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mc-lukanette · 3 years

Note

I haven’t watched the new episode but I heard it was awful. Do you have a fix-it that I can pretend is canon?

- Marinette is stressed, and extremely so; her schedule is more hectic and the kwami have been keeping her busy with teaching her any guardian rules/lessons they know from their limited knowledge that she might not have gotten from Fu since he hadn’t had the time to teach her due to what happened.

- Because of these factors, her dates with Luka have often been interrupted and constantly replanned, only the cinema date being anywhere near complete due to her giving him the guitar pick necklace. Luka is trying to be respectful and not pry, but can’t help being disappointed whenever she leaves.

- Eventually, Luka talks to her on the matter, concerned for where she goes and how she always seems anxious when she does. Marinette assures him that she adores him, but she has... things that she has to do, and even though she wishes so badly for it to be different, she’s forced into this situation and she’s so sorry for it.

- Luka is pained by the secret she’s forced to keep, but gives her a sad smile and ends the conversation there. She can tell that he’s putting on a brave face from the slump as he walks away.

- Later on, Marinette is walking down an empty street, muttering to Tikki about the situation, when an unfamiliar form descends from above and lands in front of her. Tikki quickly conceals herself and Marinette goes on the defensive, recognizing that this must be an akuma. “Who are you, and what do you want with me?!”

- The akuma reaches out... and gently takes her hand in his. “We have a date planned today, Marinette, and I want to make sure that we get to finish it this time.” “...W-what? Wait--Luka?”

- In that instance, someone from a distance screams at the sight of the akumatized Luka, yelling for someone to call Ladybug. Luka faces them, muttering, “You’re disrupting us,” his sentimonster helper using their ability to make the person and even the phone they were trying to use go completely silent, much to their shock. Roger, who was nearby at the time, approaches and gives a speech about defending Paris, then tries to attack Luka, but Luka uses his own power to flash Roger back to where he was a minute ago (meaning Luka’s sentimonster is an equivalent to Silencer whereas Luka himself is similar to Viperion); this happens to put Roger in the middle of the street - where he’d originally been directing traffic - and he has to dodge an oncoming car.

- “Luka!” Marinette states, panicked. “You can’t do this! You’re akumatized, you’re not thinking!” In response, Luka settles his hand on her shoulder. “I’m thinking perfectly well, and all I can think is about how you’re so burdened by something that I could never help you with. Now I can, and I’ll stop anyone or anything from bothering you or interrupting us, so we can have the date you deserve.”

- It’s at that moment that Marinette realizes that this akuma literally just wants her to have a nice time and that’s the sweetest freaking thing she’s ever heard.

- She can’t help being torn. On one hand, this is an akuma who will inevitably cause havoc, and she stops akuma as Ladybug... but on the other, this is Luka and she’s so touched and this is an offer for them to finally have a date not interrupted by an akuma because he IS an akuma, and she’s felt so bad ditching him before so this is a chance to remedy that.

- Marinette can see Tikki peering at her judgementally from her purse, but the opportunity is too tempting to pass up and Marinette agrees to go on a date with him, exciting Luka as he enthusiastically tugs her closer so they can walk together.

- Cue montage of Luka recreating their dates, though this time where she can actually enjoy them without interruption. Luka and his sentimonster occasionally use their powers and Marinette clearly hesitates, but he dotes on her so much that it’s hard for her to not want to continue their dates.

- Meanwhile, Shadow Moth probably: Wh--where the heck is Ladybug???? (there’s also probably a moment where Luka mentions Shadow Moth and Marinette uses the opportunity to gather some information)

- During one of the recreated dates, Chat Noir shows up and manages to snatch Marinette away, jumping up and out of harm’s way while trying to find a place to hide. He ducks into an alleyway and is about to go on about how neat his save was when Marinette huffs and asks, “What do you think you’re doing?!” “...U-uh, saving you?” “I didn’t need saving! We were on a date!” “You were on a what now.” “Chat Noir, it’s very rude to interrupt someone’s date. “I’m sorry, Princess, but I’m still stuck on the fact that you said you were dating an akuma--”

- At that moment, a hand clamps down on Chat Noir shoulder. He stiffens and turns, seeing Luka there and very much not happy. Luka squints, asking lowly, “What did you call her?”

- Chat Noir can only weakly look back at Marinette, who waves apologetically at him right before he’s yeet’d off into the distance. The sentimonster gives chase.

- Marinette does eventually leap into action as Ladybug once she recognizes that okay this was amazing and incredible and I’m officially de-stressed but Luka is akumatized and there is definitely a rule against Ladybug dating supervillains.

- Naturally, when Ladybug arrives, Luka’s first concern is what happened to Marinette. Ladybug tries to get him to back down and points out that he won’t even remember any of this once de-akumatized, but Luka insists that, “It’s okay. Marinette will remember.”

- Ladybug is internally like okay but can you not, I’m trying to fight you here and you’re making it difficult.

- Ladybug tries to negotiate/convince Luka into getting de-akumatized, until Chat Noir shows up on the scene again, the sentimonster following after. The fight itself is significally difficult and limiting; if they make any loud, disruptive noises, they’ll be silenced, but if they try to fight Luka directly/physically, he can zap them back to where they were a minute prior; knowing Luka, he could even engineer it so that one of them perhaps gets trapped if they’re not careful.

- Post-deakumatization, Marinette meets up with Luka and gives him a long overdue kiss. Luka is stunned, having been prepared to apologize for getting akumatized, and asks her what he did to deserve it, to which Marinette explains that he’s amazing and she’s happy to have him.

- They end up talking and Luka apologizes for trying to pry about her secret, but explains about his dad and the mystery behind his identity (foreshadowing the conflict for a future episode: I'd have the whole Jagged thing be a different episode so it gets proper focus). Marinette insists that she understands and he has nothing to apologize for, but pauses and laments that their dates might very well continue to be interrupted.

- Luka hesitantly starts to ask if she thinks it’d be best if they broke up, but Marinette cuts him off to insist otherwise. She wants to make this work with him but it’s complicated and she literally (stressing that it’s not a trust issue) cannot tell him why she leaves all the time. Luka smiles reassuringly and points out that a perfect song doesn’t exist and that every song goes through edits. Marinette asks what he means and Luka explains that he can’t help wanting to be selfish and spend time with her, but also that the knowledge of them dating is enough.

- Marinette, considering this, realizes that - yeah - not going on dates doesn’t mean they can’t be in a loving relationship, and maybe they can stop planning dates and get together right after she deals with akuma instead. She’s been a mess because of stress and that’s caused even more problems, so it doesn’t make sense to cause herself more stress by breaking up with Luka; she needs to take care of herself.

- The episode ends with Marinette in her room, some of the kwami being a bit chaotic/loud but Marinette being completely unphased and talking excitedly to Luka on the phone about their recent date “after that crazy akuma attack,” as Luka can’t hear the kwami due to their voices not breaking through technology.

#type: ideas #episode: Truth #Flower Arrangement Shipping #other: ml spoilers #((Kind of an expansion of ''The Evillustrator'' but with essences of ''Silencer.''))#Pro LukaMari #Lukanette

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cherrysung · 4 years

Text

dom antics

pairing: boyfriend!jeno x reader

genre: smut / slight fluff

warnings: soft dom!jeno, very slight degration, praising, fingering, oral (f. receiving), riding, unprotected sex (stay safe!)

prompts: none.

summary: a pleasant twist is always openly welcomed, but with your boyfriend’s inevitable nature, how will you present the idea?

requested by anon.

word count: 1.6k

note: anon I’m so sorry I’ve taken so long, this is most likely schedule because I’m on a short break to get my life together. when this is posted though, I hope this is what you wanted and I truly hope you enjoy it! and thank you for waiting! ps. I’m unable to add a “read more” option until a bug with my blog gets fixed.

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Eyes that creased exactly into moon crescents and a smile that made everyone want to squeeze his cheeks were not enough to fool you anymore, but they were small characteristics that also made you fall hopelessly in the beginning. Now you knew, those were meant to be seen, sure—but not what happened behind closed doors—not what happened to you, behind closed doors.

Jeno was far from being the sweet soul everyone thought he was, but at least some of his kindness managed to shine within the endless torture he’d sometimes put you through. Just for his amusement.

Your legs thrashed chaotically and unstoppably on the bed, you still had not even reached your first orgasm, but your boyfriend already had you feeling so riled up with his constant, teasing touches.

“Babygirl, we haven’t even gotten started,” Jeno chuckled with a hint of surprise in his voice. All he had been doing was mischievously kiss and suck at your neck for several minutes while his hands caressed your sides. You now laid on the soft mattress all at his mercy, legs still kicking desperately in annoyance at his lack of touches where it actually mattered—between your thighs. Soaked, and dripping, between your thighs.

“You have been teasing for so long.” You simply stated, rolling your eyes when he once again lowered his head to your neck, slightly wet lips pressing soothing pecks on your sensitive skin.

He continued to suck purples, reds and blues all around your neck and collarbones, occasionally shifting lower in the direction of your bare chest but never fully reaching your hard nipples. All because he felt like it.

You whined once again, back arching until your chest was pressed against his own, and Jeno could only smile at your impatience. He might be hard on you, constantly tricking you into believing you’d be finally receiving a different treatment other than the colorful masterpieces he never failed to leave on your neck, only to then later edge you to extreme heights that had you reaching the sky and touching the bright stars while tears streamed down your face at his unmerciful ministrations.

Still, even with the wet mascara staining your hot cheeks and your body constantly jumping at the oversensitivity while your lips spilled nonsense, there was always a small action of his paired with the rest of his ruthless movements that very slightly balanced everything. As a result, a special and unique moment was created.

“Use your words or I’ll carry on doing this until I force the begging out of you. What sounds better?”

You whined—again—and you had lost track of how many times you had already pathetically attempted to move his hands somewhere else; yet, they always returned to their previous position on your waist.

“P-Please Jeno, touch me! I’m so d-desperate for you to touch me.” The words left your lips in stutters, absolutely drowned in impatience you no longer cared how ridiculous you might sound.

Your boyfriend smiled, and there it was again, the eye creasing smile that had made you fall in love with him. Had it not made an appearance during the current situation, your cheeks would’ve immediately been painted pink and your hands would’ve quickly moved on their own to cup the boy’s face and lovingly press your lips against his. Right now, though, all you wanted to do was slap the look away.

“Yes, princess? Touch you? Where do you want me to touch you? Show me.” He cooed adorably, body still hovering over yours as he lovingly pecked your cheeks and forehead.

You nodded, gently taking his bigger hand in yours and guiding downwards; down, down, down, until it was innocently resting over your warm heat, barely convered by your sheer, lace underwear. Silently, you moved his remaining hand up to your lonely tit before locking eyes with him, the gaze enough to let him know just how much you wanted this.

He wasted no time in tearing the fabric off your pussy, but you were too far drunk on his touches to muster out any complaints. Instead, you whimpered more, absolutely impatient after being teased for so long.

“You’ll have to shut up if you even remotely want any of this, you know?” He whispered sinfully in your ear, fingers running up and down through your wet folds playfully. “My pretty, little slut.”

Jeno plunged two fingers into your hole with no warning whatsoever, setting a fast pace right away that had your legs thrashing around the sheets once again and both your hands covering your mouth to stop any sounds of pleasure from spilling. He curled, and caressed your sweet spot; he knew all your weaknesses and favorite places better than you ever could.

Your back continuously arched off the bed, clit occasionally rubbing against his wrist every time you raised your hips. His free hand left your breast, instead replacing it with yours before taking hold of your legs and wrapping them around his neck. In no time your boyfriend was diving into your pussy, tongue swirling around or llicking at your sensitive nub and folds that shined with your juices, all while a third finger was added into your clenching walls.

“J-Jeno, I’m going to cum.” You whimpered, unable to remain quiet any longer as you pinched at your nipples in ecstasy.

“Nonsense.” He replied, a whine leaving you when all ministrations came to a halt. He moved his face away from your cunt, all for you to admire the light sheen of your wetness on his chin and pink lips. “You’ll cum with my dick.”

You nodded desperately, if it weren’t for the current scenario he would’ve surely laughed at how impatient you were for his cock. Yet, he didn’t, because he was just as excited to fuck you deep into the mattress and tell you how good of a girl you are. Right?

A thought that had been on your mind for a few weeks now struck you once again, and you fiddled with your fingers nervously as you scanned over the boy who was currently undressing himself.

He must’ve noticed your sudden state of daze, hand gently guiding your chin so your eyes would stare back at him. “What’s wrong?”

You blinked once, twice; eyes immediately looking elsewhere before you confessed, “could I try riding you today? If you aren’t fine with the idea then we can just forget it though—”

“Let’s do it.”

“Really?” Your eyes locked with his brown orbs, the slight nod of his head and the smile that adorned his lips enough to assure you.

Soon, you were straddling Jeno, his hands gripping at your waist as you lowered yourself down onto his angry cock, the tip red and swollen as precum ran down the sides.

Moans left the two of you as you took all of him, a groan falling off his lips once he was fully settled deep inside your warm walls, the feeling heavenly and like none other he had felt before. Now, he wondered why he hadn’t asked you for this any earlier.

“Baby, you take my dick so well. So full of it. Good fucking girl.” He gritted out, lips gingerly kissing at your neck before nuzzling his face into your tits.

You began moving ever so slightly, slowly moving up and down his dick to test the waters. You had no idea what you were doing, but it felt incredible for the both of you. The tip of his dick kissed at your sweet spot with no problem, eliciting whimpers that rumbled from your chest and shocks of shivers that ran down your spine.

Jeno continued to suck on one of your nipples, your movements becoming faster and faster by the minute, and in no time—you were bouncing on your boyfriend’s dick as if you had been doing it for years.

“Fuck!” He groaned, letting you take full control of the pace while the bed creaked loudly, the sound of skin slapping and your unholy sounds the only thing that echoed between the four walls you were in. “You are doing so well, baby, so so good.”

He could only bask in the feeling of his cock sliding against your slick walls, constantly reaching the deepest parts of your heat deliciously as it clenched around his throbbing shaft.

“J-Jeno, I won't last much longer—”

He caressed your sides gently before thrusting up into your hole, and you wordlessly thanked him with a passionate kiss as the burning in your thighs gradually went away. Jeno pulled you closer to his body, loving the feeling of your tits bouncing against his chest before bringing one hand to your clit, rubbing quick circular motions and eventually prompting your much awaited release after so much teasing.

His hands held your shaking body tenderly, rubbing at your back soothingly as his movements abruptly stopped and ropes of his cum filled your hole, the white substance trickling down your thighs not too much long after.

He sighed, hips slightly grinding into you while you rested your face limply on his shoulder, pressing light kisses on your cheeks as the both of you came down from your highs.

“You should ride me more often.” Jeno smiled, carefully moving your body off his member and laying you down on the fluffy sheets. He threw on some new underwear and sweats and returned from the bathroom with a warm washcloth to clean the dried juices from your thighs.

You smiled back at him, eyes threatening to flutter close as you jumped at the oversensitivity whenever the cloth got too near your heat. “Really? I thought you wouldn’t like the idea since you always like being in control.”

“Correction—I’m still in control, that’s why I’m letting you fuck me.”

“Of course.” You snorted, watching him get rid of the cloth before joining you on the bed, immediately snuggling up to him and resting your cheek on his bare chest.

“We should probably take a shower soon.” He whispered, fingers running through your hair.

“Later. I know what a shower together usually means, you pervert.”

“You know it. I love you.”

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shihalyfie · 4 years

Text

Ichijouji Ken, his future, and Kizuna

Having talked about Kizuna’s extremely deep relationship to 02 as a series, it’s only natural that I should probably spend some extra focus on its main central character, Ichijouji Ken. It’s no secret that, although Daisuke was the protagonist of 02, Ken was the central figure to the series itself (after all, the series was founded on the concept of deconstructing the supposed “genius kid”), and so Kizuna having such a deep relationship with 02 means that it does, inevitably, have a deep relationship with Ken in particular.

The last twenty years have been full of a plethora of meta analysis on Ichijouji Ken as a character within 02 to the point I feel anything I could possibly come up with would probably be redundant, so today I’d like to place extra focus on his development after 02 (in terms of both canonical materials and general analysis), and how it leads up to his portrayal in the recently released Kizuna. (Naturally, spoilers for the movie will be below.)

We’ll start this analysis by looking at where Ken left off during the final episode of 02.

Thanks to his interactions with the rest of the 02 crew (especially Daisuke), Ken was slowly putting his life back together, but he still had a long way to go. As late as episode 49, we learned he still had suicidal ideation tendencies in regards to his deeds as the Kaiser, and although the rest of the team did get through to him in the end, it was clear that there was still a huge path ahead of him as far as coming to terms with himself and bonding with the rest of the team went. This was especially because he ended the series with the Dark Seed still in the back of his neck -- supernatural forces may have assisted his initial downfall, but it was going to be entirely on him to make sure that he never went back there again for the rest of his life.

One thing that’s really important to put in perspective is the actual chronology this ordeal took place in. Although the Kaiser saga spanned a little under half of the yearlong series that 02 was, Christmas skewed the schedule a little bit, so a good chunk of the second half of the series actually took place in much more condensed time than the first. Taking into account the official statement that everything before Christmas roughly aligns with the time of the year the relevant episode aired, and given the exact dates in December that we know episodes 38-50 take place in, within the course of 02, Ken’s reformation from being the Kaiser and bonding with the group spanned around only four months. That is not a lot of time, especially compared to the roughly two-year period Ken went through the trauma of his brother’s loss and his transformation into the Kaiser, so in actuality, Ken made a huge amount of progress considering how little time he had to do so.

Before we continue, I should make clear that I generally count pretty much everything in the Toei-esque fashion of “everything is canon, don’t think about contradictions too hard” (which is generally their modus operandi with pretty much any franchise), so pretty much everything here is fair game. That said, obviously, contradictions and other outliers do exist, so occasionally I am going to have to omit stuff that really, really doesn’t track...so for the sake of this analysis, I’m skipping Armor Evolution to the Unknown for two reasons: one, because it takes massive liberties with characterization for the sake of crack (it’s pretty hard to believe Ken would be this degree of flippant about the Kaiser persona in a more serious situation), and two, because it was written before 02 finished airing (it was released between episodes 43 and 44) and doesn’t reflect a lot of series and characterization development that happened later in the series. (Armor Evolution to the Unknown was released during a time period when the drama CDs were really, really big on the crack -- the three Adventure mini dramas are the same -- and it wasn’t until later that actual “serious” ones would start coming out.)

Given that, our next canonical point we can work with is Diablomon Strikes Back, which takes place in March 2003.

At this point Ken’s recovery is at a little around six months, and he’s making massive progress -- even if you’re not sure about counting the actual events of this movie as canon, it’s an excellent character study in terms of watching Ken’s emotional recovery at this point in time and his relationship with Daisuke, now that he’s not directly dealing with issues pertaining to his own past trauma.

It’s already a very different Ken from the one we’ve seen in the original series, where in episode 38 the idea of him laughing was such a huge shock, but here we already see a much wider emotional range from Ken -- light cheerfulness, playfulness, and at times even a bit of petulance. His actions and dialogue still have Ken’s trademark “softness” -- being kind and gentle has always been said to be his core inner trait, after all -- but, nevertheless, he’s a lot more willing to show “superficial” emotions, especially compared to how closed up, shy, and sometimes standoffish he would be within 02 proper.

Even Ken’s own body language indicates a lot -- he’s much more relaxed and natural. Observe how he slouches here.

In fact, if you listen to Park Romi’s delivery of his lines throughout this movie, she voices him with a significantly higher-pitched and “lighter”, soft tone through all of it, which really gives off the impression that he’s much less emotionally uptight.

We get a glimpse of Daisuke and Ken’s future dynamic and how they’ll continue to be such tight friends in the future -- Ken is someone who can keep the infamously chaotic Daisuke in check (especially since prior to Ken coming into his life, Daisuke’s closest friend was probably Miyako, and while the two certainly got along very well with each other, they had a tendency to enable each other’s chaos a bit too much at times).

But despite Ken obviously trying to be more sensible than Daisuke here, it still manifests as a much greater show of emotion than the kind you’d be used to within 02 proper. He’s much more assertive with putting his foot down in keeping Daisuke under control, which indicates not only a more comfortable relationship with Daisuke in particular, but also a general increase in his ability to be assertive.

In one of his most famous scenes in this movie, he actually outright taunts Daisuke in order to spur him on. He’s doing it totally affectionately (it’s specifically to give Daisuke more motivation to keep running), but nevertheless, he’s taunting Daisuke -- not really something you'd expect from Ken in 02 proper. The original line in Japanese even has him use the very super-casual and aggressive end particle ~ze.

He even snarks about Daisuke’s convenient bouts of luck in ways that aren’t exactly complimentary (the literal phrasing of this line has “baka mitai ni” in it, in this context "some kind of ridiculous incredible power”).

And, near the end of the movie, when he starts to lose hope, it only takes a single line from Daisuke to get himself back together -- this kind of thing would have probably taken a whole speech in 02, even from Daisuke himself, but by this point Ken’s got a much better emotional grasp on himself.

And in the end, the movie ends on both Daisuke and Ken laughing together -- very lightly.

It’s easy to pass off Ken’s characterization in DSB as an incidental thing simply because this is a “side story” movie from 02 -- especially since it was technically produced during 02′s airing -- but in fact, this portrayal is consistent with what Ken has to say about himself during his next known point in canon, Spring 2003.

Given that Takeru’s track is apparently set “three months” after Christmas, and Miyako’s track talks about having just entered middle school, I assume that this means Ken’s takes place in around late March or early April 2003 (almost exactly a year since 02′s start), but in actuality nothing really “happens” during Ken’s track. Nevertheless, it provides a lot of information on Ken’s state of mind during this time and his own self-reflection on his past...and defines in very clear words what it is that Ken needs to move away from.

You were always in a bad mood and you were cold to me, but now that I think about it, maybe you really wanted to be nicer to other people. I don’t know what happened to you that made you act like you did, but now, I finally feel like I understand a bit. You were demanded to grow up fast, weren’t you, Brother? Because we were always being evaluated and compared by someone, we didn’t get a chance to have more freedom. We didn’t have any chances to run down an alley because we felt like it, or pull up weeds, or tumble around… meaningless things, things that didn’t bring any value to us at all. Just like the cat napping on the roof… we weren’t able to fully enjoy any everlasting freedom.

02 -- especially its latter half -- dealt largely with the concept of parents imposing too many expectations on their children, acting “proud” of them but actually using them to inflate their own self-worth, and in the end effectively robbing their own children of their right to “be children”. While we don’t know a lot about Osamu based on limited information about him, Ken’s parents also lament that they might have robbed Osamu of the opportunity to be a “normal boy” in 02 episode 23.

Once Ken took the role of the “family genius” after Osamu’s death, Ken was thus likewise robbed of that “normal childhood” due to all of the expectations put on him -- and Ken’s words in his track imply that it extended to before Osamu’s death, because just because Osamu was the favored one at the time didn’t mean that Ken wasn’t subject to the same kind of expectations to at least some degree, even if not as much. (Note how he really didn’t seem to have any kind of friends at all prior to Daisuke and the others.)

Thus, Ken’s ideal trajectory is to become “a normal child” -- one not subject to expectations as a “well-behaved genius child”. That applies not only to things like his academic or sports performance, but also even his core manners -- being a “normal person” in this context meaning being allowed to show emotions, be petty, have emotional range that extends beyond just being deferential and polite, and generally do things because he enjoys them and not because others expect him to. This is consistent with his portrayal in DSB, as in said movie he really does come off as a “normal boy” -- a young child who, while certainly less chaotic than Daisuke, is still enjoying himself and interacting with the world in “his own” natural, relaxed way rather than holding himself to obligations.

