#also she's genuinely attracted to three different men over the course of one pretty short novel and i love that for her
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I’ve been thinking about the development of Elizabeth’s feelings for Darcy in P&P, and one of the things I find really intriguing is how incredibly careful Austen is in her handling of their physical attraction to each other.
A lot of takes on Darcy’s initial attraction to Elizabeth focus entirely on the physical element, but Austen’s description of it folds together his attraction to her intelligence, her expression, her body, and the “easy playfulness” of her manner. Of these, the earliest mentioned is his realization that her face is “rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes” and her eyes are the physical feature that he seems to dwell on the most.
At any rate, Darcy’s attraction to Elizabeth is established early on (Ch 6) and continues as a thread from that point on. And—I mean, even in 1813, it’s one thing to show a man in his twenties being attracted to the pretty heroine. Austen is a lot cagier about Elizabeth’s feelings.
The narrative is structured so that we know Darcy is physically attractive from his entrance in Ch 3, when the narrator refers to “his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien” along with his wealth. But we’re not in Elizabeth’s head at that point, and iirc, she isn’t shown as saying or thinking anything about his physical attractiveness until she blushingly agrees that he is very handsome forty chapters later.
Even there, Austen leaves the dialogue to stand on its own and tells us nothing of what Elizabeth actually feels about it. The conversation moves to Darcy’s personal virtues, which reveal the critical fact that Darcy is consistently kind and good-natured in the domestic sphere. So Elizabeth’s concession that Darcy is physically attractive is narratively linked to the suggestion that he would make a safe husband, emotionally speaking (although her concession comes first, which may be significant).
Between the initial, omniscient narrator-type description of him and Elizabeth agreeing in Ch 43, we do get references to his looks a few times, but during the period of Elizabeth’s dislike, it’s always either through implication or through someone around Elizabeth rather than Elizabeth herself. So Bingley, for instance, jokes about how Darcy is so much taller than he is, but the narrator only remarks on Elizabeth’s assumption that Darcy is offended by this.
We know that Elizabeth looks for a resemblance to Darcy when she first sees Lady Catherine, and finds it, but this isn’t explicitly linked to her conclusion that Lady Catherine might have been handsome in her youth.
Then there’s the introduction of Colonel Fitzwilliam, when he arrives with Darcy, as “about thirty, not handsome, but in person and address most truly the gentleman.” Obviously the contrast is with Darcy, who is handsome but has less gentlemanly manners, but this isn’t explicitly spelled out. Austen simply says that Darcy “looked just as he had been used to look in Hertfordshire” and moves to the manner of his compliments to Charlotte.
We do get an explicit contrast later, when Darcy, Georgiana, and Bingley come to Lambton (so, after the critical revelations):
Miss Darcy was tall, and on a larger scale than Elizabeth; and, though little more than sixteen, her figure was formed, and her appearance womanly and graceful. She was less handsome than her brother; but there was sense and good humour in her face
Austen breezes past this to Georgiana’s manners and Bingley’s arrival. There are a couple of discussions of Darcy’s appearance earlier at Pemberley, but entirely held between Mr and Mrs Gardiner, who admire his figure while Elizabeth is consumed by embarrassment. She mentions that it was obvious that he had only just arrived via horse or carriage, but not how she knows this or what she feels about it beyond repeatedly blushing.
Then they meet again, he interacts with the Gardiners for awhile, and Elizabeth and the Gardiners leave. The Gardiners discuss the encounter including Darcy’s appearance, and Mrs Gardiner—who at this point, still thinks Darcy has mistreated Wickham—first concludes that Wickham is handsomer, then immediately re-considers and decides that Darcy has perfect features, but not Wickham’s angelic countenance. She (Mrs Gardiner) goes on, “He[Darcy] has not an ill-natured look. On the contrary, there is something pleasing about his mouth when he speaks.”
Elizabeth does not opine on Darcy’s mouth, lol, and instead defends Darcy’s moral character as far as his financial dealings with Wickham are concerned. We don’t hear much more of it apart from that, and in general, we see Elizabeth’s reactions to Darcy more than we hear about them:
Their eyes instantly met, and the cheeks of both were overspread with the deepest blush.
She blushed again and again over the perverseness of the meeting.
The colour which had been driven from her face, returned for half a minute with an additional glow, and a smile of delight added lustre to her eyes, as she thought for that space of time that his affection and wishes must still be unshaken.
Darcy had walked away to another part of the room. She followed him with her eyes, envied everyone to whom he spoke, had scarcely patience enough to help anybody to coffee; and then was enraged against herself for being so silly!
The colour now rushed into Elizabeth’s cheeks in the instantaneous conviction of its being a letter from the nephew, instead of the aunt
She had only to say in reply, that they had wandered about, till she was beyond her own knowledge. She coloured as she spoke
I do not personally think there can be much reasonable doubt about whether Elizabeth is attracted to Darcy during this phase of the book. But the narrative does dance around it enough (for understandable 1813 reasons, I suspect, given that Elizabeth either dislikes or hates Darcy for a significant portion of the book) that it’s not at all clear when she begins to finds him attractive, especially given that she does not actually see him between receiving the letter and acknowledging his attractiveness at Pemberley. So I think there are multiple valid interpretations or headcanons one could come up with for that.
#fun fact: i started writing this bc i was like 'i want to make a post about something trivial i can be concise about'#rip me i guess#but tbh my personal headcanon is that elizabeth /is/ attracted to darcy for a lot of the book but NOT remotely 'secretly in love' or w/e#people will be like 'if the attraction is mutual then what about her dislike are you saying-'#nope! she hates him. in fact she only hates him more bc he's smart and hot and complicated.#in addition to her conviction that he's a terrible person morally#and then she finds out he's actually okay and then that he's actually GOOD and then that he's made himself even better#elizabeth: i tried infatuation at first sight with wickham. now i shall try grown-up feelings like respect and gratitude#three days later: alas... i could have loved him...#some indeterminate amount of time without actually seeing him later: ...oh. fuck.#(i paraphrase. but honestly while elizabeth's realization that half her sleepless nights are darcy's fault is sad it is also very funny)#but yeah i think elizabeth is extremely wary of where attraction to emotionally unsuitable people goes and just buries all that#but once hte brakes go off she falls FAST#also she's genuinely attracted to three different men over the course of one pretty short novel and i love that for her#anghraine babbles#anghraine's meta#austen blogging#elizabeth bennet#fitzwilliam darcy#otp of otps#pride and prejudice#jane austen#long post
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My Friend’s Father (Part Nine)
Pairing: Cillian Murphy x Reader
Warning: Age Gap, Smut, Domestic Violence, Angst
Words: 3,064
Please comment and interact...it's what keeps this blog going
***************************
Almost a week had passed since you stayed with Cillian at his unit in Galway and, despite the fact that he was away, things had further developed between you as emotions grew with every day.
He was different to any man you had ever been involved with and, whilst your involvement with each other stemmed from purely sexual lust and hunger, you had evolved from this to something different entirely within a matter of days.
Of course, you knew each other for years and, whilst you had a crush on Cillian for as long as you could remember, you never thought that it would be like this and, for Cillian, this feeling had never been mutual.
Whilst he always considered you to be attractive and very intelligent and kind, he never felt any emotional connection or sexual attraction towards you, at least not until that weekend when you visited Denise, which was also the first time he saw you again after six months had passed.
On that night during which you slept with each other, he let his sexual hunger take over his reasonable thinking mind after he saw you, in his kitchen, making pancakes and you had since, quite openly, talked about it. He saw sleeping with you as a mistake but, ever since that night, he couldn’t get you out of his head.
For you, things weren’t just sexual anymore and you began to feel strongly for Cillian which worried you especially since he was open about the fact that he didn’t know where things were heading with you. The fact that you are his daughter’s friend and much younger than him clearly bothered him and he sometimes admitted to you that he felt strange about building such a strong connection with you. A relationship was not what he wanted but he liked you, a lot.
As such, during the past week, Cillian called you every day after he finished filming and you were talking to him more frequently than you were talking to Denise.
During his breaks, he would also text you and check in on you as you were in the middle of exams. He always remembered when you had a test and asked you how it went and, when you told him that you didn’t feel confident with your results, he reassured you that you probably did well and, even if you didn’t, it wouldn’t matter. According to him, a pass is a pass and you needed to lower your expectations of yourself just a little.
To your surprise, he also remembered appointments you had scheduled and things that bothered you which meant that, unlike other men you had been with, he was actually listening and was interested in what you had to say.
Some nights, you had spent hours on the phone or Skype, joking about things you had encountered that day or talking about books, literature and music, which is something you both enjoyed.
Politics and social issues were other matters you could discuss endlessly and, even when you were of different opinions, you would be able to argue in the most satisfying way. Cillian always treated you as an equal and even opened up to you about his divorce from Denise’s mother recently.
Another thing you learned from Cillian was that Denise was brining along her friend Amalie to Manchester to stay at his apartment and, when you gave him a warning about her and her intentions, he reminded you that he only had eyes for you. In fact, he always showered you with compliments and all of his compliments were genuine and came natural to him, helping you immensely with your self-consciousness.
Unfortunately, whilst you enjoyed how engaging Cillian was with you every day, like a teenager in love, with the constant text messages and calls, your father soon got suspicious and confronted you about.
****
“Dad, I am almost 22, you don’t need to be spying on me” you said somewhat frustrated as he asked you who you were talking to every day.
“You live under my roof and you answer me young lady” he said harshly and you couldn’t help but roll your eyes just as your mother stepped in, trying to calm him down. Your father was much older, approaching sixty and fairly old school in the way he expected you and your sister to behave.
“A friend…I am talking to a friend” you explained and your father asked again, telling you not to lie to him because he would know.
“And this friend of yours, you can’t meet him…you just text and talk? You can’t bring him to our house and introduce him?” your father asked along with a million other questions.
“No, I can’t. he lives in Dublin and I, most certainly, wouldn’t bring him into this…” you said somewhat irritated by the interrogation.
“Dublin, huh? So, you met him when you visited Denise?” he asked and you nodded.
“It’s not her brother, is it? Because I really don’t want you to get involved with him. I don’t like this family and their views” your father said harshly, causing you to chuckle.
“Their views?” you asked somewhat surprised and your father nodded.
“Yes, their views on what’s right and wrong. If I recall correctly, this girl you call your friend was going out with someone of the same gender for a while. God didn’t tell us to do this but her parents obviously didn’t have an issue with it which, apparently is called new age parenting. Everything is pro choice and lets their children decide what is best for them even if they lack experience” your father went on to say and you couldn’t help but shake your head at his absurd commentary but, he continued and you soon learned what had happened between your parents and Denise’s parents many years ago, before which your mother had called Denise’s mother her friend as well.
According to your father, Cillian had voiced his opinion to your father when it was found out that your sister was pregnant following a short affair with a man she had met through university.
Cillian’s ex wife had told your sister that she had options, causing your father to get rather angry with her, which is when Cillian stepped in, supporting what Denise’s mother had said.
She had offered your sister help but your father considered this to be a betrayal and, whilst your mother maintained contact with Denise’s mother for a while, your father refused to get involved with Denise’s family thereafter.
Cillian’s often all so public views angered him and he made this very clear. He didn’t want you to be involved with his children and you couldn’t help but laugh about the irony of it all when you found out about this incident.
“Jesus Dad, that was years ago and not everyone has to have the same views as you” you said before confirming that you weren’t seeing Denise’s brother.
“No, they don’t, but I am just looking out for you and, instead of acting the way you do, throwing yourself at guys with new age ideas, I would much prefer if you met a nice young catholic man” your father explained, causing your mother to fume in anger with him.
“Throwing myself at guys? Listen, I am not sure what slut you think I am but it’s nice to know that you think so little of me” you said before storming upstairs and into your room.
Having to deal with this crap bothered you and you knew that, when this semester came to an end, you could be moving out now that you saved enough money for a bond and rent.
*****
As the evening went on, you spent all of your time in your room, reading a book until, finally, at around 9 o’clock you saw a notification on Skype.
‘Hey Beautiful’ Cillian said as you picked up and popped in your headphones.
Cillian apologised for calling through so late and informed you that he was finally able to speak to Laura, the woman he was seeing before you.
He knew that you wanted to know about it and he had no problem telling you what you needed to hear while telling you that you had absolutely nothing to worry about.
It was Laura’s first day back on set after a week-long break and Cillian told you that she wasn’t exactly impressed when he stood her down.
‘She probably likes you…I can understand that’ you said calmly but Cillian told you that he was pretty clear with her about what this was between them.
‘Well, in retrospect, I shouldn’t have gotten involved with her’ he went on and you were quite happy to change the topic by this point and told him that you were aching for him.
‘Well, I am not sure that I can help you with that’ Cillian chuckled.
‘We could have Skype sex I suppose’ you giggled.
‘Skype Sex?’ Cillian laughed before telling you that he didn’t think that this would be a good idea since you were at home with your parents and you had previously complained about the thin walls of the house.
‘Oh Jesus Cillian, my father already thinks I am a slut, so I personally don’t care if anyone hears me getting myself off. I’ve got my earphones in and am the only one who can hear you and my door is locked’ you chuckled.
‘Your father thinks that you are a slut? Do you want to talk about that?’ Cillian asked concerned but you shook your head.
‘I rather not. You met him and know what he is like’ you explained.
‘I do. He takes God very seriously’ Cillian said before continuing on. ‘But, if you have problems at home you need to tell me please. You can stay at my apartment. I can get my house keeper to meet you there with the key’ he offered.
‘You said you were going to stay out of stuff between me and my parents just as I would stay out of matters between you and Denise’ you then said, reminding him on the conversation about your respective roles which you had three days ago.
‘Yes I did, but I can’t if I have to worry about you’ Cillian said firmly.
‘There is no need to worry Cillian. I promise’ you reassured him. ‘Well, actually, I need you to worry about my sexual needs right now’ you then went on to say with sly grin.
‘Through Skype?’ Cillian asked again somewhat concerned.
‘Yes’ you said with a cheeky smile as you settled more into your bed with your laptop.
‘Alright then, show me what you are wearing” Cillian said as he cut straight to the point.
‘Can you see?’ you asked as you adjusted the cam and showed Cillian your dark blue lingerie.
‘Very nice…but…I think you would look even better if you were naked, don’t you think?’ Cillian said somewhat nervously and you nodded in agreement.
‘Well, I suppose I should strip for you and you should strip for me’ you giggled as you seductively took off your bra slowly, showing Cillian your perky breasts through the camera.
You heard him inhale sharply as he watched you and took his t-shirt off at the same time, leaving him in nothing but his CK briefs.
Without words you then scooted back on the bed and removed your undies, allowing him to watch before you sat down on the bed, spread eagle and naked, giving him a good view of your mound.
‘Jesus Y/N, you are so fucking beautiful and sexy…touch yourself for me, nice and slow’ Cillian breathed out and you let his soothing voice wash over you, knowing what he was trying to do and happily helping him succeed.
‘Like this?’ you moaned as you began to run circles over your clit with your fingers.
‘Yes, just like that babe’ Cillian groaned as he shuffled down his briefs and you were finally getting a good look of his hard cock.
‘Oh god, I want to stroke your cock so badly’ you moaned as you seductively opened your pussy lips with your fingers, opening yourself up before reaching for the black vibrator you kept in your bedside table.
‘Well, someone's particularly horny tonight’ Cillian chuckled as he watched you play with your pussy, and you could hear the smirk in his voice.
You mumbled a small "mhm," and he laughed.
‘Good, that's exactly how I like you, so naughty and needy’ Cillian said as he slowly began to stroke his hard member.
You barely registered his words enough to answer with another "mhm," but your subconscious managed it. Your weak answer elicited another delicious chuckle from the other end of the line.
"Why don't you show me how this little toy of yours works?” Cillian then asked as he watched you eagerly.
“I was just waiting for you to ask” you giggled as you began to run your fingers along your stomach and back up to your chest, leaving a trail of goosebumps their wake before reaching for the vibrator and turning it on.
“Put into your sweet pussy babe, let me see it” Cillian groaned and you moan in response, barely processing his words but still understanding enough to answer and do what he asked.
"I bet your pussy is already dripping” he said as you slid the vibrator into you slowly. He was right, you could feel your wetness pooling.
“I am so fucking wet and I wish it would be your cock inside me” you moaned as you began to stroke the toy in and out of you.
Cillian was groaning on the other side, his eyes full of lust and desire for you and you let out a quiet moan as you watched him with the same desire and hunger while you were pleasuring yourself.
“Good girl, keep going…” Cillian tells you and you moan again hearing it.
“Tell me how much you are aching for my cock” he then said you moaned again.
“I want your cock so badly, fuck…I want your cum inside me, dripping out of my wet little pussy” you moaned, eliciting a groan from Cillian as he began to stroke his cock harder and faster.
“Such a naughty needy girl, aren’t you? I can’t wait to be inside you again and make you cum over and over again” Cillian said with a laboured breath and you are barely listening at this point.
“I want you to cum for me and show me this dripping pussy when you do…I fucking love hearing your moans, so fucking sexy…common babe….let go” Cillian said, knowing that you were close and your orgasm rolled over you as soon as the word 'cum' left his lips, and although your sensitive clit was screaming at your hand to stop, you couldn't.
‘Oh god fuck, yes…’ you moaned as you came hard and fast.
“That’s it babe, don’t stop” he instructed as your moans continuously spilled from your mouth, and you were not even sure what you were saying or if you were forming words at all. The only thing in your head is a deliciously heavy fog and Cillian’s voice guiding you to do what he wanted.
“Don’t stop, keep fucking your sweet little pussy babe” Cillian ordered as he knew you weren’t done and, just as he did, you let out a high-pitched moan, bordering on a scream, as an even stronger orgasm washed over your body.
‘Cum for me babe…I want to see all this cum’ you moaned in return, focusing on the delicious image in front of you as Cillian was stroking his cock and, just when you finally come back down you heard Cillian groan loudly.
“Fuck” he groaned as he stroked his cock hard and fast you watched rope after rope of cum spurt onto his stomach.
‘Oh god, what a waste, I want to lick your cum off your skin so badly” you breathed out as Cillian came down from his high slowly and used a tissue to clean himself up.
‘Stop saying those things or you have to stay on the line for another twenty minutes at least’ Cillian chuckled as he could feel his manhood stir again.
‘Well, I think you shouldn’t cum again until you come to visit me in Galway the weekend after next…I want you to save it all for me’ you said, causing Cillian to cock an eyebrow as he pulled his briefs back up.
‘Fat chance babe’ he chuckled, knowing that going without an orgasm for nine days would be rather difficult for him.
Eventually, after a lot of begging, he agreed to try but he wouldn’t be able to make you any promises to this effect.
***
The following day, you went to work and then university thereafter but, when you eventually returned home, your father was in a worse mood than ever before.
‘Can you explain this to me?’ he asked angrily as soon as you walked through the door and you couldn’t help but gulp when he pointed to a white box which he had placed on the living room table.
‘You went through my personal belongings’ you huffed out as the box contained some lingerie and intimate items, including toys, that you were hiding in the bottom of your dresser.
‘Again Y/N, this is my house, my rules and I don’t want my daughter to own filth like this’ he said, after having heard small pieces of your conversation with Cillian on Skype the evening before.
It was obvious to you that your father was appalled and you were outraged that he had been snooping through your room and, as you would later learn, had even tried to access your computer.
‘I can’t fucking believe you dad. These are my personal belongings and you have no right to go through them’ you huffed out and, just as you did, you could feel a sharp strike across your face.
‘Get this shit out of my house and talk to me with some respect’ he said harshly, leaving you speechless and in tears as he walked away, leaving your cheek burning red.
Tag List:
@lilymurphy03@deefigs @theflamecrystal @desperate-and-broken @weepingstudentfishhorse @livinginfantaxy @rosey1981 @atomicsoulcollecto @peakyboyslover @nerdy4itall@elenavampire21 @hanster1998@mariapaiva13 @fairypitou @harry-is-your-sunflower @zozeebo @lauren-raines-x @kasaikawa @littlewierdalien @sad-huffle-nerd @theflamecrystal @peakymalfoyscullymulder @themissthang@0ghostwriter0 @stylescanbeatmyback @1-800-peakyblinders @datewithgianni @momoneymolife @ntmynouis @lilymurphy03 @mcntsee@cloudofdisney@missymurphy1985 @peakymalfoyscullymulder @otterly-fey @janelongxox @uchihacumdump @basiclassy @being-worthy @chaotic-bean-of-smolness @margoo0 @chocolatehalo @vhscillian @ysmmsy @littlewierdalien @crazymar15 @stickyknightflowerbailiff @im-constantly-fangirling @goldensunflowe-r @tellingyouastory @captivatedbycillianmurphy @namelesslosers @littlewhiterose @ttzamara @ttzamara @cilleveryone
@peaky-cillian
@severewobblerlightdragon @ysmmsy
#cillian murphy#cillian murphy smut#Cillian Murphy x Reader#cillian murphy imagine#cillian murphy x y/n#cillian murphy x you
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Broken Strings~
ꕥPosted: 7/20/21
ꕥGenre: Fluff, Angst, Smut, College!au, Rockstar!au
ꕥPairing: Fem!Reader x Rockstar!Yunho
ꕥWord Count: 10k+
ꕥWarnings (please read all!!): Yunho’s ex is an absolute asshat, death threats towards both Yunho and reader, mention of knives used as weapons, San is a bisexual king (happy late pride month), unprotected pool sex/public sex (no one is around but I guess it still counts), masturbation (f), foul language, mentions of alcohol intake, reader is mentioned to have dark brown eyes several times which you can just ignore if you have different colored eyes ofc, mentions of a restraining order against an ex, please let me know if I missed something!!
ꕥTag List: @cappujinho @bobateastay @nevieatiny
ꕥA/N: The song lyrics are ones that I wrote myself specifically for this au and I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t nervous about posting it. I know there isn’t any tune or anything, but hopefully it sounds like a real song someone might sing. Also I’m not writing angst for a while after this holy shit I’ve been crying too much over this I’m emotional okay
“Date night! Date night! Date night!” I grabbed my boyfriend’s arm, bouncing on my toes.
Yunho raised a hand to cover his ear, scrunching his face, “Babe, I love you, but I think you’ve deafened me.”
I pouted at his tone and crossed my arms, “You’re such a grump.”
“Oh whatever.” He smiled, “You ready?”
I smiled at him and nodded.
Ever since his band, Sidekick Heart, began to pick up traction, he had less free time and our full-day dates once a week soon became date nights every few weeks. Most of his time was spent writing songs, producing them, and practicing endlessly. The fact that he had a tour coming up soon just meant he had even less spare time. I was happy for him, of course, but I couldn’t hide my disappointment that he was leaving.
In middle school, he and three of his friends formed a band for fun, which they kept with all throughout high school. They got good, really good and almost right after they graduated they were signed by a label. Now, three years later, they’d already released two albums and one EP and earned enough money to make a living, which was why Yunho dropped out of college a month ago. Since he had steady career path, he saw no reason to continue and decided to focus on music. He still visited me at college whenever he got the chance, but his visits were becoming more and more sporadic.
We started dating freshman year of college. We had our difficulties as most couples do, but everyday I thanked the stars for pairing us together. I met him on the first day of French class, a day I know I could never forget, no matter how how our future played out.
I sat my backpack on the table in front of me, looking around the empty classroom. I was ten minutes early, so I wasn’t surprised about the lack of students. It was a bit unlikely for me to be so early, but I wasn’t able to sleep the night before and so I had extra time to get ready. With nothing else to do, I took out my phone, reading some missed text messages.
I heard the door open and my head tilted upwards, meeting eyes with a fluffy-haired brunet. He shyly smiled at me and I returned the gesture. The man took a seat in the front row across from me, only a few chairs in between us. I found it cute that he liked to sit in the front of the classroom, too. Very few people did. He turned away from me to place his backpack on the floor and take out a few books. I took the opportunity to look at him. He was attractive, for sure. His short sleeved solid black shirt followed his movements, tattoos peaking through his top. The shirt itself tucked was into ripped jeans, his black shoes matching the outfit, along with various accoutrements. His look was uncommon for college students, most just wore sweatpants with with a casual shirt. I thanked myself for dressing nice that day.
I tilted my head to get a better look at his side profile. He was so handsome that I seemed to forget I was staring. I couldn’t help but get caught up in him, not realizing that I was no longer being subtle.
He spoke without moving to face me, “You’re pretty cute, too.”
“I-I what?” My eyes widened, realizing I’d been caught.
He turned, a charming smile on his face, “You aren’t exactly discreet.”
I took a breath, trying to form a coherent sentence, “Well...can you blame me?”
He pursed his lips, trying to hide a smile, “I appreciate the compliment. What’s your name?”
I hesitated before answering him, which brought a full smile to his face. He moved closer to me before holding out his hand for me to shake. I grabbed his hand and shook it, trying to keep my hands steady. His hand was soft, clearly he took care of himself.
“I’m Yunho.”
I smiled, observing the way he lit up as he turned my hand, placing a delicate kiss on my skin. I felt my face heat up and averted my eyes. Yunho chuckled as he released my hand. Both of us looked up at the sound of the door opening, a group of students entered, followed by a lady who I presumed to be the teacher.
Yunho looked at me, “Meet me after class?”
I nodded, biting my lip as I felt excitement build in my stomach, wanting nothing more than for class to end as soon as possible.
The instant the teacher ended her lecture she left with the rest of the students, who were talking among themselves. My eyes flickered to Yunho to find him looking back at me, his backpack now thrown over his shoulders.
“You have any classes after this?” He asked in a nonchalant manner. Later he confessed to me that he was far more nervous than he appeared, claiming that he fell in love with me at first sight.
I finished placing my notebook in my bag, zipping it up and putting the straps over my arms, “Yeah, unfortunately. I’ve got World Politics in ten minutes.”
“Aww damn. I was hoping we could grab some food.” He reached into his pants’ pocket, pulling out his phone, “Maybe I could get your number instead and we could meet up later?” He wasn’t pushy or demanding, simply asking.
I nodded quickly, “I’d like that, Yunho.”
He suddenly became more shy, the tips of his ears dusting a beautiful shade of pink, “I like the way you say my name.”
I giggled, trying to hide my own shyness. I took his phone and entered my number, really hoping that he would text me. As if he read my mind, he confirmed what I was thinking.
“I’ll text you,” He looked at me with sparkling eyes before shaking his head, like he was pulled back to reality, “Oh uh...you should probably get to class.“ He raised a hand, somewhat awkwardly scratching the back of his head.
“Yeah I probably should. I’ll see you around?”
He smiled, “I’ll see ya.”
-
It wasn’t long before he texted me, and it made my heart flutter that he kept his word. A day later we met up, grabbing ice cream and getting to know each other. He was a dance major and had to practically beg his parents to let him pursue dance. In return they said he had to repay them with getting straight A’s. He had one younger brother who was possibly the biggest baseball fan to ever exist, he roomed with three men he’d been friends with since kindergarten, and he absolutely adored my brown eyes.
“They’re just beautiful.” Yunho gushed, “Both times I’ve seen you they just sparkle and shine like they’ve got their own little galaxies in them. I’ve never seen anyone with such genuine, kind eyes.”
I let out a girly laugh at the compliment and covered my mouth with a hand, “You’re really trying to flatter me, aren’t you?”
“Depends. Is it working?” He laughed as he propped his head on one of his hands, leaning closer to me in the booth we were sitting in. We’d finished our ice cream long ago, now shamelessly flirting and getting lost in each other.
“It might be.”
“Well I do mean it. I’m not only trying to flatter you.”
The ringing of his phone caught our attention. He smiled apologetically and reached for the device. He sighed, reading the contact name and looking back up at me.
“I’m sorry I’ve gotta take this. It’s one of my roommates and it’s entirely possible they’ve set the house on fire.”
I laughed, “It’s okay, go ahead.”
Yunho excused himself as he answered the call, walking outside. I took a look around the shop we were in, smiling at all the decorations when I noticed a woman sitting alone, eating ice cream and staring at me. Her eyes were such an ice blue that they made her intimidating, to say the least. I wasn’t too surprised, I’d dressed nice and all throughout the day I’d been getting looks. Taking it as a compliment I smiled at her and waited for Yunho to return.
“So good news,” He started as he sat back down in the booth, running a hand through his hair, which was way more attractive than it should’ve been, “They haven’t burnt down the apartment, but San—he’s one of my roommates—his car ran out of gas a few miles away from here so I’ve gotta go help him. Can I drive you back to your own apartment first?”
“Oh no, I don’t want to worry you.” I waved a hand, “I can have a friend pick me up.”
He nodded, “If you’re more comfortable with that, sure, but I’d rather drive you home, if that’s okay.”
I nodded, walking with him as he guided me out to his car. We had our first kiss when he dropped me off, leaving me with the promise of another date, and he delivered. Time and time again he proved he truly cared about me, which inevitably led to a relationship.
We heard a loud crashing in the basement of the house and Yunho let out a frustrated groan, “Oh god it’s happening again.”
He walked over to the basement door, opening it and sighing at the loud yells emitting from below.
“What is it this time?” Yunho shouted.
Wooyoung’s voice rung out, “San won’t let me use the controller!”
The man in front of me placed a hand over his eyes, over the situation entirely, “You’re still fighting over that game?”
“Crash Bandicoot waits for no man!”
“San let him have the controller or I’ll come down there and I’ll beat both of your asses!” Yunho shut the door, giving me a tired smile and walking back to me, “You’d think we would’ve outgrown this stage by now. I’d fire them both and hire a new bassist and drummer if I could.”
“Okay that’s an absolute lie, and you say that like you’re any better. I saw you arguing with Seonghwa over the last bag of chips yesterday.”
He pointed a finger at me, not trying to hide the smile on his face, “Okay that was absolutely valid. I bought those and they were mine.”
I smirked. “My point still stands.”
He rolled his eyes playfully, changing the subject, “How about after our date I sing you a couple of our new songs?” He leaned closer, his lips barely grazing my ear, “I wrote a few about you.”
I pulled back from him, feeling warmth spread in my chest. “Really? You did?”
Yunho wrapped an arm around my waist, “How could I not? You’re always my inspiration.”
I let out a string of incoherent gibberish which prompted the most adorable eye smiles from my boyfriend. I felt too honored to put my emotions into words.
“Go on.” Yunho motioned to the front door, “Grab your purse and head out to my car. I’ll let the guys know we’re going and I’ll meet you outside.”
I gave him a salute, “You got it cap’n!”
His eyes warmed, “God, I love you.”
“I know!” I teased before I grabbed my purse and skipped out of the house. The sun would be setting soon and I admired the several hues that were painted within the sky. I sat on the hood of his car, swinging my feet as I saw him walk out of the house.
“So where exactly are we going?” I tilted my head, looking forward to his response.
“Well I’ve got a couple ideas.” He held up his long fingers and counted off on them, “We could go bowling, or we could have a late night picnic, or maybe...” He moved closer, placing his hands on either side of me with a mischievous grin, “We could go swimming.”
My face lit up, “I haven’t been swimming in forever!”
“I know, that’s why I recommended it.” He laughed, “Let’s break into the swimming pool downtown. It’s definitely closed by now so we can be alone.”
I raised my brows at his words, a smile widening on my face, “Don’t we need to bring swimsuits, though?”
