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v-is-braindead · 4 months

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🅖🅐🅩 🅗🅔🅐🅓 🅒🅐🅝🅝🅞🅝🅢

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Brought to you by a winter snow storm

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Gaz HC’s

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(SFW)

> When he isn't at work he is practically attached to you at the hip. He always takes you shopping and spoils you whilst you two debate over skin care.

>This man absolutely has (at a bare minimum) a 5 step skincare routine. He doesn't skimp out on products either.

> Inexplicably has a thing for scent. Fragrances you use in your perfume, shampoo and conditioner, lotion, deodorant… literally everything matters.

> Following that all his fragrances match. His cologne would be similar to Uomo Born in Roma, including violet leaf, sage, and vetiver. If he can't find something he needs with a matching scent he will try finding a close replacement begrudgingly.

> Seeing as he’s often away from his home for prolonged periods of time, he will come home and deepclean the place before he even considers relaxing.

> When he finally makes it official with you, he spends his free time planning cute dates and being a present boyfriend.

> Outdoor summer movie dates? Check. Winter ice skating? Absolutely. Carving pumpkins for Halloween? His will be the scariest one you have ever seen.

> This man will cater to your every need as long as you pay him in the currency of kisses and hugs.

> While he is absolutely a gentleman, his work is very demanding mentally, physically, and timely. He does occasionally enjoy sitting in bed cuddling while you play with his hair.

> His love language to you is gift giving. However, his personal love language is physical touch and quality time, considering his profession and its needs, he deeply enjoys what time and touch he receives.

> This man will dress to impress, always maintaining perfection, but also matching your outfits perfectly. In a suit? He will be too. You're in a frilly sundress? He’s in a loose summer button up shirt which complements the color of your dress to a T.

> He knows when to show off, when you're at a party getting looks from others he’ll show his muscles by wrapping his arms around you or pulling you in by the waist. He’s not afraid to show who you belong to.

> He is a sucker for home cooked meals made by you, It's the thought and love that makes the food taste delicious. If you can't cook he will absolutely teach you how just so that way he can praise how well you made something. If you're not in the mood to cook he will make your favorite thing for you or get your favorite take out.

(NSFW) *more afab*

> He is a caring partner, he focuses on you finishing before he even considers relieving himself.

> This man enjoys when you sit on his face. He loves the feeling of the weight on him while being between your plush thighs. It makes him feel secure and hearing the moans egg him on further.

> The amount of times where he would just pick you up and eat you out on whatever is closest is insane.

> He has a whole playlist dedicated to fucking you so hard that you wont be able to walk for the next week. He also has one for when he really just wants to love every little thing about you while making you turn into jelly.

> His smell is heightened so he likes to make your senses sensitive. His favorite ways are tying you up and leaving you exposed and randomly tracing and touching you. Another one is a blindfold, especially when you're needy and begging.

> Similar to his playlist for the mood, he will praise you for taking him so well and being such a good girl. Maybe that same night even, he’ll be grabbing at you and practically growling about how you're his dirty slut that was made for being used by him.

> Has considered a threesome with you and soap…

> Will absolutely record himself fucking you in every position so that when he has to be away for work he has plenty of material.

> He doesn't own any toys for himself but he's bought you plenty of toys for while he's away. He doesn't mind because he knowns that when he comes back that he’ll fuck you better than any toy ever will.

> He's a switch naturally but usually tops. Will let you dominate him if you want to top or he just feels more submissive.

> He leaves so so many bites and hickeys. He adores the way they cover your neck, body, and jaw. You get upset when they aren't easy to hide, little do you know he purposefully makes them hard to cover up.

> Keeps a polaroid picture of you on the inside of his gear. It's his second favorite picture of you, the first being anywhere you're smiling for him, it shows you in the first set of lingerie he bought you between his legs.

> Soap accidentally saw this picture and asked about you. Gaz speaks so highly of you and shows you off to Soap. He gets turned on simply by the thought of you being you… Like this man just loves you so much.

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How I feel after writing this<3

#kyle gaz garrick #cod mw2 #cod #task force 141 #kyle garrick #gaz x reader #kyle gaz garrick x reader #gaz headcanons

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nonbinarygamzee · 11 months

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What about Terezi thoughts?

the thing with terezi, for me, is that she is quite possibly the only character to rival the level of unease and distrust i have for interpretations as i do with gamzee, in all the opposite ways. she was really important to me in the early days, because for all of the gripe i have about how it was ultimately handled, her story was always about her own guilt and attempts to reconstruct her own worldview because of that guilt, struggling with her own inability to justify herself because in ways she understands her own behaviors are rooted not in reality but in a position and expectation and place of power which she was born into. its so hard to talk about her, and really i feel like i am even more willing to go into the vriska stuff than i am the terezi stuff because as much as vriska conversations are complicated by the fandoms past (on either side of that debate) there is just an even more intense air of refusal to engage with terezis character assassination than anybody else....... which i guess makes sense, shes one of if not arguably the most frontal character, shes beloved weirdgirl, (mostly) unapologetic in her convictions. all i guess admirable traits if you are not like..... from my specific sphere of homestuck fans who have been worn down for all of those reasons. and yknow, a lot of vriska fans will disregard my opinions as inherently unserious and bad faith upon realization i like the clown, which sucks, but its mostly the terezi circles that have treated me like im personally committing some kind of violence by trying to discuss gamzees agency and the problems i have surrounding. what the comic did to these two together.

i guess that isnt really all that much About terezi but really i do think i have said most of the sweeping things i have to say about her as an actual character before. we are given this character who clearly does not have much awareness for the systems which lead her to her worldview, has little to no interest in being actually Fair (i mean come on even for the mess homestuck is her introductory interests in justice and murderstuck investigations are Meant to be read as her being clueless and on board with alternias laughably unjust judicial system. thats textual!) until she and people she knows are hurt by the actions shes up to then encouraged and taken part in. and that itself isnt an issue it is a pretty fascinating position for a child whos then being placed(/placing herself) into a role of an arbiter amongst an increasingly unstable group of isolated children, all of whom including her are very much products of the social conditions which they have been raised. the problem is that any real attempts to reckon with this stuff got shoved aside in preference of a shoehorned narrative about abuse that, if you were around and in the right places at the time, you KNOW how bad faith that shit was from inception. all of the interest in her guilt and insecurity about her own ability to think beyond that instinct that has been instilled into her that hinged on her own decisions and regrets are instead reconstructed to be all about shitting all over the plot device character who already didnt get to Be somebody, and was the subject of so so so many harassment campaigns that we know damn well hussie and the people working with him at the time were well aware of. to me the only way you can see any of that as a genuine attempt to touch on toxic relationships or domestic abuse are if you had no idea what kind of shit he (and the fans turned friends turned contributors) was doing, actively, at the time and it doesnt help that in releasing psycholonials he kind of just got to rewrite the narrative about how the fandom vitriol was spreading (and his extremely direct hand in that) or what was actually being said a lot of the time at all.

and like, yes i have an inherent distrust of people who arent going to examine all of the biases that go into presenting the character who is an amalgamation of all of hussies terrible biases wrt blackness and mental illness and addiction as the only of the kids who is somehow not just as much a victim of the antagonism of the narrative they exist within (while literally working under the child abuse demon!!!! i will say it again i will say it forever), duh, we know this, but i dont think you have to like or sympathize with gamzee to admit that shit was contrived and BAD. it isnt that strong, smart characters, especially girls, can never get abused or manipulated, or whateverrrr, but the second the story decides to reveal this detail is the start of a refusal to engage terezi as the intelligent and hyper-competent character we were initially presented with. her dialogue for literally the rest of the comic from that point on is a hollow, horrifying ghost of what she was before, any attempts to write her as unaware due to her emotional state more often just come across as a caricature of an emotional woman and the fact that it literally gets so bad that people were analyzing that shit at the time wondering if she wasnt also literally being psychically manipulated or barred from information in the same ways is, to me, proof enough of that. homestucks got this very very potent kind of misogyny going on with certain characters where they are allowed to be smart, often smarter than any of the men in the room, but not smart enough that theyre actually allowed to be right, and if they are right its usually as a result of the universe kind of.... dropping the info into their lap, moreso than deducing shit. and part of that is for sure i think that hussie is just better at telling than showing, but if you have READ any of their past works you also know that the idea of women being just generally stupider and flatter and lesser agents in their own stories is something he has always kind of had an issue with. im tired of stepping around it, im tired of stepping around the cop character having an investment in lynching imagery and then getting to be victimized by the manifesations of hussies discomfort and perception of black men! and being told im crazy by people who didnt have insight into how insidious so much of this all was at the time it was happening!!!! tired of not letting her BE flawed because people would rather avoid all of the discomfortttt. aaaand ok this is where im cutting it

#ask #terezi #um all this said you dont have to believe me when i say it but i like her! that i like her is part of why im so tiredddddd #meta

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funkymbtifiction · 3 years

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Please, help me understand Fi more.

Hello! I hope you are enjoying your day!

I was hoping that could help me understand xSFP types and Fi types in general better, because as an ENFJ most of them seem reckless, annoying and egotistical to me. It’s easy to resonate with some of their fears and desires, however, I don’t really get them.

E.g.: in ‘Shadow and Bone’ Alina Starkov’s whole personality is a huge red flag. It is quite difficult to understand how one can think only about herself (and Mal sometimes) when there are much stronger forces at work and you can feel that historical events are literally at your doorstep. It’s quite surprising to see Alina not making any effort(she doesn’t really want to know other Grisha or train or even think about what is going to happen). She gets a chance to feel normal, to fit in, to have a kind of family with other mages, and yet…

As you have probably guessed, I have no problem understanding Kirigan’s intentions, but I would like to understand Fi a bit better, as there a lot of main characters with Fi.

Thanks in advance.

I am enjoying my day, thanks. I got done with work early, and realized I’m exhausted, though, so I doubt I’ll get much more ‘productivity’ done today.

SFP / SP types “live in the moment” and focus on what is immediately in front of them; they don’t see or look for the big picture, and whatever Ni flashes of insight they have are rational “sequence of order” premonitions. For that reason, you cannot judge them from an NF big-picture perspective, because their focus is here and now. Sometimes, they are reckless; other times, they are “on point” and skilled at seeing what is coming and doing something about it (either being part of it, or getting the hell out of Dodge).

I had a conversation with a friend one time about Marie Antoinette, as we debated whether she was ESFP or ISFP, and she pointed out that Marie could not have been ESFP, or she would have had a quicker sense of the reality of her situation. One of her ladies in waiting, an ESFP, saw what was happening and the way the trend was moving toward beheading aristocrats and left France. Marie was swept up in it all, and a casualty of it, because her feelings (subjectivity) outweighed her Se objectivity.

That is, in a nutshell, what is happening with Alina. Her personal feelings are directing every decision she makes. You have to “get” her not only from an ISFP perspective, but a 6 perspective, and factor in that she’s a social-blind Enneagram type. Her feelings are all that matter to her. Her feelings dictate her actions. Who she cares about influences her choices. She is a Fi-dom. Fi-doms have barometers that are in flux between “I love this,” “I hate this,” and “I don’t care.” For love, they love a lot. For hate, they loathe. And for the “I don’t care,” there’s no middle ground, and no need to think about it further, because they really do not care. Fi weighs everything according to itself – what its ethical judgment is about this thing, person, situation, belief, etc. How *I* judge it.

Alina is an orphan who has only ever had her best friend, and she is ripped away from him without any choice in the matter, and forced to attend a magical school where the only other person who seems to care about her, and offer her protection and guidance (the same thing Mal did) is the general. She’s an sx-user – if she doesn’t have fire with someone, she doesn’t “bond” with them. She’s an sp-user, she wants to feel safe and keep herself “okay.” She has no social instinct, which means friends aren’t to be made for “casual reasons.” (To be honest, that baffles me to; I have strong soc and not to make friends, take an interest in the other girls at the school, and think about what my role is would never occur to me.) She is a Se user, so she’s thinking about what is immediate and what she wants rather than seeing the bigger picture. It takes her time to start doing that, to start breaking down things and trusting her Ni, and by the end, she has a sense of her place of “belonging” in the world, but it’s still… about the person she cares about the most. It will always be that way.

She’s a Fi-dom, she has sx, and she’s a 6 – she NEEDS Mal. The story is all about a 6 learning to trust herself and do things for herself, rather than relying on other people all the time; like the Darkling’s mother said, you can’t always be using “amplifiers” (other people), you need to do it yourself. Every 6 must learn this. She’s about her connection to Mal (and later, the Darkling) and protecting that person; that is the central focus and drive of her life: I need you and me to be safe, and to be together. Other ISFPs aren’t like this. Harry Potter is one, and he takes on plenty of things that are “not his problem” because his Fi says, “Wait a damn minute here… this is WRONG. I MUST ACT.” SFPs act on what they feel is right – you see it in Harry Potter, in Buffy Summers, in Legolas Greenleaf, in Thomas from the Maze Runner. Feelings lead to action.

Fe/Fi conflicts a lot, and it’s not hard to see why, because it’s going in opposite directions. FJs want to be situationally-appropriate, FPs want to live their truth. FJs feel like they are obligated to society, to put themselves aside and work for a greater good; FPs feel like society is made up of individuals who should make their own choices, and not be “forced” to do anything. For an FP, it’s a choice of “*I* am going to do this, because it’s the RIGHT thing to do.” Consider Frodo in LotR. He didn’t have to take the ring, and throw his entire life into the toilet in the process, but he decided, with his Fi, it is the Right and Moral thing to do, and that the task should be his. The Ring came to him. It’s his responsibility.

Alina was not given a choice; she was revealed to have magic, and forced away from the man she cared about, her entire life uprooted – and it was not her choice. IFPs just want to live their life free of outside interference and for others to be able to do the same. Some of them are selfish, some are generous. Some of them would make friends, others would not. Some of them would say, “I have a responsibility to society to do X,” others would say “X is not my problem.” It’s all dependent on the individual. That’s what you need to remember about Fi: it’s all subjective. Everything for a Fi is subjective. You won’t find two Fi’s who are exactly alike in terms of what they think is right, if they feel responsible for what happens, or what should happen. They live in a world of a continuous testing of the outer world, to see where their barometer arrow swings. Do I care? If so, what am I going to do about it? If not, then what?

Ironically, an INFP introduced me to this show. As it turns out, her Fi only cares about the trio of Crows, so she watched it focused on them and sometimes felt angry about the changes to the book / their characters; she didn’t care about anything else, so she didn’t absorb it (or even necessarily watch other scenes). I watched it, absorbed everything, but only cared about the Darkling’s arc, as I found him the most interesting. As a result, we have nothing to talk about after seeing the show, since she only cares about the Crows and I don’t care about the Crows. For both of us, the viewing process was a process of looking for something to care about, something that means something to us as individuals, and devaluing everything else. That’s how Fi works: if I care, I care a lot. And this matters more to me than that does. It comes with a subtle tone of dismissal at times -- I don’t care about that -- but it’s really a process of what draws Fi.

That is just the tip of the iceberg about Fi; you can read a lot more about them and all the types in my upcoming MBTI book. ;)

#question #mbti #isfp #alina #shadow and bone #submission

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lorenzobane · 3 years

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Harebrained Scheme

AN: Written for @trektober-challenge first installment- namely Prime Directive, but more specifically inspired by some of @fractal-baby discussion about Spock’s absolutely insane plans. It was written pretty quick and definitely playing fast and loose with timelines, but set after ST:ID but before ST: Beyond. Can be read as pre-Spirk, but the major relationship is Jim & Sarek chatting.

Can be found on AO3 here

Being kidnapped and held with his First Officer’s father was never exactly the plan for Jim. There are, in fact, a lot of people Jim would rather be kidnapped with. Namely, the aforementioned First Officer Spock.

But as it stands--

“We have been held here for approximately 2.3 hours,” Sarek says after a moment of silence.

Jim nods, “don’t panic.”

Sarek gives him a look that plainly says Vulcans don’t panic. “I am simply stating a fact of our capture.”

“Yes, sir,” Jim says patiently. “I’m aware of how long it has been.”

“The temperature is several degrees below Vulcan standard,” Sarek pointed out.

“I am aware of that as well,” because Jim was. Whoever their enemies were, they knew who they had kidnapped. The temperature is holding steady at a place where Jim is uncomfortable but is draining Sarek.

Sarek says nothing and continues to observe the cell around them calmly. Jim has been pacing since he woke up about an hour ago. It’s a plain white room with no windows and no doors as far as he can tell. He’s tried clawing at just about every inch of the sterile space, and as far as he can tell, nothing gives.

“What are the walls made of?” Kirk mutters to himself. They don’t feel like metal or even plastic- they radiate the coolness as if they’re some type of natural product, but the way the room is sealed tells him some kind of technology is involved.

Sarek cuts into Jim’s thinking with a, “I believe these are made of Betazoid limestone.”

“What makes you say that?” Jim asks. With Spock, he’ll usually prattle for a few minutes, discussing density and texture before giving him an answer as straightforward as his father.

Sarek looks at him in surprise, “you are not able to tell?”

Jim resists the urge to reply with sarcasm. Sarek isn’t Spock, which is plainly apparent in every interaction they have. Though Spock always seems extremely calm and balanced to Jim, being around his father makes Jim aware of how much more emotion and variation Spock regularly expresses.

“No,” Jim says. “I haven’t spent much time on Betazoid.”

Sarek nods, “I was briefly an Ambassador there in my son’s youth. He was very fond of the rock and found its cool texture pleasing.”

“I thought it would be illogical to find a rock pleasing,” Jim replies without thinking.

