#i can see why they went safer instead of experimental...

[yandere-daydreams]

Title: Closed Casket.

Commissioned by the very lovely @99shadowcat99.

Pairing: Yandere!Demon Brothers/Reader (Obey Me).

Word Count: 2.4k.

TW: Toxic Relationships, Dehumanization, Codependence, Threats of Violence, Mentions of Death, Implied Imprisonment.

It was a closed-casket funeral.

For such a small detail, it bothered you more than it had any right to. You hadn’t been the one to arrange it, the one to speak to the undertaker and evaluate the damage – that was a responsibility that fell to her fiancé rather than you, a distant cousin, only brought up in conversations about postponed friendships and quickly thinning family trees. You’d done what you could to help, what a last living relative should do to help - paying for flower arrangements, speaking to financial advisors, sorting through her belongs and trying to guess at what might’ve held some sentimental value to someone more present in her life, but you never saw the body. No one ever offered, and you hadn’t known how to ask. She was gone, now, dead and buried, and you'd never gotten to see her, even if everyone who had said that it was probably for the best.

And it probably was. They were probably right. You wouldn’t feel any better, if you had.

And yet, you found it difficult to believe you could feel any worse than you did now, either.

Belphegor was curled around your arm. He had been since you came back from the Human World, slotted against your side, draped over your shoulders, and currently, splayed out on top of you, his face buried in the flesh just above your shoulder blade, his body forcibly tangled with yours in a way that was too awkward to be comfortable for both of you, a sacrifice he seemed more than willing to make on your behalf. You’d tried to shrug him off earlier, when he first decided there was enough space on the smallest loveseat in the common room for his strange, daily ritual, and when that failed, you’d tried to talk him into letting go, into loosening his grip enough for you to slip away when he fell asleep, into relocating to somewhere else, somewhere softer, somewhere with a pillow that could easily replace you when he was too busy tossing and turning to care, but Belphegor had always been so frustratingly picky when it came to where, how, and when he chose to sleep.

He’d chosen you, and he’d chosen like this, and he’d chosen now. There was little you could do to change his mind, after he’d already made it up.

Still, you tried. He wasn’t asleep yet, caught somewhere between permanently half-conscious state and a sleep deep enough to warrant medical concern for most living creatures, supernaturally inclined or otherwise. “Belphie,” You called, gently, pushing the temptation to try more forceful methods into the back of your mind. “Think you pick another spot? Just for today?”

“Can’t.” It was a simple response, his voice heavy with sourceless exhaustion, just as short and just as blunt as it had been the last time you asked. You weren’t sure what you’d expected, honestly. “You were gone. I can’t.”

Your frown deepened. You’d left for a week – nine days, at most. And Belphegor couldn’t have been awake for more than half of that. “That’s not--”

“He was lonely, sweetheart.” It was Asmodeus, this time, as he perched himself on the loveseat’s arm. He wasn’t any better than Belphie, nimble fingertips soon tracing aimless patterns over the side of your neck, the dip of your shoulder, taking up the space he could occupy since the space he’d like to was already in-use. “He’ll get better, in a few days. Once it sinks in that you won't be leaving again.”

You were out of practice. A month ago, you would’ve known better than to respond, than to ask questions to someone who took as much delight in festering doubts as Asmodeus did. A month ago, you would’ve brushed him off and found your way to Purgatory Hall for the rest of the night. But, it wasn’t a month ago, and you were tired. You were still thinking about that casket, and you couldn’t seem to think of much else. “What do you mean?”

“Oh?” There was a pause, a laugh, light and melodic and fluttering. You’d always liked his laugh. You could bring yourself to enjoy it, though, not right now. “No one’s told you, yet?”

“Don’t tease ‘em.” You hadn’t noticed how full the common room had gotten, not until Mammon spoke and you reflexively turned to face the sofa opposite to yours. He was standing, leaning against the back, his hands clasped in a way that’d put his anxiety on display far more transparently than his voice ever could. Beelzebub, too, his arms crossed over his chest as his attention shifted idly between you, the console in Leviathan’s hands, and the book splayed out in Satan's lap, his scowl serving as evidence of his annoyance. It always bothered you, how easily he grew frustrated by situations he chose to put himself in. It bothered you a little more, today. “Might as well spit it out, if you’re going to bring it up,” Mammon went on, shifting his weight, letting his eyes fall to the floor, then rise to the ceiling, then drift back to you. “There’s no point putting it off.”

“Weren’t you supposed to tell them, Mammon?” Beelzebub chimed in, absent-mindedly. If it'd been Satan, if it'd been Lucifer, it would’ve been pointed, malicious, purposeful. Beelzebub just sounded like he was trying to remind his older brother of something he’d forgotten. “You said you should be the one to do it, since you met them first. Then, when Lucifer said you wouldn’t be able to do it, you said that if the human threw a tantrum, you could just--”

“I didn’t say shit.” Mammon cut him off, his tone hostile, but it was a half-hearted anger, more petty than vengeful. “I said I could, not that I would, and Lucifer shot me down. If he hadn’t, there’d already be a deadbolt on every fucking door in the house. We wouldn’t be sitting around, talkin’ about it.”

“Every door?” Beelzebub looked confused. Then, he looked concerned. “I thought we agreed to just seal the exits.”

“I still think we should just use their bedroom,” Leviathan chimed in, never looking up from his hand-held. Something tightened in the back of your throat. Experimentally, you tried to pull yourself out of Belphegor’s arms, but he only held you tighter, and Asmodeus’ nails dug into your shoulder, rooting you back into place without a single word. “It’d be cool, kinda like a permanent save-point. We wouldn’t have to worry about baby-proofing the entire house, either.”

“We could use a leash,” Asmodeus suggested, never breaking his stare. He didn’t look away. You wished he would. You wished they’d, if nothing else, have the courtesy to wait until you’d left the room to start talking about things you didn’t know and didn’t want to know. “So we can make sure they’re always close by! Or, we could have Lucifer enchant a collar – having to hold a tether might get in way when I have to--”

“He’d never do it.” It was the first time Satan had cut in, but it was clear he’d been listening. His book was still open, his expression still concentrated, but he was tapping his foot, the disruption soundless against the thick carpeting, and you couldn’t remember the last time he thought to pretend to turn a page. He was listening, but he didn’t want to be. He was a part of this, but you doubted he’d every say as much out loud. You doubted he’d ever let himself admit he’d stooped to that level. “And if he did, we’d never hear the end of it. In a week, there’d probably be a new kennel in the catacombs, right next to Ceberus’.” He stopped, for a moment, shaking his head. For your own sake, your chose to believe the envy lingering behind his voice was his attempt at a bad joke. “You would prefer a bedroom, wouldn’t you, (Y/n)?”

He asked you a question. He was talking to you, now, directly, which was more than you could say for any of his brothers. It should’ve been an improvement. An opportunity, if nothing else, a chance to ask why Asmodeus was looking at you like that, why you could feel Belphegor’s careless smile pressing into your skin, but you hesitated, something catching in your chest. It felt too solid, too heavy, too rough and too jagged. It felt like it’d hurt to swallow down, later on, once the unease passed and you got over whatever scheme they’d planned out, while you were gone.

“I… What?” You weren’t sure what you wanted to say, but it came out as a question regardless, your reluctance blending messily with your confusion. “This isn’t funny. If you’re going to act like this every time I visit the Human World, I might have to stop coming back.”

Finally, Satan glanced up from his book. If you didn’t know better, you might’ve said he was smiling. “Right. Because you still think you're allowed to leave.”

The rest of the room fell silent. Or, maybe it didn’t, maybe it was louder than it'd ever been. You didn’t know. You couldn't hear anything, not over the sudden ringing in your ears. “I’ll have to, eventually. It’s not up to me.”

Beelzebub shifted in his seat, suddenly uncomfortable. “It’d be safer if you stayed in the Devildom. We can’t protect you in the Human World.”

Leviathan’s grip tightened around his console. In the background, you could hear the plastic shell start to crack. “We wouldn’t be able to see you. Not all the time. Not for more than a few weeks at a time.” He was quiet, for a moment. Then, he added, “It wouldn’t be the same. It wouldn’t… It wouldn’t feel like it does when you’re here.”

Mammon looked away, letting his head lull to the side. “You belong here, with us. You’re supposed to be here. We’re just doin’ you a favor. No one wants to watch you figure out how fucked you’d be on your own.”

And, finally, Belphegor groaned, exhaustion heavy in the gravely sound. He untangled himself from you, but the freedom was temporary, fleeting, his arms snaking around your waist, instead, his face soon gracelessly buried in your chest. His eyes flickered open, but barely, just enough to let him stare up at you through his eyelashes, a thoughtless grin pulling at the corners of his lips. He wasn’t divided, not like his brothers were. He didn’t try to pretend he was above holding you against your will. “You're not leaving again.” It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t even a threat. It was just a fact, to him. It was something that wouldn’t happen, that couldn’t happen, if only because his older brothers were willing to work so hard to make sure it didn’t. “We’re not gonna share you, anymore. We’re not gonna have to.”

You didn’t want to hear anything else. You didn’t want to be here, anymore, not if this was what it meant, not if it was going to feel like standing in front of that closed casket all over again, the urge to run and sob and scream silencing every reasonable thought you’d ever had. You didn’t bother trying to talk to Asmodeus and Belphegor, you didn’t bother trying to coo and edge and skirt around their anger, their unspoken threats, not anymore, not when your body was already standing on its own, shoving at Belphegor’s body and swatting at Asmodeus’ hand as he reached out, aiming to cup your cheek and tell you so gently to sit down and shut up. Beelzebub leaned forward, Mammon flinched, and you could’ve sworn you caught a row of long, pointed fangs flash across Satan’s sneer, but you didn’t care. You wanted to hit something. You wanted to yell. You’d wanted to ever since you came back to this damned house and its overly affectionate occupants.

“You don’t get to share me.” You couldn’t be shared. You weren’t theirs to share, even if they already seemed geared against the idea. You weren’t theirs to trap, either. You never would be. “I don’t need your protection, and you don’t need to see me, and the only place I’m supposed to be is the Human World. I don’t know what got into your fucked-up heads while I was gone, but you can’t just--”

“Sit down, (Y/n).”

You stopped mid-sentence.

Right. You’d almost forgotten Lucifer hadn't gotten a chance say his piece, yet.

He didn’t give you time to cooperate. There was already a fist curled around the back of your collar, dragging you back into your seat, the action so much more aggressive than Belphegor’s oppressive dead-weight or Amsodeus’ sweet, sickly temptation. You couldn’t see him, but you could feel Lucifer looming over you, standing tall, towering above his younger brothers as he took control of the room. You wondered if he’d been here the entire time, if he’d heard everything, rather than just your sudden outburst. You wondered if you should hope that he had.

“We missed you, while you were gone.” He didn’t sound mad. He didn’t sound mad, but none of them did, none of them sounded like they were plotting to keep you away from your home, your friends, the life you had outside of demons and angels and magic. None of them sounded dangerous, either, save for Lucifer. He’d always been easier to trust when he wasn’t pretending to be kind. “We’ve all been alive for centuries, and yet, you went and made a week feel like a small eternity. Do you know how difficult it is for a human to inflict that kind of suffering onto a demon?”

You didn’t answer. Across the room, Mammon laughed and Satan bristled. Belphegor melted back into your side, more than happy just to have his resting place scared into immobility.

“You’ll stay.” It was an order, this time. Not a suggestion, not a passing concern, but a command, something you would be expected to obey. He had the nerve to use that low, calm cadence, measured and pre-meditated. He didn’t want to let you convince yourself he was as prone to bluffing as his brothers were. “You’ll stay because we want you to. We’re willing to use force, but there’s no need for that. Is there, love?”

You nodded, your body tense and your eyes glassy, and Lucifer rewarded you with a breathy chuckle, a row of knuckles delicately pressed to your cheek. A miserable reward for such an unwilling sacrifice, but Lucifer didn’t seem to mind. It certainly didn’t stop him from leaning in, his lips brushing against the top of your head, his voice falling just low enough to make something sharp and cold shot down your spine, as he went on.

“It’s not like you have anything to go back to, anymore.”

[alltooreid]

Call It What You Want

Everyone around them is trying to discover the true nature of Y/N and Spencer’s relationship. Little do they know Y/N is trying to figure out the exact same thing. 

A/N: Sorry this took a lot longer than I wanted it to.... Mental health is hard but here it is!! I hope you guys love it :)) Additionally I added a lil garvez to this... but for it to work with the timeline we’re all just gonna pretend Lisa doesn’t exist... ok great!

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Fem!Reader (with a little splash of implied Garvez content for my personal joy)

Requested?: Yes!! :)) “can you do a one shot based off call it what you want??”

Type: Fluffiest Fluff

Word Count: 3K

Content Warnings: None! 

“My baby's fly like a jet stream High above the whole scene Loves me like I'm brand new So call it what you want, yeah, call it what you want to”

The team was sure something was going on between Y/N and Spencer, they just weren’t sure how to prove it.

Every sign pointed to the two dating, but the pair hadn’t said anything about it. Maybe they were trying to keep it a secret, but at the same time they didn’t appear to be being very secretive about it.

So ever since Penelope saw Y/N giving Spencer a ride home a week ago, she has been determined to uncover the truth, and hopefully the truth was her two best friends were in the world’s cutest, most perfect relationship.

She was using her technical brilliance to gather data when she was caught by none other than Luke Alvez.

“What are you doing in here?”

“This is my job Luke, I have to be in here,” she rolled her eyes.

“Well, I know that! I mean what are you doing right now, we don’t have a case.” he smirked “Are you committing any cyber crimes? You know you could get in a lot of trouble for those, the FBI won’t help you. You should let me help.”

She smiled, “You do know I got my job here from committing cyber crimes right? I don’t think I would need your help. Besides, I’m working on a personal project.” After some thought she decided Luke might actually be helpful “I’m trying to find out if Spencer and Y/N are dating.”

“I swear I saw them leaving together yesterday, that seems like pretty good evidence! I could be very helpful to you.”

“I’m way ahead of you, but I guess you can help,” she pulled up a new tab, quickly constructing a timeline while Luke pulled a chair next to her. “So our favorite pair’s relationship would, based on my intense experimentation and surveying, begin here,” she traced a circle around the start of the timeline with her cursor, “on that night we went out after the case and then wouldn’t stop talking to each other.”

Luke and Penelope discussed all the things they saw that led them to believe that Y/N and Spencer were more than just friends, from how keen Y/N was to listen to anything that came out of Spencer’s mouth no matter how difficult to follow, to Spencer’s willingness to touch her. After about 15 minutes however they were interrupted by none other than Y/N herself. Penelope quickly switched tabs, so that it now appeared she was just showing Luke a funny kitten video.

“Hey guys! What are you doing in here?” “Oh you know, just wasting time. . . What’s up?” said Luke.

“I was just checking to see if you wanted to go to lunch! If you have any opinions as to where that would be great too because no one out there can make a decision . . .”

“Of course I want lunch! I’ll be out there in just a sec,” Penelope smiled and started closing her work done as soon as Y/N left, almost forgetting Luke’s presence.

“Um, Penelope?”

“What is it Luke?”

“Do you think you’d ever do anything like what Y/N and Spencer are doing?” he asked.

“Like what? Keep a secret? You know I’m terrible at that stuff.”

“No, no I mean like . . .” he took a deep breath, “You know, like dating a coworker?”

“What does that have to do with anything? Now hurry up and come to lunch, we can keep working afterwards,” she replied.

Luke awkwardly smiled, and they both left.

Little did Luke and Penelope know that as they debated and pieced together aspects of Y/N and Spencer’s relationship, trying to uncover if they were dating, Y/N was doing the exact same thing.

Her and Spencer had been on three dates, each more boyfriend and girlfriend than the last. They got coffee one day, then went to a movie, then a nice restaurant for dinner. Tonight Spencer wanted to keep it a surprise, but that just made her even more confused.

Sometimes her and Spencer would sit next to each other at the round table, and now when they did that he would reach over, not to hold her hand, but just to link their pinkies together.

She didn’t know what that meant.

Sometimes Y/N would go on a tangent and realize she had been talking for almost an hour about nothing in particular, and when she realized Spencer was the only one still listening would apologize for wasting his time. To which he would reply, “Why would I be upset about spending time with you?” She didn’t know what that meant.

And one time, on her and Spencer’s first “date” they were about to part their separate directions, and Y/N had no idea what to do with her body or her hands, Spencer wrapped her into a hug, and she swore she felt his lips brushing against the top of her head.

She really didn’t know what that meant.

Which is why she continued to let Penelope and Luke have their fun trying to decipher her and Spencer’s social cues. She knew as soon as she was about to enter to ask about lunch, Penelope was not exactly quiet and Luke wasn’t any better, but she let them believe they were being sneaky.

Besides, maybe if they found the answer they could let her know.

When the team returned from lunch she couldn’t help but continue to contemplate this issue further, Spencer hadn’t really said anything to her at lunch. Were they still just friends? Were they dating but not telling anyone? Were they going to tell anyone?

“Y/N! Are you excited to hang out tonight?” Spencer asked.

Hang out. So it definitely was not a date. . .

“Of course! Right after work right? Your place?”

“Yep! It’s a date,” he smiled and walked away, leaving Y/N in a state of confused panic. What was this? For someone so logical and scientific, Y/N wished that Spencer Reid would just tell her the kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, and genus of their relationship.

Maybe then she could stop dissecting it to try and figure it out.

　♡　　♡　　♡　　♡　　♡　

As Y/N stood outside Spencer’s apartment building, she struggled to muster up courage to go inside. It’s not that she was nervous to hang out with Spencer, it was just Y/N knew she needed to have the “what are we” talk with him for her own personal sanity. And she just wasn’t sure yet what his answer would be.

She had made her way into the building and gotten to Spencer’s floor when she ran into the man of the hour himself.

“Oh there you are! I was about to come down and get you,” he said.

Y/N glanced at her phone, “I’m sorry, am I late?”

“No, no, no. You’re perfect, I just got excited.”

That confused Y/N even more, she couldn’t decide if that leaned more towards friend or date territory. However all of her anxieties were forgotten for a moment as soon as she entered Spencer’s apartment.

Almost all the lights were off, except for several strings of lights shaped like stars, strung in different directions across the room. In the corner were several folded up blankets and sheets, and pillows were spread out across the room.

“Do you like it?”

“I love it, although if I’m being honest I don’t really know what it is . . .”

“13 months ago we were on a case, the one were the unsub was killing couples when they went out camping so that no one would look for them for days, and you said that you used to go camping all the time but you didn’t think you could go anymore. So I bought stuff so we could go camping together, right here.”

Y/N was left almost speechless, “I- I don’t even know what to say, Spencer this is incredible.”

