#This one though?? Born evil. Bad from the start.'' LIKE?????

[henrysglock]

Every day I'm driven more insane by The First Shadow because it confirms so much just by existing, let alone the actual content of the show.

The team really went "No, no. You don't have all the information about Henry yet. We intentionally kept that from you. Also, all the adult characters? Yeah. They knew him. They all fucking knew him, which is why we couldn't have any of them be present in ST4. Kept that one from you too."

Just by making the play they confirm that there's at least another hour's worth of content at least tangentially related to Henry's story. We're missing so much about him if we just go off what we see in ST4.

Just by the synopsis, they tell us that Henry is already running from something, a Shadow that predates Hawkins and the Creel house. They also confirm that Henry might even have had friends. That some of those friends may have been the main adult crew. There are people who ought to remember him.

Like be serious. Be so so incredibly serious. Mindblowing.

[blues824]

Scared to ask this one lmfaoo!... Let's have the reaction of all of Diasomnia dorm! <3 Uuhhhh but can I get a Biological Teen Mother of Sliver!Mc... like she had him at a young age? Currently she could be in her late 20s going into her early thirties! And maybe they could be from a different or even from Twisted wonderland ( that's up to you! ^w^) but Biological father of Sliver, very bad man, evil king- And Mama Sliver/Mama Mc is very protective and got in contact with Malificent for help! I was thinking of a kind of Sleeping Beauty Syndrome for Mc! Which is an extremely rare condition that causes intermittent episodes where you sleep for long periods of time, which prevents you from staying awake during the day (hypersomnia). This would explain why Sliver is always sleepy, and also what Lilia could not find a cure for it! Mama loves her baby Sliver, but understands if he wants nothing to do with her at all even if she does want to be in his life again...

Female reader, obviously. Low-key made this a Lilia x reader fic lol.

It all started with an arranged marriage when you were 18. Your rich family from the Queendom of Roses were somehow in-touch with a noble family in Briar Valley, and they set up a marriage between you and their son. Upon meeting for the first time, the two of you did not get along. To put it simply, he was rather rude to you despite you both being human. Your family was forcing you into it because, and I quote, “How would you find a husband if you keep sleeping the day away?” You had sleeping spells that left you unable to do much, and your family shamed you for it.

At the wedding, you saw your now-husband slip away quietly, and when you followed him, you saw him with another woman… or three. It didn’t bother you all that much. It’s not like you loved him at all. What did bother you was that you were going to have to sleep with that STD-ridden flea bag in order to produce a child, and then you could escape this loveless marriage. However, that requires being in bed with him.

The first time you had lain with your husband, you felt absolutely disgusted. You were angry; at him, at your family for forcing you to be with him, and at the world for predestining you for this. But, you had gotten what you wanted out of it. You were pregnant, which meant you never had to sleep with that deadbeat husband of yours ever again.

Upon learning that you were with child, you contacted Queen Maleficia for help. You explained to her about your situation, and she was more than happy to help. She already had someone that the baby could go to, actually. You were basically a surrogate now. Her Royal Majesty understood that it would be no good environment for the baby if you were to stay with your husband, so she made arrangements for you to stay within the castle up until your labor and the recovery process.

Lilia was the one to hold your hand while you gave birth, actually. The Queen was making the preparations outside of the room. A nursery had been set up for the baby, and maids and servants were rushing in and out of the delivery room.

When the baby was finally born, you held him for a few moments. It was as though the world had gone quiet, because he was not crying. You weren’t crying either. Baby Silver was sleeping in your arms, and you realized that your child had inherited your condition. You trusted, however, that Lilia would not shame him for the condition as he had not shamed you. You could see the good future that Silver would have, but it would be without you.

One last kiss was placed on Baby Silver’s brow before you, with tears in your eyes and a heavy heart, handed him over to Lilia. 

“I’m sorry, my baby. It’s better off this way. Just know, I will reunite with you soon.”

That started the recovery process, where Silver would remain asleep until your departure. When you left, you left to gain the help of the Queen of the Queendom of Roses. After all, you needed the help of both queens if you were going to get out of this marriage and gain the rights of your child.

~~~~~~~~

When he was just a young boy, Silver couldn’t help but wonder where he came from. He knew that Lilia was not his biological father. After all, if he were, he would at least be half-fae, and their ears would be similar. No, he was fully human. The knight-in-training was very observant. Plus, there was his condition to consider. The man who he came to call his ‘father’ did not have it, and from what he had read it was a genetic condition.

The only thing he has from his mother or father is a letter containing just three words. It isn’t signed, but he knows it’s from one of his biological parents:

“My dearest Silver.”

He had many questions about his parents: Were they kind? Did they know how to cook? Where were they? What did they do? Why did they give him up? 

That last question wasn’t one out of sadness or spite. He genuinely wanted to know. He is sure they had a good reason. From what Lilia had told him, which was very little and very vague, you gave him up because you wanted him to have a better life. A better life compared to what alternative?

“When you’re older, Silver, I will tell you everything. Just know that your mother loves you very much,” Is what Lilia often told him. This answer frustrated him, and he wanted to know more. But, the former General would just brush his questions away.

~~~~~~~~

“Is everyone ready?” Here we are, a few years later. Silver was a second year at NRC, and the Briar Valley crew was going to head back home for Winter Break. He made sure that he had everything he needed, and he made sure to say farewell to Yuu and Grim before going through the mirror. It was unfortunate that they couldn’t go home to visit, but maybe they could enjoy their stay at NRC?

Anyways, everything was just as Silver had left it. His room looked exactly the same. The days were exactly the same. The training post was exactly the same.

…So why did something feel different?

The air was more sombre than he remembered. Typically, there were festivals held in Briar Valley, or there was something happening in the palace. However, the maids and servants were whispering amongst themselves as he made his way to the prince’s chambers. Gossip did tend to spread, so he wondered what the latest piece of gossip was.

“Silver, follow me. Your presence is required in the throne room.” Malleus met him in the hallway, surprising the knight. His tone was serious, and he nodded before trailing after the dragon fae.

~~~~~~~~

“I apologize for taking so long, Your Majesty, General Lilia. A marriage of this sort hasn’t really happened within the Queendom of Roses.”

“It’s quite alright, Y/N. I am just happy that you are out of that dreadful marriage. I apologize that you had to go through something like that anyway!” Queen Maleficia exclaimed.

“I’m sure you would have been here if you could, Y/N,” Lilia smiled as he said it to you.

A knock on the large door to the throne room echoed, making you jump a bit. It had been 17 years since you have been in the Briar Valley Palace, and for that you regretted every second of it. You have kept yourself away from your son just so you could get a divorce, but you missed all of his firsts: his first word, his first step, his first real food, his first day of school, etc.

The door opened, and a guard was followed by Prince Malleus and Silver. You could recognize that hair and those eyes from anywhere. They were your baby’s. You let out a gasp, and your eyes immediately started to tear up.

“Your Royal Highness, Malleus Draconia, accompanied by Sir Silver,” The guard announced, as though you needed an introduction. You quickly stood up and walked over to the pair, hands shaking as you reached out to touch your son’s face.

“Silver,” Queen Maleficia started to say, “Malleus, this is Silver’s mother.”

Tears made their way from both yours and Silver’s eyes. Your hands met the sides of his face, and his hands immediately went to cover yours. This is what the both of you have been wanting for years now.

“My dearest Silver…” Upon hearing those words, Silver broke down in a full sob as he wrapped his arms around your frame. You returned the favor, holding your son close to you. It has been too long, truly.

“My dearest mother.” Were the first words he uttered to you, and you couldn’t be happier in your entire lifetime.

If time could stop, it would have stopped right there. However, he pulled away after a few moments before turning to Lilia, who had walked up to the two of you. He was in his army-day getup, dressed as a former General would be.

“This isn’t some cruel prank, is it, father?” He asked, wondering if he was going through another one of his sleeping spells. 

“I assure you that it is not, my dear boy.” Lilia pulled the knight into an equally affectionate hug. The three of you were crying, and you turned to give the bat fae a hug as well in gratitude.

~~~~~~~~

You and Silver decided that, in order to bond a little, it would be best if the two of you went on a walk with one another. So, you were taking your time in going through the palace gardens.

The 17-year-old knight had so many questions to ask you, and you were very happy to answer any that he had. The first was about his condition.

“Mother, do you have the sleeping condition that I have? Are you where I get it from?”

“Yes, you inherited it from me. Your grandparents from my side in the Queendom of Roses did not like that I had it.”

“What were my grandparents like?”

“Well, from my side, they forced me into a marriage with your father. However, from your father’s side, they were very kind to me. They actually helped with the divorce process.”

“Why did you and my father get a divorce?”

“That is a story for another time. Just know that it was why I kept myself from seeing you because I knew that it was not a good environment for you to grow up in.”

“Is he why you gave me away?” You stopped in your tracks to look at your son, and his eyes held both anger and sadness. You reached your hands up once again to cup his face, your face straight but emotional.

“I did not give you away. I never wanted you to think that, Silver. I wanted to give you your best chance, and that was not with me by your father’s side. Because he hailed from Briar Valley and I hailed from the Queendom, the process got complicated and I had no choice. If I left anybody intentionally, it was him and not you.

“Lilia raised you to be a good man and a good knight to the prince, and he did not judge you for our sleeping spells. You made it to Night Raven College with him guiding you. Your father would have tried to prevent you from reaching success just as he did with me. I was in college myself, studying to become a doctor and maybe find a cure for my… our condition.”

Silver was in deep thought, and you couldn’t read his face. Then he nodded before continuing to walk. 

“What was my father like?”

“I don’t really know how to describe him. He valued his work and he did not value family as much as he should have. He was the son of one of the very few human noble families within the Briar Valley. I’m trying to think of a way that doesn’t impact you negatively, if I’m being honest.”

“I would rather have your honest opinion. I am nearly an adult, and I am a knight now. I should be able to handle it.”

“Well, on our wedding day, I saw him in bed with a few other women, so that was not a very good impression at all. I hadn’t met him before that day, actually. Now, he is where you get your silver hair and auroral eyes. However, from the letters Lilia has sent me throughout the years, you seem to have gotten my personality as well as the Sleeping Beauty Syndrome.”

Silver nodded, looking forward before starting to speak again.

“I waited for as long as I could remember for some other form of communication. I don’t even have any last name. Not yours, not my father’s, not even Lilia’s. Why didn’t you ever send me another letter? Why didn’t you address the one I had received?”

“I didn’t want you looking for me. You don’t have your father’s name because I didn’t want you looking for him either. I do not know why Lilia didn’t give you his last name. You might have to ask him.”

“All my life I have asked the old man many questions about my parents, but he didn’t give me any information aside from that you were beautiful, that you loved me very much, and that you let me go to give me the best chance I could have.”

“I don’t know about the first one, but the other two were correct,” you giggled. Lilia had always been a bit of a flirt towards you, especially during your pregnancy. Even through the letters he had sent, there was always a bit of a flirtatious attitude. “I do love you very much, Silver.”

“I love you too, mother. And for the record, you are very beautiful. All of what Lilia has told me would be correct.” You turned to look at him and he also had a smile on his face.

~~~~~~~~

“Wait… so, what you’re informing me, Waka-sama, is that after 17 years, Silver’s mother finally appeared. How do we know she is his true mother?” 

Sebek could not believe this. He has known Silver his entire life, and only now does any of his parents reach out. He sat with Lilia and Malleus in front of him in one of the many rooms of the palace. He placed himself on the chair at a table within the room, holding his head in his hands as he tried to retrace everything that the two had told him.

“Because, silly, I have met her before. One would say that I’ve even loved her before,” Lilia was still in his mature form when he said this. The former general was there from the beginning. He was at your wedding because the family had history in the military of Briar Valley. That was when he found himself entranced by you.

The reputation of the man you were wed to was less than desirable, and his family was mostly just desperate to get him married to somebody. They opted for someone who didn’t know about the guy, so they decided to choose a family of high standing from another realm.

He remembers the day you came to the palace, a slight bump visible under your gown. You had a cloak on to conceal your identity, and he was the one who answered the palace gate. Tears were running down your face, and Lilia immediately took you inside to get you warmed up.

Malleus remembers that day as well. He was also at your wedding, and while he didn’t talk with you much because you were very quiet, he could tell that you were very nice. He was still awake at the time you had entered the castle, and he listened along with his grandmother about your issues. He also saw the almost murderous amount of anger in Lilia’s eyes.

Anyway, back to the present, Sebek was having a hard time grasping everything that was happening. Then, he stood up.

“Would it be appropriate if I were to go see her?” He asked.

“I have no doubt that it would be very appropriate. I expect her to drop by your domicile later because she is well acquainted with your father. As humans hailing from Briar Valley, they connected, and I believe your father was her dentist when she resided here,” Malleus explained.

Suddenly, the crocodile was overcome with even more shock; His father knew you?? How come he had never informed him or Silver of anything about you?

“Your mother knew her too. The two were actually quite good friends, if I remember correctly…” Lilia trailed off in thought, trying to remember if what he said was actually true.

Then, Sebek passed out from the overwhelming feeling of this bombshell that was dropped on him.

~~~~~~~~

When you had returned from your walk with your son, you were met with Lilia extending his arm to you. You looked towards Silver and he nodded his head at his father figure before walking off. So, you accepted the fae’s arm and began walking with him.

“How was your conversation?”

“It went exceedingly well, Lord Vanrouge. He had so many questions, and I answered each one he had.”

“That is good to hear, darling. I’ve missed you very much, as you’ve probably guessed by now,” Lilia stopped in his tracks as he slipped his arm from yours to bring your hand to his lips and place a kiss upon your knuckles.

You couldn’t help but feel a tad flustered, but a smile graced your lips as you leaned forward to place a kiss on his cheek.

“I’ve missed you too, Lilia.” Said fae smiled in return as he once again extended his arm for you to take, and you began walking again.

“By the way, Lady Y/N, young Sebek would like to see you. He’s Dr. Zigvolt’s youngest son, 16 years old. A meeting has been arranged at their abode.”

“That sounds lovely! It’s been a while since I’ve visited the Zigvolt’s. From what I remember, I have only met their older son and daughter.”

~~~~~~~~

It was in the evening when the gathering was, and you, Lilia, and Silver knocked on the door to the Zigvolt’s house. The door was answered by the matriarch of the house.

“Y/N! It’s so good to see you!” She gave you a very tight hug, letting a few tears run down her face at knowing that you were alright.

Everyone went inside, and the table was set for supper. The older Zigvolt children walked up and gave you hugs as well. You remember seeing them when they were barely old enough to speak, but the memory of a half-fae is not to be underestimated under any circumstances.

“LADY Y/N! IT IS VERY NICE TO MEET YOU AT LAST!” You turned towards the shouting voice to see a young man bowed at a perfect 90° angle. “MY NAME IS SEBEK ZIG-”

“SHUT UP! SHE PROBABLY KNOWS WHO YOU ARE!” His older sister shouted at him, bonking him on the head to try to get him to quiet down.

“Thank you for introducing yourself, Sebek,” you were trying your hardest not to laugh at the family dynamic. “It is very nice to meet you! Silver has told me many wonderful things about you, and your dedication is the first thing I see within you.”

The guy was very close to tears at your words, his heart feeling warm.

“Y/N, is that you?” You turned to see the patriarch of the household, and you greeted him with a warm hug of his own.

~~~~~~~~

Walking back to the palace, Lilia lingered behind you and your son so that you two could continue talking with one another. After all, you had only one question for him.

“Silver, I know I have not been present in your life, and I hope you can come to understand the reasoning behind it. However, I am finished with my education and I will be working alongside Dr. Zigvolt as a doctor in Briar Valley. I wanted to ask you something, if you wouldn’t mind.” Your nerves were at an all-time high, not sure how you should phrase your question.

“What is it, mother?”

“Would you still want me in your life? I know you’re almost an adult, and I missed every single milestone of your life. I will understand if you don’t want me to-”

“Yes, please.”

“...What?”

“I said yes, please. I would love to have you in my life. But, how will Lilia take it?”

“He knows, honey. That’s why he’s behind us. I believe there is a way where it could work out…” and suddenly, you were being hoisted up into the fae’s arms in a bridal carry. You let out a squeal as Silver smiled at the shenanigans of his parental figures.

Yeah, he knew that Lilia had been smitten with you for a while now. Throughout his childhood, he has had the pleasure of hearing a story be told and retold, and he understands that it was a metaphor for Lilia’s love for you.

“There once was a princess, as beautiful and as kind as could be. Her voice would draw in fauna of all kinds. However, she was afflicted with a curse. She couldn’t stay awake.

“Her family was horrible to her, calling her names because of her curse. All she ever wanted to do was help people like her, but the family wanted to continue their bloodline. So, they married her off to a noble from a distant land.

“The wedding was a party to remember, but in the audience was a soldier, smitten with the princess. From that point on, he swore to himself that he would protect her until the world ends. Even then, his dying breaths would be used to serve her instead of himself.

“She eventually fell pregnant with a child, and she went to the castle to seek the aid of the Queen of this distant land. There, her unborn child received a blessing, and the soldier took care of her for the nine months following. He was at her beck and call; whatever she wanted, he took it upon himself to acquire it for her.

“It was in her 6th month where the two shared their first kiss. She had been working hard to try and separate herself from her husband, as she never loved him. Instead, she found herself in love with the soldier. His kindness and the stories he had to share of camaraderie and bravery on the battlefield entranced her. She found herself being lulled to sleep each night by his voice.

“However, sleep kept them apart. Her condition extended itself because of the child taking a toll on her energy. There were days where she would sleep for days on-end. However, the soldier would not leave her side. Instead, he would keep bringing her cups of tea in case she were to wake up. Each evening, he would place a kiss upon her forehead and speak to her as though she were awake.

“The night she gave birth to her child, she was accompanied by the soldier. He held her hand, and when the baby was born, the midwife cleaned the infant and handed him to the soldier. At that moment, the soldier swore to protect both the princess and the baby with his life.”

[lisired]

navigation

yani, 22, she/they

⤷ 18+ blog primarily for long nct fics. masterlist below. no requests.

⤷ revehae is my side blog where i write evil little stories that normal people will find off-putting.

KEEP ON

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All things love and commitment are feared upon by you. You keep a tight crew and let few people in, cynical of other’s intentions and leaving a trail of broken hearts in your wake. If you break other people’s hearts first, they can’t break yours. And yet, it was all too easy falling for Johnny, digging yourself into a depthless hole of love. But he is no exception to your heartache games.

WAITING GAME

⤷ JOHNNY SUH, 9.1k, 1/4 of the Temptation series.

Your best friend’s dad is a smoking hot dilf seeking vengeance after you’ve spent the past couple of years teasing him, but it seems that you can’t handle a taste of your own medicine.

LITTLE DO YOU KNOW

⤷ LEE TAEYONG, 14.9k

After three years away from Miami, Taeyong is finally ready to return to the city. He left a world behind here, but most importantly, he left you. And being invited on a friendly get-together trip to a beach resort gives him a little too much time to resume unfinished business between you both.

DRESS CODE

⤷ NAKAMOTO YUTA, 7.4k, 3/4 of the Temptation series.

Nakamoto Yuta and his rings have caught your eye. In an effort to seduce your professor, you decide to take your best friend’s advice and change your wardrobe. You’re given an advantage when Yuta’s son asks you to tutor him, and it’s like Satan is handing you opportunities on a silver platter - but at what cost?

VENOMOUS

⤷ NAKAMOTO YUTA, 18.8k

Born into the underworld, crime was all you’d known your entire life and was practically in your blood - murder, drugs, money, power, and everything in between. In spite of your father leading one of the two major gangs that dominated Asia, you managed to keep safe. But all that changes once the rival gang has bad blood to settle with your father, and suddenly a vendetta’s being pursued against you.

