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josephquinnswhore · 1 year

Note

could you do a little fluff of pedro (or any of his characters) x plus!size reader where reader buys new lingerie for his birthday and he's like lemme take a picture and he takes a polaroid pic and sticks it in his wallet and then they go out with friends and one of his friends for shits and giggles takes his wallet and sees the picture and they're like "👁️🫦👁️ wow she's hot" and he gets jelly

ilysm kisses 🫶🏾

Polaroid

Pairing: Pedro Pascal x female-plus size reader.

Summary: an image meant for Pedro’s eyes only, ends up being seen by curious eyes who make inappropriate comments.

Word Count: 2.2k

Content Warning: lewd language, Pedro being horny as fuck, taking nudes, Pedro swearing/getting jealous. Slight smut but not really, unprotected p in v but no actual sex.

Note: THANK YOU FOR THIS REQUEST. I’m a plus size person myself so I’ll divulge into this so hard. 🫶🏼

Through the years you’d always put a lot of thought into Pedro’s gifts, whether it be a sentimental gift, such as the hand painted family portrait of him and his sisters you’d gifted last year for his 47th birthday. Or something he needed but would never tell you he needed. He didn’t need to tell you, because you always listened and figured out simply by listening; such as a new laptop during covid lockdown so he could do interviews via Skype and Zoom call.

This year, you were stumped. You figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask Oscar to help you with what to gift Pedro. You FaceTimed him, his warm smile is the first thing you’re met with, his messy mop of dark curls fell onto his forehead, some grey hairs visible through the bad lighting. “Hey Osc, I’ve got a favour to ask.” His eyebrows shot up In curiosity. “Go on.” He encourages.

“I don’t know what to gift Pedro for his birthday, he’s made it entirely impossible this year. No hints, no nothing.” Oscar raises an eyebrow, “you, the best gift giver doesn’t know what to give her boyfriend for his birthday?” You bit your lip, embarrassed as you walk around throwing some pieces of rubbish in the bin, trying to keep your mind busy as you stress about this present, with only 7 days until his 48th birthday, you felt your blood pressure rising as the days came closer and you still hadn’t gotten him anything.

“I know, I know. Can you help me or not?” A mischievous smirk crawls onto his lips, something that had your suspicion spiking. “What are you smirking at Oscar? Tell me what you’re thinking.” He shrugs casually, “get some lingerie for him, do a sexy photoshoot or something.” You bite your lip in uncertainty, “are you sure it’ll be good enough?” The older man huffs, “you’re joking right? Have you seen the way he looks at you?”

You hum, deep in thought as you realise Oscar’s right, Pedro does love your body, your curves and perfectly natural breasts, the cellulite on your rounded ass cheeks. The way he can grab handfuls of your thighs and how they feel wrapped around the back of his head as he dives face first into your cunt, he even loves the way your soft tummy slightly hangs over your pubic bone.

“Hey, you still with me?” Oscars voice snaps you out of your trance, figuring it wouldn’t hurt to try something new, if Pedro didn’t like it, which was unlikely, you’d know for next year, and bonus, you’d have a new set of lingerie. “Uh yeah, thanks Oscar I gotta go, bye!” You quickly hang up before he has the chance to say his farewells. Lingerie, it’s gotta be sexy, accentuate your curves and be the best gift he’s ever received. You pull your hair up into a messy bun before making a beeline straight for your car, keys in hand, jingling as you speed walk, eager to get to the shops.

The lingerie shops ambiance is unmatched, the pink neon sign drew you in, once you were in you didn’t want to leave, the golden hue of the light was soft on your eyes, the faint scent of rose water had been spritzed into the air with the fan circulating air around the small store, the quiet hum of a SZA song played from the small portable radio that sat on the wall shelf behind the counter.

There were so many options, too many colours and plus sized inclusive sizes. The shop attendant approaches you with a smile, “can I help you at all?” You smile nervously, “yes please! I’m wanting a new set, for my boyfriends birthday. Has to be super sexy. It also has to be purple, that’s his favourite colour.” You explain meekly, your cheeks reddening at the fact you’re telling all of this to a stranger, she leads you to a section of purple garments, all stunning in their own right. “He’s one lucky man. Do you need help with the sizing?” You tell her your size, she flicks through and finds all purple items in your size, stacking them on the front desk. “You can flick through them or feel free to try them on.”

You pick up the first set and hum uncertainly, feeling like it was not what you wanted, the material certainly wouldn’t cover much at all, you wanted something with more coverage. The second set was nicer, but still not something that wowed you, the small silver studs were definitely too much in your opinion. The third set you picked up you gasped, the colour was beautiful, rich and thick in the back of the bra, it had 5 clasps which would offer more support, it had harnesses that would look sexy with some stockings clipped to the harness. It had a stunning chest piece that would expose your cleavage and make it look sexy, the lacey material would would look beautiful on your skin.

“Can I try this on?” The lady smiles, “please! Go for it. Our dressing rooms are just to the left here.”

You underestimated how good you would look in this piece of lingerie, it made your hips look bigger, your curves softened and your breasts looked incredible, not to mention how nice your assed looked. The purple on your skin tone was like it was made for you, you felt sexy and knew this was the one.

“I’ll take this one, thank you.” As you return to the counter and set the lingerie down as she scans it, you pay the $120 on card and smile as she puts it into a paper bag with the store name on it. “I know he’s going to love it. Good luck!” The lady farewells and you thank her for her help before sitting in the car, all these scenarios running through your head about how Pedro will react.

“Happy birthday baby!” You cheer as Pedro steps into your apartment, the house smelt delicious, you’d cooked his favourite meal, the food simmering and getting to be plated. The room was littered with purple and silver balloons, red rose petals led down the hall to the bedroom, the scent of just blown out bubblegum candles lingers as the wick starts to smoke. “Thank you baby. Look at this, it’s incredible.” You pull him into a hug, squeezing your arms around him as his scent swirls up your nose and makes you inhale. “This isn’t the gift baby, it’s in the bedroom. I’ll get it for you.” You offer, rushing to the bedroom and know you need to move quickly, you’d practised a few times over the past couple days knowing you had a time frame of a few minutes before Pedro got impatient.

You pull your nice dress off and throw it into the hamper, setting up the balloons nicely and the love heart shaped rose petals on the bed, setting the candles alight, you slip your heels on and open the cupboard draw to set up the Polaroid camera so it was facing you. “Baby, you okay?” Your heart races, you need to finish up, now. You take your hair out and let it fall down, sitting up as you lean your weight on one hand behind you, setting one knee up on the bed, you let the other fall flat. “Actually baby I could use some help if you don’t mind.”

Your heart is in your mouth as you hear his footsteps near the bedroom, the squeak of the bedroom door is deafening as he opens it. His mouth drops when he sees you, the purple lingerie that covers your body is looking incredible on your body and you know it. Pedro’s dark orbs are scanning your body, groaning as he sees the Polaroid camera, shuffling in the spot as his cock grows hard and awfully uncomfortable in the confines of his jeans. “Fuck baby you’re gunna kill me.” You hum and look at him through your lashes, something you know drives him crazy. “Looking so fucking perfect for me, this is all for me hm baby?” You nod, “all for you Pedro.”

He picks up the white Polaroid camera and steps back, snapping the image of you posing, capturing the decorum of the room, “I love you so much.” He moans, his fingers gripping the image as it prints out, he was quick to snap an up close photo of you smiling, eyes closed teeth baring, he knew this would be his favourite.

“Let me see those perfect tits baby.” You lie down on the bed, your back being itched by the rose petals. He snaps a few pictures. “On your knees, honey.” You obey him and stretch your arms out toward the pillows, arching your back and raising your ass in the air, a grunt leaves Pedro’s lips as he smacks your ass, your gasp turns into a moan as he smacks your other asscheek, pushing yourself further back towards him. The camera snaps a few pictures, the redness of his handprint visible on your asscheeks. “So fucking perfect.” His thick fingers play with the small amount of fabric, getting a good look at your weeping cunt that’s soaked for him. “Fuck baby you’re dripping, roll back over.” You roll into your back, your hair sprawled onto the bed underneath you. Pedro, with one hand unbuckles his belt with a groan, undoing his jeans to relieve the tightness that caged his hardness.

He pulls your lingerie covering your cunt to the side, getting a perfect look at you. He palms himself roughly before pulling his underwear off entirely. Pulling his shirt underneath his chin. He slides his thick cock into you, your body squirming at the feeling, “fuck-so fucking big Pedro.” He groans, only pushing himself half way into you, before wrapping one large hand around your neck and takes a photo with the other hand, of his cock inside your cunt, hand wrapped around your neck and your perfect body clad in this purple lingerie.

“What about dinner?” You whimper, hearing the whir of the camera printing the obscene image. Pedro tosses the image along with the others onto the bed beside you, along with the camera. “Dinner can wait baby, I gotta have you. So fucking perfect. This is the best birthday gift ever.”

You would have to thank Oscar for the advise.

Two days later on the weekend was when everyone was out at a bar celebrating Pedro’s birthday, they had all insisted on spending time with him, Oscar had rallied some old and new friends of his, the bar jam packed and booked to yourselves thanks to Oscar.

The music was loud and you were having a great time, catching up with some old friends. “Hey honey, can I get you another drink?” You finish your beverage, the alcohol making you a little lightheaded, your bladder begging for release. “Sure baby. Just gotta duck to the toilet. I’ll be back.” You kiss him on the lips, missing his warmth and taste as soon as you pull away, shimmying through the crowd of drunk friends.

“Hey man, I’ll just get another beer and a cocktail.” Pedro leans against the bar, knee bent as he pulls his card from his wallet, paying for the drinks. “Hey man. Whoa, I gotta see this.” Oscar snatches Pedro’s wallet, Charlie Hunnam steps behind him, “dude no way.” Pedro leaves the drinks on the bar, “Oscar, give it back man.” Charlie huffs, “you get to have that all to yourself, so unfair, she’s so sexy.” They pull the Polaroid of you out half way trying to get a better look, Pedro’s hand is wrapped around your throat and thankfully they don’t pull it out entirely, the thought of his friends seeing him inside of you was too much. He didn’t need them seeing you like that, exposed and taking him perfectly, he didn’t want them thinking of you like that, or getting any ideas.

Pedro snatches the wallet back, pushing the Polaroid back into his wallet and shoving it into his Jean pocket. “Don’t ever touch that again, you hear me?” Pedro growls, his jealous getting the best of him as he turns around to pick up the drinks, they throw their hands up in surrender, “we’re cool man, alright.” You walk up to the bar and press a tipsy kiss to Pedro’s lips, he hands you the drink and you sip, groaning at how perfect it was made. Pedro’s free hand grips your ass and gives it a tight squeeze.

“Oh, hey guys!” You didn’t notice the two men standing there at first, they were watching Pedro claim you, his possessiveness shining through even though he knew you’d never do anything to make him worry. You were just incredibly sexy and that image wasn’t for their eyes, you were his and only his.

You turn back to Pedro and a drunk smile sits crookedly on your lips. “Happy birthday baby.” You whisper. Pedro pulls you into him and he kisses you, he moans into the kiss as if it were just you two, as if the bar wasn’t full of his family and friends. You hook your finger into the belt loop of his jeans. Throwing the glass back before licking your lips seductively, “what do you say we go home handsome?”

Pedro only nods, giving his friends a lazy smirk and a wink as his hand rests on your ass on the way out of the bar.

#pedro pascal #pedropascal #pedro pascal x fem reader #pedro pascal plus size reader #pedro pascal x you #pedro pascal rpf #pedro pascal birthday fic #Oscar Isaac #charlie hunnam

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gossip-girl-of-middleearth · 2 years

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HI I don’t know if your request are open so I figured I would send one anyway and then if they were closed you could just ignore it lol

BUT I had this idea and it’s been in my head for days and I don’t feel like writing it myself soooooo

Do you think you can do a one-shot or, yk, whatever you’re comfortable with, for a Legolas x Reader where the reader is kinda like Jaskier? Like they’re dramatic af, are a bard, and isn’t an elf but has somehow just been alive and in peak condition for way longer then they should’ve been? Like Legolas and Reader don’t really get along at first when they met because Reader was traveling with Thorin and Company and stuff and even after he figured out they weren’t bad he was still like “my GOD are they annoying.”

And then Gandalf seeks them out after the fellowship is formed they’re actually super useful bc they know like 10 languages, have traveled almost everywhere, and is actually very good with a sword. Gandalf brings the fellowship to a seemingly random tavern and Legolas just stops bc he recognizes them immediately and is just like “oh my god, PLEASE NOT THEM FU—“

But yk after that they like fall in love and shiz 🙄

SORRY THIS IS LIKE SO SPECIFIC OR UR NOT TAKING REQUEST it’s just I love ur writing, no other lotr blogs I’ve found are taking request, and also you seem to like Jaskier so I figured u might enjoy this a little ?? 😭😭

ANYWAYS EVEN IF YOU DON’T WRITE THIS THANKS FOR READING IT AND I LOVE UR WRITING SM ITS SO GOOD 🫶🏻🫶🏻

Sing Me A River (Legolas x Bard! Reader)

Author’s Note: HELLOOOO, FELLOW DEAR HEART! My requests technically are always open, it’s just a matter of if I ever get around to them lmao. Naturally, I get a lot of requests. Even more naturally, someone requests something and throws the word ‘Jaskier’ in there I’m writing this baby ASAP. Now, this thing grew legs of its own so you’ll probably have to request a part two in the asks so I can get that to you. I just really wanted to put something out tonight, so boom, two-parter. Maybe three. Hey, let’s just see where it goes. Now, believe me when I say I tried to find a gif that wasn’t Jaskier, but apparently if you type in ‘medieval bard lute gif’ into Google images Jaskier is the golden child of the hour. Anywhooooo hope this is what you were going for! I’ll get onto part two soon — you just gotta put it in the asks!

Warnings: Crude jokes made by reader all for the sake of the guts and glory of an epic banger of a song. Mentions adult content. (Bards will be bards).

Synopsis: Like all relevant characters of Middle-earth back in the day, you joined the Company on their Go-Fund-Me campaign to reclaim Erebor. You were a nobody bard back then but the success of your relations with kings and stories of defeating dragons made you a big hit. Speaking of hit, you and Legolas don’t get on. You made one too many hits about him that painted his royal family in a bad light. Oops. Now, Sauron is back and the Fellowship may just need your help. It’s mostly just Gandalf vouching for you, though. Oh, and fangirl Boromir ofc. They find you singing a frankly defamatory song about Legolas in a lively tavern at the height of your fame (you’re essentially One Direction circa 2012 big in Middle-earth in this fic). Tension brews as you’re ultimately asked to join a second Go-Fund-Me campaign.

The evening was late in hour but early of chores, as Gandalf and Elrond poured themselves over maps of Middle-earth. Various members of the newly-formed Fellowship hung about the open-aired room, pondering each other with curious glances.

Everyone shifted uncomfortably, wondering who’d prove to be the best travel mate for the next few months. It was as if no one knew what to do with their hands or feet, as they stood about awkwardly.

What was there to talk about, anyway? Economic investments and the rising housing crisis in the wake of the upcoming war? With so many races in the room, it was hard to navigate cultural customs, let alone figure out who was of what social standing based on clothing alone. A prince certainly had no place discussing such mutual matters with a gardener, nor a Captain of Gondor with a ranger.

No, it was best everyone waited until Gandalf and Elrond announced a travel route.

“This would steer you best from the path of both Isengard and its scouts,” Elrond concluded, pointing and dragging one finger down the tattered map.

“That’ll bring us into long-overrun townships,” Gandalf pointed out. “Middle-earth is no longer the safely presumptuous-centric land it used to be. People from all over Arda have now flocked for its resources and previously-thought safety.”

“Secrecy is best bought when surrounded by languages that cannot understand you nor you them,” Elrond countered, raising a brow and looking up at the wizard.

Gandalf raised a hand and scratched at his wiry beard. “No… But perhaps we could benefit from an additional team member for the passage? One who knows, say, ten languages across the seas and land underfoot?”

Elrond’s face quickly fell into disapproval. He moved back from the map as if standing too close to it would conjure up the bard’s presence alone, for said bard certainly dwelled somewhere within it, if the local posters unceremoniously plastered on historical podiums in Rivendell detailing the latest show were proof enough alone.

Legolas noticed this behaviour and kicked himself off the wall. He’d had run-ins with bards before – or, one, at least, and one was certainly enough. He quit twirling a knife in his hands, a gift from his father for his begetday long ago, and paid close attention.

“Ten languages would most certainly aid you, but…” the usually reserved lord made a face of cringe, “must you really bring along your friend? Do you even know where they are?”

Gandalf suddenly looked bashful. He reached into his satchel and removed a flyer. It had your pouty face on it and colourful words detailing where your next show was and the date. “I meant to visit them for one of their shows, before getting side-tracked…”

Elrond tried to not judge his friend, as he glanced up from your poster and back to Gandalf. He raised his brows and sighed, resigning himself to the idea. You had certainly grown in fame over the last few decades since your efforts in fighting the dragon fueled your reputation and songs, and certainly the fame had added to your already eccentric ego.

“Very well, if that is your will, I will support it… Just, don’t invite them back for a concert, please; my sons are still recovering from the last one, as is my winery.”

Gandalf nodded at the lord and smiled. “Nonsense, our bard is of the utmost integrity. I have nothing but faith.”

Legolas looked between the lord and wizard, quirking a brow. He tried to view the poster before it was placed back inside the satchel, but alas Gandalf unknowingly blocked his view.

But then, the prince suddenly recalled you in full detail from the fight against the dragon, and your time spent in the Mirkwood dungeons. You were clearly mortal, and that was many years ago.

Satisfied with the thought, Legolas nodded to himself in reassurance. There was no way you were still alive and kicking. With any luck, you were fast asleep in a chair somewhere, millions of leagues away.

