#It might just be a bigger deal in my head than it actually is HA

[watchyourbuck]

The thing about Tommy is that he’s very pretty. Everything about him is intoxicatingly attractive, and no matter where they go, people follow. Men, particularly.

Buck isn’t necessarily the jealous type. He’s had his fair share of protecting ex girlfriends from creeps and dudes who won’t back off, but this is different. This feels like a constant, extremely symptomatic migraine.

Of course girls throw themselves at him, but the mere fact that they have no chance makes it less angering. It’s the studs, and the twinks, and the huge men who put their hands on his man. That cup his ass almost as a greeting gesture. That play with his hair, and whisper in his ear.

And Tommy isn’t stupid. He knows he’s being flirted with, but since he could never have eyes for anyone who isn’t Buck, he doesn’t see the need to be rude. So he keeps it at ‘No, thank you’’s, and polite, refusing smiles. And yes, that’s yet another one of the qualities Buck loves about him. Because he doesn’t like violence. But then again, it fires up the unwavering possessiveness brewing in the pit of his stomach.

So Buck’s gotten creative. Now that they’re officially a couple, and go out on dates every weekend — to different places, if he might add —, he’s had to get handy with the way he lets people know Tommy’s his.

He orders with him at the bar, makes sure to say ‘my boyfriend’ and strategically places his hands on parts of Tommy’s body that would get him punched if they weren’t together. It works, for the most part.

But there’s always that one guy who can’t take a hint.

“You’re like a Greek god,” he whispers and Buck rolls his eyes. “Greek gods shouldn’t be alone.”

It’s a twenty-something year old dude that looks like he’s missing a college class. He’s wearing a tank top and eyeliner and he’s about a second away from earning himself all of Buck’s un-contained rage.

“I’m not alone,” Tommy says, pointing at him, and god bless his heart. “This is my partner.”

Buck bends forward a bit to wave enthusiastically, but it comes out bitchy. He’s almost sorry but then the guy barely acknowledges him, putting his hand on Tommy’s shoulder and rubbing circles on the exposed skin. Tommy’s hand tightens on his hip, keeping him still.

“You know, I’m very flexible,” the guy says and Buck is currently making a deal with god to grant him patience. “I could show you just how much.”

“Oh, you’re not showing him anything,” Buck barks, right from over Tommy’s head. If he has to get on his tippy toes to do that, well, the other guy doesn’t have to know.

“Evan,” Tommy warns, but it’s endearing, it carries no threat. He turns his head to the kid and tilts it. “You should find a guy who’s interested. I’m not.”

Buck absolutely preens, a cocky smirk settling on his face. He’s about to claim victory when he notices the guy’s demeanor doesn’t change, and he actually steps closer. “That’s because you don’t know what you’re missing, daddy.”

Nope. A surge of something primal and almost maniac courses through his body, and before Tommy can do anything about it, Buck’s rounding him and taking the guy’s wrist and squeezing it. He’s shorter than Tommy but significantly bigger than this kid, so he towers over him easily. “Take your hands off him if you want to keep them.”

The kid’s face contorts in fear. “What’s your problem, dude!”

Buck laughs, his only point of connection to reality being Tommy’s hand on his belt loops, holding him in place. “My problem,” he says, his voice deeper, “is that you can’t seem to take no for an answer. He’s told you he’s not alone. So, back off before I make you.”

His eyes shift from Buck’s to Tommy’s, who Buck can only guess has a soft but unreadable expression on his face. When the kid isn’t defended by Tommy, he snags his hand back, scoffs and takes off.

Buck watches him until he loses him to the crowd, then lets out a big breath, closing his eyes momentarily. He turns to Tommy, expecting to find judgy or at least annoyed eyes. He doesn’t.

“Not that I wanna encourage you,” Tommy says, sitting on a stool to pull Buck closer, right between his legs. “But that was really hot.”

Buck huffs out a laugh but it’s vaguely one. “I’m just— he wouldn’t stop touching you. You’re, ugh, you’re—!”

Tommy tilts his head, chasing after Buck’s gaze when he looks to the side. “You can say it.”

Buck bites his lip and stares. How could he not, after all. “You’re mine,” de declares, definitive and on the verge of angry. “And I don’t like men touching what’s mine.”

And he knows. There’s a fine line between sexy possessive and psychopathically controlling, and he’s walking it like a rope between two buildings, but the look on Tommy’s face and the unmistakable sight of the front of his pants growing tighter doesn’t help him get off the high horse. “We can always make a scene,” Tommy shrugs, getting up again and cornering Buck against the bar.

Buck’s eyes darken, even through the pain on his tailbone. His arms surge forward to wrap around Tommy’s neck and bring him down. And if they do make a scene, if they do make out messily and desperately for everyone to see, then it’s truly not his problem what they think. As long as they know who Tommy belongs to.

[samandcolbyownme]

Summary: anon request - "Hi can u do one like should've stayed home but with Sam please and can u make it so they end up fighting about leaving and not wanting to leave and so the car ride home is silent leaving Colby feeling awkward until they get home then they make up after a little bit more arguing please please pleas thank u."

Warning: This one shot will get dark at parts and contain the reader being targeted by the spirits and some actions include; being touched, pushed, choked, scratched, spoken to, and other things some readers might find a bit creepy. There will also be mentions of murder and such at the place of exploration and other bad things some readers may be triggered by and there will be a short SMUT scene at the end.

I also kinda changed around the ending a little bit, hope you don't mind!

Word count: 8.1K

"What's up guys. It's Sam and Colby."

You stand off to the side, watching as they do their intro, "Today." Sam presses his hands together and leans in, "We are at the Agatha Asylum, or better known as the worst place to be sent if you were already having a bad day."

"It's said that people who had, or thought to have had any kind of mental illness were sent here for-" Colby puts air quotes, "-help.. and they were punished by being chained to walls, stuck in cages, beaten, and most even faced death."

"We are here today to see if we can get some answers as to why the person in charge, John Agatha, would do something like this." Sam glances over at you, "We also have with us a very special guest, y/n."

You walk over, standing in between Sam and Colby and hold your hand up, "I don't know why I'm here. I hate asylums."

"You volunteered to handcuff yourself to the wall, remember?" Colby jokes and looks at you. You raise your eyebrows, "The fuck I did."

"Anyway." Sam tries not to laugh, "We are currently waiting on the owner of this asylum to get here so we can get a tour and get a feel for what we will be dealing with.." Sam looks over at the road, "I think that's them now."

A car pulls up and parks, stepping out is a man and women.

"Are you Mark and Cindy?" Colby asks walking over and the man nods, "Yes, are you Sam and Colby?" Sam holds his hand up, "I'm Sam, this is my girlfriend y/n and that's Colby."

You all say hello and they jump right into it, "So.." Cindy starts out, "This is Agatha Asylum." She motions towards the building behind the fence, "This is to keep anyone out, since we're trying to get it ready to present to the public, we have it blocked off so people don't get in without us knowing. Or we try to at least."

"Have people gotten in?" Colby asks and Mark nod, "Oh yeah. We eventually set up security cameras around the perimeter. The day we noticed a broken window and spray paint lids, actually."

"What kind of things happened here exactly?" Sam asks handing the camera to Colby.

Cindy blows air, "Oh gosh, anything from restraining the patients inhumanly to keeping them locked in cages that were maybe, if they were lucky, a little bigger than themselves."

You raise your eyebrows, "What the hell?"

Mark nods, "most of the women who came in were attacked by the staff if you know what I mean so I'm sure the women are angry. I mean, hell I would be too if I was stuck here."

"Have you guys had any thing happen to you?" Colby asks, "Like personally or maybe to someone you know that has come here."

Mark nods, "Yeah, I've had my tools messed with, moved. Cindy has been pushed down the steps, and one of my guys who are working with me on getting this ready, was pushed from his ladder."

"Pushed off a lad- oh shit." Sam shakes his head, "Is there anything we need to know before going in there? Like maybe who to try and get in contact with or what not to ask?"

"John Agatha. He's the one who ran this place. Many people have tried to contact him but they never got any real answers as to why." Cindy says, "Just make your intentions known, I know some of the spirits in there can get pretty mean, so just keep reminding them that you mean no harm."

"Has anyone stayed a full night here?" You ask and they laugh, "No."

"No?" Colby asks raising his eyebrows, "Looks like we have a challenge on our hands, guys." He looks over at you and Sam and Sam shakes his head, "I'm already shitting my pants, dude."

"You all will by the time it gets dark. It's a pretty active place during the day, don't get me wrong, but not only me, but from other groups that came through as well, said it's gets worse at night." Mark sighs, "So. Who's ready for the tour?"

"You guys have fun, I'm going home." Colby pretends to walk away before turning back around, "No, let's go before I really do change my mind."

.·:*¨ ✘ ¨*:·.

"So this hallway leads you to where most of the women were held.." Cindy points to the right and then to the left, "Men were held that way."

"Is there any specific areas as to where the most activity happens?" Sam asks laying his hand on your back as he steps around you, "Where were the cages kept exactly?"

"This whole place, honestly. You're bound to get activity anywhere in here and there were at least two cages per room."

"Per room?" You raise your eyebrows, "How many were kept in a room at one time?"

"Two but some held up to four, depending on many were here and came in and what not." Mark says looking around. He stares down the hallway and Sam turns the camera, "Did you see something?"

"A shadow moved across then end of that hallway there." He points, "No taller than you." He motions to Colby and Colby shrugs, "Sorry. I'm just that fast."

He starts pretending to Sonic run in place. You laugh and shake your head, "You can't be serious at all can you?" He shakes his head, "Not when I'm scared shitless, no."

Mark and Cindy laugh and start walking down the hall way. They explain each room briefly, basically what it was used for until you finally reach an old wooden door that's laying on the floor.

"This is where they kept, what they called, the worst of the worst." Mark lifts the door, revealing a steep staircase, "Watch your step as you come down."

"This is a really odd basement entrance." Sam says handing the camera to Colby, "What the hell."

Mark and Cindy go down first, followed by Sam then you. He helps you down, coaching you through the steps until you reach the bottom.

"What you're not going to help me?" Colby asks looking over his shoulder at Sam. All of you start baby talking to Colby coaching him down the steps and he stands there with his lips pressed together, "Should have never said anything."

Sam takes the camera, making sure Colby is good before turning around, "What is up with freaking jail cells in the basements of these places?"

"Literally." You mumble as you wrap your arms around yourself, "It's so cold down here. Did they have any sort of heat at the time of this place being open?"

Mark shakes his head, "They had a fireplace over there but as you can see it got filled from the outside in so who knows when that happened."

There's a loud thud from upstairs and you jump, "the fuck?"

Colby points, "That sounded like the door lifted up and dropped back down." Sam nods, "Yeah yeah yeah."

"Very well could have been. Doors opening on their own is very common around here." Cindy says, "Especially the third floor, that's where lots of the killings happened."

"Why the third floor?" Colby asks, "Why not down here?"

"The patients ended up dying all over the place, but if they were ordered to be put out by John, they would drag them up the stairs, kill them then dump their bodies out of the back window, into what was said to be a big wagon and then taken about half a mile away and they would just burn them and then just cover the hole with dirt."

"That answers my question about what they do with the bodies." Sam cringes, "I can't even imagine that."

"The hauntings and activity started a year or two after the patients first started to die. So if you can, try to contact.. oh shit. Was was his name?" Cindy looks at Mark and he shakes his head, "Oh, you mean Warren Summers?"

She nods, "Yes! He was reported to be the first to die, they ruled his death an accident but we all know it wasn't."

"Well definitely try to contact him, find out some answers." Colby nods and mark motions, "Alright, I need to get out of here, this spot makes me feel sick."

"Whoa really?" Sam looks at Colby, "Do you feel okay?" Colby nods and Sam looks at you, "Do you feel alright?"

You nod your head, "I mean, I feel like there's pressure on my chest, but it's not like, oh my god I can't breathe, kinda pressure."

"Let's get out of here and we'll just start in the main lobby." Sam says as he walks you over to the stairs. You go up first, followed by Sam and he turns around, "Come on, Colby." His voice is high pitched, "You can do it!"

Colby glares up at him from mid stairs and shakes his head as he laughs, "Thanks buddy. I needed that."

Mark and Cindy make their way up and she points to you, "Are you sure they're the ones not together?"

You sigh and shrug, "Sometimes I feel like I'm in a competition." You laugh and look over at Colby who does the, I'm watching you, motion.

.·:*¨ ✘ ¨*:·.

"Alright, guys. We have the REM pod here, and we're going to start out easy tonight by starting in the lobby." Sam walks over to the desk, setting the pod down, "It was said that there was a receptionist here who just so happened to be John's wife, Mabel, so she had to known everything you'd think."

"Didn't mark say that she disappeared randomly one day and no one really looked for her?" You ask looking at Sam, and he nods, "Yeah yeah yeah, maybe she didn't know what was going on and when she started to find out he silenced her?"

"John Agatha was a very wealthy man at the time of his death, so it very well could be or he offed her because she knew he had money?" Colby shrugs, "I mean, there's really only one way to find out."

Colby leans forward, switching on the pod and testing it a few times before stepping back, "Ladies first." He smirks towards you and you roll your eyes playfully, "Okay. Hello, my name is y/n. I mean no harm, I'm just here to ask you a few questions if that's okay."

The pod lights up and you straight up slightly, "If it's okay that I ask, can you touch that little light for me again?"

It lights up and you look between Sam and Colby, "Okay." You look back, "Thank you. Am I speaking to the wife of John Agatha? Mabel. If so touch that light for me again."

A few seconds go by before the light goes off, "Thank you, Mabel."

Sam hands the camera to Colby, "Hello, Mabel, I'm Sam. I come with peace and the possibility of finding out what happened here. I'd like to ask you something too if that's okay."

The pod lights up and Sam takes a deep breath, "Did your husband.. end your life?"

Right after the pod lights up, it stops and there's a loud crash from slightly far away.

You all jump, yelling out cuss words. You lean around Sam the look down the hallway, "What the hell was that?"

"It sounded like something big fell, like you know those big metal carts the food trays are served on? It sounded like one of those and everything in it just falling out." Colby moves forward, "Should we go check it out?"

The rem pod lights up three times in a row and you all look back at it before looking at each other.

"My name is Colby, I mean no harm to you or anyone else here. Was that a warning? Should we not go look?" Colby asks and it lights up one time quickly, "Make that go off for me if that was a yes."

Instantly turns on.

"Fuck, okay." Colby turns to Sam, "What do we do?"

Sam shakes his head, "If we're being told not to go there, we shouldn't."

"That hasn't stopped us before." Colby chuckles slightly, "Y/n."

You're zoned out on the dark hallway where the sound came from, you know that Colby has the camera on you, but you can't acknowledge it.

You feel Sam's hand on you, pulling you back as your body is trying to go forward, "Hey, hey. Y/n. Look at me." Sam steps in front of you, breaking your stare and you shake your head slightly.

He looks up at Colby and back to you, "What just happened? Talk to me." Sam lays his hands on your cheeks and keeps your head straight, "Hey."

"I felt something calling me towards where the sound came from." You lay your hand on Sam's bicep, "It was weird."

"What the fuck." Sam whispers as he looks back up at Colby and he shrugs, "Okay, we'll just go to the left wing, give whatever that is, time to do whatever it needs to do."

Sam pulls you with him, as you still felt drawn.

"So something just took over y/n pretty much." Colby explains, "Y/n, what happened?" He points the camera on you and you laugh slightly, "Um, I don't really know.. like you know how when you're so tired you just zone out?"

They nod and you sigh, "It was like that, but I swear there was a figure standing there, watching us and I was just having some sort of stare down with him."

"You started walking towards it, then. Like what happened with that?" Colby follows up, "Like did it say anything?"

You shake your head, "I knew you had the camera on me, and I knew Sam was pulling me back, but no. Nothing was said, it just stood there watching us and I just felt like I needed to go there."

"John Agatha?" Sam whispers, "Could it- do you think it was him?" You shrug, "Maybe? I don't know, it was the same figure Mark saw I think.. he was really no taller than Colby."

"It had to be, maybe he's trying to tell us to get out or maybe.. with a sliver of luck, he wants to explain himself." Colby shakes his head, "I don't know, let's just avoid that area until we cover this side."

Colby grabs the pod, switching it off as he turns back towards you and Sam, "Are you okay like do you feel alright?"

You nod, even though you feel like you could puke, "Yeah, yeah I'm good."

Sam rubs your arm, "You sure?"

You nod again, "Yes, Sam. I'm sure."

He could tell something was off, but he trusted you. He knew you'd stop if you really couldn't handle it.

"Where to next?" You ask as you take his hand into yours. Sam squeezes your hand and points, "I figured we could go into the day room, that's where Paul Yellow allegedly killed his roommate."

"These two men specifically had beef with each other.." Colby starts out as he hands the camera to Sam who lets go of your hand to take it, "..it was said that they would always be stealing from each other and would always be trying to get one another in trouble, but no one would admit to it, so the staff basically let them handle it themselves and that's when Paul came into the day room with a hammer that he somehow found, and bludgeoned Frank to death."

"Yeah in front of everyone but the staff were basically the only, " sam turns the camera around to him, putting at quotes, "Sane ones here, so they covered it up basically by saying that Frank fell and that was that."

"Wasn't Paul taken by the staff and tortured?" You ask as you look over at Sam. He nods, "Pretty much, yes."

As Sam and Colby explain what you guys were going to do next, you walked over to the window, looking out into the old courtyard.

"Come over here."

You turn around, walking over to Sam, "What?" He looks at you confused, "What?" You look between him and Colby, "Didn't you just tell me to come over here?"

Sam looks up at Colby and back down to you, "No I was getting the EMF ready."

You motion towards the window, "I swear to god, you said, come over here, when I was standing at the window."

Colby's eyes go wide, "He didn't say that." He shakes his head, "Oh fuck."

"So if you didn't sa-"

The sound of, what you think, is a metal trash can sliding across the floor makes you stop talking. It's quick, but you all hear it.

"Something just got drug or pushed across the floor." Sam whispers, "Fuck, fuck, okay. Let's get this thing going.." he turns on the EMF and you all step back.

"I'm y/n. I come in peace, I just want to ask a few questions. Paul Yellow, did you tell me to come over here?" You bite down on your cheek, waiting for the device to give you an answer.

"Were you over by the window with me?" You ask and it lights up green, "was it Paul?"

It lights up red.

"Are we talking to Frank?" Colby asks and it lights up green, "Did Paul kill you?"

Lights up red.

"Was it someone else?" Sam asks trying to keep the camera still and he looks over at you when it lights up green.

"Who else co-" you stop, "Was it one of the staff, Frank?"

Instant green.

"One of the staff did it then blamed Paul?" Colby looks shocked and he jumps slightly as it lights up green, "Holy shit, dude."

"I wonder if they've had anyone figure this out." Sam asks and he turns around, "Did you hear that?" You lean around to look, listening for the sound. Sam looks back, "It sounded like someone was walking and dragging their hand along the wall."

The sound Sam explained happened again and you look up at him, "That?" Sam nods, "Exactly that."

"Something is following us." Colby says quietly, "It has to be."

The EMF lights up green and you all look at each other, "Is it John Agatha?" You glance back at the EMF, "All you need to do is-"

It lights up green and you sigh, "Thank you." A thump against the wall makes you jump, "I don't think he likes being told what to do." You joke which makes Colby laugh, Sam just shakes his head.

"You good, bro?" Colby pushes his arm and looks at him. Sam smiles slightly, "Yeah, no I'm good."

You find yourself being pulled into that stare again, this time it's in the corner of the day room, but nothing is there.

"Colby. Colby." Sam says as he grabs you by the waist. You try to pull away from him, but he wraps his arm around you, "Y/n. Snap out of it, come on."

You lean back into him, "There's something over there."

"You aren't going over there alone." He fights back as he switches his flash light on, revealing just the ripped wallpaper, "See. Nothing."

"There was." You turn around, "he was watching us."

"Who? John?" Colby asks and the EMF lights up green, "Maybe we should try the-" the loud crashing sound makes him stop talking instantly.

"You don't think people got in here do you?" Sam tightens his grip on your waist, "We tweeted about coming here.. so like.."

"They have cameras all around the perimeter they said, and I'm sure they would have told us if they saw something." Sam says as he pulls his phone out, "Let me call Mark, see if he can tell me if there was anything outside."

As Sam calls mark, you close your eyes, resting your head back on his shoulder. Colby walks up, squeezing your arm, "You still with us?"

You open your eyes, nodding, "Yeah I just got really dizzy."

Sam looks down at you and puts the phone on speaker, "There was nothing outside?"

"Not since you went back inside." Mark says on the other end of the phone, "If you do decide to leave just make sure you lock the gate and we can get the key tomorrow."

"Alright, yeah. We'll let you know." Sam says and they end the call, "So it's just us in here." He looks down at you, "Are you okay?"

You nod and stand up, "Yeah, I'm good."

"You're not dizzy anymore?" He brushes hair from your face and you shake your head, "No I'm good."

"I'm thinking we move from here and we go to the third floor." Colby walks over and Sam stops you from following him, "We can leave if this is too much."

"Sam. I'm fine. I promise."

"I don't like the way you just zone out and try to walk away. That's not like you, that isn't you." His eyes scan over your face and you weren't sure if it was the place effecting you, but you just wanted to keep going, "Something is drawing us to that hallway."

"What do you mean?" Sam shakes his head, "Y/n, I don't want you out of my sight, this place is too big and too dark for you to just go off away from us."

"Then put me on a leash or something, because I'm not done here."

You've never spoken to Sam like that. Ever. So when you said it, you were both surprised, "I'm.. sorry, I don't know where that came from."

"My point exactly." Sam chews on his lip, trying to tell himself over and over again that this place is a lot more powerful than they thought.

"What's going on? You guys okay?"

"Yes." You say the same time Sam says, "No."

Colby looks between the two of you then back to Sam. Sam sighs, "This place obviously has a hold over you, y/n. So everything is not okay."

"What-" Colby starts but you cut him off, looking directly at Sam, "Sam. This is what we do. you can't expect me to just back out every time something hap-"

Sam cuts you off, "Yours being pulled by what we can only assume is a dark entity. How do you expect me to act? Just let you walk off into the sunset with it? No. No thanks."

"Guys, come on.. just take a deep breath. There's absolutely no need to argue." Colby tries to settle the situation but it only seemed to fire up the ghosts because it sounds like a table is lifted then dropped back down.

Sam instantly grabs you, pulling you to him, "You're staying close."

You don't put up any more of a fight, knowing that Sam would drag you out himself if he had to, "Fine."

You knew he was right. As soon as you seen the figure in the hallway, something switched and it was like you needed to follow it.

And you didn't know why.

"Why don't we just go there?" Colby says as you guys leave the day room, "Where the sound happened. If it gets bad we can just leave, we always have that option."

You knew Colby wanted to stay, too, but he was also worried about Sam because he was worried about you, "What do you want to do, Sam?"

Sam thinks for a moment before sighing, "If you zone out one more time and try to walk away from us, we're leaving."

.·:*¨ ✘ ¨*:·.

The investigation went on to be better than you guys thought. Nothing happened to you. Nothing happened to them, you thought that maybe your small argument with Sam helped, but you'd soon come to find out that was not true at all.

"So as you guys could see, there hasn't really been much activity going on, probably for the last hour or two." Colby says and motions towards the spirit box, "We brought this to the third floor, hoping to see if we can figure out what exactly happened to some of the patients."

Sam sets the camera down on the one table, angling it towards you guys and the box, "Okay, we'll sit this right here and.." Sam stands up and turns around, "Did you touch me?"

You shake your head, "We've been over here."

"My whole body like shifted and it felt like someone's hand on my side." He lays his hand right where he felt it, "like right here exactly." Colby walks over and Sam demonstrates on him what he felt.

"fucking hell that's creepy." Colby shakes his head, "You know when we were walking up the stairs, it felt like someone else was behind us."

"I thought I heard someone whistle or whisper, I don't know.. it was like a quiet high pitched sound, but I couldn't make out if it was a word or not." You look around, "This floor honestly makes me nervous, and those creepy steps didn't help."

"Those stairs the whole way up I just kept thinking about how people were actually getting dragged up and sown." Sam shakes his head, "let's just.. get this thing going."

Sam was off, and you picked up on it quickly. It was almost like what took over you, took over Sam.

"Sam?" You step towards him, "Sam... Colby.. colby."

He stares at the floor and Colby walks up to him, "Sam, dude. Hey."

You shake him slightly and he looks back up, "Let's get this thing going."

