#(how old do I have to get before I can have legitimate grievances and struggles)

[isfjmel-phleg]

_

[astyle-alex]

[Fanfic] Start With Why | the Old Guard

WhooHoo! New fanfic! It's always a great day when I can start posting a new project! (Especially, when I have  a whole project entirely completed and can post it  with confidence that it won't be pushed off on hiatus because I get derailed in the middle of writing).  This was is already complete at 6 parts and will wrap up right before 2020 (finally) comes to a  close.

Start With Why

Fandom: the Old Guard Pairings: Background Nicky x Joe Characters / Focus: OT5 + Copley, reacting to Booker's betrayal Rating: Gen Audiences Warnings: None (well, language, because the team are all quite colorful) Total Word Count: 10,288 Chapter Word Count: 2,017

Summary:

The thing about betrayal is that it hurts. Sometimes it hurts too much to see the broader situation clearly. But after Booker's betrayal, the team has to look at themselves and see how every one of them is culpable. Booker may have done the deed, but his measly 200 years makes him a child to the others, especially Andy, and like babysitters are to blame when their charge sets the curtains on fire, the Family needs to ask themselves WHY and accept the honest answers. Why Copley, Why Merrick, and Why something made Booker believe that his choice was the right one for his Family...

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Part I :: ANDY

In the Immediate After, Andy is both utterly numb and entirely electrified. She’s chilled through her old bones from the icy weight of deadened muscles, and yet lit from inside by a fire she’d forgotten how to feel as they escape Merrick Labs. That conflicted state of incomparable feeling persists as they drive to a safehouse 20 minutes outside the London center-city, one with enough bathrooms to allow each member of their tragic little band to claim one for themselves (though, obviously, Joe and Nicky share one, regardless).

The privacy of that permeating sense of space permits them all to take their own time in separating themselves from the immediate horror of what they’d just gone through.

It allows them to clean up in their own ways and refocus on the fact that this isn’t really over, not yet. There are still two frickin’ cosmic elephants in the room.

Booker is the first one, the most critical and the most painful.

Copley can wait until a point later in the After.

Andy takes longer than usual— than she used to.

By the time she’s washed away the blood and viscera, by the time the shower has worked the worst soreness out of her aching muscles, and by the time she’s redressed her still-unhealed wounds, Booker’s already gone. Nile, too.

They’ve crossed the little hamlet’s main street to a bar perched right on the coast. The Prospect of Whitby’s an old haunt of theirs, a regular watering hole they’ve indulged in for a few hundred years now (with careful periods of avoidance as generations change over). Booker’s ordered a round of beer for all of them, ensured that he’d selected each of their favorites and instructed the bartender to keep them coming all afternoon, before stepping away— as close to out of sight, out of mind as he could possibly think the rest of them would tolerate.

He’s doing his best not to antagonize them any more than he already has— staying close enough to feel like they’ve got adequate supervision on him, and yet staying far enough away to keep from starting an actual brawl.

Meanwhile, Nile’s claimed a table in the back. It’s their usual spot— the one high-top that’s got the most obvious throw of tactical advantage in the place. Nile doesn’t wave when she spots Andy in the pub’s gloom, but she manages a stiff smile before she glances over her shoulder towards the wrap-around balcony to which Booker has retreated.

“He thinks you’re all gonna rip his limbs off or some shit,” Nile states, with that wonderfully refreshing, un-subtle archness of hers. “Seems pretty sure about it.”

“He’s been drawn and quartered before,” Andy replies, knowingly side-stepping Nile’s unspoken question. “He knows there’s a particular appeal to it as a punishment for us.”

Nile doesn’t take Andy’s shit and shoots a flat look her way that makes old warrior, unbearably, want to flash a cheeky smile. It hurts for Andy to feel such lightness in her chest when her heart is hung so heavy.

“We can’t just let this go, Nile,” Andy tells her, sympathetic.

The kid’s only known Booker a few days. She can’t possibly fathom the sting of this betrayal— can’t possibly grasp how it feels to have a rent torn through their reality when they’ve lived with such a small circle of Family being the only people in the world they trust.

It’s not her fault that she can’t understand, not by any means, but that doesn’t change how she truly cannot understand it.

Nile’s part of the Family, now, so she deserves to weigh in, but she’s just a baby…

Andy aches with pity for her— pity mixed with pride— and let’s her smile soften as the ghosts of 6000 years flicker through the shadows trapped behind her eyes.

Nile draws breath to say something more, but she doesn’t get a chance before Joe and Nicky walk in. They look better, Andy notes with the kind of relief that hits like a car crash, but they also look haunted in a way she’s never seen in them before.

Even after losing Quynh, even after nearly losing touch with Andy (as Andy nearly lost herself to the throes of a depressive psychosis that made her lash out), they’d never broached the sorry state of looking even half this fucking devastated.

They have every reason to feel that way, Andy knows, but as the debate over what to do about Booker gets started— with Nile wanting nothing more than an apology from the man who’d betrayed them and Joe wanting to send large dismembered pieces of him to the moon— Andy feels more and more exhausted.

The ‘debate’ soon becomes a mostly circular argument between Joe and Nile.

Nicky shows his favor for one side’s point or the other’s in a pantomime of subtle touches, nods, and eyebrow raises. He doesn’t just blindly support Joe in this— in anything, really… (it’s endlessly comforting for Andy to be reminded of how healthy their relationship is and how Nicky has remained wholly his own person even after a thousand years as part of a set binary-unit)— but he doesn’t speak up with any of his own suggestions, points, or grievances.

Andy just stares at the ceiling.

She listens to their points, listens to both sides.

Gets more and more frustrated with what she’s hearing from them— frustrated with them altogether. As they’ve been arguing, Andy has realized something very important about the little family she’s managed to gather around her.

“You’re all such fucking children,” she mutters— loud enough for them to hear, apparently, as they abruptly stop arguing and stare at her with a mix of confusion and insult.

Andy is not a mother to these people. At most, she’s an older sister, much older, maybe, but just a sister— not someone who should be in a position to dictate right from wrong for them.

But they are just all so fucking young.

A thousand years is nothing.

Joe and Nicky are like teenagers to her, suddenly— teenagers, at best.

Booker is a toddler in a tantrum and Nile, poor sweet fucking Nile, is an innocent, gurgling infant with that blindingly happy baby innocence shining from her frickin’ skin.

“Why’d he do it?” Andy mutters, gaze drifting out towards Booker’s back.

“He wanted it to end,” Nicky supplies, the reserved statement lilted in Nicky’s way of recognizing that a deeper question should be asked while admitting that he doesn’t know what that question should be.

“Bastard just wanted to get himself an out,” Joe spits, snarling into his beer as Nicky joins Andy in looking out the window at Booker’s back.

Andy sags in her seat.

She knows it’s not that fucking simple.

And she knows they know it, too.

Booker did this for himself, yes, but he also did it for her.

And she can’t imagine that he did what he did without knowing that it would be enough to affect Joe and Nicky, too. That he did it without realizing that escape for him and Andy meant something horrible to Nicky and Joe…

But there’s another question, too, one that not even Nile has thought to ask yet.

Joe and Nile’s argument has picked back up while Andy’s gotten lost inside her head.

It stops abruptly as Andy kicks out at the stool across from her and curses as she hits the table with her fist. They stare at her in various stages of grief and high concern as she stands up and stalks out to the rail where Booker’s banished himself to standing vigil.

“Why Copley?”

Booker blinks and frowns at her with a clear pain in his eyes.

“Answer me, Book,” Andy snarls, eyes on the ocean. “Why fucking Copley?”

Booker tries, shifting uneasily beside Andy as a few false starts claw up his throat. Andy lets him be, leaves him to struggle instead of barking at him to get on with it. She knows he’s trying, that he’s forcing himself to really answer instead of giving her an easy line meant mostly to provoke her righteous fury.

Knowing that he’s really trying does not stop Andy’s grip on the rail from going white-knuckled as he struggles to get his stupid shit together.

And then, finally, Booker sighs and huffs the confession, “I believed him.”

Andy’s posture doesn’t change a fraction, but her eyes snap sideways to assess the loose, defeated curl of his posture.

“I believed him, Andy,” Booker says again, telling her heavily, “I believed in him.”

“And Merrick?”

Booker doesn’t flinch at Andy’s venom. He just looks ashamed.

“I never met him,” Booker admits. “Copley found him and said he was the right person for it all. I checked him out, but he wasn’t very social. And I guess he was just too young or too careful for any big scandals to have come to light. His company had done some legitimately good things, things that have directly saved thousands of lives. What I found seemed solid.”

The regret and pain and self-loathing are all pitiably evident in his little speech— it’s the most words he’s strung together with her since… long before they stormed Copley’s home office.

“He was a kid,” Andy almost agreed. “200 years, and you’re still a fucking dumbass when it comes to trusting kids… but why Copley? Why trust that jerkwad so damn much?”

Booker doesn’t answer right away— can’t answer, more like.

“Because he believes in you,” Booker says, closing his eyes and hanging his head like a man at prayer— his voice cracked with the weight of fraying Faith.

It makes Andy turn to face him more fully, makes her have to fight hard to hold back from breaking her fist on his face at the painful thought that anyone might still believe in the pathetic god damn wreck of a useless, fragile fucking person she’s become.

She’d been an impotent immortal for a century, at least. And these last few decades…

Her efforts to save the world have all been nothing but a futile drop in the god damn ocean, and if she’s honest with herself, Andy can admit that all her efforts had probably always been a senseless and pitiably ineffective pretense at helping people… all 6000 years of this shit.

It had all just been something shiny and simple to flatter her own damn ego.

She’d never really saved anyone.

She’d kept a couple people alive, sure, but she’d never really made things better.

Not in any way that mattered in the long run.

But Booker turns to her, looking more broken than she’s ever seen a man survive and says, “You do so much good, Andy… We do so much good. And Copley sees it. This was supposed to be a gift, to all of us— to the whole god damn world. It was supposed to be one more bit of good, but one that could give us something back, for once.”

It hurts like nothing Andy’s ever felt to have that flung at her, to feel a cherry-picked array of words she knows she’s said too often to ignore their clear impact on her team… It hurts too much to ignore the bite of having that impact thrown back in her pathetic, ancient face.

“Maybe we don’t fucking deserve it,” Andy spits, pushing off the rail and storming back inside the pub— running away to where she knows Booker won’t follow.

The others are looking at her expectantly as she throws herself back into her previously abandoned chair and chugs her beer as fast as she can down it— mortal liver be damned.

When the glass is empty, she slams it down and kicks herself back until her chair is tipping at a dangerous angle with her neck wholly exposed and pointed up to the ceiling.

“God damn fucker really thought this shit would help,” she reports— uncertain if the wail she hears behind the words is clear in her voice or simply screaming in her skull.

- - - - -

Author's Notes:

I love Andy's complicated relationship with Booker, truly.

NEXT TIME: Booker reflects on his own actions, mistakes, and shortcomings. Until someone makes him think about his potential.

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<3

[shiobookmark]

Binge watching Merlin when you’re familiar with the stories is such a weird experience. I need to vent. 

I have so many problems with the show. They mostly boil down to the fact that there’s an awful lot of character development that drags its feet for several seasons before picking up all at once, meaning characters can seem to never learn their lesson only to make huge strides in the course of an episode seemingly at random. And unfortunately, Arthur is the biggest victim of this. And the show suffers for it. I was doubtful he’d make a good Arthur at first, but mum, who’d seen the series before, assured me it was all in service of his character development. And there is a great arc struggling under there somewhere, but it’s mired down in seasons and seasons of episodic ‘monster of the week’ stuff where Arthur waffles back and forth in his ideals. I know what they’re trying to do but the effect seems more like Arthur is a weak-minded man who follows only what he believes other people think is right. He learns his lesson about this again and again and it never seems to take. The unicorn, the execution at Agravaine’s order, the ghostly child, and just recently the Disir. It’s episode 5 of the final season. There’s only eight episodes left. Yet here he is, prancing into the sacred grove with no regard for the laws and customs, every bit the arrogant jock, much like he did in season one.  It ignores his character development. Arthur knows better by now. Yet for plot reasons all that has to be thrown out the window. He’ll turn on a dime and be forthright and humble a few minutes from now- oh yes, there he goes. How is he still a creature of hindsight? Where was this wise kingly fellow an hour before? Another problem is Merlin. Early on the show really suffered from Disney morality, how Merlin couldn’t be responsible for anyone’s death. Now it suffers from protagonist-centred morality. In the later seasons Arthur just follows along with whatever Merlin thinks is best, even if he resists at first. It’s supposed to show that he’s learned to listen to others, but because he can never make a right decision first time, he ends up seeming more like Merlin’s puppet.

The most egregious example of this is this episode, where Arthur faces a dilemma and outright asks Merlin what he should do... and does it. Which then means Mordred survives and Arthur is doomed. It wasn’t really Arthur’s choice, was it? Not a product of his own beliefs and actions, it could have easily swung the other way. The choice was Merlin’s. How are we supposed to root for Arthur that way? The show’s called Merlin so I understand that it has to follow his perspective, but there are far better ways to do that. Look at the trilogy by Mary Stewart. Her Merlyn doesn’t spend as much time at Arthur’s side, but you could easily write similar stories where he does. Merlyn has his own enemies, his own goals, he loves Arthur and helps him but they are his own adventures. They’ve started calling Arthur The Once and Future King out of nowhere now and it’s weird. Why would people call him that. They have no idea he’s going to die and be destined to return. What the fuck. And it’s not that I dislike the show I actually really like it? It’s got some ‘it’s so bad it’s good’ qualities for the first two seasons but after Richard Wilson (Gaius) finally learned to act with more emotion than a wooden spoon it really picked up. There was good payoff in some bits. Morgana was a bit forced and I could have used a few less false starts with her hatred of Uther (how many times can she almost betray him?) and a bit more exploration into why she hates Arthur other than ‘he’s Uther’s son.’ She loved Arthur until her villain arc what the actual fuck And her actor is terrible but nevermind they all are I just particularly despise the smoozy style she adopts