Oh, you were in a chair alright. Except standing on top of it, one foot on the backrest and one on the seat. You certainly weren’t asleep, either, nor was your performance lulling anyone into such a slumber. There would be no lullabies here tonight, good sir.

Instead, on top of the chair, you belted out lyrics to the song you wrote about your time captured in Mirkwood with the Company, using the foot on the backrest to push the chair downwards, where you dramatically landed on the floor and kept on playing around the lively tavern with your lute.

Folks of all nationalities and origins joined in, for how could they not? You knew how to play the song in over ten different languages and were finally onto the Common Speech version. Everyone sung along as you made your way around the floor, illuminated in a thousand different arrays of golden candlelight.

You alluded to the Mirkwood Elves being absolute idiots, to put it lightly. It was only unfortunate that the Fellowship, led by Gandalf, walked in the moment you made a crude innuendo about Legolas’ hair being nearly as pasty as the spider’s webs surrounding his forested home. Something about incest, too.

It wasn’t very nice, but what could you say? You hated the pretentious white-haired family and they you. Perhaps composing a ballad with the dwarves about the elves’ wine-stained teeth in the dungeons planted the seed of distaste in the first place, but alas.

Gimli clapped his hands merrily and tapped his foot. “Oh-ho-ho! ‘Tis a CLASSIC back home! I’ve been meaning to meet the bard from my father’s tales for many years now! What an honourable night. Let us drink to it!”

Pippin nodded faster than light at Gimli and then Merry, speaking before racing off with his cousin and dwarven friend to the bar.

“Aye! We’ve heard this one, too! Even all the way out in the Shire!” Pippin looked up at Legolas, who’d just walked in with Aragorn right behind him. “Funny, I didn’t know there were other white-haired elves such as yourself and your father in Mirkwood, your highness. What are the chances of that!”

Just then, you sung of Legolas by title and name, confirming every crude lyric to be indeed about him towards the end of the song. Something mean about his father, too.

Pippin’s mouth parted and his brows shot up in surprise. He quickly shrugged it off, though – looking up at the elf casually before joining Merry and Gimli by the bar. “Oh, they are singing about you! That makes more sense!”

Legolas furrowed his own brows, looking away from the departing hobbit and across the tavern right as you came to the finale of the song, earning rapturous applause. And then, his eyes grew wide.

Gandalf looked bashful as he stood with Boromir. The captain was grinning at your performance – whistling as you took a dramatic bow as the cheers carried on. Frodo and Sam looked between each other but shared a silent nod, and afterwards, they joined the rest at the bar.

Seething, the prince snapped his gaze up at Gandalf. “THEM? Are you SERIOUS? How could you possibly not tell me?! They are the most arrogant, dim-witted, crude, annoying—”

“Now, now, Legolas,” Gandalf cut in, placing a hand on the swiftly rising elf’s shoulders. “Y/n and yourself may have an… adverse history, but that whole Mirkwood incident was put to rest years ago. If I recall, you both parted ways amicably at the end of the battle. There may have even been a smile, too, if I recall very well!”

“Overjoyed to be rid, as I remember it,” Legolas rolled his eyes, landing them in your direction. You took a sip of ale and felt a gaze, or, glare, lingering in your direction. When you locked eyes with the angry ones of the prince, you widened them for only a moment, before narrowing them and smirking mischievously.

Oh, he didn’t like that.

Hoisting your sloshing ale out to the side, you widened both arms. You were stood atop a tavern table, now pointing in the prince’s direction.

“Oh, my stars! Do my eyes deceive me?” Your naturally loud voice caught the attention of the tavern again, who all no doubt were hoping for an encore. “Ladies and gentleman, if it isn’t the star of the hour! Well, besides me, of course – but no, I should share the limelight; it’s the muse of my song, Legolas of the Woodland Realm!”

Everyone all looked in his direction. Many laughed loudly, some whistled appreciatively, and others who believed the lyrics muttered behind cupped hands to conceal their words and grins.

Aragorn shifted uncomfortably. It wasn’t good to bring this much attention to themselves, especially given the circumstances. One look from Aragorn sent up at Gandalf voiced his concern. The wizard nodded back and drew you over with a beckoning hand.

You finished off the rest of your ale and encouraged other bards to pick up the music again. Once the sound of flutes and lutes filled the air, you made your way through the crowd, placing your hand over your heart and responding earnestly to every compliment as you walked past.

"Y/n! I saw you play when I was a child!"

"My niece is a HUGE fan!"

"Do you sing at weddings?!"

And soon enough, you were in front of the trio.

“Gandalf the Grey,” you grinned up, slinging your lute across your back.

He responded warmly, throwing your bard title in as he did so. “You’ve exceeded your previous standing upon the pedestal of fame. Apparently, this song has been heard all over the land.”

At the mention of the song, you turned to Legolas. “Ahh, has it now? Judging by the star-struck expression upon your oddly fine-tuned visage, I’m guessing this is your first time?”

Legolas narrowed his eyes and kept them locked on yours. “First and last time.”

Without missing a beat, you replied, “Aw, buddy. Don’t worry. Being a two-thousand-year-old virgin isn’t that weird. Don’t count yourself out just yet.”

His face dropped. “Wha—No! That’s not at all what I—”

“I must say, dear bard,” Boromir cut in, firmly shaking your hand. “My little brother and I have seen you perform in Gondor before, and we are both great admirers of your work. Might I please trouble you for a signature made out to ‘Faramir’? I might not get this opportunity again.”

You shrugged it off coolly. “Yeah, sure! Always happy to meet a fan!”

Legolas stared in horror at the interaction for a moment. “What is happening right now..?”

Aragorn placed a hand on his shoulder and stepped in. “Y/n, I’m afraid we have not only come for review of your work tonight.”

At that, he looked up at Gandalf urgingly. The wizard sighed and nodded. “Indeed not. Might there be somewhere more private we can talk?”

Briefly looking up from the signature you were writing on a handkerchief, you nodded your head from side to side in thought and pursed your lips, speaking as you wrote. “I’ve got a room here. I’m not sure we’ll all fit, but I suppose we can figure something out."

You sent a wink Legolas’ way, whose face was still frozen somewhere between contemplation, shock, and horror.

“You should be dead,” he decided upon moments later.

Feigning alarm, you looked over your shoulder. “Why? The song really that bad? You hired the world’s worst assassin to take me out and they couldn’t even finish the job?”

Learning how to dance with your words again, Legolas replied straight to the point. “You look the same as you did all those years ago. You’re mortal. You should be dead, or very, very elderly, at the least.”

You blinked back at him. “Was there a question in there somewhere, or…?”

Noticing all the attention you were drawing, Gandalf and Aragorn decided to usher this meeting along elsewhere.

“Ah, Y/n,” Gandalf slid in, smiling tensely as he noticed Legolas’ fingers curl backwards, as if instinctively reaching for his bow. “Perhaps we should continue this upstairs? We have much to discuss, as mentioned before.”

You raked your eyes over the prince’s face for a further few seconds. He all but glared back. You dropped your eyes to his hands, noticing the way they curled the same as the wizard did. Smirking, you looked back up into the prince’s eyes – locking them there as you responded to Gandalf.

“Great idea.”

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lavenderbexlatte · 2 years

Text

day 12 - breathplay

stray kids 1.3k words gender neutral reader insert Reader x Hwang Hyunjin NSFW

🖤 warnings: kink experimentation, mild d/s dynamics, handjobs, there are right and wrong ways to choke in the bedroom and i am very strict about this we will be learnin’ tonight 🖤

kinktober masterlist

connect with me! / masterlist

"I guess I've never really thought about it before."

You look away from Hyunjin, silently judgmental, and you immediately pull up an image search on your phone to really drive in how dense he's being. It only takes a second to find the gif you're looking for.

Hyunjin himself, made-up and coifed and glittery for a music video, with a hand (Chan's, you'll have to write him a thank-you note or something) tight around his throat. You turn the phone toward him silently, and he glances at it briefly before scoffing at you.

"That doesn't count," Hyunjin insists.

"Bullshit, it doesn't count. He's choking you."

"For a video. He's acting."

"Chris can't act."

"That's not my fault."

"You can't say you've never thought about it," you say. "It was a whole thing! Right here!"

"Fine, then I thought about it for the fifteen minutes it took to film this, and then never again," says Hyunjin.

You put your phone down again. "If you're just saying that because you don't like it and you want me to let it go, that's fine, you know."

"I never said that, either."

He hasn't really said anything of value at all, but that's Hyunjin for you. Contrary for the fun of it, affectionately pushing your buttons and shutting you down whenever he can. You'd known he was like that with his friends (hi, Changbin), but you didn't know he's be the same with you until you'd gotten closer to him.

"You ever wanna try it?" you ask, slyly.

"Try it?"

You nod. "Choking, or whatever."

"Or whatever," he mimics. "I guess, maybe."

"You don't have to say yes. I'm really asking."

"I'll try anything once, you know that," he says, rakish.

But he's still avoiding the question, so you let it go for now. Not worth making a fuss, not when you're supposed to be having a nice night in.

-----

You think Hyunjin has completely forgotten that little discussion, until the next time you're spending the night together.

It's going about how these things usually go, for you two: Hyunjin pressed to the mattress, you up on your knees looking down at him while he squirms and whines and mostly just looks pretty. You don't have any kind of set roles or routines, but he likes being spoiled and you like spoiling him, so things just fall into place.

You haven't even done anything to him yet. He got naked all by himself, and now he's just there. Being pretty.

"I think..." Hyunjin starts, and then stops.

You look at him expectantly. Whatever it is, you can do it. For him? Anything.

"I think I want to try."

You blink. "Try what, baby?"

"I mean - if you want, we could try-"

He's babbling at this point, and you put a hand on his shoulder. It stops his mouth, and stops his wiggling, leaving him just looking up at you wide-eyed.

"Try again."

"Can we try...ch-choking? Like you - like before, like you said..."

It's like he thinks you're going to say no. As if you could say no to him.

"'Course we can," you say.

Hyunjin has been hard this whole time, but he twitches when you say that, like his cock is reacting to the idea before his brain.

"Never tried it before."

"Yeah, we established that," you say fondly.

You smooth back his shaggy black hair where it's falling in his face, because as beautiful as that is, you want to see him well, make sure he's listening.

"You gotta tell me if you want me to stop. Even a little bit," you say, "Even the littlest bit uncomfortable or scary, you have to say something."

"I will," he says.

It gets overwhelming in the moment, though, so you hold out your hand, pinkie raised. "Promise you will."

He smiles, dazzling as always. "I promise.

You link pinkies and press your thumbs together, a very serious and sexy unbreakable promise.

Talking your way through it seems like the best bet to keep him comfortable, so that's what you do. "There's a right way to do this."

"And a very wrong way, I assume," he says, talking through a pouty plush lower lip and making you want to coo at him.

"You never want to go for the windpipe," you say. "Crushing someone's throat is a boner-killer."

"I'd say so."

"So what you have to do, is go for the oxygen supply."

He's relaxed more, now, just listening to you talk, so you move over. Kneeling to his side, equally within reach of his pretty face and his pretty cock. You trace your hand over his chest, up the delicate skin of his throat.

"On the side," you say, tapping below his ear at the pulse point. "Cut off blood supply, you get dizzy but it doesn't hurt."

"I want it to hurt," he says immediately, like he's lost complete control of his mouth.

"No, you don't."

He just smiles again, so pretty.

"I'm gonna show you what it's like," you say. "Just for a second."

"Okay."

Verbal consent. He's so good.

Ever so slightly, you squeeze at the sides of his throat, as well as your hand can grasp. You can feel his pulse, hard under your fingers, and after a second, he gasps. You pull back right away, let him go, and he whines.

"Well, don't stop!"

"It was okay, then?" you smirk.

"I think it was," he says, "I think you'll need to do it more so I can decide."

He is really such a pain.

You have a very convenient way to get him to shut up, though.

The grasp you have on him is more confident this time, surer of how he's going to react. And he does, letting out a gasp that you can feel through your palm over his throat. A glance downward reveals what you'd been hoping for: the trail of precum leaking from his cock, revealing exactly how much he's enjoying this.

"You think you could cum untouched from this?" you ask, more curious than seductive.

You let go so he can answer.

"I - let's find out," he sputters. "Fuck, baby, please-"

"Correct answer."

It sounds fun, and you'll certainly give it a go at some point, you're not going to put that pressure on him, not on his first try.

This time you have a careful grip on both his neck and his cock, digging your fingers into the gorgeous column of his neck and as well as you can given the very precarious multitask, giving a good pump up his shaft and a twist around the head to match.

More pressure on his throat, less on his cock, and vice-versa, as both pulse in your hands.

His breathing gets more ragged as you go, and just to check, you let up on his throat for a second, giving him a chance to get some air properly if that's what he needs, lavishing more attention on his cock. But as you draw away, he grabs your wrist, dragging your hand back to his neck.

"Please," he says, so hoarse, so needy.

"Baby, I don't want to do too much."

"So close!" he whines, "Just - please!"

The flushing of his length, the way it's swelling in your grip, he's not lying.

"You're okay?" you ask, voice firm.

He meets your eyes, clarity under the lust. "Yes. More. Please."

Who are you to deny Hwang Hyunjin anything?

He whines, barely audible, and cums as soon as you tighten your fingers around his throat again, spilling over your hand the instant his air supply is cut off.

"Oh, baby..." you hush him, stroking him through it.

You're off his neck and his cock as soon as he's spent, going instead to cup his face in your clean hand and make him look at you.

"Jesus," he's breathing, chest heaving beneath you.

He looks fine, but you ask anyway, "Does anything hurt?"

Hyunjin shakes his head, and you have to brush back his messy hair again.

You look at him, so fond, and then you smirk. "That was fast."

#kinktober 2022 #kpop kinktober #hwang hyunjin fanfic #hwang hyunjin smut #stray kids hyunjin fanfic #stray kids hyunjin smut #stray kids fanfic #stray kids smut #sub!idol #dom!reader

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freebooter4ever · 11 months

Photo

So you guys know i (try to) post daily doodles, and i have said before that i draw for about 2-3 hrs every night. BUT that also means i dont post about like 80-90% of the drawings i do each night. Today though, i've been thinking about A*I and my own relationship with drawing, and how utterly baffled i am that anyone would want to use it to like...draw for them..and how the concept that *tell a computer what art to do so i dont have to do it* is alien to me. So here's ALL the drawings i did tonight. The bottom one is the last one i did and the one i would normally post. And i want to talk about A*I without talking about good or bad end product. Because i dont care if im making the shittiest art in the universe - i still wouldn't use A*I. Not even as a ‘tool’.

If you've been around here for a while you know i have a love/hate relationship with my art. I write too, but writing doesnt make me so frustrated and angry that i want to throw my computer out a second story window. HOWEVER. There is a huge caveat to that anger.

It happens after.

You could look at it a little like hockey. Every game is fresh, right? I mean god knows the US made an entire movie about how every game is a new game and the odds could always fall in your favor no matter how stacked against you. So every drawing i go into it excited - like LOOK at that reference material, its gorgeous. The gesture is beautiful, the post is interesting, there is something about it that is just begging to be drawn. But then say you hit intermission in the hockey game and the opposing team scored a few points. And i step back and look at the drawing and realize i started to go wrong somewhere along the way. But its too late now, you gotta commit and keep going. And you do but somehow the final score is STILL 6 to 0 and thats when i want to flush all my art down the toilet and never look at it again. But its okay because the next drawing is going to start with a blank canvas and who cares what happened last time.

Ok maybe a bad example.

The product is never really what drives me to draw - i mean, sure i do like it a heck of a lot better when i have something /anything/ that i can post to show that im sticking with my everyday doodle. But its not a requirement to doodling. The process of drawing is always fun. Its when i come out of it and look at the stupid thing that im like ‘well fuck i fucked that one up again didnt i’, and THEN i get annoyed lol.

I dont sit there consumed with frustration over ‘gee i dont know what to draw’. This is never an issue. I HAVE TOO MUCH TO DRAW. Sometimes i avoid certain gifs/photos because in the back of my mind im like ‘yeah no, i havent leveled up that far yet, i cant do that justice’. But i dont want to admit the sheer number of images of geno alone i have saved. I think my biggest reference folder is still aoki and that has over two thousand screenshots - i dont think anyone will ever surpass that LOL. I have a never ending supply of practice art to be done.

The frustration comes when i have an image in my head and i want to get it down on paper so-to-speak (computer whatever). So - when im NOT using reference (or at least not an exact one) and am making an ‘illustration’ (ish). But again, the process isn't the issue. I like the act of drawing, i like the image in my head slowly taking shape, i like how vividly i can see it. Yall know how obsessed i am with personality - that's not just part of the drawing, that IS the drawing. And each deicision in the illustration is defined by the personality/character.

A computer can't fucking do this.

Could i maybe tell a computer ‘draw geno in the shower’. Sure. And it probably could. And if i didnt care about the process - if all i wanted was a very good drawing of geno in the shower....that probably would be fine. Maybe great even. Maybe it would be the best damn drawing of geno in the shower ever. And then i'd feel like shit because a machine is producing art that is more valuable to other people than mine ever will be. But holy fucking shit that ruins the entire POINT of drawing???? Why would you do that?

I mean, im sure yall can infer the entire point of the act of drawing geno in the shower. He's hot, he's wet. ANYWAY.

In my opinion, a person who wants the end product and doesn't care about the process of getting there....that person is not an artist. That person is someone who enjoys art, and probably thinks they have a lot of good ideas to make into art, but who doesn't feel that pull to make art themselves. They just want to buy art. And they want it cheap. And mindless computers being trained in seconds on the decades of creativity and hard work of art masters is a heck of a lot cheaper than a human.