Sarek is quiet for a moment before responding with, “yes, indeed it was. However, as my wife put it to me then, there is nothing illogical about curiosity. The desire to explore. I am not sure I agree with her, but I have never been successful in curbing my son of any habit he does not wish to break.”

“He can be stubborn,” Jim replies with amusement.

A mild understatement if Jim has ever said one. Though he is always respectful and never veers into full-on insubordination, Jim now understands what Pike meant when he referred to Spock fondly as an ‘extremely independent First Officer.’ Jim doesn’t mind it, maybe even loves it- the way Spock is relentless when he is convinced of the correct course of action. The argumentative (logically debated, in Spock’s words) messages and memos coming at all hours until Jim either gives in or says the phrase, “drop it, that’s an order.”

Which, at the very least, shuts him up for a shift or two.

“Do you believe they will be able to find us?”

Jim shrugs, his communicator is still on his person, and he tries it every few minutes, but he keeps getting static. “None of my messages are going through, but as you mentioned, your son is very stubborn and an extraordinary Starfleet officer. If anyone could rescue us, it would be him.”

Sarek nods again, and they sit in silence while Jim continues to search every square inch of space. It doesn’t make sense- unless their captors beamed them into the room, there is no way for them to have entered without a door of any kind.

“My son,” Sarek says, somewhat awkwardly pulling Jim out of his observation of the walls once more. “How is he-- I mean to say, I recognize as one of the very few Vulcans at Starfleet, and now as an endangered species, it may be challenging for him.”

Jim kindly doesn’t say that Sarek didn’t actually ask a question and responds with, “the crew loves him. He fits in great and has a surprising number of friends. The kids in the Science department all think he’s some type of rock star. The amount of transfer requests I get specifically for his division is getting out of hand.”

“Rock star?” Sarek repeats back.

“A term for an old Terran classical musician who was known for extreme popularity,” Jim responds with some curiosity. Spock is exceptionally familiar with Terran classical music and had known precisely what Jim had meant when he used similar phrasing. Still, Jim supposes that perhaps he picked it up in his many years on earth.

“I am gratified to hear this,” Sarek replies, somewhat slowly. Jim jerks up, alarmed, when he realizes that it appears that each blink is getting slower and slower as if he were fighting falling asleep. “He has so few affiliates on Vulcan.”

“Really?” Jim asks, surprised.

For all Spock can be logical, sarcastic, and moralistic to the point of exhaustion, he’s also a kind friend, a shockingly understanding commanding officer, and a good sport about most things. He even participates in some ship-wide events, like the talent show where he played some genuinely excellent Vulcan lute.

And purely for Jim’s amusement, played a lute version of a truly ancient Terran classic that Jim has a soft spot for, Wildest Dreams.

“He… Was an unusually brilliant student,” Sarek says, still slow as if fighting for words. Jim realizes with an urgency that he should probably try to keep Sarek talking to keep him awake.

“Vulcans didn’t like brilliant students?” Jim asks with amusement. The idea of Spock being a nerd among nerds is somewhat hilarious.

“No, they did not like an unusually brilliant half-human,” Sarek replies, his voice for the first time that Jim has ever known him touching with a hint of sadness. “And he was… Willful. Unusually brilliant, and ferociously unselfconscious about his mother.”

Jim laughs a little at that, rubbing his neck unconsciously, “yes, I definitely learned the hard way that you shouldn’t insult his mother.”

“As did many,” Sarek says, his eyes closed. “He had a violent physical altercation when he was eleven for a similar reason. It was that disrespect of his mother that ultimately caused him to turn away from the Vulcan Science Academy.”

“He didn’t go to VSA because they insulted his mother?” Jim asked, surprised. “Why would they insult Amanda anyway?”

Sarek takes a sharp breath at the casual use of his wife’s name, and Jim feels terrible. After months of playing chess with Spock, they had begun discussing their childhood and Spock often spoke of his mother glowingly. He had insisted that they use her name to honor her memory.

“They referred to her blood as a disadvantage. I knew the moment they said it; he would never accept a place that looks down on humans. He could be illogically loyal.”

“His illogical loyal behavior saved you on Vulcan, and it saved earth,” Jim replies, his voice sharper than he intends it to be.

Sarek opens his eyes at that, slowly and blearily, “I did not mean that negatively. I have come to find that many of the traits I viewed as… Aberration in him, in his youth, has come to define his tremendous successes.”

Jim doesn’t say, though he dearly wants to, that viewing his child’s personality as an aberration at any point is pretty illogical. Still, Spock is a subject that Sarek is willing to stay awake and speak about, so Jim asks, “like what?”

“Well,” Sarek says wryly, “his disregard for rules he simply disagrees with. It is, presumably, the reason that he works so well with you and your idiosyncratic leadership style.”

“I would not say that Spock isn’t interested in the rules,” Jim replies with surprise, the betrayal of Spock’s report after they saved him from a volcano still kind of stings.

“He follows the rules he believes in avidly, that is true,” Sarek says, his voice does hold amusement now. “But he regularly ignores them if he wishes to. I presume you are referring to his report after the events of Nibiru?”

Jim jerked in surprise, “how did you know--?”

“My son and I have been keeping close correspondence after the destruction of Vulcan and the loss of his mother. We are attempting to… work through the strain our relationship was put under while I worked through my disappointment that he did not go to the Vulcan Science Academy.”

“Isn’t disappointment illogical too?” Jim asks. It is hard for him to hear the casual way Sarek describes his feelings towards Spock when Jim truly and completely believes that his First Officer is one of the finest beings he has ever encountered.

Sarek makes a noise of agreement, “you are correct. Vulcans may take a vow to control our emotions, and we certainly may attempt to utilize logic in most decision-making. Still, there is no doubt that our species can be vulnerable to prideful behavior.”

Jim, having beaten Spock at chess a few times, can attest to that.

“What did he say about Nibiru?” Jim asks, curious now as to how Spock described the events to his father.

“I believe,” Sarek says again, his voice rich with amusement now, “that you saw yourself as the rule breaker in this scenario. However, after listening to his entire recounting, I must ask you- whose idea was it to freeze the volcano?”

Jim looked at Sarek blankly, “Spock’s. He had been reviewing the geothermal events on the plant. He calculated the likelihood of explosion was incredibly likely, so he asked if he could try one of his experiments to save the planet.”

“You realize that the plan itself, from its initial conception, violated the Prime Directive, do you not, Mr. Kirk?”

Jim looked at Sarek blankly, “what?”

“It is against the Prime Directive to interfere with a planet’s destiny in any way. Then, the matter of his cold fusion device. An entirely novel invention that had gone through no formal testing, no review process… He simply believed it would work, conducted experiments in his free time, and wanted to use it. And had a captain who trusted him.”

Jim blinks again at Sarek. “But… But…”

Sarek leaned his head back, “do not feel bad. He was somewhat infamous for this when he was a boy. His capacity to convince his instructors that his personal pet projects were highly logical and beneficial regardless of external forces was… Remarkable. And in you, I think he has finally found a place where his prodigious intellect is not being checked by constant regulation.”

“Spock always follows regulation,” Jim defends on instinct, his mind reeling.

“He always follows the ones he believes deserve to be followed,” Sarek corrected. “He has always had a somewhat unusual penchant for attempting novel actions without the traditional Vulcan tendency of deep contemplation.”

Oh, the thought hit Jim suddenly. Spock is a Vulcan bad boy. Jim doesn’t know why he finds that so shocking; Spock does, after all, go along with a majority of his plans and even comes up with half of them. Even more damning, if Spock did not agree with a course of action, it relatively rarely ends up occurring.

Which means… Spock is actually as goddamn reckless as he is.

Jim isn’t sure how he feels about this revelation.

“He... He tricked me!” Jim cries out eventually, unable to contain it.

“But as I have said,” Sarek adds, his voice is shallow and slow now, “I have come to realize… These qualities, his capacity for creativity, and quick thinking have allowed him to become the most remarkable of us.”

“I’m glad that you could see what we have always seen,” Jim says, though he’s more using the royal “we.”

It took him considerably longer to see what was right there in front of him, but once he had, it made sense to Jim that Spock had been a popular professor, First Officer, and Advisor in his time at Starfleet.

“I was unwilling to admit it, but I was worried when he chose Starfleet. So far from his people, alone and living in an abundance of difference. Vulcans can be quite homogeneous.”

“Infinite diversity in infinite combinations,” Jim quoted from Spock’s eternal sermons.

“Ironic that it is a Vulcan philosophy when so many of us view the world so similarly,” Sarek said, inclining his head slightly. “However, in a land of difference, he was able to find a space for himself that he was unable to find with his people. He always did appreciate adventure, read illogical books with his mother like Alice in Wonderland and Sherlock Holmes. Even Shakespeare which his instructors on Vulcan never enjoyed.”

Jim raised his eyebrows again. Spock often quoted fanciful literary classics in trying situations. Still, it never entirely occurred to him how oddly poetic and even artistic that would have made him in a different place.

“I hope he knows that I hold him in high regard,” Sarek says after a moment, and his eyes drift shut again, his breathing going slow.

“No,” Jim leaps up. “No, you can’t. I can not be responsible for the death of two of Spock’s parents.”

“Captain Kirk,” Sarek says with exhaustion, “do not worry. I can place my body into a healing trance that will allow me to remain stable for an extended period of time if need be. The Betazoid limestone will make us challenging to track and as such--”

Just then, there is a loud thudding noise on the wall to their right, like something heavy just rammed into it at full speed.

A thudding again, and then Sarek shudders awake, “Spock?”

Jim doesn’t hear anything but Sarek does because he turns to Jim and says, “please move 3.87 feet to your left.”

Three seconds later, a thud outside the wall gives way to what appears to be an ancient wrecking ball.

“What is that?”

“I think it is your crew, Captain,” Sarek says.

Another beat and a large stone crash through the wall using a device that is an ancient Terran wrecking ball.

“Captain,” Spock said calmly through the hole he just blasted through the wall. “I see you’re unharmed. Father, it is gratifying to see you safe as well.”

“Glad you got to us in time; we were running out of gossip about you,” Jim says with a smirk as he slowly starts to try to clamber through the slightly too small hole.

“Please refrain from joking,” Spock says, guiding his father through the hole much more gracefully.

“Who’s joking?” Jim replies.

Spock looks to his father with an eyebrow up, and Sarek responds, “while I would not term it “gossip,” the captain is correct, and our mutual affiliation with you helped pass a majority of the time.”

Jim nearly cackles at the brief look of horror that passed over Spock’s face when he replies with a steady, “indeed.”

Jim smirks and is silent while Spock focuses on calling the Enterprise to beam up.

And much later, when Spock asks him what they discussed while Spock and Jim played their usual game of chess, Jim can be entirely honest when he says, “your many admirable qualities.”

It’s definitely worth the way Spock’s ears turn a light green.

#trektober2021 #star trek #aos star trek #aos spock #spock #AOS Kirk #james t kirk #ambassador sarek #i intended this to be pre-spirk #but can be read as gen

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shes-coming-clean · 3 years

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Green Day Documentary Reviews Pt 2

The last one of these seemed to make people happy, and because my brain refuses to think about anything but this band right now, might as well do something productive with that. So here is part 2!

Today’s doc: Green Day: Born To Be (2016)

I decided to get this one over with because I didn’t remember liking it the first time, and wow, it’s even worse than I remember. So this review is going to be a lot more negative overall because oof this one pisses me off. Honestly, one of its strongest qualities is that its only 24 minutes, so at least you don’t have to suffer too long.

Pros

* It focuses on their lives from childhood up through American Idiot and includes a decent amount of detail.

* They don’t have any present day interviews recorded specifically for this documentary, which means they have to get really creative piecing old interviews together to tell a coherent story. And they do that well...about half the time (more on that later)

* There are Portuguese subtitles so that’s nice. We love accessibility in this house

* There is a mention of Two Dollar Bill! Love to see it. Unfortunately, they get the nickname wrong and call him Two Dollar Billie (How do you miss the play on words there?) but still, it’s a nice detail to include

* They actually discuss Billie and Mike’s childhoods in some detail. Tré does not get the same treatment but A for effort - 2 out of 3 aint bad.

And that’s it for pros. On to the cons. We’ll focus on the nitpicky stuff first

* This video only has audio in one ear if you’re using headphones, which is kinda unusual for this channel, so I wonder if there was some kind of mistake uploading it.

* They only seem to have footage from the Dookie era and onward so when they talk about stuff before that, they either use a mix of a couple of old photos of the band, generic stock footage, or more modern video clips. I understand that you have to work with what you have, but this is kind of distracting when you’re hearing the narrator talk about their informal audition for Lookout Records, but you’re hearing and seeing the Good Riddance music video. Like, I’d give it a pass if the song at least commented on or shared an emotion with that part of the story but it just feels random. They really don’t seem to have put too much thought into when they use certain clips, so the performances on screen aren’t always from the time period they’re taking about - even later on in the story. This, and the lack of a clear structure can make it hard to tell what year/era they’re talking about at any given moment.

* They have to rely on past interviews to do a lot of the story telling, but once again, they don’t always care too much about time period and will clip sections out of context. For example, they take a clip of Billie from roughly ‘95 talking about how the last few years have been crazy, and make it about their career downturn in the early 2000s, even though you can CLEARLY see he’s younger than in the other clips.

* There is a narrator who fills in the parts of the story not conveyed in clips which is a good choice...except that he’s really annoying. I can’t tell if it’s his voice or the script he’s been given, but either way, it’s not great.

* The narrator says that all three band members divorced or separated from their wives in the late 90s/early 2000s, except...that didn’t happen. Billie and Adrienne had a rough point, sure, but they didn’t separate or divorce.

So far, most of my critiques have not been massive. I still probably could’ve enjoyed a doc at least a bit even if it had those problems, a lot of which seem to be due to a lack of resources and having to make do with what they had. I can understand that. The same does not hold true for this next part, which is, how they framed the band’s jump to a major label and the years that followed.

Every band, actor, or public figure of any kind will usually have some kind of signature question or complaint that everyone either levies against them or debates. Green Day’s is basically “are they real punks or are they sellouts?” At this point, I think this question is pretty stupid and I have a lot of problems with the mindset behind it (I think it has a lot to do with classism and sexism, but that’s for another time), but it’s part of the band’s public persona at this point, so any documentary has to at least touch on it. Most docs tend to frame the backlash against the band after they sighed with Reprise as the petty complaints of jealous gatekeepers who were pissed that the band was inviting normies into their punk club. Basically, there was nothing Green Day could’ve done about it - it was going to happen either way.

But this doc takes it for granted that Green Day absolutely sold out, and not just that, they fundamentally changed and stopped being punk. Which, like, are we listening to the same album? The only real difference between Kerplunk (released before they signed with a major label) and Dookie (their major label debut) is that the second had an actual budget. The sound and subject matter is very very similar. They were never super “hard core” to begin with - in fact, it was their catchy melodies that made them stand out. Nothing in their style changed. Honestly, I would argue that Dookie has a lot more songs about being angry and punk than Kerplunk does. The only difference is its higher production quality. So, when this doc says things like they “lost their hard fought identity” I honestly don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. And this isn’t just me being a fan. The doc says they changed, it says they stopped being punk, but it doesn’t offer any evidence to substantiate that claim. We’re just supposed to hear the ominous music and the out-of-context clips (which were mostly self-deprecating jokes) and believe it.

When they do provide details, most of them are wrong, or at very least, misleading. For example, they claim that the backlash only happened after the band released the second and third singles off of Dookie, “Basket Case” and “When I Come Around” respectively. It claims that the first single, “Longview” was punk enough to make fans happy while the other songs weren’t, which...ok - I just don’t think you can claim “Longview” is any more punk than the other songs. Honestly, it’s kind of a departure from their normal sound into a more jazzy style. I don’t think you can argue that it’s any more punk than “Basket Case” unless you’re claiming that singing about masturbation makes something inherently punk. Like, what are we even defining as “punk” at this point? Also, the backlash started long LONG before any song off the album had ever been released. It started as soon as they signed with Reprise, so claiming it was because people didn’t like the music is just dishonest.

Overall, I really feel like this doc has a very strange tone, especially for a piece of media supposedly promoting their newest album (Revolution Radio). It pays lip service to how great and accomplished the band is, but takes every opportunity to trash them. Because it goes so hard on the “they sold out” narrative, it implies that the success of American Idiot is just because they got lucky that people liked the product of their lack of artistic integrity. I am more than ok with criticizing a band - even one I like, and I don’t mind when a doc does try to do more than just praise Green Day, but those criticisms have to be backed up. And the whole question of “selling out” is just so so stupid at this point. This doc came out in 2016 - was the most pressing issue that year really whether or not a band stopped being punk 25 years ago?

So, thanks for coming to my ted talk. I hope you liked it and if there’s any other Green Day docs you want me to review next, please let me know. These have been a lot of fun to write and I’m so happy that people seem to like it.

youtube

#green day #billie joe armstrong #mike dirnt #tre cool #alliereviews #green day doc #punk #punk rock #pop punk #dookie #american idiot

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blazichu · 3 years

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Mystery March Day 13: Relax

I misremembered this one as ‘rest’ which kind of colored the tone/content, but I still dig it.

It started with a death curse.

Or, well, maybe it wasn’t a death curse specifically-- Vivi didn’t pretend to be an expert, but she knew how it made her feel, even from a distance, and from that she could extrapolate that it was bad news.