Uther in general is great I just needed a lot less of him Arthur should have become king at the end of season 1, maybe the middle of season 2. Not season 4. Uther ends up being an annoying thorn in Arthur’s side. It’s a game of ‘what stupid shit is Uther gonna pull this episode and have they beefed up security on the dungeons yet?’ The episode where he comes back as a ghost and Arthur finally tells him where to shove it was brilliant and I loved every second of it. I was afraid it was going to be yet another ‘Arthur doubts himself and reverts to the path of a tyrant before he sees the error of his ways’ episode but it wasn’t, which was nice. They dallied around so much I only really started enjoying the show once Arthur became king. Because there were stakes. We got to see what he was made of. But the biggest problem I have with the show, is the treatment of magic. The old religion had a bit of an image problem within the show itself because other than Gaius and Merlin, no one seems to use it ‘correctly.’ And boy does that open up a can of worms.  But I was willing to roll with it. There’s been a lot more specifically Celtic stuff in later seasons which I appreciate as it certainly works better than the weird grab bag of monsters we had previously. (But what happened to Tristan after Isolde died? He just vanished once he served his narrative purpose.) It’s just as of this latest episode, Arthur is being blackmailed into bowing down before the triple goddess or else he and his kingdom will fall to ruin. And that’s... not okay. That’s the same kind of shit Uther did. It’s Might makes Right.  It’s religious oppression. ‘If you don’t do what we want then you’ll suffer.’ Arthur is supposed to be about Might for Right*. Objectively he shouldn’t stand for this shit. But because it’s the Old Religion ooooooh how mystical and shit, he has to. Because protagonist-centred morality. Why didn’t this happen to Uther? Has Arthur been continuing the executions? Has he been encouraging the hunting down of Sorcerers? We know he goes after the dangerous ones, but is his ‘outlawing’ of magic a ‘supporting them under the table’ sort of deal or is he as ruthless as Uther? We don’t know. And now that the show has committed to specifically the Triple Goddess branch of paganism rather than just vague mostly made up stuff with a Celtic ‘flavour’ it has some really nasty real world connotations. We’ve never seen benevolent magic users outside of Merlin and Gaius, or if we did they died. The Druids are sometimes around but they’re more like plot devices for when the show needs some wise and pacifistic victims. It’s really uncomfortable. They’ve just doomed Arthur by having Mordred live, because he refused to embrace magic. Or as I’d put it: Because he refused to bow to tyranny. Arthur promised to make life better for magic users and he broke that promise. Taking him to task for that is more than okay. Have the Druids do it. Have them demand recompense and then let Arthur do what he does best: Forge alliances.  We’ve seen him do this. We’ve seen him face up to the consequences of his hasty and violent actions before, we’ve seen him behave with grace and humility and turn enemies into friends. It’s what makes him a good Arthur. Instead we’ve got this crap that’s supposed to be about not defying the natural laws of the world, but because it’s specifically a religion it’s just really gross. And finally, Mordred. What even is his deal. He’s given a pisspoor reason to hate Merlin way back in season 2 or something when Merlin trips him up with a tree root to hopefully get him killed by the pursuing knights because he’s destined to kill Arthur And somehow that’s supposed to be a grudge he holds into adulthood. But grown up Mordred seems a nice fellow, he’s put all that behind him. And he’s supposed to be Arthur’s doom. This is going to be rushed as all hell isn’t it? The problem is Mordred was never given a legitimate grievance to replace the one he lost when he stopped being related to Arthur. Going the incestuous bastard baby route isn’t necessary since it’s actually a modern addition, but having Mordred be Arthur’s cousin might have worked just as well. The problem is Morgana has taken all that over. What I would do is have Mordred be Merlin’s character foil. A sweet kid who grew up with the Druids and becomes a Knight because he, like Merlin, believes he’s destined to do great things. But he makes the opposite choices to Merlin about magic. He’s open about his beliefs, hoping to find understanding and instead Arthur rejects him. He looks for support from Merlin but finds none. He swears to hurt Merlin however he can as a traitor to their kind. And the best way to do that is to kill Arthur.

Bonus rant: Lancelot is boring. I like his actor, he does the noble and handsome bit right but his character has no texture or grit to him. Give me TH White’s ugly angst muffin any day. The Lancelot/Guinevere romance subplot was lame as hell and it only really delivered when Guinevere was enchanted into having an affair with his ghost. I prefer to think there was no enchantment but gotta keep things squeaky clean. Guinevere can’t just love two people simultaneously I guess, gods dammit.

It’s Arthurian legend with all the edges sanded down smooth and a lot of pacing problems.

[theliterarywolf]

So, Let’s Talk ‘Love Death and Robots (Episodes 10-18)

Hey guys, I finally decided to finish off my write-up on Netflix's Love Death and Robots, even though I hope that anyone who wanted to give the show a chance has by now. If you need a bit more coaxing, I covered the first 9 episodes here (you can also find my rating system explained there) and I go over the last 9 episodes here.

Oh, also... I know that there's the whole 'Netflix arranges to episode order based on your sexual orientation' thing going on. Even though I think that's kind of bunk because I don't recall Netflix sending me an email to ask 'Hey, so... can we know if you're straight or not?'

I’m going by the episodic order on my first and second viewings.

Let's get started.

Episode 10 – Shape-Shifters

I know people have been making the jokes of 'Lol, who was the closeted gay Republican furry who wrote this short~?” But, God, can... Can we please get more domestic supernatural pieces like this?

Homoerotic subtext or not, watching this story reminded me of one of my grievances whenever I try to wade through the muck and the mire that is the Kindle Store: that being, in regards to MLM writing, you're either a cowboy or a werewolf.

And no one does anything unique with writing gay cowboys or gay werewolves. It's always 'I'm a closeted, homophobic son of a bitch who needs my heart melted by the northern newcomer and their high-falutin' ways' or 'we're werewolves so we have to live by A/B/O-Omegaverse rules, I guess???'

The execution of this story, the melding of fantasy and the real world is something that I like to see in media but, more than often, is shat out into a mess of awkward writing and characters. I'm looking at you, Bright.

Did it Have a Robot – Yes? Or No?

No, this is more of a fantasy, horror, military-drama combo that does wonders.

Could this Stand Its Own as a Feature Film/TV Series?

I mean, with Teen Wolf gone and Supernatural on its way out, I think a fully-developed series leading up to the short that we get here, talking about the main two characters growing up as werewolves and how the world treats them would have a great place in prime-time.

Episode 11 – Helping Hand

127 Hours, eat your fucking heart out! I felt more from this one short about suffering and sacrificing for the sheer essence of surviving the insurmountable than I did with the whole of 127 Hours. Which is kind of bad considering how the latter is based on an actual true story.

Did it Have a Robot – Yes? Or No?

The main reason the main character has to do what she does is because she's doing maintenance on a space-station.

Could this Stand Its Own as a Feature Film/TV Series?

I think this stands better on its own as is.

Episode 12 – Fish Night

(No Gif for this one. Pity...)

Allow me a second.

…

Okay.

If you've ever watched something like Disney's Fantasia or James Cameron's Avatar (Disclaimer – If anyone tries to insinuate that I would ever put Avatar on the same level as any Disney film in terms of quality/re-watchability, I will slap you), you get the sentiments of: 'this exists to be a very, fancy, elegant tech-demo. I know I shouldn't think about story, but I am, and all I see is a very fancy tech-demo'.

That's the notion one gets with Fish Night. Another 2D addition to LDaR, the story of two business men stranded in a desert and the beauty of the natural world of past and present is visually stunning but, as soon as that night falls, you're going to know exactly what is happening for the rest of the story.

But it sure is pretty, though!

Did it Have a Robot – Yes? Or No?

Nope. It was just really pretty.

Could this Stand Its Own as a Feature Film/TV Series?

Nope. It's just really pretty.

Episode 13 – Lucky 13

The second of the stories in LDaR that has a 'last-stand' tilt, even though it doesn't kick in until the end. However, before that, I really enjoy what is another story with a legitimately strong female character, who also happens to be a woman of color, who comes up from the adversity of being a novice pilot and being given an airship with the most unfortunate of reputations to manage.

The relationship between the main character and the ship 'Lucky 13' is really what makes this story stand out.

Which... is ultimately bad for the story that rounds out the collection. But, that will come later.

Did it Have a Robot – Yes? Or No?

The characters are essentially space-marines and they drive around in airships, what more do you need?

Could this Stand Its Own as a Feature Film/TV Series?

Maybe a feature film. But it would have to devote every minute of a film's run-time to developing the universe and personalities of the human characters.

Episode 14 – Zima Blue

Admittedly, this one managed to keep me in suspense until the focus of the story first made himself visible. After that, we're taken on a minute trip through the phenomena of true talent, existentialism, and the concept of joy and self.

And... that's all I will say on that one.

Did it Have a Robot – Yes? Or No?

Ooh, does this one have a robot...

Could this Stand Its Own as a Feature Film/TV Series?

You know, this one is a bit tricky. Maybe not a feature-length film but not pulled out into a TV series either. A thirty-minute short film, perhaps, would let the setting and artwork shine more.

Episode 15 – Blindspot

(No Gif again...)

You know, I keep forgetting that this one exists. It's not even that it was bad, it just...

Okay, so I watch a review channel on YouTube from time to time called “Double Toasted” and, even though I don't agree with about 75% of their stance on LDaR, what they said about this one was pretty spot on.

It's reminiscent of the classic Saturday Morning Cartoons of the 80s... Just with more swearing and death.

Because, yeah, this story follows a team of multi-colored androids driving EXTREME! vehicles while trying to steal a secret computer-chip from a carrier convoy. And all of the androids represent a common character trope seen in those sorts of cartoons: the Cool Dude leader, the brawny idiot, the smart-talking girl, and the green-behind-the-ears junior character.

I actually liked the animation to this one but story-wise it really is just your EXTREME! Saturday Morning cartoon with cursing and violence.

Did it Have a Robot – Yes? Or No?

Yeah, the entire cast.

Could this Stand Its Own as a Feature Film/TV Series?

Maybe a TV series... Ooh, especially if it was done by someone like Christy Karacas (Superjail! and BallMasterz: 9009)

Episode 16 – Ice Age

(I should probably come to the conclusion that no one on this site cared enough about these last few shorts...)

Okay, this one I feel cheated in order to be included in here because it honestly feels so out of place. You get to follow a new, quirky couple moving into their first place together and, whoa-oh! They find an old freezer and decide to look inside to decide whether or not they should keep it!

… And, inside, is a micro-ecosystem that shows the entire past, present, and future of the human-race before blazing out in a fluorescent heat-death in front of their eyes.

All while said quirky couple makes commentary on what they're seeing.

I still don't know what animation was used for a good portion of the freezer-scenes. Was it CG combined with scaled-down camera or what?

Did it Have a Robot – Yes? Or No?

Tech... nically...

Could this Stand Its Own as a Feature Film/TV Series?

Oh, honey, no... A feature-length film of this would be on the same level of all of those ironic romcoms we got in that painful period of the early 2000s and a TV series of this would be canceled after three episodes.

Episode 17 – Alternate Histories

Look, I get where people come from with Alternate Histories: 'this one was goofy', 'it ran a bit too long', 'fake news'. And, honestly, when the title first showed up on my screen, I was cringing because I was sure they were going to spend 8 or 10 minutes of talking about a certain annoying pumpkin man.

However, I actually had fun with this one. Yeah, it seems like the flow and writing seems more like it would be at home on something like Robot Chicken at times, but I still liked it.

Besides, we get to watch a little Cartoon Hitler being killed over and over and over. What's not to like?

Did it Have a Robot – Yes? Or No?

The Alternate History software in of itself is reminiscent to your 'what-if' tropes in science fiction. Just condensed and split apart into a few different scenarios.

Could this Stand Its Own as a Feature Film/TV Series?

I couldn't see a full film or series of this working but maybe, like I said, if an entire episode of something like Robot Chicken was just dedicated to making up a dozen different ways to kill Hitler, that would be pretty interesting to watch.

Episode 18 – The Secret War

This, I feel, is the true casualty of LDaR. Not because it's bad on a technical level, it's actually visually stunning. Not because it's bad on a story-telling level, the writing is actually solid.

No, the main fault of The Secret War... Is that it is the last story in LDaR.

That it's the THIRD 'Last-Stand' story we've seen in an anthology of 18 different stories. I can understand the team behind LDaR wanting to have something like this be its finisher because, as I said, the art direction and writing behind it are really worthy of some fine cinema.

But it would have been better for everyone involved if they had swapped this one's position with something like Zima Blue or Lucky 13. By this point in watching the series, you're kind of reflecting on the darker stories but appreciating the lighter ones as well. So you'd want something with a little bit of hope to finish things off with.

And, trust me: those who know me know that I'm a proponent of 'more dark stories in media/not everything needs a happy ending'. This one just needed to be earlier in the anthology because, oof, I just was not able to get invested in the characters and their struggle. You know that it's not going to end well, you're just watching characters march towards their deaths.

And, again, this would have been fine... Had it been episode 6 or 8. But, no, this is how we decide to end off this cavalcade of high-concept art.

Think back to Night on Bald Mountain from the Original Fantasia. Yes, the initial orgy of horror and fright from Chernabog and his minions is a decadent display but a lot of its weight and impact would have been lost if the film just ended with that. That's why having the brief ending of the Ave Maria segment works: to keep things balanced so that everything in Fantasia can be appreciated in checks and balances.

LDaR unfortunately didn't have that foresight. So, what should have been a feast feels more like a push to get through.

Did it Have a Robot – Yes? Or No?

No, this was one of the fantasy/horror pieces.

Could this Stand Its Own as a Feature Film/TV Series?

Honestly, I'm not sure. Maybe a feature-length film just so that the universe and characters can present themselves on their own, rather than having to bear the weight of being the big finisher to the impact of 17 other stories. But it would still be a risk.

So, those are my thoughts on Love Death and Robots. Personally, I would LOVE for there to be a season 2 of this with more writers involved so we can get an overall more distinct portfolio of writing approaches (as well as maybe serve as a springboard for up-and-coming writers, hm..?)

I do acknowledge the risk of making something like this a yearly thing (many critics of Black Mirror insist that the series' recent low-points are due to the writers having to constantly come back and try to one-up their poignancy), but I think the risks would be dealt with if, again, more writers were allow to join in.

Oh well, feel free to tell me how you felt and what your personal favorites were. Thanks for reading and have a good one!

[qqueenofhades]

So after the spate of high-profile celebrity suicides recently, and the short-lived discussion of mental health that surrounds them (kind of like the way the gun control debate appears for a week after a mass shooting and then vanishes), I have had some probably disconnected thoughts that I finally felt like putting down somewhere (and honestly, I had most of this post typed up and then tumblr deleted it, so... round two and Fuck You Very Much Tumblr). I briefly thought about putting it on facebook, but a) fuck facebook, I’m barely on it anymore, and b) everyone that I care about is either or also here. So I guess it’s once more using the big blue hellsite as a diary, because I was awake until 1am last night talking to myself about this, and writing is how I work things out.

As ever, please do not feel obliged to read the post or whatever else, especially if you’re uncomfortable with the themes/subjects discussed. Again, it’s essentially for my own benefit and trying to organize things I’ve wanted to say, as a long-term sufferer of depression and anxiety who is also having a really tough time now, and how I see that reflecting on what’s happening both with me and the wider world.

Anyway.

I feel like my main reaction is one of weariness that so much of the response is “get help if you’re struggling! Reach out! Call someone! Things will get better!” Which is... helpful in its way, and I genuinely believe that the people reblogging suicide hotline numbers and “don’t kill yourself” posts and so on really want to help. I am not one to point fingers at anyone who really wants to reach out and do something to make a difference. But that’s also it? We’re barely getting to the place of recognizing depression as a legitimate problem and not stigmatizing people who have it (hah), but to me, it sounds so much like “well, I know you have two broken legs and can’t stand upright, but you should still go walk to the clinic and ask them to help you.” Again. Important. But why is so much of it centered around the assumption that the depression sufferer has the responsibility to go on an individual basis and try therapy or meds or whatever, while the mental health services that even exist are being slashed? While some people seem perfectly happy to talk about how mental health is the problem, and not readily legal assault rifles and a culture of white male entitlement and grievance), and the assumption remains that we can just treat depression on an individual, ad hoc basis, rather than looking at it systematically.

We’ve had a ton of studies and research showing that depression rates are way up, that a lot of people identify as having anxiety and mental issues and are messed up out the wazoo (which frankly, I think most of us are), and then the attendant “everyone’s a snowflake, buck up and take it on the chin!” backlash, because frankly the world is horrible and society sucks. (This opinion is sometimes subject to revision, but still.) Honestly, is this any surprise? When we’re in collapsing late-stage capitalism that has basically utterly fucked everyone born after 1980, we live in this awareness that things are systematically and unbearably evil and oppressive but the vast majority of us have no ability to do anything about that, and birth rates and marriage rates are declining because people (completely understandably) don’t want to bring children into this nightmare of a world and are realizing that traditional ideals of marriage and sexual morality are BS.... I mean, are we surprised that people just don’t want to live in this world anymore? When I find myself worrying about the idea of taking on another student loan (another of the basic commodities that it has become expected that you’ll go tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for) and then am like, “well, there’s a less than zero chance that Western civilization collapses in my lifetime/the next ten years, and I’m going to die in debt anyway, so...”, there’s a sense of surreality and almost despondency that we’re able to know more than ever how shitty things are, but again, can’t do anything about it. Again. We can’t fix depression by telling people individually to go try therapy or whatever else. It doesn’t get at the reasons that so many of us just can’t stand the world anymore.

