#what if we fell in love in every iteration of our life | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tryst-art-archive · 1 year

Text

December 2010: "Until I Fall Asleep"

This is the second iteration of this story, and quite different from the first in that it's in Calez's perspective rather than Dani's.

---Story follows---->

I used to keep a photograph of Dani silhouetted in a window in my pocket. In it, she stood on a desk, balancing her weight on her left leg, the right bent just so, her arms languid lines extending to the window frame, holding her loosely in space. She wore a short dress that clung to her and heels that boosted her three inches. The glare of a Detroit street obliterated the interior details of her body, allowing only for a single line down her side and along her arms. There was just enough light to see the pink-tipped gray of her hair.

It was a photo from one of the richer periods of our wanderings. Dancing across the country and accidentally pirouetting into a Detroit winter, we found a cheap apartment overlooking one of the city’s busier streets. Michael took up work in a local night club, engaging himself as an exotic dancer, his perennial career. I found a part-time job in a pizza place and spent my spare hours on street corners, freezing my fingers on the ice of my flute in exchange for the pocket change cell phone-wielding citizens were willing to spare. Dani took to babysitting.

We pooled our funds to afford rent and buy groceries and indulged ourselves in the luxury of a roof over our heads. At that time, Dani and I had been homeless for two years, Michael for I don’t know how many years longer, and had spent the previous winters in the southern parts of the country. This was the first time that we had lived within the confines of architecture since we had followed Michael out of southern Florida and into a life of musical vagrancy.

We shared a bed for the four or five months that we stayed in that run-down, two-room apartment. I slept between Dani and Michael, forming a chain of spoons. Michael curled into my back as I curled into Dani’s, and her arms stretched down over the side of the mattress so that when I woke in the mornings, dull sunlight caught the olive of her skin and the pink fringe of her spider silk hair.

She had gone gray in elementary school due to an otherwise minor thyroid problem, and by the time I met her in the beginning of our adolescence, she had embraced the color. I remember sitting at lunch with Dani and her admiring circle of misfits, my hands in my lap and my mind full of scales. Even at thirteen I was struck by her. She stared me down with ice cream green eyes and rechristened me Calez. Some days or weeks later, when she and the rest of the school discovered that I played the flute, she lauded my skill with more admiration than anyone else. She noticed that, when I became bored, I harmonized to the other flutes, and she begged to learn music. I taught her as best I could, and she became skilled in keeping rhythm and could sing a tune with everyday beauty. She danced when she made music, and before long we spent our time making melodies and dancing, laughing as we cast our emotions to the air.

I fell in love with her quickly and quietly. I became the pillar that she stabilized her life upon. She told me everything there was to tell about her life, about the father who left her and her mother behind or about every boy she thought she loved who left her behind, crying on my shoulder. I held her when she needed comfort, laughed with her when she needed mirth, and shared only the secrets that wouldn’t upset her. For her, I was the smiling face with the half-lidded eyes. In the Detroit mornings, she would roll over, stretching, and smile at me as if I were not a man. Then she would sit up and reach over me to tickle Michael into wakefulness and laugh at him as if he were not gay. Then she would tell us what she dreamed, and I would forget why I slept between them. Michael would smile vaguely, mind clouded with sleep, forgetting to be untouchable.

Michael came to us in the tangible heat of a Florida summer. We had graduated from high school and filed our applications to the University of Miami. Dani intended college as no more than a buffer to keep her from the working world; I had declined to go to Berklee College of Music in order to stay close to Dani. By that time, our musical sessions had taken us onto the street corners of Miami where my flute and Dani’s dancing gave us enough pocket change for booze and weed and ice cream. Dani claimed that it was the stream of thirtysecond notes, mordents, and trills that slipped out of my flute that brought us the cash; I knew it was her peculiar appearance and untamed dancing that drew the crowd’s attention. A tambourine in one hand, or perhaps she held a washboard that day, she spun on one booted foot, her scarf echoing her circles, her multitude of bracelets jangling. Then, as now, she wore her hair in an unkempt bun so that the pink tips of it made fireworks behind her head and free-falling segments framed her face.

That summer a new club targeted at young gay men had opened in the city’s party district. Dani being straight, and myself being bisexual, we meandered down to it on a Thursday night and found a battalion of tipsy twenty-somethings waiting to get in.

“Oh, we are so jamming near here,” Dani said.

We picked a spot just far enough away as to avoid the drone from the bass pounding away within the club and just close enough to catch the attention of the waiting patrons. We made a killing that first night; the clientele enjoyed the side-show and sent members of their party over to leave bills in my flute case. Dani flirted with them lightly as they came and went, careless of sexuality and gender, playful in speech as in her dance.

I closed my eyes on the scene, falling into my flute, aware only of the keys under my fingers and the way the air stepped aside for Dani’s body. Countless measures into the evening, I felt her movement stop, and she shook my arm. “Did you see that?” she said. Her eyes were wide with schoolgirl glee, and her mouth struggled with a grin too large to contain.

I shook my head.

She made an exasperated noise, rolling her eyes. “You have to look tomorrow night. The dancers from the club came out, man! They were watching, and this one—my god, you have to see him, Calez! You will shit your pants, I kid you not.”

We returned the next night, Dani bouncing on her toes, goose bumps on her skin in spite of the heat curling around the buildings, lying heavily on our limbs. I drew music from my instrument, and Dani sang that night. When she stopped, the absence of melody popped my eyes open, landing them on a slim figure leaning against a nearby brick wall. He tapped the ash from the cigarette he held in one hand, his other propping up the opposing elbow. He wore a light sweater in spite of the heat; I imagine he wore it as an act of modesty as he later told us he didn’t wear a shirt in the bar.

Dani struggled not to stare at him, and no wonder. His skin was like sand, his hair was like terracotta, and it flopped appealingly in front of his highlighter blue eyes. He watched us with a lazy fascination, entirely silent as his fellow dancers clamored around him. They joked with Dani while she danced, shouting encouragement, enjoying our enthusiasm. She laughed with them, of course. She bantered with them, though her minty eyes returned again and again to the Sahara man with Antarctica eyes. My own tree bark irises flickered between the two, watching Dani’s interest grow, watching this latest object of her desire smoke lazily, watching the by now familiar writhing gurgle of jealousy bubble through my gut and up into my chest.

The leaning figure’s attention focused on me then, and he happened to catch my eye. He lowered his cigarette and flashed a charming smile full of commercial-perfect teeth before throwing the butt to the ground and rubbing it out under one scuffed shoe. He led the other dancers back inside.

Dani whipped around, decorative scarf flapping behind her. “Well?”

“Well.” I eyed the door to the bar for a moment. I had to admit that that brief moment of eye contact had sent a shiver up my spine. “He’s striking,” I said.

“Striking? Is that it?”

I shrugged. “I can’t get excited about someone I don’t know.” I grinned and elbowed her gently in the side. “You’re prettier anyway,” I said.

She punched me in the arm and called me stupid, and I laughed, returning to my flute.

The dancers visited with us on almost every night that we stood on that corner. We became accustomed to their presence, and it came as a surprise when, on a slower evening, the blue-eyed man said, “You two are pretty good. Real love of music. I’m a fan of yours. My name is Michael.”

In Detroit, Michael briefly entertained a lover. This wasn’t the first occasion that he’d had one since we’d known him, but it was the first occasion that the relationship occurred where we could see it. Before that, he had simply gone to the home of the beau of the day, claiming that his own was unfit for lovemaking, glossing over the fact that his home at the time was the underside of a bridge or the forgotten attic of a church. The lovers believed him, oblivious to the subtle signs of his vagrancy. All three of us are careful to disguise our homelessness. We leave my flute case open for funds as we make our song and our dance, and usually those funds morph into a supply of cosmetics and food.

Michael is religious in the cleaning of his teeth, and Dani is fanatical in the maintenance of her hair. We bathe in rivers, sneak into unrented apartments to borrow the showers, steal sleep and food where we can, carry stolen knives to defend ourselves from anyone who decides to dislike us. We’re easy to spot, Dani and Michael being the miracles of genetic chance that they are, and we aim to appear to thrive even when we are barely surviving. It’s the easiest for me. My hair is a mop the color of dirt; my skin is neither good nor bad; my eyes are sepia. My grin is too lopsided and vague to be untrustworthy, and I blend into crowds. I scruffily pass as normal without undue effort.

But in Detroit we had unusual wealth that gave us a ramshackle home, and Michael brought his beau of the week there. On a Friday night, I came home to the unmistakable sound of Michael’s conquest, and a tightness in the air that made me look for Dani. She had curled herself up in the chair by the desk at our one remarkable window which overlooked the street and filled the room with dim, shifting light. She wasn’t in tears, but the rigidness of her face and tension in her poise said she held them back. She stared out down the street, and in an odd way, I could hear her thinking.

I laid my hand on her shoulder, leaned down, and pressed my cheek against the top of her head. “Hi,” I said.

It took a moment, but she managed a faint greeting. “We’re on the couch tonight,” she said.

I nodded. “We’ll get him back some day,” I said, squeezing her shoulder.

She smiled for half an instant. “I wish he wouldn’t do this.”

“I know. We could ask him not to, but he’d pout.”

The smile lasted this time. “That’d be annoying.”

We sat together in silence for a few minutes longer, studying the cars slipping down the thoroughfare. I went to make the couch sleeping-appropriate for Dani, gathering blankets as I crossed the apartment so that I could make a nest on the floor for myself. Behind me, I heard Dani saying, “We should have a two-man party. We’ll get our rock on and take pictures and leave them around so Michael’s all jealous when he kicks his boy-thing out.”

“Sure. Do we have a camera?”

Dani appeared at my side, bent like a butler, holding an instant camera out to me. “We do indeed, my dear sir.” She laughed. “One of the kids gave it to me. She was dressin’ up like a princess and shit, all ‘Oh, Dani, Dani! Take a picture of me!’ It was adorable, man. I was like ‘Alright, I’ll go get these developed and give them to you next time I see you, okay?’ But I didn’t use all the pictures on dress-up. I figured I’d save the last few shots for myself. It’s like a tip, yaknow?” She stood upright and shook the camera under my nose. “Bless my foresight, eh?”

I smiled and took the camera, watching as she pulled on some shoes and clambered onto the desk. Once there, she began gyrating and throwing her arms in the air, pretending she was in a crowded club, reverberating with the bass line in a techno song. I snapped a few pictures of her dance, set the camera aside, and jumped onto the desk beside her, finding the rhythm from the sway of her wrists and twist of her hips.

We danced until after Michael and his beau had fallen asleep. Laughing, we hugged when our dance grew tiring, and Dani turned to the window. I hopped off the desk, returning to the camera. Dani, leaning into the window, said, “I hope we move out soon.”

I snapped my picture of her then.

After Michael introduced himself to us, that first time, our musical sessions on the sidewalk expanded to include a break period in which we talked with him and the other dancers. He was reticent about himself but similarly disinclined toward idle, polite chat. He spoke the most when his fellow dancers were absent, and they became more and more so; I began to suspect, as the months rolled on, that he was asking them to stay behind.

“How old are you, anyway?” Dani asked once.

Michael drew on his cigarette. “Older than you, but not by too much. I’d be out of college now, if I’d stuck with that.”

“You went to college?”

He nodded. “Up north, yeah. Studied music, dance, theatre, musical theatre just to roll it all in one. They taught me all the technicalities. Here’s how you sing a high C, here’s how you approach a part and develop a character, here’s how you waltz or salsa or tango. This is an aria, this is a ragtime, so forth, so on. Then they’d hand me a project and say, ‘Be creative!’ all full of bubbles, so I’d do what came natural. I’d take all those things, pick out elements, and throw out the rest, blend it all together to see what I got, just do what felt right.” The end of the cigarette lit up, casting his hair into sharp relief. “They didn’t like it.”

“So you left?” Dani’s eyes were wide, her body taut with admiration.

Michael didn’t answer right away. The corner of his mouth moved slightly, caught between responses. “No,” he finally said. “They failed me out.” He looked away from us.

“Oh,” Dani said, sagging slightly.

I tapped my flute against my shoulder. “People seem to like you, though.”

“Yeah!” Dani said. “I mean, look at that line, man! You’re drawing a crowd, and it’s a friggin’ Wednesday.”

Michael shook his head. “Dancing half-naked for a bunch of drunk men is fun in its own way, but it isn’t dance.”

Another time, Dani asked him, “So where do you live?”

“A bit of everywhere.” Her critical stare prompted him onward. “I don’t have a house or an apartment or anything, if an address is what you’re asking for.”

“What?”

He didn’t say anything, and Dani turned to me. I shrugged.

Michael rubbed his cigarette, barely begun, out on the wall. “You stay in one place too long, they make you play by their rules. Keep moving, and they can’t find you.” He walked into the club.

We stayed in Detroit until the winter passed by, then we headed east, a direction Michael had been reluctant to go. “Too many memories,” he said. We went south through Ohio, following the border of the United States and Canada, tracing along lakeside shores. In Pennsylvania we stole a tent from an unsuspecting SUV and pitched it in a cow field. In the morning, Michael and I awoke to a scream from Dani; a cow had poked its head into the tent.

Michael refused to pass through New York, urging us through New Jersey, touching New York soil only briefly to enter Conneticut. In Rhode Island, we found our way to New Port and managed to spend two nights in one of the smaller McMansions before security guards realized we were there and chased us out. We lost them down along the rocky coast which we followed up into Massachusetts. In Boston, we wrapped ourselves in Salvation Army blankets like Scotchbrite.

We entered New Hampshire in time for another winter, pushing us into the cheapest accommodations we could find and the least appalling jobs on hand. I framed my picture of Dani and left it in the center of our kitchen table. At that time, Dani’s work hours at a breakfast place didn’t line up neatly with Michael’s at yet another club and mine as the janitor to the same club. With Dani largely absent from our waking lives, Michael and I began to discuss matters that we’d tacitly agreed to ignore before, slipping into a surreal degree of honesty.

“So Dani,” Michael said, evening after evening, until at last I said, “What about her, Michael?”

He studied his fingernails. “You tell me.”

“We’ve known each other for years. She’s beautiful and funny and kind when she wants to be. She’s got a good head on her shoulders, even though she doesn’t always use it. She loves to dance and break free, and she’s got more balls than me, that’s for sure.”

Michael barked a laugh. “I’m pretty sure you’ve never said that many words in a row to me ever.” When I didn’t respond, he said, “You’re in love with her.” Then, “You know she doesn’t feel the same way, Calez, and if she doesn’t by now, she’s never going to.”

“Please don’t tell me to move on.”

He shook his head. “You already gave up your life, didn’t you?”

We were silent for a moment. “She’s in love with you,” I told him.

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I know. Her and everyone else with eyes.” He stared at me, piercing with his electric blue. “Except you that is.”

I allowed myself a grin. “Heart’s already spoken for, man.”

He threw his head back, laughing. I swept gum wrappers off the floor. When I looked up, Michael was leaning into my face. “You know,” he said, “you’re a good doormat, Calez.” He caught me by the chin, studied my face, and sauntered out of the club, through the snow to the bed where Dani lay curled in sleep, alone.

Toward the end of the summer before our theoretical college years, Dani’s and my late night trips into Miami became more infrequent. Familial duties, the purchasing of collegiate goods, and the way we drew out the process of packing tore at our energy, so that we welcomed the peace of our beds. When we did step onto the streets, we found that Michael’s cigarette breaks lasted longer and longer. He spoke more and more freely, and though the specific details of his life remained obscured, we began to understand that he had let us into a confidence he shared with no one else, and when I mentioned this to Dani, he won the whole of her trust.

At the end of August, Michael wandered out of the club without his cigarette, walking up to us and coughing politely to stop our music. “I’m leaving soon,” he said. “Seems to me you probably are too, but you don’t seem to be planning on going too far.”

Dani’s face fell. “You’re going?”

“I’ve stayed here longer than I wanted to.” He turned his head aside but watched us from the corner of his eye. “I’m thinking that maybe you two have too.”

Dani’s hand rested on my forearm; her fingers gripped me.

“You see,” Michael said. “I’m homeless, in a sense. I don’t live anywhere, I just wander around, dancing. But it’s pretty hard to dance without music, you know? And you two are quite the musicians.”

Dani locked eyes with me, her breath faint and her body quivering. Her entire being shook with the desire to escape the mundane apathy of her life, to escape the father who left like so many other fathers, and the mother she unjustly despised like so many others despised theirs, and the high schools and colleges where she learned and would learn trivia through a haze of smoke, and the way that she woke up in the mornings, eyes crusty with sleep and chest filled with the feeling that she was going nowhere and never would find herself anywhere. Her soul wept for the chance to shed the detritus of her life, to shed the fact that it was essentially unremarkable. She stood on the cusp of finding the excitement she so craved, and the cost was all the life she had lived before, all that she had ever been or had, and all the safety that a dull life afforded.

Staring into her eyes, watching her soul beg me, I saw that there was one thing she couldn’t leave behind. One aspect of her life, one pillar in it, that she couldn’t stray from.

I looked at Michael and said, “Now?”

“Yeah,” Michael said. “Before the ex-boss figures out I just took the cashbox.”

I would apologize to my parents via payphone several weeks and two states later.

