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alsheon · 6 years

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Quan Zhi Gao Shou/The King's Avatar modern classic Thief AU

Ye Xiu: Under the pseudonym of “One Autumn Leaf” he becomes a moonlight thief for fun and the thrill. Or basically he just wants to mess with those rich fools and annoy everyone with his awesomeness.

Han Wenqing: The head of police. He’s in charge of everything about One Autumn Leaf, mainly because he’s the only one who could stay sane enough after many encounters with the thief. He’s aspired to caught One Autumn Leaf no matter what and end the thief’s mischief. He’s somewhat fond of Ye Xiu, which baffles his friends because he never was ‘fond’ of someone.

Zhang Xinjie: Han Wenqing’s assistant. He’s an aspiring detective that also share a determination to catch OAL. He’s usually somewhat useless as OAL tends to choose midnight as his heist’s hour and Zhang Xinjie uses to sleep at that time. But Zhang Xinjie played a big part in deducing from where the thief would come. He has some suspicion about Ye Xiu, but he’s suspicious about everyone so no one really bothers with him.

Zhang Jiale: Could be said he’s Han Wenqing’s second-in-command. Popular among his peers for his accuracy in shooting as well 'dazzling-ness’. He uses a type of gun that produces beautiful and unique line of shoots making him be nicknamed “The dazzling shooter”. But alas, toward OAL he couldn’t do a thing. In fact, his dazzling shoots accompanied by OAL’s elegant dodging, only added the ethereal feeling when OAL escaped, very much to his chagrin. Toward Ye Xiu he has some mixed feeling, annoyance and… Affection.

Su Mucheng: She thoroughly supports Ye Xiu in his way to have fun. Sometimes she becomes Ye Xiu’s assistant but because of her job as an entertainer she rarely did it.

Zhou Zekai: He’s a rich guy whose things somehow always interested OAL, prompting the thief to always send a letter to him. If the letter is a love letter Zhou Zekai won’t mind it but it’s to steal his thing! Basically, almost 50% of OAL’s heists is just to steal his things before giving it back at another month or another week. He's so frequently become OAL’s victim, to the point he just wants to shout at OAL in any heist with “Just Take Me With You!” because he’s already THAT desperate. Toward Ye Xiu, he’s REALLY in love… But it’s complicated as he also acknowledged that he has feeling for OAL too.

Sun Xiang: He’s still in Highschool and was an avid fan of OAL. He’s really jealous of Zhou Zekai, his good friend, to be frequently stolen at by OAL much to his friends’ disbelief. He’ aspires to be a moonlight thief like OAL too prompting his friend to call him “Chuunibyou”. He always tries hard to come at every of OAL’s heists like it was some concert. He dislikes Han Wenqing for being at the opposite side of OAL. He hates Ye Xiu to the fault because of his guts and how the guy always makes fun of his 'crush’ on OAL. (Truth be told YX just didn’t know how to deal with this guy who always shouts “Cool! OAL! OAL FOR THE WIN!” in the crowd when the heist happens)

Yu Wenzhou: a private detective that Han Wenqing trusted in pinpointing OAL, mainly because Zhang Xinjie always slept at the heist time. He has a calm personality and a frequent smile that make him seems mysterious and other-worldly. Many people suspect that he’s actually the OAL himself, that’s why Han Wenqing dragged him to his side at every heist under the pretense “Zhang Xinjie is asleep”. After five or so heists with him on the police’s side and never gone, everybody is more or less believe he wasn’t OAL. But because of his brilliance, Han Wenqing kept him by his side every time if it’s about OAL. Ye Xiu is careful toward him and Yu Wenzhou also seems to have some suspicion on Ye Xiu who accidentally solved a difficult riddle in a matter of a minute before Yu Wenzhou. But under that suspicion, Yu Wenzhou surprisingly found himself drawn toward Ye Xiu constantly.

Huang Shaotian: He’s Yu Wenzhou’s childhood friend and a freelancer. His first encounter with OAL is when he’s part-timing as a security in an art museum. He’s indignant about how OAL could steal under his watch and have been following OAL’s heist since then wanting to catch the thief but also want to learn all those tricks. “Wouldn’t it be cool if I know those tricks? I know! I’ll catch OAL and forced him to teach me those tricks before kicking him into the jail!”. He actually didn’t hate OAL because OAL frequently stole from Zhou Zekai, his most hated person. He’s a very good friend to Ye Xiu, in fact, Yu Wenzhou knew Ye Xiu through Huang Shaotian. Acknowledging he has a feeling for Ye Xiu but feels anxious because whenever Yu Wenzhou is in the vicinity Ye Xiu always secretly glance at YW. (Ye Xiu was only being cautious about Yu Wenzhou but HST interpret it to another way)

Wang Jiexi: He’s the Magician extraordinaire who have the ability of a seer. He’s paid a lot for one fortune telling and one day Zhang Jiale prompted Han Wenqing to ask a “Magician” to see who is this OAL like the superstitious guy he is. Wang Jiexi couldn’t see the uncovered secret but he could pinpoint several places that will OAL used. “The magic he used is but a "trick”. My magic comes from the soul there’s no trick in it.“. When he met Ye Xiu he got a premonition about something. Later on, he found out about OAL’s identity as Ye Xiu in secret and has been subtly helping OAL since then. Ye Xiu never knew that Wang Jiexi knew, but he have a mixed feeling about Wang Jiexi’s secret helps in some of his heists.

Qiu Fei: He knew OAL’s identity. He’s Ye Xiu’s ward and could be said as a disciple and a sidekick to OAL. He’s the one who gathered the information for the heist to lighten Ye Xiu’s job. He’s really fond of his mentor and extremely respects him. Extremely diligent and intelligent, he once asked if he could do a heist too and YX is considering him as a successor.

Bao Rongxing: OAL accidentally encounter him in a heist, the guy surprisingly could catch up whether by shit luck or not but OAL could escape from him easily. Later on, as Ye Xiu, he met Bao Rongxing again. One thing leads to another, Bao called Ye Xiu "Boss” and has been following YX ever since. Much, much later Ye Xiu trusted Bao enough to let him enter his lair and even met Qiu Fei. But it wasn’t till long while later when Bao realizes his boss is OAL despite OAL’s spare clothes displayed in the lair.

Wei Chen: A veteran detective that had long retired but then got drawn in again because of the interesting case of OAL. He almost caught OAL in his first attempt but Ye Xiu denied it with “I never knew he joined along! He caught me off guard!”. Well, tbh his way is really shameless in not letting OAL have an additional defense against him. But in the latter heist, he couldn’t get as close to OAL who had prepared for him. But together with Yu Wenzhou, OAL usually avoids them. He’s a long time friend of Ye Xiu and always come to complain to Ye Xiu about OAL after he comes back from his 'retirement’.

Chu Yunxiu: A female top model who got interested in OAL after one party that turned into a heist. She later on indulge the idea of “Han Wenqing and One Autumn Leaf is in love with each other” and actually the one who start the romantic fandom dedicated to One Autumn Leaf.

Mo Fan: Ye Xiu’s victim. He’s also a thief but not flashy and showy like One Autumn Leaf. One day, they’re targetting the same jewel. To be fair “Deception” didn’t follow the outside news and just stole out of convenience when he sees the guard is lack (HW, as always laid in waiting to try to bait OAL with slack guard but who know…). At that event OAL declared cold war on “Deception” and Deception’s fame rocketed after that much to Mo Fan’s horror. Ye Xiu had much fun that night.

I got this when I was about going to sleep and couldn’t resist to write them here for future’s convenience.

#the king's avatar #quan zhi gao shou #ye xiu #han wenqing #yu wenzhou #huang shaotian #zhou zekai #sun xiang #qiu fei #mo fan #wang jiexi #AU Ideas #the king's avatar's AU #mine #The AU I mean #anyone could use it

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ryukoishida · 7 years

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Quan Zhi Gao Shou Fic: In which rebel!Shaotian and goody-two-shoes!Wenzhou meet and fall in love. [High School AU]

Title: I Cause Trouble, not Romance Fandom: The King’s Avatar / Quan Zhi Gao Shou Character(s)/Pairing(s): Yu/Huang (Wenzhou/Shaotian) Summary: Five times rebel Shaotian stirs up trouble for goody-two shoes Wenzhou and one time Shaotian catches Wenzhou breaking a school rule. Rating: T A/N: It’s only so long before I can hold myself back from writing high school AU Yu/Huang… so here we are! Based on ideas from this list. May I also recommend listening to Matthew P.’s “Take a Chance” in the background while reading this? It’s weirdly fitting.

