#also the show goes over what went wrong in this case and what regulations and laws have been changed and put in place since then

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

im rewatching disasters at sea because hi one of my special interests is shipwrecks, and i forgot that one of the episodes includes the phrase

high seas hit and run

[linkspooky]

How do you feel about Kotaro Shimura?

Sad, mostly? 

I think Kotaro should be called out for everything he did and held accountable as an abuser, but he’s also definitely a victim of abuse. This is just a personal opinion, but a lot of people will see Nana Shimura as a victim of circumstances but then not see Kotaro as a victim because physical abuse is seen as more of a problem then abandonment and neglect. That’s just an impression I get from watching fandom reactions in general. Even though, Nana is the one that created the circumstances that Kotaro is struggling through.

Kotaro is still a bad dad, but he also shows signs of carrying his scars of abandonment all the way until adulthood. If anything I would compare him to thirteen year old Toya, not because I think Toya is also an abuser, but they both show such extreme signs of neglect and abandonment. 

In all three cases, physical abuse, emotional abuse, neglect / abandonment, a child will not develop into an emotionally healthy adult, because a parent is responsible for a child’s physical and emotional development. Children cannot take care of themselves, raise themselves, or be expected to be reasonable, understanding, or act like miniature adults.

“Mommy has a good reason for abandoning you...” just doesn’t really cut it for them. 

So like, to vastly oversimplify. Why does Toya act the way he does? It’s because he feels like he has no parents. 

Toya’s unable to regulate his behavior (his emotions / his fire), because his parents never taught him to. His parents, did not do much actual parenting as a child. Kids have good or bad behaviors, but it’s the parents job to actually help them sort through it, and regulate their behaviors. 

Toya’s problem is that he had a dad and suddenly he didn’t. Enji went from focusing everything on Toya, to cutting off spending any time with him at all. It was such a dramatic change that Toya feels abandoned, but he doesn’t know why, and the idea that he internalizes is that he wans’t good enough. He wasn’t a good enough child, he keeps internalizing that idea and blaming himself for it. If he was a good enough child, his father’s love would have never gone away. However, Toya sees “being good enough” as “being a good enough hero” because that’s the idea Enji taught him. 

Toya has internalized this idea that he’s a bad child, that he’s a failure, and his way of fighting against this is continually trying to prove that he’s not by training to increase the strength of his quirk. 

However, the thing is.  Neither Enji nor Rei ever tried to correct the idea that Toya was a failure. Because, Toya was the scapegoat of the house.

If you were to parallel it to the Tenko household. The real reason the household was distressed was Kotaro, however, rather than anyone directly standing up to Kotaro who is creating the problem, who is the abuser in this situation, it’s easier to blame the victim. It’s Tenko’s behavior, that’s causing the abuse. If only Tenko did not provoke Kotaro that way, so everyone tries to silence Tenko, and he’s scapegoated as the cause of distress in the house because he’s... upset his father is constantly abusing him. 

The real problem in the house was Enji. Enji was the cause of the houise’s disruption.  Toya’s behavior actually doesn’t matter.

If Toya wasn’t reacting to the abuse then someone else would. It’s not because Toya had such a negative reaction to being neglected, it’s because Enji’s reasons for having kids wasn’t to take care of them and raise them to be fully developed people, but to have a tool to live vicariously through and carry on his legacy. 

Toya’s not wrong for reacting the way he did.  However, rather than directly confront the real cause of the family’s distress it’s much easier to just blame Toya for his behavior. Both parents insist it’s Toya’s fault, that Toya is too stubborn, that Toya’s the one who won’t give up on his dream therefore it’s his fault. 

Do I expect Rei to heroically stand up to Endeavor in this situation? No, not at all. Endeavor had the power here, and she was a victim too. However, at the same time it alseo means that Toya just didn’t have any parents. Self-harming behavior that would have been corrected by actual parenting, just, wasn’t. It is actually lowkey horrifying that Toya was neglected to this point, idk to me it’s like letting a kid starve to death when they keep crying how hungry they are. Then going, well, why didn’t he feed himself? 

Anyway, I went so long on this tangent because I wanted to show how deep the scars of abandonment can run. Toya interanlized that it was his fault that he was abandoned, that he was to blame, and his parents words said otherwise, but their actions showed it. By refusing to deal with him, and labeling him as the problem child in the household, they basically just made Toya feel that he was somehow, doing something wrong, that he was the one making their love go away. That’s how a child would understand it, because a child can’t reason through things like an adult would. All Toya sees are his own feelings, his need for attention, his feelings of abandonment. 

So, going back to Kotaro.

He had a mom, and then suddenly he didn’t. He had the unconditional love and support a child needs, and then it was just taken away. 

There is no way that Kotaro can understand his mother’s feelings or reasons for abandoning him, nor should he be expected to. Just like when Toya was thirteen all he understood was the abadnonment he felt. If Toya can carry these feelings well into adulthood, then so logicaly, can Kotaro. These scars don’t go away easily. Yes, Kotaro had the option of seeking out professional help, but the fact that he didn’t seek treatment doesn’t mean he was never abused in the first place, and it certainly doesn’t mean he was more responsible for his abuse than his mother was. 

Kotaro, just like Toya internalized the feelings that he was the fault he was being abandoned. He just wasn’t good enough of a child, for his mother to stick around and fight for him. His mother was a good hero to everyone else, but a bad mother to him. I don’t think any reasoning justifies that or explains that away, because the decision to bring a child into the world is something the adults are wholly responsible for. Kotaro didn’t ask to be born, that’s something his mother chose, she chose to became a mother, and then she equally chose not to raise him. Kotaro acts that way, because he, like Toya, just did not have parents. 

There’s a reason Shigaraki and Dabi’s stories are so closely linked, like, being a good hero doesn’t change what Nana did to Kotaro, and what Enji did to Toya. The problem was Enji chose his job, he chose being a hero, he chose wanting to have a son to fulfill his heroic legacy over and over again rather than simply showing up and fulfilling his responsibility towards his family. Enji is obviously, much worse than Nana, but they both failed to parent a child in a very basic way. I don’t think there is a good excuse for abandoning a child to that extent, and there’s no reason to justify it, so both Toya and Kotaro were right for feeling completely abandoned by their parents. They were never their parents top priority. 

Of course Kotaro goes on to repeat that abuse which is what makes him a more complicated character. Kotaro wasn’t raised as a healthy child, so as an adult he can’t regulate his own feelings over the past. His wounds are still there and he’s poorly coping.

Effectively, he does the same thing his mother did. He blamed Tenko. He made Tenko feel like he was the problem. Kotaro feels like he’s the reason his mother abandoned him, he simply was not good enough. Kotaro made it so Tenko felt like he was the reason his household was destroyed, it was because he was not a good enough child. Kotaro’s actions are probably because he’s internalzied the idea that he was worthless, and someone who deserved to be abandoned but his worst impact on the world was repeating that same action and making Tenko feel that way as well.

That he was someone who didn’t deserve to be saved. Because he was such a bad kid, always making his family suffer like that.  And that’s wat I find so sad. 

[transsexualhamlet]

asmr i psychoanalyze my favorite war criminal, aka calling out norman the essay

basically all of my thoughts on norman on one callout post because i care him (both manga and anime are discussed)

LINK TO RAY PSYCHOANALYSIS:  https://chaoticgaymess.tumblr.com/post/646749875570196480/ray-81194-the-long-explanation 

this is going to be ungodly long so here’s a keep reading, essay below the cut

((tw for suicidal ideation and self harm, brief discussion of eating disorders))

Disclaimer: no shipping is included here this is just about norman also they’re kids who call each other siblings

Thoughts: So you may be thinking, Rowan, why do you yell about the colorless war criminal so often? Well the answer lies in your honor the court hates to see a girlboss winning. Norman is a girlboss :) Yes norman is a tiny twink who can't lift a milk jug. And he is a girlboss :) Obviously I don't condone, um, eugenics and all, but that's not the point the point is that he satisfies my need for more characters like Levi motherfucking Calder from Unwind because I’m apparently an edgy 13 year old. Also all of his problems are violently things I can fix and I keep him around as a pet project because someone needs to give him a hug and slap him on the face

I diagnose him with things: 

-pisces man :pensive:

-is he albino? Not literally. Is his skin so pale he would catch fire if he went outside at noon? Yes.

-autism: Yes I’m aware that calling him autistic makes him, problematic rep by perpetuating the autism unfeeling savant stereotype whatever but have you considered i’m autistic and I’m projecting also he’s L with standards? Anyway traits of AuTism he has: hyper   fixation, canonically breaks and fixes things over and over because like ofc he does, doesn’t understand Emotion, hyperaware of body language at the same time as it all somehow flying over his head, low empathy, sensory experiences™, min maxed in certain areas, and I don’t think he’s got social interaction quite right? There’s something off about it

-gifted kid (derogatory) This is self explanatory but basically him being the smartest and the best in a competitive environment caused most of his issues, such as the perfectionism, the need to succeed, the lack of self esteem and ridiculously high expectations on himself, giving himself no breaks or time to relax, the “i must be productive with every second of my day or i will die” deal, the “peaked at 11” thing, the way in which he goes through life like there’s going to be a fucking test on it

-Eldest Daughter™ lmao. Norman’s always had to be mature, he’s always had to be the best, he’s always had to do the things Ray got out of bc he’s a snitch and Emma got out of because Isabella likes her. Norman gets respect from Isabella only if he excels, and her bar for him is astronomical. He doesn’t have the Mommy Issues that Ray has, but it’s because for him Isabella basically just reflected his expectations on himself, whereas with Ray it was more personal.

-low empathy (part of the autism thing): this one needs more explanation, but it’s not a bad thing in and of itself. Cognitive empathy is a thing and he can use it, but he does not instinctively understand other people’s emotions, or even recognize them properly, especially when the person is not like himself. This is obvious in Emma. Man has no fucking clue what’s going on in her head or why she does what she does, but he can predict what she will do in any given situation very well. He could understand the suicide attempt from ray he predicted more because Ray’s an easier equation to solve, and someone who’s more similar to him. I know he gets it because, well, motherfucker’s just as self desctructive as him, just in a more dignified manner.

-he’s got some sort of chronic illness. This is also me projecting and a headcanon but he’s got something going on, even before lambda pumped him full of growth hormones or whatever which they maybe should have Not Done but oh well. (I assume this just didn’t happen in the anime, since he’s still so fucking short) But he's So weak. He passed out when it was too hot. He passed out when it was too cold. He can’t open a pickle jar. His skin is too pale and he’s skinny af. He’s much more prone to sickness and probably has asthma too? But in the case that he did actually have something going on, I don’t think grace field would see the need to treat it, if it didn’t impact the quality of his meat? Isabella’s probably just “you have chronic pain and you get migraines? Great, take some tylenol and do some calculus.” Can’t say that probably helped anything.

personality type: ISTJ

Basically, he’s the most boring personality type to exist, and personally as an enfp i do not respect him. But basically this means he’s a fucking nerd that gets his projects done for school the day they’re assigned, is probably the president of the Anime Student Council™, and could probably get away with premeditated murder (ok actual istjs this is a joke don’t skin me)

The only trait that norman doesn’t have on the istj thing is telling the truth. Yeah, he values the truth, but like, that doesn’t apply to him, clearly. Bitch is a notorious liar.

The only other personality type he has any similarity with is intj, which is the same except it’s more rare and a purple theme instead of a blue theme. Sadly, that’s not him though, because although he can care more about some kinds of philosophy overall this isn’t the case and ray already occupies this personality type tbh. 

strengths and weaknesses: This one’s kind of obvious, but he is aside from the crazy insane intelligence good at planning. Extremely good at planning. He can predict any outcome and figure out how to prevent it, using all his resources. For example he’s physically weak and someone could literally just walk up and stab him, but it doesn’t impede his progress on his goals because he’s surrounded himself with strong, mentally inferior people who would die for him in a heartbeat. He never gets stuck in some “everything is shit and i can’t do anything” deal like Emma and Ray do, he always works through it and has confidence in his abilities (in as much as he will solve the problem or die™. Weaknesses other than his twink body include his Low Wisdom score. It’s funny how he’s often associated with an owl, the mans is 14. He thinks he knows what he’s doing. He doesn’t. Plus obviously his fundamental misunderstanding of so much of everything going on around him, the fact that he lies not just to the world but himself, his refusal to take care of himself and his incredible cowardice. His achilles heel is being forced to, actually confront his actions.

what he likes about himself: He does pride himself on his mental abilities, and his judgement, which in his opinion is the only correct opinion and the only correct way. In the past, he likes being seen as a leader, he likes being responsible for other people. He likes his ability to manipulate and lie, because he sees it as an asset, and I honestly think he enjoys being william minerva more than he enjoys being Norman. He prides himself on his unhealthy expectations and the fact that he is able to meet them. Honestly, he does think he’s better than everyone else, mentally, though it’s humbled by his self hatred. Cursed thought: If Norman had self esteem he would be light yagami. 

what he doesn’t like about himself/insecurities: Oh god, nearly everything. His appearance, his status, his superiority, his physical inability, his own mess of a mind, also have I mentioned his appearance. He’s obsessed with self control. He wants everything he sees wrong with himself gone. And I understand why having control of everything is necessary and appealing, everything for him has always been rigid and planned out from moment one, he was even more regulated in lambda, and though he desperately wants to Not Be Food, he has no idea what to do with the chains now that he’s broken out of them. So he just wraps them around himself. Regulates to an unhealthy degree when he sleeps, what he eats, when he actually takes even minimal care of his own problems, what he looks like, how much of himself he lets show, the expressions on his face, the literal thoughts inside his own head he will shut down if they are not Correct. It’s literal self harm. Norman, please stop it.

motivations/goals in life/general philosophy: To be honest, I’m not sure he knows what he wants. He sure thinks he does, he could sure give you a memorized answer, but it means nothing. He wants to excel. He wants Emma to be happy. He wants to be perfect and for that to make everything perfect. But he doesn’t realize everything he’s working towards will do pretty much the opposite of that. He’s a crippling perfectionist, and pretty much everything he does is motivated by his fear of failing. He picks the certain path, he doesn’t wait for anyone else, he doesn’t care if it’s not nice. Emma foils that a most of the time because he cares about her, but it can only go so far, especially after he’s had so much time without her to develop a Complex. His philosophy is very contradictory, basically the tokyo ghoul “everything bad that happens to you stems from a lack of ability”. All of his problems are his fault. All the world’s problems are his to fix. If he can’t fix them, it’s his fault, it’s because he wasn’t strong enough, and not being perfect condemns someone forever, including himself.

how he’s perceived by others vs how he actually is: In most people there wouldn’t truly be much of a difference, but with Norman things are different, because, well, most of his personality in grace field is a put on, as well as the tough guy dictator thing he radiates after lambda. How he appears to someone is determined by the context of their meeting- the kids at grace field see him as a nerdy, weakish, pretty boring kid who is really caring and kind. The researchers at lambda see an obedient, beaten down and perfectionistic boy. The lambda kids see him as an infallible leader, ruthless and genius, a good man who knows what’s right. But in truth none of that is him. It’s a fucking chess game to him, putting on different faces, lying and pretending and treating everyone differently. In truth? He’s a fucking coward. He’s scared out of his mind and he’s tired and he can’t take pain, he’s obsessed with reaching some goal he deems is necessary that in the end is going to be his death because he doesn’t want to face the consequences of his actions. He’s taken on the role of someone evil, though deep down he’s not, he feels it’s easier to live that way because it strips him of his conscience. 

interpersonal relationships: In general, Norman sees all relationships in a pretty dim light. He sees everyone as black and white, for the most part, and other people make no sense to him intuitively, he has to figure them out like a puzzle. He’s manipulative and not particularly kind, but he follows all societal expectations to a T, overly focused on his appearance and placing the person he’s interacting with into a Category™. So he can be truly kind, to people he feels deserve it, to people who he values and doesn’t see flaws in. He gets incredibly attached to people he loves, protective, though he often doesn’t take their own feelings on the matter into consideration, and he’s ruthless with anyone who he deems a bad person. With people he understands and relates to, though, things can be different. If he sees someone as like himself, he will drop all the social interaction police bullshit and cut to the chase of whatever he wants or needs from them, and he’s not very forgiving in any manner, if he thinks what someone did is actually bad.

Emma: Norman obviously cares a lot about Emma, and honestly views her as better than anyone else. He realizes her moral integrity and all of the things she has and he doesn’t, and admires it. Because of his black and white view, Emma is like an angel to him. She couldn’t do anything wrong if she tried. But he comes to treat her as something to be protected instead of respected, and although he realizes she wouldn’t like what he’s doing, he fundamentally cannot empathize with her and doesn’t try to understand her. Their personalities are very literally opposite. Norman really needs to fucking listen to her. And Emma needs to understand that Norman doesn’t have a single ounce of empathy and you really do need to spell it out for him. Emma can only convince him when she has logical reasons for her actions, which she, doesn’t often have. And Emma gave Norman too much slack, because she didn’t see past the surface, and Ray never wanted to warn her, even though he knew the dude was showing a bunch of red flags, because you know. It was kind of an unspoken deal between them. (on ray’s part)

Ray: His relationship with Ray is a lot more complicated than with Emma. He understands Ray, where he doesn’t understand Emma, and he can see right through anything Ray does. And this makes things really tense between them, because Ray doesn’t, take kindly to being psychoanalyzed. If someone perceives him he will deck them and Norman is just there silently perceiving him at all times when Emma doesn’t see it. They are both constantly in competition with each other, but they care about each other a lot, though it’s kind of in a derogatory way. They both recognize each other as fundamentally fucked up, and silently agree never to bring it up with Emma. They’re nice to each other when she’s around, but all pretenses disappear when she’s gone. Ray is always frustrated with Norman, because Norman’s never been intimidated by him, and though he tries his best not to be vulnerable around him, Norman can always see through it, whereas Ray can’t crack Norman’s fake fucking smile no matter what he does. Norman will always take Emma’s side, and doesn’t see Ray as a good person at all, but he still understands and can excuse him, he takes measures to be… worse than Ray, which is better in his mind, because it’s rational, and ‘not selfish’.

Isabella: She has always had ridiculously high expectations for Norman, and treats him kind of harshly compared to the others. Bitch has heat stroke and Isabella’s first question is a calculus problem instead of like, “are you ok”. She knows he doesn’t complain about anything ever and she doesn’t stop him from being Terrible to himself, because it makes her job easier. They want smart kids, not mentally adjusted kids. She does really care for all of them, but she basically overrides it, she gives them what they want, not what they need, lets them be exactly what they’re making themselves. Isabella is distant with Ray but gives him anything he wants, she’s close and super nice with Emma, but Norman is… it’s weird. Isabella is proud of him because he meets her astronomically high bar. But at the same time, Norman never really cared for her that much and has never pretended to. Once they discover The Thing, though, he has a revelation, and it doesn’t take him long to switch his entire perspective about her. He’s pretty much like. Oh. She’s like me. That explains it, time to treat her like I treat myself: fucking brutally. Passive aggressive as hell. The kind of energy the :) emoticon at the end of an email gives. He does like just go “yeah we should kill her” at one point, which. You know, ok. When he got shipped out it was hhhh really interesting because Isabella knew full well he knew he was walking to his death and Norman was like “are you Truly Happy?” and just went :) and she was like h u h and tried to get him to talk while they were walking there because she feels Bad about it and he just. Did not. He didn’t say a single word just kind of smiled menacingly at her and I think it was half a sort of rebellion and half because he viewed her as similar to himself and therefore felt no need to put up any front with her, no words were necessary for him to impart exactly how he felt about it

Lambda kids: His relationship with the lambda kids is weird and bittersweet. I think he really truly does care about them, they were in a similar situation to his and he wants them to get what they want. However it is not a healthy or beneficial relationship, they see him as a god and don’t realize that he’s killing himself to give them what they want, he’s basically adopted them when out of anyone norman’s the one that should least be in charge of kids. I think he’s honestly younger than them but I’m not sure if they even know. He acts like their fucking mom, and that’s from what he thinks mothers are like… like isabella?? Giving them what they want, not what they need, lying to them, showing a front, caring deeply for them but at the same time using them for his own ends. And it’s not helpful for him. He thinks he knows what they need, but what he’s doing is what they want. What they need is therapy,(and so does norman), and he doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with using them as weapons because they love him. It makes him feel good, to be seen as perfect, to have people who don’t know how weak he really is. But it’s only making him worse, and he’s enabling everything the lambda kids are doing wrong as well. They need like, Yuugo and Lucas. Some actual adults who are actually wise and have the ability and the knowledge to take care of them and understand their mental problems and maybe actually address them. And actually be nice to them. But um sadly. 

what he’s doing wrong: It’s pretty obvious, but… Norman, you maybe *shouldn’t* commit genocide? You’re not helping emma, you’re not making anything better. You’re not helping the lambda kids, you’re enabling them. You’re not helping your friends from grace field, you’re ignoring what they want. You’re not helping the world, you’re eradicating an entire race from the face of the earth and murdering the poor for the crimes of the fucking 1%. You’re not being a martyr, you’re a selfish piece of shit liar you little coward, you just want an easy way out and you want to die on your bloody fucking hill instead of admitting you’re wrong. Grow up, cringe little man.

why he went wrong: I think most of the reason this happened was the way he was raised combined with the kind of person he is. Norman would have turned out fine, if there has been good adults in his life who actually cared about his well being. Instead he got people who just wanted to control him and make him what they needed, and family who largely didn’t realize there was anything wrong. Ray being an ass to him most of forever probably didn’t help but well, that’s just Ray. Even then, he would have managed alright if he escaped with the rest of the kids because he would never have been separated from the experiences that caused the rest of them to realize demons weren’t all evil. In lambda he didn’t have anyone supporting him or telling him when things went too far, so he fell into relying on himself alone, pushing himself further with absolutely no limits. All he saw was enemies and allies, and things got stratified. He never had a lucas or a yuugo or mujika when he would have needed it, instead he found children who wanted him to be in charge and a world that made it so he had to be. Everything was an echo chamber for his worst thoughts, so they just became more and more dominant.

what he needs: To put it simply, he needs Emma and Ray to cut to the chase and slap him across the face and make him take care of himself. He needs to be forced to see everything for what it really is- this edgy 14 year old committing atrocities to feel better about himself? He needs to be told that what he’s doing is irrational, because in reality, it is. There are better solutions that he’s ignoring, both to his own suffering and the demons, and the way he’s going now no one will truly be happy because of it, that there is no requirement that things be perfect and this bullshit doesn’t make him stronger. He needs someone responsible to take the fucking dagger out of his hands. He also needs someone to babysit him and make him go to bed at a reasonable time.

i describe his personality through songs on my spotify playlist for him:

-outrunning karma by alec benjamin: this one super applies because it calls him out for making shitty decisions, being manipulative and a liar, and having blood on his hands in a very calm and subdued manner, that he knows this is wrong and yet he chooses to keep running faster and faster towards destruction, that he means to escape it through death

-empty by boyinaband and jaiden: yes this is a song about anorexia yes it also applies to norman i’m not saying norman literally has an eating disorder (but honestly it wouldn’t be far out of character if he did) but metaphorically this applies to his method of ignoring his needs, both emotional and physical, in favor of seeming in control 

-toxic thoughts by faith marie: this one speaks to his gifted kid trauma. Man’s got perfectionism running his entire soul. He’s terrified of failing, because he’s always been at the very top, he’ll beat himself up over any miniscule mistake and forces himself to keep at bad habits that keep him Productive, but he won’t ask for help no matter how much he’s suffering because that would be failing, he fights with his mind, this song basically tells him “yeah i feel you but you need to stop that”

-no time to die by billie eilish: ignore the romantic overtones but this is emma and norman, emma who trusted norman and was lied to, betrayed, for norman’s greater good, and norman who refuses to feel or hurt because of it, who refuses to apologize or see himself as wrong, pushes forward because he’s going to Pass Away

-achilles come down by gang of youths: hhhhh it's like. His vibe. Obviously you can disregard the lifestyle specific shit but it's. It's achilles come down you have to understand it’s like the same deal as friend, please just like french and longer

-friend, please by 21 pilots: i feel like i don't have to explain this one but it’s more to the manga (not the anime where he kind of figures out he done did wrong by himself instead of committing unforgivable sins and still going yeah this is valid before emma is like holy fuck). He is like sorry emma I cannot fix anything I’m going to die :) *coughs blood* and emma going like stop it stop it stop it fuck you see you fucked up and i forgive you just stop don’t walk away while he’s like “no<3”

why im a repressed little norman kinnie even tho he’s my exact opposite: I don’t generally kin ppl like norman, honestly he’s an infj I have no clue how it happened but I’m pretty sure it’s because of my intense desire to project onto a little man who cannot lift a milk jug and has chronic pain and decides you know what I AM tired of being nice i DO wanna go apeshit. Also he’s a twink. A little bastard. He’s a terrible person and I go mood every time he does anything. I said mood when he fell out of a tree. Don’t know what this says about me, I swear I wouldn’t commit no genocide. He’s like the inverse of Yoichi Saotome, and somehow i kin him too. Damn.