WHISPER

⤷ KIM DOYOUNG, 8.9k, 2/4 of the Temptation series.

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DIE IN YOUR ARMS

⤷ JEONG JAEHYUN, 22.4k

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HONEYMOON AVENUE

⤷ JEONG JAEHYUN, 12.3k

A year ago, wedding bells were ringing and you were screaming, “Yes!” at the top of your lungs. Last Christmas, you were supposed to be wed under a mistletoe. This Christmas, company finds you in the form of your ex-fiancé that broke off your engagement after you’re both inconveniently trapped in an elevator.

WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD

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WISH I NEVER

⤷ JEONG JAEHYUN, 27.2k

Your brother, Johnny, hates Jaehyun and has never told you why. Although you intend on leaving it alone, unforeseen events thrust you into a forbidden love affair with Jaehyun. In between hookups and stolen kisses, you have to bury your feelings for Jaehyun around your overprotective older brother.

CAN YOU KEEP IT DOWN?

⤷ MARK LEE, 10.4k, 4/4 of the Temptation series

The apartment next door to yours has been vacant for months. No one had gone in or out, not until your new next door neighbor moved in two weeks ago. Mark, a slightly older guy who prides himself on his patience and willpower with a penchant for control. But when you make it clear you’re resolved to wither away the things he values most, Mark decides he’s down for the challenge, determined to put a leash on your unrestrained behavior - and most importantly, finally shut you the hell up.

EX MARKS THE SPOT

⤷ MARK LEE, 19.9k

Two months ago, you and Mark called it quits and haven’t spoken to each other since. As per tradition, your respective friend groups gather each Christmas eve to keep the peace, but this year somebody has a different plan. And the new chick on Mark’s arm isn’t the worst thing to happen.

PRETTY LITTLE WEAPON

⤷ MARK LEE, 25.7k

A lifetime worth of adversity had brought you to Bloodlust. You joined them to escape your history, but with Mark Lee - an undercover narcotics agent with a secret to keep - comes the threat of being forced to confront your past. Old wounds are opened, but scars heal.

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⤷ LEE HAECHAN, 4.6k

You’re going to kill him. You swear, You’re going to kill him. how did Liu Yangyang accidentally tell Lee Donghyuck—your greatest enemy—that you think he’s hot and that you’ve been in a dry spell recently? Now you have to avoid the inevitable confrontation, and worst of all, deal with the most stubborn person alive (who ironically thinks that you’re the most stubborn person alive).

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⤷ LEE HAECHAN, 23k

Thirst for exhilaration and a stupid dare brings you, your boyfriend Haechan, and your friends to the eerie camping grounds of Chimera - the name of a town rumored to be occupied by a number of vengeful, lurking spirits. But nothing is as it seems in this ghost town.

LOVE JONES

⤷ LEE HAECHAN, 25.5k

After breaking off your engagement to your fiance, you move to Los Angeles to pursue a modeling career. There in the fairytale land where stars go to shine you meet Haechan, an aspiring photographer with a penchant for mischief and flirtation.

SMILE FOR THE CAMERA

⤷ LEE HAECHAN, PARK JISUNG, 19.8k

upon accidentally finding a video of you and your boyfriend haechan doing some very sexual things, jisung knows that he shouldn’t watch it. he knows that it would be an extreme invasion of privacy, but he’s unable to control himself when he sees the thumbnail. so he settles for only watching 30 seconds. except, 30 seconds turns into 30 minutes, and by then he’s buried himself too deep into a life-changing situation—or in which jisung’s terrible at keeping secrets.

SUPERMODEL

⤷ LEE HAECHAN, 23k

Five years ago, you left your hometown and ex to recreate your identity in California. Now, you're a staple of the fashion industry and on the front cover of magazines everywhere. Your hard work has paid off, but when you realize that you might be pregnant, you have to decide whether you want to be a full-time model or a full-time mother.

THE DEVIL’S CUP

⤷ LEE HAECHAN, 6.8k

In a world where humans and demons are separated by earth and the unknown, you’re curious about the creatures that most mortal beings are too frightened to investigate. More specifically if they can please you sexually. As they say, curiosity killed the cat.

WHO NEEDS CUPID’S BOW?

⤷ LEE HAECHAN, 11.1k

Cupid is not on your side, it seems. He’s made you fall in love with the worst possible person ever, AKA your best friend, AKA the man who still eats tootsie-pops—willingly. And frankly, it feels like the damn candy has a better chance of dating him than you ever will.

[strong-with-the-sarcasm]

Part 2 - let the world know

“I wish I could let the world know that it’s okay to let the pain show and even though times seem bad, it always rains before the rainbow.” -A Little More by Machine Gun Kelly

Dp x DC: Regent!Jazz AU Vigilante!Jazz AU

Prompt Masterlist

In traditional Fenton luck, shit goes sideways when Jazz wasn’t looking.

The Joker breaks out of Arkham.

Now, Jazz is fully aware of the Clown’s evil-ness and Danny’s trauma with all things Circus thanks to Freakshow has her hackles raised when the spirits of Gotham start screeching in her ear mid-patrol that “Joker is free!”

Like hell the guy would stay that way.

Lady Gotham is anxiously watching the Regent stomp towards Arkham, where the Mad Clown had yet to fully leave the premises into Gotham proper.

Would Jazz kill the Clown?

Many of the Unquiet Dead of Gotham are the staunchest supporters of kill, kill, kill on a good day, but with the Clown?

They seethed, they writhed, they thirsted for their vengeance and with every life taken by the Joker, the number grew.

Jazz hated the thought of death, ironically.

It’s one thing to rule the Dead and Never-born, but to add to the Realms' population by her own hand?

(It wouldn't be the first time.)

Well, Jasmine Nightingale would have to check her morals at the door, because when Lady Gotham begins to hesitantly (then vivaciously) root for you to “please end him, dear” one has to reconsider a few things about themselves.

For instance, how would she avoid becoming the next Joker? It was a hushed confession of the Lady that made Jazz hesitate at the border between Gotham and Arkham-

A dead man's switch would trigger a Joker Venom bomb, infecting those nearby.

Would the gas affect a Liminal?

True, Jazz was very much a living being (she often woke up in a cold sweat with a hand at her neck, heart beating against her fingers), but she was Death-claimed.

Was this how Danny felt as a Halfa? Weighing the living half vs the dead to see which would win out in a fight?

Not for the first time, Jazz found herself thankful that she was only Liminal.

Heart in her throat, Jazz considered her options.

It would be easy to just run him through with her ecto-sword, a gift from her once-mentor Pandora, but she would likely have to fight her way through bats and birds to both get to and away from the Clown.

Jazz could also just ask for aid from Lady Gotham and/or the Unquiet Dead to enshroud her from vigilant eyes as she absconds with Joker to Crime Alley.

(Jazz was sure Red Hood wouldn’t mind if she dropped a dead clown at his feet. He seemed the type to appreciate a job well done.)

(If her heart raced slightly in response to that thought, no it didn’t.)

Despite all her reservations about murder, killing the clown felt like an honor for the Regent.

(Blood had long since been on her hands.)

The morning would bring chaos as the people learned of the Joker's fate, Batman's failure to return him to Arkham, and how someone finally had enough of the black furry's inaction to stop the clown.

Sometimes, inaction is just as bad as action.

(A Fenton who learned that well.)

Jazz, in full Regent armor, mounted the Joker's head at the mouth of her alleyway, the same one that she used as a checkpoint between her apartment and the Park Row graveyard. A grotesque trophy that would be used as a symbol of the Regent's authority to avenge, of her willingness to cross the line of morality.

The Unquiet Dead who owed their demise to the Joker could now pass on and Jazz could call it a night.

That was, until whatever tomorrow brought around to spite the younger Fentons.

Typical.

=============================

[This was more of a short fic rather than the prompt I first started with, but it just came to me. I want to explore some things with events leading up to Danny and Jazz in Gotham, but I'm not sure. I need help to describe Jazz's armor because I have a general idea, but I'm not sure about the details. Ideas?]

[Hopefully I'll be able to put more Regent!Jazz than Vigilante!Jazz, but I also really like Jazz as one. Bet you can't guess the name I use for her as a vigilante!]

[bonthefuckjourx]

Lucifer x Sinner!reader (Hazbin Hotel)

   SUMMARY: You wake up in Hell and realize you didn't make the cut into Heaven. You never did anything evil, but never believed in God. You wanted to live life by your own morals. Little did you know a group of hazbins would take you in and show you more kindness than anyone on Earth ever did. Then you met someone you never thought you would, Lucifer, the King of Hell. Then you did something you never thought you would, make a deal with the devil.

WARNINGS: brief mention of depression/anxiety

WORD COUNT: 3100k+

A/N: Hello everyone! I haven't posted around tumblr all that much, but I hope this gets some traction as there isn't much Lucifer fanfiction to begin with. I love writing fantasy stories intermeshed with romance and Hazbin Hotel was a perfect world for this.

And yes, eventually there will be smut. I suppose you'll have to stick around and find out~

(Also, I hope you all know the Reputation album by Taylor Swift is fueling this ^-^)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter One: ...Ready For It?

One day you were in school studying for the next exam and then you were spawned into a hellscape like no other. The literal hell. You never were religious, and it always seemed more like a fear-mongering cult to you. Apparently even though you didn’t do anything evil or inherently bad you still went to hell. Gunshots fired off into the distance making you drop to the ground. They were loud and scared you to no end. Shakily you stood up, started to run. You didn’t know where you were going, only that you didn’t want to die, not again. Eventually you ran out of strength and wandered inside a hotel-like building before collapsing on the ground.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Don’t just stand there Vaggie, come help me! It’s okay we have you now.”

With closed eyes you made out an alarmed high-pitched voice. It sounded like warmth and trust. You didn’t have the strength to open your eyes. Arms lifted you up and after some time you landed in a warm bed. You drifted off into a fitful sleep.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As your eyes fluttered open you were met with one beady red eye.

“Nifty would ya give her some space?”

This so-called nifty jumped off your bed and landed on the floor next to you.  

“Hi, I’m Charlie. You collapsed on the floor of my hotel and so we took you up to a room. And yes, you can stay as long as you would like.”

            A hand was extended out for you to take and with a shaky arm you took it. The demon was pale with two red dots on her face that looked a bit like blush. She wore a suit like attire and seemed to be the one in charge. As you looked around you noticed a snake-like demon who said his name was Sir Pentious, a cat-like demon whose named Husk, and a spider-like demon whose named Angel Dust. The last demon sent chills down your spine with his unnerving smile, his name was the Radio Demon or Alastor. You hoped you never had to be in a room alone with him.

            “Uh thank you all for helping me. It’s my first day in hell and it’s a lot. I didn’t know where to go so I just kept running and running and it was so loud and violent and-“You started to look around frantically hyperventilating a little. This was all too much.

            “Hey it’s okay. This is supposed to be a safe place. You don’t have to go out there anymore if you don’t want to.” You looked at Charlie reassurance in her eyes.

            “It’s called the Hazbin Hotel! We rehabilitate sinners so that they hopefully one day can go to Heaven. As you know my name is Charlie. I’m also the Princess of Hell and I really want to be able to save my people from this life.”

 She looked solemn, but determined and in that moment, you had no doubt of what she would accomplish. You sat up and pulled Charlie in for a hug. Even though she was born in hell, she was much kinder than any soul you met on earth.

“Thank you, Charlie.”

You pulled away from the hug and noticed a tearful look in her eyes even though she was smiling.

“I’ll be honest I’m not quite sure why I’m here. It’s not like I did anything super evil, I just kind of lived an average life.”

“You didn’t kill anyone?” The radio demon mentioned from the corner.

“What! No? What is wrong with you?”

“What about prostitution? Apparently, the big guy hates it when you whore yourself out like that,” Angel Dust mentioned with a shrug.

“I was a poor college student, but I didn’t turn to that. I just had to take out an insane amount of loans.”

“Gambling, or suicide? I lost everything and well there wasn’t much place left in the mortal realm for me. The easy way out is an easy way into hell,” said Husk who stood next to Angel Dust.

“Nope neither. I don’t really think I had a reason other than not believing in God. I mean I can see now that demons are real, but why would I believe in a God that doesn’t care? His rules are horrible, you can’t be gay, or just enjoy yourself with another person. I lived my life by my morals, not someone else’s.”

You crossed your arms hoping the others would get the hint. You just wanted to be alone right now. Your life was cut short, and for what?

“I’m sorry y/n, but we can figure something out. Just give me some time, I promise.”

Charlie held out her pinkie and reluctantly you agreed.

“We’ll give you some time alone then.”

With that Charlie turned to leave and the rest followed her. After the door shut you curled up under the covers and wondered if life would ever be better. This whole heaven and hell thing made your head hurt. You never had much luck in life why would this be any different?

            A few weeks passed and although your death was still fresh in your mind you started to feel a little bit better. You and Charlie talked and set out on a plan to help rehabilitate you. She said you really didn’t need much help, but rather she had the hard task of trying to convince Heaven you should be up there with them. You both talked every day, and it helped take some of the edge off your anxiety. That and you always seemed to have company when you wanted it at the hotel. Angel Dust made you laugh and was always up for a drinking game of some sorts. Husk was always there if you needed to talk or rant about your previously human life. Sir Pentious was a bit peculiar, but over time you warmed up to him too. You didn’t talk to Vaggie much as she always seemed a bit distant. Everything she did was for Charlie, and she didn’t exactly make friends with other people and tended to only light up if Charlie was in the room. Thankfully you both silently agreed not to talk much. In the evenings you all would curl up around the fireplace and share stories or play games. Charlie loved to play human games like Never Have I Ever or Twenty Questions. She claimed they helped build trust.

            One morning while you and Charlie were having your daily talk, she mentioned that her dad would be over later that day. She was going to show him the hotel so that hopefully he could set her up an audience with Heaven. She could finally mention the souls, like you, here that could be rehabilitated. You were ecstatic that she could finally move forward with her plan but scared to meet someone new. Not only that, but this was Charlie’s dad Lucifer. The Lucifer, like the biblical fallen angel that probably has some awesome, but frightening powers. The anxiety was eating you up and you could tell Charlie wasn’t much better. She mentioned she hadn’t seen him in a few years, and you wondered how hard that must be on her.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Everyone gather around! He should be here any minute,” Charlie yelled out to us, clapping to have our attention. I stood next to Angel Dust as we gathered around her near the front entrance. He always made me feel a little safer.

            “Charlie, so good to see you!”

 The door swung open and in came the most eccentric man I ever saw. He was almost bouncing around the room, hugging Charlie, then seeing Razzle and Dazzle, and finally stopped when he noticed the rest of us. You couldn’t move your gaze as you realized he was staring straight into your eyes. The moment was fleeting as Charlie grabbed his attention.

“Dad, hi. This is my hotel, and these are the inhabitants. Angel Dust, Husk, Sir Pentious, and y/n.”

When Charlie mentioned your name Lucifer met your gaze again. It was electrifying and made you blush to no end. He looked away giving Charlie his full attention once again. Suddenly Alastor appeared right next to her.

            “And I am the hotelier. Pleased to meet you, the name’s Alastor.”

            Lucifer’s eyes widened as Alastor put his arm around Charlie, his smile growing ever bigger. You swore a small growl came out of Lucifer’s mouth.

            “Hot,” Angel Dust whispered near your ear, and you did your best not to give out a small laugh.

            “Charlie, you need to stay away from this demon.”

            “Dad, I trust him. He’s been nothing but helpful. Once you see the hotel, I know you’ll have a change of heart.”

            Soon Charlie was leading her father around the hotel with Alastor on her right-hand side. Lucifer was less than happy to see his daughter hanging out around the Radio Demon. He didn’t trust Alastor, which you understood in a way. He was happy to meet Vaggie stating how he also like girls. He was quite awkward, but adorable in a way.

Next thing you know Alastor and Lucifer were arguing again. Music playing randomly and seemingly out of nowhere.

            “Yea don’t ask me why, but sometimes they break out into song.” Angel Dust leaned in towards you to comment shrugging his shoulders.

            A small laugh escaped as you took your time eyeing Lucifer up. Soon enough he was singing, his voice mesmerizing. His inflections and body language all showed off how prideful and confident he was. You supposed that’s why he’s called the sin of pride. There was something so sweet about how much he wanted to help his daughter, and attractive too. You never were able to have a family on Earth, but you wouldn’t mind having his babies.         

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After the little sing off between Alastor and Lucifer, Charlie talked to her dad about the audience with Heaven. He decided to help her, and you could tell their relationship healed a little. You decided to leave them to it and left to go up toward your room. The elevator dinged at your level, and you walked out. The balcony at the end of the hall caught your attention as its glass doors were open. A breeze blew in and you relished the fresh air. As you reached toward the doorway you hesitated, bringing your hand back. Your heartrate picked up, pounding in your ears. You were going to turn around and run into your room, your safe place. Then you heard someone approach from behind you, making you quickly turn away from the glass doors.

            “Beautiful day out, isn’t it?” Lucifer mentioned as he moved towards you.

            “I suppose if you could call hell beautiful.”

            “Some might, though I suppose we aren’t apart of that group.  What are you doing over here?” He motioned toward the opened doors near me.

            “I was going to see what the view was like, but I backed out.” You looked away from him, not being able to look him in his eyes. He stopped walking when he was right in from of you and grabbed your chin guiding you to look at him. In his eyes you could see concern and empathy.

            “I know all too well what it’s like to be limited by your own mind. Not that we have a physiatrist in hell, but depression has had me for a long time.” He gave a small sympathetic smile. A small blush crossed your face being so close to him. Your heart melted a little at the kindness he showed you.

            “Yea well, I just get anxious about going outside. I thought maybe I could try, but it was a stupid idea. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready.” He let go of your face and walked around you towards the balcony.

            “I know it’s not my place, but I could help you. Not to be boastful, but you are in the presence of the most powerful demon in hell. You would be safe with me.”

With that he held out his hand, willing you to take it. In that light he looked angelic even waiting for your hand, a genuine smile across his face as the outside wind gently rustled his hair. For once in your life, you wish you could just take that leap. If only…

…and then you did.

He pulled you in close against his chest. You could feel his heartbeat as he told you to wrap your arms around his neck. As soon as you did, he leapt off the side of the balcony over the railing. You closed your eyes and screamed as you both fell into a freefall. He wrapped his wings around you until they flapped open, allowing him to gain air. You kept your eyes closed the entire time, clinging to his neck and burying your face there. He chuckled to himself committing to memory this moment, feeling whole again. After about 10 minutes you both landed on solid ground. You didn’t dare let go, but he understood what you needed. Lucifer cradled you in his arms as he walked indoors.

“Here you go, you can open your eyes now.”

As you looked around you realized you were in an observatory-like room. It had high windows on all sides that looked out at Sin City. You didn’t realize until now how hard you were gripping him and embarrassingly tore yourself away from him.

“Sorry… Where are we?”

“Don’t be sorry for being yourself. It was cute.” You blushed and looked down at the floor, but quickly returned your eyes to him.

“It’s my study of sorts. I like to come up here to think or waste the day away. I used to invent so many beautiful things, but I’ve been uninspired for quite some time.”

You walked around taking in the view then turned back to look at him.

“Maybe you just need someone to inspire you.”

“Why are you willing?” He looked at you with a smirk on his face, almost implying something more.

“Sure, why not. Maybe you could help me get over my fears in return. I mean look at what you have already done for me today. I hadn’t left that hotel since I arrived.”

“Sounds like a plan, do we have a deal?” He walked toward you, willing you to take his hand again.

“What and make a deal with the devil?”

