#absolutely obsessed with this realization. i wish i had considered the depth of his abilities sooner

[majorplayer]

my favorite thing about the duck shuffler plush trailer is the implication that all the next-level reality-bending associated with the high roller comes from buck. it's not special, and it's not something unique to the high roller; buck can just Do That. he can restore color to a monochrome world at the clench of his fist, nbd. the high roller's ability to levitate and be literally invincible, normal tuesday for buck. being that he seems to have some kind of direct control over light (the restoring color part of the trailer), he can probably do the silhouettes thing like it's a lame party trick, and he simply never gets a lucky enough thpin to make it happen in a fight against toons on the streets of TTC. it makes total sense now that i think about it considering how Wager Management is itself straight up reality-bending in a different way from the other managers' (since many of their cheats bend reality in some way). altering toons' dna instantaneously to literally species-swap them into ducks, summoning giant bars, etc. just imagine him accidentally using Wager Management as his lever gets caught on a doorframe (equivalent to stubbing your pinky toe), and before the outcome settles, he's gotta prepare for either summoning jellybeans all over his office or, idk, fusing with the nearest cog and literally, irreversibly breaking the fabric of the spacetime continuum. casually. in a casual way. like, he does it all the time, by accident. insane.

[inhonoredglory]

another character based question - how do you feel about mikasa? a lot of fans dont like her, im curious about how you feel! - armin anon

Hellooooo Armin Anon. OMG it’s been forever since I had the time to sit down and do a proper meta, and I apologize.

First off, I finished the manga!!! (So, spoilers ahead for anyone else reading this.) I had to lie down after reading 139. It’s a tremendous story and I’m still taking it all in. The set pieces and personal/emotional stakes of everything that happens is just astounding. If it’s one thing Isayama does good, it’s the gut-wrenching personal anguish that underlies the action. I’m absolutely floored. My favorite bit was probably the timey-wimey stuff in Paths and Eren. That blew my freaking mind. But onto Mikasa!!

A Cruel Yet Beautiful World

I remember way back when I started the anime that I started liking Mikasa first out of the group. I liked how sullenly silent and no-nonsense she was, and I liked her loyalty to Eren. Her emotion, especially when Eren died in Trost, was palpable and terrifyingly beautiful. Her grief was incredibly realistic––rushing off with a death wish that even she couldn’t succumb to in the end, because of the drive to fight that she got from Eren. In a world like SNK, her relentlessness breaking through her grief was incredibly moving. And her philosophy is basically the driving theme of SNK: “This is a cruel world, and yet so beautiful.”

This is the same moral message she gives Eren when he can’t find the strength in him to fight Annie––and gives him that warm, understanding, inscrutable smile that allows him to finally accept his own monsters, fight Annie, and save her and Armin. (One of my favorite panels of her from the manga, actually.) Mikasa is basically the first character we meet who embodies this contradictory morality, which grows to engulf SNK and other characters as well (Levi, Reiner, and Armin especially come to mind). Which could be why I was drawn to her at the start, since the complex moral outlook of SNK was the primary reason I fell hard for this story.

(And gosh, it’s tragic to realize that it’s teaching moments like the scene above that made Eren into the person who could influence his own child self to murder, the person who could wipe out so much of humanity, the person who could take Ymir’s challenge to free her by destroying the love of the person who cared the most about him. I’m still processing yo.)

Acker-parallels

I started really analyzing Mikasa when I had to defend her from a friend of mine who accused her of resenting Levi (for beating up Eren) and that’s why she attacked him so violently in the RTS serumbowl. Because of my research into rebutting that, a lot of my affection for Mikasa now comes in seeing the little ways in which she cares and trusts other people, including Armin, Levi, Gabi, and Jean. And her quiet sensibility that goes beyond her love and protectiveness of Eren.

With Levi in particular, I find a lot I like about her. Because you can definitely see her annoyance at him, but she also trusts him more than anyone else in the Corps outside of Armin. After Levi’s violent encounter with Historia, she was the only one who implicitly trusted Levi’s judgement, backing up Armin’s more reasoned logic. She sees beyond her own emotions and even moral feelings and realizes the world is cruel enough that sometimes people have to do dark things to help others and survive.

This is very much the same statement Levi made to the 104th when he had asked them to follow Erwin’s orders when the commander’s plans were questionable on the surface: “Do you trust him? Those dumb enough to say yes… come with me.” These two understand each other on a moral level, and they ask for their comrades’ loyalty without demanding it, because they each know that everyone’s conscience is their own.

There’s a clear parallel between Mikasa and Levi, not only because of their Ackerman heritage and sensibilities (loyal to a fault to their chosen person, impossibly strong, quiet and grim), but their frustration when they cannot protect the people they are responsible for. They both know they are the strongest around, and if they cannot fulfill on that power, a lot of people will die.

There are many moments in which Mikasa puts aside her personal feelings to do her soldierly duty, from leaving Eren to help with the evacuation of Trost to leaving Eren and Armin to fight the Colossal Titan alone in Shigonshina.

And then there’s the fact that Levi’s the one who could break past Mikasa’s headspace and distraction so that she can do the right thing. He understands her strong emotion, he respects it, but he also knows when that has to be put aside for the greater good. But he doesn’t put her down for having those emotions, either.

Strength from Eren, Humanity from Armin

Mikasa’s love and loyalty to Eren challenges her tremendously after the timeskip and her sorrow at Eren’s change is what really stands out to me about her character in the Marley arc. The absolute grief in her eyes when she tells Eren what he’s done is devastating, and it shows just how much goodness and compassion she does have.

And yet she longs to understand Eren, to trust him, to believe there can be something redeeming, and not merely jaded and tired, in what he taught her so many years ago––to fight, to win, to live.

There’s such a difference between these same words said here by Mikasa, so many years later, after so much heartbreak, to the anger and flame that were in them when she first heard them, back when she realized that this was the way of the world. That death and killing happens in the natural world everyday and that’s how you survive. That the world is both cruel and beautiful.

And yet as the years wore on, as Mikasa grew closer to others, found purpose in protecting others, sought a life with Eren… as she wandered further into the forest of life and society and relationships, she lost some of that simple injunction... to live is to fight, to fight is to win. She, like so many of the 104th and the others on this journey, found that it’s not enough to just fight and live and be satisfied. We really want it all to mean something, to have our actions be redemptive. To allow ourselves to believe that we do what we’re doing because we’re not just saving ourselves, but saving others, “saving the world” like Yelena points out (in the forest therapy session pfff). And it’s that drive for something bigger in our actions that grieves her so much with Eren, because as she wants her own actions to be fundamentally good and selfless, she wants his actions to be moral as well.

So while Eren is the person that frustrates Mikasa and motivates her to become stronger and braver than she ever was, Armin is the person who humanizes Mikasa and allows her the space to be gentle and vulnerable. She comforts Armin, confides in him, puts her faith in him, and puts her life in his hands.

She trusts Armin with Eren, and she values Armin’s intellect and compassion, qualities she doesn’t have in nearly as much quantities as he does: “There are only so many lives I can value. And… I decided who those people were six years ago. So... you shouldn’t try to ask for my pity. Because right now, I don’t have time to spare or room in my heart.”

This bit from her confrontation with Ymir and Historia was a defining moment for me with Mikasa. It’s honest and realistic in a way that few of us care to admit about ourselves, and it’s just super chilling and badass coming from her, too. It also shows how much she fights for Armin and Eren both. They are the two people she loves the most in the world, and she never gave up on saving either of them––from death or from themselves.

I’m looking back on Trost now and finding so much irony with the ending to SNK. In Trost, she was the one to give up on Eren, telling Armin that it was hopeless to try to extract Eren’s personality from his Titan form. And yet, like in the end, it’s always been between Armin and Mikasa to try to salvage Eren’s humanity. In Trost, Armin tells Mikasa to leave––to go do what she’s good at (saving lives)––and to entrust Eren to him.

It’s a huge expression of both Mikasa’s trust in Armin, and her belief in Armin’s abilities and friendship for Eren. And in the end, it’s the two of them again debating on if there’s any humanity left in Eren. The bond they share is intimate and deep. With all the military doubting Eren and scheming to take away his Titan (with even Jean and Connie unavailable to them emotionally), it’s only Armin and Mikasa against the world––the only two people who can truly consider Eren’s actions and hold off on judging him. And you can feel their love for him even as they doubt him.

And like back then, it has always been Armin who understands Eren most, the one who recognizes his own evil and Eren’s and finds a redemption in having others stop you, because you cannot stop yourself.

And that’s the thing I really take away from SNK and from Mikasa’s journey, that we all have devils inside us, and yet there is still beauty to be found, within us and in the world––from the natural wonders that Armin dreams of, to the comfort of purpose and companionship that Mikasa has in Eren. Love and wonder is what redeems us of our devils. And yet love itself is complicated, and can turn ugly in its obsession. That giving up that love is what makes the love selfless and beautiful, what absolves us of the selfishness within us. That’s what Mikasa learned. And in the end, she was able to release that love for the good of the world.

So I guess to sum up, I really love Mikasa. I can see why her dogged loyalty to Eren might annoy some fans, but I think there’s a lot more to her than simply that, and in fact, her journey and growth is heart-rending and one of the most symbolic arcs of SNK and fundamental to its entire theme. She’s a badass with a lot of emotion and depth behind her cold mask.

[otonymous]

It’s The End Of The World (MLQC Headcanon)

Dear Nonny...

I say that now, Nonny, but the truth is that the ONLY thing I love more than smut is angst! Mwahahaha! 🤣🤣 That being said, let’s take a one-way trip to Angst Town!  Everybody got their seatbelts on?!  LET’S GO!!! (Please note warnings below before reading 💕💕💕)

Warnings: angst, explicit language, trigger warnings (mentions of speeding, near-death experiences and flashbacks, nausea & vomiting, insomnia, slight mention of possessive behaviour, workaholism, loss of appetite and weight loss, anger and violent behaviour (not towards other people though!)) and SPOILERS (basically up to chapter 24 in the EN server; includes dates and Rumours & Secrets for the boys) 

Gavin:

DEVASTATED.  This man is absolutely devastated.

Gavin has known you since high school and loved you since then

You were his dream girl — the one he thought had got away until his duties brought you back into his life.  He had vowed to protect you till the very end, had absolutely no qualms about giving his life for yours.  He made a solemn promise to himself that he would never lose you a second time

Until that fateful day when you invited him out for lunch at Lynn’s Kitchen on the grounds of your old high school

You order his favourites, spicy noodles and lemon tea; wait until his stomach is full before you open your mouth to gently broach the topic

“Gavin…I…”

A single glance at your face tells Gavin that something is terribly off.  He’s immediately setting his chopsticks down, asking, “What’s wrong?  You know you can talk to me about anything.  Whatever it is, I’ll help you—”

“Shaw.  We…we’ve decided to be together.  I know you’re not on good terms, and he did insist on coming today, but I thought it would be best if I told you myself…”

He cannot hear  

He cannot move  

And it isn’t until the burning sensation in his lungs catches up with him that he realizes he hadn’t even been breathing

Amber eyes, listless and dull, float from your lips to the wall decorated with Post-It notes just behind you, moving from one colourful slip of paper to another

“I hate it when people leave without saying goodbye.”

Gavin still remembers the loops and dashes of your handwriting on the Post-It note you had written so long ago, the way you dotted your i’s with hearts

And all of a sudden, he is back in his high school uniform, bloodied and bruised and free falling from the roof of the four-storey building

Except this time, he cannot hear the strains of a piano, no matter how hard he tries.  The gingko leaves around him flutter to the ground just before…

“Gavin?”  The touch of your hand on his snaps him out of his reverie.  He tries to force a smile and fails.

“I…I’m sorry.  There’s somewhere…I just remembered…I have to go….”  He hurriedly puts a few bills on the table — more than enough to cover the entire meal — and dashes out of the restaurant

Gavin hops on Sparky and just goes…riding for hours on end with no destination in mind.  He’s taken with an intense urge to go fast, as if his body were trying to outrun the feelings he doesn’t have the means of dealing with.  At one point, an overwhelming wave of nausea hits him and he stops at the side of the road, retching and retching until his stomach is as empty as his hollowed-out heart

He’s still thinking of you the entire time he’s MIA.  The last text from his phone is one sent to you, telling you not to worry about him and apologizing for the way he behaved back at the restaurant.  He’s asking if you’d still be okay with talking to him when he gets back, and of course, to contact him immediately if you need anything at all

He still feels you in the wind

Believe it or not, for a short period of time, Gavin actually develops a fear of flying: it reminds him too much of you, brings up too many memories of him holding you in his arms as you traverse the skies together.  He’s not confident he can do it anymore, partly because he thinks his Evol might suddenly give out when he’s high up in the air

The turning point comes when Gavin visits his mother’s resting place.  There, for the first time since you broke the news to him, he actually cries, and it gives him the strength to carry on

Let’s be clear: Gavin will never, ever be over you.  The two of you will remain friends though because Gavin intends to watch over you for the rest of his life (that is one promise he would never break)

With time, he gets used to seeing you with Shaw, even starts to relax a bit when he realizes that his younger brother is capable of protecting you

Someday, Gavin will marry — likely someone who was set up with him either by Minor or his colleagues (Birdcop would never take the initiative to actually meet somebody).  This person is absolutely smitten with the handsome officer and his gruff ways and cannot wait to start a family with him.  They would also have to be thick-skinned and stubborn enough to turn Gavin’s “no” into an eventual “yes”

And while Gavin would prove to be a loyal husband and doting father who would do anything for his family, a part of him would always, always, continue to burn for you.

