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scandeniall · 4 years

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mirrors for friends //ch.2

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wc: 1180

pairing: TBD x reader

Ch. 2 // Here We Go

3 years ago

“Atsumu move your fat ass head,” you groan, shoving your band mate slightly to see the tiny phone screen Mirrors for Friends we’re currently gathered around. The 4 of you were currently gathered in Iwaizumi’s living room, attempting and failing to all squeeze onto a tiny loveseat. You had called dibs on the couch and since it was Iwaizumi’s place, that left the remaining two members on the floor.

“Your head’s fat”

“You two shut up and let’s watch my masterpiece come to life.” Kuroo stops the two of you before you could start your usual bickering. He also ignored your comment about how you definitely pitched in, instead opting to rest his head on your knee. On the screen was a recorded rehearsal for a new song, Here We Go. Written primarily by Kuroo, the song became an unspoken anthem for the band. It’s a song about pure passion for making music, and following this dream. A sentiment shared by the rest of you.

The song even throws a direct shot at your former band mate. Some guy you and Iwaizumi had met, who knows when. One day the two of you were just hanging out in a cafe and the next you thought you had a new friend. You guys thought he had been cool, and he was a pretty good singer. The four of you were already friends had just decided to combine your musical inclinations and form an official band. Not wanting to be the only one singing, you guys sought out another member and that turned out to be a huge mistake. While the rest of you were ready to put as much into this as you could,he was the only one not ready to take anything serious. Showing up late to practices, and when he did he had either been too high to function or so hungover that even the strum of an acoustic guitar “ruined his eardrums”. On the occasion he was a functioning member of the band, he’d always have something negative to contribute.

“This song sucks, who wrote it.”

“Iwaizumi, how are you so tired after playing drums? You're sitting down”

You constantly had to act as a buffer between the dude and Kuroo. After all, at that early point he had been the only one really writing the music. So to have his lyrics constantly nitpicked by some jerk who only contributed a few measly vocals, only for your benefit. Then Atsumu has been no better. His purposeful backhanded compliments had caused a physical fight on several occasions. That hand the fact that he didn’t even try to be nice to the guy. After all, this rando comes in and starts insulting his friends? Thank god for Iwa being able to calm the other guy down enough for you all to at least get something done.

That continued on for nearly a year, and by then you all had recorded several YouTube covers as well as like 2 originals in Iwaizumi’s basement and had started building a tiny following. The four of you still hung out together a ton and one day after your fifth member showed up to practice hungover and annoyed, all hell broke loose. It had started with a snide remark by atsumu about how it was nice that he’d finally showed up. An hour late. Somehow it got to the guy arguing about how you all took this shitty good for nothing band too seriously, and how you all were probably just having weird massive orgies whenever he wasn’t around. “This band is nothing but a joke. A stupid dream by a bunch of weirdos who aren’t going anywhere in life.” That day not only did you lose your fifth member, but he reignited the fire that had begun to dull in all of you. The four of you were going to make it.

The sound of pen rapidly scribbling across paper, broke you out of your study induced trance. Glancing, up you noticed the closed laptop and textbook from the man you’d come to the library with. “That doesn’t look like peptides and amino acids to me.” The first time you caught a glimpse of Kuroo’s course work, and you were completely confused. Hell, you still are, but you’d been around the guy long enough to know that the scribbled words right now looked nothing like his little molecular pictures you’d seen him make before.

“(Y/N), Come here for a second and take a look at this.” Kuroo hadn't even acknowledged your comment, so curiosity got the best of you. Closing your laptop, and abandoning your seat, you moved so that you were leaning over his shoulder, squinting at his handwriting. “What am I looking at, all I see is your chicken scratch.” The seriousness in his voice caught you off guard as he mentioned that they were lyrics.

This will always be mine, so much more than just a dream to me And I will never be fine with letting you ruin everything And I will never fucking follow your lead Give up on you, so you can take it out on me I'm sorry that you had to watch your life come tumbling down

“It's about us. The band, and how that asshole just tried to bring us down. I was thinking that might be a verse. Heavy guitar, maybe some type of solo back and forth with drums,” Kuroo hummed out eyeing your profile. “What do you think?”