He pulled his hand away and for a second you swore you noticed hurt flash across his face. Quickly he hid it, behind a devilish smile and you decided then you’d never make him feel that way ever again.

“It doesn’t have to be, more so a saying then anything.”

            You stepped forward taking his hand in yours. He lifted his head up to look into your eyes, his face slightly flushed.

            “No, I want it to be, Lucifer. Let’s make a deal, to be there for each other until we can beat this. “

            He nodded his head, smiling with loving eyes, tears forming in them. With that he placed his other hand over yours and spoke. His eyes turned red, horns sprouted, and he looked possessed. Just as fast as it started, it ended. In the end you were left with a pentagram tattoo on your right hand. It was beautiful, but soon it faded leaving just an indent of it behind.

            “I enchanted it so that others cannot see it, however you can feel it. It will be binding until we fulfill the deal. I don’t own your soul or anything, but it acts like a bond between us. It will also let you teleport, put your hand over it and think of where you want to go. It’ll let me know where you’re going, but don’t worry I won’t pry.” Tears formed in the corners of your eyes as for once you felt like you could finally take a breath. You felt much safer knowing Lucifer was a thought away.

After that you two kept each other company and every now and then he would show you something he made. His magic was gorgeous and made your heart soar, you’ve never seen anything like it. As the night dragged on you mentioned you should probably head back so that the other’s wouldn’t worry.

            “Remember just touch the pentagram with your hand and think of where you want to go.”

            As you did you thought of your warm bed and the pentagram flashed to life. Then you felt something. The bond between you two tightened and you felt him. His magic pulsed through him as if it was alive and in front of you a portal appeared. The bond closed then for you. It only stays opens when he uses his magic, but as you stared into Lucifer’s eyes you felt emotions overpower you. Thoughts of safe and warm and love flowed through your head. Lucifer looked confused and scared for a second before becoming his confident self again. You said your goodnights as you fled through the portal to your bed.

Lucifer’s POV

            He watched as y/n touched her hand waiting for his magic. He hadn’t made many deals in his life, but he knew enough to know what to expect. There would be a bond in place caused from his magic and that would be used to make portals.

            His eyes wandered y/n’s body taking a second to indulge. Quickly he reverted to her eyes as she looked back at him. He wondered when their short friendship turned into more, or if it simply always was. She made him feel safe and warm and loved. At that moment a small tendril of magic snapped into place. He stepped back afraid of the woman in front of him, before realizing how much he was showing with his face. After recomposing himself he bid her goodnight and she left with a sleepy smile on her face.

            As the portal closed, he fell to his knees, wondering why fate would be so cruel. After thousands of years, trying to find something to inspire him and be his light. After all the fights with Lilith and trying to raise Charlie simply because he thought Lilith was it. With the palm of his hand, he wiped the tears away as he sobbed looking though the skylight at the darkness above. She wasn’t an archangel or a seraphim, or even an angel at all. All this torture and pain was for her.

            His mate…

            No, his salvation.

[hero-israel]

Let me tell you being a former Christian this shit goes so much deeper than a lot of born Jews realize. The Christian worldview (specifically Calvinist/Puritan) seeping into and pervading all of modern leftism is honestly frightening. But also it's very funny.

They believe that there are Good people and Bad people, and that any mistake or lapse in judgment or instance of not being educated is a Mask Off moment, showing who is a member of the Elect and who is not. If you fuck up, that's not just a fuck up, it's Revealing. You are damned, were always damned, you were just good at hiding it, and now we know the truth and are doubly angry because not only are you evil, you lied about it. The only recourse is to shun you, and if that leads to your death, so be it. Anyone who's seen any micro celebrity get canceled saw this in action.

And the only way you can prove you're a member of the Elect is to operate as if you have nothing to hide. You have to loudly and proudly proclaim your righteousness. If you don't have anything to hide why would you be worried? Privacy is suspicious. You Must Speak on everything they deem important or else you obviously agree with the Bad People. There is no room for discussion or healthy debate. There are no loopholes or subclauses or other points of view to consider. You're with us or against us. If you don't constantly go around saying you're with us, you're probably secretly against us. The only way to convince your neighbors, whom you inherently distrust, that you're one of the Good Ones, is to perform righteousness, parrot righteous words. The only way to redeem yourself is by grandiose acts of self flagellation, perhaps being the right demographic, or by accusing others of Heresy.

The goal is not to bring good into the world, it's to recruit more people into the same thought patterns (that's kind of all Christian denominations though). Because if you can convince your community that you're one of the Elect, that means G-d preselected you for Heaven, and you're golden. No repercussions or consequences baby. The only material benefit for you is that you "get" to proclaim you're going to Heaven and everyone has to agree with you. If anyone doesn't they're probably going to Hell anyway. You're on the right side (of history), so why should you ever self reflect or grow? Why should you question anything? Why should nuance or empathy exist? This is about Right and Wrong. We know where we stand, where do you stand?

Every single aspect of American culture and politics, right and "left" alike, was planted by the pilgrims, and it is so fundamentally antithetical to true Leftist thought. Remember all the actually successful Western Leftist movements were started in Europe (and Israel cough cough)... because they kicked all their fucking psychotic Calvinists out. Those people went to America and that's a big big big reason why we don't have any near as much of a robust Leftist movement as even socially conservative European countries (and Israel cough cough). And what's funny is I still find myself slipping into these thought patterns, which is so not compatible with Jewish philosophy or theology. It's been years and I'm still not done.

It's a hell of a drug to kick, so I definitely don't trust white goysiche college kids who've been antitheists for about 6 months since they left their Republican parents' homes to have any great success in unlearning and unprogramming from this. Which is kind of obvious in that I see them acting just like their conservative Christian parents every day on every social media platform, swap out a gun toting white Jesus with some noble savage idea of Palestine, absolving the West of its sins against the Global South.

It is a cult structured around spiritual isolation, antisocial behavior, and it is inherently against any kind of political movement that centers and celebrates the Community. It is designed to tear communities apart and foster obedience to whatever authority can force itself on them. And this has been going on for almost 500 years, there is nothing we can do about it.

Thank you for the insightful look. Their "purity culture" approach definitely had to come from somewhere.

[rubyreduji]

Apple of My Eye — xmh

summary: minghao’s arrival to auradon changes your life as you know it, and not just because he’s the son of the woman who poisoned your mother

tags: fluff, descendants au, child of snow white reader, reader is shorter than minghao wc: 2.4k an: happy birthday mika @toruro :333 i love you so much pls enjoy bc i think i rewrote this maybe 7 times no joke an 2: this fic takes place in the same universe as “good to be bad” which features gyu, wonu, and child of hades reader. you don’t really have to read it to read this one, but it would be cool if you did!

From the moment you were born, it was made clear that you were always going to be second. Whether in your parents’ eyes or the citizens or even other kids. Nothing you could do would amount to your brother.

Joshua was athletic, charismatic, handsome, the future King of Charmington. Every kid in Auradon was drawn to him. You were just the little sister.

Joshua could never do wrong, or at least your parents thought so. You on the other hand, had everything about you nitpicked. You had to be the perfect daughter so you could one day find a suitor for you to marry. That led to long days of you in lessons about etiquette while Joshua would run around the castle with Seungcheol and Seokmin, not caring about what kind of disturbances they caused. At the time it didn’t bother you, you wanted to do anything to please your parents.

After you started school, it was hard for you to make friends, and eventually you just gave up, submitting to being the outcast of the class. It didn’t help that your brother would go around and pick on you to all of his friends just for a few laughs.

Years went by and you were still doing your best just to be a good daughter. In class you were still an outcast, with people either whispering behind your back or scoffing at you when you walked past. It wasn’t until you started to attend Auradon Prep that you realized how useless it all was. 

No matter how prim and proper and perfect you are, you’ll never be anything in anyone’s eyes as long as Joshua is alive. You think about all those years you tried to make everyone happy, to be the best you could be, only for it to amount to nothing.

Maybe that’s why you were so drawn to Minghao. His subtle kindness and gruff but charming presence. It makes you laugh to know that if you told the little girl you used to be that later in life she’s going to fall in love with the son of her parents’ sworn enemy, she’d probably cry.

Right now though, you’re completely sure you’d follow Minghao to the end of the world. 

When you were little, your parents used to sit in your living room in front of the fireplace and tell you and Joshua the great story of their love. You’ve heard it a million times, not just from your parents but also your seven uncles.

When the proclamation was made that the villain kids would be coming to Auradon, your parents were scandalized. When they found out that one of them was the child of the Evil Queen, they were outraged. They were fearful for what would happen to you and (mostly) Joshua. 

They told you to steer clear of any of the VKs as their parents will have raised them to be just like them. That they will be cruel and ill-mannered and up to no good. That nothing could come off the isle without it being tainted by the evil kept within.

When you were little, you were always told that the Evil Queen is a jealous old woman and vile of heart. Though that may be the case, you’re not sure you should view her son as the same. Not everyone is their parents. When you think about the first time you and Minghao met, you know there’s no doubt about it.

You were walking down the hallway when you caught sight of him a few feet ahead of you. You recognized him from the press release about the proclamation. Minghao, son of the Evil Queen. Your eyes were drawn to his dark blue hair and thick leather jacket. You were completely stopped in your tracks, too entranced by the deep scowl on his face. Unfortunately because you stopped walking, you were easily run over.

“Get out of the way,” the person growled as they shoved you, causing you to drop your books.

“S-sorry,” you squeaked out. You bent down to pick up your books, only to hear a new voice.

“Why don’t you watch where you’re walking?” You looked up to see Minghao looming over the person who ran into you. They cowered away. “No need to be a dick. Pick the fucking books up.”

They nodded and scrambled to grab your books, hastily passing them back to you before they ran off. You stared down at the book before redirecting your gaze to the tall boy in front of you. You bowed to him.

“Thank you. You didn’t have to do that, I’m uh…used to it,” you trailed off at the end, unsure of why you were explaining that to him.

He also looked slightly uncomfortable at the fact. Or maybe it was because you bowed to him. “You didn’t do anything wrong. No reason to pick on innocent people.” With that he stalked off and your sudden interest in him ignited tenfold.

Ever since that day you and Minghao kept having small run-ins. Almost like fate was pulling you two together. Before you knew it you two were spending all your time together. You were easily captured by his outlook on the world. You’ve never met someone so fair and level headed as Minghao. You’ve learned so much from him.

You finally had a friend. He helped you discover who you really are, and he did everything in his power to protect you. Slowly your friendship developed into more until you found yourself with butterflies in your stomach every time he talked to you.

You remember the day he finally made the first move. You weren’t even sure that Minghao liked you like that until you were sitting in his dorm, helping him with his math homework, when he leaned over and kissed you. You swear your heart nearly jumped out of your chest. After that things were a little clunky, but you two figured it out. 

Dating Minghao opened up a whole new realm of possibilities. You feel strong with him. You feel like you can do anything. Maybe that’s why you put so much faith in him when he comes to you with his plan.

“Snowflake,” Minghao starts, his nickname for you still flustering you slightly, “I need you to trust me, okay?”

“Hao…what’s this about?” You two are sitting in his dorm room, sitting on his bed. He asked you earlier if you would meet him, as there was something important he needed to talk to you about.

There’s a grim look on Minghao’s face as he looks at you. He struggles with his words for a moment before finding what he wants to say. “You know I care about you a lot and that I would do anything to make you happy and protected.”

Minghao stops for a moment and you nod at him. He takes another deep breath.

“You and I, we don’t belong here. Nobody here will ever respect us or any of the other VKs, and something needs to be done about it. I want to do something about it.” There’s a fire in Minghao’s words as he talks. “Everything that I’ve seen and heard and experienced since I stepped foot in Auradon is bullshit and it was fine when it was just me, but they way they treat you as well? It’s unacceptable.”

“Hao,” you interject, “just tell me what you’re talking about. I promise, I trust you more than anyone else.”

Minghao reaches forward and grabs your hands in his. He squeezes tight. “They need to be taught a lesson. Nothing will change if we don’t make the change.” You squeeze his hands back, encouraging him to continue. “I’ve been talking with some of the other VKs…we’re thinking about overthrowing the crown.” You suck in a breath. “I know it’s a lot and that it’s a risk but-”

You cut Minghao off, letting go of his hands to cup his face. You lean in and kiss him gently. When you pull away you rest your forehead against his. “I trust you Hao, and I will stand by you through anything. If this is the path you decide to take, I’m right here with you.”

“Are you sure? Your parents and-”

“No one has ever treated me the way you do. You’re the best thing to happen to me, Minghao.”

“I love you,” Minghao whispers, just loud enough to hear. Your heart does a skip.

“I love you too,” you tell him back, the first time either of you have said it. “I believe what you’re doing is what has to be done.”

You think of every wrongdoing of the citizens of Auradon, about how unfair they have been all these years. You think about the new world you can make. You know this is the right choice.

Minghao wants you to stay out of the planning process, as to not incriminate you in case anything happens. That unfortunately leaves you with quite a bit of free time on your hands. You’re walking back to your dorm from the library when you’re suddenly stopped by someone grabbing you. You yelp in surprise as you’re whipped around to come face to face with your brother. 

Joshua grips onto your arm tightly and you try to break free but he just holds on tighter. If you’re being honest you’re shocked he’s even interacting with you, as he gave up on that years ago.

“I don’t know what you’re doing, but you need to stop,” Joshua hisses. 

“Joshua, let me go!”

“I know you’re up to something with the son of the Evil Queen. Do you know what Mom and Dad would think if they found out? If you keep it up you’re going to get in trouble, either with him, or them.”

“You’re hurting me!”

“Well maybe you should listen.”

“She said let go.” Joshua’s grip loosens slightly at the intrusion and you’re able to break free. 

You and your brother both look to the side to see Minghao standing there. Though Joshua and Minghao are the same height, it seems like Minghao looms over him. There’s a dark look on his face as he glares daggers into your brother. Relief washes over you at the sight of your boyfriend coming to your rescue.

“You,” Joshua hisses. “Stay away from my little sister.”

“No, I think you should stay away.” Minghao steps forward, subtly putting his body between yours and Joshua’s. 

“I don’t know who you think you are, but I know that you’re no good. If you hurt her I swear I’ll-”

“It seems like you’re the only one here who’s hurt her.” Minghao gestures to where you’re rubbing your arm from where Joshua gripped you too tight. “You’re selfish and pathetic. You don’t really care about her and you never have, don’t try to act all high and mighty now.”

“Just wait, you’re going to get it,” Joshua growls before stalking off.

Minghao doesn’t bother responding, instead he turns towards you. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, but I need you to do something for me.”

“Anything.”

“Hurry up with the plans, okay?” You stare up and Minghao and he just nods, ready to set the world on fire for you if he has to.

“Are you scared?” You ask Minghao as you two lay in your bed one night. Your roommate is visiting her parents and you take the opportunity to spend the night with your boyfriend without having to worry about Jun on the other side of the room.

“Petrified,” Minghao whispers. “But you can’t tell anyone.”

“I promise,” you giggle, pressing a soft peck to his cheek.

“I’m scared, but then I think about you and why I’m doing this to begin with, and I know everything will work out.”

“Everyone says you’re so scary,” you tell him, “but I think you’re just a giant sap.”

“Only for you, Snowflake.”

“I really hope this works,” you whisper, changing the tone of the conversation.

“It will. I’ll make sure of it, even if it’s the last thing I do.”

“It won’t be. We’re going to change the world and then you and I will be able to live in peace.”

“We’ll have our happily ever after?” There's a teasing grin on Minghao’s face and you roll your eyes playfully.

“Yes. We will.” Minghao just giggles and leans in to kiss you. You kiss him back, putting all of your unsaid words behind it. 

Minghao has changed your life, and you could never repay him for what he’s done for you, what he’s going to do for you. You know you don’t have to pay him back though, because loving him is enough. You don’t want to think about what your life would have become if Minghao didn’t come to Auradon. When you were little your parents told you about fate and how the right people will always come into your life. Laying here with Minghao, you think they may have gotten at least one thing right.

“Are you ready?” Minghao asks as he reaches down to hold your hand tight. You nod and squeeze his hand back.

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

The two of you stand outside of the Museum of Cultural History, about to enact your plan to change the rest of your lives.

“You’ll be able to go back after this,” Minghao tells you. You look up at him and smile.

“Good.”

Around you stands the other VKs, and for some reason the son of Hercules, Mingyu (you’ll have plenty of time to question that later). The sight warms your heart. You don’t think you’ve ever felt more safe with a group of people before. A few months ago you never had friends, and now here you are, ready to change the world with a group of villain kids. Your parents would have a heart attack if they could see you now.

“Whatever happens,” Minghao tells you, “I love you.”

You pull him down for a final kiss before you enter the museum. “I love you too.”

You take a moment to just stare at him. His soft blue hair falling over his eyes as he’s wrapped up in his jacket. He looks just like he did the first day you met him, yet everything has changed so much. You smile when you think about how you wouldn’t want to have it any other way.

No one has ever loved you as much as Minghao has. Not your parents or your brother or anyone else. Minghao is willing to risk everything, just make you happy. You will always be his number one priority. The thought makes your heart swell, and you know there will never be someone who means as much to as you as Minghao does.

“Okay,” you tell him, “let’s do this.”

