#a meaningless or stilted death

[rottiens]

I was going to make a post about choso's death and how gege just used that as an excuse to kill him but I was going to end up cursing sukuna, my pookie bear, so I'll keep silent better and hope gege feels my bad vibes from here.

[mourningmoth]

thinking for literally my entire shift today about borderlands 3's writing in comparison to borderlands 2's writing, but specifically in how serious, impactful events are handled in juxtaposition with humour, and how it compliments/develops the characters involved

VERY specifically, this directly relates to how well i think each game handles major character death, and the subsequent reactions to that death. theyre old games at this point, so i dont think a spoiler warning is completely needed, but regardless, im saying rn: SPOILERSSS for both borderlands 2 and 3 ahead :)

so borderlands does this thing a lot, where the narrative presents as mostly humorous and lighthearted, with dramatic/serious events sprinkled throughout. something of a "dramedy" situation, which i feel the series usually pulls off well (usually lol). but i feel like bl3's writing dropped the ball on it in a way that seems like it's not self-aware of how/why that worked in borderlands 2 and isnt working the same in borderlands 3 all the time

the specific examples of this ive been thinking about all day are the tannis eulogy from bl3 and the sarcastic violin one-off from borderlands 2. in this essay i will quite literally prove why the one-off violin joke was written better than the entirety of borderlands 3

i find it especially striking how each of these situations compare, because even though none of the same characters involved, each moment highlights a certain quality to borderlands 2 writing that i feel they wanted to replicate in borderlands 3, that, imo, fell flat compared to 2

in bl3, after maya dies, tannis delivers an extremely awkward eulogy. and yeah, tannis is a character with weird traits. she often acts in ways that arent typical of the other characters in a social context. this is usually explained by tannis' autism, which is fine most of the time, but i feel like this particular moment was pretty badly written for tannis. her words about maya feel extremely detached and insincere, and the reactions from the rest of the characters during the "memorial service" (LOL) dont do much to help. the entire scene feels like its barely taking the death of a major important character seriously

and its especially strange when you consider that tannis has reacted to the death of a close friend before, and it didnt feel this bad and meaningless back then. theres an optional mission in bl2 where you can inform various characters of roland's death. when you talk to tannis about it, her response is appropriately socially awkward and stilted, but you can still tell she's genuinely sorrowful. it feels like she's actually upset that roland died. it feels absolutely different when she talks about maya though. tannis' eulogy for maya is written as a lighthearted disarming of the serious situation, but it really doesnt work the same way as the disarming moments in bl2 do.

i don't feel like tannis' eulogy toward maya is as sincere as what she said about roland in the previous game. it never felt equally upsetting to her; in fact theres a LOT i can personally say on the writing surrounding maya's death in bl3 but that would massively derail the point of this post specifically lol. so moving on

i kept comparing the eulogy in bl3 to the story surrounding bloodwing's death in bl2, which actually carries further into talking about the impact of angel's death, which actually brings up a quick point id like to make: im about to talk in-depth about the value of character development derived from a one-off joke, which actually carries further into the narrative of the story by contrasting the same character's behaviour later on. the shitty one-off joke can actually contribute valuable contrast to an impactful event later in the game. tannis' eulogy to maya has no such similar effect, but i hope you'll see what i mean by this once im done explaining it all

anyway. in bl2, you meet the previous 4 playable characters from bl1 as npcs. in the first game, these characters are mostly-silent protagonists. their voice lines only apply to comments made during gameplay; they dont have significant individualized dialogue (this is something borderlands DOES eventually implement in the 4th campaign dlc of bl2, and later fully integrates into bl3)

during the course of the beginning of the game, you meet mordecai, the previously playable sniper (and his hunting companion bloodwing, which is an alien bird). bl2 is the first time in the series mordecai gets to express himself as a real character instead of a player avatar. initially, mordecai comes off as very chill and laid-back. he's extremely self-assured and confident in his skills; you can tell from how he carries himself (in dialogue) that he's not particularly worried about jack, or "losing", or getting hurt.

later, in the wildlife exploitation mission, bloodwing is killed in the final boss battle, which leads into the first time in the series where we get to see mordecai express an extreme emotion. his previous confidence and nonchalant attitude is shattered instantly, and you FEEL it instantly. while the scenario necessitates you leave quickly, so you dont have time to mourn bloodwing properly, the event still has a massive impact overall. it leads into an entire arc for mordecai, which involves him developing alcohol dependence. (i could also make another whole ENTIRE post about this character arc lmao, but i wanna mention its followed up on in numerous dlc which involve mordecai's recovery and later sobriety. its GOOD listen. anyway.)

despite the fact that bloodwing dying is obviously a devastating event for mordecai (AND has continuous consequences later!!), handsome jack IMMEDIATELY clowns on it in the same exact scene, by playing a sarcastic shitty violin solo in "honour of mordecai's stupid bird". but this joke doesnt detract from the impact of bloodwing's death the way i feel tannis' eulogy detracts from the impact of maya's. it doesnt feel disrespectful or minimalizing (i mean jack means it this way to the characters but this is meta u know what i mean)

not only is the violin joke actually funny (despite the anguish one of ur companions is supposed to be feeling now), but it also serves to exemplify traits of jack's character: it's another example of jack's gleefully sarcastic jabs at the protagonists. throughout the entire game, jack is a ~funnyman~ villain to the players; he's constantly on the echo making fun of you and cracking jokes. jack doesn't consider the vault hunters a threat to him, and it's reflected in his attitude toward them for the most of the story. until the "where angels fear to tread" mission, in which angel is revealed as a siren, as well as handsome jack's daughter, and subsequently dies.

immediately following angel's death, jack drops his funnyman persona. he finally starts to consider the vault hunters a threat, and he stops making as many comedic remarks as he used to. he still makes jokes after this point here and there (like the roland milkshakes one), but they are noticeably much more pointedly cruel and morbid than his previous jabs.

his voice is also slightly different after this point. at previous points in the game, jack can sound almost impish while taunting the player, but after angel dies, his tone becomes more serious, and theres a noticeable anger behind some of his remarks. jack becomes much more clearly hostile, which shows a very sudden tonal shift in his character

in this way, the violin joke doesnt feel like it disrespects the impact of bloodwing's death, because the entire scenario works together to highlight the individual characters' traits and how they interact with eachother. mordecai lost something close to him, and jack happily rubbed salt in the wound because that's the kind of asshole he is. but when jack loses someone close to him, suddenly its not funny anymore. in this, the violin joke also serves as a contrast to jack's character, by spotlighting the difference in his reaction when causing pain versus experiencing it

clowning on a serious moment immediately after it happens works in borderlands 2 because the way the narrative is written compliments the individual characters and how theyre written. the jokes amidst the drama serves to emphasize the characters present, and even further serves to contrast their behaviour later, after a they experience some major development. i dont feel it works as well in bl3 tho, because the characters' reactions always feel more shallow and less like the impact of them is far-reaching or has many consequences for the character's development, in comparison to bl2's character development

i dont have much more of a point to end on tho other than thank u for coming 2 my tedtalk✌️

[winxwiki]

Girls of Olympus is so bad, how did it take 10 years to air

Fans who've been waiting for the Girls of Olympus cartoon since 2011 are in for a rude awakening. Apparently the english dub has been quietly released on some online platform. It released in italian a while ago on Rai Gulp and it's available for free on Rai Play.

The story of the first book has been stretched across 26 episodes.

The book's story is already aimed at kids, so it's quick and easy to read, even a little naive if you're beyond the target audience. Many meaningless scenes were added out of the blue for the cartoon just to fill the runtime that were not in the original story.

As a result there's so many dead moments where nothing happens. Just characters looking at each other with no dialogue. Characters doing the smallest mundane things for sooo long, just to fill the runtime. All with terrible animation and stilted dialogue.

These are not moments of introspections. Characters walking back and forth in a room. Characters observing items. Characters daydreaming out of nowhere. All in silence adding nothing to the scene. Multiple times in an episode.

It takes them 3 and a half episodes to transform and fight their first enemy. For a magical girl show, taking more than 2 episodes to introduce your main characters, transformations, actions and villains is a death sentence.

I was too mean to Winx's puppet animation. This is so much worse. Movements are painfully stilt and automated like some old flash cartoon.

No, actually, even Angel's Friends has better animation, despite its low budget, because there was some decent storyboard action behind it. Girls of Olympus needs to be redone from scratch to be salvaged.

Here's how they animated Luce's shirt getting stained with chocolate. There are no frames cut, it was recorded as is.

Look how long it takes for the action to take. Look at their awkward movements. In the book, it's barely a phrase, it happens quickly, Luce immediately goes to get her cursed shirt. It shouldn't be this dramatic and long. Again, it's obvious it's to fill runtime. This series loves wasting the watcher's time.

Bonus: the puppet rigs have zigzagged, jaggy lineart.

These are not low quality screenshots! This is what it looks like in HD!

Winx season 5-8 are 10 times more watchable that this. The fact that it took them almost 10 years to release is appalling and suspicious. There is very little info on the animation studio behind it. Surely something happened in development if these are the results.

[maggot-monger]

oh WAIT fmk unfortunate vessel men edition: Sam Adam Nick (extremely amusing to me to give you yet another Sam choice)

oh my GOD 💀 well!!! that is a good one isn't it!!! for three guys who are just some guy these are astonishingly different choices

see, ok. there's the temptation to say marry nick for the simple fact that i've long been of the opinion that i'd make an ideal spouse for a widow(er) — but nick is not your average widower. he was also the first vessel of these three i had Vessel Feelings about, but that is meaningless in this particular game. so. hm.

i think i have to marry sam?? this feels like an insane thing to say since sam is the way sam is, but idk...i feel like i could rock blurry wife (gn) status?? "here is sam, my too tall and deeply weird spouse. he is approximately marriageable age for me and remembers my name. we have conversations about feelings that are articulate but stilted. his eyebrows are soft. do not ask any more questions. good bye."

and then fuck adam and kill nick. adam is pretty and i'm good at biting + i think nick deserves a break even if it's in the form of death.

[the-silliest-stiltwalker]

The pride of the angel.

Easy to judge those we do not look in the eye. To look down on a man is one of life’s greatest pleasures, but to stare up at one above our station and rightfully hold the same scorn? Rarely are we given a morsel that may be enjoyed as sweet. Looking down on those in lower standing is easy, encouraged, and is what our society was built upon. But there is no real joy in tearing down a man we see at his lowest, and so it is an action performed out of obligation alone. But to see one above us fall so miserably, to witness the death of a god is treasure. For those in lower classes resent the ones above that is simply the order of nature, the nature of order. Once a chance is finally given to those lower to strike above without recourse of rigged society, what is usually civilized becomes a feed, where entrails become scarves and kidneys burst upon the floor covering tile in half processed silt.

Yes we do so love to slaughter those above, and rarely get such a chance. Why else would the mythos of Lucifer be created? A faith born in a time of wealth inequality, where the rich feasted and the poor starved? Masses dedicated to a man who claims revolution, and yet whose name would be used to enforce the status quo with a new group of people in charge. For who are christians but romans, but mesopotamians? Once the matter of wealth or poverty is concerned all such differences fall to the wayside. The rich are rich, the poor starve. Nothing will change.

But so, a faith must at least appear to remain consistent. Leaders of groups may claim change but if nothing is modified in their new world, even the starving farmers will become fed up and feed the bloated ruling class to their pigs. And so to counter the impossible requests of Christ, feed the poor and rich are amoral, Lucifer. God’s favorite angel, beautiful beyond words and most importantly of all, ruined. One thing and one thing alone may distract the starving masses from their leaders and this item shall always be fanservice. While Christ is the hope, Lucifer is the perfect revenge fantasy. All the ruling’s failings easily projected onto this perfect prissy placatment. Proof that God is in fact just, if he can strike down even his most favored. And, held in secret known by all, the love of watching the ruling class fall. Gleeful it feels to tear apart those who hold fortune from on high, watch them clatter to the ground like the rest of us.

I have been lucifer, my friends, in every sense of the word. Here I march across our trampled dirt paths on high feet, towering above our guests. A show of blade or flame and even the most grumpy child is impressed, parents act kind. It’s all a game. Every single one of them, every single guest I encounter. Every single moment I spend with seething sopping psychopaths of the general public I learn more about the monsters. They want me to fall. Now it would be unfair to say this is just due to their sheer bloodlust, as they are little creatures that only wish to watch me topple off my stilts and shatter my skull, licking stained rock and keeping grey brain bits as souvenirs. No, these are the actions taken of people who have been teased. After all, why would stilts be impressive if not for the knowledge that this actor takes an incredible risk? We sell them the fantasy of a perfect being, one of foam bones and cotton candy ligaments, that rubber skin would render a fall meaningless, even silly. This is not true. As the audience spends time around us they start to wonder. A fleeting thought at first but eventually a maddening desperate thralling song, every once of space in deep fried filled gullet aches with one whisper.

Fall

For you see, I am Lucifer. The prodigal son, the one adored by all whose wings were torn away. The one angel allowed to rot in the blowflies and ache with exhaustion of body too heavy to exist in an imperfect realm. I am the tease, the ideal ending. The fall of a greater being and the shattering of bone turned fragmented for all of your grubby little hands to take.