Another interesting thing about DSB is that it has Ken refer to Daisuke by given name. This is particularly intriguing because up until the end of 02, Ken consistently referred to Daisuke as “Motomiya” (he did use given name in episode 39, but it wasn’t something he really followed up on). This despite the fact he went with given names (plus honorifics) for everyone else in the 02 team, but it seems like Ken was still trying to figure out his very complicated feelings about Daisuke as someone who was his Most Hated Person™ during his Kaiser days and yet is now trying to aggressively reach through his barriers that he’s constructed out of self-defense.

And yet, extremely notably, almost every single post-02 material is consistent about the idea that Ken switches to given name basis with Daisuke after 02. (The only exception is Armor Evolution to the Unknown, which, as stated before, was written and recorded during 02′s airing and not after; notably, Daisuke is also on surname basis with Ken during that drama CD, even though he permanently switches to given name basis after episode 39.) That includes “out-of-hard-canon” things like Xros Wars episode 78.

Yet they still couldn’t remember to put the highlight back in Ken’s eyes, among other things.

Honorific and surname-given name basis fluctuated quite a bit in both Adventure and 02 (especially whenever canon material changed hands between writers), but for all intents and purposes, there is no reason Daisuke and Ken should not be on mutual given name basis after 02. This is especially when you take into account the more naturalistic relationship they have as of DSB -- there’s no standoffishness at all between them anymore.

This ties very deeply into how 02 portrayed its characters. One thing I’ve very, very often pointed out was that it was always an explicit point of contrast between themselves and the original Adventure team was that the 02 kids were not only “friends” in terms of fighting together on Digimon cases, but “friends” in the sense of actual social-life friends who clicked well in personality and adored each other’s company. (Part of this was because of the core theme of the series; Jogress being such a huge motif, “understanding your friends” took precedence over Adventure’s “understanding yourself”.) These are the kids who hung out together in the totally-not-related-to-any-Digimon-incident (at least, not at first) picnic in episode 6 and Christmas party in episode 38, a stark comparison to the Adventure kids who infamously started drifting as early as Our War Game!.

(Note that this isn’t meant to diminish or drop shade on the Adventure kids’ bonds in any way -- I feel like their bond is more of one that’s a “transcendent” one that crosses space and links them through their shared experience, but, nevertheless, is simply not the same in nature as the “social life” bonds the 02 kids had where they were very casual and yet intimate with each other in almost all daily life respects.)

As a result, Daisuke and Ken’s relationship ended up very different from that of their predecessors Taichi and Yamato -- it’s actually hard to imagine them getting in all that many highly heated fights in the same way their seniors would be prone to, and they’d generally be on “mild banter” terms for most of it. In fact, they come off as pretty casual and in-sync with each other, and it’s to the point where it really does feel like -- especially by the point of DSB -- staying on “standoffish” surname basis really is unwarranted.

And while it’s tempting to limit Ken’s relationship to only Daisuke, this did involve the rest of the 02 group, after all -- we got significant episodes defining his relationship to the others (Miyako got a whole episode in 25, and 30′s entire events kicked off because of an attempt to get him to better socialize with Iori!), and the 02 kids as a cohesive “overall group” were integral in getting Ken to open up and show different sides of himself. Although his relationship to certain team members ended up closer than others (Daisuke and Miyako, the ones who tried most aggressively to reach out to him, ended up getting the most out of him), nevertheless, it was important that Ken ultimately cultivated a relationship with a group of friends, and not just one.

This, of course, brings us to Kizuna, which takes place in the summer of 2010. This is a massive leap of time we don’t know a lot about, and for all it’s worth, this means we have, compared to the approximately two years Ken spent suffering under the influence of the Dark Seed, a whole eight years dedicated to potential recovery. There’s a lot that could have happened during that time, and what happened in between, we can only really guess.

Well, for one, he cut his hair.

The reveal of Ken’s design for Kizuna was a huge shock for those watching, because, among all of the twelve main human characters in Kizuna, he probably has the biggest and most drastic design change -- especially because his long hair was so iconic that even the epilogue depicted him with it (and even longer, at that). Were it not for other important identifiers like Wormmon’s presence and the fact said hair is at least still indigo blue, you’d almost wonder if it’s the same character.

(I do have to at least give props to this Animedia poster, though -- that soft and concerned expression is textbook Ken-chan, so it absolutely nails the vibe that it’s the same character despite the massive design change, and it even has a small cute detail that, despite clearly trying to calm Yamato down in haste, he’s still tidy enough to lay his chopsticks neatly on the bowl. That Ken has a habit of doing this while eating hot ramen is a very specific minor blink-and-you’ll-miss-it detail in 02 episode 36, and while I’d normally pass this off as coincidence, Kizuna and its PR has had such ridiculous attention to detail that I’m not entirely willing to.)

Not only that, his actual outfit in the movie is rather unassuming -- it’s just a black shirt, pants, and a belt, compared to the more distinctive/fashionable or setting-immersive outfits everyone else has. I mean, it sure beats that godawful grey gakuran he was constantly wearing during 02, but there were certainly a lot of complaints about how...well, unassuming and plain he looks.

The thing is, though, this is very much in line with how Ken would most likely want to present himself. When you think about it, Ken himself would probably not really appreciate his fanbase status as the “sad pretty boy”; having been scrutinized, evaluated, and put on uncomfortable pedestals through all of his early life, “blending in” and coming off as an average, unassuming person would be right up his alley.

Anyway, before we get into Kizuna itself, we have the drama CD that came with its BD, Where Should We Go? While it was released after the movie, in chronological timeline, it serves as a slight prequel, and what we learn about Ken in it is certainly...interesting. Namely, that he’s apparently a hardcore fan of Japanese hot springs. And not just a hardcore fan of them, but also a complete nerd.

The hot springs *obviously* must have free-flowing water. If possible, I think I’d prefer a quiet, rural flowing hot spring that’s surrounded by a moss-covered garden. Then I want to stay the night at a historical inn that focuses more on tranquility and wabi-sabi rather than wildness or beauty. I’m not looking for a lot on the food options, but the portions should ideally be neither too large nor too small. If we’re just going to relax our bodies, then I’d like it if there was a variety of hot springs to choose from. The water quality that I recommend for the ladies would be the hydrogen carbonate spring or the alkaline simple hot spring (these are otherwise known as simple hot springs with a basic pH of 8.5 or above), but my personal favorite is the hot sulphur spring! Incidentally, the hot sulphur spring is said to treat arteriosclerosis and high blood pressure. If it were possible, I’d like to take my time there… At least stay for two nights! Ahh… Hot springs… Hehehe…

I cannot stress enough how much the audio delivery for this depicts him as being terrifyingly into it. It’s also...not exactly the most fashionable thing for a nineteen-year-old to be into (actually, it’s more of a stereotype old man thing, what with the fixation on traditional Japanese aesthetics and health nut aspects), but we have Ken being very shameless and assertive about his personal interests, even if they’re a bit unusual.

Funnily enough, this isn’t actually the first time he was demonstrated to be a huge infodumping nerd -- it’s just that the last instance was questionably canonical, but tracks extremely heavily with what was just demonstrated here. Namely, Daisuke and Ken’s Shopping Carol:

Listen, the thing about Christmas is that it's one of the most important days in the world... It was the day the Savior was born... So, you go to church and pray... Of course, you knew all of that right?

Or in other words, he interrupts Daisuke’s wistful thoughts with The Actual Nerd Facts, because he’s a nerd. He even has a bit of a smart-aleck atmosphere...and then he cheerfully and sassily dumps all of the work on Daisuke thereafter. While the canonicity for this song is hard to place since it was released during 02′s airing (and 02 itself depicted a very different Christmas), plus the ambiguity of character song canon in general, it’s interesting how Ken’s portrayal here is pretty surprisingly in line with what we’re learning about his future personality.

The rest of what we see of Ken in the drama CD is what we generally knew about him already -- he’s kind, he dotes on Wormmon (he even indulges Wormmon’s request to take him skiing!), and he still keeps up with being into intellectual studies, and even soccer (he’s described as actually keeping up with soccer to the extent he does training camp), because he was always interested in those kinds of things -- it’s just that now he can indulge in them in ways he personally likes instead of being held to other people’s standards.

But he’s also very emotional, passionate, and openly assertive -- something he could be in 02, but only when it was something he really, really cared about, because most of the time he was a little more on the shy side with others. Not anymore. And he’s happy to indulge in the chaotic trip planning and enable the others, and, at the end, gives some sentimental words to Daisuke, his best friend.

Anyway, onto the movie itself!

Notably, they do not mention Ken’s past trauma nor his deeds as the Kaiser throughout the entire movie.

That might surprise people, given that this was...well, central to the entire plot of 02, so it’s arguably a glaring omission that despite having the 02 cast here, it’s not even brought up once. The only real “reference” to it is this scene, where Ken happens to be the one who knows about Menoa’s background as a child prodigy -- and even then it’s uncertain whether this had anything to do with said traumatic events (Menoa was admitted to Liberica in 2002 itself) as much as it’s a meta nod to Ken having a suspiciously similar background and the fact he and Menoa were based on the same real-life story (the nine-year-old boy who skipped grades into Columbia University).

But, again, recall that Ken has had eight years to move on from the events of 02, more time than said events had actually spanned over. That doesn’t mean he’s easily going to forget that trauma, nor that said events don’t still have an impact on him, but rather that a true positive development for him should have him not having to consciously dwell on it if it’s not necessary, and that his friends of now eight years should probably not be still holding it over him at a time like this.

After all, 02 itself was dedicated to scolding this kind of behavior -- not being “stuck in the past” (which, well, also happens to be a very pertinent theme when it comes to Kizuna...) was basically the entire point of the latter half, and so it stands to reason that Ken, and by extension the rest of the 02 cast, would be more focused on what they’re doing now instead of what happened back then.

In the absence of any references to said past, Ken in the actual movie ends up coming off as a bit unremarkable and plain compared to the three friends who end up surrounding him, all of whom have much more extreme personalities (the chaotic and exuberant Daisuke and Miyako, and the comically poker-faced Iori). But you get the feeling that he’s perfectly fine being that way -- rather, he’s enjoying getting all of his fun from his exciting friends, without feeling a need to spice things up himself.

So when we finally do meet Ken for the first time in Kizuna, he’s cheerfully eating ramen with Daisuke and Iori in New York (which, for all it’s worth, is probably really questionably legal, considering that Adventure’s world of 2010 likely still hasn’t figured out how to deal with that whole thing with “immigration and customs” as it pertains to Digital Gates.) Emphasis on cheerfully. He’s as tidy as ever (note how he still properly keeps his chopsticks between his fingers and cleans up after himself, albeit not as well as Iori), and he’s obviously more straight-laced than Daisuke or Miyako, but he isn’t really hiding the fact he’s also totally enjoying this. He didn’t even know why they were there for ramen in New York in the first place, but he just rolled with wherever Daisuke took him.

Recall that, according to their official profiles, these three go to completely different schools now -- Iori’s in high school, Daisuke’s at vocational school getting a chef’s license, and Ken’s in university studying psychology. (Which, by the way, is not brought up at all throughout the movie nor the drama CD! It’s easy to glean how his past experiences might give him an interest in the topic, and it’ll certainly be a valuable background to have for his future known career in criminal investigation, but despite Ken previously having had a reputation for being studious, it’s not brought up at all -- almost as if hanging out with his friends and having fun with them is more important and pertinent.) The drama CD even points out that Ken would normally be busy with soccer training camp. Yet they’re hanging out. In New York. Eating ramen. So, Yamato, what were you saying about how “choosing your own path can sometimes mean being alienated from friends”? If anything, these friends seem to be going out of their way to make sure they’re staying tight.

And, as you’d expect, Ken refers to Daisuke by given name, following DSB’s precedent. Again, given the nature of their relationship right now, this should be expected. There’s other evidence that Kizuna does use DSB as reference in certain other respects as well (Takeru calls Yamato “niisan”, which had previously been exclusive to that movie), and it’s very possible that Ken as portrayed in that movie was used as reference for his potential trajectory here.

Note that he seems to be even more outwardly affectionate with Wormmon than before (which is, shockingly, apparently possible) -- he still feeds his partner before feeding himself (similar to what he did in 02 episode 37), but now he also shamelessly carries Wormmon on his head, which he never did in 02. Perhaps it’s because he’s tall enough to carry the weight, but unlike with Takeru and Patamon, Wormmon is big enough that the sight is honestly comical -- yet Ken couldn’t care less, and while we don’t see him in his own school, it’s a sharp contrast to how Taichi and Yamato scoffed at the idea of bringing their partners to school because they “have their own lives to live”.

(A nice touch is Ken carrying Minomon from his arm, which actually comes from a very obscure piece of 02 concept art -- you can find it in the Character Complete File or the Animation Chronicle -- but was never depicted in the series proper. The Kizuna design works in the April 2020 edition of Animedia actually recreated that piece of art with Ken in the exact same position, only as a nineteen-year-old this time, which was an incredibly welcome thing to see.)

He greets Miyako upfront when she arrives, which doesn’t look like much on its face, but recall that this probably wouldn’t have happened during 02 proper -- not even with Daisuke! -- and, at the very least, not with this very casual “hey!” tone. It means a lot in terms of how much more casual of a person he’s been able to become in the last eight years, and how much more casual he is with this group (well, at least with Miyako). Takeru also greets Wormmon in the drama CD, and Wormmon seems pretty unusually happy to see Hawkmon when they meet each other there, certainly implying a lot of interpersonal interaction since.

Miyako meets up with them (and, going back to how tight these kids are, Miyako would come in all the way from Spain to meet her friends even for the exact same job that she dumped on her seniors), and they end up infiltrating Menoa’s office. He gets in a line of snark, especially because the Shueisha Mirai novel indicates he’s deliberately “looking the other way” in regards to worrying about security -- looks like he’s developing some Lawful tendencies, but in the end, his friends and getting to the bottom of the real truth take priority.

And, also, it’s still pretty clear he’s totally taking the opportunity to enjoy this.

So what does this all mean, really? He’s taking a fairly passive attitude with his abundantly more chaotic friends, but he’s also not protesting, and he’s enjoying everything he can out of it. He’s a bit quieter than he was in DSB, but that could easily just be from being older and a bit more mature, and he hardly comes off as reserved, either (it helps that Daisuke doesn’t quite resort to any antics nearly as ridiculous as he did in DSB, so there’s no need to keep him in check -- yep, even Daisuke got a bit more mature himself). And he’s joining these kids in being possibly some of the most chaotic disaster adults (near-adults?) on this planet, in a sharp contrast to their seniors.

I mentioned earlier in my analysis of Kizuna’s relationship to 02 that Ken is actually a “hidden” foil to Kizuna’s main antagonist, Menoa -- they were both conceived from the same idea Producer Seki had regarding the real-life “genius boy” who ended up going to Columbia University at a young age and, in her opinion, was going to be robbed of a proper childhood experience. 02′s Dark Seed children arc was a major indictment against parents forcing this kind of pressure on children, not only in the sense of pushing them academically but also quashing out their more “childish” dreams for the sake of a more “dignified” outlook and future. Through the events of 02, Ken learned a very personal lesson on not losing his “true self” to the pressure of those expectations, and the meaning of valuing his family and friends instead.

Ken and Menoa, effectively, were originally on the same path, but thanks to the circumstances of 02, Ken managed to avert Menoa’s fate and ended up following his own way. Nevertheless, Ken was largely robbed of a normal kid’s childhood up until the age of eleven, and it stands to reason that, even at the age of nineteen, he might still be trying to make up for all of those fun experiences he never was able to have.

Funny thing about his haircut, too -- this isn’t the first time Ken’s had this haircut, actually. You know when was the last known time he did?

Hm. Coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not.

But unlike Menoa, who decided that it would be better to trap herself in her own distorted view of what “childhood” is, or Oikawa, who ended up clinging dearly to the last reminder he had of what he’d lost from his childhood, Ken ends up dealing with it in a very forward-facing manner. In fact, he’d elucidated his feelings on the issue back in Spring 2003:

There are still a lot of times when I think about how I should have “done this back then.” But I discovered that there are many things I can do over afterwards. I’ll stop counting the things that I can’t do. Because I’m sure there are many things that I can do.

Instead of living in regrets about the past, Ken simply chooses to move forward by making new fun experiences and memories with his friends, befitting those he couldn’t have when he was a kid, and perhaps even enhanced by his newfound freedom as a nineteen-year-old.

During the final battle, we get a few more emotional and assertive shows from Ken -- his concern about Miyako is pretty frantic-sounding, and the fact he steps in so quickly and frantically to help her out by his own will is pretty impressive. And then he definitively declares that they can’t afford to give up -- which is certainly in line with the nobility he had even during 02, but remember when, even in DSB, Daisuke had to be the one to remind him of this? Now he’s the one reassuring his teammates about this, all on his own. When it all comes down to it, his sense of awareness of what he wants and what he wants to do is stronger than ever.

I mentioned in my analysis of Kizuna in relation to 02 that the 02 kids are in a fairly unique position in the movie, thanks to having already practically gone through a lot of the lessons in both 02 and Kizuna, thus leading them to become very lacking in susceptibility to potentially losing their partners anytime soon (and in fact are deliberately portrayed as such). I would say of all of them, Ken is the most representative of this -- being such a direct foil to the movie’s main antagonist, one who actually came dangerously close to making some of the exact same mistakes she did and emerged with his own trauma as a result, the lessons and warnings imparted by the movie are already deeply embedded in his being.

He’s one of the most openly affectionate and intimate with his partner, having already learned the very, very hard way of what happens when you don’t treasure your partner properly. (He’s taking Wormmon jogging with him, which has got to be an awfully uncomfortable setup, but, goddammit, he’s gonna make it work. And if ~With~ is to be believed, he’s been doing this for years now.) He’s still got a Dark Seed in the back of his neck as an eternal reminder to remember who he is, and to acknowledge the love from his family and friends around him instead of succumbing to arbitrary societal expectations. Remember what I said in my earlier analysis about the true reason for partnerships dissolving, and how deeply it was tied to throwing yourself away for the sake of arbitrary standards of adulthood? Ken’s experiences and extremely painful trauma are like a giant do not do this stamp on his face, and although everyone in this cast is naturally human and may have ups and downs or relapses, Ken is possibly one of the last characters one could imagine succumbing to that kind of mistake again.

So we make it to the epilogue, and although Ken’s technical job title as given in the epilogue is literally “police officer” (keisatsukan), his form of dress (plainclothes, not uniform) and his the Character Complete File indicate he’s from the Digimon Special Investigations Unit (tokusoubu), or, in other words, he’s actually a public-servant detective. (So no, the various dubs also going with “detective” are thus not “changes” in this respect.) In short, he investigates scenes of crimes after they happen, and the Character Complete File provides an example in the form of him investigating a dead body found at the river.

This is probably why Kizuna has him major in psychology, because forensic psychology would be a pretty useful skillset for this kind of job, and a university education in general would most certainly be helpful. (The job requirements as per the Japanese system also require a very high level of athleticism and aptitude.) On the other hand, considering what we know about Ken up to Kizuna, there aren’t any indications that he treated this like any kind of major aspiration, and the psychology major makes you think he might have just fallen into this career by a series of accidents -- he took an interest in psychology (and mental health) due to his own experiences, and then decided that “discovering the truth behind things” was up his alley (much like Iori). Even more notably, his position isn’t really described in any history-making terms, not even ones like being “the first” of anything (like Jou), and it feels like he’s doing this to contribute to society in a way he prefers more than he’s trying to accomplish anything world-shattering.

But on the flip side, it’s probably no coincidence that the 02 epilogue portrays him with such a big family. Of course, it also fits with his and Miyako’s family backgrounds (they’d probably want their kids to have siblings, given their own experiences), but since the Dark Seed was described as having its effects countered by acknowledging how much you’re loved, Ken is clearly surrounded by love -- his wife is one of the most openly affectionate people out there, and his kids (or at least his middle child) use the same “Mama” kind of affectionate language Ken shared with his own parents. Once the events of 02 came to a close at the end of 2002, Ken went on a journey of discovering his own self-assertion, personal desires, and fun -- shedding the expectations and societal standards others had of him, and learning to enjoy life in ways he personally enjoys, for his own sake.

#digimon #digimon adventure 02 #digimon adventure last evolution kizuna #ken ichijouji #ichijouji ken #shihameta #kizuna spoilers

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letterboxd · 3 years

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Horse Power.

The Nest’s writer-director Sean Durkin talks about creating atmosphere, watching films without judgment, and the best movies of 1986.

Downfalls in Hollywood movies tend to be chaotic, dramatic and a lot of fun along the way. From Citizen Kane to The Wolf of Wall Street, outsized ambitions are realized on screen in castles, exotic holidays, wild parties, sweeping us up in the extravagance of it all, before the inevitable crash. The Nest takes a slower, far more British view of ambition and its effects on family—or, as Charlie writes, “this movie is a reminder that people who call themselves entrepreneurs should instead be stay-at-home dads”.

The new film from writer-director Sean Durkin, the brain behind cult-survivor slow-burn Martha Marcy May Marlene, is less “strap in and enjoy the ride”, more “slow disintegration of all sense of sanity”—a tense psychological drama focused on the person who usually gets hurt the most: the wife. And that horse-lovin’ dream wife Allison, as played by Carrie Coon, is a character to behold (and the subject of many obsessive The Nest reviews on Letterboxd).

Just as Durkin takes time to carefully explore Martha’s vulnerability in his earlier film, in The Nest, he closes in on Allison, as she and their children adjust to 1980s life in an English manor, far from the comfort of Allison’s American home, while wheeler-dealer husband Rory (Jude Law) chases a new opportunity.

There are thematic similarities in both films; a case to be made that ambitious men wreak a comparable mental destruction on their families as cult leaders do on their followers, breaking them down with charm, persuasion, false promises. There’s also something about the juxtaposition of periods in the film—the fifteenth-century manor vs the ’80s bangers on the soundtrack—that adds to The Nest’s unnerving atmosphere (other parts of the soundtrack are composed by Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry in his first film-score credit).

Keen to understand more about Durkin’s influences and memories, Jack Moulton put him through the Letterboxd Life in Film interrogation.

Carrie Coon as Allison O’Hara in ‘The Nest’.

The Nest feels like a very personal film. In what ways are the emotions of the premise personal to you? When I was making Southcliffe in 2012, I was back in England where I spent my childhood and I hadn’t been back in close to twenty years. It really struck me how London and New York felt very similar now but they didn’t when I was a kid. I thought maybe I wanted to make a film about a family that moves in that time and how a move can affect a family. As I wrote the script, I became a parent, so it became as much a reflection of modern adulthood as it did about my childhood in the ’80s. Although it’s a period piece, I wanted to make it feel very close to today to look at the celebrated values of the time and how those are still very relevant.

The mansion the family moves into is the titular ‘nest’, and the use of space and atmosphere contribute so much to the film’s subtext. What were you looking for when location scouting for the house? Was it an easy or difficult process? Yeah, it was difficult. It was like doing an open casting call. I had a very specific idea in my head but [my production designer] was able to put it into actual architectural terms so we were able to find a house that a successful commodities broker would live and commute from in Surrey. We needed something beyond that, but if you go too far, you get small castles. Once we located the right exterior, there were a bunch of [houses] that would’ve been great, but when we got inside, there were no open spaces. I wanted to have long hallways to be able to see through multiple rooms to create that isolation—the opposite of the cozy American house that they were living in before, to really highlight the good life they left behind.

Carrie Coon and Jude Law in ‘The Nest’.

We love the soundtrack; not just the choice of songs but the way that they’re mixed. Can you give us some insight into the song selection? When writing, I build a playlist that I write to. This one was a mix of personal memories from childhood—like Simply Red, which takes me back to falling asleep in the back of my dad’s car—so there’s a way into writing there on a sensory level, and then I build upon it with songs that I love from the time. I was listening to Richard Reed Parry’s Music for Heart and Breath album a lot and he ended up being the composer of the film, so his music was always part of the heart of the movie as I was writing it.