And the hardest part of all this for me is how worthless this makes me feel - nobody wants you, they want that automatic button. Kinda like my dad that way (haha)

#geno #doodles

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attex · 4 months

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for the ask game! well now i’ve gotta know nsh

favorite thing about them

the fucking relationship he has with suns hits really close to home . its disturbingly real ngl . really nearly almost everything is like this i hate relating to some made up guy but alas

least favorite thing about them

i dont even have anything to say here... i kin him it sucks

favorite line

HAHA WITH THE SLIMERS HOLD ON LET ME GET THE FULL QUOTE WE SAY THE "HAHA WITH THE SLIMERS" THING ALL THE FUCKING TIME AS AN INSIDE JOKE WITH FRIENDS

"Haha with the slimers, lizards and etceteras? Surely the answer was in a lizard skull all along!"

LITERALLY THE BEST THING HE HAS EVER SAID . if you want a more serious line,

"I hope eventually when you are out of this state of mind you will look back at these. Look back and reflect on all the regrets you've set yourself up to have."

brOTP

suns, as god intended but also in our* fucked up and beautiful minds with sliver besties

*my friend and i

OTP

sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon sigmoon im really fucking normal

nOTP

nothing. hes the communal boyfriend literally anything works idc

random headcanon

he's incapable of feeling remorse :)

unpopular opinion

(every single ordeal of his mischaracterization here making him stupid silly and nothing else etc. and emotional about things he wouldnt be) also he wouldnt hate pebbles. (u might think i see otherwise but no! its more complicated imo. applies to everyone i dont believe he has any direct hate relationships)

song i associate with them

if you gave me any other character i could easily answer this but with nsh i find this impossible. i dont associate songs with him probably cuz i dont rotate him in my head like the others .

favorite picture of them

yet again theres no images to show in canon other than 1 . so ill just put a cute pic by my boyfriend @sleepyrays

#ask #hexatxt #rainbowsword #ask game

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sshbpodcast · 7 months

Text

Character Spotlight: Spock

By Ames

Last week we highlighted (and lowlighted) James T. Kirk here in our new blog collection, going character by character where no one has gone before. It’s going to be a bit of a trek in and of itself, so join us here on A Star the Steer Her By to learn what we think of all your Starfleet favorites: when are they at their most naughty and most nice. This week, we’re moving on to the best first officer in the fleet and one of our favorite Vulcans, the ever logical Mister Spock!

For the franchise’s first major alien character, he succeeded in teaching humanity to audiences throughout his far-reaching tenure, and that wasn’t always his human half! Credit to Leonard Nimoy for giving us such a well-rounded character even though he couldn’t display emotions in the same fashion as the others (but boy did he find a way!). Follow along below for our thoughts on Spock’s best and worst scenes, and listen to some bonus chatter over on this week’s podcast episode (discussion at 1:05:00). Fascinating.

[Images © CBS/Paramount

Best Moments

Checkmate, Finney It’s been a minute since I released my blogpost about how bad I am at 3D chess (and all chess for that matter), but Spock’s so great at it that he uses his logic and big Vulcan brain to figure out the chess program is busted in “Court Martial” and save the day, which might be the Spockiest thing I’ve ever heard.

Pain! Pain! Spock mind melds a lot of critters throughout the shows and movies, but one of our favorites is when he connects with the Horta in “The Devil in the Dark.” Like in our Kirk spotlight when the captain defended the old girl, we’ve gotta credit Spock with communicating with her and treating her like a sentient being. And Nimoy’s acting in this scene! Mwah!

A man of integrity in both universes The Spock in “Mirror, Mirror” isn’t exactly our normal Spock, as his circumstances in the mirror universe have made him a different person in a lot of ways (mostly in the facial hair region). But in even more ways, he’s just like our Spock: someone who sees the illogical nature of the Terran Empire and who will take steps to make it better.

I love you but I hate you I don’t know why, but I’m just thoroughly tickled when Spock outwits the androids in “I, Mudd” with a logical paradox that breaks their computer brains. Sure, he tries a neck pinch first (he is Spock, after all!), but it’s telling the Alice robots, identical in every way, that he loves one but hates the other that causes them to malfunction all over the place.

Trademark Vulcan sass If Vulcans are allowed to express one emotion throughout all of Star Trek, it’s sass, and Leonard Nimoy can deadpan with the best of straightmen. In “The Trouble with Tribbles,” McCoy remarks that tribbles are “nice, they're soft, they're furry, and they make a pleasant sound,” to which Spock quips, “So would an ermine violin, Doctor, yet I see no advantage to having one.” Grade-A Vulcan sass right there.

Gladiatorial mind games “Bread and Circuses” may not be a good episode, but it gets the Spock-McCoy dynamic right. Not only does Spock save McCoy in battle, but that scene in the prison cell… I could write essays about that scene as they’re both so vulnerable and desperate to connect, but Spock, ever the Vulcan, represses that emotion… just barely. And when Spock tells McCoy that they share concern over Kirk’s safety without actually telling him, it’s perfect.

Vulcans are incapable of lying, he lied While we found Kirk’s behavior in “The Enterprise Incident” utterly baffling, Spock’s is thoroughly intriguing. He spends most of the episode seamlessly deceiving the Romulan Commander who’s thirsting after him so hard, and she plays right into his Vulcan-saluting hands because she didn’t anticipate so many loopholes allowing Vulcans to be duplicitous!

The wonders of the universe Am I mostly bringing up Spock mind melding a giant cloud in “One of Our Planets Is Missing” so that I can bring up my TOS fanfiction “Sentient Life”? A little bit.

I have been and always shall be your friend This list would not be complete without the beautiful sacrifice scene in The Wrath of Khan. The needs of the many do indeed outweigh the needs of the few in this perfectly poignant and amazingly acted character death. I can’t think of a better main character death in all of Star Trek and Nimoy crushed it.

Rock out with your Spock out We’ve also got to give credit to Leonard Nimoy for the Vulcan neck pinch, a nonviolent, nonfatal deescalation tactic that is perfectly in character. It is a great inclusion for such a logical people to manage violent conflict in a mostly harmless way, and one of our favorites is neck pinching the punk on the bus since it’s also one of many great comedic moments in The Voyage Home.

They are not the hell your whales Speaking of The Voyage Home, we’ve got more good Spock moments to choose from in that movie! It is such a smorgasbord of quippy, fun moments for our resident Vulcan because so much of the movie is that fish-out-of-water kind of humor, but everything Spock has to do with the whales, George and Gracie, is especially excellent.

Cowboy diplomacy We even get to see a little Spock action in The Next Generation when his plan to reunite Vulcan and Romulus gets revealed in “Unification.” It is such a noble goal from our logical friend (perhaps spurred by his encounter with the Romulan Commander in “The Enterprise Incident”? Nudge nudge!) and we loved seeing his resolve and commitment to helping his square-shouldered cousins.

—

Worst Moments

Beep twice for “NO!” I get that the studio wanted to save time and money by using the footage from “The Cage” in “The Menagerie,” but they had Spock acting fully out of character to make it happen. He kidnaps his disabled old captain against his will, he conspires to steal the ship, he puts the lives of everyone on the Enterprise in danger, he nearly gets Kirk killed in a shuttle, he creates an illusion of a flag officer! It’s a full-on mutiny that sees no consequences!

Life-or-death decisions, but mostly death “Strange. Step by step, I've made the correct and logical decisions – and yet two men have died,” says Spock in “The Galileo Seven.” Somehow, every time we see Spock in charge, everyone has a really bad day. The show would make you believe it’s because Vulcans only act on logic with no emotion or intuition, but they really need to stop leaving the ship in his hands!

Not even a grandfather paradox – just a father paradox Temporal shenanigans abound in “Tomorrow is Yesterday” when the Enterprise is forced to beam up Captain Christopher. Spock assures everyone that the displaced pilot will have no bearing on history, until he is forced to eat those words because this science officer neglected to check if Christopher’s son would be influential. Since when is Spock so careless?

A need-to-know basis We joked throughout The Original Series that Vulcans seemed to attain a new superpower each week. And since Spock just doesn’t seem to tell people things they need to know until they really need to know it, we don’t learn about his inner eyelids until “Operation: Annihilate!”, his parents being onboard until “Journey to Babel,” or his having a half brother until Star Trek V!

This has pon farr enough I’m frankly sick of everything about pon farr, and am dreading revisiting it in Enterprise. It’s yet another one of those Vulcan aspects they won’t tell you about until too late, and in “Amok Time,” it’s way too late. The whole biological circumstance is weird enough, but if Vulcans has told us any of their rituals ahead of time, Spock wouldn’t have had to kill his best friend in the kal-if-fee like a chump.

Heil Spock While it’s mostly a gag on the podcast that Spock loves Nazis, there’s definitely a reason why we think that. In “Patterns of Force,” Spock agrees with Gill when he calls Nazi Germany the most efficient state Earth ever knew, saying: “Quite true, Captain. That tiny country, beaten, bankrupt, defeated, rose in a few years to stand only one step away from global domination.” Does that make Spock a Nazi? Not entirely, but it would explain some things, like how quick to wanting to kill Mitchell he was in “Where No Man Has Gone Before.”

What a tangled web he weaves Like in “The Galileo Seven,” Spock ends up in command again when Kirk is presumed dead in “The Tholian Web,” and he borks it. The whole episode is about him and McCoy snipping at each other because of the effects of the area of space, but they’re both extremely out of character even without it, with Spock ignoring Doc’s warning about getting stuck in the web, making awful decisions, and generally being terrible at leading a crew.

If only I could forget We found it weirdly nonconsensual when Spock decides to make Kirk forget about his romance with Rayna (and who knows what else?) in “Requiem for Methuselah.” McCoy jabs at Spock that he’ll never understand, and then Spock seems to act just naively when he takes Kirk’s memory in his sleep, as if Spock were taking him literally when Kirk said he’d rather forget.

Behind every good woman… is Spock taking credit We’ll surely bring up “The Lorelei Signal” when we talk about Uhura’s best moments because it’s a rare moment for the women to get the spotlight, but there’s a moment in this episode in which, despite the lady crewmembers having already figured out the ploy themselves, they’ve hatched their plan “in accordance with Mister Spock’s request” and I vomit in my mouth a little.

You have not achieved kolinahr It’s pretty clear that the production team didn’t know they’d have Leonard Nimoy back for The Motion Picture until late in the writing process because his motivation is spotty at best. Since he has not achieved kolinahr, he rather makes his presence in the movie about himself, and to make matters worse, he yeets off to mind meld with V’ger without telling anyone!

I hear he's nutty as a fruitcake As beautiful as the death scene in The Wrath of Khan is, it’s also pretty messed up for Spock to cram his katra into McCoy with no warning and with dire effects. Think about it: none of the humans knew before The Search for Spock that katras were even a thing, and Bones could have gone insane just for the sake of bringing the character back to life, negating that great sacrifice!

They flung their wooden shoes called sabots into the machines We love a good mind meld on Star Trek, but Spock just plain crosses a line in The Undiscovered Country when he mind rapes Valeris to expose her as the saboteur. Considering the mind meld was first created in order to give Spock an alternative to violent action to combat assailants, using it in a way that’s so violating is the most uncomfortable moment we could think of.

—

Keep your medical tricorders scanning here as we continue along through all the main characters from The Original Series! Next week, we’re scanning for Dr. Bones McCoy here on the blog, as well as continuing our watchthrough of Enterprise over on the podcast. You can also send a message over subspace on Facebook and Twitter, and keep your damn katra to yourself. Live long and prosper!

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rainbowstargazerlilies · 9 months

Note

Hi! It’s you, surprise!

Anyway, I’m so mentally ill over “the stars claim them” a d I love it I love it I love it. Ever now and then I’ll think to myself “hey, what’s a good fic to read?” And every time it’s yours.

It’s just like [image of cat eating a box] and just so good. It honestly might get printed out and bound into an irl book just so that I can actually bite it.

(I am working so hard not to get off topic)

I don’t think I’ve ever found it harder to explain my love for something with actual words. Your writing alone is incredible. I think I’ve already said this in a comment but I am constantly on the edge of my seat waiting to see what you do next, and you write all of the character so well.

Never before have I wanted this much to reach into a fan-fictional world and scoop out an oc with my hands and just hold them like a tiny little kitten. (Technically accidentally did that with a character anyway but ah well)

Plot aside, because I’m already talking characters, I love the cast you’ve chosen so so so so so so much, I love the diversity and headcanons. And I especially love the dynamics and interactions with each other. And the parallels, oh my goo the parallels in character pairings that pop up occasionally. (Lyf and Micheal, Tim and Grifter’s Bone guy (his name evades me), even just the whole vampire Gerry thing)

Which reminds me, you’ve managed to have at least one reference to wtnv in every book so far, is this deliberate or just art?

Okay, I could talk characters all day so let’s move onto plot now and I’ll ramble about individuals later. 300+ (or something) chapter slow burn my beloved. And then everything just tumbling around around it is just wonderful.

Lyf was just out here trying to live their best life and then things just kept happening to them over and over and over and over again, first the prisoners, then the train, then the prisoners again, then the void, then space, then Nastya, then death, then earth, then the spooks, then the mechs, then the spooks, then the mechs, then the circus, then the mechs, then probably some more spooks, then [see last three lines].

Poor inspector is in the washing machine of happenings.

And of course, gotta adopt a family along the way because, as Batman has shown us, the best way to recover from your whole family dying is to just adopt more.

And the whole chaos avatar screwing with all the other fear’s shticks is an incredible concept and I adore it. I also find it beautifully hilarious. Do you think Lyf could just rainbow people like they did Gerry to help them escape their entity? Instead of like, eye stabbing?

And the fact Lyf sees the fears in colours and one of the first people they meet in Gerry, who originally referred to them as colours in the show, is just fabulous. And then Lyf being all the colours is also marvellous.

(I feel like I’ve been going too long, am I going too long?)

There’s just so many little plot points that I adore that I can’t remember them all at once let alone put them in words so maybe I’ll just doom spam ask you a live rereading so that I get all the bits.

This story is my soul, my life, I am empty without it. Anyway, off to go read it again probably.

Thank you for writing, I love it so much.

!!!!!!!

Thank you so much! I've really loved writing this story, and seeing other people enjoying it to similar levels is beautiful. And no worries about getting off topic or going too long-- I've written this story for over a year. If anyone's going too long here . . .

But anyway. Let's chat!

If you (or anyone else!) ever get this story printed out and bound, I would love to see it <3

I'm so glad you enjoy the writing and characters, too! I personally love my characters and try to let them guide the story as much as possible, so hearing that I write them well is fantastic. So. Thanks!

(And I get the feeling. I've literally made tiny knit dolls for some of my OCs along with my TMA and Mechs ones. Brenn and Juniper my darlings, for instance. And my Lyf, of course. That doll has now crossed so many state lines because I keep bringing them on road trips and the like with me. . .)

Character parallels too. . . yeah, there's a lot that can be said about the way characters parallel and interact and misunderstand each other, and I love writing them doing that. It's fun to consider, and I love it :)

The washing machine of happenings. . . yeah, that sounds about right :D

Heh, adopting a new family to cope with losing one is certainly a way to put it! Not sure how well that works, for Lyf or for Batman, particularly when said New Family also gets into danger, but. . . yep!

Could Lyf just rainbow people to help them escape from an entity? Likely! It would hurt a LOT, though, and it'd probably end up having consequences, you know? Whether it's that the person in question becomes a chaos magnet, or whether they'd be able to break reality too. . . yeah, that's an interesting one to ponder.

I love that, yep!

I'd love to see your thoughts if you do that, whether it's on here or on Ao3! Like I said, I've been writing this for more than a year now, and I really do love talking to people about it.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts like this, and I hope you continue to enjoy the story! We've got some fun times ahead. . .

#hello hello to the ask box #luckybyrdrobyn #the stars claim them

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twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat · 1 month

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Gulps…, hellohi.. confession I’ve been daydreaming about angst recently and that cult leader Geto drabble u wrote only made me think about it even more… <///333 ignore that I’m a little bit obsessed with the mentally ill/traumatised reader + stsg trope but… can u really blame me ☹️ they would be so good and I think they would be the best comfort u could possible have :((

Ok but. more specifically reader with a rough childhood (a lil like sugu.. he def has some sort of daddy/mommy issues i will die on that hill) or some sort of abandonment/trust issues that has a habit of self sabotaging or intentionally distancing themselves. More specifically maybe grown up stsg where they’re a little more mature and have more of a grasp on how to help you better.. maybe reader has a nightmare or something, goes out for a smoke on the balcony etc etc.. sugu meets them out there n. They just have a good old fashioned talk like :( just being honest and vulnerable because it’s late and u just need a hug most of all :(( def ends with him carrying reader back to bed n playing with ur hair until you fall back asleep GODDDD KILL ME NOW ☹️☹️ moments of tenderness/vulnerability are my absolutely favourite thing in writing/shows/etc ESPECIALLY when it’s from characters that usually don’t display those sort of feelings because you just know it means there’s such a strong bond between them…. Can u hear my heart breaking

^^ either this one or reader with trust issues that’s a little cat-like personality wise (which I think fits so beautifully because stsg are the most wolf coded boys ever) who’s fully convinced they’re better off on their own, they don’t need friends or people to rely on. Until they meet stsg!!!!! Because suddenly there are two irritatingly charming losers following you around and worming their way into your heart and you just. Physically cannot bring yourself to deny them, even if it’s a little scary allowing people in. And god i think it would make them feel SO special once you started warming up to them. Allowing satoru to greet you with hugs or pinch ur cheeks… letting sugu baby you a little…… (distant screaming)

THIS HAS BEEN ANOTHER YAP SESSION BY ME ^_^ it’s literally so late at night rn I don’t know why these ideas always come to me just as I’m about to sleep ffs ☹️ N E WAYYYSSSS im looking forward to that satoru fic/drabble thing u were talking about :3 a mix of scared and excited ngl I feel like I gotta prepare myself incase it’s angsty….. but WHAT HAVE U BEEN UP TO?? It’s literally just been grey n windy where I am so I hope ur getting better weather where u are 😞😞 I HOPE U HAVE BEEN HAVING FUN N TAKING CARE OF YOURSELF!!