Yunho grinned at me and moved a hand to ruffle my hair, “Nope. We’re going without ‘em.” He lifted me off his car, “Hop in, babe.”
-
We approached the fence with our hands interlocked, a new message greeting us. A red and black sign with the words ‘No Trespassing’ was attached haphazardly to one of the metal wires looped through the fence surrounding the pool.
Yunho tsked, “Aw that’s cute. Like that’s gonna keep us out. This is basically our pool anyways.”
I laughed, both of us knowing full well there was no method of security beyond the sign and fence. The pool had never installed security cameras and after word spread that the owner had a fear of advancing technology, we had no worry of being caught.
He cupped his hands, holding them out for me to step on. I placed my foot on his hands as he lifted me up, helping me scale the fence. I stepped back, feeling a thrill as Yunho jumped over. It was probably the fourth or fifth time we’d done this, but each time was just as exciting. We walked over to the edge of the pool, its light blue water and the dark blue of the sunset opposing one another but making a beautiful visual.
“Alright, off we go.” Yunho’s fingers danced to the hem of my shirt, then pulling it off and ridding me of the layer of clothing. He pressed several kisses to the exposed skin, making me shiver.
Yunho then pulled back from me, slowly removing his shirt and giving me a teasing look when he caught me staring at his abs, “I look good, don’t I?”
“Shut up,” I laughed, lightly slapping his strong, tattooed arm before removing my skirt, enjoying the way my boyfriend’s eyes devoured me. I returned the action when I saw him remove his jeans, something he was clearly enjoying as well.
I turned back to the pool only to be thrown over Yunho’s shoulders. He let out a string of laughs as I struggled to get down, fearing that he would throw me into the water.
“If you throw me into the pool I’ll kill you!” I laughed, squirming on his shoulders.
“No...I would never do something like that.” I wasn’t even facing him, but I could hear the smile in his voice, which was my only indication that he was about to throw me into pool.
Before I could try to make any sort of escape, he tossed me into the water. It was cold, but less cold than I expected it to be. I coughed up a bit of water as I resurfaced and when I opened my eyes I squinted at Yunho, annoyed at how attractive he looked with the evil smirk on his face.
“You’re a jerk.” I said with no venom behind my words.
“Yeah, yeah. Brace yourself I’m coming in.”
I barely had time to move before he jumped in, his legs tucked to his chest. “Cannonball!”
I moved my hands in front of my face to block the wave of water coming my way, not feeling any surprise about my boyfriend’s childish behavior. When he resurfaced he faced me with a smile, wading towards me, embracing me in his arms, and wrapping my legs around his waist. He was so tall that he could reach the bottom of the pool without having to swim, unlike me, where I was no near reaching the bottom and needed to swim in place. With a satisfied hum he pressed several wet kisses to my neck.
“I love you,” he mumbled, his voice muffled by my skin.
“I love you too, babe.” I hesitated before I said my next words, still overwhelmed at how strong my feelings were for him, “You’re the love of my life.”
He pulled back with a bright smile on his face, his eyes shining almost as if he was tearing up, “I knew you were the love of my life the moment I saw you. And you’re all mine.” Yunho said before he placed a delicate kiss to my lips.
“All yours, babe.”
His long fingers danced along my sides, grabbing at my hips as he began to attack my chest with kisses. I giggled as the feeling of his stubble tickled my skin.
“You know, you really ‘oughta shave before you get a full beard.”
“Why? Are you saying I wouldn’t look good with one?”
I cupped his face, “You’d look amazing with one, but I thought you didn’t like beards, babe?”
“Hate ‘em.” Yunho’s laugh echoed around us, “Really weird that men can grow them in the first place. But anyways...”
His hands made quick work of my bra, letting it sink to the bottom of the pool. I opened my mouth to scold him but before I could his mouth latched to my right nipple, sucking and nipping on it in a way that made my hands seek out his hair and tug harshly at his locks. Letting out a growl, Yunho placed one hand on the the pool wall for balance and the other on my back, drawing abstract shapes there.
Yunho moved to my other nipple, giving it the same treatment and smiling when he heard my moans. In a flash he removed his hand from my back and pressed me against the pool wall, his hand now traveling to my panties.
As he removed the final item of clothing he ran a finger over my clit, giggling to himself. I gave him a look and he clarified, “Babe, you’re wet enough to fill an entire swimming pool.”
I groaned, pressing my head into his chest, “You make that same god awful joke every time we come here.”
“And as such I couldn’t let tradition die.”
“Shut up and fuck me.” I laughed, promptly helping him out of his boxers.
He continued to tease me after, switching between playing with my clit and stretching me out with his long fingers. By the time he finally gave in, I was a whimpering, pathetic mess, begging for more.
As he aligned with my walls he looked at me with delicate eyes, “Ready, little flower?”
I nodded quickly, chanting ‘yes’ over and over. Yunho once again placed a hand on the wall and hooked one of my legs over his waist, allowing him to thrust deeper inside me. He held my hand with his free one, a simple action that always melted my heart. Despite how long we’d been together, I would always get overwhelmed by him so easily. Everything about him exuded such a strong aura that sometimes just the smallest kiss would leave me breathless. The first time we were intimate he took his hand in mine and assured me he would be gentle, and every time since he’s held my hand. It wouldn’t feel right without our hands together.
“Shit—it’s been way too long since we’ve done this.” I said as he snapped his hips into mine, quickly repeating the action.
“God I know.” He let out a pained groan at the thought of it, “Four months is gonna be fucking awful without you.”
“Guess we’ll have to make do with what we’ve got now.”
“Guess we will.”
The sounds of water splashing and the echos of our moans, a symphony I had become so familiar with, was gradually reaching its crescendo. It was getting harder to keep my eyes open but I forced them to be, needed to memorize everything about this moment. The sweat dripping down Yunho’s forehead, the tattooed muscles he was flexing, the sounds and praise he was emitting, and pleasure we were both feeling--I wouldn’t see nor feel this for the next four months.
A particular snap of his hips had me seeing stars and I called out to him, letting him know I was close. Within minutes, both of us were panting and reeling from our highs. Yunho pressed his nose against mine and both of us closed our eyes, enjoying each other’s presence.
“How come every time we come here it ends in sex?” I giggled.
He blinked and moved a strand of wet hair out of my face, “Because you’re hot and barely wearing any clothes and no one’s around.”
I blushed at his compliment, “I mean like I’m not complaining or anything.”
A cocky smile formed on Yunho’s face, “Well it certainly didn’t sound like you were a moment ago.”
“Yunho!”
The man laughed, lifting me up and spinning me around in the pool before cradling me in his arms.
“I hate to say it, but we do need to head back. The world awaits for us, I’m afraid.”
I sighed, pressing into his chest, “I’m gonna miss you.”
He stilled as he pulled me closer, “I’m gonna miss you, too. You don’t have to miss me yet, though.”
“I know.” I swallowed, wishing I had something more to say.
“Come on, then.” Yunho gave me a quick kiss, “Let’s head back.”
-
Yunho held the front door open for me, giving me a gentle slap on my ass when I walked through. I turned around and gave him a playfully annoyed look, which he only laughed at.
As we walked towards the living room, the sound of a random sitcom filled our ears. Six heads turned our way after hearing our footsteps. Seonghwa was resting his head against his long-time girlfriend. She was a sweet girl and complimented him more than any woman I’d seen him with. They really were soulmates, if they ever existed.
San was sitting holding hands with a man he’d been interested in for awhile. I’d often see him flirting with various men and women, but he never went any further than that, too afraid of commitment. This man; however, seemed to breaking through San’s walls. I really hoped they would work out, San deserved someone as kind as him.
Wooyoung sat across from the them, who acknowledged us first.
“Hey guys. Have fun?” Wooyoung asked, smiling at my soaked hair. He had his arm around a woman I’d never seen before and I was certain that none of us would ever see her again. He had the reputation of a playboy, and every poor woman thought they’d be the one exception, the one to make him stay. I’m sure the allure of being a drummer in a band was part of his appeal, too. Maybe one day, like San, he’d settle down.
The woman became visibly upset when Wooyoung looked me with a teasing glance. Feeling sympathy for her, I decided to do my best to calm her nerves.
I spoke for us, linking hands with my boyfriend. “Yeah, we did. I think we’re gonna go clean up though.” I looked at the woman, “I’m y/n, by the way. I’m Yunho’s girlfriend.”
She didn’t even try to hide the relief on her face. “Oh! I’m Solar. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Yeah,” Wooyoung started, “Best girlfriend he’s ever had. Much better for him than Lucy.”
Yunho glared at the man, “Thought we agreed not to bring her up?”
Lucy, the woman Yunho dated before me, was arguably the scariest person I’d ever heard about. They dated for roughly three months before she became obsessive, to the point where Yunho had to get a restraining order against her. She threatened to hurt all of Yunho’s friends and family, all because she wanted Yunho all to herself. That was about all Yunho ever told me about her. Not that I complained. I didn’t exactly want to discuss his exes, even more so when they were that crazy.
I never told him, but I knew I saw her the first date we went on. I could see the way her piercing, ice eyes saw through me. I had no doubt it was her. I just hope I’d never see her again. Maybe now that she saw he was taken she’d leave us alone. There was an uncomfortable silence following, none of us knowing what to say until San spoke.
“You look like a wet dog, Yunho.” San joked, prompting laughter from a few of us, which seemed like more of a noise of relief rather than one of actual humor.
“Yeah, yeah.” My boyfriend relaxed his shoulders, “I think we’re gonna head in for the night so don’t make too much noise.” Waving them goodbye he caught up with me, placing a hand around my waist.
“Shower with me, doll.”
I placed a hand on his chest, “I would love to.”
-
I came out of the shower wearing my favorite large shirt of Yunho’s, drying my wet hair with a towel. The smell of chlorine had gone away for the most part; whatever chemicals the owner put in that pool always made the smell harder to get rid of. Only a small price to pay, I figured.
My boyfriend, who was much quicker than I was, looked up from his phone as he was splayed out across his bed. His tired eyes smiled at me while motioning me over. Yunho’s own hair was still drying and with his bare face and crooked smile, he was as handsome as he could ever be.
“Hey there.”
“Hey, sweetheart.” He reached an arm out to me, pulling me against him when I took his hand, “How ya feeling?”
“Tired.” I hummed, sleepily smiling against his neck.
“Too tired to listen to the song I wrote for you?”
“No! Not at all.”
Yunho chuckled, slowly brushing my hair aside and turning his head to look at me. As he had countless times, he took a breath before he turned to me, beginning to sing.
“You give me fireworks
I’ll give you the kindest words, my dear
Your love caught me
The moment I met your eyes
And how could I not fall?
Your heart bared, no disguise”
I fought to stay awake although his melodic voice seemed to be lulling me to sleep. I felt myself losing consciousness, but managed to catch the last few lyrics he sang to me.
“Now I sunbathe in the daybreak
Half asleep, half awake
Writing this song
As I hope I’ll dream of you”
Yunho brushed his fingertips brush against my face before he spoke, “Goodnight, flower.”
I muttered some form of a “goodnight” before I felt sleep take over me, nuzzling happily against my boyfriend.
-
I woke up in a panic, unsure why my heart was beating so fast until I looked at the clock. Eleven in the morning. I was an hour later than I should’ve been at my job. It seemed that even unconscious my body knew I was late.
“Oh shit I’m gonna be late for work!” I spoke with wide eyes.
Jumping from Yunho’s bed I stripped myself of his shirt and quickly threw my clothes on. The body that laid beside me stirred, moving the covers aside.
“Are you leaving?” He asked sleepily, his face puffy from sleep and an adorable pout on his lips.
I frowned, “Yeah. I’m sorry we didn’t get to spend more time together, babe.”
He shook his head, “Don’t worry about it. Both of us slept in.”
I tied my hair back, sighing. I was so caught up in my thoughts I almost missed Yunho’s question.
“Sorry what was that?”
He smiled, “You’re coming to our going away party tomorrow, right?”
“Of course. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” I moved back to the bed and hugged him, feeling my heart sink. I was proud of him, I really was, yet couldn’t help but feel sad that I wouldn’t see him for so long.
This was the longest tour they’d ever gone on and we’d never been apart from each other that long before. I trusted him and I was confident in our relationship, but realistically, all members of Sidekick Heart were attractive young men and a good portion of their fans were female. I was far more concerned about the female audience doing something than I was about Yunho making a move on another woman.
With one last squeeze of his shoulders I pulled back, goodbyes beginning to fall from my lips before Yunho pulled me back.
“I need a goodbye kiss.”
I pressed my lips together with a smile, gladly indulging him. Giving him one last kiss against the lips, I bid him farewell until the following day.
-
“So how was work?” My roommate asked as I walked in the house, propping her feet up on our couch and tossing a kernel of corn into her mouth, the lighting of the TV illuminating her blanket-covered body.
I sighed, sitting down on the floor next to her, “Other than being an hour and a half late and missing an important meeting I think it went okay. I’m just glad the day’s over.” Rubbing a hand over my face I turned to her, “What about you? How was your day?”
“Pretty damn good actually.” She smiled, removing the blanket and showing me the new ink on her upper arm. It was an assortment of flowers and matched her bubbly personality perfectly. They were now the fifth adornment on her beautiful dark skin, each one of them tempting me more and more to get a few of my own.
“Another one already, Tiff?”
“Listen, you’ll know how addicting they get as soon as you get your first.”
“You sound so confident that I will.”
“Oh I know you will. You’re dating a rockstar, after all. Not to mention he’s the goddamn lead singer and has tattoos of his own.”
“Shut up.” I giggled, “Speaking of, are you coming to the farewell party tomorrow?”
“I plan on it, but I’ll probably be there a couple hours late. My dad’s flying into town for the weekend so I plan on visiting first. I’m definitely coming though.”
I hummed, “Yeah, don’t worry too much about it. We all know it’ll go till sunrise anyway.”
She let out a loud laugh, likely remembering the last party of theirs we went to where she ended up more drunk than I’d ever seen her. She claims she remembers flashes of the night; playing strip beer pong and being dared to steal one of the neighbor’s bushes—which, after much convincing from those who were sober, she decided against it—but didn’t recall half of the hilarious memories of her the rest of us did. Personally, my favorite was watching her hold a tomato soup can and cry over the fact that it could never have children.
Tiff let out a yawn as she stretched her arms above her head, turning in my direction. Her words were muffled by her yawn as she spoke, “Imma go to bed now. You good before I go?”
I smiled at her, “Yeah I’m good. I won’t stay up too much longer, just need to go through my nightly routine of looking at the stars, ya know, the usual.”
She nodded, wrapping the blanket around her and heading to her bedroom, “Sleep well, babe. I’ll see ya tomorrow.”
“Back at ya.”
It was a habit of mine, gazing at the night sky before sleeping. It gave me comfort knowing that out there, somewhere, there was something else out there with me. Almost like I wasn’t going through everything alone.
I set my purse down when I reached our kitchen, reaching for a tea pot and tea bags, brainlessly brewing my favorite tea as I thought of what Yunho might be doing right now. It was probably most likely that he was practicing for their tours, but I could only hope he was getting a little bit of rest.
I stepped out onto our porch to look at the stars with a cup of tea in my hands, the night sky twinkling with all the stars it could offer. A slight breeze rustled my hair and I closed my eyes, thankful for the pleasant weather. I heard a sudden snap of a branch and my eyes quickly opened as I searched out property for any sign of an aggressive animal. My eyes finally landed on a human-like figure. Feeling adrenaline run though me, I decided to confront whoever or whatever it was.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?” I spoke, my voice loud but not quite a yell.
The figure took off it’s hood to show their face, and I saw a familiar pair of ice blue eyes, though I hadn’t seen them in years, “I’m here to see you, of course.”
My brain quickly connected her to the woman I hoped I’d never see again.
Lucy.
“Well I don’t want to see you. Leave.”
She pressed a hand to her chest, feigning offense, “But I came all this way! Just to...say hello.”
I took a step towards her, hoping that if I appeared confrontational she would leave me alone. “I don’t know who you are, now please leave. I’m not going to say it again.”
“Oh, you poor girl. You really think you have the upper hand?” She pulled out a knife, and walked towards me at impressive speed, pointing the weapon at my throat. “I know you’ve been seeing Yunho. I. Don’t. Like. That.” She emphasized every word of the last sentence, anger woven within her voice.
I wanted to fight back. Everything in me was screaming to fight back, but I knew I had no chance. I had no idea what she was capable of, and I didn’t dare to find out.
“I dated him first and he’s still mine. You’re going to break up with him, you hear me?” She screamed in my ear, the sound shaking me to my core, “I never want to see you near him again.” She grabbed my jaw harshly, forcing my eyes to lock with hers. “I bet he doesn’t even love you.”
My eyes watered. I knew she was wrong, but with the adrenaline coursing through my veins and the harshness of her words I began to doubt myself.
Her grip tightened and I let out a yelp, “He loves me and I love him. He’s always loved me, not you. Why would he ever love a thing like you?”
She then threw me to the ground, towering over me, “Break up with him. Make him hate you. If you don’t,” She squatted down next to me, once more pointing the knife at my throat, “I’ll kill him myself and make you watch. Then,” She cocked her head, a crazed smile plastered on her face, “I’ll kill you. If I can’t have him, no one can.” She stood, smirking at me, “And you know I will.”
She kicked me in the stomach, watching as I crawled into myself, groaning from the pain. I closed my eyes, hoping she wouldn’t hurt me any more than she already had.
“I’ll be watching you at the party tomorrow. Do it then. Break his heart. I’ll kill him then and there if you don’t.” She looked down at me and scoffed, “And I’ll be bringing friends to make sure the job gets done.”
I carefully opened my eyes to see her stepping over me, walking back into the darkness from which she came. I scrambled back into my house, hyperventilating from the interaction I just had.
I spent the night crying, not able to sleep even for a minute. I tried to think rationally, but there were just too many variables. How many ‘friends’ was she bringing? Would she really kill Yunho in front of everyone? Where would she be watching me from? Is she watching me now?
I could text or call Yunho to let him know, but where would we go from there? He’d want to meet me and she’d kill him instantly. Right?
“Maybe I could pull him aside at the party and warn him?” I murmured to myself, “No, she could probably see that. Maybe there’s people actually at the party who are looking out for us, too.” I covered my face with my hands and fell back into my pillows, weeping as I knew I had to break up with the love of my life.
-
Choosing to wear a yellow dress honestly couldn’t have been more ironic. Yellow was supposed to be a happy color. A color of hope and yearning, innocence and warm days full of laughter. It was the complete antithesis of how I felt and what I knew I had to do. Even worse, the weather was perfect. It was sunny, but not so much to make it unbearable outside. Everything about today made my insides twist.
I took a breath at the door of Yunho’s house, bracing myself for what I had to do. Knocking a few times I heard a commotion inside before the man I came to see opened the door. His smile had never been bigger.
“Baby!” He cheered, pulling me into a bear hug and ruffling my styled hair, “I’m so excited you’re here!”
He looks so ecstatic. And I have to break him.
The thought crushed me and brought tears to my eyes, but I couldn’t let him die. I knew she was serious, I didn’t doubt that for a moment. I grabbed Yunho’s arm, pulling him outside and away from everyone in the house.
I looked at the ground as I felt my lips begin to quiver, “I’m sorry. I just need to get this over with.”
Yunho bent down to meet my eyes, “Hey, hey. What’s going on sweetheart?” His voice was gentle, one of his hands coming to rub the tears from my face, “I’m here for you, whatever it is.”
I looked down, unable to look him in the eyes. I hated myself more than I’d ever hated anyone. “I don’t love you, Yunho.” My hands began to shake beyond my control, my own body knowing I was making a mistake.
“W-what?” Yunho’s voice cracked. A moment of silence passed before he let out a hollow laugh, “Baby, you don’t mean that-”
I looked up at him and immediately wished I hadn’t. Tears were welling in his eyes, his own hands beginning to shake.
“I said I don’t love you Yunho!” I said louder than I intended, “Not anymore. I don’t want to be with you. I’m sorry.”
He took a step back and I noticed his hands clenching, something he always did to keep himself from crying.
“If that’s what you want,” Tears fell from his eyes before he finished his sentence, “Then I’ll support your decision.” He looked to the side, not knowing what else to say.
I wanted nothing more than to throw myself in his arms and explain everything, tell him that I’ve never stopped loving him, not even for a second, but I couldn’t. Instead, I wiped away my tears with the back of my hand and looked at him one last time. He was so fucking handsome, so goddamn kind, and here I was doing this to him. Maybe he did deserve someone better.
“Good luck with your tour, Yunho. I know you’ll be fantastic.”
I turned and walked away from him quickly, leaving the house and ignoring the stare I could feel on me. I ran across the yard to my car, starting the engine and leaning my head against the steering wheel. I felt myself lose all oxygen in my body, the only option left to take large gasps of air. My vision was so clouded by tears I couldn’t even see anymore. I’d just lost myself along with my other half. I’d never felt as empty as I did in that moment.
Just then I heard a knocking on my window. I half-hardheartedly lifted my head and felt my heart lurch. Yunho was standing outside my car, eyes red and puffy, looking at me like I was the last person he’d ever see. I opened my car without thinking, my breathing still as uneven as before.
Yunho spoke, his voice coarse and distant, “I’m not asking you to change your mind, but I need you to know that I have always loved you and I always will. That will never change.”
I wiped the snot from my nose but didn’t bother to try and fix the mascara I knew was streaming down my face. I knew I had to look horrible, but he still held so much love for me that it was easy to see in his eyes. I fought myself to not reply, knowing that if I’d open my mouth all I’d say was ‘I love you’ over and over again.
“Is it too out of line to ask for a last hug?” He smiled sadly as more tears poured from his eyes.
I shook my head, running into his arms and embracing him. I felt like I made a mistake the moment I did because I could smell him. He was wearing the cologne I bought him for his birthday. His warm, sturdy chest...everything about him felt like home.
“Goodbye, Yunho.”
-
I arrived at home alone, tears still stinging my eyes. Tiff was nowhere to be found and I couldn’t decide if I was thankful or sad for the fact that she wasn’t there. I barely made it out to our porch before collapsing once again, finding it harder and harder to breathe. I didn’t know how long I was sitting there, it could’ve been one hour or three, but given the setting sun it looked like it was the latter. Once more I heard a noise outside our home, and once more the female figure appeared before me.
“You did good,” Lucy said, twirling her knife in her hands, “Dare I say I’m proud of you.”
“I don’t ever want to see you here again.” I cried, “I did what you want now get the fuck away from me.”
“My, my. You have quite the mouth on you, don’t you?” She tsked, “But you did as I asked, so I might as well comply. Don’t; however, think that you can go crawling back to Yunho and tell him about this. I’ll keep watching you and if you decide to do just that...I’ll follow through with my promise.”
I kept my eyes on the ground, convinced that if I looked up at her I’d attempt to rip the hair out of her head. No anger I had ever felt before could surmount to the rage I was feeling.
“Nonetheless, it was a pleasure doing business with you, miss.”
As soon as she came, she was gone. When I finally let myself look up, I could no longer see her, only darkness. Once again, I was alone.
-
Six months had passed since I broke up with Yunho and today officially made the third new date I’d went on. All of them were absolutely horrible. It wasn’t even that the guys were mean or rude or weren’t attractive, they just weren’t him.
Why am I even trying to move on?
I looked at myself in the mirror. My eyes looked heavy, the bags under my eyes ever prominent. I couldn’t fool myself. I’d never be able to be with another man again. I forced myself to hold back tears and reached back to untie my hair, preparing to take a bath in hopes that it would take my mind off of things.
I began to run the warm water as I reached for several candles, lighting them and placing them around the room, trying to forget the entire day altogether. As I waited for the tub to fill I grabbed my phone, opening Instagram for no other reason than to have something to do. Although Yunho and I broke up, I still followed their band account, as well as their individual accounts. Seonghwa, San, and Wooyoung were still my friends, after all. Yunho was the only exception. Both of us unfollowed each other early on just because it was too painful. I didn’t hold it against him and hoped he didn’t hold it against me either.
Regardless, my eyes found the most recent post on Sidekick Heart’s account. All four members were shirtless, their hair dripping wet with goofy smiles plastered on their faces. They were standing by a pool, the same one Yunho and I would often break into. I noticed Yunho first, how could I not? His smile wasn’t as wide as the other’s, his eyes a bit colder, but he looked happy all the same. He looked good. Really, really good. He was always fit while we were dating, but he gained more muscle since I last saw him and it didn’t go unnoticed by their fans, either. I clicked the comment section against my better judgement, knowing what I was going to see before I even did so.
“Yunho looks like a fucking goddd”
“So Yunho’s still single right??”
“Yunhooo hmu I beg you”
“Jesus Christ Yunho break me please”
A surge of jealousy rushed through me. I hated when girls said those things when we were together, but now that we were apart it made it even worse. I had no right to be jealous, and that was the worst part.
The water reached my leg that was resting on the side of the tub and I scrambled to turn off the faucet. Doing my best to push the images from my mind I placed my phone aside and stripped from my clothes, settling in the water. I sighed as some water fell out of the side of the tub. It wasn’t a terrible thing to happen, but it seemed to just be another thing to go wrong.
My eyes wandered back to my phone, Instagram still open and the picture I was looking at earlier still on display. He was so fucking hot and seeing that he was standing next to that pool—our pool—made my brain short circuit. I couldn’t stop my thoughts from taking me back to the last night we broke in, the way we teased each other and how it inevitably led to sex. It seemed I had no control over my body as my dominant hand slipped between my legs.
But as much as I wanted it to be, it wasn’t the same. My fingers weren’t as long or slender as his and just nothing about our touches were the same, but the image of him just made my hormones rage. Every ounce of me craved him.
My fingers swirled around my clit, a bundle of pleasure shooting through me at the action. I closed my eyes, letting my body take over and repeat the motions and much as I fought not to, my brain kept replaying scenes of two of us again, and again, and again.
“Such a good girl, aren’t you?” Yunho spoke as I sunk down on his dick, barely finding the energy to lift myself up again even though the noises he made were like shots of espresso.
“Aww, is my baby getting tired?” He cooed, jerking his hips into mine.
“It’s not fair!” I whined, “I’m not good at this and you know it.”
“But we wouldn’t be a good couple if we didn’t encourage each other to work hard, right? Up you go, flower.”
I whimpered and pouted, but still obeyed him. Taking pity on me, Yunho grabbed my waist and lifted me, relaxing his grip as I moved downward. I made a noise that wasn’t understood by Yunho, but it didn’t go unnoticed.
“What was that?”
“Please. More. I need you so bad.” I begged.
Yunho laughed, “I really do have you wrapped around my finger, don’t I?”
I nodded before remembering that he’d probably prefer a verbal answer, “Yes. I’m w-wrapped around your finger.”
He let out a noise of satisfaction before flipping us over into a position so that he would have full control. I grabbed the bedsheets roughly, so much in my own world that I didn’t hear Yunho’s words.
“What was that?” I let out with a series of mewls.
“You’ve got me wrapped around your finger, too, you know? I don’t go an hour without thinking about you anymore. I can’t even have a single conversation without bringing you up. Anytime someone says your name my heart beats out of my damn chest. You’re the only woman for me.”
My legs shook as my high approached, barely able to breathe at it’s intensity. It took me a minute before I could even remember where I was. As I came to my senses, I felt tears biting at my eyes and this time I didn’t bother to hold them back. I watched as they streamed down my face and joined the now-cold water surrounding me. I brought my hands up to cover my eyes, glad Tiff wasn’t home to hear my wailing. She’d been good about staying with me since the breakup, but tonight she just wasn’t here. The hole in my heart felt even deeper now. I wondered if he found someone, if he was happy now. Hell, maybe it was his ex. The thought tore my heart out and ripped it in two. I wanted to be happy for him if it was true, but I just couldn’t be. I was still too selfish. I still wanted him to love only me.
-
New friends, new beginnings or whatever.
That’s apparently what I thought when I began attending more clubs at college after the breakup, meeting new people and eventually finding a really solid friend group. All who happened to really like punk-rock music.
“You should really go with us,” Shang directed his words at me, “There’s a new band popping up that’s playing this weekend. It’s three hours away but they have great music.”
I sighed, not fully convinced although it did sound fun. The last concert I’d been to was one of Yunho’s and though I hadn’t even seen him in what felt like forever, I still couldn’t help myself from thinking of him anytime someone talked about concerts. Sensing my apprehension, the woman beside me spoke up.
“Road trip! Road trip! Road trip!” Tyra chanted in my ear, her black curls bouncing with her as she clapped her hands between the words. “Come on, it would be so much fun and you know it.”
I bit my lip, deep in thought. I knew I would have fun but I just didn’t know if that would outweigh the pain I would feel.
“What’s the band name?” I asked, looking at Shang.
“Honestly?” He scratched the back of his head, “I was a little drunk when I told one of my friends I’d be there so I don’t even remember what they’re called.”
“How do you know they have great music, then?” I laughed, Tyra agreeing with me, apparently not knowing who was playing when she agreed either.
“I mean, my brother listens to their music and he’s got good music taste so they’ve gotta be good.”
I closed my eyes as I felt an oncoming headache, knowing they wouldn’t accept no as an answer. “Fuck it.” I stated, “I’ll go.”
The two cheered, Shang promising that I’d enjoy myself. I doubted it, truthfully, but really it was decided that I’d go the moment the pair brought the idea up to me.
-
Our trio waded through the giant crowd as the doors opened to let us into the venue. It was big, one of the larger concerts I’ve been to. Whoever we were seeing was successful, for sure. The volume at which everyone was speaking was essentially a yell, so I had to do just that to get my messages through.
“I still can’t believe we have no fucking idea who’s playing!” I yelled at Shang.
He laughed, “I got seats towards the front row, though! I didn’t even have to pay for them!”
“That’s not gonna matter if we don’t know any of the lyrics, you dipshit!” Tyra barked.
“Okay okay I should’ve asked, I get that now.”
As we found our way towards the seats, there was a big projector with the words ‘Sidekick Heart’ displayed across it. My heart dropped and I suddenly felt it become hard to breathe.
“You got us tickets to a Sidekick Heart concert?” Tyra beamed, “I love their music and I’m practically in love with San! His vocals are insane! Holy shit, Shang!”
“Ohhhh yeah I remember now.” He chuckled.
I seemed to fade into the background as the two of them discussed their love for the band and the members. All I could think about was seeing Yunho again.
Would he see me? How would he react if he does?...Does he hate me?
I only came back to reality when the audience began to cheer and I saw all the members step onto stage. Seonghwa cradled his electric guitar, in one arm, waving at the audience with the other. Wooyoung plopped down behind the drum set, smiling at the audience while twirling a drumstick. With his bass guitar, San, ever the king of expressions, gave his best smoulder to the audience and it seemed like the audience collectively screamed over him. Then came Yunho out to center stage, his electric guitar in his hands and a smirk on his face as if he knew everyone in the damn building wanted to fuck him. And he’d be right. The spotlights on each of them made them look like actual gods. If I didn’t know them personally I would have thought they were.
Yunho leaned into the mic, his gruff voice taking me by surprise, “Hello everyone! Great to see you all! If you haven’t been to one of our concerts before this is how it’s gonna work: You’re gonna dance, we’re gonna sing, we’re all gonna have a fucking great time tonight!”
