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demigodofhoolemere · 4 months

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Collecting all of my thoughts on the 60th specials now that they’re over and there’s a cohesive overall picture, because I had many and I want to de-clutter them in my head for my own sake. Not in any particular order of significance, just stream of consciousness as I rewatch.

Be warned that while there were definitely things I enjoyed, there’s going to be a good bit of negativity in here, so if you understandably don’t want to see critiques of something you really liked, please do yourself the favor and don’t read this. I know what it’s like to see very negative takes on something you loved a lot and I know how bad it can feel as it sits with you in your stomach for a while if you’re particularly sensitive to it. Enter at your own risk. Also, I’m not looking to be argued with so if you read any of this and disagree with me on things, please just keep scrolling. This is just me throwing my thoughts at the wall.

And obviously, massive spoiler warnings here. I’ll be talking freely about all the things.

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THE STAR BEAST

- I’ve seen people make fun of the opening but I don’t find anything wrong with it in particular. The Doctor standing there like he was cut and pasted is a little silly but it’s not laughably bad either. I get the feeling they realized after they’d already shot the specials that they needed a recap and threw it together pretty quickly but it’s not terrible.

- The new credits are GORGEOUS and the music makes me very happy.

- I have issues with it that I’ll get into but despite myself it’s nice to see Tennant again. He was my first Doctor and his era is very nostalgic for me so it would be hard to be totally unhappy to have him around.

- That said, now with the context that the return of this face somehow has nothing to do with the Toymaker, I’m baffled and not a fan of bringing him back just for the sake of it. I really thought there was going to be SOME kind of interference by the Toymaker that would be delved into a bit when he eventually turned up, something to justify this, but no. Which means that he really is just back because that particular regeneration needed closure or something, and yeah, Ten had issues and not the happiest sendoff, but in my personal opinion it just feels more like favoritism from RTD. For 57 years, regeneration has meant letting go, and it comes across like RTD can’t do that if he has to make up non-interference-related reasons for bringing an old face back and thereby altering regeneration mythos (which he does again in an even worse way later…) by suddenly saying it’s possible for a past life to come back. I know there’s technically precedence for old faces returning, in the form of the Curator, but that was done so quickly and vaguely that it’s not invasive. This is asking us to go along with old faces coming back for *checks notes* reasons, and to give a whole new number, altering our numbering system forever, to who is essentially just Ten again. I’m sorry, but I am never calling him Fourteen. I’m resigned to the fact that I’ll have to refer to Ncuti as Fifteen and so on from there, but that’s just Ten. The only difference is that he’s got three more lives in his head that make very slight differences to his personality. Very, very slight. But it’s bugging the crud out of me that Tennant is apparently so special that it’s fine to randomly have him become himself again, that he gets two numbers, and is now being made to appear twice on every poster that has the full lineup. I am never going to acknowledge him as a whole new regeneration between Jodie and Ncuti, I’m sorry. I adore Tennant, he’s my first and I’m legally obligated to mention that I do love him extremely dearly, but if none of this had anything to do with the Toymaker torturing him and playing with his emotions or something by making him look like his old self who had so much baggage, then this whole thing is immediately silly and self-indulgent on RTD’s part.

- I know that the Doctor and Donna were brought together again because the two of them combined as the DoctorDonna could save London, but it happens so fast and without emotion. Their paths just sort of happen to cross, immediately. It’s done very quickly and in a way that doesn’t let me feel the full weight of him reacting to seeing her again.

- However I love seeing Donna again. She’s very much the same Donna I’ve always loved and it’s great to see her.

- I do like bringing back the recurring joke of Donna missing out on obvious alien attacks, lol.

- Nice that this stuff takes place in Camden seeing as Bill Hartnell partly grew up there.

- I appreciate moments like the psychic paper saying “Grand Mistress” instead of “Grand Master” as acknowledgment of Thirteen’s existence. I was worried she’d be entirely swept under the rug.

- Allons-y! 💙 That does my inner 2012 self’s heart good.

- Shaun Temple is a sweetheart and a delight.

- Gotta love throwing in one last reference to Nerys, lol.

- Donna, I’m proud of you for being such a good person that you want to give away your money to people in need, but keep at least SOME of it, girl! You’ve got a family!

- Shirley Anne Bingham is awesome and she can stay as long as she likes.

- Oh boy… pretty much everything to do with Rose feels very ham-fisted and clumsy to me. You can have a trans character without going about it like this. If the point is supposed to be to normalize portraying it in media, then it should be natural, not be about making a point. Shoving it down the audience’s throat every minute is naturally going to make people dislike the writing, even people who fully agree with the intent. I’ve already seen a fair number of LGBT+ viewers discuss this being poorly done. It doesn’t feel well-written to me and I don’t think it’s going to age particularly well either. More on this later as the worst of it crops up.

- I love Sylvia trying so hard to protect Donna by completely denying anything alien and acting like everything is normal. This poor woman is doing everything she can. I never thought I’d like her so much.

- Sad to hear Donna talk about feeling like she’s lost something but never knowing what it is.

- The Meep and the Wrarth Warriors all look incredible.

- Not a fan of the sonic basically being a magic wand. There’s a reason they ended up ditching it in the Classic series, because it was getting so that the Doctor relied too much on it, and that was before it had anywhere near the convenient powers it’s had throughout the modern series. This is a big step even further than they’ve ever taken it before and it really took me out of it. The sonic shouldn’t be able to create Iron Man HUD screens or Green Lantern hard light shields. I’m hoping they don’t do that again as the show continues.

- Murray Gold’s music is beautiful and it’s great to have it back. It does have a tendency to get too loud, though. I like to hear what people are saying.

- I do quite like the interactions between the Doctor and Shirley. She’s got a good personality to bounce off of him. I especially like them waving at each other as he sneaks off onto the UNIT truck.

- That pretty purple light coming from the ship was more exciting when I thought it was the Toymaker’s power coming to control them. Oh well.

- Love Donna’s reaction to the Meep.

- Poor Sylvia at her wit’s end. Someone help that woman.

- While it’s fitting that the Doctor has now been slapped by the trifecta of mothers from the RTD era, I’m not sure that we should still be doing gags like that where it’s apparently okay and funny to slap someone if they’re a man. The reverse would go down very differently. At least in context it makes perfect sense for Sylvia to be angry that he’s shown up and to want to get rid of him, but I hope that kind of humor doesn’t stay.

- Shaun walking in on all of this chaos like

- Nice to see the Doctor get emotional over Wilf. Same, dude.

- ^ I also really like that Kate took it upon herself to get him into a nice care home practically for free. I appreciate that she gets in touch with so many of the companions and that she’d go out of her way to help him have what he needs. I could see her dad doing that, too. I’d like to think that Yates is in the same care home (considering Richard Franklin is in real life at this point) and he and Wilf can share stories.

- Gaaahh at, “You’re assuming ‘he’ as a pronoun?” Nobody talks like this.

- Not sure the Doctor should be talking so freely about aliens and two hearts right in front of Donna and risk her remembering. He even casually hands her the sonic for a moment and shortly after starts explaining what it is. Probably not the best idea. Bit careless, mate.

- Part of me feels like the barrister wig bit is a little too silly, but then again:

- Anyone who had any awareness of the original comic was already waiting for the Meep’s turn, but knowing didn’t make it any less of a good reveal. I liked the very sudden shift.

- Shirley having weapons in her wheelchair, heck yeah. Reminds me of the Brig’s concealed gun in his cane in SJA.

- I like Donna feeling compelled to help even if she can’t remember having ever done anything like this. I also like Sylvia’s chilled realization that Donna called him “Doctor” without having ever been told.

- Lol at the kid watching the destruction from the window and not running or looking freaked out in the slightest. Boy has no self-preservation instincts.

- There is definitely some good emotion going on with the Doctor’s conflict in having to reactivate Donna’s memories, and it’s extremely well acted, but for whatever reason I don’t feel as much weight here as I should. It’s not just that I’m too disconnected from their original run at this point, because I rewatched The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End as well as The End of Time in the lead-up to this airing and I was severely emotionally impacted like I’d been thrown back 10 years in time, so I have no idea why I just don’t feel as much as I wish I did. It’s definitely not about their acting. Maybe it’s just too quick? Because I feel like the pacing of this episode in general goes by so fast that there hasn’t been enough time to really drive home the drama of what remembering will do to her, or the full extent of their relationship. Everything just sort of happens. The conflict of having to choose to restore her memories is great but the actual regaining of those memories just feels… sudden? Unearned? I don’t know.

- Don’t know how to feel about Donna having straight up Winter Soldier trigger words to unlock her memories.

- I really feel like her getting her memories back should have been a much more emotional moment between the two of them. She has no reaction to suddenly having it all back — it’s just undercut with the humor of yelling about having given away all of her lottery money, and being mad at him that there was a subconscious part of her that had his influence that drove her to do that. Honestly, I believe Donna would do it anyway, you don’t need to make some explanation for his soft heart still sticking around in her head like she wouldn’t have done that on her own. After a decade of wishing Donna could one day have her memories restored, this isn’t what I wanted out of it.

- It’s better a minute later when she realizes she only has 55 seconds left before her brain fries but she’s okay with it because it’s the best 55 seconds of her life to now be fully herself again. It’s also sweet when the Doctor is holding her as she begins to fade away, even if it’s undercut a moment later by her suddenly waking again.

- I’m not sure why the metacrisis energy in her head would split off and have half go into Rose in the womb. I suppose you could come up with a way that makes it make sense but it’s pretty convenient.

- Doctor: “We are binary.”

Donna: “She’s not. Because the Doctor’s —”

Doctor: “Male.”

Donna: “And female.”

Rose: “And neither. And more.”

… Huh??? Are they trying to say that Rose is trans because the Doctor is capable of being either male or female and the metacrisis somehow passed this on?

- I like the quick moment between the Doctor and Sylvia. Didn’t know I wanted more of them.

- The Meep’s ominous allusion to “the boss” doesn’t seem to have been about the Toymaker, so… what gives? Not that that’s a bad thing that it wasn’t, I wasn’t sure what to think of him having people working for him anyway, but I’m curious if that thread will ever get picked up.

- Donna: “Yes, we know.”

Rose: “We know everything, thanks.”

Donna: “And you know nothing. It’s a shame you’re not a woman anymore. ‘Cause she’d have understood.”

Rose: “We’ve got all that power, but there is a way to get rid of it. Something a male-presenting Time Lord will never understand.”

Okay, first off, why the attitude with the Doctor? Geez. Second, Thirteen never let go of anything in her life lol, no she wouldn’t have understood. Third, did they not just say that the Doctor is ‘male and female and neither and more’? Now a few minutes later the Doctor is suddenly just a dumb man who could never understand because he doesn’t have a woman’s perspective? One minute we’re saying gender doesn’t matter because he’s both and none, the next we’re using the standard binary against him to act like the women are so much smarter than him? There’s no need to pick on him like that, and please, just pick one, you can’t have it both ways. Also, oh my word, ‘male-presenting Time Lord’? Russell, can I have a word with you about writing sentences that sound like they would actually come out of someone’s mouth?

- ^ Additionally, the solution to the metacrisis is to just… let go of it. They literally just choose to make the energy leave them. Easy as that. That feels so incredibly unearned and completely undermines the stakes involved. For 15 years Donna was at risk of having her head explode. Her ending was an absolute tragedy with very serious consequences. And now they just go, ‘Well, they can let go of the metacrisis though’. All of the drama of her circumstances feels horribly undermined by the easiness and convenience of that. I don’t think they should have fixed everything in just the first episode of this anyway, let alone that lazily.

- I am quite a fan of the new TARDIS interior. It’s a bit big, hopefully we’ll get some furniture in there over time or something, but it’s a very neat design. I’m very pleased to have the Classic white back, but that the lights can also change colors if they feel like adding a bit more mood or character to a scene. I’m also assuming that its wheelchair accessibility means we’ll get Shirley in there at some point, which I look forward to.

- Aw at the Doctor remembering how Donna takes her coffee.

- “I really do remember, though. Every second with you. I’m so glad you’re back, ‘cause it killed me, Donna. It killed me, it killed me, it killed me.” Aw 💗

- “I said so!” Poor Sylvia, lol.

- Watching this the first time under the assumption that the Toymaker was pulling strings throughout the first two specials, I really thought they ended up at the end of the universe because he hijacked the TARDIS, and the coffee was a coincidence. Nope. Turns out the TARDIS really just broke down that bad over one spilled cup of coffee. It really should be more resilient than that!

~~~~~

OVERVIEW

I liked more than I realized, there is some good in here (Sylvia was the unexpected MVP), but for me the bad just outweighs it too much. The things I do like are generally small moments and the things I don’t are generally quite big ones, which is a problem. I’ve got a number of issues with the writing, and that’s just if the episode were standalone, let alone the fact that this is supposed to be for a big anniversary. In the context of the entirety of the specials it’s got even more problems. This doesn’t feel like it’s celebrating anything, except perhaps the original comic which is nice at least, but apart from that, it’s just… an episode. A poorer one at that, imo. The pacing is rushed and the writing is often either forced or lazy or both. It doesn’t have anything to do with the next two specials and it doesn’t set up anything that it should. Maybe I shouldn’t have expected that it would, but I find it bizarre that it doesn’t.

I really wanted to like this and I went into it expecting that I would, but even beyond the writing problems, I just couldn’t connect. I don’t know if it’s the pacing or what but I don’t feel nearly as much as I want to and feel I should. Ten and Donna are being very much themselves and they’ve got stuff here that should make me emotional, and to a degree it does, but… something is just off. I don’t feel the weight of it, and that’s a recurring problem throughout all of these specials. For whatever reason the episodes just don’t emotionally resonate with me for the most part, even if I’m pleased to be watching Ten and Donna and should therefore be more excited about it and care more about the fact that they’re back on my screen. I really, really want to care more about seeing them again. I do care, but it’s just… off. The rushed resolution to Donna’s problem doesn’t help, either. I don’t feel the emotional payoff. Part of me feels like if they were going to undermine the impact of Journey’s End by solving everything with such ease and casualness, then maybe they shouldn’t have done this at all. And I love Donna, I do, I’ve always wanted her to remember eventually, but I really feel there needed to be more to it than this. This doesn’t feel earned. I’ve got little to no emotional catharsis out of it. I would wonder if it was just a me problem if not for the fact that my sister came away from it feeling the same. Tales of the TARDIS handled this better for Jamie and Zoe in just 5 minutes — they didn’t have stakes for remembering like Donna did, it was just a cruel thing done to them, so it doesn’t feel like it’s undercutting anything to have their memories restored just as easily as they were taken, and there’s a whole ton of emotion packed into that 5 minutes that feels real, earned, and gets to me every time I’ve watched it. Why I don’t feel the same about Donna is beyond me.

I’m really struggling to understand why after just this first episode so many people were rejoicing that RTD has saved the show. Granted, I didn’t hate the Chibnall era, just select parts of it in the same way that I would have problems here and there with RTD and Moffat, so I’m not coming from a place of having felt like the show I loved was dead, but I really don’t see how The Star Beast is any better than most given episodes of the preceding era. I didn’t feel some magical shift. If anything, I liked most Chibnall era episodes more than this. I don’t know what everyone is talking about.

Thankfully the next special is a vast improvement imo.

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WILD BLUE YONDER

- The opening with Isaac Newton just feels completely unnecessary to me. I feel like Russell just wanted to make a joke about changing the word “gravity” to “mavity” and decided to create that opening scene. I believe I also saw that the actor is a friend of his so this also could have spawned from him trying to create a bit part for him. Whatever the origin is, I’m not a fan of it. I really hope the mavity joke doesn’t continue past these specials, because I find it very annoying for reasons I can’t even quite place. Just gets on my nerves. And let’s forget the fact that the word gravity existed before Isaac Newton anyway.

- The TARDIS blaring the military song at the beginning and later near the end is another thing I would have sworn was the Toymaker having a laugh. Nope. No clue why it’s doing that, then. They do say something about the TARDIS playing them a war song, I guess they mean to imply it was some kind of warning of what they were getting into? But it kind of just happens. I feel like RTD keeps doing things without explanation just for fun. And there’s definitely a time and place for that, but in these specials it keeps being stuff that really should have elaboration and then they just don’t.

- I really like the massive spaceship and its design. Feels like something my brain would make up as I’m listening to a Big Finish story. The moving pieces are awesome as well.

- This is just me being someone who primarily prefers the Classic series a lot of the time, but I’m kind of done with New Who making a point of people’s attractiveness. I don’t need commentary on how hot the characters think anyone they’ve run into is, let alone a historical figure. New Who has a strange obsession with sexualization. RTD and Moffat are the worst offenders with this. Can’t call to mind times where that happened in the Chibnall era but I could be missing something. In any case I really want them to grow up a bit.

- Hey, that’s the first reference to the Doctor snapping his fingers to control the TARDIS in who even knows how long! Not that I was even a fan of that concept but it’s interesting to hear about it again.

- I like that Ten quickly stops himself from placing any blame on Donna and apologizes.

- The Doctor kissing her hand and holding it to his chest when she starts panicking is very sweet. 💗

- Woohoo, bringing back the HADS! Troughton fans unite!

- I love the robot. That is a great robot.

- I totally thought that the void outside was the Toymaker’s realm. That’s what I get for listening to Solitaire I guess.

- ^ I was also waiting for the glass that the Doctor was pressing against to completely disappear and he would fall into the Toymaker’s realm. Would make a good fic though.

- With all of the shots of Ten and Donna being watched from behind I kept expecting the forms of old companions like Susan or Steven to show up to mess with the Doctor. Never mind.

- I knew he was going to lick the strange gooey substance. Same old Ten.

- Poor Donna wondering what her family would do if she never returned.

- I thought it was abrupt that the Doctor had finished his job and already come back to Donna, but the moment where we cut back to the Doctor fiddling around immediately made it click that Donna was NOT talking to the real one, which is terrifyingly creepy.

- ^ I assumed at first that the Toymaker was faking being the Doctor to get information out of Donna. Then when the fake Donna turned up I thought they were both just his puppets he’d sent. Even when it was revealed what they really were I still imagined the Toymaker had something to do with sending them after them. Still jarred that these first two specials had absolutely no set-up for the big bad they were teasing in promotions for ages. But this particular instance is still very good without having anything to do with him. The Not-Things are chillingly creepy and I was constantly on edge.

- I like how Donna has absolutely no reaction to, “My arms are too long,” as if the Doctor would just say that lol.

- The long arms are so freakish in the best kind of freakish way.

- I seriously thought for a minute that they were turning into giant marionettes. There’s a bit of music during the reveal that sounded a bit circus-y for a moment as well. I could not stop seeing the Toymaker around every corner lol.

- David and Catherine kill it as the Not-Things. It’s fascinating to see them play against themselves in such a dark way.

- The way they look when they’re growing enormous and are appearing more and more freakish really feels like something my brain would concoct while listening to Big Finish if they did a story like this.

- I really enjoy the darkness going on here generally. They didn’t shy away from being absolutely twisted and terrifying and disturbing. It’s good to have a bit of that sometimes.

- This is seriously David and Catherine at some of their best. This special has the best stuff for the Doctor and Donna as a duo and their relationship, as well as having to play everything twice. They’re so good at making the Not-Things convincing that I was genuinely having a hard time figuring out which ones were real for a while.

- I hate the Timeless Child lore but it’s used here to good effect. Same with the Flux. I actually quite enjoyed the Flux arc but the fact that it did permanently wipe out half the universe without getting reversed or fixed and we just don’t talk about it is ridiculous. While I wish they would fix the situation, similarly to the Timeless Child it’s used well here.

- That contorted crab walk thing is incredibly disturbing even if it does look stupid lol.

- Really, how can they use a line like, “To play your vicious games and win,” and not have me think the Toymaker was involved somewhere in here?

- The Doctor not being able to stop thinking is very relatable lol. I would fail so badly in this scenario.

- I really like the design of the old captain of the ship. I’d love to see what that species looks like when they’re not just skeletal remains. Unless they actually do just look like bone anyway like Thestrals, in which case that would be even cooler.

- Everything about the climax is very well-executed. The drama, the pacing, the stakes. Very strong stuff.

- Poor Donna being left behind. But do you know what I was expecting? Naturally, for the Toymaker to pluck her out before the ship exploded so that he could keep her alive to force to play games. These specials did not go anything like I expected lol.

- Sweet Ten and Donna just sitting there reeling for a minute.

- Not sure what invoking a superstition at the edge of the universe is supposed to do with the return of the Toymaker in the next ep. He says it’s because the walls of reality are thin and all things are possible, but that doesn’t mean that pouring some salt on the ground magically has something to do with him specifically. Feels like a very weird reason to give when the logical thing to do would just be to say that the Toymaker has been plotting to get him back for a long time and finally showed up now.

- Wilf broke me. This was the one thing in any of these specials to get me truly, legitimately emotional. Shed a tear over him and his sweet face. It’s a shame they weren’t able to film any more scenes with him but I’m so glad they got that one in.

~~~~~

OVERVIEW

By far the best of the specials. I quite enjoyed the sheer darkness and madness of this one, and David and Catherine absolutely knock it out of the park. The writing is largely very good and it’s very effective in its scare factor, as well as in showcasing the relationship between the Doctor and Donna. This is the best stuff they have in any of these specials and I felt a little more connected to them here than in the other two. That doesn’t say as much as I’d like it to, but I’ll take it.

It stands up very well on its own, which in one way is great and the mark of a wonderful episode, but in another way also speaks to one of my overall problems with these episodes which is that they’re not connected to each other. This is a fantastic story and extremely well done, but once again it doesn’t feel like it’s celebrating anything and I truly don’t understand why these specials weren’t written to be a lot more connected than they are. At the end of the day it’s just a collection of random episodes that fill a gap before Ncuti takes the reins. That said, I’m not complaining about this one, this really was very interesting. Definitely the standout episode out of the three.

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THE GIGGLE

- Getting this out of the way right from the start lest I comment on it during every scene of his: NPH steals the show. He acts his heart out here. On the one hand it’s a very different approach to and portrayal of the Toymaker, which would otherwise bother me, but I can buy it as a Toymaker who has had centuries and centuries since the original serial to grow madder and madder and madder (and though he doesn’t regenerate like a Time Lord, I’d still be willing to believe that pieces of his personality might shift with different faces). On the other hand, there is still very much an element of Michael Gough in his darker, more intense moments. Glints that you can see in his eyes and his wicked grin. Very different but very the same. I really wish more of the episode had focused on him, and even further that he had been involved in all three of these specials.

- I appreciate the different accents he puts on throughout, as it proves me right that he just copies things from all manner of cultures he has no connection to. Vindication.

- Genuinely creepy in the opening scene the way he talks about the doll family as if buying the one doll would be separating it from its family and make them sad. You get the impression he’s not kidding. Even creepier when he says the hair on the doll was from a woman who won’t be missing it and won’t miss anything ever again. This one scene sets up right from the off that he is deeply unsettling and has done truly horrifying things to the victims of his games.

- I keep looking for Easter eggs in the toy shop and keep finding nothing lol. Wasted opportunity to have a Trilogic game or something hidden in the background.

- There’s some very dark music that plays frequently which seems to be the Toymaker’s theme. I really like it.

- Very unsettling that the Doctor’s first interaction with the Toymaker is unbeknownst to him. I like that he just stays in the background for a minute before messing with him while he still doesn’t know it’s him.

