#something something the appeal of no longer bearing the responsibility of the thing people have been using you for almost all your life

[plusultraetc]

how have I never thought about how Hawks' favorite hero was Endeavor, when he himself acknowledges that his quirk's greatest weakness is fire and Shigaraki's favorite hero was Eraserhead, the one hero who could take his quirk away

[dialoguetrees]

Playing House: Man, Woman & Child in Il Mheg

*Spoilers; dialogue and screenshots from 5.0 and 6.0 below.*

On the surface Il Mheg is immediately appealing, awash in rainbows and flowers and inhabited by childlike beings. By being a land of magic and wonder, Il Mheg represents new opportunities and freedoms. But its eternal spring is also naivety and avoidance. These tensions play out as characters struggle with the patriarchal tropes of the domestic sphere.

DISCLAIMERS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: 1) This is best read alongside #crystevatower, jacob's exercise in a psychosexual reading of Shadowbringers and Endwalker. In order to keep the post coherent I have to re-tread a lot of things he's already talked about. 2) This analysis applies the lens of a transfeminine urianger, and if that raises your hackles, I ask that you bear with me.

In Il Mheg, all three characters (Thancred, Urianger, and Ryne) escape from something while they are there. The something is a little different for each of them. It is a refuge, but also from things they shouldn't be avoiding. The home the bookman's shelves provides grants needed relief and shelter, but the roles it confines them to also keeps them in stasis, pun intended.

Thancred (Father)

Though characters in MSQ keeps telling us that Thancred's problem is an inability to accept that Minfilia is gone, I don't think that's true. Thancred is instead struggling to resolve the role of patriarch and protector with so many historic failures; his own, Ran'jit's, and his guardians'.

Thancred: This isn't a matter of fate, Urianger. It's about choice. And I've had years to decide where I stand.  Thancred: Minfilia has spent too long in chains already. I would not shackle her again by making my hopes known. - 5.0 quest "On Track"

Thancred plainly hopes for Ryne to live. He is more aggrieved by the fact that if Ryne takes up Minfilia's legacy, she will have to fight the Lightwardens. He wants to put off the question of whether or not Ryne will take up that responsibility not because it means losing Minfilia, but because that responsibility killed the last girl who had it.

He understands that death as a failure of himself, a failure he is not willing to endure again or subject another young girl to, and he is paralyzed because there is no future ahead where Ryne does not die or take on grave personal danger.

Thancred was the one that connected Minfilia to Louisoix and the Scions, to The Mission, as his mentors did to him. He is perhaps reflecting that had he known what it would entail, he wouldn't have chosen this, and he wouldn't have wanted Minfilia to choose it either.

Thancred: It is for her to choose what shape her destiny will take. It is for me to stay silent. To protect her, teach her, and stand by her. That, at least, I can do for her. - ""

For all he speaks to his gratitude towards Louisoix and his Sharlayan master, the man he is belies it. This is a person deeply suspicious of and resentful to male authority, crystalized in the fight against Ran'jit where he overcomes those doubts in order to embrace a role as Ryne's father. He no longer sees Minfilia's life, and death, only as masculine failure, but as feminine victory. He sees a future for his daughter and embraces it, whatever may come.

But if that were enough, the story would simply end there. It doesn't, and it isn't.

Urianger (Mother)

Some people will have a defensive reaction to the idea of calling Urianger a mother, or a woman, in this context as homophobic or heteronormative. Whether or not you can suspend your disbelief and get on board with a transfeminine Urianger, I hope you can at least notice the tropes she is being subjected to and how she reacts to them.

Thancred and Ryne retreat to Il Mheg, and go to Urianger as a soft place to land. And she is that. The shelves seem an idyllic comfort compared to their life on the road pursued by Eulmore's soldiers. Ryne is excited to see her, and Urianger treats her warmly, calling her "my dear." There is real happiness and safety here, but also stagnation.

Urianger: I attempted to broach the subject before. Mine intention was to ensure no words remained unspoken between them[...] Alas, in the end he refused to heed my counsel - 5.0 Quest "Have a heart"

Regardless, the Urianger we meet in Il Mheg is euphoric, smiling, joking about her fair features. Compared to the ascetic, practical man Urianger claimed to be on the Source, the Urianger we meet is changed. Transformed, even. (We can even tell her "I almost didn't recognize you..." you're making it too easy, FFXIV!)

Urianger is neither ignorant of nor indifferent towards the problems in Thancred's and Ryne's relationship. She confronts Thancred, and reminds him of and encourages him to speak about the things he would rather avoid. Thancred will accept her hospitality, but he won't take her advice. Why not? And why does she tolerate this?

Urianger: A time will come when they must face the reality of their circumstances. But I have faith that all will be well in time... - ""

It's important to note that while Thancred fears men as guardians of children, he doesn't feel the same way towards women.

To Thancred, the presence of a woman, a mother, is what makes a home. If Urianger was a potential father to Ryne, Thancred would have regarded her with the same suspicion he carries for male parents. Instead, she takes on the role of F'lhaminn, representing "warmth and tranquillity."

Urianger's existence doesn't challenge Thancred's positions on patriarchs and fathers, because Urianger is not a father to Ryne, and not a man. And that is exactly why she accepts this role; it's her own refuge.

Urianger is getting to be a mom, for just a moment. Maybe not even a good one. Maybe one stuck within a passive role. But to be a mother is blessed relief compared to the role the Exarch has put her in, which hangs over her dreadfully. Urianger lights up when she addresses Ryne, and buckles over or crumbles to her knees when she confronts her deceptions. Being a mom has its limitations, but it is at least authentic to her and her desires. Like Thancred, she is using the domestic sphere in order to escape an identity anathema to her sense of self.

I hesitate to outright call Urianger an enabler, because she is boxed into place by various sexist/transphobic forces. Thancred's suspicions towards himself are why he's ignoring her, but it's the patriarchal nature of their arrangement that gives him the ability to do so.

Ryne (Child)

Ryne is 16, two years away from adulthood but still a child. She has spent the last three years of her life with these two parents, consistently if not continuously. They have both tried to allow her to be a "normal" girl, and she clearly feels attachment towards both of them regardless of their failings.

But she's not a normal girl. She has a destiny, one she's going into badly unprepared. 

What's naive about the Waters-Augurelt family in Il Mheg is not, I should be clear, its queerness or Urianger's womanhood or the safety of a home. Its an idealization of the nuclear family, particularly motherhood, as an escape from trauma. Ryne wants what anyone would want; for both her parents to be present, engaged, and connected with her. Patriarchal norms won't accomplish this; they are the very heart of everyone's trauma.

That Urianger's faith was rewarded in the end doesn't change the fact that if he had just listened to her outright, Ryne would have been saved years of sorrow. Thancred's opinions towards women as passive providers of safety and comfort are to blame, and that he has awakened to the personhood of daughters and sisters is not the same as feminist consciousness. (We see him nearly return to his womanizing habits during the Crystarium victory celebration, stopped by Urianger's nagging-- or so he claims.)

Ryne can't live out Thancred's idealized version of childhood; the home he never had and wishes to give her through Urianger is insufficient to answer the questions hanging over her. 

When Ryne says, "I wish he'd just say it─just say that he hates me! That he wishes I was dead so that she could return..." I don't think she really believes it. I think what she is trying to get Urianger to say is, no, no, of course not-- Thancred loves you, we both love you.

And while she deserves to hear it, what is valuable about Ryne is not just that she is loved by her parents, though she is. It's that she has value all her own, and in her own identity, a life lived beyond the hopes others have for her.

Urianger: Were she here, she would not suffer thee to languish in sorrow. She would tell thee to seek thine own path, thine own purpose. Urianger: It is a truth which I myself was slow to learn. Yet a truth it remaineth. - 5.0 quest, "Have a Heart"

While this wasn't what Ryne was hoping to hear, it is enough. The connection is felt, deeply.

Minfilia: I don't know about the world...but I never asked to be saved. Minfilia: However much it hurts, and however hard it gets, it's my life, and I want to live it on my own terms! Minfilia: And those “mad fools” you want me to abandon? The ones I've traveled with, fought with, and may one day die with─they feel the same. Minfilia: So no, I will not be deceived! No matter what you say, I refuse to believe it's all for nothing! Minfilia: They're everything to me. All I have and all I need. And I would gladly do anything for them. Minfilia: Let us pass, or kill me. I'm not leaving here without them.

Brides, Mothers

If Urianger's narrative ended with her passive victory, her faith rewarded, and her family gathered happily around her, then that would be straightforward praise of the family unit as they had arranged it. Instead, we complicate her domestic role by mirroring it, revealing her unhappy dealings as the Exarch's "Accomplice." (Y'shtola also calls this an "Infatuation," doubling the romantic associations.)

Y'shtola: Urianger─I know full well, after all these years, that you have only the best of intentions [...] But that does not make it any easier to put my faith in a man so infatuated with secrecy. - 5.0 Quest, "An Unwanted Proposal" < SEE!!!! SEE THAT QUEST NAME??? I'll calm down

Her relationship with G'raha is another unequal partnership, where Urianger carries out the commands given to her. It isn't until Endwalker that we fully understand just how painful Urianger found her obedient role.

Urianger: In her hour of need, I did naught. Dutiful disciple of Louisoix, ever looking to the greater good... Urianger: Had I shut mine eyes and bid her live instead, mayhap she would be with us today. Urianger: Selfish wants born of everlasting regrets. Most days I put them from my mind, but could think of naught else when asked to swallow the same bitter draught. Subterfuge and sacrifice. Mayhap the right, moral choice, but one I regard with great trepidation. - 6.0 Quest, "Back to Old Tricks"

When she says "dutiful disciple," it's bitterly, her hand clutched into a fist.

Far from completely passive and accepting, from infatuated, Urianger is unhappy to be merely selfless, merely dutiful, even as she is happy to be a woman. As Venat tells her, her heart never wavered; but it isn't Louisoix she is purely loyal to. Nor is it Thancred or the Exarch. Her greatest loyalty is to something higher.

Urianger: In truth, I can no more ignore the plight of this world than I can choose to stop breathing. And thus do I labor─for those we have lost. For those we can yet save. - 5.0 quest, "A visit to the Nu Mou"

Hydaelyn: For duty's sake, thou hast been bound by truths unutterable, time and time again. Yet thy heart hath never wavered, as thy companions will attest. - 6.0 quest, "Her Children, One and All"

She demands recompense from G'raha later at Ultima Thule, understanding that he incurred a debt with her, that her submission to his plans was not merely natural or to be taken for granted. G'raha, like the domestic sphere created in Il Mheg, was naive in his romantic notions, in the roles he gave Urianger (and others) to play.

Remember that line Urianger said? "She would tell thee to seek thine own path, thine own purpose... It is a truth which I myself was slow to learn. Yet a truth it remaineth." But when, exactly, did she learn it? When in SHB did she not walk the path given to her? Where did she stray, and why?

Rejecting narratives, no matter the comfort or permissions they may provide, help us to truly become our authentic selves and show up for those we care about; something Urianger has continued to advocate for in Dawntrail, and likely beyond.

[cgogs]

TNTduo at Niki's birthday party closing conversations, small breakdown Link to my transcript: x

The scene starts with Wilbur telling Quackity he's going to blow up Manburg, and walking off to do just that while he has an audience (Niki+Karl+Chat) to witness it. Quackity is left to try and talk him down.

Q's tactic switches from "You're not going to do this." to "You don't want to do this. " to "You don't have to do this."

Because between each effort to de-escalate and talk Wilbur back from the edge, Quackity is being proved wrong between each tactic. "You're not going to do this"-- which is less Q calling Wilbur's bluff, and more Q trying to appeal to his better nature-- is met with an immediate somewhat heated rebuttal as Wilbur's takeaway is that Q is trying to act like he's better than him:

Quackity is so confused by this spiel about chaos that he actually isn't sure Wilbur is even talking to him. And because the situation is delicate, and Wilbur's response to absolutes ("You're not going to do this") is to get defensive, Q has to form a response that disproves his assertion without actually saying 'you're wrong.'

He can't outright challenge Wilbur's projection but asserts that he doesn't want this, while also trying again to appeal to Wilbur's senses. Both logical AND emotional: Manburg is special to people, and don't blow up something important on impulse or you may regret it.

Wilbur sheds this off immediately, asking instead to sing Q a song like they had been at the party before. Quackity agrees to buy himself some time while he searches for him.

Now this is where it gets interesting. Wilbur is pointedly and purposefully showing warning signs, playing up his instability and impulsivity. While he sings the anthem, he changes some of the lyrics to be about blowing up L'manburg and shows exaggerated frustration to messing up. This is theater. This is essentially him, again, flashing bright colors and calling attention to himself. (I say this is a farce because of how Wilbur responds later, bear with me) Wilbur slams his guitar and frustratedly declares he's going for the button. Because Quackity's previous attempts to appeal to his better nature have failed and (in his perception) made things worse, he finally comes down to Wilbur's level and tries to bargain with him. That's what this has been to Wilbur-- a negotiations table under the guise of intervention.

He gives up all his ground. He's making a deal. He'll go along with Wilbur's plan if his own doesn't work. This is quite the risky gamble. Quackity is relying on his ability to pull off this meeting without a hitch, and to Wilbur's liking, to prevent the entire city from being exploded. But this is the corner he's been pushed into by Wilbur's threats. Wilbur has finally put a crack in Quackity's collected persona, and he knows it immediately. He patiently waits to hear all of Q's suggestion (when previously he was quite the interrupter andy) and responds only to make sure Q means it. Because this is what he wanted! He wanted Q to set up this meeting. This was Wilbur pushing Q into doing something he'd been apprehensive of beforehand. An actual negotiations table. Real talks. He relaxes immediatley, a hard contrast to the persona he was putting earlier.

Something interesting to note is how Wilbur leaves the game but not the VC-- meaning it's no longer possible to press the button. This is the equivalent of him putting the gun down. Quackity is instantly relieved, believing he has successfully talked him down from the ledge.

Now THIS is where it's obvious Quackity has lost. This is where the fact that this was a setup is most obvious. His concession means Wilbur holds the sway of the bargain completely, compared to the high ground Q held at the beginning of the interaction, not giving up any ground. Wilbur is calm, he has precise demands, he gives Q a deadline that Q doesn't even try to fight even though it makes his life quite a bit harder.

The speed at which Wilbur switches up, because Quackity has handed over all the power! And before he was so all over the place, speaking erratically, convincing Q that he was far more gone than he actually was. And now that Q is bending to him, he knows exactly what he wants and leaves amicably once he has it.

But note: This deal relies on Wilbur's satisfaction. He tells Q he'll be watching. He says, if plan A goes wrong, I'm pressing the button... And Q tells him,

Yes. This means the conditions of the bargain are up to Wilbur's judgment. He calls the shot. They came into this with, "I'm going to blow up Manburg and you are going to watch." and ended with Quackity essentially... agreeing. And he realizes it a little here:

The relief of Wilbur standing down is soon soured by the realization of what exactly must come next, and what happens if it doesn't. From Wilbur's perspective, he's convinced the VP to set up a cabinet meeting to negotiate terms. From where Quackity's standing, this feels like he's diffused a bomb.

Which is actually a sentiment quite a few people have expressed, namely and most obviously: Ranboo. There are only two times the word 'bomb' is written in The Wilbur Van despite TNT being a main plot point.

Ranboo saw something in Wilbur. He saw a man trying his best to carve out a legacy and a man at his lowest trying to gain redemption. But unfortunately he also saw a man with an insatiable pride, a man who was a living bomb about to explode and, scariest of all, he saw a bit of himself. [...] “I have an idea,” Ranbo began, his words echoing around the cave, “I know what to do. I know how to defuse the bomb and make you realise how frivolous this whole thing is.” he smiled.

If Wilbur had opened with "Set up a cabinet meeting before the week is done or I blow up the country." Quackity would NEVER have thrown Wilbur a bone. Wilbur is weaponizing his own instibility here, leveraging the button over Q's head to get him to scramble to negotiate with him. This is a pattern Wilbur is privy to (the vassal conversation, Inconsolable Differences). That is why this is all specticalized, obvious, and public.

He calls out to Quackity, specifically, that he wants him to watch Manburg blow up. He tells Quackity to follow him. He says he's glad for the audience, though Quackity is the only one he's showing off to, because Quackity is the only one who has something Wilbur wants. Niki tearfully and desperately pleads with him as well and is entirely ignored, while Quackity has his full attention. Because Quackity has something he wants.

This is a power play.

And he does!

[aminiatureworld]

Small Bits of Memory

Characters: Scaramouche, gn!reader

Word Count: 1,531

Warnings: None

Premise: Little moments between Scaramouche and the reader.

Author’s Note: Warning, I’m not caught up on the archon quest. I did skim the wiki (which made me kinda sad ngl), but if there are inaccuracies, that’s why. I also may have made Scaramouche a bit sappy because of this.  

I took “comfort” to mean “hurt/comfort” so if some of these are a bit melancholic it’s because angst brain does not turn off.

Scaramouche

Scaramouche is well familiar with nightmares. He knows the feeling of opening yours eyes in the dark, not moving, not crying out or sitting up; simply opening your eyes as the latent fear of your dreams finally catch up with you and finally your breathing starts to speed in your chest, as your finally realize how afraid you were. Thus on the first night he wakes to you staring intently at the darkness around you, still to the point of stiffness, he automatically understands what’s going on.

At first he’s too scared to wrap his arms around you, afraid that you’ll find the action frightening, or that you’ll instinctively reject him. He only reaches out his hand, secretly relieved when you entwined your fingers within his. Feeling vaguely sentimental in his tired state he whispers: “I’ll protect you from the dark, so stop staring and go back to sleep.” He hopes that you won’t tease him about it tomorrow, as some small part of him knows that it was a very silly thing to say.

Afterwards he grows a little bolder, inching closer to you, then letting one arm rest on your shoulder, fingers featherlight on your skin. Thankfully your penchant for nightmares isn’t too great, so it’s about two months before he wakes up the next day to his arms wrapped around you, you nestled within his sleepy embrace. Seeing you sleeping peacefully after the look of uncomprehending panic plastered across your features the night before calms him like few other things, and he sighs peacefully, letting his eyes flit closed once more. The two of you sleep in that day.

Scaramouche always panics slightly whenever you get hurt. It could be a paper cut, it could be a bruise, it could be a battle injury, his response is relatively similar each time. You might squirm as he cleans your cut off for the third time in ten minutes, assuring him that you aren’t going to die, but he isn’t truly listening to you. There’s a glazed look in his eyes, and it takes him a few moments to register that you’re calling his name. You worry about it sometimes, you wonder what might happen if you were to truly injure yourself. You hope he wouldn’t blame himself too much. Scaramouche has a surprising penchant towards self-flagellation, when he’s not telling himself that he’s superior to everyone around him.

Scaramouche has never horsed around in a river, never experienced a snowball fight, never watched a sunrise for the sake of it. He was not created for such things after all. It’s hard for him to imagine enjoyment in the little pieces of universal humanity, perhaps because he feels somehow separated from such a privilege. You start keeping a list of these sorts of things, small moments to enjoy. He finds the idea silly at first, but gradually grows to like the experience. Perhaps not the individual activities, but the experience as a whole. He might not understand the “universal human experience” as you call it, but the snow against his skin is cold and clear, and the sun looks like fire in the sky, and you’re smiling next to him, and all is well in the world.

Scaramouche doesn’t have much attachment to Inazuma, considering it a desolate land where the people survive despite, not because of, the land. He has no love for the plains, or the skinny forests, or the craggy rocks and hills. The flowers glow preternaturally, and the electricity that fills the air makes unpleasant crackling noises. Nevertheless he has to admit a fondness for the cherry blossoms that bloom on Narukami Islands. It’s as if a small sliver of beauty managed to scrape its way into the world. He’ll take you to see them sometimes, regardless of his status as a Harbinger and a general menace. Perched amidst the falling petals you remind him of some sort of spirit from folklore. If he could draw well at all he thinks he would make a portrait of you surrounded by those blossoms. Certainly there’d be nothing else worth painting.

The two of you like to read together, Scaramouche going over whatever plans he’s currently focusing on, you curled up with a book. If you find a passage or a quote you particularly like you’ll tap him on the shoulder, and Scaramouche will duly listen to you read it aloud. He likes the sound of your reading voice, the way it varies slightly from when you talk. Unfortunately he made the mistake of telling you that once, and you began to insist that he read for you. Though he secretly enjoys doing so, he still grumbles about it out of habit. The both of you know he’s only doing it for show.

Scaramouche once caught you using a broom like a sword. Though you looked very drunk he secretly found it endlessly endearing. He offered to teach you some basic sword forms (despite his weapon knowing swordplay is a basic requirement for all Fatui soldiers). You accepted eagerly at the time, unaware of how much you’d underestimated Scarmouche’s fervor when it came to training. It took a wooden sword snapped in half for him to lay off a little bit, but at least his troops started dropping hints at you that they no longer feared for their lives. Though you think they were joking, you were still glad for the learning experience. You two still spar every once in a while though.