He beamed, instantly satisfied with that answer. “I tried to find a tent, but all of the stores I went to said I should order one online . . . I figured it would be more fun to build a fort instead.”

Spencer brought over the supplies he had bought and gathered, various sheets and comforters, pillows, his leather couch cushions, sleeping bags, a large collection of clothes pins, and some more lights. Except Spencer left a single bag in the pile, the only one from a craft store.

“Do you want me to grab that one?” Y/N asked.

“Oh um, no don’t worry about that one. I saw something stupid on that site JJ and Garcia really like while I was passing JJ’s desk. . .  Pinterest? Yes that’s it. And I tried to make it but even though I memorized the instructions I couldn’t get it to work. . . I kind of just gave up and threw everything in there.”

“Can I try it?”

He nodded, and Y/N got up and glanced into the bag, in it was a push light, warm toned tissue paper and a couple empty paper towel rolls, all stuck together, but also somehow falling apart. Y/N couldn’t help but smile, “Were you trying to build me a campfire Dr. Reid?”

“Well you said that your family used to have this big bonfire every year, and that it used to be one of your favorite traditions until you couldn’t handle going anymore, so I thought I could make one that would be a little safer for you. Turns out that you actually need four PHDs to be good at crafts though.”                    

“Spencer this whole date is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me . . . Thank you.”

“Of course, I really want you to enjoy yourself when you're around me Y/N.”

“Spencer, I’ve never not enjoyed myself when I’m around you, and you were with me when I got shot. You’re my favorite person, you do know that right?”

He blushed, “You’re my favorite person too Y/N.”

So the two lovers built a blanket fort, draping sheets over string lights and shoving the inside full of pillows and blankets, giggling the entire time. Y/N taught Spencer the simplicity of DIY projects, and how sometimes the directions needed to be adjusted slightly based on personal preferences and ability. Soon the pair were cuddled up together on the ground, no other space to be except for right next to each other, as the rest of the fort was covered by snacks, pillows, their homemade campfire, and Spencer’s vinyl record player.

“Did you do this on purpose? Making me be so close to you?”

“No, I would never, it’s not my fault this area is so small . . . “

“Mhm, although I’m sure a genius like you could figure out how to make an adult sized fort, I’m very glad you didn’t,” she said, giggling and squishing herself closer to him. They smiled and kissed each other, before Spencer spoke.

“You make me so, unbelievably, happy. I never thought I could feel like this until we met Y/N.”

Y/N smiled even bigger, “Spencer I really, really like you,” she paused, it was now or never, “but um, what do you want to call this, like what we’re doing.”

“Well what do you want this to be? Because I want you to be my girlfriend.”

She smiled, “I want you to be my boyfriend.”

“Well then that’s what we’ll be,” he said, kissing her on the forehead.

“Well you do know the team, particularly Penelope and Luke have the exact same question.”

“Well I think more than Luke wondering if we’re dating, I think he’s just wondering if Penelope will date him. . . So I say let them have their fun for a little while, before we tell everyone.”

She smiled, “Perfect. They’re profilers, they’ll figure it out eventually.”

“Well, I think we should watch a movie. . .  Although I mostly enjoy my cinema in Russian, tonight is about you and I don’t want to give you a headache. What’s your favorite?”

“You’re going to laugh at me.”

“I promise I will not laugh at you darling.”

“High School Musical 3.”

　♡　　♡　　♡　　♡　　♡　

So Y/N spent the rest of that night explaining the plot of the first two High School Musical movies, then explaining why the third one was the clear winner, and then finally showing Spencer the third one off of her phone, where she had it saved to her cloud for emergencies.

And although singing and dancing adults pretending to be teenagers was not exactly Spencer’s favorite genre, he loved how happy the series as a whole made Y/N. So he latched onto it, and learned as much as he could about it.

One particular scene however, in one of the earlier films, seemed to make Y/N extra excited, as she spent the longest amount of time talking about it. So Spencer decided he knew exactly what to do to prove to her he was in this relationship for the long haul.

Spencer could tell she was anxious before their date, and it didn’t take him long to guess that it was because she didn’t know how serious everything was to him. Yet, he didn’t want to be too obvious that he wanted her to be his, because if he had assessed wrong he would make a complete fool out of himself.

But when she asked him, she seemed so nervous, so small, he knew he had made a mistake in waiting, and now he wanted to make it up to her.

So as she was walking in the next day he caught her. “Y/N!”

“Hi Spencer! What’s up?”

“I have a present for you. . .” he said, handing her a small box wrapped in shiny gold paper.

“For me? Why?”

“Oh you know, just because. . .”

As Y/N unwrapped the box, Spencer got more and more nervous… What if she hated it? What if she thought it was stupid or too soon or didn’t get it or-

“Oh my god Spencer I-”

“You know what it’s stupid, I don’t even know why I got it for you. I can return it and find you something you’ll actually like-”

“I love it Spencer, it’s perfect. Will you put it on me?”

Spencer hooked the chain around his new girlfriend’s neck, the small “S” pendant shining in the light.

“It’s like Gabriella’s. . . I love it. I can’t believe you would care to remember something like that…”

“Of course I would remember that. I have an eidetic memory. Did you know that although the original purpose and origin of initial jewelry was largely unknown, they date back to the 14th century?”

“No, I just mean… It’s very thoughtful Spencer.”

He smiled, “Well I’m sorry to kill the mood, but I really have to go to the bathroom. I drank 3 cups of coffee this morning and I was standing here waiting for you for 18 minutes and 4 seconds before you came in.”

She laughed, and then hugged him, “Well don’t just stand here! Go!”

Spencer ran off, leaving Y/N to walk into the bullpen alone. As Y/N was making her way to her desk, she was stopped by none other than Penelope Garcia and Luke Alvez, Penelope up front, Luke standing a foot or so behind her, ready to back her up.

“Y/N! We know your secret, you and Spencer are secretly dating. . . We figured it out this morning. You can’t hide from us anymore,” Penelope said, Luke nodding behind her.

“Well yeah we’re dating, but it’s not a secret.”

“What? Excuse me? You haven’t told anyone!”

“Yeah but we haven’t really made any effort to hide it? We told everyone about the time we went to the movies?”

“Yeah but- Um, we just thought we were being sneaky. . .” Penelope said.

“You might wanna get a little better at that guys, the Bat Cave is not soundproof.”

“Dang it, I really need to work on that…” Penelope said. “Well Luke Alvez, I suppose our quest has been conquered.”

“See! We were right, I told you I’m great help,” Luke said.

“Oh don’t get it too twisted, this was almost all me.”

After a moment of playful banter, Y/N stopped them “So when are you two going to start “secretly” dating huh?”

“Uh hmph, I don’t know what you talking about. I would never,” Penelope said.

At that moment, Spencer returned from the bathroom, and came up upon Y/N hugging her from behind and leaning to rest his head on her shoulder. “What are we talking about?”

Penelope threw her head back in defeat, “Nothing, 187, we were just talking. . .”

“Don’t you think Luke and Penelope would make the cutest couple Spencer?” Y/N smirked.

“You know what? Yeah I do!” Spencer played along, “Have you guys ever thought about that?

Luke was beaming behind Penelope, while she looked like she was trying to hide her enthusiasm. “No actually I haven’t,” she said.

“Well you definitely should,” Y/N said, giggling as her and Spencer walked to his desk.

“Hey, wait come back here! What does your necklace have on it?” Penelope asked, half running after them, Luke closely behind her.

“Whatever you want Penelope, whatever you want.”

“I want to wear his initial On a chain round my neck, chain round my neck Not because he owns me But 'cause he really knows me”

Thank you so much for reading!! Please reblog and let me know what you think :)))

holly’s tiny taglist: @reidingmelodies @hercleverboy @rigatonireid @muffin-cup​ @takeyourleap-of-faith @wheelsup​ @s1utformgg​ @averyhotchner​ @widow-cevans​ @rotinireid​

please let me know if you would like to be added or removed :))

[wolveria]

Blue Moon - Chapter 1

Pairing: Android werewolf!Nines x Reader

Summary: It was Halloween night when you stumbled across the android that looked more monster than machine. Damaged and alone, you didn't have the heart to leave him behind.

You'd always had a weakness for strays.

Prompt: Inspired by art!

Warnings: Rated E, eventual smut, Zlatko experimentation, monster romance

AO3

You pulled your coat closer in a useless attempt to ward off the cold. Winter had decided to make an appearance early this year as snow laid on the ground, and you lamented over the fact you’d chosen to walk home instead of take a taxi. The coffee shop was only a couple blocks away from your apartment, but it felt like a cross country trek as your breath billowed out of your mouth.

The wind rustled through the trees and you shuddered again. The park you’d taken a shortcut through was a good size, and you could no longer see the streetlights that signaled civilization was near.

Why had you decided to do this, again? And on Halloween night? Not that you believed in the paranormal or anything—

You dropped your nearly-empty coffee cup, the last drops spilled and forgotten on the footpath. A pair of glowing blue eyes stared out at you from the underbrush around the base of a tree.

Before you could think to scream, a low whine came from the bush. You placed your hand over your heart and let out a long breath, smiling faintly. It was just a dog, that was all. And the light from the full moon must be making its eyes glow like that. Yes, that’s all it was.

“It’s all right,” you said, offering your hand in what you hoped was a friendly manner, praying it didn’t have rabies. “Come here, boy.”

There was a low thudding noise accompanied by the brush moving. A sad, fluffy tail thumping against the ground.

You gave a sympathetic “awwww” and lightly patted your thighs, hoping to coax it out of its hiding place.

“You poor thing. Are you cold? I bet you’re hungry. Come here, sweetie, let’s get you some… food…”

Your voice trailed off as the glowing pair of blue eyes rose, higher and higher—definitely not at canine level—before it stepped out of the shadows.

It was huge, or at least seemed that way when you’d been expecting a large dog at most. Standing on two legs, it reached over six feet easily, not including the wolfish ears that stuck up from its head. With blue-black fur, sharp nails and a hint of teeth peeking out from its lips, you would have never guessed it was an android if not for the spinning yellow ring at its temple.

The android was also completely naked, not a stitch of clothing to be seen, and you quickly snapped your eyes back up to its face, face flushing at the sheer size of what you’d seen.

It—he took a hesitant step toward you, and if you’d had any of your senses left, you would have run. Android or not, you were fairly certain you were about to be murdered and eaten, and not necessarily in that order.

But your joints were locked, your limbs frozen, and all you could do was watch as the android bent down and wrapped a clawed hand carefully around your discarded coffee cup. Stepping directly in front of you, he slowly held the cup out, his ears laid flat as if afraid you were going to whack him with a rolled up newspaper.

You glanced from face to his outstretched hand. That was when you caught sight of the gash across his ribcage, the exposed internal circuits glittering in the dark.

You’d always had a soft spot for injured animals. And while he might not be an animal, per se, it was close enough that you gently took the coffee cup and gave him a soft thank you.

His ears perked and his tail wagged hopefully as he retracted his hand. He continued the slow wag of his tail as he stared at you expectantly. It took you a minute to realize what he was waiting for. He was, after all, an android, and a canine-like one at that.

He was waiting for orders.

“Are you lost?” you asked. Was he even programmed to talk? “Where do you live? Do you need help getting back home?”

You almost asked who his owner was, but it didn’t feel right. You suspected you’d made the right decision when the question had him folding his ears back, his floofy tail dipping towards the ground.

“Uh, that’s okay.” You tried you best at a soothing smile. “The police station isn’t far from here. I can take you there—“

It was precisely the wrong thing to say; his LED went red and he winced as if you’d slapped him. You weren’t at all prepared for him to open his mouth, and a raspy, rough voice to come out.

“No. Please. Not there.”

You gawked up at him, hardly believing what you’d heard with your own ears, but the android could definitely talk. As strange as he looked, he was capable of communicating his wants.

…and you’d heard rumors about the kinds of androids that wanted.

Carefully you glanced around, but no one else had come across the two of you. It was lucky it was Halloween when most people would be trick-or-treating or handing out candy; the last thing you needed was to be caught in the middle of the night, in a park, with a strange, naked android.

“Okay. No police station.” You rubbed at your arms as you glanced him over, immediately regretting it as your sight dipped below his belly button. Looking away resolutely, you offered, “Why don’t you come back to my place, just for tonight? Get you some clothes and then… we can have a talk.”

Finally, you had said the right thing. His ears went all perky and his tail wagged its fastest yet, but most of all, his LED went blue for the first time. It was the same shade as his glowing eyes.

You gulped. This was such a fucking bad idea.

“I would like that,” he said, voice all soft and gentle. And just like that, you were a goner. No turning back now.

“Come on,” you sighed, stepping around him to continue in the direction of your apartment. It was a bit silly still hanging onto the empty coffee cup, but all you could focus on was the near-silent footfalls behind you as you tried to come up with the best way to sneak a naked android werewolf into your apartment.

***

As it turned out, dealing with the android was a lot less surreal when he had clothes on, even if it was a pair of sweatpants and a tight sweater that barely fit him. You’d have to order some clothes for him tomorrow

If he even wanted to hang around that long. You were under no illusion that if he wanted to leave, you wouldn’t be able to stop him, but for now he seemed content to stay.

The android was currently standing in your living room, fussing with the hem of the sweater that barely covered his waistline. You covered your mouth with your fingers in a poor attempt to hide a smile. Now that you were confident he wasn’t going to eat you, the android was actually quite adorable. You’d even cut out a hole in the back of the pants for him to pull his tail through.

You plopped down onto the couch and padded the cushion next to you. It had been a long time since you’d had a houseguest, and it said a lot about your state of loneliness that you were excited over having a strange android for company.

Said android stared at you for a moment before perching, quite primly, at the other end of the couch. The fact he had to move his tail out of the way before he sat down ruined the composed image he was trying to convey.

He really was very odd, and not just because of all the wolfy bits. This android seemed very much alive, a fact that should have had you picking up the phone to call the authorities. But… you didn’t.

Instead, you bombarded him with questions. What was his name? Where did he come from? Was he a custom model? How had he been injured? The wound looked ghastly, but he hardly noticed it. You made a mental note to add Thirium and android chassis repair sealant to the shopping list. You’d never owned an android before, but you’d always been fascinated with them and knew the basics of what they needed.

“RK900,” was his answer to your first question. He skipped over to the third. “I am… I was a prototype created by CyberLife to assist law enforcement. It would be safer for you if I said nothing further.”

Unable to imagine an android like this working with the police, you guessed he’d looked different, before. More like a standard android instead of one so altered he was nearly unrecognizable.

“Okay, I won’t pry,” you said, amassing all your willpower not to assault him with more questions, the biggest one being why do you look like something out of my deepest, darkest, most shameful wetdream? Yes, you were definitely not venturing into that territory.

Your next question was caught on a yawn, and you looked away as your face grew warm. He was just an android, why were you being so self-conscious about every little thing you did?

It could have been the way he’d watched you ever since you’d stumbled across him in the bushes: laser-like focus that never broke. It didn’t help that the sclera of his eyes were black, making the blue stand out even more.

Also, he didn’t blink. Like, ever.

“I’m gonna head to bed.” You thumbed over your shoulder toward the hallway. “Will you be all right out here? Do you need anything?”

“Yes,” he said. “And no.”

You were picking up on his mannerisms very quickly. He over-enunciated and spoke with perfect grammar. It was in direct contrast to the way his sharp nails toyed with the sweater, or the way his ears would swivel at sounds you barely noticed. At some points in the conversation, he would tilt his head at you in a way that was so dog-like, you had to keep fighting down the smiles. You’d definitely never met an android like this one before, even if he had looked perfectly human.

“I will be fine,” the RK900 added when you continued to stare. “I will rest and repair. I have neglected to enter stasis mode for… quite some time now.”

His eyes dropped to the carpet, demeanor evasive and uncomfortable. It took everything you had not to reach out and pet him on the head.

“I shouldn’t intrude in your personal space. I will be gone in the morning.”

And then you did reach out, placing your hand on his arm. He was solid and surprisingly warm under the fabric of the sweater.

He stared at your hand for a moment before slowly lifting his head to meet your eye. His expression was so… sad. You had no doubt it was authentic, and that you were right about what he was.

“Please, you don’t have to go.” Your voice was soft, ensuring it was a suggestion and not a command. “You’re more than welcome to stay. I want to help you. Will you let me do that?”

The ring on his temple was a solid yellow and you nearly pulled your hand back, but then it went blue and he gave a small nod. You sighed with relief and gave him a gentle pat before letting him go.

“Thank you.” You rose to your feet, stretching to get the kinks out of your shoulders. It was stressful bringing a wayward android home. “I’m just down the hall if you need me. See you in the morning.”

Before you made it to the hallway, you paused and half-turned.

“Do you have a name?”

He blinked up at your question.

“I mean, I know RK900 is your model number, but… you have a name, don’t you?”

His ears drooped. You were learning they were a better indicator of his thoughts than the color of his LED.

“No. CyberLife never gave me one.”

Of course they wouldn’t, you thought, not the first time you’d unhappy with the way androids were treated. CyberLife was by far the worst. Why would they care about any of their merchandise?

“Well, maybe you can come up with one.” You hoped he understood the things you weren’t saying aloud, that you understood what he really was beneath the strange exterior.

His ears perked up and his expression softened.

“That… would be nice.”

Before you could say anything to embarrass yourself, or worse, run over to him and give him a hug, you excused yourself to get ready for bed. Already your mind was going through a checklist of all the things you’d need to care for an android in the long-run, and that was being optimistic. The RK900 could still change his mind. There was still so much you didn’t know.

It wasn’t until you shut off the lights and stared at the ceiling that the implications of your actions truly hit you. You’d seen the news reports, read the independent websites that couldn’t be suppressed by CyberLife. There were androids out there, said to be “lethally malfunctioning,” that were disobeying and turning on their humans.

One of the most common signs to watch out for was mimicry of human emotions. Anger, was the main one, but there was also fear. And that was something you’d seen a lot of tonight shining out of the RK900’s eyes.

You weren’t just harboring an android that looked like a werewolf.

You were sheltering a deviant.

[imaginetonyandbucky]

Keeping Me Alive

Chapter 11: Heathens

by @dracusfyre

They made it to the long-term cruise liner parking lot where Tony had staged an SUV for their escape when James stopped and said, “Tracking devices.”

“Shit.” Of course Hydra would have some way of tracking him; he was an expensive tool, after all, not a person. Tony had Jarvis scan him and found two transmitters, one in the metal arm and one in the back of his neck close to the spine. “I can jam them both until we are in a safe place to remove them,” Tony said, “but I can’t get the one out of the arm without tools. And the one in your neck…” Tony trailed off when James pulled a knife out of the sheath on his thigh and held it out.

“Get rid of it.”