(Also irrelevant but I was just about to add a silly image to finish and I stumbled across this image of satoru and I’m laughing my ass of why is he so lanky?????? I could NOT be his friend I would just make fun of him for being built like a fucking STICKBUG 😭😭😭 LOOK AT THE RESEMBLANCE)

(Yes I made the second image myself what do you think of my artistic talent ^_^ ignore the flag)

HELLO HI MY DEAREST OLLIE i am gulping right with you ……… this made me so insane 😔😔

i’ve said it before n i’ll say it again . ariollie STAYS synced up i’m convinced we share a brain……. your scenarios always make me feel so ill (affectionate) and this scenario just means sm to me :((( they really would be the best!!! a reader like that would be treated so tenderly and with sm understanding…. especially since suguru and satoru had rough upbringings too!! (not canon for sugu maybe but i agree w you 100% ollie i literally can’t see his childhood being anything but messed up…. he def has both mommy and daddy issues i know my own kind 🙏🙏)

aaaaa just!!! yeah. reader isolating themselves when they feel down and overwhelmed and being taken care of so effortlessly… stsg just wouldn’t let you face your struggles alone. you’re a team!!! and yeah grown up stsg would for sure be the best at this. i think that as teens they won’t know exactly how to help/might be a little overwhelming….. but as adults they’re more mature and grounded and have a better understanding of your struggles and their own!!! goshhhhh the balcony scene 😔😔😔 ollie do you want my heart to shatter (also what if i told you that exact scenario has popped up in my head multiple times we’re so linked) suguru would just be so vulnerable and patient and caring :(((( our papa bear…. carries you to bed and lulls you to sleep. for sure makes you a warm cup of tea too… sighhh i need him i fear 💔💔

AND AND ANDDDD a catlike reader 😵‍💫😵‍💫 one of my personal favs. independent and a little distant….. used to being on their own……. very picky with who they allow close. it’s just PERFECT for stsg (WOLFCODED BOYS SO TRUEEE)… ollie the way you describe it all makes me feel ILLLL they really would feel so honoured 😭😭😭 cue satoru melting into a puddle when you finally wrap your arms around him….. suguru literally grinning like an idiot (he’s trying DESPERATELY not to but it’s impossible) when you shyly ask him for affection. yeahhhh their hearts would explode i think

ANOTHER BANGER YAP SESSION FROM OLLIEEE i look forward to them sm yknow!!! i can always trust you to have the tastiest stsg scenarios ready to go 🙏🙏🙏 i’m a lil late to this BUT i hope you had a cozy sleep my friend <3 AND WAHH i’m so glad you’re excited for bfb!satoru!!!! i’m gonna try to get it out by next weekend…… i promise not to make it angsty hehe it’s just a lil bittersweet!!! a tiny bit!!!! (depends on how you feel abt the unrequited love trope though 😭😭) IT’S GRAY N WINDY HERE TOO i’m hoping for more sunlight soon………. and i’m doing well hehe i’ve been playing a bunch of pj sekai + watching my favorite streamer play zero escape >:33 WHAT ABT UUU OLLIE what have you been up to?? good things i hope!!! pls remember to rest up and take care of yourself as well <333 it’s what stsg would’ve wanted!!!

(also PHDKDVDJDJYFU NOT THE SATORU SLANDER?????? 😭😭😭 LEAVE MY STICKBUG ALONE???????? i snorted so loud thank you for the free art it’s beautiful <333 i’m gna print it and hang it on my wall.)

#THE RAINBOW FLAG so true………#THANK YOU FOR STOPPING BY OLLIE I LOVE YOUUU here is some coffee n a treat for you 🍩☕️ <333 #stsg and their little kitty cat reader….. they would be so smitten 😔😔😔#no but i think stsg would jsut be the bestest partners Ever for a reader w childhood trauma #all three of you have had rough childhoods in different ways and i just think that makes taking care of each other sm easier!!#it’s easy to think that suguru would be the mature one but i think ppl often forget just how mature satoru is as an adult too #he might not be as good as suguru when it comes to talking about emotions but he’s just. so secure. so strong and dependable #if satoru found you wallowing in your sadness on the balcony i think he would sit with you and distract you. or just hold you tight #it’s just reassuring to have him there yk???#sighhhhh…. they’re both so good 😔#ask tag ✩#ollie !! ✩

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1d1195 · 2 months

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I feel like it has gone by quickly?? But at the same time THE CONCEPT OF TIME IS SO WEIRD TO ME I SERIOUSLY DONT KNOW ANYMORE LOL and Friday I was a bit busy :( it was a friends birthday so I out! But trust me I was ITCHING to pull up tumblr, read and talk to you! You know I love your book recs! And honestly that book sounds creepy! But you’re right I probably would end up reading it and liking it! Definitely added to my list! But I am surprised that you read it solely because you like “easy reads” , things that basically aren’t too stressful! Glad it wasn’t horrible though lol

I SERIOUSLY CANT LOOK THAT MAN IN THE EYES😭 when i turned in my exam to him my heart was beating out of my chest! And UGH IM A SUCKER FOR A HEIGHT DIFFERENCE LIKE MY BRAIN GOES CRAZY!! And idk he’s such a hot DILF lol and YES I DID SEE THOSE HARRY PICS AND I SWEAR I FELT LIKE DROPPING ON MY KNEES FOR THAT MAN😵‍💫😩 he looks so good it makes my head all fuzzy lol

Trust me I WAS CRAZY TOO!! All I wore were band t shirts and merch during my emo phase like I had no normal clothes or clothes that weren’t from hot topic bahaha and honestly I see why you were team Edward! I FINALLY saw the Twilight movies this past summer for the first time! I was never drawn to it when it was popular or the books BUTTTTT if I did have to chose I would have been team Edward lol there was no competition in the first place lol and yes I knew ALL the emo bands lore and stuff! Specifically twenty one pilots’s lore which is all lot lol but taht was like when i was 11 lol now i simply CANNOT due to lack of brain power lol

ANOTHER COUPLE MIGHT BE GETTING ENGAGED?! HELLO?! IM GONNA CRY FOR SURE!! And I’m sure part 4 will be great! You’re really great with coming with such detailed and unique! And you take such classic tropes and give your spin on it! I genuinely think you’re so talented Sam!

What’s crazy is that in my head I call you “ Samantha” when you literally do something crazy in your stories or like make me giddy?? Like “omg SAMANTHA!!!?” Idk if any of that made sense lol anyways Noah would have been cute! But Kyle is definitely more of a frat boy name lol and yeah I know about icebreaker never read it but I’ve definitely seen the girlies go crazy over it lol

My Kyle is literally so sweet! I met him at my schools IT services thing and he helped me out! Then I saw him again and he’s very nice!

And you know I love your long responses and I love you!!!-💜

HAHAHAHAHA I TALK TO MYSELF ALL THE TIME. I CONSTANTLY say “get it together Samantha.” That’s hilarious. I love that! If you’re inclined you gotta let me know which part/line in particular you do that for every once in a while 😭😂💕 please do not apologize for having friends and plans and being social. I’m glad you went out! That sounds like fun! My best friend and I are November birthdays so we celebrate the whole month of our births (our significant others LOVE it almost as much as we do, obviously).

The book was SO CREEPY. Stress level 12/10. So OBVIOUSLY I know the deeper meaning behind “don’t judge a book by its cover” but I’ve literally never picked up a book without judging its cover. Or at the very least the back cover. I’m pretty close with my sister so I often give books about sisters a thorough twice over. ALL THIS TO SAY I had no idea what it was going to be about when I picked it up hehehehe

Omg I could cry. Height difference, DILF, unable to look him in the eyes ughhhh I will also cry. I’m swooning just thinking about it 😭 I gotta write a professor/TA situation one of these days 😍😍😍

I don’t think I had an emo phase. A pseudo emo phase for sure. I never got into bands the way I was supposed to (but if I hear Fall For You I turn into a puddle). I’m obsessed with the image. I am spiraling at the idea you only saw Twilight last summer. I went to the midnight premieres I’m CRYING 😂

I have a lot of ideas in my head but they all boil down to happily ever after, marriage, 2.5 kids, and a white picket fence. I feel bad yall gotta keep reading the same story over and over 😂

Okay Kyle def is more of a frat name that was also what I thought when I switched it over. Noah was too cute I think hehehe maybe another story.

OBSESSED WITH YOUR KYLE MEET CUTE. CAN’T WAIT TO WRITE ABOUT IT 😍💕

Have a lovely start to your week bestie! 💕💕

Xoxo

P.s. Don’t read my update tomorrow if you’re having a good day lol I have been struggling with seasonal depression (I think it’s just regular depression actually at this point. But ya know) I am being dramatic honestly. Please don’t worry about me but regardless I’m probs going through an emo phase NOW hahahahahaha so it’s a little bit of a tear jerker imo

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decaffeinatedparadisemaker · 1 year

Text

2022 Year in Review

Tagged by @kitausuret hiiiii kita <3

1. Number of stories posted to AO3: 8, 2 of which are in-progress

2. Word count this year: 81,374

3. Fandoms I wrote for: MCU, Spider-Man (comics, Webb, Raimi), Spider-Gwen

4. Pairings: Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Peter Parker/Gwen Stacy, Peter Parker/Michelle Jones, Michelle Jones/Gwen Stacy, Jian Mei/Peter Parker

5. Stories with the most... Kudos: Long Road Home - 24 Bookmarks: Long Road Home - 3 Comment Threads: Long Road Home - 15 Complicate Me, Elevate Me (Symbiot3) - 8 Word Count: Long Road Home - 38,375

6. Work I'm most proud of... Amazing Jian Mei, hands down, no contest. I have never seen any take on a Chinese MJ Watson, or an Asian MJ Watson outside of Meera Jain, who hasn’t had a lot of page time and has had zero screen time (a travesty). So, I rolled up my sleeves and tackled it myself, and I’m doing my absolute best to represent Chinese and Asian culture and traditions and everything and still make her MJ Watson, and y’know what? I kinda like what I’ve done. And her story is just beginning! Please please please I am begging you please read it and comment and recomm to others; I really really really want more people to understand appreciate Chinese culture outside of the usual food

7. Work I'm least proud of: Probably Unfamiliar & Unknown, but only because I’m stuck tbh hahaha

8. A favorite review I received: Honestly, anytime I see a comment on Amazing Jian Mei I die of love, but if I had to pick a few (no way can I just pick one):

@weoffendedshadows ‘s comment on Chapter 1:

As promised - there is something amazing about seeing a character whom I have built up an image in my mind, of how they look, act, and just generally exist, and then is challenged so thoroughly and deeply that i can't help but look and see the same character in a new light. This is MJ, the same one I've been reading for years now, and I am loving how that same personality shows up here.

I also love the importance of culture within this story, how MJ struggles with the new world she finds herself in, while holding onto what is herself. I'm looking forward to seeing Peter here.

- Honestly after I had posted the first chapter I was so petrified that people would hate the idea of a Chinese MJ Watson, and to see this comment gave me so much encouragement and justified my decision to put this out. Because writing AJM isn’t pulled out from nowhere; I’m ethnically Chinese myself, and almost everything culture-specific is something I either experienced myself or something that I personally know has.

Em jeet ‘s comment on Chapter 6:

Oooh MJ got a lil spicy in this chapter! I adore the way you write her btw. She’s so perfectly wonderfully in character while also being Chinese. Idk, it’s just nice to see you let her be both, because some people can only manage one or the other.

Good lord, but the tension building (in her head) between her and Peter is fantastic. I hope to get a confession— Spider-Man or otherwise— at some point

- Em has been one of my more consistent commentators, but if I had to pick one this is it. The balance between being Chinese and being recognizably MJ Watson is, well, something I had dearly hoped I hit, and to see someone recognize my efforts? No words

@kitausuret ‘s comment on Chapter 7:

WHEW finally I made it to the last of the updates!

Oh! I forgot to mention earlier I think it's interesting that Liz is a journalist in your universe! I wonder if she's ever worked with Betty, or Robbie, or anyone kind of adjacent to the Bugle fam like Ben Urich. Fascinating stuff!

I like the conversation between May and Mei, it's so good. May knowing Peter's secret identity is also kind of a neat development here, but at least it sounds like here she didn't discover her nephew was Spider-Man because he was collapsed half-dead in her home. Little things~!

Aaaaaand of course, gotta love that little bit of tension between Peter and Mei. It's fate. ;)

Oh, one more thing: what inspired you to have Mei pursue medicine, out of curiosity? I really liked in 616 how MJ started pursuing a psychology degree so that's what I immediately thought of, but I love learning where people pull inspiration from. 💖

- @kitausuret is completely unhinged because of Mei, but this comment dug deeply to me, because she picked up something so important - the medicine thing, which is an important cultural discussion. I am so, so, so glad she picked up on how important this was to me <3

9. A time when writing was really, really hard: It generally is hard because I think the fandom is dry right now, but two periods in particular tested me: the first is right now with regard specifically to Unfamiliar and Unknown, simply because I find writing a Far From Home adaptation Very Hard. The second was when I was writing that certain scene in Chapter 3 of Amazing Jian Mei - you’ll understand what scene I refer to if/when you read it (although I will not judge you if you wish to skip it), but I literally cried while writing it and was crying myself to sleep that night.

10. A scene or character you wrote that surprised you: Hmm not sure. I’ll have to think about this one.

11. A favorite excerpt of your writing: I’m not sure I can call it my absolute favorite, but this scene from Chapter 1 of Amazing Jian Mei is definitely up there:

Mei blinked and focused on the screen, where, truth be told, she had the fewest requests from Rainbow’s list of models. Part of it was undoubtedly because she was new, but… “I do not understand what that has to do with my name.”

Andy grimaced, looking visibly uncomfortable. “Mei, in my years working, I’ve noticed that models with more, uh, Western names, tend to get more bookings. It’s why I changed my stage name myself; my real surname is Karim. I’m an American citizen, was born and raised here, and Andrew Joseph are my real given names, but for a while it was difficult for me to find bookings with an Arabic surname, so I picked O’Conner from a phone book. In the same way, Jian Mei is an obviously Chinese name, so…” he spread his hands helplessly. “I don’t like it either, Mei, but it’s an option I recommend.”

Mei nodded. “Dawn told me something similar, but she only said it was because she was tired of people mispronouncing her name.”

Andy nodded. “She chose Dawn from her surname.”

Mei raised both eyebrows. The surname 萧 had absolutely nothing to do with the word “dawn”, but thinking about it, she realized that the almost identically-pronounced 晓 (minus the vastly different intonation, which any Chinese speaker would immediately pinpoint, but which most non-speakers would probably hardly notice) translated to Dawn. So… “What if I make a stage name similar to mine?”

Andy nodded. “Most non-speakers would butcher your name into Jane May, which is a start.”

Mei thought about it. “Is that a good name?”

Andy rubbed his chin in thought. “It’s just, they’re both first names, and they’re not so catchy.”

“How about May first? It is the correct pronunciation of my real name anyway.”

“Hmm,” Andy was visibly perking up, and looking intensely at Mei (which gaze, however, she didn’t mind; unlike the other gazes she was used to, Andy’s was pure thought and focus and creativity). “May Jane, May Jane. It’s still a little softer than I’m used to, but-ah!” A snap of the fingers. “How do you feel about Mary?”

Mei thought about it. “Mary Jane is not so far from May Jane.”

“Mary Jane, Mary Jane, yes, I can see it.” Then she saw Andy realize something, as his shoulders slumped and his eyes defocused. “But that can’t be just it, because Mary Jane can also be slang for marijuana, and we don’t want your stage name to be immediately associated with, well, that.”

Mei sat back and pursed her lips. “How about if we add something to Mary Jane?”

Andy’s eyes refocused on her face. “Like a third name? Something Western? Yes, yes, that could work. Do you like anything?”

Mei slumped. This was hard; she didn’t know that many Western surnames that she liked. Chewing her lip, she looked around Andy’s office for inspiration, and finding none, thought about the contents of her bag-ah.

Mei smiled, and Andy immediately noticed.

“What is it?”

She reached into her bag, pulled out the book she had bought the previous week, and showed it to Andy, who tilted his head to one side in puzzlement. “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes? Mary Jane Holmes?”

Still smiling, Mei shook her head. “I was actually thinking of Dr. Watson.”

Andy’s eyes lit up in excitement. “Yes, yes, yes, it’s excellent. Excellent! A good addition to our team.” Rapidly, Andy snatched back his laptop and started typing furiously, then hit the enter key and leaned back. “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the newest model of Rainbow International, miss Mary Jane Watson.”

Letting a grin spread across her face to match the one on Andy’s, and feeling a surge of confidence and adventurousness, Mei stood up and reached a hand across the table. “You can also call me MJ.”

12. How did you grow as a writer this year: I started writing. I have never written anything before, except for the usual creative writing classes way back in high school and college, which were all more than a decade in the past.

13. How do you hope to grow next year: If I can continue bringing Mei to the page that’ll be the greatest thing ever.

14. Who was your greatest positive influence this year: Too many to mention. Uhh. @seek--rest of course, @promiseofthepremise, @jenniboo311, @pepperminttegan @kitausuret @dyde21 @evil-pony @mysterycyclone @anarchyduck @inkpenparker @weezly14 @demigod-of-the-agni GOD I AM FORGETTING SOMEONE I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRY PLEASE LMK I WILL ADD YOU HERE I’M SORRY

15. Anything from your real life show up in your writing this year: Like I said. Everything culture-specific in Amazing Jian Mei either came from my personal experience, or from something experienced by someone I personally know

16. Any new wisdom you can share with other writers: Just write. I know how scary it is. But I promise you, there will be that one person who reads it and loves it and tells you that they love it, and you’ll fall in love.

17. Any projects you’re looking forward to starting (or finishing) in the new year: I’m looking forward to continuing Amazing Jian Mei (not sure so much about finishing, but definitely continuing). Plus another couple ideas marinating.