- I don’t like that the new UNIT building is essentially Stark Tower. That’s much too ostentatious for an organization that’s supposed to keep a low profile. Their building in The Power of the Doctor was already way too big. I don’t know why they seem to have gone very public now.

- I like that Kate is so scared by all of this that the first thing she does is to just grab the Doctor in a hug. Also, nice shoutout to Kate having fought Yetis.

- Mel! 💗 It's so nice to have her here. I haven't seen her Classic stuff yet but I've always adored her from afar, she's so precious. I'm always here for bringing back old friends as long as it's done well. The Doctor's reaction to her is so sweet.

- Sorry to disappoint, Mel, but you’re not the first redhead lol.

- Cool little robot guy. I'd ask why they have him working for them but they also had an alien as their scientific advisor for years, so whatever.

- Very interesting to demonstrate what happens to people's minds by turning Kate's protective armband off. Her tirade over nothing is both funny and frightening.

- The return of newscaster Trinity Wells! Nice to see you, girl. Though I have no idea how UNIT not only created but has already been trying to mass produce and give to the world these Zeedex bands within 2 days for this to even be on the news. Apparently they were an invention of the robotic character the Vlinx but that’s still a bit fast lol.

- I like that Donna was able to figure out the music scale from a perfectly ordinary experience. And lol at having Bonnie Langford sing the arpeggio.

- Considering the implication that having traveled in the TARDIS prevents the effects of this on an individual, I now want fic of every companion who's living in modern day Earth reacting to all of their neighbors and family suddenly losing their crap. Ian and Barbara watching their friends pick loud fights in the streets, Jo seeing every member of her family go mad. Not to mention the characters who either never set foot in the TARDIS at all or not long enough for it to protect them. Poor Liz Shaw somewhere, and Benton and Yates. All of the SJA kids except for Sky since she's an alien, and she'd have to deal with all of them being terrible.

- I like that they have Mel doing some technical stuff since she was supposed to be a computer programmer.

- Glad they gave a reason for why and how Mel is back on Earth lol. Nice shoutout to Glitz while they were at it as well.

- Kate really seems to like offering everybody a job lol.

- Subtle bit of creepiness to the Toymaker that no matter how many of his juggling balls he throws, he's still juggling the same amount of balls.

- I'm glad they had him already know Donna's name. I imagined he would have to but you never know what writers are gonna do. I'm also very pleased that it's immediately acknowledged that the Toymaker is an extreme threat by having the Doctor tell Donna to go back to the TARDIS the second he's realized who it is.

- Heck yes to the brief Hartnell and Gough flashes! It's not only lovely to see them in general but I love the weight that it adds, that they know each other from so long ago, and that those people are still who they both are inside the different faces. You can see Michael Gough's eyes in NPH right here in particular and for a moment I feel I can even see Bill's eyes in David.

- Shoutout to the hidden Joeys in a couple of different places. They're not nearly as visible in the episode as the set pics made it seem but I know he's there.

- Love that he means Hartnell when he says, “When I was young.”

- I like the unnervingness of the endless hallway and all of the doors just leading you nowhere. I can imagine that kind of a trick in the original serial. (In fact I now really want to see that be something they'd have to deal with. I can just hear Steven's huffy, 'Oh, no,' when they realize they're never getting anywhere lol.) The two of them ending up separated is also good stuff.

- I still don't see what invoking a superstition at the edge of the universe has to do with bringing the Toymaker in. It's a really weird and nonsensical reason to give when the only reason you need is that he's finally coming for his rematch.

- Very creepy stuff with the poor man being made into a marionette, as well as the Doctor seeing himself as one. That’s the kind of disturbing factor I was hoping for with this special. There isn't a ton of this kind of thing here and I'd have gone quite a bit darker myself for this whole episode but I appreciate what we have.

- The Toymaker looming above, looking down as he holds the puppet strings is some really good imagery.

- Donna vs the rest of the doll family is very freakish, but I also feel bad for them because there's no way those weren't real people at one point. Particularly disturbing to have Donna rip Sue's head off and kick it across the room, considering. I know she doesn’t know these were people, and even if she did she does have to protect herself somehow, but yikes.

- I love the painted stage backdrops in the middle of absolute black nothingness. I was hoping they'd have this sort of thing, since much of the original is in this sort of broad, void-feeling space.

- I really like this bit where the Toymaker is showing what happened to the previous companions that have been on the show since Donna left. Very chilling to see him be well aware of all of the particulars of these events and I’m glad they went for it in torturing the Doctor with personal pain. It wasn’t as much or as dark as I’d hoped but I like it, and I always like seeing a Doctor acknowledge companions he was with when he had different faces. Very nice to see Ten’s face talk about Amy, Clara, and Bill. Also, nice recap for those who may have stopped after Tennant originally left, and wow, the Moffat era really had a ton of tragic departures. I keep thinking what must have been going through Neil’s head reading about a character who was killed by a bird, and the various insane-sounding reasons from the Doctor as to why these characters are somehow okay despite what happened to them, considering he apparently didn’t know about Doctor Who whatsoever prior to being approached for the role!

- Oh, the shift in the Toymaker’s face when the Doctor challenges him to a game. Stuff just got real.

- It’s so good to see them playing at a table again.

- “I made a jigsaw out of your history. Did you like it?” Not sure what that means unless they’re trying to indicate that he’s somehow responsible for the Timeless Child mythos, or at least for various inconsistencies in the Doctor’s life. I doubt they’d hand-wave away the whole TC arc like that when Russell said he wouldn’t undermine his friend’s work, so I don’t know what to make of this. But if we can ignore that from here on out then that rocks.

- Poor Master, lol. I can only imagine bedraggled and broken Dhawan being offered a chance to live if he played a game, taking the offer, and promptly losing. I want to know how that went down. Apparently very badly, if the price was being trapped inside the Toymaker’s gold tooth. Also, is he aware of what’s going on or is he just sort of in stasis in there? It would be awful for him if he were conscious of everything, but awful results are how the Toymaker operates, so I wouldn’t be surprised. Imagine the Master trying and failing to scream to the Doctor to do whatever he has to to get away.

- Okay, who on earth is this person the Toymaker supposedly didn’t dare play? They’re claiming that he played and defeated God but there’s somehow someone even more powerful that the Toymaker of all people is scared of? “The one who waits”? Jokingly headcanon-ing that it’s Rory until we get anything further on that, lol.

- I mean, the Toymaker ain’t wrong about the issues of the human race in the 21st century 🤷‍♀️ VERY weird to hear him say the word ‘cancel’ though. That originated here on tumblr to my knowledge. Things like that have gotta stop breaking containment, now they’re spreading so far that a character from 1966 is saying them.

- Love the Toymaker’s aghast reaction to Donna saying he’ll just cheat. Though they make it sound like he’s forced to always play by the rules by some sort of cosmic force that binds him. In the original you get the impression that it’s just a matter of principle to him, which I prefer.

- I like that the king on the playing card looks like it could either be Michael Gough or NPH, or perhaps a blurred line between them to represent both.

- Part of me feels like the dancing scene is a bit too far in terms of silliness for circumstances that should be very serious, but it’s also too enjoyable for me to not get a kick out of. They also managed to make it quite dark and threatening, having him appear all over the place, forcing Kate and then Mel to dance, turning the two UNIT men into bouncing balls that still retain the images of their screaming faces and the Doctor telling Kate that they’re dead, and making all of the bullets turn into rose petals therefore showing them all that they’re helpless against him. For something that should come across as ridiculous, it’s actually surprisingly effective. Though I don’t know what it is with RTD and having his big bads dance to girl group songs lol.

- When Kate asks where the guards and staff have gone and the Toymaker just goes, “I think they’re still falling.” Eek.

- Ten really has a thing for offering bad guys to travel with him instead of wreaking havoc lol. But I love that they had him say that the two of them together could be ‘celestial’. Thank you for the little reference and for proving me right again that that’s the context in which we’re supposed to take his title. Also, interesting little moment there where the Toymaker very nearly almost seemed tempted.

- This scene is very quickly ruined, but I like Donna and Mel going to the Doctor’s side to be with him as he regenerates. Very sweet to see two past companions who still love him very much and are willing to put themselves in the line of fire just to make sure he’s not alone. And when the Toymaker comments, “Handmaidens,” it reminds me of the original serial when he comments on Steven’s “adolescent expressions of loyalty”.

- Nice detail that Mel seems a lot more prepared and okay with the realities of regeneration, just comforting him with a smile and not seeming terribly worried whether he’s going to be okay because she knows he will be, she’s seen him in the aftermath of a regeneration before and loved both Doctors she was with. Of course she and Donna are both emotional, but Mel definitely strikes me as more ready to deal with what comes next.

- I’m really mad that this moment is all about to get undermined, because having Ten 2.0’s last words be, “Allons-y,” aka, ‘let’s go’, is incredibly fitting and poignant in contrast to the original, “I don’t want to go.” Why’d they have to go and ruin what could have been a nice, touching regeneration?

- Aaaand here’s the moment that ruins the entire rest of the story for me. Rather than regenerating like normal, the Doctor “bigenerates”, splitting into two of himself so we have both Tennant and Gatwa together. It’s hand-waved with, ‘oh there’s this thing called bigeneration that’s supposed to be a myth but apparently not!’ and then not discussed any further. Russell, you just got back, did you seriously have to already bring a massively disruptive lore change with you? We just had one. I seem to be in the minority, at least on tumblr, but I am not on board with having two Doctors existing simultaneously. It feels more like the Doctor split off a twin. You can’t copy a soul and have two of that soul at the same time. That is not how people work. I keep having to focus on Mel being adorable in the background because the rest of this is aggravating.

- I feel it robs Ncuti of a proper entrance as well. He doesn’t get the same process that every Doctor before him since Troughton has gotten. He’s relegated to splitting off of the fan favorite rather than taking his place as is kinda his right, which could also easily cause people to forever view him as an offshoot and not the proper Doctor. Not to mention the fact that their split also divided articles of clothing between the two of them, meaning Fifteen is left running around in underwear for the entire remainder of the episode. A lot of people seem fine with this but I really think it’s an undignified entrance for the poor guy, and I’m not sure it’s going to age very well either. It would be humiliating enough for any Doctor to start out that way but I can already see people in the future looking back on it as a very degrading introduction for the first black Doctor. My mind also often goes to considering whether certain things would come across the same if it were a woman, and boy, that would not be received well if the new Doctor were a woman having to run around in her underwear as an intro, which means it isn’t really great for a man either.

- I wish I could enjoy the two Doctors excitedly interacting, but that’s the kind of thing that’s only fun or interesting in the usual context of multiple incarnations meeting up from different time periods. This stuff would otherwise be cute, but in the context it’s in, I’m just too uncomfortable to enjoy any of it.

- “Do you come in a range of colors?” is another line that I’m not sure is gonna age well. I’m not sure I like the sound of it now as it is.

- The Toymaker claims he played against the “guardians of time and space” and shrunk them into voodoo dolls. Are we talking Fifth Doctor era Guardians? Poor guys.

- Part of me feels the “ball game” final fight is cool looking (or at least, it’s well-shot to distract me from the fact that it’s not that good; I can’t decide), but the ultimate result is disappointing. It’s pretty unsatisfying to have the Toymaker’s defeat be that he happened to not catch a ball. It makes him look unskilled to just have it graze past his hand when he easily could have stretched slightly further and gotten it. I know people say that his original defeat in the old serial was anticlimactic, but he was defeated because the Doctor was clever. It wasn’t that the Toymaker did anything that would lead to his own loss, it’s not that he wasn’t as clever, it’s just that the Doctor had a good idea and succeeded with it. It was very evenly matched, but somebody has to win even in a very tight game and it was the Doctor. Here, the Toymaker loses because he was unlucky. It wasn’t a victory on the Doctor’s part, the Toymaker just messed up. That doesn’t feel like a satisfying defeat at all because it’s not even a defeat. Everything hinges on the Toymaker somehow not catching a ball.

- Don’t know if that’s the last we’ll see of the Toymaker. It may be the last of NPH playing him at least. I wouldn’t be shocked if they brought the character back for another round some decades down the line, just get him out of the box and dust him off on the rare occasion.

- He says his “legions” are coming, and I believe RTD has said that Fifteen is going to keep facing them. Curious who those will be. I don’t exactly see the Toymaker having armies in reserve somewhere.

- Good for the poor man that he gets to not be a marionette anymore!

- Fifteen: “You can’t save everyone.”

Ten: “Why not?”

Because you go Time Lord Victorious when you start asking that question. Have a Snickers.

- Again, I wish I could enjoy the two Doctors. Fifteen comforting Ten should be a very sweet thing, but this whole thing just feels so wrong to me.

- Well, cue endless speculation on whose hand picked up that gold tooth with the Master in it. That should keep the fandom going for a while.

- ^ Also, ahhh, the various Master laughs when it focuses in on that! I think I hear my beloved Delgado!

- I greatly appreciate all of the Classic references when they’re talking about all of the things they’ve gone through and never stopped to rest after, and all of the people lost.

- Fifteen: “Sarah Jane has gone, can you even believe that for a second?”

Ten: “I loved her.”

Fifteen: “I loved her.”

Owww, official confirmation in TV canon that Sarah Jane is gone by now. I’d appreciated that they had never explicitly said anything like they did with the Brigadier. I loved her, too. 😢

- ^ Also mentioning loving Rose, ahhh. The Doctor has never actually said those words to or about her because he was always an idiot thinking it didn’t need to be said. Finally, a Doctor says onscreen that he loved Rose! 2012 me is pleased.

- Mavic Chen! RTD said he’d be mentioned at some point, but still, there’s a deep cut of a reference! Heck yeah, Hartnell enthusiasts rise.

- “I’m fine because you fix yourself. We’re Time Lords, we’re doing rehab out of order.” Okay, this particular line would seem to imply that at some point when Ten 2.0 eventually regenerates, it will be to Fifteen? That he’s thrown back into the timeline and bigenerates out of himself as Fifteen, thus meaning there’s still just the one Doctor and the timeline aligns itself? Nothing else in this episode indicates that whatsoever, but if that’s what I’m meant to take out of it then it would fix a lot.

- So… they’re seriously saying that he became Ten again for the emotional catharsis of sitting back and living with Donna’s family for a while. Messing up regeneration lore to enable past lives to come back, ignoring that the point of regeneration since its inception is to move forwards, for what is essentially RTD’s fix-it AU fic for his own characters. This continues to feel like it’s RTD’s celebration of his own stuff rather than an overall 60th anniversary celebration. I really want to be happier about having my Ten back, and that Donna gets to remember everything, but so much of the way this has been done leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.

- Aaand oh boy. Here’s the bit where they duplicate the TARDIS. For the sake of argument, say that Fifteen really did come after Ten 2.0 living his life with the Nobles and he’s just thrown backwards in the timeline. If that’s supposed to be the same with the TARDIS, that he’s just bringing it into this time somehow from where it last was with Ten 2.0 prior to his regeneration, then that would be fine. But there is absolutely nothing that indicates this. The takeaway I get is that the TARDIS has been copied. Tennant is going to stay at the Nobles’ and have the original TARDIS on hand so he can still leave sometimes. Gatwa takes off in the copied TARDIS. The Doctor that we’re supposed to be following from here on out is no longer traveling in the very same TARDIS as he always has. If that’s seriously the case, then that’s a GIGANTIC heck no from me. Absolutely not.

- Oh, how I wish I could more properly enjoy this final scene of Ten with the Nobles. On paper it’s absolutely adorable. If they confirm that Fifteen is the regeneration after and not an awkward offshoot, then retroactively I could enjoy this a lot more, but until that potentially happens, I’m still uncomfortable with the two separate Doctors at the same time and therefore uncomfortable with the context of him being here because there was a second Doctor who can keep going instead.

- Would have sworn that the Doctor’s eyebrow story was going to be about Delphon but then he says another name. Oh well.

- I do really like that Mel gets to join in on the Noble family gatherings. Lovely to keep her until the end and that she gets to have sort of a family. “Mad Aunty Mel” 💗

- ^ Also sweet that the Doctor took her to New York in the Gilded Age for a nice little trip at some point in the time skip before this. Mel deserves nice things.

- Why are we saying that Wilf is shooting the moles in the garden? Unless there’s something I’m forgetting where he’s done something like that before, I don’t feel like Wilf would hurt a fly let alone moles. With how hard it was for him to take out his gun after so many years in The End of Time I’m not sure I buy him being okay with shooting anything. Weird note to end on for him.

- Having the Doctor spend most of his time living with the Nobles and resting presents a bit of a Steve-stays-in-the-past-in-Endgame problem in that there’s no way he wouldn’t always be trying to right wrongs around him. Just like Steve would have to ignore every horrible thing he could do something about, including rescuing Bucky who is being tortured out there, any time this Doctor isn’t there when something is going terribly wrong nearby, it means he’s ignoring it while he lounges. That doesn’t sound like him at all.

