#there are what over 100 named characters in that book? the cast is huge

[britneyshakespeare]

I don't even think of David Copperfield as a Victorian novel. I think of it like it's the Peanuts or the Simpsons

#text post #dickens #david copperfield #last week i was talking to some friends abt how i had reread david copperfield and it was the best thing that ever happened to me #and i was telling them that dickens is so good at physicalizing and characterizing ppl that i never had trouble remembering names #there are what over 100 named characters in that book? the cast is huge #the only one who never leaves the page for any interval is david himself #so many diverse settings and characters. and as soon as one opens their mouth #youre like oh i remember when i last saw you it was at yarmouth #it's so good!!! and most importantly it is SO FUNNY #every era in his life feels so significant and you can feel how much he cares abt his ties to ppl and places #as much as those ppl and places are constantly changing. #ned @sneez and i have been catching up and part of the message he sent me was #'im reading david copperfield right now. i believe that is a book that you really like?' #BOY DO YOU REMEMBER CORRECTLY!!! i havent even told him about my reread yet #i was too busy talking abt shakespeare. but oh i was gonna get to dickens

[laylainalaska]

I watched Foundation S1-2 this week and really enjoyed it, for certain values of enjoyed, copying over my write-up from DW, now with corrected character names since I've looked them up rather than spelling them from vague osmosis from the show.

(Blacklist the Foundation tag if you don't want to be spoiled from gifs, as I plan to promptly go seek out the least hinged gifs from this entirely unhinged show and bombard everyone with them.)

This show is a bonkers SF soap opera with gorgeous production values, Lee Pace hamming it up in crop tops, and a series of increasingly off the rails holographic versions of a dead chessmaster mathematician deploying his 9999-step plan to save the galaxy. I've literally seen nothing about this at all in my social circles, to the extent that I didn't even really know about it until the spouse started watching it. I was kind of halfway glancing at the screen now and then, if I happened to be in the room, for the first half of season one (and have only the vaguest idea what happened in the first few episodes, based on later events), then got invested and eventually completely hooked in season two, which also picks up after a 100-year timeskip so the cast has changed a lot anyway. Although between stasis pods, cloning, and holograms, it's mostly the same actors. (We have a running joke that by season 3 the cast will be at least 50% Cleons and Hari Seldons by volume.)

Anyway, so it is good? Hard to say! It's sort of like if Expanse and Game of Thrones had a (somewhat more optimistic) baby, in which the budgets are huge, the planets are beautiful, the spaceships are shiny, and lots of Big Feelings happen. The Evil Empire is run by an endless series of clone emperors played by Lee Pace in Romanesque armor and capes with massive amounts of scenery-chewing and an immortal robot bodyguard he occasionally has sex with. They have All The Clones in storage, so if he gets killed, they'll just transfer his memories and activate another one! Meanwhile the rebellion is being orchestrated as a 4000-step multi-century Xanatos gambit by a guy who started by having himself killed and activating a digital copy. Interestingly though, there is so much going on, and it's taking so much time for his plan to come to fruition, that it never really feels like the two of them directly pitted against each other (at least not that much), it's more like all of the stuff that happens along the way, the planets and the pretty spaceships and the people we meet who struggle and fight and save each other along the way.

I have to say that while I'm occasionally reminded by certain plot points and tropes that this is a series based on books from the 1970s, they did a good enough job with racebending, presumable genderbending, and so forth that it rarely feels like it. (Also, though I only know the books from general osmosis, I'm fairly confident the plot has gone way off-book anyway.) In season two there are no less than four young female characters of color in major plot-defining roles, there's a central gay couple whose loyalty to each other in the face of the Empire is a major plot point, and in general it's just a pretty, pretty show full of pretty people and pretty planets (and occasionally some really dazzling space-operatic SF stuff). It is definitely the most OTT and operatic thing I've watched since probably the MCU, and I'm really enjoying it.

Under the cut, out-of-order and largely out-of-context comments on various things I had a reaction to (mostly season 2 since that's where I got invested).

This show is an emotional roller coaster of the highest order. How many different instances of presumed dead and identity-switching can we pack into a single episode?

CONSTANT MY BELOVED. Season 2 in general gives great female characters, I already loved Salvo (;__;) and I also really enjoyed the ladies from the Cloud Dominion, but Constant!! She's just so funny and fun and so absolutely deadpan about everything from conning randos on some backwater alien planet to kidnapping a guy. I was so glad she lived through all of the half-dozen times she almost certainly should have died.

I was surprisingly upset about formerly-trapped-in-the-Radiant half-crazy Hari's death, "surprisingly" because, well, Hari being Hari, and also, it wasn't like this leaves us entirely without Hari Seldons, there's still Creepy Monolith Hari and who knows how many other copies out there. But that one had been through enough with Gaal and Salvor that he really felt like a different person. He's still a manipulative sack of dicks but I liked him! I was sad, but at least hoping he was backed up somewhere! And then two episodes later the most excellent reveal that he and Gaal faked the whole thing! I thoroughly loved all of that. Gaal hugging him! <333

"Don't trust the planet of the creepy utopian space psychics!" Orion and I were chanting at the screen, while they proceeded to not listen to us and it was, predictably, a bad idea. Seriously, when in all of sci-fi was trusting the creepy psychic utopia a good idea?

I had guessed/hoped that the guy with the whispership (can't remember his name) was going to warp into the plaza and save Constant from execution, but I really wasn't sure, and even with an inkling it was going to happen, that was an AMAZING entrance, A+++, no notes. Especially after Constant gave her speech and everything seemed to be setting her up to be a martyr to the Foundation, I was less and less hopeful she was going to get out of it alive somehow. Excellent rescue, very pleased.

I really enjoyed the entire subplot with the Evil Empire Honorable Space Admiral (can't remember anyone's names here either) and the scene in which he justifies his continued loyalty to the Empire is really a good scene. I mean, it's awful. But you can see his reasoning. He can't overthrow the Empire, if he refuses orders it won't change anything, he and everyone he loves will die, and someone else will be put in his place and follow the orders anyway. But then the whole thing with Constant's rescue points out that it may not be possible to change the entire Evil Empire, but you can make a lot of difference for just one person.

But I still wanted him to make better or at least different choices on the blowing up the planet sequence! I guess it all worked out according to Hari's 9999-step plan (my death is only the beginning! the death of my planet is only the beginning!) but that hurted.

Between Honorable Space Admiral and his fighter pilot husband, I was absolutely *not* expecting the husband to be the one of the two of them that survived. However, Honorable Space Admiral and whispership guy got a dynamite final episode (the fistfight with Cleon! never has a man deserved so much punching! the airlock switch!) and they both got to go out in an excellent death scene.

The entire thing with Terminus getting blown up! And then Deus Ex Monolith! And Constant's dads and Space Admiral's Space Husband are alive after the whole exploding planet fell on them! (I was SO happy Constant's family got reunited, I was so afraid she and Space Dads were going to go down each thinking the other one had died.) I think this episode gave me emotional whiplash.

SALVOR NO. WHAT WAS THAT EVEN. She just randomly died at the end there?? Come onnnnn. We already got like 12 death fake-outs in the last couple of episodes! Why'd that one have to be real?!

If time passes differently in the monolith, does that mean the entire rescued Terminus population are still going to be around after the second 150-year timeskip? I have questions!

Speaking of time passing differently in the monolith, best dialogue: Whispership guy: Whoa, it's dark. How long was I in there, anyway? Constant: Three years. Paulie: More like three hours. Constant: We agreed we weren't going to tell him! I love them. <3333

That sure was A Lot with the Cleons. And now I guess there's an entire Cleon/Cloud Dominion dynasty out there somewhere just waiting to cause trouble.

So yeah, I'm really enjoying my bombastic sci-fi soap opera! Season 3 when pls.

#foundation #foundation tv

[cuddlerlouis]

Wait what did you mean by mp what fucked up shit happened?

my exact tags were: #there should be criticism for mp because they’ve fucked up things or done things that dwd and its team/cast did and got shit on and yet

i can give you a few examples off the top of my head.

olivia got shit on for allowing paps to get pics around the trailers and fans near set when they were filming in palm springs. people claimed she did that so she could sell her flop movie and get tabloids involved with pap pics. yet no one ever said anything when we would get daily pap and fan pics from the mp set. no one said anything when we could literally match entire scenes from the book to pap pics and videos taken on set. the only things we didn't see were indoor scenes and yet no one claimed that michael grandage allowed paps to make up for his shit movie.

when olivia did multiple screenings for dwd, she got shit on because she did multiple, and because some reactions were apparently bad. said reactions were sent through anonymous asks on tumblr therefore with no way to actually confirm anything. when a similar thing happened with mp, people had distinctly separate reactions. first of all, the huge majority of people who attended the mp screening were harry fans, lots of harries and larries, it was all over twitter. my main point is that obviously mp would get a fantastic response if the room is full of biased harry fans. yet people tried to actively compare those two events regardless of who it was composed of and what the aim was and claimed harry would 100% be considered for an oscar with mp yet was the shittiest actor in dwd. anyway, the point of those screenings was to help the producing team develop their movie with some input from other people, and despite those anons spreading bad things, i did see other good reactions for dwd that no one considered here.

when it comes to posters, tastes and interests are different and subjectivity is important so i won't go there, but having the director's name misspelt on the first poster for mp is ridiculously unprofessional. i just checked and it still isn't changed. barely anyone has pointed that out but i just know had it been dwd people would have been LOUD about this.

people are SO ready to analyse every social media interaction or lack of when it comes to dwd, yet no one has said anything that harry doesn't follow david dawson back on ig. shouldn't there be beef between the two of them?

when articles started to come out in tabloids about harry's performance in mp, i remember people celebrating the headline that harry could be considered for the oscars with his performance, yet no one even cared that the rest of the cast was nowhere given the same credit, they didn't even get david's name right, when i have seen people go furious when other dwd cast members are not mentioned or credited right. and of course they all blamed it on olivia.

i could go on tbh. the double standards are ridiculous and yet no one points these out because they wanna hate olivia and dwd so bad and because they worship my policeman because harry plays a gay character. im obviously not saying dwd shouldn't get criticised or that mp should get ripped through shreds. im just pointing out the differences in criticism both of these movies have faced and the clear biased a lot of people have. i shouldn't need to specify but i am really excited for both movies and try to consider fair comments and criticism for both, unlike the majority of this fandom.

#asks #anonymous

[jqemfanfic]

Love in the Limelight, Chapter Three: Embarrasing Introductions - Side B

Once the brothers had finished with all the introductions and speeches it had gone way over time and it had already reached 12:30. We were supposed to wrap it up at 11:00.

I was hankering for a coffee so bad at this point.

The brothers ushered us out of the meeting room and down the hall to the entrance where there were about 20 golf carts lined up to take us to the main set where a breakfast buffet was set up for us. I got into a cart with Gaten, Sam, and Natalia. Our conversation was full of catch-up talk and general chit-chat as we hadn't seen each other in a while. I was listening to what they were saying and contributing where I could or when I was spoken to, but honestly, my mind was elsewhere.

How can I ask who he is without it sounding weird? What if they get sus? Is he crew or is he part of the newer cast? However, I didn't have to ask as he was brought up in the conversation anyways. "Have you met Eddie yet Billie?" I looked over at Sam who was next to me. She had been trying to make sure she knew who everyone was before we started production so she studied the cast and crew books religiously. "hmm?" I hummed before snapping out of my blank stare, realizing I was being spoken to "Um no not yet, what is he like? Is he nice?" I asked still only somewhat engaging in the conversation. "He was the guy in the corner talking to Noah and David, the one with the green sweater?" explained Gaten. "I don't know if you noticed him but he's playing Eddie. His name is Joseph". Suddenly my interest in the conversation went from 0 to 100 real quick. I had to compose myself for a second before I let my face tell everyone what my head was thinking.

Then reality set in.

You're the "leader" of the hellfire club, as the brothers put it. Oh god... The nausea was back. This means that I'm going to be spending a lot of time with this guy. Eddie is the Dm of the Hellfire club. He was the new main character of the group. My heart quickened at the thought and the colour that had just left my cheeks snuck back up on me again. Perfect, let's make it obvious you have a lady boner for him, shall we? I brought my hand up to my mouth, picking at my lip, another one of my anxious quirks.

"Yeah, the guy who was literally eye fucking you from across the room" Sam whispered as she leaned into my ear. I darted my gaze at her, shocked at her words. I playfully punched her shoulder and she laughed, i grabbed her arm. My face was in full-on tomato mode now.

"Shut up Sam, he was not! oh my god," I yell whispered. I hoped to God the others weren't listening. A huge smile I couldn't hold back enveloped my face. "So, you did notice him then?" she whispered again, a menacing smile still on her face. She cracked her knuckles and her neck, tilting her head side to side

"wingman mode, activated" she smiled.

I squeezed her arm and looked her dead in the eye and mouthed don't you dare. She shrugged, still with the menacing smile plastered on her face. Before she could give me a smart-ass response, we pulled up outside the giant air hanger of a set we saw that there were lots of tables set up and the breakfast buffet ready and waiting. Everyone had been assigned tables in an attempt from the brothers for people who may not know each other to mingle. Sam said she would find my table for me.

I however made a B line for the coffee table.

I grabbed the biggest cup possible and filled it to the brim. I sighed happily as I brought it up to my lips and let out a quiet fuck yes to myself before closing my eyes taking a sip of the warm liquid gold.

"I guess coffee is the way to your good side, noted," said a voice to the side of me. I turned my head and saw him. Making tea for himself. He looked up from stirring to smile at me. I choked slightly on my drink as I turned to face him. He's British?

"You okay?" he said, a look of concern mixed with amusement on his face. "didn't mean to scare you"

Fuck.

I blushed whilst I nodded, trying to swallow as I died inside and put the cup back down on the table. "Joseph, Joseph Quinn" he reached his hand out for me to shake "how very Bond of you" I said with a smirk, happy with my quick remark "Sybil, Sybil Monet, but everyone calls me Billie" I took his hand and shook it. Goosebumps enveloped my whole right side as he touched me.

"Sybil? Now that's a name you don't hear anymore" he added "very British" he took a sip of his tea, not breaking eye contact.

God damn those eyes.

"Um yeah, my parents really made my heritage obvious" I laughed. "But I mean I feel like the same could be said about your name". He nodded with a grin swallowing his sip of tea "touché" he smirked. He has the most attractive smile. I looked down and realized that our hands were still attached. I cleared my through and gently pulled my hand away. Though I knew that I didn't want to.

He reluctantly pulled away his too "you don't sound all that British though? Is that Australian I hear?" he asked, crossing his arms, and looking me up and down, again. I don't think my heart can handle him scanning me like that. Especially since with his arms crossed it made the width of his shoulders more prominent.