18. Tag some writers whose answers you’d like to read: I think everyone I tagged has already answered this but again if I forgot to tag you as a positive influence please don’t pitchfork me I am sorry again

And before I forget:

HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO OUR BELOVED @seek--rest !!!!!

#I'm a writer!

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platonic-f-o-things · 1 year

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So…I’ve been meaning to send something about that wonderful imaginary friend of mine, my platonic f/o, for a while, but I’ve been a bit embarrassed to do so. I think I can finally do it, and just gush about him for a little while.

So…G is not human. You probably wouldn’t be able to tell from a distance, since he looks more or less human, if a little uncanny (/pos), but he is actually a powerful alien entity from an unknown higher dimension! This is actually one of the reasons I’ve been so nervous about talking about my platonic selfship with him, because I was worried that people would find me “cringe” for imagining that an interdimensional reality bender far above anything humans can comprehend would ever care about me enough to consider me his friend, but the very idea of his existence is so oddly comforting to me.

“It is true that there are horrors beyond our comprehension in our worlds, but there are wonders beyond our comprehension out there also. I know, because my best friend is one of them.”

-my self-insert.

So, in the source material, G is extremely enigmatic, with his glowing eyes and odd manner of speaking and his unknown motives and strange power over time and space. But I’ve always noticed signs that he is not indifferent to humanity, wanting to understand us better, to guide us in the right direction, possibly even growing fond of us as a species and the games’ protagonists whom he works through to achieve his goals. Now, I gotta admit I am quite the existentialist, and as the dark corners of my mind were once filled with the fear of the unknown and the unknowable, G terrified me at first. But throughout my playthroughs of the games, the image of him watching over me from the distance slowly became something reassuring, almost like a guardian angel. My version of G became a reflection of my view of the unknown itself: perhaps a little frightening from a distance, but gentle and fascinating once you get to know him. He is the cosmos that cares, the infinite being that smiles down at us, the Comforting Otherworldliness, and I now know him personally and love him as surely as if he were family.

As I realized how happy he made me, I slowly imagined myself getting to know G better, and I view him as my otherworldly companion, my Star Man (waiting in the sky/ly), my best friend from Somewhere Else. I’ve been writing a fanfic about exploring the void and different dimensions with him, and I was even confident enough to upload that fic to AO3. But he isn’t the only one who showed me his world, as I happily taught him everything I know about Earth and humanity, as he is still rather unfamiliar with it, and he finds it as beautiful and fascinating as I find everything he has shown me.

I’m honestly just glad to have him by my side, always ready to hold my hand from beyond the veil of our reality.

~stars-n-freckles45

🌌

That’s so incredibly beautiful! Thank you for sharing! 🥹💕

I want to say that first of all, selfshipping is never cringe! It’s an expression of truth! It’s an expression of real relationships you have with characters!

Humanity isn’t insignificant. It’s vast, wonderful, and beautifully-diverse! G learned this through observing earth, I’m sure, but he also learns it through his friendship with you!

He’s beyond honored to protect you each and every day, and to show you that while the vastness of the unknown may seem daunting, it isn’t so different from Earth!

Everyone everywhere has a heart, and he’ll protect you with all of his heart! From every earthy terror to every possible existentialist doubt that might sneak into your mind. 🥺

My personal philosophy is that existentialism is a fear of the unknown, and that the ultimate fate of our universe is much more forgiving than people predict.

I hope that gives you a little solace! And I hope that G gently reminds you that peace will always be with us, every day, in big and in small ways!

#long post #existentialism cw #platonic f/os #stars-n-freckles45 #sorry this got lengthy! I’m passionate about philosophical stuff 😭#Mod Lace #heavy cw #just in case!

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queenofbaws · 2 years

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The way I gasped when I saw six sentence weekend again. I’ve been caught up in a bit of Quarry induced tunnel vision 🤪

But how about some climbing chrash? There may be some content of them coming from me in the near future too ;)

six(ish) sentence weekend ;P

“Aaaaand...voila. The stage has been set.” Just for good measure, he bent down to double-check that he had, in fact, shut the camera off. No harm no foul if he hadn’t - it’d take all of three seconds to give that incriminating little comment the snip-snip in editing - but still, it never hurt to be sure. “These idiots are never going to see this shit coming. I can already see it...the grimaces as their guilt slowly but surely - ”

“Waitwaitwaitwait. Hold up. Just...” From where he sat half-sprawled on the staircase, phone held precariously over his head as he played some pointless game, Cochise did his best to burst Josh’s masterfully-blown bubble. “Before you send that out, I think we gotta have a talk, man. When you said we’re gonna, quote, ‘party like we’re fucking porn stars,’ what the fuck was that supposed to mean?”

Before he could get so much as a peep out, Ashley chimed in from her spot on a nearby armchair, her legs curled up beneath her and a paperback folded in her hands. “Yeah, actually I had the same question. I think you should do another take just to, like, clarify.”

So this was what he got for dating a couple of nerds, huh? Served him fucking right, he guessed.

The camera had been turned off, and thank God for that, because while he couldn’t say with any certainty what kind of look he was rocking at just that moment, Josh knew enough about himself to understand it wasn’t the sort of face he wanted preserved on his harddrive forever and ever amen. In one jerky motion - hopefully enough to drive home the point that he would not be doing another take, thanks very much - he pulled it from off of its tripod and turned to face them. “Clarify,” he repeated, voice flat. “You need me to clarify what I meant by saying - ”

“We’re going to party like we’re fucking porn stars,” Chris finished for him. His phone made a cheery little noise at that. “Yeah. I mean. Maybe? I don’t think Matt or Jess’ll stop when they hear that, but Emily’s kind of a hardass, know what I mean? I feel like she’d text you back trying to pick it all apart like one of those trick questions on the SATs.” Without looking away from his game, he pitched his voice up into an awful, droning valley girl whine, no doubt meant to be an impression of Emily: “Ummm...look, I don’t know who you think you’re talking to, but I am like, sooo not interested in some juvenile little boy-girl makeout party, sooooooooo...”

“By phrasing it like that, ‘party like we’re fucking porn stars,’ you aren’t really giving anyone enough context to, um, understand the purpose ‘fucking’ is serving in the sentence, y’know?” Ashley, at least, had the decency enough to look up from her book as she told him (not in quite so many words) that he was a moron. “Is it a verb? Or an adjective? Because while both are bad, I still think one’s preferable to the other...like...okay, I guess I don’t know...how one would party as if they were having sex with a porn star, is what I’m getting at. Like, is that a good thing?”

The urge to sit down and hold his head in his hands was quelled only by the fact that he didn’t want to set his camera down where either of these idiots could potentially break it. That was the only thing keeping it from happening. “Guess it depends on the porn star, Ash,” he said instead, letting his eyes roll up and up and up towards the vaulted ceiling of the lodge’s main room. “Gotta imagine some of them enjoy the game more than others.”

“Okay, but also? Then the other option, partying like we, ourselves, are the porn stars. That’s not a great image, I guess. But more than that, like, are you insinuating this is going to be some kind of orgy? Because if you are, I mean, Mike’s gonna RSVP, no question, but the others probably won’t, so...”

“Yeah, and if I’m gonna be attending a weekend-long orgy, I’d really prefer one without Mike. Y’know, if at all possible.”

For the first time since drawing up the idea (though not, he suspected, the last) Josh found himself wondering why oh why he’d thought it a good idea to include these two in his revenge plot. He could’ve, he reflected, just done it his own damn self; no one would’ve been around to take a red pen to each of his sinister machinations. As it was, he’d saddled himself with the dork patrol for better or worse.

“I’m not doing another take,” he said decisively, choosing to ignore both of their scoffs. “We’re going to party like we’re fucking porn stars, and that’s fucking final. Now get off your asses - we’ve got pigs to string up in the basement.”

#nick-furchillo #six sentence weekend #queenie writes supermassive #ohohoho your promises of future climbing chrash intrigue me ;P hehehehe