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Huang Shaotian has a reputation.

He’s the school’s infamous loud-mouthed rebel and troublemaker. Students fear him, respect him, or outright avoid him; teachers are helplessly frustrated when handling him; and punks from other nearby schools, not knowing any better, challenge him only to regret their decisions soon after. Known for his bleached blond hair, piercings, messy uniform, and a dangerous yet self-assured smirk as he brings down students physically bigger and tougher than himself, sixteen-year-old Huang Shaotian is an existence that’s impossible to ignore, a typhoon that’s surely to bring destruction and chaos upon the path he walks.

Yu Wenzhou also has a reputation.

He’s the responsible class president, a diligent straight-A student, and an all-around helpful and polite young man — simply put, he’s an exemplary student for his fellow classmates. Students admire him or outright have minor crushes on him; teachers adore him; and even the punks in the school know better than to pick on him. Known for his composed intelligence, his gentle smile, and kind manners, Yu Wenzhou blends in well within the teenage adrenaline and hormone-infested campus; he’s a tranquil lake that brings peace of mind and harmony to those who are close to him.

There should be no reason for these two to cross paths, until one fateful morning — the sky a flat grey and the air heavy with precipitation — a drenched Huang Shaotian brings an equally drenched kitten to school, and Yu Wenzhou, who arrives at school a little later than usual due to the weather, witnesses the tender way with which the school rebel murmurs comfort to the tiny feline.

“There, there little guy, let me dry you off, okay? What kind of asshole would throw out such a cutie like you, huh? Shame on them, I say…” Shaotian mutters while lightly wiping the orange-white tabby with a handkerchief, its fur matted with mud and dirt.

Wenzhou freezes at the strange sight and quickly slips behind one of the pillars a few paces away, unaware of the water droplets from his umbrella that are soaking the cuffs of his pants. He’s not sure why he’s hiding, but his heart is thudding hard against his chest like he’s done something guilty, like he’s just seen something he shouldn’t have.

Cautiously, he peeks out from behind the pillar again after a few seconds.

Shaotian is still softly whispering to the kitten, his golden irises focused and bright; even towards a cat, he can’t seem to shut up, and Wenzhou finds that the corner of his lips is curling up before he manages to catch himself.

“Oi! Huang Shaotian, there you are!” a rough male voice interrupts Wenzhou’s trance. “Didn’t you get my message, or are you too chicken to accept my challenge?” the insult is accompanied by his lackeys’ uproarious laughter and a series of frightened mewling from the cat in Shaotian’s arms.

“Do you fucking mind? You’re scaring my cat here,” Shaotian snaps as he turns fiercely to face the group composed of four boys — all of them in various stages of the typical “troublemaker” label: dyed hair, jewelry, tattoos, untidy attires. If Han Wenqing from the Disciplinary Committee were present at this moment, he’d had a field day filing all the rules these kids are currently breaking.

“Y-your cat?!” the boy shouts in disbelief, clearly displeased by the fact that Shaotian cares more about his feline companion than his challenge, which can possibly change the social hierarchy in this school in a matter of minutes. “Who cares about the stupid cat? Come on, let’s go up to the roof and settle this once and for all!”

“Are you fuckers deaf or something? Didn’t you just hear what I said?” Shaotian gently scoops up the kitten into the crook of his arms and pulls himself up, his narrowed eyes cold and sharp, lips tightening into a straight line.

Wenzhou knows when a fight is about to start, and unwilling to get caught up in the middle of this, he’s about to sneak past when someone calls out to him.

“You! Yeah, you over there with the blue umbrella!”

Wenzhou’s shoulders quiver when he hears approaching footsteps, the damp slaps of shoes against wet concrete growing louder. He turns around stiffly, and he’s stunned by how close Huang Shaotian is standing before him, close enough to see that his blond hair is still dripping with rain water, thick lashes stuck together in black crescents, and gold eyes wide and stormy.

“Y-yes?” It takes Wenzhou everything in his power to remain rooted to his spot and not step back from the intimidating proximity.

“Can you do me a favour?” he asks with a tone like they’ve been friends for years, almost like he’s pleading for his help, except it’s Huang Shoatian, and he never asks for anyone’s help, as far as Wenzhou is concerned.

“Depends,” Wenzhou croaks out.

“You’re going back to the classroom, right? Can you take Troubling Rain with you?”

“Troubling Rain?” Wenzhou tilts his head to the side in confusion.

Shaotian stares at him like he’s slow before clarifying with a sigh, “… the cat, dude.”

Wenzhou blinks twice, suddenly comprehending and internally curses himself. “Oh… right, of course.”

The blond-haired boy carefully places the small feline into Wenzhou’s arms. The cat mews in protest for a brief moment and only calms down after a few strokes on the head from Shaotian’s warm fingers.

“I’ll pick him up after I’m done dealing with those idiots,” Shaotian casually nods towards the group, not even bothering to lower his voice, and then he turns his sharp gaze back onto Wenzhou, his lips curling up into a defiant smirk, “You won’t tell on me, would you?”

“No,” he says, realizing that this one, single promise is enough to destroy his reputation if anyone were to find out.

“You’re a pal. I owe you one!” Shaotian slaps Wenzhou on the shoulder and breaks into a bright grin, sunlight peeling away the monotonous grey.

Dazed from the unexpected encounter, and with a wet kitten named Troubling Rain yawning in his arms, Yu Wenzhou gradually makes his way up the stairs to his classroom.

For the first time since he started attending this school, he’s late to class.

ii.

“Class prez, class prez!”

“What is it, Boyuan?” Wenzhou calmly turns to see the other student running towards him, his face panic-ridden, and Wenzhou almost gets crushed in between the desk and his classmate when Xu Boyuan reaches forward to grab the edge of the desk to steady himself.

The tall stacks of workbooks that Wenzhou has been attempting to organize and is about to bring to the teacher’s office sway dangerously from Boyuan’s momentum, and Wenzhou is only able to rescue two stacks with his reflex; he watches helplessly as the third tower of workbooks crumbles like a weakly-constructed sandcastle and scatters into a useless pile on the floor.

He’ll have to organize those again from the order of the student numbers. All thirty of them. Why is this happening to him?

“A… A fight! A fight broke out on the second floor!” Boyuan struggles to inform the class president as he takes in huge gulps of air.

“Who?” Wenzhou asks warily.

“Huang Shao and—”

He stops listening the moment Huang Shaotian is mentioned. Of course that kid is involved. Wenzhou shouldn’t even be surprised anymore. With a command of “get a teacher, quickly!” thrown towards Boyuan, Wenzhou dashes out of the classroom and heads for the staircase.

It’s easy to follow the jeers and encouraging shouts from other students to locate the fight. As he pushes through the excited audience with firm words of warning, many students move aside to let him through, though most of them still remain close by to watch.

In the center of the crowd along the narrow hallway, Huang Shaotian and a senior named Ye Xiu, who’s almost equally infamous as Shaotian in terms of their rule-breaking records, are at each other’s throats, their fists grasping each other’s wrinkled shirts and their faces bruised and scratched with bloodied lines.

“Enough! Both of you, hands off!” Wenzhou attempts to wedge himself in between the two boys, his hands shoving at their shoulders but to little avail.

“He’s the one who started it first,” Ye Xiu tells him in a lazy drawl, and if Wenzhou weren’t so annoyed at the both of them for interrupting his classroom duties, he’d almost be impressed by the casual way with which Ye Xiu is talking to him, as if there isn’t blood seeping out from an ugly scratch across his cheek or a pulsing swell that starts near his left eye, and he’s just nonchalantly commenting about the cafeteria menu.

“Yeah? Well that’s because you keep running away from me every time I challenge you to a one-on-one!” Shaotian retorts, and his pull on Ye Xiu’s tie tightens as their foreheads bump together, both of them growling lowly in their throats.

“You heard him, right?” Ye Xiu glances over at Wenzhou with piercing eyes, daring him to continue interfering with their brawl. “Just let us handle this on our own so I can put this little brat’s ass in his rightful place.”

