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robininthelabyrinth · 3 years

Note

Fic were both JZX and Jiang Yanli are trans? I imagine the engagement would get complicated.

The More Things Change - ao3

“My lady,” the midwife said. “Congratulations. You have a daughter.”

Madame Jin shook her head. “I need a son,” she said.

“My lady –”

“I’m not doing that again,” Madame Jin said, her voice getting stronger. “I need a son.”

“But –”

She looked at her loyal maid, who inclined her head.

A knife flashed.

“Congratulations, my lady,” her maid said, pushing aside the midwife’s body with her foot. “You have a son.”

Madame Jin smiled.

“I’m glad you survived the birth of your child,” Madame Yu said to her old childhood friend, wondering why she’d been invited over to visit Lanling City quite so quickly – it hadn’t even been a month. “Were you thinking –”

“I have a son,” her friend said.

“Congratulations.”

“You don’t understand,” her friend said. “There’s a problem.”

“A-Li,” Jiang Yanli’s mother said in a strange tone. “Do you like wearing dresses?”

“Uh-huh,” Jiang Yanli said, trying to see if she could stick her fist into her mouth. She’d always worn frocks, the way all children her age did, but at some point soon her mother had been warning her that she’d need to switch over to wearing proper robes for boys. Jiang Yanli had burst into tears, saying she didn’t want to be a boy at all – that she didn’t want to leave her mother’s side, that she didn’t want to join the world of men, she didn’t, she didn’t.

“And you really don’t want to go be a boy? Really, you’re sure?”

Jiang Yanli nodded.

“What if I said you didn’t have to be? You could be a girl, just the way you like.”

“Really?”

“Mm. But you’d have to be a girl forever.”

“Okay,” Jiang Yanli said happily. “I wanna be a girl forever.”

“Good,” her mother said, and picked her up. “Just keep saying that.”

“What do you think we are,” Jiang Fengmian asked his wife blankly. “Qinghe Nie?”

His wife glared daggers at him.

“Attempt the impossible,” she said stiffly. “A-Li has been claiming to be a girl consistently for a year. Would you deny her the chance to follow her dreams?”

Well, when she put it that way…

Jiang Fengmian hesitated.

“It does create a problem,” his wife said, and he looked at her. She smiled faintly and leaned forward, showing her curves to their best advantage. “If she’s a girl, she’ll marry out, won’t she? We need a boy.”

Jiang Fengmian swallowed. A boy sounded – nice, he thought vaguely, eyes caught on what he was being offered. A little boy, lively and bright, with a happy smile always on his face…yes, that sounded rather nice.

Wei Changze’s letter upstairs said that his wife had announced that they had conceived, and that she had divined that it would be a son – it was frightfully early to make such predictions, less than a month in, but apparently disciples of the immortal mountain were able to determine such things early. A boy like that, who could be friends with their boy, a reason for them to come to visit and maybe even to stay…

Yes, he thought. That sounded rather good.

“All right,” he said. “A-Li can be a girl, I guess.”

Madame Yu and Madame Jin let news of the engagement seep out as rumor for months before telling their husbands. When they did, they took different approaches: Madame Jin pointed out the strategic benefits of an alliance with Yunmeng Jiang and the unlikelihood of Jin Guangshan finding a match for their son that would give him so much more influence in the cultivation world, which had made her husband stop his grumbling and look upon the match with a favorable eye.

Madame Yu stared at her husband, for whom she had just born a son three weeks premature and very nearly died in the process, and said, “What’s your problem?”

“A-Li can’t marry the Jin sect heir! She’s not –” He waved his hands. “The possibility of children –”

“I would have thought that would be a selling point,” Madame Yu said, and he blinked at her. “He’s Guangshan’s son. There will be children enough.”

After some further arguing, Jiang Fengmian begrudgingly backed down.

Madame Yu smiled to herself, and thought of grandchildren.

Everyone said that Jin Zixuan was a spoiled brat and incredibly lucky, but he didn’t think he was. Sure, he was rich and legitimate; his father valued him, while his mother loved him and would defend him against any challengers to his position as heir, but privately…

“Why do I have to work so hard?” Jin Zixuan asked, panting. “I’m already cultivating, and my teachers say I’m not bad with the sword –”

“Not bad isn’t good enough,” his mother said sharply. “You have to keep up with all the rest of them, and that means getting ahead now.”

“The rest of who?” he asked. “Do you mean…”

He hesitated, not knowing if he was also included in his mother’s taboo against mentioning the results of his father’s philandering.

“All of the cultivation world’s young gentlemen,” she said, to his surprise. “You have to keep up with them. No, you need to exceed them. You must!”

“But – why?”

“I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

“Mother,” Jiang Yanli said. She was clutching a book in her hands. “Mother, can we talk?”

Her mother frowned at her, looking disapproving – and then she saw the book.

Jiang Yanli thought she would yell at her, but she didn’t; her mother only gestured for her to come into her room, ordering her maids to close the doors and windows.

“Mother,” Jiang Yanli said. “Mother, the book –”

“How did you get a spring book?” her mother asked. She looked tired. “Surely you’re still too young?”

Jiang Yanli bowed her head.

It was true, she was too young. And yet…

“Mother, the pictures in the book…”

“I know.” Her mother sighed. “All right. Let me explain.”

Jin Zixuan stared at his mother. He felt sick.

“But,” he said, and swallowed. “But what about…?”

“I’ve handled it,” she said harshly. “But that is why you must not allow your father to take you to a brothel. Is that understood?”

“Who do you think is the best girl? Zixuan-xiong?”

“Oh, don’t ask him! He has a fiancée, so his answer will be her!”

“A fiancée? Really? What sect is she from? She must be extremely talented!”

“Forget it,” Jin Zixuan said.

“What do you mean by that?” Wei Wuxian exclaimed, and suddenly he was getting into his face. “Say that again if you dare!”

Jin Zixuan opened his mouth, hating him – hating the whole situation, being stuck not making any decisions for himself, his whole life mapped out for him by others – but then hesitated.

Jiang Yanli is the only one fit for you, his mother said. Do you understand? The only one.

“I haven’t met her since I was five,” he said instead of what he wanted, rolling his eyes. “So how could I dare to boast about her in your presence? You all want to know about her, ask Jiang-gongzi.”

Wei Wuxian blinked at him, the wind suddenly taken out of his sails.

Jin Zixuan escaped.

He felt like shit, thought. She was his fiancée, and he didn’t know anything about her – he didn’t want to hear about her, think about her. And yet…

The only one.

He went back to his room and wrote her a letter. It was a mess, the worst thing he’d ever written, nothing at all like the polite and careful phrasing, elegant and beautiful, that he’d been trying to put together, something worthy of his name.

He sent it before he could think better of it.

Jiang Yanli held the letter to her chest and smiled.

They’d exchanged a few dozen letters. Jin Zixuan knew that his intended was smart and witty, empathetic and kind, observant and well-meaning, but he didn’t know that she was beautiful until after they escaped from the indoctrination camp and the cave with the Xuanwu of Slaughter.

He’d just accompanied Jiang Cheng for the entire seven days it took to get to the Lotus Pier, collapsing right alongside him, and while Jiang Cheng had – somehow – gotten back on his feet and immediately led his father and mother out the door to go rescue Wei Wuxian, he’d stayed down on the floor until someone knelt down in front of him and smiled.

“Can I get you something to eat, Jin-gongzi?” Jiang Yanli asked.

“Uh,” Jin Zixuan said, and turned bright red. He could sure think of some things he’d like to eat – living as his father’s son had certainly given him an education (however theoretical) about that.

“Food,” Jiang Yanli clarified, giggling into her sleeve. “Let me get you some food.”

This was probably a bad idea, Jiang Yanli thought, looking down at the head tucked against her chest. I probably should’ve just stuck to food. What if he gets with child? What will we do then?

She couldn’t quite bring herself to regret it, though.

“A-Xuan,” she whispered, and Jin Ziuxan stirred a little. “Can we do it again?”

“You’re insatiable.”

That wasn’t a refusal.

“A-Li!” Jin Zixuan shouted, rushing forward. “A-Li, A-Li…!”

She collapsed into his arms.

He looked at the retainers from Meishan Yu, stubborn but pale. “It’s all right,” he said. “She’s my fiancée. I can take care of her.”

“The Jin sect walks in the center path,” one of the retainers said. “Never quite committing to the Sunshot Campaign. How do we know this isn’t a trick to get into the Wen sect’s good books?”

Jin Zixuan bit his lip. He’d pushed his father time and time again, and even that had only gotten them to participate half-heartedly in the fight against the Wen sect. What could he say? What worth was his word?

“It’s all right,” Jiang Yanli said. “I trust him.”

“You could do so much better, you know,” Wei Wuxian said. “It’s not too late!”

Jiang Yanli smiled down at her wedding outfit, but thinking instead of the panicked expression on Jin Zixuan’s face a week before when he’d unexpectedly thrown up in the morning when he was supposed to be preparing for the Phoenix Mountain hunt.

“Oh, it’s too late,” Jiang Cheng grumbled. “On that note, you pick the name.”

“The name…?”

“For our upcoming nephew.”

“Shijie! You didn’t!”

Jiang Yanli’s grin widened.

“Wei Wuxian has committed a crime in attacking our camp and taking the Wen remnants,” Jin Zixuan’s father announced. “We should –”

“Let it go, Father.”

“…what?!”

“I’m getting married, and he’s A-Li’s shidi,” Jin Zixuan reminded his father. “It would be inauspicious to start a marriage by breaking such a relationship.”

His father looked like he was planning on ignoring that, so Jin Zixuan used his trump card.

“We can’t afford anything inauspicious right now,” he said. “Not when there’s a child on the way.”

His mother dropped her cup.

“I have to go,” Jin Zixuan said. “You don’t understand. I have to.”

Jiang Yanli rubbed his hair. “You’re supposed to be in seclusion,” she reminded him. “As am I.”

“I’ve been throwing up every morning for two months, A-Li,” Jin Zixuan pleaded. “I can order them to clear the kitchen. No one would know we were there!”

Jiang Yanli laughed a little. “The craving’s that bad, huh?”

“Yes!”

“Oh, all right. We’ll give it a shot…”

It would have worked, too, if Jin Guangyao hadn’t noticed that too many people were in the wrong place and taken it upon himself to investigate.

“…Jiang-guniang?” He stared at her flat waist, then turned his eyes slowly towards the roundness at Jin Zixuan’s. “Jin-gongzi…?!”

“It’s all right, it’s A-Yao,” Jin Zixuan said to Jiang Yanli. “He won’t tell anyone. Right?”

Jin Guangyao shook his head mutely.

“Seclusion,” he muttered. “No wonder…everyone said it was bad timing that you went into seclusion right before Mistress Jiang announced her pregnancy. But it wasn’t, was it..?” He shook his head. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell.”

“We’re in your debt,” Jin Zixuan said, and thought Jin Guangyao’s eyes upon him were softer than they’d ever been before. “You’ll be a good uncle.”

Jin Guangyao smiled. “Perhaps,” he allowed. “One question, if I may. Who’s the father?”

Jiang Yanli wrapped an arm around Jin Zixuan’s shoulders and beamed.

Jin Guangyao’s jaw dropped again.

“Your son needs you,” Jiang Yanli said to Madame Jin. “Go.”

“Jin Ling,” Madame Jin said, looking down at the baby in her arms. A son, her grandson…a miracle. “Well. You’re – not what I expected.”

If her husband ever found out…

Well.

She’d just have to make sure he wouldn’t, now, wouldn’t she?

#mdzs #jin zixuan #jiang yanli #madame jin #yu ziyuan #my fic #my fics #the more things change #misaligned

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awkwardemons · 3 years

Text

(this is all based on rp!) Okay, before I get into this I want to say I love Phil, both the character and the content creator! And in this, I am talking not about the meta reasoning for things, but the in-world reasoning for things. That being said the whole “Wilbur was lying in the letters and so Phil did not know that anything was wrong until the letters stopped” just does not make sense based on what has been previously shown.

Now I didn’t see the full stream where Phil talked about the letters, but from what I gathered here are the main points

- Tubbo became the president during the elections, being given the presidency after Wilbur won

- Wilbur left L’Manberg of his own choice

- Phil does not know Schlatt other than him being dead

- Was not aware of Wlbur’s mental state

- Was not aware of the button room

- Was not aware of Willbur’s plan to blow up L’Manberg

So that’s all well and good. However, here is a line by line analysis of the Button Room scene that now makes absolutely zero sense with this hot new spin on it. Now, you could argue that anything Phil said before he logs onto the server is not canon. I disagree, but I understand. I would argue that because he joins the server because of what happens right before, and what he hears, that it is canon. I will be starting slightly before he physically joins, so bear with me

Tubbo: I’m gonna be honest, I really don’t know what a president does! [everyone, including Phil, laughs]

Wilbur: I’ll be back, I’ll be back.

Phil: Wait, where’s Will going?

Wilbur, who cannot hear Phil: Chekhov's Gun. Chekhov's Gun.

Phil: Is he done? Is he done streaming?

Wilbur: I’ll be honest with you, chat. I’ve been wondering this whole time if it still works.

Now, this is important. Wilbur does not say any specifics. He says “it’. This sentence is extremely vague. Anyone who did not know exactly what he was talking about would have no clue.

Phil: [music cuts out] Oh no....

This reaction doesn’t make any sense unless Phil knows what Wilbur is planning. Theoretically, he should not be concerned by this.

Wilbur: I’ve been thinking to myself would- would it- does it still- Because I fixed it up for today, but [Phil: Mate...] as you know before someone- someone- Last time i pressed it someone had removed the redstone.

Alright, so, now all Phil should know is there is some button that is/was connected to redstone. That could mean so many different things.

Wilbur: There's um... I always- Whenever I’m here I’m reminded of the song that I’ve scribbled on the walls. Then, you know.. That there was a special place, there was. Was a special place where men could go and emancipate, you know? And there was definitely that special did exist once, it did, it did. But even with- I- Even with Tubbo in charge, I don’t think it can exist again.

Once again a reference to Tubbo just now becoming the president.

Phil: [Phil has deafened] Oh this motherfucker. This motherfucker. He’s gonna do it... Is he gonna fuckin do it? [Phil goes to join the server]

Is he gonna do what, Phil? How are you aware of what WIlbur was planning, but promised not to do? Because there should be no way he knows what’s happening based on what he heard.

Alright and this also marks the spot where it can’t be argued that the things said aren’t technically canon.

Wilbur: [we hear the end of his sentence after Phil undeafens] It’s over.

Phil: What are you doing.

Wilbur: Phil?

Phil: What are you doing.

Wilbur: Phil, where are you?

Phil: I’m joining the server right now.

WIlbur: Wait, you’re- How?? You- This is-

Phil: I’m hacking in.

Wilbur: [while laughing] What do you mean you’re hacking in? What??

Phil: I’m getting in, dude.

Wilbur: Do you want- Do i need to go get you from spawn? What? Is it...

Phil: It’s taking a while to load...

Wilbur: [seemingly remembering Phil’s original question and stuttering through his answer] I’m not- I wasn’t doing anything. We just- We just made Tubbo president. We- We um- We (led to?) Tubbo president and we won! We won the war. Schaltt’s gone. Schlatt’s gone, Phil, so it’s uh

Now there’s a lot to unpack here. The highlights are “We just made Tubbo president” which should not line up with what Phil believes is true, “We won the war” and “Schlatt’s gone”. Both of the last quotes, Wilbur is addressing Phil as if he knows the situation. As if he knew they were going to have a war with Schlatt. Phil, apparently, does not know who Schlatt is, nor would he have any reason to think there would be another war. But Wilbur certainly seems to be under the impression that Phil knows what’s going on. And, Phil himself appears to be completely in the loop.

Phil: [disbelieving, and overlapping Wilbur still stuttering] Uh huh. Uh huh. So [Wilbur: It’s good.] You are where exactly now?

Bit of an odd question with an odd tone of voice for someone who does not know what’s happening.

Wilbur: [unconvincingly] In... L’Manberg.... There’s so- The area- You wouldn’t know, I don’t think you’ve been here, but it’s the area around L’Manberg. It’s complicated. It’s geo- geography and that, you know it’s- it’s- it’s geography and stuff and- [Phil joins the server in the hallway leading up to the button room]

Okay, but WIlbur isn’t wrong. Philza should have absolutely no idea where to find Wilbur. The entrance was just on the side of a mountain, if I remember correctly. Phil should have no idea where he is. And yet he’s able to find him very quickly. Now, I know this was for dramatic effect. I know that. However, again I am looking at the in-canon consequences and explanation for things. Most of the server members didn’t even know where the button room was. So, How does Phil know?

WIlbur: Phil?

Phil: Mmhm.

Wilbur: Uh....

Phil: Yeah... “In L’Manberg” you said.

Wilbur: The- This is L’Man- The-... Okay. I will admit... Do you know what this button is?

Phil: [without hesitation:] Uh huh. I do.

There. Without a shadow of a doubt. Phil knows what the button is. How would he know that? This absolutely does not line up with what he’s saying now. And it’s a logical next step to assume that if he knows what the button is, he knows that WIlbur made it. And if he knew that WIlbur made it, he is at least decently aware of WIlbur’s mental state.

Wilbur: Have you heard the- the song on the walls? Before? Have you heard the song? I was just saying- I made this big point, and it was poignant, and it was that there was a special place where men can go- But it’s not there anymore, it’s not.

Phil: It is there. You’ve j- just won it back, Will.

Once again showing that he was aware of the Schlatt situation. That Wilbur had to win L’Manberg back, that he didn’t just leave to start over.

WIlbur: Phil, I’m always so close to pressing this button, Phil. I have been- have been here like seven or eight times I have been here. Seven or eight times. [Phil sighs] Oh they’re gonna come and- I need to block this off. I don’t want them in here. [Phil laughs. We begin to hear fireworks.] I don’t want them in here. Phil, I- I have been here so many times... They’re fighting. They’re fighting!

Phil: And you want to just blow it all up?

Make note this is the first anyone has said about blowing anything up. I know I’m repeating myself, but this just further shows that Phil knows exactly what the button does and what Wilbur’s intentions are.

Wilbur: [sighing] I do... I think- I-

Phil: You fought so hard to get this- this land back. So hard.

Once again referencing conflict he should not know about.

Wilbur: I don’t even- I don’t even know if it works anymore, Phil. I don’t even know if the button works. I could- I could press it, and it might...

Phil: Do you really want to take that risk? [he laughs] There is a lot of TNT potentially connected to that button.

How does he know that? (Also this is technically the first mention of specifically TNT)

Wilbur: Phil. There was a saying, Phil- I’m gonna turn down these bloody fireworks- Phil... [Phil laughs] There- There was a saying, Phil, by a traitor. Uh once part of L’Manberg. A traitor, I don’t know if you’ve heard of Eret?

Phil: Yeah.

Wilbur: He had a saying, Phil. “It was never meant to be.” [Wilbur presses the button]

Phil: Oh my god... You didn’t. [L’Manberg blows up.] Ohhhh my god... [Phil looks at the destruction] Will! It’s all gone! [Phil laughs]

Wilbur: My L’manberg, Phil! My unfinished symphony, forever unfinished! If I can’t have this, no one can, Phil!