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sunnydaleherald · 1 year

Text

The Sunnydale Herald Newsletter, Tuesday, December 20

Xander: I've gotta say something... 'Cause ... I don't think I've made it clear. I'm in love with you. Powerfully, painfully in love. The things you do ... the way you think ... the way you move ... I get excited every time I'm about to see you. You make me feel like I've never felt before in my life. Like a man. I just thought you might wanna know.

~~~~

The Sunnydale Herald is looking for at least one new editor! Contributing to the Herald is a great way to get your Buffy on! Find out more here. If you saw the phrase "HTML template" in our previous calls for editors and that was what made you decide that Herald duties aren't for you, you may be glad to hear that we've set up an alternative posting process! [Drabbles & Short Fiction]

Faith's Best Christmas Ever (BUffy/Faith, M) by apachefirecat

My Hand was the One You Reached For (Buffy/Spike, G) by lexterminate

It's a Hard Knock Ice (Buffy/Spike, E) by ClowniestLivEver

I'll Be Home for Christmas (Buffy/Spike, M) by scratchmeout

[Chaptered Fiction]

He Slays Monsters Ch. 2: Gender-Blind Casting (Buffy/Faith, E) by BeatriceEveryTuesday

Saving Faith Ch. 1-8/8 (COMPLETE) (Multiple pairings, E) by neondream

Learning To Be Love's Bitch, Chapter 23 (Buffy/Spike, M) by Desicat

Burn, Chapter 1 (Buffy/Spike, T) by violettathepiratequeen

Christmas Without You, Chapter 1 (Buffy/Spike, E) by Dusty

[Images, Audio & Video]

Artwork:Buffy & Spike () by isevery0nehereverystoned

Artwork:Faith () by salylockheart

[Reviews & Recaps]

S4. Ep11. Doomed by becomingbuffypodcast

There was so much wild shit in BtVS by lierdumoa

ReWatch: Buffy the Vampire Slayer - S5, E1-2 by kimannebb

ReWatch: Buffy the Vampire Slayer - S5, E3-4 by kimannebb

Video: Buffy The Vampire Slayer 6x20 “Villians” Reaction () by naj

[Fandom Discussions]

Sparrow's 2022 Fandom Round Up by sparrow2000

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zero-ek · 7 days

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A couple other live concerts and a couple other thoughts on them

Yo!

So this is coming after another post concerning other concerts, i had to break it off cause i reached the image limit on that one lol, plus i felt like it'd be more thematically concise to separate these guys into their own post. So yeah, anyway, here's part one.

Also also because these don't allow screenshots i did my best to describe every highlight, but because of that this became a huge block of text, just a heads up.

3. Natsume Itsuki – Parallel Shot

(See the KV here cause i don't want Hanagata to be mad at me)

Dang, it’s been a month already....

So, good news, I’m not as moody as I’ve been the previous days, so thankfully i did get to enjoy myself watching this concert a lot more, however...

You see, this was, as per usual, a two performance concert (which by the way if you know it I’d really like to know why that is a thing), and usually with these both performances are mostly the same, with some minor changes to the setlist and whatnot. Now while they did stream both parts this time (usually only the nighttime one is available), I’m kinda on a budget, so, thinking i wouldn’t be missing out on much, i got the nighttime one, since it’s the one i normally go for.

Tamu, however, decided that this time there’d be a storyline playing through both performances, and pretty much built the entire experience around it, the song choices, the breaks and everything. So while it was by all means an awesome performance, i was left really itching because i didn’t get the full picture.

I did watch her post-concert talk and the daytime performance watchalong, so i do sort of have an idea of what went on, but dang it I’m feeling so sad that i didn’t actually get to see it, especially since in hindsight, i really want to know how the songs she sang in the daytime part sound like live. But hey, the chance’s already been missed, not much i can do about it now.

Oh, before we get into the actual live, i gotta mention this:

Look. at. This!

I’ve known about this outfit since her first live 8 months ago or so, but she hadn’t posted any pics of it until now so i totally forgot about it. I still can’t believe not only that she actually had this made, but that it looks as good as it does.

First song was “Struggle of Egos”, the theme for this concert, and like, i cannot begin to explain how absolutely m a s s i v e this song sounds live, like it’s incredible. Tamu’s singing is also a lot “shoutier” live, which only makes the performance even rawer (hey hey actually if you wanna check it out for yourself she does show the first couple songs on her watchalong stream so you can go see that I’m not lying)

Also, it might just be the camera framing but the venue looks huge! Like i actually got a little jumpscared by how big it looked, especially with that massive screen behind her (looking it up, it says it’s 618 inches, or 15 meters in diameter!). Also i really love the camera angles, there is a crew operating them manually, so there’s a lot of dynamic shots and very precise closeups.

She then sang her solo version of “Tsuisou no Ragnarok”, which is her collab song with Nakucha under Gree Entertainment. I mention this because firstly on looking up what Gree is exactly i learned that they also work with Assault Lily, which now has me convinced that everything I’ve ever been interested in is run by the same like 10 people or something how the heck do i keep running into the same things like this? But more importantly i gotta mention that I’m really happy that Hifumi seems to be making a hard push for these two lately, i get the impression that they saw how banging they’ve been with La Prière this past two years and realized it’s worth getting them out there. Also, as an Eufolie enjoyer I’m just happy in general that these two are doing stuff together again (even if it isn’t jazz).

She performed “Happy Enforcer” and “Spider Girl” with the dancers from the last concert, and she mentioned afterwards that she messed up pretty hard her dance parts, but honestly those girls were going extremely hard, i gotta commend her for managing to keep up and sing at the same time.

So, for the story, or what i understood of it: it seems that 3D Tamu is actually a separate entity than utaite Tamu, and while they should normally coexist as like perfect mirrors of one another, something went wrong and 3D Tamu started to be loaded up into utaite Tamu’s body instead. 3D Tamu then asks if she could take the opportunity to borrow her body so she can see the real world, which real Tamu accepts, but something seems off.

The now 3D-Tamu-in-real-Tamu’s-body then sang some covers, the highlight for me being “Unravel”. I’ve heard this song like a million times by now, but I’ve never heard it sung in the context of a live concert, and Tamu’s main vocal character being the raw energy her voice has gave me some of the most intense chills I’ve felt in a little while.

The two Tamus talk a little more, and turns out some time loop shenanigans are going on, 3D Tamu is purposefully trying to hijack real Tamu’s body and wants to keep this concert on repeat endlessly. So, from what i could piece together, the daytime performance was the first loop, in which she successfully took over and reset everything.

The robot cat thingie, which i actually don’t know the name of someone help (Future Zero note: apparently he’s called "War Criminal Cat" lmao) managed to remember everything though, and asked the audience to help break the loop and stop 3D Tamu. They do, and that sends the concert, which apparently was exactly the same as the daytime performance so far, off course. It seems that 3D Tamu is on Banana mentality, so real Tamu talks about how the uniqueness of each performance is what makes live concerts exciting to try to talk her out of it.

And like, starting from here until pretty much the end of the concert, she sings a battery of some of her most intense songs, which, looking at the setlist, seems to mirror the more pop-y vibes from the daytime setlist, which i imagine were 3D Tamu’s picks. Particular highlight to “Fragment of Qualia”, i adore that song and was so hyped to hear it live, hearing it with the huge venue acoustics and the crowd cheering was already amazing through the stream, i can’t even imagine how crazy it must’ve been to actually be there.

Also, i gotta mention, the entire concert has been pretty much high gear only so far, like, there’s been calmer songs, but overall it’s been high intensity all the way.

Finally, 3D Tamu is about to be expunged from real Tamu’s head, so as a final request, she asks real Tamu to shoot her with her gun, claiming she wants to at least go out with a bang. Real Tamu shoots... and misses, saying that you shouldn’t want to go out with a bang, but with beauty.

The two of them sing “Ai to CodeQ...” together, before 3D Tamu disappears for good. I’m like 99% that the entire story of this concert was written around and as a build up to this song, like, I’d say it’s even more of a theme to this concert than “Struggle of Egos” is. I will admit that it’s not as much of a favourite for me, but it’s that thing where, when you listen to a song in a different context, it helps you see it in a different way, it’s been growing on me, particularly because existentialism is my bread and butter and the lyrics for this song touch on that quite a bit.

Anyways, this is where the concert ends formally, so for the encore, she sings “My Entertainer”, which 3D Tamu sang on her daytime setlist (this mirrors that the daytime encore was Anamnesis, which was in real Tamu’s nighttime setlist). The dancers come back for this one, and Tamu is still keeping up like my gosh what does this girl eat???

By the way, speaking of the setlist and, I’m particularly sad to have missed the last three songs of the daytime setlist. She sang an alternate version of “Junjou Sacrifice”, which she did release and i honestly love it more than the original, i feel like the instrumentation encapsulates the vibe of the lyrics much better. Then “Miniascape”, which is one of my favourites of hers just out of the sheer atmosphere it evokes, and she ended with “Son Macabre”, which i honestly didn’t like at first, but it seriously grew on me a whole lot, she mentioned it on the watchalong, but it really gives off that “bad end” vibe really well, from the perspective of the villain, particularly, and i reeeeeeeally wanted to hear that in the context of this concert’s story.

Now that the story is over, Tamu can finally break character and do an MC. Yep, the only MC is in the encore. She goes at it for like i think 15 minutes or so, mainly showcasing merch and talking about how this whole live came to be, and like, she’s talking at like a hundred miles an hour, mind you she’s doing this for the second time on the day, and this one is even more hyped up than the daytime one, and there’s not a sliver of tiredness at all in her voice, like if i speak uninterrupted for just 10 minutes my throat feels sore for the rest of the day girl what are you?

The biggest announcement is that she’s going on tour!!! And with a live band!!! Like, the momentum that she and the other LaPri girls have been on is insane, they’ve done so much these past two years that whenever something new is announced, i get kinda fearful that like, it’s gonna be their peak and things will start to slow down, just because y’know, they’re pretty much as close to indie as you can get (nayuta in particular actually being one), but no, they just keep shooting higher and higher, and that really warms my heart.

Also, with how intense Tamu’s songs in particular are, my excitement is through the roof to hear how a live band brings them to life.

Actually, now that i think about it, it might’ve been for the best that i picked the nighttime performance, I’m writing this a couple days after my first watch, so i had a little time to marinate my thoughts on it, and most importantly the immediate post-event-hype wore off, so I’m more inclined to think “dang it, i really wanted to see that”. And like yeah, i am a lil pouty that i didn’t get to watch everything, but all in all i feel like i really needed the uninterrupted burst of energy that this live was.

I like to make playlists of concerts after i watch them, not only cuz it helps me remember but often because i like to think about the intention that went into arranging the songs in that particular order. I’ve noticed that I’ve been listening to Tamu’s quite a bit ever since, and i feel that i gained another level of appreciation for her stuff now, particularly because i was in the position that i was when i watched her concert, which is fun, but also cruel to think about how these sorts of pieces move. (Future Zero note: guys help me i don’t know what the frick i meant by this???)

I don't know how to end this, uhh... i guess the lesson here is beware of time warping, body-snatching, cute singing anime girls. Yeah.

4. Aitsuki Nakuru – Qulalim Stella

After all these years, i finally know how to write クラリムステラin romaji! It’s still nonsense but it sounds cool

Oh and by the way this is the best concert I’ve ever watched. Ever.

I’ll get into detail about it in a bit but I’m finishing writing this up over a week after i first watched it, and i still cannot get this concert out of my head (which for me is saying something), like it was just so good in all the best little ways a concert can be, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Before we get into the songs, i wanna talk about the visuals. First and foremost, the venue was massive, like, look at this!

I looked it up, and the capacity is for roughly 1.7 thousand people, and it was absolutely packed! And also, the stage was fully decorated, which i could be wrong but i don’t think I’ve seen that before in utaite concerts (usually it’s just the empty stage, or just the screen behind them), which really helped bring the performances to life, considering how large the stage was.

But what i freaked out the most about was this:

They actually made her the Nardack/Indigrotto/jellyfish outfit!!!

She had announced what the stage outfit would be like (this one, from the 2nd keyvis and designed by her friend Youichi), and with how complex Nardack’s design is, i wasn’t expecting at all that she’d actually have it made too. The pics really don’t do it justice, it looked amazing on stage, the skirt is a lot puffier than it looks, and the translucent parts looked especially great with the stage lights shining through them.

The first three songs were very fitting for a 1st concert, in a “this is who i am vibe”, she started with “Azura Lano”, which she later called her “self introduction song”, then “Cosmodiver”, one of her latest songs, which she actually explained that it was made especially for this concert (and written by Tamu, no less!). And “Kotonoha”, a very old song for the older fans, which I’ve never heard before because I’m an overseas fan and Nacollection 1 isn't real for us.

A couple of things to note, first of all, my compliments to the PA team, the whole concert was mixed to perfection, with the venue being as large as it was, the acoustics were really intense, but not too overbearing on the ears. Also, and I’ve noticed this on her 3D stuff, but it’s amazing how Nakucha’s voice has so much projection while still remaining as airy and breath as she usually is. She’s a human flute if I’ve ever seen one.

Also also, for this being her first ever solo concert, she’s an absolute natural at it, like, she said she’s just winging it, but she’s extremely charismatic and lively, her interactions and banter with the audience during the MCs had me smiling all the way. Of course, this isn’t her first concert per se, she’s had the past two years or so with LaPri and stuff, but i do think there’s a difference between having the other two to bounce off of and doing it on her own, and she pulled it off incredibly well.

Anyways, she sang her version of “Tsuisou no Ragnarok” (which in my humble opinion is the best one), and i haven’t been able to shake the thought that they’re gearing up for a NakuTamu two-man live, they’ve got another single coming up soon, and it really seems like Hifumi and Gree are pushing hard to make this pair a thing.

Now, for the first highlight of the night, “Oxydlate”.

Holy crap.

This was pretty much what everyone was talking about, reading up on tweets and live reports, and justifiably so, because oh my god what a performance. The song has some of the highest falsettos she can do, which was already impressive enough, but i think what really made this so incredible was actually getting to see her expressiveness during it, like, being able to see through her body language, the inflections and tiny imperfections on her voice denoting how demanding this song is, and how much work she is putting to pull it off so perfectly.

That, combined with just how enthralling the song itself is, is what i think made this so memorable, it gets you as into a performance as i think is humanly possible, like, i distinctively remember being in like a sort of a trance that i had to shake myself out of by the time the song ended, I didn’t mention this before, but i was home alone the day i watched this live, so i got to set up my computer to my actually pretty nice TV, and i really feel like that increased my experience of it like tenfold.

Oh, and i can’t not mention That One Part™ where she falls to her knees, which pretty much everyone was like “holy sh*t what a moment”, she actually mentioned on her post concert stream that she was only half-acting on that part, she really needed to get her bearings in that moment and figured she should do it with style. I personally feel like that part really cemented this as one of my favourite live performances of all time, like it’s that good.

Then it was Endorfin time! sky_delta came as a guest, playing the keyboard, i really liked how the stage really lit up during this part, with the strobe lights going crazy in the back, and the crowd really got to cheer hard during this part too, Endorfin’s songs usually being more upbeat, and that played off of the hype from “Oxydlate” perfectly in my opinion. A special highlight to “Suisei no Parasol” because sky_delta got to play a sick solo in it.

I wish sky_delta had stayed longer, not only because live instruments are better as we all know, but honestly he himself was a joy to watch. He’s a little more awkward on stage than Nakucha, but they bounce off each other really well, and he really seemed super happy to be there. She mentioned how he approached her 10 years ago, when she wasn’t doing singing as much, and was like like “hey let’s do this thing”, and now she got him to perform their songs in front of almost two thousand people, that really warmed my heart.

Entering the second half of the concert, a prerecorded performance of 3D Nakucha sings “Indigrotto” while real Nakucha goes to change outfits, it looked sort of like this (there's a timestamp here i hope it works):

She comes back wearing the dark outfit from the 2nd keyvis and sings “Evil Bubble” joined by two dancers, and i must say that I’ve not been a harder display of bad b*tchery as this. She spends most of the performance sat on this ornate sofa, doing a badass pose, while the two other girls dance wildly around her, and only at the end she gets escorted out of it, hand in hand with the dancers, mirroring the puppet imagery from the song. I gotta give props to the camera work here for really going crazy with the shakes and angles while still managing to capture everything, it made the recording really come alive

She then really goes off and joins in on the choreography in “Lilith”, and like, she absolutely s l a y e d, she kept up with the dancers amazingly, and the choreo itself was incredibly captivating (this is my polite way to say that she had me swooning lol it’s a sexy song and I’m gay what do you expect?).

The next three songs were pretty much each one a highlight, being all fan favourites, but i feel like the last one in particular even more so. She started with “Gyakusaka”, with the dancers doing this amazing performance with traditional umbrellas. Then “Killer Neuron”, which is already hype enough of a song just from the sheer energy of it, but was even more intense to watch, with the dancers going all out, and the incredible camerawork being the cherry on top.

She then went into an MC and i gotta say that i love how she’ll sing like the hardest, filthiest, most stank-face inducing songs known to man, and then be all like “hey guuyyyss ☺️☺️☺️ that was Killer Neuron!!!! ☺️☺️☺️☺️ how was it? Was it fun???? ☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️”.

Halfway through the MC, the lights go out, and when they come back up, Nakucha starts speaking in this overbearingly cutesy and bubbly way, and i adore that i immediately knew what was going on. Like, she could’ve just gone straight into the song, even more so since everyone knew she was going to sing it in this concert (it was chosen by the fans through a survey), but it’s super cool that she took the time to make up a whole routine to build up to it, even though I’m pretty sure she was cringing on the inside.

Anyways, yeah, the next song is “Fake Idol”, the Aitsuki Nakuru song of the 2020s (so far). And y’know, as hype as this song was with the whole buildup and everything, by this point the rhythm of the second half has already settled in, so there isn’t much i can say about this performance that i haven’t about the others already. But as it turns out, she has a trick up her sleeve, because following this one, she sings two of her “actual idol-ish” songs, which i thought was genius.

Like, if these two songs were anywhere else on the setlist, it would’ve been fine, cutesy upbeat songs are fun to cheer to, but i wouldn’t think much of it. But because she started the set with “Fake Idol”, you get that lingering feeling that something isn’t right. The two songs, “Continue!” and “Watashi ga Watashi ni Itatta...” are perfectly innocent, cute songs, and she just sang them normally, but she manages to spin them around as songs that put you off simply by their placement.

Which is another reason why i believe why this is my favourite concert ever: the setlist was absolutely perfect, every song choice was perfect, their positioning on the setlist was perfect, and the flow from one section to the other was completely immaculate.

The last song was “Kore Kurai de”, another one i actually hadn’t heard before either. As it turns out, it’s a song she sang for a really old eroge, and actually i wanna take the chance to ask what is it with eroges having some of the hardest ending songs ever? Like, i do appreciate the effort and that they take themselves so seriously, but like, the amount of times I’ve heard a banger only to look it up and see that it came from an eroge is insane (looking at you, I’ve sound, Mosaic.wav). Kudos to japanese devs for that.

She explains that the reason she chose this song in particular was because not only she imagined that it’d be nostalgic for a lot of people, but because the lyrics summarized perfectly what she had to say and how she wanted to end this live with. Halfway through the song, though, she started to cry, and i don’t mean like her voice was shaking or she teared up a bit or anything like that. No, i mean she cried hard, like to the point that she couldn’t even finish the verses anymore. She managed to power through but as soon as the song ended she just mumbled a “thank you” and literally ran away from the stage.

It hit me really hard that, like, the girl who was lighting the whole stage on fire only 5 minutes ago and pulled off every song on the setlist flawlessly was the same one crying so hard that she could barely get the words out. Mainly because she isn’t the most open about herself, not that she doesn’t share (i mean look at her sub-twitter), but she’s sort of like the type of person that you can only infer so much about what they’re like from what they show you, so you can’t say that you really “know them” for certain.

(Also overall, she just isn’t around all that much)

So because of that, i really didn’t know how to feel about what had happened, it was simultaneously extremely endearing, given that the song is about not being able to properly express one’s gratitude for how cherished they are. But at the same time, i felt guilty somewhat, it takes a lot of fortitude to be vulnerable in front of someone, let alone over a thousand people, and i got the impression that she wasn’t particularly ready to be put in that position. I sincerely hope that I’m wrong and that she did felt at least comfortable enough to be seen like that, i imagine everyone knows how much it sucks to crumble somewhere you don’t feel safe doing so.

She came back for the encore, and the first thing she said was “this is so cringe”, which... yeah, i can imagine, if it was me i would’ve just went home then and there and not do an encore at all, professionalism be damned. Again, I hope it’s not something that’ll haunt her in her sleep or anything. It was usual encore business, she showed off her merch, did her announcements, she called the dancers and sky_delta to the stage to say a couple words, which was particularly nice. But most importantly to me i think was the little talk she had at the end.

In her words, she’s always been nothing more than an “empty void”, someone who never had any big dreams or passions in her life, being overall a complete pessimist. But that changed once “Aitsuki Nakuru” came to be, because that was a part of her that people began to look up to. Since then, she dreamed that she could keep on being “Aitsuki Nakuru”, to be able to live up to who that is.