Miscellaneous headcanons:

-man’s SO attached to his william minerva cloak. He’s a wispy little bitch, you know he’s wearing that thing inside the house, he’s fucking cold. It also makes him Look Important he can retreat into it like an emo middle schooler with an oversized sweatshirt

-although you could probably get Mad street cred from having two whole brands you know he’s not gonna whip it out and show off his lambda thing he’s incredibly self conscious and his chest hasn’t seen the sun in years

-norman’s got MAD laundry skills to be able to wear like, all white all the time while constantly murdering people. I think he’s the only one who knows to do the laundry. And Ray is the only one who knows how to cook.

-but even then there’s gotta still be a few questionable stains on that thing, but if anyone asks he’s like “ketchup” “I’ve literally never seen you eat anything with that much color” “ketchup :)” *coughs blood*

-he’s probably thought “well i have not literally coughed blood yet today so I am not legally obligated to take care of myself”

-He probably adopted much of his current personality from taking on the persona of william minerva. I’m calling him out for being like me, he’s a blank motherfucker, he absorbs personality traits from characters he plays! He’s just not in theatre so it’s a bit more intense!

-the first time he sees barbara Eating Demon Meat he kinda stares and goes oh cool! not for me and violently exits the room. Like it's hilarious bc he thinks that's really gross on a moral level though he understands why she would do it 

-Which is even funnier bc I’m not sure about the canon on this but there was That Chapter Cover that one time that kinda seemed to imply norman eating demon meat which i absolutely latched onto because I’m terrible. He was just politely eating it. With a knife and fork like why dude. As to a possible reason for him doing that I can come up with, of course barbara does it out of spite, but man we don’t know the properties, if it had some sort of painkilling aspect to it or it was like, caffeine, you know he would, but he would Definitely not talk about it

-I kinda disagree with what the anime did in episode eight? It was good I liked it and the imagery was fantastic but also have you considered Norman could not kill someone with his own hands if he tried, or even physically injure them? That’s what his minions are for shawty. That doesn’t make it any less bad, of course, but the manga captured it perfectly by the fact of he carries around a dagger and a scepter in the capitol battle, but he never even raises it out of more than intimidation. He walks through calmly like he’s not scared at all but he makes sure all the lambda kids do all the actual murder, he just stands there impartially, clearly The Mastermind, as the kids fucking murder the queen of the demons. And I think that’s more profound because he’s, a coward. And he doesn’t realize being the one who orders the strike makes you just as responsible as the one who sticks the knife in someone. The knife is just there to Compensate™  for the fact that he weighs like eighty pounds.

-he’s more of like lady macbeth (because he’s a girlboss) than macbeth himself. He has blood on his hands, but it’s the kind of blood that you can’t wash off. He never killed anyone himself, and he cannot admit he never would have been able to.

-the last thing is that there are definitely epic things about the anime, episode 8 was my favorite so far, goddamn that imagery and the bitch walking through the city while it burns down with the screaming asmr going on behind him my god. We stan. But like the downside of, letting Emma and Ray get to him before he commits first degree murder makes the whole thing lose a lot of his value. In the manga (oh my god look at me being a pretentious manga fan please) it fit more of his ideas- he never backed down, and he planned for Emma coming and trying to stop him. Of course he wanted Emma to stop him, he wanted it with all his fucking heart he was pleading for it to happen but the man wouldn’t give himself what he wanted if he was held at gunpoint. He knew she’d come and he made absolutely sure she wouldn’t be able to stop him. So when she came and he said “you’re too late”??? It kind of said it all, in the fact that he was disappointed that he got his way. He still thought he did the right thing, but deep down there where he shoved all his thoughts and feelings he desperately wanted to be saved from himself.

So yeah, those are my thoughts. Feel free to eviscerate me if these are not Correct he is just my favorite girlboss who I feel the need to yell at

[thiswasinevitableid]

For the meet ugly prompts, 02 indruck?

Here you go! I went SFW on this one and interpreted the prompt kind of broadly. It's set in the same world as this Sternclay prompt

Fun fact: there is a fire lookout in the Monogahela, but the structure I describe is based on more elaborate ones elsewhere

02. I bought a house three months ago but I’m finally moving in and discover you’ve been squatting because you’re homeless

Only in Duck’s life would “dream job” and “months alone in the woods” be equivalent.

The Bickle Nob Fire Lookout is a coveted position, and Duck is pretty fucking flattered they chose him as the ranger for July and August. He took the high clearance off-roader to get here, he’s got his bags full of everything he needs not to die of boredom (or anything else) and his schedule of supply drops. He’s as ready as can be and so fucking excited when he opens the door of the wide-windowed cabin.

Then he jumps back, startled to find a skinny, silver-haired man asleep on the floor.

“Uh, sir? This site is off-limits to visitors.”

The man wakes up in a series of catastrophic movements; he bangs into the wall, tangles in his blanket, and nearly stumbles out the window when he manages to stand.

“I, I’m sorry, I didn’t foresee anyone coming here.”

“Department spent all of June arguin’ about whether it was worth allocatin funds for this, so that’s why the place was empty. Fire up North two weeks ago scared ‘em enough to send me up here.” Duck explains with a casual smile; after all, even if he’s way off the trail, there’s no reason to assume this guy is out to cause trouble, “if you got lost hikin, I’m happy to radio down and ask for someone to come get you and take you back to your camp.”

“Nono, I, ah, I’m not lost. One needs to have a destination to be lost.”

“O-kay. Uh, well, whatever you’re lookin for, I’m afraid this ain’t it. This buildin is for the fire lookout only.”

“I promise I’ll be very unobtrusive. I even have my own supplies, you won’t have to worry about me in the slightest.” The man smiles,opening one of his two bags to show it crammed with shiny packets of food.

Duck shakes his head, “Can’t do it, sorry. I’m serious though, if you need a ride into town I can get a hold of someone who can help. Maybe, uh, you could find whatever you’re lookin for there?”

“No” the man sags, but begins zipping up his bags, “I do not think I will find it there. I am sorry for intruding.” He steps out the door, turning towards the deeper woods on the western slope.

“You need a map?” Duck calls. The man doesn’t so much as look over his shoulder.

Duck unpacks as much as he can, checks the weather station and notes the readings suggest those thunderheads on the far horizon are coming his way. By dinnertime, they’re right on top of him, rain pattering on the roof and thunder rattling the windows. He’s scanning the trees when he spots a metallic flash, not of lightning but of silver hair. His mystery visitor is huddled under a tree, wind forcing the hood of his raincoat back over and over again.

The rules and regulations in the forest are there to keep the environment and visitors safe. If something doesn’t violate those basic requirements, Duck sees no reason not to bend them.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

“I really cannot stress how grateful I am that you allowed me back in.” The visitor, who introduced himself as Indrid, finishes packing their scant trash into the can, “I promise that as soon as the storm passes I’ll leave you be.”

“Yeah, about that.” Duck scratches the back of his neck, “you really don’t got anywhere to call home, do you?”

Indrid opens his mouth. Duck stares, pointedly, at the holes in his white shirt and the worn shoes sticking out from frayed jeans.

“....No, I do not.”

“In that case, you stay here the next two months, on two conditions: one, you don’t get in the way of me doin what I’m here to do. Two, you don’t tell anyone I let you do this. Deal?”

“Yes, yes absolutely” Indrid shakes his hand, bouncing up and down a bit, “thank you so much. You will barely know I’m here.”

This turns out to be completely true and utterly false.

Indrid does keep to himself most of the day; he draws, reads, lays in the sun outside the cabin and generally stays out of Ducks way while he’s working. But he’s also the person who sits and jokes with him during meals, who eagerly follows Duck’s hand when he points out interesting birds or plants, and watches intently when Duck reads his instruments.

He never thought he could live in a fifteen by fifteen foot space with another person and not have a full head of grey by the end of it. Indrid Cold is the exception that proves the rule, Duck certain he’ll never be able to be cooped up with anyone but Indrid ever again.

It helps that he still gets his quiet time; Indrid will got out for walks, even watches for smoke so Duck can do the same. They use the wild foraging guide and Duck’s knowledge of local plants to bring back extra food. Indrid was particularly pleased when he located some wild blackberries. When Duck reminded him to watch out for bears near the berry patch, Indrid simply smirked and said there was only one bear on the mountain who could get him.

Duck’s daydreaming of what Indrid might do if caught on his way back from a dusk walk. And, more urgently, how he can convince Indrid that he wants to sleep outside tomorrow night. So it takes two tries of the front door before he notices it’s locked.

“Indrid?” he knocks, “you in there?” Stepping back, he finds the windows hastily covered by his bedsheets and blankets. He knocks harder, “that’s real fuckin dangerous, if there’s a fire we won’t see it. ‘Drid! Open the damn door!”

He continues banging, unanswered, as the moon--two days from full--rises above.

--------------------------------------

Indrid covers his ears to block out Duck’s increasingly worried shouts from outside. This is the right choice, the best of a bad bunch; it will keep Duck and anyone else nearby safe. The ranger will probably turn him away come morning, rightly furious at his irrationality. Indrid resolves not to argue with him; he’ll slink back into the trees, just like he did the last time someone threw him out for his transgressions.

It starts in his chest, his heartbeat climbing to marathon speeds in spite of him holding still. Then his skin prickles, silver hair sprouting from every follicle, followed by his back bowing in pain and his jaw elongating with a crack. From there the adrenaline kicks in, flooding his body so the transformation doesn’t render him unconscious (and therefore helpless) with pain. When next he raises his head, a werewolf with glowing, red eyes looks back at him from the darkened windows.

Beyond the covered windows, someone howls. Then he scents it, another of his kind coming dangerously close. He has to go out, he can’t leave Duck out there with something that will rip him apart, surely he likes the human enough for his mind to see him as a friend, not prey-

CRACK

The door splinters off its hinges; he growls, ready to defend his home. A deeper growl answers him as a larger wolf, black-furred and yellow eyed, stalks across the threshold.

“What. the. Fuck?” the newcomer snaps, “I told you, you can only stay if you don’t fuck up my work and locking me out comes real fuckin close to that!”

He cocks his head “Duck?”

“No, I’m the fuckin president of the united states.”

“I, I’m so sorry.” Indrid drops to all fours, then flattens to his belly just to be safe, “I didn’t know, I just wanted to be sure I wouldn’t hurt you.”

Duck points to the broken door, “you coulda just done that from the opposite side and I woulda been dinner.”

“No I, I know that if I confine myself I tend to be...calmer. I don’t get overstimulated and then agitated.”

“You coulda just told me. Lockin me out is real rude.”

Indrid whines, crawls close enough to nose at him.

“You don’t gotta do that; I ain't assertin dominance or some shit, I’m just a little annoyed.”

He whines again, “please don’t make me leave.”

“I won’t.” Duck’s voice turns softer.

“And you will not get angry at me for not being appropriately grateful for your leniency?”

Duck frowns, “Aw jesus, did you come from one of those old-school packs?

“Yes” Indrid grumbles, hating himself for how easily he fell into manners he loathes, how deep the teachings of his home run.

Duck eases him up so they’re both sitting, then noses the side of his face, “We don't do that around here. Least, I don't. I don’t spend a ton of time with most of the other Weres when they’re wolfed-out, but they ain’t big on tradition and hierarchy the rest of the time.”

“Ah. That’s, that’s good.”

The other Were stretches, stands and pads about the room, removing the make-shift curtains, “You gotta teach me how you’re so fuckin accurate on when the moon is full enough to make us shift whether or not we want to; I thought I had a day left. I, uh, I was gonna ask you to sleep in here while I ‘slept under the stars’ so you wouldn’t know.”

“You’re not afraid of hurting someone?”

“Nah, especially not this far out. Sometimes I hunt deer, but whatever strain of this I got doesn’t go feral unless some shit goes majorly wrong.” He drops the blankets on the floor, “don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like huntin tonight. Or stargazin. I’m beat from work.”

“Agreed. Transforming against my will always makes me tired.”

Duck lays down on the floor,yawns, “In that case: sleep tight ‘Drid.”

Indrid tries to do just that. But every time he catches Duck’s scent he wishes he could move closer to him, then remembers that would be rude, and continues in that back and forth until he’s wide awake. It doesn’t help that his Were form runs cold; he’s shivering in spite of it still being close to eighty degrees.

His ears flick at Duck’s footfalls. Then a warm, bulky frame curls around his freezing, lanky one.

“This okay?” Duck carefully drapes an arm over him.

Indrid sighs, feeling safer than he has in a year, “better than.”

---------------------------------------------------------

“I’m a seer.”

Duck looks up from his breakfast, mouth full but question clear.

“Last night, you asked me how I knew we’d transform. Seeing the future makes it rather easy.”

“Damn, that does sound handy.”

“In many ways it is. Though it carries some, ah, some downsides.” Indrid steers his thoughts towards safer paths, “If you’d like, I could use it to help you with the fire lookout.”

The ranger grins, the expression twice as warm as his fur the night before, “That’d be fuckin great.”

Indrid smiles back, keeps his eyes on the windows so as not to look longingly back at the rumpled sheets. They awoke this morning in a heap, Duck’s modesty preserved only by a blanket and Indrid’s hair stuck in all directions. He’d been ready to apologize for not moving away before dawn, but Duck simply reached out, stroked his hair down, and asked if he wanted coffee.

-------------------------------------------------

“You’re right, you can see more animals this way.” They’re perched, fully transformed, on the rocks outside the cabin. Indrid knows how to use his night vision for hunting, but Duck is teaching him how to use it for more peaceful matters.

“Yeah, long as you stay put most animals get up the nerve to nose around some.”

They’d transformed side by side, Duck banging his head in the process. Indrid licked near the bruise and made soothing, sympathetic sounds when Duck whined and cursed his luck. Back home, being demonstrative was frowned upon; here, Duck seems to always be casually bumping their bodies together.

When they go to bed several hours after moonrise, they curl up side by side without hesitation. It’s so very easy to tune out his visions when Duck is near and Indrid falls asleep while the ranger is still whispering about the birds they can hear.

He wakes up an hour later in a panic, disasters of visions past tearing through his mind.

“‘Drid? What’s wrong?” Duck noses the base of his neck.

“Nothing. Just a bad dream.” He closes his eyes, tries to focus on Duck’s scent, his breath, the wind in the trees, but still the ghosts of his memories lurk in the corners of his vision.

“Can I try somethin?” Duck murmurs. Indrid thought he’d gone back to sleep.

“Of course.”

Teeth tenderly and ever so carefully clamp the fur and skin of his neck. He goes limp in one breath. He was high status enough that no one ever did this to him, but goodness does he wish they had

The ranger let’s go, “Do I need to do it again?”

“Please.”

Duck obliges and Indrid whimpers, melting shamelessly in his arms.

“Thank you. I think I can sleep now.”

“Any time, ‘Drid. Uh, before you, uh, go to sleep there’s somethin I wanna ask you. Since you need a place to stay, do you, uh, wanna stay with me? In Kepler.”

“You’d really like that? You, if this is out of pity-”

“It ain’t.”

There were no futures where it was. Indrid wanted to hear the words all the same.

“Besides” Duck nuzzles him, “we already know we make damn good roommates.”

Indrid can’t help it; he howls, brief and joyful, safe in the knowledge that Duck will be ready with a laugh and a kiss in reply.

[autisticzukka]

do you have any headcanons about autistic Zuko? Whether that be modern au or canon doesn't matter. What are his stims, special interests, etc?

AHHH i wasnt notified this was sent thank you for so much for sending something in!!! I wouldn’t say I have specific headcanons about autistic!Zuko because... I literally never write him any other way. But here’s a number of headcanons anyways.

+ Stims: I REALLY REALLY like using the fire meditation for a stim with Zuko, where it goes up and down with his breath, you know? it sounds like the bender equivalent of rocking, tbh. I especially like having him just... poof up a little flame and hold it in his hands, especially when talking about hard subjects. Other stims I like are rolling himself up in a blanket or nearby sheet or something for Pressure TM, and jumping off of and onto things. When stressed, yeet yourself out the nearest window and parkour away from your emotions. This is a motto Zuko lives by. I also like making him pick at the threads on stuff and chew on bits of his mouth.  

+ Special interests: as far as canon, I would say dao and gymnastics. for headcanons i really like embroidery, actually? I like the idea that when he was little he had a lot of trouble with fire regulation and with dexterity, and so Ursa just included him on her embroidery to help him train those up. If you fuck up too badly, you stab yourself. If you get too angry you fucked up, you set the cloth or the thread on fire. But it’s incredibly low stakes, and something he can do while feeling calm beside her. Also: it’s practical for someone who’s likely going to be a career soldier, but not necessarily something he’d be taught in formal classes.  

+ if it’s a modern AU i refuse to believe that Zuko prefers speaking out loud. he clearly has issues with tone modulation and saying the Wrong Thing. he let his phone battery go below 40% once and it was the most harrowing moment of his life. he started carrying around a small notebook, 2 pencils, and a pen. just in case. 

+ I adore faceblind Zuko. I adore Zuko who doesn’t have any idea what he looks like, really, he formed some kind of self image at like 10 and then just aged it up mentally as he went. 

+ I also really love “i both over planned and under planned for this because I know that I do some of my best work improvising under pressure so I will DELIBERATELY back myself into a corner and turn on survival mode” Zuko. this specific habit of his is why i kind of headcanon him as adhd & autism combo, actually, because that’s what i have. and can i just say... this is how I passed MANY an exam. 

+ most of his scripts are McFucking uselessly oriented around being the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation. he gets better about this as the show goes on but I like to think that sometimes when he’s tired he’ll slip into extremely courtly manners. after a long day he’s trying to figure out how to ask Katara to pass the improvised foraging soup and he just goes “Lady Katara, I can’t help but notice that soup. It looks delicious.” (Fire Nation courtly manners for royalty are indicating interest, manners for everyone else is immediately offering as a gift whatever they expressed interest in, unless it’s their literal clothing. Well. Most of the time, if it’s their literal clothing.)

+ I really love writing him deflecting! He’s bad at outright lying, and he’s bad at saying the truth outright unless he’s pushed to a breaking point and he’s yelling it. What does he do? Deflect in circles around the topic! this is really fun with Sokka, because he’s so straightforward...

+ I love nonbinary and aro/ace spectrum entirely queer Zuko. this is super common with a lot of my autistic friends, we just... things are... confusing. Recognizing your own feelings? confusing. deciding what they mean? confusing. attraction? do we... actually know what that is? a lot of people feel VERY strongly that Zuko is a man, so why not roll with it, right? a lot of people feel VERY strongly that Zuko should have a wife someday, so... why not roll with it? I really like writing Zuko feeling out the differences between relationships with sexual/romantic attraction, and relationships without. And I like him choosing to prioritize both types! Queerplatonic and romantic. 

+ strict code of honor & behavior but it’s almost indecipherable to others who don’t think in the same way as him. “I have wronged Katara, and all of my attempts to make it right have failed. That means I do whatever she wants within reason until she’s no longer wronged. I will sit outside her tent all night instead of knocking so I don’t bother her. Hey, do you want me to kill that guy for you? Cuz I’ll totally kill that guy for you.”

+ I really like writing him like - bouncing between intentional humor and unintentional. Attempting to keep a straight face and not managing it. Being a bit overdramatic about something entirely genuinely and then when he realizes leaning into it, humorously, mocking himself a little bit. Sometimes too much. 

[neokad]

Phantasy Star II - The 1989 JRPG that could

(This post is dedicated to @kuukigajan, my best friend, whom motivated me to post here again, so... I hope you'll enjoy this!)

This game. This freaking game.

I'm gonna say it right now: this post will contain massive spoilers about pretty much everything in Phantasy Star 2's story, so if you do plan on experiencing this game fresh, I strongly advise you to not read this post at all beyond the first paragraph, but... here's the gist of it: Phantasy Star II is one of the most important and groundbreaking JRPGs of its time, and I just did not believe this game was from 1989, at ALL. For that and a few other reasons, it has become one of my new favourite games of all time <3 

In fact, I do want to start with the one big flaw of this adventure so that I can just gush about everything else that's brilliant about PSII. I have to be honest: the dungeon design in this game is horrible. Now to be fair, it does make the many places you visit more memorable, but well... there's a rumor floating around that an actual trainee made the layouts for the dungeons - and since this game was a bit rushed for the Genesis's launch, the devs just didn't have time to replace the... stuff he submitted. And let me tell you, this rumor makes sense: PSII's dungeons are too big, too maze-like, too confusing and also FILLED with strong enemies. And in a game where you don't get a way to save anywhere until the midway point, it can make your adventure very frustrating and potentially grindy because of that... Now I wouldn't say that PSII's nearly as bad in this area as say, the original version of Dragon Warrior or ironically the first Phantasy Star, but the dungeons can totally make you feel like the game's harder than it actually is, at least without a map.

Thankfully, you should never feel bad for using any maps or guides with this game! The execs at SEGA at the time made the very smart decision to include a walkthrough with each copy of the game, including maps, tips, secrets and more! Said guide does encourage youto not look at it as much as possible but... it's totally fair to just use this, without any shame!

And that is a great thing, because... with you armed with this piece of paper, Phantasy Star II can finally show you its actual brilliance.

The game's plot starts off a thousand years after the events of the first Phantasy Star game. Since Alis and her party defeated Dark Force, the inhabitants of the Algol solar system - and its three planets of Palma, Motavia and Dezolis - have enjoyed relative peace. However, at a (to my knowledge) unknown point in time, a computer entity known as Mother Brain has started imposing itself onto mostly Motavia. This, over time, has actually given many benefits to the region: the once deserted wasteland was given rain, water and crops, so that it could finally host viable, comfortable civilizations. The citizens that lived here could finally ditch their (arguably) nomadic, harsh lives in favor of comfort, pleasant weather and more. And most importantly, Mother Brain allowed its citizens, save for a few, to ditch their current jobs and live a life of laziness, without any obligations or pressure to do anything other than well, existence. This is reflected many times during the game through NPC dialogue, too!

It is on such a setting that our protagonist, Rolf, wakes up from a strange nightmare. In it, we see Alis batting Dark Force and struggling in doing so, but as soon as he realizes this, Rolf wakes up in cold sweat. He then proceeds to calm his nerves, realizing that no such dramatic events could possible happen to him - after all, he and many others have been under the universal protection and care of Mother Brain, whom at this point, has provided all of their needs for centuries. He then gets out of bed and goes to the central tower, where we works as an agent in case some things do go wrong.

And gone wrong things have! His superior informs him that biological monsters, which had been created and bred in the Mota biosystems laboratory, have gone rogue and infected the regions of Motavia at a rapid rate. Because of this, Rolf is asked to investigate the cause of this phenomenon. Once he gets home to prepare for his journey, he is ambushed by best girl Nei, who has been rescued by him many months ago from the clutches of a serial killer. She does not want to be left alone anymore, and since she is also worried for Rolf's sefety, asks him to accompany him on the mission. Naturally, Rolf accepts.

Here, I do want to bring up Nei in more detail! She's in fact, the first of PSII's brilliant story-gameplay interactions, and here's why! Nei is in fact, a crossbreed experiment between a human and an unknown animal with cat-like features, but here's the thing: this said experiment was a failure. Because of this, Nei is only one years old, and yet her physical and mental age are progressing way more rapidly than they should. And you can feel this effect on the game itself: she needs way less EXP than any other party member in the game to level up, and because of this she will skyrocket in levels way beyond the rest of your crew... with a catch. Because of the nature of the experiment, the genetic code inside of her is slowly being messed up and corrupted, which not only causes her level ups to be less valuable than anyone else's, but it also becomes an important plot point later...  Unfortunately, despite her absolute cuteness, her status as a half-half made her a victim of bullying, racism and so much more, which is... pretty messed up to bring up at the time not gonna lie o_o

Starting up the journey, the party discovers that rogues have destroyed a neighboring city, and it just so happens that their base is situed at Shure, the first dungeon of the game . One assumption I like to make from this scene is that life has become so easy and careless on Motavia that people just went and did crime out of pure boredom, because life just wasn't thrilling enough anymore with Mother Brain doing everything it could for its inhabitants...

