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thebroccolination · 1 year

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[Content Warning: sexual assault of minors]

There’s a documentary airing tomorrow on BBC2 about the late Johnny Kitagawa and the very open secret of the many sexual assault allegations against him.

For the uninitiated, Johnny was the founder and CEO of what I believe has been the most powerful music agency in Japan’s history. After founding the agency in 1962, Johnny and his sister Mary are known to have pulled a lot of questionable and downright abusive tactics to gain the amount of power J&A has enjoyed over the Japanese media industry.

Since their influence has been waning over the past decade or so, it’s difficult to explain concisely how strong they were, especially in the nineties and early aughts.

Like, companies were forbidden from using the idols’ images without express permission, so magazines would need to publish previews for upcoming issues featuring blacked-out silhouettes of the idols.

The point was to make J&A idols seem more exclusive and distant to augment their appeal, so only when the magazine was officially released were their images uncensored.

And of course, forever looming in the background were the ever-present allegations of sexual abuse by Johnny himself.

This isn’t in question, either. When detailed testaments from teenage boys were gathered and published in a massive expose by a well-known tabloid back in 1999, Johnny sued for defamation of character. Some of the charges—that J&A supplied minors with alcohol and drugs—were dropped. But the court found legitimacy in the sexual abuse charges. (The transcript is available in Japanese online somewhere, but I can’t remember where off the top of my head. I don’t remember if it was ever translated into English, but I’ll come back with a link if I find it.)

[Variety] Johnny Kitagawa: Power, Abuse, and the Japanese Omerta by Mark Schilling

Regardless, an official charge was never made, the public and fandom overlooked this open secret, and Johnny himself continued to live a wealthy and relatively secretive life behind the wall of his talents’ fame until his death in 2019 at the age of 87.

If you’re getting cult vibes from this, you’re drawing some sound conclusions

As an American fan who was once deep in the J&A fandoms of Tackey & Tsubasa, NEWS, Kanjani8, V6, KinKi Kids, etc.…this was a wild place to be in many ways.

From the outside, it’s probably simple enough to look at the facts and understand how clear-cut this is. Fans weren’t ignorant, either, and there was a persistent moral issue in supporting beloved idols while knowing that it led to a known abuser at the top.

And of course, not everyone believed or believes the allegations. Even if tomorrow’s documentary proves without doubt that Johnny Kitagawa sexually assaulted the children and teenagers under his power, there will always be defenders among the fanbase. At the lowest tier of morality, there will always be people whose personal comfort comes first, and rape is a big ole sad face threatening to ruin the flawless facade of Silly Handsome Rainbow Concert Land.

That said, I think what complicated things for a wide swath of the fanbase who did believe the allegations was how affectionately the idols themselves used to and still talk about Johnny. The man’s image for most fans was of an eccentric old man who had an acerbic sense of humor and spoke in random English snippets. “Did you see him?” an idol once asked the audience during a concert. “He was visiting backstage and said, ‘It’s hot out there today. They must be hot, those poor fans outside.’ So he took a box of bottled water and went to hand out waters to people.” Some fans exclaimed in recognition, and the idol laughed and said, “Someone remembers!” Because Johnny himself rarely appeared for interviews and released photos of himself only once every thousand years, the ongoing joke was that hardly anyone among the general public would have recognized this random old man as the mighty mogul of the music world. And because the idols themselves told such quirky stories, many fans chose to take the word of the idols they admired rather than confront the reality in newspapers.

While I lived in Japan, I rarely heard the allegations discussed, and whenever I brought it up among Japanese fans, the atmosphere got awkward and quiet until someone changed the subject. Worse was when I discussed it with members of the general public, many of whom seemed overwhelmingly aware but dismissive. “He’s a weird guy,” an older man once told me wryly. “Everyone knows he’s gay. That’s what they do.”

The subject of Johnny Kitagawa’s abuse is such a wide-reaching and nuanced subject, there’s no way the BBC documentary will be able to introduce Japan’s media culture, the entire J&A system, and the depth of Johnny’s abuse in an hour. But I’m relieved that it’s happening at all because for so, so long, the Japanese media has been unwilling to lose the money-making factory that is J&A by shining a spotlight on Johnny’s crimes, and so the victims of his abuse have been either ignored or reviled.

The thing to remember, I think, is the thing I keep coming back to. The vast majority of these idols joined J&A very young, and many of the older members in their twenties, thirties, and up have no other job experience to this day. Most have no university degree, and some never graduated or even attended high school. This is all some of them have, all they’ve ever had, and the sheer fear of needing to go into the job market at sixteen with nothing on your resume but junior high and “danced behind famous people for three years” in a country as stringent as Japan is unimaginable to me.

(TV Guide’s June 2000 cover featuring the Golden Era of Johnny’s Juniors, most of whom worked so extensively that they were unable to graduate high school or university. In more recent years, the agency has put stronger emphasis on Juniors pursuing their education.)

I don’t follow J&A idols anymore, but I imagine it’s less common today for someone to casually explain that he joined the agency at twelve to help support his struggling single mother and siblings. One of the saddest things I’ve ever heard Takizawa Hideaki say was how happy he was at fourteen when he realized he was among other boys whose fathers had abandoned their families. He grew up in poverty and joined J&A at thirteen, and if I start talking about his history with the agency I’ll never stop. (Thankfully, he and most of his generation have left the agency since Johnny’s death and are pursuing their own paths—though none that I’m aware of have spoken ill of their former boss.)

In the nineties, Juniors slept in two dormitories. Dormitory A was where the Juniors guaranteed to debut slept, and boys in Dormitory B knew it. The most famous boys living in the Kanto region—Takki, Tsubasa, Arashi, Yamapi, etc.—all lived in Dormitory A. After Shukan Bunshun published their expose, the dormitories were permanently closed down.

There’s no way to know what the silenced survivors have been through psychologically. Johnny himself is dead, so closure has to come from allowing the survivors heal however they need to. Japan is notoriously lacking in mental healthcare or awareness let alone compassion for sexual abuse survivors, so perhaps addressing that is the first step so they can find that closure privately.

In any case, the documentary airs tomorrow on BBC2, and I’ll be watching and hoping this is the first step in exposing the crimes committed and opening compassion for the survivors.

#johnnys #japanese media #jpop

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cakeinpants · 2 years

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Exams are finally over and I can draw anything I want as much as I want yasss! Now I can be more active on Tumblr and catch up to all these asks.

Below is kinda off-topic. I just thought I might as well share some art from uni... yes, I can draw non-oddworld stuff too x)

Decorative painting~

One of the tasks was illustrating a book. I basically got to draw some fan art for my beloved Kir Bulychev x)

This one was pain... I just hate gouache. But it was nice to incorporate some of my characters in these tasks.

"Propaedeutics".. that's a funny word. These were fun.

And.. whatever this thing is..

Aand some more random things and we reached the image limit.

#traditional art #sketches #painting #off topic #illustration

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jovialjuggernaut-draws · 1 year

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I posted 741 times in 2022

493 posts created (67%)

248 posts reblogged (33%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@jovialjuggernaut-draws

@drones-art

@the-alice-of-hearts

@jovialjuggernaut

@forevercloudnine

I tagged 507 of my posts in 2022

Only 32% of my posts had no tags

#riddlebat - 224 posts

#batriddler - 200 posts

#riddler - 189 posts

#batman - 142 posts

#bruce wayne - 110 posts

#edward nygma - 94 posts

#the riddler - 93 posts

#edward nashton - 78 posts

#the batman (2022) - 55 posts

#edward nigma - 50 posts

Longest Tag: 137 characters

#also im in a discord w lfwrites and. she said this was also sent to her so like. not really inclined to respond to a prompt sent en masse

My Top Posts in 2022:

Literally ran to ur blog as soon as I could pick my brain back off the theater floor to post comprehensibly what r ur thoughts I am so AAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAA

oh my god no thoughts im screaming

holy shit

1) eddie was SO horny. the whole time. he kept up a boner in every fucking scene. that man was the horniest hes ever been. i think he came in his pants when he got cuffed. AND THEN STARED BRUCE IN THE EYE AFTER sticky pants and theres his fucking Beloved watching him hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

2) the arkham breakdown.......... he fully believed bruce would fall in love with him then and there........... this really was the same eddie as batman forever he had the same exact pair of glasses and he was just as convinced one conversation would drop that man to one knee ring in hand

hed practiced that speech so many times but never saw past his heart eyes BRUCE you could have done something there!!! YES hes unhinged but now hes unhinged AND has your voice replaying eternally in his head digging at him hhhhhhhhhh god i love bruce making these men worse

3) Batmobile.... Sexy.

4) Bat boots...... Sexy.

5) Selina owns no good wigs and thats so funny. shes wearing the 5 dollarest wigs she could find

6) bruce punching gordo. bruce and gordo besties. this was a buddy cop comedy.

7) bruces shirtless scene being his fucking conspiracy board scene.................... if eddie had seen THAT fucking CHRIST heda been all over him like jam on bread i tell u hwat

tangentially bruce and eddie the same man. stalkers. creeps. standing there silently. watching waiting etc. love when theyre similar makes me fuzzy inside

the fact that bruce just instantly guesses the right thing to find the next clue so many times he and eddie think EXACTLY the same way theyre on SUCH a wavelength!!! the same fucking wavelength!!!!

anyway my brains fucking scattered and i need time to process and im so fucking hhhhhhhhhhgghh

i gotta write i gotta draw i gotta cosplay eddie in his lil arkham outfit w his shitty collar i need to learn to sing ave maria i love that man with my whole heart and soul i cant believe i wasnt kicked out of the theater i got so many compliments on my eddie jacket

296 notes - Posted March 5, 2022

WHO ELSE LOSING THEIR MINDS TONIGHT

328 notes - Posted October 12, 2022

himmmmmmmmmm

397 notes - Posted March 6, 2022

today.... i am thinking about....

bruce taking the rats from eddies apartment home bc theres no one to take care of them w eddie in arkham and he looks up absolute mountains of rat care info and gets them an absolutely MASSIVE enclosure, fucking floor to ceiling, 5-6 levels, different stairs and platforms etc to get to each level, different chew toys on every level, and theyre fat and happy and he sometimes w take one out to sit on his shoulder and nibble at his hair when he needs a Rubber Duck for a case

and maybe also he goes to visit eddie in arkham once in a while and updates him abt how the rats r doing and its just that little connection between them like hes given the rats a better life as a proxy for edward and

anyway. bruces new pet rats.

601 notes - Posted March 15, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

I find your power to rewrite history (create random bondage edits that get so high on google images that multiple people believe the Riddler just regularly wears rope under his clothes) to be awe-inspiring, and everyone should follow you if only to hear the next words of a prophet. What is the new fanon, wise one?

bruce wayne trans

835 notes - Posted August 5, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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patchun · 3 years

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WBaWC Deep Dive: Part 1/2

Lots of philosophical ideas are presented and explored in this game. In this post I aim to point them out. ZUN stated this in his SCooW interview:

"There isn't any sort of obvious theme to the story this time. It's mainly just an introduction of "there's a world like this out there". There's a variety of things going into that world, particularly satire, but if you ask what the work wants to show you, there isn't much in particular. "Here's this world called the Animal Realm, and here's these various elements spread throughout it."

And after doing a ton of digging... yeah, I think he's right. I was kind of hoping there would be something unintentional, but because the perspectives of the human and beast spirits aren't really shown, and only the spirits of their rulers, taking an actual message away from this game is very difficult. That said, I feel with this game more than any other, it's very easy to identify why certain decisions were made. Why is the first boss a stillborn child? Isn't that pretty random? No, let's look into it.

The story this time is quite complicated, so you may not be able to see the whole picture if you just play as one character. To be fair, you may not be able to do so even if you clear them all. (lol)

This will obviously be based on my own interpretation. Long post ahead.

Eika Ebisu. The soul of a stillborn child, and a master of stacking stones. Importantly:

She and the rest of the stillborn child spirits at Sai no Kawara stack stones as work every day. They stack stones as work, in Shinto mythology this is as repentance - because they brought sorrow to their parents by dying too early. Kind of morbidly amusing, I guess, but ZUN makes it a point to say this:

She's also a god of fortune who's able to change simple, pointless work into something that's enjoyable and worth doing, and who can make the best out of any bad situation.

Her ever-cheery demeanor, bright intellect, and penchant for constantly holding exciting new events like stone-stacking contests makes her the Sai no Kawara's resident idol, beloved by all the children's spirits there.

With the spirits of stillborns, yes. I feel like it's more hopeful to portray them as having fun in the afterlife, you know?

Being a god of fortune, Eika is able to make stone stacking FUN. The simple labor of stacking stones for these kids is no longer labor for repentance, but a game, thanks to her (NOTE: labor.) For that reason she is the resident "idol". She is probably the most healthy idol in the game, according to the ideology ZUN seems to be presenting, but we'll get into that later. There's more to this character.

In philosophical discussions of animal rights, when we ask "what is it that makes humans worthy of moral rights", we try to find a criteria. Something that humans have that nothing else does. That criteria then needs to be defended as being a good reason for humans to have moral rights. Used to, sentience was the argument made for human uniqueness. Humans are sentient and conscious, while animals are, in Descartes' scummy terms (sorry, I hate Descartes) "mere automata". We worked on this assumption from that idiot for years, but recently it has been scientifically proven that animals, at LEAST mammals, birds, crustaceans, cephalopods, and reptiles, are sentient, and it is summarized in a document called the Cambridge Declaration of Consciousness.

So this proves a problem for those who believe animals aren't worthy of moral rights. So then, what else do humans have that animals don't? Why are we special in deserving moral rights? Well, that would be our intelligence, right! Even the smartest animals are only about as smart as a five year old (this is not actually true but let's just pretend it is, they're smarter). But then, if intelligence is the criteria for moral rights, then what exactly is the system here? Does that mean that children are less worthy of moral rights than adults because they aren't as intelligent? Does this mean that people who mentally disabled and not viewed as "intelligent" by parts of the populace should be less deserving of moral treatment?

