#mystery tribune

[papashittycams]

My Mother in law’s coworker’s father was a photographer for the Chicago Tribune. Apparently this person has heard of my love of photography, & is giving me a box of old photography stuff. I have not been told what’s in the box, & won’t find out until tonight after work, & it’s being kept secret from me by my Mother in law.

It could be ANYTHING, & I’m going crazy not knowing what’s in the box. WHAT’S IN THE BOX.

#film #believeinfilm #film photography #photography #analog #photographers on tumblr #analog photography #Chicago #tribune #gift #mystery

[swordmaid]

tav shri’iia is THE canon for me obvi but I also really like the idea of tav wren with yves still being part of the dead three as bhaal’s chosen. the thing with wren is that he was yves’ childhood friend who was pursuing his bard career and severely flopping. one night when he was supposed to escort yves home from the graveyard he chose to perform in some tavern instead, and that night is when the bhaalists came and killed her. for him, one of his closest friends just went missing the night he was supposed to look after her, and when she returns 2 weeks later all beaten up and bloody with no memory of herself ofc he felt guilty….! and he couldn’t even bear to look at her because it’s all his fault u know … if only he didn’t ditched her maybe this wouldn’t have happened so one night he just decides to leave bc he couldn’t take it anymore. it’s always been his dream to be a travelling bard anyway and maybe his career will pick up in some other city than baldur’s gate, so he leaves her and his home and sets out to salvage what he can of his career. and in the most part he was mildly successful. he also ends up making a pact with some fae and they help with his bard career too lol but the guilt of yves is still in his mind- he just got better at ignoring it.

SO. imagine his surprise when he gets tadpoled and goes to moonrise to find a cure and he sees his friend - the girl that’s been haunting his dreams and the source of his guilt and shame - a part of the evil cult that’s been enslaving people with parasites. and now he’s meant to kill her? but how could he when he’s the one who left her behind and maybe it’s his fault that she turned out like this … but anyway I love the idea of wren being like noooo that’s NOT yves she would never do that!! and they’re just like girl ur delusional ur friend is literally chopping people up forcing us to find the parts like some treasure hunt

#but durge era yves is so similar to glados to me where she is so mild about everything and instead of forcing you to test #she forces you to figure out the murder mysteries around the lower city and present ur case in the murder tribunal #like as she says. the only thing better than murder is getting away with it and what’s more fun than to watch someone figure out the puzzle #you set for them u kno 🤭🤭 #and her proposition to ally w her is that she wants u to figure out the whole absolute ploy and how it started and what role she plays #and the only way to get those answers is to break in gortash’s place which betrays his trust … so it’s like a fun whodunit for her..!! #also i think wren finds out what actually happens to her that night .. learning that his real friend died and got replaced with this other o #other one who’s essentially just wearing her skin … reconciling with the truth that if he was with her she would’ve lived … killing this #yves for his friend so she can have some peace finally .. etc etc. it’s really about ween #wren*s survivor’s guilt bc I like to imagine they had another friend who he left with to look after yves #and when he finally returned after how many years he learns that friend has been dead (bc yves killed him) and allegedly yves’ mental #health went downhill when their friend died so she had to be sent away #which in truth she just left for the bhaal temple lol #anyway just thinking abt this three.. def wanna do a wren playthrough one day ..!! #also their other friend’s name is pan (full name xaphan) and they’re a tiefling but idk abt their appearance yet #making them a tiefling so yves’ first kill post lobotomy links back to her og friends where - if #it’s alfira she’s a bard like wren and tiefling like pan … but honestly pan could be Dragonborn too if she ends up killing quill lol #shut up about bg3. #bg3

[hollisofficial]

genuinely love general crozier of metalocalypse fame so much. hes such an interesting character who very obviously has a place in the plot but nobody seems to acknowledge him as a major character . i need to know more about him. frothing at the moutb

#LIKE. MAN. #i need to know more about the tribunal in general #like why is the entire first season crozier trying to kill dethklok and go against salacia? #how did he learn abojt the tribunal????? why does he want to kill dk so bad?? like obviously bc theyre destructive ect but is there more?? #is he the only person in world militarys that wanna do this?? in the govm that wants to do this?? is he acting alone?? how did ravenwood kno #abt the prophecy?? just bc hes a preist?? did CROZIER know before clming into this?? how did HE find out????? #why does salacia need him. i mean like obvs so salacia can control the millitary thru him but like. I FEEL LIKE THERES MORE LAYERS TO THIS. #CROZIER CANT EXIST JUST TO BE FUCKING KILLED FOR THE EXITUS SCENE MAN THERE HAS TO BE MORE THAN THIS. #I KNOW HE GOTTA PLAY A BIGGER ROLE IN THE PROPHECY AND THE ENDING I KNOW IT I KNOW IT [bawling eyes out emoji] #sorry for wanting that old man to get a happy ending . i think hes been thru a lot. hes captivated me with his mysterious plot rizz. sorry. #m.

[drew-marsinvestigations]

Recently inherited my grandparents' house. My grandpa passed away in 2008, so there's not much left in the house that is identifiably his. As I was going through some cabinets, I found a stash of my grandpa's books. In the mix were some family history related things, as well as a bunch of books about ghosts and haunted houses.

He obviously bought them at yard sales. Him and my grandma were suckers for a good deal. But then I saw this one:

Beautiful. My favorite by far. I started flipping through the pages, and I started finding stories that had been bookmarked. One was bookmarked using a piece of newspaper from The Chicago Tribune from October 1975.

At this point, I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to piece together clues and find out some weird family secret because I'm definitely inside a Nancy Drew game.

Is my house haunted? Well, a few people have died here, so I guess I'll find out soon enough.

#dont take this too seriously #i just thought it felt very nancy drew coded #would love it though if my grandparents came back to haunt me for a little bit #this side of my family is boring and has no secrets #nancy drew #ghosts #haunted houses #haunted house #halloween #chicago tribune #spooky #spooky season #mystery #ghost #haunted #haunting #october

[juleecruisearchive]

A Star Is Born

by Greg Kot It could well be a plot summary of Blue Velvet, or perhaps Twin Peaks: “It’s all about relationships-inside and outside the company. Famous film directors. Composers. Me. It’s so complicated and giant and strange.” But it’s actually Julee Cruise, the diminutive musician-actress whose angelic voice has graced the provocative Blue Velvet movie and the hit Twin Peaks TV series, talking about life with David Lynch.

After being released to critical raves and commercial indifference last year, Cruise’s Floating Into the Night (Warner) album has cracked the Top 100 pop charts, thanks in part to the success of Twin Peaks. Floating Into the Night provides theme music for the show, and Cruise appeared in an episode of the Lynch-produced series as a roadhouse singer.

The album, full of deceptively straightforward romantic lyrics written by Lynch and an alternately lulling and jarring score composed by Angelo Badalamenti, sounds like nothing else in pop music. Cruise sings in a soft, child-like soprano over a cushion of purring keyboards and percussion, only to have myriad sound effects disrupt the mood: guitars out of Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti westerns, early ‘60s girl-group choruses and Big Band horns. It’s not unlike watching a Lynch movie: Just when you think you have a handle on things, something strange and discomforting happens.

“The person singing those songs is very lonesome; in fact, she’s losing her mind,” Cruise said with a laugh. It’s clear that besides being a mesmerizing singing performance, Floating Into the Night is also a first-rate acting job.

“Technically this music is so delicate that it’s a challenge just to sing it,” she said. “But at the same time, it allows me to be more dramatic, more psychotic than if I were just singing ‘Oh, baby, baby’ into the microphone. Certain things you can’t overact while you’re singing. This, I can overact and get away with it. I can stylize it.”

Cruise met Lynch after he had hired her friend, Badalamenti, to work on the score of Blue Velvet in 1986. “David wrote the lyrics out on a napkin and gave Angelo a few instructions,” she said. “Angelo wrote the music based on that.”

She rounded up some other singers, none of whom could negotiate the nebulous, free-floating rhythms and subdued, dark textures of the song, Mysteries of Love. Finally, she tried it herself.

“There was just the hint of a melody, no breaks in the music, no place for a singer to breathe,” she said. “At first I said I couldn’t do it. I didn’t think I could hold my breath that long.” But she so impressed Lynch and Badalamenti with her interpretation that they insisted on pushing the project further, into a full album.

While the record deal took shape, Cruise took a job as a Janis Joplin-style singer in a New York play and “completely butchered my vocal cords.”

“I had to hit rock bottom and almost lose my voice before I could learn how to use my voice for this album,” she said. She also gave up smoking, and as the album progressed, her voice grew stronger.

“On half of the album, they had to overdub my voice three or four times to make it sound strong enough,” she said. “But by the last half of the recording, my voice was strong enough to stand on its own.”

The album’s unique mixture of sounds, its undercurrent of stylized madness, evolved as the three worked together. “There were times I was worried that it was going to sound too clichéd, too bland,” she said. “The track I Remember, for example, sounded like something out of a bad soap opera at first. Then, by accident, we came up with these weird synthesizer notes that transformed the song into something credible, something with real bite to it.”

Though critics loved the album, commercial radio didn’t know what to make of it. But the success of Twin Peaks has rekindled interest in all things Lynch. “I wasn’t counting on Twin Peaks changing anything for me,” Cruise said. “I didn`t think it would be a hit except with the black turtleneck crowd.”

The series’ broad-based appeal ensures that a second Cruise album will appear next year (“the same voice but with a different feel”), and that she’ll be singing in the Twin Peaks roadhouse next fall.

Though she has risen to the level of collaborator with Lynch, Cruise still remains a fan of his work. “I turn out all the lights, climb in my favorite chair and watch Twin Peaks on Thursday night just like everybody else,” she said.

And the notorious Blue Velvet? “It frightened and fascinated me,” she said. “It took me somewhere else.”

The same could be said for Julee Cruise's intensely introspective music. Source: Chicago Tribune June 17 1990

#1990 #julee cruise #Chicago Tribune #Floating Into the Night #twin peaks #blue velvet #david lynch #angelo badalamenti #interview #badalamenti #twin peaks soundtrack #newspaper clippings #mysteries of love #i remember

[blue-lollipops-and-ice-clouds]

My Drow Dark Urges.

Mayrel - Rae - Alyce - Doll - And, the newest, Morigyn.

#bg3 drow #bg3 dark urge #you can definitely tell how i slowly but surely just started downloading mods for clothes by the time you get to Alyce #oh why does morigyn have a collar on the fuck is with that? don't ask questions that mysteriously appear like ghosts in a derelict town #baldur's gate 3 #rae is in act 3 btw! i've been playing him since November and he killed Raphael and the murder tribunal and also saved shadowheart's [!!!]

[ideemthatsheyetlives]

I have so many thoughts about the characters of Disco Elysium and AI: The Somnium Files interacting with each other and hopefully this isn't a bad outlet for them.