Phil: Oh my god.

I could go on to explain how the next moments show inconsistency with Phil’s character and Doomsday, but hey. So yeah in conclusion, the story just does not line up, it doesn’t make sense with what we’ve seen. This entire scene does not make sense with this new angle. Everything from the tone, the characters actions and reactions, and just fully the scene itself would need to be completely different. Also, Just throwing it out there: If all Philza knew about the situation was:

- Wibur stopped writing

- Tubbo is president

- Wilbur just blew up his nation that isn’t even his anymore

- Wilbur wants me to kill him for what he’s done, but I don’t have very crucial information

to understand the situation

Then him murdering Wilbur is so much worse. Then, it only takes 30 seconds of convincing for Phil to blindly kill his son. It just doesn’t make any sense

If you want the letters to make sense, I think it would fit that Wilbur stopped writing the day of the Manberg festival. Then, Phil could have gotten letters from Wilbur, already spiraling further, detailing the button, the button room, where it is, his intentions, and his mental state. But, hey!

#dream smp #/roleplay #philza critcal #i guess??#wilbur soot #dsmp #philza minecraft #ph1lza #i dunno team #i never post on here #but i had some thoughts #thank you for reading #xoxo

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elliemarchetti · 3 years

Text

If Need Be

At this point I don't know if it makes sense to anticipate everything with a brief description of the plot, but for all the possible new readers who will run into this chapter and for some strange reason haven’t seen the previous ones, this is the story of Elva, a half-elf of Mirkwood, leaving with the Fellowship in place of Legolas. The actual tale begins shortly after Gandalf's death, and it all centers around how Elva's presence impacts not only on the mission but on Haldir's life.

In this part, the Fellowship finally leaves Caras Galadhon to resume their Quest.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Words: 2448

In the morning, as they were beginning to pack their slender goods, some Elves went to Haldir’s talan to bring many gifts of food, mostly in the form of very thin cakes, made of a meal that was baked a light brown on the outside and inside was the colour of cream, and a hooded cloak.

"For someone who spends most of his time at the border, you are very popular," Elva commented, after thanking yet another visitor.

"They fear I may not come back, and they tell me that my brothers will be helped in every possible way,” the marchwarden explained. “These are lembas, or waybread, more strengthening than any food made by Men and more pleasant than the cram made in Dale. It must be eaten little at a time, for these things are given to serve when all else fails and will keep sweet for many days, if they’re unbroken and left in their leaf-wrappings.”

“Those are fair garments, though,” Aragorn commented, stroking the light but warm silken fabric, the same the Galadhrim and the court wove. It was hard to say of what colour they were, as they seemed to be grey with the hue of twilight under the trees and yet, if they were moved or set in another light, they were green as shadowed leaves or brown as fallow fields by night; in the dusk, they looked like water under the stars, and even the brooch that fastened them, a green leaf, was veined with silver.

“They must be from the Lady,” guessed their host. “Yet, as you said, they are garments, not armours, and they won’t turn shaft or blade, only serve us well in staying out of the Enemy’s sight.”

"They seem to have done their work so far," Elva said, trying to cheer up the room and hinting that after all his wanderings he was still alive.

"Sure, and a considerable number of blades to the throat were also needed," he replied, after which silence fell, and was maintained as they walked through Caras Galadhon’s empty green streets. In the trees above them, many voices were murmuring and singing, and flashed of barely comprehensible words followed them to the lawn where the other members of the Fellowship waited and down the southward slopes of the hill, to the great gate hung with lamps until the white bridge, after which they took a path that went off into a deep thicket of mallorn trees and passed on, winding through rolling woodlands of silver shadow, leading them ever down, southwards and eastwards, to the shores of the River, laid in a shining lawn of grass studded with golden elanor that glinted in the sun. On the right and west the Silverlode flowed glittering and on the left and east the Great River rolled its broad waters, deep and dark, with woodlands still marching as far as eyes could see on the southwards shores, bleak and bare, as no mallorn lifted its gold-hung boughs beyond the Land of Lorien. On the bank of the Silverlode, at some distance up from the meeting of the streams, there were moored many boats and barges, some brightly painted, shining with silver, gold and green tones, and some either white or grey, like the three that had been prepared for the travellers. Haldir threw some coils of slender but strong rope in each, and Sam went to inspect the workmanship, similar to that of the cloaks they wore.

“They are made of hithlain,” their guide explained, anticipating his question. “Had I known this craft delighted you, I could’ve taught you much, but at the moment I think you’ll have to settle for a theoretical explanation during breaks.”

Sam seemed satisfied by the pact, and went to take his place with Frodo on the boat captained by Aragorn; Boromir thus settled for Merry and Pippin, and Haldir for Elva and Gimli, with whom he had most bonded during their stay in Lothlorien. The boats were moved and steered with short-handled paddles that had broad leaf-shaped blades. When all was ready, their guide led them on a trial up the Silverlode, where the current was swift and they went forward slowly. Sam sat in the bows, clutching the sides, and looking back wistfully to the shore, the sunlight glittering on the water dazzling his eyes. As they passed beyond the green field of the Tongue, the trees drew down to the river’s brink: here and there golden leaves tossed and floated on the rippling stream and the air was very bright and still, bringing only silence except for the high distant song of larks. They turned a sharp bend in the river, and there, sailing proudly down the stream towards them, they saw a swan of great size. The water rippled on either side of the white breast beneath its curving neck and its beak shone like burnished gold, while its eyes glinted like jet set in yellow stones; its huge white wings were half lifted, and suddenly they perceived that it was a ship, wrought and carved with elven-skill in the likeness of a bird. Two elves clad in white steered it with black paddles and in the midst of the vessel sat Celeborn, with his wife behind him, tall and white, a crown of golden flowers in her hair and a harp in her hands. Sand and sweet was the sound of her voice in the cool clear air as she told the story of gold leave shook by the wind. As if the first vision of the Mirror had awakened in Elva an ancient memory that didn’t belonged to her, she too sang of Lorien’s first winter with bare and leafless trees, but she didn’t have the heart to finish, because it spoke of the departure beyond the Sea, of that journey that tasted like defeat and she could never face, even if she wanted to. Haldir stayed his boat as the Swan-ship drew alongside, so the Lady could tell them she had come to bid their last farewell and to speed their boats with blessings from her land. The half-elf wasn’t quite sure their intentions were that noble, but she said nothing, and ate lunch with the royals on the grass, as Celeborn suggested, speaking again of their journey.

“As you go down the water,” said the Lord, “you’ll find that the trees will fail, and you’ll come to a barren country. There the River flows in stony vales amid high moors, until at last after many leagues come the sheep shores of the tall island of Tindrock, that we call Tol Brandir. With great noise and smoke, the waters fall over the cataracts of Rauros down into the Nindalf, the Wetwang, as it’s called in your tongue.; that is a wide region of sluggish fen, where the stream becomes tortuous and much divided and the Entwash flows in by many mouths from the Forest of Fangorn in the west. About that stream, on this side of the Great River, lies Rohan, while on the further side are the bleak hills of the Emyn Muil. The wind blows from the East there, for they look out over the Dead Marshes and the Noman-lands to Cirith Gorgor and the black gates of Mordor. Boromir, and any that go with him seeking Minas Tirith, will do well to leave the Great River above Rauros and cross the Entwash before it finds the marshes. Yet they shouldn’t go too far up that stream, nor risk becoming entangled in the Forest of Fangorn, a strange, little known land, but doubtless, you don’t need this warning.”

“Indeed we have heard of Fangorn in Minas Tirith,” replied the person most concerned. “But what I’ve heard seems to me for the most part old wives’ tales, such as we tell to our children. All that lies north to Rohan is now to us so far away that fancy can wander freely there, but it’s now many lives of men since any of us visited it to prove or disprove the legends that have come down from distant years. Anyway, I have myself been at whiles in Rohan, but I’ve never crossed it northwards, although, when I was sent out as a messenger, I passed through the Gap by the skirts of the White Mountains, and crossed the Isen and the Greyflood into Northerland. A long and wearisome journey it was, four hundred leagues I reckoned it, and it took me many months, for I lost my horse at Tharbad, at the fording of the Greyflood. After that and the road I have trodden with this Company, I don’t much doubt I shall find a way through Rohan, and Fangorn too, if need be.”

“Then I need say no more!” exclaimed Celeborn. “But don’t despise the lore that has come down from distant years, for oft it may chance that old wives keep in memory word of things that once were needful for the wise to know.”

At those advice, Galadriel rose from the grass and taking a cup from one of her maidens she filled it with white mead and gave it to her husband.

“Now it’s time to drink for our farewell,” she said, and when they had all done as she commanded, chairs were set for her and Celeborn. For a while she looked upon her guests, but at last, she called each in turn, offering them gifts, starting from Aragorn, whom she addressed as the leader of the Fellowship, giving him a great stone clear green in colour, set in a silver brooch that was wrought in the likeness of an eagle with outspread wings.

“This was left in my care to be given to you, should you pass through this land; I gave it to my daughter Celebrian and she gave it to hers, and now it comes to you as a token of hope. In this hour take the name that was foretold for you, Elessar, the Elfstone of the House of Elendil!”

Aragorn took the stone and pinned the brooch upon his breast, and those who saw him wondered how they hadn’t noticed before how tall and kingly he stood: “For the gift that you have given me I thank you, Lady of Lorien of whom were sprung Celebrian and Arwen Evenstar. What praise could I say more?”

The Lady bowed her head, and she turned to Boromir, giving him a belt of gold, similar to the silver ones Merry and Pippin received; to Elva, she gave a bow such as the Galadhrim used, longer and stouter than the bows of Mirkwood, and strung with a string of elf-hair. With it went a quiver of arrows, while Sam received no weapons or wealth, but only a little box of plain grey wood, unadorned save for a single silver rune upon the lid, filled with earth from Galadriel’s orchard: “It won’t defend you against any peril, but if you keep it and see your home again at last, then perhaps it may reward you. Though you should find all barren and laid waste, there will be few gardens in Middle-earth that will bloom like yours, then you may remember Galadriel, and catch a glimpse far off of Lorien, that you have seen only in our Winter, for our Spring and our Summer are gone by, and they will never be seen on earth again save in memory.”

Sam went red to the ears and muttered something inaudible, as he clutched the box and bowed as well as he could.

“And what gift would a Dwarf ask of the Elves? ” said Galadriel, turning to Gimli.

“It’s enough for me to have seen the Lady of the Galadhrim, and to have heard her gentle words,” he replied, courteous.

“Hear all ye Elves!” she cried to those around her. “Let none say again that Dwarves are grasping and ungracious! Yet surely you desire something that I could give? Name it, I bid you! You shall not be the only guest without a gift.”

“There’s nothing, Lady Galadriel,” said Gimli, bowing low and stammering. “Nothing, unless it might be permitted to name a single strand of your hair, which surpasses the gold of the earth as the stars surpass the gems of the mine. I don’t ask for such a gift, but you commanded me to name my desire.”

The Elves stirred and murmured with astonishment, and Celeborn gazed at the Dwarf in wonder, but the Lady smiled. “It’s said that the skill of the Dwarves is in their hands rather than in their tongues, yet that is untrue of Gimli,” she said. “And how shall I refuse, since I commanded you to speak? But tell me, what would you do with such a gift?”

“Treasure it, Lady” he answered, “in memory of your words to me at our first meeting. And if ever I return to the smithies of my home, it shall be set in imperishable crystal to be an heirloom of my house, and a pledge of good will between the Mountain and the Wood until the end of days.”

So the Lady unbraided one of her long tresses, cut off three golden hairs and laid them in Gimli’s hand: “These words shall go with the gift: I don’t foretell, for all foretelling is now vain with darkness lying on one hand and only hope in the other, but if hope shouldn’t fail, then I say to you that you hands shall flow with gold, and yet over you gold shall have no dominion.”

Then she addressed Frodo, and gave him a small crystal phial, glittering with rays of white light from the Earendil’s star as she moved it: “May it guide you in dark places, when all other lights go out.”

Lastly, she looked at Haldir, giving him a sheath made to fit his sword, overlaid with a tracery of flowers and leaves wrought of silver and gold: “The blade drawn from this sheath shall not be stained or broken even in defeat,” she said, leading Elva to question again what their guide might’ve seen in the Mirror. Were those words a hidden condemnation? She couldn’t know, and after the gift that had been given to her, she couldn’t ask too. Haldir bowed, but found no words to say, so the Lady arose, and the yellow noon laid on the green land of the Tongue accompanied their last farewell, for so it seemed to them that Lorien was slipping backward, like a bright ship with enchanted trees, sailing on to forgotten shores, while they sat helpless upon the margin of the grey and leafless world.

#haldir of lothlorien #haldir x fem oc #aragorn #arwen #aragorn x arwen #sam gamgee #boromir #frodo baggins #merry brandybuck #pippin took #gimli son of gloin #galadriel #celeborn #galadriel x celeborn #lotr #the fellowship of the ring

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dreamsister81 · 3 years

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Jeff and MI:

By age, you fit in the G.I.T generation, but you obviously are not one of them...

These facilities are a mystery to me. There they tell you only one thing: hurry up! This leads you nowhere, afterwards your own children run away from you. Through these trainings you get to know women, you get to know men, music is inoculated into people who have no feeling for it; then they can only scare other people or insult them...

I was in this terrible place too, by the way-G.I.T That was a complete waste of time, apart from the theoretical lessons and the friends that I had there. Otherwise: an absolute wrong decision.

How long have you studied there?

One year, the normal program. They give you tons of material, you have to absorb everything, you practice, you are tested and you go to the next course. An intensive support with development is simply not possible. I did so many things: theory, single string technique, jazz class, rock class, all sorts of genres. My friend John was teaching bass there, and he once said that there is not a single teacher at the institute who says to the students, "OK, you're learning all this stuff here now, you're learning how to entertain people and you're learning to learn. But do you even know that there is no one in the universe other than yourself who plays the music you play? " John left the school then. For me it was all a joke that cost me $ 3,900. People interested in music should take private lessons somewhere, start a band, do something with people who like them and have what it takes. These schools are a scene in their own right, a very small, secluded world-the music, on the other hand, is gigantic and open. If you don't notice it, you miss a lot of magic, pain, development...(thinks) and rock! Apart from Paul Gilbert, there was no one there who really rocked. Session musicians are bred there; and at the end of the year you get a piece of paper that says, "Now you have the skills to become a professional musician." Well, congratulations! And then you look for jobs and play what other people want. But that's not all the music, there's something else isn't there? Where's the music coming from? From your own head or stomach, or the concepts of the people you work for?-Gitarre & Bass, October, 1995

I had a friend named John Humphrey. I went to this really crappy guitar school for a year, and he used to teach there, he was a bass teacher. And then he left, and we ended up being roommates later on, after I graduated. This is the kind of school where you give them a shitload of money in order to spend a year learning their curriculum.

What was it, G.I.T. (Guitar Institute of Technology in Los Angeles)?

Yeah, it was G.I.T.. They give you their curriculum, and it's not too comprehensive, but it's just enough, and then you can [snaps his fingers] move on to the next thing. And pretty soon you have all this shit inside you and then they give you this paper that says you have what it takes to be a professional musician.

It's a rock-oriented thing, isn't it?

In the end, I think, the only true product of that kind of learning is to get you gigs on the studio circuit and to get you gigs on the session guy circuit.

So, Lee Ritenour went there or something?

G.I.T. was started by Howard Roberts, the guy who played the wah-wah guitar on the theme to Shaft. And this other guy named Pat Hayes. I don't know. It just seemed like a racket, really. John said a lot of things to me that stuck in my mind. He said that there was nobody who stopped you, sat you in a room and said, okay, we have all these artists that you're learning the licks from, you have your guitar heroes, your virtuoso lust objects. But there's nobody who can make the kind of music you can make now except for you. And you can make it now. You don't even have to know how to go fast. And that makes all the sense to me in the world. It's also kind of an unseen process, that concept, originality. It's like that in all the education systems; there's never any real...identity education, self-generative identity art sort of thing, to be yourself. If everybody in Melbourne had a Wurlitzer organ and had the passion to sing something or make something, you'd have hundreds of thousands of different styles, if they were coming exactly from only their DNA, only their makeup, and their emotional percepts, their idea about what art is. You could have way-removed genres from what is already accepted, avante-garde country-rock-punk-folk-whatever. It's unlimited. But for some reason, the conventions always take over and there's a very ready and powerful formula to step into...

Those are the type of [formula-derived] players who can say, "Well, I was listening to the radio in 1967 and I heard the guitar solo in Jimi Hendrix's 'All Along the Watchtower,' and that guitar sound, that tone, would work perfectly for this television commercial."

Yeah. See? "Stealing from the greats, that's okay." That's right. Once I stopped in [at G.I.T.] years later, when I was on tour going through L.A., just to see what it was like. They've got a completely high-tech, multi-million dollar facility...

More so than when you had been there?

Way more. When I was there, it was just a ragtag bunch of teachers, and they had all left by then. They had video facilities and a class for stage moves and all kinds of things. And I saw this guy who was working the desk, the guy who watches the door. He had a bass on, and he was practicing his Nirvana chops! He was playing "In Bloom" on his bass, way up on his chest, jazz-fusion style, to the Nirvana song. I thought, oh shit--he was practicing his grunge riffs! He was getting his grunge down! Best fucking thing you can do, if you have the interest, is go to a private teacher, go someplace, some college, and learn theory. That was something I really enjoyed, actually, something that wasn't totally pointless. Theory meaning the meaning of the musical nomenclature. I was attracted to really interesting harmonies, stuff that I would hear in Ravel, Ellington, Bartok.-Double Take, February 29, 1996

Once the site of a seakeasy and a bra factory, the 30,000-square-foot quarters were now the home of Musicians Institute, a vocational school for anyone who considered himself or herself a serious musician. With its wooden desks and chipped-tile hallways, MI resembled any other urban school, but at those desks, student guitarists and drummers studied scales and power chords in hopes of becoming the next Eddie Van Halen or Neil Peart, the flashy drummer with Rush. On their way to class each morning, flaxen-haired guitar gods in training could be spotted holding their guitars and practicing licks as they walked down Hollywood Boulevard.

Jeff had heard about Musicians Institute (and its subdivision, the Guitar Institute of Technology) while in high school and told everyone it was his one and only destination. However, potential superstardom did not run cheap. The school charged $4,000 for its one year course, and by the time Jeff Graduated from Loara High School, Mary Guibert was beginning to fall on hard financial times as she went in and out of jobs. In need of money for herself and her two sons, she prematurely broke into a $20,000 fund earmarked for Jeff, but only after he tured nineteen. Once Mary proved to the courtsthat Jeff needed it for his education, he and Mary received it a year early. In a deep irony, the father Jeff had barely met and increasingly resented would be paying his son's way through music school.

On graduation night, September 15, 1985, at the Odyssey in Granada Hills in the San Fernando Valley, Jeff, Stoll, and Marryatt closed the ceremony by playing Weather Report's "Pearl On the Half Shell."-from Dream Brother

With its 30-odd thousand feet of floor space and row upon row of "labs", where hopeful guitar heroes could jam with such shit-hot players as Scott Henderson, LA's Musician's Institute must have seemed like nirvana for someone like Jeff Buckley, trapped as he was behind the Orange Curtain. According to his buddy Chris Dowd, that's exactly why Buckley enrolled there, arriving just before autumn, 1984, bankrolled by $4,000 that Mary managed to squeeze from a Tim Buckley trust fund.