God damn.

"Yeah, it is, I am British though I lived there till I was 12 then my family and I moved to Melbourne." I responded twirling my watch around my wrist in a nervous fashion. "Right, I for sure heard a fleck of British in your voice when you were talking back there so that explains it." I sucked my teeth with a smile whilst nodding my head.

"yeah, it definitely comes out when I'm nervous" reaching up and rubbing my neck, eyes glued to the floor to cover the red on my blushing cheeks. "So, I make you nervous?" he asked. My Head tilted trying to gain my eye contact back. My head shot back up and looked at him, realizing I must still have a British fleck in my voice as I was talking to him.

Fuck.

He smirked at me, sipping his tea again and looking at me over the rim of his cup. what is going on? Is he flirting with me?

I opened my mouth to say something, but Sam came in and saved me. "I found your table Billie, it's number 3," she said smiling at my blushing face, knowing exactly why I was doing so. I took a deep breath to calm myself.

Thank God for Sam.

"Hi I'm Sam, Billie's assistant" she smiled at joseph and reached out her hand to him. "Joseph" he smiled and shook her hand. "Nice to meet you, I think you guys are on the same table anyways if you want to follow me" she added and she turned to lead us to our table sneaking a quick knowing glance at me.

Joseph looked at me and motioned for me to go first "after you" he said. Ugh he's cute. "Thank you, kind sir," I laughed as I followed on behind Sam.

Is he being a gentleman? Or is it an excuse to check me out?

Please God let it be both.

#joseph quinn #stranger things #fanfic #smut #eddie munson

[yippieyiyo]

Ok now here’s a post about Utora.

Utora is the elder Royoko brother. (Full name: Utora Kuutamo Lumine Royoko) Unlike Upero, Utora is more reserved and tends to be shy around others. Utora is quite the bookworm and is also a particularly strong bloodmage. After hearing rumors that something is sapping his magic-rich homeland of its power, Utora makes it his mission to resolve the incident and restore the country to its former glory.

==SPOILERS FOR MY BOOK==

Utora is the fabled "cursed prince," although he hopes he's not the monster the old legend depicts him as. He has a permanent, irremovable curse placed on him called "Adfectium." Whenever he's feeling an emotion extremely intensely for more than a few seconds, he will take on a different appearance, gain deadly amounts of strength, and said emotion will be amplified heavily. He has had the curse since he was a baby. Utora's curse has caused him a lot of grief and trouble throughout his life. Utora thusly doesn't like himself very much, and is especially self-conscious about his curse. He'd prefer if as few people knew about Adfectium as possible.

Some miscellaneous fact about Utora and what he's like:

Utora is more reserved, like I said, and although he's not the best at it, the nature of his curse tends to make him bottle his emotions up out of habit. This can make him seem cold and brooding.

When in his cursed form, Utora is brash and impulsive, a stark contrast from the "I've got everything under control" facade he tries to maintain in his normal form. He can often say or do things he deeply regrets later, and due to that plus the features/nature of his curse he can be pretty unstable and dangerous to be around.

Utora gets uneasy around crowds and has an extremely difficult time being the center of attention. He hates it when he feels like everyone's looking at him.

I can only think of one character that really reminds me HEAVILY of Utora and that's Shigeo Kageyama aka Mob from Mob Psycho 100. Utora, however, is a slight bit more emotive than Mob is.

[TW SELF HARM- BLOOD MAGIC] Utora practices blood magic, which means unlike others who use wands, staffs, and amulets to cast spells, Utora uses his own blood. He usually carries a knife around with him and... you know... draws some blood, to put it bluntly, in order to cast spells.

Utora is a conjurer, which means he can make objects he's studied closely or copy objects he can see. These conjurations are translucent, light blue, and only last for a limited amount of time. This, of course, depends on the amount of blood he uses, but is usually a few hours.

[THE BLOOD MAGIC PART ENDS HERE.]

Utora is extremely protective of his little brother Upero, and will go to great lengths for his brother's sake. Since Upero's father died before he was born and their mother Kuna is often busy with royal duties, Utora assumes a sort of guardianship/mentor role over Upero. Not like they aren't still brothers, he just takes care of him y'know?

Utora has a huge crush on Mariella. Honestly, calling it a crush would be an understatement.

#my art #my ocs #Upero and Utora

[readingshenaniganss]

Monday Review:

Starting Pride with a bang, I read One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston. Well, I actually read it the last day of May, but shhhh, I'm counting it.

This book was phenomenal. It was fantastic, and cute, and wonderful, and lovely, and every other word that in any language that could indicate I loved this book. It was just perfect.

The story is about August Landry as she moves to New York after transferring universities and majors. She's not sure about her roommates but it's the cheapest room available. She's not sure about her program but maybe third time's the charm. She doesn't know what she's doing at her new job and hopes she doesn't get fired in the mean time. But she does know one thing.

She has a huge crush on Subway Girl. Like, 'imagine putting Ikea furniture together' levels of crushing.

But a random photo brings August to question just who this girl is and where she comes from. Or more precisely, when.

This book was everything, and I mean everything. August and Jane have such great chemistry together that it was always fabulous to see them interact. In fact, the entire cast had great chemistry with each other and I was never waiting for the story to change which characters we saw.

August, while a little brusque for me at first, I warmed up to pretty quickly. I really appreciated seeing her growth throughout the book because it felt natural and didn't stem 100% from the lover interest. Her friends are a major part of her journey and help her open up to loving trusting others, even if she might get hurt, because they let her know that they'll be there to catch her when she falls.

Jane was great. She's charming, and dashing, and feels so alive she could jump out of the page to start a dance party in your house. But she also has such painful depths, and as we discover with her the ups and downs she's been through, we see the pain she feels knowing she's stuck in some weird time prison while everyone she knew has grown old and and moved on from the point she's trapped at. We see her go from frustrated not knowing who she is, to agonized over the knowledge that those she loved are gone, with complete lives she never got to see.

And for the rest of the cast is just-*Chefs kiss*

So I'm just going to get this out of the way, Niko owns my whole ass heart. He is great, and I love him, and he can do no wrong ever.

Below are several lines from him that live rent free in my head. To those who have read the book already, yes, they are all from the same scene and I make no apologies.

Like, I'm obsessed. There's nothing else I can say but that this non-toxic goth psychic has my heart.

Myla is also wonderful. She's just this positive force that keeps on going and reminds August that times get tough but you have to get through them anyway. I also really appreciated that August and Myla didn't have a whole melodramatic fight just for the sake of one. I had been worried about that with the trust issues August started with and Mylas' insistence upon August being her friend that there would be a blow up, but there wasn't one!!!

Wes is the quiet introverted roommate who has the social skills of a giraffe on ice. He mainly shows up to give vibes of 'why am I here?' and honestly, relatable. I really liked him here because he acts as a mirror to August. Both have issues with letting people in with their backgrounds and can sort of commiserate with each other their struggles. It gave depth to their relationship that could have been overlooked, but instead created a couple of beautiful moments as they both deal with their emotions.

And then Isaiah are just a fucking delight. Isaiah, drag name Annie Depressant, is a brilliant star every time when on page. I want to go to one of his brunches and get drunk with him. And he's so easy goin. 'Hey, we're breaking into a bar to do a séance, want to come?' Sure! 'Hey, going to help cover their asses as they do and Ocean's Eleven style heist to save Jane from her subway time capsule?' Absolutely!

There are a few more characters in the background, like Augusts' mom, her boss and her coworkers. While they don't really play a bigger part in the book, to say they do nothing to the story is just a huge oversight. Casey does a outstanding job of weaving everyone together so that, while the plot of the story doesn't necessarily revolve around their actions, leaving out the interactions leaves a hole where they were. Their relationships to August add the faintest sketch lines to create a more detail painting and in doing so creates a masterpiece.

One thing that I also really enjoyed seeing was just how young everyone was, how young they all sounded. All of the main cast felt so young, it didn't feel like an author trying to figure out how you sound in your early 20's, it was an author who knew how you sounded, and the choices to made, and the humour you have. When Wes was complaining about the trains and said 'But go off I guess' I was startled into laughter. One, cause I forgot about that meme, but two, cause it was so on the nose. It felt like something I would melodramatically deadpan to my fried group. And maybe it will be super dated in a few years because of it, but I rather think of it as preserving what 20 year olds were like in the 2020's.

I also love that everyone in the main cast is queer. It's just a much more realistic aspect of life, especially in a city like New York. Hell, I'm from a small town in the middle of Canada, and my highschool group still ended up being 75% queer, though some of us didn't realise what flavour we were until later. Seeing a group of friends whole, while not all identifying the same way, share the experience of not being heteronormative, and it shows in ways that you just innately recognize when you're a part of that group too.

I also really like how much of the queer activism of Jane's life was interwoven. While it's not the main aspect of her personality, it is an important one, and rightly so. She was a lesbian punk in the 70's, there's no way you can just ignore everything that was going on then, and this book doesn't. It talks about the history, and what it was like. How that colours your view of the world and your reactions to it.

The only thing I found to be slightly annoying was when they tried to explain the science behind Janes' time travelling. Specifically, the theory that she was hopping through several points in time. I see no evidence how they got to that conclusion, it's not like Jane is going 'yeah, today I'm in 2021 but yesterday I was in 1986.' So I didn't love seeing that, 'cause it felt like a completely illogical guess to make for the situation, and only brought in to create more drama at a later plot about her becoming more and more stuck in the present while the subway line is about the get shutdown.

But even with that irritation, I loved this book, this book was almost perfect, and if I tried to describe everything I loved about this story I'd be here forever. Instead I'll just say thatwhen I have disposable income, I'm buying a copy. For now, just going to take it out of my library on repeat. Go read it

10/10

#One Last Stop #Casey McQuiston #book reviews #readingshenanigans #reading shenanigans #pride #pride month #book blog #bookish #booklr #books & libraries #lgbtqia #pride 2022 #queer reads #i loved this book #Niko is supreme

[arabella-prongs]

Justice for Cho Chang

Alright, hear me out. 

Cho Chang has always been one of the most controversial characters of the Harry Potter series because of how she was portrayed to be so stereotypically East Asian - to the point where her full name is literally composed of two Chinese/Korean last names (we’ve all heard of that discourse before). 

What has always annoyed me the most, however, is that Cho Chang in the books has 100% more potential for charisma and personality than what the movies constrict her character to have.

First of all, Cho is a huge jock. Need I remind you that she was the only girl in the Ravenclaw Quidditch team up until her 5th year and has been an avid fan of the Tutshill Tornados since childhood? You can bet my boy Cedric developed a crush on her from getting his ass kicked on the Quidditch field.

Not only is Cho a jock, but she is also known to be one of the most popular girls at school which, to me, adds to the interpretation that she was more extroverted than introverted prior to Cedric’s death. In the books, she is often seen hanging out with groups of people and being almost intimidating from how cool she is.

Moreover, and probably most importantly, Cho was able to cast the Patronus Charm which required a huge amount of control over her emotions. Let’s not forget that during the time that she did, my girl was dealing with:

1) Trauma from her boyfriend being murdered by the freakin’ Dark Lord.

2) Losing her friends and seeing her grades going downhill as a consequence of said trauma and depression.

3) Being part of a secret organization preparing her to go to freakin’ war.

Therefore, the fact that she was able to cast a whole ass Patronus Charm despite being obviously very tormented by her feelings of grief, anxiety and sadness is, to me, super badass and remarkable. 

So let us not carry the poor portrayal of Cho Chang from the movies, but rather celebrate the characterization that she deserves. 

When you think about it, Cho and Ginny are very similar in how they are generally disliked from their portrayal in the movies. They really went from being badass Quidditch players in the books to silent love interests on screen. 

Can we get as many voices calling out the unfair representation of Cho in the movies as we’ve gotten for Ginny?

So in conclusion,

LESS of :

MORE of:

(Edit: Also, her Patronus is a swan??? The birds known for their beauty but also for how dangerous they can be when they attack you!!)

#Also can we stop making all female Asian characters *smart and silent girls as delicate as soft petals falling from a sakura tree* ???? #Can we have more diversity in representation please?? #For the longest time as a teen I tried my best to adhere to that stereotype because I thought Asian girls could only ever be that #delicate smart and silent #I guess that's why a part of me yearns for Cho Chang not to be remembered like that #and you say representation doesn't matter?? #It's been on my mind for so long #cho chang #ginny weasley #harry potter #hp #asian representation #hprppoc #hprpocweekend

[panlight]

i think one of meyer's biggest problems (i mean aside from the obvious) is that to her, the characters in her book that aren't bella and edward are just set dressing. she doesn't understand that anybody could see esme, for example, as a tragic character whose human life was defined by loss and abuse, because to her, she's just a plot device. she's The Mom, full-stop. jacob's imprinting doesn't register as horrifying because renesbait is the perfect daughter who deserves the perfect happy ending (a doting husband and probably kids), and jacob is just perfect for her! he's big and strong and loyal, and he won't age and die on her! she doesn't seem to get that people could see these characters as anything other than vehicles for bella and edward's story (and renesbait's, down the line). she has exactly one (1) story that she wants to tell, and anything else is just flavor text.

though to be fair, this started as her personal fantasy. when she got a book deal, she then had to go and beef up the story, which i think is where a lot of the worst stuff comes from.

Yeah, pretty much this.

And this is why romance novels and rom-coms that focus on just one couple (vs an ensemble like Love Actually or something), usually have a pretty limited cast because, who cares? The point is the relationship between the two leads, you don't really need or want anything else. Maybe a quirky or sassy friend (Alice) and a rival (Jacob) or some sort of inconvenient girlfriend/fiancee/ex (sort of Tanya? but not really) and that's all you really need. Family might exist for funny meeting-the-parents scenes but you don't need a backstory on the parents. You don't need a backstory on the quirky friend.

But after she invented Edward, she said she couldn't imagine him without a family. He MUST have a sister like Alice. But that's not enough. SM is from a big family, Edward deserves a big family, so then she invents all these other characters to be The Mom and The Father Figure/Mentor, then The Big Brother. Then oops, Quirky Sister and Big Brother need romantic partners, so here comes Mean Sister and The Vampire-y One. And now you have this huge cast with thinly sketched (but interesting!!!) histories that she doesn't plan to actually DO much of anything with, they just exist to be The Family. None of them have a story arc of their own. I mean I guess there's sort of "Rosalie learns to like Bella" but that's still Bella-centric and is more about Bella's fantasy of a perfect forever family. Does Jasper improve his control? Is Alice vicariously living through Bella's human experiences meaningful? Does Carlisle successfully convince others to try vegetarianism? Who knows, who cares, not the point.