Lucien:

How do you expect this man to behave when he’s lost the only colour in his life?

Lucien would never, ever recover from this.  He doesn’t want to.  The man for whom love was never meant to happen has no need for such an emotion.  He wants nothing to do with it unless it has to do with you

The professor’s world literally returns to being a drab shadow of blacks and greys — the rainbow disappeared when his little butterfly flew into the palm of another’s hand

“Do you love him?” He’ll ask you, dark eyes almost hypnotic in their intensity when he pierces you with that gaze

You’re ashamed to find that you have to think twice before replying that you do indeed love Victor

Ba-bump, ba-bump, BA-BUMP — Lucien breaks out into a cold sweat as his heart begins to race, face becoming pale as a sheet

His shaking hands are pulled into tight fists within the pockets of his lab coat.  He’s running his finger over the cap of his pill bottle inside one of them, not wanting to take them in front of you because in spite of it all, the last thing he wants is for you to worry about him 😭😭😭

Lucien nods, placid smile a mask on his face when he says,  “I wish the two of you nothing but the best.”

“Lucien!”  You start after him when he turns to walk away.  “We…we’re still friends, right?”

For what is possibly the first time in his entire life, Lucien can’t think straight.  His mind is a mess, logical thoughts tangled up with sorrow, hurt, anger, and the sense that the world could end at that very moment and he wouldn’t even bat an eye.

He takes a deep breath, composing himself before he turns to face you again: “Of course.  You can always come to me if you ever need anything.”  It takes everything in him not to fall apart when he lays a hand on the crown of your head, savouring the heat of your body for the very last time

In the days immediately afterwards, the people around Lucien better watch out as his ability to keep cool, calm and collected is challenged: he’s giving the side-eye to his colleagues at the research institute more often then usual, and Black Swan members literally want to run the other way when they see him coming.  If they thought Ares was ruthless before then they’d better watch out now…

As if it were even humanly possible, the professor sleeps even less now: if he’s not in the lab, he’s literally wiling away the hours watching old Hollywood films

Sometimes, he’ll place his hand on the handle to the door of your apartment, closing his eyes and doing his best to pretend that he can still feel your palm in his (he knows you’re not home.  You so rarely are these days…)

Unbeknownst to you, Lucien spends his weekends revisiting the places you used to go together: sitting on the same bench at the aquarium where you kissed him without a second thought, wandering to the theme park you ran away to as a child just to watch the carousel spin round and round, trying his best to keep a smile on his face when the kids at the orphanage ask him where his “pretty lady friend” is

Lucien actually has a kite that he bought ages ago, intent on fulfilling his promise to one day fly it with you.  It sits in his apartment still.  He can’t bring himself to dispose of it.

Gives you his pen, Iridescent, as part of his wedding gift to you.  “May it always bring you luck, wherever you are and…whomever you’re with.”

Regardless of where he is, Lucien will always be keeping tabs on you.  If Victor ever trips up, you can bet that Lucien will be there to swoop in and take his place

The professor will never love another person for as long as he lives.  That’s all there is to it.

Victor:

Throws himself into his work when you break the news to him that you’ve accepted Lucien’s proposal

“If that dummy can’t see that I’m the most suitable choice for her, then let her suffer the consequences of her foolishness.” — Victor will tell himself that, but don’t believe it for even a second

Victor has always been obsessed with working, but this is on an entirely new level, even for him: the man’s been missing meals (or taking them at his desk, at most) and doesn’t leave his office until close to midnight, most days of the week

Like a watch whose gears are irreparably damaged, the LFG CEO is broken on the inside.  He has to focus on work because he knows that if he stops long enough to fully consider the consequences of having lost you, he would never climb out of the depths of his despair

Even his dad and aunt become concerned, especially when they notice that he’s lost weight: “Victor, you have employees for a reason.  Delegation is not a weakness.”

His mind often drifts to you, especially when he’s driving.  There are many times when he finds himself absentmindedly heading in the direction of your office after work before he catches himself (the man is so used to picking you up that it’s become like muscle memory, in a sense)

Weekends will find him holed up in his attic space, fingers tracing over the uneven surface of the cup you had accidentally dropped and shattered, the pieces of which he had spent an entire night glueing back together

He shuts down Souvenir for a while: Victor cannot bring himself to step foot in the kitchen because he can’t help but see your face, smiling in rapturous joy to indulge in the caramel pudding he made especially for you

He spends his nights lying wide awake in a bed that suddenly seems much too big, wondering if you would’ve chosen differently if he took the time to tell you all the things he always thought were obvious: that he respected your fighting spirit, admired the brazen way you never gave up on the things you believed in, loved every single thing about you, even the things he seemed to disapprove of

His biggest regret: that he never had the chance to tell you that you were the love of his life

He often fantasizes about what it would’ve been like to stop time before you informed him you were choosing Lucien, to exist forever with you in a single moment when you made him the happiest man alive just by sharing your time with him

He still checks your Moments account religiously, murmuring “Dummy” with the faintest hint of a smile on his face to see your ridiculous posts, but he can never bring himself to reply.  Victor’s pride won’t let him.  He would rather die than let you know that each moment spent without you makes him feel like he is suffocating

Eventually, his worried family — especially his aunt — decides that enough is enough.  They force Victor to take a vacation while trying to discreetly set him up with daughters of other wealthy and prominent families

Victor is beyond annoyed at having his personal affairs meddled with like this, but is essentially strong-armed by his aunt, who turns on the waterworks and starts sobbing about wanting to see the progeny of her dearest nephew before she passes on or withers away from want of new blood in the Li family

Victor will eventually have to marry and have kids — he needs to have someone to pass LFG on to.  It will be a long while before he does settle down though; at one point, it’ll seem like he’s content to be a bachelor for life, married to his work

He will show up for your wedding though, and you can bet the most generous gift will be from the LFG CEO

“Try not to be such a dummy from now on.  I won’t be there to set you straight and your husband may not be as patient of a man as I am.”  Those jet black eyes are wavering with emotion when he reaches out to lay a hand on your head.  But he halts midway, awkwardly pulling back because he’s realized that he doesn’t have the right to touch another man’s wife so casually 😭😭😭

Kiro:

“Ahahaha!  All right, all right…you’ve got me.  You can stop playing around now, Miss Chips,” Kiro will say, hands held up in defeat when you tell him that you’ve accepted Gavin’s proposal

When he realizes you’re being serious, it’s like all the warmth and light has suddenly been sucked from the room

Those blue eyes go wide, the smile dropping from the superstar’s face.  For what seems like an interminable amount of time, Kiro just sits there staring at you, almost catatonic

When he speaks again, you’re so surprised you almost jump out of your skin: “Gavin…he’s that cop, right?  The friend you’ve known since high school?”

You nod and all of a sudden, it’s like the floodgates have been opened: Kiro’s grasping your hands in his, expression panic-stricken as his questions come a mile a minute:

“Was it something I did, Miss Chips?  I swear I’ll change!  I…I won’t eat junk food anymore!  Won’t even look at that stuff!  If you don’t like your nickname, I’ll call you by your real name, anything you want!  Or maybe it’s because my schedule is always so crazy?  I’ll cut back on my jobs, I don’t care about the money!  If you’re tired of running from the paparazzi, I’ll quit.  Just quit, stop everything — I don’t care, ok?  The only thing I care about is you!  Miss Chips?  Please don’t cry…I’m your hero, remember?  So please…please…”

A single tear rolls down his cheek — you have to look away or else your resolve would crumble

“I’m so sorry, Kiro.  I…I wanted you to be the first to know.  I wanted you to hear it from me…”

It’s like all the life has been drained from him; it actually frightens you to see him like that

“Kiro?"  You hesitantly lay a hand on his.  It’s almost cool to the touch.  Kiro gives his head a little shake, seeming to come back to himself

“I’m…I’m so sorry, Miss Chips.  I don’t know what came over me.  I didn’t mean to get hysterical.  God, what an awful way to react….”  He forces a laugh, but it is wooden and so goddamn heartbreaking to hear.  You almost wish he would scream obscenities at you instead

“He, Gavin…he’s a good man.  He’ll be good for you.  I’m happy that you’re happy, Miss Chips.”

The next day, Kiro drops off the face of the Earth: he’s MIA, no one can reach him

Everyone is panicking: his agent, Savin, and management, his legions of adoring fans all over the world, and most of all, you

That is, until he sends two text messages, one to Savin and the other to you, telling you all that he’s safe and not to worry; he’s just taking some time to work some things out for himself

In actuality, the only thing that’s happening is that Kiro is reverting back to who he originally was before you came into his life

His sun has been eclipsed by crushing sorrow and loss, the brilliance of your light and warmth forever taken from him and he is left in the cold shadow of solitary darkness

Kiro wants to be happy for you, and he hates that he can’t — this dissonance so disconcerts him that he’d rather not feel anything at all

When the superstar does eventually return to the world at large, there’s something about him that’s changed — Savin and the rest will be largely fooled by that ever-cheerful mask he puts on, but you won’t

Those blue eyes seem just a bit darker, the radiance of his being almost imperceptibly dimmed

Poor Kiro, loved the world over, would never love another person for the rest of his life.  It would always be you or nothing.

Shaw:

Hurt.  Angry.  Confused.

Shaw is angry with himself for ever believing that you and him had a future together; he hates that he saw the signs that you would always, always, always choose Gavin in the end and still continued to lie to himself in spite of it

He hates that he let himself become vulnerable by falling in love with you (Shaw sees vulnerability as the biggest weakness one could have, that’s why he’s always kept himself emotionally guarded in his dealings with people)

But for whatever reason, when it came to you, he just couldn’t help but fall (“Guess brothers are hard-wired in the same way after all, no matter how different we think we are,” he’ll say with a bitter laugh)

A lengthy and most unusual storm will hit Loveland City; expect an extended light show with lots of thunder and lightning

The boy is trashing his place, throwing whatever he can get his hands on: cans of Coke and Pepsi, dishes, clothing and books

He breaks the deck of his skateboard when he smashes it against the wall, bringing down a good chunk of plaster along with it

You won’t be there to witness the destruction.  Shaw will continue to front like nothing could ever faze him when you tell him that you’ve chosen to be with Gavin.  He’ll chuckle, brows raised as he bites on the tip of his straw, saying, “Whatever.  It’s your life.  Do what you want with it.”

Then suddenly, he’s standing up to leave, hand half-raised in goodbye as he makes for the exit without so much as a glance back at you.  

“Take my umbrella.  And don’t worry about returning it.”  

Those are his last words to you.  Not long after, you spy the handle of the black umbrella sitting in the stand near the front of the café (the only one there, since it had been bright and sunny out).  And suddenly, the clouds are rolling in to blanket Loveland City in grey, sheets of rain pouring from a sky cracked in half by a fearsome bolt of lightning

Shaw walks, letting cold rain soak him to the bones to take his mind off the ice that’s already started to freeze the blood in his heart

“Don’t cry…don’t let them f*cking see you cry…" he's saying to himself, over and over again like a mantra

Starts hanging out at the Live House more than ever, losing himself in the music and packed crowds there; he can’t stand to be alone right now.

When he’s not playing bass guitar as a last minute backup for the bands, he’s literally working on his thesis at the bar, sipping on his Coke and Pepsi blend (the staff know him so well that they’re pretty much cool with him doing anything at this point LOL)

STILL blows off every person who comes to proposition him for a good time

I’m sorry, but you know it’s pretty much gonna rain on your wedding day, right?  (The poor boy can’t help it, okay?  He is SAD, SAD, SAD!)