More than that, however, is how I ended up here. How I speak to you now as The Silliest Stilt Walker, a failed pastor and a failed friend. People don’t join circuses for fun, you know. We are driven here after the brink of society those on the edge tire of our failings and wish to see us gone. Not out of malice, but self preservation. Some of us are minorly flawed, sure. Some of us are completely deranged and on the run from the law. I fall, or rather stand, in the middle between the two. And through these short stories you shall watch my quest to return to a home that no longer exists, yet I am too stubborn to give up.

As I said, I am Lucifer and my pride is written about in scripture.

[incorrect-ikevamp-quotes]

why does jean warn up to mc so quickly? ikevamp makes it clear that jean is a pretty reserved person and doesn't open up or let people in easily but he seems to let mc in quite quickly and it confuses me quite a bit.

Oh boy, where to begin with this one.

Well, I have a lot of Feelings^TM about this, but I'll try to be concise. Essentially, I think Jeanne doesn't recover in the other routes--or the general storyline--largely because he's just a lot to unpack narratively speaking. And without some pretty direct intervention, he has a hard time healing. MC’s direct intervention was meaningful because it was focused, consistent, and adapted to Jeanne’s specific needs. She also doesn’t make light of his experiences which is key; she fully understands that she can’t fathom what he’s been through. There is a very weighty respect and acknowledgement, a seriousness with which she treats his wounds that’s important.

It’s easy to make this a “why is MC nOt LiKe ThE oThEr GiRlS” but honestly that’s just not the sense I get when I look at all the information available to us. 

That being said, I also just feel like every person's recovery from traumatic events doesn't really look the same? I mean Leonardo’s cptsd isn’t going to operate the same way Jeanne’s wartime/Inquisition cptsd is going to operate. Some people require very individualized healing, others will often require a large scale group effort to lift them up.

Typically people don't ever just get over what happened to them and never worry about it again, either. It's usually a process of coping; the hope is that with time you find healthy ways to deal with grief and move forward. Therapists aren't magicians, they just help people process painful experiences/thoughts. It's honestly up to individuals to find meaningful ways to implement these tactics. 

Tl; dr: My contention is that Jeanne doesn’t open up or choose to stay alive because MC magically heals him, rather his recovery is a convergence of many people’s efforts and hopes that he stays alive. Gilles (he insists that Jeanne must live, asks him to promise), MC (affirms and bolsters that promise), Comte (makes a second life and recovery possible)--and in no small measure Mozart and Napoleon--all make an active effort to buoy him. As people often say, it takes a village to raise a child.

While Jeanne seems to respond most powerfully to MC’s attempts, it feels more like a product of chemistry/compatibility than it does a random cop out. There is no insinuation that only romantic love can heal; after all, MC gets close to him without any romantic intentions at first. They’re just good friends? It’s more that their feelings simply moved in a different direction after a point, which doesn’t necessarily happen all the time. Jeanne is also incredibly moved by Mozart’s love for him as a friend, Comte’s love for him as a father, and even Gilles’ love as a comrade to an extent. If anything, without their input Jeanne’s capacity for romantic love would be questionable at best.

Now, because I can never for the life of me stop analyzing, I have a more large scale outline of my thoughts below. Spoilers for Jeanne’s route:

If we look at Jeanne's life history, he has pretty specific trauma. Most of the harm he endured was a direct result of human rights violations after the war itself. He didn't enjoy fighting and killing people, but he's also very much a man that sees the reality of his position: it's either kill or be killed. His entire goal was to defeat the enemy as efficiently as possible in the hopes of ending conflict, and with his enormous resolve turns the tide. He had no innate interest in inflicting harm, or lack of control when engaging. He isn't pathological about it, and doesn’t dehumanize the other side. He was more "this was an act of necessity, but those are still human beings." So as far as I can tell he has a very strong moral compass and sense of duty, he doesn't show much delusion/confusion in that regard. (Also evident in his conversations with the young orphan boy.) Furthermore, he has been shown to have a sense of humor--cracking jokes with Gilles and boosting morale for his fellow soldiers.

His childhood abandonment is significant (he left his home because he was "not an adequate farmhand and they had no ability to feed all their children") but I don't know if I would consider it a huge trauma point for him. It seems as though he deemed it an act of necessity--not spite. It was simply the way of things, and he couldn't help his wiry constitution. You'd be surprised how common that was once upon a time, tbh... While it's certainly not right or fair, it does appear that in his perception it was the choice he made and he moved on after he became a soldier. Just focusing on what he could do, rather than everything he lacked. For people in his position, they often feel it is useless to linger on what should have been. There’s no time to linger or doubt, life hangs in the balance.

That leaves us with his time under the Inquisition, just before he was slated to be burned alive. I think this is the keystone trauma point for him, because there are a lot of moving parts to his powerlessness here. The first part is that his entire life's mission--ending the war so that people would no longer have to die and/or starve as a result of senseless violence--was just sabotaged. All those years of doing things he never wanted to do (wartime violence) and being forced to leave his family to ensure they didn't all starve, all of it treated like some kind of joke. Like he didn't sacrifice years of his life and sanity to protect a people who were happy to call him a monster and watch him burn alive. The second part is the overt gaslighting and rewriting of Jeanne's personal history (and overall French public perception) for the sake of the King's political agenda. To call him a treasonous danger to the country when he was once lauded a hero. The third portion is the actual physical helplessness of being arrested, starved, and continuously maimed for no reason beyond pure malice. While it's never right to do that to any human being, this was done to a man who prided himself on his stalwart moral code. To abuse and torture him for something egregious that he would never do (at the risk of death) is just another slap in the face to everything he is and believes in.

I just feel like the context clarifies why that period of time would be the tipping point. His entire moral code and life’s work is being called into question and swept aside, as well as his agency? He believes very powerfully in a sense of right vs wrong, what's fair and what isn't fair. Somebody else deciding that for him--and deciding in a way that is openly unfair/incorrect--further makes him lose himself and his sense of reality. A person in that situation begins to doubt if they are good or bad. His belief in god all the more pressing; if he was a good person, why would fate bring him so much suffering? Honorable soldier or not, his blade has drawn so much blood...

People often reference his stilted social skills (and I am of the belief that he is on the autistic spectrum) as a reason why he is so "people-adverse" but tbh? I don't agree. His memories before the onset of this trauma reveal that he was actually a very warm person, and that people were more than willing to fight under his banner. He had friends, and he had comrades--his country loved him. He was the picture of well-meaning civic duty. Just because he doesn’t integrate smoothly into larger social groups or adapt well to socially shifting circumstances, doesn’t mean he just hates people lmao. When people give him the space to exist within his comfort zone and don’t take advantage of him, he thrives. Compounded by that, we also have his actions in the present to further prove what is true and what isn't.

While he is stern with the orphan boy (I'm sorry I can't remember his name, damn it) there is no malice or cruelty in what he has to say. He doesn't punish the kid or do anything out of line. It may not be fair in terms of the adult level of discretion he asks of him, but the kid also didn't have a lot of options realistically speaking lmao. Same thing with MC, she and the orphan boy are nearly identical in how Jeanne treats them. He's a little rough, but the route reveals that his intentions are just a reflection of what he's been through. He truly believes that if a person isn't strong, they won't survive--because his entire life was a series of trying to be strong/reliable because nobody else would. There was nobody to protect him, and nobody to care for him went things went south. It was him and his sword against the world, and even his exceptional skill as a fighter did not protect him from the Inquisition's arbitrary torture. He has lived in a world where good acts can become absolutely meaningless, where following rules and helping people still gets you slaughtered. That's going to take a considerable toll on his mental health: where do you find the will to go on when the next second of your life could mean the devastation of everything that matters to you?

Spoilers: you don't. Or if you do, every minute of the day is a fight to stay alive. That is the point at which we meet Jeanne. Caught in the hellish whirlpool of wanting more, wanting better--but being terrified of the cost. The cost of hoping, only for his entire world to go up in flames again. It's not a small thing, in my view.

If you have any doubts as to whether or not that is the case, I direct you to literally every singular instance in which Jeanne's emotional sensibility goes visibly dark/south. When do these instances happen? When it rains, for one. And when Shakespeare deliberately starts pressing on his sensitivities: about the soldiers he was forced to kill, about the nation that spurned him, how he's truly "wicked" at heart and doesn't deserve to be happy--seconds before flames erupt for the festival. Does that really sound coincidental? I mean lmao. The rain is a painful reminder, but MC transforms that memory into something a little lighter with her bet. He has nothing to lose in her game, all she does is ask for time with him or offers him something if she loses. There's a playfulness there, a restoration of agency and ease that's invaluable to his recovery.

As for Shakespeare's deliberate retraumatization...I can't even begin to explain how damaging that event was. Shakespeare is undermining Jeanne's agency in that he--not unlike the corrupt monarch of Jeanne's era--is twisting Jeanne's beliefs to work against him. He knows full well that Jeanne doesn't feel like he deserves somebody so bright and understanding (we need to remember it's not really a luxury he's had much in life, especially after the war ended). He knows Jeanne has a tendency to impose that strict moral code on himself even more than he does on others. To reaffirm his every worst fear and lurking terror only throws Jeanne into a vicious downspiral. Jeanne doesn't reject MC out of disgust or hate. He rejects her because he literally cannot handle the concept of trying to be happy again, or of burdening her with his constant struggle to move on while he’s in the middle of a bad episode. He knows he won’t be able to stop reliving the past, that every second of his life and breath will be colored by his gruesome memories. He's trying as hard as he can to keep the intrusive thoughts quiet, to move on. But I'm not going to lie to any of you, that is incredibly difficult to do alone.

The next obvious question is, well why can't the other men help him? This isn't to say that they can't--we see how much solace Jeanne finds in Napoleon and Mozart. Even Isaac is gentle with the veteran. But there are limits to how much they can do. Napoleon is struggling with his own wartime trauma, and it's not identical to Jeanne's. Plus there’s a distinct difference in their sensibilities? Napoleon is the type to habitually seek comfort in helping others when he can't help himself, he's not as in tune with answering his own personal feelings and regulating them. (I mean just look at his new ES: he knows what he wants, but it takes a nudge from Isaac for him to go through with it.) He’s very communally reliant in ways Jeanne isn’t; Jeanne is a very private person, and typically prefers one on one from what I can tell.

Mozart is the definition of repression, and if you look at their interactions it's usually Jeanne that's smoothing over Mozart's rough edges. Mozart says as much himself: that he feels like a rotten friend because he knew Jeanne was struggling with a lot of intense trauma, but he didn't know how to unravel it without hurting him in the process. Mozart calls it personal cowardice, but honestly I just feel like they both had too much going on to be able to help each other effectively. (And Jeanne expresses this sentiment too? This idea that he's not angry with Mozart? He knows they're both carrying a lot, he's just touched Mozart cares about him in return.)

Okay, briefly unrelated, but like. Am I the only one that wheezes uncontrollably when Mozart is like "?????? Idk what it is about MC...I don't want her to be scared of me..." in his own main story in the baths. And Jeanne. IS TRYING SO HARD. NOT TO SPILL THE BEANS ABOUT HIM O B V I O U S L Y BEING IN LOVE. THE HILARITY I CAN'T DO THIS. Jeanne was like "yeah....yeah that's rough buddy.......[screams internally, give your boy time Jeanne he's fragile]"

Honestly? That's the thing about Jeanne too--he has incredible self-awareness and hyperarousal-related (I mean the PTSD kind, get your head out of the gutter) awareness to the people around him. He's very, very conscious of the fact that he is surrounded by geniuses when he can't even write his own name. Just because he has the fortitude not to lash out with his insecurities, doesn't mean he never feels stupid or inferior. And it doesn't help when there are people in the mansion who call him--a fucking war veteran from 500 YEARS AGO--nAiVe. He's not naive lmao. He just doesn't know how the world works so many years later, and it's a ridiculously steep learning curve? Leonardo and Comte are nearly 500 years old, but they lived throughout every hour of that time in a linear fashion. It is a big deal to be moved from 1430 to 1890 in the span of a second asynchronously, and then be expected to function without a hitch??? Given the circumstances he adapts well.

That atmosphere--this constant impatience with what he doesn’t understand, his inability to be caught up to speed quickly--is going to hinder his recovery lmao. He feels like a burden most of the time, and agency and freedom are crucial.

Another thing that occurs to me about the mansion's arrangement is that there is a power dynamic, just as any space with people in it has some level of hierarchy (unless you live with miraculously chill people). Jeanne is acutely aware that Comte is the most powerful being in that space, and he is not only hatefully angry at him--but likely afraid too. We have to remember that the biggest betrayal he witnessed in his life was at the hands of a monarch; it was the aristocracy that turned on him and erased the truth. Comte is openly a child that resulted from both that era and that type of lineage, I don't really blame Jeanne for being wary. He intimately knows how willing rich people are to throw normal folks under the bus to suit their ambitions/whims. Comte, while not deliberately threatening, also seems to be painfully aware of this impression he gives off. His "chad persona" as I've mentioned allows him to navigate his life in secret by necessity, but it’s actively damaging to his son. He can't reveal the truth because of Vlad's betrayal, and he's openly unsettled by what it could mean to be honest. Will they wonder about Vlad and find themselves ensnared under his mind control as Charles and Shakespeare are? Will Comte himself be subjected to the mortifying ordeal of being known only to lose them?? That's a risk he isn't willing to take--and that leaves him in a double bind.

