#and I was like 'oh of course. no. it's the exact same morality put aside for What Cadmus Decides It Needs'

[pocketramblr]

more Cadmus gripe time because I just finished the last boy on earth arc and ughhhh SB was so devastated to return home and find everyone gone, and we saw that Roxy spent weeks trying so hard to find him when everyone else said he was gone and good riddance, she even found Robin's number and asked Batman for help, she even went to see if Knockout knew anything, and everyone at Cadmus knows this- and when SB comes back from spending months as an amnesiac captive and wants so badly to see his friends again, they don't use their incredible resources to track down Roxy and help reunite them, they take him to Paris and claim it's because giving him a new scenery and something to hit will do him good and get his mind off it, but then it turns out they just want to field test him and get him to work for them. SB going from being exploited by Leech to exploited by Cadmus is bridged by a story where he's literally stripped of all agency and the ability to speak for himself and I'm going to scream.

[roxannepolice]

This may be stretching the concept of work's intent and possibly conflating it with reader's intent, but I think if you scratch to the absolute bottom of chameleon arch in s3 the ultimate difference between the Doctor and the Master becomes being people oriented vs. goal oriented. Like, if you go beyond the question of "could the Doctor have been something of a bad person* and the Master a good person", and ask "under what circumstances would they be like this", it looks like the Doctor - or, what aside from a body (with all its mind-indepented memories) was left of them in John Smith - was. well. being oriented towards people around him. And. that's what had One go from crotchety man willing to kill over his secrets or even a freaking lighter into the Doctor that is. Meeting all those wonderful companions, starting from Ian and Barbara that would just tell him fuck off you're crossing a line and I will not have it. And no, I don't think it's a matter of "wanting to be liked", but rather seeing "oh my Omega, I actually hurt this person". And in the main story that worked out for good, and in fact I would say that when it comes to "origins of morality" and "how to live" questions, that is the more reliable way to go! But when that same mindset is surrounded by all the bigotry - as well as just living a nice life as it is provided to you! - of edwardian era, it results in... well, obviously, the way to deal with those evil guys is to FITE! and this is what all those teenage boys have been trained to do, should the need call (ah, the hanging cloud of knowledge a need will in fact call them so soon in this two-parter...)! And this... competent. but ultimately underdeveloped through no fault of her own maid needs to just have the distinction between fiction and reality explained to her, the poor thing probably thinks the invention of writing is only to be used for things that are absolutely true... Yeah, punch him.

I use the term "goal-oriented" for the Master, but I suppose I should clarify, because we all know that if it was pure goal-orientation, then there are infinitely easier ways to take over the world that *checks notes* man-eating sofas. Yes, the Master is absolutely into over-convoluted plans to the point where they become a goal in itself. But what I mean is, no, they can't just hang around seeing the universe, they need a goal to achieve, there has to be a point to all this, and survival and power are arguably the two most basic goals there can be, once you scratch happiness as a bit too indefinite. And obviously, that's the exact opposite of "how to live". In many ways its a much more animalistic and base motivation than anything a conscious mind might want. Kind of existence vs. life distinction. BUT? In those last few decades of universe's existence??? Where there is literally no other goal left than survival? Not necessarily your own survival, but rather survival as an abstract concept, survival of ANYTHING? That mindset, combined with brains, makes you the most wonderful person that could possibly be! You're there, doggedly pursuing the only goal left in the universe, putting all of the resources you have left, MAKING ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY OUT OF FREAKING FOOD, and if anyone has any shot at surviving it is indeed thanks to you! There are two apparent contradiction to this (as of course there have to be in a story that's honest and not just making a point). The first is Yana keeping up the hopes of other people even while knowing it's likely false, and the second is him being willing to sacrifice himself so others will reach Utopia. But if you think about it. Both of these things are, in a way, utilitarian. Yes, hope is often framed as the ultimate irrational ideal, but once it's gone from everyone else, then... what is there to do? That's the end to the only goal left. So long as others hope you can get them out, you can go on tinkering just in bloody case. And while giving up your life for others tends to be framed as the ultimate act of good... there's a level at which Yana just freaking calucates himself as the easiest to expend. He's old and tired. The people who managed to reach the silo are either children or young and strong, there's a lot ahead of them. This is cynical and absolutely not the perspective to hold. But. at the end of the universe. This cynicism leads to sacrifice.

THAT IS NOT SAY YANA ISN'T JUST PLAIN NICE AND SHOWING MORE CONSIDERATION FOR OTHER'S FEELINGS THAN THE MASTER IN ANY FORMAT EVER DID! But I suppose when you're goal-oriented and everyone around you literally has no other goals than yours... why not just be kind** indeed?

Yes, there's a great tensimm fanfic about this:

*I admit I think one of the most interesting aspects of John Smith was precisely making him not a good person but hardly the worst man there ever was maybe it's because I've read edwardian era books that makes me think his paternalisation of Martha really wasn't the worst way for a white man to treat a poc even without outright violence. But if he was a really good person then that would just tell you making him give up his existence was bad because he's a good person whereas as it is the question is what makes the subjectively real existence of this particular not very good but not really worse than millions of people like him man that devloped subjectively very real bonds with others more expendable than any other's?

** Gosh my mixed feeling for Twelve, like I love him, he's up there with 2,3,4 and 10 as character-defining for me, but why just why have him always turn out to be ultimately right about his absolute morals, he's kind of the antithesis to time lord victorious, so long as you do the kind thing then there's always an unforeseen ex machina to prove you right, you'll never fuck up REAL bad, a real dilemma is not between making the choice that's subjectively or objectively good, it's between two objectively bad choices once again Simm!Master fell where he stood no less than Twelve.

[rarepairnation]

Your ™ (aside from faramir obv) is how unhinged you are about denethor AND having the most correct takes abt him🧡. Oh and also oranges maybe

AAAA...THANK YOU ??? THIS KNOCKED ME FLAT like for real i cannot express how much ive been thinking about this ask all day. like i was in the grocery store thinking about it. i cant decide if it's funnier if you've been here since i was 19 and a hater and watched me have my dramatic change of heart in real time or if youre new here and don't know my tragic backstory. TO ME it's hilarious to be assigned denethor girl bc like teenage me is having a heart attack but i bear the badge with pride nevertheless <3333 and thats what we call character growth!

pj had totally got me with the mad-and-vindictive-with-despair denethor gambit for years and years but literally i started working on the faramir goes to rivendell au and thought for about two seconds about how complex both faramir and boromir's relationships with their father are and how the film changes genuinely weaken all of their characters so much and did a total 180 degree turn on a dime. by doing denethor dirty i would automatically be doing faramir dirty and then i started thinking and went hang on a second he is so complex and interesting actually. like i can't emphasize how much that was the exact logic that allowed me to achieve this development.

i mean okay LISTEN TO ME oh my GOD denethor IS a good leader there's a reason why gondor stood so long alone against the enemy and he NEARLY fucking beat SAURON in 30 years worth of head-to-head knock-down-drag-out psychic stalemate warfare and he only falls into despair when he loses both of his sons. you don't need to like him to respect the achievement!

i almost put a read more here but fuck it denethorposting on main. hit j on your keyboard or do a big scroll if youre sick of me LOL

i am very well known for going totally feral over duty vs love dynamics and that is literally what is going on between denethor and his sons. he cannot be their father and their commander at the same time and they are at war!!! being their commander has to win out above all else!!! whether any of them like it or not!!! do you know what ruthlessness means do you understand that duty wins this one.

do u guys understand that denethor and faramir are a father and son who love each other above else and yet do not like each other at all. there was a schism somewhere there along the line and love without bitterness and political sniping and ideological misalignment is a DISTANT MEMORY. No Of Course He Shouldn't Have Said He Wished Faramir And Boromir's Places Exchanged Jesus Christ No Son Should Have To Hear That From Their Father But Girl Sometimes When You're Grieving You Say Stupid Shit That You Shouldn't Have. doesn't mean you should've said it but [pippin voice] we can understand poor denethor a bit better, huh?

its just so interesting to me to think about faramir and denethor's relationship from a standpoint of like. ok listen good stewards that are not good fathers and dutiful sons who will not compromise their moral compasses for love. i don't like you and i agree with approximately 1% of everything you've said ever and your expectations of me have always been unreasonably high even when i was a child but you also are the only person who could ever understand the terrifying psychic powers that just live inside my brain and you are probably the incarnation of lordly dignity and power that i have had and i have wanted to emulate all my life and i still have the instinct to ask for your approval even if i'm going to hate what you're going to say. and when i'm dying i will call out for you. and i don't like you and your moral compass is going to get you and me and everyone in our city killed and you haven't listened to a single thing i've said since you were fourteen and i fucking hate that you're listening to and trusting the fucking wizard over me but you are my best captain and you are everything that i wished i could've been without the war and you'll never understand that that's why i pushed you so hard i just wanted you to live. and if you couldn't live at least we could die together. LISTEN i am a faramir girl until the death you all KNOW THIS BUT THESE TWO THINGS ARE NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE- [i am forcibly yanked offstage]

[strideofpride]

Idk if you’ve discussed this before but it often bothers me when people just act like Joe Goldberg is the same as Dan Humphrey, even when Penn jokes about it, cause I feel like aside from them being from Brooklyn, reading books, and idealizing his partner, there’s really not that much in common.

I guess it has to do with the gossip girl reveal but Penn did not play the character for six years thinking that he was gossip girl, so the effort put into Dan by him didn’t come from a place where he thought Dan would turn out to be a power hungry sociopath.

Like I genuinely think that Dan was an interesting character that was often conflicted with ideas of morality within the show, and he was important to the show because no else (aside from Vanessa but the characters didn’t take her seriously) would be able to confront them for their shit. I know that with time, the character kinda had to evolve because fans of the show weren’t interested in morality, but he was still up till season 6 considered a person who tried to be good when many of the fan favorite characters didn’t. And someone the other character could always rely on despite some of his mistakes.

So even though I know some are joking, to write Dan Humphrey off as just prologue Joe Goldberg just feels like a slap to Dan

Yeah, I agree completely. I think comparing Dan to Joe only makes sense if you’re accepting the idea of Dan being Gossip Girl on its face. Cause even though Dan could view his love interests on a pedestal sometimes, it’s not like he was trying to control them or control their lives from the outside. Dan almost always came from a place of trying to see the best in people, while Joe is the exact opposite, and is almost always seeing the worst in people.

And yeah! The Humphreys, Dan especially, were the moral compass of the first season, but as the show leaned harder into its cynicism, the show and the fans both thought morality was silly, and I think a lot of the hate Dan, Jenny, and Vanessa get is extremely unwarranted in that regard, because so much of it is like “oh they weren’t perfect, they did something kinda bad, they’re evil now!” While Chuck can be a rapist and people are like “BuT HIs GrOWth THo!!” 🙃 (and of course there’s a great deal of classism, misogyny, and racism baked into that hate as well)

Anyway, time to link the video essay again:

[jiminrings]

i just reread ll (after seeing that yoongi pic on twt..... loml) AND UGH IM SO MAD AT THAT FIGHT WHY DID HE SAY THAT AND OH MY GOD WHERE IS OC SLEEPING OMG DID SHE STAY THE NIGHT AT TAEHYUNGS (not like that ..... nasties 😑) WHATS GOING ON. WHAT IS JUNGKOOK GONNA DO WHEN YOONGI OR SEOKJIN FIND HIM WHAT IF YOONGI KILLS HIM OR SMTH

cold senior!y/n x stem major!koo masterlist :D

you leave jungkook alone in your dorm after a fight — but at the same time, he gets left alone with yoongi and jin, who still aren't sure what to think of him especially now

aka part two of the ll couple's first fight

"i think i'm gonna crash."

seokjin yawns and says out loud without the knowledge that he's speaking out loud, his hands fumbling for the dorm keys amongst the numerous keychains he has a knack for collecting

"you drank one cup of coffee, jin," yoongi snorts because as far as he recalls two hours ago, jin even made him drink his remaining coffee because he couldn't take any more

yeah well sCREW jin for trying to stay awake the whole day alright!!!! he made a roadtrip out of scouring each individual part he wanted to add to his fancy PC setup he's been saving a pretty penny for

he doesn't say it at all but yoongi carries immense happiness in tagging along with errands even if it serves him no purpose <3 sometimes he just likes being a keychain to his best friends and he's happy!!

"yeah, hot coffee — the worst," jin elaborates his dislike for hot coffee even if both you and yoongi heard it a hundred times before

he's noisily trying to find the right key and he's surprised you haven't woken up and just oPENED the door for them, but he's cluelessly and thoroughly entertaining yoongi aka the guy who hAS his own key yet refuses to use just so that he could see his friend suffering some more

at this point, your neighbors probably think you’re getting robbed but thankfully jin finally manages to put in the right key, a satisfactory sigh leaving him when it finally clicks and turns the right way

the dorm is dark and noT dim like what they’re used to, probably something to be blamed to the hellfire of rain that’s going on outside

jin’s carelessly removing his shoes by his own feet, only stopping when yoongi harshly pinches him on the side before he does it to himselF on the inside of his arm

“ow! what was-“

he soothes the sore spot on his side because yoongi can reallyyyyyy put his two fingers close without pinching and therefore make it hurt even more, eyes all around the place before it stops on a familiar figure

a familiar figure, sure. welcome? not exactly.

"huh. you're still here? are you staying the night?"

seokjin asks out loud to jungkook who’s standing by himself beside the couch with his hands bunched, worried eyes fixed on them

"where's y/n?"

yoongi asks and it’s made evident how the both of them have different intentions to acquire for, but they all boil down to you nonetheless

jungkook’s throat dries because it hasn’t even been an hour that he’s left alone in yoor dorm, not expecting it either that your two friends would come home this quick

"that's the thing,” he mumbles and yoongi picks it up first, slithering around jin to confirm if he’s really hearing jungkook

what does he mEAN that’s the thing???

"y/n left."

jungkook’s with the two of them now but oddly enough, he doesn’t feel cornered even if the two of them are positioned as if they’re trapping him

he feels more alone than he is cornered, fresh tears stinging at the back of his eyes that he doesn’t want to show yoongi nor jin

"what did you just say?" yoongi asks more in confusion than in disbelief, narrowing his eyes at your boyfriend

"why would she leave at this hour and at this weather? not to mention, leave you alone with us."

jin raises a valid point to put into everyone’s head how bizarre the situation is and not to spook jungkook out, but it sounds like the latter to him which is why he snorts at the startled look

"calm down, kid. we're not gonna rough you up if that's what you're thinking," he reminds him because they’re not tHAT unhinged when it comes to you, walking to the refrigerator to down the nearest water bottle, ".... not unless??"

he still carries a playful edge to him because as much as he’s worried about you, atleast one of the three of them in this room should be far from having a breakdown to level the others

yoongi’s not done with his questioning streak because he presses further, sitting at the couch in your exact seat that makes jungkook gulp

god it’s now just hitting him that you left

"why did she leave?"

"w-we fought."

there’s slight hesitance in his tone because he’s not exactly surE if he should be telling that he fought with you to your friends, but he sets aside the possible consequences because after all, it’s you that they’re conversing about

yoongi nods to himself, having a hunch that the both of you must’ve fought and when he looks up at him, he only belatedly realizes that your boyfriend’s now blonde

"what did you do?"

he goes straight for it, startling jungkook

he’s not necessarily offended that yoongi asked him what he did because if you ask him, this is really aLL his fault

"i-i'll get to that but uh shouldn't we look for y/n first?"

...

..... okay that was understandable

yoongi knows where he’s coming from, nodding to acknowledge him

"not the first time this happened," he admits quietly and that leaves jungkook speechless, watching him intently which is why it made sense that yoongi’s not out of his mind panicking just like he is, "y/n left the dorm when she and seokjin fought."

yoongi says it even quieter and jungkook gets why, because as low as his mumble went, seokjin still managed to hear it

it must’ve been a sore spot that jin doesn’t want to tell him all about, atleast right now, because he looks down to his feet as if he’s been burnt

"it was a serious fight, but it was long ago,” he mumbles under his breath and the reminder of their fight which he’s tried to bury in the back of his head throws him off his feet slightly, “she doesn't really leave when it's just a petty fight or something."

yoongi somberly smiles at jin as some sort of apology for bringing it up, not wanting to put salt on the wounds as he just redirects his attention to jungkook

"i'm asking you for the last time, jungkook — what did you do?"

there’s no direct pressure behind his words but the three of them know that it would drastically help if he just said so

there’s no moral compass that he tries to steer because he himself wants to tell yoongi and jin, even if it means having to put the little respect and love they have for him on the line

jungkook doesn’t sugarcoat and retells all the way from what happened with the hoseok situation until he finishes with what happened merely an hour ago, almost scared to look up at the both of them

jin humorlessly chuckles and shakes his head to himself, still perched against the kitchen counter

"low fucking blow, kid."

surprisingly, yoongi became the lenient one

jungkook’s head aches because the two of them switched attitudes in a matter of minutes!!!! jin is the one that sounds like he hates being in the same room as him and yoongi is the one that tolerates hin generally

he could oNLY assume that the retelling of the events must’ve hit jin one way or another, somehow connected to what the two of you fought about long ago

yoongi takes the liberty to speak after jin’s remark, nudging jungkook by the knee to sit beside him

"y/n's hurt, of course, because as much as she had flings and casual fucks and whatnot," he trails around but doesn’t look to jungkook who’s wide-eyed thy he’s even letting him sit beside him, “you're her first boyfriend."

...

....

...... what

“i am?”

jungkook asks in confusion and the regret creeps up to him not a second later, the ringing in his ears blocking out the rain and even jin’s announcement that he’ll call you

he nods and kook knows that he’s not only saying this to pull at his tail, simply because he’s aware that yoongi doesn’t joke around with him

with jin entering his room to call you, that leaves him alone with yoongi and it barely registers in his head that this is the first time it’s only the two of them after that time when he threatened to give him a knuckle sandwich and the sort

"was starting to entertain and like the idea of you in y/n's life — our lives, y'know?"

yoongi initiates conversation and kook gets startled even more, tripping over his words because he can’t grasp at the situation fully

"i'm sorry, yoongi. i-i really am."

"hate to say this but," he clicks the roof of his mouth with his tongue, fiddling with his bracelets, "i know you are."

???

jungkook’s confusion at your friend’s words is what distracts him from his remorse, not believing his ears

yoongi believes him??? he knOws that he actually feels sorry for having done what he did??

"y/n doesn't like being accused, i think no one really does," he starts off carefully, “it's not my story to tell but it's for you to understand that y/n, y'know...."

jungkook swallows the lump on his throat for whatever yoongi’s gonna say next, a furrow in his brow as he chooses his words

“she doesn't come from a past wherein assurance is at face value,” he clears his throat, "that's all i can tell you."

jungkook nods and he tries to contain his thoughts because he doesn’t want to assume. he’s only gonna take what you give and he’ll willingly wait for that time you tell him all about his past

he does have a clue about your family because he asked that one time if he’d be meeting your parents because you’re a senior and you’re graduating soon, but you only shaked your head no and said “yoongs and jin are enough” for your ceremony

yoongi feels sorry, but he’s not sure for who :(

all he knows is that his heart aches, even if it’s for the boy in front of him that he swore he’d hate, but is now unconsciously worming his way into his heart

he’s no stranger to what jungkook feels because he felt the same type of territoriality and the insecurity that came along with it — the one he used to have over you, in that platonic soulmate sense he didn’t realize at the time

"it's not my place to tell you either, but sooner or later, insecurity will consume you, jungkook."

the guy in question nods eagerly because yoongi manages to address the struggle he has in his mind, acknowledging the issue at-hand fully

"y/n can't baby you forever,” yoongi sighs, “but you can't be ditched whenever she feels like it either."

:O

did...

did yoongi just take his side.....

jungkook kNOWS in the back of his head that yoongi’s neutral, but it all just registers in his head that for the first time, yoongi’s on his side, even in a sense

"talk it out. just sleep in her room for the meantime. fix it in the morning,” he starts to gather himself to stand, pausing to look at jungkook in the eye, "i'd hate to see my soulmate hurting."

the thing is, jungkook knows that yoongi’s your soulmate :-)

you told him that once and as much as you explained that it was only platonic, jungkook quickly understood it, much to your surprise

he knows he doesn’t know the entirety of you, but he knows that when he looks at yoongi, he’s looking at you too :)

yoongi gives him the ghost of a smile, making jungkook blink twice

"sooner or later, the two of us need to talk."

jungkook’s contented with that, smiling back at him

"good night, yoongi."

"good night, jungkook."

( ♡ )

ok.,.,.

“don’t come home, it’s pouring. or go back to your dorm, whatever. i don’t care.”

okay you dO in fact care!!!

it’s been more or less two hours since you left the dorm and you know this because jungkook’s been texting you without fail, only stopping twenty minutes ago that makes you look at the time

it’s 11 o’clock :O

either he’s asleep like he usually would be at this time, or he walked home

in fact, you don’t even know if jungkook is still at your dorm

your phone rings all of a sudden that it makes you flinch, scrambling to see who it was and you don’t know if it’s disappointment or relief coating you when you saw that it was jin

"and where is my favorite girl at this time of the night?"

you could only chuckle as you share a glance with the person whose dorm you crashed in, sending an eager greeting with his mouth full

"i'm at taehyung's. we're eating brownies right now."

when you knocked on tae’s door just two hours ago, the only thing he greeted you with was with a towel!!

he didn’t ask why you’re practically soaked in front of his doorstep because for whatever it is, it must probably be in good reason

truth be told, you didn’t even knOw where you were supposed to go but then tae popped into your head as the only sane person you know that would let you in at this time of the night without prior notice

it was a simple “jungkook and i fought.” to which he only nodded to, turned on the tv for you, and started baking brownies

"mhmm. what kind?"

you chew on the chocolate fudge, slightly chuckling at what jin’s insinuating

"the kind that doesn't leave you disoriented."

he hums at that and you could picture him swiveling on his gaming chair he bought just a week ago, his phone tucked to his ear closely

"the same kind that makes you able enough to come home tonight?"