Originally known as the Guitar Institute, which in itself says plenty, the school was opened in 1977. Drawing on the educational philosophy of journeyman guitarist Howard Roberts, it was co-founded and managed by Los Angeles music businessman Pat Hicks, "a real shyster opportunist", in the words of Tom Chang, an expat Canadian who would become very tight with Jeff Buckley during their two years at the Institute. In 1978, thr Bass Institute was opened, followed by the Percussion Institute two years later. Desppite Hicks' questionable business ethics-amongst other things, he'd hire students as cheap labour to do essential maintenance work on the building, which led to Buckley being hired as an electrician's assistant soon after graduating-he did manage to persuade well regarded players and bands to lecture, and play alongside, the hopefuls who'd enrolled there.

What Buckley lacked up in "front" he clearly made up for in ambition. That was proved, in spades, by Buckley's graduation performance which was played out on September 15, 1985, at a venue called the Odyssey in Granada Hills. While the sonic crush and enviable chops of Rush and Led Zeppelin still rocked the world of this Orange County teen, Buckley had also developed a real taste for such "noodlers" as Weather Report.

The number chosen by Buckley for graduation was their "D Flat Waltz" (not "Pearl On The Half-Shell", as documented elsewhere, which they'd performed at a previous event), a typically complicated few minutes of Weather Report neo-fusion-a "really cool piece, very involved", according to Tom Chang-and a standout from their 1983 set Domino Theory. But Buckley, accompanied by Stoll on drums and Marryatt on bass, didn't just play the piece, he also wrote the individual parts out beforehand for the band.-from A Pure Drop

MI pics by me

#jeff buckley #MI #Musicians Institute #GIT #mylove #supremebeing #favorite #music #jeff places

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witcheswritings · 3 years

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Rest in me

Summary: (Modern!AU) In the aftermath of a terrible accident, Hinata and Sakura struggle to start anew.

Lenght: 3098 words

Author: CireneMQ (Nohara-Cirene)

Translator: Rainbow.feathers (Rainbowfeather)

Fandom: Naruto

Relationships: Sakura Haruno/Hinata Hyuuga

Warnings: Descriptions of severe injury, descriptions of recovery.

Disclaimer: This fanfiction was written as a commission for the very creative @wombatking who was kind enough to prompt us this beautiful idea! If you want to commission us anything don’t be afraid to ask!

September and the leaves lose their color by fall. In a tenuous way, as, little by little, the greenery gives way to ocher tones.

Intricate parallelism with reality that is not yet assimilated; the irrecoverable loss of everyday life and the illusions that take rot like leaves on the ground. Compost for pain, distant hopes that try to sustain the impending collapse of the will.

And the juxtaposition of effort and resentment, of resignation and denial.

Sakura leaves the hospital, withdraws from the care and the smell of antiseptic that for three months have kept her in a different world and now they’re part of a bubble that no longer exists. She returns to the real world with that involuntary feeling that she is living in a very long nightmare, but that sooner or later it will end.

During her recovery, she repeated herself that although it was all bullshit, life would be lighter when she finally returned home. She missed the fresh air, the school, her friends and Hinata.

Yes, her girlfriend had done almost the impossible to stay by her side.

During her stay in the hospital there was not a single day where she did not visit her, even with the pressure that Hiashi exerted on the schedule and mandatory activities for his first-born. Sakura, aware of the peculiar family situation, kept repeating to herself about how lucky she was to have her. There was nothing she could ask for that Hinata hadn't done for her. For that reason, seeing her waiting in front of the door was not at all surprising.

Hinata was there, with the kindest smile in the world and affection coming out of her pores..., and everything that Sakura anticipated that she would feel, the happiness of being free, of returning to "everyday life" with her, turned to bile in her throat; life was not lighter, the nightmare was not going to end.

She tried to smile, but the joy didn't reach her green eyes. Hinata understood instantly, trying to dilute her sadness in the subtle touch of her lips, a moment of tangible calm.

“Let's go home, Sakura.”

Suddenly the world turned upside down. Ordinary details became unrecognizable, from the drive home to sinking into the mattress; the air was different, smelled of cracked faith and a chaotic form of suppressed despair.

“Are you comfortable?”

“Well... it's not like I feel anything.” Vinegary smile that Hinata sweetened with the warmth of her own.

She arranged cushions behind her back, taking special care not to move her abruptly. Sakura gritted her teeth, annoyance stemming from the boredom of being treated with the fragility of a dry leaf, yet she said nothing. It was the truth, the plainly crude and revolting true.

The time, when "Sakura! Sakura!" was chanted by those who attend the soccer games and the adrenaline of scoring a goal ran through her blood, would never return. She was a brittle leaf under the sole of a world that was hers, but that no longer recognized her as someone capable of setting the pace.

Still in grief, she held Hinata's gaze and invoked the iron of her own character; she couldn't give up.

“My mom says the wheelchair they ordered has arrived. I'd like you to help me set it up, it'll be fun, don't you think?”

“Of course! Your strong lungs will do a lot...”

The months of hospitalization were filled with "solutions" to her situation, such as the new computer that, based on voice commands, allowed her to communicate with the world in the same way as she did before. Sakura's mother had taken the time to research all the rehabilitation therapies she could, including pseudo-sciences that promised fantastic results. Sakura agreed to practically all of them, even though they were mentally exhausting.

“I plan to go back to school, although I'm not sure how I'll do it. Mom has her doubts, and I don't want to depend on anyone for that.”

Hinata sat on the mattress, tilting her head and giving her a look full of tenderness. She had known her long enough to know that dependency was unthinkable for the usual Sakura, so she preferred not to pull that string. The Hyuga's hand raised to Sakura’s cheekbone to give her a sympathetic caress that said everything that the pink-haired woman did not want to hear in words; namely, compassion.

“Then, we will have to hurry up so you can handle that chair.”

However, things do not always turn out as you imagine them, Sakura would learn this as soon as her inert body was secured by the security straps to the device. What began with the excitement of starting over ended in tears and anger.

Her lips were dry, and she was annoyed at the failed attempts to get the wheels to obey as Hinata, standing in front of her, urged Sakura to reach her.

“Blow again, Sakura. Remember; a loud puff is forward.”

“I know, I know.”

The lips formed an "o" again and stuck to the bulb. Instantly, the girl released the air forcefully and the wheels began to move, but again drew back as she took a breath before withdrawing completely.

“You have to inhale when you have already removed the mouth from the bulb, otherwise the reader interprets it as you want to go backwards.”

Her jaw was trembling. She had already memorized the theoretical instructions, but putting them into practice was something totally different, something Hinata couldn't understand as much as she wanted to. Sakura clenched her eyelids wanting to calm down, until the sweet voice of her girlfriend pierced her eardrum with the annoyance of a bell.

“Let's see again what the manual says...”

“I already know the fucking manual, Hinata!”

The girl's eyes widened, and she recoiled from her girlfriend's outburst. The anger was evident and even understandable. Sakura Haruno, the one who was a star and was always going a thousand an hour, tied to a chair and without the immediate patience to assimilate it. Hinata looked down and fiddled with her fingers.

“I'm sorry… it wasn't my intention.”

“It’d be better if you go home, I’ve had enough of feeling useless ... For today.”

“I’m really sorry, I…”

“Please, Hinata.”

Although what Sakura said sounded more like an order than to a request, Hinata did not add anything, except for the goodbye kiss that her girlfriend received coldly.

That same cold ended up keeping the girl awake until dawn, but it was the debacle in conjugated tears that each one kept in their respective beds, which encouraged them to do something for the other.

Sakura to apologize for her attitude, Hinata to change her empathy for the love that covers everything, even if she doesn't understand it.

With their hearts set on each other, they recalled the tragic events that led them to end this way.

********************* ********************* ********************* *********************

The darkness was beginning to beat the light. It was getting dark, but visibility still revealed the silhouette of two girls playing next to the pier. Sakura and Hinata, with joviality and tenderness on the cusp of falling in love at their short sixteen, sitting with their feet in the water.

“I will do it! I'll swim to the rock and show you that I could also be the star of the diving team; I don't care what Ino says.”

In between stolen kisses from Sakura and laughter that was heard alongside the first crickets. Hinata was smiling softly, enjoying her girlfriend’s energy that used to fill her with warmth.

“You don't have to prove anything to me, plus you already know Ino.”

Sakura stood up, letting go of her girlfriend's hand. Her will and the desire to feel the adrenaline that conquering every challenge left her, led her to jump into the water and submerge to start swimming to the huge rock that was on the other side.

Hinata looked at her, while she shook her head at the audacity she manifested in everything. That was one of the things that made her fall in love with Sakura; the freedom she lived with. It was a pleasure just to watch her exist, an extreme fascination that the Hyuga couldn't ignore, just like that moment.

The mauve eyes watched her girlfriend's head come out every so often to take a breath, while the distance between them grew. At last, Sakura touched the rock with her hands and instantly turned to look at Hinata and smile at her. The damp feet began to help her climb slowly, making sure twice to hold on firmly to some protrusion and fitting her feet in every nook and cranny.

The effort ended when she was able to sit on the rock and then pull herself up until she was standing on it. Hinata narrowed her eyes, barely appreciating the movement in which Sakura blew her a kiss with her hands and lowered herself to jump.

Sakura, for her part, watched the dark water and her mind made quick calculations of how far she would have to push herself in order to rid herself of the bulging rocks looming below. It was at least five meters high, and the race would have to be sped up to go far enough and land at the proper depth.

She stepped back again, counting back five steps. Good thing the rock was big enough, otherwise no one would have the courage to run and jump, as she was about to do.

3, 2, 1…

The initial impulse was good, Sakura perceived it the same as when she started to run from three quarters of the field towards the goal. It was going from zero to one hundred in just a fraction, but she was more than used to that lift off. The floor was about to run out and with that she prepared to bend her knees a little and take as much momentum as possible in the last two steps.

However, when the right leg leaned against the edge of the rock, the moisture left by herself before, betrayed her in the most brutal way possible.

The foot slipped. Sakura's momentum was nullified and she violently rushed down. The worst of the case is that she already had her center of gravity positioned forward, just a fraction of a second before she slipped. The inertia did its job, Sakura fell headfirst into the water, while the last rays of sunlight allowed Hinata to watch the crash.

Hiashi's daughter's scream occurred as she threw herself into the water to go after her girlfriend. She was never the best at athletics, but this time she didn't give up. Her arms worked their way through the water, swallowing some liquid that she ignored in her desperation to advance.

When she finally arrived, Sakura was sunk beside the rocks, inert as a scandalous amount of blood swirled around them in the scariest landscape she had ever witnessed. She took her in her arms and dragged her so that her head could be in the open air, then she gave her the kiss of life and luckily, the pink haired girl responded promptly. However, what gave her some peace soon turned into a different nightmare.

“I can’t move,”

Hinata's screams overshadowed the crickets, the sound of running water, and the music of some friends who were also enjoying the first party of the summer. Immediately, several approached the lake in order to respond to her call for help.

The next thing Hinata could remember would be the blue and red lights and the sirens that beat her intermittent crying. Paramedics who with a grimace, revealed the terrible state of her girlfriend. Upon arriving at the hospital and after the respective medical tests, Mr. and Mrs. Haruno received the sad news.

X-rays and the subsequent tomographies as well as complementary resonances that confirmed what the doctors had already anticipated: Severe neck injury.

Fourth and fifth vertebrae fractured, with oppression to the spinal cord and consequent injury to it. Loss of mobility and sensation from the neck down, on top of what all of it entailed; paralysis.

The collapse of illusions and dreams. The severed wings of the young woman and the despair and fears that came with it... In addition, guilt on Hinata, the same guilt that brought her down in the hospital corridor when her girlfriend's mother explained the situation to her.

The debacle of a newly blossomed button and the broken heart of whoever witnessed it right before their eyes.

********************* ********************* ********************* *********************

With the rays of the sun lighting up the sky, Hyuga left the comfort of the sheets to gain ground on all the tasks that her father overloaded on her shoulders.

She fulfilled this, yearning to make Hiashi change his mind and give her dreams a chance. The same dreams that, with what happened with Sakura, took on greater strength and filled her psyche with decision.

Hinata would be a nurse, she’d take care of people's lives with her characteristic tenderness, but she would spice up her courage with the strength that her girlfriend showed... And she would start immediately.

She changed her clothes to more decent ones and descended the stairs with renewed will. The sleepless night and the memories strengthened her walk and she tried to stay that way.

In no time, she was, once again in front of the Haruno's front door and they let her in with their usual kindness. If they had anything to be grateful for, it was the time and heartfelt support she provided for their daughter.

Hinata knocked on the door of her girlfriend's room and the characteristic "come in" didn't wait, nor did she have to say anything before Sakura spit out the same thing that hadn't let her sleep the night before.

“Before you say anything, I need you to forgive me. Yesterday I was..., it's no excuse, but...”

“You don't have to say anything, I'm sorry to pressure you like that.”

“No, Hinata, listen to me...”

“I don't want to hear it. Just tell me what clothes do you want to wear, let's go out.”

Sakura frowned. Although she understood what was coming out of Hinata's mouth, she couldn’t digest the intention behind it, nor that firmness in her voice, something completely out of the ordinary in her.

“Go out? Where?”

“On a date.”

With more love than Sakura thought she deserved, Hinata took time to help her get dressed. As they did so, she kept talking about the activities she had planned to do together at school. Sakura's green eyes scrutinized her girlfriend's movements and expressions, her throat tightened in a knot and the feelings that threatened to break out of her orbs, condensed into tears.

Gritting her teeth, she drowned out the tears and blamed the sunlight for crystallizing her eyes. Hinata smiled, she knew she was hiding behind a lie, but she wasn't going to dig; she wasn't going to expose her.

“Alright, dear. Let's go!”

Ten minutes later, they were walking down the sidewalk on their way to the park. It was the first time that Sakura had transcended the world from her wheelchair and that filled her with an inhospitable vulnerability.

She barely spoke, the silence was filled by the banal comments of the other, in addition to the noise of the cars moving down the street.

The habit of going for an ice cream before taking a seat on their favorite bench, was a routine that both maintained as something sacrosanct, and this time would be no exception.

Hinata asked for two cones, the same flavors as always, the vendor handed them to her while looking curiously at Sakura in the chair. Hinata caught that and directed him her sharpest gaze, intimidating him with the hostility he perceived in her.

She paid and turned around, suppressing the kindness that characterized her in order to teach a lesson to the vendor who was watching Sakura with that rude curiosity. But when she got to her, she realized that it would be difficult to maneuver with two ice cream cones and at the same time push the chair.

Sakura looked away, not wanting to see her struggle accommodating both ice creams in one hand and taking her to their bench with the other. Feeling humiliated, she endured the grief of the situation until they were both face to face; Hinata on the bench, Sakura tied to her hopelessness.

“Do you want to try mine?”

In a simple question, the pink haired girl broke down. She was not even able to eat a little ice cream on her own, something so easy and absurd became impossible in her situation and that was only the watershed for everything else that would come; school, life… Bullying.

People like the ice cream vendor, who were used to seeing her energetic and unstoppable, now looked at her like a freak. Sakura's sob could no longer be contained and Hinata could see in the foreground the cry of defeat and doom that split her girlfriend in half.

In another time, she wouldn’t have thought of having the emotional strength to give a word of comfort to anyone, she’d always considered herself as a nerd without charm, a crying girl who depended on everyone; weak, invisible. But since Sakura came into her life, her perspective on herself had taken a momentous turn. That pink-haired girl, with beautiful green eyes, had supported her when needed and taught her every day how valuable she was.

Hinata could never put into words her love for her or her gratitude for everything.

Sakura had built bridges of steel in between Hinata and her inaccessible willpower. It supported her in the fight for her dreams and diluted the negative feelings that stemmed from her father's continued disapproval.

Rising from the bench, she reached for one of the wildflowers growing in the grass. She knew she couldn't ease the pain, but at least she would try to give back a little of everything Sakura had given her. Hinata squatted in front of Sakura, filling her eyes and her smile with love trying to lighten the situation.

“It's going to be difficult, but I'm not going to leave you. I love you.”

With the utmost delicacy in the world, she brushed the cheeks bathed in tears, tracing the path of the salted drops that now trickled like a spring. Sakura paused at the feeling, stunned by her girlfriend's actions.

“Go ahead and get it out. I will hold you, you can rest in me.”

#sakura haruno #haikyuu hinata #sakuhina #naruto fanfiction #commission work #taking commissions #commission #fanfiction #trigger warnings #severe injury

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polaristranslations · 3 years

Text

The Twelfth Box

■ ■

Well, we've come a long way, but my story is finally reaching its climax—however, as for what lessons you'll take away from this story, I do not know. Calling it a lesson might be a bit of an exaggeration, but a tale, no matter its nature—as long as it is a tale told from one person to another—is a conversation. Even if the listener is listening in silence while the speaker is speaking, I believe it is still a conversation—I believe they are still exchanging words. Until one day in the future, when science has further developed and tales become entertainment that is machine-generated, I believe that tales, or episodes passed down from generation to generation, are a means of communication.

Even this story revolving around Hakobune Middle School's 66th Generation Student Council Executive Committee—it's a tale that's an unpleasant memory, a painful memory, and, in some places, a bittersweet memory for me. But in the end, it was not so much what was told but the act of telling it that was more meaningful.

And there was meaning in you listening to it.

So what I want to say is, thank you for listening to me.

■ ■

Chinu Namaji told me.

The reasons for my loss in the Formation Game.

"Well, I've been beating around the bush, but it wasn't any particular strategy worth putting on airs about—I'm sure even you've managed to guess at most of it, Kurokami-chan. You gathered only strong players, and I—well, it would be a bit mean to call them weak, but it might even be too presumptuous to call them players—I gathered only amateur players. If you think about it normally, your team had the overwhelming advantage, but the reason my team was able to win was exactly that—the reason it seemed like an advantage and actually was an advantage was the reason you lost, Kurokami-chan."

I listened to Chinu-senpai's words. I simply stayed quiet and listened.

Part of it was due to wanting to hear the reason I lost, but it seemed to me that she was trying to tell me something else, and if that was the case, I couldn't miss a single word of it.

That was the conversation between me and her.

Although, to that attitude of mine, Chinu-senpai laughed.

"Ahaha, it's not something you need to listen to so attentively. You'll be disappointed if you concentrate so hard—the point is, gathering only the strongest people does not make a strong team. This is why the theoretically viable all-star team is not necessarily the strongest team in the world. It's all about balance."

"Balance—are you saying that if everyone is at the same level of strength, then balance comes naturally?"

"Sort of, but not quite—strength is after all, limited to just one position. Even if you gathered nine pitchers that could throw a fastball at 150 km/h, that team isn't going to win the Best Nine Award, right?"

At the time, I didn't know very much about baseball, so I didn't understand the example itself, but now, there wasn't a metaphor more apt than this—of course, a metaphor was just a metaphor, so it wasn't like it applied directly to basketball.

But it was true that I hadn't thought about balance.

