#a death that doesn't take the character away but kills them. a death that is staining as much as it can for longer than it should be able t

[whetstonefires]

Thinking about the parallels set up between Wei Wuxian and Mo Xuanyu, and how actually most of them are oddly specious.

The sketch of the backstory lines up, but on close examination they're mirror images.

Wei Wuxian wasn't kicked out of his sect, he left it. Wei Wuxian didn't hate the house he grew up in, he loved it, and getting the people there killed was the absolute last purpose for which his dark powers were ever intended.

Jiang Cheng was no Mo Ziyuan--his jealousy was a complicated thing all twisted up with love, and while he would lash out at Wei Wuxian both as a casual means of shit communication and more damagingly in moments of high tension, he had neither the desire nor the ability to bully him, and in general respected his boundaries almost too well.

When Wei Wuxian destroyed himself about Jiang Cheng, it was to give him cultivation, and protect his life and happiness. He would never have killed him.

Madam Yu was a domineering aunt-like figure, who hated Wei Wuxian for reasons of reputation, and because she had resented his dead mother, but she crucially did not have the power to actually disrupt his lifestyle to any significant extent.

Mo Xuanyu was shut up in a small room to rot; Wei Wuxian didn't even attend classes unless he wanted to. Mo Xuanyu was weak and disliked; Wei Wuxian was brilliant and popular.

Mo Xuanyu's uncle is a cipher of a figure, without character or agency, a nonentity who is resented to death apparently mostly for what he didn't do; in theory he is the master of the house, but he certainly never protected his wife and son's punching bag from them.

And this is what got me thinking along this track: because people keep interpreting Jiang Fengmian as this, as exactly like Mo Xuanyu's nameless uncle, a nonentity who lets his wife make all the decisions, and is contemptible therefore.

He shows up in fic characterized this way all the time, handled narratively as a gap rather than a person, an absence where there should have been a parent, and it's...totally inaccurate? The man only has a few scenes but the things that are most firmly established about him are:

he regularly goes out of his way to protect Wei Wuxian

he's extremely fond of Wei Wuxian

he cares a lot about ethical behavior

he's conflict-avoidant and gentle

he can and will overrule Yu Ziyuan when he's made up his mind, and there's nothing she can do about it

his communication skills are mediocre at best

he doesn't understand jiang cheng

he has a dumb sense of humor

Now almost none of this made it into cql besides point 4 and maybe 6, 5 is technically there but buried by the cinematic framing, so I totally get why the fandom on the whole struggles to characterize him well, and it's easier to write him off.

But it keeps bugging me to see him and Yu Ziyuan squashed into the mold of the Mo, because not only is that boring and reductive and kind-of-missing-the-point, it's like. Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng's characterization suffers a lot when you alter the environment and take away the influence exerted by their shared father figure.

Jiang Fengmian was Wei Wuxian's primary adult role model and it shows.

Jiang Cheng's relationship to his own sense of ethics is fraught because 'teaching him good ethics' was his dad's number one parenting goal, but they misunderstood each other so badly (partly because Yu Ziyuan kept loudly misinterpreting them to each other, which is so realistic I can't get over it, that's exactly how it works good lord) that Jiang Cheng has a direct association between the concept of 'doing the right thing even when it's hard' and a feeling of personal inadequacy.

The fact that Wei Wuxian got their dad-person's approval for being exactly himself and Jiang Cheng not only couldn't do that, he couldn't even get that same level of approval when he really pushed himself to rise to expectations, because Jiang Fengmian did not intend that warmth as a 'reward,' and so never realized he was withholding it, and therefore misunderstood Jiang Cheng's visible jealousy as a dangerous sense of personal entitlement that had to be carefully restrained, which reinforced his distrust of Jiang-Cheng-the-person and fed into a shitty loop where they were less and less able to relate to one another--that's fantastic. That's so human! I love it so much.

Both their failures are their own but at the same time it would never have gotten so bad if Yu Ziyuan hadn't been interjecting herself in there, in the middle of their relationship, fucking it up. That's family, baby.

I would ofc like if there was more fic engaging with the subtleties of all this because it's so good, mxtx did such elegant work here and it is not sufficiently appreciated. But it's the kind of thing that's hard to write good fic about; I am struggling with it myself.

So mostly I wish there was just more fic that didn't impose Mo Xuanyu's cliche angst backstory on Wei Wuxian, who has a whole different thing going on.

[shiroxichigo]

Ichigo gets a lot of shit (typically from outside of the Bleach fandom) for being a character whose wants/goals never change from beginning to end of his series. He always wants to protect people (and even though I could argue that he went from only wanting to protect those close to him to wanting to protect everyone he can, that's not the point I'm making with this post).

I think a lot of people who only give Bleach a passing glance fail to see Ichigo's true character growth. It's not about what his goals are or who he's trying to protect, but rather, it's about how he achieves it.

Ichigo is very self-sacrificing in the first third of Bleach. He believes that if the mission is successful, then it doesn't matter how broken or close to death he gets. The mission, saving Rukia (and hurting/killing as few people in the process), is all that matters.

Then, when a part of himself (his inner hollow) emerges, and says "hey yeah no, I'm not letting you get yourself killed and I'm also not letting you hold back against your enemy", Ichigo immediately rejects it.

It's not until he defeats his inner Hollow that we see Ichigo really dive into a fight with the intent to kill. The problem is, once his Hollow is defeated, he thinks that's it. He's freed himself of that part of him and he can go back to being self-sacrificing.

We see this throughout the Hueco Mundo arc. It's why saving Orihime parallels saving Rukia. Ichigo naively thinks he can suppress a part of himself. He bottles it up until it explodes, coming back to haunt him in his fight with Ulquiorra, etc. He learns that side of himself isn't so easily tucked away, and if he recklessly endangers himself, he could end up endangering his friends too. At his own hand, no less.

Then Ichigo discovers he can commit the ultimate sacrifice. Final Getsuga Tenshou. He can throw away these powers and the parts of himself that he doesn't like, and he can get rid of Aizen all in one go. He's lucky that it worked, but only because Kisuke was there.

Then, once Ichigo is powerless, he learns that's not what he really wants. Life doesn't "go back to normal". The can is open, and there's danger out there beyond just Aizen. And Ichigo can't do anything to stop it unless he gets his powers back.

So he does. Then he cuts down the threat to his friends and family. And he doesn't hesitate this time. Yes, he still has compassion for his enemies (he even goes to the Soul Society to ask for Ginjo's body so he can give him a proper burial), but he's learned not to hold back and he's learned that new threats will appear and he'd rather have the power to face them head on.

So then comes TYBW, and Ichigo is facing battles head-on without hesitation. He goes straight to the "bad guys" with the intention of cutting them down. He learns the truth about who his Inner Hollow is, and he accepts it. He's even willing to accept whatever consequences may come from training in the Royal Palace and becoming stronger. He accepts his power and potential fully, and learns that he has what it takes to protect his loved ones with his strength, and not with a sacrifice.

Ultimately, he heals the part of himself that thinks his life is worth less than other people's. He heals the part of himself that blames himself for not protecting his mother (when he was 9!! Like come on Isshin, put the kid in therapy!! Anyway...) He grows into someone who knows his self worth. And I think, for me at least, that makes him one of my favourite protagonists of all time. Because can't most of us relate to feeling worthless at times? And don't we also wanna overcome that?

Thanks for reading my ramble lmao, I'm sure this could have been more elegantly written but I'm very sleepy and just wanted to get my thoughts out there.

[clonehub]

Years on, accusations against Andor for being "too dark" confuse me because I don't think there was any aspect of the violence itself that was darker than anything we've seen in Star Wars. What people took issue with was that the characters would pause, comment on, and react to such violence in a way that the majority of other Star Wars characters historically have not.

Take a look at any of the violence in The Clone Wars -- often the most we'll get is characters acknowledging the violent act they just witnessed or committed themselves, but for various reasons they can't/don't portray it the way that, say, Bic getting slammed into a wall and bleeding from the head (police brutality was shown. Characters get blown sky high in Star Wars animation all the time -- but when the same happens in Andor with the Pre-Mor cops, it's not the violence, it's the cries for help and the wounded screams and the ashen nausea on Siril's face.

Which is to say that Andor doesn't gloss over, excuse, ignore, or make light of its violence. A child is about to enter into a child marriage for the sake of the rebellion and its handled with horror. Immediately after rescuing a child bride from a defacto pedophile, Boba's put in the child's place and this is played as a joke despite him ALSO being a child (the presumption being that the pedophile in question ~obviously~ doesn't want Boba, and that Boba can get out on his own).

I'm glad that Andor doesn't play around with its violence. It showed the horrors and downsides of oppressive violence and how it can hurt the oppressors without excusing anything they do. Rebels' modus operandi was making a running joke of the silly, ridiculous, our outlandish ways that the crew would kill Imperial soldiers.

(Don't get me wrong, I love Rebels. I really do. But if we're looking at the pure math, two highschoolers blew up a lot of people and laughed about it. This isn't an indictment on Rebels!)

One might even say that Andor on average was less violent than your typical pre-Andor Star Wars show. People have committed suicide (twice, TCW), fallen to their deaths (repeated, TCW), been decapitated (TCW), lost limbs and shown the missing limb (TCW), been blown up (TCW), sacrificed themselves (TCW) etc etc....you get the idea. But outside the deaths that are meant to be important to the characters themselves? You're unlikely to get a moment of horror or shock or fear at the sight of a dead body before them. Even Omega is given a weapon strong enough to kill, and she uses it on a clone no more then 15 feet away from her. We get more commentary on Crosshair leaving (not even almost killing them, just leaving) than we do on her apparently killing multiple people.

I don't have a smooth ending for this, this is more of an observation or anything. But the discomfort with the dark-violence of Andor? I think that was folks wishing the characters would move on from mass death and violence the way other characters have for years. They don't want to be disturbed.

[malfiora]

Characterization Compendium

Key

Star sign: (canon vs. inspiration) traits from that sign that fit with this character

Canon = this is the character's sign based off their official/generally accepted birthday

Inspiration = this is the sign that this character reminds me of, and here's why

Colors are based off the elements each sign could be:

Air • Water • Fire • Earth

Batfam

Bruce

Walks the razor's edge between light and dark and develops an unhealthy but necessary dependence on his kids (particularly Dick) to stay grounded in the light.

Loves his kids, loves being around them, will never say this to them unless he's on the brink of death but there are signs. Loves them all equally but treats them differently based on personality, age, and background, which is often mistaken as him playing favorites (it's not).

Pisces: (canon) works well with any other sign, creative, deeply emotional and intuitive, hates being inauthentic, shuts down when hurt or slighted, nonconfrontational (in relationships not in the field lol – he'd rather ignore the problem than have a difficult conversation about it)

Immutable personal moral code but demonstrates mental flexibility (or cognitive dissonance) toward others, especially his allies.

I go back and forth between Catholic, Jewish, and agnostic for him.

Dick

Extremely observant, which manifests as intuition. This means that both his deductive reasoning skills and ability to read others are par excellence. In social settings, he won't vocalize this process (depending on the context he may not even realize he's doing it) but will react to whatever he reads. Others read this as charm (or intimidation).

Talent for leadership despite working more efficiently alone. Both his charisma and experience make people naturally turn to him, and a deep seated compulsion to meet others' expectations means he often does take the lead.

Relationships: Barbara is one of his best friends before anything else; Jason is his (the one he gave the mantle of Robin to, the person who first shifted his identity toward mentor/big brother); Tim is the first he got to mentor; Damian is the son-brother (the one he raised and dotes on)

Scorpio: (canon? inspiration) [I will die on this hill] charismatic, manipulative, deeply and darkly emotional (some may say broody), fiercely protective of loved ones to the point of avenging them, holds grudges probably longer than he should, will lash out when hurt but feel bad about it

Barbara

Used to dealing with men who have strong feelings about everything (i.e. Dick and Bruce) and not being taken seriously (first year or so as Batgirl, then later dealing with people's perceptions of her while disabled) so nothing phases her. Still, she has some insecurities, which she overcomes with sheer force of will that projects strength. Ultimately, she'd rather suffer in silence.

Doesn't completely agree with all of Bruce's ideologies (leading to some friction between her and Dick), especially around killing since her father's a cop. But they align enough to be allies. She respects Bruce and believes in Batman.

Aquarius: (inspiration) Follows her own inner compass, pulls away the more someone tries to control her, enjoys engaging in mental exercises

Jason

As Robin, he was constantly caught in the tension of living up to Dick's example and wanting to be considered his own person. He always treated Robin with reverence and tried to do everything by the book. His own trauma and Bruce's guilt have convinced them both that Jason was a "problem" – he wasn't. He took school and his material comforts seriously because he never had them, so he was a tidy kid and a great student. Critical thinking skills that he honed from reading classic lit.

As Red Hood, he's now torn between living his own life/principles and begrudgingly wanting to regain Bruce's trust/faith if not his love. (He's never lost Bruce's love, but he has yet to accept this.)

When he came back to Gotham, he was pissed that his death seemed to change nothing: Joker was still alive, Batman had a new Robin, and crime was still everywhere. He took matters into his own hands. He still believes his way is better than Bruce's but recognizes that it's futile to pursue his vision with the Batfam still around. If he thinks he can get away with it, he'll kill someone he thinks deserves to be killed (e.g. someone who hurts children, sexual assault perp)

Leo: (canon) headstrong, charismatic leader who attracts people to him even if he doesn't try/want to/understand why, can be insecure about why people like him (are they just using him/wanting something from him, or so they genuinely like him?), protective of those closest to him, he'll talk a lot of shit but it actually takes a lot to provoke him to act, but when he does it's vicious and you'll feel like you deserved it

(Additional context)

Tim

Burnt out gifted kid who was adultified as a teenager because he had to basically raise an adult (i.e. help piece together again Bruce's mental health). Middle kid syndrome – used to being ignored and uses it to his advantage. Often manipulates (or tries to) the others to enact some plan. Pretty shameless

Libra: (inspiration) rigid sense of justice and morality, good judge of character

Knows a lot of random stuff because it's helpful for a case but kinda clueless about anything else, great at deductive reasoning. Lives to terrorize Dick (sometimes) and Jason (always), while genuinely trying to be a good big brother to Damian and Duke.