She said that if “Aitsuki Nakuru” were to fade away, she’s afraid that she might end up back on her old ways, “a monster of pessimism”, as she put it. So, as long as the veil of “Aitsuki Nakuru” exists, she wants everyone to keep watching over her through it, and keep her dream alive. And in return, she’ll keep on singing through it, to push everyone towards their own dreams. While she doesn’t want to be put in a pedestal or anything, all she asks is that everyone keeps the memory of “Aitsuki Nakuru”, even if just a small piece of it, on the back of their heads, until the day we die.

I mentioned that this was my favourite concert I’ve ever watched, and like initially i thought it was just the euphoria of blasting it on a big screen, which i never got to do before, but even after that wore down i was still thinking about it a whole lot, particularly these last 20 or so minutes of it. Plus, I watched some insanely incredible stuff, like, a core memory of mine, and the very reason I’m so into watching live concerts, was Kalafina’s very last concert on the Nippon Budoukan, that was an experience i cannot even begin to describe, and that I’m forever thankful that i never forgot about.

But what made this one so special to me, even in the face of much more objectively amazing stuff I’ve watched prior, is that it felt very human, “normal”, in a sense. I know that my gushing so far may not convey that very well, but for whatever reason, throughout the duration of this concert, i never once felt like i was looking “up” at her, that the girl on stage was someone above me, that i couldn’t see eye to eye with. This is something that I’ve been working to unlearn about people i admire ever since i left my teens, but that i don’t think I had faced it to this degree yet.

This could be just me assuming things, but from what little i know about her, Nakuru seems to be the type who doesn’t think too highly of herself, not in a self-deprecating way (although she goes that way sometimes), but as in like “i’m just a person doing person things like everyone else”. A thing to note, and that she mentioned a couple of times, is that she didn’t particularly want to do a live concert at all. She doesn’t like singing in front of people, and even though she does do live events every so often, she gets a little unhappy about it because she feels that she isn’t cut out for it.

In contrast to that, this concert was put together to an unbelievable degree of perfection, as i made sure to let you know. You could see in every detail of it, the stage, the decorations, the outfits, the choreographies, the sound quality, the cinematography, the venue itself, that an insurmountable amount of effort went into producing this concert and making it happen as smoothly as it did. And people showed up for it, i know i keep on hammering this point but like holy ship the venue was massive, keeping in mind this is the very first live concert of a doujin artist, i cannot stress enough how absolutely incredible that is.

Of course, i have to be real here, Hifumi is a very capable agency, and Nakuru is one of the more well known utaites out there, so it’s not like this is a total Cinderella type thing or anything. But even still it felt very personal, like, the high production value in this didn’t feel like some celebrity’s grand endeavor, it felt like an everyday person, the type you’d see on the train or your coworker, being granted the opportunity to show the world that they can do something special.

And y’know, i think, and i at least hope, that this was a revelation to her as well, that she’s capable of a lot more than she gives herself credit for, and that there’s much more to reap from what she sowed for the past 10 years or so. “Aitsuki Nakuru” isn’t some ethereal existence that she needs to keep clinging onto to be able to have some sense of worth, “Aitsuki Nakuru” is something she made with her own hands, the result of work and dedication. It may not be who she is, but is what she achieved, and i sincerely hope she is as proud of that as everyone else around her is.

“Kore Kurai de” was a song about gratitude, being shown happiness that one doesn’t know they could have, but not being able to express themselves about it. With the context of what she spoke about herself and what “Aitsuki Nakuru” means to her, i want to think that her tears came from realizing that it’s her that we’re looking at. She is Aitsuki Nakuru, the happiness and gratitude she wanted so much to convey through that song was the result of what she worked to achieve. Not some external concept bound to a song or illustration or 3D model, her, the actual person in this world that made it happen.

In short, this is my favourite concert of all time, not just because it was some million dollar production that was completely and utterly impressive every step of the way (which it was, mind you), but because it was the work of a very flawed individual, not unlike all of us, that shows that we’re not any less capable of achieving incredible things because of it, even if we might not personally believe it so.

Anyways i didn’t even mention the encore track, it was the title track of the concert, “Qulalim Stella”, which by the way i actually took the time to translate, if you scroll down on the music video you’ll see me down there lol. I particularly like the second chorus, in the context of this concert:

“The yesterdays that i put behind me, and the hazy tomorrows yet to come

I hope that i can eventually embrace them both.

Because you showed me a side of myself i never knew of, I can now shine so brightly. And so

I shake away my doubts, so the path i walk may continue.”

Like I’ve said before, the song choices and placement for the setlist was absolutely immaculate, following up on the themes of “Kore Kurai de”, but with much more conviction and firm grasp and understanding of oneself. I’m not sure if that’s something she actually thought about, but i hope that, as the song suggests, she can hold her head up high moving forward and be more proud of herself.

(Future Zero note: her current Twitter banner is a shot of the live concert visuals from Fake Idol, kinda ominous but i hope this means she sees live concerts more favourably now lol)

Oh, yeah, and the announcement! To no one’s surprise, really, she’s gonna do another live, and looking at the venue holy shoot the place is even more massive than the first! I don’t think i need to say how excited i am for this one!

Nakucha world Domination!!!

6. La Prière – Splash the Tone

(Go follow Narumi-sensei he actually has a tumblr!)

It’s summer!!!

Well, not here, and especially not in Japan, but it might as well be, I’m pretty sure it rained like at least once a week for the entire last year, but lately it’s been scolding hot every single day, I’m pretty sure my skin is sublimating, and i even got a pretty bad nosebleed the other day.

This concert really was like an Avengers moment, since not only it follows only a little while after Tamu and Nakucha’s solo lives, but also, as the very last stop of their tour, it’s the last project backed by the crowdfunding from two years ago (which i still can’t wrap my head around how insane that was). And it absolutely shows here, not only this is their biggest venue yet, but it was also incredibly produced. Like, from the stage outfits, to the adorable set decor, to some of the most professional and dynamic camerawork I’ve ever seen, it’s actually hard to believe that this wasn’t a company-backed concert, i cannot stress enough how well put together this live was.

The first three songs were probably the most in line with the summer theme, “Seishun Summer Dive”, which I’m actually a bit sad that they couldn’t find a way to sing the harmony parts live, but on the other hand, really highlighted just how perfect the live mixing was on this. The drums pop out so much that you’d actually think there was a live drummer in the venue. And yet, their voices were crystal clear, which particularly impressed me since not only were they wearing masks, but this song has the harmony parts and pretty dense horns as well, which could’ve very easily drowned out everything else.

Next was “Susume Lovely Idol...”, probably their silliest song, i really liked how not only they came up with a little choreography for it, but also fully acted out the little dialogue parts. While this isn’t a song that i usually go out of my way to listen to, it was very cute to watch it performed on stage.

They did a little intro MC (shout out to the couple people who were actually from overseas, i soooo envy you) and then went into the title track, “Splash the Tone”, and like, this actually got a little surprised because of it, especially since the previous two songs were so high energy, but i was absolutely captivated by how soft nayuta sounded in this one, like, not only the texture of her voice, but even her pronunciation of each word was unbelievably clear, my heart actually skipped a beat every time she had a solo verse.

(not biased at all guys promise)

Then “Instant Love”, which actually had a pretty involved choreo that they absolutely slayed. Something i really love about this song is that it’s a perfect example of how their combined vocals are greater than the sum of their parts. Like, you have the verses sung solo, then the pre-chorus has one vocal line front and centre, but with the other two harmonizing the backing vocals (which i particularly like how since they each have a turn, it showcases the different combinations of their voices and how they harmonize together) and finally the chorus, which puts it all together with their unison parts.

Next, they sang “Evo”, which i actually didn’t expect to become one of my favourites, it’s one of those that never leaves your head after your second or third listen (damn you Chinozo and your catchy hooks), it was a particularly “ooh!” moment for me when it came up because they sang a different summer themed version of it, with a different MV in the back and everything, although sadly it’s not going to see the light of day.

Oh yeah, as if this live couldn’t get any better, they even brought guests! Nakurage (CV: Natsume Itsuki) and Poyuta (CV: Natsume Itsuki), who were both incredibly honoured to be there and absolutely came out of their own volition and not at all because they were coerced into it by a certain lady in blue or anything.

Something i really like about these smaller concerts is that, at least from what I’ve seen, the MCs are much more laid back and freeform, particularly with this one where there’s three people on stage, there isn’t much of a worry about keeping the audience “in the moment” and they can just goof around a lot more. Tamu and Nakucha in particular are such a dynamic duo, their back and forth is always so amusing i love it.

Ending the “upbeat” part of the live, they sang “Tenshin Ranman...” and “RisingSun” because they’re required by law to sing these two together. They and the audience had these little wooden fans during these two tracks, and the visual of the crowd waving them around was really compelling for me, i don’t know why, like, it made the venue feel very “alive” in a way.

Also, for the first highlight of the night, “RisingSun” holy shoot, it’s already my favorite of the two, but the live performance was jawdropping. The song has a lot of long tones, and nayuta absolutely knocked it out of the park on her parts, her voice was soo bewitching like i can’t put into words how well she was singing here. Like i mentioned before i don’t know if it’s just me but her voice just feels even more clearer and softer than ever in this live, i couldn’t get enough of it.

Also also, i didn’t mention, but in this first “idol-y” part, pretty much every song had a little choreo for them, a couple were very simple, and a couple were genuinely impressive. Like i mentioned, the one in “Instant Love”, but also the one for “Tenshin Ranman...” were probably my favourites.

There was an intermission while they went to change outfits, and the song that they played was... something, i could barely follow along because it was so trippy, like think “Susume Lovely Idol...” but double the BPM and add some very weird beat drops and breakdowns and a bunch of nonsense lyrics. It’s not something they released i think but i couldn’t not mention it because it was so weird.

The second half of the concert (which was more like 2/3 of it) is where in my opinion it really pops off. First and foremost look at their outfits:

Not only were they absolutely rocking these on the stage, but they sang 5 absolute bangers back to back, “richromatic prayer”, their latest song, really reminds me of their earlier, super intense material, like, it’d be a perfect fit for “Galaxy Triangle” had it come out back then. Next, “Eikyuu no Gemini”, which i can’t really explain why but it has that particular sort of epic feel that gets you pumped up in a “i want to flamboyantly swordfight to this” sort of way. And “Koi no Illusionista”, which is one of my favourite songs of theirs ever, not only because it’s extremely catchy, but also it has a super crazy and addicting rhythm section, which was absolutely incredible to hear through a live mix. (also I’m pretty sure their outfits were based on the ones from the MV), they also had a choreo for this one, so even more extra points.

They kept going with “Sweet Dreams”, which looking back, was probably the only low energy moment from the entire setlist, i mean “Instant Love” wasn’t super high energy, but it had the most complex choreo so far to make up for it. Also i wanna praise the camerawork again, since the girls were sitting down for this one, they went crazy with the effects and angles to still make it visually engaging. And finally closing up the set, “Muhou Chiten”, another personal favourite, it’s a very quintessential Jpop song, but done so well that it just never leaves your head.

Now for another big highlight, the start of the next set was “Necrogamy”, which is like, an outstanding piece of music, like easily top 5 best LaPri songs, objectively speaking. I could just spend the rest of this report talking about all the things i like about this song, like, to me, it’s a distillation of everything that makes each of them, and LaPri as a whole, great, the lyrics are very engaging (massive props to Tamu, she wrote them!), and the melodies and instrumentation are so beautiful and captivating.

And of course, their vocals are so mesmerizing all the way, there’s solo parts showcasing their softer singing, then the first chorus in unison, displaying their synchronicity, but then, as the song shifts from major to minor they shift into harmonizing, which is probably my single favourite thing about this group: they each have such distinct voices, each very clear but in very different ways, yet they combine so perfectly when they harmonize, nayuta’s is focused yet clear, Nakucha’s is breathy and ethereal, and Tamu’s is strong and piercing.

Then there’s the c part, which suddenly brings the energy of the song up, and just condenses everything i just talked about, there’s unison parts, which devolves into disjointed solo verses, continuously building up in intensity until they all come in sync again to resolve the section. Finally, the song ends with a repeat of the a section, but it ends with them harmonizing a minor chord instead, reinforcing the overall theme of the song.

Yeah really like this song...

The next one was “GHOST”, which while significantly less intense than the last one, it makes up for it by having very expressive verses, the rhythm is a very tight groove and the verses are more spoken and rap-y, but the way they put a lot of emotion in their voices make it flow very naturally, while still being musically engaging. (Also i particularly love the drums in this one and again, the in house engineers killed it with the live mix). Then, “Sore wa Sekai...”, their first song ever as La Prière, and to this day one of their best ones, being incredibly well composed and masterfully making use of their vocals both individually and together. It was particularly interesting to hear it live, since it made for a good show of how much their singing has matured since then, Tamu in particular, since she sounds a lot more aggressive when she sings live, i feel like her parts were really the highlight of this track, particularly in the last chorus, where there was this little back and forth between Tamu alone and Nakucha and nayuta in unison, she cut straight though their softer vocals with how potent her voice is.

The final set of the concert though was just cruel.

“Habataku Kimi e” is another personal favourite, maybe not top 5 but extremely close, much like “Necrogamy” it’s all about how their vocals mesh together in all sorts of different ways, but while “Necrogamy” reels you in first before hitting you hard, this one is just a big explosion all the way through, like it’s all of the things i talked about before but condensed into a short but powerful burst of music, even more so on a live mix, where everything sounds so massive, and you can pick apart their voices even more clearly, like i got goosebumps so strong it actually hurt a little lol.

“Triptych Symphony” then follows in the vein of “Sore wa Sekai...”, in that it’s very much about each of them individually, showing off their own strengths and ultimately how they come together to make something even more beautiful as a trio than it’d be possible on their own, not only in the arrangement (which i can’t not appreciate that it was by nayuta, the talent on this girl), how it’s mostly solo parts, but certain parts will be highlighted by one or two of them doing backing vocals to support the lead for the part, and only converging in a unison part at the very end. But also in the lyrics, which actually i wanna come back to in a minute.

Then, finally, for maximum emotional damage, the final song of the concert was “Three Piece!”, which like... i didn’t think that i was gonna cry watching this live, but like, how do you not? That wasn’t fair at all. I wanna say that it was i think 10pm at the time but i actually sang along to this one, and yeah my sisters got mad at me for it but y’know what i had tears in my eyes and the biggest dumbest smile in my face and i regret absolutely nothing.

Thankfully they didn’t cut straight to the encore because the whiplash would’ve killed me, the first song was “Animatte Utopia”, which i had been wondering why it wasn’t together with “Evo”, since they both have the same energy. Again, since they didn’t cut straight to it like it usually is the case with these lives, and they even played a little intro for it, i had a little time to get my mood in order.

Anyways, i feel like I’ve been very cordial and respectful throughout this report, but i genuinely don’t think there’s any other way to express this.

nayuta.

Was too.

F***ing

CUTEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!

So they had changed into casual clothes, as per the usual with encore sections, but for this song they each had put on a set of animal ears and tail, corresponding to the MV. Not only that, but this one also had a super cute choreo too, and it’s probably just because I’m biased since she’s my favorite but like i feel like out of the three of them nayuta was the absolute cutest, just completely and utterly the most adorable little thingie I’ve ever seen, like i wanted to squeeze her till my arms give out, especially considering she’s the shorter one of of the three of them, so she just looked even more cute jumping around and doing the animal poses next to the other two. Like i swear to god i wanted to scream into my pillow because of how cute she was...

...ahem...

So, uh, yeah. Also, the choreo for this song was a really intense one, and the song itself is very fast paced, so it was actually really impressive that they pulled it off so flawlessly, especially considering they were using handheld mics, which are way too easy to lose volume if you pull them away even just a little bit. But then again i shouldn’t be too surprised since they were absolutely slaying from early on in this live.

While they were doing the usual encore stuff, showing off the merch and all, Tamu brought along a cake, and they sang Nakucha happy birthday (the live itself happened at the end of February, her birthday being March 1st.). Apparently it was the backstage crew’s suggestion, which I thought was very sweet of them, Nakucha mentioned that she doesn’t really like to celebrate her birthdays (same), but that she was genuinely glad that they went out of their way to do that for her, she stole a bite of of the cake and they took the ending pics with it, i hope that made it one to remember for her.

Now, for this encore’s Reflection Time™, which i actually wanna get into quite a bit. Nakucha asked the other two to “summarize what La Prière means to them in one sentence”. It’s a very interesting question to pose, seeing that this is not only the end of their Tour, but of the whole CF campaign and the two years of projects and content that it spawned, it’s the end of an era, pretty much. Not to mention that Nakucha was the one to bring it up, considering that this is only a few weeks after her own solo live and what went on back then.

Tamu said that for her, it was a “turning point in her life”, mentioning how back then, it was a big push for her to quit the day job she had at the time, in order to make more time for LaPri’s projects. Of course, she had her solo career at the time, but that it was LaPri that pushed her to make that life-changing decision, and that she probably wouldn’t be here as we know her if it weren’t for it.

Coming off of that, nayuta said that it’s something that “added colour to her life”, how it allowed her to do things that she wouldn’t be able to by herself, this concert and tour being one of them. And that because she has the two of them with her, supporting her and stepping in where she falls short, she was able to broaden her horizons and achieve much more than she thought she could on her own.

(Also she mentions how the whole idea for a live CF project came from a long conversation about life that they had on the Tokyo Sky Tree at sunset, and like that’s the most idol anime thing ever are you kidding me???)

Finally, Nakucha says that for her, LaPri is “courage”, that back when she was doing her solo live, she had been so painfully nervous about doing it on her own, but now that she has the two of them with her this time around, she feels much more at ease. She talks about how she only got the courage to do a solo live because of having already done the LaPri concerts prior, because of the two of them pulling her out of her comfort zone and showing her what standing on stage has to offer, and that at the end of the day, she can do it on her own.

The overall sentiment here was very much that “i��ve made it somewhere i never thought i would”, which i think in the face of this concert in particular, is pretty much the single most suitable way to describe LaPri and the past two years. While y’know, in Nakucha’s solo live, the sentiment i got out of it was “someone not yet realizing how far they’ve come and how much farther they can go”, with this it was much more in the vein of them seizing an opportunity and taking it as far as they possibly can.

Nayuta mentioned how much of a wonder it was that the three of them, as doujin artists, were able to make it all the way to Tokyo Zepp (twice, even!), which thinking about it, yeah, that’s actually pretty crazy to think about. Sure, i think everyone who’s into japanese music knows one or two cinderella stories like that, but at the very least in the independent utaite sphere (as far as i know, Hifumi doesn’t have anything to do with LaPri in particular, though i wouldn’t be surprised), it’s not at all the most common thing to see projects of this scope.

I mean, yeah, they are sort of a supergroup, i think each of them has over 10 years of work under their belts, and are pretty much some of the most high profile people in the doujin music scene. But then again, it’s not the biggest scene out there to begin with, and even for some of the most accomplished veterans, a live concert is an incredibly arduous task to pull off on their own, part of the reason why you’ll most often only see them live in festivals or as part of larger projects.

And yet here they are, with a two part concert and a 3 part tour in only two years, finishing it off on Tokyo Zepp, and with such a widespread reach that not only were they able to stream it overseas, but they even got a sizeable handful of attendees from outside of Japan to come watch them in person. Putting it into perspective, it’s an absolutely bonkers thing to think about.

I mentioned the last three songs being such a hard hit, and i wanna elaborate on that a little more. “Habataku Kimi e” is a song about closure, it evokes the idea that things end and we gotta move on from it, but that there is much more to be seen beyond what we have now. That’s something that could be said about the live, the tour, the CF campaign or La Prière as a whole, especially if we take into account that it’s the theme song and very last track of their latest album.

They’ve just entered their 5th year as a group, and yeah, they’ve come so far, and achieved so much, but that’s gotta end at some point, and LaPri themselves are going to end at some point. And in that sense, and in the context of what they talked about afterwards, i feel like it’s as much of a song for themselves as it is a song for the listener, in the vein of “this won’t last forever, but that’s okay, we were able to be part of something special, and we can now look to the future precisely because we had it”.

“To you, spreading your wings, now i say

That this goodbye only hurts this much, because we’re now so full of light.

To you, spreading your wings, never stop moving forward