I simply called out to seniors that seemed to be athletic—maybe that would've been fine for individual games, but because it was a team game, it apparently backfired.

Backfired?

No, that wasn't it.

That sort of plan wouldn't just backfire normally—normally, anyone would gather players just as I did in order to form their team. That was the obvious strategy, and in fact, Chinu-senpai herself had guided me into following that strategy. She explained the rules of the game as if who I scouted was important—thinking about it, her going on about all-star teams and so forth was preparation, laying down the groundwork, wasn't it?

On the other hand, she must have quickly finished gathering her members in order to use the time spent waiting for me to instruct the five people she gathered on how to fight as a team.

How to handle the ball and pass it—in other words, teamwork.

Normally, if she were going to discuss why she won, that would be all—but the real reason she won was because she was able to make me not realize that this game was a team game. She'd made me think that it was an extension of an individual game—and, with me not seeing it as a team game, there was no way that frame of mind would be enough to beat her.

Rather than backfiring.

It never fired to begin with.[?]

"Well, in this case, your strong players ended up getting a bit arrogant, which made them unsuited for an off-the-cuff team game—in contrast, my weak players knew their own limits, and thus were able to follow my instructions perfectly. But that might just be secondary—after all, when I lost to President Kumagawa, we were definitely trying to face him with our teamwork."

"When you—lost to President Kumagawa?"

"If I said that, would it be a bit misleading?"

Chinu-senpai said.

With a lighthearted tone.

I wondered why she was being so lighthearted, but perhaps it was to keep the atmosphere from growing too heavy—in that sense, you could say her attempt was fruitless.

"After all, after that match ended, he said something like this—'Again, I couldn't win'."

Again, I couldn't win.

Chinu Namaji had said she'd lost, and Kumagawa Misogi had said he couldn't win.

In that case—it was a game with no victor.

Of course, it shouldn't need to be said now that that was basically Kumagawa Misogi's forte, but at the time, I couldn't believe that it was possible for a game to end with those results.

"By the way, the game we played was a game based on rules quite different from those of the Formation Game—however, the strategy he used was mostly the same. I... No, the girls' basketball team ended up being thoroughly beaten by his 'weakness'. We were beaten to a pulp, beaten so badly that we couldn't get up again—and then everybody quit."

"Quit—the club?"

The deserted gymnasium.

The solo club activities.

I figured that was the reason, but the reality was slightly different—the members that had been beaten up by Kumagawa Misogi were no longer here, not because they had sent in their resignations from the club.

They hadn't even sent in their resignations.

"What they quit wasn't the club, but basketball itself,"

said Chinu-senpai.

"They were unable to renew themselves, to flip the switch on their lives—they're still being dragged along by their defeat. Being dragged along slowly, and continuing to live slowly... No, continuing to lose slowly—it's tragic."

That's why I'm here,

said Chinu-senpai.

"That's why I resigned as Student Council Treasurer—I guess if I wanted to say it in a cool way, then I wanted to make sure they had a place to return to, I guess? But it's not anything that cool. It's more like atonement."

"...And by atonement, you mean?"

"So basically, I ended up getting those girls mixed up in the match between me and President Kumagawa—although the actual circumstances were a bit more complicated."

From then on, she began to speak evasively. Instead of getting to the point, her explanation felt far more ambiguous than her prior explanations—so at the time, it was a little hard for me to understand, but now, I understood the circumstances. And I understood why it was so hard for her to speak.

To sum it up, it was like this.

Chinu Namaji, who had been appointed as Hakobune Middle School's 66th Generation Student Council Executive Committee Treasurer, was also a major player in the girls' basketball team—it didn't seem like she was forced to make a decision between the two, but I suppose it depends on how you look at it. The facts may not be so simple, but it was likely the club members thought that if Chinu-senpai were not involved in Student Council activities, she would concentrate more on basketball—it was likely they even wanted her to quit the Student Council. So, it seemed that the Student Council and the basketball team collided. The actual details were a bit more complex—perhaps Chinu-senpai couldn't excuse her teammates getting involved with the Student Council Executive Committee led by the infamous Kumagawa Misogi—basically, the girls' basketball team recklessly bet everything on their team leader, Chinu Namaji, and challenged Kumagawa Misogi to a match.

And then—they lost.

"...Well, this doesn't just apply to athletes—anyone who normally puts in the effort and works hard would think like this. No matter how much you may regret losing to someone better or greater than you, it's not impossible to accept that loss. It's just a math problem. It's natural that 2 is bigger than 1—and if you reflect upon not having been 3, not having been able to become 3, then that can become your next goal. But, if you're 2 and you lose to 1, or even lose to a minus, then what is there to reflect upon? How can you use that loss to proceed? Do you just accept that the world is like that and give up? Just accept that being better is not always rated highly, that excellence is not always recognized? Yeah—and so, everybody gave up."

No, not everyone.

After all, there's me,

murmured Chinu-senpai.

"Being better is not always rated highly, and excellence is not always recognized, but whatever—I can deal with that. Even if the world doesn't understand, it's fine as long as I understand—or so I put on a bold front. But what I can't deal with is when something that's stupid or worthless is given a high rating by society—that just kills my motivation to live. I wasn't able to accept my powerless defeat. It felt like all my effort, all the hard work we'd put in together—it all came to nothing. Like I'd been thrust with the idea that our lives were meaningless. And I lost all motivation for everything."

Born without meaning, live without relations, and die without worth.

That was what had been said.

By Chinu-senpai—and by Kumagawa Misogi.

"Well, ironically enough, with that as the reason, I was able to resign from the position of Treasurer, and keep watch over the basketball team. So in that sense, President Kumagawa wasn't able to win."

That was true.

He hadn't achieved the results he wanted—with the result being him losing one of his officers, what exactly was he trying to do? As a result of the match, both the basketball team and the Student Council Executive Committee had experienced losses. Well, that was more or less what Kumagawa Misogi was made of—but to me at the time, it just seemed like an uncanny act.

"Basically, that's why I quit the Student Council Executive Committee—and why you became my successor, Kurokami-chan. Do you understand now?"

"......"

I had no choice but to respond that I did understand—it wasn't like I could just deny her past. However, it was hard to tell what exactly I did understand. I had certainly wanted to learn why Chinu-senpai had quit the Student Council Executive Committee, and why the girls' basketball team was in this state... But now that I'd learned it, now that I'd understood, all that was left was a feeling of dissatisfaction.

No.

Perhaps I was angry.

Not at President Kumagawa—but at Chinu-senpai.

It might be a bit irrational, but why didn't she try and face President Kumagawa again, try and have a rematch with everyone in the girls' basketball team?—I may have felt that way.

It wasn't the time to give up, it wasn't the time to just wallow in your powerlessness—I may have wanted to say something like that.. But I couldn't. There was no way I could. So that I couldn't say something like that, she had made me play this Formation Game—in the same way she lost to Kumagawa Misogi, she made me suffer a defeat.

And that was probably a fraction, less than one-hundredth, of the "sense of defeat" experienced after coming face-to-face with President Kumagawa—at the very least, after having felt it, I couldn't bring myself to criticize the members of the girls' basketball team.

"Well, no need to concern yourself with us—that's our problem. It's not like I'm trying to tell you to take down our foe for us, to get revenge for us, or anything like that."

"Eh—but!"

Revenge was a strong word, but.

I'd been sure that that was what she was trying to say.

After all, Chinu-senpai had just said something to the effect of "taking Kumagawa Misogi down"—hadn't she? With even the condition of "using that same method"—so, that's what I had assumed all this time.

However, that wasn't it.

Instead of that—it was, to say the least, for her junior.

And for her successor, some pertinent advice.

"In the near future, you'll end up facing off against President Kumagawa—I don't know how it'll happen, and I don't know what will cause it, but there's no way a person like you and a person like him won't collide at some point. But when that time comes, challenging his 1 with your 2, challenging his minus with your plus—that's all meaningless to him. He won't take any damage at all from that. Kurokami-chan. If you want to win against Kumagawa Misogi—you will first have to begin by losing to him."

■ ■

Chinu-senpai's words were like some sort of Zen dialogue, so at the time, it was hard for me to comprehend them—and rather than a Zen dialogue, it felt more like an impossible dialogue. However, it was still frighteningly pertinent advice.

In fact, when the time came for me to settle things with Kumagawa Misogi here at Hakoniwa Academy, we unexpectedly ended up settling things in such a way—Former President Hinokage's "Evilize Training Camp" was made with that in mind, too. However, this basically meant that I had been unable to follow or make use of the advice given to me in middle school, which meant that I'd failed to fulfill the request of Chinu-senpai.

I'm ashamed of myself.

After losing the match, I couldn't even carry out the request that I got as the penalty—if the news would reach Chinu-senpai's ears that belatedly... After three years, I was able to settle things with him, then it would be a great comfort to me.

However, there was nothing special about Chinu-senpai.

In the sense that she had been a part of the Student Council Executive Committee, she was a special case, but like her, there were students all over the school whose lives had been turned upside down by President Kumagawa. There were students all over the school, including myself, who were ruined by the mixture of good and evil, mixed with victory and defeat.

I'd even go so far as to say that the entire school was like that—

With the exception of my brother and the Vice President.

However, it went without saying that when I heard the story from Chinu-senpai—when I heard the story from her through the form of a competition—it was a clear turning point for me.

The next day.

After school, I headed for the Student Council office.

Of course, I'd gone there once early in the morning, but at that time, the office had been empty—despite mustering all that motivation, it felt like a huge letdown in the end. But I didn't falter, pulled myself together, and opened the door to the Student Council office after school.

This time, President Kumagawa.

Kumagawa Misogi was there.

He was alone—neither the Vice President nor the Secretary nor the General Affairs Manager was there.

I hadn't intended on changing my plans had anyone been there, but this was certainly a favorable situation for me.

If I was going to confront him, then one-on-one was ideal.

「Heya, Medaka-chan—what's the matter? With such a dignified look on your face,」

President Kumagawa said.

「Although, Medaka-chan, I guess you're always making that dignified face, aren't you—even though you'd be better off living your life a bit more cheerfully and loosely. Then you'd be more popular.」

To those cheerful and loose words of his, I said,

"President Kumagawa."

It was a proclamation.

"The responsibility of the Treasurer position of the Student Council Executive Committee—I will humbly accept."

「...Huh? I thought we'd already finished discussing that matter?」

"No. To me, this is the starting line."

It was true that I'd been performing my duties as Treasurer in the Student Council Executive Committee for a couple of days now—but now, I was truly determined to fulfill my duties.

It was this very moment that I was truly "promoted" as the Treasurer, in the truest sense.

That I decided to work under Kumagawa Misogi—that I decided to fight against Kumagawa Misogi.

As a comparison, it was sort of like how a shogi piece gets "promoted" after entering enemy lines—although it was more like a betrayal than a simple turnover.

「Hmm. I'm just thankful to hear that, but... What led to this change of mind? Should I hear it?」

"I spoke with Chinu-senpai,"

I said. I had no intention of hiding it from him.

"I learned—about my predecessor, and the details that led to her being relieved of her position."

In actuality, instead of being relieved, she resigned on her own—President Kumagawa actually tried to hold her back—but this was neither a misunderstanding nor an attempt to mislead.

But even so, I expected a rebuttal.

And yet,

「Chinu...?」

said President Kumagawa, tilting is head.

「...Who's that?」

That was.

The reaction of someone who'd heard the name for the first time—as if he wasn't even sure that the word was supposed to be a name.

「Also, what do you mean by predecessor? The 66th Generation Student Council Executive Committee's Treasurer has always been only you, Medaka-chan.」

"...Is that so."

There was no meaning to disputing it.

Whether he'd actually forgotten, or whether he was simply concealing it, I had no desire to even think about it—however, I keenly felt it.

From now on—this was the opponent I would have to fight against.

I resolved myself to face off against Kumagawa Misogi—the Minus that crawls from chaos, Kumagawa Misogi. It was like a joke, pitting a Treasurer against an incalculable man, but this was my reality here at Hakobune Middle School.

「Is that all you wanted to say? Then, get to work, Medaka-chan. Maguro-chan and Kouki-chan will be here soon—along with Anshin'in-san, too.」

"Anshin'in-sa—"

「Don't worry, you might not be used to it in the beginning, but I'm sure you'll get the hang of it in an instant, Medaka-chan. I look forward to our long relationship together.」

Kumagawa said with a smile.

It was a smile with no emotion behind it.

「I'm sure it'll be an unforgettable experience.」

■ ■

And so, Hakobune Middle School's 66th Generation Student Council Executive Committee was established. What happened after that, you should know very well—we fought, we broke down, we rampaged, and we became a mess.

There were disagreements, there were misunderstandings, and there were mistakes.

Things didn't go the way I planned, and of course, Kumagawa Misogi never had any plans to begin with, so we never arrived at a future that had been predicted by anybody—power and intrigue only swirled, finesse only flailed, and eagerness never saw the light of day.

It was out of anyone's hands, and no one could be held responsible.

A battle with no victors, that would make no one happy, began and ended.

No, it failed to even end.

It simply carried on, unsettled.

I didn't know what Chinu-senpai felt as she watched it happen—perhaps she was disappointed in me, or perhaps she never expected anything from me to begin with, thinking, "Ah, of course".

At any rate, I failed. And I don't think I managed to recover from it here in Hakoniwa Academy. That—those things—were a failure that cannot be recovered from.

There were too many things that couldn't come back—and there were too many people that couldn't return.

And so, for you—for you all—I want you to not repeat the same mistakes I made. That's what I wish. From the bottom of my heart, I hope that you don't make the same mistakes again—I know you're going to say that you would never do something like that, but you know, something like that can happen to anyone.

Just like how Chinu-senpai wasn't anyone special.

Kurokami Medaka and Kumagawa Misogi weren't anyone special, either.

When two people meet and get involved, a tale is born—though the two of us in middle school could only produce a bad ending like this. But even if it's a bad ending, even if it's a childish, or even juvenile—there is no doubt that it is still a tale.

As long as I can tell it to you like this.

Torai Kudaki.

Hakoniwa Academy's 100th Generation Student Council Executive Committee General Affairs Manager Torai Kudaki—I can no longer participate in whatever Student Council activities you'll perform now, but if there's any advice I can give you as a pioneer on the front lines and as a defeated soldier, it is to be the hero of a tale that you can tell, a tale that you are willing to tell to someone else.

And then, someday, you should tell it to a junior that admires you.

The battle you fought—and, of course, the happy ending you achieved.

■ ■

Hm? Chinu-senpai?

What happened to Chinu-senpai after that?

She's still well, even today—in Hakobune Middle School, the basketball team never managed to be reformed, but she was able to move on to high school as a competent player, running across the court even now.

Yes, that was one thing that President Kumagawa taught me.

Even if a tale ends with a bad ending—

People do not end with a bad ending.

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nichester · 4 years

Text

Review: Extracurricular

Media Type: Korean Drama

Genre: Teen drama/Crime/Noir

Summary: Ji Soo, a diligent but poor high school student is saving for college and paying rent by moonlighting as a pimp. His precarious balance of school and work begins to fall apart when another student, Gyu-ri, discovers the truth about his job and wants in. Things spiral quickly out of their control.

Why you might care: If you enjoy watching teenagers do crime and get realistically in over their heads; if you are interested in dark shows with Really Good performances (in particular from the leads, who have enough chemistry for us to buy their toxic but unbreakable bond) or if you are interested in any of the themes of crime and class struggle.

Why you might not care: Give this one a pass if you don't like your shows dark and/or are looking for a happy ending. Importantly, pay attention to potential triggers in this show! (Suicidal ideation, self harm, violence against women, sexual assault, hallucinations, and torture all occur, although not always explicitly, on this show. Feel free to message me if you need more detailed warnings!)

Trope Bingo! Partners in crime/Bonnie and Clyde; enemies to sorta? lovers, literally I have no idea how to categorize their relationship

If you liked _______, try ______!

Can't say I've watched much in this vein! I've heard that School 2013 or Sky Castle are both excellent dramas about struggling high schoolers, but which have less grim endings. The Get Down is a great netflix show also about marginalized teenagers struggling to pursue their dreams despite the crime and violence they're surrounded by.

~Spoilers (not anything detailed but just to be safe) and overall thoughts under the cut~

Plot: I'll be honest, I'm not a big plot girl. Unless there's something stand-out about a story's plot, I tend to consider it more as a vehicle for character development than anything else. In this show's case, I was on the edge of my seat in horror for most episodes. The plot unfolds in a seemingly inevitable negative spiral that takes all of our characters down and leaves them far worse off than when they started. This show did rely a lot on coincidence, both positive and negative. Usually I would consider this a flaw, but I think it worked well here as a way to portray a random, unfeeling world around the characters and to emphasize the precarious nature of their situation.

Central character(s): I was really attached to both of the leads. They had the convincing contradictions and vulnerabilities of deeply troubled teenagers, and their different traumas and personalities played off of each other well. For all of Ji Soo's smarts and skill, he has a startling naivete and a tendency to panic when things don't go according to plan. Gyu-ri is equally smart, but loud and manipulative in contrast to Ji Soo's awkwardness and isolation. Gyu-ri pushes Ji Soo to try to expand his business to make up for his unexpected losses (decisions that drive the plot), but this goes against his every cautious instinct. Ji Soo tends to focus on maintaining what little he has, while Gyu-ri fully embraces the philosophy "the best defense is a good offense." Indeed, Gyu-ri is reckless to the point of suicidal, but the later episodes reveal a protective instinct that seems to be as unexpected to her as it is to the audience, an instinct which continually drives her to throw herself into harms way in defense of Ji Soo. The strongest development that both characters had was in their relationship with each other, which led them to be both braver and more open than they had ever been in their lives. But their involvement with each other and their reluctance to cut ties is part of how they got to where the show leaves them--cornered and bloody.

Romance: Technically this show has no romance, but I think it's fair to say that the leads develop an obsessive, Bonnie and Clyde-style relationship that is partially romantic in nature. Ji Soo has a distant crush on Gyu-ri at the beginning of the show, which she exploits. Honestly, some of the funniest moments in the show come from the contradiction between Ji Soo's side-hustle as a pimp and his complete and total inability to speak normally in Gyu-ri's presence. His disillusionment with her is genuinely painful, but necessary for their relationship to become one of equals. Their grudging partnership is abrasive, but their bond feels very convincing. No matter how much they resent each other, they're more strongly drawn to each other. (Watching Ji Soo pack up her discarded chip bags to bring with him on the run is just….. Its so….. Kids make me cry ok!) It's clear for both of these lonely and deeply messed up kids that simply having a partner--someone who they can reveal their ugly sides to and depend on--is an intoxicating feeling. By the end of the show, they'd kill for each other and probably die for each other. The show smartly doesn't ever "consummate" the romance--they don't really have enough downtime when they're not actively fighting to make it convincing, and despite everything they've done both characters are still very young. If there is a second season, this is a ship that is likely to sail (but possibly crash and burn).

