Rewrite My Line

Tagged for this one by @tildeathiwillwrite, and—

Oh gosh, it's an internal thought line! XD Before even touching this I can tell you it's going to be so much longer than the original!

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my line:

He wandered about the city aimlessly, eventually stopping at one of the fountains and resting at a nearby bench. He stared at the splashing water almost desperately, trying to turn his mind to less depressing thoughts. It didn’t work.

rewritten as:

He wandered. He didn't know where he was going, where he wanted to be. Nowhere. Anywhere. As long as it wasn't here.

Eventually, he stopped at a fountain square. The air was cold where it blew off the mumbling stone. One of many in the park, the fountain muttered and grumbled, the water cycling endlessly in an illusion of permanence. He sat down on a bench to watch it, to distract his stupid mind from its stupid, depressing thoughts. Maybe he could go into a trance. Maybe he could find some kind of profound wisdom in the miracle of gravity made trivial by modern technology. Maybe he could just dunk his head in the basin and count all of the coins tossed in despite the signage, drowning the world out until he had to come up for air, choking and coughing.

He sighed and leaned forward, burying his face in his hands.

---

Gently as ever tagging @afoolandathief, @amethystpath-writes, @annakayy, @gummybugg, @kaatiba, @those-damn-snippets, @serenanymph, @surplus-of-sarcasm, @written-in-starlight, and anyone else who wants to play along!

Your line today is:

The leader stopped, and we each turned to take our places. There were moss-covered boards for us to kneel on, to save our knees from the hard, rocky ground. I knelt down, and when the leader motioned for us to get low, I leaned forward, placing my hands on the wet, gravelly ground, and rested my forehead on my fingers.

[again, I'm sorry if this is kinda long. @_@ You can cut pieces out, it's okay.]

@thelazywitchphotographer :D

forbidden fruit (g.suguru)

suguru used to share grapefruit with you after class.

it was a simple thing. you both would wait for at the same bus stop, him catching the first and you catching the second. one day your stomach happened to growl especially loudly and the rest was history.

he was popular enough to get at least a few gifted to him during the months where they were ripest, maybe from different people or maybe not. the details never mattered all that much to you whenever he offered you half of one.

the smell of april showers always mixed in with the aroma of the peels, zesting the air with citrus.

he always peeled them so delicately, even targeting the patchy white pith that latched itself to the meat of the fatty fruit. he said he wasn’t a fan of the texture. that the extra time it took to scratch and strip the extra skin off was worth it.

you never had the patience for it. it might have been why he offered to peel them so often. he made them look and feel like such a gentle fruit.

“i used to be able to eat these whole all on my own as a kid,” he said one afternoon. “now, if i eat more than half my stomach gets upset.”

he splits the fruit in two, his thumbs digging, forcing juice to pool into the crevices of his fingers and lines of his palms. a pool of it stains the laps of your uniforms by the time suguru’s bus arrives. he leaves you with the corners of your lips tangy and licked wet.

"i used to mistake them for oranges," you included internally.

it felt embarrassing to say aloud. the words would have left your mouth stupidly as each memory of him expertly dodging your friendly questions tainted the skin of your fingertips. keeping you at an arm's length, stretching just close enough to offer you something.

he would have laughed. you might have smiled naively, glancing down to the remaining slice pinched between your stained pointer and thumb before popping it into your mouth.

you huffed a breath out of your nose sharply, cheeks sapped by his contagious inclusivity. he had a way of making you feel part of something greater, even if it were for just a few moments at a time.

for weeks you watched him: the way he licked juice off his plump lips, the way he styled his hair, the way his legs spread whenever he sat down, and how he always perched his backpack on his lap; you felt included to view all these little antics.

you wondered if—during all that time—he noticed things about you too.

the last time the two of you share fruit is anticlimactic. your guard is down. you don't even find out that he'll be gone until the new school year starts and a week of you alone at that bench passes.

you suck at the nectar on your hands messily, turning your head towards the road after hearing the sound of tires rolling through gravel.

the last thing you remember is seeing the back of his head. your eyes drifting to the closed fist at his side, a grapefruit peel peeking out of the crevice of his palm.

Honestly, i don't want a stormbringer anime adaptation, i love the light novel sm (chuuya stan here) and i'm afraid of an adaptation, what if they animate like shit an important scene? or one not so important but that I like a lot? :( and if they skip something? they would definitely skip something :(( But yk what i'd love? A stormbringer manga, if it's with hoshikawas art even better! :)

Oh OH I'D PAY MONEY TO READ AN HOSHIKAWA STORMBRINGER MANGA. It doesn't even feel *that* unlikely, I really hope they continue the trend of adapting light novels as manga because it's such a wonderful way to experience the stories (and I mean Hoshikawa's art style. c'mon. it's something else.). I do agree manga is the optimal medium for novels adaptations as it's often the most faithful to the original story and even leaves space for new interesting expansions!! Like how Fifteen gave us an insight of how Mori and Dazai met for the first time with the Fifteen manga, I found it such an interesting new puzzle piece to better understand what their relationship used to be like.

I do feel like they will adapt Storm Bringer to anime at some point; I mean, they already adapted Stormbringer in all the ways they could, and the anime production LOVES Chuuya fanservice. Anime-style Verlaine even appeared in the April Fools special, so you know. Also this. Maybe for the second half of this season if they're really going to divide it in two cours like people have speculated. But I hope not, looking at the length of the novel alone it's true it seems way too long of a story to adapt it within a season without cutting too many scenes... Maybe they'll make a movie out of it, but it's hard to tell if they'd invest on that. It's unheard of to me for anime movies adapt novels which are an uncertain investment, opposite to movies like Dead Apple that have the added value of being a brand new story people are curious to learn about. Then again Stormbringer is remarkably popular so! who knows!

I know it can get upsetting to get an unfaithful adaptation– trust me, I really get it! But I think a trimmed adaptation is still better than no adaptation at all? Like look at Untold Origins, it left out so many compelling details and aspects of Ranpo's characterization (and, by the look of it, a lot of Fukuzawa internal screaming lol). But would you rather have gone without it? As bad as the sb adaptation could be we'd still at least learn what Verlaine sounds like and watch him being fabulous in animation‚ which I guess is a win!! But maybe take my words with a grain of salt, I know very little about sb to begin with. Anyways shout-out to Stormbringer Chuuya in Hoshikawa's art style

a handful (or two)

stray kids 3.9k words female reader insert Thick/Chubby!Reader x Lee Felix  EXPLICIT/NSFW

🖤 warnings: DISCUSSIONS OF WEIGHT/BODY IMAGE/INSECURITY, unprotected sex 🖤

connect with me! / masterlist

Sitting at your kitchen table in the early evening, you feel more like a soldier walking into battle than anything else.

You’ve got a list of your body measurements scrawled on a piece of paper beside you, as you scroll through an online shop on your phone. Ruffled blouses, wrap dresses, raw-hemmed jeans, tiered skirts, fitted cardigans. The clothes are cute, and your Likes list has no shortage of garments, but you’ve reached the worst part of clothes shopping:

Finding things that are actually in your size.

Korean online malls are not known for their variety of sizes, even though obviously, the people in any country who need to buy clothes have all different kinds of bodies. The cute clothes, the mainstream ones, the clothes that YouTubers and Instagram models promote, are mostly one-size. And that one size…is small.

Too small for you.

It’s a regular debate that you have with yourself. You shouldn’t even give your patronage to shops like these ones, where you have to filter through every single item and look at the detailed measurements to find the rare pair of pants that you could squeeze into. You shouldn’t play into a system that makes you hate yourself.

But you need new jeans. And in your heart, you want cute jeans from the online mall, like everyone else.

You pull up a pair of jeans in exactly the style that you want and scroll down to the measurements. You have to steel yourself as you look at the numbers.

Waist…hips…thigh…rise…length…

They’re too small.

You pull up another pair, and another, and another. They’re all too small.

“No,” says a small, dark voice in the back of your mind, “You’re just too big.”

You’re so caught up in this game of finding cute things to wear and discovering exactly how much the seller doesn’t want them to fit on people like you, that you don’t even hear your boyfriend until he’s right next to you.

“What are you doing?” comes a deep voice, right in your ear.

You jump in your seat, fumbling your phone for a second and catching it before it falls. Catching your breath, you look up at Felix, stood beside your chair gazing down at you.

“Jesus, when did you get here?” you ask, putting your phone down before anything else happens.

“Just got in,” he answers, nodding toward the door. “I called hello. You didn’t answer.”

Felix has a key to your place, free to come and go as he pleases, so it’s not exactly unusual for him to turn up like this. He’s dressed in a big t-shirt and joggers, practice clothes, obviously fresh from the studio with the rest of the guys.

“I was distracted,” you murmur.

“I guess so,” he grins at you.

You offer a halfhearted smile in return, feeling stupid for your bad mood, caused by something so out of your control. Shopping shouldn’t ruin your day. Felix pulls out your other dining chair to sit across from you at the small dining table, and you can’t help but stare at his body as he settles down. 

He’s so…skinny.

You’re envious. You shouldn’t be, because your body is plenty good enough as it is. But you are. With a body like that, you could wear anything.

“What are you doing?” he asks you.

You hesitate, but Felix pays no mind to your internal struggle, reaching across the table to pick up the scrap of paper covered in your measurements. You want to snatch the paper out of his hands, which is ridiculous. He knows what your body looks like. Seeing the numbers that describe it isn’t going to scare him off.

But still, you feel that sick self-consciousness rising up as he glances over the paper, and sets it back down.

“I’m trying to buy jeans,” you say weakly.

“Trying?” Felix prods.

“Trying and failing.”

You pick up your phone, unlock it, and shove it at him, the screen still open to the last pair of too-small jeans. He peers at the listing, at the chart full of centimeters, and then down at your measurements scrawled out in your handwriting.

“They call that a large?” Felix says, amazed, and you cringe. “It’s like a half-centimeter difference.”

You know he’s just surprised since shopping for women’s clothes isn’t something he does often, and you’re sure he doesn’t know how common this problem is for you. But his words still sting a little.

“Yeah,” you say, “I think I’m done for tonight.”

You try not to let your deep-seated disappointment in the situation, and in yourself, show too much. Felix watches as you stand up and stretch. You can tell he’s thinking hard, can see that he wants to say something. But you really don’t need his commentary on this. You spend enough time thinking about your body, wanting to change your body, hating that you want to change your body…

“Do you want dinner? I went to the store earlier,” you say, determined to change the subject.

“Sure,” Felix agrees easily.

You cross your little kitchen and fling open the cupboard to dig out groceries for your meal. At least this is a task to take your mind off everything.

You don’t even notice as Felix takes the slip of paper from the table and folds it into his pocket.

--------------- Some days later, you all but trip into your bedroom after work, exhausted but hopeful.

Felix’s shoes and jacket were both waiting by the front door when you came in, which means he’s here waiting for you. He was nowhere to be seen in the rest of your small apartment, so that leaves this.

Of course, you’re not disappointed; Felix is lounging on your bed, playing on his phone and looking like the epitome of comfort in lounge pants and messy blonde hair. He smiles like the sunrise when he sees you.

“Hi, angel,” he says, as you drop your bag on the floor.

Instead of replying, you let yourself fall onto the bed beside him, flat on your back, and stretch out your poor sore limbs like a starfish.

“Long day?” he asks.

“The longest,” you agree.

“You’re in luck, though,” he says, “I have a surprise for you.”

You turn your head to look at him. “Really?”

He nods.

“Then gimme!” you quip.

Felix laughs brightly, and unfolds himself to retrieve a small gift bag from the side of the bed, tucked out of view. He hands it to you, and it’s surprisingly heavy and dense for its size. Today isn’t a special day by any means. Just a weekday, a work day, and you wrack your brain to figure out exactly why your boyfriend decided tonight was the night for presents.

“Can I open it?” you ask.

“You’d better,” says Felix, settling back down to watch you.

So you unceremoniously rip out the tissue paper packing, and when you’re met with a small pile of folded fabric, you upend the whole bag onto your bed.

There are four things inside.

A soft, oversized t-shirt, loose and comfortable and your favorite color, to boot.

A pair of thigh-high stockings.

A single thigh garter, in bright white.

And a pair of panties, also white. You unfold the underwear, to reveal a heart-shaped cutout on the back, and at the bottom…

“Crotchless?!” you ask, flustered.

Felix shrugs, his expression mischievous, “I thought they suited you.”

“What’s all this about?” you ask.

“I wanted to prove a point,” he says.

“What point can you prove with lingerie?”

“I’m proving pretty clearly that plenty of stores sell things to your measurements,” he says cheekily, “Just not that one store you were on the other day.”

Oh, my God.

You’re equal parts mortified and absolutely melting with the sweetness at the heart of this gesture. You didn’t realize that he was paying this much attention to you that day. You didn’t realize he knew how frustrated you were, how discouraged.

“They’re pretty,” you admit, turning the panties over in your hands.

“Then try them on for me.”

Felix’s tone is suggestive and low, lower than usual, and you know for certain that he didn’t just buy these things to cheer you up. He’s got an ulterior motive here.

“What’s in it for me?” you tease.

“Dress up for me and find out,” Felix replies.

Never one to turn down the prospect of some fun, you gather up the clothes and dart across the hall into your tiny bathroom. If Felix wants you to dress up for him, you need to do that alone and make a spectacle of it.

You dump the armful of clothing onto the counter. There’s no bra or anything, so you assume that Felix means for you to wear only the t-shirt. And that’s exactly what you do, stripping out of your work clothes and pulling the shirt over your head. You put on the panties, noting exactly how well they fit. The elastic doesn’t dig, and they don’t ride up, just smooth fabric and lace against your skin, hugging the curve of your ass. You try to forget about the opening at the bottom, baring you to the world; you already know Felix fully intends to use it, but you can’t believe he’s done this. It’s bold, even for him.

The thigh-highs come next, and while these also fit more nicely than any pair of tights you’ve ever owned, you have thick thighs, and the soft skin dimples around the top elastic band. You slide the thigh garter onto one leg, settling it at the top of the stocking. It only makes that indent more pronounced, soft flesh giving way under the thick white band. But you try your hardest not to feel self-conscious about it.

Felix picked these things for you. That means he wants to see you like this.

You pluck up all your courage, and walk back into your bedroom. Felix is waiting eagerly, and when you come into view, lingering shyly at the doorway, he smirks. 

Honest-to-God smirks.

“Oh, angel,” he says, his deep voice nearly breaking over the syllables, “Oh, yes.”

You can see plainly on his face how much this little outfit is affecting him, and it sends a little thrill down your spine. Because truly, these clothes aren’t too out of the ordinary. The thigh-highs are new, and the panties aren’t something you would have picked for yourself, but it’s hard not to feel like you’re just wearing…a t-shirt and underwear.

It’s the intimacy, you decide. The fact that Felix carefully chose items in your most precise, comfortable sizes, and built you a sexy little dress-up kit that makes you feel as good as you look…God. Overwhelmingly intimate, you realize, and hot as hell.

“Let me see you, come here and give me a little spin,” Felix teases, twirling his finger in the air to mimic the model turn he’s demanding.

Smiling, squashing down a touch of embarrassment, you comply, coming to stand before Felix and turning around slowly on the spot. You can feel his eyes on you, and as you turn your back on him completely, you hear your bed creak.

Hands land on your waist as Felix pulls you flush against his front, and you can feel how hard he is already, filling out the front of his sweatpants. He’s always eager, always relishes the time you get to spend lost in each other, but he seems especially brazen tonight, as he grinds his clothed cock against your ass and slides his hands under the t-shirt to cup your bare breasts.

“You don’t even know what you do to me,” he murmurs.

You turn around in his arms, letting his hands drop back to your waist. He’s grinning at you with no small amount of lust in his eyes. You’re sure that you look similarly affected; you can already feel wetness gathering between your legs. His undivided attention, especially when you’re dressed up like this just for him, has you going out of your mind with want.

“Then show me,” you say.

He huffs out a laugh before diving in to kiss you, his pouty bow-shaped lips moving against yours roughly. Felix kisses like he’s starving and you’re one of the desserts that he loves to bake, like he’s afraid you’ll disappear if he stops ravishing you. His hands wander down to your ass, pinching hard enough that you squeak.

“Easy on the goods!” you chastise, as the spot aches deliciously.

Felix just pinches you again, harder, and guides you back toward your bed. You lay back on the mattress with Felix right behind you, settling between your spread legs. He sits back on his heels, just looking down at you beneath him in your skimpy panties and stockings. He runs his hands down your thighs indulgently, sliding a finger under the garter on one side and pulling it back so that it snaps against your skin.

“Angel, I should’ve thought of this a long time ago,” he says.

There’s no time for you to tease him, because Felix pulls his shirt over his head and discards it over the side of the bed, and you’re taken in by his gorgeous lithe body, his tiny waist and the rippling lines of his abs. No matter how many times you see him like this, it’s still exciting, that you can have someone so beautiful. He takes hold of the hem of your t-shirt next, and coaxes you upright so that he can take that off, too.

Your body is the exact opposite of his, soft where his is hard, sloping curves instead of the sharp cut of his ribs and hips and shoulders. But he leans right down over you and begins to kiss and nibble his way down your body, starting at the juncture of your collarbone. He trails his mouth over your chest, down to suck one of your nipples into his mouth. You gasp as he grazes his teeth over the bud, and he laughs gently.

Felix continues his slow ascent as you grasp at the sheets, mouthing over your stomach, soft like the rest of you. His hands hold your legs open wide for him as he moves down your body. He skips over your core entirely, choosing instead to bite sharply into the exposed skin of your upper thigh, above the band of the stockings.

“Lix!” you gasp, unable to help how your hips twitch forward at the sensation of his teeth.

He hums in response, leisurely delving forward to press a single lingering kiss to your folds, on full display in these deceptively pure white panties that hide absolutely nothing.

“Fucking love your legs,” Felix all but growls against the soft skin of your inner thigh, “Fucking love-”

Your hand flies down to grip at Felix’s hair as he bites a second bruise, this one on the tender inside of your leg. He’s never been this singularly-focused before, and you marvel at the way he’s worshipping your thighs, your waist, his hands roaming your ass and tweaking the fabric of the thigh-highs. You’ve always known that Felix liked your body – he’s your fucking boyfriend, after all. But this…

“Felix, I can’t,” you whine, “I need you, I need…”

“Oh, believe me,” Felix says, “I need it more.”

He draws away from you to push and kick his sweats and underwear off, and you watch hungrily as his cock bobs free, painfully hard and already leaking precome.

“You want – like this?” you ask, as Felix drops back on top of you, the head of his cock already nudging up against your pussy.

Felix likes it from behind, likes being able to grab your ass and watch your back arch as he drives into you. He likes you on top, so he can watch you bring yourself to orgasm using him. This is uncommon for you, missionary, you sprawled underneath Felix as he bends your knees up for better access and strokes his fingers down the length of your legs.

He nods, breathless. “Wanna see your face.”

His soft, honest admission makes your heart flutter even as you swear you can feel the arousal thrumming in your veins. You need him, need him so badly you could cry –

With a shift of his hips, Felix lines himself up and pushes into you. He’s agonizingly slow with it, just letting the head split your walls before he drags back out. He’s teasing you, absolutely doing this on purpose, and you can’t handle it. You untangle one hand from the sheets to cling to him, as he just dips the head of his cock in and out of you.

You whimper your frustration, and Felix leans in to kiss your cheeks, your nose, before pushing back in deeper, and deeper again, and finally he’s buried in you to the hilt.

“So gorgeous,” he groans, his deep voice reverbing in his chest, “You’re so good, angel, so good.”

He has one hand gripping your thigh tightly, holding your leg up beside your torso in a position that tests your flexibility more than a little bit. The other hand is digging into the curve of your hip, hard enough that you think there will be bruises.

Felix has those dancers’ hips, and core strength that lets him drive into you like he’s doing now, smooth long strokes that you arch up to meet as well as you can in his grip. He’s holding you at an angle that lets his pelvis grind against your clit every time he bottoms out. It’s not enough stimulation to let you finish, but it’s more than enough to drive you out of your mind.

“Lix, Lix, please,” you beg, not even sure what you’re asking for.

He says something, quiet enough that you can’t really pick it up, and when you move your hand from his dip of his spine to the back of his head, Felix fixes his gaze right on you. He’s still speaking, rambling in his deep voice.  

“-Let a fucking app make you think you’re not perfect cuz their fucking jeans don’t fit you,” he’s saying, “So soft, so pretty, like fuckin’ heaven, look at you.”

You can’t look at yourself all that well, but you can look at Felix, glance down to see the way he’s burying his cock in you again and again, holding himself up to look you in the eye as he fucks you into the mattress.

“Perfect,” he swears, “Taking me like a dream, angel…”

He’s never this vocal, either, and the talk has your head spinning almost as much as the brutal pace he’s maintaining. You can hear the obscene sound of your wetness around him. The desperate, weak first stirrings of an orgasm are starting to creep up on you, but you know yourself. You’re going to need more than this to finish.

Even so, you clench around Felix as he works himself into you again, and again, and he laughs breathlessly at the feeling of it.

“Are you gonna cum for me?” Felix asks, low and sweet.

You shake your head desperately, “Not enough – Lix, please, I need-”

“Not enough?” he echoes, amused, as his hips snap against yours in perfect time, “What, is this not good enough for you, angel?”

“So good, so good, just, please,” you whine.

Felix doesn’t answer you, but he does let go of your leg to bring his fingers up to your face. You’re so far gone, so hazy with lust and the orgasm that’s building but just isn’t close enough, that you barely notice him until his fingers are pressing at your lips.

He has small, beautiful hands, and you open your mouth to let him slip two dainty fingers into your mouth. You suck on the digits, knowing how much Felix likes having your mouth on him, or his on you. He’s not picky, as long as someone is licking, biting, sucking…

“So dirty,” he sighs.

Only for him, you think to yourself. You can’t summon the words to say to him out loud, but you certainly think them. Only for him.

“Don’t hold back on me now, angel,” Felix says.

He retrieves his fingers from your mouth, and snakes his hand down between your bodies to press them feather-light to your clit. You can’t help the gasp that escapes from you as he touches you, gentle and precise. The slide would have been wet and easy enough even without the extra help, but the combination of your saliva and your wetness as it seeps out around Felix’s thick cock makes his fingers glide over your clit with friction so good it’s almost painful.

Under your breath, almost like a prayer, you’re murmuring, chanting, “Please, please, please, please, oh-”

“You first,” he says, “Come on, are you gonna give me one?”

You want to, God, do you want to. You writhe in his hold, torn between rocking away from the steady delicious pressure on your clit and into the press of his cock splitting you open. Felix throws his head back as you tremble around him - your peak is so close you can fucking taste it - and groans.

“Love you,” Felix gasps, “Shit, love you, love your body-”

That’s what does it.

That view, Felix above you, so fucked out, working so hard to make you feel good. Physically and mentally, that’s what he’s trying to do. He saw you being upset for like fifteen minutes the other day and he’s putting in all this effort to build you up. He just wants you to feel good –

“Felix!”

His name passes your lips, just once, before you’re cumming hard with a strangled moan. Felix fucks into you hard once, twice, and then thrusts into you fully with a cry of his own as he cums against your walls. He’s quick to drop down and meet your lips in a messy kiss, pressing your bodies together, skin on skin.

The two of you shudder and murmur your way through your orgasms, as you marvel at how quickly he was able to bring you crashing right over the peak with him.

Once your voice comes back to you, all your can manage is another squeaking, “Felix.”

“Yeah,” he answers, decisive, like you’ve just revealed the secrets of the universe to him. “Yeah.”

He pulls out and gingerly moves off of you, but not without stroking his hands from your waist all the way down your thighs as he goes. You laugh quietly as Felix collapses onto his back beside you, wiping his brow dramatically like he’s just gotten off a hard day at work. His cum begins to drip back out of you as you sit up, which is gross, but you just want to be close to him. You curl against his side, head on his chest, and Felix accommodates you easily, cuddling into you just as eagerly.