#disco elysium #ai: the somnium files #ai:tsf #the somnium files #kaname date #aiba #quick time event #qte #I initially thought to have Aiba tell Date to shoot the mailbox because there are porno mags in there but the mailbox is out of frame #the tribunal #Aiba could solve the mystery of the hanged man #disco elysium x the somnium files #I want Kim Kitsuragi and Aiba to meet #I want Kaname Date and Harry Dubois to meet

[biggaybunny]

Just checked out a Disco Elysium speedrun to see what they could do to this game, and it turns out there’s (at least in some versions) a glitch that lets you start with max stats/skills. So they put on their pants, run outside, grab kim, grab money from the company rep, buy a book, and then read (skipping time) for two days until the map opens up and they can solve the entire case. They notably:

Do not examine the corpse, you know, the one whose murder you are solving

Do not put any thought in the thought cabinet

Do not remember their name or face

Do not examine the car

Talk to Kim like twice

Never talk to several characters like Evrart

Do not save Kim during the tribunal

Never visit the church

Don’t have the ex-something dream

Don’t talk to the [REDACTED] because they didn’t do any side content

I feel the need to emphasize, they never put on a goddamn shirt or any shoes

So to summarize, an amnesiac, half-naked freak-of-nature with 0 thoughts in his head wakes up, haggles his way out of debt and into money, re-reads a trashy fantasy novel for two solid days, and then solves a bizarre murder mystery single-handedly, forcing his precinct to reluctantly take him back, all while having never learned a single lesson about himself or the world.

#disco elysium

[cheralith]

vogue — 「 boss/fashion designer!geto suguru x reader 」

synopsis ; even without much knowledge in the world of fashion, you decide that it's in your best interest to work for the country's fashion magazine powerhouse. however, you begin to second-guess your decision when you're faced with the grueling labor of its one and only editor-in-chief who expects nothing less of perfection. can your efficiency meet his standards or will you be out the door before you can even blink?

content tags/warnings ; gn!reader, use of they/them pronouns, mild language, traditional japanese basis of (l/n) (f/n) used, reader wears glasses, makeup, and heeled boots, some mild manga and jjk 0 spoilers (three minor characters from each are introduced), uhhh suguru being a dick lawl, some parts not edited/not beta read

contains ; editor-in-chief!geto, fashion designer!geto, assistant!reader, assistant turned ****!reader, platonic roommate!ino, modern au, mild angst, some crack if you squint

word count ; 10.2k

notes ; heavily inspired by "the devil wears prada" and "paradise kiss", so there'll be some references i've dropped within this—see if you can spot them! also the censored is spoilers so until then, hehe.

now playing ; seven days in sunny june - jamiroquai

It’d be foolish not to know the household name of Geto Suguru, the ultimate male muse of Jun Takahashi whose title has yet to be reigned by another. He was the ultimate breathing mannequin of the iconic Yohji Yamamoto piece he had worn on the Milan runway back when he was just a teenager. It was one of the most staple pieces of the new century that helped open the gates of the mixing of world culture and avant garde fashion—an England-Japanese punk fusion of an ashen and tattered kasaya layered under the contrasting statement piece: the earth-toned gojōu-gesa splattered with weaves of gold—and it was that very piece that rose him to the top of the fashion world as one of the most powerful names in global fashion.

And how could he not? At seventeen, he was scouted as a model for Gaulthier and became his muse at the ripe age of twenty before several other worldwide designers began to fight for his eyes. It was only a few shrewd years later that he’d open up his own successful fashion line, RIIKO, named in honor of his late sister, resulting in it becoming one of the fashion line pillars in the modern century. 

It didn’t take long after that, due to his fame and distinct education from Jujutsu University, rising to the top for Kaizen fashion magazine and ruling it with an iron fist and several cups of coffee with almost all his designs on display for all to see in the office. It was due to his work that Kaizen became the powerhouse of powerhouses of fashion editorials and magazines and it was solely his work that made fashion what it was in present times. 

Whether it was direct or indirect, Geto had impacted the industry in all sorts of ways. Be it blossoming an upcoming supermodel’s name or setting new fashion trends, everything could essentially be traced to Geto Suguru. 

So it’s understandable that many had called you a fool—a dimwit, even—for not understanding how big of a deal it was to become his junior assistant after lazily submitting your resume. Originally, you had just wanted to become a simple lifestyle journalist for papers like Sankei Shimbun or The Japan Times, but seeing how it was between a seemingly mysterious fashion magazine that mentioned, received gasps, or the measly and homely newspaper of The Hokkaido Tribune, a magazine you knew would only give new journalists the scraps of what they earned, the choice was obvious. 

Whatever gave you more money, you’d take. Survival of the fittest, was this world not?

“Do not tell me you’re going to your interview at Kaizen wearing that?” Ino barks out a laugh as he finishes his morning cereal for breakfast, scanning your outfit. “You’re going to work in a fashion magazine, not some dingy corporate office.”

You sneer at him as you shove on your loafers (don’t mind that the leather is peeling slightly on the side). You think that there’s nothing remotely wrong with your overused gauntlet gray matching set of trousers and blazer with a slightly wrinkled button-up underneath it. 

“Oh, please,” you roll your eyes at your roommate and parttime brother figure. “What on earth do you know about fashion?”

“Enough of it to know that outfit is atrocious for that type of environment,” he states simply as he shoves a donut in his mouth. He kicks his feet up on the table, making you cringe at their nakedness. “Trust me, change if you can. Make a statement for ‘em.”

Ino Takuma sighs and glances at your thick spectacles that you’ve worn since early college. “And at least change your glasses for your contacts. Heard they don’t like those sorta things over there. At least not the prescription kind.”

“Can’t find them,” you grunt when you feel the weight of your shoulder bag heave down your body. “I’m already late, anyway,” you sigh, “Listen, if I don’t come back alive, which I will by the way, then you can dance on my grave all you want.”

“I’m holding you to that,” he chants before he lets out a haughty snicker that gets muffled instantly when you slam the door on him. 

You throw insults at Ino in your mind, grumbling about how a mere job hopper like him wouldn’t even know the speck of fashion, how you refuse to take advice from someone who wears the same thing every day. There’s nothing wrong with the gray, you think. It’s safe and presentable, ordinary and professional, and you’d much rather blend in than stand out as you believe standing out and making yourself known is just a recipe for trouble. 

Stretching out a hand on the street, you call for a taxi and humbly enter as you smooth out your trousers. The taxi driver eyes you in the rearview mirror with a questioning glint in your eye. “Job interview?” he asks.

“Oh, um,” you nod your head. “Yep! I'm a little nervous, haha.”

“Really?” he says as he gratefully steps on the accelerator a little faster. “Better get you there quick, then. Would hate to have you late. Where are you planning on working?”

“Kaizen Magazine,” you declare confidently, an affirmative look on your face.

“Kaizen?” questions the driver slowly as his eyes go to scan your outfit in the mirror again, his brows raised. “As in the… the fashion magazine?” 

You nod with visible apprehensiveness. You think that maybe you truly were the only person in the world that didn’t know the impact of Kaizen, seeing as how a mere taxi driver even knew about the name and you didn’t up until a few weeks ago. 

“I see…” he mutters. The drive there is a mix of silence and everyday morning conversations, before he pulls up to the building that held the key to your dreams. “Well then, here’s your stop.” 

You let out a little gasp of excitement. “Thank you so much,” you reply as you shove some cash into the slot. 

“Hm, well,” the taxi driver counts the money carefully, barely looking just before you close the door as he mutters, “Good luck, Plain Jane.”

You turn back to the taxi, your hearing a little awry. “Sorry, what was that?”

But when you turn back to the yellow cab, all that’s left is a billow of smoke and cinders. Dazed and confused, you quickly shake those feelings off before you head inside to the building that was now your shining beacon of hope with a determined smile still plastered on your lips. White is the first thing that greets you when you enter the building as it was essentially aired out onto every corner. White marble counters, white tile flooring with white grout, white frames of fashion icons—the white screams pristine and perfection to you and its message went very much noticed. You haven’t even met Geto Suguru yet, but you understood already that he expected nothing but excellence.

You ride up the elevator quietly and alone, trying not to focus on how your anxiety increased with each ding of the passing floors. The elevator screen seems to almost taunt you as it closes in on your doom, the numbers getting closer to the designated floor until it slowly pauses and shone brightly the number 21 in stippled red.

The doors slowly open and the light seeps itself back to your vision, white flooding your senses again. You carry yourself carefully down the hallway whilst taking your time to admire the many framed pictures of past magazines, multiple runway models, and scraps of newspaper articles. One specific piece catches your attention, however; it was large, almost half your body size and framed in a gilded black frame. It was a picture of a mannequin wearing a tawdry gray-black robe with the kanji characters of “summer” painted with purple messily atop. Layered was a loose, but well-fitted piece of thick green and gold cloth that looked much more refined to the messiness of the other materials. 

You stare at it for what seemed to be forever whilst admiring the contrast and beauty of the work before your name is called out.

“(Y/N) (L/N)?”

Your trance breaks from the voice approaching you. You turn to see a short and young woman with dark blue eyes staring at you with a raised brow. “That’s you I presume?” she asks.

“Oh! Uh,” you nod furiously and smooth out your trousers again. “Yes… yes, that’s me. I assume you’re Manami Suda? The one I spoke with on the phone?”

She nods slowly, her eyes going to study your outfit which was a rather stark contrast to her own attire that highlighted an emphasis on shades of opal and navy. Her eyes have a similar glint in the way that Ino’s and the taxi driver’s had, further enunciating the message that your attire was rather… something.

“I see you’ve dressed up for the occasion,” she murmurs. Sarcasm going undetected by you, you grin as a response and think that a compliment from her was a sign you did something right. Her eyes go to rise back and meet yours again before she turns and redirects you to the end of the hallway where some rooms belonging to subordinal editors sat in, clacking away at the computers. There was one singular room that held the only door on the floor and it doesn’t take you long to assume who it belongs to considering the large letters of GS frosted onto the glass.

Two desks stood on each side of the door, one completely devoid of life and decorations. Manami guides you to the empty one and patted the top of it. “This will be yours if you manage to miraculously pass.” 

Manami taps on her clipboard a couple of times, listing off a couple of requirements that you were most likely going to need in the future: efficient time management, ability to fight for what Geto wants, sharp memory, quick feet…

“And uh…” Manami flickers her eyes to you and the details (or lack of, in this case). She mutters under her breath quietly, “... a good wardrobe.”

You turn to her, internally wondering if you were going deaf today. “Sorry, can you repeat that?”

“A good, warm…” she squints, obviously finding the right word to keep that ignorant smile on your face. “... welcome to start off his day.”

She succeeds in her task as you merely nod with the same blatant grin attached. “Got it!”

Manami tours you around the floor of the office, letting you say hello to your future coworkers that work in the cubicles that send you worried looks behind your back. They obviously seem too pitying of you, knowing that your fate would be sealed as Geto’s potential right hand man the moment you signed that employee contract.  