After New Hampshire, we trekked through muddy Maine and clambered over the landscape of Vermont. We picked up the Appalachian Trail there and followed it down to Maryland. We took a detour out to see Washington D.C., walked through Virginia and began to head west. In Kentucky we found a railway line that took us further west faster, and we napped in the lullaby of its clamor, Michael and Dani each with their heads in my lap, the photograph of Dani wrinkled and creased in the folds of my pocket.

We spent some time wandering up and down California, sleeping in its abandoned places. The corners of my photograph turned on themelves and were born away. The edges tore and the image scratched. In a Los Angeles bar, our bellies full of vodka and rum and gin paid for with flute money, Michael drew Dani and I into himself and kissed us both on our mouths. “Here’s to a beautiful marriage,” he said. “You are the loveliest concubines a scamp could ask for.”

Dani reeled under the impression of his lips and the fog in her mind. She cupped my face in her hands and stole what remained of Michael’s kiss from my jaw, giggling as she pulled away.

Michael smiled wolfishly and fished the photograph of Dani from my pocket. “Barkeep,” he said. “Another round if you please.” His gin and tonic oozed a circle into the face of the photo.

On the last night in Detroit, Michael curled into my right side and Dani into my left. I didn’t sleep. Instead I worshipped the ceiling over my head, I worshipped the comfort under my back, the walls that kept out the wind, the locks that kept out the fellow vagrants, the muggers, the gangbangers, the filth.

In the morning, Dani rolled awake and peered at me. “Did you sleep?”

“Not really,” I said.

“Silly,” she said. “We’ve got some serious walkin’ to do.”

I smiled, stroking her hair. “I know. I’m just going to miss this place.”

A little crinkle formed in her brow. Her mouth opened and closed, searching for the words or the breath to say them with. “Do you. Do you miss Florida sometimes? Do you ever want to go back?”

“Do you?”

“No.”

“Why would I then?”

She buried her face in my shoulder. “Good,” she said. Then, “Oh! I didn’t show you the pictures you took.” She rummaged in the bedside drawer for them and spread them out across our legs. Michael slept on.

We admired some shots and giggled at others. As Dani began to pile them back together to put away, she pulled one out. “This one’s all arty,” she said, passing it to me.

I agreed, and she said, “You want it?”

“I… sure!”

“It’s yours then.” She poked her tongue out at me and shuffled around to the other side of the bed to wake Michael.

In the picture, she stood on a desk, balancing her weight on her left leg, the right bent just so, her arms languid lines extending to the window frame, holding her loosely in space. She wore a short dress that clung to her and heels that boosted her three inches. The glare of a busy Detroit street obliterated the interior details of her body, allowing only for a single line down her side and along her arms. There was just enough light to see the pink-tipped gray of her hair.

Some hours later, she said, “I don’t think I’ve ever had any pictures of you.”

I said, “That’s okay. I’m right here.”

After the L.A. bar forced us out with its closing, we wandered down unfamiliar roads, hanging off one another and crooning brokenly to stray cats and unperturbed raccoons. We walked into a run-down motel and rented a room for the night, vaguely feeling that it was a worthwhile thing to do. The door to the room closed behind us, and Dani flopped backwards onto the bed, laughing. Michael sat at her head, curling her hair around his fingers, watching her mirth fondly. I crossed the room and returned their kisses of earlier. Michael allotted me another, and Dani sat up, taking both our hands and drawing us deeper into the bed.

We romped through our obliterated memories so that all I recalled afterwards was Dani’s voice in the darkness, singing softy in time to Michael’s breathing until I fell asleep.

In the morning, we looked like strangers, and I couldn’t find my photo of Dani. Michael had left it at the bar. “I’ll see if it’s still there,” he said, stepping out.

I sat and stared at the tumult of the bed sheets.

Dani touched my shoulder, then wrapped her arms around me, resting her chin on it. Her mouth opened to say something, perhaps even formed words, but no sound came out.

I held onto her arms, squeezing them in response.

We tidied the room and left to find Michael.

#old writing #writing archive #short story #fiction #prose #10s #2010 #Age 19 #oc writing #original characters #Dani #Michael #Calez #assignments #homelessness #musicians #I remember one of my classmates got mad at me over this story #glorifying homelessness was the problem

2 notes · View notes

albrechtsenalbrechtsen88 · 2 years

Text

Bvlgari Baggage

Brimming with beautiful details and sophisticated finishes, the gathering is the end result of ingenious methods, completely mastered by Bvlgari’s expert and expert artisans. A collision between jewelry inspiration and leather goods artistry, every creation is a sophisticated display of recent refinement, meticulous consideration to detail, and visionary craftsmanship. In 2017, Bulgari opened a new jewelry manufacturing headquarters in Valenza. The largest in Europe, with a complete area of 14,000 sq. metres , the Manufacture has been given a Gold LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) certification for sustainability in its design. The facility was constructed over the previous residence of the primary goldsmith in Valenza, Francesco Caramora. The buildings comply with the model of a Roman domus, and are built around a central courtyard. There is a continuing need for designer baggage that aren’t what you see on everyone, and Bvlgari fills that want. Here is a better have a look at my personal favourite baggage from the brand, the Bvlgari Serpenti Forever luggage. Each options distinctive lines together with the long-lasting snake head closure which is the house emblem. The brass gold-plated snake head options black and white enamel with green malachite eyes. It works superbly on the bags, providing a focal point that exquisitely stands out. Italian luxurious model Bvlgari is renowned for its high-class jewelry, watches, and purses. We came across Bvlgari in Harrods and determined to evaluation the best Bvlgari Serpenti bags we fell in love with. It’s no surprise that their luggage are a variety of the most desirable luxurious trend equipment in the world. The gentle gold chain strap is harking back to the curved physique of a snake. The impact is, in fact, heightened by the classic serpents head decoration above the fastening. Compact however surprisingly spacious, this is normally a excellent, chic possibility for days out. An integral part of trend, purses and purses have been indispensable accessories ever since we started to carry around personal objects. bvlgari crossbody bag In 2011, Bulgari signed a strategic alliance with LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA, the world's main luxury group. The settlement was primarily based on a stock transfer of the Bulgari household's shares in Bulgari S.p.A. to LVMH, an all-share deal for €4.three billion ($6.0 billion), greater than LVMH had supplied for any other firm. Make your presents even more distinctive with Bvlgari’s personalization service. You can personalize chosen Bvlgari luggage and small leather goods purchased on-line with our complimentary sizzling stamping service. Select the characters and the gem-inspired foil colour you wish to have embossed in your leather-based good to make someone feel particular with a truly one-of-a-kind creation. Snakeskin is quickly falling out of favour, however it's a traditional, and this python bag is undeniably stunning. The differing shades of blue that cowl this textured clutch bag give it a way of depth that almost brings it to life. Bulgari mint condition massive bronze leather-based shopper with gold tone hardware. The Italian luxurious model partnered with Ambush’s Yoon Ahn on a capsule assortment that’s a part of Bvlgari’s ongoing “Serpenti Through the Eyes Of” series, which launched in 2017. Bella Hadid stars within the campaign for this newest iteration, alongside Ellen Rosa and Xiao Wen Ju. In Rome, early mornings are chronicled by glittering marble and the glow of a rising sun. For the "Radiance" spirit of Bulgari's new handbags, their design team captured Rome's luminescence via subtle tweaks on beloved items. A new Serpenti Bag hobo form, laser-cutting to imitate gleaming rays, and a shimmering jewelry box (p.s. it has a secret compartment on the bottom). No spring collection can neglect the floral. Energized by the vivid tones of Rome's flourishing gardens, Bulgari elevates pastels and gem tones alike. A cool-shaded rainbow even made its way onto the brand's ornate python pores and skin, hand-sponged to perfection. CR Fashion Book could earn cash from the merchandise featured on this web page. We only choose merchandise we hope you’ll love. wikipedia handbags

#replica bvlgari #best replica bvlgari bags #bvlgari bag #bvlgari serpenti bag #bvlgari bag sale #bvlgari crossbody bag

0 notes

dropsofmoonlightzine · 3 years

Text

Drops of Moonlight Zine: A 30th Anniversary Sailor Moon Fan Project

Because Sailor Moon is a Millennial like so many of us, next year she will have been around for 30 years. And because that’s HUGE, we’re gonna make a huge deal out of it, and we want you all to contribute!

Together, collaboratively, we are planning a friggin monster of a zine. A fan book. A bilingual fan book in both English and Japanese, by both English- and Japanese-speaking fans. A tribute to the show. Our theme? Post-canon. Everything and anything about these characters and this fandom since the curtain fell on all iterations of canon.

We want fics and fanart and doujinshi (fan manga) about what our favorite characters have been up to since Stars or the end of PGSM or even Parallel Sailor Moon. We want essays about anything from Sailor Moon’s impact on both your life and your culture to what fandom spaces have been up to in the past 30 years. We want cosplay photo love stories of adult Hotaru and Chibs, and we want documented walk-throughs of your Sailor Moon collection and what these pieces mean to you. We want it all and more.

So yes. This is gonna be big. It’s gonna be zine-exclusive, and it’s all for charity: All proceeds of this project that exceed its production costs will be donated in full to Archives of our Own and the Organisation for Transformative Works.

Are you interested? Are you with us? We’re super excited, and we want you all to be a part of this, every corner of the fandom!

For more info on what to expect and where to sign up, head on over here!

この記事の日本語版はこちらです。

#DropsofMoonlightZine #PearlJubilee #sailormoonzine #zine #sailor-moon #sailor-moon-30th-anniversary #月の雫

657 notes · View notes

doctorofmagic · 3 years

Text

My thoughts on What If... Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?

The very title of the episode sends a shiver down my spine. And this is where we’re going to start.

~ long post under the cut ~

A year ago, I wrote this post as an attemp to dive into one of the most important traits in Doctor Strange’s personality: love. Stephen is a being made of love, made to love, no matter which interpretation you have when you watch Infinity War. If you don’t read comic books, you’ll understand the moment you meet Donna. You’ll begin to understand how her death reshaped his entire subjectivity out of fear of failing, being powerless and unable to control everything around him (especially death), thus the arrogant and yet a disaster of a man we all know.

Where do I even start? Stephen loved her sister deeply and felt responsible for her death. And then, slowly, he also lost his parents and his brother. He fell in love with Clea but he also pushed her away. He loved Zelma platonically and lied to her, which was enough for them to break their bond. He felt attracted to Kanna but screwed things up, even though they remain friends. He was forced to kill the Ancient One, the only father figure he had ever since his father died. And lastly, the only person who would never leave his side... also left. Yes, even Wong. Stephen has SO much love to give but he’s also afraid because he’s cursed. He truly believes his love in poison. And would you look at that? What If really delivered a story where this is actually true.

What If Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?

The level of understanding when it comes to the character is... inconceivable. What could possibly reshape Stephen into following a dark path but love? The very premise of the whole episode. This is so much more than a love letter. This is literally too much, in all senses.

Fine, let’s begin.

What if the best of intentions has very strange consequences?

No. You used the word “strange” for the pun but this is not the word. Nah-ah. I’d go with ATROCIOUS, for starters. Things are gonna escalate so quickly, my friends.

Seriously, tho? Christine is SO SO SO SO beautiful, they’re so cute together. I have this feeling that MCU!Stephen was quite toxic because of his arrogance and this is why they didn’t work out. But WhatIf!Stephen???????? He’s always praising her, teasing her in a healthy way, respecting her and listening to her. HE TRULY LOVES HER, I’M GONNA CRY ALL OVER AGAIN, PLEASE, NOT THE CRÈME BRÛLÉE, PLEASE

I’m going to leave this shot here because we need to go back to it later. Hold that thought.

And bonus points to “Yeah, well, I would call that quite remarkable.” / “Well, I would say the same about you.”

GODS. THE PAIN. STOP THE PAIN.

So in this reality, Stephen didn’t caused the car accident because he was checking his phone while driving. Also it was not the reckless attempt to pass the truck. Well, maybe it was the consequence of this act? The fact is, the car behind them loses control, which makes them crash. Does it matter? We’ll learn later that no, it doesn’t.

And yep... Christine dies. Have you noticed the shattered heart? Ah, the pain only gets better and better.

Again, Stephen blames himself. More than anything, this is so important because Stephen is all about guilt. We still need to meet Donna so we can add yet another layer of guilt. But the feeling exists. This is what corrupts Stephen’s heart and soul in all his iterations. This is what makes him the character I love so much. I love this SO. MUCH. In addition, his stubbornness to accept his condition. Man won’t take a no. This, this is Doctor Strange in character. Stop complaining about NWH Stephen, it’s pathetic.

Okay, “grief-stricken”, Stephen found the Mystic Arts and became a sorcerer. That’s when he learned about the Time Stone, the Eye of Agamotto and Dormammu. Nothing changes, he saves the universe. But time does not heal his deepest wound.

I love Wong so much. Every time Wong does something, the world is healed. Really. We’re going back to him as well but for now I’ll just leave this shot.

BUT STEPHEN, DOING SOMETHING RECKLESS? HE’D NEVAH

Aaaaaaaannnnnnd then he did.

He goes back in time. It’s been two years since he lost Christine. I think he reacted pretty nicely, despite the circumstances. Now let’s go back to that shot I said I was saving for later.

Stephen is so light-hearted here. Also, during the first time he lost Christine, he had no idea what “The Price is Right” was. He knows now, which means he probably tried to learn more about the show because of her, because of grief. HAHAHA MORE PAIN

AND THEN HE

AND THEN SHE DIES AGAIN

AND THEN HE KEEPS GOING BACK IN TIME

AND SHE KEEPS DYING

AND THE MUSIC

AND HIS VOICE

AND HE TRIES TO CHANGE FATE BUT IT CAN’T BE AVERTED

HE EVEN TRIES TO STAY AWAY FROM HER LIFE BUT SHE DIES ALL THE SAME, WHY

AND EVERY TIME THEY CRASH, HE FEELS THE PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL PAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN, WHY

I’M-- *ugly sobbing noises*

Apparently, not.

And this scene when he simply... closes his eyes before she dies again...?

This is where this episode had me in endless tears. It got me the four times I watched it. I’m dead serious.

Okay, so, next the Ancient One appears to Stephen, explaining that Christine’s death is an Absolute Point in time. It cannot be changed. Stephen needs the accident to become the Sorcerer Supreme and defeat Dormammu.

And this is where Stephen starts his journey into darkness. “Nothing is impossible, you taught me that. I only require more power.” Disobeying the Ancient One, Stephen then travels in time, seeking the Library of Cagliostro. Now, if you’re not aware of that, Cagliostro was a sorcerer who studied time in comics, and later became Sise-Neg (there’s a recent post on this because of the new Defenders run). It’s funny to think that Sise-Neg also destroyed the world when he became a god, however he grew past his pettiness and remade reality. Stephen did not possess such power, as we’re about to see.

PS: “Stop torturing yourself, Stephen.” Naur but he should use this line like a mantra. Especially comics!Stephen.

Not gonna lie, tho. This place reminds me of the Temple of the Vishanti from T&T (of course I was going to insert T&T somewhere, it’s me).

And of course they’d go for a pun with his name haha. I don’t know how to feel about this, tho. I feel like the episode is too heavy and dark for comedy. But it is what it is.

Okay but why some books are in cages??????????? And wow, it seems Cagliostro also gathered knowledge about several fields of magic.

And then Stephen learns that, in order to break an Absolute Point, he needs to absorb more power. This is when I went “oh-oh, here we go”.

And for real, is this Shuma-Gorath? Why are they keeping his name a secret? Is this the same creature from the first episode with Captain Carter, right? RIGHT? It has to be Shuma-Gorath.

Of course he tries to be polite and ends up all hurt haha. O’Bengh warns him about love but he will not listen. “Love can break more than your heart. It can shatter your mind.”/ “Is she worth the pain?”. Please, this is Stephen. He eats pain for breakfast.

Also, also, let’s take a break. We’re finally going to get monsterf0cker tentacle-lover Stephen Strange. It will cost us everything but here we goooooooooooo (yes, I went frame by frame for your more obscure fanservice needs)

Gods, I love this sequence so much it hurts. Okay, here we go.

Shmebulock???????????

AND HE STOLE THE CAPE??????????? AND DREW THE LINE ON BUGS??????

The grasp this man is holding on me right now...

Some of you will understand. I’m with you.

And here are the grostesque ones. These are hard to take SS but I had to.

Animation, sound effects, OST? CHEF’S KISS TO ALL

And lastly... the tentacles. Yeah, if you’re new... this is a thing.

Fanservice. Fanservice everywhere. (low-key the reason I also waited to write this review, I wanted to enjoy this part so badly but I was too sad for that lmao)

Okay so. O’Bengh is suddenly OLD and DYING, until we realize that Stephen spent CENTURIES absorbing mystic beings. CENTURIES. WTF STEPHEN. He had nothing in mind but the goal to save Christine. And people wonder why he went insane???? I’m sorry, O’Bengh, but I can’t take you serious when you still call Stephen Sorcerer Armani. Oh, and also because you watched him absorb beings for centuries in silence lmao. But I guess I have to because you said that Stephen is split in two since the Ancient One cast a spell on him, splitting the timelines and making them exist in the same reality before he could travel back in time. I know, it’s complex. Anything for the plot.

And now good!Stephen has an evil!twin who wants to absorb him back in order to become whole and break the Absolute Point. Cool.