The point remained: there was a curse being levied, and the two people who might have any indication what it did reacted harshly to it. Those reactions, however, were on polar opposite ends of the spectrum. While Mystery bristled and visibly weighed his options, Lewis decided on a more proactive approach. In an unerring, deceptively fast glide, he made his way toward the caster and seized their raised hand by the wrist.

Startled by the unexpected contact and the skeletal phantom suddenly looming over them, they immediately lost their concentration-- and, for good reason, went into a panic. They tried to backpedal. When they only made it a step away, they tried to wrench the arm away.

Lewis’s grip on it tightened, and he rumbled something inaudible from their distance.

The spell in their hand popped-- exactly like a soap bubble, in spite of the fact that it didn’t technically exist yet-- and Lewis flinched in its wake, hair flickering wildly for half a second. Just as quickly as the disruption came on, though, his demeanor and form settled; he raised his free hand to gesture lackadaisically.

“Still dead. Imagine that.” He leaned in, as if to confide in the caster, but the phantasmal force behind his words carried them across the gap between himself and the rest of the group, “Be grateful it was me tonight; if you raise this hand again, toward any of them,” His grip tightened, and they renewed their struggling, teeth grit against the pressure on their wrist, “It’s the first thing you’re going to lose. Do I make myself clear?”

Something must have passed between the two, because Lewis dropped their hand, sending them skittering backwards blindly. He straightened up to his full height-- plus an extra couple of inches, due to his lack of contact with the ground-- and made as if to follow. The caster whirled around and booked it as fast as they could.

For several seconds, he stayed put-- tracking their progress until he deemed them too far away to bother with-- and then turned to rejoin the group, absently flexing the hand that had interrupted the curse. He looked completely unruffled, though, admittedly, it was pretty hard to judge when the only metric was a skull with resting bitch face.

It was off-putting, if Vivi was honest-- not the skull, but drastic behavioral shift. Lewis had always been loathe to use his stature to his advantage; he may have loomed, but it was always an accident, and on the rare occasion he’d seen fit to intimidate someone, it had always disturbed him after the fact. Maybe he was just leaning into the fact that it was hard to be a reassuring presence when one was very obviously dead, but it was hardly an isolated phenomena.

She still loved him dearly, but times like this, she worried for him.

Belatedly, Vivi realized that Arthur had frozen up somewhere in the middle of things. Lewis, as he drew nearer, seemed to notice the same thing, sighed, and gave him an absent pat on the shoulder.

And that was that.

Until later that night, when midway through a discussion on Scottish folklore, Lewis fell asleep at the table.

Thinking nothing of the sudden silence, Vivi stabbed a couple more penne, giving Lewis a few more seconds to consider his stance on kelpies. When there was no answer forthcoming, though, she glanced over, and immediately dropped her fork.

“You’re seeing this too, right?” Arthur asked, bemused.

Bizarrely, even though there was no gentle rise-and-fall of the chest, it was immediately obvious that Lewis was asleep, and nothing more sinister. And if there was something more sinister than dead Vivi wasn’t sure she wanted to know what it was.

She scooted forward in her seat, leaning over her plate to get a better look without uprooting herself.

“I… didn’t realize that was an option.” She said after a moment passed. Then, with the blunt end of her knife, she nudged Lewis’s jaw. Arthur fussed at her for it, which was fortunate, because Lewis didn’t wake up to do it himself. She set it down and frowned, “Think we should be worried?”

“Uh, yeah?”

Vivi hummed to herself and stood up, moving to shake Lewis’s shoulder; skull still resting on his arms, he didn’t stir in the slightest. Chewing thoughtfully on her lip, she looked at Arthur. “I realize now’s not the time, but how do you s’pose his skull’s staying in place if he’s not actively keeping it there?”

Arthur, who’d gotten to his feet the same time Vivi had, flicked both of his hands up in something that wasn’t quite disbelief, “You’re right, it’s not the time.”

He made a circuit of the table, and the slumbering ghost thereupon, then came to a halt at Vivi’s other side. “He… looks fine? There’s nothing up with his anchor, anyway, so…?”

Vivi nodded, thoughts racing-- and then, both as a test and in search of answers, hollered, “Mystery!”

Nothing from sleeping spooky, but after a moment, Mystery appeared, grumbling all the while.

“You bellowed?” He asked, face twisting in displeasure as he padded onto the wooden floorboards.

With a wide wave, Vivi gestured in Lewis’s general direction, “Do you know anything about that?”

“I believe that’s your boyfriend.” He said, irritation creeping into his tone, “Should I identify Arthur for you, too, while I’m here?”

“We think something’s wrong.” The Arthur in question cut in, before they could get off track, “He’s, uh, asleep? Probably?”

Mystery shot him a look over his glasses, “He’s what.”

He offered a much more subdued wave toward the still form at the table.

Perhaps realizing that, through all the shouting and sassing Lewis hadn’t said a word, Mystery tensed minutely and trotted over. As the others before him, he nudged the ghost. And, as the others before him, he received a complete lack of response.

“That’s… unusual.” He said, somewhat unnecessarily, and propped himself up on his hind legs, front braced against the edge of the chair. It took a bit of craning, but he managed to nose his way against Lewis’s chest and prod at the golden heart sandwiched between its owner and the table.

That, finally, got a rise out of Lewis. He made a soft, inhuman noise akin to whine and flapped the nearest hand, as if to shoo Mystery away. As subdued a response as it was, neither Vivi or Arthur had expected anything, and it was enough to make one start, and the other jump.

Snout scrunched in thought, Mystery hopped down from his perch, “It seems you were correct, he’s asleep.”

In a silent bid for more information, Vivi turned her palms upward.

“I don’t know what you want me to say. My best guess is that it’s a product of the spell he intercepted earlier, but, as that’s the only variable at play here, that seems rather obvious.” His cocked his head, deliberating, “I suppose we could try to agitate his anchor, if you’re that worried, but he doesn’t seem distressed. Personally, I don’t see the harm in letting him sleep it off.”

At that, Vivi gave a short, wry laugh, “Well lookit that, Artie, you managed to stay up longer than a dead guy.”

Arthur stuck his tongue out and made his way back to his place at the table, eyes briefly resting on Lewis’s slouched form. “Should we move him somewhere else? You know how he gets when I fall asleep at my desk.”

“I think it’s less that he objects to the tabletop, and more that you should go to bed before you get to that point.” Vivi said, flopping back into her chair, “Kinda funny that he passed out here though, after all the talks you guys have had. What do you think, is it gonna take magic backlash to beat your all-nighter-recovery record?”

–

It took another two days for Lewis to wake up. There was some debate as to whether or not that technically broke Arthur’s record; Arthur was relatively certain he’d never taken that long to bounce back from a tinkering binge, and Vivi begged to differ. Mystery wisely stayed out of it.

Up to that point, they’d just resigned themselves to having haunted decor on the table while daily life went on around him, so it was a welcome surprise when Lewis showed signs of waking.

Vivi eyed him from over the edge of her laptop’s screen as she collated her research into parasomnia. He briefly buried his face deeper into the crook of his arm, then sat up and pressed the heel of one hand into an eye socket. As his open eye landed on Vivi, he blinked, dropped his hand, then glanced to the empty seat across from her.

She grinned at him and, without thinking, announced, “He lives!”

It was followed by a confused beat of silence and then a sheepish, “Oh shit, sorry.”

Lewis simply stared at her, uncomprehending.

“How’re you feeling? That was a pretty serious nap, but I guess that’s the worst you can do to someone who’s already dead, huh?”

“A nap?” He echoed, voice distorted either from sleep or confusion.

Vivi turned in her seat to gesture to the brightly-lit kitchen window. “I was trying to be nice, but I could try something more festive, like ‘short coma’.”

“Vivi. Since when do ghosts sleep?”

She shrugged, “Since two nights ago? Mystery thought there was a way to wake you up, but if a curse is anything like the flu, you were better off sleeping through it.”

“Oh,” Lewis said, voice unusually soft, “Right, the spellcaster. That shouldn’t have done anything, though…?”

Vivi shot him a sideways look, and gestured widely to the table. “You tell me, boo.”

Lewis did no such thing. Instead, he got up and floated away, body language troubled.

Things went back to normal relatively quickly thereafter.

On this particular night, Vivi was still pulling together notes for their next case, and frequently called out random trivia about bog bodies to whoever was available to hear it. Mystery would have been underfoot in the kitchen, had its other occupant not been hovering a good six inches in the air, floating around or through him in an effort to ignore his well-meaning nagging, whilst cleaning up for the day.

And then there was Arthur, who had disappeared after dinner. He had the next day off, which was a double-edged sword-- more often than not, he took it as an excuse to stay up until dawn and then crash.

There was a loud clang from down the hallway, and Lewis automatically turned to consult the nearest clock. Simultaneously, Vivi’s eyes flicked down to the digital display on her laptop. 1 am already. She saved her work and stretched, deciding her fifteen remaining tabs could wait.

While she shut things down for the night, Lewis tucked a new towel into the oven’s handle and started toward the hall, goal clear in mind.

Vivi stared after him and, after some thought, did a little skip-hop closer to catch his arm. “Maybe you should try to get some sleep, too.”

“I… don’t need to sleep.” He said, in the tones of one who’d been made to explain something very simple to someone who should know better.

“Not technically, no, but you can.” Vivi tilted her head as she considered whether or not to voice her next thought. “I get that you didn’t really have a choice in the matter before, but you-- after you woke up, you seemed a lot happier, and it made me think. We sleep because our bodies need it, yeah, but it’s important for us mentally, too. Even if you’re dead, you’re still a dead human-- what if you’ve just been cranky because you don’t have a body to tell you you’re tired?”

Lewis was quiet for several long seconds, and then sighed, “If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll try.”

A slow smile worked its way across Vivi’s face, and, with some doing, she craned high enough to press a kiss to his cheekbone. With a gentle bump of his temple against hers, Lewis floated off-- and, as he left, Vivi caught a single word muttered into the darkness:

“’Cranky’?”

–

Though she’d told herself she didn’t have any specific expectations, Vivi found herself slightly disappointed when she spent the night alone. At first, she assumed it meant Lewis had decided against resting after all, but when her alarm went off and she made to start fumbling around in the kitchen, she realized what had happened: for whatever reason, he’d decided to sleep on the couch. She told herself not to speculate why; he had to have his reasons, and there was no point in humoring the wriggling doubts when she’d just be able to ask.

She was a little surprised, though, when her futzing with the coffee pot failed to disturb him. Maybe he was just that tired. It wasn’t unthinkable; if her theory held any weight, he’d only slept three nights over the course of a year.

With the coffee brewing and toaster at work, Vivi wandered over and braced an elbow on the back of the couch. As before, it only took a glance to recognize that Lewis was asleep; unlike before, his anchor was in plain view to confirm it, dusted a mellow gold that didn’t pulse so much as draw in and out, keeping the same pace as the low, even breathing of true sleep.

It seemed he’d curled around it out of habit, protecting it even in unconsciousness.

Vivi lingered a bit longer, without any particular reason for doing so; thoughts came and went, and she didn’t try to hold onto any of them. It was soothing leaning there, absently matching her breathing to the lazy thrum of Lewis’s anchor.

Then the toaster went off and she started upright, slapping her cheeks in anticipation for the day ahead.

She never asked why he chose the couch, and he never offered her an answer.

---

Something about that brief respite must have convinced Lewis that he was better off taking the occasional nap, because he didn’t speak a word of protest from there on out. And as he accepted it, the less Vivi worried for him; he’d never been unrecognizable-- not counting, you know-- but he started acting more and more like himself, rather than the new, spooky version where you had to squint to make out his original personality.

That wasn’t the only benefit, either. Arthur might have foregone sleep for his own sake, ignoring any number of pointed reminders while he worked, but this discovery seemed to change things. If it got too late and he realized Lewis was still hovering around, he’d shut things down on his own and shoo the ghost off to bed, using himself as an example.

It was an incredibly sweet gesture, but Vivi had a suspicion that Lewis might have engineered the chain of events in the first place; he may have urged Arthur to sleep in the past, but he only started loitering when he realized he could make himself the impetus to follow through. But at the same time, the longer this went on, the gentler the reminders became, the more it turned into something he considered ‘for Arthur’s benefit’ and less a naughty, if mutually beneficial, game.

The compromise didn’t always mean they slept at a decent hour, or even went to bed properly, but it did mean that they slept every night, at least for a little bit, and that was better than the alternative.

(It also meant that Vivi got up one morning, further into this arrangement, and found them asleep on the couch: Arthur’s good arm dangling off the edge, Lewis half-sunken into the back of said couch, loosely curled around his anchor-- but also, as a consequence of where he was laying, Arthur. If it hadn’t been for the phantasmal tail his lower body melded into, ‘cute’ was all it would have been, but as things stood, that also bumped it into the ‘fascinating’ camp.

She hadn’t forgotten the fact that his skull stayed firmly in place while he slept, so this unconscious modification was an object of intrigue for her.)

“It’s because you weren’t getting your beauty sleep,” Vivi joked, then moved her hands in a rainbow’s arc and put on the ‘I am interacting with a young child’ voice, “And we all know real beauty is on the inside.”

Lewis sighed a laugh, but didn’t argue. In fact, after a moment’s thought, he said, “It’s strange. Obviously I know I’m dead, but I didn’t realize how awful it was to feel like a ghost until I felt like a person again.”

And to that Vivi hummed, unsure what to say, thoughts racing.

Then there was Thursday.

On one particular Thursday, where Arthur couldn’t stay asleep and Vivi had an especially early shift, the commotion throughout the kitchen roused Lewis from wherever he’d settled the previous night. Nothing unusual there, and Vivi would hardly begrudge his help as she blearily went about putting breakfast together.

There were no footsteps as he rounded the corner-- there never were, regardless of whether he walked or floated-- but something was audibly off when he greeted them.

Vivi waved without looking over, intent as she was on the coffee pot.

It would have taken her a few more minutes to notice, if it hadn’t been for Arthur’s uncertain, “Uh, Vivi…?”

She glanced up, and then automatically followed the pointed tilt of Arthur’s head, failing to process the look on his face until several seconds after the fact.

Where he’d emerged from the hallway, Lewis was shooing off a Deadbeat that seemed determined to get in his face. Frankly, it was hard to blame the Deadbeat; as soon as what she was seeing clicked, Vivi bounded across the kitchen and got in his face herself, reaching up as far as she could. Her hand brushed his cheek. Not his cheekbone, his cheek-- and despite herself, she felt tears welling up.

“Vivi?” He asked, and there was no overt reverberation. As dark-- as dead-- as his eyes may have been, his concerned gaze on her was a balm she hadn’t known she needed, and she gave up on holding back the sniffles as she flung her arms around his neck.

She’d known. She’d known he was still there, even in his roughest moments, and now she had him back.

#Mystery Skulls #MysteryMarch2021 #blazy's stuff

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ofcloudsandstars · 3 years

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Daily witchcraft ain't that exciting lol

To give some people an idea of what I've been up to from time to time.

Yesterday my work schedule got shifted around so I had a sudden day off. I was having a Mental Health Moment™ so I decided to do some shadow work and got some helpful clarity for now. I also read a bit of 'How To Heal Yourself When No One Else Can' by Amy B Scher which had some helpful advice in there. I also washed my hair and long showers always become a bit of a magical cleansing routine like its all about focusing on clearing energy and starting anew. I only use scentless soaps and have a charcoal soap block a witch friend in NYC gifted me to clear energy that I use on my skin.

Other than doing a bunch of errands that was it lol.

The day before I cleaned the SHIT out of my room it feels so good in here. I then finished the task with smoke cleansing.

Today I just woke up and did some dream oracling cause I had a weird ass segment of my dream that was concerning and stress-inducing. It was about a friend. I am still debating telling my friend about it but it didn't feel like a premonition just an unfortunate observation that I don't think will help him right now.

Today also has two intense astro aspects. We have mercury conjunct chiron and Mars square neptune. (be careful with your health and over exertion guys!) So if your mental health or even physical ailments have been flaring up the planets are being rude today lol. It's probably why I have been trying to work with it and do some shadow work cause I have been suppressing a lot of emotional pain that I am now trying to address like a haphazard sock drawer begging to be organized cause its nearly the end of my first saturn return transit and I am trying to get my head straight.

Tomorrow I have another full shift at work so maybe not much will happen. I may start working on May's Astrological forecast if it turns out to be a slow day.

I guess I am just rambling to give people an idea of what its like doing daily witchy things. It's not that exciting lol. I feel like the most exciting daily witchy things are like when synchronicities happen but they are hard to capture and hard to prove they are just like the most wonderful coincidences that make life feel special.

Sometimes when I am running late I try to channel mercury and do spells to get myself there right on time or sometimes everyone else just somehow ends up late so my 5 minutes means nothing lol. Sometimes things just work out to my favor in unforseen ways that make me feel kind of guilty cause I sometimes feel like I don't deserve it. I dunno I mean its just stuff like you have to be there for it. Cause even if it's just coincidence its more about the delivery and timing and the fact that I really wanted something in that moment and the universe was like: aight.

I think this topic bothers me a lot because capitalism really convoluted a lot of people's perception of witchcraft. It's not a job (unless you want it to be) I feel like its closer to the 'spiritual practice' category though its not really one either its more of a practice (that can help amplify your spiritual practice lol). It's more like a sense of awareness of your energy, the energy around you and using that energy to your needs. Sometimes this can develop into more complex magical craft making or ritual doing but on a daily basis this is like visualizing outcomes you want, divining and shifting your energy to shield yourself or put out glamours to get ahead lol.