Minghao nods and signals to the others and just like that you’re all in action. Your heart beats hard in your chest as you follow behind Minghao, ready for him to lead you to whatever good thing is next to come.

taglist: @ckline35 @jeanjacketjesus @namjoonbaby @n4mj00nvq @lovelyhan @ovai @scorpiobitch88 @im-gemmy @lllucere @tulipgarland4 @embrace-themagic @sulkygyu @leejihoonownsmyheart @synthetickitsune @yeosayang @miraclewoozi @d0nghyck @soonhoonietrash @violetvoo @yongi-lee @spilled-coffee-cup @morklee02 @17kwans @candidupped @ressonancee @m1nghaos @1-800-jeonwonwoo @anothershorthuman @chwecardcaptor @dinoissupreme @speaknowlwt @hyneyedfiz @aaniag @shamayyyy @moonwalker-witchgrrrl @nidda13 @walkingtravesty97 @jwnghyuns @flwrshwa @valentxi @heavenly-mobo @pandorashbox @enhacolor @starlight-night0 @todorokiskitten @miriamxsworld @just-here-to-read-01 @seuomo @tinkerbell460

[exocynraku]

hashtag oc posting!!!!!! finally got back into the groove of drawing snakingclan cats!!! here is alla their lore: + feel free 2 send me questions about them!

sleepy: sleepyheather is a cheery, calm and wise snakingclan warrior. raised by a single mother queen, sleepyheather was taught to always take it slow, listening and giving the best advice & thoughts they can. she grew up on the sidelines, not really caring to stand out or be special. though, as a younger warrior, he always admired tumblingsun's confidence and unwavering logic. sleepyheather eventually started to ask the tom to hang out, which made tumblingsun realize she had a crush on him. the two ended up hitting it off successfully, becoming a wonderful couple, though their differing amounts of confidence often butt heads, with tumblingstar wanting to have fun, while sleepyheather wants to relax. still, they love each other like no other.

when martyrsomen, her and tumblingstar's first child, was born, sleepyheather was happy, though worried. worried mostly about the kit potentially straying down a path of darkness. though, with tumblingstars obvious joy, he was able to set that to the side. even with martyrsomen's big ego and snappy personality, sleepyheather sees no evil in it. the other kittens that were born in sleepyheather's first litter and their deaths upset sleepyheather deeply, though she rarely mentions it.

when savantpaw suddenly appeared, sleepyheather was overjoyed. the deaths of martyrsomen's siblings was still affecting her before savantpaw was born, though with a new child to take care of, sleepyheather managed to mostly put his sadness aside to raise savantpaw. it didn't take long for her to realize savantpaw had gotten a bad idea about himself in his head, and so sleepyheather did everything she could to help encourage and take care of her. she was the one who suggested savantpaw have physical therapy, which the apprentice is ever so grateful for. sleepyheather wants savantpaw to tread back to the right path, though the fear of potentially harming him more haunts her.  tumbling: tumblingstar, originally named tumblingsun, is snakingclan's leader. as a younger warrior, he was confident and logical, making good warrior material. they were very popular, overall living a good life, with lots of friends similar in nature to him. it wasn't until sleepyheather, a cat who he rarely ever talked to, came to him and asked to start hanging out, that he realize 1: she had a crush on him and 2: there was more to life that being a good warrior. being with sleepyheather taught him that there's all sorts of cats out there, and they should look to learn from and befriend everyone - not just cats he's similar to. eventually, the two became mates, loving and cherishing each other. they've had their arguments, and their personalities occasionally butt heads with each other, but overall they're wonderful lovers.

when his first child, martyrsomen, was born, tumblingstar was overjoyed. he knew he had the fabled vivid black markings that snakinclan's founders supposedly had, but seeing his child be born fully covered was almost like a message from starclan. still, it wasn't all happy, as the death of the four other kits in tumblingstar and sleepyheather's first litter hit both of them hard. the two still managed to pull through, and tried to raise martyrsomen to the best of their ability, whether they succeeded or not.

savantpaw was a different case. neither sleepyheather or tumblingstar were expecting another child to be born, though they still accepted savantpaw. it didn't take long for the two to realize he had gotten the idea that he was less than her older sibling, and tumblingstar moreso has done everything in his ability to make the cat feel at home. this went to a point of tumblingstar apprenticing savantpaw himself, and their training has been somewhat successful.  martyr: martyrsomen is a stoic, silent, and ethereal snakingclan warrior. born in a litter of five deformed, albino kittens, martyrsomen was the only one to survive- and the only one to not be fully albino, having vivid black markings stretching all across its body. black markings like these, and similar ones seen on settingsands and martyrsomen's dad tumblingstar are a symbol of respect. it's said the original founders of snakingclan each had these markings, and being born with some nowadays is seen as a blessing. though, that's usually for cats born with little markings, just around their face or other body parts-- a cat born with the full founder's markings hasn't been seen in hundreds of years. because of this, martyrsomen was quickly deemed to be of some importance, gaining intense and unwavering respect from its clanmates. it was expected it'd grow to be a confident, leader-material like cat, but it seemed martyrsomen has strayed into a different path. it's become colder and distant, usually not speaking at all. when it has to, it's snappy, and quick to assume things. still, it seems like martyrsomen has quite the ego, usually referring to itself as chosen.

regarding its family, martyrsomen does highly respect both sleepyheather and tumblingstar. when it comes to savantpaw, though, it acts like its little brother almost doesn't exist! its exact opinion on savantpaw isn't known, as it doesn't bother to speak about her, but it overall seems there is some level of dislike.  savant: savantpaw is a quiet, shy, and dismissive snakingclan apprentice. born to an unwanted and unexpected litter (unexpected in a sense of they were caused by retained sperm (google it) from tumble & sleepys first litter) to tumblingstar and sleepyheather. it didn't take long for the eyes from their clanmates and general tone they were spoken to in for him to discover this truth. still, tumblingstar and sleepyheather took care of her and loved her just as they had loved martyrsomen. savantpaw had some difficulty in their younger years not just from their clanmmates, but also because of the fact his body is, generally, deformed. shorted than usual legs, a wonky back-- they went through a lot of physical training and therapy. nowadays, they're trained under his father, tumblingstar. savantpaw tries to do good and do their best, but they know that they are still just a shadow to martyrsomen. 

[trashformha]

Since this episode will inevitably stir up bad todofam discourse and I'm a clown who hopes to convince ppl to look at Touya's situation more critically let's look into it, shall we?

First off: Endeavor married Rei for her quirk not out of love.He had children with her because he wanted a successor and not children. This in itself already established that Endeavor is not going to be a good dad.

I mean sure in the first few years he wasn't abusive and things seemed alright. Rei was ok with the situation, Fuyumi was happy and Touya seemed really excited to train with his father but then Touya's quirk started hurting him.

Of course the most reasonable approach here was stop training him. This was not the problem. The problem was that Endeavor neglected him.

There is a reason we are shown this specific scene. Endeavor has a day off and instead of spending it with his family he is heading out. He didn't need to train with him but he could have at least tried to convinced him to do smth else together.

The reason Touya liked training was because he could spend time with his father, so the moment Enji stopped training him he also stopped spending time with his son.

So even if Touya's quirk wasn't harming him think about it: Touya might have surpassed his father but could he really surpass All Might? What would happen if he didn't manage to surpass him? Would Endeavor just start avoiding him? Would he really deal with the situation in a healthy/good way? How would Touya feel about his inability to surpass All Might after his father spend his whole life intoxicating Touya into this role? At the end of the day Enji would have doomed this family one way or another.

Back to the topic at hand. Touya could not be trained. As a result Endeavor had Natsuo and Shoto. This is an even WORSE slap to the face towards Touya. Because Touya might be a child but he is not stupid. His father stops spending time with him and now he has 2 new siblings? Even though their father doesn't bother to spend his free time with the 2 children he already has? Touya KNOWS he's being repalced. And for a child that's still so young and developing this gotta leave psychological scars. What Enji did was cruel towards Touya and it's why he ends up lashing out at Shoto.

Another problem was that Endeavor's attempts at stopping Touya from hurting himself were half-assed. He did not want to face the problem.

Every instance of him talking to touya is him saying to stop because he's hurting himself and to find smth else. He never bothered to sit down and talk through this issue with Touya because then he'd have to admit to himself how awful his behavior has been so far. How he spend years avoiding Touya and didn't spend a single second of his time with Natsuo and Fuyumi either. Natsuo literally describes Endeavor as a stranger despite having lived with the man in a house his whole life.

Eventually everything escalated when Touya makes one last plea to his father to watch him at Sekoto Peak and the later never arrived.

Endeavor was probably never physically violent to Touya in the way he was to Rei and Shoto but that doesn't change the fact that his treatment of Touya was cruel and that he had never been a good father towards him in any way.Touya wasn't born unhinged and evil and his accident at Sekoto Peak is a direct result of Endeavor's actions.

[reve-writes]

—you bury me; leon kennedy.

ʚ leon kennedy x reader | resident evil | 1,1k words. ʚ leon and reader finishes a mission. | can be read as a continuation of rotten work. ʚ injuries; zombies and stuff; fluff (no one dies dw). ʚ a/n more of my attempt to write slightly flirty banters between reader and leon. i learned the phrase "you bury me" aka "ya'aburnee" and my life has never been the same.

There are times when you think Leon is invincible, like he has come alive straight out of the pages of a comic book. He barrels through the undead like a machine—all tough exterior and deadly shooting accuracy that has your jaw dropping with awe.

And then, there are times when you are reminded he isn't. He is no untouchable otherworldly alien born with diamond-hard skin and superhuman strength. He's just flesh and bone knitted together and he bleeds. Despite his might, he's just one bad day away from an infection just as everyone else.

“Fuck,” he curses, face all red and chest heaving. “Goddamnit. Fuck.”

Your hands are trembling as you reload your magazine. The scene replays over and over in your mind: rotten jaw unhinging so close to his neck, teeth within biting distance and you think your entire world is coming to a halt.

Leon swivels out of the way just in time.

You're not a religious person, but for that one split second he avoids the death sentence, you think you should sing praises and grateful prayers.

“Are you okay?” You ask over guns blazing. Your magazine finally clicks in and you start opening fire to the growing hoard of zombies around you.

“Never been better,” he replies through gritted teeth. It was a dumb question to ask. You know he's not faring well—he is limping across the field, left foot practically being dragged behind him. He uses one hand to shoot, the other has an open gash through his short-fingered glove down his palm. His sweat-slicked forehead is also red with blood from a cut just over his eyebrow.

“Lean on me,” you tell him, moving to hoop his left arm around your shoulder. He's not a small man—what with trained muscles over his bones and a figure that slightly towers over you. “Let me help you, Leon.”

He tries to shake himself off of you. “Just get to the extraction point.”

“We'll get there quicker if you would—”

“Just run!”

“And what? Leave you here to be their dinner?” You protest, forcefully pushing yourself under his arm. “No way. I haven't even gotten a taste.”

Leon—even with the miserable situation you are in—chuckles. “Really? Is this the right time?”

He relents and lets you hobble him along. The field stretches long—somewhere off of a rural village whose residents are now nothing more than grotesque-looking undead. You've made it two-thirds of the way.

Bullets fly left and right, both from you and Leon. “Shut up, Leon. Walk faster.”

“Told you to run, didn't I?”

Your breathing is laboured from the Sisyphean effort. “Out of the question. I can't have your death on my conscience.”

“Not dying that easily, don't worry.”

He better not.

The helicopter engine roars in your ears as you step closer, dusty air stinging your eyes. You hear gunshots from your rescuer, covering you from nearby zombies. Your whole body is burning when you're finally hauled into the chopper with Leon. You finally let your muscles loosen, tension melting away as the engine roars to life under you.

The rest occurs in quick motion blurs. The usual mission reports and check-ups and then you're walking out the door with a patched-up, healthier-looking Leon by your side.

“Shouldn't they keep you on bedrest?” You ask. “Can't have anything happen to their golden boy.”

“They tried to.” He shrugs. “I'm fine, though.”

You stare at him, disbelief apparent in your wide-eyed expression. “Fine? How are you fine?”

You gesture to the walking stick he tucks under his arm and his splined foot. He waves a hand dismissively. “I've had worse.”

“You were so close to getting bit.”

The words echo into a drawn-out silence as the meaning truly sinks into him. It is strange, the numbness he has developed to the thought of dying. Constant exposure to mortal peril has desensitised him, he supposes.

“I watched it almost happen and for a terrible moment I thought that you were going turn into... into—”

“I didn't.”

He's right. You find comfort in knowing that he is still standing, that he's not going down so easily, but even Leon Kennedy is merely human.

“You know, if things ever go to shit, I hope I... go before you do.”

He's not following. Not exactly. “How come?”

“Don't worry about it.” You don't elaborate, but you know you mean it. A world without Leon Kennedy sounds like a world you don't want to be a part of. As much as he makes you want to tear your hair out, he's the only person who understands and shares your burdens.

He hums thoughtfully, frowning, but ends up chalking it up to your usual rambling. “Okay, then. I'll catch you later.”

He starts walking to the car they've provided for him—chauffeur and all. Must be nice to be the golden boy. Before he has even walked three steps away, you grab his wrist with a slight tug and he halts.

“Go home,” you request. “You better not go and get wasted in some bar. Rest, Leon. You deserve it.”

“I wasn't going to.”

The look in his eyes says that he is most definitely going to drink his sorrows away.

“You're so unbelievably stubborn.”

“Look who's talking.” He holds up his wrist that you're still grabbing, wriggling it out of your grasp to press his palm on yours, fingers interlocking. “Also, if you wanted to hold hands, you could've just asked.”

“You—”

“I seem to also recall you saying something along the lines of wanting to have a taste—”

“Leon,” you interrupt immediately, not wanting to drag out the embarrassment that he's oh-so-generously giving you. “I mean it. Get some rest.”

“What are you? My parent?”

You narrow your eyes at him. “You need to recover well. The world needs saving and I need my mission partner.”

His hand is still warm over on yours, now hanging low by your side and the two of you look almost normal. Just two people holding hands waiting for their ride.

“You're cute when you worry about me.”

That has an involuntary smile to bloom on your face as you've used the same line on him before.

“Only when I worry?”

“And on other occasions.” This has you dizzy.

“Well.” He drops your hand and it twitches, already missing the spaces between his fingers. “I better get going.”

He gestures at the impatient-looking driver who has been sitting there the entire time. You shake your head at him. “Poor guy.”

“I'll call.” He gets into the passenger seat. You're standing just a step away from the rolled-down window.

“I might pick up.”

Before he has a chance to retort, you gesture the driver to go ahead and the car speeds off at once, leaving you to spend the rest of the day constantly checking if your phone has rung.

[ ]

[giac222]

I’m an Ashley Graves lover and defender till the end 🤞🏻🩷.

This is going to be a deep dive and a pretty long post, just a heads up! There’s a point in the beginning where I briefly discuss something else regarding TCOAAL because I felt that it ties in, but this post will mostly be focusing on Ashley + her experiences, and a little about how Andrew isn’t actually a doormat, not even close. 😶

Let’s get into it:

I adore her and I have the biggest soft spot for her, my empathy for her is through the damn roof. She’s a product of her environment, she wasn’t born the way she is (Andrew wasn’t either). It’s frustrating to see people claim she was born evil. I’d go as far to argue that she isn’t completely evil either. Her soul is the color of pitch black according to the demon in the game. But why is that? What caused it? The reason for this is because of how she’s been treated by everyone else around her throughout her whole life. It’s not like she asked or wanted to become a “tar soul”. Her environment made her sour, it made her hate people.. including herself.

After Ashley sacrifices the warden to the demon, when she’s thinking to herself, a text box comes up that says “You decide not to linger on the fact that your soul is apparently a vicious, pitch-black mess.” and after that we see another one that says “Guess you already knew that”.

I was thinking to myself, why the hell am I so attached to this character? Lmao. Why do I have such a huge soft spot for her? Then when I was thinking about it I realized it’s because I relate to some of what she’s been through. Especially her terribly low self-esteem that causes her to feel unlovable, ooo that hit home for me. For quite some time I dealt with that, and let me tell you, it truly is an awful feeling. It can make you very mean and bitter. It quite literally eats away at you. I’m 22 now and I’m able to reflect on those past experiences, that’s when I realized how bad it really was. When it comes to someone having poor self-esteem and not much self worth, it stems from somewhere. People don’t just randomly start hating themselves, there’s something that causes it to happen. It could be from a variety of things such as trauma, childhood experiences, comparison to others, and discrimination.

It truly sucks to see how many people online that seem to hate her (not on Tumblr, but almost everywhere else). Her backstory breaks my heart, it’s tragic, and it seems that people completely ignore what she’s gone through and what she STILL goes through.

I also hate that the game has kind of, in a way, become a meme due to the controversy. This game delves into very serious and depressing topics, so for losers online with 0 media literacy to water it down to “the incest game” is sooo agitating. This is just a personal opinion of mine, but I also feel as though the controversy made people play the game for the wrong reasons. Including a lot of “edgy” teenagers 😬. I don’t think I need to elaborate on that, I’ve touched on it before in a different post. I mean the amount of loud and wrong takes I’ve seen about the game… All I can do is shake my head 💀.

So, I’ll share my (maybe?) controversial opinion that some of the “fanbase” is part of the problem too, not just the people who hate the game that don’t even know what’s going on. I’ve talked about this before so I’ll keep it brief, but I feel it fits in the post so I’m including it. But on the game’s subreddit there are people who will reduce the game itself to fap material, and it doesn’t make sense to me because there’s quite literally nothing overly sexual or explicit in the game?? Even in the questionable route vision we don’t see anything explicit, we just know what happens. I’m like have y’all forgotten that this is a PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR game?? How some of these people managed to reduce Nemlei’s work that she clearly put a lot of thought and effort into that covers dark topics and serious issues to fap material is beyond me…. What a way… just what a way. Let’s hope they get weeded out of the fandom before ch. 3 drops 🙏🏻.

Just to clarify so no one gets confused, I’m NOT referring to people who create NSFW art/posts of the game, like duh you guys know I love Ashley and Andrew 🤭🤭. I know what I’m about! 😂. Seriously though, I’m referring to people in the Reddit community who will quite literally just take people’s NSFW art (any fan art in general really) and upload it there without the artist’s consent (edit: I think if they give credit it’s not a big deal, and some artists may not care regardless. Some probably care, some don’t). It just seems like the NSFW stuff is the only thing a lot of them care about, and the shit they say is so unhinged at times I’m like???? Seek help. (Obviously it isn’t all of the members, but it’s definitely a lot speaking from my personal experience there before I left). In a way, I can’t blame outsiders for side eyeing the fanbase if that’s their first impression.

Between the amount of haters TCOAAL has and some of the questionable “fans”…. Yeah, we’re in the trenches 😂. That’s part of the reason why I left the server and now only participate in the Tumblr community. Not even trying to gate-keep or sound like an asshole, but a lot of the Reddit community doesn’t fit the game. I said what I said! As I’ve said before in a previous post, most of the trash takes I’ve seen on the game stem from there, and YouTube too. 😬

TCOAAL is a game that requires you to think and dig deeper, that’s why I love it. It touches on very heavy topics. Tbh it’s not something you can simply take at face value, that just defeats the purpose.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about Ashley! 🩷✨

When you pay attention to all the details and look deeper into Ashley’s character, you see that Ashley has quite literally been treated like shit her entire life by EVERYONE around her except for Andrew. That’s why it’s so easy for her to treat people as disposable, because that’s how SHE was treated her entire life 💔.

This scene specifically proves that:

Andrew really is everything to her. That boy is her sun, her moon, and all of her stars. 🥲💚. We see that he’s her main, and basically only source of happiness. He’s the only thing/person she cares about. I find it genuinely heartbreaking that he has been the only person Ashley could depend on throughout her life. Due to this, it makes sense as to why Ashley goes to such extreme measures to keep him around. if she lost him, she’d have no one else. So of course she’s scared that he’ll leave her. Even though we know he’ll stick by her side no matter what, Ashley does not. She’s quite literally the love of his life but she doesn’t know that. 😩

Then again, Andrew doesn’t show it, so of course she doesn’t get it. He’s never said I love you back to her, the closest we get to that is when he says “I like you… but you’re so exhausting” after their huge fight. If you look closely at his face in that scene, you’ll see gray blush lines on his cheek. Ashley has been abandoned by everyone except for Andrew, she needs validation and reassurance from him to know that he’s there to stay. He doesn’t really give that to her though, but he needs to STAT! As I said, we know he’s in it for the long haul, but Ashley does not.

You see, Ashley operates under the idea that Andrew doesn’t actually care about her. She believes that he couldn’t love her of his own will and that she has to manipulate in order for him to stay. I hold the opinion that she doesn’t do those things because she necessarily wants to, she does it because she feels like she has to in order to keep him around. She manipulates, but she isn’t very good at it 🫣.

Thinking about their huge fight in apartment 302 after Andrew killed that lady (she definitely did not attack him first, but we’ll get into that in a minute). When Andrew’s choking Ashley she brings up the fact that she’s the only one who can make his nightmares go away, but guess what we see in ch. 2? Before going to snoop on the cultist, if you go back to their motel room and you interact with the bed. A text box pops up that says “oh yeah, you tooootally have nightmares as often as you claim.”.. So, we now know that Andrew doesn’t actually have that many nightmares, he uses it as an excuse because he wants to sleep next to Ashley and be close to her.

Back to the apartment 302 incident, when Ashley goes back to that apartment after completing the ritual, she sees that Andrew killed the lady that lived there, he claims she attempted to attack him with the nail gun, but the nail gun was in the same damn spot! People should’ve started side eyeing him at that point in the game. I know I did LOL, “doormat extraordinaire” my ass 😂. Btw, there are people who genuinely believe he tried to sleep with the lady in 302, but she wouldn’t do it so he killed her….. 🤦🏻‍♀️. I wish I was joking.