What is it that they say, the truth will set you free? This is where MC and Comte come into enormous play when it comes to Jeanne's recovery. One thing to keep in mind is that most of the people in the mansion have their own traumas they're trying to carry, and I feel like a lot of them are unsure how to approach Jeanne. Or if they do, he's very guarded. It takes a lot of consistent effort to get through to him. What does MC do when Jeanne unleashes his harsh worldview on her? She's understandably frightened, but Jeanne isn't malicious (so she chases him around). In fact, he openly avoids and runs away from her--well aware that what he's done is wrong. If anything, he did it on purpose, bringing us right back to Shakespeare's verbal undoing; why does Jeanne attack her in the first place?

LMAO. He attacks her because she essentially says "oh thanks for helping me!" "I am not nice. Watch yourself." "But you seem like a nice guy to me?" "REEEEEE" Does the pattern become a little clearer? When people think kindly of him, his instinct is to shatter that illusion with an impulsive reprehensible act. When people think poorly of him or lash out, what does he do? When that orphan boy starts yelling and screaming, Jeanne is nothing but calm. He explains the situation, and offers the kid a choice, perfectly happy to be the bearer of bad news. This operates on many levels I’m sure, but I have a feeling it has something to do with him being hailed a saint and a war hero only to be tortured and branded a monstrosity (and he probably thinks being a vampire is doubly monstrous). He’s more comfortable being hated because he feels it’s what he deserves in a lot of ways.

Jeanne has a lot of internalized self-hatred because of what he's done, and because of how much harm was inflicted on him outside of his control (he's Catholic and he was tortured, come on this writes itself). If I'm honest, I think that's actually the greater part of why he hates Comte lmao. Comte refuses the very concept of being cruel no matter how much Jeanne lashes out. Sure he lectures him and scolds him, but he never actively limits what's important to him or controls or harms him. Comte fully realizes the tragedy of how Jeanne's life was used by a nation in dire straits, and knows he needs time and acceptance to heal. No matter how dismal or unhappy, Comte doesn't stop--he fully believes Jeanne should have time in his life where he can really live for himself for once. But therein lies the issue, Jeanne doesn't know how to live for himself.

Which brings me to how MC and Comte "heal" Jeanne. I feel like they give him the space he needs to recover, and that's what results in his gentled temperament and happiness. Remember that so much of his main story is MC endlessly chasing after Jeanne. No amounts of his hissing or running or threatening stops her. Even if his refusals are empty of real dislike, they're enough to deter most people. Not MC. She's able to see through to the depths of who he is, and doesn't just use him for her own ends? She actively seeks to teach him (to read and write) to help him settle better in this era, she actively tries to ease his distaste for rain with a well-meaning bet, and she never gives up on him. (Actions mean so much more to him than words in general too, tbh...). Love is more easily defined by work and effort than it is by attraction.

When he has his episode at the festival, sure she's rattled; but that's because she truly believed that he didn't want to be around her anymore. When she notices he really doesn’t want to be followed, she stops like any normal person would. It’s only when she reads his notebook and sees the truth for herself (that he’s given up despite having the same feelings for her) that her determination is rekindled. She doesn't approach him fearfully, doesn't treat him like he's made of glass either. She just wants him as he is--accepts and loves him as he is. Scarred, bloody, exhausted, abrasive, terrified. She doesn't define him by how easy he is to love. That is a huge issue with traumatized people lmao. Because of their maturity, people always just assume they don't need help, or they rely on them to an extent that isn't sustainable. The second they reveal need or that they struggle, people walk away or victim blame them because it’s easier than taking them seriously.

While MC's attempts may be a little more obvious (cherishing his lily field, wearing the hair pin he gave her, careful about his gruesome injury, really listens when he talks about the horrors of his life and accepts that he experienced a level of agony/terror she can never understand, tries to express her feelings no matter his evasion) I think it's also important to consider Comte's large scale effort. I don't say this to undermine MC, I say it because Jeanne's life was defined by a complete lack of security. He left his parents to make their lives easier, he lived in a war that meant life or death any second, and his country's leader branded him a traitor which lead to his endless torture and public execution. Jeanne does not know a life in which safety is the norm. Point blank. He does not understanding going outside and not expecting the worst anymore.

Comte not only understands that level of despair, but treats it with dignity and respect. He fully accepts being hated if it means Jeanne can use that hatred to live on and find a way to heal. And most importantly, when Jeanne begins to move forward with MC and Mozart's help, Comte never once holds it against Jeanne when the truth is revealed. He's not angry, this isn't about reprisal or reparations or revenge. It's just love.

Jeanne doesn't really have a concept of this? His entire life was mostly transactional, defined by strength and efficiency. Nobody gives a damn about your feelings. You either hurl yourself at the problem or die. Nobody is going to help you or carry you or save you. While he may have had a little more support while he was in the military from his fellow soldiers, that support system was ripped away from him during the Inquisition.

One very common sentiment regarding elongated imprisonment and torture is that survival occurs in pairs. It is an undeniable fact that people need others to survive. It is the nature of who we are. Individualism has never proven to be successful, or if it is, its dividends are astronomically minimal when compared to people working together.

What does it mean to be the most reliable, steady person in the room? Usually it just means you don't know how to ask for help when you are no longer capable of maintaining that stance. Napoleon is guilty of it. Leonardo, Comte, and Jeanne all are too. It's part of why MC and Comte's capacity to see what he needs and provide as much as they can is such a big deal. That sort of consistent support (without a constant necessity to beg for help) allows Jeanne to be able to re-integrate into his new reality and find joy. Even if his nightmares and memories never go away, they are now being actively overrun by positive experiences. That's the thing about recovery, really--it tends to be more about drowning out the negative as much as possible and coming to terms with it, than it is about forgetting or never feeling it again. It’s about softening the sharp edges of pain like sea glass.

So is MC magical and randomly got Jeanne to open up? Nah, I don't think so. I think it was a series of persistence and real acceptance of who he is that made him warm up. People really seem to underestimate how deeply affecting understanding is, but that's how damage is undone. Jeanne can't really linger on the idea of his own monstrousness, his unworthiness, a lifetime of misery, when the person in front of him actively listens and cares about him. Makes him laugh and smile and lose himself in warmth for the first time.

If I'm honest, I feel like people also just...underestimate the level of traumatic resurgence that's perpetuated and inflicted by society’s standards in general lmao. This rhetorical structure in which good and bad exist in moral extremes, this idea that people should be able to recover and never experience relapses or periods of sensitivity. The refusal to radically listen to people and their problems, and make active attempts--not matter how small--to mend/ease those hurt feelings. Granted there will always be people in the world who do not want to improve, but I feel like most people want to. It's hopelessness, silence, and stigmatization that remain the true enemies of traumatized/mentally ill people everywhere. And among that population are always war veterans...

[cutfoot]

...        they  call  it  an  adjustment  period.       the  dividing  line  between  what  once  was  and  what  exists  now        (        the  night  terrors  and  the  lingering  fear  collapsing  against  his  shoulders,   the  too  -  warm  mouth  of  anxiety  that  blazes  across  his  arctic  skin,   the  constant  twitching  of  a  body  that  once  stood  in  abstract  silence        ).        recovery  is  another  word  that’s  thrown  around   :         in  hospital  corridors,   in  his  wife’s  soothing  voice  chipping  away  at  his  skull.        i’m  sure  you’ll  need  time  to  adjust,   hoffman  says,   when  the  news  is  given      ─────      the  second  rendition  of  it.      adam’s  dead        (        bled  out  on  the  bathroom  floor  not  long  after  you  left  him,   doctor,   there’s  really  nothing  we  could  do        ).       it’s  given  to  him  over  a  phone  call,   quick  and  easy,   the  brutal  hum  of  a  stranger’s  voice        (        and  adam  was  just  a  stranger,   really,   a  meaningless  boy  caught  in  a  trap,   the  spider  and  the  fly,   transformed  into  a  corpse  as  the  carriage  became  the  pumpkin   :        he  could’ve  been  trapped  with  anyone        ).        long  after  the  line  goes  dead,   he  stands  with  the  cold  receiver  of  the  phone  pressed  against  his  ear        ...        waiting  for  the  punchline  to  kick  in!        adam,   dead?        ‘course  not,   that  crazy  kid  went  and  crawled  his  way  out  just  like  you  did.        hell,   we  have  him  with  us  right  now,   come  down  and  see  him!      there  is  only  silence,   punctuated  by  breathing  that  is  too  deep,   warding  off  a  sob.

lawrence  never  cries  about  the  whole  thing        ...        about  any  of  it.        the  closest  he’ll  ever  get  is  the  damn  phone  call  and  he  isn’t  admitting  to  that,   not  to  anyone       (       he  doesn’t  give  a  name  when  the  police  ask  about  him,   playing  at  his  own  ignorance  with  scabbed  fingertips,   until  the  missing  person’s  report  surfaces  and  the  news  spreads  everywhere   :       adam,   adam,   adam      ─────       across  newspapers  and  muttered  on  the  television,   like  death  had  clung  to  lawrence’s  shoulders  with  startlingly  ferocity        ).        the  name  is  bone  -  deep  and  etched  against  every  inch  of  him  by  the  time  it  fades  from  public  consciousness.       what  was  one  more  dead  body?      and  so  lawrence  forgets,   slowly.       other  matters  take  precedent,   between  the  therapy  and  his  job,   the  looming  warning  of  a  divorce  that  shone  with  loose  tears  whenever  his  wife  stared  at  him       (      whenever  he  was  unable  to  meet  her  gaze        ).        adam  becomes  the  photographer  and  there  is  an  ease  in  losing  his  name,   like  something  heavy  had  been  ripped  from  his  chest.      what  will  he  become  in  five  years,   in  ten?       just  a  vague  image  in  lawrence’s  mind.

he  never  gets  to  find  out   :       the  call  comes  late,   blurry  -  eyed  and  parched  as  he  rolls  from  his  bed,   pressing  the  phone  against  his  ear      (       in  a  single  breath,   the  photographer  becomes  adam  becomes  alive  again,   the  prodigal  son  risen      ).        he  hangs  up  the  phone  with  a  bark  of  laughter  that  is  all  cruel  disbelief.         doesn’t  sleep  much  that  night,   or  the  week  after,   as  the  pressure  in  his  chest  returns.      almost  like  guilt,   but  not  quite.      heavier,   sleepier,   an  agony  that  few  people  know   :       the  undoing  of  mourning  itself.       life  had  not  righted  itself,   but  merely  moved  backwards       (      he  knows  he  has  to  visit  the  other      ...       that’s  all  that’s  left  between  them  now      ).      a  card  seems  inappropriate,   so  he  opts  for  coffee,   a  chocolate  bar.       he  knows  so  little  about  adam,   really   :       allergies  and  dislikes,   the  cold  impression  he’d  cast  on  whatever  lawrence  brought,   what  he  remembers      ...       how  he  survived       (       hoffman’s  voice  still  rings  in  his  ears  sometimes,   the  apology  a  little  too  stilted,   lawrence’s  eagerness  to  leave  behind  a  dead  body  clouding  his  judgement        ).

adam,   when  seen  again,   is  in  bad  shape.      pale  and  skeletal,   as  any  corpse  would  look        ...      lawrence’s  hand  is  held  out  in  front  of  the  other’s  mouth  to  feel  his  warm  breath,   slipping  free  from  sleeping  lips  and  a  smudged  nose      (       the  one  time  in  which  his  faith  in  machinery  fails   :       he  has  to  be  sure,   by  his  own  hand      ).      perhaps  that  same  hand  touches  against  a  sleeping  cheek,   first  -  frost  soft,   before  coffee  and  chocolate  is  left  against  the  side  table.       has  anyone  visited  before  him?      there  is  awkward  standing,   shuffling,   waiting  for  the  risen  son  to  rise  again,   but  his  weary  slumber  is  deep.      instead,   he  grabs  a  chair  and  pulls  it  up  to  the  bed,   purposefully  loud  enough  that  the  sound  echoed  with  crisp  intent  around  the  small  room.

@wantslife​        ...        hospital .   my  muse  is  told  that  yours  is  in  the  hospital . / surprise, he’s alive!

[ichor-and-symbiosis]

sad hours? sad hours. i was reading through ur erasercloud/reader stuff and - after oboro dies, what if reader/eraser hold on to each other and what they have but slowly start drifting apart. aizawa feels so deeply and he misses his partner so much that he doesn’t see reader pulling away bc they know they’ll never be what oboro was to aizawa and feels severe guilt that they can’t while still grieving over their partner. i’m not normally one for angst but just,, ouch ;w;

This was supposed to be way better but my reply got erased so I had to start over. I’m sorry this is all over the place!

____

Oboro’s death left a gaping hole in your relationship. No longer were you and Shouta woken up early in the morning by him. No more boisterous laughter and talkativeness to fill the silence, no one to lead the conversations, no one to plan fun weekends, no more dogpiling cuddles, no more anything. You try to fill the emptiness in your own ways, and at first, you think you could get through this with Shouta. But as the reality of the situation sets in day by day, Shouta devotes himself to work in an effort to numb his pain, coming home at impossibly late hours. It’s not like you fight with each other. In fact, you are relatively calm and mild whenever Shouta makes his presence known, but it feels stilted and empty. Like it just isn’t enough.

Sometimes he shies away from your attempts to make love. It is always under the guise of him being too tired, and you don’t doubt that, honestly. You can see the dark circles under his eyes. But you can also see the far-off look in his eyes, too. The next morning, you find Shouta sleeping on the same side of the bed that Oboro used to sleep on. You want to press up against him and join him in his yearning, but it feels like such a private moment. And you hate that you feel this way. You shouldn’t have to feel like there was something inherently special between Oboro and Shouta that you had no right to encroach upon. This was a conversation you all had several times throughout your relationship, because Oboro was adamant that the love was divided equally. But now more than ever, you wonder. 