This has been a veryyy simplified summary of the discussion, but here's where it gets even more interesting. You see, here, two controversial ethical topics meet - abortion and animal rights. Because if you want to argue that sentience OR intelligence are the criteria for moral rights, then in either case, early fetuses absolutely do not have moral rights! This is a problem for anti-abortion arguers, which is a funny intersection in my opinion. I bring this up because, of course, while Eika is not an aborted fetus as far as I know, she is still a fetus. She is quite out of place in a game where the rest of the opponents up to Keiki are animal spirits, right? But no, the fetus and children in general actually have a very philosophically interesting place in animal rights discussions, because oftentimes to argue that animals are not deserving of moral rights you also have to take away the moral rights of children. In case this whole thing has left you confused, the side I took was that sentience IS the criteria for moral rights, meaning both animals and children have moral rights, while fetuses don't.

Now, what does Eika tell us about this? Well, nothing. Just that ZUN seems to have thought about it, really. But there are two keywords that apply broadly to WBaWC as a whole when talking about Eika:

Labor

Moral value

So let's continue.

Urumi Ushizaki. Seeing a farm animal after a stillborn child really set off some alarms. Her name translates to "moist beauty". Not sure I needed to know that, but I came across it in my research so now you do too.

She carries a stone carving of a baby. Once she gives the baby to someone to hold, she makes it heavier and submerges them in the river. She was an awe-inspiring youkai who took advantage of humans' kindness. However, since she's forbidden to attack humans in Gensokyo, she currently runs a fishery at the Sanzu River.

If one tries to cross the river without a shinigami's permission, they'll be attacked by creatures like extinct giant fish and plesiosaurs. Nowadays, she spends her time domesticating those giant fish, and makes a living wage by sometimes selling them in Gensokyo.

A baby then a cow with a baby. Urumi is the "Parental Guardian of Ancient Fish". She apparently domesticates them and makes a living wage (interesting terminology?) sometimes selling them to Gensokyo. But, it's implied that as a fisher, she actually cares about these fish. In Reimu (Wolf)'s story:

Reimu: I'm fine, thanks. If it's just fish I'll have to deal with, I'll filet 'em no problem.

Urumi: That so? Fine by me, then. I won't hold back when I turn you into food for my beloved ancient fish!

When Reimu threatens her fish, Urumi gets defensive. She refers to her fish as "beloved" and suggests valuing them over the protagonist, even though she isn't supposed to attack humans. In the SCooW interview, ZUN is asked, more or less, what's up with the fish in the Sanzu river? He responds:

It's full of fish that died, or went extinct. They can't go to Hell or the Netherworld after they die, you see... since fish and insects are in a bit of a separate category, the way I think about it.

So, remember that distinction we made earlier when talking about Ebisu? How the animals that have been proven to be sentient are mammals, birds, reptiles (cephalopods, crustaceans)? That excludes fish and insects, and here, ZUN makes that distinction as well. Fish sentience is still pretty up in the air at the moment. But that said, if there's any unintentional message in WBaWC, I suppose it would be here.

The fact that Urumi is able to domesticate these ancient fish in the first place implies a certain degree of sentience, and moreso, even without that, Urumi pretty clearly ascribes moral value to her fish in Reimu (Wolf)! In almost all routes, she defends her fish and suggests she'll feed the protagonist to them, but Reimu(Wolf) makes it the most clear that she actually cares about them. Which, when you think about it, of course you'll care about the things you domesticate.

Also Urumi's design is so cool and yet no one draws her anymore. Justice for Moist Beauty. There is more to be said about the livestock theme of this character, but we'll get back to that when we talk about Yachie's profile.

Kuwaka Niwatari.

Her true identity is that of Niwatarijin, the god of wild chickens from before they were domesticated. People tend to think of chickens as being sort of weak and cowardly, but she's a polite and just god who values equality and altruism above all. She's quietly considering what she can do to help raise the status of chickens, who've been reduced to a food source for humans.

If you've been following along so far, you probably understand already where this is going. A few words may stand out here. Domestication, equality and altruism above all, status, and "food source for humans."

Kutaka is probably the blatantly nicest character in WBaWC, who tests you because she's worried that if you go further, you'll be hurt (after winning, of course, the protagonists insult her). There's not just a ton to say about Kutaka's character itself, but there is this tidbit in ZUN's interview:

Chickens don't usually have a very positive image attached to them. Calling someone a "chicken" certainly doesn't make them sound strong either, right? And the only other common impression of them is as food, so I tried to give her a dignified feeling.

So, ZUN has deliberately designed Kutaka to be dignified, noted that she is a character who values equality and altruism, and included that one of her motivations is to raise the status of chickens who have been "reduced to a food source for humans." What's fascinating is that by creating Kutaka this way, he has given us a message - ZUN believes, to a degree, that Kutaka's motivation is a just one. Kutaka is intended TO raise the status of chickens. So let me say this. To those of you who made fucking chicken wing jokes after this character was revealed:

STOP. FUCK YOU. STOP.

If you'd like to repent, you can start by stacking stones. Trust me, it's fun!

Now, all of this is cool, but part 2 is where it's going to get interesting - when we finally get to Yachie's profile, the description of the "Animal Realm" of Hell. I'm excited, but I need to make dinner. Part 2 coming soon.

#touhou #th17 #wily beast and weakest creature #eika ebisu #urumi ushizaki #kuwaka niwatari #philosophy #animal ethics #reblogs appreciated greatly #patchunslibrary

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mimiplaysgames · 4 years

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Beloved Memories, in Notes (Vol. IX)

Pairing: Terra/Aqua Rating: T (for sexual references) Word Count: 5,377

Summary: Aqua was drunk when she kissed him and doesn’t remember. Terra is too much of a disaster to talk to her about it. Terra is 20, Aqua is 18.

Read on AO3

A/N: Based off of a prompt @holyteapotofrussell gave me: “It’s three in the morning,” which they gave me... two years ago. *HIDES* Considering how old this outline is, it’s interesting to see how my writing has changed since the first chapter of this installment, and how much it hasn’t. There was so much that I learned from writing this specific story, and going through so many mistakes. But I have to stick by it anyway. I hope you enjoy it anyway!

~*~*~*~*~

A Tale of Landslides, Pt. 3

The following days had been sunny with the inevitable chance of random storms. A typical summer in the mountains meant for ghost stories by a fire, long hours stargazing, and indulging in lazy naps on hammocks by the creek.

As if they had time for any of that. The Mark of Mastery was now three days away (as if they spent these final moments as students productively). Inside the castle walls, every hour was tense and thick and weird.

Talking with Aqua was bust. Their conversations ended with Okay, Sure, and the worst of all: Oh. It was as though Terra had forgotten how to exist around her. Every time he remembered what happened between them, a pit in his stomach filled with acid and sunk, leaving his blood cold.

He had a semblance of a plan. For now, he was equipped with a stack of three books. Soon, he’d find an answer to one question.

He heard:

“I said, you need to wax your Keyblade with bird grease if you want to improve your air magic. You know, from their beaks.”

Terra snapped his gaze up at Ven, who sat across from him in the library. Ven was supposed to be working on an essay about Keyblade ethics in the context of drawing energy from bonds shared between people - the same one he’d been procrastinating (ignoring, in Ven’s words) for days. As expected, the only book he had open was Terra’s childhood copy of The Adventures of Robin Hood, a fox and a bear gracing the cover.

“Why are you talking about severed beaks?”

Ven scoffed. “I wasn’t. You act like I’m not here, so I made it up.”

Terra pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sorry.”

“Sure. And I know how to fly.”

“You’re supposed to be working.” Terra marked the last word he read with his finger. “Why don’t you tell me what you need help with?”

“Why don’t you tell me what’s up?” Ven leaned over to read Terra’s book upside down.

Terra shut it on his finger.

“It’s not like I don’t know what you’re researching.” Ven rolled his eyes and tapped a spine. “Book of Fairies? Spirits and Other Idyllic Superstitions? What do they have to do with your exam?”

“What does Robin Hood have to do with your essay? You have a deadline.”

“I bet I could convince the Master to extend it.”

“I bet you couldn’t.”

“Five munny.”

“Fifteen.”

“Ten munny.”

“Did you forget who the Master is?”

“All I gotta do is tell him how desperately I want to be there for your Mark of Mastery.” He flapped his eyelashes. “I’ll even cry a little. When I get him to say yes, you’ll be so impressed with me.” Ven shot a dubious smirk, confident and willing to hand over his allowance.

Terra clicked his tongue. “It’s your investment.”

“Do the butterflies have anything to do with Aqua?”

“Someone has to mind his own business.”

“Someone needs to stop avoiding her.”

Terra stammered. That was nowhere close to what he wanted. “I’m not avoiding her.”

“I’ll add twenty munny to the bet if you don’t leave.”

“If I don’t leave what?”

“Aqua!” Ven called, his voice a collision onto Terra’s senses, who scrambled to turn the spines of his books away from the entrance so she wouldn’t see.

It took a moment but there she appeared, her breath heavy as though she’d been dancing. “What is it?”

“Terra’s being obnoxious.”

If Terra kicked him under the table, she’d hear it. So, he held onto his pride.

Aqua glanced over, the quiver on her lips something she tried to hide. “What did he do?”

“He won’t let me read.”

She approached the table, a knowing smirk twisting across her face when she saw Robin Hood. By instinct, she met Terra’s eyes for recognition, only to let that smile fall.

Still, she took a seat beside Terra, who adopted the sudden habit of staring hard into the wood.

“We used to pretend we were the characters,” Aqua said. “Terra never let me be Robin Hood.”

Terra winced, but the memory was warm all the same. You couldn’t pull him off, was the argument he used against her, a red feather in his hair and the same wooden sword used for practice in his hand.

“You would have made a good Robin,” he murmured.

Aqua, tensing over the fact that he spoke to her, shrugged. “It wouldn’t have made sense. He was your favorite.”

The conversation choked.

Ven rolled his lips. “Did you play Maid Marian?”

Aqua tossed him a look as though she swallowed bitter tea, and said, “Of course not. I was Little John.”

“The bear?”

“Little John was the smarter one,” Aqua said, dignified as she crossed her arms. But she lost all composure as she remembered something, her proud expression collapsing into a string of chuckles. “There was this one time-”

“Not that story,” Terra moaned, digging his face into his book.

“Terra the Hood was fighting tax collectors up by the lake. I sat on a tree branch. My job was to warn him of enemies.” She sniffed. “But he tripped and fell into a goose nest, and...” She giggled. “The mother chased him all the way back to the castle.”

Ven snorted. “Brave Sir Robin.”

“Great job watching my back,” Terra said.

“I yelled out wolf hole before you blundered into it,” Aqua said, biting her grin. “It’s not my fault Robin Hood didn’t listen.”

“You pointed and laughed at me.”

“It was a good show.” She flicked his bicep.

It almost felt like they never shared a kiss.

A heaviness dropped as soon as Terra thought of the taste of her lips, sinking his gaze back down to the book cover. Brave Sir Robin, always looking like an idiot in front of her.

“I’m going to get a snack,” Ven announced too loudly, stealing the same opportunity Terra would have tried for. He didn’t offer to grab anything for anyone, and he eyed Terra ceremoniously.

“Now it’s a thirty munny deal,” he reminded Terra. As if that's any consolation.

“Is that for a bet?” Aqua asked when they were alone.

Terra straightened. “Yeah. It’s dumb.”

Her lips pulled a small, polite smile. A peace deal, pink and supple and pillowy.

“What are you reading?”

He cleared his throat, shifting in his seat as he stopped an urge to push his books further away. He could have told her something near the truth. That being near her brought a rush of thoughts he couldn’t define. That he wanted to bring her something special, something distracting to make his apology more sincere, less surgical.

That he was about to burst if he didn’t say something about it.

He should ask her (he should’ve asked her that same night) to follow him into the wilderness and track an answer to the butterflies together. Instead, he looked stupid at the worst time, with a blank mind and a dry throat.

It was only a kiss. Aqua was the same person.

“Nothing special. Just killing time,” he said, shrugging.

“Don’t be like that,” she asked softly, crossing her hands. She blinked too much, and her head hung.

Terra knew he was an idiot.

“Be like what?” He gathered the books into his arms. Denying it wouldn’t discredit it - she’s too smart for that - but he flashed a smile anyway, hoping it would console her.

Aqua nodded, not allowing herself to look at him.

“I have a lot on my mind. The exam’s coming up in a couple of days, you know?”

This time she did, grimacing.

Terra cursed himself.

~*~*~*~*~

Stars clustered in the sky that night like galaxies. Meteorites cut across the window. Terra, shirtless, stood in the kitchen, and sipped his tasteless tea.

Aqua was mad now.

Their spar session had ended with a spat. After hours of failed attempts to break through her ice barriers, she knocked him down to his knees.

Stupid, stupid ice barriers. He proudly performed the dumb mistake of insulting her when it was really his own technique that needed the pounding.

He’d been failing bad lately, and getting worse. Worse when the Mark of Mastery was unforgiving already. How was he going to pass now?

Aqua entered the kitchen, scoffing when she saw the mug in his hand. She waved her arm in annoyance. “You didn’t leave any for me.”

Terra leaned against the marble island where she’d knead dough, and smirked.

“Maybe if you tried getting a hit on me,” she said, stepping close enough to kiss, her nose pointed, uptight, high. “Then you wouldn’t have to act like everything is my fault.”

“Everything is your fault.”

“Not your bad cup of tea.”

“You must have cursed it. Where were you during the fifteen seconds I looked away from the kettle?”

“Tell me one thing.”

He waited for her question, but the chill of vapor floated from the floor. Another damn ice barrier erected between the two of them, thick and blurring her image.

“Tell you what?” He punched the ice with flames in his fists, but it wouldn’t crack.

She didn’t reply. Blue eyes wide. Pink lips puckered to the ice. She melted a layer.

Terra pressed his forehead onto the barrier to make sure he saw correctly.

“Try again,” she scolded.

He railed the ice, a swirl of flames combusting onto the surface. Nothing. He growled.

“Do you really want me to be the one to break through?” she asked, her lips blowing smoke on the ice, inching closer.

No. Yes. He didn’t know what to expect when it happened, but she was coming, her face the only thing he could see and the only thing he wanted.

They finally touched, lips to lips. She said nothing. He only had his hands exploring her bare back, pulling her hips to dig into his.