“No, can’t do,” Wenzhou tries to get in between them again, this time more insistent, and that’s when someone’s arm swings towards his face and everything goes black.

“Oh shit. That’s… that’s a lot of blood. Did I kill him? Oh my fucking god, is he alive? Is he breathing? Please tell me he’s breathing, oh my god. Where’s the nurse when you need her?”

“I’d feel a lot better if you can just shut up for a second,” Wenzhou moans, and winces when sharp pain shoots up along the bridge of his nose. His voice sounds weirdly nasally and he realizes when he tries to breathe in (a terrible idea in and of itself) that someone has stuck tissue into his nostrils. He raises his hand up to gingerly brush across his face, feeling for any tender spots of pain, and sees fresh blood dotted his fingertips.

“Oh thank fuck you’re alive!”

In his excited realization that he didn’t murder his classmate, Shaotian tightly grabs one of Wenzhou’s hands.

“Ow!”

“Oh shit, oh shit I’m sorry! Are you okay? I didn’t mean to do that!” he quickly releases the other boy’s hand in alarm.

“What are you even doing here?” Wenzhou opens his eyes slowly, and without turning his head to the side, as that would probably worsen the nosebleed, he can only see a blurry outline of Shaotian standing beside what he presumes to be one of the cots in the school infirmary. “Where’s Ye Xiu?”

“He helped me carry you to the infirmary,” Shaotian says, “and then he got called out by his homeroom teacher, so my guess is he’s getting a good earful of scolding right about now.”

“So what are you doing here, then? Shouldn’t you be back in class?”

“I do have some conscience, y’know… I’m worried about you, okay? It’s partly — fine, mostly — my fault that you’re lying here with a goddamn bloody nose, so the least I could do is stay with you until the nurse comes back, right? But also let this be a warning for next time: never get in between other people’s fights because honestly, I don’t know what the hell you were thinking, interfering like it’s any of your business when you could have just left it to the teachers—”

“It is my business,” Wenzhou interrupts him indignantly, though it’s rather difficult to sound stern when he has tissue and blood stuck up his nostrils. “You still owe me one, remember?”

��Huh?” Shaotian scratches the back of his neck in puzzlement.

“Do you know how awkward it was for me to explain to my homeroom teacher why I had a wet cat with me on that day?”

“Oh, right! I still haven’t had a chance to thank you properly for that!”

“It’s fine, there’s really no need.”

“I insist,” he’s holding onto Wenzhou’s hand again, the syllables of his phrase accentuated by the press of his fingers against Wenzhou’s. “I may be a delinquent but I have my own principles, too! I don’t like being in other people’s debt.”

Wenzhou sighs, though he doesn’t complain about the warm hands caging loosely around his.

“You can pay me back by stop getting into so much trouble, Huang Shaotian.”

“You know who I am?” he sounds genuinely surprised.

There’s no reason for them to know each other by name; Yu Wenzhou is the class president of Class 2-A, which consists of students who excel academically, while Huang Shaotian belongs to Class 2-D, a class that makes up of delinquents and those who are basically failing school.

“Who doesn’t?” Wenzhou chuckles and then instantly regrets it when pain flares up along his nose again.

“And you are?”

“Yu Wenzhou.”

“All right, then, Yu Wenzhou. I promise I’ll… uh, get into less trouble from now on.”

“I can’t help but notice you used the term ‘less’ and not ‘no more’,” Wenzhou’s lips almost quirk up into a smile. Almost.

“You can’t expect me to entirely transform myself in one day. That’s asking way too much!”

iii.

“You should really wash your hands more thoroughly,” Wenzhou comments as he walks past Shaotian after delivering worksheets to the teacher’s office during lunch break.

Shaotian freezes at the other boy’s words, and instinctively pulls his hands up to his face to inspect more closely; sure enough, specks of bright green paint are still evident under the hallway’s fluorescent light fixtures, like neon stars scattered across his pale skin.

“Fuck! I swear I’ve scrubbed my skin raw,” Shaotian mutters darkly, and then upon realizing what he’s just said, he slaps both hands over his mouth, his eyes widened in panic.

But Wenzhou is not done; he enjoys seeing this rare side of the blond-haired delinquent just a little bit too much to stop.

“Although I have to say that neon green is not the most fetching color on a burgundy vehicle,” Wenzhou taps his finger against his lower lip in a mock thoughtful tone, “I wonder what Principal Chen thinks about the colour choices. Should we perhaps pay him a visit?”

“Yu Wenzhou, you little—” Shaotian grabs Wenzhou by the collar, and by this time, other students are already slowing down in the hallway to see if they’ll be lucky enough to catch sight of another one of Huang Shaotian’s notorious fights. Unfortunately, they will have to wait for another chance, because Shaotian is not in the mood to be in the center of attention this time. Releasing his shirt collar, he seizes Wenzhou by his wrist instead and pulls him along until they find a quiet corner away from the students milling about.

Shaotian backs Wenzhou into the side of a vending machine until Wenzhou can feel the coldness of the metal seeping through his shirt and chilling his skin; Shaotian slams a fist just mere inches beside the dark-haired boy’s head before muttering, his face hovering close to Wenzhou’s and his lips twisted into a cold smile, “You’re actually quite a little shit, aren’t you, Yu Wenzhou?”

He should be scared. If he’s sane in the head, he should be really, really scared right now, but Wenzhou understands that the heartbeat that thrums rapidly like a hummingbird’s wings, painful against his ribs with every shallow breath he takes, has nothing to do with fear. It’s excitement — at the prospect of teetering between the boundary of safety and danger, at the close proximity between himself and the unpredictable typhoon known as Huang Shaotian.

“Is that what I am to you?” Wenzhou returns with another question, dark, defying eyes gazing up at his golden ones with no sense of apprehension or self-preservation.

“What the fuck is it that you want? What will get you to shut up about car?”

“A bubble-tea, and an explanation of why you did it.”

(As it turns out, the reason is even more ridiculous than Wenzhou has initially imagined. Shaotian lost a bet to Ye Xiu — something about the results of the previous night’s Blue Rain versus Excellent Era match in the Glory tournament — and so upon following Ye Xiu’s snarky bidding, Shaotian was forced to accept the punishment for losing the bet, which was spray painting the principal’s car.

Wenzhou can only chuckle while trying not to choke over his very tasty and overly saccharine milk foam brown sugar oolong milk tea.)

iv.

With a boxed soy milk in hand, Wenzhou turns a corner to find Huang Shaotian slumped dejectedly against the side of the vending machine. Without further questioning, he quickly retraces his steps back to his locker and grabs the small first-aid kit he’s kept stocked since the time he got accidentally smacked in the face by Huang Shaotian during one of his numerous scuffles.

“Did you get into a fight with Ye Xiu again?”

Wenzhou asks softly when he returns to the same spot he’s found the delinquent earlier and sits cross-legged across from Shaotian, who finally looks up, sweat-slicked forelocks falling haphazardly into his eyes, one of which is swelling slightly and he has a hard time blinking properly.

“Would you be disappointed if I said ‘yes’?” Shaotian’s words are muffled, and he hisses at the stinging sensation when Wenzhou dabs on his split lower lip with antiseptic wipe, the white cloth tainting bright red with blood.

“Slightly,” Wenzhou replies with a quiet voice using a tone that Shaotian despises — it’s one that’s infuriatingly calm and indecipherable, difficult to tell whether the boy is pissed or simply unconcerned.

He continues to clean Shaotian’s wounds carefully, the procedure so familiar now since they learned of each other’s names last autumn: Shaotian getting into fights at least three times during the week, and Wenzhou patching him up each and every time. He would grumble about their promise, about how Shaotian is supposed to give him less trouble now that they’re friends (‘They are friends, are they not?’ Wenzhou sometimes ponders), and Shaotian would apologize with his signature sunshine smile — the one that he first gave Wenzhou when he thanked him for taking care of his cat.

“Then, no, I definitely did not get into a fight with that asshole,” Shaotian answers with a cheeky grin.

Wenzhou doesn’t say anything for a brief moment as he puts a bandage over the gash on Shaotian’s cheek with immaculate care, his dark grey eyes so focused on the task that he’s entirely unaware of how Shaotian is unabashedly staring at him, or how hard he’s swallowing when Wenzhou’s scent hits him like waves of the ocean that attempt to suffocate him if he keeps breathing it in.