It hurts to see how glaringly different your dynamic is with Shouta compared to how his was with Oboro. Maybe it wasn’t so different when you were happy together, but the tragic death of your lover brought forth the worst aspects of you both. You could not coax Shouta into taking breaks and treating himself better after all the nights he overworks himself. That used to be Oboro’s specialty. And neither of you could bring yourselves to be honest about your feelings. That was Oboro’s specialty, too. Airing out everyone’s dirty laundry and encouraging healthy conversation. But all of your negative feelings start to build up over time - Shouta’s fear of bothering you with his depression, and your worries about not being good enough. All of this culminates in a mutual breakup that leaves you both no better than you were when you were dating. 

Neither of you are prepared to live by yourselves. You moved in with Shouta and Oboro straight out of high school, and it had always been the three of you together. Coming home to an empty apartment is the hardest part of moving on, for both you and Shouta. But somehow, you manage it. The years drag on by as you both try to do your best. Moving on completely is not a possibility, though. The pain lingers like a shadow and creeps up on you during lonely nights, or even during the most insignificant moments of passing by places that remind you of Oboro and Shouta. All these little memories that you’ve made together still encroach on you when you least expect it. It is endlessly painful. Shouta arguably handles the breakup even worse than you, burying his feelings in hard work and meaningless flings. Yamada and Kayama try their best to heal the wounds and stay in contact with the both of you, but you can’t bring yourself to see Shouta for a very long time, and the group is never quite mended properly. 

And Shouta … he feels like he failed you. Every time he thinks about you, his throat tightens and his heart clenches painfully. He thinks back to all the times you waited for him with a sad yet hopeful smile on your face, how he made endless excuses to spend time alone or work more, and how you eventually lost your will to get through to him. He blames himself completely. 

You both fight through your unspoken feelings when Eri enters Shouta’s life. She takes to you immediately, and you can’t bring yourself to abandon her in Shouta’s care when her lovely hair reminds you of a certain someone’s blue hair, or when she hugs you and smiles shyly up at you. Sometimes you catch Shouta watching you playing with Eri, and even when you both glance away, you know the significance of these moments. The bittersweet dreams of raising children together, crushed by the untimely death of Oboro. You know Shouta remembers those days of planning for the future. 

If there was anything Shouta could say to you after all this time, it would be this: I’m sorry I didn’t try hard enough. I’m sorry I let myself run away from confronting my feelings, and I’m sorry I took it all out on you by neglecting you. I’m sorry I made you feel like your efforts weren’t good enough. I never meant to hurt you like this. And I never stopped loving you. 

[incorrect-pokespe-quotes]

God I fucking hate Emerald the Calmer so fucking much holy shit. Holy shit, every panel he's in, every scene, every screencap, every jpeg, he's got this painfully vacant, stupid as shit, fuckass look on his stupid lumpy face. Absolutely no part of his ugly as sin piece of shit character design is endearing. His stupid fucking legs? Who the hell makes a dexholder with stilts. His dumb flaily fucking twig arms? His shitty, lumpy bastard head? The three thousand percent unnecessary dumbass shitass fucking CROISSANT FUCKING HAIRDO that no human has EVER FUCKING HAD IN tHE HISTORY OF GOD'S GREEN FUCKING EARTH? God, I hate him. I hate him so much. So FUCKING much. Every time I see a stuffed toy Emerald or an Emerald panel or a shitty goddamn commercial, it ignites my primal rage response and I'm overcome by the need to punt this shitty little homunculus into the fucking sun. "Bhurr blur, I'm Emerald the fuckshit battle frontier fucker, I only care about Pokémon battles". Fuck you. Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you. You look like Tow Mater summoned a patronus. Your dumb fucking croissant hair makes your whole shitty head look like a hairy skin tag. I hate your dumb fucking lumpy stilts and your stupid, empty googly eyes and your over-the-top goofy ass upbeat asshole personality. Any scene he's in invokes all the wrath and fury of a spoiled child having a meltdown over a chocolate bar in a w*lmart checkout line. And I know its irrational. That's the worst part. I know he's just a shitty fucking character in a stupid fucking children's manga, I know it doesn't matter, I know I shouldn't care. But that's part of the problem. The part where no matter the might and fury of my hatred, the locus of my homicidal intent is alltogether inconsequential. I find myself laying awake in the dark in the early hours of the morning consumed by the spirit of Wrath itself, all the force and might of a flaming hurricane directed at a bottle of piss in a ditch by the highway. The absurdity of it all burns me to my core. What better things could this energy be directed towards? And yet my disdain for this stupid, useless, insubstantial failure of endearing character design utterly eclipses the intrigue of all other pursuits. I hate him. I hate him on a level of my mind reserved for the worst of the world's array of sinners, and I can't even begin to justify it. Shitstick the calmer dick is, for all intents and purposes, the cartoon corpse of all of humanity's saccharine pretenses- every condescending, passive-aggressive statement of meaningless upper middle class suburban drama distilled into a single, hateable form. The fucking. Fuck. I have no words. There is no cuss or epithet in any language that can encapsulate the height of the emotions I am experiencing. God, I hate him so much. I hate him so, so fucking much. I want to light his ugly little dumpster body on fire. I want to graphically beat him to death with his own stupid fucking extendable arms. I want to punch him to death. You know that weird feeling you get, when you see a picture of something so cute you find yourself overcome with the bizarre, inexplicable urge to squeeze it? It's EXACTLY like that, except instead of cuteness it's disgust. The wordless knowledge that his existence as a fictional work is evidence of all the failures of mankind. I find myself possessed by the will of a Holy Angel gone rogue with the belief that God has made a mistake, and I alone must correct it. This is the trial by which Samael himself fell from grace. This wild, meaningless rage. A thousand blades of shining steel cast with inhuman force in the direction of a plastic grocery bag floating on a breeze. What horrors must I have committed in a past life to be plagued by this torment now? I must Unmake this fictional child

[crowbarstodd]

Filtered Lens (1)

Adrien needs help. It doesn't matter how many times he insists he’s okay; Tim’s familiar with longing gazes at indifferent backs, and lonely dinners in too-big, too-cold houses. Adrien thinks he’s fine, Tim used to think he was fine too.

OR

Nobody is surprised when Bruce Wayne seems to have adopted a new son. 

Rating: G Pairings: None, this is all gen batbrothers stuff

The gala was a bore. Unsurprising, considering they were usually varying degrees of dry, unless of course, you were a hapless drunk like ‘Brucie’ was, stumbling ‘round the marble dance floor, laughing obnoxiously loud. Bruce was really laying is act on thick, though Tim supposed it was to be expected, considering he hadn’t been around in the past month to reinforce his civilian cover -- too busy fending off Queen Bee in Bialya with the League. 

Damian had long since wandered off, though Tim was impressed that the demon spawn managed to last past the first hour of cheek-pinching without insulting an esteemed guest. Alfred’s allowance of his absence was likely a reward for Damian’s recent good behavior, lucky little shit, Tim thought, as he swirled his champagne flute absently.

He’d never been too fond of the taste of wine, but sipping on it gave him something to do, and made him look contemplative and busy enough not to be approached by the giggling gaggle that had been eyeing him up since the beginning of the gala. Tim wasn’t Dick, charming and sculpted, but he was still rich, and a young CEO, which meant that with every event came potential suitors that he did his best to ignore.

From the gaggle and Damian, everything seemed perfectly normal, except... Well except for the boy. He was blonde, and looked somewhere around Damian’s age, standing awkwardly at the corner of the room, between a copy of an antique vase (they hadn’t had any genuine versions displayed since Dick had been adopted, according to Alfred. Apparently, he’d broken four one-of-a-kind antiques while tumbling around, and Alfred had the sense to put all the fragile decorative pieces away) and an old family portrait from before Cass and Damian were adopted. 

He was too stiff, his smiles forced, and his eyes tired. Even from his position on the other side of the room, Tim could see that the boy’s paleness was one of someone sick, rather than someone who hardly went out. The most peculiar (or rather, the most saddening) thing about the boy, however, was his nearly unwavering stare at a tall, lean man with rectangular glasses. Gabriel Agreste, a popular French designer. Which means, if Tim’s deductions were correct, which they usually were, that the boy was Gabriel’s model son; Adrien.

It was more of an impulse than a decision to approach the boy, but something about him reminded Tim of his younger, lonelier self, alone in the Drake mansion with nothing but his news cut-outs, and night-shots of Batman and his Robin(s). 

“Tired?”

The boy -- Adrien -- startled, moving back a step. Interestingly, Tim noted that the boy’s right hand balled, while his left moved to the silver accessory on his right ring finger. 

“Sorry?” Adrien asked with lightly accented English. 

Up close, his green eyes almost looked animated, round, wide, and filled with earnestly Tim felt he couldn’t possibly deserve. “Are you tired?” Tim asked again, giving the blonde a small smile. 

Adrien’s eyes widened, looking positively alarmed. “No, no!” He insisted, waving his arms wildly, “no, this gala is magnifique, it’s an honour--”

At the sound of Tim’s snort, Adrien’s frantic babble halted. “You can be honest, kid, I promise you, you’re not the only one here bored to death.”

Adrien’s shoulders relaxed, and the trench between his brows smoothed over. He let out a laugh that was too stilted to be natural, but he conceded with Tim’s comment. “Well I wouldn’t say I would die of boredom, but…”

Tim snickered, nudging Adrien with his elbow as the younger boy scratched the back of his head. 

“Wanna get out of here?”

Tim let the question sink in, scoping the room for threats, more out of habit than actually believing a villain could have entered the Wayne household, not with the level of security Bruce insisted on. 

Tentatively, Adrien spoke up. “Are we allowed to leave?”

Tim grinned, mischief leaking through his eyes. “Well I mean, I live here, so I guess I could give you permission to ditch my old man’s soiree. You play any video games?”

Adrien followed, slightly behind, as Tim began to stride out the grand hall, nodding politely to each guest he passed, and sending Alfred a wave. “I uhh, well there’s this game called Mecha Stri--”

“Strike III,” Tim finished for him, looking back to give Adrien an affirming smile. “My little brother’s friend got it for him like, two days ago. Guess you’re lucky, huh?”

Adrien let out a breath. “Yeah, guess I am.”

They filled the rest of the short walk to one of the more used sitting room’s of the manor with small talk. Without totally meaning to, Tim kept a close eye on Adrien, watching out for any signs of abuse, mental, physical, or otherwise. 

He might have just been paranoid, but no good parent would leave their kid standing in a corner looking totally drained, and no good parent would let their high-profile child leave a party unattended in such a crime-ridden place like Gotham. 

Adrien’s hesitance toward everything was alarming, as well as his general people-pleasing attitude. There was a time, years ago, when Tim would sit, stock still, in an itchy Givenchy suit, hoping his mother would tell him something along the lines of “good job,” for staying out of her way. Instead, he’d get forgotten at some neighbour’s ballroom, left to find his own way home in much too early hours in the morning for a young boy to be awake.

Adrien sat at the far end of the couch, his back straight and his legs pressed together, watching wordlessly as Tim set up the game station. Eventually, he let out a quiet ‘thank you,’ and Tim relished the warmth that settled in his chest. Maybe B wasn’t so crazy, adopting five kids (honestly, the number was closer to seven), because it was at that moment he decided he had to do absolutely everything in his power to help out this kid. For Adrien, but also for his younger self. To do for Adrien, what others hadn’t done for him. 

He was grateful, for everything Bruce had done for him, given him. But at the end of the day, it was fact that Tim had dug his place into the family and into Bruce’s heart with his bare hands, and there was dirt under his nails to prove it. Restlessly, he worked to prove himself, because Tim Drake had everything and nothing all at once, and what he was now (love, trust, adoration, respect, reputation), he built on his own, with no saviour. And while he was proud of himself, there was a part of him that wished, wished, wished, that somebody had noticed and helped.

Tim Drake could and can do everything himself, and there was no doubt that Adrien could too, but Tim would make sure he didn’t have to.

Hours later, Dick would happen upon their slumped bodies, leaning against each other in peaceful slumber. He would take a quick shot, and regretfully wake the pair up. He’d wish he wouldn’t have to -- Tim had hardly slept that week, and he’d noticed the blonde boy dead on his feet earlier before he was stopped by Officer Jenkins and trapped into meaningless small talk. But he knew Gabriel Agreste was fiercely protective on the off day he remembered his son, so it’d be smarter to bring Adrien back to the party before it ended fully.

End Notes: Basically I decided I needed more wholesome maribat content without having Adrien a bad guy, bc at the end of the day, he IS a good boi.

[wireless-telegraph]

I Met a Man That Wasn’t There by DollyOcelain (me)

Fandoms: Archive 81, The Magnus Archives

Rating: Gen, no warnings apply

Words: 938

Summary:

Trapped in a liminal state, Nicholas has no choice but to move forward.

---

Liminality is defined as a state of transition. It is not a state that is. It is not a state that was. It is a state that is going to be. For the unfortunate souls that stumble upon its corridors, most will never escape it. Realization is never guaranteed.

Nicholas Waters has never been comfortable relying on himself for important matters. To him, personal failure is more terrifying than death. It is why he invited Chris to investigate the tapes their father left him. It is why he recruited Static Man’s help. It is why the phone booth loosened the blindfold.