As you readjust on the bed, settle into a more comfortable position, you notice the bruises. Tender new bruises on your hip, and along the side of your thigh where Felix had held you so tightly. It’s the perfect shape of his fingertips, fanning out along your skin.

“Jeez,” you murmur, touching the spots and secretly relishing the way they hurt.

“Sorry,” Felix grins, though he doesn’t look very sorry at all. “Just…your thighs. Your body. Love it.”

Empathetic Chapter 14

Pairing: Bakugou Katsuki x Reader

Summary: After your mom, the number 1 hero in America, gets offered a teaching position at U.A., you two pack up your things and head to Musutafu, Japan to start a new life. Pressure for you in America was at an all-time high, and now you’re in Japan, where almost no one knows you, or your family’s past.

This tale starts on your first day of class where your new teacher decides the best way for you to fit in is to fight against the strongest person in your class: Bakugou Katsuki.

Warnings/Genre: This piece will feature some angst and reference to an abusive parent, if you are ever worried about other tw’s feel free to send me an ask and I will let you know. There will also be fluff, slight angst, pining, and slowburn.

A/N: I’m glad I was able to get another chapter out before school starts for me. Anyways, please let me know what you guys think! I love hearing your thoughts and feelings on the story!

(masterlist)

You woke up on Sunday with a small pit in your stomach.

It only grew bigger as the day continued.

However, it started small. Just a little bit of nerves for your training sessions today. Except, you did not have much time to think about these anxieties because you woke up to an email from Kobayashi.

You went in yesterday to try on the costume, it fits quite well. You loved the style he was able to encapsulate as well as the functionality it allowed. Once he pinned it in a few places and adjust some things, he bid you farewell.

He said his intern, who was a student at U.A., would make the adjustments that day and be able to give it to you for one more look over in the morning. Additionally, this student would be the person you would be contacting if you ever needed any adjustments.

The email, which also had this student in it, detailed where you two would meet up to do any final adjustments if there was anything after the adjustments made yesterday.

The meeting time was set for 10:00 in the morning and it was currently 7:00, giving you ample time to go on a quick run, shower, and eat something.

Although your morning run was usually an opportunity for you to relax, you ended up feeling more nervous than anything. It was during this run that you were able to finally think about your fight against Bakugou.

You were sure in your abilities and skill with your quirk, enough so that you knew you would be safe. However, you also knew that Bakugou has been waiting for weeks for this rematch. If he won, he would surely gloat. If he lost, he would look like an angry Pomeranian as he demanded another fight.

Additionally, this anger would surely pour-over and affect the fight in a way that could be unsafe.

You felt the pit in your stomach grow just a bit more as you turned up your music and increased your running speed in an attempt to calm down.

By the time you finished running and took a shower, you barely had an appetite. The nerves in your stomach were making the idea of a meal seem disgusting and vile. Despite this, you knew you needed to eat something and forced yourself to drink a protein shake and a piece of toast with jam.

Hopefully not having an empty stomach will help my nerves, you thought as you munched on the toast.

Once the clock inched close enough to 10:00, you made your way to the support team’s school building.

Even though it was the weekend, the building was loud and bustling. Students were running through the halls and rooms with metal in their hands. Cautiously, walked through the building to find a specific room where your new costume designer would be.

Once there, you noticed only one other person in the room.

“Iwasaki Kou-san?” You asked while taking in their outfit and style. Their hair was straight, with some strands falling in front of their face. The rest was pulled back into a white hair tie. The dark color of his hair had hints of blue throughout when hit by the light correctly. With that in mind, it was difficult to identify the hair as one solid shade. However, the most noticeable things about him were his deep eyes and thick eyebrows that made him stand out despite no one else being there.

He was nowhere near as fit as the heroes you surrounded yourself with. However, the black t-shirt he had on shaped his form in a quite flattering way.

You stopped your eyes from wandering lower and you instead looked at his surroundings. He was currently tinkering with something, but you weren’t quite sure what it was. On a mannequin behind him was your hero costume, laying limply across the much too small body.

“Yeah,” He casually replied, the smile forming on his lips was kind, inviting, and yet held a mysteriousness that you couldn’t decipher. “Are you Y/L/N-san?” His voice was soft.

You gulped down and nodded, stepping further into the room.

“Perfect,” He took off the thick gloves that covered your hands and wiped the soot off them with a white cloth he kept tucked into his pants. He then held out his now clean hand to shake your own.

You gently took his own, his calloused hands sending shivers up your spine.

Why do I feel so calm and yet so nervous? You questioned as you forced yourself to smile.

“Shall we get started?” He asked.

“Sure!” You excitedly agreed.

Iwasaki immediately moved to the mannequin and unzipped your uniform. Gently, he handed you the fabric. “You can go into that room there to change,” He explained, pointing to a door on the other side of the classroom. “I’ll pull out all the extra items while you change.

You entered the small room to see that it looked quite like a typical changing room. A small ledge to sit on or hold items, a body-length mirror, and a few hooks to hold items.

The tight bodysuit was a deep blue that looked almost black. Sort of like Kou’s hair, you thought as you pulled it on. Throughout the suit were detailed of neon yellow. As Kobayashi explained to you before, the details were the only stylist and were a way to incorporate your family’s colors without being too cheesy. The arms of the suit stopped just after your shoulder to allow for mobility. The legs, additionally, stopped quickly. You had a small metal waist set that could hold swords and expand to protect vital organs. Your pants stopped midthigh.

You remember specifically telling Kobayashi-san that you wanted skin exposed so you could use your quirk when people touch you, without having a hard to manage skirt.

Once you zipped up your suit, you made your way back into the main classroom.

Iwasaki smiled at you once he saw you.

He was currently surrounded by a variety of dark blues and neon yellows that stood out at all your support items.

He handed you the boots to your suit first.

“I tinkered with the boots a bit, but you shouldn’t notice much difference,” Iwasaki explained. “I was just trying to make them lighter.”

You nodded and you took your time to attach them. The boots stopped under your calf, but straps ran up your leg to attach to a knee cap.

“I’m sure Kobayashi-sensei told you, but the straps are to help prevent injuries from any awkward movements or excessive running. The boots and straps will help you to run faster, but it won’t be by too much so you can get used to the boost. If you want, you can also attach weights to them while you train so that you move faster in the field with the weights off.” He paused for a moment before adding, “Oh and the blade feature on your other boots is the same with these.”

You silently nodded, much too focused on putting everything on correctly.

You then attached the compact shoulder pads to your costume.

You the attached metal cuffs to your wrist that you also assembled to help prevent injuries on your hands or arms. It would also help add weight and power to any punches you would have to throw.

Last but certainly not least were your ear and eye protectors.

Kobayashi brilliantly designed your ear attachments with three different functions. When needed, you could use the ear attachments like your earbuds and prevent you from hearing thoughts. The second function was to increase your hearing distance. Although he was unable to increase your hearing distance for thoughts, he was able to help even out the differences. Now you could hear people from as far as 100 ft without needing to take out the earbuds that help prevent you from hearing thoughts. You were also able to zero in on certain sounds if needed. The final function was a simple Bluetooth addition in case you needed to communicate with other heroes on the field.

“Your ear attachments are cool, but I’m really excited to make them better for you,” Kou smiled calmly and brightly at you. “I want to make them perfect because half of your quirk is so based around your ears.”

Appreciatively, you smiled at the boy. “That’s very nice, thank you.”

Iwasaki sheepishly waved you off, “It’s my pleasure! I became a support student for a reason. If I’m able to figure anything out, I might even make it my final analysis and creation project.”

“Are you a third-year?” You asked.

“Yeah,” The boy blushed lightly and scratched at the back of his head, “I am.”

You simply nodded before attaching the shield to your earpiece that protected your eyes.

You then moved over to look at yourself in the full-body mirror.

I look amazing.

“You like it?” Iwasaki asked, interrupting yourself from going on an analytical tangent for each piece of the costume.

“I love it,” You explained, smiling brightly at yourself.

“I’m glad,” He paused briefly. “I saw your original sketches and I was worried you would hate it. Kobayashi-sensei didn’t tell me how much you two collaborated together, so I didn’t know.

You nodded as you looked at the dark black dots on your left shoulder pad. It wasn’t too noticeable from far away, but you could see it up close against the dark blue.

“Yeah,” You started, “He basically lectured me in a face call and told me I needed to think more about my quirk and what would be best for me, rather than what I thought was cool.” You thought over your next words carefully, “I’m still glad a have a place for my swords. And I have my own black shoulder strap for my biggest sword.”

“Thanks,” Kou said, “I actually thought of the metal sword holder and shield expansion feature.”

“Really?” You inquired.

“Yeah,” He ensured, a smile brightening up his face. “But you should also show me the shoulder strap. Maybe I can make it better or make a new one that will help with weight and comfort.”

“You wouldn’t mind?”

“You seem to keep forgetting this is literally my job,” He laughed. It sounded beautiful. “My third year is all about helping students and only asking my professors or intern leader for help when I need it.”

You nodded in understanding before adding. “Maybe I will. I’ll make sure to email you about it.”

“Of course,” Kou agreed. “And do you have any other adjustments you want now?”

“No, not really,” You explained, a bright smile plastered across your face.

“Then I guess you are all set if you want to change back,” Iwasaki spoke while slipping on his gloves again.

“Perfect, I’ll be right back then.” You grabbed your suitcase and went back into the small changing room to take off all your support items and costume. When done, you stepped back out, bid Kou a farewell, and left.

You walked back to the dorm with your suitcase, a little bit happier than you expected. The costume fit perfectly at this point, and you were excited to move forward with OOO in all other possible upgrades you could make. Although it wasn’t what you initially envisioned and sketched out when you first met Kobayashi, all the changes he made, with your approval, made the costume much better and more modern.

You reminisced about your first meeting with the designer, where he asked you what kind of hero you wanted to be, a sentiment that OOO was clearly upholding.

After discovery and debate, the new costume that was drawn up fit you much better than you could expect.

It wasn’t until you got back to the dorm that the pit in your stomach reared its ugly head.

The first thing you saw when you opened the large door was a sleepy Bakugou, clearly just woken up.

He was yawning, a small cup of coffee in his hands, and his hair seemed to be more of a mess than usual.

Once he opened his eyes again, he immediately found your own eyes. Although the living room and dining table were crowded with about five other people, he immediately made his way to you.

“You got your hero costume?” He asked. There wasn’t any malicious tinge to his voice, but the gruff sound of his natural voice mixed with the deepness from just waking up made your stomach queasy.

You had half a mind to just run into the bathroom and make yourself puke. However, you swallowed your nerves and nodded, hoping you didn’t look like too much of a fool.

“Maybe we should wear our costumes for our training today,” He smirked at your before eyeing your suitcase that had the number 21 printed on it. “I have a few support items I would love to try out on you.”

The idea sent a shiver up your spine, something that wouldn’t normally happen. Bakugou makes me way too nervous, you thought as you debated over what to make next. In hope of lightening up to conversation a little bit, you asked, “Oh, did Iwasaki make new support items for you too?”

“Iwasaki?” Bakugou spat back, obviously offended. “Not only would I never let that weirdo touch my equipment, but I’m also offended you didn’t realize I made them myself.”

“Iwasaki isn’t weird,” You countered, practically laughing. “He was so nice!”

Bakugou scoffed and looked away from you. “Whatever, I would just rather tinker with my own shit than have him do it. He seems too perfect, that smile of his is so weird.”

Despite still being nervous about the fight, you found yourself laughing at Bakugou’s explanation. “Too perfect?” You spoke in-between laughs. “You really can be funny sometimes, Bakugou—”

You stopped yourself from using an honorific. Not sure if he would prefer a more formal ‘san’ or a friendlier ‘kun’.

Although he clearly noticed your pause and debate on which one to use, he simply glossed over it and replied with an “I am not funny! I am being serious!” The blond groaned in frustration before adding. “You know what? Let’s wear our costumes, and we will actually see how well Iwa-shitty did.”

“Iwasaki barely did anything to my costume,” You reasoned, “He only adjusted a few things, the work is still mostly Kobayashi-san’s.”

“Whatever,” He gruffly replied, “Just bring your damn suitcase so we can change in the lockers beforehand.”

“Whatever your say, Bakugou,” You replied, quietly laughing to yourself at his small and childish fit.

The blond walked away from you without another word, leaving you by yourself with some free time.

The first thing you did was make your way to the kitchen to prepare yourself something to eat. Since it was approaching lunchtime anyway, Iida and Uraraka we currently preparing themselves some food.

“No internship today?” You asked them, remembering seeing each of them go out to internships before.

“Nope!” Uraraka gingerly explained, “We aren’t allowed to have internships on Saturday and Sunday because they want us to have enough time for school.”

“Today is our day off,” Iida added as you watched him mix something in a small, Styrofoam container.

When you got closer, a rank and vile smelled filled your nose. You immediately knew it was coming from the container and backed up while covering your nose.

You had no intention to insult their food preferences, especially because you weren’t from here, but Uraraka immediately noticed your reaction and laughed.

“You’ve never seen natto?” She asked.

You shook your head, not wanting to speak in fear that you would get a bigger sniff of the food.

Iida looked back to see your face. “Sorry,” He spoke.

“No! Don’t worry!” You replied, wanting to be as nice as you could.

Uraraka laughed again. “Natto is fermented soybeans. It might smell weird and the texture is slimy, but it tastes so good in rice, especially with mustard and fish sauce.”

You nodded while peaking over to get a look at the slimy brown beans.

“Do you want to try it?” Iida asked you, turning so you could see his portion of rice and beans.

“Umm,” You mumbled, not sure what to say. You didn’t want to take his food, and you definitely didn’t know if you would like it.

“You should,” Uraraka encouraged. “We can give you just a bit to taste.” She pulled out a bowl from the cabinet and scooped a little of her portion into the bowl. “Even if you don’t like it, you’ll have to get used to it. It’s a cheap, easy, and healthy meal so everyone here eats it often.”

Hesitantly, you grabbed the small bowl and chopsticks she offered you.

“Don’t smell it, “Iida began “Just eat it.”

Listening to Iida, you stopped yourself from smelling the bowl and shoved it into your mouth. Despite 80% of the dish being rice only, the flavor of the natto was most prevalent. You chewed quickly, not sure if it was the type of dish to savor.

You closed your eyes, swallowed the bite, and looked back to your two classmates.

“It looked like you hated it,” Uraraka laughed while munching on her own bowl.

“No,” You countered, “It’s okay. I’m just not used to it.” You got the rest of the rice and bean in-between your chopsticks and finished your bowl. “Thank you for letting my try.”

“No problem,” Iida and Uraraka replied together before they took their leave from the kitchen to seat at the large dining table.

You then scoured the fridge and cupboards for a suitable lunch and settled on fried rice leftovers from dinner the night before. You heated up a bowl and took it upstairs to eat.

Time passed slowly as you worked on homework and had videos playing in the background. Eventually, then the clock read 10 to 3:00pm, you got up from your seat and changed into comfortable workout clothes. You grabbed your suitcase, a large water container, and two different swords before making your way downstairs.

When you got to the front door, Bakugou was already waiting, dressed in comfortable workout clothes. His own suitcase was in his hand as well as two large looking grenades and water.

You didn’t bother even asking what the grenades were for as Bakugou simply waited for you to slip on other shoes.

You followed Bakugou out the door silently. “We’ll start with stretches and then change into our costumes,” Bakugou explained. “I rented out a fourth of the cityscape so we will have plenty of room to move around.”

“Okay,” You replied, “Although I might need some time to warm up with my hero costume because it just got finished today.”

“It can’t be that different, can it?” Bakugou inquired.

“It’s completely different, “You explained. “My older hero uniform was so ugly; it didn’t help my quirk at all and just matched with my family’s theme.”

“Your family has a theme?” He questioned while barking out a laugh. “That’s so cringy.”

“Yeah,” You mumbled, “But it is important to my mom and common in the United States.”

Bakugou simply hummed in response and he brought you to a small field. It was right next to the building that held changing rooms, making it ideal for your short warm-up.

“Do you want to warm up together?” You asked him.

“It’s up to you,” Bakugou replied before setting down his things and beginning his warm-up. It mainly consisted of basic stretches every person typically does.

Following his lead, you dropped your belongings to the side and moved to take off your earbuds.

“You’re taking them off now,” Bakugou asked.

You turned to see him looking at you and replied, “Yeah, is that a problem?”

“Uhh,” Bakugou fumbled, “No, I guess not.”

Ignoring his weird comment, you simply put away the earbuds. I’ll just hear any weird thoughts he has anyway.

What first filled your mind, however, was Bakugou thinking:

Don’t think weird thoughts, don’t think weird thoughts.

You couldn’t stop yourself from laughing at his thoughts which immediately drew his attention.

“What?” He spat out.

“Nothing,” You replied after your laughter died down. I don’t need to tell him about how weird he is being, you told yourself and you began your own stretch routine.

You also needed to warm up your quirk, something you did by focusing on different thoughts around you. Because Bakugou was so close to you, his thoughts we most noticeable. However, it was important to see how far you could take your quirk, so you focused as best your could on different thoughts from people different distances away.

Eventually, when your body felt nice and stretched, you wanted to move on to a jog. After letting Bakugou know, you jogged a few laps around the field while he sprinted to build up a sweat.

Once ready, you made your way into the changing rooms with all your belongings. Bakugou followed shortly behind you.

The second you put it on, you could feel the differences in your hero costume. You felt lighter despite having more on. You took a small lap around the locker room to test your speed. You then tested your earpieces that covered your ears completely. Once satisfied, you attached a dagger to the metal plate around your waist. You brought your largest and heaviest sword today. First, to test out how it works with your costume so you could bring it to Kou with any needed adjustments, and two, to intimidate Bakugou.

No one in your class yet had seen your work with knives, daggers, and swords, making it a surprising advantage if need be. You took another moment to stretch in your hero uniform before exiting the room and meeting back up with Bakugou who was facing away from you and stretching.

Immediately, your eyes found him and stared at his hero costume. It was mainly black, with touches of orange and green. From the first view, it was scary. However, you noticed intricate pieces that made it seem detailed and well thought out. However, what was most interesting to you was how it fit on him.

You would hit yourself if you weren’t so distracted ogling his free arms. They looked much bigger than you had ever seen on him. And yet, they also seemed like the perfect size. He must do a lot of weightlifting, you thought as your eyes then traveled to his waist. It was covered in black cloth, making it impossible to see his abs, but his thin waist was enough to see.

He looks so hot, your thoughts. You were unable to place every piece of his hero costume that made him this attractive, but his arms and waist were the main ones. You gulped down the lump in your throat as you watched him bend over to touch his toes

“Holy shit,” You accidentally spoke aloud.

Immediately, the blond shot up and turned to look at you. “What did you s—?” He began to question before stopping halfway through.

Holy shit, his thoughts similarly echoed yours.

You looked down, very aware that your cheeks were flaring a deep red. Although it definitely boosted your ego to hear him react to your costume like that, it sent waves of anxiety through you. He knows I can hear his thoughts. Why isn’t he stopping himself, you questioned as he thoughtfully admired the way your leg straps hugged your bare thighs.

“Are you ready?” You asked, breaking the thick silence, and hoping to distract him.

You weren’t sure how to feel. On one hand, it felt amazing to hear his thoughts. It was clear he found you attractive. However, that did not mean he liked you as more than a friend, classmate, or whatever he actually thought. You nervously shuffled from one foot to the other and Bakugou shook his head.

You fucking creep, he thought.

“Yeah,” He mumbled. His voice was raspy, and he immediately grabbed his water from the ground and chugged a good portion. He then picked up all his items and you silently followed him to the cityscape.

Both of you were stuck in your own thoughts. You debated whether or not this situation was a good thing or a bad thing. I’ll definitely have to talk to Ashido and Hagakure later. And Bakugou was currently wondering over if you heard him.

What are those things are her ears? Can she hear me with them? Maybe she can’t… I could ask her what they are. No, that’s too obvious!

“So,” You eventually began after Bakugou signed in on a sheet of paper that hung at the entrance of the cityscape. “Are you wanting to do a ruled match? Or are you wanting to do a bad guy versus good guy things?” You were trying to break the awkward silence, hoping that fighting would distract you both from the nerves you were feeling.

“A match,” He simply replied. His voice wavered more than it typically would, however, it evened out more and more as he continued to talk. “It will end when the other person admits defeat or is too injured to play.”

“Oof, that sounds intense,” You jokingly replied. You needed to give this match your all. Bakugou was a competitor and should be treated as a stepping stone for you to improve your quirk usage. Hopefully, Bakugou's thoughts and actions were slow enough for you to interpret and prevent them. That would be the key factor in who won today.

Bakugou laughed in response. The typical bark of a laugh that you had become too quickly acquainted to. “Yeah, well you better be ready.”

You two took your time making it to your designated area and choosing a spot to store your suitcases and waters. Once done, Bakugou put on the grenades he had been carrying onto his forearms.

“What do those do?” You innocently asked.

“I’m not telling you, they’re a surprise for later.”

Similarly, to how Bakugou would, you scoffed at his reply. “That was so cringy,” You added.

In response, Bakugou rolled his eyes and let out a simple, “Whatever.”

You genuinely smiled while you watch him finish securing the large grenades to his forearms.

I wonder what his first attacks will be, you thought. Those grenades can’t be his first attack. It must be something that builds up energy. Smirking, you thought of a way to make his motives clear.

“What’s your first attack against me going to be?” You asked him.

The blond whipped his head around and looked at you with squinted eyes. “Like I would ever tell you.” Don’t think about how you plan to worsen her hearing, you heard him think.

You tried your best not to react to him revealing his thoughts and simply frowned. “I guess it was worth a try.”

Bakugou didn’t bother replying and simply faced you. “Ready?” He asked as he cracked his knuckles and neck.

You simply shrugged, trying your best to look casual. I need to get away from him before he can explode out my eardrums. “Ready as I’ll ever be,” You nonchalantly responded.

You waited for a beat, just enough time to move before Bakugou. Luckily, the straps on your legs helped greatly to increase your speed. It made you feel lighter and helped smooth out your movements enough to save a decent amount of time. You were out of Bakugou’s eyesight in a flash, leaving him baffled. She’s faster than I remember. By the time he recovered enough to chase after you, you had turn multiple corners and climbed up a fire escape attached to one of the skyscrapers.

Bakugou launched himself into the sky to move faster He was clearly looking to attack quickly instead of surprise you. You used the sharp and retractable blades attached to your shoes to smash a window, timing the shattering glass sounds to the sound of his explosions.

You moved into the building, hoping he would be unable to see the shattered glass with him moving so quickly. Inside the building, you drew your dagger, just in case he found you. I’ll throw it at him if need be, you thought and you began moving higher and higher up the floors.

As Bakugou soared through the sky, he found himself analyzing the ground more than anything else. After searching a decent distance, he realized something must be off. She can’t be on the ground if I can see her from here, you hear him think. He then landed on one of the taller buildings and looked around.

I didn’t see any climbing materials on her costume unless those straps are detachable? Bakugou thought over each piece of your costume, noting whether or not they could be used to climb up buildings. He began jumping from building to building, looking for a signal.

And that’s when he saw it.

Shattered glass on the grated ground of a fire escape, teetering from side to side as if recently moved and threatening to fall a floor below.

Excitedly, Bakugou pounced on the building and peered into the room. She isn’t on this floor anymore, he noted while debating to go down or up. I’ll find you soon, he thought as he searched below first. It took him approximately 10 seconds to realize you didn’t move lower down the building. He quickly moved higher and higher, searching through the windows on each floor in hopes of seeing a flash of dark blue and yellow.

She must be on the staircase, he thought after being unable to find you. That’s the only place without windows, he reasoned before debating whether to move into the staircase himself or go to the roof where he presumed you were going to be.