I would spend my drives to set with my assistant talking about music and he would turn me onto some stuff that would make it into the movie. It was a mix of a long-running preparation and things that I pick up in the moment then making that all work at the right level so it feels of the world. Like with The Cure, we actually played that off a tape cassette when Allison walks into the room.

Since your debut feature in 2011, you’ve had a prolific career in television and as a film producer; you’re a founding member of Borderline Films with fellow directors Antonio Campos and Josh Mond. Do you see yourself more as a producer who only occasionally directs films yourself? No, I don’t really consider myself a producer. I’ve produced movies for filmmakers and friends and I help people where I can. I’m not someone who’s out getting properties and thinking about how to put together a film, I’m only thinking about my own work as a writer and a director. Between finishing Southcliffe in 2013 and The Nest in 2018, I had a five-year gap where I was developing lots of projects one after the other—two features and a television show—that were both so close to [being greenlit] but something fell through, which was really bad luck.

What film made you want to become a filmmaker? The Goonies and Back to the Future were those movies as a kid that first made me want to make movies and tell stories, but the moment where I realized what filmmaking is was seeing The Shining. I saw it for the first time when I was eleven or twelve and a friend showed it to me because his older brother had the VHS. It was my first time understanding atmosphere and direction and I just had a sense that I could do it too. It was a really crucial moment, and I kept that thought to myself for a very long time.

Cinematographer Mátyás Erdély shoots Carrie Coon in Soho.

What’s your scariest film that is not technically horror? AKA, your area of expertise. Oh man, scariest? Something I’ve watched recently is The Vanishing and it’s probably one of the most unsettling films I’ve ever seen. It was incredible to rewatch it because I’d last seen it when I was in college—I watched everything back then—and I’d also seen the American remake, so when I watched it this time, I was trying to remember things [that were different] from the remake. I was like “he’s gonna get out, right?—oh no, that’s in the American version!” I find it an astonishing movie. There’s a real human element to the pain of the killer.

Let’s nerd out: what’s your top film of 1986, the year that The Nest is set? [Laughs] I’ve no idea what came out in 1986. Can I look up a list and I’ll tell you? Let’s see, films of 1986… This is fun! Alright, “popular films of 1986” I’m seeing: Blue Velvet, Short Circuit, Stand by Me, Platoon, The Color of Money, what else have we got here? River’s Edge… Pretty in Pink… Ferris Bueller’s Day Off—Ferris Bueller’s gotta be up there. Big Trouble in Little China! That’s it! I’m sure there’s other things, but from my quick search, I’d say Big Trouble in Little China. That was a movie that was always on in my house because it was one of my dad’s all-time favorites.

Which is Jude Law’s best performance? I love The Talented Mr. Ripley so much. I constantly rewatch that movie—it’s perfect. I also loved him in Vox Lux recently.

Sean Durkin and Jude Law on the set of ‘The Nest’.

What is the best film about marriage and why does it resonate with you? Shoot the Moon was really influential for me. I’d say it’s a bit more about divorce and family than it is about marriage but [it depends on] if you take the ending to mean that they’re going to stay together—I kind of do. You could say a separation is part of a marriage. I love that movie for how it finds light in humor. Albert Finney is struggling with his masculinity where, even though he’s the one who left, he still thinks he owns it all, and Diane Keaton is quite liberated by this scenario. It’s like their journey to find language again. I find it very beautiful.

Which film was your entry-point into international cinema? I’m trying to think back to what I would’ve seen, there certainly wasn’t a lot growing up. In college I really discovered Michael Haneke and Michelangelo Antonioni. L’Avventura made a huge impact on me. I think [because of the way] the mystery kind of dissolves and it’s about the journey, not the solution.

What film do you wish you’d made? I don’t. Filmmaking is personal and it’s so much an expression of perspective when done with care and love—though obviously, there’s stuff that’s just churned out. I never see something and say “I wish I made that”. One of the things I find hard is when people critique films and say they would’ve done this differently. I’ve become very sensitive to that over time because every choice you make as a filmmaker is so specific and thought out. I try to consume movies without knowing anything about them or making any kind of judgment. I just let them be what they are and wash over me.

Which newcomer director should we all keep our eyes on? I don’t think I’m looking out for new stuff necessarily. Once I get to see something, everyone else already knows about it. One person I would say is Dave Franco, who I just worked with on The Rental. I was an executive producer and I was a creative bounce-board for Dave through the process. It’s his first film and it’s astonishingly directed. We were getting dailies from the first week and we were like, “This is his first movie? This is insane!” I think he will do some exciting things.

Finally, what’s your favorite film of 2020 so far? I was absolutely blown away by Eliza Hittman’s film Never Rarely Sometimes Always. I miss having retrospectives at local theaters, which I’m always keyed into no matter the city I’m living in. I’ve started watching a lot of Criterion Channel and I watched a movie recently that’s taken over my brain: Variety, by Bette Gordon, from 1983. It’s set in New York City around Times Square, and it’s this incredible journey that this woman goes on that captured my mind.

Related content

Sean Durkin’s Life in Film list

Sean Durkin’s Sight & Sound Top 10

Clarissa’s list of films that burn slowly

Everything Carrie Coon watched during quarantine (and the best of that huge list)

Tracy Letts and Carrie Coon’s 24-Hour Movie Marathon

Follow Jack on Letterboxd

#sean durkin #the nest #film director #filmmaker #jude law #carrie coon #slow burn #psychological thriller #letterboxd #life in film #martha marcy may marlene

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radramblog · 3 years

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Top 5 Games, ever...?

This was sort of on my mind, considering the recent GOTY post I made. Come explore the hyperfixations that managed to stick around long enough to be my top 5 list.

5. Uhhhhhh

So turns out I haven’t figured out what number 5 is yet. I suppose instead I’ve got to split it among the honourable mentions, huh.

Kirby Super Star Ultra is probably the best game from the GBA/DS era of the series and is just a blast to play. It introduced Masked Dedede, and all the banging music and memes that come with it, and probably deserves a spot here just for that.

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth removes all the awkward Flash Stuff from the excellent original, and adds so, so much more content- the game’s final expansion still isn’t out yet as of writing but even now there’s just so much to unlock. While some aspects of the game can be pretty unforgiving, you probably aren’t going to be exposed to the worst of it unless you get into it pretty hardcore, and if you do, you’ll get used to it. It’s a roguelike, after all.

Speaking of roguelikes, FTL: Faster than Light is chaotic yet serene, brutal but fair, and a bunch of other pretentious dichotomies wrapped into a neat little bow. It takes some getting used to the mechanics, but once you get the hang of it, building your little ship up and up in the face of all odds is extremely satisfying. Have fun dying hopefully not too many times.

SPEAKING of permadeath, Realm of the Mad God gets a spot here just out of sheer hours I’ve spent with it. After a messy few years with a not-so-great owner lead me to dropping the game, it seems finally to have recovered and has devs and community that actually freaking care about it, which is nice. Also, it’s free, and the recent transition to unity has the game looking better and playing smoother than 12-year-old me could ever have dreamed of.

Terraria isn’t just 2D Minecraft btw, its actually more of an RPG/Metroidvania thing, you probably know at this point, but its pretty good hey. Still haven’t fully dove into 1.4 but considering I thought Red was done at 1.1 I’m not complaining with what I have played.

4. Fallout: New Vegas

(...ish??)

I’d argue that between the primitiveness of the original Fallout games (I’ve tried to get into them, but I just can’t) and how…meh… the other Bethesda ones are, New Vegas is the only one in the series to stand up strong. Obsidian’s excellent writing and tweaks to the gameplay of 3 make New Vegas feel like an actual world, rich and characterised, which was something I found lacking in previous open-world RPGs I’d played up until that point (which admittedly might just have been Skyrim). It’s a game that challenges you to make choices that actually matter for more than the mere moments of an altered dialogue tree, both in dialogue and character building, which helps make the game actually replayable. It is also the first game in a long time that really sold the idea of DLC on me, seeing as each of the game’s 4 expansions adds an entire new region of world with its own stories and unique gameplay, tying together with the main plot but standing on their own. I am excluding Gun Runner’s Arsenal from this for obvious reasons, though it isn’t like GRA is a bad DLC or anything- on the contrary, the sheer scope of modifications and munitions makes playing a repair/science-based character incredibly fulfilling- but it just isn’t at the same scope as the other 4 (Courier’s stash barely counts seeing as its just oops! All preorder bonuses).

New Vegas is one of the few games I have actually 100% completed, achievements and all, but I’m still pretty sure there are bits I’ve missed, paths I haven’t taken, characters I haven’t talked to. Despite its inhospitability, the Mojave is always a comfortable place to return to.

3. VA-11 Hall-A

(Hey look, my phone background)

Vallhalla is a masterclass in storytelling, atmosphere, and aesthetic. Like all good cyberpunk dystopias, you get themes of class and transhumanism and artificial intelligence, but they aren’t the point of Vallhalla. Through the window and lens of cyberpunk and PC98 nostalgia is focussed a surprisingly human story centred around the protagonist, Jill, which through multiple replays still hits me in the feels just so. Of course, Jill’s story is not the only one being discussed, as every single patron of the bar has their own life going on, and the glimpses we get imply a rich, often interconnected, world. Glitch City is, frankly, a shithole, and it’s not like you don’t get some assholes coming into the bar while you’re working it. The first patron you serve, in fact, is a great example of this- Donovan D. Dawson, essentially a parody of J. Jonah Jameson, is a colossal prick and knows it- but its clear he has his own system of morals and it is mentioned that he’s excellent at his job, much as he gripes about it. He’s rude and more than a little sexist, but frustratingly charismatic and authoritative, and he’s just one of many people who show up throughout the game. Vallhalla is the perfect game to sit down, grab your preferred beverage, and just relax with.

2. Total Annihilation

(This image is on the steam page for this one, despite blatantly not being from vanilla TA)

I think I actually need to explain this one. Total Annihilation was a game released in 1997 made largely by Chuck Taylor, who would later go on to produce spiritual successor Supreme Commander. It’s an RTS game featuring exclusively robotic units with a fairly chunky aesthetic, allowing the visuals to age better than some, and a fully orchestrated soundtrack by Jeremy Soule, who would later go on to do work on a whole bunch of stuff, most notably Skyrim.

Total Annihilation is an intensely nostalgic game for me, being one of the first games I ever got to play as a kid outside of edutainment stuff, and I’d argue still holds up today (especially with the excellent Escalation mod). What it lacks in story (it’s pretty basic, but functional) it makes up for being miles ahead of its time mechanically, being the first (?) RTS to function in 3 dimensions- heights of things actually matter, hills exist and certain units climb them better than others, shooting down airplanes is difficult without anti-air but possible if you aim *just* right. While appearing pretty similar and having largely analogous units, the two factions of Arm and Core are well fleshed-out in terms of aesthetic and playstyle- Arm preferring fast and cheap equivalents to Core’s slow but powerful- and the unit variety is sufficient that strategies can vary wildly based on the map. Both campaigns as well as those from the game’s expansions are challenging, but satisfying, limiting the units you can produce to force exploration of different playstyles.

Total Annihilation isn’t something I tend to binge play for hours anymore, but I’ll pick it up for a bit every so often, and I don’t see that stopping for a long time (especially due to the recent steam release).

1. Pokémon Emerald

(At the top, where it belongs)

Yeah, this was inevitable. Pokémon is my favourite series ever; Emerald is my favourite in the series. Go figure.

Emerald, being the final game for the franchise’s days on the Game Boy, reflects everything Game Freak had learned in the first 3 generations of the series’ history. The game’s balance is challenging but fair, never spiking so tough that it is insurmountable but never holding your hand either. The AI opponents are throwing odd combinations of mons and moves at you from every corner, double battles are everywhere but rarely mandatory, and the variety of available mon both before and during the postgame is excellent. The added features on top of Ruby and Sapphire are great- Battle Tents serve to replace 3 of the contest halls (they should have all been under one roof to begin with) and provide a taste of what would later be available in the Battle Frontier. The Frontier is probably the single most expansive and challenging postgame in any Pokémon game, providing the game with a longevity that is sorely needed due to the inaccessibility of Pre-DS multiplayer. The game also manages to tie together the plot of both Ruby and Sapphire into something that feels natural, and provides the series’ first ever actual cutscene, which felt a lot cooler at the time than it sounds now. The return of animated sprites gives the Pokémon a level of life far beyond the static sprites of RSFRLG, and in my eyes wouldn’t feel the same until Black and White several years later. The return of the Pokégear phone in the form of Match Call, as irritating as it is to some, makes the world feel alive in a way that Sinnoh and Kanto probably never will, in addition to making grinding a fair bit less tedious and more beneficial. It is, altogether, probably the perfect Pokémon experience, and in my opinion only one other game comes close (its Platinum).

Oh also, they got rid of the font from Ruby and Sapphire, thank fuck, that shit is atrocious.

#ramble #video games #pokemon #retro games #lists

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lunnamars · 4 years

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somebody wants you - chap 2

Chap 2! First part can be read [here].

Can also be read in AO3 e FFNET.

Chapter 1 - loyalty

Honestly, Nami believed that Luffy wasn't a person with good taste for clothes (and for things in general), but the yukata he chose for her was really beautiful - made of a light blue fabric with cherry blossoms scattered all over and a pink obi. But his good taste was really demonstrated in the form of the black yukata he chose for himself.

The outfit was simple, but it looked so good on Luffy that Nami stared at him for a few seconds because she just couldn't look away. The color and patterns of clouds gave the rubber boy a more mature look and she was unable to not give a compliment.

"Damn Luffy, you look good."

The boy just stared at her, blinking and Nami simply turned into a puddle of embarrassment. But, quickly, Luffy recovered and opened a huge smile that distracted her completely and answered simply:

"Great!! I knew you're crazy, shishishi."

Incredibly, the captain had, in fact, behaved during their stroll to the clothing stores and as promised, she took him to a nearby ice cream shop. The redhead always laughed at how he acted when he was taken anywhere that was related to food and again, he didn't disappoint. They just needed to step inside the ice cream shop to Luffy go crazy. She had noticed the place when they passed on the way to the alley full of clothing stores and saw how colorful it was, well lit and said "come and taste all the flavors that the best ice cream shop in the New World has to offer!", which made her think instantly that the boy would love the place.

Obviously, it didn't have all the flavors, but Luffy believed it and was extremely disappointed, shouting at the attendant that this was a rip-off and the cashier girl could only look between him and Nami without knowing what to do. The redhead just gave her an apologetic look.

"Luffy! Luffy!! Okay, calm down. How about getting one flavor of each then? Will it do?", Nami tried to pacify him.

"Seriously?? SERIOUSLY, NAMI?? OE AUNTIE, GET ME A BUCKET AND MIX EVERYTHING TOGETHER!!"

And once again Monkey D. Luffy managed to make random people completely crazy with his hyperactivity and Nami could only find it funny and feel so… at home. It had been a year since they all got together again and this chaotic scene was already so much a part of her life that the navigator didn't know how to live without it anymore.

I love this idiot.

As soon as a completely exhausted attendant handed him a bucket of ice cream, he sat down next to Nami and started to eat with an amused expression, while humming some random song. The two fell into a comfortable silence and he finally calmed down.

A calm Luffy was a rare occurrence and Nami is always amazed. She always tried to take advantage of those moments because they were occasions where she was able to talk to him about various topics. Those were moments when Monkey D. Luffy looked less like a monkey and more like… you see, a twenty-year-old boy.

It's nothing new to anyone that he acted like a moron every day, but Nami knew that deep down, Luffy was very perceptive. Especially about his friends. She wouldn't go so far as to say that there was a brilliant brain inside that head always covered with messy black hair, but to say that he had no sense of the things that happened around him would be a complete lie.

She has always known this, but she's still surprised when these occasions of serenity happened. They started showing up after their two years of separation and the navigator was sure that this was due to everything that happened in Luffy's life after Ace's death. Grow in maturity was inevitable, but if Nami could, she would have given everything to make this growth happen in a different way.

The navigator rested her face in one hand and looked at him. Today he was particularly lovely dressed in a yellow collar shirt, khaki shorts, and a brown boot. The straw hat was on top of another orange one with goggles attached that Nami was almost sure was the same one she had given as a gift years ago. She didn't even realize that he still had the hat, considering how quick he is to lose things.

And now that she was watching him, she really saw how handsome he was. Deep down, no one is able to resist the captain's carefree charm and Nami realized that, in the end, anything Luffy did was completely effective against her. The contagious smile, the stupid humor, the eternal boyish face, the most beautiful innocence she has ever seen. Luffy had a heart of gold and no person in this world could deny that. Not even Torao. The Straw Hat always delighted anyone they meet because of the personality and ingenuity he had.

Gosh, how I love this idiot.

"Did something happen, Nami?", Luffy's voice brought the redhead back to the present and she realized she had been staring at him for a while. He looked at her with curiosity and a certain expression of concern, and she felt her heart warm as she remembered that even though he doesn't love her that way, she's still important to him.

You deserve the world, Luffy and all of us would give it to you if we could.

Nami just shook her head and smiled warmly. He has no idea of the extent of her affection for him and believes he won't ever know. But obviously, she'll always be around, helping him with whatever is necessary and focusing on the captain's dream (and hers at the same time), as well as everyone on the crew, because her loyalty to him is completely blind.

A blind loyalty and an unshakable trust she will have for no one else.

You are the person I trust the most in this world.

"You know you can talk to me, right?"

Once again, Nami must have continued to stare at him without saying anything because the captain's expression started to lose its innocent curiosity and turn into complete concern.

"Yep, I know.", she said.

"So, what are you thinking about? It's scaring me, Nami!"

"Luffy.", she said earnestly.

"O-oe.", he replied cautiously.

"You know that we will all follow you wherever you go, right?", the redhead's voice was firm and stern.

"Yep!"

"You know that we are utterly loyal to you, right?"

"Yeah! I am also with you all! shishishi", he smiled like a child.

"You know that I will only leave if you specifically tell me to go, right? And you know that even so, I won't leave without punching you, right?"

"Yeeeah-! Hey, but why the hell would I tell you to leave, Nami? D-D-Do you want to leave, N-N-Nami?? WHY, NAMI??"

A punch.

"How the hell don't you hear what we say, you dumbass?! I didn't say any of that! I'm just saying that if one day, you want me to leave, you'll have to say it clearly!! I made a promise to you, Luffy and I intend to keep it!"

Nami crossed her arms and glared at the captain. Luffy seemed to mull over something as he finished devouring his ice cream.

"Is there anything that would make you leave, Nami?"

The redhead turned her attention back to him again, but the boy wasn't looking at her. Luffy seemed to be stuck in another reality, as he watched people strolling down the narrow street all decorated for the festival.

"Hmmm… an order from you. And maybe, but arguably, if I got married. I don't know what your rules are about that.", she answered pensively.

"Marry? Hmm, I never thought about that. Do you want to get married, Nami?", Luffy crossed his arms and tilted his head.

"One day yes. It's not my little girl's dream, but I like the idea of settling down with someone in the future. Perhaps having a family, who knows. And since I don't know what you think about this matter, maybe this is an exceptional situation that would make me leave."

Luffy turned to face her without answering for a few minutes. His eyes weren’t focusing on her and the girl assumed that he was still in another reality, but had no idea what he could be thinking. The boy was never a person to mull over things in general, so it always worried her a little. Is he weighing the pros and cons of letting his crew's partners join the Straw Hats?

But the captain's disregard for the matter left a bitter taste in Nami's mouth and a certain tightness in his heart. He doesn't really think of me that way, she thought.

"But don't worry, Captain.", Nami poked his forehead and that brought him to the present, "this is a very distant future. We have a lot of work to do before that, right?"

"But if you marry any of us, the chances would be almost zero, right?", the boy asked while putting his hand on his chin, looking for a solution.

"Well, your logic makes sense, but I have no intention of marrying Sanji, Luffy."

"I wasn't talking about Sanji."

"Nor Usopp."

"I didn't mention him either."

"If you speak Zoro, I swear I will punch you, Luffy."

"I didn't say anything again, you idiot!", curiously, the captain got a little worked up and Nami hesitated momentarily.

"There's no one left."

"I'm no one?"

"Huh?"

Nami's eyes widened so much that she was almost sure her eyes were going to pop out. Does he even know what he's talking about? Was Luffy considering marrying her someday? Or was he just saying that to make sure she didn't leave the crew? The navigator decided it was probably the second option because the thick-headed didn't really know anything about it. He himself said that he hardly thought about it, so it was not possible for him to actually think of her that way.

"Weren't you the one who said that we don't have so much in common, Luffy?", she replied quietly looking steadily at the boy.

Luffy didn’t break eye contact but didn't answer anything once more.

He doesn't even know the meaning of what he just said. Moron.

"Luffy, relax. As I said, it is a future that I just intend to think about after reaching our goals. I don't want you to stick with me out of fear that I will let you down because I won't, okay? Don’t worry. And listen... you must marry someone you like, you dumbass."

"But I like you, Namiii!"

The girl was unable to stop her heart from galloping quickly as if she were in a horse race. She felt like she was starting to blush, but she made a huge effort to force herself to remain aloof. Don’t fool yourself, don’t fool yourself, don’t fool yourself. Even so, she was unable to stop herself from being swallowed by his penetrating gaze and whisper seriously, "I like you too, Luffy."

He raised his eyebrows and opened his mouth to say something, but no sound came out. Instantly, Nami realized the weight of the words that came out of her mouth and her brain stopped working. Despair kicked in and she tried to fix the possible shit she had done.

"I-I-I mean, y-you're my c-c-captain, my m-best friend and I know you like all of us equally, b-but I'm talking about marrying someone you love. You know, someone to have a family."

She gave an embarrassed smile and scratched the back of her neck, hoping that Luffy wouldn't notice the slip-up and question her more about it. To her luck, he expressed no reaction, rested his face in his hands and just turned his gaze to the people on the street again. He didn't look sad, or upset or disappointed. On the contrary, he seemed simply indifferent.

With that, Nami just cast a sad look in his direction while he wasn’t paying attention.

Do you think about me? I wanted you to think of me more than meat.

#monkey d. luffy #cat burglar nami #luffy x nami #lunami #LuNa #opfanfic #fanfiction

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wander-yet-wonder · 4 years

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Bitonto going back home

Chapter one - Battle of Bitonto

Fandom: Hetalia Pairing: Spamano (Spain/Naples), Frain (Spain/Bourbon France), PAST Spaus, (Spain / Austria) Word count: 2698 Rating: All audiences (possible mature content in later chapters) Warnings: Implied references as to how Spain and Naples's relationship is unbalanced and possibly unhealthy. Pee. (In a bucket in a closet and non-graphic but just so ya know) Summary: "It had been twenty years, yet the moment he saw him it was like the first time again. Every part of him remembered at once his inescapable entanglement with this man: The absence hadn’t removed his shackles; the chain had just gotten longer." Antonio reclaims his territories in South Italy after Austria had taken them in the war of the Spanish succession. Caught between the warring factions like a boat in a maelstrom is the kingdom of Naples himself. Read on AO3: X

Roderich was an absolute, absolute, nightmare to deal with when he was stressed. Romano had experienced this more than enough the past twenty years; whenever the man was giving a dinner party and had started preparing too late. The house would be a mess, food needed to be cooked and of course none of the guests could see the actual state they lived in. The days before guests would come over Roderich was furiously cleaning and barking commands and orders at Romano to help. At days like that, the only moment of reprieve he'd get was to go get water at the town square and mooch some tobacco of the boys there.

Today felt similar somehow. Roderich was unprepared, outnumbered, frantic. He'd managed to scramble together a meagre 6000 men. It would not be enough, and he knew it. He'd been commanding Romano to ‘bring him his sword, no not that one, the other one, God you're useless boy! Just go and pack rations and-‘ Romano had listened to him listlessly. He really didn't feel like doing anything, just making sure his civilians didn't get hurt in the squabble.