His fingertips linger just a bit too long along Shaotian’s jawline, but neither comments upon that fact when Wenzhou says with a neutral smile, the grey in his eyes glimmering with a somber light, “I’d be more disappointed if I find out you’re lying to me though.”

“I just can’t win against you,” Shaotian sighs, his eyes fluttering close as he leans his head back against the vending machine. The humming from the machine fills in the silence between them as Wenzhou finishes patching up the rest of his injuries.

“Come on, I’ll walk you home,” Wenzhou gets up and extends his arm towards Shaotian.

He turns his head to the side when he murmurs, “it’s okay. I want to rest a little longer.”

“Huang Shaotian?”

Wenzhou crouches down, but the other boy only lowers his head further, hiding his face from Wenzhou’s view. With a suspicious frown, he begins to cautiously press his fingers along Shaotian’s calf and down to his ankle until the boy yelps in protest, pulling his leg away from Wenzhou’s hands.

“Ow! Fuck! What the fuck d’you do that for?!”

“Your ankle’s injured…”

“Yes, thank you for the diagnosis, Dr. Yu,” he rolls his eyes, tone filled with sarcasm.

“Why didn’t you tell me? You should go to a doctor and get that checked out.”

“It’s not the first time I’ve twisted my stupid ankle,” Shaotian mutters in annoyance, using his shirt sleeve to roughly rub away the tears that have started forming when the throbbing on his ankle flares up in sharp agony, “it’ll heal in a few days.”

“So stubborn…” Wenzhou shakes his head, half-fond and half-exasperated.

“What the hell was that?” he snaps, unimpressed.

“Climb on.”

“What?” Shaotian looks up with a scowl only to see that Wenzhou is crouched down with his back facing him, his intention suddenly clear as day. He snorts out a laugh, “I can’t walk right now, but that doesn’t mean I don’t value my long-term ability to use my legs ever again.”

“I won’t drop you, I promise,” Wenzhou doesn’t turn around, but his words carry a kind of weight and sincerity that Shaotian can never resist, so without any further prompting, Shaotian climbs onto Wenzhou’s back, his arms wrapped around the other boy’s shoulders.

He’s incredibly warm, and his shoulders are broader than they look, or maybe the pain is just messing with Shaotian’s mind. Either way, getting a piggy-back ride from the esteemed class president of Class-A has not been part of Shaotian’s plan that day, but he definitely likes where this is going.

Fortunately, Shaotian’s home is not too far from the school, but it’s still taken them about half an hour before they reach the front door of his apartment.

After he unlocks the door, Shaotian turns to him with a mischievous smirk, “Yu Wenzhou, you aren’t going to kiss me better? I’m so disappointed, like you have no idea.”

“Don’t push your luck,” Wenzhou replies, hoping the sudden burst of warmth on his cheeks isn’t too visible.

“You know I love pushing people’s boundaries! It’s part of my charm!”

While the teacher is busy writing on the blackboard for next day’s lessons, Shaotian scribbles a note when he’s supposed to be working on a math assignment he’s missed a few weeks ago. After ensuring that the teacher won’t be turning around, he chucks the crumpled paper ball towards the back of someone’s head sitting two rows in front of him, the mob of dark hair a familiar sight, though not usually seen in detention after school hours.

The paper ball falls and rolls to the bottom of Wenzhou’s chair, and with motion as silent and smooth as a shadow, he picks up the paper, unfurls it carefully, and reads the messily scrawled content while he effortlessly twirls his pen with his slender fingers:

Wow, what a rare sight to see the star student in detention! What the hell did you do to land yourself into this boring shit hole?

With a gleeful light to his eyes, Shaotian observes Wenzhou penning a reply. He folds the paper into an airplane with flawlessly straight lines and accurate edges and sends it back to Shaotian.

Preparation for finals week had been hectic. I brought the wrong folder to school today and accidentally left my Chinese literary essay at home.

After finish admiring Wenzhou’s elegant penmanship for a few seconds, Shaotian is about to write back when the teacher announces to the few students sitting in his classroom for detention, “I need to go to the resources room for a few minutes, and I’ll be right back.

“Huang Shaotian,” he glares at the student pointedly, bushy eyebrows raised up and his tone strict, “I better see some of that math homework completed by the time I get back.”

“You got it, Mr. Liang,” he winks at the teacher, who only heaves a sigh and closes the door behind him.

As soon as the door clicks shut, Shaotian slips into the desk directly behind Wenzhou’s quick as lightning and taps on his friend’s shoulder with an urgency that even Wenzhou finds impossible to ignore.

“Hey, hey, Yu Wenzhou, want to skip detention together? There’s a new bubble-tea place that has just recently opened nearby; they apparently have really tasty bubble waffles, too! With fifteen different flavours! Fifteen! Isn’t that amazing? I wonder if they have it in taro flavor, you know I’d die for that shit. Come on, ditch detention with me! Oi, are you even listening to me, Yu Wenzhou mmf—”

It’s hard to interrupt Shaotian once he gets going, especially if the one-sided conversation is about food, so Wenzhou has to cover the other boy’s mouth with his hand until he calms down and shuts up long enough for him to get a word in.

“What?” Shaotian peels Wenzhou’s fingers off and demands with an impressive pout that can rival a five-year-old’s. “What is it?”

“I don’t want to get in trouble,” Wenzhou utters in a low voice, putting his pen down for the moment as he continues with a soft sigh, “I mean, even more trouble than I’m already in.”

“But detention is so boring,” Shaotian whines as if that alone is a good excuse for them to skip their punishment.

“Don’t you have homework that you need to catch up on?”

“My overdue assignments can be traced back all the way to last semester,” Shaotian tells him like it’s something he’s exceptionally proud of.

“All the more reason for you to stay, then,” Wenzhou nods matter-of-factly.

“What I mean is two hours of detention won’t make a damn difference,” Shaotian argues insistently, always needing to have the last word in an argument, “besides, I already know all the math stuff they’re teaching us — do you know how fucking boring it is to do things over and over again when you already know it by heart? And you’re helping me with history and literature later, right? We can do that over bubble-tea and waffles! Doesn’t that sound more exciting?”

“No, it sounds like more trouble than what it’s worth,” Wenzhou is saying, but he can already feel his determination crumbling the moment Shaotian lays his hands on him. He has never stood a chance, to be honest.

“You won’t do it even for me?” Shaotian, being the opportunist that he is, seems to see the cracks in the other boy’s resolve and deals the final blow, in combination with the dangerously adorable puppy eyes that seems endlessly deep, the genuine enthusiasm trickling out full and fresh and innocent like spring water from the ground, and highly infectious.

“Huang Shaotian, I swear you’re the devil incarnate,” Wenzhou buries his face into his hands, voice muffled and defeated.

“But you ain’t so pure yourself,” Shaotian retorts with a victorious grin, knowing he has won this round.

“The bubble waffles better be worth it,” Wenzhou begins to put his stationary and books into his backpack while muttering, “I don’t want to get extra detention for some sub-par dessert.”

+ i.

The rusted hinges of the door to the school roof creaks as it swings open, the shrill note clawing through the calm summer afternoon like a knife gouging a wound and tearing apart canvas of a watercolour masterpiece.

“There you are! I’ve been looking all over the campus for you. What the hell are you doing up here?” Shaotian’s voice breaks into Wenzhou’s silence like glass; it shatters into a smattering of stars as shards plummet and cascade into random constellations all around him — in the sunlight that scatters warmly across his skin, in the breeze that teases through his hair, in the sultry air that he breathes in.

Wenzhou doesn’t turn around at the familiar voice, merely exhaling as a cloud of smoke slithers out between his lips and rises above his head like a dying spirit before it dissipates completely.

He hears footsteps growing closer until he senses Shaotian standing directly behind him, and then he hears him gasp in disbelief.

“Holy shit. Yu Wenzhou, are you smoking?”

Finally, Wenzhou turns around, taking the cigarette out of his mouth with practiced ease and holds it delicately between his index and middle fingers while giving Shaotian one of his cryptic smiles, “Want one?”

“Uh… sure?” Shaotian’s tone sounds anything but certain. Still, he plops down beside his companion and takes the offered cigarette with a shaky hand. He notices that Wenzhou has wrapped the two cigarettes he has in tissue paper and not in their original paper packaging. He wants to ask why, but he’s still too awestruck by the discovery that their school’s beloved and respected model student has indulged in one of the campus’ most serious taboos: smoking in school grounds.