Much like his brother, Shaw will never really get over you.  You were, after all, the first person he ever truly loved

Would likely remain an eternal bachelor, only engaging in meaningless sex but never opening his heart to anyone ever again.  One lesson was enough for him. 😭😭😭

💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔

Thank you so much for reading!  Check out more of my work here! 📚

[meta-squash]

I did a long thread on twitter analyzing/interpreting You’re My Waterloo for the fun of it, but it was mostly for the amusement/interest of myself and like one other friend on there that likes The Libertines. So I figured I’d transcribe it over here where people might get more out of it? Since it was a twitter thread, the sentences might be a bit weird and stilted, by the way. So:

I'm glad they waited to record Waterloo until 2015. I feel like any other time would have been wrong. I know Peter was playing the slow version back in at least 2007 but I think it would have been sad in a different way if they had recorded it before 2015. Like, in 2015 it's just a straight up love song that's slightly sad because, well, it's Peter. If they had recorded it before I feel like it'd have been a love song with resentment wound through it.  There's just a lot of emotion in that song and if there's one thing Peter is really really good at doing, it's Emoting Intensely. But it's not just Peter, the piano is so beautiful and the strings are beautiful and Carl's guitar solo is Intense. It's all A Lot. Like, of all the songs that Peter has written about Carl, about their relationship and career and experiences together, THIS is the one where you can feel most strongly the near-obsessive type adoration. So I’m glad they waited to record it properly when they were friends again (also I’m mildly surprised that it was Carl’s suggestion to rerecord it). Anyway.

Fuck the first verse of this song is a lot. This whole song is a lot. I mean it starts off with such a sad sentiment, it's almost a warning? "You'll never fumigate the demons / No matter how much you smoke." You can't smoke away sadness no matter how much you want to. Bitterly ironic, considering the sorts of things Peter ended up smoking etc to chase away demons, the types of extremes they both went to above and beyond just trying to fumigate. But anyway. "Just say you love me for three good reasons / And I'll throw you the rope." It's just so fucking codependent. So intensely obsessive and codependent. There was a quote, I think maybe from Roger Sargent?, about Peter crying outside a venue in like 2002 because even then he was scared about losing his friendship with Carl to the Something Bigger of fame. This feels like a desperate bid to hang on to that love. But also like Peter is so intense. Every video of interviews where he's sitting next to Carl or gigs when they're friends or reunions or whatever, he just wants to be in Carl's space and have Carl's gaze and his attention and stuff. Like a cat that sits on your work.

Again, a digression. Oops. I said I was in a mood. It's so interesting that while it's definitely a love song To Carl, the only direct mention of Love is asking for love From Carl. It's like he's working on the assumption that his feelings are obvious (they are) and desperately wants reassurance or reciprocation.

"You don't need it / Because you are the survivor / Of more than one life" We know the origin of this is apparently Carl's dead twin brother. But also the offering of a rope only to reassure that no, you don't need it is just so...I don't know...sweet? Especially because while "throw you the rope" is obviously a symbol of rescue it could just as easily be a noose. Except that it's neither. Because he doesn't need it. Because he can survive fucking anything, because they love each other--he hopes. It’s like, if you love me as much as I love you, I’ll try to help you, even though I know you don’t need me because you just need to realize you can do it on your own. "And you're the only lover I had / Who ever slept with a knife" The interview where they talk about this line is so funny. "No it's not about us. But Carl did sleep with a knife and the line about being a survivor is about Carl having a dead twin and Peter saying he was the twin reincarnated. But it’s totally not about us." Anyway. Ugh just so much of this song seems to be about Peter being Super Obvious and open about his love for Carl and Carl being more closed off. Carl being the only lover who slept with a knife; he'll accept the love but he's wary of it and wary giving it.

(By the way by love I don't necessarily mean Romantic or Sexual love. They clearly adore each other one way or another, that's obvious enough. But Best Friendship love is 100% a thing.) (However, the Judy Garland line is so funny to me because "Friend of Dorothy" was a secret code for gay men for a while. And considering the amount of queer literature etc Peter references in everything, there's no way he didn't know this.)

I can't really go in depth into the Tony Hancock line since I really don't know much about Hancock and I know that it was a real touchstone for Peter and Carl. But it plus the Judy Garland line feels like a "neither of us have ever really had a home, but we found one in each other" thing. Which is. A lot. Especially with the "until the dawn" bit, because a main component of so many stories about them from other people is the two of them staying up for days together writing and adventuring and just doing stuff and no one else being able to get in their little bubble.

I love the "ahh" after "Stone the crows" and the way the music starts to swell. It's obvious that the next verse is the Important One. And it is. There's the story about Peter crashing an event at the Old Vic while Carl was ushering to tell him they should be writing together and everyone who's there are dicks. But it's also like...so many layers of what is success and what is appreciation and how do you express love. I assume the flowers are not from his show, that he's collected them from the stage after someone else's show. But it's reusing tokens of mostly empty/superficial/performative appreciation--the tradition of tossing flowers on the stage--as a token of genuine love. Sitting through an entire performance, watching someone else's success and dreaming of being there and then using the token of appreciation for that person to instead give it to the person you yourself appreciate and love and want to succeed with. It's like a promise, a "we'll get there." But also another act of desperation because he's been sitting there for hours. Carl wasn't there to receive the gift and wasn't there to write with him. But he's been chasing words around on the page--the love-words to this song or the words to another one?--and he needs Carl there to really complete it, needs Carl there to hear it. It's very much in line with Peter yelling that they should be writing. This intense "Please be with me please accept the way I express myself please complete my incomplete bits please like me as much as I like you" etc.

And then the chorus which is so interesting. I desperately wish I understood the Gypsy Lane and Stanley Park references. I think Stanley Park is a footie reference but I’m not sure? I'm trying to do all of the interpretation off my own brain and not use the notes on the Genius website or anywhere else but I wanted to see if those two references here had been crowdsourced. Apparently both Gypsy Lane and Stanley Park are places he spent time in his childhood (and I called it on the football reference, yes!). Which is. Wow. Okay. And then there's Waterloo which is a whole thing in itself. It's Waterloo as Waterloo but also Waterloo Station. So Carl is able to be Peter's Ultimate Defeat, the thing that has the ability to ruin him. But also Waterloo Station is near the Old Vic where Carl worked & would go to theatre bars, so it's also a place of familiarity. Since I don't know anything else about the Gypsy Lane reference, I can only assume it's also a place of comfort and familiarity. So Peter's admitting to Carl's power over him, ability to hurt him, but offering to comfort him in return. (Important for later.)

"I'm so glad we know just what to do / And exactly who's to blame" I love this line because it knows it's wrong. Especially in 2015 but maybe even in the early days. They bounced blame back and forth between them for YEARS. Not to mention all the outside bullshit. And obviously they didn't know what to do. The Waterloo/Stanley Park is another reference to a familiar place and a power to hurt/offer to comfort moment. I wish I knew if there was some sort of proper football reference here (aka a QPR reference since that's Peter's team) but I know absolutely nothing about sport so idk.

"Well I'm so glad we know just what to do / And no one's left / Stumbling around / Tumbling around / Fumbling around / In the dark" The way Peter sings this sounds so hopeful and sad at the same time. It's interesting to know this line was written way, way back. Like, this song was apparently one of the first ever songs they demoed. The demo is a lot more frantic and less romantic but jesus christ. The way Peter sings it now it's like he knows that was just an unconscious self-fulfilling prophecy. Like, no, they absolutely were left in the dark, hurting each other over and over and not being able/willing to place blame or to communicate. Except now, in 2015, they're not anymore. (and especially not now in 2021). But it's also another desire for comfort. Like, Peter's offering the comfort here. But he's also just confessed the power to hurt that Carl has. So this is also a "are you going to offer me comfort the way I've offered it to you?" sort of question. 

And then there's the solo which. Woof. It feels like a response to Peter's words. Like reaching out with sound. Like a shoulder-squeeze or a hug in response, something nonverbal that’s really trying to catch up and match up to the intense emotions in the words. The music crescendos and the solo is literally waves of notes that roll up and down and up and then it crashes down but lands so softly at the feet of the chorus.

And then we have equal footing, sort of (and Carl as Jesus again). Carl is still Peter's Waterloo, his ultimate defeat (or his place of comfort). But now Peter is Carl's Calvary. Which is the place where Jesus was crucified. Peter’s been offering comfort to Carl, but suddenly Peter has power over Carl. It's like...veneration and threat at once. Carl's Jesus, the savior, but also if he doesn't love Peter, Peter has the power to crucify him (or at least threatens to have that power). Or it's another portent: Carl could be Peter's savior, except that everything falls apart and Carl ends up hurt instead. They both end up hurt instead. So then they're on equal footing.

Which brings them to the "Well I'm so glad we know just what to do," which feels a little sadder but also a little more confident than the other two. The answer is in the "Everyone's gonna be happy / But of course." They need to work to figure out how to make each other happy, how to be comfort rather than hurt. It's not that simple. It never is. The "But of course" is a sarcy acknowledgement of how difficult that actually is. But it's also that sort of quiet hopefulness that yeah, maybe soon we'll figure it out and everyone will be happy and will get to say "of course I'm happy" about it.

[deadmomjokes]

For me, part of being asexual means that I get really, REALLY grouchy about a lot of romance in media. Rather, the obsession with romance, sex, and sexuality in media. I am that person that will roll my eyes and turn off a movie if it looks like it’s turning into some steamy nonsense, and I will never willingly sit through a romcom even if you paid me. Sex scenes? I’m out. Passionate kissing? Peace, I’m going to the kitchen, want anything? Call me back when the actual story gets back on. Ridiculous ‘ooh they have such SEXUAL TENSION and chemistry, let’s see how close we can get to making them kiss and just have them breathe heavily in each others faces to get our audience all bothered’? I will end you all. I HATE when books or movies or shows throw in a romantic or sexy subplot just for the lols, at least what I perceive as the lols. Basically, a romance has to be really super duper well-crafted for me to get behind it and not be just utterly enraged or completely turned off from the story.

(Also please note that when I use the term romance in this context, I’m using it as a catch all for ship-based storylines that, due to our culture’s obsession with sex, usually include or hinge on sex or kissy scenes.)

That being said. When a romance is done well, and I mean really well, I absolutely 100% lose my mind. I feel that mess in my soul.

So with that introduction, allow me to lay out a few of my favorite (and, in some instances, most maddeningly painful) romances/canon ships in media.

(read more because I went off. like I said, I feel this way too deeply when it’s done well.)

Winry Rockbell and Edward Elric in FMA:B. Slow burn, mutual pining, mutual cluelessness, what’s not to love? So soft and tender and funny all at the same time, and the mad respect Ed has for Winry is absolutely delightful. She does her own thing, and he’s totally supportive, just as she is of him. And a happily ever after??? UGH, I can’t, it’s perfect. The most straightforward and least convoluted of my whole list, and it’s comparatively easy to breeze through. FMA:B is great anyhow, so do yourself a favor and go watch it.

Audrey Parker/ Nathan Wuornos in Haven (with major caveats). Caveats first: they went overboard with the sexy stuff in my opinion. It got too smutty for me, but my tolerance for that stuff is super low, and it did still air on TV, so evidently it wasn’t as bad for the target audience as it was for my sex-in-media-repulsed self. I also find the final seasons to get a bit stale and repetitive in terms of them trying to advance the love story narrative (all the plot points for it got addressed in earlier episodes/seasons, so why are we going over it again??). They also have a bit of an issue in some episodes with dragging out conflicts because the characters just won’t talk to each other like adults. But overall, taken as a whole, it hits hard. Again, we have a slow burn, mutual pining dynamic that starts as a genuine platonic friendship, and transforms into a dimension and time defying chosen soulmates love story for the ages. The things they would do to save each other, even if it means they can never be together, just so they have the joy of knowing that their beloved is okay. The tiny ways they take care of each other- Audrey testing Nathan’s coffee to see if it’s too hot, Nathan slowing down so he doesn’t out-pace her, it’s just adorable.

Faramir and Eowyn in The Lord of the Rings BOOKS. This is an interesting one because it happens really quickly and between two minor characters. But Tolkien did this really interesting thing where he established these two characters separately, and then brought them together and played off what we knew about each of them in context of everything else that had happened with the main story, and suddenly it has, as one of my professors would say, “the illusion of depth.” Faramir absolutely falls head over heels for Eowyn but won’t act until she can deal with her own crap and be emotionally available. Eowyn realizes that she was hung up on ideals, illusions, and false dichotomies. Faramir has been through a lot and is looking for peace. Eowyn is looking for who she really is when she realizes she has more than two choices in life. They find healing together, and in the process, find what they were looking for in each other. And all that happens in the space of, like, 4 pages. I LOVE IT.