“This is Human Resources,” Manami gestures over to a room filled with chattering employees who seemed to be getting their gossip out before their day started. “You’ll contact them if you have any—” her phone dings suddenly. Casually, she pulls it out, only for all of her resolve to disappear in an instant. Manami then abruptly blows a whistle with her teeth, alerting everybody in the radius.

“Everybody! His morning facial was canceled!” Manami hollers. “Geto is coming in…” her phone pings again with another notification, and you can tell Manami’s heart instantly drops. “Oh God… he’s in the lobby! Everybody, places! You,” she snags the sleeve of your blazer and drags you along with her, your clunky loafers nearly tripping you. “Come with me.”

Manami takes back to where you first started and orders you to stand in the front of the blank desk with a look that screams both fright and anxiousness all in one. She lists off too many tasks that you need to do before he comes, but you’re so frazzled with trying to remember how to act in front of your future boss that you can’t even remember the first thing she told you. 

“Help me arrange the drafts of the magazines from most recent to least recent before he—”

The elevator dings and all goes quiet; Manami tosses the magazines over her shoulders and positions herself firmly in her place, gesturing for you to do the same. The doors open and unveiled from two bodyguards is a man—a tall man, around six feet or perhaps even taller—dressed in noir fitted pants and a matching button-up closed only halfway to reveal a silk navy turtleneck. Caped behind him is a black velvet trenchcoat that you’re sure is worth half your rent and a watch plated on his wrist that is well over your life savings. He’s slightly sunkissed, with blue-black tresses of hair with a soft bang sneaking through and large plated earrings to match. His eyes, however, show a tint of color—a sharp dark amethyst that you think could cut through you like crystals.

But he’s almost hauntingly attracting—like a spirit. Something about him was an enigma and his aura was nothing less than powerful. 

“Good morning, Geto,” Manami chants with an artificial happiness to her tone.

Geto doesn’t reply, just merely giving a silent blink before he sheds his coat off and tosses it aimlessly towards Manami. It proves to be heavier than anticipated, giving how she fights to groan from the weight of it. He’s handed his briefcase from one of the bodyguards and begins to open the door to his office until he pauses and turns and glances at you, the stranger.

“Hello,” you state with a slight bow. “I-I’m one of the interviewees for your junior assistant. My name is—”

“(Y/N),” Geto murmurs; his voice is soft and low. It’s all knowing, with indigo eyes boring into your own. “(L/N) (Y/N), I know. The one that graduated from Jujutsu University recently, yes?” 

 Adjusting your glasses to wave away the blurriness, you nod with anticipation. “Yes, that’s me.”

Geto turns back and opens the door, to which he only replies back, “In my office.”

You glance at Manami for confirmation, only given back with a jut of her head towards the door. All the unease you felt in the elevator comes hurdling back to you in an instinct and you feel as if you were no more than a peasant to someone that was essentially royalty in the fashion world. 

Geto turns his chair to face away from you, shuffling a few papers over each other that appears to be your resume, before he spins it slowly towards you. He kicks his feet up lazily on his desk. 

“It’s nice to have another Jujutsu alum to join us,” he says. His voice is still the same—a little baritone with a wisping edge of a whisper to it, but it almost sounds… bored. Unamused even. “A bachelors in print journalism… same as mine, hm. Tell me, is Professor Tengen still as loose as ever with their practices?”

You fight to fiddle with your glasses as you watch as Geto tangibly toys with his own, with his focus angled on the papers in front of him rather than you. “Um, I assume so. Though I believe they’re actually retiring this year.”

“Good,” he sighs in what seems to be relief. “Shame that the university had wasted time and money by hiring them. Truly, I hope they can find someone much better suited for their position.”

“Really?” you quietly question. You had only taken their class a few semesters ago and thought despite their rather… all too lenient disposition… you did learn quite a lot in their class. “I thought they were a rather alright teacher…”

Regret pools in your mouth from the moment you have finished your sentence. Geto finally goes to look at you from the edge of his glasses with a sharp look, narrowing his eyes ever so slightly. 

“Tengen was merely a sorry excuse for a professor. They were rather nothing but a nanny who gave their students too much leeway,” Geto declares. “Though, I’ll admit, I am pleasantly surprised that you managed to take something out of that class.”

A laugh that’s just dripping with nothing but nervousness leaks out of your lips. “I suppose I had learned just a few things…”

“Mmh,” Geto nod nonchalantly, eyes drawing back to the papers. “Well. Let’s start with the basics. Why exactly do you want to work here?” 

Geto already feels the cliche comments erupting. Had the person in front of him say at least one of them, he was ready to insert the papers he was holding into the nearby shredder. Or maybe out the window this time, he wonders—something nice for a change.

“I was inspired by your work.” 

“It’s been my dream to work at Kaizen.”

“Fashion is my absolute passion.”

“I want to—”

“I’m just in need of a job, really,” you say lifelessly. 

He goes to raise his head slowly from the packet and turns to you slowly. Geto doesn’t say anything, but his facial expressions indicate a blend of confusion and intrigue. A slithering tongue darts out to slick his lips, indicating you’ve piqued his interest. “Well, obviously. But why this job specifically? What about it stood out to you?”

You clear your throat. “I had learned recently that Kaizen is a rather prestigious mag—”

“‘Recently’?” Geto repeats quietly. “You hadn’t heard of us before?” 

Lips thinning, you shake your head slightly. His eyes go narrow again to your dread, serpent-like. “My specialty is more in newspapers rather than magazines, I-I’m not too knowledgeable in that area.”

Geto goes quiet and the silence makes the air go thick. It’s then that familiar glint sparkles in his sullen eyes when they go to examine your choice of clothing—it confirms Ino was truly right in the end, as he lets out a smile-less chuckle that doesn’t do much to ease your brain. 

“Continue,” Geto gestures and takes off his glasses to look at you, or you suppose your outfit, more properly. He folds his hands and places his chin on top of them. “You said you only learned about us not too long ago?”

“Yes, and I realized that perhaps working here for a while would, at least I hope, grant me access to other media houses,” you explain. It’s only then you realize that your declaration sounds absolutely ludicrous and almost disrespectful to the editor-in-chief of the most iconic fashion magazine in the nation. “Connections are quite powerful in this day and age, haha…”

“I suppose,” Geto mumbles with not much interest in your poor humor. “What about me? I do hate bragging but surely, you know about my name or at least my fashion line?”

Your hesitant countenance and silence tells Geto all he needs to know. He thinks that it’s almost some sort of marvel that no one has heard of him or his works before.

He sighs. “Do you have any experience working in any fashion-related activities at least?”

“Well, I once worked in a department store for a few months back in high school,” you say thoughtfully (and ignorantly).

Geto gives you a blank look. His blinks are apathetically slow.

“Um,” you clear your throat again and shake your head, timid. “N-no…”

“Then tell me,” he continues smoothly. “Why exactly should I hire you? You obviously have no taste in fashion and you hadn’t even heard of my name, let alone my magazine, until recently. What is there within that makes you want to work here other than you just… what was it that you said?” He air-quotes mockingly, “‘needing a job?’”

Your throat runs dry and limbs go stiff. A heat rockets to your face when you seemingly can’t get any words out to excuse yourself, much too caught up in the same of your ignorance towards Geto’s profession. And that’s all the response he needs to make his decision. 

His hand takes the packet again and to your horror that you fight to keep in, inserts it into the paper shredder. The groan of it rumbles through the room agonizingly and you realize that Ino is going to have the time of your life planning your doomsday. 

Geto gives you the mercy of breaking the thick silence first. “You may go.” 

With a swift flick of his wrist, Geto dismisses you with a slight edge to his murmuring as he puts back on his glasses to examine the morning newspaper to not waste any more incessant time in the day. 

You don’t even attempt to fight back with any poor excuses. Tears prick the corner of your eyes, the sting of them frustrating you to your wits end. Instead, you gather the last of your resolve and bid him through a strained throat good day and make your leave, humiliation and disappointment trailing not too far behind. 

You hope that Ino will give a nice eulogy, at least.

Out of all the miracles that await you in life, you do not expect the one that comes in the form of an early morning phone call that wakes you at the ass-crack of dawn. When you pick it up with sleep still very much embedded in your eyes, it dissipates in the instant you hear Manami’s voice. It’s only then that it hits you why on earth she was calling so early and why she was demanding to know your whereabouts, claiming you were going to be late on your first day of work. 

You think it’s some sort of cruel joke maneuvered by Ino, especially with how his comforts from last night were mixed with taunts. But when Manami’s voice finally registers in your brain, by some sort of miracle or stroke of luck, you have gotten the job as Geto Suguru’s junior assistant. 

You don’t know how, but you don’t waste any time questioning how on earth you landed in such a position because you leap out of bed at 7:23 a.m. and manage to do your morning routine in the matter of what you think is a record-breaking fifteen minutes. Your ruckus manages to wake up deep-sleeping Ino, who, when you excitedly tell him to postpone your funeral, gives a groggy thumbs up before drooling back into his pillow. It’s 7:38 a.m. when you shove on your shabby coat and you realize you only have a mere twenty-two minutes left until you have to officially clock in for work. 

At 7:40, you’re out the door and sprinting to the located coffee shop that thankfully wasn’t too far from where you lived.

At 7:47, you’re at the designated cafe whilst attempting to swim through the crowds of morning bustlers to pick up Geto’s coffee.

7:50, you’re sticking your hand out waving desperately for a taxi and tip extra to make the driver speed through as you attempt to make sure the coffees don’t spill out of their containers.

7:58, you arrive at the building and just barely make it into the narrow gap of a tight-fitting elevator, earning stares from the others from your rather… frazzled appearance.

At 8:02 a.m., you dash out the elevator and officially clock in for your first day at work at Kaizen Magazine amidst a birdnest of hair, clothes that were plucked out of your hamper, and what you pray to the heavens above are hefty layers of deodorant and perfume since you were given no time to shower.

When Geto comes in that day, all suave and composed, he takes one good look at you before sighing and focusing his attention to the more refined Manami and lets her take the gears for the day. The only attention he gives you that morning is the rough toss of his heavy coat—a cashmere pearl peacoat today—flung at your arms that nearly makes you tumble from its weight.

You quickly learn that working for Geto requires high demand and maintenance, as he is not one to skip over any details in his day. Not even three hours in your first day, you already have to plan out his future meetings, reschedule one with a rather feisty and insistent client, edit a forest of emails, finishing by dashing out five blocks on foot to the two michelin star restaurant to retrieve Geto’s weekly steak for lunch. Had this been your old corporate job, you only would’ve gotten half the tasks you had completed by the end of the usual eight hours, but you realized early on that you had barely scratched the surface of your future in Kaizen.

You think that after plating his steak with the shakiest of hands, you finally have time to relax during lunch time when you see the small hand of the clock finally hit 12:00 p.m. , especially since you and him were left alone in his part of the office together. But the moment that Geto saunters into the office again, he tends to you once again with a final task by himself.

“(Y/N),” he calls from the office, the scrape of his fork against ceramic cluttering your ears agonizingly. 

You fight the urge to cringe from the sound as you scurry to the doorframe, hands stiffly intertwined together. “Yes, Mr. Geto?”