I feel like I’ve settled well on my belief that people, even if often beholden to centuries-old bullshit and tribalism and prejudice, are individually good, often amazingly and soul-sustainingly so (I’m not joking when I say that I would probably be dead by now if not for the kindness of strangers and friends, including many of you who I’ve met here), but society and the overall structure is pretty much rotten. We find ways to manage, to exist, to ameliorate, to distract, and I am honestly delighted for the people who can live more or less happy existences despite everything, have found a way to do that. Again, this isn’t a “don’t go to therapy!!” sort of post, because yes, if you’re depressed, you have to decide whether and how you want to get better. But sometimes you just can’t fucking do that. You just exist this way and you know how it is and it becomes sort of familiar and accounted for. 

I’m lucky to be a mostly high-functioning sufferer, who has lived with long-term and chronic depression and anxiety since at least the age of 18 (and probably, through most of my childhood as well), which has left me latently suicidal, physically fucked up, mentally exhausted, and emotionally isolated for my entire adult life. But I’ve also managed to hold jobs and complete several advanced degrees and get out of bed and put on makeup and keep my commitments and so on and otherwise outwardly resemble a normal person. So I then read posts about people who can’t get out of bed or even brush their teeth, and I start wondering if I “really” have depression or it’s just an excuse or I’m a weak person or just broken somehow else. Which is 0% helpful and is the bad brain talking, as I recognize. Looking at me from the outside, it feels like you wouldn’t guess, which also seems to be a theme with the celebrities who died. They always seemed happy and well put together and confident, until they didn’t. I turn 30 this August, and feel about 800.

And yet. I have made the choice to live, and I have continued to make the choice, and I have learned that I have a lot of strength I didn’t know I did, and I am proud of that. But I also read a post by someone I otherwise admire and whose work I really like, about how you can’t ever have the life you want until you take suicide off the table as an option, as if you can just choose once to live and not think about it again. And I just am like... how? I’ve made it before and I’ll have to do it again, but god, I wish with my entire heart that I could just make it once and not look back. I wish I could ever be confident that I could say without qualification that I want to live more than I want to die. Because well, I DON’T want to die, not really. I find things that make me happy and that give me small joys and distract me and which I enjoy. I still have a lot of things I want to do (even while feeling I won’t get the chance) and feel like it would be stupid to die because my brain doesn’t work. So I’m still here. I’ve never made a serious attempt to kill myself, and I obviously hope that doesn’t change. But it remains in the back of my head, the idea that I just wish I could switch off for five years and come back and find that things have somehow worked out. Which obviously is not the way it works, and you don’t get to temporarily go away. But this world is so hard and so tiring to live in, and sometimes it gets to me.

As for the getting help part -- I’ve been trying to do that myself recently. Go to counselling services and the university support centre and whatever else, even though it causes me anxiety to the point of physically messing me up. It feels like being drunk or hungover or just off balance and unable to see or breathe normally. I convulse in bed at night and wake up just as tired when I went to sleep and just don’t feel like I run correctly. And this is from a relatively high-functioning person who isn’t trying to stop herself (at least currently) from suicide, but just enough to keep her going. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be a person depressed to the point of being unable to get out of bed, told to call someone or reach out or whatever else. That’s practically inhumane. We live, for better or worse, in a Western “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” culture that puts the onus on the individual to fix their own problems. When honestly, the collective society that exists right now is a toxic, oppressive, and impossible one that keeps chewing up people from every walk of life and which nobody with the actual ability to do anything about it seems to want to change. Encouraging individuals with depression to seek help is nice, sure. But until something fundamentally and permanently changes in society and how we view our obligations to each other and what we are willing to do to help and to change this culture that tells you you’re responsible for your own illness, people are going to keep dying from depression in droves, and everyone else is just going to figure we’re weak. Or there will be a short-lived mental health awareness campaign, and nice things will be said, and then it will be back to business as usual.  Because man, are we good at burying our heads in the sand for any number of things.

The choice to live doesn’t usually have the luxury of being made once and then never revisited. You have to do it yearly, monthly, weekly, sometimes even daily. And frankly, I don’t blame anyone who feels that the cost-benefit analysis doesn’t really add up to staying here anymore. I’m here certainly in part because of you here on tumblr, who have indirectly (and sometimes directly) saved my life. You have talked with me on text or email or in person for years, have read my fics and thought of things you wanted to tell me and sent me nice messages and otherwise made me feel less invisible. Your kindness has been often what has sustained me, and made me decide that I’d rather be here than anywhere else, and given me what little faith in humanity I have left. And one of the reasons I write all the time (books/fics/asks/metas/papers/theses/projects...etc) is because I literally cannot stand to live in my own head if I don’t. I do love creating things and am happy that people enjoy what I post here, and it’s a major source of pleasure and distraction for me. But I also do it because I will literally cease to function (in what limited capacity I have) if I don’t. I have to do it in order to live with myself and this monster at all, and that is also tiring. 

Overall, we’re all fucked-up people with a very dark sense of humor, whose compassion and conscience is about all we have going for us, and we just have to try to cling together and do for each other what we can. And god, I’m grateful for it. I have a lot of financial terror right now in addition to everything else, and am looking into the aforementioned student loan for short-term stabilizing (limited work rights are a Bitch), and I basically paid my rent last month because of you guys. So yeah, you’ve made the difference for a stranger on the internet being homeless or not, and I have no idea why, but please know that it means more to me than I can ever say, and I hope to give back what I can.

(I also still have a Kofi account, while I’m trying to get things under control here, so... again, entirely up to you.)

I’m not sure how I will make it to December and (supposedly, ha) my PhD graduation, let alone after that. I will probably have to choose to live again several more times between now and then, and then again after that. I hope I can continue to do that. And I hope I can talk to you, both if you need someone to listen and whatever I can do for you by that, and if I do the same.

If you’ve read all the way to the bottom, mazel tov. 

[gascon-en-exil]

A Not Actually Definitive Ranking of Fire Emblem Games

So after a lot of deliberation I’ve decided not to revisit last year’s Zelda ranking project on a full scale for FE, but that doesn’t mean it’s not something I really wanted to do. 2018 is the year we’re going to get alternatively hyped for and disappointed by FE16, after all. With that in mind have an abbreviated list that will end up being one very long post. I’ve got games to gush over and an anon or two (and very likely actual followers…eep) to piss off, so here we go.

The “personal favorites of the series, love revisiting them” Tier - FE10, FE2/15, FE4

I’m never going to argue that Radiant Dawn is a perfect game or even just a perfect FE game, but damned if it doesn’t manage to do so much right all at once. An extremely ambitious story that builds off its mostly conventional predecessor in a variety of interesting ways, deconstructing a bunch of series narrative standards (life in a defeated country kind of sucks and there are people that don’t warm that quickly to young and inexperienced rulers, go figure) and taking an eleventh hour hard right at Nietzchean atheism as read by a Pride parade. Kind of falls on its ass by the end, but every experimental FE story does the same thing so I can’t fault this one. I love the army switching as motivation to try different units almost as much as I love the oh-so-exploitable growth and BEXP mechanics. Its Easy mode also hits a sweet spot for me of being challenging enough to not be a complete snore while also allowing the freedom for all manner of weird self-imposed challenges that don’t even require grinding. By all accounts Hard mode is one lazy design choice after another, but I don’t play at that level so no complaints here.

Never played Gaiden, but to its credit around half of the unique gameplay mechanics I like in Shadows of Valentia were also in the original: the modest army size, the novel approaches to inventory management and magic, the pretty basic class system with just a hint of nuance. The remake threw in some hit-or-miss questing, dungeon exploration, and achievements, but all the rest was either a solid addition or a continuation of NES-era annoyances that I could live with. And the story…SoV makes me dislike the DS games even more just because this game does so much with so little. Even leaving aside the mostly great voice acting there’s a bunch of new content that characterizes almost everybody and makes half of them (the men, anyway, because this is a remake of a Kaga-era game and therefore misogynistic as can be) gay because why the hell not, and then some development that constitutes the only solid attempt at worldbuilding Archanea-Valentia-Ylisse has ever really gotten and also retcons some stuff from Awakening into making sense. It’s even got some solid DLC with lots of character stuff for the Deliverance, the least sucky grinding of the 3DS games, and probably the only context in which I’ll ever be able to comment on anything from Cipher.

No remake needed for Genealogy of the Holy War to make it competitive with the rest of the top tier - just an excellent translation patch and the standard features of an emulator. I’ve never watched Game of Thrones and probably don’t plan on it, but I gather that this game provides the same essential experience with less blood and female nudity and marginally more egalitarianism for all. I can forgive it for being the original Het Baby Fest since you’d be hard-pressed to find a single entirely healthy and well-adjusted individual anywhere on Jugdral and I relate to that just as much. Screwed up family dynamics for everyone! It’s also arguably got a more fun breeding meta than either of the 3DS games, lacking Awakening’s optimization around a single postgame map with very specific parameters or Fates’s high level of balance that ironically stymies analysis. This is another game for interesting inventory management and unit leveling that isn’t too obnoxious, which mostly makes up for the maps taking an eon to play through even with an emulator speeding through those enemy phases. This would be a strange game to remake, but if it got a localized one of the same caliber as SoV I fully acknowledge that this could climb to the #2 spot. SoV would probably have the queer edge though unless they do some strange things to the plot or just make Gen 2 really gay…but then again Gen 2 is the part that’s more in need of fleshing out as it is. (Also, this game has So. Much. Incest. That’s not even really a kink of mine especially as it’s all straight incest, but I just find that hilarious in light of how Tumblr’s purity culture speaks of such things.)

The “good games, but don’t come back to them as much” Tier - FE7, FE9, FE8

Blazing Sword is not here for nostalgia purposes, especially since when I first played the game at 14 years old most of what I like about it didn’t really register. It was just that game with RPG elements that I liked and permadeath that I didn’t, and it took a few games after that for me to become an established fan of the franchise. Massive props for putting such an unconventional spin on a prequel to a textbook FE; this is a game in a series about war in which no war is fought, how crazy is that? We actually get to see the backstory of FE6′s tragic antagonist, even as it’s completely tangential to the plot of this game and so just feels like random Jugdral-esque family drama without context, and on top of that we get the first hints of interdimensional travel and kinky human/shapeshifter sex several years before either of those became controversial talking points about how they were ruining the series. I am so there. Lyn doesn’t matter to the saga, but her character arc is distinct and self-contained and also she picked up a disproportionately large fanbase while being bisexual and biracial so go her. Eliwood is sympathetic and homosocially-inclined even if his growths frequently make me want to cry (at least he gets a horse unlike his similarly-challenged son), and I can live with Hector even if I could have done without his lordly legacy. Throw in some average-for-the-time gameplay with just enough variety across the two routes and even more good character work *waves at Sonia and Renault and Priscilla -> Raven/Lucius and Serra and…* and it’s all in all a solid experience. The ranking system can go die in a fire though, which funnily enough it did after this game. Yay!

Like most early 3D games - except on Gamecube so it’s even more embarrassing - Path of Radiance has aged terribly by every aesthetic measure aside from the soundtrack. It’s also painfully slow, and my computer can’t run Dolphin apparently so an emulator’s not going to fix that for me. Those obvious flaws aside, it’s still an entertaining game, and more importantly it’s the prologue that had the crucial task of setting up all the pins RD knocked over in stellar fashion, whether we’re talking about the basic storyline that actually isn’t or the many het relationship fake-outs (more so in localization…I guess we’ll never know if NoA was actively planning that when they pushed Ike/Elincia like they did). PoR is also a love letter to Jugdral in both gameplay and themes, albeit an occasionally critical one. The jury’s still out on whether Jugdral or Tellius succeeds the most (fails the least?) of the FE settings at developing a complete world with a nuanced and resonant saga narrative, but that Tellius manages to be competitive while being kind of clumsy overall with racism and shifting the series’s overarching motif of dragon-blooded superhumans to one of kinky interracial sex is pretty impressive. The less I say about Ike the better since it’s only his endings in RD that save him for me; suffice it to point out that his worldview and general personality were clearly designed to appeal to a demographic that does not include me.

And finally comes The Sacred Stones, truly my average benchmark FE as I like it but struggle to have any particularly strong feelings on it one way or the other. The story is standard but has a few intriguing quirks, like the light vs. dark magic meta, surprise necrophilia, and how the main antagonist’s sexuality sort of depends on which route you take (except he’s still never getting laid so does it really matter?). It also seems to have been the first game to have made a legitimate effort toward the kind of replayability that’s normal for RPGs, what with the branched promotions, the route split, and the actual postgame. That’s all much more engaging than just filling up a support log. The gameplay is also more polished and (I think?) more balanced than the other GBA games, if one is willing to overlook the minor issue of Seth. Let’s see…something something twincest that’s now an IS running gag, something something guys talking intimately about their lances, something something SoV did the whole dungeon crawling with monsters bit better but I can forgive SS for not taking it that far. Moving on….

The “they have Problems” Tier - FE14, FE13

Probably qualifies as a fandom heresy, but yes I’m putting Fates first of these two. Fates is in every conceivable way for me the “You Tried” game, because I had such high hopes for it from the moment we got the earliest promotional content. I was expecting a World of Warcraft-style conflict between two morally grey factions with myriad convoluted grievances against each other messily resolving themselves one way or the other according to player choice (though note that this is already somewhat damning with faint praise as no one’s going to call WoW a storytelling masterpiece), with Conquest in particular a true villain campaign that I imagined might play out as European Imperialism: The Game. What we actually got was…not that, not at all, but amid all the complaints about plot holes and idiot balls and moral myopia most fans seem to have forgotten just how much there is to this game. It’s three full stories that together average out to be just about passable, with possibly the biggest gameplay variety in the series that fixed most of Awakening’s more broken elements (pair-up, children being unquestionably superior to the first generation) while also adding in new features that undoubtedly appealed to someone or other like Phoenix mode and the castle-building aspect. I can even mostly forgive the obvious growing pains Fates exhibits in terms of queer content, as they were pretty much inevitable once the developers realized that (almost) everyone was picking up on the subtext and that that approach just wasn’t going to cut it anymore. Again, they tried, and if the results included face-touching fanservice and plot contrivances left and right and two-way cultural posturing that inevitably crosses over into real world racism at some point I can still step back for a moment and acknowledge that Fates began as a distinctive, high-concept setting on par with Tellius and Jugdral that was willing to do something different with the narrative norm (for two of its routes at least, and even so I’m not begrudging Birthright its conventionality because that grounding is important overall). And who knows? Maybe a later game will come along and retroactively make this setting coherent.