Living up to his title of “Balladeer” Scaramouche has quite the haunting voice. Not particularly high, his range still has a natural warmth to it that belies his cold exterior. You almost never catch him actually singing. The first time it happened was when you had a migraine. Refusing to leave your tent – you hadn’t actually convinced him you weren’t dying – he seemed torn between boredom and worry. At first it was a mere hum, but soon enough it morphed into a captivating song. He refused to tell you the name of it, claiming he’d forgotten, and refused to bring it up the next morning. Still sometimes you’ll catch him now and then humming out a tune, usually when he’s reading or if you’re sick or upset. His singing is something you associate with comfort.

Scaramouche is a terrible letter writer. If you send him ten letters while he’s away he’ll send you three. Still what he lacks in quantity he makes up for in word count. Curt in his official reports, his letters to you are pure stream-of-consciousness, captivating whatever he’s thinking about at the time. Usually the letters are somewhat sappy (or surprisingly bold) missives on how much he loves you and misses you, somehow more honest than when he speaks to you face-to-face. Still you’ve also gotten quite used to a thousand words on how much he hates his fellow Harbingers. You don’t mind, keeping all his letters to you in a box. Though he claims to burn yours, he does the same.

Scaramouche always tell you the days he’s leaving and the days he’s returning. Sometimes he’ll have it down to an estimated hour. Though he appreciates the pomp and spectacle of appearing around others unannounced – something he does quite a bit when working – he refuses to keep you in a limbo of waiting. Secretly he’s also always afraid you might not show up on the docks one day, and every time he sees your face after a long time away a weight lifts in his chest, the pressure on his soul just a little easier to bear every time.

Scaramouche has always felt most comfortable at night. When the world sleeps, when he has the advantage of being awake, being alert, being more powerful. When there are fewer eyes on him, and he can even tell himself that he is the only one awake in the world, can indulge in those moments of wondering, wondering whether he has ever felt something, whether he is missing a crucial piece. Whether he has ever been happy, whether he wants to be so. He can be vulnerable at night, and thus is the reason it appealed to him so much.

Now the night is his favorite time of day because he can always be near you at that time. If you two are in the same land, then you will spend the night in the same room, the same tent, the same bed. Listening to the sound of your breathing, letting himself revel in your closeness, your arms wrapped around his waist, or his wrapped around you, Scaramouche feels truly content. Perhaps he is even happy, perhaps this is what happiness is, what love is. Perhaps it is something more than that, something undefinable, something too abstract to put into words. He loves you, he realizes to himself, he loves you so much. It is overwhelming, like a tidal wave, yet it does not frighten him. He could be struck by lightning and it would not frighten him. It will in the daytime, but now is the night, and now he can marvel peacefully at the fact that he truly loves you.

[robininthelabyrinth]

i've been keeping a list of possible prompts for you and there's one i have no memory of adding that just says "courtesan nmj????" so i guess that's the prompt you're getting lmao

What Does the Fox Say - ao3

“Second Madame Nie!” a disciple shouted, rushing into her little garden. She didn’t recognize him, but he was solidly built and well-muscled like most of the others – truly, the Unclean Realm was a rapturous feast for one with eyes to see it. Yum, yum. “Second Madame Nie, I have bad news!”

Boo. She hated bad news: bad news meant she’d have to do something, usually, and right now she was seated very comfortably in a pleasant piece of sun in the garden path that’d been made up just for her and to her preferences, with her feet up on a chair and a full plate of fruit from the kitchen on the table in front of her just begging to be devoured, morsel by delicious morsel.

Her schedule was packed!

“I regret to tell you, but your husband has been killed!”

“Oh,” she said, frowning slightly. “Has he? How obnoxious of him.”

How unreliable. Men.

She sighed.

“Second Madame – Second Madame – you don’t understand!” The disciple was all red-eyed and weepy, which was a look she liked, especially in big, stout men like this. The salt added a bit of spice to the whole thing. “You must flee at once! He was killed by Sect Leader Wen in an act of outright aggression – Sect Leader Wen has declared war – the Wen sect is invading!”

She nodded and picked up another lychee to start peeling it. She’d get around to fleeing in her own time. As long as this Wen sect or whatnot was being led by a man, she wasn’t terribly concerned.

“They intend to wipe out the inheritance of Qinghe Nie! They will rip out the child in your belly!”

She hummed noncommittally. Really, how attached was she to having a child of her own? Really?

“They will slaughter civilians – execute Nie-gongzi –”

Her hands stilled.

“What,” she said, and the disciple took a step back automatically, proving that he, at least, had something more of a survival instinct than her late husband did. “Hurt my little meat bun? My darling rice roll? My savory zongzi?”

She stood up, diminutive height and over-large belly and frilly clothing doing absolutely nothing to diminish the vaguely menacing aura that darkened the sky around her. She bared her teeth.

“Who does this upstart Wen dog think he is?!”

The disciple blinked owlishly, but nodded, seeming relieved that she’d finally accepted his concern, though she could see on his face that he was thinking that her reasoning was – characteristically – a little strange. But then again, and she could see this thought process on his far too honest face, it was well known that the second Madame Nie been quite strange ever since Sect Leader Nie had found her in some lonesome place with no family or background and brought her back to be his new wife nevertheless.

Such a charming man. Pity about his loss, really.

“You have to flee at once, we can’t possibly fight so many people,” the disciple said once more, and this time she nodded in agreement. “We can escort you to a hidden exit –”

“No!” a little voice called. “We can’t go.”

She turned to look, and there was the little pork-and-shrimp dumpling himself, chubby-cheeked and earnest-eyed, looking as delicious as always.

“What do you mean, fish cake?” she asked. “Of course we have to go. Didn’t you hear what this strapping young man said? This Wen person wants to kill you!”

“If Father is dead, then I’m the sect leader,” her stepson said. He was serious and solemn in a way that made her want to pinch his cheeks and bury her face into his belly to blow raspberries, and also possibly to eat him right up, flesh and marrow and gristle and all. “That means it’s my responsibility to preserve the Nie sect.”

“Nie-gongzi, no!” the disciple cried, throwing himself to his knees in a dramatic display of loyalty. “You would only die – far better for you to run, and live!”

“Then isn’t the same true for everyone else?” the tasty little dish asked, crossing his arms over his chest and pouting. Possibly he was trying to put on a fierce expression, maybe, she couldn’t quite tell sometimes. He was so cute. “Why should I live, and them not? I refuse to buy my life with their deaths!”

“But – Nie-gongzi –”

Her charming little honey cake shook his head and held up a hand to stop the disciple, turning to look at her instead.

“Second Mother,” he said, and he had that wholesome trusting expression again that was such a perfect little one-shot-kill to the heart, ugh. “You always said you’re the best at hiding. The best in the world, no one better among all the gods or demons!”

She was, too. She couldn’t help but preen a little, proud.

“– can’t you do something?”

“Oh, darling cabbage bun,” she said, not without fondness. “I can hide myself from even the net of Heaven itself if I so choose, from gods and demons alike, and I can most certainly hide a small group from any mortal eyes that dare to look, if you don’t mind being a little tiny bit dishonorable about the business. But an entire sect? That’s a bit much, even for someone as talented and skilled as me.”

Her stepson looked up at her, all straight-steel sincerity and upright righteousness wrapped into a perfectly edible little snack-sized package. “If we split them up, the sect could be small groups,” he said eagerly. “Couldn’t you do something then?”

He was so cute, and he trusted her. He trusted her, believed in her, felt that she could perform miracles with a wave of her sleeve if only she so wished.

It was awful.

She couldn’t bear it.

“Oh all right, you nummy little slice of roast pork belly,” she said, yielding. “But I’m telling you now, it won’t be the least bit honorable! There’s only so many excuses you can come up with for having a lot of strong men with wide shoulders and women with thick thighs hanging around, and not a single one of them has the slightest bit to do with what you people consider to be appropriate.”

“That’s all right. Preserving human life comes first, always.”

The disciple looked between them, clearly completely confused. Clearly all his effort had been spent on developing the muscles in his arms (quite nice) rather than his brain (quite slow).

“What?” he said. “What’s happening?”

“We’re saving the sect,” Nie Mingjue announced happily, clapping his hands together. Too precious, too precious entirely; she’d have to make sure no one else even thought about going near her darling little snackling. “Tell everyone to prepare to evacuate.”

“That will take too long,” she said, and smiled, with teeth. “Let me call some friends to help.”

-

When the Wen sect arrived at the Unclean Realm, they found the gate open.

That was unexpected enough, but when they entered, they found that the entire place had emptied out – not just of people, but of everything else, too. There wasn’t a single intact chair or table in the entire place, not a scrap of cloth nor a bit of food, like it’d been swept clean by locusts or wild monkeys come to pilfer whatever they could.

Even the paving stones where arrays had been laid out by the Nie sect’s ancestors had been pried up and carted away.

Sect Leader Wen ordered a search, but there wasn’t any trace of it – of the people, of the stuff, anything.

No one ever found out what happened.

-

Jin Guangyao despised social events, he’d found.

It was one thing when it was something he’d planned himself, where the work was interesting enough to distract him, but when he was an honored guest for someone else…miserable. Utterly miserable.

The only thing more miserable was when the host was his erstwhile father, from whom he’d forcefully extracted recognition. With Wen Ruohan as his backer, indulging his favorite torturer as if a beloved pet, there wasn’t much Jin Guangshan could do to refuse, and neither could he force Jin Guangyao to do anything on his behalf, either. And so Jin Guangyao, sitting as always by Wen Ruohan’s side, right beneath his sons, was now an honored guest at his father’s house, getting offered his pick of prostitutes as if the man had no notion of the irony.

Maybe he didn’t. Jin Guangyao couldn’t quite tell if his father had just forgotten his origins, thinking his bastard son too unimportant to remember the details of, or whether it was meant as a deliberate insult – who could tell?

“Oh, right,” the simpering idiot in front of him, a nephew or cousin of some sort to the sect leader, said. “Our dear Jin Guangyao is known not to like the gentle flower queens, even when they come from the finest houses in Lanling. Isn’t that right, cousin?”

Jin Guangyao’s fists clenched. A deliberate insult, then.

Despite that, his face remained neutral. Instead, he chuckled and said, “The appeal is limited. After all, I have seen the best of them.”

Beside him, Wen Ruohan nodded and smirked. He appreciated Jin Guangyao’s devotion to his mother, though Jin Guangyao suspected it was because he thought it funny that Jin Guangyao would bother to honor such a lowly woman – but what he thought didn’t matter, not really. All that mattered was that he let Jin Guangyao pay his respects to her to his heart’s content.

“Well, you’re in luck!” the idiot Jin Zixun said, looking absurdly smug. “We have something of a different flavor than the usual tonight – we’ve invited entertainment from the local branch of Splendid Spring.”

Jin Guangyao barely managed to avoid rolling his eyes.

The Splendid Spring Palace was a series of brothels that had popped up fully formed just about everywhere some years back, with madams and girls and musicians and bodyguards of all sorts. It was so patently a political move that Jin Guangyao had barely bothered to pay attention to it once he’d become actually powerful, and Wen Ruohan hadn’t paid attention to it at all. After all, in the unlikely event that the business really was backed by a cultivation sect that didn’t care about its face any longer, anyone who needed to use such a façade to gather power was clearly beneath notice.

Jin Guangyao had paid only very little attention, but to different and unusual aspects of the place: by all accounts, they were surprisingly decent employers as far as places like that went. They didn’t steal girls or accept unwilling goods – they had some connection with the merchant caravans, or at least one of the companies that helped coordinate routes and provide protection to such things, and they were as meticulous about checking things over as they were about seeking refunds if they were dissatisfied – and they did accept married girls fleeing unhappy marriages, which not everyone did. They did buy up all the girls in the local markets wherever they were, but they swept them away and brought them back transformed, even the ones that wouldn’t sell because they were too ugly; Jin Guangyao assumed that meant they had people who were talented in make-up and clothing, since the usual rumors of the girls being blessed with a yao’s enchantment were obviously ridiculous and nothing more than the usual marketing gimmicks that brothels since time immemorial had tried.

Even once they had the girls in hand, the places were pretty decent: they had physicians on staff to help with the usual side effects of the business, made sure their girls were clean and healthy, and were said to even limit the number of customers a girl would be obliged to take on in a given evening…honestly, knowing as he did the brothel business, Jin Guangyao sometimes wondered how they’d managed to bespell enough people to even make money in the early days. At any rate, whatever they’d done, it’d worked, because by now they had a solid enough reputation to trade on.

In short: a decent enough place, far better than the usual run of the mill. Once he’d had the ability to do so, he’d even pulled a few strings and arranged for the better of his mother’s old compatriots to end up there, since he couldn’t convince them to leave their old professions behind entirely.

Anyway, if they also seemed to have a sideline in information brokering and assassinations, well, let them. In the cultivation world, where the only thing that mattered was strength, real strength.

A little thing like that wouldn’t make any real difference.

Or so Jin Guangyao had thought.

He found himself re-thinking that, though, when the entertainment in question came out. There were the usual set of attractive (albeit in a wider variety of shapes and sizes than usually seen) dancers, dressed up in silks that seemed actually high quality, and plenty of strapping young men carrying sabers – dancers as well, once assumed, to provide some spice to the entertainment, and implicitly on the offer for men who cut their sleeves or women with more flexibility, like widows or ones with especially permissive husbands. Wen Ruohan’s wives were in that latter category, and they were already whispering to each other excitedly, looking at them.

They’d even brought in the local madame, who was…

Well, she was actually breathtaking, even by Jin Guangyao’s extremely jaded standards. She had hair that fell almost all the way to her ankles, shimmering in the light, and dark eyes shining with liveliness, a smooth and ageless face that simultaneously suggested youth and health but also winked at knowable experience, the features characteristic of what his mother’s employers had called the ‘fox-face’. As if to emphasize that, the lady was wrapped in fox-fur and draped in embroidered brocade, with little stylized foxes running up and down the hems of her clothing and along the gazy silk draped on her shoulders.

It ought to have looked absurd, looked gaudy and overwrought and overdone, but it didn’t.

She was a thousand dreams of wealth and beauty and power and sex appeal all wrapped up in one, and even Jin Guangyao – who was in his personal preferences quite firmly a cutsleeve – couldn’t help but intrigued by her, wondering what it might be like to touch the hem of such a glorious creature.

And next to her…

The lady was accompanied by two men that seemed completely different from each other. One was a slender and winsome young man, fluttering his eyelashes from behind a fan with a charming smile, emanating the appeal of softness and weakness, ready to be indulged. While the other…

Jin Guangyao swallowed.

He was the exact opposite of the first man. Clearly strong, muscular and powerful, and tall to the point of towering, with wide shoulders and a narrow waist, a chest that you could lean your head against and an ass that begged to have someone’s hands on it – and there were his hands, big and broad, perfect for holding someone down or up if they so wished and of a size that was very promising as to what was only hinted at under his clothes. His face was hidden behind a veil as if he were a woman, marking him, like his comrade, as one of the available courtesans of the Splendid Spring, but his body was visible under clothing clearly cut to put it to the best advantage.

And oh, what advantages it had…!

“It seems we found something to the tastes of dear cousin Guangyao after all,” the idiot said mockingly, sniggering and snorting like the pig he was, and for once Jin Guangyao didn’t even care.

“Who’s the woman in front?” Wen Ruohan asked, ignoring their interplay. He seemed utterly fascinated, almost spellbound, and Jin Guangyao couldn’t blame him one bit. If this woman had been at the same brothel as his mother, there wouldn’t have even been room for jealousy or shame; his mother would have gone straight up to her to ask for some tips. “She seems…familiar, somehow.”

“That’s the madame of the Splendid Spring,” Jin Zixun said proudly, as if he’d done anything at all in relation to this – nonsense, of course. Everyone know which brothels were backed by the Jin sect, and Splendid Spring wasn’t one of them. He was acting as if he deserve a pat on the back just for the introduction! “That means she’s not for sale.”

His smile faded a little, twisting in a small bit of bitterness. “Or so she told my uncle, anyway…although I’m sure if it were Sect Leader Wen asking, the answer would undoubtedly be different.”

Probably because Jin Guangshan couldn’t slaughter prostitutes with impunity if they said no to him, whereas no one could stop Wen Ruohan from doing any damn thing he pleased.

Wen Ruohan grunted, pleased by the answer – he was a possessive man, in the rare events that he did exert himself in the realm of women, and there had been more than one instance where he’d stolen away some girl his sons had been eyeing first just for the joy of having had her first – and raised a hand, catching the lady’s eye and gesturing for her to come over, which she did.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

She laughed. “You can call me Hu Jiuwei. With the ‘Hu’ being the character for fox.”

Jin Guangyao tried not to choke. There were false names and then there were false names – the lady’s theme was already clearly related to foxes, given her fox-face and fox-fur lining and the foxes embroidered onto her robes. Was the over-the-top name really necessary?

“It’s a fake name,” she added, unnecessarily.

“I see,” Wen Ruohan said, sounding a little choked himself. Possibly it was the woman calling herself ‘Foxy Ninetails’ and then kindly reassuring them all that the name was false as if she thought them too dumb to figure it out that was tripping him up a little. Jin Guangyao couldn’t tell if she was doing it deliberately in order to make her frankly inhuman beauty a little less frightening, or maybe she was blessed with so much beauty that she hadn’t bothered to cultivate her brain at all. “Are you our entertainment for the evening?”

She smiled, and any complaints Jin Guangyao (or indeed Wen Ruohan) might have had about her intelligence faded away at once.

It was that type of smile.

You could wreck nations with that type of smile. Jin Guangyao couldn’t help but wonder: how had a woman this extraordinary ended up in a brothel, of all places? How had no one snatched her up to keep her all for himself before now?

“My sons and I –” she gestured at the two behind her, “– would be more than happy to provide you with all the entertainment you could possibly want.”

Her smile widened.

“We’ve been hoping for an opportunity like this for a long time.”

[daisiesonafield-blog]

If sad characters looking out windows near a gray seaside while memories of the past come rushing in like the tide is your kind of thing, you could do a little bit worse than My Policeman, Michael Grandage’s new film, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday. That’s the intended appeal of this sodden and dreary film, adapted from the popular 2012 novel by Bethan Roberts. It’s a story of regrets and thwarted romance in the style of Atonement-era Ian McEwan, say, all that pain and longing for lost and ruined things. 

Normally that works for me. But My Policeman is studied and plodding in its period-piece solemnity, a dirge of a movie about reckless people that is never warmed by their implied inner fire.

[...] But how did they get to this point in their later years?

Grandage can’t do much to make us care about the answer. The plot beats of the film are entirely predictable, largely because this is the exact sort of movie that got people complaining about the scourge of miserablist queer dramas in the first place. I still enjoy a good old-fashioned gay weepy from time to time—look at Terrence Davies’s exquisite Benediction, from earlier this year—but not when it’s as formulaic as My Policeman. 

The film looks lovely in all its dampness, shot in and around Brighton by cinematographer Ben Davis, who also lensed this festival season’s far superior coastal period piece, The Banshees of Inisherin. Composer Steven Price’s mournful strings ably conjure up a mood of rueful melancholy. The tailoring and pedigree are there, but they coalesce into something inert and frustrating. 

My Policeman is, despite its delicate bearing, a pretty ruthless movie. These three people badly mistreat one another on their way to a bitter ending that is, rather witlessly, supposed to feel hopeful. We are meant, I think, to find something instructive in all this pain: some lesson about what it used to be like for gay people, the lasting damage wreaked by rigid self-denial. But that’s all recitation of known things, a replay of well-worn Serious Cinema tropes. There’s no new insight to be found in the film’s stuffy and depressing little world. Even the sex scenes are rote; admirably graphic in their elegant way, I suppose, but more dutiful gesture to art-house sensuality than true passion. 

Corrin, best known as The Crown’s Diana Spencer, plays Marion’s mounting doubts about Tom—her quiet dread and embarrassment—convincingly, while Dawson cuts an alluring figure who belongs in a slyer film. And then there’s Styles, the pop star turned fledging actor making his second screen appearance in as many weeks. He came out okay in Don’t Worry Darling, which premiered last week in Venice, but here he’s top-billed—the only actor named before the film’s title in the opening credits—and he’s not yet up to that responsibility. 

Tom is guileless and simple, with a sadness hanging around him. Styles’s thoughtful, shaggy-sweet quality works well for that, but when he has to hold a scene’s emotional tenor for longer than a line reading, he’s flat. He projects a glow of decency throughout the film, which means he’s not unwelcome in any given scene, but you ache for him every time a bit of dialogue thuds. This kind of film is not yet his milieu. Maybe it will be someday. That would certainly be a happier ending than anyone gets in My Policeman, which punishes these poor souls for having ever dared do anything at all.