“No need for such formalities,” he remarks with the dab of a napkin to his lips. “They make me feel old, and I’m surely not much older than you are…” you think that’s the longest he’s spoken to you since the day had started. “Did Leibovitz confirm?”

Blinking, you tilt your head ignorantly. “D-did who confirm?”

He pauses and does that taunting slow rise of his eyes from his steak to you. “Leibovitz. Did she confirm?”

Silence fills the office, much like the silence that drowned you back at the interview. He clicks his tongue and dismisses you with a disappointed shake of his head. “Just go on your lunch,” he mutters, sighing.

Manami, the savior that she is, is called into the office after her break and is asked the same task and you watch with humiliation whilst packing your things to go on your lunch as she picks up the telephone and speaks to someone over the line before confirming to Geto that, “I’ve got Annie!”

“He hates me, Taku!” you cry out whilst flopping onto the dinner table. It’s ten in the evening and you’ve just come home after what was supposed to be an 8-5 shift. You suppose you should be used to this already after two months of working for the Lucifer donned ritually in white in the building, but you don’t know how much your sanity (and body) can take. 

Normally, Geto is usually cold to those who he wasn’t familiar with, but you think that his distaste for you sours everyday. You notice that he’s beginning to pile you with the more urgent and busier duties and that he often stares you down more menacingly in the morning with those piercing purple eyes of his, like you were gum stuck on the bottom of his shoe. You thought it was just him being normal Geto Suguru, the man with the expectations higher than the clouds, and that you just were still adjusting to such a high-intensity environment, but it was today that your world came crumbling down when you overheard him muttering to his associates about you, tone icier than ever.

You were on the other side of the door, a fist going to rap on the glass with the other holding his afternoon coffee pick-me-up when you heard it.

“... can’t even do the most miniscule things right,” Geto had groaned. “I ask if Lanvin’s models are all good to go for next Thursday’s shoot and somehow, they have the nerve to ask ‘How do you spell Lanvin’? For fuck’s sake, I can feel my goddamn conscious just wither away by the second.”

You hadn’t heard Geto swear since you had started working there, but something about his venomous tone enunciating such words had made your blood run cold from the other side of the door. Not having the courage to face him after that, you left his coffee on Manami’s desk for her to tend to with a post-it note saying a sorry excuse for yourself before letting your eyes sob frustratingly in the bathroom, isolated from others.

The last time you had cried that hard was way back in childhood, where you had broken your arm from falling down a tree branch. But you think that Geto’s words had twisted through your skin and bone much harsher than that pain ever will. 

“It’s a miracle how I haven’t been fired yet… I don’t even know why he hired me!” you wail.

Ino sighs from across the dinner table and you can’t tell if it’s a sigh of pity or a sigh of criticism. You learn that it’s both when he rolls his eyes at you whilst simultaneously pushing a plate of much needed food towards you. 

“First off, you need to eat,” he presses, staring at your gaunt features. “The way your face is swallowing is making me feel like I’m living’ with a ghost. You’ve lost some weight, I’ve noticed.”

Awareingly, you touch your cheekbones and realize he’s right, for you feel the small disc of sharpness from them prick your fingertips. They’ve never been so cavern before. You suppose it’s because of the lack of proper meal time between your days and how you often eat small and very late dinners back at home, truly not enough needed fuel for you.

“Secondly,” Ino chews his tongue, wondering if he should really say what he’s about to say because of your current disposition but goes through with it anyway. He might as well rip the bandaid off now to let more time for the wound to heal. “You won’t like what I’m ‘bout to say, but you need to up your game. Severely.”

An aching body rises up from the table. You go to stare at Ino through glazed eyes and a pouty lip, asking him what he meant.

“Ah nope! Don’t give me that face and don’t play coy with me,” he hisses, looking away to not give in to your helpless puppy eyes. He can’t—he shouldn’t give you the easy way out and just say to quit—not when you’ve been earning so much bank that rent isn’t a problem for either of you anymore. He wonders, though, for a moment if so much money is worth your rationality.

He drags a hand down his face before placing his chin on it, examining your haggard appearance. “What I mean is that you need to see through Geto’s eyes. See what he sees when he looks at you. Tell me, if you had an assistant that showed up wearing things that looked like they were plucked from the clearance bin at a thrift store and didn’t show any respect for your brand, which just so happens to be a fashion magazine out of all things…” Ino eyes you with a raised brow. “You startin’ to follow me?”

Your fingers fiddle with each other. “... sorta.”

“Now listen,” he raises his hands up lazily in surrender. “I already know what you’re ‘bout to say about me not knowing’ how to dress in shit other than black and more black, but even I know that you should put in more effort into your appearance. That’s the first step.”

“But I have—!” you exclaim helplessly, “I-I swear, I’ve been trying to… but it’s not my fault that it isn’t up to his standards.”

Your roommate groans and rubs his forehead, not really knowing what else to do for your situation until an idea pops in his head. “Free up your weekend,” he demands with a sly grin that makes you a little uneasy. “I’m no fashion connoisseur, but you know who is?”

“And remember, we never touch anything with chevron on it, especially in today’s fashion world,” Yuki chimes as she slaps on a navy blue pageboy cap on your head and she prances about your bedroom that’s been littered with spare clothes from her very own closet she graciously gifted to you for the past weekend. “I’m so utterly relieved that the trend has dug its own grave.”

The past weekend had been filled with endless shopping trips and you shuffling in and out of clothes every minute, practicing how to pair items and colors together by Yuki’s teachings. Of course you should’ve known that Ino was going to contact the one person that he was within reach that was essentially a walking encyclopedia when it came to fashion. You’ve met Tsukumo Yuki before, found her to be quite delightful even, but you never anticipated she would be this giddy, especially about clothes of all things.

And she used her brain to good use for not only clothes, but the entirety of yourself. You never knew how much just a simple haircut could do your face along with small hints of makeup to emphasize the best parts of it. Dared not your hands go to a lash curler, but here you are now, making sure your powder compact and lipstick for the day was in your bag before you went out. 

“Uh, I don’t think I ever mentioned this before yet, but thank you for helping my wardrobe out, it really means a lot,” you say just before she slides on a pair of gold bangles on your wrist. “Are you sure you wanna give these clothes to me? I’m okay with just borrowing them.” 

“Nonsense, babe,” she wavers off before shuffling through your now-hearty closet, a closet that’s now bursting with many clothes given by her. “I needed space in my closet anyway, so take as much as you need.”

So (Y/N)’s closet is basically her trash can, a particular shaggy brunette thinks with a roll of his eyes. Ino fiddles with the piece of toast in his mouth as he leans on the doorway, watching as Yuki essentially treats you like her very own Barbie doll at such an odd morning hour. 

“(Y/N)’s not a doll, Yuki,” Ino lazily calls aloud through a tired yawn. “You better get ‘em out the door soon or else they’ll get late for work. Especially need that money since the landlord’s been on our ass about increasing our rent…” he mutters, sniffing. “Damn bastard.”

She snaps at Ino to be quiet and let her work before she shuffles on a regal blue overcoat over your shoulders that completes your look. When you look at yourself finally in the mirror, you almost think there’s a stranger in your house from the way you look so dignified compared to the you just three days ago. It’s a simple outfit with not much layering, but it’s still enough to ooze charisma and elegance to wandering eyes. You’re adorned in a white weaved sweater with flared, light-wash jeans and white boots to match. Over the outfit lies the coat that drapes almost like a king’s mantle behind you and the pageboy cap as your crown.

Yuki creeps up behind you, her manicured hands on your shoulders affirmingly. “How’re you feeling, hun?” she asks quietly as she shares the same sight with you in the mirror. “Don’t you look wonderful?”

You know that it was all her work, it was all her creativity that made you into the artwork that you are now, so breathlessly laugh with a smile on your painted lips and thank her quietly once more before whispering, “Yeah… yeah, I do.”

Her eyes study you for another minute, going to stare at the glasses still atop your face. Yes, they were new and much more modern considering she quite literally called your old pair atrocious, snapped them in half, and tossed them over her shoulder, but she was still quite dissatisfied when you told her about your hesitance about using contacts. “Are you sure you don’t want to give contacts another chance?” she sighs. 

You shake your head with a small smile, “I’ll feel completely naked without them,” you murmur, “Besides, I think they actually compliment this look, if I’m being honest.”

Her lips stretch out into a grin, too absorbed in her fashion education finally being used. 

“Well then!” she begins to drag you by the sleeve out your room. “We wouldn’t want you to be late then for your first day as the new you, right? Let’s get you a cab!”

Somehow, you think you really are at your first day at work again from the way you feel that same fluttering in your stomach and from how the people you’ve once grown accustomed to seeing in the early mornings are not merely passing you with mundane nods of their heads but instead, greeting you with wide-eyed gawks and open-mouthed smiles. Some of them, a few who you knew but never spoke a word to, even do a double take and compliment you aloud on the new look. Even the cute barista in the lobby that never bothered to spell your name right at last did after finally taking a good look at the holder of the card.

When you exit out of the elevator, Manami nearly drops the pile of magazines she’s holding when she spots a refined and refreshed you. You offer a bright smile to her and you watch as her gasp slowly forms into an affirmative grin when you round your desk.

She laughs softly. “And who might you be?” she asks with a tease in her voice. “‘Cause last time I checked, that’s my coworker (Y/N)’s desk.”

“I murdered them,” you shrug nonchalantly, earning another chuckle from her. You take it as a good sign, great even, considering up until now, Manami had been rather stoic and a little indifferent towards you because of your amateurism; but now, you suppose that ditching that Plain Jane from just two days ago is finally beginning to do you good by finally grounding a proper relationship with her. “Shame, isn’t it? Poor thing.”

“Truly,” she nods. Her eyes trail further down until they spot something that makes her gasp. “Don’t tell me those are—”

“—the new calfskin gold studded Louboutin boots?” you finish for her. You flex your ankle and show off the ravishing red bottoms of your shoes. “Oh yeah.”

Manami squeals in excitement and rushes over to your desk, begging to take a look at them. “How on earth did you manage to get your hands on these?! I’ve been looking for them fo—”

The elevator dings again but with a tone that makes you and Manami flinch. Both of you stiffen and straighten out your posture, falling into a thick silence when out comes Geto traipsing out like he usually did—his aura being nothing less than dominating. You and Manami chime out in sync a good morning to him as he saunters towards his office as he begins to shuffle off his coat as usual to toss to you until he looks up and catches you in his field of vision.

He stops all of a sudden with his eyes dancing about your figure, a stark contrast to the rest of his paralyzed body. Geto’s lips thin all of a sudden, and so do his eyes when they scan your outfit. He takes in a sharp breath and opens his mouth to say something to you, yet nothing comes out, even as your eyes glisten with anticipation.

It merely instead zips itself close and he finally whisks himself into his office, coat still on and briefcase still in hand, and slams the door shut. 

But not without glancing at you one last time.

Much has changed in the past month for the better.