Fates might have more sexual fanservice, but if there’s any FE that I feel ends up a slave to fanservice in a broader sense it would be Awakening. Yeah, I get that when it was in development everyone thought this would be the final game, so it makes sense that the finished product turned out to be a nostalgia-laden greatest hits piece. It’s still hard to forgive Awakening for feeling so insubstantial, doubly so since it ended up revitalizing the franchise and now it and Fates are everywhere. It’s got a plot that only makes some sense in light of SoV and possibly on a meta level (following my theory that the plot structure is meant to mirror FE1-3 in sequence), the first iteration of an Avatar dating game heavily coloring the characterization and support system, and a queasily feel-good atmosphere that allows almost no character to actually remain dead and centers everything around the self-insert and the power of friendship. So much for the series’s traditionally dim view of human nature and recurring theme of the inevitability of conflict. What’s more, in spite of its theoretically broad scope (including a criminally under-explored time travel plot with a bad future) and numerous call-backs to older games Awakening does surprisingly little for developing the series’s most frequently-visited setting. I think it was in large part how generic this game has always felt to me even before release that I never got very hyped for it and as a consequence was never very disappointed by it. It’s just….there, with its nostalgia and its chronic “no homo” and its host of hilariously broken mechanics. I wonder if we’d have ended up viewing Awakening more favorably if it really had been the last game? Eh, probably not.

The “needs a remake or needs a better remake” Tier - FE5, FE6, FE3/12, FE1/11

I don’t have a specific order for these, except that FE1/11 is almost certainly the bottom since 5 and 6 have remake potential and, lack of localization aside, New Mystery was a better remake than Shadow Dragon.

I still haven’t fully played Thracia 776, but I’ve watched and read through Let’s Plays and have read more than enough analysis and meta on the game to where I can definitively say that I wouldn’t enjoy playing it too much and don’t feel all that emotionally connected to the story except insofar as it relates to the overall Jugdral saga. The concept of a standard FE plot that ends with the playable cast losing is an intriguing one, though they really could have done better than the weird non-ending that is this game’s final boss. I’m also not as invested in Leif the fallen aristocrat as I usually am those types of characters, possibly because it’s a foregone conclusion that he eventually gets his kingship anyway. I would like a remake, hopefully one that smooths over some of the original’s mechanical roughness and also makes a bunch of characters gay because the material’s certainly there in places, but I also admit that I’d rather have a remake of Genealogy first. Or, for that matter….

Binding Blade doesn’t have the potential for an amazing story-driven remake that Thracia does; after all, it’s basically a soft reboot of FE1 with an equally bland lord saved by his Super Smash Bros. fanbase and possibly his weirdly large harem. That said, there’s a fair amount of character potential and worldbuilding opportunities what with the series’s first true support system and the content of its unorthodox prequel. Even by itself I feel like BB does more to sell Elibe as its own distinctive world than any of Marth’s games ever did for Archanea, and that’s even with the reality that like the Archanea games this playable cast is inflated with some really forgettable characters (that seem to have followed a semi-rigid numerical quota by class in this instance. It’s weird.). This game never really stuck in my mind as a good playable experience either, not helped by the fact that it feels simple and antiquated compared not only to the GBA games that followed it but to the Jugdral games that preceded it. Good on them for throwing out some of Thracia’s more unwieldy mechanics, but did they have to throw out skills, hybrid classes, and varied chapter objectives too? The space limitations of the GBA couldn’t have been that severe.

While I’ve been spending much of this post ragging on Archanea, I will say that (New) Mystery of the Emblem has some interesting character beats, like the resolution of the Camus/Nyna/Hardin tragedy, Rickard and the situationally bisexual(?) Julian, and some of the antics of Marth’s retainers. I did like bits of the remake’s new assassin plot even if most of it is cribbed from the Black Fang; Eremiya’s no Sonia, but Clarisse and Katarina have their moments. Also, Kris isn’t that offensive to me since I was never all that engaged in Marth’s inconsistent personality and from what I’ve seen his/her supports don’t all devolve into a dating sim. New Mystery has a broader array of characters than either the original or the previous remake, without requiring the player to kill off characters just to get some of the new ones. That said, the reclassing in the DS games is still broken and allows the player to strip even more character out of their personality-deprived units. I’m getting to the point where I’m having trouble separating the two actually, so I’ll just go ahead and remark that I think everyone can agree that Shadow Dragon is the worst of the three remakes so far, with no supports, the aforementioned killing of units, a prologue that adds to the story but only exists on Normal mode and also requires you to kill someone off (seriously, what is it with this game? Is it commentary on the necessary sacrifices of war that they tried forcing on the player for one game until they realized it was a terrible idea?), the needless removal of features from earlier games like rescuing even as others like weapon ranks and forging were left in, that first clumsy iteration of reclassing, and little to nothing that I can see as elevating the story above the standard fantasy adventure fare of Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light that might have been good in 1990 but didn’t look so hot in 2008. Archanea just feels so lifeless overall compared to every other setting in the franchise, to the point where I don’t even feel that guilty about putting the first game in the series way down at the bottom when over in the Zelda ranking I raised the NES games above ones I found more fun to play solely because of their historical significance. Isn’t FE1 arguably the first tactical RPG? I feel like I should appreciate it more, but I just can’t. *shrugs*

[doe-clotureofyellow]

Chapter 3, Section 2–The Conclusion of their Wish; Scene 8

Clôture of Yellow (VG), page 259-269

��� Germaine ~Once Again, In the Lucifenian Palace, "The Hall of Mirrors"~

.

The life or death struggle with the royal guard continued.

One by one, my allies were falling. But our opponents' numbers were actually diminishing too. If things continued this way, perhaps…we would win!

The problem was that man…Gast Venom. He was a monster beyond any imagining. Mariam had been like that too, but the speed of his sword was unusual. In actuality, the majority of the casualties we'd sustained were by his hand.

"You lot are useless, all of you."

Gast trampled over the bodies of fallen royal guards.

"I can see hesitation in your blades…She might be a beautiful swordswoman, and like an old friend, but faltering in your swordsmanship over your emotions like this…Is this the standard of the Lucifenian royal guard?"

"…You horrible man. I will not forgive your slander of the royal guard!"

Hearing my cry, Gast once again turned to face me.

"Ho ho, you're lukewarm at this yourself. Aren't they your enemies now? …Ah well, once I kill you, their hesitations will vanish."

Gast pointed his sword towards me.

Before now I too had improved upon my swordsmanship, under the instruction of my father. Dad would only use a real sword when teaching Allen, and for me he would only let me learn enough to defend myself. I was so frustrated with that, I studied on my own, in secret.

But I hadn't had a lot of opportunities to test my skills with another person. This revolution is the first time I've pointed a real sword at other people--and I could tell that my skills weren't to be outdone even against the kingdom's legitimate soldiers.

Would Dad be pleased?

Or would he be angry?

I didn't know. That was something I would never know, now.

--Dad wasn't in this world anymore.

I had to win. For him, and for this country.

But…Was I winning? Against this monster.

For a moment I doubted I was.

 .

 --Shing!--

.

There was the sound of his blade flying through the air. I brought my body back immediately.

Something was fluttering in front of my eyes. My bangs.        

"Ho…dodged, did you? Seems you're a little more motivated."

That was close. If I had been just a moment later, my head would have been separated from my body.

"Look here, I'll go more rapidly."

 .

--Shing!--

--Scrape!--

 .

Gast's blade swiped at me several times in quick succession. I continued to dodge…More than that, dodging at all was taking all my might. I didn't have any time to put in a counterattack.

Each time I dodged by a hair, my red armor gained a scratch. Dad, if you were here, what would you do?

In that moment, I remembered a conversation I'd had with Dad at the bar, where he told me about a duel he'd had with a particularly strong opponent. The toughest challenger that he'd ever faced in his battles up until that point…

He was real strong, this one. The speed of his blade was unusual, at any rate. On top of that, he used some mysterious style in his swordplay.

Gast swung his sword in succession, a small smile coming to his face. Was he playing with me? No, little by little he was backing me up to the wall.

I wasn't winning. Honestly, I'd prepared for the worst. But…in the middle of the fight, your old man saw it. A peculiar habit in his technique.

Gast suddenly stopped the arm that he was swinging his sword with. Was he tired? Anyhow, this was my chance! I moved to put in a counterattack.

But it was a trap. Gast nimbly avoided my sword, and swept his own sideways, towards my face. Damn, had it been a feint? I tried to twist out of the way.

It was no use, I couldn't avoid it!

His fighting style was deceptive, I almost couldn't read him. But…

 .

--Slash!--

 .

I heard something getting sliced. This time, it wasn't my hair.

I used my body's momentum from when I'd tried to avoid him and did a somersault. Then I put some distance between myself and Gast.

My vision was stained a deep red, and then turned dark. Had he…sliced my eyes?

Shit, I couldn't keep them open!

"This is the end, young lady."

I could hear the sound of Gast's footsteps as he came to deliver the finishing blow.

Dad, what should I…?

I realized that at that moment when he went to deliver the finishing blow, and only then, he had one quirk in where he was aiming.

Calm down. If your eyes are useless, use your ears. Sound, don't miss that sound!

The place he would aim at in the end…that was…his enemy's neck!

Shing…

The moment I heard his blade flying along, I pitched my body forward.

 .

--Swish!--

 .

I heard the sound of Gast's blade slicing empty air.

And, following the momentum from pitching myself forward, I aimed at Gast…

 .

--Zing!--

 .

I brought my sword sideways with all my strength.

"Guh--"

I felt it connect with something, and at the same time heard Gast groan.

 .

It was faint, but my field of vision began to come back. So it seemed it was just my eyelids that had gotten sliced.

"Magnificent," the man who had fallen before me murmured.

I couldn't see him very well, but from his voice I could tell it was Gast. I raised my sword to finish him off.

"Have I finally found a place to die…? Please tell me one thing, swordswoman. At my last strike, you shouldn't have been able to see anything. How were you able to avoid it?"

"Do you not remember the insignia on my armor?"

Gast turned his eyes to the insignia on my armor and at once stopped moving.

"…I see, you're Leonhart's daughter, are you? Hate to admit it, but you've got me. My carelessness in knowing a weakness in my technique and yet failing to do anything about it…that was the cause of my defeat."

Gast looked like he was…faintly smiling.

"Gast, I have something I want to ask you as well. Have you seen a young male servant in the palace…about the same age as the princess?"

"…Who knows? I don't."

"Right…Why would a mercenary as strong as you remain in the palace until the end? Surely you must have had many chances to escape."

I could still hear the sound of my allies and the royal guards fighting around us.

"A reason a mercenary would fight…Ha ha ha, obviously there is only one." Gast took a bag of something out of his pocket. "…Money."

I brought my sword down on Gast.

"Sarah…your big brother…will be with you soon…"

 .

"Big sis! You okay!?"

I could hear Chartette's voice. Sounded like the fight in the garden had been settled as well.

"I'm fine. …Just barely, though."

"…! Big sis! Your eyes!"

"It's fine, he only cut my eyelids…It'll just take some time before my vision comes back completely."

Chartette noticed the corpse at my feet.

"That's…Gast Venom! D-did you seriously beat him?"

"Well…sorta."

Dad had helped me, in the end. I guess this was him making sure I didn't join him yet.

"Big sis, you're so good! You got my respect, yannow!"

After all this time she still hadn't changed…Except that no matter how ridiculously strong I had thought she was, I couldn't have foreseen her wielding such a huge sword.

"Chartette, what about the gardens? What happened?"

"We won, somehow. But the Head Maid…Mariam, got away. Though she was pretty badly hurt, so don't think she's gonna be a big threat, yannow."

She'd gotten Mariam out of the way? …Chartette's pretty substantial too.

"We've got some news from Karchess, also."

That rough voice was York.

"They found minister Minis and some others trying to escape at the back. The soldiers tried to arrest them, but they resisted…Apparently they had to kill them out of necessity."

"…Was the princess among them?"

"He says she wasn't. And before you ask, your adoptive brother probably wasn't with them either. All of the dead were of the minister class."

Then did that mean the princess was still here in the palace? And Allen too.

"Alright, let's go! We need to find the princess."

York stopped me as I tried to stand.

"You aren't doing anything with your eyes like that. There shouldn't be a lot of soldiers left in the palace. You leave the rest to me and the others."

"Yeah! Big sis, you gotta let us handle it now, yannow!"

"Chartette! You have to sit out too! Didn't you get worn out in your fight earlier!? If you move any more you're going to die!"

"Uuugh…"

I couldn't tell very well due to my bad vision, but apparently Chartette had gotten pretty badly injured too.

"York…"

"I know, Germaine. We won't kill the princess. We have to execute that bitch before the people, before everyone. You can air your grievances with her to your heart's content after your eyes heal up."

Chartette cried to York as he commanded the soldiers to head in deeper, "S--'scuse me, Mr. York!"

"…What?"

"Princess Riliane…the princess is…a real bad person, yannow. But…if you can…please handle her gently, without chastisin' her too much…"

York headed further into the palace without a word.

 .

A short time after we'd separated, a report came in that the princess had been captured inside the palace's "Hall of Sounds". After finishing with the emergency first aid on my eye and getting some help from my friends, I quickly headed there.

 .

"Germaine! I told you not to come here!" York scolded as I entered the room.

"…Sorry. But I just had to see this "Daughter of Evil" at least once, at any cost."

"You had to see her, huh?…Can you even see with your eyes like that?"

I tried to stare in. It was blurry, but I could see several soldiers in the middle of the room, and the princess in her dress. But…I couldn't clearly see her face.

"…Looks like I can't after all."

"Yeah? I told you to leave it to me and the others."

 .

"Don't come near me!"

 .

While I spoke with York, the princess suddenly began to struggle. The soldiers hurriedly went to grab her.

"Good grief…An unexpected tomboy." I could hear a big sigh. York sounded amazed. "Oi, your Highness! We don't wanna be rough with ya. So come quietly."

Pushing away York's outstretched hand with a slap!, the princess cried,

 .

"You insolent thug!"  

<<prev------directory------next>>

[thewalkingdead-imagines]

TWD - Negan Imagine ~ "Hostiles and Calamities"

An imagine about the 11th episode of Season 7

I’m following the storyline of the TV show, so I wrote parts to the other episodes as well that are connected. BUT they are all written the way that you can read them separate without having read any other part!

part 1: about the final scene of season 6 part 2: about the first episode of season 7 part 3: about the readers arrival in the sanctuary (for 7x02) part 4: about 7x03 “The Cell” part 5: about 7x04 “Service” part 6: about 7x05 “Go Getters” (7x06 was left out because the timeframe between the episodes was too short) part 7: about 7x07 “Sing me a song” part 8: about 7x08 the midseason finale “Hearts still beating” part 9: about 7x09 “Rock in the Road” (7x10 had to be left out)

The wind shook softly on the windows of your room while you looked at the swinging trees. still without a clue how Alexandria was doing after the most recent havoc Negan had caused there, nor where Eugene or Daryl were at the moment or how each of them was doing. A knocking on the door made you flinch on your spot on the bad, urging you to turn around just as the door opened and Negan strutted brightly smirking inside, his beloved bat laying on his shoulder. ”Good morning, Sweetheart”, he grinned, his eyes wandering over your face as he stopped at the edge of your bed,”We two got plans for today. Gotta meet some people.” He seemed a little too excited as he licked his lips and moved one of his hands to scratch his beard, nodding towards you, “One of them is an old friend of yours, mullet boy. What was his name again?” ”Eugene”, you said dryly as Negan kept his glance locked on yours, bringing back that odd feeling you had felt before as you shifted over the bed, forcing yourself to tear yourself from his eyes as you were moving to swing your legs out of it. ”Would you tell me where he is now?”, you asked, looking out of the window for another moment as you stood up, hearing Negan’s chuckle sounding through to you.  ”No need for that suspicion in your voice. He’s having a goddamn blast for sure. Smartypants has his own apartment and got some good food to keep the spongy mass in his head going.” It made sense, it did, but it still sounded too good to be true if you were honest. ”What did you think i’d do with him?”, Negan lowly laughed as you turned around to him, perking his eyebrows up as a small sigh left your lips. ”I think you know that”, you said, calmly but still trying to not lock eyes with him for too long. ”Well I’d be a damn stupid asshole if I’d put this big brained guy in a cell, I need that head to work intact”, he said, before he stopped and rose his finger up, “However, there’s another fucker waiting for us in the cells right now, so get ready Sweetheart, we’ll meet that sorry fuck before smartypants gets his offical welcome here.” For a moment you looked confusedly at Negan, half of you fearing that they’d caught Daryl after all and locked him back up but the rational part within you told you that Negan would most definitely have reacted differently if your half brother was the one in the cell. “Get ready, Sweetheart, alright? Would be impolite to let him wait”, Negan said, shooting you an even wider grin, eliciting another sigh to fall from your lips as you had to start another day at the Sanctuary.