You look at Colby and back to Sam, "You already said that." He looks at you confused, "Huh?" He laughs nervously, "No I didn't."

Colby nods, "You did, man. You zoned out after, looking at the floor."

Sam looks at you, "Did it come after me now?"

You shrug, "I was thinking that, because isn't that what I did?" You look at Colby and he nods, "yes but the only thing is he didn't try to walk off."

Sam switches the box on, "What do you want with us?"

"... I want ... to know.."

"You want to know what?" Colby asks loudly, "did you take over y/n and Sam?"

"... Miss.. it ..."

"You miss what?" You ask, "Do you miss being alive?"

" ... alive ..."

"You are not welcome to touch us. You cannot control us." Sam says, "What do you want us to see?"

"... the... truth .. in here .."

"Were you murdered here?" Colby asks and it sounds like something bouncing down the steps, "Was that you making that noise?"

"... must get ... out..."

"Are you telling us to get out? Or do you want to get out?" Sam presses his fingers to his lips, "Can you tell us who we're talking to?"

"... he's in.. here .."

"Who? Who is in here?" You ask staring at the box, "Can you tell us who is here with us?"

" ... John .. murder .."

"John and murder?" Colby looks at you guys, "Did John murder you? Were you murdered by John Agatha?"

"... liar .. he lies ..."

"Did John lie about your death?" You ask and step closer to Sam, "What did he do to you?"

"... tried to run.."

"Did you try and escape? Did he punish you for that?" Colby asks and jumps next to you when the door to the one room slams shut, "Who is here with us? Reveal your name to us."

"... John .. is mad..."

"Is he mad that we're here trying to find out what he did?" You ask and Sam looks at you, "I think we should stop."

You felt the need to keep going, "Can he come in here with us?"

"Y/n." Colby looks at you then to Sam, jumping as heavy footsteps come down the hallway, "Sam's right." Colby reaches to switch off the spirit box, but you stop him, "Just wait."

Sam nods at him, chewing on his lip as the footsteps start again.

"John Agatha. If you're here, tell us why you killed those people." You glance towards the door, only to snap your head back to the box,

"... they needed to die ..."

"No they didn't. They were sick." You argue and Sam pulls you back, "That's enough." You push away from him, "Sam. We're getting answers."

"No, you're arguing with something that we're unsure of. You don't know the power of this thing. " Sam runs a hand through his hair, "I think we're done. I don't like this-"

"Colby do you want to leave?" You look at Colby and he holds his hands up, "I think I'm with Sam on this one."

You roll your eyes, "Of course you do."

"Y/n. What the hell has gotten into you?" Sam looks at you shocked, "You have never acted this way during one of these and that's why we're done." He grabs your wrist, holding onto you, "We are done here."

"... no .."

Sam shakes his head and turns off the box, "I'm not doing this. We can talk about this at home."

You turn around, finding Colby no where in the room, "Colby?" You call out, "Sam. Colby is gone." Sam's heart starts to race, "Fuck, yo Colby?"

No answer.

"Fuck. Fuck. Come on." He hands you the camera, and turns on his flashlight, yelling for Colby as you make your way to the stairs.

"Careful, careful." Sam makes sure you make it down okay before stopping at the bottom, "You don't think he went to the basement did you?"

"Or where the sound came from? That's where I was feeling drawn to." You look around, sighing, "Fuck. Fuck. Colby?!"

You hear a loud thump come from where the first crash happened, "We have to." You look at Sam and he nods, "Yeah, yeah. I know." He interlocks his fingers with yours and pulls you with him.

You both yell out for Colby, looking for any kind of sign, "Colby? Come on this isn't funny." Your voice kinda breaks as your fear builds up faster and faster.

"Colby. Come on man, we're leaving." Sam yells out and you stop when you see a metal cart laying on its side, old trays spilling out from the door that is open.

"He was right, that's what that sound was earlier when we started." Sam shines the flashlight on it and looks up, "Colby?"

"Wait." You stop Sam, "Isn't John's office over here?"

His eyes go wide, "Fuck, yeah it is." He turns towards the walkway, "Colby!?"

You perk up, "Wait. I think.." you whisper, "Yell out to him again."

"Colby?!"

"This way." You pull Sam down the hall, half preparing yourself for when Colby jumps out and scares you both, or at least you're hoping that's what he's doing.

"Colby? Please." You beg, hoping you can find him.

"If we just left when I said.."

You stop, cutting Sam off, "No. we aren't playing the blame game because right now our friend is lost and we have no idea where he is."

"Where who is?" Colby walks up, and you Sam let out a scream.

"Where the fuck did you go?" Sam yells, "You just up and left us dude. Why?"

"You guys were arguing and I thought I heard someone in the hallway, so I came out to see and then I was halfway down the steps. I thought I saw people, like teenagers run to the left and my first instinct was to just go." Colby explains, "I don't know dude. Really, I was running and then I was like wait, I'll get lost so I turned around and now we're here."

"You could have been hurt, Colby." You push his shoulder and he just shrugs.

"Sorry man." Sam lays a hand on his shoulder, "last I knew you were right behind us."

He nods, "it's fucking crazy. This place is a maze, and I don't mean physically either."

"Let's just.. go get the stuff and head out to the car." Sam sighs, pointing the camera to Colby, "We found him. He says there were people here but we aren't sure about anything, and I mean that about this whole entire place."

"I don't even know how to describe it other than what y/n said. Like that tired feeling and then I wasn't where I remember I was." Colby explains and you nod, "Yeah like you can tell what you're doing but you aren't focused on what you're doing."

"Alright well I think that's it for-" Sam stops talking and looks behind him, "There was just.. three knocks." He whips around looking at you guys when it happens again, "that.. that.."

"What the hell is that?" Colby whispers and you're pushed towards the way the office is, "Do not touch me. Do not touch any of us." You hold your hand up, "Fuck."

"Y/n. We need to go." Colby steps towards you and you shake your head, "we can't leave."

"We aren't arguing again, y/n." Sam walks towards you and when he goes to grab your hand, he's pushed back.

Colby snaps his head towards the hall, "Someone just said don't touch her." He looks at Sam, "I swear to god dude. A clear as day whisper like right behind me."

You feel something grab your hair and lift it off of your shoulder. You jump and brush a hand over, "Something just played with my hair."

"We're leaving."

As you go to collect the equipment, that's when things take a turn for the weird.

"So, maybe Colby was right. We heard things..." Sam says as he tries to control his breathing, "We aren't sure what it was exactly, right now we're just ducked down behind this desk thing."

"That's what I heard earlier, but you'd think if it was actual people they'd make a lot more noise than just footsteps, right?" Colby whispers leaning in towards you and Sam. Sam's grips on your hand tightens as the foot steps grow closer.

They stop abruptly and Colby stands up, "There's no one here." Sam pulls your arm, "Let's just make a run for it."

You guys book into the door, breathing heavy as Colby closes it with a slam. Sam pulls you away from the building, "you okay?"

You nod, "Yeah, yeah are you?" He nods and pulls you into him, hugging you tightly.

"That was fucking crazy." Colby says walking around you guys, "I've never experienced anything like that. Like we were affected in a way we can't really explain in depth."

"This doesn't feel finished, though." You pull away from Sam and he stares at you, "What?"

You look between him and Colby, "Exactly what I said."

And you meant that. You wanted to come back here, get more answers about this asylum. You knew more happened here than what people have said.

"You're going to really stand here, and tell me that you want to go back in there." Sam scoffs, "Even after what you had happen? What I had happen? Christ, y/n, Colby went missing for god knows how long."

He puts his hands on his head and spins around slowly, trying to comprehend as to why you'd want to.

"Because there's more in there, more stuff that people don't know and I want to be the one to find out exactly what it is." You point to the building and drop your hand, "If you don't want to then I'll come back myself."

"The fuck you will." Sam shakes his head, "Y/n. You could have been the one lost. You could have been the one lost in there, alone.. and I don't-" his voice cracks and he clears his throat, "You're not coming back here and I mean that."

"Why don't we -"

"Stay out of this, Colby." You and Sam say looking over at him.

He holds his hands up and walks over to the car while you and Sam still argue.

"You didn't know what you were doing, y/n. Okay? You could have easily got lost." Sam looks at you and you shrug, "But I didn't."

He stares at you a few moments before shaking his head, "The only reason you want to come back here is because whatever is on the other side of that door is making you want to come back."

You clench your jaw, knowing that he's right but since you're fighting, you don't want to let him win easy.

"That place changed you." Sam says lowly, "We have never, ever fought like this, we've never fought at all. Doesn't that mean anything?"

"Never said it didn't, Sam." You mumble as you walk towards the car, getting into the back. You glance over, seeing Sam bend down slightly before kicking the rocks on the ground and walking over to get in the passenger seat of the car.

"Home?" Colby asks starting the car.

You and Sam both mumble a low, "Mhm." Colby takes a deep breath and starts to drive out of the gate, "I have to lock up. Don't kill each other." He gets out, jogging up to shut the gate.

Sam glances back at you and you look at him. He sighs, "I'm still mad, but I love you."

You try not to smile, "I love you."

Colby gets back into the car, "Did you guys makeup yet?" You both refuse to answer and he laughs sarcastically to himself, "Oh this is going to be such a wonderful quiet ride home."

.·:*¨ ✘ ¨*:·.

"We have like half an hour left, do you want to stop somewhere and get something to eat?" Colby looks at Sam and he nods, "Yeah, that works." He looks back at you, "Are you hungry?"

"Yeah." You say lowly with a slight nod.

"Are we finally speaking to each other?" Colby acts surprised, "Wow. It's about time."

You roll your eyes and Sam scoffs, "I'm mad, that doesn't mean I don't care about her still."

You smile slightly, looking away from him so he doesn't see it. You get out of the car and go to walk in but Colby stops you, "We weren't us back there. Don't hold it over his head."

"Tell that to him." You mumble and he nods, "I plan to, trust me. I just got to you first." You laugh as you walk in to the store and Colby walks up to Sam, telling him the same thing he told you.

As you're standing there, looking at the snacks, you feel hands slides around your waist and pull you back, "You know.."

"What do I know?" You ask as your nails gently graze over his hands, "Even though you pissed me off.." his voice goes quiet, "The way you argued with the ghost was such a turn on."

You smirk and turn around to face him, wrapping your arms around his neck, "Is that your way of saying you're sorry?" He bites his bottom lip as he looks at you, "I'll say it when we get home."

He winks at you and leans in to kiss you. You slide your fingers in his hair, humming against his lips slightly.

Colby walks up, "Now that's what I like to see."

You and Sam pull away and look at him. He has a big cheesy smirk on his face and you can't help but laugh, "What would we do without him?"

Colby buts in, "Oh i don't know, probably give each other the silent treatment until days from now."

Sam chuckles and sighs, "That wasn't any of us back there." You look up at him, "Yeah.. that was bad."

Colby nods, "I've never seen you act the way you did, y/n. Honestly it was kinda badass. Arguing with a potential demon."

Sam nods, looking down at you. You look up at him, "I learned from the best."

You grab your snacks and head out to the car, getting into the back as they get up front, "So now that this is no longer a quiet ride home, and I am no longer feeling awkward, can we please talk about what happened?"

"Mhm. Yeah sure." Sam mumbles as he stares down at his phone. Colby looks over at him before he starts driving, "What are you doing?"

You phone vibrates and you see a message from Sam, "Colby don't look at his phone. I beg you."

"Why can be so-" he reads over the message that was sent from Sam's phone, you've had me low key turned on this entire night, when we get home I'm going to show you just how sorry I am.

"Well, okay." Colby sits forward, "That awkward part is back."

You laugh, replying to Sam, just how are you going to do that?

Colby clears his throat, "Can we.." he laughs, "Can you stop sexting each other for one second so we can do the outro please?"

You sigh, resting your phone down on the seat next to you, "anything for princess Colby." He lays his hand under his chin, "As it should be."

You and Sam both laugh and he gets the camera rolling, "We are currently on our way home. Tonight was.." Sam sighs and looks at Colby, "I don't even know how to explain it."

"A big mess." You laugh and Colby sighs, "It was definitely something like that. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that we were .. taken over basically."

"Yeah, yeah no. That part was absolutely fucked up. I luckily didn't have it happen like y/n or Colby did, but it was still a surreal feeling to have people telling you that you zoned out with absolutely no recollection of it at all." Sam points his thumb back to you, "And then you got Mrs I like to argue with ghosts back here, but that's a story we'll post on our other channel, maybe, who knows, but we are done for tonight, like I said, it was a whirlwind of events and we are so excited for you guys to see what we experienced tonight at the Agatha Asylum."

"Drop a like if Mrs I like to argue with ghosts should be made into a sweatshirt." Colby gives a thumbs up and Sam yells, "Ayyyy yes. Y/n." He points the camera to you, "How would you like to have your own collection."

"That would be pretty sick." You smile and nod, "I actually like that a lot."

Sam points the camera to himself, "Well have to work on it. See you guys in the next one."

Sam cuts the camera off, "Mrs I like to argue with ghosts." He laughs and looks back at you, "I'm getting you a hoodie that says that."

You smile and nod, "I'll wear it everyday."

.·:*¨ ✘ ¨*:·.

"Have fun. I'll be down here editing away from all the noise." Colby says as he grabs his laptop off the counter.

Without any hesitation, Sam grabs your hand and up the stairs you go, laughing with him as you try to keep up.

You run into the room you share, falling on the bed with him on top of you, "You drive me insane, but always in the best way." His lips press to yours as his hand pulls your head close to him.

You drag his sweatshirt up his back, telling him you want it off. He leans up, slipping it off in one perfect motion and you pull him back down to kiss you.

He grinds himself against you, "I'm sorry for yelling at you." You moan slightly, shaking your head, "We weren't us." You cup his face, "This is us."

He smiles and kisses you again. You quickly grow into a heated make out, clawing the rest of each other clothes off and slipping under the blankets.

"If I ever yell at you like that again, just sacrifice me to the demons, babe." He chuckles slightly, brushing hair from your face before sliding his hand down to pull you closer.

"I'd be coming with you. We're inseparable." You nudge your nose against his and he nods, "Damn right we are."

He rolls on top of you, rubbing the head of his cock against your pussy, "You were so.." he lets out a low moan as he slips his cock into you, "..fucking hot back there.."

He pushes his hips to meet yours, "You always amaze me."

You run your hand through his hair, biting down on your lip as he starts to thrust, "Fuck.." you whimper and look up at him, "I'd do anything to protect you."

"I'd die for you." He stares at you for a few seconds, still thrusting deep and slow, "I mean that wholeheartedly. You mean the most to me and I'd do anything to keep you safe."

You smile and lay a hand on his cheek, "I love you."

He kisses your lips, whispering a low, "I love you."

He leans up a little bit, "Now roll over so I can punish you for yelling at me." He winks and gives you a cocky smirk before pulling out. You smirk as your stomach does an excited flip.

You roll over onto your stomach and Sam's body is immediately on yours, his cock back in to where it was before, "I wanted to shut you up in anyway I could."

You moan as he thrusts slow, "Why didn't you?"

"Would have had to cut a lot of the footage out." Sam says lowly in your ear, "Plus I don't really want Colby seeing how pretty you look while you're gagging on my dick."

Your eyes roll back as he pushes all the way in, "Because you my love, are fucking gorgeous."

You grip the sheets, moaning as his hand slides around to your throat, squeezing as he whispers, "Or how pretty you look while I'm in between those legs.."

"S-Sam." You squeeze his cock with your walls, "Fuck, I-I'm so close."

"Go ahead, baby." Sam groans lowly, "Fuck, I'm not going to last much longer either." He hooks his thumb over your bottom jaw and you immediately suck.

He moans lowly, pounding into you, "That's my girl."

You moan around his thumb, trying to move your hips but you can't go anywhere. Your moans are growing louder as you reach your point, squeezing him as you claw at the sheets.

"Come on, baby." He pleads, "Cum for me."

You whimper and moan his name over and over again, letting your head fall back as you cum, "Fuck fuck fuck."

Sam suddenly pulls out, his cum spilling on your back, "Fuck, babe." you let your head fall forward, resting on the bed as your breathing is heavy.

"You okay?" Sam asks getting up to get you a towel. You look back at him, "Oh yeah. I'm so much better."

He smiles and shakes his head, "You know, I wonder how much of us arguing was actually caught on camera."

"Probably all of it, Sam. And if I'm being honest, it'll probably turn me on again." You roll over once he wipes you off and smirk up at him.

"You too, huh?" He smiles as he bites his bottom lip as you nod, "Uh huh. Very much." He pulls you up so you're standing in front of him, "I really don't want to yell at you again, but if it's something that'll get you going then.." he leans in, kissing you, "then we might just have to work something out."

You suddenly hear Colby yelling, "Oh shit. No fucking way!"

You quickly throw on clothes and run down, "What? What? What!?" Sam asks going over, you hand still in his, "Bro what the fuck is that?"

"That my friend is what was controlling us tonight." Colby turns the laptop towards you and Sam and you gasp, "That's exactly what I saw."

.·:*¨ ✘ ¨*:·.

Likes and reblogs are appreciated!

[blugerine]

I’m just now realizing the geniusness of the dance scene in season 2 and how taking a “comedy” show seriously reveals so many new things about it.

NOTE: I have no idea if Neil Gaiman wrote this scene with the intention of it being interpreted in this way, but I really think it sheds so much light on why Aziraphale and Crowley’s relationship seems like it went nowhere but downhill ever since season 1.

I feel like because New Omens is marketed as a “comedy show”, viewers usually go in with the intention not to take things too seriously (except for the more emotional beats that are signaled by somber music and intense acting *cough cough*), but as a result of that, we (or at least, I did) missed out on seeing some scenes differently because we originally wrote it off as “just a silly bit”. I definitely did that during the scene where Crowley performs the “apology dance” in front of Aziraphale because he left him alone to take care of Gabriel. I kept thinking about that scene over and over again in my head because it always seemed much more intentionally childish to me than any other goofy scene we see the husbands get up to in season 2 and even in season 1, and I just realized now a reason why that might be the case.

When Crowley comes back to the shop and has to apologize to Aziraphale, the first words that come out of his mouth are “I’m back”, and both him and Aziraphale know those words aren’t enough for Aziraphale to take him back, so what’s the next best thing? The apology dance! When Crowley initially resists the idea of performing the apology dance, Aziraphale reminds him that he’s done the apology dance numerous times in the past, listing all the specific years over the centuries to really get his point across until Crowley relents. After Crowley begrudgingly finishes the silly dance, the audience share a good laugh, Aziraphale is content enough to accept him back, and the fight they just had all seems so “stupid” now in comparison to the bigger fish they have to fry.

Now, what’s the problem in this scene? Or rather, why is this scene such a big deal in regards to why they broke up at the end of season 2? That’s because it’s, again, another example of how they always DANCE (quite literally) around the actual problems in their relationship that result in them constantly breaking up. And this has been happening for CENTURIES, time and time again, they always default to pushing their problems under the rug, letting bygones be bygones. They believe they’re forgiving and forgetting, but as Aziraphale keeps recounting all the years he’s done the apology dance, it’s very clear that they’ve actually never forgotten any of those previous instances of frustration and words of venom they’ve hurled at each other. Instead, they’ve opted to pretend they’re over it, onto “bigger and better” things to do as a distraction. The only time they start conveniently bringing up past wounds is when they have YET ANOTHER breakup scene.

The dance is performed so childishly because of the childish way they deal with the problems that arise in their relationship. Despite knowing very intricately about the infinite vastness of the universe, of mankind’s greatest strengths and weaknesses, they were not made to view themselves as having human emotions, and they were not trained to make compromises that did not threaten their very existence. Crowley and Aziraphale both started as angels, and Crowley wanted God to compromise with him about keeping the universe around for more years than She had planned. But God doesn’t take suggestions, so Crowley’s angelic status was quite literally burned from him as he was sent down to Hell, which traumatized him greatly, and made Aziraphale exist in fear of the divine punishment that came to those who disobeyed God.

As such, Aziraphale and Crowley have so little understanding of how to compromise in a healthy manner, because the first time one of them tried to do it, it ended terribly for both of them, and they subconsciously vowed never to do it again. That’s why, when one of them wants to apologize, it’s almost like a child’s idea of what one is. There’s no addressing of why Crowley’s so desperate to abandon everything and run away, or why Aziraphale is so adamant on staying, even when it clearly hurts him to do so. There’s NO reasoning or compromise. There’s NO talk other than “I was wrong, you were right”. It’s either your side or my side, or we never see each other again.

Aziracrow represents a very realistic on-and-off relationship, where two broken and codependent individuals cannot compromise for fear of divine punishment or even just fear of losing the one that means the most to them. And their little dance? It’s just one of the many times they’ve tried to ignore their very real and important relationship (and character) issues, and it just continues to rot away their relationship time and time again. It’s like putting a bandaid over an infection, but they’re both immortal and everything’s working against them to actually work on healing that infection from the inside out.

So yeah, the dance scene is fucking brilliant because no one saw that coming until you actually finish season 2 and think back on it. Again, maybe I’m just being delusional reading into a scene that wasn’t a big deal, but if Neil did write it with this intention, then I think the way he disguises meaningful insights into broken relationships, tortured characters, and religious trauma through the use of comedy to be really. fucking genius.

And really sad.

I think I might cry a bit after this actually.

(Also, hello, I still have no idea how to use tumblr 💀)

Edit: Just made a couple clarifications here and there! Also, thank you so much for all the positive reception 😭!!! Reading all your reblogged tags gives me so much serotonin agsjdgs it feels so nice being in this fandom so far ❤️

[whateverisbeautiful]

♥️Reveling in Richonne - TOWL

#49: The Final Deal (1.05)

gif cred: @nerd4music

Over the years, Jadis has made several deals with Rick and pretty much every single time she screwed him over. 😪 And unsurprisingly, Jadis tries to screw Rick and Michonne over again as she and Richonne attempt to make more deals in the following TOWL scene. However, this time around will be the final deal. Finally. 🙌🏽...

Richonne enter a Yellowstone National Park museum and it’s fitting for Jadis' final moments to take place in this sorta artsy location.

gif cred: @nerd4music

As Rick and Michonne quietly hunt Jadis down they come across that bumbling trio from earlier and once again they easily disarm them. And then walkers come and take the trio out which…how those three survived this long I’ll never know lol.

So then a shootout ensues with Jadis. And it’s sweet seeing Rick and Michonne hold onto each other as they run away. 

gif cred: @coolpartytimefan

As Rick and Michonne stoop behind some fabric, I adore the quick little moment of Michonne checking on Rick with one hand on his face and one on his thigh. Her baby for real. 🥲

cred: @ririchonne

Jadis is again yapping about living and dying for the cause and calling Rick a traitor and then when Rick pokes his head out she straight up aims for the head and grazes him with her shot. 😑Knowing how fatal that shot could have been to Rick, Jadis’ needed to be sent to the afterlife immediately. Like...

Michonne says Rick’s name with concern as they switch places and he assures that he’s alright. And proving yet again that Jadis oddly might belong in the Top 5 Richonne Believers, she says, “You two together, you are unstoppable.”

Then she gets way too personal when she says, “But that won’t save your kids. You kill me, they’re dead. I die by my wounds, they’re dead.” And she’s feeling extra bold as she steps out of hiding and says, “I get killed by walkers, they’re dead.”

What Jadis fails to see is that having the audacity to threaten Michonne and Rick’s kids in front of them like this guarantees she’s dead. Like Jadis, hon...

You can tell Michonne is seeing red as she steps out with her gun aimed at Jadis. Understandably, because now Jadis is triggering Michonne as a mother.

Rick calls Michonne's name but Michonne is ready to end this lady once and for all as she debates pulling the trigger. Jadis almost looks like she’s beckoning her to do it, but knowing they actually do need some info out of Jadis first, Michonne instead kills the walkers coming from behind Jadis.

When Michonne runs out of bullets, Jadis starts shooting and they both flee for cover. Jadis tries to dish out more of that CRM culty propaganda when she says, “It didn’t have to be this way. You were on the path, Rick. After all these years, you were finally feeling the responsibility to fight for something bigger than yourself.”