His thoughts were clear to you and did not affect your plan in the slightest. With ease, you made your way to the roof. You didn’t want to tire yourself out too much. You opened the clunky door only to be hit with a gust of wind. This school must be rich to be able to simulate gusts of wind, you thought as you spotted the large fans that were scattered across the walls of this cityscape.

You perched yourself on the metal box that was warm enough to help against the wind.

Now it is just a waiting game, you thought as you simply listened to Bakugou’s thoughts.

Eventually, and predictably, he showed up through the same door you came into. You had positioned yourself behind where he would show up so he initially didn’t see you.

Quietly, you looked around the small building and watched as he peered across the sky.

There’s no way she could have gotten off from here unless she climbed down.

You put away your dagger and de-sheathed your large sword. It was chunky and sharp with a wide and heavy handle to keep it sturdy. Before Bakugou could turn or hear you, you pushed forward and kicked the blond with the bottom of your heavy boot.

He stumbled but did not fall to the floor. You held up your sword, using it to extend your arm. As soon as Bakugou turned to look at you, his neck was greeted by the sharp sword only inches away. He didn’t move for a moment, but quickly recovered and sent a blast your way. Now within a small distance, he sent off multiple small explosions. Not only did you cower to get away from his explosion, but the small explosions made it difficult to hear his thoughts.

You pushed forward despite your nerves to the boy and used the flat edge of your sword to hit him. Not sharp enough to harm him, but still a force to be reckoned with. Additionally, the thin sharp edge that was intended for use may seep in enough from the pressure to give him a small cut.

He shot back instantly, and a small amount of blood dripped from his arm. He was breathing heavily, as were you. Although he was not attacking in this moment, he still set off explosions to impede upon your quirk. You didn’t know Bakugou’s fighting style well, but you knew enough. From what you were able to pick up, you knew he intended to go for hand-to-hand combat.

Idiot, you thought while widening your stance and bending at the kneed to prepare yourself. The 50-foot distance between the two of you closed quickly as he pounced on you. Smoothly, you were able to dodge and keep a good distance with your sword and sharp blades on your shoes.

“You really should listen to my mom’s defensive lectures,” You commented. “Playing an offensive role will only get you so far.” You mocked him, watching his eyebrows turn down in anger and his thoughts rush with the idea of just fucking hit her.

You moved out of the way for each of his attacks, only feeling the heat of an explosion or the brush of his fingertips.

When the time was right, you held your sword with only one hand and pushed forward to grab onto his arm. You twisted it before he could react to make sure he could not send an explosion your way. Currently, you were positioned so your right hand held onto his left forearm. His body was twisted so his back was to your right shoulder. The blond twisted his head to look at you and continued to send off explosions to hopefully distract you.

With every explosion, you felt a pulse through his veins, and you held tightly. He groaned in pain at the action, making you realize that his wrist was a weak spot for him. “Oh, so do you have these protect your forearms and wrists?” You asked, gesturing to the large grenades.

His emotions and thoughts made his arms clear. Not just that, you idiot.

“I am not an idiot,” You replied, feigning offense.

Bakugou scoffed in reply and you laughed back at him.

“I’m winning right now, you know?” You spat back, “I wouldn’t scoff at me when I could end this battle right here.”

“Oh yeah?” Bakugou encouraged, “How?”

“Like this…sleep.” You immediately put him to sleep, something he wasn’t expected. You could tell from his thoughts that he wasn’t thinking much about this part of your quirk. Once asleep, you thought over what to do next.

You dragged his heavy body to the edge of the building, wondering if he would wake up in time to save himself if you threw him off.

I don’t think I should risk it, you thought.

Sighing, you pulled him away from the roof, pushed him farther into sleep and let go. You sat down on the ledge and waited a few minutes for the blond to wake up. You pat yourself on the back for getting him to sleep for so long and casually waited for the time to end.

It took a total of 15 minutes for the blond to finally beginning rising. Another minute for him to realize where he was. He looked up at you with a quizzical face.

“If this wasn’t training and you were a real villain, I would have thrown you off this building,” You explained. “I think I win.”

“Like hell you do,” Bakugou groggily replied while getting up. He moved into a fighting stance and you stayed put. “Are you going to get up?” He yelled at you.

You hummed, debating what to do next. “I don’t feel like it,” You replied, knowing full well how much it would irritate him.

“Then I’ll send you off the roof with an explosion,” He spat back.

“No,” You calmly replied, “I don’t think you will.”

“And why is that?” He asked.

You smirked at the boy. “Because,” You began while letting go of the ledge with your hands and leaning back, “Of this.” Once you finished those words, your body fell back and off the building. You positioned your body as safely as you could.

Obviously, this was a dangerous tactic. It was something you would never do in the field. However, you needed to have fun every now and then and Bakugou was so easy to tease. You knew he had a fast enough reaction time to get you. That was proved correct when you saw his body shoot off the side of the building.

Explosion after explosion was set off until you felt a strong arm wrap around your waist.

You looked down and saw you were about 10 feet to the ground. Bakugou reached out and grabbed onto a fire escape. “Jump down,” Bakugou spoke, his voice low.

His arm slipped away from you as you prepared yourself to fall to the ground. Your shoes, which could absorb shock, helped to make the jump easy and comfortable. Bakugou followed you, dropping a few feet away.

You stood silently as the blond stared at you before practically running up to you.

“What is wrong with you?” He demanded while holding onto your arms and shaking you.

Because of the large gloves on his hands, you weren’t able to feel his emotions. However, you were fairly certain he was worried.

You felt bad.

You felt really bad.

His eyes held more worry than you had seen from him and his thoughts had been rushing so much during these past thirty seconds that it gave you a headache. You were sure he had one too.

“I’m sorry,” You bashfully replied. “I wanted to shock you.”

“Yeah, well you did that perfectly,” He replied. He groaned while looking over your body, wanting to see if you got hurt.

“I’m not hurt,” You mumbled, pulling away from him because of how nervous his staring made you feel.

He reluctantly let go of you and let you step away.

“I didn’t mean to worry you so much,” You commented, stopping there because you weren’t sure whether or not to say sorry. That might be too far, you thought.

Bakugou stiffened immediately. It was clear those words made him nervous.

Worry? You heard him think. Fuck, I am worried. I shouldn’t be worried. I shouldn’t be worried. But I am.

Bakugou scoffed, “I have to worry for stupid idiots like you.” Why am I so worried about her? I wouldn’t be this worried about anyone else.

You simply nodded, not wanting to remind him that you could hear his thoughts. “So,” You began after a short pause, “Are we done for today?”

“After the heart attack you gave me today?” He rhetorically questioned, “Yeah, we are done for today.”

Once again, you nodded and followed Bakugou as he began walking to where you left your bags.

“Next time,” He began as your items came into sight, “Let’s just rent out part of the gym and work on hand-to-hand combat. That way,” He turned to look at you, “You can’t pull any dumb tricks.” He paused for a moment, “Also so you don’t fucking cut me with your sword again.”

“Oh!” You exclaimed, moving closer to the blond to look at his cut. “I forgot!”

Once you got to your item, you opened your suitcase and pulled out rubbing alcohol, a couple of band aids, and a Japanese brand for Neosporin.

“Here,” You began, showing the small first aid kit, “Let me clean it.”

Bakugou reluctantly sat down and allowed you to scoot close to him. You rinsed your hands off by pouring some of your water onto them before grabbing a cotton ball and also putting water onto it. You used the wet cotton ball to clean the blood around the cut, some of it was already dry. You then took another cotton ball and put a small amount of alcohol onto it.

Carefully, you ran the cotton ball over the small cut on his arm. Bakugou took a sharp breath in because of the stinging but stayed still as you cleaned it. You pulled it away and looked up at the blond. Your hands had been holding your arm still, allowing you to feel just how nervous he was.

Unfortunately, because of your quirk, you felt the exact same feelings as him. You tried your best to resist any obvious reactions and let go of his arm, so you were no longer being bombarded with nervousness.

When you looked up at him, you saw pink on his cheeks, and you weren’t sure if it was from the training or the anxiety he felt as you took care of him. Additionally, you were fairly certain you also had a blush because of your empathetic abilities. He looked into your eyes for a moment before you tore your own away and went to grab the ointment.

Cautiously, you spread a small amount onto the cut. You then took a few band-aids and spread them across his arms to cover the wound.

“Thanks,” Bakugou quietly spoke once you finished and started putting away the items.

“No problem,” You simply replied before grabbing your water and taking a swig.

Silently, the two of you grabbed your things and made your way to the lockers. The school provided showers in the locker room and well as all the necessary toiletries to help prevent kids from easily stinking up their dorms. Considering your run today and all the hard work you did, you decided a shower before going back to the dorms would be best.

“You don’t have to wait up for me,” You spoke as you two arrived at the lockers. “I’m going to shower.”

Bakugou hummed in response and entered his respective room. You casually and efficiently changed, washed your body, and put on your workout clothes again. They weren’t smelly from only stretching so it wasn’t bad to wear them.

You pushed your dry hair back, put in your earbuds, and grabbed all your things to make your way out of the locker room.

When you exited, you immediately saw Bakugou, who was leaning against a rail on his phone. His items were placed next to him and his left hand was shoved into the pocket of his sweatpants.

“Took you long enough,” He mumbled while looking at you. “You didn’t even wash your hair, what took you forever?”

“I told you not to wait for me,” You replied, “It is your fault for waiting.”

Bakugou scoffed and grabbed his things. “Whatever,” He mumbled before beginning to walk back to the dorms. “I wanted to talk to you about dinner tomorrow,” He explained, “And I didn’t want to text your later.”

“Wow,” You replied in a dry voice, “You sure do know how to make someone feel special.”

“Shut up idiot,” He spat back. You could once again see pink on his cheeks but chose to ignore it. “Anyways,” He began again, “Meet me in the kitchen at four. Sero will be there at five. I want to see how well you can cook.”

“What are we making?” You asked.

“Rice with umeboshi, miso soup, salad, some other shit,” Bakugou replied. “It’s a lot. I know in America that dishes aren’t broken up as much so I will show you everything tomorrow.”

You nodded, “Thanks. I appreciate you trying to help teach me.”

“Yeah, well I will kick you out just as fast if you suck,” He replied.

You looked to Bakugou and saw the teasing smirk on his face. You laughed at his comment which was soon followed by a few snickers from the blond himself.

By the time you and Bakugou arrived home, the conversation died down. Silently, the two of you filled up your waters and walked upstairs to your respective rooms.

“See ya,” Bakugou lazily spoke before heading into his own room and leaving you to yourself.

Blueberries and Cowboys: Chapter 2

A choose-your-own-adventure style fic. First, 2 platonic chapters for set-up/build-up. And then, the story will split into 2 paths depending on your romantic pairing preference: You and Thrawn, or You and Eli.

Chapter Masterlist

Chapter 2: The Plan

Pairing: None...yet...

Chapter Warnings: Mentions of bullying

Length: 2k

AO3 Link (In case you like it better over there, it’s okay, no judgement)

The rest of the week saw the three of you using every bit of free time outside your classes and studies to gather information for Thrawn to build a solid plan.

Eli tailed his pesky classmate Arden everywhere, even skipping a class one day to break into his dorm, trying to learn anything about the guy that could be useful to get him involved in the plot. Thrawn analyzed the simulation software and protocols that would be used to administer the tests, mapping out every possible way Commander Burdick could hijack it. And you were the one spying on the Burdick himself. Since the commander didn't seem too interested in your grades, you were able to shadow him without suspicion, and had been able to slip a bug into his offices to eavesdrop on any potential conversations about his plans for sabotage.

Your classmates and the staff were none the wiser. That was the advantage of being social outcasts. Half of them avoided you all like the plague, and the other half already thought you were weird people doing weird things. So it wasn't long before you'd all gotten enough intel to work with.

It was late in the evening at the end of the week. You found yourself in Thrawn and Eli's shared dorm, which looked identical to your own in the opposite wing, because the Empire couldn't bother with things like individuality or comfort. Eli sat on the edge of his top bunk, his legs swinging casually, and his coat unbuttoned to reveal a wrinkled undershirt you knew he hadn't bothered to wash all week. Thrawn paced about in the middle of the room, his long strides only allowing him about four good steps before he had to turn around. He still had his uniform on, boots and badges and all.

You leaned against the railing of the bed, watching Thrawn as he went back and forth. Sometimes he sat still when he was scheming, with his fingers steepled and his gaze seemingly reaching into some unknown dimension beyond your comprehension. That usually happened when he was running through variables that didn't concern you, at least from his perspective. You and Eli had accepted long ago there would always be parts of his plans he would never share with you. He was kind of a control freak like that.

But tonight, he seemed to be more welcoming of collaboration, hence his steady rhythm of pacing in front of you.

"Only one variable remains, as I see it," he was saying. "We understand how the commander will manipulate the system to cause a redundancy in the simulation, thus rendering the test impossible to finish successfully."

You and Eli shared a glance; the only person who truly understood how that was going to happen was Thrawn. He'd tried explaining numerous times but when it came to codes and tech, the two of you weren't able to fully keep up.

"We also know through your investigating," Thrawn motioned to you with what you thought was an impressed look, causing you to feel a little pride, "that the commander plans to only sabotage my test, believing it will be too suspicious if Eli also fails. He will also manipulate his false code to originate from the computer of his former lover Eva Carroway, who currently works in HR. So if an investigation does ensue, it will be traced to her and not him."

You and Eli chuckled under your breaths. It had been a little amusing when you'd discovered Commander Burdick was using this plan to not only undermine Thrawn, but also get revenge on his ex-girlfriend. But even more hilarious was how awkward Thrawn treated the subject. He had been quite perplexed to learn people could be so vindictive after a break-up. And any time he explained that detail of the plan, like he was doing now, he hesitated over his word choice. You couldn't tell if he only pretended to be confused about romantic relations, or if that was truly an area he found himself lost in.

If Thrawn noticed your snickering, he didn't respond to it, only continued to recap the plan. "We have also determined how we will expose the altered code naturally, so it does not cast suspicion on us... What was the word you used?"

"Backfire," said Eli.

"Yes. It would not due to have anyone suspect that we altered the test ourselves, or to have our concerns disregarded altogether. Thus, arranging for the maintenance crew to get a mild case of food poisoning so their performance checks are postponed to occur right before the tests will take care of that variable. At the least, they will fix the altered code and I will take the test as normal. At the most, they will report it and the commander faces expulsion."

"So..." said Eli through a yawn as he stretched. "What's left to work out, then?"

Now it was time for you and Thrawn to share a look.

"Were you not interested in involving your classmate, Arden Fey?" asked Thrawn in his soft, contemplative voice.

Eli shrugged. "Yeah. But Burdick's already got his scapegoat, his ex. So it'll be easier to keep him out of it. Whatever."

You could tell he was trying to be nonchalant. But just this morning, he had spent the entire walk between classes ranting about some new insults Arden had come up with, and how badly he wanted to show the guy up once and for all. You knew your friend wasn't feeling "whatever" about it.

"It's not a matter of ease or difficulty," Thrawn stated plainly. He had stopped pacing and was standing with hands behind his back, highlighting the broadness of his shoulders and the height of his stance. His presence seemed to fill up the whole room, and not for the first time, you were glad to be his friend and not his enemy.

"Yeah," you added in encouragement. "We just have to get creative. Find a way to make Arden a more appealing scapegoat than Burdick's ex. In fact...."

You trailed off as an idea occurred to you. You darted out of the room, surely leaving your two friends perplexed, but you would only be a second. You sprinted down the corridor toward the lifts, where a bulletin hung against the wall with fliers and pamphlets. One notice was a bit larger than the others, a promotion of an upcoming gala event to celebrate the Academy's anniversary. You ripped it off and went racing back to the boys' dorm room.

Eli had come down from the bunk and held a concerned look, probably prepared to follow you if you hadn't returned so quickly. Thrawn was still standing composed, but there was a curiosity in his eyes that made you smile.

You held up the poster in front of your chest. "What do you think the likelihood is of us playing successful matchmakers this week?"

Thrawn understood your idea almost immediately, looking down on you with a pleased smirk. It made you flush a little, to know the Chiss was impressed. You rarely had a chance to contribute good ideas when his mind worked so much faster than yours.

Eli caught on next, and he started to grin, the happiest you'd seen him in a while. His smile was infectious and you grinned back. Happy looked good on him.

"We know Eva's not shy with younger guys," you explained. "Before Burdick, she was fooling around with some intern in the med bay."

"And Arden's vain enough," added Eli. "If he thinks anyone's interested, he'll go for 'em."

"So we get him to ask her to the gala as his date...." you said.

"Burdick sees the two of them together...." said Eli.

"And realizes he can get back at his lover in another way, by pinning the sabotage on another student...." joined Thrawn.

The three of you stood together, proud and satisfied that yet another plan had finally worked out. It was almost worth the stressful studying and petty bullying and all the other unpleasant things you had to endure at this god-forsaken school, just to have fun moments like this with trusted friends.

"We should attend this gala as well," Thrawn said eventually, holding out a hand for the poster. He inspected it thoughtfully. "It is only a few days before the tests, so I hadn't planned to pay it any mind. But now...."

"Yeah, we should make sure Burdick's as jealous as we want 'im," nodded Eli.

You were secretly pleased. The plan was already a win-win, but now you would be able to go to the event yourself, too. You hadn't mentioned your desire to go to either of them before, figuring they weren't interested and not wanting to sound silly if you suggested it. But you did love dancing, and it was so very rare you got a chance to wear something other than your Imperial uniform.

"It's a dance," you noted, in case they couldn't tell by the details on the poster. "We'll need to go in pairs."

"I suppose it would make the most sense for you and Eli to go together," said Thrawn quietly.

You looked between the two, realizing both of them were flushed slightly. Eli's cheeks were dotted with pink, standing out amongst his dark brown features, while Thrawn had more of a purple tint to his face now, a color you'd never seen there before. You could feel yourself growing warm and uncomfortable as well. It was only a dance... only a way for you to enact a much more important plan... but it was the first time your trio had had to engage in anything other than platonic friendship. The balance of your group seemed to be shifting ever so slightly in this moment, and you had no way of knowing if it was for good or ill.

You cleared your throat, pushing away any feelings that might have been brewing in your chest, and instead calling focus back to the mission at hand.

"Actually, I think I'd better go with Thrawn. Whoever doesn't go with me would have to find their own date, and no offense Thrawn, but I think Eli has the better chance of asking someone else."

You hoped they hadn't noticed how hollow your voice sounded, how hard you were trying to keep yourself emotionless.

Eli was pinker than ever. "Uh, I highly doubt that..."

"You're not completely hated around here, you know," you said quickly. "Definitely not with the girls. You're not bad looking, you can be charming if you try, and you're... you know, human." You glanced at Thrawn and added again quietly, "No offense."

Thrawn shook his head. His color and demeanor had already slipped back into his usual neutral self. "No, I agree. Those are the dynamics of our peers and we must work with it. I will take you to the gala, Eli will find his own date, and all three of us will push Arden and Eva together as well. It's a good plan."

You all nodded in agreement. But there was a knot in your stomach, a nervousness you didn't quite understand. You cared very much for both Thrawn and Eli. They were your best friends, your only friends. As a group, you were bonded by your ostracism, protecting and supporting each other on your journey out of this hell-hole.

And separately, you had something special with each, too. You and Eli came from similar backgrounds, and had the same need to disconnect from your surroundings and just have a bit of fun every once in a while. The two of you had spent many late nights together, either hopping between bars, exploring the city, making each other laugh uncontrollably, or quietly sharing the honest thoughts you both buried far too deeply inside. Some nights you'd done all of the above, and returned to your dorm feeling both exhausted and renewed.

But Eli didn't always appreciate the finer things in life, and that's where you connected with Thrawn. He wasn't necessarily an optimist, but he had this way of noticing the beauty that existed everywhere around you, even in the most simple or mundane of moments. Everything had the potential to be interesting. His calm but strong presence had kept you grounded and sane throughout your studies here so far. Sometimes you would talk, other times you would simply be in the same space. And either way, you felt better about life.

You didn't exactly want your relationship with them to change. But you couldn't help but feel this gala would do just that....

Next Chapter: The Preparation >

Blueberry Path | Thrawn x reader

Cowboy Path | Eli x reader

Great comprehensive interview with Elvira on the making of The Letter Room and filmmaking, in general. One interesting tidbit mentioned: she is currently developing a podcast about sex. 👀🤔

For most of her creative life, Elvira Lind has been behind the the lens compassionately capturing true stories as a documentary filmmaker. Her debut feature, Songs for Alexis, observes two young lovebirds navigating a long distance relationship and challenging views on gender identity in the modern age. While her sophomore feature, Bobbi Jenne, explores the life of a famous dancer fighting for her own creative and personal independence.

Despite her prolific doc work, a story that couldn't simply be told in its raw form kept circulating in her head: a dark prison comedy about the secret life of a correctional officer trying to bring humanity to the prison system. When he gets transferred to a job in the letter room, he finds himself a little too involved in the private lives of the inmates.

Far along in her second pregnancy, and with the support of an incredible team of collaborators, Elvira took on the challenge of writing and directing her first narrative short, "The Letter Room." The film stars Oscar Isaac and Alia Shawkat, and has had an all-star festival run, screening at Telluride, Tribeca, and the Palm Springs International Film Festival. Here, Elvira reflects on the joys and challenges of creating your first short film—putting empathy first, reshaping the tropes around pregnancy, and screening in the COVID era.

FTW: How did you become a filmmaker?

Elvira Lind: I’ve always loved film. I was very drawn to documentaries because it felt like you were entering something that was really happening. You opened a door and were already inside the film. You’re just trying to keep up with what’s being thrown at you. As opposed to fiction where you have to conjure it up from nowhere. I loved imagining and writing stories when I was little, but I didn’t have the confidence to pursue it.

I didn’t come from a family of filmmakers. And I came from a time when people had a little shitty camcorder that you borrowed from someone’s uncle, and buying film was expensive. Things opened up and changed a lot when cameras became more accessible.

I could only afford one year of film school in Cape Town, where I met some amazing people and learned about so many different ways of storytelling. I came back to Denmark and found myself working for free a lot for other filmmakers while doing a side job. The paid work was very hard to get, but I’d rather work for free with filmmakers that I loved and have more responsibilities than have access to nothing. It wasn’t easy to find my way in, but it’s so worth it. 

And now you live in New York. How does this global background affect your general filmmaking style and approach?

I definitely bring a lot of Danish documentary traditions with me and hold it very dear. There are a lot of kick ass female documentary filmmakers in Denmark that have taught me a lot. There’s a good support system for women there. It’s an incredibly privileged place in that there’s funding from the government to make films. You can make things that, in my opinion, are often far more interesting because it’s not reliant on how it’s going to make money in the box office.

You’ve shot many of your documentaries in the past. So what was it like this time to be working with a cinematographer?

I always wanted to work with a cinematographer on my documentaries; we just couldn’t afford it. Now for “The Letter Room”, I worked with Sam Chase, who has got such a brilliant eye and it was wonderful to have someone to work with on composing the look of the film because I’m usually doing it by myself. It is kind of like a marriage. I work with the same editor on all my projects as well. You enter this symbiotic sort of dance together. For me, it also means you have to fight about things and disagree and then make up and hear each other out. My editor, Adam Nielsen, is the kind of guy who just comes up with genius ideas while in the shower or on the way home from work on his bicycle. You have to find these key people in your life where you can bounce ideas back and forth with.

Where did the idea for “The Letter Room” come from?

It was a story that was brewing in my head for a long time, but I wasn’t sure how to put a narrative film together. I just started to write it down and then it kept developing.