Sam Carter and Jack O’Neill in Stargate SG1. This one will hurt you to no end. You will hate life. But gosh dang if they aren’t perfect. This is the slowest burn and most mutual pining of all slow burn mutual pining ships to ever grace media. I’m talking 8 seasons of these two sharing feelings but being unable to express it for one reason or another. What are those reasons, you ask? Jack is her superior and respects her too much to put her in that position. No fraternization on the team. Sam has career aspirations, he won’t ruin her life. He’s got his own issues to work through and knows he isn’t emotionally available. Sam is clueless for a while, then when she realizes she has feelings for him but it couldn’t be because of their work dynamic and because he’s still dealing with his own crap, she tries to move on but keeps coming back to the unspoken fact that she still loves him. To the point that she breaks off her own engagement to a great guy because she realizes she was only trying to move on-- and wasn’t successful. They are clearly in deep for each other, and yet they keep making excuses why they can’t say it.

In the whole series, they never officially get together, and I HATE THAT. There are multiple alternate realities and timelines where they are together, and happy, but in the main timeline, they can’t get over themselves, and it hurts so bad because they’re so perfect. Jack knows she’s the smartest person in the room, and he supports her and defends her and listens to and defers to her. He respects her first as an expert, then as a colleague, and then as a woman whom he deeply loves even though he can’t find it in him to love himself. She appreciates his experience and leadership, and trusts him implicitly. She knows she’s got more book smarts, but relies on his judgement and ability to remain calm under pressure. She also knows she can be real with him, and he knows that when she calls him on his BS he better listen. She is his conscience, and he is her backbone. And in between episodes where they’re clearly pining for each other, and even during, they’re really great friends and a great team. I could seriously write an essay on why this ship is both perfect and intensely frustrating, but then again, you could just watch a great and classic series and see what I mean for yourself. (Then you’d also get to meet the perfection that is Teal’c, and watch Daniel Jackson’s transition from Milo Thatch in Space to sassy beefcake demigod who still loves archaeology.)

Beren and Luthien, Tolkien part 2, electric boogaloo. A love so powerful it transcends death, fate, hell and heaven all at once. It’s kind of wild and not what you’d expect if you’ve only read LotR (or only seen the movies), because it’s more a classic fairy tale than anything, but hot dang if it isn’t still one of the most powerful, moving, deeply impactful love stories in all of writing. It’s even a “love at first sight” narrative and I STILL fall hard for it. This story legit moves me to tears every dang time I read it, or even think about it too hard.

It starts as a simple “forbidden love” story, but these two loved each other so much that they defied one of the most powerful kings in all the world at that time (who was also Luthien’s dad, oopsies), defied Satan himself and marched into Hell just for the chance to be together, and then changed the very way the world works forever just so they could stay together and not be parted. Luthien is a total BEAST, while never giving up her gentle, loving, and tender nature. For the love of this man, she defies her father’s wishes and breaks herself out of her own dang tower to go rescue her prince instead of the other way round, she sends Sauron (yeah, he’s here too!) scurrying with his tail between his legs, wrecks his house, and frees all his slaves and prisoners just to try and get to Beren, drags his butt out of heck part 1, then willingly walks into literal, actual Hell with him and proceeds to enchant Satan and all the demons within. Then she gets her bf outta there after he loses his hand, and goes back to face her father unafraid. Basically, Beren undertakes a literally impossible task just for the chance to be with Luthien, but Luthien is the one that makes it happen because she loves him too much to sit around knowing he’s going to die. She’s willing to die with him rather than live without him, but more willing to dare death to come at her and get some because ain’t no way she’s losing him.

Then, at the last, when all should have been their happily ever after, everything goes wrong and she loses her beloved, and instead of mourning forever, she yeets off her mortal coil out of pure “Oh no you didn’t, not after all we went through” just to go stand before the God of Fate and the Dead and plead with him to change the rules of the universe itself just so that she can be with Beren. And he does it, because their love is so strong. Just for them, all of existence is rewritten so that they might never be parted.

And if you don’t think that’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard, consider also: these two crazy kids were so wonderful that the Goodest Boy in all the world, a functionally immortal and super-intelligent dog sent from heaven itself by a literal god, willingly turned on all his masters and spontaneously learned intelligent speech just so he could help them out and be their Good Boy til the bitter end, thus (in Tolkien’s mythos) starting the whole “man’s best friend” thing with dogs. So yeah. And, uh, Tolkien based it on him and his wife, to the point of ripping their first meeting frame-for-frame from real life. It’s too much y’all.

Anyhow, this post is way, way too long, but I was just feeling the need to get that out there. Maybe I’ll have more in the future, but for now, this is what was on my mind. Particularly the last two.

[flyswhumpcenter]

Bad Things Happen Bingo! The event where you send me requests according to this marvelous card! (Red cross is the completed prompt, character headshots are prompts I’ve already filled. Green deltas are for requested prompts, which is none rn, as my inbox is empty.)

Sleep deprivation, written by someone who doesn't like being sleep-deprived.

This was a request I didn't expect to get, considering it's been literal months since I've gotten one (and longer since I've actually delivered on one... Sorry again, Hubert anon). Thanks for it, Nonnie! I hope you like what I'm delivering haha. We're in the last 5th of the card, which is insane considering it took me a year to complete my first. I've recently gone back to it because wowie kazoowie it's fandom frenzy season again and SwSh has hit full-force with "I want to see more whump of these characters and I'm sure as hell gonna provide it". Nonie's alternatives made me wanna write stuff about Milo now, ah.

As to the story itself, I decided to make it kinda angsty because what's the point of writing Bede if it ain't to write angst about this guy being abandoned twice and a half? It's a slight canon divergence on what actually happened, but y'know, fanfiction has this cool thing that is "ignoring canon if it starts being inconvenient to me". Also there's Opal because I love this fairy grandma with an obsession for pink and not wanting to be told she's 88-year-old. Hell yeah.

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Journey Without a Destination

Summary: Keep going, keep going, for there is nothing to see when you are on a journey with no end. Without a point to his life and without a place to stay, Bede journeys day and night, finding some sort of refuge from himself in a forced spell of insomnia.

Fandom: Pokémon Sword & Shield (spoilers for up to the 6th Gym, slight canon divergence)

Wordcount: 1.6K words

Event hosted by @badthingshappenbingo​

AO3 version available here.

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Keep going, keep going, for there’s nothing to see here.

 Pointlessly wandering around the Wild Area, he has nowhere to go and nothing better to do than train and train until something happens or the sweet release of death arrives. There’s nobody for him to get back to, nothing for him to do, and no objective left for him to fulfil. Simply put, he’s stranded, alone with himself, with no Wishing Stars to collect and no Gym Challenge to complete now that he’s been stripped down from his endorsement and thrown away like mere garbage.

Nothing tastes the same, now. There is no pleasure in training when he knows he won’t be able to enter a stadium ever again, no spice to finding new creatures and see if they possibly match his team’s theme. There’s absolutely nothing but bitterness on his mind and salt to be spilled over the wounds he can’t be bothered to patch up, since there’s also no point in railing himself back up again.

And he supposes that’s his fault, in the end.

 It’d be easier to blame Gloria and all of her little friends; but as much as he’d like to believe that, it’s not the case and he knows it. She happened to be there, her and that redhaired pigtail woman that’s apparently making research on… whatever she’s making a research on. Thing is, Gloria wasn’t the one who went to get the Chairman, wasn’t the one who called on him: she was merely standing there, contemplating whatever ugly doodle some kid had left on that crumbling wall. That somehow upsets him even more.

There’s also very much no point to mentally ramble about that now. What’s done is done: he’s been disowned, left to rot, with nowhere to go and nothing to accomplish. He’s, by all means, useless and nothing more than a waste of oxygen and resources; and yet he can’t bring himself to just vanish. It’s like he wants to suffer just because disappearing now would make the people who betrayed him right and his only wish, right now, is to either get back at them or regain their trust. He’s not sure whether or not he’d even get affection back (or if he even got “affection” in the first place back there. Not like he’s had much of a model to base himself off).

 So, he’s been walking around, avoiding human interaction, with his sole source of social anything being his party. At least, as long as they’re his Pokemon, they won’t abandon him, right? Yeah. They’re always going to be together, between a rock and a hard place. Too bad they don’t seem to be able to tell him about their opinion on the matters at hand, because their telepathic abilities haven’t developed enough yet for that as far as he knows. Man, he wishes he’d be able to talk to them and get an answer instead of just throwing move names at them when he has to fight against the wild population and the couple Trainers dumb enough to fight him.

He still wrecks through their teams, but it has none of the flavour it used to have, and it ultimately only buys him some more money to spend on whatever he needs to continue fighting. Fighting for what other than futureless survival, he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t want to know.

 As such he’s been walking for days and days, seeing the same stones and weeds all the time, unaware of how long has actually gone buy. He has no ingredients to make curry for his team or himself, resorting to eating whatever he can manage to get his hands on, never settling camps because staying immobile means possibly dying out without having been able to avenge himself. If he stops, he may never resume his journey without a destination; so he never stops, always tries to keep himself busy, even if it means having as sole distractions his own breathing, the faraway cries from the creatures inhabiting the land and whatever the weather decides to throw at him while his team rests. Can’t fight for your life if you have nobody to fight alongside with.

(Pokemon are the only living beings that haven’t left him anyway).

 He’s tired. His feet hurt as soon as he takes a step forward or backward, tired of being pushed around when they have nowhere to go and nowhere to rest at. His hands hurt from the cold and almost-frostbite he develops when he crosses across the snowy areas, when he has to gather the balls of his fainted partners whenever he gets assaulted by something bigger than any of them are, tired of having to move and hold things when none of them have meaning or weight to bring to the table. His head hurts from the lack of rest and the tears he can’t always keep to himself, upsetting the Pokemon who haven’t fainted just yet.

Yet, even if he piles on fatigue like he’d put on clothes during the harsh winters, he refuses to sleep. It’d be letting his guard down from dangers coming from both the outside and the inside. It’d be being vulnerable during the downtimes in his tent to vandals and thieves, and during his sleep to nightmares about what’s to come and what could have been, what should have been. He doesn’t want to cry himself back to sleep when he could just ignore it all and simply walk.

 Life is simpler when you just walk, walk, walk all day and all night long so he tells himself the same song over and over again.

Keep going, keep going, for there is nothing to see when you are on a journey with no end.

 But, like everything, even he ends up abandoning himself and his feeble principles: before he realizes it, he’s heading to Hammerlocke yet again, feet heavy and eyelids heavier. His eyes have stung for the past day and night with sand, snow and exhaustion, his legs barely move anymore, his balance has been destroyed and buried. The voices in his head most likely don’t exist outside of it, plaguing his thoughts with things he didn’t need to hear.

His thoughts are too cloudy for him to even function properly anymore. He can’t remember how he got there, or why, even less what’s the point of it all. He doesn’t know which day of the week it is, or even which month. Climbing the stairs is painful and drains too much out of his energy, but he then remembers his party is almost fainted and he’s out of items to nurse them back to health, so he has to get up there and do something about it…

 He wants to fall asleep right here and there, on the steps, but he can’t.

Keep going, keep going, for there is nothing to see in the depths of a desperate soul in search for something it cannot find again.

He has to continue. For what, for who, how and why, all of that doesn’t matter anymore; he just needs to keep going. To keep going and never stop to think ever again.

 He supposes the lack of sleep starts getting to him when he can’t focus his eyes on anything in front of him, vision swimming and eyes bleary from the endeavour they’ve gone through until now. There may not be any torrential rain, sandstorms nor snowfalls in Hammerlocke, but there is the blinding sun that gives him a lethal headache and blinds him enough for him not to be able to tell where he’s setting foot anymore.

It’s no wonder he doesn’t manage to rise back up when he eventually tumbles, loses what’s left of his sense of balance and falls to the ground, scrapping his palms and knees, hitting his chin on the pavement, before everything turns fuzzy and dark. Maybe his destination-less journey has finally hit a stop, a halt, or perhaps its actual end. Maybe he doesn’t have to keep walking, keep moving, with no energy and no determination aside from basic survival and vague plans of revenge he doesn’t quite know who to target at.

Maybe that, now that he’s tired enough, he won’t see how much of a failure he’s been in his sleep.

 Keep going, keep going, for there is nothing left else to do for a soul whose purpose has been robbed from it…

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 Opal immediately gets surprised when, while in Hammerlocke for absolutely unrelated reasons, she finds an unconscious boy lying not far away from the stairs to the Wild Area. Aside from his pinks and purples, and his unlikely enchanted-looking hair, he looks less than stellar, weakened by the weather and the exhaustion that must be eating away at his bones, judging from the deep rings under his eyes and the feverish hue plastered over the bridge of his nose. She’s seen him somewhere before, she’s certain of it; but all she can remember from that is a sense of betrayal and a feeling of cold-hearted abandonment, so she walks up to him.

“Oh, such a fairy-like young man…”

How is an old lady like her supposed to let such a poor boy, moreover one who could become her successor, in such a dire situation? He seems to have gotten himself in quite a lot of troubles, even more than those she has heard about from the other Leaders and information broadcast in her theatre. It’d be too cruel to let him in the open like that. She has to at least get to know him, to discover if he is her true successor.