Wth, Jadis? 😑 Hearing that I was like - truly girl, shut up because what do you mean he finally felt a responsibility to fight for something bigger than himself?? As if Jadis didn’t meet Rick in the process of him fighting a whole war to free oppressed communities. 🙃 She's an absolute clown. 🤡

Rick makes his way over to Michonne as Jadis tells Rick that “Beale saw it too. He was gonna give you the Echelon briefing the moment you returned.” Yeah well, Consignee Bethune had other plans lol. 😋🚁🌊

And then I always really like this wordless exchange between Rick and Michonne. Because as Jadis claims that Rick’s eyes would have been opened by the briefing, Michonne looks at him and then he looks up at her and the ways it’s filmed you can just tell that there is nothing the CRM could say or open his eyes too that would make him not choose Michonne every single time. 

gif cred: @andy-clutterbuck

Jadis says Rick could have secured Alexandria’s security but he didn’t. Then she tries to make Michonne an issue by saying, “You let Michonne pull you away from that.” If only Jadis knew how true that was considering Michonne literally pulled them out of a helicopter to get away from this army. 🤭

Then Jadis wants to start coming at Michonne directly saying all she had to do was leave when Rick arranged for her escape and since she didn’t Jadis declares that now the fates of their friends and their children are sealed. Ok, Little Miss Villain...

Rick tries to again appeal to Jadis’ heart, if she has one, by saying she doesn’t really want to kill everyone back home. He calls her Anne again and he’s onto something regarding the name Anne getting Jadis riled up cuz she sounds particularly irritated as she doubles down on the CRM perspective that, “It’s not about want. It’s about keeping your humanity or saving humanity. And it is a choice.”

In a way, that is the very thing TOWL explored with Rick’s journey. He thought he had to just die and save humanity but through Michonne he regained his humanity and the belief that they can both keep their humanity and save humanity, it doesn’t have to be either/or.

Jadis says she’s chosen her community and her life and then questions if it’ll be them that dies today or her and everyone back home. And the way Michonne got a good swing at Jadis with RJ’s ax, it’s looking like Jadis is going to be the one meeting her demise. Her time is clearly almost up.

So playing pretend one more time, Michonne says, “She’s right, Rick.”  And then Rick and Michonne demonstrate yet again that verbal communication is just a thing they do for fun because they are entirely capable of conversing and making entire plans just by looking at each other.

As they look in each others eyes they immediately know to try and pull a con on the original scammer herself. Also I just realized this is Michonne once again choosing to just not even address Jadis and speak only to Rick.

Michonne says, “I didn’t want to see it. I wanted her dead so I didn’t have to see it. But Rick, there has to be a sacrifice. Since I found you, all that I’ve done has been for us. But now I see, this can’t end with us going home.”

Jadis asks what’s it gonna be and then Rick says, “Okay,” pretending to agree that he’ll stay with the CRM if Jadis doesn’t threaten Michonne or their home. 

Michonne says, “There’s still a deal to me made, one where we all can live and Alexandria.” And hearing yet another deal even be attempted to be made with Judas was just...

Fortunately, it’s a fake deal and the final deal with this snake.

Rick says Michonne will get supplies that’ll help Jadis stay alive long enough to get to the jump point and then Rick will go back with Jadis. The shot of Michonne looking at Rick as he says this. 🥲 It just truly feels like she’s looking at the love of her life. 🥹

Rick looks in Michonne’s eyes as he tells Jadis that they can say he was the lone survivor of the helicopter crash and he’ll go back to the CRM to work for a future like none of this ever happened.

He says they’ll do this on one condition and Jadis already knows when she says, “Michonne gets away and I never tell them about Alexandria.” Rick says, “It’s the only way this works” and then I love his subtle wink at Michonne when he asks, “We got a deal?” 

Jadis wonders why she should trust Rick after all the stuff he’s pulled but that had me like why should you trust him???? Pretty ironic coming from literally the longest-running scammer in the franchise. 😑

gif cred: @nerd4music

Rick understandably isn’t interested in convincing Jadis why he can be trusted so he just asks, “We got a deal or not?” Jadis isn’t doing so hot from the blood loss so she agrees and says, “Yeah. We got a deal.”

Then, y’all I adore seeing the small detail of Rick and Michonne holding hands. 😭 I love that they were holding hands during this deal, wanting each other to know that regardless of what they’re saying to Jadis right now they’re still entirely in this together.

And I also love that Rick doesn't let go of Michonne’s hand until the very last second as she stands up to come out of hiding and “go get supplies.” 🧲 TOWL said every Richonne scene is gonna have a dash of romance and I’m beyond here for it. 🥰

So Michonne tosses her weapon and exits and I love that she puts a little feisty emphasis on the weapon toss when she looks at Jadis. And then Rick disarms and shows himself as Jadis tells him to come closer.

Jadis lays down her weapons and Rick of course takes one more opportunity to let Petty Rick shine as he looks at Jadis on death's door and says, “You’ve looked better.” When I tell you I love this extra man lol. 😋 I know he’s appreciating the number his wife did on this garbage woman. And whenever Rick’s eyebrows go up like that, just know some shade is bound to follow. 🤭

gif cred: @nerd4music

Jadis again expresses acknowledgement of the power of Richonne when she says, “I was a fool to think I could take you down, with you two together.” Jadis never got much right in life, but she did have a solid grasp on the fact that Rick and Michonne really do make each other stronger and they're hard to beat together. She explains that’s why she agreed to the deal so she could keep Rick and Michonne separate.

And then to the *utter shock* of everyone, Jadis whips out Red’s red gun and attempts to double cross them for the fifty-'leventh time. 🙄But I love how Rick responds unfazed to her ploy like he thinks it’s the most predictable thing ever. 🥱 A serpent gon’ do what a serpent gon’ do, so I'm sure seeing her aim the gun just had Rick like...

Jadis says she doesn’t trust Rick but she respects him. And then Michonne shows up with a weapon pointed at Jadis and tells her to drop the gun or she’ll kill her.

Then, those noodle-less walkers come and bite a chunk out of Jadis' neck. And getting fatally bit instantly spurs Jadis' come-to-Jesus.

gif cred: @perryabbott

Jadis goes into a monologue about the many lives she tried to balance with her back and forth between Jadis and Anne and the CRM and the Alexandrians. And Richonne is nice enough to listen to her last words.

As she realizes Father Gabriel already showed her the answers she needed (realized too late imo 🙃), Jadis reveals where her dossier is hidden and tells them to just destroy it and go home.

She still believes in the CRM and that they’ll bring the world back, so she looks at Michonne and Rick and says, “Tell me you won’t come after them.” And then y’all, Michonne says request denied because she doesn’t give a damn if this is Jadis' dying wish, they’re gonna do what needs to be done. 👌🏽

Michonne replies, “No. Because we are coming for them.” And the way Rick looks, it appears like this development is news to him lol. But I love that Michonne wants Jadis to know this just before she goes.

Michonne continues, “We’re gonna get the dossier. And then the CRM - we’re gonna stop them.” She looks over at Rick as she continues to inform both Rick and Jadis of what comes next when she says, “He’s gonna get the Echelon briefing and find out everything that they do that the city doesn’t know about. The city I saw won’t stand for what they are. And we’re gonna help the city stop them.”

And y’all, the way Jadis is staring at Michonne...I know she’s thinking ‘and this is why I wrote a whole chapter on Rick's wife in my dossier.’ #DirectQuoteFromJadis'Mind. 🤭 Had her like...

Then knowing how much Jadis loves being called Anne, Michonne calmly says, “Because, Anne, the CRM is not the answer and they must end.” And, with the way Bowlcut believes in Richonne, you know Jadis knows they’re going to be successful at stopping the CRM.

Jadis really had to die knowing she and the very mission she dedicated her life to are about to take some serious Ls. 😬

Michonne then turns to Rick and says, “We’re gonna do that.” See, Michonne has been through a whole lot of life and so she’s standing here now knowing the CRM can be taken down just like all the rest.

And always a great and supportive husband, Rick is on board with this plan as he looks from Michonne over to Jadis and says, “You kept us alive for a reason.” And I love the way Rick subtly smiles at her, knowing Jadis is getting yet another front-row seat to the power of Richonne. 

So Jadis,...

Hearing this seems to have Jadis realizing she made some bad life choices and should have just stuck to her artsy lane when she says, “I wish I died an artist.” I always really like that line. Something about it is poetic and pretty in a tragic way.

But also, whenever I hear it I’m like girl, don’t worry you did die an artist...

Jadis reflects on how her life as an artist wasn’t about survival but about truth. She says this is the end of her story and her peace and then it becomes crystal clear a Richonne proposal moment is coming when Jadis removes the wedding ring and holds it out.

As she holds the ring, she tells Rick, “On the bridge, you told Gabriel you wanted to marry her.” And I love that this gets brought up again and that Michonne gets to learn that Rick was planning to marry her officially before he was taken.

The way Jadis looks over to Michonne when she says this always makes me smile because she looks quite happy to let Michonne know, 'yes girl, your man was trying to...

Jadis puts the ring in Rick’s hand and says, “He found this, and he wanted to give it to you.” Rick is shook by this and asks, “How did you...?” And I feel like with the way Rick so clearly had proposing on his mind during this road trip home I’m sure that has him even more bewildered of how Jadis knew this.

Jadis just smiles and shakes her head which had me like - hold up up up cuz no we’re nawt just shrugging off this detail of how she got the ring and was in contact with Father Gabriel. I needed her to tell them about her tea times with Gabriel because Richonne needs to interrogate that man when they get home lol. 🙃

Jadis tells Rick he wasn’t dreaming about killing her and then says, “Go ahead. Do what you said you would do. Please.” Michonne and Rick stand up and the time arrives for Rick to finally take Jadis out for good.

Jadis dies and it’s a somber vibe as Rick just quietly walks away and Michonne follows. After playing in Richonne’s face from season 7 forward, stealing years from them, and putting their children in danger, I felt it was only right for her to go. Even overdue. And while that monologue didn’t at all redeem her in my eyes, it was well-performed by McIntosh and had some heart.

gif cred: @nerd4music

I’m most glad that she gave Rick that ring tho because it leads to the best scene of the episode. 🤩

One of the earliest ways that trifling Jadis tried Richonne was in the season 7 finale when she said she was gonna lay with Rick and asked Michonne if she cared. 🙃 Y’all remember when she looked Rick up and down, turned to Michonne, and asked, “Yours?”

Well...about that.😊

I always find it to be poetically fitting that here in Jadis’ final episode, it’s also the very episode where Rick and Michonne affirm that Jadis' "Yours?" question actually isn’t that crazy because Rick and Michonne really do happily belong to each other.

He’s hers. She’s his. 🥲

So you know I gotta break down the absolutely beautiful scene that makes that sentiment crystal clear. 😌👌🏽💍

[bailey-dreamfoot]

‼️‼️THE GRAMPA SQUAD COMIC IS DONE‼️‼️

Ok so, wee explanation + headcannons under the cut.

Ok so assuming you've stuck around for my insane ramblings, heres the gist:

This comic is very much inspired by Factual Fantasy's Comics about Marsh, Natquick, and Calico Jack. And while my personal head cannon does share in the idea of the group working together- I thought it would be hilariously fun to include Inkling, and tbh it focuses more on him than the others anyway.

In the show, inkling doesn't really get out much. There are really only a few episodes where he has a significant role, and even less when he actually participates in missions outside of *insert knowledgeable insight*.

I believe this is for 2 reasons:

He just prefers the comfortable vibe of his library. The book-worm role fits his personality well - enjoying studying or cataloging species alongside Shellington - and he likes spending time with the Vegimals.

His Mobility issues. While he can very easily traverse the watery environments in the base show- in a&b, he doesn't really show much interest in exploring the land until he's told an old friend was the one in need of help. He has the ability, its just difficult- and he knows his limitations.

Inkling has his hover chair, that allows him to move around the octopod relatively easily. However - in the Min episode - they make it a point that he cant take it with him on land, or use it over rough terrain.

My version of Inkling uses an actual wheelchair, so I thought it'd be a neat idea that after that adventure- he'd want to try joining missions more often. And to deal with said mobility issues and limitations- say they got specialized tires for his wheelchair- so he could go join up on land missions more often.

After going on a few more missions with the other Octonauts, he hears about Octoagents Calico Jack, and Professor Natquick joining up with Ranger Marsh to help out in the Everglades- you best bet he jumped at the opportunity to tag along. Think of all the species he could ad to his personal catalogue. They might even discover a few new ones! Leaving the Octopod for so long after being basically the one constant to the place was a bit scary sure - and the other Octonauts were certainly emotional ab him leaving (especially Barnacles) - but maybe a change of scenery would do him good.

Sooo He does that! Professor Inkling meets up with the others on a dock near Marsh's Ranger station and get to work! One of the coolest things they did was collecting egg samples and catching an adult specimen of a newly discovered trapdoor spider! the Pine Rockland Trapdoor. Marsh Has a nursery where he cares for tons of snakes, lizards, insects and birds to make sure they have the best chance for survival. Thats where these eggs are going- to hatch in safety and then be released back into the ecosystem. On top of that, they take samples of the adults venom for study, and inkling is sure to make a detailed report of the arachnid in his many journals brought along with him!

As you may expect, Kwazzi takes after his grandad in his fear of spiders. Jack has seen worse, but It doesnt make it any easier to be close to them. Natquick on the other hand- In all his time in the arctic hes never seen anything as freaky as a spider bigger than a quarter.

Aaand that's it! I'm hoping to do some more comics with the lads in the future, although probably not as detailed as this one. It took more than 2 weeks- please.

Also, I find it kinda goofy that the panels get more detailed as you go along. Thats what happens when the first and last panel were made almost a month apart from each other. 💚

Also also- yes I did do actual research for the animals in the last comic. It was going to be a funnel web spider they're researching, but then I looked it up and found out Funnelwebs don't live in the Everglades. :']

[elyvorg]

Kieran Part 2: It’s All About YOU

Well, looks like The Indigo Disk didn’t remotely drop the ball – it caught it in incredible style! Pokémon’s best character-writing job yet has been followed up and capped off with, if anything, something even better. Kieran is far and away the most complex and well-written character that mainline Pokémon has ever achieved, and I am here to talk about the second half of why this is, in very great detail. Consider me just, blown away. I have So Many Feelings about this boy.

This is of course a follow-up to my earlier analysis post about Kieran’s character and arc during The Teal Mask, which you can find here. Reading that before this is recommended!

(This will contain a couple of brief references to some post-epilogue lines, so if you haven’t got to that stuff yet and you really care about seeing it completely fresh, you might want to hold off on reading this for now. But there’s no actual spoilers for the epilogue itself in here, because, whoops, I think I’m gonna have to cover all of that in yet another post of its own.)

(Like last time, I will be largely referring to the player character as “you” for convenience, although I may shift into third person occasionally when I’m talking about the vague implications of a personality that they are given, since that’s a little more relevant this time.)

The gaping pit of inferiority

First, though, before getting into The Indigo Disk, I want to re-establish where Kieran’s character ended up at the end of Teal Mask, now that I have a clearer idea of exactly how that relates to where things are headed.

Kieran was always gripped by an aching inferiority complex, one too huge and unbearable for him to ever face directly. Prior to Teal Mask, he’d coped with that by clinging to the figure of the ogre as an ideal of strength. He imagined that maybe one day if he managed to grow strong enough to be just like it, the ogre would acknowledge him and be his friend – and that would finally mean that he mattered and he really was strong after all. He finally wouldn’t have to deal with the crushing pain of his inferiority complex any more.

But then, of course, you swept in with your amazingly perfect protagonist strength, ripping away Kieran’s chance of ever befriending Ogerpon and doing so in the most tragically agonising way possible that only seemed to validate and hammer home to him just how hopelessly weak he really is. Left with nothing but an even bigger gaping pit of inferiority inside him, and no longer able to cling to the idea of Ogerpon as a way for him to one day escape it, the only thing Kieran could do in order to cope was find something else to latch onto: you.

You became a greater ideal of strength to Kieran than even Ogerpon ever was during the events of Teal Mask, so now he’s hung everything on the thought of making himself strong enough to prove he’s just as good as you. If he can become strong enough to beat you, surely that of all things will be enough to prove that he matters and isn’t weak at all. It’s the only thing he can conceive of that might just free him from the grip of his terrifyingly massive inferiority complex, and he’s clinging onto it for dear life, striving for it to the point of obsession.

I saw a lot of people talk in the lead-up to this DLC like it was going to be about Kieran wanting revenge on you, but that’s not remotely it. He isn’t even able to comprehend the idea that anything you did to him could be considered wrong in the first place; that’s just how things were meant to go when you’re strong and he’s weak, right? Even though it was you who took everything away from him and made him feel so crushingly inferior, that pales in his mind next to how incredibly strong you are and how badly he needs to be like that himself. This isn’t even about him getting another shot at winning over Ogerpon, either – as much as you having become her trainer is a huge source of pain and jealousy for him, he seems to have pretty much accepted that there’s no changing that now.

What Kieran actually, consciously wants out of all this is…  well, it’s extremely vague and nebulous, but that’s precisely the point, because there is no rationality involved in any of it. What is he really hoping to gain from it, when (if) he beats you? For you to decide to be his friend after all? For him to instantly become happy and finally feel strong? For him to magically turn into you and have all the good things you have that he envies about you? Obviously none of those things would necessarily happen, but Kieran is not consciously thinking any of this through to its logical endpoint. He’s not actually hoping to get a specific Thing out of beating you – he just desperately, indescribably feels like he needs to beat you, more than anything else in the world.

What Kieran really needs out of this deep down is for you, this person he’s warped himself into idolising as the Strongest Most Perfect Person Ever, to acknowledge him and his strength. It’s just like he wanted Ogerpon to acknowledge him before, shifted onto a new target of idolisation and grown far more desperately obsessive. If you of all people acknowledged him, then just maybe it might actually be true that he really is strong and worth something after all. At its most fundamental level, Kieran has always just deeply needed to gain a sense of self-worth, and yet his self-esteem is so horribly low that he’s basically incapable of doing so on his own without outside validation. But I really don’t think he’s aware on a conscious level that this is what he needs and what he’s striving to get out of all this.

(And of course there’s no way you’d ever acknowledge him and his worth as a person anyway, right? He thought you’d maybe done that when you called him a friend back in Kitakami, but any fleeting hope of gaining self-worth that way evaporated when you went and lied to him, validating his fears that obviously you’d couldn’t possibly have meant it. After all, why would someone as strong as you ever want to be friends with someone weak like him? The only way you’d ever possibly acknowledge his worth is if he conclusively proved that he’s even stronger than you, by defeating you in battle.)

Blueberry Academy

The other thing I want to do before getting into the events of The Indigo Disk itself is to re-evaluate a few assumptions I made about Blueberry Academy in the previous post, now that we’ve actually seen it for ourselves.

I was assuming that a significant part of the reason for Kieran’s inferiority complex was due to him being bullied at Blueberry, but… there’s absolutely zero indication from any of the NPC dialogue that any such thing happened. If the writers wanted this to be a fact that was relevant to Kieran’s character, they absolutely would have put something in. However, in hindsight, I realise that maybe I was primed to assume a bullying problem at Blueberry due to the Team Star storyline, when actually, Kieran being bullied there doesn’t necessarily fit. His issues about being shunned and his paranoia that people are laughing at him behind his back are so ingrained that they have to have originated from quite a while ago in his childhood – and he’s only a first-year at Blueberry.

So, scratch that part of the previous post: Kieran was not bullied at Blueberry Academy, but he was almost certainly bullied earlier on in his childhood, at whatever school(s) he attended beforehand. It wouldn’t necessarily have needed to be a really overt, physical kind of bullying either – that’s the sort of thing that Carmine would certainly have noticed and protected him from. But even something more low-key like being constantly left out of things and looked down on by others would have left a huge psychological mark on him, and would have probably been too subtle for his socially oblivious sister to do much about. (Or, in some ways, she might just have made such things worse by being so fiercely overprotective of him. Most people wouldn’t want to go near the kid with the Scary Big Sister who’ll bite their head off if they so much as look at him wrong.)

Bullying aside, I was looking for any kind of clues at all from the NPCs as to what Kieran was like at Blueberry Academy before his big change… and there’s almost nothing. Plenty of people comment on Kieran now, because everyone knows who he is as the Champion, but nobody shows surprise that it was this timid kid who rose up and beat Drayton. It seems that as far as most of the students are concerned, he just came out of nowhere. But maybe that’s the point; maybe almost nobody ever even noticed him or thought anything of him at all until he grew stronger. By the time he joined Blueberry Academy, Kieran’s default coping mechanism must have been to make himself as small and invisible as possible, so that basically nobody even really thought twice about him.

Only two whole NPCs actually make any kind of reference to what Kieran was like before he became Champion. (Well, other than Carmine, of course, and also discounting Amarys because she’d have only known Kieran through her friendship with his sister.) One of them is Drayton, who’d noticed him as the incredibly shy kid who nonetheless lit up with joy more than anyone else when watching battles. And then there is one random NPC you can find in the Central Plaza who comments on how Kieran has turned into a completely different person. That’s it. Only two people happened to have noticed this timid kid enough to realise he’s the same guy who suddenly became Champion. (And, while they both seem at least a little concerned, neither of them appear to have outright considered Kieran a friend, because of course not. You really were the first friend he’d ever managed to make, until everything went horribly wrong.)

One thing I was expecting to get from the vibe at Blueberry that it absolutely did deliver, mind you, was the culture around battling. There’s all sorts of talk about battling and getting stronger, double battles as standard to make things more strategic, and even the random NPC trainers can actually be kind of challenging. So I was definitely right that this culture must have contributed to Kieran fixating on getting stronger and proving himself to you through gaining more battling strength in particular. One NPC near the entrance also remarks that “you don’t look strong”, as if people here assume battling strength to be correlated with physical appearance, which… yeah, that explains a bit about why Kieran felt he needed to look different alongside becoming stronger in battle, doesn’t it.

Changing himself

Of course, Kieran’s reasons for changing up his appearance go much deeper than just wanting to superficially “look stronger”. In order to achieve the nigh-impossible feat of managing to match you in strength, he felt like he had to become nothing short of a completely different person. He can’t be anything like that timid, weak, pathetic kid from Kitakami who got walked all over, because there’s no way that kid would ever, ever be able to beat you.

Which means that absolutely everything about who he used to be needed to get thrown away. That hairstyle that practically covered his face and let him hide himself behind it? Gone. His country accent and way of talking due to being raised in Kitakami? That always made him feel different and outcast among the students at Blueberry already, but more than that, it’s a distinctive feature of that kid he used to be and cannot be any more, so he had to cast it away and learn to mask it. Even the unambiguously good parts of him – the way he’d always get so excited and passionate over things he finds cool! – they’re a part of his old self, so they had to go, no exceptions. Far be it from him to ever say “wowzers” any more, for more than one reason. His old hairstyle may have been the one that visually resembled a mask, but now he’s putting on much more of a metaphorical mask than he ever was before. (Putting on a mask to become stronger and hide his reasons to be cast out and shunned – a bit like a certain ogre.)

(And since Kieran’s just on the cusp of puberty, I find it fun to imagine that maybe his voice happened to start breaking in the interim between the two DLCs, so that he doesn’t just talk differently and mask his accent, his voice literally sounds different now compared to how it did before.)

Unfortunately for Kieran, no amount of fervently doing everything in his power to change and grow stronger can make his growth spurt come any sooner. It seems it hasn’t happened quite yet, leaving him awkwardly still the smallest person in the room even as he is trying to project an air of being Strong and Tough now. He gets around this as best he can by adopting a mannerism of taking a step back from people, to give him less of an angle to look up at, and tilting his head far enough back that he can kinda sorta still be looking down on them, in a sense. He is so desperate to not feel small any more.

(Fittingly – or ironically, perhaps – you are the one relevant person who is the same height as Kieran and can face him eye-to-eye. That’s bound to be feeding into his complex about you: all the other people he looked up to and saw as stronger than him were older than him and so they had a good reason to be that strong – but you and he are the same age. You should be his equal, and yet you can already do and have all these things that he could only dream of.)

And his timid demeanour isn’t the only thing from before that Kieran cast away – he also got rid of almost his entire team of Pokémon from those battles back in Kitakami. Nearly all of them went the same way as poor Furret and Cramorant before them, because they weren’t strong enough to win him that vital battle that would definitely have decided who got to become Ogerpon’s partner (right?), so there’s no way they’d ever be able to help him beat you now. The only exception to this is Dipplin, perhaps precisely because Kieran knew it was capable of evolving again and so still had more strength it had yet to show him. The rest of his team got completely overhauled, no doubt informed by his fervent studies in battling strategies to let him put together the strongest and most optimal team he could come up with.