-Vanity Fair review by Richard Lawson - not full review, read here.

[whenimaunicorn]

“Fight Me” - Ragnar the Younger x Eivor Wolf-Kissed (female)

Content Warnings: Explicit smut, fighting as foreplay, to the point where it resembles consensual noncon roleplay. Face slapping/striking, rough sex, exhibitionism, negotiating on the fly. Don’t like, don’t read, and I’m not interested in hearing if you think Eivor is OOC to your headcanons. These are mine.

Notes: I am maybe halfway through my playthrough of Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, and I haven’t found anyone I want to ship my female Eivor with yet. So, I did a thing with my favorite Last Kingdom hunk. You can easily imagine that one of her missions was to get involved with the Danes’ gathering in Young Ragnar’s stronghold (season 3) since the setting and time period is exactly the same in both game and show! I suppose Brida doesn’t exist in this fic; I didn’t find a useful way to write her in or out of this scene (although I’m sure Eivor would love to take her to bed too!)

Ragnar the Younger finishes a long pull of ale and sets his cup down with a flourish. Then he eyes the woman beside him. “Fight me.”

Eivor merely cocks a brow, regarding him over the rim of her own mug. “You have offered me no insult, Earl Ragnar. Why would I fight you?”

The big blonde leans in, his eyes swimming with mischief even as they seem to cut through to the core of her. “You are restless, Eivor Wolf-Kissed. I see a need in you, to feel your blood sing.” His charming gaze lingers on her an extra moment before he continues to speak. “You grow frustrated with the delay, how long I want to wait before marching on the Saxons.”

Her lip twists. “It is too late to talk strategy tonight. Let’s not ruin the merriment.” The talks had lasted for days; to Eivor they had seemed endless. But tonight the ale had been just as endless, and most of the Danes are now passed out around Ragnar’s hall. Or retreated in pairs to the darker corners, for more private diversions.

“No more talk,” Ragnar agrees. “Let me give you a bit of what you are craving.” He stands, wide and imposing. “Fight me. Just a friendly brawl.”

Eivor grins and kicks her chair back as she rises.

Only a few of Ragnar’s warriors, as well as a handful of others from the gathered forces of Northmen, show any interest, though they do clear a space for them. Although they are famous warriors, the two combatants are not exactly the center of attention in the hall; it’s late enough that most of the revelers are too far gone to notice what is happening.

Ragnar lifts the axe from its place at his belt and tosses it on the table. Eivor follows suit, although it takes her considerably longer to unstrap the blade at her wrist and the other sharp edges she keeps at the ready, hidden all around her person. Ragnar’s brows climb as he watches her produce them all, and she thinks he might be impressed.

She’s only recently met the young Earl, but Eivor has the impression of a good-hearted man who will be an absolute bear in a fight. Perhaps too good-hearted to lead a bloodthirsty people, given his reluctance to turn on his Saxon neighbors, but there is steel within his bones. Eivor admits that she would love to test it.

They enter their makeshift square, and contrary to her expectation Ragnar is upon her immediately. He grasps her at shoulder and waist, hooking her leg for a takedown which she is only barely able to twist away from. Straight to grappling, then. She doesn’t really mind. Eivor has never been afraid to take a punch, but Ragnar the Younger is a whole head taller than her with the muscle mass to match, and if they started this bout by trading blows she’d likely have been black and blue all over in the morning.

While she evades his attempt to trip her, she can’t quite dislodge herself from his arms, and so she’s down to twisting and turning inside his grip, trying to gain the advantage. Her muscles heat, jaw clenching into a ferocious smile as she thrills in the effort and the challenge. Ragnar was right; this was exactly what she has been craving.

And it’s not just about the combat, although she lives to best those warriors that dare to underestimate her. She shifts her hips, letting her center of balance slip just enough to lead Ragnar to believe that he’s gaining the upper hand. When he pushes her into a takedown she turns his leverage against him and rides him to the floor.

Cheers and jeers of the drunks watching them with varying levels of interest ring in her ears as Eivor clenches her thighs around Ragnar’s broad waist. He’s a handsome one, and she likes them big and not too stupid. But it’s hard for Eivor to find someone she truly wants to take to bed. She is a consummate warrior, skilled enough to best just about any challenger, and yet she only feels aroused by a man that she cannot beat.

Will Ragnar turn out to be that man? He’s grinning up at her from the floor, looking as ferocious as she feels, and when she loses grip on one of his hands he cuffs her across the face.

She reels from it, more than she should. It’s not that he hit her so hard—it’s the way her body reacts. Heat of an entirely different sort burns between her thighs, ignited by the adrenaline, and the coiled power of his arm. The disorientation of her animal reaction gives him the opening he needs to drive himself up and force her to the ground beneath him.

She doesn’t go without a fight, of course, but the heat of the struggle is only feeding her awakened lust now. That she-beast within her does not want to make it easy for him, but she’s craving his victory too, wants to feel her strength repelled and her thighs forced apart by his knees.

She arches her back beneath him. She considers hiding her feelings, given that at least some of the men are still watching, and it burns her pride to think that anyone would know that Earl Ragnar had won her in this way. But even that potential humiliation twists her insides with some undeniable appeal of its own. She won’t stop herself on account of the watchers.

She knows the heat has entered her eyes by the way that Ragnar’s darken, as he looms above her and holds her arms down at either side of her head. “Is there, perhaps, another craving I can satisfy for you tonight, Eivor?” he croons.

She lets a wolf-smile grace her lips. “I am considering it.”

He releases her hands, leaning in to kiss her, perhaps, but this isn’t how Eivor wants it to happen and so she uses the opening to push him off her and regain the upper hand. She strikes him and Ragnar’s eyes burn and she can see now how much he wants her too. “What will sway your decision?” he asks, breathless with their struggle.

Eivor leans down, and purrs into his ear: “Whether you can take it from me.”

They struggle like their very lives depend on it, after that. Ragnar crushes his weight against her but now he’s trying to achieve something much more difficult than a simple pin. He has to get one of his hands free to loosen her clothing, or his own, and every time he gets both her arms pinned at once he can’t keep her there for more than a few seconds. He growls his frustration, and she bites his neck in some primal combination of denial and encouragement.

With his shoulder pressed into her chest, grinding her to the floor below his considerable weight, he manages to get one hand shoved inside her pants. The greedy press of his seeking fingers should be uncomfortable in such a sensitive place, but he finds her so wet that he slides easily there, until two of his fingers are buried inside her.

She cries out between clenched teeth and arcs her body to the angle that makes those fingers feel most satisfying. But as soon as he shifts to an angle that’s not completely holding her down, she slips away.

Pulse pounding, she stares at him, eyes wild as she catches her breath. Her entire core is burning for him, but she won’t give up this game.

Ragnar’s gaze thickens with satisfaction. “I won’t do this to you in front of my men,” he says, “but I will finish this, exactly how you want it, if you come to my bedchamber, Eivor.”

“Better catch me,” she snarls with glee, and springs to her feet to sprint in that direction.

He overtakes her at the door. She gets only the vague impression of a big bed covered in furs before his body hits her from behind and she’s thrown on top of it. He holds her down with her face in a bearskin as he tears at her waistband, pulling it down over the curve of her ass.

There’s not much struggling she can do from this position; he doesn’t have to control her arms at all if he can keep her chest pinned down tight. He does so first with his arm, then with his chest as she feels him struggling with his own belt. She throws her hips up savagely, not to win anymore, but simply to feel herself fighting in the face of the inevitable. Her entire body is burning for this, to be bested, to be fucked only by the fittest and the strongest of warriors.

His grunting changes, and she knows he’s gotten his cock loose. She wonders what the shape of it is, if she’ll spend time exploring it with hand and tongue some time after this. She’s not opposed to gentler lovemaking after a partner has proven himself, like Ragnar is doing now.

She writhes beneath him, ready for him to get on with it. She feels the cool air on her ass and she’s aching for him. His fingers swipe her roughly, leaving a trail of spit to make sure he’ll go in easy. She’s about to growl a protest; she’s not fragile, and she likes the pain, but then the blunt head of him is pressing against her entrance and she knows why he’s in that habit.

His cock is wide. The pressure is intense as he centers his weight and pushes his way inside. Eivor keens at the perfect mix of pleasure and pain she feels as he makes his claim. Inch by inch, he stretches her, taking what he wants just as she bid him, and when he bottoms out he groans low in her ear.

“Are you still going to fight me?” he challenges, and in response she throws her hips back up against him. He hits her cervix and she squeals between her teeth but she does it again, then Ragnar is roaring and driving himself into her as hard as he wants. He stops crushing her against the bed in favor of gripping her hips with both hands, and Eivor rises up for better leverage to meet his savage thrusts.

He’s impossibly deep. They sweat and grunt together and Ragnar is relentless, hollowing her out with the massive force of his need. She feels her body clench and shimmer around him, and Eivor’s eyes widen. No man has ever brought her to the brink like this so fast . . . but rarely has a man met her passion with such confidence, and endurance, either. She drops her face to the furs, overwhelmed by the rushing pleasure flooding her core, the steady stroking of his cock spurring her on to a shuddering, bellowing release that she tries to muffle in the bedding.

He slows down when she stops screaming. Although his cock has stretched her, she feels more loss than relief when he pulls himself out and releases his grip. She’s panting, balanced on her knees and elbows, and turns as she hears Ragnar pulling off the rest of his clothes behind her. Aside from breeches pushed down to her knees, Eivor herself is still fully clothed.

Her eyes land on the gorgeous cock sticking proudly up into the air, a massive, glistening thing weeping with a thicker milkiness at the tip. “You didn’t—” she asks dumbly.

Ragnar smiles, a thick, arrogant thing. “Wouldn’t want this to be over too quickly.” He strokes a big hand idly over himself. “Thought I’d give you a moment to catch your breath. And I’m hoping that took some of the fight out of you. I want my woman to fall to pieces more than once before I take my pleasure, and I need you to hold still for the next few things I want to do.”

TLK taglist: @ceridwenofwales​ @oddsnendsfanfics​@laketaj24​ @thewildbeauty @geekandbooknerd​ @therealcalicali​ @tiyetiye​ @pokeasleepingsmaug​@goldentailedmermaids​ @sifshoney​ @titty-teetee​  @savismith​ @ariellostatci​ @perfectus-in-morte​ @axiseeu12 @kingofshadowalkers @glitta-killa​ @just-random-obsessions​ @volvaaslaug​

Specific thirst list: @fearlessindigo​ @artemiseamoon​ @naps4bats​ @evelyn-shelby​ @autumn--the--season​​

[marta-bee]

Today I’m struggling a bit. There’s an email chain- exact context is personal and not really relevant- where a child had a bad fall and had to be rushed to the hospital. The child is now more or less fine; the family is of course exhausted. And because a lot of people in this exchange are religious, the first response was to ask and offer prayers. The second, when the good news came in, was to thank God. 

I am not unreligious. I’m involved in a local church and a local synagogue (I’m.... let’s just say something of an ecclesiastical mutt; it works for me, more or less or at least better than any other alternative I’ve found). I’ve actually tried to be an atheist but seem psychologically incapable of making that leap; it’s like some kind of a higher order is just a basic concept too much of my worldview is built around to step away from fully. And I’ve seen how religion done well can be very helpful, just as religion done badly can be disastrous. Both in my own experience and others. 

So I’m not full Richard Dawkins new atheism, or atheistic at all; nor am I one of the comfortably orthodox, in any faith tradition or theism generally. But theodicy is a bear of a concept, ain’t it? It’s a big part of why I went to grad school though not what I ended up studying. I’d say I prefer the faith of Job, if choice entered into it; or perhaps Jonah running out to sea so he didn’t have to go to Nineveh.  And the whole concept of intercessory prayer is like one step removed: we ask God to do what we want, as if He’d do what’s less good just because we asked; or wouldn’t do the optimal thing if we hadn’t appealed to his ego. Prayer as meditation, as thankfulness, I’m okay with. My preferred method is usually tantrum-throwing, would-punch-God-in-the-gut screaming matches (see above re: faith of Job....) Which is still talking (screaming is communication) so to my mind it still counts.

But Jeez. Thank God, not for getting this family through the night, but for sparing this child from getting her head cracked open? I just can’t do that, because I’m too logical not to blame God for creating this whole situation to begin with. And seeing email after email with that hateful (unintentionally! but even so...) message is just chipping away at my mind.

Thank goodness it’s Friday. If this keeps up much longer, by 5:00 I’m definitely going to need a drink.

[beinmybonnet]

29th June 1613 - London, England

   “Remind me again why we’re doing this?

“He went to the trouble to have a draft carried all the way to Brandenburg for me, the least I can do is attend the opening night.”

Andromache rolls her shoulders into her partlet. “The least you can do maybe. Why am I doing this?”

“Because you missed me. And because you cried when we saw Othello.” Yusuf replies, looking sideways at her. Curbing the inevitable objection, Quynh squeezes Nicolò’s arm and strides forwards to overtake them. He lets himself be dragged after her, taking care not to tread on her skirts.

“I love the theatre. Plus, we’ve spent the last week sleeping in a shack in the Dales. This,” Quynh waves her free arm over the bridge rail, “is a nice change of scenery.”

London Bridge is teeming with people, the warmth of the bustle settling like cinders into his skin. The city writhes in its haste. Against the far bank of the Thames tall buildings strike against the horizon, the old Southwark Priory still reaching high in spent pride. Buildings are painted pale with dark beams striking bold across them. It is beautiful in its own way, Nicolò thinks. Inelegant, but unique.

“It wasn’t that bad. I still think we should have stayed a little longer, at least until-

“Andromache we’ve slept in nicer caves.”

Quynh glances back over her shoulder meaningfully, brow rising. Andromache shrugs. A smile, although few would recognise it. They step down onto the riverbank as one, turning east.

Nicolò nudges his shoulder into Yusuf as they pass the gardens. “You fail to mention you sent that script back with corrections.”

“Revisions. Small ones.” Yusuf’s voice is low, his expression impish. “Barely noticeable.”

                                                         *

“Ah, here we are.” Yusuf waves Andromache forward into their usual first-floor booth and steps back to allow Quynh to pass. Nicolò pauses, peering up the stairwell.

“Full house.”

“First performance. Trust me, this will be one to remember.” Yusuf is bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet, and it makes Nicolò want to tuck his chin over a bobbing shoulder.

“You’d think the city would be a bit more subdued,” Andromache settles herself on the bench tucking thick plum skirts around her calves. She happily accepts a bag of roasted hazelnuts from Yusuf as he passes her to stand at the balcony. “They’ve only just recovered from their last bout of plague.”

“Exactly! This is the power of art.” Yusuf beams, arm sweeping wide. “Look at these people.” All around them the crowd is seething with anticipation, the noise growing as the wait goes on. Children scramble in the lower level of the yard for better vantage points, clawing their way up the beams supporting the lower galleries. People are shouting and laughing and drinking, the sound cocooned tight within the impressive structure. A man swings a laughing boy up over the mass, and a small group of women pressed against the stage begin shouting a suspicious sounding rhyme, pointing across the pit. Before they can finish a man in the gallery beneath them roars his response across the yard.

Nicolò’s brow furrows. “Clot-pole? I don’t…”

“She’s calling him an idiot,” Andromache supplies, “and insulting his hat.”

“It is a bit much.” Quynh’s leaning over the balcony to get a better look. “I think she’s accusing him of, err – short-changing her. Last night.”

Still grinning, Yusuf peers over beside her. “Oh, she’s quite angry. Here we go.” He sounds delighted. What looks like a parsnip sails over the head of the crowd. “A pity, she’ll want those for the third act.”

Quynh’s now bent almost double over the bannister and Andromache reaches to steady her without looking. “Isn’t this sort of thing that made the man move half of the troupe over to Blackfriars?”

Yusuf shakes his head in fond exasperation. “Ah, William has become far too prudish in his success. The engagement of the audience is the nature of theatre.”

“Engagement?” Nicolò smirks as something below meets its mark with a splat and a shout.

“Well, you cannot deny their enthusiasm-”

Quynh reappears with a whoop of triumph clutching her prize; a browning cabbage intercepted in the air. She rotates the rotten vegetable in careful examination. “Excellent.”

Yusuf raises his hand in hopeless protest as Nicolò leans back in his seat, eyeing Quynh. “10 crowns says you can’t hit the stage from here.”

She snorts derisively.

“20 if you can take King Henry off his feet.” Andromache counters, rising slightly to gauge the distance. Done, Quynh agrees happily, settling beside her and tucking her cabbage under the bench. Yusuf mutters an exasperated appeal for help to the heavens and Nicolò quickly tugs him down into the remaining space with a hand over his knee.

The parting of the stage curtain prompts the dropping of remaining projectiles and an enthusiastic cheer from the crowd. The herald clears his throat, steps to the edge of the stage and spreads his arms.

The first and happiest hearers of the town,

I come no more to make you laugh; things now,

That bear a weighty and a serious brow,

Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe,

Such noble scenes as draw the eye to flow,

We now present. Those that can pity, here

May, if they think it well, let fall a tear;

Be sad, as we would make ye

“Oh, so a comedy?” Quynh says brightly and Yusuf shushes her.

The first actors emerge from the wings in their velvets and the tale takes flight.

                                                                                                                                                                    *

In all this noble bevy, has brought with her

One care abroad; he would have all as merry

As, first, good company, good wine, good welcome,

Can make good people. O, my lord, you're tardy:

Yusuf is mouthing the words soundlessly, engrossed.

There are many things Nicolò has enjoyed about visiting theatres over the years. He will readily admit this performance is an enjoyable one - the young man playing Buckingham is particularly charismatic, the audience viscerally immersed in his indignation. The actors proudly deliver their lines and their story to an increasingly hypnotised audience.  

But the play itself has never been what really draws Nicolò to this place. He glances sideways again and immediately, expectedly, loses the thread of the plot. In this moment the talent on the stage could never hope to hold his interest as he sits beside this man. Yusuf has lost himself entirely to the unfolding tale, gaze flitting from figure to figure calling below. Passion alight in his eyes. The arts do this to him in a way Nicolò has seen nothing else in all their time together. They have walked familiar paths in gallery halls for hours on end, Yusuf’s eyes roving walls of painted expression. They’ve sat in houses of the dying and listened to children bringing comfort with songs of naivety. Literature, dance, poetry, music; in all their changing forms they have always arrested Yusuf in his entirety.

These things give people freedom Nicolò, true freedom, he had once said. Free of limitation and expectation, in art people reveal their true selves. It is beautiful.

For Nicolò, that beauty is reflected blindingly in Yusuf’s own experience. To watch him like this for the rest of his given days would see him depart this earth achingly grateful to his God.

But Yusuf feels his distraction and leans toward him. “You’re missing it,” he murmurs, smile pulling impossibly wider. Unbridled delight is etched at the edges of his eyes, and Nicolò wants to trace his fingertips over the creases. He only realises he has reached out and done so when Yusuf captures and kisses his palm. “Watch the play.”

“It is a story still within living memory, I know how it ends,” Nicolò whispers.

Yusuf will not have it, nodding towards the actors. “Watch them tell it.”

Anne Boleyn is drifting across the stage, hand at her chest and Nicolò turns dutifully back to the performance.

Was he mad, sir?

O, very mad, exceeding mad, in love too:

But he would bite none; just as I do now,

He would kiss you twenty with a breath.

This time it’s Yusuf’s eyes that flicker back towards him and Nicolò hears silent words in the curl of his lip. Twenty kisses in a single breath. A risky venture, no?

Nicolò hums, his thoughts mirrored beside him. We shall see.

                                                                                                                      *

Good lord chamberlain,

Go, give 'em welcome; you can speak the French tongue;

And, pray, receive 'em nobly, and conduct 'em

Into our presence, where this heaven of beauty

Shall shine at full upon them. Some attend him.

You have now a broken banquet; but we'll mend it.

A good digestion to you all: and once more

I shower a welcome on ye; welcome all!

King Henry VIII emerges from the curtains with a flourish, the actor clearly taking great pains not to stumble in breeches that billow around his knees. The theatre bursts into applause as a round of trumpets sound, and they shout their approval at the blast of a canon from the rafters. The actors move to their marks to begin the scene in earnest, and Andromache leans forward with interest for the first time.

“See, I told you! With the funding now available, they’ve really spared no expense,” Yusuf is still clapping. Andromache hums noncommittally sitting back, but her eyes are suddenly bright with curiosity.

“Quynh, if you’re going to win your money, I suggest you do it now.”

“Why? I was going to wait until the trial scene,” she replies, confused.

From his place beside her Nicolò can see clearly that Andromache is struggling to suppress a smirk. “Well, there won’t be much left by then.”

“What?” Quynh looks down the bench at him. He shrugs. Andromache sighs around her growing amusement.

Seconds pass before she speaks again.

“They’ve set the roof on fire.”