I usually envision Tim as middle/upper class east/southeast Asian, which comes with a few features: private tutors, attending a private or magnet school, expected to go to college; additionally, some cultural practices that Tim doesn't take too seriously since his family is multi-gen American. He def has a jade Buddha necklace somewhere at home.

Cassandra

Doesn't speak often, preferring to listen and use nonverbals. Has strong opinions about things. Protective of her adoptive family, enjoys participating in shenanigans if only because she's included.

I want to learn more about Cass and think harder about how I want to write her, doesn't stop me from trying.

Taurus: (inspiration) strong opinions that take a lot of energy to change, reliable, trustworthy, stoic

Steph

Keeps things lighthearted but doesn't forgive very easily. She and Bruce have a shaky relationship due to his (perceived) lack of trust in her but she keeps things positive due to her love and respect for Barbara, Cass, and Tim.

Extremely resourceful, solid investigative and deductive reasoning skills, dedicated to the mission, fiercely loyal but also independent.

It can't be overstated how much I respect Stephanie's ability to fill a role, on top of her creating her own.

Sagittarius: (inspiration) down for adventure, has her own set of principles and doesn't follow people who don't adhere to hers or at least have their own, impulsive, good with money, regrets nothing

Damian

Projects self confidence, which is mostly authentic, but he has some deep insecurities around living up to the expectations and examples of everyone who came before him. Extremely independent but protective of those who rely on him / he cares about.

Inevitably acts like a child when it comes to mature topics, feeling strong emotions, and wanting to form connections with others (particularly caretakers). Strict vegetarian due to his respect for life, was raised Muslim and maintains some of the cultural practices.

Leo: (canon) Very much an August Leo – somehow attracts others to him regardless of how he feels about it, no need for external validation (although it's nice to hear), respects competence

Duke

Simultaneously has a lot to prove and needs no one's approval. He cannot sit by when he has the power to do something. Exercises probably the most emotional intelligence and self awareness of the Batfam. Doesn't fully see himself as part of the Batfam, and definitely feels guilty about being "chosen" when his other WAR friends were discarded

Def uses his Black card when it makes life easier or funnier for him. Similarly, he plays up being a metahuman to garner sympathy or whatever from the others. Deep down, he's insecure about his powers because he doesn't know many other folks with powers who can help him train.

Leo: (canon) charismatic leader who attracts people to him, independent, doesn't care about what people think of him because he knows himself, knows exactly how to be annoying

[eri-pl]

Silm reread 16: Beren, Luthien, and the fourth wall,

through which Pengolodh needs to be punched a little. Or at least frightened.

So… This chapter is a lot.

First we get a remainder that we are in a narrative frame: there are many stories but this one is the best. So I, Pengolodh, will make sure it sounds proper.

Also, why is the Lay of Leithian… I thought "Leithian" was some variant of Luthien, but it's "Release from Bondage". What. Why. I guess it's that one scene where she takes Sauron's island?

Before I proceed: I wanted to say that writing a love story dedicated to your wife and overloading it with meanings is an absolutely valid thing to do. And beautiful.

Yes, this is an opinion I will stick with. No, it doesn't mean that I think everything in B&L is coherent or well-written. Most is, but there are places that stick out.

So we start with Beren. He lives with his fatherr and a band of outlaws and… they worship a (lake? river? translation unclear.) because Melian had hallowed it.

They are so competent that Morgoth tells Sauron (his 2nd in command) to kill them all.

Again we have a character with unprocessed grief (nor surprising, as he doesn't know whether his wife is alive or dead) and it is the entry point for the forces of evil. So, Gorlim. Sauron pulls the Dune-like thing on him. I wonder which was first. Jirt didn't like Dune, but had read it.

Beren sees Gorlim's ghost, in the (hallowed?) water, which is an interesting place for a ghost to appear. good for him I guess?

What is the thing with hands? Beren attacks the orcs and grabs his dead father's hand with the ring of Barahir. Unclear which hand was that. Also, he becomes vegan.

Beren is so competent that he gets a "wanted" poster Morgoth offers a prize for his head. As high as for Fingon. OK, so Morgoth gives money for killing important people? Or at least offers money? We aren't told if he ever actually paid anyone. But the orcs still prefer to run away, so he sends Sauron + a whole army and his werewolves.

How competent can one guy be?

Also, we get an explanation of what werewolves are. Terrible ghosts imprisoned in wolves' bodies and posessing them. This chapter has more on werewolves then the whole rest of the book.

So, Beren has to evacuate through Spider-land. Which he manages to do. (Seriously, how many Fate Points does this guy have?)

Luthien is so beautiful that he falls in love instantly. I would be more comfortable if Tolkien didn't show falling in love as simultanously a) totally uncontroleable result of beauty, and b) impossible to not turn into action. But Beren is a good guy so he is polite, he just admires her and stuff.

Also, she's got the exact same poetic colors of hair and eyes as Elrond, which makes sense. Or, more precisely, Elrond as her.

Fate this, fate that, I get the point but don't like the language.

Beren gets kind of sick, because he has to gain more Fate Points pays for the great destiny he is going to get.

I am not going to repeat that part I complained about already. Let's just say there's a lot of "she/they were the most X of everyone in all times" and this sounds, well, poetic but not factual. (Also, they are "the most happy anyone has ever been". )

Daeron snitches on Luthien (part 1). Thingol is sad and confused and asks questions. Beren says "I found what I didn't seek, but as I found it I will never give it up" and that is a really good line.

Thingol, of all people, complains of having made a hasty oath. :D

Beren would take death before dishonor. Also shows Finrod's ring and Thingol isn't very impressed. (I think this may be used as a counterargument to "Finrod should have written to Thingol" — Beren has already shown the credentials he could get from Finrod. What additional things could Finrod tell Thingol?)

We get a description of the ring of Barahir.

Melian tries to calm het husband down, but he is upset and resentful at Beren. And he says that he desires the Silmaril (does he? Did he desire it before he said that? Unclear)

At least Thingol says that with the Silmaril he will give Luthien to Beren if she will want to, which is very proper of him. Also he mentions the "fate of Ards is tied to the Silmarils" thing. Everyone realizes that he just wants Beren dead (so I guess it is a fact?)

Beren is very chill. He says "bye" to Luthien, bows. And then he moves the guards and just walks away ignoring them which is an awesome way of leaving.

Melian is worried, Thingol says that Beren will not return, and if he (thingol) believed that there is any chance of success for him, he would kill Beren, promise or not.

We have a lot of "Lay of Laithian says" so I guess this is suposed to be a later edition... I should do a reread (well, first read tbh) on the Lay one day. But it's hard to read with focus.

Beren goes to Nargothrond, and (so that the guards don't shoot him) yells often that he is Barahir's son. Which must have looked quite funny.

Also, Turgon isn't the only one with "shoot the intruders" policy, but Finrod's one seems less strict.

Finrod talks with Beren behind closed doors (I think it's because C&C. Finrod isn't naive, he's just… idk. Anyway this is a smart move.) Also he is surprised and sad and heavy-hearted because he realizes he's going to have to die. At leats he doesn't try to weasel out of his fate.

Also, Finrod says a lot of interesting / strange things:

the Oath is on again. So, we are in the "oath is an active thing" situation. Probably.

there is a "curse of hatered" on the Silmarils. (Huh??? Who cursed them? I don't remember Fefe cursing the jewels, he cursed many other things…)

who speaks their name with greed, awakens poweerful forces (WHAT? So… Thingol is greedy about the jewel? And it triggers the Oath? Or what? that's… a whole new conceptual area to explore)

the Feanorians would rather destroy all lands then let anyone else have a Silmaril (I'm not sure how true this is but him saying this tells us something about C&C)

the Oath "rules over the princes of Noldor" (What. Finrod, my guy, you are a Noldorin prince too. Also, what. What about their free will?)

C&C are a problem but Finrod won't break his word to Barahir, so we all are deep in trouble

Finrod makes a speech, expects support from his people. It's not said what kind of support. He doesn't say he is going to attack Angband directly.

Celegorm takes out his sword and quotes the Oath. That's pretty metal, but also definitely not good. Curufin is apparently more polite now (iirc he was brash some chapters earlier, I guess he learned. Or it was Celegorm too?). Citizens of Nargothrond are scared of war, they get sneaky, start using poison and generally turn Nor Great from this time on. Huh.

The Doom of Mandos awakes in C&C's hearts and gives them evil thoughts. This is a very close paraphrase. Excuse me, what? Pengolodh, what have you been drinking? something made by Namo (or one of his Maiar, which I find more likely, but anyway) makes them think evil things? Go home and check your phrasing, seriously. This sounds so off. Unless it's the translation again?

Finrod appeals to pity and gets ten guys to follow him. I agree that this speech of him doesn't sound great and … I think he just feels sad and abandoned and does some emotional blackmailing here. and Finrod is awesome but not so awesome to never do anything wrong. It's not terrible, but, yes, I think he would be better without it.

[Which implies that if it was just him and Beren, Sauron would not try to kill Beren earlier. Which… makes some sense. When you have 12 prisoners, killing one as an example isn't a lot. when you have just two, you need to use subtler means of persuasion. (sorry for a bit of Sauron PoV ;) )]

Still, Edrahil is pretty cool here. I like him. Yes, those two opinions can coexist and it is an important point.

The song duel. Finrod picks "Of secrets kept," as his starting line, which makes sense in the context (keeping their disguise) but also, considering what kind of secret had Finrod been keeping (mostly from Thingol, who is btw associated with this quest) for many, many years, I would say it does have a weak point.

So it leads to "In Valinor, the red blood flowing" and we're out.

Luthien feels that things are bad and asks mom and mom tells her that Beren is captured by Sauron. Which she knows. Because she's a Maia, probably? But still, to see into Sauron's dungeons is quite an achievement. Maybe fate was a factor too.

Huan! The dog that is under the Doom of the Noldor! It seems as if this was the reason he later dies at all, that without the Doom thing Huan would be immortal. What even is he. [A lesser Maia. I don't care it's no longer canon, it makes the most sense.]

Also, he never sleeps, his sight and smell can't be deceived and he is invulnerable to magic.

C&C capture Luthien and we have their reasoning explained. So, C&C's logic as told by the narrative:

Finrod and Beren are as good as dead now

so let's let Finrod die

also let's force Thingol to let Tyelko marry Luthien

we will be the most powerful princes of the Noldor

the Silmarils, yea, so let's wait. first we will rule all the Elven kingdoms and then we can work on reclaiming the Silmarils.

No, it doesn't mean that someone else may take them!

Yes, it is explicitely about political power. (But also, Luthien pretty and Celegorm is into her.)

Also, Huan (like Celegorm) understands all creatures.

Finrod dies. Pengolodh edits it heavily. Seriously, I hereby accept this fic as my canon for what finrod said, because the book is lying. Oh wait, no. It is the translation. In the Polish version Finrod literally says "it will be many ages before the Noldor see me" and he says it without "probably" or anything, he says it like a foresight. And we know it is not true, because he got reembodied very quickly.

The original is not that bad. Anyway, it is lacking. It reads like something Celegorm would say in the situation (no offense to Celegorm who had actually been in this situation in early drafts).

[HC time: I imagine Pengolodh as very much the kind of guy to get offended by and cut out anything that looks too strange and … I don't know how to call it. Difficult? He's not terrible, but very insecure after returning from the Exile. He really doesn't want to offend the Valar again and isn't taking the best approach to it.]

And, speaking of Pengolodh and his additions, "so died Finrod, the most beloved descendant of Finwe". Beloved by whom? Certainly not by Finwe. Maybe by the people, but it does depend on which people exactly. Most beloved on the average? Most beloved by Pengolodh?

Pengolodh, my guy, I actually agree with you that Finrod is the loveliest Finwean, but please, could you refrain from using "loved / beloved" and comparisions?

Anyway, song-rescue. This is something even Pengolodh can't mess up describing. Also, Valacirca (Sickle of the Valar, that is: the Big Dipper) mentioned, and … it's a sign of Morgoth's fall? I thought this one was a threat to him. (Yes, let me remind you: there is not one, but two different seven(ish)-star constellations that Varda put in the sky specifically as a threat to Melkor. Also, of all the weapons, a sickle.)

Sauron seems to have a thing with "standing on a high place and smiling/laughing just before he gets wrecked". (Later he does it as Numenor is falling). I hereby HC that just before he noticed the Ring being in the Crack of doom, he also stood high atop his tower and laughted (because Aragorn's army was losing).

I'm tired. I'll cut B&L reread into two parts.

[turtlespancake]

me when i write a character who is prone to dooming themself and then they run off and doom themself. core traits are stubbornness and a willingness to disregard their own humanity gET BACK HERE IM NOT DONE WITH YOU

[x-for-a-y]

god the wreck i'm thinking about the wreck. guptill is in a mockery of life he's dead he's gone he's still there he's nowhere to be found he's an echo rattling around the gaping cavern of the wreck he's a ghost in the shell who will never be allowed to rest till his body stops bleeding! and gaster will never let that happen! he spills blood without a heart pumping his own. his light is rust-dark

[kirain]

I want to take a moment to talk about Gale's "obsession" with Mystra, because I've had that thrown at me a lot when discussing his character with players who hate him.

First off, I'd like to emphasize a point that many people already know: Mystra groomed him. Though his exact age when she "slept" with him isn't known, a new document that's been supplied in the epilogue confirms he was merely "eight summers" old when she took him under her wing and sent Elminster to find him. Mystra, in fact, has a vast history of grooming little boys, to the point that many parents hide their sons from her gaze if they show an early aptitude for magic. Though Gale did have other lovers before her, Mystra was really all he knew throughout his childhood, and the power dynamic was not equal. It makes sense that he'd have trouble pulling away from her at first, especially since she convinced him that she/the Weave were his only value in life.

Second, I want to discuss something most players probably aren't aware of. In D&D lore, there's a place called the City of Judgement. This is essentially D&D limbo, where all mortal souls go to be judged after death. Bad news for atheists, if you don't believe in or worship any gods, you're known as a "faithless", and since no gods will grant a faithless entry into their domain, your soul becomes part of the Wall of the Faithless.