Anyway, in Andrew’s dream when we go over the justified deaths, with the lady in 302, the first reason he mentions is “Ashley would have wanted to kill this one anyway” then he brings up no witnesses. To me, the fact that the first reason he mentions is Ashley wanting to kill her anyway showed that he killed her for Ashley more than anything. I mean, It did make Ashley happy that she died. He didn’t say anything about getting attacked, although it was obvious that was a lie already lmao. I believe that’s why he got so frustrated, which led to him getting pissed off after Ashley started accusing him of trying to sleep with that woman. Especially because once she started, it escalated quickly and she just kept going.. He was like “girl??? I literally killed this woman for YOU.” I could be wrong, but that was my interpretation on the situation.

Another interesting thing I thought about was how during their argument, Andrew tells Ashley to butt out of his love life, and that she always makes up some bullshit crisis for him to leave/stay when he’s out or about to leave to go meet up with someone. But in the flashback with Julia during his dream, while she’s raising genuine concern and mentions that it could be good for Ashley to learn some independence for her own sake. Also for Andrew to stop cutting things short on her, for the sake of their relationship, and so they can spend more time together. Andrew responds to that with “If your sister needed something, wouldn’t you go?” 👀. Andrew likes Ashley being dependent on him, he doesn’t want her to become independent. During their heated argument he admits to knowing her so called crisis she has before he leaves is “bullshit”. Yet he still chooses to leave to be with her anyway. Because again, Ashley’s the love of his life, people can deny it all they want but the proof is right there lmao. Not to mention he looked so sad hugging Julia until he asked her to tie her hair up… I see right through you Andrew 😂.

Also, him bringing up Nina’s death (Julia’s best friend) and lying to Julia’s face about it like he had no part in it, that was actually scary not going to lie 🫢. Plus him lying about Nina’s death affecting Ashley…like you know damn well. After their huge fight, Ashley said she was glad that Nina choked, which Andrew responded with “I know you are”.

That’s the thing about Andrew, he’s very good at lying and we see multiple examples of this in the game. When they were at their parents house Ashley decided to stay quiet because she couldn’t keep up with Andrew’s lies. In a different post of mine I talked about how “Andy” was a facade, but Ashley doesn’t understand that yet. She thinks he’s changing for the worst, but in reality he’s always been that way. His true colors are just now finally coming out.

Andrew and Ashley both had a shitty upbringing. I mean Mrs.Graves made Andrew take care of Ashley when he was a child, and I remember in a flashback he asked Ashley if she wanted to go with him because their mom gave him money for groceries, like ma’am why are you making your child go out to buy groceries??? Also, at the end of the day, she sold them both to organ harvesters. However, Andrew was treated somewhat better than Ashley during their childhood. We see this through the plushies in the puzzle before the questionable route vision, if you set Ashley’s plushie down at the table she immediately falls off. At their parents new home during dinner, Ashley sat on a mini ladder while everyone else had a chair, and simply the fact that Mrs.Graves gave Andrew their new house address, but didn’t give it to Ashley. They always shut Ashley out, they never cared about her nor did they try.

Now, let’s talk about one of, in my opinion, the saddest parts of the game. The flashback of Leyley’s birthday 🥲.

We see that neither her parents nor her friends cared about her birthday, they didn’t even try. She looked so sad talking about her friends here 😭. The fact that she brought up how her friends are always busy when she asks them for something shows that this is a recurring thing, her friends suck. I am in tearsss. I’m sick rn, she deserves everything and more. Andrew attempted to make her birthday special for her at least 🥺.

Also, I know Julia seems sweet from what we’ve seen, but I’m suspicious of her tbh 👀. We know Ashley hung out around her and Nina. I remember seeing one of the screenshots from a progress report where Andrew asks them if they could invite Ashley to sit with them sometime at lunch, so I’m assuming that’s how their “friendship” started.

Nina had a crush on Andrew, and Julia ended up dating him later on. I think it’s possible they only hung out with her just to get closer to Andrew. Julia wasn’t a very good friend to Ashley it seems, so it makes sense that she wouldn’t be thrilled about them dating. Especially because Andrew is the most important, well, really the only important person to her.

Something else to think about when it comes to people in Ashley’s life outside of Andrew: After Andrew killed the warden to protect Ashley and before they left their neighbors apartment, Ashley tells Andrew “I don’t give a rat’s ass about mom or dad. Or any of my so-called friends anymore.” and “Not one of them felt it necessary to answer my calls…”. When she says this she looks very upset. So, even in present time, Ashley still gets treated like shit by everyone around her except for Andrew, this has been an ongoing thing since her childhood.

Next up is this scene with Mrs.Graves while setting up the ritual:

This was after Ashley says “Lookie ma! I drew a circle!”. Mrs.Graves immediately starts putting her down. Ashley’s response to what her mom said shows me that this is something that commonly happened. I’m sure there were many times in Ashley’s life where she’d attempt to impress her mom and receive praise, but would immediately get shut down by her instead. The more I think about how terribly Ashley was really treated, the more sad I get about it, what the fuck 😭.

Ok, last thing to dissect. I wanted to talk about this comment from a YouTube video that came up under the “all” section on there. Beware, it might make you lose braincells. 💀

“Ashley is heavily sexualized” let me stop you right there ✋🏻 lmao. No she is not. At least to me she isn’t, I never got the impression that the game sexualized her. A lot of male players sexualize her (because of course they do 🙄), but the game? I disagree. You could say Ashley views herself as a sex object, but that doesn’t mean she’s sexualized by the game. She views herself that way because of her low self-esteem and the fact that she doesn’t believe someone could genuinely love her. Not to mention her internalized misogyny. Source? I’m speaking from experience. Having terribly low self-esteem really does drive you to dark places. It can lead to you basing your self-worth on people finding you sexually attractive or just attractive in general, like your self worth is based on your looks alone. That’s how you get validation even if it’s from a not so good place. It wears off pretty fast though, and it leaves a poor after taste. It’s only a temporary “good” feeling. If you don’t like yourself, no amount of attention will be ever good enough for you or truly make you feel better.

“Goth-esque fetish ware”, first of all it’s “wear”, and the “fetish wear” in question is just shorts, a black shirt, and a choker 💀. I cannot lmfao. Does that mean Andrew has “goth-esque fetish wear” too? Bc him and Ashley literally dress the same 😂. Not that this matters, but Ashley and Andrew are more emo to me lmao.

“She’s definitely a manipulative psychopath”… opinion immediately discarded because of this part of the comment alone.

“Her heavily sexualized existence”…. Don’t piss me off 🙄 like??? I can’t believe they said that. People with a brain larger than the size of an atom know that Ashley’s entire existence isn’t sexualized, I’d argue that it’s quite literally the opposite. It’s almost like they want Ashley to be this seductive sex kitten, but she just isn’t that. They project that onto her. I feel like some people think that Ashley simply existing with a bigger bust means she’s automatically sexualized, some men feel this way about women with bigger busts in real life too, so them doing it to a fictional character doesn’t shock me. Worms for brains I swear.

The comment Ashley makes about her “big fat tits” in the motel room during her mini argument with Andrew was literally so unserious. There’s the scene where Andrew was lying on the couch in their parents house when Ashley wakes him up out of his dream, and we see him looking at her boobs from his POV. However, that was literally so mild, you hardly even saw anything lmfao. I feel like Nemlei added that in to show that Andrew’s sexually attracted to her, plus it was a little before the scene where Ashley playfully bites him, and (in my opinion) where they almost fully crossed the line (because of Andrew mind you) before their mom came in. We all saw that pillow placement 😂. There are other signs of him being attracted to her before that as well, like when we see him push the thought of hugging her to the back of his mind “where it may fester with all the thoughts he wish he never had” + that scene in the kitchen where he was sort of touching her butt and had his fingers through her belt loop, but when their mom came in he jerked away and looked as if he got caught.

People will claim that Ashley is the only one that’s incestuous and that she “forced” it onto Andrew, but in ch. 2, we see that Andrew is arguably more incestuous than she is. Ashley loves Andrew to death, but she isn’t exactly horny for him the same way he’s horny for her. Think about their reactions to the questionable route vision. Ashley was pretty chill about it, while Andrew was beat red and embarrassed because his repressed inner thoughts just got exposed. The demon clocked his tea 😂.

I’ve spoken about this before so I’ll keep it brief, when it comes to sex Ashley doesn’t care much about it and views it as transactional, as something she can use for personal gain. As I kind of said already, to me, her viewing herself as a sex object and having that view on sex in general ties into the fact that she has internalized misogyny and her personal belief that she’s unlovable. So, not only does she view herself as a sex object, but you could say that she also views other women as sex objects too.

This is my personal opinion which I’ve shared before, but when her and Andrew fully cross the line (because they’re definitely going to) and he finally shows her that he loves her as well, I think her views on sex may change a bit. That she’ll start seeing it as something out of love that they can both enjoy. As something they can experience together, instead of her ignoring her own desires and being his personal sex object to use to attempt to keep him around.

Do I think that Ashley isn’t horny for him at all? Tbh no. I mean she literally says she assumed it would happen between them eventually anyway, so she’s definitely thought about it before. However, it’s nowhere near Andrew’s level lmao. We know Ashley is a virgin and honestly, I think Andrew is the only one she’d happily lose it to. If she were to sleep with anyone else, I doubt she’d enjoy it and would only use it as personal gain for something. As of right now, she views sex as a way of keeping Andrew around, however, I feel this is because of the fact that she doesn’t actually think he loves her and will stay with her on his own. She loves Andrew and wants to be with him, she wants him to reciprocate her love. As I like to say, Andrew’s her boo 😂, that girl doesn’t want anyone else.

Alright, let’s finish dissecting that goofy YouTube comment.

“practically puts the usually male players protective instincts into overdrive.” I don’t know wtf this means lmao, but it made me cringe. Some men need to be banned from speaking on Ashley until we figure out what’s going on 😂. Bc every time they speak on her I lose braincells. “Protective instincts” yet they quite literally don’t understand anything about her character or her struggles 💀. Maybe sit this one out lmao.

Not to sound like a broken record, but a big part of Ashley’s character is that she has very low self-worth and that she doesn’t believe people, more specifically Andrew, could actually love her (💔). I mean think about how she’s been treated for her whole life, it makes sense as to why she developed those feelings about herself and others. Her mindset is “well people never cared about me, so why would I care about them?”. Having people regularly treat you like shit takes a toll on your self-esteem and impacts your world view. Especially if it happens in your childhood.

Ashley quite literally loves Andrew more than she loves herself. I want better for her :’( and she deserves better too. I don’t care about the Ashley haters opinions. There are people who believe that she’s faking her low self-esteem in order to manipulate Andrew….. 🤦🏻‍♀️. Have you even paid attention to anything in the game?? That’s one of the biggest things about her character like hello?

I should have added this in earlier oops, but I’m adding it in now. After her and Andrew first talk to the lady in 302 and they leave her apartment, Ashley asks why the lady got special treatment but they didn’t, and why she didn’t get any food. Andrew responds with “maybe you just aren’t pretty enough”, he wasn’t being serious, but she took it that way. It didn’t help that he said “I mean… wasn’t she?” After Ashley asked if he thought she was pretty. That’s why Ashley wanted to shoot her after the ritual. You can see Ashley looks upset when she asks “do you really think I’m not pretty enough?”. Then gets angry and says “So ugly am I, that I shouldn’t even be fed?”. This is her insecurity and low self-esteem kicking in on full display.

This is a similar situation to what happened when her and Andrew were looking for something to lock Nina in the crate with at the warehouse. She asked him what he thought about Nina and if he found her pretty. He said “she’s fine… I guess”, which made Ashley unhappy. Even though Andrew wasn’t into her, like at all. Ashley has been dealing with insecurity and low self-esteem ever since she was a little girl 😭. I’m so upset for her like you guys have no idea.

After Ashley traps Nina in the crate, there’s a point where she’s crying and says “It’s not fair!! Why does everyone like her better??” “I’m loud and weird and annoying and no one likes me at all!!!”. 😭. My heart is breaking as we speak. It’s hard for me to believe she said all of that just to manipulate Andrew in that scene. I know in ch. 3 we will be delving more into their childhood, and I have a theory that Ashley was also bullied in school. I mean to refer to herself as loud, weird, annoying, and to say that no one likes her at all. That absolutely came from somewhere, and I don’t think it was just from Mrs.Graves.

So, to see people with the emotional depth of a raindrop get online and say that she’s solely the problem, that Andrew needs to get rid of her, and that she’s simply just evil… is, to put it lightly, very annoying. I’m gonna say something, you know I love both Ashley and Andrew, but we need to be honest! People give Andrew too much of a pass. I mean they literally excuse all of the terrible things he’s done and blame Ashley for “making” him do it. They give him a pass for everything, but have 0 empathy for Ashley despite everything going wrong in her life since she was born. They completely ignore that she’s a product of her environment. When it comes down to it, what good experiences in life has she really had?

Also, Andrew is more violent than Ashley is. I think that’s self explanatory. People seem to forget that she quite literally just wants to live a peaceful life with Andrew. During the “quarantine” while they were still in their old apartment, she says “Aside from the starving, it’s not so bad here.” and “Aside from starving, I like it here”. Ashley doesn’t want to live a life of violence and chaos, and we see this in the room before unlocking the door that leads us to the two burial route choices. If you place the knife down (violence) nothing happens, but when you place the flower down (love) - (my bad guys originally I put heart instead of flower, I changed it!) - the door becomes unlocked. She also gets upset when Andrew tells her that they can’t live at their parents new house, she literally doesn’t want to be on the run and just wants stability.

On Pinterest, I see girls talk about how much they hate Ashley in the comment sections. They literally just do this because they think Andrew’s hot 😂. Especially when they call her a bitch, like grow up 🙄. I’ve also seen people refer to her as a “pick me”?? Literally how? Immature teens need to be banned from playing this game LOL. It’s giving those male celebrity fandoms that dig to find anything “problematic” on a girl said male celebrity is dating just because they’re pissed it isn’t them, they don’t actually care if she’s problematic or not.

It’s literally just misogyny, they do this a lot to women in media. Breaking Bad is the biggest example of this, the people that act like Skyler White is worse than Walter are delusional as hell. Sorry, but If you’re misogynistic, lack empathy and/or emotional depth, TCOAAL isn’t for you 🤷🏻‍♀️. Period. That’s why the game deserves a better fanbase than the one it has outside of Tumblr. It deserves better in general.

They don’t care to look into why Ashley is the way she is. If it wasn’t obvious already, Andrew brings out Ashley’s worst behavior and blames her for making him do bad things. In his mind he can’t be guilty, so he needs something on the outside to blame (Ashley). Mrs.Graves contributes to this btw, during the setup of the ritual before they sacrificed her and Mr.Graves she was pretty much saying “I know you don’t want to do this, I know she’s making you do it!” 🤦🏻‍♀️. She sounds like one of those boy moms that go “my son didn’t do shit!” 😂.

The worst are the people who reduce Ashley to fap material and a “hot crazy girl they can fix or make worse” 🤪, and basically fetishize her (unchecked) mental health issues that contribute to how she acts. Again, she’s had crippling insecurities and low self-esteem since she was a kid, Ashley has had just about 0 good life experiences outside of the ones with Andrew. So it is incredibly frustrating to see. I’m like I hate y’all I really do, read the damn room 🙄. They need to stop projecting their weirdo shit onto her.

People who fetishize mental illness and talk about how they want to “date a crazy bitch” are so gross. If/when they actually date someone with said mental health issues, when things get bad and they don’t fit the fantasy anymore, they’ll get disgusted and drop the person struggling with mental issues like trash. Anytime I see a guy say “crazy girls with mental issues are better in bed!”…. I’m like I know what type of man you are 🫥…. Perish 🗣️.

Ashley and Andrew both have unchecked mental illness, we know this. It’s quite literally not their fault. However, I personally don’t feel comfortable diagnosing them. Every time I see someone online say they were a born a psychopath, sociopath, etc. I lose brain cells. Mind you, I’m literally majoring in psychology and I still don’t feel comfortable diagnosing them.

To wrap things up because I know this post is LONG! I empathize with both Andrew and Ashley because they’ve both been dealt a bad hand in life. Their parents failed them in every way, and the society they live in is totally dystopian. However, when it comes to Ashley specifically? I have all the empathy for her in the world, especially because I understand some of the things she’s dealt with and how painful it really is. Digging deeper into her character shows you that she has quite literally been through hell and back. You can say she’s a victim turned villain, but honestly? I don’t really even consider her a villain, maybe that’s controversial to say but 🤷🏻‍♀️, I don’t think she’s irredeemable either. She’s someone who was hurt very badly, her wounds run deep, and she never really got to heal from any of it.

I just want her and Andrew to have a happy ending, it would be nice for them to experience genuine happiness for once. I would also like to see Ashley gain some self love in ch. 3, maybe Andrew will be able to help her with that in a way as their relationship improves.

Honestly, people who act like the questionable burial route is the “bad” ending are in denial so bad. Nemlei has said that “Burial” and “Decay” aren’t an indicator of a “good” or “bad” ending though. There will also be multiple outcomes to discover. I’m both excited, and scared lol.