"yeah,” you breathlessly agree, fiddling with the matching bracelet you have with jungkook, “same kind."

you could only assume now that they've seen jungkook and he's still saying there, all alone but with them

your heart warms at the thought that indirectly, jin’s making you come home to reunite you with jungkook, knowing that there’s an impending conversation sooner or later

"want me to pick you up? you'll get a cold."

"i'll borrow tae's umbrella. i'll come home when we finish the brownies."

the both of you know that it’s code for you just wanting a little more time before you come back, and also because you really wanna dO finish the brownies that tae warmly made for yoy

"mkay," jin smiled at your response, "i'll lock the door but just send me a text and i'll open it for you."

"won't you be sleeping?"

"i'll stay up. i'm not sleepy."

jin replies just as quick, a complete 180 to what he said when he initially came home that he wanted to crash because of the hot coffee he drank

you wordlessly thank him and he acknowledges it, happy to atleast know that you heeded his concern for you to come home tonight

"get home safe. love you."

it’s not only minutes later than you thank taehyung immensely and promise to take him to the aquarium as your thanks, finding yourself in your dorm that seokjin ushers you into with a peck on your head

you rush to your room and you’re greeted with the airconditioning turned on, seeing a lump beneath your comforter that you automatically know it’s jungkook sleeping

you're still damp from the rain but you change quickly to the first set of clothes you can grab from your drawers, not wasting a second longer

you sneak into your own bed, the same one that’s carrying jungkook

his sleep hasn’t even been the deepest and the moment he feels a shuffle beside him, he’s woken up immediately

“i’m here.”

jungkook realizes it’s you with the way your voice is soft and the way you hold his arm when you climb into the covers, wordlessly embracing him from behind

"i'm sorry. it's all my fault,” he says sincerely as he turns his body so he could face you, caging you in with his arm

"i'm sorry i stormed out on you."

he feels you nuzzle to the crook of his neck and it calms him down, the familiar scent of you enough to make his eyes close without fear

it only hits you now that this is the first time the two of you cuddle, much less share a bed

"love you."

it’s barely audible but it leaves you nonetheless, not expecting a reply in return but you get one anyways from a sleepy yet overwhelmingly-content jungkook

"i love you the most."

.

.

.

as always, lmk what you think!! i love answering asks :D what do you want to see from the lunchbox lovers next? send them here <3

[gignikinszz]

anakin is on the train and this dipshit infront of him has been humming christmas songs everyday on his morning work commute for the past week and it’s the middle of fucking august so he’s ready to confront this motherfucker for his crimes against humanity and his eardrums then boom obi wan meet cute

anon. im obsessed 💍💍💍💍 ficlet under the cut xx

i took a few liberties with this, but i hope u still like it :)) modern au, annoyances to lovers but only from anakin's pov, 1.3k. mentions of christmas music and horrible hours of the morning beware

It was 5:15. Five-fifteen in the goddamn morning. It was six in the goddamn morning, and it was the middle of August. The seventeenth of August, to be exact.

The third week, to the day, of Anakin’s personal hell.

Some context: Anakin was on the train, just trying to get to his job at a local bakery, still trying to wake up. He’d been late that morning and hadn’t had time for coffee, and was therefore grumpy. Grumpier than usual. So fucking grumpy.

And that same motherfucker from the past three weeks was singing. Again.

Now, Anakin wasn’t a cold-hearted monster, okay? He wasn’t against singing, not at all. Not even at 5:15 in the goddamn morning on a Thursday. Not even on the train. No, what he was against, morally and spiritually and on all levels (including physical), was the fact that the stranger was singing Christmas music. In August.

Today, it was Jingle Bells, though really, the song should’ve been named Jingle Hell. Overly jaunty, reminiscent of fifth-grade showcases, jarring and horrid, even when sung with a voice as nice as Christmas Music Man’s. A disgusting display of Christmas cheer, absolutely murdering Anakin’s poor eardrums, making him wish for the fiftieth time in the past twenty-one days that his stupid dog and stupider cat hadn’t totally destroyed his earbuds fighting over them, and that he wasn’t too busy (lazy) to go get new ones.

God, he was going to lose it. If he heard one more annoying-ass sing, he was going to—

… you gave it away. This year, to save me from tears, I’ll give it to someone special…

Last Christmas. The stranger, who always, for some sick and twisted reason, sat directly behind Anakin, was singing Last Christmas.

“Yo, dipshit, can you, like shut the fu—ck.” Anakin choked as he finally got a glimpse of the stranger. “Not up. Um. You can keep singing. Bye.”

Oh, shit.

Oh, shit. He was hot. Oh, fuck. Oh, god. He was so fucking hot and Anakin had just called him a dipshit. And spazzed out. And, worse, told him he could keep singing his awful Christmas music. He’d told the most attractive asshole motherfucker he’d ever seen that he could keep singing Last Christmas. At 5:15 in the goddamn morning. In the middle of August.

Oh, fucking shit.

Anakin spent the rest of that (thankfully not-very-long, after his outburst) train ride in silence, rethinking his life, wondering how someone so hot could be committing such heinous crimes against humanity. It didn’t make sense, at first. The man had looked nice. Or just hot. Anakin didn’t know. He’d been wearing a sweater vest with nothing underneath, showing off his very muscular arms, and he’d had very soft-looking hair. How could someone who dressed like a slutty 80-year-old have such poor taste in music? Have such little respect for Anakin, and Anakin’s eardrums, and the world at large?

It didn’t make sense, but when Anakin talked to Ahsoka, who was opening with him that day, she told him it did.

“You know,” she said, “if he’s really that hot, there’s gotta be something wrong with him. So the universe is fair and shit.”

And Anakin had to agree. There truly was something wrong with the man. Deeply, deeply wrong. Disturbed, even. Not that it made it fair that Anakin still had to suffer every morning. Or that his eardrums felt like they might die.

The next morning, he resolved to put a stop to it, good looks aside. For the sake of both his sanity, and for the world. Well, the world of the train at 5:15 in the morning. It was important to him, okay?

So he steeled himself the next morning. Got up early so he could get coffee and fix his hair, because presentation was important in these sorts of confrontations. Not for any other reason. Anakin also wore his nice work shirt, the one without too many stains, for the impending argument, of course. He would’ve looked his best while telling any asshole to stop fucking singing Christmas songs on the train at ass-o’clock every morning, whether or not they were hot.

Okay, maybe it had something to do with the fact that the guy was hot. Whatever. Sue Anakin for wanting to make a better second impression.

When he got to the train, he felt all wound-up, just waiting for the inevitable. For Holly Jolly Christmas or All I Want for Christmas is You or Chestnuts Roasting on the Open Fire of Anakin’s Burning Hatred for Christmas Songs. Or whatever that last one was called. His knee was bouncing, fingers tapping, heart pounding in anticipation. For the inevitable confrontation, of course.

It began five minutes after Anakin sat down. 5:18 in the morning.

Fucking Spooky Scary Skeletons.

An insult to Anakin’s pride, to his honor, to his family, to the month of August, to Halloween, and to the world at large, that’s what the man behind him was singing. An insult of the highest order, and Anakin had only had one cup of coffee.

So he did something wild, something insane, something totally out of character for him.

He waited.

He waited until the train made its next stop, the one before his, and he moved quickly to sit across the aisle from the man.

“Hey,” he said before he could chicken out. “What the fuck is your problem?”

Hot Asshole turned to look at him slowly. “What do you mean?” He asked, all posh and British and refined, and wow, Anakin was beginning to understand the appeal of those love-hate, enemies-to-lovers, 100k slow burn type relationships. That was hot. Despite, or perhaps even more so because of, the man’s infuriating little eyebrow thing, it was really hot.

“Your stupid music,” Anakin heard himself saying, refusing to back down despite the sight in front of him. “Sir, are you aware that it’s August?”

The man smiled. Pretty, Anakin’s mind supplied. Shut up, he snapped back.

“What does that have to do with anything?” he asked, folding his hands over one knee, crossing it over the other.

Anakin blinked, slowly, trying to let his brain catch up. “Well, you’re. It’s. That’s a Halloween song,” he said, feeling dumber by the second.

“And?” The man was still smiling, all innocent, and Anakin was suddenly unsure if it was nerves or annoyance making his face flush.

“And, um—well—whoever you are, you’re singing Halloween music. It’s August.”

“I’m Obi-Wan,” the man said unhelpfully. “And I don’t see what the issue is. Spooky Scary Skeletons is about bones. The human body. Personally, I think bodies are relevant year-round, don’t you?”

No, it was definitely annoyance.

“That’s about spooky, scary skeletons. It’s a fucking Halloween song. And even if it was applicable, it doesn’t change the fact that you’ve been singing fucking Christmas music every day for the past three weeks.” Anakin gave the man his best glare, but it didn’t seem to phase him. On the contrary, he just smiled a little brighter.

“It’s just what’s been stuck in my head,” he said, sounding innocent. “I don’t know what you want me to do about it.”

“I—just—I—I want you to go out with me!” Okay, so Anakin didn’t mean to say that. In the slightest. And Obi-Wan was looking at him weirdly, and also, that wasn’t even a good solution to what Obi-Wan was asking, so Anakin opened his mouth to backtrack, but before he could—

“Okay.” Obi-Wan shrugged, smiling slightly. Anakin’s heart did a funny little somersault. “Is this your stop?”

And shit—it was, and Anakin hadn’t even gotten past the initial asking. No time to ask for horrible, hot, annoyingly heart-pounding Christmas Asshole’s number.

But that was fine. After all, Anakin was probably going to have to tell him to sing an appropriate song the next day, as well.

[the-desolated-quill]

WandaVision: ‘Subverting’ Good Television - Quill’s Scribbles

(Spoilers for the first five episodes)

Hey everyone! Well... it’s been a while, hasn’t it? The last time I wrote a proper review or Scribble, people still thought the COVID crisis would be over within a month. The poor saps. But I thought that as a special way to mark this year’s Valentines Day, we could take a closer look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s shittiest power couple in their new Disney+ show WandaVision.

The first of many MCU spin-off shows that nobody asked for, broadcast exclusively on Disney’s totally unnecessary streaming platform, WandaVision is about everybody’s favourite whitewashed Nazi experiment and her red sexbot boyfriend as they try to fit into a suburban sitcom neighbourhood without arousing suspicion.

Yes, you read that correctly. The MCU has a sitcom now. My life is now complete.

Sarcasm aside, I was legitimately curious about WandaVision because of its unusual setting. And considering one of my most common criticisms of the MCU is its total lack of creativity, anything that’s even a little bit subversive is bound to attract my attention. Of course ‘subversive’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘good.’ I could hand you a canvas smeared with my own shit and call it subversive. That doesn’t necessarily make it good art. And that’s exactly what WandaVision is. A canvas smeared with shit.

So lets split this critical analysis/review/angry bitter rant into two distinct chapters. The first focusing on the plot and setting, and the second focusing on the characters. Okay? Okay.

Chapter 1: Bewitched

Critics seem to be utterly enamoured with the whole sitcom gimmick, and it is a gimmick. As far as I can tell from the episodes I’ve seen, the sitcom setting serves no real purpose whatsoever other than to make the show ‘quirky.’ Which I wouldn’t mind, believe it or not, if the show was actually funny. There’s just one problem. It’s not.

Now in some ways describing why a sitcom doesn’t work is often futile because comedy is largely subjective. What I find funny, you won’t necessarily find funny and vice versa. With WandaVision, however, I won’t have that problem. I can demonstrate to you precisely why WandaVision, objectively, isn’t funny. And it all comes down to one simple thing. The stakes. Or rather the complete and total absence of stakes.

The show makes it very clear from the beginning that none of what we’re seeing is real. The cheesy theme song, the era appropriate special effects (mostly. It’s actually very inconsistent), the joke commercials, and, in the case of the first two episodes, which are in black and white, the appearance of red lights and objects in Scarlet Witch’s general vicinity. (Gee, what a mystery this is).

Basically Wanda has brought Vision back from the dead and created this sitcom world for them to inhabit. I’ll explain the stupidity of this in Chapter 2. The point is none of this is real, and that has a negative effect on the comedy because the very nature of comedy is suffering. Take the plot of the first episode. Wanda and Vision have to prepare a dinner to impress Vision’s boss. If they fail, Vision could lose his job and the couple could be exposed as superheroes. If this were a normal sitcom, it would work. The stakes are clear and it would be satisfying to see the two struggle and overcome the odds. But here, we know it’s not real. If it’s not real, it means there’s no stakes. If there’s no stakes, it means there’s no suffering. If there’s no suffering, there’s no comedy.

It would be one thing if the unfunny sitcom stuff lasted for like the first ten minutes or so before making way for the actual plot, but it doesn’t. Oh no. It doesn’t even last for the first episode. Out of the five episodes I’ve watched, four of them are almost entirely about these unfunny, objectively flawed sitcom homages, each set in a different time period. The fifties, the sixties, and so on. And what’s worse is that nothing that happens in them is plot-relevant. That gets relegated to the last five minutes of an episode. So you’re forced to sit through twenty five minutes of boring slapstick and puns in order to catch even a whiff of actual story. Which begs the question... who is this for exactly? It can’t be entertaining to Marvel fans, who have to slog through all this pointless shit so they can figure out what the fuck is going on. Comedy fans may get a kick out of the sitcom pastiche at first, but after four episodes, surely the joke would wear thin. So why is it in here? Clearly someone in the writer’s room absolutely fell in love with the idea of doing a Marvel sitcom, but nobody put in any time or effort to figure out how it would work in context.

I cannot stress enough how bad the plotting of this series is. As I said, the vast majority of a thirty minute episode is about shitty sitcom plots that aren’t funny and don’t have any impact on the story, only to then tease you with a crumb of actual plot in order to keep you coming back for the next instalment. Admittedly it’s an effective strategy. I was more than ready to quit after Episode 2 until that beekeeper showed up out of the sewer (don’t ask. It’s not important). WandaVision essentially follows the Steven Moffat school of bad writing. String your audience along with the promise that things might get more interesting later on and that all the bullshit that came before will retroactively make sense by the end. Except, as demonstrated with BBC’s Sherlock, that doesn’t work. And even if it did, it wouldn’t justify wasting the audience’s fucking time. And that’s what the majority of WandaVision is. A waste of time.

The only episode that doesn’t follow the sitcom format is the fourth episode. Instead it basically exists to explain all the shit that happened before. The shit that the audience, frankly, are smart enough to figure out for themselves. Wanda created the sitcom world as a way of coping with the loss of Vision, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, we got it. Thanks. It doesn’t advance the plot or anything. It’s just a massive info-dump. But by far the lowest point was when Darcy (by far the most annoying character in the first Thor film and is just as obnoxious here) was sat in front of the TV, watching the sitcom and asking the same questions we were. Not even attempting to look for answers. Just reiterating what the audience is thinking. Like this is an episode of fucking Gogglebox.

In the end it becomes apparent why the series is structured the way that it is. It’s to hoodwink people into subscribing to Disney’s stupid streaming service. If you think about it, there was no reason for WandaVision to be a TV series other than to lure gullible fans in with a piece-meal story buried in a mountain of crap. This isn’t a TV show. It’s what is cynically known in the world of big business executives as ‘content.’ They’re not interested in entertaining the audience. Instead they crave ‘engagement’, which isn’t the same thing. Watching WandaVision is like staring into the void, waiting for something to happen, while Disney charge you for the privilege.

Chapter 2: I Love Lucy

So the plot sucks balls. What about the characters? Surely if Wanda and Vision are likeable at least, it’ll give us something to cling onto.

Well as I was watching the first episode, it suddenly hit me that I couldn’t remember anything that happened to them in previous films. I knew Vision died, but other than that, I couldn’t tell you significant plot details or their personalities or anything. Not a great start.

See, up until now, Vision and Scarlet Witch have been little more than background characters. So already there’s an uphill struggle to get us invested in their relationship, especially considering we haven’t actually seen that relationship develop. In Avengers: Age Of Ultron, Scarlet Witch is killing people because she’s pissed off about Tony Stark killing people (you work that one out) until all of a sudden she stops and joins the good guys because the script said so. Vision meanwhile is introduced as a convenient deus ex machina to beat Ultron and gets no real personality other than he’s a robot. Captain America: Civil War comes the closest to giving Wanda a story and personality of her own as it’s her actions that cause the Sokovia Accords to come into effect, but she never gets any real growth or payoff as the film is heavily focused on Cap and Iron Man’s penis measuring contest. And as for Vision, all he does in the film is accidentally cripple War Machine. No real character or arc there as such. And then we have Avengers: Infinity War, where Wanda and Vision are now sporadically in love and on the run until that pesky Josh Brolin, looking like a CGI cross between Joss Whedon and a grumpy grape, comes along and rips out Vision’s Infinity Stone to power up his golden glove of doom, and the film treats this like a tragic moment, except... it isn’t. Because we haven’t really had the time to properly get to know these characters and see their romance blossom. So instead it just comes off as hollow and forced.

WandaVision has the exact same problem. Apparently Wanda was so distraught about Vision’s death that she broke into a SWORD base, stole his corpse, brought it back from the dead... somehow, and then enslaved an entire town of people to create an idyllic lifestyle for her and her hubby while broadcasting it as a sitcom to the outside world... for some reason. Putting aside the dubious morality of it all, it’s impossible to really sympathise with Wanda or her supposed grief because we’ve barely spent any time with her. Had the Marvel movies taken the time to properly explore the characters and show us their relationship grow and develop, this might have had more emotional resonance. But no, it just happens. In one film they barely speak to each other and in the next they’re a couple. No effort to explore how they feel about each other or any of the problems that may arise trying to date a robot. It just happens and we’re just supposed to care. Well I’m sorry, but I don’t care. You’re going to have to try a little bit harder than that I’m afraid. What’s worse is that, thanks to the whole fake sitcom thing, it’s impossible to really become invested in Wanda and her plight because the show has to constantly keep us at arms length at all times in order to keep up the pretence that this bullshit is somehow mysterious.

Looking through the WandaVision tag, it amuses me how many people say that she’s acting out of character. And yeah, her actions are a bit of a head scratcher. Why would an Eastern European’s ideal life be an American sitcom? Why a sitcom? Why kidnap an entire town? Why keep changing the decade? None of it makes sense, but you’re wrong for thinking that Wanda is behaving out of character for the simple reason that Wanda has never actually had a character. In fact, ironically, Wanda mind controlling an entire town and forcing them to do her bidding is probably the one consistent thing about her as she did this in Age Of Ultron. In interviews, Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany described how they used actors like Elizabeth Montgomery and Dick Van Dyke as influences, which is really funny because they’re straight up admitting they don’t have characters and even now they’re still not playing the characters, instead emulating the work of far better actors.

As I was watching the show, it became abundantly clear that not only do Marvel not have the faintest idea what they wanted to do with these characters, but they also straight up don’t give a shit about these characters. Wanda in particular has had a rough time under the tyrannical regime of the House of Mouse. First they cast Elizabeth Olsen, a white woman, to play a Romani character, then systematically erasing her Jewish roots, even going so far as to put a cross in her bedroom in Civil War, and now the character is being butchered even more by forcing her into an American sitcom housewife role that she apparently willingly chose for herself, which is laughable. I mean say what you like about Magneto in the X-Men films, at least they actually depicted his Jewish culture. At least they recognised his Jewish background was important (though not important enough to cast a Jewish actor apparently). Wanda’s steady cultural erasure over the years is incredibly insidious and judging by Olsen’s comments in interviews, where she called Wanda’s comic book outfit a quote ‘gypsy thing’ unquote, it seems nobody has an ounce of fucking respect for the character or the culture she’s supposed to be representing. (and to all those kissing her arse saying it was a slip of the tongue, she has been repeatedly called out for using the slur in the past, so at this point I’d describe her behaviour as wilful ignorance)

If you want further proof of how much Marvel doesn’t seem to care about Wanda, look no further than her brother Pietro, aka Quicksilver. At the end of Episode 5, Wanda brings Pietro back from the dead, except it’s not Pietro. It’s Peter Maximoff, the Quicksilver from the X-Men films played by Peter Evans, who coincidentally is not Jewish or Romani either. So Quicksilver has the dubious honour of not only being whitewashed three times, but also twice within the same franchise. But should we really be surprised at this point? It’s Marvel after all. The same company that whitewashed the Ancient One in Doctor Yellowface and claimed it wasn’t racist because Tilda Swinton is ‘Celtic’. But now I’m going off topic. My point is that this isn’t a simple case of recasting an actor like Mark Ruffalo replacing Edward Norton as the Hulk. WandaVision actually acknowledges the recast in-universe, which makes no sense. Why would Wanda bring back her brother, only to make him look like a different person? We the audience may be familiar with this version of Quicksilver, but she isn’t. That would be like me bringing my Grandad back to life and making him look like Ian McKellen. He’d be perfectly charming, I’m sure, but he wouldn’t be my Grandad. 

If Marvel really cared about the characters or narrative consistency, they would have brought Aaron Taylor Johnson back. Instead, now they have absorbed 20th Century Fox into the hellish Disney abyss, they use X-Men’s Quicksilver as a means to keep viewers from switching off and so that people will write stupid articles and think pieces about whether the rest of the X-Men will show up in the MCU. It’s like dangling your keys in front of a toddler’s face to distract them from the rotting corpse of a raccoon lying face down in the corner of the room.

And it’s here where I decided to stop watching the show because fuck Disney.