“You know I already think you're a musical genius.” You shrug, turning so that the two of you make eye contact. The soft smile filters through his face before turning back into his usual lazy smirk. “Well of course I am. However, I have this riff in my head that I need to get out. You down for getting out of here?” You don’t miss the way his tongue quickly swipes across his lips before he breaks the eye contact and starts packing up his bag. “Yeah, lets go write a song.”

---

“We’re fucking awesome.” Atsumu said, the rest of you nodding in agreement. You all had broken into a quick debrief about the performance, everyone agreeing that Kuroo’s guitar work on the song was absolutely insane.”You guys are gonna make me cry,” the guitarist joked, soaking in the praise. Before you all added songs to your live shows you always did a video recording. You all would give it your all, performing as if it were an official show. That was how you gauged if a song would translate well live. Sometimes you all would have friends come by and watch those rehearsals, but now that everyone has grown up, it was much harder to do.

“This song almost feels like a theme song for us. Imagine we opened with it.” Iwaizumi added. “Good job writing this too Kuroo.”

“What can I say, I’m a musical genius-” he had been interrupted by your knee painfully coming into contact with his back. “I helped write the song too jackass.”

a/n: yeah i hope this structure is clear. still dont know which boy im gonna go with *though this chapter is kuroo leaning if u squint, but all the boys will get a leaning chap*. And, pls note that they've been a band for 6 years, but this song was written 3yrs ago and that is intentional. Also the song is Here We Go by sleeping with sirens yes.

#haikyuu x reader #hq x reader #haikyuu imagine #haikyuu imagines #kuroo x reader #mirrors for friends #atsumu x reader #iwaizumi x reader

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lokgifsandmusings · 6 years

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Definitive Ranking of Book 1 Episodes, #9/12

9. 1x06 And The Winner Is...

It’s the probending finals! That’s it. That’s literally it.

As I go through these metas, I’m constantly rethinking my rankings since the issues seem to crystallize. For instance, though I might have enjoyed “Skeletons in the Closet” over something like “A Leaf in the Wind” due to personal taste, my “Endgame” essay made it clear that many of the structural and thematic problems of the season were tied to the last few episodes. For that reason, I kind of expected “Turning the Tide” to be next, since it’s the episode where (by my own account) the ‘wheels came off’ the narrative.

There *is* a lot to tackle there, but “And The Winner Is...” was right next to it on my first pass-through list, and I simply couldn’t think of a way in which it’s better.

The best that can be said about 1x06 is that it’s not bad. It’s really not. It hedges on “fine” territory for most of the episode. At the same time, it’s unthinkable that this is *all* that happens in a full episode. We’ve had utterly *packed* 22 minutes before, like “Enemy At The Gates”. Here, it’s basically two things:

There’s a championship match & some team prep

Amon attacks after the match

Hell this could have easily been combined into one bullet point if I had been trying.

It’s not that focused episodes are necessarily a bad thing, either. “Operation Beifong” is easily one of my favorites, and that B-plot may as well not exist. But the main issue is that the driving tension of this episode, at least until the terrorist attack, is a rivalry match that was established the episode prior. And consisted entirely of one mean remark on the part of Tahno that was also vaguely suggestive. Like, I’m sorry to hear Bolin and Mako lost to them off-screen in the past, but Tahno literally had four lines that was just sort of, “You are losers.” Was anyone super gripped by this?

This is especially an issue given that it followed the episode of probending saturation. Again, probending is a successful tool to showcase Korra’s development in teamwork (remember her extreme isolation in the South Pole), and to also show what type of Avatar she is and what her mark is: she reconciles the old tried-and-true into the modern era with her own spin on it (airbending applied to pro sports). However, that use was kind of drained after “A Leaf in the Wind.” All we’re left with is watching yet another match, and worse still, this one is presented as if we should be really hanging on to find out the outcome.

Look, Tahno seems like an asshole. We also are primed on a cultural level to root for the underdogs by default, and of course we’d rather the team with the people we know and like at this point be the victors. It’s *fine*, but forgive me for not being invested. I do think Amon’s attack at the stadium was an effective venue, though for the life of me, I fail to see why it couldn’t have come at the end of 1x05. We didn’t need Amon’s warning, and I actually think a surprise would have been even better (and made more sense; but I’ll get to that). Plus, that would solve a lot of the issue of 1x05’s pacing. We didn’t need 3 random matches just like we didn’t need continual love triangle idiocy. “Let’s be friends” could have been easily established before the final match against Tahno, and then the episode would end with chaos erupting.