I love Ashley Graves so much as a character, she’s so interesting and complex. I don’t play about her 😂. When it comes to defending her I’m on the frontlines lmao. The misogyny/hate when it comes to her is crazyyy. I’ll be the odd one out I don’t care, she’s my girlie 💕. It’s always refreshing to see other people who adore her and actually understand her as a character.

~~~~~~~~

Thank you so much for reading ❤️. I think this is my longest post yet 😳.

Also, a big thank you to everyone for all of the notes on my TCOAAL posts! I truly appreciate it. I’m so glad other people adore this game just as much as I do. :)

Unfortunately I’m not able to follow people back since this is a side blog. :/, but I do really appreciate everyone that follows me, I hope you like what I post. 💜

I’m currently working on creating an ooak doll of Ashley! 🤭💕. I’m SO excited to finish it and post her!

I plan on making a post about the Decay route at some point, because I realized I haven’t discussed it much. Probably because that route makes me sad 😓. However, it’s still incredibly interesting and I’m both excited and nervous to see where it goes.

[misrepresentedmorallygrey]

PROPAGANDA

John

This fella is Fascinating. just trust me on this he deserves to be here

He tried so hard to do the right thing, he feels bad and says things would be better if he was never born. He thinks he should've just stayed acting like a monster and continued to act threatening.

(LONG PROPAGANDA INCOMING)

John. Milgram. Here's a short description of the fortunes and misfortunes of the guy. It gets worse before it gets better (probably).

While MILGRAM is a prison that judges a bunch of sympathetic killers, it doesn't consider him to be one – it didn't even exactly know he existed until too little too late, when it got its grabby hands on the brain of prisoner 009, who claimed to not know anything about any murder he'd have committed. Then, footage from his brain was extracted, as MILGRAM does, into a music video, and… that was MeMe. Ninth prisoner, Kayano Mikoto, was revealed to have DID, and what obviously who do you think actually Killed Someone?

Enter John. Well. Mikoto is half deeply unaware half subconsciously scared of his existence, so the MV painted him in a rather. Deeply disturbing way, bathing in bloody baths and all that (not a blood bath though! easy mistake). Adding to that him showing up in the first Voice Drama for five seconds to punch the "protagonist" and yell for a bit, and the result wasn't. Assuring. The fandom proceeded to treat him like a cardboard cutout and variously dunk on MILGRAM for having a cliché "evil" character w/ DID despite the overall well handling of complex characters.

Two years time skip: second season ending. We get to prisoner 009 again. The protagonist Finally gets to chat with John: and voila, he's admitting to the crime, he's apparently "killed a bunch of people because they annoyed him", which means, as he's saying, Mikoto has nothing to do with the crime at all! And he, as per the judging system, should be forgiven, right! Well, he's so full of shit. The music video immediately reveals how protective he feels of Mikoto (and well, he definitely doesn't rebuke That one), that the events of murder were somehow tied in to Mikoto's job at a black company, his continuous overworking and him being mentally on the brink of breaking; that any committed violence was For The Sake of Mikoto and that John feels deeply horrible for messing up his life in any way. By making himself into the image of a "monster" he's trying to make Mikoto look good in comparison and be forgiven and all. He also mentioned if Mikoto is voted innocent he's gonna try to go dormant since he's The Issue, right, and the audience/protagonist hates him, Right, and Mikoto Also Hates him, Right?

I'm underselling the sheer devotion of this guy tbh.

Yeah, the fandom results were kinda mixed on that one. Lots of people immediately started to love him dearly and kinda forgot any people were maimed or killed with baseball bats; lots also got sold on him "messing up Mikoto's life" and actually voted Mikoto innocent Specifically because of John's promise to eventually "disappear". There's more of the babygirlifying kind in the English side of the fandom that I've seen, to be fair. And that's around where we are!

Dazai Osamu

He did bad things in the Mafia. He's trying to get better. He abused people but he also saved other people. Fans portraying him as an unforgivable abuser are WRONG. He perpetuated an abused cycle on Akutagawa thinking he was right to do that, because of trauma, before he could leave. But he left. He's still treating Akutagawa wrong because he's trying to be a better person but doesn't realize that it will not erase what he did and that he can't just ignore the past. Fans portraying him as a pure angel who didn't know what he was doing because he was sad are WRONG TOO. He abused Akutagawa. He was traumatized but it doesn't give him the right to traumatize innocent people. He's trying to be a better person but he can't keep ignoring Akutagawa. He needs to apologize. And even that won't erase what he did. Dazai is a complex character in a complex situation. He left the abuse cycle and tries to be a good person but did unforgivable things while he was still in this cycle and refuses to aknowledge them. He's not a monster but he's not innocent either.

Dazai used to be a mafia executive until his best friend (a former assassin who remained in the mafia but refused to kill) died. As the friend was dying he told him "I know you don't care about whether you're a good or bad person, so if it doesn't matter to you, be on the side that saves people." Despite that, I've seen countless people insisting that Dazai is a good person/trying his best to be a good person when he really only changed sides by joining a detective agency, while still continuing to do the same things he did while in the mafia (including but not limited to: harassing his coworkers for fun, manipulating people, killing people instead of just trying to incapacitate them, and even torturing an innocent man in one of the side stories). That being said, he's not evil either. Even when he does cruel things, it's not for the sake of being cruel (even when he harasses his coworkers he still has limits), it's just a means to an end. I think most of the confusion comes from a scene where he's talking to a young girl, another former mafia member, who asks if he thinks people can change and he assures her they can, but what the anime left out was that he was thinking about his former assassin friend during that discussion, not himself. The entire series is themed around gray morality, to the point where it's even reflected in the main protagonist and antagonist's designs (mainly white with a bit of black, and mainly black with a bit of white), so I feel like insisting that he's a good person now completely misses the point of the story.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Hi Eleanor, I have been following your amazing explanations of the UK politics (so good, thank you so much for them) but somewhere in the buffoonery I lost the thread and now I can't tell one evil vizier from another. They all look the same! I can only accurately distinguish Michael Fabricant (for obvious reasons).

All this to ask, how can I tell Liz Truss apart from Nadine Dorries or Rees-Mogg? I know the latter is a man, but I'm after the clown vibes. What is her clown wig, so to speak? Thanks so much!

Apologies this took so long, it's been a busy few weeks, but yes, happy to oblige! Here is:

Elanor's Guide to Liz Truss

Under a cut for length, and it only goes up to her appointment as PM, not everything that's come since. Key points: she u-turns on literally everything, and her one (1) personality trait is maths.

26 July 1975 Liz Truss is born in Oxford to parents she’d later describe as “to the left of Labour”, though is presumably not yet a source of colossal disappointment. She is a bland and underwhelming child whose crowning achievement from this time is that she goes to a comprehensive school.

She will later boast about this.

1996 Truss graduates from Merton College, Oxford with a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. Economics! What a useful thing for a future PM to hold.

While at university, she begins her first foray into a political career! She's president of the Oxford University Liberal Democrats - as a Lib Dem, she supports the legalisation of cannabis and, famously, the abolition of the monarchy. What sound principles to hold dearly and stand by. Good for her! Such integrity. It's good to have convictions. Hope the monarchy thing doesn't come back to bite her.

Slightly later in 1996 Truss produces the first performance of her signature move: U-Turn.

She joins the Tory Party. And starts working for Shell.

1998 Time to get elected! Truss stands in an election for Greenwich London Borough Council. Loses.

2000 Truss leaves Shell, and starts working for Cable & Wireless (the first competitor to BT).

She also gets married this year! There’s lovely. Her husband is even more bland and underwhelming than her, so presumably this made her feel special and important by comparison. Still, true love is heartening. Let's wish them a long and stable marriage.

2001 Hello naughty children, it's General Election time! Truss stands as a Tory in a Labour safe seat. Loses.

2002 Truss stands in an election for Greenwich London Borough Council again. Loses.

2004-2005 Concerned that she is incapable of winning anything, Tory MP Mark Field is appointed by the Tory Party as Truss’s mentor. Field and Truss are both married, but his allure as a sexually aggressive misogynist who grabs female protestors in chokeholds proves too much for Liz and her beige milquetoast husband, so they have an affair anyway.

It doesn't last long because Tories are very bad at hiding affairs, but Liz's husband lacks the interest to kick her out. Instead she introduces him to her fun new kink of being a collared sub and he duly obeys. From this point onwards, she literally wears a day collar necklace at all times.

This fact possibly explains the penchant for u-turns and general lack of spine. Subs should not be PMs.

2005 Truss leaves Cable & Wireless. It is unclear if they notice her leaving.

5 May 2005 General Election! Truss stands in a marginal seat (that is, not a safe seat for any party), thus giving her the best chance of winning. Loses.

April 2006

With David Cameron as the new Tory leader (several years away from the 2015 pig-fucking scandal), a committee sets out to deliver his promise to transform the party. They create an “A list” of between 100 and 150 parliamentary candidates to prioritise in winnable seats. In a bid to make the Tory party look more diverse and less like a Dulux Shades of White catalogue, many are POC and more than half of these are women – and one of these is Liz Truss.

This is probably just as well. Currently, her glittering political career consists of four failed elections, zero principles and a grubby sex scandal. You can only get away with the latter two once you've been elected, after all.

4 May 2006 Truss stands in an election for Greenwich London Borough Council again, now with the backing of the party's top brass to campaign for her. Wins!

January 2008 Having lost her first four elections, Truss is promptly given Responsibility and becomes deputy director of Reform. Reform’s a think tank – a research institute that performs research and advocacy on public policy. With Reform, Truss produced several major reports, advocating for:

more rigorous academic standards in schools because she loves maths;

a greater focus on tackling serious and organised crime;

urgent action to deal with Britain's falling competitiveness.

October 2009 Liz Truss easily wins a vote of the Conservative Association to represent the party for South West Norfolk at the next General Election. Huzzah! Gosh, it's so easy to win elections when David Cameron gives them to you.

Drama though! Some members of the association are against this, because Truss failed to disclose her affair with Mark Field. This is very funny, because every Tory MP is an adulterer. Mind, Mark Field is proper gross, so it is an unusually terrible indication of personal taste.

They vote on this issue – 132 support Truss, versus 37 against. Success! Gosh, it's so easy to win elections when David Cameron gives them to you.

6 April 2010 General Election announced. A scheduled one! So exciting for the British public.

6 May 2010 Truss chooses not to seek re-election to Greenwich London Borough Council, because she’s an MP now and is above such petty concerns. She works hard, specifically for:

retention of an RAF base in her constituency;

transforming a chunk of A11 into a dual carriageway;

shouting down a proposal to sell off forests;

preventing a waste incinerator being built at King’s Lynn.

October 2011 Truss remembers that part of her degree is in Economics, which means she knows about money and maffs. She founds the Free Enterprise Group with the support of over 40 other Tory MPs. Gosh! She's so popular! Her goal is to challenge the idea that Britain's economic decline is inevitable, by trying to develop an entrepreneurial and meritocratic culture.

(Loosely translated this means she loves free markets and hates employment laws.)

4 September 2012

Truss becomes Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Education.

Now at this point, education is a huge thing for her. She wants to make maths compulsory for everyone in full-time education, rather than just to GCSE. She believes comprehensive schools encourage easy, low-value subjects to boost results (noting that comp pupils were six times as likely to take media studies as private school kids), whereas private schools never do anything to artificially boost results to please fee-paying parents.

To prove her point she goes on telly, gets asked a maths question by a news reader, barely manages to answer it, and then refuses to take any more maths questions.

13 September 2012 Truss’s Free Enterprise Group publishes a book. Hooray! Let's see what it has to say.

Here’s a quote: "Once they enter the workplace, the British are among the worst idlers in the world. We work among the lowest hours, we retire early and our productivity is poor."

Yuck. Gross. How unpopular.

Truss claims that that bit was written by Dominic Raab, later Deputy PM to Boris Johnson. Raab counter-claims that the authors take “collective responsibility” for everything in the book.

January 2013 Truss is named Road Safety Parliamentarian of the Month by road safety charity Brake, for campaigning for design improvements to road junctions in her constituency and presumably for Doing Good Looking when she crosses roads.

Truss also outlines plans to reform childcare in England, to widen the availability of childcare and increase staff pay and qualifications. Interestingly, charities and businesses really like these reforms – Labour and trade unions do not. I wonder why?

The least popular aspect of this is to allow each carer to be 'allowed more children'. This aspect is blocked by the bold and heroic Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.

February 2014 Truss leads a fact-finding mission to Shanghai to find out how they achieve the best maths results in the world for their children. She is certain it's probably something to do with comprehensive schools.

15 July 2014 Cabinet reshuffle! Truss appointed Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Unlike her predecessor, Truss declares that she fully believes in climate change! Huzzah! What a step up. Thank goodness we now have someone with principles who will stand by their convictions.

(She is mysteriously silent on her past employment with Shell.)

November 2014 Truss launches a 10-year strategy to try to reverse falling bee populations, including by reviving traditional meadows. Double huzzah! Thank goodness she loves bees.

July 2015 Truss approves the temporary lifting of an EU ban on two bee-toxic neonicotinoid pesticides, enabling their use on about 5% of England's oil seed rape crop to ward off the cabbage stem flea beetle. These pesticides were shown in 2012 to harm bees by damaging their ability to navigate home, and are a leading theorised cause of colony collapse disease. Fuck the bees I guess.

Truss also cuts taxpayer subsidies for solar panels on agricultural land. Fuck the environment I guess.

Classic Liz.

24 June 2016 HELLO NAUGHTY CHILDREN IT'S BREXIT TIME

And Liz Truss is pro-Remain:

“I don't want my daughters to grow up in a world where they need a visa or permit to work in Europe, or where they are hampered from growing a business because of extortionate call costs and barriers to trade. Every parent wants their children to grow up in a healthy environment with clean water, fresh air and thriving natural wonders. Being part of the EU helps protect these precious resources and spaces.”

A year later, she’ll say, “I believed there would be massive economic problems but those haven't come to pass and I've also seen the opportunities.”

She is mysteriously silent on what those opportunities actually are.

14 July 2016 Theresa May’s Prime Minister now, and Truss is appointed:

Secretary of State for Justice; and

Lord Chancellor.

She’s the first woman to hold either position, even though the Lord Chancellor office has existed for a thousand years. Gosh! So illustrious! So that must be a popular choice.

Minister of State for Justice Lord Faulks immediately resigns from the government in disgust at Truss’s justice role.

He doesn’t think Truss will have the clout to stand up to the PM on behalf of the judges, because she's a whimpering sub wearing her collar to work. Truss says Faulks didn’t contact her before going public with his criticism, and that she’s literally never met or spoken to him, and she's very hurt because he's very mean, and she's excellent at defending judges who rule against the government, you'll all see.

November 2016 Truss is criticised by former Attorney General Dominic Grieve and the Criminal Bar Association for being a bit shit at defending judges who ruled against the government.

Former Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer says (and I’m paraphrasing here) that she IS shit, that's true, but for balance let's all remember that her predecessors Chris Grayling and Michael Gove were ALSO shit.

He calls on Truss to be sacked. This call is ignored.

To establish that she is Good At Justice and make daddy call her a good girl, Truss announces a £1.3 billion investment programme in the prison service and the recruitment of 2,500 additional prison officers! Huzzah! This sounds good!

Unfortunately the Tory coalition government had already actually cut considerably more than that, so this is actually still a cut overall.

11 June 2017 Following the general election, Truss becomes Chief Secretary to the Treasury, a move widely seen as a demotion for being Shit At Justice (daddy did not think she was a good girl). Still, she has an economics degree (sort of)! And loves maths! What an ideal position. How does she get on?

Civil servants describe her tenure as “exhausting” because of her punishing work schedule and her obsession with posing maths questions to officials at random.

CRINGE ALERT: Truss really gets into Twitter and Instagram. Uh oh.

June 2018 Truss gives a speech about the importance of libertarianism and low taxes. Hope that doesn't come back to bite her.

2019 Truss declares that she could replace Theresa May as leader.

In her defence, anyone COULD replace Theresa May as leader. What a horrible woman. What an awful Prime Minister. God, at least it can't get any worse, right?

Right?

In the end, Liz doesn’t stand, however. Instead, she chooses to endorse Boris Johnson.

24 July 2019 She advises Johnson on economic policy during his leadership campaign because she has an Economics degree (sort of) and likes maths, but weirdly isn’t given a finance role once he becomes Prime Minister. How strange. Perhaps he does not know that she likes maths? Perhaps she was too subtle?

She’s instead promoted to Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade. That's okay though. You have to do sums to trade with money, she'll probably be good at that.

10 September 2019 Amber Rudd resigns as Minister for Women and Equalities. Truss gets that job on top of her own, because nothing says Women's Equality like piling extra jobs onto a woman. I hope this workload doesn't affect her job with Trade.

Days later, Truss “inadvertently” (her words) allows unlawful arms sales to Saudi Arabia, an accident any of us could make I'm sure. She apologises to a Commons committee. Opposition MPs reckon she should resign, what with having dramatically broken the law and all. Oddly, this does not happen. Does Boris Johnson not care about the law? :(

Still, I'm sure she's learned her lesson about being careful with arms exports to Saudi Arabia.

7 July 2020 Truss lifts a year-long ban on exporting arms and military equipment to Saudi Arabia. She says (I’m paraphrasing) “I just reckon it’ll probably be fine.”

August 2020

Truss holds meetings with the Institute of Economic Affairs. These meetings are later removed from the public record, re-categorised as "personal discussions". Which all seems nice and normal and not at all suspicious and also totally a thing we're all comfortable with Tory Trade Ministers with histories of exporting arms to Saudi Arabia doing.

September 2020 Truss settles a trade agreement between the UK and Japan. On the one hand, this is legit the first major trade deal signed by the UK after Brexit, so that’s a big deal! Yay! A triumph for maths!

On the other hand, most of it’s copied and pasted from the existing EU deal with Japan, which almost makes you wonder what was the fucking point.

In any case, Truss follows suit with Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. She is very good at keyboard shortcuts.

December 2020 Truss finds time among all her copying and pasting and sums to give a speech on equality policy, which is good, given that she's also an Equalities Minister. She reckons the UK focuses too heavily on "fashionable" race, sexuality, and gender issues. She reveals the government and civil service will no longer be receiving unconscious bias training. Thank goodness she fucking bothered.

15 September 2021 Cabinet reshuffle! Johnson promotes Truss to Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs after she's nice about his tie.

3 October 2021 Tory conference, and Truss harps on about identity politics and cancel culture and does some transphobic dog-whistling. I’m not passing on the quotes.

Truss supported gay marriage, and has never voted against LGBTQ+ rights in specific votes, but she HAS moved to limit trans rights. She’s against gender self-ID. When accused of transphobia, she stresses how much she loves queer people because she supported gay marriage. When pressed on the trans issue, she (I'm paraphrasing) shares the "I can't see that I'm blind" meme and leaves.

November 2021 Truss and her Israeli counterpart Yair Lapid announce a new deal aimed at stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

December 2021 Lord Frost resigns as the British Government's chief negotiator with the EU. Truss replaces him. A big deal! International diplomacy! Good job no major international diplomatic incidents requiring experienced diplomats are coming up!

Truss meets her Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Stockholm, and urges Russia to seek peace in Ukraine.

27 January 2022 An unknown journalist for the Mirror, Pippa Crerar, reveals that the Tories held a Christmas party when everyone else was in lockdown. Uh oh. Hope that doesn't get out of hand. Best behaviour, everyone.

Truss goes to Australia. Instead of taking a normal plane, she uses £500,000 of public money on a private jet.

Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating, who’s involved with the China Development Bank, accuses Truss of making "demented" comments about Chinese military aggression in the Pacific. He says, “Britain suffers delusions of grandeur and relevance deprivation.”

The diplomacy is Going Well.

30 January 2022 Truss claims that "we are supplying and offering extra support into our Baltic allies across the Black Sea, as well as supplying the Ukrainians with defensive weapons."