I nearly had a whole spiel here about how excruciating it is that his new team has a Politoed, in that he could almost have kept another of his old partners from his Kitakami team if he hadn’t hastily evolved Poliwhirl into the less strategically-optimal evolution as part of his efforts to prove himself to you during Teal Mask. Except, actually, a postgame line implies that Kieran’s Politoed is also a longtime partner of his, along with his Poliwrath, like they’re a pair. So it’s not that he went and caught a “replacement” Poliwag that he was less attached to – apparently he always had two Poliwag friends from the start and just only ever trained up one of them to use against you in Teal Mask. Then, when that one had failed to be good enough for him, it was the other one’s turn to prove how strong it could really be.

As for his other new team members: Porygon-Z and Incineroar are both available in the Terarium, but Grimmsnarl is only available, to Kieran at least, in Kitakami. So that must be another one he’d caught during the school trip, maybe a candidate he’d considered training up back then but never quite had the time to alongside the rest of his team. And then there’s Dragonite, which is an interesting one, because the Dratini line is nowhere in either Kitakami or the Terarium – meaning, Kieran must have gone out of his way to trade for it in order to get one. Perhaps he was really impressed by the strength of Drayton’s Dragonite and wanted one of his own to match that? (but his has a very different build to Drayton’s, so it’s fine, he’s definitely not just copying Drayton in order to win, okay.) I like to think that maybe he got it from Carmine, who’d apparently been visiting loads of other regions with Briar during Kieran’s obsessive training arc and therefore could have been in a position to catch a Dratini.

More importantly than just catching these new Pokémon, though, would have been training them, which Kieran threw himself into so obsessively that it and studying battling strategies now consume every single moment he has, to a concerningly unhealthy degree. He’s cutting back on sleep, barely eating proper meals, because spending any more time than necessary on even things like basic physical needs is not acceptable to him. You are so overwhelmingly, impossibly strong in his mind that, in order to match your strength, Kieran feels like he has to give everything, no matter the cost to himself.

Being Champion

And, well, his fervent desperate self-destructive training did indeed make him strong enough to become Champion of the BB League. It’s only a stepping stone, a means to an end for his ultimate goal of being strong enough to beat you – but it’s something. As Champion, Kieran’s known to everyone in the school, getting awed murmurs wherever he shows up. People respect him now, because he’s proven that he's strong. (The very converse of how everyone ignored and shunned him back when he was weak. That’s how it goes, right?) And on top of that, he’s earned himself a position of authority over everyone in the League Club.

…Frankly, it’s a very stupid rule the club has to make the Champion be automatically in charge of the whole thing, precisely because of situations like this, in which the trainer who happens to be strongest also happens to be someone nobody else wants bossing them around. But thanks to that stupid rule existing, Kieran’s in charge now, and everyone else has to do what he says whether they like it or not, because he’s the strongest of all of them. Way to validate and perpetuate Kieran’s toxic worldview that having strength (battling strength) means you get to call the shots and walk all over anybody who’s weaker than you, and that’s just how things work.

Our first glimpse of how drastically Kieran’s changed, the interaction we see him having with that one poor club member, is bound to be the epitome of how he’s been treating everyone in the club these days. And he is not simply being a dick for the hell of it just because he can now and he’s turned Edgy or whatever – everything about his behaviour here is agonisingly rooted in his own deeply ingrained worldview about strength and weakness.

It's so tragically telling how he phrases his scathing disapproval of the poor guy as, “So that means you’re just OK being this weak forever? That what I’m hearing?” That’s not at all what the guy was saying, but Kieran hears it that way because he can’t help but see his own former, weaker self everywhere he looks. At the end of Teal Mask, he was trapped in that horrible pit of feeling like there was nothing he could do except be this weak forever, unless he devoted himself obsessively to becoming stronger and stronger and stronger with everything he had. Any tiny sign of weakness in anybody else reminds him of that place, reminds him that the only reason he’s not trapped there himself right now is because he’s spending every waking moment trying to claw his way out.

The guy’s reason for not completing Kieran’s training assignment wasn’t even that he didn’t want to do it. He said he’d had hectic stuff going on at home that meant he didn’t have time, which ought to be a perfectly reasonable excuse! But… not to Kieran, it isn’t. Kieran has sacrificed everything to become as strong as he is, even basic physical self-care; he would have chosen training over busy home-life stuff in a heartbeat. Anyone who isn’t willing to do the same, anyone to whom growing stronger isn’t the most important thing in the world – they’re not good enough. They must obviously just want to stay weak forever, like Kieran himself absolutely could not bear to be. So he kicks the poor guy out of the club, thus dooming him, in Kieran’s view, to really being stuck this weak forever with no chance to improve.

It's bound to be just like this for everyone else in the club, too, based on plenty of comments we hear about how Kieran becoming Champion has taken the fun out of everything, and the ridiculously strict rules he’s apparently put in place. He’s projecting his own unhealthily high standards of strength onto everyone else, then shunning them if they don’t manage to live up to that, because that’s just what happens to people who are weak, right? It is agonising to watch Kieran perpetuating the exact same toxicity that he used to always feel like he was on the receiving end of, especially as that isn’t even really why he was ever treated that way.

None of this is the behaviour of someone who is even remotely secure and confident in their strength. Despite being Champion and having the respect of the entire school, Kieran is still constantly terrified that even the slightest thing, even so much as allowing a tiny instance of “weakness” in anyone associated with him, will cause all of the strength he’s worked so hard to build to come crashing down in an instant. (One detail I really love about the scene where he’s telling that one guy off is the way Kieran’s tapping his foot at the beginning. He probably means it as a way to express impatience, but really it comes across as incredibly anxious and insecure. The animators did some excellent stuff with Kieran in this DLC.)

And what’s extra heartbreaking is that Kieran doesn’t need to be doing any of this. He’s the Champion now; he is undeniably strong; he’s able to talk to others; people notice and respect him. He is already in a position to reach out and grasp everything he’s ever wanted: acknowledgement, friendship, fun. He used to love battling – he’s supposed to love battling – so he could be having a great time with all this! If he just dropped this toxic mindset and stopped letting it turn him into a massive jerk, he could make friends with the Elite Four and others in the League Club and not be alone any more!

But he’s not able to see any of that. None of the things he’s already genuinely gained for himself truly feel like they matter, not when they’re all just a means to an end for the one thing that does – proving he can beat you. By desperately hanging his entire self-worth on the idea of becoming strong enough to measure up to you and nobody else, Kieran has blinded himself to the fact that he’s already found a good amount of what he’d always truly wanted in the first place. And it also means that, if he can’t beat you when that day comes, everything he’s done will be for nothing.

Drayton and Carmine

But although nobody is happy with the way things are now (least of all Kieran himself), it seems only a couple of people have been willing to question Kieran’s “authority” enough to try and talk him out of this.

One of them is Drayton, who’s doing this not just out of wanting his club to go back to normal, but also because he’s the almost-only person to have noticed the timid yet battle-loving kid Kieran used to be, and he genuinely wants to help Kieran remember how to have fun like that again. Unfortunately, it seems that any of Drayton’s attempts to tell him this bounced right off Kieran, because fun and excitement were a part of that weak kid he used to be and absolutely cannot be any more.

Plus, with his newfound authority and validation of his toxic worldview, Kieran would easily be able to brush off anything Drayton said to him with the excuse that he doesn’t have to listen to someone who can’t beat him. He actually mentions at one point that Drayton “always loses” to him, implying they’ve battled more than once. Apparently, in an attempt to get Kieran to listen, Drayton actually went and challenged him to a rematch at some point, or maybe even several – a remarkable amount of effort, coming from Drayton – but he still couldn’t win.

(Kieran is bound to be super jealous of the way Drayton appears so effortless in his strength, when Kieran himself had to train and strive so hard to reach this level. But on the flip side, now that Kieran is the stronger one, he can use Drayton’s laziness as another way to paint himself as superior. Obviously the reason Drayton keeps losing to him is because he doesn’t train nearly as hard as Kieran does.)

It also doesn’t help that Drayton’s attitude towards Kieran when he’s not specifically trying to encourage him to have fun again is very sarcastic and condescending, drawing from his deep frustration at Kieran’s attitude. It must be very easy for Kieran to completely overlook the part where Drayton is actually doing this because he cares – he probably feels that Drayton just hates him and wants him gone. (Just like everyone who’d always shun him and treat him like an outcast before, right.)

Then there’s Carmine, who’s been incredibly worried about the change in her brother and is bound to have done her fair share of trying to talk him out of this too, evidently also to no effect. It’s certainly easy for Kieran to remain oblivious to the fact that she’s doing this because she cares about him and isn’t just trying to bring him down, since she has, uh, historically not been very good at showing that.

It seems that Kieran has largely been avoiding Carmine since he overhauled everything about himself. No doubt a lot of that is because, what with her being part of the reason for his inferiority complex in the first place, she’s capable of triggering his insecurities more intensely than anybody else can. But maybe it’s also partly because on some level, he’s aware that she’s got a point now with the things she’s trying to say to him, and that makes him feel bad, and have doubts that he can’t afford to be having. Carmine’s certainly right to be concerned that his behaviour now would be driving any friends of his away – although she is almost definitely wildly wrong to be assuming Kieran even had any friends other than you before all of this.

(For that matter, she’s very wrong to assume that you are still his friend right now in a totally normal way; ha ha ha. But then, based on your options of “yes” and “yes” when Drayton asks you if you're Kieran's friend, it seems that you – the player character – are also somehow completely oblivious to the fact that Kieran just maybe might not consider you a friend any more on his end. Which just makes this whole thing even more excruciating.)

The dynamic between the siblings during the one brief time we see them interact here has notably changed, in that Kieran is finally able to stand up for himself more, telling Carmine to shut up when she tells him off. And yet, he doesn’t do so very forcefully, averting his gaze in a way that suggests he just sort of mumbles it. He probably realises she has a point about what she was saying – that he shouldn’t act so condescending towards you. Which on Carmine’s end, she said because she doesn’t want him to drive away the one friend he still (supposedly) has, but that’s not how it’d read on Kieran’s end, because he doesn’t believe you ever were his friend at all. He must have felt like his sister has a point only because he doesn’t have the right to act that way towards you, not when he still hasn’t proven himself to you yet (and maybe never will).

Unexpected reunion

See, there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on under the surface of Kieran’s reaction to suddenly meeting you here. Literally everything he’s been doing this entire time has been for the sole purpose of defeating you when he sees you again. Which means that you showing up and challenging the BB League should be exactly what he wants and has always been waiting for. And yet.

The first notable thing is that he had nothing to do with inviting you here – the person responsible for that was Carmine. She probably figured that you’d be able to help her brother out, so she recommended you to the director when she heard he was looking for an exchange student to invite from Paldea. As Champion of the school, Kieran should also have had enough influence to make such a recommendation – but he didn’t.

Then, when Kieran comes to the cafeteria, he has plenty of condescending things to say to Drayton (about how taking a lunch break is a waste of time, because who needs to bother with basic physical needs like eating when they could be training instead, right). But the moment he sees you, he’s just shocked at you even being here… and then he’s very quiet for the entire rest of the conversation.

Drayton puts things to a vote among the Elites plus Kieran as to whether you should be allowed to join the BB League, and – despite that this should be exactly what he wants – Kieran is the last to vote. He only does so when he’s forced to break the tie.

(Although, it’s revealing in a different way that the Elite Four all ask each other for their opinions first, with none of them naturally thinking to consult Kieran. Despite his newfound strength and authority, he is still socially excluded – but this time he really has nobody but himself to blame.)

Kieran’s wording of how he casts his vote is so very telling. Just: “It doesn’t matter who I’m facing… I don’t lose.” – and he says nothing else before leaving in a huff. He words this in a generalised way, as if this an overarching principle of his that has nothing to do with you in particular, even though it’s always been about you. Because if he let himself think about how you in particular will be his opponent, then suddenly the statement that he doesn’t lose doesn’t feel so certain. But, put on the spot like this, he cannot show any sign that he’s afraid he might lose to you – that would be like giving up and accepting that all the effort he’s put in for all this time has been for nothing. So he has no choice but to let you join.

(Drayton totally knew he would refuse to lose face like this if put on the spot, of course, and that the Elites would vote 2-2 between them and leave Kieran with the deciding vote, which is precisely why he set things up this way. Kieran’s not unaware of this, either.)

There’s a brief interim here as you head to the front desk to officially sign up for the League. This gives Kieran a moment alone to process the fact that, welp, this really is happening, you’re really here, and, isn’t this supposed to be exactly what he always wanted? Hasn’t everything always been so that he can beat you this time? He manages to twist things around in his head, convince himself that yes, this is it, the chance he’s been waiting for, and he will win when it comes down to it, he will, because that’s what it’s all been for.

As such, when he shows up at the front desk to confirm that he’s allowing you to join, Kieran is able to be a lot more direct about you challenging him than he was in his one whole sentence on the topic in the cafeteria. Even then, he makes a comment to Drayton about how he feels like he was manipulated into this… then immediately insists that he’s fine with it because this is what he wanted anyway. If it was truly 100% what he wanted, he wouldn’t have felt manipulated!

To sum all of this up: it is abundantly, delightfully clear beneath the surface that Kieran does not actually feel ready to face you. He would never have felt ready for this, no matter how long he’d spent training and pushing himself, because your impossible unreachable strength and his own inherent worthlessness are both so deeply ingrained in his mind that he is incapable of truly believing he can match you.

But, well, here you are, and now Drayton’s trapped Kieran in this situation where he has no choice but to keep up the mask of strength and confidence he’s been putting on all this time. So he’s got to act like he’s fine with you challenging him, whether he truly feels ready or not.

Your Elite Four challenge

As you work your way through the Elite Four’s ranks to earn the right to challenge him, Kieran is very insistent that you’d better not dare lose to anybody else before facing him, or to have gotten weaker in any way since he last met you.

You might think that Kieran would be glad if you actually did lose to one of the Elite Four and never manage to make it to him, because, hey, that means he’s already stronger than you! He doesn’t even have to worry about whether he can win his battle against you! But… no, that wouldn’t be how it’s supposed to go. The way Kieran’s been building things up in his head the entire time, his whole life is supposed to magically somehow get better when he beats you. He needs to prove himself and his new strength to you, specifically. It wouldn’t mean anything if someone else beat you first, or if you’re somehow not actually still the impossibly strong person he’s idolised and fixated so hard on becoming equal to. That’d just be the most crushing anticlimax for him, in which he never gets to achieve what he’s been striving so hard for, and in which he’d have to somehow come to terms with the fact that… he’s already stronger than you, and yet he still doesn’t feel better or any less agonisingly inferior than he always did? If that happened, he’d be at a complete loss as to any other way to escape how he feels about himself.

But, fortunately for him (for some value of “fortunate”), you of course still are just as strong as you always were. On hearing you assure him of this, and also on seeing it for himself as he watches one of your Elite Four battles, Kieran gives this awful twisted grin that does not even slightly reach his eyes (because he has completely forgotten how to genuinely smile and no doubt hasn’t ever done so this entire time). Yes, he will still get to have his long-anticipated showdown with you, and winning that will still somehow magically definitely fix everything that was ever wrong in his life. Definitely.

There’s also the part where, because you come with such glowing recommendations, you get to skip working your way up the BB League from the very bottom and can start right at challenging the Elite Four. Kieran has to feel all kinds of ways about this – on the one hand, he’d tell himself he’s glad because this means he has less time to wait until the battle that he’s definitely totally ready for, and he knows full well that you wouldn’t need to waste your time on small fry at the bottom. But on the other hand… he had to painstakingly work his way all the way up from zero in order to get where he is, so it sure is something that you’re so special that you just get to skip doing that. (And if you did have to start at the bottom, then it’d give him more time to train himself, just to make absolutely sure that he really is ready to face you…)

When you’ve beaten the final Elite, Kieran shows up again and scoffs that this was kind of slow for you, wasn’t it? I believe this isn’t just posturing and was his genuine reaction – you’re so impossibly perfect in his mind that he can’t even comprehend the idea that you wouldn’t breeze through this effortlessly without a single hitch. But still, at least he can turn the fact that you fell short of his impossible expectations into condescension that helps him feel above you and definitely capable of beating you. (How long did it take him to beat the Elite Four, I wonder? Probably longer than you – but of course he’s not gonna bring that up.)

Drayton, meanwhile, has now picked up on the fact that Kieran isn’t just obsessed with winning like he’d initially thought – he’s obsessed with you. Maybe he’d have approached things a little differently if he’d been aware in the beginning that you were a lot more to Kieran than just an old friend. But, welp, bit too late to back out of what he’s set up now, whoops.

And on Kieran’s end, he hasn’t let go of the feeling of being manipulated into this, and now feels like you and Drayton are plotting against him. This poor kid’s paranoia and tendency to assume people are laughing at him behind his back has still not gone away, even if it’s taken on a slightly different form now. It’s probably a good thing he doesn’t ever learn that Carmine was the one who called you here, or he’d think she was in on this supposed conspiracy too.

(But, hey, while Kieran could never do anything about it before whenever he was ganged up on and shunned by others, at least now he’s finally strong enough to fight back and hold his own, despite being outnumbered, right? Just like the ogre did.)

THE BATTLE

So now, it’s finally time: the battle that Kieran has absolutely everything riding on. Of course I’ve already made it abundantly clear here that every single thing he’s done has been for the sole goal of beating you right here and now – but it says a lot that he spends his pre-battle speech making sure you know this. He probably feels like you’re such an amazing superstar trainer that challenging someone for their Champion title is basically just another Tuesday for you, like this is nothing on your end – but this battle is everything for him, everything that he’s been spending every single moment of every single day building up towards for all this time, and he needs you to acknowledge this.

And as if that wasn’t enough, as the battle opens, Kieran screams into the sky with the sheer uncontainable emotion of how much this means to him. Everything he’s been feeling, bottling up, clinging to for so long is spilling out of him now that he’s finally here in this one pivotal moment he’s always been waiting for.

It comes spilling out in a lot more than just that scream, too; he has so many things to say throughout the battle as it all reaches fever pitch inside him. While some of his in-battle dialogue during his Teal Mask fights had fun hints at his issues in there, this one battle here absolutely takes the cake. This is quite possibly the most dialogue in any battle in any Pokémon game, and all of it has something interesting and nuanced going on that’s rooted in Kieran’s massive issues. I cannot resist taking this opportunity to talk about every single bit of it.

His first line as the battle begins is, “I know I’m making the right choice… You’ll understand that soon enough!”, which seems kind of odd on the surface. What “choice” is he even talking about that he feels the need to justify? Accepting a challenge to his Champion position is just what Champions are meant to do. But that’s not what Kieran’s thinking about here – he’s thinking about all of those times that Drayton and Carmine tried to talk him down from the entire way he was acting and pushing himself too hard. Every time they did, he insisted to himself that no, training this insanely hard is the right choice, he needs to do this, and it’ll all be worth it when he beats you. …Somehow. Definitely. You’ll see, you will, you have to…!

On the very first hit he lands on you – it doesn’t even need to be super-effective, any damaging hit will trigger it – he says, “How do you like that? See how hard I’ve trained? Not like that kid you battled in Kitakami, huh?!” In reality, the hit he lands here isn’t necessarily any bigger than the kinds of hits he dealt to you back in Kitakami – but it feels bigger to Kieran. He’s trained so hard that he feels so much stronger and so different from the kid he was back then, and he needs you to see and acknowledge this too.

Meanwhile, your first super-effective attack you land on him manages to pierce through his mask for a moment and get a “wowzers” out of him. It’s not actually any more impressive than any other super-effective hit he might receive from any other trainer – but because it’s coming from you, it feels so much more incredible, triggering his instinctive irrational idolisation of you just for a moment before he collects himself and puts his mask back up.

Then he insists that he’ll still win anyway, even if “the type matchups work out for you”. Which… isn’t how type matchups in battles work? Sure, you landed one super-effective hit, either because one of your Pokémon happened to have a good matchup, or you just had a good coverage move. That doesn’t mean that all of the type matchups in the battle are inherently in your favour. But Kieran apparently feels like they are – because, when it comes to him versus you, he always feels like everything in the world is on your side and he has to claw and grasp to regain the tiniest bit of ground against his inherent overwhelming disadvantage.

Speaking of everything being on your side, when you land your first critical hit on him (and I say “when” here because this battle is long enough that statistically you’re extremely unlikely not to at some point!), his response is delightful, raging that “even luck’s chosen you over me!” and that it’s “not fair!!!” All of his bitterness and jealousy about Ogerpon choosing you over him is still raw, evidently, so even something like you getting a statistically near-inevitable critical hit feels to him like luck itself taking your side against him, because everything always does. And on some level, he may have realised that you befriending Ogerpon was partly due to the sheer luck of you happening to meet her while he wasn’t around, so of course he’s bitter about luck because of that, too. It’s not fair, how you always get everything, so effortlessly, while he has nothing.

(He doesn’t comment at all if and when he lands a critical hit, because of course not. Confirmation bias is one hell of a drug.)

And of course, you bringing out Ogerpon herself gets an extremely strong reaction from Kieran. “You’ve got some nerve,” he snarls among broken mirthless laughter, to bring her out “NOW of all times?!” This, right here and now, was supposed to be his moment, his time to finally shine and show you how strong he is and take the victory. And yet you’re choosing this moment to parade Ogerpon in front of him, a reminder of the painful losses and inferiority he suffered back in Kitakami that he’s tried so hard to forget and overcome by making himself stronger, just rubbing it in his face that you got to have her because you’re so strong and lucky and perfect.

His expression during this line is one hell of a thing as well: shocked and wide-eyed and practically terrified, in stark contrast to all of his other expressions in this fight. He’s not only reeling from the pain of having his inferiority from back then shoved in his face, but also, he’s always believed that Ogerpon is so incredibly strong. If you’re using her against him in this battle, you and her working together… how is he ever going to be able to defeat that combination of impossible strength…?

(Apparently, Kieran’s trainer AI actually has a modification in this fight that makes him prioritise attacking Ogerpon more than an AI trainer otherwise would, which is delightful, I love that that’s a thing devs programmed in there. Of course he’d desperately want to get Ogerpon off the field as fast as he could before she utterly destroys him.)

As his back’s against the wall and he’s sending out his final Pokémon, Kieran’s still raging, with increasing desperation: “Just go down already! How are you still standing after I’ve thrown everything I have at you?!” This battle is not at all going how he’d insistently imagined it would in his head, in which he’d prove himself and win, not even though he’s giving it absolutely everything he has. (And the thought that you still won’t go down even then is terrifying to him. He really has given everything to this, he couldn’t possibly have done more – and yet, what if that still isn’t enough to beat you? That’d mean it’s just impossible for him, no matter what he does, and he’d have absolutely no idea how to cope with that.)

Just before he Terastallises his Hydrapple, he insists that he “doesn’t need the old me”, that he’s changed – here’s the way he felt he had no choice but to throw away everything about his former weaker self in order to get stronger, even the positive parts. But then he adds, “and I’ll show you I can change again!” He’s not just literally referring to the Terastallisation he’s about to do (although it’s thematically fitting that he brings up this topic as he’s doing this – and his Hydrapple’s Fighting Tera-type is a neat link to him having changed himself into being obsessed with strength) – rather, he’s referring to what he’s convinced himself will happen when (if) he wins this fight. That’ll change everything for him, right? That’ll make everything good, finally; he’s going to change for the better once he wins this, he has to…!

And then… Kieran’s animation while he’s Terastallising is an odd one. He’s remarkably expressionless about it, compared to the intensity of his expressions in the entire rest of the fight. But I think the reason for this must be: most trainers wince with the force of it as they begin charging their Tera Orb – and apparently, Kieran doesn’t want to be seen doing that, because that’d make him seem weak. So he’s trained himself to put on an expressionless mask, not even looking at the orb directly, to avoid that. (And one of the few trainers who doesn’t wince, who’s able to stare directly at the dazzling power coming from their Tera Orb without flinching, holding it up for all to see… it’s you, of course. Kieran almost certainly saw this from you a few times back in Kitakami.)

His last possible line in the fight, as he orders an attack from his Hydrapple, at which point he is guaranteed to have only one or two Pokémon left and be desperately fighting to hold on with his back against the wall, includes him saying, “I’m capable of winning too, you know!” Because that is definitely a very normal thing for a reigning Champion to need to say to their challenger. Even with all the victories he’s had on his way here, Kieran still has to fight to convince himself that he is capable of winning, because being up against you and teetering on the brink of defeat like this just reminds him of all his previous agonising losses at your hands, his inferiority complex rising up to overwhelm him with the feeling that he’ll never be able to be strong or win anything at all.