And then she just keeps adding more characters! The cast of the Twilight novels is huge; it's like a Harry Potter universe of characters when the storyline is a pretty insular romance. She invents all these fascinating characters who can turn into wolves and then again, doesn't follow through with anything. Does Leah find peace? Do she and Emily mend their friendship? Who is Embry's father? Doesn't matter. Not relevant to Bella's story.

There's the Volturi, who at first to seem to be about world building and lore, but then they just sit on there thrones so much they've started to petrify. They literally don't do anything! And again, to tell this story you maybe need like one leader and one scary weaponized vamp, but we get THREE leaders and a whole bunch of named vampires with different powers who again, never really get to do much of anything. What's the point of the history between Amun and Demetri when it's never mentioned at all?

Then all the visiting vampires. She obviously LOVES Garrett and Benjamin, you can just feel the "aren't these characters SO COOL?!" pulsing through the page. But other than Garrett's big speech [which feels weird because we only just met this guy. Usually a character who had been there since the beginning would have this moment, a moment that we had been building up to for four books. Maybe Carlisle gets to make his final plea for vegetarianism. Maybe Esme, always quiet, always on the sidelines, steps forward and surprises everyone with her defense of her family and their way of life. Maybe Jasper, the one who wasn't totally sold on this diet, who wouldn't have tried it at all if not for his gift basically forcing him to, gives an impassioned speech from the POV of a former human-blood-drinker that appeals to the other vampires better than any of the veggie-from-the-start Cullens could. But no, it's Garrett, whom we met like 50? 100? pages ago, but since we're told he's a Revolutionary, and a Patriot, that's all the weight we need], none of them really matter or do anything. Benjamin could have left Amun in the end and that would have been something, but, no. It's still Bella's shield that gets all the credit for saving the day. It's still her story and her fantasy. And that's fine! Certainly there are plenty of male-centered power fantasies where some average guy turns out to be the chosen one and better at something than the people who have trained for it for years and gets love and power in the end.

It's just weird that the story she wanted to tell was pretty much just Bella and Edward Fall in Love and Get Married and Bella is the Best Vampire and yet she invented all these other characters without giving them any larger purpose. They have backstories that SEEM relevant but never go anywhere. Esme having met Carlisle when she was a human teen never comes up. Carlisle's mother dying in childbirth is never mentioned during the debates over Bella's pregnancy. Emily's scars are clearly supposed to be a warning about the dangers of being involved with supernatural beings, but it's a warning Bella ignores (and that's not even getting into using the suffering of an Indigenous character to teach a white girl a lesson). Leah's dad only died so Edward could be confused about 'the funeral' and think it was Bella's; it's never really brought up otherwise. There's no reason the rest of the pack has to be so crappy to her, it doesn't go anywhere. How much would the main story really change if Edward were the only vampire and Jacob the only wolf? Sure, some plot beats would be different without Alice to predict things, or without the tension between the Sam and Jacob factions in BD, but overall you could tell basically the same story without literally everyone else.

#asks

[gnfkitten]

my favorite part of warrior cats is the grotesque story of squirrelflight, ashfur, and the extended cast of cats that sound like they came out of an ajj song

this gal named squirrelflight flirts with a guy named ashfur a few times. typical 80s romance song. its quick, its fleeting. squirrelflight gets together with brambleclaw. its all real lovely. brambleclaw gets promoted to leader after squirrelflights dad goes into retirement and makes his deputy the chief. brambleclaw is now bramblestar

(before the promotion and after the marriage, brambleclaw leads the entire 4 clans to a new territory. not relevant. he also stabs his brother in the neck with a tent stake)

and then squirrelflights sister leafpool, who is a medicine cat and sworn into celibacy, has sex with a guy from windclan named crowfeather. this is something all the cats are sworn not to do. double illegal.

crowfeather is a bit of a whore because he was previously in love with another girl who went on a magical journey with him when he was a child. (brambleclaw was there for that too. brambleclaw is eternal and everywhere) the girl crowfeather was in love with got impaled by a falling stalagmite while protecting a tribe of savage feral cats with names very similar to english translations of a few native american names i know. interesting. racist? there was a mountain lion involved

yeah so they have sex and leafpool gets pregnant. but since she did two crimes in one she gives the kids to squirrelflight and pretends they belong to her and brambelstar. theres an uncomfortable birthing scene because the kids decided to emerge from her cat uterus in the middle of a snowstorm. this is very telling of their characters after birth

theres three kids. jayfeather lionblaze and hollyleaf. jayfeather is very angry. lionblaze is angry but in a brave way. hollyleaf loves rules. they are a legendary trio

theres a thing about superpowers, and a prophecy or something. jay is sickly and blind and can see peoples thoughts. lionblaze never loses any fights, ever, and he maims ashfur a little while theyre trianing. hollyleaf doesnt have any powers, but she is absolutely obsessed with the warrior code and gets caught up with a guy named sol who says the world is gonna end. none of this is relevant except the "bootlicker hollyleaf" thing

ashfur is stewing. ashfur has been stewing for years now. long enough that they literally brought all 4 clans across the continent to a new territory kind of stewing. hes lonely. he misses the girl he was madly in love with, and shes married to the coolest guy in town. hes in agony. (over in windclan, crowfeather has a new girlfriend. manwhoring as long as he lives)

theres a big fire. thunderclans entire territory sets on fire. everyone is escaping, except for squirrelflight and her three kids. jayfeather, lionblaze, and hollyleaf, who is contemplating becoming an antivaxxer or something

imagine this: a clearing on the edge of a pit. the pit is where the cats live. everything is on fire around this clearing. there is one log running across the clearing, and squirreflight and her fake kids are going along it to escape. theyre the last out

ashfur appears he stands at the other end of the log. hes pissed. hes crying. he hates squirrelflight. he hates her so much. his rage is all consuming, like the fire that burns around them. he says he wants her in as much pain as possible, and he knows how: taking the only thing she loves in this world. her 3 kids

we all know something ashfur doesnt. the kids arent hers. squirrelflight, though non an omnipresence, is gifted with this knowledge herself.. she sees ashfurs twisted evil mind and tells him, flat out that they arent hers. she doesnt love them. he can kill them, they mean nothing to her. they are, after all, just her sister leafpool's. why would she care for them?

ashfur is stunned. he gives up. he leaves. squirrelflight and her three kids leave. its a bit awkward. imagine the thanksgiving dinner table after a particularly bad argument. thats all this is really

anyways. hollyleaf is broken from this. shes the daughter of a medicine cat and a manwhore from a clan that only eats rabbits. she cant take it. much like ashfur, she snaps

there are these big clan meetings, once every month. everyone goes, except the old people and the dying people and the kids who just want juiceboxes and lunchables. thunderclan is heading out to the Meeting Island. they find a body in the river. surprise! its ashfur

they go on to the gathering despite finding the body of one of their finest, most mentally haunted warriors polluting the stream with the blood seeping out of his slit throat. the three kids are there. squirrelflight is there. leafpool is there. bramblestar is there

this story has very weird heathers energy to me. its there, but it isnt coherant. like a bad remix of 100 gecs, sort of. this part is no exception

hollyleaf runs up to the big tree the clan leaders stand on and monologue. shes not allowed to do this. perhaps the sense that she lost her identity with her illigitimate birth turned into something real, that the warrior code didnt matter anymore. perhaps she was just tired of being kind; she wanted to go apeshit

she confesses. to two things. number one - the muderder of ashfur. how tragic. number two - leafpool. leafpools affar with crowfeather. squirrelflights lies to her for her entire life. theres chaos. thunderclan is like stan twitter after a minecraft youtuber said something racist 8 years ago. the 3 other clans are trying desperately to get in on this drama. the hot tea of the hour if you will

hollyleaf says her share. she runs away. lionblaze and jayfeather chase after her all the way back to the thunderclan territory. she yells at them. she runs into a tunnel and gets crushed by rocks. thats the end. shes dead.

jk jk that was a lie shes alive and shes living in a huge cave system with a ghost cat. remember the native american coded mountain tribe? yeah, they had ancestors. the ancestors lived at the territory the 4 clans moved to after squirelflight flirted with ashfur and before she got together with bramblestar. they used to drown little kids in the tunnels. jayfeather is the entire reason why the ancestors moved to the mountains and became the racist mountain tribe. i wont explain the timeline of this, and i dont think i could if i tried

up above hollyleafs slowburn romance with a transparent cat, theres a new girl with superpowers. prophecy fulfilled yadda yadda. her sister is annoyed that she isnt #quirky and so she joins a fighting cult run by the cats in hell. i cannot stress this enough its literally every cat from the 50 some books before this who went to hell. they have an army of children. theyre training them. the sister kills one of her classmates and becomes equals with the hell cats. my second favorite plotline in the series

the hell cats come to the land of the living. the sister betrays them. theres a big battle, and its supposed to be the end of the series but you know theyre gonna continue it for at least 20 more books. (they did). hollyleaf appears, and i dont think its ever explained how or why. but shes back, and she joins the battle. everyones too busy with the literal hell cats to care much about some kid with a body count of 1 appearing randomly

hollyleaf fights a bit. she gets mauled to death. thats the end. its just over. she dies and she doesnt come back. rip to a queen

i think my biggest question besides why would someone create this ad continue to do so for fifty plus books, is how the fuck brambleclaw stabbed his brother with a tent stake when he literally doesn’t even have hands. what.

#hollyleaf was a queen gone too soon #thank you for telling the plot of all fifty books i can finally know #warrior cats spoilers #maybe? #would anyone who follows me actually have that tagged? #long post

[fencesandfrogs]

clan culture inspiration fic master post

a collection of fics/series/w/e i've used for inspiration. ordered by how much i used them

Flightless Dove, Poison Ivy acaciapines

read it, it’s good. it's 100% my main fic inspiration, i love it, it's very good.

the light that shines on you solacefruit

huge inspiration for my riverclan. just. massively where i get a lot of ideas. probably a larger source of material than flightless dove, if i'm being honest.

RIVERCLAN leaders have a litany of names. weather caller, storm seer, spirit walker. a new leader being made is a chance to find another for the list. these names are to honor leaders for the role they play in their lives.

(names. leaders. meaning.)

so you can see where i got that from.

Warriors Redux Deconstruction Dullard on ao3 (not linked)

i've split this into two parts, because there's a lot. i'm a fan of this in terms of world building, but i've been select in what i've used from it. deconstruction is linked highly because it had a lot of key details that shaped my opinions on what wouldn't be. a lot of this i would've changed anyway, but i wanted to list WR because it'd be dishonest to act like this wasn't shaping my thoughts.

anyway, a short list of things that were mentioned in WR:D that i'd already decided on or am now using

behaviors. i mean, i've said "flicked her tail" or "flattened his ears" so much it's getting old, but by god if i am not being true to cats movements. i think WR:D is somewhat conservative on use of purring, but i've also been writing about kits, and a lot of purring is involved with kits, so special case, i suppose. but i'm very cautious with my descriptions. i've tried really hard not to use smile, because cats don't smile. that's the one that gets me the most.

water. this is kind of a specific thing. but. in ctd's fading echoes. the lake is a concern not because the cats need water, but because the prey needs water.

queens and toms. now. i have always been irritated by this. and the lack of female leadership. because toms should know they're kept on the graces of the queens. the sisters got it right. but i can't just kick out half the cast, so i'm forced to keep them. i have, however, kept toms out of the nursery. queens are protective around their kits. it's the best i can do to appease my strong desire to literally just kick every male cat out of the clan. in all of my stories, though, i keep track of who's in the nursery with what kits, because those kits are going to bond to every damn mother. it's super annoying that this isn't kept more clear anywhere. i have to do so much math and check so many allegiances every time.

kits. it's basically impossible to convince me to write this the way the hunters do, so even in ctd, we see kits not walking, not opening their eyes, until real kittens would. does this make the early chapters of growing shadows a pain because dovekit does basically nothing but sit and listen? yes. do i care? yes, it is important to me that dovekit does nothing but sit and listen because she's a baby. bb. need protect.

genetics. usually i correct coat colors for POV cats. because it bothers me. see: tortie dovekit/ivykit in CTD, and the fact that i think in jaywing, jayfeather is going to end up amber like brightheart. i need to do some research to double check, but...i think that's what will happen. (please don't ask about hollykit, ivykit, and lionkit. i don't even know who their parents are. how is crowfeather "dark grey, almost black"? what does that mean. how is leafpool even leafpool. i don't understand anything.)

religion. i'm not fundamentally changing how starclan works, because i'm writing the books where magic is confirmed real, but...i've tried to distance the connections with it. and god, so help me, i'm going to make things a proper religion for w&f. there will be religious things like prayer. god.

cultures, folklore, names. this is getting long so i'm lumping this together. basically, i've got some name stuff sorted out. it's not "traditional" naming, because i'm not going WR on this and renaming really important cats (altho the reason WR has my respect for traditional naming is because they're not afraid to rename cats to fit the scheme), but i have some pretty defined rules. and there will be folklore and stories. this is especially important for dovefeather, when she goes to riverclan.

Sharing Tongues Icej

a series. i don't think i've used much of this directly, but it has shaped a lot of my opinions on clans. it's why thunderclan is militaristic and why windclan is so strict.

it's also shaped my thoughts on a lot of parts of clan life. i'm writing this all out of order, so i'll say, a lot of the inspiration that warriors redux had, is shared in this series. i'm not sure if there's overlap in the interst, but it's got simularities.

especially in terms of relationships. i have a bit of a fascination with story telling as a form of culture, if only because in my personal life, story telling, especially verbal story telling, has always been really important. so i think a lot about it.

anyway, these are a good set of fics, and they're ranked so highly because they're kind of a paradigm i've crafted my thoughts around.

Tell me about your Ancestors Drowsy_Salamander

so this was what got me started, even over flightless dove. it got me thinking about the differences clans would have.

i haven't written "funerals. mourning. prayer." yet, although as you might guess from the fact that i have a title, it is on my mind. i think i'll draw heavily on this for that.

one other very specific line in this that i draw on is

When SkyClan was reformed by Firestar at the gorge, it was reformed in ThunderClan’s image.

now i say that specifically because i didn't want that. i wanted leafstar to find her own tradition. a lot of skyclan's destiny deals with her struggling to adapt the warrior code to her clan. so Ancestors continues by talking about tree's influence, and this is what i got from it:

SKYCLAN once held ceremonies at tilt, when the birds were quiet, but now, they hold most ceremonies at low moon, when the spirits are strongest. ...

apprentices are made at low sun, born from a time when they were not always gathered.