Epilogue: One Foot In The Grave

You know, I am sick and tired of the so called ‘professional’ critics bending over backwards to praise these god awful films and shows when it’s so clear to anyone with a functioning brain cell how bad they truly are. WandaVision is without a doubt one of the most cynically produced and poorly structured TV shows I’ve ever seen. Its riffs on classic sitcoms are pointless and self-indulgent, the writing is terrible, the characters are unlikable and unsympathetic, and it’s entirely emblematic of what the entire MCU has become of late. And it’s only going to get worse as Disney drowns us with more ‘content’ to keep the plebs ‘engaged’. In short; pathetic.

[thekisforkeats]

The Way You Say My Name

Info: The Magnus Archives, JonMartin, rated T for swears. Canon-Compliant. Set immediately post-MAG 22. Martin is trans and Jon is amab non-binary.

CWs: Guilt, self-recrimination, worms (mentioned), arguments, shouting, crying, lying (Martin lying about his CV still), transphobia (mentioned), misgendering (mentioned), child abuse (mention of Martin Blackwood's mother) 

Summary: Just after MAG 22, Jon apologizes for his treatment of Martin over the past few months. Or tries to, anyway. It's hard to apologize to someone when you don't understand exactly what it is you've done to upset them.

(Of course, once Jon's apologized and Martin's relaxing, well... that's when Jon will finally notice he actually likes Martin, isn't it? Not that he's going to admit to that, even to himself.)

Shoutout to the Martin Blackwood Lovers Discord Server, without whom I would not have written this up and posted it. ;) Jon’s dialogue was (mostly) written by @marianfuckinghawke.

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“Recording ends.”

Jon reached out and pressed the stop button on the tape recorder. He sighed and looked at his phone. The message from Jane Prentiss was still glowing on the screen. He ran a hand through his short hair, aware he was mussing the grey-streaked black and deciding he didn’t care.

He had listened to Martin’s account of the encounter with Jane Prentiss with trepidation and worry. Now he could feel his face settling into something more drawn with concern. First, concern for his two assistants who were out of the Archive at the moment. Second, concern for Martin. The man had gotten himself into this mess because of Jon’s words. Due diligence. Was he really such a hardass that he had put one of his subordinates in harm’s way? How had he not realized that it might come to this?

Martin sat fidgeting, shifting in his seat, and Jon could feel the other man’s soft brown eyes on him. He had the look of a frightened, cornered animal and it cut Jon to the quick. He had done this. Jon was responsible for the man’s state, and he had to figure out how to make it better.

There was silence for a solid three minutes. Then Martin opened his mouth to say, “So if I’m going to be--”

Jon started speaking at exactly the same time. “So obviously you’re--” He blinked and said, “I’m sorry--”

“No, no, you go,” Martin said, raising his hands and waving them rapidly.

“No. It’s alright… go ahead,” Jon replied at the exact same time, then frowned.

Martin cleared his throat, then seemed to gather his courage. “Well. I was going to say. If I’m going to be staying here, I’ll need… things. Like, uhh, there’s a cot, but I’ll need, like… a toothbrush? I mean, you don’t have a stash of those sitting around, do you?” He chuckled in a self-deprecating manner.

“No, I do not,” Jon replied. “Nor do you have a proper change of clothing… you can hardly wear the same outfit for however long this will take, and you won’t want to sleep in what you’re wearing.” He had a sudden mental image of Martin sleeping naked, and cleared his throat while he shoved it away. Hardly an appropriate thought about a co-worker, even if it wasn’t remotely sexual. “We will have to go out and get such things for you… perhaps after I brief Tim and Sasha on the situation.”

Martin nodded. “There’s a room that might be, umm… did you know one of the rooms that’s filled with boxes is supposed to be the break room?” He gave that self-deprecating laugh again. “‘Course you know that, stupid, what am I saying…” He glanced aside, cheeks flushing. “Umm. Anyway. Umm. It’s bigger than the room you’ve got the cot in? If… if… I’m going to be staying here… I could clean it out… make it livable, maybe, umm, get some snacks and tea and things in, and there’d be more room for extra cots… in case you need somewhere to stay late or… something…” A pause. “Or not! Or just. You know. I’ll just. Have lots of time, so. I can. Clean. The break room.”

Jon did not, in fact, know that they’d had a break room at all. It had been frustrating to have everyone going up to the Admin break room on the ground floor, and he’d said so more than once. No, wait… had someone told him, and had he just told them off about clearing the room out?

He was suddenly horribly aware of how many times he’d griped at Martin for going up there to make tea that he had then gone ahead and drunk. How had he been such a prick to this man?

When Jon had started as Head Archivist, he’d had all sorts of plans for team morale, bonding exercises, and the like. He’d always hated them personally but they were the sort of thing bosses were supposed to do. The trouble was that all of his “how best to run the Archives as a team” ideas had flown right out of his head once he’d gotten down there and found himself at a desk where a woman had maybe died, struggling to record statements, dealing with doggy messes, and that damned persistent feeling of being watched.

Well, now was as good a time as any to start acting the way he should have all along.

“Martin… we will clean the break room. Together. As a group.” He ran his hand through his hair again. He really was going to look a mess. “It is a communal space, it will be a communal job.” He added quickly, “Yes, I know you’ll be here more than the rest of us, but I want us all involved. We need…” He sighed. Time to apologize. “I have been… less supportive of you than I should. And…” He swallowed, aware of the flush rising on his cheeks. “I feel I must apologize. So… I am sorry. But we should do more together, especially given that circumstances have escalated.”

Martin blinked at him for a moment. “You’re… sorry. For… being less… supportive than you should have been.” There was a hard-to-read undercurrent in his tone.

“For being… rude to you… and for punishing you…” Jon replied. “Unjustly.” He gestured to the recorder. “All of this… happened because of your adherence to my instructions…” He frowned. “So. I’m sorry.”

“Well,” Martin snapped, “at least you’re finally realizing that it was… unjust.” He glared at Jon, who suddenly felt pinned to the spot by eyes that were no longer soft but had gone hard as agates.

Jon blinked at Martin. “Are… are you alright?” He was apologizing! He couldn’t be messing that up this badly, could he?

Martin drew a long breath in through his nose. “Yeah,” he said, in a high-pitched, clipped tone. “Yeah, I’m fine.” He went to stand abruptly, pushing away from the desk, and in that same tone, “Well, you’d better get to… briefing people, then. I’ll just… go see how far my paycheck can stretch in Chelsea.” His tone was dripping with bitterness by the end.

Jon stood up. “Martin!” He was vaguely aware of saying it in the same irritated tone he always used for the man’s name, aware that Martin visibly flinched at the word, and tried to moderate his tone. “What is going on? I am apologizing! Is… am I missing something?” He moved around the desk to try to be sure Martin didn’t just leave without finishing the conversation.

“No,” Martin said, stopping while facing the door, tone still a good two octaves above normal. “No, it’s fine. You’re apologizing, and that’s good.” His whole frame was stiff, though, and his tone practically screamed “lying.”

Jon couldn’t read people all that well, but even he could read the signs Martin was giving off. “While your words are clear, your body language says quite otherwise.” He tried to moderate his tone again, but he couldn’t help sounding mildly irritated. He didn’t like being lied to, especially concerning his own actions, and he wasn’t sure what he had done incorrectly in this situation. “Now will you stop and talk to me?”

Martin turned away from the door, faced Jon, jaw set firmly. “What do you want me to say, Jon? Do you want me to… to forgive you? To say ‘oh, sure, you’re sorry, so that makes up for the last six months where you’ve made me want to quit my job every day?’ Am I supposed to… to… just… oh, well, there’s danger, so now you’ve realized I’m an actual person, now you’re going to stop kicking me around, now you’re going to pitch in to help around here as I’m not already the one spending all his time trying to clean up the mess while Tim and Sasha run out to research things so you don’t have to send anyone to double-check my work? Never mind that I’ve been trapped for two weeks, I could’ve been dead and none of you bothered to check on me!”

Martin was all but shouting by the end of the diatribe, every line of him stiff and furious, and Jon was suddenly very aware of the fact that Martin was taller and bigger than he was. He cringed away from Martin, took a step back. “I… I…” He turned away to his desk, grabbed his phone. “Here…” he said, handing it to Martin. “Look!” The phone would solve the problem, if Martin could just see… “There… I… just… please…”

The moment Jon had cringed away Martin had hunched his shoulders, deliberately making himself smaller. Now he was taking long, deep breaths, his expression ashamed. He reached out to take the phone from Jon.

The display was still on the screen of Jon’s message history with Martin. Before the last message from Jane Prentiss was a long list of messages from Jon--numerous messages inquiring about Martin’s health, worried and concerned. He had linked articles about foods to eat when feeling ill, then when he’d realized some of those might be hard for Martin to make alone, found new links that had easier recipes.

There were also, Jon knew, greyed-out deleted messages.

Martin, know that your presence is missed here at the Archives. I am wishing you a quick recovery.

I know it’s sudden, but I find myself missing you. Just thought you should know.

And others, so many others, as Jon had tried to figure out how to pierce the wall built by the texts he’d been getting back from what he now knew was Jane Prentiss, asking to be left alone.

As Jon watched Martin reading the messages he nervously bounced in place, one arm folded over his chest to hold the other. He could feel his skin glowing from embarrassment and he wasn’t even sure why. The blush faded, however, as he watched Martin. Watched the anger fade, and realized what lay underneath. The pain that had been underlying that anger, the way it lifted as Martin read through the message history--it was like a revelation. Martin must have walked in here convinced nobody at his place of employment really cared about him, and Jon realized that that was, indeed, what he must usually think, if something as simple as text messages was making something like hope bloom on his face.

It occurred to Jon, suddenly, that nobody had checked on Martin. For two weeks. No friends, no family. Nobody had even noticed the man was gone.

Jon had to fix this. Somehow. And not by wrapping Martin up in a fierce hug like he very much wanted to; that would not be appreciated from the man’s asshole boss. Even if Martin looked like he really, really needed a hug.

By the time Martin handed the phone back to Jon, his breathing was shaky and unsteady. He dropped back into the chair, like his legs suddenly weren’t working. “S-sorry,” he managed in the barest of whispers. “Sorry.”

“That’s… my line,” Jon said. “I am sorry. I should have said more to make it clear… you are a valued member of this team.” He shook his head, wincing at how… canned that line sounded, but pushed on. “I should have said it at least once. And… I never did. I held you at arm’s length and ostracized you. And… I understand how you felt all that time now…” He sighed. “And… yes, it may have taken this incident to make me realize how terrible a person I’ve been to you since… since you started working here.”

Martin stared down at his hands; Jon could see he was crying, but silently, without sniffling or sobbing. “Why?” he finally managed. He looked up at Jon. “Why? What did I… do? I mean… there was the whole ‘dog’ business at the beginning… what, do you hate dogs that much?” There was a kind of desperation in his tone.”

“No… I mean, sure I’m more of a cat person, but… no… I don’t hate dogs.” Jon frowned. “I… I’ve given that a lot of thought these past two weeks and I think I figured it out.” He sighed. “It wasn’t you I was angry with.” He took a breath. “I was angry at Elias. I like to have a sense of who I work with, to get to know them before I get into anything serious.” Oh, no, wait, that sounded… he hadn’t meant it like… work. He’d meant work! No, he was overthinking that; Martin knew he meant work. He stammered for a moment, though. “It’s… part of who I am… as a person.

Jon took a breath, to steady himself. Focus on the apology. “When Elias… placed you here without telling or consulting me about the selection process, it… felt like a betrayal. I felt that agency over my department had been taken out of my hands. And yes… I know he runs the Institute, but he should have at least consulted me about who is in my department.”

He dropped his head and reached to take a box of tissues from the side of the desk, to slide them towards Martin. An olive branch. “I took out that anger and frustration on you. And that was wrong, I know that now.”

“Not like I wanted to be here either,” Martin mumbled, reaching out for a tissue and wiping at his eyes. It didn’t do much to stop the tears. “I mean, I didn’t even want the damn library job, I j-just…” He stumbled, stammering, “It’s… it’s harder to get a position with a degree in parapsychology than you might think.” He sniffled. “B-but… even on top of that… you and Tim and Sasha, you’re all friends already, you requested them. Even if Tim and Sasha and I get along they don’t really know me, and you… well…” He sighed. “When Elias said I was going to work for Jonathan Sims I just about freaked out. You’ve got a… reputation, you know? I just… I knew it’d be… lonely down here, and it really has been.” There was a furrow between his brows now as he looked at Jon.

Jon frowned. He’d known he had a reputation around the Institute, but he hadn’t thought it was that bad. He took a deep breath; this wasn’t about him right now. “Then let us work on fixing that. Starting now. Like I said, we need to be working together more, improve the… office atmosphere. I… have come to admire your dedication to your work. ‘Due diligence,’ as you put it.”

Martin regarded him quietly for a moment. Then he said, “The thing that really bothers me… I don’t… I don’t think you’d understand.”

Jon frowned. Then, finally, softly, “Try me. You might be surprised.”

Martin swallowed. “I… I’m trans,” he blurted. “Like, I was… I had a girl’s name, when I was younger. Figured out I was a guy when I was a teenager, started hormones, and… well…” He took a deep breath. “My mum’s never approved, you know? She’s always been… difficult, she’s… sometimes she’ll… well, I mean, you know how parents will… say your name, right? Like, when you’ve… disappointed them.”

Jon’s frown deepened. He did not, in fact, know how parents said one’s name, but he could remember his grandmother saying Jonathan in tones of deepest disapproval when he’d come back from wandering off. So he nodded; he understood the feeling, at least.

Martin wiped at his eyes again. “The way she said my name… it made me hate my name. My deadname, I mean. But it… helped me realize I was trans, because when I thought about something else I’d want to be called, I came up with ‘Martin.’ And… and I’m kind of glad sometimes, that she… misgenders me, and refuses to call me Martin, because it means she’ll never, ever say it in that… disappointed tone. I have never regretted that choice, not once, until…”

Martin took in a long, shuddering breath, then straightened himself, looking Jon right in the eye. Like he knew what he was going to say wouldn’t go over well, but he had to say it. “The way you say my name, when you snap at me? It’s exactly like my mother says my deadname. And nobody has ever made me regret that choice. Not… ever.” He swallowed. “Until I met you.”

Jon stared at Martin for a long moment, horrified. He was non-binary himself, and yet he’d never changed his name, never even asked people to call him by different pronouns although he might have preferred it; he’d never had the courage to do so. He’d always been terrified of what people might think of him. Yet here was Martin, strong enough to change himself outwardly despite his mother’s disapproval, strong enough to keep coming in every day to deal with a boss who made him regret the name he’d chosen for himself.

In that moment, Jon felt very much like he did not deserve Martin Blackwood. That the Institute did not deserve Martin Blackwood. They would have to do better, somehow.

Finally he managed, “I’m… I didn’t know. I--” He curled his mouth in disgust. How did one respond to that? Do better? That was only a marginally acceptable platitude. “I will endeavor to change my tone.” He didn’t like that any better, but it was the best he could do.

Jon really, really wanted to offer Martin a hug. The man looked like he needed one. Tim would have offered a hug, workplace hugs could be acceptable… but, no, Jon was Martin’s boss, and Martin had just said how much he hated Jon--because if Jon reminded Martin of the mother who deliberately misgendered him, then he had to hate Jon--and who would want a hug from someone they hated?

There was something he could do to help, though. To pay Martin back, as it were. So he, too, straightened, and said, “Well. You were talking about how far your paycheck will stretch in Chelsea, but I think that will be quite unnecessary. Given that you encountered Jane Prentiss while in the line of duty, as it were, I think we can expense your essentials to the Institute without too much trouble.”

Martin’s eyes widened. “W-wait… won’t that… I mean… won’t Mr. Bouchard be… upset about that?”

Jon actually smirked. “Don’t you worry about Elias; I fully intend to take out my irritation about his habits as a supervisor on him instead of you from here on out.” Not directly, of course, but Elias would be irritated by the entire setup, and some petty part of Jon enjoyed that thought.

Martin was staring at Jon now. “I… I wouldn’t want you to… get in trouble…”

Jon waved a hand. “It’s the least I can do.” He stood. “Let’s get to the shops for toiletries before they close and then we can see about getting some clothing delivered. And, ahh, do you have any… prescriptions you’ll need…?” He was thinking about hormones. “I suppose I could send Tim ‘round to your flat, but I wouldn’t want to put him in danger either…”

Martin stood, hesitating. “I’ll… figure all that out. It’s alright. Really.”

Jon came around the desk to grasp Martin by the arms and look up at him, intently. It was the closest thing to a hug he’d let himself get to. “Martin,” he said, as gently as he could manage, with as much respect as he could manage, “you put yourself in danger because of the way your superiors at this Institute have treated you. Let me at least begin to partly repay that debt. Please.”

Martin was blinking down at him. “Uh… umm… aren’t we having… Mr. Bouchard repay the debt…?”

Jon smiled up at Martin as he dropped his arms. "Ahh, but we’re not going to ask Elias to come help clear out the breakroom. Can you imagine him moving boxes?” He could feel the smile edging into a grin. “His arms would break just from trying to pick one up.”

Martin had started to smile, hesitantly. That was what Jon had been going for; he hadn’t realized how much he actually liked Martin’s smile until he hadn’t been around for two weeks. “I-I mean… you’re not the biggest guy yourself… you might have the same problem.”

“Mmm, fair,” Jon replied, “but I am willing to scrub a floor if I must.”

Martin’s smile widened. “Y-yeah, I can’t imagine… Elias… scrubbing a floor.” He giggled, suddenly. “He probably pays people to do that stuff. He… he’d probably have been hopeless stuck in his flat for two weeks.”

Jon laughed at the mental image of Elias Bouchard stuck in a flat, living off canned meals, a laugh so full he actually threw his head back a bit. “Good lord, Elias, having to live off tinned peaches? Can... you... imagine?”

“H-he’d… probably… start shouting for Rosie.” Martin was giggling so hard he could barely get the words out. He put on a bad posh accent and said, “‘Rosie, why do we have all these tinned peaches? I did not approve this budget!’”

They both dissolved into helpless laughter, both reaching out to the other to hold themselves up. There was a moment, as the laughter waned, that their eyes met, and Jon felt something swoop and flutter in his gut. Martin had such a nice smile, and such a pleasant laugh, and it would be wonderful to have both around more often, and it was making him a little dizzy if he was being honest. When was the last time he’d felt that swoop and flutter? Georgie? Briefly, with Tim?

No, no, that was the laughter and the proximity. That was all. They were bonding over dislike of Elias. That was all.

At least he’d managed to clear the air.

Jon straightened, and kept smiling as he turned toward the door. “Come along, then, Martin,” he said, and again deliberately infused the word with as much respect as he could muster. “Let’s get to the shops.”

Martin nodded. “Thanks for this, Jon,” he said, and oh dear there was another swoop at the way Martin said his name. Had he always said it like that? Had Jon just not noticed? “Really. Thank you.”

Jon turned away to school his expression. This would not do. He was not going to let himself feel any more… swoops for a subordinate. It just wouldn’t do. No matter how nice of a smile he had. He did not have a crush on Martin, because he could not have a crush on Martin, and that was that.

Feeling a little better--it was always a relief, sorting out his emotions--Jon headed out to help Martin get settled into the Archives.

[bluefuckboy]

Monster

Gn!reader x Dabi

Meant for it to be cute fluff but somehow it mutated. Reader is a bookstore clerk. Sensitive content.

You never know why people think hitting on the bookstore clerk is a good idea. Sure you’re smart and people have told you you look cute with your messy bun and rimmed glasses that you think make you look like a librarian. It’s not like you wear anything sexy. Just a sweater and your name tag.

Yet the man in front of you is clearly trying to start something as you ring up his purchase. He’s stocky and terribly unattractive. Even his voice is grating.

“I like to think of myself as a book nerd.”

He gives you a smile that makes you wanna barf, but you put on a fake grin and answer like you always do. “Well I hope this book adds to your collection then.”

He looks disappointed as you hand him back the copy of Field Guide to Chicks of the United States. His book choice alone was more than enough to make you disgusted by his advances. You give him another forced smile.

“Have a good day.”

He mutters something under his breath as he takes the book and shuffles off. You drop the façade, pushing your glasses up to rub the bridge of your nose. You love your job, of course, but there are times when you wish you could just disappear among the stacks of books you spend your days in.

You don’t realize there’s another customer in line until you hear a deep voice say, “Trouble with your glasses?”

Your head snaps up as you stutter, “Oh! Sorry. I uh…”

You stop as you make eye contact with the man. His eyes are a shade of blue you’ve never seen before. Your mind immediately goes to a way to describe them, shuffling through synonyms for blue, as that word doesn’t do them justice in the least.

Working at a bookstore, or doing anything with books was something you felt you were made to do. Your quirk gave you the ability to memorize entire novels if you wanted to. They say some people have photographic memories, but in your case, your memory is a filing cabinet of anything and everything you’ve ever read.

You had the dictionary and several thesaurus memorized by the time you were four. You were a voracious reader, and your mind stored each page in it’s own compartment. You could quote the entirety of the formidable, rambling sentence that capped off On the Road as easily as telling someone what you had for dinner last night.

It was a quirk you felt privileged to have and you snapped your fingers loudly when you finally found the right word for the man’s eyes. Cerulean. Specific and almost mysterious. Perfectly fitting for the tall, dark stranger looking down at you with an eyebrow raised.

You flush at his gaze and sheepishly take the book he had set down on the counter. You try to make polite conversation to take away the awkwardness you feel.

“Oh Frankenstein, huh? I love this one.”

“Me too,” the man replies, and for some reason you get chills.

You wish you could see his face. He has most of it covered by a mask, and the hat he’s wearing makes it even more difficult to make out features aside from his eyes. You notice yourself staring at them again and you clear your throat.

“Certainly a classic. I always like to hear what people think of it. Whether it’s more a commentary on morality, or the dangers of scientific progress. Or even the core of humanity as a- oh sorry. I’m rambling.” You smile at your feet. “I just really love this one.”