The crowd erupted as the first song began to play. It was one of their more popular songs and for good reason. All over it was a really well put together song and I couldn’t help as I began to mouth along to the words. Song after song played, some I knew some I didn’t, and the entire time I couldn’t look away from the man singing. He radiated confidence and looked relaxed as if he’d been performing for decades. I knew he wasn’t as cool as he seemed, I’d given him so many pep talks before performances I couldn’t count them, but as an outsider you’d never know.
I wonder who talked him up this time?
“Alright everyone. This is the last song of the night and-”
The audience booed, everyone upset at the night coming to a close.
Yunho laughed. The sound was rich and beautiful. He was truly enjoying himself. This is what he was meant to do, with or without me. I closed my eyes, willing myself not to cry.
Yunho’s voice filled my ears. “I know, I know. I’d love to stay a bit longer, too. Here’s the thing though...” He paused and I opened my eyes only to see him looking back at me. His eyes automatically softened as they always did when he saw me, but as if he remembered how we ended his gaze hardened slightly, like he was trying to distance himself. It felt like we’d been looking at each other for hours before he opened his mouth to speak again, but I knew very well that my perception of time had been off for a while.
“Even if we only have this little time left, I’ve truly enjoyed the time we’ve spent together. The fact that it’s coming to an end soon is what makes it so special, I think.” Yunho broke eye contact with me, smiling slightly and glancing back out at the sea of people. “Seeing your smiling faces, your energetic cheers—all of it—is a reminder to me that we’re so lucky to be doing this as a job. Really...I love you all.”
The audience let out a chorus of ‘awws’ which was followed by several rather aggressive ‘I love you too’s.
The lead singer once more smiled, “Now, without further adieu, this is one of our newest songs and it’s called Brown Eyes, here it is.”
The music began to play, all instruments coming together to make a somber tune. Somehow they were always able to write music that perfectly encapsulated emotions or ideas. This one? Loss.
“Since you left you’re still so infused
In how I think and what I do
Can’t seem to get you to leave me alone
Your ghost stayed here and she watches my tears
That run down our picture frames”
Then he found me again in the crowd, no doubt able to see the tears staining my makeup, no doubt able to see how broken I was. And still, he sang.
“I’ve tried hard to fight it
Yet I keep givin’ in
There’s been no one but you
I’m trapped, confined
And your platinum smile still knocks me out
Every single time”
He kept eye contact with me, not once breaking his gaze. It was almost as if he wanted me to break first, as if he wanted me to look away before him. As if he was daring me to leave him again.
San stepped closer to his mic and took his eyes away from his bass guitar, Yunho’s voice being replaced by the purple-haired man. As his voice rang out I only could’ve hoped the next lyrics were about one of San ex’s, not me. Even if they weren’t, Yunho still looked at me.
“It’s not aimed at me
Maybe it never was
But oh darling, you could’ve fooled me”
My eyes flickered down, unable to look at Yunho any longer. His gaze only broke my heart further and in turn I felt my eyes water. After a moment or two, I worked up the courage to look back at him. He was still looking at me like he never moved his eyes. I couldn’t seem to register the lyrics until Yunho began to sing again, his voice drawing me in as it always did.
“You've disappeared without a trace
Left an unsuspecting guise
Love, I need you to know
I’ve been losing far more than sleep
Over those deep chocolate eyes.”
As the song and the show ended and everyone in the crowd cheered, I felt a rush of emotions run through me. Thrilled that they’d become so successful, proud of them for putting on such an amazing show, and hurt because I could still see a sliver of sadness in Yunho’s eyes.
I hurt him.
Yunho then reluctantly said his goodbyes to the audience along with the rest of the members. His jaw tightened as he walked over to Wooyoung, whispering something in his ear before walking off stage. Feeling like I was set in a trance, I grabbed my Tyra’s arm and mumbled something about going to the bathroom before following him. I completely ignored her questions and concerns about where I was going, dead set on talking to him again even though I didn’t have a damn idea what I was going to say.
Somehow, through the giant maze of people, I was able to spot Yunho leaving through the backstage. Instinctively I ran towards him, still having no plan in mind. I only stopped when a purple-headed man appeared before me.
“Y/n!” He smiled, bringing me into a hug, “I missed you so much!” He pulled back from me, “We all did.”
Seonghwa and Wooyoung came from behind me, both wearing sad, kind smiles. They looked healthy and happy, which was all I could’ve asked for them.
“How’ve you been, girl?” Seonghwa cocked his head, genuinely curious.
I hesitated, not sure if I should tell them the truth. But at the end of the day, they were still my friends. “Not...great. If I’m being honest. I was kinda hoping I could talk to Yunho...if I could.”
They all shared a look I couldn’t understand.
Wooyoung spoke up, “We’re having a party at a friend’s house after this, you should come.”
I was surprised, still not fully understanding the situation.
San frowned, “I think it would be good for you two to talk. He didn’t tell us too much about what happened, but I’m sure you had a good reason. You were always so good to all of us.”
“I can text you the address if you’d like,” Wooyoung added, “You still have the same number?”
I nodded.
“Okay, good. We need to get back but we’ll see you there. Take care, okay?”
“I will. Thanks guys.”
San pulled me in for another hug, “Of course.”
They waved as we parted ways and for the first time that night, I felt hopeful. I spotted Shang and Tyra and ran up to them, no doubt a smile on my face as I asked, “Soo...you guys up for a party?”
-
I ditched my friends the moment we arrived, barely even sparing a word with Seonghwa, San, and Wooyoung once they nudged me in the direction of Yunho. I didn’t try to think too much about it, knowing I’d explain it all to them later.
He was standing in an empty bedroom, looking at the floor and sipping out of a red cup which likely contained liquor. When his eyes met mine a rush of memories flooded back to me. The first time we kissed, the first time he confessed he loved me, the first time he saw me cry.
The first time I broke his heart.
His eyes raised to mine, his face stoic, “Enjoy the show?”
My mouth opened and closed, not having any clue what to say to him, “Yunho I-”
“I know why you did it.” He said suddenly, “A week after you left me Lucy showed up to one of our shows and tried to convince me it was all a coincidence. Said that I could finally be with her. When I didn’t buy it she finally gave in and told me she convinced you we were better apart. So naturally I called the cops and they arrested her for breaking the restraining order, thank god.” He shook his head, looking disgusted, “You know I never wanted us to be apart. My question to you,” he took a step further towards me, “is why did you do it? Why did you end us?”
When I couldn’t seem to respond he talked once more, “You could’ve told me what she was trying to do. We could’ve worked it out together.” He looked more disappointed and heartbroken rather than angry.
He doesn’t deserve this. He doesn’t deserve any of this.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Yunho.” I bit my tongue as I fought back tears, “I’m not asking for you to forgive me. I-I’m just-” I sobbed, “Lucy told me she would kill you if I kept dating you.”
Yunho’s mouth shut and eyes widened, clearly missing that bit of information. I took it as my cue to continue “I don’t know why she did it, but it’s probably because we were happy.”
More tears fell down my face and it became harder for me to talk, but I owed him the truth. I had to tell him the truth. I looked up at him but because of my tears my vision was blurred. Yunho’s hands were tightening into fists as he looked away from me.
“I couldn’t tell you because I had to protect you so I had to make you hate me and I’m just so sorry.” I fell to the ground, my body feeling as heavy as my heart.
I felt a warm hand on my shoulder and I brought my eyes to meet his own, “I’m sorry.” A tear streamed down his cheek, heavy remorse in his eyes, “God she’s fucking awful.”
A laugh got caught in my throat, “Yeah she is.”
He set his cup down somewhere along the way a his hands cupped my face, finally whispering the words I’d only heard in dreams, “I still love you so fucking much. I never stopped loving you. I never even tried to stop because I know I couldn’t.”
I jumped into his arms and kissed him hard, unintentionally knocking him to the floor. He met my lips with just as much fire, groaning when I unconsciously bucked my hips into his, all my sexual frustration still pent up.
“I missed you so fucking much.” Yunho growled, obviously feeling needy too but deciding against it as he wrapped his arms around my waist, speaking in between kisses, “I missed your cute laugh. I missed your lips. I missed your fucking awful jokes. I missed the way you’d look at me whenever you told me you loved me. I missed your gorgeous body and your smile. I missed your moans and the way you arched your back when we’d have sex. I missed how alive you made me feel.” He pulled back to look at me, “My life had no purpose without you.”
I took a breath, tears once more falling, “Mine didn’t either.” It wasn’t anything profound or emotional, but it was the truth. It didn’t.
Gently picking me up, he placed me on the bed. His eyes were raw, as emotional as they could ever be. Taking my hands in his, he looked at me as if I would disappear at any minute.
“Stay with me. Come with us on the rest of the tour. If you can’t take a vacation we’ll hire you as an assistant. If you can’t do that we’ll make some other kind of accommodation. Just stay, please. Please be mine again.”
I looked at the man in front of me. The tough-looking, six-foot tall, tattooed, strong man that could probably scare the shit out of anyone. Yet here he was, bearing his heart to me and being as vulnerable as a person could be.
I smiled, feeling my heart swell. “I’ve only ever been yours.”
-
The morning was bright, lighting directly hitting my eyes. I cursed myself for not closing the blinds the night before and blinked off my sleep when I heard a familiar pleasant sound.
Jumping down from the bed I put on the new fluffy bathrobe my lover bought me. I followed Yunho’s voice out to my porch, realizing I was listening to a new song of his. The man was strumming a guitar, a beautiful melody falling from his lips. When he noticed me, he smiled and continued to sing.
“I’m in a vivid yellow mood
You’re my muse, my home and room
And now that I have you again
What could I ever fear?
Oh do me a favor, dear
And inscribe your name on my sleeve
Let me keep it there forever
Because you’re better than any daydream.”
#ateez#kpop#imagines#ateez au#ateez fluff#ateez imagines#ateez smut#atzinc#fluff#ateez yunho#rockstar au#yunho au
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Okay I had to do some stuff, but here I am rambling about relationship between Killer and Nightmare in Colours of LOVE.
Some of this I might mention before some of it might be your and Jann or Yuri ideas... Anyway!! The way I see that:
Even though this is soulmate au Nightmare and Killer aren't perfect fit for eachother. They are perfect fit in threesome - Ccino softens rough edges of both of them, and changes their attention from being mad on eachother to carrying about Ccino together (especially at first when he is really depressed). But before that... It was hard.
Killer is really open about everything he thinks and feels. If he founds someone who is attractive he will flirt. Even when he is already dating Nightmare. And also he always shows his affection to Nightmare everywhere, in public too. That's cute and sweet, but Nightmare is really closed person so that makes him really uncomfortable. Night often got jealous with Killer flirting with anyone else, got embarrassed with his kisses and all on public, and in general is a bit annoyed with Killer's actions. Killer on the other hand doesn't really understand why Nightmare is so "tensed" (he is not, Night is just much more calm, but Killer don't get it).
They were braking up and coming back again a few times, because they had argued a lot about everything and got tired of this. Right now they are on their "best days" - they started to date again a few weeks ago and right now they are through some stuff, they understand eachother better, and pretty chill about eachother weird actions. Like in the second page Night is a bit flustered by Killer's kiss but he almost used to that. Same as he is worried about being late, since Killer is almost always late, but he is more or less fine by that. On next page (which you haven't seen yet), there are an interesting dialog between them, and I will definitely write some of "subtext" about it when I will post it.
Actually if they haven't met Ccino they would break up again after a few months. And maybe come back again after a week.
Also! Interesting thing about third soulmate: at the beginning of the comic (before Nigh met Ccino) Killer is 100% sure that they have third soulmate, but Nightmare is sure for about 60%. Killer is existed about that, he knew knew that he is polyamorious for a long time, but Nightmare hesitates a lot, because he can't really imagine himself in polyam relationship. It feels weird and also he is soooooo jealous about Killer paying any attention to anyone except him, that he worries to become "third wheel". Will it be different with Ccino?? Who knows (. ❛ ᴗ ❛.)
Hi kotikaleo!!! This was super fun to read.
Firstly I'm going to tag @zu-is-here since she started the studio verse
It's definitely an interesting insight to your comic and the characters!
It reminds me a lot of an early version of my own ideas about the studio verse nightkiller relationship! And I can definitely see the way we have bounced headcannons of each other paying off.
Them still dealing with a softer kind of lovehate dynamic is an interesting one. It doesn't seem to be as extreme as my version, but it's interesting that it's still there.
The fact that they are meant to work as a 3 makes sense as well. If they are supposed to be bounded as a 3 it makes sense that three they their relationship would be unstable. They don't work as a two, but they are soul mates and something would always pull the two of them together.
I'm also curious, since Nightmare isn't 100% sure that the lack of colour is due to them being soul mated to another person. I wonder if he ever felt like the universe got it wrong? And that he'd been mated to the wrong person? Or perhaps he felt it meant that him and Killer don't have soul mates and that's why they have some connections.
It sad boy.
Also if Killer knows he's poly by nature, is that something that causes disagreements with the 2 of them?
And now for mine and @jann-the-bean version.
This story has been something that we mostly developed in tumbler DMs but both me and Jan wrote a story about it. Jan wrote
KillerNight(s)
And I'm writing
Round and round till we all fall down
Nightmare and Killer's relationship started off baddddd, it basically started as a mutual dislike for one another. This is due to their conflicting personalities and morals.
Nightmare was originally quite excited to meet Killer, as he'd heard a lot about the actor. But almost straight away he found Killer to be rude, childish and irritating. Killer found Nightmare to be stuck up, snobbish and entitled.
The two first met at an awards ceremony and got into a yelling match after a few drinks and were separated. From there their dislike for one another was made quite well known to the public because of a social media battle back and forth.
This only went on for a few months however, as the characters of 'Killer' and 'Nightmare' were cast to play together.
Nightmare and Killer agreed to be civil in order to function while working and get the filming completed as soon as possible.
As they worked together, their dislike turned into a playful banter and respect for one another. And then something else shifted.
Now Killer has a reputation for being a player and one who likes to sleep around, as you said, he's open about his interest in people when he has it and enjoys casually flirting with just about anyone.
Which came to include Nightmare.
Nightmare paid no mind to it really, though he couldn't understand why it embarrassed him so much.
Killer comes to find Nightmare to be very attractive and enjoys his reactions when teased, he rights him off though because he was under the impression that Nightmare was straight, and he'd never try to change that.
It was a day when they were talking about Killer's eyes and how it's caused him to struggle, that Nightmare tells him that he thinks his eyes are very pretty and that they are an attractive quality, and something in Killer breaks and he kisses him.
So Killer feels like he messed up and the two avoid each other. But it causes Nightmare to start questioning things about himself.
Nightmare at this point had only every dated women. He assumed that he was straight. But after that kiss a lot of buried feelings are dragged to the surface and exposed, and he realises that he's also attracted to men.
So Jan goes into full details about this, in the fic Killernights, but basically Nightmare confronts Killer about the kiss and Killer tells him he 'has a thing for him'
The two go back to Killer's flat to talk, but their normal banter, leads to flirting and then another kiss. And Nightmare who is curious and suddenly craving new sensations becomes lost to him. Killer who finds Nightmare physically very attractive, also gets wrapped up and the two of them sleep together.
Nowwww this is getting long so I'll try to shorten it down a bit.
Basically, it's an amazing night. It's passionate, enjoyable and a lot of fun for both of them. Upon finding out Night has never been with a man, Killer guides him carefully though the process.
After that night the two can't stop thinking about each other, even though they both planned for it to be a one time thing. Again, they avoided each other until talking after a while.
And killer admits his desires for the other, and offers Nightmare a safe environment to experiment with his sexuality, where he won't be judged.
To cut a long story short, this spirals into a passionate and carnal, on and off booty call/fling with each other that spans for years.
Other that time they grow very close with each other, and come to recognise the similarities that they share, and have soft moments of just enjoying being together with one another.
For Killer, Nightmare is the first person to ever tell him he had beautiful eyes and mean it. The first person who wasn't at all put off by them.
To Nightmare, it feels like Killer is the one person that will never pick Dream over him. And he makes him feel wanted and desirable in a way few have before.
However, their are still parts of their relationship that conflict. Of course a healthy relationship will always have some conflicts. But for Killer and Nightmare the conflicts clash and fight with each other.
That along with both of their past traumas, (I wrote about Killer's back story here) means they find it difficult to talk about genuine feelings and what's bothering them. Causing things to bottle up and blow up over time.
They also find it impossible to admit that they actually love each other deeply.
They tried to be in a full on committed relationship once, (which I'm writing about in Round and Round) but it didn't work out for these issues. As well as the fact that Killer is poly by nature, and therefore gets anxious and uncomfortable in a relationship with one person only. Which he won't talk to Night about for the reasons stated above.
Enter Ccino.
Now Ccino is the missing piece for Nightmare and Killer.
He's soft and gentle spoken, which easily helps them calm down when things get heated between them. He also provides a safe and loving space to open up about what things are bothering them.
Nightmare and Killer's also, as you said, spend more energy caring for and sometimes worrying about Ccino, so they have less energy for the constant fighting.
Ccino was the missing piece. He's the person who will cuddle and read books with nightmare, but also the one who's super into affection, which Killer loveesss.
A relationship would never work between just killer and Ccino, since Ccino wouldn't be able to keep up with Killer's libido and killer doesn't know much about Ccino's mental health. And Ccino wouldn't work in a relationship with just Nightmare because Night's colder and more straight forward personality would leave him affection staved after a while.
They just work together! They are basically soul mates in this universe as well!
P. S Nightmare in this universe was also very veryyyyy jealous when Killer showed interest in Ccino. Which is something he took out on Ccino till Killer stopped it. After falling in love with Marshmallow he regrets this a lot.
I'M SO EXCITED FOR MORE. COLOURS OF LOVEEEEE
#undertale au#shipping#undertale multiverse#sansest#fluffynightkiller#fluffynight#Nightkiller#studio verse#studioverse#studio au#studio versions#studio#Fluffynightkiller#ccillermare#Colours of love#headcannons#Headcannon
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Chapter 29, Part I
Buster had hoped that the picture would progress more smoothly back in Culver City. New York had been recreated on Lot Two in no time and was ready for filming by the time he returned to M-G-M on Monday the 30th. He was finding that even without the onerous script, however, he just couldn’t go back to the way he’d done things a few short months before.
When arrived on the set, he hadn’t wanted to get into the scenes of him and the girl right away. Instead, he pulled Bruckman aside and chewed over ways to lead the audience into the story, break the ice a little. Maybe a fussy grande dame carrying too much weight wanted a portrait of her little boy. Buster could see them in his head, the fat lady brushing the shoulders of the kid’s jacket, posing him just so. When she wasn’t looking, the scoundrel would stick out his tongue or thumb his nose. In the meantime, he—that is to say, the photographer—would be growing more and more frustrated with the boy. After being scolded by the lady, who wouldn’t hear that her perfect angel was monkeying around, he would finally take the portrait and show her the result. Upset, she’d blame the kid’s behavior on him. The conversation would get heated, drawing the attention of a drunk panhandler who would ask for his portrait to be done too. After all, his cup was full of pennies, wasn’t it? He could afford it. The lady would object. No, her boy was first in line. There’d be a yelling match between the two, the finely dressed fat woman and the ragged skinny drunk, followed by some shoving, in which Buster became collateral damage when the drunk ducked a punch. The hullabaloo would attract a crowd, and finally a policeman (giving Buster a suspicious look as though he was the cause of it all) would disperse the crowd. Buster would be left on the sidewalk, unpaid for his portrait of the kid and worse off than when he started.
This idea having occurred, he’d called to the crew to get him a fat lady, a kid, and someone who could play a drunk. They just looked at him like he had three heads.
“What’s the big idea?” he’d said.
“C’mere, I wanna word,” Sedgwick had said, frowning over the cigarette between his lips.
They’d gone around the corner until they were out of earshot, then the older man rounded on him. “What in the fuck was that?”
“What in the fuck was what?” said Buster, genuinely baffled.
“All the business of ‘Get me this, I want that.’ You made me look like a damned ass in front of my men.”
“How?” said Buster, astonished.
“By undermining my authority, that’s how. I’m the director. You barking orders makes me look like a spare prick.”
Buster had tried not to gape. He felt his own anger begin to rise. Wanting to keep the peace, though, he’d swallowed and said, “Well, I’m awful sorry. It’s nothing personal, honest, I just never worked another way. It won’t happen again, alright? You have my word.”
Sedgwick’s shoulders had relaxed somewhat and his expression softened. “Thanks. Look, I know it’s got to be tough to adjust, but we do things different. Just watch. You’ll see it’ll get taken care of.”
The scene didn’t get taken care of, despite Sedgwick’s assurances. Buster had stood back chain-smoking and watching calamity unfold. The kid was uncooperative, too green to be anything other than nervous in front of the camera. The fat lady couldn’t seem to understand that the camera couldn’t see the kid when she stood in front of him in all her overproportioned glory. The drunk couldn’t take direction at all, to the point that Buster suspected the drunkness wasn’t an act.
Finally, Sedgwick had thrown up his hands. “This is a disaster. Buster, line these god damn people up and get this fucking shot over with.”
Buster stubbed his cigarette out. “Me?”
Sedgwick had looked pained. “Yes, you. Who else?”
Feeling satisfied inside, Buster had taken over and soon had all parties in line and the scene rolling right along. In the days following, Sedgwick didn’t try to interfere with him and he didn’t try to interfere with Sedgwick, and they grew to like each other. A large man, he had a big appetite and liked to come over to Buster’s half of the bungalow to eat an elaborate lunch cooked up by Caruthers rather than patronize the studio cantine. Buster dubbed him Junior.
Even though Weingarten was up his ass about something every other day, shooting was going alright, too. Maybe it wasn’t the way he was used to working, but at least he’d gotten three-quarters of his control back and could dispense with things like jewel thieves and kidnappings.
As April gave way to May that week, he stayed overnight at the bungalow. On Wednesday he managed to sneak Nelly in. They had to forgo their usual activities beneath the sheets owing to her monthly visitor, but they had a nice dinner of roast lamb and potatoes and tried a few foxtrots in the front room, bumping into furniture because was hardly any room, then Nelly practiced her lines while he smoked and perused the latest pile of newspapers and magazines that Caruthers had left.
On Friday night, he drove back to the Villa. He arrived just in time for dinner, catching Natalie as she passed through the atrium.
“Hello, Nate,” he said. He’d just hung his coat and hat and kicked off his shoes.
“Oh, you’re back in time for dinner,” she said without a smile. He could tell by the way she said it that it was a question in disguise: Why haven’t you been home for dinner?
“Well sure, it’s Friday night. Ain’t filming tomorrow. I’m staying at the bungalow while we’re filming,” he added. “Toldja that.”
“You didn’t,” she said, unsmiling. “You didn’t say you were staying at the bungalow this week.”
He considered his wife’s unhappy countenance and tried to remember if he’d called her on Monday. He’d had dinner with Sedgwick, then there was a bridge game and drinks with some of the M-G-M brass. Sam Goldwyn had been there. Or had that been Tuesday night? He couldn’t remember, and couldn’t remember calling her. “I thought I did. Honest. I got caught up in stuff, I guess,” he said.
“Oh, your card games?” she said, hand on her hip. She looked beautiful, all polish, poise, and elegance. “Maybe with that girl from your picture? Marceline?”
His eyes widened. “Marceline? You mean Marceline Day?” He knew he ought to be used to Natalie’s jealousy by now, but sometimes it flew at him out of the blue and smacked him straight in the face like that baseball last July. He’d hardly filmed a single scene with his newest leading lady, let alone entertained thoughts of seducing her.
“I simply find it incredible you’d forget to call me over a card game.”
“Well, it’s true whether you believe it and I said I’m sorry.” He reached for her arm. “C’mon, let’s not fight about silly stuff.”
“Oh, I agree it’s silly alright,” she said, brushing off his hand. “I didn’t make it so, you did.”
“Nate,” he said. “The kids. C’mon, they’re in the other room for Christ’s sakes.” In an attempt to extinguish the argument, he grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed both her cheeks in quick succession. “Please? You’ve got me tomorrow and Sunday. I’ll spend all that time with you. I’m all yours.”
Natalie grimaced. “I’m leaving tomorrow afternoon for Lake Tahoe. With Norma. Don’t tell me you forgot that too.”
“Of course I didn’t,” he lied. He had no recollection of her telling him about Lake Tahoe, though supposed it had been discussed in New York when he was listening with half an ear. “Let’s make the most of tonight then, and tomorrow morning.”
“We’re having veal for dinner,” she said, ignoring his offer.
“Good. I’m hungry.”
It wasn’t much of a truce, but he treated it like one and put his arm through hers and walked her to the dining room.
Natalie went to bed early that night complaining of a headache and was too preoccupied the next day buying new outfits for her trip with Norma to trouble with him. “I’m sorry, but it’s supposed to be warm and we’ve got to have some lighter dresses for the trip,” she’d said just before departing.
He tried to distract himself golfing with Tom Mix, but kept getting stuck on thoughts of his wife like a skip in a record. There had been a time when Nate had loved him and they’d gotten along, he could almost swear by it. He’d once spent hours with her mother and sisters, not resenting them for taking up Natalie’s time and attention. Rather, he had been glad to be in their midst even though Peg had never made a secret of the fact that she didn’t think him good enough for her middle daughter. It had been easy then to love the people who loved Natalie.
There had also been a time when Nate and him had talked about more than the children, kissed in more than a perfunctory way, and shared more than just a house and money. To this day he couldn’t understand why it wasn’t that way between them anymore, couldn’t remember when they’d begun to drift apart. He was pretty sure she had still loved him when they’d moved into the Villa. When had she stopped? Why had she stopped?
Tom would bring him back to reality at intervals, reminding him that it was his turn to put. He’d forget about Natalie for a couple minutes, but the needle would return to the beginning of the groove and he’d start worrying all over again. If only if he just—maybe if he just …
That night, he got roaringly drunk at Marion Davies’ party, not bothering to see Natalie off at the train station when she left late in the afternoon.
The Villa was vacant the following day, his sons having been kidnapped by Constance and all the servants but Caruthers dismissed until Monday. Their benevolent mistress had decided they could do with a little holiday as a treat. Tired of fretting about Natalie, he drank some black coffee to tame his headache and called Nelly afterward.
Note: I know you’re all sick of waiting, so I decided to publish Chapter 29 into two parts. The second part will likely be longer. Sorry I’m so busy, but 🤷♀️
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Family Night
Tom Hiddleston/Fem!Reader RPF
Warnings: some angst, family drama, squabbling, fluff, feels, warmth, love, implied future smut
After reconnecting on the set of In The Timing, Tom wants you to meet his family. How bad could it be?
I am feeling soft and fragile this week, so I had the urge to drop in on this couple and see a little slice of their life. Just some feels and a little bit of angst, but lots of love.
@yespolkadotkitty @just-the-hiddles @alexakeyloveloki @arch-venus25 @caffiend-queen @ciaodarknessmyheart @frostbitten-written @grufflepuff-writes-stuff @hiddlesholic @hopelessromanticspoonie @kellatron55 @myoxisbroken @nonsensicalobsessions @poetic-fiasco @redfoxwritesstuff @shiningloki @shae-annelore @vodka-and-some-sass @wolfsmom1 @yespolkadotkitty
"I've changed my mind. I don't think this is a good idea," you said nervously as the car pulled into the driveway of a nice house in the suburbs of Oxford.
"Darling, relax," Tom sighed, shifting the jag into park and turning his devastatingly blue eyes on you. "Everything is going to be fine. They'll love you."
"I don't know how you can say that," you fretted. "Your mother hates me!"
"Correction," he grinned, "she hated you. Past tense. But back then you were the evil siren who had seduced her baby boy into a hedonistic life of sin he was too young and naïve to be prepared to resist, putting his entire bright and shiny future at risk."
"This is not helping!"
"Now though," he continued, ignoring your interruption, "you are the brilliant author of her favorite novels, and the screenwriter who has single handedly elevated her perfectly grown up boy to new heights of acclaim."
"I am the same person though!"
"I know that darling. I have inspected you very closely to catalogue that all of you is, indeed, just as I remember it from our first meeting-"
"With a few more pounds," you muttered.
"And you are exactly as perfect as I remember, if not more so. My mother, on the other hand, has a more selective memory."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning, that by this time I am sure she has managed to convince herself that she always loved you, and wanted only for us to end up happily together."
You gave him a hard look, wanting to believe the slightly smug smile that tilted his lips but having a hard time doing so. Mrs. Hiddleston had definitely not approved of you all those years ago, and you doubted time would make her forget. You couldn't really blame the woman. You yourself had been convinced that the difference in your ages and circumstances had been an insurmountable barrier to your relationship. Tom had been a young student, just out of university and about to begin intensive training to become an actor. You were years older and already settled into your life as a writer, although you had yet to have much success at it. While the passion between you was undeniable, you had let your insecurity lead you to end the relationship.
Now, years later, situations had altered. Tom was indeed all grown up and an international movie star to boot, as you had always known he could be. You were still older of course, but the difference in your ages seemed less significant now that you were both established in the world. Everything had changed, except for the fire that still sprang to light when you were in the same room. That miracle had somehow managed to survive the separation, reigniting stronger than ever when your paths crossed again to make the movie you had written drawing inspiration in part from your love for him. For the millionth time you thanked whatever gods might be listening for giving you a second chance with this man.
"Come on, best face the fire and get it over with," he said, getting out of the car and trotting to your side to open your door like the perfect gentleman he pretended to be. Only you knew better.
"What fire? I thought you said there was nothing to worry about?"
"Merely a metaphor love. Besides, my sisters and their families are here, so that should smooth things over."
"Yeah, that's going to make me feel less nervous," you groused.
Tom held the door open and ushered you into the house, steering to the left and into a cozy, tastefully decorated living room.
"Mum, we're here!" he bellowed as he helped you out of your coat and hung it with his on a peg in the hall.
"Uncle Yay Monster!!!!"
A quick thunder of steps was heard as a small child hurtled down the stairs and straight into the impossibly long legs of your companion. Tom laughed with genuine joy as he tousled the curly blond hair and attempted to pry the arms from around his legs. When he finally freed himself, it was only to swing the young girl, you guessed she was around 6, up into his arms for a bear hug that should have crushed her. Only your knowledge of how deceptively gentle he could be kept you from fearing for the child.
"Hello Pip!" he said, lifting her higher to balance on his shoulders. "Miss me?"
"Yes! Daddy's not as tall as you are!"
"Oh, so that's all I'm good for, is it? A better view? You women are heartless!" Tom winced as two little hands grabbed clutches of his hair, tugging for balance.
"No, not all. You also bring me presents!"
"Presents? What presents?" he made his voice baffled.
"Uncle Tom, you did bring me something, didn't you?" the shameless child wheedled.
"Maybe... grab my knapsack, would you?" he asked you.
As you moved to pick up the bag from where he had dropped it, you felt the girl's eyes focus on you as she suddenly realize she and her beloved uncle were not alone in the room.
"Who are you?" she asked with that directness only children could get away with.
Trying to hide your nerves, seriously how could you be nervous of a six year old? you introduced yourself, smiling up at her. From her lofty perch the girl regarded you as if you were an intruder into her realm and she was not sure whether to welcome you or order your beheading.
"Why is she here?" she asked Tom, who was moving from foot to foot in order to bounce her.