(ceremonies)

and i'm happy with that

Warriors Redux: Ammendment Dullard on ao3, not linked

this is ranked significantly lower than deconstruction because (a) i'm borrowing superificial things at best and (b) i had already come to a lot of these conclusions. still, i'm writing a full list because there are little things i don't think to write whole essays about sometimes. that said, whereas in deconstruction, i could basically say "yes, everything that's said here, i agree with, i'm only tweaking things for personal taste or because of differences in perspective" here it's more like "here are the things i'm using" and the other stuff is just there, but not really anything i want to use

time and date. in one of my generic CTD posts i had a few paragraphs about this. basically, i like the system of time. except for half, because that confuses me. so it's dawn, sunrise, low sun, (sun) tilt, sunhigh, dusk, moonrise, low moon, (moon) tilt, moonhigh, repeat. and kits are aged to apprentices at the beginning or rough midpoint of seasons.

numbers. math. drawing things in the dirt with claws. in short, yes, no, what the...no. just no. cats in my stories can basically count, but they don't really, like, count the way we do? they might say five leaf bares ago, because i am not saying, "the leaf bare before the one with X which was before the one with Y" and that's what a cat is thinking and maybe they have words for this, i don't know, i'm not writing that. four and nine are holy numbers, or the closest cats get. (apprentices are apprenticed at nine moons in the holy sense, because a queen pregnent for a three --- two, but who's counting --- and in the nursery for six. this will never come up in a story unless it's a background note, because it's confusing and hard to explain off the cuff.) i don't have to explain my last point.

names. i have my own rules. i don't intend on changing character names with the exception of the symbolism in jaywing and dovefeather, but i may at some point make some comments on what, based on my rules, i would do. i don't want to change names because it confuses me, but i don't want to say for sure that i won't. definitely not based on WR rules, i have my own form of "traditional naming" for the w&f world.

clan specific notes. you can find it in my writing. there's a lot of influence in it. i don't want to list everything.

come back to you one by one solacefruit

i haven't really used this for anything, i just generally like it. it's definitely given me inspiration for how i use stories, but not any particular thing.

it really is beautiful, though.

alright, that's about it.

#warriors au #warriors worldbuilding #worldbuilding #warriors #warrior cats #jaywing #cloudtail's daughter #dovefeather #mine #txt #28th #February #2021 #February 28th 2021 #1st #March #March 1st 2021 #q

[cryinginthebackseat]

initials t.c.

Fandom: Open Heart

Pairing: Tobias Carrick x MC

Words: 7.299 (I’M SO SORRY)

Summary: Tobias Carrick makes Claire an offer she can’t refuse.

Warnings: 50% plot, 50% smut, swear-a-thon, blasphemy

Author’s Note: when the book first introduced us to tobias carrick, the first thing that hit my mind was “okay, but that dude is like the carbon copy of jesse williams and that’s hot” but then, once it reveals who he is and what’s his role in the book i went “interestinggggggg” cause you know, i’m a sucker for morally grey characters and all, and i’m not even ashamed to admit it. also, carrick is shaping up to be such an interesting character with each chapter and maybe one day- okay, maybe this sounds like a pipe dream- but one day, i hope he can be a li (let a girl dream plz) lmao

also if anyone’s interested, i made a PLAYLIST to accompany reading the fic.

the title is inspired by serge gainsbourg’s initials bb

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Cast down off heaven Cast down on my knees I’ve lain with the devil Cursed god above Forsaken heaven

To Bring You My Love - PJ Harvey

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 

Whenever Claire thinks about Tobias Carrick, admittedly, unfortunately, tragically, she always thinks about his eyes first before remembering what a colossal pain in the ass he is.

It always comes in that order. Like the number 3 always comes before 4, like the seawater dragging back from the shoreline before a tsunami occurs, like pouring milk before the cereal (she honestly didn’t get what the fuss is about until one day Elijah cried ‘oh, hell no you don’t, satan!‘ one morning and proceeded to give her bullet points why pouring the milk before the cereal is considered a sin and more of an abomination than Nephilims’ existence and that there’s a higher probability that she’s a psycho for being a ‘milk first’ kind of person). So apparently, Claire’s a psycho now which explains so many aspects- but she digresses and the point is, the reaction is uncontrollable and she high-key hates how she can’t control her goddamn mind most of the time.

The point is, she needs to stop thinking about him to begin with. 

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 

Claire Castelnuovo was born in the summer, under the sign of Gemini. Marilyn Monroe once said that stands for intellect, being a Gemini, but she was too blissfully unaware of this guerdon that she devoted her adolescent years to being outdoors instead. Too many days she spent trampling along the cornfields with her cousins until the skies faded out with brilliant purple-tinged amber and she was carrying a piece of the sun in her skin and smelled like one, stuffing wildflowers inside her boots as she walked around the neighborhood with her dad’s old stethoscope, napping in a hammock with Oasis’ All Around the World on repeat. By the time she hit 15, her black strands had turned brown from repeated sun exposure. She loved it.

But it was a different time, a different place. Somewhere that only exists on the margins of her memories, lost and hidden.

Now, Claire prefers the night.

It’s 9:30 pm when she arrives at a hotel bar in downtown Boston. A newly christened establishment which has somehow become a regular spot for Hemingway’s enthusiasts once the Boston Globe wrote an article about their Hemingway Daiquiri and how, as they wrote it, ‘probably the only place that’s brave and crazy enough to adhere to the 1930s original recipe’ and bourgeois party birds at wee hours during the weekend.

Her eyes are gritty, dry and strange. Her mind’s much worse for the wear- she feels like shit, like in the middle of watching that scene from The Green Mile shit when all is hopeless and you feel like walking out of the theater, but you’ve spent your last savings just to buy the ticket, so you decide to stick through it.

Claire makes a beeline for the bar, tries to flag down the bartender. She orders an Old Fashioned, making sure to specify to double it because she’s not a regular here and he’s not Reggie and that’s how she’s been taking her drink for years.

She knows well deep in her bones that she should be somewhere else. Somewhere more familiar, somewhere where Tim Mcgraw often plays from the subpar speakers, and the rustic wooden bar countertop is gouging and discoloring from the cheap household cleaners and alcohol stains, and her friends are cramming together in the same booth in the back, reveling and laughing until they close the bar down and make a mess all over. Perhaps it’s a mistake coming here, where no one’s a familiar face and the drinks are a tad overpriced for her budget.

But then, perhaps this is exactly what she needs; the unfamiliarity, the visceral feeling knowing that she doesn’t belong here, where no one knows her name and the huge deal of weight she’s currently carrying on her shoulders. Perhaps, she can’t face her friends after what happened, after what Esme has done. Shit, how could any of this happen? Claire knows this all on Esme’s, but her guilt has grown hopelessly tangled with her anxiety. She’s her intern, for fuck’s sake, Claire’s supposed to prevent this from happening in the first place.

Man, where’s Declan Nash when she feels like punching someone in the face?

Claire makes the mistake of drinking her drink too quickly, because it hasn’t been ten minutes and she’s drained half of the content. Then she reaches for her phone in her bag, fiddles with it, absent-minded, equal parts bored before then settles on watching the band performing Art Pepper’s You Go To My Head and immediately thinks of that time she accidentally dropped her brother’s saxophone in a moment of her rather graceless, wine-soaked self with the whole family present.

Someone plops down on the empty stool next to her. Claire’s now scrolling through her phone- again, bored. Sienna commented on the post Elijah shared to the group chat with a few unnecessary-yet-totally-necessary emojis to the already convoluted series of texts and Claire only reads them in silence, not only because her friends’ texting behaviors are too chaotic for her to follow sometimes but she’s not really feeling like talking to anyone right now.

“Well, well, well, look what the cat dragged in.”

Famous last words.

Claire freezes in her seat. Her phone’s still glowing in her hand, alighting her features. She recognizes that voice- too well, that is and it’s enough to set off her flight-or-fight response.

She glances up from her phone, preparing for the worst.

Well, what’s presented before her is literally the worst.

“Of all the gin joints…” she says once her eyes find Tobias Carrick sitting next to her, still in his work shirt, sleeves rolled-up, a few buttons undone, reeking of smoke, soap and antiseptic with a shit-eating grin plastered over his face.

She should have gone to Donahue’s instead.

“Evening to you too, Castelnuovo. Drinking your dinner tonight, I see?”

“What, this? No, this is breakfast. 100% daily value of alcohol and pretty much nothing else. I mean, it’s not the weekend without a bad case of hangover and an aspirin snowglobe in the morning, am I right? You know, like a glass of aspirin? Not a literal snowglobe?” she blabbers, realizing just so by the time she hears him snort. Claire chokes down another sip to shut her mouth up. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I’m about to commit first-degree murder and burn this whole place to the ground,” he drawls, the ever goddamn sarcastic. “What do you think? I’m trying to get dru-”

“No, I mean what are you doing here, of all places? Can’t you get drunk somewhere else?” she interrupts, her midwest accent does funny things to the vowels and consonants- something that only happens whenever she’s in distress, or at least according to Jackie.

“Last time I heard, this joint’s still owned by the Hilton, not a certain junior member of the Diagnostics Team at Edenbrook hospital.”

“Dude, what do you think of the H in Claire H. Castelnuovo stands for?” Deadpan, trying to keep up with the rolling sarcasm, she retorts. He smirks.

“Horatio?”

“Get the fuck out of here,” she mutters, mid-eye-roll, mid-snickering.

He chuckles, his voice rich and smoky amidst the late-night swing and distant chatters. Carrick doesn’t leave, of course, typically him- if those anecdotes Ethan told her has taught her anything about his character, that is- defying everything, scheming his way to the top, the embodiment of ‘those devilish boys with their heavenly eyes’ type your mother warns you about.

Not that the latter is relevant.

“Or what?” His mouth twitches but there’s a hard, challenging light in his eyes that she knows too well by now.

“Or I’m leaving.“ She shoots him a glare. He’s testing her patience- again, like it’s his finesse. Some things never change, it seems.

“Come on, Castelnuovo, don’t be a sourpuss. The night is young and I can promise you, the last thing I am is a horrible drinking buddy.”

With a touch of irony, she replies: “I’m sure. I bet you asked your friends to fill out a questionnaire every time you went out with them, did you?”

Carrick hums.

“You’re funny.” But he says it in the same tone that someone might say Jesus fuck, you’re probably one of the most frustrating creatures I’ve ever laid eyes on. Also, because the next thing he says is: “A little rough around the edges, but funny nonetheless.”

“That makes one of us then.”

Carrick frowns, which is kind of a surprise because she’s half expected him to flash her that signature cheeky grin of his.

“Listen, I’m just trying to make a friendly conversation here. I know we haven’t really seen eye-to-eye with each othe-”

Claire snorts and crosses her arms over her chest. “That, doctor, is an understatement of the fucking century.”

“Okay so, we’re like Tom and Jerry but sans the background music and a naive little duckling running around calling one of us his momma, but I feel like now’s the time to call out a temporary truce between us.” A beat, then: “I heard about what happened with the intern.”

Something flashes across her face- and Carrick must have noticed it, because his face does this odd thing- it softens, even for a moment. She hates it. He’s not supposed to be looking at her like that, not supposed to see her at her weakest state or saved her ass- And Jesus, why does she have to be indebted to Tobias Carrick, of all people- But god forbid, the last thing she’ll ever do is crying in front of him.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she mutters, barely audible, trying to temper her fluctuated emotions.

“Then don’t. We can talk about anything else or fall into some sort of endless, meaningless platitudes. Whichever will work.” As if sensing Claire’s lingering hesitation, he adds. “Tell you what, to sweeten the offer, your next drinks are on me.”

She assesses him for a long minute, eyes narrowing. She’s shaking her head, but her mouth, as if against her will, instead says: “Careful, Carrick, there’s a chance I’ll be abusing that offer and run you dry.”

"Hey, if you want to butcher your liver so bad, don’t stop on my account,” he says. “Don’t worry, though, I’ll make sure to save your ass again this time around. Pro bono.”

Claire looks as if she’s just swallowed a dead rat. “Thanks, but no thanks. Death seems more like an appealing choice.”

“Well, I stopped death from interfering then, I’ll stop it again.” Carrick winks, she pretends to gag again yet remains still in her seat, so Carrick waves at the bartender for their order- she orders for a refill and he, a martini and Claire is this close from asking 'shaken or stirred?’ but then remembers who he is and immediately washes the question down with her drink.

“You know, if anyone told me weeks ago that I’d be having a drink with you tonight, I probably would have socked them.“

Carrick is in the middle of lighting his cigarette, but laughs instead. “The Times They Are a-Changin’, as Bob Dylan said.” A puff of smoke escapes his mouth, curling around his fingers. Claire instinctively looks away. “Which reminds me of that one time your mentor sang Ballad of A Thin Man on the fucking subway when we were 20.”

She swivels her head to his direction, on the verge of choking on her drink. “Hold on, hold on, Ethan Jonah Ramsey sings?”

“Give him a dare he couldn’t refuse and a few shots of whiskey, and I promise you he’ll sing like Sinatra on crack.” He grins, his eyes are all crinkled and bright; she thinks that means he’s genuinely amused. “Ah, good times. We were like- wait, who was it he’d like to say we’re like again?”

A small smile pulls at her lips. “Bert and Ernie.”

“Jesus, he really fucking compares us to some Sesame Street characters, huh?” She laughs at that, loud and bright. He does the same. “Personally, I’d always say we were like Butch and Sundance back then- rebels with a cause, a band of misfits, trying to leave our marks on the world. You know those types. We were young, we wanted so much- I still do. I mean, let’s be real, whoever’s wanted to be defeated at their own game?”

A crease forms between her eyebrows, not quite a frown.

“Nobody,” Claire concurs, hating herself for it. “But was it worth it? Betraying the closest thing you had to a brother or a lover…” Carrick coughs on his smoke from the latter. “or whatever in the process just to get what you wanted?” Claire was obviously aiming for that brash, hard-hitting jab, but it lands gloriously too soft.

The bartender finally places their ordered drinks down on the bar. Carrick reaches for it, taking a careful swig, then sets his glass down. He takes a deep breath.

"It’s nothing personal. It never was. I never considered him as my rival.”

“Yeah, but by doing whatever you did, you’ve made an enemy out of him,” she counters. “Look, Carrick, I know we live in a dog-eat-dog world and I know being good sometimes doesn’t get the job done. Perhaps Machiavelli was right. Perhaps, when necessary, you have to be ruthless, dissembling and manoeuvring- what did he say again? ‘The end justifies the means’? But if any worthwhile end can justify the means to attain it, if everyone outright surrenders to their darker side, then what’s left of our humanity?”

For an interminable moment, there is only silence. He simply stares at her, as if she’s a walking, talking Rubik’s cube he can’t solve or a book that he has opened and now he’s got to know so much more and she feels pinned under those warm irises, uneasy.

Suddenly, his mouth begins to take shape; the corners hike up, stretch and then he does the unexpected.