He doesn’t need long to piece together what’s happened. There’s a thin plume of smoke rising from the inner curve of the roof and within, a flicker of light no bigger than that from a candle waving gently in the rafters. The canon. They wadded the canon, he realises. The little flame wafts higher in the breeze. The crowd is oblivious, too focused on the stage to be looking upwards. He taps Yusuf’s thigh.

It does take a moment. “Oh dear.” Yusuf looks back and forth between the roof and the stage, face falling. “Well maybe-

There’s a loud pop as the flame meets eager fuel. It dances up into the thatch lining the hooped roof and flares wide and greedy. Whip fast, it licks across the reeds consuming them in crunches and cracks that have people now looking skywards and shouting. Those in the highest galleries rear back as the fire completes its rapid circuit of the roof. By the time the actors have abandoned their attempts at continuing and stand dumbstruck on the stage, the theatre is ringed in an ominous halo of flame.

“Yusuf, unless your intention is a repeat of ’54…” Quynh trails off sadly, holding her cabbage.

Clumps of lit thatch are beginning to drift into the standing audience and the pushing and shoving follows in earnest. One man charges through the crowd braying, his breeches alight. Andromache stands looking decidedly more cheerful. “Come on, we’ll help them clear the pit.”

Nicolò follows suit, a hand falling to Yusuf’s shoulder. He has to work to quell an absurd urge to laugh; Yusuf is glaring at the roof with all the stubbornness of a chastised child. He squeezes gently, sympathy winning out. “I’m sorry.”

“Canons, who on earth thought canons in a wooden building was…” Yusuf trails off, glancing up. “Nothing to be done I suppose.” He holds out his other hand. “Shall we?”

Drawing Yusuf up behind him, Nicolò moves out into the stairwell twisting up into the higher galleries where people are starting to pile down in haste. An older man stumbles in the rush and he reaches out to steady him. “Careful, sir. Head out towards the river.”

The man nods and quickly hurries on pressing his handkerchief to his mouth. The next woman through the door snatches her arm up to her chest before he can move to offer any assistance. Dirty papist  she spits as she veers away. Yusuf tenses, a hard line pressed at his back. Nicolò just dips his head.

“Please hurry.”

By the time the flow of people has ebbed the flames are beginning to consume the ornate stage pillars. The curtains masking backstage catch like parchment and blaze furiously. “We should make sure the galleries are clear,” he says, “you take the east, I the west?”

Yusuf eyes the roof timbers warily. “Five minutes. No more.”

In the end it only takes Nicolò four minutes to usher the last stubborn gamblers from the gentleman’s room. The fact that the smoke has now crept down to waist level speeds this along nicely, and they hurry to the stairwell hunched and coughing. Nicolò stays low, following them down the last steep flight when his foot catches on something in the darkness, almost putting his hand through the adjacent wall in an attempt to steady himself. There’s a man slouched in the corner, limbs sprawled wide and snoring. An empty bladder clutched to his chest. The strength of the brandy fumes punch through the dense smoke to further sting at his eyes and his irritation almost threatens to outweigh his conscience. Almost.

By the time he staggers out into clear air dragging his oblivious charge Nicolò know he’s been much longer than five minutes. Behind him there’s a crash which sounds very much like the galleries have finally given in and collapsed. Sounds like, because his eyes are clenched shut, burning and watering. Pressing his hands to his knees, he tries not to gag on the tar in his throat.

A hand settles on the back of his neck whilst another cups a palmful of water to his face. Nicolò winces.

“I’m sorry,” he rasps, “He’s heavier than he looks.”

He can hear Yusuf grinding his teeth but his response is surprisingly placid. “Rinse your eyes.”

Yusuf presses a water skin into his hands and moves away. When Nicolò’s vision has cleared he spots him back near the eastern entrance, patiently shepherding two enraptured boys further from the fire as they gape at the sky. Even for one who has seen much, Nicolò must admit, it is quite a sight.

The playhouse’s cylindrical shape has moulded the fire into a twirling steeple of flame inside the structure, now reaching twenty feet clear of the building itself. The Globe resembles an enormous cauldron struggling to hold its roiling contents. It belches clouds of thick black smoke as its rim splinters and cracks under the pressure and heat. What’s left of the thatch continues to feed the furnace, keeping the flames bright and fierce.

Quynh appears, sliding her hand into the crook of his elbow to steer him away. She leads him to a grassy curve of the riverbank where people are congregating in groups and beginning to resettle on the ground. From one muse to another, the audience remain eager spectators, gasping and whooping as the bones of the building begin to break, sending up showers of sparks. Yusuf and Andromache join them just as the walls start to keel inwards.

“You were right, definitely one of his more memorable works,” Andromache announces as they sit. “Perhaps my favourite.”

“Yes, I’m so very glad you enjoyed yourself.” Yusuf’s tone is flat, but his eyes roll indulgently.

Quynh settles herself back against Andromache’s bent knees, facing the playhouse. “We can still make a night of it. We get a bottle of wine, some pastries. Watch the sunset.” Her voices softens slightly and she levels her gaze at them. “You really must go so soon?”

He looks to Yusuf, who nods. “We have passage on a ship to Antwerp. She leaves on the tide tomorrow morning.”

Quynh’s sigh is dejected. “You won’t consider staying just a little longer? We’re moving on to…” she trails off, peering up at Andromache – Devon, she supplies, “We could use your help relocating these women. The trials are becoming barbaric.”

Yusuf shakes his head, surveying the crowd. “I’d prefer not to tempt fate. London is not at its most welcoming for us presently.

Nicolò quirks his lip. “You mean for me.” Ah, he sees now. The woman from earlier is stood just a little further up the bank, clutching at well-dressed man and pointing at them. Yusuf stares back unflinchingly. Nicolò feels him shift to further block her line of sight to him.

Then he turns back to meet Nicolò’s eye and speaks firmly. “For us. If a place does not welcome you, it does not welcome me.” 

Quynh has watched the exchange carefully and suddenly sits up. She clears her throat and calls out loudly enough for those nearest to turn. “Thou art a boil, madam, a plague sore!”

Andromache snorts and the woman raises her fan to her face appalled, tugging on her husband’s arm. It has the intended effect on Yusuf though and his grin returns to its proper place. Nicolò feels a familiar rush of affection for Quynh and her unfailing ability to put people at ease.

“King Lear,” Yusuf says proudly. “I didn’t think you were paying attention.”

“Of course she was,” Andromache interjects, “It’s a magnum opus of insults.”

Quynh grins up at her. “Oh, you worsted-stockinged knave.”

The retort is instant. “Brazen-faced varlet.”

“Ancient ruffian.”

Andromache shrugs. “Accurate.”

Their laughter comes in easy unison and Yusuf’s expression is unbearably soft as he watches them. “It won’t be for long,” he promises.

Quynh pulls her eyes from Andromache and nods. “Probably a sensible choice at the moment. You do look violently Venetian Nicolò.

He wrinkles his nose, affronted. “I do not-”

Yusuf is reaching for his face, so he pauses his protest for the gentle pass of a thumb over the bridge of his nose. “It’s your profile my love.” Yusuf’s tongue darts out over the pad of his thumb before it returns to rub more firmly at his nose. “Which currently is very sooty.”

With his hands still upon Nicolò’s face he murmurs.  “Oh but what a piece of work is this man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel,” Yusuf blinks, his sincerity blinding, “in apprehension how like a god.”

It’s all Nicolò can do not to rub his flushed cheeks into Yusuf’s palms like an alley cat.

Andromache arches a refined brow at Quynh. “Nicolò gets a Hamletian ode to his soul, and I get ‘ruffian’?”

Quynh rocks onto her elbow in the grass without missing a beat. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Mayhap a smouldering playhouse, ablaze in righteous flame?

“Likened to a smoking wreckage, how romantic.”

Nicolò would laugh but Yusuf is still holding his gaze and his face, everything else muting around him. He does this; bestows his love in soft declarations that leave Nicolò stunned, and then holds him steady until the words perfuse. Nicolò loves him so much he feels he might combust, with all the ferocity of the fire at his back.

Centuries before, he had allowed his disbelief to ask a question once, and only once. The intensity frightening him. Could a gift such as this truly be his eternal?

Nicolò smiles at his world and whispers.

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and gives life to thee.

 held in the embers on ao3 at theexistentialteapot

 part one of this series can be found here

[bearificationtransformations]

Troy had heard about the new bearification drug. It seemed to work like magic to the guys who took it. Within hours, or even minutes, guys who took the drug began growing more and more body hair and packing on bulk. Troy wasn’t sure how much he believed it, but each week there was more buzz about it on a few gay porn sites and fetish pages. The whole thing seemed very unlikely, and a supposed source would appear only for that supposed source to disappear moments later.

A handsome guy, Troy was not particularly bearish. Despite getting plenty of attention for his lean, slightly hairy build, Troy DiAngelo loved the big muscle bear look, and the idea of something that could help him pack on mass really appealed.

He hit the gym regularly but didn’t have that muscle mass he really wanted to build. 170 pounds on his 5’10” frame wasn’t that much.

Troy clicked on the link when someone posted about a source for the bearification formula. It led him to an craigslist -like coded email address. He wrote in asking for the price, not expecting any response.

Only minutes later he recieved a response, still from a coded email address:

“I need to know what you plan to use it for. Tell me, how big do you think you’ll get with one vial?”

Troy wrote back, saying it was just for himself, something to help build mass, something for the gym.

A few minutes later he recieved the response:

“$50.00 for a half dose. If you’re just building some muscle, you only need a half dose taken once. Take it before and after a hard workout. Do weights, none of that running shit, that’ll just make your legs and ass huge. Two workouts after you’ve taken it. Twice a day for three days. If you skip on working out you’ll get fatter and not build much muscle. If you lift, it’ll work correctly. Also, I don’t know what your background is, but some guys get really hairy really quickly. Most guys get hairier, some get really, really hairy. Be prepared.”

Troy couldn’t pretend he wasn’t excited by the idea, and even if It was a scam, it wasn’t that much money. He used some online payment service the guy linked him to and send his address.

6 days later the vial arrived. It wasn’t a scam.

Troy mused over what to do, and waited for the weekend to try it out. He did exactly as the anonymous source had said: on Friday night he hit the weights at his gym hard. He did both back and chest. He went home sweaty and downed the vial. He didn’t feel anything right away.

It was an hour later he began feeling the rising heat on his skin. He itched he felt energetic. He swore his forearms looked hairier. He stripped of his shirt quickly and looked in the mirror. He could see a huge number of new, thin, barely visible hair covering his chest and stomach.

‘Fuck’ he thought, it was working. He was so jacked up and excited he barely slept. He jerked off twice and on the second time finally passed out. As he jerked off that evening he watched the thin hair steadily grow thicker and more noticeable. Soon he could feel more of it on his arms, chest, even shoulders. He felt meatier too. He couldn’t place it, but he felt... a little bigger.

Having barely slept, Troy jumped out of bed to hit the gym as soon as it opened at 7:00 am that Saturday. His shirt was tighter and he had a little patch of hair now swirling at the base of his neck. His chestwas getting totally covered in new, thick hair. As he looked at himself in the gyms mirrors he could see how much bigger he was looking already.

By the time he got home he weighed himself. 190 pounds and climbing. It had been 12 hours since he had taken the formula and it was really doing its thing. His arms were bigger, his chest, his shoulders were broader. He hadn’t gained an ounce of fat either. He was well on his way to muscle beardom.

Troy could hardly concentrate on anything other than his transformation. He was so horny and worked up that he could hardly stand it. He loved how tight his shirts were getting in all the right places. That and the hair was just getting thicker and thicker all over his body. His beard was getting longer. That supplier hadn’t lied! Maybe it was his Italian genes that kicked in, but Troy was now a seriously hairy guy. The impossible-to-hide, overwhelmingly hairy guy. The kind of hairy that pours out of shirt collars and sleeves. People were going to notice no matter how he trimmed it back.

That night he did his leg workout and came back to his home scale. 210 pounds of fur covered beef. He was beside himself. He jerked off 4 more times that night, barely able to keep his hands off his new body. By Sunday morning he was 220 pounds. The growth was slowing down, but man was he thrilled. No one could deny him the title of muscle bear now.

The next days went on without out too much further change, but his libido didn’t seem to diminish much. He was now constantly horny and his dick seemed just a little thicker than before.

Troy had to graduate to larges and extra larges for his shirts to fit over his furry 230 pound build. He was strong as hell, and had virtually gained zero fat in the process. Men seemed to get out of his way when he worked out now, And the other big guys in the gym took notice. He proudly measured his arms at an impressive 19” and benched 315 with no problem.

And when he finally uploaded his new scruff profile pic up that week, the app exploded with messages. No one could get seem to get enough of the hairy beefcake he had become, and he couldn’t get enough ass to ever satisfy him. He had turned into a beast of a man.

[baoshan-sanren]

Chapter 17

of the wwx emperor au that’s now more like the terrible horrible time the Lan Sect is having ugh

Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 Part 1 | Chapter 8 Part 2 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 Part 1 | Chapter 15 Part 2 | Chapter 16

Night has fallen by the time the rain finally stops, and WangJi is still restless.

Nie MingJue had come to inform them that the investigation has seen no new developments. There is now a number of guards posted outside the Peach Blossom Pavilion, and no food or drink is to pass through their gates without being tasted first. The Emperor is anxious that no further harm will come to the Lan Sect, Nie MingJue had said, and it is still unclear if uncle had taken any comfort in those words.

The Emperor had also decided that the competition can proceed at a normal pace the following day. The lack of news is somewhat discouraging, but WangJi is very much looking forward to the competition. The earlier fight in the courtyard had barely taken the edge off his disquiet.

Uncle had gone to sleep at the usual time, but both XiChen and WangJi are still awake, neither of them tired enough to sleep. If uncle’s room had directly overlooked the courtyard, WangJi would have suggested another sparring session, even at the cost of more mud in his hair.

He is still considering whether moving through the basic forms on his own may quiet his restlessness, when he notices a shadow on the corner of the roof. The shadow is motionless, but WangJi recognizes it between one breath and the next, his heart skipping a beat.

XiChen is reading by the candlelight, looking peaceful and content. WangJi hates to disturb him. He stands at the entry for a long time, trying to find the right words, but still does not have them when XiChen finally looks up.

“WangJi? Is something wrong?”

“The Emperor is on the roof.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The Emperor,” WangJi repeats, “Is on the roof. Of the Peach Blossom Pavilion. I think he wants to speak to me.”

XiChen’s face is utterly blank. It is rare that WangJi cannot guess what his brother is thinking, but this is one of those times.

“Is uncle asleep?” XiChen asks.

“Mhm.”

“We will tell him about this tomorrow.”

WangJi nods.

XiChen sighs,

“Be careful.”

“I will.”

By the time he leaves the pavilion, the shadow has moved. WangJi lands lightly some distance away, and sees Wei WuXian sprawled on his back where the two peeks meet, face turned up to the sky.

He straightens up when he sees WangJi, and even in the gloom, the smile on his face looks delighted.

“Lan Zhan,” he calls out softly, “come sit with me.”

Do not kneel, Jiang YanLi’s voice echoes in his mind, it will only make him unhappy.

He settles down near the Emperor, who immediately offers him a white clay jar.

“Drink?”

“Alcohol is forbidden,” WangJi says.

“Ah, is this a Lan Sect rule?”

WangJi nods. He wonders if someone like Wei WuXian would hate living with so many rules. But then again, he thinks that the Emperor’s life would probably seem very restrictive to great many people.

“Will you still compete tomorrow?” Wei WuXian asks.

“Mhm.”

“Excellent,” Wei WuXian straightens up, and shifts closer, “I am going to tell you a secret, but you must promise not to tell anyone else.”

It is tempting to agree. It is tempting to agree to anything and everything right now, when Wei WuXian’s face is so open and relaxed, his hair mussed from lying on the roof, his eyes shining.

“I cannot promise.”

Wei WuXian tilts his head. His fingers drum against the clay bottle.

“Did you get in trouble? For keeping the rooftop thing a secret the last time?”

WangJi nods, grateful that he does not have to explain it in detail.

“If you tell your brother and uncle, will they keep it a secret?”

“That depends on the secret,” WangJi says, and Wei WuXian laughs.

“Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, did you not know? You are not supposed to deny the Emperor anything he asks for.”

WangJi refuses to be intimidated. This is surprisingly easy to accomplish. There is something soft about the expression on Wei WuXian’s face, something that WangJi had only managed to glimpse in the South Lake courtyard.

“Fine, fine,” he waves his hand in WangJi’s direction, “please tell your uncle and brother that the Emperor would very much prefer to keep this a secret. It is nothing dangerous, after all.”

WangJi is fairly certain that he and the Emperor cannot possibly have the same definition of dangerous, but he nods anyway.

“I mean to enter the competition,” Wei WuXian grins, “I will take the place a Nie Sect disciple, and A-Sang will pretend to be me.”

WangJi frowns, and Wei WuXian laughs again,

“You do not approve?”

“What if you are hurt?”

“Lan Zhan,” Wei WuXian mock-gasps, pressing his hand to his chest, “do you think so little of my skill? Did I not manage to evade you, on that very rooftop over there, while completely unarmed?”

He does have a point. They had not faced off for long that night, but Wei WuXian certainly knows how to avoid being stabbed. However, this does not necessarily mean that he is skilled with a sword.

“You must give me a proper fight, Lan Zhan. I am tired of everyone always worrying that I will get hurt.”

WangJi is conflicted. He also does not like the idea of Wei WuXian getting hurt. The idea of WangJi being the one to hurt him is even less appealing. Historically, the Lan Sect has not fared well when it came to waving swords at the rulers of Shan Dynasty. Wei WuXian seems to have forgotten that little detail, and WangJi is not sure how to remind him.

“Ugh, I can see you are still unhappy. How about this? I will take the place of the Nie Sect disciple with the lowest rank, so I must fight my way to the top tier. If I can climb up to a match with you, without being hurt, then you must promise not to hold back.”

If Wei WuXian can truly fight his way through five ranks in one competition, without being hurt, and still face WangJi at the end of it, then he will certainly make a worthy opponent. An opponent WangJi does not have to worry about injuring.

“Not a scratch,” WangJi says, and Wei WuXian barks out a laugh.

“You drive a hard bargain. Not a scratch. I swear it.”

He nods, and Wei WuXian beams at him brightly.

WangJi has to look away.

Sprawling down across the roof again, Wei WuXian sighs, turning his face up to the sky. WangJi has to admit that it feels nice, sitting on the rooftop, being able to see all of the Immortal Mountain City stretched out around him. The air is cool, carrying a faint scent of rain, and although the City is never silent, it is peaceful enough.

“Hey, Lan Zhan.”

WangJi looks down to find Wei WuXian no longer smiling.

“I am sorry someone tried to poison you today,” he says sheepishly, “To be honest, I did expect at least a few assassination attempts for my birthday, but I thought they would only be directed at me.”

It is a bizarre apology, but WangJi supposes it is no more bizarre than Wei WuXian himself.

“Do people often try to kill you?” WangJi asks.

“Oh yes,” Wei WuXian says, grinning again, “all the time. But they usually prefer the more straightforward methods. I think sword and arrow attacks vastly outnumber the attempted poisonings. Although,” he frowns, “there has been few of those too. One time, someone actually managed to stuff a dozen scorpions into my bed. I was too drunk to notice. Luckily, A-Sang saw them and raised an alarm.”

WangJi does not understand why Nie HuaiSang being anywhere near the Emperor’s bed fills him with a helpless fury. It is an illogical, and stupid way to feel, and WangJi hates that he cannot seem to reason it away.

The Emperor can share his bed with anyone he chooses. The Royal Companion will eventually bear the title of the Imperial Noble Consort. WangJi needs to breathe deeply, and relax.

“I assume you do not have very many assassination attempts at Cloud Recesses,” Wei WuXian says carefully.

WangJi shakes his head. Once in a while, some overconfident cultivator will storm their gate and demand a duel, only because they know that the Gusu Lan have so little dignity left, they cannot afford to lose any by refusing. But although those can be troublesome, they are at least straightforward in their intentions.

“You do not seem very upset that someone tried to kill you,” Wei WuXian says.

“They did not succeed.”

“They may try again.”

“Mhm.”

Wei WuXian raises up on his elbow,

“That is all you have to say? Mhm? You are not even a little angry?”

WangJi wants to explain that he does not fear death. That there are things in life infinitely worse than dying, and that he feels angry about many things, much more often than he should.

Anger is always pointless and unproductive. It has never made his burden any less, and it has never helped him feel less wronged. Once he feels anger for one injustice done to him, it is so easy to feel anger for them all. And that much anger no person can carry, and still live a peaceful life.

He does not know how to say any of those things, nor is he is sure that Wei WuXian would understand them.

“I do not want my brother and uncle to get hurt,” he says instead.

That, Wei WuXian seems to understand.

He sits up and faces WangJi, his expression hard. The shift between the cheerful, careless Wei WuXian and the Emperor is so stark, that WangJi can only blink at him in response.