I said I wanted to talk more about Wong because I think people are not talking about him enough. Wong is so important in this episode. He’s the one who’s trying to heal Stephen after Christine. He’s Stephen’s anchor.

Also, THEY FINALLY USED A SPELL WITH THE NAME OF THE VISHANTI. HOORAAAAY

So, for the sake of our understanding, I’m addressing the characters as evil and good!Stephen. Let’s go. Evil!Stephen summons good!Stephen and gods, he still holds such a strong grasp on me... unbelievable. THE DEEPER VOICE BENEDICT USES???? PLEASE, DIDN’T WE HAVE ENOUGH?

Imagine his strength to hold so many beings inside him, fighting to control him. BRO, THIS IS TOO TOO MUCH

Fine, I’ll not post SS about the fight because I’d be here all night long but I WILL say this: NOT CLOAKIE!!!!! NAAAAAAAAAAUR

Also if you ask me if I recognize any of the spells? Maaaaybe the Flames of Faltine, the not-so-crimson Bands of Cyttorak and a little trick Magik does with her portals. That’s how far I go.

I’ll not comment on the “seducing yourself to stay in the trap”. I will not. I’ll just say that the first person Stephen thought of when “Christine” was talking about the crème brûlée was Wong. That’s it.

And finally evil!Stephen absorbs good!Stephen and releases... UNLIMITED POWER (I love when the stone goes red as if it was bleeding aaaaaaa)

I can fix him...

This scene here? Poetic cinema. (I love his wings so much)

And when Stephen says her name and the other monsters’ voices echo “Christine”, AAAAAACKKKK

AND OF COURSE CHRISTINE WOULD FREAK OUT, BRO. LOOK AT WHAT YOU’VE BECOME BECAUSE OF YOUR TWISTED LOVE. I’M NOT DOING FINE.

Oh, but it’s too late anyways because Stephen broke reality haha. This scene is interesting because Stephen is the only one who sensed and/or talked to the Watcher until now. I read an interview that the Watcher kinda showed up but it’s also about Stephen’s keen senses. Bit of both, let’s say. Still, man, 616-Watcher is not that cold. 616-Watcher would watch this and say “how about I intervene anyway?”. WhatIf!Watcher is brutal.

The way Christine looks at Stephen one last time also KILLS ME, DESTROYS ME, BREAK ME INTO A MILLION PIECES.

And this is where my soul left my body.

This is how they end the episode. This is how you leave me speechless and with teary eyes. This is how you give me a whole existential crisis.

This... this was brutal to watch. Really.

What can I say after this? I’m used to reading painful things when it comes to Stephen. Aaron’s and Cates’ runs are heartbreaking on so many levels. Hickman’s New Avengers is not easier. Coincidentally, What If? Magik Became Sorcerer Supreme and The End. And now Death of Doctor Strange. And yet, after everything I’ve been through, I’d never expect to watch something so brilliant, so tragic, so heartbreaking and unexpected in the MCU. Never. This is top tier content and this is my favorite character with SO MANY LAYERS and SO MUCH UNDERSTANDING. I can’t put into words how meaningful this whole episode is to me, or how deep it touched my heart and soul.

I’ve been struggling to find the proper words since then, I still can’t. All I can add is, I cried for the 4th time now. This is too, too much, even for Stephen stans. Even for the ones who are used to pain, regardless of which media you’re into: comic books, live actions or animated movies. This is literally more than I can take and yet I’m so, so grateful. The voice acting, gods, how did Benedict manage to create a better Stephen than the one he’s literally playing in real life???????????? HOW

This episode really took the max potential Stephen had to offer as a character, added tons and tons of layers based on his grief, depression, arrogance and need to control everything and created a tragic masterpiece. In 7 years of being a Doctor Strange fan, I've never read or watch something that could go this deep into the character. The closest I can think of is Mr. Misery and the metaphor of Stephen's depression. This is a whole new level of respect and understanding. This is more than a love letter. This is peak maestry. It’s perfect, it’s heartbreaking, it’s... gods, I can’t.

Sorry for dragging you until this far. Before I wrap up this review, I just wanted to remind you all that Stephen will appear again, he will smile again, he will be surrounded by people again. So this is not the end. It was painful but be brave. We still have a few more steps to take.

#what if...?#doctor strange #stephen strange #what if doctor strange lost his heart instead of his hands?#wong #christine palmer #the ancient one #long post #review #he did nothing wrong #so what? he destroyed a whole universe #/j #benedict cumberbatch

172 notes · View notes

sutimetravelau · 2 years

Note

[Steven:]

Breakfast!

MC Bear Bear!

Lion!

Let’s go!

This is our home, I’ve got a dozen iterations

So full of music, a quirk of the flow of time

This is my family, a perfect constellation

So many stars and everybody gets to shine

Whoa (Oh-oh-oh-oh), let's be clear, my mother runs this show

Whoa (Oh-oh-oh-oh), she came here so many years ago

Whoa (Oh-oh-oh-oh), and every year our family powers grow!

There's just a lot you've simply got to know, SO…

Welcome to the Family Universe!

The home of the Family Universe!

We're on our way!

Where all the people are fantastical and magical

I'm part of the Family Universe

[Children:]

Oh my gosh, it's them!

[Child 1:]

What are the powers?

[Child 2:]

I can't remember all the powers

[Child 3:]

But I don't know who is who?

[Steven:]

Mm-mm-,alright, alright, relax!

[Child 1:]

It is physically impossible to relax!

[Child 2:]

Tell us everything! What are your powers?

[Child 3:]

JuSt TeLL uS wHAt EvEryOnE cAn dO!

[Steven:]

…And that's why coffee's for grown-ups

My brother Pink, his mood changes like the weather

When he’s unhappy, well, that teenager gets scary

My brother Diamond—

(We don't talk about Diamond!)

—They say he was captured, one day he disappeared

Oh (Oh-oh-oh-oh), and that's my bro Denim, here's his deal

Whoa! (Oh-oh-oh-oh), the truth is, he’s genteel and always keeps it real

Whoa! (Oh-oh-oh-oh), his melodies are happinesses, so ideal

If you're impressed, imagine how I feel—Denim?!

Welcome to the Family Universe!

The home of the Family Universe!

Hey, coming through!

I know it sounds a bit fantastical and magical

But I'm part of the Family Universe!

Two gems fell in love in the Family Universe

And now they're part of the Family Universe

So, yeah, Ruby saved her love, heck yeah!

They fused and didn’t care, aw yeah!

That's how Garnet became a Fusion Universe!

Let's go, let's go!

[Crystal Gems:]

We swear to always help those around us

And earn the power that somehow found us

The town keeps growing, the world keeps turning

But work and dedication will keep the power burning

And each new iteration must keep the power burning

[Child 1:]

Wait... How many brothers?

[Child 2:]

There's so many people!

[Child 3:]

How do you keep them all straight?

[Steven:]

Okay, okay, okay, okay

So many kids in our house, so let's turn the sound up!

You know why? I think it’s time for a sibling round-up!

(Sibling round-up!)

Brother Twoie always in his flip flops

Forest shape shifts, Strawberry; his powers he’d rather not display!

My older brothers: Hero and Tats

One strong, one graceful, perfect in every way!

(Hero!)

Shows his power, the town goes wild

(Hero!)

He’s a perfect golden child

(Tats! Tats! Tats! Tats!)

And Tats is super strong

The glory and the brawn do no wrong!

That's life in the Family Universe!

(Oh-oh-oh-oh)

Now you know the Family Universe

(Oh-oh-oh-oh)

Where all the people are fantastical and magical

(Oh-oh-oh-oh)

That's who we are in the Family Universe!

¡Adiós!

[Child 1:]

But what about your powers?

[Steven:]

…Well, I gotta go, the life of a Universe!

(Oh-oh-oh-oh)

But now you all know the Family Universe! (Oh-oh-oh-oh)

I never meant this to get autobiographical

(Oh-oh-oh-oh)

So just to review the Family Universe

Let's go!

[ Steven(Children):]

(But what about Steven?)

It starts with Mom, and then Brother Pink, from angel to danger

(But what about Steven?)

My bro Denim can make you feel better with just his orchestra

(But what about Steven?)

My brother strawberry, well, he's accident-prone but he means well

(But what about Steven?)

Hey, you said you wanna know what everyone does, I got brothers upon brothers and—

(Steven!)

My bro Forest won't stop until he makes you smile today!

(Steven!)

My brother Twoie prefers Hero and Forest to stay far away!

(Steven!)

Look! It's not like I want ‘em, hey

powers are just way too much drama

And between you and me, I don’t love my mom like I oughta.

Yo, I've said too much, and thank you but I really gotta go!

(Steven!)

My family's amazing!

(Steven!)

And I'm in my family, so…

(Steven!)

Well...

[Crystal Gems:]

Steven!

THANK YOU YESSSS IM SO HAPPY SOMEONE MADE THE PARODY

also bonus:

#THAT LYRIC ABOUT TWOIE MADE ME LAUGH SO HARD #'my brother twoie fucking hates them!!!!! lol'#save #fave #twoies

45 notes · View notes

theotheroccassionalfanficwriter · 3 years

Note

Heyhey! I think the cryo archon chlde one. Sorry for not being specific. Thank you

It's okay anon! No problem! This one has no smut and more murder couple and politics. I had fun writing this, thinking about how could you get kidnapped under lock and key and realized that it could only happen if it was allowed to so ta-da!

CW: descriptions of cruelty and gore.

The curse words, in order, are: bitch and whore

In a Quiet Lagoon, Devils Dwell

Summary: It was easy to forget that there was more to the Cryo Archon's face than a besotted husband and loving father. It was easier to forget that the beloved Tsaritsa was a dutiful Harbinger.

For all of Tartaglia’s meticulousness, he was not infallible as his worshippers made him to be. You knew that there were times he could be blindsided by things he didn’t take into consideration. As his wife, you took it upon yourself to ensure to cover for his blind spots, both in the battlefield and in running Snezhnaya. It required meticulous planning from both him and yourself, to ensure that the work would not interfere with your family’s life.

Tartaglia and his harbingers dealt with Snezhnaya’s foreign relations and problems. You dealt with the domestic problems; spies and dissidents that partnered with the Abyss Order, the occasional gods that wanted to dethrone Tartaglia, and on very rare occasions, traitors.

You cocked your head as you observed the room you were held in. Fine furnishings and lavish interior designs that were popular among the upper middle nobility of Snezhnaya. You were glad that your beloved son was with Tartaglia since it meant that you’d be able to get information out of this.

‘Well, at least before this reaches his ears’ You thought as you dreaded the bloodbath that would await you once this was over.

You stood up from the bed, gauging your current strength and frowning at the visible after effects of the drug.

“How troublesome”

You couldn’t locate your vision at your person, you applauded your captors for being thorough in that regard but pitied them for their worthless effort. You wobbled as you slowly walked around the room, inspecting the decors and checking out the windows. The door was locked with magic, you could tell with a cursory glance that the magic was intricate and would result into a backlash if opened with brute force.

‘Smart’ you praised them.

You moved to the windows and found the same magic. You sighed at the minor inconvenience this put you through. You could only forlornly stare at the white expanse of snow that was outside your window. The scenery was familiar to your eyes but its name eluded you.

‘And I wanted to welcome him when he returned.’

You sighed once more. Hoping that your captors would show themselves soon, you wouldn’t want to waste an opportunity to do some spring cleaning after all.

The moment Tartaglia returned to Zapolyarny Palace, the entire capital of Snezhnaya had drowned in his frosty wrath. He barely restrained himself from plunging the entire nation into frost, the thought of his darling son fearing him had kept him mostly sane. Pulcinella had taken his son away from the crime scene, a wise choice for the Harbinger if he wanted to keep on breathing.

Tartaglia could tell that the guards and maids stationed in your wing were all shaking. He spared no thought for them, postponing their inevitable demise for the kidnapping of his beloved wife.

“Your majesty” Dottore called from behind him.

Tartaglia kept on investigating the crime scene, scouring every detail so as to not miss any possible leads.

“The maids and guards have been questioned” Dottore reported, steeling himself to the cold hard stare of his Archon. Being subjected to it was suffocating, and he wondered how you could maintain eye contact with the Tsar when he was like this.

“I trust that you’ve brought me good news?”

The calmer Tartaglia was, the more pressure Dottore felt. His archon was fickle at best and volatile at worst. Most myths that surrounded him were almost never far from the truth and Dottore had no want nor need to be used as an example.

“Almost” He answered, “While we’ve yet to determine who is behind this attack we’ve narrowed down the list from the means used and there is ample reason to believe that the Tsaritsa has not been harmed.”

The silence was deafening. Dottore couldn’t wait to get out of Tartaglia’s warpath, seclude himself in his lab and experiment on the fools who had let this happen.

“Throw everyone stationed in this wing in the dungeons. Zapolyarny Palace will be in lock down” Tartaglia ordered as he moved out of your marital room and headed towards his former wing.

Dottore hastened to follow from behind, awaiting further orders now that the Tsar had made his move.

“Bring back everyone who entered and left the Palace. Those foolish nobles must have forgotten their place.”

For all of Tartaglia’s genial smiles and affable personality, it shouldn’t be forgotten that he was a man born to fight. One of the three archons from the original seven. A god who could stand toe to toe in the battlefield with Morax.

“As you command!” Dottore replied, face grim and yet he could not hide the excitement in his eyes. He had heard rumors, stories about the days when the entirety of the Snezhnayan ancient noble houses were almost culled in a blood bath.

There was no clear reason on why it had happened and no one dared to ask. But the one detail that remains in every iteration of the story was that the blood from those nobles were the reason for the odd patterns on the low parts of the wall of old establishments within the capital. Patterns that oddly resembled blood stains when seen from a certain angle.

You hummed as you saw the snow storm picking up from outside, a visible sign that Tartaglia had already learned your disappearance. You remained at your position by the window, back turned to the door as you listened to the rushing footsteps that were getting closer.

‘I do hope they can amuse me’ You thought just as the doors banged open behind you.

“How did you contact the Tsar?!”

‘Oh~ so it was them?’ You thought with mild amusement, you didn’t bother turning around to greet them.

“Is that the proper tone to use when speaking to your Tsaritsa?” You mocked them, eyes watching their angry face from the window’s reflection.

Behind you was the Count Potemkin, current head of the ancient noble House of Potemkin. Standing beside him was one of your former fiancé candidates, the heir apparent, Matvei.

“Answer me, you disgusting Сука!” Potemkin cursed making his way towards you.

You slowly turned around, a smile on your face just as he reached out to grab you. Before he could even breach your personal space his hand was pierced by ice protruding from the ground. He screamed in agony, clutching his arms as he squealed like a pig.

“Gosh, would you lower your voice? It’s unbecoming for such an ancient bloodline to act like an animal” You chastised as you took a step back and observed the damage.

“Ah, what a shame, I didn’t break your wrist at all” You commented as if you had not precisely calculated to pierce his hand through the most excruciating way.

“You Блять! Let my father go!” Matvei cursed as he struggled on his restraint “You’re no match for our family’s knights!”

You blinked at his words, tilting your head to the side, as if considering his words. He smirked on seeing your action, “That’s right! Even if you’re a harbinger you’re still just one person!”

“Would you stop squealing like a pig? It’s been minutes now, you should have gotten used to the pain!” You turned around to shut Count Potemkin’s mouth. Ice formed on his mouth, starting from the tongue and making its way outwards.

“Ah~ That’s better!” You ignored the pale looks from the father and son, “If you behave, I might just let you keep your mouth but if your son keeps on pissing me off…”

You trailed off, maintaining eye contact with the Count. Your eyes were filled with malice and sadism, “My hand will slip and blow your brains out~”

You smiled, sweet and disgustingly vile as you made your way to the couch and sat in it. The snow storm outside had turned stronger, hail fell through the skies, mixing with the rapidly falling snow. Just from that alone, you could tell that your time to wring out information from them was running out.

“What reason did you have to attempt something as stupid as this?” You asked as you formed ice shards that floated on top your fingertips.

Matvei remained silent.

“Not talking anymore?” Every move of your body was designed to mock them, a display of power that showed how easy it was for you to trample upon them, “I just remembered, the Count was raising his precious daughter outside wasn’t he? A pretty blonde child with green eyes…”

Matvei flinched and stared at you in horror, dread pooling in the pits of his stomach as you spoke,

“Inessa Yakova Potemkin” You laughed softly, “No wonder the Countess died of anger, her dear stupid husband had acknowledge his bastard child, sent her to the palace to be a handmaiden.”

“Imagine what kind of face the Tsar would make if he knew how the Potemkin family insulted me by sending an illegitimate child as a handmaiden” Your ice changed its shape into a dagger, “Even if House Potemkin is an ancient bloodline, it doesn’t erase that your house is lower than my duchal household.”

Matvei screamed in pain as your dagger cleanly sliced off his left ear. You smiled at them coldly, “Start speaking, you should know by now that any resistance would only lead to a painful death...I can’t guarantee your darling sister would be spared from it either.”

In another life, you wouldn’t threaten another’s family. You would have shown mercy but this wasn’t that life. You were the Tsar’s wife, a Harbinger, and most of all the child of Snezhnaya’s strongest ducal house. A slight against you was a slight against everything you stood for.

“Time’s running” You reminded Matvei.