The bastard fucking laughs.

“Excuse me?!” she spits, white-hot anger lacing each word. Carrick laughs harder- the audacity- despite Claire’s growing razor’s edge stare. “Did you just laugh at me? I was being fucking seriou-”

“Sorry, sorry.” Wiping an imaginary tear from his left eye. “I was just remembering Harper’s words. She’s right, you really are on the side of the angels, aren’t you?”

She points at him with her glass, snarling. “And you, mister, are the devil himself with a medical degree and an egg head- and I don’t mean the slang for a highly academic person.”

“Ouch,” Carrick says out loud, still kind of laughing, borderline frowning. “Okay, I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”

“Damn straight. Though you have a lot to apologize for.”

He groans. “Don’t tell me you’re still pissed about that one patient I stole under your nose?”

“The North remembers, ser,” she says, mean-spirited.

“Then does the North remembers that I saved her life?”

“Oh, so you’re discrediting the efforts of the other doctors that helped you make the cure?”

“Alright, alright. You win.” Carrick holds up his hands, the universal gesture of defeat and takes one final drag of his cigarette. He stubs it out, all the while keeping his gaze on her.

“So, how exactly can I make it up to you?“

Claire blinks- once, twice, thrice, realizing his intent. His voice drops an octave and he’s leaning in, close enough for her to notice the constellations of freckles splaying across his face and the way his brown eyes glinted like two shots of whiskey under a stream of light, intense and all-consuming. She feels her mind races, her brains feel as if they underwent a short-circuit and get caught on fire, and the fact that her mind’s on the precipice of exploring the idea is not helping.

A burst of laughter erupts from her throat, not that it’s funny- there’s nothing funny about the situation, but someone ought to diffuse this shift of tension between them, or that was her aim, at least.

“What, you wanna pay me back?” she asks, trying to keep her voice from cracking but failing miserably. Fingers trembling against her glass as she chugs nearly a quarter of her drink in one go.

He notices that.

"A Lannister always pays his debts, does he? If you think that I owe you one, then I’ll gladly pay.” His eyes flick back to her face, searing into her. The air crackles between them. The band is playing a different song now, a sound that only exists on the margin of her attention. If they’re in, say a mid 2000s rom-com movie, someone would probably interrupt this moment and save her from this. But this isn’t a movie.

Claire licks her lips, a candid reaction which encourages him to inch closer- or is it her? She can’t tell anymore. Tracing odd patterns on the palm of her hand with his finger and oh god, this is Carrick, the bane of her fucking existence, she’d shoot him first before she kisses him. But something about the prospect of fucking this bastard twists her insides deliciously into a confused mess.

“How? By fucking me?” she inquires, feigning scandalized- all that Catholic guilt bullshit.

He grins, all-teeth and wolfish and shrugs as if they’re talking about his life insurance policy or shit. “Well, that’s the idea.”

“But you don’t even like me.” It should come out as I don’t even like you, but even she knows that’ll be just another lie she tells.

“On the contrary, I enjoy our rivalry far more than I should, Castelnuovo,” he purrs and places a hand on her knee. Her throat bobs. She’s wearing a skirt, it didn’t seem important then, but now his hand feels warm against her skin, dangling on the edge of impropriety. Like gravity, all it takes is a little push for him to cross that line.

“I should be disliking the way you talk to me, challenging me and putting me on the back foot every goddamn time. I should be focusing on taking you down a peg, but the more I see you, the more I realize you have an attractive kind of power. And I’m just one man. And if there’s anything I learned, the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.”

But then his movement suddenly ceases. Claire almost asks why.

"However…”

“What?” she stares up at him, eyes wide, breath hitching.

“However if you only accept alcohol as the currency for transactions, then I’ll tell the bartender to get us another round instead,“ he tells her, offering her one last chance to back out from this, from making this mistake with him.

Claire stares into her drink, actually mulling this over. Her mind tells her no, but the other part- the alcohol-infused part of her mind- whispers otherwise. She imagines if Ethan or any of her friends are here, they would probably grab her shoulder and shake the living hell out of her for even reconsidering his offer.

But then again, intelligence, alcohol and desperation have always had a bad history of getting along together.

“What about June?” Claire asks against her better judgement, after a long, considerable pause. Carrick raises a confused brow.

“What about her?”

“I thought you guys…” she trails off, makes a face, feeling all-kind of flustered and aroused and wow, she’s really doing this, huh? “I mean, I don’t know- I don’t wanna get in between you guys.”

“Nah. It was only a three time thing, but there’s never been anything between us.” He chuckles at Claire’s askance look. “If you don’t believe me, you can fact-check it with the woman herself,” Carrick adds, looking at her dead-on with his eyes like he wants to get the message across.

She regards him silently for a long second, and maybe she’s a touch drunk now, maybe the bartender put something in her drink, or maybe she just needs to blow off some steam after what’s been happening in these past few weeks and Carrick happens to be a decent warm body for the occasion, but Claire finds herself shifting closer.

"Then I want you to pay me back.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yeah,” she answers, more sure this time, more determined.

Her nose bumps his, his breath fanning across her face all the while Carrick’s slightly pushing her skirt up, letting his fingertips travel higher. His eyes keep darting back and forth from her eyes and lips, checking for her reaction. There is no inhibition here, not anymore. People might be watching- heck, they could be already watching and it terrifies her that she doesn’t give a damn about it.

“But if you tell anyone about this, I swear to god… ” she warns and a shadow of mirth passes across his eyes, making her almost regretting this. Almost.

“Claire, darling.” It’s the first time he’s ever said her name and her stomach does a tango. “Your secret is safe with me.“ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 

He gets them a room in the hotel, it’s on the twentieth floor. Carrick handles the accommodation- he can afford it, apparently, which is not really surprising and the nuisating check-in procedure while Claire only waits in the lobby like a beautiful, agitated china doll amidst the turbulent sea the whole time until he comes back, flashes the room key at her and beckons her to follow.

She goes ahead of him, but he catches up. His body heat sends her anxiety rocketing sky-high through the roof as they walk next to each other, hands briefly brushing against one another but she ignores that (or at least she tries).

They are silent in the elevator, they are silent even once they reach the designated floor and walk down the hall to their room where the dim and shadowed lights follow their steps like vultures.

Carrick holds open the door for her and she enters, taking in the windows and the striking view of Boston skyline peeking behind the curtains, the TV and the queen-sized bed. The latter does nothing to assuage the anticipation that’s bubbling in the pit of her stomach, by the way.

Claire hears him shut the door, locking both bolts. She peers at him over her shoulder, half-turned, one eye on him. Their eyes meet, neither speaks. He’s taking off his black peacoat, back against the door, he’s looking at her as if wanting her is his full-time occupation and the realizations comes in like a mule kick, how that tiny voice inside her head, the one that tells her that this is a bad idea and she’s better off leaving never comes.

The room is not considerably huge (with $110 per night, you would have expected you’d get a bigger room), he could easily have her in six large steps, yet he stands there. Sizing her up, smirking rather devilishly, handsomely as if challenging her to make the first move. It’s another fucking game with him. A display of power, waiting who would fall first.

Claire finally turns around to face him. With a renowned determination, she removes her coat, letting it fall unceremoniously onto the carpeted floor. Her blouse follows next and her skirt, which she tugs it oh so slowly down her legs.

Carrick’s eyes widen, if she doesn’t know better, she thinks he’s speechless. He takes a deep breath, his gaze religiously following every movement as she twirls around once more to unhook her bra. His jaw clenches and unclenches. He’s having a hard time keeping himself in check which she takes an immense pleasure in. Claire just wants to see the man squirm for a change, even if she has to shed every article of clothing she wears.

By the time she slips off of her underwear, she is breathing raggedly. He hasn’t yet approached her so she crawls onto the bed, lying on her back with one elbow props her up, legs crossed. She kicks off her heels, rolls down her stockings with a bit of that noir come-hither, Lauren Bacall-esque heavy bedroom eyes.

Finally, Carrick steps closer until he’s only a hair’s breadth away, like a target, filling her line of sight. The tension in the room is hot enough to send the thermometer reaching its maximum limit and she’s burning, burning, burning right through the core.

Claire cranes her head up to meet his gaze, noticing the way he’s drinking in her body like a pirate ogling a bottle of rum. High-strung, tense, Carrick lowers his head to her, his fingers carding through her long hair. Dimness consumes him raw, his silhouette is starting to find its place amongst the shadows except for his eyes. Never does the fire in his eyes falter, merely alight.

They are already nose-to-nose when Claire suddenly raises her hand over his lips. He withdraws from her, looking confused and hot and bothered.

“Take a seat over there, will you?” She motions to the settee near the bed, her tone leaving no room for argument.

He smirks, but she can see his bravado if faltering. “Ordering me around in the bed now, are we?”

“Didn’t you say tonight is about you making it up to me?”

“Touche, touche.” Carrick straightens his posture and makes his way to the settee across from her, shifting uncomfortably in his seat given the growing issue in his pants.

With eyes still trained to his, Claire cups her own breast, fingers pinching her pebbled nipple before the same hand travels lower down her stomach, her thighs. Carrick leans forward in his seat, obviously liking where this is going before Claire slowly and teasingly part her legs for him to see.

A surprised groan escapes him.

“Jesus, Claire,” Carrick hisses. “Fuck, I didn’t know you’re a goddamn tease.”

She doesn’t bother replying to him, but a winning grin finds its way across her face as she lays on her back, her shame and modesty are distant, knees pulled up so he can have a clear view of her. With two fingers, she runs them along her folds, dragging them slowly up to her clit. Claire imagines they are his fingers- which once upon a time would have horrified her, but tonight, as she repeats the motion over and over, knowing that he’s sitting there, watching her without being able to get his hands on her, she decides to submit to this newfound fantasy.

A rustle pulls her back to reality. He’s undoing his own pants, palming his cock, runs his fingers over the leaking head.

A low moan catches in her throat at that, her gaze snapping up from his erection to his face where his irises have darkened and pupils dilated. He wants to show her, that’s he’s as depraved as her when it comes to wanting, that he fucking wants her and in spades and she fails to think like a normal human being anymore.

Claire uses that image to work on herself harder, faster, feeling the intense pressure beginning to build beneath her fingers. She’s so wet now, despite him being able to see that, she wants him to hear it as well as she uses her idle hand to tap against herself. Carrick growls, his pace matching the rhythm she’s setting.

She slips her fingers inside her, drops her head back against the mattress and bites a loud moan that threatens to escape her lips. Flushing scarlet all over her abdomen, her breasts and up to her neck. Her blood thumping louder than bombs in her ears, her breaths begin to come in gasps.

Another fast and hard thrust from fingers, and Claire finds herself sighing his name.

“Tobias…”

And every last bit of his self-restraint snaps.

In just a blink of an eye, Carrick is already on his feet, grabs her waist, harshly, and tugs her down onto the edge of the bed where he’s now kneeling before her. He doesn’t bother with the teasings or soft kisses or caresses, and even before Claire has the time to register what’s happening, he crushes his face between her parted legs and eats her out.

She gasps, high and fleeting, twisting the bed sheet between her fists while his tongue flicks over her, moving back up, back down, lapping along her folds in the same motions she showed him with her hand, how she likes it. Claire forgets how to breathe. It just occurs to her just how arousing the sight of him on his knees like this, sending her mind hitchhiking into outer space.

“Oh, fuck.” She breathes, back arching on the bed with a drawn-out moan. “Fuck, Tobias!” Her hips gyrate over his mouth and she presses her heels against his shoulder blades. She’s so close. All she needs is a little push to send her careening into oblivion and it seems that Carrick can sense it because he brings two digits to her entrance and slides easily inside her, setting a ruthless pace.

With her hands reaching out to the back of his head, Claire cries out his name and trembles violently. Encouraged, Carrick curves his fingers inside her, hitting that exact spot that finally undoes her as she comes, long and hard, around his mouth and fingers- the kind of orgasm that you can feel deep in your bones- and watches as fireworks dance behind her lids.

When she finally comes down from her high, everything is hazy. It’s like waking up from a deep slumber after a decadent soak in a scented bath and she loses all orientation, until she feels him nipping the inside of her thighs. She hisses, glances down, heavy-lidded eyes finding Carrick is leaving bruises after bruises all over her skin like some kind of a lewd memento of his work, like he wants her to remember this the next time she wakes up in her own bed and he’s not there.

"Are you trying to turn me into a Na'vi, doctor?” She asks, still kinda breathless, feeling surprisingly conversational despite having just experienced, if not, one of the best orgasms in her life. He smiles against her thigh and withdraws from her, only after her thighs are sufficiently bruised enough, licks his fingers clean and stands up at the end of the bed.

“Maybe. You’d make a cute blue extraterrestrial creature, though,” he replies cheekily, then undoes the button of his shirt, showcasing his naked torso.

Claire feels her cheeks heating up again, but forces herself to stare; eyes following his pectoral muscles, down to the toned lines of his abdomen while he slides off of his pants. The man is one fine specimen, alright, and he knows- smug bastard- and she thinks it’s such a shame that Carrick is… well, Carrick. If the man learns how to shut up for one minute or avoid trying to sabotage everyone’s career at Edenbrook altogether, maybe, just maybe, she’d consider him.

“But honestly, I just wanted to hear you say my name again,” Carrick continues, crawling his way up to her, pulling her out of her musings. He settles between her thighs. His lips finding her ear and nibbling at the lobe while his fingers pinching and pulling at her nipple. Claire shivers. Nails scraping along his skin, raising angry marks that would certainly be there tomorrow.

When they kiss, it’s so good that she can’t help but curl her toes. He kisses her like he’s trying to steal her breath or her name. She can taste herself in his mouth, which sparks so many feelings inside her. Her mind’s foggy, sweat pooling on her forehead. Carrick is but shoves his tongue into her mouth, lapping at her, biting, sucking and she leans hard into the kiss, retaliates by scraping her teeth against his bottom lip. It spurs him on. Making his cock twitch against her thigh and Claire decides she can’t wait anymore.

Claire rolls her hips at him. He takes the hint and rolls over to grab a condom from his pants. Then he’s back on top of her, his weight and heat crushing her most deliciously and brings her body further up the bed with him; she drapes her legs around his hips, hands gripping his arms. Her lust and anticipation collaborate to the point of near madness.

Carrick nips the taut line of her jaw and drives himself into her.

They both groan in unison.

“Oh, fuck.” Carrick mumbles between shaky breaths, his face pressed against her throat. “Fucking hell, Claire, you feel so warm.”

Claire, on the other hand, goes rigid under him. Her mouth hangs open and her world narrows down to the feeling of his cock inside her and the pleasure that builds up again in her abdomen.