Tony wanted to protest but he bit his tongue when he saw the look on James’ face. He would want it out of him as soon as possible as well; he was lucky that Stane hadn’t thought to put one in him too. He climbed laboriously out of his suit and took the knife as James turned around and bent his head. Guess I get to stick a knife in the Winter Soldier after all, Tony thought with a grim smile. Years of working on circuit boards had given him a steady hand, so even though he grimaced as blood welled to the surface when he sliced through James’ skin, he was quick and efficient. “What should we do with it?” Tony asked when it was on his palm, tiny and shaped like a pill capsule. James took it from him and crushed it with his metal hand, letting it fall to the ground before grinding them into the pavement with his boot.

James helped him pack the suit in the back of the SUV and then they both went for the driver’s seat.  “I have the key,” Tony said, pulling it out of his pocket and closing his hand around it when he saw James eyeing it. “Also, you don’t know where we’re going.” 

“If Hydra comes, I should be driving,” James said with a scowl.  

“If Hydra comes, you should be shooting,” Tony countered, and James considered that for a second before going around to the passenger seat. He’d already stashed one of the duffle bags of arms and ammunition that they’d taken from the lab in the floorboard, and as Tony pulled out of the parking lot he began methodically loading all of the rifles and spare magazines. It was a funny thing to find relaxing, but it made him feel safer to think that all of the Soldier’s lethality was on his side for once.

By the time they got onto the 5, the car had fallen into a strained silence, so Tony turned on the radio. The news of his demise had made headlines about an hour into their drive, though the police being interviewed were very careful not to officially declare Tony dead. The radio was the only sound in the car until they were four hours north of LA, when James finally spoke again. “Why?” He asked, his voice low and gruff and barely audible over the radio, even though Tony had the volume low.

Tony, who had been waiting for the question since he first took his helmet off in the lab, glanced over to see James studying him. “Do you recognize me at all?” After a moment of hesitation, James shook his head and Tony turned his eyes back to the road. “You and I have a long history,” Tony said finally. “None of it good. I don’t blame you for it,” Tony added hurriedly when he saw James stiffen. “I mean, I did, but I don’t now, because...Well, the point is, I realized recently that we are – were – both prisoners of Hydra. So I figure that means we have a common enemy, and that we should work together."

"You want me to help you take down Hydra?"

"Well, yeah." Tony glanced back over; James' expression didn't say what he thought of that. "Unless you don't want to, I guess. But we should still stick together until it's safe. I don't know about you, but I'm not going back."

James snorted at that. “So where’re we going?”

“Safe house.” There was silence in the car again as Tony pulled off the next exit to get gas. After he started the pump, he climbed back into the car and opened the center console. It was filled with protein bars, candy, chips, and drinks. “Pick your poison,” Tony said as he grabbed a bottle of water and a candy bar. James eyed Tony and then the stash of snacks before picking out a protein bar and bottle of Gatorade.

“What’s this?” He asked as he eyed the unnaturally blue drink.

“Sugar water, mostly.” Tony chugged his water as James took an experimental sip. “Your file says after you, uh, wake up you need a lot of protein and electrolytes and stuff. So drink up, it’s good for you.”

James grimaced at the taste but drank it steadily like a person that is used to taking medicine. When he was done he started making his way through the stack of protein bars with a grim determination that was almost impressive, if Tony hadn’t started to worry that he should have packed more food for the drive. They weren’t even a quarter of the way to their destination and James had eaten more than half the food. Finally the pump turned off with a thunk, so Tony finished paying and climbed back into the driver’s seat.

“If you've read my file,” James said as they got back onto the highway, “then you know a lot more about me than I know about you.”

“That’s not a high bar,” Tony said with a ghost of a smile. “I know more about you than you know about yourself.” James shot him an unamused look and Tony shrugged. “What do you want to know?”

“You said your name was Tony Stark,” James said. He pointed to the radio. “If that’s true, why do the police think you’re dead?”

Tony’s eyebrows climbed. He didn’t realize James had been paying attention to the radio; he’d spent the entire drive so far staring out the window and checking the rearview mirror, presumably looking for Hydra. “Because I want them to think I’m dead,” Tony said. “That way I can be free to do what needs to be done.”

“What did Hydra want you for?”

“I make weapons. Made,” Tony corrected. “Their little pet engineer, cranking out planes and tanks and bombs for them,” he added bitterly, gesturing to the weapons in the bag at James’ feet. “I have also been fixing your arm for the past few years.”

That made James’ eyebrows draw together. “Music,” he said after a long moment. “I remember loud music.”

“Yeah, that was me. You remember that?”

“Hydra doesn’t exactly play me tunes on a regular basis,” James said dryly. “It stood out.”

Tony barked out a surprised laugh and turned the radio away from the news to classic rock. They switched vehicles a few hours later, then again at the border with Oregon. When they finally pulled in to Tony's cabin - one left to him by Ana and Edwin, and significantly renovated over the past month - Tony turned off the car and sagged against the seat. It wasn't until he felt his shoulders and jaw relaxed that he'd realized how tense he'd been the whole drive; he was suddenly acutely aware that he had been awake for almost 24 hours. "Home sweet home," he said unnecessarily as the engine ticked and cooled.

"I'll be the judge of that," James said. He climbed out of the car then proceeded to fit an unlikely number of firearms on his person before he disappeared into the woods. Tony shrugged and started to lug the suit piece by piece into the house, and when he took a moment to fire up the surveillance system he could see James evaluating the perimeter, pausing each time he noticed one of Tony's cameras. "I may not be an expert, but I am paranoid," Tony said to the monitors, then went back to the SUV for another load. By the time he had the suit in the gantry and ready for the next time he needed to put it on, James had finished his patrol and was standing in the middle of the living room. "Does my security meet your standards?" Tony asked as he headed for the freezer. For now, the cabin was stocked with shelf-stable food and the freezer was packed with instant meals, enough that they could avoid leaving for a few weeks as long as they didn't want things like milk or eggs or fresh fruit and vegetables.

"I have some suggestions," James said, following Tony into the kitchen. "Mostly involving explosives."

"Then you must not have checked around the foundation," Tony said. He picked out a frozen pizza and, checking the instructions, turned on the oven. He turned around to see James still standing there, looking uncertain, and he cursed internally. He wasn't used to having someone else in his space; it was going to take a while for him to get used to having a roommate. "Come on, I'll show you around."

James' room was in the top of the house, in a renovated attic space. Tony had picked it because the windows gave it excellent views on all sides of the house, and since James' files said he was a sniper he thought James would appreciate it. But as they stood there, Tony realized he had underestimated how tall James was, because if he stood anywhere other than the middle of the room he would have to duck. He'd also have to sleep diagonally on the queen size bed, but from the way James had gone all still and quiet when he'd looked at the room, Tony thought it might be good enough. There was one bathroom and it was on the ground floor, next to another bedroom. That was supposed to have been Tony's, but when he'd tried to sleep there he had woken up multiple times with panic attacks, feeling exposed and vulnerable, so his room was now in the basement. The basement had started life as a cellar but Tony had expanded it and reinforced it until it could probably now be classified as a bunker instead.  "And this is HQ," Tony said as the lights came on to the main room. He'd moved everything important out of the LA home before he'd sent it into the Pacific, including his computers, JARVIS's servers, and all of the tools and machinery he would need to design and build new suits. What drew James' attention, though, was the murder board that took up one wall of the room. It was pretty sparse at the moment because Tony had only just started to dig through the Hydra files he'd downloaded, but there was Stane, Pierce, and Stern, as well as some of their more prominent hangers-on.

There were also the people that Tony had seen last time he was in the lab with Stane. Tony picked up a marker and put an X on all the faces he remembered. James pointed to one that he'd missed and then Tony hesitated, fidgeting with the marker before he finally said, “I was there the last time they…” Tony blew out a breath, unable to finish his sentence. "With the.."

“The chair,” James finished for him.

“Yeah.  And I wanted to say I’m sorry.”

“Why? You weren’t one of…” James made an aborted gesture towards his head. “I knew them. I didn’t remember them, but…I knew them.”

“Because I didn’t stop it earlier. I mean, I didn’t know about it, but it was because I didn’t want to know. I was scared and…” Tony swallowed thickly and forced himself to keep going. “Weak. I let Hydra break me down for so long and they didn’t even need the chair to do it.”

“How long?”

“Over twenty years. Since I was sixteen.”

“Sixteen? Christ, you were a child,” James said with disgust. “Where were your parents?”

“Um…” Tony glanced over at him and grimaced. “They died. When I was eighteen.”

“Died?” James caught the look on his face and cursed long and low under his breath. “It was me, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Tony fidgeted with the marker in his hand. “I told them what was happening, and Hydra had them killed.”

“Ah, fuck. When you said we had a bad history you weren’t fucking kidding.” James ran a hand over his mouth and crossed his arms. “Well, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

“Well, it’s not like it was your idea,” Tony started, and then got cut off when James snorted. “What?”

“Look at us idiots, apologizing for shit that was Hydra’s fault,” he said. “I’m sorry Hydra made me pull the trigger on your parents. You’re sorry Hydra tortured and brainwashed me. I hope you got me out because you have a plan to make Hydra sorry I killed your parents and they brainwashed me,” he said, pointing to the murder board.

Tony met his eyes and felt a smile tug on his lips. He pulled out the picture of Ana, Edwin, and Maria from Christmas out of his pocket and propped it up on his desk. “Yeah. Yeah I do.”

[kessielrg]

[DA+KH] It Will Get Better

Summary: An experimental fic for @chibi-mushroom‘s Dragon Age AU for the Kingdom Hearts series. Exploring a HumorousHawke!Xion, sedatephobia, mild trauma, bunny children infiltration, and hope. Mild spoilers for after Act 2 of Dragon Age 2. I want to apologize now for how easily startled Xion is, it’s not intentional. ^^;

Rating: K+

Word Count: 2,978 words

If you liked this story, please reblog!

---

The estate was just too quiet. Of course, anything would seem quiet after the Qunari uprising. A few months after, and life at Kirkwall was back to its usual chaos. And yet, Xion found herself staying at home away from the business of the city. Even more so, it gave her time to think about a lot of things.

The Qun. Her mother. Her siblings. The Fifth Blight. Events and experiences that have passed but still insisted on festering in the darkest part of her mind. Was it all her fault? Did she make any good choices in the past five years?

Silence made it worse. Silence made Xion want to hide in a corner, cover her ears, and scream ‘you can’t find me’ like when she was a child. She couldn’t keep doing this. Today she’d go for a walk. Not a long one, but long enough to redirect her thoughts. At first, just getting out of the house had been the harder part. After that, she just followed her feet. Her mind was numb to her surroundings as she walked. It wasn’t until she reached the edge of Kirkwall  -to where the walls surrounding met the outside leading into the Free Marches- that she stopped.

Run.

Run as fast as you can and never turn back.

Xion shook her head. No, there were still things in Kirkwall that needed to be sorted out. She was the city’s champion, after all. She had to stay. If not for the city, then for what family she did have left. Her uncle was debatable, but Cloud? Cloud was… safe. Safer where he was than in being here with her.

But she didn’t want to stay. She wanted to get away from this draining city before it ate her up alive. No, she'd rather die than stay to help the people here. They didn’t need her. Knight-Commander Sephiroth was doing a decent job at keeping peace. Kirkwall didn’t need a champion. It did not need her. If anything, things would probably be a lot more peaceful if she just-!

The sound of a small squeak caught her attention. Blinking (and quickly wiping away a tear from the corner of her eye), Xion looked around for the source of the squeak. She looked down to give a jolt of bewilderment. There, almost at her feet, was a small blue rabbit. The blue creature looked back up at her with wide, almost completely black eyes. Despite its odd appearance (and Xion’s own questioning if it was mortal or not), it didn’t seem to be much of a foe. It just looked at her with its big eyes and wide smile. Nothing else of real note beyond that, really. When it finally decided to bound away from her, Xion jumped back in surprise.

“Wait!” she found herself saying, “Where are you going?”

The blue rabbit paused for a moment before turning back to her. It titled its head from side to side in thought. A grin came across its features again as it waved for her to follow it.

“You’re not serious.”

She was given another grin before the creature started back on its original path again. Xion could feel the hairs on her arm stand up. Something about this wasn’t right -she’d seen too much in Kirkwall for it to be anything but- and yet…

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” she mumbled to herself before finally taking the steps outside Kirkwall’s walls.

That little bunny had been very sure that Xion would follow it. It would go a certain distance before pausing, looking back at her (sometimes even jumping to make sure she knew where it was), then starting back on its trail again. Something about this little game felt surreal; like a part of her was just sleepwalking and she was actually back at home, and still in bed.

She didn’t stop following that bunny, though.

The two of them travelled further and further away from Kirkwall. The imposing walls around it fading from view as they went on. They did keep to the established roads, though, so that was worth some amount of hope to work off of. Eventually, they started to see a caravan along the roadside. Seeing it made the little bunny hop faster- Xion was still too numb in her senses to match its speed. Outside of the caravan were more of the blue bunny children; three were playing some card game where one bunny was being absolutely smug about winning, another two were trying to feed the caravan’s horse a carrot, and one other was with a human young man. It was in noticing the young man that Xion paused.

He didn’t look much older than Cloud- maybe a year younger, but not by much. His clothes made her think he was a lesser noble that ran away from home, with his cleaned black jacket, vest, and pants. Not a wrinkle to be seen. Something about him seemed faintly familiar, as if Xion had seen him around Kirkwall, but not for long periods of time. Was it the hat? It certainly was a style all its own, featuring a long white and red feather for accent. The brim was long enough in the front to hide his upper face when needed, and at the moment it was hard to tell just what kind of face he was making as the bunny child vied for his attention.

The bunny child that had been guiding Xion let out a very loud shout of “I’m ba-ack!” that nearly scared Xion out of her wits. The noise also brought about the attention of the young man. He adjusted his hat a bit before giving a wide grin.

“About time.” he replied. “Did you find Sabi or not?”

The blue bunny just let out a happy squeal before continuing to the young man’s side. Xion had started to come forward again, her feet guiding her to be within arm’s distance of the young man. The two looked each other over- the feeling that Xion had seen this young man before was even more prominent than before.

“Well, you’re not my baby sister.” the young man noted, tilting his hat up a bit to get a better look at Xion. To the bunny child, he got down to about its height before saying, “And did you forget what Sabi looked like? Our sis has brown eyes, not blue ones.”

The bunny child looked back up at him, crossing its arms and giving him a stink eye.

“You are a bit too short to notice that, huh?” the young man then mused before ruffling the top of the bunny’s head. “Don’t worry, I still got a treat for you. It’s in the back of the caravan.”

The small creature gave a sound similar to an ecstatic squeal before heading toward the aforementioned caravan. This just left the two humans to themselves -for the most part- and the silence was starting to weigh on Xion again. If it wasn’t for the sounds of the bunny kids in the card game apparently picking a fight, Xion would have backed away from this odd caravan and straight back to Kirkwall. But did she really want to make that walk back up alone?

“Are you looking for someone?” Xion finally asked, if only to distract her own thoughts. “I could help if you really needed it.”

“Nah.” the young man said with a wave of his hand. “If Junior can’t find Sabi, then Sabi doesn’t want to be found right now. She’ll show up in her own time. Always does.”

“And Sabi is…?”

“My baby sis, of course. Don’t worry- she’s human too.”

A moment of confusion hit Xion, but then it rolled over into good humor.

“Oh good,” she mused, “For a moment I thought she was a Behemoth.”

“With that tenacity of hers, it wouldn’t surprise me if she was part darkspawn.” the young man cheerily replied, tipping his hat toward her in goodwill. “But that’s younger siblings for you; get in all the trouble and think us older kids are gonna bail them out. Not that my sister needs the help, truly. But it’s nice to always be there. You know?”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that.” Xion told him with a smirk. “I was the youngest in my family.”

“Pardon if I’ve offended you, then.” the young man replied. “But you know it’s true. I’m sure your older siblings are down right jealous of how often you get away with things.”

Despite herself, Xion let out a small chuckle. “That’s what my brother would say.” she agreed. “Our father was a mage, and my brother was the only one of us siblings that wasn’t, so he didn’t get to spend much time with him.”

After saying this, Xion froze. Maker, being Kirkwall’s Champion or not, she had forgotten that there was a prejudice against mages. The young man didn’t seem to notice her bluff, or even indicated he thought of it as one, instead giving her a light laugh.

“Now I’m jealous.” he said. “Our old man left sometime after my fifth birthday. He probably never even knew my sister existed.”

Still recoiling from her mistake, and realizing that she had not been listening to him, the news gave Xion a small jolt. She fumbled over her words as she mumbled, “Must have been hard for her. Your sister, that is. There are still days when I wish I could have my father by my side.”

And the rest of my family. It’s too quiet. Too lonely. Too… too…

“Mom was sweet on her.” the young man said, taking Xion out of her thoughts for a moment. “Definitely had a solid reason why she gave her a name meaning ‘princess,’ that’s for sure.” But then a frown appeared on his face. “I think she gave her too much affection, actually. Sabrina doesn’t realize that the version of our mom she saw wasn’t the whole thing. She wouldn’t listen even if I did tell her.”

“Why can’t she see it in your mother herself?” Xion wondered, thinking back to her own father and the times he did something slightly worrying her mother didn’t approve of when she found out about it.

The young man’s expression only darkened. “Mom died when Sabrina was 11, and I was 16. How old were you when you started to question the image you had of your parents?”

Admittedly, it took her a moment to consider it.

“It was probably when my sister’s magic started to manifest,” she carefully decided. “We moved to Lothering to protect (or, I guess more accurately, hide) her. I must have been…?” That was when a realization hit her, and she looked back up at the young man in mild surprise. “I wouldn’t have been much older than Sabrina. Maybe even younger.”

“Exactly.” he affirmed. He let out a long, conflicted sigh before giving a small shake of his head. “But where have my manners gone? We’re talking about family, and we don’t even know each other’s names yet.”

The young man adjusted his hat once more, pushed up his sleeves a bit, then held his hand out to her. “The name is Brain, madam.”

For a moment, Xion just blinked. Her thoughts went on pause from this young man’s change of topic.

“Xion.” she carefully agreed. “Xion Hawke.”

“So that’s why you’re familiar.”

“Huh?”

“I’ve seen you in Kirkwall.” he explained, as simple as day. “I used to operate a pop up store in Lowtown, then moved out to the Gallows by request. Well, it wasn’t so much a request than it was to help out a little wallflower. Either way, I come around every now and again. Circuit around Orlais, Ferelden, and the Free Marches to get the word out.”

“I do recognize you, then!” Xion marveled, speaking more of a thought out loud than actually talking to him proper.

“Nice to know I’m recognizable.” Brain mused, tilting his hat toward her. For a split second, he looked like he was going to say something more, but decided against it. Instead, he gave her a soft smile. “Things have gotten a lot better for us since then. Since Mom died, anyway.”