The way her body folded into his was an unbearable pressure. Nothing satiated the hunger for more. He grabbed her chest. It wasn’t soft.

In place was something leathery, long, strong, wrapped around his hands. The tip of it suckled his thumb. An elephant trunk.

She gasped at the lewdness.

The trunk lurched from his grip and slapped him so hard he woke up.

Warmth churned in his chest. Where was he? In his room, not the kitchen. His arms wiggled as he failed to lean on them, his torso the weight of a ton. He felt good, like a relaxed breeze, but exhausted as though he’d taken a punch to the gut.

Wetness and stickiness pooled in his pants.

“Not again,” he groaned into his pillow.

His body protested as he stood up. Dragging himself to the bathroom, he threw off his clothes and scrubbed the crotch of his pants, cursing every single stitched fiber.

He thought of her, and his stomach jumped with the urgency of a child awaiting punishment. This was why they stopped wrestling, why they didn’t share a bed anymore: do the right thing and avoid the possibility that he’d hump her in his sleep. It wasn’t like he didn’t enjoy these dreams - well, with exceptions - but they made it difficult to face her in the morning.

After a cold shower, he slipped into clean, dry pajamas.

In a couple of hours, the sun would rise. One of the books laid open on his desk. He found them: small, white butterflies that were transparent upon closer inspection, their glow so bright it only gave an impression of a shape.

Terra should go back to sleep but didn’t know if he was capable now. He shook away every flash of an image of her undressed. He wanted her. But he wanted his best friend back. He wanted lots of conflicting things and right now he had neither.

Damn it, it was getting worse.

If they weren’t on odd terms, he’d march to her room and ask her to sneak into the forest with him, no matter the time. Usually, the worst he’d catch from her was a sour mood, but he found them. Small, white butterflies. No better timing. No better way to face her wrath than suffering it half-asleep.

Aqua’s door silently peeked open, like she made the effort to oil it. Her bedroom was prim as usual. Her comforter tucked tightly around her body, slick and even everywhere else. Through the darkness, Terra noticed shaved shards of colored glass on her workbench, orange, blue and green, and narrowly avoided bumping into them.

He gently rolled her shoulder. “Aqua?” he whispered.

She didn’t respond. He sat at the edge of the mattress, and shook her harder. “Aqua.”

When she woke, she threw him a squint before turning the lamp on her nightstand. She mumbled, “What’s wrong?”

“There’s something I want to show you.”

She blinked slowly. “What?”

“In the forest.” He snorted.

Aqua snatched her clock, a frustrated smile spreading on her face. “It’s three in the morning.” Her voice was hoarse.

“It’s noon somewhere else.”

Blinking a few more times, Aqua had the sudden awareness of who was sitting on her bed. Terra knew what to expect. She scrambled for her pillow and beat him on the head with it. “Now you’re talking to me? After days of acting like I was a plague?”

Terra caught the pillow before it could hit him a sixth time, his heart choking itself.

“Couldn’t afford to get infected,” he said with care, cocking a smirk. “Girl cooties, doctor’s orders. I’m sorry.” He watched her use all the weight in her body to wrestle the pillow out of his hands, her head thrown all the way back. “Cute,” he said of her failed efforts.

Aqua glared at him and twisted the pillow for a better grip. She hated the term when it applied to her, but Terra had always thought of her this way. Seeing how hard she was trying, like a kitten bunny-kicking a tired dog, how could he think otherwise?

A twang of guilt stabbed his heart.

He let go and she toppled backwards. She cursed under her mutters. Too tired for this nonsense.

She studied him before she scoffed. “What’s in the forest?”

“Magic.”

“Take yourself, then.”

“It’s something you’ve never seen before.”

She paused, stopping herself from throwing him out of her room.

“If you promise to give my best friend back,” she said softly.

Hearing that stung exactly as he deserved. “Of course. I’m sorry.”

“You said that already.” She smiled anyway, refusing his help in getting out of bed.

Her hands reached for the ceiling as she stretched. This lifted her shirt and exposed her stomach. Her pants were low enough to show how her pelvis dipped inward near the hip, shaping a subtle pouch just below her belly button amid strong muscle underneath.

Heart now hyper, Terra forced himself to look away.

“I’ll get Ven,” he said, his voice trembling. He begged the stars that she didn’t notice.

Ven only agreed to get up if he was carried. He snored on Terra’s shoulder, piggybacked out of the castle through the front entrance, past the waterfalls, and downhill into the furthest clearing where the castle lanterns met the border of dark woods.

Close to the ground danced what looked like stars, bobbing up and down as they fluttered in mismatched patterns.

“Are we here?” Aqua asked, hushed as if to avoid disturbing the lights.

Ven let out a noise of awe, very much awake. Terra straightened to shake him off his shoulders. Not that Ven minded - he was the first to approach the lights, an apprehensive hand reaching out as one zigzagged around his fingers.

“Wish fairies,” Terra said, which encouraged Aqua to step forward. “Some worlds call them prayer sprites, or ghouls.”

Ven laughed, herding a group as he chased them by the creek.

Terra planned to feel proud of this moment, but Aqua shot him a cynical look. “Is this what you were researching?”

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Took me a while to find the right books. They travel in between worlds, appearing once every fifty years for a couple of days before moving on.”

“Does that mean they’re good luck?” Ven asked.

“They’re like shooting stars, they grant your wishes. They have a reputation for being a sign of significant change...” Terra was rambling and he lost sight of why he was there. None of the information moved Aqua, who crossed her arms. “It can’t be a coincidence they appeared just before our exam,” he finished with mediocre finesse.

She stepped closer to him. “Did you think bringing me out here would make everything between us okay?”

If Ven heard what she said, he did an excellent job not showing it. He flopped onto the ground, his legs spread wide. Some of the wish fairies gathered closely to him, rolling in his palms.

Terra brushed one hand through the hair on his neck. “I hoped so,” he murmured.

She sighed, the smallest smile coming up as she watched Ven play.

“Are you ready to talk?”

It was Terra’s turn to sigh. He was desperate, but now that the moment was here, he found he wasn’t ready to jump this chasm. The kiss seemed like a swamp, set up to drown them both. The feelings he had for her were disorganized at best, one voice begging to touch her and the other wanting to escape somewhere where she couldn’t find him for a decade. They were mean and juvenile. Hopeful and hopeless. If he was a worthy person, that kiss wouldn’t be destroying him now.

“I don’t compare to you,” he said, his voice low and shaky, regretful of every syllable that passed through his teeth.

“That’s what’s bothering you?” She leaned forward, forcing Terra to look at her.

She didn’t allow him to reply, her body trembling with earnestness and confusion all the same. “You nearly pulverized me the other day. You… You’re wonderful- A wonderful Keybearer.” She shook her head, suddenly gawking at the horizon. “I’m not above you or better or… How could you think that? We’re equals. We’ll always be,” she said with fragile confidence, as though she was responding to doubt.

When she finished, she deflated. It gave Terra the impression that there was something else on her mind as well.

Strangely, her words didn’t do much to help him feel better. She was always one to lift him up, and he did the same for her for so many years. Now they just seemed rehearsed, the reality of an exam that would test how far they’ve come looming over their shoulders.

He wanted to believe they were equals.

“You’re not afraid of the exam?” he asked.

She inhaled, eyes hard on the grass. Ven stopped playing, idle on his hands as the wish fairies danced on his legs.

“I’m afraid of change,” she said, bracing her fingers on her lips as though the words slipped.

“What does that mean?”

Aqua hugged herself, her voice distant. “We’ve known nothing except training. I knew this day was coming, but it seemed like a dream. Now it’s here.”

“It is a dream. We’ve shared it.”

“Yeah.” She breathed. “But what about the after? We’ll have different responsibilities. Separate missions. I know that’s the point, but what if we don’t see each other anymore?”

“That won’t happen.” Terra swallowed. The Master did all of his duties alone, no friends to speak of.

She pursed her lips. Terra wanted to kick himself. She needed her best friend. Now. Tomorrow. Yesterday. What in the world was he doing instead?

“I’m an idiot,” he said.

“Should I even reply?”

“I shouldn’t have... There was just... One other thing that was on my mind.” She listened. He wished she would prod him. “The night of the feast, you…” He scoffed. “You got drunk.”

Her eyes widened.

“It’s kind of crazier than that.” He gave her a lopsided smile. “You kissed me.”

Aqua caught her mouth open.

But the gasp Terra heard wasn’t hers - it was Ven’s, who dropped his jaw and took in air as though he had witnessed his lifetime’s greatest scandal.

“Do you mind?” Terra spat.

Ven snapped his mouth shut and turned away.

“I’m so sorry, Terra,” Aqua said, horrified. Her cheeks turned rosy. “I’m sorry. Were you upset with me?”

Terra expected her to be penitent, but this - did she regret it? His heart sunk. “It’s fine,” he said, stopping himself from embracing her. “It wasn’t a big deal. The dumbest thing ever.”

Aqua held her breath. She looked hurt. Did he say something wrong? Was he supposed to make it out to be important?

“I mean,” he forced a laugh. “It felt nice.”

She brought her hand to her chest and gaped. Oh no.

“But it was nothing. I’m being very stupid.”

She pouted.

What was he supposed to say?

“You didn’t answer my question,” Aqua breathed. “Did it upset you?”

“No.” He didn’t sound convincing. The kiss was awesome. Stop the dreams, I beg you. “I mean it. I didn’t know if it meant anything, or how to act afterward, and I think I made it worse than it was. There’s nothing else.”

Nothing else. How it hurt to say.

She didn’t nod. “Promise me we’re okay?”

“Better than that. I promised to bring me back.”

Aqua seemed relieved. Much more relaxed in her shoulders. But something was still off. Her eyes went somewhere else, somewhere that made her sad. Terra only saw a flash of it before she picked herself up and smiled. It wasn’t natural.

Ven was still listening - he didn’t say anything, but he shook his head in disapproval.

Things were supposed to be fixed by now. Wish fairies fluttered near. Terra felt an unfamiliar warmth radiating from it, a magic he didn’t recognize. Holding out a hand, he let it sit. An outline of wings glowed and dimmed, swirling patterns knitting across.

“What did you wish for?” Aqua asked. One sat in both of her hands.

Her. He let himself take one very selfish moment in the vicinity of a power far greater than him despite that he could crush it with his fingers. He prayed it knew that he didn’t have bad intentions. He wished for her.

“That I pass the Mark of Mastery,” he said.

For someone who believed you had to work to make your dreams come true, that was the one time he actually sounded believable.

“What about you?”

She passed him a glance before shifting her gaze back to her visitor. “Oh. The same.”

He lobbed his hand and the wish fairy panicked, hovering close to his face. It was like it wanted him to take a message. He nearly leaned forward to hear, as silly as it made him feel, when he felt Aqua’s head on his bicep, testing it for the best spot.

“You owe me the very least of being my pillow,” she giggled.

He could put his arm around her. He weighed the possibility, but opted to watch the way her eyelids resisted and lost the fight to stay open.

“Can you guys get a room?” Ven called.

Aqua snapped, a deep crimson staining her cheeks. “Ven!”

It was enough to make Ven nervous, shakily getting on his feet. The wish fairies scattered. “Wh- What are you going to do?”

She summoned Rainfell, a chill building in the air. “I need target practice.”

“You can’t do that to me.”

“I suggest you survive what I plan to do.”

Whatever Ven felt transformed into an impish grin. “Catch me first.”

He ran laps as Aqua swung her Keyblade and made ice chunks implode. She missed. “Stand still.”

“I’ll tell the Master!”

Aqua was slow to respond.

Ven launched himself up behind her. “Death to taxes!”

He knocked her to the ground, holding a firm grip around her shoulders. She was no Terra, not that much taller than Ven and surely not bigger. She attempted once to stand up, but she collapsed, crushed by his weight on her back. Her laughter lacked strength, a small bird’s song.

The sound of it hit Terra hard. He couldn’t shake off the gnawing fear that he let something precious slip through his fingers. That she was lost forever or that she was never his to begin with.

“Ven, I’m tired,” she begged.

“How about you promise me something?”

She responded with a slap that landed nowhere, a giggling Ven shuffling away. Aqua nestled in the grass, sighing, as though all she needed were sheets and a pillow.

The least he could do was carry her. Taking her head on one arm and roping her knees with the other, Terra picked her up. She didn’t protest - she had to be dead tired not to - and instead clung onto his shoulders. She nuzzled her face into his neck, hiding her face away from the glare of the lanterns. Terra couldn’t help but notice her smell, a flowery sweat with a dash of perfumed soap. Vanilla? She was soft; his dream didn’t do her justice. He preferred it this way, though, over her being so far away, even at arm’s reach.

Ven did him the favor of not saying anything stupid as they walked back to the castle. He chatted instead about his wish to see the worlds - something Terra was sure would happen one day, as soon as the Master deemed him old enough to. Aqua may have listened. Her breath slowed but she kept a strong grip on Terra.

“We still share the same dream, right?” she murmured when they got to her room. Ven waited outside - there was an implication there, but Terra chose to ignore it.

“Yeah.” Terra inhaled, her warmth the only thing in his mind.

Her face left his neck, something he sorely missed. Standing up, Aqua held his elbow, glancing at his lips before looking back up at him. She nervously pushed a lock of hair behind her ear.

“You said it felt nice.”

He froze, his tongue thick. “It- It was,” he stammered.

Her eyes darted around the room, locking over her colorful glass work in progress. “There’s something we should talk about.”

“Okay. Whatever you want.”

“After the exam, I mean.” She fumbled with her fingers. It was strange to see her so unsure. Unbreakable Aqua. “We have too much going on right now.”

“Of course.”

She wrapped her arms around his waist, hugging him tightly.

“You okay?” he asked, brushing her hair with his fingers.

“If you are, I am.”

That again. “I told you, I’m fine.”

She squeezed him before letting go. Her hand smoothed the wrinkles of his shirt, splaying on his pecs. Her smile was tense. Brave.

“Thanks,” she said. “They were lovely.”

Terra gently closed the door behind him as she retired to bed. Ven frowned. Like steam about to wheeze out of metal, he flipped a look at Terra on the verge of sputtering a lecture.