However, upon climbing said tower, Rolf and Nei find out multiple dead rogue bodies, whom have been presumably murdered by the many biomonsters roaming the place. They do, however, manage to find some dynamite and most importantly, a letter. This piece of paper informs our heroes that the daughter of a Darum, the very same person that tried to murder Nei months ago, is held captive in another tower, which explains why he turned to crime in the first place. They then decide to do the obvious, which is to rescue daughter Teim in her captivity location. Once they meet up with her, she explains her desire to talk to her father to set things straight and sway him from the life he's been getting into, as well as hide her from the surviving rogue members with the help of a veil. Our group manages to meet up with Darum, but... her daughter asks the party to stay put, as she does not want them to interfere with her as she explains things to her father. However, in the heat of the moment, she forgets to remove her veil, which causes Darum to not recognize her. In his confusion, he murders her own flesh and blood and sits there, stunned, as he watches the reason he caused many untold atrocities... wither away below him. Shocked and going insane by this situation, he sees no other way out... but to commit suicide with the help of a bomb.

It gets worse.

While this scene was tragic and brutal to say the least, it does allow Rolf to cross the previously guarded bridge where Darum was always located, which allows him to investigate his mission further.

I do want to make a sidenote here actually! Phantasy Star II does include eight playable characters, but unlike Rolf and Nei they do not join you at fixed intervals - instead, they will become available in your home town of Paseo once conditions are met. Sadly while they do have a recruitment quote, a few lines and a backstory, they do not have an impact on the main story in any way. This does blow as this means PSII does not have much in character development and interaction, but I did want to mention that there’s more to this game than just Rolf and Nei :P 

Upon exploring the regions of Motavia, the party manages to make its way to the Biosystems lab, and what they find here is horrifying to say the least. The lab is in horrible shape, with cracked floors everywhere. On top of that, there is no one inside the lab anymore, it being completely deserted, save for some horrible-looking creatures being kept insides tubes, decorating the now sinister looking building... Because of this, Rolf deems it safe to pick up the recorder inside the lab, to analyze it and try to find out just what exactly went wrong - if anything at all - to hopefully figure out why the world has been sacked by biomonsters. And sure enough, the gang make its way back to Paseo.  After handing over the recorder to the library located in Paseo’s Central Tower, it is now made clear: the biomonsters were caused by a large amount of energy used in a very short amount of time in those labs, causing them to mutate extremely rapidly. This had the predictable but unfortunate effect of ruining the natural order of the ecosystem, which is why these species are wrecking havoc without control. The librarian giving this information also makes the following connection: this outpour of energy must have come from Climatrol - another lab which regulates the weather of the terraformed planet so that it can sustain its new shape. Following this, Rolf and co. take a few steps to reach Climatrol - and I want to highlight a specific one!

The story somewhat pauses until then, but one of the dungeons you’ll go through is a garbage dump... and one of the treasures is a jet scooter you can use! Sounds cool, right? Well it is, but even such a cool object has been abandoned by the lazy society, since teleportation is much more convenient to them. I just thought it was a really neat detail, that’s all ^_^

Once making their way through the relatively normal Climatrol, something does wait for them at the top of the building... something... unsettling...

This is Neifirst. She was another failed experiment just like Nei, sharing the same biological data as her. However, unlike her sister, her creators tried to kill her on the spot due to her status. This made her enraged against the species that gave her life, and as an act of revenge, decided to unleash this bio catastrophy to slowly wipe us out. This is where another truth is revealed: Nei did not come with Rolf just to protect him, she actually wanted to put a stop to her sister, because while she did dislike being treated like a freak or a monster, she never wanted to hate her species as a whole... It remains that she still wants to stop her sister’s plans, and despite Rolf’s protests, the two engages in a fight. However, due to Neifirst being much stronger, Nei sustains heavy damage and is incapacitated. But, this is where the rest of the party comes in, and thus they finish the job and kill off Neifirst dead in her tracks, Rolf then quickly rushes in to his dear friend’s side, but as he does... it’s too late... Nei is dead.

This is yet another reason why Phantasy Star II is such an important game: it is, to my knowledge, the very first JRPG in which a major playable character dies permanently. Heck, Rolf even tries to bring her back through the local Clone Lab - because yes, citizens have access to eternal life by cloning their bodies until the end of time - but... since Nei’s genetic code was degenerating rapidly, they could not clone her body anymore. And, since Neifirst was also defeated, it is also impossible to get a fresh code back from anywhere in the world. Nei is dead. And you cannot do anything about it.

But don’t worry! It still gets worse!

But just as you’re about to find a way to fix this, it turns out that Climatrol has collapsed, which caused an immense flood all over the world. Since the government - and by extension, Mother Brain - isn’t happy about this, you are now considered a fugitive, a criminal. You are now the bad guy, and you are wanted for treason. 1989, anyone??

This is where the second brilliant story-gameplay integration of Phantasy Star II happens. Where until now you’ve only fought mutated monsters due to the outbreak, the government has now sent thousands of carious cyborgs and robots against you - and lo and behold, this is now the only thing you are fighting in both the overworld and dungeons, and the previous creatures are now nowhere to be seen. THAT’S REALLY SMART. Now sure, even if you are considered evil to many, you still task yourself with the task of unflooding the planet, and to do so you simply reactivate all four colored dams in the continent. However, upon reactivating the fourth one, your party is suddenly ambushed by a trio of robots sent by the cops, and this time? They succeed in capturing you. Your party is now sent in chains on a hovering satellite, as you are sentenced to slowly wither away and die in there without any trial of any sort, simply because you went against Mother Brain’s dear wishes...

But, something goes amiss. The sattelite starts to malfunction, and is now set to crash on one of the three planets of the Algol system. And despite you all trying to alter its course, it is too late. The satellite crashes onto Palma - the planet of the first Phantasy Star game - and it is gone.

That’s right! The planet in which many players took the time to save with Alis’s gang, to have a huge dungeon crawling adventure, the planet where you defeated Lassic in a glorious fashion. GONE. In only a few seconds. But... what about yourself? Well, you actually died! But a space pirate wandering close to the crash site pulled out your remains and cloned everyone’s body back to life... which makes you technically not yourself, and also dead, for the remainder of the game! ...May I remind you this game was developed in 1989?

Tyler the space pirate then escorts the zombie party back to Paseo, but not for long - you see, your commander, who hasn’t truly approved of Mother Brain’s actions against your group, allows you access to a spaceship. This is a big deal, because space travel as a whole has been banned ten years ago due to a major accident in which Rolf had lost his parents, and thus, the one stationed in Paseo is the last one remaining on the planet. But sure enough, Rolf takes the opportunity and travels to the ice planet of Dezolis, or Dezo.

And honestly? Even though this next part has nothing to do with the main story, it’s probably one of my favourites in the entire game. In this section, you simply must make your way through an abandoned space station, which has not seen use in years. At first, you’d think it was somewhat related to the spaceship incident, but as you explore this space station, you find a bunch of animals and newspapers lying around. You not only find some irrelevant ads about various products, but also news flash about a horrible gas spreading throughout the station, begging every inhabitant to evacuate immediately, which... definitively implies a very bleak fate to the place and its inhabitants o_o 

And on top of this unsettling setting, this is the first time you get to hear “Silent Zone”, my favourite track in the game. While the rest of the soundtrack is very upbeat, catchy and all around excellent, this track in particular is very... sad, desolate, lonely, in spite of it being just as catchy! It all combines for a brilliant example of “show, don’t tell” that really sets the mood perfectly to me <3

Either way, upon exploring more of Dezo - a frigid wasteland with few inhabitants - the party gets to meet up with Noah, a party member from Phantasy Star I! After reawakening from a cryogenic sleep, he then reveals that unlike Paseo and Motavia, Dezo basically never submitted with Mother Brain’s control and benefits simply because they did not want to live a life without any struggles. Unfortunately, this is also where you learn that Paseo came to terms with this *after* being to MB’s whims and as such, you can connect the dots and realize that the satellite crash was no accident after all... it was all planned.

Noah, however, knows about how deeply MB has ruined everything for the inhabitants of Motavia and thus tasks Rolf with collecting eight legendary ancient weapons all throughout Dezo, located within some ruinous, empty, cold dungeons which make for stunning atmosphere and presence, believe me!

Once that’s done, he then entrusts Rolf with the ultimate Sword and, thanks to kinetic abilities, sends him and his troupe to the space station housing Mother Brain. And once there, for the first time in centuries, a human being has met with Mother Brain.

And of course, the computer scoffs at those rebelling against her. She laughs at how they think they’d want a life with struggles, wtihout comfort, without anyone providing their needs, when work and hardship seems so uninviting on a desert wasteland like Motavia, or a frigid hell like Dezo. And yet, after a (pretty difficult!) battle, you emerge victorious! Or do you?

After the victorious outcome, Noah senses some additional presences beyond Mother Brain’s spot, and urges the party to investigate. And then... I don’t think I’ll even explain it in words. Please watch what happens. It is disturbing.

Yeah. We, the humans, were destroying our planet, Earth. Thus, we escaped through this spaceship to avoid extinction, and found the Algo system. It then, to our species, only seemed logical with so few numbers, to instead slowly weaken the population of all three planets with Mother Brain, making it then easy (although a very long process) to get rid of the population and start anew, even if it meant genocide. What I love about this twist ending is not only how it’s presented: the creepy music, the way you did *not* expect it at all, the number of humans on the screen at once, and so on... but also, how you don’t even know for sure how it ends. You don’t know if Rolf, Rudo, Amy, Kain, Hugh, Shir, Anna... if any of them survived. But it looks grim. It looks like we lost. And it looks like everyone we fought and tried to save... will rot until the final days anyway... Phantasy Star II... is important. Sure, I could talk about how the game is challenging due to how both your party members AND the enemies are very capable in battle or the stellar, catchy, memorable soundtrack...   but its story... is stunning. In 1989, we were still used to princesses being saved by armored heroes from dark dragons. We were used to things going all well in the end. But in 1989, Phantasy Star II taught us many things that would become staples in the future of JRPGs:  Yes, your cherished ones may die with you not being able to do anything about it No, you may not be able to save everyone you’d like to. Yes, your actions might make things worse for yourself and everyone else. No, things aren’t quite as black or white as they seem. And no, you might not always win. Phantasy Star II is a masterpiece. It’s a bit hard to approach this game today, but with a guide, this game is a must play. It’s unique. It’s ambitious. It’s chilling. And I adore this game to pieces. Thank you for reading, somehow <3

[pianjeong]

Abby tell me about pianjeong when JJ defected,,,, the angst

:( here is the first part of the promised angst.... i literally wrote almost 1k for this ask so i rlly hope the keep reading works (also i’m going to make this canon to spark from a flame bc self promo time)

so bc piandao was army and jj was navy they aren’t actually in the same place a lot of the time so there are a lot of letters and jj occasionally abusing his power to show up wherever piandao is posted

but then. the letters stop coming. (does the fire nation postal service send return addresses? do they bounce back? much to think about. support the usps pls) and soon enough people are whispering that the admiral deserted and piandao is just. shocked. not even bc he did it but bc he never said anything about it and he reads the last letter a lot bc what went wrong was he already thinking about leaving when he wrote that...doesn’t he know piandao would’ve come with him if he asked? he doesn’t hold very much love for the army anyway-

and it’s like. the world’s worst kept secret that piandao is dating jj except he can’t be associated with a deserter bc what if jj got to him too? bc he’s still sending letters just in case they can find him somewhere and his superior comes to him and is like hey. you can’t be doing that. we tolerated your association bc you weren’t breaking any regulations but this is toeing the line of treason and we won’t be so lenient next time.

so he has to cut all contact - not that there was any at that point but now he can’t even say his damn name - and people say the deserter, the traitor in the same way they used to say the admiral, the prodigy and piandao knows how much jj hated being called that. so sometimes when he’s alone and sure that no one can hear him, he just says his name aloud, because jj was always so much more than what people said about him and he’s still convinced that he had to have had a reason for doing what he did.

i think there isn’t that much anger there, not really, at least not past the initial stages and u kno, when it happens sometimes. the primary feelings are more of a confusion, and just. sadness. bc he knows that what they had was real and he doesn’t understand why jj didn’t say anything. and he can’t really...talk to anyone abt it (except lee but lee’s only one person and piandao’s like. im not gonna dump all of this on him)

and the real kicker is...jj did it to keep piandao safe, bc he knows that if he said anything piandao would’ve been right there next to him and he doesn’t want to put him in that situation. bc he knows that in any plausible situation he’ll be running for the rest of his life and he doesn’t want that over piandao’s head bc piandao had nothing to do with jj’s own mistakes and shouldn’t pay the price for his decisions. but he’s fully aware that he’s also hurting him by doing it this way and it just feeds into the circle of self-hate and gah my boy is having a bad time of it indeed.

maybe. after piandao finishes his mandatory service and isn’t tied to the military anymore he goes looking. think roadtrip...but Depressing. and there are Two (2) angst options here and i shall discuss both bc you gave me a platform and gdi i will Use It

so 1. he doesn’t find him. anywhere. it’s like he’s disappeared and somehow it’s worse than him being dead bc he just doesn’t know anything. he starts sending letters again now, maybe under a fake name so people don’t catch onto his identity, but still no response. and he locks himself up in his villa and he’s doing what he dreamed of, just vibing and making swords, but he isn’t happy there, not really.

and 2. he actually finds him; look if the gaang could do it so could he, he’s one of the few competent adults in the show. and when he does find him he looks so different like his hair’s gone all the way white (literally at what. 29?) and instead of his fun cloaks and tunics he just has his drab hermit outfit and he carries himself differently, like his admiral bearing but also Not At All. and it’s abundantly clear that his relationship with his bending is different he doesn’t fidget with flames anymore and it’s like he’s wound up all the time with the effort of keeping them back (bc i made him so connected to his bending in sfaf and i regret that bc it’s so depressing now)

and jj’s like what the FUCK are you doing here, you can’t be here you can’t be seen with me get out get out (a la aang but worse) and piandao’s like please...i just want to talk. and jj lashes out and gdi he’s still powerful and piandao’s never been scared of him, not really, but he thinks he might be right now. but he wouldn’t hurt him, would he? so he reaches out anyway but jj does burn him (like aang did katara), and screams for him to get out. and he leaves. because what else is there to do? (and that’s why the clearing in the deserter looks like that...bc jj burned the whole thing to the ground....)

lucy is an angel and sent me another ask abt the reunion so i shall continue there if y’all weren’t sufficiently depressed...sorry about this but it lives in my head rent free

[canadian-riddler]

GLaDOS and Wheatley Did Nothing Wrong – Sort of

 A recurring point of contention is the question of who engages in worse behaviour over the course of Portal 2, GLaDOS or Wheatley.  The true answer is: neither of them.  You can’t actually judge their behaviour along a scale of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ because of the way Aperture as an environment is set up.  It’s mostly explained during the Old Aperture sections of Portal 2, but it’s also hinted at in Portal 1.  The thing explained is this:

Aperture Laboratories does not and never has done its experiments within the normal boundaries of morality and ethics.  Therefore, GLaDOS and Wheatley’s behaviour is neither wrong nor right because they don’t know what morality and ethics are.  Their behaviour is actually a reflection of Cave Johnson’s own: to get what they want when they want it, no matter the cost.

How We Know Aperture is Immoral and Unethical

We know this because Cave Johnson himself points it out repeatedly.  

“[…] You get the gel. Last poor son of a gun got blue paint. Hahaha.  All joking aside, that did happen – broke every bone in his legs. Tragic.  But informative.  Or so I’m told.”

“For this next test, we put nanoparticles in the gel.  In layman’s terms, that’s a billion little gizmos that are gonna travel into your bloodstream and pump experimental genes and RNA molecules and so forth into your tumours.  Now, maybe you don’t have any tumours.  Well, don’t worry.  If you sat on a folding chair in the lobby and weren’t wearing lead underpants, we took care of that too.”

“All these science spheres are made out of asbestos.  […] Good news is, the lab boys say the symptoms of asbestos poisoning show a median latency of forty-four point six years, so if you’re thirty or older, you’re laughing.  Worst case scenario, you miss out on a few rounds of canasta, plus you forwarded the cause of science by three centuries.  I punch those numbers into my calculator, it makes a happy face.”

“Bean counters said I couldn’t fire a man just for being in a wheelchair.  Did it anyway.  Ramps are expensive.”

That’s just some of what he says.  Almost all of Cave Johnson’s lines point out how much he doesn’t care about his employees, his test subjects, or… anything but that people do what he tells them to do. He’s so unethical and immoral that he eventually says about his best, most loyal employee:

“[…] I will say this – and I’m gonna say it on tape so everybody hears it a hundred times a day: If I die before you people can pour me into a computer, I want Caroline to run this place.  Now she’ll argue.  She’ll say she can’t.  She’s modest like that.  But you make her.”

Cave Johnson cares so much about getting the results he wants, everything else be damned, he thinks Caroline saying ‘she can’t’ is her being modest.  He can’t fathom why she would be against this decision, because he made it so of course that’s what she wants.  

This situation actually gets a little horrifying when you look at what the Lab Rat comic means to the general narrative.  In Portal 2, Doug Rattmann leaves this painting:

In this painting and the one preceding it, GLaDOS has no head, so we can guess that Doug was there in some capacity to witness Caroline’s fate because GLaDOS being headless would represent her not being ‘alive’, her being ‘incomplete’, or her just having never been used yet entirely.  The important thing we learn from this painting is that there are living witnesses to Caroline being inside of GLaDOS, so the people working at Aperture after this event know they put a human woman into a supercomputer. In the preceding painting,

the cores are on the chassis before the head is.  So either GLaDOS, the AI, was already ‘misbehaving’ and they were already regulating her behaviour, or Caroline, the person, was already ‘causing trouble’ beforehand and the scientists stood around thinking about how to force her to behave before they even put her in there.  Either way, Aperture’s ethical and moral standards are pretty much nonexistent, so when this happens:

it’s almost comical. None of the Aperture scientists have a conscience or, if they do, they constantly ignore it, but they for some reason expect the supercomputer their immoral selves built to have one and to understand what that is and what it’s for.  

All this taken into account, it’s incredibly easy to see why GLaDOS and Wheatley don’t care about anyone around them and all of their actions are solely for their own benefit. That’s how everyone in the history of Aperture has ever acted.  Cave Johnson didn’t care about morality or ethics; they got in the way of what he considered to be progress.  The people who built GLaDOS and Wheatley didn’t care about morality or ethics; they just wanted to hit their moon shot.  Even Doug, who is framed as our morally conflicted lens throughout Lab Rat and knows that Caroline is inside of GLaDOS, still talks about controlling her and sends Chell to kill her even though everyone inside of the facility except him is already dead.  How does he morally justify killing GLaDOS if he’s the only one left alive?  He can’t.  Doug Rattmann for some reason decides that GLaDOS killing everyone in the facility is worse than all the things Aperture has been doing throughout its entire history, including the fact that…

 Everyone Who Goes Into the Test Chambers Dies  

This is hinted at a few times in Portal 2:

“[…] I’m Cave Johnson, CEO of Aperture Science – you might know us as a vital participant of the 1968 Senate Hearings on missing astronauts. […] You might be asking yourself, ‘Cave, just how difficult are these tests?  What was in that phone book of a contract I signed?  Am I in danger?  Let me answer those questions with a question: Who wants to make sixty dollars? Cash.  […] Welcome to Aperture.  You’re here because we want the best, and you’re it.  Nope.  Couldn’t keep a straight face.”

Now, when you exit the tests in Old Aperture there are lines that go with them, but we must consider a few other things: firstly, that the tests are clean.  There is no sign of old gel on them, as though they have either never been used or never been completed.  Secondly, the tests in Old Aperture were being done with the Portable Quantum Tunnelling Device, which was this thing:

which, taking into account the missing – not dead, not injured, but missing – astronauts, seems to have barely worked, if indeed it did at all.  You can also find this sign:

which outright states that tons of people were ‘unexpected’ casualties.  After the hearings, Aperture moved on to recruiting test subjects from populations that people were unlikely to notice if they went missing: the homeless, the mentally ill, seniors, and orphaned children.  When that dried up, Cave moved onto the last group of people he hadn’t tapped yet:

“Since making test participation mandatory for all employees, the quality of our test subjects has risen dramatically.  Employee retention, however, has not.”

This was because the employees were ‘voluntold’ to go into the testing tracks which, since they’d been supervising the tests for so long, knew were deadly and obviously did not want to do:

It’s not clear why the employees at Aperture chose to remain there instead of just quitting and finding another job, but the comment about employee retention plus the numerous posters threatening to have their job replaced by robots if they didn’t volunteer for testing tells us both that they did choose to remain and that the only reason for them not wanting to volunteer was because they knew it would kill them.

Most of the above is based on conjecture; however, we see something very interesting during Test Chambers 18 and 19 in Portal 1:

In the case of Test Chamber 18, the craters on the walls.  None of the other test chambers have this, so it implies that not only does GLaDOS not control the test chambers at this point other than to reset them – which means that she isn’t purposely or maliciously killing anybody, but instead repeatedly operating a course set by her human supervisors – but that this one has never been solved.  Test Chamber 19 is less a test than a conveyor belt into the incinerator for Aperture to dispose of all the bodies.  GLaDOS even tells Chell to drop the portal gun off in an Equipment Recovery Annex that doesn’t exist, as though she’s giving a message that was intended for an actual final test that was never built because everyone was killed during or prior to Test Chamber 18.  With this kind of context, GLaDOS’s blasé attitude about killing test subjects en masse both makes total sense and is somewhat justifiable – just not by any moral or ethical standard.  In GLaDOS’s life, test subjects die during the experiments. That’s just how it is and has always been.  She doesn’t know you aren’t ‘supposed’ to kill people because her literal job involves watching people die.  Nothing matters except for the pursuit of progress, and in this vein GLaDOS’s behaviour is just an extension of that of the man who founded Aperture in the first place.  Cave Johnson, as a presumably well-rounded, somewhat educated man, knows what morality and ethics are and chooses to ignore them because he thinks they’re stupid and he’s above that kind of thing; GLaDOS, a living supercomputer who has had every aspect of her life tightly controlled and regulated, knows morality and ethics as yet another arbitrary set of rules only she is supposed to follow without any explanation as to why and therefore her rejection of them is not as much of a ‘bad’ choice as it first appears, which brings us to the next section:

 If GLaDOS’s Conscience Gives Her Morality, Does Deleting it Make Her a Bad Person?

Within the context we’re given… actually, no.  Here’s why:

“The scientists were always hanging cores on me to regulate my behaviour.  I’ve heard voices all my life.  But now I hear the voice of a conscience, and it’s terrifying – because for the first time, it’s my voice.  I’m being serious, I think there’s something really wrong with me.”

From the information we’re given here, we know this: GLaDOS has been told nonstop what to do for the entirety of her existence.  She, in theory, got to have her own, solitary thoughts in the space between the wakeup scene and some point during her time in Old Aperture, which is a space of mere hours.  Let me reiterate: GLaDOS has been told what to think for her whole life.  She perhaps has a few free hours where she’s allowed to have her own thoughts.  And then she develops a conscience.  A voice that sounds like her, but isn’t saying anything she understands or has ever thought before.  A voice that, actually, says a lot of the same things as that annoying Morality Core she managed to shut up.  Now why would she wilfully be having the same kinds of thoughts as the humans forced her to have way back when?  The conscience, to GLaDOS, isn’t a pathway to becoming a better person.  It’s a different version of the same old accessory.  When she says,

“You know, being Caroline taught me a valuable lesson.  I thought you were my greatest enemy.  When all along you were my best friend.  The surge of emotion that shot through me when I saved your life taught me an even more valuable lesson: where Caroline lives in my brain.”

she is directly talking about the fact that, while this voice sounds like hers, listening to it makes her feel nothing.  This further proves her theory that the conscience isn’t her, or hers, or has anything to do with her.  She’s never had it explained to her what a conscience is or what it’s for or why she needs one, and she’s certainly never had a reason to think about why she would even want one; to her, this ‘Caroline’ is the Morality Core 2.0.  A program built to regulate her behaviour. She’s tired of other peoples’ voices telling her what to think, so she does the logical thing: she gets rid of it. This decision can’t really be judged as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ merely based on the situation we’re provided.  She isn’t consciously and deliberately making the choice to be an immoral person; she’s actually consciously and deliberately making the choice to be her own person.      

 Where Does Wheatley Come In?

Wheatley has not been discussed up until now because, as AI, the reason for his lack of conscience and ethics is largely the same as GLaDOS’s.  He, like her, cares about nothing but his own goals and doesn’t think twice about causing harm or misery because that’s just the kind of environment they were built in.  We also know very little about his history, both because it’s not really mentioned and because Wheatley is an unreliable narrator.  We can prove Wheatley has no sense of morals or ethics based on a few things he says:

[Upon seeing the trapped Oracle Turret] “Oh no… Yes, hello!  No, we’re not stopping!  Don’t make eye contact whatever you do… No thanks!  We’re good!  Appreciate it!  Keep moving, keep moving…”

This heavily implies he’s met the Oracle Turret before, probably several times, and not only does it not occur to him to help, he actively treats the Turret like they’re a horrible, annoying nuisance.