In short, a faithless' soul will be sucked into the wall, where it will guard the city and suffer endless torment for all eternity. This fate isn't only reserved for faithless, however; it's also a punishment for fallen Chosen or anyone who's been abandoned by their gods. Like Gale. He's absolutely terrified, and he tells you as much if you romance him. If you keep things platonic, he alludes to it during the "go to hell" scene. This is compounded by the fact that raiding demons sometimes attack the City of Judgement, tear souls from the wall, and drag them to the Abyss, where they're used to spawn new low-level demons or to feed their masters. There's no good ending, whether a soul remains trapped in the wall or not.

Gale doesn't explicitly say it, but he's contemplating his own death here, as he probably did the entire time he was locked away in his tower. This is why he's so quick to agree to kill himself for Mystra's forgiveness. It's not because he's "obsessed" with her or because he wants her back, it's because he'll literally go to hell if he can't convince her he's worthy of her twisted sense of forgiveness. By the time we meet Gale, he's honestly over Mystra in all romantic sense, and even more so by Act 2, whether you romance him or not. He's simply...

[sas-soulwriter]

Creative misfortunes for characters

Identity Crisis: Have your character lose their memory, forcing them to rediscover their true self and past.

Betrayal by a Loved One: A close friend or family member betrays the character's trust, leading to emotional turmoil and inner conflict.

Physical Transformation: Give your character a physical ailment or transformation that they must come to terms with, such as sudden blindness, a debilitating illness, or turning into a different species.

Unrequited Love: Make your character fall deeply in love with someone who doesn't reciprocate their feelings, causing heartache and a quest for self-discovery.

Financial Ruin: Strip your character of their wealth and privilege, forcing them to adapt to a life of poverty and face the harsh realities of the world.

False Accusation: Have your character falsely accused of a crime they didn't commit, leading to a desperate quest to clear their name.

Natural Disaster: Place your character in the path of a devastating natural disaster, such as a hurricane, earthquake, or tsunami, and force them to survive and rebuild.

Loss of a Sense: Take away one of your character's senses (e.g., sight, hearing, taste) and explore how they adapt and cope with this profound change.

Forced Isolation: Trap your character in a remote location, like a deserted island, and make them confront their inner demons while struggling to survive.

Haunted Past: Reveal a dark secret from your character's past that comes back to haunt them, threatening their relationships and well-being.

Time Travel Consequences: Send your character back in time, but make them inadvertently change a crucial event in history, leading to unintended consequences in the present.

Psychological Breakdown: Push your character to the brink of a mental breakdown, exploring the complexities of their psyche and their journey towards recovery.

Unwanted Prophecy: Have your character be the subject of a prophecy they want no part of, as it places them in grave danger or disrupts their life.

Loss of a Loved One: Kill off a beloved character or make your protagonist witness the death of someone close to them, igniting a quest for revenge or justice.

Incurable Curse or Disease: Curse your character with an incurable ailment or supernatural curse, and follow their journey to find a cure or accept their fate.

Sudden Disappearance: Make a character disappear mysteriously, leaving the others to search for them and uncover the truth.

Betrayal of Morals: Force your character into a situation where they must compromise their ethical values for a greater cause, leading to moral dilemmas and internal conflict.

Loss of a Precious Object: Have your character lose a cherished possession or artifact that holds sentimental or magical significance, setting them on a quest to recover it.

Political Intrigue: Place your character in a position of power or influence, then subject them to political intrigue, manipulation, and power struggles.

Existential Crisis: Make your character question the meaning of life, their purpose, and their place in the universe, leading to a philosophical journey of self-discovery.

Remember that misfortunes should serve a purpose in your story, driving character growth, plot development, and thematic exploration.

[ukiiseikou]

in my dreams, you love me back / don't wake me up, deceive me sweetly

various hsr (dan heng, aventurine, sunday, jing yuan) characters as isekai romance tropes.

dan heng in: helping that useless prince!

the exiled prince! he ends up settling in a modest (for him - raised with a silver spoon in his mouth and all) cottage. he finds usual peasant housework and chores difficult to deal with, so he employs you to help him around the house. you wake up already months into the job, and he finds it extremely weird how his usually quiet housekeeper is suddenly all chipper and nosy into his work and daily life (i mean, he employed you in the first place because he were anything but that). he doesn't find the change bothersome though, and catches himself starting to look forward to your sudden barging into his room in the middle of the day with his tea balanced precariously in your hands, bringing a new type of entertainment into his less than exciting life.

aventurine in: stopping us from going broke!

you've reincarnated into the body of the wife of the gambler noble: aventurine. originally just a side character who gets all his money taken away from him by the male lead in service of the plot, you work to stop that aaaaaall from happening - mostly to save yourself. your current life is cushy and you would love to keep it that way! along the way, you've gotten to interact more with your husband, who usually keeps out of your way and only speaks in condescending tones. eventually, you find out that nothing is as it seems, and you discover more and more of your husband's past, and you slowly find yourself finally falling in love with each other, slowly, slowly.

sunday in: wait, is this story about us?

sunday is the tragic villain of the story - obsessed with keeping the status quo, his plans keep getting thwarted by a pesky pest - YOU. after all, he is your favourite character, and you would rather not see him go down the path that leads to certain death. you keep taking random tools that will help him, and his informants keeps mysteriously disappearing under unknown circumstances. his messages sent by bird never seem to reach their destination and his henchmen are always tripping over misplaced equipment and the main leads never seem to be where he needs them to be. he eventually pins the blame on you, and turns his gaze and focus on getting you to his side before continuing on with his plans. after all, anyone who can thwart his plans and keep up with him like this deserves to be rewarded and kept by his side, not killed.

jing yuan in: saving the general

he's the general who strikes fear into his enemies. he's the teacher whose students barely make it out alive every class. he's your sleepy boss who makes you do everything. yes, the feared and mighty general in private is utterly dependent on you in his private and daily life. as an avid reader of the original novel, where jingyuan is killed so that his mentee - the protagonist, goes off on his hero's journey in revenge, you never knew that being his assistant would be such a hassle. but the protagonist is currently a child, and he runs around your feet - so much so that you are starting to question whether the him whose challenging you to a duel right now with a wooden sword when he's only half your size is the same character as the one you read on the pages of the book. either way, you should be responsible and raise him well, while also hopefully saving him from the heartache that is losing his father figure in a few years. after all, you've gotten yourself in his good graces, and you kind of have a soft spot for him as well, not that you'll ever admit it.

[last-words-ofashootingstar]

Allure

Part One:Sunshine

❥MATZ x fem reader

Kim Hongjoong and Park Seonghwa. The most known and feared alphas of the new generation. It took two dozen elder alphas to subdue them and stick them in the world's most secluded prison- hidden away in the mountains. The prison that sweet little omega (Y/n)'s works at.

Knuckle Velvet (Part Two)

Smoke (Part Three)

➯a/n: i've always wanted to write a story i would like to see as a movie or show, and i very much enjoy supernatural and dark romance, so i made this ! it does get very dark so please read the warnings and take care of yourself first and foremost. i am very proud of this, i hope you enjoy 💕

✃ "Because you're... alluring."

✫彡wordcount: 9.3k

♫"Hey, you should leave that young thing alone, ain't no sunshine when she's gone, only darkness everyday." - Flower Face (original by Bill Withers) ♫ Allure Sountrack

(>ᴗ•)♡´･ᴗ･`♡genre: smut, YANDERE, a/b/o au

ಠ_ಠWARNING/content: DEAD DOVE I MURDERED THAT BIH

chapter specific: literally what have i done, not beta read(ironically), criminal MATZ, alpha MATZ/omega reader, forget everything you know about werewolves, so much world building, extremely yandere behavior, talk of attempted child murder, class division of werewolves, panic attacks, vulgar language, mind control, lots of scent stuff, unhealthy relationships, ptsd, flashbacks and nightmares, physical violence, manipulation of others dreams, supporting character death, forced soul bonding, forced marking, reader implied to have mental health issues, murder, gore, violence- all that good stuff. THIS IS NOT A NON CON FIC ALL EVENTUAL SMUT WILL BE CONSENSUAL.

⁂perm taglist: @stvrfir3 @tunaasan @marievllr-abg

⁂fic taglist: @potatomountain @spooo00oky

MATURE UNDER CUT MDNI

˚➶ ｡˚ PART ONE ˚➶ ｡˚

You hate weekdays. That much is true for a lot of people. You like to think your reasoning is especially valid.

Every Monday through Friday like clockwork, 6:30AM you walk into the prison. That on its own wasn't so bad. You lived only ten minutes away; the gothic building looked over your village in tandem with the mountains. You could see it when the weather was clear, even from your bedroom on the edge of town. You were no longer afraid of it like when you were a child.

You are, however, afraid of the newest prisoners.

New arrivals didn't usually rock you. This is the only prison in the country fit to hold lycans, after all. They all got transferred here eventually. From beta's who were just stealing to eat, to alphas who used their powers on humans, to those who believed in the old ways and fed on humans.

You had to interact with them all face to face.

You weren't excited for that particular aspect of your job this week.

You made your way through the double doors and greeted the security guard, your friend Hyolyn, as you went through the metal detector. It went off on account of the scent blocker that was embedded in your neck. She chuckled and switched it off so it stopped its incessant beeping.

"Don't laugh at me!" You threw a smile her way as you got your small purse from the plastic bucket she slid towards you. She doesn't bother to check your bag. She knows you well enough to know you wouldn't bring in any "fuck shit", as she would say. "You alpha's don't have to worry about accidentally spewing scent everywhere."

"Thank goodness for that, this place would stink to high heaven." Her unintentional reference to the new arrivals makes the air turn stiff. She could tell you were on edge immediately. "They aren't all that scary," she lays a comforting hand to your shoulder as you fiddle with the long strap on your crossbody bag.

"I heard one of them killed Alpha Greene... you think that's true? That guy was huge, I saw him at The Thing last year, I almost peed myself cause he looked at me-" You stop your own rambling, taking a deep breath and letting it out as a shaking sigh. "I don't want to go in there. Honestly, why can't we install a laundry chute or something, fuck."

"I'll follow you up, I c-"

"No, no, it's visiting day. You need to be down here. You know Chungha? Her daughter is visiting today. Don't want you to miss her." You offer a sad, tight lipped smile, but that doesn't trick her instincts to protect her weaker pack member. She knows you too well to be tricked.

"You just scream and I'll be there. Either of those cocky fucks lift a pinky in your direction and I'll gut them. They don't deserve to see a trial anyway."

A small exhale in the form of a chuckle lightens her protective instincts, she can tell you feel more at ease with her promise to be right there at the slightest hint of trouble.

"See you, Hyolyn."

"Later, babes."

You wave your fingers with a smile as the elevator doors slides shut. As soon as they clunk together, you let it fall and crouch with your head in your hands, taking in deep and slow breaths as you try and force all of the rumors you've heard about the two newest inmates away from your head.

The older alpha of the duo was the first born in this generation. They're always powerful. But he was born to two bloodthirsty rouges. Born in sin and blood lust.

The younger alpha was born just some months after, to an arranged marriage that was purposefully formed to make powerful children. They surely regret that now. Some say the man has the strongest, sharpest claws since the first lycan in Talbot Castle.

When the elevator dings, you're already upright and have that strong facade on that you put on when you're clocked in.

˚➶ ｡˚

You start with the familiar. "Hey, Chungha," you tap on the silver bars of her cell, "hand 'em over." She smiles as she stands, stripping the sheets from her cot and holding them through the bars for you. "Thank you," you draw on with a tug on your lips that matches hers.

"Yunnie in town?"

"Mhm," you hum as you fold the blanket before dropping it in the large basket on wheels, "she came over for stew, I made sure to feed her good and well, don't worry."

You know it was probably problematic, but you couldn't help it. Chungha came here three years ago on a charge for battery, and over those three years you became sort of friends with her.

The battered in her case was her grandfather. When her five year old daughter, Jiyun, started to show signs of being an omega- he left her in the snow to wither away. She managed to survive until her mother came home, and said mother was furious.

She was lucky she didn't charged with attempted manslaughter.

"She said she'll be here first thing."

"Thank you," she had a heavy pull on her voice. You don't have the emotional connection to other wolves like an alpha or beta did. But it was clear to anyone she was being sincere. "You're a good woman."

"Don't mention it, Yunnie is good company. Oh," you start to wheel the basket away when you remember something. You reach into the purse that you had set on the handles. "She made this at art class, asked me to give it to you so it didn't have to wait in processing."

It was a small, cruelly made ceramic bowl in the vague shape of a heart. It was clearly made by an eight year old, but made with love.

"I owe you."

"Just keep working on that parol work." You said lightly and blew a kiss as you moved to the next cell.

    The rest of your work nearly cleared your mind as you went from cell to cell, floor to floor. Omega's were on the second floor. Beta's on the third. Alphas on the fourth. High security on the fifth.

     It's on the fourth level that you begin to feel those nerves that you had just worked away. The scent was becoming stronger. They didn't put them on blockers? Maybe they didn't think it would be worth it. Everyone knew that they were the worst of the worst, they didn't even try to hide it. They would undoubtedly be put to death. Why waste two perfectly good, expensive, blockers?

     The basket of used sheets is nearly full, accumulating into a weight that makes you put your back into it as you push it into the elevator.

    Your index finger reaches out, and before you can stop yourself you've pressed the button to the fifth floor.

       You blank out until the door opens again. Your teeth are eternally grateful for the gum between them so they don't grind themselves into dust. The mint flavor does little to calm your nerves.

     The only thing that makes you come back to your own head is Changbin. He's a big, buff beta with a gun full of silver bullets on his work belt. He won't let them hurt you. His smile washes away a lot of the nerves.

    But the growl that rumbles against the walls makes them return ten, one hundred, one thousand fold. You don't dare say a word. A deer in headlights until Changbin places his hand on the small of your back. "Go on, don't give them the satisfaction of scaring you. They aren't going nowhere no time soon. Take a look."

     He motions you deeper into the hall, florescent lights buzzing above you, matching the jittering feeling in the deepest pit of your stomach. It smells too strong. Too much. You're about to fall to your knees from the weight and you haven't even come face to face with the near feral criminals.

    Changbin opens the doors at the end of the hall.

     They've definitely gone all out to keep them in place. Two large cages placed next to each other in the middle of the enormous room. Made of pure silver and wrapped in wolfsbane. The unpleasant smell of the plant makes your nose twitch. A ring of blood ash surrounds it. Only omegas can pass through blood ash, and now you start to realize why they sent you.

    You want to curse the warden, but the second you open your mouth, a loud cackle sounds out from one of the cages.