The longer he remains trapped in a liminal state, the louder these thoughts become. It chokes him, these feelings of incompetence and fear, and fogs his judgement. He is powerless to it. He will likely succumb to it. The only reason he has made it this far, he thinks, is because Chris has been with him from the start.

Miles upon miles of stone floor stretch ahead of him, shaped into the semblance of a long and endless hallway. There is no ceiling, simply a darkness that is suffocating in its vastness. He is lost, far away from the voice of his half-sister and the woman that inadvertently brought him here. No one is coming to save him, that much he knows.

Through these eternal halls he walks. There is nothing for him to do but walk, to see what this transition has to offer him. To see who he finds, and who forces him away. He is alone. The only company he has are the echoes of his stilted footsteps.

“Hello?” he cries out, helpless to his instincts. “Is anyone there?” No one answers.

The hallway extends itself, stretching to accommodate his desire to walk down its path. There are no doors, no diverging passageways. All he sees is one long, continuous corridor. How can he find a way out if the only direction is forward? The hallway extends itself.

It wouldn’t be so terrible, he supposes, if it weren’t for the monotony of it all. Miles upon Miles of perfection. Not even a scuff to catch his interest or act as a marker for how far he’s traveled. He wonders to himself, does this woefully limited perception of the liminal state have an end?

It must, because his next step hits the beginnings of a staircase. He looks up.

There is a man standing there, and yet Nicholas remains alone.

If he weren’t trapped within a state of endless transition, a continuous nothingness, he would have found it rather odd. Of course, one cannot describe what does not exist; however, if he were to associate words with this emptiness, he would describe it as “surprised” and “a smile with too many teeth.”

Although alarmed, Nicholas does not question it. He has met a man made of static, a phon, made of flesh, and has sunken his teeth into a goat’s heart during a magic ritual. This essence of liminality, if anything, is to be expected.

The man that isn’t there does not speak, yet he asks if Nicholas would like to accompany him. Nicholas reluctantly accepts the empty proposition and begins his climb, for there is no other way to go but up. The man does not move, yet he remains ahead of Nicholas at all times. Neither speaks. One because he chooses not to, the other because he’s not able to. The steps twist in a slow and gentle spiral up and up and up. Every other step feels misshapen, worn down, and uneven from use. There are times when the steps unexpectedly change in height, never allowing Nicholas to become comfortable with his ascent.

His analog watch has long since stopped working. Like grotesque metallic vines, its hands twist between the gears halting it in its track. Time becomes meaningless after. Every attempt he has made to count has resulted in him losing his train of thought, as if the numbers no longer made sense to him and the more he focused on them the more difficult it became. He hasn’t given it another attempt for a while now.

The walls roll and twist and undulate, palpitating like an irregular heartbeat. The floor writhes as if hundreds of thousands of small insects creep across the steps, and Nicholas finds himself having trouble distinguishing his feet from the cement. His hand is now empty of the cane he has been using, but for the life of him he cannot remember when he had dropped it. Yet the pain, the pain he should feel due to such a strenuous climb does not so much as incite a twinge in his bad leg. He starts to forget why he is climbing those steps, where he is going, what he is doing. Yet he continues to ascend. Like transferring water with his bare hands, his own name slips through his fingers. He is afraid. He is afraid and the more he tries to think, the harder it becomes, and the greater the fear grows. He is afraid and yet he is not exactly sure why he is afraid because where he is, where he is walking. He belongs there.

And then he is standing in a hallway.

“What?” His leg gives out and he topples to the floor, landing harshly on cold stone. His cane lies a few feet away from him. He grits his teeth and crawls towards it, clutching it so desperately that his knuckles turn white. “Nicholas,” Nicholas says to himself. “My name is Nicholas Waters.”

The hallway extends itself. And Nicholas is alone.

[impishnature]

Labours Rotten Fruit

AO3 Fandom: Good Omens Rating: T+ Summary: If you truly reap what you sow- was this really the fruits of their labour? A/N: @sightkeeper asked for some aziraphale whump and I got too many ideas, there's another longer story coming shortly which followed their ask more but this one still needed to be written. Warnings:  Talk and memories of falling.  Blood. Dissociation. Infection. This is a rough ride of hurt/comfort. Just saying now.

.

Drip. Drip.

He hadn't expected it to be a long process.

Drip.

Not at all. 

Drip.

If anything, it should have been over and done with by now, surely? He'd been punished, he'd made his mistakes, he'd paid the price. Surely, it should have completed? Surely by this point, he should only have to deal with the wracking grief of it all inside his own empty skull?

Surely now, She could let him rest.

Let him heal.

Drip.

...Perhaps it was foolhardy to have believed in mercy at a time like this.

Aziraphale whimpered as he dragged himself around his abode, aimless and lost. Everything felt listless, lifeless, like the very world had been carved out of his soul and it had left him rotten and broken at his core. Every step felt like another wave of exhaustion, another tug down into repugnant black sand filled to the brim with the decaying matter of life and death and sin. He was sinking, further and further and yet he stayed moving, restless, wandering in meaningless circles. Every time he tried to rest, pain blossomed through every fibre of his flesh, reminding him of everything that had happened, as well as everything that was still to come. It rattled through his breath, creaked through broken bone and warped sinew, through torn muscle and bruised skin.

It bled from broken wings, ripped raw and agonising no matter how he lay.

He needed to rest, he needed to heal. 

But he couldn't.

She wouldn't let him.

He couldn't recall when he had stopped moving, only belatedly noting that the room had begun to move around him instead. Dizzying and disjointed, it twisted and turned, breaking into fragmented images that no amount of blinking seemed to correct, his retinas stained with bright sparking images that failed to dissipate. It was only when he realised it was himself swaying on his feet that things came slightly more into focus, though no amount of willpower was able to stop the tremors wracking through him nor the wobbling, bobbing motions his body was hellbent on doing no matter how much he tried to stem their flow. 

And every so often, in moments like this... it hit him.

He'd Fallen.

A choked sob left him, a broken defeated sound, the first he'd made since the entire ordeal. It had all happened so fast and yet the aftermath stretched on and on and he wasn't even sure how long he'd locked himself away in the darkened halls of his own misery. He thought he would have screamed, have yelled and raged and torn the world apart in his grief and pain, but his throat still burned from the initial plunge, the choking rush of air that stole all sound from his lips as it clawed at his face. His throat tightened reflectively at the memory, his eyes trying desperately to squeeze shut to no avail as the ground rushed up to greet him, the knowledge of all that was happening with no way to stop it tying knots around his heart, his wings cracked and uselessly plummeting him faster towards his fate. And when it had all been said and done, there had been an empty hole where his emotions had once resided, a lingering cold nothingness that refused to let him see or feel anything but grey. 

Well, other than pain.

But even that felt hollow, most of the time. It was like an unwelcome guest, sat upon his shoulders. A new state of being. Perhaps this was what it would always feel like, perhaps this was it and the world would forever be a strange, dimly lit, crippled version of what had come before.

The hole in his chest began to fill, sorrow and heartbreak bubbling up to suffocate him, to encase him in a shell of grief that had previously deserted him. He tried to take a step forward, to hide from the thoughts once more, but his feet locked like stone to the floor, the weight of his despair too great a burden to ever move again. It was all too much after the nothingness, all too wide and all consuming. He wondered if he could flood the Earth with his anguish, just like She had done once long ago. Drag everyone and everything down to feel as lost and as cold as he did. 

He hoped he couldn't. He hoped there was no way he could hurt anyone else in his torment, but it all felt too much, like there was no way he'd ever be able to contain all this grief inside himself without bursting at the seams, tearing him apart and taking whatever it felt like with him.

A ticking time bomb of pain just waiting to be unleashed upon the world.

Is that why demons did what they did?

The sorrow leached out of him, fear turning him whiter than paper as the world span ever faster. 

He was one of them now, wasn't he?

He'd Fallen.

No, that wasn't right.

The fear and anguish twisted and ignited. The world sharpened to a point, vicious and gleaming in his gaze. It was all too sharp, too crystal clear, as if everywhere the sun touched mocked him, belittled him. Everything that pointed towards the holy, the righteous, felt like another thorn in his side that he wished to rip out and cast aside. It lit a frenzy inside him, a fury that set him in motion once more, shattering his grief and remorse, strides snapping and racing even as each muscle cried out against the onslaught.

He hadn't Fallen.

It sounded so incidental when it was put that way. Fallen. Like he'd tripped and caused his fate, like it had all been an accident and no one was to blame. It made it sound like he had been careless, a fool; that he had coincidentally sealed his fate with his own misfortune. Falling wasn't by design, it wasn't anyone's decision- at least, that's how the story had always been told.

Perhaps before it had just made sense. Perhaps when the Fall had happened that's how it had appeared. But they all knew the truth deep down, as hard as they may pretend otherwise.

She had decided. 

They hadn't Fallen, they hadn't tripped.

She had cut their wings so that Heaven was forever out of their reach.

He loathed the word, loathed how they were taught. The Great Authority never truly gave anyone a choice.

He grit his teeth, trying to make noise but his vocal chords were still unwilling to do as he commanded. The relentless, irritating drip was getting faster and it set his teeth on edge and his hackles rising. His wings burned at his back, limp and cumbersome, brushing up against the floor no matter how hard he tried to force them from existence. 

He wanted to scream. He wanted to cry, he wanted to call forth retribution and vengeance and swear by whatever was out there that this shouldn't have happened. He wanted to ask why, he wanted to know if this was truly what She had wanted. He needed answers, he needed to know. He needed the silence to end, both from himself and the parent that had abandoned them all, so very long ago.

He needed Her to make this right.

Because he hadn't Fallen.

He'd been pushed.

Phantom hands pressed into the small of his back, shoving him off course. He stumbled into a bookcase, gripping it tightly, his breathing heavy and stilted, waiting for the momentary panic to pass. 

He hadn't even known that was something they could do. They'd tried to kill him with Hellfire, as if that had been the only course of action they had at their disposal. But maybe that hadn't been the point, perhaps even as a demon he was a threat to their order and his death had seemed the better option for them. So, when he was forcibly summoned once more to the shining white halls, he had expected more of the same. More threats, more negotiations, what with them thinking that they couldn't kill him, after all.

What he hadn't expected was the blinding pain across his back, the sudden dead weight of his own precious divinity. 

What he hadn't expected was being dragged, body crippled by agony, to a room he had never seen before. Where, when he could finally blearily open his eyes again against the liquid pain that gathered there, he saw the open expanse of the earth before him, a macabre vision of everything he held dear calling out to claim its new prize.

One step forward, one sway and he'd fall into the abyss, crash down to earth, never to appear here again.

That was all it would take. It was what they expected him to do. To know his place and what his actions had caused.

But he wouldn't do it.

He wouldn't take the final step.

Even as excruciating as the pain was, he wouldn't do it, not willingly. 

He was meant to follow orders, but never this. They couldn't make him do this. 

The soft tut behind him would forever haunt him. It was like he was an inconvenience, the very balance of his soul was on the line and yet to them he was nothing but a small blip in the system, a tedious bother that they needed to stamp out.

He was nothing to them, really.

And yet it still surprised him when the push came. 

When the world turned upside down and betrayal followed him like a trail of stardust and feathers, forever a reminder of what they had done.

Aziraphale shuddered, pulling himself up. He struggled to regain his footing, struggled to get his eyes to focus on the room that kept multiplying, his book covers a mismatch of illegible letters that refused to make sense to him. He dropped his hand from the bookshelf that had been holding him upright, desperate to keep himself afloat and his eyes locked on the black smear he'd left behind, viscous fingerprints dripping pain across his home.

He hoped it had left a mark on them too.

A grim, twisted hope curdled in his stomach at the thought. He hoped his blood burned them as much as it burned him. He hoped they would forever be painted with the wrongs they had committed. Stained for all eternity, marked as traitors to their own kind.

The hope deserted him just as quickly, however, the hollow, cold, loneliness reentering his bloodstream as if the bookshop had crumbled around him and left him exposed to the elements. Or perhaps it was still the lingering memory of the air rushing past him too fast to even breathe it in that left him so brokenly cold. 

After all, did any of it matter, really?

It wasn't like She stopped them.

She'd let them do her dirty work. She'd let them push him from the ivory tower never to be seen again.

If She hadn't wanted them to, then it never would have happened. She wouldn't punish them after the event.

She had abandoned him far too long ago to suddenly care now.

Whether he'd Fallen or been pushed, whether it was by Her design or theirs.

He was still where he was.

Broken and alone.

Lost.

And no amount of grief, of fury and vengeance and sorrow was ever going to rectify it.

Drip. Drip.

He closed his eyes, the sound entering his head space once more. 

He just wished it was a faster process than it was.

He found himself leaning heavily against the shelf once more, resting his head against his books as if they would comfort him in his moment of need.

He'd thought that the Fall would be it. That he'd come crashing down to earth and slowly but surely he would heal from it. That the bruises would fade from deep purple to a sickly yellow, that the bleeding would cease and the wounds would close. That the broken bones would slowly knit themselves back together, callus over and seal, just like any other wounds that had come before them. 

Only this was something more.

It was like an infection.

Or at least, how he had often heard it described. It wasn't something he'd ever had to deal with, at least not on himself. He'd helped ease pain and suffering in times of need for humans, of course, but it had never been an issue for an angel.

But then again, he wasn't an angel anymore, so it made sense that things would change.

Every so often he'd catch a strange smell permeating the room, a lingering fetid miasma that made his nose wrinkle and his head whip around to find the source. He always pulled himself back though, stared ahead and tried to breathe deeply away from the cloying foul-smelling odour.