This is happening, she thinks, he’s inside her and it feels so amazing. She might as well be crazy for agreeing to do this with him in the first place, but the promise of the thrill beats the doubts.

He starts slow, just the smallest fraction of hips, gently thrusting back and forth in shallow motions. She whines, frustrated and impatient, raising her own hips to meet his, but Carrick’s weight pins her onto the mattress and she can’t fucking move.

“F-faster,” Claire stammers, her molars grinding like toothache.

The bastard smirks, like he’s been anticipating the word coming out of her mouth.

“Beg for it.” His words are punctuated with every unhurried stroke he’s giving her, teasing her and if she’s not in the middle of being fucked right now, she would have kicked him in the balls.

Growling, she swallows her plea by pulling Carrick down for another kiss. This time, she’s the one who does the biting and the sucking, making sure he’s distracted enough and then just like with all the things she does in her life, she takes the matter into her own hands.

With all her strength, she scrambles up, pushes him off of her and knocks him onto his back flat on the bed. When she swings her legs to straddle him, his eyes pop.

“Holy shit, you are feisty.”

“Only cause I’m angry and horny,” she bites off. Angling herself above him and with one hand, guides his shaft back to her opening. “And you- you weren’t doing a proper job fucking me.”

He smirks. “I was trying to wind you up.”

“Fuck you.”

She lowers herself and sinks back onto his cock, relishing in his moans and growls.

“Baby, you’re doing it.” His hands curling around her waist, his head falls back onto the bed, exposing his throat and Claire is so hard-pressed not to bite him there.

Claire ignores his smartassness, naturally, and lifts herself, drops back down. Slamming her hips into his until she’s bouncing on him. Nails clawing at his chest. Finally be able to set a pace she desperately craves for, finally wiping that smirk off of his face.

Under her, Carrick is biting his lip in an effort to not to lose control. His hands are everywhere now; her stomach, her breasts, her neck, her cheeks. Leaving fire on its wake. She might still hate him after this is strange, little arrangement is over but at this juncture, he’s exactly the remedy she needs after everything.

Then Carrick wraps his arms around her and picks up the pace, thrusting into her hard and fast. Claire shakes. She can’t catch her breath, her forehead pressed on his shoulder, her teeth latching onto his skin. Breathing a string of 'fuckfuckfuck’ while he squeezes her ass and continues to fuck her with careless abandon.

"Tobias.” Her moans amplify. She’s close to climaxing again, her legs quivering. Eyes wide shut. “Please, please.” So much for not begging.

He pulls her to him so their foreheads meet. Their lips brush against each other, but they aren’t kissing, merely trading breaths. A hand touches her cheek and her lids flutter open, finding his eyes- those depthless, amber eyes that pretty much lead her to this point, are watching her, pulling her in.

“Say it again,” he encourages darkly, face twists in pleasure. “My name. Say it again.”

She does it again, it comes out as a groaned whisper, repeating it over and over again like a sacred mantra.

Her second orgasm sweeps through her, making her spine arches, it tears a winded moan from her throat and it’s more than enough to trigger Carrick’s own release; fingers digging into the soft flesh of her hips, groaning gutturally.

Panting, sore but sated, Claire collapses on top of his chest, his arm still drapes around her. The rise and fall of his breath lull her to sleep. Before she knows it, he gently rolls her to his side, pulling the covers for them and kisses her on the shoulder, which comes out as… odd for her.

The bed moves and she feels him leaving.

He’s leaving.

He’s leaving.

She doesn’t know why it stings, but it does. But also Claire opts not to pay no mind to it and forces her mind to surrender to sleep that once again tries to take hold.

Claire wishes she doesn’t dream of him that night, but she does.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

It’s way past midnight when she wakes up. The room is dark. The curtains are closed. She’s still naked and sore under the covers, mind reeling in from what has just transpired.

One might ask in which universe does Claire Castelnuovo agree to sleep with Tobias Carrick? Well, apparently they did it in this one and oddly still, she doesn’t regret it. Though she’s still low-key sad that he left her straight after sex, but hey, what can she do about it? This arrangement itself is nothing but a means to an end, anyway, a perverse alternative for him to pay back what he allegedly owes her, she shouldn’t be surprised if he left after the ‘debt’ is paid.

Feeling her mood somehow takes an unexpected dip, she gets us from the bed and gathers her clothes on the floor.

She’s in the middle of zipping up her skirt when the bedside lamp flickers and comes on.

Claire turns around. Carrick, rousing from sleep, looks at her, rubbing his eyes and stifles a yawn. His lips still tinged from her kisses and bites.

“Leaving so soon?” he asks, voice still raspy from sleep and Claire thinks her mouth is hanging open, standing rooted to the spot like a spider on an icicle; frozen in time.

For a moment, she does nothing but stares at him, being rendered speechless. For many times, Tobias Carrick never fails to surprise her. Just when she thinks she has him all figured out, he comes sneaking in through her windows like a thief in the night and it just strikes her, how he really is an uncharted territory for her. Despite her having him pinned under her, exploring the hard planes of his body under the touches just a few hours ago.

The man is like a fucking myth, at this point. She knows him only from stories and her limited time around him, but who is exactly Tobias Carrick? Is he the competitive doctor at Mass Kenmore, the Machiavellian asshole that severed his friendship/relationship with Ethan for the sake of his greed and ambition? Or is he, Tobias Carrick, the man who saves her life, makes her laugh and kisses her shoulder in the afterglow?

She’ll probably never know.

“Yeah, my roommates will probably deploy a search party if I don’t come home tonight,” she replies, distracted, finally finding her own voice back. He nods, feigning disappointment- or is he not? She clears her throat and continues putting on her clothes. “I thought you left.”

He chuckles at the absurdity of her deduction. “And without saying goodbye?” Carrick rolls off of the bed and rises to his feet. He’s already wearing his pants- thank fuck for that- and approaches her. “I may be an asshole, Castelnuovo, but just so you know, my mother raised me better than that.”

So they’re back to their usual last name basis perimeter. That’s good, right? After all of this, she thinks a little familiarity would be nice for her sanity.

“Good to know, then.”

Silence encompasses the room. It’s awkward and overwhelming and it throws her a little off-balance. At the bar, they seemed to know exactly what to say to each other- especially him; but now, even she can sense the hesitation in his gait, at the way he’s looking at her and a faint alarm is trilling her head. Because if he’s making this awkward, she can do a whole lot of worse.

"Oh, before you ask, that makes up for pretty much everything, yeah. I mean, it’s alright.” You fucking dumbass, she thinks to herself, averting his gaze while a smile blooms on his face.

“Good to know, then.” He parrots her words and she huffs a laugh, freely and sweetly, like she’s currently not knee-deep in her problems or she’s just fucked the most incorrigible man that ever exists. He does too, but his gaze lands on her mouth before going back to her eyes.

Another silence passes. It’s time to go.

“I have to go now.”

He nods mutely and moves away so Claire can step past him.

She wears her coat. In the mirror, she still looks thoroughly fucked; her hair’s dishevelled, she smells like him now, but she really needs to go. She promises herself that this will be a one time thing because, Jesus fuck, she’s supposed to be smarter than this. She’s not fifteen anymore, and this is not the summer where she can watch the sunset from the cornfields with her cousins even though his eyes possess the same color.

Yet she walks toward the door in a daze, like she’s forgetting something but can’t pinpoint what it is.

“Can I-”

“Hey, do you-”

She stops, mid-turning, and closes her mouth. She doesn’t realize she’s interrupting him.

“Oh, sorry,” Claire says, embarrassed. “You go first, it’s alright.”

“Can I have your number?” he asks, uncharacteristically hesitant.

She thinks he’s joking or maybe he’s just feigning interest, but one look at his eyes and she can tell that this isn’t smoke and mirrors.

The eyes, chico. They never lie. It’s dumb, but that line from Scarface is the first thing that comes to her mind. That’s why when she hands him her phone, her hand is shaking slightly. She has to bite her lip to stop herself from grinning like a maniac.  

Claire takes a cursory glance at her phone once he returns it. He saved his number solely as t.c. with the water drop, the syringe, the ghost, the eggplant, the firework emoji and she chuckles endearingly, questioning the universe how he can easily get both a rise and a laugh out of her.

“I’ll text you?” Carrick asks again and she nods a little too enthusiastically at it, but what the hell?

“Sure.”

“Alright.” He takes one look at her, steps closer and for a moment, she thinks he might be going to kiss her.

“Goodnight, Claire,” Carrick says instead and she nods, admitting the fact that he’s not going to do it.

“Goodnight to you too, Tobias.” Then pauses at the doorway, feeling surprisingly bold. “I gotta give it to you, though, for someone who’s become the bane of my existence for months, you’re a damn good lay.”

He barks out a laugh, obviously, that Claire can hear all the way down the hall. And she thinks she can get used to the sound.

                                                         fin.

Tag list: @villain-fuckarooni @beckaroo @arfeiniel​ @this-person-is-busy @colossalpainintheass​ @drethanramslay @hatescapsicum @theeccentricbibliophile

#playchoices #open heart #tobias carrick #tobias carrick x mc #open heart mc #oh mc #pixelberry #choices stories you play

[coffeebooksorme]

It Happened One Summer eARC Review

GOODREADS SYNOPSIS:  Tessa Bailey is back with a Schitt’s Creek-inspired rom-com about a Hollywood “It Girl” who is cut off from her wealthy family and exiled to a small Pacific Northwest beach town... where she butts heads with a surly, sexy local who thinks she doesn’t belong. Piper Bellinger is fashionable, influential, and her reputation as a wild child means the paparazzi are constantly on her heels. When too much champagne and an out-of-control rooftop party lands Piper in the slammer, her stepfather decides enough is enough. So he cuts her off, and sends Piper and her sister to learn some responsibility running their late father’s dive bar... in Washington. Piper hasn’t even been in Westport for five minutes when she meets big, bearded sea captain Brendan, who thinks she won’t last a week outside of Beverly Hills. So what if Piper can’t do math, and the idea of sleeping in a shabby apartment with bunk beds gives her hives. How bad could it really be? She’s determined to show her stepfather—and the hot, grumpy local—that she’s more than a pretty face. Except it’s a small town and everywhere she turns, she bumps into Brendan. The fun-loving socialite and the gruff fisherman are polar opposites, but there’s an undeniable attraction simmering between them. Piper doesn’t want any distractions, especially feelings for a man who sails off into the sunset for weeks at a time. Yet as she reconnects with her past and begins to feel at home in Westport, Piper starts to wonder if the cold, glamorous life she knew is what she truly wants. LA is calling her name, but Brendan—and this town full of memories—may have already caught her heart.

MY REVIEW:  A HUGE thank you to Avon and Harper Voyager for providing me an eARC in exchange for an honest review! I became an instant fan of Tessa Bailey when Fix Her Up came out and since I've recently gotten into Schitt's Creek, I figured this would be right up my alley! And it completely was! I was not disappointed at all with what I was given nor shown anything other than what I've grown to expect from a Tessa book. It was sexy, steamy, and full of laughter! Piper was way more dimensional than I initially thought her to be from the first couple of pages. I honestly thought she'd start as a 100% airhead but she had depth to her to begin with and it was so amazing to see her grow but also accept and celebrate her own awesomeness. She was vivacious, funny, caring, and honestly, smarter than she gave herself credit for. Her relationship with her sister Hannah was honestly my favorite part as well. She not only stood up for her younger sister but always, ALWAYS, put her first. Brendan, on the other hand, was very one dimensional. Rough and tough fisherman stuck in his ways. He literally had no appeal to me other than he worshipped the ground Piper walked on and was sexy in the bedroom. Other than that, to me, he had no personality. What you see is what you got with him, which is fine, but I really wish he'd had the chance to have more of a shine personality wise in this book, though I get why because it's more a book for Piper than for them as a couple. The story itself also takes the course over a month so I really felt as if the timeline of the romance was a skosh too quick. I can't remember how long the timelines were in Tessa's other books, but for some reason this one just really stood out for me. Piper moves to Westport, falls in love with Brendan to the point of moving in, and discussing babies all within the span of a month. That's just...fast. I do have to give it to Tessa for not ending the book with them getting engaged and married, though. That's a nice change from most contemporary romance that I've read lately. All in all, solid story. Wonderfully funny humor, great cast of characters, growth, SISTERLY LOVE, and steamy sex. Would definitely recommend.

RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

RELEASE DATE: July 13th, 2021

#booklr #bookstagram #tessa bailey #it happened one summer #avon #harper voyager #earc #it happened one summer arc #book reviews #book review #reviews #my reviews #romance #bookworm #book dragon #bibliophile #mine #my book reviews

[thanatophobia-thoughts]

Some of my wind has returned to me, so to speak, for working on this blog. Not that I’ve stopped, as all of those following can tell, nor will I soon be returning to 4 original posts each day – 3 is enough, with one reblog to bring up old information. In fact, that is part of the discussion for today, in a way.

Returning to work has allowed me to return to my love of reading, and while today I will be going to get the new Junji Ito manga (Sensor – I write this on 8/17/21), I have been working my way through the Masters of Rome series by Colleen McCullough.  

I’ve suggested reading autobiographies and diaries, and that suggestion doesn’t change.

What I’d now like to suggest are reading stories – fictional or historical, or that strange mix of both – that carry over the lives of multiple people.

The only way I can think to explain that, is to use my current example. The series begins with telling the stories of Gaius Marius and Sulla, two men who set in motion dramatic changes for historical Rome. It goes through to their deaths (along with a host of other side characters), into the life of Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, and Gaius Octavius – the future Augustus. I’m only on the 4th book right now, but I have already observed an entire generation die off.

My beloved Sulla, the ever-graceful Julia wife of Marius, and of course, Marius himself, are all gone. Their impact continues to be mentioned, to be remembered, but with every book it fades. Even that of Servilia (mother of Brutus), who as a child was terribly impacted by her mother’s adultery, seems to recognize that influence less and less. She has more influences, more nuances, to her life.

And these, too, will fade. Octavius is not yet born, but hinted at in Caesar noting he should find a husband for Atia, mother of Octavius. This will circle back. Another generation will fall, and another rise.

I do not believe this is a common occurrence in series; they tend to focus on one set of characters, and do not show the progression to the rise of others. A Song of Ice and Fire may get close to that, one day, but as of yet I cannot say if it will; nor can I suggest it for such reading as the series is not yet complete.

Masters of Rome is the only series I am familiar with that does this, though I have never sought it out as a thing before. I imagine it may be more common in historical fiction than it is in other genres.

The only other I can think of that may do this (I have not read it so I cannot confirm) is Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

So my suggestion is, if you like history, find a period you enjoy that spans around 100 years, and see if there are any historical fiction written about it. Or, if you’re not into history, I’m certain there are sci-fi and fantasy stories that span generations.