For now, thinking of the near future has little to no point, she’s better off calling for help before the boy suffers from hypothermia in the harsh winter sunny winds of Galar. Perhaps she can give him what he doesn’t seem to have anymore…

 Keep going, keep going; for there is a purpose to everyone in this world, a purpose you have yet to find for yourself, waiting for you at the end of the seemingly endless journey.

[wolfhednn]

💫! :0)

send 💫 for a shuffle-generated meta | @cynthero

❛ it’s a bit dangerous, but i’m so sweet. i’m here to save you, i’m here to ruin you ❜

                                  — pied piper, bts

ooc. catch me sitting here crying because nothing about this song has anything to do with felix kjhskjdhf

eventually i decided that this might be an appropriate time to talk about The Elephant in the Room™ wrt felix; that is to say, the ‘ go find a husband ’ line in his ingrid B support that everyone whips out to attest that he’s a misogynist, which i argue is unfair to felix because it ignores the context of the comment and the history that the two share.

as a disclaimer yes, the line is a cruel and deliberately inflammatory one; felix does not often, contrary to how he seems, say things to needle people. this, i think, is one of the only occasions where he does. is it insensitive, and could he have worded it better? lmao absolutely. but, as we see from many of his lines, felix is poor at expressing his emotions and ideas in ways that don’t come across incendiary or critical. that does not mean, however, that he’s saying it because he hates women or something.

in order to explain why this line is not coming from a misogynistic place, we need to first consider felix and ingrid’s history. they are childhood friends, and ingrid had been betrothed to felix’s brother, glenn, from birth. it’s reasonable to assume that felix and ingrid were very close — the whole of the childhood friend quartet was, and felix would have seen that, in the last year before glenn’s death, ingrid and he had begun to truly fall in love beyond just their betrothal. besides himself and his father, felix anticipated that ingrid would be the person next most impacted by glenn’s death. he would have expected that she would be the one outside of his immediate family who would understand his feelings of loss the most.

after glenn’s death, ingrid goes into self-imposed isolation to grieve; we learn this from her support with sylvain. i don’t believe felix begrudged her this; after all, he was doing the same, and such a reaction isn’t unnatural. by the time she re-emerged, felix was already deep in the depths of resentment towards his father and faerghus society at large for devaluing his emotional reaction to glenn’s death ( see here ). i imagine that he would have subconsciously hoped that ingrid, of all people, would understand him.

instead, she starts saying the same things everyone else around him is. she, too, starts praising his death and talking about how she wants to emulate what he’d done. this inflicts a deep emotional wound on felix — not only does she, who had apparently loved glenn so much, give no indication that she wishes he had lived ( i know she does in other conversations, but felix never hears it; honestly, the two of them just really need to talk about their glenn feelings ), but it also sounds to him like ingrid is totally fine with following after glenn and dying too, for the sake of some ‘chivalric ideal’, leaving behind everyone else around her.

i think this sense of emotional betrayal is why we see the schism between them that we do in the game; it’s entirely one-sided, as well. ingrid harbors no bad feelings towards felix; it’s all him.

so what does this have to do with the B support line?

let’s look at the topic of their conversation in that support. they’re discussing an ethical situation surrounding the topic of chivalry. felix likely already anticipates what ingrid is going to say the moment he realizes what the subject is. ingrid goes on to do just that:

Ingrid: Whatever your personal feelings on the matter, I see similarities between such tactics and these “dumb” ethical questions. I haven’t read beyond this one, but I think the obvious answer is to follow your commander.

felix is of course unhappy about this answer. the crux of the tension in this conversation is felix’s underlying belief that, like everyone else in faerghus, ingrid doesn’t think for herself, but rather blindly follows the honor and chivalry script just because everyone else says it’s good. ( this is what he accuses her of in the end of the support: “At least I know not to heedlessly obey orders. I know not to romanticize blind obedience. My brother taught me to think for myself.” )

ingrid continues after felix’s silence, showing doubt in her ability to do what’s asked of her as a chivalrous knight:

Ingrid: The duty and pride of being a knight demand that you follow orders, regardless of your own feelings. But if I were put in such a position, I don’t know how I’d fare… In fact, were someone to carry out those orders, I know that I’d attempt to stop them.

felix sees her as still being preoccupied and obsessed with her idea of being a knight — that is, being able to follow a commander’s orders without question — instead of understanding that being a knight means using your own judgment to protect the people that depend on you. this is why his next words to her are so harsh: “You’re not meant to be a knight.”

so then, why “go find a husband”?

because where does ingrid’s imagined picture of the perfect knight come from? glenn. she says this outright in many of her supports — that glenn is the one she seeks to emulate, who embodies all the best qualities of a knight, who inspired her become one herself.

but in felix’s mind, ingrid is obsessed with what she thinks glenn was as a knight, not what he actually was — someone who was acting on his own beliefs, not blindly following the commands of a leader. in felix’s mind, she’s bound up in this debate with herself not because she wants to truly be a knight, but because it’s what glenn was.

hence, “go find a husband”. “go find someone else to put on a pedestal”. this has nothing to do with felix putting her down as a woman or pigeon-holing her into traditional feminine social roles. it’s coming from a place of harsh criticism for her lack of independent thought, and the way her attachment to glenn is coloring her ability to grow as a person.

[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Recaps: Volume 6 “The Lady in the Shoe”

Welcome back, everyone! The summary for this episode: Part Two was pretty excellently done (with one major exception) and Part One would be stellar if we could just separate it from its context. Which of course we can’t. So it’s a bit of a mixed bag this week.

Episode Eleven is titled “The Lady in the Shoe,” but apparently instead of a scolding and early bedtime children get to be blown up via missiles. Alrighty then. We open back on the mech battle with Ruby telling Weiss to get her butt down here, we need your help if we’re going to take down this monstrosity. Weiss briefly speaks my language.

Weiss: “You’re joking, right?”

Except it’s not a criticism about picking a fight with a Atlesian special operative in the first place, just that said special operative has some serious firepower on her side. Ruby justifies this leaderly decision with, “We’ve fought giant monsters before. This is just a tiny old lady…”

Which is precisely the problem, Ruby. You’re not fighting a giant monster here—this mech is not an objectively evil grimm rising up from the depths of the ocean that you are duty bound to fight. You are about to attack a tiny old lady—the sort of person you’re supposed to be protecting, even when they’re dicks. It still astounds me that the writers put all this dialogue into the characters’ mouths without commenting on (or even realizing) the staggering irony here. Can Ironwood please show up at the last moment and chastise them all for doing everything but what huntsmen are supposed to do?

Notice in this shot that no one has drawn their weapon yet. We know the kind of response time this group has. If there’s any danger nearby—real (grimm) or imagined (their uncle)—those weapons are raised in a heartbeat. Now here’s a massive mech bearing down on them and no one is moving to defend themselves, so some part of them must realize that this is a stupid, childish, needless fight that they are responsible for diffusing, considering that they started it in the first place. No one bothers though. They’re not outright attacking yet, but they’re not backing down either. That stubborn faith is admirable when set against monsters and Salem’s henchmen, not when it’s aimed at an authority figure you never should have made an enemy of in the first place.

However, Cordovin then reminds us of her dickishness, calling the kids “spider roaches” (ew) and promising to take them down. She wants to see how their “resolve holds out against the might of the Atlesian military,” once again encouraging the audience to accept this fight as the volume’s long-awaited resolution. Their resolve has been shaken the last few days, but fighting Cordovin has absolutely nothing to do with facing off against an immortal enemy. Having the kids hold their ground here doesn’t somehow tell us that they’ve re-discovered purpose in their good deeds and are willing to continue fighting against Salem, it just highlights how unwilling they are to admit when they’re wrong. This fight emphasizes only how immature and reckless the group is behaving right now. That doesn’t disappear just because RT tries to flimsily reframe it in another light.

Things immediately start going downhill. Done with her warning shots, Cordovin launches a missile at Maria and Weiss, though at the last second it’s blown out of the air by Ruby. This cues Cordovin into the fact that the rest of the gang is down on that cliff. She launches another shot and Weiss jumps down at the last second, getting up a barrier of stone and ice to protect them. Like so much in this fight, the save only comes at the very last second.

Oscar: “That was close…”

This should really be cueing the kids in. Cordovin isn’t playing around and this little encounter just got horrendously dangerous. The answer here is to surrender, admit that you were in the wrong for trying to steal military property, not escalate the situation by gleefully fighting back. And Ruby absolutely escalates it. A minute later—after laughing while dodging more missiles—Ruby takes a freaking headshot at Cordovin.

Look, there’s no excuse for that. Not in my book. I don’t care how likely it is that Atlas glass is strong enough to stop one of her rounds. I don’t care if Ruby assumed Cordovin would have her own aura up as an extra precaution inside the mech (if she can even manipulate aura like that. Cordovin is military, but that doesn’t automatically mean she can fight like a huntsmen. There might be a reason she got in that mech instead of fighting them herself). I don’t even care that Cordovin shot first and people are going to claim that the group is now justified to do whatever they want to her. Ruby could have been wrong. All of her assumptions about glass and aura might have come back to bite her. She looked a woman dead in the eye—not a grimm, not Cinder, not Salem herself—and shot with an intent to kill. What would everyone think of our precious protagonist if she’d murdered a Atlesian official after getting caught trying to steal their tech? Since when does the show encourage us to cheer on the group attacking an ally, no matter how much of an asshole she is as an individual?

I’ll be blunt: I don’t like this Ruby. I wanted leader!Ruby dealing with her anger at Qrow, our kind and level-headed girl growing into a mature young adult this volume. Instead we’ve gotten a smug, flippant child who is so obsessed with moving forward that she’ll eschew strategy and ethics in favor of results. She’s impatient. She’s once again overconfident in her abilities. She’s backsliding and this would be a fascinating thing to witness if the show weren’t incorrectly characterizing this as growth.

Before Ruby takes her shot though we get a bit more of that irony. Jaune points out that such a large mech will have difficulty hitting a small target, so they should spread out and give Cordovin too many things to focus on. “We just have to be smart,” a hilarious line given the context of all this. Maria is charged with keeping the airship safe, despite the fact that she had her license revoked. (Another example of them taking the legitimate, “How is this woman flying a plane?” question and reducing it to a joke.) Qrow offers to give them another bird’s eye view of the situation, despite the fact that we’ve seen no reason for this sudden change in his outlook. For 7 episodes now Qrow has been under the impression that everything he’s done as a huntsmen is useless and last week he followed that up with the worry that his semblance is at the heart of it all. Neither of these fears have been addressed. Ruby giving one incredibly broad line about how she still needs Qrow Branwen shouldn’t erase what’s been plaguing him for an entire volume… but it apparently does. Fighting is no longer a useless endeavor with Salem hanging over him. Stealing an airship is no longer a plan he’s against. His semblance is no longer something to take into account. (You’ll notice that, conveniently, his semblance doesn’t seem to have any impact on the fight. Suddenly close combat alongside allies is no longer the dangerous thing that the Tyrian fight once painted it as.) Like so many others I’m thrilled that Qrow seems to be in a better place… I just wish we’d been given a convincing reason for him to drop his bottle here and happily join a fight he’s so-far been against for three distinct reasons. Like so much in this volume, the ideas are great while the execution falters.

Truthfully though? I love the fight itself. Ruby skillfully dodging missiles or running along their back, Weiss creating a series of ice islands for them to jump off of, riding on the lancer she summoned… all of that is epic as hell. However, that’s undercut by the fact that I’m just not rooting for Team RWBY here.

Over the course of the fight they do a good amount of damage to that mech. One of the biggest blows is when Qrow and Ren manage to destroy the device generating Cordovin’s shields. They don’t disable it, they just shoot it until it breaks. The entire time I was thinking, “Wow. This is going to be a pretty penny to fix/this mech is going to be entirely useless if Argus suddenly needs it to defend themselves from some grimm.” The entire time the group—particularly Ruby—treats it all as a fun adventure that’s only serious when they want it to be (like shooting at Cordovin). Ruby’s logic is chastised because “This isn’t a game!” and when she gets into trouble Weiss demands, “What if I hadn’t caught you?” The answer is just a sunny smile, not any actual thought about what her choices just were and whether she should change them.

Ruby is meant to be chipper in the face of danger, i.e. “Bad! Landing! Strategy!” after getting knocked off a cliff by a grimm. She’s not supposed to attack other people, destroy their defenses, and laugh about it. Perhaps the most frustrating moment is when she hangs off the front of the mech, waving at Cordovin like they aren’t having a legitimate battle here. Nora’s commentary is something that I always enjoy, “And you said it wasn’t beach season” + “You get back here with my man!” is fun, especially since the latter finally acknowledges that she and Ren are a couple now. Hallelujah! But it only works because Nora’s entire brand is happy-go-lucky in the face of overwhelming odds. That never really changes. Ruby, however, is jumping between silly goof and murderous huntress within the span of a few seconds. Is the Cordovin fight supposed to be comical or something they’re taking seriously as one of our final battles? The writing can’t decide.