"Mind your manners, Pip," he scolded with a laugh. "She's a friend of mine. A very special friend."
"Gran did say you were bringing someone... I had thought she meant Luke."
"Why would I bring Luke to a family dinner?"
"Well, he's almost like family," she whined.
Tom swung the now squirming child off of his shoulders and hunched down to look at her more closely. You could see the disappointment in her face, and from the slight stain of her cheeks you had a sudden flash that her irritation was not so much at your inclusion than at the publicist's absence.
"Oh, Luke is fun, isn't he?" you asked, earning yourself a quick, incredulous look from Tom. "It's a shame he couldn't come tonight."
"He is!" the little girl turned her attention to you with a smile. "He scolds Uncle Yay Monster, and sometimes gets cross at him, but he's always very polite to me. He says that I'm the only Hiddleston who knows how to behave!"
"Shows what he knows," Tom huffed under his breath, making you struggle not to laugh.
"He's a very smart man," you nodded, ignoring your beau. "The first time I met him he said that he hoped I might be able to keep your uncle in line. I haven't had much luck so far. But to honest I don't really want to. I rather like it when he misbehaves. Sometimes."
"Me too," she admitted after a moment. "But don't tell Luke that!"
"I promise, it will stay between us," you said solemnly.
"I guess you can stay then," she decided. "Now, what did you bring me?"
"Greedy little Pip!"
"Pip?" you asked.
"Short for pipsqueak," Tom supplied with a grin.
"My name," she said with all the maturity of a duchess, "is Emilia. Only he calls me Pip. And only because he refuses to stop, even though I am much too old for that name now."
"Well, then I will call you Emilia. It's a very pretty name. Much more suitable than Pip."
"Traitor," Tom accused as he fished through his bag.
"I thought I heard voices!"
Emilia was squealing over her Shuri action figure, autographed on her feet, when a small group of adults entered the room. The family resemblance between Tom and his sisters was unmistakable. Fair haired and blue eyed, they were a classically attractive British family. Tom affectionately hugged both women with genuine warmth before moving on to the two men hanging slightly back and also gripping them in embraces. You stood aside and let the voices wash over you for a moment before he Tom turned back you and raised an eyebrow, drawing you to his side.
"Allow me to introduce my family. My sisters, Sarah and Emma, and their poor, beleaguered spouses Yakov and Jack."
"Hi," you managed. "Nice to meet you all."
"Oh, I love your books!" Sarah gushed, easing your mind a bit that the first response was positive.
"So, this is the woman we've heard so little about!" Emma, the younger of the two women said with a familiar grin.
"I've told you about her!" he insisted.
"You'll have to excuse Tom," Sarah told you with a roll of her eyes. "He loves to stoke the drama by being mysterious."
"I didn't realize I was such a secret," you said, glancing at him.
"They're grossly overstating things," he replied.
"No such thing. Tom never brings his women home. Not that there have been a lot of women," Sarah hastened to add.
Emma nodded. "And never for more than -"
"Three months!" they said in unison.
"Shut it!" Tom warned eloquently.
"Ah, the three month rule," Emma sighed dramatically, reminding you of her brother. "Give them just enough time to become fatally attached, poor deluded things, and then kick them to the curb."
"We never even get to meet most of them. He's always been that way. Ever since the woman."
"Sarah," Tom's voice was a warning.
"The woman?" you asked at the same time.
"Years ago, no one for you to worry about now!" she insisted quickly.
"Some older woman who broke his heart. Poor boy was never the same since. Not that he was such a catch before, mind you," Emma put in.
"That's enough," Tom snapped.
"Ooh, Tommy's angry!" Emma teased. "What was her name? Sarah do you remember?"
"Let me think," the older sister tilted her head to the side.
"No need," you decided to end the torture. "Um... it was me."
"What?" two sets of blue eyes stared at you while Tom ran his hand down his face.
"Can we maybe sit down now and talk like adults?" he asked in a pained voice.
"Oh, I need to hear this!" Emma said, falling into a chair.
Tom closed his eyes briefly and pulled you to his side on one of the comfortable sofas. You gave him a week smile and drew strength from the way his hand squeezed yours.
"Yes, alright," he said with a sigh. "Let's not all make a big deal out of this. We dated years ago. It was not an ideal break up -"
"I'll say," Sarah interrupted. "You cried for months!"
"I did not cry for - that is not the point. We met again on the set of the film, and the feelings were still there. We've been back together ever since."
"That would be so romantic if it wasn't about Tom!" Emma cooed.
"I think it's plenty romantic with anyway, thank you very much," he replied.
"I don't know what to think," Sarah said. "On the one hand, I swore if I ever met the woman who hurt my baby brother so badly I would beat the stuffing out of her. On the other... well, he does look fairly happy now."
"I am very happy now, so there will be no beating of anyone!"
"I really didn't mean to hurt him," you demurred. "I just thought the timing wasn't right."
"And I disagreed," Tom said through gritted teeth. "However, we both concur that the timing is impeccable now, so here we are."
"Wait, does your mother know?" Jack asked, interrupting the sibling banter for the first time. All eyes swung to him and he raised his hands defensively. "What? I know I'm the newest one, or was until now, but even I have heard of that woman who broke her baby's heart."
"I knew this was a bad idea!" you groaned.
"Well, it's not as though we had many alternatives," Tom shrugged philosophically. "You could hardly just never meet my mother if we are going to be together."
"I'm sure we could make it work some how," you said in a panic.
"Oh, don't worry about mum," Emma waved off your concern breezily. "Once she sees how dopy the Little Prince is over you, she'll come round soon enough."
"I'm just excited that Tom finally has a partner!" Sarah grinned.
"A partner for what?" you asked, a new sinking feeling hitting you.
"Game night of course!" Sarah answered.
"There are too many of us not to play partners, not if we ever want to go to bed," Emma explained, "but poor Tommy never has anyone for his team."
"Not since he made Mum cry that one time," Sarah added.
"I did not make her cry!"
"Yes you did!" his sisters said in unison.
"He made Luke swear once," Emilia added in from where she sat, previously forgotten by the grownups, introducing Shuri to Loki and Peter Parker figures. "I heard it all the way up in my room!"
"Pip! Hush! You're supposed to be on my side!" Tom told her.
"I thought it was funny," she giggled.
"Well, yes, so did I," he admitted, "but that's not the point."
"The last time he brought Bobby and said the dog was going to be his partner," Yakov sniggered.
"As I recall, we won anyway," Tom said superiorly. "I don't need a partner to beat the lot of you. Of course, I am glad to have you anyway, darling."
"I can't say the feeling is necessarily mutual," you looked at him in dawning horror.
"It shouldn't be," Emma mouthed at you in an exaggerated stage whisper. "
"Mr. Bossy Pants doesn't like loosing, you see," Emma told you gleefully.
"But he looooooves rules!" Sarah added.
"Well, there's no point without rules!"
"You are such a tight ass!" Emma mocked.
"Just because you're damn squib when it comes to games has to cheat to win!"
"Thomas William Hiddleston, how dare you talk to your sister that way!"
All heads turned to the entryway where a stylish woman of advancing years stood, arms on hips, looking fierce despite her red apron. Tom stood and took a step forward, face flushing as he realized his mother had caught him out.
"That's right, you tell him!" Emma couldn't seem to resist saying.
"Hush Emma," the matriarch said to her younger daughter, "I have no doubt you were provoking him."
"See, she always takes his side!" Sarah pointed out to you.
"That's because you two always gang up on me!"
"Stop it all of you, or do you all have to go sit on the naughty step for a time out?"
All three Hiddleston children looked mutinous, but held their peace as their mother stared them down.
"Some day you will have to teach me how to do that," Jack sighed wistfully.
"I'm afraid it wouldn't work for you dear," she smiled at him. "You have to be a mother. Now, Tom, would you like to introduce me to your friend?"
"Of course," Tom seized the change in conversation and grabbed you by the wrist, pulling you to your feet like an overzealous puppy. "Mum, I know you've been telling me you wanted to meet the woman who had made me sound so happy on the phone. Well, here she is!"
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Hiddleston," you lied, smiling anxiously.
"Oh, please, call me Diana," she smiled, moving in to hug you. "From what I've gleaned from my son, you are practically part of the family all ready."
"She certainly is," he agreed, beaming. "And I want no more jokes about three month rules or mystery dates."
"Oh, have the girls been giving Tom a hard time?" Diana sighed, rolling her eyes at her children. "They do love to needle him."
"It's good for him," Sarah opined. "Helps to counteract all that Sexiest Man Alive nonsense to hear from people who know the truth."
"Not to mention it's proper payback for the therapy bills from having to see our brother's arse on the big screen every time we go to the movies."
"Mum..." Tom wheedled.
"Alright girls, that's enough in front of Tom's friend. So, you two met on the set of the film? I love your writing by the way! Did Tom tell you I was the one who suggested he go after that project?"
"He did," you confirmed.
"From the moment I read your books, I couldn't help but think of my Tom. Well, perhaps not in the steamier scenes... I confess I had to skip those. I'm not a prude you understand, it's just in this case..."
"I understand completely!" you interjected as her children shuddered and squirmed.
"Good. I just couldn't get past the idea that the stories were written specifically with him in mind!"
"Well, actually," you took a deep breath, deciding to face the fire head on, just as Tom suggested, "they were."
"Oh, you mean you were a fan of his work?" she smiled. "I can understand that. He is rather charming on screen, at least in the movies where he is not forced into some ridiculous wig."
"No," licked your lips nervously and glanced at Tom.
"You see Mum," he took over, taking your clammy hand in his firm, warm embrace, "we had met before. In point of fact, you two have met before."
"Oh, Tom, don't be silly. I would remember that!"
"Oh, I think you do," he grinned, making you wonder if he'd gone mad. "It was the first time you dropped by my apartment at RADA. You hadn't called, and I thought you were the pizza deliveryman."
"Oh dear," Sarah pinched the bridge of her nose as you cringed in memory.
"Now Tom, the only woman I ever met at your apartment was that dreadful... oh!"
"Indeed," he nodded.
"You mean you were..."
"I'm afraid so," you mumbled, staring at the floor.
"But you were so old," she said. "So much older than my Tommy."
"Real tactful, Mum," Emma commented.
"I am older than him," you confirmed.
"But you don't look it all," Diana said, looking from you to her son. "If I didn't know any better, I would think that Tom was at least your age, if not older."
"Thanks, Mum."
"It's all that time in the sun," Sarah said. "I've told you to put on sunblock."
"I do."
"Children," Diana said, voice crisp with command, "the table needs setting."
Clearly knowing when fun time was over, Sarah and Emma jumped to their feet and with startling alacrity were out of the room, husbands in tow. Tom put his arm around your waist and stubbornly stood firm in a power stance, glaring at his mother.
"You too, Tom," she told him quietly.
"It does not take five people to set a table," his voice was just as soft.
"Then you can make the salad. We all know from that silly addvert you filmed that you know how to do that at least."
"It's okay, Tom," you told him as he geared up to protest again. "I'll be fine."
"Of course she will. Emilia, don't think I don't see you there. Go with your uncle and make sure he doesn't cut himself on any of the knifes."
You could tell that Tom wanted to protest further, but with his niece staring up at him adorably he was unable to do so. At last, with a disgruntled grunt, he lifted Emilia back onto his shoulders and harrumphed off towards the kitchen.
"Please, have a seat."
Diana gestured to one of the highbacked chairs. You perched on the edge as though prepared to fly off at any moment. The older woman settled herself straight backed in the seat across from you and looked you over carefully.
"So, you're her," she said at last. "I must confess, you look quite different in my memory."
"It was some time ago," you mumbled.
"A decade and a half. You broke his heart when you left him you know. He never really got over it. Oh, he dated of course. Actresses, popstars, but his heart was never in it."
"I never got over it either," you confessed, tears fighting to form in your eyes. "I loved him very much, even back then."
"But you left him."
"I did."
"Why?" she seemed very intent as she held your gaze. This mattered, you knew. Deeply.
"Because I loved him," you admitted. "I loved him from that first night. But he's Tom, and was even back then. He was brilliant, and driven, and had the whole world spread out in front of him."
"He did. I thought you were going to stand in the way of all of that. Be a distraction."
"I would have. If you know Tom, and of course you do, you know he is incapable of doing anything by half measure. If he committed himself to me, he would have gone all in. How would he be able to do that and gain the experience he needed?"
"He wouldn't have."
"I agree. He would have missed out on all the adventures waiting for him. And he would have secretly resented me, maybe even hated me for it."
"I don't know about that," Diana said, thinking it over, "but I would have. Yes, I can admit that. He was always destined for greatness, that boy. His father and I knew it from a very young age. When he told me about you, I thought you were an opportunist. Using an up and coming young boy for all the things that an older woman would. When you dumped him, well I just assumed..."
"That I had gotten bored with him?" you guessed.
"Well, yes I suppose. But that wasn't it at all. You weren't being dismissive, you were being protective. You put Tom's needs above your own."
"I don't know that I was being all that altruistic," you laughed. "Being tied to someone who resented me didn't seem like all that much fun for me either in the long run. But yes, I wanted what was best for him."
"Of course he couldn't see that. He's always been a stubborn boy. But now, after all this time..."
"It was like fate," you blurted out. "I know that sounds hokey, but it was as though the universe wanted us to end up together."
"Maybe it did."
"Then you're not upset?"
"My dear," she said, "I have watched my son his whole life. He is not an easy man in many ways. He is elusive, competitive, bossy, and highly driven. His standards for others are only exceeded by his standards for himself. If you have managed to maintain his interest, not to mention his heart, for all this time, who am I to gainsay that? Yes, I objected to your relationship in the past. You were correct about the opportunities he would have missed out on. But it's different now. Tom is a man, and well established in the world. He can pick and choose his projects to a great extent, and has the clout in the industry to set his own terms. If that includes bringing his wife on a shoot, or scheduling so that it fits in with her schedule, well, good for him."
"Wife?" you squeaked. "There's been no talk of that!"
"Oh, just wait. As I said, I know my son. He is not one to let the grass grow under his feet. If he is introducing you to all of us, and I admit, we can be a trial, then his plans are not of the short term variety."
"I want to be the flower girl!" a high pitched, excited voice called from the hallway.
"Emilia! Were you eaves dropping?" Diana exclaimed.
"Only because they told me to!" the little girl poked her head in to say.
"For the love of... if you'll excuse me, I have some children to reprimand."
"Of course," you said with a small chuckle.
"But first," you were suddenly embraced in a warm, maternal hug, "allow me to officially welcome you to the family. You have your work cut out for you. But please, for me sake, try to get him to cut his hair, or at least buy a new outfit. We are all heartily sick of The Uniform."
With a last squeeze, Diana got up and headed for the kitchen, leaving you shaken on the couch. Tom had been right, you had faced your fear, and the worst had not happened. In fact, things had gone better than you ever hoped for.
"Everything alright, love?" he asked, stepping in from a side door that you hadn't realized was there.
"Everything is wonderful!" you smiled tearily at him.
"See, I told you she'd love you!"
"Wait, aren't you supposed to be getting scolded?" you asked, coming into his arms.
"Ah, well. Every good obnoxious brother knows all the escape routes. I slipped out as soon as heard footsteps. By the time Mum finds me, she will be worn out from dealing with the others. Classic technique! Time tested."
"You must have been a terror," you laughed.
"Oh, most definitely," he agreed happily. "But now I'm your terror. And I assure you my sisters are very happy to have me off of their hands."
"I'll bet."
Tom grinned, and then kissed you soundly, making you forget for a moment the large family argument doubtless going on in the other room. He had a way of taking every thought from your head except for how perfect it felt to be in his arms, pressed against him. When he finally pulled away, you were both breathing hard and more than a little excited.
"Best stop that for the time," he said regretfully. "Or we'll be in for it even more."
"You're probably right," you had to admit. Then a thought struck you and you couldn't resist a giggle. "Tom?"
"Yes love?" he asked, kissing your neck.
"What's the naughty step?"
"Just wait until everyone else goes to bed tonight," he told you, head in his voice, "and I'll show you."
#Tom Hiddleston#Tom Hiddleston/Reader#Tom Hiddleston/Fem!Reader#Tom Hiddleston/OFC#Romance#Love#Families#angst#fluff#teasing#squabbling#siblings#past relationship drama#meeting the family#tom hiddleston rpf#In the Timing
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Emery the Incubus
Hope you’re all in the mood for a short, but sweet piece about two musicians. Also, my finals are coming up in the next two weeks, so I’m going to take a break from writing until it’s all over. I just need a little bit of extra time for school.
M Incubus X GN Reader, 2,793 words
You sat onstage. Your fingers trembled as they worked over the strings, your bow drawing out the notes in long, mournful chords. The song was not complicated, but it was your own, and that bit of nerves makes everything more difficult. When your fingers shake, it is hard to keep them on the right strings. The hand holding the bow was slightly numb and you hoped that you weren’t going to drop it onstage.
The song came to a crescendo, then down to a close. You took a deep breath, stood, and dipped your head in a bow.
Applause filtered up from the audience. You straightened back up, hoping that no one could see your knees shaking from a distance. You couldn’t make out anyone’s faces in the audience, couldn’t tell if they were politely disinterested or genuinely enthusiastic. With another deep breath, you straightened and walked offstage.
Your professor was waiting in the wings and he nodded at you as you moved backstage. “All right. Persimmon, you’re up. Head to the front of the stage. Can we get one of the stagehands to clear everything off?”
Slowly, you made your way all the way backstage, into the little room for performers, and sat down. Your knees refused to stop shaking.
There was only one other person in the backstage room. He did not help your nervousness. He was an incubus- you thought. You were pretty sure. Technically, he could be a tiefling. Both had large, curling horns, thin, often spine-tipped, tails, and larger-than-average canine teeth. Teiflings, though, often had red, blue, or purple skin, while the man in the room with you had deep tan skin. It didn’t mean he couldn’t be a tiefling, though- sometimes they had human-colored skin. What made you suspect that he was an incubus, though, was exactly how pretty he was.
There was something strong and sharp in his features, with an elegant profile and a perpetually thoughtful, half-lidded expression on his face. He was muscular and strong-looking, with long legs and his shiny, black hair was slightly curly and always tied off with a ribbon. It wasn’t just you that thought so. You had seen at last half the students in any class you had with him alternating between staring and desperately trying to look like they weren’t staring. An incubus couldn’t attract people who weren’t attracted to his gender, but anyone who was attracted to men, regardless of whether or not he was strictly their taste, would find themselves drawn to him.
Given exactly how much everyone seemed to fall over him seconds after meeting, you thought that incubus was a good guess for his species.
He fiddled with his bow, plucking a few strings on the violin he held under his chin. His musical skills were fine, if a little bit middling, but he also didn’t need great skill. He was only aiming for a minor in music, his major being taken up by biology.
“How did it go?” You jumped, slightly startled. He rarely spoke, even in class, and his voice tended to be rather quiet.
“It went fine,” you said and felt pleased that you hadn’t tripped over your own tongue. “Are you up next?”
He plucked a few more strings before retuning. “In two.” It was the single longest conversation you’d ever had with him, which wasn’t hard considering that the only competition was an exchange of apologies after you’d run into each other. He drew his bow across the strings, producing a low chord.
“You’re sharp.” The words came from your mouth before you even thought about them. It was practically a reflex. He looked at you. His eyes were a startling shade of purple, and the shock of realizing that prevented a hasty apology for your intrusion.
He stared at you for a moment, then looked back at his violin and twisted a peg. He drew his bow over the strings again, and looked at you in askance.
“Yeah, that’s better,” you said.
“How did you know that?” he asked.
“I have perfect pitch. And a cello and a violin aren’t that different.”
“Ah,” he said. He sank down into a chair and rested his violin on his lap. “I should have guessed.” He rested his hands over his violin, fiddling with his fingers. “I heard your performance.”
You nodded. “And?”
“It was good,” he said. “It was… beautiful.” He picked up his violin, examined it for a moment, placed it back in his lap. “You wrote it?”
“Two of the pieces are my own. The other three are just classical pieces I thought fit the theme.”
“They were all very good,” he said. You shrugged.
“I missed a note in my second piece.” You had also failed to crescendo the preferred amount in one of your own songs and the other had a bit of complicated playing at the end that you hadn’t been entirely been happy with, but hadn’t had the time to keep going over.
“Only one note?” He barked out an anxious laugh. “I’ll be lucky if I miss less than half of them.”
“I’ve heard you play before. You aren’t bad.” There were occasional class performances, and he’d managed to be perfectly adequate every time. He’d never managed anything overly tricky, but he’d also never bombed any pieces.
Persimmon left the stage. The incubus watched her as she passed and as the next performer took the stage. He played with his violin bow, tapping it lightly against his leg.
“I wish I was as good as you are,” he said. You glanced at him. He was staring at the ground, a tight smile on his face. “Then maybe I wouldn’t be so nervous to go onstage.”
“I still get stage fright. I thought I was going to drop my bow when I played tonight,” you told him. He looked faintly surprised.
“Really? But your playing is so beautiful…” He trailed off.
“It never feels good enough. And no matter how many times I practice, I could still miss a note or forget a section. And if I miss one note, I am much more likely to miss more. I am always nervous before I go onstage.”
His expression shifted. “You’d never know. You always look so calm.”
“Practice,” you said. “If it helps, you could probably get away with a charming enough smile. Looks are half the battle when you’re onstage.”
He laughed softly, though he still looked anxious. “Maybe. But I don’t think a nice smile is going to help the audience overlook it if I forget half the song.”
“Emery.” Your professor leaned through the doorway. “You’re on in two minutes.”
“Oh.” He stood up, tail twisting and flicking nervously around his legs. “I’ll... see you.”
He stepped through the doorway. After a moment of considering, you stood up and followed him.
There was a secluded spot in the wings where you could watch the stage. Already, a small group of people had gathered to look. You couldn’t quite see the stage from behind them, but you could hear everything. You closed your eyes and focused on the playing.
The first song was low and mournful, some kind of slow, sad song you didn’t recognize. It was technically well done, but you could almost hear the nervousness in his playing. The beat was just slightly too fast and you could tell his hands were shaking a little on the strings.
The next song was jauntier, more of a dancing tune. He seemed to be less nervous and the crowd took up a rousing clap along with the beat. One or two notes were slightly sour, but they were hard to pick up under the obvious joy of the crowd.
The third and final piece was back to the slower, more solemn theme of the original. It swelled and crested like a wave and made something stir in your chest. There were a few missed notes again, but the emotion of the piece got through. He’d obviously spent time practicing, and his heart was in the music. You decided he’d had no reason to be so nervous. It wasn’t the best playing, but it was certainly good.
Thunderous applause sounded as he exited the stage. You moved back into the back room and started putting your cello away.
Emery entered the room and promptly collapsed into a chair.
“There’s a flower in your hair,” you told him. He reached up distractedly and plucked it free.
“Someone threw a bouquet out of the audience,” he said, twirling the pink flower in his hair. “They’re cleaning the stage off.”
“It sounds like you have an admirer,” you said. He snorted.
“I have many admirers,” he said. Then he winced. “That sounds conceited. I don’t mean to be-”
“Because you’re an incubus,” you said, taking a chance and hoping you were getting his species right.
“Mm,” he said. “I have a myriad of people who would love to be around me because of what I am.” He sounded thoroughly bitter.
“There are worse things,” you said. Emery pulled a face, then sighed.
“I know. I must sound like a whiner.” He leaned back. “It’s gotten me quite far, you know. Or… it did?” He tilted his head, looking thoughtful. “I was an actor, briefly. And a model.”
“In anything I would know?” you asked. He snorted.
“Only if you watch a lot of commercials. Or read fashion magazines for children. I only did it until late high school, but I stopped when I decided to go to college.” He shrugged. “I’m glad I did it, though, if only because it lessened my need to take out student loans.”
“You didn’t like it?” you speculated.
“I was pretty neutral on it, actually. It wasn’t fun, but the money was good. There’s a big demand for incubi in modeling, even if I’m only three-quarters-”
“Really?” you said. He smiled toothily.
“Full incubi and succubi can turn it off,” he said. “Or, at the very least, target it. Shapeshift. I can’t.” He shrugged. “I just have an aura of… attraction. And, of course, the horns and the tail.”
“And the eyes,” you said. He looked at you, startled, then laughed.
“Those aren’t natural, actually. It was a spell they used on me in my modeling days. It went a little wrong- they set the duration for four years, rather than four hours.”
Your mouth opened. “How junior was the spellcaster?”
“It wasn’t her specialty. She was just there to supply makeup and contacts, but she asked me if I would prefer a more magical solution. I’m afraid I can have an allergic reaction to the colored ones, so I agreed. After about four hours, she realized her mistake, went over the spell again. She wasn’t competent enough to undo it, and I’ll admit I like it this way.” He slipped his violin into its case and buckled it closed. “Might even ask for a redo when it’s worn off.”
“I think it suits you,” you said. He nodded.
“I thought about changing my appearance recently,” he said. “But it doesn’t work.”
“You can’t change it?”
“Oh, I can. But my intention was to… dampen my aura? Stop the attraction, I suppose. It gets frustrating. People always look at me, always try to win my attention, I suppose. I can’t ever be… unnoticed.”
“Is that why you gave up acting?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact. Well, that and the fact that I wasn’t terribly good at it. Why do you think I never moved beyond commercials?” You laughed and he continued, bolstered. “I don’t particularly want to be famous. I considered music, but you had a point, earlier. Onstage, people do care about the music, but also about the looks. Doing this professionally would just be another way to get eyes on me. Or praise I don’t deserve.” He frowned at the ground. “My applause was just as loud as yours.”
“That’s a strange thing to be upset about,” you said.
“Because they were clapping for me, not my playing. If they had been, your applause should have drowned out mine several times over.”
“Thank you,” you said, “but I’m sure you’re exaggerating.”
“It’s true. Your playing is impeccable.”
“We’ve already been over the fact that it was not,” you said.
“I’ve heard you play several times before. Maybe there was a wrong note, but it was wonderfully soulful.” He laughed. “I am convinced that when I hear you play, I can hear your heart.”
There was silence in the room, except for the distant sounds of the concert still going on. He ducked his head. “I’m sorry. I’m usually not that poetic. Um. This is embarrassing.”
“Actually, I think it’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me about my playing,” you said. He looked relieved.
“I… am not that good at playing,” he said. “And I certainly can’t write anything.”
“Coming from you, that’s quite a compliment.” He smiled, looking quite pleased. There was a glimmer of something in his eyes, but it was gone when his lids flickered closed for a moment.
“If you aren’t aiming to be a musician, then what does interest you?” you asked.
“I want to work with animals,” he said. “They’re not affected, you see. I have to work to earn their favor.” He smiled. “It took me three months to earn Baphomet’s affection. Oh, that’s my cat. Grouchy old thing.”
“You have a cat?” you said. “Don’t you live in the dorms?”
There was a moment of shame, the a spark of mischief entered his eyes. He lifted a finger to his lips. “Don’t tell. Please?”
“I promise I won’t,” you said, “as long as you promise to let me see him.”
His brows rose. “Are you trying to get me to take you back to my room?”
It was your turn to dissolve into stammering. He waved his hand to dismiss your worries. “I’m teasing. I’m sure Baphomet would be pleased to meet you. After a fashion, anyway.” He looked at you a moment, seemed to be gathering his courage for something. “Would you mind- and you certainly don’t have to if you don’t want to- but I was wondering…”
His courage failed. His tail flicked rapidly and he seemed to be struggling to speak. “I can’t answer until you’ve actually asked something,” you reminded him. That got a tight smile and he tried to speak again.
“Your music. I was wondering if I could hear some more of it?” He worried his lip and you wondered how his sharp teeth didn’t break the skin. “I know it might be personal, but I… It was beautiful and I’d like to hear it again.”
“I think I can arrange that,” you said. “But not all my pieces are as polished as those, so you might not be as pleased by them.”
“I’m sure I’ll be pleased with whatever you want to play,” he said. He shifted his legs, tail stilling with obvious effort. “And would you be willing to help me learn how to play better?”
“There are better people to teach you,” you said. He sighed and gave you a look under his lashes.
“Maybe I would prefer to spend time with you,” he said. You opened your mouth.
“Are you-” The words were stuttering. “You’re asking me out?”
“I’m trying to,” he said. “I haven’t been clear enough, have I? I’m not used to being the one doing the asking, I’m afraid. It’s a bit of a novelty, actually.” He gave a sort of half-shrug. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I’ve had an attraction for a while now, actually. From, uh. The first time I heard you play, actually.” He rubbed at the back of his neck. “But I’m usually very cautious about asking people out. I know that some people thing incubi just use people for sex. And others… aren’t shy about doing it the other way around. So, I was waiting to make sure that you liked me back. For me, not for anything else. But you corrected me earlier. And you haven’t fallen over yourself with me either. So.” He coughed. “All this is a very long way of saying that I would like to go out with you. And I’m hoping you feel the same?”
He was just as handsome as before. But the only part of him you really noticed were his unnatural eyes. They were bright with affection.
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“You make your own fairytale” - Jester, comphet, and realizing you might not want what you thought you did
It’s no secret to anyone who follows me that I headcanon Jester as a lesbian and have enjoyed pointing out the not-so-straight moments she’s has on the show every week. Until recently, I wasn’t any more invested in this than I usually am in my lgbt headcanons - which is to say it’s fun and meaningful to me but I don’t think it holds much weight outside of my own imagination.
However…
These past few weeks finding “evidence” for this headcanon has felt like less a treasure hunt for subtext and more like just… watching the show. It’s been very easy lately to read Jester’s behavior as that of a closeted lesbian or bi woman, to the point where I’ve started questioning whether it even makes sense to continue calling it a “crack theory” or “conspiracy”. If you’re willing to entertain the belief that gay readings of characters don’t always have to be purely self-indulgent, please enjoy this long-winded explanation as to why I think there’s a legitimately good chance that Jester is canonically in the middle of figuring out her sexuality.
To start I want to say that, no, I don’t think this is something that was planned from the start. I don’t have a portal to the inside of Laura Bailey’s head, but if I had to guess I’d say that she probably left Jester’s sexuality “undecided” at the start of the campaign, but defaulted to having her like men. Even then I didn’t see her as straight, but there were decidedly less ‘moments’ early in the campaign to support that. This actually lines up fairly well with my theory, which is that Jester’s arc is one of self-exploration. But more simply, I think the idea probably just wouldn’t have occurred to Laura when she was busy just trying to get a feel for the basics of her character. I don’t consider any of the early campaign to “contradict” anything I’m going to say next, I just know somebody would bring it up if I didn’t address it first.
(I have some friends who do very firmly believe that Laura is playing the full long con with Jester and has been slow-burning her sexuality crisis since the start of the campaign, and they’re valid, but I won’t really get into that here since that’s not my personal interpretation. If Laura wants to prove me wrong on a Talks episode sometime in the future, I will gladly eat my words.)
Jester did start out as a character who ostensibly “liked men” but even from the start I thought her way of interacting with that attraction was… interesting. She had an idea in her head of what an ‘ideal man’ was like and projected it onto nearly every man she found attractive, regardless of their actual personalities. All the men she likes are dashing, they’re all handsome heroes, they’re all suave and they’re all definitely interested in her. She thought she wanted a fairytale prince, and so she saw fairytale princes everywhere she looked. It was also really interesting to me that she never made an effort to pursue most of the men she was ‘attracted’ to. With the notable exception of Fjord, she only commented on the appearance of men after she was already distanced from them. Even Nott - the married woman - made more actual passes at men they met than Jester - the romance obsessed one - ever did. Jester seemed to care more about using her attraction to men as a way to gossip and bond with the rest of the party than she did about using it to actually court anyone.