Yuki was a godsend—she had been your guardian angel, your fairy godmother of sorts—because you swore your career life had taken a complete 180° the moment your closet was revamped. Ever since that makeover, you had felt so much more confident in your actions, so much lighter on your feet. The price of your efforts was beginning to pay off as well, as Geto began to slowly thaw his icier sense of self when you began to actually put effort into your appearance. His thrusts of his coat towards you began to become less aggressive, was significantly more lenient when it came to more of the impossible tasks, and had at one time actually muttered a ‘good morning’ to you and Manami after months of greeting with silence and judgemental glances.

She’d occasionally check up on you every once in a while, usually to offer new clothes that she didn’t want anymore. And by offer, it actually just meant packing them in a box from her place to yours with a post-it that’d usually read “With love, YT ❤” in neat cursive. Along with forming a close bond with Yuki, your relationship with Manami improved significantly, especially when you gave her those white Louboutins she was eyeing. She often invited you to lunch with her other friends, Larue and Remi. 

The iconic John Galliano once said that, “The joy of dressing is an art.” A month ago, you would’ve never believed what you would think is a rather tacky statement, but now, you can truly see it to believe it. It never occurred to you to actually look at your surroundings closely, but you often would sometimes take a few seconds out of your day to admire the many colors and materials that would adorn your coworkers. Whether it be admiration for their sense of style or mild jealousy over luxurious pieces, you were finally understanding what makes fashion, fashion.

And your epiphany was awarded today with the task that you thought would never come into the light of your days working for Geto—being tasked with dropping off The Book.

The Book was a collection of pieces that were needed for the upcoming edition of the magazine, regarding it as being the most important item in the entire company. It was a duty that usually Manami tended to, but she hypothesized that you managed to finally get on Geto’s good side after a while and congratulated you. Manami spoke to you briefly about how trivial The Book was to both Geto and Kaizen. She told you about how you must guard it and Geto’s key to his penthouse with your life, and that you were to remain absolutely invisible to him if he was in the apartment. Manami told you because it was usually the hour he needed most concentration—it was during the later hours of the day that he usually mended last minute edits to the edition or he was working on his latest fashion collection since he was only able to work on it during the weekends as Kaizen took too much of his time.

Manami told you he would most likely be found on the second floor of his penthouse, and you were to remain on the first floor at all costs. 

“The editors will finish The Book around 10:30 or 11:00 at night, wait in the office until then. Then, drop the book off at his penthouse at no later than 11:30 with his dry cleaning, too.”

Her words echo in your mind as you tiptoe out of the cab and look up to see a gleaming, glamorous building sitting in the heart of the city. It’s one you’ve passed a plenty of times—hell, you pass it on your way to work—but it never occurred to you that it’d be this antique white, Parisian-styled building that would be the abode of your boss. 

“Take the elevator to the top floor and enter his apartment. Do not call out his name, don’t wander around, don’t even make a single sound. You are nothing more than a ghost when you step foot into his house.”

The only doors that are on the very top floor of the apartment complex are two large metal doors that sit before you. You enter the key into the keyhole and push them open with controlled force, closing them as quietly as possible with Manami’s whispers still floating about your head. You knew that Geto was certainly a man of luxury, but to see that wealth exempt in a form other than fashion was a sight that you weren’t sure if your eyes deserved to feast on. Sculptures and paintings decorated the foyer and hallway, adding occasional splashes of color to the ivory-adorned apartment. After hanging the dry cleaning in the designated coat closet, the first room you enter - and perhaps the only one you’ll ever be in - is the said living room with the glass coffee table sitting in the center of it.

“Place The Book on the coffee table in the living room. That’s it. Do not toddle any longer in his house and get out immediately. Don’t let curiosity get the better of you and just simply go afterwards. It’s for your own good.”

But oh, how curiosity is just a little devil of temptation that sits far too easily on your shoulder. A house holds the most of a person, and Geto is just an all too mysterious enigma for you not to at least dip your toe in. The doors at the end of the hallway are waiting for you, but so are the picture frames that sit atop the TV stand. You suppose… maybe another minute wouldn’t hurt.

Your feet carry you slowly to the stand and you crouch, adjusting your glasses to get a better look at the pictures. There’s only two of them—six by fours, both in oak brown frames. The first one is a picture of a smiling young girl with short chestnut hair sporting a smile with a cigarette between her teeth. Beside her are two boys taller than her, both making similar faces at the camera. One of them, the one that’s a little taller with silvery snow hair and opaque black sunglasses, throwing a forced, all-too wide grin that almost looks maniacal. It doesn’t require much brain power to know the other figure in the photo is a younger Geto Suguru, his hair shorter in a tight bun with a rare, but soft grin on his face, his gaze affectionate to the others.

The other picture is of the same two boys arm in arm with each other. Both of them are grinning now, with the white haired boy still smiling a little more largely than the other. It doesn’t take long for you to assume who the other boy was considering that the shade of purple sheathing his twinkling eyes is unique to only one individual in your life. 

Best friends, you suggest in your mind as you study the pictures a little longer than needed. A minute, you thought, wouldn’t do much harm, but how utterly wrong your thoughts prove when you suddenly hear the slam of a door from the floor above. The crash of it makes you yelp and breaks you out of your trance from the pictures and your gaze suddenly snaps to the open stairs above you, as well as two voices echoing aloud. 

“Y-you can’t—” an unknown voice wheezes. “I’ve been your muse for years. You possibly can’t just abandon me out of nowhere…”

“You say that as if I’m not doing that right now,” a familiar one replies back boredly. It’s Geto, and his voice makes your nerves electrify in fear because it’s in that moment that you remember that you can’t get caught inside of his house. “This is the last time I’m telling you, Shigemo. Get out.”

The man that you assume is Shigemo heaves heavy breaths. “You need me,” he declares.

“Needed. Past tense,” Geto corrects as he almost forces Shigemo down the stairs with an invisible force surrounding him. You can see their figures above you, Shigemo slowly stepping backwards with each step Geto takes forward. “You’ve done me well these few years, I admit, and I do thank you for that. But I suppose your expiration date has finally come.”

“I’m not a food,” Shigemo snivels. “I’m a person. Most importantly. I’m the reason your fashion line flourished, I was the inspiration for almost all your works. We’re essentially a team.”

They’re towards the end of the staircase, towards where you are still present in plain sight. Your eyes scatter about a place to hide in the meantime, but there are seemingly no places to hide that would hide you well without the notice of Geto’s eyes.

“A team?” Geto barks out a sarcastic laugh, one that makes shivers run down your spine from both the rarity of the sound and how utterly intimidating it is. “I work alone and I always have. There is no point on relying on anyone of any kind when my independence obviously pays off.”

“Who will you have then?” Shigemo retaliates with a whimper in his voice. “You know that I’m the only one that will tolerate you. It’s not like you can go crawling to Goj—“

“Finish that sentence and see what happens,” Geto hisses, causing the other man to fall into a forced silence.

Your eyes finally land on the small space between the fireplace and a pillar. It’s a space large enough for you to fill and efficient enough to hide you from sight. Unsticking your feet from the ground, you make a run for the small space, only for you to forget about the obstacle that was the ottoman sitting spitefully on the floor.

The thud that comes from your body almost rivals the volume of the door slamming open moments earlier and just like the door, it attracts unneeded attention. Geto and Shigemo stop their bickering for a moment to search for the cause of the sound, only to see you humiliatingly face first on the floor. Geto narrows his eyes at the sight of you, an unwanted visitor in his home. 

A pained groan slips from your lips accidentally. You silently curse yourself for not taking the time to properly break into the tantalizing loafers Yuki bought you the day prior and wince at the pain blooming from your knees and chest. When you finally get up, you can’t help but notice that everything around you seems rather… hazy.

“Who is that…” Shigemo mutters.

Geto bites back a sigh and instead, pinches the bridge of his nose. He supposes that despite your improved mannerisms, your clumsiness still has yet to dissipate. Annoyed, he grunts out, “One of my new assistants.”

Shaking his head, Geto decides to deal with you later. His home is already suffocated with one individual, he doesn’t need another clogging the atmosphere up. He returns his attention back to Shigemo. “I thought I told you to leave,” he states, shoving his bag towards him.

Shigemo’s face paints a horrified expression once again. “Geto, please rethink this,” Shigemo pleads. 

He lets out a chain of pleads and excuses for himself as Geto essentially escorts him out with just walking towards him, his face still icy. Shigemo ends up on the other side of the door to his penthouse and it’s there where his patheticness exudes the most—he falls on his hands and knees like a beggar, claiming he’d do anything and everything just to be by his side. 

But his voice is suddenly cut short when Geto finally slams the door in his face, the thickness of them guarding him from Shigemo’s whines. He lets out another sigh and locks up the door securely before dealing with the other parasite in his house.

“I don’t think dropping off a book should take longer than thirty seconds,” Geto drawls as he saunters towards the living room, where you’re still on all fours on the floor, your hands tapping around. “So tell me, why are you still here?”

At the sound of his sharp tone, you freeze. You’re sure you looked utterly stupid and a mess right now, considering that you had just lost a fight to an ottoman out of all things, but you couldn’t let Geto see you in such a state. It didn’t take you long to realize that the reason why everything around you looked so blurry was because of your now-missing glasses that you attempted to look around for. But you pulled a Velma, and just like her, you can’t see without your glasses.

Everyone thinks it’s an exaggeration when you state that you felt utterly naked without them, but you truly did. You’ve been wearing glasses ever since childhood and you really didn’t appreciate the looks you had gotten when you were younger when at times you’d take them off. Some complained that your eyes were too small, too big—others mentioned you looked “off” and “weird” without them. Either way, comments from the other children stuck with you like scars, and ever since then, you refused to be seen without them. 

“I a-apologize,” you stutter, shuffling your body to hide behind the recliner so Geto wouldn’t see how much of a clutter you are. You’ve humiliated yourself too much already in the office and the last thing you truly need is for you to get fired merely because your curiosity got the better of you. “I was about to head out and th-then I heard your voice from upstairs and—”

Your words fall deaf on Geto’s ears. He lets out another groan while stretching the aching muscles in his neck as he closes in on your disorderedness. A hand goes to shield your face—you don’t want him to see the bareness of your face, especially since you didn’t bother wearing makeup today. You can’t even bear the thought of him looking at it. In a rushed state, you wander around for your glasses with your head tucked in, using the remnants of your hair to curtain your face.

A jumble of excuses tumble out of your quivering lip, but Geto is too preoccupied with the gleam of something catching his eye. Laying flat on the floor are a pair of glasses that doesn’t take Geto long to presume who they belong to. He plucks them from the ground and examines them for a brief moment before holding them above you. 

“I assume these are yours,” he asserts with a cocked brow.

Your head snaps up at the sound of his voice directly right above you and through your foggy field of vision is the seraphic figure of Geto holding what seems to be your glasses. Lips escaping a relieved gasp, you hurriedly scramble to your feet. Your eyes are too poor to see it properly, but Geto also shares surprise, but for an entirely different reason.