Your footsteps echoed through the dim lit hallways of the Sanctuary, dull as they bounced of the walls before they mixed with Negan’s voice. ”Asking yourself who we’re gonna pay a visit, huh?”, Negan asked, flashing you another grin before he directly went on,”It’s Dwighty boy, ‘cause that fucker screwed up keeping your brother under control, and now, now we two are gonna meet him after one night in paradise!” With that, Negan lead you around the last corner before the cells, only one of them locked while the other was leaned against its doorframe, Dr. Carson stood in between the both, looking straight at you as soon as you stepped into his field of view. ”Mornin’ Doc”, Negan chuckled before he moved towards the locked door, making Carson step further back as he gave Negan a nod. ”Good morning, Sir”, he said, before he looked for a moment at you, “Good morning.” ”Good morning”, you mumbled, trying to put a small smile onto your face before it flattened again as you heard Negan’s low laugh sounding through the air. ”Alrighty, now enjoy the show, Sweetheart”, Negan chuckled before, giving you a wink before he moved closer to the door and started to drum it against it, only a few times but loud enough to put a shiver through your body. “Good fucking mornin’, sunshine. Is it just as cozy as you remember? You spent a lot of time on the wrong side of the door after that fucking stupid road trip with the wife and Tina. So let’s talk about now. We went out looking for your little failed project for a few hours, just around the perimeter, tip to taint, as it were, right about the time I had you thrown in here, and when I got back, I realized I was short a wife”, said Negan, dropping the bat from the door, though still holding tightly onto it. ”Which one?”, you heard Dwight’s cracking voice ask through the door, just loud enough for you to hear. ”Sherry. You know anything about that, Dwighty boy? ‘Cause I got to tell you, that is one hell of a coincidence, her leaving just a few short hours after Daryl fucking took off. Oh, and he didn’t force his damn way out. No. Somebody opened the fucking door for him”, Negan went on, while your mind started to fll with more questions. Did she really let Daryl out? But why should she have done that? Bad conscience? She sure as shit didn’t have that when she pointed a gun at Daryl, stole his motorcycle with Dwight and left him to die in the woods after he’d helped them bury her sister and offered a place at a safe community. Just thinking about it made your skin crawl again and after how you’d seen her the day Carl had come here, you couldn’t stand her just a single bit.   But maybe she’d done it after all, not for Daryl, but truly to just calm her bad conscience down, who knew. ”It wasn’t Sherry”, you heard Dwight respond, ripping you back out of your own thoughts while a low chuckle left Negan’s lips. ”Dwighty boy was it you? Did it work the other damn way around? You were supposed to break him. Did he break you? I mean, let’s face it , you’ve got some pretty legitimate grievances. You change your fucking stripes on me, Dwighty? You starting to see things different?”, Negan asked his voice sounding even raspier than it usually did before he pounded the bat against the door once more. “After all this before and after hell, after everything who are you, Dwight?”, asked Negan, licking his lips as he swung the bat back on his shoulder. ”I’m Negan”, Dwights voice sounded through the door, desperately trying to keep his voice steady before Negan moved to grasp a bundle of keys out of his pocket, skipped through them until he found the right one and finally unlocked the door, revealing an exhausted and sickly looking Dwight. His eyes were surrounded by dark circles and looked tired, and a wound with dried blood was boasting on his forehead, making you quickly assume that they’d beaten him up before they’d thrown them in there. For a moment, Dwight kept sitting on the ground before Negan wiggled his fingers slightly, motivating him to get back on his feet and face him. The blonde started to shuffle onto his feet, struggling slightly to get up as he clenched his jaw and finally straightened his posture as well as he could and looked up at his leader. “Daryl isn’t like you. He’s emotional. So he’s either on his way home, or he’s coming back here to try to kill some more of us. Mostly you and me. Either way, we’ll find him”, Negan said, sending a shiver down your spine because you knew that what he was saying there was true, you could only hope that the very last part wouldn’t come true. “So do you think you know where Sherry went?”, Negan said after a short moment of silence, a part of you glad that he didn’t keep on talking about Daryl. “Yeah”, Dwight responded with a nod, his strangly blonde hair falling into his face. ”Alright then bring her back”, said Negan before he turned around to look at Carson. “Stitch him up. Fix what you can fix”, said Negan, motioning towards Dwight who stood with slouched shoulders in the doorframe, squinting at the light of the hallway that met his eyes as soon as Negan’s tall frame wasn’t blocking it anymore. Quickly, Carson nodded, hurrying over to Dwight only to look over at you once he had reached him. ”Oh Miss? We need to get a new bandage for you too soon”, he said, pointing at the upper part of your arm that was still bandaged. ”We’ll stop by. Thanks Doc”, Negan said, nodding towards Carson before his glance went towards you and another chuckle left his lip, ”Good, so first thing’s done, Sweetheart. Now’s your friends turn”, Negan said, playing his hand swiftly on your shoulder to make you move along with him down the hallway, sending a small shiver down your back before he dropped it from you and glimpsed at you from the side. ”So you know Smartypants well right?”, Negan asked, adjusting his bat on his shoulder a little while you shortly nodded. ”Yeah”, you said looking at him before you saw him raising his finger chuckling. ”Woah, being very talkative today, huh?”, he laughed right as he lead you into another hallway, keeping his glance fixed on you nevertheless. ”So you know if he has it up here?”, he asked, obviously trying to get some more out of you as he pointed at his head. ”I guess you better ask him yourself”, you said, obviously disappointing Negan a little with your answer as he let out a groan, not serious, rather teasing as he flashed another grin at you. “Well, I sure hope it’s gonna be something promising!”

It merely took a couple minutes until you heard the squeaking of the large metal doors that lead outside and were dazzled by the bright sunlight that suddenly lit up the dim lightened hallway. You stepped quickly outside, hearing how the door fell back into its lock as Negan moved in beside you and gave you a grin before he nodded to your right. “Let’s get started, huh?”, he chuckled before you glanced to your side and saw Eugene standing circled by a couple Saviors in the courtyard, holding onto a large glass with pickles. With large steps Negan moved towards him as you stayed a little in the back, deciding to first watch what was happening right as Negan’s loud voice boomed through the air. “There he is. Man of the hour! Come on over here, big fella”, Negan laughed, waving for Eugene to step closer towards him. He was shaking, you could even see it from your spot behind them and it looked like he was getting paler by the second, though Negan seemed to have told you the truth. He was completely unharmed and dressed in new, clean clothes. “Don’t be rude, asshole. Say hello”, Negan chuckled, grinning widely as he moved right next to Eugene. “Hello....”, Eugene stumbled, glimpsing frightened up at Negan before his glance moved over to you only to bounce back to Negan a second later. “You got a name, asshole?” “Eugene”, he answered with a voice that seemed to become more tense with every passing moment. A chuckle fell from Negan’s lips as he stepped a little away from Eugene, widening his arms slightly as he glanced at his followers. “Now us. Who are you?” Oh, so they were doing that again. “I’m Negan”, the Saviors yelled, loudly and enough to let Eugene flinch a little before Negan stepped closer again and rose Lucille just enough up to hold her end into Eugene’s face. “Well, Eugene I know you remember Lucille. Now, you see this right here? You might have to get real close. That, my friend, is the bullet you made. Now, under normal circumstances, I’d be showing you that real close over and over again”, Negan told Eugene, pointing at the bullet into the wood before he  leaned his body back and imitated the sound of the bat hitting a head with another chuckle. “But, Eugene, see, all I really want to know is if you are a smarty-pants. You know things? Answer the question”, Negan asked, pointing the bat at Eugene while you still just stood there, watching the bizarre scene that played out in front of you. “I…I am, indeed, a smarty-pants. I taught myself to cast bullets. I uhm found a machine shop with the necessary stuff. I…I read uh a lot, and, um although my memory is not considered eidetic, I don’t skim and I don’t scrimp. If knowledge is dropped, I do, indeed, pick it up”, Eugene said, stuttering a little less than before though he was still more than uncomfortable. “Oh, so you really are just some asshole?”, Negan asked, perking his brows up before Eugene shook his head vehemently. “N..No. I’m not. I have PhDs in biochemistry, as well as immunology and microbiology, and I’ve completed my doctorate, which makes me a doctor. Prior to the collapse, I was part of a 10-person team at the Human Genome Project, working under Dr. T. Brooks Ellis to weaponize diseases to fight weaponized diseases. Fire with, uh you know uh f-fire”, Eugene lied, the same lie he had told your group such a long time ago and you could understand why it was warming that lie back up now; it was his only true weapon. For a moment, Eugene looked back over to the fences as some of the walkers groaned loudly, stretching its arms into your direction though the sticks it was stuck on kept it right on its spot. “All right, Dr. Smarty-pants. You ought to be able to crack this without breaking a fucking sweat. You see, I have a lot of free labor here at the damn fence, living dead pricks that help keep the riffraff out. Problem is, they don’t keep. They fucking fall apart. Like that poor sack of pile of shit there”, Negan said, pointing right at the walker in the cage before he continued. “So, Dr. Smarty-pants, how do we keep them on their feet?”, Negan asked while you saw how Eugene tried get himself under control, though he was only starting to shake harder again. ”Goddamn you’re still fucking trembling. Jesus”, Negan said, before he let out a small sigh and turned just enough around to you to look right into your eyes,”Sweetheart, why don’t ya come over here? Maybe a familiar face will calm his ass down.” For a moment, you stared straight at Negan, gulping and pondering whether he was trying to play some game while another laugh fell from his lips. ”Or maybe you gonna make him even more nervous, who knows”, Negan chuckled, shrugging his shoulders and wiggling his eyebrows in a rather dramatic manner before he let another chuckle fall from his lips. ”C’mon, do it for your friend’s sake here”, he said, pointing at Eugene while you slowly started to nod. You didn’t like this, not at all, but Negan had a point there, maybe Eugene would truly get a little more comfortable with someone he knew next to him. You moved over to them and ended up standing a little awkwardly next to Negan while Eugene looked at you for a moment as if a ghost had just appeared in front of him before he started to talk again. It nearly blustered out of him as he started to list every single thing he needed to fix the walker situation and how he planned to apply it to them with molten metal that was flown over the walkers to protect their rotting skulls. You could barely keep up as the words just kept coming out of his still trembling lips before he suddenly stopped and a laugh fell from Negan’s lips.. “God damn! If that ain’t the coolest thing I’ve ever heard in my life! Not only is that practical, it is just badass! Whoa”, Negan laughed before he leaned foward to put an arm around Eugene’s shoulders, while you just stood there and watched the unlikely couple. “Look at you, Dr. Smarty-pants. Did Rick have you doing this kind of fucking valuable stuff for him?” ”No.” “His loss, our gain. I feel like I need to give you some kind of signing bonus here”, Negan laughed as Eugene’s gaze lifted for a moment and his brows tensed confusedly. “Uh, w-well, I was… I was gifted these pickles.”, Eugene said, moving his hands slightly up to show the large glass of pickles a little more and if the situation wasn’t so serious, you would have probably laughed. Everything about this was so weird. Negan and Eugene arm in arm. The oversized pickle jar. The extreme differences between the two men. “Ahh. No. As a token of my gratitude, I’m gonna send you over a few of my wives to your apartment tonight, show you a good time…Now, I don’t think I have to worry about this. But who knows how truly smart you are? No sex. That is a grave no-no….However, you can have a little dinner, some drinks, share a few laughs….There is nothing like beautiful women that smell good to make you feel human again”, Negan said, letting you almost unconsciously grimace in disgust. They were there voluntarily, of course, but this whole harem situation still weirded you out. “Did…did you say “wives,” meaning plural?”, Eugene asked with wide eyes, and you could honestly understand the startled expression on his face. “Hell yes, I did!”, Negan laughed before Eugene’s brows tensed a little more before his glance moved over towards you for just another moment. “Are you-”, he started, only to be cut off by Negan before he or you could say or respond anything. ”Fuck no, she’s not”, Negan said, quickly looking back at Eugene as he let out a sigh and began to grin widely again. “So what does Dr. Smarty-pants say to his knew bestest friend in the whole wide world? What does he say?” “Thank you. Fully, completely sincerely, seriously thank you”, Eugene choked out, holding even tighter onto his jar of pickles. “Okay. Why don’t you go have some fun?”, Negan asked, before nodding towards a blonde woman who quickly moved over to Eugene and grasped his shoulder and  started to lead him back inside, followed by the other men who had surrounded you up until now. You watched him until he vanished back inside the building and just as the door fell with a loud, metallic bang into its lock, Negan turned around to you with a bright smirk. ”See Sweetheart, I was all good to that smart fucker. Didn’t harm a single one of his mullet hairs”, Negan grinned as he leaned a little closer in to you, waiting for a reaction. ”Yeah”, you just said dryly with a small nod, before you suddenly heard your stomach grumbling a little while you already damned your body as soon as you saw Negan’s shit-eating grin widening. ”Well shit, looks like someones damn hungry”, Negan laughed, nodding down to your stomach before he nodded towards the door, ”Well, then let’s get you some food.”