“I have sworn that I mean the Lan Sect no harm. I will swear to you now, that I will do all that is in my power to protect them.”

The words seem to take up all of the air on the rooftop.

WangJi is silent for a long time, struggling to comprehend them. Why would the Emperor  make such a promise? Why would he do such a thing for WangJi, or the Lan Sect?

The implications are too vast to even consider.

“Ah, Lan Zhan,” We WuXian says, focusing on some point underneath WangJi’s chin, “do not look at me like that.”

His hands seem to be nervously twisting around the jar, from which, WangJi has noticed, he had not drank once since the beginning of their conversation.

“Mhm,” WangJi manages, and looks away.

Wei WuXian laughs softly.

No longer looking at Wei WuXian, WangJi can now see the window of the pavilion, where the candle still flickers, despite the late hour. Suddenly, he is sure that XiChen will not go to sleep until WangJi is safely back inside the pavilion walls.

“I must go back,” he says.

He does not want to keep his brother up any longer, but he also wants to escape from the Emperor, whose gaze he can clearly feel burning its way across his cheek.

He rises, and Wei WuXian immediately stands up as well, as if his only purpose on the rooftop had been to speak to WangJi.

“Do not forget your promise,” Wei WuXian says.

“I will not.”

WangJi wonders if he should bow, but Wei WuXian is already leaping to the opposite roof, running to the Jade Sword Palace, robes flaring behind him.

[stillness-in-green]

The MLA(/PLF) Headcanon Post (1/2)

In response to this nice ask about whether I have any headcanon or thoughts about the current members of the MLA/PLF, I spent two weeks blithering 16.5K words of exactly that into a Word file, because when it comes to underappreciated characters I love, I do not understand restraint.  This post and its follow-up will cover all ranked ex-MLA members of the PLF, as well as Original Flavor Destro and Curious, since I wasn't going to leave them out of a project like this even if they aren't "current."

The ask only mentioned having previously read The Lore Post, the last exercise in ridiculousness that I wrote at the tail end of MLA Week, so I wrote this to summarize everything that doesn't appear there—which is to say that a lot of the material in these two posts will look familiar to anyone who's read my fanfic about the MLA cast.  There’s still plenty of new material to go around too, though!

So, I don't have much in the vein of askblog-style headcanons where I can randomly tell you stray trivia about a character’s favorite foods or their love languages or what have you; that stuff either comes up when I'm writing fanfic or it doesn't.  That said, below, please find a mix of thoughts I keep in mind when writing characters, facts that have only turned up in my fanfic/notes so far and not the Lore Post meta, and a selection of lightning round headcanon provided by cross-referencing a random number generator with some old questionnaires I keep around for OCs and tabletop characters.

In this post: Destro, Re-Destro and his advisors, and Geten.

Destro— 

General Thoughts The whole "revolutionary leader" thing came very naturally to him. He was committed, charismatic, very willing to risk his life and safety for the cause, and he cared about his people. All that said, he absolutely had a pompous, prideful streak, especially where it came to his justification for terrorism.  You only have to read his own words to see that.  Still, he was in large part reacting to the world he lived in, one of greater violence and danger than the current day. 

I like to think that—because he was genuine in wanting freedom for all—he would not approve of what became of his Army.  He'd be able to see how they got there, and he would probably have made much the same choices if he'd been there with them, but while he would have agreed that his role should be remembered—that's just Due Credit—he would never have wanted to become the nigh-on religious figure his followers turned him into. Continuing to fight the good fight for his ideals is one thing, but secret salutes and isolated villages and being raised from infancy to know your life has only as much worth as it can contribute to Liberation…  Well, it's just not what he would have wanted for his people, much less his descendants. 

Family Situation Chikara was only around 7 when his mother was killed, the event that would shape the rest of his life.  He wasn't hiding in the closet from the mob, either; he was kicking and punching and biting, his motivation to save her overflowing—but he was still only 7, and eventually overwhelmed.  His own life might well have ended there with hers, but for a group of neighborhood vigilante types (at least one of whom probably went on to a career as a hero, after legalization).

He went most of his adolescence without getting involved with anything more sinister than student newspapers, founding a secret meta-rights "club," and attending the odd larger protest, but when the government started talking about passing laws restricting the use of meta-abilities, he started getting very radical very quickly, and when some absolute snake started to use his martyred mother's words to bang the drum for banning quirk use outside the home outright, he went off the deep end.

Lightning Round (Randomly Selected Headcanons)

Favorite book genre?  Memoirs and biographies—he wouldn't have written his own if he didn't appreciate their value.  The intimacy of the personal juxtaposed against the broad scope of history appeals to both his regard for individuality and his revolutionary mindset.

Most prized possession?  Thoughts on material possessions in general?   He doesn’t generally prize material possessions—in fact, he’s something of a skinflint.  His most prized possession is an old pair of gloves that belonged to his mother, which he'd been wearing at the time of her murder.  He didn't come from money to begin with, but his mother’s story made enough of a splash that his financial situation was improved by well-meaning sorts sending along donations and contributions and the like, as well as government officials knowing they needed to be sure that he wound up somewhere at least semi-reasonable lest they court further outrage by mishandling the son of a martyred woman.  The money all went towards school and living expenses, though, leaving him quite experienced at balancing a budget, which would come in handy for that whole ‘leading a violent uprising against the state’ thing later on.

Academic Background: Got all the way through college!  Was involved in student groups as far back as middle school, and only got moreso the further in school he got.  Majored in Human Development; he was intending to go into the public health and policy sphere before the appropriation of his mother's language pissed him off so much he got into terrorism instead.

THE MODERN MLA

Re-Destro—

General Thoughts A huge amount of the way I write him is influenced by one single thing—his characterization as described in the second data book.  His personality is summed up there as "sokoshirenai yami"—bottomless darkness, or, as a friend translated it for me, "unfathomable gloominess."  That really, really stuck with me, because on the one hand, it's so opposed to virtually all of what we see of him on the page, where he's being cheerful or scornful or sycophantic; the closest he ever gets are his brief tears for Miyashita, Curious, and his other followers.

On the other hand, it makes so much sense that the man we see—the man who talks about the heavy burdens of his legacy, who was handed that legacy when he couldn't possibly have been any older than 6 or so, who willingly straps on a self-designed torture device to wring out more power, who all but worships the ground Shigaraki walks on even though Shigaraki is the reason Re-Destro no longer has legs to walk that same ground with—should be "unfathomably gloomy."  Of course he's gloomy!  He was never allowed to be his own person!  He has never in his life known true freedom, only existed as a vessel to bring that freedom to others!  And he can't really even talk to his closest friends about it, because his closest friends are still his followers, and he wouldn't want to weigh them down!

With that context, it makes all the sense in the world that he'd be so devoted to the man who relieved him of that burden.

Family Situation He loved his mother Yukie a great deal, despite knowing from early on that he was carrying the weight of the title because she believed she couldn’t.  (Perhaps growing up hearing about the martyrdom of Destro’s mother left him wanting to ensure the happiness of his own, for her happiness was very rare.)  He was 10 when she was killed in a Villain attack; she’d been on a daytrip over to a neighboring city to visit some of her erstwhile school friends.  The requisite mourning period was 49 days, and as the only surviving family member, quite a lot fell to him even before considerations of his role as Re-Destro.  it was perceived as better—for both the Army’s morale and for his own stability—for him to be involved with as much of the work of transition as possible, but obviously he couldn’t do it completely alone, nor should he.  Thus, for two months after Yukie’s death, the previous generation's Sanctum[i] stayed with him in his family home. Afterward, he moved in with Anchor (one of his grandfather's advisors), where he would spend the rest of his young adulthood until moving away for college.

Claustrophobia The name of that literal-iron-maiden deathtrap he brings to bear against Shigaraki is no coincidence: Rikiya developed claustrophobia over the course of a stint of abusive training when he was thirteen. He generally has a pretty good handle on disguising it, thanks to a combination of people being unwilling to ask him questions they don’t actually want the answers to and the fact that he had to learn how to operate through it in order to complete the training at all. He has never told anyone, largely because he’s never been able to recognize that it was abuse, and so his abuser remains a figure of some influence.

Education He was largely taught by private tutors, in his home and in theirs, rather than attending school, but I think he probably wasn't completely home-schooled.  Particularly once he'd decided that he did want to attend university—and not just some little local technical program, but a major school in a proper city—he probably attended classes a few times a week at his local high school just to get a feel for being around other people his own age. He'd been friends with Koku for several years by that point, otherwise he probably would have been pretty hopeless, but he was still a pretty odd duck by the time he got to university.

This, incidentally, is why he never pushed Geten too hard about school—his own experience of it was so weird and piecemeal that he mostly thinks of school as relevant only for the education it provides, and less so the crash course in social dynamics.  Since Geten doesn't care about getting an education (nor, indeed, about learning how not to be a rude little troll), and has a strong enough quirk that he'll never lack for a position in the Army even without a formal education, Rikiya is perfectly happy to let Geten have his way and just be minimally learnèd.

Stress His powers operate by infusing his body with the characteristic black matter of his manifested stress; he can increase his size with this (his so-called Liberated Form isn't just armored up; he becomes physically taller and bulkier), as well as throw handfuls of the materialized power.  A side effect of this is that his stress can also infuse itself into his bodily fluids. The stress matter is a highly dense particulate, so if Rikiya is not in proper control of himself, his proverbial blood, sweat and tears can be literally heavy with the weight of his power.

The Value of Life He cares very much about the lives of his followers, but those genuine feelings are filtered through both the mental compartmentalization required by an emotion-based quirk, and an upbringing that taught him to care about his underlings in the same way one would rare goods.  Valuable goods, certainly, goods worth being proud of, goods to be maintained with care, but still, ultimately, things that can be sold or traded or bartered off as necessary to further one's goals.  Even his own life, while "objectively" the most valuable of them all, isn't an exception to that policy—the Great Cause is more important than any individual life, up to and including his own.

On a Personal Note He’s something of an obvious weirdo to outsiders—his enthusiasm comes off as strident, his smiles overly polished—but despite that, he's bizarrely hard to dislike once they start spending real time with him.  He's not anywhere near as prideful about himself as he is the legacy of the MLA, for a start; he's actually pretty self-deprecating when he's not performing the whole Heir of Destro's Great Bloodline routine at people.  He's also happy to go along with other people sharing their hobbies (because he doesn't have any of his own).  The more you get to know him, the more obvious it becomes that he's a total basket case, but “total basket case” is still an improvement over “self-absorbed 1%-er CEO” that people like Spinner come in expecting.

What Are Boundaries? He has very little understanding of how to enforce boundaries around his private life, or, indeed, of why such boundaries might ever be necessary.  Oh, he can do the double life thing, keep the CEO of Detnerat separate from the Grand Commander of the Metahuman Liberation Army, but when it comes to the MLA itself, he's so groomed to devote himself to the cause that he doesn't really distinguish between the responsibilities of Re-Destro and the needs of Yotsubashi Rikiya.  Rather than being the egomaniac you might expect of a man with the absolute power over others he has, he instead struggles to assert himself as his own person at all.

Issues with boundaries are not uncommon with the MLA—they're all raised to see themselves as warriors to advance the cause before they are, like, “human beings”—but Rikiya’s are particularly exacerbated because he was raised by adults who were getting pretty paranoid about his bloodline's tendency to die young, and thus were always checking in on how he was doing, dictating his schedule, weighing in on his plans, and so on.  He just wasn’t raised with reasonable expectations for privacy.  Even as an adult, he'll give his apartment door code to pretty much anyone in the MLA who has even a semi-plausible reason to want it—certainly quite a few of the elders know it!  And it isn’t only the elders, either; Rikiya's phone and several of his accessories carry tracking chips courtesy of Skeptic, which Rikiya knows about and doesn't think is at all untoward.

While his experience dating Koku definitely taught him some hard lessons about how much he could allow himself to ask of people who would obey him without question (they broke up over Rikiya’s realization that Koku would never deny him anything, thanks to a cracked rib Koku didn’t see fit to tell Rikiya about until Rikiya hugged him a little too hard), he never learned how to value his own autonomy in turn.  Oh, he's the Grand Commander, and everyone around him has been raised to venerate his bloodline, so most of them would never even think about trying to take advantage of him as such, but it's absolutely the case that people who are bold or familiar enough to try can basically run right over him with minimal efforts made at obscuring the fact.  His life is full of people who do and have done exactly that, some to a net positive effect, and some—well.  See again the entry about his claustrophobia.

The abjectly terrible state of his sense of self-worth is also the reason the Claustro exists.  While he was relatively capable of trying to work around his phobia when he was younger, the older he got, the more it started to feel like leaving doors cracked behind him or only working in offices with big spacious floor plans and oversized windows was, in some way, Letting Down The Cause by allowing his fear to control him, rather than embracing it so he could properly stockpile it for later use.  A dinnertime chat with Curious about turning one’s trauma into a weapon for the good of others catalyzed this, leading to the development of the “burden-enhancing steel pressure mechanism,” Claustro. 

(It also means the clone of him made by Twice to handle Detnerat after Deika is bizarrely okay with its circumstances, which I will almost certainly write more about one of these days, but I’m still kind of reeling from that reveal, so more on that another time.)

Lightning Round

Religion?   He doesn't identify as being of a religious faith, but he was brought up in the same peaceful marriage of Shinto and Buddhism that the majority of Japanese people are, and like many, he adheres to a number of traditional practices more out of habit than devout faith.  There are two celebrations that demand significant emotional investment from him.  First comes the New Year's celebrations, important because the MLA prides itself on looking to a brighter, freer future, and it's a period when he can let himself think that maybe he'll be just that little bit closer to Liberation by the end of the year than he was at the start.  Second is Obon, a summer festival for honoring one's departed ancestors. Since his authority and his life's work derive entirely from his bloodline, he's obligated to care about this one, though in practice, he tends to shy away from thinking much about Destro (who he has very twisted-up feelings about indeed) in favor of less emotionally fraught waters.

What did he dream of being or doing as a child? Did that dream come true?   He never really had a significant period where he thought about being e.g. an astronaut or a doctor or a hero; in fact, it came as something of a surprise to him the first time Koku asked him what he was planning to do when he grew up.  He always just had the nebulous expectation of, "Be the Grand Commander," and the elders were happy to leave it at that until he brought it up on his own.[ii]  

How does he behave around children? He likes kids!  He’s wistful about the freedom enjoyed by happy children while also being sympathetic to ones that seem overly burdened.  He’s not the most natural person in the world with them, but most of them can tell that the awkwardness comes from a well-intentioned place, and will treat him as a funny-looking man who’ll let them bother him at length without getting mean.  It turns out he’s actually pretty good with them, then, if only by virtue of being easily bullied.  (This, notably, goes for non-MLA-affiliated children.  Everything’s much more formal within the cult, though it didn’t Geten long to suss out the “easily-bullied” part, either.)

Trumpet—

General Thoughts The largest factor in how I write Koku is, of course, the headcanon that he and Rikiya are ex-lovers, and neither of them is 100% over it even all these years later.  Beyond that, though, Koku is the most temperate of the group, the one with the most easy charisma (MLA members are more swayed by Re-Destro, but Koku does better with outsiders who aren't predisposed to hanging on Rikiya's every word).  He strives to come off as The Sensible One, and given the extremes the rest of the inner circle are capable of, it's not hard for him to maintain that title.  He's as messed up as any of them, though, second only to Rikiya in levels of childhood grooming.  He thinks of himself as a practical man, but he is deeply indoctrinated, the boundaries of his expectations very much defined by his upbringing, so he never really sees it coming when he gets clobbered by something from out of left field.

Family Situation: Koku has the largest family of the identified members.  Aside from his grandfather (called Old Man Hanabata, the founder of the Hearts & Minds Party, and passed away by the canon era), Koku has cousins, nieces, nephews and more, courtesy of his uncle, his older sister and her husband, and other extended family.

He’s also the member most accustomed to wealth, power and influence.  He's from a rural area, certainly, but being in a family of hereditary politicians (and with that family not suffering a string of untimely deaths and disappearances like Rikiya's did), he was raised from the start with ready access to money and nice things.  Still, for all his family's sway in a major branch of the MLA's operations, they're not First Families, and thus don't have any elders in their ranks, making them still somewhat subordinate to said elders when it comes to orders about the Great Cause.  (He’s working on it.)

Meeting Re-Destro Koku and Rikiya met at 12 and 10 respectively, when Koku tagged along with Old Man Hanabata for a meeting RD was likewise accompanying Anchor for.  It had been the better part of a year since Rikiya's mother passed away, but he was still strikingly melancholy for a boy that age, which—along with all the weight given to the importance of the meeting—left quite an impression on Koku.  Koku thus became Rikiya's first real friend in his own age group, a friendship heartily encouraged by everyone around them.  Koku was well-behaved, intelligent, a little older but not too much so, and set to become influential without a danger of becoming too influential; he was seen as a good choice for a friend.[iii]

The Break-Up Painful as it was at the time, there was a silver lining to his and RD's post-college break-up: it got Koku out of the elders' pocket.  He’s been groomed for one thing or another all his life, but after he became friends with Rikiya, he was always getting leaned on to report back to the First Families about how Re-Destro was doing, and to try to influence him towards actions the First Families approved of.  In a very real sense, Koku was part of the apparatus keeping Rikiya from any real freedom.  Their break-up and subsequent estrangement meant that the elders had far less to breathe down Koku's neck about, and by the time they reconciled, Trumpet had gotten his feet under him, as had Re-Destro, and they were both better able to fend off such background meddling.

This doesn't mean Trumpet's not still carrying a torch, however.  He thought he was handling his long-banked feelings pretty well—being Professional, being the advisor Re-Destro needed and as much a friend as Rikiya would allow—right up until Rikiya scared the life out of him by nearly dying in Deika.  He's all but glued himself to Rikiya since, as much as he can get away with given their respective responsibilities.

As an Advisor Other than leading the HMP, he does some work with internal politics and reputation. It's not, strictly speaking, his actual job as advisor—Re-Destro or the elders would probably be sought for more formal or critical mediations—but he and the people who report directly to him do enough travelling around to see constituents that they're often in a position to field those tensions before they get big enough to require attention from higher up.  Koku's happy to do so, in fact—not because he just loves handling petty arguments about resources, but because the HMP is a faction of the MLA in and of itself, and mediating is a boost to that faction's standing and autonomy.  (Also, it's that much less on Rikiya's ever-overburdened plate.)

Lightning Round

What would he do if he needed to make dinner but the kitchen was busy?Ahahahahaha, “make dinner but the kitchen was busy,” please.  Any time there could feasibly be someone else occupying a kitchen he has any business being in himself, it would be a housekeeper, and s/he would be making food for him/his family.  It’s not as though Trumpet has never cooked—he did live alone for some years after school—but outside of a scant few years in university, there’s never really been a time that kitchen use overlap would have been a problem for him. 

Favorite indulgence and feelings surrounding indulging. Probably gourmet cuisine, especially imported stuff. He’s had tailored clothes all his life; they’re just part of the job.  Expensive alcohol also doesn’t wow him; it wouldn’t be strange to find some sake maker whose family has been doing it for sixteen generations in the village he grew up in.  It’s a lot harder to cultivate a true gourmand’s palate out in the sticks, though, no matter how rich your family is.  Living in actual civilization affords a great deal more variety—and anyway, nice dinners are one of the few things he can reliably tempt Rikiya into accepting.  As to his feelings about indulging in general, he’s broadly For It.  He works very hard, he seldom gets real time off, and it doesn’t help the Great Cause for him to deny himself nice things, unlike some people.  (He’s maybe a bit bitter.)

Does he like to be the center of attention all of the time? Not especially.  Oh, he’s very good at it, certainly, and he doesn’t dislike it, but being the center of attention is practically always going to be tied up in The Great Work, so he desperately needs to get out of the spotlight from time to time, if only to be able to turn off the persona.

Curious—

General Thoughts There are two main factors in how I write Chitose: her practicality and her rapaciousness.  I write her as having an appreciation for good moral character in other people, especially when it makes a good story, but not considering herself particularly bound by conventional morality: her moral compass is Liberation, and she follows it unswervingly.  I also write her as predatory, lusty about a lot of things, often to the point of overstepping.  It doesn't hurt anyone that she likes hearty foods and strong alcohol, but she also doesn't have much regard for peoples' boundaries, and even less so when she thinks they have something to offer the Great Cause.

While that trait isn't without its benefits, it can get pretty ugly, too, as we see in how she treats, and talks to, Toga.  Even with Rikiya, the only person she thinks of as 'above' her in any meaningful sense, she's not at all above manipulation.  She's respectful of him, but knows him too well to always take him at his word.  He plainly can't always see what's best for him, but what's best for him is best for Liberation, and therefore, as a Liberation warrior, it's her responsibility to sometimes make decisions for him.  He'll appreciate it in the long run—he always does.  (Skeptic and Geten have similar views—Rikiya makes it easy.)