- And off Fifteen goes, getting ready to go into the Christmas special. I’m worried about it but hopefully it’s better than I think it will be…?

~~~~~

OVERVIEW

Oh, massive mixed bag.

I really like the Toymaker parts of the episode. He wasn’t in nearly as much of it as he should have been and his downfall is disappointing, but the overall writing for him and performance by NPH was fantastic. There’s some very good dark and twisted stuff in here and I’m glad they went for it, even if I would have done even more with it. He is far and away the main highlight of the episode and much of my enjoyment of it is down to him. Mel also plays a considerable role in that, just because I’m thrilled any time an old companion turns up, but I also felt more connected to her, whose stories I haven’t even seen yet, than Ten or Donna somehow. Honorable mention to Kate and Shirley who were also great.

As has been true of all of these, I still just can’t fully emotionally connect with Ten and Donna. I desperately wanted to, and there’s a part of me that did in a way, but nowhere near how it should have been. I feel like I’m insane because on paper there’s nothing even wrong with them and it sure as heck ain’t the performances. But going from a few of their episodes in series 4 in the lead-up and feeling all sorts of strong emotions, that somehow just didn’t carry over to this and I don’t get why. Pacing? Trapped in the poor writing around them? I seriously can’t figure this out, but it doesn’t feel the same as it used to at all. Something is wrong and I don’t know what the heck it is.

And there’s the matter of Ten coming back because apparently that specific incarnation needed a happy ending. I really feel the need to emphasize that I LOVE TEN, but being nostalgic and sentimental isn’t a good enough reason to mess with the regeneration cycle and skip backwards a few lives. Literally the reason they give is that this particular face needed rest (they do say that the Doctor needs rest generally, but they didn’t have to go back to this face to do that — Donna indicates that this face came back so that he could ‘come home’ and be happy.) It feels way too much like favoritism to single this incarnation out in such a big way, and honestly? Ten needed to go when he did. He was becoming someone he wasn’t and it was his time. Of all of the Doctors, his was the one that actually really needed to regenerate, for the sake of his own soul. It was certainly distressing but it was a solid end for him. I don’t feel he needs this do-over to go back and get a happy ending. No one Doctor deserves that over another (though if they did, it would be poor Two whose life was cut short by execution courtesy of his own kind.) I love Ten so dearly but it feels wrong to act like he’s so important that he specifically has earned any of this treatment. I’m beginning to appreciate Tom Baker’s approach of not making multiple comebacks precisely because of his popularity.

For a good chunk of this ep, the writing was pretty good, especially where the Toymaker himself was concerned. But once the bigeneration happened, it was so downhill that it makes me struggle to want to rewatch this even for the good parts. I’m really, really hoping that I’m right and Fifteen is meant to come after Ten 2.0 has already had his lifetime, ditto his TARDIS, because it would largely save this episode for me and because the alternative is completely appalling and I can’t be okay with it. To make matters worse, Russell has claimed that he believes the bigeneration echoed back into all previous regenerations and causing each Doctor to split off from the last so they all get to go on with their own life, that they’re ALL out there in some kind of “Doctorverse”, which is absolutely insane. It defeats the purpose of regeneration: “Times change and so must I,” and, “Life defends on change and renewal.” This completely flies in the face of a critical aspect of the show, that one has to move on eventually. There’s a time for each of these incarnations, but they can’t last forever. It weakens all of these deaths, a good number of which were sacrifices, to claim that they all actually get to live on, and the very idea of it also supports my fear that there’s seriously just supposed to be two Doctors now and we’re supposed to be okay with that. According to Russell there’s a whole ton of Doctors existing simultaneously and that’s supposed to be okay. It’s the definition of bonkers is what it is. I really feel the opposite of all of the ‘RTD saved the show!’ sentiments; it feels like he’s gotten too big for his britches and has returned with a bizarre god complex where he’s wielding way too much power and plans to use all of it however he wishes. He’s single-handedly making me nervous for this entire next era.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BIG PICTURE

Though there are definitely things I liked, particularly the Toymaker and Wild Blue Yonder, there was far too much that I don’t feel good about for me to be able to say I really loved these specials. I probably won’t reblog much of it beyond what I already have and I’m not particularly motivated to rewatch these except in a full-scale series rewatch because I’m not the sort of person who can let myself skip stuff.

I really feel like these should have been either Jodie’s or Ncuti’s. Ten didn’t need to be here, much as I love him. It could have either been a very dramatic ending for Thirteen (though I enjoyed The Power of the Doctor for that) or a very interesting beginning for Fifteen. It would be interesting to see a brand new Doctor have to navigate such intense stuff. And if it had been Thirteen, I honestly feel I may have emotionally connected better because she’s who we’ve been with.

In my perfect world, these would have all had to do with the Toymaker. Have him be woven throughout the first episode (and give that first ep a very different plot than what we got) and then a cliffhanger that reveals him as having been behind it all, leading into two full episodes of fighting against his power. Either keep Wild Blue Yonder, because it’s pretty darn good, and just have it so that my initial thoughts regarding involvement from the Toymaker were correct, or alter it entirely and focus on really delving into who he is and how much danger they’re in. Make them play deadly games. Get some incredibly dark and disturbing visuals and emotional torture in there; show past companions as puppets and dolls (whether it’s really them or not), have them come to life and taunt the Doctor if they’re fake or hauntingly beg him to save them if they’re real, make him face choosing between saving Donna vs other friends, really dig in as deeply and darkly as is possible without permanent consequences like death. Make episode 3 a long battle of wits with lots of intimate time between the Doctor and the Toymaker, with extremely severe personal stakes. Go all out. If you’re going to use the Toymaker again you really should be taking advantage of just how far you can go with a character like this, and the dynamic between him and the Doctor. Give NPH a boatload of screen time and a big, twisted sandbox to play in. Loads of emotionally, mentally, conceptually, and visually dark and disturbing things. They had some very good stuff but there should have been more of it, and even more unsettling, or at least on par with the marionette man and the soldiers turned to balls. If we keep Tennant for this, make the regaining of his face a plot point that was influenced by the Toymaker, something to torture him because Ten was one of the most emotionally volatile and damaged. When regenerating into Fifteen, let it be a normal regeneration, preferably caused by the Doctor needing to sacrifice himself to defeat the Toymaker because he can’t get away like he did before — this time, he really does have to face going down with the Toymaker to succeed. Keep Donna because she’s a prime resource for hitting Ten where it hurts, but have their reunion be orchestrated and the regaining of her memories be more complicated. It shouldn’t be as easy as it was. Have ample time to give full acknowledgment to the stakes involved. If she regains them in the first episode and it feels too easy, make it so that the Toymaker has only made it seem that way, but she’s in serious trouble the longer she goes on with her memory intact. Either tragically make her forget again in the end to save her life and to not completely undo Journey’s End, or make it far more complicated to ensure that she can safely retain the memories. It should only be in the final episode when they’ve fought for it and come out victorious that they can confirm that she’s safe and is able to go on this way. Definitely keep Mel somewhere in here, as well as having other old friends appear in some way or another. In the VERY least, just reference Steven and Dodo, because they didn’t, dang it all, and I ask for so little.

There’s so much that I wish these specials had done, that I wish they’d been. And largely, they just didn’t. For all the good that there was, there was a heck of a lot that ultimately makes it fail as a collective whole, at least for me. I had to put on a Classic story as a palate cleanser after going through all of that again.

#doctor who #dw critical #negativity #60th anniversary #the star beast #wild blue yonder #the giggle #spoilers #dw spoilers

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kitconnor · 1 year

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anonymous asked 💬 Hello there! Could you please make a tutorial on how you combined gifs and images in your edit THE RECENT FASHIONS OF JENNA ORTEGA? It's incredible. Thanks!

tysm for this ask 🫶🏼 below the cut is a step by step on how to do this kind of set. i will be using photoshop 2023 for this tutorial.

original inspiration was taken from sith-maul’s zendaya lookbook gifset !

step 1: cropping

for this style to work, your gif needs to be tall. the best dimensions are 540x700. make sure you don’t have too many frames because the bigger the crop, the bigger the file size !!

the other thing you want to do is crop it a little to the left or to the right, whichever works best. this is so you can slot in the photos of the outfit :)

step 2: colouring

to make the whole thing more cohesive later on, how you colour your set is important. for the demonstration, i’m using a clip of jenna from her interview with who what wear, which has a lot of easy to manipulate colours. because the main colour is obviously pink, i’ll use a colour balance layer, a selective colour layer and a hue/sat. layer.

be mindful when using hue/sat and colour balance that you’re not whitewashing your subject or dramatically altering their skin tone. if there is low movement in the gif, you can use layer masks to prevent this.

you can see here that there’s a huge difference in the old vs. new colouring, which is what we want !!

step 3: source your pics

probably the easiest step. you can either just google search for pictures [person] [event/photoshoot] is the best way to search for that, or you can search for something on pinterest. you want one picture that’s ideally head to toe, plus another showcasing the outfit from around waist up.

step 4: edit the photos.

now that we’ve got our photos, load those into ps. once loaded in, you’re going to want to go to select > subject and then go option + cmd + x (for mac, i’m sorry idk the windows prompt !) and then just paste that on a new layer.

depending, the photo may select some of the background. but there’s really nothing you can do about that, so you just have to tidy it up manually using the eraser tool.

now my photo looks like this !

crop the photo to the same size as your gif and repeat the same process for the other photo.

step 5: placement of the photos

first off, duplicate your photos onto the gif. then, resize them to your liking. ideally, you want the full shot going from top to bottom on the gif, and the medium shot positioned down from it.

i also make the medium shot a little bit smaller, so we can highlight the head to toe. as well as that, put the head to toe shot behind the medium shot by swapping their layer orders.

here’s a ss of what mine looks like, just to give you an idea.

step 6: colouring the photos

first stop: add a black and white gradient map. completely ignore the fact the gradient map will go over everything; we’ll fix it in one sec ! colour the photos as normal: curves, levels, anything you do in your normal colouring process. just make sure all the layers are underneath your gradient map layer !

on top of it all, add a gradient layer and change it to a colour in the outfit. you can click and drag it in all different directions to get to a good point. don’t forget to change the angle of it so it fits best !

for example, here’s mine:

you can see that the gradient gradually goes up on the outfit, leaving it almost half half.

now, select all the layers that are over the first picture and right click > clipping mask. this clipping mask will make sure that all your colouring layers ‘clip’ only to your picture. DO NOT select the picture layer as well. this should be what you have:

the arrows show that it has clipped to the subject.

now, just repeat those colouring steps on the other pic so you’re starting to look like this:

OPTIONAL: i usually change the blending mode of my gradient layer to ‘colour’ so it blends nicer on the picture, it’s not compulsory, but the result looks better. you can also choose to sharpen your pictures if you like !

step 7: typography

there’s two main things you want: the title of it (this could be a fashion brand or maybe a show/film name if you want to do this for a character) which will be in a statement font as well as the location or the date (could be the episode and the episode air date or the film premiere date) to start, create your layer above the colouring layers for the gif, but below the pictures of your person.

for this tutorial, i’m using the font ‘magazine’ but you can really use any font you want, as long as it stands out against the cover.

next up, you’ll want to search ‘map pin point png’ on google and get your little pin point icon. this will be so you can add the location and the date, or whatever you want to add. i change the font that i use for the subheading, just to switch things up ! you can do whatever you like though.

here’s what i’ve got for my subheadings. make sure that you’re placing it in the empty space on the bottom corner, not on top of your pictures.

and that’s it ! you can add any other finishing touches that you’d like, or do any other effects that you want. this is simply a base for you to work off, but you can change things wherever you deem it necessary to improve upon. apologies for this being so long 😭 hopefully it helped a little though !

#*tutorial #asks #gif tutorial #clubgif #userriel #tusercat #usercim #usersmia #userv #thingschanged #userzesty #userlp #userpjo

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hyewka · 6 months

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Hi! I hope you’re doing well and I absolutely adore your stories, really. You’re an amazing person and I can see it.

As a fellow writer I just feel like asking you a question or so.

See, I’ve written like 30-40 or so full fics within the span of half a year or so, right. I even have a few series on my acc that I’ve spent so much of my time on. All of my stories, I enjoy writing them but then when I post them I don’t get much likes or reblogs. Like when I look at the graph it’s always so low.

What do you think I should do to be doing better? Or is it all just chance and luck?

Thank you!!<3

Hi anon! To answer your question, it's not necessarily all up to chance and luck especially on a platform like tumblr. To get higher interactions and to reach a bigger pool of people you should consider a few things!

One: what fandom youre writing for. Generally, to gauge at how active your fandom fanfic community is, check two things; top posts of all year under the most commonly used tag and top recent posts. On moablr, I wouldnt consider a post with 300-500 notes flopping and anything beyond that interval is big on here. In other fandoms, especially bigger ones, this information might be different so considering your fandom base is important in managing your expectations.

Two: what tags you're using. tags are very very important on tumblr. for txt, txt smut tag is the most followed versus using something like tomorrow x together smut. Don't use broad tags either, it wont get you that many interactions. For example, something like kpop smut isn't gonna do much for you.

Tags that work for me in relation to txt smut work: #txt smut, #txt hard thoughts, #txt hard hours, #txt x reader - also if it's not ot5 add the members name in place of txt for example: #yeonjun smut.

Tags I've seen people use that don't work: #txt x gn!reader or anything that identifies the reader like plus size!reader in tags just wont reach that many people.

Also, if you write things like hybrid and sub!idol I'd recommend to use those in tags! Though it seems broad, most people who follow these tags read anything regardless if it's within their fandom space or not.

Three: you have to consider your writing. Too many gramatical mistakes, too niche, the length- all those things matter. If you're writing in English make sure your writing is cohesive and easily understandable. I would say to stay away from writing abbreviations in dialogue or in your writing, things like "tbh" or "bcs" is a little amateurish and might put some people off if it's repeated throughout your work. Just make sure it's decently consistent. And also!! Cant stress this enough but if you're writing a full fic be mindful to not have a lot of very long paragraphs.

If you're too niche, like what you're writing is a fantasy world building driven sex dungeon, there might not be that much demand. I'm not saying to stop writing things that interest you or adjust your hobby to what people want, it's just that the more genre your fic falls under, the more niche it'll get. Meaning a smaller audience. Yandere and dubcon will always appeal to a smaller amount of people so keep that in mind.

When it comes to length, it's not that big of a deal but it might sabotage you. The longer it is, usually the less people interested. Especially if it's smut. Anything over 25k might be too much. Now on the other hand, a fic really small (like a sentence or two so basically a blurb) might not catch someone's attention enough to hit like or reblog. 1k-4k word counts is desired.

This also has to do with summaries, avoid very long summaries. Two to three sentences would do.

Four: how your fics look. check the layouts of your fics, and then compare it to everyone else's. I'm not saying it has to look the prettiest or be very neat, but adding pictures to your fics especially on tumblr REALLY helps with engagement. I also recommend using simple dividers and not to use different fonts for titles, especially tumbrs cursive one. Either three icons that are cohesive with the other or a header that's the size or a little bigger than twt headers dimension.

Five: what's popular on tumblr. This goes hand in hand with the niche point I made earlier but making the switch to x reader instead of a named oc genuinely makes a very, very big difference. Switching from first person narrative to 2nd person, so instead of writing in "I, me, we" use you and your. This also makes a difference.

That's all I think might be hindering your amount of interactions, tags I'd consider the most important. If you want tkwo build a more dedicated followg, I'd recommend opening your requests!

#✶ ━━ rana ; answered #if you think youve done all of these and are in this situation dm me #ill be glad to help out anon

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leonbates22 · 8 months

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#th

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mbti-notes · 3 years

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hi i’m an istj. i fear the problem im going to describe is resolved by being more Te proactive and taking on more leader responsibilities and failing. just typing that out makes me feel burned out and miserable. anyway i get involved with groups that align with my values to get things done but it always feels like i somehow join things that aren’t as efficient as i’d want them to be or stagnate. at the same time that i have strong opinions about what to do i resent having to take on more responsibility to enact it. i want to be part of an established, moral, process/group but it seems like everything is in flux all the time. just making sure: is this Te-Ne dysfunction ?

Your question is about type development. An important aspect of type development is understanding the weaknesses and flaws of your type, in terms of the ways that your type tends to misuse functions. You seem to believe that your problem boils down to a simple lack of desire to lead in group situations (weak Te?), but it probably goes far deeper than that.

Si-Ne problems often manifest as a general aversion to change, specifically, unwillingness to change how one looks at a situation, which would then significantly alter one's approach to it. Imbalance between Si and Ne becomes a very unhealthy stubbornness when one is also prone to Si-Fi loop that thinks in terms of pure absolutes. In essence, you believe what you believe and you want what you want, and nothing and nobody can break through that mental wall. Perhaps not even you.

Auxiliary development is meant to help with Si extremes and Si-Fi loop stubbornness by making you care more about empirical facts (Te) than your frustration (Fi). It isn't always easy to develop the auxiliary function when you come to believe that it interferes with what makes Si feel most comfortable (e.g. "just typing that out makes me feel burned out and miserable"). If using the auxiliary function feels so "tiring", it doesn't mean that you should avoid using it. Quite the contrary. It's an indication that you haven't yet learned to use it properly, which means further development is necessary.

Te wants efficiency, that much is true. However, what separates immature Te from mature Te is how exactly one conceptualizes "efficiency". When Te is immature, one has a very rudimentary understanding of how to be efficient. For example, one is likely to believe that efficiency is achieved through assertiveness or even brute force, i.e., "making" things happen despite all the obstacles in the way. Is it any wonder that using Te feels tiring, then? You're essentially forcing yourself to swim against the current. Si doms are painfully aware that their energy is finite, so they quickly run out of steam.

However, Te isn't really about mustering up energy. This is not what makes TJs smart, strong, and formidable. Mature Te conceptualizes efficiency as reducing the amount of energy required whenever possible, which is why they have a lot of energy to take on very heavy workloads - some people call it "working smart". This is done through facing the empirical facts of a situation head on and learning to work closely with them, which makes it far easier to make them work in your favor.

Your problem requires a two pronged attack:

Are you able to change how you look at situations in order to improve your approach (to address Si-Ne imbalance)?

Are you able to face the empirical facts of the situation and work with them rather than against them (to develop better use of Te)?

Wanting to be part of a process/group that aligns with your values in order to enact some good in the world is an admirable thing to strive for. Presumably, the other people involved in the group have the same sense of mission, otherwise, they wouldn't have joined. However, what you fail to take into account is that people aren't generally single-minded.

Human beings are complex because they are motivated by a multitude of factors, whether they realize it or not. They are full of psychological conflicts, contradictory desires, irrational impulses, old baggage, and unconscious bad habits. And when you bring people together, all that stuff comes out and creates complicated entanglements. A "group" only becomes a "team" when it is able to overcome those psychological obstacles together, and it can be a very long process of learning how to maximize strengths and mitigate weaknesses in every individual member. That's why a lot of groups simply fall apart. While your intention to join the group seems simple and straightforward (because Si-Te is admirable in its ability to keep things simple and straightforward), other people's intentions might not be so simple. If you fail to take into account the irrational aspects of human nature, you will cause yourself needless suffering.

Your frustration with people is likely a manifestation of your unrealistic expectations of them. Perhaps you aren't able to understand people who don't resemble you, let alone work with them. And you will certainly be doomed to fail if the only way Te knows to deal with individual differences is to force everyone to become more like you. That's an impossible task, not because it requires the energy of a thousand suns as you assume, but because you're choosing to fight against reality. Mature Te would advise that you should first face down the empirical facts of how people operate if you hope to discover the most effective way to influence them. Your repeated experience of feeling disenchanted with groups tells you that you're missing an important piece of knowledge about groups and how they operate.

I'll give you a very simple example from my own life. I used to gather with a group of 30-50 people once a week to conduct planned discussions. The discussions never really started on time despite everyone being in their seats because people weren't focused enough at the start of the session. There was often whispering and sidetalking and such that would go on for about half an hour before the room felt settled and focused.

One method of addressing the problem arose organically. Whoever was the main speaker simply started shushing people and it became a thing. Sometimes, it would even escalate to calling people out, like a teacher scolding a student in a classroom. This definitely made the social atmosphere less inviting and more tense. Sure, people would shut up after being called out, but they became less focused due to seething with resentment. Power struggles aren't great for group morale, especially if it's supposed to be a group of equals coming together for a common cause.

It all sounds quite childish, but these kinds of judgments are useless. You can call people childish, inefficient, incompetent, etc etc, but it doesn't solve the problem. And, worse, being judgmental blocks you from understanding people better and working with them. Perhaps an ISTJ would see this as a "mess", an "inefficiency" that wastes time, and evidence of bad character when people break the rules.

However, if you change the way you look at the situation, you might not be so quick to make such judgments. Actually, it's kind of weird for a bunch of people who know each other well to enter a room and immediately sit down quietly. Humans have a natural tendency to socialize as a way to strengthen interpersonal bonds. Isn't group cohesiveness a good thing, since it encourages better cooperation? If you are able to see the benefits of their chatty behavior and how it contributes to group cohesiveness, then instead of fighting against it, you would think of ways to harness it.

The real problem wasn't inefficiency; inefficiency was merely the symptom. The more primary problem was that a lot of people joined the group not just to "get things done", but also to make friends. The structure of the event denied them from fulfilling that important need and then they were more likely to act out. This problem was discovered when people had a chance to talk about what was frustrating them, which meant that the group had to make space to conduct some uncomfortable conversations.

To address the problem, the group eventually decided that the first 15 minutes would be devoted to socializing and allowing people to catch up, with the explicit promise to get down to business when the time was up. Some people brought drinks, others brought snacks. Some even showed up early to have more time to socialize. It enlivened people and enriched their relationships. Being "officially" allowed to get the chattiness out of their system, they were better able to sit down and focus on the planned agenda. The meeting felt like fun rather than a chore. And if you're interested in a cause, don't you want to recruit more people to support it? Making things more fun is one good way to attract support. You can look at it as wasting 15 minutes OR you can look at it as a 15 minute investment.

Solutions to human problems require:

cognitive empathy: figuring out what's really going on inside people's heads (in Te terms it means working only with the empirical facts of the situation, rather than indulging negative Fi judgments)

strategy: taking the time to work with people and figuring out the best way to help them get over obstacles (in Te terms it means investing energy early and wisely to maximize your returns later, rather than putting effort into the wrong places or only stepping in to tackle mere symptoms of the problem)

creativity: harnessing natural human tendencies to produce something useful or worthwhile (in Te terms in means taking what's already there and transforming it into a NET positive, rather than getting too fixated on every little negative detail and losing sight of the bigger picture)

Te can be a great function for dealing with human problems as long as you overcome the immature aspects of it, such as impatience, bluntness, or inflexibility. Every person is unique, so every group is different. Let go of the idea that there is only one way to approach a problem/conflict and you will start to be more creative in your approach. By accepting the fact that things are always in flux and using empirical evidence to understand and predict how change works, TJs become much more effective and efficient at everything they do. When it comes to people, meeting someone different from you is an opportunity to learn how to deal with that kind of person. The more knowledge you have of human psychology under your belt, the better you get at dealing with people's weird or negative tendencies. If a strategy works, use it again. If it doesn't work, adjust it to fit their psychology better.