I feel like the capitalism part bothers me because it does two things. Either makes witchcraft seem inaccessible unless you have a shit ton of money and time (and witchcraft to me is like anticapitalistic)- plus selling tools that are usually unethical cause they are mass produced now when it should be about making your own from local nature in your backyard. As well as making it so that you feel you have to be 'productive' in order to call yourself a witch

and the other thing is that it takes the practice, reduces it to a brand and then distorts the meaning. So people just getting into it are like lost in the sauce. I mean they did this with every counter culture but the original meaning just gets lost as it gets boiled down into an aesthetic. I feel like with witchcraft it was particularly malicious cause witchcraft is such a $free.99 finding your own empowerment/connection to yourself and nature that capitalism sought to turn it into something profitable and reduce it into some new age fantasy brand.

Anyway don't fall for capitalism's suffocating chokehold of feeling like if you want to be something, ANYTHING, that you have to perform it everyday and take pictures for proof to post online. This isn't just about witchcraft I am realizing this is destroying like all of our hobbies and anything we do for fun or that defines ourselves.

An example: I have trouble creating visual art because of social media now, when art should just be about you finding joy in expressing yourself. Now I do feel like you gotta post it online for validation even if you're not as experienced as you like to be. You feel the need to compare your journey to others and what you make to others. It's exhausting. Don't let capitalism do this to you. Especially your spiritual practice or your witchcraft practice. They are really personal practices. It's about your personal journey.

#another rant #I hate capitalism guys #I will shout about this forever #especially since it's aries season #I also hate witchtok #like cool if you like it but if you start feeling overwhelmed in your craft #its cause you are on witchtok #I feel like witchtok is this theatrical caricature of the craft #I dunno probably cause its dramatic teens that want attention and are in it for the clout #daily witchcraft #long post

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theimpossiblehologramtree · 4 years

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It’s a date

Pairing: Zendaya Coleman x reader

Word count: 960

Warnings: none, honestly i think i didn’t even swear in this one... wow me,,, i didn’t proof read tho

anonymous asked: hi! could you do a zendaya x female reader where she gets hired as an actor, in either an avengers or spider-man movie, and it’s her first big acting job, and she meets Z and it’s all very cute and after some time together she’s friends with z and tom and everyone, then z gets a crush on her and toms like ‘you’ve got a crush on her’ to z and z is like what no i don’t, and toms like if u don’t ask her out i will so z asks the reader out and its all stuttery and awkward and it’s very cute, thanks!

A/N: OKAY BUT ZENDAYA IS A FUCKING GODDESS HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO COPE WHEN I KNOW SHE EXISTS! Also sorry this took so long but i had a lot of work at the end of semester. The title lowkey sucks, but that’s bc I had no idea what to name it.

Please keep in mind that English is not my first language.

🐝masterlist🐝

REQUEST IF YOU WANT MORE

☕buy me a Ko-fi!☕

Gif is not mine. Credits to the owner.

You walked into the building vigorously, a smile never leaving your lips. You went into the room a receptionist showed you and looked around. There was a large table in the middle of it. Small cards with actors' names on them were laying on it in front of freshly-printed script copies. A couple of people were bustling around the room, preparing water and coffee for the celebrities.

It was your first proper acting job, aside from a couple of small gigs and a few high school plays you did as a teenager. But it wasn't just some random movie no one would ever hear of. You have been granted a part of Gwen Stacy - Peter Parker's new love interest - in the new Spiderman production. It was one of the most awaited movies, which put you under a lot of pressure. Not wanting to be remembered as 'the one that is always late', you arrived twenty minutes earlier than you were supposed to be. Much to your surprise, you saw another woman already sitting in her place. She was sipping her coffee and reading her script. There was something familiar about her, but you couldn't quite put your finger on it. You walked over to her, debating in your head whether you should start a conversation or leave her alone. Finally, you decided to introduce yourself.

'Hi' you said, sticking your right hand out and smiling. 'I'm (Y/N).'

She looked up at you over her glasses and shook your hand, returning your smile.

'Hey, (Y/N)' she said, blushing slightly. 'I'm Zendaya, but you can call me Z.'

'Oh, that's where I know you from!' you exclaimed loudly. She gave you a puzzled look. Oh, great. You just made yourself look like a total idiot, you thought. 'It's just that I knew you looked familiar, but I didn't know why. Now I do. Shake It Up!' you tried to explain yourself. You fully expected Zendaya to make fun of you, but she only sent you a warm smile.

'I would have dressed up if I knew I would be meeting a fan' her eyes lit up, as she joked.

You sat down in your seat, which happened to be situated right next to hers. She offered you a cookie from a bag that was laying right in front of her. You ended up talking with her the whole time and quickly found out you had a lot in common. During the table read you exchanged funny remarks and jokes, which made you look like a pair of giggly high school students. The director and writers had to shush you all the time because you were making each other laugh so hard it was almost impossible to calm you down. Even though you two had just met, her close presence made you feel less stressed about working for Marvel.

'You're staring again' said Tom to Zendaya, approaching her. They had become very close friends during the production thanks to their similar age. Z snapped out of her thoughts, realizing that she had been, in fact, staring at you for a very long time. She blushed and turned her head to Tom, tearing her eyes away from you.

'No, I'm not' she shook her head, playfully pushing her friend away, even though her red face seemed to be telling a different story.

Tom sighed in disbelief. How could you be so oblivious to Zendaya's constant looks and shy flirting? Everybody on set knew that she had a huge crush on you from day one. And it would take an idiot not to realize that you are bisexual. Anyone could sense that from the distance, due to your always cuffed pants and longing looks you sent towards Z.

'Geez, Zendaya, her eyes are practically never leaving you! Yesterday she walked into a pole because she couldn't stop staring at you in that summer dress' Tom said, waving his hands around and almost hitting an extra, that was just passing by, in the face.

'For the last time, Tom, she does not like me like that! And I don't like her like that either. We're just friends!' she exclaimed, blushing even harder at his comment.

'All right then' he said. 'She's a really pretty girl and if you don't ask her out in the next thirty seconds, I will!

Zendaya opened her eyes in shock. She tried to argue, but Tom just pointed at his watch and whispered 'Thirty seconds, Z'. She moved towards you, still glaring at Tom and flicking him off. Her heart was beating rapidly when she approached you, smiling.

'Oh, hey Z!' you returned her smile, which made her melt instantly. 'What are you up to?'

Zendaya couldn't help but stare at you for a few seconds, before replying. What could she do, though? To her, you were the epitome of perfection.

'Ermm..., nothing really' she giggled nervously, feeling Tom observe her from the distance. 'What about you, (Y/N)?'

'Honestly, nothing either' you laughed.

Zendaya nodded. This is it, she thought.

'Would you, maybe, want to go get ice cream with me later?' she took a deep breath, waiting for your reply.

'Yeah, sure!' you said enthusiastically. 'Who else is coming?' you asked.

Zendaya blushed and looked down at her shoes.

'Well, I was kinda hoping it would be just the two of us. Like a date' she whispered, too embarrassed to look you in the eyes. With her heart beating in her chest, she waited for your reply.

After a solid minute of processing what she just said, you slowly smiled and took Zendaya's hands in yours. Getting on your tiptoes, you pressed a chaste kiss to her cheek.

'It's a date, then' you whispered, leaving her speechless.

#zendaya x reader #zendaya #tom holland x reader #zendaya imagine #michelle jones x reader #mj x reader #marvel #majka writes #peter parker x reader

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dustofbrokenheart · 3 years

Text

The Covenant: Top Anon

Pogue Parry x Reader

Word Count: 2,288

Summary: You have a loyal follower who comments on every post under your food blog. Just who is your favorite follower and why is the new grocery boy kinda cute too?

It was a new year and the start of a new you. Well, that is, a you who was trying new things.

In the past, you always made resolutions, but that spirit ran out before the month of January was even done. But after the particularly rough time of the past year, you swore that this time would be different, that you would make a serious effort to do something new.

It was that determination that led your current situation—your kitchen countertops were covered with ingredients and cooking utensils, your cell phone resting on a near by tripod for filming purposes.

The goal for this year was to try running a blog, and since you were a bit of a foodie, it made a lot of sense to center the blog around cooking and food. The idea came to you quickly; the hard part was deciding on a name, which took a while.

Eventually, you settled on The Foodiest. Naming was not one of your strong suits, but it was enough to get the point clearly across to potential viewers.

Choosing the layout design was on the same level of easy as deciding and didn’t take more than a day or two to implement on your site. Thank goodness for the existence of pre-made layout templates that saved you the effort of having to code everything yourself.

With of the work on that end finished, the day had finally come for you to actually cook something to post about. Seeing as how January was a cold, winter month, you chose to make mashed sweet potatoes. Not only was it one of your favorite winter side dishes, it wasn’t hard to make either, giving you the confidence that even if your writing was lackluster, at least the food would look good.

Most of the blogs you were familiar with used a combination of text and photos for readers to follow along with, but you were going to try video in place of images. You sometimes struggled to copy based on what was shown in the photo, especially when you first started cooking, so you hoped video would make it easier on budding chefs who came across your content.

Luckily, the video would be sped up and lapsed for the final post to spare people from having to watch the monotonous parts in full length.

Hands on your hips, you surveyed everything one last time to make sure it was all ready. With a satisfied nod you reached forward to tap the large, red record button on the phone.

You debated whether or not to talk while filming but decided against it. You were nervous enough posting to the blog without having the added stress of talking.

Everything happened in its regular order: you started by peeling and chopping the potatoes, a basic step, but you took your time doing it, paranoid as ever that you would cut yourself with the knife. Next you boiled the bright orange chunks in a pot of water; then put them in a mixing bowl once they were cooked. And finally used an electric mixer to blend it all nice and smooth, adding in milk, brown sugar, and cinnamon.

Swiping your pointer finger through the finished product, you hummed with delight at the delicious, sweet taste. You pulled out a presentable bowl from the cupboard and spooned some orange fluff into it for the final reveal. Reaching blindly towards the far end of the counter you grabbed a bag of pecans to top off the mashed sweet potatoes. You scrutinized it and added more pecans for good measure.

Doing something in front of a camera was very different than doing the same thing on a normal day. Tension leeched out of your shoulders and you exhaled loudly with your head leaned back. A sense of pride warmed your chest, especially as you returned your gaze to the picturesque bowl. It looked great and tasted even better.

There was a large portion of leftovers because the recipes you used were collected from family and meant to feed small armies of people. You did your best to eat what you could and made plans sharing the rest with friends and coworkers later.

A few days after you published the post, you decided to check the stats on your account dashboard to see what the public response to it was, if there was any at all. Google analytics was useful for counting the total number of views it received while the blog site itself tracked the likes and… a comment?

Initial shock gave way to a bolt of excitement that had your fingers tingling with energy. You clicked to read it, wondering what it may say. Fingers crossed it was something good, whether it came in the form of a compliment or some constructive criticism.

Anonymous: wow good job

The chair creaked as you sat back slowly. You didn’t know how to read that, there wasn’t a whole lot to go on. Wow good job, said sarcastically? Wow good job, said excitedly? It didn’t help that the commenter didn’t believe in using punctuation either. And since it was submitted anonymously, there was no easy way to track down who sent it.

But maybe you were being too paranoid about it. You decided to take it as a compliment and cracked your fingers before firing off a response.

Foodiest: Thanks anon! I had a lot of fun with this dish. Hope you tune in for the next one :)

Anonymous never followed up with that particular exchange but they commented on every post without fail for the next two months.

Anonymous: nevr had white chili before it was good

Anonymous: the stuffed pepper were good

Anonymous: good call with the shrimp

Of course, all of the messages were sent as anonymous, so there was no 100% guarantee that it was the same person, but your gut feeling told you that it was. Who else had no respect for grammar rules and religiously used ‘good’ as their only descriptor?

You grew to expect, and enjoy, the weekly comment left by anon and made sure to leave a nice response in return. It was hard not to feel a connection to someone who took the time to try your recipes and leave a nice message. If only you could figure out who it was or at least have a name for them besides anonymous.

Foodiest: I’m glad you liked the recipe! My gramma swore by mayo when making grilled cheese. Thanks for always liking my stuff, if you ever want to talk more feel free to message me!

There. Maybe that would make them feel comfortable to give you their name you thought as you powered down your laptop for the night.

You spent the next couple of days leading up to the new post planning on what recipe to cook. Yep. Definitely not hoping for more information about anon.

For this newest post you decided to make some Indian curry, one of your favorites. Even long after you finished cooking, taping, and cleaning, the potent scent of spices was still heavy in the air, like aromatic nirvana that had your mouth watering even with a full stomach.

You tried your best not to refresh the post every few minutes to see if anon commented but it was tough. It turned out that you didn’t have to wait long as they left a comment within twenty minutes.

Anonymous: havent cooked this yet but looks good. Never really had indian before so have to go buy the stufff first – po

Anon finally gave up a name! You let out a happy noise and read it again. Po… short and to the point, just like all of the previous responses had led you to think about them. There was no time to waste, you hurried to write back, initial typos all over the place as the words out-paced your fingers.

Foodiest: Hi Po! It’s nice to have a name to put with your words. I would recommend going to an Asian Market for the spices, they’re more likely to carry them. Let me know how it goes for you :)

Since that conversation, Po and you chatted frequently about the weekly recipe choice, whether or not it looked good and if Po had plans to make it themselves, which they often did. Po seemed to like all types of food; vegetarian, meats, drinks, desserts, even ethnic dishes from places as far off as Bolivia and Morocco.

And the longer you two talked, the more frequent the messaging became. Whereas in the beginning Po would only submit a compliment that you would follow up with a ‘thank you’, it had turned into lengthy back and forths that took up a majority of the comment section for each post. More followers joined as the months went by and you hoped that they weren’t intimidated by your blatant favoritism but it was just so easy to talk with Po. If you were being honest with yourself though, it wasn’t only that it was easy… you genuinely liked talking to them.

Every time you made a new post it was difficult to not refresh the page every few minutes to see if they had left a message. And when they did, it was like a shot of electricity straight into the system where your heart would jolt and your face would flood with heat. You were hesitant to say it was a crush given that you didn’t know what they actually looked like and the computer screen barrier made it so you were content to define it as friendship.

Pushing those thoughts aside, you grabbed your wallet and keys while putting on shoes so you could make a quick run to the store. You had big plans to make some buffalo chicken wings for the blog this week and you needed to stop by the store to pick up some ingredients that you didn’t have, namely Frank’s Original Red for the buffalo sauce and blue cheese for the dip. Being an adult and responsible for your own grocery shopping was a chore at times.

Luckily, Winter had thawed out into Spring so there was no need for you to warm up or car or scrape your windows. You just hopped in and drove the four blocks it took to get to the store. The plan was to cross the stuff for the wings off of your list first and then browse around for some good snacks to tide you over for the next week or so. Things were going according to plan until you saw him.

A tall boy wearing an employee apron stood in front of the cracker section, his jaw line and soft looking long hair catching your eye. Then he reached up to the tallest shelf to restock some boxes his arms flexing slightly to show off his heavy biceps and his shirt rode up, exposing deep cut ridges in his lower abdomen. To put it simply, you were starstruck.

He finished with the boxes he had in-hand and went to grab more from the cart at his side when you noticed your blatant ogling. Rather than confront you about it he merely smiled and moved out of the way so that you could get to the brand that you wanted. Choking from embarrassment, you kept your head down and threw a box of Goldfish into your shopping cart, speeding to get out of the aisle and his presence.

The store was a small local business and you frequented enough to know most of the workers there but you didn’t recognize this one, meaning that he must be new. What a way to make a first impression on him. Clearly your constitution was no match for his rugged, good looks. Then he was polite enough not to comment on you objectifying him which somehow made you feel even worse about it.

You decided to end the shopping trip almost immediately knowing that you were too spooked to continue shopping lest you run into him again.

You rolled the shopping cart into an open check-out lane and started putting your things on the conveyor for the cashier to scan. It just so happened that you knew the cashier—she was a middle-aged lady who’d been at the store for nearly two years. “Hi, Y/N. Find everything you needed?”

“Hey, Eva. Yes, I did.” You tried to steady yourself. Eva had a notoriously sharp eye and wouldn’t hesitate to question you if you looked off.

She left you alone today, engaging in normal chit chat, until she had trouble scanning the bottle of Frank’s hot sauce. Eva frowned when it didn’t want to scan and tried again but the bottle slipped from her hands and the neck of it shattered. Eva cursed and huffed, hurrying to throw the bottle into the trash before more leaked onto the register.

“I am so sorry, hun! I’ll get you another.”

“It was an accident,” you assured. “I can get it myself—"

“Not a problem,” she assured you with a wink. She pulled a walkie from her hip and spoke into it. “Hey, bring me a bottle of Frank’s Original Red Hot Sauce. Quick.”

You barely had time to don your awkward smile as she talked about how her neighbor’s dog kept pooping in her yard when the guy from the cracker aisle walked up behind Eva and handed a bottle of hot sauce to her. She took it and patted his back to get him to move forward.

“Thanks, hun. Y/N this is the new grocery boy—”

“Pogue,” he interrupted. “My name is Pogue.”

_______________

Another fic where they know each other but don’t know that they do. This time featuring Pogue and his fandom accepted interest in food. I picture him to have bad messaging skills — his fingers struggle with those tiny phone buttons.

#the covenant #pogue parry #pogue parry x reader #imagines

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shinobis-of-ninjago-au · 3 years

Text

Shinobis of Ninjago

Pilot 1: Way of the Ninja

Prologue (Pilot 1, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), Pilot 2, Episode 1

Ignacia was known for the beautiful rice fields and small villages that dotted the region. Perhaps one of the most popular stores to visit was nothing more than a tiny weapons-smith shop run by two teenagers. It was about a mile outside of the nearest town, but the journey was worth it for the beautiful handcrafted weapons. The store was very traditional, only hammers, chisels, and other simple tools were used to make the products.