Family Situation She probably has the best actual relationship with her family of the group—her mothers are removed enough from the heart of MLA politics that her relationship with Rikiya doesn't color her family life the way Koku's does his, and she's much more sociable than Skeptic or Geten.  She doesn't get home much—just the major holidays, work permitting—but she's in frequent enough communication for a grown woman, and chats with her younger sister more often than that.

Meeting Re-Destro She met Rikiya properly when they were 21 and 27 respectively.  They were living in the same city at the time (him running Detnerat, her in university), so of course she'd seen him at the odd MLA event he turned up at, but when she landed an internship in her junior year, she cheekily turned up one day in her reporter capacity to interview him as “a local rising star of industry.”  It was the first chance they'd had to talk one-on-one, and would not be the last, as she frankly elbowed her way into his life and gradually sussed out that here was a man with Problems.  He and Koku were still in a distant patch at the time; she is largely responsible for getting them back on friendly terms as a way of showing her Pure Intentions.

The fact that her Pure Intentions both land her a square position as one of RD's advisors herself and get Rikiya to a better place emotionally is calculated, but not, therefore, untrue.  Ironically, while she was concerned about looking like a gold-digger, the MLA elders were probably thrilled and relieved to hear rumors that Rikiya was getting romantically involved again.  And with a lovely young MLA woman!  They wouldn't even need to worry about surrogacy arrangements!  (Not having grown up around the Yotsubashis, Chitose is unaware of exactly how pointed an interest the elders take in the matter of securing that bloodline.)

Feelings Today She loves Rikiya dearly, and prizes his regard more highly than anything in her life, but has not devoted much thought to the idea of being in love with him. She's married to her work, as they say, but she's also keenly aware that Rikiya would, for a great many reasons, be a lot of work to be in love with.  She's decided it's generally better for his mental well-being, and therefore also better for the Great Cause (she’s much more capable of reading that relationship reciprocally than Rikiya is), to make sure he's eating at least one good meal a week and getting some proper socialization in outside of MLA meet-and-greets.

As an Advisor She handles external politics and reputation--it's her job to prime Japan culturally for the Liberation agenda in ways more wide-reaching than Trumpet (he's head of a political party, and that's not nothing, but that party is still a small minority on the floor of the Diet).  She pulls attention to stories that benefit the MLA, and diverts attention from stories that don't.  This is far broader than just publishing Destro's memoir; it also means poking holes in the broader Hero Society narrative.  She does this by providing as broad a platform possible for stories about the tragedies of excessive regulation, the evils of quirk-related bias, the abuses of power heroes are capable of, and so on.

Lightning Round

Does she remember names or faces easier? She’s quite good with both, actually, but I’d give names the advantage because she works primarily with written rather than visual mediums.  (Also, BNHA names being the ridiculous puns that they are, you can probably tell more about a person in HeroAca Land by analyzing their name than their face anyway.) 

Is she more concerned with defending her honor, or protecting her status? Her status, absolutely.  Impugning her honor hurts no one but her; she can laugh that off because honor is a silly social construct anyway.  Threatening her status is a much more dangerous prospect—her status is long-cultivated to enable the advancement of Liberation ideology; it lets her keep an eye on Re-Destro, who needs as many people looking out for him as he can get; it’s what she’s worked for all her life. Curious will fuck you up if you threaten her status.

In what situation was she the most afraid she’d ever been? The time she got in trouble for nearly exploding some dude’s face off for stealing her purse.  She was 17, had spent very little time in non-Liberated territory before, and was not raised to wait on heroes to solve her problems.  She wasn’t afraid of the thief or the hero, really, but she was completely terrified that she might have just blown over half a century of secrecy by not performing Helpless Civilian well enough. The terror was pretty convincing to the police interviewing her about it, anyway.  On the whole, it was a very valuable learning experience!  

Skeptic—

General Thoughts Tomoyasu is a character I haven't written extensively yet, but what I think is most interesting about him so far is the contrast of his hyper-modern methods with the bone-deep zealotry for the cause.  See, Rikiya, Koku and Chitose all grew up in the sticks; Rikiya and Koku had money from a young age, but it was old money, tied up in trusts.  (Geten didn't have any of those, but Geten's a different story for other reasons.)  Tomoyasu grew up in a major city from the start; he was a technological prodigy from practically as soon as he could hold a tablet.  He has very little respect for the old ways of doing things when he knows there are newer, better ways of advancing the Cause. However, none of that makes him more likely to break from the MLA's ranks—if anything, his idiosyncratic approach just causes him to approach Liberation in really weird ways, ways no one else would ever come up with.

Pressganging Bubaigawara Jin based on a plan to clone Re-Destro?  Who else would that ever even occur to, much less such that it became the basis for an elaborate psychological assault?  But that's Skeptic in a nutshell—respect the old for what it did at the time, but don't think that means you have to use the same methods they did forever as you pick up the torch to carry it forward.

Family Situation He has an amicable but not intimate relationship with his family.  His parents are very proud of what he's done for the cause and how he won the confidence of Re-Destro, but they don't make much claim to understand how his mind works.  In turn, he recognizes the value of their support over the years—he certainly made a lot of waves with his unabashed venom for the MLA leadership's hidebound traditionalism, and his parents' staunch backing meant a lot for him being able to take the stands he did—but is not very emotionally close with them.  Might find himself with an older brother, if I ever occasion to write about his family situation in more depth.

Education He graduated a four-year university program for getting his computer science degree in two very intense years, during which he did virtually nothing for the Great Cause, his intention being to better position himself for maximum ability to advance Liberation afterward.  See above re: battles his parents fought for him while he was busy modernizing.

Meeting Re-Destro He met Re-Destro via Curious.  He was 22, just a year out of university and already climbing the chain of command at a young telecommunications company.  Rikiya was 33, working on the Claustro, and needed proprietary comms built to a higher standard of security than Detnerat was focused on.  Curious, who was always better positioned to be keeping up with the local personalities, introduced them.

Tomoyasu attempted to keep a civil tongue in his head the first few times he and RD met, but he'd been running on bile and energy drinks for years by that point and was hard-pressed to stop just because he was meeting his Grand Commander.  If anything, finding out that Rikiya was okay with his direction and his mouth eventually helped him chill the fuck out, marginally.

On that note, Skeptic is absolutely the advisor most willing to backtalk Rikiya right to his face.  (Rikiya loves him for it.)  Oh, he'll still accede to Rikiya's wishes, and Re-Destro's orders are his highest priority, but that doesn't mean he feels obligated to be diffident about it.  Like Curious, he has a highly developed sense of, "It's fine if it's for the greater good," which will and has led to him taking things into his own hands when he thinks he knows best (which is always).  He's not going to explicitly disobey orders, but he will creatively interpret them if he feels strongly about them, and he will try to "anticipate" orders before anyone has time to give him specific ones, the better to tailor his efforts towards proving his methods and goals correct rather than being stuck with orders he hates.

On Names I’ve definitely evolved some in my approach on this since I started writing the MLA cast, but at current, Skeptic and Geten are the only ones I consistently write as using and thinking mainly in terms of code names rather than given names.  Trumpet is too familiar with the public/private divide, and has too much intimate history with Rikya-the-person, to default to Re-Destro; Curious is too trained to look for The Human Heart of the Story.  Re-Destro himself, ever since breaking up with Koku, has always tried to use code names for people (himself excluded, because he has enormous self-confidence issues about measuring himself up to the original Destro), but can slip into given names when he’s vulnerable.  To Skeptic and Geten, though, the code name is the real name, for all intents and purposes.  The cover identity is a fake; the whole point of the code name is that you’re proving yourself worthy of taking up your proper place in the Army.  Of course the name you win for yourself is the name that counts.

Lightning Round

Given a blank piece of paper, a pencil, and nothing to do, what would happen? You’d pretty much have to lock him in a room with nothing but paper and pencil in it for that to be his first resort rather than whatever item of personal electronics he’d otherwise have on his person.  But assuming some actual plausible scenario—couldn’t bring his electronics into a government building, let’s say—he would find trying to do something productive on paper and pencil rather beneath him, and he’s an inveterate fidgeter.  I mostly see him folding that ludicrously tall frame of his into a chair and setting to using the pencil to poke about three hundred holes in the sheet of paper, meticulous and orderly, while muttering complaints to himself the whole time until something annoys him a bit too much and he jabs the whole pencil through the page. 

Who does he see as his best friend?  His worst enemy? I headcanon him having a very reasonable, functional, productive relationship with his No. 1 advisor, Red, and being reasonable, functional, and productive probably goes a lot farther on making you Skeptic’s “friend” than any amount of emotional intimacy.  But “best friend” is not really the kind of language Skeptic uses for his relationships; if you were to ask him who his best friend is, he’d probably tell you, “Iced coffee.”  As to his worst enemy, that’s just whoever is annoying him most on any given day, from difficult clients, to people annoying Re-Destro, stodgy elders, that hero grinning like a tool, that couple walking too slow in front of him on the sidewalk, etc. And Skeptic is pretty proactive about dealing with enemies, as much as he can be.

Has he ever been bitten by an animal? How was he affected (or unaffected)? lol he is a city boy and always has been.  He probably tried to pet a stray cat once out of curiosity, and because it seemed like the sort of thing people did, and then has never forgiven Animals In General when it bit him and then ran off. 

Geten—

General Thoughts Another one I haven’t written a great deal about yet, particularly in the present day, though I’m looking for that to change soonish.  One thing I’d like to explore is Geten when he’s not seething with rage and shame because he failed to bring Re-Destro a victory in Deika. The fandom tends to write Geten as an always-angry attack dog barely contained beneath a chilly veneer, and that’s fair—ever since we got the face reveal, ever since the MLA’s defeat at Shigaraki’s hands, Geten has been an always-angry attack dog barely contained beneath a chilly veneer.

But if you look at Geten from before we knew what was under the hood, you find a different story.  “Chilly and angry all the time” is not at all how he acted when he was fighting Dabi!  At that point, he was talkative, even chatty.  He engaged in a lot of snide smack-talk; he was obviously confident in himself and he spoke very proudly of the MLA as a collective.

He was still quiet at the dinner he attended with Rikiya and his advisors, yes, so I don’t think Geten’s done some kind of full 180 on characterization.  I do, however, think that Geten has a sense of humor in there, has a sense of camaraderie with the MLA rooted in more than just his relationship with Re-Destro, even if Re-Destro is obviously his most important person.  I don’t know if we’ll ever see that in the manga proper, given everything that’s happened, but it’s worth remembering in terms of what Geten is like when he’s solely among allies.

Family Situation Orphaned at a young age, and a problem child from then on.  He passed through a series of foster parents and state facilities before eventually crossing paths with the leader of the local MLA branch in Kesseru, Beacon (more on him next time).  This encounter would lead to him being sent to a group home with a reputation for being good with such difficult cases, giving them Structure and Companionship and Meaningful Work.  (Spoilers: It’s Liberation.)

Despite evening out considerably after a significant meeting with Re-Destro when he was 7[iv], Geten never got particularly close to his adopted family/the other kids at the group home.  He's very favored by the Grand Commander, for one thing, and he has the strongest quirk in the home for another—and since he learned the quirk supremacist stuff from them, that’s a pretty significant part of the dynamic!  Both of these factors mean there's some distance between him and the rest. Still, he's not on bad terms with them—indeed, his foster parents are quite proud of him—and he would probably tear out someone's throat with his teeth for threatening them, if only as a matter of pride.  

There are 4-6 other kids there at any given time; for the bulk of his young adulthood, there were two older than him, the others younger.  He doesn't have much time for Big Brother Pastimes, but is not completely immune to them, either, particularly where the youngest kids are concerned.  His tolerance for Little Brother Antics, however, is nonexistent—if the older kids think they can ruffle his hair and treat him like a kid, they can square the fuck up; he is Number One around here and don’t forget it.

Education Geten never went to school, but he's not completely uneducated.  He had some tutoring in the group home, some more from Re-Destro personally, and has a pile of books he keeps at his bedside, mostly strategic in nature.  He finds them vexing at times, but is slowly reading through them anyway because Re-Destro asked him to.  He’s been a bit more diligent about it since he was made a regiment leader, because lord knows Dabi isn't contributing much.

On Re-Destro Re-Destro became fond of Geten for the same reason he became fond of Skeptic and Curious—Geten was willing to push back.  He really did make some attempts early on to keep Geten at a proper distance, mindful of anything that would look too much like favoritism.  And Geten knew, in the hard-headed way of a child, that Re-Destro was being a grown-up about things, trying to be mature, trying to be impartial.  Geten just didn’t care about any of those things.  Every time, he would listen very seriously to the things Rikiya told him, nod attentively, repeat back what he’d been told, and then go on about doing his own thing anyway.  And his own thing was, typically, to keep coming back.

Of course, if there’s anything we can tell about Re-Destro from the way he treats Shigaraki, it’s that Re-Destro loves people who take the choice away from him.

Eventually, of course, Geten grew up (mostly; I peg him at 19 now), joined the MLA officially, and had to settle into the structure of the Army.  It began to lead to trouble for Re-Destro, when Geten blatantly disobeyed him; it stopped being cute.  Still, the sense that he Knows What’s Best lingers, so Geten works himself very, very hard to be everything Re-Destro needs him to be and more, so that maybe Re-Destro’s burden will be just that little bit lighter.

On Quirk Supremacy (and Re-Destro, still) Here’s the thing about Geten and the whole, “A life without a strong meta-ability has no value,” line, and this continues to drive me mad because of how people getting it wrong influences the bad takes on the MLA in this fandom: Geten is not a reliable witness.  He is not one of the leaders of the MLA, nor does he speak for its rank and file. Even if you assume the absolute worst about his implications there, far worse than is justified by the text, Geten’s very name, Apocrypha, means that he cannot be presumed to be aligned with MLA orthodoxy.

The only one of the people close to Re-Destro who wasn't born and raised MLA, he still manages to come off, in some ways, as the most zealous of the lot of them.  But really, it’s very noticeable that Geten—unlike Re-Destro himself, and unlike even Re-Destro’s close cohort—never talks about the original Destro, never even mentions him.  When he thinks about his leader, he only ever thinks about Rikiya.  Geten doesn’t follow Re-Destro because of his bloodline, because of the tenets; he follows Re-Destro because of personal loyalty.[v]

So how best to do that?  Well, think about it: Geten is not terribly intelligent, nor wealthy, nor well-connected. He and Trumpet are the ones most influenced by the quirk supremacist line of thought, Trumpet because his relatively weak quirk comes off as exponentially stronger the more he can surround himself in people it works on, and Geten because his strong quirk lets him mentally justify Re-Destro's investment in him despite his other insufficiencies.

Compare this with Re-Destro, who only ever talks about quirks in terms of freedom. Even more prominently, look at Skeptic and Curious, who are not at all defined by their quirks and how strong or weak said quirks may be.  Indeed, those two devote scarcely a thought to the matter because they contribute to the cause in much more important ways and seem to be perfectly comfortable with where that leaves them.

Geten may not be very smart or influential, but he’s very capable of looking at what strengths he does have and focusing hard on those.  That, I think, is what really lead to his embracing quirk supremacy, even in the face of evidence that he doesn’t have the whole picture: the search for a way to measure himself up to the movers and shakers Rikiya is otherwise surrounded with, and not come up drastically wanting.  

“Apocrypha” Geten has been Geten for a long time, since long before the MLA types usually take up their code names. He’s also an outlier in the MLA for having a name in Japanese instead of in English—the only one who does!  My headcanon, unless and until we get some other members with Japanese code names, is that he got the name directly from Re-Destro—possibly even in the conversation that lead to him imprinting so hard on the man when he was 7—and insisted on keeping it before any other code name that was suggested to him in later years.

But yes, he does have a normal Japanese name on file at the group home, which he’s obligated to answer to on the rare occasions that someone from Child Services is checking in or he and Re-Destro are out in public.  I don’t plan to bother coming up with it unless I need to, as I expect we’ll get it in a character profile one of these days.

His Quirk While a lot of people like the vibe of Geten and Dabi being somewhat equivalently vulnerable to their own quirks, and I agree it makes for good fanart, in truth, Geten is only as vulnerable to his ice as Endeavor is his flames.  Which is to say, he isn't immune, but he's certainly more resistant to it than the average person would be!  There’s already plenty of good material to contrast Dabi and Geten without pretending their quirks are more mirrored than is actually the case.

Lightning Round

How does he treat people in service jobs? He doesn’t, because he’s never in a position to interact with people in service jobs.  There have been times he’s gone out with Re-Destro, but in those cases he’s mostly let Re-Destro handle the human interaction.

What does he dislike in other people? Laziness; the lack of a higher purpose of some kind.  (It’s possible he’d thaw out on his disdain for Dabi considerably if he knew more about Dabi’s plans to undermine the whole of the Hero System than Dabi is inclined to tell him.)

Is he always there for a friend in need? Sure, as long as by “friend” you mean “fellow Liberation warrior” and by “need” you mean “in need of an icicle punched through one of someone else’s desperately fleshy body parts.”

Footnotes

[i]  Sanctum II's tastes being what they are, this probably means Rikiya is the MLA member most likely to be able to perform traditional Japanese tea ceremony.

[ii]  And there were elders who would have been happy to leave it at that permanently, I'm sure.  There are always going to be those regents who have trouble relinquishing power back to the boy prince when he grows up and becomes king, you know?

[iii]  And, when it eventually got out that they were dating, a relatively solid match, give or take the surrogacy arrangements that would eventually need to be made.

[iv]  I’m hoping canon gives us some details on this eventually, so I’m not planning to iron out more headcanon on the matter unless I absolutely have to.

[v]  This, incidentally, is a large part of why Rikiya does keep him around—it’s soothing to have someone around who never brings up his ancestor.  Anyway, after Geten evolved his quirk, people stopped complaining so much, even though RD never did get around to, like, giving Geten any formal responsibilities.  Geten, who knows very well that Re-Destro’s real advisors have real jobs, mostly took this as reason to be all the stronger, in hopes that he’d eventually be given one.

[maxwell-grant]

Downfall of a Dark Avenger Part 2: Shadows of Manhattan

Having finished reading Al Ewing’s El Sombra trilogy and having had enough time to digest it, I’d like to talk about the trajectory of it’s titular protagonist, the character and series’s relationship with it’s influences. Relating to The Shadow and Zorro and general pulp archetypes, and also the way it incorporates Astro Boy’s Pluto into the mix.

This part is focused on Gods of Manhattan and El Sombra’s first appearences in Pax Omega and the ways in which the urban vigilante manifests itself in the books. 

In Gods of Manhattan, El Sombra takes a backseat to it’s central players, Doc Thunder and The Blood-Spider. I’ve mentioned how Thunder, while ostensibly a Doc Savage/Superman amalgam, also combines aspects that allow the character to condense the entire history of the superman into a single being, but to a character very much centered on the future and in progressive ideals, described in the book as someone considered both the city’s ultimate savior as well as viewed as "a faggot, a liberal and a miscegenationist”. In that regard, the Blood-Spider becomes his opposite. Perhaps the most comprehensive savaging of the dark detective/The Shadow ever put on paper, that has a larger point behind the questions and criticisms it brings up to what this kind of figure can be. 

"You can hardly have a war on crime unless you are the one defining what a crime is. First rule of the war on crime: everyone is guilty or something"

Us am vigilantes! Am us not men? Us use violence to effect social change! Am us not men? Us bring terror to underclass, make streets safer for overclass! Am us not men? Am us not men?

Making them loved rather than feared. Having them fight crime, or the right kind of crime, at least. Created a persona designed to appeal to the worst in people, to bring the citizens of New York around to his cause, his war on crime, which would, of course, then become a war against ‘urban crime’. Or some other little euphemism. ‘Inhuman’, for example. Sounds a lot more relatable than subhuman, doesn’t it? Comes to the same thing, though.

Although The Blood-Spider is an evil take on The Shadow, most of his character traits are taken from characters that followed him. He’s got the moniker, savagery, fright tactics and branded murders of The Spider, he climbs buildings and has a civilian identity akin to Spider-Man’s, with constant name references to characters like Stacey, Jonah and a redhead named Mary Watson, with him sharing a name with Peter Parker as well as Batman villain Jonathan Crane, he’s got Rorschach monologues that are echoed by his associates past his demise in white supremacist organizations dedicated to carrying off Spider’s legacy, predating HBO Watchmen’s take on Rorschach legacy. If Doc Thunder is all about taking the superhero’s past to create a better future with it, Blood-Spider takes the future of the urban vigilante and uses it as a conduit to enact a barbaric and reactionary agenda in service of undoing everything Thunder stands for, even before he’s revealed to be a Nazi agent. 