After a few unsuccessful attempts, Shaotian finally manages to light up the tip of his cigarette. Wenzhou must have noticed his hesitation, but he says nothing and continues to take a drag like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

The amber of the tip glows a weak red as it quickly burns away into flecks of ashen grey; a thin ribbon of smoke dances and spreads and dies.

‘Fuck it,’ Shaotian thinks, sticking the cigarette into his mouth and sucking in the smoke and heat like his life depends on it.

His mouth and esophagus instantly scorch in watery flames, the smoke making his eyes water as tears drip down his cheeks while he coughs for a good while. He swears he can hear Wenzhou laughing softly beside him as he pats his back in comfort, and if he weren’t about to cough his lungs out, he’d give the bastard an earful about murdering him with this tiny fire stick.

“You should have told me this was your first time,” Wenzhou says with a quiet, amused smile.

“When did you start picking up this bad habit? Who has tainted our precious class president?” he finally croaks out after putting out his cigarette and flicking the bud far, far away from him.

“I started before I met you,” Wenzhou only says with a shrug, turning to face the fence once more. The scenery beyond the fence is nothing spectacular, just residential buildings, tidy gridded streets, and the occasional patches of green where local parks are. “I’m not proud of it, even if I only smoke maybe half a package every semester, but it’s one of the few ways I know to unwind from all the stress.”

He blows the smoke out and feels his heart growing lighter, and he wishes his feelings — the warm timber that has started out as small, harmless ambers like the tip of the cigarette that steadily grow into an uncontrollable forest fire — can flow freely out from him, too.

The cigarette in his hand is almost burned out, the small flame nearly reaching his skin and if he doesn’t let go, he’ll inevitably get burned. Maybe he wants to get burned, Wenzhou suddenly realizes.

Maybe that’s what he wants all along.

“You’re not going to report me to the Discipline Committee, are you?” Wenzhou turns towards Shaotian and asks, his lips quirking up into a small smile. It’s neither defiant nor scornful, and Shaotian can’t tell what’s behind that expression or within the dark, stormy grey of his eyes.

“Hell no,” Shaotian stares back at him, wide-eyed and slightly offended that Wenzhou would even suggest such a thing, “What kind of relationship do you think we have now, huh? You think I’d tell on you like some little snitch? No way!”

“Oh? And what kind of relationship do we have?”

Wenzhou leans in, a hand winding Shaotian’s loosened tie between his fingers as he pulls the other boy in even closer until their noses are practically brushing against each other’s. All Shaotian can smell is the sweet scent of the tabacco smoke and whatever kind of soap that Wenzhou uses — something woodsy and herb-like that reminds him fondly of a forest in the summer.

“Yu Wenzhou, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he murmurs, ravenous golden eyes gazing bravely into Wenzhou’s darkened irises.

“Shaotian,” he whispers his name, the first time he does so without calling him by his full name, and it’s sweeter than anything Wenzhou has ever tasted, “may I call you that?”

He nods once, and then Wenzhou is speaking again, his breaths warm against his lips, “Shaotian, may I kiss you?”

“Fuck, I thought you’d never ask,” Shaotian laughs, before the sound is swallowed up by Wenzhou’s lips covering his in a gentle kiss.

He tastes of spice and smoke and smoldering ash, and Shaotian loves every second of it.

(They make sure to dispose of their cigarette buds afterwards. Even with their new-found romance, there’s no reason to start an accidental fire now, is there?)

—

A/N: Ohmygod 5K+ words. This has been fun, y’all.

#quan zhi gao shou #the king's avatar #qzgs #huang shaotian #yu wenzhou #yuhuang #bowie's crappy writing

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jhopesforehead · 5 years

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I realized a while ago that I have a lot of nicknames for my biases / wreckers, and depending on situations I call them different things so I thought I’d list them all for fun. Read if you wanna or not, I just thought this would be funny to maybe later compare with people who bias the same idols.

More under the cut !

BTS:

Hoseok (bias):

Hope / Hobi / Hoseok - To be honest, I can call Hobi three different things in the same sentence without blinking an eye. These three are the most I use. It also depends though on who I am talking too. If I’m talking to someone who knows his name, but isn’t into BTS / kpop, I’ll generally say jhope / hope and just use that so they know. If it someone who knows bts well though and is into kpop, i’ll use all three sporadically.

Jay - I dare you to find a hope stan who doesn’t use this nickname tbh. Generally when he’s being rude and kind of giving off that american vibe? used a lot / is the only name i use while he’s in the states but once he goes back to korea / somewhere else it’s back to hope / hobi.

Sunshine / The Sun - This is pretty self explanatory too. Can only really be used around my kpop friends who know bts well.

Jeong Hoseok - Used when he’s in trouble or is being disrespectful like in those bapsae fancams we were all blessed with. I see you, Hoseok.

Taehyung (wrecker):

Tae - To be honest, this is really the only nickname I have for Tae and it’s the nickname most army use. Sorry about that.

Kim Taehyung - Used when he’s being RUDE which is a LOT of the time to me tbh. He really wrecks me to the point where it’s unbearable sometimes.

EXO:

Minseok (bias):

Minnie - Generally only used if he’s doing something cute, or if I have time to say the whole word before whatever im watching switches to a different member.

Xiu - My most common nickname for him mostly because it’s quick to say and quick to type.

Kim Minseok - Only used when he’s in trouble (by either being really disrespectful or otherwise)

Chanyeol (bias):

Yeol - The easiest / fastest to say / type and so I generally use that when I’m talking about him. Sometimes used in verbal conversation.

Chan - Also very quick and easy to say / type but used less than Yeol.

Puppy - Generally used when he’s being cute or doing aegyo / acting like a big dumb Labrador or something.

Long Legs McGee - I honestly have no idea how this nickname started, but I think it came from just watching so many Chanyeol fancams and noticing how fucking long his legs are (plus I’m really short so I feel like it’s slight jealousy). Whenever I use this it’s generally accompanied by my friend saying, “You’re so mean to him” but like ... it’s true. Have you seen the man?

Park Chanyeol - Once again, only used when he’s in trouble or being disrespectful. Generally when he’s flexing / poking his tongue out / or being unnecessarily / unexpectedly sexy.

Kyungsoo (bias):

Soo - My most used nickname for him because it’s fast / quick to say / type. Used really no matter what he is doing, whether it’s him being cute or I’m just talking about him. He generally also gets this name when he’s being rude / disrespectful.

Do Kyungsoo - not used a lot at all, only when I’m feeling particularly attacked by something he’s doing. Fun fact, the most I’ve ever used his full name was while watching 100 Day Prince.

Baekyun (wrecker):

Baek / Byun - Most used because they’re quick / easy to type / say. Baek is used marginally more though.

Bunny - Used very rarely and only used when he’s being cute.

Byun Baekhyun - This is used when he’s being rude / disrespectful / sassy / joking around. Tbh I use this a lot because his existence pains me.

NCT127:

Mark (bias):

Mark - I generally just use his name when talking about him. I only have one other friend who is into nct so it’s not like he’d get mixed up with anyone.

Baby / Sweetie / Sweetheart - Because Mark is younger than me I often use these as long as (if I’m with someone) they already know who I’m talking about. I use this a lot when im by myself and cooing over him. However, as he’s getting older, they’re really only being used when he’s being baby.

Sun / The Sunshine - Because he makes me happy.

Lee Minhyung - Used when he’s being rude / acting above his age. He tests me.

Johnny (wrecker):

Johhny - Yeah, Johnny doesn’t really have any nicknames either. I think it’s because it’s already an american / english name that’s short enough that I don’t have to change anything. Plus I can’t call him john because that’s how i identify another idol from another group (who I don’t bias or stan actually).

Twin Tower - Used when he’s being a tall fuck.

Youngho - Once again used when he’s being rude, but only when he’s being REALLY rude. If it’s when he’s just teasing doyoung, it’s Johnny.

NCT U:

Lucas (bias):

Yukhei / Lucas - Used mostly when I’m talking about him to friends.

Lu / Xuxi - Also used when I’m talking about him, but oddly less than Yukhei / Lucas despite the fact that I love calling him xuxi a lot more than any of his other names.

Puppy - I use this when he’s being big and dumb just like a puppy, or when he’s being cute / using puppy dog eyes.