The shop was run by siblings, both under the age of fifteen. The eldest, a red-headed girl who was known for her temper, was the age of fourteen and was responsible for supplying for their small family.

Her brother, a thirteen year old boy, was a magnificent mechanic. If it was broken, he could fix it. From cars to toasters to computers, he knew his way around machines.

Today was a quiet day for the blacksmith shop. It was days like this that the siblings loved. They would work for hours on orders and fill up the stock. The girl was bent over an anvil, hammering a piece of steel. She had been at it for a while now, perhaps an hour.

She lifted up the sword she was creating and plunged it into the barrel of water behind her. The steam barreled up as she held it there before dissipating. She pulled the sword up in the air triumphantly before sighing, her confident stance dropping. The metal had cracked, meaning she had to start over again.

The boy looked up from where he was working on a outboard motor for a boat, wiping sweat from his brow. "Lo hiciste demasiado rápido, Skylor. Ten paciencia, si papá todavía estuviera aquí, diría--" ('You made it too quickly, Skylor. Be patient, if father was still here he'd say–')

"Lo sé, lo sé. 'No importa cuántos materiales tengas, la experiencia no es algo que aprendas de la noche a la mañana'. Eso puede funcionar para ti, Jay, pero voy a ser un mejor herrero que papá." ('I know, I know. 'No matter how many materials you have, experience isn't something you learn over night'. That may work for you, Jay, but I'm gonna be a better swordsmith than dad ever was.')

Skylor had been so caught up in her failed sword, she hadn't noticed a woman enter the shop. She caught the attention of the siblings when she spoke.

"Your metal is loud and heavy, useful to slow one down, useless in the art if stealth." They looked to the figure standing next to a display of helmets they kept next to the door. Her white robes were spotless and she had a wide-brimmed straw hat pulled down over her face. She tilted her head curiously. "All tools for a samurai. But nothing for a ninja?"

"Ninja?" Skylor scoffed, putting down the sword and quickly switching to Ninjargon. "You're a long way from finding a ninja in these parts, old woman. And the shop is called 'Four Weapons' not 'for browsing', either buy something or go peddle your insults somewhere else."

The woman looked up at the redhead, revealing shining grey eyes and a wrinkled face. "Too bad, thought I'd find something special here." She said as she exited the shop.

Jay made a motion with his hands for Skylor to do something. They needed good reviews if they wanted to keep putting dinner on the table.

Skylor ran to the back of the store and returned a few seconds later with a sword in her arms. "If it's something special you're looking for, let me show you-" She trailed off, looking for the woman who had been roaming the store.

"Qué es?" ('What is it?')

"Ella era sólo--olvídalo." ('She was just–forget it.') Skylor said, returning the engraved katana to the back of the store.

—————————————————————

The sun was just beginning to set as the rice farmers finished filling their last buckets of the day. On the horizon purple and black clouds formed, racing towards the town. The farmers looked up with curiosity, as there wasn't supposed to be a storm until later this week. Large vehicles soon came into view, the designs far from anything the people of Ignacia were used to. They stopped a kilometer away from the blacksmith shop.

They seemed to be humans at first glance, but underneath all the armour they wore, you could see rib bones, in fact, you could only see bones. They were skeletons, with piercing red pupils in their eye sockets.

"Oh, let me go first! Please, oh, please! I'm dying to go down there!" One of the skeletons in the largest vehicle pleaded.

"You nit-wit you're already dead! Try to control yourself in front of Mistress Samukai!" Another snapped. She cleared her throat and turned to the largest skeleton. "Uhh, with all do respect, Mistress... last time you did say I could go first." She added sheepishly.

Samukai was by-far the biggest skeleton of the army, piercings and scars visible on her bony face. Thick armour was draped over purple and black robes. She frowned at her Top Generals' antics but soon smirked. "Sorry girls, this one's mine. Just remember what we're after, and find that map!" She put one of her arms forward, signaling the drivers to advance on the small shop in the distance.

The villagers shouted as they climbed out of the wet rice fields, some holding sickles or scythes. The small crowd ran at the fast approaching army of skeletons, trying to scare them off. This was one of the best crop years they've had in a while, they didn't want anything to ruin it. Samukai shouted at the group. The simple action made all the villagers retreat to the river or fields.

The small army raced on toward the blacksmith shop, stopping in the front yard and ripping up the gardens the siblings kept such good care of.

"¿Qué son ellos?" ('What are they?') Jay whispered, handing his sister the sword she had asked for.

"No lo sé," ('I don't know,') Skylor said, slipping on a helmet. She led Jay to the cellar under the store, making sure he was hidden behind rice barrels. The siblings embraced each other, promising the other that they would be safe. Skylor brushed his hair out of his face, and pressed their foreheads together; an Ignacian gesture. "Quédate aquí." ('Stay here.') She climbed the stairs and hid behind Jay's workbench.

The creatures didn't seem to be interested in weapons or money, they seemed to be searching for something. Skylor watched as two moved towards the display of katanas they kept outside, close to where she was hiding. They knocked over the stand, disappointed when they didn't find what they were looking for. The creatures started to move closer to Jay's workbench, unaware of the young girl hiding behind it. They each had a baton made of bone in hand, but their grips were loose. Skylor realized this and used the opportunity to sweep the legs out from underneath the two. The skeletons laid on the ground, stunned, barely even noticing when the girl drove her sword into their skulls.

The sound of bones clattering to the ground must have alerted the rest of the army, because Skylor soon found herself surrounded by more skeletons. They formed a circle around her, weapons at the ready. Using what little knowledge of weapon techniques she knew, she defended herself, even managing to take down a few opponents. She soon learned that if you hit them in the back, legs, or rib cage hard enough, they fall to the ground useless.

A loud thud caught her attention. She kicked one in the legs and turned around, blanching when she saw what was behind her. Jay stood there, a gardening hoe in hand and a skeleton laying at his feet.

Skylor's surprised expression soon turned to worry and anger. "¡Pensé que te había dicho que te quedaras atrás! ¡No te involucrarás en esto!" ('I thought I told you to stay back! You are not getting involved in this!') She shouted.

"De ninguna manera voy a dejar que solo tú te diviertas." ('No way am I letting only you have fun.') Jay smirked, leaving no room for argument as he took down another skeleton.

During the fight, the siblings must have gotten separated, but Skylor always made sure she had Jay in her line of sight. She took note of him fighting on the path that led to their shop, holding his own against a few skeletons.

Feeling a presence behind her, Skylor turned. There stood a skeleton, maybe six or seven feet tall, with four arms, each holding a curved dagger. Skylor started slowly walking backwards, the skeleton matching her pace and moving forward.

Before she could comprehend what was happening, the skeleton was running forward, swinging her four daggers at the girl. Unable to counter, Skylor was pushed backwards. With one final hit, Skylor was sent flying backwards, slamming into one of the cherry trees.

Groaning in pain, Skylor looked up from her spot in the dirt. Though her vision was blurry, she could make out a tall figure walking towards her. What Skylor saw next, she was unsure of, for there was no possible way that a miniature golden tornado took down a skeleton.

The tall figure from before, the skeleton, spoke. "Sensei Mystake, your spinjitzu looks rusty!"

The golden tornado slowly spun to a stop, revealing a figure dressed in white and a wide-brimmed straw hat. The woman–Mystake– placed her bamboo staff on the ground, "Nothing like bone to sharpen it's edge, Samukai."

Samukai glared at the woman, furious that she stopped the battle between her and the redhead. Samukai glanced at her previous opponent struggling to stand at the base of the tree, then Mystake, debating which she should take care of first before she spotted something behind the white-clad woman. Chuckling darkly, she threw her four daggers. Mystake turned, watching as the blades hit the supports of the water tower positioned outside of the shop.

In a flash, the bright gold cyclone appeared and was moving rapidly towards Skylor. The tornado picked up the girl, moving her and itself out of the way. As soon as is appeared it was gone, Mystake standing in its place, hovering over Skylor. The water tower came down with a large crash, sending a wave of water washing over the yard.

Samukai used this distraction to retreat back to her large vehicle, calling the rest of her army back as well. She was handed a rolled up piece of parchment by her top generals as she settled into her seat. "Lady Misako says take the boy!" Samukai shouted. A skeleton in the back of the vehicle readied a claw-like hand made of bone. It was fired and it soared through the air before closing around Jay. The look of terror on his face as he was pulled back to the army was the most pain Skylor had felt in her short fourteen years of life. He screamed out her name, as she did his.

The army wasted no time leaving the weapons-smith shop, taking Jay along with it. Skylor tried to follow, running after the vehicles. The pain in her head soon became too much to bear and she fell to the ground, crying in pain, anger, and grief.

At the sound of footfalls behind her, she whipped around, wishing that she hadn't as another jolt of pain shot through her head. In front of her stood the woman who had come into the shop earlier, the one who had turned into a golden tornado.

Skylor glared at her, trying to stand up. Once she was on her feet, she pointed an accusing finger at Mystake. "You could have done something! You could've used your spiny-whatever!" The woman opened her mouth to speak. "But you did nothing. Because of you my brother is gone!" Skylor looked around the soaked, teared up yard, walking over towards the cherry trees. She picked up her sword, pushing past Mystake. "I'm going to get my brother back."

"Where they go, a mortal cannot." Skylor stopped in her tracks and turned back to the old woman who was shaking her head. "That was Samukai, Queen of the Underworld. And if it's true that she is carrying out orders for Lady Misako, Then I fear things are far worse than I had ever thought."

"Lady Misako? Underworld? What's going on?" Skylor demanded, trying to convince her pounding headache to go away. "What do we have that's so important to them? And why would they take my brother!?"

"What's so important? How about everything in Ninjago itself!" Mystake snapped. She gestured for Skylor to take a seat on the bench outside of the shop. It was there for the rice farmers when they would have lunch. The farmers and the siblings were very close, close enough that Skylor and Jay would occasionally make lunch for the farmers that stopped by. Skylor settled into place on the wooden bench, looking uneasy.

"Long before time had a name, Ninjago was created by the First Spinjitzu Master, by using the eight Weapons of Spinjitzu. The Scythe of Quakes, the Nunchucks of Lightning, the Shurikens of Ice, the Sword of Fire, the Staff of Illusions, the Trident of Water, the Whip of Technology, and the Sai of Absorption. Weapons so powerful, no one can handle even four at once."

"Yeah, yeah, I know the story backwards and forwards. Four of the weapons were destroyed in the final battle to differentiate good from evil and save Ninjago. What's the point?"

"But that is only half the story. Maybe if you listen for once, you would hear what others have to say. It might prove useful in the future." Mystake cleared her throat, continuing the story. "When she passed away, her two daughters swore to protect the four remaining weapons. But the oldest was consumed by darkness and wanted to possess them. A battle between sisters broke out, and the oldest was struck down and banished to the Underworld. Peace returned and the younger sister hid the weapons. But knowing her older sister's relentless ambition for power, she placed a guardian to watch over each weapon. And for fear of her own demise, a map for a honest man to hide.

"That honest man was your father. The older sister is Lady Misako. And I need to find those weapons before she does." Mystake finished, turning back towards Skylor.

"You're the younger sister," Skylor realized. "So you came looking for the map in order to stop your sister." Her expression changed to anger. "The one who took my brother."

"No," Mystake shook her head. "I came here for something greater." She placed her staff of Skylor's shoulder. "You."

Mystake turned away from her, pacing in thought. "As my sister cannot enter this realm, she must have struck a deal with Samukai. If she were to collect the four remaining weapons, I would not be able to stop her again. But you! The absorption grows throughout you; the ability to borrow another's power for a limited time. I will train you to harness it, use it, and become a spinjitzu master!" She tapped her staff on Skylor's shoulder with every word.

Skylor pushed the stick away. "I'm flattered. But nothing is stopping me from saving Jay. I am not getting involved in your sibling rivalry." She stood, grabbing her sword and pushing past Mystake.

"How do you expect to rescue your brother from the clutches of one of Ninjago's strongest armies? I do not think that concussion will fare you well."

Skylor's shoulders slumped as she turned back towards the old woman. "If you have any ideas I would love to hear them. Especially since you let him get captured."

"If you want to get your brother back, you must control the power inside. Only when you become a Spinjutsu Master, will you be able to face Lady Misako."

"I don't care about Misako. If it means I get my brother back, when do we start?"

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bbyx · 4 years

Text

ripple effect - part nine

Summary: During her fourth year at Hogwarts, (y/n) Deauxville falls for none other than Cedric Diggory. But it's not easy when you have to deal with protecting your family's fortune, keeping your father's illness a secret and having two of your closest friends catch feelings for you.

Pairings : reader x cedric, reader x draco, reader x harry (y/n) walks to care of magical creatures, worried lines creasing her face.

You were planning on seeing Harry first thing this morning so he could explain how the fuck his name ended up in the Goblet. But Harry hadn’t shown his face at breakfast. You were a little disappointed, knowing the shoe prank would have cheered him up a slightly.

(y/n) had started getting very worried when Ron said he “didn’t give a rat's ass about where Harry was.” Hermione was nowhere to be found and all your other friends were too hungover to be of any help. You regretted never going to sleep, you and Draco had stolen some Wideye potion from Snape’s cabinet, but the potion made your mind feel foggy. On second thought, maybe that was just the hangover.

The fresh air doesn’t help much at all, the wind makes you dizzy and your eyes can’t seem to focus with all the light sweeping through your sunglasses. If it weren’t for Harry, you would have done the same as Cedric and Nick, who both didn’t bother to go to class today.

“Harry!” You croak, wincing at the pain growing in your head.

“(y/n)! Uh what’s with the sunglasses?” Harry says, glancing up quickly at the cloudy sky.

“I think it’s pretty self explanatory.” You say, inching the glasses down to show him your bloodshot eyes.

“Harry, what happened with the Goblet.” You say, your tone becoming more serious.

“ I’m not sure, somebody must have put my name in somehow. Moody thinks somebody’s trying to kill me again.” Harry sighs running his hand through his hair. “ And Ron's jealous, and half the bloody school hates me.” He looks so exasperated, you wish you could just take all his worries off his shoulders. You missed the happy boyish glint in his eyes.You grab his face in your hands.

“Hey, I don’t hate you.” You say softly, which finally brings a small smile to his lips.

Draco’s blood boils as he walks the grounds to Hagrid’s hut, seing (y/n) and Potter’s silhouettes. She’s resting her head on Harry’s shoulder and laughing at his stupid jokes. Draco knew that should be his shoulder. And to make matters worse she seems to only have eyes for that big Hufflepuff oaf. Finally (y/n) breaks free from Harry and joins the rest of the Slytherins. Draco motions for Crabbe and Goyle to shut up as he nears Potter.

“Ah, look, boys, it’s the champion, got your autograph books? Better get a signature now, because I doubt he’s going to be around much longer. . . . Half the Triwizard champions have died . . . how long d’you reckon you’re going to last, Potter? Ten minutes into the first task’s my bet.”

Before Draco could pull anymore insults from his brilliant mind, Hagrid arrived carrying huge crates filled with those disgusting skrewts. The giant man explains that students will be paired up to take the skrewts on a walk. Draco takes a leash attached to the grey slug like thing and joins (y/n)’s side.

“Be my partner?” A voice breaks you out of your thoughts.

“Of course.” You answer, sounding even raspier than before.

“Bad hangover huh?” Draco says as the creature starts venturing off.

“Hmm” Is all you managed to say back, your head hurting from all the thinking you’ve been doing about the Goblet mystery.

Walking the skrewts was a disaster, everytime one of their ends exploded it would send the skrewt, and the poor student walking it, flying forward a couple feets. Lavender Brown was constantly screeching because apparently her skrewt was “trying to kill” her.

Yeah I'm rooting for its success.

Draco wouldn’t even let you near the skrewt, holding it out as far away from you as he could.

“Why can’t I walk it? It’s just like a dog.”

“Dog?! Have you seen this thing? No, I'm not letting you near this death machine. It’s already burned you once...”

“You’re so annoying Dray.” You say playfully shoving his shoulder.

“(y/n) you can’t even walk straight yet.”

Just at the right moment his skrewt’s end blasted and sent him flying in the mud. You laugh so hard falling to the floor, bracing yourself for the next wave of pain.

“I’m dropping this class next year, I swear.” He grumbles, getting up and glaring at the creature.

You were mad, furious even at Draco for making those stupid Potter stinks badges. Draco was furious at you for jinxing most of them to say Malfoy stinks instead. The two of you weren’t speaking anymore, making the atmosphere with your Slytherin friends very awkward. You took some consolation in knowing that Millicent and Daphne had refused to wear the badges, but for the past week you had been spending most of your time with your brother’s friends or Harry and Hermione. To add fuel to the fire, Draco has gotten into a fight with Harry and jinxed Hermione’s teeth. It also didn’t help that Cedric was now followed by a group of girls everywhere he went, preventing the two of you from having a private conversation.

On your way to charms, Jeremy appears next to you, fixing his yellow tie.

“What do you want?” You say slightly angrier than you had meant to.

“Nothing. Um Cedric wanted me to give this to you.” Jeremy says, pulling out a small envelope from his robes.

“Oh thanks.” You say but he’s already ducked inside a classroom.

You rip open the envelope. It reads:

Picnic tomorrow?

Miss you,

Cedric.

P.S: there will be chocolate frogs.