Speaking of Fjord… boy, he’s a whole thing in of himself. Fjord was the first man she ever befriended outside of the very small bubble of people she knew growing up. He was nice to her, they trusted each other, their meeting probably felt like fate, and because of that Jester thought she was in love with him. The fact that Jester was in love with the idea of Fjord rather than the real him was something I had been speculating for a LONG time, but now that Laura has outright confirmed it I can talk about it without having to use any sort of disclaimer. Jester took a very short amount of time to decide that she was “in love” with Fjord, and almost all of the instances where her attraction was most obvious were prompted not by anything he did, but by things that reinforced Jester’s own beliefs on what romance was supposed to be like. She bought a cheesy smut book and started comparing Fjord to the protagonist because of course he’s exactly like Oskar - he’s a man and he’s handsome, isn’t he? Another woman flirted with Fjord and Jester got sick with jealousy because he’s supposed to fall in love with her, isn’t he? When the two of them were free from expectations they were cordial friends with no particular tension between them; it’s when Jester was reminded that they’re ‘supposed to be’ a love story that she got anxious, upset, or started putting on an obvious front.
A lot of this could be argued away as Jester just trying to take things too fast, but what really stood out to me was that Jester never seemed happy about her crush on Fjord. She wasn’t giggly and bubbly when talking about him, and with few exceptions she didn’t seek him out to spend extra time with him or confide her desires in him. The three times she openly addressed her crush - to Nott, the Traveler, and Caleb respectively - she was anxious, confused, or outright upset. Her talk with Nott seemed like she was trying to get reassurance that she was “normal” and that she was having the “correct” feelings in response to Fjord kissing her, which is extremely easy to read as Jester starting to realize that she might not have the feelings for men that she “should” have. Her conversation with Caleb was equally distressing, because by that point she was starting to see her fantasy was falling away. She asserted that she was “stupid” for believing it in the first place and openly admitted that she’s no longer sure her feelings still exist now that the idealism is gone. From that point forward all of Nott’s attempts to set her and Fjord up only caused her more anxiety and distress. The couple of times they were forced to be alone together they were stilted and awkward - a far cry from their original easy friendship - and after a point, Jester started to turn down offers to spend time with him altogether. “No, he’s not flirting with me,” she said, no longer even able to pretend she’s excited by the prospect.
The thing about Jester is, so much of her outward personality is based on appearances. She acts happy and cheerful and confident all the time because she thinks she has to, and she’s an accomplished liar who doesn’t like other people to see her upset or doubtful. Only in drastic situations does Jester willingly let someone see her vulnerable. It would have been incredibly easy for Laura to play Jester as her usual, cheerful, ‘no problems here’ self during her conversations about Fjord if we weren’t supposed to interpret her as being obviously and deeply conflicted. Something in her head felt very, very wrong when Fjord kissed her for her to be able to tell Nott that the only thing it made her feel was “not dead”. Something in her mind didn’t click right when she finally got what she wanted for her to be able to tell Caleb that she wasn’t even sure her crush was real.
The slow resurgence of the bond between Fjord and Jester recently made me wonder if I was wrong about my interpretation, if maybe Jester had just been sulking because she thought Fjord didn’t like her, and now she was convincing herself again that he did. But Laura confirming on Talks that Jester was mostly over her crush on Fjord solidified for me that her arc was intentionally about learning how to move on from unhealthy infatuation. So if it’s undeniably canon that Jester’s only real crush on a man was based on her misunderstanding both the situation and her own desires, and it’s canon that she is moving on from that attraction and starting to learn what she actually wants, that leaves us with the question: Where is Jester going from here?
I’ve talked a lot so far about Jester’s relationship to men and how so much of it mirrors the experience of a woman dealing with comphet; performatively talking about attractive men without pursuing them, idealizing and projecting ‘ideal’ traits onto crushes instead of developing them naturally, convincing herself she’s in a fairytale romance because a man was nice and nonthreatening towards her. But being a wlw doesn’t ‘require’ comphet, and regardless I can’t - and wouldn’t - build a gay headcanon just around her feelings about men. So let me talk now about Jester’s relationship with women.
Jester has been naturally complimentary of women since the start of the campaign. She’s quick to call them cute, call them pretty, compliment their clothes. I don’t necessarily think - until more recently - this was meant to be read as ‘not straight’. If anything I think it was just another example of Jester’s naturally flirty personality - she likes to compliment people, she likes to tease. However, the difference in how she approaches women and men has been extremely blatant recently and I genuinely don’t think it’s an accident. The ways that she - and Laura while playing her - acts around characters who are beautiful women isn’t the same ‘casually complimentary’ demeanor she had towards all genders since the start of the campaign. Jester calling Lady Olios ‘beautiful’ no less than three times in a single meeting and being noticeably flustered isn’t usual Jester behavior, Laura repeatedly asking Matt what the Bright Queen is wearing only so that Jester can be visibly awed by her beauty isn’t usual Jester behavior. The fact that she compliments women to their face, while with men it’s always an offhand comment after they leave, also stands out to me. It’s the little moments too that I notice, the times where there’s no reason to even make a comment in the first place unless you’re trying to make a point, like Jester telling Caduceus that the Wildmother is hot, or mentioning how attractive Yasha is in the middle of an unrelated conversation. It all adds up.
I’m aware of my biases in viewing these scenes as a lesbian, but completely outside of headcanons it’s obvious that Jester has an established fixation on beautiful women, and it’s obvious that this has come up more frequently now than it used to in the past. It’s the fact that this overlaps with her realizing that she’s no longer sure what she wants - that love and romance and attraction aren’t what she thought they were - that feels deliberate to me in a way that Jester’s earlier offhand comments about women never did. If Jester’s feelings towards women are meant to be entirely platonic, then the insistence on highlighting them - sometimes even interrupting scenes to do so - seems strange to me. It’s not played for comedy, it’s rarely relevant to the scene at hand, so why does it come up often enough that my friends and I keep a running joke that if there’s a beautiful woman in a scene Jester will comment on it at least once? (Play that game yourself when you’re watching new episodes, you’ll be amazed at how rarely you’ll be wrong)
So where’s this going, if Jester is being played as in the middle of discovering her sexuality? She gets over a major crush on a player character just to flirt with random attractive NPCs? Is Jester’s gay awakening supposed to be centered on her occasionally thinking powerful and unattainable women are hot, or would Laura have the logical sense to plan such a serious character decision around something that would have an actual impact on the party? Well, let’s be honest, you probably knew this part was coming eventually…
Jester’s relationship with Beau is one of the closest and most stable friendships in the group. The two of them have an intense love and trust of one another and are both verbally and physically affectionate on a greater level than any pair in the party. I’ve talked myself to death about these two already and I’ll do so plenty in the future, so I’m not going to give an entire summary of their relationship (if you need a refresher, here you go). Yes, I ship them. Yes, I’ve talked plenty about what I think of Beau’s side of the relationship. But it’s regardless of shipping or the potential of mutual feelings that, for the purposes of this essay, I say there’s a good chance that Jester canonically has a crush on Beau.
Hear me out.
The two of them had an ostensibly platonic relationship for the majority of the campaign. There were some charged moments but nothing that could really and truly be read as explicitly romantic or sexual without shipping goggles on. Then Episode 46 aired. Jester was directly in the middle of her crisis about her feelings for Fjord, Laura was clearly playing her as starting to realize that she didn’t feel the way she originally thought she did, the group had just been through a tremendously traumatic experience that made Jester question whether she could trust them… and then Beau hugs her, and talks about their shared childhood trauma, and tells her she’s beautiful, and tells her that she loves her. I can’t say for sure that this would have been the moment that Jester fully developed feelings, but I do know that if you were already planning for your character to have an arc about learning what she wants from love, this would feel like an awfully convenient moment to build off of. And I can certainly observe the ways that Beau and Jester’s dynamic has visibly changed in the episodes since.
We already know what platonic friendship between Beau and Jester looks like; we watched 40+ episodes of it. What we have now is Jester blushing and giggling when Beau blows her a kiss, Jester asking Beau if she’s secretly in love with her, Jester stepping in to counter every derogatory thing said about Beau with showers of compliments, Jester asking to look down Beau’s pants, Beau offering to let Jester watch her make out with another woman, Jester approaching Beau and only Beau to discuss her thoughts about love and romance. These are often explicitly flirty interactions that we genuinely never saw between the two of them previously, and given how it directly lines up with Jester falling out of love with someone else and clearly having romance on the brain, it feels oddly perfect to just be a coincidence. Even the more ‘dubiously platonic’ moments between them are more frequent and more tender. Jester doing things like giving Beau a massage to help her fall asleep (a scene she logically shouldn’t even have been awake for), pulling Beau aside to ask her to commit some vandalism for her, or repeatedly complimenting her when she shows any sign of insecurity. The fact that Jester immediately chose to stay roommates with her - in a house with so many rooms that the only other people bunking up are a married couple - at the very least confirmed for me that Jester has been prioritizing Beau in her life in a major way lately.
The little comments, the encouragement, the way Jester seems to almost hover over Beau for any sign that she needs to be comforted or reassured… it all adds up to something big in their relationship having changed and there is absolutely nothing contradictory or unreasonable in viewing it as Jester having developed romantic feelings for Beau. If Jester went up to someone the very next episode and told them she was in love with Beau, everything that’s happened between them would feel like a perfectly natural progression up to that moment. Call me crazy, but when you can draw a line that easily from A to B using only what’s available to you in canon, I think at the least you usually call that an entirely plausible theory.
So what’s my point here? Am I saying Jester is for sure being played as a closeted gay woman who’s secretly in love with Beau? Of course not. I don’t claim to be any more certain of what Laura Bailey has planned than anyone else. I’m also not trying to say that Jester is “coded” as gay or anything like that. But I can look at the storybeats that I correctly predicted due to my own headcanons (Jester questioning and ultimately abandoning her feelings for Fjord, Beau and Jester growing closer and having more non-platonic interactions) and follow it to its logical conclusion.
If all these things have been correct so far, and Jester being gay is an easy and logical interpretation that contradicts nothing and explains a lot, then why not assume it might actually be what Laura is intending? At the very least, why not stop treating it like a wild fringe theory that could never have solid supporting evidence?
Jester is gay, tell your friends
#critical role#jester lavorre#cr jester#beaujester#minor spoilers#fuzzy tries to be meta#i'm so sorry if the read-more doesn't work on mobile#i can't fix it
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Hi you... if you were going to curate a little season of films for me, which ones would you choose and why? They don't need to be horror, I'm just curious what you would choose 🌸
I don’t know if you’ll like these movies, or if you’ve already watched them, but after i watched these films, i felt like they might need to belong to you now. i hope they make you smile, roll your eyes, and cry just as much as i did.
1. city of god (2002): this is one of the most immersive and gorgeously shot films i’ve ever seen. it’s set in rio de janeiro during the 60s and spans decades exploring the drug culture in the slums and how this can affect kids just as they are trying to figure their own selves out. the way this film is shot, feels like you were at the sea with them as the sand crunched underneath your feet. but the way that the director captures these individuals, makes you so fucking relieved that you don’t live through any of the circumstances that they go through.
2. the dreamers (2004): set in 1968, this film follows three students in Paris who come of age and explore one another and their limits during the revolution. while these students prop themselves up as individuals obsessed with sex, running underneath themselves is a current of jealousy, obsession, and blurred familial relationships that made me increasingly uncomfortable. you find yourself feeling bad for the children, and ultimately upset at their upbringing because of their parents.
3. if beale street could talk (2018): this movie is based off of james baldwin’s titular 1974 novel. in it, the director expertly and vigorously explores love: a love that feels so real that it hurts. the cast is what sold this film to me. the way they talk, laugh, cry, and smile at one another is achingly beautiful and terrifyingly sad. i wanted to transport myself back to their time period and watch the main characters fall in love because the film didn’t seem like enough.
4. the neon demon (2016): this film follows an emerging model who sacrifices herself to the demands of the industry in order to be attractive and beautiful. there are so many stunning colors in this film that it makes you dizzy, like you’re in a trance and that’s what this world is for the main character: a trance. as she oscillates between reality and fantasy, her world and the characters in it, increasingly seek out to alter her personality.
5. death becomes her (1992): a deliberately ultra-campy parody of trashy, pandering "women's pictures," soap operas and paperbacks from the '80s and '90s. The three leads all do some of their best work - it's hilarious watching Meryl Streep play a terrible actress, Goldie Hawn is particularly hilarious during her character's cat lady phase, and all around just a really fun and eccentric film.
6. princess cyd (2017): i can’t think of anything to write for this but i just wanna say that this is literally one of the most pleasant movie experiences i’ve ever had. so much light and genuine interaction in warm sun rays radiating positive energy and an openness that is far too uncommon in movies nowadays. people talk, people connect, people grow bonds and are allowed to be sexual or intimate or personal without an air of shame or judgement. just pure kind and curious human association.
7. spiderman: into the spiderverse (2018): the message of Spider-Verse is not "gentrify yourself! stop expressing your personality and just conform to what society wants you to be!" After all, what makes you different makes you Spider-Man, and Miles' final expression of himself as a superhero still retains much of his personality and individuality...they're just being used in more productive and fulfilling ways. It's the little things that drive the point home, like noticing that the title page for Miles' finished Great Expectations essay has been stylistically doodled and colored like street art. Rather than seeing his artistic gifts as an opposition to his schoolwork, Miles infuses them together to make the best of the hand he's been dealt.
8. my life as a zucchini (2016): initially heartbreaking and sad, but slowly becoming more joyful and heartwarming as the plot moves along. The film really feels like it captures the essence and child like wonder of these kids, all of them going through hardships but managing to find something to help each other out. It’s so refreshing to see the actual orphanage portrayed in a more positive light, not the usual horrid dump that a lot of lesser movies play them out as. The animation is stunning. One of the best uses of stop motion I’ve seen, everything is so colourful and detailed. There’s some moments set in snowy mountains and these look incredible. There’s clearly been so much love and care put into each and every scene here. The music too, sounds spectacular, it really works well with each scene.
9. lovesong (2016): Mindy and Sarah have that type of relationship where they don't need words because they speak in a language made out of glances and touches. This movie is about the fear of ruining a meaningful friendship and losing an important person, about love that is so complicated that one might not even try because the outcome seems to be so obvious.
10. her (2013): Heartbreak is formative: it changes you heart side out, and leaves your muscles a little stronger, your skin a little thicker, your bones easier to repair. Before this film, I’d never seen anything constructive in having your insides pulled apart by the seams by another person, but this film taught me how. Being in love and then being forced out of it is an experience that changes you fundamentally, but Her taught me its purpose – you don’t need them to leave you so that you can find someone who’s a better fit, because perhaps you never will. You need it to participate in humanity. The common denominator is being hurt, and without it, you’re barely alive.
11. shoplifters (2018): bittersweet and richly transportive, Shoplifters is a film that nonchalantly eases you into its tragic beauty in a way that doesn't punch you hard until the end. It simultaneously made me want to be part of the film's world and also very glad that I'm not. The setting the characters live in is messy and cluttered and full of dysfunction and lies, but it's also got family, and laughter, and fist-bumps, and slurping warm noodles while rain pings on the tin rooftop. So nuanced, so many tiny moments of delicate beauty and unassuming heartbreak, so many people making terrible decisions with good intentions.
12. god’s own country (2017): though it is a love story between two men, this aspect is only addressed briefly in a single scene. Rather, the film is about finding someone who makes you want to be a better person, someone who comes into your life just when you needed it most. Gheorghe helps Johnny open up and realize the beauty of the simple life. From this relationship, Johnny begins to feel comfortable with expressing himself, and his love and gratitude towards others. He also begins to appreciate life in the country, surrounded by stunning landscapes and the beauty of simplicity. Addressing the Yorkshire countryside, Gheorghe says "It is beautiful, but lonely." Johnny is presented with the notion that he doesn't have to be cold and miserable, slaving and drinking his days away. He is presented with the possibility of no longer being alone and finally finding happiness and contentment - and it is more than gratifying to see him accept it.
13. disobedience (2017): a tender star-crossed daydream. the three main character dynamics are special enough on their own, but the romance that blooms at the center is cathartically intimate and even magical: a reunion that feels so inevitable. catching glimpses of a past life, details we aren’t privy to. all the stolen kisses and whispers and promises. a bond so strong that they fall back in sync with each other like second nature, even if they try to fight against it. even if it won’t work. and yet they choose each other, even if for a few minutes.
14. raw (2016): this film is so gross and I like that. There is tons of blood and unique body horror and it all works perfectly for the tone the film is attempting to set. The use of color, specifically neons, creates a constant feeling that you are traveling through some sort of weird ghost world, which I really like. Overall, it's a very well put together film with flashes of brilliance.
15. the night is short, walk on girl (2017): what an absolutely magical adventure of a film. Essentially this is a heavily episodic look at a night in the lives of several people, centered on a woman and a man as she gleefully floats from event to event while he neurotically obsesses over how to "coincidentally" talk to her. The storytelling is incredible; while the overarching narrative is simple there are countless threads woven together to connect everyone in the story to each other. That in itself is a big theme: connections between people, how everything is interrelated, and what a large impact seemingly insignificant things people do can have an impact on everyone around them.
16. coraline (2009): Coraline is the best stop motion movie ever made in my opinion. Before the film released in 2009, I read the book and was completely blown away by its creativity and story. It’s a pretty dark tale featuring many scenes of fright that work well in both a horror setting and an animated kids setting. On surface value, this film is quite horrifying, which is something I’ve always loved about it. While it does make a few minor changes to the book, it improves upon a piece of art that was already jaw-droppingly good. Coraline feels like a real little girl with some real problems. She’s selfish but likable which is something most films cannot translate well. Of course, she has a pretty awesome arc as well which brings this movie to a perfect close for her character. The other-mother is also perfectly done. She is almost exactly how I imagined her in the book and the animation on her is spookily gorgeous. There is not one dull moment in this film. It is literally a perfect piece of cinema.
17. the third wife (2019): haven’t seen a film this visually delicate in a while. Ash Mayfair works with the looming mountain surroundings to make her characters —these women, these girls— as small as possible, as isolated as possible. Uneasiest of all is the protagonist May, so young and so weighed by responsibility, her position blurs between being one of the wives and being one of the daughters. It’s an extremely bleak tale of circumstance. An old tale, certainly, but so beautifully crafted it doesn’t matter. Mayfair holds a fearful tension throughout, and it only ever shatters in the cruelest of ways.The abundance of women and display of sisterhood begin as a comfort, but horror takes over as we realize how conditional and fragile that comfort is. Even the daughters are subconsciously aware, one of them praying to the gods to grow up and become a man, shearing her hair off in naive triumph. It’s a doomed cycle of girls performing roles which are unfortunately their best option, right up until the final scene of May with her daughter, still in their mourning clothes. She, like the older wives, finally realizes they’re the same as the cattle laying on their side for too many days.
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The Seduction of Motomiya Daisuke, Ch. 1 *A Daiken Fic*
Daisuke's friendship with Ken has always come easily. It's the lusting after your best friend part that's hard.
He just didn't realize how hard until Ken starts acting weird.
Now, Daisuke isn't sure how long he can handle his BFF and roommate's sudden attentions. At least, not without potentially ruining a 12-year friendship.
AO3 | FF.Net
Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17
KEN
Hikari frowns in the booth across from me. "Come on, Ken, it can't be that bad…can it?"
I almost laugh.
Because even she hesitates when she actually thinks about it.
Of course it's that bad.
Daisuke, my best friend for over a decade, my crush for just as long—perhaps longer—and my roommate since we graduated high school, taunts me.
Not literally.
Okay, well, it's Daisuke, so yes, literally. But not literally about this. That would require him to have the faintest idea about my crush.
God, I can hardly call it a crush anymore. It's been twelve years since we first met, and while it's safe to say my eleven-year-old self had a crush, that's hardly the appropriate word now that we're twenty-three.
But unintentional as it may be, he still taunts me.
He walks around the apartment in his boxers without a care in the world. He has no problem changing clothes or even taking a shower with the door only partway shut. To be fair, we only have the one bathroom, and he takes ridiculously long showers right when I need to get ready for work, so leaving the door cracked makes sense. But he leaves the door cracked even when it's two in the afternoon on a Sunday, and neither of us is going anywhere.
He takes any opportunity to pinch or prod me. He's always been a physical person, but he enjoys teasing me far more than I can handle. He snickers every time I squirm and gasp when he pokes me or runs his fingers over my ribs to tickle me. In fact, he's thinks it's "fucking hilarious." That's an exact quote.
Worst of all, though, is how easily he hugs me. He's a genuinely affectionate person, and he has no understanding that invading someone's personal bubble is wrong—or maybe he thinks we've been best friends long enough my personal bubble no longer exists for him. He'll press a hug to my back while I'm cooking—then spend the next few minutes with his chin on my shoulder, critiquing my every move because I'm apparently "absolute shit" in the kitchen, though he says it with an amused laugh and his hot breath on my neck. When we watch a movie, he sits right next to me, far closer than necessary on a large couch, and stretches his arms across the back so I have no choice but to curl into him. And on the few nights I still suffer from nightmares, he crawls into my bed and holds me in his muscular embrace until I calm down. On those nights, he refuses to leave, insisting in case the dreams come back. The nightmares stay away for the rest of the night, but his arms remain hooked around me—a promise that he'll keep me safe. He hasn't failed me yet.
When at last I meet Hikari's gaze again, still trying to decide the best way to explain, her face has fallen. "That bad, huh?"
I nod, solemn.
"And you're sure he doesn't know what he's doing?"
I scoff, lips twisting into a petulant scowl. "This is Motomiya. He rarely has any idea what he's doing."
Hikari smiles at that. "Daisuke has matured quite a bit, Ken."
"Not when it comes to me. He's a child—he pouts, he begs, he pokes, he even tries to trip me sometimes."
But she only laughs. "Does he try to pull your pigtails too?"
I shoot her a glare—mostly because she knows one of my reasons for finally cutting my hair back in high school was because Daisuke liked to play with it.
Then, she sighs. "Honestly, it sounds like he likes you, and considering that's exactly what you want, I don't see the problem."
I reach for my teacup and frown at the remnants of my matcha. "You know me, Hikari. I'd prefer not to make any moves without all the data, and this is definitely a situation where I need more data. If I misread signals, I could ruin one of the most important friendships in my entire life."
Hikari stretches across the table to squeeze my wrist. "Change is scary no matter what, Ken. But if you think Daisuke would ever stop being your friend because you confess your feelings, you're underestimating him."
"No, it's not…" I shake my head. "I know he'd still be my friend, but everything would be different. Everything would be tainted."
She smiles again, this one an attempt to comfort and reassure me.
"I just…I need more data, but I can't decide on the best plan to proceed."
"Well," she says, teasing a little now, "if you're asking me to interrogate him about his feelings for you, the answer's definitely no."
I snort. That wasn't even on my radar.
"We're not eleven anymore," she continues, more seriously this time, "and between the two of us, I think we can find something more appropriate and accurate."
I shake my head with a sigh. "I hope so. I've been thinking about this for weeks, but everything I come up with just doesn't work."
She snickers. "Because you're thinking about this like Ichijouji Ken."
I glower at her. "I am Ichijouji Ken."
"Yes, but thinking like you isn't going to break through to Daisuke. You're too logical, too critical. We need to think like him to find something that will work."
Hmm.
That's actually a good idea.
I swallow, narrowing my eyes in thought. "So we play to his strengths?"
Hikari shakes her head, a little smirk growing on her lips. "No, we manipulate his strengths, and we play dirty."
My mouth curves into a wide smile, and a short laugh bursts from my lips.
"Well," she amends, "you play dirty. I have no intention of getting more involved than this."
"Noted," I say when my laughter fades, and I quickly return to all seriousness.
"So first, we determine Daisuke's strengths—how he thinks about things, what senses he relies on, how you can switch around his schedule to your advantage."
I give a short nod. "Well, he's a very physical person, so touch is really important. He bounces around from idea to idea and has trouble making everyday decisions. He's rarely observant, but if something has his focus, he is hyper-aware of that thing, though usually that's a video game or something."
She bobs her head in agreement. "Okay, but I think you're missing something very important: As impulsive as Daisuke can be, he really relies on things to be the same. He relies on you to be the same."
I cock my head. "What do you mean?"
"Ken, it's no secret that you and your friendship has been Daisuke's rock throughout the years. Even a few small changes—nothing too obvious, of course—could really get under his skin."
Oh.
"Also," she adds, "don't forget how incredibly emotional and impulsive he is." Here, she hesitates. "Which is exactly why I think the best course of action is to give him a dose of his own medicine. Force him to be the one uncomfortable."
I want to smile, but I hesitate. "I'm pretty sure that would require more self-confidence than I have, Hikari."
She holds me steady with no more than a firm smile. "Ken, you are one of the most intelligent and attractive men I have ever met. Reach deep and give him hell, you understand?"
I laugh, but my heart isn't in it. "You're enjoying this far too much…"
The small smirk on her normally soft features is confirmation enough.
#fanfiction#digimon#daisuke motomiya#ken ichijouji#hikari yagami#my fanfiction#digimon fanfiction#digi fic#digimon 02#seduction of motomiya daisuke#daiken#anatui#anatui writes
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Sarah Monette, the Victim Dilemma, the Aesthetic of Suffering and the Uncanny Valley of Arse Rape
by Wardog
Monday, 27 April 2009
Wardog fails to finish Sarah Monette's Corambis.~
Massive massive massive massive spoilers for about 1/3 of the book. Also, as the title suggests, this article is about nasty things so don’t read if you’re likely to be upset
Preramble (like a preamble but … d’you see?)
This is a bleak day indeed. I just got my hands on a copy of Corambis, the much-anticipated (by me at least) concluding part to Sarah Monette’s Doctrine of Labyrinths quartet and the truth of it is, I don’t think I can finish it.
Oh, Sarah, what happened? I do still love you, I just don’t think it’s working out.
I think it’s partially problems associated with reading through a series over a lengthy period of time. When I read Melusine, The Virtu was already out in hardback and I tore through at them enthusiastically, so drawn into the world and the characters that I barely noticed they were so heavily saturated in angst and woe that one could drown in it by simply opening the book a little recklessly. There was a bit of a wait for The Mirador – which I seem to recall I felt slightly less positively about but still adored – and I fell upon Mehitabel Parr’s I’m sure welcoming bosom to save me from the tidal waves of A&W. As much as I love Felix and Mildmay, it was Mehitabel’s narrative voice that made The Mirador bearable for me. It was such a necessary contrast to the boys: someone with some redeeming sense of self-irony, hurrah!
Of course, Mehitabel isn’t in Corambis. And, God, I miss her. There is a new viewpoint character, Kay Brightmore, blinded and imprisoned and weighed down by the terrible military failure that kicks off the book. He’s basically lost everything that ever mattered to him, can no longer fight on account of being blind and, needless to say, he has angst out the wazoo about it. I was broken and crying by Chapter three.
And, quite frankly, I just can’t take it. I know there is redemption in the future of these characters (characters I really care about, having spent three books with them), I know there is self-actualisation and the potential for happiness, I know because I cheated and looked, but I’ve really really struggled with Corambis. The worst of it is, I’m sure it will be a triumphant and satisfying conclusion to the quartet. Sarah Monette is an excellent writer, I love her world, I love the way she uses language, I love her characters, I love everything about her but I think I’m going to have to accept the fact I simply can’t read her.
Oh, Sarah, what happened? I do still love you, it’s not you, it’s me.
Maybe in a couple of years we’ll be able to work something out.
I think circumstances might be playing into this unhappy state of affairs as well. When I read the early books, there wasn’t a cloud in my sky. But having emerged from a rather bleak year, there’s something a little too close in all that guilt and grief and self-loathing and despair, and I can’t distance myself enough from it to enjoy it. There is a systematic aestheticisation of suffering to be found in all of Monette’s books. I’m not going to try and argue that as either a positive or negative quality in her work. I think it’s probably neutral: it’s
something
art
does
sometimes
. I acknowledge the difference between literary suffering and real suffering, in that there can be a romance in the former which is impossible in the latter. Also literary suffering exists in a wider, symbolic and allegorical sphere than that of an individual having shitty things done to them by life or others, mainly, I suspect, because it’s not real. Take madness – there is something deeply attractive and romantic about the artistic representation of madness (like Felix’s madness in Melusine) and it’s perfectly possible to appreciate that, and to find in it a kind of beauty, without ignoring the genuine distress suffered by the mentally ill. In short, Ophelia is not my friend who killed herself last year.
But the boundaries between the fictional and the real are not comprehensively signposted. There isn’t a traceable spectrum between Lavinia, daughter of Titus Andronicus, and Elizabeth Short. And ultimately I think there comes an impossible point when the literary and the real collide, corrupt each other and prove they are utterly irreconcilable and yet simultaneously inseparable. Yes, they must be understood as different things operating in a different way – a painting of St Sebastian is not the same as footage of the prisoners at Guantanamo bay – but there comes a point when it is necessary to remember what it is that’s being aestheticised and ask yourself why.
Page 152
Okay, so, there’s a gang-rape scene in Corambis.
Felix – former prostitute, broken gay wizard with ex-cruel master and traumatic past - ends up subjecting himself a thaumaturgic orgy in order to earn money to pay for his ailing brother’s medicine.
It’s awful.
It’s not that it’s explicit, just awful.
And I’m no wuss, okay. I’ve read Last Exit to Brooklyn. I’ve read The Wasp Factory. I’ve read American Psycho.
But something about this scene in this book bought me a first class ticket on the ARGH! Train and whizzed me straight out of my comfort zone.
It’s strange to say that something is “outside your comfort zone” in that it feels like a confession of personal failure (also something that’s outside my comfort zone). And then I thought about it more, and I thought: hey, so what, gang-rape is outside my comfort zone. Surely that’s normal. Gang-rape is absolutely something that should be outside all our comfort zones. But here’s where it gets complicated: in fact, fictional gang-rape is not outside my comfort zone. I play H-games, for God’s sake, where they’re ten a penny. You can’t take two steps in an H-game without stubbing your toe on a gang rape. So it’s something more specific than that. It was something about this particular portrayal of it.
It’s not shock value. Felix gets himself sexually abused on a pretty regular basis, so much so, in fact, that it’s kind of part of the fun, and it’s very much tied into Monette’s aesthetic of suffering.
I could not see, and I could barely hear, save for my own harsh breathing. But I could feel. I could Malkar’s hands like silk, running up and down my back, tracing the scars, the old palimpsest of pain. I could feel his body arching against me, his bulk, his heat. I felt his hands slide under my hips, stroking, exciting, felt the stiffness of him against my thigh.
Pain, then, but not too much.
Pain … and arousal all woven together like a tapestry. I was moaning, gasping; the only word I could form were “Please, Malkar, please, lease,” and I didn’ tknow if I was begging him to stop or continue. Not that it would made the slightest difference either way.