The man’s eyes turn up slightly as he watches you. “I think it’s more of a tragedy.”

Your eyebrows go up. “Oh? How so?”

“Everyone likes to dissect the representation of the Monster and point fingers at who is the villain. Personally I think Dr. Frankenstein is the real monster.”

His voice gets quieter. “His Monster never asked to be made. He was made to fulfill Frankenstein’s arrogant ambitions. And then, when he’s not good enough, Frankenstein abandons him.”

He huffs out what sounds like a pained laugh and you can’t help but feel he’s speaking from some sort of personal experience. You turn the book over in your hands, trying to formulate a reply.

The man, however, continues, his eyes distant, “Everyone is so quick to judge such a hideous creation. I’m curious as to would they do if they found out who the real monster was?”

He sighs and then hands you the exact amount rung up on the register. As you put your palm out to cup the coins he places there, his fingers brush your skin. It feels unnaturally hot and you quickly clench your hand shut, keeping the cold coins inside.

You go to hand the book to him. He meets you halfway, the sleeve of his jacket riding up as he extends his hand. Your stomach drops as you see a row of thick, surgical staples winding around his wrist, separating the smooth skin of his hand. The flesh covering his wrist is marred, continuing up his forearm into the dark sleeve.

The man must notice your lingering eyes as he takes the book. He puts his hand up, the sleeve falling more, revealing the same warped skin. His face is emotionless as he speaks again.

“Always the monster who suffers. At least he gets to go out in a blaze of glory so to speak.” He lowers his hand and his eyes lock with yours. “If only the agony of the flames could have been felt by the corpse of his creator.”

Your mouth goes dry at his words and you feel your heart speed up. He holds your gaze for another second, then you watch his back as he leaves. As the door shuts behind him you let out a breath you didn’t even know you’d been holding in.

.

A week later you stand in the sea of people staring up at the man on every tv, every screen. You recognize his voice. As if you could ever forget. But now you can see all of him.

You can see all the scars, the countless staples holding him together. His eyes are staring at you, boring into you as you hear the words he’s saying. It’s hard to process the horrible things he’s saying. You want to cover your ears and close your eyes. Get away from the horror being revealed.

But you’re stuck, transfixed as his story echos the words within the pages of Mary Shelley’s masterpiece of fiction. You almost wish this was the same. But you know it’s real. It’s a reality that makes your blood run cold as you stare once again at those cerulean eyes.

Your mind subconsciously pulls forth some of the final words of Frankenstein’s monster. You cover your mouth in fear that you might let out a malapropos laugh at the cruel irony.

“I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly and exult in the agony of the torturing flames.”

[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Recaps: Volume 8 “Creation”

Happy Saturday, everyone! Oh man, oh man, oh man. I think I'll need to steer clear of the general RWBY tags this week, simply because I know the sort of responses I'll see to this episode. From smug celebration at Ironwood's downfall, to bad takes about what makes us human, this episode is a petri dish of sensitive material handled insensitively.

Let’s unpack it, shall we? 

We open on an action that feels like a summery of the last three volumes: a grimm attacks an airship from the front, no doubt killing its pilot, while the other grimm conveniently ignore our heroes, no masking in sight. The group looks a little sad at the destruction around them, but ultimately ignore it because they have bigger, heroic things to do. I could write a whole, additional essay on how the huntsmen code — to protect the people — has been warped and abandoned by our protagonists in their effort to do what they think is right. It's a tale that might have been compelling if only RT knew they were writing it.

We get a shot of Atlas drones unloading the bomb before one is taken out, presumably by Qrow and Robyn. Segueing to Ironwood and the Ace Ops, they're waiting for Penny to arrive, the former carrying a massive gun presumably capable of capturing her. Despite the horror we saw on their faces last episode at the realization that Ironwood would kill Marrow for speaking up, it seems that now the Ace Ops are entirely in agreement with these measures. A week ago the implication was that they fell back in line out of fear, but now Harriet talks passionately about "putting down" the group if they were stupid enough to accompany Penny. "The General gave his terms." Vine sighs at this, but doesn't actively disagree. He's just "retracing the steps that led us here."

So, congratulations on introducing four new characters, not bothering to develop any of them, killing one off while ignoring Qrow's hand in that, and having the other three become all, "Yeah! Mass murder is a perfect solution!" off screen. Marrow is the only one with something resembling development and, as covered in these recaps, that's been pretty badly executed too.

Ironwood sends them to deal with Robyn and Qrow after Winter reappears to "assist" him. That gets quotation marks because most viewers at this point have realized that she's who our two birbs spotted in the elevator. Winter isn't on Ironwood's side anymore, she's just skillfully clearing the field for the final attack. Indeed, we get a moment where she hesitantly brings up the bomb and Ironwood responds that he hopes she's not going to try and talk him out of it. No. Winter doesn't think that's possible. This was her final attempt at peace.

One of the reasons why I think I'll stick to my own blog for a while is because the fandom has a tendency to paint broad personality traits as evil when applied to some characters, yet simultaneously heroic when applied to others, when really it's about how that those traits are used. What I mean is, I've seen a lot of Ironwood critical posts that emphasize how stubborn he is. He thinks he's right and he won't back down. He wont listen to others. He's going through with this plan and if anyone tries to stop him? That's their mistake. Totally evil, right? Except, this is the exact same behavior Ruby displays, particularly in Volumes 6 and 7. She was stubborn about stealing from Argus and continuing the fight to the point where it endangered her and her teammates, to say nothing of the rest of the city. She refused to listen to Qrow, or Ironwood, or the Ace Ops, loudly announcing that she was right about, well, everything. If they didn't agree with her, the options were to leave the group entirely, or fight her. The actual difference here is that the writers have taken Ironwood to an extreme, one that's incredibly easy to understand as bad because it is bad: bombing Mantle has no defense. Ruby pulls the exact same nonsense, it's just not to that same extreme and her actions are followed by scenes that are meant to make us forgive her: a sad look because she didn't mean to get a city attacked by a leviathan grimm, a cry on the staircase because she didn't mean to risk the lives of an entire kingdom... even though she did. Ironwood is the bad guy because he's been written to take specific, OOC actions like shooting unarmed kids. He's not the bad guy because when other characters go, "Don't do this" his response is, "I have to." Because that's been Ruby's motto ever since she "had" to use the Lamp to rip Ozpin’s life story away. RWBY introduced those extreme actions of shooting the youngest in the group (for no reason) and threatening to bomb a city (for no reason) or shooting a councilman (for no reason) because when you remove those you've got a man who looks exactly like our hero. Ironwood's arc has been peppered with these confusing, unpersuasive actions because if you just keep the story as him stubbornly keeping to a plan he thinks will save the world, you're left with the reminder that all Ruby has done lately is stubbornly keep to plans she thinks will save the world. This moment with Winter just highlights how ill thought out Ironwood's descent has been because he does everything Ruby does... with a few, tacked on, “and randomly shoots people!” moments to ensure we understand that he’s definitely evil. No comparison to our heroes here, folks! 

Ironwood is a bad guy now. That’s certain, but he was made that way so the story never had to grapple with the question of what that means for Ruby if we really start condemning things like lying, secrets, stubbornness, or endangering others for the greater good. Well then damn, if we strip away the hypocrisy then she might not be a good person after all. Or the people she’s simplistically labeled as bad might not be the devils Ruby claims they are. 

But that’s a level of nuance RWBY would rather pretend doesn’t exist. 

All of which is highlighted by Ironwood’s reaction to "Penny." He sighs and sags over the gun, immediately putting it aside. With his hand on her shoulder, Ironwood tells her she's "done the right thing." Precisely the same way Ruby would lower Crescent Rose and give someone a smile when they decided to fall in line with her.

Which, of course, is the moment when Emerald reveals herself, dispelling the Penny illusion and revealing Team JNPR The Second behind her. She gives a quip about it feeling "weird" to do the right thing before disappearing.

From there the action picks up fast. I really enjoyed this battle simply from a choreography and energy standpoint. It gets the blood pumping, Ironwood's hand-to-hand is spectacular — especially that moment against Ren — and the group actually displays teamwork for the first time in what feels like forever, all of them needed to land a hit on Ironwood. As always, out of the context of the rest of the show it feels and looks great. My primary issue is that we get this fantastic fight against Ironwood. Not Salem, not Cinder, not Watts (like last volume when Ironwood was still a hero), not even Emerald as a means of transitioning from murderous villain to the group's best bud. No, what's arguably the best action sequence in the volume thus far goes to beating up the guy they betrayed from the start. There's no catharsis for me here, only frustration as we watch Ironwood stand in shock as Winter powers up Nora — who's fine now, I guess — and she slams her hammer into his face. 

It never should have come to this and when a good character is done so dirty, their downfall doesn't evoke the emotions the writers are looking for. Watching Ironwood fall doesn't generate feelings of victory, or even tragedy at a course of events others were powerless to stop. It's just frustration at watching years worth of bad writing, sprinkled with fantastic ideas that never go anywhere.

Oscar gets a few hits in, Ironwood snatches his cane, and just as he's about to throw a punch, Winter arrives with the most dramatic sword slash I've ever seen.

Ironwood's aura breaks and he falls, unconscious. We cut to an image of a droid's head separated from its body, one of Robyn's arrows through its skull. That doesn't have meaning or anything.

I suppose I should be grateful they didn't rip Ironwood's arm away during the fight, or outright kill him, though I'm still expecting him to die before the end of the volume.

Hmm. Wouldn't that be something? If after Salem's arrival, freezing cold, a Hound attack, grimm soup, a giant whale, a massive army, and a hack ending in self-destruction, the one character who actually dies is Ironwood. 

It's looking more and more likely.

Honestly, beyond all the obvious, what's so frustrating about this fight is that characters are only now using their impressive abilities to their fullest. Emerald creates an entire fantasy of what's happening and then straight up disappears, but she only does a half-assed version of that when fighting against Penny. (And really, she put more effort into helping the heroes she just joined over Cinder, the woman she's been obsessed with since the start?) Marrow refuses to use "Stay" against a group they wanted to peacefully arrest because that's just too horrible an act, I guess, but he'll do it on his own teammates the second Qrow and Robyn don’t want to fight.  

This is what I mean when I say the rules of the world bend to assist the protagonists in absurd ways. It's not nearly as egregious as Amity suddenly being up and running, but the fact that characters become substantially more powerful while fighting for the protagonists than they do against them is still a significant problem.

So Ironwood is down and out. As much as I hated watching that and didn't necessarily want more, am I the only one who felt like it was... a bit lackluster? I mean, the action was great, yes, but relatively short. There was no dialogue, such as another delve into the moral questions that led to this fight in the first place. There certainly wasn’t any hesitance against fighting a former ally. (Again, we’re meant to believe that the Ace Ops won because they just couldn’t bear to fight the group seriously, but every former ally here is capable of wailing on Ironwood without a single pause or pained look?) Ironwood just skillfully blocks for a while, is blindsided by Winter's betrayal, and then falls unconscious. Given that we learn he and Jacques will be evacuated after the rest of the kingdom, it's possible he'll escape somehow and we'll get a fight 2.0, but if not that feels like a rather tame end to the guy forced into the antagonist seat. Plus, what was the point of having Qrow frothing at the mouth to kill him this whole volume? I never wanted that to happen, I'm glad it hasn't, but I'm nevertheless left to ask why we bothered with that eleven episode side plot if we were going to erase it with one sentence from Robyn about Qrow being better than this. If that's all it took, let them work through Qrow's irrational anger while sitting around in a cell.

Winter tells the group to move onto "phase two" which is when we're treated to a flashback. We return to the ending of the last episode, with Ruby realizing that opening the vault is an option. Jaune, all smiles, goes, "We never considered using what's inside!"

This is what I mean about no consequences! This is what I mean about it all being a meaningless circle that ends with undeserved praise for the group! We started this horror show with Ironwood going, "We don't have a plan to protect the people, so I'm going to take what people we do have to safety" and the group going, "We don't have a plan either, but we're going to stop you implementing your plan because it's not perfect, risking a kingdom's worth of lives in the process." Now, the group has used two plans, one of which two characters knew about at the start and another they could have devised with the information they had. Oscar and Ozpin's, "We have an all powerful magical blast in our cane" and the group's "What if we used the Staff for something other than raising Atlas?" are both things that could have come up in the office debate. These were both always on the table! Instead, Ruby grew furious over the mere thought of cutting their losses, betrayed Ironwood again, attacked his people, denounced him to the world, and then two days later goes, "Oh wait! We could do something now that we could have easily done before if we hadn't made a needless enemy!" 

Everyone realizes how much worse they made things, right? Turning against Ironwood, bringing everyone left in Mantle directly under Atlas, sitting around while an army was devoured, drawing it out until Penny was hacked... all of it would have been avoided if the group had thought and discussed things for a few minutes, not jumping straight to violently resisting what Ironwood came up with first. "We never considered..." Ruby says. Yeah, you didn't, except that's not something to smile about. The group made the situation a thousand times worse with their reaction when they could have just magically evacuated the kingdom from the start. “Maybe we could use it to save Penny and get everyone in Atlas and Mantle back to safety." Nothing has changed! They had this ability the whole time! Nothing about the last twelve episodes led them here, they just randomly thought of it after RT had padded the volume with needless drama. Considering that they're heading to Vacuo now, we could have just made this the finale of Volume 7 instead: big fight with Ironwood, revelation, get everyone  evacuated while Salem attacks, leave her behind, then Volume 8 begins in Vacuo with the group knowing Salem is out there looking for them. This entire volume has been pointless. What did they accomplish?

Oscar got kidnapped and beat up, Nora was scarred, Ruby and Yang realized horrible things about Summer, and the whole world is panicking about a witch. Good things are... Ren and Ruby unlocked some semblance stuff? Weiss loves her brother again after he proved himself useful to her? Great work, team.

So this one moment makes everything they've done up to this point useless and, of course, once thought up the plan goes off without a hitch. Note that the summary of this episode says, "It's risky, dangerous, and nearly impossible — but it's the only plan they've got." Nearly impossible? That's a whole lot of talk for a plan that was implemented perfectly.

There is, admittedly, one snag, but one that is likewise made meaningless just seconds later. We'll get to that.

We see Winter call Weiss who also smiles at hearing from her sister. Obviously interactions like the group's with Emerald are the bigger concern, but it's still an issue that no one reacts as they should to people reappearing in their lives. Rather, RWBY continually confuses audience knowledge with character knowledge. We know Winter is on their side now, but Weiss hasn't a clue. Last she saw, she and Winter were agreeing to head down different paths. She has no reason to think her sister isn't loyal to Ironwood, so why isn't the group treating this call with suspicion? What if it's Ironwood trying to mess with them through a presumably safe party? I swear to god, with any consistency in the story this group would be dead ten times over because their decisions are so stupid. Oscar decides to believe in the guy currently beating him to a pulp, the group decides to trust a villain over a flawed ally, and now they see Ironwood’s second calling and are like, “Great, big sister Winter is checking in!” There’s a difference between a hopeful story filled with second chances and characters whose reliance on the narrative bending to assist them makes them come across as insanely naive. 

None of which even touches on characters forgetting that other characters are presumably dead. Ironwood shot Oscar off the edge of Atlas, but doesn't react to learning he was kidnapped, or when he shows up to the fight. Thanks to Marrow's comment, Winter thinks YJOR have perished in the whale, but also has no reaction to them appearing to help with this plan. Absolutely nothing is followed up on.

We then get a flashback within the flashback (fun) of Winter — shock — not arresting Marrow. It's precisely as I assumed, with Marrow angrily asking why she hit him and Winter responding with, “Because you were about to get killed if I didn’t do something!” As I said last recap, I feel like I should let the marginalized groups lead this discussion, but I do want to add that no matter how well intentioned — or strategic, as I mentioned last time — the imagery itself is still harmful. No matter the context, we were still left with white woman Winter putting her knee on black man Marrow's back to arrest him, and it’s an image that everyone in the U.S. should be familiar with the horror of. Far more of a problem than the (presumed) ignorance of this scene is, I think, the choice to make Winter entirely unrepentant. I think some of this discomfort could have been alleviated if RT had written Winter as apologetic, contrite that it came to that and asking Marrow to understand that she only did it as a means of assisting him. Asking his forgiveness. Instead, we get this

So what, the only emotion we have room for is gratitude that Winter beat him up? Yikes.

As a lighter side note, I find the animation here unintentionally hilarious. Winter's assistive device makes her shoulders look too high, making this gesture more, "Woman exaggeratedly pouts about not getting ice cream for dinner" and less, "Woman sternly closes off during a disagreement about saving lives and betraying their general." Gotta find our humor where we can, right?

What's intentional, but far less funny, is the needless animation to show us that, yes, Marrow is peering at Winter calling Weiss. Oh, the shenanigans. 

The elevator opens where Qrow and Robyn spot them. "Speaking of help," Winter says, as if she has any reason to believe Qrow didn't kill Clover. He and Robyn lower their weapons a bit, as if they have any reason to believe Winter and Marrow aren't still loyal to Ironwood. Would it really be so hard to have Winter immediately throw up her hands in the face of their almost-attack, blurting that she's not their enemy and needs their help, please listen? Again, RWBY can't remember which characters know what, let alone what their motivations and reactions should be.

We then enter the third part of the flashback where everyone piles into the Schnee dining room and discusses doing the things they could have done from the start. I'm metaphorically banging my head against that table. In RWBY's favor though, we also get a long shot of Jaune continuing to boost Penny’s aura.

Though it's only one of many issues, just the other day I asked, "Hey, why has Jaune always needed to hold onto the person he's assisting, but now suddenly he can touch Penny once and the boost remains?" It still doesn't explain why he was letting go before/why him needing to boost her continuously didn't put a hard time limit on their plan — not that Mantle's hour limit meant a thing — but at least they're showing more of that here.

Oscar notes that Atlas has enough gravity dust that it won't fall immediately when they use the Relic, but they will have to move fast to ensure no one is underneath. Yeah, like all the civilians you put there. He also cautions that the Staff isn't a "magic wand" that they can just wave to make all their problems go away... even though that's precisely what they're going to do. Ozpin gets some lines that aren't apologies or followed by attacks — hallelujah! — about how the Staff's spirit is a "character" and requires that you be able to precisely explain anything you want him to make. Blueprints, examples, a firm knowledge of how this will be accomplished — all of it is required to actually get what you're after. That's a cool limitation. It's just too bad we didn't know about it episodes ago, forcing our heroes to find ways to meet those requirements. Instead, they already have everything ready to go the moment they learn about it: Penny has her own schematics and Whitley apparently has knowledge of the entire kingdom after sending some ships out. Normally I'd go, "Really?" but I'm still just struck by how much good he's done compared to everyone else in this room. Your show is seriously broken when the side character the writers didn't even want the audience to like until a few episodes ago is more active, mature, and sensible than the heroes.

From there we see the group implementing the plan. They fly up through the hole Oscar left, straight to the vault. Penny opens it without any trouble and Ruby uses her speed to grab the Relic and stop time, halting her self-termination. I do like that combination of skill and their knowledge of how this magic works. That felt like a smart move. What's interesting though is that the Relic appears to stop time in the entire kingdom. We see people in Mantle and Atlas slowing to a halt too. I assume no one remembers that happening after time restarts, otherwise people would be freaked out by suddenly being frozen in place.

Wouldn't that have been cool though? The group often takes a while to use the Relics, either deciding what they need, or watching Jinn's information, so what if you had a population that blinks and suddenly, from their perspective, half an hour has passed? How long might Ozpin have sat on his knees after Jinn told him he wasn't able to defeat Salem? How long was that space frozen? We could have had a world built around rumors and fairy tales. Not the random stories Ozpin brings up to make a point and that we never hear about again, but tiny details that foreshadow these revelations. A Beacon where the kids tell each other spooky stories of people suddenly losing time, once a whole day. The wives, sisters, daughters, and nieces who disappear, or wake up one day with horrifying, unnatural powers. We see magic influence the world around it, but we've seen very little of the world reacting to that influence. The one time I can think of is Blake reading a book about "a man with two souls," the fiction clearly inspired by knowledge of Ozpin. And indeed, it felt great to recognize that as a significant detail and then be proven right years later as the lore was revealed. We could have gotten so much more of that if RWBY was better planned out.

I'm getting off track though. As time stops we see a series of images: Ironwood being led to a cell with Jacques, Penny succumbing to her hack, Team JNPR The Second preparing to contact the kingdom about what's going on. Then everyone is distracted by the giant, blue, buff Ambrosius who comes out of the Staff.

...there's a lot of innuendo in that last statement lol. At least RWBY is committed to the crazy design they chose? I was never particularly comfortable with the image of characters gaping up at a giant, naked woman in chains, so it's nice to balance that a bit with an equally giant, naked dude in chains.

From here things get confusing. In all honesty, I'm not sure if this is another moment where RWBY is trying to pass off a retcon as the group being brilliant, or if I, as an individual, simply didn't follow the logic. I won't bother to rehash the slow, meandering way that Ruby reveals their plan — that certainly didn't help with the clarity. Not in an episode where we didn’t even know these rules ahead of time — but it boils down to this:

The moment they have Ambrosius create something new Atlas will start to fall. Two of his creations can't exist at the same time.

He needs clear instructions about what he's making in order to create it.

The group has brought him Penny's schematics so that he understands how she's built.

They want, specifically, "a new version of her... using her exact robot parts."  

They can't just create an exact duplicate of Penny because that would carry the virus with it.

They can't create an exact duplicate without the virus because that Penny would cease to exist as soon as they used Ambrosius to make an evacuation plan instead.

So they essentially want Ambrosius to create a new Penny by removing all the robot parts from the Penny that currently exists, carrying the virus with them, and leaving only the human parts of Penny behind: her aura/soul. Then, the purely robot version is destroyed when Ambrosius creates something new.