(y/n)’s bad day had just gotten a great deal better.

You were waiting by the Black lake for Cedric, while everyone else had gone to Hogsmeade. It was a surprisingly nice day for early november, you weren’t cold in your hoodie but you weren't warm either. You spot, from across the grounds, Cedric clumsily balancing a huge basket in one hand and levitating a couple other objects with his wand. You can’t help but notice how dashing he makes the Hufflepuff uniform look. He sets down a checkered blanket on the ground and throws a couple pillows on top.

“Ta-da!” He says opening the basket, filled with warm butterbeers, little pastries and fruits.

“Ced, you’re too nice.” You say giving him a long hug.

“Wait, I'm not done,” He says reaching into his pocket and pulling out a chocolate frog. “As promised.”

“I brought you something too.” You say, ruffling through your bag and handing him a small pin with a gold butterfly. “In French culture, butterflies are supposed to bring good luck, and since the first task is coming up and-”

Cedric’s lips crash into yours. Warm. He tastes warm.He tastes like cinnamon, honey and ginger. He slides one hand in your hair and holds your waist firmly with the other. Finally, you break apart for air.

“I love it.” He whispers in your ear, grabbing the pin from your hand and securing it to his sweater. He’s wearing his usual lopsided grin.

“I’m glad.” You say, a huge smile spreading on your face.

The rest of the afternoon was one of the nicest you could remember. Cedric had brought bread for the ducks and you laying on his chest, finding shapes in the clouds while he played with a baby duckling. Suddenly he stops humming, waking you up from your dazed state. Cedric shifts, sitting up slightly.

“(y/n) what’s your wand core?”

“Veela hair, my grandmother’s. Why?”

“Just wondering if you had the same as Fleur. She mentioned it at the weighing of the wands.”

“What’s yours?” You say not wanting to stay on the subject of your breathtaking cousin much longer.

“Unicorn hair.” He says twirling his wand around. He stops. “So if I put your hair inside a wand it would work?” He wraps a strand of your hair around his wand. You ponder his question for a couple seconds.

“Probably, but it would be a weak wand. I don’t think I have a lot of Veela genes.” You say smiling as Cedric plays with your hair.

“You’re always underselling yourself, you know.” He chuckles before planting another kiss on your lips. Then an idea pops up in your head. Cedric looks confused when you suddenly get up. He catches your wrist.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Calm down Romeo, i’m getting flowers for your flower crown.”

“My flower crown?”

(y/n) comes back a little while later, holding dozens of brightly colored flowers. You sit down crossed legged and start knotting the stems together. Cedric puts his head in your lap.

“Are you nervous about the first task? It’s only a week away.” You say looking down at him.

“A little, but i’ve got this now.” He runs his fingers over the golden butterfly. You smile softly. After that, you and Cedric debate about Quidditch as he feeds you sweets because your hands are busy braiding the flowers together.

“Ta-daa!” You say holding up the finished product. The crown was full of daisies, daffodils and carnations.

“Can I put it on?” He says excitedly.

“Of course, I made it for you.” You answer, placing it on his head. He darts like a little kid towards the lake to gaze at his reflection.

“I’m never taking it off.” Cedric says quietly as you walk towards him. He turns and hugs you tightly. “Thank you, it’s beautiful.”

“We should head back.” You say motioning to the group of girls, back from Hogsmeade, giggling behind a tree.

“Well shit.”

Cedric pulls his wand out of his pocket, mumbles a spell and the blankets that tidied up the blankets and basket. Wingardium leviosa he whispers, making the objects levitate. Then he flings you over his shoulder and makes a mad dash towards the castle.

“Ced! Aah put me down! I swear Cedric! CEDRIC AMOS DIGGORY put me down!” (y/n) says laughing wildly.

Draco was in a particularly bad mood at dinner. All anyone would talk about was stupid Diggory and his stupid flower crown. A number of girls had tried to replicate their own flower crowns but Draco knew exactly where the one on Diggory’s auburn head was from. He had worn multiple of those as a child and was always amazed at the skill of her nimble fingers.

Yeah, keep grinning you big oaf. Little do you know she’s made a dozen of those for me.

“Dragons?”

“Yes (y/n), try to keep up please.” Hermione says quickly, walking to her next class. “He says he saw dragons in the Forbidden forest. And Karkaroff used to be a death eater.”

“Oh. my. god.” You say, your brain piecing everything together.

“What?” Hermione says, glancing at her watch. “What? Please I haven’t got all day.”

“Hermione, remember at the World cup, when I rented that property to the ministry? Remember? Dragons! That’s what they’re using it for.”

You can practically see the wheels turning in her mind. “That makes perfect sense. How did we not figure that out.” She says shaking her head wistfully.

“Nevermind that, how is Harry going to fight a fucking dragon.” You say, racking your brain for spells. Another worry hits you. ”I have to warn Cedric.”

“That’s what Harry’s doing right now.”

“Cedric, do you have a plan? For the dragon, I mean.”

“Yeah, I’ve thought about it, but i’ve thought about this more.” Cedric says, kissing your neck softly. A smile tugs as your lips as you mumble “You’re so cheesy Ced.”

You and Cedric were in a small alcove near the potion classrooms. His warm tongue grazes your lower lip, making you unable to focus

“I’m serious, I can help you if you want.” He pulls you into a hug, resting his head on top of your hair.

“There is one way you can help.”

“How?”

“What’s your favourite type of dog?”

“What?” You say, incredulously.

“Just answer.”

“Labrador.”

“Concentrate, Harry, concentrate” Hermione says.

“What d’you think I’m trying to do?” says Harry angrily. “A great big dragon keeps popping up in my head for some reason. . . . Okay, try again. . . .”

(y/n) and Hermione were in an empty classroom, trying to teach Harry a summoning spell.

“You need to flick your wrist more.” You say, your nose buried in Basic Hexes for the Busy and Vexed.

After what seemed like hours, Harry finally got the hang of the Summoning spell.

“That’s better, Harry, yeah that’s loads better,” Hermione said, looking exhausted but very pleased.

“Well, now we know what to do next time I can’t manage a spell,” Harry said, throwing a rune dictionary back to Hermione, so he could try again, “threaten me with a dragon. Right . . .”

He raises his wand once more. “Accio Dictionary!”

The heavy book soared out of Hermione’s hand, flew across the room, and Harry caught it. “Harry, I really think you’ve got it!” you say clapping. He blushes a little.

“Just as long as it works tomorrow,” Harry says. “The Firebolt is going to be much farther away than the stuff in here, it’s going to be in the castle, and I’m going to be out there on the grounds.”

“That doesn’t matter,” said Hermione firmly “Just as long as you’re concentrating really, really hard on it, it’ll come.”

“Harry, you’d better get some sleep . . . you’re gonna need it.” You say motioning at the window, where the sky was a moonless pitch black.

The next morning, you woke up in blind panic. Dragons. It seemed so much more daunting than it had yesterday. The sick feeling in your stomach only got worse when the champions were escorted out at breakfast. Everything seemed to be going so fast. Next thing you knew, you and Draco were walking towards the forbidden forest. (y/n) and Draco were on speaking term again because he had agreed to do her potions homework for the month.

“Go get a good spot Dee, i’ll join you soon.” You say before running forward to the champion’s tent.

When you enter, you see Krum looking sulkier than usual on a stool and Fleur fiddling with her hair nervously. You almost felt bad for her before she rolled her ice blue eyes at you. Harry was talking to Hermione and Cedric was pacing back and forth, his skin greener than usual.

“Hey,” You say touching his shoulder. He jumps slightly at your touch. “ Are you okay?”

“Of course!.” He says, but his voice wavers a little. “ What are you doing here?”

“Came to wish you good luck” You say tapping the little golden butterfly gleaming on his chest. “And give you this.” You say standing on your tiptoes and pressing a lingering kiss on his lips. He grabs your waist tightly, not wanting to let you go.

The sight of you and Cedric kissing makes Krum even surlier than before and Harry is now the one who looks green. At the same time, Ludo Bagman walks in.

“ Ah, young love.” He says, which makes you both pull away breathless. “I’m sorry to break this up but i’m going to have to ask you girls to please step out.” Ludo Bagman says to Hermione and (y/n), who was blushing furiously.

“Good luck Harry.” You say, squeezing his hand right before exiting the tent.

A/N: I’m gonna make a taglist for ripple effect so send me an ask to be added xx. ALSO this is my ABSOLUTE FAVOURITE gif he’s just so cute.

#cedric diggory #harry potter #draco malfoy #hp and the goblet of fire #cedric diggory x you #cedric diggory x reader #cedric x you #cedric x reader #harry potter x reader #draco malfoy x reader

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buzzdixonwriter · 3 years

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Hoo U?

A spirited discussion is raging on Facebook now, the good kind of spirited discussion, an enthusiastic exchange of ideas and ideals, not a snark fest.

The top is a deceptively simple one: Who are the characters various actors played?

Let me clarify: It began as a trivia challenge to name actors who have won Oscars for playing the same character.

And there in lays the debate.

How exactly are we defining a character.

This all sounds trivial, and to be frank this part of the discussion is, but it’s gonna get deep by the end.

Trust me.

So here’s the kickoff:

Marlon Brando won a Best Male Performance Oscar for playing Vito Corleone in The Godfather; Robert DeNiro won a Best Male Supporting Performance Oscar for playing Vito Corleone in The Godfather II

Heath Ledger won a Best Male Supporting Performance Oscar for playing the Joker in The Dark Knight; Joaquin Phoenix won a Best Male Performance Oscar for playing the Joker in Joker.

(Trivia bonus: Kate Winslet and Gloria Stuart received Oscar nominations for playing the same character at different stages of her life in Titanic, and Winslet and Judi Dench were both nominated for playing the same character at different stages in Iris as well; plus Peter O’Toole was nominated twice for playing Henry II in Beckett and The Lion In Winter which technically counts as a sequel…)

The Facebook debate is over whether Ledger and Phoenix were actually playing the same character.

Now in the case of the former, The Godfather II is a continuation of the same story in The Godfather by the same creative team with much of the original cast reprising their roles, the Oscars going to two actors who played the same character at different stages of their life (BTW, where's the love for Oreste Baldini, who played Vito as a young boy?).

The two films were re-edited and combined with The Godfather III to make a nine-hour and 43-minute miniseries The Godfather Trilogy.

It is clear the creators’ intent from the beginning was for audiences to accept Baldini / DeNiro / Brando as the same person at various stages of his life.

The Ledger Joker and the Phoenix Joker cannot possibly be the same character for a wide variety of internal continuity issues separating the two films. The creators of Joker went out of their way to state their version of the character was not The Dark Knight version.

Unlike The Godfather movies, you can’t link up the various live action Batman / Suicide Squad / Joker stories into a single coherent narrative (especially since you have to drag in the live action Supeman and Wonder Woman movies and TV shows as well).

. . .

Can different actors play their version of the same character in otherwise unlinked productions?

Of course they can.

Stage plays do it all the time.

If you start with the same exact text, then clearly any number of actors can play Hamlet or MacBeth or Willy Loman.

The problems arise when one goes afield of the text.

. . .

In 1932 Constance Bennett made a movie called What Price Hollywood? that did okay but really didn’t set the world on fire.

In 1937 Janet Gaynor remade that film as A Star Is Born, the story changed to give it a tragic yet uplifting conclusion; her version was a big hit and Gaynor received an Oscar nomination.

In 1954 Judy Garland remade A Star is Born as a musical and that proved a big hit, and Garland received an Oscar nomination.

In 1976 Barbara Streisand took a swing at the material with a country-western version of A Star Is Born and while she got an Oscar nomination, audiences were unreceptive.

In 2018 Lady Gaga remade A Star Is Born and received both an Oscar nomination for her role and an Oscar win for her song.

Question: Are they all playing the same character? Each played a character that started their film with a different name than the other versions, but the Gaynor / Garland / Streisand / Gaga versions all end with the central character proudly proclaiming they are “Mrs. Norman Maine.”

Same character?

. . .

There’s no argument that William Gillette, Basil Rathbone, and Benedict Cumberbatch all played Sherlock Holmes, even when their productions took certain liberties with the stories.

But Sherlock Holmes is not an idiot, and Michael Caine played Holmes as an idiot in Without A Clue.

Was he playing the same character as Gillette / Rathbone / Cumberbatch?

(Ironically Peter Cook played a very recognizable and wholly credible Holmes in his farcical send up of The Hound Of The Baskervilles with Dudley Moore.)

Did George C. Scott play Holmes in They Might Be Giants? Almost everybody else in the story thinks he’s a New York banker who’s suffered a nervous breakdown and only thinks he’s Holmes, but Scott believes he is Holmes 100% and throughout the film other people he encounters accept him as Holmes at face values.

He functions as Holmes throughout.

And in the end, the audience is left in a weird place, not really knowing what his fate may be, not absolutely sure if he is a bonkers banker but maybe…somehow…he is Sherlock Holmes…

. . .

Did John Cassavettes in Tempest and Walter Pidgeon in Forbidden Planet play the same character? Were either of those roles Shakespeare’s Prospero?

Did Christopher Lee play the same character in Horror Of Dracula and its sequels, in Count Dracula, and in In Search Of Dracula? (The producers of Count Dracula sure went to great pains to explain their version was a different and more accurate version than the Hammer version of the character, and In Search Of Dracula cast Lee as Vlad Tepes who was the real life historical figure Bram Stoker based his novel on.)

For that matter, is Count Orlok in Nosferatu: A Symphony Of Terror actually Dracula? A European court awarding lawsuit damages to Bram Stoker's widow sure thought so.

Along similar lines, was Bela Lugosi playing Dracula in Columbia's Return Of The Vampire? Universal's lawyers sure thought so.

Did Jim Caviezel in Passion Of The Christ, Max von Sydow in The Greatest Story Ever Told, Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke, and Michael Rennie in The Day The Earth Stood Still all play the same character?

Did Toshiro Mifune, Clint Eastwood, and Bruce Willis all play the Continental Op?

Did Clint Eastwood play the same character in all three Dollar films?

Did Vincent Price, Charlton Heston, and Will Smith all play the same character?

Did Leonardo DiCaprio play the same character Steve McQueen played in The Great Escape (even if just for one brief scene) or did he play a character who played a character Steve McQueen played in The Great Escape?

Ooh, here's a good one!

Lon Chaney Jr starts Ghost Of Frankenstein playing the same monster Boris Karloff played in the original Frankenstein / Bride Of Frankenstein / Son Of Frankenstein trilogy, but by the end gets Ygor's brain (Bela Lugosi) transplanted into his body and speaks / thinks / acts briefly as Ygor in Frankie’s body.

However, Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman while maintaining continuity with all four previous films cast Lugosi as the monster (because Chaney had to play the Wolfman, duh) without dialog. Glenn Strange then assumed the role again in continuity with all previous films for House Of Frankenstein, House Of Dracula, and Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, occasionally speaking briefly in the role.

Who was Strange playing in his films? The original Karloff monster or Ygor in Frankie's bod? Are those two distinct characters?

. . .

All the above is fun trivia to debate, but it links to a much more serious question: Who are you?

That’s not a trivial matter. What constitutes out identity? What makes us who we are?

I lost my father years ago to Alzheimer’s. As my brother Robert observed, the only member of a family not affected by an Alzheimer’s diagnosis is the person suffering from it themselves.

I would talk to my father on the phone, and he was always pleasant and cheery, but about three years before he died I realized he had no idea who I was, I was just some voice on the other end of the line that mom wanted him to talk to.

My father was by nature and easy going kinda guy, and that certainly made his last few years easier for my mother and brother Rikk to cope with, but one night when I was visiting, trying to get their affairs straightened out so he could enter a nursing home, he got irritated with my mother as she was trying to help him and raised his hand as if to slap hers away.

My father never raised his hand against my mother.

Ever.

He taught me and my brothers that was something no real man ever did.

He might sound gruff on occasion but he never raised a finger, much less truck our mother.

The fact he did so in the throes of Alzheimer’s indicated that whoever he once was, he wasn’t that person anymore.

We got him into a nursing home and he lasted a little less than a year there, his mind and his memory and his personality deteriorating rapidly.

Who was he at the end?

I didn’t go to his funeral.

What was the point?

The father I knew and loved had departed long before they buried his shell.

My grandmother, on the other hand, remained her cranky, irascible self until a week and a half before she died, finding the wit to crack one last memorable joke before her body began shutting down.

. . .

The question of identity is related to consciousness, and these are referred to as “the hard question” by physicians and physicists and philosophers alike.

What makes us “us”?

How do we know who we are?

What constitutes identity?

There are no easy, pat answers.

We have textbook definitions that dance around the issue of identity and consciousness, providing enough of a foundation for us to recognize what it is we’re discussing, but no one has yet come up with a clear, concise explanation of what either phenomenon is.

It’s like saying “apples are a red fruit.”

Okay, we know what you’re talking about, but we also know that description falls far, far short of what an apple actually is.

That’s why trivial discussion like whether or not Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix are playing the same character is a lot more important than it seems.

(BTW, they aren’t. Phoenix won his Oscar for his version of the Rupert Pupkin character in a violent remake of The King Of Comedy.)

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subtlereferencetomyinterests · 3 years

Text

I Taste Honey but I Haven’t Seen the Hive - Chapter Six

Ao3, Masterpost, C.1 C.2 C.3 C.4 C.5

Relationships: eventual queer-platonic intruality. platonic dukeceit, creativitwins, and dlampr.