The grand hall was bustling with people when you walked inside, hurrying through it to get from A to be or stopping at the countless booths of food and supplies. “Alright, I’d love to stay here with you, but I really gotta take care of some shit”, Negan said as he stopped walking for a moment and let an almost uneasy feeling spread through you. You could for sure use a bit of alone time, but you weren’t used to walk among the Saviors on your own, you didn’t really knew this place yet and being left alone in this big fucking hall honestly gave you an odd feeling. “You can have anything you want, just say they should put my name on the list”, Negan said, giving you a quick wink, “It won’t take long, I think I’ll be back in twenty minutes at most.” ”Alright”, you said, only giving him a nod, seeing him shooting another grin at you before he gave you a small pet on your unharmed arm and turned around to walk away, vanishing in one of the hallways that led away from the grand hall merely moments later. For another short moment you just stood there, looking at the crowd before you started to move in and explore the booths a little. There wasn’t just food or medicine, there was much more than you had expected, even a damn barber who was currently cutting some guys beard and an older woman who had sewn a couple teddy bears and was giving them out to some kids, an honestly sweet gesture you hadn’t expected to see at an place like the Sanctuary. You could feel some glances fixing on you though when you walked through the paths between the booths, not many but there had to be a few people who recognized you as the one who kept walking along Negan’s side for whatever reason. You couldn’t blame them, you didn’t even know the reason yourself. You still found yourself stopping at one of the booths in the corner of the hall, a place with a grill and some sandwiches when you found your hunger trumping the surprise once for all. You glimpsed at the goods on the grill, trying to decide for a moment what you should get before the tall, blonde man behind the booth walked over. ”Want something?”, he asked, the tone rather harsh as your glance shot up to him and you started to nod. “Yeah...could I have some of that?”, you asked, pointing at one of the pieces that were still sizzling on the grill. “Number?” “I don’t have a number… but Negan told me to put his name on the list”, you said and while you were speaking it out and saw the irritated and cold look slipping into the man’s eyes, you could already hear how dumb you sounded. You should have asked Negan to give you something to confirm this whole thing with, but you hadn’t thought of it in the moment, and now you were starting to regret it. “Are you fucking with me?”, the blonde asked, his brows tensing as the dry tone turned into an angered one, signaling you that you should get out of here and just wait until Negan was back to get some food then. “No I…Alright I better go now”, you said, feeling the tension growing over your body as the man stared down at you and gave you the unwell feeling that you were unwillingly messing with an aggressive man who was looking for a fight. “Wait, wait you can’t just get your lying ass out of here”, he growled, glaring at you as he started to round the booth, and made you step away, just trying to figure out how the hell you could get away from here before taking too many risks. “Alright, I don’t wanna start a fight here but I’m not lying. He told me to get it on his name. You can ask him if you want to”, you said, trying to stay as calm as you could as the man moved closer towards you as goosebumps spread over your skin and your heart began to thump faster. He was a giant, even taller than Negan and widely built, and you couldn’t deny how intimidating he was. “You know what were doing with people like you here? We beat the holy hell out of them”, he growled, staring down at you as an ice cold shudder washed down your back while you were already calculating your chances on how likely it was to get out of this unharmed. If it really came to a fight, your chances were low, who were you kidding? You’d been forced to learn how to be a good fighter and you truly believed at this point that you’d become good at defending yourself, but this man was a giant, a muscled giant with an anger potential for 10. And before you could do anything else, he was starting to corner you, leaving you to try and find out how to escape this situation. “You’re so gonna regret fucking with me”, he growled, stepping even closer while you still tried to reason with him, obviously unsuccessful. ”We don’t have to let that escalate-”, you tried to say as calm as he could but he cut you immediately off. ”Shut up”, he said, just as you could feel yourself bumping into the wall behind you while you stared with furrowed brows at him, an odd mix of panic, fear and anger boiling within you. You could feel your hands balling into fits as you tried to hold yourself back but you were getting cornered more and more with each second, the cold wall pressed into your back and the man got more aggressive as he got so close that you could feel his heavy breath on your skin. No one was helping you, no one was coming to support you and you doubted that anyone ever would. You could feel your hands tightening as the panic in you started to skyrocket, realizing that you were doomed if you weren’t gonna try this, just before adrenaline started to rush through your body and your fist flipped up. With as much strength as you could muster up it hit the side of the man’s face, letting you flinch as pain streamed from your knuckles up your arm while you could see him stumble back and cursing loudly. For a moment moved enough away for you slip away from him and flee, and just as you wanted to start to run you felt a strong grip on your shoulders that pulled you back against the wall. You winced as your body got hit against the stone, breathing heavily as his grip got stronger and you realized that you were fucked if no wonder would happen. ”Goddamn Bitch”, he spatted as you felt how his hand went from your shoulders to your throat while you tried to kick him away with your legs, using the last possibility that you had left. “You’re just making it worse”, he hissed while you kept kicking, trying to move up to hit git groin but he stood too close for you to reach up while you kept kicking before you felt his hands tightening around your throat. Gasping desperately for air you moved your hands to hiss, trying to get them away from your throat. Panicking you could feel your vision starting to blur, could feel your mind starting to get hazy as you kept fighting back as best as you could before his grip suddenly loosened. From one second to another your eyes widened as saw the blood streaming over the man’s head as he sunk to his knees, just before another blow of Negan’s bat crushed down onto him. Gasping for air you held your throat, panting while the room was spinning around you and your heart pumped against your chest while you could see through your blurry glance how Negan hit down onto the man, panting as well while his face reddened in fury. it felt surreal for a moment, and a tiny part of you asked yourself whether you were hallucinating this but as your breath started to grow slower and your mind got clearer again you realized that this was not just a mirage your air deprived self had made up. You caught yourself staring at the crushed skull of the men who’d choked you just moments ago before you saw Negan loosening his grip on his bat, enough to only hold it with one hand and let it’s bloodiness dangle beside him as he began to walk over to you. “Holy fuck, are you okay?”, he asked, breathing heavily while his concerned glance ran up and down over your body while you slowly started to nod. “Yeah”, you mumbled as you got your voice back, though still trembling and trying to catch your breath before Negan turned from you to the silent crowd that had started to grow around you. “If any of you dare to do some shit like that I swear you’re gonna end up just like that dead fuckin’ asshole”, Negan yelled loudly, so loud that it echoed through the grad hall while his voice was full of anger before he nodded to two of his men. “Get his sick ass out of here”, he growled, pointing with his bloody bat at the dead and limp body on the ground that painted the grey into a gruesome dark red. Still shaking you looked down at your hand and reddish, swollen knuckles that hurt more now that the adrenaline and panic started to slowly decline, wincing slightly as you moved your fingers. “Punched him?”, Negan asked with a small grin as you looked back up to him, only nodding slightly. “Alright, then let’s get you out of here.”

Negan stopped as soon as you’d reached a more silent hallway and moved closer in to you to take a look at your neck. Slowly, his hand moved up and his fingers met your jaw, unexpectedly gentle and careful, and still your body flinched slightly in response to his sudden touch. “Shh it’s alright”, he mumbled, as he turned your head softly to take a look at your skin that felt tense and strained. “No marks...at least yet”, he mumbled, tensing his thick brows while his touch let something in your body stir, though you were quick to push that onto the shock state your whole self was still slightly swaying in. Slowly, he started to back away, his hand falling from your jaw down to your arm, stroking it slightly as he noticed that you were still trembling. He looked concerned, honestly  concerned and for a moment it seemed like he was shaking a little himself, irritating you for a moment. Negan, the cruel Negan, seemed to look so human in these moments, so genuine and even quiet while his eyes were still wandering over you. You tried to not think much of it, and while part of you started to overthink it was another pushing his behavior onto the fact that he’d just killed someone. “Do you wanna wait till you get that bandage changed to let the Doc look over this or go now? Hell, I can get him right fuckin’ here if you like”, Negan asked, ripping you out of your thoughts for a moment before you quickly shook your head, wincing softly as you felt your skin tensing. “I can wait”, you said, honestly just wanting to let this all relax and let your head calm down at first. “You sure?” “Yeah”, you nodded, still feeling Negan’s large, warm hand on your arm before he slowly started to nod as well. “What happened?”, he asked, looking down at you while you shrugged your shoulders softly, still not really sure what the fuck had just played out in the hal. “Tried to get some food from his booth, he thought I was lying when I said to put it on your name....I tried to reason with him but he didn’t wanna let go of it. When I tried to leave and just stop it he completely lost it...I think he was just searching for a fight.” “Was a dumb idea of me...I should’ve come with you”, he mumbled, guilt filling his voice that made you almost unconsciously almost grow softer for him for a small moment as you shook your head. “It’s okay.” “No it’s not”, he quickly added, shaking his head as he let out a sigh ,”That fucker almost squeezed the fuckin’ life outta you.” You just glanced at him for another moment, still startled by his concerned and worried behavior before he let out a small sigh and nodded towards you after a short moment of silence. “So you didn’t get to even eat something, huh?”, he asked before you started to shake your head and he gave you another nod.,”Okay...then let’s get away from this shit here and get ya some food.”

Negan led you rather quickly away from the hallway and the grand hall, while he fumbled on his walkie and kept talking to a few men, ordering them to deliver some food up to his apartment. You kept glimpsing at him from time to time, still wondering about his reaction earlier, still trying to figure him out before his walkie suddenly hushed and he caught you looking at him. “Thought it would be more comfortable to get the food at my place”, he said with a small shrug of his shoulders, assuming you’d been wondering about his choice to eat in his room. And while you’d probably done that if you hadn’t just been saved by him, right now, your mind was in a completely different place. Making your way up to his room from the lowest floor almost felt like an odyssey, tiring and kinda uncomfortable now that your heavier breaths had to travel through your hurt throat. You would have rarely thought that you’d be happy to be at his room, but right now, you were just glad that you’d finally arrived. “Alrighty, they already got the food in here, thank fuckin’ god”, Negan said with a small groan as he moved behind you into the room, closing the heavy doors behind him and placing his bloody bat at the wall while you found a bunch of truly delicious looking sandwiches on a plate on the coffee table, along with some lemonade and water jugs that stood right next to it and two empty glasses. For a moment, just a small moment you wondered if the lemonade had been made with the powder from Alexandria’s pantry, before Negan’s voice ripped you out of your thoughts again. “C’mon Sweetheart, no need to be shy, get comfortable and get yourself some of this delicious shit”, Negan chuckled, motivating you to sit down on the comfy leather couch before he let himself fall next to you with a small groan. Moving forward he reached for the jug with lemonade, before giving you a glance. “Want some? It’s delicious as fuck, it’s self-made by one of the guys in the kitchen”, he asked, before you slowly nodded and for some reason you felt better now that you knew that it wasn’t Alexandria’s lemonade. Quickly, Negan filled both of your glasses up before you started to eat and just then, as you bit into your first sandwich, you realized how hungry you’d truly been.

Dawn was already turning the sky outside into a warm, almost comforting color when the plate was completely cleared of the sandwiches except for a few crumbs and your glasses were filled with the last bit of the lemonade. Negan started to shift beside you, sighing slightly before he moved up from his spot on the couch and ran his hand over his salt and pepper stubble as he walked a little through the room before he came to a stop and looked at you. “Listen, I think you should stay here.” “What?”, it immediately slipped out of your lips the moment his voice hushed, while you looked irritated at him. “You heard that right”, he said with a small sigh,”I think you should stay here with me, at least for the next nights.” Just then it started to dim on you what this actually meant. He wanted you to stay here, sleep here, spend your time here when you weren’t walking around the Sanctuary, give up your own room. “Why?”, you asked, looking with furrowed brows at him while you couldn’t keep some annoyance from sneaking into your voice. “'Cause your sweet ass is safe here”, he said, continuing as soon as he saw that you weren’t satisfied with that answer alone,” Up here, no fuckin’ prick is gonna be able to attack you again. Your room isn’t as secure.” “Why would someone come to my room to attack me? The door can be locked too”, you said, starting to grow defensive before another thick sigh left his lips. “Listen I don’t fucking care if it’s being locked or not, you my dear Sweetheart are staying here“, he said as he pointed swiftly at you, still seeing how clearly unpleased you were with his idea. You weren’t even a fan of staying at the Sanctuary at all, but having your own room made things a little more pleasant here. It just gave you the possibility to shut everything out, including Negan. You wouldn’t get that when you’d practically live together with him. “Or I’ll make sure to get some mattress into one of the other empty rooms on this floor...but ‘cause they’re not being used there’s no working heater in there and they’re not renovated nor nearly as taken care of as this apartment here”,he offered, his eyes staying fixed on you the whole time,”And you can’t tell me you actually want that.” He was right about that, and you didn’t like that. You’d slept on mattresses or even floors for long enough when you’d still been outside with the others, and there were by far worse things than that, but days around the Sanctuary were tiring, and you’d been glad to come back to a warm room and a real bed each evening. So you said nothing, realizing that the other option wasn’t great either. “Yeah, that’s what I thought”, Negan finally said before he let a heavy breath fall from his lips as he could see that you still weren’t happy with the situation. “Listen I’m not doing this to fuckin’ patronize you or control you. I just don’t want you to stay in the lower floors. I know this place. I know these people. You’re more in focus now after this shit...and I know these fuckin’ lower floors are not as safe as it is in here”,he said before he ran his hand over his beard again and shrugged his shoulders,”What’s even the big problem about this? We’re spending every damn day together either way.” “Well I did like that tiny bit of privacy that you’d left me”,you mumbled after a moment of silence, crossing your arms before your chest . “And I have no sleeping stuff over here”, you added, knowing how weak that kinda argument was but you were kinda grasping for straws here. “Well I think we can take care of that”, Negan suddenly said as his serious expression changed into the usual roguish one and a grin began to grow on his lips as you could already guess where he’d like to take that. Quickly, he moved over the closet and reached inside, only to pull out some black lingerie after a few moments of searching that he proudly presented. “Yeah I’m not gonna wear that”, you said, shaking your head and with still crossed arms while he let out a theatrical sigh and the look on his face made it seem more and more like he was trying to relax the tense atmosphere a little with this stunt. “Now that’s a damn shame. You’d made this thing look hot as hell”, he chuckled, looking down at the short, seethrough dress that was made up with some lacy bra and more lace that stretched down the fabric. “I don’t care...I’m not gonna wear that”, you said, almost having to chuckle as well in response to the ridiculousness of the situation. “Okay, got it”, he said, raising his free hand in a surrendering motion before he shot you another grin, and you knew that man well enough by now to know what he’d offer you next. “I’m not gonna sleep naked either.” “Damn Sweetheart you’re starting to know me quite well”, he laughed as he hung the lingerie back into closet as you let out a small snort just as he looked back at you. “Anyway, I don’t have anything else here”, he said with a small shrug, stroking pondering along his stubbly cheek before he nodded back to the closet, the look on his face more relaxed and actually serious for a moment,”’Cept for some shirts of mine. You’re okay with that?” This wasn’t the best option, but you could live with that one so you started to nod and could see a grin forming back on Negan’s lips. “Awesome”, he chuckled, enough to let you realize that he probably didn’t mind seeing you wearing something of his either and just then, it slowly started to settle in that you were actually gonna live with Negan in this room, even if it might be only for a couple days.

The dusk was already settling when you stood in the apartment’s bathroom and pulled the large shirt over your underwear, trying to use the small alone time you had right now.   You still felt overwhelmed, your head stuck full with thoughts about the day and just then you truly realized that Negan had actually saved you, he’d cared for you afterwards and he’d shown his concern once again, regardless of how little you’d like to admit that. There was this odd feeling that was stirring within you, flaring up each time Negan showed these other sides of his and it messed far more with you than you liked. There was nothing right about this feeling, no single fucking thing and a part of you was glad that there was still enough that kept you from him and repulsed you, giving you the feeling that you hadn’t gone completely insane yet. Trying to get rid of the rest of your thoughts you breathed out and moved to get ready for the night, trying to wash away the mess in your head before you took a deep breath and unlocked the door again. Negan was already sitting in the bed, his back smoothed into the large dark pillows, a notebook in his hands while a grin was covering his face as he looked at you. “Well hot damn, I already expected you to look beautiful as shit in this but damn, you’ve topped my expectations once agin..but fuck, what the hell did I expect”, he said with a wider growing wink as he caught the bit of blush that spread over your cheeks as you hurried over to the bed. You shuffled closer, watching as he moved to grasp the edge of the sheets and quirked an eyebrow up at you as he lifted it. “Slide into this cozy fuckin’ heaven, Sweetheart”, he mumbled, pulling the sheets a little more back as you gave him a testing look for a second. “You know I’m not gonna bite you”, Negan said with a deep chuckle while he snapped the notebook shut and laid it next to him on the nightstand, “But if you don’t wanna sleep in here with me...I’m fine with goin’ on the couch too.” For a moment, you glanced a little astounded at him, surprised that he would surrender the bed for you. “Bein’ serious”, he added, shifting a little as his eyes wandered over your face, watching your reaction closely. Should you really send him off to the couch? Sure, staying at his room wasn’t your biggest dream coming true and you were feeling just as torn about him now as you had in the bathroom, but still, if he had done anything today, it was showing you that he was trying to take care of you, at least in some odd way. Hell, you were a big girl and there was no need for drama. “No, no it’s fine”, you said, a part of you not really believing that you had just said it before you pushed yourself to slip under the sheets instead of watching Negan’s reaction. “There ya go”, Negan chuckled as you sunk into the soft pillows and pulled the sheets over your body, while something began to poke you from within. He had saved your life this day and you hadn’t said a thing to him about it, first out of shock, then because you forgot and now...hell now you were actually beginning to feel like an asshole about it. A little reluctantly you turned around to him, watching as he settled his tall frame within the black pillows before his hazel eyes darted right at you, signaling that it was too late now to backtrack. “I uhm, I just wanted to thank you for what you did in the hall. Thank you, really”, you said, fumbling with your fingers on the soft sheets while you saw a mix between a smile and a smirk create on his lips, moving up until it filled his eyes as well. “Anytime Sweetheart”, he said, slightly nodding and with wider growing lips before you could sense your body reacting, mirroring him as a tiny smile quirked the corners of your lips up before you perceived it, shutting it down as you sunk into the pillows, watching from the corners of your eyes how he chuckled throatily. Fuck, what was he beginning to do to you? “Good night, Sweetheart”, you heard him mumble, making you glance for a last time at him as you huddled your head into the thick pillows and saw the drowsy growing face of the man beside you. “Good night”, you mumbled back, catching yourself glancing at him for a little longer than you liked to admit, before pushing yourself to close your eyes and allow yourself to doze off.