In your situation, you see the problem as people being inefficient, so your inclination is to step forward and do something to "make" them more efficient. Humans aren't built with the prime directive to be efficient. They're not machines. Their psychology is messy, so trying to force them to behave like a machine is to force them to go against their psychology. In other words, you're choosing the least efficient approach. The more efficient approach, though it requires more intelligent thinking on your part (you want to become more intelligent, right?), is to properly understand the more primary problem of what's really causing them to be so inefficient in the first place. That is the way to discover the right strategy. If you are able to target those obstacles at the very root, efficiency improves more naturally.

Oftentimes, working smart doesn't require you to step up and be THE leader for everyone. As an introvert, it's probably more comfortable for you to work behind the scenes to talk to people, get a better idea of what they need and/or what problems they're experiencing, and incrementally remove the obstacles that are preventing them from focusing on what they should be focused on. You can't fix everything all at once, so just do what you can to fix what you are able to fix at any given point in time. It's a process and some progress is better than no progress.

#istj #auxiliary te #fi loop #inferior ne #te #efficiency #problem solving #working smart #creativity #change #perspective #social skills #ask

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plush-rabbit · 3 years

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Late Night Talks

Request: Hey! I hope you’re well sweetheart! I have a request, so I’m the youngest of my family (unfortunately) and a lot of the time I’m unheard and dismissed because of this, ngl I don’t have the best relationship with my family so it’s hard to connect with them, or talk to them. I kinda feel like white noise ya know? So Compress, Twice, and Dabi are my closest comfort characters. So how about them suddenly seeing the reader (probably late at night) talk about the things they enjoy with just stars in their eyes. It’s a harsh comparison to how they act during the day, it’s still them, but it’s just more raw.

🙇‍♀️

thank ya babes

A/N: I hope that you like this, I’m not sure what the harsh comparison was supposed to be but Im guessing it was supposed to be more reserved? (also babes, feel free to gush here, i love talking to yall)

Bubaigawara Jin:

Jin’s need for interaction and want for friendship makes him the perfect partner to talk to. He loves talking to you, his legs bouncing and hands flapping as he mentions something that he likes. Sitting beside you, he does most of the talking, how energy out matched and while he does talk, he also looks to you for commentary, wanting to remember that he isn’t alone. There are rare instances when you two are alone that you’ll talk more. The roles will be reversed and you’re talking about anything and everything, smiling at him and for the moment when your eyes lock, he feels the weight on his shoulders lift.

It’s not uncommon to find the villian and you in a single room together at night, often the words will travel the halls and you have to muffle your laughter. This night is one of those- he’s in your room at night, resting beside you as you talk about this new thing that you’re into. You’re eager, shifting in your seat, a bowl of popcorn nearing the end of the bowl, kernels accidentally grabbed at. You’ve grown so excited, your words tripping over each other as you try to find a way to make yourself comfortable all while he stares at you. You’re processing the words fast, trying to tell the story in a cohesive way but with your excitement you are unable to. You look at him with wide eyes and a grin that can nearly blind him.

You’re different at night. He’s unsure whether because your mind has grown groggy with sleep or if it’s because the likelihood of someone interrupting the both of you has lowered, but you’re different. You’re much more prone to touch- you reach for him and you playfully push at his shoulder, your tongue stuck between your teeth as you give him a coy grin. Perhaps it's due to you being so touchy, that he grows bolder with his movements, grabbing your hand and playing with it as you continue to speak, the bite to his words softening whenever you tease at him.

If it were up to him, he would listen to you for hours on end, locking the door and making sure that you two could just talk until time ran out. But, he knows that that’s impossible, so he lays down on your bed, his head resting on his palm as his elbow digs into your pillow. You’re much different to him when the dim lighting is all that illuminates the room, your hair holding a soft glow, the features on your face almost softer and he’s unsure whether it’s exhaustion that grips at him or something else, but he wants to stay awake, he wants to listen to you every night. You mean a great deal to him and he wants to hear you speak, will take every word and keep the important ones so he knows what you like and what to do.

Despite being tired, he wants to continue talking to you, hearing you talk but the night continues to go on, the sky turning a softer shade of blue, and your words are starting to drift. Jin will take over at that point, laying beside you, talking as you start to drift. He mentions things that you said, making a point to mention that you were the one who came up with that observation and talk about how that really stuck out to him. You voice continues, your words growing softer and your gaze on him now barely peeking between your lashes and yet, he is unable to tell you to go to sleep. It’s selfish of him, but he wants to hear you talk until you’re whispering your words into a single breath. The next day, when you can barely keep your eyes up and you’re talking to him, he’ll have an inside joke, your grin widening as you take joy that he listened to you. Under the table, his knee nudges against yours, his smile ever growing when you return the gesture.

Dabi:

Dabi enjoys hearing you talk- it’s soothing for him, something where he’s able to rest his head on your lap and have you play with his hair as he listens to you gush about whatever it is that you like. However, while he does so, he realizes that he has a habit of falling asleep on your lap. It isn’t because you’re boring, you’re just nice to listen to. Laying with you and hearing you talk is one of the few times where he’s at peace, safe in your arms and touched gently. However, he’s noticed the implications of it, noticing that you don’t talk as much as you did. His piercings are warm as they press against his palms, his eyes half-lidded as he tries to figure out a way to make it up to you or to show you that he does actually care for what you have to say.

Unable to sleep, he arises from his bed, walking towards the living area trying to find some sort of sleeping aid. Instead of sleeping aids, he finds you curled up on the couch, the screen of your phone lighting across your face. You give him a smile as a greeting, your focus returning to your show. He can see heavy bags under your eyes- you’re forcing yourself to stay awake. The couch is soft under him, his arms spread as he turns his gaze over to your show. Without a word, you align your phone to make sure that he’s watching it, your words are whispered as you explain the plot and the characters but as you continue to do so, your words excite and your volume raises gradually.

The night is somewhat young and as far as he knows, there’s no mission that he has tomorrow. He has to fix his past mistakes and he wants to hear you talk. He pushes more, asking about the relationships between the characters and even wanting you to restart the series from the first episode- if you want to, of course. When you do so, he makes himself comfortable on the couch, stealing your blanket and laying down, offering for you to sit close to him in a much more relaxed manner. He covers the both of you with the blanket, his arm stretched behind your back and hand resting on your shoulder.

In between episodes, you start to muse once more, ranging from the metaphors to your favorite lines, and to the designs that you like. Your legs bounce, shaking as you try to contain your excitement despite it being written all over you. He gives you his full attention, nodding his head along as you ramble. Your words are rapid, your expression focused entirely on him and he wonders if you’ve always been hiding all this excitement. You’re much more animated, moving your hands and arms, shifting as you speak and there’s a certain tone to your voice that makes him unable to look away.

Every word of yours is coated in sugar and honey, and he clings to it, nodding along and looking at you with half-lidded eyes, unable to wipe the soft smile off of his face. The show is forgotten, your phone now showing him pictures from different stills and you’re much more relaxed, leaning against him, your head pressed against his side. You have a wide smile, your eyes shining with stars as when you look up to smile at him, he returns it as all air escapes his lungs. Once Dabi can properly think, he enters the conversation, offering more than soft hums and words of interest. At night, he can see your smile, the way that you look at him with wide eyes, the giddiness in your voice is enough to wake up from his growing slumber. He could fall asleep listening to you, but he doesn't want to miss how you look when it’s just you and him.

Sako Atsuhiro:

Atsuhiro adores hearing you talk. He’s rather eccentric, always wanting for the spotlight to be on him, but when you talk, he doesn’t mind being the one entranced by you. He wants to hear you talk, to see the light in your eyes. Yet, he can tell you’re holding yourself back- you play with your hands, tug at the ends of your hair, and laugh nervously as you apologize, telling him that you didn’t mean to talk for so long. While it’s true that you might talk over people, he knows it’s because of how excited you are, willing to share whatever is on your mind before the thought fades.

It’s a late night for him, phantom pains that make it unable for him to sleep and even with the medication acting as a placebo, he’s unable to truly find peace. He finds you in the kitchen, mumbling to yourself as you prepare a late night snack. He knocks against the wooden wall in an attempt to announce himself before startling you but you still jump, turning around with wide eyes and a parted mouth, before relaxing once you take notice that it’s just him. When you ask why he’s up so late, he gestures to his arm, making a strained face as his hand clamps around the residual limb, the pain sharp as it shoots up into his shoulder. He asks what you were muttering about and when you turn your head, your lips pulled into a straight line as you’re clearly flustered at having been caught, he laughs, telling you to tell him- to get his mind off of the pain.

You start off slow, mumbling between words and telling him about a new thing that you like. Your words increasingly start to grow with confidence, your eyes on him as you share your late night snack. He listens to you, nodding along and saving the best piece of the snack for you, his chewing trying to be quiet so as to not interrupt your words. While he also wants to start to talk about one of his hobbies, he much rather listen to you. When you do take a bite, he asks his questions, encouraging you to continue talking, his arm resting against the table and he leans towards you, eager to grasp at every word that leaves past your mouth.

Stars are in your eyes, your tone softer and you go to hold his hand, your thumb, index and middle finger hooking over his middle and ring finger, your eyes wide and smile whimsical as you talk. Under the bare light of the kitchen, you’re softer, your eyes shadowed and your touch gentle as you begin to toy with his hand. You’re passionate about what you talk, and he wonders if when you look so eager, and so full of life, if it’s only something that you show to whoever catches you at night, to someone who can glimpse a version of you so real that he’s almost at a loss for breath.

Sleep gnaws at him, but he is unwilling to do so. His pain is gone, replaced with a dull ache that he knows he can sleep off, but he has stars in his eyes as he listens to you talk. Your voice is soothing, your laugh like a lullaby that only pulls him in further to you. His hand is warm, hispalm tickled by your nails and the snack now lays forgotten on the plate. He almost feels bad for wasting food, but he doesn’t have the will to pull his hand away and finish the food that you prepared. Every word that you speak only makes Atsuhiro want to smile, to lay on his bed and think about you and how you spoke to him. You talk, and he’d do anything to keep your voice memorized, to stay awake long when you've fallen asleep just to remember how your voice lilts when you start to get excited or how it drops during a serious part as if you were telling him a secret.

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scullysflannel · 3 years

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but pls explain me season 6 🤪 (i would love to hear ur reading of mulder in s6)

lol neither one of us expected this to be 1400 words long but here we are.

So my first and most honest take on Mulder and Scully in season 6 is just that the writers were playing the game more that season. They spent five years subverting the Hollywood idea that two people who love each other have to act like they hate each other, and then the show moved to L.A. and the writers were like okay! It’s trope time! And they dropped a cow through Mulder’s roof so there would only be one motel bed for him to share with Scully. I respect the game. It’s my favorite season. But it’s a big shift from the way Mulder and Scully were written before, and it really only works because the season winds up being thematically cohesive enough to justify it, to a degree that was probably sometimes intentional and other times definitely not. Like in Arcadia I think we can all agree the writers were simply men making bad jokes about marriage.

But in the big picture, so much of the season supports the idea that Mulder and Scully are backsliding because they’re fighting the next stage of their relationship. I’ve said this before, but I think the hallway confession in Fight the Future is massive for Mulder and Scully in season 6. Way bigger than Diana. Scully says it in the season premiere: When Mulder told her that he needs her to be his scientist, the lesson she took from that was that she can’t change. The whole season thematically is about the two of them being afraid to let themselves change each other or admit they already have, because they’re afraid that if they stop being the Skeptic and Believer they stop working. They don’t want to risk losing each other. But they can’t be in a relationship if they can’t be changed by each other. So they’re stuck in this terrible limbo, and they’re not happy about it, especially because they’re already at a point where the roles they’re playing don’t fit them anymore. And at a macro level that’s honestly some of the best justification for “will they/won’t they” screwball comedy fanservice I’ve ever heard.

I love all the ways the season plays with Mulder and Scully’s anxiety. In Dreamland Mulder gets trapped in traditional married life; in Arcadia Scully signs them up for it and all he does is mock her; in The Rain King they keep getting mistaken for a couple. They’re always having to confront these domestic expectations. Neither one of them wants that life, but they were both kind of bred to expect it: Mulder the Martha’s Vineyard kid, Scully the sacrificial military wife. That’s part of what they’re struggling with: They don’t have a blueprint for what being a couple will look like for them, and they keep having these visions of the worst possible ending. “Getting out of the car” isn’t even a line until Dreamland, but Drive is literally “if Mulder gets out of the car, will someone die?” Do they die without each other (Tithonus) or because of each other (How the Ghosts)?

A lot of people have written so well about the motifs of this season. @iconicscullyoutfits pointed out how many season 6 episodes involve resets (How the Ghosts), usually with memory wipes (Dreamland, Monday) and dreams (Triangle, Field Trip). The message is that Mulder and Scully can’t move forward if they can’t get out of their own heads. (Field Trip pulls it all together by putting them in each other’s heads.) @foxmulders brought up how season 6 keeps telling Mulder and Scully they’re fated to live and die together (Triangle, Monday, How the Ghosts) but still forces them to choose each other on purpose, and I think a lot of the season lives in that tension between knowing something and still having to choose it. And @thegrotesckque has a great take on how Field Trip resolves the “getting out of the car” question (is it a betrayal for Scully and Mulder? Is it a betrayal for the show?) by proving that they’re better as a team when they stop playing Skeptic and Believer anyway. That’s what saves them.

All of that is so much better than whatever the show is trying to do with Diana. She’s not written well enough to explain why Mulder is so loyal to her (but is written just badly enough to justify Scully’s animosity lol). The X-Files doesn’t care about Diana as a person or even about her relationship with Mulder and how it affects him; it’s not like being burned by Diana brings up Mulder’s trust issues later in the season. They just wanted Scully to be jealous. It’s the weakest trope in a very tropey season; they threw in a love triangle and then immediately stopped caring about it, and not in a funny “no one else stands a chance” kind of way, although obviously yeah, no one else stands a chance.

But Diana isn’t the point. Even if she were better written she wouldn’t be Mulder and Scully’s biggest problem, because all of the interesting episodes of the season are about how Mulder and Scully are their own biggest problem. Diana just weaponizes those insecurities. Like, yes “you’re making this personal” is so rude it’s comical and Mulder is a jerk to Scully about Diana and Diana is a snob, and you can see all of that contributing to why Mulder and Scully are on edge with each other in the first half of the season. But it’s not like either one of them actually thinks Diana might be better for Mulder than Scully is. They’re just afraid they’ll let her stand in their way.

If I wanted to really give the Diana arc the benefit of the doubt, it would go like this: Diana is a catalyst for Scully to realize how much she wants to feel wanted. Mulder takes Scully for granted, and I’m usually kind of charmed by that (I know) because he trusts her so much. He’s so comfortable with her (@wtfmulder has written about this). But when Diana shows up and he starts siding with Diana over Scully, it hurts, especially because he never gives her a good reason. Really I think he’s just loyal and handling it badly. He sides with Diana because that’s the relationship he thinks needs defending right now. We talk a lot about the power imbalance in Scully’s previous relationships, but from the way Mulder behaves around his old girlfriends it seems like he’s been overpowered just as much. This is the first equal relationship for both of them.

It’s just wild that they put themselves through so much because it’s so simple. Of course Mulder loves Scully. He tells her so. But I think Dana “oh brother” Scully is right that he’s not ready to do anything about it, because if he were he’d be making her feel desired. He can say “I love you” on painkillers, but he can’t even ask her to dance in Kroner. He makes bad jokes to deflect (hence all of Arcadia). He’s just as overwhelmed as Scully is by the weight of what they are. I think in early season 6 they both still need the song and dance that gives them plausible deniability: him stealing her car keys and her insisting that she really should be getting home. And if Mulder has a hard time earnestly pursuing her, I think Scully also has a harder time than she’d admit letting herself be pursued. They’ve been kicked off the X-files. In a way just spending time together is so much more intentional than it used to be. Everything means more.

I don’t think they start to get their act together until Milagro, when Scully lets go of her desire to be pursued. The show’s method is bad—Dana Scully is never allowed to learn a lesson until her body is put in danger—but I think David Duchovny mostly saved it by making sure Mulder learns something too. Even if he had no idea what would happen right before The Unnatural, the way the episodes fall is perfect. Mulder finally figures out that Scully wants him to want to spend time with her outside work. It only took six full years.

And then because they are very zero to sixty I think there’s a good chance they start doing IVF, like, right after that. Love that journey for them. If they started IVF before Mulder read Scully’s mind, he must have been insufferably needy. Maybe that’s why they’re so short with each other in Field Trip; they’re trying to make a baby and they need supernatural intervention to process it. It takes a literal religious revelation to convince Mulder and Scully it’s okay to hook up.

#this is so long it's fully unhinged i'm so sorry #o6666666 #season 6 #xf thoughts

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ryuu-to-sobakasu-hime · 3 years

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Ryuu to Sobakasu no Hime (Belle) Novel | English Translation | Chapter 3

**This is a machine translation. I put it together by extracting text page-by-page from a .pdf version of the Japanese novel, and running it through Google translate. I have only minorly edited some of the more confusing lines to make it more read-able. It is still a very rough translation, but it’s good enough to understand what’s going on. If there is anyone out there who wants to properly translate the novel, I am more than happy to edit it, if you’ll contact me.**

———————————————

Chapter 3: Memory

"Mother."

"What is it, Suzu?"

When I called, my mother turned around and replied.

Eleven years ago. The house was still new. There was no garage yet, and potted flowers were lined up all over the garden. "Do not cut my hair."

I told her that and ran down the slope in front of my house. Mom walked down the stairs opposite her, resting her hand on her waist and waiting. I ran away in the opposite direction, bouncing, saying that I would never let my hair be cut. But I was taken back without a hitch. She was seated on a bench in the garden and dressed in a haircut cape. “I’m going to make you look cute, Suzu.” After cutting my hair, I don't like the tingling of my hair. She shook her legs and sharpened her lips. But when she held the scissors without hesitation, she cut my hair all at once. "Because you’re going to be an elementary school student," I hope the hair on both sides doesn't stick to my shoulders. The bangs were far above the eyebrows. Even when I went to school, my neck was tingling for a while.

I played a lot with my mother. I took a sumo wrestling on the lawn of the riverbed in the evening. I pushed her by force and my mother rolled on the grass. I won, I laughed happily. Mother also laughed. I asked why? Won’t she cry if she loses? Mom shook her head. “I'm glad that the weak Suzu has become stronger.” Dad was laughing while lying on the grass. My mother often made salted seared meat. She lightly sprinkles salt and roasts the bonito stabbed on a gold skewer from her lenticel over an open flame on the stove. I was staring from the top of the chair. Since the fat drips, the microwave oven will not get dirty if you bake it while sucking it with cooking paper. When it gets burnt, dip it in ice water to cool it, and then drain it. It was a style. So as a kid, I had a hard time holding a thick piece of salted meat with chopsticks, and I had a hard time putting it in my mouth. Mom was waiting for dad's return, holding a mug and watching my struggle.

My dad was a salaryman at that time, and he wore a tie and went out to the city every day. Perhaps because of that, we had some money in our house in the old days. Mother bought a state-of-the-art smartphone at the time. I decided to try out the performance of the on-board camera, and on dad's lap, I pointed my smartphone at my mom. I asked dad to help put mom in the frame and pressed the shutter. She is dressed in white.

The smiling mother, she was beautiful. The photo of her was printed on paper and is still at the house. I was a cheerful child running around, unlike now. I definitely liked playing outside rather than inside the house. If there were trees, I climbed, if there were leaves, I tore them, and if there were insects, I chased them. But it didn't burn in the sun. I must have been such a constitution. Instead, my face is freckled.

I was often injured. My knee was also full of scratches. In the woods, on the riverbed, on the slope in front of my house, I often stumbled and fell. My mother ran up in a hurry and she hugged me tightly, crying in pain. Mysteriously, it hurts somewhere. That's when I was happy. I don't know how many times I fell because I ran around vigorously and wanted mother to hug me. Every time mother rushed in as if it was a big deal for her daughter and worried. Every day was like summer vacation. I clung to mother doing the laundry and cleaning and played. After lunch, she opened the tatami mat, laid a summer futon on the tatami mats, and we took a nap together. The smoke of the mosquito coil was rising slowly. When I woke up, most of the time, I couldn't see my mother sleeping next to me, and she was busy doing housework. In retrospect, she never been told me that she is busy. She was always with me when I asked for it. Since my house was in the mountains, I rarely went out to eat somewhere, and instead my mother cooked any kind of food. One day she saw it in a picture book, and she said she wanted to eat yakitori. She had never eaten it before. My mother made yakitori by sticking chicken on skewers one by one. For the first time in my life, I saw yakitori with the naked eye. I didn't know how to eat it, so I couldn't do well by chewing the meat and removing it from the skewers. Dad and mom were staring at me. Never missing what her daughter experiences for the first time in her life. The place where we, who live in the mountains, go out to play is not an amusement park or a shopping mall, but a campsite further in the mountains from our house.

On a sunny summer day, my mom and I wore a wide-brimmed hat and crossed the subsidence bridge. Dad was carrying a lot of camping equipment. The water crystal pool in the depths of the Yasui Valley was a breathtaking blue color even for us living in the area. The water is so transparent that you can clearly see your shadow on the bottom of the river. I feel a little scared as if I were floating in the air. My mother was an advanced swimmer. She boasted that her mother, who was once a local kid, swam like a kappa every day in the summer. She knew all about the fun of the river. At the same time, she never let her swim in dangerous places on dangerous days. Mom wraps around me, floating. She dived into the water to show her off her skills. Still picked up by her, I became anxious and called out. “Mom, don't go.” But mom, she swam in the blue water, as if she couldn't hear me.

One evening, I was playing with my mother's smartphone and saw a strange app. I put it on. When you launch the app, you'll see white and black horizontal stripes lined up. I pointed to what this was and asked my dad who was next to me. Dad looked it and twisted his neck, calling mother, who was preparing dinner. After dinner, mother's hand fixed the smartphone I was holding vertically. I laid it down and found it to be a piano keyboard. As prompted, I pressed one of the keys. There was a "do" sound. I looked at my mother's face. My mother also saw my face, saying that she had come out. It's mom’s music production app. Only then did I look around my mother's room and notice. Old records, cassette tapes, and CDs are lined up on the shelves to the end. And if you set them on a record player or cassette deck and pass them through an amplifier, music will be played from the left and right speakers. The collection was a brilliant one that accurately captured the main points of the history of classical, jazz and rock. I didn’t know at the time, the value and meaning of such a lineup being packed in a room at the end of the world.

In that room, I pressed the keys of the app one after another and recorded. When played, each sound sounds in the order in which they are arranged. Even if you enter an insane scale, it will play back in a lawful manner. I was so happy that I bounced on my chair. My mother was laughing too. Warm incandescent light was illuminating us. After that, I was crazy about this app. I had my mother lend me a smartphone and I was playing around with it day, night and morning. The operation was intuitive and easy to use. There were words that I couldn’t read because it wasn’t a children's app. And there were many functions I didn't understand. But I was absorbed in that kind of thing. I was completely absorbed in the exciting new experience of writing songs. I composed a number of songs and previewed them in front of my mother. The mother who finished listening gave me advice in short words each time. If you do xxx, it will be better, or the trick is to do xxx. She sometimes took out some of the records in the collection and listened to them for reference. My mother is neither a musician nor a composer.

I think each piece of advice is accurate even if I look back on it now. Over and over again, she listened to my melody, and she said she noticed something, and she sang herself to make sure it was. When I asked, she said it wasn't bad. She said she was smirking at me as she said. I put the sound in a place that I wouldn't normally put it. I'm sure this song was a failure, and all the work I've done so far will be ruined. But as it gradually takes shape, it seems strangely cohesive, she said. I felt as happy as I wanted to. I'm sure it's my parents' favor, but even if my mother added, I was happy. For me, I'm not making it with the intention of letting someone else listen to it. It would have been nice if only my mother could listen to it. My mother sings along with the song I typed in. Take the tempo with her right hand and sing gently. The voice of mother, who was also a member of the chorus made by her friends, echoed and was transparent.

She listened to my weird songs many times. I was happy and sang along with it. Anyway, it’s a song that is as nice as my mother.