He'd been sent out to go deliver some letters to the captain of the guard but on the way back he stalled... Why should he go back to that house? To be shouted at? Instead, he bought himself roasted chestnuts and climbed the stairs in the old bell tower of the chiesa di San Francesco d’Assisi, finding a comfortable hiding spot with a view amongst the parapets. His eyes fixed on the horizon and his limbs tingled with anticipation. He was coming. He couldn't see anything yet, but he knew: 12000 Spanish troops were just beyond the horizon. A strange feeling took hold of him. He'd been so numb lately, so apathetic to all this mess. Spain had been too broken to even acknowledge him when he left; seemingly enthralled by France and just- tired and sick. When Roderich had taken him, telling him that Spain was in no shape to take care of him, Romano knew that was the truth. But the Austrian had overestimated his own state of mind. He was keeping his head held up high, a strong and composed front for anyone to see. But Romano had to live with him and had to witness exactly how thin that veneer was. By now he'd cleaned about everything of the kitchen floor- broken plates, blood, vomit. He started to feel like he was the only adult here. He wasn't even certain if Spain had ever even thought about him after he'd been led out of his house. Years had passed afterwards and that had just confirmed for him that Spain hadn't even really noticed he was gone. He didn't want it to- but it had broken his heart a little. So those garrisons beyond the horizon breathed new life into a piece of him that he'd so diligently killed. He'd come for him. Yet he wasn’t just yearning, the advent of Spain would bring war to his town, so he dreaded it in equal amounts. From his hiding spot, he could see the monks in adjacent cloister rush about supplies so it could be used as a hospital for the inevitable wounded. It never ceased to be curious to him that the seagulls and doves would just soar over it all and nest here with him in the bell tower, over Spanish troops, over stubborn Austrians, and over Italian blood to be shed. They were just, above it all. As long as he was up here, in a way, he could be above it as well.

When Antonio would eventually cross the hills surrounding Bittonto and reach the town, the image of Romano eating chestnuts in the bell tower wasn’t what greeted him. Roderich had eventually noticed his charge had been missing for too long and had him dragged back to the house and, after that, to the city wall's defences. Romano got outfitted in some almost offensively basic armour and had a musket pressed into his hands. At daybreak, he was made to stand next to Austria when their cavalries and Antonio’s were facing each other. Roderich stubbornly declared that the people of South Italy didn't welcome the Spanish and that Spain was to leave at once. He elbowed Romano and he repeated the words without much heart. The face of Romano, who was standing next to Roderich- supposedly to make Antonio feel like Romano no longer wanted to be in his care- spoke volumes: ‘Please Antonio don't kill too many civilians and I'll gladly return to you’. He looked like what he was: a defiant teenager being made to stand somewhere and say something by an overbearing parent. Antonio turned a hard gaze to his ex-husband and smirked as he rose to the challenge. He didn’t say anything and just stepped closer to Roderich, who in a moment of weakness fidgeted with the ring on his right hand that he was still wearing. Satisfied with the reaction Antonio spat on the ground and turned his back as they both drew back into their ranks.

Watching a battle like this take place was an incredibly tense affair. Romano was stationed at the city walls, near the Porte Baresana, and was gripping his musket as he watched the Spanish cavalry perform feints. Antonio was provoking Roderich, trying to get him to react, trying to get him to break formation. There was a certain art to this game of strategy but he could only see it in theory later back in the studies of learned men during peacetime, here in the moment however he could only count the seconds until he’d get pulled into the chaos of combat. It didn’t take long for Roderich to take the bait; the sun was barely peeking over the olive groves on the surrounding hills when the cavalry broke. It had started. Romano loaded his musket in case he had to defend himself, not knowing if that would be against Spaniard or Austrian and watched Roderich’s neatly lined up cavalry ranks devolve into a disorganised scrambling mess. It was poetic somehow; this was the effect Antonio always had on Roderich. So often had Romano watched how all the refined order Roderich portrayed to the world would come undone and unravel at Antonio’s smallest provocation.

Then, one by one he could see riders break away from the group and disappear into the hills. “Accidenti! They’re fleeing!” He shouted to the soldier next to him, but also just half to himself. Roderich’s army was crumbling and fleeing in the direction of Bari. Romano leaned further over the balustrade, trying to see what happened but a cannon fired, and the infantry opened fire, causing thick clouds of gunpowder and smoke to obscure the view of the battle taking place in the valley. He ran down the wooden stairs of the temporary scaffolding that had been put up along the city wall to go and find a better viewpoint, but the moment he got down, the city gate burst open and Austrian soldiers rushed in. Amongst them was Roderich on horseback, smeared with soot and looking like a cornered animal about to jump. He spotted Romano instantly and grabbed his shirt. Romano got pulled close against the horse. The boy was nervous to be that close to the large animal in such a chaotic environment, it could trample him if it got spooked. Roderich leaned close so he could shout instructions at him over the noise of the battle and the chaos in town.

“I’m going to get reinforcements- defend the down! I’ll be back soon I promise.”

In a moment of forced parental affection, Roderich patted his head and smiled at him. “I have faith in you, you can do it!” He then let go and turned his horse. When he galloped out, Romano saw that Guiseppe Antonio, Prince of Belmonte, the commander of the Austrian troops followed him. They were without a leader in here, no general left to instruct the Austrian forces still within the walls. Romano ran the moment Roderich was out of sight, to hide, to keep himself safe. He was so done with cleaning up the mess these two had made of themselves. He was so done fighting Roderich’s battles. Still the Austrian soldiers, despite being without a leader showed no intention to surrender. Jogging as far from the battle as his heavy, clunky, slightly too large, armour permitted. Romano found an empty garrison building he could wait out the siege in. To his joy, he found an abandoned bottle of wine and a supply closet, perfect. To the devil with courage: this wasn’t his fight. He was just a leaf in the wind being blown around mercilessly by the powers of Europe, he might as well lament his fate with a bottle in hand, getting drunk. It also hurt less if you get shot when you’re drunk, he knew by experience, it numbs everything.

Halfway through the bottle, Romano got up to piss. A little unsteady, he made his way to the window and peeked outside to see if it was safe to find an alley or latrine. Oh, fuck no it wasn’t, soldiers were running around, and bullets were flying, he’d have to find an alternative. He searched the building a bit but didn’t dare to go too far from his supply closet: A stray bullet going through the windows could still hit him. He crawled on all fours to another door and opened it. It was another supply closet but this one was filled with ammunition… Oh, and a bucket thank god. Romano crawled in and closed the closet door. He stood up and unbuttoned his fly, let out a sigh of relief and started. As he was doing his business he started casually looking around at the closet, and then a great idea came to him. Great ideas tend to strike when you’re in the bathroom (or in this case a closet?), especially if they’re coming from that place of ‘not quite drunk but definitely beyond tipsy’ state of mind. There was a way to end this stupid battle without having to fight either the Spanish or the Austrian soldiers. With a shit-eating grin, he tucked himself away and took two kegs of gunpowder under his arms. He cracked the door open just enough so that he could look outside of it. Once he saw a clear line, he took a sprint and found the cesspit behind a block of houses. He tore open the barrels and dumped them in. He paused and then threw some water on it as well, can’t have that stuff blowing. He made the same run five more times, dumping round musket bullets, gunpowder and lint into the cesspit and then dumped a wheelbarrow full of manure on it to hide it. Exhausted he wandered over to a tree and sat down. Night had fallen and the fighting had seized. He sat there and almost fell asleep from exhaustion, but he eventually got cold and dragged himself home. The armour clattered to the floor and Romano stumbled to his bed. He passed Austria’s empty room, the bigger and more luxurious one. For a moment he contemplated sleeping there, but he knew he’d be uncomfortable doing so. He just took the down feather-filled pillows and then went to his simple cot.

The next morning, he dragged himself back to the front line, in armour, to see how the situation was progressing. The highest-ranking soldiers were discussing strategy in rapid German and Romano stifled a yawn. They had already started giving commands for the soldiers to take positions and the fighting to resume when a young Italian mercenary working for the Austrians came sprinting towards them. “Stop! Stop wait! We are all out of ammunition!” Confused murmurs rose through camp. Accusations were thrown left and right, but yesterday had been chaos, everyone had been shooting everything and no one had exactly kept count. After a tense silence they realised there was no way to salvage this, they had to surrender. Romano showed no emotion, even feigned some surprise but oh, his relief was immense. His plan had worked.

Romano removed himself from the command tent and marched himself back into the city centre, sitting on the steps of the Cathedral, waiting. He could see the white flags rising on the watchtowers and there were some very tense minutes of silence before, with an utter cacophony, the Spanish army poured into the streets. They were not killing or plundering to his great relief. Then he saw him, slowly emerging out of the crowds. He saw Antonio before the other saw him. On horseback he rose above everything, first, he could see a glimpse of him and as he approached, he was revealed to Romano like the sun slowly emerging from the clouds and equally radiant. The moment those green eyes locked with his Romano felt his chest contract with a painful surge of emotion. Antonio looked better than he’d seen him look in fifty years, gone was the sickly crumbling empire, and returned to him was that brazen, youthful Achilles. It had been twenty years, yet the moment he saw him it was like the first time again. Every part of him remembered at once his inescapable entanglement with this man: The absence hadn’t removed his shackles; the chain had just gotten longer. Their eyes met and Antonio smiled. Of course, he’d be smiling, he’d won after all, always getting his way, that man.

Romano threw his hair out of his face and looked up at the other with a defiant smirk. He was the first to speak and threw a casual and uninterested sounding greeting at the occupying nation. Anything to hide that he was trembling.

“Ciao, so… what have you been up to? Haven’t seen you around these parts for a while. Was the food bad last time or-”

He couldn’t finish his little charade of uninterested chatter because with a loud clatter of armour Antonio had swung himself off his horse and landed in front of him cutting him off with the sheer noise the metal made. Before he knew it, strong arms pulled him to his feet and into a tight embrace. Romano initially stiffened but slowly allowed himself to ease into it. He would’ve given a lot for this embrace in the past, had it come earlier. Had it come before he had learnt to know better than to have expectations. He tried to draw back because if he stayed there longer he would lose control of his volatile heart but found he couldn’t. The strong arms tightened when he tried, and he found he wasn’t as much embraced as that he was captured. His cheeks flushed red in frustration, instantly recalling that this was the way things were again: Everything was on Antonio’s terms, it was imitated on his terms and it didn’t end until he had gotten what he wanted.

“Mi Nápules, don’t be so cold- I came back for you! I tried before but I wasn’t strong enough yet. I should run into that cathedral behind us right now and thank God on my knees for returning you to me.”

Still, the grasp did not relent. Antonio’s eyes were firmly on the Romanesque cathedral behind Romano’s back as he kept talking.

“Of course, Roderich isn’t completely defeated yet, he’s regrouping in Bari.”

He squeezed harder, possessively, it almost hurt.

“Technically you’re still his territory. I suppose you should still aid him in the next phase of the battle…But I don’t think you want to. Come let’s go pray and go home, your house here! I want to see it!”

And like that it was all decided for him, while he was muzzled, any opinion he’d might want to express muted as his face was pressed into Spain’s shoulder. When he could finally breathe again, blinking against the light of the returning, bright Italian sunlight he was already being pulled along into the cathedral so God himself could seal his fate and seal this reunion.

#spamano #spaus #frain #aph spain #aph south italy #aph france #historical hetalia #juliwrites

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faee-riee · 5 years

Text

lifetimes;

Connor x GenderNeutral!Reader

\\ In which Connor realizes the dangers in the ability to think, but as always, his beacon of hope pierces through the brewing storm.

TRIGGER WARNING: I say the word suicide, in case you are extremely sensitive. But nothing more, don’t worry (:

—————————————————————

Moments of serenity can be the most thought provoking.

And that’s what scares him.

Connor arrived home at 3:15 am from a chaotic day at the station. He couldn’t wait to walk through that mahogany door you guys picked out for your house and crawl into your shared bed to just cuddle. Connor realizes you were not in bed once he eagerly arrived home and checked the bedroom. He became worried and walked around the cold house to look for you. He found you sitting on the balcony floor, wrapped up in a blanket with your head tilted up towards the night sky; eyes gently shut.

Anyone would have thought you were asleep.

but Connor knew you better than that.

Connor sighed in relief. He shed his dark brown jacket and removed his tie, unbuttoning the first few buttons of his shirt in the process to release the unnecessary pressure.

“Are you alright, my love?”

Connor took his place next to you, analyzing you quietly.

“I am now that you’re here.”

Your eyes remained shut, but you took a deep breath and leaned closer into the comfort of your boyfriends side. A small smile tugged at the corner of your lips as you felt him wrap his arms around you.

“Did something happen?”

“Nope, I just missed you. Fowler let me out early, so I’ve been killing time out here. Relaxing.”

You opened your eyes and met with the chocolate colored ones that always looked to you with adoration. It always made your heart skip a beat or two. You took in the appearance of your boyfriend: hair slightly tussled, showing that he’s been running his hands through his locks. Most likely from stress.

Had he picked that tick up from you? You wouldn’t be surprised.

He was admiring your features and unwavering care as your head cocked to the side after taking in his appearance, no doubt owing that habit to him.

“Stressful day at the station?”

Connor chuckled, “Is it that easy to tell?”

“Well, I mean... it is if you’re me. Because, you know, I love you and all.”

He sighed, “This case Hank and I have been on is going nowhere. We fear that we may have to mark it Cold.”

“Is that the one with the murder-suicide?”

Connor grimaced, “Unfortunately.”

“That’s not good. The family really wanted justice for their daughter, too.”

“We have reason to believe that it is, in fact, murder. But the evidence on site seems to have no connection to each other, or they just lead the investigation into a dead end.”

Connor sighed, and adjusted his grip on you. You hummed in appreciation and moved the blanket to where it was over the both of you. It was late now, and you both should be getting some rest. Obviously the bed you two share was more comfortable than the floor, but he didn’t seem to mind being on the ground.

After a long and stressful day, all he wanted was to be with you.

Comfortable silence fell on top of the both of you; enveloping you in a warm blanket of coziness. You shut your eyes once more. Connor had nothing else to do besides to either look at you, or look at the stars.

Both equally as beautiful.

He opted to look at you. Wanting to memorize every little thing about your flawed perfection.

Those same kind eyes that looked at him since day one remained the same, except the closer Connor looked, a fine line at the corner of your eyes reveals itself. Realization overwhelmed him as his audio processors barely picked up your hushed whisper.

“What are you doing, Connor? Looking at me again?”

The microscopic lines became a little more apparent as you grinned.

Connor smiled playfully, “Maybe.”

You still had the ability to make his thirum pump beat a little faster. The ability to make every single piece of his body feel worth. To feel needed. Loved.

You gave him the ability to feel so human.

Yet, he knows that he is in fact anything but that. He knows that as more days go by, you will slowly gain more wrinkles on your face. Arms following suit. Then your hands.

God, you were going to have to leave him one day.

That shook him to the core.

You opened your eyes as his LED flickered yellow and red.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

Connor furrowed his eyebrows and bit his bottom lip. You sat up carefully and kept the close distance between the both of you. You made sure to keep his line of sight with your own; hoping that you’re conveying the amount of sincerity in your words,

“You know you can tell me anything, right Connor?”

“Of course, it’s just...,” his indicator became a steady yellow, “I’m afraid... of something inevitable.”

You voiced stayed a whisper, careful to disrupt the quiet atmosphere,

“Do you mind telling me what that something is?”

He looked down to his lap, picking his words carefully. You reached out touch his cheek and made him look you in the eyes.

“I don’t want you to leave me.”

Connor leaned into your touch as you processed his words. Subconsciously, stroking his cheekbone as he let his eyes flutter close. You pulled him close to you, putting your other hand on his other cheek. He opened his eyes to the sound of soft laughter,

“My love, we still have a lifetime ahead of us.”

“Yes, A lifetime. One. Singular. That lifetime is yours. You’re giving your lifetime to me, and that is the most important gift I’ve ever received. I want to spend my lifetime with you, but the awful truth is that my lifetime might as well be infinite. I will have to see you leave the face of the earth and I can’t do anything about it. It fucking sucks because I—“

“Connor, calm down.”

Your hands shifted to go around his neck, pulling him close until your foreheads touched,

“Just being able to meet you has been the greatest gift in my lifetime. I’m so incredibly thankful that you would dedicate this piece of your lifetime to me. Even when there are so many people who are so much better than me living in their lifetime right now. You make me feel so special.”

Connor dove deep into your eyes, seeing every bit of sincerity and love that you’ve given him for the past 2 years. It never failed to make him warm inside. He almost cursed himself for thinking that he wasn’t enough for you. You’ve shown him that he was more than enough.

And how could he not believe you?

He always did. Always would.

But now isn’t the time for that; there was only you and him basking in the present.

“Plus, I’d like to believe that in no matter what lifetime we’re in, our paths will cross once again.”

You grinned brightly, obviously trying to cheer him up from his past musings. He loved you for that. He pulled you closer and kissed your cheek,

“God, I love you so much.”

“I love you, too.”

——

Now Connor stood here, softly weeping with the rain upon your grave. Gavin and Nines stayed close behind, mourning for the loss of their friend.

Connor kneels down to place the bouquet of flowers into the vase, and gently lays his hand on the marble tomb,

“I’ll see you in the next lifetime, my dearest. I’ll be right here, waiting.”

—————————————————————

A little back ground info: In this one shot, realistically at the end, Hank and Sumo are gone, and Gavin is older now too.

-Also, in case you didn’t know, when Connor said “We fear that we may have to mark [the case] Cold.” It basically just means unsolved.

Authors Note: I hope you guys are having a lovely day, today! Thanks for reading my first one shot! A pretty shitty ending if I do say so myself, but you know what? It’s cliché and I love it (^: It was so fun to write and there will definitely be more to come.

-s.

#connor #connor rk800 #rk800 #angst #fluff #fanfiction #hank anderson #gavin reed #dbh nines #rk900 #nines #dbh #character death #x reader #one shot #drabble #sumo #connor x reader

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buffster · 5 years

Text

The Yoko Factor (BTVS 4.20)

This is part of my ongoing Buffyverse Project, where I write notes/meta for every episode in an attempt to better understand the characters and themes of the shows. You can find the BTVS list here and the ATS list here. Gifs are not mine.

All I remembered about the Scooby fight was that it happened. I had forgotten how, and I actually do think it makes more sense now. It wasn’t about their friendship, it was about attacking each of their insecurities and making them feel that everyone else in the group had noticed them too. This was possible because the friendship has been so fractured that no one feels supported or even seen. They have no reason not to think they’re being judged.

Unfortunately, the resolution to all this never really comes around. There is a ton of good stuff here--Buffy’s increased reliance on herself, Willow’s moving away from her computer skills and into witchcraft as a solution to everything, Xander not feeling respected and seeing Anya as an extension of that, Giles losing his sense of leadership and importance--but we never really get an acknowledgement of any of that until much later. And the real problem that Spike landed on--that the Scoobies aren’t paying a bit of attention to one another--gets a quick patch over but continues to be a problem. Yes, Buffy isn’t judging Willow, but is that a good thing or just a symptom of her ignoring her entirely?

Spike is the one who comes up with this plan to incite drama, which I do feel makes sense for his character. He’s insightful and incredibly good at stuff like this. It’s also fun to see his perspective on Buffy and how fascinated/afraid of her he is. He keeps insisting to Adam that he needs to consider her a bigger threat. You can sense the admiration beneath the irritation.

Adam: You feel smothered. Trapped like an animal, pure in its ferocity, unable to actualize the urges within… Clinging to one truth like a flame struggling to burn within an enclosed glass… That a beast this powerful cannot be contained. Inevitably it will break free and savage the land again… I will make you whole again. Make you savage.

This is the episode in which Forrest is killed. He claims his problem with Buffy is that Riley is willing to commit treason over her and turn against their “family”. I would have loved to see some more backstory on Forrest: either have him be an orphan who found his family through Riley and now he feels abandoned or have him have a romantic interest in him. Then you could even have had him join Adam willingly as a way to get his family back.

Angel’s return also doesn’t fit into the story well. I covered over in Sanctuary why his coming here made no sense, and his drama with Riley was nothing but fan-baiting. It also felt like a bit of a step back for Angel’s character; he always seems less mature over on Buffy. On Angel he seems sad but resigned to the fact that he can’t have Buffy and she comes off as wanting more than he can give. But here he seems like a petty, jealous ex. I don’t see a scenario where he would like Riley, but beating him up, refusing to explain he’s not evil, and insinuating he might have slept with Buffy is ridiculous. The end scene where he says “I don’t like him” in a tone of resigned sadness makes more sense than everything before it.

Buffy: Look, I… you weren't entirely wrong, what you said in L.A. We don't live in each other's worlds anymore. I can't just barge in on yours and make judgments.

Angel: I'm still sorry.

Buffy: Thank you.

Xander is the one who gives Riley the information on what turned Angel evil. Why does he have this habit of venting inappropriately when it comes to Buffy’s boyfriends (here, and when he tells Dawn Spike tried to rape Buffy)? In the script Xander decides to tell Riley even though it’s clear Buffy doesn’t want him to know, but in the episode it plays like Xander accidentally spilled the beans.

As far as Buffy’s decision on this, I get it. It’s a bit easier for Willow, for example, to be totally honest with Tara about her past with Oz. She loved him, the wolf thing became a problem, he left. Angel will always hold power over Buffy and she will always have feelings for him, and basically the only reason they’re not together is because they can’t be. How do you tell a boyfriend that if your ex suddenly became human you’d be tempted to run right back into his arms? It’s unresolved and messy.

Riley: I went a little nuts, you know? I mean, on the one hand, I should believe in us. But, on the other, sometimes things just happen between ex's and then I saw he was bad

Buffy: He wasn't bad.

Riley: Seriously? That's a "good" day? Well there you go. Even when he's good he's all Mr. Billowy Coat King of Pain and girls really-

After their talk they say I love you to each other and then Buffy has to tell him about Forrest. He abruptly leaves, and the cliff-hanger is that he goes to Adam.

Let’s get in to the Scooby drama. It’s clear Buffy, Willow, Xander, and Giles haven’t been paying much attention to each other lately, but you know who has been paying attention? Spike.

Spike: Think you're neglecting the past tense there, Rupert. Besides, she barely listened when you were in charge. I've seen the way she treats you.

We’ve seen a few hints that Giles is insecure about losing his job as librarian and, more importantly, Watcher. He was fired way back in season three, but when Buffy belonged to the Council she continued to look to him for guidance and ignored the replacements. When she decided to drop the Council and stop taking orders she also stopped looking to him. She’s the leader now.

Xander: This is so like them lately. It's all about them and the college life. You know what college is? It's high school without the actual going to class. Well, high school was sort of like that too but the point is, I'm the one working hard to earn a living and it's a huge joke to them.

Anya: They look down on you.

Xander: And they hate you…

Anya: But they don't look down on me.

Xander is struggling to find his footing post-high school, which we actually have seen hints of throughout. The ironic part is Buffy and Willow will be in the same place after college, but by then Xander is finding a place in construction and doing a bit better. Spike suggests they mentioned him going to the military, which was a strange choice. It would be fairly easy for them to shut down having ever said that if it came up. Spike only gets away with it because the fight is so chaotic.

Willow: I am a whiz!

Tara: She is a whiz.

Willow’s insecurity is about her new relationship with Tara and her friend’s feelings about it. Spike slips up here; he says Xander said she was being trendy but Xander doesn’t even know about the relationship at this point. Spike points out something interesting here--Willow isn’t as focused on her computer skills lately. But that’s not something she or anyone else will be concerned about for awhile.

Spike doesn’t say anything to Buffy, which makes sense because she’s sort of the center of this whole universe. Buffy has a lot of concerns, but her friends not liking or needing her isn’t one of them. The interesting thing about all this drama is that none of the friends care a bit about what the others are going through; they’re too focused on their own drama. Buffy and Willow don’t think about Xander’s employment issues, Buffy and Xander don’t think about Willow’s sexual preferences or her obsession with wicca, and Buffy, Xander, and Willow don’t think about Giles’ lack of employment in any real way.

Tensions escalate when they all convene at Giles’ house because everyone is overly sensitive (Buffy is totally lost).