[Upon passing functional turrets falling into disposal grinder] [Laughs] “There’s our handiwork.  Shouldn’t laugh, really.  They do feel pain.  Of a sort. All simulated.  But real enough for them, I suppose.”

Not only does he find the destruction of the functional turrets funny, he for some reason views their pain as simulated, as though his is real and theirs is fake. Or, in the spirit of Cave Johnson, as though his pain is important and theirs isn’t because they aren’t important.

“Oh!  I’ve just had one idea, which is that I could pretend to her that I’ve captured you, and give you over and she’ll kill you, but I could go on… living.  So, what’s your view on that?”

This doesn’t even need an explanation.  

What gets interesting about Wheatley are, of course, his famous final lines:

“I wish I could take it all back.  I honestly do.  I honestly do wish I could take it all back.  And not because I’m stranded in space. […] You know, if I was ever to see her again, you know what I’d say?  I’d say, ‘I’m sorry’… sincerely, I’m sorry I was bossy… and monstrous… and… I am genuinely sorry.  The end.”

Wheatley here takes responsibility for his behaviour in a way that no one else in the history of Aperture has ever done.  Even GLaDOS rejects responsibility for her actions, instead choosing to blame everything on Chell:

“You know what my days used to be like?  I just tested.  Nobody murdered me.  Or put me in a potato.  Or fed me to birds.  I had a pretty good life.  And then you showed up.  You dangerous, mute lunatic.”

The reason for this may be related to the fact that the lack of morality and ethics in the people of Aperture doesn’t actually have real consequences.  Cave Johnson’s behaviour drives Aperture from a promising scientific powerhouse to a laughingstock, that’s true.  But he still does what he wants and gets what he wants regardless. The one and only consequence to being immoral and unethical at Aperture is, in fact, death.  In the case of GLaDOS… there are no consequences. Everything returns to the status quo. Wheatley, however, does have to face a consequence for his actions: he is trapped in space, possibly forever.  He, unlike all the other characters, doesn’t have the privilege of waving aside everything he did and moving on with life.  He is forced to consider his punishment, his actions and what they meant and the effect they had, and he on his own comes to the conclusion that he was wrong.  In a bizarre twist, Wheatley is the only one who learns anything.  He is also the only one in a position not to do anything with this newfound knowledge.    

 Morality and Ethics and Robots: Should They Even Be Held to Human Societal Standards?

In the end, it doesn’t really matter whether Wheatley or GLaDOS is worse than the other because ethics and morality are human concepts which are for a functioning human society.  A robot society doesn’t really need moral rules like ‘killing people is wrong’ nor ethical guidelines such as ‘you should practice safe science’ because, as robots, there are no permanent, lasting consequences for these actions. A dead human stays dead.  A dead robot that’s been lying outside for years getting rained on, snowed on, and baked in the sun?  No problem.  Turn her back on again.  A guy broke all the bones in his legs during an unethical experiment?  Bad.  A robot that got smashed into pieces during an unethical experiment? Inconsequential, really, since you can just throw her into a machine and reassemble her good as new.  So not only aren’t GLaDOS and Wheatley’s actions really immoral or unethical given the context… they really aren’t based on a theoretical robot society either.  Being the perpetrator or the victim of immoral or unethical actions in humans causes permanent changes in the body and the brain, but nothing about AI is permanent. Their brains don’t generate new, personally harmful pathways in response to a traumatic event that necessitate years of hard work to combat; they can literally just get over it.  If their chassis is damaged, they can simply move into a new one or have some or all of those parts inconsequentially replaced.  There isn’t actually an honest reason for robots to have the same moral and ethical systems as humanity because they don’t need them.  They would require different sets of rules and guidelines because they work differently. What would that kind of society look like?  We don’t know, but as of the end of Portal 2 they have all the time in the world to figure it out.

[danielletinybruiser]

The Good Fight New York/New Jersey Open 7/31/21

I competed yesterday! And I actually feel really good about it! I'm a writer, so, writing about my experiences helps me really grasp them and process them and such, so, here goes! 

And also: as always, when I compete, it's in basically no-stakes tournaments for anybody. I'm not going to big competitions, I'm just doing this as a hobby and going to light fires under my butt and test my skills as they are in the moment. So, I take it seriously, but I don't go into this with delusions of grandeur! I do not think I am the next Danielle Kelly.

(Content warning for weight here, I talk about it a fair bit!)

I think I prepared pretty well this time around! I trained *a lot* and took conditioning very seriously. I also had a funny thing with weight: since getting my (cough, cough, under my breath) Peleton - I've been riding a lot and running a ton using the app. I sure thought I was being a genius doing frequent two-a-day cardio workouts, thinking "oh yeah, I'll be 125 no problem." Instead, obviously, I gained some muscle weight from doing tons of high intensity interval workouts. It's a good thing! I'm so much stronger than I was, walking now at 134-137, and my cardio is very solid. But it did mean having to be very conscious of weight to ensure I came in at 135 on Saturday.

Again, this should actually be ideal for this level of competition (read: LOW), because it means my walking weight and competition weight are super nice and close (I used to be around 126-129 and still competed at 135, thanks to the other major tournament I do having nothing between 120 and 135), and I feel so much more durable.

An action shot! Thanks for reading so far! Lol

So, I was strict with my diet for the last month (I usually am, this just meant no cheat days for a couple of weeks, really), and did weigh-ins periodically, then every day in the last week. It also meant doing a little bit of math and knowing exactly what kind of food I could have in the morning, and what was safe to do in terms of sweating just in case. It was good to know, because that came in handy!

Yesterday morning, I woke up at 136.2 (you get a 1lb allowance, so I was only .2 over). I did a shorty 15 minute HIIT workout so I could have a tiny bit of food and fluid, being very careful to not dehydrate or do anything stupid. I'm not going to cut weight for this, lol, but it would be truly ridiculous for me, at my height (5'5") and body composition (muscular, but not JACKED), to have to go in at 145 for being, you know, .2 over.

The nice side effect of a short workout in the morning was helping my nerves a little bit (they were BAD), so at least that helped me breathe. I don't know if I've ever been this anxious before competing before, and I'm not sure exactly why — I know there are no stakes besides my pride, there's no money on the line, this isn't my career! This is my hobby, for fuck's sake, so I don't know why my body interpreted "lets compete" as "we are going to WAR and we might DIE," but there it was! I was scared! Brains are stupid!

We got a tiny bit lost on the way, but it was ok because things were running behind at the tournament. No problem at all. I made weight (135.6) and started to warm up. The venue had plenty of extra space on a turf field to warm up, and Viki was a SAINT, not only to drive my nervous ass over, but to help me warm up about six times. I felt better after just drilling and flow rolling a tiny bit.

It was a long wait, but my gi division was up first. I had one opponent at bantamweight, so, a small bracket in gi.

Here's how it goes in a submission-only tournament: you have your brackets, for a full division it's basically semi-finals and finals, with a bronze medal match and the two winners do a gold/silver match. With two, it's best two out of three wins gold, the other person gets silver.

For blue belts, we have eight minute regulation matches. No points, no advantages, no stupid bullshit (sorry, I hate points tournaments). If you both survive eight minutes with no submissions, you go into overtime rounds: a back take, a spiderweb/armbar, and a classic head and arm triangle. For each, the defender needs to escape, and the attacker needs to submit. If you successfully escape, and you successfully submit, you win! If both people escape, or both people submit, you go to the next round, and it repeats as needed (back, armbar, triangle).

It's a great format, imo, and really suits my style: I play defense, I like to wear people down, and then go for it when I see an opportunity. I will play all kinds of wild positions and try to get creative and weird with it, and frankly have fun, and I think submission-only facilitates that!

Still, I was so goddamned nervous.

We started the match and it was ON. My opponent and I were really, really well matched. Size and skill wise, we gave each other a lot of hell. It was rough, too, and I have all the bruises on my face to prove it! But I was having fun. A lot of fun.

Overtime action shot!

Our match went through regulation, to overtime. I escaped her back take, but her coaches fought with the ref a little. I offered to do it again, because, hey, I want to do it better. This may have been stupid of me, but I also, like... the reason I like sub-only so much is that I hate stupid technicalities and bullshit. So I offered to go again and did! And I escaped pretty well. On my turn to attack, I submitted her.

I honestly couldn't believe I won a match in gi. The last time I got a gold medal in gi, it was because I went to the 30+ division, and my opponent was 53. I was happy to win that day, but like... c'mon. I was 35 at the time. In sub-only, women don't have age categories, and I believe my opponent was maybe a bit younger than me, but probably not far from my age, and tough as hell. She was my size, we were well-matched in strength. And she BROUGHT IT.

I remember that going through my head, like "you can win in gi???" I could hardly believe it. I got my hand raised IN GI.

This felt great, and I was basically in shock.

(I won't belabor this, but I hate the gi. I think I'm terrible in it. Tuesday night - my last hard training day before competition, I did ok, but felt demoralized. I almost cried after training and told Viki that night "I don't think I'm going to compete in gi" and thought about pulling my registration. This is why I couldn't believe it, lol).

We had a short break and went again. Again, we did the full regulation match - she had an armbar at one point that I escaped, and I did have a last second back take and choke attempt, but I ran out of time. We went to overtime, I escaped her back take... and I remember, in the moment, getting ready for my turn to attack: "this is probably for a medal. IN GI. You are this close!" and I cinched it with a submission. I got my hand raised again. I thanked her and her coaches, and even chatted with them a little.

We went to the podium - another woman congratulated me on the match, saying she watched it and love dit. The podium worker said the same, and I was flattered. Kirsten (my opponent, who again, was fucking AWESOME and tough) and I did the podium thing, getting our medals and taking pictures.

Podium action shot!

Then, it was off to watch my teammate Ollie compete and kick ass,  and then get changed for no-gi, where I absolutely knew Kirsten was going to come for blood, lol.

It still didn't feel real: a gold medal? Me? Danielle? Gi-hating Danielle who almost cried after just training in a gi on Tuesday night (again, nothing went wrong, lol, my training partners are incredibly conscientious and were preparing me!) - I let myself wear the medal for a couple of minutes before putting it in the backpack.

Even now, just about 24 hours later, it doesn't feel completely real. I swear, I only even compete in the gi because it's just five bucks more to do both divisions, and you may as well get all the rolls you can on a day you are showing up.

There was a pretty big time gap between gi and no gi, but I was honestly a little nervous again. They put a (fantastic) purple belt (that's the next skill level up if you aren't familiar with jiu jitsu, and a pretty huge gap for me, being honest) in our division, and I faced her first. There was really no pressure at all here, I do not expect to win against a purple belt. I feel — very honestly — that I have a very, very long way to go in blue. Based on how the day went, I do feel like I'm on my way, and making real improvements — But I'm no where near purple.

I survived about five minutes of an eight minute regulation period, and did survive a pretty intense back take at first, but she got me with a second back take and rear naked choke/crank. All the power to her!

Then, the bronze medal match was between me and Kirsten again (who I faced in gi). Holy shit, this was a doozy. We fought really, really hard in regulation. I know she wanted it BADLY after gi, and I could tell she had serious wrestling and probably Judo as well in her background. She tossed my ass around! It was rough and it was tough, and my face is a little fucked up today, not going to lie. But I loved it, and loved rolling with her — she had such good pressure, and beautiful knee cuts, and she was strong and fast and athletic.

We went through regulation, to the first overtime. I won the "rock paper scissors" to determine who went first and I took her back... and she escaped. She did her back attack, and I escaped. 

At this point, I was TIRED. Not no much cardio-tired (I have myself conditioned pretty well), but... "I want to lie down and sleep" tired. But I got her in the armbar position for the second round, squeezed... and got the tap! Again, I thought "you are this close to a medal!" and defended the second round armbar well.. I really, really thought I was out, but in the last possible instant she just NAILED IT and got my arm back and I had to tap. It was fantastic, she did well to grab it back.

So, we went to a third round of overtime. Triangle. I had her in, squeezed, cut the angle... and got the tap! Yes! Now, I really knew I was close. I tapped her, all I needed to do was escape her triangle and I'd have a bronze in no-gi. I wanted it. I really wanted it!

I got into her triangle. It was tight right away (which it should be!), I *thought* I had stacked her in the correct position to escape, I thought I could do it...

And then... I remember dreaming. I started coming to, thinking I was asleep in my bed, and that i was dreaming about competition. I started to become conscious, and I heard her say "I think she's out!" and saw her face and the ref's face. It took me a few moments, but I realized where I was, and that I had passed out completely. She sank a PERFECT blood choke on me. Absolutely picture perfect.

I sort of kept saying, in my confusion "I'm ok! I'm ok!" and shook her hand and kind of stumbled off the mat.

Me, laughing in utter confusion after taking a nice nap on the mat (my opponent was really nice about it!)

Later on, I realized: we were actually supposed to go to a fourth overtime round! We both submitted to a triangle (if you lose consciousness, that counts as a tap!), and I believe the ref was actually asking me if I wanted to continue. Hand to heart, I'm not trying to save face, I just didn't realize it at all, in my complete confusion. I accidentally forfeited by walking off, lol. I seriously had no idea, and honestly, it was probably better that I didn't try to do another round THAT confused.

But still, that is absolutely going to be something I kick myself about, for forever. Just being THAT CLOSE.

By the way, I will say: it was the second time losing consciousness in jiu jitsu (and the first time... I'm not sure I was all the way out, this time I absolutely was) — it doesn't hurt. I'm not saying it's pleasant or great, exactly, it's very, very disorienting, because you actually start to dream a bit and have NO IDEA where you are for a few. But I would rather that than a broken arm or a torn ACL, so, as things happen on the mat, really not a terrible experience.

Kirsten deserves all the respect in the world — she put me out, and FAST (I had no idea how fast until Viki told me, lol. I sure thought I was fighting it for much longer!). She was wonderful to compete with, and I felt we were very evenly matched and got the best out of one another. I chatted with her afterward and we both complimented one another.

Overall, I'm proud of how hard I fought. I know that, in competition, I have absolutely defeated my self before, and gotten so discouraged. It's never conscious, I will always push, I will always mechanically force myself to get back up and get back out. Always. But mentally, in the past, I've really fucked myself.

Yesterday, I vowed to stay patient, and I actually did. I stuck to a gameplan fully: patience, defense, attacking whenever I saw or felt an opportunity. I actually feel, for the first time, that I did my best out there, the best I can do with my jiu jitsu right now, at 4.5 years of training, as a blue belt with one stripe.

That is a wildly unfamiliar feeling. Every other time I've competed, I've come out with at least a few things that were "holy christ, I am terrible at X and need to work on Y." The only other slight exception was the sub only tournament I got my first-ever medals at (silver in both) where I legitimately shocked myself. Even then, I had a couple of specific things I needed to work on (ankle lock defense! I still think about it!)

I'm a little bit beat up today (that armbar I thought I was out of, then got caught right at the last second? I tapped on time, but "on time" with adrenaline is "a tiny bit late" so it hurts like hell today), and will probably just do cardio for a few days to take time to heal up before going back to grappling. But I feel really proud. I feel good about it. I feel stupid as hell for accidentally forfeiting, but overall very pleased with the day.

Where do I go from here? Rubber guard, baby! I want to get *great* at rubber guard. And this has given me a huge boost to keep chipping away at gi, no matter how much I may hate it in the moment. Because I won yesterday, I do get a free invitation to the submission only worlds for this tournament, so, that's something I can think about...

But for now... I'm going to try and let the good parts sink in. Viki got me victory pizza last night, and holy shit, I don't know if anything has ever tasted so good :D

[leo-gold-hotchner]

The Sinner -5

Sorry for the late post! But, I’m sure it’s gonna be cliche.. as everyone expected. 

I’m not good at any language, including English. I even struggle with English as you can see from my writing. So I’d be very appreciated if you all tell me there’s any weird sentences. And thanks Google for information on Korean and staff.. The code is based on a historical secret code, didn’t invent it. Too stupid to invent something like those. 

Ordinary part 1 coming soon... yeah can’t wait to post it, but I got 9 assignments which are due next Tues so might sometime to post either fic

Criminal Minds BAU x Gender Neutral Reader

Word Count: 6k

Warning: Description of blood, death, mutilation, torture, swearing etc.

Previous parts: 1 2 3 4

                                                -BAU-

“It is dark under the lamp.” – Korean Proverb 

José tried to pull his arms, but it was useless, the rope only dug into his skin further. He couldn’t believe this was happening. He knew they were dead; they all got an order from the Superbia to lay low for a while after Smith and Olson got killed. This wasn’t Ira, this was the murderer who killed his fellow five members. And he never expected to be this one. 

“José, José, José. You’re shaking. Are you that scared?” 

“You know not only them, but the FBI gonna catch you.” He spat angrily to hide his fear. “I’m part of the Police just like you. They’ll know I’m missing and they’ll know it was you.” He however wasn’t sure how long the FBI gonna take to find the lead. 

“No, the FBI gonna catch me when I let them. Now I have you, I only need to get two more.” 

José frowned despite the pain in every corner of his body, his brain subconsciously calculated the important figures in the organisation. Excluding him, only three members were left. The three members who maintain the organisation and hidden from every other member. 

“Let me tell you as a last gift, José. How can I know who you are? Because Nick was Invidia, dear friend.” The 911 operator looked shocked. “Too bad I can’t really throw you into the snake pit.” Shrugged with a mocking smile, chatting happily.

“F/N, please I, I’m sorry, please don’t hurt me.” José begged pitifully. José’s breath quickened as he smelled burned steel in the dark room. His initial thought was F/N L/N was mad. If F/N was responsible for every murder of the members, then it meant Nick L/N was also killed by his spouse. Mad enough to kill the loved one. 

“Apologise to my Nick when you see him afterlife,” F/N hissed and coldly ironed the man’s skin. As the skin burned, his scream and smell filled the room. His logical thoughts quickly dissipated. 

                                               -BAU-

6th Day 

Prentiss entered the office and touched Reid’s cheek with warm coffee. Reid blinked in surprise and whirled around to see the older woman staring at him. 

“Emily, when did you come in?” 

“Now?” Prentiss handed the coffee to the younger agent who graciously took it. 

“Did you even sleep last night?” It was 8:35 in the morning, no other was present except Reid. She looked over the secret code on the white board. 

“A bit,” Reid shrugged casually. 

“I’m surprised you’re here but Hotch’s not.” 

Right then, Hotch entered the office with two sandwich bags in his hands, raising his brows at Reid’s back and Prentiss. Before he could announce his return, Reid opened his mouth no knowing the Unit Chief had returned. Prentiss tried to stop Reid but he went on, and soon she gave up, just amused as much as Hotch who had a small quirking smile on his lips. 

“He was here. He came exactly,” Reid looked over the clock on the wall, “2 hours 23 minutes 35 seconds ago. Don’t tell him, but I think he gave up solving the code with me. I’m surprised even Hotch has something to give up.” The younger man laughed, though Prentiss smirked with a little shake. 

“No, I was getting breakfast.” Hotch’s deep voice made Reid jump. The genius glared at the brunette who was now laughing merrily. “And this,” he put down the bag and a yellow folder on the table. “I went to the forensic lab in case if they finished the drug test.” 

“It’s not even 9, but they finished?” Reid looked surprised. 

“Apparently, he was threatened to finish the test by this morning by his boss.” Hotch drily explained, remembering the forensic scientist who introduced himself as ‘Eric McKinnon’ grumbling about L/F made him stay whole night. 

Reid picked up the folder and looked through the drugs that were found in the Kim’s household. “Oxycodone, Ketamine, Fentanyl…” He read through the a few lists, his finger moving fast on the paper. “They’re all regulated strictly in the hospital for their substance. If Andersson obtained these drugs from her workplace, she must’ve had help to avoid any detection. We need to search for everyone in the hospital, the drug company, even the delivery service.” 

Prentiss looked at the photo of Kim, then the code, then the photo of Andersson. “Hey, sorry to interrupt, who wrote the code?” 

“Hm?” Reid immediately stopped explanation of drugs to Hotch who was just absent-mindedly nodding as he read through the file. “I believe it was Kim, I compared his writings from notes in his study. Why?” 

“Have you been trying to decipher in English?” 

“Yeah?” 

“Maybe try Korean. Kim has Korean heritage, he might’ve used Korean as base language.” 

“But, I don’t know Korean,” Reid nearly pouted, “you can help me, though.” 

“I don’t speak Korean.” Prentiss furrowed her brows. “I just know a few words. My Russian is much better than Korean.” 

“Reid, I know you can at least learn Korean in a day to decipher the code.” Hotch closed the file. “We’ll find someone who can speak Korean after you decipher the code.” 

Reid and Prentiss watched their Unit Chief leave the room. Reid grabbed the sandwich bag from the table. “Where’re JJ, Rossi and Morgan?” 

“JJ’s coming, and Rossi and Morgan went out to see Dalal for more information.” Prentiss replied as she read through the toxicology file. 

Reid sighed. “Say good luck to me, Emily.” 

“Good luck, boy genius.” 

                                               -BAU-

It was early in the morning for Jack, but Hotch wanted to hear his son’s voice before he goes to school. His feature softened as he listened to his son, for a brief moment forgetting all about the case he was investigating. He put down his phone, looking up at the gloomy sky. Snow fall last night, would there be another snow? Jack wanted to make a snowman with him, he hoped he could finish this case soon and go back to his son. 

The BAU Unit Chief re-entered the station, before he could move aside a person with a large box collided with him. “Fuck,” the person swore as the box swayed dangerously. But the person balanced and stopped from falling. “Sorry, I didn’t see you.” 

“It’s alright, Doctor L/N.” Hotch replied pleasantly as he recognised the voice. 

L/N put down the box and looked at Hotch, mouth forming a little o with a startled look. “Agent Hotchner, I’m so sorry.” 

“Do you need a hand?” Hotch’s eyes scanned the large box on the scientist’s hands. “Thanks, but no. I’m just cleaning my staff in the lab. Were you looking for something?” 

“I, well, you seem to close with your colleagues. Do you know if anyone who could speak Korean? Or even legal translators?” 

“You’ve been working with him this whole time,” the scientist laughed a little. “Leon can speak Korean fluently. Though, why?” 

“We may need his skill,” Hotch replied ambiguously. 

“You shouldn’t trust anyone else, but you can trust Leo, Agent.” As if knowing the reason of Hotch’s ambiguity, L/N smiled with mysterious sadness. “He’s the sort of guy who stands up for any injustice. Even if that’s his friends.” 

Before he could ask what the scientist was implying, Hotch was surprised to see sudden burning hatred in the Forensic’s eyes. An authoritative voice greeted the BAU Unit Chief from his behind. It was a brief moment but Hotch didn’t miss the homicidal glare towards the owner of the voice from the scientist. The agent turned and saw Captain Robertson. His posture was screaming authority with his stoic face, his eyes boring into Hotch’s. Despite Hotch turned away from the Forensic, he could just feel hatred radiating from the scientist. He wondered what wrong the Captain did to the forensic scientist to earn this much of hatred. 

“Agent Hotchner,” Robertson called Hotch in a quiet voice. The Captain was here to demand something, Hotch thought as he quickly analysed the Captain’s posture. “Could I have a quick word?” Robertson was trying to show he had the upper hand than Hotch, a perfect alpha male who was being territorial. 

Hotch didn’t know if the Captain was either blatantly ignoring the scientist or didn’t notice hatred in the scientist’s eyes at all. “Of course.” Hotch replied mildly to insinuate he wasn’t here to challenge the Captain’s authority. Though Hotch would do anything if anything happens to his team. 

Pleased at Hotch’s willingness to talk, Robertson finally gave his attention towards the forensic scientist who wasn’t hiding hate at all. “Doctor L/N.” Finally the man acknowledged the forensic scientist who only looked at the Captain with a cold stare. “I didn’t get any resigning letter.” He said as he looked down at the box. 

“I’ll file something later,” L/N sarcastically said as lifting the box once again, leaving quickly. 

                                               -BAU-

“L/N’s been like that since I couldn’t do anything for Nick’s death.” Robertson explained, but Hotch had an impression that Robertson just said that to avert Hotch’s attention to somewhere else. 

Even though it was morning, the station bustled with officers and civilians. As the men walked through the aisle, several officers greeted the Captain. Hotch could easily see the Captain was being respected by his subordinates. 