     Changbin's hand twitches at the gun attached to his side.

    "Oh wow," the smaller alpha chuckles, eyes closed, head tilted back, as he sniffs the air. "I didn't expect that." More manic giggles slip past his lips.

    You haven't even looked up to see them and you want to cave in on yourself.

    "What are you rambling about, huh?" The guard next to you shouts, making you flinch instinctively.

     "That sweet... sweet, smell," he moans. You can hear him shuffling. "From a peppy little spit fuck omega."

   You gasp abashedly, and now two laughs ring out. You want to wonder how they can smell you. Your insurance provides the best scent blocker in the country. But you're too scared to breathe, let alone think.

      "Shut up," Changbin groans, he can feel you tense next to him, "don't piss me off, Kim."

    "Awe," a new, rumbling voice makes you cower the second it reaches your ears, "this your mate? Hm, no... you wouldn't bring your mate here. You're not an idiot. Then, say... omega." You don't make a move to look when he addresses you, you stay looking at Changbins grip on his gun, silently.

     "Omega, come!" Your feet move for you, and that manic laugh almost makes you wet yourself as you realize that your wolf is making you move toward them without your consent. You stop just outside of the blood ash, where you know you're safe.

     "Changb-"

     "No. I'm the one you're speaking to."

   Changbin seems to be weighing his options, eyeing the men as they eye you.

    "Why are you here? You a shrink?"

    You shake your head.

   "You a lawyer?"

    Again.

   "She works here, dumbass, look at her scrubs," the younger speaks, and you nod subconsciously, to which he giggles, "what can we do for a pretty little thing like you?"

    When you refuse to speak, the guard does it for you. "She's here for your sheets today. Get used to her."

     You hated that this was your job, but it was easy and accessible, and available for omegas. Werewolves are clean freaks. Every day you had a different cleaning task, but you didn't complain. Not until right now- you wanted to rip out the throat of whoever's idea it was to not shoot these criminals on sight.

     "Ah," he hums, and you can feel his eyes raking your body. You can feel both of their eyes. "Not too bad of a sight to get used to. Huh, Hwa?"

     "Mh, that's right... can't wait to get my hands on her."

Your head snaps back to Changbin.

"Awn, she thinks he's gonna help her!" The high pitched giggles bounce around in your head. "Oh, little omega~"

The saccharine coo finally pulls your eyes to the men in the cages.

If you thought you knew what fear was before this moment, you were wrong.

The two strongest criminals in the country, staring you down like a piece of meat. It doesn't matter that they are the ones in cages of silver and wolfsbane. You are the one who feels cornered.

You can immediately feel out their dynamics. The taller one is the older one, quiet and still in his cage as he sits in the center. Shaggy, shining hair framing his face and neck like an elegant piece of lace over a brides face. He has a sleeve of tattoos on one forearm, a thick tattoo on his neck. Eyes glowing a deep, blood red, as he tries to read your entire story with only a look in your direction.

The giggling one is less intimidating, only by a hair. Chemically lightened locks pushed back messily, letting his entrancing features shine in the light from the narrow windows high on the walls. He has tattoos as well, but they seem few and far between. His eyes are human for a moment before they meet yours. Instantaneously, they flick black.

The knot drops from your throat and you let out a small, pathetic, squeak.

Changbin breaks your staring contest with the alpha, shouting orders at them. "Take the sheets off your cot and set them outside of your cage. Do not attempt to touch her, I will shoot you."

    Neither criminal makes a move to follow his orders, both simply staring at you.

A low growl is emitted when the older alpha finally snaps up, tearing the sheet off the sorry excuse for a bed in one fell swoop. The younger follows his lead, shoving their sheets through the bars that are wrapped in the poisonous flower.

You look to the guard, and he nods, "go." With his finger twitching at the gun ready to pull it, you jump over the dark red ashes and into the wolves den, snatching the sheets up as quick as possible and dashing away, out the door before they even get a chance to lock in your scent up close.

The giggles follow you all the way to the elevator and ring in your head even as the thick metal thunks shut.

As you take a deep breath, you notice the sheets are gripped to your chest, your claws drawn subconsciously in your panic and ripping them up. "Shit!" You let out a curse and shove them into the bottom of the basket so you don't have to smell it as closely on the long ride to the basement.

˚➶ ｡˚

The lingering wafts of your fresh scent are long gone, nothing to distract the alpha's from their caged boredom and bubbling rage over being caught. "I'll have that runts heart in my hands by the end of the month." Hongjoong groaned, to no one in particular- he knew Seonghwa was too deep in thought from their recent revelations. "Fucking back stabbers. They're more pathetic than a bitch in heat trying to get off with a dildo."

The thought hit his mind as soon as the words left his lips.

The thought of you, legs spread with your hand dipped low, trying to satisfy your primal urges and-

"Stop that." Seonghwa growls, kicking the bars of their shared 'wall'.

"Settle down!"

"Oh, like you weren't thinking it!" Hongjoong rolls his eyes, a scowl on his face as he crosses his arms. "Your ruts coming and you don't want your-"

"I said stop," he nearly roars, grabbing Hongjoong's state issued orange top and ripping it with his claws as he pulls him forward.

"I know you want her because I want her too." He whispers, smirking at the telltale signs of desire and bloodlust in his mates eyes. Red swirling around the brown of his human eyes. "Imagine how good she'll smell when we take out that stupid blocker. We'll be drowning in her scent." He moans, grabbing his wrist, "I get the honors, my claws are sharper, anyways," he draws them quickly, digging them into his skin as if to prove a point.

"I can use my teeth, mark h-"

"Oh, will you two stop? Love of God..." The guard in the large room slaps his book down on the rickety table. "What is there possibly for you to be fighting about? You're about to be executed, you know that right? No jury in the world will let you walk, especially the human half."

Their frustrations turn to the man, letting each other go. "Ah, you think so?" The older croons, dragging his index over his bleeding wrist and bringing it to his lips, sucking it clean before he continues. "We won't be around these parts long enough to meet the jury."

"What do you mean by that?"

Hongjoong covers his mouth when a laugh slips past. Seonghwa simply smirks as he sits cross legged, eyes locked with the guard as he licks his wound.

"What do you mean by that?!"

The blonde man breaks out in a fit of laughter. The brunette simply flashes his bloody canines in a twisted smile.

˚➶ ｡˚

You spent the whole time doing your daily tasks trying to hype yourself up to go back up to the fifth floor.

You usually went top down, four to one. Nobody has ever been on five before.

You go bottom up today, starting at Chungha with a full basket of freshly washed sheets. She prattles on about her visit with Jiyun, and how she's so thankful for you.

You choose that as your focus point for the rest of the work day, even as you press the button to the fifth floor.

You think back to the first time you spoke to Chungha, she was a crying mess, unable to sense that you were an omega like herself. She cried and cried and cried as you held her hand through the bars of temporary holding. She cried for her daughter, for cursing her with the shame of being the weakest link of any pack. When she looked up and saw your eyes, barely glowing, she cried more.

She apologized profusely, but you reassured her that her words were true, and you hadn't been offended. You told her that, in fact, she was the first to ever share your feelings of what being an omega really meant. It meant loneliness beside anyone but other omegas. Fake relationships born with people who only stuck around because of their primal instincts to either prey on you or protect you. It meant facing the fact that you were outcasts from both of the world's dominant societies. Outcasted from humans for being a werewolf. Outcasted from werewolves for being weak. So weak, in fact, that blood ash didn't even think of you as a wolf.

That night, you drove four hours to the next village over and looked after her daughter until her aunt had room. You remember the first thing the girl said to you. She didn't speak that whole day, surely in shock from the past few days events. But when you tucked her into the motel bed, she spoke as soft as a ghost, "sing me a song?"

You hum it to yourself now, the soft sound reverberating through the metal around you until the door opened.

You wheel the basket with you this time, like it will protect you as you approach the open doors, already feeling the unwavering gaze of the criminals.

"Hey, dolly~" Hongjoong, you had learned when you took a peek into their files, purred your way.

You didn't give him the satisfaction of responding verbally, but he saw the goosebumps on your arm as you reached into the basket, stretching on your tip toes to get the last two sheets.

"You never shut up do you, Kim?" The guard sighed with an exhausted tone, making you smile as you slowly made your way to the ring of red dust.

The throaty rumble from Seonghwa, the older, taller wolf, makes that smile drop to the depths of Hell.

The new guard seems to notice your anxiety, eyeing you up- in a much less predatory manner than the caged men. "Go on, 'mega. I'm watching them."

A bang on the metal bars makes you glue your foot right back where it came from. It's the blonde one, "you shut the fuck up!"

"No, you shut the fuck up! I'm the one with the silver bullets!"

All of the yelling is making you tremble, Hongjoong and the guard going back and forth. "She isn't your omega!"

"She ain't yours!"

Seonghwa watches with a sinister smile as you back away from the ash and the guard, calling to you quietly, "hey."

The soft tone of his voice makes you raise your eyes, but not your head. His eyes don't hold that threatening and dominating red from before. They're a soft brown color that reminds you of a beautiful dark oak in the morning sunshine. "What's your name?"

"(Y/n)..." your tongue moves without your consent, fresh blankets held to your work scrubs.

You desperately want the guard to notice this trance you're in, and grab you out of it. You want to do it yourself, but you can't do anything but admire the beauty of the criminal who has you hypnotized.

"You're a pretty omega, y'know? What color is your wolf?"

"Black..." It's a slur off your lips, barely registering in his sharply tuned ears over the yelling that continues to fill the room.

"Mine too. What's her name? His is Akma."

"Solis."

"Very pretty. Is she fast?"

"Yes."

"Does she want an alpha? A mate?"

"Yes."

The guard finally notices your raised gaze, affixed to the infamous, unlawful, man. He puts his gun back in the holster quickly before gripping your shoulder and forcing you to turn around. "You idiot, didn't anyone ever tell you not to look a first born in the eyes?"

"Sorry. I'm sorry." No one had ever told you that, actually.

Both of the criminals share a smirk as the man from your pack attempts to calm you. It wasn't hard for them to figure out you were an alpha-less village. They could smell every single wolf in five miles, and not a single stench from a wolf even nearly as strong as them.

There was, however, you. A honeyed smell that filled their guts with the primal need to rip out the eyes of anyone who dared look at you.

The guard couldn't be more wrong. You are their omega. You just don't know yet.

"Go and give these fucks their sheets, then get the hell out of here." The man shoved you, making you jump clumsily over the ash so you didn't break the seal.

He yells at them to back up, and they do so without a fight.

You shove them both in at the same time before running back out quickly, grabbing the empty basket and dragging it with you, the sound of the wheels scraping with the force of your panic echoing in the near empty room.

"You guys get off on scaring defenseless girls?" The guard scoffs, not expecting an answer as he drags the chair out of the room and slams the doors behind him.

Seonghwa lets his facade fall the second the door shuts, falling to his knees and grappling at the sheet like he's a starving man with the last piece of food on Earth. Hongjoong watches for a moment in confusion until the scent catches up with his weaker nose. Then he's quickly falling in the same position.

"It worked, the guard was so easy to distract," Hongjoong chuckles, face buried into the sheet that smells vaguely like you from your time spent holding it. "What did you learn?"

"(Y/n), a black wolf named Solis," he pauses, eyes rolled back as he takes a deep breath. They're red when they re-open. "No mate. It's really her."

"You think we should have told her?" Hongjoong inquires, looking through the bars.

He's never seen Seonghwa on his knees for anyone but him or the moon.

"No," he shakes his head, turning to lock eyes with him. "She'll figure it out when I mark her."

"When I mark her."

He rolls his eyes at his defiant nature, knowing full well he won't disobey his orders no matter how badly he wants to do something.

In a dog eat dog world, the strongest was the most powerful. Unlike their human neighbors, werewolves don't decide political or social standing by money or family name. They decide based on who comes out on top in a battle of the body and of the wits.

It had been determined years ago, when they were just young rebellious pups, that Seonghwa was the alpha. A fight in the woods under the moon had set it in stone between the two.

He could have ripped Hongjoongs throat out right then and there, but now, 13 years later in the present; they're bonded for life.

Sometimes he still sees Hongjoong as that 12 year old boy under his teeth, still snapping and growling even as he bled out with tears in his dark eyes, fighting to survive purely out of spite.

"You can mark her first," Seonghwa speaks quickly, turning his back as he puts the sweet smelling sheet on his cot.

He smiles at the man, a quiet thanks spoken through their bonded souls.

˚➶ ｡˚

Tuesday, they don't see you until much later in the day, but they bask in the sight of you opening the door with a broom and tray in hand, smiling at Changbin. You'll be here for a while, it's a big room.

"Hey, Binnie," you whisper to the beta, and Seonghwa has to bite his tongue.

Binnie? Ugh.

Hongjoong isn't so polite, "hey, Dolly! We don't get a hello?" You barely peek at him, eyes flicked from him right back to the floor in a millisecond. He knows you noticed his pout when he hears the smallest 'hello' tremble by your lips.

You start in the corner, headphones attached to your walkman with your favorite song on repeat to try and soothe yourself. Bill Withers calming voice blocks out every word of the teasing alphas, but you can still feel them mocking you and picking at you.

You don't dare sweep anywhere near the blood ash on the floor. One less precaution in place was one more thing to worry about.

"Bye, Binnie."

He does growl that time, eyes narrowed on your back until the door shuts.

˚➶ ｡˚

Wednesday, you have a frown on your face. "Three days in a row?" The guard Hongjoong got in a yelling match with, Merle, greets you as you come into the cavernous room, "bad schedule huh?"

"No kidding," you sigh, feet slightly hesitant to pass the dust border, "I'm here to fix your shirt. It's state property." You don't look at them, but they know who you're referring to.

They act like they don't, though. Just to hear more of your voice. To make you wriggle under their attention. "Sorry? What do you mean?"

You look and point to Hongjoong, his collar ripped from Seonghwas grasp. "State property."

"Ah, of course." He grins like a jackal, pulling it over his head and sticking his hand out of the bars just in the slightest. "On one condition."

You pout, eyes on the shirt which is just far enough away that you'd have to step closer. And it's the cutest fucking thing they've ever seen.

You look back up at him, silently asking. "Sit and talk with us. The guards here are no fun!" His laugh makes you jump back further, he sounds like a mad pirate.