He doesn’t give you the sanity that is your glasses right away, because he’s much too preoccupied studying your face. It’s so… fresh. Your glasses were hiding such a view, like curtains to a window that unveiled the utmost rare and breathtaking sights. The way your eyes are wide open, pupils blown with a touch of singularity makes him even more intrigued because of how they’re uniquely placed onto your face along with the rest of your features. Your lips, plump with a natural sheen to them—your cheekbones, perfectly rounded. The slope of your nose fell just right. Geto studies it like an artist to a blank canvas, devoid of anything yet holding just the perfect amount of space—wanting, waiting to be filled with anything and everything.

When his eyes stare at you in what seems to be bewilderment, you swallow thickly and look away. But you can only glance at your surroundings for less than a second before Geto takes your chin between his thumb and forefinger, turning your face toward him again. It’s then that you realize that Geto isn’t staring at you, but your face as a whole. His eyes flick with small movements, dancing about as they go from eyebrow to lips, freckle to lash, examining each and every single particle that your face has to offer.

You feel a heat creep onto your cheeks. You’re not sure whether it’s because of the closeness you and him share or the fact that you can’t detect his opinions on the one thing you’ve been disclosed about for years, but either way, you feel weak in the knees; it only worsens when Geto’s thumb brushes over the entirety of your bottom lip, feeling the plushness of it on his the pad of his finger.

“Has your face always been this open…?” he murmurs softly as he studies the various angles of your face. 

You aren’t sure whether it’s a compliment or insult, either or neither. Geto’s tone always had a sort of bleakness to it, but in this very moment, you truly can’t tell what he’s thinking. 

“My glasses…” is all you manage to squeak out, fighting the urge to squirm in his grasp. Another gulp goes down your dry throat when Geto’s face contorts to an irritated confusion before he realizes his other hand holds the one thing dear to your heart. 

“Oh,” he mutters and hands them back to you. His opposing hand finally goes to release your face. “Right.”

Shaking hands go to put them back onto your face again. Sighing internally of relief of your now crystal-clear surroundings, you dust yourself off with your head once more, tucked into your chest. 

“I’m so sorry for this,” you whisper. The heat on your face has now spread to the entirety of your body, your nerves alight with the rush of adrenaline. “I-I’ll make sure this never happens again… good night.”

With that, you scurry yourself out before Geto has the chance to falter. All words to urge you to stay to either scold you or excuse you evaporate on his tongue. He can only watch in a strange silence as your figure rushes down the hall and out the doors, the click of them ringing out in his penthouse.

After moments of self-paralysis, an unknown feeling boils inside the pit of Geto’s stomach. He thinks he’s seen your face before with the familiarity of it unsettling him. The ghost of your face prances about in his mind as he slowly climbs the stairs to his sewing room, ignoring the shattered wine glass on the floor thrown by Shigemo. He instead, refills his own glass again with the nearby bottle of merlot wine and savoring the thickness of it running down his dry throat, embellishing in its warmth.

A single, large window faces the busy nighttime street and Geto walks and stills near it, watching carefully as the speck of your figure on the street below calls for a cab. He eyes how you turn towards the building one more time, doing your usual adjustment of your glasses (it’s a habit you often do in times of nervousness, he’s picked up) before you shuffle yourself into a cab that speeds off into the night.

Geto lets out an annoyed click of his tongue. Something about your face seems haunting and he doesn’t enjoy it. The last thing that he needed for today was even more plaguing thoughts in his head after the loss of his muse not even just ten minutes ago, but now with your face staining the back of his head, his jaw grits in irritation. In a poor attempt to take his mind off the excursion of today and the future, he shuffles about his many sketchbooks to look for any designs he could pluck out for his latest collection. 

It’s an hour in, two glasses of wine later, and somehow, he still hasn’t found a single piece to begin working on that fits into his theme. Miraculously, through the vast array of what is thought to be thousands of sketches, Geto hasn’t found one that stood out to him until he gets to the last sketchbook. It’s an early one—he thinks it dates back to his early college days, when he was just beginning to peek into the world of fashion. A pang of nostalgia hits him all of a sudden when he flips to a specific page that was the start of his history.

It’s the very design that had the attention of many designers. The sketch featured a gold and red embellished outfit, a sheen of glittering flickers adorning it. The shirt features a mosaic of gold and small flecks of color here and there, imitating the many church mosaics he’d often admired as a child. The skirt and collar of the shirt were the same shade of blood red, crimson gems bespeckling them. 

It’s not the outfit, however, that makes his eyes harden. Why would it? He’s seen it many times before. It’s been brought up over and over again—in interviews, in magazines. It’s one of the staples that made Geto the pillar that he is. He knows every detail of it, much like his other designs, so it isn’t the design of the outfit that made him appalled. It’s instead, the person that’s wearing it. 

Because somehow, the eerie sketch of the model’s face that he had drawn years ago…

… somehow replicates your own face perfectly.

a/n: first jjk fic in forever! wowie it's been much too long... also if u need a refresher on who shigemo is, he's the guy with the ponytail that nanami pulled kekeke

10.2k is hefty i know but i couldn't help myself my bad lolol T_T currently just a test run of what i hope to be is a series that some may be interested in because clearly this barely scratches the surface of what i want to embed haha so please let me know how you like it so far :))

continuing, i hope you enjoyed and thank you for taking time out of your day to enjoy my craft, whether it be your first time or your hundredth! once more, likes/comments/reblogs are always noticed and are always appreciated (´｡• ᵕ •｡`) ♡ !!!

#jujutsu kaisen #jjk #jjk x reader #jujutsu kaisen x reader #geto suguru #getou suguru #geto suguru x reader #geto x reader #geto x you #getou x reader #geto fluff #geto smut #takuma ino #manami suda #gojo satoru #gojo x reader #nanami x reader #gojo satoru x reader #gender neutral reader #gn!reader

[gucciguccigarbage]

I know we make a meme of never discussing the actual mystery in Disco Elysium but I also want to point out how brilliant it is in a sort of metatextual way like... At least in my particular playthrough, I came at the mystery from a certain angle. This is a "detective RPG", it's detective fiction, it's going to follow the framework of a mystery- And then it doesn't, actually. In what seems to be accordance with Knox's Decalogue, in act one we're introduced to the concept of a mercenary looking on from a high vantage point, we uncover that the shot couldn't come from the roof but instead somewhere further away, then the tribunal comes and there's a sniper mercenary there and...

That isn't the answer. Trying to say, yes, obviously- This sniper mercenary we haven't met before but knew existed shot Lely because he was a liability and the death could be used as a catalyst to start killing people. It was planned. But then it isn't. You can't even have Harry make those connections, as far as I can tell (could be I missed something in the checks of course). Even saying "I think it was one of you" doesn't have him point at the sniper specifically

Then the game continues, and you find the culprit, and it isn't like there weren't clues, but this is against the "rules" of detective fiction. A brand new person you had no idea existed until you find out they're the killer. But that makes sense. The Detective RPG was never detective fiction to begin with. It was a procedural. Of course it was a procedural. Look at how you got here. Look at Kim. You're not a Holmes and he's not a Watson, you're both just police officers. This is where the trail led. It is a political crime, not a ~murder mystery~

And that's a very effective move.

#disco elysium #disco elysium spoilers

[skyberia]

i would like to take a moment to describe something that happens in the moralist route that drives me absolutely insane, for the sake of the people who've played through DE but cannot be bothered to be a centrist, just so you can... idk, inherit my brainrot (endgame spoilers ahead):

in the moralist route, the event quest you get for it is one where you get soona (or noid? potentially?) to help you turn the statue at the roundabout into a huge antenna to contact the moralintern airship that's flying above revachol, in order to tell them about the upcoming civil war in martinaise and/or the 2mm pale hole in the church and so on.

while you're trying to establish communications, you run into a lot of radio interference. it's a lot of people speaking in different languages, number stations, and so on, but then all of a sudden, you hear kim's voice.

"it's cold now..." he says. "... someone's been maintaining it, the wiring has been repaired..."

when you turn to look at him, kim's just as confused as you are. he insists he hasn't said anything, he doesn't know where that's coming from. it sure SOUNDS like him, but how can it be him when he's right there next to you?

soona cuts in and explains, this is just some pale interference. entroponetic crosstalk, it happens. "a particularly eerie speciment, but still just a harmless piece of the past returning to surface." and kim's like "right, i just wish i could remember what i was talking about..." that mystery solved, you resume your mission and continue trying to contact the airship.

but then, much, much later, after the tribunal, when you arrive at the island, you both walk into the seafort to find a generator. kim places his hand on it to check for warmth and then announces to you:

"it's cold now, but someone's been maintaining it. the wiring has been repaired."

neither of you acknowledge it out loud. there's no time, you have to question the suspect, you have to close the case, you have to move on. but still, inland empire reminds you, haven't you heard that before?

(and if kim doesn't make it to the island somehow, if he gets shot during the tribunal and you end up taking cuno with you, he's the one who checks the generator instead. "this shit's cold," he says. and inland empire Immediately senses that something's wrong.

"'It's cold now,' he was supposed to say. 'But someone has been maintaining it. The wiring has been repaired'..."

"But he's not here to say it. Something *else* got in the way. Events *intervened*...")

#disco elysium spoilers #de #just take one of the more mundane lines in the game & turn them into a fucking spectacle why won't you. Jesus christ #''yeah the pale contains information from the past'' And also the future. and alternate universes #but how would anyone even figure that out? how do you even verify that? haha. help #this is skipping over a lot of details btw. this is just the general gist of it. you should play the moralist quest if you have the chance #i think this counts as a halloween post. appropriately spooky shit i feel

[artbyblastweave]

Let’s get some abandoned effortposts on disco Elysium in the list. Liked what analysis on it you had, would be great to see more, or fail to see as the case may be

Here’s one of the last insights on Disco Elysium I care to put to paper for a good long while; I really enjoy the nested futility and self-defeat of the central murder mystery, the way it structured to constantly raise the question of how anyone could possibly benefit from what you’re doing.

I mean off the bat the murder victim is a fascist stormtrooper, so there’s that. I personally maintain that it’s still good in a general sense to investigate murders regardless of the moral standing of the victim, but to get real, it’s a very convenient time for me to embrace universalist rhetoric given how little support the neighborhood receives with problems that don’t involve someone well connected. And then, over the course of the game, you can kill all four people left on the planet to whom the initial victim actually mattered on a personal level. Three in clear-cut self-defense, the fourth as an optional casualty to the same mindless, trusting proceduralism that’s admittedly and unfortunately intertwined with my “ no murder left unsolved” stance.

And then! You finally run down the murderer, and from a public safety perspective it turns out that if you’d just gone home after the mercenary tribunal, nothing would have changed; Dros is on his last legs, the odds he’s gonna kill anyone else are very very low.