“We couldn’t let you threaten the Tsar’s power! You’re Lord Pulcinella’s niece, a child of House Yusupov. We needed to remove you from the seat of power, at first we planned to get rid of your child but all of our attempts were foiled.”

Another dagger found its way to his thigh. He screamed in pain, wet stain growing on his crotch and you clicked your tongue in disdain.

“Please that’s all we know!”

This time blood spurted out from his father’s left shoulder, some of it landing on you, some on the table in front of you. You didn’t flinch, merely wiping the blood that landed on your face with your gloved hand.

“Father!”

“Let’s do this again, shall we?” You smiled.

“I-I really don’t-”

Spikes of ice burst out from his right thigh.

“Duke Izmaylov! It was him who planned all of this! Duchess Tolstoy funded the operations! Please spare me!”

“How disappointing” You sighed as you made his father’s eyes burst.

You sneered in disgust as Matvei vomited on the marble tiles in front of him. You looked up as you heard heavy footsteps and the sounds of scream echoing beyond the open doors. Moments later, Tartaglia was visibly walking towards you from the other end of the hallway.

“Ah. Time’s up.”

You stood up from the couch and made your way towards your husband, the Tsar, Tartaglia. His cold eyes melted and looked upon you with relief, his hands patted your body, looking for non-existent injuries. You let him do as he pleased, both of you ignoring the dying count and the vomiting Matvei.

“I came as fast as I could” Tartaglia burrowed his face on your neck, ignoring the discomfort from the height difference between the two of you “I thought I’ve lost you.”

You felt your heart ache at his tone, your arms automatically hugging him in comfort, laying a soft kiss to his cheek as you spoke, “I’ll make sure that will never happen.”

You signaled the Fatui waiting behind him to start rounding up the two.

“We’ll have to clean up Two ducal households and five Countdoms” You reported as you gently and comfortably let Ajax’ hand settle on your waist as he led you out of the mansion.

“I’ll handle that. You should take a rest with Teucer, our son was worried today.” Ajax replied as softly as he could but the tenseness had yet to fade away.

You leaned further into his embrace, “Mhm. By the way, the insider was Inessa, you should get rid of all the staff that had a relationship with her. It wouldn’t do if one of her lovers got the idea to avenge her.”

“As you wish.”

Three months later the public bore witness to a new cruelty of the Cryo Archon. At Krasnaya Square, a stage was set up, in it were the shackled and chained members of several noble households. Some from the ancient noble houses, and the others from the new nobles.

Tartaglia had intentionally spread the news of your capture and subsequent rescue. He wanted to make a show of power, one you approved of, if only to ensure that his plans for world domination and eventual downfall of Celestia would run smoothly.

Teucer, your 5 yr old son, sat on your lap watching the proceedings from the balcony area. The two of you were surrounded by Fatui guards, new ones. The entire area was secured and security was tight, there was no way a rescue for the condemned would occur.

Tartaglia had made sure of that.

“Close your eyes, dearest” You whispered to your son’s ears.

From below, all of the traitors had blood bursting out of their heads, spikes protruding from the inside of their brains as Pulcinella finished declaring their crimes and their sentence. You hummed a soft tune as Teucer asked, “Mamochka, can I open my eyes now?”

“Not yet dearest, not until Papa comes back.”

You gazed down at the crowd, watching as they rejoiced at the culling before your eyes were drawn at the corner. You smiled at the familiar blonde hair of Inessa, your eyes merciless as she stared at you with hatred.

'Ah, how she must have looked like once she realize all of it was a sham~'

You waved at the crowd from the balcony, pleased that the nobles would now learn to step back in line. You felt your husband’s stare and gave him a loving look.

“Mamochka?”

You sighed in fond exasperation, you figured that he could look now that the bodies were being carted away, “You can open them now, give Papa and the rest a good wave okay?”

Teucer did as you said, more cheers erupting from the crowd upon seeing their beloved Tsarevich waving at them. From his position below, Ajax smiled warmly at the sight of his family being safe and sound. The sun shined brightly in Snezhnaya’s eternal winter.

An auspicious sign from their Cryo Archon.

#childe x reader #genshin impact x reader #yandere childe x reader #genshin impact childe x reader #tartaglia x reader

256 notes · View notes

ramblingguy54 · 3 years

Text

Sonic & Tails R: A Love Letter To Miles Tails Prower’s Characterization

Warning: This will contain massive spoilers for the short radio play series of Sonic & Tails R. If you haven’t listened to the radio play yet on Youtube, I’d highly recommend any hardcore Sonic fan who hasn’t seen it check it out. It’s one Hell of a treat.

For as far back as I can remember in my childhood, Tails’ story of trying to step outta Sonic’s shadow has been such a resonating one for myself. Even when I was a much younger kid playing my Dreamcast, during entries like Sonic Adventure 1 & 2, there was some idea lingering about why Tails just stood out more emotionally in his journey to grow beyond depending on Sonic all the time for help. Now here I am a young adult in my late twenties having such a deeper appreciation of this little two tailed genius kiddo because he’s got an important element that’s made him so beloved for good reason.

In spite of his genius being a rival to that of Eggman’s high IQ and of course proving to surpass it plenty of times when scenarios boil down to being a high stakes battle, Miles Tails Prower beneath it all is still just like any one of us. We’re all trying to find our place in this world about what defines us for who we are as unique people. He wants to be more than just seen as someone who’s alongside Sonic The Hedgehog’s never say die attitude, but prove he’s plenty capable of standing on his own two feet to protect everything the kid holds dear to himself. Underdog stories, when they’re naturally executed very well, can reel me in so easily. They are very much my bread & butter trope I adore seeing.

To no one’s surprise, the two Sonic Adventure’s iterations portrayal of Tails’ characterization are hands down some of my favorite writing for the two tailed fox, regarding what the 3D era has done toward him, development wise. It gave him more of an existential struggle to endure like, “What happens when Sonic isn’t around to help stop Eggman? What if I’m not strong enough to accomplish what he can?”, making Tails plight to be seen as an equal all the more endearing when stopping Eggman in his climatic battle against the Egg Walker in Station Square. This here is a great use of a timeless lesson you can apply in life that if you set you heart and mind on anything, there isn’t a thing you can’t accomplish on your own, which is why many fell in love with Sonic Adventure 1 & 2′s writing for Miles Tails Prower’s journey of independence.

As someone who comes from a large family tree of relatives, I feel the weight of my existence on my shoulders at a number of points more than I’d care to count, admittedly. Seeing Tails struggle with his sense of purpose, in contrast to observing how much Sonic has accomplished with his carefree, yet deeply compassionate attitude, means the world to me in watching another trying to comprehend their value as a whole on how much they matter, overall. This is a big part of why my fondness for SA1 & 2′s quality has never wavered over these years, besides still obviously enjoying most of their game play mechanics. People can try to debate to their heart’s content on whether the Adventure games still hold up in their own eyes, but I’ll always respect them for how they tried to develop certain characters, such as Tails, Gamma, and Shadow The Hedgehog notably, to attempt expanding upon their characters, as well as world building.

I won’t bother going into a rant about how Sonic’s recent 3D games have butchered Tails’ personality & relatable nature, due to the current writers in charge of handling the cast of characters. More or less, I greatly empathize toward the notion many have already stated about Tails being so cowardly and God forbid, looking at Lost World, downright severely mean spirited. Rather, I’m obviously writing this lengthy post to breakdown why Sonic & Tails R succeeds, where these certain 3D games have greatly faltered in exploring Tails’ emotional dilemmas as an insecure, yet still having the courage to prove himself, talented boy full of hidden potential he doesn’t quite realize, until his back is against the wall in life threatening situations.

“That day, I realized I couldn’t depend on you forever. Not that I can’t depend on you, but like, “What happens when Sonic isn’t here?”, you know?”

Sonic & Tails R further delves into this fundamental rule of what has defined Tails in Sonic Adventure 1 & 2′s stories of events where Sonic wasn’t there to aid his best bud in taking down Eggman’s evil efforts for global domination, most importantly his fear of defending the Earth without his role model. Besides what I already stated in SA1′s events in Station where he stopped the Egg Walker, as well as the missile Eggman launched from detonating before their climatic battle, Tails watched Sonic blow up in ARK’s capsule presuming him to be dead after Sonic imparted how much faith he has in the kid’s abilities to be truly strong in the face of any foe. Sonic & Tails R manages to use fan service in a way that doesn’t feel like “pandering” for the sake of it, using this past canon material to do more of an in-depth study about Miles’ anxieties of existing without Sonic.

Wouldn’t put it past them if EmuEmi & crew were using SA2′s Sonic death fake out scene in that space capsule to further add trauma to Tails’ psychological attachment to Sonic, as well as his insecurities of depending on him too much, to boot. While it’s never obviously outright stated in their radio play, I definitely believe they were factoring this element into adding dramatic exploration for why Tails is so self-conscious about the worst case scenario of permanently losing Sonic. Watching Sonic supposedly die put Tails into a deeper state of self-reflection, so I very much enjoyed how they went using these past events to create a thorough exploration about him learning just as it’s important to realize you need to stand up for yourself without using someone else as a crutch all the time, it’s doubly important to remember there’s nothing wrong about asking someone for help when you’re about to be down and out with little options left.

Sonic & Tails R beautifully builds upon the foundation these two games’ stories left behind years ago, creating new damn great material to explore with the most iconic characters of this cast, Sonic & Tails brotherly dynamic. I’ve been praising Sonic & Tails R out the wazoo for how well it captured Tails underdog story of overcoming death defying odds, but it managed to remind me how simply adorable and outright wonderfully endearing their brotherly chemistry is as a whole. This is a big friendly reminder Sonic isn’t all about being cocky wise cracking character making meta jokes left and right, but he can be plenty capable of showing serious compassion to anyone he values as an ally and friend. This is no greater evident, than with him verbally lifting Tails up in his time of need when he’s self-depreciating his own significance. It can be seen in Episodes 2, 4, and 7 giving Tails motivational pieces of advice.

Episode 2 In Adabat’s Cavern

-Sonic: Wasn’t it your radar that helped us find these Emerald shards in the first place? How could you be slowing us down when you’ve gotten us this far?

-Tails: But, I...

-Sonic: I could never make something like that. You’re the smartest person I know, Tails. One way or another, we’ll figure this out, count on it.

Episode 4 In Holoska After Helping Silver Save The Chao

-Sonic: So, what was that back there? At the cave, in Adabat? -Tails: What do you mean? -Sonic: Frozen stiff. Confidence shot. It’s not like you. It was more than feeling like you were “slowing us down”, right?

Episode 7 Inside The Egg Carrier 3

-Sonic: Let’s split up! I’ll distract them and you can go after the energy source. -Tails: You’re gonna take them on all by yourself!? Let me help, Sonic! -Sonic: No time for this, Tails. Stop overthinking and just go! If I can get their attention, I’ll take the heat off of you and that room you’re going to probably won’t have any security. Take this emerald and I’ll take the other one we have. It’ll lead me right to you after I beat these guys. -Tails: O-Okay... -Sonic: Hold on, Tails! Listen to me. Don’t stop moving and be careful. I’ll be fine and so will you!

Sonic & Tails R remembers the most crucial detail of their important relationship. One isn’t better than the other and needing to always rely upon that notion for helping one outta a jam, but instead showcases how they’re equals as a team/bros. Sonic may be super fast and strong, however Tails has his intelligence to analyze situations in a different angle Sonic wouldn’t necessarily consider, per say. Which isn’t to say Tails couldn’t put up a fight either, as we’ve seen in SA1 & SA2′s stories where he faced Eggman one on one with no outside help to best him at his own game of wits & strength.

We get see the apex of this idea through Tails facing Eggman in his super improved mecha walker. Although Tails may get thrown for a loop here at first by Eggman, it’s his villainous speech about winners and losers in their world that ironically does the exact opposite of what he intended. Eggman wanted to crush Tails’ sense of self worth before finishing him off, but all it did was reignite the very lesson Sonic told him earlier before running to distract Eggman’s robotic minions. That said lesson of he’s more than capable of facing dangerous threats

-Eggman: Poor boy. We all have to learn this lesson, sooner or later. In every game there’s no one you can depend on. You’re all alone and you’re either a winner, or a loser. And as you know, loser’s lose all of their lives. Say goodbye, fox!

-Tails: You’re wrong! I can depend Sonic! I won’t let him down! I can’t because...Because he’s depending on me! And because of that I won’t lose to you!

This radio play strikes a good balance in utilizing the grey moral area about depending on someone vs it being an unhealthy display of attachment derived from serious insecurity. Word’s can’t begin to describe how much I loved this moment to pieces because it’s oh so important for writing Tails’ characterization. If you’re going to tackle him being super self conscious about his reliance on Sonic, then you gotta remember why they are so close to one another to begin with. Sonic & Tails have an unbreakable connection, considering they’ve brought out their best qualities in themselves from being together as individuals. For Sonic, it’s his older brother compassion to Tails to bring him outta feeling melancholy. For Tails, the kid finally understands there isn’t anything wrong with depending on Sonic when he needs it most.

After all, that’s what a real healthy friendship is all about. Whether you’re giving someone a dose of tough love, or simply a piece of motivational advice, it defines how much you truly care about someone, period. Sonic & Tails have this very same power from their bond, which is why new emeralds form from their compassionate friendship that hasn’t been shaken after all the years they’ve been together. Another detail worth noting is it adds to the lore in an impactful manner when Tikal expresses in Episode 8 about positive connections and thoughts from users of the Chaos Emeralds having a strong will & heart. Using the ideas they had for encapsulating Sonic & Tails’ dynamic to create new emeralds from their love for each other as brothers adds an emotional weight.

“So, Sonic’s not the only one who harness the power of the Chaos Emeralds? I can too!?”

“Yes, you have a strong heart! There is a power waiting to be unlocked within you, as well.”

I’d always daydreamed about in my childhood seeing Super Sonic & Tails take down a threatening villain, whether it was Eggman or different powerful creature such as Chaos or the Biolizard. You can imagine how fucking giddy I was beyond belief to see this artwork of Episode 9′s cover for the radio play. Tails not only got to have another one on one with Eggman, but a team up with Super Sonic in his own respective Super form? Sign me the Hell up! Talk about an all you eat buffet of good writing for Tails’ journey reaching its climax. Getting to hear this play out, alongside the amazing song of Fly With Me, made it authentically feel like something straight outta if there were an installment of Sonic Adventure 3 being brought into reality, which certainly feels like it now.

Episode 9 has so much awesome stuff with Sonic & Tails working together in their super forms. Particularly, my favorite scene is at the beginning when Sonic teaches Tails how to navigate his newly acquired speed in his respective Super form. My heart melted hearing Sonic help Tails through it all, while he was overjoyed about how fun this new form is for himself. Wholesome Sonic & Tails content is the perfect daily serotonin for me, easily. It’s an awesome fun fact to know they used a scrapped boss from Tails Tornado segment in SA1 for Eggman’s flying dragon three headed robot in their big final battle, once again using old canon material in a very effective manner to boost the quality of their fan made story.

It’s been a real thrill to hear Mike Pollock play a straight forward serious Eggman making my day in more ways than one, considering that’s another thing I’ve been yearning for desperately besides Tails being a competent character again. His performance in Episode 9 when Eggman gave that speech about how long he’s been at odds with Sonic & Tails stubborn will power was simply excellent. The moment he told his mechanical dragon to crush them I got serious chills. That’s the Eggman I remember and grew up with. He could be a hammy villain sure, but Eggman wasn’t a doormat that could be swiftly beaten. Robotnik can be considered a serious threat in his own right and this radio play nailed it down to the very letter with how much he predicted their actions.

“Sonic, all I ever wanted to do was be like you. You’re not scared of anyone or anything. I could never be like that. At least, so I thought. I grew from that, but then I got so caught up in trying to prove it that thought it wasn’t okay to depend upon anyone, especially you. I just didn’t want to be that scared little kid in Station Square anymore, but now I understand. It’s okay to depend on your friends. It all means is that we’re stronger together, so the next time Eggman comes back and wants to start any trouble with you, or any of my friends. Emeralds or no emeralds, he’s gonna have to get past me and he won’t!”

Sonic By Episode 1′s End: Aww, yeah! Adventure, here we come!

Tails By Episode 10′s End: Aww, yeah! Adventure, here I come!

Turn your thoughts into power. Be all that you can be.

The ending legit got me choked up because what of they decided to do for wrapping up Tails journey in a poetic fashion. Having Tails go off on his own separate journey to grow more independence pulled on my heart strings perfectly. Very much so, as I’m transitioning slowly, but surely, into gaining more freedom to go out into the outside world in my own life. Concluding the story, by Sonic & Tails holding onto the two Emeralds their bond had formed from positive energy, due to their powerful friendship, was so heartwarming. This is how you write an overview of what makes Sonic & Tails chemistry work so well as it does.

Sonic & Tails R’s ending represents while some things never change, like Sonic and Tails bond for each other, it also shows there’s very much a necessity for people to grow, hence Tails’ whole solo journey in the epilogue. People can’t stay in the same place forever and will need go about finding their own path, even if it means saying “goodbye” periodically for a notable amount of time.