I couldn't. Happy memories of me and mother suddenly end here. And that August has come. After this, all I have is a painful, painful memory. The voice of a little girl crying and crying echoed in the riverbank. A girl was left alone on a sandbar. Is she 4 or 5 years old? She looked smaller than I was. It was so sunny just a while ago, but I noticed it wasn't a blue sky, and it was covered with overcast clouds. The beautiful and calm river was cloudy, flooded, driftwood-filled, and surprisingly fast. I can imagine that it is raining heavily upstream. Before this happened, there were people happily making noise on the opposite bank when the flow was still transparent. They are now staring at the girl on this shore. She wore colorful outdoor clothing that made it easy to see that she probably came from the city, not a local. The girls' clothes were also bright colors that I had never seen. Why did people from the city overlook the girls' flashy colored clothes? Why did she forget her existence and she came back to this shore? What to do with friends, their families, and those who enjoyed fishing and canoeing on the riverbanks.

It seemed that she couldn't do anything, and she had no choice but to stand and look like a stick. It's no wonder you're standing. The violent flow of the river separated the girl from the people. Everyone realized that it couldn't be helped. One of the adults was talking to someone on his cell phone. However, everyone can see that where the girl is, is gradually narrowing. Everyone is aware that it is very unlikely that the rescue team will arrive in time. Therefore, I have no choice but to stand up without being able to do anything. Is it just listening to the girl's crying as it is? At that time, someone picked up the red life jacket beside the canoe.

I went forward while staring at the girl. She was a mother. Mommy, and I hurriedly clung to the hem of her mother's clothes. She realized that what her mother was trying to do was too dangerous. She wouldn't have been anxious. She screamed and pulled hard, trying not to let her go. Mom crouched down and squeezed my hand, and she told me something. At that time I can't remember what mother said. Maybe I was screaming and not ready to hear the words. Mom stood up to shake off my chasing and ran, locking the buckle on her life jacket. I fell down on a stone in the riverbank trying to chase her. Still, I got up and shouted at mother's back. Don't go. I think mom didn’t hear my words. While checking the girl's whereabouts, I went around the river, went into the water, and got in the stream to help. It started to rain.

How long has it passed since then? Suddenly the surroundings became noisy. The girl was rescued from the river. Adults are pulling the soaked and tired girl out of the river. I was staring at while getting wet in the rain. People running up. A mixture of joyful voices and crying voices. Are you okay? Open your eyes. I'm glad I was saved ... The girl was wearing the same red life jacket that her mother wore. At that moment, I understood at once what was happening. Mom isn’t here.

"Mother ..... Mother .....!"

I looked left and right, searching for her.

Not anywhere.

"Mother ...!"

In the distance, I heard an ambulance siren. The girl was wrapped in a blanket.

Carried by many adults, she leaves the riverbank. Everyone is crazy about it and realizes that my mom isn't there.

She isn't.

"Mom!" Only I raised my voice and kept calling. Many times. Many times. Many times. I don't remember much after that. When I heard that my mother was found all the way down the river, it seemed like a lie. It wasn't long before I realized that the mug that mother was using was missing. Dad put a picture of mother, which he took someday, in a picture frame and put it in a corner of the kitchen. He had to add flowers every day next to it. Neighbors bothered to talk to me every time I met them on the road, listened to me in a friendly way, and encouraged me with tears. Meanwhile, the Internet was flooded with anonymous posts about the accident.

"It's a suicide act to jump into a river flooded by rain"

"It seems that she was confident in swimming, but it's different from the pool."

《It is irresponsible for my child to help someone else's child and die》

《If there is an accident, playing in the river will be a nuisance and annoying》

《Because helping people is a good person, this is what happens》

The person who wrote it probably didn't know anything about the actual situation, and the day after he wrote it, he probably forgot what he wrote. However, the person who wrote it keeps sticking in my chest forever. Immediately after the accident, an acquaintance told me with resentment that it was terrible when I saw this. In front of these words, I was too young to understand all the meanings. However, as I grew up and became able to understand the meaning of the words accurately, I continued to suffer from the unconscious malice contained in them. Losing mother.

How should I pass on these writings as a bereaved family, even though I still can't accept them, as if the mother who helped me was all bad?

Aside from me, my mother just smiled in the picture frame in the kitchen. From that accident, I think something has changed decisively from what I used to be. One evening, in mother's room, where dust began to build up, I stood on her chair, hoping to return to her happy memories. And I sang the song I sang with mother. But when I started singing, I realized I couldn't sing at all. My voice became stuck in the back of my throat and couldn't get out of my mouth. I was confused. Something in my heart was suppressing me from singing. Why can't I sing? Tears came out.

Hey mom. Why can't I sing?

It was clear that the reason why singing was so fun and necessary was because my mother listened to it.

However, just because you can't sing... You don't have to worry about anything. Even if you can't sing, no one will blame you. Life just goes on. I went to a local junior high school. The jumper skirt uniform was stuffy. Many of the elementary school classmates went to the town as they went on to school, and there were not half of the students remaining in the local area, so even in junior high school, it became a compound class. Therefore, the chorus practice was accompanied by the vice-principal teacher, and it was decided to sing in all grades. There were three people in all grades. Because there were only three people, I quickly realized that I was just lip-synching without singing. I was asked why I didn't sing, but I didn't say anything. I thought they would get angry, but they didn't get angry. It means that only I can visit from the next practice.

I sat alone in a corner of the music class and watched everyone practice. I may have looked like a lethargic girl who was just silent. But inside that, there are things that can't be translated into words.

I think it was swirling. When I left school and returned home, I irresistibly entered mother's room in the twilight. The twilight light was shining through the window. Cardboard boxes containing tableware and seasonal home appliances that are no longer in use are piled up on the table. It was completely turned into a storeroom. It's been many years since then. It has passed. I listened to the large number of records there, one by one from the edge of the shelf. Days, days, days. By listening earnestly, I managed to calm my rough feelings. But one day, there was a moment when I thought I couldn't bear it anymore. Upon returning, I entered my mother's room, sat down in front of the keyboard, quickly opened the report sheet, and began to write fiercely with a pen to spit out the incomprehensible feelings in my chest. I was almost suffocating if I didn't spit it out. I turned over the paper and continued to write forever. -Why did mother leave me in the river? Why did she choose to help the child who she didn't even know her name rather than live with me? Why am I alone? Why, why, why – I added paper, supplemented with post-it notes, and wrote long, long lyrics. The scale that springs up is notated long and long. Those that were neither were spit out as pictures. It was a swirl of many kinds. It was like a whirlpool floating on the surface, like a black hole that swallowed everything, and like a hole in the top of my head. The floor of the room was filled with pieces of paper with a mixture of lyrics, pictures and sheet music. But suddenly..... I returned to myself and stopped writing. Right now, I've noticed the worthlessness, meaninglessness, ugliness, and helplessness of the words, pictures, and scales I wrote.

What are you doing? I broke the paper. Everything I've written so far.

I threw it in the trash can without hesitation. The bundle of paper looked like a vomit that I had just spit out. Then I became a high school student.

I finally found myself worthless. The uniform tie was stuffy. I crossed the subsidence bridge while looking down and went to school. I took an exam and passed the exam at a junior and senior high school in the center of the city, and transferred from high school. There, I met my childhood friend Shinobu-kun again.

"Shizu.."

"Shinobu-kun ..."

Now that I was in high school, Shinobu-kun looked tall and shining, all different. On the other hand, I didn't seem to have grown at all since then, and I was irresistibly embarrassed and couldn't even talk. What have I been doing so far? I started a new life going to the city from the mountains, but I couldn't get into studying. Even though I had a hard time taking the exam, I just looked out the window during class. Knowing that this shouldn't be the case. Club activities didn't go anywhere. There were very few such students. On the way home, you can see the students devoting themselves to club activities. The track and field club is jumping the training hurdle in a line in the courtyard. The volleyball club is running on the ground. A percussionist in the brass band with a metronome in his ear is striking a stick in the hallway. The Naginata club sits upright in the martial arts hall with a good posture, and thank you for your cooperation, saying before the practice. The first-year students of the baseball club, who have not yet been numbered, stand side by side and watch as if they are digging into the practice of their seniors. I didn't belong anywhere, so I left school quickly. It was already winter. There is a river called Kagami River that flows from east to west in the center of the city. Since the flow is often gentle, the TV tower and buildings on the opposite bank are reflected like a mirror. When I returned to the station through the road beside it, the girls of the light music club carrying the "Chahahaha" musical instrument case overtook me with a light step while laughing. A cute cat-shaped stuffed animal attached to the school bag is shaking. Attached to my school bag was a cheesy plastic plate of "Gutto Koremaru". "Gutto Koremaru" is an egg-shaped character who can poke his hand against the wall and endure the pain. I have a crack in my head, probably because I endured it too much. Of course, it's not cute.

In a dark and narrow corridor.

I resisted, "I can't do it! Hey!", But I was pulled into the room, saying "OK." The soundproof door slammed behind me. Shinboku "Ah!" There was a flashy room in a karaoke box, and the pink and purple lights were spinning mysteriously. It smells of incense. Only for girls in the class.

I heard that it was a social gathering, but when I saw the frenzy of the girls standing on the sofa and shaking their heads, I thought that I could not get into this tension very much.

"Peggie Sue is cute"

"This is the one that is popular in" U ", isn't it?" On the monitor screen on the wall, the popular Az of "U", Peggy Sue, was seen singing in a black rubber dress. Purple lipstick that shakes silver hair. An eccentric beauty with red eyes. Peggy Sue? "U"? Az? Is it popular? I don't know anything. It's like an event in a different world from me. Then, Hitomi suddenly offered a microphone, "Yes." Sing, and so on. "Huh?" Puzzled. Neither the coat nor the muffler is taken off. But "yes" the microphone was pointed again. Why for a child like me who is at the end of a class?

"Sing together?"

"Hey, sing."

The shadows of the girls press the microphones. What do you mean?

"Are you not going to sing alone?"

"Isn't it a lie that you can't sing?"

I see, so it’s this situation.

Dozens of microphones are forced against my face one after another. "Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu"

"Sing"

"Hey, sing?"

"Sing"

Those voices sound like a threat.

"You're telling me to sing."

"Sing!"

Ahh!

Immediately, the microphone popped off and fell to the floor.

The girls dancing on the sofa suddenly saw me. It's calming down as if I was taken aback.

"What happened? Suzu-chan"

The mic and the shadows of the girls disappeared like a phantom.

"No, nothing. I'm sorry. Hey ..."

Without saying anything, I pushed the door of the karaoke box open by force and went out like crawling. Someone might have heard and told everyone that I couldn't sing.

When I got off the bus, powder snow was flying. I almost slipped down the slope from the bus stop. Even in Kochi, it usually snows in the mountains, aside from the city. When I crossed the subsidence bridge, I heard a crackling sound of thin ice. The surface of the concrete bridge is frozen.

Cold. It's not dexterous enough to get used to everyone, and it's not divisible. On the other hand, I’m not strong enough to be alone, not prepared, and have no idea.

I don't do anything selfish. Rumors that you can't sing, that's a lie. I'm just not confident in myself for a while. I want to get along with everyone. Really. I know. Of course I know. So "Ah ... Ah ..."

In the middle of the bridge, I impulsively exhaled my voice.

"Ah ... ah ... ah ah"

As I breathed in, cold air sank into my throat. Still, I sang towards the river. "Ah..”

Did I sing? It didn't match a song. It's just a growl. The bag slipped off my shoulder. Will you forgive me if I sing? Can I get along with everyone if I sing? It doesn't help to sing alone in such a place. It's like a scream of a dead end before being crushed. Still, I sang that song with my mother with a squeezed voice. I was happy back then. It's different now. Powder snow was swirling in the flow of the river. Suddenly, in front of me it became pitch black. Nausea swelled from the back of my stomach, and I held my mouth with both hands.

"Uuuuu!"

I crouched on my knees. However, I couldn't stand the momentum of the backflowing gastric juice. I pushed my body forward and vomited towards the clear stream under the bridge. The vomit that was about to kneel and vomit fell to the surface of the water, creating a number of ripples. I spit out everything in my stomach and fell on the bridge. My hair is messed up and my mouth is smeared with gastric juice and smells. It's already spicy. I want to get rid of everything. Shivering and crying as if groaning. Drops of tears ooze on my cold cheeks and tingle. I wish I were gone.

I could hear the slight sound of powder snow folding and piled up right next to me. A notification came to the smartphone that slipped off my bag. It was a message from Hiro-chan.

<< Look at this, Suzu. It’s so amazing that I’m seriously laughing. >>

There is a link to somewhere.

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dcx2NedPVBEdbfQaU-WC0pJMRmn20ASn7HSC0KY9R7E/edit?usp=sharing ~ Google Doc of the English-translated novel.

ryuutosobakasuhime.wordpress.com ~ English fan-site for Ryuu to Sobakasu no Hime where translations, scans, and other content is posted.

#belle #belle movie #ryuu to sobakasu no hime #ryu to sobakasu no hime #ryu #ryuu #studio chizu #mamoru hosoda #竜とそばかすの姫 #belle 2021 #hime

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straykidsreactions · 4 years

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Reaction To: Foreign S/O Debuts in a Kpop Group

S T R A Y K I D S R E A C T I O N T O : Foreign S/O debuting in a K-pop group + how you met

A/N: Thanks so much for requesting and being patient @lovemyhyunjinnie , and for supporting the blog!

Genre: Fluff

Chan:

You’d started seeing Chan a little over 8 months ago after meeting him completely by accident at a noodle shop down the road from your trainee dorm. You’d only been in Seoul for a little over a month at that point, after being accepted into the Big Hit Entertainment trainee program, and that noodle shop was the only place you could find that had pictures on the menu. At that point you could probably count on two hands the number of phrases you could say in Korean, so you’d resorted to nervously pointing at pictures on the menu to order your food- fortunately the older couple who ran the small eatery grew accustomed to seeing you late at night after long hours of practice and welcomed you despite the obvious language barrier. The night that you met Chan had been a particularly hard night, after 10 hours of dance and vocal practice with an additional 2 hour Korean lesson- you were feeling drained and at your wits end. It was probably around 2am at the time, and the shop was entirely empty save one tired, hardworking young man in the corner who was downing a large bowl of black bean noodles while working furiously on his computer. You didn’t pay each other any mind at first, but as you sat in front of your soup bowl with tears bubbling up in your eyes- feeling entirely alone and lost in the world- you’d felt a soft tap on your shoulder, only to look up and find the soft and sympathetic gaze of the strange young man as he extended a napkin in your direction. You’d gratefully accepted it and dried your eyes, trying to mutter through a somewhat cohesive sentence of gratitude in Korean before Chan had interjected- letting you know that he spoke English. Though it was already late when you met, it felt as though you talked for hours after that. He’d consoled you and encouraged you to keep going, despite how tough it was going to be. He’d given you his phone number at the end, after walking you back to your dorm, and told you that if you ever had time he’d like to see you again. That’s how it started and now 8 months later the two of you were closer than ever, despite both of your busy schedules.

Standing backstage at the Mnet Countdown show, you took nervous breaths as a stylist fitted a mic headset against your face. You were finally debuting and, though you knew your time as a trainee was short compared to that of other idols (especially to compared to your boyfriend’s), it had felt like a lifetime. Looking around at your group members, you felt a small ounce of consolation knowing that you weren’t the only foreign member- there were 3 of you in total- but still you were prepared for the backlash you might face. You’d already accumulated a large fan following as trainee’s through rookie showcases, especially overseas, but the nerves in your stomach were still overwhelming. Just as you heard the MC’s announcing your group’s name and you prepared to take the stage, you felt a tap on your shoulder reminiscent of that night so many months ago when Chan had helped you out of your darkest moment.Turning quickly, your eyes met the loving gaze of your boyfriend as a small smile flickered across your face, spinning you around in his arms as he took in how good your stage costume looked.

*blushing as you unintentionally breathed out a sigh of relief, something that had become a habit for you every time you saw Chan’s face*

“Yahh, what’re you doing here- we’re going on stage any second!”

*smiling as though he didn’t seem to care that you were short on time and his presence there at all was risky if any photographers happened to be near by*

“I don’t care, baby- you know I had to be here for this. God...look at you.”

*smiling shyly before turning away as you heard one of your member’s call your name and wave you over*

“I’ve gotta go, babe but...thank you for being here. Are you gonna stay and watch?”

*nodding as he patted your head lovingly, letting go of you so that you could join your other members*

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world, Y/N...I’m so proud of you.”

Minho:

You’d been in Seoul for a little over a year when you met he man who would later become your boyfriend and, ironically enough, you met him on an idol survival show. Of course Minho wasn’t a contestant on Produce 101, but he was brought onto the show for a couple episodes as a guest judge towards the end of the reality show filming. He appeared as a judge for the last 3 episodes- when there were only a handful of trainees left- and you were among them. Though you hadn’t interacted a ton during the production of the show, the moment that sparked your initial crush was during a rehearsal leading up to the final episode where Minho was overseeing and choreographing the dance practice. You’d almost mastered the difficult and demanding choreo, but as you lept into the air for what felt like the 100th time that day you felt your ankle weaken underneath you and in an instant your body collapsed into a heap on the floor. As your fellow trainees and friend’s gasped, it was Minho who had been the first to run to your side- the look of genuine concern evident on his face. He’d offered to help you out of the studio, away from the cameras, and to the designated nurse a few doors down. In the quietude of the hallway, as the young man slipped his arm around your waist to balance you as you stumbled, you couldn’t help but feel your heart rate quicken. You were far from fluent in Korean but you conversation skills were passable after having lived and trained in the country for a year, so you muttered out a polite apology as you continued to lean on him for support. In that moment, he’d stopped you for a moment, turning his body to face you as he propped your back against the wall, causing a small gasp to escape your lips. He didn’t lean in when he spoke, keeping a professional distance between the two of you, but his voice was like honey and it almost made you wish that he had leaned in just a little.

“Don’t apologize, Y/N...it’s my fault for pushing you too much during practice. I’ll take full responsibility.”

You shook your head, assuring him that you didn’t blame him and how sorry you were for taking up his time, to which he’d only smiled, helping you off the wall and towards the nurse’s door. Just as you were about to go inside and he was headed back into the practice room, he’d turned to you with that famous charismatic smile spread across his face. If his words hadn’t resonated with you so deeply, you almost would’ve not heard him over how focused you were on his ridiculously handsome features.

“Listen to the doctor, ok? Don’t give them a hard time just because you want to perform, you have to make sure you’re healed first...you have to win, Y/N, you deserve to win.”

After Produce 101 had ended and you had placed in the top 3, earning yourself a spot in the nation’s next big group, all of the winning contestants along with the judges and producers were invited to a large celebratory dinner at the company. After the dinner had finished and you and the other winning trainees were getting ready to head back to your dorm, Minho had pulled you aside and congratulated you on winning. That same night he’d asked you out- and it was the first and possibly only time that you’d seen him truly nervous. You’d been a bit taken aback at the time but one date turned into 3 months and, despite your relationship being a secret from the public eye and having to work around both of your busy schedules, you could honestly say it was all worth it.

Your group went on to begin training and preparations for your big and highly anticipated debut, and when the time finally came all of the fans that had watched your journey from Produce 101 were more excited than ever. Minho had texted you to say that he’d be watching your debut stage and to wish you good luck- and despite knowing how busy he was you had to admit that it stung a little knowing he wouldn’t get to see you on the day of your debut. It wasn’t until you were backstage with your members, 10 of you in total, waiting to take the stage when you heard the voice of the special MC announcing your group- a voice you were all too familiar with. Your eyes widened as your members whispered to themselves, wondering if it really was the same man who’d been a guest judge on your survival show a handful of months earlier. A blush filled your cheeks as you tried to focus, not wanting to get your hopes up on the off chance that you were just hearing things, but as you entered the performance stage and took your place as you awaited the cues from the cameramen, you couldn’t help but smile at the MC in front of you- none other than your proud boyfriend staring back at you.

“Everyone, please join me in welcoming the incredible new rookies on their debut- let’s show them a lot of love, ok?! Music, cue!”

It was only a flash of a smile that you caught before the music began and you refocused your attention on giving a flawless performance, but it was enough to give you the confidence boost you needed. After the show had finished and you were all on cloud 9 from your official debut performance, you searched backstage to find the man who’d given you so much confidence. You finally found him in his dressing room and the instant he saw you he’d light up, pulling you into a warm embrace despite the risk of cameras around. Laughing, you pushed him lightly as he only wrapped his arms around you tighter, shaking his head as the smile on his face only widened.

“You did so well today, Jagiya.”

*blushing as you stared down at the floor, finally loosing his grasp on you as he took your hand in his*

“You didn’t tell me you’d be MCing, Minnie.”

“I wanted it to be a surprise, hopefully it wasn’t too much for you.”

*smiling as you shook your head, squeezing his hand that was intertwined with yours*

“It was perfect. Do you think I’ll do ok though?”

*giving you a confused look as he played haphazardly with your fingers*

“Why...because you’re a foreigner?”

*nodding slowly as you bit your lip, despite having debuts the pressures as a foreign idol were weighing on you*

“You’ve made it this far, Y/N...if you can do that, you can do anything. Besides, I’m right here by your side. I won’t let anyone hurt you, I promise.”

Changbin:

You’d met Changbin after being in Seoul for only a handful of weeks, after being accepted into the trainee program at SM Entertainment, and you’d been taking private Korean lessons at a famous language center. It was a popular place for companies to send their idols and trainees who needed additional language lessons, usually for Korean and English classes, and it felt as though you basically lived there. When you weren’t training at the company you were at the language center doing everything you could to improve your Korean and, though you could feel yourself progressing, you also felt the immense pressures to push yourself even farther. It wasn’t until one evening when you were up late studying at the language center, that a young man had come up to you with several English textbooks in his arms. He was barely recognizable as an idol at that point, wearing glasses and an oversized hoodie with slight bags under his eyes from staying up so late, but his cautious smile was warm and inviting. He’d asked in somewhat broken English if you spoke the language, and when you responded in very broken Korean that you did, he’d sat down across from you in relief.

“I am trying to..uhmm..get better with my pronounciation. I think my English is..mmm, not that good. Is it ok if I talk to you?”

It had been the first time anyone had attempted to make conversation with you in English since you’d been in Seoul, and though you didn’t know him at all you felt compelled to help him. You flipped through your Korean textbook, showing it to him and asking him if he would help you in return, which he’d happily agreed to. The two of you had spent the rest of the night trying to make converse with your limited knowledge of the other’s language but, despite not having a fluent speaker between the two of you, you’d felt like the conversations came naturally and you almost didn’t want it to end. He’d walked you to the bus stop once the language center closed for the night, and had put his number in your phone so that you could meet back at the same place to practice the next day. it went that way for a month or two, meeting practically every night to study together- and you found that you picked up the language best when you were jut talking casually between the two of you. You got to know each other through the conversations you had, talking about anything from family and childhood stories to your current professions. You talked about what it was like to be a trainee and having Changbin as a someone you could confide in during those first couple months in Seoul became a huge source of motivation for you to keep going. The first date the two of you went on wasn’t even really a date, you’d just become so involved in your conversation that when the language center closed he’d suggested going to a convenient store across the street and getting food. It was the first time that you’d successfully ordered something in full Korean, and Changbin had been so proud of you that in the moment he’d pulled you into an embrace in the middle of the convenient store- making you blush. He’d apologized afterwards, stumbling over his words until finally he took a deep breath, admitting that he liked you (which he was able to do in fluent English). You’d responded in fluent, though probably still somewhat broken, Korean that you liked him as well- and the rest was history. That was two years ago and after all that time dedicated to practicing and rehearsing tirelessly- you’d managed to be selected for debut.

When you’d told your boyfriend, he was almost more excited than you were. He was so filled with pride that you’d achieved everything you’d set out to do- but it wasn’t until the night of the performance as he watched from backstage that he felt tears pricking at the corners of eyes. It would be a mix of pride and nerves for Binnie, knowing that you were so talented and deserved all the support and love in the world, but also being worried that you’d receive hate in the industry for being a foreign idol. He knew you were strong, but he also knew himself well enough to know that watching someone receive any kind of negativity would absolutely crush him. He wouldn’t bring it up to you, you knew what you were getting yourself into and he trusted that you could handle yourself despite being in such a tough industry. More than anything he was so proud, watching your absolutely flawless performance on your debut stage filled his heart with a sense of admiration he’d never felt before, and as you ran backstage after your performance with the other members of your group- you spotted him in an instant. He smiled, pulling you aside as the other 5 members of your group playfully teased the two of you, giving you some space.

“Did we do well, Binnie? You can be honest?”

*smiling as he cupped your face in his hands, staring at you in silence for a moment as he he shook his head*

‘it was perfect, baby....you were perfect.”

*lighting up you blushed slightly, prodding him further*