I’m dangerously close to fix-it fic, and I realize that. But I just don’t see this episode justifying itself as is. What is the value of having Tarrlok, Lin, and Tenzin debate how to handle an attack that was always going to happen? I mean, I’m usually all for this kind of granular detail, but there was no incentive or reward for the audience agreeing with anyone in it. Other than that, we had Korra and the Ferrets attacking pictures of Tahno and a match where the Wolfbats cheat (which wouldn’t have been hard to establish in half the time), before the attack itself.

For an episode that was supposed to set the tone of the rest of the season, it felt very much like spinning-wheels.

Alright, now the logical issues. Tarrlok, Lin, and Tenzin know this terrorist threat is there. The whole Council is united in closing down the arena (and are unmoved by Korra, Bolin, and Mako arguing for it to stay open because...they want it to) until Lin runs in and says they need to show city-wide strength and unity against the Equalists. This is a decent point, especially because it’s still unclear what percentage of nonbenders even support this cause. There’s no real debate that ensues, however, even though these are rather relevant topics to address.

Tarrlok agrees to this as long as Lin is the one to personally ensure responsibility for everyone’s safety. Which is just...this doesn’t make sense. It’s still the Council’s decision to go through with it, and it also seems bizarre that the only thing fueling Tarrlok’s decision was personal risk. He is legitimately committed to stopping the Equalists, and there’s no reason why the presence of police would alter his calculus about keeping the arena open very much. Plus, is he elected? What is his biggest fear, here?

The weirdest part to me, though, is why *wouldn’t* Lin’s police force already be assumed as protection? In fact, shouldn’t she have been in on this conversation from the get-go, since it’s literally about security, and even just Amon threatening to attack the place would trigger a very serious response on the part of the police department?

Maybe these are nitpicks, or maybe I’m just frustrated by the fact that Amon could have easily been stopped if they just positioned metalbenders and the entrance and searched everyone. I guess in fairness the gloves were new technology, and they were just assuming otherwise unarmed chiblockers would show up. But the Equalists Korra fought in 1x03 undercuts this assumption quite significantly since they were already using gas canisters and other sorts of weaponry. Hell, Bolin and Mako even dealt with a guy who had those shocker-sticks, which I have to assume they would have mentioned to someone. Since, you know, the people keeping Republic City safe are running around in metal suits?

I think the crux of it, at least for me, is that in our current world, if you’re going to show us the “governmental response” to a threatened terrorist attack, it deserves to be handled in a way that 1) makes sense and 2) actually tries to grapple with the balance of showing resilience/unity versus safety and the risks associated with both. I’m just not sure LoK was ever really the show that should have tried to handle this, and certainly not when our protagonist is arguing one side on the basis of her wanting to participate in a sporting event.

Which again, but a surprise attack could have resolved this issue.

There’s also a more general problem here, and that’s the Equalists and their very, very undefined support. We’re supposed to assume the majority of nonbenders are *not* Equalists, or at least, that’s what 1x08 implied with the police force inflicting harm (or almost doing so) on a vulnerable population. We see that Amon’s rallies are popular and people were generally supportive of vigilante justice being doled out against corrupt gang members (again, debending can kind of be thought of as disarmament, at least before Amon’s “cleansed of impurity” quasi-genocidal speech begins), but there’s a large difference between that and willingly hiding a glove in a bucket of popcorn and attacking the police with it.

We could think that most nonbenders do want *something* done about the inequality and the way benders are able to extort (also their taxation without representation, I guess), but is *this* really the message that’s going to get people on-board:

“Good morning, citizens of Republic City. This is Amon. I hope you all enjoyed last night's pro-bending match, because it will be the last. It's time for this city to stop worshiping bending athletes as if they were heroes. I am calling on the council to shut down the bending arena and cancel the finals, or else there will be severe consequences.”

If anything, this is the kind of shit that would bring people together to say “fuck those guys.” Amon was able to spin the Wolfbat’s win into some commentary that was probably relatively resonant, but again, it’s the premeditated nature of this that seems utterly unstrategic. Had the Council shut it down...where does he make his speech about taking Gotham back from the corrupt?