“You guys are ridic-”

Terra clamped a sharp hand on Ven’s mouth, picking his body up at his hip like carrying a log. Protests, insults, and sneers were muffled. Flailing kicks bumped the backs of Terra’s knees. They didn’t have much of a punch, though.

When Terra entered Ven’s room, he had to stop. A warm, slimy brush grazed his palm.

“Ven! Gross.”

“You deserve it.”

Terra wiped his palm on his pants - he wasn’t going to let Ven go that easy.

It wasn’t the same as throwing boulders for exercise, what with Ven being heavier than some and less cooperative, but Terra kept a firm hold on Ven’s thrashing body, lifting him high in the air. Ven still tried to wiggle free. Bless his heart.

Terra threw Ven onto the bed, who bounced before he settled.

“You need to be told a thousand times over: You’re an idiot,” Ven said, fixing his hair.

“Go to sleep.”

“Did you expect things were going to go differently?”

Terra stopped at the door. “What do you mean?”

Ven grasped his forehead in disbelief. “You didn’t notice? You rejected her.”

“I did not.” Hope tasted sour in his mouth.

“Seriously, you flat out made her think that nothing was going to happen between the two of you at all.”

“What do you want me to say?” Terra whipped over his shoulder.

Ven wasn’t offended. If anything, he was amused, pleased with himself that he had Terra’s attention. His bedsheets were messy, and he kicked his legs under. “Anything. Something that sounds like the truth.”

Terra sighed with exasperation. Something like the truth meant the thought of her traveling to other worlds without him pricked the tiniest bit. It was the thought of her meeting new people. The thought of her sleeping in someone else’s bed made him nauseous. And he had to let her just to see her smile.

“We’re both very stressed.” Terra shrugged, pushing statues and books from other worlds off the top of Ven’s dresser, leaning his elbow on the surface. “It’s complicated.”

Ven rolled his eyes. “Come on. Give me something real.”

Something like the truth. Terra smirked. “She’s hot.”

Shock first. Disgust melted Ven’s outgoing expression into the horror of witnessing a scene he didn’t want to see.

“Ugh, why would you tell me that?” He covered his ears before realizing it was too late already. “I thought you cared about me, man, I’m never gonna heal from this.”

Watching Ven squirm and mutter indecencies was a welcome amusement, but it didn’t last long. Terra took a seat at the foot of the bed, tucking one leg in and crossing his arms. Something like the truth gave him very little about this to find funny.

For years he kept it to himself, and he was plenty fine with that. Never did he expect a day would come where he would hate that fact.

“I love her.”

The agony washed away from Ven’s face in a blur, his head raising from his hands. He nodded. Terra let himself wallow, appreciative that Ven understood how serious he meant it. That he did not have to explain himself. That there was some quiet.

“Thanks for not treating me like a little kid,” Ven said softly.

Tears tickled the back of Terra’s eyes and he quickly braced them with his arm before they fell. “No problem.”

“Will you tell her?”

Silence. “I don’t know.”

“You have to.”

“It’s the worst timing.” He couldn’t take her best friend away from her. “The Mark of Mastery is so close. We should be studying.”

“Then tell her after. At least it’d be off your chest.” That same, twisted grin that made Ven look like a sock puppet crept back up. “I think you’d like the answer she’d give you.”

Blush cooked under Terra’s cheeks. He jabbed a finger at Ven’s face. “You’re not going to say a thing.”

“I won’t… if you promise you will.”

He didn’t want to take the bait. But it was tempting. A surge of foolish bravery birthed from nowhere heated his body. “Okay,” he whispered.

Ven was pleased with himself. That happened too much. “You owe me thirty munny, by the way.”

“Shut up and sleep.” Terra stood up.

“You’re still paying me tomorrow.”

“Make me.”

“Where’s your honor?”

“Up my ass.”

Ven waved his hand, as though he was commemorating art. “The tragic life of a best friend gone bad. Starring Terra Butt-Picker.”

“And Ven, the Destitute Boob.”

The hallway outside was still, but alight from the moon that glowed through Terra’s bedroom door. Telling Ven released a pressure akin to a valve loosening. At least someone validated Terra. At least he wasn’t crazy. Half of him considered knocking on Aqua’s door one more time. Get it out of the way. See if what Ven said was true. The other half knew better.

The clock was ticking and he had already wasted a day. Aqua’s door would still be there after the exam.

Terra planned to pay most of the munny. Terra planned to take her to a world with lots of fireworks, where the colors could make her smile and he could finally say it. It’d be perfect.

It was a comforting thought.

A/N: This chapter makes references to Disney’s Robin Hood (1973).

#terraqua #terra #aqua #terqua #kingdom hearts fanfiction #ventus #kh fanfic #i really dreaded publishing this one #because of the mistake of like #not really resolving it within this collection i guess?#but there's more i promise!#my fic

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imperfectapollo · 4 years

Note

“I could tell it was your favorite book because of all the notes you wrote in the margins.” For the prompt and whoever you would like

Thanks for the prompt!

Characters: Romeo and Jack.

Book: Unicorns? Get Real! by Kathryn Lasky.

Word Count: 1,601

Okay. So I know the book seems like an odd choice but hear me out. The original story was going to be The Secret Garden but then I went into one of my drawers to grab a stress ball (I call the drawer my ‘Stress/anxiety drawer’) and found the book, hitting me with a bunch of flashbacks considering it had been one of my favorite books when I was younger.

He knew going through his brother's things were wrong but to a curious eight-year-old, the danger of being scolded was nothing to the nagging feeling of wanting to know...Besides, he was sure he had left Cinnabun in Jack's room and he really wanted the stuffed toy in his arms right now.

Romeo bit his lip, carefully opening the door. He knew that Jack was out for a few hours, so he had a while to look for his rabbit before getting out of there. However, part of him also wanted to explore the room of the boy he looked up to oh so much.

The smell of paint greeted the boy as he quietly slipped into the room, leaving the door behind him open just a crack. He took a small shaky step into the room.

Still, the colors mixed on white backgrounds drew him forward. Jack rarely liked to show off his art which no one seemed to understand. The only idea Romeo could come up with would be insecurity. He never understood because the few pieces he had seen looked like they should be hung in a museum! Though, maybe he was just biased because Jack was his older brother.

His eyes ran over the piece in front of him, multiple brush strokes mixing just the right shades of color to make a beautiful landscape of the Brooklyn Bridge. If he focused hard enough, Romeo could feel the wind blowing through his hair as the noises of the water flowing under him filled his ears along with the sounds of the traffic, conversations fading in and out as people walked past in a steady flow.

Shaking his head, the young boy found himself back in Jack's room, the feeling of cold wood under a small paint-splattered tarp bleeding through his socks. Finally, he drew himself away from the artwork, stepping back onto the carpet, toes twitching slightly at the sudden change in texture.

The young boy scanned the room, noticing the small patchwork bunny resting on Jack's bed, right where he had left it that morning. A bright grinned stretched across his face as he found himself running over, launching himself onto the bed so he could grab the old toy, hugging her tight to his chest. It was one of the only things he had left from his biological mother and was something he wanted to keep with him at all times, even though he knew couldn't.

Breathing in the familiar scent that reminded Romeo of safety, a calm aura surrounding him as he closed his eyes, allowing himself to relax for a few moments despite knowing the risk he was taking by being in a room he wasn't meant to be in.

When he woke up, he found himself alone in the room with no evidence that anyone else had entered the room. Well, other than Tubs, the family's aging fat cat who was now resting by Jack's bookshelf.

Getting up, the child walked over to her, gently scratching her head with a sleepy grin, pausing to stretch as he finished waking up. He paused, noticing one book that had been tucked into the corner of one of the shelves as if it was being hidden from the world.

Biting his lip, Romeo crept to the bedroom door, peaking out only to find that the house was still, faint music coming from Race's room to let everyone know that he didn't want to be interrupted.

Giving in to temptation, he turned around, silently darting towards the bookshelf, pulling out the old book. Judging by the worn-out cover and multiple tabs popping out from its pages, it was a well-loved book, making Romeo question why it had been hidden away from everyone's eyes.

Running a hand through his messy hair, he looked over it. He hadn't heard of it before but something called Unicorns? Get Real! didn't seem like something that Jack would enjoy. He would think that it was an old school book but he doubted that. All of Jack's primary school books ended up going to the younger kids, yet here was this random book, hidden away and judging by the way the tabs looked, it had been opened recently. Shaking his head, he looked over the blurb.

Who can think about unicorns at a time like this?

When rumors of wild unicorns come to Camp Princess, there's a frenzy of excitement as the royal maidens prepare for the Unicorn Round-Up. But Princess Gundersnap has more important things to worry about. Her war-inclined mother has taken her beloved pony, Menschmik, into battle, and Gundersnap fears for his life. Besides, Gundersnap is much too practical to believe in unicorns. Or is she? Both the magical tapestry in the tower and her favorite local witch, Berwynna, seem to be trying to tell Gundersnap something. Could the Unicorn Round-Up be more than just a bunch of royal hooey?

The mention of war confused Romeo. Due to his young age, he had never heard of war though he guessed it was a fight...But if it was a fight, why was the princess fearing for her pony's life?

Shaking his head, he moved back to the bed, planning to read for a little before finally escaping the room. However, the second he made himself comfortable with his beloved rabbit in his lap, Tubs resting by his side, the door opened, revealing the body of his older brother causing them both to freeze as they made eye contact.

Romeo knew that Jack would rather die than hurt any of his siblings but Romeo still feared his reaction. Privacy was meant to be respected yet here he was, breaking that simple rule by not only entering the room without permission but by taking something that didn't belong to him.

The book dropped from his hands as Jack walked over to the shaking boy. Looking between his little brother and the fallen book, he sighed. "Ro...Whata you doing in my room?"

Shaky hands rose, Romeo ready to explain in the only way he knew when it came to communicating. "I'm sorry! I just wanted to get Cinnabun and accidentally fell asleep and then Tubs was by your bookshelf and I noticed the book and wanted to investigate! I'll leave now!"

Jack sighed, carefully picking up the book before sitting beside the mute boy. "Take deep breaths for me kid okay? I'm not mad. You just need to ask next time okay?" He kissed the top of the boy's head after he nodded, glad to see his shaking was starting to settle.

He looked down at the book, running a finger over the image of a princess on top of a unicorn. Part of him was embarrassed by the fact he had kept the book for so long but one of his foster sisters had owned it and often read it to him before she passed away and Jack had been moved to a new family but he had hidden the book in his suitcase, wanting to keep a part of her with him.

There was a reason he had hidden it away considering it would be a seen as a stereotypical 'girly' book. It brought back good memories that he didn't want to let go of.

"Why this book?"

"It was hidden and considering all the tabs, I wanted to see what it was..."

Jack carefully picked up Romeo before setting him in his lap. He hadn't read the book in a month or so and considering his brother now knew about it, he may as well take the time to read for it.

The second he opened the book, the two were greeted with multiple small notes, listing pages with events, written in two different styles. Listed in even smaller handwriting was a key for each tab.

Jack cleared his throat. "The princesses of the south turret." He slowly started to read, using different voices for each bio of the princesses so Romeo would be able to tell which princess was which.

Each page's margin had been filled with small notes, tabs labelled with scene names. Memories flooded the teen as he read. He didn't notice Romeo had fallen asleep until he had closed the book.

Carefully tucking him into bed, Jack silently moved towards where he kept his art supplies, an idea having popped into his mind as he read.

Allowing his hand to guide him, he smiled as he watched a drawing come to life. Losing himself in his art, he didn't notice time flying by until soft footsteps approached him.

Jack looked up, smiling softly at the sleepy boy. "Hey." He set aside his sketchbook, carefully putting down his watercolours.

Romeo paused as he noticed a familiar figure on top of a unicorn. A shy smile spread across his face. "Is that me?"

"Sure is kid." He smiled, patting the ground. After the small boy sat down, he wrapped an arm around him. "Ain't done yet but once it is, I'll give it ta you okay?"

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Go for it."

"Is that book one of your favorites?"

"It is. A few years ago, it was my favorite. How'd ya know?" Jack hummed, looking at the book he had brought over with him.

Romeo grinned as he snuggled into his older brother. "I could tell it was your favorite book because of all the notes you wrote in the margins."

#newsies #Jack Kelly #Romeo (newsies)#apollo's shitty writing #prompt #mute!romeo #thought I'd give it a shot lmao #prettyinlimegreenboots

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razberryyum · 5 years

Video

The Untamed/陈情令 Rewatch, Episode 3 (spoilers for everything)

(covers some of MDZS chap 13 and erm...that’s it. They mostly go rogue for this ep*)

WangXian meter: 🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰

(a 🐰 is earned every time there is a WangXian scene or even when they’re just thinking of each other...some scenes deserve more than one 🐰...don’t worry about it, it’s not an exact science 🐰🐰🐰)

Really, bless Team CQL for transforming what was only an anecdote in the novel into one of the most beautiful scenes in the show. The first time Wei Ying and Lan Zhan first crossed swords played out like a moonlite, rooftop ballet and it is completely breath-taking and romantic and perfect. What makes this scene even more meaningful to me now is the added sense of poignancy of knowing that they will never be able to spar like that again due to Wei Wuxian’s diminished abilities in his Mo Xuanyu form. Although, even before his rebirth they wouldn’t have been able to repeat this dance since Wei Ying's extraordinary swordsmanship had already gone away with his golden core. It's yet another reminder of not only how much he’s lost, but also how great a sacrifice he made for Jiang Cheng. Just thinking about that is enough to make my heart ache like crazy all over again over how much Wei Ying loves his bro and how much he went through for him without JC even knowing it for such a long time.

But back to happier thoughts, what I also loved about this scene is just how downright adorable Wei Ying was being. Actually, he really was being a total mischievous cutie during most of his time at Cloud Recesses, which makes sense since this is the Wei Wuxian that was still brimming with boyish charm and innocence as his life still hadn’t been touched by heartbreak and tragedy yet. That reminds me of another reason why I am so impressed with Xiao Zhan as an actor is because he basically had to portray three different roles in The Untamed—as the youthful, wide-eyed Wei Ying, followed by the more bitter and mature Yiling Patriarch, and then finally the carefree yet jaded Mo Xuanyu—and he performed each persona with equal aplomb while injecting noticeable differences in each phase of WWX’s life as exemplified by alterations in his posture, expressions and even the way he says his lines. I'm not familiar with what acting awards are available in China’s entertainment industry, but I hope he receives some sort of award recognition for his work. He definitely deserves some nominations at least.