Side Characters/Side plots: In a show like this one, which depicts a marginalized and frequently abused group of women, the presence of sympathetic characters who are also members of that group is crucial, or the drama would feel exploitative. This show's most prominent side plot depicts an underage sex worker, her post-traumatic stress response to a violent client, her struggle over whether or not to speak to the police, and her desire to find genuine human connection, whether it is with her shitty boyfriend or with her pimp. (Their odd father/daughter relationship was one of the most moving parts of the show!) While I thought the writing was sympathetic to Minhee's situation, she is frequently used as a reminder of the human consequences of the other character's actions. This is both good and bad--it's important to remind the characters and the viewer of how damaging their behavior is, but it also risks treating her as a more of a tool for the lead's development than a thoroughly explored character. Up until the last episode I think the writers gave her a distinct enough arc to avoid this pitfall, but depending on her ultimate fate (in a theoretical season 2) I could change my mind.

Tone: The tone is dark, tense, and constantly on the verge of slipping into chaos. Hallucinatory sequences play out as Ji Soo and Gyu-ri imagine themselves killing people, destroying things, or being buried alive. These sequences emphasize the character's instability, while also establishing the camera as an unreliable narrator of events in a way that pays off in the ambiguous final moments. The fantastic acting is buoyed by the directing to depict the precarious state of the leads' minds as their situation spirals further out of their control. Ji Soo's scenes feel claustrophobic and paralyzing--when he ventures out of his apartment to talk to Gyu-ri or to go to the café you get the blinking, shuffling sense of something emerging from a cave. Gyu-ri, on the other hand, is a loose cannon, and her scenes have a jittery, dangerous edge to them. As a whole, the show is excruciatingly tense and frustratingly unresolved.

Theme: This show is a full-fledged tragedy. It is a brilliant example of a negative change arc, with all of the characters taking more and more drastic actions while still managing to retain our loyalty. I think the writer's are clear that although none of these kids have made good choices, the real tragedy lies in how they have been abandoned, used, or neglected by the adults in their lives. The few adults who show any care for them are either relatively powerless themselves (like Mr. Lee and their teacher) or too late to avert disaster (like the prosecutor). Extracurricular is a grim look at how we fail vulnerable children to the point that even a boring, average life seems like an impossible dream.

#reviews #extracurricular #extracurricular netflix #i really liked this show guys!#but it is definitely dark and was a p upsetting watch #with that in mind #please more people watch this! im going nuts over here like like 5 other people!#yeah im going nutty over this show please interact #watch me post this wholeass review and it doesnt even show up in the tag

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paipayaseeds · 3 years

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Haiyato had let out a small laugh, a little out of it--different from his normal, carefree one because they were exposed to the eyes of many--being careful of his image. he had always been blind to his actions, unconsciously doing as what he was supposed to, especially when others were watching him. it had been habit at this point.

he blinked at Iris’ actions, stopping the rolling cart with his foot as he held Akane almost defensively, as if Iris had tried to openly attack them. he wasn’t aware of it though, maybe he was just jumpy.

though, from the people around him--whom he didn’t exactly want to see--he could see that...around them, if he did decide to put the girl in the cart, he wouldn’t be the odd one out.

his actions contradicted his thinking--he wasn’t going to cook or eat her, he wasn’t going to hurt her, he wasn’t going to put her into shock or anything of the sort. he just wanted to...calm her down. make sure that she had a reason to obey him and not try to kill him.

though, he supposed he could use Iris as a way of threatening her, but he doubted that would work much, as the girl... she was now a despair--someone who wants despair and is for despair--and wouldn't mind being beaten into submission if she wanted.

well, he wasn't unwilling to mention Iris, of course, but to keep the act up that he really had been brainwashed by Junko, he needed some grand plan that would scare her into the despair she craved so much.

"i'm just… going to cook for her," he spoke, rolling the cart that had the unconscious despair inside of it, "Akane had always loved food, but if she doesn't calm down after then…. i'll have to improvise, i guess."

his grip tightened on the handle of the cart, sighing as he calmly rolled along the streets--as calmly as he could.

"but i'm... not sure if i'll have everything i need, nor do i know if any of the ingredients are good, so… i'd also like your help, if you'd be willing," his gaze was anywhere but Iris, both embarrassed and scared of his effort, "it's fine if not! i can make do with the skills i have.." it felt like he left off on an odd note, though it could have just been his overthinking.

as soon as the three had approached a building, it had been the center of Haiyato's attention. it wasn't extravagant or fancy, or tidied up to cater to his "likings", but it was… normal--still affected by the whole world ending--but, normal.

he could feel himself get a little giddy as he quickly rolled the cart inside, avoiding the body near the doors out of respect and trying to hide a small smile forming on his face. he'd never been in an apartment building before--it was always over-the-top hotels or too-clean houses with people that were always licking the bottom of his mother's shoes.

he inhaled slowly, the noise that had reminded him of everything--screaming, yelling, crying, guns--grounding him again. his tense shoulders from excitement had relaxed, knuckles turning white from how he handled the cart.

he bit his lip, trying to ignore the sounds and remain excited to see "normal" things, "let's go on the elevator!" he suggested, not waiting for an answer as he rushed towards a sign that led towards the machines, "wait, what floor do we take?" his voice seemed artificial as the doors opened with loud creaks, and he stepped inside the small space with a gulp.

the apartment was nice. if it were a sunny day with blue skies, the windows that followed the elevator up would have been nice to look at, and calming the tensed Haiyato.

his back faced the window, hands going to cover his ears.

now that he had nothing to distract himself with, all he could do was stand still and listen. but he really didn't want to do that.

Izuru watched as Haiyato practically skipped into the apartment building, the excitement he had been emitting, clear as day. With a focused demeanour, his red eyes scanned the machine from the outside; judging from the broken down frame and the dented elevator doors, it had been severely affected by the chaos.

Even so, the idiot Haiyato seemed to disregard that fact and went inside anyway. The braided man had to follow, knowing if he didn't, Haiyato would somehow get himself into another harmful situation.

Silently stepping inside behind the way-too-excited man, he pressed the button of the floor he had somehow remembered from seeing the outside of the building that hadn't been too affected.

Glancing over to the boy who had his hands over his ears, Izuru's mind immediately went back to the time Haiyato had done his hair for him.

Izuru bit his tongue, eyebrows creasing as he heard his own strange and peculiar thought ring throughout his head, 'Doesn't playing with hair make him less stressed- God damn it, why do I remember that.' Since when had he started caring about whether he was stressed?

Then again, theoretically speaking, it'd be better for both of them if Haiyato's stress levels lowered.

Clearing his throat and mind of the thought, he muttered bluntly underneath his breath as if his time had been oh-so-precious to him. “This elevator is inefficient.” Then again, he had been very emotionally distant.

You know what? No. This wasn't weird unless he made it weird. Whatever Izuru had been planning to say next, had been completely out of the fact; it would only inconvenience the two if Haiyato threw a tantrum— Okay maybe that was a little harsh- No, it wasn't.

Izuru had temporarily left his body for a moment, as he had been focusing on the battling thoughts in his head. God, why did this always happen?

Coughing as if he had a gumball stuck in his throat, he suddenly broke the silence with his blunt tone, which unusually raised and lowered awkwardly. "... You said something about how hair always calmed your nerves before a shoot," He stated, seemingly having more to say but pausing for literally no reason.

Looking straight ahead, he refused to make eye contact as he glued his eyes to the elevator doors in front of him. Acknowledging the boy's stress, he continued, "I don't care if you touch my hair or not,"

His tone had been flat as usual, as if he didn't care whether the boy touched his hair or not; which had obviously been a lie. "..." Izuru definitely had more to say, but for whatever reason, he had stopped there, letting the Haiyato choose what he wanted to do with that remark.

#mod chia #tag anon #rp #UYHBAJSKJHGBASASGKHJBSDAHUSJBKAFDGHJBK

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tsarisfanfiction · 4 years

Text

Melt V

Fandom: Thunderbirds Rating: Teen Genre: Hurt/Comfort/Angst Characters: Brains, Virgil Tracy, John Tracy, Alan Tracy, MAX

Part 5 of my entry for @gumnut-logic‘s SensorySunday: Smell. Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Nope, this fic is not back on track at all. Thanks to Nutty for helping me with Virgil... although Virgil is also the reason we’re back off the rails again, so there’s that. This is my first time writing TAG!Brains (I have some TOS!Brains in a wip but his stutter is different, and there’s no MAX). It’s also always awkward writing the pov of someone smarter than me...

“I-It doesn’t make sense!” Brains declared to MAX, who whistled back at him sadly. His hands were shaking, and he curled them into balls. John’s call, interrupting some Thunderbird Three maintenance and potential upgrades, had been full of nothing but bad news. Scott hospitalised, Gordon heading home with broken bones, and all because one of their pods – a pod Brains had designed – had exploded on them.

Calculations whizzed past in front of him, all the variables and what-ifs of a HeliPod’s construction. Had he made a mistake? Was he sending the boys out with a ticking time bomb? Mr Tracy would never forgive him for such an error.

MAX whistled at him again, insisting that he hadn’t made a mistake, but he just shook his head at his creation.

“N-no, MAX. There m-must be an explanation. Thunderbird Five d-didn’t detect anyone e-else in the vicinity, s-so it must be an issue with the HeliPod.” But what? The schematics didn’t highlight anything out of the ordinary. Information streamed from Thunderbird Two on the exact makeup of that particular pod showed nothing odd, either.

He started again, back from the top. What was he missing? Nothing was coming up, all the calculations were perfect, assembly had gone without issue, no issues with any of the parts used. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

In the corner of the display, Scott’s suit telemetry taunted him. Another failure. He needed to look into that as well, find a way to improve its heat resistance. What if Virgil hadn’t been so close? HeliPods could go a long way from Thunderbird Two. Their suits were supposed to protect them. It had failed.

Was there a way to get neoprene to resist higher temperatures? Would he need to argue with Scott about replacing the fingerless gloves with full-cover like his brothers’? Scott had said he didn’t need them, that the extra dexterity made piloting easier, and Brains preferred not to clash horns with the eldest Tracy brother if he could, but he couldn’t let this happen again.

MAX whistled at him again, turning around in a circle before heading out of the room. His concentration broken by the sudden departure, Brains heard the unmistakable sound of Thunderbird Two returning to her hangar. He hadn’t heard Thunderbird One, but that wasn’t overly unusual when he was distracted by his work.

Thunderbird Two. Virgil.

He hurried to the hangar, arriving just as a stretcher bearing a bundled-up Gordon was offloaded. Alan was already there, bouncing up and down nervously at his brother’s side, but it was Virgil Brains needed.

“V-Virgil!” he called, running across the hangar and almost falling flat on his face.

“Can it wait, Brains?” the larger man asked, frowning down at his brother. “I have to get Gordon settled.”

“Do you have the H-heliPod?” he asked. Virgil’s face went dark.

“Buried under an avalanche,” he said.

“O-oh.” Brains needed that HeliPod. Calculations didn’t tell him what had gone wrong; he needed to see the actual remains and analyse them.

“Brains, I have to get Gordon sorted, then get back to the hospital. The HeliPod is not important right now,” Virgil said firmly, but Brains shook his head.

“N-no, Virgil. I n-need to see that HeliPod a-as soon as possible. U-until I can determine w-what happened to make it e-explode, I c-cannot allow any of y-you to use a-any of the p-pods.” Brains didn’t like arguing, let alone with Virgil, who was usually the calmest and most reasonable of the on-Earth Tracys, but this was important. Too important to wait. “I-I can take Thunderbird Two myself.”

“No!” Virgil snapped. “The site’s too dangerous.”

“Uh, hey, Virg?” Gordon interjected, making Brains jump. He hadn’t even realised the aquanaut was conscious. “You know you’ve got to go back anyway? Thunderbird One?”

“Thunderbird One can wait,” Virgil said stubbornly. “Sorry, Brains. You’ll have to do your assessments another way. We can’t retrieve the HeliPod.” He stalked away, towing the stretcher with him.

MAX whistled mournfully.

“I know, MAX,” he replied. “I n-need to see the remains t-to see what happened.”

“I’ll take you!” Alan appeared at his shoulder. “Come on, let’s find out what happened to my brothers!”

“ALAN!” Virgil roared. There was the sound of heavy boots pounding across the hangar floor, and Virgil was back in front of them, every inch the angry bear he could be when provoked. “Absolutely not. You are staying right here on Tracy Island with Gordon.”

“But… Scott will be happier if Thunderbird One’s back home,” Alan protested, poking the bear in a way Brains could never gather the courage to do. “And Brains is right! We have to know what happened to Scott and Gordon. What if it was the Hood?”

“Then we leave Kayo and the GDF to deal with it,” Virgil growled. “John is already in contact with them. Once Scott’s out of surgery, Kayo’s going to the site to see what she can find.”

“She’s going alone?” Alan gasped. “But- isn’t that dangerous?”

“Kayo’s trained for that sort of thing,” Virgil pointed out. “You are not.”

“But… but…” Alan started. “But if Thunderbird Two needs to go back to retrieve Thunderbird One anyway, why not go at the same time as Kayo?”

“Alan-”

“It’s in an avalanche zone, right? So if we wait too long, there might be another one and then Thunderbird One will be even harder to get!”

Brains refrained from mentioning that it was possible, if time-consuming, to construct a brand new, upgraded, Thunderbird One, and that the boys got unhealthily attached to their machines despite his warnings to the contrary. While it was true, it would do nothing except give Virgil another reason to not go back, and while Thunderbird One was replaceable, the information from the damaged HeliPod was not.

Virgil looked unimpressed, arms crossed and unmoving in the face of his youngest brother’s arguments. Brains feared that he’d need to hijack Thunderbird Two himself the moment Virgil was out of the hangar, but he was no pilot and certainly had no head for heights nor speed.

“Virgil,” he started, determined to argue his case one more time, but was interrupted by John appearing.

“Kayo thinks it’s a good idea,” the ginger said. “She says she’ll meet you there.”

“John-”

“It’s too dangerous for one of you to go alone to a live avalanche site,” John steamrollered. Brains didn’t often get to see John overriding any of his brothers, but even through the hologram and his limited understanding of fellow humans, he could tell that John was angry. “Brains is right. There is absolutely no sign of anyone else there on the ridge that EOS or Thunderbird Five can detect, but the HeliPod didn’t explode until they were out of your sight, which means that something is not right. None of the theoretical calculations Brains or I have run so far explain that, so we need to at least get detailed scans of the HeliPod, if not the physical remains.”

“I-”

“We’re looking at best case scenario, Thunderbird Two’s pods have a potentially fatal flaw, and worst case scenario, someone is actively trying to kill us – and came far too close to succeeding today. We need answers, Virgil, and we can’t wait for them. If you can’t leave Gordon, I’ll be down in fifteen minutes to take Thunderbird Two and Brains out myself.”

“John-”

“Thunderbird Two is going back there no matter what, Virgil,” John told him firmly. “The only say you get is who’s on board.”

Virgil looked furious, glaring at his brother’s hologram. Brains waited with baited breath, Alan alongside him, as a silent battle of wills took place between the second and third Tracy sons.

“I don’t like it,” Virgil said finally, his tone leaving Brains in no doubt that Virgil absolutely hated it. “But no-one’s piloting my ‘bird into an avalanche zone except me. And none of you are coming with me.”

“But Virgil-”

“Alan, you are going to stay right here with Gordon.” The blond pouted but nodded.

“T-take MAX,” Brains insisted, quietly relieved that he was banned from the flight. Thunderbird Two was magnificent, but like the other Thunderbirds had a tendency to make him sick. His robot whistled eagerly, bouncing on his wheels to show his enthusiasm for the idea.

Virgil surveyed him for a moment, brown eyes severe and obviously unhappy with the situation.

“Fine,” he caved, clearly realising that there was no additional risk to including a robot in the flight. “But I’m getting Gordon settled first. Alan, come on. And John?”

“Yes, Virgil?”

“If you’re not down here by the time I get back from the medical bay, I’ll drag you down myself.”

Brains strongly disagreed with that demand. Thunderbird Five had the most sophisticated computers in International Rescue, and would be crucial to the investigation.

“I’ll be there,” John promised. Virgil nodded and stalked back across the hangar with Alan in tow. Brains didn’t watch him go.

“But John!” he protested. “Thunderbird Five’s c-computers will be crucial in the investigation.”

“It’s fine, Brains. EOS can give us all the information we need,” John assured him. “If I don’t come down, Virgil isn’t going to go at all.”

“I-if you say so.” Brains was dubious, but there was nothing more he could do. “C-come on, MAX, let’s get you r-ready for the mountains.”

MAX gave an enthusiastic whistle and eagerly led the way back to the lab.

Refitting him didn’t take long, and soon he had MAX ready and waiting for Virgil in Thunderbird Two. Brains himself settled in his lab chair, his goggles settled comfortably over his eyes to show him everything MAX’s optical sensors transmitted.

Virgil took rather longer to appear, presumably awaiting John’s descent from Thunderbird Five before entering his launch chute, but he finally did so, greeting MAX cordially enough. Brains thought he seemed a little more settled with the idea and part of him wondered if his brothers had continued the conversation out of his earshot.

“Okay then, MAX, let’s go get Thunderbird One, and find out what happened to that HeliPod. Brains, you ready?”

“R.A.D.”

“Alright then.” The cargo transporter moved, trundling forwards onto the runway. Brains didn’t need MAX to look out of the window to imagine the launch ramp engaging itself; nor did he need the audio sensors to hear the rumble of the main engines igniting. “Thunderbird Two is go!”

Part 6

#sensorysunday #sensorysunday2020 #thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds are go fanfiction #tsari writes fanfiction #brains #MAX #virgil tracy #john tracy #alan tracy #gordon tracy #scott tracy #kayo kyrano #grandma tracy #eos #melt

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womanoflettersinthebunker · 4 years

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Dean took to hunting like a fish to water and it terrified John to the core.

He had tried to drag it out as long as he could. Kept everything to a theoretical level, books after books from Bobby to keep his attention under the guise of needing to learn about monsters before being able to hunt them. Dean was not a reader, that was Sam, so it was a hassle to get him to do it but thankfully Dean listened loyally.

But then it got to the point that he had no other choice to start teaching him how to use a weapon and how to fight.

Every town they came to, every school he enrolled Dean into, he could almost count down the hours until that call came that Dean had gotten into yet another fight. And he had no idea how to deal with it without Mary at his side, she was able to spin stories upon stories until the principals and teachers had no choice but to look at Dean a bit more sympathetic.

But he called back to that ol' Kansas charm; the yes ma'ams, no ma'ams, and despite how it twisted his stomach to do so, he had no qualms in bringing up the fact that the boys momma had been killed in a fire, horrible thing that Deans still trying to come to grips with.

Most of the time it worked, the principals melted at his tone and words, watching Dean with newfound sympathy and pity.

Dean hated the pity more than anything and John would have to reach down to grip his hand which Dean gripped back tight enough to hurt even him as a distraction.

But as Dean grew up and started to act out more and more. Which eventually led to more fights and more calls from schools. He had no outlet other than getting into fights, and starting to pick them at bigger kids.

He knew he shouldn't be but when Dean managed to bring down kids older and bigger than him, he was a bit proud.

But he also was scared about what that meant for the future. Maybe Dean needed something else, needed an outlet of some kind so that meant...

So he willingly handed over a knife to his ten year old son who took it and gripped the handle tightly, fingers flexing around it as he stared at his own reflection in the blade with a glint in his eyes...

It scared him more than any monster out there.