Returning the conversation back to the original topic made Xion’s heart stop for a moment. “They have?” she carefully asked despite this.

Brain gave her a confident nod.

“Sabi won’t admit it, but they have. Months after our mother died, we were adopted by an Orlesian merchant. He and his wife had been trying to have kids for years, but never could. (And it’s particularly hard to tell for how long they’ve been trying, since they’re one of those who are not quite human, but not quite animal. For some reason the Maker decided those folks could outlive us normals for at least a solid age or two.) So now I pay my dues helping him operate the most successful business this side of Thedas. Sabi also has her own little mission to repay the old rabbit. Although I must warn you- if you ever see a pretty girl with a rabbit mask on; run.”

“Noted.” Xion agreed with a little chuckle.

Brain gave a smile of his own before joining in the laughter. The sound echoed through Xion’s heart and filling her with a relief she didn’t know she needed until now.

After awhile, Brain collected himself to gently slide a finger across the brim of his hat.

“Things will get better for you too.” he then carefully told her, jolting Xion out of her joy. Not for the first time, the sudden shock feeling more like a slap to the face. It was rather concerning that this young man had that kind of power. “It might be something small- like buying yourself something nice, or meeting someone new. Maybe it’ll happen ten years from now. Who really knows? It’s hard, but it is possible to focus on the good coming, rather than the bad that’s already happened. It won’t be easy, but you seem the type to never back down.”

“Like your sister?” Xion asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

“A lot like my sister, actually.” he laughed in return. His sincere humor toward the topic was enough to send Xion in a light laughter as well. 

Not wanting the small joy to end, Xion let her laugh naturally die down before looking him over again. Brain only stopped laughing because a bunny child was biding for his attention. As he talked to them, Xion further studied the young man. You couldn’t tell it at first glance, but Brain did have a genuine worry for his little sister. He hid it well behind clever remarks and an unbridled confidence. She wondered for a moment if Cloud felt the same way about her. It didn’t cross Xion’s mind that she had been staring for too long until Brain brought his attention to her. He didn’t say anything, but he tipped his hat in goodwill.

“It’s getting late.” Brain noted, taking half a glance up at the sky before looking back at Xion. “Would you like an escort back to Kirkwall?”

Xion smirked. “It would be the smarter choice, wouldn’t it?”

Brain offered back a rather bemused chuckle. He then let out a shrill whistle. Not long after, a blue bunny child came out of the caravan and happily bounded over to them. The bunny kid nuzzled against Brain for a moment as he likewise gave them a pat on the head.

“Junior, do me a favor and take Xion back home.” he said with a smile. “It’s getting late.”

The bunny child looked up at him with a wide grin, nodded in agreement, then happily went to Xion. It happily bounded into her arms, looking up at her with an innocent gleam in its eye. A thought came over Xion- one that she spoke out loud in mild bewilderment.

“That’s… not the same one from before.”

Brain raised an eyebrow in time with tilting his hat forward a bit. “Wow, I’m impressed. How’d you guess?”

“A hunch.” Xion carefully admitted. A comment from before came back to Xion in that moment. Brain had mentioned that his adoptive caretaker was a rabbit, right? And these blue bunnies were likely from him, right? She felt a bit dumb in just now asking the question. “Didn’t you say that your adoptive parents were not able to have children of their own?”

A rather mischievous glint flickered in Brain’s eye for a moment. “That’s still correct.”

“So how’d this little fella come along?”

Brain smirked. “Their luck changed, just like yours will.”

For a moment, Xion didn’t know what to think about that. She idly looked back down at the bunny child. It looked up at her with a wide eyed curiousness that only children knew how to pull off. The raw innocence of the creature almost made her recoil. At the same time, something in her clicked.

There was still hope.

Xion hugged the bunny kid for a second before waving Brain goodbye. The walk back to Kirkwall wasn’t filled with heavy thoughts. If anything, she was almost skipping. Once she and the bunny child got back to Kirkwall’s gates, they waved good bye and Xion made the walk back to Hightown. She saw a lot of blue bunnies on the way there. Each time she saw one, she remembered what Brain told her. When Xion got home, quietly shut the door behind her, and started to make a cup of tea. She slept incredibly well that night. It felt nice.

After that day, Xion started to notice just how many blue bunnies hung around Kirkwall. Each time she would see them, she’d smile and remember Brain’s advice with clarity.

It will get better.

[yellowmagicalgirl]

Instead of letting me sleep, my brain decided to come up with a krexie au last night. CW for unethical experimentation, torture, and kidnapping, all of which happen to a pair of teenagers

During the chaos of the Eternal Night, Area 49-B is there. Douxie uses his magic to try to protect himself and others. (And also to gain revenge on the Gumm-Gumms because they killed at least one of his family members.) Area 49-B knows rumors about the existence of wizards, and they’re glad to capture Douxie as a specimen. They tranquilize him and slap a pair of handcuffs with adjustable settings that let them control just how much of his magic he can use. They then force him into a cage and a hospital gown, and begin running tests on him.

Less than 48 hours later, Krel is being reckless and walking around alone without his transduction. Area 49-B captures Krel, strips him of his weapons and clothing, and forces him into a quickly-altered four-armed hospital gown. Due to logistical purposes of having captured two specimens in about as many days, Krel’s cage gets placed right next to Douxie’s. Both of them resist the experimentation, to no one’s surprise. To the surprise of Kubritz, Douxie and Krel try to communicate in a vaguely friendly manner, so she tests a theory.

Douxie’s handcuffs are turned to their lowest setting, and he has to watch Krel get beaten. Douxie then unleashes a powerful storm of magic at the outrage at this, powerful and angry enough that he ends up using a bit of dark magic. Kubritz then turns Douxie’s handcuffs back to their highest setting (so he can’t use any magic) and has him knocked out again.

When Douxie and Krel wake up again, they’re in the same cage. They’re given the verdict: if one of them resists the experimentation, then the other is going to receive punishment for it. They mostly stop resisting, but only mostly because trying to get away from pain is an instinct that wizards and akiridions both share, and not an easy one to shut down even when trying to protect someone else.

Area 49-B keeps the lights on constantly, and constantly makes enough noise that it’s hard for the boys to sleep. Still, they try to sleep in shifts, just so they can try to keep each other slightly safer.

Lots of handholding and cuddling for warmth/comfort happen when the two of them are in the cage together.

Krel: I feel like we may have met before all this. Just briefly, though. Douxie, trying to squash down his burgeoning gay feelings because now is not the time: I think I’d remember meeting someone as amazing as you. Krel: I have a human disguise, I just can’t use it right now. Douxie: Oh, did you attend Arcadia Oaks Academy? Krel: There’s more than one school for people our age in that town? And no, I spent a couple parsons... I think you’d call them weeks? At the High, not the Academy.

Area 49-B installs a device in Krel’s body that allows them to force him to change forms. This is incredibly painful for him, as opposed to normal transduction. Sometimes they do this for the sole purpose of trying to figure out how different substances will affect him in human vs akiridion form. Sometimes they’ll force him to change forms just to punish him and Douxie.

Douxie, stroking Krel’s hair to comfort him after he’s been forced to become human again: I figured it out! I think. Krel: Figured what out? Douxie: Where we might have met before; you were in the Battle of the Bands, right? Krel: I remember now. You were in it, too, right? Douxie: Yeah. I’ll admit, your genre of music isn’t normally my thing, but you were mesmerizing. I remember thinking that you were so beautiful, and that I wanted to get to know you better. Not like this, of course. And not that you’re not beautiful in your true form, but I’ve had other things on my mind.

Despite Douxie basically confessing to having a crush on Krel, and despite Krel being a genius, Krel is oblivious when it comes to feelings.

Sergeant Costas’s heel-face turn starts earlier, because he has a hard time stomaching the torture of two teenage boys who look like humans. This sentiment might also affect some of the other members of Area 49-B, but most of them (try to) stomach it because these kids aren’t human (nevermind that a lot of the evidence points to Douxie being human or human-adjacent), and they’re just following orders.

Douxie and Krel are able to break out of their cage by knocking out a guard. Afterwards, they start running, trying to find a way out, and also a way to get Douxie’s handcuffs off of him. Unfortunately, they are sleep deprived and malnourished.

At the same time, Aja, Stuart, the Blanks, Zadra, and maybe Toby+the Creepslayerz are raiding Area 49-B, trying to find both Stuart’s ship and Krel. Aja and Zadra find Krel’s clothes and serrator, as well as Douxie’s clothing. They then find Krel and Douxie, trying and failing to fight back.

Aja: Aww, Krel made a friend. Zadra: How???

Aja cuts off Douxie’s handcuffs and hands Krel back his serrator. Afterwards, they fight their way back out and to the taco truck, where they drive away. Krel and Douxie end up passing out in the back as they drive back to Arcadia, still holding hands.

When Douxie gets home, Archie has been worried sick about him, fearing the worst, and then he sees how Douxie now has white bangs from using dark magic. Archie starts to lecture Douxie, but almost immediately afterwards Douxie breaks down sobbing due to the whole ordeal, and Archie immediately switches to trying to comfort his wizard. Douxie then finds out that he’s been fired from the restaurant because he didn’t call in for at least two weeks. He’s barely able to keep his job at the magic shop. Stuart ends up hiring him to work part time at Stuart Electronics, half out of pity and half because he needs some extra help now that he’s dealing with bounty hunters.

With the help of Mother and Izita, Zadra takes the device out of Krel. Afterwards, it takes a while for Douxie to be able to watch Krel change forms and not immediately wince despite Krel reassuring him that this form of transduction isn’t painful. (Krel is very nervous before using transduction because he has trauma.)

Douxie ends up joining up with the Meme Team as an ally against Morando and Kubritz. Everyone other than Krel can see that he has a painfully obvious crush on Krel.

There are multiple nights where Douxie and Krel can’t sleep (too dark, too bright, nightmares, too quiet, too loud, etc.) so they end up staying up and texting each other. Archie steals Douxie’s phone at least once in an attempt to get them to sleep.

Krel slowly realizes that he has romantic feelings for Douxie. This realization is impeded because he’s not sure if they’re really romantic or if they’re just a product of just how much he and Douxie depended on each other for a sense of security back in Area 49-B. (They might be both.)

Krel’s crush isn’t as painfully obvious as Douxie’s is, but it’s still rather obvious to everyone other than Douxie.

Eli quietly weighs the horror of Krel dating someone from their rival school against the fact that Krel managed to find happiness despite the horror he went through at Area 49-B and decides that, unlike with Mary, he’s not going to say anything.

Summer school is worse for Krel, and slightly worse for Aja, than it was in canon.

Dealing with the asteroid is more emotionally difficult, because as little as Krel and the others trust Area 49-B, they also don’t want Arcadia Oaks to be destroyed. Douxie stays behind, trying to research a spell to shield the town, but he’s unable to cast it. Costas discretely lets Tronos go, which means that Morando isn’t able to kill him.

Krel: I wish you and Steve would be a little more discreet about being gushy and romantic in front of me. Aja: Those are big words considering that you and Douxie are almost always flirting with each other. Krel: Krel: Wait, what? Krel: You think he might like me back??? Aja: Sometimes I wonder why you’re considered the smart sibling out of the two of us.

When Costas comes to deliver information on Morando, Archie threatens to remove his hand, eyes, and tongue should Costas respectively touch, look at funny, or speak threateningly towards Douxie (and as an afterthought, Archie decides that those threats also apply to if Costas does the same to Krel. And as a secondary afterthought, Archie states that Costas will still lose body parts if he does any of the above to any of the people working against Morando).

[shinsorokiri]

UA Idol | Chapter Twelve

Hitoshi Shinsou x Reader

Word Count: 2,812

Warnings: Language, dense Shinsou and (Y/n)

A/N: School is kicking my ass. Literally been in it for one week and I’ve had two mental breakdowns, not to mention one of my literal idols and one of the best actors to bless the art of acting passed away yesterday. I hope this is a good chapter, I didn’t have a lot of time during the week to write it, but I did my best for everyone. I would have preferred to make it longer, but I sadly ran out of time. Next week will be fun to write though, because I have so many ideas for what is about to happen during the performances, and I hope I can translate that into written words. Anyways, I hope you enjoy! :)

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You and Shinsou were correct and Denki and Mina wanted to get trashed. They let the both of you know that the second all the contestants are cleared to go back to the lobby. They also started genuinely praising the two of you. “You guys did so good I cannot believe you actually got to perform your original songs in front of an entire crowd,” Mina basically squeals as everyone files out into the lobby of the theater. “I can’t believe you two actually performed originals. That’s crazy! How did you have the courage to do that, that’s deadass so manly,” Kirishima starts fanboying, and you and Shinsou just grin at each other. “Well, we performed originals at the general auditions portion, so we figured why not perform originals again. And also, a lot of the songs out there are about love and no offense, but I’d rather die than sing about love,” you respond, and Shinsou nods. “You two are fucking weird. Talented, but weird,” Bakugo grumbles. Mina, Denki, and Kirishima begin planning on going out to get drinks later, with Bakugo grunting in response every now and again, but as it turns out, the judges had different ideas for how your night was about to go.

“Hello everyone. As you know, we have a group challenge where you’re required to get together in groups of four and perform a song for the four of us. This usually takes all night long, and lucky for you, tonight is the night you have to prepare for it. But before you jump to find three other people to sing with you, this year, we’re changing it up a bit,” Midnight explains, and everyone starts mumbling to each other. Your eyes widen, and you look at Shinsou with a shocked expression. He returns the look, what could they be planning on making you all do instead of the group challenge? Or did they pick the people you were singing with for you? “Instead, you will all find a partner, and do a duet. We have a list of songs you can perform, you’re allowed to repeat songs other people have performed, but just know that if we see the same song performed the same way over and over again, we’ll get a little tired.”

“Actually, I enjoy hearing everyone’s individual voices on songs, even if they perform it in a similar way to someone else,” Toshinori’s blind positivity cancels out Aizawa’s harsh negativity, and you can tell it makes Aizawa genuinely want to die. It’s kind of funny, not gonna lie. But in all seriousness, duets? “Duets, as I’m sure a lot of you know, are actually harder than group performances. You don’t have four people to rely on, only one other person and there has to be some sort of chemistry, or the duet just flops. So, pick wisely, but also don’t pick someone who may overshadow you. Just because you’re a pair for this challenge doesn’t mean the two of you will go through together. And like Midnight said, you have all night to prepare, the first duet will sing tomorrow at three in the afternoon. The reason we’re having this happen so early s a secret for now but know that there is a reason. Happy singing, everyone,” Keigo says, giving everyone a wink before the judges leave the room. Shinsou immediately grabs your shoulder. “Partners?”

“Partners,” you confirm, giving him a nod. You have to pretend that him suddenly gripping onto you like that didn’t make your heart beat faster. And that when he let go, you have to act like it didn’t disappoint you. But in reality, you wouldn’t mind if he would touch you forever. Wait, stop thinking like that (Y/n). He’s just your friend. No. Luckily, you’re able to break out into a grin, when you hear a groan behind you. “This sucks! I wanted to do the group performance with all of you that would have been so fun,” Mina whines, and Denki nods. “Well, hey, at least you can do the duet together, you suggest, and she sighs. “I guess, but it just won’t be the same. Let’s go pick those songs we can sing,” she says, beginning to walk over to where the list of songs is. They were almost all love songs. Except for like, five. Which were about heartbreak. Lovely. You hear Shinsou sigh, and you look over at him. “What are we thinking?”

“Well, we need to be unique somehow.”

“True, true. Which will be hard considering literally all of these songs are being sung at least once.”

“Great. We’re playing instruments, right?”

“Oh, 100%. I’m not about to just stand onstage and sing about love to you, that would be... awkward, right?” You fidget with your hands, and he reaches back to the back of his neck. “Yeah, it would be. Very awkward. The most awkward thing, really,” he mumbles, awkwardly chuckling afterwards. A lot of awkward just radiated off of him in like one minute. And you for that matter. Why did it feel so awkward anyways, it’s not like you wanted to sing a love song to him in front of a bunch of different people. Definitely not.

“So… heartbreak songs? They have Cardigan by Taylor Swift on here.”

“Yeah… and Falling by Harry Styles.”

“I like both of those options,” you say, going back and forth between them in your head. Shinsou nods, “How about we try both of them and pick the one we like the most?” You grin at his suggestion, giving him a thumbs up. “Let’s find a place with a piano. Both of those songs are piano heavy, and I think it would be too hard to come up with something unique on the guitar in the amount of time we have,” he suggests, and you agree. “Do we know who’s performing first?”

“I don’t think we find out until tomorrow morning; they need to see who all is paired and then go from that.”

“Makes sense, let’s write ourselves down then. We’ll put our names on both songs and then come back and cross out one of them when we decide,” you say, writing yours and Shinsou’s names down under Cardigan. He follows suit, writing your names under Falling. You both slink away into a set aside practice room with a piano and make yourselves comfortable. Of course, the cameras would come in every once in a while, asking the two of you what you were thinking of doing. “Right now, we’re stuck between two songs, but we’ll figure it out eventually,” Shinsou informs them and then they leave, letting you two finally begin to practice.

“Okay, so luckily, I know how to play Falling on piano because it’s honestly just a good fucking song,” Shinsou says, and you laugh. “I know how to play it too for those exact reasons, actually.”

“Wow, I can’t believe we’re the same person.”

“Shut up, loser, we are nowhere near the same,” you joke, and he rolls his eyes. “Whatever you say, kitten.” You punch his shoulder and he feigns injury, causing you to laugh. Of course, your laugh causes him to laugh because I mean your laugh is the cutest thing he’s ever heard and it’s ridiculously infectious. And yeah, he admits your laugh is cute, but friends call each other cute all the time. Duh. “Okay, but seriously, let’s practice Falling and then Cardigan and see which one we actually want to do,” you say, breaking him out of his intense staring at you that he didn’t even realize he was actually even doing. He quickly turns his head to look at the piano, and acts like he wasn’t just observing how breathtaking you looked when you were laughing. Especially when you were laughing because of him. And the way that the light was shining on your face seemed to just make you look even better and yeah nope, time to sing a sad song that’s enough of that.

He begins playing the beginning, and you start singing the lyrics, and your voice is still just as amazing as it was when he first heard it. He never understood how someone could be so perfect until he met you. He joined in eventually, the two of you adding some experimental harmonies every now and again until the end of the song. “I didn’t hate it,” you say, and he nods in agreement. “But maybe, just maybe, Cardigan will feel better?” he suggests, and you grin at him. You pull up the sheet music on your phone, beginning to play and read it at the same time. Shinsou begins singing the song, and you nearly mess up on the piano because his voice is just so beautiful that it caught you off guard. You’ve heard it so many times now that it seems almost ridiculous that it would have this effect on you, but yet here you are. You push back the feelings and continue playing, and even beginning to sing after a while. You knew all the words to the song, but Shinsou was still kind of iffy on some parts, so there would be times when he would drop out and you would pick it back up for him. All in all, it went really well, but it still was just… missing something.