Yet again there are no italics. its new years eve sue me. oh also happy 2021 nobody question my priorities thanks <3

Warnings: so much softness, implications of self-isolation, swearing, Lots of Feelings, sympathetic everybody, descriptions of the sides having non-human features.

Word Count: 3,962

Something Remus came to realize was that he, a bit paradoxically, was not used to people being in his space.

It was weird. Not weird in the way that people usually felt when he was the one interrupting- he wasn’t scared by it, or disgusted, or even really annoyed. It was just… surprising, to have somebody else hanging around him, unprompted by anything.

Remus wasn’t known for having boundaries- or respecting them, for that matter- but he’d at least been attempting to restrain himself just a bit after being accepted by the others. Out of courtesy, if nothing else.

And apparently he didn’t need to. Not after what happened with Patton, anyway. Now that Patton had deemed the two of them ‘close’- something he was absolutely happy to agree with, for the record- Remus’ world had flipped sort of around. Back to no boundaries, only he wasn’t the one crossing those lines, and nobody was running screaming. Least of all Patton!

Remus ran the thoughts over in his head, feeling like that day was shaping up to be a great example of the change:

He and Patton were sitting side-by-side in the living room, content, with the rest of the sides spread around in different seats and configurations just the same. The unlikely pair were at the fringe of the circle, close enough to be part of things but far enough to zone in and out at will (as both were prone to do). It was nice, amiable.

But minutes before- forty of them at most- Remus had been up in his own room, happily dissecting some gooish creations and only vaguely aware that there was a meeting that day. His attendance to group meetings varied from week to week- sometimes he was bored and could use an argument, and other times he was having fun on his own and knew that it wouldn’t be all that important if he ditched. He joined more often than he used to, sometimes he was even asked for, but he was optional still. A favored option, suggestions taken now, sure- but still not mandatory.

He was going to stay upstairs for that one, but Patton had come to get him. Had dragged him down in that sweet, puppy-dog way of convincing that worked so well and, knowing him, was totally unintentional. And even if Remus didn’t care about arguing his way through content production right then, Patton had promised that it was important for him to be there.

That was the word he’d used for Remus. Important.

How the hell could Remus say no to that?

At least the meeting was going by without a hitch, for once. He assumed it was- Remus was honestly paying very little attention- but the lack of anger or tension was practically palpable. These things were usually so spiteful that even Remus, renowned lover of chaos, could almost taste his headache when everybody started shouting and hissing and fighting. It just got sad.

But not that time, apparently.

As Logan went on his third ramble of the evening, smiling widely at a surprising lack of interruption, Remus turned to Patton. He whispered:

“Okay, when are they gonna snap? Did they all finally get lobotomized?”

Patton frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean where’s all the screaming and crying? Specs and Prince Priss haven’t had a single one of their horny yelling matches, what gives?”

Patton smiled in a way that said he was trying very hard not to laugh, rolling his eyes.

“These meetings have calmed down a bit, I guess,” he shrugged.

Remus glanced around the room with narrowed eyes. While that certainly seemed like the truth, he couldn’t buy it.

“Yeah, I give it until one of them vaguely insults the others, and then everybody’s gonna shut down for the next week. That kinda tension doesn’t just go.”

Patton didn’t say anything. Half-gazing at the carpet, he didn’t look like he’d even heard. He was smiling, but it was one of those jumbled up expressions, the type that tried to span a hundred different feelings. He had so many expressions like that, that seemed bottomless and swirling and so intricate on a humanoid face that, in reality, wasn’t built to display something like that. It was uncanny- not like an eerie doll, but like something with unearthly beauty. This face, though, had tones of upset.

“It’s been a while since you’ve been around everybody,” Patton said.

It wasn’t a question and it didn’t need to be. While Remus wasn’t exactly known for keeping to himself, he couldn't be called sociable either. He dropped in to say something, usually random, and then he was gone as soon as he’d visited. Even before the first Patton incident, fuck, it had been weeks since he’d actually stuck around through something.

Since The Acceptance, now that Remus thought of it, he’d been spending more time alone than ever. Not all of his time- he remembered being surprised at Logan talking to him, willingly, like friends, and after that had even come Virgil and Roman. He saw people, talked to them, yeah. The time spent was friendlier, more welcoming, but it was so much less.

Well, it was obvious why: they visited him, but- like he’d mentioned, he’d been trying to give them some space.

“Sure, it's been awhile,” Remus admitted, “But I never expected shit to change so much around here, still.”

The haze on Patton’s face thickened like fog on the moors, a soft and sympathetic mist over his eyes that Remus knew was aimed at him (even if it was pointed more to a sort of middle distance).

“I don’t think I did, either,” Patton’s mouth barely moved, his voice less of a whisper and moreso a fragile breath. “I was hoping for it, but… I’m still trying to get used to stuff being allowed to change, you know?” He picked at a loose thread along the seam of the couch. “I haven’t done this stuff in a while, either.”

Remus’ head shot up, and he almost forgot that they weren’t the only two in the room. Somehow, he stopped himself from shouting:

“You- it has?”

A tiny smile. Something built up behind Patton’s eyes; a wave, dark and lonely and filling his bright blues with cloudy gray. “I just needed some alone time, after everything changed so much so fast. I still feel, I dunno, weird. I don’t know what’s wrong with me- but…” he swallowed, his head lifting. “I’m really happy for them,” he was staring- so very loving- first at Logan, then Roman, then Virgil and Janus. It was a wonder none of them felt his gaze on them, Remus thought, because he was sure if anyone looked at him that way, he’d burn up like a fae upon iron. “They deserve it so much. I know that not everything is perfect still, but, I’m just so proud of us anyways. I- I think maybe-”

He cut himself off, blinking rapidly. Remus gave the room a quick once over to make sure nobody was looking their way- and nobody was: Virgil was very resolutely trying to get everyone to stay on topic despite Janus and Logan’s continued tangenting, and Roman was scribing furiously on several different pieces of paper- before he inched close enough to curve his arm around Patton. Touching like that had steadily become familiar to both of them, and it didn’t take long for Patton to fall untense against his side. He leaned into him, muttering: “I mean, they’re all doing a lot better than me, that’s for sure. I- I don’t even know what I’m for anymore. Maybe that’s why I’ve been… ditching, really.”

Remus squeezed his shoulder. There were so many things he could’ve said and done, but all of them loud and fervent and definitely not subtle enough to go unnoticed by everyone. So, for the sake of Patton’s privacy, he settled on this:

“That makes two of us, Morey.”

The meeting that was planned to take two or three hours took the entire day, just as always. Hours and hours were spent in a room filled with excited conversation, of which the subject oscillated wildly between relevant topics and complete nonsense- which Remus and Patton did, eventually, tune back into (and contribute to as well, mainly in the nonsense department). Eventually, even Virgil gave up on trying to keep anything in order.

But the meeting ended on a good note anyway. Lots of good notes, actually, if the stacks upon stacks of paper they’d scribbled up were any indication. Mess, the sides had come to believe, was usually a measure of their productivity: if crumpled pages were strayed across the room, if forgotten pens and pencils balanced on every surface from coffee table to TV stand, and if- in the process of snacking- they’d accumulated enough dishes to fill the sink for days on end? Shit. Got. Done.

Remus stared over the chaos with unfocused eyes. He felt distantly proud of the stormish state the living room was in. Draped over the back of the sectional, he gnawed idly on a wood pencil, stripping its yellow into beige. The paint fell off in bitter chunks, and the taste made him think of grabbing some non-acrylic dinner before closing the night off. Maybe he’d steal some of whatever saccharine sweet Patton usually made in the late evenings, and then spend the rest of the night with him, anyway. Remus debated what would be the most fun (or if he was tired enough to sleep yet), partially aware as he did so that he’d chewed and swallowed the metal-eraser end of his pencil.

“Ugh,” a drawn out groan broke his thoughts, petulant and whiny. “Do you have any intention of helping us clean up this, the common area?”

Roman was kneeling beside Janus on the carpet, the pair surrounded by papers and binders and trashbags, the former of which they were sorting into either of the latter two, depending on how useful each page was. Roman had stopped working, however, to stare up at Remus indignantly. Remus glared right back.

“I’ve never had an intention in my life,” he answered.

Janus shrugged, smiling in that I-told-you-so way at Roman. But Roman, ever the nuisance, wasn’t letting it go.

“Come on! It’s not like you’re even doing anything!”

“I’m doing something,” Remus’ words were wide and wobbly as he stripped another line of paint off the pencil, breaking some splinters off into his teeth.

“Oh, really?”

“Yes,” another chunk of wood, down the hatch. “I’m flaying all these leftover pencils until they’re lead-sticks.”

Roman hopped up from the floor and dropped himself onto the couch, shoving himself into the way so jarringly that it reminded Remus of himself.

“Well, now you’re going to help us clean.”

Janus rolled his eyes, not even glancing up. “Roman, just leave it alone, we-”

“We are all parts of this whole now, including him! Remus-” Roman rounded on him again, “If you’re going to come down here and help us make all this mess, with all of your numerous contributions that we have to write down, you’ll help clean it like anybody else. Do you think that I like any of- of-” he gestured, flamboyantly, at the room, “This? Ugh, please, I’m a prince! But, fair is fair, and fair means everybody.”

And that was the point of the conversation in which Remus would cackle, push Roman backwards off the couch, and proclaim how much it’d go against his very being to clean a mess instead of cause it. He’d tell Roman how funny it was that he thought he could boss him around, because it always had been- that full-of-it Older Brother kind of attitude that had never worked. The Prince had never once managed to get him to do anything, and each attempt only got funnier than the last.

He didn’t say any of that, though.

Roman was bitching at him, not to go away this time, but to stay. Stay and help the group, because he was a part of said group. So he was asked to help them, the group that he was a part of, because he was part of it. That group.

“Okay,” he blurted, “Okay, I’ll- alright.”

Roman blinked at him, a look of disbelief spreading across his face. “You- oh!” he smiled, utterly baffled. “That was- very easy?”

Janus, too, was looking up at Remus with bewilderment, his task of paper-sorting all but forgotten. Remus couldn’t blame either of them, but he still huffed, trying very hard not to be embarrassed by that whole… moment.

He shook it off, rolling off the couch and standing up, jittery.

“Whatever, just- tell me what to pick up, okay?”

They seemed not to hear him, the gawking continuing on until he started working unprompted, and longer than that still. Each time he (begrudgingly) shoved something into a trashbag, it earned him another Exchange of Glances from the pair.

They got over it eventually, though, because there was a fuck-load more to clean than there was room to stare. So they cleaned.

Remus thought it would get old after a minute, and he’d finally gather up the guts to bail on them, but it just… never happened. It felt unnatural to be getting rid of a mess- like an animal having its fur brushed the wrong way, continuously- but by some point the sensation was distant. The rest of him was still busy processing, experiencing, maybe possibly overthinking this kind of recognition he’d never gotten before. It was handed to him now like it was something normal. The three of them worked together, and it was normal.

Acceptance, as it turned out, wasn’t synonymous with ‘soulless assimilation’. In fact, it was pretty fucking great, getting to watch his brother and best friend find documents from the floor with his ideas on them, then tucking them into a binder marked important, instead of a trashcan marked to burn. It was… surreal.

But the tidying was over in just an hour and a half- oh wow, never in a million years would Remus have thought an hour and a half of cleaning would be too little for him. He made a note to absolutely destroy something big and important later, to balance the universe out again.

Roman sank through the floor as soon as they were done, complaining loudly about how very exhausted he was. Remus teased him on his way out, but it was just for the habit- he was way too mushy to think of anything properly mean at the moment.

Janus watched him go, silent. He sat beside Remus on the couch, and despite his obvious tiredness, he waited a good few minutes before saying anything.

“Thank you,” he murmured.

Remus shivered. Janus pulled him up into a hug (one that maybe dragged on for a little too long, but who was counting?), and it spelled out all the pride and care that he’d never been good at verbalizing. With that, he gave Remus a short nod, and then was gone as well.

Which made everyone else upstairs, probably in their rooms and halfway asleep. Then there was Remus, antsy in the living room, itchy with feelings.

Everyone but Patton, of course, who could still be heard humming in the kitchen; who never went up until he knew everyone else was in their rooms, true to the protective parent persona. Remus suddenly didn’t think he wanted anything else but to see Patton after what had happened, to talk to him, to…

He walked to the kitchen.

“Pat.”

Patton looked over his shoulder at Remus, up to his elbow in sudsy sink water. A smile fell naturally across his face.

“Hi,” his voice was low, delicate. “You about to head up?”

Remus watched his friend work, trailing into the room slowly. He grinned, “Are you kidding? I could stay up all night, if I wanted.”

“Do you want to?” Patton asked him.

Remus thought on it for a moment. He shrugged, iunno, leaned against the counter by the sink. Patton turned away again.

It was so quiet. No wind. No footsteps. Not a muffled voice upstairs, even- just the sound of water and ceramic hitting ceramic. Everything was still.

Remus hated it. Silence was fragile, and he crawled with the need to break it. He felt it get tense as it stretched out, and he just wanted to tear the air apart with sound. It felt like nothing mattered anymore, when peace was so easily able to drown it all out. Cold and alone. He hated it.

Sometimes, Remus imagined that if the silence went too long, he’d never be able to make a noise again. There were few things that made him so unhappy, but the quiet…

“What’s on your mind?” Patton asked.

Remus jolted. Patton was staring, concern gathering in his eyes the longer he did. Remus took a deep breath- he remembered something, something small and unimportant that Janus had told him once.

When one is so intensely happy, they can fall to agonizing upset even quicker than if they’d been mildly perturbed in the first place, because of the ferocity of the feelings. Something like that.

“A lot more than I’m willing to throw on your shoulders, Pops.”

Patton pouted. Actually. Fucken. Pouted. The worst part was, his puppy-face was actually working.

“Ugh,” Remus rolled his eyes, “Just- could I- I dunno, have a hug, or some shit?”

If Patton was surprised, he hid it well. God knew, that wasn’t exactly the kind of thing Remus would ask for. He almost never asked to get attention- taking it was much easier, and much more entertaining. Besides, if he’d ever asked before that point… well, he already knew what answer he would’ve gotten.

Patton’s smile only widened, until it was positively melting. “Of course you can,” he shut the sink off. “Of course.”

He reached haphazardly for a hand towel, to dry his arms. Remus, riding the high of that enthusiastic permission, absolutely could not wait that long. He latched his arms around Patton’s middle before the side had even finished talking, burying his face between his shoulder blades and hugging tight.

Patton went still, like he didn’t know what to do. After it became clear that Remus had no intention to move, Patton laughed, dreamy and soft, and shook his hands as dry as he could. He patted Remus’ forearm; bead-bracelets clattered under the Duke’s sleeves.

“Hey,” Patton said.

“Mmh?”

“Not that this isn’t lovely,” he laced his fingers with Remus’, squeezed them, “But I’d like it better if I could hug you back, ya know?”

Remus let go, reluctantly. In the true fashion of intrusive thoughts, there was a second he was so convinced Patton would run, now that he was freed. Make an escape from him, an escape from his claws.

He didn’t. He spun right around and pulled Remus against his chest- one arm linked around his torso, the other winding into his tangled hair. Anyone, at a glance, could see that Patton was huge- but up close the difference was dizzying: his wide chest, encircling arms that seemed to be made of nothing but muscle and padding, and that height, all made him so… comforting. Big and strong, a body that disguised power in soft edges and fat. If he squeezed just a little too tight, in fact, Remus wouldn’t be surprised if Patton could make splinters out of his bones. Which Remus definitely, definitely wouldn’t mind, but the knowledge that Patton not only could do that but also wouldn’t ever do that- that was what really did him in.

And he’d hugged Patton before- months ago, and somehow Patton had seemed so small then, when everything had started- but being hugged? Properly, too, not underwater while one of them was drowning- it was a world of difference. No panic, no breakdowns, just a real, solid hug.

He could just ask for this and then have it. He could smell sugar cookies and candle wax, and feel somebody- a willing body- pressing in. It was weird. He thought that someday, he might get used to it. He wanted a chance to get used to it.

“Do you wanna talk now?” Patton prompted, forcibly reminding Remus that he had a bloodhound’s nose for emotional distress.

“I don’t know.”

Patton hummed, his fingers scratching through Remus’ hair. “Today went better than I thought it would.”

“You didn’t have to bring me, if you thought it was gonna be bad.”

“I wasn’t worried because of you! I was worried because of me. Things have been… a lot for me, lately.”

“Oh,” Remus angled his head to the side, looking up at him. “Yeah. I feel ya.”

“But they were all so much more patient, weren’t they,” Patton’s eyes went a little misty, the way they always did when he talked about his family. “Everything’s different now, and I guess that scared me, but I think that now… it’s a good different, you know?”

“Like us, right?” Remus laughed, “This is the craziest difference, if ya think about it.”

Patton chuckled, the sound reverberating in his chest so that Remus felt it more than heard it.

“I don’t think I would’ve gotten through with today without you, you know that?”

It was deeply honest. There was a beat.

“I-” Oh fuck, Remus was choked up, when did that happen? “I wouldn’t have even had a day like today, without you, so. Do with that what you want.”

Remus buried his face in Patton’s sternum, just to avoid the sad understanding in his eyes.

He- he wasn’t exactly made for the care he was getting, not the kind of softness in that face. Not when Patton was still patiently untangling his matt of hair while they hovered in the stillness of the dark, empty kitchen, and Remus desperately didn’t want to cry.

Patton gave him a minute to breathe, at the very least, before:

“They like you, though. Janus loves you.”