Sunlight was filling the room as you slowly started to wake up, opening your eyes gradually, your hazy mind still believing for a second that you were laying in the bed of your old room before the smooth sheets around you and the sight of a sleeping Negan right next to you catapulted you back into reality. A shiver ran down you back as you realized how close he actually laid next to you, so close that you could almost feel his warm breath on your skin, and the peacefulness he radiated in these moments irritated you for a moment. Sighing softly you moved onto your back, peeling your glance from his sleeping figure, hoping to get some sleep you cuddled back into the pillows right before you felt a familiar, uncomfortable feeling started to settle in your middle. “Oh no, c’mon please no”, you mumbled under your breath, feeling the pressure on your abdomen and the familiar nausea spreading through you as you moved a little more, though not trying to wake Negan beside you. Getting this shit now was the last thing you needed, and while it was more than time for it again, you hoped that this was just a quirk of your body, nothing else. Slowly, you started to move out of the bed, looking down at yourself and the mattress, glad for a moment that you were fine for now before you tried to move as quietly as you could over to the bathroom. The door creaked a little as you slipped inside, making you inwardly curse before you locked the door behind yourself only to feel the pressure starting to grow further, confirming what you had suspected just moments later. “Well shit”, you grumbled to yourself, groaning as you pinched the bridge of your nose. This really topped it all, especially as it dimmed on you that the probability that Negan had anything here that would help you deal with this shit was close to zero. Still, you made yourself some provisory stuff, just to deal with it for the moment before you moved over towards the cabinets in the bathroom, hoping that you’d had some luck after all and some pads or whatever else had smuggled themselves between the other things. However, you only found what you’d expected and that was nothing besides the usual bottles of shampoo, shaving cream and razors. “Hey Sweetheart, you okay in there?”, you suddenly heard Negan’s voice sounding through the wood, letting you flinch for a moment as you realized that you’d probably been louder than you’d thought. “Yeah”,you said, wincing as you felt a cramp sending a sharp pain through your lower stomach,”One moment.” With a small sigh you closed the cabinet door again and moved over to the door, already feeling a little awkward having to explain the situation to him now, though there was honestly no reason for it. He was a grown man, he should be aware that this happens. “Negan?”, you asked as you slowly opened up the door, seeing him looking at you and then down to your throat, as if he’d expect that the attack yesterday had left more marks on you than you’d previously realized. “Yeah?”, he asked, quirking his brows up as he stood right before you and glimpsed at you with sleepy eyes. “I uh-“, you started, shifting a little from foot to foot,”I just got my period...and you don’t really have stuff here for it...could you get me something?” “Oh shit, right”,he said the moment your voice hushed, running his hand over his drowsy face before he started to quickly nod, “but yeah, of course, what do you need?” His fast reaction startled you for a moment, letting you ponder before you looked back up at him. “I don’t know what the Sanctuary has as supplies but pads or tampons would be great. Just whatever you got here.” “Okay, you need some pain killers too?”, he asked, pointing towards you, eliciting a surprised look to spread over your face, that made a chuckle fall from Negan’s lips the moment he saw it. “C’mon I wasn’t born yesterday and believe it or not, I’ve lived with a woman before”,he said, perking his brows up before he let out a deep sigh,”I know that shit hurts. So do you want some? Like that ibuprofen stuff?” “That would be great, yeah”, you stumbled, still surprised, in a positive way though you were glad that you’d get something for the cramps and the overall shitty feeling that was settling within you. “Alright Ma’am, then I’m on it”, Negan said, shooting you a grin as he did a dramatic motion, giving you a nod before he moved towards his closet to slip into some other clothes, right before he made his way out of the apartment.

You moved in to sit down onto the leather couch, shifting a little uncomfortably as the pressure kept spreading over your abdomen, keeping you right in the same spot as you waited for Negan, still a little surprised of how attentive he’d been. You weren’t quite sure how long you just sat there like this, still dressed in his large shirt, until his deep voice sounded through the thick wood doors. “Delivery’s here”, he called out a moment before he slowly opened the door, pushing the handle down with his elbow since his arms and hands were packed with a big wood box ,”Come and get a look, Doll.” You moved up from your seat, a little startled at his sight as he kicked the door shut again behind himself and gave you a grin the moment you moved towards him. “Had no clue what exactly you need, that stuff is complicated as fuck, ain’t gonna lie”, he said the moment you reached him and glanced into the box, taken a back for a second as you saw how filled it was before he nodded towards the pads and tampon boxes in one corner,”So I just grabbed a bunch. Raided a warehouse a while back, so we’re stocked with that and all other sanitary shit up to roof.” He shrugged slightly before he moved over to one of the armchairs with you, placing the box in its middle as you got a second glance into its inside. “Pain killers are over there, got some of your clothes for you too...Oh and I found this one”, he chuckled, reaching inside to pull a fluffy, dark gray hot water bottle out, pointing at it with a wider growing grin before he let it slide back into the box. ”Not filled yet but I can change that, plus”,he stopped, motioning towards one of the closets,”And I think that deserves a drum roll, I still got some chocolate in one of those drawers... think that’s it for the moment. I don’t have a pussy so I got no clue if I left anything out, if so, just lemme know, Sweetheart.” For another moment, you stared at the filled box, overwhelmed with what he’d just brought you. As for the sanitary stuff, sure that was just human decency, but he’d gone the extra mile there, bringing you helpful and actually thoughtful stuff you hadn’t even thought off when you’d first talked to him earlier. He was acting in this caring way again, and you couldn’t wrap your head around it. “What’s with that surprised face?”, he asked with a rough chuckle, responding to the look on your face that had given away how you felt about this situation. “I’m not always an asshole,”,he said the moment you looked up at him, pointing swiftly at you as he gave you another smirk”And I said I’d take care of you and that’s what I’m doing now.” You just looked at him for another second, trying to once again figure out who this man really was before you slowly started to nod. “Thank you”,you said, giving him a small but genuine smile as your eyes switched to the box again. This was still Negan, and there was a part of you that questioned whether he had done this with any hind-thoughts but the look on his face and his eyes were telling you something different. If you liked it or not you had to acknowledge that what he’d done there was nothing else but kind. “Anytime”, he said, winking at you before he let out a little sigh. “I’d tell you to make this a lazy stay in day but we still gotta check this up again”, he said as he motioned towards the older bandage on your left upper arm, scratching his beard as you glanced down at it for a moment,”After that, you can plop down back into this cozy heaven asap.”

About an hour later you found yourself standing in front of the doctors office, watching as Negan knocked the end of his bat against the door. “Doc, got some job for you”, he said, leaning himself against the door as if he was trying to hear whether there was movement inside, but he got no response. “I’m coming in”, he said with a sigh after a couple more moments, opening the door to a clearly empty office with no Dr Carson in sight. “Well looks like you gotta put up with me”, left Negan’s lips in a chuckle before you moved after him into the office, closing the door as Negan grabbed his walkie and let out a thick sigh. ”DJ, I need you to find out where Carson is and send him to his office, I got a job for him here to take care of”, Negan said into the walkie as he leaned Lucille against one of the counters only to hear the clicking of the walkie a moment later. ”Sure thing Boss, couldn’t get a grasp on him though for a bit. Might take a little longer until I find where he’s at, I’ll let you know as soon as I can”, the male voice on the other side sounded through the radio as Negan let out a small groan, pinching the bridge of his nose before he started to nod. ”Alright, I count on you”, Negan mumbled back into the walkie before he tucked it away again and glanced back at you before a grin started to tug on his lips again. ”Looks like we gotta get into some Doctor Roleplay now, huh?”, he chuckled, running his hand over his short beard stubble as you leaned yourself against the table in the middle, trying to not show him too much of a reaction as he moved towards the cabinets, “Either way, gonna try to change that bandage of yours for now, after that we can still let Carson over it again but fuck, I don’t really wanna leave that old shit on you any longer.” With that he started to rather quickly collect what he needed before he moved in to remove the old bandage on your arm, all while you could feel his glance roaming over you. His touch alone already gave you an odd feeling and his glance wasn’t helping either, so you were more than glad as he moved on to clean your wound, got some new salve onto it and eventually finished the whole procedure by wrapping a new bandage around your upper arm. “Hmm, gotta secure this thing huh?”, he mumbled as he glanced at the tangling end of the bandage, biting the inside of his check a little as he pondered before he glimpsed back at you. “Hold this for a sec, Sweetheart”, he mumbled, waiting until you moved your fingers up to keep the bandage in place before he moved over to the desk by the window, looked around before he opened one of the drawers and began to rummage in them until he let out a triumphal chuckle. “Got it”, he said, holding a medical tape up with a wide grin before he looked back into the drawer, moving to close it before he suddenly halted and went quiet for a second. “Well what the fuck is that?”, he mumbled to himself, fishing a piece of paper out of the drawer, his eyes wandering over the words that were written onto it before a deep scoff left his lips. “Looks like we found the prick that let your brother out.”

”Goodbye, Honey” These two words were written on the small note in a cursive handwriting, Sherry’s handwriting. It hadn’t taken Negan more than that to count two and two together and you could tell by the look on his face the moment it had dimmed on him, that he was everything else than happy with this new revelation. He’d still been careful and considerate with you as he’d finished the bandage, the anger only seething within but it started to put a tension all over him as soon as he’d called for Dwight to get the furnace ready and took you to get downstairs into the grande hall. The stench of metal and fire mixed with one another and rose up your nose the moment as you found yourself walking inside, capturing the people who were already standing around the furnace and the small free spot right before it, where two men held a frightened Carson, trying to keep him on his legs. He was visibly shaking, his eyes darting to the ground as if he was trying to focus on something that was keeping his whimpers from turning into sobs. More tension started to grow over you as you walked past Dwight who stood by the furnace before you felt its heat radiation onto you for a second before Negan stopped with you shortly past it, the frown on his face turning into the dangerous grin that you’d seen before. ”Alright Sweetheart, its gonna get pretty messy here so in case you don’t wanna watch, I’m not making you. You just gotta close your pretty eyes”, Negan chuckled, smirking at you as a tight breath left your lips and a frustrated look of yours met him right before he turned around and started to walk towards the circle’s middle. For a moment, your eyes ran over the crowd in front of you, first catching Negan’s wives on the other side, as always wearing their uniform-esque black dresses and you could catch one or two of them looking over at you, eyeing you before your attention got caught by something else. From merely one moment to another you could see Eugene and a blonde woman, one you’d seen more often around the community, appearing on one of the platforms by the windows, her grip on his hard as he looked scared down at Carson and the furnace. A nervous breath fell from your lips as you watched him for a moment, before Negan’s deep chuckle made you look back down. “You are gonna want to pay close attention to this”, you could hear Negan’s gravely voice say as he rose up his bat to point it right at Eugene. For a second, he held this position, his grin widening while the fright on Eugene’s face grew, right before Negan suddenly moved. Your breath got caught in your throat as you saw him swinging the bat against Carson’s side, hard and with enough force to make the other man choke and stumble, weaken his trembling legs even more while a blood freezing wail left his lips. “No, no, no, no! Why? I didn’t do anything.” “I found this little souvenir tucked away in your desk”, Negan said, the wicked grin widening while his eyes stayed cold while he held the little note up between his fingers. “I...I don’t know what that is”, Carson said, his voice trembling and the first tears were rolling over your face right before another cold shudder washed over you the moment Lucille hit his side the second time, the barbed wire digging into his white coat while another wail left his lips. “You my dear friend, you left the door open and let my puppy out. You fucking knew Sherry hated Daryl being here, so you let him out for her, be the damn hero. Then you could move in. That is some weaselly shit right there”, Negan called out, leaning closer to the frightened man while you felt yourself growing more uncomfortable with each passing second, if you could you’d just flee this moment now but you were stuck here and you knew that you would have to watch whatever was going to happen in the next moments. “But I didn’t. She’s the one who ran-”, Carson panted, barely keeping himself on his legs as Negan cut him off. “Oh, she ran? You know why she ran? Because she knew I would blame her, which I did. But, see, Sherry told Dwighty boy the whole story right before she was torn apart. That girl got horrifically killed because of your greedy, delusional, and tiny little prick”, Negan hissed, moving over to the furnace to slip the thick glove over his hands and grasp the burning hot iron from Dwight’s hook that glowed with heat. “It’s not true”, Carson whimpered as his eyes fell onto the iron while Negan walked closer and made nausea stir inside your stomach, remembering the stench  of burning and melting flesh from the day Carl had snuck into the Sanctuary. “Dwight?”, Negan asked, perking his brows nearly theatrically up as he glanced at the blonde who was just staring into the flames, the look in his eyes cold and the sound of his tone monotone as he finally spoke up. ”He did it” “He’s lying about it”, Carson gasped in the next moment, panic flooding his face all over again as Negan shook his head and let a deep groan fall from his lips. “Why? Why? Why would he do that? Why would he intentionally try to hurt you? Sherry’s gone. And if he’s lying and she’s out there, We will find her. And then I will burn the other side of his fucking face off until he dies. So, what was he gonna get out of this?..No I know my Dwighty boy. See, all he needed was one more night in the hole, get his head screwed on straight. It worked before, and it worked now. Ain’t that right, Dwight?” “Oh, yeah”, Dwight responded in the very same cold and monotone manner as before and something about the way he looked, the way he talked and the way he behaved gave you the feeling that Negan was being too confident about Dwight’s loyalty. He always seemed odd to you, but today, his whole appearance just made you assume that there was something seriously off about the whole situation. You didn’t know what had exactly happened, if Dwight and Carson had planned this together and Dwight was backstabbing him now or ir Dwight was pushing his wrong doings onto Carson, but whatever it was, Dwight had to be involved in this, at least somehow and Carson was the one who was gonna pay for it, alone. “Oh, please. No, please. Oh, Jesus, don’t burn me. Please!  No. No, no, please!“, Carson cried out, ripping you out of your thoughts and back to the scene in front of you as Negan rose the iron up and stepped closer towards the other man. “Now you know I hate this shit. Just tell me you did it and that you’re sorry, and I don’t have to do this”, Negan said, his voice growing in an odd way a bit softer for a moment, irritating you while Carson breathed through for the first time, tears still in his eyes before he rose his voice after a few, dreading and silent moments. “Yes…Yes, I did it… all of it. Sorry. I’m so sorry. Please...I’m sorry.” “That’s all you had to say. That is all you had to fucking say”, Negan said, a slight growing growing back on his face as he put the iron back on the hook and for a moment, a teeny, tiny moment, you actually thought that this might be it, that Negan was gonna let him sit in a cell for a few days maybe, but that this was it for now, but merely seconds later Negan proved you wrong. Your body flinched, a hasty gasp left your lips and your eyes widened in shock as you suddenly saw him grabbing the doctor by his shoulders, before he dragged him harshly over to the furnace and threw Carson head first inside, holding his flinching body into the flames as his screams echoed through the grand hall. A stench of burning clothes and flesh rose up your nose, letting nausea claw on your throat as Carson’s body stopped to move, his lover half hanging lifeless out of the flames as they were feeding away at him. If you wouldn’t have seen it, if you wouldn’t  have smelled it, you’d likely though that this wasn’t real and a part of you still hoped that your senses were mistaken. But Negan had burned him, he’d burned him alive and it only made you feel worse about the odd feeling you’d felt last night and earlier this day. How was this man who was strutting through the hall there after tossing someone into the flames without flinching the same who’d been so concerned and careful with you? Who was literally bringing you hot heating bottles and chocolate to make you feel better? You really shouldn’t be surprise by his cruelty anymore, not after that one night in the clearing, but you still were, in the oddest way possible. A shivering breath fell from your lips as you tore your eyes from the burning body, an ice cold and at the same time boiling hot shiver running down your back as you watched Negan walking over towards Dwight, loosely wrapping his arm around the shorter man before he pointed his bat up at Eugene. “Good thing we got a spare Dr. Carson...and smartypants’ brain.”, Negan chuckled roughly before he glanced down at the blonde beside him and let Lucille dangle back down his side. “Must be shitty as fuck to lose her, huh? I’m sorry for you Dwighty”, Negan said, while Dwight kept on looking the same way he had during this whole ordeal, cold and monotone. “I’m not”, left Dwight’s lips, right before an amused look spread over Negan’s face as he let out a whiste. “Whoo. Fucking ice-cold. I fucking love it”, Negan chuckled, giving the younger man’s shoulder a tight squeeze before he let go of him and just then, his eyes met yours as he moved with heavy steps towards your spot beside the furnace. “Alright Sweetheart, let’s get outta here, isn’t all too cozy in here”, Negan said, winking at you as was met with an irritated and frustrated glance of yours, while you were still trying to get the ugly feeling this whole thing had just elicited within you out of your body, and you did so the whole way up back to the apartment as well, without any success.