“I don’t know what’s wrong, but it just… doesn’t feel right. I absolutely love the lyrics and meaning of Cardigan, but Falling seems like the safer option since we both know the piano and all the words without fail,” you say and Shinsou sighs. “I know what you mean. I guess we’ll go with falling then…? I don’t know, I hate this entire thing of having to choose one song and perform it, we could probably write one in the amount of time it takes to prepare just this one that was already written,” he says. “You are 100% correct. Too bad we can’t do that, that would save us a lot of time being indecisive over what we actually want to do with this.”

“Yeah. Well, we should probably go with Falling, so I’ll start messing around with the piano to see how we could make it a little different than everyone else who will inevitably decide to do this song,” he says, starting to play the beginning again.

“I wonder what Denki and Mina are going to perform. I know they said they were going to perform New Rules, but they never really stick with their first choices, like ever,” you say after about the fourth hour of the two of you messing around with the instrumental for Falling and coming up with nothing. “Probably some really sappy love song or something to do with sex. They know how to sell sex,” Shinsou says and you nod. “That they do. They’re too hot for their own good,” you joke and the both of you chuckle. “Well, whatever it is will definitely be the complete opposite of whatever we decide to do.”

“And we probably will never hear the end of it,” you say, and he nods. “We definitely won’t. Why don’t you two ever sing happy songs, I swear it’s so depressing listening to you,” Shinsou imitates Denki and you laugh. He was spot on. “Wait, I think I got an idea for the first verse piano part, let me work it out real quick and then we can try to sing it again,” he suggests, and you nod. You go on your phone, absentmindedly beginning to sing the lyrics to Cardigan under your breath. You think nothing of it, you just sang the song a few hourus ago and you very much enjoy it, so of course you would keep singing it. You only stopped when Shinsou said your name. “Yeah?”

“Do that again.”

“Do… what again?”

“Sing Cardigan. Go. Now.” You raise an eyebrow at him but start singing it regardless. You don’t understand what’s happening until you realize he’s playing the piano for Falling, and not for Cardigan. And it fits perfectly with what you’re singing. Then he begins singing verses of Falling, and again, it flows perfectly and sounds like the two song were written with each other in mind. He stops playing after you reach the end of the first chorus, and the two of you just look at each other. “Now this feels right,” you say, and he smiles at you. “Falling Cardigan, anyone?” The two of you immediately get to work, going back and forth with the lyrics of the two songs and making a mash-up. “Do you think this is allowed,” you ask and Shinsou shrugs. “Might as well try. I mean they’re both songs on the list so why not, you know?” He had a valid point. Any your little mash-up sounded dope. Not to mention all the nice harmonies the two of you included. And the way that you both decided to play the music for the entire song was about to look so cool. It also helped that the both of you could play the piano for Falling in your sleep, because if not everything probably wouldn’t have gone the way it was. Now, you were just excited to actually perform this for the judges and everyone else. And it’s a good thing you and Shinsou can run on low hours of sleep, because to make this perfect you two needed to rehearse for quite some more time. But it’ll be worth it.

Suddenly, PM bursts through the door to your practice room, cameras following. “Hey there, you two! Is it okay if I talk to you for a bit?”

“Yeah, sure,” Shinsou says, and you both divert your attention to him. “So you two decided to team up together, huh?”

“Yeah. Well, we actually met at the general auditions through mutual friends, and ever since we’ve been sharing song lyrics and talking to each other all the time, actually,” you say, and Shinsou nods. “It only makes sense for us to do a duet together, really. We like the same type of music, so we decided to just go for it,” Shinsou adds on, and PM smiles. “Well, what have the two of you decided on?” You and Shinsou give each other a little grin before Shinsou answers. “It’s a surprise.”

“A surprise? It has to be from the list of songs, you two know that, right?” “Yeah, we know. And it is. But you’re just going to have to wait and see what it actually is,” you say with a small smirk. PM laughs, and then camera quickly divert from the two of you to two other contestants who just broke out into a verbal fight in the lobby. “Okay, but seriously. Now that the cameras are gone, what are you two thinking of singing?”

“Well, we couldn’t decide between two songs, so we decided to do both of them.”

“At the same time,” you finish for Shinsou and PM smiles, and shakes his head. “You two are the most original contestants I think we’ve ever had on this show, that’s for sure,” he says and the two of you smile. It’s nice being complimented like that. But that can’t be true. “I’m sure there were other people before who were just like us,” Shinsou says, basically reading your mind. “Oh, I’m suure there were, but none of them actually showed it! You two are unapologetically yourselves, and unsurprisingly that’s making the two of you a seemingly unstoppable team. I have to go interview more contestants, but just know that if you two stay on the track you’re on right now, you’ll make it through Hell Week and probably to the very last live show. I’m rooting for the both of you!” he enthusiastically says, basically sprinting out of the room and onto the next duo he wanted to talk to.

You and Shinsou give each other a happy look. You don’t really believe you deserve this kind of recognition and praise; anyone could do what you were doing, but Shinsou on the other hand was genuinely amazing. He deserved every good thing anyone said about him. And although you didn’t know it yet, Shinsou felt the same way about you that you felt about him. And he didn’t think he was anything special at all. You though? You were perfect.  Everything you did was wonderful, and he believed everything good should go to you. He was pushing to showcase you in the duet, and you were pushing to showcase him. There was a perfect kind of push and pull, similar to the way the ocean works, between the two of you.

You two really do make quite the team, even if you don’t know quite how good of a team you were yet.

[goldenkamuyhunting]

(Part 1) Thank you for keeping this blog going. There are few in the fandom who gives as much attention to detail as you do, and I always look forward to reading you blog. Long ask below, which had to be split into 4 parts.

Thank you for enjoying my blog!

I’m always happy to know there’s people who enjoy it!

Now, for your questions:

1) Yuusaku is basically cannon fodder. Even if Ogata didn't shoot him, he was unlikely to live through the war. Russo-Japanese War was the first to witness the carnage rapid firing lines could do to an infantry charge; standard bearers in those days were basically on suicide missions. This was why it was mostly phased out by WWI. I'm surprised Yuusaku even lived through more than one charge. Was Hanazawa senior aware that grooming his favorite son to be the standard bearer, while glamorous, was going to get him killed?

1) As sad as it is, back then ALL THE INFANTRY was sadly cannon fodder, a beaviour that will continue even during WWs.

Yuusaku, being at the head of the charge each time, had more chances to get killed than the others but it’s actually a matter of luck as, not only the others were close by, but soldiers didn’t really take aim when shooting (except for snipers), they just aimed their weapons in the enemy’s general direction and fired.

Still, it was all a matter of luck.

Sugimoto (who’s ironically based on a real soldier) managed to survive to plenty of charges, others didn’t manage to survive to their first charge.

Yuusaku didn’t have to die just because he was a flag bearer... but surely the odds were against him.

As for Hanazawa in truth the situation is much more complicate.

I’m pretty sure Hanazawa wasn’t happy Yuusaku HAD TO BE the flagbearer. As far as he was involved he had only one son and that one was Yuusaku and back then heirs were important and if he were to die Hanazawa would remain without one since it’s clear he never planned to acknowledge Ogata.

The problem isn’t so much that he wanted Yuusaku to be the flagbearer, is that he couldn’t avoid Yuusaku being the flagbearer.

Out of bad luck Yuusaku was a second lieutenant back then and unmarried, therefore virgin (because they had already moved in a time in which having a lover wasn’t respectable). And, of course, being the son of Hanazawa Yuusaku was expected to check all the other requisites a flag bearer had to have, being handsome, high achiever and a paragon of moral virtue.

In short he was perfect for the job.

Beign the flag bearer was a honour and refusing it was a sign of cowardice that would have tossed shame on the whole family.

If Hanazawa had stopped Yuusaku from being a flag bearer, Yuusaku would have lost face and Hanazawa with him and since Hanazawa was a big shoot in the army during the war this would have turned into a huge problem.

And then there’s also what Koito senior said.

Someone had to be the flag bearer. Stopping his son from doing so to protect him and therefore sacrifice someone else son would be viewed as inexcusable.

As much as I hate Hanazawa I recognize he couldn’t keep Yuusaku out of the position.

For me his sin, in regard to Yuusaku, is more that he had told him not to kill. While a sword can’t really stop a Maxim gun, during the charge they would get in close contact with other soldiers, soldiers who could kill him. Using his sword to defend himself would increase his odds to survive.

Hanazawa instead, realizing the chances for Yuusaku to survive were dim, likely preferred to use him till the end as some sort of pure idol to fulfil a theory of his own at whom the soldiers might not even believe that, if Yuusaku weren’t to kill, soldiers would remain pure as well and wouldn’t feel guilty.

Of course it can be that Yuusaku actually wasn’t so good with the sword. Maybe if he were to try to defend himself not only he would fail but this would lower the troops’ morale. As an idol instead Yuusaku is protected by the soldiers who see him as their personal amulet of good luck.

In this case in a way Hanazawa took the best decision both for him and the troops. We know too little to tell... but I’m pretty sure Hanazawa knew there were few chances Yuusaku would survive.

In his position he couldn’t possibly not know.

Sure is Yuusaku seems to believe everything his father says without thinking at it too much.

When he explains his reasons to Ogata... well, they aren’t really his reasons but what his father told him. He didn’t rielaborate, didn’t internalize, didn’t think it over.

It’s just ‘daddy told me so therefore I do it in this way’.

2) I wonder what was going through Ogata’s mind, watching Yuusaku run into the meat grinder. At that moment maybe it occurred to him that being Hanazawa’s favorite son came with a heavy price tag.

Everything comes with a price tag... but objectively both Ogata and Yuusaku were risking to die in that war and if Ogata was left more often in the trenches, where it was slightly safer, shooting at enemies, it was merely because he was lucky he was gifted at shooting otherwise he could have been right next to Yuusaku running, charge after charge... only he never enjoied an ounce of Yuusaku’s benefits.

The truth is that people who come from a privileged situation like Yuusaku, Koito, Tomoharu, Ueji or Chiyotarou, aren’t insured to have a happy life free of danger. They can be as miserable as the next guy and can end up in troubles way bigger (Ueji even went insane after all, Yuusaku died, Tomoharu wasn’t up to fulfil his family expectations, Chiyotarou get bullied, Koito had no support when he lost his brother...).

But they will also be sheltered by way too many things that make life miserable and will be given chances that others can only dream.

So yes, being Hanazawa’s legittimate son came with a heavy price tag but being Hanazawa’s illegittimate son not only also came with a heavy price tag but was bereft of the benefits being Hanazawa’s legittimate son could offer.

3) He must also know that Yuusaku getting KIA is a matter of (very short) time. Tsurumi must know that too, so he called off the kill.

Honestly I believe the only reason Tsurumi called off the kill was because he wanted to push Ogata to kill Yuusaku on his own. Ogata showed a softer side with Koito when he kidnapped him, giving him a sweet and conforting him...

...but that’s not all. When he carried Yuusaku in a brothel and Yuusaku turned down his idea to have fun with the girls he could have gotten Yuusaku drunk or forced him in another way. He didn’t. He let him go and made sure he wasn’t seen as he left, when he could have let Yuusaku’s reputation being tarnished just by letting him being seen.

Tsurumi mentions noble blood deliberately, sure this would be a jab at Ogata.

He pinned the two brothers one against the other trying to recreate the situation that pushed Usami to kill Tomoharu and it worked. Only Ogata wasn’t enamoured of Tsurumi as Usami was.

4) Yet Ogata killed him anyways. Maybe he thought since Yuusaku was going to die anyways, why not use him as an experimental guild-trip?

I’ll say it’s more than experimentation. In addition to Tsurumi subtly pinning him against Yuusaku there’s to say all Ogata wanted was his father’s love and attention, and he had seen Koito getting it after his brother died.

Plus Yuusaku made the mistake of stepping in a minefield.

Ogata is a man who represses his guilt, who has learnt to do it as a child when he killed his mother, whom he loved. For Ogata is a cornerstone in his own development he doesn’t feel guilty because ‘he had a reason for his mother’s murder’.

And Yuusaku then goes and tell him this is impossible, that he has to feel guilt.

...and Ogata, who’s stuck between his own maladaptive copying mechanism, his wish to be normal, and his deep desire to be loved by his father, kills him, again telling himself since he has a reason, he wont’ feel guilty.

Only he will feel guilty despite being in deep denial over it but that’s a talk for another post.

5) Now I have a feeling that deliberately killing Yuusaku is just another lie he tells himself. Maybe it wasn’t deliberate, but the most egregious failure he made as a sniper for which he spun a whole narrative for: he kill Yuusaku by friendly fire.

I think Ogata genuinely believed he had shoot to Yuusaku and killed him. In short, I believe he aimed and shoot. Of course it’s possible he missed, subconsciously or by coincidence and, ironically, Yuusaku was killed by someone else, either by incident or deliberately so as to delude Ogata into thinking he had killed him.

Plot wise though I don’t see the point of having Yuusaku die due to an accident because, if this were to be the case, it would never be possible to discover it... unless Ogata were to remember his bullet actually hit another target... or it were to turn out the bullet in Yuusaku’s head wasn’t the one of a type 30.

It might be different if it was someone else who had shoot him, making Ogata believe it had been him, like how ‘by a coincidence’ Tsukishima had learnt of the whole Igogusa’s story about how her corpse was dug up.

However, as Usami pointed out, Yuusaku was shot perfectly in the center of the back of his head... and Usami knows no one else in the 7th who could do it.

So unless Tsurumi has an extra sniper we’re unaware of, it would be hard for him to stage Yuusaku’s death so that Ogata would believe he were the killer.

So I don’t know.

But I think the real key in the whole thing isn’t if Ogata has killed his brother or not, but that he believes he has done it and, contrary to what he thought, he feels guilty as hell for having done it to the point he hallucinates Yuusaku each time he’s not in his best shape or even when he is and he’s about to do something he feels he might regret afterward.

But of course this is just me.

Thank you for your ask!

[sparklingichigo]

Experimental Magic Gone Wrong

Part 1

One fine day in Purgatory hall, of course, the human girls are hanging out there. Of course, Haruka and Ichigo are just being good friends and decide to help Luke and Simeon with cooking and other stuff. At the same time, Solomon is making this new potion in a form of candies. It was just an experiment but little did he know, it's an experiment gone wrong...

Solomon: and done! It looks cool! Oh no, I need the toilet! [runs to the toilet]

Meanwhile out there, Luke asks Ichigo and Haruka to look for Solomon because lunch is ready. Of course, they looked for him but instead, they found these beautiful candies inside his room.

Ichigo: Ooh candies!

Haruka: So pretty! Do they taste as good as they look?

Ichigo: Well there's only one way to find out.

The two tried the candies, overall nothing happens to them and the day went on normally but when they return to the house of lamentation, something weird happens!

Haruka: Okay, Satan is tall but I don't remember him being this tall...

Ichigo: He's not even that tall-

Satan: .... [blinks confusedly]

Asmo: Hey what's.... sheep?

Satan: Who are these sheep? Do they belong to someone?

Ichigo: well dang... you can't even recognize me?!

Through the eyes of the brothers, it's just aggressive baa-ing and hoof knocking so they do find it adorable.

Asmo: And her color is pink! Whoever owns this sheep is missing out!

Ichigo: [smacks Asmo with her hoof] SHUT IT!

Asmo: Gurl, why are you so- *sees a hair clip on her* wait Ichigo?

Ichigo: Yeah, it's me!

Asmo: Oh my goodness! Sis why are you a sheep?! Don't tell me that's actually Haruka?

Haruka : [nods]

Satan: She's also a sheep? [picks Haruka up]

Asmo: Well I'm guessing it's Solomon's fault but for now let's take care of them until he finds an antidote

So the day went on with them being sheep. Lucifer is obviously shocked by it and instantly calls the purgatory hall to ask for the cure.

Simeon: ...I have no idea what you're talking about...

Lucifer: they're clearly a sheep right now and they just got home from purgatory hall!

Simeon: Well...

Luke: Oh no... did I accidentally put something in the food.....

Lucifer: YOU WHAT?!

Luke: no no no no I swear!! I checked the ingredients! There's nothing harmful!

Lucifer: ....then it's Solomon...

Solomon: what? Why is everyone staring at me...

Luke: ....What did you do to them?!

Solomon: I don't know?!?!?!

Luke: They went to look for you, they must've eaten or drank something or smell something from your room!

Solomon:... they went to my room?

Luke: Yeah, I told them to look for you because lunch is ready!

Solomon: ...ah... OH NO, THE CANDIES!

Lucifer: What candies?!

Solomon: I kinda...make experimental candies/potions to show someone's inner animals. It's just something I found on the internet...

Lucifer:...

Luke:...

Simeon:...

Lucifer: [sigh] Please find an antidote soon :))

Solomon: Y-yes sir! [fear intensifies]

Lucifer hangs up and tells them about the antidote.

Belphie: Can't she stay like this? She's really fluffy- :D

Ichigo:... I DON'T WANNA LIVE MY LIFE GETTING CHASED MY BEEL?!?! WTF-

Beel: [Pets Ichigo so she'd calm down] There there...

Ichigo: You're not gonna eat me aren't you?!

Beel: Yeah I won't-

Ichigo: w-wait you understand me?!

Beel: I...have an ability to talk to animals :D

Haruka: Well... I'm gonna stay with Satan since it's safer-

Beel: Uhm... I'm not sure about that...

Haruka: What do you mean, Beel?

Beel: He has cats...

Haruka: ... O-O oh no

Beel: Or you can stay with Asmo :D

Haruka: [shakes her head]

Beel: Uhm..... Lucifer?

Haruka: [scared sheep noises]

Beel: Then... Uhm...

Mammon: She can stay with me!

Haruka: ABSOLUTELY NOT! [smacks Mammon with her hoof]

Mammon: What was that for?!

Levi: I mean if she wants to, my room's open-

Haruka:...

Satan: Uhm... you're gonna abandon her for your games so no-

Belphie: Can I-

Ichigo: [horns Belphie] NO!

Belphie: Heh, if you're jealous just say so, I only love this fluffy sheep anyways~

Ichigo: [groans in frustration but it sounds like more baa-ing]

Lucifer: Ichigo, Ichigo, calm down....

Ichigo: y-yes sir- [quiets down]

Haruka: You know what....maybe I should stay over with purgatory hall

Beel: Hmmm purgatory hall...

Satan: Purgatory hall? Really?