There was a podcast that I listened to that really inspired me. It told the story of different men who were all unknowingly writing love letters to the same woman. She started to ask for money and help with rent, but the letters she wrote were so wonderful and all these men were very in love with her. These very lonely men felt like magic had entered their lives. They all eventually found out that the woman was actually a man writing to different people trying to get their money. They were all heartbroken, but one of the men said that the worst part was losing these letters and that the fantasy was gone. He wished they could just keep writing to each other. So much of life is fantasy and trying to live through other people’s lives. I’m very drawn to stories of loneliness and bottled up feelings.

And then I am firmly against the American prison system. It’s heartbreaking, frustrating, and I can’t make sense of it. How do you even begin to explain this system to a child?

It’s a society that doesn’t care about humanity. I wanted to show the monotony, the repetition, the sadness. I don’t see the bigger goal or purpose of locking people away for countless years  and taking away all the things that makes you feel human, that makes life joyous. I really believe that we can all change and this system teaches people nothing. “The Letter Room'' is the combination of these two concepts that I’m very passionate about.

And then I got pregnant for the second time and I hadn’t made a film between the two. It was a crazy feeling to be taken over again by pregnancy. A wonderful friend of mine, Sofia Sondervan-Bild, came to me and said, “I think you should make this film and I’ll make it with you.” Initially, I freaked out and thought I didn’t know how to do fiction and doubted how I could make a film in a prison, but she inspired me and told me to do it. She’s just one of these incredibly powerful people that you want to go on an adventure with. She made me feel like my pregnancy wasn’t going to stand in the way of me making this film. We ended up shooting while I was far along in my pregnancy in a prison in the middle of a summer heat wave. It was crazy, but it was the best thing that I could’ve done at the time.

When you were directing on set at that stage of pregnancy, did you feel like you were reshaping tropes of what women are capable of? 

It was insane. The funny thing was that the crew was like, “we can’t complain that we are tired because she is extremely pregnant and still running around.” I was so high off of that experience. When we finished, I collapsed. I fell straight onto the couch and then I have a two and a half year old screaming my name. That was more work for me than directing the short. I edited the film right before I gave birth actually, and then I gave birth and did sound right after. I was pumping breast milk in the corner in the darkness during the sound edit.

I’ve learned a lot from surpassing whatever I thought was physically possible with being pregnant. I learned that being in a creative process gives you so much energy that it allows you to be in whatever shape, size, form, mental space you can. People are ready to give you their support, if you choose the right people. I’m really grateful that I chose such wonderful collaborators who supported me through it all. Even when people were questioning my choice to direct a film while being pregnant in a prison. Why not? Women get pregnant and then we still need to be supported so that we can continue to make the things we want to do.

What was your experience with getting “The Letter Room” funded?

It’s really hard, let’s be honest. There aren’t a lot of people sitting around waiting to fund a short film. We ended up working with Topic, which is a part of First Look Media. They are just incredible and really support filmmakers with whatever their vision is. I’ve had great experiences and some really bad experiences with funding, so I know this was an ideal scenario.

Having a short that is over 30 minutes long seems like a feat. At what stage in the process did you know this was going to be a longer piece? And how did that decision affect the shoot in both positive and difficult ways?

It was way too long at first, and when I shortened it, it was still 32 minutes. We could only afford five days of shooting, and a lot of it is shot on active prison grounds, which have an insane amount of protocol. We almost used everything we shot.

I’m not used to being able to have different angles to choose from in my doc work, so I think I just knew exactly what I wanted. I know that my producers were worried that I wasn’t getting enough, but to me, I was like, I’m getting double of what I usually get on a documentary! Everyone was quietly concerned, but everything worked out when we got to the edit.

The short’s length hasn’t done any favors for me so far, but you need to breathe as an audience, you need to pace it out. If I cut out certain minutes, it would’ve felt rushed and you wouldn’t have believed the arcs that the characters had.

I loved the concept of placing a very empathetic character in a setting that is contrary to that personality type. You included so many details that made the world feel so three dimensional and cared for. Can you talk about those decisions to create that feeling?

It means so much to me that it made you feel that way. What frustrates me about the prison system is that it lacks any empathy or understanding of human nature and nurture and who we are. What we need to become better people. It takes all of that away.

I spoke to people who have spent a lot of time in prison and they told me that you have to hide your feelings and that showing any signs of weakness will be a disaster. It’s the worst possible scenario you can imagine yourself in. Being robbed of every privacy, anything that makes you happy, anything that makes you feel like yourself. I imagined the character of a caregiver in this setting who wants to help and finds a silly way to do so. I was very inspired by that story of the love letters that I talked about earlier. What does it mean to lie if you’re making someone else happy?

It’s the morning of your first day of the shoot — how do you feel?

I was very nervous. I had never said ‘action’ before. I’ve been on a lot of sets, but I didn’t want to seem like I didn’t know what I was doing, but it’s also okay not to know. Mistakes are going to happen, and sometimes they become gifts. At the same time, I was very excited. You come in and there are all these people there with you who are there to make this thing you’ve written come to life.

What are some things you would do on set to create a safe space and vulnerable environment?

We did everything we could to make the set a safe space. It was very difficult and stressful to shoot in an active prison, but we made sure to actively ask our crew if everyone’s feeling okay and if we can do anything to make the situation better. I’m very vulnerable and encourage all of my crew to be vulnerable with me. Mistakes are welcome.

It's a short film, people come and work on this not because they’re making a million dollars, but because they want to be there and are being incredibly generous with their time and energy. It was such a good environment that even when challenging things came up, it was still a lot of fun.

What was it like working with actors for the first time?

That was one of the biggest challenges for me. I’ve heard so many different stories in passing of the least helpful note or worst thing to say to an actor. You want to be respectful and actors have their way of working. Ultimately, they are all really talented actors and all of them came with so much energy and a lot of ideas.

I spent time with each of them talking about their character. Those 1 on 1 conversations helped me a lot in the writing process as well because you’re bouncing ideas off of each other and they’re asking you questions about how they would respond to a certain situation.

I had always imagined Alia Shawkat as Rosita and she ended up wanting to do it and came from LA to film it. I had tears in my eyes when we were filming the scene of her and Oscar. They were excited to do the scene together. It was all a dream.

What was the experience of working creatively alongside your partner like?

We were joking a lot about it before because there was already the stress of being so pregnant and we have a 2 year old at home, and now I was putting us in another highly intense and demanding situation. Either it was going to be great OR we would drive each other nuts. But we had so much fun. It was wonderful to work together. I was so happy to be on set and make my film and he’s just so talented and fun to be around. Those little moments where you know each other so well—I’d give him notes and he just kept surprising me and was so respectful of my directions.

He found this photo for him to connect to the character and it became very fundamental to me. It was this incredible black and white photo from the 70s of a prison guard. I had always imagined that he would have this inner salsa soundtrack playing in his soul and we would play Rubén Blades and 70s salsa music and Oscar just morphed that into music into everything and created this unique character. 

And he was wearing a fat suit the entire shoot and I was pregnant and Alia Shawkat had her pregnant belly on. The three of us—it was so funny.

It seems like the perfect first experience of going into narrative with people that you really trust and support you.

Definitely! Find the people that you can team up with that really believe in your vision and who will push you to do exactly what you had in mind. People who never try to push you into these conventional routes. Our creative voices are so fragile. You want to be on the same page so that they see what you’re trying to do and want to bring that out of you. Where they’re treating your film as a sacred thing that you’re creating together.

How do you know when a film is done?

Fiction is very different from documentaries. With documentaries, it never feels like it’s done because there are so many options. That’s also why I love fiction so much; It’s so much faster. It’s a whole different beast to tame a documentary with hundreds of hours of footage where you’re reinventing the wheel every day.

How have you built up your own confidence as a director and your unique voice?

Stubbornness. I’ve had many experiences working with people who didn’t believe in my project. You have to stick to your guns and trust your instincts. Once you find your voice, you find people that want to go on that ride with you and find your vision interesting. It’s a miracle when any of us gets a project made, so your confidence can’t come from how much money your movie made. It has to come from somewhere else. Did you do justice to the people you portrayed in your story? Did anyone walk away feeling like something had changed within them?

What is a good director to you?

Someone who is driven with passion without letting that passion take over and become any source of frustration that’s taken out on other people. It should feel like a collaborative effort. And having gratitude every day that you’re making something with other people who are donating their time. You’d be nowhere without them. One of the most important things is making sure that your crew is treating everyone equally. It depends on the size of the production, but having someone who can sense what’s happening in all different departments and having department heads that are there to protect everyone. Listen to each other, and make sure everyone feels safe and is in the best place to be creative.

With COVID, what has the adjustment been like to being in an online space for this festival run? 

I’m really deeply saddened by not having the human interaction aspect of it. It feels so crucial to be in the room together, to meet and see each other's projects and share the experience, to cry and laugh next to people you don’t know. I’m grieving to be honest. We just gotta get through this time. It reminds us of how sacred it is for us to gather and how that feels, and I hope that all of that will come back after this and that cinemas will survive. We really need them.

What’s next for you?

Right now I’m writing more fiction and working on a new documentary feature that I am kind of researching and shooting at the same time. I am also creating a podcast about sex, called “The List” with my friend, writer and photographer Kirra Cheers, based on a book and play she wrote. My husband and I just started a production company together, Mad Gene Media, in order to develop and produce our own material. So. lots of exciting things to continue with in the new year.

Born in 1981 in Copenhagen, Elvira Lind graduated from School of Media and Creative Arts in Cape Town in 2006 majoring in documentary film where she received two awards for her final year achievements. She has worked within that field since directing and shooting documentaries of various lengths for TV, cinema and web on 4 different continents.​In 2020 she premiered her first fiction project, a 32 min short film she wrote and directed. The film was sold to Topic and was invited to various festivals including Telluride and Tribeca FF. Elvira's feature doc BOBBI JENE premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2017 where it won all awards in its category including Best Feature documentary, best editing and best Cinematography. The film had theatrical release in US, Spain and Scandinavia.​Elvira's first documentary feature Songs for Alexis premiered at Toronto HOT DOCS in 2014 and screened and competed at a long list of international festivals. Her 8 part documentary TV series "Twiz and Tuck" was bought by VICELAND and launched in 2017. Elvira now lives and works out of New York.

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𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐘  𝐋𝐎𝐍𝐆  𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐑  𝐒𝐔𝐑𝐕𝐄𝐘

BASICS. FULL    NAME  :  Augustus Alexander Wang  NICKNAME  :  August and Gus ( in general ), Auggie, Ice Prince, and Guggie ( by Aurora ). Aug and Lestat  ( by Jack ),  NAME    MEANINGS  : Augustus is  Latin for  the great / the magnificent.  Alexander is also Latin and means defender of mankind. From what I know, Wang in Chinese means king.  HISTORICAL    CONNECTION ?  : Though, his dad did think of the Roman Emperor Augustus when they named him, they liked the meaning. It seemed to fit him. They weren’t wrong, he was an emperor and he still has that energy.   AGE  :  22. Like Aurora, he can’t age past 22. He wouldn’t have minded either way.    BIRTHDAY  :  5th  April ETHNIC    GROUP  :   Augustus is half Korean and half Brazilian.  NATIONALITY  :   British LANGUAGES  :   fluent  in  English and French. Conversational Latin. Broken Korean. Learning Urdu. SEXUAL    ORIENTATION  :  demi-heterosexual ROMANTIC    ORIENTATION  :  demi-heterosexual RELATIONSHIP    STATUS  :   Single and doesn’t want to mingle. He had only one serious relationship in the past with Aurora Shams from 2017-2019.  CLASS  :  Upper  class,  Wealthy but not private-jet kind of wealthy.  HOME    TOWN  /  AREA  :  London till he was 10 and Vancouver till he was 17 CURRENT    HOME  :  Los  Angeles PROFESSION  :   Drummer, songwriter, model, and student.    PHYSICAL. HAIR  :  long  and  wavy.  Chestnut brown. Here is an example. It goes down his earlobes in length.    EYES  :  piercing, almond-shaped eyes. Naturally brown, but he wears blue or green contact lenses.  NOSE  :   a Greek nose, straight without bumps. FACE  :  Oblong shaped, sharp and chiseled cheekbones, strong jaw. Masculine features. Example.  LIPS  :  not  full  nor  thin, heart shaped.     COMPLEXION  :  pretty pale. Example is same as the face section.  SCARS  :  one on his chest. TATTOOS  :  a very small ‘10/17′ on his left rib.   PIERCINGS:  earlobes HEIGHT  :  6′5″  or  195cm.   BUILD  :  Inverted triangle. Broad, tapered shoulders. Muscular. Defined, sculpted abs. Long limbs. Broad chest. He was naturally towards the muscular side with broad shoulders and chest. He’s never been on the skinny side. Example one and two   USUAL  HAIR  STYLE  :  he lets his hair do their thing, he styles them a little, but he prefers a messier vibe.  USUAL  FACE  LOOK  :  He looks generally bored. His eyes have a piercing look that seem to be drilling into the person before him. Like he can see right through you. There is an insolent smirk tugging at his lips like he thinks you’re amusing. Almost proud, like he thinks he is above you. There is depth and intensity in his eyes that stare skywards in thought. There is also mischievous, radiant glimmer in his eyes.   USUAL    CLOTHING  :  prince charming meets rockstar. Lots of jackets, darker colors, boots, necklaces and rings. Here is his wardrobe.      PSYCHOLOGY. FEARS  :  claustrophobia and the fear of ending up alone. He always had this creeping feeling that he’d be alone in the end and that he was always meant to be alone.  ASPIRATIONS  :   he doesn’t have any set aspirations. They change every now and then. However, his goals are just to keep his found family happy.  POSITIVE    TRAITS  :  extremely charismatic, intelligent,  academic and studious, alluring and attractive, quick-witted, charming and captivating, articulate and eloquent, adventurous, desirable, analytical, brilliant, friendly, enthusiastic, adaptable, observant, kind, mellow, competent, extremely caring and protective over those closest to him, clever, loyal, clear-headed, confident, humorous, courageous, imaginative and creative, a visionary, refined tastes and manners, daring, dignified, ebullient, deep, remarkable, surprisingly he’s very forgiving, forthright, gallant, logical, gentlemanly and sophisticated, perfectionist, popular, self-reliant, shrewd, witty, suave, curious, and resourceful.    NEGATIVE    TRAITS  :  egocentric, self-obsessed, idle, indifferent, selfish, defiant, arrogant, argumentative, rebellious, kinda lazy, stubborn, distracted, doesn’t really care for morals, blunt, can appear insensitive a lot, is insensitive at times, no filters, can be cold for those he doesn’t care for, emotionally immature, deflects emotions, suppresses his feelings, sorta detached, kinda pessimistic, and unknowingly self-sacrificing because he thinks it’s fair and he deserves it.   MBTI  :  ENTP  (  Ne  dominant,  Ti  auxiliary,  Fe  tertiary,  and  Si  inferior  —  this  means  she  can’t  use  Ni,  Se,  Te,  and  especially  can’t  use  Fi). He  perceives  the  world  by  connecting  dots,  thinking  of  never-ending  possibilities,  looking  for  pieces  of  a  puzzle,  and  finding  meaning  in  abstract.  He  makes  judgments  on  if  what  he  perceives  fits  his  internal  logic.          ZODIAC  :  Aries sun, Gemini rising, Sagittarius moon.  TEMPERAMENT  :  sanguine choleric  ANIMALS  :  parrots and cats because they’re both intelligent but little pieces of shit who enjoy making your life hell.  VICE  :   it’s either his ego or how he ends up detaching himself FAITH  :  currently, he’s Mu.slim. He was born protestant, became an atheist when he was 13, agnostic at 14. Bud.dhist at 15. Taoist at 16. Confucianist at 17. Mu.slim at 19. Doesn't practice it though.     GHOSTS  ?  :  yep.. AFTERLIFE  ?  :   yep REINCARNATION  ?  :  he guesses so. Went  through  it, but doesn’t remember. ALIENS  ?  :  hell yeah. POLITICAL    ALIGNMENT  :  liberal. ECONOMIC    PREFERENCE  :   upper class or upper middle class is good with him.  EDUCATION    LEVEL  :   MSci in Physics from the University of Cambridge. Is opting to specialize in astrophysics soon. FAMILY. FATHER  :  Edward Wang, owner of a chain of fine dining restaurants  MOTHER  :  Elisa Violeta Wang, psychiatrist, deceased  STEP MOTHER :  Chaeyoung Wang, lawyer.  SIBLINGS  :  Cassandra Wang, athlete EXTENDED    FAMILY  :  he is not close with his external family and doesn’t know his birth mother’s family at all. They never wanted him.  FAVOURITES. BOOK  :   Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Galactic Dynamics by James Binney, Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Mukarami, Slaughter house Five by Kurt Vonnegut, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, and Lord of the Flies by William Golding. MOVIE  :  Scott Pilgrim vs The World 5    SONGS :  All You Want - Dashboard Prophets, Tokyo Smoke - Cage the Elephant, Where is My Mind? - The Pixies, Sparks - Coldplay, Lithium - Nirvana, and Mr. Blue Sky - Electric Light Orchestra     DEITY  :  none.  Let him argue with one and ask for proof of their deity-ness. HOLIDAY  :  Halloween. It’s dramatic and fun. MONTH  :   October, because he met Aurora and Jack this month in 2017. SEASON  :  spring  and  summer. PLACE  :  he doesn’t have a specific place, but he prefers European architecture.  WEATHER  :  cloudy and windy. Sunny if it isn’t too hot. SOUND  :  drums and percussions, the sound of aurora and jack’s laugh, guitars, violins, the sound of wind roaring, music boxes, and the clinking of bangles and jewelry.  SCENTS  :  sage, rosemary, and damascus roses. TASTES  :  chocolate, strawberries, chilies, and fried food.       FEELS  :   the feeling of hitting the drums, wind in his hair, the cold night air, warm morning sun, grass against his fingertips, silk, and touching long hair.   ANIMALS  :  cats and dogs. NUMBER  :   8 COLORS  :  white, cherry red, pink, maroon, wine red, black, and silver. EXTRA. TALENTS  :  he is an extremely talented drummer, good at guitar and the piano, he is talented at songwriting, composing music, he’s exceptionally good at mathematics and physics, analytical skills, storytelling, knows a lot of facts, near photographic memory because he remembers all important historical events with dates and details, academic writing, and brainstorming ideas.  BAD  AT  :   cooking, not very good at driving because he gets distracted, doing one task at a time, playing videogames, actually listening to what people say, being humble, and actually being a good leader.  TURN    ONS  :  this is a complicated question. He needs a very strong emotional connection to feel sexual attraction towards someone. And he only felt it for one person in his whole life. But, what sparked that attraction was a brilliant mind and the ability to connect with his mind on a very different level. It’s not going to repeat with anyone else.  TURN    OFFS  :  literally everyone else. He’s not sorry, but I am. HOBBIES  :  playing the drums, writing and composing songs, reading, solving problems, listening to music, watching shows, getting people to do weird shit, and annoying people.      AESTHETIC  :  crowns, drums, broken drumming sticks, abstract art, the vast space, chess boards, album cases, thrones, the echoing sound of pianos, Greek sculptures, galaxies and nebulas, early morning sunrise through curtains, libraries, equations scribbled on napkins, empty museums, unmade white sheets, polaroid cameras, conspiracy theories, VHS tapes, antique books, cobblestone alleyways, night skies, cluttered books, calloused fingers, crumpled composition pages, guitar picks, vinyl, telescopes, and planets.      Basically: abstract, chaotic academia, cryptid academia, dark academia, indie, kingcore, light academia, musical academia, science academia, spacecore,   QUOTES  :   it’s weird but i can’t decide which one fits him.  FC  INFO. MAIN    FC  :  victor han  ALT    FC  :  n/a. OLDER    FC  :  he can’t age past 22, so he doesn’t need one. YOUNGER    FC  :  none  yet. VOICE    CLAIM  :  both speaking and singing (his accent is posh British with a slight hint of Canadian) MUN  QUESTIONS. Q1  :    If you could write your character your way in their own movie , what    would  it  be  called ,  what  style would it be filmed in, and what would it be about ?    A1 :  The same answer as Aurora, The Tale of Solis et Lunae that stars him alongside Aurora, Lunae, Jack, and Tate, plus more. A cosmic adventure / fantasy / coming of age / superhero / the reluctant hero / the chosen one.  His role is of Aurora’s best friend and her greatest support in emotional and supernatural dangers. He is the time traveler who ascends time and space, so he often also gives her insight and information like the sage. It’ll  expand across dimensions, worlds, and different states of existence. The scenes would be cinematic with a strong soundtrack. I imagine him to have some scenes like Quick Silver in the X-Men movies.       Q2  :   What would their soundtrack / score sound like  ?     A2  :   He would have a 90s grunge or spacey dream rock sound. It ties in with the end of the last answer because i see him in one of those scenes with 90s grunge or maybe classical music ?    Q3  :      Why did you start writing this character  ? A3  :    I made Augustus just a bit before Aurora. They were a two part deal. I don’t know when it began, I just had this image of a tall, long haired boy with piercing, intelligent eyes who’s a smart-ass and likes being a know-it-all nuisance. This character has been the same since he began in 2019 and refused to change. He was always a drummer, he always had the same fashion sense, the look, Gus was always half-Korean, he always had long fingers he wore rings on, and he was always Aurora’s best friend/partner in crime. He remains unchanged and that's why I wanted to write him. This very vivid image of this boy was something I had to pen down. And just my luck, I found a fc who looks exactly how Gus looked in my head.   Q4  :    What  first  attracted  you  to  this  character  ? A4  :   Augustus is just extraordinary. It’s something I always felt about him and Aurora and I don’t see any of my other characters coming anywhere close to them regardless of how much I spent time on them. But with Augustus, his entire image and looks and personality — down to his wardrobe and jewelry was always so vivid in my head. Like I knew this very chaotically handsome boy who was going to turn the world upside down.  His story is interesting, but what interests me more is his perspective on his story. The way he looks at his life and how he is quiet and doesn’t show his pain. How confused he always is. How much he aches but never seems so. The way he loves but doesn’t say even a quarter of the intensity he feels. And how sometimes he believes he deserves suffering because it makes sense to him. I also love the connections he makes and the way he loves so deeply and profoundly but underneath the surface. His connection, love, fears, and hopes with Aurora and Jack for their respective reasons are extremely beautiful.   Q5  :      Describe the biggest thing you dislike about your muse.  ? A5  :  Augustus is unknowingly self-sabotaging. He let go the only relationship / love in his life that made him feel like real love just because he thought he didn’t deserve it. And because when he was provoked, it made “sense” to him. He bottles his emotions and pain so much despite their intensity. He never shows how much he really cares and really hurts. And how sure he is that he’ll end up alone without friends and that it makes sense to him. Q6  :      What    do    you    have    in    common    with    your    muse  ?   A6  :    Here’s a fun answer, because I bottle my emotions like him. I also interact with the carefree way he does even if I don’t feel peachy. He’s smart and witty and really hot and I don’t even have that going on for me. So, yikes. Only of Gus’ bad things I share.  Q7  :      How  does your muse feel about you  ?   A7  :  Gus loves interacting with people so he’ll definitely show up to annoy me. Maybe, he might think I’m fun to annoy? Or maybe, we’ll have a similar sense of humor. I think he won’t dislike me. Not sure if he’ll like me. I think he’d think I’m funny in a strange sort of way.  Q8  :      What    characters    does    your    muse    have    interesting    interactions  with  ? A8  :    Aurora, first of all. They have this same brain wave-length thing going on where they’re partners in crime and bffs forever more. He knows how she is feeling and what she’s thinking even before she utters it. If she is about to sneeze, he’d get a tissue ready. He can tell if she is hungry or sleepy with one glance. She can do the same, so they sorta have this weird understanding of each other.  Jack is this older brother figure Augustus loves. He won’t admit it, but he kinda wants to make Jack proud of him. He also wants to provide love and care to Jack that he thinks he deserves but never got. They’re his family now and he’ll never be alone or sad again. He annoys Jack a lot but behind it all, he just wants Jack to think he is needed and he belongs. That if he thinks Augustus is reliant on him, then he has this family he has to protect and care for. He can’t stand the thought of Jack feeling unloved, forgotten, alone.  Tida is another one. There’s this great respect and adoration Gus has for him. Almost like he looks up to him in some ways  He also has a lot of hopes and expectations attached. He feels Tida is everything that Gus himself lacks. He is the ideal boyfriend, kindest person, shows his emotions vividly, and is like a warm and cozy blanket personified. He is probably Tida and Aurora’s biggest supporter and first one to know. He can’t be happier than he is that Aurora found someone as good and perfect as Tida.   Taewon is one really fun character. Their two-way frenemy jealousy spans over years and started in Cambridge when they were both in love with the same girl they claimed to be best friends with. Though, trying to be calm, Augustus was constantly provoked and hurt, made to feel inferior and constantly in fear of his relationship being broken by Taewon’s schemes that he couldn’t say out loud. This dark period ended with a fist fight and baggage of guilt they both carry to this day for hurting each other and the one they claimed to love. Today, they’re way past that and frenemies who have funny quips and arguments for each other. They say they dislike each other. But if the lighting is good, one would be the photographer of the other. Q9  :      What    gives    you    inspiration    to    write    your    muse  ? A9  :  Music  helps  me  imagine  scenes  with  perfect  visual  details.  Any  scenes  from  shows  that  remind  me  of  my  storylines. Q10  :      How    long    did    this    take    you    to    complete  ?   A10  :  I don’t remember. It was many days and I didn’t count because it was in bits and pieces.