(And, hey… what if he had actually managed to win? Tragically, the game does not let you see any of his reaction if you do happen to lose to him; it just rewinds time like it never happened. But there’s no way that Kieran beating you here would truly have helped or fixed anything about that massive inferiority complex of his. He’d ride the high for a bit, but then he’d go back to the same condescending façade he’d had before and gradually realise that… he doesn’t actually feel any better about himself beneath it like he was supposed to once this happened. Funnily enough, beating you in a Pokémon battle would not have magically turned him into you.)

Everything falls apart

But, of course, because the game refuses to let you not be the Perfect Protagonist (or, perhaps, because the narrative needs to go this way in order for him to actually get better in the long run), Kieran loses. The last time he lost a pivotal battle against you that he’d told himself everything depended on, back in Kitakami, he crumpled immediately in defeat – but this time, his reaction’s a lot more drawn out. Back then, the conviction that he could never ever beat you was right there at the surface to the point that he was basically expecting to lose despite his determination. But here, he’s spent so long insisting to himself over and over that he will win this time, he will, convincing himself that things just have to go that way… that it takes him a moment to even process the fact that they haven’t. He’s just shocked, lost, dumbfounded, not knowing how to react, because this wasn’t supposed to happen…!

But then the spectators around him mutter and begin to leave, apparently because he lost, because he’s no good after all and so there’s no point staying to watch him, and this seems to be what agonisingly drives home the reality to Kieran. All the respect and esteem he’d managed to grasp for himself – in this one awful moment it feels like all of it is crumbling away before his eyes. All of his effort to get here (so much effort) was worthless, all because he couldn’t beat you. He’s gone right back down to being nothing. I adore the blurry effects in the cutscene as Kieran sways and staggers and collapses, giving a visceral sense that the shock of this is hitting him so deep that it's rendered him physically light-headed and dizzy. Guh, this poor kid.

And then Drayton has to come along and rub it in. Kieran winces in agony as he gets smugly called “ex-Champion” – though he was never doing any of this for the Champion title itself, having it meant something and made him matter, and now that’s gone like it was never there at all. It’s bound to sting especially hard coming from Drayton, whom Kieran believed was plotting with you to take him down, take away everything he had, and now that’s exactly what’s happened, because he wasn’t strong enough to stand up for himself after all.

…The fact that Drayton felt the need to be a smug bitch about this first and foremost does not remotely help Kieran actually listen to and internalise the genuinely good advice Drayton gives just a few moments later. He really was doing this because he cares, and because Kieran ought to go back to having fun with things! But of course Kieran isn’t in any state to listen to that, not after all his paranoia about Drayton manipulating him, and then Drayton rubbing his loss in on top of that; he still has no idea that the guy genuinely wants to help him. (Unfortunately, while Drayton cares about the person Kieran should be, he has been deeply frustrated by the person Kieran is being, and that comes out in sarcasm and smuggery first, hence why this completely bombs.)

So instead of taking on board Drayton’s advice, which he probably wasn’t even listening to, Kieran just starts desperately, incoherently mumbling about how he’ll win next time. It’s the only thing he can cling to – the same thing he always has, to escape the all-consuming, unbearable thought of just being achingly inferior forever and ever with no way out. He still can’t see any other way out that isn’t beating you. (But… how is he ever going to win next time, when he’s already given it absolutely everything he had and still couldn’t manage it…?)

Seeing him being so clearly Not Okay, you approach him and (probably) attempt to say something to him, but it seems like even if you try, you barely get any words out before Kieran just shuts down even more. He reacts with slumping, and with an “Aw, man…” – the same words and body language he’d often have back in Teal Mask whenever something (usually his sister) would push back at him and make him feel small. Now that he can no longer cling to his façade that he totally is stronger than you and just hasn’t proven it yet, he’s reverted right back to the state of mind he was always in back then. And it’s you in particular that triggers his inferiority complex harder than anything else right now, even if you just silently approach him, or say a few words that certainly wouldn’t have been anything cruel.

It's a bit of a shame that the game doesn’t actually let us see what you try to say to him, assuming you do. But it most certainly couldn’t have been anything along the lines of “You put up a really tough fight!”, because that kind of thing – acknowledging Kieran’s strength, even though he lost – is exactly what he’d need to hear right now, and he’s clearly not hearing it. Whatever it was you did say, he probably barely even heard it beneath his crushing sense of inferiority at being near you, and you probably trailed off pretty quickly upon seeing his reaction.

(In fact, it might say a lot that your dialogue options here are so non-specific that they’re literally just “Say something/nothing”. This suggests that the player character has no idea what to say to Kieran at seeing him in this absolute state, and they can only choose to either accept that and remain silent, or to fumble for something to try and say anyway. I believe it’s pretty important to “your” role in Kieran’s arc that the player character is extremely socially awkward and just finds themselves utterly lost as to how to deal with him breaking down like this because of them. Someone with better social intelligence would be able to say the right thing here to help him at least begin to feel better! But that someone is emphatically not you, it seems. This apparent social obliviousness also tracks with the fact that you – the player character – agreed with Carmine’s very short-sighted decision to lie to Kieran back in Kitakami, thus unwittingly setting off this whole domino effect of his issues in the first place.)

Sudden legendary hunt

If Kieran had had longer to process his defeat, maybe he’d have realised that there really is no way he can “win next time” when he already gave it his absolute all this time, and he might have begun to approach the fact that there’s nothing he can do but let things go. However, while he’s still reeling, he almost immediately gets dragged into the meeting with Briar about her expedition to Area Zero.

Kieran looks like he’s barely even listening to the conversation at first, just staring miserably into space in front of him, no doubt stuck endlessly thinking how can I ever be stronger than you when everything I had still wasn’t enough??? But then Briar mentions that they’ll get the opportunity to find a legendary Pokémon on this quest – and whoops, now Kieran’s paying attention. Because here’s the answer to his impossible conundrum of how he can beat you next time.

Make no mistake: this is nothing like Ogerpon was to him. He’d been fixated on her and cared about her ever since he was little for deeply personal reasons based on him relating to her situation and projecting onto her. Her strength was part of it, but it wasn’t that he wanted to obtain that strength by catching her; he just admired her strength and wanted to be like her, and if he could, then maybe one day she’d acknowledge that by being his friend (and therefore also incidentally his Pokémon partner). But Terapagos is nothing to Kieran here other than a source of potential strength for him to acquire for himself by capturing it, a tool that will finally let him beat you.

Nonetheless, because this is another legendary Pokémon, Kieran can’t help but draw the surface comparison to Ogerpon anyway and remember the way she chose you over him. He’s probably already imagining that Terapagos might just do the same thing, because you’re so strong and special while he’s nothing – so he tells himself, fervently, that no, he won’t let that happen again, he won’t let this chance go.

He doesn’t ever say as much, but he’s bound to be already having doubts as to if he really could ever capture such an amazing Pokémon. Legendary Pokémon – or really, any Pokémon in general – are supposed to join trainers once they acknowledge their strength; that’s what battles to weaken and capture a wild Pokémon are all about. How is Kieran ever going to get Terapagos to do that for him when he’s so weak? But even so, even if it seems too good to be true, he has to cling to this possibility. It’s the only chance he has left to still just maybe be able to beat you, to continue running away from that gaping pit of inferiority inside him that he doesn’t know how to face.

(A minor nitpick I have with the game’s writing: it’d have been fun here if things had been subtler and Kieran hadn’t outright said that he wants to catch Terapagos at all. His intent would have been very clear regardless for anyone who could read between the lines – I realised what was up the moment he reacted to hearing about a legendary, because Oh No. But nonetheless, it seems like you the player character and also Carmine are both socially oblivious enough to fail to follow Kieran’s stated intent to catch Terapagos through to its obvious conclusion of “he’s still fixated on beating you”. I guess the two of you just assume, oh, hey, he’s found another legendary Pokémon to get excited about, that’s good, that means he must be getting over Ogerpon, right…? Ha. Ha ha ha. If only.)

Journey through Area Zero

As you make your way into and through the depths of Area Zero, Kieran seems to have largely lost hold of the condescendingly superior façade he’d been putting up all this time (after all, he doesn’t have the right to act that way towards you when he’s still weaker than you). This allows a few little hints of his true self to begin to rise to the surface and shine through again, at least a little bit.

He lets slip a “wowzers” on seeing the sheer alien beauty of the place for the first time, and later at the lab he’s so excited at the technology reminding him of a spy movie that he even forgets to mask his accent for a whole sentence. But both times, he’s quick to catch himself and brush it off and act aloof. That excitableness was part of who he used to be, that kid who was weak, and he's still convinced that he can’t afford to be that person any more. But, hey, getting these little reminders that he actually enjoys being his true self and has missed it, at least certain parts of it, has to help! Plus, Carmine seems happy at these moments of him being the little brother she knows and loves again; they have a bit of regular healthy sibling banter; she notices him being considerate about Briar reading someone’s private diary…

These are all good signs that Kieran’s starting to get back to normal, maybe just a little… but, not completely. The spark still isn’t there in his eyes, even when he’s smiling about the cool spy vibe of the lab. Despite the distractions, he’s largely very intent on just getting to the legendary Pokémon and nothing else. And perhaps most relevant of all, he barely says anything of substance to you, even if you try and talk to him.

He does have a notable reaction near the beginning when you mention that you came here last time with some friends of yours. Kieran had probably never quite considered the idea of you having other friends before – Ogerpon did not exactly prime him to imagine that about his idols, after all – but, now that he’s hearing it… of course you’ve got friends. Why wouldn’t you? You have everything, everything he’s always wanted so badly for himself but could never, ever have.

Then, of course, you’re the one who does all the hard work in the Underdepths to deal with the sparkling Pokémon that are blocking the way forwards. For the first one, Carmine almost asks Kieran to take care of it before changing her mind and asking you, which, ouch, that’s got to have stung. (I don’t think she did that to deliberately be unkind, though; it’s probably that she still feels a little weird and uncomfortable about her brother battling, because of the way he’s been, so she’d rather just watch you battle it instead.)

Because of all this, later on Kieran bitterly comments that he feels like everyone’s relying on you too much. Really, the only reason this is the case is because you just happen to be the one who has the lizardbike buddy that can navigate you to the Pokémon you need to defeat… but then, that in itself is another sign of how special and favoured by legendaries you are, isn’t it.

And actually, you’re not necessarily the only one who can reach the sparkling Pokémon! Kieran has a Dragonite, which must have been what he rode on for the flying Elite Four trial, so, in theory, he could go and deal with those sparkling Pokémon himself. But he doesn’t, because you’re already doing it anyway, and he doesn’t feel worthy of taking the spotlight from you. (Or, he could ask to join you on your lizard buddy as you head over there, but ha, even less chance he’s about to do that.)

One bit of optional dialogue Kieran has during this part is insisting that he could totally make quick work of those sparkling Pokémon if only they weren’t so far away. This is very true… but the fact that he never tries to do so despite actually having the ability to reach them himself tells us that his words are just desperate posturing that he doesn’t truly believe. He can’t even register the part where he genuinely has a really strong team of Pokémon that he worked hard to train, because he did all of that for the sole purpose of beating you, and since he couldn’t manage that, that means that none of it matters and he’s just useless.

Then there’s the moment near the end where Carmine tells Kieran it’s his turn to call out to you to let you know the path opened up, but Kieran miserably assumes you’d prefer to hear it from her instead. (As if who tells you that even makes any difference!) Carmine did this to try and begin bridging the gap between you, and she forces him to do it anyway despite his protest, but then when she asks if he’s got anything more to say to you, he just says no. He still doesn’t feel like he’s worthy of even interacting with you in any way at all, still convinced he must be nothing to you.

There’s a heartbreaking hypocrisy to this, too, since he knows you’re perfectly okay interacting with Carmine, and it’s not like she’s ever been able to beat you in battle either. But… but that’s different, right, because she’s already someone who’s strong and cool and worthy of your friendship. In Kieran’s head, he is the single person in the world who is so automatically, inherently worthless that he needs to prove his strength before he is allowed to Matter to you or to anybody.

Outburst at the crystal

As the group reaches the final chamber, Kieran rushes ahead into it and begins pulling at the crystal the moment he figures it even might be Terapagos, because he is so desperate not to lose this chance to anybody else (meaning you). In his urgency, completely oblivious to how messed-up this sentiment is, he blurts out that this’ll mean he can finally beat you, at which Carmine, who failed to realise this was still the reason he was doing all this until now, tries to call him out on it—

—And Kieran can’t stand that; he can’t let her try and take this away from him too on top of everything else, because this feels like the one remaining chance he’ll ever get to still have something and matter next to you. So in a kneejerk attempt to defend why he needs this, everything comes tumbling out. All of those feelings about how you have everything he’s ever wanted, and he has nothing, how he trained so so hard but even that ended up worthless because he still lost to you in the end, so this is all he has left.

(Well, it’s not quite everything that comes spilling out of Kieran here. He doesn’t say anything about why he feels he needs to beat you, and how that’ll totally magically solve everything for him – because there is no actual logic behind that part. There’s nothing he can say to make that make sense, and on some level he must be aware of that, must know it doesn’t, really. But if he admits that, admits that there really isn’t any way at all to escape from his crushing inferiority, then he’ll have nothing left whatsoever, which he cannot bear.)

Hearing Kieran’s outburst about how worthless he feels, Carmine tries to put in a good word for him about how he’s tried his best too – which is good! That’s exactly the kind of thing he needs to hear; she’s finally getting it! But unfortunately, because she herself is one of Kieran’s sore points, in regards to how you magically went and befriended her, he doesn’t properly register what she’s saying. Hearing her speak at all just triggers that thought and spurs him into venting about that, too.

His hang-ups with you befriending Carmine are interestingly reversed from how they appeared to be in Teal Mask. Back then, he seemed more low-key jealous that she might have been trying to take you, his first ever friend, away from him. But now (now that he’s convinced that you were never really his friend in the first place), it’s all twisted around into yet another sign of how perfect you are, because you managed to win over even someone as prickly and abrasive as his sister so remarkably fast. (Which, of course, has less to do with you than it has to do with the fact that Carmine’s actually a lot softer at heart than Kieran realises.)

He’s also maybe thinking about Drayton here, about the one time Drayton claimed in the cafeteria that you and he were “already tight”. That was a massive exaggeration, but no doubt Kieran filed that away as another person – someone else he finds infuriating and impossible to get along with – that you instantly won over with your magical friendship powers because of course you did. And on top of that, he’s bound to be thinking about his recent realisation that you came to Area Zero last time with your friends, plural, because of course you’d already got a bunch of friends, you’re perfect, you can do anything you want, you can be friends with anyone!

And yet – even as Kieran says this, it is objectively not true. Because you’re not friends with him right now! No amount of your amazing protagonist powers has been able to cut through his pile of issues and properly befriend him, even though you want to, because you are in fact not perfect in the slightest and have no idea what to say to get through to him and help him! But of course Kieran doesn’t realise this contradiction in what he’s saying – he's worthless, so the fact that you’re not friends with him is obviously just because you never wanted to be.

Speaking of you not being perfect, this moment here in which Kieran outright voices his jealousy and sense of inferiority compared to you is bound to be the first moment in which you, the player character, actually begin to realise that this has been his problem this whole time. (And, to be fair to your poor socially-oblivious avatar, it really wasn’t very apparent from their perspective until now! The only time Kieran ever gave any real explicit indication of his issues around you before was in Teal Mask, after the third battle when he lamented that “it’s because I’m weak” – but at the time, the player character wasn’t aware (like we the players were) that he knew they’d lied to him, so they couldn’t have known he was thinking about that. They probably just chalked his reaction down to him taking the lost battle particularly hard. The lie reveal was messy but seemed to work itself out; he was obviously upset when you caught Ogerpon but appeared to accept it well enough in the moment – then all of a sudden he showed up later being really determined to beat you for some reason??? Why.)

Another thing I love about this moment is the animation of Kieran desperately pulling at Terapagos’s crystal, the way he has to pause to catch his breath in between each huge tug, which really gets across that he is giving this every ounce of his strength. And that still isn’t enough, because it never is – he’s always too weak to be able to grasp even one thing for himself, but he is never ever going to stop trying no matter how impossible it seems.

(And I wonder if it’s going through his mind as he does this that surely this wouldn’t be nearly so hard for you. Like this is a sword-in-the-stone kind of thing, in which Terapagos would slide out smoothly like butter for someone who’s truly worthy of it, while a weakling like him is stuck hopelessly yanking on it with everything he has and just making himself look pathetic, because of course he doesn’t deserve this.)

Catching Terapagos

Except it turns out Kieran can manage to pull out the crystal after all, doing so with such force that he accidentally flings it halfway across the cavern to land between you and him. He rushes to pick it up before anyone else can, because this is his and he can’t let anyone take it from him, he can’t—

But then Terapagos wakes up, pops out of the crystal that serves as its shell… and it’s facing you. It doesn’t even see or acknowledge Kieran at all. It looks up at you adorably, like a baby imprinting on the first thing it sees, taking a few steps towards its new friend…?

(this has to be such an aching reminder of the way Ogerpon so quickly came to adore you and didn’t care about him, all compressed into one single agonising moment, ouch)

…This was not Terapagos choosing you over Kieran in any meaningful way. Kieran was behind it, such that it literally couldn’t see him and didn’t even know he existed. All it was doing was latching onto the first person it saw, which was you, because – completely by chance – it happened to wake up facing you and not him. If it’d woken up facing Kieran, it’d have seen and approached him in exactly the same way. Terapagos’s dormant crystal form is symmetrical; Kieran had no way to know which end was the head and which was the tail until it popped out.

This was, almost literally, a fucking coin flip. Only the coin was a magical crystal turtle and the winner was whoever “heads” landed facing towards.

(But then, luck has always chosen you over Kieran, too, hasn’t it?)

And so, seeing this happen to him yet again, seeing his one last chance of maybe finally having something and mattering about to be casually snatched away by you, like always, because the universe always gives you everything he wants… Kieran makes an awful, desperate split-second decision and throws the Master Ball. Because of course he does. It’s not right; it’s not fair on Terapagos – but it is so achingly understandable why Kieran would be driven to do this in this moment. The whole thing was so cruelly, rudely unfortunate. This poor kid just wants so badly to have something, to have anything at all where he’s not immediately overshadowed and upstaged by you.

(Also, shout-outs to the narrative cleverness of quietly establishing that BB Champions get given Master Balls, by the game giving you one when you beat Kieran, such that you think nothing of it at the time but can realise right away in this moment where Kieran got his from.)

Still, it’s notable how quickly Kieran was able to pull out the Master Ball, which suggests he’d had it ready near the top of his bag. It must have crossed his mind on the way here that surely, you’re going to somehow magically sway Terapagos to join you – or that it’ll just shun him, because earning a legendary’s respect involves proving one’s strength, and he’s still so weak – such that he felt he might need a way to guarantee it would become his, no matter what.

But even then, I do want to believe that Kieran wouldn’t necessarily have used the Master Ball if he hadn’t felt like he had no other option, and that he wanted to at least try to get Terapagos to join him willingly, like trainers are supposed to do. If he’d won the turtle-coin flip and it had woken up facing him, maybe he’d have been able to do so! But of course he didn’t get to have that.

(It’s kind of a shame that the characters never discuss the dodginess of catching a Pokémon from behind in a Master Ball, how that gave poor Terapagos no choice in the matter like Pokémon are supposed to have when they join a trainer. But then, pointing out that Master Balls are inherently ethically dubious gets awkward considering that the player can freely use them on anything they like, so the game was probably never going to go there. You are too silent-protagonist and Briar is too irresponsible-adult to comment on it, but maybe Carmine could at least have had a brief line questioning this? But, well, at least she does express apprehension about going in to battle with a legendary Pokémon they know almost nothing about, which is also a very valid concern, considering what ends up happening.)

Trying to beat you with Terapagos

So of course, the very next thing Kieran does is challenge you to battle him with Terapagos, so that he can finally beat you. Only… he doesn’t show anywhere near as much of that furious, fervent determination that he had for the Champion match. All that fire of his got snuffed out the moment he lost back then, and it never really came back. This isn’t the battle he’s been psyching himself up for and dedicating everything towards for months; it’s nothing but a desperate grasp at not falling apart completely. He’s kind of just… going through the motions, trying to beat you simply because it’s what he’s been clinging to all this time, and he still doesn’t know what else to do with himself if not this.

And more than anything, Kieran has to know deep down that he doesn’t truly deserve this, not after the way in which he caught Terapagos. After all, trainers are supposed to earn having strong Pokémon in their team, either by training them up from a low level themselves, or by proving their strength to a high-level Pokémon by weakening and catching it in battle. (This is why high-levelled traded Pokémon will disobey you if you don’t have enough badges – you haven’t given them a reason to respect you!) Catching a legendary from behind with a Master Ball is none of those things. Kieran has to be perfectly aware that he has not earned Terapagos’s strength in any way (just like he knew all along he’d never really be able to).

A very revealing line on this matter is that if you say you’re not ready to battle him yet, Kieran tells you, “You’d better not run away from this”. He never once implied you might run away from the Champion battle – that’d be like admitting you couldn’t win, and you’d never do that. But here, it's different, because Terapagos isn’t his strength, so even if he could beat you with it, it wouldn’t really prove anything about him. You’d be well within your rights to just refuse to indulge Kieran in this at all, and on some level, he knows that.

(…With all that said, Terapagos does obey his commands in the battle anyway. It’s sadly difficult to attribute any definitive emotions to it because it’s pretty unexpressive, but perhaps we can imagine that Terapagos is kind of just lost and confused, going along with the orders of the one who threw its ball because it’s not really sure what’s happening and battling is kind of instinctual for all Pokémon. Maybe it’s even more instinctual for Terapagos, thanks to its ability that automatically shifts it into a battle form when there’s an opponent in front of it. It doesn’t really help matters that you just sent something out to battle it without questioning things, either.)

If you manage to hit Terapagos super-effectively during the battle, Kieran scoffs that “it has a weakness? I thought this was the hidden treasure of Area Zero?!” What do you mean his super-special legendary that would let him finally definitely win this time isn’t invincible, that it’s still functionally just a regular Pokémon and it’s still possible – and not even that hard, really – for you to beat him even now.

And if you land a critical hit, oh boy: “How can you get critical hits, even at a time like this… What are you, the hero of this story?” Kieran is clearly raw with bitterness about the turtle-coin flip, about luck choosing you because you’re just so heroic, even when this was finally supposed to be his moment really seriously for real this time. It’s reminiscent of another time he compared you to a hero when you critted him, in his fourth Teal Mask battle – but back then, he said you were like the hero in “a story”, whereas here, you’re the hero of “this story”. Kieran’s realising on some level that if this were a story, you would be the hero of it, you’d deserve to win, and… wouldn’t he be the villain? Because heroes certainly do not go around throwing Master Balls at legendaries from behind.

(For the record, though? Kieran is not a villain. Stop calling him a villain, people. Not a single thing he does is outright villainous; catching Terapagos in this way is wrong, yes, but it’s an act of desperation for which his entire end goal is literally just to win a dang Pokémon battle against you. He’s barely even that much of an antagonist, if we get into that – this isn’t really a you-versus-him conflict so much as a him-versus-himself conflict that you happen to be inextricably wrapped up in.)

Kieran isn’t even that crushed when he loses this battle, just… lost and confused. He insists that “I thought if I had Terapagos, it would make me stronger,” as if catching it in a Master Ball would change anything about his strength – but really, he has to have known that wouldn’t truly be the case. And when Briar remarks that Terapagos isn’t as strong as it should be, Kieran just miserably assumes, “so it isn’t the hidden treasure?” Like, of course this was too good to be true, of course whatever Pokémon he actually managed to get his hands on was just some dud and not the real deal, because he’s never deserved to have anything worthwhile. His expression’s upset, and pleading, as he says this was meant to let him beat you, still like that’d somehow fix everything, but his desperation’s become something pitiful compared to how furious it was before. He just doesn’t know what else to do, doesn’t know how else to cope with his crushing sense of inferiority if he can’t hold onto this.

Terapagos goes berserk

The only reason Kieran even Terastallises Terapagos is pretty much because Briar tells him to, and he’s at a loss for what else to do. It’s very possible that if an actual responsible adult had been here to talk him down – or, heck, even just let Carmine talk to him, since she was trying to do so again – then he’d have finally been in a state to listen and none of the ensuing disaster would have needed to happen. But Briar’s gotta see her giant sparkle turtle, because it turns out that basically her entire character exists to facilitate Kieran’s character arc having the most dramatic climax possible, and I for one am 1000% okay with that.