His only consolation was that Dean had never raised a hand to his family. Not even to Bobby, though sometimes he had a dark look on his face when Bobby spoke about John taking his kids into the hunting life.

He was gentle with Sam, looking after his brother with care and love. Despite everything else that had happened one of the things John never feared was leaving his youngest son with his eldest.

And Sam adored Dean, clinging to him as tightly as he could, curling around him when they slept in the same bed, and Dean held on just as tight.

That showed him something. It showed Dean...that despite all that anger building up in him, God knew where he had no idea, he was still a good kid. He still loved him and Sammy, still wanted to do good.

So, he started to take Dean out with him on hunts and well...there was a good side and a bad side to it. Once Dean went on hunts and got out his...anger, because he didn't want to use the other word that came to mind, he was calmer at school. Still prone to shooting words and throwing fists but this time he wasn't the first one to throw the punch.

So John kept him physically busy. When there weren't any hunts he trained him, making him run laps after laps, even splurging to buy him a punching bag to hang in the room and go at.

He did have to stop buying them after Dean broke his second one after a week without going on a hunt.

And Dean on a hunt...that was a sight to behold in the worst way possible.

It was the purest outlet that he could find for Dean. He was calm after a hunt, at ease. Less prone to snapping at them, words only never physical, but whenever he watched his son on a hunt.

He was terrified. Dean with a weapon in his hand and a monster to aim it at was something straight from a horror movie. Dean didn't just enjoy the hunt, he relished in it, adored it in a way that made John want to stop all of it and find something else to help Dean.

Problem was, nothing did.

Dean had the finesse and the precision needed on a hunt, problem was, he didn't use any of it. He turned his nose up at guns, upper lip curling in displeasure every time John handed it to him to use.

Dean enjoyed knives, loved their usefulness and how much they helped. When it came to picking a weapon, if he had to, between a gun and a knife; he'd pick the latter every single time. And every time John would have to take the knife from him and press a gun into his hands, placing the knife in Dean's jacket instead.

Dean hated sneaking from behind to get the drop on them and shoot them in the head, all the steps needed to end a hunt quick and easy with as little blood as possible.

He preferred to go in and get as bloody as possible. Ripping into the monster with utmost glee that he no longer tried to hide at that moment, the silver of the knife barely visible from how much blood and gore covered it and then him.

The first time was when Dean was ten years old, the look of realization, and peace but John would never admit to that, that appeared on his face when he had first buried his knife into a werewolves chest...

It haunts John's nightmares just as often as Mary's death.

He made the mistake of taking Dean on a hunt with another hunter, a simple one named Matt Johnson that was in town and asked for another pair of hands and gun. He snorted when John turned up with Dean, taunting him about babysitting and whether or not Dean had to be tucked in.

He then doubled over when Dean punched him in the stomach and John would admit, he wasn't about to lecture his son about that.

But the hunt had gone on like all the others. John and Matt planned while Dean fidgeted, itching for the actual hunt.

And he hated it but he started to plan his hunts so that they could subdue the monster, but he could also give Dean his opportunity to work out his...emotions or whatever it was.

He didn't tell Matt, the man didn't have to know what was going on with his family. This was between him and Dean.

So the hunt went off like it was supposed to, it was a rugaru that had recently gone over the edge and turned, eating and gorging itself on human flesh. Matt was delegated to get the still living human out and to safety while Dean and John would get the rugaru.

That was the plan and it worked, John had gone in to subdue the monster, gunshot to the leg so that it couldn't move, and then with an extremely heavy heart, he stepped back and let Dean go in. He blocked out the monsters screaming and the sound of the knife slashing through flesh.

But he did hear the sound of footsteps coming to a stop and he looked up to see Matt standing there, staring in shock and horror.

"What the fuck is wrong with him?" Matt demanded. "He's a blood thirsty fuck." And then John saw him going for his gun at his side.

He reacted fast and on instinct. He got his gun out first and with a single shot, Matt fell to the ground with a bullet in the middle of his forehead.

Dean had fallen silent John realized. He turned back to his son and saw a look on his face that he had never seen before. He looked young, younger than he had in a very long time. He had dropped his knife, the rugaru was long dead, and looked at him and back at Matt.

John put the gun back into his holster before slowly going to his son. He heard a whimpering sound escape him, he'd never heard such a sound from him, and suddenly Dean moved and threw himself at John, gripping at him tightly. He wrapped his around him and just held Dean close as he shook.

Later, when they were burning both the bodies, Dean stared at the ground, stared at the knife in his hand before he slowly looked up at John, the fire reflecting in his eyes.

"Dad...is there something wrong with me?" Dean asked, his voice cracking and breaking.

John didn't know how to answer that, didn't know what to say to make things better and explain it all away. They never talked about this, never mentioned that Dean was different, that he had to be treated differently. That at times he felt like he had to walk on eggshells around his eldest son.

Mary would know how to answer, she would know what to tell Dean to assure him and not hurt him.

But he had no idea what to say.

"You're just different Dean, different doesn't mean bad." John told him, staring into the fire for another moment before he looked down at his son once more.

"There's nothing wrong with you," he told Dean. "Nothing."

Dean might scare him at times, but he was his son and he was lost and hurting, looking to him for comfort in a way he hadn't since Mary had died. John knelt down so that they were at eye level and wrapped his arms around Dean, just holding onto his son as he did the same.

He didn't give a damn why Dean was like this, he'd help him deal with it. He'd find ways to help Dean in whatever way was possible.

Dean was his son, first and foremost, and he didn't give a damn what he had to do to protect him. Even if it meant protecting him from himself.

#supernatural #Supernatural fanfic #supernatural fanfiction #spn fanfiction #366 #141/366 #366 day challenge #366 days of writing #Inheritance Through Blood au #john winchester #dean winchester

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overthinkingkdrama · 4 years

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Jona’s 5 Worst Dramas of 2019

A couple words about this list. I’m making this for fun. If a drama you love ended up on this list, it doesn’t mean that I hate you or I think you’re stupid or have terrible taste. But these are dramas that inspired strong negative reactions in me for one reason or another, whether that be disappointment, rage or disgust.

I’ve only included dramas that finished airing in 2019 in my selection process. If you have some dramas that hated, feel free to share them in the replies or send me an ask. It’s fun to complain about things for some reason.

Also, I have included major SPOILERS in a couple of these. So read at your own peril.

Dishonorable Mention: Melting Me Softly

I sincerely tried to limit myself to only dramas that I--for whatever misguided reasons--finished in their entirety for this list. Mainly because I don’t think it’s fair to brand something as the “worst” of anything without actually giving the thing a fair shake. That’s the only reason Melting Me Softly isn’t higher on this list. But I felt that it wasn’t right to leave it off entirely, if for no other reason then out of respect for the fallen Ji Chang Wook stans out there who lost their lives trying to make it through this trash fire. Somebody needs to stand up for those brave soldiers, out their gifing trash dramas while people like me are safe and sound on our couches, watching the tag like it’s a train wreck.

I made it through only two episodes of this drama, and despite my goodwill toward the majority of the cast, they were two of the most bafflingly bad hours of television that I forced myself to sit through this year. From what I could tell while side-eyeing the drama on tumblr and twitter it didn’t improve much over the course of the run. There were a couple steamy kisses that I enjoyed in clip form, but I don’t think it would have been worth the brain cells lost to sit through any more than that.

Bottom Line: Painfully unfunny, overwhelmingly expositional with no character development, confusing pacing and sloppy editing. Two episodes was two too many.

5. When the Devil Calls Your Name

It pains me to put this on the list because it was just last year that a Jung Kyung Ho, Park Sung Woong collaboration (Life on Mars) ended up in my top 5. And giving credit where it’s due, the two male leads seem to have a great deal of fun working together and I believe that all the actors gave this drama everything they could and sincerely tried to make it work. That’s one of the things I like about Jung Kyung Ho, he picks unique, risky projects that either pay off in a big way or fall flat on their faces (like the amateurishly written and edited Missing 9) Unfortunately, this script just too messy and too bizarre to work. Ha Rip as has a deeply frustrating character arc. He’s such a self-centered jerk for the vast majority of the drama, which is fine for a Faust type story if it’s written with conviction, but every time you think he’s started to turn a corner or grown as a person he reverts back to his old ways. The writing and tone are whiplash inducing. Plus the vague “soul mates” relationship between Ha Rip and Kim Yi Kyung seemed to want to have it both ways, flipping between implied romantic potential and a father/daughter dynamic, which made me quite uncomfortable.

Bottom Line: This drama’s bizarre mythology and world building barely makes any sense at all, but at least they’re easier to follow than the character development. Attempted something unique, but couldn’t pull it off. The OST is super dope though.

4. Love in Sadness

When I watched the first teasers I got the distinct impression that this wasn’t going to be a good drama, or at best it was going to be a guilty pleasure, but at the time when I started it I was hungry for a melo and there wasn’t much airing to hold my attention so I started it on impulse. I think in this case I got what I deserved for continuing to watch something I didn’t think was very good.

The first few episodes were actually pretty gripping and intriguingly dark, but that petered of quickly and the drama became and infuriating wheel spinning exercise with barely any perceptible plot development from episode to episode. The protagonists in this are all so stupid that in the final few episodes the female lead gets kidnapped not once, but multiple times because she keeps meeting her unstable husband alone. Plus nobody in this drama seems to know how to call the police when a madman is waving around a gun. It probably wouldn’t have made me so very mad except that in the last few episodes the writer became unaccountably preoccupied with how sad the psychotic, wife-beating husband’s family life was and how lonely and pathetic his life was when he wasn’t allowed to stalk, assault, and psychologically terrorize his wife. Seriously, in the last leg of the drama the villain is the only character who gets any character development at all. The drama pulls out all the stops to try to make use feel sorry for him. It’s disgusting.

Bottom Line: When a drama about a woman trying to escape domestic violence becomes completely preoccupied with painting the abuser as tragically misunderstood, you’ve got some serious problems.

3. The Lies Within

If it wasn't for the last two episodes this drama would not be on this list, but that isn't because it was in any way an exceptional drama, or that it otherwise would have ended up on my best list. Without the last two episodes The Lies Within is a merely adequate thriller, somewhat heightened by the brutal nature of the premise. I picked this show up largely to fill the void that was left by WATCHER and it was more or less successful, plus it helped that I liked the cast. However even at the beginning this drama I felt like it had some pretty glaring tone problems. There were parts of the drama that were standard OCN dark and gritty thriller, and there were other parts that felt like a campy police sitcom. The humor, when it does crop up in this drama always feels super out of place. But then that last big twist happened and man...I can't remember the last time a drama made me that angry or cratered quite so hard with a twist.

[And this is where I spoil the HELL out of this drama...]

Before this drama decided to go all M. Night Shyamalan in it’s last two episodes, there seemed to be at least one, if not two really reasonable candidates for the kidnapper. Actually all the ground work they’d done up to that point would seem to have pointed to Young Min and if he had turned out to be the perpetrator, I would have completely bought it. Instead they decided to blow everyone’s mind by making the kidnapped husband complicit in his own kidnapping and dismemberment. Which might seem like a shocking twist until you think about it for even half a second.

What it winds up doing on a narrative level it makes everything the characters have done to investigate this series of crimes up to this point feel pointless, resulting in a huge anticlimax. It makes the ambiguous figure of Seo Hui’s husband not only hopelessly stupid, but also cruel and unsympathetic. Because he thought somehow simply sharing the information with her would put her in more danger than threatening and psychologically terrorizing her into investigating the very people he was theoretically trying to protect her from. The explanation that he was already terminally ill doesn’t to anything to mitigate the stupidity of his plan for me. Seriously, you couldn’t think of any solution aside from cutting bits off yourself and sending them to your wife in the mail? I could rant about this ending at length, but I’m going to try to stop here.

Bottom Line: As far as I’m concerned, if you choose to sacrifice the emotional and narrative coherence of your story for a cheap and dirty twist to surprise the audience, you deserve every ranty review you get.

2. Love Affairs in the Afternoon

I’m really not sure what possessed me to watch this drama to begin with. That I continued to watch it is on me. The fact that I watched it despite hating the shallow characters, the thin story and the abortive message at the core of the drama is simply a lapse of judgement for which I shouldn’t be forgiven. Why did I do it despite not having a single nice thing to say about this show? Well, there are two reasons. I was curious to see if they would do anything compelling with one or two of the characters, (specifically the serial adulteress housewife an the broody artist) and I was surreptitiously watching this drama at work and it was really easy to follow the plot while only actually keeping my eyes on the screen about half the time. I watched the last episode before the subs were available and had no trouble understanding what was going. Which could be a sign that my Korean is improving, but is more likely a sign that the writing was so predictable and simplistic that you could follow it if you didn’t speak the language at all.

[Spoilers beyond this point.]

It’s my understanding that in the Jdrama that this is based on all of the characters basically wreck their lives and end up miserable, pointing toward the emptiness of the lives of these people who try to find fulfillment through extra-marital affairs. If that’s how this drama had ended, I still wouldn’t have enjoyed the execution but I could have respected the intent. But in this watered down Kdrama-fied version all the couples’ issues are resolved in the whitewash of a last episode time skip that makes the suffering and bullshit that led up to it feel completely pointless.

Bottom Line: Maybe this level of trashy, uninspired tripe would be somewhat justified if the chemistry between the leads had been better, but somehow they even managed to screw that up. The leads are just bad, vacuous people, a fact which is rendered all the more unforgivable by them being utterly bland. Everybody needed to divorce, nobody deserved to end up happy. Please be wiser than me and avoid this one.

1. Memories of the Alhambra

Initially, I was on the fence about even producing a “Worst List” this year, because in the past few years I’ve tried to be better about dropping dramas the moment they start to disappoint me, rather than hanging on to them and winding up burning myself out. I wasn’t sure if I’d have enough material to write this list, or at least not enough material to make it worth reading. Then I remembered that Memories of the Alhambra finished airing in January of this year (2019 was impossibly long, wasn’t it?) and I thought, “Aha, I can make this work.” I knew at once this drama was going to be the shitty tinfoil star atop my Christmas tree of suck.

I’ve already written a full review of this drama, where I got about as mean as I felt I could reasonably be. You can go read that if you like, I’m not going to retread all my many complaints here. What I will say is that Memories of the Alhambra took my mixed-to-favorable opinion of the writer, Song Jae Jung, and turned it to a negative one. She’s someone who clearly has a lot of interesting high concept ideas, but the execution is just not there. You can hook an audience with a concept, but you have to keep them with craft and structure.

Maybe the industry can be blamed for that. Maybe she just has a hard time ending her stories, or maybe writing on a deadline doesn’t agree with her. Whatever the reason, I can no longer trust her to deliver a satisfying story. And that’s deeply saddening to me, because Queen In Hyun’s Man is in my top 10 favorite dramas.

To be front-to-back terrible is one thing. The joke’s at least half on me for bothering. But to have potential, to have an interesting hook, a budget, a cast, but then to be either unwilling or unable to live up to that potential feels like a con. That’s how I felt about his drama, like I had been willfully deceived by special effects and flashy editing, all orchestrated to disguise a narratively bankrupt, unsatisfying drama.

Bottom Line: Is Memories of the Alhambra objectively the worst drama on this list? No, it’s not. Is it the most disappointing? Absolutely, it is. And that’s the more heinous crime, in my opinion. And that’s why it’s my worst drama of 2019.

#kdrama reviews #worst list #kdramas 2019 #jona spoils #exit review

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justgottafinishthischapter · 5 years

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Making a Fictional Language

So you’re writing a story where you want to create a fictional language. That’s great. Only problem is, you’re not quite sure how to go about it. Fear not, I have a few tricks up my sleeve that I use myself when constructing a language. Now of course, before we can discuss how to build a conlang, it’s worth mentioning what a conlang is.

The term “Conlang” is short-hand for Constructed Language. What this means is that the language is fully realized and fully formed with proper grammar, an expansive dictionary, and could theoretically be learned and used in day-to-day conversation. A Conlang is not a real language. It doesn’t exist in our real world. But it’s well formed enough that it could be learned and spoken with a wide reach of use. Examples of Conlangs include Klingon, High Valyrian, Dothraki, and Na’vi. There are some lesser forms of Conlangs such as Functional Languages. That is, languages that exist only to say a few words. Before being turned into an official language for the show, Valyrian had very few words. It was the job of a linguist to construct a language around the fundamentals that George established in his books. Another example is Atlantean from the Disney movie Atlantis: the Lost Empire. There is just as much Atlantean as needed for the script and nothing else, and if you wanted to learn the Atlantean word for fire, you’ve gotten your hopes up for nothing. Some are also simply text-based, such as Hylian in the Legend of Zelda. It uses different symbols, but it all directly translates to the Japanese language, making it just a re-skinned version of Japanese.

So, how does one actually build a conlang? Honestly, a good first step is to do some research on Phonetics. But the crash course is this: a Phoneme is the simplest sound you can make. There’s an international phoenetic alphabet (IPA) that you can find tons of online. Every distinct sound made by human language has a specific symbol to represent the sound. Learning to read these symbols and the sounds they make will make it easier to find sound links between words. Now, let’s get to the actual methods and the steps involved.

Method 1: The Library

You may have heard of a Sound Library before. For sound technicians, a sound library is a database of sound effects and noises they can Foley into film projects. Building a language can work the same way. In the Librarian method, look through the list of IPA and look for the sounds you want to use in your language. Think about the tone of the language, and whether you’re looking for something softer or harsher, and the kind of culture the people have. Once you have your library of phonemes, it’s just a question of how you want to go about forming words. You could roll die to decide syllables and which sounds to use, you could play it by ear, you could compare to languages you want to sound like. The main appeal of this method is that it creates a great consistency with the sound of a language.

Method 2: The Language Blender

You know you want your language to sound coarse and rough but you’re not sure how to make it sound that way? A good method I like using is taking common words that your world would use, such as Fire or Sun, and translate it into about 3-5 languages that fit the sound you’re trying to invoke. Once you have all of your words translated, you have two paths. Option 1: Find the middle ground. If 3/5 of your words had the letters ma next to each other, chances are, that’s a good pair of letters to carry over to your own language. Option 2: Take your real life languages and put them through the Language Mixer on Chaoticshiny.com. A major benefit of this method is systematically learning words in other languages, and even seeing the etymological roots that tie languages together. The one downside of this language building format is that you may end up with words that don’t mix well together, or as they mix, you find that the sounds of the words don’t tend to mesh well, so it’s important to have a Base Language, the root language you build your fictional language around. No matter what, include at least part of the translation from this language, and you’ll be more grounded in your approach.

Method 3: The Root System

This is a conlang creating system I learned from Artifexian on Youtube, and I’ll link the video he made right [here] if you want to see it for yourself. He has a lot of great world building videos and I love his content, so don’t be shy about giving him your likes and support because he talks about a lot of the world building aspects people tend to gloss over, myself included. What this method does is it focuses on forming root words that then lead into forming other words.