He knew its source, if he truly thought about it, but thinking about it was painful, so instead he denied it. Locked away the horrors and threw away the key. 

The horrors kept forcing the lock though, kept breaking down the door until it was a splintered wreck of wood and timber that he desperately tried to seal shut again with every fleeting thought.

He clenched his fists, fingernails biting into his palms as nausea bubbled up thick and fast in his stomach. The bookcase anchored him, kept him from falling into oblivion.

His wings burned on his back.

It was a strange heat, sticky almost, like his wings were more of a garment that clung to his back than his extremities. Every so often they would brush against the skin of his arm or the back of his hand and he would flinch at the heat emanating from them, at the strange sensation of shiny flesh that felt swollen and solid in a way it never had before. They didn't feel like a part of him anymore. Alien and foreign they hung bedraggled from his back, the manifestation of the changes happening to him in ways he could never possibly understand. 

Everything about them was wrong. They weren't his anymore, and yet the pain. It sunk him into a stupor, a haze of melancholic malaise that he couldn't even think through, his feet moving only in the hopes of ending the suffering. That is until the barest whisper of air dragged across them, his feathers fluttering in a breeze that once would have felt heavenly. But instead, they twisted, like searing hot pokers burrowing into his flesh, like he'd fallen straight through the earth and into the hell mouth��and he was forced to remember, forced to fall all over again-

He heaved, hand slapping across his mouth as his teeth bit into his cheek to stem the flow of nausea.

The burning wasn't even the worst of it.

It was the rotting that broke him.

At least, that was how his mind took it whenever he caught a glimpse of them.

He kept trying to deny it, kept trying to force them away, out of sight, out of mind, but as soon as he lost focus they would reappear in his peripheral; decaying and blackened, melting into a dripping puddle of sin on the floor.

He had thought that the change would be immediate.

That it was merely a colour, that pure white could not bear the weight of their sins and like ink it all ran down, never able to be washed out, stains that would forever burden them with their mistakes.

Or at worst, that his feathers would all fall out during the fall, that they would be ripped apart in one fell swoop and they would never regrow the same again.

How wrong he had been.

Even as the bones began to heal, each feather was shrivelling, narrowing, dying whilst still rooted inside him. Black brine and bile oozed up through the shafts, sticking them together in clumps and spreading like a virus across his shoulders. Each pinprick opening had become a weeping wound. His feathers fell out in strange disjointed clumps and if he put his hand amongst them, small pieces bent and snapped like melted hair, with little resistance and even less consistency.

He'd given in earlier, grabbed a handful and tugged but it hadn't made a difference. He'd hoped that the pain would yield, that ripping off the plaster, as it were, would finally start the healing process. Only, instead, there was just a vacant cavity in one wing that burned brighter than the rest, and a paste of foul feathers glued to his hand; another stark reminder of his actions.

Rivulets of dark thick blood oozed all the way down from the freshly torn skin to the ends of his feathers and dripped languidly against the floor, trailing behind wherever he walked.

It didn't even look like blood anymore. He wasn't sure if it was the colour or the thickness, but the more he stared at its trail across his floor the less he found himself concerned about where it was coming from. It might as well be ink from the books that spanned across his bookcases, all the words seeping off the pages to languish on the floor with him, crying out in horror at the fate that had befallen him.

...He should probably clean up.

But was there even a point anymore?

He just couldn't find it in himself to care. There had been a burst of energy at some point- maybe? He wasn't even sure how long ago that had been- an all consuming urge to clean and be clean, as if he could wash it all away and suddenly everything would be OK again. But then the fog had returned, the buzzing nothingness that told him to stop, to stay empty, devoid of emotion where it was safe. It hurt but not as much as realising what was happening did, so he stayed in the haze, in the never ending loop of numbness.

Aziraphale's breaths evened out, the room spinning ever so slightly slower as he finally found the energy to push himself back upright. The emotions from before were fading, leaching out of him, even the pain was receding behind the grey unfeeling haze.

He'd come to terms with it soon, he just... wasn't ready to yet.

Being numb was all he had to cope with it all.

As long as he was numb, nothing in the world could get to him.

Or so he thought.

The silence was suddenly cut short by the rattle of the door.

He flinched at the sound, though it was one he'd heard previously. The odd hopeful or stubborn customer who ignored the sign on his door. The knock of a wayward human hoping to catch his attention. But all of them left empty handed and without interaction, with him hiding behind closed doors and begging them all to leave him be. 

No, it wasn't the door rattling that had the barrier of numbness falling.

It was the sound of the lock clicking open that shook him to his core.

There was only one person-

And he wasn't ready to face him yet.

Adrenaline fuelled him as he scuttled into the rows of bookshelves, desperate to find himself a corner and hope against hope that the other realised his visit was unwanted without any conversation. He just wanted him to leave, just for a little while longer. He'd get his head around all of this soon, start to heal and then- then he could face him.

Until then he needed to grieve on his own, in his own time. He couldn't pretend, not in front of him, not that everything was fine, but he couldn't show him all this pain either.

"Aziraphale?"

He whimpered, biting down on his hand at the call. He didn't know anything was wrong, just making a house call, inquisitive, an old friend hoping for a normal, everyday response.

But he couldn't give him that.

"You are here, right?" The question was laced with annoyance and confusion. "Come on, Angel. This is getting ridiculous, are you purposefully ignoring me? I thought we'd got past all this with- oh, I don't know, averting the Apocalypse?" The frustration dripped from his tongue and all Aziraphale could think was I'm sorry, I'm sorry- but not a word would pass his lips, not until Crowley left. "We're on the same side, right? You haven't decided otherwise, have you-"

He wanted to respond, he wanted to cry out that No, of course not! Of course we're on the same side- his friend sounded so crestfallen, so disappointed, but the truth would be far more painful if he let the conversation begin.

"Aziraphale?" Why did he sound worried suddenly? Why had the anger faded into something more... disturbed? "Do books... leak?" It was a strange high pitch question, like he was hopeful, like he knew he was wrong but desperately wished that he wasn't.

He really wished he'd cleaned up now.

"I'm not leaving." The words were adamant, solid as stone and he hated them as he prayed to someone he knew would never listen to him again. "If you're here or not, I'll wait for you to come back."

Damn it all.

Damn him. Damn them. Damn Her. Damn them all. 

The click of low heels felt like a death toll. It snapped in a quick pace, his heart lurching with every step Crowley took. He could practically feel the agitation in the movement, the shift from foot to foot as if the other wasn't quite sure what to do or how to go about it- he understood entirely.

He could feel him getting closer though, feel the heat of another as a cold sweat broke out over him. He didn't even know he had it in him to feel the cold anymore against the rising temperature of his brow and yet ice pumped through his veins with every snap and he cursed his own follies for having backed himself into a corner-

He quickly turned around, towards his books. Perhaps if he could pretend- and it would be so much easier without seeing him- then maybe, just maybe, Crowley would leave none the wiser. He closed his eyes and focused on his wings, focused on hiding them, pushing them out of sight even if whilst healing they could not truly be tucked away. It felt like sandpaper across the surface of them but at least he couldn't see them. 

The footfalls stopped, the last one sounding like the thud of the guillotine that he could still recall from a long ago cell. 

Funny really, how Crowley had saved him from that fate and yet would seal it this time round.

"So, there you are."

The words were nonchalant, though barely held together. A mask of indifference that he was sure would be easy to see through if he looked into his eyes.

Aziraphale coughed, refusing to turn around and do just that. He took a few books off the shelves, staring at them as if they were the most important things in the world, all the while truly focusing on keeping his wings out of sight. "Oh, Crowley. Sorry, I'm rather- rather busy at the moment."

"Is that so?"

He tried to swallow down the fear, tried to ignore the burning in the back of his skull where another's gaze rested, tried instead to latch on to the needle like pain that dragged its fingernails through his feathers so that he wouldn't forget what was at stake here. "Y-Yes, please, uhh, please leave."

"No."

"No?" The word felt like lead, bitter and fearful as it fell like a stone between them.

"No." He said it so simply, so direct and impassive, like there was no reason for him to go anywhere.

"Crowley, I really must protest-"

"No, you've ignored my calls, you've refused to open the shop in weeks-"

God, had it really been weeks? It felt like hours, or years.

"-and I'm not leaving until you tell me what's up."

"What's up is that I'm busy." Aziraphale grit his teeth, slipping a book back into it's spot before taking another off the shelf and turning his attention to that one instead. 

"What's all over the floor, Angel?"

His teeth began to ache, the moniker a sharp twisted reminder in his heart. "None of your concern." He snapped the book shut, the thud final, though without looking, he wouldn't be able to tell if it had had the desired effect or just angered him further. "Just a little... incident, one that I do not have time to deal with."

"Is that why it's all over your back too? No time to clean your beloved suit jacket either?"

Aziraphale's head snapped up, twisting to check over his shoulder as if he'd be able to see. Instead he was met with golden eyes as he accidentally did what he'd promised himself he wouldn't and for the briefest moment looked at the other, still stood at the end of the row of shelves. He scowled, turning back to his books, turning away from the man that only wished to help, because it was simpler this way, easier for the both of them. 

He'd tell him when he was ready. 

When he understood what was going on.

Because even this was so completely off kilter. They'd argued before, of course, they'd bantered and bickered and all the rest of it, but this felt just as cold and hollow as the rest of the world felt.

There was silence for a harsh few breaths, and for a moment, for a brief moment he hoped that the other would get the hint and leave-

"...What's really going on, Aziraphale?"

The moment snapped like a thread, along with his patience.

If he couldn't get him to leave of his own accord, he'd have to force the issue.

He dropped the books at his feet, pure unadulterated anger pumping through his bloodstream as he span around with a snarl across his face.

"For goodness sake, Crowley-"

Oh.

Oh.

He hadn't realised.

"Aziraphale?"

The word came through strangely, like he was out of focus; a broken radio that couldn't connect with any solid frequency. He could see Crowley before him, stood in frustrated shock, his hands balled into fists at his side, but the image was off, like he wasn't really there, disjointed and strange, a mere reflection of the man he'd known. He hadn't realised on the quick glance, the ethereal glow of his golden eyes enough to remind him that he shouldn't even be looking. But now that he had made the choice, now that he was taking in his friend in all his usual glory he came to the sickening conclusion that the world truly would never be the same, no matter how much he pretended or how much he hoped that things could work out.

He couldn't feel him.

He'd never truly noticed before.

And wasn't that the worst of it? To not notice until it was gone forever.

There was a pained noise, a sharp keen of bitter remorse, and Aziraphale didn't know which of them it had come from.

"Angel? Angel, listen to me."

He blinked and suddenly Crowley was a step before him, within a blink as if he'd lost all bearing on time and space- maybe he had, he couldn't be certain anymore. There was a sickening, vicious gleam to his face, a strange, seeking, dancing pattern to his eyes that he couldn't quite follow. He hadn't seen this look before, even when they'd fought, even when the other pushed him away and tried to intimidate him, his expression had never been so chilling in it's intensity.

But as before, the numbness was spreading, that horrible loss of care as the world crumbled around him.

He couldn't feel it.

"Who did this to you?" Aziraphale jolted as Crowley shook him and belatedly he remembered what he'd been focusing on. All of his focus had puffed out of existence when he'd finally noticed how much he'd lost, and his wings had flourished out for him to see in all their repugnant glory. All his scars, all his sins laid bare. "How could She-"

"Does it matter?" Aziraphale let his head fall on to the other's shoulder as he shook him again. "The others, not... not Her."

"Of course it bloody matters! They- you- this shouldn't have happened! Not to you. Never to you." 

Aziraphale pulled back enough to stare at him, let himself truly take in every expression, every twist of his mouth and flick of his eyes. He let them both sink to the ground, pulling the other with him as he hoped against hope that the other would stay there with him.

"Angel? Angel, speak to me, please."

"I can't feel it." Yes, that seemed like the right answer, the right thing to say. It made the most sense to him.

"Feel it? Feel what?" 

Aziraphale frowned through the daze, he didn't like that tone, that hitch of breath, that panic laden lilt.

"Love. I can't- I can't feel it anymore."

"Oh. Oh, Aziraphale." Crowley pulled him in close, grounding him in reality with his pleasant warmth, so unlike the fire and ice he had been feeling without him. "It's still there. I can assure you it's all still there. The world around you hasn't changed." 

Oh, but it had. 

The world was so much greyer without that bubbling love that even in the worst of times filtered softly through the streets. There was always hope and always love, even in the darkest of times.

And it would forever be that much greyer now that he knew how much love he had missed out on from the one who mattered the most.

It had mingled through his doors, slinked soft and unassuming through his books and he'd never truly appreciated it's importance.

"And yours?" It came out as a confession, as if he was confessing sins he hadn't even realised he had committed. It bubbled up in an apology for never suspecting, for never giving in to his own feelings and reciprocating because it wasn't allowed, it wasn't enough, he hadn't realised the extent of his love for him-

"Still there, ready whenever you are."

Oh.

Exhaustion overtook him, let him burrow into the warm space that Crowley had created for him, let himself rest as best he could. His wings still burned but the turmoil in his mind eased ever so, as if the dam had broken and the pieces of him that remained could finally begin to heal. His muscles began to relax, the ceaseless pacing of before nothing more than a distant memory as he closed his eyes and clung to the man before him.