Of course, we do hit a point where things get bad enough that the group starts panicking again. Cordovin has enough of all this and makes a swipe at Nora, forcing Jaune to make a last second grab for her. Both of them are slammed into a rock with their auras broken. The rest of the group gets blasted right off Weiss’ lancer, but Ruby can’t quite make it to the edge of the cliff. She stops her fall with Crescent Rose and then just…hangs there?

Okay. This is what I mean when I say the writing is contrived; that things are working out in one specific way to serve the plot, regardless of logic. Why isn’t Ruby using her semblance? Is she really that exhausted already? Why not just dive into the water? We’ve seen numerous times—starting at Beacon’s initiation—that Ruby can fall from great heights provided that she use the impact of her shots to slow her descent. Why isn’t Weiss summoning something for her to drop onto? Why does Qrow reach for Ruby and then just stand there stupidly while Cordovin levels a shot at his niece?

There’s no reason why prodigy Ruby would just hang there cringing, or why all of her talented friends would just stand there dumbly, except that the plot wants Maria and Oscar to “have” to rescue her. Except they don’t have to. We haven’t set up a situation where they’re truly the last line of defense. Jaune and Nora have already been knocked out. Now you could have Cordovin cut off the rest of the group with one arm while aiming at Ruby. Show a brief shot of Ruby trying and failing to start up her semblance, slipping further down the cliff in exhaustion. Let Weiss scream at her to just drop and Qrow shout back that she never learned how to swim. Give us reasons—even if they’re flimsy—for why using the airship is suddenly the only option.

Because you know, airship. The entire point of this fight is to keep the airship intact and get to Atlas. Now it’s been shot at. We don’t see what exactly the damage is, but I’m going to roll my eyes hard if it’s conveniently minor. Have Oscar and Maria escape unscathed, but I hope the ship itself is wrecked. Let the group realize that they picked a fight and their reasons for doing so are now useless.

“This is what happens when you think you know better than those rightfully in charge,” Cordovin says and she’s right. Her being an asshole is entirely separate from the fact that she’s got her facts straight. She is in charge of the Argus base, adults do often know better than teens, and this is what happens when you think you know better than those who told you, “This is a bad idea.” RWBYJNR made their bed and now they can lie in it. Now if only the writing would actually acknowledge that...

We cut with the mech fight half over and transition to Blake and Adam. This is the part of the episode that I think was very well done, but let me preface that by saying I view this battle in the same way I view Qrow’s current characterization. Meaning, I’m glad we got there… but how did we get there? That’ll make more sense in a moment.

For now, we watch as Blake tries to get away from Adam, no doubt hoping to make her way back to Yang. All of Adam’s dialogue in these scenes is excellently done. He’s the epitome of an abuser, characterizing Blake’s growth as a flaw—“Can’t you do anything besides run?” Missing the fact that nowadays she’s only running from him—and blaming her for his actions: “I wouldn’t have to be doing this if you’d just behaved!” It’s the kind of dialogue that I’m sure will sound too familiar for many viewers. Definitely hard to watch, but that’s because it’s well crafted.  

“You’re selfish. You’re a coward,” Adam says. “You’re delusional,” Blake shoots right back.  

As the fight continues Blake ends up losing her coat, something the whole fandom was hoping for given the importance of her scar. I really enjoyed the use of editing during all this. Adam ends up breaking Gambol Shroud (symbolic and a good setup for volume 7) and manages to get Blake into the same position as when he first stabbed her. This time Blake blocks the hit and when she does we get the briefest look at Yang’s bike rushing towards them. The speed of the cut is a good choice, keeping up with the fast-paced action, letting us know Yang is almost there without drawing attention away from Adam and Blake.

However, the fight does simmer down as Adam finally removes his mask.

That brand is… disturbing. Granted, it would have been more disturbing if I’d been able to figure out what those letters (numbers?) were right from the start lol. For anyone still confused, Adam has a horrific SDC burned over one eye—a literal mark of the Schnee Dust Company. Did he work for the Schnees and receive that as a part of their slave labor? Was it enacted as punishment after one of his raids, a way of sending a message to all the other faunus? We don’t know, we might never know, but at the very least I want Weiss to see Adam before he’s either killed or makes another escape. Given everything else that’s been going on, RWBY hasn’t had time to explore the accusations Blake leveled at Weiss all the way back at Beacon, or the conversation we overhear her dad having at the party. It’s looking like Yang and Blake’s arc with Adam is finally coming to a close, but getting a look at his face could be the start of a new one for Weiss. She deserves to know the full extent of what her father has done. Not just to her as his daughter, but to an entire minority group.  

“You didn’t leave scars, you just left me alone,” Adam whines like his own trauma in any way excuses what he’s done to Blake. “How does it feel to be alone?”

We get Blake’s ear twitching towards the sound of Yang approaching, she uses her semblance to escape, and at the last second proclaims, “I’m not alone.”

THEN YANG STRAIGHT UP HITS ADAM WITH HER BIKE.

Right now I do not CARE about in-world physics, or how Yang aimed coming off that cliff, or any of that. She hit Adam with a goddamn motorcycle while doing a flip off of it. There’s no world in which that isn’t badass.

Now we know how she gets rid of bumblebee. Yang couldn’t drag it on their adventure for forever. I’m glad it became something symbolic—Yang giving up a precious momento that carried her off into her new life, doing so without a moment’s hesitation for Blake—as opposed to just something like, “Yeah I shipped it off back to Dad!”

RIP Bumblebee. You will be missed.

Here though we get to the portion of the fight that (dare I say it?) feels a little un-earned. Look, I’m thrilled that we got these girls protecting one another and standing tall in the face of their abuser, but like Qrow’s sudden mood change, these kinds of payoffs are 100% better when we see how characters got there. The last time we touched on Adam in Blake and Yang’s lives:

Both of them were still having PTSD flashbacks, to the point where they instinctually flinch away from him in terror.

Blake was under the impression that she has to protect Yang and had no idea why that might not be what she wants.

Yang got pissed at Blake’s protective instincts and refused to communicate, shutting down the conversation.

Yang was coming out of a situation (Ozpin) where her anger had reached new levels and she was once again ready to punch her way through her problems.

Now, suddenly:

Neither Yang nor Blake hesitate for an instant. Yang in particular, who had no idea what she’d find when she went after Blake, is 100% confident in facing down Adam. Her hand shakes, yes, but that doesn’t actually have an impact on the fight. PTSD isn’t that kind. If you’ve been cowering instinctually for months now upon seeing visions of someone, that doesn’t conveniently disappear when you meet the real thing.

Blake announces that she’s not protecting Yang… even though two-three days ago that was her position. What changed?

Yang doesn’t react in surprise to hearing this sudden change of heart. Why is she acting like they’ve always been on the same page about protecting one another when they explicitly haven’t been? They had this disagreement literally days ago.

Yang is perfectly calm during the whole fight. She doesn’t use her semblance, immediately listens to Blake’s info about Adam’s, never once loses her temper. I’m thrilled to see the improvement but again, where did it come from? If Yang is going to get that worked up at Ozpin, why would we expect her to be perfectly cool when facing Adam, of all people?  

As said, these are all things I wanted to see, but it feels like we skipped over a big chunk of the journey. And honestly part of that journey could have been worked into the fight itself, pretty easily. Let Yang jump off that cliff, see that it’s Adam, and immediately freeze. Blake has to block a hit to save her and comments, “Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.” Yang gets pissed. She doesn’t need Blake to protect her, she’s doing the protecting, and she starts the first half of the fight in a temper that Adam takes advantage of. You can have them realizing in the moment that they need to protect one another so that by the time they’re holding hands we feel like we’ve evolved to this point naturally. 

Let Yang realize halfway through the fight that this head-on approach isn’t working so that when she suddenly tells Adam to leave this feels more like growth instead of, “Wait. Yang’s just gonna let this guy walk away? Since when?” Like so much in volume 6, I’m thrilled with what we got… just not in the way that we got it.

Each fight is only half over though. Presumably Episode 12 will wrap things up and then Episode 13? That’s up in the air. At this point though I’m still really hoping for some repercussions. Give me a moment where Cinder and Neo show up, but the gang is so exhausted from needlessly fighting Cordovin that they don’t stand a chance. Let them encounter a swarm of ocean grimm drawn up by how scared the Argus population is,

but they’ve destroyed the mech specifically designed to fight them. Let the kids face some actual consequences for their actions so that they can finally realize how stupid they’re being.  

Then Ozpin can show up and save them all. I want them to learn something, not die lol.

I doubt we’ll get it though. Most likely? The airship is fine, the battles are won, we’re encouraged to cheer for our current “heroes,” and they fly off towards Atlas without consequence. Yuck. I’m preparing myself for it though. We’ll see…

Until next week!

Other Things of Note

Just for the record, that team up with Ren could have been a perfect moment to slip in Qrow’s semblance. You recklessly shoot at the dust generator creating shields for a mech? Bad luck causes it to blow up in your face, launching Ren into the water, explaining Nora’s yell about giving her back her man.  

Kinda surprised by Adam’s blue eyes. Not gonna lie. I mean, not that anyone else in this show is following real world genetics (Yang’s eyes are purple and red I MEAN), it just wasn’t what I was expecting.

“He gets to dish out damage without having to feel it? That’s just cheap.” Ah, that feels like a sentence with more than one meaning…

I brought up in a previous recap about how RWBY treats disabilities, emphasizing that they’re either ignored (Maria’s blindness isn’t a problem! She can still fly just fine!) or we reach a point where there are only upsides (Yang able to detach her arm and escape Mercury). We see another example of that here wherein Yang’s new arm is able to withstand the blow that would have otherwise torn through flesh. She’s now stronger not just because of what she’s survived, but because her arm is literally better in all respects from the one she was born with.  

[dazaran]

title: ouroboros mirror ship: ayatsuji yukito/kyogoku natsuhiko rating: G AO3 link: here!

day three of rarepair week -- prompt : soulmates / obsession.

The concept of soulmates is always one that grated on Ayatsuji’s nerves. Not because he dislikes the concept of having someone to spend the rest of your days with, but because that a majority of society likes to believe that the definition of ‘soulmate’ is someone who is your perfect fit - which of course is impossible in itself, as ‘perfection’ does not exist.

Someone like him cannot have something perfect. No, not someone as tainted as him. Anyone who is his soulmate would think the same thing of themselves.

But if you were to ask him if he had a soulmate, he would think ‘yes’ and respond ‘no’ - that was just how complicated the relationship was. Ayatsuji didn’t want to live with the man, but at the same time, he couldn’t live without him either. It was a horrendous case of a snake eating its tail, and endless cycle he couldn’t stop, and the other had no intention of discontinuing.

Ayatsuji will swear to himself and to Tsujimura he hates Kyogoku Natsuhiko, but when it comes down to it, his entire job as a detective left him hyperfocused on the man known as Public Enemy #1. Ayatsuji hated him, he cared for him, he wished to defeat him. It was an ungodly combination of obsession and selfishness that could never be sated, and that selfishness is exactly what Kyogoku loved the most.

It was so he could indulge in watching Ayatsuji’s selfishness that Kyogoku went to such lengths to draw the detective’s attention, killing and manipulating others if need be. To reach out for him normally went against his principles, and Ayatsuji would have been too suspicious to agree to such a thing either. He had to do something drastic to draw the detective’s attention... Which certainly said a lot about his personality.

Basically, it wasn’t easy at all to get Ayatsuji Yukito’s attention, let alone keep it.

And once he had it, the thrill of having the attention of Japan’s most dangerous ability user was so addicting that he couldn’t get enough of it. Ayatsuji is the oasis in the desert, the mirage on the horizon, what Kyogoku desires to keep all for himself, yet let go when they’re too close - a game of cat and mouse that tortures both of their hearts.

Call him a masochist if you would, but there was something all too pleasant in it all. Even if it hurt his heart, and Ayatsuji’s, he loved it all the same. This was a game only the two of them understood, a game only the two of them could play... And Ayatsuji knew that too. That’s why he, too, never stopped.

“Kyogoku... you bastard...” Ayatsuji wheezes, slamming a clenched fist against the worn statue to his right as he falls to his knees next to it, panting for air after having finally finished climbing the mountain. Of all the ridiculous ways Kyogoku had challenged him, this truly had to be the worst. Not only had someone been killed, but the puzzle left in the man’s wake had led the homicide detective up a mountain of all things. While it’s very like Kyogoku to want to loiter around an abandoned temple for a mountain god, Ayatsuji can’t share the sentiment. At all.