Let’s pin our colours to the mast here. That’s beautiful. Terrible, but beautiful and absolutely literary in its unrealness. It’s also about as accurate a portrayal of sexual abuse than St Sebastian up there is of martyrdom. Perhaps I’m just an irredeemable sicko but I’m pretty sure it’s there, to an extent, to be enjoyed, partially as spectacle (straight women do not generally write about beautiful gay boys sexing each other manipulatively because it’s a Serious Social Issue) and, also, partially as vindication for all the crappy things that have been done to innumerable female characters in a seventy years of fantasy fiction. I’m not, of course, advocating backlash (more manrape!) but there is something compelling and, even perhaps comforting, in characters like Felix, Alec and friends, these beautiful men, who are as sexually vulnerable as women, suffer and fear the sort of things women suffer and fear, and are very much created to be subjects of an extra-textual female gaze and the intra-textual male gaze. I’m not saying that men don’t get raped and looked at, but the sheer saturation is demonstrably less. I am not trying to say that what happens to Felix at the start of Melusine isn’t dreadful. It is. But it’s a literary violation, and it reduces him to a literary madness that is as terrible and as beautiful as the horror that creates it.
But let’s talk about gang rape. Now there’s something you don’t say everyday.
The scene itself written in a very similar style – opulent, not too explicit although more explicit than above, and contains the same awkward issues of dubious consent. In Melusine, Felix chooses to go to Malkar in a fit of self loathing. In Corambis he agrees theoretically to an orgy in order to raise money for Mildmay’s medical treatment. In both cases what ends up happening to him is far more devastating than what he originally signed up for but, equally, there’s an element of complicity to it. If you return to your abusive master, expect to get abused. If you agree to be the centerpiece of an orgy, expect to get fucked. This abject stupidity is granted a psychological plausibility because Felix is a messed up little bunny, with a supposedly tragic conviction of his own profound worthlessness.
Obviously I don’t want to get into real issues here, but I think the reason the dubious consent became one of the bothering aspects of the scene in Corambis is that the sex abuse came plot-approved. I mean, if Felix was walking down the street and happened to get jumped and gang raped by a bunch of guys I think many a reader might rightly cry “Sarah Monette, what the fuck?” as there are very few occasions in which it is either appropriate or necessary to get one of your characters gang raped. But this way he has a “real” reason to put himself voluntarily into a position where he might be. It’s even, perhaps, meant to be on some level noble – in a hopelessly fucked up way, of course. So what you end up with is a deeply uncomfortable situation in which everything conspires, including (conveniently) Felix himself, to create a scenario in which a horrible but beautifully written gang rape is, to an extent, okay. And this is where the aesthetic of suffering starts to come apart at the seams.
Essentially this scene falls right into the uncanny valley. If it was purely designed for titillation I wouldn’t have a problem with it, but as it is there are elements are titillation and elements of horror. We are meant to be shocked and appalled – and it is shocking and appalling – but it’s framed in such a way that we are simultaneously liberated to relish the aesthetic. And quite frankly that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I think there’s something profoundly hypocritical and, indeed, deeply disturbing in the idea of enjoying both moral outrage and illicit sexual excitement (see Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse). The scene bears all the hallmarks of erotic non-con (there are elements of psychological exposure as well as physical, the victim is physically aroused throughout, the abusers are appreciative of his beauty and his apparent eagerness, and so on and so forth) but worked through a guilt-appeasing filter of “oh gosh, isn’t this terrible.”
My ankles were still chained and somebody had me scruffed like a kitten; I was keening in protest, but I was dragged upright, forced to straddle someone’s thighs, while he continued fucking me with the same relentless steadiness. I was displayed for all of them, my arousal jutting out shamelessly, the tear tracks on my face attesting to my weakness.
Now, I know that, unlike erotic non-con, Felix is not secretly into what’s being done to him and that he’s breaking and being broken here but you still have a scene that’s running in two directions simultaneously and trying to have its cake and eat it. It goes out of its way to tick the non-con wink-wink boxes but then slaps you face in the face with its insistence that this a terrible and traumatic event. Essentially you can’t have a gorgeously written gang rape that positions itself within a carefully constructed aesthetic framework and a psychologically accurate and traumatic portrait of a terrible ordeal.
And, ultimately, I guess you have to ask yourself if it’s okay to have an aesthetic gang rape scene full stop. The idea bothers me less as pornography but here, I would argue, that it gains an added erotic piquancy from the fact it really is annihilating Felix, which, again is troublesome. Essentially it’s why raping Clarissa is so much more interesting than raping Justine, and why it’s all right to get off on the latter and not the former.
The more I’ve thought about this and tried to articulate my issues with it, the more complex and convoluted it has become. There is, of course, an element of the purely personal about – I didn’t like it and it upset me – as well as these more abstract, intellectualizations of it. I dug around on Monette’s Livejournal – on which is usually charming and sensible – to see what I could find and, lo and behold, she has written quite comprehensively on the subject, which I shall now quote pretty much in its entirety:
I knew from very early on that Felix was going to turn back to prostitution to get the money for a doctor for someone he loved (I knew this was going to happen before I knew Mildmay existed), and I knew that he was going to end up in a situation that was completely out of his control and that hurt him badly. Because Felix is reckless and self-destructive and because under all his vanity, he doesn't think he's worth protecting. And because it is a kind of answering horror to his being raped by Malkar at the beginning of Mélusine. And because he needed something that would force him to confront these issues--force him to see that he doesn't deserve to be abused--and it had to be something superlatively unbearable if it was going to get through to him, because Felix has way too much experience at ignoring his own pain.
Say what? So it’s redemptive gang rape, the sort makes you a stronger and better person? What … the … fuck? It’s like those Hollywood amnesia plotlines (one blow to the head gives you amnesia, another blow cures it) except with sexual abuse. I know, again, we’re operating in a fictional sphere but this is so made of wrong that I’ll just content myself with linking to Dan’s article on
the victim dilemma
and throw my hands up in despair.
I quite enjoy Monette’s aestheticisation of suffering, I could probably navigate the uncanny valley if I really had to but I am sick to death of male fantasy writers using sexual abuse as a textual shortcut for character development and I’m damned if I’m going to deal with women doing the same thing. Sarah Monette, you are better than this.
Sexual abuse is not good for you. It happens and people react. Constantly depicting characters who react to it in courageous and life-enhancing ways is not empowering, it’s fucking demeaning to people who struggle along every day as best they can.
I’m sure in a different time in a different mood I’ll pick up Corambis again and I’ll get to page 152 and I’ll shrug and go “gang rape, meh” and read right on.
But not today.Themes:
Damage Report
,
Books
,
Sarah Monette
,
Sci-fi / Fantasy
~
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Arthur B
at 14:44 on 2009-04-27It's depressing when series go south like this. It's especially annoying when they burn down the virtues of the earlier volumes. I was looking at your first Monette review and you were saying how you were impressed by the fact that Felix was gay, but it kind of wasn't a big deal; I'm getting the impression that as the series goes on that becomes less true, since that LJ extract makes it sounds like Monette intended all along to reduce Felix to a weepy gay man being abused by angry gay men. (If I'm interpreting that right - if Felix pimping himself out predates the existence of Mildmay, that means that Monette was planning to make this happen since before the first book, right?)
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Wardog
at 15:11 on 2009-04-27Mmm, that's part of the problem though. I don't actually think it's "gone south" - despite the Xtreme angst I was quite absorbed until page 152. It was merely that scene that tripped me out. I'm sure if I could put it behind me and just get on with the book, I'd probably really like it.
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Rude Cyrus
at 20:32 on 2009-04-27Great, now I need a shower.
While I suppose rape can be presented as being aesthetically pleasing, like in erotic non-con, I still don't like it. I've always found consenting sex between happy, willing partners infinitely more pleasurable -- don't ask me why. This sort of stuff just makes my skin crawl.
What's funny is that I can make it through The 120 Days of Sodom without blinking, but I think that's because De Sade insisted on using the driest, most tortured language possible.
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Wardog
at 21:15 on 2009-04-27Sorry Cyrus. I'm not sure but I think it's probably easier to be into erotic non-con / rape fantasy if you're a woman than a man, either because you're more likely to imagine yourself as the rapee rather than the rapist which is slightly easier to deal with morally speaking or because the world seems generally reluctant to admit that women can rape people too. Whereas if you're a man who fantasies about forcing women to have sex with him ... well ... hostility many ensue from quarters unwilling to concede the very real difference between fantasy, reality and simulated non-con.
Hmm, I think the thing about 120 Days of Sodom is that, as you say, it's incredibly dull. And de Sade is a terrible writer. There's only one thing worse than a rape scene and that's a badly written rape scene!
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Arthur B
at 21:18 on 2009-04-27I do wonder sometimes whether deSade was an early pen-and-paper troll. Most of his books seem to be the literary equivalent of telling someone a particular link goes to an interesting and thought-provoking philosophy website when actually it points to goatse or 2girls1cup.
I mean, he went to jail for it, but you have to make sacrifices for "the lulz", as I believe the young people call it these days.
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http://roisindubh211.livejournal.com/
at 02:43 on 2009-04-28"Constantly depicting characters who react to it in courageous and life-enhancing ways is not empowering, it’s fucking demeaning to people who struggle along every day as best they can."
I have to disagree here- not with the point you make, but with the accusation being levelled at Monette. Felix has spent three books getting abused and every reaction to it has been, basically, "I was right all along, I am worthless. Hmmm, should I hurt myself again or just re-alienate everyone who cares about me tonight?" The enormity of the gang-rape is something he's not prepared to consider his just desserts, and it isn't the only influence on his growth as a person. A lot has to do with having Mildmay -who has been developing his own self-confidence, on his own, without the help of shitty things happening to him- be there for him and push and push to get him (Felix) not to hurt himself any more.
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Wardog
at 09:13 on 2009-04-28
The enormity of the gang-rape is something he's not prepared to consider his just desserts, and it isn't the only influence on his growth as a person.
I do see your point and I wasn't really dissing Monette, who I actually adore. There was just something about this scene, or the way it was presented, or *something* that was a bridge too far for me. And at first I was inclined to just ignore it and tell myself to stop being a wuss and then I got interested in *why* this scene was so problematic and, secondarily, I realised that, on a wider level, it should probably be okay to stand up and say "for me, this gang rape is not okay."
I will at some point finish Corambis, because I have *hugely* enjoyed the Doctrine of Labyrinths quartet (I have some reviews knocking around here in which I give much sweet sweet love), I think I just need some time to get away from the gang rape.
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Wardog
at 09:29 on 2009-04-28
I do wonder sometimes whether deSade was an early pen-and-paper troll
Dan and I like the idea of historical trolls, and also explains the Marquis far more than most of pop-psych nonsense I've read does =P
Lucifer, of course, would be the first troll - complaining about the mods.
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http://miss-morland.livejournal.com/
at 11:54 on 2009-04-28*giggles at the thought of de Sade and Lucifer as trolls*
I haven't read Monette's books, but I still found this post very interesting - it articulates my issues with non-con and dub-con in fiction very well. (I do wonder, though, if ambiguous portrayals of rape scenes are sometimes meant to make the readers think and question their own attitudes, instead of jumping to the safe reaction of 'OMG so horrible'?)
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Dan H
at 14:25 on 2009-04-28
I do wonder, though, if ambiguous portrayals of rape scenes are sometimes meant to make the readers think and question their own attitudes, instead of jumping to the safe reaction of 'OMG so horrible'?)
You might well be right, but even if that is the intent, it's a deeply flawed one.
Perhaps I'm just an arrogant shit, but I really hate it when people try to make me think about stuff unless it's in a medium *specifically designed* for that.
If you want to challenge my preconceptions about rape, write a book that is *about* challenging my preconcieved notions about rape. Don't try to do it in the middle of a fantasy series that is mostly about hot gay wizards gettin' it on.
If I want to have my ideas about absuse challenged, I'll read Lolita, or possibly I'll track down some abuse-survivors' weblogs. I won't read an otherwise ordinary fantasy novel or, for that matter, watch
Dollhouse
.
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Dan H
at 16:05 on 2009-04-28
The enormity of the gang-rape is something he's not prepared to consider his just desserts
I can't speak for Kyra, but the problem I have with this is that it suggests, falsely, that the more traumatic an experience is the less likely you are to blame yourself for it. I'm by no means an expert on the subject of abuse survival but from my limited experience people's tendency to self-blame for things is wholly unrelated to the severity of the abuse suffered. For that matter, the whole idea of rating abuse experiences in order of severity is a bit of a dodgy precedent.
Essentially I think there's an important, and worrying, difference between "Felix has experienced things like this before but, because he has grown as a person, and because of the influence of Mildmay, he does not blame himself for this experience" and "Felix has experienced things like this before but, because this experience is so much worse than the others, he cannot blame himself for it".
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http://sistermagpie.livejournal.com/
at 21:38 on 2009-05-01I haven't read this last book yet, but I'm glad for the heads-up. Having read the other 3 I can definitely see how this kind of thing would play, and I'm not surprised that she'd planned something like this from the beginning. It does make you think thought, about the idea that this character is constantly going through situations like this, and it's finally when he acheives the kind of abuse he might have always thought would be what he deserved, that he realizes he didn't deserve it. Even if Mildmay and other experiences are also part of his turnaround, I don't know whether that kind of catalyst will click for me the way another one might.
Like, rather than having him be in a situatio that's the same as before, but with one clear difference that makes him see it clearly, it's almost like Helen Keller at the well. Repeated fingerspelling over and over and finally he gets it.
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Wardog
at 15:28 on 2009-05-11I lost this temporarily in the deluge of comments about other things.
It is possible I've over-reacted to the gang rape; I suppose responses to these sort of motifs are always going to be extremely personal. I feel almost hypocritical because, as you say, there's plenty of indication previously that we were on the Sex Abuse Superhighway and something like this was probably bound to happen. But the way it's framed and written, combinated with its narrative function as a catalyst for change really really squicked me out. I know it's not necessarily meant to be psychologically plausible but there's something deeply worrying in the idea that there is a scale of sexual abuse, the extreme end of which teaches you self respect.
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valse de la lune
at 14:04 on 2011-07-12I tracked down
this interview
and I'm now extremely, thoroughly grossed out with Sarah Monette:
I think this does happen to gay male protagonists (the most obvious example is Mercedes Lackey's Last Herald-Mage books). And I think Felix does fall into this trap to a certain extent, although in my defense I will say that the reason he gets raped is because I was interested in the tension inherent in a character who could be both rapist and victim. Which could have been a woman, or a heterosexual man, but it was most obvious and easiest to mobilize with a gay man.
I also chose a gay male protagonist because my abiding interest is in the power dynamics of human relationships, especially sexual relationships, and it is VERY VERY HARD to write about that with a heterosexual female protagonist without pigeon-holing her and yourself into either a re-inscription of patriarchal gender roles (male dominant, female submissive) or a simple gender reversal (female dominant, male submissive) (which I did work with some in my novella, "A Gift of Wings," in The Queen in Winter). A lesbian relationship is also a possibility, but it's far more interesting and attention-grabbing to take power away from a man than it is to give power to a woman.
[...]
Also, because we live in a patriarchal society and have for several thousand years, there's nothing new or shocking about the idea that women are victims. (I'm not saying this is a good thing, mind you.) You can get more narrative charge out of victimizing a man and you aren't reinscribing the same old gender role patterns into that ever deeper groove of men act and women suffer.
What the fuck, Monette? My word, lesbian relationships aren't just ~hawt~ enough unlike slender
yaoi stereotypes
wizards sexing it up and... female empowerment is just too boring? Female victimization is just too
banal
to write about so gay men being degraded (and in this case, often raped by women) has more "narrative charge"? There's also something toward the end that basically goes "well, if you are writing about male rape it's super
titillating
shocking so people will recognize RAPE IS HORRIBLE whereas women being raped is just so
every day
so... hey, manpain! That'll get people
thinking
, right? Right!"
I don't know, all of this reads like the slash fangirl's justification why she's not interested in writing girls but wants to write hot boys instead, all disguised under a pretend layer of ~*soshul justeese*~.
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Wardog
at 23:33 on 2011-07-12Oh dear. I'm actually really annoyed with myself that it took me to Book IV to unpack what was going on with the, err, sexay mainpain and all the arse rape. I did quite like Monette initially - I think partially because when I first read Melusine I was still under the impression that gay characters were pretty rare in fantasy. To give Monette credit, when she actually bothers to be interested in them, she does write interesting female characters - I mean I *loved* Mehitabel from this series.
I think what freaks me out the most is that, as you observe, it's blatant titillation under the label of trangression. I have no problems with people getting their kicks from whatever they get their kicks from, as long as it's a carefully demarcated fantasy space, but pretending it's anything else is deeply toxic.
Also that interview was just awful :(
Maybe it's just because it doesn't apply to me but I don't understand why so many women find two dudes so unbelievably hawt but two women apparently tedious. Ho hum.
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valse de la lune
at 05:06 on 2011-07-13I think gay characters are still pretty rare in fantasy, but the gay dudes all seem to come from the same wellspring of fanfic tropes. I've read all the arguments as to why dudeslash is a female-positive space that enables women to explore their sexuality and I do get some of it, but I can't shake the feeling that so much of that is hot air; no matter how hard a slash fan argues I can't really see how spamming rape at gay dudes is particularly, y'know, feminist. Maybe it plays with power dynamics and whatnot but, on the other hand,
rape culture
.
I don't get the thing with YAY HAWT BOYS EWW GIRLS ARE BORING either, though it's been explained to me that most female characters aren't decently written so people'd sooner generate fanfic about boys instead. But that doesn't fly because fandom churns out great volumes of fanfic dedicated to minor male characters, even though some of them barely have a presence in the book/show/movie--see Figwit of the LOTR movies fame--whereas women, primary or tertiary, still get written out or villified. There are even
bingo cards
. Somewhere in that
is
a valid clause regarding how we're trained to look at media through male gateways thanks to patriarchy and we internalize that. Still don't get it on a personal level because I've always preferred female characters over male, but there it goes.
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Melissa G.
at 06:30 on 2011-07-13
Maybe it's just because it doesn't apply to me but I don't understand why so many women find two dudes so unbelievably hawt but two women apparently tedious. Ho hum.
Speaking as a straight woman who gets paid to translate yaoi, I can understand that pretty well. :-) It's not that I find girls boring as characters, but as someone who isn't sexually attracted to women, I find myself gravitating toward situations where I can look at/write about two sexy boys instead if I'm looking for smexy times. (Though I'm very, very picky these days about yaoi because of tropes I'm sure I've mentioned before.)
I feel some sympathy for Monette because I do have a hard time verbalizing my tastes without resorting to those same basic arguments about power play or feeling the need to judge the female character and how she is portrayed specifically because she's female (which I wish I didn't, but I do so...). What I find odd is the fact that everyone insists on asking me *why* I find male-on-male romance so appealing, and then I'm stuck in this hem-hawing, putting-on-airs defense because I'm too embarrassed to just go, "Two guys doing stuff to each other is hot?"
(Uh-oh, now I'm having Dorian Gray flashbacks. Oh, Ben Barnes, you scamp, you!!)
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Steve Stirling at 07:07 on 2011-07-13
I don't get the thing with YAY HAWT BOYS EWW GIRLS ARE BORING either
-- you get exactly the same in reverse from male writers a lot, so I don't see that there's any mystery about it.
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valse de la lune
at 07:20 on 2011-07-13I don't think Kyra's asking "why male-on-male?" but more "why do people find women inexplicably boring?"
but as someone who isn't sexually attracted to women, I find myself gravitating toward situations where I can look at/write about two sexy boys instead if I'm looking for smexy times.
That doesn't make sense to me because, even outside of sexual context, a lot of slashers just don't want to write women period and I'm sure we don't always only write about what's sexually/romantically attractive to us (or no straight man would ever write male characters).
It also doesn't really answer why women are so villified and hated by fandom at large: why people like Monette believe "it's more interesting to take power away from a man than to give power to a woman," or why slash is passed off as some wonderful female-positive space when it involves a lot of female-negative things, including but not limited to slut-shaming and othering women. Ogle hot boys, whatever (but even so, why so much fucking rape all the fucking time? Why the infantilizing tropes?). But I think you can do that without contributing to misogyny and rape culture.
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Steve Stirling at 07:24 on 2011-07-13
I don't think Kyra's asking "why male-on-male?" but more "why do people find women inexplicably boring?"
-- I don't. I actually had to start flipping coins at one point to make sure my characters weren't predominantly female.
Maybe it's because I was in single-sex schools for a lot of my adolescence, but I just find women more interesting than men. More complex and variable, on average.
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Steve Stirling at 07:38 on 2011-07-13
Ogle hot boys, whatever (but even so, why so much fucking rape all the fucking time? Why the infantilizing tropes?). But I think you can do that without contributing to misogyny and rape culture.
-- I don't read much (any, really) slash, but the actually-published equivalents like the book described here don't seem particularly misogynist to me. Just obsessed with Hot Boys in Chains.
As for the rape and stuff, a lot of people get off on that. Trying to tell people that the sexual fantasies which ring their chimes aren't permissible is roughly equivalent to trying to scold water until it voluntarily runs uphill. Much effort, little result.
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valse de la lune
at 07:45 on 2011-07-13
I don't. I actually had to start flipping coins at one point to make sure my characters weren't predominantly female.
Thank you, Minority Warrior, but if you are a bloke that's not exactly addressed to you.
I don't read much (any, really) slash, but the actually-published equivalents like the book described here don't seem particularly misogynist to me. Just obsessed with Hot Boys in Chains.
I've only read the first book and the gang-rape scene in the fourth, but a lot of the women in this series like to rape gay men for some strange reason.
Melusine
opens with an anecdote about the pure, true love between men. Two women get between it; one proceeds to rape one of the men repeatedly until he wants to kill himself. So, yes, both fandom slash and published slash perpetuate a lot of the same crap. Then there's Monette's interview and strange leaps of illogic which read sexist as hell to me.
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Melissa G.
at 08:48 on 2011-07-13
That doesn't make sense to me because, even outside of sexual context, a lot of slashers just don't want to write women period and I'm sure we don't always only write about what's sexually/romantically attractive to us (or no straight man would ever write male characters).
I can't speak to that. I don't know why so many writers are so anti-female characters, and it would take me pages of musing to try and come to a conclusion. I was referring specifically to sexual situations (by which I mean stories centering on sex) because the comment I was particularly responding to was "why do so many women find two dudes so unbelievably hot but two women apparently tedious". Which I read as "why do so many women love writing about two guys (sexually) but find writing about two women so boring (sexually)". Perhaps I misinterpreted what Kyra was saying. I stated clearly that I don't find women boring as characters to read and write about, but that I understand why many women gravitate toward male homosexual relationships and why they might find it arousing when they are writing merely to titillate themselves/others.
I haven't read the series in question so I take everyone's word for it that the rape isn't handled well and misogyny abounds. And trust me, I'm the first person to get fed up with the kind of tropes male-on-male stuff tends to come with - especially when written by someone who's probably never even spoken to a gay man before. I got fed up with one author in particular because her protagonists kept falling for their rapists, yuck. But just because a lot of it sucks and perpetuates some seriously shitty stuff doesn't mean that it's not okay to find guy-on-guy stuff hot. And I really don't appreciate being made to feel like because I like it, I am somehow in danger of losing my feminist card.
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valse de la lune
at 09:57 on 2011-07-13I don't think I have been suggesting that if you like slash, you're in danger of losing your feminist cred; being a feminist doesn't exactly mean everything you consume must be feminist, after all, and we all enjoy things that are problematic to some degree. I just don't like how it's put forward as a YAY WOMEN field when it's not really. Likewise, I've been shouted down in fandom spaces for calling out misogyny in slash, something along the line of
you will find it is you who is misogyny
.
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valse de la lune
at 10:06 on 2011-07-13(Sorry that I'm coming down harshly such that you feel you're being discredited as a feminist, though.)
One more thing--I've been told over and over that there is a strong presence of queer women in slash circles, so for some it's not so much a matter of "I'm straight so more cocks yay!!!" In fact, with so many queer women around--so many lesbians even--you'd think there would be more F/F fanfic. But there isn't, so...
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Melissa G.
at 10:23 on 2011-07-13
I don't think I have been suggesting that if you like slash, you're in danger of losing your feminist cred
I think I was responding defensively to this comment:
Ogle hot boys, whatever (but even so, why so much fucking rape all the fucking time? Why the infantilizing tropes?). But I think you can do that without contributing to misogyny and rape culture.
It basically felt to me like my entire sexual preference/fetish/whatever was being boiled down to "ogling hot boys". It’s those kinds of dismissive, judgmental comments that make me feel like I need to somehow justify what I find arousing. That’s why you have people arguing that it’s pro-women or empowering or whatever to write and read man-on-man love stories. When an attraction is called into question, I think often women in particular feel the need to base that attraction in something intellectual and philosophical. Because it would be wrong for a woman to just find something titillating or arousing. Because women aren’t supposed to like sex just for sex.
I think there are ways that it can be empowering (I wouldn't go so far as to say 'feminist'), but most of it fails in this regard. For me, when I read a story with a male bottom that I can relate to as far as sexual behavior, it makes me feel less weird. There's something freeing about the behavior being related to the position and not the gender, for me anyway. I think that also relates to why an author might find it more interesting (and by interesting I mean because they find it hot) to take power away from men. For some women who are attracted to men, there is something very fascinating and seductive about a man submitting (either sexually or emotionally), probably because it's something so commonly associated with female behavior. So again, it becomes less of a gender thing and more of a relationship role thing. If that makes any sense....
I just don't like how it's put forward as a YAY WOMEN field when it's not really.
I totally understand that. I actually avoid fan written slash like the plague because most of it is just not good. Most of it is (I think) influenced by yaoi, which oh dear god, has such problems. There is so much rape and questionable consent and a lot of "I'm only gay for that guy" and such overly traditional female behavior (even though one of them is male, go figure). And the kind of people you've probably argued with are likely the kind of people who make me afraid to admit I'm part of the yaoi subculture.
But there is good stuff out there. I promise. :-)
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Melissa G.
at 10:26 on 2011-07-13
One more thing--I've been told over and over that there is a strong presence of queer women in slash circles, so for some it's not so much a matter of "I'm straight so more cocks yay!!!" In fact, with so many queer women around--so many lesbians even--you'd think there would be more F/F fanfic. But there isn't, so...
Sorry, I made my long post before I saw this! That is odd. Why don't they focus on yuri? Yuri is slowly becoming a more female dominated genre. It's kind of cool actually that the female authors are slowly co-opting a genre that was once basically male-written lesbian porn for men. To each their own, I guess?
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valse de la lune
at 10:59 on 2011-07-13
It basically felt to me like my entire sexual preference/fetish/whatever was being boiled down to "ogling hot boys".
But... I said that because I think it's pretty dandy if you're just in it for the ogling of hot boys, or balls being cupped gently, or even self-lubing anuses. I don't think you, or anyone else, need to justify it any further than that. Think it's hot? Go for it! That's excellent. Objectifying
men
in and of itself, separate from the concern over straight people fetishizing homosexuality, doesn't really bother me. I'm not questioning the appeal of slash: I'm questioning some of the tropes, the homophobia, the misogyny. Which certainly aren't universal, but there sure is a lot of them to go around. Hell, gay male characters written by straight men also get raped an awful lot (hi Richard Morgan, thank you for that graphic schoolboy gang rape).
Disclosure: I think lesbians are awesome. I'd like to read more stuff with lesbian representation. Being homoromantic does have something to do with it, though.
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Melissa G.
at 11:11 on 2011-07-13
But... I said that because I think it's pretty dandy if you're just in it for the ogling of hot boys, or balls being cupped gently, or even self-lubing anuses. I don't think you, or anyone else, need to justify it any further than that.
:-) I think it just came off as hostile because of the swearing, lol. To be honest, I was probably overly defensive because it's kind of a touchy thing for me.
I'm not questioning the appeal of slash: I'm questioning some of the tropes, the homophobia, the misogyny.
Yes, I'm with you here. I have a lot of trouble with a lot of boy/boy stuff that's out there.
Re: Lesbians
If you're looking to try out some yuri, I can lead you to some scanlation sites. I haven't read much yuri so I can't totally vouch for the content, but these are sites that I know of:
Lililicious
Payapaya
Just be sure to check for ratings and such. There was one on Lilicious I read years ago that I was enjoying.
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valse de la lune
at 11:14 on 2011-07-13OMG yay :D :D :D Thanks for the links. My friend's been sending me some too. I'm also quite pleased to see that a lot of yuri writers are female. Awesome.
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Cammalot
at 15:23 on 2011-07-13I JUST WANNA WATCH DUDES EMOTE. ;-)
I actually got into yaoi (not slash for whatever reason) because I was attracted to what I thought was the innate equality in such a a relationship. There are a variety of reasons I don't really seek out much fanfic anymore (one of which is the decade-plus that has gone by) but one of them is that I don't really see that equality getting embraced. (I'm necessarily truncating this, I have to imitate being a productive employee at the moment.)
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Melissa G.
at 19:40 on 2011-07-13
I JUST WANNA WATCH DUDES EMOTE. ;-)
Ooh, yes, good observation. I like that too.
I actually got into yaoi (not slash for whatever reason) because I was attracted to what I thought was the innate equality in such a a relationship.
Ditto. That's what I really like about it too, which is why I hate when they skew the power dynamic too far in one direction without somehow compensating for it in another way. I've never been into fanfic, but I do love doujinshi.
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Cammalot
at 19:48 on 2011-07-13I wrote up this whole long comment yesterday, but today with you guys' further conversation I realized I was addressing something that Pyro was not talking about, so I'm tweaking, but I don't think I'll have a chance to get to it today.
The extremely short version is that there's a very definite blockage that some women seem to have about writing women, and I had it myself for some time (and that some more extreme versions of it outright baffle me), and have spent a lot of time trying to process, discuss, and debate what the fuck that is about. With theories. I have theories.
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Melissa G.
at 19:53 on 2011-07-13
The extremely short version is that there's a very definite blockage that some women seem to have about writing women,
Definitely noticed this myself at times. I gravitate toward writing male characters, or at least I used to. I'm very interested to hear your theories whenever you find the time to write them up. :-)
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Sister Magpie
at 20:07 on 2011-07-13
Sorry, I made my long post before I saw this! That is odd. Why don't they focus
on yuri? Yuri is slowly becoming a more female dominated genre. It's kind of
cool actually that the female authors are slowly co-opting a genre that was once
basically male-written lesbian porn for men. To each their own, I guess?
I would guess that that's probably not all that related to the whole "that's my kink" thing, only not all kinks are sexual. That is, expecting them to explain it would probably be similar to having anybody explain why they find one thing more hot than another.
For instance, I like het and I like slash, but there are certain kinds of stories that could definitely be considered non-sexual kinks that I am more likely to read about in a m/m pairing than a f/m pairing or f/f pairing. I suppose I could try to relate it to power issues with gender IRL, but it's probably more just a kink if it's something I've pretty much always been drawn to.
I don't find that rape or "I'm only gay for that guy" seems to dominate most of the slash I come across, but I think that might often come down to different pairings leaning towards different dynamics. Or else also some authors being better than most.
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Steve Stirling at 22:44 on 2011-07-13Pyrofennec:
-of the women in this series like to rape gay men for some strange reason.Melusine opens with an anecdote about the pure, true love between men. Two women get between it; one proceeds to rape one of the men repeatedly until he wants to kill himself.