Why do I make this suggestion?

Simply because I do not believe we are ever truly exposed to this. We know it occurs, as we know death occurs, but we are rarely involved in stories that go through multiple perspectives of changing generations and times. We certainly see it around us – my grandparents, my parents, and gradually, the children of friends (maybe my brother – who knows!), and perhaps even their children! We experience it, but I believe we are so close to it, that it often blinds us.  

This is a way to remove oneself from the narrative, and look at it through other eyes. Experience it, in a way we live. I feel Masters of Rome captures that. I know the names Nixon and Reagan, the way many in Rome may have known the names Sulla and Marius after a few decades went by – where to the people left who lived with them, they remain huge, notable! To someone like me? Not so much. In my time, I suppose it’ll be figures like Barack and Trump who stand high in my memory, as far as politics go.

Innovations in my mom’s time seem simply normal, or even outdated, like the VHS. Now we have Blu-ray and digital!

I do not think we truly experience multiple generations in the way a novel or even a show, can allow us to – all at once, quickly, and to thus be more keenly aware of the shifts because by our time our reckoning with it – a few hours, a few days, weeks, depending on how fast we read – is far shorter than the time changes occur through generations, which is years. It’s fresh. We wonder at how things are forgotten, so easily cast aside, when it happens all the time.

In a way, it brings us to confront that true horror of thanatophobia that many like to hide behind: that we are not truly dead until we are forgotten. Here we see forgetting even within the same, and next, generations.

Here, we see death. As normal. And here we see moving on, as normal. Here we see lives untouched by the tragedies of these earlier losses. Would my brother’s children, ever be impacted by the loss of great-grandparents they never knew? No. No more than I am, and of those, there is only my father’s grandfather I think I would have liked to know, because he saw something in my dad that my dad should have seen earlier.

Exposure to generational stories and the death inherent in them, the change inherent in them, I think is important. In some ways it is as comforting as it is terrible, because for those with loved ones they’ll leave behind, it shows how families can grow and flourish and be happy after losses. It shows that “moving on”.

I browsed a Reddit thread for ideas (https://www.reddit.com/r/booksuggestions/comments/wdy5f/can_anyone_suggest_fiction_novels_that_span_over/), and so I am including these thoughts as well:

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Roots by Alex Haley

House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer (a part of a series followed by The Prodigal Daughter)

The Mists of Avalon by Marion Bradley

The Sackett series by Louis L’amour

The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu

Some of these look quite promising, so hopefully some will appeal. If there are other ideas, I certainly welcome reblogs with contributions!

#death anxiety #death anxiety talk #book recommendation #book recommendations #masters of rome #colleen mccullough #historical fiction #thanatophobia

[utanoprince-imagines]

Starish and Quartet Night as bungo stray dogs’ abilities

A/N: Other than utapri, I am also a huge fan of BSD, and so I thought why not write about the boys having the abilities like the characters in BSD Generally I tried to keep it to classic literature book titles and based their abilities on the title of the book.

I also decided to split the boys into team ADA and port mafia. Not sure if I should put this as my disclaimer but putting a boy in the PM does not necessarily mean he is a ‘bad’ person. My take on the ADA and PM for this scenario is that they fight for different reasons!

All in all, these are just some headcanons I have and may not be 100% accurate to the boys’ personalities or the BSD plot.

Welp, this was a lengthy a/n mainly cause I’m kinda nervous about posting these kind of stuff. But thank you for reading till the end and I hope you like it!

STARISH

Otoya:

Designation: ADA

Ability name: In Search of Lost Time (Marcel Proust)

Ability description: Ability user is able to travel up to 1 hour back into the past. Anyone who is standing within a 5-metre radius of the user will also be affected.

Otoya discovered his ability when his friend nearly cycled into the path of a bus 

Otoya looked on in shocked and desperately prayed that he could turn back time, which was what eventually happened and he managed to pull his friend to safety

Unlike the other ADA members who were recruited by Reiji, Otoya volunteered to join the agency at his own will 

Otoya is always eager to go on missions, whether he was assigned to it or not. He wants to do whatever he can to help others

He eventually trained his stamina by jogging every morning, as well as took self defence classes

Once in a while, he hangs out with Syo to play soccer (whether a not the both of them decide to use their abilities during a match is up to them) 

He looks up to Reiji a lot and is close to Tokiya 

Tokiya:

Designation: ADA

Ability name: Persuasion (Jane Austen)

Ability description: Once eye contact has been made, ability user is able to get the victim to reveal whatever secret he desires.

Tokiya stumbled across his ability when he was asking his mum what she got him for his birthday and she told him

She later admitted that she did not have the intention to reveal his gift in the first place

Tokiya initially had mixed feelings about his ability, as he was aware that some people wanted to keep certain thoughts hidden

But he later learnt how to better control his ability, and decided to use it for good

Reiji later recruited Tokiya into the ADA after having a chat with him in a cafe and Tokiya showing interest in helping with the agency

Tokiya has little to no combat skill, but to make up for it, he is extremely intelligent

Before going after an enemy, Tokiya does intense research on the person, sometimes asking Ai for help

He is then able to cause the enemy to go into a panicked state when his deepest, darkest secret is revealed

As much as possible, Tokiya avoids leaving the office and similar to Masato, he spends his free time reading as well as listening to music

Natsuki:

Designation: Port Mafia 

Ability name: Lost Illusions (Honore de Balzac)

Ability description: Ability user is able to send victim into a trance-like state, allowing user to brainwash the victim. For the ability to work, eye contact has to be made.

When he was a child, Natsuki was ordering ice cream when the man suddenly looked dizzy and said odd things

His parents later explained to him that it was an ability granted to him

Natsuki didn’t really understand it, but he was careful to not make eye contact with anyone for too long as he was aware that was what set the ability off

Growing up, he learnt how to control it and can now make eye contact with people without his ability setting off

Camus personally recruited Natsuki into the port mafia, recognising the strength of his ability if used well

Despite his tall figure, Natsuki loves cute things and is often seen bringing mini pastries to Camus’ office to eat with him (Camus appreciates that a lot)

During his off days, Natsuki enjoys catching up with his favourite TV show (Piyo chan)

He loves dotting on Syo due to his small size and enjoys putting him in ‘cute clothing’ (despite Syo’s multiple protests)

Masato:

Designation: ADA

Ability name: The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)

Ability description: Ability user is able to transport people to a garden which is inaccessible by outsiders. Only people within a certain radius are affected.

Masa didn't have the brightest childhood, and grew up emotionally broken

He first discovered his ability when he heard his parents fighting outside and he found himself transported to a different room 

When he finally came out of his secret room, he realised thst his parents had been searching for him, giving him a greater understanding of his ability

He uses his ability to save others from harm, but occasionally uses it as a retreat when he needs the time and space to think 

When Ren comes over to bother find him, they sometimes gather in his secret room, away from the public eye 

Masato learned how to fight with the katana to make up for his ability which lacks combat

He prefers office work and spends most of his free time reading 

Ren:

Designation: Port Mafia 

Ability name: Perfume (Patrick Suskind)

Ability description: Ability user is able to track down a person with his scent. For ability to work, a piece of clothing must be given to the user.

Ren discovered his ability when he was trying to return a lost handkerchief to a stranger who dropped it in a crowd

He took a whiff of it and immediately saw the location of the owner as well as the path he took

He was recruited into the port mafia by Natsuki when he stumbled upon him carrying out a mission

During his off days, Ren enjoys playing darts in an underground pub

He also enjoys looking for Masato from the ADA to hang out with him (also Masa might beg to differ)

What he lacks in combat, he makes up for with his ability, tracking down multiple criminals and targets with ease 

Ren is a sweet talker, and is easily able to convince target women to pass him their scarf/handkerchief for his team to track them down later 

He is often seen working with Syo, who helps with the combat side of missions

Syo:

Designation: Port Mafia 

Ability name: Fires on the Plain (Ooka Shohei)

Ability description: Ability user is able to use fire. He can also control the intensity, and how far it can spread.

Syo first discovered his ability when he was in a heated argument with a friend and accidentally set a portion of grass on fire

He then trained himself to be careful and to learn how to control his ability

Ren was the one who convinced Syo to join the port mafia, telling him that his ability would be well respected in the agency (he was right)

Syo quickly rose up the ranks in the port mafia, and is often tasked with leading missions

Syo is a very smart ability user, and knows when to use his ability to just threaten someone and when to use it to hurt someone

During his off days, he is often playing soccer with Otoya. Although he says that no abilities should be used, he sometimes uses his ability to trap Otoya within a certain space while he scores a goal

Syo admires Natsuki’s ability a lot, and enjoys working with him (although he will never admit it)

Cecil:

Designation: ADA

Ability name: The Call of the Wild (Jack London)

Ability description: Ability user is able to freely transform into a wolf on command. This ability is highly suited for combat

Cecil’s parents were the first to discover his ability when they went to wake Cecil up one morning but discovered a wolf lying in his place instead

They initially panicked but upon hearing the wolf mumbling, they realised it was just their son

Cecil was recruited by Reiji when he turned into a wolf to help sniff out for survivors in a snowstorm

Realising that they’re abilities worked well together, the both of them worked as a team a lot

Cecil is often seen training his stamina so that he could keep up with his wolf abilities

While he usually has a calm and happy personality, Cecil can become extremely violent when angry and has little control over his emotions

During off days, Cecil likes to take shelter in a high tree to read his book or listen to music

Cecil doesn’t like doing paperwork and is often seen asking Tokiya or Masato to help him (which they reluctantly agree to because Cecil is very cute)   

QUARTET NIGHT

Reiji:

Designation: ADA (leader)

Ability name: Snow Country (Yasunari Kawabata)

Ability description: Ability user is able to control snow over a certain radius. Depending on the user, light snow or a snowstorm can be summoned.

Reiji discovered his ability when he was a child and was upset that it wasn't snowing for Christmas

He ended up summoning a light snow over his house

He founded the ADA in hopes of using his ability to help others

On off duty days, Reiji uses his ability during winter festivals to make children happy by sending down snow to help them build snowman or take part in snowball fights

Reiji is not too fond of using his ability to hurt others. However if the situation calls for it, he will.

Depending on the severity of the situation, Reiji can either send heavy snow to scare the villain off or unleash a deadly snowstorm to directly hurt the villain.

The only scenario where Reiji casts a deadly storm is usually when someone he loves gets hurt.

He is often seen working with Cecil as their abilities work well together 

Reiji often uses his ability to trap the villain within a certain area, while Cecil swoops in to hold the villain down

Ranmaru:

Designation: Port Mafia (but is kind of a lone wolf) 

Ability name: In Cold Blood (Truman Capote)

Ability description: Ability user is able to leave no trace of crime committed. All evidence is wiped clean once the user leaves the crime scene.

However, much is still unknown about this ability. 

Ranmaru first discovered his ability when he devised a detailed plan to kill his friend’s stalker

When he was about to wipe off the blood on his knife, he realised it had already disappeared

He honestly did not know what to feel about his ability. He didn't exactly despise murder, but knowing that the cases remained unsolved bothered hims slightly

The only things he know about his ability is the fact that all evidence will be erased the moment he leaves the crime scene

But there is said to be more to his ability than that

He was recruited into the port mafia by Camus but with the condition that he was allowed to work alone

As he spends most of his time in his apartment, he isn't close to anyone

Ai:

Designation: ADA 

Ability name: Masks (Fumiko Enchi)

Ability description: Ability user is able to take the form of someone else. However, for this ability to work, the user needs to recognise the exact shape and form of the victim in detail.

Being a droid, Ai was programmed with the knowledge that his ability exists

His first experience with his ability was when he was people watching and accidentally morphed into a stranger he was looking at

Ai’s constant curiosity has allowed him to easily memorise the faces of others, as well as their physique

Because of that, he is a complete pro in using his ability

He was also programmed to distinguish between the right and wrongs of the world

He is fully aware of the capability his ability has to engage in wrong doings

Despite so, he chooses to only use his ability to do good

He's not a fan of fighting and prefers to write up reports and conduct interrogations in the office

He is close with Tokiya and is often seen hanging out with him

Camus:

Designation: Port Mafia (leader) 

Ability name: Phoenix (Osamu Tezuka)

Ability description: Ability user possess phoenix abilities to a certain extent, the most notable one being able to heal mortal wounds and revive selected people from the dead. 

Camus discovered his ability when he had a injury from horse riding and ended up healing himself when he hovered his hand over the sprain

He joined the port mafia as a low rank employee, but quickly worked his way up to the top due to his ability, eventually taking over the organisation 

Most of the time, he is inside his office (drinking tea) while watching over the city

He has a decent combat ability, but prefers to leave the fighting to his underlings as he felt that it was not 'royal' of him to engage in such things 

One of his known skills is the ability to revive the dead, but for this to work, the person needs to be dead for less than an hour

Camus barely uses this ability as he believes that death is inevitable, but if someone in the port mafia (or ADA because he lowkey loves them) is dead, he will not hesitate to bring them back to life

He is someone who likes working alone and is not particularly close to anyone in the organisation

#uta no prince sama #utapri #starish #ittoki otoya #ichinose tokiya #shinomiya natsuki #hijirikawa masato #Jinguji Ren #kurusu syo #aijima cecil #quartet night #kotobuki reiji #kurosaki ranmaru #mikaze ai #camus #uta no prince sama scenarios #uta no prince sama imagines #utapri scenarios #utapri imagines #utanoprince-imagines

[f1nalboys]

*grabs the mic*

guess what time it isss?? A LONG ASS ASK FILLED WITH FINAL DESTINATION CONTENT WITH ALEX BROWNING ANON!!—

- ok listen. carter is a dick. be he would never forget anything his s/o tells him. very ride or die. mention you like this color? he will text you ‘out with my mom you said you liked this color and i found a sweater made of it want it’ and act like it’s not a big deal.

- clear rivers is a she/they bisexual will not elaborate. wish her and terry got some screen time together so we could of had something like the ashley’s and wendy got in fd 3.

- billy and lewis have the same energy. really nice loner jocks who would treat you right.

- one of the worst fandom takes is that fd 2 is better the the og fd. bro come ON the characters suck! it had 2 good sequences (car crash/ elevator) and everything else felt boring!

- alex browning was way to careful to die by a brick. in my mind he faked his death to go look for a way to prevent the whole thing from happening again under the radar.

- ON THAT NOTE no way alex wouldn’t try to survive as long as possible to keep clear safe. like sorry man he would go to the ends of the earth to prevent anyone else dying.

- in my ‘main cast lives au’ they all rent a house together and live somewhere that’s not new york but east cost. maybe mass of something.

- sorry but no way clear doesn’t get bitches. look at her! gorgeous!