You look over to Merle, who just shrugs, "just get it over with so these guys will shut up. They're only talkative around you, they need an audience for their antics."

"We won't bite," Seonghwa chuckles with his teeth exposed, making you shiver.

"Fine, give it here." You take a single step forward, palm out infront of the blonde.

When you grab it and go to race away like always, his claws wrapping all the way around your wrist stops you, sharp edges threatening to slice your skin down to the bone. You scream your head off, silenced when Seonghwa coos softly, "sit with us, and talk."

"Let me go..." you plead, eyes frantically flicking to Merle, whose gun is drawn to Hongjoongs head from the border of the ash, waiting for him to take one more wrong move so he can rid the world of one of its greatest criminals.

"Sit, omega." You do so, slowly lowering to the floor with your wrist and life still in Hongjoongs hand. "You have your sewing kit with you, I can hear the buttons hitting the needle. So sit, stay, and talk while you fix it."

Once again, they're the ones caged in. But you're the one who's stuck.

     One look to Merle tells you he probably wouldn't help you even if he could get to you. He lowers his gun as your tailbone hits the concrete floor.

     Your thin work scrubs do little to fight the cold of the old flooring, one reason of many that you shake as you reach into your purse and get the small tin box.

     Hongjoong releases your wrist and sits mirrored to you, hands perched on the bars in the gaps of the purple vine flower wrapped on them. Seonghwa comes to the corner of his side of the split cage and breathes in deeply through his nose, eyes locked in on your every movement. "So you're essentially the errand lady? Maid?"

      "Yes..." You murmur under your breath as your fingers work to thread the needle, slowly backing away until you're out of reach, but still stuck in the blood ash with no one to rescue should the men infront of you decide to rip their cages open. You only stop backing away when you hear a warning growl.

     You don't care to see which it came from, you just want to do this as quickly as possible and get far, far, away. They could have chose anyone to focus their annoying efforts on. Changbin, Merle, the warden. But no, just your luck.

      "You live in the village, right? Were you born here?" Seonghwa continues to do the talking as you carefully fix the shirt.

      "Yes. And no."

     A small hum from the one in front of you is a sign they want you to continue. "I was born to an overpopulated pack. They kicked me out when I turned eighteen. Our old alpha took me in." The hitch in your voice is a clear sign that it's a sore topic. And Hongjoong continues to poke the wound.

      "How did they find you?"

       "Woods."

       "Woods?"

     You can't help the small growl of frustration, lip curling as you look up. "Woods."

     The reaction is one you wouldn't have expected from a normal person, but then- they aren't normal.

     They laugh, cooing over your gesture of anger. Compared to them, you seem like a teacup puppy. "My, my," the brunette chuckles breathily, "is that Solis coming to play?"

     "At least she can," you snap, sent to the back of your own head as your wolf tries to defend you, "she isn't a caged mutt."

    Hongjoong breaks out into a manic fit of laughter, while his paramour is the opposite: his eyes flick red before your own, sharp teeth on display in a show of dominance over your smaller ones that are subconsciously bared at him. "Watch it, omega." He spits his words with venom, "I won't be so nice when I get out of here."

     You rip the extra thread with your claw, kicking the shirt across the floor so it sits at the bottom bar of Hongjoongs cage. His chest still wracks with laughter, watching as you sit up in a low squat so you're still level with the alpha.

      It's clear that you aren't currently you. Your wolf has control of your mouth and body, crouched in a position akin to that of a dog ready to pounce as you hiss your words, "I'm going to laugh in your face as you hang."

     "Aw, is that how dear old alpha died?"

     "Cut it out!" Merle screams disinterested, eyes glued to his flimsy magazine.

      "I heard he got gutted~" Hongjoong giggles, watching the color flicking in your eyes.

     "I'll gut you!" Your threat only makes him laugh more.

      "(Y/n)!" The voice of Hylyon breaks your wolf away from you immediately, falling to your bottom and crawling to the sound unwittingly. "You fucking idiot, Merle!" 

     She reaches over the blood ash and pulls you over the ring, letting you collapse into her as she drags you away, still throwing profanities at the incompetent guard. Hongjoong is laughing loudly. Seonghwa yelling at you to come back. The elevator cuts of his roar, the last thing you see through your blurry vision is his fist making a dent in the silver cage.

You fall onto the floor of the metal box. Thoughts flood your head too quickly for you to swim though them, making you drown and try to escape by releasing the pain with tears. You don't even notice when your friend turns her key in the elevator to make it stop in its tracks, you only see her when she sits right infront of you.

"Babes, calm down, I've got you," she reaches out slowly and places a hand on your leg, slowly rubbing her thumb over your knee.

"I can't go back up there... they're too strong, they make me feel like I'm suffocating," you splutter through gasps, "I'm too weak!"

"Hey, hey, you're spiraling!" She opens her arms and pulls you into her, letting you sob into her uniform. "In and out, girl," she holds the back of your neck securely, almost instantaneously making you calm. "I got you... I got you..."

You sit there for a good while, crying into her shoulder as you sort through your wracked brains.

Your alpha was gutted. Right in front of you. Because of you.

Unbeknownst to you, their tuned ears are still listening in, the elevator stuck within their ear shot as you begin mumbling your favorite song to yourself through tears.

˚➶ ｡˚

The sound of claws slicing through the skin on your back rings in your ears. Though, you can't feel it. Your eyes are locked in on your own claws, dug into the hardwood floor of your humble home to keep yourself from being dragged.

     You've been here a million times before.

     Blood pooling off of your body and onto the frigid surface below you. Teeth sharp and bared to the moon though the open window, begging that she might let you survive. Eyes aglow with your instincts as your wolf tries with every fiber of her being to turn, but she knows it's no use.

     The distorted voice above you drips with mocking venom, a chuckle as its owner realizes you can't even fight back like other wolves might: by letting your wolf fully transform.

     The wind blows through your curtains, washes your body in the artic breeze. The snowflakes on your windowsill are so delicate, all of their features fade into a blurry mush as they make contact. They melt, dripping down your wall.

     This time it's different.

      You're turned over, gaping wounds slammed into the floor as always, but when you look up to your aggressor it's different.

      His eyes aren't the yellow of a rouge, but the red of an alpha. His hair isn't that unruly blonde curl that you pulled at frantically, that you can still feel on your finger tips when your hands are unoccupied. It's long, shining, soft looking dark locks.

       You fall through the floor into another time, another place.

     Face first into the snow: your hands, shaking with adrenaline, do little to catch you.

       You don't remember this.

       This isn't right.

       This isn't your nightmare.

       You find yourself in a clearing in a forrest, the densely packed trees creating a bubble of nature around you. "(Y/n)?"

      You whip around, coming face to face with an unfamiliar man. Almost face to face. If he weren't floating a few feet in the air.

     His legs are crossed under him, hands facing palms up on his knees.

      "Don't worry. You're only dreaming." He speaks calmly as he floats around you in a circle, like a shark examining its potential prey.

     You follow him with your feral gaze, that familiar feeling of an adrenaline crash quickly approaching.

You know you're only dreaming. You've had that last dream more times than you can count in the past three years. It always plays the same. But not this time. You're only slightly thankful that you don't have to witness your alphas death again, but the gratefulness is overshadowed by confusion.

"Are you an angel?" You whisper, watching the man's soft and rounded features as he comes to a stop in the air in front of you and gracefully lowers to his feet.

"I can be, if that's what you want me to be. I'm only here to watch your dreams, fight off the nightmares."

"Why?" You feel distant from your body, watching powerlessly as your hand takes his, letting him lead you out of the clearing and into the darkness of the woods.

It disappears around you, warping into a spring day on a familiar path.

"A favor for a friend."

With the snow gone, you're in your spot, your old towel on the dewy grass with a book laid atop of it and the soil beneath your feet as you approach.

"Enjoy."

The hand vanishes from your own, leaving you alone on the side of the path. You look for him. But he's just an eidolon, watching you from the sky where you can't see him.

You warily take a seat and pick up the book.

˚➶ ｡˚

They don't see you again through the week. And when the next Monday comes by, their sheets are removed while they're in the showers.

Hongjoong sighs from his place on the floor, for the tenth time in the past half hour.

"Hong-"

"I miss our omega!" He whines, cutting him off.

Seonghwa stands from his cot, slowly lowering to the floor next to their shared bars. He lays flat on his back, mirroring Hongjoong as he tilts his head to look at him. "Soon." Is the only word he utters.

He reaches through the silver bars, ignoring the sting as the fresh wolfsbane brushes his wrist, and takes his hand.

The both of them look up at the ceiling through the bars of their enclosure.

Your scent is long gone from the room, and their noses can barely pick up on it through the rest of the village and prison.

"I want out of here," Hongjoong whispers, so lowly that the guard can't hear him from outside of the door, "when are they coming? Your bond with them is stronger, I can barely feel them..."

"Soon." He repeats, "very soon, Joong."

˚➶ ｡˚

Tuesday you manage to talk your coworker into sweeping the top floor, and you rejoice in the freedom of not being under the alpha's gazes. You've worked out a good schedule to completely avoid seeing them, and it's made your job feel like it's back to normal.

You can still smell their power wafting through the AC, but it's bearable. You distract yourself in your free time by making excuses to be on the second floor with Chungha and the other omegas.

Today, that excuse is 'omegas need physical outlets too', and the warden let you bring up buckets and brushes so you could all scrub the base boards.

"Oh, I've got one!" The omega to your left speaks, lifting his brush in the air in a eureka moment, "Texas Chainsaw Massacre or... Halloween?"

Chungha scoffs with a smile as she scrubs away to your right, "are we including sequels? There's like a billion!"

"No, stand alone original," Beomhan goes back to scrubbing as he continues, "both of them are classics but which one is a better classic?"

"Halloween is the classic slasher, Texas Chainsaw is like psychological horror," you chime in as you dip your brush into the bucket, sitting on your calves as you take a breather. "I think it's not fair to compare them... but Texas Chainsaw, definitely."

They laugh along with you, and Chungha shakes her head, "Halloween has more rewatchablity. You don't want to see Sally go through that more than once, but Laurie Strode fights harder and it's more like, yeah I'll watch her kick ass again."

"Cinematography in both is so beaut-"

The lights above you flicker before they shut down completely. People start muttering their concerns, quite a few of them looking your way. "Don't worry!" You hop up and get your keys from your pocket as you make your way to the locked stairwell. "I'll go and see what's going on, keep scrub-"

A loud siren echoes in the brick walls, shocking you all to cover your ears.

Everyone looks to you for answers, and you don't have any as your brain starts throwing theory after theory at you.

"It's okay, go back to your cells! Shut them behind you!"

They listened, however grumpy about it. The cell doors locked automatically when they were closed.

"Hey, what's going on?" Chungha asked over the clanging of the cell doors. The two of you, along with Beomhan, were the only ones left after a moment.

"Go back to your cell, Beomhan, hurry."

"No, what's happening?"

     The sirens cut off and leave you in a pregnant pause for a moment as you simply try to calm yourself.

A deafening scream ricochets through the air vent next to you, scaring you into their arms as you all stare at it.

Usually, the air flow covered the echoes throughout the floors. But with no power, you could hear everything- albeit muffled.

Yells and shouts. Gunshots. Growls. Unidentifiable chaos. And above all, your ears tuned in on a rumbling, calm voice through it all.

"Ain't no sunshine when she's gone... It's not warm when she's away..."

Your eyes widen as theres a bang at the stairwell door. "Go, go!" You grab each of their wrists, dragging them into Chungha's cell. You slam it behind you and let down the sheet she has over it, backing away and staring at it as you hear the door hit the wall behind it with the force it's slammed open.

"(Y/n), what the hells happening?!"

     You slap your hand over his mouth and bring a finger to your lips. The other omegas on the floor are all making a ruckus, and you can only hope that it will confuse that unfortunately familiar voice so he can't find you.

˚➶ ｡˚

The beta in the large room ignores Hongjoong as he continuously asks after 'the pretty omega'.

He just sweeps and sweeps, finally understanding why you hate coming up here. He has his back turned to the cage, and consequently, to the windows.

High on the tall walls, the narrow glass is opened from the outside. Seonghwa smirks, and gestures his head to it. Hongjoongs gaze follows, and he has to slap a hand over his mouth so he doesn't laugh.

A skinny figure is sliding its way in through the window sideways.

He drops to the floor as silent as a mouse, landing on his knees and grinning wildly up at his alphas.

Hongjoong throws his head back in preemptive relief, while Seonghwa is watching with a similarly wide smile as the man walks straight through the blood ash, breaking the circle with the tip of his shoe.

The worker still has his back turned as the lock on Seonghwas cage is picked with a long claw. He doesn't even know what's happening as the next thing he knows, he's thrown across the floor.

      Blood ash knocks up around him, coughs wracking his body as he looks up to his assailant.

      Park Seonghwa, newly freed from his cage, looks down at the worker with his eyes glowing red.

     "Now usually..." He begins, crouching to be face to face with him, "I'd go through this whole place just for the fuck of it and cause some beautiful chaos. But I'm looking for someone."

     "(Y/n)?" He stutters out, backing away only to knock into Hongjoongs legs. Stuck between the two criminals, he chooses his own head over yours. "The second floor! Sh-she's on the second floor!"

     "Let's go get our omega, Joong."

      Nonchalantly, Hongjoong draws his claws and slices the neck of the worker. He hops over the gurgling body and follows his mate with an ecstatic giggle.

      He wraps his arm around the skinny man's shoulder, "Wooyoung! Our savior~" He ruffles his hair and laughs as he groans.

     "You guys know I've got your back. Seonghwa told me about your new omega, you seem excited," he mimics the alphas smile as the eldest of the trio opens the doors.

     The guard on duty, who happens to be Merle, looks back with wide eyes.

"Yes, oh yes!" His eyes roll to the back of his head, touching the stitches you made on his shirt. "Oh, you'll love her, she's a feisty omega just like you."

He makes a run for the fire alarm at the end of the hall, but Seonghwa is faster. The beta is tackled to the floor.

"I'm glad you both will have a buffer, tired of you always at each other's throats during ruts," Wooyoung laughs, looking down at the guard as they pass.

Seonghwa had simply torn out his throat with his bare hand and made his way to the elevator, holding it open with an impatient glare.

The door closes behind them and the only sound is Seonghwa's heavy breathing.