Kieran looks apprehensive and afraid even as he’s just beginning to Terastallise it (no emotionless mask to cover the wince this time), perhaps because he can feel that the power from his Tera Orb is way more than it usually is and isn’t sure this is a good idea. But what else can he do? He has nothing else left – so he throws the orb anyway.

Again, Terapagos is frustratingly unexpressive, such that it’s difficult to get a sense of whether it attacking Kieran once it Terastallises is an instinctive, unconscious defence mechanism, or something more deliberate. But it’s certainly more fun to imagine it’s deliberate – that this is Terapagos lashing out from anger and fear now that it’s been given a terrifying amount of power it can’t fully handle and begins to realise, wait, no, it didn’t want this. That makes this problem distinctly more Kieran’s fault, which is a good thing for his arc. (If Terapagos’s rampage wasn’t based in its emotions in any way, then this kind of wouldn’t be Kieran’s fault at all, not really! It was significantly more on Briar that he Terastallised it, after all. Kieran’s real mistake was catching it without its consent – so it’s more narratively satisfying for this to be, in part, him facing the consequences for that.)

Either way, the important part is that Kieran is bound to feel like this is Terapagos lashing out at him because he shouldn’t have caught it. He always knew deep down that that was wrong, and now here’s the proof, because of course a strong and special legendary like that would never truly acknowledge him. And now it’s so mad at him for trying to act otherwise that it tries to kill him. (This poor kid is already clearly very sensitive to rejection in general, but, ouch, that has to have been like a stab in the gut.) This is all his fault for daring to think he deserved to have any kind of strength at all.

But then you save his life, by sending out your lizardbike friend to shield him! Which on the one hand just makes you even more of a perfect hero – but this time, your heroism is a good thing for Kieran. And, more than that… you wanted to save him. You saw him as someone worth protecting? You, actually, care about him??? (Kieran has been convinced that he’s nothing to you pretty much ever since you lied to him back in Teal Mask, but, oh, hey, maybe not…?)

Not that he has much time to process that in the heat of the moment; he’s too busy freaking out over everything such that Carmine has to be the one to tell him he should recall Terapagos. Maybe on some level he just feels like Terapagos would never listen to him if he tried, because it literally just attempted to kill him – and indeed, it fights back and breaks the Master Ball rather than go back to being his Pokémon (there’s another painful sting of rejection). Of course Kieran should never have caught it or called himself its trainer. He reflexively asks “why?” it wouldn’t come back, but he knows why. It’s because he’s worthless and deserves nothing, and he should never have tried to pretend otherwise.

Facing the gaping pit

At the start of the final battle, Kieran’s just frozen in terror at what he’s accidentally unleashed, not to mention the recent shock of nearly being killed and the knowledge that this is all his fault. (Even though, it isn’t all his fault! Briar deserves at least half the blame for this! But that doesn’t remotely occur to Kieran in the moment, because he is intrinsically the most worthless person ever, so of course all the blame should be on him.) But after a little while, the immediate terror fades, and Kieran’s left with nothing but the overwhelming feeling that he’s useless, that he can’t help anyone. It’s that vast aching pit of inferiority that’s always been there inside him, finally right at the surface.

There’s nothing he can do to run away from it any more. Ogerpon didn’t want him and chose you instead. All of his efforts to make himself stronger meant nothing in the end because he still lost to you. He never should have tried to catch Terapagos, because it never wanted him either and all he’s done is put himself and everyone else in danger. There’s just no way out.

Which means that, for the first time ever, Kieran has no choice but to finally, actually face up to and confront his terrifyingly huge inferiority complex, and begin to fight against it in a genuinely healthy way.

Maybe he wouldn’t have even tried at all if it hadn’t been for the fact that he needed to help with this battle! Shout-outs to the narrative for creating a situation in which Kieran has to help after Carmine’s one remaining Pokémon goes down, because he might otherwise never have done so.

(I love that one of the things the battle camera can do while you’re idling here is cut to Kieran and linger a moment with him, with the look of either frozen terror or miserable inferiority on his face. Even though he’s technically just a background character right now for the mechanical purposes of the battle, this moment is about him, and the devs knew it.)

And of course it takes Kieran a really long time, most of the battle, to actually find the courage to fight back! His inferiority complex is so massive, so all-encompassing, the root cause of all of the desperate, self-destructive, obsessive things he’s done to try and escape it, that of course it’s so, so terrifyingly difficult for him to actually face up to it and find the strength to try and believe that… maybe it’s just wrong.

Crucially, the single thing that does the most to trigger Kieran’s shift into courage is you – you, calling out to him, asking for his help. Hearing that you actually value his strength and need his help is exactly the kind of acknowledgement that Kieran has always desperately craved from you all along. It’s just what he needs to help him believe that, just maybe, he might actually be kinda strong and worth something after all.

But even then! Even with that, his inferiority complex does not magically vanish, because of course it doesn’t work that way! All your words do is give Kieran the courage to fight it, by holding onto the fact that you believe in him and he’s not alone. His animations here are so good; there’s tears in his eyes even as he manages to snap himself into determination, because he is still so scared and just finally being really, really brave about it!

One really lovely subtlety is that the highlight in his eyes, that little visual detail that makes a character really look alive, which was completely not there in Kieran for the entirety of Indigo Disk up until now, finally comes back in the exact moment when he finds the courage to fight. And it's neat how the game manages to re-use the same screaming animation Kieran had for the beginning of the Champion fight, with the only minor differences being the tears and that highlight in his eyes, but in this new context it communicates an entirely different kind of emotion. It’s like he’s fervently psyching himself up into believing that he is capable of doing this.

And hey, Kieran’s contribution to the battle really is pretty helpful! It’s a genuinely tough fight to the point that, no matter your level, there’s a good chance you were struggling on your own for a while, so you’re probably glad he’s here to help even just in a mechanical sense. His Hydrapple’s Supersweet Syrup ability can be useful to you as well as him, and then if it goes down, he switches to Dragonite and – because of the evasiveness drop – begins spamming near-accurate Thunders on a Terapagos who is Water-type for this final phase. Look at him go! (And another thing Hydrapple can do to support you is use Dragon Cheer, which delights me, because it’s Kieran deciding that actually he’s okay with you getting all the critical hits after all. Aww.)

Once Terapagos is defeated, if you try to not catch it, Kieran will tell you that you need to do it, that “it has to be you, not me!” It’s so lovely that there’s not a hint of bitterness to him here as he says this, just perfectly comfortably accepting it, because he never really wanted Terapagos anyway and he knows it’ll be happier with you, and that’s all that matters. Even if you don’t get that line, his encouragement of you as you go for a Pokéball is more than enough to communicate the fact that he’s okay with you doing this. And Kieran’s smiling again, cheering you on with that same animation of his from back in Teal Mask when he was super excited to watch you battle his sister! This is the excitable, battle-loving kid he always was and finally is once more! His smile is even more adorable now without his hair obscuring half of it, too.

Letting it go

In the end, Kieran’s finally able to let things go thanks to multiple factors brought about by what happened in Area Zero. There’s the part where he spent the adventure being just a little bit closer to his normal self, letting him realise that he misses being like that and that maybe there was nothing inherently bad or weak about those parts of him at all. There’s the way that Terapagos going berserk served as a very stark representation of how his obsession with strength only ends up hurting himself and everyone around him, which must have helped him see that his behaviour leading up to this was doing the same kind of thing and he can’t go back to that.

And, perhaps most importantly, you acknowledged his strength by calling out for him to help you against Terapagos, which is what Kieran really needed the most all along. By joining you in the battle, he’s finally begun to face his inferiority complex, to shoot down the conviction in his mind that he’s useless and weak and can’t do anything, and prove to himself that he’s capable of confronting scary things after all, even including his own mistakes.

I do have another small writing nitpick about his dialogue in the post-battle scene, in that I don’t quite agree with his progression from “I just don’t have it in me to be like you” straight to “finally I can let it go”. Kieran was always aware of the former, deep down, but knowing that never did anything but make him latch desperately onto trying to prove that wrong no matter how impossible it felt. Meanwhile, the latter implies that he’s always consciously wanted to let it go and just somehow couldn’t despite that, which isn’t quite it either.

Instead, I think it’d work if he first went from how he can’t ever be like you into “I guess I have to just let it go”, and then from there into “Yeah… finally I can let it go”. Feeling like he simply has no choice but to let go at first, and only from there would he reflect and realise that actually, he can now, and maybe a part of him had always kind of wanted to after all.

Delightfully, as Kieran begrudgingly accepts that he can’t ever be like you, you finally get a dialogue option that lets you tell him that he’s strong and cool and worth something as he is!!! It seems like it really did take you hearing his inferiority complex directly from him in order for you to realise that this was something he needed to hear. He reflexively tries to downplay your compliment, like he didn’t really do anything impressive at all just now, because he still instinctively feels that way about himself – again, his inferiority complex has not just magically vanished, because it doesn’t work like that! – but hearing otherwise from you of all people has to be an immense help for him in fighting against it.

And it’s this that sets Kieran off crying, from that overwhelmingly positive emotion that you think he’s really cool, aww. This seems to break something of an emotional dam for him, letting him just have a good long cry about all of it, which, yes, he has so many emotions he’s needed to let out for so long now and it is good and healthy that he’s finally able to do so! (I wish this part was better animated, alas – but believe me, I am imagining him having such a big long cathartic cry even if the game isn’t managing to adequately show it.)

Then there’s the final scene! It’s so brave of Kieran to have resolved to apologise and make amends for everything he did wrong. That is scary as hell and comes with a huge risk of massive painful criticism and rejection, but he’s doing it anyway because he wants to do the right thing. He is such a good kid at heart despite his massive issues having driven him into several big mistakes.

Now that Kieran’s returned to something resembling his old self, his anxious body language from before is back – he’s barely making eye contact with you as he speaks, his head low, instinctively trying to hide his face behind the one bit of hair he still has hanging down. But nonetheless, you can tell that he’s making an effort to fight that and push himself to be just a little bit more assertive than he was able to be before all this. As he asks if you two can be friends again, he’s grimacing, already braced for rejection, hesitating then blurting out all of it in one big go before he changes his mind – there’s still a very significant part of him convinced that you’d just never want that and he doesn’t even have the right to ask. But at least he’s now able to realise that said part is probably wrong and find the courage to ask anyway! Because he wants this, and he deserves to at least try and grasp good things for himself!

And of course you still want to be his friend, because you basically always were anyway from your perspective, and Kieran is so adorably happy to have this second chance, and I am so delighted that the two of you are able to be friends again like you always should have been all along, aaaa. I could not be more proud of my boy.

(Well, I could go into a lot more detail about just how proud of and happy I am for Kieran thanks to all of his scenes in the epilogue and postgame. But that’s enough of its own separate Thing that it ought to get its own post! So hold on for that; I’m not quite done having So Many Feelings about this boy just yet. Aaand here it is!)

[ohheythisisagoodname]

write your name with hearts

featuring: Izuku Midoriya, Katsuki Bakugo, Shoto Todoroki, Denki Kaminari, tamaki amajiki, shinso hitoshi note: so sorry their all kinda short so i could fit them all without doing a second part

izuku (i can't tell if this is a person of broccoli....)

~ he was taking notes on you and your quirk one day

~ poor baby didn't even notice it because he was going on and on about your quirk until uraraka pointed it out in curiosity

~ his face lit up like a tomato

~ he tried to explain somehow but failed... horribly...

~ he actually ended up doing it a few more times

~ you caught him doing it once and he closed (slammed) his book faster than the speed on light. At least he didn't say he didn't do it.

~ after that you would always look over his paper sometimes to try and catch him in the act but after that he's never been caught again, doesn't mean he doesn't do it though.

~ it's just something he can't get over now

bakugo (the angry pomeranian. best friends a simp so might be a little bit oc-ish)

~ even he doesn't know what happened but one second his writing with his head in his hands and the next he's a blushing mess.

~ you had walked past his desk and when you saw it you pointed it out.

~ bakugo would extremely blush, but then he would try to hide it and start yelling at you telling you to mind your own business and start saying your delusional.

~ afterward after class he would go straight to his dorm a blushing mess.

~ like deku you would never find him doing it again.

~ for weeks after that you would be on his mind, he would think about that god awful moment.

~ he tried to play off the thoughts running in his head about your pretty little face as you had asked about it.

~ god he loved that curious glint in your eyes, but he'll NEVER say so.

shoto (it's icy thought on thursdays)

(help i have no idea how he would act, soo soo soo sorry this is gonna be so ooc, but all of them are soo...)

~ deku finds him doing it and asks him about it quietly so you couldn't hear shoto was writing your name with hearts.

~ he automatically erases it and stares at deku with a poker face "who's y/n?"

~ deku would automatically fall silent. "eh... um... nevermind." deku would say ending that awkward conversation.

~ of course somehow word about it would get to you, how? no idea. don't ask me.

~ you could ask shoto about it but he would just ghost the question.

~ like bakugo he would never be seen doing it again but his feelings for you would escalate from that day.

denki (my cute little sparky boy who lit a spark in my heart)

~ kiri found out about denki tending to write your name (yes in yellow hearts. get it? haha, i'm so funny... ha... ha... i'm delusional and a idiot...)

~ denki openly admitted it with an energetic smile

~ after going on and on about for a full hour with bakugo and kiri just staring at him like he's a simp (but i'm a bigger simp)

~ after that he just sat back down laughing awkwardly and scratching the back of his head.

~ if you had asked him about it though his brain would fry like when he uses his quirk and he would become a blushing mess

~ if you didn't though he would just stay cocky about it thinking that if you ever found out he'd just have a chance to ask you out but as you can see... it failed... horribly...

~ he would still ask you out though... in this brain... his fried brain...

~ but all that you would get was a blushing mess and incomprehensible babbles.

~ he would try again once he's brain wasn't on the fritz but his brain fried again thinking about it... holly ratatouille he's cute

tamaki (no.1 shy boi of my heart, ligt changing songs just for him, now playing "i can't handle change" by roar,)

~ you thought the others were nervous? oh boy... ignore getting your brain fried, ignore turning into a tomato, ignore whatever shoto and bakugo were. this shy boy right here is the real deal.

~ mario *ahem* i mean mirio caught tamaki in the act and asked about it.

~ of course tamaki blushed, with that quivering smile appearing on his lips.

~ tamaki being mirio's best friend told him about his feelings for you and mirio being mirio promised not to tell a soul

~ but once nejire told mirio about your little crush on tamaki mirio told nejire about tamaki's little crush on you. and then the word spread like wildfire

~ once tamaki had figured it out he was in a full blown panic attack

~ poor baby didn't even consider you liked him back and thought it was all a prank on him for liking

~ it took a lot of convincing for him to finally understand you liked him back

shinso (my beautiful insomniac who would keep me company through those bad nights)

~ umm... so who's the worst person to find you writing your crush's name with hearts? stop thinking its aizawa.

~ as soon as he catches shinso writing your name with hearts next to it.... damn... his own Protégé having a crush on his own student...

~ aizawa doesn't exactly hate the idea of shinso getting a girl/boyfriend but at the same time they could get in the way of hero work.

~ aizawa keeps it to himself that he knows shinso's crush but shinso had noticed something was off about the way mr.aizawa would act when he and you were together

~ once shinso had asked about it and aizawa explained shinso had birds over his head

~ after that he makes a deal with aizawa, he works as hard as he can and aizawa will help shinso get to go one a date with her and boy shinso kept his word

bye bye

none of it is my art

[msgexymunson]

Kickstart My Heart

Eddie x Fem!Reader

Description: Eddie's taken aback when someone makes a bigger scene in the cafeteria than him. Maybe he's finally met his match?

Warnings: Mostly fluff, smidge of angst, very very slight smut (making out/slight grinding) mentions of drug use, use of y/n twice (I try to avoid it if at all poss) use of pet names (princess/sweetheart etc) Reader has curly hair and a back tattoo and I'm totally projecting I'm fully aware.

A/N: Honestly I keep seeing Eddie with cheerleaders and I respectfully disagree. I wanted him to meet someone with similar interests and also wanted to see how he could deal with someone being a bit of a dom as well. I'm not 100% on this but it's been sitting in my notes forever. I'm thinking this would be a good mini series so let me know in the comments/reblogs if you like it enough for that! Edit, Part 2 now out!

5.2k words

Masterlist Part 2 Here

Eddie lounges on the bench in the cafeteria, his legs draped either side, tapping a tattoo on the floor with his feet. He was laying back, magazine in hand, reading out choice paragraphs to his followers, the Hellfire club. And anyone else who might be listening. "....see, they don't even realise how much of a joke they actually are!" Eddie flourishes the magazine and starts rolling it into a tube, mock conducting with his hands, pointing at the more popular kids in the hall.

The boys at the table nod make agreeable noises, knowing it's easier to just let Eddie continue when he's like this; but then something catches Dustin's eye.

"See? I told you Mike, she does go here." Hitting him on the arm.

"Where? Where?"

"Right there, walking in, that's the girl." Dustin stares at the doorway, transfixed.

Eddie laughs, still laying there.

"Don't tell me your losing your mind over a girl Henderson."

"I heard she just got out of Juvie. She showed up in my science class and threw a drink over Jimmy Clayton." Gareth pipes up, following Dustin's gaze.

"I saw her at the arcade wrecking it on Galactic Warriors."

"You should talk to her Dustin!" Mike laughed.

"Screw that, she's a senior and she's scary dude."

Eddie, now annoyed at the lack of attention, jumps up onto the seat, standing on it, knocking the gang out of their spell. "Hey sheep, this is reality calling!" He shouts to them in a sing song voice, bonking Dustin on the head with the magazine, then turns and looks around the room trying to find who they are talking about.

He doesn't have to wait long. A commotion starts two tables away, and the prettiest girl Eddie has ever seen is facing off with Jason Carver.

Long, messy curls adorn her head, wearing a faded Anthrax t shirt tied at the waist, nipping it in, and tight jeans, a wry smile on her lips.

"Get out of my face, freak!" Jason sneers at her.

"You just tried to grope me, now you don't like me sweetheart?" She shouts sarcastically back at him. She leans forward then sticks her middle finger up right in Jason's face.

Eddie has frozen, standing on his seat, mouth slightly open, magazine hanging from his hand, forgotten.

The girl starts to back away. As soon as she turns her back Jason mutters loudly, "as if anyone wants to touch you slut."

Eddie's about to jump off the chair, a fire lit in his stomach. But before that can happen, the girl spins around, and in one smooth, almost dance like motion, pulls her sneaker off her foot and throws it straight into Jason's face. Jason looks furious, his face bright red. The girl smiles, takes a bow, and just leaves the hall. Without her shoe.

Eddie is in love, he's sure of it. It's a peculiar, foreign feeling. He's warm all over. A flush begins to creep up his neck. A flutter in his stomach, mouth dry, head fuzzy. He watches those curls bounce off until the door shuts.

"Eddie! Earth to Eddie!"

He shakes his head to get a grip on reality, and realises oh yeah, I'm Eddie.

"What?" He jumps down to the floor, trying to act nonchalant.

"What was that about losing my mind over a girl?" Dustin grins at him.

Eddie's composure breaks for a second, then smiles back, with that signature Eddie grin. "That, my friend, is not a girl, that is a force of nature."

A shriek distracts him for a second. Someone had grabbed the sneaker and flung it at their friend, sending a drink flying. Another student grabs it with a look of disdain and flings it over their shoulder. Eddie watches it land on the floor a few feet away.

A smile parades across his face. He flings the magazine at Dustin and bounds over and grabs the shoe, then races back and grabs his battered metal lunch box in the other hand.

Dustin groans. "Oh shit Eddie, no, no!"

Eddie grins and winks at Dustin with a glint in his eye.

"Eddie, come on, you cant go after her." Mike rolls his eyes.

"And why not?"

"Because! Because she's basically you!"

"Mike's right, the universe might implode. Or you'll end up in prison." Dustin says, knowing its hopeless.

Eddie laughs. "Well now I gotta find out." He spreads his arms wide, sneaker in one hand, box in the other. "I bid you adieu," and leans into a low bow, turning to leave the room.

After a few minutes of searching and feeling embarrassed, Eddie's annoyed. No one should take up this much space inside his head so fast. You had captivated him and it was a wholly new experience. He'd had crushes on girls before, fleeting things, but this was different. He felt a burning in his chest that he'd never felt before. He decides the best thing to do is to get some air, have a smoke and chill out. There wasn't much left of lunch break after all.

He starts to walk over to his usual spot in the woods, inspecting the shoe in his hand in the process, turning it over and over. It's small, even for a girls sneaker, and about as dirty as his own. There's marks on the white leather, and scribbles and drawings on it in ballpoint pen. He sees 'Iron Maiden' in spiky letters across the side and his heart leaps. Oh come on, get it together Munson, you getting all excited over a shoe?

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

What a grade A prick you think to yourself as you lay on the picnic table in the woods that another senior told you about, smoking a cigarette.

You were seriously thinking this is a bad idea, coming back to Hawkins. You hadn't been here since Middle School and the crowds hadn't exactly improved. First that pervert in Chemistry tried to put his arm around you, now some basketball playing entitled dick gropes you in the lunch line.

You try to lay still and calm down, but your fingers were pulling at the hole on the thigh of your jeans, unravelling it more, your leg restlessly shaking.

Eddie approaches the clearing cautiously,  surprised to see someone on the table. Then his heart swells. It's her. She's laying on the table, curls spilling over the edge, one knee up and legs slightly apart, one socked foot dangling off the table. She looks so peaceful, and slightly vulnerable. Eddie suddenly feels a twitch in his pants, really Munson?

"You lose something?"

You look up, slightly startled, to this very pretty boy with messy brown hair, standing there grinning sheepishly, waving your shoe in the air.

"Only my mind." You say back, sitting up.

"Oh, is this isn't yours?" He smirks at you, a glint in his eye. His very familiar eyes. You take in his figure. Leather jacket, band t shirt and black jeans. He's lean, and tall, and handsome.

"Now that, that I didn't lose. I ejected it. With force."

He laughs loudly at that and moves towards you, holding the shoe out. You reach for it and he pulls it away, a cheeky smile on his face.

"So you want your homemade missile back or...?"

In response you stick your socked foot out to him. He seems surprised at this small but bold movement. He puts down the lunchbox he's holding and undoes the knotted laces, then slides the sneaker onto your foot.

"What do you know, it fits!" You giggle at him which makes his face light up.

"So what's your name?" He says tying your laces.

"Cinder-fucking-rella."

He grins at you, still holding your foot. You take a last drag of your cigarette and look him in the eye. There's a moment when you both look at each other, a heat in the air.

"Gonna need that back." You motion to your foot. He lets go and puts his hands up in mock submission, smug smile on his face. You jump off the table and start to make your way back to school.

"Hey- wait!"

"See you around Prince Charming." You say over your shoulder.

"See you princess." Is his quiet response.

Eddie's standing there, for the second time today, staring at your curls bounce, watching you leave.

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

Oh my God its Eddie Munson. You think to yourself, grinning now your back is turned, a flush creeping up your cheeks. You cannot believe it. He was the year above in Middle School and you crushed on him, hard. You nearly didn't recognise him with long hair but he smiled at you and it clicked and you nearly melted right then and there. God, since you'd been held back a year after the chaos that is your life you were sure you'd never see him again, at least at school. He must have been held back two years.

Eddie Munson. He looked good. Real good. And you just left. But he had looked so smug and sure of himself and you never like to do what people expect. Practically skipping to class, you kept saying his name in your head. Eddie Munson. You grin to yourself. Maybe this year wont be so bad.

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

"Late again Mr Munson?"

"Only so we can have these chats Mrs O'Donnell"

"Thin ice young man. Take a seat."

Eddie flops down in his chair, and leans back. Its last period, and his concentration is elsewhere. Chin resting in his hand, he thinks about the brief encounter with, well, with her yesterday. Whatever her name is. The princess. He smiles to himself. Not many people can surprise him. Why did she just run off though? He thought their chat was going well.

Halfway through the lesson, he feels something on the back of his head. Then again. Turning round, he sees her. Smirk on her face, balling up a strip of paper. He grins, then runs his hand through his hair, sending an avalanche of little white balls to the floor like snowflakes. She laughs silently, banging her hand against her mouth to be quiet, and looks at him with glee. Eddie's heart is about to burst, looking at her joyful face. Lost in her eyes for a second, he remembers his 'thin ice' and whips his head back round to the front. Coast is clear.

She taps him on the back, he glances round and she waves a folded piece of paper. He looks back to the front but holds his hand out behind him to take it. She presses the note into his palm with warm fingers.

Taking the note, he unfurls it with deft movements:

Meet me after class Mr Munson.