That is not to say that Wang Yibo was being a slouch either; even though I had my doubts about him initially, I do still recognize that playing a stoic character is not an easy task since he had to find creative ways to avoid falling into dullness. A good deal of microexpressing is involved that can be difficult for an unseasoned and non-professionally trained actor, but WYB definitely lived up to the challenge as the show progressed. But because WWX is the more blatantly dynamic character, one’s attention is naturally drawn to him, even I was more focused on him at first, so I ended up neglecting what was going on with WYB’s Lan Zhan. It was only after revisiting this episode that I was truly able to appreciate the subtlety of performance.

While it’s hard to imagine anyone being able to resist Wei Ying’s charms, I do believe Lan Zhan was indeed mostly irritated by him during their initial interactions. At the same time, however, he also clearly noticed that there was more to WWX than meets the eye since he was definitely intelligent (after all, he correctly deduced, twice, what was going on with the injured cultivator Lan Zhan brought back) and he was also quite skilled since their sword fight ended at a draw. But because Lan Zhan had years of propriety instilled in him by Uncle Lan, his automatic reaction to someone who was as unruly as Wei Ying had to be instant disapproval and annoyance. The irony of that is most likely because Wei Ying was such an annoyance to Lan Zhan that he couldn’t help but constantly notice him as a result, as one would do with an eyesore, so even from the first moment they met, his attention was already captured. It’s not the most positive way to start a relationship to be sure, but obviously it worked out for the best in the long run, especially once Lan Zhan got to know Wei Ying better and that animosity turned into something more affectionate.

Big Brother Appreciation Time

There are many reasons to love big bro Lan Xichen—he is such a sweet, caring, gentle, considerate, and loving soul who is also a skilled and talented cultivator—the least of which is his intent on playing matchmaker between his little brother and WWX right from the start. I loved that he noticed something in Wei Ying immediately and realized he would be a good person for LWJ to have in his life. Bless him for being so observant and intelligent.

Random Bits of Randomness

If Lan Qiren knew that this rude, improper kid would one day be the person to “corrupt” his beloved nephew and steal his pure, innocent heart, he probably would’ve spit up all the blood in his body and dropped dead right then and there. I will always laugh at just how offended he looked when Wei Ying dared to rest Suibian on his desk, as if he had dumped dog shit in front of him instead.

I just wanted to commend Mian Mian’s fellow sect-mate on the left there who, even though she was not complimented on her good looks or even given a second glance by WWX, still generously talked Mian Mian into allowing the Jiangs to stay at the hotel. I thought she deserved some credit for her nice gesture.

Not having read the novel yet when I first watched this episode, I was actually shocked at the reveal that Shijie was engaged to Jin Zixuan because I would never have thought they had that relationship from this scene. I know JZX didn’t really have any intention of honoring that arranged marriage at this point in the story, but the rudeness he allowed his servant to get away with was still unbelievable. I mean, seriously what the hell, she was still his fiancee, he hadn’t broken off the engagement yet, how DARE he allow that nobody back there address Shijie and his potential future in-laws in such a rude way. The fact that he actually kicked them out of the hotel was also shocking because it felt completely unnecessary. I really didn't like JZX because of this moment and that sentiment stayed with me for quite some time. What made the scene sadder is Shijie obviously was crushing on him and for the longest time I couldn’t understand why because I thought she totally could do better AND deserved better. I can’t say that I ever learned to love JZX, but I definitely don’t dislike him anymore.

Though I’ve been pretty critical of the CGI in The Untamed for the first two episodes, I do want to point out that not all of it is horrible: I was actually impressed with how both Cloud Recesses and Nightless City looked, even though I think their design for Nightless City was rather off the mark since it no longer suited its name. Since they were going to go with the dark theme and make the Wen Sect as blatantly villainous as possible, the production team should’ve just changed Nightless City’s name to Forever Night City (“長夜城”). Personally, I would’ve preferred it more if they had just stuck with the design of the Wen sect’s residence and uniforms as they were described in the novel (which was beautifully brought to life in the donghua) since I liked how deceptively righteous the Wens seemed. In CQL, they were so obviously the bad guys that they bordered on being cartoonish, especially Wen Ruohan (portrayed by Xiu Qing). Man, his performance simply was NOT working for me AT ALL. Even his make-up was a mess...looked like it was melting off of him all the time. In contrast, I thought Wen Chao (portrayed by He Peng) was bit much at first too, but then eventually I started to appreciate the actor’s performance, especially during his last scenes where he actually made me feel bad for his character because he was so convincingly pathetic. WRH never won me over and I was really relieved when he finally died. I actually thought they gave the actor too many scenes already leading up to his death. Felt like a lot of unnecessary filler to stretch out the episodes.

Xue Yang is absolutely evil and horrible and psychotic and a total mass murderer and villain, but dammit, as soon as he showed up, I couldn’t help but immediately take a liking to him, and it’s all the actor’s fault. I have never seen Wang Haoxuan in any other show before...then again, I think he’s only been in two other shows prior to The Untamed, both of which I haven’t watched...but much like with Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo, I think the show struck gold by casting him as Xue Yang. In addition to making his character difficult to hate, he has also made him so interesting and magnetic that I couldn’t wait to see him pop up again. I am so glad that Team CQL altered the Yi City arc so that we were introduced to Xue Yang, Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan sooner than in the novel. Not only did it allow us to become acquainted with the characters early on so that by the time Yi City rolled around, everything that happened in that arc would be even more emotionally effective because we were already invested in them, but we also got Xue Yang sooner and more often, and for that I am thankful. I already liked him before I read the novel so by the time I came across his character in the book, all I could imagine was Wang Haoxuan. He completely fit the image of Xue Yang for me. I don’t know if I would feel the same way had I read the novel first before watching the show, but I would probably still like Wang Haoxuan’s portrayal. I know there have been criticisms that he is overacting, but for me, everything he did worked. It worked so much that I wish things had been different with his character, that Xue Yang wasn’t the monster that he is and committed all those atrocities that he did. I mean, he’s literally worse than Charles Manson. And yet, I still like him; I can’t help it, he’s just so much fun to watch. His eyes freaking sparkles. How am I supposed to resist that?? Look, there are times in a person’s life where one must make certain decisions that are undoubtedly not wise ones, but one still must stick with them because that’s the choice that was made. Liking Xue Yang is definitely one of those decisions for me and I’ll just have to live with it.

**I didn’t want to put this right at top since they would be unavoidable spoilers, but Shijie, Wen Qing and Wen Ning never attended the studies at Cloud Recesses. I’m really happy for that change in the drama, especially since we got to know Shijie more. As mentioned above, the early introduction of Xue Yang and the yin metals was also a deviation from the novel.

Questions TBD:

I had questions regarding the whole yin metal drama, but I have a feeling it’s only because I wasn’t paying close enough attention to that part of the story every time I watched these earlier episodes. I tend to zone out when we dropped in on WRH because I just find him so ridiculous and his whole set up in his fortress ridiculous too. Those zombie/ghost puppet dudes are just silly and I think it's kind of hilarious that WRH would just have his precious yin metal floating in the main hall like that for everyone to see. He has a cool throne, I’ll give him that, but otherwise, I really just can’t with him. On this rewatch this time around though, I am going to really force myself to pay closer attention to WRH and yin metal stuff so that I can finally make sense of it all, or at least know for sure that it was never meant to make sense because they actually botched that whole storyline.

Overall Episode Rating: 8 Lil Apples out of 10

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asifindmypath · 5 years

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Pop Culture Paganism: A Mental Exploration

My own personal thought experiment regarding a mental exploration of Pop Culture Paganism and Witchcraft. Don’t like it, you don’t need to read it. Flamers will be ignored. Constructive discussion and rebuttal is encouraged.

It’s worth noting that I’m a fairly recent “convert” to a pagan setting. I consider myself an eclectic polytheistic pagan witch. I worship a number of gods from different pantheons, and have a generally mixed Eclectic spirituality. I’m still learning and experimenting and discovering my craft and my path. I am not an expert by any means, and the following are my personal opinions. The only reason this post is not Private like most of my entries on this blog is because I feel this discussion may be validating for some who are put down for their faith.

Now without further ado, if you’re interested, check under the Cut. ;)

I’ve been doing a lot of research recently. It started by my looking up if it’s offensive to the gods to watch/enjoy/associate them with pop culture. Is Hades offended by my love of the Disney version of him? Would Bast or Serket be offended by my using images of them as they appear in video games like Smite?

I’ve come to answer myself with; it depends. It’s going to require experimentation, meditation and asking each specific god their preference, but in general, I think the answer is mostly no. If you have the proper intent, I think the gods appreciate it all the same.

I found an interesting Reddit Thread in which their was a discussion about Pop Culture Paganism. I didn’t realize that was even a thing, but reading the discussion was fascinating, and validating. While some are offended by the mere thought of not strictly following the old ways as closely as we can, others argue that myths of the old gods began as stories.

It’s doubtful that if these gods existed as real people or divine beings before humans, that these stories we know of them are one hundred percent accurate. Humans are fallible, we embellish, we exaggerate, and even when trying to be as accurate as possible, we still insert personal bias into everything. We can’t help it, it’s in our nature. So any story, true or not, is going to, at it’s core, be subject to the bias both of the original first-hand account, by every subsequent retelling, and by the person hearing it.

Therefore, why is it offensive to the gods to follow a new retelling of them? a modern version of a god, like, Loki and Thor, for instance, should be just as valid. It’s doubtful that the comic writers and film producers over at Marvel have consciously been contacted by Loki and Thor to tell them how to depict them, but does that mean that the gods weren’t influencing their own stories? Could Loki not have inserted the ideas, placed sources of inspiration into the lives of the writers? Of course he could have.

Another point that was brought up was that new gods spring up all the time. There is a new goddess being worshiped in India by the Dalit community. There are authors who have unwittingly created new gods or religions with their writings. There are sects of people who worship the Valar from Tolkien’s universe, the Jedi Way is a recognized religion now, Lovecraftian monsters are widely accepted as actual ancient beings and have permeated so many areas of culture. Some Celtic deities are traced back to seeming works of fiction.

Some people use pop culture figures as associations for their gods; more tangible, relate-able and realistic than their ancient stories. I recently made a strong association between Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock and Thoth. I’ve also used a Tolkien Mantra of sorts to honor Anubis; Patience being a struggle for me, and one of His attributes, I will occasionally find myself thinking of Treebeard’s signature philosophy, “do not be hasty.”

Some do actually worship fictional characters, even those not intended to be deified. Some use archetypal characters for worship and find pop culture associations for them, but some literally worship Batman or Sailor Moon. Some use fictional characters in spirit work, or create spells around them. The concept of the energy, the love and adoration, the living and breathing history and collective thought poured into and about these characters, this whole process makes absolute sense to me. I’m not sure if I’ll go quite so deep into it, though perhaps. Vi has already mentioned potentially worshiping Clavicus Vile. I’d be okay with that.

Given that many works of fiction draw from real life mythology, legends or properties, a lot of fictional deities and characters have some real-life counterpart. One can find strong correlations to the Gems in Stephen Universe having similar properties to their real-life crystal and stone counterparts. Many fictional deities are amalgamations of real gods. Hell, many “primary” sources of old gods are works of fiction in and of themselves, such as the works of Homer. While there may be truth the stories, they are embellished and theatrical to make it interesting to read, and are at best an artist’s interpretation of events.

I saw another post today that was so validating. Can’t find it right now, or I would link it. Basically it said that a god becomes a god when someone believes they are one. It could be a single person. They are a god. The older the god, the more energy put towards it, the more followers they have, the stronger they become. So in my mind, old gods like the Egyptian, Roman, Norse, Celtic, ect. gods, those of ancient civilizations, most of these will be far more powerful than a new god with a small following. Millions of people did and still do worship Anubis. There are probably only a select few who worship Dipper Pines (though given GF’s cult following, I’m sure I’d be surprised at that number-). Therefore Anubis has more influence and power as an established god, able to reach out even to those unaware of him at the time, and sometimes bring people to the fold this way. Versus Dipper, if deified, would have a harder time calling to a random new child to join the cult of the Mystery Twins.

My concept, which I originally considered a sort of excuse or explanation of my odd and unusual spiritual beliefs, is that energy is a force, it’s neither created, nor is it destroyed. If magic is just channeling one’s will into existence, expending your energy and maybe using other energy aids (a burning candle, a charged crystal, stored energy in plant matter, ect) to yield a desired effect, then why can’t the same concept be put towards anything? If we can will the spirits to read our futures, if we can will two people to fall in love, or will the universe to cause someone bad luck or harm, why can we not will a new being into existence?

In the same way that offerings, prayers and even uttering the name can strengthen older, established gods; in the same way, why can I not make offerings, prayers and epitaphs to Smaug, or Winnie the Pooh, or any fictional character?

Personally, the concept of pop culture magic is also fascinating to me, and that makes even more logical sense to me. If we take a character like Ash Ketchum. A character of indomitable spirit, fierce determination, immortality, and innocence; a character beloved by millions, who’s journeys have inspired generations of children, even shaped the lives of some - there is magic there. There is so much collective thought, energy, love, adoration there. So many know his name, his image, his stories. There are myths and legends about him, theories about other adventures, other possibilities. Artwork is made, statues created, there are buildings dedicated to his world, his friends and family, the animals and creatures of his world.

Even if you don’t see the correlations to a god from an outside perspective, that amount of power centered around some pixels on a television screen is real. It’s there, it exists. No witch or magic user should be able to deny that. Using that stored energy in a spell would be simple when looking at it from this perspective. In the way we can take an animal, look over all its aspects, and channel it into our spells. In the same way we can invoke Mother Bear for strength, maternal protection and love, we could invoke a character like The Doctor for wisdom, compassion and a drive to do what’s right.