“Are you sure? You can say if it could’ve been better, I’ll work harder and I know there’s still so much I can do better I-”

*shaking his head as he pressed a thumb to your lips, interrupting you as he blinked back tears in his slightly misty eyes*

“Wahh, you see this, baby? Your performance was so good your boyfriend is gonna cry- isn’t that enough proof?”

Hyunjin:

You’d been in Seoul working as a trainee at JYP Entertainment for a year and a half, after being recruited from an international audition. Though you’d never met any of the members of Stray Kids (or any other JYP artist for that matter), you were very familiar with who they were and you looked up to them a lot. It wasn’t until a particular dance showcase that JYP announced he’d have an additional person watching the performances with him. You hadn’t even processed that it was Hyunjin walking through the door until he was practically seated at the supervisor’s table- all you could do was stand frozen as your heart rate quickened and your palms grew damp. He introduced himself politely and said a few encouraging words before sitting back down and calling the first group of trainee’s forward to perform the choreography. You were in the third group and, by the time he got to your name the butterflies in your stomach had only gotten worse. When he read your name of the list he paused for a moment, recognizing that it was not a Korean name. He looked up, his eyes landing on you immediately as the obvious owner of the foreign name. He smiled softly, waving you forward and you had no choice but to nervously approach the table. All eyes were on you as he leaned towards you slightly to speak in a soft voice.

“It must be difficult, huh?” You didn’t want to think of the way your face must’ve flushed when he made eye contact with you, so you just nodded softly and turned your gaze to the floor.

“Use it, ok? You’re always gonna stand out, but don’t let it be a bad thing. Just keep trying, you were accepted for a reason...”

It was the first time somewhat within the company had addressed your nationality in a way that was entirely encouraging and supportive- and it gave you the confidence you so desperately needed to perform your best at the showcase.

After the performance had ended you didn’t have an opportunity to thank Hyunjin for his kind words, but over the course of the next couple weeks you later found out that he’d been trying his best to find your schedule so he could run into you again. He convinced himself that it was just because he wanted to show you support since he imagined being a foreign trainee must be very difficult, but deep down he knew it was more than that. He was interested in you, and when he did finally manage to run into you at the practice studios late one night he took it as a sign that he had to at least try. He’d offered to run through some difficult choreography with you and, despite you insisting that you didn’t want to take up his time, he assured you that it was no trouble. The two of you stayed up practicing until the early hours of the morning- but it was by far the most fun you’d had since beginning your training and you were endlessly grateful for that. Just as the two of you had agreed to call it quits for the day and began packing up, he’d asked if you were allowed to have a cell phone. You’d told him that you did, since you were a foreigner you needed to have it for emergency contacts and translation apps, to which he just smiled. He asked if he could see you again, gesturing for you to give him your phone. When he returned it to you there was an additional contact in your phone book- under the name “Grandpa”. You laughed, giving him a quizzical look.

“It’s in case anyone searches through your phone- I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble because of me, Y/N...I-I probably shouldn’t even be talking to you, I know you’re not allowed to date anyone...but I wanna get to know you. I’m sorry if that’s too forward.”

Over the next handful of months you and Hyunjin became closer, mostly meeting late at night in the dance studio to practice and, though your language skills weren’t exactly fluent, you had enough conversational skills between the two of you to create a dialogue. It wasn’t perfect, the two of you didn’t have a proper date outside of the company building for the first several months that you were seeing each other, but it was enough. On your 6 month anniversary, sitting on the floor of the dimly lit practice room for what seemed like the millionth time, Hyunjin had stared at you with an expression on his face that you couldn’t quite place.

“Promise me something, baby.” You’d agreed, giving him a slightly confused look as he scooted closer to you.

“Promise me that when you debut, you’ll let me take you out on a proper date.” You’d felt slightly embarrassed at the time, saying that you didn’t know if you’d ever debut and that he shouldn’t wait for you if he didn’t want to, but he’d only smiled, cupping your face with his hands and assuring you that’d wait as long as it took.

A full year after that night in the dance studio- you’d finally been selected for debut. You were beyond excited and, though you knew it’d be tough being a foreigner, you also knew there’d be a lot of support for you from international fans. When you told your boyfriend, he was absolutely elated. That is, until you told him that your debut performance (which he’d been promising since you met that he would be there for) was on the same day as Stray Kid’s comeback performance. Despite both performing on Inkigayo, you were on completely stages recording at similar times which meant that Hyunjin couldn’t physically be there to watch your debut performance in person. The one saving grace, however, was that at the end of all the performances on the show that night- every artist was brought onto a central stage to film the closing scene and thank their fans for tuning in. You hadn’t noticed it at first, but as Hyunjin took the stage with his members, still slightly sweaty and dressed in his stage costume from his recent performance, he was also holding a bouquet of roses. He glanced in your direction just before the cameras started rolling, smiling brightly and giving you a small thumbs up. It wasn’t until after the cameras were rolling and Stray Kids had said their closing remarks, however, that Chan stepped forward to say one last thing.

“We’d also like to congratulate JYP’s latest group on their debut- we look forward to working with you more! Fighting!” Despite Chan being the leader, it was Hynjin who stepped out from his place and walked over towards your group, the five of you looking between each other in slight confusion as Hyunjin walked directly up to you. Handing you the bouquet of roses, he smiled and gave a polite bow. You were shocked by his bold action, though you were the leader of your group you’d never anticipated him handing you flowers on national television. Nevertheless, you returned the polite bow, thanking him.

*flashing you a knowing smile as your took the bouquet in your arms, trying your best not to blush while the cameras were still rolling*

“Congratulations on your debut, Y/N.”

Jisung:

When you first met Jisung, you weren’t even officially in Seoul yet. You’d just been recruited as an idol trainee at Cube Entertainment and were flying to South Korea to begin training. Your flight had a layover in Singapore where, coincidentally, Jisung also was after visiting some old friends at the international school he’d attended in western Malaysia. He was flying back to Seoul after taking a short vacation and, as it turned out, the two of you were on the same flight. You couldn’t speak a word of Korean outside of a few basic phrases, so when you heard the warm voice of a young man sitting down beside you speaking in English you felt a small sense of relief that you wouldn’t have to take out your pocket dictionary.

“Excuse me, would it be ok if we closed the blinds...just while the plane’s taking off? It makes me a bit dizzy.” You’d looked up to meet his polite, apologetic gaze and for a moment you almost couldn’t think straight. He was one of the most handsome men you’d ever seen, but you collected yourself quickly and nodded, closing the blinds as Jisung thanked you. That had been your first interaction however, after a completely chance delay on the tarmac for an additional 3 hours, your conversation slowly expanded as you began simple conversations with one another. He’d asked you why you were travelling to Seoul alone, and when you’d told him that you were a trainee his face lit up- explaining that he also worked in the industry and that if you needed advice or help with anything to let him know. By the time your plane actually took off the ground it felt as though you’d made a real friend- his amiable and laid-back demeanor felt welcoming in a world where everything else was so new and uncertain to you and you’d appreciated that. After an additional 6 hours in the air, however, watching a movie together and drifting in and out of sleep against Jisung’s shoulder- you felt that you’d made more than just a good friend. It was a completely chance meeting, and you weren’t sure when you’d be able to see him again due to your busy schedules, but you’d both felt in that moment that there was something between you worth not giving up on.

When you finally landed in Seoul it was late at night and, fortunately, no photographers had been tipped off that Jisung would be there. He helped you load your bags into the taxi, breathing out a nervous sigh at the realization that if he didn’t say something now he might never see you again. He’d hoped that it would be a bit smoother in his head, but as soon as he saw you opening the door of the cab he’d blurted out a jumble of nervous words.

“Y/N wait- listen I know you’ll be super busy and I’m always insanely busy too but I-I wanna see you again and I wanna keep talking to you because I-I think meeting you was really special and the best luck I’ve had in a while so maybe if-if it’s ok with you I could get your number?”

You felt a weight lifted off your shoulders at the realization that he felt it too, and you happily agreed. You hadn’t even arrived at the dorm when you received a text from Jisung apologizing for uncool he must’ve looked and promising that the next time he saw you he’d be more put-together. That had been your first meeting, and 3 years later you were still going strong.

You worked ridiculously hard at training and studying Korean in those 3 years, supporting your boyfriend over every comeback, and when you were finally approved for debut in the latest group at Cube Jisung was unbelievably excited. Knowing that he could be there to support you and your members on your journey would make his heart fill with pride, and he had to admit the added bonus of you no longer being under a dating ban would make going on dates a lot easier. He knew you’d have a hard time being a foreigner in the industry, it had been hard enough as a trainee, but he’d also been with you long enough to know that you were strong enough to take on any challenge.

When your debut stage finally came around, Jisung wouldn’t miss it for the world. His heart was practically beating out of his chest as he watched on the large monitor from the guest room backstage, his eyes becoming misty as he watched your effortlessly perfect performance. You were so incredible, and you were his. After your performance had finished and you’d come backstage with your members, it wouldn’t take Jisung long to wrap his arms around you and pull you aside, not paying any mind to all the people around you. You blushed as he pulled you towards him, sitting down near the back corner of the bustling room filled with tons of people all of whom were eager to congratulate you and your members on your debut. All you could focus on was Jisung, though, as he smiled sweetly with warm and pride-filled eyes.

“You did so well today, baby...you know that right? You did so so well.”

*blushing as he cupped your cheek in his hand, a small teasing smile playing on his lips*

“You’re an idol now, huh? Are you still gonna want to date me? There are gonna be a lot more guys asking you out from now on, you know.”

*rolling your eyes as you shoved him playfully, assuring him that he was the only guy you wanted to be with*

“I’m gonna hold you to that, super star.”

Felix:

You’d met Felix while training in Seoul, after being accepted into Pledis Entertainment about two months earlier, at a gaming cafe of all places. You didn’t have much time as a trainee who was also struggling to learn the language, but when you could you tried your best to work late nights at the gaming cafe around the corner from your dorm in order to earn a bit of pocket change. It just so happened that Felix had agreed to play a match with a few old friends from Australia when his personal computer died- leaving him with no other option but to find a 24 hour gaming cafe. It’d started as only a one time visit for Felix, he hardly had time to drive the 15 minutes to a gaming cafe when he had his own computer at the dorm, but after seeing that you were the one behind the check-in counter he decided the 15 minute drive might not be such a horrible thing. You hadn’t paid him much attention the first time, you spent most of your time behind the counter studying your Korean textbooks and watching playback videos of the dance practices from earlier that week, but after a few hours of gaming as Felix was finally leaving the cafe (having been the only customer there in the first place) you glanced up. He was standing in front of you, bare faced and smiling as he brushed his fluffy, unkempt hair away from his face and adjusted the hood of his plain black jacket.

“H-have a good night, sir.” You’d muttered in the best Korean you could muster at such a late hour, causing Felix to smile slightly as he raised a brow.

“How long have you been here? In Seoul, I mean.” When you gave him a confused look, surprised by his immediate switch into fluent English, he laughed slightly, apologizing for his straightforwardness.

“Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m a foreigner too- I’m from Australia. Don’t worry, it get’s easier, I promise.” You smiled slightly, nodding as you glanced over at the textbook on the counter. Felix followed your gaze, his face brightening slightly as he pointed to the book.

“Those books seem so childish, they really work though, I swear. I used the same ones.” You couldn’t place your finger on why exactly, but something about the stranger’s reassurance comforted you more than you’d known you needed.

“I’m Felix, by the way. What’s your name?” You’d replied with your name, taking his extended hand and shaking it softly as he smiled.

“Will you be here tomorrow, Y/N?” You nodded and, though he hadn’t asked, you noticed yourself telling him every night that you worked at the cafe. You knew it was a stretch, and that your interest in him must have been so obvious from the way you told a complete stranger your work schedule unprompted, but you almost hoped that maybe he’d come see you again. He did, of course, and he felt a little better about his obvious tactics at trying to get to know you better by the fact that you also seemed interested in him. One visit to the cafe turned into several, always late at night and almost always when hardly no one else was at the shop. After a few weeks of his frequent visits, Felix stopped pretending that he was coming there to even use the computers, instead opting to sit across from you at the counter and just have conversations with you. They were mostly in English, but he also did his best to help you with your Korean and for that you were endlessly grateful. Though you knew who he was, his face was fairly famous across Korea after all, you never brought it up because it never came up in conversation. It didn’t seem to be something Felix had any interest in talking about, instead you spent most of your time talking about your dreams, things you wanted in life, the biggest abstract concepts and those most minute details. Mostly you just found ways to make each other laugh, and though neither one of you realized it at the time you were an escape for each other. In the same way that Felix hadn’t discussed his work with you, you hadn’t discussed your real reason for being in Seoul with him. You’d told him that you were studying Korean and that you worked part time at the gaming cafe, but it never seemed relevant to bring up the fact that first and foremost you were a trainee. It wasn’t that you’d intentionally hid it from him, if he’d asked you directly you would’ve told him, but there was something innocent and nice about discussing other things besides just your everyday activities and lines of work. it almost felt like a movie.

In fact, the night that Felix asked you out properly (to grab noodles from the convenient store across the street), he still didn’t know that you were a trainee. He didn’t know for a few months after that either- you’d only told him when it came up in conversation as he was driving you somewhere (this time in the light of day) and he’d asked where to drop you off. You’d casually replied, telling him Pledis Entertainment, causing your boyfriend to laugh and give you the strangest look.

“Pledis? Yahh- Y/N! Are you not telling me something?” Fortunately your light-hearted boyfriend had found the humor in the situation, making you promise to not keep any big information from him like that and formally apologizing for also not talking about his work in the same way. It was only 6 months after that conversation that you were approved for debut.

Though Felix hadn’t been there for a good portion of your time as a training knowingly, he’d been there for you in the way you needed most. When your debut stage finally arrived he’d asked you if you wanted him to come, seeing as how he’d missed so much of your trainee experience. In all honesty you felt like your nerves might be too high if he were there and you didn’t want him to go out of his way, so instead you compromised and promised you could watch the debut stage together the next day when it aired. He’d agreed, meeting up with you at the cafe where you’d met that fateful evening several months ago and warmly pulling you into an embrace. After watching the stage performance on one of the computers several times over and pausing on every close up of your face to shower you with compliments, he turned to you with bright eyes and a wide grin plastered on his face.

“Babe..just- wahhh....Wow. Oh my gosh.”

*giggling as you smacked him lightly, insisting that he was just hyping you up as he continued to tease you*

“My (girlfriend/boyfriend) is a celebrity, huh? Wahh, that makes me so cool. And you’re so talented too...Will you let me come to your next performance, baby? I’ve missed so much already, I really wanna watch you perform this live.”

Seungmin:

You’d been a trainee at KQ Entertainment for just under 3 years when you met your soon-to-be boyfriend. You’d just walked into a small coffee shop located on the outskirts of Seoul after a long day of training in hopes of getting something to warm you up. Seungmin also happened to be there, though not for the reasons one might think. He was dressed in full barista attire, standing calmly behind the counter with his phone in his hand as he snapped a few pictures of himself. A few crew members were staggered about the coffee shop, along with a few elderly customers who didn’t see to mind the intrusion. He was there taking photos for a comeback concept- but as you entered the shop and immediately focused your attention on the menu, you hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary about the young, handsome man behind the counter.

“Can I get a latte please, and also maybe one of those muffins?” You gestured towards the baked goods on display, not paying much attention to face staring back at you with a small smile flickering across his lips. Just as one of the crew members was about to step in and assure you that the man you were talking to was, in fact, not a qualified barista in any sense- Seungmin waved them off. He nodded, placing your muffin in a small box and handing it to you, his heartbeat a little faster than he would like to admit. Though your eyes hadn’t met yet, he was looking directly at you- and something about you was alluring to him. He blushed slightly as he tried desperately to think of what might go in a latte, ultimately resorting to pressing several different buttons on machines that he had no idea how to work. Coffee began pouring out of every orifice of the machine, and loud whirring noises let him know that whatever he’d done it was horribly wrong. He gasped, cursing under his breath as the crew rushed in to help him. Only then had you looked up, eyes wide at the odd spectacle of several grown men trying to subdue a rogue coffee machine. Stifling a laugh, you got Seungmin’s attention and pointed towards the power cord, which he then hastily unplugged. The whirring came to a halt and half-brewed coffee stopped spewing- and in an instant the two of you were chuckling to yourselves. The crew members left to get cleaned up, leaving the two of you alone for a moment as you looked at the man who’s crisp white button up was now covered in coffee stains. Smiling softly, he apologized for the commotion, admitting that he didn’t actually work there.

“I’m here for a..uhm, a photoshoot...thing. I, I don’t know the first thing about coffee.” You’d laughed gently in response, assuring him that it was ok.

“Hmm, can you make tea?” Butterflies rose in his stomach when you looked at him with a playful smile, and he’d nodded, locating the hot water and pouring some into the cutest mug he could find. Placing the small bag of herbs into the water, he handed you the mug and warned you that it was hot. You’d thanked him, paying for your beverage and taking a seat near the back of the cafe. Only a few minutes had passed before you were joined by the same smiling man, asking if he could sit with you and- though you didn’t know the first thing about him- you’d agreed. Maybe it was his trustworthy eyes or the fact that you couldn’t supress the heat that rose to your cheeks whenever he smiled at you- whatever it was something made you feel compelled to keep his company. You talked for a while, though it wasn’t long before the crew members came back and started rushing Seungmin out of the shop. He apologized for having to leave so suddenly, and as you stood to watch him go you’d called out to him.

“W-wait..I know you’re probably way too busy but- well...” You didn’t have the nerves to ask if you could see him again, though you desperately wanted to. He read the emotions on your face, smiling as he was guided out of the shop by the staff. Motioning towards your mug of tea, he gave you a thumbs up and just before he was out the door he gestured for you to call him. Then, in a flash, he was gone. You stared down quizzically at the mug of tea he’d prepared for you, and after a moment of staring at it blankly you noticed the small tag on the end of the tea bag had small writing scribbled on the backside. You couldn’t help the ear-to-ear grin that formed on your face when you realized that it was a phone number.

From the inception of your relationship with Seungmin, things had been very secretive and under-wraps. You met when you could, always late at night and in the oddest places possible to avoid cameras, especially since you were still a trainee and technically under a dating ban. On top of that, the tabloids would have a field day if Seungmin was spotted with not only a trainee, but a foreign trainee. It had only been a few days after you’d been approved for debut, one year after that fateful night in the coffee shop, that you and Seungmin were caught by one of the managers at KQ Entertainment. You’d only been having a simple meal together, but of course the two of you were in a mountain of trouble. Because you’d technically already been approved for debut they were a bit more lenient with you, but nevertheless your phone was temporarily confiscated and the two of you had to agree not to let your relationship get caught by photographers or anyone else outside the company. In the few weeks preparing for your groups debut you weren’t allowed to go anywhere without supervision and Seungmin was no longer invited to your debut stage. That being said, Seungmin had a way of getting what he wanted- and there was nothing that he wanted more than to see all of your hard work come to fruition.

The day of the debut, you and your members were already on edge, rehearsing in your dressing room over and over again as giddy nerves bubbled up on your stomach. You wished that your boyfriend could be there with you, as he always knew exactly what to say to calm your nerves, but you knew he’d be thinking of you and that was enough. Your performance, of course, went smoothly without a single hitch, and you almost didn’t want to leave the cheering audience as you and your members took a bow, exiting the stage. It wasn’t until you wer backstage, however, that one of the assistants came up to you with a look of urgency on her face.

“Y/N? This is for you.” Handing you a small coffee cup, you gave the woman a confused look. Asking who ti was from, the woman only shrugged, stating that she only knew it was supposed to go to you and not to let anyone else have it. You frowned, definitely hesitant to accept a drink from a stranger. In fact, you’d almost thrown it away until you saw small scribbled handwriting on the side of the cup- trying your best to read it without drawing attention to yourself.

3rd floor dressing room A16, down the hall on the right.

Love, your favorite barista

Smiling, you clutched the cup to your chest, letting one of your members know that you were going to use the restroom as you quickly made a dash for the back stairs. When you made it to the mostly quiet 3rd floor and found the correct dressing room, you opened the door to see a completely empty room, save your boyfriend smiling from ear to ear. He ran up to you, pulling you into a bear hug and placing his hand over your head as he stroked your hair. You could tell from his casual attire that he’d tried really hard to get into the building without being noticed, teasing him slightly as you adjusted the hat on his head.

“You did all this just to see me after the performance?”

*nodding as he smiled widely, blushing slightly at his bold move that was definitely putting both of you at risk for getting in trouble if anyone found out*

“I have my ways, Jagi- I had to see you. On of the producers let me watch from the soundroom...you did so well today!”

*humbling deflecting his compliment, assuring him that it was a group effort as he stepped closer to you, his bright smile never wavering*

“Baby, give yourself credit, hmm? You were amazing out there. I know how hard it’s been for you, but everything was perfect.”

“You mean it, Seungminnie?”

*nodding and flashing you a wide smile to assure you that he was being serious*

“I mean it, Y/N...now aren’t you proud of me for sneaking in here?”

Jeongin:

You met Jeongin after training at P-Nation Entertainment for a little over a year and a half and, though your Korean skills were still developing you had a decent grasp on the language and managed to get by fairly well. Besides being a trainee at P-Nation you were also a backup dancer for some of your label’s big name solo artists and, on the particular occasion where you met Jeongin, you were backup dancing for Hyuna. The solo star had just comeback with her latest single and was performing it on Mnet, coincidentally the same day that Stray Kids was also promoting a comeback on the same show. You’d been in the dancer’s dressing room amongst a sea of other dancers for various artists performing on the show that day- all of you in a variety of different costumes and aesthetics. Being that you were a backup dancer for Hyuna (who is famously known for her sleek and sexy concepts on stage), your garment was a little on the revealing and tight side. It was flattering, of course, but nevertheless it was a little out of your comfort zone. You had just finished getting ready and were standing in the hallway of the backstage area as you waited for the other dancers- when several idols began walking past. You could feel their eyes on you as they passed by, making you slightly uncomfortable as you tried your best to place your arms over your body. You tried to adjust the fabric so that it would cover you a bit more, but it was no use. You didn’t mind it on stage because that was part of the job, but just standing still with stranger’s eyes on you made you feel a bit embarrassed. It wasn’t until you felt a gentle tap on your shoulder that you pulled your gaze away from the floor, looking up to see a young man with a sympathetic smile and warm eyes in front of you. He was clearly dressed and ready to perform, a mic pack was already attached to him and his hair was perfectly styled, yet he was extending his arm towards you with a jacket in hand. You gave him a quizzical look and he just smiled bashfully.

“Oh, um..I’m sorry. I saw you standing here and you look a bit, um, uncomfortable? You can wear this if you like.” He gestured again to the oversized leather jacket in his hand that had clearly been a part of his stage costume just moments earlier. You smiled softly, feeling heat rise in your cheeks but this time in a positive way. Shaking your head, you insisted that you shouldn’t accept the jacket when he was supposed to wear it on stage, but he persisted.

“No, it’s fine really! It’s too heavy to perform in anyway. Just wear it until you have to go on stage, you’re a dancer right?” You’d nodded, telling him that you were going on stage shortly for Hyuna’s comeback. He laughed slightly and nodded his head, though there was something you really appreciated about the fact that his gaze never drifted below your eye level.

“That explains the costume. Here, wear the jacket until you have to go on stage. You can return it to me at the end of the show, deal?” You’d hesitanttly agreed to the kind stranger’s proposal, putting the large jacket on and immediately feeling more comfortable. You thanked him and he waved it off casually, leaving to get ready for his own performance. After the show when you returned the jacket to him, he admitted that it looked much better on you and that he’d hoped you would keep it. When you insisted that you couldn’t dream of keeping a stranger’s jacket he’d just grinned from ear-to-ear and, though his nerves were bubbling up inside him, he kept a cool and collection disposition when he replied,

“Hmm, maybe we don’t have to be strangers then.” He apologized almost immediately afterwards for the bold line, but when he saw the way it made your face light up he couldn’t help but push it one step farther, asking in a slightly more bashful tone if you’d like to get lunch sometime. You’d agreed, and the rest was history.