Giles: You never train with me anymore. Adam's gonna kick your ass.

Buffy: Giles?!

Giles: Sorry! Didn't mean to be so honest. Terribly sorry.

After seeing Forrest die, Buffy isn’t eager for anyone to come along with her. And that just further taps into their feelings of inadequacy.

Xander: And if I did join the army I'd be great. You know why? Because maybe they'd give me a job that couldn't be done by any well-trained Border Collie.

Willow: Sure, you'd be wonderful in the army -- you think the umbilical cord between you and Anya would stretch that far?

Xander: I knew it. I knew you hated her.

Willow: Hey, I'm not the one being judgmental, here. I'll leave that territory to you and Buffy.

Buffy: Judgmental? If I was any more open minded about the choices you two make my whole brain would fall out.

Xander: Oh. And superior. Don't forget that. Just because you're better than us doesn't mean you can be all superior.

Buffy: Guys, stop this. What happened to you today?

Willow: It's not today. Buffy, everything's been wrong for a while. Don't you see that?

Buffy: Willow, what do you mean things have been wrong? Things don't have to be wrong, do they?

A major problem with the Scooby friendship is that Buffy is the leader--and she is both too distracted and too inclined to ignore emotional issues to lead effectively. Buffy is an avoidance type and so the entire group avoids talking or working through their feelings with each other. This is something Giles noticed in Once More With Feeling but it never gets fixed. The group is missing someone like Faith or Spike...someone who would be more willing to call out issues and bring them out in the open. Buffy hates that, but sometimes it’s necessary. Just look what happened to everyone in season six...

Character Notes:

The Initiative: They want Riley back. They (correctly) realize they can’t harm Buffy if they ever want to bring him back into the fold. When the relationship between them ends they do eventually lure him back, so good call there.

Spike: We learn he can’t even point a useless gun with the chip in his head. It appears to be activated by intent to harm rather than ability, which makes sense. He lists his past fun night outs as deflowering a virgin princess, killing a minister mid-sermon, and seeing the Sex Pistols in ‘76.

Adam: His favorite Beatles song is ‘Helter Skelter’.

#theyokofactor #doug petrie #buffy summers #willow rosenberg #xander harris #rupert giles #spike #anya jenkins #angel #buffy/angel #riley finn #buffy/riley #xander/anya #tara maclay #willow/tara #forrest gates #adam #buffy/spike

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oh-roman · 6 years

Text

sweeter

Harry misses his family.

Tuesday, October 10, 2017.

Harry’s biggest fan is four years old.

He has shoulder length brown curls that he insists he brush every night before bed, on his mother’s request. His favorite color is a soft purple and his favorite song is none other than “Meet Me In The Hallway” by his all time favorite daddy in the world, Harry Styles.

Harry had been gone on tour for seven months now, however he hadn’t missed his routine schedule to call Lucas after school on Friday’s and Tuesday’s. Most times Lucas would rant to Harry about the turmoils of kindergarten and express his adorable complaints about the nap-time procedure and the unfair justice of the mere fifteen minute play time. Harry would listen to Lucas’s thirty minute rants and giggle through his replies—only responding sheepishly.

Lucas let out of school at 2pm everyday, but the time zones made it difficult for Harry to sometimes wake up at 3am—just three hours he had returned from a concert venue—to speak to his little.

“Hi, daddy!” He’d answer, holding his mother’s phone completely up to his ear and practically yelling into the speaker.

“‘Ello, ducky,” Harry knuckled at his eyes and yawned away from the speaker. “Was your day incredible?”

He thought about it for a second and swung his legs back and forth in the car seat, starring at the passing cars. “Yes, it was incredible.” He replied, finally.

Harry pulled his lips into a smile and rolled into his side in his hotel bed to click the lamp on.

“How’s mummy?” Harry sat up against the headboard and yawned again, away from the headboard.

“She’s incredible too,”

“Tha’s good. Hope you’re bein’ good to her. She does a lot fo’ you, y’know?” Harry toyed with the TV remote in his hand

“Yes, I know,” He began tracing her finger along the glass window. “Hey, Dad? Mummy says I can’t bring Lola to school.”

“She’s right,” Harry ran a hand through his hair and imagined Lucas pouting by the phone speaker. “The school has a no pet policy. Maybe one day at show and tell, yeah? School year’s just started.”

“Lola’s not just a pet. She’s my friend.”

“She’s a kitten, ducky. The school’ll only see her as an animal. Listen t’your mother.”

“Dad?” Harry hummed in response. “When are you coming home?”

The question was shockingly difficult to answer for two reasons. He no honest knowledge of when he’d be able to return home. He and Y/N had purchased a comfortable home in a small town in northern Michigan. It was amidst a beautiful forest that looked heavenly during the summer months and completely chaotic during winter. However, it kept his family out of sight of paparazzi and safe from the cruelty of the media; the world and its opinions. The worst it got was when Y/N would sometimes have to wave off fans outside of the bridal shop she worked or the girls who waited for her to pick up Lucas after school. Harry hated the attention at times, but delved in the support. He decided it was harder than anticipated, to separate work from his personal life. The truth was: he didn’t have privacy and from the outside looking in, he was nothing more than a famous (a word in which he hated) song writer and performer, who occasionally worked in films, with a sweet personality. If anyone had bothered to look a little closer, they would have known how painfully hard it was to leave his life behind and the even bitter heartache it felt to have to say goodbye to his son over the speaker of his phone, thousands of miles away.

“Soon,” Harry felt a weight on his chest, so he cleared his throat and adjusted his eye contact to several trinkets in the room—as to distract himself from the truth.

“I’ll be home sooner than you know it.”

. . .

Saturday, February 17, 2018.

Harry’s biggest fan was set to turn five today.

Flight 408 was the only thing that kept a slight grin on Harry’s face all morning. He’d fly to Michigan and get to surprise Y/N and Lucas with his presence and gifts of course. It would a two day vacation for him—not extremely long, but a long enough time to shake the feeling of loneliness that he felt for the past seven months.

He hadn’t called and notified Y/N of his arrival—insisting he keep it a surprise.

He exited the airport full of screaming fans, the weight of bodyguards pushing his body a bit, and the annoyed onlookers—all watching Harry walk with his head down toward the doors. If he were honest, all of the noise gave him a bit of a headache and (like most days), he wished he weren’t the Harry Styles and just a guy going home for his don’t birthday. It was god knows how early in the morning and the nap he took on the plane made his mood far too great to be ruined by a lack of noise control in the airport.

From the view of the car window, hailed by Uber, Harry traced his finger against the cold glass and watched as the snow fell delicately (or, so it looked like) and blanketed every tree in sight—towering over everybody. The ride home was anything but smooth—it was a bumpy one, considering the amount of ice on the half-plowed roads. However, nothing felt better than treading up the four steps leading the front door of his home—Gucci duffel bag draped over his shoulder, suitcase handle in one hand, keys in another and a box with shiny wrapping paper, tucked under his arm.

. . .

The house smelled warm of spices and a light floral scent. It was only five in the morning, but he knew exactly why and it made him smile a little.

Y/N was never a morning person like him and so she sipped in hot tea early in the mornings to try and change this vindication. It helped her cope with things—work, family, the world. In fact, he knew exactly where she would be at this time of morning.

He toed his boots off at the door and let his coat drape from his body. The floor was freshly mopped; he could tell by the way he almost slipped in his socks, with every step. Y/N cleaned more than a janitor.

He made silent steps up the stairs—careful not to trip over Lola, who curled up on the top step—and walked all the way to the master bedroom. The room looked the same as he remembered it—black and pink accents everywhere.

The bedroom had everything Y/N ever wanted in a home. A walk-in closet, big enough bathroom, storage on the walls and (her absolute favorite) a patio, leading outside. It was bitter cold outside with unforgiving Michigan winds, so Harry had floor to ceiling windows installed, so that Y/N could watch the snow fall in the mornings, while still being in the comfort of warmth.

He brushed his fingers over the mattress and sighed a bit before a slight noise caught his attention and he lifted his eyelids. She shifted her weight on the carpet and gasped so hard he feared she might drop her mug and spill the tea all over the rug.

He was smiling, but he didn’t know how to react; he could hardly remember to breathe, until she bent down to set her mug on the coffee table and began treading toward him with silent expressions.

She pressed her body against his, in a fragile manner. As if he would break if she weren’t careful enough. Harry craned his neck to bury his face in her neck—taking in her scent. She always felt so soft, like putty in his hands. He insisted he ransack her back and hips with the touch of his fingers. They both sighed at the feeling of being in each others warmth; basking in the slight sunrise peeking through the windows and settling on their skin.

Y/N ran her fingers up to settle on the nape of his neck, then through his hair—though their wasn’t much to grab on to.

“You’ve cut your hair,” She sighed into his chest and lifted her head to see him. He nodded and let out a breathy laugh.

“Why didn’t you call?” She drowned her eyebrows a bit and held onto his biceps. “Could’ve made you breakfast, or had a cup of coffee waiting for you,”

Harry couldn’t wipe the smile from his lips. Her cuteness was inevitable at this point, so he just lifted his hand to thumb at her bottom lip, softly. “‘M not hungry,” He traced his thumb down the curve of her throat. “Wanted t’surprise you, plus the little one turns five today.”

She hummed in response and he felt the vibration on the pad of his thumb. A fire was burning in his chest and rising up the length of his neck.

When Harry pressed his lips against her’s, he did so out of need. It was selfish, but he deemed it necessary. They had both been deprived of the natural affirmation interlocked in their bodies. Being apart was arguably the worst harm they ever experienced. Not being able to properly hold to one another—it drove them equally insane.

“Daddy!”

Harry jumped and pulled away from Y/N with a smack—craning his neck around to see Lucas running toward him with small legs and a huge smile. Harry kneeled and opened his arms wide with approval. He caught Lucas’s body and held him near—softly bundling his short curly locks between his fingers.

“Wha’a you doin’ up so early?” Harry pulled back a bit and moved a whips of Lucas’s hair between his ear.

“I had to pee,” He shrugged.

“This isn’t the bathroom, y’know,” Harry chuckled and held onto his son’s sides.

“Mummy helps me reach the sink,” He giggled.

Harry hummed and quickly glanced back at Y/N. “Good t’hear you’re makin’ it to the bathroom. ‘S long as you aren’t messing up your sheets anymo’,” Harry tickled his sides a bit—quickly moving his fingers outside of Lucas’s Toy Story pajama shirt. He stopped shortly after and Lucas smiled wide—missing teeth and all—and fell against Harry’s chest.

“I missed you, daddy,” He mumbled, wrapping his little arms around Harry’s neck.

“Missed you more, Lou.” His voice almost broke, but he cleared his throat instead and blinked away the tears that threatened the corners of his eyes. “Look a’ wha’ I picked up.

Lucas pulled back and watched as Harry snuck a hand in his back pocket and pulled something out. It was a small, lazily wrapped rectangle. Lucas gasped and began jumping as if Harry had just surprised him with a new car. Lucas held it carefully, barely wrapping his fingers around it, as to not ruin the terribly wrapped present.

“Happy birthday, ducky.” Harry nodded toward him, insisting he open it. Lucas sat on the floor, with his legs criss-crossed and tore the packaging open, revealing what he had so desperately anticipated. A Hershey’s bar.

Lucas gasped again. “A chocolate!” His voice was small and squeaky—only making all of this so much more amusing. Then, his smile suddenly fell and he looked up at Harry with sad eyes. “Mummy says no sweets in the morning,”

Y/N’s mouth fell as Harry and Lucas both looked up at her as if she were some kind of monster. Harry raised and eyebrow and grinned a little.

“Go on,” Y/N sighed, crossing her arms and Lucas hissed a “yes” while ripping the chocolate from the wrapper and taking a big bite from the bar. Harry chuckled and his shoulders rose and fell.

“‘S good, yeah?” Harry asked, wiping a smudge of chocolate from Lucas’s cheek, who nodded fast and giggled, because the chocolate had melted a bit so it was making his hands all sticky.

“Alright, let’s get you all cleaned up.” Y/N interjected, quickly jogging over to Lucas; fearing he might get chocolate on the tan carpet. She picked him up and Harry stood as well.

“Thank you,” She whispered reaching up to tap Harry’s cheek with her free hand.

“‘F course, pet,” He mumbled, catching her hand and kissing the back of it. “I’ll go start breakfast,” He squeezed her hand now and leaned down to press his lips against hers. It wasn’t long before Lucas was squirming in his mother’s arms, giggling with a string of “eww’s”.

. . .

Waffles were his forté.

That and banana nut bread, which was rising in the oven. It just so happened to be Y/N’s favorite, so he made sure to follow his mother’s recipe—that he had memorized for years—perfectly.

Harry connected his phone to the kitchen Bluetooth system and “Love that Burns” by Fleetwood Mac lowly hummed throughout the speakers.

“Can I help?” Lucas squealed from down below, holding onto Harry’s thigh like a tree.

“Only if you promise not t’eat the merchandise.” Harry focused on whipping the waffle batter together, whilst glancing at the clock above the stove.

“I promise!” Lucas yelled and Harry grinned while cleaning his batter-strikes hands on a kitchen towel, before bending down to hoist Lucas up onto a kitchen chair, so that he could reach the counter.

Harry sliced the fruit, while Lucas sprinkled chocolate chips into the waffle batter—it was Harry’s way of sneaking sweets into breakfast without much fuss.

Lucas made “oo’s” and “ahh’s” as Harry carefully poured a small amount of the batter into the waffle iron. He giggled at his reactions and craned his neck down to press a kiss to his forehead.

“Can I put on the Carolina song, now?” He pleaded and Harry pretended to think about it for a moment, stroking his chin and raising an eyebrow in thought. Lucas giggled at Harry’s antics and finally Harry nodded and watched as Lucas clapped his hands in success.

Y/N walked downstairs in a loosely wrapped silk robe, with undergarments underneath. She was working her hands through her slightly wet curls—a bit defined from the water—, attempting to pull it into a messy bun. At the same time, she was raking the coconut out left on her hands, onto her scalp.

“She’s a good girl!” Harry and Lucas shouted, swaying their hips and shaking her heads. They were both shirtless with batter-stained pajama pants. Y/N rolled her eyes at their little dance party, taking a seat at the kitchen island. The island was decorated with three plates lined with strawberries and sliced mangoes. The boys faced away from her, still dancing around and holding imaginary microphones.

Eventually Y/N managed to get all her hair into a low bun—though some curls still managed to fall. Harry turned around, holding a plate with two hands while Lucas carefully held the forks and knives. Harry winked her way—his dimples peeking. Just as Harry bent down to lift Lucas onto the bar stool, “Ever Since New York” came on shuffle. Lucas gasped and raised his arms, excitedly.

“This one’s my favorite!” He said, leaning his elbows on the island table. He said that about every song on the album, which is why Harry made it routine to teach Lucas a few chords in the songs, on the grand piano that sat in the guest bedroom. Most times however, Lucas was more satisfied leaning onto Harry’s arm and watching as his dad moved his fingers on the keys and sang to him. This was before the tour, so Lucas had to settle with hearing Harry’s voice over a radio, or (his favorite) a vinyl.

“Looks good, Styles.” Y/N said, as Harry sliced the banana bread and distributed a slice to everyone. He lifted his eyes toward her and grinned, before licking the stray crumbs from his thumb and walking over to her with bright eyes. He stood there for a moment and stared at her, thumbing over her right cheek.

“Love you,” He blurted.

Y/N paused for a moment before replying. He thought maybe the music was too loud for her to hear what he said. Thought maybe Lucas’s singing was too much.

“Oh! Tell me somethin’ I don’t already know!” Lucas screamed, squeezing his eyes shut.

Before he could react and turn the volume down or signal Lucas to stop, she was calling his cheeks in her hands and moving her lips over his. She was so soft at it—maneuvering over his lips like a kind of velvet. No tongue or bucking of the hips—just plain endearment. Half of this was because they didn’t want to scar the poor boy too much on his fifth birthday. However, they also simply loved the pure attachment; wanting nothing more than to be in each other’s presence without a care in the world. And that’s how they felt—together, surrounded by problems they didn’t have to worry about.

Harry pulled back, only because he knew she hadn’t eaten and the bread (made just for her) was getting cold. He pulled his bottom lip into his mouth and walked backward away from her, still grinning. He turned the song down so taht it merely hummed and pulled his own chair out.

“Wait,” Y/N tapped the table. “Could you get the c-a-k-e from the fridge?” She asked, watching as Lucas furrowed his eyebrows and concentrated on figuring out what she had just spelled out.

Harry nodded and came back to the table with a three layer chocolate cake in hand. It had Lucas’s name spelled out on top, as well as five rainbow striped candles.

“Close your eyes, ducky,” Harry said, turning off the lights and setting the cake on the table. He grabbed a lighter from the drawer and flicked the fire against each candle. “Alright, open up,”

Harry took his seat next to Lucas and draped his arm around him, before clearing his throat. “One and two and,” Harry nodded toward Y/N before they began singing Happy Birthday, ending it all with a loud applause and forehead kisses.

. . .

Two slices of cake, three refills of orange juice, and one slice of banana nut bread later, Lucas was nodding sleepily, before slouching onto Harry’s arm, snoring slightly.

“C’mon birthday boy,” Harry mumbled, picking him up, while Y/N began clearing the table.

Harry came back into the kitchen, running both hands through his hair. He yawned a bit and leaned against the sink edge while Y/N scrubbed the last of the dishes. Once she was done, she wiped her hands clean and turned toward Harry with a sigh. He cleared his throat and held her hips, with a smug smile on his lips.

She parted her lips to speak, but it was too late, once he had bent his knees a bit and picked her up to straddle him. She squealed a little, though it was masked in laughter. He carried her over to the sofa, but not before popping an extra strawberry that sat on the counter, into his mouth. He fell back on the couch with an exasperated sigh. His jaw worked at the strawberry, while she traced her fingers over his neck, lovingly—feeling his throat contract when he swallowed.

“So, I was thinking,” He started, resting his hands on her waist, making circles with his thumbs. “Wha’ if you two fly t’France with me,”

She smiled and let her arms fall to her lap. “You’re crazy,” She said, raising a brow.

“‘M serious,” He said—his laugh throaty. “I’ll fly you out Thursday night, so Lou won’t miss school, then you can stay the night at my ‘otel and we can spend Friday together,”

Y/N shook her head and ran her hands over her face. “I have to work and Lucas has show and tell, Friday. Says you told him he could bring Lola,”

“Oh, fuck the bloody show ‘n tell,” He laughed and Y/N shushed him, craning her neck toward the hallway to make sure Lucas hadn’t crawled up from bed to listen in. “Call off work, Y/N. You haven’t taken off in months, pet. I know you’re tired,” He brushed his hands in circles over the silk robe.

She waited a second, crossing her arms, before shrugging her shoulders. His eyes lit up and he licked his lips. “Could have Lucas see his first Harry Styles concert,” He suggested and she closed her eyes, giggling softly, while leaning her head on his shoulder. “I’ll call off tomorrow,” She mumbled.

“Perfect,” Harry hummed, letting the weight of his head fall back onto the sofa, using his hands to race up and down the length of her back—focusing his eyes on the pattern on the ceiling with a grin at his lips.

#harry styles imagine #harry styles tour #harry x reader #dad harry #dad!harry #harry styles fic #harry styles fluff

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elfnerdherder · 7 years

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Ill Intentions: Chapter 11

You can read Chapter 11 on Ao3 Here

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Chapter 11: Character Arcs

The apartment was soon reduced to a chaotic, shambled mess.

A few cups had chipped and shattered as Will decimated the kitchen, and the trash had been overturned in his haste to hunt through the pantry. Towels laid in desolate piles across the hallway, and dresser drawers had been overturned and upended in his haste.

Will sat huddled in the wake of a flipped mattress and abused Wal-Mart sheets, shaking hands grasping a note written in an elegant, beautiful, and furiously familiar hand.

Dear Will,

I am interested to see just how your world turns when you don’t have an electronic device to dictate every aspect of your life. Will it slow to a stop, marked only by a rising and setting sun, or will you retaliate in a blind fury, unable to stop the quickness of your pulse?

I’m eager to see the messages and reminders you have programmed to light up on this screen. The battery life on these, I’m told, are incredible.

-Chesapeake Ripper

He could hear his voice in those words. Will reread it enough times that it began to echo in his mind, frantic and furious with the all-knowing arrogance of it. The bastard had even put it in the sock drawer, where a familiar and not entirely welcome knife once lay.

“No,” he murmured, and he felt himself rocking a bit, side-to-side to try and ground himself rather than start screaming. “No, no, no, no…”

He set the note down on a pile of disheveled shirts, and he let out a croaking gasp. He had the urge to scream, to yell. He had the urge to pace, bellow, to rage, and he contained it all within himself as he started tapping his fingers on the ground, the sound hard and punctuated with the beat of his pulse.

His phone rang, and Will snatched it up from among a spilled glass of water and the remnants of a dead plant that’d fallen from the windowsill. He’d have to sweep it up later, along with the rest of his things he’d reduced to shards in his furious haste.

“Hello?” he asked. It was breathy, needing –God, why did he have to sound so hopeful that it was the Ripper, there to gloat then inevitably return his watch?

“Where the hell are you?” Beverly hissed. “You’d better be in a hospital –you’re not in a hospital, are you?”

Fuck.

“I’m…not feeling well, Beverly,” Will said hollowly. “I don’t think I should come in today.”

“Seriously? Haven’t you seen the news?”

“Is that a joke?”

“Dead serious, if you’re not on your way here, you’d better turn the news on. Work is hell right now, hell, and there are cops, feds…shit, other news vans…”

Will managed to drag himself to his feet where he made his way to the living room. The TV had been shoved to the side so violently that it teetered on the end of the stand. He nudged it to safety and sat down in front of it, skimming through channels until he could find the local news. Teeth gnashed against his bottom lip, breaking skin. His wrist felt bare, far too light.

“…and here now we’re standing just in front of Tattler News where you can see beyond the police line the body of a young man that authorities are now recognizing as Harrison Nolan, an up-and-coming member of the Baltimore Symphony. This is reminiscent of the recent murder of another young musician, Billy Nguyen who was found on the stage of the Baltimore Symphony with the neck of a cello placed down the victim’s throat.”

Will’s heart plummeted to a sickening squelch in his guts.

“Although partitions and canvases are being placed to block the view of onlookers, you can still see the victim has been found much the same way as before. Is this a promise of something more to come? Is there another serial killer in the midst of the DC area, looking to upstage the Ripper? Has the Ripper’s correspondence with Tattler News reduced him to something ‘mainstream’?”

“Shit,” Will murmured. In the distance, just beyond the reporter’s shoulder, he could barely make out a man slumped into a simple-backed chair, head tilted back to give way for the neck of a cello that burst from his mouth.

“Do you think it’s the Ripper?” Beverly asked. It took far too long for him to focus on her voice rather than the image before him. It cut back to the woman, and he blinked rapidly, dispelling it from his retinas.

“No, he…”

He’s playing a different game.

“This isn’t his style,” he said instead, quietly. “I think this is someone else that wants to be in the column.”

“Charlie’s asking where you are. What the hell do you want me to tell him?”

That took Will far too long to answer as well. The image in front of him cut to the crime scene from before, when the first body had been found on stage. He stared at it for several moments, mouth dry, wondering at the still image of the neck of the cello sprouting from a gaping mouth as though it were coming to full bloom.

“Will?”

He gave a start and looked away from the image. As it cut back to the woman’s white noise of fear-mongering, he shut off the TV and rubbed his face, resolute.

“I’ll be there in a bit…I have to get ready. My alarm didn’t go off.”

“Seriously?” Beverly bit out a snort. “Better have a better excuse than that when you get here. He’s pissed.”

Will hung up and sat on the floor of his apartment for several more minutes before he could pull himself to his feet. The skin on his wrist felt odd, and he itched it as he gathered together a suitable outfit and choked down a cup of coffee.