He composes himself for a moment, his stomach somersaulting, a wide smile just itching to spread across his face. So, was he right, did she like him? He turns his head briefly to flash her a lopsided grin and a nod.

The bell rings. There was the general scuffle, chair screeches and chatter that a accompanies the end of a lesson. Eddie leapt up and nearly ran to the door, hearing a soft giggle behind him.

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

Look at him, he's practically skipping you laugh to yourself. Seems a shame to mess with him. You were going to mess with him though. Only a little. It's not every day your childhood crush seems to like you back.

"Hey princess." Giving you a goofy grin. "Hey" you beam back, tilting your head to one side. "Can we go to the bench, I need to ask you something."

"Er sure?" He looks happy, but confused, searching your face for answers. You whip your head around and start walking briskly. He hops to try and keep up with you. I could get used to this, Eddie Munson trailing behind me.

He catches up, and you have a chat about music, passing the time. Turns out you have pretty similar taste. He points out your Anthrax t shirt from yesterday and you talk about Iron Maiden, Ozzie, Dio, Metallica. He waves his arms in the air and bounces, so excitable, like a child. You make it to the bench and you take a seat, hands steepled in front of you, pulling a serious face.

He hops down and sits opposite, head cocked to one side, giving you his full attention. God he's handsome. That hair falling around his face, those full lips, those eyes that seem to stare into your soul and beyond. Even his neck is attractive. You realise you are staring, a cough clearing your throat.

"I hear good things about you Munson."

"Well you cant be talking to most of Hawkins then, I'm a Satan worshipping weirdo!" He opens his mouth wide, sticks out his tongue and wrinkles his nose up at you. Look at that tongue.

You stare at him in mock horror, your hand flying to your mouth.

"Really, do you sacrifice virgins?"

"I would if I could find one." He winks at you.

You laugh then, so hard you snort a little, then your cheeks blush pink.  Eddie revels in the slight drop in your guard.

"Wow princess, that was really something." He smirks at you.

"Damnit Munson, stop with the 'princess!'"

"Well what am I supposed to call you, you wont tell me your name sweetheart."

Something about the way he called you sweetheart stirred something between your legs. You rubbed your thighs together briefly. It was a great feeling, but it also annoyed you a little. You hated being out of control, and you felt a flash of, wait was that fear? He'd caught you off guard. You were supposed to be catching him off guard. You smile at him lazily.

"Well maybe you need to earn it." You winked at him.

"Ah I see how it is. Hmmm. Well, what did you want from me then, dragging me into the woods."

You reach over and grab his hand, lean closer. The warmth of his hand contrasts with the cool feel of his rings brushing your palm. "I hear you can help a girl out." You say to him breathily.

Eddie's eyebrows raise so high that they disappear into his hair and a flush appears on his cheeks. You smirk at him.

"Word is your the school's supplier. Or am I wrong?" You bat your eyelashes at him.

He nods in understanding and for a second, looks a little deflated. "Well you ain't wrong sweetheart." He grabs his metal lunchbox and plants it on the table, giving you the sell.

You agree to half an ounce, and you are sure he gives you more than that, not that you are complaining. He holds it out and you go to grab it, but he snatches it away at the last minute, grinning at you. 

"Come on Munson!" You say to him, mock pouting.

"It comes at a price."

"Oh yeah? I just gave that to you!"

"Something else. I gotta know your name." His eyes near bore into your soul.

"I told you. Cinderella."

"Very funny princess. I tell you what, we can make a deal. You come to the Hideout tomorrow night, and listen to my band. Then we can forget the name. For now."

Smooth Munson.

"Maybe I will then."

"Ah ah ah princess, you gotta. Comes with the deal you see. You need to promise."

"Fine. Cross my heart. I'll come see your band."

His grin damn near splits his face apart. "I promise you sweetheart, with your discerning taste? You're gonna love it."

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

Eddie gets ready for the gig tonight, backstage, standing in the mirror. Maybe he spends a little extra time on his hair. So what? He's playing a gig. Nothing at all to with her. He wondered who he was trying to kid. He hadn't been able to stop thinking of her. His mind just kept wandering. She was gorgeous and feisty and everything he could ever want. It takes a lot for him to focus on the moment. He steps out, guitar in hand, and takes a deep breath. Starts playing, and searching the very small audience. She's not here.

First song of the set down, then the second. Eddie's starting to give up, glancing at the door, when a familiar head of curls bounces through. She's here. She's just late. Eddie laughed to himself. Like Mike said, it was very Eddie of her. She sauntered over to the bar and got the attention of the server immediately, tossing her head back and smiling. Eddie felt a hotness creep into his chest, almost as if he was jealous. It was only after ordering a drink she hopped onto a bar stool, turned and looked at him, legs seductively crossed. She's fucking beautiful. Her hair seemed neater, she had clearly styled it somehow, but the curls still fell around her face. Her dress was figure hugging and black, a zip running right down the front. Her curves took his breath away. Eddie couldn't help but wonder if the whole dress came undone if you pulled that zip. He nearly faltered in his playing thinking about it. Another song down and then another, then one of the waitresses came over to him, beer in hand.

"A beer from Cinderella?" She said, pointing at her. Eddie laughed, of course she would send a drink over. Shit, do I like her because she's like me? His band finish the set, and he downs half the beer. Taking a deep breath, he moves his way into the audience.

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

Ok he's coming over, act natural. You try to look like you are looking the other way, then start to inspect your fingernails. Eddie stands in front of you, and you look up into those deep brown eyes of his. It takes your breath away.

"Why if it isn't Van Halen, I'm you're biggest fan" you say breathily, a smirk on your face. I'm not done playing with you yet Munson.

Eddie smirks at you, "looks like you decided to turn up after all princess."

"Well, you know, I kinda promised this guy."

"This guy must be impressive if you're coming here to this dive just to see him."

"What can I say, he's got a bit of an ego but he looks damn sexy when he plays the guitar."

Eddie nearly falters, seeing you bat your eyelashes at him. He looks so cute when he's not so sure of himself. Then he takes a different tact, pointing at the beer in your hand "aren't you a minor sweetheart?"

"Aren't you Munson?"

"Well, they don't know that " another Eddie wink.

"Don't know about me either. I told the bartender I'm 35."

Eddie laughs at this, for once feeling out of his depth.

"What are you, 17, 18?'

"Try 19 Munson." He looks at you quizzically. "Yes it's not just you that's been held back."

"How do you know about that?" Shit nearly gave it away.

"Everyone knows, you're famous Eddie."

"So, you gonna actually tell me how you know that, and how you know my full name sweetheart?"

You scrunch your face a little, realising you never said his first name before. Got a little too carried away with the game you had been playing. Shouldn't have called him Van Halen either. Seems like the right time to confess. Well, here goes nothing. You take a deep breath, your heart in your throat.

"I know you Eddie Munson. I went to middle school with you. You were in the year above. My names y/n l/n."

Eddie's eyes widen. He looks at you, really looks at you. Then the words you never thought you would hear come out of his mouth.

"Shit, y/n, I remember you. You were always running around with those nerds, you wore glasses all the time. I remember you getting pulled from school!"

"And how the fuck would you remember that?" You said, feeling uncomfortable.

"Well, I remember, I remember the talent show. When you sang in front of the whole school. Hotel California. I never expected it, no one did. You were really good."

You blush a deep crimson, annoyed at your vulnerability. Eddie doesn't seem to notice, just looking over your shoulder, remembering.

"Shit I remember hearing you sing, then having to go on with my band near straight after, feeling like we weren't gonna be shit compared to that."

You blush red to the roots of your hair. "Well, your bands really good, really good Munson..  I was just, you know, karaoke singing..."

"No, honest, I thought you were amazing." He grins at you, fingers tapping on the bar next to you. That Eddie grin makes you want to melt into a puddle. Weren't you supposed to be teasing him?

You stare into those eyes. Those big, beautiful brown eyes and realise something. Maybe you had been wrong about Eddie. You strip that bravado back, that fake confidence, and he is just a kid. An overexcited, vulnerable, kid. Just like you.

He's looking at you, staring at you with those eyes of his, and you need to do something before you are his, right here and right now. You turn to the bar and wave at the bar tender. "Two tequilas, please." As you flash a comfortable smile. The bartender catches your gaze and pours out two shots, smiling at you and raising his eyebrows at Eddie. You take your shot in hand, staring at Eddie, and down the shot. You swallow with barely a flinch, waiting to see his reaction.

"You're gonna be the death of me sweetheart." He grins, then takes his shot the same way.

"You wanna get out of here?"

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

I'm the luckiest guy in the world. Eddie gazes at you, your cheeks flushed, laying on his couch, your feet resting on his lap. Listening to the metal music Eddie had put on, curled up on the couch. You had been joking and chatting for an hour or so and he just felt so comfortable around you. You seemed to have the same sense of humor as him, laughing at all his jokes. It seemed a far cry from the way you had reacted to him before, building walls up. He thought it was nice to see you as you, without defences.

"So, you want a beer, or you ready to sing for me."

"Not on your damned life Munson, though I'll take that beer."

Eddie laughs and gets up, lifting your feet softly to one side, and grabs two beers, opening them by the fridge.

"So, why wouldn't you tell me your name before." Eddie asks, his head to one side, intrigued.

'Because Munson, it was fun messing with you." You smirk back at Eddie, but there's a blush to your cheeks that makes him think you weren't being honest with him.

You continue, "a lot of people know things, or think they know why I left. I just didn't want you to judge me before you knew me."

"As a victim of judgement I can safely say I know what you mean." Eddie brings his hands up, indicating to himself. He hands you a beer which you place on the table, and he does the same. He sits next to you, close, head turned towards you. 

Damn she's intoxicating. Eddie coughs, and looks into your eyes. You smile back at him, his eyes drawn to your lips.

Come on Munson, kiss me already.

You both sit, mulling in this hot silence, looking at each other, flushed cheeks and beating hearts. It's almost a stand off, each waiting for the other to make a move. You lick your lips and try and build up that confidence that you had before. Reaching out, you hold your hand to his jaw line, gently rubbing your thumb down it, coming to rest on his chin. He moves forward, expectantly, and you take that as a sign. You lean towards him, your breath on his lips, as your hand snakes into his hair. Your noses touch, the tip of your nose rubbing just to the side of his, as your lips ever so lightly graze, sending shivers of sensation through you. His mouth opens slightly, and you both press your lips to the other, tongues touching, softly, hesitantly. Your mouths open more, tongues reaching out, exploring each others mouths leisurely, deeply. His hands reach out to hold you at the hips, pulling you closer. You pull at his hair slightly and he moans into you. You break apart, both panting slightly, and stare into each others eyes. You see those soulful dark eyes pouring out feeling to you, and you know that he has stolen your heart forever.

Eddie breaks the silence. He grins and chuckles at you, "Now that was intense."

You're breathless, wordless for once, biting your lip. "Eddie..." you manage and he smirks at you. You press your lips to his again hungrily, urgently. His hands grip your hips, and you crawl into his lap, swinging one leg over so you're straddling him. His hands massage into you, and both of your hands end up in his hair, tugging at it. You are both kissing almost violently, and you break away so you can breathe. You rock your hips forward, feeling how hard he was getting through his jeans. He takes a sharp breath at that, his hands moving lower to grab your ass, grinding you into him again. You moan low into your throat, throwing your head back.

"Jesus princess you're so fucking hot." He manages to say, his voice so low and rough its almost a growl.

You lean forward again, pulling him into another fervent kiss, tongues clashing, hips bucking. He groans and bites your lip. Grabbing you by the hips he suddenly stands up and you throw your arms around his neck for balance, wrapping your legs around his waist. He carries you to his bedroom, never stopping the urgent flow of hot kisses.

He throws you on the bed and climbs on top of you, then seems to remember himself. "Sorry, you just.. you do things to me."

"You drive me wild Eddie Munson" you grin back at him. "But maybe we should, you know, take it easy. I like you, I really like you, but I mean, you barely know me."

"Not true, I know you from middle school, remember? That's years." He winks at you, then flops down next to you, on his side "Seriously though, whatever you want. We don't have to do anything you don't want to do."

You could have cried at that. His face turned to you, that look of concern on his face, his brows slightly furrowed, it melted your heart. You hold a hand to his cheek.

"I'm not saying I don't want to, you know. I'm just saying not yet. I do want to, I just, want to take my time with you Mr Munson."

He grinned at you, stroking your side.

"I've wanted you since your shoe connected with Jason's face."

You laughed out loud at that, he smiled at you, enjoying how much he could make you laugh. He pulled you in for another kiss, less urgent but still passionate, long and deep, like you had all the time in the world. The rest of the universe melted away, it was just you and him, wrapped in each others arms.

"Can I stay? Is that OK?" You stare in his eyes.

"Princess you're not going anywhere as long as I can help it."

"I meant for tonight, like sleep here." You poke him playfully in the ribs.

"Sure! Tonight, tomorrow, maybe the next one.." you giggle at that.

"Hold on let me grab you something" he jumps up and leaves the room. You hear the music stop and a small cry.

You sit up, as he walks back into the room, looking dejected.

"Eddie what's wrong?"

He looks at you with a miserable face, throws his hands in the air "we forgot the beers!!" He falls to the floor on his knees in mock anguish. You chuckle at his theatrics.

"You're an idiot Eddie Munson." You throw a pillow at him. He grabs it in the air and throws it back.

"What the hell was I doing? Oh yeah" He throws a faded black band t shirt to you. "To sleep in."

You get up with your back to him as Eddie sits on the edge of the bed.

"So yeah if you wanna just go to the bathroom you can change..."  he stops mid sentence.

You had started to unzip your dress, letting it fall to the ground, uncovering your back. You have a tattoo that covers your back, huge, black, bat like wings. Your black, lacy matching underwear is on display. Still with your back to him, you unhook your bra, and that falls too. You slip the t shirt over your head, it's big on you and reaches just to the tops of your thighs. Ok that was mean.

You turn around and look at Eddie's face. "What?" You smirk.

Eddie's broken. He's staring at you, beetroot red face, mouth hanging open, unable to speak.

"Holy shit.. You- you're... you've got...erm, wow." Eddie is speechless for once. "Cool tattoo." He manages to stutter out.

You smile at him sweetly. "Thank you."

"Jesus y/n that was really mean" He says, regaining some composure and pulling you roughly towards him. You laugh, throwing your head back, and his lips find your throat, kissing and sucking your neck. You let out a whimper, he feels so good against your skin.

"You've made me really hard, I hope you realise that you devil woman." He keeps kissing but he's digging his fingers into your ribs, tickling you. You giggle and squirm, enjoying the effect you seem to have on him.

"Sorry, I know, I'm an awful tease. Someone really needs to teach me a lesson."

"Oh just you wait princess. I'm totally getting you back for that."

"I look forward to it Munson." You wink at him.

Getting ready for bed, you grab your bag from the living room, and make your way to the bathroom. You come back to the bedroom with your hair piled up in a bun. Eddie's in his boxers, laying on the bed. His lean figure is relaxed, a smattering of tattoos cover his torso and arms. Your gaze settles on them, unable to take your eyes off him, and drifts down to the rather clear outline of his hardness in his boxers. Now he certainly looks impressive you think to yourself, your mind wandering.

"What's on your mind sweetheart?" He smiles at you smugly.

"Nothing" you say a little quickly. He chuckles. You're enjoying this, the to and fro between you to, even if you had lost that one. He seems to be enjoying it too, his eyes were twinkling, dark pools staring at you.

You join him in bed, under the sheets, wrapping around each other, impossibly close. He kisses you softly on the forehead. "Goodnight princess."

You smile to yourself in the dark, thinking how lucky you are, to be in Eddie's arms.

@eddiesprincess86

[pancake404]

The Prototype Squad

I wanted to make my version of the role the Bigger Bodies/Smiling Critters were in specifically on the Prototype side. So here is the Prototype Squad and some head canons I have with them. They all are totally hinged and sane.

Catnap: Catnap is the obvious one as he always was on the Prototype’s side but I think out of an ironic twist, Catnap is the most sane out of them all. He is also the unofficial leader of the squad despite Catnap’s insistence to continue to focus the leadership role on the Prototype. He often uses his red smoke and insanely sharp claws to hunt down as well as stalking.

Some extra head canons include that Catnap is often the one hunting and does try to take care of the followers. He still does prefer being by himself.

Craftycorn: She focuses a lot more on perfection and her artwork given the obsession she has with the color red after the hour of joy. She pretty creative both in an artistic way and hunting way as she thinks of ideas to eliminate heretics. She does enjoy making paintings of the Prototype to show to Catnap which he always appreciates. Her weapon of choice is a knife which she finds easier to obtain and use the color red.

She died when Pickypiggy managed to sneak up on her while she was painting, they fought but Pickypiggy ended her up victorious with the first sneak attack.

Pickypiggy: Out of them all, she is the least devoted to the Prototype as she mainly joined because Catnap offered the deal of being fed. She’s sort of a danger to the other followers as she would constantly think of hunting and eating them as well as hogging food for herself only which is something Catnap…isn’t fond of. Despite this, she is loyal to Catnap’s orders as he is the one giving her food unless Pickypiggy manages to hunt down other toys herself. Her weapon of choice is a cleaver which she uses as she doesn’t possess any sort of claws. It also helps hacking away at other toys.

Picky died after killing Crafty when Catnap figured enough was enough and labeled Picky as a heretic for now killing other followers and keeping food away for herself while others starved.

Bobby Bearhug: She is similar to Picky as she’s more devoted to Catnap than the Prototype but she didn’t prove herself to be a harm to other followers and still aided the Prototype so Catnap didn’t care much. She mostly acts out of fear of being alone from trauma of being in an isolated space where she couldn’t hear or speak. As shown, she has a bit of an obsession over him. Her way of killing is brutal but interesting. She’s good with words and psychological manipulation so she is able to spin others’ words around, labeling them as heretics for Catnap to kill but she is still physically strong being able to break bones or strangle others.

Catnap is unsure if Bobby is dead or not as one day she was there and the other…she wasn’t. He even asked the Prototype if he knew but the Prototype surprisingly didn’t know either. There are sometimes rumors that the Prototype did know but just neglected to tell Catnap for whatever reason. The line, “Now you won’t ever leave” is original and not part of the cutouts or anywhere in the game. I figured it would be fitting ending line for her to say.

All members of the Prototype Squad are clever and dangerous in their own ways and I might make actual Bigger Body Versions for the other three. For now I drew them sort of like the Reborn! Au where the biggest bodies get reincarnated into the cartoon universe.

Fun fact: I was considering adding Hoppy into the group but so far, the squad alright being a group of four.

[phoenixyfriend]

Post-O66 Mace going into hiding as a pirate with a crew like Hondo's, is that anything?

I got a bunch of input on discord. Calling this one:

A bunch of pirates, a Jedi Master on the run, and a traumatized twelve-year-old.

Kicking off with a key part of it all is @atagotiak (Tia):

He’s annoying because he’s such a stick in the mud (by which I mean it’s rather inconvenient for a pirate crew when the new recruit has morals and stuff) But he’s too valuable to get rid of, due to having all that experience with administration

I am enamored with the idea of Mace's main job being just. Pirate Admin.

Mace: So this is what I am reduced to. Aiding and abetting… in tax evasion. Hondo: And piracy. Mace: The tax evasion is a bigger hit to my pride.

Tia:

The pirates are annoyed that despite him stopping them from going through with the more immoral (and lucrative) plans they’re still making more money than before

Pirates: How are we making more money now-- Mace: Have you heard of a budget.

@jebiknights (knights):

okay but traditionally pirate ships have a quarter master who is high ranking, in charge of the bounty of every prize and therefore in charge of dividing everything up fairly like that could work really well lmaooo

The crew runs into Obi-Wan during the Leia incident and it's just time for "I can explain" on both ends.

Tia:

Hey, d’you think the pirates go after force sensitives? Mace managed to talk them into recruitment and/or relocation instead of selling to the empire. (And that’s another thing that could possibly have worked out better for them than the immoral option (not least because the empire doesn’t really treat its allies well)) Obi-Wan: and how are you dealing with Hondo’s… nonsense? Mace: eh, it’s not like he’s any worse than you or Yoda. (Mace is probably just messing with Obi-Wan. Probably)

Also I'm thinking that one of those initiates that Hondo let go(?) that one time finds them because a pirate might be likely to sell them out but they're demonstrably competent at evading arrest, so maybe-

And that's how Mace ends up with another padawan. Maybe Katooni.

@dracothulhu:

Hondo would put him in so many stupid costumes

knights:

i also just realized that mace loses both of his hands in rots..... hondo tries to convince him at least one of said hands should be a hook or a lightsaber

Tia:

Probably deliberately playing straight man about it. He doesn’t care about dignity that much, but there’s benefits to exaggerate how humiliating he finds it Hey, y’know what’s piratical? Eyepatches

[vibrates in response to baiting for Nick Fury jokes] Love it

Tia:

I do think as much as jokes about Samuel L Jackson’s other roles are fun, pirate Mace shouldn’t swear much, even after becoming acclimated to pirate life.

knights:

also i agree i think pirate mace shouldnt swear much, he should get to use his classically trained acting chops and give dramatic speeches like hes the love interest in a pirate romance novel hondo is swooning in the background .... nixy im about ready to start crack shipping them bc of this dammit this is going to pick at my brain isnt it dhgisrjgser (pirate mace not the hondo/mace part) honestly the funniest thing is that mace would probably really enjoy being a pirate after all of the beauracracy he had to deal with in the senate during the war. things are much more simple even if everyone drives him nuts lol listen mace didn't intend to get directly involved in the actual like heists probably, he is there to lay low and also to keep the ship organized and make sure hondo doesnt blow all their money on booze and "investments", but then hondo's dumbass probably gets in over his head along with his first mate and some other crew members and mace is starting to like the life hes living esp bc he is still able to help people on the Path in between thievery and tax evasion, so he goes to rescue them and is like... what am i supposed to do i am too recognizable i am supposed to be dead and puts on a disguise and just goes for it

Another thing Mace is good at is contracts He is. Painfully good at it. He doesn't enjoy it, but watching Hondo draft up a contract is almost painful. (Hondo is smart at this. He's clever. He's experienced. But he didn't take multiple classes on contract law.)

Tia:

Hondo never seemed especially book smart, and he never made a promise he hadn’t at least considered breaking so contracts would be a weak point for him

[lemotmo]

Another really good one, I like this because we're starting to see a lot of this redemption thing in the BT tags. This was a question about Gerard and his connection to Tommy. And now that we know they're not upset about us sharing their answers I feel okay sending it to you.

A. Happy Friday to you as well! Unfortunately, based on your question, I don't think you're going to like my answer, but I promised you guys my honesty so here goes. Gerard is not here for Tommy. Gerard is not here for a Tommy redemption arc. Mainly because we (the audience) are not meant to see Tommy as needing redemption. Tommy is a general audience character. Meaning everything we're supposed to know or care about where Tommy is concerned is what the show told us in season 7. He is the guy Buck is currently dating and he used to work at the 118 before Bobby took over. That's it. That's all the show needs the audience to care about, at least right now. Fandom people are the only ones who remember his exact history, and no offense to anyone, they didn't bring him in for us. He is there to serve a specific story purpose so his individual history is irrelevant. Gerard is there for Bobby, and increasingly I think, Eddie. The Bobby stuff is obvious, but Ryan has mentioned Gerard now in a couple of interviews so I think he's giving us a clue that Eddie and Gerard will be some kind of story.