Except... this new Penny, this human Penny, still needed a human body. That's what Ambrosius created and that's the snag I don't understand. They want a version of Penny that's just her aura, just her soul, but that soul still needs something to be housed in. Ambrosius himself notes that. At first I thought the group would just have some wisp-like version of Penny they'd have to find a new body for — perhaps leading to a new one for Ozpin too — but she's just... given a human body when he takes the technology away, something she absolutely didn't have before. That is Ambrosius' creation. That is what should have disappeared along with the removed parts of Penny, leaving only her soul — what Ambrosius didn't touch — behind. Instead, the plot oh so conveniently has Penny get a new body for free and it's untouched as they move onto the next task.

Ruby drops a casual line about Ambrosius not being able to kill, or destroy, or something, which I think is meant to be the justification here. The rule (which, again, we JUST learned) about not killing anyone supersedes the rule of two creations not allowed to exist, allowing Penny to stick around. But even if that’s true, it’s a load of bull. What, does the magic think no one in an entire city might die if the floating mechanism is removed and it plummets to the ground? Ambrosius didn’t say, “Sorry, can’t stop floating Atlas because thousands of people are still here and they’ll die if I create something new,” but we’re supposed to believe the group skated by on, “Sorry, can’t destroy the last creation like everything else because there’s a single person still using that body and she’ll die if I create something new”? 

Seriously, did I miss something? Or is this another, "Amity is ready because the group needs it" situation? The rule of creations ceasing to exist is bent because the group needs to have their friend around. Ambrosius is certainly enthusiastically complimentary, saying how "smart" the group is and that they've "done their homework," but I'm not so sure. It feels like a moment where the show is (once again) insistent that the group is far more talented and brilliant than their actions actually imply. It's only the rules of the world twisting and turning that allows for their success. To say nothing of how the episode dropped all these rules on the viewer in a ten minute info dump, ensuring we didn’t have any time to think about them before the deed was done. 

It doesn't add up for me and honestly, even putting that aside? I hate this. I absolutely despise it. Look, if it turns out this really does make sense then props to the group for coming up with that plan. Our snag aside, the rest is a legitimately well thought out wish. I don't have a problem with the execution so much as the message. I've been saying since Volume 7 that RWBY has done Penny a disservice in terms of her "real girl" narrative. Whereas before we had a firm message that you don't need "squishy guts" to be human, to be real, Volume 8 continued to carry us further and further into the idea that it is necessary. That Penny's body is entirely inhuman, something to hate, but at least her soul is human and good. That's what the virus arc taught us: your terrible, technological body might be betraying you, but hold onto the parts of you that are really human. I hated that too, but I never thought RWBY would go this far. They made Penny fully human and went, “THIS is the version that always should have existed.”

And this isn't just me reading into the implications. It's right there in the text. Blake says that they're looking for “Penny, the girl who’s always been there underneath." Meaning, underneath the metal. The girl exists trapped in the robot body. Yang holds up her arm and says that the metal is only "extra," it's not really who you are. 

That gets into two perspectives on disability that RWBY just doesn't have the nuance for: what's an integral and celebratory part of one person's existence can be seen as something separate and discomforting to another. Though there are many people with disabilities who would happily cure themselves with a magic Staff if given the chance, there are just as many who say no, this is a part of my identity. I don't want to change, I just want the world to accommodate my existence. However, RWBY takes a hard stance here, saying that any metal in your body is intrinsically bad. We didn’t use to have this take, but now the show has embraced it. Blake says the real Penny is trapped in there. Yang's words implies that she'd get rid of this "extra" bit of her if possible. Mercury with his metal legs is the enemy. Ironwood with half his metal body is the enemy. Whereas once difference was truly accepted, now it's shunned and fixed whenever possible. Those who can't be fixed, like Yang, must simply deal with the lot they've been dealt, reassuring themselves that the metal isn't really them. But Penny? Penny they can fix.

So they do and the very first thing Penny does is hug Ruby, exclaiming, “Do hugs always make you feel this warm inside? Wow. More!” and proceeds to hug all the others. 

What's the underlying message there? Penny didn't understand hugs before this moment. She never experienced the "warmth" of them while an android, despite the fact that here warmth is entirely metaphorical and has nothing to do with a literally cold body. RWBY really went and said that the "real girl” android was never actually real at all — not as real as she could be — because it's only when she's given "squishy guts" that she understands the true happiness of a hug.

Wow.

I mean seriously, wow. 

Never-mind that, you know, we've seen that happiness and warmth since she was first introduced.

RWBY is really rewriting all the core themes introduced in Volumes 1-3 and it sucks. The show is absolutely the worse for it.

To say nothing of all the other disservices to Penny's character here. There's all this buildup about whether she'll still be the same Penny once the wish is complete, but of course she is. We wouldn't want to have Penny struggle when she becomes something other than what she's always been, would we? After all, it took Yang an entire volume to work through the shock of a metal arm, but taking away a metal body for a human one is in no way traumatic. Having a normal, human body is intrinsically a good thing! Of course Penny accepts it with nothing but smiles. Becoming human is celebratory, but becoming more machine is a horror.

She gets to watch her body self-destruct, glitching out and collapsing in front of her. But again, nothing to unpack there that can't be covered with a hand over her mouth.

There's no discussion of whether Penny still has the Maiden powers, or whether a wish like that would mess with the transfer in any way. How did the group know this action wouldn't register as a clear-cut death, forcing the power out of her and into someone new? Obviously they couldn’t know, but no one even thought to bring it up? 

And the entire time they're formulating their evacuation plan, there's no talk of whether these portals will appear before everyone currently alive in the kingdom. I mean, if they do then Ironwood and Jacques can just waltz through and escape into Vacuo. If they don’t, then Maria and Pietro don't necessarily have a way out. We still don't know if they're stuck floating in Amity, or if Amity crashed, or if they made their way back to Mantle or Atlas. More importantly, the characters don't know. I have no problem with RWBY keeping that a surprise until the finale, but I absolutely take issue with Pietro's daughter walking through a portal, seemingly not to care whether her father is going to make it out too.

It's been the same with Qrow and his nieces' relationships. The show is good at insisting that these families love each other because they hug and smile while on screen together, but when shit is actually going down, none of them care about pesky things like disappearances, arrests, or “The last time I saw you, you were with an old woman on a damaged station after a villain attack, potentially stranded in deadly cold if life support failed.” 

So yeah, this entire arc with Penny has been a disaster. From throwing away her framing subplot, to giving her a virus that did absolutely nothing, to giving her the Maiden powers which she's also done nothing with, to erasing her android status for a “She's really human now” message, Penny has been done dirty by the show these last two volumes. Not nearly to the extent Ironwood has, but still. At this point I wish they'd just kept her dead dead. Why do I want her back when that resurrection produces no reaction, her conflicts lead nowhere, and one of the core things that made Penny Penny has now been magically erased?

I've been saying for weeks that killing Penny off and keeping Penny around each had serious downsides attached, yet I never expected RWBY to do BOTH.

Also, I'm warding off any, "But Pinocchio was made into a real boy too" defenses. RWBY is not Pinocchio. Penny is not Pinocchio. I thought the allusion was going to be the Pinocchio inspired girl heading into the whale, not the show forcing the exact plotline  —  down to a blue, magical creature — onto a character whose entire journey has been about accepting herself as an android. Congratulations, RT. You just obliterated years of work.

Again, if you'd like an example of how to do this far better:

As Penny's character falls apart, Atlas shakes, alerting Jaune and the other that a new wish has been granted. Jaune pecks at the screen and realizes "That did, uh, something…?” but doesn’t realize that there's a giant, red "LIVE" up in the corner.

Jaune tries to warn the entire kingdom about their plan, but what he actually says is

“Atlas is falling, but — !”

And then the communications cut out. 

Watts, perhaps?

Our heroes are really good at saying things that make large populaces panic, huh? This is the one (1) snag in their "impossible" plan, but as said above, it doesn't amount to anything. We get a shot of Nora, horrified at the thought of kingdom-wide communications being down, but literally seconds later Team RWBY has made portals appear that everyone can walk through. So... why do we care about communications? More importantly, why does the show try to make us care? So much time is spent getting the viewer invested in problems that never come to mean anything. 

Including the problem of Salem herself.

Because the group successfully creates that evacuation plan. This is it. Everyone is leaving while Salem still reforms. 

Yang asks if they can use the vaults themselves as a single point for everyone to go to and Ambrosius agrees. So everyone is going to pile into the Vacuo vault that can only be opened by an unknown Maiden? They're going to put an entire kingdom's worth of people, including their enemies, into the vault where the Relic of Destruction is? Yeah, that's great. Prior to this — like if this had been the plan at the end of Volume 7 — I would have 100% agreed that these risks are better than death by Salem/grimm/cold. Now though, Oscar as axed Salem for an unknown length of time, the cold is having no impact on the civilians outside, and the grimm only attack background military personnel that supposedly no one cares about. They couldn't have spent another few minutes (especially with time stopped!) to figure out a means of getting to Vacuo that doesn't involve revealing and providing access to the location of a super secret vault? To say nothing of what they're going to do if Salem wakes up and snags one of those portals for herself. Two kingdoms for the price of one!

But that's what they're going with. Weiss gives Ambrosius a schematic of the kingdom, I guess, and he makes branching pathways appear with numerous portals for everyone to step through. They'll enter through one and, when they exit another, will be in Vacuo. Easy peasy, right? Especially since Ambrosius doesn't seem to have any limitations about how often his power is used. Is it three creations every 100 years like Jinn? We're not told, at least not to my recollection. However, I was expecting there to be a waiting period, that they'd fix Penny, go to evacuate the kingdom, and learn that sorry, I can't make another creation just yet. It feels like the sort of shit move these beings would pull — "Don't cry to me when it's not what you wanted" —  it would have been another commentary on the group's insistence on putting friends over the people's safety (like demanding the Ace Ops not bomb the whale because of Oscar), and crucially, would have kept the action in Atlas. Isn't that what this volume is? The battle for and potential destruction of the Kingdom of Atlas? We have two episodes left and, unless something unexpected happens, we're moving that action to Vacuo. Why? 

Meanwhile, Penny's corpse is just chilling in the background 😬

While all this is going on, Winter reassures Jacques that he and Ironwood will be evacuated too, though she makes it clear saving him was Weiss' idea. It checks out, considering Weiss is the one who turned her father's arrest into a joke last volume. Winter still takes his abuse seriously.

The group prepares to leave with a celebratory, "We did it!" from Weiss. I'm still banging my head against that dining room table. Before they can pass through the portal though, Ambrosius leaves them with one, dire warning: "Do not fall." 

In any other story a line like that is a neon sign announcing to the audience that someone will absolutely fall, and maybe they will, but RWBY has dodged consequences so often I wouldn't be surprised if this was merely another way to string us along. Remember all the hype surrounding Salem? The cold combined with her army and magic? How she was going to decimate Atlas and leave our group broken in a Fall 2.0?

I mean, we still have two episodes left. Forty minutes of content. Salem might still decimate them, especially since something has to happen in the finale. But god, it's a problem that we've come this far without a payoff. Salem randomly decided not to attack anyone, was stopped by a weapon added in solely for this purpose, and now the whole kingdom is being evacuated with a plan the group could have used at the start. This volume really is meaningless. 

“We go to vacuo and hope we’ve thought of everything” they say as the camera zooms in on Cinder's smiling face. For the second week in a row.

Bingo time!

Winter betrayed Ironwood, the group used the Staff of Creation, and I'm axing Maria on behalf of Pietro. You can't have the guy's daughter become human — after he was killing himself to give her his aura?? — and magically walk to Vacuo, not knowing if he's even survived since she last saw him, and expect me to think he hasn't been forgotten. Same with Maria. Has the group mentioned her since Amity cut out, notably for reasons they couldn’t explain? Of course not. Did they care to find out what happened? Of course not. I have no doubt they'll both re-appear in the next two episodes, Pietro crying over how perfect his girl is now and Maria congratulating the group on their actions, but we're still marking it.

This is the ugliest thing I’ve ever created, I hope you all are enjoying it :D

Another week, another couple feet added to the hole we’re digging. I know I keep saying I have no idea what's going to happen next... but I have no idea what's going to happen next. A Vacuo ending was not in the cards, not outside of them miraculously showing up in ships. Maybe they have been on their way to Atlas (somehow...) and will arrive precisely when everyone has left! Anything is possible at this point.

See you next Saturday, everyone. Hold on until then lol. 💜

[franniebanana]

CQL Rewatch - Episode 9

Let me preface this by saying we’re entering a period of episodes that I’m not that fond of. There’s nothing wrong with them really, but it’s just padding and a little bit of set-up for later arcs, but I personally think the set-up is unnecessary.

Anyhow, straight into it! I shouldn’t say “straight” when wangxian is on screen. I struggled to get a good shot, but the dichotomy between Nie Huaisang and wangxian here is hilarious to me. He’s such a good comedy act, flailing and being totally useless, other than being another warm body, but at the same time, he’s the only one really acting like a teenager here. Lan Wangji is always so cold and serious, while Wei Wuxian is a goof until he needs to be serious, but both of them are also extremely talented. We know Nie Huaisang isn’t an idiot, but I don’t get the impression he’s a great cultivator either.

I literally watched this scene this morning and totally missed this part. Lan Wangji stops Wei Wuxian from killing or attacking the puppets further, as he’s about to use his sword to defend them all. It’s a great little moment, actually, because it shows how Wei Wuxian is willing to do anything, but he’s not willing to murder innocent people if they can be saved. We already know, with all the Lan principles, that Wangji would not kill needlessly, but we don’t necessarily know that about Wei Wuxian. But he has morals, he has his own principles, and he’s not going to cast those aside for nothing.

Now, you could say he won’t do it now in the story, but what about later? What about Wen Chao? I’d say that’s totally different. That was revenge. And one of the things I like about this story is that it doesn’t shy away from revenge (something that a lot of Western media kind of disdains—we seem to be afraid to in any way make revenge out to be something good).

I can’t believe I managed to capture the exact moment that Lan Wangji used the Silencing spell on Nie Huaisang. I’m honestly really impressed with myself. Of course, it was totally by accident. I was initially going to just talk about how funny Nie Huaisang is again, because I love his flailing and physical comedy, and his expressions are fantastic. But can I talk about this glare that Yibo has right now? Haha, I love it. Again, if looks could kill. If I were Wei Wuxian here, I’d feel pretty satisfied for being the one not silenced at this moment. Honestly, it shows such a progression in their relationship: they’re really working as a team, no longer at odds with each other. It’s really apparent that they have become a team: it’s Nie Huaisang and WangXian—not Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji. There are also more moments where it feels like Wei Wuxian is really looking for Lan Wangji—like, it feels as if he’s more interested in the relationship than Lan Wangji. I don’t think it’s true at all, but that’s kind of what we’re shown. The thing is that Lan Wangji is so much more aloof and cold towards Wei Wuxian—very tsundere, I suppose. But of course, we know Lan Wangji is very conscious of Wei Wuxian.

I’m not going to pick on her specifically here, because overall, the fake instrument-playing is pretty hysterical. I do think she’s the worst at it, though, probably because she only does this in one scene or something. Wang Yibo has a double for a lot of the scenes where he’s playing the guqin, but what little we see is fine. Xiao Zhan is also okay—we know he isn’t really playing, but he does an okay job pretending to play. Like, his lip is on the flute. It kind of looks like Wen Qing doesn’t even have her lips on the flute—like she’s trying not to wreck her makeup. Anyway, I’m not going to harp (see what I did there?) on it—none of them are musicians.

Reminder to gif this part.

Any time Wei Wuxian comes to Lan Wangji’s defense is a good time, and coupled with a smile like this—my heart is melting, excuse me. I love these moments, because for just a few seconds, it feels like no one else is there—it’s just the two of them having a moment together. And Wei Wuxian is once again here proving how he’s loyal to Lan Wangji, how his friendship is worth something, and it’s not just skin-deep. I think Lan Wangji is touched here: the way his averts his gaze, as if he likes what Wei Wuxian is saying, but he still feels uncomfortable. Outside of his family, this is probably the closest relationship that Lan Wangji has ever had.

Wei Wuxian has a lot of cool magic, and it’s a shame we don’t get to see more of it. I like the idea that his talismans are more clever, if that makes sense. They aren’t just explosions or hitting people with waves of force to knock them around. He’s got golden nets, and talismans that can bind/bond people to each other, ones that can cause you to be pinned to the ground. It’s just very fun, and we don’t get to see a lot of that sort of magic in this world. Actually Lan Wangji has the Silencing spell, plus the body binding spell that he uses in the book, but that is, unfortunately, not in this series. And the first time you see it in the book is when he binds Wei Wuxian’s body so that he has to sleep right on top of Lan Wangji—great stuff.

WWX: So they are making use of my wisdom? LOL

Wei Wuxian stops to make a joke, saying he is most disturbed by the hallucinations because he has so many thoughts in his head—basically too smart for his own good here—and at the same time, poking fun at Lan Wangji, because he isn’t bothered by the hallucinations (ie. he doesn’t have many thoughts in his head). Okay, first of all, we know Wei Wuxian respects Lan Wangji a lot, so he is definitely joking, and it’s all in good fun. Lan Wangji rolls his eyes a bit, and he’s not bothered. He did, after all, tell Wei Wuxian to put the net over the other three so that he and Wei Wuxian could take care of the dire owl alone. He also respects Wei Wuxian and values him as a fellow cultivator and teammate. Second of all, again, Wei Wuxian is not an idiot! He’s smart! He’s clever! He’s not dumb! I don’t know who still needs to hear this, but I’m saying it again. I know it’s easy to put him into the typical BL “female” role: he’s smaller, he’s a bottom, blah blah blah. I honestly don’t like that at all. Every ship doesn’t have to be two opposites. It doesn’t have to be m/f, top/bottom, big/small, dark/light, smart/dumb, strong/weak. I’m aware of how the book is written and I’m aware of BL tropes in general, but I see two equals here. I like how they picked Wang Yibo, a shorter and younger man than Xiao Zhan, to play Lan Wangji. I like that they took out the fact that he has inhumanly strong arms. I like the different dynamic that it displays from the book characters. That isn’t to say that I don’t like the book—I love the book. The book is my favorite adaptation, both in terms of storytelling and in terms of plot. But that doesn’t mean that it’s perfect for me.

Anyway, enough ranting for now.

I love this shot. And I love how in sync they are in this fight—it’s like a dance. When I’ve heard about fight choreography in the past, I never associated it with the word “dance,” until I saw this series. I don’t know if it’s the costumes or the setting or the actors or what, but their motions are so fluid, so dance-like—it’s actually quite beautiful.

Oh, my god, look at that grin! I fucking love it!! Also, serious moment turns into a chance to tease Lan Wangji. I will accept it.

My sentimental heart loves how scared Wei Wuxian is for Lan Wangji here. All that time wearing the One Ring—I mean, holding the Yin Iron, is really wearing him down. (Sorry, I couldn’t help myself). But jokes aside, I love how Wei Wuxian is right there, instructing him on how to handle what’s going on and to not lose control, while the others are just kind of clueless as to what is happening or how to help. And even after Lan Wangji snaps out of it and says they have to go to the Chang Clan, Wei Wuxian’s expression still is one of great concern, and I doubt it’s out of fear for what the waiter has just told him. I think he’s just really worried about Lan Wangji. This is the first time that Lan Wangji has even been like this, even in the face of great danger, and Wei Wuxian is shaken by it.

Other episodes: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |

[mtraki]

Brain chemistry is messing with me... got me in the bad feels looking at dark roads... So let’s try and drag ourselves out of it through hyperfixation!  It’s time to rant about Agent 47′s brain chemistry-- specifically all the serums and antidotes that artificially change it! (It’s a rant... I won’t take up space on your dashboard scroll if you don’t want to see it, but if you do, please check out under the cut.  Spoilers for the comics and Hitman Season 2-3 are unmarked...)