Twin Tower - Seeing as he’s pt.2 of the twin towers. Used when he’s being a tall fuck.

Wong Yukhei / Xuxi (!) - I use this when he’s being rude / disrespectful / or he’s doing something that causes so much second hand embarrassment I literally cannot handle it.

Winwin (wrecker):

Win - Generally used because say ‘winwin’ takes way too long and i could just say it once and be understood.

Sweetheart - I really adore Winwin, so I honestly just call him sweetheart whenever it’s just me watching something. Or, I’ll use it when I’m around friends but only if they know who I’m talking about.

Sicheng (!): For when he’s being rude.

Jungwoo (wrecker):

Woo - Mostly because I’m lazy, but also because I think it’s a really fucking cute nickname too have because he often woo(s) me off my feet.

Jungwoo: For when he’s being rude.

NCT DREAM:

Renjun (bias):

Renjun - I really just call him by his name seeing as I never really got into dream as much as I did the others. But I adore him a lot, and I adore dream.

Haechan (fond):

Hae - Easier to say than Haechan sometimes. Quick and simple. He’s not even really technically a wrecker (as I said before I never really got into dream because I was uncomfortable with the age difference but I adore them all a lot) more like another member I am very fond of.

Sunshine - Pretty self explanatory. I think most people call him this anyway seeing as it’s true.

Wayv:

Ten (bias):

Ten - I don’t really call him another else than this. Apart from maybe ‘Hoe’ but that’s just a term of endearment.

Xiaojun (bias):

Xiao - Mainly just because it’s short and easy to say.

Seventeen:

Woozi (bias):

Jii - I refuse to use Woozi at all in verbal / text conversations and only rly use it when searching him because often ‘Jihoon’ doesn’t work as well. It’s cute / short (like him) and simple and easy to type / say.

Lee Jihoon - Generally used when he’s in trouble. However, it’s quite a mouthful ( ;) ) so i’ll generally just SHOUT ‘Jii !’ when he’s being rude / disrespectful too.

Vernon (bias):

Hansol - I also refuse to use Hansol’s real name at literally any point, even when I’m searching stuff but if it doesn’t work then i’ll use vernon (for like fancam and stuff).

Sol - Used rarely but generally used when i’m just trying to shorten his name. I like how it means sun though because he’s like that to me, the sun :)

Puppy - Because he really is, most of the time, just a dumb puppy. Love him though.

Chwe Hansol (!) - Used when he’s being rude, which is very often to me so if you go through my text / message conversations you’ll see his full name a lot.

S.Coups (bias):

Seungcheol - Not really a nick name, but like the other two I refuse to use his stage name at all costs unless searching for him. Long ( ;) ) so I generally only use it when I have time.

Cheol - A lot more common than using his full name, but I switch between the two a lot without really any reason.

Choi Seungcheol - A mouthful but I will honestly somehow get it out SO fast when he’s being dumb / rude. happens a lot whenever i watch one of their concerts and a rap stage comes on.

DK (wrecker):

Seokmin / Dokyeom- Once again, hate his stage name. Prefer to use his full name even though it’s longer.

Seok / Yeom - I’ll shorten his name to seok if it takes too long to say ‘Seokmin’, or yeom if it takes too long to say ‘Dokyeom’.

Minghao (fond): Minghao was my first second bias (jihoon was my first who stayed my first) but I’m forever fond of him and i adore him.

Hao - Generally just a lot easier to say than Minghao ‘cause it’s faster / easier to say / type. I’ll use it no matter the situation, whether he’s being normal / cute / rude it’s always just ‘Hao’.

Got7:

Jaebum (bias):

Jaebum - To be honest, sometimes I just prefer to use his name over nicknames. It’s not that long / hard to say and I can get it out reasonably fast.

JB / Bum - ‘JB’ used when I can’t be bothered saying his whole name. ‘Bum’ when he’s being a little shit.

Lim Jaebum - I use this when he’s in trouble / being rude / being disrespectful. tbh out of all of my biases I saw his full name a lot because he just riles me up in ways i can’t explain. one time i was watching stages of him with a friend and he did something and i went and yelled at him / about him for a good ten minutes.

Mark (wrecker):

Mark - Once again, I really just use Mark’s name when talking about him, no matter what he’s doing. sometimes it does get confusing for other though if i just start talking about him, seeing as I bias another mark.

Other:

Yugyeom

Yugs - because it’s quick and easy to say.

Kim Yugyeom - When he’s being a fucking thot (which is a lot)

MonstaX

Jooheon (bias):

Joo - Used when I just want to talk about him, nothing else. It’s quicker / easier to say / type than his full name.

Honey - I only really started using this recently because he changed his stage name to ‘Heony’. It’s quick and easy to say.

Bumble Bee - When I’m feeling overly amorous and want to use a cute name for him. I don’t know when it started, or why, but I definitely feel like it has something to do with the fact that his name sounds like ‘honey’.

Jooheon - For when he’s being rude / disrespectful. Oddly happens a lot.

Changkyun (wrecker):

Kyun - This is the only nickname I have for him and it’s just because it’s quicker / easier to say / type.

IM Changkyun - For when he’s being rude / disrespectful. this is up there with the names I say a lot because he is often being rude.

VIXX:

Ravi (bias):

Wons(h)ik - I really have a thing against using stage names. so, although it’s longer, this is what I will call him.

Bumper Bar - Started because of his ass. Only really used sometimes.

Kim Wons(h)ik - For when he’s being rude / disrespectful.

Ken (wrecker):

Jae / Whan - I’ll use either quite commonly. I really don’t like the name ‘ken’ because of reasons, so I’ll do most things to ignore it / call him otherwise.

Lee Jaewhen - For when he’s being rude / disrespectful.

Day6:

Wonpil (bias)

Pil - Purely just because it’s short / easy to say. He’s my happy pil(l).

#Kat talks #my bias / wreckers #don't @ me about double / triple biaising some groups okay #it just happened #exo #bts #seventeen #svt #day6 #nct #nct127 #nctdream #nctu

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triteicerecords-blog · 7 years

Text

"Shauny's very sad...": A momentary glance into the life of Shaun Hathaway.

About a year ago, I had found myself stumbling upon what would be my partner label, Cavern Brew Records. Of the many oddities that was the label's discography, few truly stood out to me more than Shaun Hathaway. With bassy, underlying drones, harrowing, dark sampling, and loose, yet oddly intricate orchestration, Shaun is one small dark ambient artist, bound to make big leaps in the near future. The following is an interview between the two of us.

What made you want to become a musician, and make ambient music? Have you considered experimenting in other genres?

Well, when I was a kid I used to draw a lot and write stories/small books, then when I was beginning to become a pre-teen I used to act in plays and write scripts for plays and even came in second place in a playwriting contest in 6th grade, then when I was a teenager (high school age) I used to make short films and sketches with my friend at the time, and then after I was about to turn 17 I was starting to write, near-feverishly, lyrics down into various notebooks and I probably have about 4 or so notebooks filled with bars I wrote. My ex-girlfriend actually gave me my first "official" notebook that I used to write rhymes in because I was so convinced that I was going to rap and she was the only person at the time that actually believed in me, so I wanted to make her proud. Soon after I dropped out of high school and we broke up, I recorded a few songs with my close friend and I kind of sort of really cringe looking back at it because it could be a lot better. Don't bother looking for them, though, because I made sure they were taken off of soundcloud. Anyways, the continuation in the storyline I am trying to create is that I was fascinated by how my friend could produce his beats so fast while still being funky as hell. So, he used to try to show me how to use FL Studio and every time I would try to create something, I ended up accidentally creating something hellish so I eventually decided that there was clearly something to it. I think it was a culmination of all of the noise music I was listening to and my generally manic state I was constantly in at that time period, but I very specifically remember hunching over my laptop and making my very first full-length song "Adjustment" in a non-stop 6 to 9 hour production "marathon" and immediately uploaded it to SoundCloud. After I made that song, I was incredibly proud of myself for what I had created and decided to continue making more and more of it and eventually released my first EP "Shaun's Dark Place EP" and was almost immediately contacted by the founder of what became Cavern Brew Records who asked me to release stuff on his new net-label and I said yes. As for the second part of the question, yes, I have considered and have already experimented in hip-hop primarily. I very much plan on creating more and more hip-hop frequently and my end goal to my musical career would be to create experimental R&B and hip-hop, along the lines of artists like FLANCH, JPEGMAFIA, and basically everything Arca has had a hand in producing.