This is a root system language sheet I designed based on my own fantasy world. In their culture, running water is associated with healing and cleaning because it carries off dirt and other foul things and wipes them away. For this reason, rivers have associations with cleanliness, healing, and life. And this is something worth keeping in mind when building your own language. How does the culture itself interact with the word you are describing? For instance, the reason we say “vandalize” to mean to destroy someone else’s property is because of the Vandal barbarians that plagued Europe during the last legs of the Roman Empire. Heck, the term Flanderize isn’t even that closely linked to the Simpsons, but it emerged as a result of Ned Flanders’ character becoming stock and one-note, which led to the creation of the term. When it comes to actually building the dictionary, this can be a really useful step. So, for example, let’s say the word for River in my language was Asar. A boatman might be Asarii, much like how we have work and worker, fight and fighter, dance and dancer, the suffix of -ii denotes someone who does the root term, in this case, they go on the river. Meanwhile, a fisher could be Asarakii, having Asar mean river, -ak as a suffix for a thing living in the river, and the -ii as a suffix for those who catch the things that live in the river. And for something more abstract like River of Time or River of Stars, you might get something like Asarag Talari.

UNIVERSAL CONLANG TIPS

Keep in mind the people the language exists for. if you’re creating a conlang for dragons, reptiles don’t have lips, so the labial sounds of [p], [b], [f], [v], and possibly even sounds that require lip shaping such as [o], [u], and [w] might not fit the creatures that need to be speaking. Furthermore, if the culture exists before global communication and they live next to the ocean, chances are, they won’t have a word for camel, desert, or sandstorm unless it’s a desert port city. This is why Dothraki has words for every kind of horse and no word for thank-you.

Remember that certain sounds can be switched around. Throughout human language, I’ve learned that certain letters can easily be switched out for each other, and this is in part due to linguistics history. Most of the letters that can be exchanged I actually realized while studying Grimm’s Law and the evolution of language, and by looking at Welsh in particular. In Welsh, the way to write a [f] sound is to write it as ff. When just one f is by itself, it becomes [v]. The sounds of [d], [t], [θ], and [ð] share a similar connection, as do [k] and [g], [ʃ] and [ꭓ], and [b] and [p]. So changing between these similar sounds could prove to be a useful strategy for mixing up your language.

You absolutely have to create a grammar system or you’re going to make a huge mess. That means word order, syntax, suffixes, tense, conjugation, and whatever else is needed. If it helps, learn how another language conjugates its terms. In Sumerian, the phrase “I am your king” is Lugdalzuimen. Lugdal means King, zu is your, and imen means “I am”. So word order is Object Possessive Subject. Then in the phrase Sesguene imes means “they are my brothers”. In actual word order it translates out as “brother my -s they are”. Now we see that the word order is Object Possessive Pluralization Subject. In the phrase Dumuninlagasakak, it becomes child queen Lagas of of. Meaning child [queen of Lagas] of or Child of the Queen of Lagas. By understanding how this language structures itself, something like the phrase River of Stars I made earlier could now be broken down to be something like Asartalariag (River Star -s of). I find it helps in this case to word it as “River star many of” to get “river of many stars” to figure out when the pluralizing suffix would be applied.

Resources:

Wiktionary.com

Chaoticshiny.com

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/definitionlookup (for all of your ancient greek translation needs. Set it to Latin transliteration)

http://www.abair.tcd.ie/?lang=eng (because Google Translate doesn’t sound out Irish words)

https://www.wordreference.com/enfr/ (it’s set English to French, but it has a lot of languages, and it’s great because it also teaches you slang uses of words.)

#conlang #constructed language #fictional languages #fictional language #conlangs #writing advice #writing tips #linguistics #etymology #phoneme #phonology #sumerian language #dothraki #klingon #high valyrian #na'vi #artifexian

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soranihimawari · 4 years

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Call Me Kat

I already written several one shots for different characters from Haikyu!!, so I thought of throwing my hat into the ring of the Nekoma team. I am not sure if I want this to end in fluff crush confession or a one night encounter that turns into something a bit more serious. This might also be a three parter, so please bear with me as I write this.

Tag list: @vbcshenaningansnwritings @kaidasen

Length: 3.8k

“But why do I have to stay with grandpa over the week?” I asked. Honestly, I didn’t understand why I was thrown into helping my grandfather watch over his volleyball team training camp. It was the second day of summer vacation and although I had an agenda of doing nothing but completing my resume for a new cat cafe close to the Nekoma campus, my parents thought it would be best to surprise trip to keep my grandfather (and the other managers/team sponsors) company.

“I’m not even part of the girls volleball club,” I whined, but when my mother had put her foot down, I had to yield. I raised my arms up in the air and conceeded.

“You ought to go, besides,” my fathrer said when he took a sip of his afternoon tea. “You know how to play well enough that I’m sure Nekomata-san would appreaciate your contribution.” I let out a puff of hot air and nodded.

“Alright. I’ll go, but only because I do like keeping gramps from drinking too much,” I chuckled while my mother rolled her eyes in amusement.

“Reason why you’re also going there. Not to babysit the man, but to help him if he drinks too much with the others. You do know how good of a drinker he can be,” my mother winked at me when she sat down with another cup of tea for myself.

Thus, this was how my week had begun. I had packed my overnight dufflebag with all the feminine essentials I (or the other girl managers) needed along with three work out gym clothes as well as my overnight pajamas. On the day that I had left, I donned ruby sneakers, work out (yoga) pants in black, and a loose fitting navy shirt. It wasn’t going to be extremely hot today, but I thought leaving in the morning after a few calisthetic stretches would suffice. Tokyo had many cafes I could theoretically purchase coffee from, so I was set to jet.

I grabbed my sunscreen and my phone accessories on the kitchen counter before pressing kiss to my parents’ cheeks. I slid my apartment keys in my pocket; I began to jog toward campus in time to see that most of the other schools had arrived. Luckily I noticed the lady managers standing to the side before they were eaten alive by another one of our volleyball club member’s words of praise:

“Oh my god. Karasuno has two female managers?! They have a pretty one AND a cute one!”

I noticed Yaku run up to scold him while apologizing to the vice captain of the Karasuno team. I couldn’t help but laugh as I snuck behind the scenes to enter the gym where my grandfather asked me to help set up. Fortunately, I did hear Yaku’s apology when I stepped quietly out of ear shot.

“Oy~!” Yaku called out to his teammate, “I’m really sorry about him. Hiya Suga-san.”

I made my entrance toward the gym where our volleyball coaches for Nekoma were standing. My grandfather supervised the practice matches going on between Fukurodani and Ubugawa. Loud yells were heard when each team scored. Pretty soon, the match would be at set point. Both of the managers from Fukurodani noticed me and raised an eyebrow at each other, but not before they had to use where I stood as a point of reference for their ace.

I placed my bag down next to him before greeting him with a hug.

“Heya gramps,” I said with a small smile. “Hi sensei.” I bowed slightly in his partner’s direction.

“Shamu-neko,” the old man said with a huge grin spread across his face. “I take it you are spending time with me because your mother asked you to?” I hummed in compliance. Being gifted such a nickname because of my affection toward calico cats as child led me to identify with them since I was born with heterochroma (me left eye was hazel green while the other burned a light ice blue). It was a double recessive gene in my father’s side along with the inherited cat pupils. No wonder gramps called me that since I was seven, I thought.

“Okaasan worries too much about you. Enough to send your granddaughter to make sure you don’t overdo it during this training camp,” I reminded him with my arms folded across my chest. “If you’ll excuse me, I am going to put away my things.” Both Nekomata and his second bowed to me as I scurried off to the ladies’ dorm.

As I opened the door to the room, I bumped into the other team managers from earlier. The one with the dark hair and glasses gave off an aura of quiet steadfastness while her blonde counterpart was going through the anxieties of being a new manager for Karasuno. Those crows are no longer flightless, I mused.

“Is this where we’ll be sharing a room, right?” I asked to make my presense known. At the sound of my firm, respectful tone, the blonde first year nearly jumped out of her skin.

“Oh, my gods!” she yelled. “You scared me.”

“I didn’t mean to,” I replied raising my arms up after I dropped my bag near the closest wall. “I’m--”

“A relative of Nekomata,” her co-manager said with an encouraging nod. “Kitty, isn’t it?”

“Kat, actually. I see you’re from Karasuno,” I said extending my hand for a formal greeting. “Kiyoko, correct?”

“Mmhm,” she said and we shook hands. “This is Hitoka-chan.” I waved when the first year when her name was given to me.

“Pleasure to meet you both. I believe it might be best for you two to head to the gyms already. I’m sure the boys from both of our teams are expecting you to watch their preliminary games.”

We exchanged good byes and split off into different gyms when we reached the ground floor. I was lucky to find one of the gyms, gym 3 empty, but the nets needed to be raised. I asked for the keys from my grandfather after I had set up the additional nets. With the sweat I had glistening on my brow, I heard all smart talk cease to exist when a volleyball was about to whir by my head. Instead of hearing my gasp of fear, I instinctively blocked the ball with a set bump. I dropped the keys in the split second I had returned the serve, but I shook it off. My grandfather just scratched his cheek playfully as the other teams stopped their matches.

“Lev! What did we tell you about watching where aiming that serve of yours!” Kenma was slow to anger, but everyone could tell he was reaching his limit. The ball had flown a few meters into the air before gravity slamnmed it down. Kenma, as well as the captain, Kuroo, took a breather to walk towards me.

“Are you ok?” Kuroo asked. He wore an annoyed expression on his face as well, but I know those amber eyes of his were more trained the red marks on my forearms than anything else. Those marks usually go away, however, I took into account how Kenma eyed the impression of stripes from the ball. A few more minutes passed as each of the matches went back underway.

“It’s alright, really,” I said aloud. I picked up the keys with my left hand, “No harm done, Kenma.” He nodded before Kuroo pulled him by his collar to return to their own game. My grandfather clasped his hands together when I waved from the arch way.

“Damn it, that really did hurt,” I muttered when I walked back into gym 3. After retrieving a volleyball basket, I placed the keys against one of the sides of the walls of the gym. I walked back where the volleballs were placed and picked one up. I had given it several bounces before taking my place behind the boundary serving line. With one deep breath I had taken, I decided I should practice a few serves. I took a few steps back and threw the ball in the air with my right hand and with a thunderous crack of my left, I hit the ball with enough force for a theoretical service ace. When I landed back on my feet, I noticed one of the team co-coaches hanging out by the doorway. I had continued to practice several more serves before my breathing became labored. I heard an acknowledging clearing, “Ahem,” stem from the entrance way.

“You play just as well as the old man,” he said, a different sense of pride was strewn in his voice. His ivory and black attire was recognizable: Coach Takeyuki. I bowed toward him as a short greeting. “Why you never went to pursue the sport is beyond me.”

“Thanks, but volleyball isn’t really for me. Dance and the performative arts has my soul, haha. Also, it has been a long time since I sat in on one of grandpa’s volleyball training camps, Takeyuki-sensei,” I mused. I picked up the ball to return it to the bag I had taken it from. “I’m headed back to the main gym. I finished setting these up for the boys. Care to escort me back sir?”

***

That night, at dinner, I was surrounded by a literal ray of sunshine, a tall silver haired cat, Yaku, Kuroo, and Kenma. I had begun eating without them since I was snacking throughout the day (one bowl of spicy stir fry with chicken, then later in the afternoon, I went with the other secondary managers to find ice cream tubs for us girls, which was a fun excursion). The chatter at the dining hall was quite boisterous, each team sharing funny stories about the today’s games. Apparently, Karasuno’s freak quick attack was the main subject at many tables, however, talent and sense is what makes for good rallies. It was something I heard my grandfather mention when I was younger. Although, I have seen quicks much like that before, I don’t think the speed at which the players used were impossible to the trained eye. As I lifted my cup of tea to take a sip, I noticed the smile of the tangerine haired energetic boy when he looked at me.

“Woah, your eyes are so cool,” the bright orange haired middle blocker said. He was scarfing down onigiri like there wasn’t enough rice in the world to contain his hunger.

“Thanks, I get that a lot,” I say with a smile. I placed my cup back on the table to raise a spoon to my lips to sip on the miso soup I helped the girls make in the kitchen hours earlier. (Cooking was a skill I learned, but also being enrolled in dance classes throughout my formative years caused me to create an atheletes diet. Besides, my grandfather and I would play a set of two on two up until this past school year. His focus was on training his clowder of cats into the best teams Nekoma has had in recent years).

“I’m really sorry about hitting you with my serve,” this tall cat was named Lev, if memory serves me correct. He seemed a bit out of it after he almost hit my head. Impulsive and brash, but he does show promise in terms of room for growth.

“You’re fine, Lev. You just need to polish up a little bit. Watch your aim too. I noticed you were a bit out of it when I came back with Fukurodani’s coach. Besides,” I placed my spoon down on my tray and gripped his shoulder. “I was able to return it and still cook dinner, I’m not as weak as you think.”

I kept drinking my soup before moving on to my rice. “Yaku and Kenma would not have to scold you if you did watch your aim though.” Lev’s bright eyes glazed over in embarrassment, yet he nodded making a promise to watch where his serves were going to land.

“If you want help with your serves, meet me in gym 3 at nine tomorrow,” I offered. I picked up my tuna stuffed onigiri and began to munch on it. I glanced at my grandfather who was seated a few tables ahead of us. I guess he must of heard Lev’s, “Really! Wow! Thanks!” walking toward us.

“Shamu-neko~” the famly patriarch called to me. At the sound of my nickname, the boys chuckled. They didn’t know, or rather, as a third year, no one really knew my family ties to the Nekoma coach (with the exception of Takeyuki and now the other coaches). I noticed his rose colored cheeks, the signs that someone had slipped the old man alcohol. He mentioned he would be drinking with them later on the phone last night, so I wasn’t too surprised.

“Call me Kat, grandpa,” I said with a huff of hot air when I took a bite of my hamburger steak. I closed my eyes and meditated on my chewing before I felt Nekomata patting my shoulder. Kuroo’s eyes went wide with either glee or fear, Kenma sort of chortled. Lev and Yaku sat staring at their food while Hinata (whose name I found out during a brief side conversation he had with Kenma) had his eyes dart back and forth between Nekomata and myself. Upon our mutual smiles after reminding each other not to stay up too late, everyone finally saw the resemblance.

“You’re going to train Lev I hear,” the old man hiccoughed. “I’m proud of you grandchild.”

“You ought to go to bed, old man,” I mused with a smile, patting his arm. “After all, your first year almost decked me in the head with that serve of his. Oi! Takeda-sensei! Can you escort him to bed please?”

Upon hearing my strict, but pleading tone, the co-coach of Karasuno came stumbling toward my grandfather and bowed in apology. Before they left, my grandfather and I exchanged a few inside jokes which caused us to laugh a little bit. I guess my smile and wave caught the Nekoma captain who was seated with us.

“Same smile,” Kuroo said nonchalantly. His tone was barely above a whisper, but I heard him. I glanced back up at him with a more toothy grin. I saw a small hint of color rush toward his cheeks before I began piling their empty plates on my tray.

“You guys go on ahead, I’ll clear the table,” I instructed. I noticed the underclassmen were being called by other members of their teams to head toward their shared dorm rooms. This left Kuroo and myself behind. Usually, he was very loud, sometimes obnoxiously intelligent, but he did mean well. I mean we might have had a few classes in junior high together (which might explain why he didn’t remember my last name), yet this was the first time we really saw each other outside of classes. A few minutes of clanking dishes being piled into a stack on three trays were the only noise between us as well as the sounds of our work out attire swishing against the table.

“You received that serve well,” he complimented. The raven haired cat captain stood up before mentioning, “It’s been a long time since year three in junior high, Kat-chan.” I nodded.

“Three years in Nekoma and you still haven’t apologized for almost breaking my nose with that serve of yours, Tetsuro,” I teased. The story goes a new member of the volleyball team was practicing his serves during lunch, the ball was hit in such a way it landed on my face: hard on the nose. I was sent home after the bleeding ceased. I think it was then I decided to not pursue the same sport that encaptured my grandfather’s attention. I have Kuroo to thank for that. Damn him and his first year naivete. He did mature into a popular tom-cat though. I never really hung out with him except for training camps like this in our first year. I suppose being around him equated to me being almost injured, so I chose to avoid him every chance I got on school grounds.

“We were first years! How was I supposed to know you were the relative of Nekomata? He doesn’t say much about his family,” he explained. "Mentions his granddaughter at every game when he points out where you were sitting. But that’s it!”

I laughed a little at his defense.

“Relax, I was giving you a hard time over nothing.” I stood up to walk toward the now empty kitchen; Kuroo followed behind me with the dishes on one of the trays. I turned on the sink, grabbed the soap bottle, and squeezed a generous amount on a sponge. “Grandpa doesn’t like to talk about family much since he views all of you as his grandsons or pupils.” I shrugged it off. “After all, I have had my whole life with him, of course I wouldn’t mind if I shared him with the team. He’s a good man and a great coach.”

“Is that so? Honestly, I thought he would at least view me as a candidate to date his hot granddaughter,” Kuroo’s sarcastically sincere voice struck a chord with me. I was elbow deep in suds when I let go of a tray back into the still water.

“E-excuse me?” I asked. I was perplexd. My eyes widened in shock since honestly, I thought we’d never cross paths enough to really establish any sort of romantic ties. At least that was what I thought. Kuroo leaned against the side of the sink that had the drying racks on them.

“You’ve come to all our games for the past three years,” he began to make his case. “You cheered for us up until our last game. Then, apparently, you come here at the request of your mom to make sure coach doesn’t overdo it.” He folded his arms across his chest. Oh, so he knew I was here thanks to sensei probably telling him, I thought. I shook my head to brush my long bangs out of my face (my long navy dyed hair was still tied in a ponytail from earlier).

“Kuroo, I came to those games to cheer for my grandfather first, his team second. He hasn’t retired coaching because this sport, volleyball, is his life. Also, how did you know I went to every game since we started high school?” He leaned in toward me as I went back to scrubbing the tray I had dropped. I was trying to focus on the task at hand, but his looming presence closing the distance between our faces caused me to feel a bit nervous. Kuroo had this blush drawing across his cheeks due to his bashful nature.

“I saw you in the stands, Kat,” he answered. “I waved to you and you always waved back with this enormous grin on your face.” His breath was warm against my cooling cheeks. Oh crap. Am I blushing as hard as he was? I thought. I swallowed thickly.

“Unbelievable,” I muttered. I rolled my eyes when I let out a sigh. I think since the day the volleyball collided in my face, I had grown a soft spot for Kuroo. Glancing upward at him made me come to terms with the bitterness I had toward this confession.

“I waved toward you for literal y e a r s; Kuroo, maybe seeing me cheer the loudest for you would have made my feelings known. Yet, you dated like three girls in second year. Watching you with them was weird, but I think it was because I wasn’t sure if I liked who you were becoming. And you know, after I spent time with you guys at end of season parties, maybe lent you my English textbook twice this last month, now you decide to tell me you want to date me? D-don’t say things you don’t mean. It’s not nice.”

Kuroo took a step back and handed me the last bit of the glassware I had to do. He shrugged placing a hand inside his club member jacket. He pursed his lips and let out a low whistle. Kuroo glanced between the tile in the kitchen floor and me.

“I’m sorry if this came really late, but I was talking to Kenma about how kind you are yesterday (for the fifth time this week) and my best friend had to tell me that I liked you because I couldn’t shut up about how you make an entrance every time you walked into the hallway and the sun danced around you right before you dashed around a corner to avoid me. You’re nice to me and tell me these stories about when you were young and how you seldom had friends on the playgrounds too. You’re sweet to Lev because you know Yaku and Kenma would get angry at him for things like today. Bonus fact is you’ve been friends with Bokuto since elementary school! You know your limits and you have a hard time with chem, but you always call me for help when you know I have a day off...”