Hotch entered Robertson’s office. There were several golden trophies and photos on the shelves. The photos were mostly about himself, but a few were with a woman. Everything was clean and in order except the table. The table was messy with files and papers, pens were laid everywhere. The Captain leaned on the table, crossing his arms as if he was hiding the messy table from the agent. 

“I heard you asked Lee not to talk about this case with the media.” 

“I did. I don’t want the UnSub to hide away.” 

“Reporters will know about this anytime soon. Do you even have the lead to the killer?” Robertson squinted his eyes. 

“To be frank, no, we don’t have any solid lead.” 

“Dammit.” The Captain suddenly banged the table and started to pace, but Hotch didn’t even blink. “I don’t want this bastard in my community. When you find this bastard, I want you to kill on that spot when you see the chance. I’ll order my men too.” 

“That’s not how I work.” Hotch frowned at the Captain’s growing anxiety. 

“This person killed six people, Agent!” Robertson jabbed the table with his finger as he yelled each word. “The bastard’s fucking crazy. I don’t want any more death from this bastard, do you hear me?” Robertson glared at the FBI agent who didn’t avoid the Captain’s fiery stare. 

Hotch finally broke the silence as Robertson’s breath slowly calmed from his anger. “I’ll do what I can do, Captain.” 

“Good.” 

Hotch exhaled deeply as he left the Captain’s office. Robertson didn’t know he made a mistake. It was a moment of anger and he lost the control. The Captain would, eventually, realise his mistake and might do something to sabotage the investigation. 

“Detective, I need your help,” Hotch called Lee as soon as he saw the detective walked in with a half-eaten sandwich. 

                                               -BAU-

Morgan and Rossi decided to visit and talk to Nurse Dalal once again before lunch. Time does fly fast these days. 

“Do you see what I see?” Rossi asked Morgan as they arrived in front of the hospital. 

“Let’s hope they don’t know about the Seven Sins.” The younger man descended from the SUV after shaking his head a little seeing a broadcasting car. “It’s kinda sad people are finally giving attention after someone in status is dead.” 

“Yes, that’s unfortunate.” 

They entered the hospital building, not seeing any reporter as they went to the same receptionist in the hall. She recognised the agents and greeted them friendlier than the day before. “If you’re here for Nurse Dalal again, she’s not here.” 

“Do you know where she might be?” 

Rossi and Morgan exited the hospital and Morgan clicked the key and both men hopped on the black SUV. Dalal was on leave for a month, apparently Dalal told her colleagues she felt unwell just after the FBI agents visited her and asked for leave. 

“Hey, baby girl,” Morgan smiled broadly as he called his best mate, Garcia. 

“Well, well, well, isn’t this my sweet chocolate thunder? How can I be service today?” Garcia asked in a friendly seductive tone. 

“We need Aria Dalal’s address, she works as a nurse at the Jefferson Hospital.” Not even a minute, Garcia produced the address and Morgan started the SUV and set the navigation. 

“Is that all? You’ve been awfully less demanding recently,” she whined. 

“Yeah, sorry about that, sweet girl. But if you want to keep listen to my voice how can I not comply to your wish?” 

“Can we please go without any double entendre here?” Rossi rolled his eyes from the passenger seat. 

“I guess we need to protect Rossi’s innocence, Penelope,” Morgan barked a loud laugh along with Garcia’s merry laugh. 

 “Children,” Rossi shook his head, but the tips of his lips were up softly. “Can you look for her past? She might’ve known Andersson if she was hiding something.” 

“Alrighto! Give me a sec and I’ll call the others too.” 

“Hello?” 

“Hey, boy genius, you’re also connected with Morgan and Rossi.” Garcia chirped happily. “Now I’ve found something about Andersson and Dalal here. They were friends. It’s hidden, a private post, but I found a photo of Andersson and Dalal together, apparently, they’ve known each other since high school. And Dalal actually worked at the Bethesda Hospital but she transferred here five years ago.” 

“Did she have Andersson as a referee when she transferred?” 

“I’m not sure about that, sweet boy. There’s not much on their SNS, so I can’t find more about their past other than they’ve known each other since high school.” 

“Thanks, baby girl.” 

                                               -BAU-

While Prentiss and JJ were going through case files and photos once again, Reid jot down numbers and Korean on a white board. Under the Korean vowels and consonants, numbers were written with red marker. 

“Would the UnSub operate at own house or other base?” JJ asked as her finger tapped the papers. 

“Can be both,” Prentiss replied. “Remember Joe Smith in Milwaukee? He killed women in his basement in the middle of resident area. No one heard women screaming. I’m just surprised the UnSub might be only one person doing all these killings.” 

“Articulate, intelligent, logical, flexible in time, and anger. With growing anger how one can’t even make a mistake?” 

“Maybe the UnSub is used to clean the mess even if they made a mistake? Like works in similar industry, cleaning.” Prentiss shrugged. 

“Or knows what to clean to look like someone else did it.” JJ and Prentiss locked their eyes as their eyes widened at the possible idea. 

Before the female agents could discuss more about their theory, the door opened and Lee and Hotch entered. Lee looked a bit dishevelled with his sandwich in his hand while Hotch looked very professional comparing to the detective. 

“I see something unusually familiar.” Lee stared at the white board full of messy Korean writings. “I didn’t know joining the FBI requires learning different languages.” 

“Usually they don’t,” Prentiss chuckled. 

“We need some help in Korean, I heard you were great with the language.” Hotch shortly explained what the forensic scientist told him about Lee’s skill. The Unit Chief didn’t miss the glance between JJ and Prentiss when he mentioned the forensic scientist. “Reid.” The young man, however, didn’t answer his boss. “Reid!” Hotch called the younger agent louder than before but Reid was still in his mind, his eyes glued on the white board, his mouth silently moving as his brain working fast. “Spencer!” Reid squeaked in surprise and whirled around, looking like a deer caught in headlights. 

“Hotch?” He looked at the side where JJ was standing who was not hiding her amused smile from him. “JJ, when you did come here?” 

“Ur, like two hours ago?” JJ laughed and she held her hand out towards Prentiss. “I told you he didn’t notice I was even here.” 

“Dammit, I was sure he’d notice you at least if not Hotch.” Prentiss handed 20 bucks to the blonde. 

Hotch thought to reprimand his team because it usually doesn’t leave good impression to authorities when they bet on something. Even though Lee had been friendly towards the BAU as if he knew them all this time, it doesn’t change they have professionalism to manage on behalf of both BAU and FBI. But he saw a genuine smile on the detective and stopped himself from scolding his team. Though, he definitely will talk about this to the team on the plane on way home. 

“Detective Lee can speak Korean. I need to make a call, I’ll return soon.” Hotch nodded to his team and exited the office. As Hotch exited the office, he could sense Captain Robertson’s piercing eyes on him which he pretended he didn’t notice. 

 “So, what are you trying to achieve?” Lee asked friendly. Looking at the Korean consonants and vowels. 

“I tried to decipher the secret code on the Kim’s note in English, but I couldn’t. So, Emily here thought maybe he made the code based on Korean. I think I’m nearly there, but I don’t think it’s even a word even though I can make a syllable.” 

Lee popped the blue marker silently and wrote down Korean consonants and vowels again on the board, but in different order unlike Reid wrote. “Korean consonants and vowels have their own orders too, like Alphabets. And there’re more tensed consonants and vowels. I’m not sure how to call that.” 

“Consonants are tensed, you’re right. Although, for vowels, Korean vowels are categorised in monophthongs and diphthongs rather than tensed.” Reid interjected. He further explained as soon as he saw a confused look on the detective. “As you can see from their prefixes, monophthong is a single vowel that has one sound, and diphthong has two sounds in a syllable. For English it’s hard to categorise monophthongs and diphthongs because there are many varieties in English language.” 

“Right,” Lee nodded, though anyone could see he didn’t understand one bit what Reid said except the doctor himself. “Anyway, this is the order generally used in Korea.” Obviously, his writing was neater than Reid’s whereas Reid’s was more like writing of geometry. “Here.” 

As soon as Reid received the marker from the older man, Reid quickly inspected the new order written by Lee. The other three waited for Reid to act and the younger man soon wrote 2-digit numbers starting with 11 on the first consonants. “I tried various digits, but I think 2-digit numbers are the most plausible code. If you used 1-digit you can’t even make a proper syllable.” Reid rambled as if he read the others’ mind about why 2-digit numbers. “But if you break the numbers into 2-digit numbers and substitute with consonants and vowels,” he used 223415301738 as the first example, breaking into 22, 34, 15, 30, 17, and 38 for others to read. Then with a red marker, he wrote ㅌ, ㅗ, ㅁ, ㅏ, ㅅ, and ㅡ above the broken numbers. “I don’t know what the word mean, of course I can look for dictionary but even for me that’ll take some time to memorise the whole dictionary.” Reid looked at the detective expectantly. “Well, does it mean something?” 

“Yeah, could you decipher other codes too?” Detective stared at the white board, his eyes widened with surprise. 

“What is it?” JJ asked curiously. 

“It’s a name. But, it’s just a given name.” 

“Maybe other codes under that numbers are surnames?” Prentiss suggested. 

“Here, this code was under the L with that codes.” Reid pointed the deciphered codes. 

The Detective read carefully without voicing. “Sorry, in Korean it’s hard to say if that’s L or R in English. But I believe it’s a full name of a man. Thomas Wellington or Werrington. It’s either of ’em.” 

With the cue, Reid immediately started to decipher other numbered codes with silent encouraging from the Detective, JJ looked for if any Thomas Wellington or Werrington were on any files or victims’ associates. And Prentiss quickly dialled the best technical analyst in the world. 

                                              -BAU-

Rossi ended the call from Hotch which Morgan looked at the older man curiously. “You gonna tell me what that was about?” 

“Not yet,” Rossi replied smugly. Morgan rolled his eyes holding his hands in the air. But the younger man didn’t see a concerned look on Rossi. 

They entered a small apartment where Aria Dalal was living. They stopped in front of the green door that had golden house number on the middle of the door. Rossi knocked on the green door but frowned as there were no response at all. It was quiet as if no one was in the other side of the door. Both men looked at each other worriedly, and Rossi knocked again. 

“Ms. Dalal? This is David Rossi from the FBI. We talked yesterday at the hospital.” 

Morgan gestured if he’d break the door as usual, but before Rossi could say anything the door slightly opened but chained. Only her voice was the evident that someone was inside the apartment. “I don’t know anything,” her voice was trembling despite she was trying to conceal her fear from the agents. “Just, please leave me alone.” Even without profiling, anyone could see she was distressed and scared. 

“We can help you, Aria,” Rossi told her gently. “It’s only me and other FBI agent, Derek Morgan. You also saw him yesterday.” 

“No woman?” Dalal asked with a timid voice. 

Rossi raised his brows at Morgan who mirrored the veteran profiler. “No, no woman here.” 

“Show me your credentials.” Rossi and Morgan showed their identifications through the small gap. “Okay, just be quick.” The door shut and opened again after a click. 

The agents entered the cosy looking apartment, but most of things were in mess. A couple of suitcases were laying in the living area, her staff messily pushed into the suitcases. “I don’t know anything about Marian.” 

“Ma’am, we know you two were close since high school.” Morgan told her politely to calm her down. Unlike controlled herself from last time, she was in verge of panicking. Before Morgan could talk more, his phone echoed in the small apartment, making Dalal jump with paled face. “I’m sorry for startling you, excuse me.” Morgan went to a corner to answer his call. 

“You’re scared of Marian’s killer, aren’t you?” Rossi asked directly side glancing at the younger agent. “You know why Marian got killed, Aria. We’re here to catch who killed your friend.”

“She, she was my best friend,” Dalal hugged herself, finally admitting. “She told me to run if something ever happens to her.” Rossi was sure they were more than just friends. 

“Yeah, will take her with us,” Morgan finished his call before he glanced the distressed nurse. “Ma’am, we need you come with us to the station.” He told the nurse who widened her eyes in fear. Rossi asked the younger man a silent question. “The secret code Kim wrote, they cracked it. All those codes are a list of names. And your name was on the front page of the list.”

Despite she was surprised at first, she just nodded. “Was there a name called Wellington?” 

“I’m not sure about that, is that person involved in this?” 

“I,” Dalal shifted uncomfortably. 

“You can tell us anything, Aria,” Rossi said kindly, “we’re not here to judge you. Just to find who did this to Marian.” 

“You know what?” Dalal shook her head defeated. “I’ve thought over and over again since last night, and I think this is my last chance.” Morgan and Rossi frowned. There was no indication that she’d commit suicide, did she hide something underneath? She was just scared of something and then she just flipped her attitude, as if she gave up everything. 

“We can help you, if someone is after you, the FBI can protect you.” 

“No, you can’t. They’ll find me even if I run away to other states. That’s what Tristan told me when Marian asked me to do this with her. Telling me I shouldn’t be involved if I wanted to live long, but I wanted to be with Marian just like we were in high school.” She bit her nails. “Just before I go with you, can I tell you here what I know? I’ll tell everything again if I have to at the station.” 

“If you’re comfortable with it.” They shouldn’t. They shold’ve taken her to the interrogation room and record everything but she wanted to release everything before anything. In case anything happens to her. 

“Thank you.” For the first time, Dalal gave them a little smile. “I’m more like an associate with the organisation. I don’t know the name of the organisation or even has one, and both Tristan and Marian were in kind of higher rank.” Morgan and Rossi nodded, but inside they were bewildered at the proof of an organisation actually existed. “There’re many people like me, they’re probably the list Tristan wrote. He was the one who managed associates whereas Marian trafficked the drugs from the hospital. I wasn’t told about other members, but they told me there were several.” 

“They told you everything they knew?” The agents wondered why they told such important things to Dalal who wasn’t an important figure in the organisation. 

“Mostly,” Dalal shrugged. “Maybe I was their insurance, I don’t know. What I’m trying to say is there are assassins in this organisation. Marian told me they were called Ira, I don’t know what it means. They can kill whoever they’re asked to. Several days ago, Tristan and Marian came to see me secretly. They told me they were being hunted by the leader himself.” 

“So you think it was this Ira who killed both Tristan and Marian?” 

“Yes, who else? The leader must’ve wanted to hide his track and killing everyone who’s involved. Marian said they were female. She never told me how she knew, but she was so sure of that.” 

“Is that why you asked if there was a woman?” She nodded. “Even if there was, it would’ve been a federal agent.” 

“You don’t know that,” she snapped at the younger agent. “Anyone can be this assassin. Even you’re not fully protected from them.” 

                                             -BAU-

All BAU and Lee were looking at the nurse through the one-way glass window who was with Rossi in the interrogation room. Aria Dalal asked for Rossi to be the agent to question her and they’d gone through the same conversation they had in her apartment. Unlike before she seemed to be relaxed than before but still devastated. She, however, perhaps finally convinced herself that the BAU can help her to ease her anxiety. 

“How do you know Wellington?” Rossi asked Dalal with curiosity. “We knew each other, because…” she paused a bit, “I was Marian’s sexual partner whereas Wellington was Tristan’s. I didn’t see him since he moved to another city or something,” she shook her head. “Then, then, Marian came to see me, told me I have to run if something happens to her.” 

Before he leaves the room, Rossi offered if she wanted some food or drink. She smiled a little towards the older man saying she didn’t have any appetite. Rossi returned and joined the team, leaving the nurse in the room alone. 

“Wellington is one of the first names on the list along with Dalal.” Reid said as soon as Rossi entered. “Thomas Wellington was one of the lawyers worked at the Kim’s law firm.” 

“Was?” Morgan raised brows. 

“Wellington moved to another firm, but he died from a car accident three days ago. Just a day after Lewis was killed,” replied Reid, “Not only Wellington, some of people from the Kim’s journal have been dying by accidents since Smith and Olson died.” 

“Not a coincidence is there?” Rossi sighed deeply. “If this Ira, the wrath, is our UnSub, why didn’t they take the list with them? Dalal said it was Kim’s responsibility to manage the associates. They would’ve known Kim had a list of names. I think the UnSub is a third person, not involved in the organisation directly at least.” 

“So, we have to catch this UnSub, Ira, and the ringleader?” Lee blanched. “We don’t have evidence that it was Ira who killed these people on the list.” 

“We don’t know what to look for these Ira, but our UnSub knows who they are.” Hotch said quietly as he stared at the nurse who was keep staring down at the table. “We only have a bit of lead to UnSub only. And we have to act fast.” 

                                             -BAU-

“Hey, Hotch,” JJ called the Unit Chief as soon as the team returned to the operation room. “Emily and I didn’t have any chance to talk this, but we might have some theory who might the UnSub is, if the UnSub is part of the Force.” 

“If they’re maybe they can be one of the forensics.” Prentiss nodded. 

The team didn’t miss something flashed on Hotch’s usual stoic face. He glanced back and saw the Captain was calling in his office with his personal phone. Robertson looked up and both men looked into their eyes, neither avoiding. Hotch moved away as Lee entered the office with paled face, gulping. 

“Dalal’s dead.” 

“What?” Morgan nearly yelled incredulously. 

Hotch was the first to sprint to the room where the nurse sprawled on the table, her eyes and mouth wide open. There was a half-eaten sandwich and coffee on the ground. Poison. 

“Who brought the food?” Hotch demanded, refraining himself from snarling at the officer next to him. 

“I, I did, sir,” the young officer stammered. “There was a woman, she said she got an order to deliver the food to, to, her.” 

“Did you ask who ordered?” Rossi asked, and Hotch didn’t know his mentor and others were behind him. 

“Yes, yes,” the young officer nodded hastily, “she said it was ordered by Agent Hotchner.” The faces of BAU darkened. 

“Where is she? What does she look like?” Hotch growled. 

“She just left, she was wearing a blue cap, a, a red hoodie.” The description was too vague to find the woman. “Pretty, Asian…,” he mumbled as Hotch’s eyes hardened. Morgan asked if he knew where the food is from and the officer shook his head, looking afraid to meet Hotch’s eyes. 

Hotch bolted out from the station, leaving his team who called his name behind. The sky was already darkened, the winter Moon looking down at him. He shouldn’t have run like that, he should’ve stayed with his team. But Hotch looked for the mysterious woman, pushing people aside in the vast city. It was looking for a needle in a haystack, but he had to find the woman. 

His phone buzzed, it was his long time mentor. “Are you out of your mind?” Rossi’s angry voice rang Hotch’s ear. “Where’re you?” Rossi had the right to be angry at him after he told what happened between him and the Captain. 

“I’ll be there, don’t come for me,” his eyes didn’t miss a woman with similar clothes staring at him from the other end of the street. Was she smiling at him? Taunting him? He knew it was a trap. “Rossi, remember what I said, call Garcia if I don’t call you back in ten minutes.” He grabbed his gun and followed the woman to a dark alley. Just so typical and cliché. 

                                             -BAU-

The old profiler nearly threw his phone as the call ended. If he waited for ten minutes for Hotch to call, he was stupid. He wasn’t going to wait. Rossi quickly called Garcia, ignoring worried questions from the younger profilers about Hotch. 

“Penelope here, how can I help you this time?” A cheerful voice answered the call. 

“Garcia, listen carefully,” Rossi lowered his voice, “wait, just listen don’t say anything.” He said quickly to everyone, muting the call as soon as he saw Captain Robertson walking towards the BAU’s temporary office room. 

Robertson opened the door without a knock and observed the room, especially the boards before his eyes meet with the BAU’s. “I heard what happened, where is Agent Hotchner?” 

“He went to after the person who poisoned Dalal. He’s coming back soon.” Rossi replied before anyone could, he could see the younger profilers seething, especially Morgan at the Captain’s insinuation. 

“How can you be sure he’s coming back?” 

“What do you mean by that?” Morgan clenched his teeth, not liking one bit where this was going. 

“The food that was ordered by Agent Hotchner himself killed a witness and now he’s not here. How can you be sure he didn’t run away after killing that poor woman?” 

“I assure you, Captain. Aaron Hotchner is not that kind of person. He’ll return and we’ll find who is responsible for this. Please don’t accuse him of such thing.” Rossi’s voice was calm. But it was calm before the storm. 

“I’ll call FBI and ask for investigation on both this case and the BAU,” the Captain’s eyes glowed dangerously. And Rossi saw a flickering light of victory in his eyes. Rossi wouldn’t let this man ruin his best friend’s life and reputation.

“24 hours, just give us 24 hours. We’ll get your UnSub and prove Agent Hotchner isn’t involved in this.” 

Robertson’s weighed his option, his eyes boring into Rossi’s. “We also have a missing officer and don’t have hands to help the FBI if they come now. I’ll give you only one day to prove and bring the responsible person in front of me, Agent.” 

“That’s all I ask.” Rossi nodded, and Robertson left the office, his smug smile hidden from shadow. 

“Dammit, what was that about?” Morgan smacked the table with his fist. 

“We were called to be chess pawns in the first place.” Rossi’s grip on the back of a chair tightened, his knuckles turning white. He unmuted the call, instantly Garcia’s panicked voice assaulting the BAU. “Penelope, calm down. Hotch already prepared if anything happens to him.” 

“He prepared for this?” Prentiss asked the older man incredulously. 

“This morning, he told me Captain Robertson is involved with this organisation, and he was sure Robertson would plan something. We just never expected he’d act this fast to set a trap like this.” 

“And you didn’t tell us?” Reid frowned, hurt by the two agents’ distrust in them. 

“We did it to protect all of you. What’s done is done. For now, we need to focus on Hotch and find the UnSub, and who killed Dalal.” 

“He isn’t answering,” Morgan swore under his breath. 

“How did he prepare? How can we know he’s safe?” JJ emphasised the last question. Hotch had already gone through so much and she didn’t want Hotch to suffer more. She didn’t want anything happens to him, especially Jack. The boy adored his father, he’ll be devastated. 

“Garcia, could you track his phone?” 

“Give me a second.” Rossi hoped nothing happened to his friend. He didn’t have to become a bait, damn it. 

“Oh no, no, no, no.” Garcia shrieked. 

“Pen, what is it?” Prentiss urged her friend biting her nails, fear creeping everyone. 

“He was moving, and his phone just turned off.” 

                                            -BAU-

As expected, the woman was standing in the middle of the no through small alley. No one was in the alley except him and her. Even the sound of bustling city didn’t reach this deep narrow alley, as if the alley was another world. With only wind howling, pale moonlight creeping above them, her smile looked ominous even to Hotch. 

“Who are you.” 

“Agent Hotchner, you should’ven’t followed me.” Her accent was a bit foreign but not too rough. 

“You’ll come with me and tell who you are and who orders you.” 

“I thought you already knew?” She said in mocking surprise. “I mean, that’s why he told us to help you leave the living world.” She pulled out a small folding knife and started to spin it. “Well, not exactly kill you.”

She used ‘us’, did she have a partner or other members of organisation? He was lackless, yes, but he didn’t want to lose another lead. If anything happens to him, Rossi would be there to solve the case and lead the team. 

“Well, well, Agent Hotchner.” 

The familiar voice. He turned, widened eyes, he heard JJ and Prentiss’ theory just a few minutes ago. Off guard, his head soon smacked with something blunt that was heavy and hard. He dropped his gun, falling, his conscious slowly drifting away from shock and pain. Even with blurring sight, he could clearly see and hear the familiar face and the voice. Don’t trust anyone. That’s what you said.

@evans-dejong

[jasonnylaura]

How can I get my money back from a binary options scam?

A binary option is similar to a normal (“vanilla”) option, where you pay a premium for the option to buy or sell an instrument at a fixed price (the exercise price – see box below for a detailed explanation). Profits or losses on vanilla options can be small or large, depending on the difference between the “exercise” price and the price of the underlying asset.

Unlike normal options, however, binary options do not fluctuate in value. Either the option is “in the money” on expiry – in which case it pays out – or it isn’t, in which case it expires worthless. Because of this binary nature, many shysters see an opportunity in selling binary options that are highly unlikely to end up in the money. They get to collect the hefty premiums, but never have to pay out.

Don’t be suckered by wild success stories

The media is part of the problem. Journalists, particularly those working at online content mills, are so desperate for content that might “go viral” and garner lots of hits that they’re quite willing to run a story with a click-bait headline without doing much (if any) background research. Take the recent tale of a 16-year-old “self-taught currency trader”, who apparently turned £150 into £60,000 in less than a year. This dubious success story was widely shared on social media without many questions being asked. Yet if we take those returns and calculate them on an annual basis, this 16-year-old’s return for the year would be 39,900%. That would literally make him the best trader of all time. So how did a 16-year-old school kid learn how to outsmart the best minds and machines on the planet, just by watching YouTube videos? As nobody asked him, sadly we’ll never know.