It’s for these reasons I’ve listed in great explanation above throughout this detailed post cement Sonic & Tails R high on my list of favorite Sonic fan projects. They captured the magic of what made the Adventure games so beloved. Gonna be looking back on this passion project for many years to come. Everyone involved in this year long effort of a project dating all the way back Summer of 2020 ought to be immensely proud for how much their hard efforts paid off in the long run.

Thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts here!

Hope you enjoyed.

#sonic and tails r #emuemi #sonic the hedgehog #miles tails prower #sonic analysis #long post #dr eggman #sonic adventure #sonic adventure 2 #this fan project means so much to me #everyone poured their heart and soul into it

60 notes · View notes

drawlfoy · 4 years

Text

Colorblind

masterlist request guidelines yes ma’am i’m back

pairing: draco x gryffindor!reader

request: yes! thank you kind anon :) this is the first request that really got me out of my writer’s block so i appreciate it!

summary: soulmate!au where the entire world is black and white except for your soulmate. y/n’s situation is a bit...unconventional.

warnings: swearing and a little gore but it’s not explicit at all and just a mention

a/n: helloooooooo everyone! i know i’ve technically been “back from the dead” for nearly a month now, but this is the first time i’ve decided to jump back into writing. i’ve been working on the wonders of ohio bit by bit and have been horrified to see just how much my writing has deteriorated since last summer (when i was writing 1k words+ a day). i’d like to get into writing genuine original work during this quarantine, so i’m using my blog as a chance to polish up my own writing and work the kinks out before i touch my original ideas. thanks for being so patient with me !

music recs: figure 8 from peach pit, don’t delete the kisses from wolf alice, and bad things from cailin russo

word count: 3,098

Y/N frowned as she stirred the honey into her tea, watching the sugary swirls as they dissolved into the bottom of what she had been told was an amber drink. Her best friend, Tina, sat across from her in her snug Gryffindor robes, energetically recounting just how beautiful the color blue was.

“I had no idea, Y/N,” the brunette gushed, her cold triangle of buttered toast lying long forgotten on her plate as her hands added animation to her story. “You have to see it. He told me that the red in our robes brings out my eyes too--something about the color wheel and how green is opposite of red--and we made each other hold up our things so we could see what color its meant to be...honestly, it was such a dream...”

Even though Y/N was thrilled that Tina had found her soulmate in the convenient place of the Ravenclaw house--really, she was ecstatic for her friend--she couldn’t help but feel a little sad. She did quell the bitterness and envy that threatened to crawl its way up out of her throat, instead choosing to sit and pretend to listen as her own thoughts trailed off with a vacant smile on her face.

She’d been alive for 16 years, seen everyone there is to see at Hogwarts, traveled to every country that had a sizable young magic population, and had let her parents submit pictures of her to wizarding families all across the globe--only to still live in a dull world of simple blacks, whites, and greys. Friends like Tina had told her vibrant stories of the stunning hues of green, blue, red, purple, and gold, but Y/N had no way of knowing what they actually looked like, relying instead on her parents’ soft explanation of green as the color of life, blue as the color of peace, red as passion and anger, and yellow as the feeling of the sun hitting your skin after a long winter.

Infuriating. She despised the security questions she had to fill out to open her Gringotts account (What’s your soulmate’s surname? What’s your favorite color?) and the unimpressed look of the goblin teller as they quietly conferred with her parents (”Sir, we rarely have complaints over this--statistically speaking, soulmates are found by the time a wizard or witch is old enough to handle money...).

In other news, her love life was barren and dry, and at the end of the day, it was better to just not dwell on where she fell short.

“I’ll stop going on about me,” Tina said, finally reaching down for her breakfast. “I want to hear about you. I’m so sorry that you have to put up with that crabby posh Daddy’s boy in Potions. You have my moral support. Always.”

“You mean Malfoy?”

Tina quirked an eyebrow as she took a sip of her own tea. “Yeah. Y/N, I have no clue how you’ve gone so long without being put off by that wanker. He’s so annoying. I know you don’t believe me, but you’re about to see for yourself in...erm..” She made a show of checking her pocket watch. “Less than an hour.”

“He doesn’t seem that bad,” Y/N countered. “I’ve spoken to him once or twice in the library. Doesn’t have much to say, but he was cordial. I’m not horrendously upset that we were assigned to be partners.”

“Did he know you were a Gryffindor?”

“I have no idea. Neither of us were wearing our robes, so I couldn’t tell you.”

Y/N’s friend rolled her eyes dramatically. “You’re going to be singing a very different tune come lunch. Trust me.”

<^>

The wooden stool that Y/N was perched on was uncomfortably wobbly as she waited, albeit a little nervously, for her potions partner to arrive. It had been an unwelcome selection process--or perhaps, lackthereof--that began with Slughorn reading off a canned speech regarding house unity and the importance of bridging the gap between old rivalries and ended with groups that consisted of one Slytherin and one Gryffindor and directions to create an immaculate Draught of Peace.

Not her favorite way to spend a Friday morning, but she admitted to herself that it could be far worse. She could be paired up with one of Malfoy’s goons--Crabbe or Goyle--who were by far much more obnoxious.

A slight movement in the corner of her eye pulled her attention back to the present. Y/N started at the dark figure standing by the empty stool next to her.

“Excuse me,” Malfoy said simply, placing his satchel on the table in front of them and sitting.

Y/N sent him a weak smile as she unrolled her parchment and began reviewing the ingredients.

“I don’t mean to sound brash,” she began as she sorted the ingredients at their table, “but I’m pretty good at Potions. If you want to, you can just read the directions while I prepare everything.”

He seemed like he wasn’t quite listening to what she was saying, instead his eyes, unfocused and slightly cloudy, were settled on her braid that snaked around her shoulder.”Er, yeah. Sounds good.”

“Okay.”

As the pair began, Y/N couldn’t help but notice that Malfoy looked tired. His normally pristine and glowing skin looked dull and lifeless, decorated with dark eye bags under his slate-grey eyes. She was struck with a sudden desire to ask if he was alright but decided against it. The furrow in his brow as he glanced over the directions reminded her that they were simply partners for the week--and that Slytherins generally got into a hissy fit if people tried to act too buddy-buddy with them too quickly.

“Add the moonstone until it starts to steam,” he said after a few moments, apparently not noticing that she was already emptying the powdered moonstone into the cauldron. “Stir until completely dissolved.”

“Add syrup of hellebore.”

“Stir until the consistency is akin to cream.”

This went on for the rest of the lesson--Malfoy softly instructing her while Y/N consulted her own set of directions, just in case. As she worked, she couldn’t help but notice how unusual his hair was. It was unlike any other white she’d ever seen before--instead, it had some kind of warm hue to it. Y/N knew that no one her age actually had naturally white hair--Malfoy clearly had some iteration of “blond”, whatever that meant--but all the other light haired wizards she had met had slightly grey tinges in their hair...not whatever he had going on. She shrugged it off and kept stirring.

An hour passed by much quicker than anticipated, and to her surprise, Malfoy never said anything even mildly irritating. Y/N stored this tidbit of information away with the interest of asking Tina why she thought he was such a dickwad.

“I think that’s all we have to do today,” Malfoy said once they had added the porcupine quills and set the lid on for the night.

“We really let it sit here until Monday?” she questioned, reviewing the parchment one more time. “That seems a little excessive.”

“Well, it’s not like--” He began waspishly before he took a breath and cast his eyes to the ceiling. “Er, I mean, I know that Slughorn casts a preservation spell on them over the weekend. There’s really no other way to do it without booking an entire day.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

He sent a surprisingly soft smile her way. It appeared that they had finished earlier than the rest of the students and had a couple more minutes until they were dismissed, so the silence around them was tense. Y/N decided to take a risk and ask something she assumed everyone, especially someone as allegedly ostentatious as Malfoy, liked talking about.

“So,” she began casually, twiddling her thumbs under the desk, “Have you found your soulmate yet?”

The few moments of complete and absolute quiet that followed after this question prompted her to send a glance over to Malfoy, who looked...completely stricken?

“Er....” His eyebrows furrowed as he looked her up and down. “Yes?”

Y/N had never had an interaction so awkward as she waited, tense and very weirded out, for him to just go ahead and pose the question back to her so she could break the ice and complain about how she’d searched far and wide for her soulmate and failed--but it never came. Malfoy just stared at her for another few heartbeats before he shut his slightly gaped mouth and turned to pack up his belongings.

Not another word was exchanged between them until Slughorn officially announced that they were all dismissed as long as their brewing stations were spotless.

Malfoy was out the door before she even had a chance to say goodbye.

<^>

“So?” Tina sat at the edge of her seat, waiting for her friend to relay all the details of her potions adventure.

“Super weird,” Y/N answered. “He was nice. Didn’t say anything mean about my house or parents or wealth or anything. I asked him about his soulmate, though, and he totally clammed up.”

Tina’s eyes narrowed as she shifted on her bench and drew closer. “I haven’t heard a whisper of anything about his soulmate. Poor bloke probably doesn’t have one. I’m not surprised...no one deserves to be stuck with him forever.”

“No, that’s not it,” Y/N countered. “First of all, he’s not bad. I told you. Second of all, he told me he had one and looked at me like I was stupid for not knowing. It was weird.”

“I wouldn’t sweat it. He probably thinks he’s so important and sought after that all anyone talks about is him and was just offended that you didn’t know, I guess. This is what I mean. He’s such a prick.”

“Maybe.” Y/N found herself looking over to the Slytherin table, her eyes stopping on the curiously colored hair of a certain 6th year. He seemed especially down, hardly touching the spoon in his stew and choosing to look like the definition of angst instead.

But in a very attractive way she admitted to herself. There was no denying it--Draco Malfoy was beautiful, in a tragic sort of way, like how paintings of imaginary places that you’ll never be able to actually visit for yourself are beautiful.

His eyes snapped up to meet hers, jarring her out of her whimsical train of thought and bringing a blush to her cheeks. For once, she was relieved that no one could see her in color.

<^>

By the time Monday rolled around, Y/N was feeling more and more uneasy about her whole situation. Malfoy ignited some kind of weird feeling deep inside of her--almost like butterflies--as he absentmindedly tapped his lips with his quill, studying the directions sheet in front of them.

“How was your weekend?” Y/N asked, her voice a little pitchier than she would’ve liked. He arched a perfectly shaped eyebrow at this, hardly even bothering to glance her direction.

“The usual,” he drawled. “I studied, mostly.”

“Nice. Way to keep us all on our toes.”

The slight smile that stretched across his face and the dimples that followed nearly made her knees weak, her hand shooting out to grasp the edge of the table before they gave in. “Yeah. You know me. The wild card.” His voice seemed bored, but she was just glad that the words coming out of his mouth weren’t entirely insufferable.

Y/N sent him a soft smile, fiddling with the edges of her robes. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Tina watching them intently.

“We only have to stir it 12 times counter clockwise and 14 times clockwise and add the unicorn horn powder before we let it simmer until Wednesday,” Y/N mused as she finally tossed the parchment back on the table. “Easy work. We should be done in about a half hour, give or take.”

They made quick work of the directions, the smell of their potion taking an amiable lilac like scent.

“I think that means we didn’t royally fuck it up,” Draco offered as she rolled her sleeves back down and settled into the stool next to him.

Y/N smirked at him, a glimmer in her eyes. “We? Don’t you mean me?”

He laughed stiffly before immediately sobering up and packing up his things. “Sure. I’m going to ask Slughorn if I can leave early. See you.”

With that, he got up and left her alone. At face value, Y/N didn’t expect the situation to mean that much to her, but it left a bitter taste in her mouth and stung more than expected.

Shake out of it, Y/N, she chided herself. What does it matter, anyways?

<^>

A knock on her dorm room shook her out of a particularly thrilling study session for her DADA exam, whose notes she promptly shoved into her satchel at the suggestion of a welcome distraction.

“Come in!” she called.

The door opened to reveal a particularly devious looking Tina. “I come with questions.”

“Please distract me from that tragic exam tomorrow,” she moaned, throwing herself on her bed. “Anything is better than thinking about it.”

Tina’s lip quirked as she settled down next to her friend. “It’s about your dear Potions partner.”

“What about him?”

“Don’t think I didn’t notice how you were looking at him today.” Tina propped her chin up into her hand. “You like him.”

“I most certainly do not!” Y/N said hotly. “I mean...I think he’s cute, and his hair reflects the light in this really cool way, but no! I’m not an idiot!”

“Of course you’re not an idiot,” Tina soothed. “He’s objectively a very pretty person. No harm in appreciating that. And now that you’ve spent a little more time with him, and you’re realizing that maybe he isn’t an arsehole, I could totally understand why you’d develop feelings for him.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!”

“How am I being ridiculous?”

“He’s already found his soulmate, Tina. I’m not masochistic enough to want to pine after a boy who already has his person.” As the weight of the words sunk in, Y/N could feel her chest tighten for just a moment. Tina just kept watching as she moved to gently wrap a hand around her shoulder.

“So say I do like him, just a little bit,” Y/N continued as her voice grew softer. “Say I actually let myself develop feelings for him even though I know there’s no way he’s my soulmate. Say I actually give in and have to see him every day knowing that he’s in love with someone else. Don’t you think that’s a little too much for me? I want to find my soulmate! I don’t want to mess around with anyone unless it’s with them.”

Her friend was quiet, but she moved her arm to wrap around Y/N’s frame.

“I’d just really like to find my soulmate already,” Y/N finished up. “And I’m afraid that they’re not even out there. So, no. No detours allowed.”

Tina smiled a little at this, sitting up to instead pat her friend on the back. “You’ve always been the more focused one. I respect that. But I am saying that there’s no harm in seeing other people while you wait.”

Y/N shrugged. “Yeah. Fairs. Now, I hate to say this, but I have a list of spells a metre long just waiting to be memorized for the exam tomorrow. I’d love to tell you the rest of all my gushy secrets once that’s taken care of.”

“Of course!” Tina kissed her friend on the cheek and skipped off. “Just don’t go too crazy studying. I still need a best friend to bitch to at breakfast.”

“No promises!”

<^>

“Add a little more powdered moonstone,” Malfoy instructed from her right, “Just until it starts to boil.”

Y/N went to reach for it, catching a glimpse of her partner on the way. There was something just so magnetizing about him, something so delicate and stunning. She couldn’t help but feel a quick twinge of envy for whoever his soulmate was.

The sound of the moonstone slipping into the potion pulled her back into reality, and she quickly stirred to avoid an unwelcome explosion.

“And now the chopped gillyweed.”

Y/N turned to their stockpile of ingredients, only to see whole cloves of gillyweed.

“I have to confess something,” she said, still stirring vigorously. Malfoy snapped to attention so quickly it almost made her jump. “I’m shit with a knife. Can you chop it for me? I have to keep stirring this anyways.”

What looked like disappointment flashed across his face for just a moment before he stood up and reached for a knife. “Sure.”

Y/N nodded and turned back to the concoction, careful to make sure that the moonstone wasn’t clumping together at the surface as she waited for Malfoy to be done with the gillyweed.

“Fuck!”

Y/N turned to see Malfoy’s hand covered in--no way.

His hand was covered in blood, as was the knife that was held tightly by his right hand.

“Fuck, fuck, can you hand me a towel?”

Y/N couldn’t help but stare as the words from her parents floated back into her head (Green is the color of life, blue is peace, red is passion and anger...).

“It’s red.”

“Sorry, what?”

“Your hand. It’s red.” Now that she looked closer, she could see hints of colors that she’d never seen before in him--a soft hue that reminded her of first kisses and the scent of roses in his cheeks and lips, a warm, sunny glow in his hair, and a cool, startling color in his eyes that seemed like the color for getting thrown into a cold lake on a summer afternoon.

He was staring right back at her, his eyes wide and his breathing quick.

“It’s you, isn’t it,” she breathed. “It’s been you all along. If only you hadn’t worn those blasted black suits all the time instead of your robes..”

The corners of his mouth crinkled into a smile.

“Ms. Y/L/N, step out of the way,” Professor Slughorn interrupted, rolling up his sleeves and getting his wand out. “Draco, boy, this looks deep. Get on up to the infirmary now. Don’t dally.”

“Meet me,” he whispered as he made to leave. “Tonight. In front of the library. I guess we have some things to discuss.”

“Yes, yes, I guess we do.” Y/N cheeks were hurting from smiling, and as he left the room, the color fading from her vision, she had never been so content to be in pain in her life.

final a/n: hi everyone :) welcome back! can’t wait to write more! sorry if this was a bit of a trainwreck...i haven’t written in a long time and this is the first thing i’ve done since college apps. all feedback is appreciated! thank you! also apologies for any plotholes or spelling errors! i wrote this in a day and i know it’s a little messy oops

#draco x reader #draco imagine #draco x you #draco malfoy x reader #draco malfoy imagine #draco malfoy x y/n #draco x y/n #draco #draco malfoy #draco x oc #draco malfoy x oc

891 notes · View notes

bippityboppitybibuck · 3 years

Text

This ficlet is written for and inspired by @valleydeans A Ghost Story. It contains spoilers to the entire story, so please don’t read this if you haven’t finished reading it yet. Wc:1400, no extra warnings (warnings for original fic stand) Italicizes mark establishing narrative the rest is in Cas’ POV.

It first plays on the old radio that sits attached to the bottom of one of the kitchen cupboards in the townhouse. Both Sam and Dean forgot it existed, left behind by the previous tenants, since they never had cause to use it but it was simple enough that Cas managed to get it turned on.