Blood-Spider is what happens when the absolute worst aspects of said characters are brought to the forefront and twisted by a dose of reality. He’s to The Shadow what Plutonian is to Superman, the most sour way said character and legend can be twisted into something horrendous. He’s the Doutrinador in a fedora, everything I vehemently argue that The Shadow wasn’t, and yet seems sadly ever closer to as more and more comics dehumanize the character. He’s Howard Chaykin’s Shadow, naked and raw and exposed for what it ultimately is. An insult and a wake-up call, if a necessary one.

In fact, said poisoning of a legend is explicitly a plot point in the book, because the book establishes that, before The Blood-Spider, the city’s main vigilante used to be a man by the name of Blue Ghost, friend of Doc Thunder and, although a mysterious public figure, still firmly on the side of good. Unfortunately, moral victories aside, “good” alone doesn’t cut it in the world of El Sombra. 

You took a look at the Blue Ghost - mysterious masked avenger, operatives all over the place, big fan-following with the working classes, and you figured...we need one of those. Just take away the Japanese orphan kid and replace him with a foxy Aryan chick.

Blue Ghost is almost a textbook Spirit analogue, even defined as being beat up a lot as his main asset, except here, he’s placed as Doc’s counterpart that died before the story began and is now replaced by a darker and more horrendous counterpart, and because The Spirit was influenced by The Shadow, it opens a roundabout connection. You can read this as a comparison between the shift from Adam West’s Batman to Frank Miller’s Batman, or a comparison between The Shadow and earlier more straightforward pulp vigilantes like Jimmie Dale, or a comparison between the pulp/radio Shadow and later iterations of him or analogues to his archetype that upped the nastier aspects. Again, nothing in El Sombra is ever quite just one thing. 

And at last we come to El Sombra, who spends much of the book caught in between the duels of Doc, Untergang and players in between. And it’s interesting that here, while El Sombra’s final victories over the story’s major conflict lie in his willingness to team up with Doc, despite knowing of his origins as a Nazi weapon, his victories over Blood-Spider instead come from turning tricks of The Shadow against him. First, when he discovers Spider’s true nature, spying on him by pulling a Fritz the Janitor. And then in the finale, when he schools Spider on what a real shadowy avenger looks like. 

"Amigo...that's my sword"

The voice came from the darkness above them, where the gaslight did not reach. The Spider's blood ran cold for a long moment, and then he grabbed hold of his other gun, tearing it from its holster and raising it to fire a volley of bullets into the darkness. "Where are you? Show yourself!" he hissed, turning in place, the gun raised to fire at the slightest sound or movement.

"You're not the only one who can hide in the shadows, my friend. I've got very good at it, over the years."

"Show yourself!" Another volley of shots, with no result. Was he throwing his voice? Was he everywhere at once? Was he a shadow himself? A ghost?

The voice echoed from another place now, continuing his speech exactly where he had left off. And still that mocking voice echoed from the shadows above.

"See, I didn't know if you were a good guy or a bad guy. I mean, sure, you killed people, and you were kind of a dick about it, you know? But I didn't know if you were one of the bastards. I didn't know if you needed to die or not, amigo."

The gun clicked empty. He was out of bullets. He turned again, and there was the man in the red mask. Just standing there, in the middle of the concourse. His smile didn't look human. And his eyes. Oh, his terrible eyes...

"Stay back." The Spider whispered, and his voice sounded in his ears like a frightened, animal thing, waiting to curl up and die in its hole.

The man in the red mask only laughed. A rich, deep, joyous laugh, a laugh that echoed and filled the whole station, bouncing from pillar to pillar, careening through the great vaulted arches. Such a laugh!

Then the laughter stopped, and he fixed the Blood-Spider with a look that would freeze the fires of Hell.

And suddenly - quite suddenly - there was no Blood-Spider. There was only Parker Crane, the Nazi. Parker Crane, the traitor. Who thought he could destroy America, and only managed to destroy himself. Parker Crane. Just a man wearing a mask. He ran, and left the sword behind him.

"Nice trick," Doc murmured, turning to the masked man. "Throwing your sword from up on the balcony - good aim, by the way - then throwing your voice and a little mental suggestion to make him think you were up in the arches where he'd been. Where did you learn that?"

The masked man shrugged, lifting up his weapon. "In the desert. You can learn a lot in the desert, if you put your mind to it."

By the story’s end, once Lars Lomax, Thunder’s arch-enemy and Lex Luthor, takes center stage as it’s ultimate threat, Parker Crane is left a traumatized, broken shell unable to even move, utterly stripped of any mystique or power that his mask and guns may have brought him. And in the end, El Sombra finds him, neutralized and no longer a threat to anyone. And he makes his choice.

El Sombra knew what it was to hate, to hate so hard and so long that you knew nothing else, to hate so strongly that it crossed that line into something beyond reason.

He lifted his sword, resting the blade in his palm for a moment, considering. Crane only stared, weeping and making his soft, mad noises. El Sombra sighed, shaking his head. "You know, I don't know if I can kill a guy who's already dead. Even if he is one of the bastards."

"Don't let him in here." Murmured Crane, his eyes wide.

"Shhh, I won't let him in," smiled El Sombra in response, trying to be reassuring. "You'll never have to face him again. I promise. It's okay, amigo. It's okay."

It was strange. He knew he should feel hate for Parker Crane. It was Djego's job to bear things like pity and doubt, to feel sorrow and shame. That was Djego's role in their team of one. El Sombra was there to take never-ending revenge and to laugh and to never look back. But to know that his murder of Heinrich Donner - his righteous kill - had resulted in so much harm coming to so many... and now to see the leader of Undergang, the man he'd come to New York to kill, just an empty, broken madman, a shell of a person... El Sombra wondered if he was changing.

"Don't," whispered Crane, a tear rolling down his cheek. "Don't let him back in."

El Sombra smiled, placing a hand on his shoulder. "It's okay, amigo. I'm going to go and make sure nobody ever needs to see him again. And I couldn't have done it without you." He squeezed lightly. "You didn't mean to, but you did some good. Remember that."

Then, gently, he pushed the tip of the sword through the front of Crane's skull and into his brain.

He was not incapable of pity. But he was who he was, and he did what he did.

And broken or not, the bastards had to die.

We’ve seen El Sombra struggle and be faced with choices, choices between Djego and El Sombra, choices between kindness and violence, between peace and conflict. We’ve seen the conflict in his soul between things that he knows are right, because Djego is a good man with a good soul who wants good things for himself and others, and things he knows he must do, because he is El Sombra and El Sombra was created to kill the bastards that brought his world to ruin and therefore it’s what he must always do. And in the end, El Sombra is simply stronger. He has to be. But strength and violence and hatred can only get one so far. 

Gods of Manhattan is the trilogy’s moral compass, the book that most clearly defines the morality the series operates on. And in between the spectrums of justice embodied by Doc and Crane’s approach, between the two urban avengers in The Blue Ghost and Blood-Spider, El Sombra made his choice. And it’s the first choice that dooms him.

Enter Pax Omega, and we learn that, 4 years since the previous book's events, El Sombra joined a squad of agents called Yankee Bravo Seven, who work for an organization named STEAM, who enact missions against Nazis to turn the tides of war. He is joined by several other types of characters, including The Blood Widow, Crane’s former assistant Marlene Lang now having taken up the moniker (just as Nita van Sloan did for The Spider, even with the “Widow” prefix). We see that El Sombra has joined a team of bantering heroes and even formed a friendly rivalry with a man named Savate, modeled after Batroc the Leaper. 

But we see that the hunger for vengeance still burns, still burns beyond reason, restless because it’s been 4 years and the war still isn’t over and Hitler still isn’t dead by his sword. And it’s that restlessness that again dooms him, when he once again makes the wrong choice and betrays leader Jack Scorpio, Scorpio who had personally brought him on board and gave him the best shot he ever had at getting to Hitler. 

El Sombra frowned. "We need to make our move now."

Scorpio shook his head. "Not yet."

"What?" El Sombra looked incredulous.

"Wait for my signal, I said! Damn it, I need you to trust me!" Jack Scorpio reached up to brush the back of his finger across his forehead, and realised he was sweating. 

Through his special glasses, El Sombra's aura was glowing an angry, pulsing red, like a throbbing vein. "Just...trust me. I'm asking you to hold back for just five minutes. There's more going on here than you know."

El Sombra just stared at him, his lips pulling back from his teeth in a cold snarl.

"Trust me. That's all I ask." Jack Scorpio looked into the blazing eyes behind the bloodstained mask, and spoke softly, soothingly, almost desperately. "Can you just hold back for one minute?"

The eyes behind the mask narrowed.

"Can you?"

PERSONNEL FILE: DJEGO "EL SOMBRA". TO EYES ONLY: THIS INDIVIDUAL IS HIGHLY DANGEROUS. IT IS STRONGLY RECOMMENDED HE NOT BE INCLUDED IN ANY OPERATIONS CLASSIFIED ABOVE TOP SECRET OR HIGHER. (I'll take the risk - J.S)

El Sombra spat in Scorpio's face.

"Chinga tu madre."

Then he drew his sword and leaped down into the fray.

After the mission is over, with the base destroyed and a major victory secured, although with Jack Scorpio having been killed, the team disbands. El Sombra continues to wander the forests near the Luftwaffe base for about two weeks, killing as many Nazis as he can, until an explosion blast hits near him, knocking away his mask and portions of his leg and arm, and rendering him unconscious for 8 months. By the time he wakes up, the war has ended, and so has El Sombra for the past 7 years.

Djego was afforded the best of medical care at the hospital in Venice. El Sombra was nowhere to be found.

His mask had been torn off in the explosion, along with some of the meat of his leg and arm. He walked stiffly, now, with a pronounced limp, and his left arm was all but useless, hanging limply at his side. The Wildcat crew had salvaged his sword, but Djego had little interest in using it.

Gradually, he regained his mobility. The back of his head itched constantly, and he suffered from horrendous mood swings, when he would rage against the Fuhrer and the bastards, or weep helplessly, like a child. But gradually, he found his personality stabilising in the gentle, antiseptic atmosphere of the hospital. He found that Djego - so long despised as a weakling, a coward and a fool - was capable of a kind of gentle, melancholic wit that made him popular.

Djego healed and grew, and the itch in the back of his skull began to subside, as El Sombra relinquished his grip.

Djego felt his heart seize in his chest. The cloth was missing a scrap at the end, and there was mud ground into the fabric along with the old bloodstains; but it had two evenly-spaced holes in it, and was unmistakably a mask. It seemed to be looking at him.

He takes up gardening and establishes himself in the city of Brandenberg, he becomes a fixture of the city and a friend of it, he enters a relationship, and El Sombra never appears again.

Until a mysterious stranger named Leonard Lorraine, walks through his door one day, saying he’s got a mission to fulfill, and hands him his mask. And, once again, El Sombra is simply stronger, and he makes the wrong choice again. 

Djego shook his head and tried to step back from it, but his legs wouldn't move.

"No," he whispered. "No. Please"

"I was happy," pleaded Djego. "Doesn't that matter to you?" He picked up the cloth in trembling fingers, looking into the empty eyeholds. "Doesn't that mean anything?"

There was no answer. The patrons of the bierkeller did not even notice anything was happening.

"I was happy," Djego choked, and then, in one spasmodic motion, he pulled the mask onto his face, and secured it tightly, so that the knot once again rested in the back of his head, where it belonged: so tightly that it might never come off again.

El Sombra looked at his hands.

He prodded his belly, amused at the rounded shape of it, and took a couple of steps back from the bar. The limp was gone.

He laughed, very softly, so as not to disturb the patrons.

Djego and Lorraine walk through the desolate streets of Berlin, which in the years since has completely sealed itself from the outside world through an impossibly thick dome, and Djego discovers the city completely bereft of life, with only a few lobotomized robotic citizens aimlessly wandering and chewing on the mountains of corpses in the city, as their Nazi ideology reached it’s inevitable outcome of total annihilation of any and all that the party could find an excuse to slaughter in the name of purity, which eventually included it’s few remaining members. In this world, Hitler has been a brain inside a robotic contraption ever since 1945, and it’s amidst this scenario that El Sombra, while thinking about how his final confrontation with Hitler would play out, eventually finds what’s left of Hitler. 

All around them, there were the sounds of machinery, but the Mecha-Fuhrer was completely silent, utterly motionless. In the centre of its chest rested a tank of toxic green fluid, and on the surface of the fluid, a human brain floated, like the corpse of a goldfish.

It was quite dead.

El Sombra stared at the Fuhrer for a long moment. Eventually, he spoke, and his voice was cracked and raw, and choked with rage. "Is...is this a joke?"

De Lareine smiled his terrible smile. "The Fuhrer's body needed a great deal of maintenance and repair, you know. After two years, one of the processes delivering oxygen to his brain failed...and there was nobody left to repair it. He died, slowly." There would have been some pain, at the end".

El Sombra slammed his fist into the great iron throne on which the massive body sat, shattering his knuckles and tearing the skin from them. He didn't seem to notice. "Some pain," he choked, through gritted teeth."

El Sombra was still staring into the empty, dead eyes of the Fuhrer.

El Sombra again chooses poorly. It’s this moment, above all else, that truly damns him to his fate, as we come to see what is it exactly that a persona created for the purpose of vengeance has, when said vengeance is robbed from it. Like Parker Crane, his persona crumbles completely to expose the petty, ugly little feelings that drove it to such grandstanding antics in the first place, and the allmighty El Sombra is exposed for the all-too human failings that damned him once and for all.

"This isn't right," he said, eventually, in a strangled voice. "How...how can it end like this?"

"Why shouldn't it?" De Lareine shrugged. "Here's a thought. Maybe, despite his twenty-year tantrum and all his dressing up, spoilt little Djego is not the centre of the universe -"

El Sombra turned, face red, tears streaming from his eyes, and charged at De Lareine, slashing his sword. El Sombra crashed down onto the floor, into the soot scattered about, as De Lareine walked around him.

"Did you really believe Adolf Hitler would wait around for your sword? Did you not imagine that it might be better for him to seal himself off in a hole to die, instead of murdering and enslaving continents until you finally got around to him? Did you think you were the hero of your own little story, El Sombra, with your mask and your laugh and your-"

"Shut up!" El Sombra cried out, scrambling to his feet, the sword shaking in his hand, tears and snot running down his face. "He was mine! He was mine to kill!" He lifted the sword, the tip trembling. "Bring him back," he screamed, "do you hear me? Bring him back to life!"

De Lareine had to laugh at that.

And in the end, El Sombra is crushed, spiritually and physically as his spine is shattered by Lareine, who begins to experiment on him as he lays dying, ready to fulfill fate’s greater purpose for El Sombra. Ready to become not just the perfect machine Pasito’s conquerors intended, but a superior design. Ready to abandon his former life, ready to abandon everything that defined him, ready to shed any and all traces of Zorro and Shadow and pulp hero in his system, because the age of pulp heroes and superheroes has passed. 

The metal man emerged from his hole, dragging the corpse of the Fuhrer behind him.

The brain in the metal man's chest would, perhaps, live for thousands of years. He wondered how he would spend the time.

He remembered little of his former life; he had been a man named El Sombra, or perhaps Djego. He had been stupid - he realised that now - but that was something he would never be again.

Apart from that, there was only a succession of faces, the memory of laughter and of a final, awful betrayal that had destroyed him. But there was also the sense that a great and terrible mission had ended at last, and it was time for a new life to begin.

The metal man took a last look back at the great dome of Fortress Berlin. Somewhere in there, the Leopard Man was hunting, freed from his own mission. And in the Fuhrer's old office, the empty, lifeless clay of El Sombra - or was it Djego? - lay, discarded, like a butterfly's cocoon.

The metal man thought on this, as the Fuhrer rusted at his feet and the tanks began to approach from over the hills ahead.

He would need a new name.

It’s now the age of Pluto.

[classic80sand90smovieloves2]

Meeting and Dating Shavonne Wright

(My crappy gif)(Requested by anonymous/The ask had three separate requests in it so I’ll respond to it later when I’m ready to start writing the others)

- You met Shavonne in school. The two of you had a class at the end of the day together but you didn’t talk to each other until halfway through the year when she saved your ass in the school bathroom. 

- It was around fourth period when you just so happened to enter the bathroom after she did. She was leaning against the sink smoking and not paying any attention to you when you made your way into a stall. It was there that you found out that “that time of the month” came early and you were completely unprepared. 

- You cursed quietly, panicking while rifling through your bag for a second time. You could hear her let out a short laugh in response to your outburst before she finally spoke. 

“You alright in there?” The question was joking more than anything.

- You winced at the idea but swallowed your pride, asking if she had a pad or something that you could use. 

“Oh shit, girl. ...Yeah, give me a minute.” She answered quietly. You could hear her heels clicking against the floor as she made her way over to the stall, her hand appearing over the top of the door to hand you one. 

- You thanked her and finished up, hoping that she would leave before you got out but you had no such luck. You shyly exited the stall, flashing her a small smile as you went to wash your hands. 

- She nodded at you while taking a drag from her cigarette, brushing off your second thank you as you finally left the bathroom. You let out a breath once you got into the hallway, figuring that was that and she’d forget about it by the time your class with her came around. 

- So the end of the day came around and you made your way into your final class; study hall though your “teacher” let you do whatever you wanted within reason. 

- Shavonne came in a few minutes after you had and, for the first time, seemed to notice that you shared the class together. She hesitated for a moment before making her way over and asking if you were “alright now”, offering you a Midol as she took a seat. 

- The two of you talked on and off for the rest of the period; you blamed it more on the fact that she didn’t really have any friends in that class rather than her actual interest in you. But you’d soon be proven wrong.

- She began to sit with you nearly every day after that, your conversations moving past awkward small talk and the length at which you spoke getting longer and longer. Shavonne actually found herself trying to get to that class faster so that she could see you sooner, something she later realized was a bit odd for just two friends, especially when it came to her. 

- After about a month of talking, the two of you began to walk out of class together, still making conversation as you made your way through the halls. It was there that she finally asked if you’d like to hang out after school. 

- You agreed and soon found yourself sitting on her bedroom floor as she rifled through her records, trying to find a good album to listen to. She asked you what you thought of Don while her back was turned to you and you honestly answered: you didn’t know him very well but he seemed like a jerk, harmless but an ass. 

- To your surprise, she agreed and told you that she was planning on breaking things off for good, hesitantly admitting that she liked someone new anyways. You started to prod just a little bit.

“They’re... well you know....” You don’t piece two and two together as she begins to subtly describe you. “Just... cute, you know?”

“I’ve never heard you call anyone cute before.” You chuckled slightly. 

“Sexy. Is that better?” She teasingly corrected herself. “But they’re more cute. Like a puppy or cat or something. I don’t know she’s just different.”

Your heart skipped a beat, wondering if you heard her correctly. “She?”

“Huh?” She asked but you knew she was faking it, her voice high and nervous. 

“You said ‘she’.” You replied tentatively, unsure of if it was your place to intrude. 

“Alright, so it’s a she.” She muttered defensively, knowing she couldn’t play off her fumble.

“Alright.” You said and moved on to another subject of conversation.

- The two of you had your first kiss the same night she confessed that she had feelings for you. She’d dragged you out with her late one night, convincing you to come by admitting that she’d broken up with Don and “just wanted some company”. 

- You were sat next to her on a field of grass, swatting mosquitoes from your legs while she smoked when she finally told you that you were the one she’d been talking about. You went silent for a long moment before you told her that you liked her too, letting her lean closer and closer until her lips brushed against yours; testing the waters before she pulled you into a real kiss. 

- It’s certainly a new experience but one you wouldn’t trade for the world. 

- Lots of pda. She’s a touchy person in general so no one really suspects anything when she’s hanging all over you. She constantly has her arm around your waist/shoulder or her hand in yours. 

- Quick, frenzied kisses. She’ll desperately attack your lips for a minute then pull away like nothing happened the next.

- She likes when you lay your head on her lap but; depending on her mood, she’ll either play with your hair or put things in it until you notice. Even though she messes with you, she doesn’t want you to pull away. 

- She’s a tease. She doesn’t like serious talk, instead she prefers to gossip and  try and get a reaction out of you, usually a nice one. 

- Tv dates. 

- Slumber parties, you have one; at least, once a week. You usually make whole days out of them, heading over to her house right after school and staying there until late the next morning. 

- You know that picture of the two girls where one of them is putting makeup on the other while straddling their waist. That’s the two of you; you can decide who’s who. 

- Bathroom smoking breaks. You tend to light her cigarettes for her since she rarely remembers her own. 

- She literally has everything else you could need in her bag besides a lighter. Hair ties, tampons/pads, gum, breath mints, chapstick, tissues, pepper spray, spare money, band aids, etc. 

- Playing dumb games to pass the time, especially during your free periods. 

- She likes to be tall but she really isn’t. She’s constantly wearing heels and gets annoyed when you tease her about her height. 

- On the same note~ She’s actually really insecure. She may not act like it on the outside but she’s always secretly trying to do things that make her look more “appealing”, skinnier, prettier, etc. 