A year later, P-Nation Entertainment announced it’s first group was scheduled to debut, and you were among the members. Jeongin would be so incredibly proud of you, feeling an array of emotions at the fact that his (girlfriend/boyfriend) was finally debuting. Dating in secret over the past year had been especially difficult for Jeongin, since he knew that if you were caught it would especially risk your career since you hadn’t debuted yet- and on top of that he’d hate hearing the comments you received for being a foreign idol trainee. Though there was a lot of support as well, Jeongin desperately wanted to speak up publicly and shame those who had negative comments to say towards you, but he couldn’t when your relationship was a secret. The night of your debut, as Jeongin watched from backstage in a private viewing room, he knew in his heart that you were more than just someone special to him. He’d wanted to be someone who could protect from the moment he met you and gave you his jacket and, despite any criticism the two of you might face, he wanted to be that person for you publicly. After your debut as Jeongin pulled you into a warm embrace, showering you with praise for your incredible performance, he took a deep breath, whispering softly as he took your hand in his.

“Jagi...I-I wanna be your boyfriend, publicly. For the whole world to see.” When you gave him a confused expression, he’d explain.

“Not right now, I know you only just debuted...but someday. When I’m worthy of it.”

*blushing softly as you insisted that he was by no means unworthy of being your boyfriend*

“Innie you know I’d love that...but it’s just so hard to say with something like that, what if people don’t like us together or-”

*shaking his head as a smile rose on his cheeks, interjecting*

“When we win Album of the Year. How about that, hmm Y/N? Once...once Stray Kids has won album of the year...and once your group has won Rookie of the Year. How does that sound?” You’d laughed at the time, feeling that awards were still so far off in the future for your newly debuted group, but nevertheless you agreed.

A mere six months later, taking the stage with your 6 other members at the MAMA’s to accept your very first Rookie of the Year award, you felt your heartbeat quicken and butterflies rise in your stomach as you looked out of the crowd as they applauded. You caught your boyfriend’s eyes as he proudly stared up at you. It wasn’t even an hour later that Stray Kids took the stage to accept their 3rd and most prestigious award of the night- Album of the Year. As each member gave a short acceptance speech of gratitude and love, Jeongin expressed much appreciation towards his fans, his family and his members. He hadn’t told you that he’d received permission from the company, so despite your promise 6 months earlier you weren’t expecting anything grand during his speech. That’s why it took you by surprise almost as much as the rest of the audience, when he called out your name.

“Uhm, actually- there is one more person I’d like to thank. (She’s/He’s) helped me through so much over the past year and a half, and I’m very lucky to have (her/him) in my life. Truthfully, I-I don’t know if I’m good enough for (her/him)...but I promised this person that if we won Album of the Year we would stop hiding our relationship, so thank you Stay’s for making this dream of mine come true. And Y/N...thank you for being such a good (girlfriend/boyfriend)- congratulations on Rookie of the Year, Jagiya.”

#stray kids reactions #straykidswriters #thekpopnet #bang chan #lee minho #lee know #seo changbin #hwang hyunjin #han jisung #han #kim seungmin #yang jeongin #i.n #kpop reactions #stray kids x reader #stray kids x idol!reader #stray kids gender x gn reader #gender neutral reader

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actualsunflower · 3 years

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ur art is rlly inspiring for me... I struggle a lot with line art, would u be ok giving advice? I rlly love ur art

I'm really sorry I left this in my inbox for long, I've just been trying to figure out how to answer fjdfskf but first that makes me very happy that you find my art so inspiring 🥺 really, I've worked so hard on my art for so long, and I struggle so bad to see it as good and worthy of even sharing. Looking back at old art I can see the progress, but it's still hard to look at it and call it good myself. I have a bad habit of comparing myself to other artists out there and I never compare in my eyes :/ it's really hard unlearning that but I've been making a lot of progress, and actually spending almost a year not sharing any of my art really helped with that. (I'm not saying do the same thing it's just my experience!!) Now it doesn't bother me quite as much.

See I left this ask in my drafts for so long. I was going to make a little tutorial on how I do things, see if that helped but I just kinda... Never did it, executive dysfunction and work and all. So I'll just give some tips instead

1- My first advice is to give up the tiny lines, the one teeny line at a time thing, and go for full lines. It doesn't have to be like the entire face shape at once, but do bigger chunks because the more lines the more shaggy and jagged it looks. You won't get a smooth cohesive line like that if you're going for a clean and smooth look. It's hard to get over habits like that but once you do your art And your wrists/arms/shoulders will thank you. (This only applies if you want a clean look, if that's your thing and what you're going for disregard that. But this is about my art specifically.)

2- always stretch your wrists, it really does help. Give your hand a good pull back (not to where it hurts) and make a fist and roll your wrist, it helps A LOT and feels good lol stretching your whole body is good as well, if you've got bad posture like me you'll start hurting halfway through. A lot of times though you won't even notice you're in pain until you try to sit up.... Ouch

3- USE REFERENCES!!!! It is not cheating, it's not cutting corners it is essential to learning!!! And not just learning but it's essential for just enjoying art, it takes away so much frustration of "why doesn't this look right?!" And something else nice, is if you're really struggling with something, just take a picture of yourself and trace it. I do it all the time and it has saved me many a frustrating breakdown. Just make sure you own or have permission to use the photos you're tracing over. Just don't use it as a crutch, as in for every single thing because it can at some point hinder growth. My advice is just sketch over the general shape, and then do the rest yourself. Just having that shape/position will help way more than you know. And don't be afraid to just cobble together references, paste and reshape and move whatever you want or need.

4- Play with and make brushes. I have a special brush that is used Only for Jay's vitiligo and it saves me a lot of time, pain, and just looks really cool and helps me keep it consistent. And you'll be surprised at how you feel by just changing the brush you do line art with. Softer/harder brushes can change everything

5- literally who cares about shading. If it looks cool, put it in. If you don't think it looks cool, erase it. You are the god of lighting and shading in your own art, it doesn't matter where the light is coming from. Just say there's multiple light sources even, it really don't matter

6- learn to use multiply and add layers, they are super helpful and fun. Multiply layers are great for shading AND blush, I use one clipped over Jay's face for blush, just clip, watercolor over cheeks/nose/ear tips, slight transparency and bam perfect blush (for color, I pick base skin tone, slide bar to red, deepen a bit, perfect) (I use the color box/w the side bar) add layers are great for glowing things and bright lighting. (A tip for glowing things, use the desired color, blur a bit, then use a dot of white in the middle, blur that. Extra glow!)

7- warming up is a great idea. I just scribble a bunch, do little doodles of my pets, go from faintest to hardest in pressure and back again in on line, then I usually do something a bit more substantial, which is typically drawing Jay or Nick lol that's why I always have so many Jay and Nick drawings. It helps though

8- this one I feel is very important. Don't ever feel like you're copying someone else. People add and remove things from their style subconsciously, I have seen more than once where I post in my style and later see someone else who did something that incorporated that specific thing I did. It just happens. You do it without thinking, and you can do it while thinking it too. Don't trace people's art, but if you love the way someone draws eyes, just draw them like that too. Nobody owns an art style, no one can stop you and you will not get in trouble from doing that. Eventually anyway it will evolve into your own unique way, and people will do the same when they see your art. It's and endless cycle in the art community and it is one of the treasures of sharing our art. Whether we think it or not we are all influencing each other and it's a beautiful thing.

That's all I can think of rn so, I hope this is helpful and I apologize for taking forever lol

#sorry it's kinda long #hope it helps though #sunflower asks #art advice #if you find typos no you dont 💖

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bentforkent · 4 years

Text

to the moon and to saturn - chapter one

spencer reid x fem!reader

navigation and summary

word count: 2753

no content warnings

next chapter

seven

“you’re boring.”

“no, i’m not, y/n!”

“you never want to play pirates with me!”

spencer’s hair is long and his glasses are sliding down his nose. the light seeping into y/n’s room from her large bay window is muted by the white sheet covering it. the sheet rests precariously over a chair, forming a blanket fort carefully engineered by spencer, and haphazardly constructed by y/n. there are throw pillows tossed throughout the fort, and spencer makes an attempt to straighten them whenever he gets the chance. whenever he comes to y/n’s house, ringing her doorbell with a backpack full of books, they work together to add on to their secret hideaway. the white sheet is the newest addition, especially designed to let more natural light into the blanket burg. this follows a poor mishap where a lamp y/n had left on too long burnt a hole through her carpet.

previously, the pair had constructed a stuffed animal room, a reading corner, a designated snack area. y/n’s starting to run out of linens. the fort has been standing for weeks now, y/n’s parents very rarely involved enough to enter her room, giving her and spencer free reign to create their own imaginary worlds to play in undisturbed.

except spencer, with all his practicality, isn’t particularly adept at the “playing in imaginary worlds” part. y/n can’t comprehend that. it’s simple for her to slip into a different universe, enjoyable, even. she’s begged spencer to play mermaids, bank robbers, fbi agents, firefighters, princesses---you name it. spencer indulges her for the most part, but y/n can always tell that he’s not that into it. he’s much fonder of tucking into some obscure poetry book, reading aloud when y/n requests. she never comprehends much of what he’s saying, but he reads so confidently that it fills her with glee anyways.

for seven year olds, it’s clear to outsiders that they both don’t quite act their age. y/n, with her big doe eyes, dreams too much, her escapism both her greatest asset and most fatal flaw. spencer’s a stickler to the realistic, his pragmatic nature an unconscious choice that gives him a beautiful worldview but will make him grow up too fast. for now, though, the children don’t worry about that. they worry solely about balancing each other out and the purity that comes with being in youth.

y/n is splayed on her back on the floor of the fort, where her scratchy carpet is covered with a fluffy pink blanket. her hair fans out around her head in a halo. spencer’s physics book is closed and set gently in the corner, and he’s attempting to braid a small chunk of y/n’s hair. “pirates is my least favorite game,” he says.

“what about knights?” y/n angles herself to look back at him. she’s far too young to execute a soul searching gaze, but the way her eyes strain to scan his face comes close. she takes note of his facial expression giving away his inner thoughts. the way his lip quirks up indicates that he definitely does not want to play knights with the girl in front of him, but the softness in his eyes tells y/n that she’s won.

without another word, they crawl out from their blanket fort and jump onto the bed. “my armor is blue,” y/n says, unsheathing an imaginary sword and holding it up in joust. “knight armor was typically made of iron or steel, and there was no way to make it blue in the late 15th century,” spencer piped up, mirroring her actions. he likes playing at y/n’s house. his parents would never let him jump on the bed. y/n’s parents let the two of them do a lot of things, spencer thinks, and he’s never heard them fight like his parents do either.

“cool, spencer!” y/n says enthusiastically. she’s always enthusiastic when he tells her a fact, even though she rarely really understands him. she knows people are terrible to spencer because of his intellect, and had made a pact with herself when they first became friends that she would never ever ever be mean to spencer for being smart. “we can pretend, though. yours can be blue too!”

“okay,” he replies, and y/n begins to coach him through the game, attempting to loosen him up a bit. they play, bouncing around on the bed and wielding fake medieval weapons until the sun begins to go down and spencer remarks that he needs to go home before dark or his mom will be upset.

y/n reluctantly lets him leave, knowing that he has a lot less fun at his house, but finding comfort in the fact that he’ll come back the next day.

spencer and y/n spend every day together, without fail. they’re young, and they don’t know much about life, but they know that they’re the only people for each other. they’ve been inseparable since y/n had toddled into spencer’s first grade class and heard him reciting a john lyngate poem. her favorite book at that time was a brightly colored picture book, so she was both fascinated and confused by the boy in glasses in front of her. that day, they’d sat together on the bus and chatted the whole way home. the pure elation that occurred when the children realized they shared the same bus stop was unmatched. y/n, who’d just moved to las vegas, was relieved she’d met a friend in her new hometown.

she didn’t really meet any other friends after associating herself with spencer. he’d warned her that being his best friend was basically social suicide, but y/n was already attached to him like superglue. once, a girl in their class had tried to invite y/n to sit with her at lunch. the girl not-so-subtly made it clear that spencer was not invited to the table, and y/n had shut that down quickly with a swift spoonful of red jell-o down her shirt. spencer decided then that red jell-o was his favorite.

to sum it all up, in super simple terms, y/n and spencer were close. and everyone in their town knew it, including their parents, although both sets of adults were generally nonplussed about what their children were involved in as long as they were alive and surviving.

y/n’s parents aren’t neglectful, per se. she’d just had to learn how to fend for herself very early on. y/n’s existence had been an accident, and although she didn’t know that in explicit terms, it wasn’t hard to figure out based on the lack of maternal instincts from her mother. y/n’s mother sat on the back porch of their house a lot, looking out at their tiny, barren backyard with a cigarette in hand. her father went away on many business trips, coming back to greet the family only with a pat on y/n’s head before he padded up to the bedroom to slip into bed. one day, y/n would realize the intensity of the mental health problems both of her parents were suffering from, but as a child, the adults in her life just felt far away.

spencer’s parents were similar in a sense that they weren’t the best. rather than the silence that settled over y/n’s house, his home filled with argument. it’s why he found solace with y/n, with their blanket fort. y/n’d offered to let him live with them constantly, but spencer couldn’t leave his mother. his father? he couldn’t care less. but his mother...as much as spencer longs to spend his days curled up in y/n’s bed, reading, he knows above anything else, he’s got to protect his mother.

after closing the door behind spencer, y/n skips to the kitchen to pour herself a drink. her and spencer had made fresh lemonade the day before, squeezing lemons y/n had stolen from her neighbor’s tree. spencer had been in charge of the sugar, and he’d added way too much. the pair tried it, though, and liked the super sweet taste.

y/n fills her glass with ice, having to stand on her tippy toes to reach it in the freezer. after the cup is filled with the sugary beverage, she takes a second to peer out of the window and check on her mom outside. y/n expected to find her in her usual plastic chair, cloud of smoke encircling her. but she wasn’t there. this was odd. she sets her sweating glass down on the table, and wanders upstairs to get a location on her mother.

loud moans float down from the top of the stairs, and y/n, ever naive, follows the sound to its source. the stairs creak under her feet, her house old and probably close to crumbling. y/n pushes the door to her parents’ room open with both hands, and is immediately sick at the sight. at seven years old, she doesn’t fully understand what’s happening, but she knows that whatever she is seeing is wrong.

william reid, spencer’s father, is laid naked next to her mother, also fully exposed. they’re startled by the door opening, shocked to see young y/n standing there, witnessing their adultery. the three of them are in a trance, suspended in surprise. y/n’s brain is moving a mile a minute, she knows, but she can’t seem to form any cohesive thoughts except “this is not right.” it feels like forever that y/n is holding eye contact with william before her mother speaks. “y/n,” she starts, but y/n doesn’t stick around to hear the end of the sentence. she’s out of the bedroom and out of the house in 30 seconds flat.

as she runs down the suburban street, she’s barely aware of the tears rolling down her cheeks or the pain in her feet. she’d forgotten shoes. she runs, runs, runs, hair flowing behind her. she runs until her thoughts catch up to her. where can she go? she realizes that her body had been taking her straight to spencer’s house, but she couldn’t. how could she look him in the eye? how could she tell him that her own mother is responsible for his family falling apart? how could she ever even be near him again? stopping in the middle of the road, y/n lets out an anguished scream. a ferocious scream. a scream that claws its way out of her chest. and then, sufficiently exhausted by both her physical activity and her emotional despair, she turns back the way she came and begins to trek back towards her house.

- - - - - -

“penny, i have no clue how you do your job,” y/n says, handing the blonde woman before her a hot macchiato in a to-go cup.

her hair is longer now, her eyes more weary. the wonder she felt as a child is long gone, sucked out of her on that fateful night. y/n hardly thinks about it anymore, but that night after she had gone home, her mother made her pack her bags and took her as far away from vegas as possible. as far away from spencer as possible. she never saw him again. it’s been almost twenty years since she’d last seen the geeky boy. the loss of her childhood best friend was a dull wound now, one tucked safely in the back of her subconscious. sometimes she wonders how he turned out, but their time together feels more like a dream than a memory.

y/n moved away from her parents as soon as she turned 18, straight to washington d.c.. with no money, no degree, no friends or family, y/n turned to her work. she got a job in a tiny coffee shop, and the elderly lady who owned it took her under her wing. her name was janice, and she was an old, childless widow. y/n’s kind disposition filled a void janice had given up on trying to fill, and the two became a fierce pair. janice provided y/n with the apartment above the shop, higher-than-minimum wage, and when janice passed five years later, y/n inherited the coffee shop itself. she’d been owning and running it ever since.

it was at this shop that she met penelope garcia. penelope frequented the kitschy coffee place before work, and had gained quite the soft spot for the raven-haired owner. the two of them chatted every morning as y/n flitted around behind the counter, making whatever caffeine-filled concoction penelope had ordered. eventually, their friendship progressed past casual small talk at y/n’s work into wine-filled sleepover nights at their apartments.

“my job is hard, my friend,” penelope replies, shuddering. “some of the stuff i see gives me the heebie jeebies.”

“yeah, like dead bodies.” y/n turns and begins making her own personal coffee to start the day, penelope leaning on the counter in front of her. “heebie jeebies is an understatement!” y/n faces penelope again and grins, pouring copious amounts of sugar into a mug that janice had used while running the café.

“you know, y/n, i only know one other person in the world that takes that much sugar in their coffee,” penelope remarks while she watches the barista stir her obscenely sweet coffee with a wooden stirrer.

“hmm, they must be my soulmate, then,” y/n says. penelope’s ears perk up at that. she makes her way to the door, and y/n raises her mug in lieu of a wave. “have fun at work, pen! see you at your place tonight! i’ll bring wine!” penelope responds with a witty goodbye and heads to work, just the jingle of the bells on the door to signify she was ever there.

-----

penelope saunters into the behavioral analysis unit office 30 minutes later, cup of coffee long empty. “good morning, babygirl,” derek says.

“i’ll show you a good morning, hot stuff,” penelope deadpans, walking through the bullpen to greet all of her coworkers. penelope’s so bright that she immediately lights up the dreary BAU.

“spencer!” she calls, prompting the shaggy haired doctor to look up from his desk.

“good morning, garcia,” he says with a small wave.

“this morning, i got coffee at my favorite place,” penelope begins to gush, “and the barista puts just as much sugar in her coffee as you do!”

spencer doesn't understand why garcia is telling him this until she continues.

“this particular barista happens to be super cute and also one of my closest friends.”

spencer shakes his head with a laugh. “no, garcia, i’m not letting you set me up again.”

“okay, the first one was not good, i’ll admit.” she perches on the edge of his desk.

“but i actually know this girl! and i love her!”

spencer shakes his head again, giving penelope a light, joking push off of her seat. “no,” he emphasizes, and garcia gives him a dramatic sigh.

“okay,” she says, dragging out the word. “i’m going to go to my lair now to give you time to

think about it.” she presses a kiss to the top of his head, and with a ruffle of his hair, she floats to her office.

i’ll convince him, she thinks. i mean, how could i not? coffee aside, the kids are perfect for each other. she doesn’t know how she missed the blatant similarities between them. penelope’s usually very perceptive, and that makes her really good at setting people up. i might as well be cupid, she thinks, except for that one date i’d sent spencer on. she chooses to ignore that one. a minor lapse in judgement.

penelope pulls out her phone to text y/n.

penelope (7:56): y/n, my love, my light, i have found the most perfect guy for you

y/n (7:57): no penny, not again

y/n (7:57): remember the last date you set me up on?

oh yeah, penelope remembers. she’d sent both of her friends on two completely separate, shitty dates. maybe cupid wasn’t the best nickname for her.

penelope (7:59): you’re right. ugh. ix-nay on that idea then

she attaches a lot of sad emojis, then tucks her phone away. there goes that. penelope tucks that idea away, into the depths of her brain, and forgets about it.

#spencer reid x reader #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid smut #matthew gray gubler x reader #matthew gray gubler smut #matthew gray gubler fluff #Spencer Reid angst #criminal minds fanfic #criminal minds smut #my writing #to the moon and to saturn #to the moon and to saturn chapter one #Spencer Reid x you

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royallyprincesslilly · 3 years

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Title: Kismet {8}

Henry Cavill x Famous OFC Aliya Taylor

Warning: Plot, Tiny Slow Burn, Mild Cursing, Dialogue Heavy, POV Changes, Small Time Jumps

Words: 6.6k

Summary: Aliya is a singer turned model turned actress. Since she was fifteen, she’s been creating her empire in the entertainment world. As the daughter of a famous fashion model/designer and Hollywood director, you’d think life is easy for her, but her past has been anything but easy. Due to past trauma, she’s forever changed and no longer trusts any man that is not in her family and a select few in her team. She’s sworn off love and serious relationships and has planned never to fall again, but love isn’t something that can be planned. It just happens when it’s meant to. Can Aliya outrun a love that seems hellbent on holding tight to her, a love that is Kismet?

If you enjoyed this please LIKE, COMMENT, REBLOG!! 😘

As always, thank you so much for reading. ❤️❤️

***Loosely Edited/Proofread***

***Interactive***

Previous Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |

-Henry-

The minute he woke the next day and the alcohol had worn off; he instantly regretted his actions. His head was pounding and his nose stuffy, which was always what the morning after a drinking fest looked and felt like for him. the pain in his head made him painfully aware of everything he’d said to you. More than half of him wished he would have just held his peace and moved on, but the other side of him—the stubborn bull side felt nothing but satisfaction from what he’d done. It was time, especially seeing that you completely had the wrong idea about who he was and his character. He couldn’t help but wonder what you thought about your conversation, but instead of dwelling on it, he decided to push it to the side and do the logical thing. Move on.

It was now five days since that conversation, and though it felt strange the first couple of days to not send you a message when you ran across his mind, he did it and adapted. He now was throwing himself into work because there wasn’t a shortage of it. Most days, he was in pre-production for Witcher two, and that in itself was a lot of work. Production decided to kick fight choreography up a notch because last season wasn’t badass enough. The choreography this season was definitely taking it up several notches, and it meant more long hours of training and even more potential for him to be hurt.

By week two post convo, he was steadily counting down to his vacation time. Training was kicking his ass, and the more and more days that passed, the more he thought of you. That wasn’t all though, the more the way he thought of you changed. In the beginning, he thought he was infatuated or possibly obsessed. When he was around you, he always felt as if he wasn’t in control. He felt like there were forces that were controlling your interactions and pulling a starry blanket over his feelings. He expected this time away to act as a purge, but it hadn’t, not in the way he’d anticipated.

“Come on, her name is Becca, and she’s super cute,” Alisha said.

“Why is it that all my brother’s wives want to set me up?”

“Because we care. You’re too great of a guy to be alone,” Halley complimented.

They all nodded, and his eldest brother painfully squeezed his cheek.

“Plus, look at this face,” Nik teased, making all of them elate.

It had been like this since they were kids. Nothing had changed.

“I’m perfectly fine being alone,” he answered.

“Doesn’t mean you should be,” Amee piped out.

No matter what, he said it wouldn’t be good enough until he gave them what they wanted. He had no intention of doing it, though. He wasn’t sure if it was really his loathing of being set up or because he didn’t want to pretend to want anyone else. Whatever it was, it had him declining to their annoyance. He could stick it out for the next two weeks until he got out of London.

-Aliya-

“You fucked up, plain and simple,” Amaya blurted out as she flipped through a magazine.

You rolled your eyes and tried to continue writing notes to the song you’d just wrote. As sure as you were that it was pitch black outside, you knew she wasn’t done—not by a long shot. A minute passed in silence, but as projected, Amaya began again.

“Just explain to me why you don’t want to be happy.” Amaya tossed the magazine aside, giving you her full attention. Still, you ignored her and kept your eyes glued to the note pad.

“Liya, come on. At some point in your life, you’re going to have to be honest with yourself.”

She was right. For the last few weeks, you’d spent a lot of sleepless nights doing just that. Since Henry’s call, you’d been forced to look at your situation in a light you’d ignored. It wasn’t that you were doing it maliciously. It was just easier and neater to see the worst in every situation hence the worst in people. You’d been the girl who dug deep for the best in people and only focused on that and their potential for too long. It made more sense from a survivalist standpoint to be different.

You’d went back and forth and round and round your situation, and perhaps you were too quick to jump to conclusions. The bottom line was the things he said had affected you, more than you liked and more than you could ignore. A few days after his call, you saw his picture in The Sun. He wasn’t alone. It looked like he’d had a long night of partying. You deduced it was probably the same night he called you. Though he was obviously drunk, he still looked so damn good. In the last few weeks, you’d thought about him a lot. On several occasions, you’d taken up your phone for the sole purpose to stalk his Instagram or even scroll through your gallery to gawk at his pictures. Never though, did you attempt to call.

The main reason was that you hated being the one in the wrong. You hated feeling like the asshole and what was worse was that you also hated apologizing. So, you bit your tongue, pushed your thoughts and emotions aside, and just hoped time would make it all fade. It didn’t.

“Aliya!”

Closing your notepad, you stood. “We’re going to miss the flight.”

“Whatever! It’s a private jet. It’s your private jet.”