Garrett, Leah. X Troop: The Secret Jewish Commandos of World War II. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021; London: Vintage Publishing, 2021.

(The American cover is on the left, the British on the right.)

Every so often, gifs from something called X Company cross my dashboard. When I came across Leah Garrett’s book X Troop, my first thought was that it must treat the same subject, but it seems that that can’t be the case: Garrett maintains that none of this story has ever been told before, because most of the documentation remained classified until very recently. (She claims to have single-handedly declassified many sealed British military records.) X Troop is about No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando, 3 Troop, commonly referred to as X Troop, comprising 87 German, Austrian, and (in a few cases) Hungarian refugees, all but five of them Jewish (at least under Nazi racial laws — I’ll get to that). It is indeed an extraordinary story, and occasionally an infuriating one. Garrett has done a tremendous public service in relating this tale, but the book itself has some puzzling — no, let's be honest, irritating — aspects.

The men who would make up X Troop left their native countries in their mid to late ’teens during the late 1930s, most of them without their parents as passengers on the Kindertransport. They occupied themselves in various ways until the middle of 1940 when, apparently without exception, they were interned on the Isle of Man, in Canada, or in Australia, to which more than 2,500 of them were transported on the H.M.T. Dunera, a dangerously over-crowded liner on which they endured conditions so horrific that the officer in charge — Major William Patrick Scott, a gleeful sadist and anti-Semite — ended up being court-martialed.

It is heartening to be able to report that British public opinion appears to have turned strongly against wholesale internment by mid-1941, but it wasn’t until that December that the internees were released from confinement. Those who had been transported overseas were offered immediate permission to return to the U.K. — if they volunteered for the Pioneer Corps, and I’m grateful to Garrett for providing the first detailed explanation that I’ve seen of what that meant. It wasn’t a good situation: they did menial labor and were bored out of their minds.

In the summer of 1942, they were finally offered an opportunity to join in the fight against the Nazis. This appears to be an instance in which the “great man” theory of history is perfectly valid, Lord Mountbatten being the great man in question. Garrett explains:

Mountbatten made a bold suggestion [to Winston Churchill]: they should create a new special unit of commandos, different from anything used before. Rather than coming from the ranks of the army or the navy, No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando would be composed of soldiers made up of displaced nationals such as Poles, Norwegians, and Frenchmen. Each of the units . . . would be used for different missions depending on their native languages. They would be unified by the shared desire to drive the Nazis out of their home countries. These commandos, highly trained and highly motivated, would lead the way when the time came for the Allies’ invasion of Europe.

And that’s exactly what happened. There were French, Dutch, Belgian, Norwegian, Polish, and Yugoslavian troops within No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando. There was also a troop known as the “British” troop, made up of Germanophones. That was X Troop (a nickname Churchill gave them). “X Troop would be Britain’s secret shock troop in the war against Germany,” Garrett relates:

They would kill and capture Nazis on the battlefield. But that would not be all. They would also immediately interrogate captured Germans, be it in the heat of the battle or right afterward. The men’s fluency in German would enable them to get essential intelligence that would guide the next moment’s choices rather than having to wait to interview prisoners until they were back at headquarters. ... They would have to be in peak form both physically and mentally. And because they were nearly all Jewish refugees from the Third Reich, they also would need to be diligently protected.

The situation was particularly dire because most were stateless — stripped of their citizenship in Germany or Austria, but refused naturalization by the Home Office. As one officer later recalled, “If any of them were captured in battle and their true identity had been revealed, their fate would have been almost impossible to contemplate.” (Those who chose to remain in the U.K. after the war faced an uphill battle in gaining British citizenship, as Garrett relates. She tells us nothing, incidentally, about Jewish personnel in the other No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando Troops.)

The first step was to have them adopt pseudonyms. When they arrived in Aberdovey (now Aberdyfi), Wales, for training they were each given 30 minutes to come up with a nom de guerre. They also had to concoct false backgrounds to explain why they spoke English with foreign accents. One man told the couple with whom he was billeted “that his accent was somewhat peculiar because his father had traveled a lot on business,” an unlikely story that they apparently accepted without question.

X Troop personnel were involved in the Dieppe raid — which may have been a mistake, as the troop was just past its infancy and several of the men were killed — and the Sicily landings and their aftermath, but of course all of that was really just a warm-up for the invasion of Normandy and, beyond that, Germany. More than half of the book is devoted to this. Assigned to various units, nearly all of the commandos landed at Sword Beach on June 6th, 1944, and proceeded into Central Europe, achieving victory after victory. Garrett places great emphasis on anger as their motivator: anger at the disruption of their lives and at their uncertainly over the fate of their parents and other relatives.

Leah Garrett is American; she is also Jewish. Like the overwhelming majority of my fellow Jews in this country, she is incapable of acknowledging the possibility of viable Jewish life outside of the U.S. or Israel. Her main piece of evidence for this view, which she hammers home repeatedly, is the fact that all but three of the surviving X-Troopers (22 were killed in action) chose to continue using their noms-de-guerre after the war — and, as she is at pains to point out, all of those who resumed their original names ended up emigrating to the United States! (The book’s excellent index helps the reader keep track of who was whom.) It’s true that names hold an important place in Jewish culture, but coming from someone using Garrett as a surname, her attitude comes across as either oblivious or chutzpadik, I’m not quite sure which. She also seems not to know that, historically at least, Jewish immigrants to Britain have changed their names with an assiduousness that makes the same phenomenon in the U.S. look like a mere blip.

Garrett also informs us, in the written equivalent of hushed tones, that some of the men who settled in the U.K. after the war married gentile women and brought up their children as at least nominal members of various Christian bodies. I share her discomfort with this, to be sure, but in order to maintain her shocked, shocked, stance she has to ignore something that she has in fact explained at some length in the book’s early chapters: a significant percentage of the future X-Troopers had only one or two Jewish grand-parents apiece, were brought up as Lutherans or Roman Catholics, and had absolutely no idea that they had any Jewish forebears until Nazi racial laws forced the issue into view. While I’ve known quite a few converts to Judaism whose initial impetus was the discovery of Jewish ancestry, it’s a bit much to expect that everyone will react that way. On the other hand, it’s dispiriting to learn that the inscription on the monument to X Troop that was raised in Aberdyfi in 1999 does not include the words Jews or Jewish.

Garrett is Professor of Jewish Studies and Director of the Jewish Studies Center at Hunter College, part of the City University of New York (CUNY), a post she has held since 2018; she previously taught at the University of Denver and Monash University. As a former CUNY faculty member myself, I’m in a position to tell you that (a) even as a full professor, she won’t have been hired with tenure, and (b) this book probably won’t help her to achieve it. It’s a great read on an important topic and represents prodigious research, but as a work of scholarship it has several marks against it. It doesn’t come from an academic publisher. It has only a partial scholarly apparatus — end notes, but no bibliography, or even a list of the many abbreviations used in the notes. Those notes aren’t always as useful as one would like, I might add: after relating that some of the men interned in Australia chose to remain there permanently, Garrett announces that they “would forever change the landscape of Australia. They would be known as the Dunera boys and would become leaders in the arts, sciences, culinary arts, and industry during the twentieth century,” but fails to give us any clue as to where we can go to find out more.

She also adopts an informal writing style that alternates between the faintly slangy (“All the evidence I’ve found points to ... ”) and the unnecessarily dramatic: two key chapters are written entirely in the present tense, a strategy that would normally be after my own heart, but which feels contrived in this context. It also seems not to be the case that none of this has ever been written about previously, as Garrett asserts. (Last but not least, Garrett recently resigned from CUNY’s faculty union, which may end up affecting her status there, as tenure recommendations are made by union members.)

Mixed feelings, then; but the book is worth reading, and I can recommend it.

Alrighty how about 14 with Mettaton and 9 with Toriel?

This is a long ass post, so buckle up buttercups >:)

So, if you really think about it, Mettaton IS a robot now. He fused with his body, considering he can die in Stabby Stabby/Nuetral routes. Robots can’t absorb alcohol, therefore they can’t get drunk.

Now, the argument could be made that he just absorbs the magic that makes up the drink then sends it to his power core, like an organic body. The that funky drunky flow intoxicates him.... But that also contradicts my personal head cannons on how Metta’s body works.

I’ll make this brief (if that’s possible in a post of this length lMAO), but how I think that MTT gets his power is either through electricity or, in a worst case scenario, gasoline mixed with magic. While I believe he can eat and drink monster food, it’s stored in an internal compartment before being broken down into manageable magic chunks over a series of several days. So, alcoholic beverages would give him at most a buzz over the course of like a couple of days.

That being said, there’s hope!!!

Remember when I said that I headcannon Metta runs on gasoline if he can’t get any electricity? Well, the means he can switch between which tank he’s drawing from. And, there is a type of gasoline made with a base of Ethanol! Which is the compound used to make drinks alcoholic! Therefore, the alcohol would be going to his core at the rate needed to actually get drunk.

Which means, if he wants to be drunk he can just switch into gasoline mode and slip into whatever tipsy needs he has! As long as he’s filled up on ethanol!

Now I’m not saying that this was found out by complete accident with Alphys testing out a new fuel type but.....

That’s exactly what I’m saying.

But!!! Yall didn’t come here to hear about Mettaton’s autonomy, so let’s talk about his drunken habits!!

I like to think he doesn’t drink often, mostly because of the aforementioned not actually realizing he could till he was on the surface. But, some of the best examples of how he is in a drunken state would probably be back when he was a ghost.

It was probably some rough times back then. Shyren’s sister had just fallen down, and it’s inplied the cousins are rather close with the family. Add in a healthy dose of dysphoria and yearning for a greater audience- no, purpose... It must’ve been rough for Metta.

Mabey to cope, the cousins invested in some ghost ale?

I like to think when buzzed, Mettaton is just a (somehow) more confident and showy version of himself. Just with less motor control and a higher chance of making impulsive decisions.

Once we pass into drunk territory... things start getting more emotional. There will be tears. Probably a lot of them. He’s very emotional and can and will state his mind. Heartfelt confessions might happen, rivalries may happen, or he may just tell you what you already know.

If the cousins cracked open a cold one.... Well.... That may of been the first indications (aside from behavior they’d picked up but not said anything about) of what was really on Metta’s mind. About how desperate he was.

Metta didn’t remember it in the morning. Blookie never told him what they talked about. It was never spoken of again.

Ok!! On a slightly higher note: Toriel!

I’ve always seen Toriel as having a very smooth sounding, mezzo soprano voice. It’s nothing remarkable. She doesn’t belt often, she doesn’t have much of a verbrato, she just sounds like your normal 50ish woman who sings abit too much in the car. But, her voice is warm and soft and perfect to fall asleep too, especially when a smile gets in the way of her vowels.

She sings fairly often, probably the most in the main cast (aside Mettaton and MABEY Papyrus). Be it in the car, or when she has too much to drink, or when singing a lullaby to her kids.

I’ll start with lullabies since I believe they’d be the most personal to her.

We don’t know exactly when the monster human war happened, but I’m of the belief that it happened sometime in the Middle Ages, which would place Toriel’s childhood in medieval times. While she wasn’t born there, I also think both Toriel and Asgore’s families hail from Ireland. Her mother would sing to her every night, sometimes mixing in ancient tales of wild beasts and faeries.

It’s a sentiment she’s passed down to her own children.

Albeit, she changed a few lyrics or scenes in the stories to make them less terrifying, besides when she was caring for some of the older souls. There may also be a touch more happy endings than there were in the older days, and mabey a couple more injuries instead of deaths. But for the most part, they stay the same.

The pieces she dare not change though, are the ones she sings in Gaelic.

Frisk hasn’t learned the language (yet), so Toriel finds no need to change any details to such relics. Plus, they have a lot more of an emotional connection than most of her other songs or stories. Her eldest two children were incredibly fond of them

(Also the song I used for these doodles is called Bó na leath-adhairce (One Horned Cow). The woman who sings it (Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh) sounds a lot like how I imagine Toriel sounding. But like. With a lot more vocal training. She still sounds like she’s singing through a smile and I love it)

On a much more fun note, let’s talk about Toriel’s drinking songs!

So, this doesn’t happen often, but if the moods right and Toriel’s had JUST enough to drink.... She might attempt to start up a drinking song with whatever crowd she’s got around her. She doesn’t know many songs, and she only half remembers the rest, but goddamn it if she’s not gonna try it.

It’s awful. Any recognizable lyrics are either slurred, butchered, or in a language no one else can understand.

But she looks like she’s having so much fun, no one ever tries to stop her.

Hell, some people might even join in, if there’s been enough to drink in the house. If that happens, and if she’s feeling confident enough, Tori might even get up and dance a little bit, dragging whomever she pleases in as well. If she’s drunk enough to start singing like this in public, then she’s definitely drunk enough to do some dances.

Mostly though, she just sticks to lullabies.

As for the second part of this prompt, it’s a lot simpler than all of the rest of this post. Toriel enjoys most music, especially the choral verity. She’ll let anything on the radio, so long as it’s appropriate when Frisk’s in the car.

Her favorite genres though, are Classical, Folk, and Celtic. They were the styles she grew up with and remains fond of to this day. They bring back a feeling of Nostalgia without too many memories, just how she likes it. She also quite enjoys Operas, and plans on taking Frisk to see one once she gets the hang of the internet.

She used to adore ballroom music and waltzes but....

Now they just bring back Memories she’d rather not have.

Striking Up the Ball

Rafael Barba x Reader. AN: The fic that was not supposed to be. Interesting how the muses work sometimes. This covers the “masks” square in my kink bingo, found here. CW: outdoor fingerbang + oral anyone?

WC: 2219

AN2: Typos & such. Forgive me, xo.

Alex Muñoz was right.

Under any other circumstance, Rafael Barba would have been allergic to political shindigs like the one he was currently attending. The NYPD ball was one of the premier social events. Olivia was one of the many police officers being awarded medals of distinction. Not wanting to attend alone, she begged her best friend to attend with her.

“Rafael, please.”

Olivia placed a hand on Rafael’s outstretched arm. “It will be good for you to go. How long has it been since you and Yelina have been divorced?”

Rafael looked up from this scotch he was nursing and pursed his lips as he racked his brain. “A little over a year.”

“This is just two friends, having a much needed, overdue night out. Open bar.” Olivia reasoned, waggling her brows.

Rafael let out a low chuckle. “Okay. Now, cummerbund or waistcoat?”

“Definitely waistcoat.” Olivia suggested. She looked away for a minute, before turning back to face Rafael. “You know, Y/N may be there.”

Rafael reached forward to pluck an olive from the bar condiment caddy. “Why would I care if Y/N is there?” He asked brusquely, ignoring the fact that his stomach did a small flip at the mention of your name. Hopping off the barstool, he reached into his wallet and pulled a few bills out covering both his and Olivia’s tab. He pressed a kiss to Olivia’s cheek. “Send me the details. I’ll meet you there.”

--

And that is how Rafael Barba found himself on the steps of Gracie Mansion, the home of the Mayor of New York City, waiting for Olivia to arrive. Despite it being well into Autumn, it was unseasonably warm. Every so often a breeze from the East River billowed through, providing some relief. The night was perfectly clear, with the stars shining unusually bright despite the light pollution. Olivia stepped out from an unmarked black car, dressed to the nines in a floor length sparkling emerald dress with a plunging neckline. Her hair was swept up and chandelier style earrings hung off her face.

“Rafael Barba, you sure do clean up nicely.” Olivia murmured, taking in the handsome prosecutor’s appearance. Rafael appeared sophisticated in classic black tie, with a waistcoat as discussed. His salt and pepper hair was perfectly coiffed, creating a lovely swoop in the front. 

“I should be so offended. I am one of the best dressed ADA’s out there – where do you think Carisi gets it from?” Rafael retorted cheekily. Olivia let out a laugh and waved him off.

“In all sincerity, Olivia, you look gorgeous.” Rafael complimented, pressing a kiss to her cheek.

He extended his arm, and Olivia took it as they ascended the stairs into the mansion. Olivia handed the invitation to the doorman and after being cleared by security, made their way in. They followed the elegant strains of music. The home of the mayor had been transformed into an elegant fever dream of glittering crystal and opulence. Peonies, roses, lisianthus, hydrangeas, and tulips hung off the iron chandeliers. Food and drink overflowed in excess. Just as they were about to head into the main room, they were stopped by a woman holding two masks.

“It’s a masquerade.” The woman donning her own gilded mask explained. “Enjoy the festivities.”

Rafael audibly sighed and Olivia turned to him, her brow arched. “Well then. Here we go.” The French doors opened as they donned their masks.

Rafael turned to Olivia. “You owe me big.”

--

The party was filled to every corner. Waiters moved through and around the crowd effortlessly and with ease. The party was a little too loud, even for Rafael’s liking – and he knew as a Cuban, how his family and friends liked to party. People were in various stages of inebriation. From a distance, Rafael spied the mayor and other top brass in the PD talking and laughing. A waiter passed through and Rafael plucked the remaining two champagne flutes from the tray. Rafael turned to Olivia but found that she had disappeared altogether. His eyes scanned the room and he saw her talking to some other party goer.

Rafael straightened himself and tipped back one glass of champagne with ease. He continued to scan the room, watching the partygoers alike when his eyes settled on you. He realized that Olivia wasn’t jerking him around – you in fact had made an appearance. Covering your face was a rose-gold filigree half-mask, but he could recognize you from a mile away. Your lips were painted in a dark, deep wine color that complimented your dress. You wore a wine-colored A-line sleeveless sequin mini dress with a deep neckline. Your hair was loose, large, soft curls cascaded down your shoulders.

You were in deep conversation when you felt as if you were being watched. You turned around and met Rafael’s eyes from across the room. Rafael tipped the champagne chute in your direction and you smiled. Excusing yourself, you made your way over. The way your hips switched as you walked over - something in him stirred – and it was more than just his cock, which became alive for the first time in a very long time since the divorced was finalized. 

Rafael set down the now-empty champagne flute and started working on the other as you made your way over. His eyes coasted down your exposed skin to the swells of tits, which were lifted obscenely high in your dress.

“Good evening.” You greeted. He stared at you intently, transfixed by your supple pout. His cock stirred and for the briefest moment he could imagine your mouth stretched out over his thick cock.

“Hello.” Rafael rumbled. The husky timbre of his voice caused you to involuntarily shiver. He took your hand in his and pressed a kiss to the top of it. You sucked a deep breath in as his soft lips touched your skin, feeling an electric spark. You wondered if he felt it too.

“How are you enjoying yourself this fine evening? You asked.

“This is quite the event.” Rafael replied, glancing at all of the party-goers.

“I’d say so – it’s as if all of Manhattan’s finest are here.”

“Well, more like right in front of me.” He murmured. You cocked your head. “I’m sorry, what did you say?” Rafael paused and then cleared his throat before continuing. “You look gorgeous.”

You felt your heat skip a beat at his words. “You look quite handsome yourself.” And you meant it. There was something about Rafael in a tux that did something to you. He was already handsome, but now, him in a tuxedo… desire pooled in your belly.

You were the newest special victim detective. And you had a thing for the prosecutor who worked closely with your squad. There was something about him – whether his legal knowledge, his humility, or his sense of ethics and fairness. You harbored a crush near immediately.  You relished any opportunity to work with him one-on-one or sit in on one of his trials.

You had no idea Rafael was attending the masquerade ball but you had run into Olivia at the bathroom and she had made a casual mention of his attendance, which caused you to internally squee with delight.

The string quartet in the corner began to play and you recognized the early strings of Romance in F Minor. You looked longingly at the other couples dancing and turned to Rafael.

“Care to dance?”

Rafael’s lips twitched into a smile. “Absolutely.” Taking your hand into his, he accompanied you to the dance floor. Rafael held you close as you two swayed to the music. Never in your wildest dreams had you imagined this would be how you were spending your evening. At minimum, you figured you would have fun dressing up, watch your captain accept her award and then have a really amazing dinner on someone else’s dime.

Rafael’s hand lowered to the small of your back, pressing you even closer. The closeness makes you shiver involuntarily, and your nipples harden, straining against the confines of your dress. You take a deep inhalation of his cologne and your cunt kicks hard with need. At one point, Rafael looked down to you and he didn’t miss how you licked your lips and again, he felt his cock twitch and stir to life.

The dance ended, with another starting. The two of you continue dancing, losing yourselves in the moment. Eventually you both take a reprieve to sit for dinner. Olivia eventually accepted her award and from where she stood, she did not miss how you and Rafael sat closely to one another. You crossed your legs as you listened to Olivia’s speech and your dress rose on your thighs, exposing more skin. You made no move to pull your dress hemline down and Rafael used the opportunity to trace concentric circles along your skin. You were breathing heavier, your heart raced in its cage.

The award ceremony finished, and you stood quickly, eager. You could tell the moon was shining brightly from the floor to ceiling windows and you reached down to tug on Rafael’s arm. “It’s warm in here, lets go for a walk outside in the garden.”

Rafael nodded and the two of you ventured outside. You did not miss how his hand was on the small of your back, guiding you. The garden was quiet, save for one or two guests. You held onto your clutch as the two of you made way through the hedge maze. You noted in the center was a small tower with double helical external staircase.

As you two made way through the maze, you chit-chatted on small, non-important matters. You both finally made way to the middle of the maze, to where the tower menacingly loomed. You spun on the balls of your feet and ripped your mask off. You faced Rafael and searched his eyes through the mask he wore. They were blown with lust.

“Kiss me.”

Rafael turned to you and gave you a wicked, near wolfish grin. He yanked off his mask as well, pulled you in close and captured your lips with his. You whimpered in response as his tongue dueled with yours. He moved his lips to along your neckline, causing you to gasp and groan. A hand trailed up your dress, seeking. Rafael let out a deep throated rumble as he moved the tiny sliver of fabric that dared serve as your panties. His fingers quickly found your slick heat and he stroked you, collecting your wetness on his fingers. You dropped your clutch as you desperately gripped the iron railing that surrounded the tower.  

“So wet and needy.” Rafael murmured in your ear before giving it a nip. His fingers glided to your clit and he rubbed similar circles on the swollen nub just as he did earlier on your thighs. You let out soft moans as he worked your clit with mixes of small circles and soft pressure.