The last redoubt is the ideological angle- there could be a narrative here about how you’re crushing the last vestige of the revolution, how the killing and the subsequent investigation was the last theatre of the old war- but I think the narrative resists even this attempt to read meaning into it. From an ideological perspective Dros committed the killing off the clock. It was spite, not praxis- informed in the moment by his misanthropy, his neuroses about women, and his obsession with Klaasje more than it was about striking a blow for communism. He killed Lely while Lely was doing probably the least objectionable thing he ever did. Obviously Dros’s neuroses and living situation were downstream of ideology, of material circumstances, in the way everything else is- but to try and elevate the killing by making it about that feels disingenuous.

And this is great, because Disco Elysium isn’t really about the murder mystery in the same way that Fallout: New Vegas isn’t really about finding the guy who shot you in the head-it’s an injection point, it’s a thread you pull for guidance, but the real meat is all the other stuff and people you encounter while poking around. The killing isn’t unimportant, per se, but the mystery surrounding it kinda is! Given the repeated anti-climax, it’s definitely *less* important than the harm you can cause to people in order to push the investigation forward, or the good you can do for the community by going off-script and helping people out with random bullshit. It’s neat!

#thoughts #ask #asks #meta #disco elysium

[grimalkinmessor]

Fic Rec time because why not: Death Note Edition ✨

These are some of my favorite DN fanfics and I figured I'd share them with you :3 Even if you've probably already seen some of them.

I am also a multishipper so this going to LONG. Buckle in 🚀

Gen

Five Days by Shadow_of_Quill

Rated M. Noncon Warning. Several instances throughout the week where people don't keep their hands to themselves around Light.

Despite the serious subject matter Light deals with it in a very Light™ way. This is the origin of a few of my angstier Light headcanons.

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This Is How I Disappear by TzviaAriella

Rated T. MCD Warning. After an international tribunal condemns nineteen-year-old Light Yagami to death, the Kira Task Force must come to terms with the fallout of the case–and with Light’s surprising last request.

I'm pretty sure everyone's read this one at some point. It's a classic. Everybody's GOTTA read this one at least once. Angsty but it's hhhhhhHHHHHH 🙏 So good.

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And This Is All There Ever Was by Min Daae

Rated T. MCD Warning. In which Light has confessed, in order to win.

This one is technically lawlight, but it feels very gen to me so I put it NEAR the lawlight list. I love Light being a spiteful shit and this is him being spiteful to the very end. This man will do anything to win.

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Lawlight

Polarity by Writeous

Rated T. Some people are born with soulmarks: small, colorful images tattooed onto your skin that represent the people who would prove most important in your life. By all accounts, soulbonds are supposed to be beautiful, something to be cherished and revered over the course of your life. Light Yagami grows up with a bold, typeface L on his hand and a soulmate that hates him.

I'm obsessed with this fic. OB. SESSED. It only has one chapter so far but I love the dynamic on this one. I love soulmate aus but specifically the grittier ones. It has a MCD warning but as of now it's not applicable yet. Highly recommend.

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Time Speaks by aSmallMoon333

Rated E. In his first life, L died in the arms of his greatest enemy.

In his brief second one, he died alone.

And in his third, too-long life, L died anticipating finally getting even with the man who'd won their game one too many times.

And Light Yagami? If he'd known this is what picking up the Death Note would bring....well, he'd probably still have done it anyway.

This fic? Superb. Spectacular. I reread it at LEAST once a month. It has lodged in my brain and rots everything else around it I am so obsessed. L and Light are so unhinged and in love and petty and I love them. MCD warning, obviously, but it doesn't stick. This was my first fic back into the DN fandom and honestly I think it should be everyone else's too 🙏 My friends tell me they're getting back into DN and I immediately recc them this fic.

.

louder then bells by relic_crown

Rated M. No one has ever seen Light’s soul, but it haunts his dreams as a monster: eyes bloody as sunrise, feathers tasting of citrus and sharpie fumes, breath hot as summer and twice as brutal. At first, he thinks the notebook itself is his soulmate. Then he tells himself Misa can be enough.

L ruins everything. For the first time, someone sees Light’s soul, and through his eyes Light knows it must look monstrous – why else would L be hunting him over it?

A soulmate/His Dark Materials AU—can you tell I have a thing for soulmate AUs? I adore the vibes of this fic, from the mystery of Light's soul, to L's distinct creepiness, to how Light views Kira :) I cannot explain that last bit to you, you're just gonna have to read it.

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Slow to Boil by TrashKing

Rated E. L has loved Kira since he knew there was a Kira to love. Unfortunately for him Light Yagami doesn’t quite understand the whole process of being seduced so L will have to take the frog in the pot approach to taming this beast.

I have a kink for L having a Kira kink, and this is one of my favorites to read when I have my 'I Need L To Be Obsessed With Kira' cravings. Very fun read, highly recommend ✨

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The Many Forms of Blessings by TrashKing

Rated E. Light was taken in by Wammy House after he lost his family in the accident. Now eighteen he finds it’s a tradition at the house that the best of every generation meet the mysterious creature who lives in the catacombs under the estate; L. Light is reluctant and that unease proves well placed when it’s revealed the graduates L likes never leave the underground.

And THIS fic is the one I circle back to when I get my 'I Need L To Be Obsessed With Light' cravings :3 Dark and beautiful in that Beauty & The Beast/Leda & The Swan way. I really love Light's characterization in this fic, as well as the darker take on the Light Grows Up In Wammy's trope.

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Rabbit Holes by TrashKing

Rated M. L Lawliet, head programmer and engineer for W&W Cybernetics, arrives at Tokyo-3 to fix a malfunction that killed eight people. The problem is that 'malfunction' turns out to be a newly sentient super computer called Kira. L disconnects him from the rest of the installation to begin a historic interrogation, but Kira might not be as defanged as L believes.

If you can't tell by now I am trash for TrashKing's fics—I can't help it I'm straight up in love with their Light. I would recc literally all of their fics but we don't got time for that, there's over fifty. This fic is fluffy and funny and really interesting, and it was a super fun read! I liked the inclusion of Ryuk and Light's very wholesome and yet still very Light™ reactions to human experiences :)

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Into The Grey by Kratos_Aurion

Rated E. Light is a young, hot, reclusive Omega who follows all the rules and does it all right. Except when he's sneaking out to capture criminals as the vigilante only known as Kira. L will always and forever be the world's greatest detective, but the Alpha might have a little competition in the Kanto region of Japan.

In a world just barely free of Omega oppression, these two geniuses find themselves in a race against the clock and each other.

VIGILANTE 👏 LIGHT 👏 I love this little scheming bastard. I love the twists and turns this fic takes and the persistent aura of dread and danger. I also just like it when L and Light bicker and fight and they do that a lot in this fic. A lot. It's great. I can't explain what else I particularly like about this fic without spoiling it, so you're just gonna have to read it.

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Extrajudicial by Boo_Yeah

Rated M. L knows that Light Yagami is guilty. And he is forced to accept that he will never be able to prove it.

So, just this once, he decides to break his principles and go above the law. He kidnaps Light and takes him to Wammy's house.

He's sure that having the kids interact with a real-life mass murderer will be a very educational experience indeed.

Or: Light is Kira, L is sick of how easily manipulated the police are, and he secretly wants to see what will happen if he forces Light into a domestic situation with children just as intelligent as he is.

I am a person who really enjoys L Wins AU, so L yoinking Light from Japan just to hide him away in Wammy's to try and redeem (?) him all while Light kicks and screams is something that just speaks to me personally 🙏 L just wants to not kill his friend and Light just wants to continue to commit crimes, top tier story on God.

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Animal Games by tsukinoyagi

Rated T. Gone Girl AU. L has moved his lovely, vile, entirely batshit husband out of their beautiful Brooklyn brownstone into a Missouri suburb, then left him to his own devices. He is under the impression that this is going to end well.

This fic is beautifully written and it scratches that itch I have for malicious antagonism between established lawlight. These bitches are SO toxic and I love them. I really enjoyed the different perspectives just so you can see that both of them are unreliable narrators.

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Terraito

The Gods of The Godless by foreskinsmoothie

Rated E. Noncon Warning. Light was perfect. And now that he’s not, there’s just nothing left for him here, in this life.

After a night that ruined his life, left him crippled and spurred forth multiple failed suicide attempts, Light decides his best course of action is putting himself in the most dangerous situation he can think of and making grotesque gangsters do his dirty work. He slips into the sight of Ryuk, infamous for fucking male escorts, then killing them in a brutal blur. Or so those dark web message boards say.

Light’s fate is in Gods hands… or maybe a creature far crueler has plans for him.

I LOVE THIS FIC. I ADORE IT. It's dark and gritty, but as someone deranged about human (?) Ryuk and his and Light's dynamic, this fic is wonderful. The noncon is not between Ryuk and Light, but the descriptions are explicit so be aware of that. Both Light and Ryuk have my entire heart here no lie.

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Toes, Knuckles, Teeth by TrashKing

Rated E. Ryuk's always been good at bending rules. Shinigami aren't supposed to have sex with humans but, well, by his estimation Light is also a Shinigami.

This fic revolves in my brain at 3x microwave speeds, okay? I am studying this fic like it is the scrolls of old, alright? I hold unhinged amounts of feralness for this fic. It's a smutty little character study, and it has imprinted itself onto the back of my eyelids forever. This fic addresses every reason that I'm so obsessed with Ryuk and Light's relationship. SO GOOD 🔥

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Meronia

what doesn't kill me makes me want you more by neallo

Rated M. “Poor Near,” Mello says, stepping closer and pulling Near’s head back further, tilting her face up as Mello cages her against the wall. “How long have you liked me?”

Near’s heart is kicking against her ribcage so hard it almost hurts, and her ears are burning with embarrassment. She squeezes her eyes shut, unable to hold the blonde’s gaze. “Mello, I...” she tries to speak, hoarse.

“Has it been months?” Mello asks, her voice getting closer as Near feels her lean down. She braves a glimpse through her lashes and watches as Mello bends her head to brush her cheek against Near’s, putting her lips next to Near’s ear. “Years, maybe?” The older girl teases.

Near finds it in herself to squeak out a “yes,” and almost jumps at Mello’s sharp intake of breath.

“Years,” Mello marvels.

A Fem Meronia fic set in Wammy's era where Mello finds out that Near enjoys getting bullied by her—because Near has a MASSIVE crush on her. What more could you possibly want out of life? Amazing fic.

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The Archer Ensnared by jabbernatty

Rated E. Near has two goals: the first, to celebrate Mello’s birthday. The second- a secret. His methods for achieving these? Questionable.

THIS. FIC. THIS ONE. Near is my favorite levels of unhinged and this is so in character for me. I enjoy it a lot. If you haven't figured it out by now I enjoy romantic antagonism and problematic relationships and this fic has both 😍

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we will be better than i was by sahwen

Rated M. AU in which Mello swallows their pride and works alongside Near. Things aren't as different as one might expect.

Nonbinary Mello, domestic-edging meronia, and tragedy mixed in with funny shenanigans. The way this written is just,,,so pretty?? I'm in love with it. 10/10 it has everything.