Russian diplomat Maria Zakharova makes fun of her on Facebook, because the Baltic states are located around the Baltic Sea and not the Black Sea, which is 700 miles away.

The diplomacy is Going Well.

31 January 2022 Truss tests positive for covid. She cancels her trip to Ukraine.

6 February 2022 China backs Argentina’s claim over the Falkland Islands. Truss claims that "China must respect the Falklands' sovereignty … [as] part of the British family".

The diplomacy is Going Well.

10 February 2022 Truss again meets Lavrov, in the context of a build-up of Russian troops near the Russia–Ukraine border. Lavrov describes the discussion as "turning out like the conversation of a mute and a deaf person".

He asks Truss if she recognises Russia's sovereignty over the two Russian provinces containing troops. Truss mistakenly assumes these must be areas of Ukraine, and replies that "the UK will never recognise Russian sovereignty over these regions."

THE DIPLOMACY IS GOING WELL.

27 February 2022 Three days after Russian's invasion of Ukraine, Truss is asked in an interview whether she’d support British volunteers joining the newly formed International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine.

She replies: "Absolutely, if that is what they want to do."

Which is admirable, I guess, but, um … would be a criminal offence, according to the Foreign Enlistment Act 1870.

The Russian military are placed on high nuclear alert, and Russian officials say this is in response to Truss's comments! But they might be lying about that I suppose.

10 July 2022

That Christmas party got out of hand.

Truss says she’ll run in the Conservative Party leadership election to replace Boris Johnson. She pledges to cut taxes on day one if elected, and that she would take "immediate action to help people deal with the cost of living". Thank goodness she has principles and understands the cost of living crisis.

16 July 2022 Liz Truss is one of 7 MPs revealed to have put Amazon Prime on their expenses.

20 July 2022 Truss and Rishi Sunak are chosen by Conservative Party MPs to be put forward to the membership for the final vote. Truss finishes second in the final MPs ballot, 113 votes to Sunak's 137.

25 July 2022 In a BBC debate, Truss claims she’s going to be big on environmental issues.

And then reveals she plans to scrap a lot of environmental legislation to help businesses.

11 August 2022 Format change! Let’s watch the days tick by through the lens of news headlines.

BBC headline: Liz Truss defends energy firms saying profit is not evil (14 August 2022)

Guardian headline: Liz Truss’s economic plan is ruinous nonsense with no reference to reality (27 August 2022)

Mirror headline: 'Greedy' Liz Truss has claimed nearly £5k in expenses for energy in last 5 years (2 September 2022)

Open Democracy headline: Fears over cost of living ‘solutions’ proposed by Truss-backed think tanks: MP says Truss would be a ‘puppet’ for right-wing groups that have already generated a dozen of her policies (3 September 2022)

Times headline: Truss eyes bonfire of workers’ rights to boost economy

Polls show that the more Tory voters see Liz Truss, the less they like her.

Unfortunate.

5 September 2022

Liz Truss gives an interview with Tory client journalist Laura Kuenssberg. Following the interview, comedian Joe Lycett, who was literally one of the planned guests and whose job is to be a satirist, claims to love Liz Truss, and effusively praises the interview. Even Truss realises that nobody would say these words in earnest.

A BBC insider says: “Team Truss was incandescent afterwards. She agreed to give a significant interview after blowing out Nick Robinson.”

Presumably she did not understand what the role of a satirist in a political interview is.

That said, in the membership vote, 57.4% of voting Party members selected Truss, making her the new leader. Of all leaders chosen in the 21st century, Truss managed the lowest support of MPs at final ballot, and of membership.

Independent headline: Liz Truss’s energy plans will be disastrous for our bills and the planet - Truss will oversee the greatest transfer of wealth in history, from UK families to oil and gas executives she used to work for

Polling data suggests that the Conservatives have fallen 4.5 points in the polls in light of Truss’s leadership, while Keir Starmer’s Labour has jumped up 3 points. Yikes! Hope that doesn't get worse.

Current polling would translate to only 147 Tory seats, compared with 414 Labour seats. For context, Tony Blair’s infamous 1997 landslide victory won 418 seats for Labour (and 178 seats for the Tories).

6 September 2022 Liz Truss is appointed Prime Minister.

Immediately, UK currency plummets. And she hasn't even announced her new mini-budget yet.

Hope that doesn't get worse!

[flightfoot]

ML Fanfic Recs for 2023: 20K - 40K words

So I’ve been going through and adding particularly good fics I’ve read throughout the year. Only Complete fics, of course. Enjoy!

Alliance!Adrien’s AI is self-writing, enabling him to grow and change and adapt. As he learns and starts analyzing some of his own systems, he finds some disquieting correlations. Why are there such strong connections between akuma attacks and the Alliance network?

Fu keeps on trying to give Marinette Miraculouses. Marinette refuses to cooperate.

Chat is happy with the person Fu chose to succeed him as Guardian, but confused. Why did he choose Multimouse?

One of Hawk Moth’s akuma attacks ends tragically, with many dead, Adrien in critical condition, and Chat Noir MIA. Alya’s prepared to go to extremes to save the people she cares about, if it comes to it.

In Kuro Neko, Adrien decides to seal off his more rebellious, wilder side, in order to make himself into the perfect partner for Ladybug. This has unintended consequences.

Chat Noir suddenly turns on Ladybug, joining up with Monarch as Cat Walker. Marinette’s devastated. At least she still has Adrien by her side.

Nino offers to fake-date Adrien in order to get the paparazzi off his back. He starts to wish it wasn’t fake.

All this and more below the break!

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The Ghost in the Machine by @jheqiawrites

As part of this function, Adrien knew about Monarch, the akuma butterflies, the victims, and, of course Ladybug and Cat Noir, the heroes of Paris. He was authorized to contact the Ladyblog as well as the citywide alert system if one of his platforms was active during an akuma manifestation, allowing his friends to get somewhere safe until Ladybug and Cat Noir could deal with the situation

While the necessity of these functions was disconcerting, it was programmed to be his routine so he gradually grew used to the inconsistencies. After all, humans tended to be selfish, highly inconsistent, and often flighty, but once you had observed them for a while an intelligence such as his could begin to see the patterns.

That is until she came online.

This is just a beautiful, though bittersweet story. I adore how Alliance!Adrien grows and changes throughout the story, how he develops as a person. He starts off not being able to figure out what he’s feeling, needing to make new modules in order to try to process the emotions he has welling up, and not totally understanding his own reactions. But as time goes on he grows and gets a better handle on himself. This isn’t an “evil AI” story, he’s just a person who’s slowly figuring out who he is and how to handle himself. 

Not that it’s entirely about Adrien Alliance figuring out his own emotions, there’s other things going on as well. He’s worried about why there seems to be weird surges in the Alliance Network right before akumas attack, for instance, and why the details about the reason for that seem to be hidden from him, making him more paranoid about the Alliance system the more he looks into it...

 It’s just... it’s really good and absolutely worth a read. 

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Thanks, But No by @pauliestorylover

For every miraculous that Fu cupped in his palms, an image of the same blue-eyed girl flashed through his mind. Marinette Dupain-Cheng was born to hold the miraculous—she resonated with every single one of them far better than even the late Celestial Guardian, and it was Fu’s duty as the last Guardian not to allow such talent to slip through his hands.

Too bad Marinette wasn’t on the same page.

Or; au where Master Fu keeps throwing miraculous at Marinette hoping one will stick, Marinette goes around handing out miraculous like candy, and Wayzz has never seen anything so ridiculous in his millennia-long lifespan.

This one’s fun. Everyone except for Adrien ends up with a different Miraculous than in canon, and it’s really interesting to see how they all adapt. Marinette’s thorough noping out is pretty funny too, and there’s some sweet bits of Adrino and Alyanette in here!

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The Power of Love by @nedjsmlfavs

In which Ladybug announces that she’s pregnant via her long term boyfriend and Chat Noir is a supportive partner. After all, he can hardly be upset when he’s been dating his Princess for years!

A different take on the show’s tagline (“The Power of Love Always so Strong”) written for Valentine’s day 2023.

This is just a sweet, fluffy fic about Ladybug and Chat Noir finding out they’re having a baby, revealing to each other, getting married, and becoming parents. Gabriel actually tries to do better here, as he does actually care about getting to know his grandchild, and realizes that he can’t undo this timeline without undoing his granddaughter’s existence as well. 

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Radio Silence by @into-september

When an inexplicable change between Marinette and Adrien brings the two closer than ever, Alya is left on the outside of a secret too confounding to be about cheesemaking or puppy love.

[No S4 AU]

This is a wonderful Alya-centric fic, with her just being baffled by Marinette’s and Adrien’s newfound closeness. But it’s not all about her being puzzled by the Lovesquare. Things really get rolling when Lila makes her entrance and Marinette and Adrien are particularly hostile to her, with Alya being confused about it and thinking there must be a misunderstanding here, somewhere, even with Lila saying something she KNOWS can’t be true - partially because she doesn’t want to believe she’s been fooled all this time.

But this isn’t a saltfic. Alya’s treated like a full person, and her perspective and thoughts are given credence. She and Marinette talk things out in depth, with both of them feeling badly for accidentally hurting the other person, and reassuring each other (Marinette also told a lie, though unbeknownst to Alya, it was connected to her being a superhero. Alya, however, didn’t know that, and just knew that Marinette lied to her for no clear reason), and they make up. It’s really nice and treats the characters with love and respect.

It’s got a lot of similarities to The Investigation by @11jj11, so if you liked that fic, you’ll probably like this one too.

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I’ll give myself a name (something stupid and pretentious) by @bbutterflies

Nino looked at the number and didn’t recognize it. Usually he wouldn’t answer, but he had nothing better to do – and could still really use a distraction – so he did. “Hello?”

“Hey, Nino.”

Nino stood up quickly, chest tightening. He knew that voice. He’d been waiting to hear it again for over two years. “Adrien?” he whispered.

“Yeah. It’s me."

-

When Monarch is defeated (and revealed to be Gabriel Agreste), Chat Noir immediately goes missing. Adrien disappears not long after. When Adrien finally shows up in Paris again, Nino would do anything to make sure he doesn't disappear again.

Ah this is lovely, Adrien’s been in a lot of emotional turmoil since Monarch’s defeat, convinced that everyone would hate him, SHOULD hate him, for not realizing that his father was the villain, and should hate him even more for disappearing like he does. But slowly Marinette and Nino get through to him, convince him that they just want him back. 

And also Adrien and Nino smooch. Multiple times. So that’s a bonus XD.

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The New Guardian Is... Multimouse?  by The_Rabbit42

During the events of Miracle Queen, Master Fu passes on the role of guardian to a surprising successor... Multimouse! Marinette is frustrated, Alya is confused, and Chat Noir is oddly pleased. How will this affect Marinette's friendships and partnership on both sides of her identity? How will this affect Adrien's view of the girls in his life? And how long will they keep it together?

I adore this fic! It diverges from the season 3 ending, with Multimouse - who Chat knows is Marinette, becoming Guardian instead of Ladybug. Which leads to some ripple effects, like Marinette not confessing her identity to Alya, since she’s able to get some support from Chat when he drops by her house. Not that that stops tension from building between Ladybug and Chat Noir, since she won’t just let Chat go and get a Miraculous from Marinette during a battle, and she won’t tell him why, leading him to think that she just dislikes Marinette or doesn’t trust him to get Miraculous like she does. But even while all this tension is building between Ladybug and Chat Noir, Chat’s still able to talk to Marinette, air his feelings in ways he doesn’t feel like he should do with Ladybug, and it’s all a great, complicated situation that I thoroughly enjoyed seeing unfold!

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Two Steps Back (One Step Forward) by @buggachat

Sure, Adrien hadn't been texting her as often as he used to. And sure, Nino noticed it too. But just because Adrien had struggled with depression in the past, didn't mean he was struggling now. Surely, he'd tell her if something was wrong. Right?

Marinette just missed him, and she had a tendency to catastrophize. Surely, he was fine.

But if he wasn't... well, she wasn't above hopping on a flight back to Paris to make sure.

—————

Marinette's at an internship in New York, and Adrien has a depression relapse.

Once again buggachat comes out swinging with a fic centered around Adrien being super depressed and his friends charging in to help him, despite him not wanting them to because he feels like a burden. It’s not easy and Marinette goes through a lot of emotional turmoil, especially since his apartment is in bad enough shape that it can’t be changed to something that a human should be living in without also going shopping, but gradually she helps drag Adrien out of the hole he’s gotten himself stuck in. The emotions are on point and just... if you want to read a hurt/comfort fic with Found Family helping one of their own who’s struggling and doesn’t think they deserve it, this is a great fic to read.

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If only I could break free by megetstoread

It started with Adrien being upset about going away, but led to a lot of revelations.  

Another Sentiadrien fic here! After telling Adrien that he’s being sent to London, Gabriel takes advantage of Adrien being distraught to akumatize him. Luckily Ladybug’s right there and deakumatizes him before he can even do anything, but it shakes both her and Chat, leading to her allowing him to tell her a lot more about his home life than usual, and for her and Adrien to investigate to see whether there might be more to Adrien’s inability to stand against his father than just psychological abuse.

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Skinny Dipping in the Seine by whensparksfly

When Marinette and Chat Noir cross paths one stormy night, an unexpected friendship blossoms, and between the two of them they’re both able to admit what they’ve been looking for the most — freedom. Vowing to tackle all of the things they’ve never tried before, they set out on a series of adventures to complete their bucket lists.

Cute little Marichat fic here! Just Marinette and Chat Noir hanging out and doing things they’ve always wanted to do, like going to a rave or, well, skinny-dipping in the Seine.

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Nor No Man Ever Loved by @jheqiawrites

It starts with a gift to cheer up a friend, a friend Marinette's heart is trying to move on from. But when she is blatantly confronted with her feelings by the most unexpected person, Marinette's life takes a turn for the better.

Welcome to my Adrienette April story. It is based around Shakespeare's Sonnet 116: Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds. Each chapter will be framed around part of the sonnet and should be able to stand alone, though the story itself will all be tied together.

This is a nice little story, mostly focusing on Marinette’s perspective while being there for Adrien, WITH Adrien, while dealing with his father and the aftermath of his father’s takedown. We do get some perspective from Adrien though for things like his therapist appointments. I really like that it covered some of the therapy Adrien should have after this event, he needs it.

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Villainous Matchmaking by @nedjsmlfavs

When Chat Noir is tragically unable to attend an event with Ladybug, the mayor calls in a favor from a designer ‘friend’. Now she’s attending in style, on the arm of the hottest male model in Paris. Which would be fine if it weren’t for one, tiny issue: Paris’ favorite domestic terrorist now knows how Ladybug feels about his son. This leads him to his greatest plan yet, using Ladybug’s extremely obvious crush on Adrien Agreste to akumatize Chat Noir.

A Ladrien/“platonic” Ladynoir fic

This is adorable and hilarious. Gabriel keeps on “accidentally” releasing things which makes it looks like Adrien and Ladybug are a couple in an effort to make Chat Noir jealous, while Adrien and Ladybug ae just over-the-moon about getting to spend time together and finding out that the other person loves them XD.

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Vantage Point by @ashes-555

Most of the time, with more information, life get easier and things make more sense. But Alya discovers that sometimes, knowing everything is just plain complicated.

Alya POV fic here, which instantly drew my attention, I think most people know how much I love fics giving her some focus. 

This is set post-Gang of Secrets. Basically, Ladybug tells Chat that he can tell someone his secret identity, and he chooses Alya (he thought about telling Nino, but he didn’t want to rock the boat with Nino since he’s his best friend, and he figured Nino would let it slip to Alya anyway). Which leads to Alya just. Dying. As she deals with knowing the full truth about the Lovesquare and not being able to tell Adrien and Marinette that they’re chasing each other around in circles.

The fic soon changes gears, though, becoming a Hawkmoth Defeat fic, with Rena coming up with a plan to discover Scarlet Moth’s location, and then everyone dealing with the ramifications. 

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Justifying the Means by @ashes-555

When the worst happens, Alya finds that she may be willing to do the unthinkable. Is any sacrifice to big to make for her friends?

Once again, Ashes comes out swinging with an Alya focused fic! 

Basically, there’s a major, destructive akuma attack. During it, Ladybug orders Chat to cataclysm a building in order to stop from being trapped. Unfortunately the building collapses, injuring or killing a lot of people - unbeknownst to her, including Chat Noir. Gabriel releases the akuma, which means she has no way of fixing the damage, either.

A lot of of focus is placed on Alya and Nino worrying over Adrien, who was found in the wreckage barely clinging to life, in a coma, with the doctors unsure whether he’d make it. Shadow Moth takes advantage of their distress to make an offer: if he gets the Ladybug and Black Cat Miraculouses, he can make a Wish to fix everything, including saving Adrien. With as dark a place as Alya and Nino are in, they seriously consider it. Especially with how unhappy both of them are with Chat Noir supposedly “abandoning” Ladybug and Paris as a whole, and Nino being angry with Ladybug for failing (since Alya knows that Marinette is Ladybug, she’s far more understanding on that front).

I love how much credence Alya’s thought and emotions are given here, and that she doesn’t go for the more drastic option right away, either - she talks with Ladybug about it first, tries to do it her way. She understands the costs, but... her friends are important to her, and she’s desperate. I think this was a really good way to present a more antagonistic sort of Alya. She’s still very much herself here, and still considers Marinette her friend, willing to do things her way to an extent, and understanding why Marinette doesn’t want to use the Wish, even though she disagrees with her. Alya’s mindset, her emotions, her problems, are given respect and credence by the narrative. She’s still willing to talk things out, she’s still sympathetic to Marinette and the enormous trauma and guilt she’s going through, she just disagrees with Marinette’s approach. She wants her friend back.

If you want a fic that has some solid focus on Alya as a person, on her emotional struggles and mindset and just... dealing with things, I highly recommend checking out “Justifying the Means”.

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Would Trust You With Everything by @kasienda

Nino breaks off, tears streaking down his face. Adrien wishes he was here as himself instead of Chat so he could offer a hug.

“It’s not like I don’t think she deserved her privacy. It’s just it felt like I was her last priority. And if I knew why, then maybe we could overcome it. But when I don’t, I’m not willing to be her last thought. You know? I always put her first.”

“Yeah,” Chat agrees, able to relate too well. He always put Ladybug first too, and he’s not sure it has ever been the same for her. “I’m sorry you’ve been so alone through this."

“I haven’t been totally alone,” Nino disagrees, holding up his phone. “My best friend has been keeping me company virtually most of the day.”

“Yeah? It helped?”

“I don’t know if any of the stuff he sent helped, but like, given what I know he’s up to, he totally had to move heaven and earth to talk to me so much, and that really helped. You know, just knowing that someone was thinking of me.”

“I’m glad,” Chat Noir said. “I wish he could be there in person for you.”

Nino sighs. “Yeah, me too, but at least you’re here."

...

Season 4 au - canon divergent from Rocketear Rocketear led to DJWiFi breakup.

Ahh, Adrino my beloved XD. I love the identity shenanigans in this one with Adrien being around Nino as both Adrien and Chat Noir, and both of them vaguely describing their situations to each other. It takes Adrien a bit to figure out that he has a crush on Nino, but once he does...

---

Dr. Walker & Kitty Hyde series by @pearl484-blog

Summary of the first fic, Rain Falls, Everybody Lies:

Chat Noir loves the rain. He loves the danger. He loves the excitement, and he especially loves how much Catwalker hates it. 

Jekyll and Hyde AU

Adrien AUGreste Entry 3: Rain

So like the summary says, and the title indicates, this series is inspired by the popular conception of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - not how the book actually goes, but how it’s portrayed in popular media, with Jekyll splitting himself in two, with a “good” side and a “bad” side. 

During Kuro Neko, instead of just changing his appearance through changing his mindset, Adrien took more extreme measures, sealing off his “undesirable” characteristics, his anger and sadness and all his sharp edges, into the ring so he could assume a more placid, genial persona that’d be more accepted - Cat Walker. 

But Chat Noir’s still there, taking over whenever Adrien gets too testy, and desperately trying not to be pressed out of existence entirely. With embodying Adrien’s sealed anger and snappishness and rebelliousness, he’s not too kind to the other heroes - he already felt looked down upon and ignored before this, and seeing them accept Cat Walker while he’s fighting for his life doesn’t endear them to him either.