“Oh, oh, oh God.” You moaned as you now gripped onto Rafael. The music, the dancing, the alcohol – it was all too much. It was hedonistic and epicurean. And you wanted more. You wanted Rafael. Rafael captured your lips once more, swallowing your moans as he slipped a thick digit inside of you. Your thighs trembled as he finger fucked you, bringing you quickly to the precipice. Your eyes squeezed shut as you completely dissolved into pleasure. Your orgasm rippled through your body. It was almost blinding; sounds of the party nearby were fuzzy, almost like white noise.

Rafael removed his fingers and made a big show of sucking his fingers clean. Roughly he pulled down the top of your dress, freeing your tits from their confines. He grabbed one globe tightly and lowered his mouth to it and suckled. He repeated his actions to your other breast, flicking his tongue until your nipples were stiffened peaks. Rafael removed his mouth and with his index and thumb, twisted a nipple rather roughly causing you to whimper. It should have hurt but instead caused your cunt to involuntarily clutch around nothingness in desperate need.

You let out a whimper and watched in eager anticipation as he removed his tuxedo jacket. He set it down, inside to the grass and then knelt before you. He encouraged you to spread your legs which you were all too happy to oblige.

Rafael buried his face in between your legs, sucking and licking at your most feminine parts. “Oh God,” you groaned as your head lolled back, lacing your hands into his salt and pepper hair. You pulled at his hair, tugging as your hips rocked against his face. “Don’t stop, so close,” you groaned.

“Never,” Rafael murmured as he used the tip of his tongue to torture your clitoris. His breath tickled swollen pearl. You felt the familiar coil in your belly and before you knew it, you were falling apart, coming all over Rafael’s face - chanting his name and praising God all at once.

Rafael licked you through your orgasm and then pressed kisses up and along your trembling thighs until he was standing fully. You wrapped your hand around his neck and pulled him in for a kiss, deep and hungry.

“Lets get out of here.” Rafael rasped, breaking the kiss.

“Lead the way.” You reply as your pulled up your dress, fixing yourself. Rafael grabbed your hand and the two of you made your way out. 

Your masks were still behind on the ground. Long forgotten.

FIN.

--Tag List--

@mgarner1227 @madpanda75 @tropes-and-tales @beardedmccoy @youreverycolor @neely1177 @the-baby-bookworm @mrsrafaelbarba @skittle479 @ottosuricato @delia26 @sass-and-suspenders @mommakat32 @dreila03 @beccabarba @garturbo @lovebennycolon @imjustreallynosy @sweetsummertime99 @whyissvuruiningmylovelife @annabelleb49 @scarletsoldierrr @cesarofangirl78 @redlipstickandplaid @redlipstickandblacktea @zoeykaytesmom @differentshadesofgray @misssirenlove @esparza-army @bananas-pajamas @mishaissocoolike @thefanficfaerie @theenchantedgalleryofstories @catnip987 @choppedgalaxynerd @pieceofshittytitty @ktiz90 @evee87 @itsjustmyfantasyroom @blk0912 @detective-giggles​ @rampantmuses​ @jazzyjoi​ @caked-crusader​ @rachelxwayne​ @the-hopeless-haze​ @prurientpuddlejumper​

Sherlolly Self-Interviews 2020

Well hi 👋

Ignoring the internal image of Gilderoy Lockheart smiling smugly while flashbulbs pop and saying ‘In my autobiography, Magical Me...’ 🙈😆 I shall take the opportunity of this lovely event to introduce myself as a writer of Sherlolly fanfiction on AO3...

I am English and somewhere over 30.  I watched the show as it aired, and lost my heart as quickly to Molly Hooper as to Sherlock Holmes.  The kiss is British television history.  Series 4 is my favourite.  Moriarty on the beach is life.  The Holmes brothers break my heart every time.

I am extremely lucky to have been provided some questions to answer here by @ohaine and @mybrainrots - huge, huge love and thanks to these two lovelies, and not just for this.  I admire you both so much as writers, and your support means the world to me ❤️ Thanks too, to @sherlollyappreciationweek!

Where did you begin to write, and have you written for other fandoms?  I wrote my first fanfic when I was eleven years old - a 100 page ramble about The Monkees.  Oh yes.  Then in 2018, I fell for the characters of the Disney Pixar film Cars and began writing and publishing.  So far so random!  Writing in this fandom sprang from binge-watching all four series of Sherlock during lockdown.  I remembered reading Louise Brealey talking about being disappointed Molly didn’t get chance to ‘roundly kick Sherlock’s arse’ and agreeing with her wholeheartedly.  That, over a few weeks, turned into my first fic - Who You Really Are.  

You’re a recent (and welcome!) arrival to the Sherlolly ship, and I was wondering if writing in an established, less active than it used to be fandom has been a challenge?   Thank you, firstly.  My experience of this fandom has been incredibly positive - the sense of welcome has been wonderful.  I will admit I was terrified posting the first fic - there are hundreds of times more stories posted daily in the Sherlock fandom as in the one I had some experience of.  But I needn’t have worried, it’s been a blast.  I will also admit, that it’s no small thing to be surrounded by such brilliant writing and the long-standing passion which goes with it.  But I find that inspiring in itself, and I’m very glad to be here - how supportive the fandom are makes me feel like I always have been!       

What’s your favourite place and way to write?  My aesthetic is Lin-Manuel Miranda in his in-law’s laundry room 🤣 I wrote my first ten-thousand words on the notes app on my phone before my other half told me to stop being ridiculous!  I switch between the laptop, my phone and longhand (I’m a sucker for a nice notepad and a Uni-Ball Eye) and, more often than not, not sat up properly at a table.   

Since you’ve (done something I’ve never managed successfully and) written a novella length fic... how did you organise/keep track of all the details and where you wanted the story to go?  Did you outline/plot in advance?  First of all - I would love to see a novella length fic from you @mybrainrots!  The final scene of Who You Really Are came to me very early on and I knew I wanted the fic to fit within TFP - a lot of it takes place in the timeframe of the final montage.  At first, it was going to be much more about Sherlock’s relationship with the ideas of sentiment and love (the phrase ‘I’m not sentimental about you, I love you,’ haunted me for a while) and I spent some time researching the psychology and playing with scenes from throughout the series - one of my favourites I didn’t go on to use was inspired by the final scene of THoB.  Using scenes from the canon gave an automatic structure, and I was always aiming for the final one I wrote early on - the two of them on the beach (everything is about the beach, with me!)  As I went along and started, inevitably, to slow down, I mapped out the chapters with a short note of what I wanted to be in each, then would add notes or phrases as they came to me - often emailed from my phone!  I had to force myself through a tricky section set in Baker Street at one point, but it came together in the end.  I did plot The Pathologist’s Skeletons on paper first, as I found with a casefic which remains a WIP, that I can get confused and lose focus when it comes to details and how to reveal them in a way which stays paced and interesting.  I’ll certainly do that from now on with longer stories and cases.  How did you keep up enthusiasm for the work?  I want to write an original novel, so I am forcing myself to work through the knotty bits and blocks as a learning experience.  Not everything is destined to be finished or finessed, of course, but I’m finding this process is building my confidence that I can overcome problems and slow periods.  I also find I know when I need some external inspiration - some of my favourite scenes have come to me while out walking the dog or sitting on the beach.  I’ve also been inspired by books or other series or things going on in the world, as we all are, and sometimes that’s pushed me on.  Plus, of course, I’m a newbie - I’m very much in the honeymoon period of my writing, even though I’ve loved Sherlock for ten years! (Ten years! Bonkers.) 

You’ve got a knack for writing Sherlock’s thoughts and capturing his voice.  That said, which character do you find easiest to write?  Which is the hardest?  Thank you so much.  I absolutely love writing Sherlock and Mycroft, and I’m sure that’s because they suit my somewhat over-the-top writing style!  I find Molly and her POV really difficult.  I want the scenes I write from her perspective to sound completely different to Sherlock, but that means writing in a style which doesn’t come as naturally to me.  I’m a long way off happy with that at the moment, but I’m enjoying the challenge.

Is there a scene or character that specifically inspired you to start writing Sherlolly?  The whole of TFP, but especially from the moment Sherlock arrives at Musgrave onwards.  I am desperate to see what a Sherlock Holmes who has been reacquainted with his own heart would look like.  I find his emotionality in those final scenes hugely compelling (Mycroft’s office is one of my favourite moments from across all four series) and, as I have always believed in him and Molly, I practically jumped up back in May after watching it and said ‘right, where’s my notebook?!’.

There’s a lovely peaceful, quiet feeling to your fic ‘We’re All Right At The Moment’.  Can you tell us what inspired it and if you’ve thought of doing the backstory that goes with it?  Thank you!  Like everyone, I would go back to January of this year and start again in a heartbeat, but I am hugely fortunate to be able to say that I have a lot to be grateful to the UK lockdowns for.  I might never have begun writing in this fandom otherwise, for one, and I have had a brilliant time so far and met some lovely people. Honestly, I don’t feel able to do any sort of justice in my writing to what has happened in the world in any broader sense than drawing on my own experiences of staying at home and enjoying my family.  This particular super-short fic sees Molly cutting Sherlock’s hair at home in Baker Street.  I wrote it in the evening after I had cut my other half’s hair and had been reminding myself that despite how horribly worried I was - and still am - about everything, we were all right in that moment, and to focus on that as much as possible.  I wanted to try to capture that, if for no reason other than to look back on this entire experience and remember something lovely, so I am so pleased to hear you felt the fic did that.  It was only after I finished it and reread it, that I realised it is ambiguous as to whether Molly is worried about Sherlock contracting the virus, or whether she is remembering him being treated for it... As I say, I don’t think I could write more about these extraordinary circumstances - perhaps it’s just too close at the moment - so I don’t plan on extending it.  But you know how it is, the plot bunnies hop where they will... 

Do you have a Sherlolly music playlist?  What are your top five favs from the list? Here’s a run down of (6 🙊) songs I have been getting emotional over in the last little while, leading my brain to assign their significance to my favourite couple...

Kissing You - Des’Ree - It’s so 90′s, it’s a bit cheesy, it’s oddly disturbing.  It helped me write A Request, Made Properly, and that gave me an excuse to have Sherlock kiss Molly in the snow.

How Long Will I Love You? - Ellie Goulding - part of the playlist, but also in remembrance of a friend who passed away recently.  Life is very short, love is forever.

High and Dry - Jamie Cullum - It’s made me emotional for a very long time.  The original is my partner’s version of choice, this is mine.  

Think About You - Delta Goodrem - Okay, this one isn’t emotional, and it’s not my usual vibe!  Blame the zoom exercise class I do!  But oh my goodness, it’s Molly.  Bless her.

Blinded By Your Grace (P.T.2. F.T. MNEK) - Stormzy - One of the best ever, I reckon.  Spent an awful lot of time thinking about angels and demons, grace and what it takes to save someone, while writing my latest - The Pathologist’s Skeletons.  This has been in my head most of the (blimmin’) time!

Love Me Like You Do - Ellie Goulding - I didn’t know I was a fan of Ellie until I wrote this list... I don’t subscribe to the theory that the love Molly wants or that which Sherlock has to offer is any lesser because it isn’t ‘normal’ or expected. I don’t think romantic entanglement would come easy to either of them. But it’s still love and it would be beautiful.

Thank you so much for reading.  Thanks and love to @ohaine and @mybrainrots. And thank you @sherlollyappreciationweek for the event and for everything you do ❤️

Feel like I should sign off with a quote from the show...

“You’re not a puzzle-solver, you never have been. You’re a drama queen!” Dr John Watson (Moffat & Gatiss) 2014 😜

X

A fav fic of mine by @mybrainrots

https://archiveofourown.org/works/7563193

A fav fic of mine by @ohaine

https://archiveofourown.org/works/10562904

My stuff:

https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnglandsGray/works

The Aftermath - Ch. 20

Dinner

Summary: Riley spends the day with her friends at Ramsford, and after Liam returns from the funeral, they enjoy a meal together

Word Count: ~5.7k

A/N: flashbacks are in ~italics~

Warnings: mention of character death

*All characters belong to Pixelberry, except those that are unique to my story (I’ve also used some characters and fictional instances from Donna Tartt’s “The Goldfinch”)*

Catch up here

A/N 2: forgive me for the last post. I clicked “post” from my phone and it literally only posted the title lol

Tags:  @captain-kingliamsqueen​​ @marshmallowsaremyfavorite​​ @gkittylove99​​ @lovablegranny​​ @loudbluebirdlover @mom2000aggie​​ @kingliam2019​​ @queenrileyrose​​ @shanzay44 @cordonianroyalty​​ @hopefulmoonobject​​ @hopelessromanticmonie @cinnamonspongecake​​ @queenjilian​​ @kuladekiwi​​ @twinkle-320​​ @iaminlovewithtrr​​ @charlotteg234​​ @amandablink​​ @texaskitten30​​ @tinkie1973 @louiseingram1208 @queencatherynerhys​​ @pens-girl-87​​ @missevabean​​ @ladyangel70​​ @sanchita012​​ @cordonianprincess​​ @liamandneca @cordonia-gothqueen​​ @pink-diamond13​​​

I’m sorry, the tags are being weird and I don’t know if they’re working or not… but I hope I got everyone down! If I missed someone, or anyone wants to be added/removed, let me know :)

I hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing, and please excuse any grammatical errors :))

Also just wanted to say thank you for all the likes, reblogs, and comments<3

✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧

- Riley - 

After the kids and Liam left to attend Regina’s funeral, I introduced Hana to Rowan, and we spent the day talking about their personal lives. I was grateful that neither of them brought up any questions about Theo or my life with him, but throughout the day my mind wandered back to my dead husband.

I missed him, and as much as I wanted to hate that fact... I didn’t. I had to peel myself away from wondering about the details of what happened to him when the bomb went off. Was it a slow death or a quick one? Was he thinking about the kids? Was he trapped? Did he see the guards run through the exhibit as I did?

Being back in Cordonia was beyond surreal. I had dreamed about coming back for years, and the topic was something Theo and I used to argue about a lot. Thinking back to those arguments makes me realize how futile they were: here I am now, no thanks to Theo, and there was no fighting involved in bringing me here.

I jump back to reality after silence spends around me. Hana and Rowan were having a conversation, but they stopped talking and were looking at me inquisitively, a shy smile on Rowan’s face.

“So do you think I should say no?” she asks, looking between Hana and I.

“The court can be a cruel place sometimes,” Hana tells her. “But I can give you some tips to make it easier.”

“Sorry, what were you talking about?” I say. “I zoned out.”

“Um, so,” Rowan begins. “Maxwell asked if I would like to join the court for the Social Season.”

“What?” I make a face. “Really?”

Rowan blushes and looks down. “Yeah, um...”

Hana and I lean forward, waiting for her to continue.

She sighs and her shoulders slump. “I thought he asked me because he wanted to spend more time with me, but I think he’s just concerned about Gabriel and Eleanor having like a support system, y’know?”

“I mean, Gabe and Ella should be fine,” I state. “Liam said he’d look out for them, and I’ll be there, too.”

She looks up at me and tilts her head. “You know that’s what I thought... but then I felt like he might’ve said that because he wanted to spend time with me? Nevermind, that’s dumb.”

“I haven’t seen you two together for long,” Hana jumps in. “But you both seemed quite friendly with one another yesterday evening.”

Rowan laughs to herself. “Yeah, he was showing me a video of a dancing corgi. I thought it was cute and then he started sending me all these dog memes.”

“That’s definitely Maxwell. And if you want, you can join the court for the Social Season.” I reach out to touch her knee. “I know I’ve probably scared you away from it, but your Social Season should be nothing like mine.”

“You’re right,” she answers. “Different circumstances.”

For a moment I wondered why she was so concerned about Maxwell’s reasons behind inviting her to join court, but Savannah interrupts us and says that lunch is ready.

With Hana and Rowan’s help, I managed to hop down the stairs and towards the dining room. Once there, I notice Bertrand sitting at the head of the table, Bartie, Olivia, Maxwell, and Drake sitting next to a woman I didn’t know.

I maintain my balance against a chair and watch her walk up to me. She’s almost as tall as Drake, and her kinky hair is neatly pulled back. “Pleasure to meet you,” she says. “I’m Jessica.”

“Riley,” I say, shaking her hand.

We all take our seats and start our meal. Bertrand mentions that the press have noticed that House Beaumont and House Nevrakis are not in attendance for the Queen Mother’s funeral. Olivia comments, saying that if she could, she would make her disdain towards Regina even more apparent, all because of what she did to Liam.

I look down at my plate, feeling guilty. I was part of Liam’s continued pain — and Gabriel’s, for that matter. If I hadn’t left in the first place, none of us would be in such an awkward position.

The subject shifts towards the upcoming Social Season. Savannah tells us that she’s heard some of the other noble ladies say that there will be some international presence this year.

She continues the discussion with Bertrand and Hana, with a little input from Jessica. She had an accent, and her voice sounded like music; I was fine with staying quiet and listening to her talk. I notice that Drake’s shoulders are oddly tense, though his face is calm. He had told me a bit about his relationship with Jessica, but I wanted to know more.

“Jessica,” I jump into the conversation, grabbing everyone’s attention. “Have you ever gone through the Social Season before?”

She gives a lighthearted laugh and puts her hand on Drake’s arm, who doesn’t react. “Drake has always told me that he thinks I would not enjoy the Social Season.”

“Depends,” he says. “You’d like the fancy parties and ball gowns, but people in the court are two-faced.”

She clicks her tongue. “When has that ever made a difference in one’s life? It’s only negatively impactful if you allow it to be so.” She turns back to her food and continues, “But nevermind that, I’ve decided that I will join for the season this year.”

Drake’s head jerks in her direction, and then I notice him quickly glance towards me.

“Oh, this’ll be my first year, too!” Rowan states. “So both of us will be going through something new.”

“The court can be a delightful place when one has the right companions,” Hana tells them.  

For the rest of our meal, a pensive look remains on Drake’s face. After everyone leaves the dining room and I follow Hana and Rowan back to my room, I notice Jessica give Drake a quick kiss before she walks down the driveway and into a Jeep.

Drake walks off, and Maxwell trails behind him, claiming that he was excited to finally get to know his future sister-in-law.

After I reach the top of the stairs, Rowan leans in and says, “Hey, was it just me, or does Jessica look really familiar?”

I recall her face, and try to attach it to someone I may have known during my time in New York. “No,” I tell her.

She shrugs it off and leads me back into my room.

Rowan turns on the TV, and we watch “Game of Thrones” with Hana, whose eyes are glued to the screen. Eventually, Savannah joins us and once in a while Bertrand checks in on us.

He had the staff bring us snacks, and when we were a little more than half-way through the first season, Bertrand tells us that Liam and the kids are probably on their way back.

I throw my legs off the side of the bed and hop towards the bathroom. “I have to get ready for my dinner with Liam.” I tell them.

“You have dinner with His Majesty?” Bertrand exclaims, his eyes going wide.

I stop hopping. “Yeah, he asked me last night before the doctor got here.”

Bertrand looks me up and down and begins to shake his head. “Hurry! There is not nearly enough time to make you presentable! I will go down to the boutique and get you something that would be of King Liam’s preference.”

“I’m not going to be dressing up for his preference!” I try to hop after Bertrand, who is already on his way down the hall. “We’re just going to talk about everything with Gabriel and Eleanor!”

“Nevermind that, blossom!” Maxwell appears from the other end of the hall. “It never hurts to get glammed up!”

Hana pats my shoulder. “I’ll go with Bertrand and make sure he gets something of your style.”

I wanted to tell them to stop, that I had a nice dress in my suitcase, and that would be enough. But I recognize the look in their eyes; there was the same intensity whenever we got ready for an event together, but something was different. There was too much intensity. They not only wanted to do this, they needed it.

I relent, and Hana follows after Bertrand. I go back into the room and manage to take a quick shower.

When Maxwell knocks on the bathroom door, I take a robe and wobble out, coming face-to-face with a green floor-length gown. Hana and Maxwell observe me, waiting for a reaction.

“Isn’t that a little much for dinner?” I ask them.

“It is perfect,” Bertrand states. “Need I remind you, Lady Riley, that royal society strives to uphold sophistication and elegance in every event. This situation is no different, as His Majesty will be dining with you.”

I scoff and roll my eyes. “Bertrand, I know about all the sophistication and elegance. I’ve dined with royalty before, and have been rubbing elbows with New York’s elite. I’ve had my fair share of practice.”

“That does not mean—” he tries to continue, but Savannah puts her hand on his arm.

“Bertrand, let Riley get changed in peace. Let’s go check if everything is set for her and Liam.”

He turns back and hesitates, but then follows his wife out the room. Another pang of guilt vibrates through me. I imagine that Bertrand’s hard exterior didn’t make it easy for him to get through to Savannah and eventually propose. I wished that I had been there to make everything go through more smoothly... or at least have attended their wedding.

I wobble back into the bathroom with the dress. I lean against the wall and eventually get the dress on. I make some small adjustments, making sure I had put it on correctly, when I hear Hana call out:

“Is it comfortable? Sorry if it is too tight or loose, I gave you the same size that you used to wear during the Engagement Tour.”

“It fits like a glove, Hana!” I call back to her. I look at myself in the mirror, and if not for the faint lines on my forehead and the tired bags under my eyes, I could imagine that I was about to exit into my first Beaumont Bash.

I blink away the memories and stumble out of the bathroom. I don’t pay attention to finding matching shoes, but Rowan helps me tie my hair back into a fashionable braid. While she does that, I put on some makeup, and the time passes by so quickly that I’m shocked when Ella runs into the room screaming, “Hi, Mama!”

She hugs my waist and I draw her in. “You look pretty,” she tells me. I check the door to see if Gabriel followed her, but he isn’t there. Hana, Rowan, and Maxwell send smiles my way, and then leave the room.

I turn my attention back to Ella. “Did you have fun?” I ask her.

“Yeah, we got donuts on the way back!”

“That’s nice.”

She takes a seat at the edge of the bed and watches me finish getting ready. I can see her through the mirror in front of me, and I sometimes give little poses that make her erupt into giggles.

“You look... stunning,” a voice says, taking me by surprise. I jump out of my seat. Even though my leg didn’t hurt anymore, I couldn’t balance on it. Liam rushes forward to help me, grabbing my elbow and then my waist.

His outfit wasn’t as formal as it was when he left this morning, but he still looks every bit regal. I wonder how he changed so quickly. I look up at him, putting my hands on his shoulders to balance myself better. His eyes rake over my body, causing a warm feeling to radiate through me.

It’s the first day of school. Even though Gabe had gone through this twice already, his separation anxiety always surfaced when we were about to leave. He left his backpack upstairs and tried to use it as an excuse as to why he couldn’t go. After I rushed into his room and got it for him, Theo asks me if I saw Ella’s backpack anywhere. She looks at me, her rosy cheeks clear compared to Gabe’s tear-stained ones, and tells me that she didn’t think she would need it.

I give Gabe his bag and rush back upstairs to get Ella’s. When I come back down, I trip and begin to fall forwards. Theo’s already there. He grabs my forearms and I stumble into his embrace. Our noses touch for half a second. Theo’s eyes sparkle with a look I don’t appreciate. He chuckles and leans in for a kiss. He tastes like pancake syrup. “I love you,” he tells me, loud enough for the kids to hear.

“Time to go,” I say, and pry myself away from him. I look down at the kids, and find Gabe clutching my shirt.

He’s crying again, saying, “No, mommy, no.” He hiccups nonstop. I lean down to kiss his cheek, and my son’s blue eyes look sadly desperate.

I tell him, “It’s okay, baby, it’s going to be alright.”

In the car, I tell Gabe that the end of the day would show up and he wouldn’t even realize it. Theo is occupied with Ella. She tells him how excited she is for the first day of kindergarten, and most of her words come out in a mumbled blur, but Theo gives her his full attention.

Theo’s hand is on my knee, lightly rubbing it with his thumb. After I give Gabe and Ella another kiss and let them leave for school, I ask him to remove it.