It wasn’t until halfway to work that he realized he’d forgotten to grab his water bottle. He thought about going back, but traffic was such that it’d be an entirely new ordeal altogether that he wasn’t precisely prepared for. He’d have to rely on work coolers, then.

He almost missed his stop on the bus, and he only realized it was there when the old woman beside him shoved and nudged him far enough away for her to walk out. He gave a start at the realization of where he was at, and he followed after her, an uncomfortable prickle down his neck.

“You’re not following me, are you?” the old woman asked.

He looked away from the distant street corner he would turn at and stared at her for an uncomfortably long amount of time.

“Because if you are, I’ve got mace. I’ll mace yeh,” she informed him.

“I’m going to work.”

She eyed him with extreme prejudice –likely his wrinkled shirt. His hair, too, he supposed, seeing as how he was now just realizing that he’d forgotten to brush it. It was quite the contrast to her own perfectly ironed shirt tucked into pants hiked up high at her hips –remnants of the good old days when gas was only twenty-five cents a gallon and a milkshake was a nickel. He likely looked the type to try and pickpocket someone, in her eyes. A mildly desperate expression, right hand twitching towards his left like he could find his watch there if he just fucking tried hard enough.

Oh, god. His watch. His fucking watch.

“Alright, then. Be quick about it.”

“Alright,” he said, and he took a dramatic step around her before he hurried on his way. He pitied the idiot that decided to try and mug someone like her –that pity faded as he figured they’d likely deserve it if they cased someone like that out and thought she’d be an easy target.

He had to fight through the crowd to get to the front, and more than a few elbows nestled into his gut as he skirted around them all. Their breaths and BO clung to him, and when he reached the front he nearly bowled over an officer that stepped just before him to stop him.

“I work here, this is-”

“ID, please,” the man said.

Will fished out his wallet and handed over his license, eyes scanning for Beverly. A cluster of news vehicles cramped up the public parking, and cameras were wildly swinging across the crowd, then towards the partitions that blocked the view of the body.

“No, your badge for the press,” he said impatiently.

“Yeah,” Will snapped impatiently, “it’s-”

Right here, he finished mentally, although the words didn’t come. His hand pressed to the place on his chest where his lanyard would hang, if he had it.

If he’d fucking remembered it from home.

“Behind the line, then,” the officer decided. Will could almost smell his smug superiority as he sauntered away to push back a few people testing the line, and the urge to lunge out at him coiled, ready to spring. It was a sudden wave of emotion, hot and volcanic in its fury, and it surprised him as he stood, puzzled beside a chatty millennial that was glued to her phone.

“Yeah, I can’t get inside to work because of this freak show, and my boss is going to kill me if I…”

Her words faded, though, as he struggled to turn the sudden emotions about in his hands, wrestle them into something manageable. The officer was just doing his job, Will decided. He was just doing his job, and anyone that wanted a closer look at a dead body would say whatever they could if it meant that they could get just close enough to maybe poke it with a stick once or twice. Stephen King had made a novel about something much like that –a group of boys that poked a dead body with a stick.

Serial killers must be Stephen King’s muse, too.

It took far too long for him to turn his feelings into something logical. Half of him longed to rush after the man, grab him, and snap his neck. The other half turned the idea about of him just staying home for the day. He could turn around and just go home, lock himself in his bedroom with a fifth of Jack and call it a fucking day.

“I’d say something, but honestly anything revolving around you is hard to be surprised by anymore.”

Jack Crawford’s voice listed across the foggy aspects of his thoughts, turned about as they were with the feeling of what the officer’s pulse would feel like in his palm as he squeezed. Will blinked once, then rapidly; he clung to the sound of professional weariness, and he looked up from his shoe in order make some sort of paltry eye contact with Jack. He swallowed heavily and wished that he’d remembered a water bottle. It’d sat in the back of his cabinets for so long that it’d collected dust, but now that he’d found it…

Something else to blame the Chesapeake Ripper for, then. His water would taste like the sun-abused shit in Charlie’s office by the time he got home.

“I forgot my press badge,” he said.

“…Come on,” Jack grunted, and he lifted the tape for Will.

As they passed by the officer who was busy answering questions to an irate woman, Will ensured that he made eye contact of a sort with the man. A smug, self-satisfied smile crept across his lips, and it twisted to a sneer as the cop realized just who it was he’d held back from entering. He glanced from Will to Jack, then back to Will; that Will Graham, he was fast realizing. That God damn, Will Graham.

“One of yours said that I should haul you in for questioning on this one,” Jack said as they ascended the steps.

“Todd from Marketing?”

“Yeah, I think name was Todd.”

Todd has a cocaine problem, he wanted to say. How about you go and grab the squealer’s stash before you bring me in for this?

It wasn’t the time, though, to throw Todd under the bus. He may need him for more paper analysis or something else mundane and detailed that he didn’t want to do, consumed as he was with his work.

“Todd hates marketing,” he said instead. “And me.”

“I supposed that if you were to start your own killing spree, you wouldn’t put the body on your front doorstep,” Jack assured him. “You seem a little too smart for that.”

There was that. As they skirted the partitions and Will got a full view of the body without the trouble of distance from a news station, he felt something much akin to relief that Jack didn’t find him entirely capable of this.

“…This wouldn’t be my design,” he murmured.

“Thank God for that,” Jack replied.

“This the kind of thing your boss had in mind when he started ‘Will Intentions’?” A guy asked, head popping up from around the body. It wasn’t Jimmy, and that minor change shook him down to his core, made words dry up in his mouth because first the watch, then his water, then his badge, and who in the world was this son-of-a-bitch? Why was everything suddenly changing?

“This isn’t good press,” Jack said.

“Any press is good press,” Will managed hoarsely. “That’s news for you.”

“Well this guy was pressed for time,” the man said, and he stood up. His mouth was obscured by a cloth mask, although unruly, curly dark hair poked up from a headpiece of the same material. A kind attempt at not contaminating the crime scene. “He’s fresher than the last one. The killer probably didn’t want it stinking up anything.”

“The last one?”

“Found in Baltimore just two weeks ago –Billy Nguyen.” The man eyed Will much the same way that the old woman had, as though he could see Will’s worth beneath his plaid button-up and found him wanting.

“You don’t think they’re from the Chesapeake Ripper, do you?” Will asked Jack.

“It’s on your doorstep,” the man interjected. Will ignored him.

“I didn’t at first, but unless you’ve got more crazies climbing out of the woodwork for you, I think it’s highly likely,” Jack said. “Unless you’ve got another idea?”

Will had several ideas, but none of them sounded stable enough to share. He frowned and glanced back to the body.

“Could I…” he looked to Jack, then back to the body. Could he see? Could he look at this the same way he stared at Mary Mai and see?

Jack stared at him, and Will had an uneasy ripple down his spine at the feeling that maybe, just maybe, Jack could see, too.

“Brian,” Jack said, and something on his face made Will’s stomach flop. “If you’ll step out of here with me for a minute.”

“Jack,” Brian needled.

“Come on.”

The apparent Brian didn’t enjoy being shifted from his work, and it showed in his face. The incredulous expression twisted, then cracked somewhat as he gave Will the most accusing and understanding expression of disdain that he’d ever witnessed. He skirted the body and Will, then stalked from the tent with the beginnings of his rant starting with, “Jack, seriously, a civilian…?”

Will ignored it, though. His fingers reached for the watch on his wrist that he knew wouldn’t be there, and he sighed.

The body was older than a few days; it didn’t reek so much of decay as it did chemicals. Will circled it, studying the way that the wooden neck of the cello burst from his mouth, lips curled to reveal the artistry beneath. If he’d been wearing gloves, he’d have taken fingers to it, caressed it as he wondered at its purpose –

-No, no, the purpose was obvious, wasn’t it? The musician wanted to play. This was his magnum opus.

The throat was open, peeled back with efficiency, although there was a bit of classic showmanship in the way that it was pinned in place with pearl-tipped pins. The white, bleached strings at his throat turned out to be vocal chords, though in truth Will only recognized it by the thickness of them –normally they weren’t so white, were they? No, no…no. Blood had dripped onto the suit, speckled bits of red like burst holly on freshly fallen snow. The cold, even within the partitions, was biting. It was going to snow, soon. It was going to snow, and the Chesapeake Ripper had his fucking watch.

“You wanted to play him,” Will murmured, and it made so much sense. His throat was dry, and he swallowed, imagining the sort of music that would burst from someone like this, become from someone like this. He took a musician, and he made his very skin, his very bones into an instrument to play for the masses. A true arrogance, to take one so talented and make him your own toy to play at your leisure. He wondered what sort of thoughts pervaded the mind of someone that wondered the notes they could draw forth from the neck of the dead.

Nothing tasty, surely.

Will closed his eyes, and there was a flash of light that turned his lids pink –likely a reporter in the distance trying to get a good photo. He inhaled, and the taste was on his tongue, the scent of whatever had bleached his vocal chords stung his nose, and just in the distance, Will swore that he could hear the sort of music that would make tears come to even the hardiest of men’s eyes.

It would be mellow –something along the D-string, fingers fretting over the vibrato. Will swayed to the sound of it, the crooning lilt that made his bones vibrate, and he imagined the care it must have taken to lay him out so kindly, to share such art with the world –

-Art? Surely, in this man’s eyes, it was art. But for Will, too?

“Will?”

It wasn’t his name that pulled him from the sound, the sensation that sent goosebumps along his arms. It was more the tone, he supposed, and how it didn’t mesh in the least with F-Harmonic notes that settled deep like the ache of overworked muscles. He looked to the entrance of the tent where Jack was busy observing him, and he supposed that out of any time to be caught not quite ‘all there’ this wasn’t a good one.

“This isn’t an act of anger,” he said, and he cleared his throat to relieve the hoarseness from it. “Not at all.”

“He isn’t punishing the musician?” Jack snorted. “Seems like jealousy to me.”

“No, no, it’s –” Will scowled and rubbed at his mouth, swallowing down a foul word “–elevation, Jack, he’s…elevating them. They’re probably good musicians, aren’t they? First chairs, second chairs…he’s taking them, and he’s making them more. He’s making their music something that comes from within, something…”

He clenched at the air, grasping for the words that didn’t want to come easily. Jack stood by the entryway, patiently impatient as he waited.

“He’s… making them more than what they are,” Will finished lamely. “Taking the core of what brings their happiness, and taking that art and passion and ingraining it into their skin. That’s what he’s doing.”

Jack nodded and looked to the man, mulling a few thoughts around his head as he thought. It left Will feeling anxious. His watch didn’t buzz to tell him that he’d better take a walk through the office –is that what he’d be doing right now? He made a move to check the time, then hissed out a curse when he realized once more that it wasn’t fucking there.

“His intestines are missing,” Jack revealed. “Are you sure this isn’t the Chesapeake Ripper, Will?”

“Yeah, Jack, this…this is different. The Chesapeake Ripper isn’t so much a man succumbing to intrusive thoughts –this feels intrusive. Thoughts that pervade the mind until…” He gestured lamely to the corpse. The cello. The art. “And I’d say it’s here because he probably wants his name in the column, too.”

“Are you going to give him that satisfaction?”

“…No. One too many psychos, I think.”

“One too many psychos,” Jack echoed.

He was let go after he sighed a few things, and he headed into the office with an odd, lingering sound just at the edge of his hearing, like the haunting vibrato of a cello’s wavering song.

He tried to banish it, shove it to the far back of his mind where it could lay to rot and wither like his other tasteless thoughts, but there seemed to be a genuine lack of control. His thoughts leapt with short, electric burst, rapid sensations like the quick blinks of his eyelids, watering at the gust of AC that hit him as he walked by the lobby desk: the cop, the watch, the music, the throat, the cello, the need, the violence, the fury, the feel of the Ripper’s blade against his stomach, the putrid muck that fed through his veins like a poison because it’s no wonder you can relate to someone like this, considering your own tasteless, horrendous penchant for violence.

“Will, there you are –come on; are you coming?”

It wasn’t Beverly that yanked him unceremoniously from his thoughts, but Freddie. Just inside the elevator, she swung a checkered arm out to hold the door for him.

“Charlie is having a field day, you know,” she said as he stepped into the elevator. It chimed shut and shuddered before lifting. “Where the hell were you?”

“…I lost my watch,” he said. It sounded far more blank than morose, an odd feeling attached to it –confusion and disbelief rather than anger.

“Your watch?”

“It wakes me up in the morning,” he explained. “I don’t know where I left it.”

Freddie eyed him with extreme prejudice. It was reminiscent of the woman on the bus and Bryan poised beside the corpse, and it made a trickle of anger slither up his throat and lodge itself just at the back of his mouth. He had to resist the urge to spit it out at her.

“That out there him?” she asked.

“No. Someone else, someone…”

Someone that really shouldn’t be my problem right now.

Freddie laughed, sparing him the elongated, pregnant pause. “Wow, Graham, you’re really shook up. Did your grandma buy you that watch or something?”

The elevator dinged onto their floor.

“I never knew my grandma.”

“Okay.” She gave him another sidelong stare. “Just letting you know, Charlie’s-”

“Pissed, I’m late, there’s a dead guy on the steps outside, my watch is gone, and-”

“-waiting for you in the conference room,” Freddie finished. “Someone else is there to see you.”

That stopped him. Will turned towards the conference room rather than Charlie’s office, and he spared Freddie a confused, uncomfortable look.

“Yeah, someone’s in there to see you,” she said, and her mouth of secrets twisted into something akin to a smile. “See, not all bad.”

Not all bad, she said. Could still be somewhat bad, somewhat…

Just who in the hell would want to see him?

“I’ll go see to that, then,” he said distractedly, and he headed towards the conference room.

“Thank you,” Freddie prompted.

“You’re welcome,” Will replied.

He didn’t hesitate by the door because that would be cliché –Will Graham wasn’t much a person for such things as that. Instead, he walked right in with his shoulders hunched, his messenger bag digging into his collarbone, and his tie bunched up, half-hanging out of his coat –this he only realized when he saw a faint, faded reflection of himself in the windowpane across from him. He stared at that image of himself: glasses crooked, clothing rumpled, hands bunched to fists in his pockets. His reflection was more of the person that he generally tried to present at Tattler news; something innocent to be trusted and left well enough alone. He wondered how his colleagues would have described him, hunched over their keyboards with the pressure of deadlines on their back.

Something much like that reflection, he supposed. Nothing at all like the reality of himself. Nothing at all like what the Chesapeake Ripper was trying so desperately to reveal to the world.

“Will,” Charlie grunted. He stood from his chair at the head of the table, and the look he gave Will could have melted steel beams. “Glad you could make it.”

“…Rough morning,” Will managed after a beat. “Sorry,” he tacked on hastily.

“Well, you’re here. So is your guest.” Charlie gestured off to the side, although the look on his face barely softened. “I’ll leave you to it.”

Whatever lecture Will had been expecting wasn’t to happen, it seemed. Charlie excused himself from the room, nudging and shoving past Will who hadn’t managed to leave the doorway. Fight or flight instinct, he supposed. He needed an exit close.

It took too long for him to see her there, hunched back towards the small AV station where the TV and work videos rested, collecting dust. She was a thin, slight girl with classically straight brunette hair and pale skin found in most rural, mid-American homes. She turned to look at him only after Charlie had left, and although her clothes were plain, they seemed to be a sturdy, expensive make.

“Hello, Mr. Graham,” she said, and despite the watery, uncertain stance, her voice came out strong and sound. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

“Who are you?”

She smiled. “I didn’t expect you to recognize me, although I recognized you immediately. My name is Abigail Hobbs.”

A special, lovely thanks to my Patrons: Emily Elm, Matilda, Starlit-Catastrophe, Sylarana, Heather Feather, Frosty Lee, Duhaunt6, and Superlurk! You’re the best!

#LiaS scribbles #ill intentions #hannibal #hannibal au #hannibal fanfic #hannigram #slowburn hannigram #journalist!will #someone help will graham #find his god damn watch

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zukadiary · 7 years

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All for One ~ Moon Troupe 2017

This was my first live Tsukigumi since Puck. And really, the only Tsukigumi I’d seen at all since then was Aasa’s A-EN and part of one Arthur stream... so yeah, long time no see, Tsukigumi. I’m not sure anything can beat HOT EYES!! in terms of how far past my expectations it flew... but this is a really close second.

All for One is an original Koike-sensei fantasy involving the Three Musketeers. It’s 2 acts, and I was concerned that it would be presented in a questionable state of doneness and not interesting enough to hold my inevitably sleep-deprived attention. I was very wrong!! The first thing I did after leaving the theater on Tuesday was hunt down a good seat for today, and now I’m kind of desperate for a third chance. This show presses buttons I didn’t know I had (but apparently denim capes and barrel throwing are real turn ons for me).

--BRIEF SUMMARY, WILL INCLUDE SPOILERS!--

The story is very silly even for a comedy, and nearly all the punchlines are pretty groan-worthy. Chapi is not actually Louis XIV but his twin sister; she was supposed to be tossed aside when they were born but they gave away the wrong baby, and raised her as a boy while frantically searching for the real Louis to no avail. So she’s assumed the role of king, and meets d’Artagnan (Tamakichi) when he’s brought in to give her fencing lessons. d’Artagnan gets overexcited and knocks her down, she gets upset (mostly from being compelled to fence in the first place) and orders him to leave the Musketeers. Later, sick and tired of pretending to be a man—especially now that her mother is trying to concoct a plot marry her off to the Queen of Spain (Umino Mitsuki) despite this lie—she puts on a dress and wig and goes out to mingle. She sees d’Artagnan in a bar drowning his sorrows with the other Musketeers, and starts engaging him in conversation in hopes of drawing his feelings toward “the king” out of him. They fall madly in love! Meanwhile, everyone else in the bar starts making fun of Cardinal Mazarin (Itsuki Chihiro), whose nephew Bernard (Tsukishiro Kanato) is the captain of the royal guard. Bernard and some guards walk in just in time to see this, and the Musketeers are ordered to disband as punishment. They find the real Louis while visiting Porthos who has taken another job as an actor, and the rest of the show is just kind of a general hullabaloo of Chapi trying to figure out how to avoid marriage and be with d’Artagnan, and the Musketeers trying to get the real Louis into the palace and their band back together, while Bernard continues trying to ruin everything. Act 1 felt more polished; it has some really big impressive musical numbers (and I’m always wowed by Tsukigumi’s overall vocal level when I see them live). Act 2 felt like Koike ran out of steam a little; it was more generic Takarazuka, and the final chaotic series of fights on the rotating stairs reminded me an awful lot of the end of Kenshin. He’s also clearly still really excited about sword noises (not complaining... so am I).

It’s not the story that I fell in love with as much as the incredible balance this troupe has APPARENTLY DEVELOPED WHILE I WASN’T LOOKING, and I think Koike’s biggest success here was putting every little piece in exactly the right place to maximize that balance. We all joke that Chapi is the real top star of Tsukigumi, but in All for One she essentially was. MiyaRuri and Toshi are so obviously more polished than Tamakichi, but they don’t hold back, and instead of showing her up it highlights her purity. Reiko definitely doesn’t mesh yet, but Bernard is a ridiculous character, so she’s free to be awkward for now and still totally succeed... plus she’s a type that I think really adds something to the troupe. Ari has the challenge of being overly masculine and funny, and she’s still finding her feet but it’s a great time to make her try this. The energy of the troupe overall has gotten so much less competitive and more FUN AND HAPPY since the last time I watched them. I did not think making Tamakichi a premature top star would accomplish that, but it seems it did, and I’m so glad I was wrong... this Tsukigumi is truly a delight, and I hate them a little for making me want to continue throwing them my money.

My highlights...

Manaki Reika as Louis XIV/Louise: Completely the star. Every time I see Chapi I think about that 2012 Christmas TV special where she barely knew how to talk, and every bit of growth makes it harder to believe she’s the same person. It’s so fun to see her dance, order people around, do a boy and a girl and both voices (and SING in both voices) all in the same show. I also love that they don’t make her do the standard musumeyaku only-think-of-your-partner thing, and lower herself to raise Tamakichi up; it was so much fun with them both at the center.

Tamaki Ryou as d’Artagnan: I found Tamakichi SO COMPLETELY CHARMING in this, she has the overgrown puppy appeal dialed up to 1000. I just LOVE that they’re aware of her youth and USING IT instead of trying to hide it, and lord I hope that’s not a one-off thing. Having her play the wide-eyed hopeful pure hero/young man IN LOVE (circumstances be damned) worked so well, especially coupled with her very imposing stature—it was adorable. It’s kind of a weird feeling, because she’s definitely not my type, but I still loved watching her so much, just with like... a completely energizing and not life-ruining happiness. IMAGINE THAT.

Miya Rurika as Aramis:

You know that feeling, when you see that one role, played by someone who you *like* but who isn’t *yours* or anything, and you can’t even say “this was a brilliant portrayal because of xyz,” but you’re like, ok, this is just the trash can where I live now, please forward my mail...

That’s all I’m going to say, lest I risk descending into impurity.

(RIP the lady she targeted during her solo today, with a last second lunge, several rows back from her usual spot)

((Also, she just seems so much more comfortable with both Kacha and top stardom (?) out of the picture. I guess I don’t know if it’s just 3 years’ growth or if a weight really has left her shoulders, but either way it’s made her lethal x1000))

(((Also, her lips are like a Rococo painting. Who looks like that??)))

Uzuki Hayate as Athos: Not generally being a watcher of Tsukigumi, this is probably the first major thing I’ve ever seen Toshi do (although one time I took an internet quiz and it said she’d be my boyfriend). I do know this was kind of a big deal role for her to land, and I loved her in it very much. Her LOOK is ON POINT, and she really completed the chemistry of the main-4 group as the serious one. I particularly liked the dynamic between her and Ari, when they paired them—”SIGH, don’t drink that,” etc.

Akatsuki Chisei as Porthos: Ari still has a lot of growing to do, but her youthful exuberance and the fact that she’s a giant person worked really well for big, strong, (perpetually drunk?) Porthos. She also had some of my favorite individual scenes, featuring the hurling of shockingly large objects at her troupe mates. I’m glad she’s getting a role that’s forcing her to stretch herself, and I think more than anyone she’ll get better and better as the show progresses.

Tsukishiro Kanato as Bernard: Predictably, Reiko is completely Yukigumi... but in her favor, she BROUGHT THAT SHIT TO THE SWORD FIGHTS, dear lord girl. Bernard is a safe stretch for her, if that makes sense... it’s a comedic role, which is not her forte, but he’s ridiculous enough that she can go over the top with it, which I think is easier than finding subtlety. And she looks DAMN GOOD all in black, and consistently flanked by Kizuki Yuuma *swoon* and Chinami Karan, who also look damn good in their dark metallics and wildly colored hair (this show really is looks for days). Reiko has also adopted Chigi’s exact furrowed eyebrow smolder face for finale numbers, which is both heartwarming and heartbreaking, and VERY WELL suited to her particular brand of otherworldly beauty.

Saou Kurama as the Dutchess of Montpensier: I’m here for Lady Koma. She’s in love with Louis and determined to teach him the joys of indulging in women until she figures out what’s really going on. It’s not a huge role and not strictly necessary, but it definitely adds another layer of charm and silliness to the story, and it is what it is specifically because it’s Koma.

I also particularly enjoyed Touka Yurino as Chapi’s mother.

I think I could watch this every day until I leave. I’m not even sure why I love it so much... it’s pretty dumb. But I love it. Tsukigumi, this was not our arrangement, you were supposed to leave me alone.

#takarazuka #reviews #all for one #Dramatic S(ummer 17)

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ontheperiphery · 7 years

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ticket to ride

kim taehyung x reader, college!au fluff word count: 1.8k

you’re not sure what compelled you to offer a favor to someone you barely knew

Aimlessly scrolling through social media to kill time waiting for your friend, you’re dismayed to find that you showed up at the shopping plaza so early that you had scrolled through almost all your media feed, twitter, tumblr, instagram, snapchat. You frown slightly at refreshing your more face-paced feeds like twitter, but finding little more content to consume, you reluctantly resign yourself to tapping open your last resort: facebook. Communicating with college acquaintances was important, you supposed, but just fresh out of finals, you wanted to enjoy at least a bit of your summer break without considering how everyone you knew seemed to be more successful at finding meaningful summer jobs or internships than you.