Kyogoku laughs, shoulders hitching up innocently. “You should stop smoking. Your lungs would be grateful for it, Ayatsuji-kun.”

Ayatsuji glares dangerously through his sweat-drenched bangs. “I’ll kill you.” he hisses, though his voice lacks its usual bite, as it’s dry from thirst. Of course he has no intention of listening to such a suggestion.

Kyogoku gives a dramatic sigh. He expected that answer, as well as this situation, and  was prepared for it. Reaching into one of his sleeves, he pulls out a small flask while stepping forward to close the distance between himself and the younger man. Ayatsuji’s expression turns vaguely curious, gaze wary - but he says nothing, merely seeming to wait and see what Kyogoku does.

Kyogoku stops before him, twisting off the cap and pouring a generous amount of its contents into his mouth. It makes Ayatsuji straighten his back, as if trying to view the contents.

“What is-”

Before he can finish, Kyogoku leans forward to loom over him, worn gloved hands cupping both of his cheeks. (They’re warm - they always have been, so aggravatingly warm and comforting.) Their lips meet, and the sorcerer angles the detective’s head back far enough to force Ayatsuji to open his mouth and accept whatever Kyogoku had poured into his mouth. It only takes half a second for Ayatsuji to realize it’s just plain water, and he lifts a hand to grip at Kyogoku’s kimono as hard as possible, pulling him closer as if trying to accept every drop.

That desperation, that anger - it’s so beautiful, it’s so addicting. Kyogoku loves it, he obsesses over it.

When the kiss breaks, the blonde gasps, though it’s more out of thirst than being out of air and they both know it. Autumn brown eyes narrow, staring up into Kyogoku’s even darker ones. Despite their depth, despite the dark color, they still have a playful twinkle that is ever so characteristic of Kyogoku.

“Do you feel better now?” Kyogoku teases.

Ayatsuji huffs, snatching the flask of water out of Kyogoku’s hands to down the contents. Some of it spills out the corner of his mouth, dripping down his neck and into his shirt, which the older only watches in interest. When the water is completely gone, the detective tosses the metal flask aside with a relieved gasp, pivoting on a knee to take a seat on the worn stone floor underneath him. His forearms rest on his knees, gloved hand dangling out in front of him.

“... So?”

The sorcerer hums curiously, tilting his head. “So - what?”

“You didn’t call me up here for nothing. Stop playing the fool.”

“Oh,” a chuckle. Kyogoku paces around Ayatsuji before stopping at his side. “To you, it would surely be nothing.”

“Being given no explanation from you is more infuriating than a seemingly pointless reason.”

To the point, as always. Kyogoku smiles, looking down at his company. “I wished to show you this lovely view. Isn’t it nice?”

Ayatsuji deadpans in return, clearly unamused. Even so, after letting his gaze linger long enough to make him feel as if he’s thoroughly made his displeasure obvious, he sighs and looks away to take in the view that Kyogoku speaks of. Such a remote location in the Hokkaido region of all places... Truly, it is beautiful - but he’s too prideful to actually agree with Kyogoku. “... You have too much free time on your hand, stupid old man. Get a hobby.”

“Oh, but I certainly do have one.”

“‘Helping’ people commit crimes is not a hobby.”

“That, my dear, is not my hobby. Consider it a part of my occupation your government has so kindly pinned onto me.” Kyogoku bends down to take a seat on the uppermost stair of the mountain’s worn trail, smiling at his company. “Rather, is my hobby not giving you moments of freedom from the cage you loathe?”

A roll of Ayatsuji’s eyes, joined by a scoff. “Do it without getting others involved and I’d consider saying thank you.”

“Oh, isn’t that too boring? We both know you’d be more suspicious if I invited you out normally.”

Silence - it’s confirmation, of course, which they both are well aware of.

Kyogoku smiles in amusement at the reaction, then continues, “There is no one on this earth who can pull you out of your cage as I can, Ayatsuji-kun, and likewise, there is no one on this earth close enough to understanding my ways and going to equal lengths to find me. That is how we know we’re each other’s ‘other half’.”

Ugh. The very fact that Kyogoku somehow came to the topic of soulmates when Ayatsuji had been thinking about it on his way up this damn mountain made everything all the more obnoxious, all the more clear that they were truly, unfortunately meant for each other.

“Another philosophy lecture - you’re exhausting me.” the detective lifts a hand to remove his hat, setting it aside before coming his fingers through his hair.

“It’s not quite a lecture as much as it is my own thoughts. Think of it in this manner, Ayatsuji-kun: a true soulmate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. Is that not what we are, intentional or otherwise?”

Because the only person allowed to kill you and I is the other, and absolutely no one else.

For what feels like minutes, Ayatsuji and Kyogoku keep each other’s gaze. They do not move, do not blink, and perhaps do not even breathe. The only sound that can be heard is the rustling of the trees and the faraway song of a sparrow as if it couldn’t bear the idea of the area lacking in a voice.

Eventually, Ayatsuji laughs, lowering his head with a snort of amusement. “You’re impossible, Natsuhiko.”

That small bit of happiness is enough. That is all the sorcerer aims to gain amidst the atrocities he commits. “That I am,” he agrees with a laugh. “That is why you will never defeat me, not even for an eternity.”

“Maybe not now. But some day, at some point, you will concede. You can’t run forever.”

“I encourage you to continue to challenge me to the best of your abilities to make that a reality, Yukito.”

“Yeah... Wait for me, stubborn fool.”

“Until the sun sets never to rise again, I will do just that."

That determination, bravery - those too, Kyogoku obsesses over, as there is no feeling more disgustingly genuine and raw in the matters of love than obsession .

[13eyond13]

Do you have any headcanons about B? Like if B had an older sister what would their relationship be like? Sorry if that's weird but I'd like to think If he had a better support system he wouldn't have done the whole LABB thing

Hi Anon, thank you so much for asking! I love getting headcanonquestions, especially about B.This is such an interestingquestion! I’ve never imagined Beyond as anything but an only childbefore, just because B’s only relatives mentioned in the novel arehis parents. He was seemingly orphaned after their deaths, so you’reright, he likely didn’t have a good support network or other closefamily capable of taking care of him. We were only told a fewvague sentences about B’s past: We were told:

[1]B had a father who was murdered by a mugger.[2] B had a motherwho died in a train crash.[3] B had the shinigami eyes sincebirth, somehow.[4]B knew what the lifespans meant, and knew that he was incapable ofever changing the numbers.

I really do like the idea of Bwith a protective older sister, though, and how that might have changed things for him. I’ll run through how Iimagine this AU might have looked if he did:(this turned out VERY long and very in-depth lol, like approx. 2500 words, and I totally understand if you don’t want to read the whole thing! I’ll put it under a cut here):

B’s BABY YEARS:

B’s sister is seven years older than him, because he was a surprise pregnancy for his parents.

She hates him at first, because she’s so used to being an only child, but he’s actually a very pleasant baby – quiet and alert and cheerful, doesn’t cry much.

His sister still hates him until he’s about two. She sometimes stands over his crib whispering mean things to him, but he just gazes up at her adoringly and smiles and coos at her until she feels very guilty about it, and goes away again.

B’s TODDLER YEARS:

 B follows his big sister everywhere as soon as he can walk. He is very affectionate, always asking to be picked up and carried around. He snuggles into her neck and plays with her hair, and calls her a funny bungled version of her name, because he has trouble pronouncing his R’s. This melts her heart pretty quickly, and she soon forgets she ever resented him.

B’s sister finds she really likes playing mother with him – she loves getting him dressed and feeding him snacks, and teaching him things whenever he asks – which he does often, because he is a very curious & bright child.

B hits his childhood development milestones very early, and it’s speculated that he’s very intelligent, likely a certifiable genius. His medical checkups reveal nothing unusual about his brain or his eyes, but he always seems much older than he really is – about double his actual age, mentally at least.

B seems to daydream a lot, and to easily be distracted, especially if he’s in large crowds of people. He often says strange things that nobody can make sense of, but his family mostly writes it off as a personality quirk, or a byproduct of his big imagination.

His sister is very interested in nurturing B’s intelligence; their parents are always busy, both working hard to make ends meet, and so when she babysits B she starts teaching him to read and do math. He’s reading grade six level chapter books out loud to her by the time he’s three. B starts asking his family very strange questions soon after he becomes literate.

B’s EARLY CHILDHOOD YEARS:

B starts asking his family about all the floating numbers and the names. He points to the spot just above people’s heads and recites exactly what he sees out loud. He is shocked that nobody else can see them. He knows the name of anyone he sees, whether or not he’s ever met them before. “Why are your numbers so much longer than hers?” he might ask his sister, or “Why does the man’s name say this when we actually call him this?” “Why don’t I have any letters or numbers above my own head when I look in the mirror, or when I look at pictures of me?”

His family is astonished, and somewhat frightened. They quickly realize it is not just the strange imaginative games of a small child. 

They start doing little experiments with him to make sense of it, and find it seems to be related specifically to B’s vision; he has to see a person’s face for it to work. He can point to any person in any photograph and tell you exactly what their name and number is, as long as their features aren’t obscured. The people in photographs only have numbers sometimes, he says; for example, his family shows him a book of old black & white war photographs, and according to B not a single person in it has numbers. He says the numbers are always changing for people he sees everyday, but that their names never do; he says that the numbers only ever get shorter for everyone, not longer. 

B’s parents ask him about their own numbers. They ask about his sister’s, too, but B senses that the whole thing is making his sister feel very anxious. B trusts his sister’s intuition with all his heart and is very loyal to her, so he refuses to divulge any of his family’s numbers to anyone. His sister is very relieved by this, though she doesn’t fully know why yet; she is very proud of B and his unusual gifts, but something about the numbers part of it always gives her a queasy feeling in her stomach.

The whole numbers thing starts making sense for everyone once their elderly landlady dies and they attend her funeral. Four year old B says her numbers are completely gone now when he looks into the casket. He says the numbers are always pretty short for old people, but that hers were the shortest ones he’d ever seen.

B’s LATER CHILDHOOD YEARS:

Once it’s discovered what the numbers actually mean, B’s parents start fighting about it. His mother wants to use B’s abilities to make money, and pressures his father constantly about it.

B’s dad is just obsessed with finding out his own lifespan. He tries to coax it out of B nicely at first, then pressures him with guilt, but B will not budge on the matter, and remains very tight-lipped.

Theirparents start fighting secretly every night when B and his sister arein bed, and it’s always about whether or not they should attempt to make money off B’s talents. They try to be quiet, but the kids still overhear all of it. They could use the money to put both the kids through school and to move to a nicer neighbourhood, his mother says. It would be good for the whole family, if they were smart and careful about who they partnered up with, she says.

B and his sister become inseparable through all of this familial stress. B often asks to sleep in her bed with her when he has bad dreams, and so her pseudo mothering of B continues as he grows. 

B’s sister never asks him about the numbers or the names, and just treats B like a normal person. She tries to focus his mind on other things, and aims to keep him feeling good about his abilities instead of guilty or stressed whenever he mentions them. 

He confides in her during one of their sleepovers that he knows how to mostly work out the lifespan formula automatically now when he looks at people, but that it’s not totally flawless yet; the numbers are very tricky, but he thinks he can narrow the timeline down accurately to within a few weeks of the death date. He does these calculations automatically without meaning to every time he looks at people now, and he hates it. 

He is very sad about finally understanding the lifespans of their parents, and says he wishes more than anything he knew of a way to make people’s numbers get longer instead of shorter.

B’s PRE-TEEN YEARS:

B’s dad loses his job, and starts seriously considering his wife’s insistence that B is their ticket out of their financial struggles. They start seriously scheming about maybe contacting some talent scouts to meet with, secretly after B goes to bed. 

 B’s sister internalizes B’s morbid knowledge about their parents’ lifespans, and starts growing up very quickly as a result. She takes on two part-time jobs while finishing up her final year in high school and saves up a lot of money. 

B’s parents never end up actually monetizing his talents, but they do end up divorcing due to the constant fighting.

B’s sister moves out on her own as soon as she turns 18, into a crappy two bedroom apartment in the city near her work.

B’s parents both die soon after, within a year and a half of each other. It’s a very rough time for B and his sister, as they loved their parents dearly in spite of their flaws and have no other living family. Their parents left them with some debt, but B and his sister are each other’s emotional support all throughout the grieving, and manage to stay strong all throughout.

B’s TEEN YEARS:

B’s sister becomes his legal guardian, and he moves into her spare room. They happily stop talking about his strange abilities altogether.

They make a pretty good team when it comes to splitting the domestic duties. He loves to clean and does it for fun, so the place is always absolutely spotless. 