Beel: I mean she can't tolerate 90% of us. As much as I want to take care of her as well..... [glances at Ichigo]

Satan: Right, an aggressive jealous sheep- understandable

Ichigo: [offended sheep noises]

Belphie: [Bringing Ichigo away before more chaos happens]

Haruka: Yeah, purgatory hall. Someone take me there, please!! [give them cute sheep eyes]

Beel: I guess it is safer^^ Let's go then!

Satan: I'll go to!

Ichigo: then who the heck is gonna take care of your damn cats?!?!

Satan: why is she baa-ing aggressively??

Beel: Well... Nah you wouldn't understand anyway, I'll just take her there. You'll stay here with the others. Okay? ^^

Satan: Why not? She's my girlfriend, isn't she?

Beel: [losing his braincells] I'm her friend too and I don't want any more chaos after this, please? :(

Lucifer: Satan, I think that's enough^^

Satan: [totally not listening]

Lucifer: ^^ please let Beel take Haruka to purgatory hall and stop bothering him about it!

As Satan and Lucifer end up arguing, Beel and Haruka decide to go to the purgatory hall that second. The others help them by distracting Satan. Once they're there Luke opens the door.

Luke: Beel! Haruka! You're here!

Beel: Yeah, she asked me to take her to purgatory hall since it's safer for her.

Luke: Of course it is. Unlike those demons! Come on in!

The two went in and they only find Simeon in there. Of course, the two are wondering where did Solomon go.

Simeon: Well Solomon is busy finding the antidote. So what brings you here?

Beel: Haruka prefers to stay here since it's safer and I agree as well, right Haruka?

Haruka: That's right! [happy sheep noises]

Simeon; Well, she's welcome here, I guess the three of us end up taking care of you, huh?

Haruka: [nods]

Beel: Alright then, guess I'll just drop her by and-

Luke: Before you go! Here! [gives Beel a box] These are for you and Ichigo, I just baked them!

Beel: Oh! Thank you! [accepts the box] I'll be off now^^

Luke: Bye!!

Simeon: Have a safe trip!

[fullofmemories]

🎧🎧🎧🎧🎧

send "🎧" and i'll give a song that reminds me of my muse and explain why

1. It’s Alright - Mother Mother This song really reminds me of Katrina because it’s so centered around the idea of guilt and forgiving yourself for the past. Katrina tends to have a guilt complex, especially when she’s younger, and she struggles very much over time with accepting that she doesn’t need to feel so much guilt. Her tendency to repress guilt and other emotions sometimes causes her to act out, which is also touched on in the song. It also acknowledges fear and hesitance to look within yourself for fear of truly being something awful, which is something she does have to overcome. Over time she learns to accept that there is a reasoning behind all her actions, good or bad, and that she’s not awful or sinful. She’s merely human, and doing the best that she can. 

2. Meet Me in the Woods - Lord Huron This song I feel like very much relates to her experience in HYDRA. Especially with the beginning line being “I took a little journey to the unknown / and I come back changed, I can feel it in my bones / I fucked with the forces that our eyes can't see / now the darkness got a hold on me,” and her change both physically due to experimentation and mentally/emotionally due to trauma. The line “I have seen what the darkness does / say goodbye to who I was” also relates very much to her change, especially from an emotional standpoint. But I also very much like the line “I can bring your fears to light / show me yours and I'll show you mine,” seeing as through her powers of memory manipulation she quite literally can bring people’s fears to light as well as show them her own. (Also, the whole theme of the woods makes me associate it with her because I associate the woods with her as well!)

3. Mansion - NF This song I tend to relate very heavily to Katrina and the concept of her going through her own feelings and emotions - especially with how powerful her memory is, it’s very easy for me to see her having her own “house of memories” so to speak, compartmentalizing and storing away thoughts in their own rooms. The one part of the song that I don’t relate to her is the bit about losing his mother - Katrina’s relationship with her parents was never that good; she likely would have had a very different reaction. But there is one part especially that just works so perfectly with her, and I’m just gonna paste it here because I think it speaks for itself: “...And I admit, I am emotionally scared / To let anyone inside, so I just leave my doors locked / You might get other doors to open up, but this door's not / 'Cause I don't want you to have the opportunity to hurt me / And I'll be the only person that I can blame when you desert me / I'm barricaded inside, so stop watchin' / I'm not coming to the door, so stop knockin', stop knockin' / I'm trapped here, god keeps saying I'm not locked in / I chose this, I am lost in my own conscience / I know that shuttin' the world out ain't solvin' the problem / But I didn't build this house because I thought it would solve 'em / I built it because I thought that it was safer in there / But it's not, I'm not the only thing that's livin' in here / Fear came to my house years ago, I let him in / Maybe that's the problem, 'cause I've been dealing with this ever since / I thought that he would leave, but it's obvious, he never did / He must have picked a room and got comfortable and settled in / Now I'm in a position, it's either sit here and let him win / Or put him back outside where he came from, but I never can / ‘Cause in order to do that, I'd have to open the doors / Is that me or the fear talking? I don't know anymore”

4. Giver - K. Flay This song reminds me of Katrina in a similar way to It’s Alright - the struggle to try and become a better person. However in this song, she realizes the mistakes that she’s made and instead of finding the reason, she attempts to grow from them and improve herself. It’s about wanting to improve, and attempting to, but not always being sure that you actually have. 

5. Eight - Sleeping At Last This song relates strongly to Katrina’s fears - namely, fear of vulnerability. It’s a story of someone who went through hardships from a young age, and has become very guarded as a result. Katrina definitely has issues with trust and a fear of vulnerability because of how she’s been hurt in the past, but she does genuinely want to be able to feel safe around people and be able to open up to them. Problem is, not only is she scared, but she’s been scared for so long that sometimes she doesn’t know if she remembers how anymore. But she’s determined to learn, even if she still doesn’t open up to many. 

[my-darling-boy]

Hio! so I want to bind but I can’t (or am not allowed) to get a binder. Is there anything I can use in place of it? I use a sports bra but it doesn’t always work the best. Also best wishes in your pursuit of finding a place to move to ::)

Hello! I just want to say that I’ve DEFINITELY been there before and know that struggle :’) I had a much bigger chest for my size than the little one I have now and figuring out how to conceal my chest was a pain (literally!)

The sort of bad news is that there is really no other “safe” method of binding besides using a binder that was made with safety in mind for a trans/gender non-con person or using a sports bra(s).

As you probably already know, you cannot use medical bandage or duct tape when binding. There are trans people who have tried using TransTape to gauge their level of binding (which could make great for subtle binding cos unlike a binder, you could tape down more or less tightly) but with that being said, I DON’T recommend it. TransTape is—regardless of what misinfo you might hear, even if it was “made by a trans person”— KT tape (that typical black tape you see crossed over nipples) and while it has advantages over a binder, there are still some serious risks to it, more so in some cases than a binder, and causes severe skin irritation in some wearers. Not to mention, it’s just overpriced KT tape that is made to fit a chest more, but with the same danger as usual KT tape

On the flip side, I have a few much safer concealing tips that could make the chest area ambiguous or give the optical illusion the chest is smaller if you are not allowed to purchase/can’t afford a binder. They depend on chest size obviously, but you can give them a go!

1. Layering shirts

This isn’t always going to work with everyone’s dysphoria, but some people find layering shirts can help make the chest area and abdomen equate more in “thickness”/smoothness so there doesn’t appear to be stark contrast between the chest size compared to the rest of the torso

2. Sports bras

Sounds like you’ve already tried this one! Wearing a snug sports bra can help compress. Some people opt to wear two, one facing forwards, and one on top facing backwards. While the additional sports bra may help to smooth out the area, it more often than not does not create more compression as thought, but simply adds another layer of fabric to smooth out the chest area by wearing the bigger, flatter back side of the bra in the front. Be sure you aren’t wearing a sports bra that is much too tight, else you risk the same effects as wearing a tight binder

3. Wearing poofy jackets/sweaters

While this may seem counter intuitive, I personally found this tip for me to be much more helpful than the usual “Wear oversized clothing”. The advantage of wearing a poofy jacket over a big hoodie is that you don’t have to sacrifice the proper fit of an item to get the same (if not better) chest concealment. If you wear a poofy jacket, your chest will only fill up the leftover cavity inside the garment. Basically, it gives the optical illusion on the outside that the poofiness of the jacket/sweater is just the natural poof of the garment, and not because of your chest underneath.

Oversized clothing can still be a helpful tip, but I know I was made dysphoric when I saw that the hoodie/top went out as far as my chest stuck out and made that weird curtain of excess fabric hang down over my abdomen from the “shelf” created by my chest. Poofier garments can help extend outwards the area over your collar bones to create one smooth side silhouette to de-emphasise the appearance of a chest.

This is why I might also advice against turtlenecks, buttoning a shirt all the way to the top or any shirt that would help define (from the side) the space above the chest cos it could spark your dysphoria seeing that deep “swoop” from your neck to your chest

I got a poofy jacket from H&M and it is a GODSEND. Sometimes if I’m going to wear it, I don’t even bind because you can’t tell my chest is underneath. It also has poofy arms which make my shoulders appear bigger, and it cinches in at the wrists and lower abdomen to continue my V shape (or create the illusion of one of you don’t quite have one and want one). And the best part? It still looks like fitted clothing without giving up concealing my chest.

4. Balancing out other parts of the silhouette

This is a case by case basis, as there are many different parts of the body a person can feel dysphoric about, but instead of concentrating on decreasing the size of one body feature, sometimes emphasising another body feature can help make the former appear smaller.

If you can’t bind and want the chest to appear smaller, wearing things with wider shoulders or bulkier arms can help correct the balance of widths in your upper torso. Sewing a strip of interfacing or stiff fabric into the shoulder seams of flannels, button ups, sweaters, and other tops can help add more structure to the upper body and make your chest instead appear more muscular.

Part of this tip will be experimentation, as everyones bodies and how they experience dysphoria is different. You may find high waisted trousers make you feel less dysphoric or for some reason wearing This One Shirt makes you feel really good about your chest!

5. Asymmetrical or scattered shirt patterns

Striped shirts, mostly vertical but also horizontal, and squared “grid-like” patterns can sometimes create unneeded definition to any chest. When thinking of three dimensional objects, vertical and horizontal lines are there to provide depth. If our brains detect depth variations in straight lines (for instance, in a vertically striped shirt over a large chest) our brains can easily decipher shapes behind those lines because the lines define depth.

Therefore, shirts with crazy “busy” patterns, asymmetrical lines, diagonal lines, dotted shirts, or plain shirts patterned with drawings or singular objects, you can visually disrupt people’s ability—as well your own— to see the depth of your chest (i.e. how far it sticks out).

ALSO.

If you would still like to order a binder and bind only when out in public but need to buy it secretly because of parents or guardians making your life difficult, during the holidays or nearing a birthday is a GREAT time to buy. If you order the package yourself and it arrives, you can say it’s a gift for a friend.

I don’t know about other binder brands but Underworks is my go-to binder, and I know they sell through Amazon. Meaning, it’s discrete packaging just marked with the Amazon logo and no one will know you’re buying a binder. DEFINTIELY opt to do your own laundry if you don’t already or wash it in the tub/sink and let it air dry in your room so you can always make sure no one at home knows you have it.

Obviously, if you have very strict people at home, be careful or don’t do this at all; it’s just my advice to someone who knows they could successfully do something like this. If you shouldn’t risk it, don’t, and opt for the latter tips instead

And thanks for the best wishes too!

[prof-zimbrane]

Zimbrane Headcanon #4/?

Zim may do a lot of evil things, i.e. kidnapping, stealing, jaywalking, murder, destruction of property, unauthorized experimentations, tax fraud, etc. but one thing he will never do is swear in front of children.

It doesn’t matter if the child is his arch-nemesis, he still wouldn’t swear. His personal code of conduct against swearing also extends to Gir and Minimoose, especially Minimoose.

Why would Zim honour such a thing? That’s because Zim believed that children learning to swear reduces their mental capabilities and makes them unproductive members of society (it doesn’t help that irken smeets are taught that a slaughtering rat fairy named Isabeth will come to eat any smeets who swear).

Professor Membrane also views swearing as something children shouldn’t be exposed to and do because it doesn’t let them expand their vocabulary and find alternatives. But he sees insults as worse offenders than casual expletives.

So, during breakfast one morning in the Membrane household (Zim and Professor Membrane are already in an established realtionship), everyone was present at the table. Clembrane was preparing food when he accidentally flung a hot frying pan full of fried pudding into Professor Membrane’s face.

At that moment, Professor Membrane was reading an aggravating article written by a rival pseudoscientist that completely ignores any “actual” science, trying to disprove Professor Membrane’s accomplishments. With the only emotions being rage and fury filling Professor Membrane, he loudly yelled a singular “FUCK!” when the pan hit his face. Right in front of his children. And Gir. And Minimoose (no! not Minimoose!!!).

Unfortunately, for Professor Membrane, Zim was sitting right in front of him, also covered in pudding. More unfortunately, Gir started loudly singing a single lyric song featuring a certain expletive. Points to anyone who can guess what that word is!

The ears of Dib, Gaz and Minimoose (no! not Minimoose!!!) were assaulted with a cacophony of Gir sounds that became progressively more demonic and high pitched. It took the combined efforts of everyone, mostly Gaz and her skillz™️, to calm Gir down.

After Zim controlled his paranoia of Isabeth coming to eat Gir and the rest of them, Zim definitely became mad at a certain scientist and started dragging him away from the kitchen.

“Dib! As the oldest, you’re in charge! Oh wait. Yes.. Clembrane is here... Children! Listen to Clembrane while I have a TALK with my Bae... I mean your Dad! I never said what I said!”

While Zim is fuming and trying to collect his thoughts, Professor Membrane broke the silence in the hallway.

"Is something wrong dear?"

Zim spoke, "Don't you understand what you just did???!! You SWORE!! In front of the children! In front of Minimoose!!"

His actions became more enraged and explosive.

"Do you stupid humans swear freely in front of smeets? Their brains are still puny!!"

Instead of rage, panic began settling in Zim's facial features.

"And Isabeth might come to take them away. That awful Isabeth!! Zim remembers..." Zim's voice became quieter near the end as he reminisces the scolding and punishment he received in the smeet-housing facilities. He'll never forget being assigned to clean the folds of a Slorbeast ever again.

With a despairing Zim, Professor Membrane tried de-escalating the situation by embracing Zim.

“Darling, I know swearing in front of kids is a societal taboo, but with enough explanations, they’ll learn what words are inappropriate in different scenarios.”

Zim coiled away in anger, but still remained in Professor Membrane’s arms. It’s cozy, why wouldn’t Zim want to stay? Yet he doesn’t want to let the argument die away.

“Urgh! Sometimes you can be really ignorant! When smeets swear, they become less intelligent... And they get eaten by Isabeth.” Zim seriously told Professor Membrane.

The scientist could hardly understand what Zim meant by the last line.

“That’s nonsense! No child will get eaten by some “Isabeth” for using adult language!” At this point, Professor Membrane felt amusment as he dismissed Zim.

“YOU!!! Are a bastard and a cunt with shit for brains, Membrane! How dare you mock Zim??!! If I had my tools with me I would-“ Zim’s yelling was interrupted by a slight cough.

Dib and Minimoose stood in front of them. Well, Dib stood. Minimoose floated.

“Dib?! How long were you listening to us? And Minimoose?!” Zim exclaimed. It came to his mind that they might have heard Zim calling Professor Membrane “a bastard and a cunt with shit for brains”.

“Before you started calling Dad “a bastard and a cunt with shit for brains”.” Dib replied in a deadpan manner. He’s hungry and he’s going to be late for school. Minimoose floated beside Dib, also feeling hungry.

Dib, and Minimoose (no! not Minimoose!!!), both heard Zim then. Today was not Zim’s day. If anyone on Irk knew what Zim had done, his life as a model Irken citizen would be over (what Zim fails to realize is that Zim’s life as a model Irken citizen never even began).

Seeing Zim’s dark expression, Professor Membrane started hugging Zim tighter.

“Love, I’m not sure what your fears are about this Isabeth but I promise you that this issue will be easily resolved.” Professor Membrane said while tilting Zim’s face up so they can see each other eye to eye.

“The world is not going to end and we can talk to our children later about the dangers of swearing. We both slipped up as parents but slip-ups happen and I want you to be here with me so we can both work together to prevent these slip-ups.”

With such soothing words, Zim felt a little better and safer. Isabeth is millions of miles away across the galaxy and Zim never remembers her ever coming to eat him. Or Purple for that matter. Purple had the largest potty-mouth ever for a couple of months, trying to show the other smeets that the adult Irkens were stupid. Hmm. Maybe things really aren’t so bad.

“Zim can never stay mad at you.” Zim crooned with devotion in his eyes. Professor Membrane and Zim seemed to be lost in each others eyes, using physical contact to ground themselves to each other.

Dib interrupted them before they can do anything more cheesier, “Anyways.. We’re still hungry since Foodio 3000 isn’t here to make us food (Foodio’s currently filming a show called “Kitchen Hells” with Ramsey Cordon) and Clembrane’s fried pudding is...”

Dib gestures to Professor Membrane and Zim, who have done nothing to clean themselves up yet. They both look down on themselves and the burns they’ve sustained.

"Nyah!" Minimoose exclaimed, agreeing with Dib.

"Ah yes. I’ll make some toast then." replied Professor Membrane.

And they all went back to the kitchen to finish their breakfast which doubled as a lecture on why swearing is bad and how swearing is only allowed when one becomes "older".

In the distance, galaxies away, a slaughtering rat fairy coincidentally named Isabeth is stuck on an asteroid that is headed towards Earth...

[youzicha]

could the Chernobyl disaster have happened outside the Soviet Union or the communist bloc? was there anything socialist or autocratic about it? or could it have happened in any similarly-dangerous and similarly-complex engineering project?

My immediate reaction is to group the Chernobyl accident with other high-tech accidents like plane crashes, industrial fires, or radiation incidents in the west, but maybe that’s because I like to read step-by-step accident descriptions which focus on the technical aspects! It was definitely the case that Soviet nuclear power plants were much less safe than the western ones, although it’s not obvious if that is due to authoritarianism…

From an outside view, I think the various western incidents should make us less comfortable that it couldn’t have happened here.

• The radiation releases from the Fukushima accident were ten times smaller than at Chernobyl, but it still represents a failure of reactor containment. Apparently quite a lot of Cs-137 was in fact released from Fukushima (like a third of the Chernobyl release), but most of it went into the Pacific ocean rather than the atmosphere.

• The Three Mile Island accident showed that U.S. reactor operators can make mistakes too. I used to dismiss it—in the end there were no big radioactivity releases, so no big deal, right?—but after the Fukushima accident maybe we should re-evaluate it. TMI had a core meltdown and a hydrogen explosion, much like Fukushima, so I guess it could have gone badly.