At least that’s what you told yourself but here you were scrolling through the frustrating app anyway. Like a fool.

So you sat at a shaded bench and texted your friend where to meet and scrolled past videos recommended to you via algorithm, events you may or may not be interested in attending, grad pics you at least paused on to reply with your congratulations, and hm. Taking a minute to read a little closer-

“Hey! Y/n, what’s up?”

“Oh,” you look up with surprise to greet your friend, “hey Namjoon, not much.” You ask if he wants to grab some food before shopping and conversation picks up from there. It’s not until you both are both nearly finished with your meals that you absently sip at your iced tea and ask, “Would it be weird to offer a ride to someone who needs one? If you don’t know them that well?”

“No?” Namjoon answers while snatching a fry from your tray, “you’re doing them a favor so if anything they’ll be thankful to you.”

You huff in response because that wasn’t the kind of answer you were looking for and though you shoot Namjoon an unamused glare, you wait another moment before responding in hopes that he actually had more to say.

Chewing thoughtfully he nods, “well I guess…since it’s you though, it’ll be ride of awkward or no conversation.” Namjoon pauses again, making eye contact with your still present glare.

You snort at his words.

He then hums in affirmation, “see? You’re not really one to keep a conversation going. Anyway, did someone ask you to take them somewhere?”

“I guess” you concede, “I’m not the best conversation buddy” Your eyes narrow as you swat at Namjoon’s hand attempting to sneak another one of your fries. “But I dunno. Earlier I saw someone who needs a ride to the train station and it kind of works for me because I’ll already be in the area that day and it’s on the way home…” Letting your words trail off you take another sip of your drink only to receive the discordant sound of exaggerated sipping and no more tea.

“And you just wanted to be nice?” Namjoon fills in oh so helpfully.

“Yeah.”

“Then I don’t see a problem,” Namjoon shrugs, “even if you suck at making small talk make them sit in the backseat and listen to music or something. Or maybe they’ll be talkative enough to make up for it.”

Your eyebrows still scrunch together with doubt and Namjoon takes the opportunity to swipe another french fry, although he accidentally topples your drink cup in the process. The empty clatter immediately snaps you out from your distracted consideration of Namjoons advice.

“Thanks for the input,” you mutter dryly with a fixed glare.

Namjoon only smiles sheepishly in response.

Flopping on to your bed with a huff, just about ready to fall asleep, you pull out your phone to set an alarm for the next day. You had errands to run in the morning, and thanks to Namjoon’s prompting, you sent a message offering a ride to, it turned out, a good friend of his. According to Namjoon, the kid was friendly and you had nothing to worry about, but if sound logic and good advice was enough to assuage your doubts, you probably wouldn’t still be lying wide awake contemplating the problems of tomorrow.

Eventually you fall asleep to the soft hum of your nerves calming in the silence and solitude of your room.

The next day arrives and brings a consistent stream of stress in the form of almost-mishaps. From snoozing your alarm one too many times and running out to drive to your volunteer shift without grabbing more than a granola bar, realizing you forgot your drivers license and making a detour back home to grab it on the off chance you’d need it, arriving late to deliver some stuff you were selling to make moving out easier for one of your roommates and finding that the buyer was even more late than you, nothing truly went wrong but your day was chaotic enough to have you exhausted and ready to nap for a week to make up for it.

But you didn’t have that kind of time and settled for a quick lunch as poor compensation.

Your phone lit up with a message from the person you barely knew but offered to drive to the train station. It had been a while, but you two had shared a class a few academic quarters ago and sometimes passed by each other at general body meetings or events for a mutual org. Although you don’t remember ever having a one-on-one conversation or spending time together without other mutual friends present, you resign yourself to a first for everything. Fingers metaphorically crossed as you pulled up to the agreed meeting place with your to-be-passenger, you rolled down to window and waved to the waiting figure nearby, hoping you would be recognizable.

“Oh! Hey, Y/n,” he smiled, excitement clear as the brightness in his expression, “was just about to message and make sure it was you.”

Chuckling sheepishly in response, “hey Taehyung. Yeah, I’m kind of glad you were able to notice me. Do you want your stuff in the backseat or in the trunk?” You gesture to his luggage and carry-on and briefly wonder if courtesy required you to step out of your car to greet him and help him with his stuff. But then he’s already wheeling his bags towards the trunk of your car as you push the button to open it accommodatingly to watch helplessly in the rear view mirror and hope with all of your being that you weren’t being rude.

Thankfully you remembered to also unlock the car doors and Taehyung hops into the passenger seat beside you without trouble and offers an iced tea with boba. You blink, pleasantly surprised as he gives another bright grin that somehow lights up the space around him even as the corner of his lips aren’t upturned in the way you’re used to smiles doing. And yet, his smile was incredibly endearing and happiness is contagious and the boy teases a thank you and a grateful smile from you before you even realize it.

Given that you had driven friends and roommates to the train station before and didn’t need directions, you were able to drive comfortably and popped in the straw to your drink, delighted that he chose a flavor that you enjoyed.

Taehyung only shrugs off your attempt and another thanks, upholding that, “hey, you’re actually being a big help to me, you deserve it. It’s for you.”

“Hmm I guess. Thanks, still,” you reply with a small huff and a smile.

You’re not sure if Taehyung thinks you still need convincing, but he has some way of filling up space. In conversation, in the car, from talking about his thankfulness that you were willing to brave the traffic that was inevitable from people driving home from their jobs during this time of day, how lucky he felt from not needing to call an uber or lyft which surely would’ve cost him a pretty penny in this traffic, to firmly insisting that he treat you out to a meal or something when he was back in town. He didn’t mind if you had to brake less than smoothly if other vehicles on the road drove more recklessly than you, easily continued conversation from your shorter responses, and just, had some way of making and filling space.

The both of you were animatedly talking about your pet dogs back home, sharing fond and nostalgic memories and before you realized and could transition the conversation to proper thanks and appreciation of Taehyung’s company, you had arrived at the train station and just a few seconds away from arriving at the pick-up/drop-off curb.

Facing you, Taehyung had yet to notice, “Ahhh, it’s been so long since I’ve seen Soonshim y-”

“Hey uhh,” you interrupted a little less than gracefully, softened with a smile, “I’m really sorry but we’re here.” You felt awful for cutting him off, but hoped your unease didn’t make its way into your expression.

“Oh…listen, Y/n, it was really nice of you to drive me!” Taehyung replies without missing a beat, “have a good summer break I really hope you don’t have to deal with a lot of traffic on your way home-”

You both jump a bit at a loud beep from a vehicle behind you, supposedly waiting for their turn to pull up in the drop-off zone as well and you already feel the imaginary time limit weigh on your shoulders. Your mind drifts back to the hassle of the day’s previous errands. Right. Because nothing today was allowed to go smoothly.

Your thoughts were the mental equivalent to keyboard smashing and while you regretted the forced and quick goodbyes with Taehyung and again, helpless waiting in the driver’s seat as he retrieved his bags from your trunk on his own, Taehyung tried to wave off the concern in your possibly frowny-face and gave one last beaming grin directed at you.

“Have a great summer!! Thanks again!” you hear, past the hum of outside clamor and vehicles pulling up and leaving.

Letting your mind focus instead on the traffic that never eased up on your way home and the soft hum of your favorite playlist, you tried not to think about how much lonelier it felt whenever you turned your head to your right and took unusual notice of the empty passenger seat.

Stop-and-go-traffic came and went and you grew increasingly relieved the closer and closer you got to home. It wasn’t until you safely arrived and tiredly lay down on a nest of pillows and blankets still gathered on your living room couch that you looked at your phone to notice a new message.

[5:15pm]kim taehyung: thank u again for taking me to the train station!!! HOPE YOUR DRIVE HOME IS EASY AND LIGHTER TRAFFIC THAN YOU EXPECT!! pls let me take you out sometime for food when you have time!!! or I can drop off food anytime during the school year

You smiled at Taehyung’s energy that carried over so naturally over text, and replied as promptly as you could now that you were no longer driving. It feels almost natural to continue conversation with him and you’re glad that none of your fears over the favor came to fruition.

[5:48pm]you: you’re welcome!! im back safe and sound :)

[5:48pm]you: I hope you have a safe trip as well!

[5:49pm]kim taehyung: tHANK YOU! when I get home ill tell soonshim u said hi

Attached was an image of a very cute dog and you allowed a fond laugh to express the warm happiness filling your chest.

Yeah, Taehyung sure had some way of filling space.

#bts scenarios #bts scenario #taehyung scenario #taehyung scenarios #lori writes ;v;;#happy summer y'all #hope ur all enjoying time off from school #unless u have summer classes in that case my sympathies and good luck #may good grades and free time and fun bless u

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delhi-architect2 · 4 years

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Journal - One Drawing Challenge 2020: The 100 Finalists (Part 2)

Explore a further 25 extraordinary architectural drawings, each one a Finalist in the 2020 One Drawing Challenge. Let us know which are your favorites on Instagram and Twitter with the hashtag #OneDrawingChallenge!

← Previous 25 Drawings Next 25 Drawings →

“Podalida” by Joakim Dahlqvist

“A drawing of a fictional city. I was tired of all the dystopian vision and wanted to create something that is optimistic yet still ambiguous. It is a scene full of activity and dynamism, multiple stories without a single protagonist. There are many easter eggs and secrets to be discovered every time one looks at it.”

“The Minute Before Tomorrow” by Nadar Matar, CallisonRTKL

“She murmured to me bluntly: you do not belong here. I answered bluntly: I do not belong here. I never managed to package her neatly when we were separated. Because I never had the courage to tell myself that I left, never to be back again. Now I am a shadow of myself, restlessly wandering Earth. “Do you often go back?” I am repeatedly asked. And I lift my gaze to hide my silence. I never left. She lives in me.

Our soul is a shelter. Cities live in us as much as we are in them. They inhibit our memories and tell our stories, they transmute, live, die and glow in our fantasies.

She will rise again, the optimist says. The cynic sees a city in the process of going extinct: Beirut will never be the same again.”

“Portrait of a City” by Jihoon Baek, Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten (Royal Academy of Art KABK)

“People of the past generation often imagined how the city would look like in modern days. Sleek towers, straight roads, tidy urban fabrics, coherent buildings, massive gardens…

However, our cities look a lot different from the imagination of the past. A city rather evolved with each different story and context, resulting itself to be a massive collage of incredibly diverse characteristics.

Tall and low, glasses and stones, old and new, beautiful and ugly, subtle and distinct, East and West, beloved and hated, construction and destruction, real and unreal…

This diversity, which might seem nasty and chaotic, is in fact, the greatest properties of modern cities that amuse, attract, enrich, and shift our lives.This is the true beauty of a city.“

“Land of Electric Beasts : Machine Landscapes of the Post Anthropocene” by Tinn Kiewkarnkha, INDA Chulalongkorn University

“Land of Electric Beasts : Machine Landscapes of the Post Anthropocene,” a drawing of a speculative scene of a post-human rural landscape of the not so distant future. It is a journey into a vast land of automation in an agricultural landscape located in a countryside or what can be called a machine landscape.

Based on the acceleration of existing trends and technologies, an indoor agricultural landscape with sets of transportation cranes. It is but a small window into an emerging reality, a new non-human wilderness dominated not by the natural world but a new set of machine ecologies beyond human scale and understanding.”

“Imagining a Vertical Forest” by Endrit Marku, Polis University

“A tower carved with niches of trees. A monumental piece of architecture and an apparent intelligent solution, pleasing everyone, the egos of architects and developers, their wealth too, but also their desire for a public display of social responsibility. The building shadows the old land-consuming city that paved the path for the relentless earth’s anthropization. This tower aspires to become one with nature, claiming a place among the planet’s remaining forests, and it feels special, fresh.

Before it, there were just the mountain forests, the Babylonian gardens, Chernobyl’s abandoned khrushchyovka’s or even the potted flowers on grandma’s terrace. It is made of concrete, earth’s alienated son. Labyrinths of pipes pumping water upstream, for the trees to survive, are an improved version of nature’s streams. The missing fertilizers can be bought in any hypermarket. The imagined architecture is a simulacrum of already built simulacra precariously floating without foundations in illusory perpetuity.“

“View of Apartment #5, a Labyrinth and Repository of Spatial Memories” by Clemence Laurencio, University College London (UCL), Bartlett School of Architecture

“Five months have passed since the start of the lockdown here in London. I remain isolated on the third floor.

After many months of being locked up in my apartment, something peculiar began happening…

One day, as I made my way to the washroom, I suddenly found myself transported to another place. It was dark, but I could feel the cold stone beneath my feet. My steps echoed through this cavernous space. I reached for the wall, where I felt the familiar shape of the light switch… I was back in my apartment. I thought I was meandering through the sunken stepwells in Ahmedabad. Another time, I was running my hands on the smooth sun-kissed tiled roof of Doshi’s Sangath, when in fact, I sat in my living room, clasping my warm coffee mug… flashbacks of past times manifest themselves …

My memories had allowed me to escape my apartment.”

“Together Alone” by Yee Bless, Handel Architects

“Today, social distancing has manifested a new definition of ‘together’. The physical proximity of people and buildings have been reduced to the ‘virtual’. ‘Together’ we isolate, ‘together’ we work, and ‘together’ we zoom into the lens of our homes and struggles amidst a pandemic, the intrinsic fight for human rights, and survival of the everyday.

This drawing cuts a section through hexagonal pods that encapsulate our inhabited spaces. The hexagonal shape represents our self-proclaimed strength and efficiency around our designs, the same efficiency that circulated the virus with rapid speed. The hexagonal framework is deforming under the pressure of an evolving reconciliation for how we cope with the virus in our daily lives. Our pods are juxtaposed against one another revealing that we are closer ‘together’ than we think, and that we must act ‘together’ for the future.“

“City of Nothing // Island of Everything : Park Avenue Elevaiton” by William Bayram, Declan Wagstaff and Christopher McCallum, University of Edinburgh

“As a unique urban context, Manhattan settles itself within the dichotomy of a city and island. Its individuality, yet connectivity, thrives for greater density as the catalyst of the containment of the strange. This architectural manifestation of estrangement shares a duality between pragmatic and fantastical, thus the city cannot help lend itself to the thinking of both creative endeavours. The containing of this architecture within the restriction of an island splits between the seen/unseen, vertical/horizontal, overworld/underworld comparisons.

Here, the island finds itself a blended world of consumption, sustainability, cultural and political iconicity. Yet for all the island’s architectural accumulation, what it has to show for itself is non-material, therefore through the consumption and containment of everything it presents and trades nothing. This thesis seeks to explore this territory of estrangement through two narrative threads of thinking, the Pragmatic and the Fantastical which find themselves at times separate or intertwined.”

“The Censored Materials Archive” by Chi Kit Matthew Choy, The Chinese University of Hong Kong School of Architecture

“The censored materials archive situates in a world full of dogmatic opinions and polarising beliefs. It provides a space for those who are willing to give censored works a second chance by engaging and listening to one’s contentious ideas, and in return appreciating the disparity among a pluralist society.

Unlike conventional museums, galleries are linear with no visual connections between them. There is no alternate path, only confrontation. Spatially ambiguous galleries reflect the controversial and disputing nature of the materials. Galleries are only allowed to be entered individually, allowing visitors to examine these works without the fear of being captiously judged. The debating hall is the crucible where bonds are forged and views diverge through presenting censored materials. While heated arguments and candid reflections are conducted, autonomous machines below these galleries work endlessly in archiving and curating censored materials with their non-partisan eyes.“

“(Re) programmed ruin” by Paola Botía, Universidad de los Andes

“The project starts from the understanding of our cities as a palimpsest, the coexistence of different temporalities that manifests the cities’ continuous growth and transformation. These unending changes leave urban voids, decaying sites apparently forgotten; loaded with what has occurred, but somehow unaware and oblivious to the dynamics of the contemporary city. These “Vague Terrains” as De Sóla Morales defines, are places where nature breaks borders in different scales conquering the void and exalting the inevitable ruin of architecture in time.

This abandoned sites, which may seem completely inaccessible, represent the void as a place with the potential to unveil new ways to address urban renovation. The project aims to reprogram this post-industrial landscape as a hotspot for culture and public life, setting in motion the revitalization of the neighborhood as a new cultural cluster while visualizing how the altering characteristics of the ruin enhance matter and architecture.“

INSCAPE: Neo-Unité by Hao Wang and Xin Feng, Harvard Graduate School of Design

“At the time in which we are subjected to the invitation of isolation, socialization is at risk. People’s true identity has been pulled back behind the media screen and developed a digitized relationship, raising the questions, is the digital-self your true self? Is cyber relationship real? Thus, domestic living and socializing prototype should be redefined. In response, a new home scape – INSCAPE – is designed to reflect upon the challenge between true identity and social relationships.

In our site-less Neo-Unité Community, worldwide habitants get a matched housing unit based on their personality. While providing intimate space to be alone, a screen – act as a scape – serves to communicate and exchange emotions anonymously. This “Instagramal Screen” is an digitized interface between co-habitants where they act and react on both sides and develop unexpected relationships. Through inventing INSCAPE, love and care could be unleashed through both virtual and reality.”

“H.D.D” by Brent Haynes, Manchester School of Architecture

“Harpurhey’s Density with Distance (H.D.D) is a testing ground for a new urban typology that turns social distancing protocols into an asset for Highstreet revitalization.

There has been a recent increase of awareness of spatial boundaries within the public realm. Line ups outside shops have become a new, unpleasant, part of the retail experience; and when the lines recede, paint and stickers remain as undesirable decoration to remind us of our new reality. What if we could turn these waiting irritations into memorable experiences and furthermore, integrate spatial distancing measures into an urban aesthetic?

Welcome to H.D.D.

The most prominent feature of the proposal are the three-story, tri-axial sliders, that together line up and consume the street. The sliders pickup and place sitting booths; a new urban system to provide a high-tech, pro-consumeristic solution to our socially problematic reality.”

“Twisted Landscapes” by Solangely Rivera-Hernandez, CAS Architecture

“Imagine being able to twist and turn your environment. Have the power to control the landscape following a Rubik’s cube logic for example. Only that in this case, the colors are spaces and with every turn new destinations show up. What would happen if more than one user controls it? That would be out of this world!

Traditional architecture as we know is meant to be built with a lengthy life span. Constructions from centuries ago still stand today giving us a glimpse of the past and with that permanency comes our urban fabric development. That said, with technology’s growth, architecture has expanded its reach. Now there are houses and buildings with parts that move, rotate, and even transform. Can we think of something macro? How about a whole city of endless possibilities where each turn composes a new landscape?”

Dumpster Panda by Tanya Castillo Pelayo

“Back alleys and garbage pick up places are under designed and neglected spaces, yet they are often the focal point for many apartment dwellers’ everyday view of their communities. No matter where you live, sometimes the focus is on something you do not want to see. Dumpster Panda irreverently and playfully highlights unwanted hidden corners of suburbia.”

A window over an algae-powered Colliers Wood by Matt Faraci, University College London

“This vision references the industrial arts-and-crafts heritage of Merton, London whilst contemplating future opportunities for sustainable energy. It echoes technological advancements made with several microorganisms, like fast-growing microalgae suitable for most types of water which can produce energy, light and heat by absorbing CO2. It is set in Colliers Wood, a suburban London neighbourhood recently densified with new developments in the middle of the extensive sprawl of period houses.

By scaling up this symbiotic process, it redefines natural organisms as an active piece of city infrastructure and satisfies our thirst for renewable energy whilst mitigating threats to our ecosystem. This visual critique shows an inside/out approach where the colours utilised merge interior and exterior spaces and where urban opportunities rely on individual responsibilities, imagining a world where energy is produced on natural bodies of water (here the River Wandle, southwest London) as well as personal tanks in our homes.”

Adenventure of the Fantastic Arcman: Piranesi by Stefan Maier and Bernadette Hofer, University of Innsbruck

“He rose into space, a pillar into the sky, vaults for eternity, black shadows passing by. This is the story of Dilli City’s Arcman… who he is and how he came to be. “When is a man a city? When it’s Batman or when it’s Gotham. I’d take either answer.” – The Riddler Is there a correlation between actor and the space he acts in? Is identity shaped by space or is space shaped by identity? Or even both? It is the 1986 Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns that highlights the inseparable connection between Batman and his city. It resembles a circular connection, in that one is always creating and perpetuating the other. What Comic book heroes show us, is how the character and it’s built environment correspond to each other. So, what defines the architecture of our comic heroes? Which role does it take? Superhero or supervillain?”

Cannibalism City by Yafei Li, University of California, Berkeley

“The city is shattered by social distancing, whose intestine can be peeped between the six-foot gap. The broken grids, like islands, staring at each other with no interaction or communication. Social distancing pulls the city apart and reveals the dirty intestine, full of racial discrimination and class conflict, hidden under a seemingly friendly face. A painted skin has been torn apart and the essence of cannibalism in this city is exposed.

Cannibalism City, it reminds me of a paragraph in A Madman’s Dairy by Lu Xun, “In ancient times, people often ate human beings. I tried to look this up, but my history has no chronology, and scrawled all over each page are the words: ‘Virtue and Morality.’ Since I could not sleep anyway, I read intently half the night, until I began to see words between the lines, the whole book being filled with the two words, ‘Eat People.’”

“Clay Workshop” by Alexandros Michail Varvantakis

“Queenstown Microsociety

This design proposal revisits surveillance with a mindset that no one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with their privacy and creates a new form of society in which occupants can feel secure.

Queenstown aims to re-evaluate covert responses by proposing an architecture where people can live,work and hide together under a sustainable economic network embodying a primary school, several workshops and factories trying to be fully autonomous.The construction sequence of the proposal is separated into 3 phases and it’s planned to be completed in a century from it’s start date.

Queenstown philosophizes over several pedagogic systems and aims to illustrate ideas that combined result in an Utopian system of education which forms the foundation of an idealistic society.This speculative proposal is a device,a thought experiment which gives an alternative way of living to London citizens beyond the limitations and the insecurity of the contemporary society.”

Cloud City by Luka Rados, Technical University of Vienna

“Cloud City is a utopic solution for the sprawling cities of tomorrow. The transportation is seen as an important aspect of this vision, where new sub-centers are being developed around the big transit intersections. This would be a new and more organic interpretation of the garden city, where newly formed centralities would function as small almost self-sufficient cites.

A Modular system is developed that can attach and detach itself, and therefore grow and shrink depending on the community needs. This flexible system should be seen as a cloud covering and supplementing problematic areas of the city, where extra infrastructure is needed. This section is a concrete intervention for one area in the 22nd district of Vienna, which is often seen as a District on the wrong side of the Danube. It was through centuries neglected since it was land that was often flooded, and it is desperate for new revitalization.”

CUENCAMO by Danilo Cristancho, Architect

“CUENCAMO a new opportunity.

A premise of architecture is to implant itself in harmony with the context. Welcoming and being welcomed by nature becomes an architectural priority in times of climate change. Where is the balance between architecture and nature? Perhaps we should explore deep in the forests, build and be a community with nature, understand it and project our refuges according to what nature dictates.

This is a refuge built by an explorer who investigates the possibilities of making architecture in absolute harmony with nature; he is deep in the forest, in the mountains … of the earth? No. This is a new planet, Cuencamo, deep in another galaxy. A new possible world. A second chance.”

Decoding WasteCity by Andrea Zamora and Juanita Echeverry, Universidad de Los Andes

“The COVID-19 emergency, together with our consumer behavior, triggered pollution and waste production rates. This catastrophe led to the city abandonment, where buildings became obsolete.

Returning to the ruined city implied rethinking the management of resources. Waste colonization became the strategy to survive reality. In this way, the new territory is shaped by the overlapping of multiple time scenarios where the interrelated layers reconcile conflictive situations.