“Shit Doll, you’re tense as fuck. You can loosen up, y’know? As I said, you can spend the rest of the day just cuddlin’ up in that bed”, Negan said after the heavy wooden door fell into its lock behind the both of you and he casually walked towards the couch, leaning Lucille against its side. You just stood there, still at the door, like glued to the spot and unable to process his sudden change again. He’d just burned someone to death, how could he act like this again? What was going on in that damn head of his? “What?”, you heard him ask, darting your glance at him after he’d seen the look on your face and you couldn’t do else but look bewildered at him. “You...”, you started, sighing as you were trying to collect yourself, “I just watched you burn someone alive...how am I supposed to be not tense?” A thick sigh left Negan’s lips his eyes narrowing slightly while a frown spread back over his face that let just another shiver run down your back. ”He deserved it. He betrayed me, he technically betrayed the whole damn Sanctuary. I can’t have someone in that damn position who plays hero and gets this place in trouble. He’s been a suspicious fuck for a while, this just topped it off”, Negan said, his eyes fixing on you as you still looked at him the very same way as before, bewildered and confused. ”He had it coming. I know what I did there was fucked up but he had it coming....plus,...it’s as if you haven’t done screwed up shit too, huh?”, Negan asked, moving closer to you as he perked his brows up, reminding you most certainly of the night in his outpost and the men you’d killed in their sleep. ”I know”, you answered with a thick gulp, looking up at him as another shivering sigh fell from your lips,”But I haven’t done something like that yet...and I hope it never comes to that.” ”I’m just trying to do what’s best for this place. Carson deserved what he got, Eugene, your friend, needed to know what happens when someone’s being a betraying little bitch and good thing is, I think he got it. Think what you want about my methods, but I’m just trying to keep people save. Killing him saved others on the long run, many more others”, he said, his breath growing heavier as you stared up at him, still utterly uncomfortable and even upset with what had happened before you saw him turning back around, moving towards Lucille by the couch. Finally, you could peel yourself from the spot by the door and moved around the bed to sit down onto your side, moving in to settle on the sheets as you could feel the shock starting to ebb away, allowing the pain in your abdomen do become more prominent again. You shifted uncomfortably, trying to find a position hat soothed the upcoming cramps a little while you heard Negan rummaging in the room before he walked out and returned only a few minutes later to get back to whatever he was previously doing. You didn’t turn to look at him or watch what he was doing, for a moment, you just wanted to shut him a little out and that worked until you you watched him moving closer from the corner of your eyes. You glimpsed up, your eyes widening a little in surprise as you saw that he was carrying the filled hot water bottle in one of his hands, the other holding a small package of chocolate he had told you about earlier.   ”Don’t look at me like that”,he sighed as he saw astounded look on your face,”Just because I fucked Carson’s ass up doesn’t mean what I said to you changes.” He moved closer, holding out both items towards you as he quirked his brows a little up and made you feel even more conflicted and torn about him than you already were. ”And I don’t wanna see you in pain, alright?”, he added, his voice growing a little softer, only throwing you more off before you finally reached towards him and first took the hot water bottle, then the chocolate into your hands. ”Thank you”, you mumbled, putting on a small smile and glimpsing up to him as you adjusted the bottle to lay over your stomach and sat the chocolate bar beside you. ”Anytime”, he said, quirking the corners of his lips a little up before he reached up to run his hand over the slight stubble that was covering his jaw,”Alright, then get yourself all cozy here, I still gotta visit Eugene and make sure he’s up to speed.” “No need to worry though, I’m 100 percent sure smartypants is gonna do his job”, he added with a grin the moment he saw the slight tension spread over your face and part of you’d already seen Eugene’s fate being upside down. ”Okay”, you said with a nod, a part of you glad that he was leaving for a little so you’d get the possibility to clear your head a bit and with that Negan eyed you for another moment before he moved over to the couch to grab Lucille before he slipped out of the room and left you alone in the apartment. Sighing you leaned back into the pillows, trying to get comfortable as you closed your eyes and breathed deeply out, trying to get Negan for a little out of your head but there was this part that just kept on nudging you. You still couldn’t wrap your head around his different sides and you still felt horrible about this little feeling that just didn’t want to vanish completely, and you had the unsettling guess that it would only become harder to work against it the longer you lived with him in this room.

part 11

tagging: @imaginesforthepeople @toxic-ink @reylo101 @agespenst @squidgy84 @nobodylastname @xsnak-3x @tolieboy @writteninthestars288 @nice-shoes-nerd @dasani-saraai @thegirlwiththelyrics99 @magical-spit @myrabbitholetoneverland @straightestgay-voice

[republicstandard]

Fight For The Future: Nationalism, White Identity, and the Genocidal Left

Ever since Donald J. Trump won the election, the Left has been trying to come to grips with it all. Why did so many people reject the One True Narrative? Why is America so full of evil racist meanies?

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Beyond the standard leftist bogey of racism, they seem to be genuinely concerned with the rise of nationalism in the United States, and to some degree more broadly in the Western world.

I’m fond of joking that to the Left, anyone to the right of Elizabeth Warren is a racist, even a neo-Nazi. And to be sure, whenever the Left try to brand anyone or anything as racist, they’re using a Kafka-trap: branding someone racist generally has the effect of putting that person and their defenders on the defensive.

We should not lose sight of how very sinister this can be. If you doubt this, consider what happened to James Watson, co-discoverer of the molecular structure of DNA with Francis Crick.

Nationalism, for the Left, is integrally related to the bogey of racism—at least when practiced by Western Whites. Both constitute in-group preferences on the part of White people.

And now we come to the double standard. As I recently pointed out, black nationalism merges rather handily with far-left entitlement and theft.

On that note, I somehow managed to stumble across this fawning review of Black Panther by racial grievance-huckster Shaun King. Here, have a few paragraphs—consider it your daily dose of cancer:

“But let me close by talking about the movie. Nothing like it has ever been done before. Not just with a Black superhero, but with several Black superheroes. Black Panther had a whole cast of beautiful Black brilliance. Black scientists. Black Presidents. The style. The technology. The color.”

I enjoy a good fantasy as much as the next person (and probably more, since I actually write high fantasy), but you have to take a moment to appreciate the sheer hypocrisy of the left. Black expression of identity and in-group pride=Good. White expression of identity and in-group pride=Bad.

“But it’s even deeper than that. There is a movement we call Afro-Futurism, where we imagine a Black way of life free of White supremacy and bigotry. Black Panther, I think, is the first blockbuster film centered in the ethos of Afro-Futurism, where the writers, and directors, and makeup and wardrobe team all imagined a beautiful, thriving Black Africa without colonialism.”

And if it was historical reality instead of childish racial wish-fulfillment and piss-poor fantasy worldbuilding, a movie about Black Africa without colonialism would feature mud huts, iron-tipped spears, and malaria.

“Wakanda showed us our families in one piece. No war on drugs. No mass incarceration. No KKK. No lynching. No racial profiling. No police brutality.”

And all of those things are 110% equivocal, with no differences between them at all. War on drugs? KKK! And the modern social ills are all the fault of Whites, and in no way reflect disparities in the rates of crime, police encounters, or welfare dependence.

But if we’re being honest, the Left is not simply the side of black identitarianism and nationalism: they’re happy to shill for globalism when it’s convenient to do so, i.e. whenever it can undermine group identity and cohesion for Whites.

An example of this very phenomenon recently presented itself on my Audible:

Let’s break some of this down a bit:

“A lot of us don’t see ourselves in our bookshelves, our libraries, or our bookstores.”

It’s almost as if identity matters or something.

“Our bookshelves tend to be disproportionately White and disproportionately male and do not represent who we are in this country or who we are becoming.”

There’s so much to unpack here. Could it be that a bookshelf that is disproportionately White reflects a civilization that has also been White? And I say “has also been White,” because as he points out, “we” are becoming something else.

Disproportionately male? What is the right proportion of male authors? Should we expect a 50-50 breakdown between men and women? (Should we expect men and women to have the same priorities, statistically speaking?).

He complains about history, and then goes on to make a very interesting demand:

“Our bookshelves need to look like the future and not the past; they should be brimming with writers of color, women of color writers, indigenous writers, immigrant writers, women writers, LGBTQIA writers.”

Don’t you love the idea that Whites, and especially White men, are the past? This is nothing more than a demand for the diminution, demonization, and erasure of White racial identity, and especially of White males.

This is, again, the central leftist hypocrisy on nationalism, and the identity politics that provide the basis for nationalism: it’s perfectly okay for _everyone except for Whites, particularly White males. _

Now, if you’ve been following my work since the beginning, you’ll recognize this as our old friend, the Great War of Coalitions. More specifically, it’s the Left’s central coalition strategy: demonizing Whites, and especially White men, is how they recruit coalition partners (the Rainbow Nation brigade referenced by Junot Díaz above) and reward them through the welfare state, which actually works out pretty well for White leftists.

Of course, for this strategy to really work as intended, the target needs to not be able to fight back. And this is why leftists have to deny Whites any legitimate identitarian interests, particularly if they are to continue the globalist project of flooding Europe with migrants and fake refugees.

Now that we’ve identified the problem, what’s the solution? We have a leftist anti-White coalition that is designed to appeal to non-Whites, immigrants, women, and sexual minorities. If you are in any one of those groups, do you have to join the coalition?

On the other hand, we have everyone from moderate leftists and classical liberals to right-wingers such as yours truly who reject said coalition. If you are White, and particularly if you are White and male, is it necessary to go full Richard Spencer?

I submit that the answer to each of the above questions is a resounding No.

The way out of this coalitional struggle that the Left have foisted on us will not be easy, but a good start would be to offer a better-quality and more honest dialog on racial identity race relations. I see plenty of encouraging signs of this already.

A few principles for a more honest dialog might include the following:

1). Admit that many people have racial and other in-group preferences—and that’s okay.

People should not be demonized for expressing a preference to live in neighborhoods with people whom they perceive to be like them. Nor should they be demonized for expressing concern for persecuted national minorities in other countries, groups they again perceive to be like themselves, and trying to fast-track them to safety.

2). Recognize and reject racial grievance hucksterism.

The Left gets a lot of mileage out of grievances against Whites. We have to recognize this for the poisonous, contemptible strategy that it is, a tactic which in turn fosters resentment among Whites.

I’m hardly original here for pointing out that leftist anti-White rhetoric has done a fantastic job of creating the very bogey they now despise – the alt-right.

3). Be honest about real racial issues – and try to find common ground.

A significant part of my red-pilling experience on racial issues was the recognition that the left consistently fails to confront the truth about race and crime, race and welfare use, and the pernicious effects of leftist policies – usually chalked up to a supposed ‘legacy of slavery.’

We need to be honest about these and many other issues because they dynamite the entire narrative of “White privilege,” an intellectually malformed and morally perverse narrative which functions to demonize and delegitimize Whites.

4). Commit to Western and national identity.

We should unequivocally assert the validity of Western civilization, of national identity, and of nationalism over globalism.

Whatever else may be said about White, Western civilization, it has uplifted the entire world. As I recently pointed out with regard to the ongoing and accelerating White displacement and White genocide in South Africa, Whites elevated that country from mud huts and iron-tipped spears to automobiles, the internet, and pizza. Would a bit more gratitude, and a bit less resentment, really be too much to ask?

It is true that the West is the historical civilization of Whites. This in no way means it cannot include others now. What it does mean is that we need a better foundation for race relations, one which is not based on an intellectually and morally bankrupt, perverse doctrine which delegitimizes Whites.

We also need immigration control. It should not be controversial to suggest an end to the massive importation of the Third World into historically White, Western lands.

On the plus side, my own sense of this is that the backlash to the left’s crazy anti-White narratives seems to be growing. I suspect this is a good foundation for finding common ground and advancing the dialog in a more productive direction.

Other principles can and should be added as needed, along with refinements of the four principles suggested above.

It will not be easy to reform race relations and shift the conversation about identity in a manner that discredits leftist propaganda and hypocrisy. Still, it is worth doing, and my own sense of this is that the pushback against the Left seems to be growing (the Trump election being a notable example).

In this struggle, the hypocrisy, hysteria, and entitlement of the Left are working against them. They have become the embodiment of petty tyrants and bullies, hiding behind the comfort of institutions and the longstanding hegemony of their Narrative, all too often afraid to confront opposing ideas.

The only vision of race relations on offer from the Professional Left is the one promoted by the peddlers of grievances, half-truths, and the toxic racial blood libel of “White privilege.” It is a vision for hysterical, entitled children who need to lay their own grievances, inadequacies, and insecurities at the feet of the ever-present, ever-evil and oppressive forces of society.

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Isn’t it time for the adults to take back the conversation?

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