"You're real eager, huh?" The omega breaks the silence, "San should be coming in any second to block the main door. No one will get past him. The rest are in the village, just as we planned."

"Good, she'll need somewhere to rest before we take off....Fucking idiots, thinking they can cage us." He groans, eyes flicking to the number above the doors as it dings.

       3? "Fuck."

     The door opens and the woman on the other side takes a moment, nearly walking in before she notices the crimson liquid dripping from Segonhwa's hand.

      She makes it halfway through the hall before Hongjoong pounces on her, fighting her effortlessly as if she's a rag doll. The guards run to try and save her, but it's too late for the unfortunate woman, and they just signed their own death certificate as well.

       Seonghwa and Wooyoung make quick work of them, but their plan is already foiled as the lights flicker to a halt and leave them bathed in dim light of the setting sun in the few windows.

      The alphas fall to their knees as their sensitive ears are bombarded with a loud, incessant siren.

      "Wooyoung!" Hongjoong screams over it, "go turn that shit off!"

      He nods, taking the keys off a mauled guard and dashing to the stair well, leaving it unlocked behind him.

     Hongjoong crawls to Seonghwa, collapsing into his chest with his teeth clenched and palms over his ears. His ears were always more sensitive.

     His partner places his hands over his, thumb running over his own. He looks down with his eyes glowing red, meeting pure black.

He leans and kisses him deeply, all teeth and bloodlust, trying to merge their souls until the sirens cuts off.

Their foreheads rest together, ignoring the chaos of the beta's around them yelling to be released.

"Are you ready?" Seonghwa whispers, gathering another set of keys from the fallen workers. He throws it to one of the locked in prisoners, a smirk on his face. So much for not creating chaos.

"Let's go," Hongjoong holds the door to the staircase open and lets him go first with a dramatic bow.

It takes one scream to start the havoc. The entire prison is filled with the sickly sweet sounds of caged animals with a taste of freedom. Gunfire and howls bring a smile to Seonghwa's lips as he sings out,

"Ain't no sunshine when she's gone... it's not warm when she's away..."

He hums the song with a wide grin as Hongjoong kicks the door. It takes only one more kick before it slams open and bangs against the cement wall.

The omegas in their cells are all yelling at them, at one another, in general.

Hongjoong kicks one of the many buckets on the floor over and groans, "here I was thinking she'd make it easy. I guess we'll have to go cell to cell!" A small spike of a heartbeat in his ears makes him smirk, following the sound that he memorized the first time he'd heard it.

Seonghwa follows him, immediately zeroing in on the same cell. He comes to stand infront of it, his breath making the blanket behind the bars sway slightly.

You see both pairs of orange slip on shoes and you feel your heart stop in your chest.

You cower further into the corner with Beomhan as Chungha stands in front of you. The sheet is grabbed from the outside and ripped away, making you all shriek.

"Were you playing hide and seek?" Hongjoong giggles, throwing the blanket to the side with his eyes never leaving you, a scowl growing on his features as he notices the way you're curling into another wolf. "You should know better than to hide from your alphas. Come on out."

You shake your head, gaze lowered as you hold onto the back of Chungha's uniform.

"(Y/n)," the saturnine man speaks, "come here."

"No, leave us alone! Leave me alone," your voice cracks despite how strong you want to appear.

"If I have to drag you out of here I will be very angry. Just come on, do us all a solid."

"No-"

"Open the fucking door!"

"No!"

The cells were built to hold lycans, which means lycans shouldn't be able to get in... right?

"Fucking-" Seonghwa hits the bars, leaving a dent and making the three of you jump.

Hongjoong leans on his tiptoes and whispers into his ear, and whatever he says makes his eyes begin glowing a murderous red.

He slowly wraps his clawed fingers around the bars, and the way Hongjoong backs up makes your stomach churn in anxiety of what's about to come.

And it was warranted anxiety.

With a loud growl and a single tug, he rips the silver bars from their cemented place in the wall, causing a large crack to form.

"Holy shit!" Beomhan screams, arms wrapping around you tightly.

Chungha is ripped from the small room and tossed all the way across the room, back colliding with the wall and leaving her unconscious.

You yelp as Beomhan meets a similar fate, torn from your grasp and out into the rec room like he's a mere bag of trash. You see Hongjoong approaching him with his long black claws out and proud, but your vision is blocked by the large alpha infront of you.

     Your hips back into Chungha's small desk, and your hands clamber around, landing on something small and solid.

     You swing it at his head and he ducks, grabbing your wrist and dragging you out of the small cell. You manage to swing again, making contact with his head. The small ceramic bowl shatters into pieces and leaves him only temporarily stunned, glaring down at you.

      "Fucking stop," he growls quietly, shoving you to the floor.

       He lets you shuffle away, only because Hongjoong is right behind you.

     The blonde chuckles, pulling you back up by your collar and crashing you face first into one of the round steel tables bolted into the floor. "Ow!" You yell out as your head makes contact, fighting against him with all your might, but it's fruitless.

     He kicks your feet apart and stands between them, leaning his chest over your back. You can feel his nose against your neck, over the healed skin above your scent blocker. You snap your eyes shut and do the only thing you can thing of.

     You can't fight. Begging to these men would be useless. You can't disappear into the floor like you wish you could.

     "Please, Selene," you pray to the moon, tears slipping past your shut eyes as you feel the claws of the mad man on your neck.

       You cry out as the other worldly sharp nails slice into your neck, slowly and almost surgically. His other hand is cupped on the back of your head, keeping your head pushed into the cold metal. "Shhhh," he gushes above you, "it's okay."

      Seonghwa sits at one of the bolted stools and rests his head to mimic yours, cheek on the table. "We'd've been more gentle if you listened, omega."

       Between the tips of his claws, Hongjoong holds your small alloy scent blocker. Almost instantaneously, your natural scent floods their senses.

     Their deep rumbles of pleasure make you snap your eyes back shut, missing the way Hongjoong stomps on the device.

     "Fuck," the wolf behind you curses, body pressed close to yours like he wants to fuse together, he places his hands in yours and tells you, "you might want to squeeze."

    "Wh- ah!" Your scream echoes over all of the other chaos as his teeth sink into your left shoulder, and you do just that. Your clawed hands squeeze around his, sharp nails knocking together as you hold on like his hands are the only thing keeping you from slipping to the underworld.

       It feels like a million pins and needles washing over you, leaving you paralyzed in place as he purrs into the wound, making your bones vibrate.

     A warm, comforting hand on your cheek makes you force your eyes open. Seonghwa smiles sweetly, like he isn't witnessing one of the biggest crimes in the lycan community.

      Forcing someone to be your mate for the rest of your mortal lives.

     "Breathe, omega," his words make you realize you're holding your breath, and you let it out as a sob. "That's it," he hums, rubbing his hand down your head with all the gentleness he's capable of.

        Hongjoong pulls away with a moan, resting his head between your shoulder blades as he catches his breath.

     Your wolf is already calling for her mate, howling in the back of your mind as you cry.

       "Don't worry, we'll take good care of you." Seonghwas words have little time to register in your adrenaline filled head as he turns your head the other way and climbs up on the table.

     It hits you when he moves your ruffled shirt away from your right shoulder. "No! No!" You find yourself with two million pins and needles in your body now, squeezing Hongjoongs hands all over again as Seonghwa sinks his teeth into you at an excruciatingly slow pace.

They're bigger, or maybe they only feel that way because your body is on fire. You sob freely, feet stomping pathetically to cope with the pain.

What little comfort you find in Hongjoong squeezing your hands back is washed away by the simple fact that it's him. That blood from his claws drips onto your skin.

It feels like a century later that the older alpha finally pulls away, a bellow of pleasure as he runs his thumb over the wound: making you jump.

"Your turn, omega."

The weight of their bodies is gone, but you can't bring yourself to move. Out of fear, maybe. Pain, perhaps.

"You know what happens to wolves who don't finish the bond." Hongjoong purrs teasingly, knowing full well that you will have to mark them back least you want to suffer at the hands of the moon herself.

A life with them was better than being turned inside out and left to the elements. Just barely.

You lift yourself on shaking arms and nearly fall as you turn. You would have if not for Hongjoong catching you. He lifts you back to the table much gentler, letting your legs dangle as you sit on the table top.

"Why... why me?"

"... Have you heard of Harry Talbot?"

"Harry Talbots a myth... what's he got to do with your fuck shit?"

"Harry Talbot was the first wolf that could smell his mate. He could tell just by her smell, they were meant to be." Hongjoong slots his way between your legs, smiling down at you with his bloody teeth, "her smell called to him. It wasn't just good. It wasn't a normal scent. It was...alluring."

You were growing dizzy, head spinning.

"Strong alphas can sniff out their true mate. And, baby, we're the strongest that there is."

You have to force yourself to swallow. Have to remember to breathe.

"Why? Because you're... alluring."

That's the last thing you can register before your world turns dark.

˚➶ ｡˚ PART ONE END ˚➶ ｡˚

[after-witch]

Bookworm [Yandere Mahito x Reader]

Title: Bookworm [Yandere Mahito x Reader]

Synopsis: Mahito doesn't like that you have an interest in a book character.

Word count: 1787

notes: yandere, kidnapped reader, mentions of other people being tortured/killed, supreme self indulgence of the highest order

“Who is the smiling man?” 

The silence that had existed between the two of you was broken by a question that made you flinch. Well, why not? Mahito has been quiet all morning--and afternoon, actually, which perhaps should have startled you more than his sudden words. 

But you were too happy to enjoy some quiet (you would never say “peace and quiet,” not down here, not with him); all too happy to curl up in your haphazard nest on the floor with some books that took  you away from this place. Away from Mahito.

Who was, of course, still here. Lounging in his hammock with a pile of books sagging down the netting. 

You couldn’t tell exactly what he was reading from down here--you probably needed new glasses, a subject you were certainly not going to bring up with Mahito, who might reiterate his offer to “fix” your eyes. It looked like a bundle of pages stapled together. Maybe he went to the library and printed off obscure articles to read again. 

“Hey,” he calls down, and the first hint of worry begins to prickle on your arms at his uncharacteristically serious tone, “Answer me.”

Your mind stutters, tries to put one word in front of the other, and make sense of it all. 

The smiling man? The smiling man, the… ah. From Small Spaces. The otherworldly supernatural entity who lives in a world behind mist and has a penchant for making deals with people for their greatest wishes. 

It’s not your fault that you haven’t thought about him in ages. It’s not like you had copies of your books with you, and the fun you had with imagining him in an endless number of scenarios had fallen by the wayside considering your circumstances. 

It’s hard to daydream about worlds behind mist and cornfield servants when you’re watching people be turned into grotesque experiments that had them, sometimes quite literally and loudly, begging for death.

Mahito is looking down at you now, staring expectantly. 

“He’s a character,” you say, fidgeting on the floor. “From a book series.” You look down, flip a page in your book, although you haven’t finished reading the last one, and ask, casually as you can muster: “Why?”

Mahito, up above, flips a page. You can hear the wobble in the paper--not a bound book, that’s for certain. And there’s some low, primal sense that shivers through you which says, plainly, that he’s actually reading whatever’s in front of him. 

“You write about him a lot.”

Oh.

Low, slimy dread filters into your stomach. Thick and gelatinous, resting at the bottom of your belly like an unwanted slug. 

“I… don’t know what you mean,” you say, voice only half-there, because while you are apparently stupid enough to lie to Mahito’s face, you’re not stupid enough to think he’ll believe you. 

You are just stupid enough to think that he won’t know exactly how deep your interest in this particular character goes; before Mahito took you, you thought about him all the time. You’d take walks and daydream about him, write story after story; you’d even commissioned fanart of him, because it wasn’t like there was a plethora of fanart for a character from a middle grade horror book. 

Mahito huffs out a sigh. Quick and short, it sends a shock right down your stomach. 

“Get you a man,” he starts, and confusion buzzes through your brain until he continues. “Who is an otherworldly entity that is so petty when an 11 year old beats him that he traps her in another world, leaving her to a fate worse than death, and laughs until he cries about it.”

You wrote that. There’s a vague memory of when you posted it--after you’d taken a walk, you think, and reread your favorite parts in the books for a few hours. But the way Mahito says it makes it sound--you don’t know how to explain it. Like saying the words out loud almost pains him; they come out clipped and bitter. 

Bitter? But why?

He doesn’t stop there. He reads something else, voice getting higher, almost mocking the way you talk. And that bitterness is still there, a thread continuing through every syllable.

“What if we kissed in the corn maze before you turned me into a scarecrow servant whose soul slowly gets dried out and useless and in the end you feed it, crunchy and tasteless, to your hellhound.” 

He takes a breath. Then--

“One particular aspect of the Smiling Man’s cruelty that I truly adore is that he can make people feel understood. He can make them feel like he cares, like he’s lending a listening ear, like he’s wanting to help them out and make them feel nice.”

Another breath--and he continues, again and again, reading your posts. Quoting your stories. Listing off the titles, the imagine posts, everything you’ve said about him.

All the while, bitter and mocking, his voice raising now and then in an imitation of your own. 

Then he gets to the last page of his clearly self-created tome and stares down at you, waiting, expectant. 

And you… you actually glare up at him. 

Because you're scared, sure. You’re always scared in some way, when you’re with Mahito. But there’s something else too, something that digs its way out of the rot in your gut and sticks up a petulant middle finger.

How dare he do this. How dare he take something that was yours and make it his; put it in his mouth and sneer over it. 

“Have you been--” Your mouth sticks together, refusing to let you accuse him of what you know he’s been doing. Stalking your online profiles. “That’s… that’s private,” is what you finally mutter, cheeks feeling hot and that half-buried petulance pushing you forward. “It’s not any of your business.” 

“Private?” He mutters the word softly, cradling the sound.

And then--

Mahito doesn’t often move fast around you. He prefers to be slow, languid. Calculating. You think it’s because that terrifies you more.

But now, in a moment, he goes from being slouched in his hammock to leaping down and crouching right in your face--there’s sudden pain in your head, and you realize he’s grabbed your hair and yanked it back.

That metaphorical middle finger sinks back down into the slimy gut sludge.

“Not from me,” he says, low, a warning. “Not for you.”

This is all it takes for tears to prick inside your eyes.

Mahito’s lips quirk up. Just a little. Just enough for you to notice.

“You’re going to cry already? I didn’t even do anything.”