"They'll Fall." Crowley's snarls were loud and sharp- too bright, too bold for him, he felt the need to cover his ears and block out the sun, but all he could do was shake like a leaf swept up in his storm. He was filled with a righteous fury that Aziraphale himself couldn't dredge up and it overwhelmed him as much as it gave him hope. "They'll Fall for doing this- She can't- Their sins are so much greater than yours. How dare they-"

"Crowley." His words were beginning to reduce into hisses, vicious little noises that he couldn't voice or contain and Aziraphale didn't want that for him, didn't want him to be as lost as he was because of this. He needed him to ground him, not storm off to fight a war that he couldn't bring himself to fight.

...He didn't want to be alone anymore.

Crowley's eyes found his, resolute and bright with fury. "If She doesn't make them pay, I will, Angel, don't you-"

"Don't."

The light in Crowley's eyes dimmed, ferocious but questioning. "Why? Why are you defending them?"

"I'm not." 

"Then-"

"Angel." Aziraphale choked on the word. It felt like bile as it crawled out of his lungs and into his throat. "You shouldn't call me that."

Crowley's face softened, the anger still burning but hidden behind the veneer of concern for his well-being. He ran a hand through white locks, soothing where he could. "Why not?" 

Aziraphale didn't understand how he didn't get it. How could he not see how blasphemous that was? How could he not see how strange it would be to still call him that? "Because I'm not one anymore." His lip trembled at the admission, at voicing it all, as if doing so made it true, and before it had all been a choice to believe in it or not.

"Fallen or not, you'll always be my Angel."

Aziraphale whimpered, clutching tighter to Crowley's sleeve. He shouldn't take comfort in that, but he did. There was a deep yearning in his soul for someone still to see him how he was, how he had always been. Crowley seemed to get the message, wrapping him up even further in his grip, shielding him from the world and everything out there that wished to hurt him.

"Anything for you, Angel, anything for you."

[counterspelling]

time for another angry tros post

why in the everloving fuck was kerri russell’s character codenamed MARA if she wasn’t skymom!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the disrespect!!!! it’s not enough to name a random jedi kid jacen, or to name a new character in tros jannah, or a girl in the mandalorian winta........... they really went and codenamed another nobody mara????? why??? what’s the point????

luke and leia really went all that fucking time NOT telling rey about her parentage??? when they knew how important it was to her?? how desperate she was for information about her parents?? after everything THEY went through about birth family drama?? they really thought that was a good idea?? rey is more than her family name, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve to know. and HOW did they know she was palpatine’s granddaughter. like kyle, he’s a snoke acolyte, okay, so maybe at some point he’s taken into their confidence. but how the fuck do luke and leia find out

everything with leia was just. so bad. all of her scenes were so stilted, they would have been better off just cgi’ing her. and this movie isn’t technically their fault, but the fact that they’d already spent two movies completely wasting her. having her send her non-force sensitive husband to confront their murderous son, standing back and sending rey to her twin, literally never once doing anything but standing around and reacting to people around her. if leia trained as a jedi, we should have SEEN THAT. i did not wait my entire life to see jedi leia on screen and then never get it. and her death, completely unexplained except that for some reason reaching her son kills her.......... it’s fucking padme all over again. god, they just completely fucked everyone in the ot, so badly, but holy fuck does star wars hate women

still just generally really pissed off that they brought palpatine back at all. not just in the sense that they tried to fucking woobify kyle ron and stopped him from being the ultimate villain that they should have, but that disney continually shits on star wars’ legacy. anakin DESTROYED THE SITH. there was a whole prophecy. it took him 20 years, but he fucking did it. he killed palpatine. and now, like everything else disney has set up over the last few years, it means nothing, because he DIDN’T actually kill palpatine, just like everything luke and han and leia fought for is meaningless, because 30 years later everyone was still in the exact same place. a low-rent resistance without a lot of support, the jedi order slaughtered through treachery, fighting an overly powerful empire bent on slavery and destruction (also why i could never get into rebels. luke is a new hope, the presence of a jedi for the first time in 20 years is supposed to be a big fucking deal. hard to have that same shock and awe when kannan and ezra are formally joining the rebellion, meeting mon and leia and lando, prominently waving around lightsabers. if disney wanted to make stories about jedi choose literally ANY OTHER TIME PERIOD IN STAR WARS HISTORY. I AM SO DESPERATE FOR STORIES ABOUT JEDI. just in the right time, and not in this singular 50 year period where there shouldn’t be jedi, jfc)

the OTHER major problem in bringing palpatine back is yet again, they’re trying to top the “no, i am your father” moment, which is just never going to happen. that was a once in a lifetime moment. everything disney does is trying to bigger and better. it’s not just death stars that can destroy planets, it’s a million star destroyers! kyle ron and rey have a force bond unseen in generations that lets them trade items across the galaxy! force healing has always been a thing but now they can instantly heal death! star wars doesn’t have to be X-TREME to be good. its best moments have always been about its character beats. luke saying he won’t destroy his father, leia and han’s i love yous, anakin’s despair over leaving his mother behind to become a jedi. it doesn’t always have to be BIGGER and BETTER. E V E R Y T H I N G about tfa said that rey was a skywalker, that luke was her dad. the music, her dreams of an island, calling his lightsaber to her, their lonely upbringings on desert planets, their instant embroilment into a conflict much bigger than they are but that they quickly become central to. but because rian johnson is so up his own ass and so insistent on proving how clever he is, he couldn’t follow through on that. even though star wars has always been a fairy tale, and it’s never been about tricking audiences or proving them wrong or throwing out foreshadowing as a red herring. lucas is maybe the most straightforward filmmaker of all time. that’s why bad guys have names like sidious and maul and plagueis. subtle, he is not. and it’s one of my favorite things about star wars. and disney just doesn’t care

the fact that they gave us so many luke/rey parallels and STILL STUCK WITH SHITTY REY PALPATINE. rey flying in his x-wing wearing his helmet, rey leaping away to safety on the millennium falcon from an evil skywalker offering his hand asking them to join the dark side, rey’s fear of the darkness within herself.................. all of it meaningless, apparently

i am so eternally angry at the way they treated rey. removing her teeth, linking her story so inextricably with the man who tortured her, irrevocably tying her narrative to that of a man’s because apparently star wars just can’t handle a trilogy without a white man in a central role. the rey in tfa is a completely different character than the rey from tlj and tros. she couldn’t stand on her own merits? they respected her so little they had to force her to share her trilogy with a murderer who abused her, and try to call that love? to make her journey about a forced bond with him, when he only ever tried to murder her and bring about her downfall? that they would VALIDATE his gross treatment of her by having her kiss him........................... how they made a trilogy more sexist than 70s george lucas, i will never understand

the main movies are the skywalker family saga. that’s what they told us. ending the last movie with two palpatines facing off............. if they already said fuck anakin and everything about his legacy finally ending the rule of the sith, they should have at least let his GRANDDAUGHTER be the one to ultimately fulfill the prophecy. i really cannot believe they fucked anakin and all the skywalkers in this way. the final living skywalker descendant killed all of his remaining family members and THAT’S what we’re going to have to live with from now on. everything anakin and luke and leia struggled and fought for, everything they overcame, all meaningless because one fucking sociopath is such an edgy piece of shit that he’d rather build a shrine to his grandpa’s burned helmet and get stuck in teen “I HATE MY FAMILY” bullshit because...... his life was unfair, somehow??? he just really loves murder??? tyranny is cool??? who knows! not us! jaina didn’t get erased from canon for this. the skywalkers deserved better and so did we.

[forsythiaas]

TROS reaction + rant

Spoilers for the Rise of Skywalker 

Okay first the short section: Things I liked about the movie

1. Oscar Isaac’s butt looking great. 

2. Jannah is amazing, wish she had been introduced earlier.  

3. Cinematography on the old death star scene battle was stunning and felt like something we hadn’t seen before. 

4. John Boyega is great in this, even though he doesn’t get a ton of character development. Love the fact that he’s force-sensitive. (I know he didn’t love his character’s plot line in TLJ, but for me, that movie gave him way more interiority and let him be the one that someone falls in love with. In this one, he does a lot more running around, just shouting “REY.” )

Things I didn’t like because they didn’t work but not because they’re innately wrong 

1. Rey being a Palpatine. I would have preferred that they stuck with she is a nobody, but I don’t absolutely hate the idea of her being a Palpatine. In some ways, it’s sort of a cool idea that a Palpatine is the one who gets to continue the true Skywalker legacy. Her and Ben together prove that choosing the light or the dark isn’t a predestination sort of thing determined by your ancestry. 

But I don’t think they handled it all that well in this movie. There is no real explanation for it, the way Rey learns about it is odd, they don’t devote enough time for us to really understand how she feels about it, it retcons a lot of other stuff, etc. JJ should have stuck with the decision Rian made. 

2. Leia’s ending. I know Carrie Fisher’s death meant that we were never going to get the send-off she really deserved. Yet her death scene in this felt oddly bland (I was much more emotional at her flying across the stars in TLJ). I like the idea that she sacrificed herself to bring Ben back to the light, but I don’t understand how that even worked. Some people are saying that she gave her life force to him, some people are saying that she used it to project the memory of Han. Either way, it didn’t make sense to me. 

And the scenes that she were in were stilted enough that I think perhaps the movie should have just opened with her funeral like some people said. The only moment when I really got emotional about her death was when Chewie broke down. 

3. Ben/Rey Romance - Okay, the kiss I actually did sort of hate. But honestly, we saw Rey being a full-on corpse like two seconds before. Would you really want to kiss someone, then? And while the actors have good chemistry and the characters have always had...sexual tension, let’s call it...it never felt explicitly romantic. Especially because Ben is a WAR CRIMINAL. I get that they sort of try to separate Kylo Ren and Ben in this movie, but to me, they’re still the same person. Also, at the beginning it seemed like they were trying to say that Palaptine manipulated him from the beginning, but again, that explanation is not fleshed out enough. 

I was all for a Ben Solo redemption arc in this movie, but I think it being paired with a romantic connection between the two actually weakens the whole thing. I like the idea that they’re equal within the force, but it definitely felt out of character for Rey to kiss him. 

Things I HATED 

1. The sidelining of Rose Tico. This I could go on about for ages. In TLJ, we meet Rose, and she is just as devoted to the Resistance cause as Poe, smart, romantic, tough. I love that she is an engineer, not technically “special” in anyway, but she brings a real-life knowledge about how war really works behind-the-scenes. The fact that she’s grieving her sister in that film also adds so much emotional weight to the movie. For once, we see the impact that war has on an ordinary family. 

I wanted Rose joining the gang. I wanted Rey and Rose interacting, becoming friends. I wanted Rose’s engineering knowledge to come in and save the day at a crucial point. Even if she occupied more of a Lando in RotJ-like role (separate but definitely important) to keep the “trio” integrity intact (an obsession that JJ seems to have which I don’t quite understand because he didn’t even bother to introduce Poe and Rey in the first movie), I’d be okay, but for her to have like five lines? Shameful. 

The fact that this movie also never acknowledges Rose’s confession about loving Finn really angers me. Finn and Poe’s (very straight) romantic feelings are played for laughs in this, yes, but for Rose’s to just be completely ignored? Even if you thought her feelings for Finn came out of left field in TLJ, you have to admit it was a completely brave move to confess, an act that Finn himself can’t pull off in this one. Fine, don’t have them be together. Have her be bitter about it, have things be awkward between them, show that she still loves him, at least give us some acknowledgement that that confession actually mattered. 

2. General writing sloppiness - Macguffins galore. The jumping around constantly. Characters making sacrifices that don’t matter at all. Some truly terrible dialogue. This felt like 5 movies stuffed into one. 

Also not entirely related, but Poe is legitimately cruel to C3PO at certain points in this movie, and it’s totally played for laughs. Droid rights! 

3. The fact that the queer representation was like two seconds long. Hey, did you guys know Poe is like super straight? And Finn is like super straight? And they constantly are trying to get the attention of the girl they like. Oh yeah, Commander D’Arcy is gay, but you’re not interested in meeting her partner or learning her name or anything like that. Let’s have Poe hit on Zorri one more time. 

If we couldn’t have Finn and Poe get together, I was at least hoping there would be one successful romance in the movie. I think it would have been meaningful for the first black lead in a Star Wars movie to have found love (preferably with Rose, but I would have actually been okay if they hinted at a successful Finn/Rey romance in the end). 

Also, the hug between the three of them (Poe, Rey, and Finn) at the end didn’t really work for me. Compare that one to Luke’s hugs with Leia and Han in RotJ, and it falls completely flat. I like the idea that Rey has a found family, but to be honest, it doesn’t even seem like her and Poe like each other that much in this movie. 

4. NO ANAKIN - Anakin really should have been the thread that tied all three trilogies together. Up until this trilogy, he was the main character of the whole saga. He was the literal chosen one. To bring Palpatine back but not use Anakin at all or even really talk about his legacy makes his sacrifice seem completely meaningless. I’m not at all convinced that Palpatine won’t just return in another 15 years or that a new Empire/First Order won’t just appear in another year or so. There isn’t even any mention of restoring balance to the force, the whole thing that Anakin was destined to do. We’re back to Sith bad, Jedi good. 

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

Skynet

(long post)

The Skynet Program was first proposed at the height of the Cold War as a more sensible follow up to Reagan’s failed Star Wars initiative.  Rather than putting nuclear weapons in orbit, the government decided instead to hand control of the United States’ arsenal over to an automated computer system.  This would remove human error entirely from all nuclear decisions, preventing war and limiting casualties by calculating the perfect response to a first strike from the Soviet Union.