Who are your influences? Or people who you frequently listen to?

My influences for my dark ambient and noise music would definitely be Kylie Minoise first, he has probably had the most direct and notable influence on my harsh noise releases, and others would be Jason Crumer (mainly just Ottoman Black), The Gerogerigegege, and Sissy Spacek, so decently entry level stuff, however I should give a salute/shout out to PURGIST. The people I frequently listen to would most notably be LIL UGLY MANE who is my ultimate production and generally musical idol, Death Grips, Clipping., JPEGMAFIA, Danny Brown, Arca, SOPHIE, another huge production idol of mine, Ratking (and Wiki's solo career too), Machine Girl (mainly just WLFGRL, not gonna lie), ANTWON, Watkin Tudor Jones and his various projects, I know they only have one album, but I fucking love FLANCH so far, Memphis Hip-Hop as a whole has been a huge musical awakening/love for me, especially albums like The World Of A Psycho by Maniac and Demons Takin' Over Me by Nigga Creep, and the whole DJ Sound and Frayser Clique sound, not to downplay Three Six Mafia at all, Giles Corey, and fucking fight me, but I love Spooky Black/Lil Spook/Corbin. I've also really been getting into Xiu Xiu lately.

What are you listening to right now? What would you personally recommend?

I personally try not to listen to music while doing most things except driving and, well obviously, listening to new music because I feel like I'm not giving it my fullest attention and that it deserves better than that. However, I will admit that I will play the albums BBNG by BADBADNOTGOOD, ABSENCE OF SHITPERSON by LIL UGLY MANE, Swing Rocket by Swing Rocket (good friends of mine), and Fashion Week by Death Grips while I am driving in the car with new people or just people I am musically incompatible with, like my mother, most of my friends, or my 7 year old niece. People I HIGHLY recommend would be literally any of the artists I mentioned for the last question, but severely underrated people or projects I would really like to double down my love for would be FLANCH, ANTWON, and JPEGMAFIA. FLANCH for the reasons being that they managed to essentially bring to life a lot of hazy-ish/ballparked ideas I have had in my head for things I would love to both create and hear in a very clear, but by all means strange vision and it is absolutely phenomenal. FLANCH is easily one of my favorite albums of the year. ANTWON being another huge recommendation because of his always incredibly entertaining lyrics, energy, voice, flow, ability to do his thing on just about any beat he is handed, no matter how strange, and his very clear love for punk and black metal which heavily translates into both his aesthetic and lyricism on darker songs. Him and Wiki also put on a 10/10 concert when I saw them both live. And finally, JPEGMAFIA is everything that both music and politics need at this time. He is the best provocateur, both musically and personality wise, of 2016. He has openly admitted to being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian because he believes people should be pushed in the way he pushes him. His albums BLACK BEN CARSON and his collaborative EP The 2nd Amendment with artist Freaky should both be immediate listens for anybody reading this. He is a genuinely amazing glitch-hop, industrial-hop, and just generalized experimental hip-hop artist. Easily one of my favorite newer artists by far.

You chose your real name as a moniker, and many of your albums give a slight description of your personal life in of itself. Do you feel this transparency is a key factor to what makes your music interesting?

I absolutely believe transparency is very key for my releases under my real name, however I would very much like to believe that people would find the music itself entertaining or interesting regardless of personal backstories connected to the albums.

And what possesses you to put out your own personal life? Contextual reasons or catharsis or?

I think it just has to go hand in hand with the transparency I offer by using my real name. I have multiple songs under probably around 20 different aliases out that have no real need for my name to be attached to them, so I leave them segregated from the message, sound, emotion, or point across I am trying to make to people, unlike with my "main" musical releases. But yes, catharsis is very much a great deal to do with it. Like how I used a text message my ex sent me as I was boarding a bus in Boston after we broke up as one of the cassette covers for the album Suicidal Ideation. I am also using the same text message picture to press onto some shirts that should be going on sale relatively soon/before the year is over. My good friend MC 469 and I both are currently the only owners of said shirts. It just works as a grieving method where if I include my personal life into my artistic ventures I just look at it as a part of my art now. Like that text message picture, I barely even look at it and want to cry anymore, I usually just immediately connect it to the aesthetic that I have been trying to hone since I started releasing my dark ambient music rather than the incredibly upsetting amount of personal turmoil it would usually stir up.

Say I’m a new listener. I want to know a short summary of the context that leads you to create these albums. What would you say?

Shaun's Dark Place / thesunshinedieswithoutme: At the time I had just been released after spending a 10 day stay at a mental hospital in Brattleboro, Vermont after being placed in a psychiatric ward for 6 days because I was put on suicide watch for the second time that year (2015), and I had a lot of emotions, feelings, and anxiety to release somehow and the medicine I was on made me feel slightly numb and I was scared of becoming, I guess, normal, so I discovered during that 6 to 9 hour production marathon of the song "Adjustment" was that what I was doing was incredibly therapeutic and I had just discovered a new way to voice my anxieties. Return to Shaun (split album with artist Return to Sender): I had discovered that as helpful as it was to express very morose emotions, it also gave me a pathway to be able to create "fun" harsh noise and just to enjoy myself while still giving my small fanbase what they asked for. Suicidal Ideation: This album began production a little after the previous two projects and I was experimenting in doing much longer, dronier, and more entrancing soundscapes when everything took a really sharp turn for the worst at that time in my life. To sum it all up, I broke up with my current girlfriend at the time because of the multiple unresolved problems and emotions I never settled with my ex, so I went into a full-blown mental breakdown which lasted for about 4 days until my ex, the one I was missing very much at the time, called the police and told them that I was probably going to kill myself that night, which I guess I never thought I would admit it publicly, but I was. I was planning on pulling over somewhere isolated after talking to my ex one last time and just letting the car exhaust fumes kill me. So, the police apparently showed up at my mom's door, while I wasn't home, basically saying "Where is your son?" "He's a danger to himself" "He might have killed himself" and horrible shit like that so I had to stop at the local police station to tell them to stop harassing my mom until they eventually led me under false pretenses and put me on suicide watch for the third fucking time that year where I was held against my will in a psychiatric ward for about 36 hours. In a manic state, I tried to call my ex who called the cops on me and the last words she said to me were "You belong in a mental hospital" and I still haven't been able to contact her since considering she blocked me from her entire life after that, but do not get me wrong, she was entirely within the right to do what she did, I just kind of wish it was perhaps done a little less harshly, but I cannot pinpoint her as "the bad guy". One last "fun fact" about that album was that the song September 22nd was actually made for my mom for her birthday because at the time I couldn't afford to buy her one, so I thought I would try to "make something happy for once" as she would always try to tell me. Cold (single for Stocking Stuffer): I wanted to create an ambient piece that gave the listener a very unsettled and distant feeling of an icy and strangely familiar, but foreign state of mind and or mood. they found him in the forest: I accidentally stumbled upon footage of my father walking through various job sites (he was a forester/logger) and I thought to myself how heartbreaking this was that all the video and audio recordings I had left of my dead father were some 5 to 30 second snippets of him walking through leaves and occasionally mumbling under his breath. October: It's a very self-explanatory project once fully listened to and is easily my most directly personal, and possibly horrifying, album/project to date. It's kind of a hard listen because of the subject matter itself, but I would like to think that it is a very essential listen for any fans of mine who are interested in learning more about my own "backstory". Halloween Split Series 16.2 (Shaun Hathaway x Subversive Intentions): I like to describe my side of the split as a Halloween sound effects/scary stories CD or cassette found in a Goodwill or a similar thrift store, with something incredibly sinister lurking beneath the surface of it all. I'm very proud of this split because it was born out of the most absolute passion and love for my favorite holiday and the collection of old Halloween story and sound effects cassettes and CDs I "used to" listen to in abundance for almost the entire month of October.

When I had a previous had a discussion with you, you stated you would most likely have difficulty having a call as you are “in the middle of nowhere”. Do you think such adds to that isolated feel of your music?

Absolutely. Isolation and alienation are very far from foreign feelings living in New Hampshire, which, in turn, translates heavily into my music. I always had a "joke" that the only ways to die in New Hampshire are suicide, overdose or car accident. Unfortunately the "joke" becomes much more morbid when you start to live here longer and people you used to know start to die faster and younger every year.