Here, life is possible due to the existence of new mobility systems developed within the living planes. Bridges allow horizontal passages, while the redesign of Bogotá´s public transport tracks along vertical structures that pivot through the coatings of the new reality.

What used to be is essential for what is to come. Each layer is indispensable for life to endure in the new territory. By decoding the decay accumulated over decades and reconstructing from what is no longer usable, life can develop in wastecity.”

Everything/Nothing Exploded Axo by Will Bayram, University of Edinburgh

“The thesis explores the vertical expansion of Manhattan within a terrain of ravines that exposes the city’s schist underside that underpins the skyscrapers above. This underground condition highlights Manhattan’s desire to grow upwards rather than outwards.

By inhabiting this new landscape the architecture explores the dichotomy Manhattan presents as thriving off the consumption as an urban cluster (Everything) and its contradiction, the thriving of relief (Nothing). The group schematic proposes three towers of Nothing that interlink through Agora fragments within a network of Everything, dedicated to the strange production of returning Nothing to the city and a weaving Agora that seeks to satisfy the city’s need for Everything.

My tower of Nothing proposes a facility that produces pure oxygen for both research and the city and an Agora fragment that blends the economic flux of commodities with an additional wing dedicated to the political functions of trading and regulating.”

“Fusion” by Gonzalo Vaillo, MORPHtopia

“The hyper-densification of certain metropolises (especially in Asian cities with uncontrolled urbanisation models) is pushing (if it has not yet exceeded) the sustainable limits of the living conditions of such built environments. This is occurring, to a certain degree, because of the abandonment of large agricultural areas. (Zhang, Li, Song, Zhai 2016) In this context, this project proposes a re-occupation of these obsolete structures of the countryside.

Unlike traditional “hard” urban planning devices, a fused affiliation of natural, technological, and human agencies establishes a model of low-human-controlled growth infrastructures emerging from the patterns of old agricultural subdivision. A rabbit hole that demands constant extrication of oneself from my/your/his/her/our/their condition at the top of the pyramid. An ecognostical model of coexistence. (Morton 2016)”

“GENETICS” by Giangtien Nguyen, INVI LLC

“At some point in their life, the elderly will stop their journey. The new generation will start their own exploration while carrying the genes of their ancestry. Circle of life is a reality of every living thing. As we journey to the height of our youth, selfishly we look to our personal benefits. During pandemics we excuse ourselves to physically connect for pleasure but forget to look at the consequences. The long climb to success tends to make us forget to look back on the elder generations. If we remember to see them, then we can then see our future.”

“GRID IN THE SKY” by Trevin D’Souza, Sir J.J. College of Architecture, Mumbai, India

“As I look out into the new world, I see the chaos humanity has caused that lay suspended over the earth. Humans have tried to reach closer to the sky taking their civilizations one step further in their greedy quest to expand upwards.

The word ‘ home’ and ‘land’ has been redefined. Humans now live in a home that is somewhat stationary as well as moving by virtue of a mechanized grid that helps transport each ‘home’ or ‘land’ throughout the grid. Humans feel they are free up in the sky, away from the tortures of Earth and by doing so have given back to the Earth its former glory with open, untouched greenery, except the metal columns that hold the whole grid of civilization. Humans are thus isolated in their own land yet not alone, stationary yet moving, in the air but still connected to the ground.”

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22 incredible albums turning 20 in 2018

There were plenty of albums released in 1998 that are still beloved today. From the astonishing Music has the Right to Children to the still-acclaimed Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, here are some of the best releases from that year celebrating big anniversaries in 2018.

1998 was one hell of a year. Titanic continued to pack movie theaters and cleaned up at the Oscars, taking 11 awards. US President Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky rocked American politics. Nintendo released The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Oh, and a small company named Google was founded in Menlo Park, California.

Musically, releases came thick and fast as access to computer technology became more widespread and young producers began to experiment with an array of pirated, cracked software available online. Warp Records’ slippery electronica flourished as drum ‘n’ bass got progressively more aggressive and trip hop, previously a space rife with innovation, became the soundtrack to aspirational lifestyle ads and fancy dinner parties. Over in the US, the rap landscape was changing as the golden era disappeared and New York’s Rawkus imprint was quickly gaining traction. Meanwhile in Detroit, Theo Parrish was prepping his game-changing debut album and just over the bridge in Windsor, Richie Hawtin was preparing to kill off Plastikman with Consumed. Are you feeling old yet?

Air Moon Safari (Virgin)

Spotify / Apple Music

Time hasn’t been kind to Moon Safari. In the years following its release, Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel’s debut album found itself soundtracking adverts, used as sonic wallpaper for TV shows and licensed out to an increasingly bland series of ‘chillout’ compilations peddled by Ministry of Sound, resulting in the duo being lumped in with the likes of Zero 7, Morcheeba and Lemon Jelly. It’s easy to understand why: Godin and Dunckel’s update of vintage lounge music and easy-listening pop is, at times, a little too on the nose.

However, it’s hard to deny that Godin and Dunckel’s songwriting and arrangement elevates Moon Safari far above most of the Ibiza comedown dross that followed it. The whole album sounds like it was recorded in the 1960s and then sent to the 22nd century for polish and mastering, and the album is as much a retro-futurist electronic classic than it is a collection of music for wishing you were lying on a beach. Reaching 20 hasn’t brought Moon Safari back from chillout hell, but it still exudes an effortless cool. SW

Autechre LP5 (Warp)

Spotify / Apple Music

Packaged in a rough grey CD case with “autechre” embossed into it and a sticker on the front (which inevitably fell off after a few months), LP5 was steeped in mystery. Sean Booth and Rob Brown were practically household names at this stage, riding high on the success of 1997’s hip-hop influenced Chiastic Slide, so the confounding and deliciously complex LP5 was a kick in the teeth to fans unwilling to join the duo in their relentless pursuit of progression.

The battle lines had been drawn and you either got on board with Autechre’s crystalline, almost impossible to plagiarize rhythms or you went back to Amber and spent the next two decades reminding people about the good old days. JT

Big Pun Capital Punishment (Loud)

Spotify / Apple Music

For the late Big Pun, every single breath was an opportunity. He may have been most famous for ‘Still Not a Player’, a pop remix of his debut single ‘I’m Not a Player (I Just Crush a Lot)’ and R&B singer Joe’s ‘Don’t Wanna Be a Player’ that is still played on the radio today, but he was infamous for fitting polysyllabic punchlines into the standard sixteen bars. His debut Capital Punishment proved he was more than a king-sized loverman, tapping into the same visionary wells as two other late, great NYC Bigs: The Notorious B.I.G and the hedonistic Harlem hellion Big L.

Like Biggie, Pun was an unsuspecting heartthrob with as many axes to grind. And he brought along an impressive ring of friends to tell his tale: Punishment featured guest verses from a slew of varied artists such as Prodigy, Inspectah Deck, Black Thought and Busta Rhymes. But the most memorable of Pun’s creative contributions came via a remake of Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre’s ‘Deep Cover’, a Fat Joe collab called ‘Twinz’ where Pun spits: “dead in the middle of Little Italy / Little did we know that we riddled some middle man who didn’t do diddly”. 20 years later, and you still can’t say it five times fast. CL

Black Star Mos Def & Talib Kweli are Black Star (Rawkus)

Spotify / Apple Music

“We feel that we have a responsibility to… shine the light… into the darkness,” began Mos Def and Talib Kweli’s sole studio album together, and shine a light they did, on black excellence and defiance in the face of insitutional racism in late ’90s America on this cult classic. “Still more blacks is dying, cause they live and they trying / ‘How to Make a Slave’ by Willie Lynch is still applying,” Talib raps on ‘Redefinition’, before Common collab ‘Respiration’, on which the pair show off their unique alchemy over lazy guitar. “Stay alive, you play or die, no options / No Batman and Robin,” complains Mos Def about law and order in Brooklyn. That may be so, but 20 years on, Mos Def & Talib Kweli are Black Star still sounds like the work of a very dynamic duo. AH

Blonde Redhead In an Expression of the Inexpressible (Touch and Go)

Spotify / Apple Music

Blonde Redhead had already proved their art-rock bona fides status by the time they released their fourth album In an Expression of the Inexpressible. With two albums on Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley’s label Smells Like Records under their belt and a Touch & Go debut featuring Unwound’s Vern Rumsey on bass put out in 1997, the NYC-via-Italy and Japan trio had been cultivating an immersive sound that was both noisy and romantic for most of the ‘90s. In an Expression was their first with Fugazi’s Guy Picciotto on production and it was the first evidence that polish wouldn’t tarnish their chaotic sound.

Here, they played with the way their brand of urgency can manifest, whether through the breathless vocals and tumbling percussion on opener ‘Luv Machine’, disjointed howls on its title track or fine-tuned math rock on the refined ‘Futurism vs. Passéism Pt. 2’, which features Picciotto in a pitch-perfect French monologue: “Le temps le plus important c’est la première fois / Le temps le plus important c’est la deuxième fois / Et après ça la troisième fois / Et on recommence”.

In English, that translates to: “The first time is the most important time / The second time is the most important time / And after that, the third time is the most important time / And then you start again.” It was a perfect mantra for their fourth album because after In an Expression, the group released their most divergent album, Melody of Certain Lemons and, then finally, their masterpiece Misery is a Butterfly. CL

Boards of Canada Music has the Right to Children (Warp)

Spotify / Apple Music

Despite its litany of accolades, Music has the Right to Children wasn’t an immediate success. Over time though, widespread acclaim and word of mouth helped push the album far beyond the usual Warp remit. Boards of Canada had put out similar records before – the equally brilliant Hi Scores was already popular amongst keen diggers – but Music has the Right to Children imagined their woozy, nostalgic sound in widescreen, filling the gaps between memorable tracks like ‘Turquoise Hexagon Sun’, ‘Roygbiv’ and ‘Aquarius’ with field recordings, eerily familiar samples and crumbling white noise.

It was an album that felt like a distillation of a great deal of contemporaneous ideas: the neck-snapping MPC rhythms of golden era hip-hop, the acid-blurred bounce of rave, the haunting textures of ambient techno and the vaporous rush of Warp-patented idm. As trip-hop became relegated to the coffee table and drum ‘n’ bass slowly lost its luster, Music has the Right to Children filled a gap, preying on our THC-damaged memories and offering a full dose of musical Xanax. It’s never been repeated, either – countless artists have attempted to replicate Sandison and Eoin’s formula and none have succeeded; like the titular Pete, Music has the Right to Children stands alone. JT

Brandy Never Say Never (Atlantic)

Spotify / Apple Music

Brandy’s self-titled debut was sweet and flirty. Its follow-up, Never Say Never, however separated her from being just a pop singer with an accelerating star to one with something to say. The album was released after numerous advances in her career both professionally (the sitcom Moesha she starred in for five years launched in 1996) and as subject of gossip columns (at 17, she took budding NBA star Kobe Bryant, who was 18 at the time to prom). Never Say Never explores themes of fame, like the Mase-featuring single ‘Sittin’ on Top of the World’, as well as love, such as on the Diane Warren-penned ballad ‘Have You Ever?’. No discussion of Never Say Never, of course, is complete without mention of Monica duet ‘The Boy is Mine’ – a playful chart smash which also featured on Monica’s 1998 LP, named after the track, and boasting a similarly maturity to Brandy’s album. CL

Destiny’s Child Destiny’s Child (Columbia)

Spotify / Apple Music

For anyone who’s ever doubted Beyoncé’s dedication to the rap roots of her hometown Houston, revisit Destiny’s Child’s self-titled debut. While the album is jam-packed with radio-friendly hits, like their debut singles ‘No, No, No Pt. 2’ (US) and ‘With Me’ (UK), it also features Bey’s first musical dalliance with Geto Boys – the ‘Mind’s Playin’ Tricks on Me’-sampling ‘Illusion’. (She and DC groupmate LaTavia Roberson, of course, appeared in the video for ‘Gangsta Put Me Down’ a couple of years before.)

Destiny’s Child doesn’t have the same panache as their starmaking second album The Writing’s On the Wall, but the singles are fun to revisit, as are their counterparts – the ‘No, No, No’ slow jam and a version of ‘With Me’ featuring Master P. CL

DJ Clue The Professional (Roc-A-Fella)

Spotify / Apple Music

Before the rap mixtape was a ubiquitous entity, DJ Clue’s The Professional (alongside three volumes of Funkmaster Flex label-released mixtapes) brought the concept, legally, into CD stores. It featured the remix of DMX’s ‘Ruff Ryders Anthem’ and appearances from Cam’ron, Big Pun, Fabolous, Canibus, Noreaga, Missy Elliott, Jermaine Dupri, Jay-Z, Ja Rule, Foxy Brown, and, among plenty more, a new version of EMPD’s ‘It’s My Thang’ featuring Keith Murray and Redman. This compilation made it feel like New York was an unstoppable force, especially potent with all of its powers combined. The late ‘90s turned out to be the beginning of the end, but this was a hell of a way to start the bon voyage party. CL

DMX It’s Dark and Hell is Hot (Def Jam)

Spotify / Apple Music

It may be hard for some to imagine it now, but there was a time when X was incredibly fit and famous, bridging divides between rap fans, hard rock fans and casual music listeners who liked whatever was on the radio. (Seriously, check out his Woodstock ’99 crowd.) His debut album It’s Dark and Hell is Hot wasn’t just a collection of major hits, like the endlessly quotable ‘Ruff Ryders Anthem’ or his summer love song ‘How’s It Goin’ Down?’, but a spread of genre that ranged from some of the most silly but lovable horrorcore (‘X is Coming’, ‘Damien’) to some of the most sinister, detailed gangster rap of the late ’90s.

Lead single ‘Get at Me Dog’ is unhinged, and not just because X punctuates the Sheek Louch chorus by emitting literal dog barks. In the third verse, which is rumored to have originally been about 2Pac, he raps, “Blood stains and chalk means your man couldn’t walk / After the talk, about him not being 11:33 to New York… And it’s gon’ take all these n***as in the rap game to barely move me / Cos when I blow shit up, I have n****s falling like white bitches in a scary movie.” There is a physicality to the music on It’s Dark that is displayed best there, but you can still feel his kinetic movements in every rhyme throughout the album. CL

Fugazi End Hits (Dischord)

Spotify / Apple Music

When Fugazi’s fifth album End Hits dropped in April 1998, everyone thought they were on the verge of splitting up. “It’s more about the end of the century and the slow-moving apocalypse, so it was sort of like, ‘Here are some last words from the world,’” explained Ian MacKaye at the time, offering an alternative interpretation of the LP’s title that turned out to be a private joke among band members anyway.

End Hits didn’t sound the death knell for the post-hardcore legends, who went on to release The Argument in 2001, but it was instrumental in helping to close the book on their early sound. An audacious trip from a fearless band, picking up where 1995’s experimental-leaning adventure Red Machine left off, the album further embraced that deep, meandering, jazzy spirit, while having barely anything to do with the three-chord structure of classic punk rock. It was also a record that distilled the DC band’s anti-commercial, anti-corporate politics into a single song, ‘Five Corporations’, with lines like: “Check the math here / Check in ten years / Clusterfuck theory / Buy them up and shut them down / Then repeat in every town / Every town will be the same.” A classic in the canon of an impossibly important band, End Hits is such monumental album, we even named our new weekly playlist feature after it. ACW

Juvenile 400 Degreez (Cash Money)

YouTube

From the perspective of a New Yorker whose only idea of regional rap was hearing artists from different boroughs and, maybe, New Jersey on the radio every day, Juvenile was a lightning rod. On Rap City – pre-Tha Basement days – you could get a taste of how the rap landscape was unfolding in the rest of the United States, particularly the South, whether it was Ghetto Mafia’s ‘In Decatur’ or JT Money’s ‘Who Dat?’. Those songs sounded like nothing I had ever heard before, but Juvenile’s ‘Ha’ was the most transportive.

Whatever your experience with 400 Degreez when it was released, whether it was a triumph for you and your home or a portal to something completely new, or you know, maybe you weren’t even born yet, the album still transports people today. Ever seen the change on a dancefloor when the first few notes of ‘Back That Azz Up’ start? Juvie led the charge on the south’s hip-hop takeover and even the most indignant on either coast have to admit it when this song comes on. CL

Lauryn Hill The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (Ruffhouse)

Spotify / Apple Music

Forget everything that happened next: the lawsuits, the exile, her tax troubles, imprisonment, the endless concert no-shows, the $2.5m spent on a second album that never came and so on. Miseducation was and remains a neo-soul masterpiece. Packing a spiritual calm and intimate power at once crushing and revitalizing, the album was a smash, propelling Hill to even taller heights of fame than she’d reached with the Fugees. 20m copies were sold worldwide, prompting Hollywood to come calling as the star’s celebrity grew and grew: Hill turned down roles in The Matrix and Bourne franchises as the spotlight on her intensified.

The glare of that spotlight ultimately became too bright for Hill, who disappeared and never really returned after the release of an MTV Unplugged album three years later, some sporadic tour dates and the odd new track aside. At least we’re left with an album that, 20 years on, as women continue to strive to be heard in a world dominated by men and misogynists, continues to be relevant in its celestial magic and inspiring tales of female perseverance. AH

Leila Like Weather (Rephlex)

YouTube

After touring with Björk, keyboardist and sound engineer Leila Arab retreated to her studio and penned Like Weather, one of the Rephlex label’s most singular releases. Arab harnessed a wide variety of influences, from Aphex Twin’s squiggly bedroom electronica to the dusty bump of trip hop, assembling an album that sounds like a forgotten tape of Prince demos played backwards. Her inventive production sits at the center and is embellished with a cast of vocalists – most prominently Stubborn Heat’s Luca Santucci – who lift off her sound into a parallel (purple) universe. The result is a suite of effervescent, sub-aquatic soul pop that still sounds completely out of time. JT

Massive Attack Mezzanine (Virgin)

Spotify / Apple Music

The Mercury-nominated Mezzanine saw Bristol’s finest reach the peak of their cross-pollinating powers to perfect the spiky downtempo stew they had begun cultivating some seven years earlier. Featuring guest spots from Studio One legend Horace Andy and Cocteau Twins’ Liz Fraser – whose ethereal vocal is the jewel in the crown of an album that brought us one of the most memory-jogging songs of the ‘90s, ‘Teardrop’ – we named Massive Attack’s third LP one our favorite albums of the decade in 2012, and quite rightly so. ACW

OutKast Aquemini (LaFace)

Spotify / Apple Music

After the intergalactic ATLiens, Aquemini saw Andre 3000 and Big Boi not quite return to Earth, but certainly position their wild funk-rap space craft a little closer to our stratosphere. Sure, the pair’s third studio album together was threaded with the spacey textures, futurism and out-of-this-world ambition as the 2m-selling ATLiens, but this was a different, more human-sounding release, full of live instrumentation and lyrics confronting mortality. Maybe this was down to the birth of Andre’s first child a year earlier, a milestone in the rapper’s life that could be linked to more reflective, real contemplations on tracks like ‘Da Art of Storytellin’ (Part 1)’, which eulogizes a childhood friend named Sasha Thumper who died of a drug overdose. From single ‘Rosa Parks’ to the George Clinton-featuring ‘Synthesizer’, it hasn’t aged a second. How can it? OutKast, even then, were living in the future. AH

Plastikman Consumed (NovaMute)

Spotify / Apple Music

Compared with 1993’s stark, acidic Sheet One and 1994’s undulating Muzik, Consumed borders on silent. Richie Hawtin’s wobbling TB-303 lines are still present, almost, but gone is the rhythmic clatter of ‘Gak’ or ‘Spastik’, replaced by cavernous reverb and spine-chilling minimalist drones. Make no mistake, Consumed is barely dance music, it’s a hypnotic, progressive inversion of acid house tropes, spiked with Artificial Intelligence-era ambience and sci-fi paranoia. If its predecessors embraced the party, Consumed exemplified the comedown. JT

Pole 1 (Kiff SM)

YouTube

Armed with a faulty Waldorf 4-Pole filter unit, Stefan Betke took Mark Ernestus and Moritz Von Oswald’s Berlin dub blueprint and subdued it, discarding techno’s uniformity and highlighting the beauty of his failing production process. A few years earlier, German trio Oval had pioneered glitch music, mutilating compact discs to create digital belches and hiccups that were subsequently manipulated into rhythms and drones; Betke harnessed a cotierie of similar sounds, but underpinned them with the bass weight of a Jamaican soundsystem.

1 is the first of a trilogy of numbered full-lengths from Pole and introduced many listeners to Betke’s sound, channeling his dubby sketches through a wall of surprisingly graceful interference. It isn’t the best example of his sound (that would be 2) but it helped shift electronic music forward and its ripples are still being felt. JT

Surgeon Balance (Tresor)

YouTube

Brummie techno producer Anthony Child managed to achieve the impossible back in the 1990s when he successfully transported Detroit techno’s heady futurism to the UK, augmenting its downtrodden grit with grim, post-industrial cynicism. Balance was one of a sequence of classic Surgeon albums (along with 1997’s Basictonalvocabulary and 1999’s Force + Form) and highlights Child’s unique skill in long-form. The album is, basically, a series of eardrum rupturing warehouse techno bangers, but unlike so many others (back then and now) is, for want of a better word, balanced. JT

Theo Parrish First Floor (Peacefrog)

Spotify / Apple Music

Comprised of the two EPs Parrish created for Peacefrog in 1998, the Detroit legend’s essential collection of fizzy, feel-good “sound sculptures” is a sample house classic that will never grow old. An eccentric LP that holds a mirror up to the DC-born producer’s freewheeling DJ sets, First Floor is an electronic album with a deep soul, one where the looped jazz, funk and disco samples of Parrish’s Chicago upbringing peek through distorted drums, with a groove running through that will take you by the hand and lead you straight to the dancefloor. ACW

Tortoise TNT (Thrill Jockey)

Spotify / Apple Music

Chicago’s Tortoise were notable for their unusual take on post-rock; they were less indebted to hardcore than many of their peers, exploring Krautrock rhythms, dubwise low end and infusing their compositions with electronics. But TNT was different from their acclaimed self-titled debut and its inventive followup, Millions Now Living Will Never Die. Now, instead of motorik drums and pulsing bass, light, jazzy guitar riffs and Rob Mazurek’s trumpet filled tracks that owed more to progressive rock than they did Can. Critics were impressed at the time, but fans were divided by the new direction, which at times skated a precarious line between innovation and regression. But Tortoise flirted successfully with jazzy, easy listening tropes on TNT and two decades later, the album sounds markedly more impressive than the quiet-loud dirges of much of the rest of the post-rock canon. JT

Total Kima, Keisha, and Pam (Bad Boy)

Spotify / Apple Music

History could be kinder to R&B trio Total and, perhaps, now that their modernist album Kima, Keisha, and Pam is turning 20, they’ll get their due. Signed to Puffy’s Bad Boy label at its peak, the group were known for their many collaborations with Missy Elliott and The Notorious B.I.G. – that’s Pam singing, “Biggie, Biggie, Biggie, can’t you see…” on ‘Hypnotize’.

On the album, tracks like ‘Trippin’, ‘If You Want Me’ and ‘I Don’t Wanna’ sound like they could be released right now and still sound just as fresh, if not like they’re pointed toward the future. Some of that is, of course, Elliott’s deft hand – she wrote nearly all of the songs on the album – but it’s also in the performances from and the attitude of the group. They had a certain cool-girl persona that hadn’t really materialized yet, but can be found in artists like Kehlani and Tinashe today. CL

Honorable mentions

Coil/Time Machines – Time Machines (Eskaton) Two Lone Swordsmen – Stay Down (Warp) Various – Lyricist Lounge Vol.1 (Rawkus) Windy And Carl – Depths (Kranky) Ed Rush & Optical – Wormhole (Virus) Herbert – Around the House (Phonography)

Read next: 30 incredible albums turning 20 years old in 2017

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