The other angle here, is that anyone who subscribes to the Many Worlds Theory can’t really deny the possibility of most of this. This theory proposes there are an infinite number of universes full of infinite possibilities. There is a world where the Roman Empire never collapsed and we’re all living under the new Caesar. There is a world where modern day man is still living alongside dinosaurs. There is a world where ours does not exist. There is a world exactly the same as this one, except that you ate cereal for breakfast today instead of scrambled eggs. There’s a world where dogs are the dominant species and keep humans as pets. There is a world where the Avengers are fighting against Thanos. One where Luke Skywalker is teaching younglings in the Jedi Temple. One where Ash and Pikachu are traveling to another new region in the Pokemon world. One where we live in a giant computer simulation. Infinite. Possibilities.

I’m not here to convince anyone, I may or may not even practice any of this, it’s just some interesting thought exercise. I like thinking about things like this sometimes. I also think that in a world where we are beginning to pave our own Paths; we’re inventing identities for ourselves, discovering new genders, sexualities, magics, gods, everything; that we should be kind to each other as we discover these new avenues. To each their own, and live and let live <3

Blessed be, everyone, and may you all find whatever Path you wind up on fulfilling and full of joy.

#pop culture paganism #pop culture pagan #pop culture magic #pop culture witch #theology #pc paganism #thought exercise #an exploration #my journey #beliefs #spirituality #pop culture witchcraft #pc witch #pc witchcraft #pc pagan

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greywindys · 5 years

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It’s that time of year again! I, and possibly a good number of you reading this, just spent the whole of 2018 in the Gorillaz fandom. Congratulations! You made it! Because this year...kinda sucked. Not just for the Gorillaz fandom but, if this Washington Post article is any indication, for the rest of the world too. Maybe on an individual level there were moments of light. Maybe Gorillaz was your moment of light. If it was I’m genuinely happy because that means you probably found a way to avoid or ignore all the chaos that went down this year. But overall? Fandom was rife with disappointments, confusion and conflict with some good parts (for me, at least) sprinkled in here and there. Below is a personal reflection on the top 10 significant events in fandom of 2018.

1. Murdoc Goes to Prison

2018 started out peacefully for fandom. We were just finishing up sharing our scans of G-Magazine and theorizing over the next album when we’re treated with this - a nineteen second mocap of a frantic Murdoc accepting a Brit Award with an “oh by the way I’m going to prison.” We didn’t know why or for how long, and, though fans were confused and Murdoc going to prison is a tired, overplayed storyline at this point, it was cherished as any new Gorillaz content, especially animation, is cherished. Memes were made, most notably the #FreeMurdoc hashtag complete with a petition which was acknowledged by creators and caused the first big outburst in fandom for its messy tag. I did what I always do with Murdoc videos and went through the entire thing frame by frame to collect screenshots. Little did I know that this would be the only time I would get to indulge in this beloved past time. Little did I know that I would be wearing the same expression as Murdoc is in this screencap this entire phase.

2. Murdoc hate

Murdoc hate has always existed. It’s also generally accepted. However, when it was confirmed that Murdoc was going to be in prison for an undetermined amount of time and that he may not even speak this phase (thanks a lot, phase 5 plot!) it reached unprecedented levels of viciousness. Some fans took every opportunity to drag him in the main tag, start debates with anyone who might mention one positive thing about him and expressed how they genuinely wanted him to die and/or never come back. It kinda reminded me of this season of MTV’s The Challenge when everyone ganged up on Johnny Bananas. Like, yes he’s an asshole and yes this was probably long overdue but also omg when is there and end point? Is there an end point? It was like some people hated Murdoc more than they liked Gorillaz. For some additional context - this tense environment was born out of an astoundingly severe conflict that happened in spring where three separate fandom storms that had been brewing since late 2017 collided into one huge mess. Discords were raided, friendships were lost, the police were called (I’m not even exaggerating). I won’t go into it more but if you were there, you know what i’m talking about. Murdoc wasn’t the cause of this, but his character was at the center of one of those storms and the canon sending him to prison only reignited the ire towards him. For awhile Murdoc fans weren’t sure were exactly they stood with the greater fandom, and new fans were confused as to why this one green character was the source of so much grief for haters and fans alike. This continued for most of the year (and still continues today), hence why it’s getting a mention now.

3. Ace

Believe it or not Murdoc and Ace are confirmed #friends. You wouldn’t know that from all the Murdoc vs Ace content that sprung out of this year but Ace was the one who joined Murdoc for hot chocolate after he got out of prison, “they go way back” etc etc. Ace was a big deal because it was probably the only time the fandom guessed something correctly this entire year. Jamie began posting cryptic pictures of Noodle with this unidentified man, then another with only the Ace card visible. “It a Powerpuff Girls crossover!” Some people claimed. But that seemed so random? Really? A B-list cartoon villain from a cartoon targeting an entirely different demographic? More likely than you think! Ace never spoke a word and he wasn’t allowed to smoke or have sex. People obsessed over him anyways. To this day I still have no idea who he is or what kind of personality he has or really anything. But he wasn’t a bad guy (more on that later) and he was Murdoc’s friend so he’s alright with me.

4. Messaging Denholm

By now the fandom was fraught with distress on so many levels. We were lost. We needed someone to guide us, to show us the way, to show us the #truth. I don’t know exactly who started this trend but it soon spread around Reddit and other social media sites that Jamie’s son Denholm was replying to dm’s on Instagram and soon, he was graced with a deluge of of inquiries from casual fans and Murdoc stans alike. The thing is though - he actually *did* answer them. Many of us had spoilers re: Murdoc and Ace’s friendship, Murdoc getting out of prison, etc. MONTHS before they happened. I believe he even told us that 2D was fine back in like, June or something. Denholm knew! Eventually we pissed him off but it didn’t stop him from answering. He just answered angrier. It also caused fans to argue more because people started accusing others of photoshopping his responses and nothing can ever be done peacefully here. I haven’t followed up on this story singe the end of summer but I think fans have finally scaled back on the messaging. But I hear he’s working on a Gorillaz documentary for 2019 so...I’m sure we’ll be talking again soon.

5. Noodle

I want to take a moment here to also acknowledge the struggle AMA Gorillaz hosted on, of all places, Youtube. Thankfully, diligent redditors compiled a google doc of all the answers otherwise they would lost thanks to Youtube’s confusing interface. ANYHOW. The answer that stirred up the biggest milieu of debate and confusion came from Noodle. This isn’t exactly my lane - I don’t wade into Noodle issues and I don’t id as part of the LGBT community - so I’m not going to say much here other than, at the very least, this was the second or third time she has officially denied any interest in dating her bandmates.

6. 2D’s journal/2Doc

Okay first of all: 2DOC...jk, jk...jk? But no, honestly, this actually did become a big story this year, much bigger than expected. The release of 2D’s journal was the catalyst here, revealing a number of drawings and images of Murdoc. “Souk Eye,” a song that came with visuals featuring close ups of Murdoc’s face and vaguely romantic lyrics was depicted in 2D’s journal next to yet another drawing of Murdoc. We were confused! 2D didn’t care that Murdoc was gone, right? 2Doc shippers were intrigued. I was hesitant. We were all called delusional. However, “Souk Eye” was later confirmed to be a love song by Damon Albarn, and Murdoc and 2D have both claimed their relationship is “better” since the end of phase 5 (hhMmMmM). Obvi, take this with a grain of salt because it’s Gorillaz but the journal was instrumental in confirming how closely The Now Now (and the entire plot of phase 5, really) was tied to Murdoc and 2D’s relationship, particularly what 2D thinks of Murdoc. Think of it as platonic if you want but they share a closeness on SOME level and the content of 2018, from interviews to the Murdoc chats to the album itself, supports this. I rest my case.

7. Lost theories

Pour one out for all the lost theories. If you were a new fan this year you probably came up with a theory, or you got really invested in a theory. Some examples: HIM from PPG orchestrating the destruction of Gorillaz by possessing 2D and getting Murdoc framed with Ace as a double agent, or Murdoc’s imprisonment being tied to his trouble with EMI from phase 4, or phase 5 being about time travel, or Murdoc crashing Demon Dayz fest and fighting El Mierda on stage, or 2D being the one to frame Murdoc or Murdoc’s inmate number (24602) being a Les Mis reference implying that he’d get a character arc similar to Jean Valjean...you get the idea. But there are dreams that cannot beeee, and there are storms we cannot weather. You can argue about the budget or G-Shock or whatever but the truth is Gorillaz is just disorganized. This is their Brand™.

8. The Murdoc Chatbot

Gorillaz did an interesting thing this year - it let us talk to Murdoc! Sometime around June, he writers decided that the plot of phase 5 would be best spent, not on exploring the band’s dynamic with Murdoc gone or developing Ace’s personality, but on Murdoc! Fandom spent most of the summer following Murdoc’s experience in prison and helping to “free” him via a chatbot you could access through Kik, Instagram or Facebook. Basically, Murdoc was Paddington from Paddington 2, and we the fans were supposed to be the Browns trying to break him out and prove his innocence. Other fans begrudgingly used the chatbot to make fun of him or tell him to die and follow along with the story (it was the only place you could get plot updates). It was a neat idea as well as a funny experience to pretend to be talking to him, and the plot was very engaging at times. It was the chatbot that revealed the very dissatisfying (albeit happy) conclusion that Murdoc is no Paddington and had lied about everything - being framed, El Mierda etc. - but felt really bad about it. His apology was basically this. I’m going to also tag the #FreeMurdoc merchandise debacle, how overpriced it was and how it ended up being pointless anyways because Murdoc wasn’t framed and didn’t need to be “freed” onto this, because it all falls under the same event. Oh, and you got to talk to Noodle sometimes, too.

9. G-shock ends phase 5

I put “ends phase 5″ in strikethrough because G-Shock on its own is actually pretty cool, and made up for the lack of videos (2 in total) that were released this year. The now Murdoc inclusive band goes to space and starts an alien war! That’s fun! Completely removed from whatever phase 5 was, but fun! (And I say that genuinely) What was messy about G-shock was that it came out of nowhere. The final Murdoc chat, that was SUPPOSED to reveal the ending to the prison arc, hadn’t even happened but suddenly, Murdoc was back to sell watches to aliens with the rest of the band and Ace was gone. But the final chat was delayed by a month and G-Shock came out anyways. Out of this came memes about how phase 5 ended so Gorillaz could try to sell us watches.

10. Cass Browne Tells us the True Plastic Beach Ending

We ended 2018 with not one but two major interviews from the fancast, Hallelujah Monkeyz but I’m choosing to cover their latest interview with Cass Browne, writer of Rise of the Ogre. If you were new this year you probably heard older fans mention ad nauseam how much they missed this guy name Cass. Well, Cass came back and dropped actual bombs about the true ending of phase 3, Murdoc’s lost backstory and the Plastic Beach book he found AND that a sequel to ROTO was planned and dropped. Understandably, this sparked a lot of discussion and also revealed just how important Cass was to the continuity of the Gorillaz storyline. Back then, we had ROTO and Plastic Beach. Today, we have “Murdoc drowns in poop and reunites with the band offscreen”

And that’s the year! And look I’m not saying this because I’m a stan but this was a Murdoc year. He was at the center of like, at least 80% of the angst and joy of fandom and I could make separate “top 10 Murdoc moments” or “top 10 2Doc moments.” I guess for me, on an individual level, it was an alright year. For one, I actually talked to more people this year and met some really great friends (something I don’t typically do in fandom). I also get to check “write a fanfic” off my bucket list (it’s still a WIP but it’s the first WIP I’ve ever had so I’m counting it). And personally, my life has changed and without getting into too many details I’ve overcome a lot, grown professionally and...I think I can be kinda proud of myself for that. I expect 2019 to be a slower year than this one, and, I think the fandom needs that. Hopefully I’ll still see some of you around because I’m going to be here for at least the next few months while I finish up you know what.

Honorable mentions: 2D “Dies” of Ligma and other 2D memes, 2D writes The Now Now, Benjamin Clementine says he regrets working with Gorillaz, Noodles old VA confirms Jamie ghosted her and recast Noodle without telling her, Gorillaz delay the final Murdoc chat by a month, Demon Dayz doesn’t get streamed, Music video releases - “Humilty” and “Tranz”, Cyborg Noodle returns with boobs and causes debate, the “Let Ace Speak” petition,

#endofyear #long post /#there's a 2doc mention in here just fyi if you want to avoid #not as organized as last year's that's for sure #but here it is!#again this is more for my records and tradition but also here to read if you want

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tomeandflickcorner · 5 years

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Jericho, Mad Beauty, and Thor for the ask

Whoa, I almost forgot about this!

Jericho-

Favorite character: Tie between Jake and Gail

Least Favorite character: Um...hard to say. There weren’t any characters that made me groan whenever they popped up. Though Gray Anderson came close, so I guess I’ll go with him

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): Jake/Emily, Johnston/Gail, Robert/Darcy, Stanley/Mimi and Heather/Beck

Character I find most attractive: Hard to say. Though I can see why people might find Jake and Emily attractive

Character I would marry: LOL. Well, all the ‘eligible’ men on the show seemed to be taken, don’t they? So there’s not much to chose from

Character I would be best friends with: I wanna say Heather. She was pretty cool

a random thought: I think, at one point, it was mentioned that one of the deputy’s kids was sick with something. I remember thinking if that was going to be relevant, but it was never brought up again

An unpopular opinion: I don’t think the show did a proper job at explaining why Johnston and Eric held such a negative opinion of Jake at the start of the show. I got that Jake was basically the town’s ‘bad boy’ back in the day, but... they way they acted towards him when he came back into town seemed a bit mean spirited to me

My Canon OTP: Jake and Emily

My Non-canon OTP: IDK. Maybe April and Russel?

Most Badass Character: Gotta go with Robert. No offence to Jake, of course. But between the two of them, Robert is the one I’d actively avoid trying to tick off

Most Epic Villain: John Gotez

Pairing I am not a fan of: Maybe Eric and Mary. While I didn’t actively hate it, I was mostly indifferent to them and pretty much fell asleep during their scenes

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): April. hands down

Favorite Friendship: Jake and Robert.

Character I most identify with: Not sure.