The focus of the rant is thus: “Exactly what did Ether’s antidote do?” ‘That’s easy, MT,’ I hear you tell me, ‘It brought back 47′s memories that were wiped by Ort-Meyer before he escaped the lab.’ Forgive me, strawman Reader, (but as always, thank you for your faithful engagement) but I don’t think it’s that simple...  Maybe because I overthink things, or maybe because the details aren’t adding up... Let’s discuss. In the cutscene in HITMAN 2 (Hitman Season 2) ‘Long Shot’, Olivia and Lucas provide a syringe from Ether Biotech Corporation.  According to their information, Ort-Meyer’s estate and his research were granted to the corporation (through Providence) after his passing.  The syringe is supposed to be an antidote to what Ort-Meyer used to wipe 47′s memory.  Using the syringe, 47 is able to remember Janus, the first Constant of Providence, so they can go get his info on the Partners... and kill him. ‘Yes, MT,’ you say, ‘so it’s easy.  The answer is right there.’ Well, please bear with me... In the next cutscene ‘Gifts and Curses’, our leading ladies Diana and Olivia are doing the real work (tracking Janus’s coffin) while our lads are being moody.  Lucas asks 47 if he’s all right and 47 says, “It comes back in flashes.  Fear.  Anger.  But like it happened to someone else.” Later, in ‘Precautions’, Lucas and Diana talk about how Lucas has feelings about the things he’s done, and 47 does not-- a parallel is drawn between these feelings and “having a conscience”. In ‘The Ark Society’ mission, on the Isle of Sgàil, as you’re marching Arthur Edwards, the Constant you are abducting, to the harbor, he’ll fish around for information by giving some of his own.  For the purposes of my rant, there is an exchange I want to focus on: Edwards: “...Your murdered him [Janus] to get to me.” 47: “Not just that.  He had it coming.” Edwards: “Interesting.  It was my impression that you were cured of such... sentiment.  The ‘good doctor’ built his serum specifically to target the seats of your emotions.  Has Miss Burnwood’s sense of justice rubbed off on you, I wonder?” This is where I feel the need to stop and point out that there are TWO DIFFERENT SERUMS at play here, that were forced on 47 at TWO DIFFERENT TIMES in his forgotten past.  This is shown in the comic series. SERUM #1) This serum was given in 1989, after 47 and 6 failed to take over the Institute.  47 sacrificed himself so 6 could escape (though he was presumed dead) and instead of being killed like he expected, due to pressure from Janus (who spoke as Constant for the Partners of Providence) Ort-Meyer instead used a serum to stifle his and the remaining clones’ emotions.  This one was an injection to the neck (like the antidote).  Here are his exact words: “I gave you something most people lack: a true purpose.  And you cast it aside.  For some misguided dream of freedom.  Why?” “It’s that storm inside you.  All those feelings I fought so hard to lock away.  Raging, driving you.  So now I must wipe them out entirely.  A small chemical insult designed to target the amygdala, the hypothalamus, the cingulate gyrus.  The seats of emotion.  I’ve just sawed the legs off them.  Do you understand, 47?” “Your memories remain intact.  But now they’re a series of events with no significance.” The effects of this serum were devastating.  With the singular exception of 47, every other clone more or less lost the will to live.  They died of starvation, dehydration, infected bed sores... losing any and all motivation for anything.  Meanwhile, 47 became an apex predator of murder, stating that the opportunity to complete the assassinations handed down by Providence through Ort-Meyer were the reason he went through each day.  He had a hand in the deaths of a good number of clones, either via poisoning or smothering. SERUM #2) This serum was given in 1998 (that’s nine years after the first one) after Providence demands Ort-Meyer give them 47 as the only success of his very expensive perceived failure.  Ort-Meyer gives this serum, without the permission of Providence, very specifically so that 47 will not remember him to assassinate him.  This serum is given orally, and through a hose and pump apparatus.  Here are his exact words: “I only need one more day, and a moment alone.” (This is included strictly to point out that 47 must have escaped that exact same day) “I raised you as my own.  Taught you everything you needed to thrive in this fallen world.  And now I have to take it all away.  You would come after me.  It’s the only way I can be free from having to watch over my shoulder for the rest of my life.  It feels like drowning at first.  Don’t struggle.  I’m going to make you perfect.  Now you have all the potential in the world.” 47 wakes up later to the voice of Ort-Meyer over the intercom.  He implicitly trusts the voice, as he knows nothing else.  He knows about the existence of nothing outside of the room and the voice.  He starts making associations as he goes on, and points out that he understands how some things work (”The mechanics of breathing, the science that makes remotely operated restraints possible.”) and the justifications behind their existence (”Somewhere deep down, I even understand the need for them.”).  As he makes his escape, he observes that their is familiarity in the sensations of killing.  Out in the world, he continues killing on his own for about a year, claiming that his work is his only indulgence and that he doesn’t need things, friends, or stories.�� He does also claim to have a few stray memories that haunt him-- elicit emotional responses in him (which we also see in Absolution with the whole “doctors” flashbacks). Edwards should not know about the mind-wiping, and his dialogue does not betray that he does.  Lucas apparently knows about both, but I’m going to attribute this to “Lucas became personally invested in learning what happened to 47 specifically after learning he was alive and working for ICA, so put the pieces together once he stole the data from Providence” because he wasn’t around for either serum.  Meanwhile, Edwards doesn’t have many reasons to worry about 47 until he starts trying to use his past as a lure for Diana.  Because his angle is to eventually reveal that it was 47 (AND 6... they were on the job together, per the comics) who killed her parents, and the fact that that juicy reveal would hurt that much more if he could reveal it as something 47 knowingly hid from her... I don’t think he’d go out of his way to discredit Janus’s reporting on the situation that only the first serum was given, and something else happened that allowed 47 to escape into the wild.  Janus is apparently Edwards’s beloved mentor, after all. ‘MT,’ I hear you say, ‘You’re rambling.  What’s the point here?’ The point is that 47, a man who does not mince words, makes the observation, when asked, that he remembers fear and anger.  These are the things that stand out to him in his memories.  The emotions.  This is in violation of the first serum’s properties as well as the second. Now, why is this happening?  Perhaps the first serum has an effective lifespan, and perhaps it’s wearing off.  Perhaps 47′s human (arguably superhuman, per some sources) brain is adapting to make necessary associations despite the “chemical insult”. Or... was this antidote supposed to also be an antidote for the first serum?  It is noteworthy that 47 starts behaving in ways that suggest more emotionally-driven motivations after the antidote is given-- at least it seems that way to me.  This seems especially the case at the very end of HITMAN 3 (Season 3), ‘Untouchable’, when 47 is confronted with his guilt, with his feelings about what he perceives Diana’s thoughts and feelings to be, and with his choice in the end concerning Edwards in the final confrontation.  No matter what he chooses, he owns his choice and all the baggage and consequences that come with it.  At the very end, in the cutscene 'New Deal', he tells Diana that he isn’t ‘Agent 47′ anymore.  That he chooses this path because he can. Perhaps I’m very much misunderstanding the themes, here, but 47 not remembering his past never struck me as something that held him back from choosing something else.  It has always been his inability to connect with others in any way outside of infiltrating their spaces and killing them... with very, very few exceptions... that has kept him from choosing a path outside of murder-for-hire (perfectly executed, of course ;) )  So I’m left at the end with the conclusion that 47 is now able to operate as his own conscience because he now has a... mostly usable independent sense of morality-- which requires a certain level of empathy. So... again: what’s the deal with the antidote?  Is it two-in-one?  This would be fine, (Okay, not really, I would then have to rant about how this only makes sense as a convenient plot device because for which person BESIDES Agent 47 would such an antidote be useful unless they also work with the first serum... and oh boy IMPLICATIONS... I know we keep crashing their stock but can we crash their production too?) except the antidote is only referenced as working to return 47′s memory... and his ‘warmer’ dialogues through the end of 2 and into 3 with his allies is simply treated as matter of course-- nobody points it out. I don’t know if this is a problem with my perspective, the writing, or what... But it seems like Lucas knows and doesn’t know about both serums at the same time (he comments specifically about 47 remembering things... but not him behaving more emotionally engaged)... Or like the games smooshed both serums together while the comics had them separate.  This isn’t like the whole “we don’t talk about Absolution though we do wink and nod that it mostly happened in canon” thing.  The comics were written as a companion for the HITMAN: World of Assassination trilogy! I know how I’m treating it for 'Monstrous’ (because if I don’t, I’ll go crazy and rage-quit the fic) but it still bothers me...  Anybody got any ideas?  Nuggets of lore I missed?  Am I the only one stressing out about this??

[stray-tori]

TPN S02E08 - Initial Thoughts (anime-only)

Reaction Vid: Google Drive

I’m here, finally! Let me just say, I’m glad to see some more positivity around ahh- Not that anyone isn’t allowed to feel negatively about it, I do have my problems too of course! But it’s just nice when things are epic and liked by people :)

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I don’t think I can really separate it into topics this time so I’ll just kind of... go through it by chronological order this time! With “.” paragraphs separating thoughts :)

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Norman figuring out that there’s at least one other person taking tests because he’s left-handed and the code scan thing is placed on the right when he put it down left is such a nice, unspoken execution!

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also. Zaziee :(

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also, what do we think is happening in this room? are those just... dead subjects that they feed to demons or...? experimenting with how certain manipulated humans will affect demons eating them? 

(also they just flipped Norman’s walk here, so his curl is on the wrong side. not blaming them or anything, I just noticed. I hope the staff is doing okay :<)

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also, idk if my brain is melting but when Norman was like "I just need a detonator" and then he focuses on that king chess piece before the explosion, is the implication that the king piece was the detonator? :D

I do like the few subtle hints we do get just from the scenes (like the left hand/right hand thing and the cube communication) but I feel like I'm missing some connecting pieces here, even with knowing Smee was there and supporting him. It’s weird because I feel like the left-hand thing was really nicely done and digestible and the fork thing is presumably checking out how many cameras there are (even if still a little obvious) - but the explosion? Maybe I’m just stupid haha- it had to be Smee helping, right? I just would have liked more hints (but maybe I’m too small brain rn).

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I'm a little confused because Peter said "the era of James as the gatekeeper has ended" (paraphrased), so he’s the gatekeeper right? And Norman was so concerned about the gatekeeper last episode, to the point that I felt like it was a point largely against the "using the gate in GF" plan (aside from uncertainty about the gates and the human world, of course) - but it's literally just a human then? I thought it was gonna be some epic demon or magic concept or something, but it's just that dude pff- whats the dude gonna do against the murder squad? :D Ig he has the farm/demon forces behind him but those would exist either way (and Norman must have considered that), so why is he in particular such a big deal/threat? Is he that ultra big brain? Not big brain enough to have prevented Norman’s escape anyway.

Or maybe he’s just 6 moves ahead and waiting for Norman to lead him back to the hideout that was referenced a few episodes ago where Norman brings all the stolen kids -- but I feel like that’s such a... roundabout way of capturing the GF kids. Plus, that should be Isabella’s doing, if anything. So yeah. Confused about that a bit.

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I love the parallel how in ep1 Ray running from the pursuers and Emma collapsing was the whole thing about like, not taking it all upon yourself -- and now Emma (who mirrored Ray’s exact run through the forest) got help with Ray jumping in and also later Sonju, conveniently timed as usual haha.

(negativity) It’s a nice parallel, though i would have preferred if Ray had run again and Emma had gotten the shot - it’d still carry around the same message (”then vs now”) but please I beg you give Emma one (1) cool bow shot  - or I’ll steal your animation and do it myself >:”(

(ik she got the hunting shot which was slow and cool but idk)

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The animation was so pretty. I loved Norman on the cliff and the wind animation, and the MUSIC when the town raid happened and how everything was framed and the goddamn MUSIC???? DID I MENTION THE MUSIC.

Also Norman’s expression and that shot where he realizes Vyrk has the blood condition and sweeps in for a stab.

It was pretty brutal and I appreciate that they showed it. It’s just... really pretty overall and- yes. thank you. love goes out to the staff. god knows they need some. and money. please give them more money.

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I also like how with how the episode set up the whole, "are you god?" - "I'll be a god or devil" thing, and then when Vyrk asks "are you a human?", my friend joked he'd answer "no, i'm god" and then we joked a bit about his silence. But in hindsight, I really appreciate those jokes, because it made me realize: for a different kind of character, that WOULD have been the perfect setup to have a badass response but that silence was probably on purpose and I can’t really explain it but I just like how that makes the through-line in the episode even stronger and also kind of connects with his wavering?? I can’t explain but I LIKE IT.

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(slightly negative) It's a little bit funny that the parallel didn't occur to him until it was thrown in his face, but I think that's what dissociation and just being observed in one's plan does.

Plus I do get what they're going for, and it was pretty dang emotional. A little on the nose maybe but- yee.

It works well as an eye opener to tear down the mental wall between the two groups. He's also never really been in contact with demons equally before afaik so, I shall accept it. Not that currently killing them all makes him equal in power dynamic right now, but I mean like, in a way where he truly, in real life, got to see that they’re similar -- he made comparisons to humans last episode, so clearly he wasn’t completely unaware. He’s smart, he knew what he was doing would make him seem like a devil to the demons. He probably just numbed himself to it until something that could break those walls down happened, ie the Emma thing.

I feel like it could have worked too if her name wasn’t Emma, but he probably wouldn’t have paused for as long and the voiced lines couldn’t have been given the time needed to make them hit as strongly - but I do think just a line that sounds really similar to what they talked about in GF could have been enough too - but again, that would have potentially taken too long down the exchange between the two.

It also doesn’t seem completely random since the old guy also reacted to Emma’s name before and everything so. Overall, I’m willing to suspend my disbelief - even if it IS funny that the family naming went from Vyrk to... Emma :D (though demons do get old so I suppose that makes sense haha)

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I also wonder how this will impact Norman going forward. Even if he decides for the GF plan now (likely, we don’t have much time), he still did that and even if they return all the degenerated demons with Mujika’s, Sonju’s and Vyrk’s help... I doubt those who were already eaten and killed, can be saved. So that blood is on his hands forever now, likely hurting even more now that he feels personally impacted by it and not just... knows he’s doing something bad.

The anime definitely doesn’t have the time to delve into that sadly but that’s,,, very good angst.

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week 3 of asking where is Isabella- (I mean I am GLAD that she didn’t show up at the temple- yET - because that’d just make them leaving them there worse but fudshjsd- Is she actually just waiting for them to come for the gate what’s happening ahahaha-)

I also don’t know if I mentioned this in my last episode thoughts or not, but I do still believe the gate stuff could have been revealed more incrementally? Like have James include that tidbit of info, please. If we know gates exist, then at least now it isn’t such an extreme change of information to know: “there are gates. yes where you were sent WAS a gate, but they’ve been destroyed. oh and another gate is in GF!” like HOLD UP-

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I wonder if we’ll ever see the hideout that Cislo or Vincent referenced... I’m sure that’d be lots of random children designs so probably not but,, I am really curious how and if they’ll take all those kids. Norman did say he wants freedom for all cattle children. but with no large scale plan anymore, I’m not sure if that’s gonna work. If any human stays behind, as I’ve often talked about before, the cycle just starts anew and I’m really curious if TPN will go for a morally grey ending like that.

Unless the whole “evil-blood” religion works out this time when the high class is gone. but even Sonju is already in part a counter-example so... we’ll see I suppose.

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I really loved this episode though! If the anime continues this trend to the finish line, it’ll stay a wonky 7 for me :) (quality wise, you guys know my tpn brainrot won’t make me truly hate it pff- tpn love too big-)

[inkribbon796]

What a Beautiful Wedding Ch. 7: The Show Stopper

Summary: The heroes and Illinois go in to face up against the Actor.

Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

When Ranboo’s portal opened up they were in some theater house, and the first thing that the group saw was Logan and Janus over Thomas’s unconscious body. Remus and Joan nearby.

“Logic!” Jackie raced over.

Logan started, almost hitting Jackie with one of his batons before the speedster jumped out of the way and Logan realized who it was. The logical Side visibly sagged in relief.

“Oh, good,” Logan commented, “you are all doing well.”

“Fookin’[1] relative,” Chase spat angrily, he wasn’t sure if it was being near Logan, or if he was just becoming more and more agitated the longer he spent without knowing if Dark was okay but his skin felt like it was trying to actively climb off of him as he got closer to the Sides.

“You three okay?” Silver flew over.

“No,” Logan admitted. “I do not know where the other Core Sides are, we lost sight of everyone else when we came here, and he won’t wake up. It is my estimation that something happened to the Core Sides and the shock knocked him out.”

“It must’a[2] been the Actor, he’s been doin’[3] weird stuff all day,” Jackie reported.

“Then the other Sides must be located before he can do any harm to them,” Logan decided.

“Go, I’ve got this,” Janus told Logan, summoning his staff and using his magic to pick Thomas up.

“We’ll keep him out of the line of fire,” Joan promised.

“Don’t take any unnecessary risks, not even for yourself,” Logan told them, looking straight into Joan’s eyes.

“Same goes for you, A.I Asimov,” Joan told him and he ran off with Janus and Remus. It left Logan with the others.

The logical Sides looked at the minors. “Unacceptable, what are you two doing here?”

“The bastard took Bomble an’[4] we weren’t just gonna[5] sit around with our heads up our arses[6], now were we?” Tommy glared at him as Ranboo looked around nervously.

“If splitting up weren’t terrible of an idea, I would demand it immediately,” Logan told him.

“Hey, Lo,” Jackie called out and a good sized green mechanical sphere flew out of Jackie’s suit. The large camera on the front shuttered open and closed before flying over to Logan.

“We can use him to scout the place out,” Jackie offered, motioning to SAM. “Figured he could keep takin’[7] pictures in here.”

“Good idea,” Logan told him, and connected to the orb, sending it around to look for any traces of a disturbance. The only nearby doors were the ones that lead to the main stage.

A set of double doors that Chase was already moving towards. Once he reached them, the marksman could hear faint mumbling from inside the auditorium. He began to creep in, Sam moving in slowly with him, but the instant Chase saw who was on the stage, all subtlety flew out the window.

“I don’t why you insist on throwing these tantrums,” Marc spat as he stood on the stage with Dark. “I’m giving you a leading role and still you want more?”

“Let go of me,” Dark spat, trying to twist himself free from the smoke that Marc was trapping him in, and trying to stab him at the same time. “I won’t be your villain.”

“Come on Dames, you’ve burned down an orphanage,” Marc chuckled as he threw Dark to the side. “Let’s not pretend. Besides, the bubbles you made were weak, they fell apart the instant someone poked at them. So give me the anomaly and I’ll make everything so much nicer.”

“I don’t have it,” Dark told him.

Marc glared at him furiously before he slapped Dark across the face, his claws out and so he left deep gashes in his face.

Dark became equally furious but when he moved to retaliate, Marc elbowed him sharply in the gut and his body dropped.

The Entity coughed up black, inky blood, the body he was inhabiting was screaming in pain. His souls screamed in rage. He wasn’t running out of aura but the body he was in was starting to reach its limit.

“Dames, we play the scene after we set the stage, so give me—” Marc snapped before he was pegged in the back by one of Chase’s TASER rounds. Ripping a scream from his lungs.

Jackie quickly raced in and snagged Dark, snatching him away and back to the group. Illinois almost immediately pulled Dark out of Jackie’s arms.

“Pass him ta[8] me,” Chase ordered.

“You need your hands to fight, I don’t,” Illinois spat at him, aura and magic coiling around him, ready to strike out like a whip.

As Logan entered the room after them, the logical Side looked around and saw one of the nearby pillars and froze in horror. He raced towards it. “Morality!”

The pillar was just a giant stasis tube where Patton was floating inside, unconscious and energy coursing around it. Logan looked around with SAM to see that the other three pillars contained the two other missing Sides, and Tubbo.

Logan felt rage come over him and Ranboo’s eyes tracked around the room as he portaled over to the other side and was at Tubbo’s pillar, the young boy’s radioactive iris symbol glowing faintly as his eyes were half closed in his torpor state.

“No! No!” Ranboo scratched at the pillar and started opening up a portal to pull Tubbo out.

“Get away from there!” The Actor threw a spear of black smoky aura at Ranboo and knocked him to the side, his aura pinning him down. “I’m not done with the brat yet.”

“Let go ‘a[9] him,” Tommy spat, Logan had to use nanites to pull Tommy out of the way.

“I am using them,” Marc scoffed. “They weren’t doing much good in their own stories so I pulled them into mine. Just give me the real anomaly, Dames, quit playing around. We can quit wasting our time with these garbage stories and do something better. Something airtight that isn’t subject to such impermanent and sudden change.”

“Stay away from him, yeh fookin shitestain!”[10] Chase shouted. “An’ yer gonna give e’eryone else back too.”[11]

Marc just stared at Chase in confusion before he held a finger up and pulled a couple papers out of nowhere, skimming through them for a very specific character description. “Who the fuck are you again?”

“Wait!” Actor paused before laughing. “Wait! Shit! When did that change? That’s right Ink said that kid had changed my script again for the thousandth time.” The last two words had been spat out bitterly despite his suddenly humored mood.

Then Actor smiled at Chase, the marksman keeping himself in-between Marc and Dark. “Well, well, like sister, like brother. Ruining one man’s life isn’t enough for you, so you grab for another? Thought Wil was supposed to be the whore of the relationship.”

“Shut the fook[12] up!” Chase took out one of his guns and just shot at him in a fury, he didn’t miss the way Dark flinched at Marc’s words, and felt even more fury boil inside his soul. The demon turned into smoke and the round went right through him, jumping down from the stage.

“You just into trigger happy gunmen or something?” Actor smiled. “Because you’re now two for two, at least, if you don’t include that French sword thrower I know you were fucking in university.”

“What part ‘a[9] “shut the fook[12] up” didn’t yeh[13] hear?” Chase demanded angrily.

“Oh, I know the perfect place to put you in my story, it’ll be perfect,” Marc said, his tone laced with threat and promise all in the same breath. “Illinois, bring him over.”

“No!” Illinois took a step back, he could tell that Dark was starting to nod off, his body dropping off into exhaustion and the last thing Illinois wanted was for this lunatic to put his hands on him again.

The denial seemed to actually make Marc angry, “Illinois. Junior. Get over here and give him to me.”

“I’m not your fucking kid, I’ll take your head off before I let you touch him,” Illinois couldn’t see Logan or the minors, but he didn’t know if Marc had done something to them or if they’d slipped off to carry out some kind of plan.

“Let’s not waste our time,” Marc stepped forward, he snapped his fingers and the room flickered back to the wedding gazebo. “Give him to me, we can go back to the wedding, make it look amazing, and then we can start this story off right. Come on, I don’t want to hurt you if I don’t have to.”

“Illinois is right to be suspicious of the Actor’s claims,” the Host announced from the stage. He had appeared there and spotlights snapped to look at him as the room darkened just a little bit. Dark roused a bit at the blind seer’s voice and he began weakly struggling a bit in Illinois’s arm.

“No, no, get away from him,” Dark whimpered, trying to open up a portal to drop the Host into but the Host was able to dispel it. “Not again.”

“You again,” Marc sneered. “Thought we agreed that you were going to be heard and not seen?”

“The Host agreed to no such terms, the Actor is insane and imagined words the Host never said,” the blind seer snapped. “The Host is a part of this story, just as much as the Actor or the Entity is.”

“An oversight, and a waste,” the Actor told him firmly.

“If the Actor minds,” the Host snapped. “He should stop digging his own grave and listen to the Host, before his time runs out.”