Your eyes dart up and back, towards where he’s currently gripping your hair hard enough for it to sting.

He sighs through his nose. “This isn’t anything. You know that. Don’t be childish now.”

But--he lets go of your hair, and doesn’t grab for you when you scoot backwards on your blanket nest. Instead, he plops himself down, crossing his legs and resting his chin on his elbow.

You don’t speak. You don’t want to, and you don’t know what to say. Sometimes it’s better to be quiet around Mahito, so he doesn’t get ideas. Although he comes up with them on his own just fine, even if you try to stay silent.

It’s Mahito who breaks the silence.

“Why do you like him so much?”

How silly, to feel embarrassed right now. With the creature in front of you, and what he can do. But that’s what makes your cheeks burn: embarrassment. 

“I don’t know,” you mumble, because while you are stupid in so many ways, you’re still smart enough to know he wants an answer. “I guess I just like antagonist characters sometimes.” Well, most of the time. But it’s better to keep that from Mahito, if you can.

Mahito’s lips quirk here and there while he thinks. Then he looks at you with something like genuine confusion.

“You say that you like how awful he is. The awful things he does. So…” He tilts his head a little. “You should like me. Right?”

Your fingers pick at the loose threads of your clothes. Your eyes don’t meet his entirely--they flick up and down, from your legs to his face. 

“It’s not the same thing,” is what you come up with. But how to explain that to a curse?

Mahito frowns. 

“I don’t understand.” No bitterness, no pouting. A simple statement of fact.

“He’s not real.” You swallow against the minefield that all of this is making you step through, hoping you’ll avoid them. “But you are. That makes it different.” 

Mahito leans forward, grabbing your wrists, pulling you closer to him with a yanking, childish gesture.

“So you should like me more,” he says, a slight pout in his tone. “Because I can really do those things.” His eyebrows raise, and you swear you can hear a buzzing light bulb go off. “I could turn someone into a scarecrow for you.” He smiles, sudden, excited. “Do you want me to find some school children to torment?”

“No!” Your voice cracks. There are brief images in your mind--the people he’s tortured and killed, experimented with, before you were here and while you’re here and probably after you’re dead and gone--and you shake them away. 

Mahito’s eyebrows furrow. He groans and rolls his eyes backwards until they are entirely white, not in mockery or an attempt to scare you, but in irritation. Fingers squeeze your wrists briefly and let go, and you stay quiet, trying to fight your urge to cry, until Mahito slowly rolls his eyes back to stare at you.

His gaze flicks over you, until he catches your eyes with his. 

“You won’t write about him anymore.”

You don’t take a moment to answer this time.

“I won’t.”

“You won’t read those books anymore.”

“I won’t,” you stay. “I haven’t. I--don’t even have copies anymore.”

Mahito smiles, a little. Maybe it’s a good thing you never asked him to find you a copy, a thought which had been a brief temptation a while back.

And then he leans in closer again, until his nose touches yours.

“You won’t think about him anymore,” he says, quiet, solemn. Not an order but a matter of fact. 

You don’t answer. You swallow against a bitter taste in  your throat; you swear, sometimes, that the sludge in your gut is real and tries to make its way out sometimes.

Mahito presses his nose against yours until it starts to hurt.

“You won’t,” he says again, this time more to himself. “I’ll make sure of it.”

[felibrary]

╭──╯ DOCTOR'S PRESCRIPTION !

PAIRING: jiaoqiu x gn!reader

SYNOPSIS: how does a healer heal himself when he falls ill? the answer is he doesn't, after all, you're here to take care of him!; alternatively your boyfriend's sick, and despite all his refusals you insist on taking care of him.

WORDCOUNT: 1.2k | CONTENT & WARNINGS: did i play the tb mission yet..no, did i still write this? yes cause i just man idek okay, jiaoqiu might be ooc, banter and bickering and just tooth-rotting fluff (and jiaoqiu rots in bed..literally lol)

TAGS: @azullumi (i hate all of your fans for choosing the blind date one. reject them exes and bring back hanahaki diseases and yearning 🔥🔥)

AUTHORS NOTE: the closed eyes remind me of jouno. jiaoqiu pls dont die. also im trying to be more dialogue-centrish here cause im not familiar with his character yet soooo no metaphors for now

“jiaoqiu, would it kill you to stay in bed for at least once?”

the scent of freshly brewed green tea and aromatic congee slowly fills the air and you lean back against the counter, with your hands on the surface of the kitchen island and a deadpan expression you stare right at your boyfriend who has only woken up now.

an expression that brings no good settles onto jiaoqiu’s face. “do you need help?” jiaoqiu smiles mirthfully and without hearing your answer he swiftly brushes past you. in the blink of an eye, jiaoqiu picks up the kitchen knife lying on the cutting board before expertly chopping the spring onions into thin rings to later sprinkle over the congee.

he cannot be serious right now.

you have to prevent yourself from sighing out loud before grabbing him by the shoulders to make him turn around  “stop being so stubborn and return to bed,” you’re not sure if the reason you’re heating is up due to the congee whose heat is emitting into the air, the close proximity between you and jiaoqiu that makes your heart skip a beat or two, or the fact that jiaoqiu’s sick and is probably spreading his sickness over to you. 

the latter sounds the most reasonable. 

as it seems (and as expected) your demand goes in one (or well two) ears and out of the other one(s). “and since when are you the doctor?” his cheeky tone and the smirk he throws you are both infuriating. “but, i guess i’m lucky to have such a smart and not to mention beautiful partner who cares about my well-being,” he remarks lovingly. 

“you think you can bribe me with sugar-coated words?” as sweet as he might be, you won’t let him off the hook so easily. after all, he also deserves to rest, especially when sick. 

someone who only takes care of others and their well-being but never their own, will meet their demise sooner than those who constantly seek out help, due to never confiding in others when facing hardships.

“i’m simply stating the truth.” he chortles gleefully, tilting his head to the side while doing so.

“what a charmer you are,” you reply dryly before taking a few steps away from him. “anyway, as you’ve already mentioned your oh-so-smart and beautiful partner cares about your well-being, so i ask you to go back to bed, and get your well-deserved rest,” you quickly change the subject.

ironically nothing escapes jiaoqiu’s attentive gaze, so you wouldn’t be surprised if he’d noticed the rosy tint on your ears by now. but even if that were the case he doesn’t seem to pay any mind to it.

“as much as i appreciate your concern, there’s really no need. i’ve experienced much worse and more severe illnesses. a little fever won’t be the death of me.” jiaoqiu shrugs in simplicity, brushing it off as no big deal.

“you’re such a handful to deal with sometimes,” you mumble under your breath before swiftly pressing your hand onto his forehead and withdrawing it as quickly. “jiaoqiu. you’re literally burning up.” 

you don’t wait for him to respond — you won’t give him the time to respond before reaching down and searching for his hand. his lithe fingers find yours and you carefully lace them together before guiding (dragging) him back to the bedroom and forcing him to lie back down as you crouch at his side.

the wet towel that sits all scrunched up in the plastic bowl right next to his bed seems all wrung out already catches your attention and you sigh. “sorry, that i didn’t come earlier to refresh the water,” jiaoqiu’s ears perk up at your apologetic tone and he smiles. “don’t worry about it.”

“stay here, i’ll get you a new one. don’t move while i’m gone okay? just try to relax a bit.” the only thing you receive as a form of acknowledgment is a quiet hum before rushing off to the bathroom to fill the bowl with new cold water.

you return just as quickly as you left and begin to wring the piece of cloth and fold it into a rectangle before placing it onto jiaoqiu’s forehead. “is this okay?” you ask, carefully brushing the strands of hair that stick to the damp towel away. again, a mere hum is the only answer you receive from him.

as you’re reminded of the green tea and congee that are still in the kitchen you jump up. “right i almost forgot the food, i’ll go and get it. wait here for me.” you turn around and before you can even fully leave the room, a whine of your name makes you turn around.

“can you turn the pillow for me? this side is too warm.” your boyfriend starts to complain and you can’t help but stare (in surprise or irritation, you don’t know — maybe both.) you help your boyfriend up and make him lean against the headboard as he continuously holds the wet towel against his forehead. “here,” you present him and he smiles in satisfaction. 

he settles back into bed you assume he has no more requests thus you decide to leave and reside in the kitchen once more. the aroma of spices fills your nose once more and you can’t help but smile as you take the lid of the pot off before using a ladle to scoop the congee into a bowl. 

you reach for a porcelain cup and pour the green tea into it before placing it on a tray with the congee to bring it to jiaoqiu.

as soon as you enter his room, jiaoqiu’s ears perk up. “i’ve missed you,” he expresses wholeheartedly and that makes your heart melt. it’s these moments where you get reminded how lucky to have him. “so now that you’re back can you turn my pillow around again? this side heated up much faster than anticipated.”

okay so maybe you weren’t that grateful to have him.

you sigh and put the tray down on his (unexpectedly but pleasing) tidy desk, normally it would’ve been filled with a bunch of different notes and recipes for both meals and medicines, but it’s exceptionally organized today. 

once again you help your boyfriend once again by flipping his pillow before grabbing the bowl of congee and handing it to him. upon him not accepting, let alone acknowledging the food before him, you furrow your eyebrows in confusion.

“what? do you want me to feed you next princess?” you scoff and although your remark is sarcastic, jiaoqiu can’t help but smile cheekily. “well if you’re already offeri-” he doesn’t get to finish his sentence before you shove the metal spoon full of congee into his mouth which slightly catches him off guard and makes him open his eyes for a split second.

although you’ve seen his eyes countless times, you can’t help but admire them. his eyes resemble honey, beautiful and golden but also sickeningly sweet and addicting. “you know you’re so much more beautiful when you shut up for once,” you tease.

Jiaoqiu detaches himself from the spoon and scoffs. “should’ve added black pepper instead of white pepper. you know that i favor intense flavors over mild ones.” he complains and you can’t help but crack a smile. ”stop being a picky eater and eat.”

END NOTE: this has been sitting in my drafts since June 21 LMFAO but yeah here it is!! also does this look proofread to yall cause it really isn't its quite literally 3am and school's starting next week. my sleeping schedule's so fucked up I'm crying. but shoutouts to Grammarly for proofreading tho fawk u for saying i need Grammarly pro to see my other 92 mistakes like okay. in this economy??

© VYNICITY 2024. stealing, copying, translating, reposting my works on other platforms or feeding them to ai is not permitted.

[maxwell-grant]

There's a trend people have pointed out in superhero stories over the past 20 or so years that is the death of "regular" supporting casts, an increasing absence of un-powered sidekicks or people involved who aren't in the thick of the action or in the hero's secret. Everyone who interacts with superheroes is a couple issues away from becoming one, every story involves a supervillain encounter or several dozen, every hero's gotta have a lunchbox-ready "superhero family" made from these characters, and every side character that doesn't join them is either going to die or become a supervillain.

The defining example people use for this is Spider-Man's supporting cast, with every Spider-Man cast member short of Aunt May and J Jonah Jameson getting some kind of powered upgrade or symbiote, and I'm gonna say Amanda Waller is an excellent case study of how this kind of thing happens, and I think it helps to explain why Amanda Waller has been, Like That, for the past 30 years.

She’s wearing a grey shirt underneath a blue blazer and it’s tucked into a similarly blue skirt that stops at mid calf. She reminds me of the neighbourhood aunties I used to see leaving for church every Sunday morning.

My mom used to say that you are the company you keep. So what kind of person does it take to keep a variety of bruised, battered, and dangerous personalities in check? - Amanda Waller: DC's Most Terrifying Woman

To those of you who haven't read John Ostrander and Kim Yale's Suicide Squad, there once was a time where Amanda Waller was something more than a powerful antagonistic force able to butt heads with the biggest superheroes, and something other than a heartless establishment face out to make superheroes miserable for ill-defined reasons. Structurally speaking, Suicide Squad is a comic about marginal DCU characters forced to deal with actual real life problems, and it's central character is a marginalized person forced to deal with DCU problems and characters. The members of the Squad are a rolling parade of costumed misfits and maniacs assigned to go around the globe to fight and kill and die on dirty missions to deal with dirty laundry and stop war zones from erupting, while Amanda Waller is forced to shuffle around her cadre of D-list supervillains and disgraced superheroes and get into stand-offs with secret spy societies, living nukes, voodoo cartels, and Batman.

Amanda Waller neither looks nor acts like the kind of character that stars in a superhero comic, and she is the central character throughout the 66 issues of the run and we follow her character arc from beginning to end as she's forced to spin plates to accomplish her goals and prevent bad situations from getting worse. She is the most fully realized character in the run and everything rests on her shoulders. We spend a lot of time inside her head, her team, her associates, she is the center holding together an extremely chaotic book with no two characters on the same page. She is, and has to be, an extremely powerful person, someone who stands her ground no matter what, an unbeatable force of will because that is the only way she's going to survive the situations she's in, the only way she can be "The Wall", the kind of person who can repel Batman, command a platoon of monsters, talk her way out of Deadshot's contract, someone who can stare at Darkseid and credibly threaten the President into letting her live.

That's the part that everyone is more or less familiar. But there is, or at least used to be, much more to Amanda Waller than just being The Wall, not in the least because being The Wall is also hampering her effectiveness as well as straight up killing her.

"Amanda's toughness has taken her a long way" "It's taken her as far as it can. But it can't take her no further. It's actually starting to drag her down. I'm scared for my baby sister, rev - scared that the anger in her is congealing into hate." - Suicide Squad #31

We get to know her backstory, her plans, her points of contention with the system, her relationships with people around her, and how deeply she cares about things and people even as she sends them to the meatgrinder. From the start we learn that Waller staffs her team with people she's prone to getting into disagreements with, like Simon LaGrieve and Rick Flag, specifically so they can cover her moral blind spots and pick up the slack in emotional intelligence she's lacking, be the heroes that she can't afford to be. It is unspeakably crucial that the Squad is led by Rick Flag as well as Bronze Tiger, a fallen hero who owes Waller for his recovery who eventually takes Flag's baton. Waller stands up for her team, gets into fights with her superiors when they decide to terminate them, and takes the fall for them when necessary. Waller is a person who does Bad Things - but she is not a Bad Person.