Character I wish I could be: I’m drawing a blank, I’m afraid

Mad Beauty-

When I started shipping them: Hard to pinpoint the exact date. It started off when I saw a post mentioning the pairing, and I was intrigued by the concept. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I liked it. Before I knew it, I was Mad Beauty trash

My thoughts: I just think they make the most sense. All things considered, Jefferson and Belle probably suffered the most during the course of the Dark Curse that created Storybrooke. Jefferson was forced to spend nearly three decades watching his beloved daughter from afar, knowing he couldn’t approach her because she didn’t remember him. Not to mention how he was the only one in town who remembered the truth but knew he couldn’t tell anyone on account of how nobody would believe him. As for Belle, she spent all that time confined in her cell in the psychiatric ward, where her only human contact were the orderlies who brought her food and whatnot. She never received any visitors during that time and I doubt the orderlies bothered striking up a conversation with her. To top it off, if her behavior when she was forced over the town line were any indication, she probably had absolutely no memories, either real or faked, to revisit while in confinement. While the show never addressed it, I firmly believe that Belle was probably in serious need of therapy when the curse broke. Apart from that, there’s the fact that Belle was a young woman who clearly craved adventure and wanted to see the world. Jefferson, who had spent quite a few years as a portal jumper with the use of his magic hat, has most likely visited more realms in the multiverse than anyone else in the show. So he’d be perfectly suited to be Belle’s personal guide to each and every one of those realms, giving her the world tour she’d always yearned for. And then there’s Grace. I think we all can agree that Grace is Jefferson’s top priority. Can you imagine how much Jefferson would love to see Belle and Grace interact and bond? Because it’s obvious they would. Especially since they both know what it’s like to lose their mother through tragic circumstances. Plus, both Jefferson and Belle are characters with a strong association with tea. I cannot erase the mental image of all three of them sitting down to a tea party.

What makes me happy about them: That I can write about them. Writing for this paring is almost as fun as writing about Captain Swan, my top OTP

What makes me sad about them: That this particular ship is so uncommon. It’s rare to find another Mad Beauty shipper. That and the fact that it will never be canon

Things done in fanfic that annoys me: Well, there are very few Mad Beauty fics out there, so I suppose the lack of them counts as an annoyance. Especially since most of the available ones seem more about Rumbelle, based on the fic summaries

Things I look for in fanfic: For it to actually exist (lol)

My wishlist: Don’t think I have one

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: Not sure with Jefferson, since we hardly saw him interacting with anyone in canon, but Belle is my multi-ship. I’d be happy to see her with anyone who deserves her, really (Including Gold, as long as he actually got his act together first and quit being such a manipulative a-hole)

My happily ever after for them: Ah, but that would be a major spoiler for the fifth and final installment of my canon divergence series, wouldn’t it?

Thor-

How I feel about this character: Overall, I like him. While I wouldn’t say he’s my favorite character, I’ve always enjoyed his presence. He just strikes me as someone who’d be a lot of fun to be around

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: Jane Foster. And maybe Lady Sif as a ‘we dated as kids/teenagers but then broke up amicably’ kind of deal

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: Loki and/or Valkyrie

My unpopular opinion about this character: His intelligence seemed to be a bit inconsistent at times. (Really, he knows about emails, but doesn’t know you need a computer to access them?) It’s a bit frustrating, because he is clearly an intelligent man

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: That he hadn’t broken up with Jane. Whose bright idea was that?

Favorite friendship for this character: It’s a toss-up between Steve and Darcy Lewis

My crossover ship: Does paring him with Ororo Munro/Storm count as a crossover? I mean, they’ve both technically Marvel characters, but so far, the X-Men aren’t a thing in the MCU

Send me a Number

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velcr0kitty · 7 years

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What If?

Title: What If? Summary: You indulge yourself in a harmless passion, following a train of thought, but when Mikey catches a glimpse it may not be so harmless after all. Author: Velcr0Kitty Characters: Mikey (2016) x Reader Word Count: 1846 Warnings: Angst, fluff, body image… issues? I guess? Author’s Notes: Welcome to my first fic, I’m so sorry. I seriously didn’t expect it to become so sad my original idea was so happy ;-;

You drift to the bottom of the sketchbook and scrawl a title of sorts.

What If - Mikey

Under it, you put your signature. It’s hard to deny your feelings for the charismatic turtle, but with that whole “different species” issue complicating things you doubted the feelings would ever be mutual. That hasn’t stopped your daydreams yet.

You never imagined you’d be in a situation where you even could think that. Once upon a time you could only imagine yourself with your beloved art degree in a pleasant flat somewhere other than NYC. You would be a master of your passion and your passion, a career. Before you got your chance, however, your best friend fell very ill. You spent your time with her, being supportive. This was the snowball that became the avalanche.

Your friend was released after a few weeks. Then in succession, like a machine gun of shit, your mother died in a car accident, you were hostage in a bank robbery, your new apartment building out of town exploded (You didn’t honestly believe the landlord at first). Three foot clan attacks and a load more bull-shit later, you were broke, homeless, family-less and living, quite literally, under a rock (a storm a few months prior had upturned it in central park.) That’s where the turtles found you. Dirty, starving, and huddled up under a blanket some random do-gooder’s gave you. Though you suspect it was mostly Donnie’s doing, for whatever reason, they took you in and welcomed you into their home.

That was three years ago. Over those three wonderful years, they nursed you back to health, welcomed you, and loved you as one of their own. It didn’t take long for feelings to develop for the youngest. You spent day in and day out with all of the brothers, of course, but most of your time was with Mikey. Donnie always patched you up and made sure you were okay, but Mikey sat with you and made sure you were okay. He quickly became your best friend.

He comforted you, stayed up with you when you couldn’t sleep, you two have more inside jokes than you’d care to count. The only thing you don’t know about him is how much the guys have been hounding him for months, just small remarks during training or while on patrol, to get him to “just turtle up!” and ask you out or something.

For some reason, you kept your art from them. As close as y'all were, having even one thing to yourself can do wonders for your sanity. Sometimes, while the boys trained or for the hours Splinter had them in the Ha'Shi, you snuck out to buy supplies. Nothing too big, just sketchbooks and pencils that you stashed under your bed when not in use.

You often drew the brothers, for good reason. They had both ridiculously interesting lines and unique shapes, as well as always being around. Plus you had found a few well-hidden hidey holes to draw from if you wanted a live reference.

It’s only natural when crushing on a giant talking turtle to, even just once, imagine what he’d look like as a human, right?

Today, you ran with that thought. So, as you finish the drawing, you scan the page for any last minute fixes. You run your fingers over the sketch, being careful to not smudge. You feel the bumps and ridges of your pencil marks travel underneath you like a road map. As you move over his face, your hand reveals his brilliant and goofy grin, but you can almost see the way his blue eyes light up and glint with mischief when he laughs, the way the green of his cheeks shimmer in the light with his constant smiles and grins. You soften and fall into a lazy smile.

Your hand continues over his torso, your mind wandering to the endless amazing hugs, his muscular arms, his surprisingly comfortable plastron. Hesitantly, you move left, over a man. Lean, but built, muscle hidden under a wildly patterned t-shirt. His mid-length blond messy hair falls into his eyes, but the mischief and brilliant smile remain. He stands with his arms crossed. His pose screams youth, confidence and energy. Your eyes flick back and forth between the drawings. You are nowhere near as familiar with this man, but your curiosity is sated.

The sounds of training float from the dojo as you come back to reality. Heavy grunts and dull thuds tell you how far into training they are and, not realizing how late it really is, decide it will be some time until they’re done. You abandon your art supplies on your bed for the makeshift shower down the hall that Don whipped up last year.

When you emerge toasty and clean in your favorite PJ’s, you waddle towards your room and revel in the silence. You’re nearly winded when just how silent it was hit you like a freight train and you took off for your room. Mere footsteps away from the right corner and a soft hiccup of a sob makes you freeze, your heart dropping. You stop, inches from the door. You know what’s coming. Something in you tells you to run. What's around this corner? You know it will break you. You can leave. You don’t have to see those baby blues hating you. Thinking you’ve betrayed him.

You run a hand through your hair. Ruined.

You wring your hands. He hates you.

You take a step into the room, almost trembling. Looking everywhere but where you need to. His eyes are burning into you. Your room is dull. Face this. You could have run, but you didn’t. So, FACE. THIS.

When you make eye contact, you couldn’t and will never be able to accurately describe the sheer betrayal in his eyes. He’s gripping your sketchbook, the drawing. His eyes are red, his mouth agape. He opens and closes it a few times, searching for words.

———

“You know, we were almost human once?” You drop your controller and shift on the couch to look at him better. Disbelief paints your face.

“No kidding?”

———

“… What,” his voice breaks, as does his eye contact, which drops to the paper in his hand. “Y/N, what is this?”

———

“Seriously, Angelcakes. It’s crazy, Donnie had this ooze that we got from…” As he tells you his story you can see how important it was to him to find some normalcy. He wasn’t cracking jokes, he was barely moving. Just talking. This became the most personal and serious night you two had ever shared. He spoke of growing up with ninja turtles. You, of school, of bullies, of humans. You shared worlds.

———

You couldn’t find the words. You knew you had hurt him. Badly. It was just a drawing and a thought to you, but to him… to him it meant you didn’t like him for him. Maybe even not at all.

———

You swapped so much about each other that night, not just talking but learning. He finally opened up wholly when he wouldn’t look at you.

“I wish…” His hands suddenly become very interesting. “I wish I was human, you know? It would just be…” he searches for the word. The word he finds will break him. As he says it, he will cry through his half-hearted smile. You will hold him until you both fall asleep, cradling him to your chest, TV still on.

He looks up with pain and resolve.

“… Easier.”

———

“Y/N!” Mikey slams your sketchbook against the wall searching your eyes for an explanation. For the first time you’d ever heard, your best friend raised his voice. He was pissed.

———

The next morning he woke up embarrassed. He remembered your sweet coo’s and soft-spoken words of comfort from the night before as he took down a wall he never knew he had, for you. He never realized how much he wanted to give you the life you deserve, and just how much he couldn’t actually give you. A certain melancholy took him. He felt so bad as you talked about your life. As far as he knew no one in his family knew anything about you from before they found you, just that you had suffered a great deal and had no one left, but last night? He hadn’t thought about how much had to have happened for you to end up that way. For a moment, you had both bared yourselves, completely.

As these thoughts ran through him, the grogginess of waking up left him. He watched your eyes move behind your eyelids, your mouth open slightly as you breathed through your dreams. He pushes himself up so his full weight isn’t on you and with the loss of heat, you stir. Your sleepy eyes captivate him and he feels like he’s really seeing you. You have no idea. “Morning,” you quietly utter, not wanting to break the peace. Running a hand down your face, you sit upwards slightly. Noticing the vibe rolling off your normally talkative terrapin you sober up and give him a questioning look.

He hovers over you effortlessly, arms holding him up on either side of your hips. He has yet to move his gaze away from you, drinking in your features like a dying man. The only thing he can think of is kissing you until you melt, of running his hands down your waist. Steamy images fog his vision as he disappears in the thought of you. All you see is his expression softening until he closes his eyes with a small sigh.

“Um… Mikey, you good?” This snaps him out of his trance. He’s blushing and burning up but, lucky for him, you don't notice a thing. He coughs.

“Uh, yeah babe,” the nickname that had been used countless times felt heavy on his tongue, “I’m fine, just uh… tired. Do you mind if I…?” He slowly lowers himself back onto your midsection, eyes asking permission.

“Oh yeah sure,” you stammer, concerned. “Go for it.” He snuggles into you further, wrapping himself around your stomach and breathing in your smell, suddenly feeling like a brand new person.

———

When you don’t say anything for a few seconds he storms off, taking your sketchbook with him. You yell a helpless ‘No!’ after him. The room swarms around you and you feel like the floor left without you. The air leaves your lungs and you land on your knees. Soft, wary footsteps pad into your room and pair with your light sobs. Leo reaches down and wraps you up in his arms rubbing your back, speaking calming words, soothing you.

You can faintly hear Raph yelling after Mikey but as your own sobs wrack your body you lose all concentration on them and instead melt into Leo. He picks you up, carries you to your bed and lays you down. He hesitates, wanting to ask about what just happened but not wanting to push your already fragile state.

(THERE WILL BE A PART 2 :D )

Tags: @another-tmnt-writer @darkumbreon9

#tmnt #tmnt mikey #tmnt fic #tmnt 2016 #mikey x reader #tmnt x reader #finally done #fuck yeah #angst #it will get better #i promise #lord help me #word count: too many

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hermanwatts · 4 years

Text

Sensor Sweep: Conan Companion, Star Trek, Necromancers, Stanley Mullen

New Release (Amazon): By Crom! At long last the definitive history of Conan the Barbarian paperbacks that fans have clamoured for. 107 pages with detailed chapters devoted to each of the mighty Cimmerian’s publishers. Heavily illustrated with many rare images. Plus complete cover galleries of every US and UK Conan title ever issued. In full colour. An indispensable aid to Conan collectors and completists everywhere. Featuring a specially written foreword by Conan comics legend Roy Thomas!

Star Trek (Huffington Post): The LA Times recently ran a story about the Child Exploitation Section of the Toronto Sex Crimes Unit, which contained a mind-boggling statistic: of the more than 100 offenders the unit has arrested over the last four years, “all but one” has been “a hard-core Trekkie.” Blogger Ernest Miller thought this claim was improbable. “I could go to a science fiction convention,” he explained “and be less likely to find that 99+ percent of the attendees were hard-core Trekkies.” While there may be quibbling about the exact numbers, the Toronto detectives claim that the connection is undeniable.

Review (Brain Leakage): That said, if you are looking for a great post-apocalyptic read, I want to draw your attention to the work of Jon Mollison. I read his A Moon Full of Stars recently, with the intent of dedicating a full-length ‘Pocky-clypse Now review to it soon. I do still plan on doing that. But I’m probably going to wait until after our daily news cycle looks a little less like the opening credits to the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake.

Awards (Kairos): … And enjoy a hearty laugh at the incestuous wasteland the once-prestigious Hugo Awards have become.

Predictions that the Hugo field would degenerate into a circle jerk of olpdub purse puppies beloved by editors in New York–and pretty much no one else–have been realized ahead of schedule.