Granted it was only because the button was labeled Power; Cas knows even a moron could have figured that one out.

Cas didn't know how to change what music played at first, so he pressed buttons until something happened and took note of the outcomes. Seek seemed to be his friend, AM did not, and one afternoon while Dean and Sam were out at class or work or the library - there were so many places for Dean to be now, back before his resurrection Cas could have just walked around the grounds of the manor until he came upon him but now Dean is as hard for Cas to find as his place in this new time is - he finds a station that played a lovely song with a piano (Sam later told him it was an ‘indie station’, he doesn’t know how to tell him that he has no idea what that means) soft lyrics fell upon his ears and he lost his afternoon to meaneal tasks while the music floated from the small machine.

He takes notice of a song that starts to play only because it is in such contrast to the music the machine has been playing for the better part of the afternoon. There's a heaviness to the melody, an intensity that the other songs lacked, he spends much of the song listening only to the instruments.

The only line that actually sinks in after that first listen is “there is no sweeter innocence than our gentle sin” and he can’t understand why his chest seems to expand against his ribs while his lungs squeeze themselves together because he’s never heard the type of lyric that was made to hit you square in the chest because, well, there’s not been a lot of music listening aside from piano and string quartets in his life.

He asks Sam how to learn the words in a song and Sam shows him how to get to a ‘Google tab’ so he can look up the song (Sam reckons a genius lyrics page might be a little too much for Cas). He types the words he remembers into the ‘Google’, and is decidedly confused by what can only be the name of the song. Take Me to Church, while a lovely name, stands out like a sore thumb in his head alongside the titles of the pieces he aimed to perfect in his old life.

He spends as much time as possible over the next three days listening to the song on ‘Youtube’ while he reads the lyrics, he just barely manages to stop himself from writing the lyrics out on paper so he can look at them when he’s away from a computer (like when Dean heads to school with his laptop and he can’t listen unless the machine - a ‘radio’ apparently - decides to play it)

Each line draws him in and pushes him away in equal measure, humor for Cas doesn’t mean laughing at a funeral it means Dean teasing him, tickling him, smiling as he waits for the joke to land on Cas’ ears. But still they all seem to resonate beyond what he thought was possible, Dean was always met with disapproval, he always wanted to worship him in any way he could, even now he curses the moments they could have had together if only one of them had been braver before the night spent in their clearing.

“We were born sick / you heard them say it” and “I was born sick, but I love it” stop his breath cold on every listen. He doesn’t allow himself to look too deeply into that, he’s long since accepted himself and delving into beliefs of a time long since past does no one any good.

What strikes him as odd is that there's a violence to the love and devotion that he can’t really understand, worshipping like a dog and revealing your sins to the sound of steel being honed isn't how he loves Dean, isn't how he sees Dean as his salvation, he writes hymns inspired by Dean. He doesn’t, could never, equate his devotion to something so lacking in softness, not when he can still feel the tufts of Dean’s hair under his nose or the petals of the roses Dean winded up the trellis on the side of his balcony.

The focus on a violent love turns him off from the song but there’s a pull in his mind with each iteration of “offer me my deathless death” he knows enough to know it might be a reference to sexual pleasure but he can't shake that something about the line draws him in, what with his death being undone when Dean brought him back.

The bridge, as the website calls it (Sam does eventually end up showing Cas the genius page), he reads the most, over and over and over and he thinks how it was just him and Dean in those stolen moments, how the doctrine he was told to follow labelled him a sinner but with Dean that didn't matter, it didn't even filter into the moment. The ritual the man sings of, the scene that plays out with it, becoming clean, human, he can’t even put words to why that settles so deeply into his chest, why it makes sense to him even though he never truly felt dirty about the things he and Dean did, the love they shared. But the truth of the matter is that Dean made him human again that night in the manor, and in doing so made him clean, clean of the never ending hell of the manor, just like he had promised to do all that time ago.

“Let me give you my life” sits heavy in his skull, it scratches at something deep within his brain for weeks. Ever since he first took the words into his head something about them made him think of them. It didn’t make sense though, Cas’ death hadn’t given Dean his life. Hell Cas’ death almost surely led to Dean’s own. So why would this lyric stick with him?

It's about a month after the successful ritual that he hears the song again, a fluke video on ‘autoplay’ on the youtube tab Dean keeps open for him. Let me give you my life. Let me give you my life. Cold fingers dance along the hairs at the nape of his neck, blood covers his hands, a redo, a trade off. Let me give you my life. And then a trade again, Dean to him this time. Let me give you my life. Good god, let me give you my life. The weeks spent ruminating over the line make sense now, as though some deep part of him always knew of the choice he made that night, the choice to save his love, the choice to give his life for the only thing that ever made him feel alive.

In the wake of his completed reincarnation, the sloughing off of death’s hold on him, the song takes on intense new meaning, which is no surprise really. His heaven is and has always been the moments he and Dean spend alone together, afternoons in the music room or midnights spent wrapped around each other. His lover is the sunlight, to keep the goddess on their side Cas and then Dean offered their sacrifices. Deathless deaths in multiples, love is worth more than what Sunday’s used to hold.

One night he plays the song for Dean, when the spring shoots are digging their way to the surface and the snowdrops are withering. He says nothing when Dean’s hold on him tightens as the song plays, he doesn't mention the hitches in his husband’s breath or the redness in his eyes when Dean hits replay on the song. He doesn’t bring up the way this song seems to recount their story with startling accuracy, he knows Dean understands. Take Me to Church... they needn’t worry, they’ve already reached salvation.

Sam sneaks the song into the playlist for the reception, their guests assume it’s just another popular song with a decent beat but for them it’s undoubtedly more.

#a ghost story #my writing #destiel ficlet #wayward 👼#I don’t know how else to tag this

22 notes · View notes

cuinnamonbun · 3 years

Note

The brothers being accidentally in love with the Muslim even though they can’t be with them... would they lowkey convince the MC or would they sulk lol

(Say if it goes for both ways, MC is a hopeless romantic lowkey lmao)

OOF. So much angst. This one is a real brain teaser, I had to read SOO many tragedy poetry and fics to get the feeling so excuse the sentimental writing LMAO. A bit of warning though, I feel as though the brothers are OOC in this which is seriously messing me up, but I didn’t want to leave you bare-handed!

I feel like this HC requires a bit of context in order for people to understand why I wrote the brothers’ reactions the way I did. So I’d like to iterate the fact that I, too, am a hopeless romantic and I definitely believe love can change even the most difficult man. I’ve always had this HC in the Obey Me! universe that every creature is fallible and that the brothers, once fallen, are now much more vulnerable to these new emotions than when they were angels since they’re no longer bound to the service of God y’know?

So with that in mind, onwards to the HC!!

p/s: I’ll post the little brothers’ reactions soon, hope you liked this :)

How the Brothers React to Accidentally Falling in Love with a Devout Muslim MC (Big Brothers)

Lucifer

At first, this man will pursue MC for not-so-wholesome gains (cough corruption kink cough). Lucifer is a very decisive man. He knows what he wants and unashamedly goes after it and he will stop at nothing until it’s rightfully his

But in his pursuit, I could see him actually, really, really falling in love with MC

It’s their pure, kind soul that attracted him initially as with all the other demons, but the more time he spends with them, the more he gets sucked in until all he wants and craves is MC

It’s almost heart-warming if not a bit concerning

However in his chase for MC’s affection, Lucifer would forget one crucial detail: MC is a Muslim, one whom is devout especially now having seen angels, demons and hell right in front of their eyes and when he accidentally witnessed them praying, he will just shut down and instantly remember that they are not meant to be

To put it simply, it’s illogical for them to even be together

When the realisation dawns on him, he immediately turns a full 180 and become a massive dick to MC, even borderline cruel that shocks the brothers

If MC confessed their love to him, Lucifer’s heart would soar in happiness, but his pure, unadulterated love for them would force him to push them away and tell them that he doesn’t reciprocate their feelings

But I could also see his Pride taking factor into this.

A prideful demon such as he, who willingly defied God and fell from Heaven, he would absolutely REFUSE to have his partner so dedicated to God.

It won’t sit well in him at all and it will absolutely leave a bad taste in his mouth

But this doesn’t change the fact that he’s still in love with them, a fact which he DESPISES and is DISGUSTED by

When they left the Devildom, Lucifer would do what Lucifer does best: repress his feelings. That, or take it out on Mammon lol

But seriously though, he would need an outlet for his anger, heartbreak and yearning and he would most definitely drown himself in work or by punishing his brothers.

He can pretend all he wants that he’s fine, but Lucifer’s cues are pretty easy to read especially since MC has managed to get the demon brothers’ to bond with and understand each other deeper beyond surface level (a miraculous feat, kudos to our MC), the others can definitely tell that there’s some serious repression going on

But Lucifer gets very snippy whenever the brothers try to help him with it, which irritates the HELL out of them and they would be too annoyed with him to even bother helping him now

Now that his pride has driven away both the very person whom he loves and his brothers, Lucifer will become even more withdrawn and far, far lonelier than he was before MC came into their lives

Sometimes, he curses the circumstances that led them to him, even if they were the best thing that ever happened to his family

Yeah, heartbroken!Lucifer is just ;((( (Alexa play bitches broken hearts by miss billie eilish)

Mammon

This man is a capital S simp.

Mammon gets attracted to anything shiny/pretty REALLY easily (after all, it’s one of the main reasons why his symbolic animal is a crow) so him being attracted to MC at first didn’t really come as a surprise

I think he knows the difference between finding someone attractive and actually being in love with them despite having never even fallen in love before

He’s lived for centuries and plus, his own sister loved a human, he’s certain he has never felt that for anyone before

Him realising that he’s in love with MC would definitely come as a shock to him though. This tsundere can deny it all he wants, but he can’t deny the fact that MC’s mere presence alone gives him serenity and cardiac arrest at the same time

His initial reaction when he comes to terms with it would definitely be to flee and avoid MC like they’re the plague. But this man pines and when he does, his sin will flare up and MC will find themselves with a very clingy Avatar of Greed by their side

To Mammon, being in love is the equivalent of stepping outside of your home for the first time in weeks and feeling the gentle warmth of the Sun caressing your skin

He is gentler, more compassionate, and more attune to MC’s feelings. He definitely places them above Goldie because they are his most prized possession, the keeper of his heart, the rarest jewel and like everything he treasures, he takes extremely good care of them. But he would NEVERRR let MC or his brothers EVER know about that (sike, everyone knows it, he’s so soft for them it’s so obvious. They find it endearing though)

Which is why when he remembers that they’re Muslim and that they worship God, the very deity he curses and rebel daily against, his heart would break

He isn’t stupid (well, not all the time), he’s lived in the Celestial Realm before. He has seen the humans who reside there once they pass their mortal life. They were infinitely exuberant compared to the ones who were condemned to a lifetime of punishment in the Devildom for their sins

And he could never doom them like that, it would hurt him to see his love miserable and depressed down in the Devildom even if he would want nothing more than for them to be together forever

So, he would bottle up his feelings and try his best to live in the present and enjoy what little time he has with them, even though he felt like that entire year passed by in a flash (which, in demon years, is most definitely like the blink of an eye)

If MC reciprocates his feelings, I can picture him being so, so joyful about that fact, but he knew that their romance is a tragedy right from the beginning. He is a fallen angel, he can’t change his nature and he has transgressed against God in the worst possible way; by swearing eternal enmity towards Him.

I can’t picture him getting over them, even after they’ve passed and are thriving in the Celestial Realm

omg I'm gonna sob Alexa play Smile by Juice WRLD

Leviathan

We all know that Levi thinks of MC as his Henry, his number one best friend

And he’s right. There were no instances of their hangouts being anything more than platonic

When he first started falling for MC, he’d deny it like Mammon did

Him? In love with his best friend? Preposterous.

Eventually he’ll come to realise it though because they were probably watching hilarious videos on the Internet (cough Buzzfeed Unsolved cough) and Levi was so distracted because he was just staring at MC laughing suuuper hard at the video in pure awe. Like his lil demon heart just went doki doki

Pure joy is so beautiful on people and seeing it on MC?? They were pulchritudinous

But even after coming to terms with it though, Levi becomes SUUUUPER shy and embarrassed about that fact that for the first few days, he avoided them because he couldn’t compose himself in their presence

Eventually our beautiful demon of envy will snap out of it by MC cornering him and tearfully telling him that they miss his company

So now they spend even more time together and Levi will slowly become more confident around MC

This means soft, shy touches turn into ‘accidental’ brushes against them then to full lingering touches until finally, he becomes confident enough to throw his arms around them in a hug

Unfortunately, depending on the gender identity of MC, this may not fly all that well

In Islam, contact between opposite sexes whom you have no familial relation to/are not married to is considered a sin (I can elaborate in another post if anyone is interested in it though) and MC will have to politely turn him down, but this doesn’t mean that they hate him. It’s far, far from that

They have to be gentle in their explanation to Leviathan. This man’s self esteem is so low that if MC were to ever recoil from his touch, it would send him into a shame spiral and self deprecating thoughts that is much, much worse than before

So MC will have to remind him that they are Muslim, that they are bound to the services and will of God.

This reminder will destroy him though and his sin will absolutely consume him

He would become so, so envious of God that someone as amazing and wonderful as his MC is so dedicated to Him, and in his envy, comes wrath.

Though his wrath is not as potent as Satan’s, it is enough for him to act irrationally and ruin his friendship with MC

He just couldn’t stand to be around them because all he wanted to do is to hold them, kiss them and love them and his envy for them will become too much that he will start to breakdown because of it

I do picture him being a yandere though with his being the Avatar of Envy. If MC returns his feelings, it might be best that they keep it to themselves and not make it known because this man WILL latch on to them and never let them go

He would absolutely turn them against God if it meant he gets to be with them for eternity even after they die

#obey me! shall we date?#obey me #obey me lucifer x mc #obey me mammon x mc #obey me levi x mc #muslim!mc #obey me x muslim!mc #swd lucifer #swd mammon #swd leviathan #wow levi's went from super wholesome to super dark real quick #angst

76 notes · View notes

sincintaprevia · 3 years

Text

Destierro: Glitch, Love and Storms with Jesús Hilario-Reyes

Still from ‘La brisa va, la brisa viene’ Comfort in Disturbance scene from animated short by Jesús Hilario-Reyes, 2021.

For accessibility purposes, an Alt Text version of this Q&A is available with image descriptions here, viewable by screen readers for those who might have trouble seeing this content. Special thanks to Darryl Terrell and Nina Lucey for helping edit this text.

Since October 2020 when the following email correspondence began, we saw the “end” of the Trump era, the violent mob of white supremacists at the US capital, the Covid-19 pandemic ravage Black, Latinx, and indigenous communities, and a rise in consciousness toward the plight of our AAPI communities facing an often undiscussed or invisibilized racism. That is to say another day, another dollar in Amerikkka.

Jesús Hilario-Reyes is a Puerto Rico-born artist of Dominican descent with a lot of insights into the above-mentioned turmoil. Life’s many storms, be they personal loss or racism in the aftermaths of natural disasters, are a constant of their work. In their responses, they share many intimate moments of mourning in a truly heartfelt, intellectual, and open exchange of ideas and emotions. I feel so much love, admiration, and gratitude for Hilario-Reyes’ work and experiences shared here. Everything they say is necessary, every truth and utterance essential for us all to hear.

For those unfamiliar with Hilario-Reyes, they are “an interdisciplinary artist located at the crossroads of sonic performance, new media, and expanded cinema.” Through “iterative works” they grapple with the “impossibility of the black body, the failure of mechanical optics, and the reverb of cultural dissonance.” Hilario-Reyes makes extraordinary performances and 3D animated video works, “remixing, fragmenting and abstracting my own positionality and history as a second generation, queer, black-indigenous, immigrant, born in Puerto Rico, and whose family emigrated from the Dominican Republic.”

Additionally, through the DJ moniker Morennxxx, Hilario-Reyes is quite a fixture in the underground queer, electronic, nightlife of NYC and the world over. But they are most interested in the creative and communal spaces; “they exist in cyberspace or in real life (IRL); these projects grapple with multiplicity and safety.”

Since October, several hardships fell Hilario-Reyes, so we paused our collaboration on this dialogue to allow time for reflection and healing in an increasingly tumultuous world. But way back in October 2020 Hilario-Reyes shared what they were reading, “Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto” by Legacy Russell, which I enjoyed in audio-book form over several bubble baths. And I shared an essay, “After the Hurricane: Afro-Latina Decolonial Feminisms and Destierro” by Yomaira Figueroa, a renowned scholar in Global Afro-Diaspora Studies. I was pleasantly surprised to see Figueroa’s concept of destierro made its way into Hilario-Reyes’ recent work, performing “Destierro” at Fire Island's inaugural Juneteenth Celebration.

*Here we go:*

Jose Luis Benavides: Thank you for sending me so many images of your work-in-progress, ‘La brisa va, la brisa viene’, the work you’ve successfully crowdfunded for and have been making throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. This work and your past work contend with hurricanes, disasters, and your own personal experiences within the Afro-Puerto Rican diaspora. We see here lots of images of water and flooding. What does water mean to you, how are you relating to it as a material for making these digital images and how do you feel about depicting these flooding or overflowing images?