-- that is odd. I'd say it was evidence of misogyny if a guy wrote it, but I have trouble -imagining- a guy writing it, even a gay man. You'd need a very strange set of quirks to do so.
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The Stripper in Stuart Weitzman
I met Charlotte under distressing circumstances. I had quit my job at Jimmy Choo in November of 2016 and had just acquired a new position at the department store, Nordstrom, in Nashville. I knew I was over qualified but didn't know what the fuck I wanted to do yet (I still don’t) so I latched on to the first thing that was offered: a part-time salesman, also known as “Stylist”, in the designer shoe department.
Like most people, I was really nervous my first day. One of my good friends was a manager in that very department (hence why I receive the job offer anyway) but I still had the feeling that this new opportunity was probably going to end in destruction. Case in point, it was my FIFTH (!) job that year. I had been a waiter at three different restaurants (two with my boyfriend at the time, which is another story entirely), worked for Jimmy Choo, and now this. Was I going to be good? What were the other “Stylists" going to be like? I'm not sure why I cared so much. You would have thought I was enlisting in the Peace Corps and just landed in a strange, third world country rather than started at a shitty department store.
But I had no reason to be nervous. I was surrounded by people just like me. We were all young, reasonably-attractive, completely coddled by our upper middle class parents. In short, we were fuck-ups who had no idea what was going on in the “Real World.” All we cared about was what Alessandro Michele was doing for his next Gucci collection and where we were getting drinks that night. We acted like we were the fashion experts in Nashville, and I suppose, to a point, we were. We were selling the most expensive luxury items (Louboutin, Saint Laurent, Chanel, etc.) to the most stylistically challenged women I’ve ever encountered. The truly wealthy women in Nashville were all the same: White. Blonde. Skinny. Didn't go to college. Trump voters. Into heavy branding. These women were all happy to spend their misogynistic and homophobic husband’s money. And they ate up whatever we told them:
“Oh my god, this new Chanel bag is EVERYTHING! I can't believe it's only $5000!” or “I know these Louboutins hurt, Ms. Henderson, but I really think you're going to be the talk of Swan Ball!” Of course, Nordstrom doesn't have a return policy, so once these ladies ate our bullshit and got home, they realized they'd been played by money hungry twenty-seven-year old's and returned that shit.
Our paychecks were always up and down because of it. One week, I'd make $3000 in commission. The next week, I'd have $20,000 returned in worn stilettos and my paycheck would be about $400. Because of this company policy (where you will always be negatively impacted by returns at any time because Nordstrom wants to always “take care of the customer” - I fucking hate Nordstrom as a company, FYI) my coworkers and I banded together and became very close friends.
That brings me to Charlotte. She was one of the first people I met once I made it through my hellish five day training classes. She was always turtlenecks with Prada Mary-Jane's and her hair messy. Upon first glance, I thought that she was okay. Hipster, yes. A psychopath who enjoyed making everyone uncomfortable at all times, no. But I was so wrong.
“HI! I'm Charlotte! What’s your name? Where are you from?” She said. Her energy level was alarming, but I was the new kid, so I attempted to make polite conversation and a good first impression. I told her my name (Mathew) and where I was from (Vermont). Only two seconds had passed before she blurted out, "Are you gay?”
Lucky for her, I was secure enough being a flaming homosexual that I didn't give a shit about her question. I told her that I was and she said, "Oh, gay men normally don't like me.” RED FLAG.
Weeks went by and I maintained a polite but distant relationship with Charlotte. I would be sympathetic to her stories about her relationship with her boyfriend. I would listen to her talk about wanting to leave Nashville and express the same sentiments. But I always maintained a guarded relationship with her for two reasons:
1) She offended nearly everyone in the department, and
2) I just couldn’t stop thinking she was homophobic!
She would perpetually make these comments to me about how I was her only gay friend. How gay boys never liked her. How she didn't like going to gay bars to watch grown men dress as women. I started to think that maybe, in a past life, she had been a repressed gay man and was taking it out on me. What was her issue with gay men? Did she ever stop to think that maybe gay men didn't like her because she tainted the relationship from the get-go?
Whatever her reasoning, she took my sympathy about her love-life for genuine friendship and started acting like we were super close, even though I definitely did not feel that way. She flashed her tits at me one day at work, and shook them in my face, and asked me what I thought about her body. She called me to discuss how hot a boy we worked with was and how she wanted to fuck him. She started talking to me about her relationship woes, and because I didn't want to be rude, I listened, nodded, and agreed with whatever she said.
Eventually, she moved to New York, and to be honest, I was relieved. I wouldn't have to stand around listening to her anymore. It’s not like I hated her (at that point), I just didn't think we had very much, if anything, in common other than we worked at the same place. She had days where she was an enjoyable coworker, but a lot of the time she just made me feel awkward. I didn’t think we were going to see each other for a long time, even though I had planned to move to New York only a few months after she did.
However, I did see her, much more quickly than I expected. In May, I hopped on a plane and took a vacation here in New York. The trip was meant to scout apartments but it pretty much resulted in me binge-drinking every night and buying bunk cocaine on the street from a black man outside of Vodka Soda. I came to New York with two of my closest friends: William and Lucia. Will and I had secured an airB&B in East Harlem for the duration of our trip. However, we only had one bed, which meant Lucia needed to find a place of her own.
Lucia's relationship with Charlotte's relationship was just as weird as my own. Lucia and I bonded early on over how much we didn't like Charlotte and laughed about all the awkward shit she did to us (like the flashing.) But as time went on, Lucia let go of whatever tension she felt, and accepted Charlotte as she was: the annoying girl who made her uncomfortable, but probably not a completely terrible person.
Lucia asked Charlotte if she could stay in her downtown apartment. Charlotte said yes. Before I knew it, I was in an Uber with Will and Lucia, headed down from Harlem into the thick of Manhattan to Charlotte's apartment building. The area was beautiful. Trendy, hip, and lively, exactly what you should think of when you think of Manhattan. I was so excited to be in New York and in this cool part of the City that I forgot who we were reuniting with.
Lucia called Charlotte to let her know we were outside of her apartment building, standing in the warm 90 degree weather (this was a record high day for May in NYC), starving and ready to get the vacation started. But of course, Charlotte didn't answer. It took Lucia three tries to get through before Charlotte had opened up her apartment to us.
“HI GUYS!” Charlotte said, and hugged each of us. She invited us into her apartment, a fifth floor unit with four rooms (a bedroom, kitchen, living room, and bathroom) but without air conditioning. She kept rambling about her roommate, who let her stay there for free, and said, "Can you believe I have all of this? Can you believe I have this?”
I couldn't believe it. I couldn’t believe how fucking hot it was in that apartment. If it was 90 degrees outside, it must have been 105 inside this place. I wanted to get out of there. I was also, yet again, uncomfortable! Even her living quarters made me feel uncomfortable. She had a sculpture of an erect penis mounted on her wall. Books were strewn everywhere - on the table, on the floor, on ledges, and not in a chic artistic way. In a dirty way. The sink was full of dishes. Don't even get me started on the bathroom. All the while, she was acting like she lived in Buckingham Palace and kept chanting, "Can you believe I have all of this?”
Lunch time was here. Lucia, Will, and myself were all starving after our three hour flight from Nashville to LaGuardia and two hour Uber from LaGuardia to Harlem. As we stepped back outside into the bright sunlight on that one block in Manhattan, Charlotte said, "I know exactly what we should do for lunch. I know the best brunch place and it's totally vegan!"
I don't eat vegetables. I might be twenty-eight, but I still don't eat my veggies. Thank god, Will came to my rescue and said, "Let's go somewhere where we can all eat.”
Charlotte paused and said, "I know just the place! And it’s very New York! The guy who works there is always like 'FATHER! DAUGHTER! SISTER! MOTHER!'" She made strange pointing gestures like we were the father, daughter, sister, mother!
Will and I exchanged glances and silent laughs before proceeding to this magical, "very" New York brunch spot. It turned out to be a small but cute bakery a few blocks down from Charlotte's apartment. Our waiter was also our chef. He cooked me up the most delicious cheddar and bacon bagel. Meanwhile, Charlotte immediately began filling us in on everything happening in her life in New York.
“So I've been working at Barney’s doing freelance embroidery..." yada yada yada… “I’ve been sleeping with this older man…" yada yada yada… but the best part was when she started eating cream cheese with her bagel after announcing that she was vegan and saying, "What! If you're on vacation, then I'm on vacation, so I can eat whatever I want!"
After that, she said, "I've got a big announcement.”
"What?" Lucia asked.
“Well, I really want to go to the strip club tonight. Because I think I'm going to start stripping. I've really been thinking it's probably the best way for me to get some quick extra cash and I want to go to grad school. So I want to see what it's like. There's one close to here. And I don't care about having my tits out.”
Normally, I wouldn't judge someone for stripping. I've had friends in the past who have had to do it. However, there had been multiple times where I heard her slut shamming our coworkers. “She's such a dumb skank,” she would say, or “This is what is killing feminism” after looking at an Instagram post of our colleague in a revealing outfit from the night before. Then she would laugh. No, cackle is the right word. That very moment, when she announced she wanted to be a stripper is when I realized how much I actually disliked this person. In that moment, I realized that all she had was her fake veganism, her fake feminism, and her fake life. I called her a hypocrite under my breath and proceeded on with lunch, deciding that it was probably better to stop discussing her future profession before I really went off. We got our checks and paid but not before Charlotte skipped tipping our waiter. Remember when I said I was a waiter? Yeah, at that point, I was wishing I had never met this person. I dropped a couple extra dollars on the table. We got up, left, and I didn't see Charlotte again for the duration of my trip. Thank god.
I didn't think very much about her very much after that. It was later that I was informed that she felt bad for me and William. Apparently, she didn't like knowing that we would be moving to Brooklyn when she had "all this" in the East Village. I thought about what she had and compared it to my situation. I decided that I would rather live in Brooklyn than live in squalor like she did. I would rather spend 20 minutes on the subway than walk to work from that shithole place she slept in. And I stupidly voiced that opinion to four coworkers one day when I was back in Nashville, while casually mentioning that she wanted to become a stripper and had bought Stuart Weitzman booties for the new job.
At the time, I didn't think anything of it. Or care. So, I went about my day, and the next few months without thinking about what she was up to. I think I only spoke to her twice before I myself moved to New York. One time was for her to rant about her ex-boyfriend and the second time was me asking her tips for finding an apartment. On the day that I moved, she slid into my DM’s. Here is our entire conversation:
“Charlotte: Driving to NYC?
Me: Yep!
Charlotte: Not bringing a car tho right??
Also will is your best friend but he is also gay
Is that not weird? Or are you both not each other’s type
Sorry for ignorance
My questions never bother you so I like to ask haha
Me: No, and haven’t you ever had a friend that is a boy that you haven’t fucked?
Charlotte: Lol ya, you *upside down smiley*
Idk if someone is attractive and we get along super well? It usually develops into something
ESPECIALLY if there is drinking involved”
I never responded. Why did she care what my relationship with my best friend was? Fuck that bitch! I hated her! And yes, Charlotte, your questions DO bother me. I squatted in Bushwick and vowed to never see her again. I figured we would just drift away from each other. After all, we both wanted very different things out of living in this city. But no, Charlotte needed to intrude on ANOTHER first day of work for me.
I moved to New York because of another job offer. I knew that I wanted to get as far away from the South as I could so I was very surprised when I got offered my old job at Jimmy back, but this time in the fashion capital of the world. I was excited, ecstatic really, but my nerves were worse than they had ever been on that first day. I felt like I had made it. I was at the highest position in my field - RETAIL. Ugh. But whatever, a job in Manhattan is a better job than anywhere else. I made sure I knew exactly what trains to take, and made sure to get on them early just in case I got lost. I had a shiny new title with an illusion of glamour backing it and I was going to make sure it was the perfect fucking first day. The day passed slowly with lots of training. It wasn't until lunch that things really picked up and I almost shit my pants.
I checked my phone to see four missed messages and a phone call from Charlotte. This is what they said:
“Ok A: fuck you
and B: I refer you to things in NYC and you act like my friend and then you go around saying you don’t like me and that I’m a stripper now
How about I just tell people you moved to NYC to be set up by an elderly gay man and that I think you’re a twat, like duh fuq is your problem
And my apartment is disgusting? I hope you rot in Bushwhick and I’ll continue chilling in Manhattan and the Hamptons. PEACE. Fucking fake motherfucker.
”
To which I responded,
“You are psychotic.”
Almost immediately, the phone at work begun to ring. My new coworker answered and then said, "The phone is for you?” His face practically said, you-are-brand-new! You-don't-have-clients! Who-is-calling-for-you-asshole? I snatched the phone from him and checked the caller ID. Area code: 615. It was a Nashville number. I answered, embarrassed as fuck, knowing what was coming, and said, "Hello this is Mathew" while my new boss stood three feet away. Surprisingly, rather than hearing her scream, Charlotte hung up on me! I went to check my Instagram. She blocked me. And then Facebook. Blocked there too. It looked like she was done speaking to me. I was relieved, though I didn't understand why she decided to call my new work.
But then, one-by-one, my friends starting texting me. Charlotte was apparently "really pissed off" at me. So much so that she mentioned coming into my work and punching me in the face. That's when it clicked. She had called to see if I had started my job yet. She was walking to SoHo right then, I knew it! I probably had fifteen minutes. In another one of her texts during her rampage, she mentioned to one of my friends that she hated “prissy gays.” I waited, very anxiously, for her arrival to cuss me out on my first day of work, punch me in the face, and get me fired. I spent ten minutes shaking. I was angry, nervous, and could not believe some fucking cunt decided to tell her about my stupid gossip THE DAY I STARTED MY NEW JOB. Like! Congrats on your new job! Now let me fuck your world up real quick!!
After freaking out in my head, I decided it would be best to warn everyone working with me that day, so I told my coworker and my new boss about the psychopathic young woman with frizzy hair that might come in and assault me. Thankfully for me, my boss threw her head back, laughed, and said, "I can't deal with this on your first day!”
Charlotte never dropped by that day. I was so thankful she didn't fuck up my first day I almost thought she was a good person. She really had every right to be angry. She could've punched me in the face and I would have thought it was merited. I told people her apartment was disgusting. I told people that she bought Weitzman boots to strip in. And now I'm writing this story. I was guilty of my crime and felt the repercussions as a knot in my stomach. One of these days, she’s going to find me waiting on the train platform and smack me or push me down onto the tracks to be hit. I have yet to face our problem head on (mainly because she's blocked me on all platforms) and for the sake of atonement, I need to. Like Hilary Duff says, I need to "come clean!"
It's not like I didn't have chances to fix this. I had one when another old coworker, Keith, was visiting New York a couple weeks ago from Nashville. Keith was not my friend, ever. I hardly ever spoke to him and when I did, it was because he initiated. He wore funny hats because he was "so alternative.” Basically, Charlotte and he were meant to be best friends because of how much they both sucked. I am not 100% sure Keith told Charlotte that I had announced to all of her old coworkers that she was stripping in Manhattan, but I think he did. I was amazed that he showed up to my work randomly one day during his visit. I did not understand why he would come visit me, considering he was my top suspect that told Charlotte what I had said. Had I not been working with a client upon his arrival, things might've ended differently. I might've said something like, "Get the fuck out of my work space you fucking piece of shit." Or I might've summoned Lauren Conrad's infamous words, "YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID!" But instead I asked why he was here and what his vacation plans were. I was cold, distant, and felt like I made it pretty clear that now we weren't working together we did not need to have a relationship, but still attempted to maintain an aura of politeness.
What I should have told him was to forward a message to Charlotte. And tell her that I wasn't sorry. Because I am a bad person. I know that I shouldn't have done the things I did. I made another person feel like shit about themselves, mostly because they made me feel like shit about myself! But we weren't ever really friends! She didn't like me and used me as her gay accessory, I imagine to prove to herself that she wasn't secretly homophobic. I used her to show that I could be friends with everyone, even when those people were unanimously disliked. The fact is we were ALL shitty people! Keith is included in this. I will never apologize for being a “prissy gay" and telling people behind her back what I really thought of her. She should never apologize to me for making me extremely uncomfortable every time I was around her. And should Keith apologize for running his fat mouth? Probably, but I'm using this post to let it go.
This whole situation has resulted in the best advice I have been able to give myself: hold. your. tongue. You never know who's around and you never know what people really think about you. I was in a very comfortable setting with coworkers that were friends, but I didn't think about the coworkers that were not my friends. Do I think Keith would've told Charlotte that I was telling the world about her stripper job? Probably not if he had liked me. I wasn't nice to him, so why be loyal to me? But I could've avoided the entire thing if I had just kept my own mouth shut and privately hated Charlotte like I had been doing. I didn't need to get coworkers involved. I'm not sure why I did. Probably because I have a superiority complex and didn't want people to think Charlotte was actually living her best life in Manhattan while I “rotted in Bushwick.”
I am not that girl. Charlotte said she felt bad for me being in Bushwick. I would not let her "feel bad" for me when I was figuring my shit out in New York City. So I ratted her out and let everyone know exactly what kind of person she is. I think, maybe subconsciously, I wanted her to find out what I said. And by doing so, I let people know exactly what kind of person I am: a not very nice one.
I haven't seen Charlotte at all since I've moved here. I know that eventually I will. William saw her one day walking into a Chipotle. That’s been my closest encounter with her. I purposely avoid her neighborhood for fear that she'll be around the corner. I have absolutely no idea what I will say to her when that day comes. Will I say "Hello?" and let the past be the past? Or will I walk forward, pretend I don’t know her, and go about my day?
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Back Cataloguing The Strokes
In a departure for the site, please find a really long piece on music. Around the end of last year, I had an idea for a podcast to essentially tell the story of particular bands by going through their entire back catalogue chronologically. Then I found out someone was already doing that about two thirds of the way through writing the first batch so I decided to shift it into just a long form writing piece and post it so as it didn’t go to waste. If you like this sort of post, let me know and I can complete write ups for other artists over the off season for the football in between changing nappies and watching the World Cup! So, below, the complete history of The Strokes: Enjoy!
Looking back at the turn of the millennium from today and the world seems an extraordinarily different place and many people look at 9/11 as a turning point. Whether that is the answer or not, before we even take a single look at the lives and times of The Strokes, it’s worth recognising just where music and culture as a whole was the days before the release of “Is This It”.
The music scene was fragmented - 2000 saw the most UK number one singles of any year with such musical highlights as Geri Halliwell’s “Bag It Up”, Westlife simply existing, landfill garage reaching the top spot in the form of Oxide and Neutrino and, of course, Bob The Builder. This trend carried on into 2001 with groups such as Atomic Kitten and So Solid Crew. Jackass was beginning, American Pie was a cinematic phenomenon and Tom Green was still a thing.
In alternative culture, Britpop had run out of steam as bands either failed to evolve or simply fell out of love with the entire scene they were in while also seeing their own “attitude” sequestered and commercialised. People were looking for saviours in the most unlikely places, be it in the “post-Britpop” scene led by Travis, the alternative scene that ran under the radar during Britpop headed by Radiohead or in even odder places - such as NME’s record low sales after shoving Post-Rock Pioneers Godspeed You Black Emperor on the front page. Grunge was as good as dead and Indie music was fragmented, had no clear popular act to lead a scene with and, as such, was relegated behind some genuinely awful acts. Popular culture was, in no uncertain terms, a wasteland.
And into that wasteland came The Strokes. They weren’t the biggest band to come out of this era of New York. They arguably weren’t the most talented one either. But they are unquestionably the most important. A band whose first releases grabbed attention from across the music industry and kick started a revival in alternative music that would provide a solid half decade of new bands that consistently tapped a rich creative vein. The Strokes are simply the era’s seminal band not just because of their music but because of their image.
But who are The Strokes and what brought them together in the first place. To British eyes, their formation might seem very typical, built as it is around a series of encounters at private school. The story started with lead singer Julian Casablancas. Son of a former Miss Denmark and inheriting the model good looks, he first met bassist Nikolai Fraiture at the Lycee Francais de New York and maintained a friendship from there. In the meantime, Casablancas’ parents divorced and his mother married a painter who introduced him to “proper” music and entered a rebellious phase that would last long beyond his teenage years. Sent to boarding school in Switzerland by his father, he soon fell in with Albert Hammond Jr, the future guitarist of The Strokes.
Hammond, similarly with a model for a mother, was born into the music industry through his father, Albert Hammond Sr. Albert Sr was a prolific writer of hits, having written “The Air that I Breathe” for The Hollies and “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” as covered by Starship. Casablancas’ time in Switzerland would be short, returning to America to attend the Dwight School in New York where he would meet the final two pieces of the puzzle - guitarist Nick Valensi, who had been playing guitar since age 5, and drummer Fabrizio Moretti. New York would eventually throw all of their paths back together as the band proper formed in 1998. They quickly got songs written and started playing live in 1999, rapidly improving the tightness of their sound and the quality of their live performances - off stage, they were simply a bunch of young men having fun yet working hard for it. In spite of what, on paper, look like privileged backgrounds, the band were workers at the beginning - Casablancas a barman, Hammond working at a record store, Fraiture at a video store - and that work ethic made them enjoy the success all the more. Hammond Jr: “The other groups were aggressive, bringing in dudes to drink with, while we brought in girls. We had a lot of fun. When everything exploded for us, we thought: ‘Wow! Does this mean we can keep doing this?’.”
It was an image, if one could even call it that, that came naturally to the band. They were five men with little in the way of responsibility having a good time and not giving much care as to what people thought of that. Writer Eric Ducker, who followed the band on tour in 2001: “their 23 year old manager Ryan Gentles gave me the Russell Hammond line, “Just make them look cool” I told him that they don’t need any help looking cool.” While good music is essential to getting a buzz around any band (and, as we’ll get on to, The Strokes did some good music), it was the Strokes’ image that truly got the band over and truly got the hype machine in motion. This wasn’t just a credible band, this was a credible band filled with attractive young men who were blaze about the whole fame thing. Ducker again: “Without hearing any music, the FADER knew months ago we were going to feature the Strokes the second photographer Leslie Lyons showed us the publicity photo she took of them.”
That photo, used in Ducker’s Fader article was fairly simple - the band shot from below stood against a wall with everyone but Julian looking at the camera, hands in pockets, casual as anything. It, like so many pictures of the band in this era directly prior to them attaining widespread fame, simply exudes Rock and Roll. Here was a band with boys that looked like you could take them home to your mum, but who you knew could and would drink you under a table as soon as they were unsupervised.
And all this without mentioning the music once so far, but it’s important to understand why so many people were willing to jump on their hype train and why they were so suitable for backing that up. Long before Is This It? Was released, their success seemed pretty certain - they had played everywhere they could in New York, had moved from opener, to middle act to eclipsing the headliner to being the headliners themselves all within the space of about 9 months in 2000.
With this extensive live experience behind them, they set to the next part of their seemingly pre-determined plan for world domination - The Modern Age EP. A demo was sent to Rough Trade who snapped them up as quickly as they could on the basis of it and, later that year, debut album, Is This It? Would hit stores and take over.
Is This It? Had so much going for it. The iconic cover of a glove on a naked thigh that defined the band’s cheek, their sex appeal and even harked back to parodying Spinal Tap’s Smell the Glove - even if the band themselves weren’t entirely sold on it. The simple production that differed so much from everything else on sale at that time (and, often, what the band did after this album) but remained just accessible enough to immediately hook the listener into the band. It has a consistent rhythm that establishes itself straight away in opening track Is This It? Then solidifies through The Modern Age, of which a slightly amended version went on the album compared to the earlier EP, recorded in the same studio in Manhattan’s East Village after initial sessions failed to produce the raw sound which dominates the album.
Raw is perhaps a slightly inaccurate word to use in this case. The songs themselves in terms of pace and harmony are tight but pushed as far as they can be to stretch the envelope. Casablancas’ muffled vocals are the perfect accompaniment for this as he veers from conversational singing into passionate shouts in songs such as Barely Legal. From there, Is This It? Wanders into it’s iconic middle songs - the wistful Someday, the manic Alone Together and then into one of the most memorable three track sequences of any album - Last Nite, Hard to Explain and New York City Cops. Last Nite, the most famous of the trio is perhaps the most rough and ready song on the album, with it’s Tom Petty inspired opening bars through distortion and through Casablancas’ most slurred and hoarse vocals to become the band’s most famous (if perhaps not their best) song. Hard to Explain is, of course, the song that brought The Strokes to prominence in the first place and New York City Cops is the band at their most raucous - perhaps the closest they slide towards out and out punk on the album, even if it did have to be dropped from the US release of the album due to the events of 9/11.
Is This It is iconic for multiple reasons - be it as simple as being in the right place at the right time or be it that it was just so good as to be unavoidable. Both are true - a generation needed a figurehead to get behind and their peers needed a band to smash through the barriers of lack of interest that had dogged the scene in the five or six years prior to Is This It and, without this album, it’s unlikely that the bands who followed them not just from the New York scene but from across the world would have been able to garner as much visibility as they did. It was a bolt of lightning to revive a moribund scene that was creatively stuck in a rut.
The people responded too - Is This It debuted at number 2 in the UK album chart, eventually selling over 600,000 copies and going double platinum. In the US, it broke a million sales and was probably burned and passed around a million more as it became one of the first alternative albums to get big in the era of Napster and sharing. Geoff Nelson: “The Strokes’ debut album emerged as the sound and physical pillar of our growing collections, the intersection of this new music and this way of sharing music. This was the birth of a new cool.” The Strokes got over in that respect simply by being a rejection of the arena sized rock that was taking over airwaves - be it an Incubus, a Creed or a Limp Bizkit, Is This It was a rejection of highly polished, highly marketed faux rebels in favour of scuzzier role models who simply didn’t give a crap. When everyone else wanted to sound big, The Strokes made a conscious choice to sound small - Casablancas called it “raw efficiency” in an interview with the NME. NIkolai Fraiture stated “Record-company people, radio people, journalists, they all told us, ‘The recording quality isn’t good enough to have any mass appeal”. To me, it was more that they were able to resist the temptation to smooth the edges from their music. They revolutionised simply by shunning the revolution in technology and smoothness that was going on around them.
NME and Time magazine would place Is This It as their album of the year in 2001 with NME placing it as their album of the entire decade - Rolling Stone would place it second behind Kid A. It remains an album universally adored and the reviews bear that out: Ryan Schreiber for Pitchfork compared the band to their contemporaries the WHite Stripes with this: “the difference between the two bands lies in their degrees of skill: the Stripes have an air of amateurishness that belies songwriter Jack White's obvious talents; the Strokes, even on their debut album, sound like experienced professionals for whom mastering the form seems only an album away.” NME’s John Robinson: ‘Is This It’ is a document of a group seizing a moment and making it entirely their own. Like any indispensable invention, you’re forced to wonder how you got by without it.” Joe Levy for Rolling Stone “The eleven songs on Is This It speed by in just slightly more than half an hour, each one so tightly constructed and urgently delivered that even the ballads seem fast. The Strokes are obsessed with rhythm, and at times their approach is more like that of a soul or funk band than a rock band: Each player, even the drummer, pushes at the melody from a different rhythmic angle until there are no more angles left to explore.” Finally, MIchael Delgado in his retrospective for ISIS magazine 15 years on from the original release: “With their debut, The Strokes achieved that rare thing—the Arctic Monkeys’s first album being another good example—of achieving a sound that is heavily rooted in its time and place, and yet is so enchanting that it manages to transcend that context.”
Is This It is perhaps best summed up as a mix of those last two review quotes - a relentless yet very purposeful rhythm added to coming out at exactly the right time but without ever sounding dated. Is each song perfect? No. Is it the greatest album of it’s decade? Probably not. But it is ranked as up there by so many people because of the feelings it evokes - for so many, it was their first real introduction to alternative music. For even more, it was the album that opened the floodgates to so much other music. Perry Watts-Russell, A&R at Warner Brothers: “this is the new movement — bands that are reminiscent of things that came before, but doing it in a different way. I’ve signed a band called the Sun, and I would say that was influenced by the fact that the Strokes and Vines have gone on to success”. Like the band or not, their success meant people were introduced to other bands and it made them, if not the original creators of their scene (as put forward in Lizzy Goodman’s Meet Me In The Bathroom book on the New York scene of this era, that band would be Jonathan Fire*Eater), The Strokes would be the first to break through that ceiling even if others did it more successfully further down the line.
And, unlike so many bands, the Strokes saw their debut be recognised as a classic immediately. They didn’t have to wait for success - it came to them immediately and, like any group of young men they indulged in it greatly. The question that remained was how they would follow it up.
Between Is This It and their second album, Room on Fire, The Strokes were just about the hottest band in the world and each member of the band coped in their own different ways and, most crucially, with their own indulgences. Nick Valensi developed an addiction to Klonopin, Fab Moretti dated actress Drew Barrymore right up until the band went on Hiatus after their third album, Julian Casablancas slid into alcoholism as a reaction to the band unrelenting schedule (stating “Nothing I do productive I do sober”) and, most damaging of all, Albert Hammond began a drug addiction which would dominate his life until entering rehab in 2009. The demands of being the hottest act on the planet and the party boy image the band had made for themselves led them down roads which, for some members, would be completely self destructive.
But, in the meantime, they simply rode a wave of acclaim into 2002 and their famous 2 dollar bill concert for MTV. Playing in the round (and, eventually, all over the set!) to a small audience, it was an hour of prime time TV broadcast around the world but seemingly captured in the most retro, 70s manner possible. What remains of it on YouTube is grainy, blurred but, at the same time, completely apt for the band performing as if they were pulled backwards through a portal twenty five years. If MTV went and put out a HD re-release of the concert, it wouldn’t have the same appeal or impact. The band made cool by a rejection of mainstream values were made mainstream by it also. Later that year, they would be supporting the Rolling Stones and headline Reading festival ahead of Weezer and reformed legends Jane’s Addiction all of this barely two years on from playing New York dive bars to crowds in the tens. They were 2002’s band of the year according to Spin magazine without ever even releasing anything and earned it through an incredibly punishing touring schedule that even resulted in Casablancas being involved in a physical altercation with a record company exec and him having to perform sat down due to a knee injury.
Their mindset at this time is perhaps best captured in an interview with The Face where the band, most noticeably Julian, alternate between “playing the game” and being sick of it altogether - politely answering all the questions, opening up more than normal owing to the influence of alcohol and then writing in the journalist’s notes: ‘I’LL MISS YOUR CREEPY, IN THE SHADOWS, MAD SCRIBBLING,‘EXPOSE US FOR THE FRAUDULENT POSEURS WE ARE.’. The band were in the best place possible in their careers but, in doing so, had stretched themselves too thin and were all feeling the impact of it. This particularly affected Casablancas in terms of writing new songs as he finds himself unable to write new music on the road. Even at the end of 2002, the band would use the term 11 of 15 - they had 15 songs they were happy with all in all and 11 (12, if you count When It Started, the 9/11 replacement for New York City Cops) of them were already on Is This It.
And it is in that mindset they began to record Room on Fire.