Actually, speaking of Bane, remember that time he interrupted a major sporting event? And told everyone to “Take control of your city. This...this is the instrument of your liberation! ...We come here not as conquerors, but as liberators, to return control of this city to the people.” And a big part of that working was the ELEMENT OF SURPRISE? And the fact that it was well-attended because people weren’t scared shitless? And the cops were on a false trail instead of having been given a heads up about an attack?

I don’t even know what point I’m making anymore. That Amon is a failed Bane? (Who’s really more like comic!Ra’s al Ghul, according to Griffin.) That Nolan pulled off this concept better than Bryke, though 1x06 aired like two months beforehand?

Really, what it boils down to is that it bothers me when it feels like things ~just happen~ to advance the plot. Amon’s threat was seeded before this episode, and an attack makes sense and ups the stakes. But the open Equalist revolution announcement shouldn’t have to rely on the idiocy of everyone else. Also, in 1x04 it was “too early” to take Korra’s bending since she’d be a martyr. But now two episodes later, probending athletes are a suitable target? Sure they cheated, but these aren’t exactly crime bosses or even someone like Tarrlok. They’re not martyrs? They had fans. Finding out Lance Armstrong had been juicing was really upsetting, but I doubt we’d be cheering at someone breaking his legs (and his off-race behavior makes Tahno look like a cinnamon roll).

Yes, probending represents the worshipping of a privilege. But that is a full stadium, no matter how you slice it.

Really, if we had any idea of the support the Equalists enjoyed, or perhaps a deeper look at the plight of the nonbender past phonograph destruction, I think this could have landed. That’s perhaps where the creative energy needed to go in the episode immediately preceding it, rather than romance, especially since the Bolin leg of the love trapezoid was not needed in any way. (Frankly neither was Asami as a device to hook up Makorra in the first place.) But without it, it just comes across as a little bit of an ass-pull. This is especially the case when the Wolfbats’ cheating wasn’t even hinted at before their match. Wouldn’t Bolin have known this and mentioned it to Korra?

That said, there are nice things about this episode, and I think this is where this book’s definitive rankings turn a corner. Because truly, I feel bad having almost nothing nice to say about the 3 previous episodes I’ve dug into.

For one, I love anything Linzin. I’m like, “oh yeah, you wreck that home, Lin!”, but they do give me significant feels, and I think it��s fantastic how they’re scripted. There’s obvious affection there, as well as hurt, and this kind of deeply-rooted inability to communicate entirely honestly. Lin’s “Like old times?” actually makes me make disgusting noises at my computer. Especially since she immediately walks it back. Remember how they probably dated for like a decade and a half?

STAHP IT!!

I think it’s kind of funny that Lin is accidentally an abysmal chief of police in the narrative. Like I said, stopping and searching everyone would have been the way to go, unless that happened and the popcorn was somehow overlooked. Still, her confidence and old tried-and-true methods did help frame the uprising in an effective way.

That’s the other thing: even with Amon’s announcing of it, the Equalists revealing themselves was awesome. The slow-motion worked effectively, along with Korra’s hazy vision, and the way that there were Equalists hiding in plain-sight within the audience. Their ascent to the airships was a little silly as a conclusion, but otherwise Amon’s message and the reveal of the electric glove worked well. Though one odd thing was that in absence of distributing these (I guess they didn’t want them to fall into bender hands?), it felt a little salespitchy. “And you too can ensure equality for only 9 yuans!”

(x)

The rooftop fight was a wonderful conclusion, especially since the episode ended on the somber note, with a pulled out shot of the destruction. Lin is the perfect action hero, and this also showcased Korra’s prowess, without completely breaking the narrative. She threw herself into the fight without thinking much, and ended up needing rescue, though not before reminding us of her amazing physicality.

The conclusion was good, it was just the path getting there was not particularly engaging. Which interestingly is the complete opposite of Book 1 as a whole. Still, it was the halfway chapter needed, and the surprise Equalist uprising in the stadium is iconic enough to be ripped off. If only the follow-through had been there.

#12 1x12 “Endgame”

#11 1x05 “The Spirit of Competition"

#10 1x11 “Skeletons in the Closet”

1x06 photo recap found here

Book 2 ranking/essays found here

Book 4 ranking/essays found here

#book 1 ranking #lok meta #legend of korra #korra 1x06 #and the winner is

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