Jesús Hilario-Reyes: My thoughts in regard to water or bodies of water have drastically changed in the past month or so. I feel as though I may have had a sort of naïve approach or understanding of water and its power. I’ve never had a fear of water, but definitely a reasonable amount of what lies within. I learned how to swim quite early in my life, so not knowing is not necessarily within my memory. I spent about 6 years on a swim team, swimming competitively in club, and with my high school varsity team. I have always considered myself a strong swimmer, and have trained to be a lifeguard.

With that in mind, I have always found peace with being in the water. I tend to go to bodies of water whenever I feel too heavy and need to release. I have a very devotional relationship with bodies of water, and my experiences with them have transformed me in the most beautiful fulfilling ways. On my last trip to Puerto Rico in late March or early April I got to know the power of the ocean much more. Long story short, a young child, probably in middle school, got caught in a riptide at Condado Beach. She was dragged out behind the waves and was panicking, I noticed her quickly and began to swim towards her, riding the riptide along the way.

Still from ‘La brisa va, la brisa viene’ Comfort in Disturbance scene from animated short by Jesús Hilario-Reyes, 2021.

As I got to her, I got her to hold on to my body like I was trained to when I did my lifeguard training. But I did that training in a pool and not in the ocean. My body quickly exhausted itself from holding her up. And I felt the strength of my body dwindle. I could only imagine how this poor child was feeling, but luckily a few other people noticed what was happening and came to save both of us from drowning. The other problem was that the current was pulling us further out and we had to exhaust more energy to fight the current and ride the waves coming toward land. We ended up being pummeled by waves into large rocks. Here we felt safer since we were much closer to other people and only had the worry of maybe getting cuts and bruises from the rocks. Afterward, we made sure she was okay and got her to a medic nearby.

I was with some friends who were also visiting, who didn’t even notice this all happening haha, as they were busy flirting with their trade. We got really drunk and had a great night afterward. It didn’t hit me at first, the importance of that experience until later in my trip The next morning, a friend of mine who also happened to be in Puerto Rico on vacation, headed out to visit the Rainforest with their ‘Trade’ they have been talking to. They ended up at Playa Escondida, which is a secluded beach that is very difficult to get to, you have to hike 30 minutes through a mangrove forest.

This beach is considered one of the most dangerous beaches on the island, because of its strong riptides and its subterranean cave system that tends to drag people under. I came to find this out, after doing research on what happened next. I’m not sure how it happened, but they ended up getting pulled out at sea and the person they were with, the ‘trade’ mentioned before, actually drowned and passed away. The police were called to remove his body from the water.

My experience and my friends have sort of demolished what I thought about the ocean generally. I am a huge fan of Drexciya, an American electronic music duo composed of James Stinson and Gerald Donald. Who was based in Detroit, Michigan, and was a huge leading star in the development of Techno. They created this expansive sonic realm that envisioned Drexciya as this underwater civilization composed of mutated human beings who were able to adapt and sustain life underwater. These Drexciyan’s were descendants of newborn babies thrown off the ledge of ships, during the middle passage by enslaved African women. This world-building not only expanded in the deep ocean but also in deep space, a sort of trajectory that was hopeful and transformative of generational trauma.

I’m a true fanatic, but also a techno-centric DJ and their ideologies show up a lot in my ideas. I believe the practice of Love has a lot to do with the ability to imagine otherwise (will talk about later) With that in mind, water is incredibly bigger than us. Water often feels like a vehicle, it sort of brings you back... every time. It reminds you of your mortality, of the fragility of life, and the expansiveness of this world, this planet. It shrinks you, and undoes you -spiritually, physically in every way. It also holds so much and has space for it. It's abundant and scarce at the same time. It has the potential to destroy you, your home, and your sense of stability. It can completely destabilize an entire nation. Especially in this case.

I want to emphasize that; I do not believe that space is the place, I do not believe that deep-underwater civilizations are the answer. I truly believe that we are just enough, that we as human beings on Earth are just enough. The absurdity and rightful one of imagining otherwise- to places we have not adapted to, biologically is valiant and important. These images and scenes with flooding water create an uninhabitable (for comfortable human life) or ravaged scenario, where the character is moving through this space, burdened. Is the exact absurdity that comes with this reality we exist in.

This work looks at Carnival practices and how characters are created. For example, the carnivals following the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans were adaptive, in the creation of new figures within the celebration. Certain communities ridiculed governmental personnel (whose actions and misactions lead to the destruction of many Black communities) by creating characters around them. This sort of ridicule is at the heart of Carnival practices since the beginning of its conception.

That’s what I’m communicating with these images. Ridicule, Absurdity. My concern with this is how this work reads to my family and to other environmental disaster survivors. I’m trying to handle this project with care. So I ask my family how they feel about it, and what surfaces when they see these images. My mother, who has persevered through many hurricanes, tells me about how her experiences or thoughts around hurricanes resurface, but she isn’t retraumatized. She’s more supportive of the ways I’m navigating these heavy ideas. I’ve asked my family who lives there now and it's the same response from them. Talking about this as a means of coping but also transforming their experience into a healthier more sustainable understanding of community.

Still from ‘La brisa va, la brisa viene’ Undying Sound scene from animated short by Jesús Hilario-Reyes, 2021.

JLB: Yomaira Figueroa describes “the concept of destierro” as “an untranslatable term for exile in Spanish, which is akin to being torn from land because destierro remains a relevant and precarious condition for Black and Indigenous peoples”. You mentioned having some conversations about displacement and Puerto Rico with your mother after reading the essay. What did you talk about and how do you feel about this notion of destierro?

JHR: Ever since reading about this concept of ‘destierro’, my understanding of my work has deepened profoundly. I feel as though this concept was what I’ve been making work around for a while now, but I didn’t have the language for it. I recently have been having conversations with my mother, my aunts, and my grandfather. Much of these conversations were surrounding their migration to America. But through further inspection, it turns out this move toward the artificial American dream was a response to the job crisis as a result of the Trujillo dictatorship.

That was news to me, and then further contextualized what I’ve been thinking about in regards to fugitivity, and immigration. And then what ignited the move toward the states was the scarcity of available jobs/careers on the island, as a result of political corruption. I think about ‘destierro’ in all of this. The ways in which the trickle-down effects of political, and economic ruptures, dispossess specifically Black and Brown communities, in this false race for the American Dream. It also applies to the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, and how it has forced many people off the island, forced them to move to the states, and even face homelessness.

Yomaira mentions Jacqui M. Alexander’s work (Pedagogies of Crossing) in her essay with this quote “Alexander argues that people in exile/diaspora “ have grown up metabolizing exile, feeding on its main by-products --alienation and separation” She asks us to think specifically about the position of being “African American and exiled on the spot where one is born. To be Caribbean and exiled on foreign soil produces a longing so deep that the site of neglect is reminiscent of beauty”. Here she underscores the ontological and phenomenological aspects of being exiled and dispossessed in multigenerational contexts” I felt particularly understood towards the end of this essay where Yomaira states “Across these works, the act of remembering and awakening the memories of home/lands, land practices, and resistance to uprooting are tools of resistance against ‘destierro’.

Recently I was commissioned by Fire Island Residency to do a series of performances for their Juneteenth festivities. I performed some of my new work entitled ‘Falling so fast”. But I was also able to do an iteration of these ‘crop circles’ I mentioned. I’m thinking of calling these works ‘crossings’. My first iteration is below as photographed with my drone. This land installation is about 200 feet long and stretches from where the water kisses the sand to the start of the dunes. This work takes on a remedial approach to the effects of destierro. I found it particularly beautiful, reflective, and critical, for this work to be ephemeral. It develops this relationship of erasure with the ocean and the wind, and those passing through it.

After two weeks, this work completely disappeared. I think it really speaks to the politics surrounding fire island, in regards to stolen land… but also its ephemerality or disappearance is sort of embedded within the mechanics of queer spaces. And goes back to what we’re talking about in regard to fugitivity. Nonetheless, this work was made with my partner and lover Marques Rice - on an island where ‘wildness’ seems to be the undercurrent.

Documentation of “Untitled”, land art installed at Fire Island by Jesús Hilario-Reyes, 2021.

I recently attended a zoom panel discussion, with Yomaira Figueroa, Sarah Bruno, Anais Delilah Roque, and Beth Colon Pizzini entitled ‘Puerto Rican Studies: Current and Future Practices. Here I was able to directly ask Yomaira and Sarah questions in regard to all of this. I forget what I asked exactly but Sarah responded with such a beautiful answer.

“I’m thinking through bomba as a place of healing, particularly after the earthquakes and after Maria and within the diaspora where it becomes the Batey or the dancefloor/circle. It really operates outside of time and outside of pinned geographic space, and because it is built on care and intimacy, and its embodied long enduring history that-its within the body, it is within the music, it's in the rhythm, and it is inscribed into the Batey itself. It becomes a balm for destierro. For those who have been ripped away or born not knowing, knowing that you’re just never going to be able to see sovereignty.

And so in that way, I see it also akin to Blackness, and how it's centered in my understanding of Bomba as well as the Caribbean. And I see it more so with fluidity, Bomba is also a space where I see migration from the rest of the Caribbean, and it becomes this place in Puerto Rican history, where other people from- St.Croix, from Haiti they come to Bomba, because of its musical resemblance, and it becomes a place of welcome. And it really reestablishes Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans in the diaspora back into this Black geography that the United States has worked so hard to really distance us from”

When I tell you I was jumping in my chair!!! This is what it's about, this is how we’ve done it, this is how it's evolving. Every time I visit home, I go to Terraza de Bomba Bonanza, where they play bomba- which happens every Monday night. And this time it was located in La Perla, because of rigid covid safety protocols on the island. And La Perla is known for its low police activity given the layout of the land, it makes sense for the Batey to exist there right now. And I felt it...that feeling of liberation, healing, love, transcendence, community, care, that Sarah mentions.

But was also similar and reminded me of to the feeling I get from dancing for hours at raves specifically organized by Black and Brown Queer people. It is in these spaces that centralize queerness and Blackness, where these ideas surrounding blurring, subversion, and futurity, are embodied, practiced, and taught. It is important to understand that these places can and do exist and theory is important but the experience is even more felt within! There are also other things that come into the conversation in regard to raves, police, and the culture of social media, but sometimes and I mean that sometimes dance liberation is at the heart of it all.

JLB: I think there’s a flow between Legacy Russell’s Glitch Feminism and what Yomaira Figueroa is saying when she’s “destierro takes form as a dispossession of spiritual syncretic practices, alienation from the body, refusal of memories, and the physical deprivation of land. Across these works, the act of remembering and awakening the memories of home/lands, land practices, and resistance to uprooting are tools of resistance against destierro.” Could you describe the connections to land, transformation, and liberation in your current work?

JHR: My bad, I guess I already started going into this but yeah...

I think you’re right Legacy Russell and Yomaira Figueroa both identify ways in which glitch goes about subverting and nuance in relation to the systems at play. That being said, I think that land practices in relation to the work I’m doing feels most akin to the ideas brought about in Glitch Feminism and ‘Destierro’. Specifically, in Akin to the Hurricane and now currently in ‘La Brisa Va, La Brisa Viene’, they both employ this sense of mobility. Movement and masquerade are important in both of these works because of the ways in which they resist identification.

In Glitch Feminism, Russell states ‘Still, the machinic bias enacted by the panopticon of the mapping of the body through digital technologies is filled with hopeful holes, leaving us to ask: If a body is not legible as a body, and therefore cannot be read, will it be “seen”? Can it ghost, skirting the omnipresent digital eye? Failing recognition, can it successfully cease to exist?” And I’m beginning to grapple with disappearance, and ghosting in the coming scenes of ‘the breeze comes, the breeze goes’. But more so finding autonomy and liberation within it. Of course in strategic ways but...

I’m not sure if I fully agree that this ‘strategic illegibility’ is a move toward liberation, but it certainly is a move of resistance. I worry also, and question, if these modes of resistance are aforementioned akin to the modes of glitch Legacy, talks about? A part of me doesn’t feel that they are akin to one another. But more so adjacent.

Still from ‘La brisa va, la brisa viene’ Architectural Familial scene from animated short by Jesús Hilario-Reyes, 2021.

Nonetheless, liberation is at the spearhead of my practice, the feeling of it is the fuel for its trajectory. That, in tandem with the motif of transformation transpiring in my recent work--I’ve recently finished reading the Parable of the Sower diptych by Octavia Butler and have been so deeply moved. I found myself identifying and devoting myself to the Earth Seed ideology and seeing some of its teachings in my work. Specifically the central teaching of it; “All that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you. The only lasting truth is change. God is change.”

I’ve been sitting with this book a lot, and been thinking of how migration and autonomy play huge roles in the underlying motifs surrounding the protagonist- but also how these movements inform the characters growth through self-sovereignty, and finding belonging and meaning amidst the chaos.

I still struggle with ideas that tend to exalt Black people into something more than human, or mutated, or god-like as a means to elevate Black culture and our love for ourselves. I don’t agree with that notion, we should not have to do such things. That sort of performativity of success is toxic and deeply capitalistic, it leaves no room for the actual humanity of Black people. But I do find it empowering, to practice autonomy in the ways in which we conduct change--that is the groundwork of Akin to the Hurricane.

Documentation of “Akin to the Hurricane: Iteration 04” performed at ACRE Residency, photographed by Ryan Bach, 2018.

I’ve also been reading “The Migrant Image: The Art and Politics of Documentary during Global Crisis” by T.J. Demos. And he makes this beautiful remark that I found akin to this larger conversation about fugitivity, blackness, queerness, and liberation. It goes as follows,

“...migration identifies something uncapturable and unmeasurable, something ever mobile and unfamiliar. Far from designating a completely disempowered status, this approach sees migration taking on a certain agency, autonomy, and potentiality.”

He makes these remarks as a suggestion for the condition of being human, and ‘determining a politics of equality on that basis.”

JLB: To move from just these academic theories toward your lived and day-to-day experiences as a non-binary Black and Caribbean artist living in the diaspora, how might you relate to the idea of destierro “as a term that can capture the complex and multiple forms of dispossession and impossibilities of home for Afro and Indigenous descended peoples in the modern world”? Could destierro or this kind of embrace of the storm or becoming the storm in your work, “push […] toward liberatory practices, and map different forms of dispossession and resistance across intersecting identities.”

JHR: I think this embrace of the storm is absolutely a ‘push’ toward liberatory practices. In much of the rhetoric behind my work and even my collaboration with Leah Solomon's ‘In Hot Time’, this motif of vertical motion--this whirlwind, disorients or circumvents the viewer or at least seeks to. This everlasting state of motion is fugitive, and that fugitivity is in tandem with the nature of Blackness and Queerness. This whirlwind or the storm in this case becomes a symbolic space. To embrace the storm is synonymous with the blur. Fred Moten is probably one of my favorite writers but in his book Black on Blur, he elaborates,

“Disorder is our service, our antidote, and anteroom, our vestibule without a story. We can’t survive intact. We can only survive if we’re not intact. Our danger and saving power is an always open door. Our venue is mutual infusion, the holy of holies in the wall, glory in a kind of open chastity, where the explicit body reveals itself demure in disappearance. Unenforced, slid, venereally unnatural, and convivial, we claim slur against drill and document. Confirmation of the flesh is queer and evangelical”

I’ve held onto this statement for a while now and I think about this in regard to what Sarah spoke about - saying “Bomba is the balm to destierro”. That in these fractured, fragmented, bodies - disorder becomes that ‘push’ toward liberatory practices. That in the improvisational, sporadic, gorgeous, melodic, harmonious, chaotic space of the batey we find our antidote. That through dance, we’re able to disembody while simultaneously being embodied.

This embrace of the storm is definitely not about welcoming natural disasters and having that be the method of this idea. I firmly believe that climate change is an agent of white supremacy and that climate change disproportionately affects communities of color and lower economic status.

It's clear to me how the things that fall under this idea of ‘destierro’ have affected my individual self as well as my families and those around me. I mentioned before the political, governmental, and economic turmoil in our mother country was the agent that caused our migration. As well as how Hurricane Maria has affected my family and their relation to nature and land, also how it has affected much of the Puerto Rican population. Even in the most familial sense, there are forces far larger than the individual that urges us to move outward, away-- growing up queer in the mid-west with a heteronormative family and not having access to a community, will unearth you. And it did.

JLB: Among other things, Legacy Russell is really interested in amplifying the blurry lines between our IRL and AFK selves. From your unique intersection of identities and experiences with the performance and art world, as a DJ in the queer underground dance world in NYC, and from your own personal history in Milwaukee and Chicago. Can you describe the very real and felt a connection to community and the virtual world building you’re into or the digital worlds you’re creating and how they’re connected to your day-to-day of being Afro-Puerto Rican and non-binary?

JHR: After reading Glitch Feminism, I started to embrace more of the URL aspect of it all. I read this book while I was on a social media hiatus. At times and honestly as I write this I feel like the internet isn’t the most hospitable for me. I definitely think there are beautiful moments that happen in this space and it allows us to exist in multitudes, and that’s sort of the promise of the internet. It's an endless space that is bountiful with information and can answer many of your questions.

Still from the anime “Serial Experiments Lain” by Ryūtarō Nakamura, 1998.