His face stiffens, changing from the soft look he had when he was wishing the kids goodbye.

“I’m doing it for them, okay?” He tells me. “It’s important that they see we don’t hate each other.”

I want to ask him when we have ever done anything to make them think that, but then he gets a phone call and ignores me for the rest of the ride home.

“Are you alright?” Liam’s voice brings me back to reality.

“Yeah, sorry,” I tell him. Turning away from him, I blush when I notice that Ella is still in the room and Gabe is at the door.

I pretend to look for something in my makeup bag. Gabe and Ella giggle behind me, and I hear Liam’s thick chuckle as well. I wonder what they were laughing about, so I turn to look at them.

Liam’s face is fixated on Ella, who stares at Gabe, who clutches his stomach.

“So,” I break their moment of laughter, grabbing Liam’s attention.

He clears his throat, but the playful smile remains. “If you are ready, there is a smaller dining room on this floor. I requested the Duke have it prepared instead of the one downstairs, seeing as though you still have some time before your leg fully heals.”

“Oh. You didn’t have to do that.”

He puts up his hand. “Please, it was nothing.” Liam goes to grab my crutches, and I suddenly feel graceless when I try to move with the gown pooled around me.

Ella tells me, “See you later, Mama-gator!”

I turn back to them, wondering if the donuts Liam bought them were all they ate. “Are you two going to go eat dinner?”

“Maxwell said he would walk us through more courtly etiquette before we eat,” Gabe says. They walk away, and I turn back to Liam.

I notice how he looks at the children as they walk in the opposite direction. My heart swells, and I genuinely hope everything would be smooth sailing from here on out.

We reach a set of ordinate doors that I had never seen before. Two servants open them, and we enter the room.

There’s a small table, probably big enough for four people, but there were only two chairs. A candle and rose sit in the middle of the table, and I remember the roses he sent to me the day we were in Fydelia.

Taking a look around the room, I see that there are candles everywhere: on the floors and window sills and on smaller tables near serving trays.

Glancing at Liam, I notice that he’s been scanning my face the entire time. Sure I was impressed — flattered even — but I didn’t think he should have done all this for a simple dinner.

He leads me to one of the chairs, and pushes it in as I take a seat. Servants take away my crutches.

Liam sits calmly, though he continues to glance around the room as if he was checking that everything was in order.

After a few moments, servants put plates and trays in front of us.

“I didn’t know what you would like,” Liam tells me. “So I had them prepare a variety.”

There is soup, chicken, small tarts, cut up sandwiches, and spaghetti!

I laugh a little when I notice it, and he chuckles, too.

“I thought it would be a nice way to remember how well our first date went.”

We smile at each other awkwardly before serving ourselves. I expected him to start up the conversation, but we continue eating in silence.

Theo mostly conducted business through dinner or lunch and would go by himself. Today, he asked me to tag along, since the person he was meeting would be bringing someone as well.

We don’t talk on the drive over. That’s mostly how it is between us. We manage to keep up the façade in front of the children, friends, and family, but when we’re alone together we remain civil, and only civil.

But the amount of time we spent alone was increasing. Sure sometimes we would argue, but most of the time we acted like close friends. If someone saw us behave like that, they could easily figure out that we had a child together.

Inside the restaurant, two men are already waiting for Theo. We take a seat and order. I remain silent for the most of the meal, but I feel the other men glancing at me.

Theo discusses the benefits of them investing in his and Boris’ company, but the men are difficult to persuade. They almost stand up and leave, but Theo doesn’t lose his cool and gets them to stay.

My husband finishes his little speech, and the men start chuckling behind their wine glasses. They glance at me again, and answer Theo in Russian, which makes his cheeks go red with embarrassment. He loses his calm and curses at them, and they curse back with harsher words.

One of them throws his handkerchief at Theo and they leave the restaurant.

Even though Theo and Boris’ company was doing well — and I honestly thought that they didn’t need this new investor — I knew that it must have felt terrible to get rejected like that.

I put my hand on his shoulder. He takes it and kisses it. We leave the restaurant hand-in-hand. When we get into the car, he leans over and kisses my cheek. I wonder why he did that, since the kids aren’t here.

After the driver passes by our penthouse, I ask him where we’re going. He doesn’t answer me, but smirks. Eventually the car stops and leads me out and into a lavish rooftop restaurant. He tells me that he’s thankful to have me by his side. I sit quietly and watch him talk, looking out into the city around me, taking in the words of this man who I promised myself not to love.

Liam still hasn’t talked, and I begin to get more nervous. Remembering Theodore and our “fake-love” situation, I decide to speak up.

“I think we should set some boundaries,” I tell him.

He chews pensively. “What do you mean?”

“About Gabriel, and what’s going to happen since he’s the heir... and our son.”

Liam looks back down at his plate. “Yes, I believe that is the reason for this dinner.” He sends me a playful smile, but I keep my face straight.

“I know there’s a lot of... gray space between us, considering our relationship and everything.” I glance up to see him staring at me. I expected him to look upset. Remembering fact that he’s been trained since childhood to hide his emotions makes me feel worse.

I do my best to continue, “But I feel like I’ve been neglecting Gabe and Ella these past few days. Even when I didn’t have my memory, I knew that they lost their father, and I partly knew that I had lost my husband, but I was so focused on getting the rest of my memory back, so focused on trying to remember who you were, that I forgot that my children are probably traumatized and struggling emotionally.”

I scan his face, but don’t wait for Liam to answer before I add in, “I lost my father when I was about sixteen, but it was of natural causes... we sort of knew that he was going to pass away before the fact. But Gabe and Ella didn’t know... we had just left them at practice! For their favorite sports! And when they come back they find out that their father is no longer with them and their mother doesn’t know who they are? I can’t even imagine what they went through.”

My voice breaks a little, and I feel like I’ve fully comprehended what I’ve done to my children. My poor little babies.

Liam reaches across the table to take my hand, but I regain my composure. I continue: “Moving to Cordonia didn’t make it any easier. Right now what they need is a support system.”

“Of course,” he answers.

I sit back in my seat. “And... I want to say that I’m sorry. For leaving without telling you. Maybe this wouldn’t have been so hard had I communicated better.”

“It was my fault as well,” Liam states. “You deserved more than the trysts and secrecy.”

I didn’t understand why he was putting unnecessary blame on himself, but a small voice in my head tells me that he did wrong me, and he was right to apologize for it.

“Okay, but,” I try to interrupt him, not wanting to shoulder more blame on either of us. “We have time. To figure out what this is going to be. Until then, we have to... sort of co-parent Gabriel.”

“Co-parent?” Liam asks.

I wonder if he’s ever heard that term before. “Even though our relationship is very uncertain right now, we have to work together to help Gabriel.”

“And Eleanor, of course,” he adds.

I scoff and roll my eyes. “She can be a bit of a handful sometimes. I don’t want you to get worried about her. Gabriel’s your son, you should—"

“She’s nothing I can’t handle.” Liam chuckles. “I’ve spent time with both of them, and they’re quite well-behaved. But... may I ask you something?”

“Go ahead,” I allow him, taking another bite of my spaghetti.

“Why did you choose the names ‘Gabriel’ and ‘Eleanor’ for them?”

I slowly chew my food and swallow it. Liam hasn’t touched his food in the last couple minutes, and I imagine that he’s waiting for me to speak.

“Gabriel was my father’s name,” I tell him. “My mother suggested it.”

At the mention of her, he raises his eyebrows. I notice it and begin to laugh.

“Oh, my God! My mother gave you a hard time, didn’t she? Rowan told me about it.”

Through a broad smile, he says, “Yes, she wanted me to leave immediately and return to Cordonia. I half expected her to kick me out, but I managed to win her over.”

Boris, his wife, and their three children had been visiting the U.S., and we all decided to go to the Bahamas for the long weekend. My mother came with, since she enjoyed Boris and Theo’s company.

Astrid and I were sipping on wine. The children were playing around within sight. Theo sat next to me, with Boris and my mother on the couch in front of us.

They’re all laughing, but I’m tired. Annoyed. Before we flew over here, Theo and I had argued. I told him it was time that I told Gabriel about Liam, and that we returned to Cordonia.

He had been clean for a while now, but I still blamed his irritability on his withdrawals. He would never lash out in front of the kids, but wasn’t kind to me.

He said that if I really wanted to leave, I could just take Gabriel and go.

I wasn’t going to take up his offer, but I went to the drawers where we kept all our passports.

I find Gabe’s, Ella’s, and his, but I can’t find mine. I turn to yell at him, knowing that he took it, but he’s already out of the room. I race to the living room, ready to make him give me back my passport, but my mother has arrived since we said that we would go over to the Bahamas together. She embraces Theo like he’s her own son.

Now here, while we’re supposed to be enjoying some free time with family and friends, Drake, Maxwell, Hana, and Liam’s faces flash before my eyes. Perhaps in another life I was enjoying drinks with them instead of Theo and Boris and Astrid.

Theo notices the distraught look on my face, and wraps his arm around me. He kisses the top of my head, and whispers to me: “I’m sorry.”

There’s a large part of me begging myself to pull away, but I don’t want to be alone. I wanted Liam more than anything, but it was clear to me now that it was either Theo and my children or loneliness. I fall into his embrace, and I decide that it’s best for Gabriel and I if I stayed here.

“Um... that’s great,” I shake myself into the present moment. “I... had Gabe in L.A. actually. My mom flew out to come and see him. She was the one who suggested the name. Theo mentioned that was the name of a historical figure in early Cordonian history.”

Liam smiles fondly. “And Eleanor?”

I blush, but continue. “I, um... looked into your mother’s death. When I was pregnant. It was after the incident with Regina. I imagined what it would have been like for us if your mother had never died.” I wait for him to comment, but he says nothing. “I assumed she wouldn’t have kicked me out of the country like Regina did. And, of course, I knew that your mother was important to you. Since I wasn’t going to name our kid ‘Constantine,’ I figured that naming my daughter Eleanor could... connect our family through the distance.”

Liam’s smile widens. “That is a great honor for my mother.” The look on his face falters when he looks back to me and asks, “Theodore was content with it?”

“I told him I just found the name pretty. I didn’t think he knew that it was your mother’s name, but... there’s a chance did know.”

Liam takes a few more bites of his food. “Seems as if he knew quite a lot about Cordonia. It would be a surprise if that was something that he skipped over during his research.”

I scoff. “There’s a high chance he was lying about it, but honestly I did my best to avoid arguing with him.” I sigh, and stare down at my plate. “Even though I was fine with taking up the responsibility of Gabriel all by myself, I was pretty shocked when Theo helped out.” I look up, analyzing Liam’s expression. “Liam, I’ll never stop being sorry for separating you from your son for so long, but I think it’s important to acknowledge that at least he had a normal childhood.”

To my shock, he smiles at me. “Yes, I’m glad of that as well. I knew that if I ever had children, I would never want them to deal with as much pressure and stress that I had when I was younger. But there is another thing I wanted to discuss with you.”

“What is it?” I take a long sip of the wine.

“The issue of legitimacy.”

I put down the glass and sigh, my anxiety increasing. “Do you think that might be a big problem?”

His eyebrows furrow and he slowly nods. “Duke Bertrand mentioned it to me. There’s a chance that people would object of him being anointed as the heir.”

“They’d say I was a crown chaser and all that stuff, right?”

An anger flashes behind his eyes, but he calmly says, “Yes.”

I feel hopeless when I say, “We can’t release the DNA test, or his birth certificate or whatever?”

Liam sighs heavily. “No. People would claim they are fake.”

I didn’t want Gabe to go through the disapproval that I suffered during the Engagement Tour. I try to grab at reasons or ways to make Cordonians believe that Gabe really was Liam’s son. “Well what about Bartie and Bertrand? Did people question if Bertrand was really his father?”

Liam rubs his chin. “I’m sure some did, but I heard nothing of it. And Bertrand and Savannah were married after she returned to Cordonia. If any person did have questions about legitimacy, it would have dissolved after their marriage.”

“So you’re saying the only way to make people understand that Gabe is your son... is if you and I married?”

“Well, no, that wouldn’t eliminate the people’s disapproval entirely, but it would help them towards believing the truth.” He looks up at me, his eyes holding a hopeful question, and I understand why he started this conversation.

“Liam... you can’t be serious.”

Suddenly, his stoic exterior is gone, but his voice is level when he speaks. “Riley, the distance between us did nothing to lessen my love for you—”

“Liam,” I say forcefully.

He takes a deep breath and continues. “I know there is a lot we still have to talk through—”

“Liam, no, I... how do you expect me to accept a proposal only a few weeks after my husband died?”

He blinks, and his face slightly reddens with embarrassment. “My apologies, Riley, I didn’t consider that.”

Stifling silence spreads around the room. Neither of us touch our food or even look at each other.

“I hope,” Liam tries to speak. I can tell it’s difficult for him; he thinks about every word before it comes out of his mouth. “I hope the commitment that you had to your husband does not stop us from... continuing our relationship.”

I say, “Of course,” before his words make sense. What did he mean “commitment”? Was I committed to Theo?

I try to remember something that could prove him wrong, that would show that we were never committed to one another like a married couple was, but I can’t think of anything, and Liam speaks up again.

“But, Riley, I must press the matter of time. The anointing is at the end of the Social Season. That’s long enough for people to speculate and spread rumors. The last thing I want is for you or our son to feel any kind of worry.”

“Liam, please, I can’t think about that right now. I’m already stressed about what’s going to happen, I don’t think I can deal with a royal engagement on top of that. And our relationship is already strained. Getting married may not be the best idea. And if that backfires, it won’t only hurt us, but it’ll hurt Gabe and Ella, too.”

He stares at me, taking a deep breath. In a low voice he pleads, “Then give me until the end of the Social Season.”

“What?”

“Give me until the end of the season to prove to you that getting married wouldn’t backfire.”

I let out a laugh. “You’re joking.”

Liam shakes his head, and reaches for my hand. “I am utterly serious, Riley.”

I narrow my eyes at him, tears of frustration brimming at my eyes. My voice is soft when I say, “Why are you doing this, Liam? You’re supposed to be mad at me for keeping your son away from you for a decade. You missed ten years of his life because of me and you aren’t angry in the slightest.”

“I will admit,” he begins. “I was quite upset... but I did not know the full extent of what you went through.” He scans my face for a moment. It’s all I can do to not burst into tears. “Riley, not once has my love for you faded. Not even for a moment. I knew during the Social Season that you were the only woman for me, and I have known that through the entirety of our separation. Let me prove that we are the only ones for each other, and if by Gabriel’s anointing I am proven wrong... then we can... co-parent, and that shall be the extent of our relationship.”

Thinking about Liam trying to win my hand was silly, and honestly, I didn’t want it. But after everything, I didn’t think that being co-parents could be the only thing between us.

“Alright,” I relent, and he gives me a thankful smile.

We finish the rest of the meal, and he talks to me about the time he’s spent with Gabriel and Eleanor, and his joy about the topic is represented on his face. I truly hope this won’t be too difficult. I wanted everything to go back to normal, to the way it should have been. Even though that reality was officially unattainable, I try to convince myself that letting Liam attempt to bring us back together wasn’t a bad thing.

A Bleach Retrospective: In defense of Bleach

These are opinions, please respect that.

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My Journey with Bleach (please skip if you want to go straight to the analysis):

On September the 8th, 2006 YTV’s weekend evening anime programming block (Bionix) aired the first episode of Bleach. I, unfortunately, did not catch this episode, instead, I caught the second episode on September 15th the following week. I was ten and from then on, Bleach fascinated me. It had an interesting concept, tight pacing, catchy music, a good story, and unique character designs. I also really enjoyed how Bleach lacked the same kind of emotional labour that Naruto demanded (as child who survived off of constantly seeking validation from others because of absentee parents, Naruto is way too much work).

My fascination with Bleach got me started in the fandom communities of yesteryear, for I was a child with zero internet supervision. My introduction to fanfiction was because I loved Hitsugaya Toshiro.

Bleach was my entry into poetry (poem at the start of every volume).

But alas, all good things were not meant to last and by the summer of 2009, I was officially done with Bleach. It had felt stilted for some time before then. Over the years, I would gradually revisit bits and pieces of Bleach, but I would not read it in its entirety until months after its finish, about a decade after I had first saw Bleach on my TV. Between the time I stopped reading and the series ended, I became friends with people who didn’t think highly of Bleach and I also started seeing criticism I had made about Bleach in 2011 being repeated by fans on the internet, I started to think that maybe Bleach was bad, but I knew what bad writing looked like —I started reading fanfiction through Bleach fanfiction AMVs on YouTube — and somehow Bleach didn’t sit right with me in the “bad writing category”. 

I sit back now, a decade and ahalf later from when I first started and ask, “was Bleach really that bad, and if so, why do I keep coming back to it?”

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What Made Bleach So Good?

Unique story and aesthetics: When Bleach first started in 2001, it was one of the first manga series to talk about souls and death in a poetic way and with such coherence. Bleach clearly knew what it wanted to say about life and death. It also had a very unique aesthetic, very similar to that of “The World Ends With You” or “Persona 5″ — an urban Japanese take on R&B kind of vibe. Also, Bleach had the most “realistic” and minimalist art style amongst the Big 3.

Cool Music: Bleach had cool music, from very solid rock’n’roll and R&B style songs in its OPs and EDs to very funky OST music with lots of pizzazz. Many singers feature by Bleach ended up successful (to varying degrees) outside of anime, eg: Orange Range, UVERworld, YUI, sid, etc.

Versatile tone: Bleach was edgy, there’s no doubt about that. It was willing to show a lot of blood and bodily violence, especially in the manga (eg half of people blowing up and bits of bone still attached). Despite this though, it was not pretentious about its edginess — it didn’t revel in it. To contrast the edginess, there is a lot of humour in Bleach with character interactions. It was able to be laid back enough with its strong characters that it would rely on the characters’ relationships for comedic relief. The post-credit skits and the fillers really helped to add to this overall feel as well.

Maturity of the Story: Bleach was very willing to handle topics that made people think. For example, the Ulquiorra - Orihime subarc was treated with a sense of carefulness about it, as if to reflect Ulquiorra’s own cautious curiosity about the heart. A less emotionally mature story would’ve gone for the cheap rape/torture porn, but instead we are treated to determined strong Orihime, who has found strength through the heart after the death of her brother, clashing with the nihilistic hollow who wants to know if there is happiness outside of emptiness. It’s a very loaded question and one that requires both perspective and life experience to fully understand both parties. As well, Bleach always knew what it wanted to say about life and death as the final conflict of Bleach is between Ichigo, who has accepted his transient life and Yhwach, who is scared of death. And ultimately, underneath all that action, Bleach produced takes on its themes that were hard to relate to unless the reader themselves had a certain level of emotional maturity (eg: 12 year old me got nothing out of the Ulqui-Ori arc, but 20 year old me spent a good 10 mins crying after)

Strong characters: Contrary to popular belief, Bleach does have quite solid characterization. In fact, Bleach is the journey of Ichigo as a character, from grappling with his weakness and pain to finally accepting all the parts of himself and his history in order to defeat Yhwach and protect those he cares about. Even the secondary characters of Bleach receive a sizable amount of backstory and/or development. Bleach also managed to have more proactive female characters. Even the damsel in distress Orihime stands up to Ulquiorra and slaps him. As a result of these strong characters, Bleach was able to rely on them and their relationships to drive aspects of the story (eg Ichigo crying in the Fullbringer arc).

Willingness to Deal with Emotion: Given that Ichigo is an internally motivated character, it was obvious Bleach would deal with emotion at some point in time. Making Ichigo just a normal high school boy also relives the previous edginess. Bleach also clearly too the time to make its readers feel in its early years. We are treated to beautiful panelling and very real displays of strong negative emotions. Bleach is also very good at giving its characters room to breathe and be sad. Eg: moping Orihime, moping Ichigo, etc. As well, Kubo went to extraordinary lengths to break Ichigo down during the Fullbringers Arc.

Interesting Character Designs: Every character in Bleach feels vibrant and unique with their personality showing through in their designs. For example: Shunshi’s sloppily tied up hair, visible stubble, and overcoat-hidden-haori show that he is both easy going and not looking for a fight; meanwhile Byakuya’s neatly pulled back hair and neck covered by scarf show that he is both someone who likes structure and is conservative.

Poetry and Symbolism: Kubo manages to weave poetry into Bleach in the beginning of each volume. The poem was said by the character on the volume. It gave the reader insight to this character and it gave Kubo a chance to flex his poetic chops. Further proof of this is the fact that many people don’t realize that the name “Bleach” refers to the bleaching of soul that is key to the story. Kubo loves to use rain to set sad scenes. It rains when Ichigo fights Grand Fisher, Zangetsu tells Ichigo that he hates the rain, etc. Kubo also specifies that he wishes for the reader to read certain volumes on stormy, rainy nights.

Panelling: Many people like to criticize Kubo for the lack of effort with the Bleach manga, but Kubo has stated that he uses negative space (i.e., foregoing backgrounds) to focus more on his character’s expressions. This not only further proves that Bleach cares a lot about its characters, but it’s done well enough that the average reader likely doesn’t notice the lack of background on the first read through. As well, Bleach has very cinematic panelling. Kubo uses the format of manga well, utilizing the human mind’s ability to fill blanks in with clever panelling to create tone and build tension and the feeling of movement through a scene.

In fact, in finding pages for this analysis, I found myself noticing that Bleach panels very similarly to slice-of-life shoujo but with a boy MC manga like "Horimiya": focus on expression through intimate angles and use of panels and breaks to create mood and the feeling of cinema; whereas something like DBZ panels like a shounen action manga with many hard lines and action shots, instead of a focus on subtle details and emotions.

Some Examples:

Notice now in Chapter 197: The approaching danger, Kubo uses a gradual zoom to build tension and the black background to add intensity and signal to the reader that Hitsugaya is relaying important information.

Here in Chapter 234: Not Negotiation, the immediate close up to Ulquiorra’s eye from the full body shots creates a sense of intimidation and unease with its sudden intimacy. As well, the immediate zoom in from Ulquiorra’s side full body shot to his facial profile creates tension and the change from the dark background to the white face with Orihime releases this tension (very fitting with considering the line for this panel is “but not you”). (This scene also ties into Ulquiorra’s central dogma of “that which is not reflected in my eyes does not exist’.)

Again in the same chapter, this gradual zoom in on the two creates tension that is then release in the next panel and summarily cements Ulquiorra as a terrifying BAMF.

In Chapter 262: Unblendable, Kubo uses the negative space to create a feeling of isolation, similar to how Orihime is supposed to be feeling.

In the same chapter, notice how Kubo creates a sense of intimacy (not in the romance sense) with the relationship of Ulquiorra and Orihime. He creates tension gradually with the zooming into Orihime’s eye and releases it with the zoom out to Ulquiorra. Through this scene, Kubo has shown us that Ulquiorra and Orihime have a tense relationship and with the implication of eye contact through the shots and panel breaks creating both the intimacy and showing Orihime’s defiance.

(Interestingly, I’ve noticed that Ulquiorra and Orihime have a lot of these intimate zoom shot-reverse-shot eye panels)

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What are the Bad Parts of Bleach?

Okay, so by now, you’re probably thinking that I’m ignoring the massive amounts of critique that Bleach gets and don’t get me wrong, while Bleach does have a very special place in my heart, I’m also not maudlin enough to pretend that Bleach was all good.

Pacing:

Pacing in the First Half of Bleach (Karakura Town - Arrancar)

When Bleach first started out the pacing was excellent. Kubo showed great mastery of pace to control the tone and highlight the emotions throughout the first two arcs. Mid-way through the Arrancar arc, the fatigue sets in and it was hard to keep up with, especially since Kubo would interrupt one exciting fight set up to go set up more plot elsewhere (eg Fake Karakura town right as Ichigo and Ulquiorra were about to battle). Whilst looking back and reading it all at once does help with the pacing, it was frustrating if you were reading/watching on a weekly basis.