If I wanted to show people an accurate depiction of depression through music, you would probably be the first. You do such in a primal and blunt way, something that’s often difficult for your average joe to comprehend. It’s quite an amazing thing to accomplish. I give you praise for such.

Thank you very much! I appreciate the compliment very much! I always think it's amazing when a fan or new listener sends me an email and says almost exactly that, that my music is an accurate translation of depression into music and I take the compliment very to heart because that was exactly the goal I tried to achieve the entire time. It's also kind of a sad awakening in one regard, however. I find it amazing that somebody else out there can empathize and connect with my music the same way I did while creating it, but at the same time it depresses me a lot to know somebody actually has the same feelings as I did while creating it. Nobody should ever have to feel the ways I feel and have felt in the past and it's sad, but on an upturn of it all, I hope it will at least help some people realize they aren't alone as they think they are, as cliche as that may sound.

Do you have a certain thought process to your music? Some of your own songs hit the thirty-minute mark, and it makes me wonder do you have a certain method as to how you develop your drones?

For most of my discography my thought process just consisted of trying to capture the exact feelings I was having right then and there in the most accurate way possible and which samples could really amplify which emotion and etc. However, for a fair chunk of my other stuff, especially on my new album I'm working on (which is easily becoming my favorite album yet. No I don't have a specific release date for it. Probably 2017, though.), I find a main, usually spoken word/vocal sample, that I absolutely fall in love with and I build an entire soundscape and environment around the sample to amplify it. For the second part of your question, yes, I do have some semblance of a method to my madness. As stated a few questions back, when I started working on Suicidal Ideation, I wanted to focus a lot more on the entrancing factor of drone music and in doing so I would develop main, monolithic in size usually, and try to let it seep in and then start tacking on other large and thick layers of loops and generalized ambient sounds. Another must have for me with a lot of my music if you haven't noticed, is thunderous bass lines which, in my opinion, both enhance and add a very unsettling and overpowering feeling to each track it appears on, or at least that is certainly the goal of mine.

Any specific instruments that are key/essential to you?

If vocals count, then absolutely, yes. If not, then not really. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize that there is barely any actual instruments, sampled or otherwise, that are in my discography. The only real examples I can think of would be the highly manipulated samples of me playing with my keyboard that appear throughout Suicidal Ideation. However, I will reveal this much, the afformentioned possibly upcoming in 2017 album is going to change that. That is all I can really reveal about it.

I notice you like to use religious songs in your sampling. Some instances, it even sounds like they’re crying or something is bothering them as they sing. Are these personal recordings, or samples you happened to stumble upon?

Oh god, I know exactly which song you're talking about too, 'finalities' off of Suicidal Ideation. That was easily one of the most horrifying samples, in my opinion, that I have ever used. The whole song, especially that intro, was to basically replicate a panic attack I was having while making that song. Almost all of my religious samples actually all come from one place, which I refuse to identify because of how much long it took to stumble upon it and in the vain of not giving away one of my most treasured secrets. But no, none of the religious samples are of my creation, "unfortunately".

Are you yourself religious? And what kind of “weight” does this add to your song, at least in your opinion?

My father was semi-catholic, but his whole side of the family seemed to be relatively devout catholics and my mother and her side of the family all seemed to identify as "spiritual" so I mainly seemed to empathize with my father's religious side for a while when I was a kid. Eventually I just began to lose interest and faith in religion and ever since I was 11 I have been stuck with a strange feeling of loss that I have never been able to fully recover from. I feel like the "weight" that it adds to my music and art as a whole would be that it really envokes a feeling within every once-religious person that can't be fully realized or explained, but is merely a phenomenon that really seems to pique my emotions. Essentially, the samples, themes, etc. are all just attempts to reconnect with a part of my life that has been forever lost. It's basically my equivalent of nostalgiacally looking through old scrapbooks and photos of a dead loved one where the memories you shared with them are both very vivid but also slightly hazy, but the overwhelming feelings of sadness and nostalgia are very clear and direct.

What would you say distinguishes you from other ambient/dark ambient artists?

I would probably have to say my emotional vulnerability. I feel like a lot of (specifically dark) ambient and noise artists are completely obsessed with becoming as anonymous and enigmatic as possible for their whole gimmick, which I completely can understand and respect as a fellow artist and musician, but I feel like the farther they stray from their own identities, the further they distance themselves from their emotions and humanity. In my opinion, a majority of music is created and intended to be an artform in which artists can express their emotions in a very abstract or direct way and when people try to make themselves as unrelatable as possible, it becomes more apparent that the mask they wear they feel is more interesting than themselves which I feel is just being unfair to one's self. Another thing that sort of frustrates me about it is the fact that very rarely do those types of ambient and noise producers ever have fun with it. It's the reason why artists like Death Grips and LIL UGLY MANE will always stay entertaining to me, they play heavily with the elusive act that their fanbases has essentially labeled them as and they seem to enjoy themselves very much doing so. Another thing that would probably be a distinguishable feature of my certain style of ambient/dark ambient is the lack of instrumentation, pedals, etc. and is almost entirely plunderphonics based. I know a lot of ambient artists seem to rely heavily on (albeit distorted and manipulated) synths keyboards, etc. but almost all of my music is 100% sample based. I mean some of it is definitely recorded by me, but more often than not without specific intentions for specific songs and more just recorded for the sake of possible digital mutilations. All of my stuff is just made entirely on my laptop. However, things are going to be slightly changing with that possibly 2017 album I'm working on, but don't worry, it will still be 100% Shaun.

What is the order you recommend your new listeners check out your discography?

Honestly, I don't mean to sound like "that guy", but honestly, I think that chronologically is probably the best bet, except maybe postponing the monolithic Suicidal Ideation until you've listened to everything else, but for certain, you should really start out at Shaun's Dark Place EP or Shaun's Dark Place / thesunshinedieswithoutme.

What albums do you especially recommend, or not recommend, people listen to from you?

Definitely Shaun's Dark Place / thesunshinedieswithoutme, Suicidal Ideation, and October. If listened to in that order, you will probably get a very firm understanding on what it is that I create and who I am. Especially if listened to in that order. The rest of my discography are mainly just considered side projects and experimentations to me. That doesn't mean they should be swept under the rug at all, but they definitely were made more for me to try something new or were for a split or single. However, a huge bonus one for me would be to listen to my split album with Subversive Intentions Halloween Split Series 16.2 (Shaun Hathaway x Subversive Intentions) on Halloween day or Eve or both because that was definitely a passion project that was made entirely out of love, respect, admiration, and general adoration of Halloween sound effects/stories CDs and cassettes I grew up listening to over and over again as a child well before, well after and certainly during Halloween. I was just absolutely obsessed with them and still am.

Have you considered live performances?

Absolutely. Karma Bus and I have been in on and off again serious talks with the idea of a mini CBR/Cavern Brew Records concert with as many local artists signed and or associated with the label to come down and perform at whatever local venue they allow us to book. Another possibility we have talked about is just a dual performance with just ourselves that would possibly feature performance arts and there's even been talks about "distorted reality happenings", as I would like to refer to the ideas as, occuring throughout performances. Nothing set in stone yet, though. It's also very hard to plan concerts for my sort of music because it's not exactly something you can really dance to or even really enjoy in a traditional sense.

What do you think is in store for you in the future?

Well, I am making a lot more hip-hop beats as of lately and have been trying to polish off my skills as a hip-hop producer in order for me to be able to sell my beats or even just give out a few beats for exposure's sake to my favorite active rappers or just ones that I highly enjoy. I feel like I have to be more realistic about being able to make a living off of my music and my art in general and I feel like for me, hip-hop is going to be my way in to a livable career off of my music. I am confident that I have the ability to continue to polish off and work harder on my beats to hopefully make my way into a dream of mine and hopefully meet my idols while doing it. This doesn't mean by any stretch of the imagination that I even plan on retiring from my dark ambient or heavily experimental music as a whole, but if I succeed, it would basically just give me more means to create it.

What is an odd quirky fact about you?

The very first album I ever bought for myself was Jackpot by Chingy when I was about 6 or 7 years old. I would probably cry out of joy if I found my copy of it.

#artist interview #shaun hathaway #dark ambient #noise #small interview #music interview #trite ice records #cavern brew records

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