“Yeah, okay, but it’s not-”

“I know how you feel,” said Patton, and did. “Like they couldn’t actually care about us, even though it doesn’t make sense for them not to. It’s one of those things that’s easy to forget,” Remus could hear the smile in his voice. “So it’s good we have each other, when we need to get out of our own heads. At least, it’s like that for me, I don’t know if you even-”

“No,” Remus curled his claws in the back of Patton’s shirt, something dark and emotional flooding like tar through his chest. “Nah, you’re right, Morey. This is good for us.”

Remus shook his head at nothing in particular. He forced his hands unballed, pulled back, and wormed his way out of Patton’s hug after way too long.

His skin felt like paper from the affection, like he’d been electrocuted, and while that was fun- was amazing- for a while, he didn’t think he could handle much more in one sitting.

Patton let him go, smiling warmly, leaning back against the counter. His eyes were shiny and wet, but he was content.

“Thanks,” Remus said.

“What for? The hug?”

“No- I mean, that too, but I was saying ‘thanks, for caring’. For giving enough of a shit about me to try and help.”

Patton smiled, solemnly.

“I told you so,” he breathed, “I promised I would like you when I got to know you, and then I did. I do!”

Remus felt a grin returning to his face, sliding across his lips more naturally than anything else he’d had to deal with that night.

“Yeah. You aren’t too bad yourself, Pat.”

Chapter Seven

Taglist: @shrimp-crockpot @glitter-skeleton-uwu @donnieluvsthings @intruxiety @thefivecalls @did-he-just-hiss-at-me @gayformlessblob

#sanders sides #ts #fanfiction #fanfic #sanders sides fanfiction #ts fanfic #intruality #qpr intruality #platonic intruality #remus #patton

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dreamescapeswriting · 4 years

Text

BTS Reaction || Bittersweet Song [Request]

A/N: Me being a big dumb dumb didn’t know what Bittersweet was so I had to redo everything lmaooooo hope this is okay. And for anyone like me [Bittersweet - Sweet with a bitter aftertaste]

Seokjin: - Send My Love - Adele

You were walking down the red carpet of the Grammy's, you were up for an award for your new song and you knew that the person that the song was about was going to be there which made you nervous. Every two seconds you were looking over your shoulder for him but you hadn't seen him yet,

"So, Y/n. You're up for an award for your song Send My Love, do you want to give us an exclusive on who the song is about?" You laughed at the interviewer and shook your head at him, something you would never do was tell anyone about who it was about. Your relationship with him was hidden for years because of both of your famous lifestyle.

"I can't." You giggled shaking your head at the camera,

"In the song, you mention that you aren't kids anymore...Does this mean you were together since you were young?" You ignored his question like you were told by management and you moved onto the next interviewer.

Jin stared at you the whole night, he'd heard the song. Everyone had heard the song it was all over the internet with theories about who it was about, it even had him invested although he knew the song was about him and you.

"Maybe you can just give us the initials of his name?" Another interviewer said you'd had enough of the same question over and over again and turned around to leave bumping straight into Jin. His hands held onto your arms to stop you from falling over and you both locked eyes, neither of you moving from the position. You felt your breathing stop as he stared down into your eyes and he felt his heart skip a beat as he held you in his arms again.

"Y/n, you have to be more careful." Your manager yelled but neither you or Jin were paying attention to anything happening around you, all either of you cared about was staying in that position long enough to take a final look at one another.

"We have to go." Your manager said taking your hand and walking you into the building to find out where you would be sitting for the evening.

(X)

"Jin is the owner of Y/n's heart! Send my love is about Jin?" You read through the articles the next morning, someone had taken the photos of you and Jin from the night before and placed them all over the articles. People drawing their own conclusions on the way you stared at each other, not just on the carpet but throughout the show. He was stealing glances from the row in front of you whenever you weren't looking and people put the clips of you singing on stage next to a video of Jin reacting with his head down looking at the ground.

"Why did you have to bump into him? This could have blown over easily." You stared at your manager,

"Oh, so this is somehow my fault?" You asked throwing your phone down onto the table and throwing your head back, you just wanted to go back to bed but you had an interview later that day and that was all the questions were going to be about now.

"Fuck." You cried out wanting nothing more than to ignore the world for the day but knowing you couldn't.

Yoongi: When I was Your Man - Cover by Madilyn Bailey

Your cover of the song was everywhere that Yoongi went, he couldn't go anywhere without hearing it. It was on in the car, in the studio and even in the coffee shop that he went to every lunch. Every radio stationed seemed it was a good idea to play the song that ended him, made him crumble up whenever he heard your voice singing the words that sounded as though they should have been loving but weren't.

"Should have gave me all your hours when you had the chance." He heard your voice again and turned off the radio in the car earning looks from Namjoon, everyone knew what happened between you both but no one talked about it. Yoongi didn't want to talk about it, it haunted every time he thought about you for even a second.

"She's giving an interview online later," Jungkook told him, they'd been trying to tell him all day and Jungkook was the only one brave enough to just bring it up as a casual conversation between friends, Yoongi stared at him and then to his phone. You were still his lock screen and home screen, you were his everything still but you weren't together. You weren't going to be together anymore,

(X)

You sat at the piano finishing the last chords of the song as you sang into the microphone, looking up to make eye contact with the camera, everything you'd been taught to do by your managers.

"But I just want you to know, He buys me flowers. He holds my hand...Give's me all his hours, cos he had the chance." A tear rolled down your cheek as you broke into the larger notes, thoughts of nothing but Yoongi running around your mind.

"Takes me to all the parties cause he remembers how much I love to dance, does all the things you should've done when you were my man." The studio began clapping and you sent them a fake smile, getting up from the piano and going over to the sofa to sit with the interviewer for questions.

"We all love your cover of Bruno Mars' song, even Mr Bruno Mars himself." The interviewer said clapping his hand and then leaning forward on his legs.

"But we have to know...You sing with such passion and love in that song, who are you thinking about when you sing?" Yoongi stared at you through the phone, you were sitting nervously on the sofa. Twirling the end of your hoodie string around your finger so much it looked as though it was going to fall off, something you did a lot whenever he made you nervous.

"It's just a cover, I figured there should be a female version." You laughed but no one believed you, no one would ever believe you. Not the way you played it with so much emotion in your voice,

"Okay well, who taught you how to play the piano?" The interviewer asked, going into normal questions now that you'd finished singing. You smiled at him and then looked at the floor,

"A close friend of mine actually, he was-is one of my best friends." You told the interviewer with a smile, it was true. You and Yoongi were best friends, you started dating and because he had no time for you, you both took a step back. Deciding it was easier to be without each other in that part of your life but finding it hard to be around one another anymore so you broke apart.

"I guess we don't get a name?" You shook your head and the interview was coming to an end, Yoongi stared at you through the screen and debated calling you but he knew deep down it wasn't a good idea. Neither of you could be around each other without feeling hurt by the other, some things just weren't meant to be.

Hoseok: Big Girls Don’t Cry - Fergie

Losing Hoseok was one of the worst things you'd ever had to go through...Besides how you broke up. It was one of the messiest breakups you'd ever heard of you, insults were flying to and from one another, screaming at each other as you came to the final fight. Both of you had regrets about the breakup but there was no going back to each other, not after everything you said and everything he said to you. There was no trust in the relationship and you weren't going to go back to him just because you loved him. Hoseok stared at the screen, a notification popped up on his phone alerting that there was a new music video from your company, meaning you'd released a new song and he wasn't looking forward to it. The way you ended things he was expecting to see a diss track with major productions pulled out but instead it was a video of you sitting alone in a studio,

"The smell of your skin lingers on me now, you're probably on your flight back to your home town." You started off softly and he relaxed a little staring as you sang into the microphone in your hand, he watched as your brows frowned together when you were building up to higher and longer notes.

"I hope you know, I hope you know. That this has nothing to do with you. It's personal, myself and I. We've got some straightening up to do." You locked eyes with the camera and he bit down on his lip,

"It's time to be a big girl now, and big girls don't cry." You went back into the softer singing and staring at the floor.

"Fairy tales don't always have a happy ending, do they?" You were singing but Hobi felt as though you were really speaking to him through the song and he felt his heart crush as you stood up walking to the camera and touching it as if it was someone's cheek,

"That this has nothing to do with you, it's personal, myself and I. We've got some straightening out to do. and I'm gonna miss you like a child misses their blanket but I've got to get a move on with my life." You were singing into the camera as if he was standing right in front of you and you let a couple of tears go,

"Its time to be a big girl now, and big girls don't cry." You whispered, quickly wiping your face and ending the video. Your managers wanted raw footage and that's what they got, they were milking the breakup out of you. Hobi locked his phone and stared at the photo of you he had on his studio desk, he was happy it wasn't some kind of diss track on him but he was heartbroken that you'd released a song about him like that though he should have seen it coming. He used his personal experiences in lyrics too and it was how he taught you to write.

"Never again." You told your manager through tears, pushing the microphone into his chest and walking out of the studio. Promising yourself you would never sing that song again for as long as you lived.

Namjoon: - Why Try - Ariana Grande

Namjoon was nervous about going to the award ceremony, he knew you were debuting a new song at the opening show and since you'd only broken up last month he assumed it was going to be a diss track on him.

"You okay? You look sick." Jimin said to his leader as they sat in the front row of the audience and looked at the stage, you weren't even there yet and his heart was skipping beats.

"He's worried about seeing Y/n," Jin told Jimin who was now sitting beside Namjoon and trying to comfort him but it was too late, the lights dimmed and a spotlight was on the middle of the stage where you were sitting. Namjoon stared in awe for a couple of seconds, you were sat on a stool, wearing one of his old FG hoodies, wearing thick knitted tights, his mouth hung open as the music started softly, you looked up into the crowd and locked eyes with him instantly, your heart was in your throat and you looked away to make eye contact with the cameras,

"I've been living with devils and angels, angels, angels." You started and Namjoon was transfixed on you, he didn't look away the whole time. While other performers would come out and do a whole number you were sitting there as if you were just sat in his studio singing to him and that's how it felt to him. It felt as though you were back in his studio on a late-night, both of you singing or rapping to one another lovingly.

As the music began to pick up he still watched you, studying how you closed your eyes tightly trying not to cry as you poured every emotion into the song.

"I'm in love with the pain, I never wanna live without it!" He felt his stomach drop,

"You drive me insane, Now we're screaming just to see who's louder!" He stared down at the floor, tears falling down his cheeks as he thought about the last couple weeks of your relationship. It was full of nothing but fights, small bickering back and forth until he shouted and you shouted back.

"Through it all, you could still my heart skip, heart skip, oh yeah." You were standing up now, taking the microphone off the stand as you tried to put on the best performance through the tears.

"Even when you're yelling at me I still think you're beautiful. Through it all, you could still my heart skip." You were standing at the front of the stage singing into the camera when you stared down at Namjoon to hold eye contact, you were shaking and crying. Your microphone was shaking badly and he stared up at you,

"I'm loving the pain. I never wanna live without it. So why do I try? You drive me insane!" You were belting out the last notes,

"Now we're screaming just to see who's louder." The music ended and the venue was silent, the only thing that could be heard was your broken sobs as you walked off the stage with the microphone clinging to your hand. The crowd started clapping and Namjoon stared at the space where you'd been standing, it wasn't a diss at him it was something that you'd clearly put a lot of work into and he couldn't even knock you for it. He'd taught you to write about everything you were feeling and that was it, that was everything you'd felt over the last month of being apart from him. Your manager was waiting with open arms as you reached her backstage, you dropped into her arms and cried to her about him being there. Something you did the moment the relationship ended with him, she'd been there through everything, every fight, every small breakup that wasn't a real breakup right until the big one. The big breakup to end all breakups.

"You did great, it's okay." She assured you, rubbing your arms as you moved out of the way so the next act could go onto perform.

Jimin: Secret Love Song Part II - Little Mix

Your group was on the stage waiting for you and you walked out, staring at the fans and smiling. It was the goodbye song for the end of the show and you should have been used to singing it by then but you weren't. Every lyric brought back memories of your relationship with Jimin, every word bringing their own flashback to your love for him.

"When you hold me in the street and you kiss me on the dance floor. I wish that I could be like that. Why can't it be like that? Cause I'm yours." You began singing and the arena fell silent as they watched you singing into the microphone. No one knew about your relationship with Jimin, it was all kept quiet because of the press. No one wanted to know Jimin was dating, it would ruin his reputation.

"Stolen moments that we steal as the curtain falls, it'll never be enough. It's obvious you're meant for me, every piece of you it just fits perfectly." You trailed off and your band member took over for her verse, you looked over at the stage manager who was looking out into the crowd nervously, you followed her gaze and there was Jimin on the first row with the rest of his band members and you felt your world coming to a crashing halt. You hadn't seen him since the breakup, you were forced to break up because of people getting to close to knowing about you, you stared at him for a couple of seconds...or what you thought was a couple of seconds but your final verse was coming up. You raised the microphone to your mouth shakily and he maintained eye contact with you the entire time.

"Oh, why can't you hold me in the street? Why can't I kiss you on the dance floor? I wish that it could be like that Why can't it be like that?

'Cause I'm yours." You were staring back at him now, you didn't care about anyone else in the room, you didn't care if the relationship that was now over was outted to the world, all you cared about was Jimin knowing how you truly felt. "Why can't I say that I'm in love? I wanna shout it from the rooftops, I wish that it could be like that Why can't we be like that? 'Cause I'm yours... Why can't we be like that? Wish we could be like that" You broke down on the last lyric and your band members all crushed you in a group hug, making you kneel down on the ground as you sobbed into their shoulders, your fans all screaming at you that it was okay but you were gone. The curtains dropped and you got up from the floor, sprinting in the direction of your changing room and not wanting to talk to anyone about what had happened, especially your manager who was screaming out your name for answers about what happened on the stage.

Taehyung: My Happy Ending - Avril Lavine

"Will you just turn it off?" Taehyung asked Jungkook as he walked into the dorms, Jungkook had been playing the radio when your song came on over the radio and Tae wanted to throw the radio out of the window.

"He was everything, everything that I wanted. We were meant to be, supposed to be, but we lost it," He heard your voice and he stared at the floor thinking back to the breakup that you both went through. He knew he was too harsh on you but it was the only way he could end the things between you.

"And all of the memories, so close to me just fade away

All this time you were pretending

So much for my happy ending." He groaned turning the radio off himself and then leaving the apartment,

(X)

"Tae what are you talking about? We just had a really nice dinner." You said as you entered your apartment, expecting Taehyung to stay over for the night but he was starting to be dry with you. Giving you dry replies, not wanting to hold your hand or be near you,

"We're over okay! Look I don't know why I even got involved with you in the first place! I never loved you, all of this is fake." You stared at him, tears forming in the corners of your eyes as he stared at you as if what he'd just said didn't bring your world down around you, as if you really didn't mean anything to him.

"You don't mean that." You whispered your voice cracking in the middle as you broke down into tears.

"I do. I don't like you, the company made me date you. You think I'd ever want to date someone like you?" You swallowed the lump in your throat and he walked out of the door never to be seen again.

(X)

You stared out of the hotel window at the rain, you sat down on the window seat and opened the window up. Wanting to feel the fresh cold air but the window as slammed shut again, you were supposed to be listening to your manager telling you about the performance you had later but all you could think about was Taehyung. You thought the breakup song would have helped you moved on but it had the opposite effect, it just brought everything tumbling back to you from that night and you cried whenever you sang it.

"You have to get over him, he's just a dumb boy who didn't know how good he had it." You nodded and looked at the plans for later that night.

Jungkook: Miss Moving On - fifth Harmony

When you agreed to perform in front of people you didn't expect that within those people would be Jeon Jungkook. Your ex-boyfriend who you'd had a nasty breakup with, only a few months previous to this show. You'd performed in front of him loads of times but none of those songs were about him, none of them were about being hurt by him and finally finding yourself again.

"I'm breaking down, gonna start from scratch. Shake it off like an Etch-A-Sketch." You started and Jungkook looked up from his phone looking up to where you were standing on the stage and you weren't looking at him. He missed the way you would stare at him but he knew he couldn't go back to that, he knew he'd hurt you too much to go back to how things used to be together.

"I'm not the way that I used to be...I took the record off repeat. You killed, but I survived and now I'm coming alive." You finished at your friend took over on her verse and you glanced to where you knew Jungkook was standing and you quickly looked away at your friend who nodded at you. You'd been dreading this performance all week because you knew he was going, he'd tweeted out that he was going to see you all because before the breakup he was a giant fan of your work.

"I broke the glass that surrounded me, I ain't the way you remember me. I was such a good girl, so fragile but no more." Jungkook felt his eyes welling up as you sang directly to him, you weren't looking in his direction but he knew what this was about and he understood why you were like this.

It was coming to the final verse and you took centre stage, taking in a deep breath trying not to be blinded by the spotlight that was now on you.

"Everything is changing and I never wanna go back to the way it was. I'm finding who I am and who I am from here on out is gonna be enough...It's gonna be enough." You took a step back and the girls took over on their final lines, once the curtain dropped you walked off stage, leaning against a speaker and smiled at your friends who were trying to see if you were okay.

Jungkook didn't know what to expect when he went, he didn't think you would come crawling back to him but he figured you would at least come and talk to him after the show but when he went backstage to meet you, your band members told him you'd already left the stadium and were going home.

"Is she okay?" He asked but your friends weren't about to give him information on you,

"She's perfect." They lied, knowing that every night you either cried yourself to sleep or would regularly sleep in his t-shirt to try and make it hurt less to be without him and you didn't know that Jungkook slept with one of your shirts every night, but it was starting to lose your smell.

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