towards a new tomorrow, because even after we part

The paths we walk will continue on, forever”

The timing for this couldn’t have been more impeccable to me in particular...

If “Habataku Kimi e” is about “why” you should remember, then I’d say “Triptych Symphony” is much more about the “what” to remember them by, like i said, it’s very much about each of them and what makes their union special, i mean, a Triptych is a work of art in which three pieces (wink wink) make up a whole, which is reflected on the song’s overall theme of many voices, melodies, sounds, and destinies joining together to deliver a message, be it of “lament”, of “finality”, of “love”, and finally, in the last portion of the song, simply of “music”.

And y’know, while this song is about the merging of their voices, it’s very interesting that most of it is song in solo parts, with only a couple of spots where all three of them sing together, like in the first pre-chorus, “this lone melody i found among the darkness shall change my fate”, or the whole second verse, which is pretty much the complete opposite of the much more negative first one. The same goes for the verses each of them sing and how they might relate to each of them in a deeper level (Nakucha’s in particular), i hadn’t thought much of it before, but after listening to what they talked about in this concert, these choices seem much more purposeful than they appear.

And of course, “Three Piece!”, which to me felt very obviously like a celebration of everything that’s happened these past two years. It was the theme song for their first concert, the very start of the whole saga that this performance was closing up, which even now looking back at it, the fact that this entire project was even able to happen in the first place is just straight up unbelievable. I think that this one hit me as hard as it did because it marked the end of something that was lucky enough to be there every step of the way, it was something that I’m insanely happy to have been able to be a part of and to see through to its end.

I’m also extremely proud of the girls themselves, of course, for pushing forwards and upwards as far as they possibly could with this, and for how much they were able to accomplish because of it, as LaPri and individually, considering how much more each of them have been doing on their own in the past two years since the first LaPri live. At the very last drop of the song, the venue exploded with confetti and the crowd cheered super hard, and i don’t know why, but to me that moment in particular just absolutely filled me with joy, i don’t think that I’ve been as happy to have found out about them, to have donated to the CF, to have followed them throughout every step of this whole saga as I’ve been in that single moment. I just can’t put into words how immensely satisfying of an ending that was, like, they could’ve said that that was their last ever live performance and i would’ve been okay with it because it was such a high note to end things on.

Oh, yeah, and i haven’t even mentioned the second encore song yet.

“Chronologue”, the La Prière song, putting a bow on everything proper. I’ll admit that i wasn’t as emotional by the time it came around, since the first encore was so cute, and they talked for long enough after for me to pull myself together. This is a very special song in that the lyrics are by all three of them, and also I’m just now realizing that i made an oopsie because what this song is about is pretty much what I’ve discussed at length in the paragraphs above, so i kinda don’t have much else to say here...

The interesting thing about this song , though, highlighted here, is how it and “Three Piece!” sort of play off of each other in their similarities, Tamu even joked how hard of a punch it was to end the concert with one and the encore with the other. “Three Piece!”, which came later, is much more about looking ahead and wanting to do so much more moving forward, with verses like “There’s still much more to this story, and we’ll be together for it”. Meanwhile, “Chronologue”, which came before, is about looking back with pride on the path that one takes and being grateful for it, the titular verse of the song being “We’ve made it this far because you where here for us”. For this concert in particular, i feel like they were two different ways of expressing the same feeling, one in emotion, and one in the lyrics, which i think makes each of them a great ending in their own right.

And that’s that, the end of La Prière’s Splash the Tone tour, as well as the two year long crowdfunding campaign, it has been an absolutely insane ride and I’m so glad that i got to be a part of it. I hope that my painstakingly extensive rambling here encourages you to support your independent(-ish) utaites, i mean, who knows what other great projects are out there, waiting to be realized. Maybe it’ll be short lived, and maybe it won’t be the biggest most jaw-dropping thing in the world, but the fact that it was there, and that it happened, that alone makes it special, and speaking from experience, it is absolutely worth it to be there for something like that.

A little epilogue

It’s been almost a whole month and i still haven’t posted this freaking thing why am i like this.

I feel like i went through a whole character arc in those 3 months, in hindsight it’s pretty crazy how almost every one of these concerts had something in them that i needed to hear or think about, i honestly feel like i grew up a little lol.

All that aside, hopefully i can save up enough for this summer, since there’s gonna be a lot of stuff happening then too, though thankfully not as much as in these past few months (so far at least) so my bank account won’t cry as much. Sadly that means I’m gonna have to skip Albemuth’s live coming up this week, which sucks not only because I’ve been seriously into ADAM and their Christmas album, but i really wanted to see Aru off.

I’ll be paying attention to the live reports and Twitter so hopefully i can at least get a good grasp of how things went, but i just know I’m going to regret missing this opportunity, Albemuth really grew on me these past couple months and while i have accepted that there won’t be any more of them... there won’t be any more of them!!! And I’m gonna miss the very last of it!!! Can you see how that’s eating me alive!?

Also also, it’s M3 month!! So while things finally calmed down on the live side, i have new music on the horizon to look forward to in the meantime! The past 2 M3s have really been something for the artists i follow so I’m super excited to see what they’ve been cooking this time.

Anyways, uh, yeah, music good, girls who sing even more good, live concerts? Pshh, even gooder.

Cheers to all two of you reading this, i hope this year gets kinder to you and me both.

#natsume itsuki #aitsuki nakuru #hifumi inc #la prière #utaite

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grumpy-triceratops · 1 year

Text

Borris: Always a Boar, Never a Bore in: Hot Heist

A boar and a goose commit crimes in the name of justice, love and chili. I made a prompt awhile back saying that I would make writings based on emojis that were sent to me, and I received "🌶🐗🚨" so that's what inspired this fic. Wordcount: 3185 | AO3 Version

It is a harsh winter morning, the biting winds however, feel gentler to the boar and goose lazily relaxing in the warm hot spring.

“We’re going to have to leave soon,” the boar comments, his voice gruff but comforting as he begins to raise himself from the pool.

The goose groans in response. “But Borris,” he whines, “it's too cold,” he dunks his head into the water until just his squinting eyes remain visible.

"We gotta get out of here sometime, Rudy," the boar grumbles, climbing out of the water with a slight shiver. "Might as well do it now," he says, shaking his wet, wiry fur as best as he can. He goes by the nearby fence and puts on his fuzzy robe, before grabbing the goose's robe as well. The sound of crunching fills the air as his hooves patter through the snow.

Rudy looks at him with reluctant eyes, dabbling beneath the water one last time before jumping out with great vigor. His gray feathered body shakes horribly as Borris assists him with his robe.

"I-I-I, don't thi-i-ink I'll e-ever be warm ag-g-gain," Rudy shudders dramatically.

"You know what would help?" Instead of a response he gets an indifferent glare, though that does not perturb him, as he continues, "my family's phenomenal chili."

"If it's so wonderful how come I've never had any?" Rudy playfully remarks.

Borris wraps his front leg around Rudy's neck, "because my young friend-"

"You’re barely a month older than me.”

“There’s a very important ingredient we need to get!” He answers with vigorous jostling.

“Okay?” Rudy responds with befuddlement, “then let’s get dressed and go to the store.

Borris dawns his neon green bomber jacket and aviators, and Rudy his lavender ascot, and the two take a short gay trip to the grocery store. Adorning several bags on their tusks and necks, they return to their den.

As Rudy is setting his bags down onto the countertop he inquires, “we should begin the prep work now, if we wish to have this chili tonight, correct?”

“No,” Borris responds while putting the groceries away, “we still need the most crucial ingredient.”

“Oh? Was the store out of stock?”

Borris shakes his head, then ponders before saying, “in a sense yes, but no.” He reaches into his pocket and places a paper on the counter. Rudy reads it, looks at Borris with a puzzled frown and glances again at the paper.

“The most crucial ingredient is your ticket receipt from the last time we went to the arcade?”

“What?” He responds with a slight guffaw. “My mistake,” he says, depositing the receipt back into place, “must be in one of my other pockets. We really should go back soon,” he remarks as he rummages through his jacket, “we’re really close to getting the tie dye bean bag chair... Ah!” He exclaims loudly, drawing a pamphlet out and handing it over.

“The international pepper exhibition? Sounds lovely,” Rudy comments, politely ignoring how the pamphlet in no way resembles the receipt he was given seconds ago.

“You see, you can’t use just any pepper for this recipe,” Borris explains, gently taking the pamphlet back before opening it with a flourish. He dramatically points inside, “this is the pepper we need.” Rudy inspects the image above Borris’ hoof; he sees a fairly standard pepper resting upon a pedestal, the pepper has a gorgeous red to yellow gradient color, what makes it visually unique though is its peculiar bright blue tip.

Rudy proceeds to read the blurb aloud, “view a specimen of the rarest and most recent pepper species: the Setting Sky pepper.”

“Bwagh!” Borris retches, much to Rudy’s alarm. “They try to call it that, but it is Ivan’s pepper!”

Rudy places an empathetic wing on Borris’ back, “my dear, what on earth are you talking about?”

Borris huffs and continues more calmly, “my great-grandfather Ivan used to be friends with a groundhog named Delmar. The two were neighboring farmers, and for many years Ivan worked to grow a new species of pepper, and one day he finally did it. But when he told Delmar about it, he said he’d help him announce and promote his new pepper. However, before my great-grandfather could officiate his legacy, Delmar somehow swooped in and took both his farm and the rights to the pepper!” Rudy pats and rubs Borris’ back as he proceeds with his story, “I only got to try his chili once, as a baby, but-“

Rudy’s wings fly up in the air, “woah, I’m sorry, wait!” He interjects incredulously, “should a baby have chili?!”

Borris chuckles and answers, “no, absolutely not. I don’t think my body ever recovered. But I’m still glad he did it! That flavor has been forever ingrained in my mind, and my tastebuds, and possibly my intestines.” Rudy grimaces. “The point is, when I saw this pamphlet at the hot springs I knew that it was fate!” His enthusiasm softens and his voice becomes almost hushed, “what I want to do, well, it could be dangerous, and I will completely understand if you don’t-“

Rudy gently cups Borris’ face, gazing at him with a tender intensity. Placing a soft kiss atop his head, Rudy asks, “how can I help?”

After a long ski lift ride, the two arrive at the lodge hosting the exhibition. Rudy stops Borris just before entering. “Borris, my dear, my love, my life,” he begins gingerly, “I will follow you through this but I have to ask, are you sure this is how you want to do this?”

Borris gives him a determined nod and says, “I’m sure.”

“Alright,” Rudy responds with a reluctant smile and they both reach into the duffel bag Borris brought up. They donned the final pieces of their disguises.

“Boy howdy!” Borris hollers upon entering, his naturally thick accent intermingling with his false one, “this sure is a hootenanny, ain’t it, Jean?” Borris tips his ten gallon hat in Rudy’s direction.

“I-it certainly is,” though he is caught off guard, Rudy’s is able to maintain an impeccable french accent.

Despite the flashy entrance, the pair seem to garner little attention as the log ladened building bustles with excited pepper enthusiasts.

Rudy tuts as he adjusts his fake pencil mustache, “shall we look around?”

“Sounds like a plan partner!”

The large show floor is filled with: booths offering specialty pepper based dishes, pepper fanalia, booths informing of the latest in pepper innovations, and most importantly, an aisle dedicated to showcasing rare, unique and record setting peppers.

“There it is!” Borris yells, his boots clicking and clomping as he races towards the desired prize. Rudy waddles after him, barely catching his beret before it hits the ground.

Borris slows as he approaches, takes off his aviators, and whispers reverently, “Ivan’s pepper.” He wipes away a single tear as Rudy catches up to him.

Before them is a row displaying prominent peppers such as: the world’s hottest pepper, both the world’s smallest and largest peppers, a pepper shaped like a magic lamp, and of course, Ivan’s pepper. The peppers rest upon tall pedestals, underneath glass cases and surrounded by velvet ropes.

Borris leans in and reads the info block. “They are difficult to grow?” he questions, his guise dropping in frustration, “they lie! My great-grandfather told my mother that those peppers grow easier than back fur! That was the whole point of his wo-“

Rudy chuckles awkwardly, “relax, mon amour.” Borris follows Rudy’s subtle gesturing and notices the various security personnel stationed in the peripheries. He looks back at Ivan’s pepper gleaming radiantly under the spotlights and snorts.

“Yer right,” he mutters, his accent somehow more exaggerated than before. “I lost my cool, but I’m saddled up and ready to ride again, how ‘bout you partner?”

“O-oui,” Rudy replies, struggling to choke back his laughter as Borris twirls his fake handlebar mustache.

They go back to drifting amongst the crowd, while covertly scoping around. Suddenly, Rudy gets a glint in his eyes as he points Borris towards a distant corner. He nods and the two part ways.

Borris meanders to a food stand near the rare peppers display. He orders a stuffed pepper and quickly gobbles it down with feverish delight.

“YEEEE HAW!” Borris hollers, the fringes on his vest flailing as he leaps up and clicks his heels. This garners the fearful and curious attention of the other critters around him. “Why I reckon this delectable morsel did spark a diddy in my heart, and I simply cannot contain it, I must," he pauses before melodically yelling, "SIIIIING!" He then, with full volume and vigor, proceeds to sing an operatic melody in perfect Italian.

A large crowd slowly encompasses him as they become more enraptured by the enchanting performance.

Suddenly as his aria reaches its crescendo, the glass cases shatter. Creatures shriek and jump as the room simultaneously goes dim. The only illumination coming from some of dawn’s remaining scattered light leaking in through the windows and skylight. Guards scatter trying to quell the chaos. Some try to calm the crowd, others search to fix the lights, and some go to protect the now vulnerable rare peppers. A large maned wolf guard reaches to secure the Setting Sky pepper but before she is able to do so she is shoved aside by a barreling Borris.

“Sorry,” he apologizes as Rudy swoops in through the now cleared path and nabs the pepper midair. He drops it into the satchel around his neck and the two dodge and dash out the exit.

With great haste, they round the corner and unbury the duffel bag they had hidden in the snow. After rapidly changing into ski clothes, Borris straps into a pair of skis, Rudy hooks his legs around Borris’ midsection, and they begin descending down the mountain.

It is not long after that the mountain police and Snow Patrol are chasing after them on their own snow vehicles of various sorts.

Rudy looks back as the once distant blaring of sirens steadily grows louder. “We won’t be able to keep this distance for long!” Rudy shouts.

Borris glances around trying to quickly assess the situation. “Do you think you can handle some sharp turns?”

Rudy gulps, “I can try,” he replies sheepishly.

“Then head towards the trees!” Borris directs. Rudy spreads his wings and steers them onto the forested path. This maneuver easily shakes the band Snow Patrol and the mountain police who were riding snowmobiles, however, the large portion of police riding skis and snowboards are unperturbed and continue their pursuit.

A vast shift in light washes over them as they enter the forest. The little light they had is heavily blocked by the towering pine trees and the incoming armada of snow clouds. Though the snowfall itself is gentle, the speed they’re traveling at fiercens it. With the wind and snow pushing against them, Rudy begins to quiver.

Borris, feeling the rippling through his back, reassuringly yells, “You can do this!”

“R-right!” Rudy answers, trying to match Borris’ confidence. Displaying great elegance and focus he swerves through winding trees as if gliding through the clouds.

While some officers fumble and fall behind, most are able to keep up with the duo’s movements.

Rudy groans as his eyes dart around, “I have to find some-“ He gasps with a jolt, “there!” Beneath his goggles his eyes spark with adrenaline. “You have to crouch!” he commands.

“Understood,” Borris responds complying immediately. Lowering to the ground, Rudy angles his wings accordingly and they both speed forward. They pickup momentum as they charge towards a fallen tree resting precariously against a living tree. They narrowly manage to slide through the small gap. A sharp wince escapes Rudy though, as one of his wings, which he isn’t able to draw in fast enough, gets scraped against the harsh bark.

“Ru-!”

“I’m fine,” Rudy quickly interjects.

“Really?” Borris asks, his voice barely rising above the wind.

“Yes,” sensing his insecurity, he states with bold sincerity, “I promise.” He feels the tension slightly release from Borris’ back. “We have to focus.”

When Rudy looks back he notices a significant number of guards have fallen behind, leaving behind around a dozen officers still tailing them.

“How many are there?” Borris inquires.

“A lot.”

“Well, I have an idea,” he pauses, “but it's risky.”

“We’re already this far,” Rudy remarks, “so let’s try it.”

“Okay. Take a right out of the woods.”

“On it!” Rudy responds making the sharpest right turn possible through the trees.

The area is not much brighter and the wind and snow become more intense without the thick arboreal barrier.

Ahead of them is a mostly empty clearing aside from a few natural elements, and a shabby looking abandoned ramp lying just in front of a several foot wide chasm.

“I was wrong!” Rudy shrieks, “this is too risky!”

“Please,” Borris pleads, “I know this will work!” Rudy pauses before letting out an ever-intensifying groan as he shifts into an aerodynamic position.

The police start closing the gap between them but before they get too close Borris and Rudy hit the ramp. It wobbles but remains steady. Borris tightens his legs and Rudy spreads his wings with great gusto right as Borris makes the leap.

The two soar through the air, Borris strains to remain rigid, and Rudy to both keep his grip on Borris, and to outstretch his wings and catch as much updraft as possible.

For a moment they glide, and it feels as if the chasm below them is slowly stretching, like the landing before them is getting further and further away. Just as it feels like they’re too low to land, Borris’ skis crunch upon the snowy ledge. They land shakily, and their speed is greatly reduced but they are able to continue forward.

Behind them, an ocelot guard leading the pack readies for the same jump. However, when she leaps she is unable to get the needed momentum, and she begins to plummet. The guard nearest to her, a large crane, releases herself from her snowboard and dives to catch her comrade. A moment passes before the two arise from the depths, now chasing as a pair.

"I'm glad they're okay, obviously, but now they're copying our maneuver!" Rudy states with alarm.

For most of the officers, this scene ignites and solidifies their reluctance to continue the chase. Three guards however choose to brave the jump and land it with concerning finesse.

"Aaaaand three more are still after us as well."

"Now that's what I call five alarm chili," Borris loudly jokes.

The remaining mountain guards look at each other and simultaneously turn off their sirens. For what feels like a long moment, the only sounds filling the scene are that of: snow falling and being flattened, and air whistling through the rustling pine needles.

When they turn their sirens back on, a new sound is heard and a loud, “BOOoooOOOoooOOOooo!” blares across the mountainside.

Borris grumbles with great disappointment, “everyone’s a critic.”

“Now is not the time! They’re almost- GuAgh!” Rudy squawks, for in their distraction the two accidentally hit a partially buried stump. Borris goes partially airborne and has to fight to keep his skis from crossing. With much strain, Rudy also tries to keep from crashing.

However, with an unconscious whipping of his head, the satchel resting upon his body flies off.

“No!” shrieks Rudy as he watches the bag get yanked away by the wind.

The guards who were nearly within paw’s reach of the duo, veer off to follow the pepper.

“I-I’m so sorry,” Rudy stutters frantically, “there’s still time, we can go back, we can-!”

“No,” Borris solemnly interrupts, “it’s over.”

It's dark by the time they arrive back at their den. The falling snow is already helping to cover their tracks as they enter and silently slump against their front door.

Rudy is the first one to break the silence with his laughter and Borris is soon infected too, both honking and snorting boisterously.

“I can’t believe it,” Rudy says between laughs, “we actually did it!”

“We did!” Borris chimes in triumphantly, tackle hugging Rudy.

Rudy hisses, “ah ah, my wing.”

Borris abruptly releases him and scans his wings with great concern. He ghosts over the wound once he finds it, the scratch isn’t too deep but it is clearly tender. “I’m so sorry my love.”

“It's fine,” Rudy attempts to insist.

Borris tuts, “I shall attend to it. Please,” he gestures, “sit on the couch.”

“Alright, Dr. Borris,” he responds sarcastically while still complying with his request.

Borris finds a first aid kit and carefully addresses his injury. After he wraps it he says, “and now for the healing kiss,” and he delicately grazes his bandages.

“I’m feeling better already,” Rudy softly remarks as he plants a peck on Borris’ cheek. “What do we do now?”

“Well,” Borris begins answering as he goes back for the duffel bag left by the door. He rummages through the bag until he pulls out a satchel identical to the one Rudy wore earlier. “We just committed grand larceny,” he states, plucking Ivan’s pepper with admiration. Carrying the pepper to the kitchen he continues, “so I figure we should lay low for a while.”

Silverware clatters as Borris pulls out the drawer and Rudy quickly asks him, “is there any way I can help?”

“Just rest,” he coos. Drawing out the necessary utensils, Borris suggests, “we’ll lay low for a little bit. Then we’ll visit my mom and sister.” He works to gingerly scoop out the seeds. “We’ll give them some chili, obviously, and we’ll also give some of the seeds to Gretta.” Pausing, he puts the seeds into containers, handling them the same as one might treat porcelain. “I thought we could keep two to see if they can grow in frigid conditions. I’m hoping people will be more willing to believe us if we can prove that they’re lying about how hard they are to grow.”

Rudy nods, listening contentedly, “that makes sense to me.”

“As for tonight,” Borris says, shifting his attention from the pepper to the cabinet, “we clearly don't have time for chili, so I figured I could make pasta and prep the chili for tomorrow night." Rudy sighs wearily as Borris starts boiling water. "Do you not like that? I could make something else," Borris responds as he approaches Rudy with nurturing softness.

"It's not that," Rudy answers. "It's just that you promised I'd be warmed by your chili and now that we're not having it I don't know what to do to get rid of this chill," he says with a coy grin.

Borris smirks widely, "I could warm you up with my kisses," he says so eagerly he barely finishes his sentence before showering Rudy in tiny kisses.

"I thought you had healing kisses?" Rudy asks between giggles.

"It can be both."

"I see," Rudy states giddily.

The sounds of laughter, kisses and bubbling water filling the warm den slowly melds with the outside sound of softly falling snow.

#haley #I don't know if you remember sending me this #but I finally did it #its-a me portfolio!

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