Pacing in the Anime:

I don’t ascribe to a simplistic belief of “fillers bad” simply because I think that sometimes fillers can be a good thing, for example, since every chapter is ~15-20pp, some character interactions have to be cut for the sake for space, so filler is a great opportunity to add those moments back into your story. For example, a lot of early Bleach fillers are just the people of Karakura town just hanging out. That being said, Bleach does have an unfortunate amount of fillers, with some of them even interrupting tense fights (eg the Beast Sword Arc interrupts Ichigo’s battle with Ulquiorra). However, the padding that the fillers provided did wonders for the transition between Soul Society to Arrancar Arc in the anime. Ultimately, the Bleach anime adaption was a long-running anime made for syndication and that’s okay.

******* Brief Aside: many people like(d?) to point out that Bleach has a very cyclical plot structure. I used to think this way too; however, this is not the case. There are many other long running stories that repeat similar goals. The problem lies not in the idea, but the execution. The main complaint about the Orihime rescue was not that it was uninteresting, but instead that it felt a rehash of the plot of the previous arc. This is largely because the story was not given enough time to breath between similar character arcs. For example, in One Piece, Luffy and Co have to save Nami and by extension, her home village so she can join them; however, the next time a Straw Hat needs to be saved is 227 chapters (2 whole story arcs) later. In between saving Rukia and Orihime, there is only a really an arrancar encounter, a bit of training, cheering up Ichigo, and a Grimmjow encounter before Orihime goes with Ulquiorra, thus making the goal of this arc “save Orihime” in only ~59 chapters vs 227. These two similar arc goals so close to each other does indeed create the sense of repetition.

Pacing from Fullbringer to End:

This is where Bleach really lost a lot of people. If you weren’t gone after the Ulquiorra fight, you probably were by this arc.This arc went at breakneck speed, and ngl, during my first full read through I almost gave up here too. I mention earlier that Ichigo had been broken down in this arc, but it was hard to feel his despair and the weight on his shoulders because there wasn’t enough for the reader to take a beat and breathe. The Thousand Year Blood War, similarly suffered from sloppy pacing, with many readers feeling like story lines of Squad 0 and the Soul King were anti-climactic. As well, this arc started with a massacre and feature the deaths of many fan-favourite characters, and unfortunately due to the pacing, their deaths were not given a sense of gravity.

Missed Opportunities and Forgotten Story lines: Many people felt that Kubo forgot about a lot of his characters after the Aizen arc. Many thought the Fullbringer Arc was going to be a Chad/Orihime Arc. Whatever happened to Uryuu lolol? We all just collectively forgot about him for a large portion of the last half of Bleach. At one point in time, there was a rumour going around that Kubo had written out the story for Bleach and lost it. Idk if there is any credibility to it. However, in a 2017 interview, Kubo did say that he did end the series exactly the way he wanted to.

(If anyone wants to see me write an entire ass text post about Orihime and her treatment in Bleach, please let me know because I will do it)

Too mature:Even though above, I praised Bleach's mature handle on its themes, an unfortunate side effect of this is forgetting that the characters are only 15 at the beginning and for the first half of Bleach. This unfortunately, leads to some readers feeling disconnected from Bleach.

Epilogue: THE DESTROYER OF SHIPS!!! A lot of people hated this ending. Many people felt like the romance was shoe-horned in, others didn’t like the pairings, and there were some people who actually liked it. Personally, I didn’t like it too much, but it was a cute conclusion nonetheless. Since it didn't add anything to the story except for a "where are they now" look and because of that, I low-key felt like it was unnecessary, but w/e.

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Perspective

Making a long-running weekly serialized story is hard and doing it for 15 years is gruelling (obligatory “fuck capitalism” here). Like many artists of long-running manga, Kubo destroyed his health for the sake of publishing Bleach weekly. Kubo on his health after Bleach (photo from AshitanoGin on Twitter):

Given this insight, I think it’s only fair to be respectful and grateful for Kubo’s contribution to the anime-sphere. Also, through his work, Kubo seems to be a very understanding person and artist. I’m sure he knows better than anyone where Bleach went wrong, but there’s nothing that can be done now. Despite him having a twitter, he is not Joanne and doesn’t feel the need to constantly hemorrhage out word of god info about Bleach (and thank god for that).

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Final Thoughts

It’s hard to forget my happy memories when I think about Bleach. It had my first adolescent crush and first OTP. As a result, I think the best way to enjoy Bleach is to take what you want out of it. People always think that something has to be 100% without flaw for it to be good, but that is not true at all. It is totally okay to just like the parts that you like without engaging with anything else. It’s special to you for a reason, you know? 

There’s no use in fretting over what Bleach could’ve been, besides, very rarely is the reality better than the fantasy in your head.

I do think though that a lot of Kubo’s issues could’ve been fixed if he planned the story better but not all of us can be “I've been planning One Piece since elementary school” Oda Eiichiro.

Other voices on this issue: here

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Wow. I can’t believe you made it this far down. Congratulations! Thanks for reading my 2:30am non-sober take on Bleach (it only took me 7 hours to write). Here's a cookie <3

Hi I was hoping to ask for your advice on writing. I’m trying to write from headcanons to little short fics (like one shots) from the readers pov but I’m finding it difficult to do so smoothly. Any idea how to do the transition without it coming out as a fanfic readers worst nightmare?

Well, I cannot guarantee the quality of my “advice” but I will give it a shot! 

Apologies for you folks that hate my big essay length posts, but I do love infodumping about the writing process :P 

So just click “J” to skip the post (if you’re on mobile...sorry just exercise your scrolling finger a bit more)

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So I’ll start with the distinctions between a headcanon and a fic. On one hand, you got simpler sentences, that summarize a broader idea or scene. You might have visualized the entire thing in your head, but at the end of the day all you do is write down a few sentences or pieces of dialogue that give the broader basis of an idea and/or scene. That’s not to say writing headcanons is easy, but it is, bluntly, the simpler method.  

Writing, obviously, is more complicated. Not only are you trying to convey a more abstract idea to your reader, but you’re doing so with more layers and complexities, given that what you are trying to write is generally more detailed. You have to not only account for what your basic premise is, but the method in which you convey it. So, in a “good” fic, it typically doesn’t just focus on the basic “what is happening right now” in a scene, but can give subtleties and intricacies with its tone, themes, point of view, connotation, foils, imagery, symbolism, sentence structure, diction, context, figurative language, narrative, foreshadowing, setting, irony, character arcs, and the thousands and thousands of other layers that go into constructing story. 

And I say “story” there deliberately, as I think the best way to summarize the differences is that a headcanon is a plot, while a one-shot is a story. Your one-shot has the ability to tell different messages, details, and themes, and give several points of interest to your reader, while your headcanon is limited to the structure of its initial premise.

[And before you English nerds bash me for my definition of story and plot, please know that I am using my film teacher’s old definition, which (to quote this quizlet I found) is “Story is all of the elements of a narrative that are involved, both shown and un-shown on screen. Plot is only all of the elements of a narrative that are shown on screen.” So yeah, it theoretically could be rewritten as a headcanon is a scene, and a one-shot is a story, but I’m just nitpicking at this point half of you don’t care and want me to move on anyway, apologies!]

So how do you transition between them? Well, in honesty I don’t exactly have a sure fire way for you, saying I do would be very hypocritical. However, what I can do is point out the “gap” between headcanons and fics, and perhaps from there you might be able to forge your own path..? 

Chances are, if you’re already familiar with writing headcanons, you’ve already knocked out half of the work. See in a story, specifically in our case, fic, you have eight elements that construct it. You’ve got

Plot

Setting

Conflict

Character

Point of View

Tone

Style

and Theme

With a headcanon, (assuming it’s slightly more specific than “Headcanon that this character likes peaches!”) you’ve already got plot, setting, conflict, and character down. 

Plot: being the actual premise of your story. What happens, why things happen, how other characters react, the beginning and ending, etc.

Setting: Being the location and time of your scene/plot. The setting might be a contingency to your story, such as a prison break that takes place in prison, or maybe it is the time that is essential for your High School AU fic

Conflict: Typically goes hand and hand with your plot, although not always (obviously, plot and conflict aren’t essential when talking about fics, *winks at the nsfw side of tumblr*) But if your headcanon does have a basic plot, then it probably has some sort of conflict whether external (The Calamity kills everybody) or internal (you’re character is going through grief)

Character: This whole aspect is practically already done for you. Whether by canon from the video game or media you got it from, or perhaps by fanon, with the collective fandom agreeing on certain traits about your character(s) in question. Obviously, if you got an OC, that’s another thing, as you have to create their traits, and construct a believable way that that character reacts and makes choices throughout your plot, depending on how you characterized them

So congrats! In writing up your everyday headcanon, you’re now halfway there to making a full on fic! Obviously, 50% is still a lot, which is probably the reason you were seeking advice in the first place, so now we should move on to the other half, and arguably it is this other half of elements that give the entire distinction between a headcanon and a one-shot. So in theory, if you get these elements down, you’re on your way to writing that much faster!

Quick additional note: Another way to think of your headcanon is as an outline. While not in every case, a good way to jump from your headcanon to a fic is to stick with the major elements of your headcanon, and weaving your writing style in between. Think of the headcanon as your skeleton, and the story being the meat and muscle. Idk if that makes sense, blame my old English teacher for the metaphor

Alrighty, so for demonstration purposes I’m gonna use the very first headcanon I’ve ever written as a basis. Bear with me for a moment:

“Zelink Headcanon: Zelda Just Wants Some Snacks

Everyone always jokes and adores about how Link eats so much and cooks great food in the game (he’s gotta carbo load guys, he walks like 9 miles everyday!)

However I propose, equally hungry and feral Zelda

After Link and Zelda defeat Ganon, one of the first things they do is stop by the nearest cooking pot and eat

She hasn’t eaten for 100 years!! She’s gotta be starving!

Link just cooks up some meat skewers

“…wait I forgot the Goron spice, gimme a sec…”

But Zelda just immediately snatched it off the fire and eats the whole thing in two seconds

Link keeps trying to go out of his way to make really nice food but Zelda is just like “I DON’T CARE RIGHT NOW PLEASE LINK”

So yeah, their first date is basically just Link cooking Zelda a buffet until his inventory empties out”

Again, this headcanon has already given us half of the answers. 

We got our plot: Link, a talented chef, is cooking food which Zelda scarfs down without fear and hesitation

Setting: They are by a cooking pot, perhaps in the wilderness, away from the prying eyes of nosey villagers. This takes place sometime after the initial defeat of Calamity Ganon.

Conflict: Link keeps trying to cook “good” food, but despite the Princess’ royal upbringing, she has no care for the whole “show” of cooking with spices and garnish. She is starving, willing to eat anything

And Characters: Link and Zelda. You know... (Today unfortunately is not the day in which I construct a thorough character analysis of the two...perhaps one day...)

So, now that we have this, we start adding the meat and muscle of our story with point of view, tone, style, and theme. These elements, could be summarized as your writing style. Yes, writing style is more intricate than those four elements alone, but they do fit in with its broad definition. 

So, in essence, a way to transition between headcanon and fic is to find out what kind of writing style you’re comfortable with. 

How do you do that? Well... shocker, I know, you gotta write. 

Write first, plan the elements of your one-shot later!! 

Allow yourself to write complete utter garbage. I know you said that you don’t wanna create a “fanfic reader’s worst nightmare,” but if you become more concerned with the quality of your content before you even start writing, you will never ever ever get anywhere. You’re gonna be stuck in writer’s block for eternity, so just let the garbage and nightmares out and write. You’ll never improve if you don’t have something to improve from, you feel me? 

So, now that your mind is open and ready to write anything, whether garbage or gold, let us dive in to the parts of your writing style. 

Point of view: Do you prefer writing in third person? First? Second? Each have their pros and cons. Second person is good for your “x reader” inserts. First person is good for your narrator’s characterization. Third person is good for describing elements of your surroundings that might not be inherently obvious to your characters or audience. There are hundreds of other pros and cons to the different POVs that you can search up online, but it’ is ultimately up to you to decide which method you like best. 

When you find the method you like best, make sure you use it to it’s full potential! Use foreshadowing with your third person POVs. Use connotation, and diction to further characterize your narrator in first person. Elevate the mood and senses of a scene when in second person.

Tone: Now, this element is often confused with another literary device, mood. The difference being that you as the author have more control over the tone, than the mood. The tone, is the attitude that you as the author (or as a character/narrator, depending on your POV) have towards something. For example, your tone might be suspenseful if you withhold information from your reader, or if you have a certain choice of diction. It is typically better to look to the type of genre you’re writing for to identify what kind of tone you want. 

Mood is the feeling that the reader experiences from your writing. It’s really much more simple, a beloved character dying give a depressed mood. A cute couple hanging out will give the reader a happier mood. This is your angst and fluff feelings, if you will. (Although, please remember than mood and tone are not a binary thing, it is a spectrum, as broad and diverse as the capabilities of human emotion)

Style: Ok yes this is a bit meta, me explaining how to use style to help you construct a writing style. Blame the bendable definitions of the writing world. So just think of this as the face of your writing. The more obvious and apparent part that is unique to you and your personality. 

Think cake. Your story is a delicious cake, it is a chocolate, Zelink cake. Now, your style is the way that you present this cake. Pink frosting? Yellow? A full cake or just a slice? Chocolate ice cream cake? Chocolate lava cake? Five tier cake? Cake pops? These possibilities are the infinite ways your style will present the story.

Style, sometimes called voice, is the combination of your use of tone, mood, POV, syntax, diction, and other literary device that you commonly use in your writing. This isn’t something you learn, it’s just something you do naturally when you write. It’s what readers will like about your fics, because they like the way that you use this or that, or the way you describe this thing or that person. It’s something that can change and improve over time, but in essence, it’s what readers can read and identify as you, without even looking at the username.

Style isn’t something you have to remember, per say, like other literary devices, but it is something to be aware of as you should try to keep it consistent through your whole story. Sometimes have people have different writing styles depending on their own mood, or what they’re writing about. That is fine, so long as you keep it consistent through your whole work. A good trick for this is to listen to music that fits with the style of your writing. Use that one catchy love song whenever you’re writing cute headcanons or fluffy one shots. Use that anime opening theme for your adventurous fics and fight scenes. This way, you are keep in a consist atmosphere and your brain will be in the “Oh! It’s time to write ____ stuff!” mood. 

So just be aware of when you’re in a descriptive style, a narrative style, argumentative, or whatever style you like using. You style might even derived of the way you already create headcanons!

Theme: This is a big one. Have a cohesive theme can easily bring any story from good to great! I like to think of it as you’re story’s destiny, or reason for existence. 

Theme is an outlier for the other elements in that not only is it not necessary for your fic, it is also not necessary for your writing style either. It’s really not necessary... at all. Yet, people always use theme in their writing, even accidentally. 

Theme is your story’s underlying message, or lesson. Yes, yes, if you paid attention in your basic English class you probably already knew that, but this is a big pet peeve of mine. 

The theme of your story isn’t “true love,” the theme isn’t “innocence”, or “failure”, or “trauma”, or whatever. Theme isn’t a broad idea, it’s a specific question and an answer. 

For example: The theme of Breath of the Wild isn’t “exploration” or “time”. The theme is there is always something to seek and find, so long as you have the curiosity and courage to find it. The theme is despite the eternities of time, we still found each other. 

Your theme shouldn’t be a broad, one word answer. What about love are you trying to convey? What specifically about failure are you saying?

Theme is the entire reason why the entertainment medium exists, because artist found a way to create something compelling and interesting while also connecting them to real life things. 

When you give your reader something to really chew on, even days after they finished reading your fic, then you did a brilliant job. Essentially, you want to use theme in your story because it is what will stick with our readers even years after they’ve read your work.

While that’s all sentimental and sappy, that’s still not your biggest problem, is it? You still need to practice, you still need to learn how to use the things you’ve learned to actually write. So, a summary of what I advise you should do.

Look over and improve your old headcanons, and keep making more! Keep making headcanons and litte prompts, and let them grow bigger and bigger, and more desprictive. This could help you ease into actually writing paragraphs a bit more

Find out what you like to write. Yes, you probably already have a fandom in mind, but think back to those first four elements. What types of plots are you comfortable with, what settings, characters? Genius is only the work of enthusiasm, if you don’t like what you’re going to write, you’ve already failed

Write, write, write. Practice, practice practice. Let yourself write complete and utter garbage and nonesense. Then read it over. See what you don’t like about it. Then change it and write again. I MEAN it when I say you should write garbage. Write a completely terrible, nightmarishly cringe scene. See what you don’t like. Then rewrite it again. Repeat, repeat, repeat. In fact, it doesn’t even have to be a scene or something from your fandom. Let it be your description of a shirt, let is be some cringy poem from 7th grade. Just write and learn how you like to write. It will be so much easier in the long run

Read stuff. The stuff you read usually seeps into how you write. When you get used to reading things a certain way, you usually unconciously try to imitate it when you write. So, got a favourite fic writer? Read their stuff over and maybe even analyze the elements you like (again, think back to those eight elements I talked about) and hey, writers like it when you analyze their stuff so maybe even hit them up and talk? We like book reports we swear, most of us don’t bite. 

When you finally think you’re comfortable with your writings, maybe think about what kind of themes you’re into, or what kind of messages you want to say. It doesn’t even need to be that complex. Could be as simple as “I love this ship because it shows that you can still have flaws and be loved” Again, themes are the rEASON for eVERYTHING in the entertainment world

For further demonstration purposes, I’m going to come up with further elements for a hypothetical fic I would write based on that Zelink headcanon. So I’ve got the plot, setting, conflict and theme down. Hmm... I’ll probably use a third person POV as that is what I’m most comfortable with. With third person, I can better highlight the descriptions of Link and Zelda’s surroundings taking in the atmosphere and the aromas and and tastes. The tone will be more happy, focusing on the fun of Zelda and Link’s banter, I’ll try to create a mood in which the reader is laughing along with them, and enjoying the scene. My style will be more descriptive, again with the tastes and smells and other senses of the scene. However, I might go into a more narrative style for Zelda and Link’s banter and dialogue. While typically some people don’t want to use two different styles, I am personally familiar with the styles and know how to write them so as to blend them together more seamlessly. I might have a hint of angst at the end of the fic, as a little climax, given that the setting of the fic is after the defeat of the Calamity. I might through in some themes about how it wasn’t the material power of Hylia or the Master Sword that saved Hyrule, but the courageous and wise bond between Link and Zelda. Then...idk, a little romatic kiss for resolution because this is a fic and I can throw in some fanservice because my writing my rules. 

Babam! I just converted a headcanon to a fic.

So yeah, go write your headcanons. Then maybe next a paragraph. Then next a scene, and then you’re well on your way to one-shots and chapter fics. Happy writing and good luck!

Writing commissions!

Hi, I’m opening writing commissions! You can check out at my AO3 for examples of my work if you’re interested. I’m also open for fic + art comms with @springpalettes-art, so you can commission both of us at the same time for the content you’d like to see! 

Pricing

1 INR/8 words (500 rupees for 4000 words)

1 cent USD/5 words (1 USD for 500 words) + 50 cents to cover PayPal transfer/conversion fees

I’ve tried to price my writing so what you actually pay is the same in terms of value, no matter the currency. If your native currency is neither INR nor USD, we can work out a price in that currency that matches the value of the mentioned prices as closely as possible.

More details are under the read more -

Payment

Payment will be through PayPal for international comms. If you’re within India, you can use Google Pay if you prefer.

Fandoms

I mostly write for Haikyuu!!, but other fandoms I have written for/are familiar with include BNHA, The Inheritance Cycle, MCU, and a wide variety of assorted anime, movies and shows (for example, Mob Psycho 100, Kimetsu no Yaiba, Brooklyn 9-9, The Half of It, Sherlock, etc). Feel free to DM me to ask if I’ll be able to write for your fandom!

I don’t watch a lot of Indian series/films, but I have seen some, so I can also be commissioned to write for them/write fics with those shows or films as AUs. Again, feel free to DM me and ask. (Some I have seen include Made in Heaven, Panchaayat, and Pataal Lok.)

What I will write

Any kind of relationship - M/M, F/F, M/F, poly, anything. I’m down to write any LGBTQ+ character if you like, but keep in mind that as a cis and fairly privileged person I might struggle with writing such characters in a nuanced and realistic way, so I might not accept fics where someone’s sexual/gender identity is the focus of the story.

Rarepairs (especially for Haikyuu!!)

Genderbent characters

Platonic ships

Makeout scenes

Songfics

Fluff

Hurt/comfort

A certain amount of implied/explicit violence (for example, an army or mercenary AU)

What I won’t write

Explicit NSFW scenes

Heavy gore

Unsavoury/unethical themes (abusive ships, non consensual/dubious consent ships, a large age difference, etc)

Self insert/reader insert

IRL ships

OCs as main characters

Anything else that I’m uncomfortable with/find problematic

Other stuff

Specificity and details are appreciated! The more information you give me on what you’d like your fic to look like, the better I can match your expectations and the easier it will be for the both of us. At the very least, I need a basic plot outline/setting, the pairing/interactions between characters you’d like to see, and the genre.

If you’d like me to write in a particular style you’ve seen elsewhere (with a lot of snappy dialogue, for example, or with a lot of flowery description) you can send me a sample of similar writing and I’ll do my best to match it.

You can request fics between 1k and 10k in length. 

Once I’ve agreed to a comm, I’ll send you an outline based on what you’ve requested. You can mention an approximate word limit here, or, alternatively, you can tell me what you’re willing to pay. For example, if you’re willing to pay 6 USD, that comes to 4.8k words, and I’ll do my best to stick to this limit. Unless I go over by a significant amount (more than 400 words), and you decide you would like that included in the story, I won’t charge you for words above the limit we agreed on.

After you okay the outline, I’ll write out a rough draft so we both have an idea of how long the story is going to end up and send it to you. You can ask for changes to plot events or characterization after seeing this draft.

Once you’ve okayed the draft, I’d like you to pay the full amount. Once I receive it, I’ll write out the story in full and send it to you again to look over once more. At this point, you can request changes to pacing, word choice, and minor details, but not major details.

I’ll revise it again, and send it to you either as a PDF or Google Doc, whatever you prefer!

I’ll alter as many details as you like during these two revision periods, but requests for further revisions will not be entertained outside of that.

The story is now yours, and it will not be posted unless you’re okay with it. However, please don’t take credit for my work as your own.

I reserve the right to refuse a commission if I feel unable to undertake it, unfamiliar with the characters, uncomfortable with any part of the request, or at any point during the process if it becomes too much of a drain on my time and resources. If you’ve already paid me at this point, the money will be entirely refunded to you.

Feel free to commission me for further stories in AUs I’ve already written for! However, I’m likely to already have ideas for spinoffs, it’s just that I don’t have time to write it out, so I won’t take these commissions unless there’s no conflict between what you’d like to see and what I already had in mind.

I’ll have five slots open at a time for commissions so I don’t get overwhelmed.

Please be patient, time-wise - I’ll do my best to give you a quality fic, and it’s not a simple or quick process.

My pricing is significantly lower than that of most commission writers. This is a deliberate choice, both because I don’t think my writing is worth 20 USD for 2000 words, and because I live in a country where the cost of living is fairly low, so a price that seems reasonable to someone living in an industrialized country is likely to seem like overpricing to me. That being said, if you feel like my writing is worth more than I’m charging for it, you’re welcome to pay as much as you like - I’d be very grateful, even if it’s just a dollar or two above the price I’ve set. :)

Contacting me

You can contact me either by DMing me/messaging my ask box here on Tumblr, or by emailing me at [email protected].

That’s about it! My DMs are always open for any questions you might have. If you’re not interested yourself, but you know others who might be, please share this post with them or reblog so they see it ^.^ Thanks!