I dried my hands before I tucked my bangs behind my ear. I bit my bottom lip out of habit, one I was trying to break, but I didn’t. I scoffed at him in my own amusement.

“You also pretended to be with me a few times I was being catcalled on the walk home from several away games,” I mentioned, closing my eyes for a moment. I felt Kuroo reach out to me and pulled me into a side hug. I covered my smile as I reminisced the last time some other captain tried to gain my affection, but when he didn’t get the hint, Kuroo showed up and immediately called me, “babe,” and the guy ran off.

“I did, huh? Thought I’d forget, did you?”

“Mmmhm, but no I was hoping you didn’t, hah.” My eyes fluttered open and stared at the ground. He placed his head on my shoulder much like my first calico cat did when she wanted affection. He and I stood there in comfortable silence for about five minutes.

“Five out of ten,” my tone was warm with a concealed giggle.

“Huh?” Kuroo inquired for more elaboration.

“I’m giving you a five out of ten for that confession of yours, Kuroo Tetsuro.” I folded my arms across my chest.

He glanced up at me in wide-eyed glee. “No way, Neko-san. That was like a seven tops!” He straightened his posture chewing the inside of his cheek in annoyance. I poked his unchewed cheek laughing.

“I’ll reconsider your rating for your confession on one condition,” my amusement took over my tone. He quirked his eyebrow at me. Curious this one, my thoughts said to me.

“Sneak out with me tomorrow morning before I train with Lev for a sweets run?” I said in a hushed tone. You could of told me the world stopped spinning because instead of a proper answer, I felt Kuroo’s hands lift my cheeks up to face him before he began pressing his lips to each side of my face with a shit-eating grin.

“You don’t got to tell me twice, love.” He kissed my forehead with a smile forming upon his lips.

“Call me Kat for now, let’s survive this first adventure tomorrow, then ask me out on a proper date,” I said taking a hold of one of his hands. We turned off the lights in the kitchen before walking hand in hand down the hallway to our respectful dorms. “C’mon captain. We got an early start tomorrow.”

#call me kat #kuroo x 1st person pov #nekomata grandchild perspective #long start but fluff was promised #kuroo & confessions #haikyuu!! draft #hella rough draft at 3a.m.#will tweak over the weekend.

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obviously-best-potions-master · 5 years

Text

Snape’s Unexpected Discovery

Chapter 4

Word count: 1278

Professor Snape gave your class a task to calculate the most appropriate combination for a defensive potion. It was an old recipe with many variations. You've spent several nights in the library studying different ways of making it, and finally found the right amount of ingredients for each stage in your opinion. But in the process of studying the material you also noticed that, theoretically, basing on the properties of the ingredients, if you changed the formula in reverse order you could give additional useful properties to the potion.

You wanted to make sure your calculations were correct, but for this you had to try them in practice. And the only place where you could do this was Professor’s laboratory. You could just ask him, because he probably knew the answer, but you didn't want to disturb him and were terribly embarrassed to do this.

You were afraid that he would kick you out or make fun of you. But curiosity and thirst for research outweighed, and you slowly went to the potions class still full of doubts. Your heart was pounding from excitement which overwhelmed your whole being. The fact that you would talk to him face to face made you nervous, you absolutely didn’t know what to say and where to start, and were ready to receive a portion of anger from Professor.

You didn’t know Snape wasn't in the office. You stood at the door, holding the handle, but not daring to turn it. Returning, he saw you standing at the door, hesitating to open it, and something pricked his heart. While you were gathering your courage, you heard firm steady steps approaching you. You flinched and turned around. He stood before you, no single emotion on his face.

“Miss Y/L/N, did you want something?” He asked in a low chilling tone.

You stared at him with a confused frightened look, trying to find the right words not to make him angry.

As there has been no response, Professor opened the door in front of you and with a gesture of his hand invited you into the office, letting you go first. You walked past him, head in shoulders. He followed you, and the door slammed shut. Ignoring your presence, he sat down at his table and started grading the works. He looked harsh and unapproachable. But there was something attractive about it.

In fact, he was watching you with his side look. You intrigued him.

You realized that the longer you remained silent, the more embarrassing it would be to start speaking. Slowly you walked over to Professor's desk.

He looked up at you, giving you a second chance.

“Professor ...,” You said softly, dropping your glance on the floor.

He was waiting.

“I ...” You pulled yourself together and continued more confidently, eventually he won’t kill you. “I don’t want to waste your time with questions, so I just ask you to let me use the laboratory... I need to check one formula...”

If there stood someone else, he would have been halfway to fly out of the office, but everything was different with you.

He got interested.

“What formula?” He put his quill and notebooks aside.

“What are your questions?” Professor crossed his arms in front of him and looked at you attentively.

You could not bear his piercing gaze and lowered your head.

“This is about a defensive potion you’ve asked to study.” You began quietly.

“I remember what I’ve asked.” His voice low and cold as always.

You took a deep breath and continued. “Basing on the properties of the ingredients, I noticed that if we change the order in which they should be mixed, we can add magical power to the basic defensive quality of the potion.”

“It’s generally known that the final result depends on the order of the ingredients, Miss Y/L/N.” He said monotonously, noting to himself that no one had ever paid attention to this fact before, but you were right indeed.

“Yes, sir.” You already regretted coming here. “I found nothing about such a combination and wanted to check if it would work.” You lowered your head guiltily. “Forgive me for distracting you,” you took a step back, “this won’t happen again ...”

Snape didn’t mean to offend you, and he seemed to say nothing that could push you away. He understood that you were afraid of him, and wanted to change that. Snape saw a huge potential in you and couldn’t allow you to drop his subject only because of the fear of him.

“Wait!” He left his seat and approached you. “Come with me!” He took your arm and led you to the laboratory.

He walked past the shelves, taking out the necessary flasks and jars and put everything required for your potion on the desk.

“Now tell me, which sequence should give you the desired result?” He asked calmly, and his voice seemed to soften.

You hesitantly told him. He listened attentively and nodded after each ingredient you named, as if considering and calculating what you would get in the end.

“Begin.” He pointed at the cauldron. You didn’t expect him to stay and be present at your attempts to make a new potion, and you were terribly worried, afraid to make a mistake, afraid to disappoint him.

You got to work. Snape watched you silently, helping you to hold the flask when it was necessary, handing you the bottles now and then, closing already unnecessary vessels and putting them away. He did not say a word while you were working on the potion, but his presence turned out to be supportive for you. He realized that he was pleased to be with you and work together. You did everything right, did not fuss and was attentive. The finished potion had a hideous swamp green color, and you decided that you didn’t succeed. Snape twirled the jar intently in his hands, shaking up the contents, and watched as it settled. He was shocked, he’d seen the same potion only once.

Professor left your potion on the table, came up to the closet, always locked and inaccessible to students, opened it with a spell and took out a small vial. He came back to you and, looking into your eyes, opened his hand. You rounded your eyes in amazement. He was holding a potion of the same disgusting color as yours, with a piece of paper pasted on the glass containing your formula. You looked at him inquiringly.

“Once I’d also paid attention to this exact sequence. Nobody. Ever. Noticed. This.” He said, making pauses between words, and raised an eyebrow, as if asking what you could say in your defense. He was admired and proud of you.

Everything vibrated with delight inside of you. You couldn’t believe in your success. You smiled shyly.

“Still have questions?” He asked, and the corners of his lips lifted.

Keeping smiling you shook your head.

“Well done!” He praised you, without changing his measured tone, and, having taken you by the shoulder, led you to the exit.

“If you ever need advice, feel free to ask me...” He was waiting for your consent, looking in your eyes intently.

You nodded timidly. “Thank you, Professor.”

“Y/N... Don't be afraid to ask me.” You heard the soft notes in his voice, but his words sounded like an order.

You willingly nodded again.

You were so grateful to him. Although outwardly he seemed cold and unapproachable, you realized that in reality he was different.

When you left, Snape returned to work, but he failed to concentrate. All his thoughts were occupied by you.

#snape #severus snape #severus snape imagine #snape imagine #snape imagines #snape x reader #pro snape

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ppaltagon · 5 years

Text

Hui x cha cha cha ✰ Leader

[Pentagon ballroom dancing au]

“Welcome to my dance studio, Hui.”

Hui returned the instructor’s greeting and politely bowed to the dancers waiting in the room.

Looking over, he wondered which one of them was going to be his partner.

“Let’s see...” the dance instructor looked Hui up and down, mumbling as she did so. “...nice built... not too tall... maybe her... hmm...”

Hui shifted awkwardly, eyes moving around aimlessly in the room, not really knowing what he was supposed to do.

“Say,” the instructor called him after much consideration, “you said you’re the leader of your group, correct?”

“Uh, yes, I am.”

“Very well, then your partner shall be Y/N.”

A synchronized gasp was heard from the girls in the back and they made way for you to step forward.

“Me?” you asked in surprise, voicing everyone’s thoughts.

“Yes. I believe the two of you will have good chemistry if put together.”

“Well, fine with me,” you shrugged then held out your hand for Hui to shake. “Nice to meet you. I hope you can keep up with me.”

“Yeah, nice to meet you too, I’ll do my best,” Hui returned your smile, not taking your words to heart. He was used to people looking down on him when they first saw him.

“Then let us start right away,” the instructor clapped her hands together and the remaining girls left the room.

“Your assigned dance is cha cha cha. This dance, depending on the dancers can be the sexiest, the most fun, the most passionate or the most playful, and if you’re good, it can be all of those at the same time. What I want the two of you to express is fire against fire.”

“Oh, I’m looking forward to that,” you commented, and in Hui’s eyes you really must have been looking forward because the smug and bored expression you were wearing turned into an amused one.

“This is the dance that we usually first teach to children on their first day to show them dancing is fun so you should be able to learn the basics quickly,” the instructor told him and proceeded to explain the beats, the music and the moves.

Indeed, Hui had little to no problems with learning it, mumbling “oh, I see” and “ah, that’s how it is” all the way through the process and he found himself enjoying it a lot too.

In addition to that, once the music was turned on, he felt like he’s been doing this for years. He didn’t need to think hard about the steps anymore, just let his body move to the beat freely.

Both his mood and his confidence rose to the sky after that.

“All right, now let’s see how this works in a pair.”

“Okay!” Hui answered enthusiastically and you stepped to him. He gulped, not expecting you to come suddenly so... close.

The instructor helped his hands to the right places in a closed position; his left hand holding your right and his right hand resting on your shoulder blade, looking at each other.

“Now, this is the general pose for every ballroom dance but you rarely have to stay like this. Instead, you’re going to follow the directions you’ve learnt just now. Y/N, would you please show him those.”

Following the instructor’s words, you helped directing Hui’s hands, body and feet to the right poses and he was focused to remember them all.

“Usually, it is the man who guides the woman but since you’re a beginner Y/N will help you out.”

“Right,” Hui nodded.

The instructor then turned on the music to let you see how the small basic choreography you had practiced would work.

. . .

“What...” was all you could say after the music faded. You were looking at Hui with wide eyes, more shocked than you have ever felt in your life. He was looking back at you with a confused expression and it made you even more flustered. Does he not realize how much power he has?

“Did I do something wrong?” he asked, checking you carefully, looking for signs that reassure him that you’re okay.

“No... No but you...”

“What is it, Y/N?” the instructor asked and you took a deep breath to collect yourself.

“This guy is not real. Hui, have you ever learnt ballroom dancing before?”

“Nope.”

“Yeah, he isn’t real at all... Listen to me because I will only say it once and I can’t believe I’m about to say this...” you looked Hui straight in the eyes. “You are the best leader I have ever danced with.”

“Wha- I mean... thank you?”

“Y/N, what do you mean?”

“All the way during the dance, he was leading me like a professional. He did all the subtle movements with his hands, palms, his hold is so secure and his overall posture is stable but still it looks natural and not awkward at all. Not to mention that about halfway through, he messed up the order of the figures and it slipped your attention, right? Because he led me so well, I just followed him without hesitation like when we do the freestyle trainings. And he’s not even aware of it! My own partner is a smug idiot, he has to tell me he’s the best leader ever at least twice a day! This guy can’t be real, he’s been learning this dance for 5 hours!”

“Oh?” the instructor stared at Hui while he was absolutely lost. A small smile appeared on her face. “So, I was right to assign you to him.”

“If he’s that good, he could work with anyone, really,” you shrugged. “Why me?”

“Because you can bring out his potential the fastest and make a very powerful performance that matches his style. As I had told you before; fire against fire.”

“I see,” you nodded in understanding. “Then can I take care of the choreography?”

“It’s no problem.”

“Great. Well, Hui from Pentagon, we’re going to have a lot of fun together.”

No matter how much Hui asked for a clear explanation, he got nothing. The practice ended and he was to go back to the dorm to rest (or to his studio because what even is resting).

He felt a little uneasy about your words but decided not to let it bother him too much.

Based on what he understood, he did something well which surprised you and the instructor and now they have to change something to be more fitting for the performance.

If anything, he should be proud of himself for being able to impress you – he told himself.

The next day, practices began for real.

You put together a choreography and without wasting any more time, you started teaching him.

Hui had a bit of a hard time memorizing everything as he wasn’t used to the style of ballroom dancing however, whenever he couldn’t remember the next move, he did something based on the music.

This side of him really fascinated you: his natural talent and sense of rhythm was beyond amazing.

The way he confidently made you do something absolutely incorrect in sense of the choreography was probably the most interesting thing you had ever seen.

Even though you always scolded him for messing up the moves, you couldn’t help thinking that even if you just put on random music and told him to dance, he could make a perfectly good performance with or without you.

Not to mention, he was quite funny or something like that, so time flew by faster than you had thought.

After a week of daily practices, you became pretty good friends; the dancing and the bickerings in-between became normal and familiar – something you looked forward to every day.

One night, two days before the performance, Hui had a dream.

A dream about you.

In that dream, he was not only dancing with you but also holding you closer than naturally, kissing you...

Hui woke up in shock and was unable to fall back asleep.

He tried not to think about it too much but in the end, even during practice, he couldn’t stop his mind from going back to his dream.

Of course, you noticed him not focusing completely on dancing so you asked him what's wrong.

After much hesitation, Hui said, “Y/N, what would you say if... theoretically... I told you I have... uh, feelings for... you...?”

“You what?”

“Theoretically! Just theoretically! I totally don’t have those kind of feelings for you!”

You rolled your eyes at the forced tone he was using before collecting yourself to properly answer him.

“Well, theoretically, I would tell you that you’re just confused because of the dance we’re doing. I doubt you really love me. Think about it, you don’t just fall for every dancer you work together with, right?”

“Right, you’re right...” Hui said, sinking deep in thought.

You continued practice but now not only Hui was out of it, you had a hard time focusing as well.

The thought that Hui might like you didn’t leave your thoughts, rather you started thinking about how it would actually be nice if he liked you.

Do you like him?

You thought you were being ridiculous. He was just someone you were assigned to dance with.

After the two of you finished performing at his concert, you would probably never see each other.

What was so special about him, anyways? You are the best dancer in this dance studio, your partner is the best of the best as well, Hui is an idol. He produces music, sings and dances a totally different genre. Hui is... Hui.

Oh.

That was it.

The fact that he’s so different from the people of your world and he still could keep up with you just as well as anyone else.

The fact that you still called him the best leader you have ever danced with.

It’s the fact that he made you feel something that no one else had ever made you feel.

That you would trust and follow him, no matter where he takes you.

You’re definitely not the type to fall for your partners but maybe, just maybe... you have fallen for Hui.

That day, you finished practice early as there wasn’t any point in continuing when neither of you could concentrate.

The remaining days were filled with a tension that is difficult to put in words. It could be best explained as both of you wanted to be awkward around each other but you were both professionals as well, so you didn’t have the luxury to do that. As a result, this weird tension kept hanging around you.

Still, you managed to finish the preparations and were ready for the concert.

Fifteen minutes before the show started, Hui came to your dressing room.

“Hey, Y/N, can I talk to you real qui- oh.” His words got caught in his throat, you looked stunning.

You were wearing a dress in the colors of different shades of orange and gold mixed together, creating an image of flames. The skirt was made out of short frills, fluttering as you turned around to face him. There were golden glitters on your face aside from your make up and your curled hair was put up in a messy bun.

You looked absolutely stunning.

At least as much as you were stunned.

Hui looked quite simple; his dyed orange hair was enough to match the color of your dress so he wore an all-black outfit. However, that shirt covered very little of his upper body.

You didn’t understand why you were stunned; this is what all the dancers are usually wearing. Still, you couldn’t stop your face from heating up slightly.

“Uh... sure, what do you want to talk about?” you asked to divert your attention from staring at him and he blinked, exclaiming as if he was just woken up from a daze.

“Oh, yeah! I had been thinking...”

“That doesn’t sound good...”

“I was thinking about what I’m feeling for you.”

“Theoretically or...?”

“Can I just explain?” he whined and you smiled.

“We have to perform in a moment. You can tell me after we finished it, okay? We really should concentrate, you know. For your fans, too.”

“Fine. You’re right,” Hui nodded and his eyes changed into performance-mode. He reached out his hand and you took it without hesitation, letting him lead you on stage.

Neither of you felt any less than confident when you walked on the stage and looked at the audience screaming Hui’s name then quieting down, holding their breath in anticipation.

The lights turned off for a second before turning on again suddenly, along with the music.

From then on, everything could be summarized in one word: intense.

Everything was simply intense.

You thought he couldn’t surprise you anymore but what you had learnt about him in the practice room was nothing compared to his stage presence.

Everything went by in a blur.

Your mind just turned off and even though you wanted to, you weren’t able to form any thoughts – something that had never happened to you before.

Hui just led you through everything.

You weren’t even sure if he’s doing the choreography properly or improvising at some places as he usually did.

Hui wasn’t sure either.

He just let his body move in synch with yours, trusting that you would follow him.

He did well even though he was sure he missed some steps but he didn’t care anymore. You don’t have the luxury to think on stage, you only have the music to think of. That’s what he’s always believed in.

Feeling your hand in his felt more reassuring than he had ever expected.

For the first time, he felt that with just the flick of his wrist, he had the power to do absolutely anything.

The two of you could faintly hear the screams of the fans at the climax of the dance and in what felt like a second, you were standing still, facing each other, his breath hot against your neck, your hand pulling him close, your fingers tangling in his fiery hair.

After five very synchronized breaths were taken, you pulled away, bowing to the audience.

Hui thanked his fans and walked down the stage with you on his side.

He didn’t let go of your hand even backstage, he kept on walking towards your dressing room.

Without any warning, he smashed his lips against yours as soon as he closed the door behind you, kissing you with all the passion he had.

You didn’t need to think for a second to slip your hand in his hair once again, pulling him as close as physically possible, kissing him with the same passion.

“I just wanted to say...” Hui breathed out after he pulled away. “I don’t fall for every dancer I work together... but I have fallen for you.”

#universe net #pentagon #hui #lee hwitaek #pentagon imagines #pentagon scenarios #pentagon au #hui imagines #hui scenarios #pentagon ballroom dancing au

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