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Matsulight

metempsychosis by palant1r

Rated M. MCD Warning. After the warehouse — it will always be "the warehouse" to him, a vague noun as a substitute for years of betrayal — Matsuda wakes up the next morning faced with a second chance. One day to fix everything, one day to build the January 28 he wants. And that day will repeat for as long as it takes to get things right.

He knows that he can't save everyone. But it would be nice if he could just save someone.

OR

Matsuda gets stuck in a time loop and the situation quickly gets worse.

This fic is a TRIP I tell you, but a very good one. Matsuda's characterization in this is so much fun. This fic is about the journey of grief and all the madness and moral contemplation that comes along with shooting the greatest mass murderer of all time who was also your best friend that you're in love with. Very good read.

.

Alive by still_lycoris

Rated M. Light Yagami is a Shinigami. And Matsuda has found the Notebook ...

This is such an interesting idea, I really enjoyed it. Matsuda's moral struggle seems to be a persistent theme in matsulight fics but honestly that's half the fun. Good fic 👌

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Birthdaymassacre

A Secret Note by KeehlingOver

Rated E. What Mello left out of his writings on the Los Angeles BB Murder Cases.

Or, these edibles ain't shi--

This fic is so fucking funny holy shit. Whenever I need a pick-me-up I reread this fic. It's T4T bdaymassacre, what more could you want?

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Aggressive Top by ThePunkRanger

Rated E. Naomi Misora isn’t about to admit that the mysterious detective Ryuzaki sparked something in her, but when he insists that he’s an “aggressive top” she just can’t let it slide. So she does something entirely unprecedented, and invites him over to prove it.

What has she gotten herself into?

Naomi is sick of Ryuzaki's shit, and Beyond has reverse-psychology-ed his head between Naomi's legs 🙏 This one is unfinished but it left off on a cliffhanger that drives me FUCKIN' NUTS BRO. FIRE.

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Playing The Part by ThePunkRanger

Rated E. Someone is kidnapping members of Southern California’s BDSM community, and the world’s greatest detective is in the market for a reliable team to go undercover on his behalf.

It’s been two years since the arrest of Rue Ryuzaki, the serial killer behind the Los Angeles BB murder case, and Naomi Misora has been happy to live her life under the assumption that she’ll never have to see him again. Unfortunately, L has other ideas; ones that involve her pretending to be in a Pup/Handler relationship with the murderer she put behind bars.

I'll be real and say that I wasn't sure about this fic at first, but it's actually very wholesome?? And respectful of the kink community! There's some extra angst in the background with L's controlling tendencies (there are cameras in that hotel room. I feel it in my bones.) and his and B's rough history, but honestly I think that makes it even more interesting. Top tier fic. 👌

#death note #fic recs #lawlight #terraito #meronia #matsulight #birthdaymassacre #long post #i have several other favs obvs #but this is already.....SO. LONG. #i couldnt fit my mikalight fics 😔✊ #ANYWAY here you go enjoy :D i certainly did :D

[albrakia]

The Living Gods

Vivec, the warrior-poet god and Master of Morrowind, is perhaps the most popular of the Three. He also tends to be the most public, and the people love him. His visage appears both beautiful and bloody at the same time, and he has made violence into an art form. Vivec the warrior-poet has darker aspects associated with primitive, ruthless impulses, such as lust and murder. Almalexia, also known as Mother Morrowind, is the patron of healers and teachers. She is the Healing Mother, the source of compassion and sympathy, the protector of the poor and the weak. Almalexia embodies the best of Dunmeri culture and purpose. She exemplifies mercy, and her wisdom guides the Dark Elves in all their daily affairs. Sotha Sil, God of the World-Mechanism, is the least known and most hidden of the Tribunal gods. Sometimes referred to as the Mystery of Morrowind, he is a Magus and the patron of artificers and wizards. Perhaps the mightiest wizard in the land and certainly the wisest, he is considered to be the Light of Knowledge and the inspiration behind craft and sorcery.

#The Elder Scrolls #The Elder Scrolls Online #ESO #almalexia #vivec #sotha sil #video game #gif

[warrioreowynofrohan]

Les Misérables 5.4 - Javert Off the Track

I have to say again how well I think the musical expresses the core of this chapter despite having far fewer lines to work with.

Book: Give up Jean Valjean, that was wrong; leave Jean Valjean free, that was wrong. In the first case, the man of authority would fall lower than the man of the galley; in the second, a convict rose higher than the law and set his foot upon it.

Musical: Damned if I live in the debt of a thief! Damned if I yield at the end of the chase!

Book: Javert felt that something horrible was penetrating his soul, admiration for a convict. Respect for a galley-slave, can that be possible? He shuddered at it, yet could not shake it off. It was useless to struggle, he was reduced to confess before his own inner tribunal the sublimity of this wretch. That was hateful.

Musical: How can I now allow this man / To hold dominion over me

Book: “This convict, this desperate man, whom I have pursued even to persecution, and who had me beneath his feet and could have avenged himself, and who ought to have done so as well for his revenge as for his security, in granting me my life, in sparing me, what has he done? His duty? No. Something more.

Musical: This desperate man who I have hunted / He gave me his life, he gave me freedom / I should have perished by his hand / It was his right

Book: But also why had he permitted this man to let him live? He had, in that barricade, the right to be killed. He should have availed himself of that right. To have called the other insurgents to hus aid against Jean Valjean, to have secured a shot by force, that would have been better. His supreme anguish was the loss of all certainty.

Musical: It was my right to die as well / Instead I live, but live in hell!

Book: acts of violence committed by pity upon austerity, respect of person, no more final condemnation, no more damnation, the possibility of a tear in the eye of the law, a mysterious justice according to God going counter to justice according to men. [Note: this is one area where I think the musical errs with Javert - it roots his inflexibility in a (rather Calvinist, for a majority Catholic nation) view of Christianity. That is not the case in the book, where Javert’s religion is the law, the state, order, and in the end that worldview breaks upon the rocks of Christianity.]

Musical: Shall his sins be forgiven? Shall his crimes be reprieved?

Book: He saw before him two roads, both equally straight; but he saw two; and that terrified him - him, who had never in his life known but one straight line.

Musical: And must I now begin to doubt? / Who never doubted all those years

Book: To be granite, and to doubt! to be the statue of penalty cast in a single piece in the mould of the law, and to suddenly percieve that you have under your breast of bronze something preposterous and disobedient which almost resembles a heart!

Musical: My heart is stone and yet it trembles!

Book: To have the unknown over his head, he was not accustomed to that…Now Javert was thrown over backward, and he was abruptly startled by this monstrous apparaition: a gulf on high…

The darkness was complete…A ceiling of cloud concealed the stars. The sky was only an ominous depth

Musical: The world I have known is lost in shadow!…I am reaching, but I fall / And the stars are black and cold / As I stare into the void / Of a world that cannot hold

Book: But how to manage to send in his resignation to God?…

Unnatural state, if ever there was one. There were only two ways to get out of it. One, to go resolutely to Jean Valjean, and to return the man if the galleys to the dungeon. The other –

Musical: I’ll escape now from that world / From the world of Jean Valjean

Book: Could that be endurable? No.

Musical: There is nowhere I can turn / There is no way to go on!

#les mis #les miserables #les mis letters #javert #brickclub

[strawberrygiorno]

I've seen people talk about Kim's daily cigarette and the connection to the lungs and how if he's left in Martinaise he smokes a second cigarette and how that links to his feelings for Harry.

What I haven't seen is people talking about the cigarette also involving fire. Fire, which the game repeatedly uses to represent hope, change, and revolution.

Let's take a look at the lines after his one-a-day habit is introduced:

[Text ID: KIM KITSURAGI - "You mean this?" The light of his cigarette illuminates a fleeting smile. "This isn't cool - it's an unnecessary trial of will. And unhealthy." He flicks the ash.

VOLITION - Keeping the habit within the parameters he's given himself takes a lot of focus. It would be easier to simply quit.

COMPOSURE - Yet were he to quit, he would lose the cool factor. This man relishes his cool quite a bit -- below it all. End ID]

This is clearly an allegory for the way he tries to keep his emotions under tight control, and this includes his desire for something better for Revachol. Volition states that it would be easier to quit than to do what Kim does. Giving up hope, resigning himself to the world he's in, would mean less disappointment, more distance, less pain, but it would mean removing a significant part of himself. That spark is too important to him to extinguish fully. Being in the RCM, though, means he needs to keep that spark as dim as possible. Otherwise, he might draw attention himself or actually process his role in suppressing the change he can't help but want.

This is interesting when coupled with some statements he makes later if you ask him his position on the Moralintern and Dolorianism.

[Text ID: KIM KITSURAGI - "The Moralintern are a fact. I try not to have opinions on facts -- until they change. And," he looks at the city below, "It doesn't look like that's about to happen." End ID]

[Text ID: YOU - "Kim, are you a follower of Dolorianism?"

KIM KITSURAGI - "Yes. We all are. Her name, body, and rule are synonymous with humanism. The laws we enforce are Dolorian in origin."

YOU - "I didn't think you were spiritual."

KIM KITSURAGI - "It's not spiritual. It's constitutional. The Dolorian system does not demand faith -- only accordance." End ID]

These answers are both so... empty. There's no belief in either of these systems, just that resignation to the fact of their existence. He is, on some level, aware of what he is supporting. That tiny revolutionary desire of his keeps him from identifying with it, though his refusal to stoke that flame simultaneously keeps him from rejecting it to pursue something he *can* believe in.

So, Kim takes refuge in something he knows is true: facts. He knows how the world works, and he knows that there aren't mysterious things like giant bug cryptids or 2-millimeter holes in the world involved in Martinaise.

Except, there are those things, as well as other things that challenge what Kim holds to be facts, and he is forced to accept that the world is much stranger and much more beautiful than he dared to believe.

Over the course of one week, facts change.

The first cigarette we see Kim smoke that final day comes out almost immediately after Harry wakes up after the tribunal, which is completely understandable. After experiencing the tribunal and seeing Harry in so much pain and abandoned by his precinct, of course Kim is experiencing affection for Harry and anger at the system that created this situation.

Later, looking at the message painted on the ground in oil, Harry sets it on fire. What does he use to do this?

[Text ID: YOU - "Step back, lieutenant." (Set the graffito on fire with a lit cigarette.)

ONE DAY I WILL RETURN TO YOUR SIDE - The fuel oil catches fire immediately with an ominous hiss -- a bright orange flash across the surface of the letters. Black smoke rises from the burning message. End ID]

A cigarette. One spark to set off the massive fire. A fire that warms both of them.

That brings us to Kim's second cigarette he smokes when left in Martinaise. It's a representation of how irrevocably changed Kim is by his experience on this case. Even if he and Harry don't go on to continue working together, this one week has stirred something in Kim that causes that hopeful, revolutionary fire in his lungs to burn a little brighter, and for once he decides to fan the flame.

#disco elysium #kim kitsuragi #it speaks #i hope this is coherent #i have a bunch of other thoughts but it was too hard to get them all into one post #so focusing on the cigarettes for now haha