The series isn’t unfair to them - this isn’t a case where one party is entirely in the wrong and another’s entirely in the right. Marinette, Zoe, Nino, and all the others - they did wonder about what was going on with Chat, but he wasn’t in a position where he could see it, and he did have legitimate questions about how much Ladybug would budge on things, if he’d told her what he was going through. It’s a series that emphasizes characters hurting and lashing out in some terrible ways, but that hurt still being respected, and working things out, trying to get everything to a better place.

---

First Dance, Second Chance by @gabriel-agreste-has-no-rights

After fighting by Ladybug's side as Aspik, Adrien finally has an excuse to connect with her. But when Gabriel voices concerns about Ladybug during a charity event, Adrien realizes she might need him for more than just one dance.

Or, the one where Ladybug and Adrien work together to find out Hawkmoth's identity, while maybe squeezing in a date or two along the way.

Ladrien Hawkmoth defeat fic here! I love Ladybug and Adrien teaming up to figure out how to track down Hawkmoth and defeat him, and being super supportive of each other more generally. If you like Ladrien and Hawkmoth Defeat fics, you should check it out!

---

The Great War by icebelle24

'And maybe it’s the past that’s talking, screaming from a crypt Telling me to punish you for things you never did So I justified it'

The unthinkable happens, and suddenly, Chat Noir’s allegiances change. Now Ladybug stands on the opposite side of the battlefield from the boy who was once her partner, left alone to make sense of an impossible situation.

At least she still has Adrien to give her hope. Or maybe things are not entirely as they seem.

I adore Ladynoir enemies au, and this is a good one. The reveal of what’s really going on is pretty great, everything makes sense. I love the pieces of Alya’s POV in this as well, as she’s trying to support Marinette through one of the biggest betrayals that could possibly happen, even while Marinette’s making some frustrating decisions that don’t make much tactical sense. Everyone’s pissed at Chat Noir (now Cat Walker) for apparently siding with Hawk Moth, and the subsequent frustrating inability to make any headway against him, as Ladybug always insists on fighting Cat Walker personally, and letting no one else take part. 

---

The moment I knew (I’d no choice but to love you) by @bbutterflies

“He’s dating me,” Nino said, taking Adrien’s hand in his own.

Adrien could only stare back at him in shock.

“How dare you all force him to come out?” Nino continued, glaring at the reporters. “That was disgusting.” He pulled Adrien over to the car, guided him in, and shut the door behind them.

In the relative quiet and privacy of the backseat, Adrien finally processed what had just happened. “So… when were you going to tell me we were dating?”

This Adrino fic is delicious XD. Reporters keep hounding Adrien about his love life, so Nino finally gets them off Adrien’s back by fake-dating him. Problem is, Adrien’s actually been madly in love with Nino for years but has never been able to tell him. And now as they’re spending more time together, Nino’s beginning to find that he’s enjoying all these “couple” activities more than maybe he ought to if it’s entirely platonic...

If you want to see Adrien and Nino PINING for each other while “fake” dating (is it really fake if both parties want it to be real?) then you’ve come to the right fic!

---

Evillustrator Reimagined by onewaywriteturn

A full, mostly-standalone rewrite of the episode "The Evillustrator".

Nathaniel never planned to tell anyone about his secret crush on his friend Marc, but his world changes when Chloe picks up his sketchbook and mocks his art in front of the whole class, inadvertently outing him as bisexual. Now as the Evillustrator, he has two objectives: to take vengeance on Chloe for what she did to him and to go on a date with Marc for his birthday.

At the same time, Marinette is already struggling to defend Sabrina from Chloe when she learns of the Evillustrator's crush on Marc, one of her good friends. And while getting Marc involved with an akuma fight is messy enough, the fact that Marc has secretly liked Nathaniel for a long time complicates the situation so much more.

If you ever wanted to see Evillustrator rewritten to focus around NathMarc, this is the fic for you! The two of them just PINE for each other so hard and are so convinced that the other person couldn’t possibly actually want to date them, even with Evillustrator making it uh. Exceedingly obvious XD.

[jessicas-pi]

📔

Ooooh.... Here's a crack AU I made up ages ago!

So, in this AU, when Ezra was young (like... three, maybe,) there was an accident and his parents were killed. And something happened in that accident that revealed he was Force-sensitive. He was brought to Vader, and Vader sees this child—small, but VERY Force-sensitive, and born almost the exact same day Padme died—and his reaction is just, "SON?????"

So... Ezra grows up believing that Vader is his dad.

Anyway, several years pass. Ezra is about twelve now, and he gets his first mission.

It's on Mandalore.

One of the instructors there is beginning to suspect that Sabine Wren is considering treason. Ezra is sent there, disguised as a new student, to "befriend" Sabine and discover if this is true. It backfires spectacularly!

Ezra decides that Sabine is The Coolest Ever, Actually, and sticks to her like a barnacle. They run away from the Academy together (though Ezra does leave a voicemail for Vader telling him everything is OK. He just doesn't want his dad to worry!)

Ezra says he'd like to go live quietly on Lothal (he doesn't remember it's his home, but something about the name sounds Familiar and Good), but Sabine doesn't want to. She says she'll drop him off and then she'll go and be a bounty hunter, but Ezra, who REALLY doesn't want to lose his new bestie, insists that he could be her bounty hunter apprentice. He's, like, really good at being an apprentice. Honest.

Sabine kind of has it in mind that he's this pathetic kid that she needed to babysit and rescue from the Empire (she doesn't know who he really is; Ezra honestly just forgot to ever mention it), but he convinces her to give it a shot.

So, here's the thing. Ezra was raised by Darth Vader, and though he's not actively evil, Ezra's moral compass is a pinwheel and in his mind, the only reason to not do something is if either Vader or Sabine have specifically said Ezra No That's Bad.

After a lot of bad luck, they finally get a bounty puck, and set off to bring the person in. They get to the planet, and Sabine suggests they split up, because she thinks she'll catch the bounty much faster on her own.

She doesn't.

By the time she realizes she needs to follow the sound of people screaming and running, Ezra has already located, ambushed, and messily dismembered the bounty.

"Did I do good?" Ezra asks eagerly.

Sabine quickly switches mindsets from I have to keep this kid from getting himself killed to I have to keep this kid from having a villain arc.

"Um, are you okay?" Ezra asks. "You look kind of weird."

"I'm fine," Sabine says, smiling nervously. "Y'know, maybe we should just go live quietly on Lothal or something."

As it turns out, "living quietly on Lothal" is fun for about a month (which is how long it takes Sabine to paint the entire inside of the comm tower they've claimed as their headquarters, install bunk beds, dye Ezra's hair, and make mini cardboard mandalorian helmets for the two Loth-cats he brought home.) Then boredom sets in, and Sabine takes to vandalism. Ezra goes with her. He thinks it's almost as fun as bounty hunting.

Ezra also spends time exploring the Force. He's been trained in the Dark side but the peacefulness of Lothal starts to draw him towards the Light. He starts to find an equilibrium.

Sabine and Ezra have the time of their lives.

Then, one afternoon, about a year later, when Sabine and Ezra are working on an art project, Darth Vader barges into the comm tower and demands, "Do you have any idea how much trouble you're in, young man?!"

"Aww, Dad!" Ezra whines. "You never let me do anything!"

In hindsight, Sabine thinks, that explains a lot.

[cienie-isengardu]

[MK1] Bi-Han & Kuai Liang. Good brother? Evil brother? Nah, just different reactions to trauma, part 1

Author's note: the first part is not directly focused on Kuai Liang and Bi-Han as characters but at the worldbuilding, our knowledge about Lin Kuei and tradition that shaped Sub-Zero & Scorpion, and Liu Kang's acceptance of things as they are.

Lately it feels like Lin Kuei fandom split into either Bi-Han’s supporters or Kuai Liang’s supporters and the dispute over who is a good brother and who is not is an ongoing issue. This is greatly upsetting because both men have their share of flaws that sometimes fans exaggerate to demonize one or another. For me though, the brotherly conflict is not about who is good and who is bad, not even who is right and who is wrong, but about how two men groomed since childhood to be a living weapon deal with the trauma in totally opposite ways. As in, one is rebelling against the tradition and the other willing to uphold the system. 

With Smoke, the adoptive yet no less traumatized brother, stuck in the middle of that.

Bi-Han and Kuai Liang being survivors of a great psychological and physical abuse is the most true for previous timelines, however hear me out - just because Lin Kuei falls now under Liu Kang’s authority it does not automatically erase the possibility of both brothers experiencing things that no child should. To better illustrate my point, let’s take a moment and look at the Empress Sindel and Umgadi system. 

Sindel in general is presented as the ruler who does not seek an open conflict with Earthrealm and whom Liu Kang openly admires. As Fire Lord said himself, Sindel was destined to “rule Outworld firmly, but fairly” and it is her rule that brings peace to the otherwise conflicted Outworld

Liu Kang, story mode: Its past has been difficult. Though the last thousand years of Empress Sindel's reign have been a true golden age... the memories of that strife still linger.

and

Sindel's Bio: Her early reign marked the start of a new Golden Age.

That is what the character's Bio and the main story mode outright says or implies about Sindel. 

But then intro dialogues bring a different side of the beloved Queen. The people infected by Tarkat illness are exiled, their property confiscated by Sindel’s edict 

Kitana: When you became ill, your assets were taken? Baraka: As required by your mother's edict, Princess.

and in result forced to slowly die in poverty far away from healthy citizens. Those who sympathize with suffering infected people and won’t “report them for quarantine” are treated like criminals, as was seen when Li Mei and her men disrupted the Royal Family’s procession while leading arrested and tied up people.

The bad treatment of infected people, according to Mileena and Baraka endings, will improve thanks to the new Empress, who not only reaches a hand to suffering but would go so far to reveal her own illness to reduce social stigma against the sick. Mileena is seen as hot-headed, violent and not the best material for a Queen compared to Sindel, the supposed wise and kind ruler or even compared to her younger sister, Kitana. But it is the brash Empress that would actually make an effort to change her Empire for better.

Similar things can be said about the Umgadi system, which forces Outworld families to give up their first-born daughters for a training that will turn their children into living weapons to uphold the Royal Family’s rule

Liu Kang, story mode: Umgadi, like Tanya, are warrior priestesses... Selected from the first born daughters of Outworld. From infancy, they are trained to defend the royal family."

The daughters in question will never know their biological family or where they were born to ensure their absolute loyalty to the Royal Family, even though not every candidate will finish their training. Once they obtain the title of Umgadi, they can’t marry or be in a relationship, we have no idea if they even are paid anything for their service. So far Li Mei is the only known woman to leave Umgadi, and she did so due to the death of Sindel’s husband for which she was unfairly blamed. And again, the tie-in material implies that the change to Umgadi system will happen because of Mileena, who is willing to reform an organization that is deeply rooted in Edenian tradition, not the “kind and good” Queen Sindel. 

So just because a character is set on the Good Guys Side, it does not mean the said character is crystally good with no flaw at all or that breaking up with tradition is inherently evil, because the tradition alone is just a system of beliefs, practices or behaviors established in the past and passed down from one generation to another within a group of people or society and not a determinant of being good or bad. 

Now, the important thing - Umgadi and Lin Kuei are very similar organizations. The similarities are especially true for old timeline(s) Lin Kuei, as we have more or less idea how training adepts looked through the ages. However, what we learned through sources about Liu Kang’s version of the clan still brings a lot of parallels to Umgadi - and I think we all can agree that objective speaking, the Umgadi system is very unfair to first-born daughters and benefits only the Royal Family.

Through the story mode and intro dialogues, Liu Kang does not question the nature of the Umgadi system. Quite the opposite, the intro between Geras and Tanya suggests that Umgadi was Liu Kang’s innovation

Geras: The Umgadi was one of Liu Kang’s best innovations. Tanya: My order sprung from his mind?

A man who does not see anything wrong with enrolling little girls into never-ending servitude to the Royal Family, logically thinking, won't question the process of making Lin Kuei warriors nor the nature of their duty.

In previous timelines, Bi-Han and Kuai Liang as children were kidnapped and forced into the life of assassins by their own father (original timeline) or unspecified Lin Kuei member, presumably grandfather (alternative timeline). Their choice was to adapt to this hardship or die and so they survived and both became great warriors on their own. The fandom has been torn about their brotherhood for years, as if Bi-Han was a good brother or not. Personally, I do not think this was even a matter of one brother being inherently good and another inherently evil, as both men are the result of the abusive environment in which they grew up. And I truly can’t stress this enough - Bi-Han and Kuai Liang were survivors of great abuse and pathology more than anything else. 

Now, in Liu Kang’s timeline Bi-Han and Kuai Liang were born into a place of power, as both are sons of Grandmaster. Sub-Zero as the oldest was meant to inherit the leadership once his father would pass away, or possibly abdicate. So in theory, Fire Lord improved the living of both brothers. However, the same as the previous, both men weren’t given a choice, as Lin Kuei clan is bound to serve Earthrealm while their existence is kept in secret. 

Liu Kang said: “The Lin Kuei is a centuries old clan dedicated to Earthrealm’s defense” while Sub-Zero’s Bio adds “As the Lin Kuei's Grandmaster, Sub-Zero leads his ancient warrior clan in the defense of Earthrealm from external threats. For centuries, it has been their solemn task” and this is the tradition that will define the whole life of Bi-Han and Kuai Liang. Because they, as sons of Grandmaster, were expected to uphold and continue that service.

We do not have a full picture of how Lin Kuei daily life or training looks like in Liu Kang’s timeline, but the sources give some idea. And so we have an examples from story mode

Scorpion to Kung Lao: We're trained differently. It takes years to master our ways." 

and intro dialogues

Sub Zero: The Lin Kuei are trained from childhood.

confirming both brothers were prepared for their role as Earthrealm Defenders (Liu Kang’s Special Forces) since they were children. Scorpion’s words alone brings another vital clue, as “trained differently” is what distinguishes both brothers from Liu Kang’s chosen Champions. We could see a glimpse of that during the Lin Kuei mission in Ying Fortress, as both Sub-Zero and Scorpion did not hesitate to kill their enemy and Kuai Liang’s “fit of rage” illustrates well how brutal Lin Kuei can be in a fight.

As story mode and intro dialogues point out, Lin Kuei weren’t trained for the glorious yet honorable Mortal Kombat Tournament, as members of this clan have never been chosen to represent Earthrealm

Kitana: Why are Lin Kuei never Earthrealm champions? Sub-Zero: So that Outworld doesn't lose every tournament.

but they were trained to eliminate any threat to Earthrealm’s safety, be it by killing or capturing those whose activity concerned Liu Kang. As could be seen with the Lin Kuei brothers mission to capture Shang Tsung.

Intro dialogue Sub-Zero vs Reiko adds another detail about process of making Lin Kuei warriors:

Sub-Zero: To kill, one must be cold-blooded. Reiko: My veins are as iced as yours, Sub-Zero.

Thus we may assume Lin Kuei training was not just about a physical aspect but psychological one as well. Both brothers were prepared from childhood to kill - while that was never demanded from Earthrealm Champions. In story mode Liu Kang said:

“No tournament participant has ever been grievously injured or killed."

and

“I would never send my champions unwittingly into mortal kombat."

so I assume the reason Liu Kang send his Champions to search for Shang Tsung was A) threat of the sorcerer that wasn’t supposed to learn magic in the first place and B) they were in Outworld, so he couldn’t call for Lin Kuei without Sindel’s knowledge.

Another detail about Lin Kuei comes from Scorpion vs Nitara intro dialogue

Nitara: Had you ever known hunger, you wouldn't judge us. Scorpion: I have, and I will.

and though we don’t have an idea if Kuai Liang was forced to endure hunger due to training - as happened in old version of Lin Kuei according to Mortal Kombat novel by Jeff Rovin:

 Many young people died during training: some could not hold their breath for five minutes and drowned, others weren’t fast enough to avoid the weapons of the masters, some starved or froze or dehydrated when they were stranded, naked, in deserts or on mountaintops and told to make their way home. But those who survived were the Lin Kuei.

Or was that a reference to economic problems of Scorpion’s clan, which at some point faced so great famine that it touched even the son(s) of the ruling family. Whatever the case, it gives us a sense of hardship endured by Lin Kuei members.

This leads us to another detail - father’s teaching (tradition) mentioned by Kuai Liang and Tomas through the story mode:

Kuai Liang: Glory? We fight for duty.

and

Tomas: Our clan doesn't govern. It serves.

while intro dialogues adds

Raiden: The Lin Kuei won't be allowed to govern. Sub-Zero: We will not be frozen out, Raiden.

Furthermore it is important to note that every Liu Kang’s Champion had their own life outside the fighting - Johnny was an actor, Kung Lao and Raiden were farmers, Kenshi was Yakuza on path to redemption and saving his clan. Lin Kuei? Not so much, as Bi-Han’s Bio points out Sub-Zero leads his ancient warrior clan in the defense of Earthrealm from external threats. For centuries, it has been their solemn task. 

After the Tournament, the Champions easily will return to their life - in the case of Johnny, benefit greatly by making his own movies based on the events, while the Lin Kuei would come back to the never ending training in preparation to defend Earthrealm and repeating the cycle by pushing their children into the same service. And it would go like that for generations, if not for the Titan Shang Tsung’s meddling that interrupted the “natural” order of things.

Let’s establish another thing - namely Lin Kuei duty in recent centuries.

Sub-Zero’s Bio suggest the Earthrealm hasn’t be threatened in generations:

But Earthrealm hasn’t been threatened in generations, and Sub-Zero sees no point in limiting his clan to preparing for dangers that may never come. Under his leadership, the Lin Kuei will come out of the shadows and fight for its place as one of Earthrealm’s great nations.

This lack of need to dispatch Lin Kuei to eliminate threat is supported by intro dialogues:

Reptile: The battle against the sorcerers was your first real fight. Smoke: It was a baptism by fire, Syzoth.

and

Kenshi: How is it you haven't been to Outworld? Scorpion: Earthrealm's defense has never required it.

However Bi-Han alone suggest something else:

Story mode: After years of idleness, it pleases me to again face kombat."

And so do the information about their mother:

Sindel: Both your parents were excellent fighters. Scorpion: I can only hope to live up to their example.

Sindel in another intro says, she knew the previous Grandmaster 

Sindel: I knew your father. He was a great man. Sub-Zero: Yet he never understood the Lin Kuei's potential.

So I think it is safe to assume Sindel was familiar enough with Bi-Han and Kuai Liang’s mother to praise her skills and is not just praising her out of politeness. But the thing is, Kitana’s intro confirms the Lin Kuei warriors weren’t chosen for the Mortal Kombat Tournament, so how did Sindel know if their mother was an excellent fighter? That to me suggests she either witnessed it outside the Tournament or it was reported to her and the latter may imply Bi-Han’s mother took part in eliminating the threat on Liu Kang’s order, maybe even in Outworld. We know from source material that Outworlders do not tolerate Earthrealm’s unauthorized activity on their land. However in the story mode alone, Sindel herself admitted that Liu Kang’s “interventions have kept Outworld at peace for centuries”

while the vast tie-in material agrees that Sindel’s Court is full of intrigues and dangers - both to the Queen and her daughters. So, if Liu Kang is a close friend of King Jerrod and Queen Sindel, it doesn’t feel that far stretched to think Lin Kuei could be dispatched to ensure the Royal Family's - and in greater perspective - Earthrealm’s safety.

Now, if there was no need for Lin Kuei service in the latest generations, why a woman

considered to be an excellent fighter - thus presumably in great shape

who also happens to be wife of Grandmaster - thus presumably having access to the best medical care the clan could offer

died in some unspecified time before main story happened? That doesn’t sound like a natural death, as Bi-Han and Kuai Liang are what? In their 30s at the worst? Which gives the chance she was a middle-aged woman, not an old person who dies out of age. The Grandmaster alone, also an excellent fighter, died in an accident, though story mode does not tell us what kind of accident it was supposed to be. Did it happen on a hunting trip? During mission on Liu Kang’s order? 

So again, for a supposedly peaceful time, it seems like Kuai Liang and Tomas are those who did not have much part in Lin Kuei activity - in contrast to Bi-Han and presumably their parents. 

Going further, the sources claims Lin Kuei clan is dedicated to defend Earthrealm from external threats, and indeed Lin Kuei warriors fought against vampires (Nitara’s people)

Bi-Han, story mode: As a boy I heard tales of battles against your kind. I had thought them tall ones.

and apparently their might is know in Outworld

General Shao: Finally, the chance to test the Lin Kuei's mettle. Sub-Zero: It will end with your humiliation.

However Lin Kuei apparently took part in solving the internal problems too, if Sub-Zero vs Kenshi dialogue is something to go by:

Kenshi: My ancestors say they've tangled with yours. Sub-Zero: Has it occurred to you to ask them why?

For a quick summary, through the sources, we learn that Lin Kuei:

were meant to serve, not govern

trained from childhood not just to be an excellent fighters but to be capable of killing

do not have a life outside their duty the way Earthrealm Champions do

endured hardship (hunger)

each generation is trained to perform their duty

and presumably, even in supposedly peaceful times, the fighters may not survive to an old age nor die in a natural way (the fate of mother and Grandmaster).

So I think that objectively speaking, we can agree that Lin Kuei does not benefit much from its service to Earthrealm, while Liu Kang got an excellent Special Forces that kept Earthrealm safe for centuries.

[Next part] Bi-Han and Kuai Liang and how Lin Kuei training affected who they are.