B’s sister is generally an awful cook, but she knows how to make a mean sandwich, and she always keeps the place cozy and smelling nice by burning incense, and furnishing the rooms with the perfectly good things she finds thrifting. She has a real knack for interior design, and plans on maybe pursuing it someday, once B is finished high school and able to better financially contribute to the household.

When B is about fifteen years old, his sister notices that he’s never once shown an interest in girls. He also is very curious about her morning routine, and watches how she gets ready for work very closely. She never lets on that she notices this, but she starts casually narrating the steps she takes to apply her makeup and do her hair.

One day, B’s sister finds some of her foundation and eyeliner missing. It’s replaced again the next day, and neither of them say a word about it.

B is consistently the top student in his high school in all grades. He’s generally well-liked, though very shy, and doesn’t have many friends. His sister senses he’s afraid of getting attached to people because of his eyes, and feels sorry for him. She encourages him to join some sort of extracurricular program, saying he’d definitely have a better chance of getting into his dream schools if he was more involved.

B joins the drama club at school, and it helps him come out of his shell socially. At first he just volunteers as a stage hand, helping the actors with their costumes and their stage makeup, but eventually he works up the courage to audition for a play, too. He is a natural, and gets the lead part. B’s sister tries to help him practice his lines when she gets home from work, but she’s often too tired. She suggests that maybe he could invite some of the other cast members over to practice sometime, instead.

B invites only one other cast member over to practice; a very cute guy with long blond hair, leather pants, and a rosary around his neck. This guy seems to have been under the impression that there were other people coming too, and looks very uncomfortable about the whole situation. B’s sister feels the awkward vibes between them immediately and wants nothing more than to makes herself scarce, but she feels too bad for the guy to leave. She hangs around all night despite B’s pointed glares, and makes a pot of mushy, overcooked spaghetti for them all to share. The cute blond guy chokes it down politely and leaves as soon as he can, saying he just remembered he needs to go pick up his best friend Matt from work.

B’s school play goes very well, and the student newspaper reports his performance as the stand-out highlight of the whole thing. B tells his sister that maybe he’d prefer to move to Hollywood someday and pursue acting. She’s torn between encouraging him to follow his less practical dreams, and wishing he’d make something of his incredible smarts and aim for an ivy league school, instead. She decides to hold her tongue and let him decide on his own.

Eventually, B’s sister gets a nice boyfriend named Stephan Gevanni, and he moves in with them after a few months. He’s a sweetheart, and a very good cook, and he fills that hole in their home nicely by making delicious suppers every night. B is very blushingly awkward around Stephan, and hides in his room all the time, writing in his diary, obsessively reading manga, and listening to dramatic movie soundtracks on repeat. He gradually stops being embarrassed about his interest in makeup, as his time as a stage hand helps him feel more comfortable about it. Soon he’s wearing subtle eyeliner and foundation every day, and it looks very good on him. That cute blond guy he invited over even asked B for tips on how he pulls it off so well, he says with pride.

At some point, B comes home from school saying he’s just had the oddest day at school. He was pulled out of class all day for some very cryptic testing, which he was told was a standardized government thing. B didn’t believe for one minute that it was, but he couldn’t make sense of what else it could be, either. He said the test was the hardest thing he’d ever taken in his life, but that he had a lot of fun with it, too.

Two weeks later, B gets an elegantly embossed letter in the mail. He’s passed the cryptic testing with flying colours, and is one of the elite few finalists being invited to meet with a man who runs some of the most prestigious private schools in the country. The one they think B would make the best fit for is called Wammy’s House in England, which they would allow him to attend on full scholarship, no questions asked. B reads the letter out loud to his sister and Stephan over dinner with shaking hands, though he claims to find it silly and acts like he doesn’t care at all.

B’s sister thoroughly researches this school for the gifted, and finds she can figure out very little about it outside of the fact that it indeed exists. She’s extremely proud of B for being selected as a candidate, but her sharp intuition is giving her a very nasty feeling about it, nonetheless. She chooses to hold her tongue and see what B will choose, deciding she will whole-heartedly support his choice either way.

B decides after a lot of agonizing to politely reject the offer from the mysterious school, saying he’s finally feeling at home in his own skin for the first time in his life, and would miss his new friends at school too much. He said he needs some more time to figure himself out, first, no matter how flattering the school’s offer is. His sister breathes a secret sigh of relief, and she and Stephan makes B a lovely cake with strawberry filling for dessert that night, because they knows it’s his very favourite.

[woodsens]

Where to Find Guest Blogging Opportunities on fireinsidemusic.com

Correction Appended

On an album of bittersweet childrens tracks that she wrote greater than ten years in the past, the lady who arrived for being acknowledged only as being the piano Trainer offered what, in hindsight, seems like an eerie glimpse of her possess foreseeable future.

Im shifting away right now to a place so far-off, where by nobody is aware my identify, she wrote while in the lyrics of a tune known as Relocating.

When she wrote that music, she was young and vivacious, a piano teacher and freelance songs writer who beloved Beethoven and jazz, sunsets and river Seems, extended walks and every little thing about New York.

On a type of beloved walks, by means of Central Park in the bright sun of a June working day in 1996, a homeless drifter beat her and tried to rape her, leaving her clinging to everyday living. Once the assault, the terms to her track came legitimate. She moved away, away from New York City, away from her previous lifestyle, and all but her closest mates didn't know her identify. To the remainder of the planet, she was — much like the additional famous jogger attacked in Central Park 7 many years before — an nameless symbol of the urban nightmare. She was the piano Trainer.

Now, over the 10th anniversary of your assault, she is celebrating what appears to be her entire recovery from brain trauma. She's 42, married, with a small child. She's Kyle Kevorkian McCann, the piano teacher, and she or he wants to notify her story, her way.

Her health care provider informed her it will choose 10 years to Recuperate, and Sunday was that talismanic anniversary. I experience my life is redefined by Central Park, she claimed many days in the past, her voice comfortable and hopeful. Just before park; immediately after park. Will there at any time be described as a time After i dont think, Oh, This can be the tenth anniversary, the eleventh anniversary?

She spoke in her modest ranch home in a very wooded subdivision within a Ny suburb. She sat in a eating home strewn with toys, surrounded by photos of her cherubic, darkish-haired two-year-outdated daughter. A Steinway grand stuffed fifty percent the space, and at one particular point she sat down and played. Her enjoying was forceful, but she seemed embarrassed to Participate in quite a lot of bars, and shrugged, as an alternative to answering, when questioned the title from the piece. She asked that her daughter and her town not be named.

She calls that working day, June four, 1996, the working day Once i was harm.

Hers was the first in a very string of assaults by a similar man on four Women of all ages around 8 days. The final victim, Evelyn Alvarez, 65, was crushed to Dying as she opened her Park Avenue dry-cleansing store, and ultimately, the assailant, John J. Royster, was convicted of murder and sentenced to everyday living in jail.

But the attack over the piano Instructor may be the just one persons look to recollect quite possibly the most. A part of the fascination should do with echoes of your 1989 attack around the Central Park jogger. But In addition it frightened individuals in a means the attack to the jogger did not mainly because its situation had been so mundane.

It didn't happen inside of a distant Portion of the park late at nighttime, but near a favorite playground at three during the afternoon. It might have took place to any one. The tension was heightened with the mystery with the piano lecturers identification.

For 3 times, as police and Physicians attempted to discover who she was, she lay in a coma in her clinic bed, nameless. Her mothers and fathers were on getaway and her boyfriend, also a musician, was in Europe, on tour. Last but not least, one among her learners regarded a law enforcement sketch and was ready to identify her from the healthcare facility by her fingers, since her deal with was swollen further than recognition. The police didn't launch her name.

The very last thing she remembers about June 4, 1996, is supplying a lesson in her studio condominium on West 57th Street, then putting her extended hair in a very ponytail and heading out for the stroll. She doesn't keep in mind the assault, although she has read the accounts with the police and prosecutors.

To me its like a reality I realized and memorized, she claimed. As though I were being a pupil at school researching historical past.

She will not consider the man who did it. I might need been angry for any minute, although not much longer than that, she stated. How could I be indignant at John Royster? He was declared not crazy, but I guess by our standards he was.

Dr. Jamshid Ghajar, her medical doctor at New York Clinic-Cornell Professional medical Heart, as it was identified in 1996, explained to reporters that she had a ten % potential for survival. Medical professionals had to get rid of her forehead bone, which was later changed, to produce space for her swelling Mind. When her mother made a community attract pray for my daughter, thousands did.

Immediately after eight days, she arrived away from a coma, first within a vegetative state, then within a childlike condition. As she recovered, she slept small and talked continually, at times in gibberish. I was receiving mad at people after they didnt respond to these terms, she mentioned.

Like an Alzheimers individual, she experienced minor brief-term memory and would fail to remember readers the moment they left the place.

More than many months, she needed to relearn tips on how to wander, dress, read and compose. Her boyfriend, Tony Scherr, frequented every single day to Participate in guitar for her. He encouraged her to play the piano, from the advice of her Actual physical therapists, who believed she could be disappointed by her incapacity to Participate in just how she once had. Mr. Scherr performed Beatles duets along with her, enjoying the left-hand element though she played the right.

That was my finest therapy, she said.

In August, she moved back again property to New Jersey, together with her father, an engineer, and mother, a schoolteacher. She visited aged haunts and called good friends, hoping to restore her shattered memory. I was incredibly obsessive about remembering, she reported. Any memory reduction was to me a sign of abnormality or deficit.

Her therapists considered her development was fantastic, but her two sisters protested that she wasn't the deep thinker she had been.

What bothered her most was that she experienced dropped the ability to cry, just as if a faucet within her brain had been turned off. One particular evening, 9 months following she was harm, she stayed up late to observe the John Grisham Motion picture A Time to Eliminate. Just immediately after her father had long gone to mattress, she watched a courtroom scene of Samuel Jacksons character on trial for killing two Adult males who experienced raped his young daughter.

The faucet opened, along with the tears trickled down her cheeks. I thought about my mom and dad, my father, and the things they went by means of, she mentioned. Minimal by very little, my experience returned, my depth of mind returned.

Urged by her sisters, she went back to high school and acquired a masters diploma in new music education.

Not everything went effectively. She and Mr. Scherr break up up 5 years after the attack, though they remain good friends. She dated other Adult males, but she often informed them concerning the attack immediately — she could not support it, she explained — they usually under no circumstances called for a second date.

We've got to search out you anyone, her Good friend David Phelps, a guitar participant, said four many years ago, ahead of introducing her to Liam McCann, a computer technician and newbie drummer. For as soon as, she didn't say just about anything concerning the attack right up until she bought to learn Mr. McCann, after which you can when she did, he admired her energy.

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who had usually frequented her at her bedside when she was during the healthcare facility, married them in his Situations Square Business. She wore a blue dress and pearls. Whilst she was pregnant, inside a burst of creativeness, she and her pals recorded Even though Have been Youthful, an album of childrens tracks that she had created prior to the attack, including the song Transferring. Her ex-boyfriend, Mr. Scherr, developed the CD. On it, her spouse performs drums and he or she plays electrical piano.

Is her existence as it absolutely was? Not precisely, however she's reluctant to attribute the differences to her injuries. Her final two piano students remaining her, without contacting to explain why, she explained. She has resumed taking part in classical new music, but basic pieces, because her daughter won't give her the perfect time to apply. As for jazz, I dont even check out, she stated.

She wish to push much more, sensation stranded within the suburbs, but she is easily rattled. She tries to be information with keeping dwelling and caring for her daughter.

Dr. Ghajar, a clinical professor of neurological surgical treatment at exactly what is now termed Ny-Presbyterian Medical center/Weill Cornell Health-related Centre, who operated on Ms. Kevorkian McCann after the assault, reported previous week that her level of recovery was scarce. Shes essentially typical, he said.

Other industry experts, that are not Individually knowledgeable about Ms. Kevorkian McCanns case, are more careful.

Regaining a chance to Participate in the piano may perhaps require an Virtually mechanical procedure, a semiautomatic remember of what the fingers have to do, said Dr. Yehuda Ben-Yishay, a professor of scientific rehabilitation drugs at Big apple College College of Drugs. As soon as brain-hurt, you are often brain-injured, For the remainder of your life, Dr. Ben-Yishay reported. There isn't a get rid of, There is certainly only intense payment.

The greater telling Element of a Restoration, in his look at, is psychological, and on that score he counts Ms. Kevorkian McCanns relationship and youngster as a major victory.

For her aspect, the piano Instructor knows she has adjusted, but she has produced her peace with it. I had been type of a hyper —— I dont know if I used to be a kind A, but I used to be formidable, she states. Why was I so ambitious? I had been a piano Trainer. I dont know what the ambition was about. I actually did return to the person Im designed to be.