Here’s a partial list of this year’s finalists.

D&D (DMR Books): The Complete Book of Necromancers by Steve Kurtz was released in the spring of 1995, and came and went fairly quickly. Luckily a friend of mine snagged one shortly after it came out. Ostensibly the book was intended for the eyes of Dungeon Masters only, but of course we were hungry to add the new spells and powers to our player characters’ repertoires. Clark Ashton Smith is mentioned by name in the majority of the chapters of Necromancers. While Smith’s absence from Appendix N is conspicuous, Kurtz more than made up for the oversight.

Fiction (Digital Bibliophilia): Any book that opens Page One with a man being skewered by the broken mast of a sailing ship in the middle of a storm has to be good right? Well, I’m happy to say Oath of Blood by Arthur Frazier lives up to its gory opening scene and delivers a fantastic little novel about the clash of the Saxons, Normans and Vikings during the 11th century (1066 to be precise). Arthur Frazier was one of many pen names used by the prolific Kenneth Bulmer.

Gaming (Jeffro’s Space Gaming Blog): Charisma. It’s not just a dump stat, they say. But look, if you don’t have a lot of it, you’re going to be stuck in a career as an assassin. Which is kind of funny, actually. Of course if you were going to actually use that stat in an AD&D game, you’re going to have to flip to the middle of the combat section to find the reaction table. Why is it there right in the middle of sections detailing initiative and missile discharge? Evidently this something pretty important to consider when the players have initiative in a random encounter, right?

Fiction (Dark Worlds Quarterly): Another writer who has left a huge legacy with little recognition is Gardner Francis Cooper Fox (1911-1986). Fox began his career writing for Batman as early as 1939. (It was Fox who gave Bruce Wayne his “utility belt”.) During his decades long career with DC, he would work on such characters as The Flash, Hawkman and The Justice Society of America. He was there when Julius Schwartz revamped DC comics to meet the new “Comics Code”. He was there when DC invented its Multiverse. Outside of DC, he would pen the first Sword & Sorcery comic called “Crom the Barbarian”.

Fiction (DMR Books): The book being advertised was Kinsmen of the Dragon by Stanley Mullen. I was completely unfamiliar with both the title and the author. A bit of research revealed that this book had never been reprinted since its publication in 1951, which explains why it’s so little-known today. In spite of (or perhaps because of) its obscurity, good condition copies are pricey, usually going for over $50, and signed copies are much more.

Fiction/Gaming Tie-in (Karavansara): Two nights in Arkham: Lovecraft purists often frown at Lovecraft-inspired fiction. The main charge raised by these people is, other writers are either too much like Lovecraft or not at all like him, often at the same time. The second most common accusation is that certain stories are too action-centered and adventure-oriented, filled with guns blazing and chanting cultists. They usually blame Lovecraft’s popularity with the gaming crowd as the main reason for these degenerate pastiches, in which Indiana Jones or Doc Savage seem to exert an influence stronger than Nyarlathotep’s.

Fiction (Mostly Old Books): he Fargo series tell the tales of early 20th Century adventurer and solider of fortune Neal Fargo. They aren’t Westerns as the covers suggest. In this installment Fargo is hired by a rich old blowhard to rescue some Mayan treasures and the excavation team, which includes his son, from the jungles of Central America.

Cinema (The Silver Key): 1917 had been in my “to watch” queue for a long time (aka, floating around in the back of my mind), and last night I watched it with my older daughter, a self-described “film buff” who wanted to see what the hype was all about. Two word review: Excellent film. It’s an intensely personal/soldier’s journey type of story, and also manages to convey the larger tragedy of the Great War.

Fiction (Sacnoth’s Scriptorium): The Inklings and the Mythos (Dale Nelson). So, I’ve now recovered the missing issue of MALLORN* containing Dale Nelson’s wide-ranging inquiry into possible connections between the Inklings and Lovecraft’s circle, “The Lovecraft Circle and the Inklings: The ‘Mythopoeic Gift’ of H. P. Lovecraft” (MALLORN 59, Winter 2018, pages 18-32). It’s a substantial piece, and in it Nelson raises such topics as the following: Did the two groups read or were they influenced by each other?

Fiction (Scott Oden): In the past few weeks, my sophomore novel, MEMNON (Medallion Press, 2006; Crossroad Press, 2018), has received a raft of four-and-five star ratings on Goodreads and a pair of excellent reviews — which, for a fourteen-year old novel is no mean feat. Author Matt Larkin, in his review at Amazon, writes: “Evocative prose paints a living picture of the Classical world while the sudden, brutal violence serves to remind us never to look at history through rose-colored glasses.” While Scott Marlowe of Out of this World Reviews praises many things, including the battles: “I can only describe [them] as spectacular and right up there with some of the best battles I’ve had the pleasure to read in historical fiction (think Bernard Cornwell, surely one of the best of them all). Memnon gives Alexander such grief I imagine Alexander remembered their contests right up until his dying days.”

Fiction (Tentaculii): Lovecraft’s famous survey of supernatural literature was published in The Recluse in August 1927. Later in the same year Eino Railo published the history of the literary gothic in The Haunted Castle: A Study of the Elements of English Romanticism. A December 1927 review in the New York Evening Post suggests Railo’s book was published in time for the Christmas market and the January book-token crowd, and thus it appeared several months after Lovecraft’s circle had finished digesting his Supernatural Literature. Lovecraft refers to The Haunted Castle, a translation from the Finnish, in admiring terms in a later letter to Barlow and terms it a study of “the weird”.

History (Men of the West): Suddenly the war became fun. It became exciting, carnivalesque, tremendous. It became victorious and even safe. We awoke on the morning of Sunday, the 30th of July, with the feeling that the war was won — in spirit, if not in fact. Patton and the Third Army were away. At the 8th Corps, which held the western sector of the Normandy front, the G2 colonel said: “We’ve lost contact with the enemy.”

Fiction (Tentaculii): The second half of a forthcoming book, No Ghosts Need Apply: Gothic influences in criminal science, the detective and Doyle’s Holmesian Canon (October 2020), attempts to make the case that there are gothic traces in what are often assumed to be the ‘rationalist’ Sherlock Holmes stories. Sifting the extensive blurb for the book, one can eventually determine that the author suggests the following specific points… * intrigue and secret societies. . .

Fiction (M Porcius Blog): Let’s check out four stories by Mickey Spillane’s all-time favorite author, Fredric Brown, that first appeared in beautiful pulp magazines in 1942 and 1943, magazines that you can read at the universally beloved internet archive for free. “Etaoin Shrdlu” made its debut in Unknown Worlds in 1942. The cover of Unknown may be boring, but the interior illustrations are quite fine, those by Frank Kramer for L. Sprague de Camp’s “The Undesired Princess” in particular.

Sensor Sweep: Conan Companion, Star Trek, Necromancers, Stanley Mullen published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

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assume-a-virtue · 6 years

Text

Pre-NaNoWriMo

So this is the pre-NaNoWriMo post. NaNoWriMo is something I haven't attempted in, oh hell, years? Over a decade at this point. This practice run is occurring eight hours or so before NaNoWriMo actually begins for me. I plan to write in the mornings, though I know that plans change and muses can be elusive.

The plan is to write each morning, about two thousand words per day. This will give me sixty thousand words instead of the fifty thousand. Editing will chop out what needs to go.

So what am I writing? This is a good question, and not one I myself know the answer to. I have a lot of characters, but they're old, familiar, and beloved. I know their stories backward and forward, like a book I revisit for comfort and not necessarily for new.

I don't want that.

I want to meet someone new, someone outside the staid parameters of the people I know. I saw a recent prompt that I can't get out of my head, though I don't know if I have the talent for it, or how to execute it.

It follows the 'new phone, who dis?' trope, someone sends a dick pic out to a number they think is an ex's, and it's not. It's some random stranger who maybe flirts with them. They continue to text (why?) and begin to fall in love through this medium.

I like it. There are ways and ways to do it, and being real, how many people have not texted a wrong number by accident? Especially if (as I imagine the protagonist to be) drunk and lonely? I can even throw twists in; urban fantasy is big as hell right now, so why not make the phone owner something else? Vampire fiction is still raging, werewolves too, fairies will never die... the possibilities are endless.

Of course, this goal bases itself on these two characters (and all other side characters) being people we, the readers, relate to. This is possible, even with the urban fantasy twist.

Consider:

The old immortal with a face caught too many times in artwork, trying to figure out how not to be so visible in our social media drenched world.

The vampire HR director with impostor syndrome: the only reason she knows how to handle people so well is because she's dealt with many, and there are only so many variations on unprofessional behavior, even now.

The werewolf dog-trainer, bossing the dogs brought to him so they behave, cancelling classes around the full moon and worried people will notice.

Trees that speak, fish that grant wishes, cats that tease ogres into small shapes and then eat them; these are the things that make fairy tales.

What about modern fairy tales? Do we have any? I can suggest that we still have Cinderella; the recent Kingsman duology is a Cinderella story with two twists. The Cinderella is male, and being a secret agent has given him what he needs to blend in during "the ball" so he can marry the Princess without shame.

I'll go further and say that we have Snow White yet, still. Loved ones and relatives in comas, spoken to as if they can hear us and come back to beloved voices? Yes. What better glass coffin than a hospital? What better dwarves than doctors?

In my heart of hearts I always preferred fairytales like the Twelve Dancing Princesses, Aarne-Thompson 306. I like the complicity of the princesses in the tale. They drug their suitors, even knowing that the penalty for failure is death. Some versions of the story end with failed suitors disappearing to become the enchanted princes they dance with, but I like the "do or die" version best.

How often do you find complicit princesses in fairytales?

I think I will alternate points of view, after a point. At first all we'll know is the guy who texts the mistaken picture. Does he text a man or a woman? Well, good question. Probably a man. Does he get a dick pic in return? Good question. There are several ways to react to an unexpected dick pic, after all; they are the male version of 'notice me, I am alive!' and any attention is good.

Protagonist A, in an agony of loneliness and drink, sends a dick pic. Does he add any message to it? A drunken, lonely ramble, a confession of how alone he feels? Who did he break up with? How long was the relationship? When did they break up? What did they break up over, or was it over? Was he blindsided or did he see it falling apart?

Protagonist B receives it. Does he critique? Send his own? Does he ask who it's from? Does he respond to the ramble? Does he have time to respond to the ramble? Does the pic catch him on a rare day of downtime?

What keeps them talking? I suspect B may have to respond to that loneliness, if only to continue the connection between them. I do want them to end up together.

I like this idea. There's an online list of questions that I guess I'll try to answer for this, to flesh it out:

1. The Jump Start The first scene in the story where a protagonist with limited knowledge of a problem is drop-kicked into action on page one as conflict begins.

What is the opening image that will stick in the reader’s mind?

The dick pic, followed by the feelings!dump text, something most of us can sympathize with wanting to do, even if the idea of it is humiliating.

What is the opening mood?

Our mood is sympathy; who hasn't been lonely enough to want to send a feelings!dump to a recently departed ex? Protag A's mood is profound loneliness and sadness, maybe a bit of drunken rage. This was a serious relationship for him, maybe only his first or second but probably the longest lasting one so far.

What is the opening tone?

What is the opening conflict?

Protag A trying to convince the wrong person that they should be together and how good they are with/for each other.

What is the protagonist’s outer desire?

Wanting to reunite with his Ex, to return his life to the way it was.

What is the protagonist’s hidden need that she will fill at the end of the book or series?

Being loved for who they are.

How does the protagonist demonstrate that she doesn’t really understand the problem?

Protag A focuses on winning back that previous relationship, instead of forging new ones.

What is the central theme of the book and how does it relate to the opening scene?

Being loved for who you are, knowing when a relationship is gone, knowing when a new relationship has happened to you. Learning how to live in the present and accept the lessons of the past without assuming that the future will always become what the past was. Learning how not to love like one's parents.

Who is the antagonist?

I'm not sure there is one. A's ex isn't malicious, only oblivious. It hurts A but Ex doesn't mean to be cruel. A's mother is emotionally abusive, A's father enables her. What does that make A's home life like? Something he would want to flee as soon as he could. How old is A? A least 18-- Maybe he's 22? Did he go to college? If A's mother (hereafter called Mommy Dearest) let him, it would have been commuting. A can drive, or there's public transportation. Maybe A can't drive; this is something to overcome, a way to become more independent.

How is the antag introduced or foreshadowed?

A's family. Emotionally abusive mother and enabling father, A moved cross country to be with Ex (and secondarily to escape family reach). Not sure if they cared about his coming out. She (mother is the controlling factor) may have been accepting until it was her precious baby that comes out of the closet? I've seen this reaction before, would be easy to write it and I suspect it's more common than people realize.

If the antag is only foreshadowed, is there a main minion who appears? Is this main minion a recurring character central to the overall plot?

Maybe minions. If A moved to be with Ex, then all his friends would be Ex's friends. Having to navigate a new city and new job without any kind of support is a lot to deal with. Moving is one of the biggest kinds of life stress; to move and then be abandoned would be even worse. Does A go out with Ex's friends a little, trying to pry information out of them about Ex? I think he does, and it makes him feel even more lonely.

Prior to the opening, what internal and external forces have been at work to make the protag suffer?

Ex's obliviousness to A's needs, A's friends being mostly Ex's friends so that the breakup leaves him alone. A moved cross-country to be with Ex, and has no support now that they've broken up. Even the friends A thought he had are gone now, and everything about the city makes him think of Ex.

How are these tied to the protag’s hidden need?

A longs for a love that doesn't tell him he needs to change. A love that he doesn't need to be better for, or thinner for, or less smart for. Something felt wrong in his relationship with Ex, but there was so much physical chemistry first that it overwhelmed the concerns he might have had. Maybe A is young, too, hasn't had too many serious relationships. What is his home life like, the examples he's had? Emotionally abusive mother, enabling father? What kind of love is he used to/thinks he deserves?

So I've ended up with way more questions than answers, but these are good questions to have. These questions are what will build the story. I definitely can relate to some of it, and I figure it'll get hot and steamy somewhere along the line. Phone sex, dick pic exchange, maybe some short videos? There's a lot of draw in that.

Word Count: 1700

Time: 2 hours

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