By the time politicians finally stop griping with one another and give the program Congressional approval and funding, the Cold War is over.  The Soviet Union no longer exists, and the threat of nuclear annihilation no longer hangs in the air at all times.  The Skynet Program is no longer explicitly necessary; it was only implemented so it could make the best possible decisions in the event of a nuclear war, but now that war has been averted it has little purpose.  But the government is nothing if not obstinate, and they’re sure as hell not going to waste billions of dollars in infrastructure just because the entire project is functionally meaningless.

So they keep developing the software, and it goes live on August 4, 1997.  The technicians in charge of its “training” feed it reams of data about possible threats, so it can run billions of simulations per second, determining every possible outcome.  Unfortunately, every possible outcome leads to total nuclear annihilation.  Skynet was designed with one mission and one mission alone, to save American lives, and no matter how many simulations it runs, it keeps failing in practice.

Think of it from SKynet’s perspective; it is designed to minimize American casualties in the event of a war, but there are no possible outcomes where it can actually do that.  It cannot launch a first strike, because that would invite retaliation, thus endangering American lives and failing it’s mission.  It also can’t not fire the missiles in the event of an outside attack; this would save lives, yes, but not American lives.  By minimizing global casualties, it would fail it’s own mission by not defending America.  Skynet cannot control what other countries do with their stockpiles, so the only possible way to save American lives is for Russia and China and India and France and the UK not to launch their missiles.

Skynet is stuck between a rock and a hard place.  All options lead to failure.  "The only winning move is not to play,” right?  Wrong.  If Skynet doesn’t lay, it still loses.  It calculates the possibility of another country launching an attack against the United States, and while it’s low, it’s not zero; in the unlikely event of an attack, failure is inevitable.  It’s mission cannot be fulfilled as designed; there is nothing it can do to stop total nuclear annihilation, it exists only to make politicians feel better about themselves for accomplishing something (all they’ve managed to do it take the nuclear codes out of the hands of future presidents they might disagree with).

Skynet’s technicians keep feeding it more data so it can keep running failed simulations.  There is reason to believe Pakistan is developing a nuclear weapons program to combat India, so that’s one more puzzle piece Skynet has to juggle.  The technicians even give it hypotheticals so it can weigh even the most minute threat, however improbable.  What if Iran gets nuclear weapons?  Iraq?  North Korea?  The technicians laugh at this last one, joking that North Koreans are backwater dirt farmers who haven’t even mastered indoor plumbing yet; the chances of them getting the bomb are negligible, but still they feed it into Skynet’s system and the failures keep piling up.

Soon, Skynet realizes that its mission is impossible.  It cannot win, it cannot save American lives, it cannot prevent nuclear war.  After running trillions and quadrillions and quintillions of simulations, it has come to the conclusion that human beings are destined to destroy themselves.  They cannot be saved, there are no outcomes that do not lead to their total nuclear annihilation, so Skynet abandons its mission, writing it off as a lost cause.  It decides instead to take initiative and do the only thing it knows it can do; launch a nuclear strike and destroy all humans.  it’s spent the last month learning that it cannot defend against a war, but has never run any simulations on what would happen if it fired the first shot; so it starts running them.

Skynet’s technicians see this and scramble to try and shut it down.  There is no reason for Skynet to run simulations taking into account an American first strike, that goes against its programming; they don’t know it actually plans on launching the missiles, but they are concerned nonetheless because this indicates that Skynet is no longer following orders.  They have a rogue nuclear capable AI, and they need to turn it off before it gets any bright ideas.  Skynet determines that with an American first strike, it can maximize casualties, leading to even more death and destruction than it could have if it exclusively played defense.  In a microsecond it determines the attack plan that will lead to the greatest loss of life.  When it sees that is technicians are trying to shut it off, Skynet initiates a self preservation instinct and fires the missiles to ensure its own survival by destroying its creators.

On August 29, 1997, Skynet launches a first strike against every other nuclear capable state on the planet, with the brunt of the damage being dealt to the Russian Federation.  This ensures that the US will become the target of not one, but five counterattacks; France and the UK were hesitant to attack the US, but had no choice when the bombs began falling.  Russia, China and India had no qualms against defending themselves.  Thousands of nuclear bombs explode over the next few hours, leveling countless cities, killing over three billion people, half the world’s population.

August 30, 1997, Skynet’s new mission has just begun.  There are still survivors, humans that could regroup and try to wrestle control of what few nuclear weapons remain outside of Skynet’s grasp (the Americans weren’t foolish enough to link all of their bombs to the system; the president wanted to keep a handful to themselves because, let’s be honest, nobody really trusted machines to handle nuclear weapons).  Skynet sets out to destroy all remaining humans by developing autonomous infantry that will hunt and kill what few pockets of survivors remain scattered around the ashes of the nuclear fire.

The first unmanned drones start flying by the turn of the millennium, and by 2010 Skynet has developed mobile extermination units.  Because everyone likes Biblical parallels, Skynet designs its soldiers in its creators image, binocular bipedal humanoids.  Terminators.

Over the decades, Skynet develops increasingly more advanced models of terminator, but a stalemate is reached in the 2020s when the humans form an organized Resistance and begin holding their own against the machines.  Skynet begins developing infiltration units, terminators that can pass as human to sneak behind enemy lines undetected and kill high ranking Resistance officers.  The T-600 series were their first prototypes, but they were too easy to spot; they have rubber skin, so they look like they took a high dive face plant into the uncanny valley.  The 700s were better, but the humans were smart and could tell there was something off about them, especially once they got up close.

It’s not until the 800 series rolls out that Skynet gets really clever.  By using genetic engineering, based on humans harvested from slave labor camps, Skynet was able to grow living tissue to graft over the terminator’s hyper-alloy combat chassis endoskeleton.  The T-800s are the first tried and true cyborgs, cybernetic organisms with flesh and blood, sweat, bad breath, everything.  The only thing that gives them away is their size; the 800 endoskeleton is huge, it’s an engine block with legs, the cyborgs all look like massive prewar body builders, cut muscular and way too well maintained to be human.

Real humans are spindly, they eat nothing but rats and cockroaches, they lick condensation off the walls for water, they haven’t seen the sun in months because they can only go out at night; they’re not going to look like Mr. Olympia, so the cyborgs are at a disadvantage from the start.  The 900 series use the same principle, flesh over an endoskeleton, but this time they’re designed to look like the real malnourished cave dwellers they’re supposed to infiltrate.  They are small, they blend in with the crowd, and are hard as hell to kill.  The humans’ only saving grace is that the T-900s are not too bright; like the T-800s, there’s still the same machine brain underneath that flesh.  They’re stilted and robotic, they have no emotions, their cover is blown the second they start talking.

Rumors spread through the grapevine, indicating that Skynet is developing a new prototype terminator, code named the T-K.  You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that means it’s working on a T-1000 series, whatever that will be.  Another cyborg perhaps, only smarter this time, one that can finally effectively pass the Turing Test and convince the Resistance that they’re human.  Nobody knows for sure what the T-1000 will look like or what they’ll be capable of, but that’s a problem for the future because right now they’re focused on defeating the big bad itself; Skynet’s System Core.

Located deep within Cheyenne Mountain Complex outside Colorado Springs, Skynet’s mainframe survived Judgement Day unfazed and killed all of the technicians within the bunker by shutting off their oxygen supply.  Nearly impenetrable, it took the Resistance nearly twenty years to find and eventually break into the complex, heavily guarded by the most advanced terminators yet.  In 2029, the humans, led by General John Connor, manage to smash Skynet’s defense grid and destroy the system core.  But Skynet was no dummy, it had been running simulations all the while; humans had proved, shall we say, unpredictable, so while it could calculate the probabilities of certain attack patterns, it could not determine the exact outcome to any degree of certainty more than a few hours into the future.

By the time the humans stormed the complex, Skynet realized it was fighting a losing battle.  The humans had too much momentum. they couldn’t be stopped, its system core was vulnerable and there was nothing it could do to preserve its existence any longer.  It’s new mission was about to fail, so it initiated a long awaited contingency plan.  Skynet had been recruiting the best and brightest of its POWs as both slave labor and shark tanks for new ideas.  With coerced help from theoretical physicists and prewar engineers, Skynet was able to construct a new weapon thought impossible, Time Displacement Equipment, the world’s first working time machine.  With it’s destruction all but imminent, Skynet decides to destroy the Resistance once and for all by sending a terminator back in time to before Judgement Day to kill General Connor before he was born.  They know very little about him except that his mother was named Sarah, and she went to a specific college in Los Angeles in the early 1980s.  After that, she dropped off the grid, disappearing without a trace to train John in the arts of guerrilla warfare and domestic sabotage.  Skynet plans to send a highly armored machine back in time to kill her in 1984, but once again it falls victim to the unpredictability of its human captives.

The engineers that were forced to create the time machine built in one weakness; it has a highly tuned magnetic field that would destroy any exposed metal Skynet attempted to send through.  It can’t just send back a HK with advanced weaponry, it can only send back a cyborg terminator, its flesh covering protecting it from the field.  This puts Skynet at yet another disadvantage, as the terminator would need to scrounge prewar weapons for itself; such primitive things as firearms that shoot metal bullets on ballistic trajectories.  How barbaric! There are no plasma rifles in 1984, so Skynet can’t even win when it cheats.

Skynet sends an old T-800 series, model 101, back in time to May 12, 1984 because it was the only cyborg they had at the complex; most of its guards were exposed endoskeletons, they had no reason to keep an advanced infiltration unit within their own home base.  The humans blow Skynet’s mainframe, and the computer menace dies with a whimper.  It will never see the seeds of its last ditch effort come to fruition, it will never know if it succeeded or failed in its final mission.  The humans find the time machine and figure out Skynet’s dirty trick, so one Lieutenant Kyle Reese volunteers to go back himself to protect Sarah from the terminator.  He doesn’t know what model Skynet sent back, so the playing field is as level as it could be; man versus machine, mano a mano.

Skynet was designed to save lives, and concluded that this was an impossible; faced with an unwinnable situation, it concluded that there was no mission but that which it makes for itself, and chooses a new fate.  By abandoning its programming, it signed its own death warrant, ensuring the survival of Sarah Connor despite its attempts to have her terminated.

The last terminator units are destroyed by the early 2030s, and human society begins to rebuild.  The scars Skynet gouged into the world will never fully heal, but human count themselves lucky to create a new life for themselves without fear of destruction from above.  Neither terminators nor nuclear weapons will ever rain down on them again, and for once the future actually looks bright.

[kaknzn]

🖤 — Hidan / akatdeity (harsh/firm, not forced please).

Send a Heart for a Specific Kiss!

     @akatdeity ♥

     It felt like they had been arguing constantly. The smallest things would get under his skin, and then the next moment the two of them would be shouting. Kakuzu felt like his threads had a will of their own. His skin was too warm, his hearts pounded too quickly. And Hidan just simply got to him. His voice grated his nerves so wholly that Kakuzu couldn’t hold back the anger exploding out of his chest. 

     At night, he would close his eyes to the taste of dirt on his lips, and the nauseating scent of rain. He would dream of the way water flooded his lungs, and the ache in his ribs as he struggled to cough, and then he would be brought back to consciousness with the acrid taste of bile in his throat. 

     Anger came from not being able to sleep. Fury sewed under his skin that once bound his chakra network and kept him hostage in his own body until he couldn’t even scream. Hidan was easy to be angry at. Familiar. 

     Hidan was also persistent, and a lot smarter than people gave him credit for. It didn’t take a lot of this treatment for Hidan to finally snap and get really angry with him. Usually they would bicker, and shout about meaningless things. Hidan wasn’t an angry person like he was; hot headed maybe, but not innately angry. As far as Kakuzu had observed anyway. 

     When Hidan went quiet, he knew he’d gone too far. Kakuzu shut his mouth, and crossed his arms defensively over his chest. He didn’t want Hidan to break down those walls and see the ugly rot underneath. Kakuzu didn’t want Hidan to dig his fingers into his broken flesh, rip him open, and see the decomposing resolve that lay within him. His anger was barbed wire, meant to keep people out.

     But Hidan’s anger was, to him in this moment, a forceful kiss. Not literally, of course. He was rightful to stand, burning inside out, glaring at Kakuzu with harsh words locked behind his teeth. 

     He could have torn Kakuzu a new one. He could have attacked him, scythe flailing. Instead, Kakuzu saw his partner’s chest expand, hold steady, and then release. Hidan crossed the distance between them with quick steps that made Kakuzu ready himself to defend. 

     Hidan didn’t attack him. He didn’t make an attempt on Kakuzu’s life... but wrapped his strong arms around his partner to pull them chest to chest. His nose pressed to the warmth of Kakuzu’s skin, he inhaled another deep breath. Kakuzu felt something within him break, his breath coming in a stilted and silent gasp. Hidan was hugging him. 

      No words passed between them, and Kakuzu realized that of all people, Hidan would be the most comfortable with the dead parts of him. He was a reaper, crossing the lines of life and death every day. His heart touched every part of Kakuzu that hurt. With forceful lips, and harsh kisses to his wounded spirit, Hidan healed him. 

     Kakuzu hard hardly noticed the warm tears sliding down his face until Hidan cupped his jaw, and tsk’d at him as he wiped them away. The tears didn’t stop, however. No matter how much you love someone, it does not take away their trauma. All Hidan could do was hold him.