You were already out of the room, which meant thankfully, you didn’t have to see her face. The drive to the private airfield was about forty-five minutes. For the entire ride, you could feel Amaya’s annoyance with you. she didn’t say one word. Instead, she kept her nose buried in her phone scrolling her life away. It was okay with you; you had plenty of work to do. Plus, you knew this wasn’t over, not by a long shot.

Sure enough, twenty minutes into the flight to London, she was back at it. The difference between Amaya and Alicia was simple. Where Alicia liked to leave me be until she knew the perfect time to go in because she knew the perfect time would come when you would be more receptive to it, Amaya preferred to go in all the time. She was always on one hundred. You loved both your best friends dearly, and they both spoke to different sides of you, but sometimes you wished they were wrong a lot more often than they were right.

When you got pulled into a phone meeting, you were grateful and even more so when it lasted for almost two hours. By the time you ended the call, Amaya was napping. Though you thought the silence was what you wanted, it was a blessing in disguise. It meant you now had peace and quiet to think, and your thoughts more often than not went right to Henry.

When you landed in London and checked into the hotel, it was after midnight. Once you’d taken a shower and answered a few emails, you popped two sleep aids in hopes they would knock you out because you needed all your energy tomorrow.

-The Next Day-

Hectic was an understatement for how your morning and afternoon had been going. One of the great things about being you was that when you got bored with one career avenue, you had three more to distract yourself with. For the last several months, you’d been focusing on your acting career and had been able to complete two films and three guest appearances. In between acting gigs you were also able to do a few modeling events, including Fall and Spring fashion week.

What had fallen to the wayside was your singing career. It was almost time for you to fulfill your contractual obligations by releasing another album. You’d been focusing on writing new material for the last few weeks, and tonight you were putting on one of the last stops on a mini-tour your team had planned months ago. The travel alone was killing you. You were exhausted, even more than usual. With every show, you felt your body telling you it would soon be time to slow down or stop for a few months. You needed a break.

“I should have flown in days ago. I hate feeling like this isn’t perfect.”

“Aliya, it’s fine,” Alicia countered.

The perfectionist in you didn’t believe her.

“I promise. I wouldn’t lie to you. You have to go anyway. The show is supposed to start at six; it’s already three.”

She was right. Though you hated it, you would have to cross your fingers and hope things looked cohesive. After finishing up the last-minute wardrobe adjustments and a quick pep talk with your dancers, you made your way back to the hotel to get in a little bit of pampering before having to get back to the center for prep.

As you laid on the table and enjoyed your deep tissue massage, you allowed the worries to float away. There was nothing you could do about it now anyway. You were also sure it was perfectly fine, and just your obsessive nature taking over. Tuning everything out, you focused on your meditative breathing. Before you knew it, it was time to get back to the center to get into wardrobe and put on a show worthy of the hundreds that were spent on tickets. You were determined to perform your ass off.

-Henry-

He couldn’t have gotten out of tonight no matter what. He’d tried. When Charlie announced to everyone that Heather had made plans for their adults' date night, he rolled his eyes. Now that he thought of it, it was around the time that Amee tried to set him up with that woman. This was supposed to be a blind date, and since he’d declined, he was here alone while all his other brothers were snuggling up and whispering to their significant others.

Here he was an hour and ten minutes into your show, and he’d never had more fluctuating thoughts and feelings. At first, it was surprise; then annoyance, then it transitioned into awe until it moved to arousal and admiration. Now he was stewing deep in all of them, and it was not a good look. Your voice was incredible. He’d always known how talented you were. Your stamina to dance and sing blew his mind. Then when he watched those dance moves closer, it was impossible to keep his thoughts pure. It also didn’t help that the outfits you were wearing only fueled his imagination more.

“What’s wrong with you? You said you liked Aliya Taylor,” Amee shouted over the music.

Plastering a smile on his face, he nodded. “Yeah, she’s great. I’m tired.” It wasn’t a complete lie.

When you came out for the final song in a flowing low cut white gown and barefoot, he staggered backward when he envisioned you walking down a flower aisle.

“Fucking hell!”

All eyes snapped to him, and the curious looks on their faces only had him needing air even more.

“I—I’m gonna get a head start to the cars.”

Not waiting for a response, he turned and walked through the crowd, not daring to look back at you.

-Aliya-

Amaya and Alicia laughed together at something on Amaya’s timeline. No doubt it was some picture of one of her boy toys. You sipped from your flower decorated porcelain teacup while staring out over London to the Eye. Just behind it, Big Ben stood tall and proud as it chimes for four o’clock echoed through the city. This was a city you’d spent a lot of time in thanks to your grandparents on your father’s side. Not as much time as they’d like, but there was only so much free time you had. Big Ben and the Eye were two of your favorite things about London.

You should have been on cloud nine after another successful show and checking another thing off your extensive to-do list, but you weren’t. You felt almost as gloomy as the rolling clouds in the sky that threatened rain.

“You seem depressed.”

Alicia’s voice had you turning back to them you softly smiled. “I’m not.”

“You look it,” Amaya slid home.

Rolling your eyes, you finished your cup of tea and gently placed it on its matching saucer with a shrug. “I don’t know what to tell you then.”

Amaya then gasped with a smile in her eyes. “I know what it is. You’re finally missing your grade A prime beef of a man.”

Snorting, you shook your head. “Oh god. Try again.”

“You might be right, Mya,” Leece started placed her elbows on the table to peer at you closer. “This all started the night we had dinner with him. What’s his name again?” Both of them pretended to wrack their brains to remember his name, but they knew damn well what it was.

“Ah, Henry,” Amaya cooed, making you roll your eyes even harder.

“Both of you stop. You’re not funny.”

“We approve.”

“I second that,” Alicia added.

“What? Really?”

“Are you kidding? Yeah. Not only is he gorgeous, like drop dead gorgeous, but he is also super nice. Throughout dinner he was very courteous and sincere. You know I’m a good people reader,” Amaya attested.

“He’s funny, and he seemed to be genuine with his efforts to get to know Mya and me. He also was putting in effort into proving something to you.”

Sighing, you took a few sips of your water.

“Honestly, I couldn’t find anything wrong with him.”

“Really? Perfection?”

You couldn’t believe your ears. Yes, you’d suspected they liked him, but the perfect word was just uttered. It was never spoken of, not by them.

“Pretty much,” Amaya doubled down.

“Wow.”

“Tell me about it. Move on that before some other chick does. He will not be single for long,” Amaya added.

For some reason, this was the first time you’d thought about that, and you couldn’t believe it. She was right. He was gorgeous, among other things, and women already fawned over him. He wouldn’t be licking his wounds much longer. A knot formed in your gut, and a sour taste in your mouth followed. Glancing away from their penetrative gazes, you looked around the restaurant and nearly dropped the water glass when you saw Henry across the restaurant laughing. This was the first time you’d seen him in person since your breakfast in New York weeks and weeks ago, and he looked great.

Your eyes drank him up, taking their time soaking up every detail of his face, the slight stubble that decorated his chiseled jaw, his perfectly imperfect smile, his hair that fell slightly longer than you remembered. When he spoke again, you watched his mouth move and quickly got lost. You didn’t have to hear his words. You knew how he spoke them. You knew the effect his voice had. At the thought of that effect, you peeled your eyes away and tried to keep them on either Alicia, Amaya, or the table. Of course, it was impossible. Your eyes continuously found him, and it was on him they remained until you forced yourself to look away.

“What do you keep looking at?”

Amaya glanced around the restaurant. You knew she’d found him because when she turned to face you again, her smile was as wide as a thief's.

“Oh ho ho, looks like fate is on mine and Leece’s side.”

“Stop. Be cool, act natural. Don’t make a scene,” you pleaded.

“Look at that, same place, same time, just mere feet away.”

From the tone of her voice, you knew she was tempted to fuck with you.

“Stop, Amaya. Don’t.”

“Why?”

Trying to keep your voice down and the panic from your face, you pleaded again. “Just don’t.”

Amaya studied you for a few moments before she nodded in defeat. Relief flooded you. Though you tried, you couldn’t get your head back onto lunch and off of him no matter how you tried. The three of you left shortly after passing his table on the way out.

Thanks to a little free time, you, Amaya, and Alicia were able to soak up some shopping in London and before getting back to the hotel for a quick change, then dinner. Even though you tried to stop thinking about Henry’s face earlier, you weren’t the least bit successful, but you played it off like everything was cool. You didn’t know if you fooled either of them, but you really didn’t care. You were so ready to get the hell out of London.

-That Night-

Big Ben’s chime for one in the morning ringing out all around you. It was yet another night of sleeplessness. From your seat at the window, you could feel the nice breeze. It still smelled like rain, but for whatever reason, the rain was staying away. Finishing your glass of wine, you sighed out and nearly leaped out your skin when your phone rang in the quiet room.

“Hello?”

“What’s wrong?”

You smiled from the unexpected sound of your gramaw’s voice. It was like the concrete gate you had around your heart that was constricting it to the point where it was challenging to breathe loosened.

Sighing, you leaned back, reclining against the surface.

“I think I fell in love,” you whispered.

“In love?”

Hearing the words said back to you made you close your eyes and shake your head.

“Yeah, at least I think that’s what I’m feeling. I can’t sleep well, not that I could before. I feel a little depressed, and I can’t pinpoint why, but when I think about it, I feel this way when I think about him. Not to mention, I think about him all the time. Christ, I even dream about him.”

Pausing, you glanced at your phone to find his picture there. It was the last thing you’d been looking at before tossing your phone away.

“I truly feel like I did something wrong, like I was wrong,” you confessed.

“Have you talked to him?”

Hitting your head back, you groaned. “Not since he called me and told me I’m missing out on him and gave me all the reasons why I should realizing I’m missing out.”

You couldn't help but smile at his words as you remembered them.

“Do you feel like you’re missing out?”

Your Gramaw always knew the right questions to ask. She was one of the few that did, one of the few that you’d even listen to. Bowing your head, you sighed again.

“Maybe. Normally I’m sure about someone and sure that I don’t need or want them in my life, but with him—I have doubts with my snap judgment.”

“Oh no, snap judgments are never a good thing, Aliya.”

You groaned hearing the disappointment in her voice. “I know, jeez do I know.”

“What do you feel like doing?”

You scoffed, if you knew that you wouldn’t be going through this struggle.

“I’ll be to you in a few days. I’ll see you soon.”

“Your heart, Aliya, not your head,” she cautioned before you ended the call.

For the next thirty or so minutes, you paced the balcony of your room as you debated with yourself over what you were going to do. After psyching yourself up as much as you could, you bit the bullet dialing Henry’s number before you talked yourself out of it. After one ring, you almost hung up but forced yourself to stick through the terror running through you. Two rings passed, then three. At the fourth you began to lower your hand to end the call and then his voice echoed through the speaker.

“Hello?”

You froze drawing a blank and forgetting for a moment you had a voice.

“Hello?”

“Hello,” you whispered.

The rustling on his end was loud but brief.

“Aliya?”

Swallowing the lump, you took a deep breath. “Yeah. Hi.”

“It’s after one in the morning. Is everything all right? Are you hurt?”

Your heart lurched, and a soft smile spread across your lips. “Yeah, I’m okay. I’m not hurt,” you assured.

He sighed, then yawned.

“I uh—I know it’s late or early. I know you, um, probably have something better to do than be up. I’m sorry if I woke you,” you half rushed and stuttered out.

“You’re rambling, Aliya.” You stopped your pacing then and slapped your forehead.

“Yes, I am. I do that when I’m nervous,” you blurted.

“Why are you nervous?”

Pausing, you gripped the rail on the balcony and used it to center yourself and get your nerves under control.

“Well, I’m about to ask the man I told I wouldn’t be with to meet me somewhere at nearly two in the morning. I’m—sending major mixed signals.”

Henry didn’t speak right away. Instead, he waited, making you chew your bottom lip as your anxiety increased.

“Why?”

“Wh—why? Why what?”

“Why should I?”

Stunned, your jaw dropped. “Oh, wow, out with the hard questions. Okay. Um—well—you should meet me because uh—it’s not often that I realize I was wrong or did something wrong and when I realize that, I like to say so.”

Again the silence over the phone stretched for long moments. After a full minute of it, your anxiety peaked.

“Still there?”

Henry sighed. “I’m here. I’m thinking.”

His voice sounded so deliciously deep. Either you had woken him, and this was his sleepy voice, or he was purposely giving you that sexy baritone.

“By all means. Think as long as you need to. Um—I’ll be at the eye until 2:30. I um—I hope you show. If you don’t, I understand, really I do and no hard feelings.”

Quickly you ended the call and panted as if you’d been running a marathon all in an effort to calm yourself down. It had been years since you’d put yourself through something like that, and you had a feeling it was only the beginning of you making amends.

Being Aliya Taylor afforded you some perks, and one was being able to have access to the eye well after closing. All it took was one call, well two to be exact, and voila, you were sitting in one of the cars anxiously waiting for Henry. You had no idea if he’d show, and the more and more time that passed with him not magically appearing, the more and more your brain worked overtime. The scenery helped a lot, but when you glanced at your watch and saw that it was almost 2:30, the scenery could do no more. Your nerves and anxiety had erupted like a volcano.

“You shouldn’t be out here alone.”

Spinning, you saw Henry at the door still on the platform. You released a relieved sigh, realizing he hadn’t stood you up.

“Good thing I’m not—anymore.”

Henry stepped into the car and took a few steps to you but stopped when he was still a ways away.

“London after two is not safe,” Henry informed.

“I know.”

The doors closed, and the contraption began moving.

“How in the world did you get them to open this for you?”

Smiling, you shrugged. “I may know people in high places,” you replied, which made him smile.

“This is one of my favorite places in London,” you announced as you walked around the car, taking care not to get too close. You didn’t know if you could handle it right away, and you had to feel him out to see what his coming really meant.

“Why?”

“You can see all of greater London from here and out to the countryside if you really look once you’re up high.”

Henry also walked around the car, mirroring your intentions. Neither of you came close enough to touch one another.

“How often do you come to London?”

“A lot. I have some family here, plus I prefer the countryside.”

“So you have some British blood,” Henry inquired, half a question, half a statement.

“I had to. Only the Bris would dare think to send their daughters off to finishing school,” you quipped.

Henry’s laugh filled the car, making you smile widely. He walked to one of the many windows turning his back to you. Slowly you looked over his broad back, taking in every detail. Your fingers could still remember what the dance of his muscles felt like underneath them, and they itched to feel them dance again. Taking a deep breath, you fiddled your fingers.

“Uh--I hope I didn’t interrupt anything important by asking you here. Like I hope I didn’t impose on—anyone.”

You were fishing, it was obvious, and you felt no shame.

“Eh, who needs sleep anyway. I can sleep when I’m dead,” Henry replied with a shrug of those magnificent shoulders still keeping his back to you.

“Were um--were you uh—sleeping—alone?”

Your heart was pounding so loudly you could swear he could hear it. He didn’t speak or turn around. He just stood there torturing you. You wondered if he knew it was sheer torture what he was doing. Did he even care? The longer he remained quiet, the more you freaked out until you decided to backtrack all the way back.

“I’m sorry. Don’t answer that. It is absolutely none of my business. I don’t even know why I asked that,” you rushed out, rubbing your forehead from embarrassment before beginning to pace the car.

That was when Henry chose to turn around.

“I know a woman doesn’t say something she doesn’t mean, and usually when a woman asks a question, she wants to know the answer either to prove herself right or in hopes she’s wrong. What is it for you?”

His voice made you stop in the midst of pacing to watch his mouth as he spoke. There was something poetic about how he spoke, and it always distracted you. Nibbling your bottom lip, you thought about how to respond. You were already tired of the verbal Olympics and talking around each other.

Sighing, you rolled your eyes. “Henry--.”

“You know that’s the first time you’ve said my name without the word goodbye in front of it.”

That made you snap your mouth shut. Had it?

“That’s not true,” you protested.

“It actually is. I was beginning to think you like saying goodbye rather than hello.”

You took a step to him. “That’s not true. I like saying hello way more than goodbye,” you defended.

The neutral look on his face gave you no confidence to go on, so you rolled your eyes and continued to walk around the car. This would be harder than you expected, you thought.

“I was sleeping alone. I’ve slept alone for quite some time now,” he informed just as you were looking out of the window to the city.

“Look, Henry, I-,” you began again, but then henry cut you off.

“That day in New York those weeks ago, I should have plain and simply laid it out for you. I should have told you everything. I was with Francesca--.”

“Don’t, don’t, don’t. I honestly don’t want to know.”

“But you need to know. There is no way you can begin to trust me or begin to let yourself gravitate to me the way you’re entire being wants until you know,” Henry slid out. Pressing your palm to your abdomen, you tried to slow the butterflies that began flitting.

“I was with Francesca for about two years. The whole time I knew she wanted a family in life. She was always vocal about her wanting to get married young and have kids. I knew, but I never paid attention to it. I was away filming something for a while, and when I came home one weekend, I caught her with someone else.”

Your eyes widened, hearing his words.

“turns out she was beginning a relationship with someone else, someone who she thought would lead to marriage and kids,” Henry added. His voice held steady, but you could imagine the pain going through those memories again.

“I’m sorry.”

Henry shook his head, “It’s not necessary. After a few months of her trying to make amends, I thought we’d try again.” He scoffed then rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m a hopeless romantic. After months of trying, I knew it wouldn’t work, but I kept a relationship of sorts with her.”

You understood. They were bed buddies.

“I then met Abby, and what started as a fling developed into something more. Long story short, I got wind of a rumor she was using me for fame and money, so I distanced myself from her. after some time of her telling I had it all wrong, I decided it was easier keeping her around though my heart wasn’t in it. I wasn’t juggling them. I hadn’t slept with either of them in a long time. I just—I felt it was better to have someone who misses me and wants me than living the lonely actor life.”

His honesty had you frozen. When he began to explain, you hadn’t expected him to reveal so much. You expected a bare minimum explanation, but what you’d gotten revealed so much more about him. You felt bad.

“I guess allowing the attentions and affections to remain is just as bad as juggling them. I was playing with their hearts. I’m not proud of it.”

Henry dipped his head, showing he felt some shame for his actions.

“When I met you, I realized although I had these two women sort of vying for me, I was still lonely, but those moments we were together, I didn’t feel alone. I felt--,” he paused as if trying to find the right word. His hesitation made you look down.

You knew what you’d felt.

“When I met you, I felt someone I’d never felt before, something I don’t fully understand. I don’t know what that means, but I know I want to find out—with you.”

Finally, able to release the breath you held, you took another, then cleared your throat. “I’m not juggling two guys. I was dating two guys, but not sleeping with both. I was with Liam first, and we had an okay relationship. We were busy, never saw each other and when we did it wasn’t for long. He um—he got annoyed and broke up with me. He said I was impacting his work, and he needed to focus.”

You remembered how he’d said it too. He’d said it like you were the one to blame for the roles he’d gotten or hadn’t gotten.

“I was fine with it, and during those five months apart, I met Jesse. We worked together and had fun and began dating. It wasn't anything sexual. Then Liam comes back and wants to pick up where we left off. I told him about Jesse, and he was fine with it.”

The shock on Henry’s face almost made you laugh. Alicia and Amaya were also surprised they’d chosen that unconventional path. Amaya, of course, thought you should have kept it secret from both of them.

“One day, Jesse sees Liam and me out, and it pissed him off enough to end things. Three weeks later, I lay it out for both that I don’t want to choose, and I don’t want anything serious. They were both fine with it, and so it went on. Six months later, I decided I needed to be on my own to focus on work and me. They didn’t like the decision. They call and text me to try to—rekindle something.”

Henry scoffed, and you watched a soft smile tickle his lips.

“I haven’t physically seen either of them in weeks, now maybe months,” you finished.

Henry was quiet for a few seconds before he snorted.

“They were mad.”

“Angry?”

“No, mad, bonkers,” Henry clarified.

“Oh, crazy.”

“Yeah. To be okay to share you, be willing to do something like that. I couldn’t do that,” Henry informed, making you smile in the process.

“Well, men do crazy things.”

“I can attest to that, but I’d never do something that crazy. I can’t share what’s mine. I won’t.”

Your eyes locked, and your body swayed toward his. It was like he was metal and you a magnet. Everything in you wanted to be close to him. The more you tried to fight the pull, the harder it became to breathe. The harder it was to breathe, the dizzier you became.

“I—I—I—I,” you began before gulping the knot in your throat down that was making you speak in a raspy whisper. “I don’t—know what this is.”

Henry nodded.

“I am not used to not knowing and being out of control,” you continued.

“You feel less controlled too?”

You couldn't help but to nod. Once you did, Henry took a step to you. You took a step back.

“Hold on. I like control. I like control a lot. Anything that threatens that control is not for me.”

Henry’s eyes lowered but only for a moment before he was looking right back into yours.

“But—I really want to find out why you make me less controlled,” you finally admitted.

The uncertainty on his face spoke volumes. “What does that mean? Where does that leave this—us?”

You chewed your bottom lip; you realized how ill-prepared you’d been.

“Honestly, I didn’t think this meeting out that far. I only planned up to when you showed up. I’ve um—I’ve been winging it this whole time.”

His smile started small but spread wide in seconds; then, he laughed loudly.

“So you won’t mind me making a plan?”

Oh lord, you thought, feeling his alpha pop out. You bit your bottom lip again.

“What kind of plan?”

Henry closed the remaining space between you. Every step he took had you shaking even more.

“A plan that I’ve envisioned every night since brunch.”

Stopped in front of you and held you captivated by his gaze and the sheer dominating energy rolling off of him. The way he stood there taller than you made your mouth run dry.

“Jesus, you’re freakishly short,” Henry teased in his perfect Englishman voice.

Smiling, you shook your head. “I know, I debated wearing heels but didn’t—I wanted you to see me normal for someone reason I don’t under--.”

Henry’s sudden movement cut you off. He dipped down the entire foot he overshadowed you and lifted you into the air to hold you flush against his body. Then he lowered his lips to yours, taking and keeping control of an intensely passionate kiss. A kiss you hadn’t known you craved until it began, a kiss you were not prepared for. You moaned against his lips, and that moan triggered his. Wrapping your arm around his neck, you clung to him, and every sensation you were feeling and even new ones he was awakening within you.

Slowly, Henry pulled his lips from your, but he kept your body to his. You kept your eyes closed, relishing the lingering effects.

“You’re shaking,” Henry whispered.

“So are you.”

You opened your eyes and gazed into his as he slowly lowered you back to your feet.

“What else is part of your plan?”

Henry's smile spread across his face. “For me to carry out any other part of my plan would be completely rakish of me.”

His smile was adorable, but still intimidatingly sexy.

“I take it you’re not a rake.”

“Not in the least.”

“All right. So, alternate plan?”

He smiled again. “Still pretty rakish.”

With that, he brought his lips back to yours, but this time he didn’t pull back for several long minutes.

Though you knew people in high places, it didn’t mean you could keep the eye open all morning. After three trips around, the two of you got off then walked around London holding hands and eating ice cream. It was such a weird sensation allowing someone to hold your hand. It had been a long time since you’d ever wanted to. The entire time you laughed and talked about everything and nothing at the same time. One thing was clear; neither of you was in any rush for your time together to end.

But end, it had to. When Henry walked you back to your hotel, it was almost time for the sun to come up.

“Home safe and sound,” Henry joked.

“Yes, thanks to Superman.”

“No, no, I’m just the man. Henry Cavill.”

He held his hand out to you. Smiling, you rolled your eyes.

“Now is when we get to this?”

His goofy smile and shrug had your head skip a beat.

“Aliya Taylor,” you said, shaking his hand.

“Nice to meet you. Mind if I call you Aliya or Liya, that's all a mouthful,” Henry teased.

Your laugh was loud, and you had to clamp your hand over your mouth, remembering what time it was.

“Yes, you can call me either. Can I call you Henners or Hank?”

“No. My friends call me that.”

“So, I’m not your friend?”

“If I have anything to say about it, which I do, then no. I don’t want you as a friend.” Henry replied, making you smile like a little girl at Christmas.

“Then what do you want me as?”

Your eyes lingered for a few seconds before Henry was pulling you closer to brush the back of his hand against your cheek.

“For now, I’ll settle for my girlfriend.”

The man was an expert at charm. You bit into your bottom lip and tried to stop smiling. “Girlfriend, wow. That’s a loaded title. What does it entail?”

“Well, for one, it entails being your true self with me, accepting my true self, being there for me when I need you, letting me be there for you when you need me or when I need you, allowing me to be your strength when you’re weak, your hope when you’re hopeless. Allowing me to grow with you, learn with you. Giving me your time and attention, enough of it so what we have can grow. Trusting me and letting me spoil you rotten.”

If he weren’t holding you against him, you would have fallen back.

“Is that all?”

Henry leaned closer kisses your cheek. “To begin.”

“And if I refused to be this girlfriend you speak of?”

“Then I’d just have to convince you,” Henry cooed.

“How?”

Right on que, Henry dipped his lips to yours. The second they touched, you moaned and held him close. Why resist when you could enjoy it, you thought. His tongue swirled with yours before he nibbled then sucked your bottom lip. When he pulled back, your eyes remained closed.

“I’m convinced.”

Henry pecked your lips once, then twice. “Good. Girlfriend.”

Your eyes locked again, and you forgot all common sense for what felt like an eternity.

“Eh-em—I have to be on a set in the morning.”

“Which is now,” Henry filled in.

Still hazed in the brain, you stuttered and smiled like a fool.

“Mm, did I stay out all night?”

“You did. I hope it was worth it.”

Smiling, you kissed his jaw. “We’ll see,” you whispered as you backed away from him, making your way to the door.

“Good morning, Henry.”

He smiled again, watching you disappear inside the hotel. As you walked to the elevator bank, you couldn’t stop smiling or stop the butterflies that had been flying all night in your stomach. As you stepped onto the elevator and watched the doors closed, you recognized the feeling you felt as happiness. It had been absent for a long time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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