The Tommy stuff depends on whatever reason the show decides to give for his breakup with Buck. And yes, I do genuinely believe that is what's coming. If he's meant to be the one responsible for Buck figuring out his feelings for Eddie then I don't think his history with Gerard will be brought up except maybe as a scene or two in passing (if it's not necessary for the breakup, it probably won't be mentioned at all). If Buck is the one they want to end things, and have him figure out his Eddie feelings another way, then I think Tommy's past with Gerard will play a bigger role in their breakup. Especially if he tells Buck to deal with him by just keeping his mouth shut, and his head down and ignoring him. We all know Buck won't do that, especially if Gerard makes Eddie a target. So it depends entirely on the reason for their breakup. They don't need Tommy in a ton of scenes to accomplish either scenario, which is good because I do think he will also be filming SWAT and his availability won't be great. If he's supposed to figure out the Buck and Eddie thing, and point it out to Buck, we will need his reaction to at least some Buck and Eddie moments, (or at least his reaction to Buck's reaction to some of those moments), so they might need him for a few more scenes if they go that route for the breakup. Either way I don't see him lasting past the winter finale. Whatever the plan for Buck, I think he'll be ready for Eddie by the break, maybe even before. I think the second half of the season will be getting Eddie ready and then building up to Buddie. I don't see them dragging the Buddie thing out all season but I do think it will be the latter part of the back half of the season. Depending on Lou's availability he may be done sooner than the winter finale. We just don't know yet. But as someone who has watched the show from the beginning I don't know what other direction the Eddie storyline could be going. It's he's queer, or they're writing him as never going to be in love again because he was that in love with Shannon (which would be god awful television), or he becomes a devout Catholic (absolutely not). Those are kind of the only outcomes they've given themselves. And I'm sorry you don't like them, but Buck and Eddie learning to navigate an actual relationship, given Eddie's intimacy issues, inability to communicate his feelings, and his family/upbringing, as well as Buck's abandonment issues and need to fix everything is interesting storyline after interesting storyline. No one will force you to watch. And you're correct that lots of people will be pissed off, but many more would love it. They're very well liked by the general audience, people have got to stop trying to convince themselves otherwise because it's simply untrue. They're popular, people like them and most people would be interested in watching that storyline play out. It feels earned. Earned by Buck and Eddie and the audience. I know this answer has probably upset you and many others, and that is never my intention, but I also don't believe in telling people what they want to hear when the canon events seem to be leading in a different direction.

*chef's kiss* love it love it love it

Hi Nonny, thank you for sending in this really interesting message from the ‘anonymous blog I love’.

For those of you who have missed it, the OP of these very interesting posts on BT and Buddie has contacted me yesterday. They are a BT shipper that also like Buddie and they are okay with me posting their messages. They do however, wish to remain anonymous because they don’t want to attract any more negative attention. Their inbox is probably already a minefield, so let’s not add to their stress and respect their wishes. Thank you.

If you are interested in the OP’s posts, you can find all of their posts so far under the tag: anonymous blog I love.

Now, let’s talk about this answer:

The answer above is very interesting to me. They talk about Tommy’s role in the whole Gerrard saga and I fully agree on most of it. They point out again that Tommy is there to serve a purpose in Buck’s story, so essentially he is there as a plot device in Buck’s narrative.

As for Tommy’s role in Buck’s story, I am of the belief that Tommy will be the one to tell Buck to just ‘Keep your head down, your mouth shut and pretend it isn't there.’ as he complains to him about Gerrard and how he treats his friends on the 118. This is something Buck could never do. He isn’t like Tommy, he can’t just accept and tolerate his friends being bullied by their new captain.

I agree with OP that Tommy will probably be gone by the end of 8a. His arc will be finished and the queer Eddie/Buddie arc will be in full swing by then. This arc won’t find its satisfying ending until well into 8b though. There needs to be drama first. And I do believe that there will be a lot of drama before we actually get the payoff of the Buddie storyline.

The fact that Eddie’s arc is most likely to go into the direction of him realising he’s queer seems unavoidable. It’s like OP said: It’s either queer Eddie with eventual Buddie or ‘never again in love’ Eddie. Two options and we all know which one will bring along the most press and a whole gaggle of new viewers. 😉

Now, as a treat, I have a second post from the OP for you today. This was sent to my mutual and friend @buddiebeginz and she has kindly allowed me to use her post on my blog in order to centralise all the posts from the OP. Thank you Justine!

For context I’d like to relay to you why this post was sent to Justine. She received an ask earlier which she replied to here. I urge all of you to read her reply as well, as it was very insightful and I do agree with most of it.

Anyway, someone else sent her an anon ask later on as a response to the post she made. This anon had found a reply from the OP as to why they thought that Tommy is ‘good’ for Buck ‘right now’ and why they enjoy the character’s role in Buck’s story for as long as it will last.

Keep reading under the cut. I didn't want to clog anyone's dash with too long of a post.

Here is that ask with OP’s answer:

I admit I really like this answer. The way they break down Tommy’s role in Buck’s story as Buck having a ‘fun and light’ first experience as a newly out bisexual, before the more ‘heavy’ Eddie and Buddie story will start. I understand it and I can see how that could be some valuable life experience for Buck, so he is strong enough to tackle the next part of the Buddie journey. I can logically 'perceive' that this is what the writers originally intended for the BT storyline.

Does this mean that I suddenly like Tommy and the BT arc? No. Definitely not. And I think the problem can be found in the way that Tommy and BT was written. He wasn't written as a very appealing character. I don’t see the chemistry between him and Buck and I think they don’t fit well together. Their ‘energies’ just don't match. I don't see enough proof of him truly caring about Buck in any of the episodes. So, I admit I can't see the 'light and fun' experience OP talks about. To me Tommy is just weighing Buck down with too much negativity.

And let's not forget about how we were all introduced to Tommy in season 2 and the way he treated Hen and Chimney. The man was never meant to be a 'nice and likeable' character with a questionable background like that. They tried to redeem him somewhat with the helicopter cruise ship rescue storyline, but to me it fell kind of flat.

And yes, of course there is also the ‘Eddie factor’. I have been shipping Buddie for years now, so whether I like it or not, I am biased towards Buddie. I am also not a multi-shipper. I just don’t have that in me. Once I latch onto a ship I never let go. 😊

So yeah, ultimately… different opinions make for more interesting conversations, right? And I love reading about OP’s opinions. Sometimes they match my own and sometimes they don’t, but I still respect them and value their view on 911. That’s what fandom should be about: sharing opinions, respectfully agreeing or disagreeing with each other, listening and learning from each other. It’s so much more enjoyable than sending anonymous hatred to someone’s inbox.

Anyway, once again I ask everyone to not post any hate towards the OP in the comments or reblogs. I do highly encourage a civil conversation about the topics discussed in this post. 😊

[ryomens-vixen]

I don't even think I can handle Chucky!Sukuna, Can you?

Contains: NSFW, Comedy, Yandere Tendencies, Vulgar language, Non-Con.

Summary: Before Sukuna passed away he made you promise to bring him back by any means necessary, and you did... But he wasn't too happy about it.

Word count: Idk Sis... 🤷🏾‍♀️

Find my kinktober stuff on my Masterlist

*CRASH*

*SCREAM*

"Ryomen you told me to bring you back by any me- AH!" Yup he was absolutely pissed, stopping your sentence by the chuck of a kitchen knife that pierced the wall just inches from your face. Seeing this angry little devil inside of a children's doll Scurry about the kitchen floor in a tantrum curses and insult was laughable, but you knew who you were dealing with at the end of the day.

"Kuna just calm-"

"Tell me to calm down again, and you'll wish you hadn't!" He pointed his stubby finger at you with an enraged scrunched up face.

"What in your right mind gave you the fuckin idea to do THIS it me? Huh? Is some kinda sick joke? My dumb lovestruck wife couldn't find an actual vessel?!" God he's so hot when he's pissed, when he's degrading you.

"W-Well I wouldn't say dumb-"

"Stop goddamn talking, god I can't hear myself think with you running your mouth~" he paced back and forth about the kitchen area thinking to himself meanwhile all your dumb little brain could think about was his hand wrapped firmly around your neck once the both of you could find a perfect vessel. Hell maybe even once that looked exactly like him, but what? All you could think about was the way he manhandled you all the time. Just thinking about it made you more wet than him degrading you just now- if only he wasn't in the body of a children's toy... Something bigger... Something you could customize like the dildo you begged him to customize in the same size and shape of his cock.

💡💡💡-!!!

"Kuna! I have an idea!" You swiftly picked him up, your perverted mind racing with the thought of customizing a body for him...a sex doll to be precise.

"Well you better make this shit quick I can't stand this picking me up bullshit much longer- Ouch!"

In your excitement you might have accidentally banged his precious forehead against the frame of the door to your bedroom. While snickering about your pervy and full proof idea of transferring his soul to the body of a sex doll. As much as he would absolutely love to entertain the thought sukuna was far too busy trying to hold his temper with you, but at the same time excited to take some anger out on you in due time.

Finally it was here the sex doll you spent a few thousand dollars on made in the same likeness as your late husband. You watched as Ryomen was getting use to his new temporary body, the silicone abs, muscles, cock. Two? You customized it was two? You weren't paying attention, but Sukuna was definitely smirking your way at the thought of you bouncing on both of his cocks. He also thought about fucking you dumb.. But it Would only make you more dumb and he didn't need that at all.

"Do you like it, Ryomen! I worked so ha-" Ryomen had swiftly grabbed a fistful of your hair, forcing both of his silicone cocks into your mouth shutting you up completely. "Hey.. Watch the tee- Ah What the hell~" Sukuna kept a tight grip on your hair as he fucked into your throat, He threw his head back letting out a deep groan pushing his cocks balls deep down your throat. Holding you there just the listen to the coughing and gagging you made, patting on his thigh trying to signal to him that you needed air.

"Fuuuuck~ If I wasn't plastic if I wasn't plastic I swear you'd be drinking my fuckin kids right now." He pulled out from your throat, dragging you once again by the hair and tossing you to the bed while listening to how you gasped and wheezed for air. The mere sight of struggle from his lovely, dumb, perverted wife just turned him on even more.

Before you knew it he had your wrists, and ankles all tied up, ball gag in mouth, while he pounded into both of your tight holes. Sukuna watched as tears streamed down your face and eyes rolled back- oh did he take pleasure in that.. Licking your tears from your eyes, yanking and tugging at back of of you head. Right now you were just a dirty little who're to him and he loved every bit of- just like you loved EVERY bit of him right? Right.

"Awww, Does my dirty bitch of a wife want me to stop? Heh I don't think so doll face, You're mine!" He only pounded deeper completely bullying your gspot isn't almost like you could feel him in your guts it felt so good, but it was so overstimulating. It was all too good until you felt a sharp stinging pain on your back causing a muffled scream to come out of you. Sukuna was literally slicing at his name into your back with scary accurate precision. "oh be fuckin quiet, don't you get it baby? I'm a good, fuck..., good guy like that stupid doll says- so I'ma breed and mark you like a GOOD GUY should~"

"Fuck that's so good~"

"Kuuu... N... Na.. ~"

taglist: @blkkizzat @gojos-thot-patrol-main @biscuitsngravie @satkuna @callm3senpaii @candycandy00

Gonna go do my make up for Halloween Bye!

[raptorladylover6969]

My take/theories on Raptor Lady/The Handler’s design and how it’s significant to her overall character‼️

JWCT SPOILERS AHEAD

So I’ve mentioned this before in a comment section, but I wanted to go more in depth. For a while now, I’ve been pondering about the certain design choices of The Handler, and whats the significance behind her wide eyes, and blank expressionless face, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it actually plays a huge role in her personality, and overall character.

First off, the uncanniness of her design. She always has a blank emotionless expression on her face, and shows little to no emotion unless its related to her Raptors. So far the only emotions we’ve seen from her are: frustration (the Nublar 5 getting away from her), satisfaction (seeing her raptors kill someone, or when she realized the campers were in the warehouse with her) and empathy (seeing her raptors injured and unable to fight). Besides this, she keeps a blank expression on most of the time. Her wide eyes and no-eyebrows add to the blankness of her face because all the viewer is focusing on when they see her are her eyes.

Her personality. The way she wants people to perceive her is for them to be intimidated by her, and its not just people who find her intimidating, its the dinosaurs too. In the final episode, the scene inside of the warehouse, you see the dinosaurs in the crates going haywire, roaring and growling and stomping until The Handler walks in. The dinosaurs suddenly go quiet, and lower their heads, avoiding any to all eye contact with her. This is kind of a big deal considering even the giant carnivores also went quiet. She has all these dinosaurs cowering before her. That look she gave Cabrera clearly is her go to strategy of intimidation because of the way he was stuttering the second she turned her head to look at him.

We can also compare and make connections to this through basic science. Thousands of years ago, we looked nothing like our ancestors, our appearance is dramatically different to that of the early humans, especially our faces. and human expression. As a species, we communicate socially through our facial expressions to display what emotions we feel. Our ancestors didn’t have that. If you look at the skulls of early humans, you’ll see that humans of that time had eyebrow ridges that protrude more outwards than modern humans. The main significance of this was for the humans to look more aggressive and intimidate other humans and animals. Sound familiar??? Our ancestors only expressions were blank.

The main question here is “How does any of this information involve The Handler???” Well, theres been theories going around that she might be part raptor, because of her demeanour and behaviour. I don’t think thats the case. I think she isn’t trying to seem like a raptor, rather, she’s trying to display the same mannerisms as ancient humans.

Think about it. The whole intimidation factor in ancient humans I mentioned earlier? The lack of eyebrows is strictly for the purpose of making her eyes more bigger and expression more blank so she is able to display more fear into people (and animals apparently) just like ancient humans. The way she chases down our beloved Camp Fam is the same exact way our ancestors hunted their prey. Relentlessly, chasing and chasing until she’s got them cornered/tired. Her domination of the raptors, the same way our ancestors dominated the wolves we have domesticated. (The fact raptors are also compared to wolves in this franchise) She uses intimidation, and her smarts to make her way to the top of the “food chain”, eventually conquering the dinosaurs (I.E them being intimidated the second she walks into a room)

And what adds to this is how exactly uncanny humans were as a species. Our tall lanky slim bodies and endurance + determination made us the ultimate apex predator in the history of earth. By using the art of uncanniness, humans were able to rise above. Just like with The Handler who uses her uncanny factors to conquer.

Don’t get me wrong the theory of her being part raptor is cool, but the idea/concept of her entire personality being that of an ancient human is much much much more scarier if you look at it through the bigger picture. But anyway, what are your thoughts on this?

[imjustheremam]

HANK J. WIMBLETON

Platonic/Romantic Headcanons

Warning: this for not for kids also there will be some spoilers, if you don't like my headcanons please don't complain, also their will be some spoilers at the end.

Platonic

Hank J. Wimbleton, we all know who this grunt is, the best mercenary, assassin, and cold-blooded criminal of Nevada.

Hank is somewhere in his 30s or 40s maybe in his 50s

Hank is no joke, so meeting him will either be your demise, or give you trauma.

But you were lucky to be hired by 2bdamned (aka S.Q), which means Hank WILL have to tolerate you despite he doesn't want to. (this is my headcanon of reader)

Hank isn't the type to befriend since he only cares about missions and killing for his pleasure.

But you somehow befriending HIM the dangerous grunt in Nevada!! You basically made everyone at the S.Q fear for your safety, but hey i won't argue.

If your younger than him like 19 or lower Prepare to be grandchild because he's going to be your GRANDPA, like almost any other grandpa he takes the lead and will kinda protect or train you if your a rookie.

Even if your a medic your going out on missions since that's the reason why 2bdamned recruited you, your the supporter of the team, so Hank is going have to deal with you healing him and the others on missions.(Also Skinner will be teaching you when you get back)

Now if your older like 20 or above, Hank will treat you like Deimos and Sanford, but since you befriended him, he will treat you kindly but still be rude as always.

Hank will still act like a grandpa but if your like more older than the others he will treat you like 2bdamned only you might annoy him a little...

Even if your younger or older, hank will refuse to listen or let you treat his injuries...

But hank will help you on missions and might actually let you be his partner in crime

Now if you were just an average grunt he would've killed you unless you helped him or gave him supplies and BAM you got 1% of his trust, so good luck gaining his trust...

ROMANTIC

Now Hank isn't the type to fall in love or be romantic but hey, we're all simps let's do this.

Ok so Hank is the type of lover to take things slow because he's never been a relationship, he also isn’t much into affectionate things, so don't get too ahead.

So give him sometime, he still new to this. And when he finally gets comfortable, you then can show him your love but teach him please, isn't good at this..

Hank will only date you if your older like in your 20s or 30s, afterall he is kinda old (so those who are younger, sorry but your nothing but a grandchild to him or a random ass kid with a knife).

Hank will act like normal but he will show his kindness and love when both of you are alone, he likes to keep the relationship in secret, because he doesn't want anyone to find out especially when he has so many enemies after him.

Hank is overprotective when he on missions with you and will sometimes try his best to treat your injuries(yeah your gonna have to help him)

If your relationship gets bigger and better hank will act a little confident and might try to flirt with you when your alone with him, he will also try his best to hug you or kiss you.

But since hank can't kiss he will bonk his head softly to yours, while you give him a peck on his metal jaw or cheek.

But for his flirting it sounds like a threat but in a loving way

Hank would spy on deimos and Sanford just to learn to flirt alittle better (but sometimes he gets caught spying)

Hank is not stupid he still understand what affectionate hugs, cuddles and more but will pretend not to know just to see you teach him how or he's just doesn't want to be soft in public.

Now if the relationship is now at its highest, hank will no longer hide his relationship with you and deimos will tease the living sh!t out of you and hank...maybe...

Deimos will also help hank which hank will mostly refuse due to not liking the annoying pyro-maniac, but hank will try...maybe

2bdamned didn't actually approve of this but didn’t argue, 2bdamned let this slide since he wants you and hank to finish missions...

Sanford and Deimos actually worry about you having a relationship with Hank, like...your dating a grunt that tried to kill them (watch or play madness combat: project Nexus 2 you'll understand)

Also the A.A.H.W will also try to kidnap you or kill you just to make hank suffer...

When you and hank date, he would prefer the date to be private and secure because of A.A.H.W, Tricky, Jebus, Bandits and everyone that's trying to kill him

During dating hank will most likely keep staring at you because he doesn't know what to say or do but, but he won't lie he loves staring at you, it makes him special.

Oh but just because your dating and he loves you doesn't mean he's gonna stop being rude, he always will be rude but he goes 25% soft on you.

Your compliments and flirts will make him get flustered, to the point he might start shaking violently.

Also he will flirt with you aswell just to make you get flustered or embarrassed,

BONUS AND SPOILER ALERT!!!⚠

Remember about what I said that hank tried to kill Sanford and Deimos well, if you dated hank before destroying the project nexus.

Well Hank would still try to kill Sanford and Deimos, you however would be the one Hank will hesitate you kill...

Yandere behavior would've kicked in if he actually killed Sanford and Deimos

But we all or half of us know Hank lost the fight, so you would've try to revive his body or take him to 2bdamned,

you would not interact with him until you finally have the courage or hank would apologize to you by buying some hotdogs...

If hank won the fight, you be missing your legs as hank kill deimos and Sanford, after that hank give you one last soft bonk in the forehead before... finishing the mission... and yeah the end

" I'm sorry y/n.. but I can't have you stop me... " he said as he stares down at you, seeing your legs were cut off by his sword as you watch in horror, in pain...hurt.... he crouches down and leans his head, until both his and your foreheads touched as you close your eyes slowly and... fall alseep... forever

Its is all I could imagine hank also I'm working on the main 4 yandere request but my part-time job took away all my days off but I'm close to finishing it...

[howthebestwaslost-blog]

I think I did it again

I made you believe we're more than just friends

Oh baby

It might seem like a crush

But it doesn’t mean that I’m serious

Sooooo here are my other thoughts about who Rogue is because I think about him a normal amount. Again, I haven’t read a lot of theories, it’s probably nothing new, just want to get it out of my head. I had this on my very popular three follower ig account before, but overworked it a bit. [Warning: even more meandering, I can’t keep up a straight thought to save my life, I’m sorry]

I know we all love our honest baby blue eyes not a lying bone in his body Rogue, but:

He is a bounty hunter after all, and kind of ruthless (using an incinerator when he has a big cool dangerous gun? Really?) and he could be much older than he looks to a human, and I don’t think you can have a long life of that kind if you don’t lie and cheat and use all kinds of tricks. I do think he’s generally honest (saves him the trouble of remembering lies anyway), and he’s emotionally open, but that’s not all he is. He kills people. If he was serious about pushing the button on his ship, maybe even with a smile. He’s not - that - innocent.

It’s been bugging me that the Doctor's saving throw of the psychic paper wasn't that convincing actually. So he had a proud little Timelord speech and scanned a few faces more, but Rogue was already dealing with cosplayers who went through several faces in one evening. Why does it still work?

The "new boss" Rogue mentions is for sure the same one the Meep was talking about. The Meep already said they were going to be interested in a two-hearted individual, so by now there's a bounty out for the Doctor, and it would be a big one. Which is of course what Rogue keeps an eye out for.

But Rogue doesn’t know that the man he trapped has two hearts, and the Doctor has got a brand new face (the same one the deep scan showed despite him being shapeshifter, but without the wig - shouldn’t it show a bird? Does Rogue already know that whatever he is, at least he’s not a Chuldur? Does he just enjoy making him scramble for something to save himself after the stunt with Kylie? Does he want to see if the Doctor has another cute little note for him? In any case, he has a certain glee… which is on the other hand pretty dark if he still thought he had a Chuldur and fully intended to incinerate him alive). So what makes him take the finger off the trigger?

David Tennant's face, of course.

Which is the face the Meep knew, and therefore the face every bounty hunter is looking for. And if there's one thing the Doctor can't do, then it's to stop talking, so he keeps confirming: Lord of Time. Gallifrey. Rogue remembers that name correctly later, maybe that’s a thing people with a working brain do, maybe he already knew it. In any case, instead of a lame old Chuldur, Rogue accidentally caught the biggest price of his professional life.

“Wow.”

Of course he immediately goes along with the Doctor. He's not happy about letting the Chuldur live, but he's got something bigger in front of him, so he lets it slide.

The connection they have over their loss is real for sure, I don’t think he’s pretending here. The Doctor did his best to stir up the pain earlier. Rogue isn't opposed to a kiss, but it's also hard to believe he's completely smitten already just like that. Yes, I know it’s Ncuti I’m talking about. He would also realise that the TARDIS is the perfect vessel to have a quick escape with. So what does he give the Doctor at the next opportune moment? A tracking device.

[that part is maybe a bit weak, because him wearing the ring on his right ring finger seems like a sentimental thing, which could mean he either improvised drama in the ballroom with whatever he had, or he was honestly showing his feelings. But if you give someone a tracker hidden in plain sight, your target might feel more of an obligation to wear it if you romantically pulled it off your own finger, and it’s the obvious place to keep it until useful? Third possibility, it’s a tracker and sentimental, because he and his partner used those to be able to find each other in a crisis…]

It just doesn’t look much like an ornamental ring to me. Sure it has a caduceus sort of shape, but it looks so technical. More like the kind of thing a bounty hunter creates while tinkering in his messy spaceship to help him catch his targets.

I also think he gets caught up in the adventure and he’s genuinely excited to have someone again to do all the planning and running and hiding with. He’s grinning like a kid when they both storm out of the house, and he doesn’t seem to worry too much about the trap holding only one. That would be the kind of improvising he loves and he’s got someone clever to do it with him. He’s enjoying himself. That and the dance must be tugging on him in favour of the Doctor.

All in all though he hasn't fully decided what to do. He could run away with the Doctor, have a new person to travel with, a new life, go on adventures, and have fun. Or he could convince the Doctor to get back into his ship later. Because he likes what he does: delivering targets and collecting the money. He’s suspiciously good at using a passionate kiss to steal a trigger, why should we believe he didn’t use flirting as a strategy before?

He's got the tracker on the Doctor, they are about to catch the Chuldur too, but now the gut punch happens, and the Doctor loses another friend - or is about to, at least.

I think it’s only then, when he sees that the Doctor will rather put the whole world in danger than sacrifice his friend (as Rogue might do too, if he had the chance again) that he makes his decision - that the Doctor is worth it, that the brave friend he travels with is worth it (and he already confessed to the Doctor earlier that he does not see much sense in his own life, I need to hug him). That's the deciding factor he's looking for when he asks the Doctor, because it's ultimately the Doctor deciding for him (look at the intensity in his face when he waits for the answer). Maybe he used kissing as a trick before, but he’s tearing up here for a moment. He can relate completely to the Doctor’s pain. And he keeps looking at the Doctor’s lips for two seconds before he holds up the stolen trigger. That connection is real even though he was tricking the Doctor, and nothing will change my mind.

And maybe there's a chance this madman in his ‘dimensionally transcendental’ machine can still save him after all. I’m certain Rogue got that line very intentionally, to show he understands that the TARDIS is perfectly capable of picking him up in a different dimension, as long as she knows where to look. The ring will end up being the solution. So it’s not a complete sacrifice, but a high stakes gamble whether the Doctor is clever enough to figure it out, whether he can really move the TARDIS to his dimension, and whether he cares enough to try [getting emotional thinking that he might not have seen it as gambling on something of high value, somebody hug him please].

In short: Rogue was attaching himself to the Doctor because there’s a lot of money to be made, but gets freight trained by the full force of Ncuti’s charisma and reconsiders important life choices. Would happen to any of us.

“But I thought the bounty hunter dropped into the void in the end”

“Well baby, I went down and got him for you”