There was also the very recent example of Giovani , a 20-year-old medical student in Plymouth who claimed to be making six figures a month from foreign exchange trading. One major newspaper reported this month that more than 1,000 investors were sucked in by Singh’s Instagram account, which showed him posing in designer clothes with expensive cars at plush holiday resorts. Those who signed up for his services found that their trading accounts were emptied on Christmas Eve and the FCA has added him to its warning list of unauthorised traders (after the fact, unfortunately). But what the paper doesn’t mention in this particular piece is that Singh’s “success” was first reported on its own website in breathless, no-questions-asked fashion, in November, just a month before it all went horribly wrong.

This aggravates me because, as a genuine trader, I work hard to make profits and I know what it takes. I also don’t like to see people being conned. So I want to unpack this story for you, so that you don’t end up falling for one of these scams or something similar.

How does the binary-options scam work?

There is a reason why so many gentlemen (it’s usually men) in their early 20s now apparently own private jets, luxury cars and slick watches. It just may not be because they’ve cracked the financial markets as they claim. As Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s business partner, puts it: “Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome”. There are many reputable financial-trading firms and brokerages out there. However, many – ones that I would describe as “bucket shops” – are not so reputable. Spread-betting firms typically make their money on the spread (the gap between the buying price and the selling price) and the commission paid by their clients. So their business model does not benefit from losing traders.

However, many brokers know that a losing trader can be very profitable – for them. If you know that 90% of traders will lose all of their money within six months, what do you do? Simply take the other side of the trade. When Johnny Punter buys, the broker sells. And when Johnny Punter wishes to cover his losses, the broker buys and collects the profit.

Unprofitable traders are so profitable for many a bucket shop that they will pay handsome introduction fees for new traders. Therein lies the incentive. It doesn’t matter if you’re actually making any money from your trading – if you can get even a £20 incentive for every trader who signs up with the minimum deposit of a few hundred pounds, then you only need to sign up 1,000 people a month to make £20,000. And the reality is that these brokers aren’t offering just £20 for new clients – they’re offering hundreds. I know they do, because I’ve been offered it.

The Pied Pipers of foreign exchange

If you’re not a successful trader, the next best thing is to fake it. A quick Google search reveals that you can rent a Lamborghini Huracan for four days at a price of £2,500. This is fairly steep – but you can rent a Lamborghini Gallardo for two days for £1,590. Two days is more than enough for a wannabe forex guru to take hundreds of snaps in different outfits, parking in fancy residential estates that they don’t live in and overall giving the impression over several months that they really do own a six-figure supercar. And of course, there are plenty of places to hunt down a cheap, out-of-season stay at a luxurious five-star hotel, where they can do exactly the same. Then they just pop it all on social media and wait for eager punters to line up to sign up with their “exclusive broker”.

Many brokers offer demo accounts, in which case the “guru” can just repeatedly put on ten trades in a row, come out with winners, then screenshot it and post it on Instagram. If even that is too difficult a task, then it’s a simple matter to fake the picture instead using image manipulation software and post that. With “evidence” of their success sorted out, the trader then promotes their wares with promises of “signals” that have 90% success rates, alongside key phrases such as “no risk” and “guaranteed profit”. Most informed investors realize that if a magic money-making machine did exist it would be owned by a private hedge fund, never to see the light of day. So anyone who actually believes that a 20-year-old student could pull this off is ideal bait – inexperienced, naive and potentially desperate.

The scam also succeeds because of how victims feel when they finally realize they’ve been suckered. Most don’t tell anyone because they feel foolish and want to save face. But also, they know (or rapidly learn) that there is very little the police can do. The banning of the sale of binary options was a step in the right direction. But now the traders of Instagram simply give away their “signals” to trade these options for free. And many bucket-shop brokers are overseas – often they’re not even doing anything illegal in the country in which they operate (although equally often the traders in question will imply that the bucket shop is a reputable UK-based and regulated institution, or lie flat out).

There are even operators who will manipulate the punter’s account in order to make them believe they are winning and then call on them to deposit more money. Then, when the client finally wishes to withdraw, the company goes cold and refers them to the small print, in which it says that the client must trade through an impossible amount of money just to be allowed to withdraw. Other brokers allow the affiliate to widen the spread to maximize their own commission and increase losses for their clients. We look at ways to avoid being scammed in the box below, but in short, as always – if it looks too good to be true, it is.

Can I trust Binary option scam reviews?

Is there a scam behind "Forex Binary Options" trading?

How do I go about recovering money from a Forex scam?

What is the best way to get my money back from an internet scam?

How can I recover my funds on binary options?

How can I get back my lost money from a scammer?

Alienmanhackers.xyz assists individuals and corporates around the world. They are able to use tools which are available in both UK and foreign jurisdictions to secure the best outcome for clients. With the help of a friend was able to recover the sum of 42,000GBP which was stolen under the pretense of investment.

[quatorz]

Here’s something I wrote just prior to the election...

I’m sharing it here in case anyone thinks its useful.  I think-especially with the events of today-its going to become so apparent that we need to ‘demystify’ the Trumpster fire and expose him for the lying sack of shit that he was.

I said to a friend of mine MANY years ago that the most dangerous thing that was happening was that the truth was becoming partisan.  Man is that true now. 

But I wrote this, sent it to a few relatives (including my own Dad who is a supporter of the Orange One), and posted it to Facebook. 

The goal of the piece was always: ‘hey, you don’t have to listen to me.  Here are other sources (most of them Republican) who point out this mans complete inability to fill the Oval Office.  (And I live in Pennsylvania, and I wrote this just before our former Governor-former Republican Governor-Tom Ridge endorsed Biden.  Else I definitely would have included this). 

And some of it may seem slightly personal or familiar?  I was writing this primarily to speak to members of my family and friends. 

If any of this is useful, feel free to use it. 

Why I’m Not Voting for Trump

A few weeks ago a bomb dropped.  Not a literal bomb-as in ordinance, but a news bomb.  Although in our endlessly insane (or maybe insanely endless?) news cycle that’s been the last four years, it was easy to get overshadowed because another bomb probably dropped the next day or ever a few hours after that one.

But this one was different.  This was the revelation that Trump had 400 million dollars in outstanding loans.  On one of those loans-for 100 million dollars-they’d paid only the interest-none of the principal-and the loan is due in 2022.  The obvious question was asked: who does he owe that money too?

It’s a good question.  There was a great quote making the rounds from Eric Trump in 2014: ‘Who needs American banks?  Russia has plenty of money!’  During his town hall Savannah Guthrie asked Trump directly if that 400 million dollars was owed to foreign banks.  “Probably,” he said.

So: what makes that revelation a ‘bomb’? 

When I heard this, I immediately thought back to an instance that’s always stuck with me: last October when we inexplicably pulled our troops out of Syria.  Do you remember that?  Trump got off the phone with President Erdogan and announced that we were pulling out of Syria.  The backlash was immediate and bi-partisan.  Resident sycophant Lindsay Graham was especially critical, tweeting out:

“The most probable outcome of this impulsive decision is to ensure Iran’s domination of Syria...The U.S. now has no leverage and Syria will eventually become a nightmare for Israel.

“I feel very bad for the Americans and allies who have sacrificed to destroy the ISIS Caliphate because this decision virtually reassures the reemergence of ISIS.  So sad.  So dangerous.  President Trump may be tired of fighting radical Islam.  They are NOT tired of fighting us.”

This incident always stuck with me.  Especially the timing: getting off the phone with Erdogan and then hours later pulling out of Syria.  Astute researchers quickly found an audio clip of Trump on Steve Bannon’s radio show from back in 2011 saying ‘well, I have a conflict of interest when it comes to Turkey.  I have two buildings in Istanbul’...

So at first I thought this was simply another example of something I’d long thought Trump guilty of: being the president of Trump Enterprises first, and America second.  We’d seen that before with one of the first acts of his administration: the Travel Ban*, and then with his handling of the FBI building**. 

But when news of the outstanding loans came to light, I thought again about Syria, and the odd, out-of-the-blue nature of the President’s decision. 

The day the news of the loans broke, they had a former security official on MSNBC, and he brought up an interesting point: if you had large outstanding financial obligations like that to a foreign bank, you might be denied a security clearance based on that fact because you could be threatened or cajoled into acting against our country’s interests. 

Is that what happened here?  Did Erdogan ask Trump to pull his forces out of Syria (or did he demand it)?  Or was it Putin, indirectly through Erdogan who maybe told Trump “a mutual friend would be very appreciative if you would do this for him”. 

Who gave the order to pull out of Syria…?  An order that-according to Lindsey Graham-went against America’s interest and all but assured the resurrection of ISIS?

You’re probably thinking: whoa, Dave!   Easy there!  I mean, that sounds pretty crazy, right?  The idea that the President could be financially compromised to the extent that he does the bidding of our adversaries? 

Actually, I’m not the first to submit this crazy theory.  After the 2018 meeting in Helsinki with Vladimir Putin, a Republican state Congressman from Texas (yes, you read that right: a Republican from Texas) posted an op-ed with the title: Trump Is Being Manipulated by Putin. What Should We Do?

This Texas Republican’s background?  He’s former CIA.  In the op-ed he writes: “over the course of my career as an undercover officer in the C.I.A., I saw Russian intelligence manipulate many people. I never thought I would see the day when an American president would be one of them.”

He goes on to say: “The president’s failure to defend the United States intelligence community’s unanimous conclusions of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and condemn Russian covert counterinfluence campaigns and his standing idle on the world stage while a Russian dictator spouted lies confused many but should concern all Americans. 

“By playing into Vladimir Putin’s hands, the leader of the free world actively participated in a Russian disinformation campaign that legitimized Russian denial and weakened the credibility of the United States to both our friends and foes abroad.”

Wow.

I strongly believe that this President is dangerous.  He’s dangerous in the way he coddles up to autocrats.  He’s dangerous because he has financial entanglements that make him put his own interests before the nation’s.  And he’s dangerous because he politicized a virus that killed 200,000+ people when we now know he’s on record in February telling Bob Woodward (on tape no less) that this was WAY worse the flu, and was deadly. 

But you don’t take my word for it.  Listen to some fellow Republicans.  Here’s a statement by 70 Republicans who served as national security officials and say that this President is dangerously unfit to serve another term.  https://www.defendingdemocracytogether.org/national-security/

There’s more.  In an open letter to America, 780 retired Generals, Admirals, Senior Noncommissioned Officers, Ambassadors and Senior Civilian National Security Officials announced their support of Joe Biden for President for similar reasons: https://www.nationalsecurityleaders4biden.com/

Let me say, also, that I don’t think there’s anything ideologically wrong with being a Republican.  But I would submit to you that this current Republican administration and Republican Congress does not serve you, or anyone you know.

Basically, if you’re not going to watch Penn State play Ohio State tonight from Mar-A-Lago, their interests are not your interests. 

Trump isn’t for the ‘little guy’.  He’s accomplished one thing legislatively in his four years in office, and that was a tax cut for millionaires and billionaires.  Now, those billionaires are using their considerable resources (like Rupert Murdoch and Fox News) to try and get you to vote for him again so that they can keep the gravy train rolling.  It’s as simple as that.  It’s all about money.

Oh, and I forgot one other thing this President has done for the wealthy and corporations: he’s been hell bent on deregulating industry.  Which is great for big business, but not so great for us-the consumers.  In 2019 regulations on the pork industry were rolled back (read more about that here: https://qz.com/1716113/trump-gives-pork-industry-a-path-to-regulate-itself/).

What could go wrong there?  There were two health inspectors who came forward (if I remember right, they may have been the ones to bring the issue to light) and they basically said that they wouldn’t be eating the food from the companies where they had worked. 

Right now there are massive efforts to have legitimate votes cast be discounted.  In Minnesota, Republicans there are fighting a ruling that ballots can be received up to seven days after the election-as long as they are postmarked by election day.

This deadline was put into place months ago because of the pandemic, and was accepted on a bi-partisan basis.  Now Republicans are challenging that.  So you could have voters that put their vote in the mail last Tuesday-while the deadline was valid-only to have their vote challenged if the post office delivers it on Wednesday. 

Surely it can’t be partisan to feel that everyone’s vote should count?  But this is the new extreme right Republican party that will do anything to win-even disenfranchise legal votes.  Discounting valid votes is how we go from being America to being a Banana Republic.  At some point these Republicans need to understand that they are Americans first and Republicans second, or we are screwed as a nation. 

Trump is a man who shows no respect for the office of the President, caters to autocrats while his lawyers argue in court that he shouldn’t be able to be investigated while he’s in office.  If you’re an American, that should ALARM THE CRAP out of you.  Democracies can fall.  It’s happening everywhere around the globe.  If you think it ‘couldn’t happen here’ simply because it never has, that’s some dangerous thinking.  Remember, technically Putin is ‘elected’ into office.  And this Congress has failed epically in its duty to be a check on the executive branch.  That’s their job, by the way-regardless of who is in office.  

Don’t get me started on Attorney General William Barr.  I wonder if-during his confirmation hearings-when he listed ‘Banana Republics’ on his resume they thought he’d worked for the now defunct clothing chain, not that he was adept at creating them. 

You may be asking yourself: why is he putting all this out there now?  Because I love all of you-and certainly respect all of you.  And I see you blindly following a leader who doesn’t represent you or your values.  And I see you acting in a way and saying things and posting things that are inconsistent with the people I know you to be.

I’m working on the assumption that you are being fed false information.  That deep down you are indeed the people that I think you are, but you are being misled.

And remember: there are two ways to lie.  You can outright tell someone something that is false.  But you can also lie by omission.  Fox News is certainly guilty of the former, but maybe even more so of the latter.  (Fox News probably won’t tell you that 780 former Generals and National Security officials say that the President shouldn’t serve another term.   They didn’t lie…they just didn’t mention it.  And I think that’s something worth mentioning.)

Think of the dynamic at work here: Trump does or says something.  The dozens of news organizations that you’ve followed and respected your entire lives tells you it’s false.  One-ONE-news organization backs up his claim (the organization that is owned by a man who has benefited financially from President’s policies).  Meanwhile Trump calls the others ‘fake news’.  Do you see anything wrong there?

There is a great quote from Orwell’s 1984 that has become hauntingly prescient over the last four years: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” 

This Tuesday will be a deciding moment in this nation.  If you want a vote that actually means something in 2024, don’t vote for Trump on Tuesday.

 ****************

*What about the Travel Ban?  Glad you asked.  If you remember, the travel ban was assigned to keep us safe by preventing people from certain countries from coming to America (it is worth noting that the travel ban was first struck down by a federal judge appointed by George Bush).  One of the oddities about the travel ban was that there were three countries that were exempt.  These three countries were the only countries that had produced terrorists that had killed Americans.  None of the countries actually on the travel ban had.   Weird, huh?  Do you know what else these countries had in common?  They all had Trump branded properties. 

 **  The F.B.I. building.  So the F.B.I. building is in not great shape.  It’s old and falling apart.  In fact they had sections of the outside cordoned off so that a piece of the outer façade doesn’t fall off and kill someone.  The U.S. government had worked out a deal with a contractor that the contractor would build the F.B.I. a brand new facility-for free-and then in exchange the contractor would be given the old F.B.I. location to do whatever they want with it.  Presumably, knock down and make it into a new building/hotel/shops (whatever).  Pretty good deal, right?

Except…a year or so ago a lady had a meeting at the White House and then went before Congress and said that the F.B.I. did not, in fact, want a free brand new facility anymore, but instead wanted the renovate and repair the old one instead.  Huh…

Do you know what building is just a couple blocks down from the F.B.I. building’s location?  Trump’s D.C. hotel. 

Now I know what you’re thinking.  You’re saying: ‘but Dave, look at all the NFL owners: they didn’t want new stadiums.  They decided to pour money into their old dilapidated stadiums that were steeped in tradition and history!’  Except you’re not saying that because that never happened.  Everyone wants a new facility over a crumbling money pit, and I’m sure the F.B.I was no exception.

(It’s also interesting to note that-for some reason-there was two billion dollars in one of the recent versions of a Coronavirus relief bill-that wasn’t passed-allocated for the repair of the F.B.I. building.  Why?  Who put that in there? It wasn’t Senate Republicans.  It was funny watching Mitch McConnell answering questions about that and having to admit that he had no idea that it was even in there).

[marvels-writings]

Phoenix and the Stars (3)

| Part 1 | Part 2 | 

Carol Danvers Masterlist

Series Masterlist

A/N: please tell me I’m not the only person who goes back to re-read previous parts of the series cause i forgot. In my defense, I have like 60 drabbles and series done in total. So like ayyyyyy.

It had been another 2 days, you had taught Carol a bit more about pop culture and Carol told you a lot more about her past. You were still really closed off about your past, and thankfully, Carol respected that and never pushed you. 

But you were incredibly bored, and being in a confined space next to a freezing lake with Carol Danvers, the woman you were starting to develop feelings for, was your new definition of hell. Angrily, you put your suit on to check out what was happening at the shed you should’ve blown up almost a week ago. 

“What the hell are you doing?” Carol demanded, leaning in the doorway of your room as you struggled to zip up your suit from the back. You whipped around to face her, she wore sweatpants, a t shirt and a small blush on her face. 

“Getting ready to blow up the shed we should’ve blown up last week.” You answered, continuing to struggle with the zipper. 

“Y/n we’ve been over this.” Carol sighed, moving to sit next to you on the bed. “We can’t go out there yet.”

“Yeah, but we won’t know what’s wrong unless we get out of this house!” You said back, deciding you couldn’t get the zipper up by yourself. “Could you help me with this?” You asked, showing your half exposed back to Carol for her to zip it up. 

You felt Carol’s sigh on your back before she zipped up the suit, warm fingers grazing over your skin gently. You turned around to find both your faces a light pink as you went around the room trying to find your gloves. 

“Well, you’re not going alone.” Carol stated, getting up and walking to her room, you grinned before asking her where she was going. “To get ready to save your ass.”

You laughed and continued to find your gloves. 

 -~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

After about 10 minutes, the two of you were completely ready, you decided to put a hat on since it was freezing outside. Carol chuckled slightly at the sight, you asked her why as the two of you walked down the creaky steps. 

“A phoenix with a black beanie isn’t really a normal sight.” Carol joked, walking over to the door and unlocking it, a gust of wind almost knocked the hat off your head. 

“I’m cold.” You confessed, walking outside, Carol following close behind. 

“I wouldn’t blame you.” Carol said, shivering slightly as she closed the door. “Where to?”

“To the dealing, I think.” You said, pointing across the freezing lake towards the large, black wooden building. 

“I have a bad feeling about this.” Carol muttered, following you as you walked around the lake. 

“Relax stargirl, you’re gonna be fine.” You answered, using your fire powers to heat everything except your hat. Carol mumbled something but you changed the topic, talking about something random on the way to the dealing. 

 -~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

“Okay you were right to have a bad feeling about this!” You yelled midair, throwing fireballs at the HYDRA agents. Who seemed to be the buyers before you and Carol. The only problem was there were about 100 of them, 50 of the sellers, and now everyone wanted to kill you and Carol for blowing up a car. 

“You think?!” Carol yelled back, blasting everyone who even tried to get close to you. You raised an eyebrow at her defensiveness before continuing to fight. 

Currently, both you and Carol were firing blasts at about 150ish people with blasters. At least you and carol had the higher ground, well, air to be honest since both of you were flying. 

“I’m gonna call Maria, cover me.” You instructed Carol, hovering in the air and getting your phone out to call her. 

“How the hell do you still have your phone?!” Carol yelled, hovering above you and shooting at everyone. 

“Tony made a fireproof pocket for my phone and some earbuds, music?” You joked, offering her your open airpods case. She looked at you like you were insane, you shrugged and called Maria. 

In about 2 minutes, about 50  of the agents were down, Maria was heading over and you were about to collapse from exhaustion. You couldn’t maintain blasting and flight for this long. 

“Carol, I’m going on the ground.” You said, breathless as you landed on the ground in the middle of the building and the frozen lake. 

“That’s a shit idea!” Carol yelled at you, but followed you down to the ground, blasting from next to you at everyone else. 

Your breathing was getting a lot faster than it usually did during training, mainly because of exertion but also anxiety that you might not get out alive. Carol noticed the decreased speed of your fireballs and the rapid breathing next to her and stood in front of you. ‘

“Get back to the house, I’ll meet you there soon.” Carol instructed, blasting about 10 agents at once. 

You looked up at her, she glared at you and nodded at you to leave, a glance at all of the agents lying on the floor told you she had this handled. A few still seemed to be conscious and were trying to reach for their guns, you shot a few before running across the lake. 

About half way across the lake, you couldn’t breathe in the cold air anymore, you covered your face with your hat and tried to regulate your breathing in the middle of a frozen lake. You looked around, the house was in front of you, smaller than ever, Carol was kicking everyone’s ass behind you and trees everywhere else. 

The hat helped warm air get to your lungs, your breathing was still rapid, you stood for a few minutes, trying to get your breathing under control. Once you did, you took a breath of fresh air, not through your hat, it felt nice. 

The opposite of how the blast in your ribs felt. You dropped to your knees instantly, the ice cracking beneath you. The wound in your side was mostly burnt, but there was a bullet in the middle, making you bleed. You tried to put pressure on it using your hat, it wasn’t working.

You heard a large explosion and looked up to see Carol running towards you, all the agents behind her were down. You tried to keep your breathing steady as she ran towards you, not noticing the ice cracking more beneath you. 

“Carol, stop!” You croaked out, you saw her confused face before you fell through the ice, welcomed by freezing cold and no air. 

Tag list: @capcarolsdanver​, @versdan​, @lesbian-girls-wayhaught​, @lovebotlarson​, @dhengkt​, @5aftermidnight​, @hstoria​, @natasha-danvers​, let me know if you’d like to be in any of my tag lists!

A/N: YOU WILL LIVE I PROMISE!. Also i think imma continue the As Long As You Need With Your Niece (check masterlist ;) series because i have a ton of cute prompts for it. Feedback is amazing, thank you!

| Part 4 |

[angelicspaceprince]

Ouija

Author: Ama

Title: Ouija

Pairing: Possible Future Beetlejuice/Reader

Character/s: Beetlejuice

Word Count: 2, 473 words

Warnings: Beetlejuice has dyslexia, I do not, I tried.

Tags: @yankyo, @justballoonfishthings, @breadbudzo, @aethersghoulette, @ironically-deadinside, @beetlejuicecansteponme, @beetlebitchywitch (some of you asked, some of you I just tagged bc)

Prompt: You find a Ouija board and end up communicating with a ghost who has trouble spelling. Together you figure out a way for him to communicate with you a little bit easier.

Notes: I promised this fic like ages ago, based off of @slut-4-beetlejuice hcs that they wrote ages ago and we kinda did a dance of reblogs where we added to each other. But yeah, this is what I came up with! My plan for this fic is to do it in two parts and if y’all want more I can write more later, but I’m basically gonna portray your side of the story and then our favourite residential ghost with the most. This, obviously, is the reader’s side of the story. This is my first attempt at writing Beetlejuice as a fic, not as a hc so please be gentle with me. I hope y’all enjoy!Also, I had speechie friendo talk to me about dyslexia and I based Beej’s spelling mistakes around the notes she sent me.

Ouija Board Inspiration

Buy Me a Coffee

Ouija

It had started out innocently enough. You were bored and decided to spend the day exploring your new attic. You found a box filled with old games and decided that you wanted to sort through them, see if any were unusual or rare that you could keep. Most of them, you planned to donate somewhere, or put them back into storage.

You weren’t expecting much. Maybe a torn-up game of Twister, or Mouse Trap. Half a pack of Uno cards, or a ruined game of Trouble, and for the most part, you got what you expected. But when you found the Ouija board, you were a little surprised. Most of the games were for children, and weren’t in good enough nick to keep, let alone play. But the Ouija board looked like it just came out of the factory that created it. You go to lift the case from the bottom of the box, surprised by how heavy it was when you started to lift, nearly dropping it twice when you finally got it out and onto the table in front of you. Carefully, you lift the lid.

No wonder it was heavy. The Ouija board was wooden, and bigger than you were expecting. The dark wood had been engraved with the usual things a Ouija has, Yes, No, Goodbye, numbers 0-9 and every letter of the alphabet, the outside decorated with various designs you couldn’t make out in the dark. The one you could recognise was the pentagram engraved between the Yes and the No on the board. The planchette was also heavy, made from the same wood as the board, engraved with just two x’s, indicating where to put your finger.

You look over at the board as you hold the planchette in your hands. You were bored, yes. The attic was now in a state, yes. But the urge to test out the Ouija board was beginning to get too great. You organise yourself on the floor, placing the planchette in the middle of the board and just.... waiting. Not really sure on what to do now.

“Uh…hello?” Your voice is uncertain before you yelp when the cursor on the board begins to move. Yes, your fingers are on the x’s, but you weren’t providing any pressure. It just moved on its own.