“Your monologue needs work, kid,” the Actor chuckled, but motioned for the Host to carry on.

“The Host would like the Actor to know that he will never successfully get any of the Entity’s children on his side,” the Host warned. “Even if he was a half-decent uncle, his track record speaks for itself. There is no one in the Actor’s family that he hasn’t harmed? A wife pushed away and sacrificed? A brother-in-law strangled to death? A brother the Actor helped drive insane? And a son, cast aside because the Actor was careless.” At the last one the Host smiled and gestured to himself.

Marc’s eyes narrowed, he looked confused. “What?”

The Host’s smile became a little more smug, and Illinois realized something that he only could have realized after meeting the Actor. Host and Actor had the exact same sharp, toothy grin. “Illinois is not the Actor’s child, he has no claim to Illinois, and even if they were related, it is abundantly clear that the adventurer wants nothing to do with him.”

Host’s aura coiled around him. “Jackie saved the Author from the Actor when he was thrown forward, the homes he had been in would have paled in comparison to the Actor’s sloppy and neglectful parenting. Had the Actor been subtle, had he known who his biological child was and tried to manipulate him, he might have been successful. Instead, he was careless and his son died.”

“Oh fuck,” Actor sighed overdramtically. “That makes sense.”

“The first mistake the Actor made, while the Host has existed, was targeting the Entity,” the Host warned.

There was a sudden explosion from one of the pillars and everyone turned to look at it. The Host finally was successful in distracting the Actor from what everyone else had been doing.

“No,” Marc realized before glaring at the Host. “What did you do?”

The Host smiled, “Well, the Actor insisted all the Host was good at doing was talking, and he was not wrong.”

Logan, who had been invisible suddenly surged out of the wiring of the system. Skeppy, Ponk, and Marvin had been invisible and working in the background to help Logan and the two minors work the four heroes free. The first one they were able to free was Roman who was immediately grabbed by Logan and passed off to Janus who was racing to bring Roman over to Thomas.

The illusion of the theater house began breaking down, looking half like the destroyed wedding scene, and the theater house. Marc looked over at Logan in a wild fury before he burst into smoke and as Ranboo was trying to get Tubbo out. The teen was kicked to the side.

“Hey!” Ranboo shouted in distress as the Actor embedded his aura into Tubbo’s pillar as Patton and Virgil were both dropped out of their stasis tanks.

“I don’t think so, I have worked too hard for all of this to go down the drain,” Marc spat at him. “If you all get the other ones, I get this one.”

“Give him back!” Tommy shouted.

“Drop the kid before you get dropped.”

Ranboo turned at the sound of that voice and saw someone he didn’t expect. It was Eret who was standing with Puffy and Foolish. He’d rushed to the scene when Quackity and Foolish had reported that Tubbo had gone missing.

“Who the hell are you?” Marc asked

Eret flipped her hair, they adjusted their sunglasses and gestured to herself, “Eret’s the name. An’[4] my dear, you are going to release Tubbo or my boot will be the last thing you see.”

“I don’t think so,” Marc said, noticing the guy in a white hoodie with a sniper rifle trained on him. He started summoning up aura to rip a portal open. “This kid’s got more aura than half of you combined. He’s no anomaly, but he’s powerful enough to do what I want.”

“Wrong answer,” Eret summoned a sword, Sam creeping closer with a trident in his hands. “You see Tubbo might be staying with the heroes, but we all are rather attached to him.”

“Well too bad,” Marc said smugly, “you two-bit villains couldn’t beat me if you tried.”

Punz released an arrow, Virgil had made his way over to him and laced the arrow with his magic. It phased through Marc and hit the stasis pillar.

“Hah!” Marc gloated. “You can’t hit shit! You villains are nothing compared to me!”

A bubbling started forming as Virgil’s magic infected the magic of the stasis pillar, Tubbo starting to have a nightmare as the liquid inside looked like it was bubbling.

“You haven’t heard, asshole?” Virgil grinned weakly. “Everyone loves the villain.”

The pillar cracked and Ranboo raced in, immediately teleporting Tubbo away behind the rest of the Server members, scoping him ever so gently into his arms. He made little hissing and vwooping noises of distress. “Tubbs‽”

“Hghnnn,” Tubbo groaned, mumbling. “Put me down, you fuckin’[1] giraffe.”

Ranboo let out a relieved laugh as he gently touched his forehead to the side of Tubbo’s head. “Let’s go home, Bo.”

“Tub-man,” Quackity raced over. “You hurt?”

“Oh my goodness, Ranboo, gimme[14],” Puffy demanded, racing over and setting her forehead against Tubbo’s. “Gimme.”[14]

Tubbo made little groans of complaint as people fused over him.

Foolish and Sam pulled out their tridents and forced a defensive wall in front of the pair. They let Tommy through with barely a nod in his direction.

“You okay?” Eret asked.

Tubbo nodded.

Eret turned to Ranboo, “Make sure he actually gets some rest, the poor thing takes after Sam too much.”

“I will,” Ranboo stood up as his eyes turned purple and he opened up one of his portals and left for the attic room in the Bee ‘n Boo. He immediately set him down on the bed to let him rest.

As Actor was preoccupied with Tubbo getting away, Host opened up a portal to bring Illinois, Chase, and Dark to stand behind him.

“Illinois should move the Entity closer to the Host, the Entity can feed off of his aura long enough to revive himself,” the Host ordered, taking a step back.

Illinois nodded, “He’s not going to fracture again, right?”

“No, the Entity’s soul is tired, but not drained,” the Host told him, his aura sinking into the Entity. Dark was trying to open up a portal to take Illinois and Host away.

“아빠[15] come on, we’re trying to help,” Illinois had to move in to disrupt the portal several times. Dark was slowly getting stronger and Illinois doubted if he couldn’t convince Dark to calm down, that he’d hurt himself.

Marc took one angry step towards Illinois and Dark, opening his mouth to say something, but Silver flew forward and punched Marc in the face. “I think you’ve been talking long enough.”

Jackie sped in to force the Actor back against the wall as Dark ripped a portal open and he alone slipped inside of it. The Entity emerged from Jackie’s shadow as he surged up and pulled something out of the Void with him. The Entity moving quickly and without mercy or hesitation.

Dark smiled at Marc as a soul splitter embedded in Marc’s chest. “That’s for what you did to Average.”

Then Dark forced more aura into him and Marc’s soul violently discorporated. The demon had drawn in too much aura for Dark to snap his soul in half quite so easily.

But he was gone and Dark just stood there, the body he was in burning and a sense of triumph slowly bubbling up inside of him.

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

Accessibility Translations:

1. Fucking

2. must have

3. doing

4. and

5. going to

6. asses

7. taking

8. to

9. of

10. Stay away from him, you fucking shitstain!

11. And you’re going to give everyone else back too.

12. fuck

13. you

14. give me

15. Dad. Informal, read phonetically as: Appa.

[coreastories]

The Biscuits

Part 15 of Days and Nights of Forever 

They went to New Zealand, making new life-long friends, and unknowingly starting the next part of their forever. 

Rating: NC-17

This directly connects to: 

Royal Scandal: Proof of the king and queen of Corea’s utter besottedness with each other

A Royal Twin! Meet the Most Honorable Lady Seo-gyeong

With thanks and love to @collectsfallenstars and @pateetsie for cookie supplies and (a)moral support. 

The morning they met Luna and Shin-jae-- well, Koo Seo-gyeong and Kang Hyeon-min--was a beautiful and still winter day. 

It was August in Corea. They’d left it in high summer with scorching humidity. But here, they  could see their breaths. Tae-eul thought it was too much of a flipside theme that her double lived in a country that wintered when it was Tae-eul’s summer. But she tried not to think about that. 

There was already plenty to think of. 

They took the scenic route from Christchurch to Wellington, three private compartments discreetly arranged on the train, and then a chartered boat to cross the Cook Strait. 

The rugged coastlines of North and South Islands were blanketed in snow. The primitive beauty of those slopes and mountains took Tae-eul’s breath away. 

They watched the landscape from the deck on the stern of the boat, with Gon standing behind her, his arms around her waist. He had opened his coat so that she rested against his chest with one less layer between them. 

His right hand-- the one with the glove off because he had shaken hands with the captain and accepted the silver tin of Anzac biscuits the captain’s little granddaughter had made for them-- was inside her coat, stroking her left side, firm enough to feel through her cashmere and silk layers. 

When his hand started to go higher and lower, she grabbed it and held it against her waist. She felt his torso shake with laughter, and he bent his head to hers and buried his cold nose behind her ear. 

He laughed harder when she jumped away from him. She turned in his arms and pushed both hands against his chest. “Let’s go inside before that nose falls off.” 

He mimicked her, placing both hands on her shoulder, his right hand nestling in her fur collar. 

“Are you alright? How do you feel?”

She nodded, leaning her cheek against his hand. “A little scared but I’m trying not to look too far ahead or make things up that haven't happened yet. We’re just meeting two people who would most certainly be our friends, that’s all.” 

He nodded back, accepting what she said, and knowing the truth she hadn’t said. 

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

They’d received an invitation to dine at Government House tomorrow evening, but for the most part, they were truly incognito. They hadn’t opened the house the Royal Court owned here. They were at a hotel. They drove and walked the streets of Wellington just like everyone else. 

The Royal Guard were in civilian clothes scattered around them. Gon could see Jangmi stepping aside, fiddling with his phone, and putting it against his ear as a ruse for another 360 degree check around them. 

Aside from that, it was easy to believe he and Tae-eul weren’t with escorts at all, just an ordinary couple strolling through the capital. It reminded him of all those times he explored the republic on his own. He glanced at Tae-eul and the slight smile on her face told him she was enjoying it, too. 

Tae-eul was still smiling when she saw them in the restaurant. Her smile faltered the tiniest bit and Gon turned his head to find the cause. Koo Seo-gyeong and Kang Hyeon-min were sitting at a window booth of the restaurant where he and Tae-eul were headed to meet them. 

They seemed to sense Tae-eul spotting them, because by the time Gon looked, the two were rising to their feet and bowing their heads slightly-- and then they seemed to remember the agreement that they were all meeting as civilians and they raised their heads. Seo-gyeong raised a hand and waved. 

He could swear he had seen Tae-eul do that exact same awkward wave. 

Tae-eul’s hand squeezed his. Then she pulled him toward the restaurant. 

They exchanged polite greetings. He seated Tae-eul first, and she flapped her hands at the other two to sit down, but they waited until Gon had taken his seat. They all smiled at each other, even Kang Hyeon-min. For once, the man didn’t look like he would rather be anywhere else. 

Then Gon saw the angle of their overlapping arms and guessed Seo-gyeong was holding Hyeon-min’s hand under the table. That would do it. 

Koo Seo-gyeong wore her hair like Tae-eul’s, loose and unstyled. Perhaps because it was winter, so women left their hair down for added warmth, didn’t they? But that hair had the same waves. She wore a long-sleeved simple black sweater dress, and her coat draped over the back of her seat was of a camel color that brought back more memories for Gon. 

She was looking at Tae-eul with fascination. 

“I don’t want to assume we’re twins, Mama,” Seo-gyeong said. “I certainly don’t want to think you were alone at any point like I was. But we do look so much alike. It’s uncanny.” 

Tae-eul nodded, exchanging a look with him and extending her smile for Seo-gyeong to him. They had decided they didn’t want their relationship with Seo-gyeong to stand on more deception than absolutely necessary, so here they were. “I’m quite sure my mom gave birth to me. But this is really unbelievable, yes.” 

Seo-gyeong was still looking at them with fascination. “What’s unbelievable is this. I appreciate you coming all the way here. And really, you didn’t need to. I mean, you could easily command me to change my appearance, you know, Pyeha, Mama, and I would have understood. I’m a loyal subject and servant of the crown, and I want you safe.” 

Gon shook his head even while his brain wanted him to nod, because yes, of course, Seo-gyeong, raised in a family instead of growing up alone and having to fend for herself, would be just like Tae-eul in her sense of duty. 

“We’ll do no such thing,” he said. “We appreciate that you understand the delicacy of the situation. You could still refuse, of course.” 

Gon left it at that, giving Seo-gyeong a real opening. He looked at Tae-eul, and she was already looking at him, giving him quiet approval. 

The other couple had also exchanged looks. Seo-gyeong said, “Well, I’ve been convinced that this is all for my benefit. I’m gaining another sister and the protection of the Royal Court. It’s no loss for me to pretend to be your twin, Mama.” 

“Maybe you could call me by my name? It’s not just pretend,” Tae-eul said. Gon added, “Not pretend. We do have the lab work to back it up. And you gain a brother, too.” 

Seo-gyeong made a half-grimace, half-smile Gon also recognized. “Let me wrap my head around that, Pyeha--oppa. Omo. That’s so weird, isn’t it?” 

They all laughed, except Kang Hyeon-min, who said in a flat tone, “You haven’t even called me that and this is when you say it. To the king. You’re embarrassing.” 

 Judging from how Seo-gyeong jerked slightly and then the way Kang Hyeon-min’s face also jerked in momentary pain, Seo-gyeong must have kicked him under the table.

“Mama-- um, Tae-eul, can you tell me more about yourself? Let’s start with your job. You must know everything about me. I’m at a disadvantage.”

Tae-eul said, “Oh no, no, we didn’t look you up like that. We only have your public record. That’s how we knew you had the same face as mine, of course. And I remember-- well-- Gon told me he remembers your name from the recommendations he signed. I worked in violent crimes in my organization, too, like you. And you know it can get dreadfully dull sometimes until you’re trying to solve a murder.”

Seo-gyeong said, “Right? You either help other teams with their cases until you have yours.” 

Tae-eul nodded. “And when you do, they’re so much work.” 

Seo-gyeong nodded emphatically. “Stakeouts. Chases. Not sleeping to hunt for evidence. Waiting for stuff all the time from forensics and other labs. I don’t miss it.” 

Tae-eul was doing the half-grin, half-grimace Seo-gyeong had done earlier. “And don’t get me started on the paperwork. I came across the traitor’s men completely by coincidence in one of my cases and here we are. That’s it, really.”

Gon’s eyes went from one woman to the other, and he noticed Kang Hyeon-min doing the same, his expression unreadable. Gon had read about the likeness of twins’ minds-- not linked, but alike-- and while this was a completely different case because Tae-eul and Seo-gyeong weren’t twins but parallels of each other, they were certainly alike in many ways. 

He could tell them apart, of course. Even in this timeline, Tae-eul’s eyes were still more forthright, more dauntless. But if the two women had more differences aside from Seo-gyeong being less reserved than Tae-eul, it would probably show up if they spent more time together, certainly not right now while they were only talking about their very similar jobs. 

Seo-gyeong leaned back in her seat, smiling. “Seemed like destiny since it meant you met your husband now.” 

Tae-eul met his eyes, all traces of trepidation gone now. Only amusement remained. Destiny was their best friend. They grinned at each other. 

Then he saw her catch Hyeon-min’s eyes and Tae-eul’s grin didn’t quite falter like earlier, but Gon saw the way it turned into a wistful smile. She was truly happy for this Kang Hyeon-min, but she was also understandably sad about him. “I’m thankful for your part in this, Kang sunbaenim.” 

“It’s nothing, Mama,” he said, gruff but still respectful. 

The food they’d ordered arrived then and they ate, touching on light topics, life in New Zealand, Seo-gyeong’s mother sending packages of Corean things every two weeks, the work in Interpol, Tae-eul studying English and Seo-gyeong giving her tips and promising to send audiobooks she loved, and then just as they were all dunking Anzac biscuits into their teas and coffees, Prime Minister Koo arrived. 

She had removed her thick black coat. She wore a black leather jacket, a white pullover, and light gray jeans. And on her feet were modestly-heeled boots. As far from the image of Corea’s prime minister usually was.  

And like Gon had done earlier, Koo Seo-ryeong moved her eyes between Tae-eul and Seo-gyeong. Then she sighed, sat down, ordered coffee, and said, “What are you doing here?” 

To Kang Hyeon-min. 

“Their Majesties are here for my sister. You didn’t need to tag along. My sister’s got enough spine to sit here and have tea with her new family. You’re just cluttering up this table.”

Kang Hyeon-min slurped his coffee loud enough to be heard at the next table and then deliberately looked out the window without answering. 

Gon felt Tae-eul rather urgently squeeze his arm several times. So he spoke and redirected Koo Seo-ryeong’s attention to him. “Right. Prime Minister, our people have taken care of the lab results. The Royal Public Affairs Office has also prepared the announcement. Your office will likely be asked for a statement.”

“Ye, Pyeha, my statement is also ready. What do the lab results say?” 

“Some copy variations, but probability of full siblingship at 98%.” 

Seo-ryeong looked at Tae-eul. “And you’re really sure your mother gave birth to you, Mama?”

“Yes, there were photos and even a video.” 

“Just you?”

“Koo Seo-ryeong!” Seo-gyeong said, horrified. 

“Yes, just me,” Tae-eul answered, unflappable. 

Seo-ryeong turned to Seo-gyeong. “You’re still a foundling and not a lost girl then. Never mind. Now you’re practically royal.” 

“I am not. Will you stop?” 

Seo-ryeong smiled and sipped her tea. Apparently, she only liked poking Seo-gyeong a little, not with real malice. 

But Kang Hyeon-min made a noise and malice returned to the table. Gon felt Tae-eul squeeze his arm again. Seo-ryeong put her teacup down. 

“What are you snorting about?”

“Just thinking how ironic this is. You’ve always wanted to be queen but you’re not. And now your sister’s even beaten you without trying. She’s now related to the crown.” 

Seo-gyeong elbowed him. “I didn’t beat her in anything of the sort, are you crazy? Unnie, ani!” 

Too late. Seo-ryeong had already thrown the Anzac at Kang Hyeon-min’s head. And she grabbed another and threw it, too. 

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

Tae-eul leaned against Gon in the car, half-asleep, half immersed in memories. 

Every single time she took the bigger half of the popsicle and the few times he forced her to take the smaller one. 

The day he’d told her and her dad the story of his family’s bankruptcy. His father’s arrest. His mother’s gambling addiction. 

Every single time he had bitten her head off when he was waiting for the results of the police exam. 

The days he left and came back from military service. 

Every single time he was on her side. In their squad. Against lowlifes. During fights. Or against her dad even, when it mattered and he wasn’t sucking up. 

The day he’d told her he loved her and couldn’t let her go, but did so anyway, giving her what she’d asked for, and paving the way for her to keep her memories, didn’t he, because she had been inside the gates when Gon had altered their time. 

She couldn’t bear to think what would have happened if she had been outside when the ripple happened. 

It was all thanks to Kang Shin-jae, who was in fact Kang Hyeong-min. He was a big part of why she was happy right now, with Gon’s arm around her. 

And he had bowed his head in goodbye to her as if he wasn’t. Because he didn’t know. He wasn’t the friend she’d known since she was sixteen. To him, she was the queen, and now the sister of the woman he loved.

She was the sole keeper of those memories now, of that life she’d shared with him. 

Seeing Kang Shin-jae in the republic was different. That Kang Shin-jae wasn’t her Kang Shin-jae at all. He had been asleep all this time. 

It was Kang Hyeon-min who had been her hyeong-nim in the republic. Kang Hyeon-min who had tearfully wondered if he was where he was supposed to be, who had asked her if he still had her welcome. 

Well, he was where he was supposed to be right now. And he was happy. She took a deep breath and blinked away tears. 

Gon held her hand and didn’t say anything until they were inside their suite at the hotel. And then he looked at her inquiringly as they finished shedding their winter outerwear, leaving them in their lighter coats. 

“I’m fine. I’m good. You? Did it scare you when Seo-ryeong threw that biscuit? And with deadeye accuracy, too. That should teach you not to infuriate her, you know.”

He looked at her, amused, and… something else. He suddenly lifted her up and placed her on the escritoire. It creaked under her and she clung to him and half-pushed, half-pulled him as a lever to try to get off the antique desk, but he blocked her way.  

His gaze locked with hers and she knew she wasn’t fooling him for a second. His eyes said he understood. “Did you see the look on her face when Kang Hyeon-min started saying those things?” 

Tae-eul laughed. She loved this man. He always knew what she needed. She stroked his arm affectionately. “I thought she was going to throw her tea at him, not the biscuit. Like an angry chaebol mother.” 

They laughed together. And then his eyes were going half-lidded, focused on her grin. He kissed her, a soft and gentle press that she returned. He parted from her for a second, still smiling, and then he kissed her again. This time in earnest, the kiss she’d wanted all along. 

Because Seo-gyeong, Kang Hyeon-min and Seo-ryeong were on their side. 

Because fate seemed to be. 

And because this man continued to prove himself worthy of defying fate. In a hundred small ways that made her love him more. 

So she smiled and kissed him back, her arm sliding around his neck, his sliding under her jacket, both of them pulling each other closer. 

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

When he came out of his office after getting waylaid by phone calls, Tae-Eul was already dressed for their dinner with the governor-general, already buttoned into her camel coat. 

She stood by the window, and she had opened it to the crisp winter air. Gon looked at her for a long moment, taking in all the beautiful lines and curves she had from her loose hair to her heels.

Today, they had pretty much just slept in. Yesterday was a day of revelations and it had shaken them more than they’d admit. So they’d slept in, had a quiet day in their suite, and now she was ready for dinner with one of the many world leaders she was bound to meet as queen. 

His footfalls made no sound on the thick carpet, so she startled a little when he put his arms around her waist from behind. Then she leaned back against him and sighed, letting her arms rest over his, their fingers interlacing. 

“Are you all right?” 

She nodded. “I feel like I miss her already. I wish we could spend more time together, but there’s also this fear that we shouldn’t do that. That she belongs here in New Zealand and I belong in the kingdom. Does that make sense?”

He nodded in turn. 