• The Windscale reactor was also graphite moderated, so the 1957 Windscale fire might have developed into a miniature version of the Chernobyl accident. (The physical size of the reactors were similar—180 tonnes uranium and 2000 tonnes graphite at Windscale, versus 190 tonnes uranium and 1700 tonnes graphite at Chernobyl 4—but the Chernobyl burnup was 10.9 MW-d/kg while a typical value for making weapons plutonium is 0.5 MW-d/kg, so the Chernobyl reactor contained 20 times more radioactivity.)

At Chernobyl the core was scattered and caught fire, and then over the course of a few days almost all the graphite burned and the radioactive material was dispersed in the smoke. At Windscale, the graphite caught fire inside the reactor and there were no plans for how to extinguish it. According to the post-accident report,

[After the fire had been going on for about a day] the use of water was first considered. Two hazards had to be examined: first the danger of a hydrogen-oxygen explosion which would blow out the filters, second a possible criticality hazard due to the replacement of air by water. The Management were informed, however, of the danger of releasing high temperature Wigner energy if the graphite temperatures were to rise much higher than 1200°C. It was thought that this might well ignite the whole pile.

Happily the water worked well and the fire was put out before it spread to the rest of the core, but the filters in the air stack basically did nothing, so a large fire would have created a major radiological disaster.

Chernobyl was much bigger than all western accidents, but to me it feels like an extreme point on a spectrum.

If we take an inside view, the Chernobyl accident happened because of a combination of operator error and poor design, and we could try to trace either of these to Soviet authoritarianism.

As for the operator errors, there were three fateful decisions. First, the Chernobyl chief engineer Nikolai Fomin approved the plan for the turbine draw-down experiment, classifying it as an “electrical” experiment which could be signed off locally. In hindsight, because the experiment involved manipulating the power level of the reactor and the flow-rate of the cooling loop, it affected the dynamics of the reactor and should have been referred to physicists at Scientific Research Institute of Power Engineering (NIKIET) and the Committee for the Supervision of Nuclear Power Safety (Gosatomenergonadzor) for analysis and approval. It’s unclear if that would have changed matters, because the experiment would have been safe if executed according to the plan, but the physicists could perhaps have drawn attention to the safety aspects. As it were, the Chernobyl staff were quite complacent—perhaps because they had already tried it several times before, making various adjustments to the turbine control logic each time. On the day of the accident they seem to have treated it as a routine matter, and Fomin did not even notify plant director Brukhanov.

Maybe you can see the Soviet penchant for centralization here. I don’t know how it works in America, but Swedish nuclear power stations employ staff physicists who carry out calculations about how the plant will respond to various abnormal scenarios. That seems like it may be helpful for ensuring that the operating staff has easy access to physics expertise, compared to the Soviet system where those calculations where done far off in another city, and under a separate bureaucracy (NIKIET was under the Ministry of Medium-sized Machinery, while the reactor staff was employed by the Ministry of Energy).

Then in the reactor control room, deputy chief engineer Anatoly Dyatlov gave two crucial bad orders. First, he had the operators deviate from the plan and start the experiment from a 200 MW power level instead of 700 MW. It’s unclear why he would do that—at the trial it was suggested that he might have thought a lower level would be safer, although it actually made the reactor dangerously unstable. Then, when the reactor was inadvertently shut down, he insisted that the operators violate regulations and start it up again, which created the conditions for the explosion. Interestingly, Dyatlov’s position was administrative, outside the operational chain of command, so formally he had no authority to give orders to the operators on duty, but he still expected to be obeyed and threatened to have them fired if they didn’t comply.

The Chernobyl tv-series tries to sell this as part of Soviet authoritarianism too—they insert a fictional scene where plant director Brukhanov pressures Dyatlov to complete the test so that Brukhanov can get a promotion—but that still would not explain the 200MW order. Perhaps some of the blame should go to Dyatlov’s personality: his coworkers say he was knowledgeable but stubborn and intolerant of dissent. Either way, it’s hard to believe that that overconfident, authoritarian managers were unique to the Soviet Union. I don’t have any examples from the nuclear industry, but maybe you could look at e.g. ship captains—it is easy to find examples of captains making bad decisions, either because of pressure from their bosses or because they are just being stupid.

Meanwhile, the reactor design also suffered from several problems that contributed to the disaster. On paper, this should not have happened. The Soviet nuclear energy industry was monitored by the USSR State Committee for the Supervision of Nuclear Power Safety (Gosatomenergonadzor), who produced a set of Nuclear Safety Regulations for Nuclear Power Plants (NSR), and then approved the technical safety report of a reactor design. The Chernobyl plant was approved in May 1975.

It shouldn’t have been. A 1991 report points out that the regulations include NSR Article 3.2.2, the total power coefficient of reactivity is not positive under any operating condition, and NSR Article 3.3.26, the reactor’s emergency protection system must ensure that the chain reaction is automatically, quickly and reliably terminated—which point to the two major flaws which caused the accident. At the time of the approval, Gosatomenergonadzor was part of the Ministry of Medium-sized Machinery, and the same ministry also controlled the NIKIET and the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, the two main designers of the reactors. In this way, there was very little external checks of what the (notoriously secretive) Ministry was doing. Former Chernobyl physicist Vladimir Chernousenko writes:

How could a reactor with so many defects be built and put into operation? Firstly, no-one analyzed the RBMK plans at the design stage (that is, there was no independent, external scrutiny). Secondly, the designers themselves did carry out an analysis, but on a very superficial level (because of the poor experimental facilities, the chronic backwardness of the available computer technology, etc.).

Thirdly, thanks to the monopoly that exists in Soviet nuclear science, the RBMK reactors, unlike airplanes, automobiles, etc., were not subjected to any serious tests or trials of their durability. That is why 16 reactors were brought on line without even a Technical Basis of Safety of Reactor Installation (TBSRI) or a TBS of Nuclear Power Stations (TBSNPS) certificate.However, with these obligatory parts of the project missing, it is illegal to not only operate a nuclear power station, but even to build it (GSG §§1.2.3, 2.1.14). It was only in 1988 that the chief designer made an attempt to officially certify the safety of the second- and third-generation RBMK stations.

As for why the design had these flaws in the first place, both of them can be traced to schedule pressures and cost-cutting. First, the choice of a water cooled/graphite moderated reactor is inherently risky, because a disruption of the water supply can cause a power surge. When drawing up the plans for civilian nuclear power the Ministry of Power had considered three possible designs named RMBK-1000 (water-cooled/graphite-moderated), RK-1000 (gas-cooled/graphite-moderated) and WWER-1000 (water-cooled/water-moderated), and in September 1967 they announced that the RK-1000 had been selected. However, this was too technically ambitious to meet the schedule, and one year later they instead opted for the RBMK-1000, which was similar to the reactors already used to produce weapons plutonium.

A graphite moderated reactor has a positive void coefficient, and as it turned out, when the control rods were fully withdrawn this could get big enough to overwhelm the thermal coefficient and make the overall power coefficient positive. This effect had not been anticipated ahead of time, but was noticed experimentally when the reactors were taken in use:

Neither the designers, nor the plant operators, nor the regulatory body attached proper importance to the large positive coefficients of reactivity which became apparent from experiments, and they did not attempt to find acceptable theoretical explanations. The obvious discrepancy between the actual core characteristics and the projected design values was not adequately analysed and consequently it was not known how the RBMK reactor would behave in accident situations.There are a number of explanations for the poor quality of the calculational analysis of the safety of the design. These include the fact that, until recently, Soviet computer techniques were chronically outdated and the standard of computer codes was very low. Three dimensional non-stationary neutron-thermal-hydraulic models are required in order to calculate the physical parameters of an RBMK reactor under different operating conditions. Such models first became available only shortly before the Chernobyl accident and were not really developed until after the accident.

Second, the scram rods were poorly designed. In addition to the too-short graphite tips (which makes the reactor explode instead of stopping), the system was much too slow—the rods were forced through a water-filled channel and took 18 seconds to fully deploy. Actually, the 1969 technical drawings had neither of these problems, because the scram rod tubes were water-film cooled, so the rods could be inserted in 2.5 seconds and did not displace water. Film-cooled channels are more difficult to construct and more expensive, and the final design reused the water-filled channels for control rods for the scram rods as well.

In addition to the above two flaws, western publications after the accident generally pointed at a difference in design philosophy. Western power plants follow a “Defense in Depth” philosophy, with redundant systems designed to handle multiple simultaneous failures. The USSR took a “different” approach:

The Soviet philosophy of safety with both breeder and conventional reactors places heavy emphasis on excellence of design, reliability of equipment, and careful operating procedures to prevent any releases of radioactivity to the environment. Special containment structures are not thought to be justified because of the improbability of any serious accident, and such domes are therefore judged to be costly and superfluous precautions. The design-basis accident also does not include loss of coolant in the core, and thus the reactors do not have a special emergency core cooling system. Soviet writers question the philosophy of designing redundant systems, for:

 “An excess of such backup systems, where the need or the reliability is not clearly assured, introduces operational complexity and reduces over-all safety.”

It is acknowledged that some types of accidents might release radiation accumulated in the coolant, or possibly even some of the activity from unsealed fuel cans, but such releases are not projected as exceeding the daily permissible releases from power stations (1,000-10,000 Curies or less).

The Soviet equipment reliability was far from excellent, so I guess this difference in outlook was mainly due to a more relaxed attitude to radiation leaks. In the 1957 Kyshtym disaster the USSR had suffered what was then the worst radiation accident in history, and successfully kept the whole thing secret.

Indeed, the first six RBMK reactors (Leningrad 1&2, Chernobyl 1&2, and Kursk 1&2) had no structures at all to contain water/steam leaks, so any break in the cooling circuit would lead to a radioactivity release. (A 1991 report about post-Chernobyl safety improvements comments, “The main aim in these units must be to reduce the probability of large diameter pipe breaks to a point where such accidents may be termed hypothetical. With this in mind, some computerized and experimental research was carried out into the processes which cause cracks to appear.”)

Later RBMK reactors, including Chernobyl-4, added some containment structures more similar to Western reactors, by enclosing parts of the cooling circuit in pressure-tight concrete rooms that vented into a pressure-suppression (bubbler) pool. However, the reactor itself was too big to contain in this way. It was given pressure relief pipes, but they were only dimensioned to handle breaks in at most two of the 1661 fuel channels—the pressure from more extensive breaks could tear apart the entire core. NIKIET estimated the probability of a simultaneous two-channel break as 1e-8 per reactor-year, and three or more as negligibly improbable.

Although a lot of western publications after the accident highlighted the lack of containment, it is not known if a western-style containment building would have prevented the disaster—it’s impossible to say for sure, since it is not even known exactly what caused the explosion or how big it was. But in any case, it clearly shows the higher Soviet risk tolerance.

The risk tolerance is even more visible in the way that accidents were treated. The positive power coefficient was noted soon after the first RMBK reactor (Leningrad-1) was started, but never properly investigated. There were about 10 major accidents at Soviet nuclear reactors between 1970-85, killing at least 17 reactor workers and leading to multiple radiation releases to the environment. RBMK reactors suffered partial core meltdowns at Leningrad-1 in 1975 and Chernobyl-1 in 1982, proving that the supposedly unlikely simultaneous fuel channel rupture could happen quite often. And in 1983, the positive reactivity effect of the scram rods were noticed at both Ignalina-1 and Chernobyl-4. These accidents were more serious than Three Mile Island, and in the west any one of them would had prompted big efforts, but in the USSR they were kept secret.

The reactor designers at NIKIET were notified of the scram anomaly, and started to consider improvement to the rods to eliminate it, but it was not treated as a priority; the Chernobyl-4 reactor was to be upgraded after the next shutdown in 1986. They sent out a short and inconspicuous notice to the reactor operators. NIKIET also revised the operating instructions for the RBMK-1000, specifying a new minimum “operational reactivity margin” (ORM), i.e. a limit on how far the control rods may be retracted. In 1980 the ORM  limit was set to 10, and then in 1983 it was increased to 15. (After the disaster, it was increased again to 30.) If this limit had been respected, it would have kept the power reactivity coefficient negative and prevented situations where the scram-rod could cause a reactivity increase, so the NIKIET engineers might have considered the two main flaws of the reactor solved. But the updated manual only stated a number for the ORM; it didn’t flag it as a safety-critical limit. The RBMK reactors were plagued by shoddy workmanship and the operators were in the habit of constantly improvising to work around issues.

So the safety standard of the Soviet reactors was low. But are these failings particular to east bloc authoritarianism? For each cause I listed above, it seems one can find examples of the same thing happening in the west.The RBMK designers assumed there would be no safety issue as long as the reactor operators followed the ORM in the manual; this seems very similar to how Boeing reasoned about the 737 MAX. Very low failure probabilities were invented out of thin air; much like in Feynman’s description of the space shuttle program. Equipment was in disrepair forcing the operators to improvise; much like in the U.S. Navy. Reports of safety incidents were ignored; when the crew was evacuated off the Deepwater Horizon, the installation manager was heard shouting “Are you fucking happy? Are you fucking happy? The rig’s on fire! I told you this was gonna happen” into a satellite phone.

And there was trouble even in the western nuclear program. The 1944 Hanford B reactor was also water cooled/graphite moderated, and it was placed in remote location since the core might explode. In the 1950s there was several core meltdowns in small American research reactors. And as we saw above, the Windscale reactor was rushed into service with no containment at all. Instead of asking why Soviet reactors were shoddy, perhaps we should ask how the western reactors became safe.

Part of the credit must go to the open society. From 1954 onwards, the U.S. government invited commercial companies to build nuclear power plants. Unlike secret military reactors, the application to build such plants were public, as was the Atomic Energy Commission’s decisions to judge them safe or not. And the first serious study of a worst-case nuclear accident, WASH-740, was done because Congress was considering a law to indemnify nuclear power companies.

But the nuclear industry is not unique in being regulated in this way, and nuclear power plants still seem safer than, e.g., oil rigs. Perhaps the other part of the credit belongs to the anti-nuclear movement. The very first commercial nuclear power plant was planned to be built at Bodega Bay near San Francisco—local activist started to organize against it already in 1958, and in 1964 the public pressure forced the AEC to reject the plant. In other words, from the very beginning, America has had a third party which reviews the government/industry decisions and pressure them to take safety seriously. And reading the Wikipedia historical description,

By the early 1970s, anti-nuclear activity had increased dramatically in conjunction with concerns about nuclear safety and criticisms of a policy-making process that allowed little voice for these concerns. Initially scattered and organized at the local level, opposition to nuclear power became a national movement by the mid-1970s when such groups as the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, Natural Resources Defense Council, Union of Concerned Scientists, and Critical Mass became involved.[43] With the rise of environmentalism in the 1970s, the anti-nuclear movement grew substantially:[42]

In 1975–76, ballot initiatives to control or halt the growth of nuclear power were introduced in eight western states. Although they enjoyed little success at the polls, the controls they sought to impose were sometimes adopted in part by state legislature, most notably in California. Interventions in plant licensing proceedings increased, often focusing on technical issues related to safety. This widespread popular ferment kept the issue before the public and contributed to growing public skepticism about nuclear power.[42]

In 1976, four nuclear engineers -three from GE and one from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission- resigned, stating that nuclear power was not as safe as their superiors were claiming.[47][48] These men were engineers who had spent most of their working life building reactors, and their defection galvanized anti-nuclear groups across the country.[49][50]  […] These issues, together with a series of other environmental, technical, and public health questions, made nuclear power the source of acute controversy.

it is striking that every single aspect here—the grassroots organizing, the ballot initiatives, the whistleblowers—would be impossible in the Soviet Union. So according to this story, democracy is not sufficient to create a safe industry, but it is a necessary condition; without it, you can’t get the environmentalist movement.

The U.S. environmentalists got things done. Starting in the mid-1970 there was a dramatic increase in construction costs of nuclear power plants in the U.S., with the capital costs increasing several times over, and in the 1980s companies basically stopped building plants. (You can’t get any safer than that!) Although there are several reasons for the cost increase, the most commonly cited factor is increased safety regulations. Lovering et al. show the following graph, and analyze it as follows:

Between 1967 and 1972, the 48 reactors that were completed before the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 began construction. Their OCC rise from a range of $600–$900/kW to approximately $1800–$2500/kW. These reactors follow a trend of increasing costs by 187%, or an annualized rate of 23%. Phung (1985) attributed these pre-TMI cost increases to emerging safety requirements resulting from pre-TMI incidents at Browns Ferry and Rancho Seco. Two outliers, Diablo Canyon 1 and 2, cost about $4100/kW in overnight construction cost, and were completed 17 and 15 years later, in 1984 and 1985.

A break in construction starts is visible around 1971 and 1972,which is likely attributable to a confluence of events affecting nuclear power construction in the late 1960s and early 1970s. These include the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1971, and the AEC’s gradual loss in public trust and its eventual replacement by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in 1975. Golay et al. (1977) determined that 88 reactors in various stages of permitting, construction, and licensing were affected by the 1971 Calvert Cliffs court decision resulting in revised AEC regulations that included back-fit requirements.Finally, the last 51 completed reactors represent a set that began their construction between 1968 and 1978 and were under construction at the time of the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. For these reactors, OCC varies from $1800/kW to $11,000/kW. Thirty-eight of these reactors fall within a mid-range of $3000/kW to $6000/kW, with 11 between $1800 and $3000/kW and 10 between $6000 and $11,000/kW. From the OCC of about $2,000/kW for reactors beginning construction in 1970, OCC increases another 50–200%, or an annual increase of 5–15% between 1970 and 1978.

In particular, the safety factors Phung (1985) highlight for the mid-1970s cost increase were as follows.

Phung also notes that due to new safety regulations, power plants that had already been completed in 1978 then had to be back-fitted to fix issues that had been discovered during the 70s, which increased the cost by 28% on average compared to the original construction cost. This is a rather glaring contrast to the Soviet experience, where reactors were notably not back-fitted to fix the multitude of issues that were discovered. As late as 1983, one Soviet offical boasted that “the evolution in capital cost of Soviet WWERs has no comparison with the increase of pressurized-water reactor costs in the West during the same period.”

Anyway, the environmentalist story seems convincing as long as you only consider the the U.S. and the USSR, but I still kindof doubt it. Environmentalism and the anti-nuclear movement came to the U.S. first, and didn’t really emerge in Europe and Japan until in the first half of the 1970s (with a strong inspiration from America), when it would be too late to have a big effect on the main nuclear build-up. In Sweden, the reactor fleet was designed in the 1960s, by experts who knew best and didn’t particularly talk to outsiders. (Holmberg and Hedberg describe an Edenic state of affairs: “In the beginning of the 1970s all parties in the parliament supported a plan to build eleven nuclear reactors in Sweden. No debate, no conflict, everything calm. At the time energy policies were the topic for experts and a very limited number of politicians. Mass media were silent and the general public ignorant. In this atmosphere, the first Swedish reactor started operations in 1972.”)