But much of it is unfulfilling, I think we’re living in this dystopian cyberpunk reality that people want to reimagine time and time again-- It's as simple as this quote from Serial Experiments Lain, a sci-fi anime tv show from the late 90s where Lain, the protagonist who developed a unique connection to virtual reality network called ‘The Wired’, states the “internet is awesome, but you can’t download love”.

Sure this anime was made before the invention of social media-- I believe the failure of the internet is within its promise, we cannot expect this space to be boundless when it's so deeply intertwined with transactional relationships. It costs to have access, and within its commercial root we lose the capability to really transform ourselves, our interest becomes commodities - most things feel performative and tied to branding or some sort of revenue. Even if it's authentic, this is the nature of social media. Although we have these architectural in-capabilities -- the internet, especially for queer people does become or can become a space to extend community. The internet has probably morphed every bit of myself, it's so deeply communal that it can be very anxious.

Obviously, the internet/virtual world is massive and definitely has room for expressions of love. Recently, I organized a memorial celebration with Club Quarantine for my late best friend Terrell Davis. Who was and is one of the most recognizable and prolific designers working with CGI in the revival of Y2K aesthetics! Terrell would always be in Club Quarantine, (a group of organizers creating and hosting parties on Zoom, throughout the Covid-19 Pandemic). And I think about the conversations we had in regard to raves and parties organized by queer people of color and how he didn’t feel comfortable in those spaces. And that’s kind of what I hinted at before in how these spaces don’t exist in a vacuum -- that these spaces also deal with a status quo.

But during his celebration, I really felt this beautiful expression of love and community within my body. It had me tweeting, and yelling out loud IRL that “LOVE IS REAL '' in all caps because it felt so embodied. It felt like he was there with us, and made me think about how he will exist online even past his death. How the online or URL aspect of people live on in this stagnant state well after their death. But also how love can be shared through this space. I don’t know...I’m still processing the effects of the pandemic. I see how I’m contradicting myself...but I feel like that’s okay.

I truly believe that World Building is a practice of Love. A friend of mine shared with me a quote in the midst of all of this happening--that really gifted me with so much affirmation, and moved me to tears. I visit it quite often, this is from Valarie Kaur, a Sikh-American lawyer, and activist,

“Love is more than a feeling. Love is a form of sweet labor: fierce, bloody, imperfect, and life-giving—a choice we make over and over again. If love is sweet labor, love can be taught, modeled, and practiced. This labor engages all our emotions. Joy is the gift of love. Grief is the price of love. Anger protects that which is loved. And when we think we have reached our limit, wonder is the act that returns us to love”

Still from ‘La brisa va, la brisa viene’ This is where it happens scene from animated short by Jesús Hilario-Reyes, 2021.

12 notes · View notes

eolewyn1010 · 3 years

Text

Rambling

I’m salty, time to dissect a random piece of media.

So, there’s a very pretty little comic that crossed my dash recently. I’m not gonna link/reblog it here because it’s quite popular and I’m not in the mood for getting hated upon because of my negative opinion, but the synopsis is as follows:

Cinderella and her prince are happy together at first, but their marriage soon cools off because the prince apparently prefers to hang out with “younger and prettier women, daughters of nobles whose hands have never done a day’s work”, and Cinderella is bored out of her mind because she spent her entire life working and thus had never the time to develop any hobbies. She enjoys cooking and sewing, which is apparently not princess-y. Also doesn’t really take to court life with balls and representation and stuff, feeling it all is becoming routine. She learns all that nobility stuff and tries to get her prince’s attention back with a couple project, but eventually, he’s off to moon over other princesses again and she stops caring. One day, she finds the old diaries of a Princess Aurora aka Sleeping Beauty, becomes intrigued, then very intrigued with this mysterious far-off lady who loves poetry, eventually finds her, wakes her up and elopes with her. Many years later, they are two lovely old ladies running a bookshop and living their sweet married lives.

Cute, amirite?

Well.

Let’s start off with the prince, shall we? Why would he be so disinterested in her? We never get a reason for that. The story says that Cinderella did “stop worrying about a man who had gotten what he wanted from her”... eh, no? She’s his wife. He married her; that relationship should be worth something. If for no other reason, then at least for representational purposes and taking the effing time to make an heir. Why should he have already gotten all he wanted out of her? And what happened to their lovestory, anyway? He was very much in love with her once. What, was she not royalty enough to entertain him? But she showed a good will to learn - and teaching her stuff and sharing things with her she didn’t know yet would have been a very good reason to spend time together. It’s also established that Cinderella reads a lot and falls in love with Aurora over a shared interest in poetry. After it has been established that the prince wrote her poems and songs, so you can’t even tell me they had no common interests, because they obviously did. But I guess if we want to get the guy out of the equation, the only way to elevate the lesbian couple as inherently superior is by making the guy a neglectful, cheating dick. Whatever.

Then, Cinderella. WHERE’S THE COMMUNICATION, FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE? She tries to reconnect with the prince via spending time together, but at no point does she go, “honey, there’s something not right with our relationship, we should work on that.” At no point does she confront him or face her own insecurities about being not good enough of a partner. Maybe they could have worked it out, maybe not, but they sure could have found a better way of separating than Cinderella just running off into the night without ever telling her husband what the heck is the situation between them? Yeah, the prince is a dick, but we’re never shown Cinderella actively working on salvaging their relationship. She just stops caring - and doesn’t even communicate that. Cersei and Robert Baratheon had better communication than that; at least they could openly admit to each other that their marriage was garbage. There’s also the thing about “younger and prettier women”. Ew? In every Cinderella iteration, she’s younger than twenty, an appropriate age to be unwed in non-modern times. She’s also here about the same age as Aurora who was definitely a teen when she fell asleep, so... are you trying to tell me the prince is a pedophile? Or just that he’s shallow? Only that the first thing we’re told about Aurora when Cinderella finally sees her in person is that she’s ✨ beautiful ✨, so, double-standard much?

As for the “hands that had never seen a day’s work”... yeah, what is a lady suposed to do? Except managing THE ENTIRE FUCKING HOUSEHOLD of the royal palace, very much practicing the handicraft that women of higher stand are expected to deliver just the same (and no, I don’t mean pretty embroidery, I mean useful stuff, like repairing clothes, because clothes were expensive and you didn’t just walk to the next store and buy new ones whenever), administrative duties in the government (how does the prince have so much time to hang out with ladies? Doesn’t he have a country to run or something?), so Cinderella should have been massively out of her depth, not bored whatsoever.

And then, the relationship with Aurora. Which starts off entirely one-sided as Cinderella becomes attached to what she assumes is a dead girl who left some diaries. Which seems to count as love, apparently, considering she manages to wake her up and we have a True Love’s Kiss protocol to follow here. Thing is, I have feelings for people I’ve never met in person, online friends, not romantic feelings, but sure as hell the one or other massive squish. BUT - those developed via interaction. We exchanged questions, opinions, we discussed. I wrote something, and something came back. That’s how relationships are built. Cinderella gets nothing back from Aurora for the simple reason that Aurora is kind of fridged for the time being, so... how is that “falling in love”? And how is it better than her relationship with the prince? Woohoo, instead of marrying someone she’s spoken to three times at a few parties, she now marries someone she’s never spoken to at all! Great! Someone she really has things in common with, like poetry! You know, like the poetry her husband used to write for her when she still bothered to interact with him! The story has a time skip from “Cinderella finds Sleeping Beauty” to “many years later, happily ever after”, so we’re clearly expected to take for granted that they hit it off the second Aurora was awake. That Cinderella’s “fallen in love with diaries” was sufficient relationship-building. Also, “routine”? What, you think running a bookshop is never going to be routine? Hate to break the news to you, but love has to function in everyday life.

If you wanna have that lesbian princesses fairytale, why not write an original story instead of derailing an existing one? I guess I wouldn’t mind so much if the prince hadn’t been so trampled on as a character. He has to suck so the rest is great? Uhm, why couldn’t they talk about it and come to the mutual conclusion that they don’t work as a couple? Could make for an interesting fairytale to have people behave like adults.

Anyway. You wrote a queer lovestory, congratulations. I just don’t think it’s a very good one.

#something about a Cinderella comic #thanks for coming to my brat talk #it's not hate it's an analysis thank you very much

5 notes · View notes

desiree-harding-fic · 4 years

Text

On Loving one Taako Taaco

ReJEANcy again! Taako is away on business. Lup and Kravitz attend a party as new in laws. The people who can boast to be loved by Taako form an exclusive club. AKA: Lup and Kravitz are best friends and I will never not use the fact that Kravitz and Taako fell in love without Lup around in canon to my advantage because it has me feeling Some Kinda Way.

As always, thanks to @fandomsnstuff for you know... everything?

This felt longer when I wrote it but oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Enjoy!

ReJEANcy can be found Here and Here.

*~*~*~*~*

The evening came to its close, and with it, Kravitz and Lup retired with all due gallantry and ceremony, making their excuses and saying their goodbyes, until their coach was pulled around the front of the manor house drive, and Kravitz himself held out his hand to help Lup step up into the carriage.

She could not help but notice that the other guests began filtering out as well at their departure, and with it came the errant wondering - whether all in the county followed Kravitz’s lead in everything. She supposed they would, as he owned the majority of it. As the coach pulled away, beginning the long journey back to Astral, her thoughts strayed to the many introductions of the evening, to Kravitz’s neighbors, his friends.

Never had she been treated with such respect and deference in company. It was intimidating, in a way, to stand by Kravitz’s side; he could not stand in a room without one immediately taking notice of his excellent manner and breeding. He inspired a certain self-consciousness in company, it was clear, though he seemed at all times to combat it with a practiced grace. What a ridiculous thing money was, she thought, to inspire such feeling in a crowd. That simply because Kravitz’s wealth was so vast, he was treated as a great man.

And by extension, she as a very great woman. And there lay the contradiction to her first inclination. That as intimidating as it was to stand on Kravitz’s arm, there was a power to it. That the difference between the treatment of Miss Lup Taaco, and Kravitz’s sister-in-law Miss Taaco was tangible.

It was another thing about him, she thought, perhaps the thing that most swayed her to liking him; that beyond the other facets of his character, one thing had stood out: he had, from the moment they first met, treated Lup not as a lower-class member of the gentry, a supposed gentleman’s daughter with no fortune to her name. No, he had always acted, from the moment he was introduced to her, as though Lup was every bit his equal in rank, class, circumstance, breeding, and all. And in company, his example was always followed, for who would dare offend Lord Kravitz of Davenshire?

She wondered if Taako had felt this way when Kravitz was courting him. There was something intoxicating about standing on Kravitz’s arm, being so well treated and highly thought of. It was no wonder he had been taken with the man in so short a time.

“You are contemplative,” Kravitz said, from where he sat opposite her. He was leaned back against the wall of the carriage, one leg bent on the seat, all relaxation now that they were unobserved. “What are you thinking of?”

He looked warm from the evening’s wine. Lup felt much the same: warm, loose, a bit tired from drink and company. It led her, perhaps, to speak more earnestly than she was used to.

“That you treat me better than I deserve, in their eyes,” she replied. His head cocked to the side, slow, brow furrowing inquisitively. “You behave in company as though I am your equal,” she explained, “when women of my status are not even allowed into the rooms in which you are treated as an honored guest. You have married Taako; I may be his sister, but my circumstances are unchanged. I am not accustomed to being treated as equal to someone of such rank as yourself.”

The man looked amused, a smirk on his lips.

“Taako would have me believe you are not my equal at all; rather he would tell me that you are my better. I believe he has said as much more than once.”

Lup laughed, quiet.

“He would say it.” She could not help but smile. Taako was better to her than she deserved.

“He thinks more highly of you than of any person living or dead,” Kravitz said, and Lup was taken, once again, by how… lucky she was.

“I am fortunate it is so,” she replied, her voice falling quiet. Kravitz looked at her fondly, and Lup thought how much more handsome he seemed here, quiet and relaxed and content in a comfortable space all his own. In company he was like a marble, fixed and perfected. He was much the same at the Estate when he was working, in order that those who worked under his name could follow a strong, confident example. She much preferred the softer iteration of him here, with life flowing through him, and so obviously. She thought that this must have been what Taako saw in him when he consented to marry him.

“My brother does not love easily,” she said, the words abruptly coming up from somewhere deep, secret, and true inside of her, spilling from her lips quickly and unexpectedly, lingering in the still air. She must’ve been inspired to say them by the drink, or by the intimate darkness of the swaying carriage, but now that she had said them, she felt at once as though there was a weight on her chest that, if not removed at once, would surely kill her. She tore her eyes from Kravitz, gazed toward the window at the blackness of the country night.

“If I knew him any measure less than I do,” she confessed, “if anything had driven us from one another as children… I might believe that he had no heart at all.”

She looked back to Kravitz. His brow was furrowed once more, and he appeared fixed on her every word.

“It is quite the opposite you know,” she said. “It took me so long to understand, when we were younger. But he is not without feeling; rather… he feels so much, when he allows himself, that he can hardly stand it. He is so capable of love that he feels the need to conceal his heart behind wit and artifice, behind distant manners. It is how he survives this world; if everything were to touch him, as it touches us, he would drown from the force of it.”

Lup could not continue for the lump in her throat. She had always been the only one, save Auntie, who could understand the warmth under Taako’s iron exterior, the softness that he hid away for fear that it would one day be his destruction. Lup was the only one in the world who knew Taako enough to understand that to be loved by him was the greatest privilege man could bestow, so great, sometimes, that it was almost painful to know. Lup was the only one who understood the responsibility implied in being one of Taako’s beloved.

And then there was Kravitz.

“I apologize,” she said, around her tightened throat. “I am sure these are not revelations to you. But I must confess I was… taken off guard, upon my arrival to Davenshire, by how much he has come to care for you.” And suddenly it was vital that Kravitz understand, in no uncertain terms, how great his responsibility was too, alongside hers.

“Against all odds, you have captured my brother’s heart,” she said, looking at Kravitz, beautiful Kravitz, and she felt she would cry any moment. She spoke with as much gravity as she would muster, the wine in her blood loosening her tongue to an honesty she rarely felt confident enough to employ.

“You must be very careful with it.”

Kravitz looked warily at her, sympathy deep in his eyes. But with it, something more, something she could not yet identify.

“I intend to be,” he hedged, and Lup shook her head, closing her eyes, and then looking at him imploringly, leaning forward in her seat.

“You do not understand me. He will love you like no one alive can. I do not say it lightly. It is… to be loved by my brother, actively, is like nothing else. But betray the trust he places in you for a moment, Kravitz, and it will destroy him. It will break him so that he dares not allow himself to love again, and if there is one thing I will not see, it is my brother, shut off from this world and heartless.

“He weathered the death of our Aunt last year,” she said, “She was one of two people I could say definitively that Taako cared for. I am the other. You are the third I have seen him open himself to in the way that he has in my lifetime.” She swallowed thickly, thinking of Taako’s frightened, joyful expression the first moment he confessed to Lup that he loved Kravitz. Lup had never seen anything akin to it in the world.

“You must understand,” she said, “that you carry his heart in your hands now. He has made himself defenseless for you, and there is nothing in existence he fears more than that. There is no bravery he can summon greater than that which allows him to trust. It has never been simple for him. If he loves you, Kravitz, and he does, it is, whether you know it or not, the result of contemplation deeper and more labored than you can possibly have known when you asked him for his hand.

“I am his sister. He has always trusted me, in our own way. But he has chosen to place his trust in you, quite against his nature, and your responsibility is greater for it.” She blinked the tears from her eyes. To think Taako had only been absent a few days, and she missed him so terribly already. She did not understand how she had lasted in London without him, without being on the receiving side of that deep, overwhelming affection - without seeing him errantly in the hall or across a crowded room, and remembering, every moment, that she would do anything in the world for him.

Kravitz was gazing at her with wide eyes, half frightened, but immensely serious nonetheless, and Lup thought, of all people she had ever met, he seemed the one to hear her words and take them to heart more deeply than any.

“It is precarious ground upon which we stand, you and I,” she said, wryly. “Those who love him as we do.” She chuckled wetly. “But he is the best of us, is he not?”

“He is worth every trial,” Kravitz said then, conviction imbued in every aspect of his voice, and a wave of relief and affection swept over Lup so suddenly that she could hardly breathe. That Kravitz, with one sentence, had made it clear that he knew not only the weight of bearing Taako’s love, but also that he had come, independently, to the conclusion that he would bear it willingly, was a greater gift to her heart than any she could have received from her brother-in-law in all her life. The relief that there was someone in Taako’s life who understood him so that if she was made to leave him, he would be held in safe and loving hands was enough to finally bring the tears spilling from the corners of her eyes. And the kinship that had been lurking in the back of her mind; the sense that Kravitz knew her in an unspeakable way, simply for how much he was able to see the value of her brother, grew in her suddenly and fiercely until it was all consuming.

She smiled at Kravitz.

“Then you are worthy of him,” she said. And she let her head rest against the carriage wall, and her eyes to slide shut.

*~*~*~*~*

#taz balance #lup taaco #kravitz #taakitz #reJEANcy #regency au #lup and kravitz are best friends because only they understand how dope taako is #and also guys? I love him #this entire excerpt is me waxing poetic about how good taako is while using lup as a thinly veiled excuse #imagine being kravitz tho #and lup randomly drops this on you #fuk my dude

196 notes · View notes