- not a single person in the og finals destination movie is ugly, along with most of 3 (camera dude sucks) and 5. 2 and 4 are very iffy and in my mind they don’t exist :)))

now for the good stuff, dating ideas for the fd 1/3 characters. no canon relationships exists here for the sake of things.

fd1::

billy: baby boy! def his first s/o and is completely in the dark to the whole thing. he would learn really fast and overall be a really good partner. he plays hockey (the jersey he’s wearing at the beginning has his canon last name on it so hear me out) and would def get his s/o front row seats to all his games. would give them his jerseys because they’ll most likely be huge on you (‘i’m not sma- HE WOULD TELL HIS COUCH TO BY HIM AN EXTRA THATS BIGGER SO IT WOULD BE DONT YOU WORRY).

tod: nerd. would def be down to cosplay with his s/o if they were into it and the very least go to conventions with them. you’re probably gonna be besties with alex because this man is clingy and wants his too fav alive people to get along. would love to play video games, watch horror movies, the whole shabang. him and randy meeks would be besties same type of energy except randy has slightly better social skills.

terry: regina george who? would def be conscious dating someone at first who didn’t fit her picture perfect image. quickly gets over that real quick and becomes super clingy and flaunts you everywhere. pda? %100. she loves holding hands and overall touching you in a non sexual sense. would be the cutest couple in school. (i love to imagine her with someone who dresses like they’re from the craft because i’m a sucker for opposites attract)

alex: bro biggest softy. would want to walk you home from school, help you with homework even if you don’t take they same classes, hold your stuff for you, etc. big on just long walks with just you, him, and his dog because who doesn’t love dogs? he has a nice house and most of the time you’ll lay on his bed while he’s at his computer looking up stuff to prove tod wrong even though the thing happened at lunch and damn it come over here and cuddle. would give in pretty quick.

clear: where do i BEGIN. makes sculptures of you! i can defiantly imagine she likes drawing and has tons of sketchbooks dedicated to you! would sob if you ever drew her though. she would make you playlists and love just laying together and sharing earbuds while listening to music. would share her books with you because she defiantly annotates all of them with great commentary and loves when you return them with even more.

carter: car rides. he sings in the car when he gets really comfortable and it’s l o u d. like full on drumming the steering wheel and singing his heart out. he defiantly loves hanging out in his car. like you’ll be eating the mcdonald’s french fries and milkshake he got you and he’ll be ranting like he’s about to start the next world war with the guy who bumped him in the hallway that day. making out in his car is a must. he would defiantly be nicer after getting with you after he realizes how much easier things are when you’re not a bag of shit probably made him apologize to alex and i can see him going to your house later and asking if you’re a witch because what the fuck just happened.

fd3:

wendy: photos! so many photos! you’re defiantly the main subject of her hobby. she has them everywhere, phonecase, locker, binders, her bedroom. probably has one on her beside table so she sees it right before bed and first thing the morning. would love to go on arcade dates with you. amusement parks are iffy but loves playing dance dance revolution with you.

kevin: gentleman. walks you to the front door, talks to your parents when he picks you up/drops you off, always home for curfew. the whole deal. he’s another sports dude so he would really happy if you willingly went to his games. he would def try to show off if he saw you in the bleachers. study buddies for sure, with you and sports school sometimes gets thrown on the back burner but you help keep him on track.

erin: alt mean girl so pretty. would sneak you into work after hours so you can just hang around and talk. doesnt care about school or anything involved with it but if you’re in clubs or anything she will 100% support it. ex. you act in the school play? she’s their in the front row with flowers ready to lunch whoever says you aren’t amazing. overall pretty great gf as long as you guys can communicate

ian: toxic emo boy. would also sneak you into work it to make out not to hang. he loves sneaking into your house (even more than sneaking you out) and walking around before you drag him to your room to try to kick him out. he doesn’t make a good impression on the parents and really tried to play into the whole ‘bad boy’ person really hard even if it means being a dick to you. erin and ian are besties here if one is dating you (and not poly) so they care a lot about you liking the other. ian gets a lot more jealous and would be pissed if you and erin became besties. that’s my s/o and my best friend they can’t be best friends! like sir explain that logic.

ashley/ashlyn: they’re pretty much the same person and dating them would be the same so they’re getting combined, my bad. would do your makeup. no questions asked. even if you don’t go out in it her fav activity is too have some random movie on in the background and do your makeup while y’all fill up on slushees and popcorn. also big into pta. mostly linking arms, especially when you guys go shopping because that’s going to be happening a lot. you’re going to want to invest in a good pair a sneakers. also sitting in the room while they tan and just talking if you don’t do it.

lewis: wants you to be his football trophy s/o. he already knows he’s gonna make it big and hey, i want my favorite person by my side while i do it! i know it’s repetitive but he would have you sitting on the bench with the rest of the players during the game. not sure how he got that to happen but here we are. he’s obviously not on the neck much if ever but it makes him really happy to see you sitting their :)))

alex anon i’m telling u right now i would die for you <3

I LOVE WHEN YOU SEND IN STUFF LIKE THIS I STGG!!!! i completely agree abt 2 and 4 being the weakest links lol, 2 is NOT the best in the franchise at all. the premonition might be one of the best (i really liked the one from 5) but other than that and the elevator, like you said, it’s really lack luster lol

the dating the character things oh my god <33333 i want to be w all of them so bad…and carter remembering little things is so true, he’d forget your birthday but not the fact that you said what ur fave food was three months ago LMFAO

#talking w s1mp #ur perfect #mwah #s1mp answers

[accioromione]

I love ron but there was a huge shift of his character from book 3 to 4, he went from literally not minding Harry's fame at all to always being jealous. It seemed so FORCED in book 4 onwards. Like jealous of the cup, jealous of him having gold, jealous of his robes, jealous of him being able to ask out any girl to the yule ball, jealous of Viktor I feel like because it was planned for him to leave she had to force that but it seemed unnatural tbh

I do think JKR pushed it with the Krum thing to kind of make it obvious Ron likes Hermione, otherwise people wouldn’t know right? She had to kind of make it over the top so like it's CLEAR that Ron likes her. If he’s okay with it, it just shows they’re good friends. I think that if this wasn't the case then Ron wouldn't have been as jealous, he’d be annoyed but get over it. As to the thing with Harry, Ron is pretty great overall with him. I think what you’re missing is how the books are told from Harry’s view and not Ron’s so you don’t really see how Ron’s experiencing things. 

So naturally, let me do an essay talking about Ron’s jealousy and where it stems from and why it’s justified. 

In the first book we see Ron and Harry becoming friends, people oggle at him, but Ron does not seem to mind. Becoming friends so early on, Ron ends up viewing Harry as a friend instead of the celebrity everyone else see’s him as. Ron assists Harry in taking down Voldemort in his first year, and he gets recognized for it by Dumbledore. Now people may not see this, but although he gets recognized- he is awarded 50 points. Now here is something to remember, at this moment- Slytherin is 160 points ahead of Gryffindor. Ron has just one them 50 points- yeah it’s great- but they need another 110 points to be tied.  Hermione gives them 50 extra points and starts crying. Then Harry is awarded 60. This makes them tied with Slytherin, and is obviously, 10 more points than Ron gone. So is once again, second best.  Ron’s moment is instantly overtook by Harry. Now Harry actually gets overtook by Neville winning 10 points, making Gryffindor win, Now in my opinion Ron doesn’t care at all because he immediately goes to cheer on neville, from book one to three I think Ron is generally okay with being overshadowed- but he just like anyone else would has a breaking point, which happens to be in Goblet of Fire . 

In the second book he goes  with Harry to the forbidden forrest, facing his arachnophobia, and goes to the chamber of secrets with him. It’s his broken wand that causes Lockhart to obliviate himself- otherwise the both of them would have been obliviated. And yes he has motives, it is his sister. But remember, Ginny has three other brothers in her school, does this mean they don’t care about her? Of course not. Ron just trusts Harry in a way that other characters can’t. Harry can talk to snakes and the whole school basically thinks he is the heir of Slytherin, so maybe falling Harry into a forbidden forrest or chamber of secrets isn’t something everyone is so keen on doing. But Ron trusts Harry and is willing to risk his life to be alongside him. Now is it ROn’s fault they get seperated in the chamber? No. Did Ron help as much as Harry, of course. Dumbledore gives them special services to the school for a reason. However a key thing to note is that Ginny does not see Ron. Who does she see? Harry. What is she going to tell her mum? Well, that Harry saved her. She is already a huge fan of him, so this already adds into her narrative. So what happens when Molly Weasley comes to see Ginny? She goes to hug Harry and thanks him right away, when Ron is right there. Ron says nothing, and he’s probably just happy that she’s safe. But what do you think happened when they went home that summer? Ginny gushed about Harry, she mentioned how he had saved her. Of course, she hadn’t seen Ron so it wasn’t her fault. But this yet again, shows Ron being overshadowed by Harry even though he himself contributed to her well being.

Come the third book, we see this quote

‘“Did you really blow up your aunt, Harry?” said Hermione in a very serious voice. “I didn’t mean to,” said Harry while Ron roared with laughter. “I just — lost control.” “It’s not funny, Ron,” said Hermione sharply. “Honestly, I’m amazed Harry wasn’t expelled.” “So am I,” admitted Harry. “Forget expelled, I thought I was go­ing to be arrested.” He looked at Ron. “Your dad doesn’t know why Fudge let me off, does he?” “Probably ’cause it’s you, isn’t it?” shrugged Ron, still chuckling. “Famous Harry Potter and all that. I’d hate to see what the Min­istry’d do to me if I blew up an aunt. Mind you, they’d have to dig me up first, because Mum would’ve killed me. Anyway, you can ask Dad yourself this evening. We’re staying at the Leaky Cauldron tonight too! So you can come to King’s Cross with us tomorrow! Hermione’s there as well!”

This shows that Ron is not ignorant to Harry’s favouritism, he is well aware that harry is more recognized than him. Obviously he is not mad, he’s laughing and thinks it’s great. But it shows how he is well aware that Harry has a treatment that he doesn't, this is important. This is where we get a glimpse of Ron’s perspective in the books. If you experience the events from Ron’s perspective, you’re going through all the adventures Harry goes through minus the same recognition. 

Now Goblet of Fire comes along, Harry is chosen to be in the tournament. Ron really wanted to sign up- but he was too young. Keep in mind he's mad at Harry because he thinks Harry found a way to sign up without him, not because he signed up. Ron deals with being pushed to the side all the time and genuinely cares about Harry. Ron just wants to be seen as his equal, he doesn’t care that Harry gets recognition. He literally just wants to be an equal counterpart. He apologizes when he see’s the danger Harry is in and puts that behind him. 

Order of the Phoenix Ron beats Harry in one thing- becoming a prefect, and Harry is instantly salty. Keep in mind that Ron has been dealing with this for FIVE YEARS, long term. This one little minuscule thing has Harry feeling some way. Instead of being happy, he APOLOGIZES to Harry. He says he was sure Harry was going to get it. This shows the regard he has for Harry, the difference is, unlike everything else, this is something they simply can’t both have, only one person can be prefect. Then we see Ron literally telling Harry all the things he’s faced and Harry rubbing it in Hermione and Ron’s faces that they haven’t experienced what he has. I personally thought this was so rude. Yes Harry stabbed the diary, yes Harry cast the patronus charm, and yes Harry saw Voldemort. But Ron was with him in the chamber, Ron drove the car, Ron kept Lockhart imprisoned, you think Ron can’t stab a book with a fang? Of course he can. Ron’s leg was literally broken in POA, and he still stood up on it to fight Sirius. Where have we ever seen a time where Ron can’t handle himself? Harry is different, he has this core connection with Voldemort, most of his victories are not due to him- take GOF for example. And what would Harry have done in POA without Hermione’s time turner? Nothing. GOF he wouldn’t have made it past the Dragon if Ron didn’t get Hagrid to tell him he was facing a dragon. Instead of Ron saying all of this he sits and takes it because he knows Harry has it worse than him in terms of Voldemort. He encourages Harry to start DA But also remember why the hell can Harry cast a patronus in the first place? Did he learn it himself? No! Lupin went out of his way to TEACH him, you think Ron wouldn't have been capable if Lupin had done the same with him? Of course, in DA we see Ron casting a patronus! He goes with Harry to the Ministry, he gets hit by a death eater, SO DOES Hermione Granger, why is Harry unaffected? Because the death eaters were TOLD not to harm Harry because VOLDEMORT wanted him! In the end Harry needs help, he needs the order and dumbledore. What comes out of all of this? Harry being recognized. That’s all. 

Come HBP , people don’t care about Luna or Neville, Hermione only mentions how Harry is so liked because people know how he was in the Ministry. Then the slug club comes, imagine a club like this in your school, that is BLATANT favouritism, Harry has all these fangirls, and then is a part of this club literally for his name. He’s also now quidditch captain- Ron isn’t even mad, he even jokes that Harry will be his captain if he lets him on the team again. Then he helps Harry yet again with the death eaters and all of that and then we go into DH. 

The jealousy comes into play with Harry and Hermione, which honestly Hermione had a part to play in this, Hermione does treat Harry differently from Ron, she’s like always more concerned about him and we know (well some of us) know it’s because he’s like her brother so it’s an overly protective sister kind of thing with him, but with Ron she likes him so she’s not as coddling, she treats him like she's his girlfriend which he fails to see. She also compliments Harry because it means nothing to her but she’s more reserved with complimenting Ron because she likes him (very teenager), she can say Harry’s handsome and not care but be too shy to say Ron is because of how she feels with regards to him.  Ron obviously misreads this. Anyways, at the end of the day,  him leaving isn’t down to jealousy, it’s down to frustration and Harrys’ lack of empathy for his family. When he comes back we see the Harry/Hermione thing which is just a bigger picture of giving insight to how Ron has seen everything. Ron is so good about it we never really heard his insecurities. But it’s sad how he see’s himself. So honestly, I feel for him and the man had a lot of patience. Hermione and Harry have no regards for his insecurities, Hermione mentions his insecurities ONCE in GOF and then goes onto say Harry should have been perfect, Harry is so brave for going in the ministry, I’m 100% Hermione thought she was giving Ron’s too many hints about her liking him so she didn’t feel like she had to compliment him. Like an ‘obviously I like you so I don’t need to tell how how much all the time,’ but you know Ron misreads it and he gives off that tough persona so Hermione fails to see how he is an actual puppy who hides behind humour. Tabloids are out about Harry and Hermione and how they’re so in love all of that, like he was justified for all his jealousies and he still stood and loved Harry none-the-less, so I think failure to recognize his experience takes from why he was jealous in the first place and that he’s not a bad person for being jealous given the situations he’s been put into.