The book in no uncertain terms frames the Suicide Squad's existence as monstrous in a scale Waller doesn't understand until the very end, and it digs deep into the unethical things Waller has to allow for and perpetrate in order to keep it running no matter how many lives it saves, and she spends the first half of the book on a downward spiral. But then there's the 2nd half of the book:

In the first 39 issues, Amanda’s flaws are her undoing. As she pushes away the people she hired to act as a balance, she grasped tighter and tighter to her uncompromised vision of the Suicide Squad despite the constant changes and derailment. Her choices had consequences: the death of Rick Flag, her demotion, employees quitting, and finally, the disbandment of the team.

The last 27 issues have Amanda rising up from the ashes after a year in jail. She’s less in her own way – she communicates, her anger isn’t driving her, she’s more receptive of alternative perspective and recognizes when she’s wrong in real time – but she’s still just as scary.

Waller rebuilds her relationships with the people she drove away, takes a different tack to how the team works, and starts going out into the frontlines with the Squad. She brings Oracle (who actually made her debut in this comic) into the fold, saves her life and plays a big role in Barbara making progress in overcoming her Joker trauma. She genuinely puts in the work to improve as a person and do things a better way than before, even if there is an inescapable immorality to the very existence of the Squad and what they do. That immorality never goes away, and it only further horrifies her when learning how badly her project has gone. In fact, it's that very inescapable immorality that ends her arc.

She learns that the CIA has started using a new Suicide Squad to support a brutal regime in South America, and when faced with the full extent of her complicity in Western imperialism? She decides right then and there to end the Suicide Squad for good after they liberate the population of said regime from said Squad. She is the only person who gives a shit about the country enough to start the assignment for free once she knows about it, force the Squad along, lead the mission in field, and personally (and even gently) usher the villain to his death at the end, to end what began with her.

She does bad things, and she does good things. She cares about people, and she uses people. Her decisions ruin as well as save the world. She spins a million plates to match wills and wits with the strongest, wickedest, most cunning humans and superhumans alike, and she still has superiors to answer to and people close to her she hires to judge her for what she does. She endured racism and misogyny and poverty for decades and rode whatever she could to attain as much power over her own life as someone like her could possibly attain, and to have it, she must be a willing tool of the state and bend the knee to Ronald Reagan, the man she derides for what he did to her community, hating every minute of it.

She lost her family to sexual and racial violence, and now she wrangles a penal battalion comprised of some of the worst people on the planet to inflict violence on her orders. She has saved and redeemed people, and she's haunted by the corpses she's left in her wake. She is oppressed and oppressor, someone who could only escape the ravages of American imperialism by becoming one of it's chief enforcers, and still she rebuilds herself into a better person from it upon confronting and challenging her role in it. She is not a bad person, she is not a good person either, she is just afforded a degree of agency and complexity unpowered characters in superhero books simply don't get.

Okay cool, now what is she up to these days?

That, I guess. That is what a strong but unpowered person who does not allow themselves to be bossed around by superheroes or supervillains looks like now. Everytime there's a call for a military bad guy, Waller gets tagged in to be DC's Henry Gyrich. There was a point where Waller was made to contrast the likes of Sarge Steel and Wade Eiling, someone who butted heads with them because she was a well-meaning person working for and committing evil as often as she attempted to stop it. These days, the most consistent beat with her is that she is the most dangerous person alive and worse than the villains she wrangles into working for her. She is a thing to be overcome, a hypocrite to be exposed, a challenge to the natural order of the universe, and she is too terrific at it to be shuffled off quietly. She is a Bad Person and so everything she says and does is Bad (and thus can be ignored).

Integral to Suicide Squad's structure was the fact that Waller was the center holding everything together, the ultimate third party: spinning plates working with, for and against all of the others so she can bend rules and be bent by them. Bent, but never broken, because The Wall doesn't break, others break first. Waller was a one-of-a-kind character, and that broke her, because beating Sarge Steel and Wade Eiling at their own game means replacing Sarge Steel and Wade Eiling. Waller doesn't look like them, she doesn't look like the superheroes either, and so she can't be one of them. She can't even look like herself a lot of the time, they try to slim her up everytime they think they can get away with it.

Suicide Squad was preoccupied with exploring a perspective from a world outside the superhero worldview, but we no longer have her perspective or that of people around her, we only know her through the superheroes she inherently defies and has had an adversarial relationship against from day one. She is someone with a viewpoint that is charitable to neither superheroes nor institutions, and thus, the universe is increasingly less sympathetic to her, the less utility she has to the grander narrative where everyone has to pick between one of two options. If she wasn't powerful and assertive, she'd be another Leslie Thompkins, another Jiminy Cricket the heroes passively ignore. But because she is powerful and doing morally compromised things without asking Batman's permission, she must have a personal grudge. She must be a government monster. She must attack the superheroes for no reason, no ideology, no motive.

So now she's just The Wall 24/7, the mean icy establishment boot who is strong and clever and cruel and hates superheroes and wants to destroy superheroes and rule the world from the shadows. Everything she does is a fuck-up she refuses to take responsability for, everyone is right to hate and distrust mean old Waller, and now everyone gets to look good by dunking on her. They couldn't make her a superhero, so they made her a generic supervillain instead. And now that she's a bad guy, she no longer has to believe anything, she doesn't really have to mean anything, they don't have to write stories about something other than superheroes and supervillains, and they don't have to let a fat woman of color take up space and screentime they could be giving to Harley Quinn and Slade Wilson instead.

Even by the time of Waller's debut on the tail end of the 80s, her career opportunities were on their way to extinction

Days Of Future Past marks the triumph of the superhero comic that's pretty much concerned with no-one but superheroes. Where Ditko and Lee's Spider-Man featured a single costumed crimefighter in the context of a commonplace existence, the X-Men of the 80s focused on a huge cast of mutants who had little if any lasting involvement in the everyday world.

By the 21st century, the corporate superhero comic would largely - if not exclusively - concern itself with little beyond a large class of superhumans and their fantastical existence. I suspect there's a significant correlation between that and the continuing cultural  peripherilisation of the superhero comic - Colin Smith

Amanda Waller is one of the strongest characters in all of comics, she was as powerful as an non-superpowered character given center stage could possibly be, a perfectly designed character from which an entire corner of a shared universe was developed out of with her as the center making it work, but as the room for civilian casts and unpowered protagonists got smaller and smaller, so did Waller's options. If she was a Spider-Man character and somehow didn't get killed or made into a villain, they would have slimmed her up and given her a symbiote, because you're nobody unless you're web-swinging. Characters didn't look or act like Amanda Waller, and unfortunately, they still don't. It's just instead of making more characters like her, they gutted Waller to be more like the rest. If she couldn't make it, who else even could.

Keep your eyes peeled for this summer when she'll team up with two meaningless robot baddies to burn down the Justice League and I guess the universe for the next reboot or something.

[megaderping]

I feel like when people compare Akechi to Light Yagami, they fundamentally misunderstand his character. Their similarities really end at their designs, and Light is the kind of person Akechi would despise. Light Yagami lives a pretty privileged life at the start of Death Note. He has a stable home, with two parents and a sister who care about him. He's a successful student. There isn't really inherent tragedy to his life. The whole reason he starts using the Death Note is a mix of curiosity and a jaded worldview, and when it works it empowers him, very quickly goes to his head, as he believes he is one who can be a god of a "new world" once the shock of his initial kills wears off. While his first kill was to help someone, that altruism didn't last. He is in charge of his choices, while Ryuk mostly vibes and maybe eggs him on a little. Fundamentally, Light has something Akechi lacks: agency, and a comfortable life he took for granted. Meanwhile, Akechi is someone who lived on the bottom rung of Japanese society. His very existence is shameful there, between his mother being a sex worker, his status as an illegitimate/"throw away" child, and his mother's suicide. Years languishing in a foster system that is notoriously inhumane, in a country where 90% of the adoptions are grown men for inheritance and patriarchal reasons, while very few children in the system find permanent homes. When Akechi awakens his power, he approaches Shido not because he wants to kill people but for a stupid revenge plan cooked up by a traumatized child who's been nudged along by a malevolent god. He wants to build Shido up so that at the height of his power, he can expose him for the monster he really is, while another part of him genuinely wants to be useful to Shido, as Cogkechi later calls out. His feelings are a mess of contradictions, and so it's no surprise that Shido was able to mold him into his assassin at only 15 years old. It's also worth noting that Akechi only approaches Shido with his ability to cause psychotic breakdowns. Shido is the one who teaches and instructs him to do shutdowns. He's still complicit, very sunk cost with his revenge plan, but as I spoke of here, even if he wanted to quit, he couldn't alone. Shido's cleaner and control of the law and ability to effortlessly turn him in would render the Metaverse his only safe haven. I think people look at 11/20 Akechi and Akechi in the early parts of the engine room and assume that's just his "true self," when in reality it's another mask. Royal makes it very clear because in Rank 7, he outright warns Joker of what's to come via a pool metaphor and offers an out (though he's MUCH happier if you don't take it/stick to your principles), and in Rank 8, he goes on that big "I hate you" speech... while Sunset Bridge is playing. Y'know, the song that plays at the end of most confidants to reaffirm bonds. So when he smiles as he shoots what he assumes to be Joker, that doesn't mean he's genuinely happy. More likely, he's an emotional clusterfuck, given he also is disoriented enough to namedrop "Shido-san" over the phone, and in the subsequent meeting with Shido, tells him not to kill the Phantom Thieves and that Morgana is "just a cat." Yes, he says they'll make them fear for the rest of their lives, but remember, he's talking to Shido. The things he says are likely all incredibly calculated to sound appealing to Shido. And when you consider that he planned to utterly destroy Shido's reputation after the election, the "delay" makes even more sense.

Later, Akechi goes on about how the people he induced shutdowns on were deserving of their fates, but I don't think he believes it so much as it's the only way he could convince himself that it was worth it, and given how much society failed him, and given how many of the people he targeted were likely rivals/competitors or rich fucks, I think he'd be less inclined to assume good faith. Kunikazu Okumura was not an innocent little victim, after all. He was one of the people who requested breakdowns and shutdowns the most. I think Akechi enjoyed killing him not because of how it'd hurt Haru, but because of catharsis. Because Okumura is just as monstrous as Shido, so why should he feel remorse? However, I don't believe he feels the same about Wakaba, as when he discusses her with Shido, he mentions how her fate was because she refused to willingly work for him. It's another justification, but I personally think Wakaba's death was the most painful for him because he was effectively making Futaba just like him. That's why I think his reaction to Sae threatening Sojiro's custody was genuine. Anyway, evil grinning Akechi is just another mask, as I said. Keep in mind, this is someone who laments not meeting Joker years ago, someone who Morgana outright points out is lying about his hatred. And that's the thing. Light Yagami, while a really fascinating character, is not someone who had all this childhood suffering or lack of agency. He does not regret his actions in the slightest and goes down due to his own hubris in both the anime and the manga. While you can argue that Ryuk set him up by dropping the Death Note, Light was the one who picked it up and chose to use it. Any nudging from Ryuk didn't coerce Light into doing it because Light seized the opportunity. No, if Light Yagami is like anyone in Persona 5, it's Masayoshi Shido, not Goro Akechi. Both believe they are god/god's chosen, that they are the ones who will reshape the world to their ideals, and to be frank, both use and abuse women to serve their own purposes. Goro Akechi goes down sacrificing himself for the Thieves and pleading with them to stop his father and again in Maruki's reality when he refuses to let Joker accept a gilded prison of a world for his sake when he knows better than anyone what it's like to have no true freedom. If you max his confidant, you see him in the postcredits, leaving his survival entirely possible, and I think it works because at the end of the day, Akechi was meant to be a victim and a foil. Light is a villain protagonist and a cautionary tale. Though its his POV we follow, he isn't someone we're meant to root for, but I definitely don't think enjoying the character is a bad thing at all. He's really interesting! I just think that a lot of the Akechi and Light comparisons are surface level at best.

[acid-ixx]

Ghost-Anon here!! 😋

Ooof the new chapter was good! I especially loved the part where Dick goes kinda nuts after Reader blocked him (as deserved :p ) more so I’m so excited for Yandere!Damian too xD

hii !! tysm for enjoying the first chapter ^^ i was afraid that i wrote dick's descent to madness too quick but then i realized that "oh yeah it's literally dick we are talking about, times where he is at his limits are times where he lets the emotions control him." dick really does love his family, as proved in the comic panels i have read, and I don't like how most other comics picture him as just this silly guy who never gets mad at anyone.

he had his immense bouts of anger and frustration, it would be worse if it was caused by you, directly or not. the thing is, he understands where you're coming from. one of the things about dick grayson is that everyone loves him but himself. he has flaws that take a lot to fix, and they simply worsen when it comes to you because he had caused the same mistake bruce has committed. he was the same guy who criticized his own father for his mistakes, angered by jason's death and killing the joker after tim's own 'jokerfication' and yet he had never once noticed your demons, he allowed the world to take you away and destroy you; a crime greater than anything he could imagine.

the worst thing was, he was the same brother who had led your hopes high and crashed it at the same time. dick is the man who was described to be giving empty promises to you. it's bad enough that bruce had never even known about your presence, had never once talked to you, but dick had every opportunity to grab because truly, you saw him as your favorite before anyone else. everyone praised dick and you wanted the same praise from the next thing closer than your father— and he failed because he never tried, he failed his cute, little baby bird.

he knows that he needs to make it up to you before it gets worse but he also doesn't know that it's already too late.

you don't see him as the dick grayson. you don't see him in any positive light anymore other than the sheepish grins he would give you right after he rejects your offers.

if he wasn't so damn stupid, then you would've been there with him, at the mansion flipping through movies, pranking each other, throwing flour at one another when you bake, decorating your next diary entry with him.

and he needs to experience all that because you're the only normalcy that life has to offer. he momentarily relishes in the fact that you think so highly of him, but he breaks at the same time because all your other diary entries began to paint them all as your demons.

dick would ward the monsters away from you, he promises.

and this time, he genuinely means it.

i am so excited for yan! damian too! i wrote his character to be terrible towards you (he doesn't know he's self-projecting lmao) but i had hinted in one paragraph of his relationship with the reader. you see, most of his feelings towards you may have stemmed from some sort of jealousy, or the feel the need for competition. he had already fought tim before, it's only right that you get to experience the same pain— and i'm not expanding on this because then it would spoil the future chapters hehe, but i'll be giving one small spoiler and say that damian would go through some sort of immense, internal breakdown at the thought of you.