The Strokes went straight from touring into what would be a disrupted recording session for their second album, Room on Fire. Initially beginning the sessions with Nigel Godrich, primarily known for producing Radiohead but then also often working with Beck, the partnership soon fell apart. Godrich stated, in 2009 to Drowned in Sound: “You know, the problem there was that me and Julian [Casablancas] are just too similar, we’re both control freaks. He wanted to do it his way, I wanted to do it my way, and obviously that’s the point of me being there. And I’m saying ‘Well, why am I here if you’re not prepared to try and do it the way I want to do it?’” Godrich goes on to praise the band’s first two albums, adding, “my ambition was for them to change, so that they would remain that force, and I felt like if they didn’t then they’d have nowhere to go. I think it kind of happened, but not really.”.
Julian Casablancas’ version of events would be retold to writer Neil Strauss in what Strauss would later call his worst interview ever - reproduced in the NME in 2011 and in his book Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead. Casablancas takes two attempts to tackle the Godrich situation over two attempts to complete the interview over two nights. His first attempt is as follows:
Strauss: Okay, so what’s your stock answer to the Nigel Godrich question?
Casablancas: “Fuck you. I’m not answering that question.”
Strauss: What the hell?
Casablancas: “Next question.”
Strauss: It’s interesting. People’s true personality comes out when they’re drunk…
Casablancas: “You’re too nice, man.”
Random woman at nearby table: “What’s he like when he’s sober?”
Casablancas: “Sober, he’s a fucking asshole.”
Random woman: “So what is he right now?”
Strauss: Half sober, half drunk.
Casablancas: “And when he’s tired, he’s a rapist. (Looks warily at the tape recorder, then speaks into the microphone:) Rape is bad. Very, very bad.”
Attempt two didn’t go much better…
Strauss: So what was your stock answer to the Nigel Godrich question?
Casablancas: “Yeah, it makes me nauseous explaining. It’s not even good. It’s like a run-on sentence, with little reference parts to lead to the next part. So…yeah, we just work differently. We got along great. All out parts need, you know, specific personalities, and the band comes in, plays live, and then he does his thing. And so we try to do it more hands off, blah, blah, blah, and that kind of thing.”
Strauss: That’s it?
Casablancas: “I said it in the wrong order. I started out with the working differently thing and I should have ended with it. And the whole thing is just a run-on sentence.
The Godrich situation sorted, if not exactly clarified, the band reverted to the producer of Is This It, Gordon Raphael, to produce Room on Fire over a three month period with the album having been written in two chunks - a few songs prior to their 2002 tour and the remainder in the run up to the recording of the Album. Nick Valensi would later state that that time period was slightly too short for the band to put out the album they really wanted to which would run contrary to much of what people would say about the album.
Room on Fire is an album that, on a personal level, probably holds more in the way of memories than Is This It coming out, as it did, in my first term of my first year at University. The album was my own introduction to the Strokes beyond the singles. For me, Room on Fire evokes memories of sitting around with my then girlfriend in the halls of residence and not being entirely sold on it.
That possibly best sums up my view on Room on Fire now - not entirely sold on it. It is, at once, completely similar to Is This It and but just different enough to remain interesting. Reptilia is simply the best track the band have ever made and the example of where Room on Fire works best - marrying the urgency of Is This It with a slickness and professionalism that Is This It eschewed but doing it right.
And that latter element is the key element that makes Room on Fire different from Is This It. Where Is This It was produced purposefully with the edges left rough, on Room on Fire, Gordon Raphael takes sandpaper to those rough edges and smooths them with varying results. Reptilia is, of course, the album’s peak, but the lead single, 12:51 is the most indicative of this slight variance in direction - Casablancas doesn’t shout, the level of technical ability across the band makes the song that much smoother - but in accepting those changes, slight though they may be, made the song itself that little bit less interesting. It feels that little bit less urgent and, as a result, that little bit less essential. Hence, when seeing Valensi state that the making of the album felt rushed (and it was compared to other Strokes albums) seems to run contrary to the actual music. Hearing those edges from Is This It being smoothed and refined, knowing the pressure the band was under and how members were coping (or failing to) with that gives the impression that this is an album where more care was taken and more bets were hedged than in the creation of Is This It and that is, I feel, to its detriment. Where Is This It is a great album driven by the energy and the feeling that the band are cutting loose on every track, Room on Fire is simply a good one in my own opinion because that element is lacking at times.
Obviously, other opinions are available and it’s to those we look now as it’s important to point out that opinion on Room on Fire varies quite wildly from some thinking it merely average to a fair portion of fans who actually prefer the album to Room On Fire. Making the argument for Room on Fire being better than Is This It in 2015 for Uproxx, Jon Hugel backed his argument up with the following: “Room On Fire didn’t have the chance to blow our minds the way Is This It did, because at that point we already knew what The Strokes were and could no longer be stunned by their greatness. With that said, when you ignore the historical importance of Is This It and simply view the first two Strokes albums as individual statements, the fight becomes a lot closer, and with all things considered, Room On Fire just barely comes out on top for me.”. And, at the time of release, it’s fair to say that reviews were rarely far from glowing - Metacritic may have it on 77 rather than the 91 of Is This It, but viewed individually, the reviews are positive - Rob Mitchum for Pitchfork: “Tracks like "Reptilia", "Meet Me in the Bathroom", and "Under Control" take their place alongside the highlights of the band's debut, all hitting that perfect contrast of woozy nonchalance and taut guitar work that appears to be the alpha and omega of their stylistic inventory. That there's nothing new or innovative to be found here is sure to be a common complaint, though only those who prize evolution over knowing one's strengths will cry fraud.” Alex Needham for NME: “What’s missing is the shock and delight that accompanied ‘Is This It’, the sense of territories being (re)discovered. ‘Room On Fire’ is a refining and tinkering with The Strokes sound, a carefully calibrated attempt not to fuck up too early in the face of untold temptations. The results are still sleek, sexy and thrilling, with a tantalising promise of even better to come” Finally, Dan Tallis for the BBC: OK, I was demanding the impossible when I asked to be as excited by this record as much as I was by Is This It. Bands should think themselves lucky to achieve such heights just once in their careers. However, they've done all they could have done. They've made Is This It part two. It's more of the same plus extras. And I'm more than happy to settle for that.”
These positive reviews gave sales the initial bump one would expect and, when added to the how anticipated the album was, to see Room on Fire match Is This It’s early chart success in the UK and surpass Is This It’s original launch success in the US was heartening but, ultimately, it petered out and Room on Fire only sold about half the copies of Is This It due primarily to lacking the enduring legacy that Is This It immediately had and keeps to this day.
The band would the go on tour supported by Kings of Leon to back up the album but, quickly, the dynamic would change within the band and within the wider world of alternative music itself. By 2006 and the release of third album, The Strokes had seen some of the bands that followed them such as The Killers, White Stripes and former support Kings of Leon gain success and shift far more records than Room on Fire did. The second wave of the early noughties alternative revolution walked on the ground that the Strokes had already trodden but had none of the barriers to success that the Strokes had as commercial success was more certain. Where Is This It peaked in the UK and went double platinum, Hot Fuss by The Killers (a far inferior album in every way), went 7 times platinum and sold millions more worldwide. Even as The Strokes were headlining festivals, seeing the fortunes of other bands outstrip them so much while also seeing their own fortunes fall created a real sense of dissatisfaction.
From an NME Interview prior to an Oxygen headline spot in 2004, the writer stated: “It’s their first (major festival) since ‘Room On Fire’ was released to a muted response and disappointing sales. The acclaim of ‘Is This It’ is becoming a faded memory and Franz Ferdinand are leading the charge of fresher, younger acts keen to prove they are the beating heart of music right now. The nonchalant boys from New York need to prove they can be winners.”. Entering the process of making the next album, The Strokes had something to prove - not just that they could shift the same volume of records as these newer bands but also to themselves as to how to blow those bands out of the water. It seems hard to doubt that there was a jealousy within the band that others were now getting the acclaim and the riches thanks to their own work.
Further to that, there were plenty of life changes as well - Nikolai Fraiture would get married, Albert Hammond Jr engaged, Nick Valensi would start a relationship with (and marry after the release of the Album) Amanda de Cadenet and Julian Casablancas would not just get married, he would also get sober. The band weren’t free of all of their personal baggage but, individually they were more settled while being collectively more pissed off. In that framing, it makes the hiatus the band took after First Impressions of Earth very understandable and the album would only exacerbate the issues that were already deep rooted within the band - the transition from the band of best friends prior to Is This It into five individual units come 2006. They grew more dissatisfied at the same time as they were growing apart. First Impressions of Earth would, not surprisingly, be a bruising experience.
Similarly to Room on Fire, the first problem would be one of production. Initially, the band started the album with regular producer Gordon Raphael but, midway through, Hammond suggested they switch to David Kahne, who had produced such artists as Sugar Ray, Tony Bennett and Paul McCartney after making his name producing The Bangles. These two men would collaborate at the start but issues with the working relationship meant Raphael would pull out of the recordings. Gordon Raphael, in an interview on his website: “First Impressions of Earth was really not a sound determined in any way by me. It reflects a real desire from the band at that time to move into a bigger-clearer production sense. You can hear it on the drums, bass- everywhere in fact. I think they wanted to break through to more people, escape the sonic trademarks of their earlier efforts and explore new ground. I have nothing but respect and admiration for David Khane’s musical and production abilities, they just are very very much different than my own. Perhaps some words that indicate those differences would be fun and immediacy, vs accuracy and marketability?”
Kahne wasn’t the most obvious choice for a new producer. While his earlier career was quite fitting, he was, as Raphael suggests, a producer more to try and reach the band’s aim to sell a lot of records more than to try and make an exceptional album. The band viewed Room on Fire as a disappointment - Fab Moretti to Spin: “This is like our second second album. It’s our chance to be born again.” This drive to change up their sound with a slightly different end game is what really drove the production changes - that the band only managed to make two songs in two months and Raphael served more as a translator to Kahne as to how to interpret Casablancas’ ideas. Once Kahne was fluent in Julian, then Raphael was no longer needed. The sound was always going to change and the relationship with Raphael was always going to fall apart - they simply needed him to transition to someone else. Raphael in Spin: “They wanted this record to be really serious and big and pro. They think that’s what held them back in America.”
Even if you’ve never heard the album, that’s the sort of statement that would set alarm bells ringing - a creative change driven by commercial interests as opposed to natural evolution. Would First Impressions of Earth simply be “The Strokes Sell Out”?
The run up to the release of First Impressions of Earth showed the dangers of the internet. With the album and first single slated for early 2006, songs started leaking in September 2005 starting with lead single Juicebox. This meant that the single’s release had to be shifted to October (for download, before a video had even been shot) and on CD in December. Commercially, it would be a success being their highest charting single in both the UK and the USA. Artistically, it featured a much heavier and meatier sound than any Strokes song prior. Critically, however…?
The NME ended it’s track review with this line: “Howly, scowly and punk-rock growly – the Yanks’ll love it. Which, um, may be something of The Point.” NME, the band’s biggest cheerleaders, even gave it a review that damned with faint praise. In Stereogum’s 10 year retrospective of the album, they republished some of their forum comments about the song and here is the one I feel sums it up the most: “I think this is just a bad song. Like someone said in the comments before, if the Strokes came out tomorrow and said “haha it’s a fake, shit isn’t it?” i’d breathe a huge sigh of relief and stop trying to trick myself into liking it.” Juicebox was high budget with it’s David Cross starring video and taking on the impression that the band was big everywhere but the US. The thudding guitars at the start reminiscent of Weezer’s Hash Pipe, the shouted chorus, the provocative sexual content in the video itself (featuring what can only be described as lesbian soft porn) - that the Strokes were attempting to force their way into the mainstream through shock and awe was blatant but the song itself was simply not good enough to do that - it was a pale imitation of the more successful bands they were trying to ape and, worse still, a pale imitation of the Strokes themselves.
Soon after, the album opener, You Only Live Once (a retooled version of a demo called I’ll try anything once which is, possibly, superior to the version that made the album) leaked and appeased the fans - the song remains one of the band’s very finest. Other songs would continue to leak until, at the end of November, a full 5 weeks before the album was to be released, the entirety of First Impressions of Earth leaked. Similarly to Room on Fire, initial sales were strong - their first UK number one album, number 4 in the US but it was a mirage. Those sales were driven by the hardcore Strokes fan (of which there were a lot) buying the album as soon as it came out and everything dropped off soon after ending up at roughly half the amount of Room on Fire which was, in itself, around half of Is This It.
Why was that? For a start, First Impressions of Earth is, by some distance, the longest Strokes album - over 15 minutes longer than Is This It and nearly 20 minutes longer than Room on Fire which automatically stretched The Strokes’ formula as far as it could possibly go. Is This It and Room on Fire were tight albums with little in the way of superfluous songs. First Impressions of Earth, however, was flabby to put it generously. Mojo’s description of it as “an overgrown squall of an album” doesn’t seem that inaccurate. NME’s “Album A&E” feature on the album just prior to the release of Angles “structured like an old-fashioned A-side/B-side LP, while the first half of the album speeds headfirst into a night, the flipside has a more contemplative feel” which would be fine if two things were true - if people wanted the Strokes to be contemplative in the first place and if those songs were actually any good.
Reviewers, generally, agreed and that played out in sales. Music analyst Chris Molanphy, writing for NPR, describes something he coined the AC/DC Rule after Back In Black performed far more poorly initially than the follow up to it, For Those About to Rock, but Back in Black shipped far more copies in the long run. At its simplest, early sales are a reflection of the popularity of the last album, not on the quality of the current one. People went out and bought First Impressions of Earth initially because they liked other Strokes music. People then stopped buying it because they didn’t like First Impressions of Earth.
So what was so bad about it? From my own perspective, listening to it then and to it now is that, beyond the fourth or fifth track, it all blends into one as the mood is taken a little darker and as tracks mould into one. It lacks hooks and is, bluntly, pretty unmemorable. It isn’t offensively bad or anything like that, it simply goes on and on. Unlike Is This It and Room on Fire, it has also aged terribly to the point where it becomes almost unlistenable. Cut by about 15 minutes (at least), then a good album could have emerged but, for various reasons, it didn’t.
Key in that was the troubled production and the changed lifestyles of the members. This was the first album not to be exclusively written by Casablancas - as he cleaned himself up, he became more collaborative but in a quite fake way - he was still the person coming up with the ideas, he was now simply bringing them in 90% finished rather than 99% done. That created a very different environment to the band of brothers the band had been before - Moretti called it “ “difficult to put on a smile everyday. It was a get-the-job-done kind of thing.” Fraiture “The certain thing that makes bands great — the communication, the focus — was starting to recede.” And Hammond: “Talk about not having fun — that’s the understatement of the year.”
The result was, according to Pitchfork: “the band's failures do, if nothing else, possess a certain schadenfreude, allowing a fascinating glimpse at a band futilely grasping in all directions for something new and meaningful, only to fumble with a half-fragment of unformed idea between its desperate fingers.” And, wherever the issues in production led to, the fact remained, as per Kevin Jagernauth in Popmatters: “it might be easy to point to the industry guy behind the boards, the album speaks for itself, and the Strokes managed to write a flop all by themselves.”
First Impressions of Earth, ultimately, served only to exacerbate the problems the band had after Room on Fire. Trying to change their sound only drove people away and the experience as a whole drove a wedge between bandmates. They had changed and gotten their own things to do just as the whole Strokes project faltered most and that the band was going to take a break was inevitable. At the end of their US tour in 2006, they would go their separate ways for the best part of four years and First Impressions of Earth songs would fairly rapidly become a rarity in their live setlists.
During their last US tour, manager Ryan Gentles announced the band would take an extended break. First Impressions of Earth would, for some time, be the world’s last impression of The Strokes.
This break that went longer than originally intended for various reasons, primarily an extended stint in rehab for Albert Hammond, who went into a tailspin after the break up of a relationship with model Agyness Dean. Hammond had had drug issues for some time, going deeper after Room on Fire and then spiralling into a habit he himself said meant he was taking substances up to 20 times a day including cocaine and heroin.
But that was hardly the only thing that was going on in the multiyear gap between First Impressions of Earth and the first post-hiatus and, to that point, most collaborative album, Angles and it’s to what each member was up to in this time that we look at now.
Albert Hammond Jr is perhaps the best place to start given he kept himself the busiest. Within a year of the release of First Impressions of Earth, Hammond would have a solo album pencilled in for release. Hammond, unlike Casablancas, wrote on the road and, with the band going on hiatus, he took the opportunity as the perfect time to get his solo stuff out there. Between First Impressions of Earth and Angles, he would release two albums - Yours to Keep and Como te Llama. Post-reunion, he would also release the AHJ EP in 2013 and Momentary Masters in 2015.
Yours To Keep, as the first Stroke Solo album is, of course, the most notable and, possibly, the best of the side project albums. It is admittedly slight but it is distinctive enough for it to be worth existing and, at points, reminds one of what you’d potentially get if The Shins started doing Strokes covers - there is an inherent Strokes-ness that one doesn’t have to look too hard for given that many of these songs were originally suggested by Hammond for the band but were rejected and retooled for this effort - In Transit, in particular, goes closest to simply being a happy Strokes, something that one wouldn’t associate with the band due to Casablancas’ writing and also Casablancas’ distinctive “singing”. You can see why some of the songs were rejected and it has more to do with tone than with quality - you couldn’t imagine a song such as the cutesy Cartoon Music for Superheroes, the opener, on any Strokes album but that doesn’t make it lesser and, in fact, it stands out as a better album than First Impressions of Earth.
While few would describe the album as essential, it makes up an important part of the transit from The Strokes as the head of an entire scene to The Strokes being simply a band as they are when they return from hiatus as it shows Hammond’s own evolution into a lighter but lyrically dark songwriter of his own as the Strokes transitioned from being a band with everything written by Julian Casablancas into more of a democracy.
His follow up, Como te Llama? Was less successful in almost every sense. The cheeriness of Yours to Keep is gone in favour of a heavier album stylistically and in tone, perhaps reflecting that Hammond was only about 12 months prior to a stint in rehab. It is clear that, unlike Yours to Keep, these are his own songs as opposed to his angle on things he had written during his time in The Strokes and this resultant lack of focus brings a more uneven, and even slightly stodgy, experience compared to his previous album.
In interviews, Hammond has admitted that his solo career at this time exacerbated his substance issues. To Rolling Stone in 2013: “I was never a "maintain" guy. I was never, like, "Let's just do just enough so that no one notices." I was always, like, "I'll just destroy myself for as long as I could, and then I'd be like, Ok. I need a break." And the break wouldn't be stopping everything, but it would just be stopping shooting up. I’d be like, "Oh, I'll just drink, and smoke, and take pills. I'll just slow down." And that's the only way you can function. Weirdly enough, whenever I'd go tour with my solo stuff, I’d always stop everything. So I’d always be in the worst place on tour. I'd be broken.”
Hammond would enter rehab during the recording for the next Strokes album, Angles, in 2009.
Next on the side project train was drummer Fab Moretti and his band Little Joy. While with The Strokes, he met and started a friendship with Los Hermanos singer Rodrigo Amarante and both The Strokes and Los Hermanos went on hiatus at around the same time so, as their scheduled synced up, Moretti and Amarante began to make music while Amarante was in LA working with Devendra Banhart. Moretti found a final piece of the puzzle in the fantastically named Binki Shapiro and put out an album, also “Little Joy”, which stands a possibly the best solo Strokes effort given as it isn’t borne out of any long held ambition to be a soloist nor is it made by someone undergoing some sort of existential crisis - it is simply some friends hanging out making music and has an innate easy-going affability that the efforts of others, and arguably of the band itself, couldn’t replicate.
Nikolai Fraiture came up with the original band name of Nickel Eye for his solo project - a collection of poems and lyrics from, primarily, his pre-Strokes life that he wanted to put to music. With a backing band in the UK and cameos from Regina Spektor and Nick Zimmer, Fraiture did most of everything on the one album The Time of the Assassins - vocals, guitar, bass, production. If that sounds horribly self indulgent, it’s because it was: the songs were passable but Fraiture, in the words of Pitchfork “as a singer, he’s a hell of a bassist” and, given Fraiture is more or less incapable of holding a tune on the album (and not in an endearing way), it’s hard to recommend.
In 2009, Julian Casablancas released his first solo album, Phrazes for the Young on which Casablancas did more or less everything himself. While, in a sense, that’s not too different to Room on Fire or Is This It, this included instruments and the album is a nice bridge between where The Strokes left off and where they would pick up with Angles - bridging the 70s, Scuzzy garage variety of Old Strokes and putting in more synthy and, dare one say, futuristic elements. Casablancas’ slurred vocals remain the same but the production is very different with the help of Jason Ladey, who had worked with Rilo Kiley and Maroon 5. It has a veneer that betrays Casablancas’ origins and repeatedly shoves one idea too many into a song with every song averaging over 5 minutes - even at 8 songs and 40 minute running time, it feels long. It may not have been critically mauled, perhaps due as much due to that people waited to hear it and that 11th Dimension is an absolute banger of a lead off single but it perhaps is best considered along with albums such as No Doubt’s Return of Saturn - over-produced, over-thought and a very imperfect lens through which to view the artist’s ideas.
Nick Valensi is the odd one out in so much as he didn’t release anything during the hiatus and was busy looking after his young family and, if anything, seemed to be not all that keen on others going away and doing their own thing. Admitting to writing songs during the hiatus with the main band in mind to Exclaim: “for me, it was more a question of doing the songs justice and not just doing a solo project for the sake of doing it because everyone else was.” To NME: “The time off was really frustrating for me. I didn't want to take all that time off. I was pushing to make a record and do a tour a lot sooner.” Valensi, was, if not irritated, then certainly angsty about the fact that everyone was doing their own thing as opposed to focusing on the band as opposed to collating their talents (and their music) into The Strokes.
And so, to the return. There is a key difference between pre-hiatus Strokes and post-hiatus Strokes not necessarily in the band themselves or in the music, but in the public perception of them. Prior to hiatus, they were important, they were vital. Post-hiatus, they transitioned to being “just a band”. That isn’t to diminish the effort they put into their records, but the specialness that the Strokes had around them prior to First Impressions of Earth had well and truly gone thanks to a combination of a poor third album and time itself having moved them on from being hot young things to elder statesmen of their scene.
Perhaps more than any other Strokes album, the return album, Angles, would have a particularly tortured creation due both to personal demons and the drawn out recording process that that resulted in. On the first part, as already mentioned, Albert Hammond Jr would enter rehab during the making of the album, but the other demon dogging the album was from Julian.
Much of this was because the album was the most collaborative Strokes album yet, with Casablancas making a conscious decision to try to keep away where possible to ensure the band didn’t rely upon his input as the final word. After the communication issues that hurt First Impressions of Earth, Casablancas decided to try to make the album a more open experience for the rest of the band. Valensi: “This is the first one where we are truly working democratically. It's taken a long time because this is a new model for us”
Taking a long time was no understatement, Angles took the best part of two years to put together. Initially, the band convened to write material and put live demos together before going into record parts separately with Joe Chiccarelli producing. Chiccarelli’s plan was to put the album together with as little editing as possible, meaning that each part had to be perfect with songs taking up to 70 takes to be considered done. What further complicated this was that, with Casablancas living in LA, he was not present at these sessions and was recording vocals separately to the rest of the band. Valensi again: "I won’t do the next album if we make it like this. No way. It was awful– just awful.” The band would scrap and rework all but one song from these sessions for the actual album itself.
While the remainder of the sessions would prove more fruitful, there was little getting away from the frustrating, albeit not outright rift-causing, nature of the recording of the album. Producer Gus Oberg: “ We'd taken a year to come to conclusions about how the track should sound and where to cut the drums, et cetera, and my actual mix was very quick. It took me 30 minutes! Later, when the decision had been taken to use my mix, I said: 'If that's what you like, I can do one that's a little better and cleaner.' I'd slammed the tracks very hard through the board, and it's so compressed that it has pops in places that sound like percussive hits. I had not taken the time to do any crossfades. So I spent a whole day re-creating and improving my mix. They sound virtually identical to me, but someone could hear the difference, and preferred the original. So we went with the one I did in half an hour!”
That quote perhaps best sums up the experience of recording Angles. There was little in the way of actual problems, there were simply plenty in the way of dead ends and that made the recording process a chore - work was done, the band tried to explore everything and be perfectionists but landed back, often, on the quicker sounds. Few modern albums have probably seen so much work done only to end up on the scrapheap - 18 songs were put together in these second sessions and only 10 would make the album. That, when added to the aborted first set of sessions show just how frustrating the creation of the album was and, as Valensi hinted towards, it was seen more as a chore than anything else by the time recording finished in late 2010 for Angles to be released in March 2011.
The album, at least, isn’t a chore to listen to in the main. It is certainly an improvement on First Impressions of Earth in so much as at no point is it just plain dull, but it is lesser compared to Room on Fire so, while Casablancas may have described the album and it’s workings as “Operation Make Everyone Satisfied”, it doesn’t. It blends the distinctly faux-Seventies original Strokes sound with Phrazes for the Young’s faux-Eighties futurism to mixed results - “Taken for a fool” blends the two best of all while the clunky welding together of the two influences doesn’t get in the way on opener Macchu Picchu. But it does almost everywhere else. Pitchfork savaged the album closing their review with “Everybody wants to quit while they're ahead. Some actually do it.” The Guardian: “Angles just sounds like an album made by people who really didn't want to make an album”.
That’s slightly unfair - if one were to compare it to Phrazes for the Young, probably the band’s album 3.5 given their old creative process, the album benefits from the democracy and having band members there to moderate Casablancas’ vision. There is no descent into the overly dense muddle of Casablancas’ solo effort at any point, there is simply the sound of a band almost Under Cover of Darkness fumbling to marry two fairly disparate sounds together in the best way possible and both failing and succeeding in equal measure. Under Cover of Darkness, the lead single, emphasised this - yes, it’s the band’s most traditional track, but it’s staccato rhythm and use of chords which don’t traditionally go together show the ideas at play - on Phrazes for the Young, it would have gone crazy and been awful but with the full band, it’s moderated into a decent little track on an album that is about as 6/10 as they come.
By the time Angles came out, threads of new material for the follow up were already starting to emerge due less to a creative burst and more due to the length of time it took to master Angles. Along with that, the Angles sessions left plenty of unused material and it seemed that the follow up would not be long in coming - within a month of Angles coming out, the band were already recording. However, the actual recording process was similar to Angles in so much as it was a democratic structure and songs were put together piece by piece. And all anyone could put together about the album, even five years after it’s release, is piece by piece as best as the next album, 2013’s Comedown Machine was supported by no tour, no interviews, no promos - a near total media blackout.
The reasoning behind this is pretty hard to work out - for one, it did definitely impact sales: it was the band’s lowest charting record with only 41,000 first week sales - and opinions differ. Was it to give the band some mystique back? If so, it failed massively. Was it because they wanted it to be judged on merit? Or was it because it was the last album of their deal with RCA and they couldn’t be bothered? All arguments have a grain of truth behind them, surely. But what it wasn’t was a result of another fractious recording session - while Angles was a chore perhaps because of the new structure, Comedown Machine is an album where the band members entered the creative process fully aware that that’s what was going to happen and, as a result, much of the sometimes jarring blends disappear.
Listening to the album is a cheerier experience than with Angles - things flow better and there are even hints of The Strokes having picked up on tips from those who followed after them and those before, such as on the punky 50/50 or the very Killers-y Slow Animals. What the album lacks is any obvious song that is better than anything else on it - Angles may have it’s issues, but Under Cover of Darkness is still an exceptional song. While the band veer closer to Casablancas’ solo work than they do Is This It, the album still possesses a feeling of Strokes By Numbers that makes it hard to recommend not because it’s a bad album per se, but because it feels inessential. The media blackout made it seem as if the band didn’t care all that much about what they had made and the album has a similar impact - Comedown Machine is a band playing it safe. Kitty Empire for The Guardian: “Full of clever sounds, with melodies butting up against countermelodies and more laughs than you might think, Comedown Machine is by no means a bad record. It just has the misfortune of being the record that few Strokes fans want from them.”
Comedown Machine perhaps shares most of it’s DNA with Room On Fire - an album that sounds better produced and slicker than the effort directly before it, but misses something. For Room on Fire, it was charm, for Comedown Machine, it’s a single. Angles may have been hit and miss, but Comedown Machine is neither - it’s not a 6/10 where it’s flaws are raised by the odd success, it’s a 6/10 because every song is pretty darned average.
There were, at least, live shows for the first songs post-RCA. Future Present Past, the 2016 EP, is a breezy 3 songs long without ever really being totally clear on which song represents the future, the present or the past yet all with the “Late Strokes” tendency to be overlong and to try to fit one idea too many into a song -Drag Queen, in particular, suffers from this particular trope, while OBLIVIUS and Threat of Joy at least sound like they could have been off-cuts from Is This It or Room on Fire due to their sound and their standard. It, at least, hints towards the band still having an ability to deliver crowd pleasing songs that would fit into their live set.
Post-hiatus Strokes are a funny beast and it is tempting to almost think of the pre-hiatus and post-hiatus as two entirely separate bands. Few bands have gotten as much mileage out of one truly great album but few bands have suffered as much due to it. Is This It is classic, Room on Fire is pretty damned good as well, but the sharp decline in quality and the break the band took saw the band siphon fans. The demographic who came of age with The Modern Age were, by the end of that decade, settling down into the point where they started moving out of the scene and into suburbia. When the Strokes returned with Angles, it simply didn’t register with plenty of people - Pitchfork’s review of Future Present Past tells of an interaction with a self-proclaimed Strokes fan who, when asked what they thought of the last album, Comedown Machine, simply went “What’s that?”
Is This It remains a seminal album which broke down walls and created an entire scene in its wake and began a half decade long indie revival that only really came to an end once Arctic Monkeys broke through. But that scene ate The Strokes up - it made objectively worse bands far richer and more commercially successful than tham (see The Killers) and, in doing so, it made the band bitter that they did all the leg-work only to see others make the most of it while they got panned. In a way, it almost parallels Britpop a decade before it with Suede breaking it through into the mainstream but Blur and Oasis being the ones to make the ridiculous money with inferior material. But while Suede changed themselves successfully, The Strokes never escaped the shadow of their first album. Room on Fire was too similar and whichever experiments they came up with after never fully worked and, on occasion, were just downright bad.
As a result, the band aged. Is This It is what comes to mind when their name crops up and it gives every listener a feeling, a timewarp back to 2001 and whatever it was they were doing at that time. Inadvertently, The Strokes became the exact thing they aped - those bands from New York in the late 1970s who made some classic music and then disappeared save for the odd reunion tour, like Television. People go to a Rolling Stones gig to hear Jagger sing Paint It Black or Satisfaction, not some ballad from Voodoo Lounge. In the same way, people go to a Strokes gig to hear Last Nite, not for songs made post Angles. The past near two decades of the band’s existence have seen them fight to define their own legacy only to become some sort of legacy band where only the old stuff matters to the point where they, if not embrace it, at least accept the reality because it pays the mortgage. New material is put out as an attempt to see if, this time at last, the band can reinvent the wheel while tours have become a chore as the band transfer from “group of friends having fun” to “business venture”,
The band are now in the realms not of the cutting edge, but of classic rock - a sound they initially embraced and a sound they’ve spent so much time and effort trying to kick back against but never getting rid of it.
Is This It all they will ever be defined of in spite of so much material, so much water under the bridge? Is That It?
Yes, it is.
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