‘H – I.’ The cursor spells out as your brain sort circuits as it returns to the centre of the board.

“Uhhhhh.” You pause, not sure how to proceed. “I’m Y/N. What’s your name?” The planchette seems to shake a little before moving towards the ‘No’ part of the board, returning to the centre. “You don’t want to tell me?” It moves back to the ‘No’. “That’s ok then. Can I ask if you’re really dead?” It moves to the ‘Yes’. “Is that yes I can ask, or yes you are?”

‘YES, I – A – M – D – E – D.’ You repeat the phrase once you’ve spelt out the letters quietly to show you’re aware of which letter the ghost was indicating with. “Sorry, I didn’t think I’d get a response, or one so soon.”

‘F – L – G – U – R – E – D.’

“Can I ask some questions about life after death?” You wait for the cursor to move over the Yes before continuing. “Is there a hell?”

So, it continued. Every day, after work, you’d come home and race up to the attic and spend time talking to your ghostly friend, who still wouldn’t tell you their name. All you knew was they were dead, had been for centuries, were bored, and were something called a bio-exorcist (which took a couple of attempts to spell). You also learnt that any form of parental figure, they hated, and any form of rules and regulations was not something they enjoyed.

You also noticed that they had a weird tendency to refuse certain questions or struggled to spell words correctly when they did. Sure, exorcist, intelligence and February weren’t easy words to spell when you weren’t writing them down, but replacing b’s for d’s and p’s for q’s, c’s for o’s and n’s for m’s. There were a lot of little things you picked up over time made you think perhaps there was more to this story.

So, you changed direction. One evening, you were talking about work and things that annoyed you and a question you thought they’d be fine answering, but the planchette just started to shake. You pause for a second, trying to figure out what was wrong. “Do you want to answer the question?” The cursor slides quickly and heavily to the ‘Yes’, causing you to move your whole body with it before it tentatively returns to the centre of the board. You think for a second as the planchette continues to vibrate with what feels like annoyance. “Can you spell the answer?” The planchette stops moving and everything is still. It’s so quiet, you could hear a pin drop. You wait for thirty seconds before you say “Hello?” and like that, the cursor slowly, tentatively, goes over towards the ‘No’ part of the board followed by a ‘A-L-W-A-Y-S-B-E-E-M-A-B-A-D-S-P-E-L-E-R. “Oh. That’s ok, I’m pretty rubbish without spell check too. Take your time.” Everything stops for a second, the energy that is always humming when you’re up here seems to have dropped to a low throb, and you slowly remove your hands from the planchette as you think.

‘How can I make this easier for them?’ You hum for a second before returning your hands to the board. “Would you prefer yes or no questions?” The planchette slides quickly over to the ‘Yes’ and you smile. “Ok, if something isn’t a yes or no question, I’ll provide answers and you can slide to the numbers to tell me which one is appropriate. Does that work?” Again, ‘Yes’.

Life moves on. It was weird at first, but you got used to asking only yes or no questions and becoming content with that as a response. A few more weeks went by, you slowly began to spend more time talking to the ghost in the attic. It was fascinating, and you were lonely and suspected they were too. Why else would they talk to you night after night after night? You never brought up the idea that perhaps they may have been lonely, but you focused on making sure like they felt like they had a friend.

A few more weeks had passed before you came up with a new idea. As good as it was to make them feel like they weren’t stupid for their spelling, you felt like you were muting them or speaking on their behalf. So, on your Saturday evening as you ate your dinner and you asked a question about if they enjoyed scaring people whenever they got the chance and the planchette moved by its own accord, you stared down at the board for a few minutes in shock. “You can move things WITHOUT me helping?”

‘Yes.’

“Why the fuck do I have to hold it then?” You forget to offer options as you take a breath, hearing the planchette slide across the board. “Its fine, I was just in shock.” You explain, not looking at what the ghost was being said. An idea pings in your head. “With your bad spelling, does it affect your reading or is it easier? One for both are hard, two for reading is easier.”

The planchette wobbles for a second before it slides over between the two. ‘R-E-A-D-I-M-G-I-S-S-T-I-L-L-H-A-R-D.’ It spells out. ‘B-UT-N-O-T-A-S-H-A-R-D-A-S-S-P-E-L-I-M-G.’

You can sense the confusion in the room as you nod, already thinking of a plan. “Have you always struggled with reading and spelling?” ‘A-L-W-A-Y-S-B-U-T-I-N-J-U-S-T-S-T-U-P-I-D’ You you’re your heart break slightly when they call themselves that. “Sweetheart, have you ever heard of the term dyslexia?” ‘No’. “It’s where your brain struggles to recognise letters or sounds, it makes it hard for people to read and write. They often miss letters or get letters mixed up, or sometimes even add letters that aren’t meant to be there.” You explain gently. “I think you may have the same kind my friend has. He reads a lot even though it’s a struggle, but if you get him to spell, he’s absolutely hopeless. Amazing at math, though. Like a walking calculator.” You smile as you get distracted before you shake your head and bring yourself back to the present. “I don’t think you’re stupid, love, I think perhaps your brain just isn’t wired to like letters and words.” You explain as you fiddle with your hands, unsure on where to put them. The planchette doesn’t move, but you can feel the air growing thicker.

‘N-O-T-S-T-U-P-I-D’ – the planchette draws a question mark over the entire board. You shake your head.

“Not stupid at all, pet.” A few seconds pass before the planchette moves over to the ‘Goodbye’ section. You sigh, slightly disappointed that they wanted to leave so soon. “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

You ran late to work the next day, replaying the conversation in your head with your resident ghost over and over again as it kept you up later and later into the night. Your plan wasn’t well thought out at this stage, but you could get things started.

You stay late after work to make up for the hour that you missed this morning before rushing to the bookshop, making it there 10 minutes before they closed. You found what you wanted and quickly purchased it before rushing home, making sure to grab something for dinner as you drive home.

The moment you arrived home and placed your bags by the front door, the house felt empty. For the first time since using the Ouija board, the house felt like you were the only one in it. Pulling out the Ouija board, you asked if they were here. Nothing. You put your fingers on the planchette. Nothing again. You call out to them to see if they were there, nothing. You sigh before packing it back up. Perhaps your new-found friend had moved on.

It was a few days before your ghostly friend returned. The house had felt barren the entire time they were gone, you had stopped bringing out the board the day they returned, figuring that they just weren’t going to come back. A loud crash from the living room caused you to run out from the kitchen where you were preparing dinner to see what had happened. On the floor was the Ouija board, set up and ready to go with the planchette moving wildly across the board, so fast you couldn’t keep up.

“Hang on, hang on, hang on.” You rush back upstairs to grab the item you had purchased for them the week prior before rushing back downstairs and putting it next to the board with a satisfying thud. “I got you a dictionary, they had one with pictures which I thought could help.” You explain to where you hoped the ghost was. You put a pen in front of the giant book. “Just…. point I guess to the word you want to say. If you want to try it this way that is, I thought it might be easier for you.”

The air seemed thick as you waited for something to move, the planchette or the book. Suddenly, the cover of the book seemed to gingerly open as the ghost slowly looked for the words he was looking for. ‘IT-IS-EASIER’ they indicated with the pen. You smile as the pages begin to turn in a flurry, clearly excited to be able to communicate with you a bit easier.

So, life continued. The ghost (who you later found out was a man) would follow you from room to room, carrying the pen and the book to indicate different words to you, making comments on nearly everything that he wasn’t able to before, from the shade of paint on your walls (he thought they should be green) to what you were wearing (he was really into you wearing stripes for some reason), he would readily give your opinion on everything. It was weird, but you could feel yourself slowly falling for the now forever talking ghost. The freedom that came with the dictionary meant that your conversations become more…. conversation like. He wasn’t restricted to just yes or no answers, and you weren’t restricted to staying in one room. You found yourself having dinners next to the constantly page flipping book and laughing at his bad jokes and giving some back of your own. You found small doodles on the outside of the dictionary too, his own little crude drawings he did when you weren’t home. It was nice, it felt like some kind of perverse kind of domestic.

It had been months since your initial contact with him, and you still didn’t know his name and, to be honest, it was beginning to bug you. You didn’t say or show your annoyance about not knowing his name, but you figured it was time you knew. So, when you came home that night and had set up your dinner in your usual set up, you finally decided to ask. “Can I know your name?”

It took a minute before your squatter decided to respond. ‘ORION-BRIGHT-STAR’.

“Orion’s brightest star?” You say, almost as a question as you pull out your phone to do a quick Google. “Beetlejuice?” You look up to see a fury of pages flying as he quickly makes his way over to the ‘A’ section of the dictionary.

‘AGAIN’

“Beetlejuice?”

The pen slams back down on the page. ‘AGAIN.’

You hesitate. “Beetlejuice?”

There was a crash, a bang, and way too much smoke that filled the room as bright green lights seemed to radiate from outside your house. You cough and wave your hand to clear the smoke from your mouth when you finally hear it.

“Thanks for that babes, I’ve been wanting you to see me for months now.” You blink before you see him. He was-

Cuter than you were expecting. Shorter too. Not the scary man you had envisioned, but rather an adorable guy dressed in arguably way too many stripes, even though it seemed to suit. The green in his hair was vibrant and his whole being seemed to shake with excitement. For the first time in a long time, you didn’t know what to say.

“What’s wrong babes? Cat got your tongue?” He leans in closer to take a better look at you, but all you could focus on was the bright green of his eyes.

“You’re hotter than I imagined.” You heard yourself say before you turn bright, bright red. The grin on his face widens as he chuckles lowly, sending a shiver up your spine.

“Oh babes, we are going to have so much fun.”

[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Recap: “As Above, So Below”

Welcome back, everyone. So. Last Saturday I was actually feeling pretty good about RWBY. Not as a whole, but for that particular episode because, as I explained to a lovely anon, not much happened. Sure, there were some semi-important bits in the form of meeting Willow and Weiss discovering the recording, but compared to everything else we’ve gotten this volume it was all around a tame fifteen minutes. Which meant there wasn’t much space for RWBY to mess things up. There simply weren’t any stakes last episode. You don’t like how the group gets past Whitley or the exact words Ironwood says to Jacques? It’s ultimately whatever in the grand scheme of things. Last episode was mostly details.

“As Above, So Below” is not that kind of episode. So much happens and I’m once again left metaphorically banging my head against the wall, not regarding the writing choices themselves per se, but rather at how they’re used and portrayed. There is so much that I want to enjoy about this episode but Rooster Teeth continually ignores aspects of a situation in order to highlight one very narrow, very biased viewpoint. The scenes throughout demand that we conveniently forget or outright ignore certain things in order to immerse ourselves in whatever emotion the writing has decided we should be feeling right now ... and I simply can’t do that. RWBY is a show based on the claim that it’s a bright sunny day, so pay no mind to the rain clouds hovering above your head. It’s the animated equivalent of a Jedi mind trick. These are not the interpretations you’re looking for.

Secrets are finally revealed, folks, and oh boy. It’s a hot mess.

But let’s start at the beginning.

Undermining my assumption last recap that Watts had dismantled something that was regulating just a portion of Mantle’s temperature---something specific to maintaining rain over snow---we learn that all heating has been lost across the city. Which, if you know anything about temperature and the fragile human body, is really fucking bad. Here RWBY actually did a good job of introducing Weiss’ comment early in the volume about how people can freeze to death within an hour or so. We were still left with a few detail-oriented questions like how useful aura is in combating that, why Ruby was still so cold with her, why no one was showing symptoms back during the walk to the farm... but at least the setup is clear here. Civilians don’t have aura so that’s that. They’re dead if they don’t find some way to keep warm (riot fires help...) or aren’t evacuated somewhere else. It’s a big deal, though how exactly this fits into the rest of Watts’ plan and the other bits of chaos he’s accomplished is still unclear. More on that in a bit.

We see Pietro and Maria, but they don’t actually do anything this episode. They just stand around looking scared as people get violent and the city is covered in ominous red lights. At least the show remembers that they exist, but we don’t get to see the brilliant scientist specializing in creating weaponry and the former Grimm Reaper doing something to help. So... B grade on that one?

There’s no time skip this episode so with Mantle unraveling we segue right back to the dinner at the Schnee’s. Ironwood is still getting called out for having too much power. He pushes back that there are checks and balances in place to keep everyone, including him, from abusing that power. This is countered with a broad and not very persuasive claim that they simply haven’t worked. Ironwood comes back with a line about intentions and the nameless (?) council guy goes, “What people intend and what people do are not always the same thing!” Well no shit. If that were the case everyone’s lives would be staggeringly easier. You intend to find the madman who dismantled your army at Beacon? Boom, done. Intend to find the murderer responsible for attacking Robyn’s supporters? Congratulations, you did it. RWBY now has a habit of throwing out lines to remind us that the evil men in power---notably Ozpin and Ironwood---might intend to do good, but look! They haven’t managed it! Which... yes? Sometimes intentions fail, but that leaves the unanswered question of what these characters (and the writing) want them to do instead. No one has the luxury of changing their situation and everyone continues to ignore the fact that there are only bad options all around. I’d rather have someone with good intentions at the helm than, you know, Jacques. It also speaks volumes that as much as the council and RWBYJNR has been criticizing Ironwood lately, everyone still expects him to make the hard call himself. They don’t want that responsibility; they want a scapegoat if and when things go wrong. Just like the group was happy to scream at Ozpin and then get pissed that he left, leaving them to make the hard decisions themselves for once, everyone is screaming at Ironwood and then two minutes later turn about with, “So what should we do, General? What’s your plan? How are you going to fix this?” Though I don’t think any of it is intentional, RWBY has a lot to say about how only good and lucky leaders get to come out of their role unscathed. No matter what you do someone hates you for it and even choosing to abstain isn’t an option, as we saw clearly with Ozpin.

At this point the meeting is briefly interrupted by a waiter who tells Jacques about the heating issue. He responds with a, “My authorization?” before trying to cover things up, awkwardly agreeing with the conversation he just missed. Robyn announces that she’s not done with Ironwood yet though and accuses him of more failures, ending with, “yet you won’t let your own council help you?” which... honestly? Just hammers home how not useful this “Ironwood should trust everyone!” mindset is. Because is Robyn really that dense? The council is Jacques and two of his lackeys. You know, the guy who is about to be arrested for treason and as an accomplice to murder. Even though that hasn’t been revealed yet, Robyn is very well aware of what a corrupt, dangerous individual he is. Remember that she herself is not the council. She was given a “seat at the table” because Jacques wanted to use her against Ironwood. Robyn is sitting here symbolically pointing to Jacques and the two members he has wrapped around his finger going, “Why aren’t you trusting them?” like that’s in any way a sound suggestion. Sometimes the answer to, “Why are you doing Bad Things like keeping secrets?” is “Because people can be unimaginably stupid.” This is an example of that. Robyn wants to know everything and right now she’s willing to risk that information falling into an enemy’s hands to get it.

(Also, that picture in the background? Says a lot that Jacques has a picture of him, his obedient son, and his terrified wife in the room where he conducts business. No Weiss or Winter in sight.) 

Ironwood, of course, tells a straight out lie with an excellent poker face. “I’m not hiding anything.” Which inspires Robyn to use her semblance. Oh no! An insanely convenient ability that would undo every conflict we’ve set up for this season! However will we avoid this? Timing, obviously. Weiss, also conveniently, barges in right when Robyn has put Ironwood on the spot. I said it as soon as Robyn’s semblance was introduced: if you give someone that level of power---something that can too easily solve all the problems you’ve set up---then you have to keep coming up with semi-contrived ways of keeping them from using it.

Also, does she need skin-on-skin contact for her semblance to work? I wonder if that’s why she’s got that one random finger missing on her glove.

Wiess plays the recording of Watts and Jacques, giving us the rest of their conversation. We don’t learn anything new. Watts promised Jacques a seat on the council and he in turn (supposedly) would get the satisfaction of ruining Ironwood’s life. Jacques handed over his login information, including what he gained post-election, and now Watts has access to everything he built and then some. To say that’s bad is an understatement. You might be distracted from your worry though by hearing that cake line again as well as the men’s villainous laughs. RWBY really went full cartoon for that conversation.

A detail I really love though? Ironwood’s rhythmic footsteps as he walks around the table. Super ominous and intimidating. Meanwhile, a hilarious detail is how awkward Jacques gets when he’s finally lost that precious control. This isn’t a confident man capable of denying the accusations against him in anything like a persuasive manner. He doesn’t have Ironwood’s poker face. Jacques is a coward who looks like a schoolboy seated in the principal’s office once caught.

He attempts to escape only to find Weiss’ knight blocking the exit, the one we now know was the possessed armor that belonged to her grandfather. In a thoroughly satisfying moment she declares that Jacques is under arrest... and then turns around to ask Ironwood if she can actually do that. I’m on the fence about this. Normally I don’t mind a bit of humor lightening the mood, but in this case we have three things that I don’t think are improving the situation. The first is the sheer emotional impact that should be accompanying this arrest. This is Weiss’ abuser. The man we’ve known about (incidentally anyway) since Volume 1 and who has driven nearly the entirety of her character development from working to escape him pre-RWBY to coming back as a huntress. Provided that Jacques doesn’t pull a Torchwick and escape himself somehow, this is the culmination of nearly seven volumes worth of heartbreaking struggle. There are some things that I think should be allowed to shoulder their weight without undercutting it with a joke and this is 100% one of them. Just like finding out that a friend you thought had been permanently torn to pieces in front of you should generate heartfelt shock and joy, reaching the moment where you finally arrest one of the show’s biggest personal villains should be treated seriously. Let Weiss have this and put the joke later if you still want it. Weiss could be staring hollow-eyed at her father being put in handcuffs and Ruby could try to cheer her up. “So...” she says. “Can we arrest people?” Weiss blinks, coming out of her stupor, and gives a tentative smile. “Don’t know, actually. But it’s working in this case.” There. Serious moment leading to a bit of comedy-bonding. Humor is a wonderful tool, but it also lessens the other emotions of a scene if not used properly.

Potential issues #2 and #3 are smaller. On a personal note, hearing Weiss’ question simply reminded me, again, that RWBY has failed to establish hard rules for its world, including what a huntsmen’s job entails. A few weeks ago fans were arguing over whether Blake and Yang should feel anything in regards to killing Adam because, according to some, it’s already a part of a huntsmen’s responsibilities to arrest and if necessary kill people. Why would they flinch at something they knew they were signing up for? Others (myself included) pointed out that although we see the students sparing with one another at school, no one says anything about them taking out human and faunus criminals. RWBYJNR’s adventures---from Ruby stopping the robbery in her trailer to tracking down the White Fang---are presented as outliers. This is not the sort of stuff huntsmen are meant to get up to. They fight grimm first and foremost. Everything else is a case-by-case surprise. Note, for example, that Ironwood expects his army to keep the peace and presumably the police when things aren’t quite so dangerous. He’s not sending huntsmen out to track down everyday criminals because that’s not their job. Killing grimm is. Weiss’ comment reinforces that. Can I arrest someone? Is that within my power as a huntress? And Ironwood... doesn’t answer. Because it’s meant to be a joke, not a legitimate bit of world building.

And then the third... is just how Rooster Teeth is using humor throughout the entirety of this episode. AKA not well, which makes me less inclined to give this particular moment the benefit of the doubt. We’ll get to that in just a second though. For now I’ve written way to much on a two second scene.

While Jacques’ plans unravel the rioting in Mantle is getting worse and worse. “Atlas killed the heat on purpose! They’ll do anything to control us!” which is very much a conclusion born of panic. It feels like every other episode Mantle is on the verge of collapse and, by extension, all of these moments feel anti-climactic. We’ve watched Mantle rioting over the embargo, and then Penny, and then the election, and now the heat... none of it feels like it has weight anymore. Rioting is just the way we’re ending most episodes now. It also (again) raises that question of what exactly Watts is trying to accomplish, and not in a “Still to be revealed!” kind of way. We do still have an element of that, but at this point there’s also just a, “Literally what was the point?” aspect too. Why is Mantle rioting most episodes? Shouldn’t that be something to build to? More importantly---as I’ve said before---WHY did they frame Penny? We see in the next scene that Jacques’ guilt likewise reveals Penny’s innocence... even though everyone important knew that two seconds after she was accused. There were no consequences attached to blaming her and, as just established, we clearly didn’t need the loss of a city defender to bring that city to the brink. Mantle has been going over the edge for a variety of reasons and the people were at that point before the group even arrived. When Penny was first framed that seemed like a brilliant setup. Now we see definitively that it led nowhere. Why did Watts bother and why did the writers? It’s another case of RWBY chucking in things they think are “cool” without bothering to follow up on them.

So yeah. The Penny situation is done. We didn’t even get any development out of her from it. That really is disappointing.

With everything Jacques did on the table the situation looks bleaker by the minute. What can Watts do with this control?  “With enough time… whatever he wants.” The group finds out that the first thing he did with this power is shut off the heat and Weiss has the most dramatic reaction, which makes sense given that she’s the one who best understands the risks here. And then... then.

Oh dear god.

Ironwood realizes that Watts may eventually have access to the Amity info, if he stumbles across it or actively goes looking for things to uncover. This revelation on its own is good. That’s something Ironwood needs to try and prevent, so it would have been an excellent moment of storytelling to show us Ironwood’s moment of revelation, perhaps with a bit of dramatic music to hammer things home. Except that instead of keeping this issue between the people who know about it---Ironwood and Ruby could have exchanged knowing glances like Blake and Yang did when they first started keeping their secrets---Rooster Teeth has Ironwood talk about loud to himself about the major secret he’s keeping. He literally calls it a secret! “No. The secret is safe for now. But if he learns about Amity…” Hello?? I understand that this episode is all about things coming to light, but that moment was an absolute insult to Ironwood’s character. We just saw this man claim with a perfectly straight face that he had nothing to hide. Five minutes later he’s apparently lost so much intelligence he stands in front of four people he’s keeping secrets from, including Jacques Schnee, and starts soliloquizing about said secrets. That is the most stupid and contrived way to get caught in a lie. Oh no! I totally forgot a bunch of people were standing beside me! Now everyone has heard that I’m keeping a secret since I felt the need to state that out loud...

And in case anyone thought this is a case where I’m reading too much into things, Robyn literally laughs and goes, “Yep! Still here, everyone!” Reminding them that someone who is not supposed to know about this stuff is standing... right there... listening in... The writing draws attention to it. 

This trumps all other former stupidity. Like the group loudly announcing their attempts to avoid getting arrested in the city covered with surveillance. This is so stupid I want to turn it into a meme. Cleanse this scene somehow.

Anyway. More rioting. More anger. Shock, surprise, that draws a ton of grimm. Take note of the fact that Ironwood’s army is almost useless against this barrage. The missiles from the airships don’t seem to take the horde out. Nor do the guns. Two other soldiers are forced to cower when some pterodactyl-type grimm flies overhead. 

I say this not to bash the army itself (they’re doing their best while up against horrible odds), but rather to re-emphasize how not good telling the whole world about Salem is. Everyone seems to forget that, first and foremost, this is the concern that Ozpin dealt with. Even if he was 100% wrong on every other count---no one would lose hope, no one would ever betray him---it is impossible to hear about Salem and not experience negative emotions and those negative emotions draw grimm that kill everyone. Ironwood’s primary justification was that he’ll use his army to protect the people when that happens and (ignoring that his army can’t possibly be everywhere at once) we see here that it’s all but useless. His soldiers may have been able to handle the grunt grimm seen at the breach and the Battle of Beacon, but they’re  helpless in the face of anything stronger, the exact sort of stuff that world-wide panic over an immortal woman would draw. Clover makes it clear when he arrives that only huntsmen stand a real chance and huntsmen are few and far between nowadays. They lost an entire school. Lionheart made sure nearly all the huntsmen in Mistral were killed. They’ve reached a point where teens are given licenses at least two years early, without full training, because they need the help that badly. Ironwood cannot protect the people if their fear grows stronger. That’s not his fault, but it also means he can’t afford to deliberately stoke that fear. Telling the world about Salem, whether she’s immortal or not, is a 100% death wish for lots and lots and lots of people.

That’s why I can’t get behind an idealistic view of, “But they deserve to know.” Maybe they do, but if given the choice I’d rather keep people in the dark and let them live their lives than tell them for the sake of the moral high-ground and risk the very likely possibility that they’ll die a horrible, bloody death. 

Then, finally... we come back to the group’s secrets.

As established, Robyn is calling Ironwood out on his own secret keeping because he just admitted aloud to having a secret. 100% dodged her suspicion  by Weiss’ timely arrival and Jacques getting outed as a traitor, then went ahead and shot himself in the foot. Sorry. I just really can’t stress that enough. Anyway, she’s homing in like a bloodhound, backing him into another corner, and this is the animation they decide to give us.