- You occasionally help her get dressed because she insists on wearing the tightest pants that she can force on and ridiculously hard to clasp necklaces. 

- She can usually score some beers for the two of you from unsuspecting guys who think with the head that’s off their shoulders; if you like to drink, that is. 

- She likes being helpful, at least when it somewhat benefits her. She’ll come help you with whatever you’re doing as long as it either involves her or you spending more time with her. 

- She calls you “girlie”, it’s her version of a pet name, sort of ingenious since she can call you it in public without turning heads. 

- Drive through restaurant dates.

- Wandering around and seeing where the night takes the two of you. 

- Rollerskating dates.

- Matching nail polish.

- Bumping each other’s hips teasingly.

- Brushing her hair behind her ear for her. There always seems to be an annoying strand in her face.

- She likes to think of herself as being above “kiddie stuff” but she’s a sucker for little childish trinkets and stuffed animals. She’ll tease you for getting her something like a teddy bear but you bet your ass it’ll be sitting on her bed the next time you visit.

- She gets spooked easily and whenever she does, she has a habit of looking to and trying to latch on to you. You’re sort of used as a stress ball and a meat shield at the same time.

- Comforting hugs, she always seems to know when you need one and she’ll take one whenever you want to give her one. 

- She turns into a little teddy bear when the two of you get to her house after school. Her shoes come off, she shrinks and then she turns soft. She refuses to be the little spoon, she’ll koala bear your back before she allows you to be the big spoon. 

- She’s a clothing stealer; a beautiful, persistent thief that vexes you. Looking for a particular shirt? You’ll find it soon enough... with your girlfriend inside of it.

- Jodi is incredibly and adorably supportive while Kaye is most certainly a borderline lesbian herself. They’re most likely the only ones who know about the two of you.

- Her shoes in one of your hands and her hand in the other. It’s a common thing after a late night of partying since she insists on wearing heels every time she goes out.

- Special handshakes.

- Photobooth pictures. She’s got them pinned on her headboard and hidden in her pillows.

- She likes leading the way when the two of you walk together but always makes sure that you’re close behind, not wanting to leave you somewhere or let you stray too far away. 

- Being really comfortable with each other. The two of you can talk about whatever you want without ever having to feel embarrassed.You’re also the only one whose secrets she actually keeps.

- She’s a real one; at least when it comes to you. Pimple on your back? She’s got it. Bled through your pants? She’ll get you another pair. Puking in the bathroom? She’ll hold your hair. It’s girl code baby and she’s mastered it. 

- Shavonne’s never been jealous; actually jealous, of anyone, mainly because she’s never been in an extremely serious relationship. But with you? She certainly has a mean streak when it comes to dealing with people she deems as being too close to you.

- It’s a little hard for her to decide when she should and shouldn’t get jealous since she’s sort of new to the whole “being gay” thing. Should she be jealous of guys that flirt with you or only girls who seem to like you more than friends? She isn’t sure.

- She tries her best to deal with her jealousy on her own time and to not let you know about it. She’s sort of embarrassed since she considers herself a pretty sought after girl. She doesn’t think she should ever feel like there’s competition when she’s the one you’re with. But like I said: she’s secretly insecure and that affects how she feels more than she cares to admit.

- She’s very protective of you, insulting whoever is rude to you or tries to make you the butt of a joke. People learn very quickly that being mean/inconsiderate to you gets them on her shit list. 

- She always has a comeback no matter the situation. Teasing her? She has one. Fighting with each other? She has one. You’d think she has a book full of them somewhere. 

- She never stays mad at you for very long. She likes to think that she can hold a grudge but when it really comes down to it, she tries to smooth things over pretty much as soon as she can. 

- She sings “love you~” more than she says it seriously but the feeling and intent is still there. You think it’s cute anyway. 

- She doesn’t have anything against her hometown so she wouldn’t mind sticking around for a while. Maybe the two of you can rent/buy a house together; be ambiguously gay roommates that all the old ladies either look at weird or openly admire your “friendship”.

[thefanficmonster]

Close Call

John (The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope) x Reader (Female)

Warnings: SPOILERS, Swearing, Near-death scene

Genre: Fluff

Summary: Colleagues John and Y/N are stranded in the ghost town of Little Hope with four of their students. Will the two manage to save their group from the horrors the town has to provide for them? Will they both live long enough to see the next day and maybe finally come clean to one another?

Requested by @artlovingbre  Hello dear! Sorry to be posting your amazing request so late, hope it makes the wait worth it. I love John, he’s such a comfort character and he needs to be protected at all costs haha. Please enjoy the read! Love, Vy ❤

“Are you alright?“ Shiny eyes shed a concerned gaze on him while a warm hand hold his cheek, adjusting his head to a specific angle. “Try to open your eyes, John.“ She speaks in a soft voice, guiding him back to consciousness.

His eyelids lift ever so slightly, his foggy vision not doing the woman crouched in front of his slumped body justice. He can see the worry mixed with light fear on her features. Something about the look in her eyes tells him she’s seen something that mortified her.  John’s gaze clears up when he focuses on that exact element of her gaze, the one suggesting she’s not doing as well as she’d like others to think. He almost chuckles to himself at how signature of a Y/N move that is.

Y/N Y/L/N, the Business and Management professor who has recently been transferred into their college. In her early thirties, she’s only had about ten years of teaching experience but she has easily become the most liked and professor on campus. Her attitude and her teaching are basically a formula for success one can’t deny. She’s earned herself this job with a lot of work, having come from a much smaller and less-known college where she taught a class of roughly twenty people, she had to teach many other classes as well, considering she also possesses great knowledge in Economics and English Literature. She’s continued to do so, being a substitute professor whenever an English Lit or ECON one couldn’t make it, while also tutoring on the side. She has worked hard to make it in the world of knowledge and John finds her incredibly inspiring.

He met her when he was looking for a professor to cover for him while he got through the final preparations of the school trip he was planning for a group of his students. She would’ve volunteered immediately, he’s definitely certain of that, but this time around he was actually directed to her by a fellow colleague. Seeing her for the first time felt like he was witnessing a phenomenon he’s heard many people talk about but no one was sure it existed. He had heard whispers about her all over campus, she was rather popular - she had come to the college and brought a breath of fresh air with her, getting the students wondering and making assumptions about her. She carried herself with such powerful confidence, it got everyone thinking she’d be a strict, no-nonsense, stuck-up professor who asked for too much while not giving the students enough.

Needless to say, they couldn’t have been more wrong.

John has never connected to a person so quickly and easily before. The new professor was certainly something the school needed but no one could suspect it’d be someone of her rank. Even he felt he was below her and he has been teaching for twice as long as she has. There’s something so appealing about her, makes him want to never stop talking to her - if circumstances allowed for such a thing, he’s certain neither of them would run out of things to say. They have plenty in common, a lot of stories to share and a lot of advice to give one another despite him being the more experienced professor.

“What the hell was that?“ He mutters, sitting up in a more upright position.

Y/N scoffs, “You tell me. That man, he looked just like you. And....there’s no explanation for this, is there?”

They’ve just witnessed John’s double’s execution. It was a real torture to be exposed to such a horrifying scene. The death in and of itself was disturbing, but one can only imagine how the entire situation is messing with their heads - especially Y/N’s. She’s a person of logic, she likes being in the know and fully understanding issues and problems. She can’t just accept this illogical occurrence that has been happening to them all night. It’s tiring her out and driving her mad. Matters are a lot worse when you don’t know why they are the way they are or how they came to be. Knowing she functions based on this principle, John can’t help but feel bad for not being able to help her. Hell, she’s doing all the helping around here, he’s the one who blacked out when they returned from that hellish trip back in time.

Their students are surrounding them, all looking on with worry and confusion as to what they saw. These trips back in time have become common in the past our or two, they no longer question it when it happens, instead they focus on what they see.

“None as of now, but...“ He starts speaking, looking for words of comfort which are cut short when a sudden noise comes from somewhere nearby, amongst the tall grass and bushes.

It sounds like a fast movement, quickly accompanied by a growl-like sound that is enough to freeze the two in their spot while their students each took a step back, getting further away from the possible danger up ahead. John and Y/N get up hand in hand, eyes glued onto the now visibly rustling grass from which emerges a gruesome creature straight from hell. It’s not their first run-in with a monstrosity like this one - they faced the chain-bound one going after Angela; the floating, long-tongued one with it’s target on Taylor and the spear bearing one in pursuit of Daniel.

This one is his. It’s finally his turn to spin the wheel of fortune and see how likely he is to survive. 

His thoughts are racing, he can hear the thumping of blood in his ears. This is either gonna be his demise or a story to tell, the two options so far from one another, so surreal. They remind him how fragile his life is. How little it would take for him to be wiped off the face of the Earth, but how much effort he’d have to put in to save himself and the people he’s responsible of. Among them, a person he hasn’t been fully truthful with this whole time...

“GO IN THE HOUSE! NOW!“ Y/N’s voice grounds him, pulls him back to reality. She shakes his arm, yanking his attention to her, “John, we gotta move!“

The thought of one of these things even daring to get close to Y/N mortifies and angers him. He doesn’t want to run from these creatures, demons or whatever the fuck they may be. He’s done choosing flight.

“I’m sick and tired of allowing them the upper hand.“ He exclaims in frustration, looking around for something to use as a weapon. “Y/N, go inside. I’ll meet you there shortly.“

His words are insanity to her. She can’t even imagine leaving him behind as he’s suggesting, but she knows arguing would be futile. Instead, she backs away without as much as a word.

The demon starts approaching, this one’s movements a lot faster and more rapid in comparison to the rest they’d faced. John is aware he’ll need to stay razor sharp to even have a chance of survival, not that there’s much for him to do against an overpowered demon moving at that speed while all he has is the old sledgehammer he finds laying nearby.

He manages to get one good swing in, pushing the thing away, earning himself some time to put distance between him and the demon, but before he is able to do so, the thing is already charging at him and has him toppling to the ground, promising to seal his fate right here and now.

A sudden hit is delivered to the demon’s head with incredible force, giving John the freedom to stand up and look to see who his savior is as they go in for another swing with what looks to be a metal pipe.

It’s Y/N.

“Take that, you piece of shit!“ She yells, delivering another blow to the head. 

John runs to her side, guiding her away by the arm now that the demon is far enough away. Adrenaline is pumping through the both of them, keeping them on their feet despite the shaking of their knees. They attempt to make a run for the house, but Y/N’s movements are hindered by the chain that wraps around her calf, yanking her back and onto the ground.

John wastes no time rushing to her aid, using the sledgehammer to free her from Angela’s demon’s grasp and pulls her to her feet.  This time, the run to the house is successful. They make it inside, mildly harmed, out of breath and with rapid heartbeats. And with their lives, of course. Surprisingly, they made it in with all their limbs and their lives. That has to count for something.

“You suck at following instructions, don’t you?“ John asks Y/N after they briefly catch their breath.

She chuckles, holding the wrist she sprained when manning the heavy metal pipe as a weapon, “No, I just protect the people I care about. You should know what that’s like.” She bumps his shoulder with her, sending him a warm smile.

He sure knows what it’s like.

                                                               *  *  *

It’s all over. They are safe, back on campus. Shaken up, bruised and traumatized but alive and safe from any physical harm. For the mental torment they will be helped by professionals, friends and family. What matters is that they’re alive.

“Hey, um, I never got to thank you for saving my life back there.“ John hesitantly approaches Y/N once each student is picked up by someone from the school parking lot, presumably to be taken to a hospital. The two of them can’t go anywhere before they take responsibility for what happened.

Y/N grins at him, her tired eyes shining in the late morning sunshine. “I couldn’t leave my favorite colleague to die now, could I?” She laughs, placing a hand on his shoulder, “And thank you for saving my life.”

He returns her smile, covering her hand with his, “Couldn’t let you die on your first school trip, could I?”

She laughs again, shaking her head in what appears to be disappointment, “First and last. I bet I’m getting fired for this.” She looks down at her shoes, digging them into the pavement.

“Hey.“ He gives her hand a squeeze, grasping her attention  causing her to look up at him and meet his warm gaze, “I won’t let that happen. I promise.“

Y/N sighs and nods, exhaustion radiating off of her, “Alright, I trust you. Let’s just get it over with, shall we?” She tilts her head towards the entrance of the school.

Ok John, now or never. Just spit it out

“Um, Y/N?“ He says her name questioningly, causing her to turn to fully face him, “Would you maybe want to head to lunch afterwards? I completely understand if you’d prefer to be alone, but if you want some company...“ He trails off, rubbing the back of his neck, nervous as all hell. That’s really telling, considering they just escaped hell.

He resists the urge to close his eyes and cringe at how hesitant and awkward he sounds. Where is that bold side of him that wanted to fight a demon earlier?

“Sure, John. I’d love nothing more. Lord knows company is just what I need right now. I’d hate to be alone, I think I might lose it.“ Her response accompanied with a slightly shy chuckle sends an overwhelming wave of relief crashing down onto him, allowing him a sigh.

Sometimes, as John would learn, going through hell may be worth it when you consider the aftermath.

A chance with Y/N is his aftermath, and it just about makes the hell of Little Hope worth it. He’s yet to find out for certain though.

@sparrow-gg  @megandaisy9

[joeyglowy]

Can i request Osamu having a crush on a really short girl

Course you can! I’m pretty short myself so, SHORT GIRLS REPRESENT. I hope you don’t mind, but this crossed over into a boyfriend scenario because, you know, boyfriend Osamu is supreme. 

Miya Osamu x Fem! Short! Reader - 1600+ words

WRAPPED.

Unlike his brother, Osamu was actually a decent person.

Even when he was crushing on you, Osamu was very careful and observant to things that you were particular to and all the other idiosyncrasies you might have.

Being particularly vertically challenged, that was quite unfortunately, a lot.

He found it a particularly visually appealing and rather fucking adorable image to compare you to that of a cat. You hissed a lot, which he always found amusing but he supposed, it was all in fairness as you’d swat away the callous grins of people that tried to use you as an arm rest. You bristled quite a bit too, it reminded him of a cat puffing out their chest or their hairs standing on edge and ready to strike. You’d give people death glares at their incessant and incredibly uncreative puns (which Osamu found was justified as they were all, in fact, quite unoriginal and he could come up with much better if given a chance but refrained for sake of retaining a status where he could be viewed as a candidate for the occupational dream position that is your suitor).

You also spent fifty per cent of your existence puffing your cheeks out because for some reason no one wanted to take you seriously. It was simply ridiculous, just because you were discriminated against in the gene pool concerning the category of height, doesn’t mean you deserve any less respect than anyone else!

As such, in the crushing stage, Osamu was very deliberate to never poke fun of your height, no matter how tempting the urge was but he found himself smiling unconsciously around you anyways because he’s not blind.

You were so incredibly endearing in everything you did, he just couldn’t bring himself to pull away.

Which is why when he saw you sending smiles that seemed to be reserved just for him, or the way your eyes would twinkle when you’d see his larger than life stature in the halls, he finally brought himself to just ‘fuckin’ confess already, yer makin’ me sick with all the mush and smush, it’s embarrassin’ to be seen around ya whenever she’s there!’ as so eloquently put by his pickle headed brother.

But just this once, his brother’s advice was not completely useless, he supposed. You returned his feelings in full and Osamu remembered being so ecstatic that he picked you up and had spun you around before encasing you in fervent hug because finally he could just completely wrap himself around you and not be issued a restraining order afterwards. He remembered you getting quite embarrassed but you still had clung onto him with just as much tenderness anyway. Rarely did Osamu ever lose his composure like that but with how charming you were, your gravitational pull was too strong and all he could do was hopelessly collide with you—any battle against gravity is a futile one after all, you’ll just get send pummelling to the ground. Not that he minded since you were the one doing the pummelling.

Time skip to now, with all those formalities out of the way and the careful tiptoeing no longer applying to him since he held immunity as your boyfriend… he became an insufferable shit.

Osamu was an avid cuddler, and a sleepy one at that.

You’ve lost count of all the times Osamu would use your lap, arms, crook of your neck, sometimes just flat out sitting on you to take a nap because apparently, you were ‘perfect pillow size’.

AKA, you were his personal body pillow.

Apparently he liked how small you felt in his arms, he joked that all your pent up anger made you warm and more inviting to cuddle too.

In fact, he was even doing it right fucking now.

You groaned as you almost lurched into the kotatsu to feel what could have easily been the weight of a bear choosing to hibernate on a boulder (or in this case, your rather small frame) in the midst of you trying to do your physics homework. You huffed, irritated down to the bone as you even felt your neck being pushed down, feeling Osamu’s chin digging into your scalp as he took a casual whiff of your hair (which smelt like mangoes… damn, now he was craving mangoes). Your eye twitched.

“Osamu!” you cried out but your retaliation was met with a melodious hum. You felt yourself getting warmer as he chuckled, the rumble reverberating through his chest and onto your back before he left searing tracks of burns on your neck, brushing your sensitive skin with his nose and warming it with his breath. He settled his chin onto your shoulder, humming contently as he slouched. He was no better than a sloth finding the perfect tree to take a three day nap on. You flushed, your grip getting a little too strong for your pen as it creaked in response. “I’m trying to study here, you’re crushing me!”

Osamu, not minding the fact that he had poured his entire weight on you, yawned playfully as he just buried himself deeper into your burning neck. “Nah, I’m good. You’re pretty warm too,” he added scathingly as you pouted, feeling yourself get hotter, not appreciating this abuse of strength and power.

“Must I be harassed by everyone in my life? Woe is me, I’m being bullied for body constraints that I can’t control,” you moaned melodramatically and Osamu blinked in contemplation. He peered over your shoulder and he supposed he was being an obstruction to your studying. He grimaced, well, he did have you face planted into the kotatsu. While he was rather warm in this position and having your frame fit perfectly in his, almost like Russian dolls, he didn’t actually want to disturb you too much, last thing he wanted was for you to get upset at him.

“Fine, I’ll let go–” he had started, attempting to inch back as the shackles that were his well-built arms unlocked their hold on you and were slowly retracting until—

“Keep your goddamn hands around me or I will kick you out.”

Osamu blinked in surprise to find you tightly clasp your hands around his wrists and roughly crossed them over your stomach again, huffing once more. He couldn’t help laughing at that as you kept puffing like a steam engine. “I just wanted you to lay off so I can sit up straight and not parallel to the table! Didn’t say you had to let go,” you argued adamantly although Osamu could see your cheeks were stained a rosy red and he couldn’t help biting his lip, smiling.

“[Name], if you keep that up, I won’t let go at all,” he whispered lowly into your ear, smiling sensually before he was rudely interrupted by the back of your fingers swatting him away.

“I don’t mind that but stop leaning all your weight on me. My friends do that enough and you’re heavy babe.” As if to prove your point, you playfully slapped his inner thigh to express your annoyance. Osamu blinked absentmindedly at the snare drum sound that had resounded, still feeling the stinging impact of your hand that left lingering heat and anticipation crawling over his skin. “You’re literally a solid block of muscle which is heavy Osamu, I don’t need you giving me back problems this early in life, I’m not furniture just cause I’m short you know.”

Even as you were berating him, Osamu found his pout slowly disappearing. Sometimes he forgot how annoyed you get with these sort of things and although one could simply attribute it to you overreacting, he knew that you really were probably sick of it by now. He didn’t want to add to that. Guiltily he pushed himself straighter up, allowing you to have your back perpendicular to the floor again as you sighed in relief but found Osamu hiding his nose into your shoulder.

“M’sorry. Short jokes are overrated. I just like doing this because you’re warm. If you want, you can use me as a chair,” he mumbled out the offer and immediately you found your heart melting and your internal structures crumbling as you became as flexible as water and the expanse of Osamu’s wonderfully sculpted body was your container. Even though Osamu was tall enough to comfortably use your head as a head rest, he much preferred your shoulder since it was ‘closer’ to you in a way, something that you also appreciated.

“Maybe, and while you are quite comfortable and big enough to be a rather suitable chair, I think you’re closer to a backpack… or extra baggage than anything.” Osamu’s brows furrowed, the lines streaking across his forehead in annoyance, miffed by this statement. However, before he could protest, like a cat waiting to prey on the little mouse that finally decided to come out of its hole in the wall, when he finally brought his face into the open air, out of the comforts of your shoulder, you attacked his nose with a quick and swift kiss. He stiffened in surprise as you grinned cheekily at him.

“I don’t think a chair could ever be as cute or as soft as you Osamu.”

Satisfied with his stunned expression and the peaches of pink on his cheeks, you returned back to physics with an amiable smile that obviously meant you weren’t thinking about physics at all. You snorted to feel Osamu digging his face into your shoulder, letting out some sort of muffled, feral growl but you playfully ignored him and continued your work.

Osamu concluded that once you were done with physics, he’ll have to convert this chair into a bed because there’s no way he’s letting you get away with that one scot-free.

You really did have him wrapped around your finger. Or, maybe your whole body in this case, but the metaphor still stands.