She spoke again. “She’s different, but not really. She’s still the same Luna I met. She fetched Lee Lim for me, you know. She took care of my dad. I’m so glad she’s not sick this time.” 

Gon saw her swipe at her cheek. So he said, “He’s still exactly the same though. He still looks constipated when he looks at me. And I haven’t done anything to him.”

That made her laugh. 

“Your Majesties, the car’s ready.” 

Just in time. She turned in his arms to walk to the door but he kept his arms around her, held her close for another second, inhaling her sweet scent, and then kissed her on the forehead. She smiled at him, kissed him on the lips, and then gently pushed him off, straightening her coat.  

They walked hand in hand, and he glanced at that froth of black lace at her throat that peeked out of her camel coat. She was lovely, she was amazing, and he could feel his chest just bursting with pride for her. 

He wanted to show her off to the world, but that could come later. 

The dinner at Government House would be private. It was just the four of them, Dame Patsy Reddy and her husband Sir David Gascoigne. Gon had left her a message to thank her for the invitation and to request this intimate dinner because it would be among the queen’s first. Dame Patsy had returned the call and confirmed that yes, it would be just the four of them, and they wouldn’t even have press at all.  

It was simply a warm welcome to the visiting royalty from the queen of New Zealand’s representative. 

Gon was glad for Tae-eul’s sake when they arrived without the din of reporters. Dame Patsy and Sir David were waiting at the door to welcome them, and Tae-eul warmly greeted them, offering her hand. 

Then she turned to him and he loved that shy and brilliant smile she gave him as she waited for him to translate the rest of the greetings. 

“You two are so sweet,” Dame Patsy said. “I’m so glad to meet you in that newlywed look.” 

This was simple enough for Tae-eul to understand, and she predictably smiled her shy, closed-mouthed smile with that cute nose scrunch. It made her look about nineteen.  

Cute was still in his head and he was still smiling over how adorable she was so it completely gobsmacked him when she was helped out of her coat and he saw her dress.

It was a softly glittering cloud of black lace. 

Judging by the expressions of admiration and delight from their hosts, he wasn’t the only one who noticed how beautiful it was. How beautiful she was. 

“My dear, how absolutely ravishing, your frock. Look, your husband is speechless.”  

Gon heard that but it was another second before it registered. Then he shook himself inwardly and smiled at the GG, offering her his arm, while Sir David escorted Tae-eul. 

“You didn’t tell her what I said, Your Majesty?” Dame Patsy asked, giggling now. “Did you hear me at all?”

“Of course I did, Your Excellency.” He turned to Tae-eul. “Dame Patsy said--”

He was about to embellish what the GG had said, just to make her blush, to make her cute again so he could function at this dinner. But his words died in his throat when Tae-eul said in nearly perfect English, “I heard what she said. I was waiting for you to speak. Good for you. You’re too smooth sometimes, is that the word?” Turning to Dame Patsy who was already chuckling, Tae-eul added, “Thank you so much.” 

The evening was just a haze to Gon. He took care of Tae-eul, of course, translating when needed, answering her questions, but he had no idea how well he did. 

He was used to women wearing the most beautiful dresses. But this was Tae-eul, and he wondered if he’d ever get used to her stunning him with her beauty. The dress was modest, the neckline at the base of her throat, the sleeves to her wrists, the hemline at her knees, but all that lace-- and how well she spoke in a language she’d just begun learning-- short-circuited his brain. 

He thought about unsolved math problems throughout the dinner. And if their hosts noticed he was distracted, they were only amused. At least he’d entertained them for the evening, hadn’t he. 

Sir David was going to show him something or other in his study, but Dame Patsy vetoed that. “We shouldn’t keep you. Thank you so much for your generosity in spending the evening with two old people, Your Majesties.” 

They said goodbyes, Tae-eul inviting them to Corea for the festivals. He couldn’t remember which. He took her coat from the butler and helped her into it himself. 

She caught his eyes over her shoulder and blushed then. Oh now, she’d blush? 

He wondered if Yeong had seen the dress during the security scans and that was why Yeong had ordered the Royce Phantom as their car for this evening. 

Ahh, Yeong. 

He bundled Tae-eul into her seat and then took a deep breath of the frigid winter evening. The ride to the hotel was around ten minutes. That was nothing. Only ten minutes. 

He got in the car. Tae-eul was looking at him strangely. “What were you doing standing outside for a minute?”

He focused his eyes on her forehead, on the delicate wings of her eyebrows. He just smiled at her as he put on his seatbelt. Then he looked out his window. 

He felt her reach for his hand, resting their arms on the car’s infuriatingly huge center console. He took a deep breath. And regretted it because he got a lungful of her fragrance. 

He looked at his watch. Only three minutes had passed. 

He turned to Tae-eul. She was looking out her window, both hands in her lap. Belatedly, he realized he had disentangled his hand from hers when he looked at his watch. 

Gazing at that profile, the city lights swathing the lines and curves of her face in gold and shadow, he saw the queen she would become, had already become: poised, fierce, and brave, always brave. For him, for them, for this life they’d chosen. 

“Tae-eulah.” 

She turned to him. And she was so beautiful in that moment, in her simple questioning glance, that he wondered what idiot had possessed him to make him think he’d last ten minutes without touching her. 

He pushed the button to turn the car’s electrochromatic privacy glass opaque. 

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

Tae-eul looked from Gon to the glass and back. 

“Why did you do that? Now Yeong and Jangmi will think we’re doing unspeakable things here.”

Gon laughed. “We can speak it. They can’t hear us. Come here.” 

“No.” 

“What do you mean, no?”

“We’re in the car!”

“I want to kiss you.”

She inhaled sharply. She was still trying to catch her breath from those words, said in that voice, when his hands were there, pulling at her seatbelt for more give, and then pulling her close, and then his lips were on hers.

He thoroughly caressed her lips with his for several breathless moments. He nibbled on her bottom lip next, teasing it with his tongue, and then went back to that drugging lips on lips friction that sent her nerves on fire, before nipping her lower lip again and drawing it into his mouth, suckling gently, tasting and stroking it with his tongue. 

When he finally, finally touched his tongue to hers, she heard herself groan, and she couldn’t help the soft moan that followed when he gently delved and twirled his tongue with hers. His hand was on her ribcage, his thumb caressing the curve of her breast, the other hand cupping her cheek with his fingers in her hair. 

Her arm was trapped between them on the console, so she only had one hand free, but she couldn’t do much but cling to his wrist as he moved his mouth to her cheek, then her neck and the shell of her ear, where he paused to kiss and nip, making her shudder as sparks rushed from that spot on her ear and straight to her core. 

“Neo-neun wan-byuk-hae. Saranghae.” 

She sighed. She was just about to reach for him with both hands so she could kiss him again when the car stopped. 

Gon kissed her briskly, reached a hand to her waist to release her seatbelt, removed his, and then he was out his door and opening hers. She felt the strands of hair he’d loosened from her chignon flutter back and forth against her neck as he led them from the car to the hotel lobby and then across it to their semi-private lift. 

The liftman bowed and pushed the button to their suite. Tae-eul hid her heated face against Gon’s arm. She poked his side when she felt him laugh. 

In contrast to the dignified but still slightly mad rush through the lobby, they walked slowly to their door, saying good night to In-yeong and Ho-Pil standing in the hall. 

Once they were inside, she kicked off her heels and removed her coat. Then she fished for a  biscuit from the tin on the console. Gon stood there watching her, unmoving. 

As if she couldn’t feel her blood heating her neck and cheeks almost unbearably hot, she bit into the cookie and said, “What?”

He said in English, “You are absolutely ravishing.”

She looked like she was going to imitate her earlier bravado, but it lasted only two seconds. She looked down and said, “Oh stop it. You don’t think this was too much? Chung-cha said queens only wore two fabrics in the evenings, lace or silk. Or both.”

He removed his coat, put his arm around her, and led her to the sofa, planting his lips on her temple and not letting go even as they dropped onto the cushions, hip to hip. He took the biscuit from her and finished it in one mouthful.   

“You can wear whatever you want. Since when can you tease in English?”

She laughed. “I had Seung-ah’s help. We just thought up scenarios and she helped me with the words I wanted to say.” 

He dropped his head on the sofa’s back. “You’ll be the death of me one day.”

“Good. Because you always, always make me feel like I’m dying.” 

Maybe it was because of his kiss. Maybe because she was still tingling from that kiss. Maybe it was the way he exposed his delicious jawline and neck to her just then. She didn’t care. She hitched the skirt of her dress high on her thighs so she could do what she wanted to do, which was straddle her husband. 

It was comical how fast he put his head back upright when he felt her settle on his knees. His arms went around her back, supporting her, always protective that way. She smiled and threaded her fingers through his soft hair. 

She ghosted her lips over his nose, his cheek, his ear, doing what he’d done in the car and nipping him there. She felt him shiver and she loved it, almost as much as the feel of his hands traveling up her back, leaving a trail of delicious heat through her layers of silk and lace. 

She felt her dress loosen when he found the hidden zip and pulled it down. 

She leaned forward and relished the heavenly feel of settling against the solid warmth of his chest, and then--she didn’t know who closed the remaining distance-- they were kissing each other, tongue tips touching and teasing. He growled as he sucked her tongue into his mouth and she shuddered as that sucking and that growl set off sensation everywhere.  

If she thought a previous kiss was good, he always, always made it better. 

She had straddled his lap to initiate things, but now she was happy to be kissed senseless, just clinging to him as he kissed her like it was their first time, parting from her lips and then going back in at a slightly different angle, again and again, until she’d had enough of it and she placed both hands against his neck so she could kiss him properly. 

He tasted-- they both tasted--like the butter and coconut in the Anzac biscuits they kept eating here. It was delicious. But then it was always delicious between them. He smiled against her lips, letting her take control. 

And then he was moving his hands, gently but insistently pulling her dress over her shoulder and down her arms. It got stuck at her elbows, and they laughed a bit while she showed him the hidden zippers at her wrists. 

They both stood so she could shimmy out of her dress and he got rid of his suit jacket and trousers. And then she pushed him back down on the sofa and followed him there, her knees back on either side of him. She was in her silk slip, and he hitched it higher up her hips and pulled her closer against him. 

Her breath caught when her core connected with his arousal, only his and her underwear between them. He gave a soft thrust and she returned it, settling and rubbing against him and giving a soft, drawn out sigh of pleasure. 

Her fingers shook as she unknotted his bowtie and discarded it behind the sofa. 

“Ahh, Tae-eulah.” He growled this against her neck as he grabbed her hips and rocked her against him. She gasped and nearly tore one of his shirt buttons off. She finished them and he shrugged off his shirt and then pulled her slip over her head in one smooth movement. 

One would think they’d been apart for weeks instead of a few hours, the way they both relished being skin to skin. She shivered at the sensation of his chest against hers and smiled at how he looked at her with dark eyes, his lips kiss-swollen, and his chest rising and falling, breathing hard.  

And then he was bowing his head to sip at her lips, and then making her writhe and moan with open-mouthed, nibbling kisses on her neck. He pushed her back a little in his arms and she clung to his neck and gasped as he leaned forward and took first one nipple in his mouth and then the other, suckling tenderly for long, long moments. 

Electric pleasure was both shooting down to her core and ricocheting outward from there because he was also gently rocking against her.  

His arms were the only thing keeping her anchored, serving as her back rest with her leaning back on his lap, and this was a tiny, nebulous thought that nonetheless added to the thrill and pleasure running through her. 

She pulled him up for a kiss and he pulled her back upright against him. She said something incoherent, her fingers pushing down his boxers and gently pulling him out. He groaned against her mouth. 

“Gon--” 

She didn’t know what she wanted-- she was a little desperate at that point. But he understood. He reached between them and used his thumb to push her panties aside. And yes, yes, that was it, and she almost sobbed with relief when he pushed inside her. 

He buried himself to the hilt and she crumpled against him, only staying upright because her arms were around his shoulders. She gasped when he lifted her up--the drag and heat of it making her boneless-- and slammed her back down. 

Somehow, some way, her knees functioned again and she whimpered against Gon’s neck when she used her knees to lever herself up and discovered an angle that hit a particularly delicious spot every time she came down. 

Gon was cradling her with arms loose around her waist, letting her move as she pleased, whispering and groaning praise against her ear. Until he reached a point where he stopped praising. 

“Go faster now, Tae-eul.” 

She leaned back, “Oh?” She rolled her hips and they both groaned. 

“If you won’t do it, I will.”

She laughed at the slightly disheveled and unhinged look in his face. 

In the middle of that laugh, he rammed her hips up into hers, making her gasp. And just like that, her knees almost turned to water again because she was close. 

Gon kept at it and she clung to his neck and met his thrusts. 

“Gon, harder.” 

At her whispered command, he growled and reversed their positions, gently but efficiently placing her on her back and ramming into her, one of his arms sliding away from her waist to brace his elbow on one side of her head. The other held her close as he continued with his relentless pace, and she could only hang on, her legs cradling his hips, ankles locking behind him. 

He kept their eyes locked as he made love to her, except when he lowered his head and pressed his lips to hers, and when she closed her eyes when the pleasure became blinding and unbearable and she cried out softly as her orgasm rolled through her. 

It was intense. Waves upon waves of white hot pleasure, her neck straining and the top of her head pressing onto the sofa, her mouth open in a soundless scream. 

“God, Tae-eul,” Gon groaned against her, and he was thrusting erratically with his own climax. She hugged him and cradled his head with her hands, whispering, “Saranghae,” as they stayed joined even as they both finished. 

She sighed and kissed his hair. He turned his head and kissed her cheek, and then they were both laughing softly, fondly. 

“What was that you said?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Something about making you feel like dying?”

“Shut up.”  

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

This is for everyone who are still reading and still can’t move on from TKEM. Drop me a line. :) 

You can look up Elie Saab cocktail dresses for the inspiration for Tae-eul’s dress. 

You can also look up the Rolls-Royce Phantom to see what the car is like. What, I like cars, and they serve fictional purposes.  

The continuation of the Corean Awards Night coming up next. 

[youdontloveme-yet]

Episode 8 analysis.

This is going to be messy, so brace yourselves. It took me 3 hours to completely analyze this episode, so if there are spelling mistakes fuck you, I’m tired and idc.

This is going to be intensely FULL OF SPOILERS, so whoever has not watched episode 8, better not read.

Okay, let’s start off with a warning. The series is heavily based on numbers and symbolism, which means that if you are not a huge fan of math, logical thinking and finding shit where nobody else is seeing it, it may once again not be your cup of tea.

Well then, have fun with this thing that wasted my brain for 3 hours.

Okay, first scene is tricky, I went back to it a few times throughout the episode, because it wasn’t adding up. We have this tied up man, being thrown in a burning barrel, right? Yeah, so this is basically where the flashback starts. Not when Supot starts talking or anything. This is a heavily symbolic scene again, as it represents us with the meaning of oppression. If one pays attention, it is explained later in the episode. The symbolism behind it is the oppression of minorities. It all starts back in 1984, when the people with special abilities had just been noticed and were heavily oppressed. Supot talks about how at the beginning it had been very hard for those of their kind, since they have been oppressed. And those who were not useful or were troublemakers were immediately being disposed of. Because we all know that humans go to extremes when they are afraid of things they do not understand.

While we are at it, and since I am not really going to do this in chronological order. This is where the flashback starts and where it comes to a conclusion. It is the exact same burning barrel as the one where Yuth supposedly dies. I’ll probably mention it again along the way.

Aside from the flashback we have a very interesting take on Pang and Supot’s conversation and later on young Supot and the minister. Idk if anybody has noticed the camera angles in this episode. They are quite important. First we have the room with the black board, where Supot and Pang are talking. The camera angle is slightly to the left, with Pang’s back facing us and Supot facing him, this, in my opinion, is a symbolism for who has the upper hand in the situation. You might think that I’m crazy and this is just reading too much into, but it’s not, because there is the exact same parallel with young Supot and the minister. Of course, later on in the episode we have the exact opposite, which is the minister having the upper hand and Supot slowly gaining the upper hand from Pang.

And the opposite:

Notice how much smaller young Supot and Pang look and how the minister and Supot suddenly seem more in focus :))

The next thing I am going to talk about is the number symbolism in this episode. The whole episode is based on the number 2. Everything starts in 1984, right? Then we have 1986, when  young Supot marches into the ministry. After that we have 1988, when they conduct their experiments. Fun numbers, right? Except there’s nothing fun here. It’s a number sequence – 4, 6, 8, and after 8 is 10, which in this case is 0. And which year is in the present? 2020. Now, you may think that this is just some game that the writers did or something, but it ain’t, sorry. The number 2 is in literally everything this episode. We have Supot and Yuth, who are 2 people, right? From here comes the cursed pattern, my dudes. They come in pairs of 2 – SupotYuth, ChanonPom, PangWave. Except that ChanonPom are an alternation to the pattern, which means we are back to the number 2. I’ll talk about this along the way, but let me finish with the numbers, before I forget my thoughts again. According to google the number 2 is a symbol of partnership and balance, but sometimes it may also be the symbol of opposition or conflict. Every single major event in this episode (’84, ’86, ’88) happen two years apart from each. Then in the house scene when Yuth disappears, we have two plates on the table, who are flipped upside down and a half empty/full plate, which for me, is symbolism for the two pairs that have fallen and the one (PangWave) that is on the line, meaning there’s a 50/50 chance 

history will repeat itself. I’ll come back to this scene again.

The next thing I’m going to talk about is why ChanonPom are an alternation. Well, WELCOME TO THE PARALLEL HELL! SupotYuth = PangWave. I know, I know, you all know that. But did you know that Yuth had the same potential as Wave? Less evolved, but the same regardless. Remember that scene in the house, when the phone rang and Yuth ran off? Yeah, that was Yuth. He can manipulate sound waves I guess, as it was foreshadowed with the whole sound equipment he was using for his and Supot’s experiment and we all know that that is how they tell us about their potentials. Now, this is not even all of it. The basic is: the leader, who can manipulate thoughts and the co-leader who can control technology. Okay, from here, we have the parallel of using their powers on each other. Supot had used his powers on Yuth (Pom also uses his powers on Chanon, even though they are an alternation to the pattern), and even though he doesn’t continue with the experiment, we know that he has used it. And remember the scene, when they are eating and Supot grabs Yuth’s hand? Yeah, that is a parallel with when Wave said to Time that Pang could use his ability on him, but wouldn’t, because Yuth makes Supot confirm that he will never use his potential on him. Yes, I know it is not exact parallel, but it cannot be one, because there are many more variable into the equation in the present, than there were in the past. Okay, here I am not that certain, but I think there is one more parallel. As we all know, nobody in this fucking series dies, so Yuth was not killed, he faked his death. Now, you may ask, where is the parallel with PangWave? Oh, man, it’s in season 1. When Wave faked the whole thing with leaking the Gifted information. They are parallels, because the aim of both actions are to provoke their partner to take action.

On a side note, or not really. You might wonder why I think that Yuth faked his death. Well, many, many reasons. A person cannot die to fire as fast is the first, because we are led to believe that he got killed and thrown into that barrel, right? Which is incorrect on so many levels. As I said, a nobody can die as fast from fire. But what if he got shot and thrown in, you might ask? Well, human flesh burns kind of slow and creates shit load of smoke, which was not there. Then there’s the fact that that barrel is not nearly big enough for fit a whole body, in order to do so, one will have to cut the body in parts. Next we have the neatly put glasses on the ground. No fucking cracks on them. Very suspicious. Fuck that, but they have metal frames, which upon contact with the ground should get disfigured. Another thing is that the only possible way for those glasses to be that intact is if the height from which they are dropped is below 1 meter, as we know that is not the case. Another tell tale sign is when young Supot is at the ministry and the minister asks WHEN he got there, which means it was not him who called, which also means that my theory about Yuth’s potential is cementing itself. He also asked WHICH friend and confirmed that he has no idea what Supot is talking about. So, basically Yuth has the same potential as Wave and faked his death.

I think that by now, you can see why ChanonPom is an alternation to the pattern.

Anyway, the next thing I want to mention is the similarities between Supot, Chanon and Pang. I’m going to start off with saying that all of them are very complex characters with very intense inner struggles. Starting from Supot, we have this bright young man, who has a vision, right? Well, he has a god complex. He is obsessed with his vision and disregards his loved ones and morals, because of his ideals and what he believes in. He is also very patriotic and self absorbed, which are all red flags for someone who has a god complex. He is convinced he can change the country and leave a legacy. And in his pursuit, he loses every single thing. Guess who else loses everything? Both Chanon and Pang. But here comes the difference. They are all the same basically, but they have the variables to the equation that is the Gifted program, while in the past Supot just shot in the dark with nothing but trial and error. Chanon and Pang have hero complex. Both want to save the people they love and keep them safe, which leads them to fucking shit up even more. And while Chanon is an alternation, Pang is steadily threading in Supot’s footsteps.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention about the ChanonPom alternation. They have switched roles, as you have already guessed. That is why they are the alternation to this beautiful pattern.

I have definitely not covered everything, but these were the most important parts of this episode. The whole thing was a weird foreshadowing.

Also, I am still not entirely convinced it was the ministry that leaked the information about the program, because it seems too obvious honestly. Yeah, the minister smiles when he sees the news, but like it bugs me… They either leaked it themselves, or enabled the A.G. or Darin coerced Punn to do it. It’s just too easy if it’s the ministry. And I think that it was done in order to lure Supot out.

I decided to not write down the whole psychological analysis I did of the characters, but rather do it another day in a post dedicated only on that.

Ah, before I finish. If somebody may be wondering what is on this board:

It’s the sound sequence that triggers the Gifted cells.

Huge fucking thanks to @thegiftedseries-incorrect-quotes​ and  @wxsuthorn​ for brainstorming with me and reading my crazy shit. 

So, peace and thank you for coming to my TED talk. Byeeeeee.