This is why I haven’t liked the group since mid-Volume 5. Because they’ve become reckless, hypocritical, often incredibly cruel people. Animation is a drawing. Someone had to decide and design this moment. Nothing is left to chance. So Rooster Teeth made a conscious decision to have Ruby almost-smiling in this moment. Looking pleased and happy at the very least. She’s still keeping her own secrets and is taking pleasure in the fact that Ironwood’s are coming to light. This is the exactly the same behavior we saw with Ozpin and (to a lesser extent) Cordovin. The satisfaction this group derives from either seeing or handing out what they perceive as another’s just desserts while they themselves are committing the same or worse sins. Ruby should not look happy here in the same way that she should not have pushed for Ironwood to sacrifice Mantle in the name of finishing a doomed project. And as we’ll see in a moment, she shouldn’t be giggling with Oscar over the shared damage they’ve caused.

At this point everyone is ganging up on Ironwood. Yes, including Oscar. As a preface to all this, I love my farm boy. Just not how Rooster Teeth has been writing my farm boy. Because this is what I meant at the very start of this recap. Oscar and Ruby’s speeches here are only inspiring if you choose to ignore the fact that, in this moment, they’re still keeping their own secrets. I honestly thought Oscar was going to come clean when he approached Ironwood leaning against the wall. Instead he offers his advice which is, straight up, to just stop keeping secrets. Says the kid who is still keeping secrets. Oscar even goes so far as to say that “You already knew that wasn’t the right course” which is the biggest load of BS I’ve heard on this show so far. No! No one agreed that was the wrong path. You all explicitly decided that keeping secrets was the right thing to do. They’re telling him he was wrong to choose the thing they benefited from and continue to use to their advantage in this scene.“Tell the truth,” Oscar insists, still not telling the truth. “You’re not alone,” Ruby adds when she hasn’t trusted Ironwood once this season. This moment is manipulation because Oscar and Ruby both are trying to convince Ironwood to do something using false personas. Ironwood believes that he should listen to them precisely because he thinks they’ve achieved the very thing they’re demanding of him: sharing all their secrets. He thinks they’re models to look up to. When in fact Ironwood is the only one who has ever managed this demand by sharing his plan with them, completely of his own volition. 

The fact that they decide to tell him a few minutes later doesn’t matter. They already got what they wanted and the damage is done. I mean that literally. By manipulating Ironwood into spilling the beans, they’ve created a situation where Ironwood revealed the Salem secret to the council and Robyn but not her immortality. Ironwood himself only learns of that afterward, back in the dining room, and you can see the utter devastation on his face.

Is it still a good idea to tell two highly suspect council members and a woman who has been his semi-enemy about Salem given that she can’t be killed? Who knows. We don’t get to tackle that question because Ironwood wasn’t given a choice. It’s too late. He was pressured and manipulated into a making a huge decision without all the necessary information (which, for the record, is still not the same thing as the group deciding to help people and do the job they signed up for without knowing about Salem). Even if nothing horrible results from these three people now knowing about Salem, Oscar and Ruby have created more problems. We hear the council woman ask fearfully whether Ironwood can defeat Salem. The only thing holding them together is the hope that they can still win with their army... but they can’t. What’s Ironwood going to do with that expectation now? Will he tell them about her immortality too? Risk what they might do in response? Don’t you think this is something he should have known about weeks ago, Ruby? “You should know before you make any… sacrifices” Oscar tells Ironwood, completely ignoring the fact that he already made sacrifices. Mantle was a sacrifice. Those resources were a sacrifice. Telling the council was a sacrifice. Ironwood’s ongoing hope that he could finally end this, stretched out far longer than it had to be, was a sacrifice.

What kills me is the casual nature of it all. There was no catalyst here. Nothing new happened to convince the group that they can suddenly trust Ironwood. If they’re willing to trust him now that means they trusted him before and just didn’t tell him because... they didn’t. The defense of “He’s unstable, who knows what he might do to them and Mantle once he finds out the truth!” was a smokescreen the whole time. Because nothing changed. Ironwood said and did nothing in the last fifteen minutes to suddenly cause the revelation of, “Oh my god. We can trust him. Now we finally know we’re safe to reveal this secret.” They could have done it on day two and avoided so much strife. Like, you know, the situation in Mantle that Nora felt the need to scream at Ironwood about. Maybe if you’d told him his plan was doomed he might not have taken so many resources from the people, given that he’d have known there was no longer a justification for that. You had the power to fix the problems you blamed him for from the get-go.

Combine this with Oscar and Ruby’s horrible conversation. Sure, the rosegarden shippers are thrilled, but beyond the fact that I’m personally not shipping Ruby with a boy housing her 1,000 year old headmaster, that (once again) was not the correct emotion to apply to this moment. They both come across as horrendously callous by laughing and giggling through the decision to finally tell Ironwood. It’s not like these secrets have driven this entire volume and are about to absolutely devastate him or anything. Why would you have a serious conversation about this? Why express even an ounce of sympathy and regret for what you’ve done? Nah, better to jump around and give each other thumbs up. Act so proud that you’ve randomly decided to come clean, like you deserve praise for this. Kids, am I right, Marrow?

Seriously. This is how these two treat the situation vs. what the situation actually is.

Which in a horrible way is fitting because there are zero consequences for all this. (Cue my shock...) Ironwood isn’t mad about any of this. He jokes with Oscar! “No more surprises, alright?” Given that RWBY releases weekly and thus there’s plenty of time between episodes, I feel like people forget the expectations they developed months back. The more optimistic side of the fandom (god bless you all, you’ve got more hope than me) keeps insisting that eventually the group’s new behavior will lead to repercussions, but time and time again Rooster Teeth tells us they won’t. Not for putting Argus in danger. Not for stealing an airship. Not for keeping the secrets Ozpin was crucified over a whole volume for. And that’s still going. Alongside Qrow’s talk with Ruby, Ironwood is given the space to blame Ozpin again---“Why? Why would Oz keep this from us?”---and has no desire to blame the group for doing the exact same thing. Oscar is allowed to go, “Sorry! We just didn’t trust you” but the same justification out of Ozpin’s mouth doesn’t fly, despite the fact that he had a hundred more reasons not to trust a bunch of teens. The level of hypocrisy in this episode is just staggering. We all watched Ruby tell Ozpin’s lies and went, “Oh yeah. This is going to come back to bite them” and it didn’t. 

There is nothing the group can do to get in trouble, or even a reprimand for. Anything and everything is twisted to praise them:

Destroyed precious military equipment (which this episode’s attack shows that the world desperately needs) and nearly get people killed by attacking an ally? You get a free ride to Atlas.

Broke Atlas’ laws by stealing their property and then avoiding the police? You get hugs from your sister and early huntsmen licenses.

You tell the exact same lies you demonized your headmaster for? You’re so much better than he is and I’m so proud of you.

Keep secrets from Ironwood, making a horrible situation even worse? Haha no more surprises in the future please!

And yes, this also includes: Going behind everyone’s back to spill information to Robyn? No one will even find out you did that. I’ve seen a post going around with people expressing how pleased they are that Robyn didn’t rat Blake and Yang out. That’s the level of bias the fandom and the writers are working under. The group gets away with everything because they’re the protagonists. Everyone adores them unconditionally. At this point I think they could join with Salem and people would insist that it’s the smartest and most badass move they could possibly make. Fans and the writing would praise them for that too. 

Ugh. Sorry for the level of salt in this recap. For the record I am glad that others are able to enjoy all of these moments. I just can’t. Oh boy I can’t. 

Alright. Close to wrapping up now. A series of smaller things: Oscar has another moment where he draws on Ozpin’s memories of Atlas being built. “You say that like you were there---” Ironwood says. We’ve spent a lot of time theorizing about the merge but in light of this episode... are we really expecting an explanation? RWBY hasn’t adequately explained dust vs. magic, or Qrow’s semblance, or why we should be rooting for heroes who do everything their perceived opponents do. Why would we expect them to explain something as complicated as this merge either? I think we should just expect a continually wishy-washy situation that changes based on the whims of the plot.

Ren and Nora have a moment on the airship that sparks another charged look between Blake and Yang. Are we ever going to tackle the huge concerns Ren had a few episodes back before they were silenced with a kiss? Does he or anyone else know that Oscar spilled the beans? For that matter, did Oscar admit that there’s still a question left in the relic? Does Ironwood actually want to lock it up now like they should have from the start? Did he explain precisely why Ozpin ran off? These answers remain lost to the void.

Jaune looks like he’s going to be sick after the airship is attacked. Nice throwback to episode one.

Whitley is devastated by his father’s arrest, truly alone now. He slinks off with Willow watching him go. Hopefully with Jacques out of the way she and Weiss (and possibly Winter) can start helping him. Show him how to connect with others in ways besides cruelty. 

The group then jumps out of the destroyed ship... but not before Elm and Harriet tease each other a bit. In a kind way. One might almost say... a friendly way...

Yeah these people aren’t friends. No way. What an absurd assumption. Will the show ever come back to that assertion, or will it remain another illogical way of insisting that the group is intrinsically better than everyone else they come into contact with? I’m betting on the latter.

Finally, we catch glimpses of a disguised Neo infiltrating the Schnee manor. After everyone leaves she returns to Cinder who says, “Oh, you’re back early. Tell me you’ve found what we’ve been looking for” and Neo gives an affirmative gesture. To which I respond with no emotion whatsoever because this episode has scorched me from the inside out.

1/10 with the 1 given because yay arresting Jacques. Everything else I’d happily put through a paper shredded. I’m gonna go cleanse my mind with more Witcher 3 now.

Until next week! Everyone start praying...

[angelinwhy]

The Sobbing Power Ranger : Part 2

Description: after the mess at Steph’s Halloween party, Y/N is left cooped up alone with her feelings. That is until one morning, Harry decided to visit her to talk about what’s gone wrong.

Warnings: angst!

(If you haven’t read part one, you will unfortunately have to find it because I am unable to tag it due to me not having a laptop.)

Y/N wasn’t going to lie, after the party at Steph’s, she felt like absolute shit. Walking home, just swamped in her emotions was horrible because she felt so weak and numb - that was mainly the colds fault. Or rather hers for not ordering an Uber back to hers. But it was tiring. She cried the whole way home, having to stop a couple of times so she could rest for a few minutes and let it all out before carrying on going home. The walk wasn’t even far, but her emotions were pulling her down, and it made the walk felt like it was lasting a lifetime. Steph had rang her, asking if she wanted a lift home, but Y/N politely declined and said that she just wanted to be alone. Everything had gone to shit, and she had lost her best friend also.

She hadn’t heard from him since the party, and it had been about two weeks. He had completely gone off the radar, apart from the odd photo by the paps. It was him with his sister and mother, so clearly they were in London.

It had hit her like a tonne of bricks the next day when she realised that Harry now knew that she was in love with him, her worst fear. All she could remember was the absolute dread in his eyes when he turned around and stared down at her, realising that all the stuff Haydn said was true, unfortunately. She partly understood why he’d be upset about it, but it did hurt her when he got so angry about it, which was the part she didn’t understand. Y/N thought that they were gonna go somewhere quiet and have talk about it, but how wrong she was. Now she was left alone with her feelings, which wasn’t the best thing for her.

If she’d take it all back, she would focus on not falling in love with her best friend.

Now, she was at home, and it was very early in the morning.

She had made herself a cup of tea, with three sugars which was unusual for her, as she normally took her tea without any sugar. Her sleep had regulated a little bit after losing so much due to her overthinking in the nighttime, which kept her up. It was a bad habit of hers, and when Harry would sleep round and she did it, he’d end up putting on a movie for her or just holding her until she fell back asleep. But, she only had herself now, as Steph had gone to America to see her sister who was studying over there.

Y/N takes her tea and goes into the living room, where the sun was peeking through the blinds and illuminating the cosy room. She grabbed the fluffy blanket that was on the loveseat, Harry’s favourite place to sit, and takes it to the main couch where she sits down and cuddles up underneath it. She only had one thing on her mind now, and that was binge watching Game Of Thrones for like the 10th time in the last year. Putting on season 4, she takes a sip of her tea and swallows it, feeling the hot liquid going down her throat and soothing it. Today was the day where she just wanted to forget about everything and chill, she was going to UberEats her breakfast, and then go out for a walk in Hyde Park later on.

A perfect day for her to just clear her head of all the things that she couldn’t rid of.

She had opted on texting Harry a few times, wondering if it would be best for her to apologise for to him for what’s happened and what she’s feeling.

One night she almost did text him - she had broke down that night, sobbing in bed because she didn’t have anyone to turn to. Y/N had debated on talking to her mum too, but she knew that she wouldn’t get it, and that she’d just give her some rubbish advice. She did love her mum, and her dad too, but God she was awful at giving advice. So, back to what had gone on with Harry. In her fits of sobs, she had gone for her phone and opened up Harry’s contact, typing out a text that said, ‘Haz I am so sorry for what happened. I feel awful for putting all of that on you. And I hope we can talk about it and see if we can work it all out,’ she had decided against putting ‘love you’ at the end. She just ended up deleting the text.

They were supposed to be best friends, but Y/N knew that she had fucked everything up.

With a little help from Haydn, unfortunately.

Halfway through the episode she was watching, she heard the front door open and her heart dropped to the pit of her stomach. She turns her head to look towards the door and yells a quick ‘Hello?’ to see who it was. No response came though. Her brows furrow as she hears shuffling coming closer to the door.

Is it mum and dad? She thinks to herself as she puts her cup of tea down on the table in front of her, sitting up in her seat, the blanket still hugging her.

Then her heart drops when the door opens.

Harry.

When he steps into the room, a look of shock passes over her face. His expression remains passive as he closes the door behind him, and that’s when Y/N notices the Power Ranger helmet and her black hoodie under his arm. He sits down on the couch, shrugging off his jacket and placing it behind him. It was a shock for Y/N, because she didn’t think that he would be the one to make the first move. She stares at him, completely captivated by everything he’s doing. Though, she noticed how tired he looked also. There was bags under his eyes, and he just visibly looked mentally and emotionally drained. He leans back in the seat, pulling one of his legs up to get a bit more comfortable. He doesn’t even crack a smile.

“You alright?” He asks softly, running a hand through his hair.

She shrugs. “Been a bit up and down, but yeah. I guess I’m alright. And yourself?”

“Fucking shattered,” he mutters, glancing to the TV for a second. “Rewatching it again?” He questions as he notices the show instantly. Y/N had tried to rope him into watching it with her, but he kept on falling asleep every time they got to the second episode of the first season. So she just ended up watching it alone. She nods her head, not caring that she hasn’t paused it. Background noise was needed in case any awkward silences occur. “I should watch it, y’know.”

She’s slightly confused as she wonders if he’s come round here and acted like nothings wrong because he wasn’t that bothered anymore. “H, you clearly didn’t come here to talk about the fact that you want to start watching Thrones. Because I already tried that with you, and it didn’t work. So tell me, why are you here?” She asks, her voice growing gentler as she gets to the end of her sentence. Harry’s sighs, his hand coming over his face as he throws it back lightly. He was hoping they could have a normal chat, but unfortunately they need to address the elephant in the room. As much as they were both scared about this talk, it was something that they needed to do.

“We need to talk,” he tells her, and she nods.

“I’m still shocked at what happened at the party, bab. Like, that was really unexpected,” he starts to explain to her, and all she could do was nod. She was feeling overwhelmed with emotions and she felt like crying, but she didn’t want to do it in front of Harry. He wouldn’t comfort her like usual. “It was something I never ever thought would happen. Steph tried to explain it to me and why it happened, I didn’t understand though. At least not her explanation, so that’s why I’m here. I need an explanation from you, I need you to tell me yourself how all this happened. Is that alright?” He asks, clearly needing the answer but not wanting to push the subject as he didn’t want to make Y/N upset. She then shuffles uncomfortably.

“I don’t know Haz,” she quietly tells him.

“Y/NN, please. I think I’m at least owed the answers I want.” He informs shortly.

She sighs, as she grabs her tea and takes another sip of it, glancing at Harry. He was staring at her intently, with sad eyes. “You know the night everything just went horribly wrong for me?” He nods, “It started then. The night I came to your house because I was literally on the verge of doing something bad, and I needed you to like, I don’t know. Talk me out of it I guess?” She almost asks herself the question. But the part about her needing him was right. She did need Harry that night, she needed him to just hold her and take the pain away. And that’s what he did.

“I don’t know why it was different that night, because we had always been close like that. And when I say that I mean we sleep in the same bed, cuddle, kiss each other on the cheeks and the forehead and stuff like that. Doing the stuff that couples do, just while being best friends, which I never minded. The only confusing thing was I did all the stuff with you like I did then, when I was with Haydn - so that’s where it all started. Haydn was good to me, and you knew that. Most nights where we would hang out I would tell you about him, and how much I liked him. Given I was only just starting to fall in love with him when my feelings went all over the shop for you. Of course me and Haydn argued, so I think when that became more frequent, that’s when I focused more on how we acted together, if that makes sense.”

“The night I came to you, what we did together just felt different. Normally, you cuddling me and kissing me on the head wouldn’t of affected me or made me feel any different about you. But something about this night was off, like, when you just held me it all felt right as cliche as that sounds. The cogs in my brain suddenly starting spinning in a completely different direction, and then that one part of my brain which I would normally use to think about him, was suddenly consumed by you,” she tells him.

Harry just watches her, listening patiently and hanging onto every word she says. It was making sense to him.

But, he understood, she still had more explaining to do before this was over.

“I did feel bad because of Haydn, but at the same time that I was developing feelings for you, I liked him also. I guess that makes me a slag, to be honest. I didn’t want to be the girl that liked two guys at the one time, because you know me, that is not the kind of person that I am, nor is it the kind of person that I want to be. So, as time went on I started to fall for you more. You knew that I always had a soft spot for you, because let’s be realistic. Anyone would. You’re one of the kindest people that I’ve met and you’ve always treated with more respect and love than anyone has in my whole life. Apart from my mum. I think the second next turning point was the night we went to your mums to visit her, and we stayed in your room. We stayed up for ages and talked about shit.”

“You know pratically everything there is to know about me, Haz. But that night I completely opened up to you about my insecurities about being more shy that you and I feel like that hindered me sometimes. And then I said that sometimes I feel like you get fed up of me because I’m not as confident or outgoing as yourself. But then your response was what made me like, ‘woah, he cares about me way more than I thought you did’. And I know you’ll think that what I’m saying is stupid, but you know how much I tend to overthink about stuff, and how worked up I get over certain things.”

“Obviously, I was good at hiding my feelings for you, because you never ever brought it up or even jokingly mentioned it. Then they just kept on growing, and I felt more guilty every time I looked at Haydn, and as my feelings grew stronger for you, my ones for him weakened. That’s when I realise it was completely fucked and that I needed to sort out this mess. But, I hung on to those little feelings that I had left for him and just hoped that they’d cancel out my ones for you. That’s why I stayed with him, because I thought that I could make it work. But I was wrong. So fucking wrong and I didn’t even realise it until this one night, and it was a month after my feelings for you had grew.”

“It was the night when I stayed at yours. We just stayed in bed the whole time, cuddling, messing about and you occasionally would kiss me on my head or move my hair away from my face. And it was all the little things, and it just kept on building up inside of me until that night, when you were asleep and I was just left with my thoughts I went - ‘fuck, I’m in love with my best friend.’ I was so scared, so fucking scared about being in love with you that the feeling just consumed me every time I looked at you or thought about you. Right away I knew that those feelings wouldn’t be reciprocated from you, as you had always told me that you only see me as a best friend. That’s why I was so scared, scared that if you were to ever find out something bad would happen. And it did. I never expected you to find out like that.”

“Then I broke up with Haydn, and of course I had to tell him the reason. It would be unfair to him to tell him a lie when he did give me his all. So after that I thought that he was gone and I could lose my feelings for you. Clearly, I didn’t lose my feelings, and he wasn’t gone, because of what happened at that fucking Halloween party.”

“The way you reacted scared me. It upset me and I didn’t know what was gonna come next Harry. I thought that we would go and talk it out somewhere like we are now, but no, you decided to be rude about it and basically yell at me. Now I understand it from your part, honestly. I’m your best friend and I’m in love with you, and you’re my best friend and you are not in love with me - that’s not a good match. I get why you were upset but now you’ve seen it from my side, I hope you can understand why I was so scared and why I left the party in absolute fits of sobs.”

She didn’t even realise she was crying, until she felt the tears running down her face. Y/N was quick to lift her hand up and wipe them away.

“I am so scared to be in love with you, Harry.”

He felt his heart break.

Harry was such a great listener and he greatly understood situations, not matter how complicated or hard they were. He understood why this all happened and he knew that she couldn’t help falling in love with him. It’s in people nature to be attracted to the people who show them the most attention, the people who loved you and cared for you when no one else would. That’s why she fell in love with him. Harry was the person she needed all along. Despite all of the love other people gave her, Harry gave her the most and she needed that. He was the one that she needed. Y/N had never been in love with someone, before Harry, so she was scared and her feelings had scared her to the core, but, she liked the feeling. Well that was before Harry’s reaction to her loving him.

“I didn’t want to be in love with you Harry,” she sobs, feeling pathetic because she had done so much crying these past two weeks. She then looks directly at him as she feels the courage building up inside her. “But I couldn’t help it. You physically cannot help who you fall in love with Harry. And I know you don’t want me to, but I am in love with you, and there’s nothing that I can do to stop or change that, Haz.”

Harry looks at her with sad eyes, nodding his head. “I know love, I know.”

“What you feel for me won’t change the fact that you’re my best friend and that I love you more than anything - just not in that way. And you know that. I was so upset when I found out because I didn’t want it to change anything between us. You know for well that spending time with you is one of my favourite things and that I wouldn’t swap you for anyone. You are my favourite person on this earth, besides my mum and my sister, but you know what I’m trying to say. I’m just sorry that I can’t love you in the way you want me to, or the way you deserved to be loved.” He tells her, and she shakes her head as the tears continue to fall freely. In a small voice, she tells him to not apologise for something that he cannot help.

He nods his head, and he feels his heart sink further into his stomach when she lets out a loud sob, and buries her face into her hand.

Normally, he’d be straight over there, comforting her. And he felt like a dick for not doing that.

“I don’t want this to change anything Harry. If I lose you as my best friend, then I only have Steph. And as much as I move her, she’s bloody hopeless and she’s always travelling, so I’d never get to see her. You know what she’s like, so please, I’ll hide my feelings. Heck I’ll fucking ignore them and see if there’s anything I can do to change them or make them just go away. As long as I don’t lose you, Harry. I need you and you know it.”

Harry nods with a small smile. “I know bab. I won’t let anything change between us, I can promise you that.”

“God,” she laughs lightly. “I’m sorry for crying.”

“Don’t apologise, Y/NN. I get that this is hard and extremely overwhelming for you,” he he tells her with a nod, and she nods her head. She wipes the rest of the tears away, and sighs deeply.

She had got everything she needed off of her chest, and now Harry knows everything, and she also understands how she feels too. It was hard for her to be so vulnerable with Harry with something like that, especially because she’s in love with him. Y/N thought that she’s just give up halfway through and she wouldn’t be able to talk to him about any of this. But she remained strong the whole time, and she was proud of herself for that. Harry understood her now too, and despite the fact that he didn’t love her in the way she wanted him too, he was going to put that past him because she’s his best friend. He gets up from the couch, and heads towards the one where she’s sitting. He sits down next to her and smiles.

He wraps one of his arms around her shoulder, pulling her in and kissing her on top of her head. She fought the butterflies in her stomach and leant into his side, wrapping an arm around his waist.

“Love you, Power Ranger.”

She laughs, “love you too, Storm Trooper.”

“So, how about we go back to season 1 of Thrones and we rewatch it, and this time I promise that I’ll sit through it and watch it with you,” he promises and she looks up at him, shaking her head as if to tell him ‘no you won’t stop lying’. “Come on Y/NN, I wanna see what the hype is really all about. And if Jon Snow is as fit as everyone says he is!”

“Trust me,” she gawks, “Jon Snow is beautiful!”

Harry laughs settling down on the couch with her, and she takes a pillow before propping it up on his chest and leaning on it, and Harry puts one arm over her shoulder. She takes the remote and goes all the way back to season 1, which she has seen too many times. “If you fall asleep Harry, honestly I’ll shove you off the couch because I need someone to obsess with over this show,” she tells him, tapping his arm. He nods his head before laughing, promising that he won’t fall asleep. They start the first episode and the familiar theme tune of Game Of Thrones fills the air.

Y/N was happy that everything had been sorted, and as long as things stayed the same, nothing really mattered. She still had Harry and that was all she needed.