Similarly, Lovering et al. notes that the pattern of construction cost increases in the U.S. is somewhat unique, and in other countries you either see more moderate increases (France, Canada), or no clear pattern of increases (Japan). You can see a small increase in French construction costs after the Chernobyl accident, but nothing like the huge jump in American costs after Three Miles Island, so does that mean that the reactor designs also didn’t benefit from the additional democratic scrutiny? By the above logic we would expect the Swedish reactors to be as crappy as the Soviet ones, but as far as I know they are actually perfectly fine…

[huberts-private-counsel-archive]

Do you take crack ships for the writing prompt? If so, can u do Felix/Hubert, Fog? Tysm.

DeHope you don’t mind me hijacking this prompt for my lil Hulix AU, hehehe (the one that i answered @/stag-of-almyra’s prompt (so this would be...right when they’re storming Shambala and find Felix)

Uh...tw for implied torture and experimentation?? It isn’t gone in-depth about, but juuust in case

also using another read more bc...this long

Hubert can feel any words he might’ve had completely die in his throat. Every time he attempts to pull them out, to try and say something, anything, he feels them crumble to dust. Behind him, he can hear Mercedes gasp as Caspar whispers out an honest “what the fuck?”

But really, what other response could there have been? What other response could any of them have had to the sight of Felix - Felix, who Hubert thought dead, who he mourned, whose sword he’d kept by his side since that awful day he’d been informed of his death - the sight of Felix chained up in one of the cells. And Felix...barely looked like himself. His hair, which even during the war had been so well kept, was now long and tangled. He was thin, far thinner than what was healthy, and there were scars - new scars - and fresh wounds littered across his body.

Hubert had seen many people be tortured before - in fact, he was usually the torturer. So this was not a sight that should have made him sick to his stomach. But with how his mind kept betraying him with thoughts of Felix’s time here, of what must have entailed not to mention the memories Hubert hoped to bury long ago...

Hubert forced the bile back down his throat, instead rushing forward to try and free Felix from his shackles. As soon as he got his hand on the cuff to try and break them off - because he really did not have time for the process of trying to actually pick the lock, Felix’s eyes snapped up to look at him.

They were cold. Cold with a fury that lighted itself as he began trying to thrash away from Hubert with a snarl on his face; more out of shock, and perhaps hurt, than anything else, Hubert let go and stepped back.

“I told you to just kill me dammit, you aren’t getting anything else out of me,” Felix gritted out, and momentarily Hubert was stunned. What on earth was Felix talking about?

Then it dawned on him why Felix would be talking to him like that, and a cold stone made its presence known in his stomach.

“What the fuck Felix, it’s just us! We gotta get you out of here!” Caspar said, stepping forward as soon as Hubert stepped back. Hubert grabbed him by the shoulder before Caspar could get any closer.

“...They probably used our images to torment him further,” Hubert said quietly, a pained expression appearing on his face as a horrified, if not angry one appeared on Caspar.

Mercedes approached slowly, Felix watching her carefully with a guarded gaze. “Felix, I know it’s very difficult to believe, but it truly is us,” she said quietly, a sad expression on her face as she spoke. “Would you like it if we proved it to you?”

“Tch. Stop trying to prolong this stupid facade, I know it isn’t you!” Felix spat, venom dripping from his words.

To her credit, Mercedes seemed largely unaffected. Hubert wished he could say the same for himself. She looked into Felix’s eyes, making eye contact with him as she spoke again. “Please watch carefully Felix, I hope this will be enough to convince you that we are who we truly are.”

She went to go heal Felix from where she stood, and as she did, the Crest of Lamine appeared, its glow temporarily lighting the dim cell. Despite that, Hubert could still see Felix’s eyes widen. 

Hubert wished he had thought of it sooner. Of course. None of the copies that those Snakes would have created could bring up the Crests of the people they were attempting to copy. Felix stayed silent for a while.

“...a-are you really here?” His voice was so quiet, so weak and so unlike Felix that Hubert wanted to never hear him speak in that tone again. 

“It really is us, Felix! I swear, I’m gonna go kick those Snakes’ asses when I get ahold of them!” Caspar spoke fiercely, fury infecting his words. Not that Hubert could really disagree with his sentiment - right now though, his concern was getting Felix to safety. As soon as the cuffs were broken from their chains, Hubert caught Felix as the latter practically fell into him and held him close.

As much as he hated these circumstances...Hubert couldn’t deny how glad he was that Felix was alive. His desire to get Felix out of these dungeons to a much safer area must’ve shown on his face - Mercedes cast another healing spell to try and close up the last of the fresh wounds, before instructing Hubert to get Felix out of these as soon as possible. Hubert nodded, and proceeded to run out of the dungeons with Felix held tightly in his arms.

Hubert was filled with so many emotions, all of them swirling about his head as he ran out of the dungeons in order to warp back to base. And as selfish as it might be, among the strongest was relief - relief that Felix was alive at all, and not dead as Hubert had thought. 

Another part of Hubert hated himself for being so relieved, because at least if Felix had been dead, he wouldn’t have had to deal with the horrors those Snakes must have put him through.

He could feel Felix shaking against him, though whether it was due to a storm of emotions or simply the chill, Hubert couldn’t tell. Regardless, Hubert managed to maneuver his cloak enough to wrap it around Felix.

“Please stay awake,” Hubert found himself staying, his attempts to keep his voice level completely failing. “At least until we get back to base. Just....please don’t fall asleep yet.”

Or you might not wake up, and I can’t go through losing you when I’ve just found you again, went completely unspoken.

Felix nodded against him, a dazed expression on his face - at least he was awake.

Well, there was one thing Hubert could say for sure. He would not be leaving Felix’s side until the latter was recovered. Apologies Lady Edelgard, but...he wouldn’t be able to choose duty over the man he loved a second time.

(Despite his efforts, and he honestly did try, Felix ended up falling asleep again, the thumping of Hubert’s heart being what finally lulled him to sleep. When he opened his eyes again, he was in a cot with Hubert asleep in what had to be in an uncomfortable position. He was almost sure that he was dreaming, or that some new torture method by Those...whatever their name was. 

As soon as he so much tried to sit up - not that he really could, his whole body felt heavy and numb - Hubert shot up from where he’d been sleeping. There were darker bags under his eyes than Felix could ever remember seeing, and somehow Hubert looked paler than usual. In short, he looked like shit.

But when Felix said as much, Hubert simply smiled, as if he was just glad to hear him speak, and said that’s what a couple days worth of staying by a bedside would do. Maybe this really wasn’t some kind of twisted dream after all.)

[skookworks]

Gallery: 1-30

I had wanted to participate in Drawlloween/Inktober 2018. I like to do a little prep for sustained events so, earlier in the year, I’d checked to see if prompts had been posted for either challenge. Nothing. Checked again. Nothing. And then I forgot until October was a couple of days old. Joining in on October 2nd would have meant I was playing catch up. I hate playing catch up. I shrugged and figured, “Next year.”

A couple of days went by and the thought became, “All year.” Instead of drawing and posting an image a day in October of 2018, I decided to post an image a day in 2019. My parameters would be simple: spend no more than a half an hour on each sketch. By starting to do the sketches in early October I’d have enough of a headstart that I was sure I’d be able to manage the pace.

I posted an image a day, every day, in 2019. I actually only did 362 half hour sketches. I misnumbered a couple of my scans midway through and didn’t realize the mistake until I got the end of the year. For December 29th and 30th I posted a couple of more complex illustrations that I finished for the occasion. December 31st was a blank image – New Year, New Possibilities.

The sketches can be seen if you look at the daily posts here for 2019. To simplify things I’m going to be posting galleries of the 30 images at a time, 12 galleries total, between now and the end of 2020. This is the first one.

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Story Seed 43

Exploring the Last Sky Jungle

In November 1913, The Strand Magazine published Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story The Horror of the Heights. At the time airplanes were novel machines and few people had flown in them. Sure, the idea that there might be entire ecosystems up there above the clouds seemed implausible but that part of the world was unexplored enough that it wasn’t completely impossible. I read it when I was a kid, probably sometime in the 1970s. By then the airline industry was well established and the idea that huge creatures were living in the stratosphere was, at best, quaint.

The skies are full of planes and, as far as we know, no one has been attacked by any air predators. Not recently. There are two possibilities why –

The 20th century air pollution and the airline industry destroyed the sky ecosystems and by the 21st century all those animals are extinct. The aerohabitats were always fragile things. The toxins that rose into the upper atmosphere killed them. Faster and stronger airplanes tore through flocks of the creatures without the pilots even realizing it. Some of the larger and speedier beasts were mistaken for aircrafts and labeled “UFO”s.

The aerohabits existed and continue to exist just outside our perception. They were seen by early aeronauts because the lack of oxygen, greater exposure to cosmic radiation and other effects of the upper atmosphere created heightened perception. The aeronauts saw things that, with better, safer equipment, are no longer seen.

So that gives us two obvious possibilities for stories –

There are places in the atmosphere where few planes fly and where the air is less polluted. I tried doing some quick googling to find out what parts of the world see the least airplanes but came up short of useful info. The Antarctic skies is probably one region. There’s a big chunk of the Pacific Ocean with no islands and therefore no spots to refuel. I looked at satellite images of those areas in Google maps and the photos there are really low rez. Humans don’t watch the places where humans don’t go. So now you’d just need a reason to have someone go there and discover the last Aerojungle.

H.P. Lovecraft’s story From Beyond features a device called the Tillenghast Resonator. When activated the resonator allows a human being to see the creatures that exist beyond our normal, limited perception. An aeronaut in a new, experimental ultralight craft, attempting to make a new altitude record, finds him/herself in the middle of an aerohabit. The craft was accidentally constructed in such a way to alter the pilot’s perceptions and senses. The pilot can now see the air beasts. And the air beasts can now see the pilot.

Recommendations

This week I’m going to recommend avoiding Facebook. Plenty of other folks have made this suggestion. The thing is designed to keep you scrolling and I find that my attention span gets shorter the longer I’m visiting it. Last week, rather than jumping on FB first thing in the morning while my coffee woke me up, I read one or two of the newsletters that I’ve been recommending. More focused. A longer read. And, once I’d finished a newsletter, it was easier to write or work on art until I had to make breakfast.

This Week

My union has won arbitration on management’s “Consolidated Casing Initiative”. All 61 stations that have tried to implement this terrible plan are going to reconvert to regular casing and delivery. My station was on the list to join this “experiment” and I’m feeling nothing but relief.

I can think of a number of ways to improve our office and street times but, in my observation, management doesn’t ask the carriers how we could improve service. So we do the best we can.

The week has been mostly uneventful personally. The cat that was chewing on the base of his tail got a shot of steroids and antibiotics and a medicated cream that we applied on the spot for a week. The raw spots have healed and his fur is growing back. The cat that needs electrolyte infusions continues to tolerate them. He doesn’t seem to love us any less afterward.

The protests and curfews slowed down the care packages from my Big Sister this week but she did bring us salmon cakes and a chicken mushroom new potato pie. On Sunday I made up a stir fry to go with the cakes. I’m looking forward to having the pie tonight.

Nationally it’s been a mess. If you’re paying attention you know what I mean. I hope that there are positive results from all this. I don’t dislike the police in general but I also don’t trust them in general. The few times I’ve been pulled over here in Seattle the cops have been polite and easy going. But I’m an older white guy. I know my experience isn’t the experience of others. I had different experiences when I was in my teens and twenties in small towns in California. My friends and I often wandered the streets at night and occasionally got stopped. I was never arrested but the cops were often confrontational, unnecessarily so. I got lucky.

If you’re out there protesting, thank you for your service. Change is inevitable, positive change requires positive intention. Constant positive intention. Stay safe. Look out for each other. The monsters win until they lose. And they always lose.

Tuesday Night Party Club #23 Gallery: 1-30 I had wanted to participate in Drawlloween/Inktober 2018. I like to do a little prep for sustained events so, earlier in the year, I'd checked to see if prompts had been posted for either challenge.

[shellheadtmarc]

so, one thing i’ve been thinking about in regards to both mcu and 616 tony, and want to be very, very clear about, is his moral ambiguity.

but amanda, you say, isn’t tony a good guy?  to which i answer yes!  yes yes yes a million times yes, tony stark has, without a doubt, a heart of solid gold that’s absolutely in the right place as far as wanting to make the world better and safer.  he’s a good guy.  kind of abrasive, sure, kind of a smartass.  likes to joke when he shouldn’t because it’s how he copes with high stress.  he’s one of the best ones.  because he doesn’t have to do what he does.  he could have gone back to his normal life instead of becoming a superhero.

but this, i think, overshadows the darker parts of that ambition sometimes.  because the fact of it is, tony stark is human.  painfully so.  this - and the limitations with being human - are often a thorn in tony’s side.  you know that whole line in aou (which i’m still salty af about when hank pym is right there, i’d rip aou out of the timeline by the roots if i could even if it helps prove my point because it’s not actually out of the realm of things tony would do - it’s just this particular instance should have stayed with pym) where he tells cap he doesn’t trust a guy without a dark side?  that’s because tony has one.  a big one.  a huge one.  everything that goes on behind that pretty super genius face isn’t rainbows and sunshine.  there’s some dark, dark shit up there, and i don’t mean the anxiety and ptsd.

also good isn’t black and white.  there’s no purity test here.  good is relative.  tony stark is good.  but tony stark is, in actuality, behind the quips and the wit and the charm and the awkwardness, dark.

if you look at his track record, it’s easy to find a pattern in the things that he does, 616 or mcu.  tony is human.  tony is flawed.  tony’s technology, especially his ai work, is also just as flawed, because he’s mostly working off his own experience, and he, as i’ve said before, lets those ais grow like children, but he’s the one shaping who they become.  616 - jarvis goes haywire, tries to kill pepper.  friday during her teen years causes a goddamn mess.  one of tony’s own suits fell in love with him and decided if it couldn’t have him no one could.  his suits malfunction from time to time in a big way.  it’s such a common occurrence that SHIELD refers to it as having gotten another one of stark’s whoops i fucked up again messages.  he dabbles in things he probably shouldn’t, like alien tech he really doesn’t fully understand - he could, he just starts screwing with it before he has all of his data.  yeah, it makes him a maverick, but it also makes him a loose cannon, and everyone knows it.  he purposefully hides that he’s still under the inversion spell during the superior iron man run and does a complete 180 from who he should be, to the point even pepper is fed up with his bullshit.  (i know a lot of people hated that run but i thought it was a nice little taste of what a villain tony would feel like.)  even the digital backups of his brain, when activated, are a little screwy (see:  superior iron man and that backup deciding if he couldn’t fix present tony, he’d overwrite him).    and, of course, there’s the fact that he might be out of the weapons business, but his brain hasn’t gotten the memo and he’s still designing them.  he’s just either not letting them out of his brain or locking them away where no one can have them.  see also all the stuff he’s done to his physical body (now subverted after the coma carol put him in and rebooted out of) to make himself a better, stronger, faster iron man.  he’s redone his own eyes, for god’s sake, to make them better.  he’s rewired his insides, literally.  he’s overclocked and partitioned his own brain like a computer harddrive.  he’s dosed himself with experimental viruses after he’s tinkered on them in a hurry to both survive and to make himself a better iron man.  he’s done so much shit to himself it’s more like mad science than superhero.  it’s more fitting for the stereotypical marvel villain than the guy you’re supposed to root for.  it freaks people out.  it makes people who care about him intensely uncomfortable.  and he knows that.  but he never stops, because honestly i don’t think he can stop.

mcu has been much tamer with it, but we still see him pulling the same kind of shit, framed in a less-dark light:  teh new arc reactor because the old one was killing him, and destroying his house to get it done.  popping sensors under his own skin for a suit that barely works because he’s starting to push those uncomfortable boundaries between man and machine - actually, we can say mcu tony is on the same path as 616 tony, just a few steps behind, maybe.  ultron, which is him messing around with alien tech he doesn’t quite understand and yet saying fuck it and jumping into it anyway.  the accords, which are a way to curb them all because if tony knows anyone, he knows himself, and he knows shit is starting to get out of hand.  did he go about it right?  no.  not in the mcu (i’d argue that 616 tony was definitely on the right track but, like everything else when tony tries to reel himself and others back in, it went pear-shaped in a hurry and also because neither side was necessarily right, and neither side was necessarily wrong, and until cap gave himself up it was never gonna come to a compromise but that’s a whole different can of worms we’re not worried about right now).  he got tagged with ross which was...bad.  i’m sure i don’t need to explain why, but i will, and it meant ross had iron man on a choke leash.  that’s...that’s fucking terrifying, if you want me to be honest.  the fact that he does shit like hopping a flying space donut knowing he’s probably not coming back, leaving behind the people he loves - for some guy he’s just met, by the way - instead of staying on earth where he’s probably more needed...tony’s reckless.  it’s not him being self-sacrificing it’s...it’s him doing things because he wants to do them.  

like he tells steve, pepper wants him to stop, he doesn’t want to stop.  he’s not going to stop.  like as much as i’d love for him to retire and have a gaggle of babies and be iron house dad...that ain’t tony, y’all.  it’s just not.  tony can’t stand by and let other people do these things because tony doesn’t want to stand by and let other people do it.  he doesn’t want to quit building the suits, because he likes building the suits.  he likes pushing that envelope.  he likes being iron man.  it’s really not the issue with the tragic backstory with him - even though he’s kind of got one - it’s the fact that he got a taste, and he didn’t want to stop.

this is what i mean when i say he’s a leroy.  he is.  but in a dark way.

but to be perfectly clear, okay, this isn’t what i’d label as tony is being selfish.  it seems that way.  it is that way, on a very small scale.  but tony does this shit because he thinks it’s what’s best.  tony does it because he’s trying to improve himself and the world.  but i think what i’m really saying is just because he’s a superhero who got into it through necessity doesn’t mean he doesn’t enjoy it.  he has a focus, a curve to push past, a...an envelope to push.  i mean, he’s got trauma out the ass from doing this and he still doesn’t want to stop.  it’s a sick compulsion.  and that’s what i mean about his dark side.  he’s a superhero, he’s got his heart on the line in everything he does, but the way he goes about it...it’s dark.  it’s uncomfortable.  it’s not for the squeamish.  he’s not all poor broken boy who has to help people, he’s...doing this because he wants to.  the problem is, he’s human, and he fucks up, and when tony stark fucks up, it’s on a monumentally bigger scale than if...idk.  you or i screwed up a guy’s coffee order or dropped our ice cream.

anyway, hi, i’m amanda, and on this blog we acknowledge that tony stark has done some hinky shit in the name of being one of the good guys, and that loving him means accepting that he’s got flaws and bad parts, too.