#and i i guess i very much disagree with where the line should be drawn...

[fancyfade]

Re: that post on soft jason

I agree, Jason is in many cases a second Bruce. I think that's very important to understand for some stories: if Bruce is good to kids Jason HAS to be, and sadly, if Bruce is bad I'd argue Jason also has to be even if I want to say that a Jason who has an abusive Bruce would protect kids more. Jason is so frequently written as a mirror of Bruce (in my reading of him at least)

I think that Jason perceives himself as Bruce but doing more than him... but it don't think it's necessarily accurate.

Granted, Bruce has so many interpretations one could easily find an interpretation of Bruce that parallels Jason. If you want the edgy, miller-esque Bruce who's all into punishing criminals and views the city as a warzone, that fits very well with Jason. But the Bruce that Jason sees when he's a child is the Bruce that told him giving people medical attention was more important than going after the bad guys, and was very much not into that edgy "this city is a warzone" viewpoint.

So Winick's Jason easily does mesh with that interpretation, and I can see that as a way that authors may have drawn from it. It wouldn't line up with the Bruce that Jason experienced growing up, but Winick's Robin Jason also didn't line up with 1980s Robin Jason, so it could be a re-interpretation of both of them from that time. I don't really care for Winick's re-interpretation of Robin Jason tho.

Above is a very longwinded way of me saying that under certain writers, one can argue for Jason being a reflection of Bruce, but also that I think that version of Bruce sucks. it may have been winick's authorial intent, though.

however WRT kids: I do think that the if Bruce is good to kids, Jason is, and if Bruce isn't, Jason isn't. The portrayals don't seem super linked to me. Bruce has steadily gotten worse as the years go on, Jason's flip flopped. Like people all tell me that post new 52 Jason would never harm a child, but post new 52 Jason was fine beating Damian way past when would have ended the fight so.... if I take them at their word for it, post new 52 Jason is just inconsistent, I guess, rather than consistently worse. It doesn't really reflect Bruce at all IMO.

I also do want to say that even if one does go with a "Bruce abusive, Jason experiences abuse" interpretation (which I strongly disagree with for Jason's time as Robin), there's no guarantee it would transform him into someone who is protective of kids. He experienced having a poor petty criminal minion-ing for Two Face for a dad (who pre Lobdell retcons, was not abusive) and he became someone who kills criminals who minion for crime bosses. like even in Winick's Jason (or more of mostly with Winick's Jason, b/c that's where the focus here was). He threatens some drug dealers into compliance and following the rules he thinks drug dealers should follow, but when he has his organization set up he just kills the competition, even if they otherwise could be made to follow what he deems the acceptable rules.

Batman 646

Like I feel pre new 52 Jason (don't want to make generalizations of post new 52 having not read as much) is very much a character who like. is very much in pain and determined to put that pain out on the world.

edit: Ommmmmmmmmmmmmg i missed that this was a response to soft jason post oops. as;ldgjal;sdgkj RIP me. But yeah, I do agree that if we get soft Jason we should get soft Bruce. uwu Jason and abusive Bruce just sucks.

[richmond-rex]

Hi! I was reading "Later Plantagenet and the Wars of the Roses Consorts" and I was wondering what you thought of the conclusion they made in their epilogue "Foreign Women as Consorts" where they argued that "the real 'break with the tradition of foreign consorts comes with Anne Neville rather than Elizabeth Woodville, who could be seen as a more liminal or transitional figure"?

While they acknowledge the fact that after Anne's death, Richard was seeking a foreign consort and would have married one had he won Bosworth, I think this conclusion is drawn from a very limited framework which doesn't consider other aspects of Anne Neville. Namely the fact that she married Richard III far before his ascension/usurption to kingship (nor was he ever expected to become king during that time) rather than after, meaning that her queenship was less of a startling choice and more of an obvious expectation. Not to mention the fact that she was a very wealthy and powerful heiress in her own right, making her marriage directly advantageous and traditional to Richard III in a way that the marriages of Elizabeth Woodville and Henry VIII's wives were simply not. I also highly doubt that (and I apologize if this sounds crass) Anne's extremely short tenure as queen would have caused as much of an impact on the nature of foreign/English queenship as this conclusion assumes.

Moreover, while Elizabeth Woodville's Burgundian uncle attended her coronation and she used her mother's lineage in heralds, in practise her relatively distant foreign connections meant little to nothing for her queenship. She was born and raised in England, her father was part of the English gentry, and she was factually the first Englishwoman to be crowned queen since the Norman Conquest (which, along with her social status, should automatically make her the 'break in tradition', imo). Edward's marriage to her certainly brought him no direct foreign alliance or even national connections to the extent that Anne Neville's did. Nor could Elizabeth draw foreign support in times of crises like Margaret of Anjou or Catherine of Aragon could; her only choice was to flee to sanctuary.

I guess ultimately, I think the conclusion they've drawn regarding Anne Neville is a little strange and I mostly disagree with it? Anne's marriage to Richard prior to his ascension makes her an interesting and unique consort (and reminds me of Mary de Bohun who died before Henry's usurption), but her immense connections and wealth undercuts any assumption of a 'break' from her end, as a marriage to Anne offered immense (national) benefits along the same lines as foreign consorts did. Elizabeth strikes me as the far more obvious choice for a "break" in the tradition of queenship, even more so given her comparatively lower social status. The fact that she was "a liminal and transitory" figure, as the chapter says, and could be seen as a precedent to Anne, should be argument enough that if the 'break' began with one person, it should ideally be her.

Idk, what do you think?

Hi! I agree. Although I don't think the break in the tradition of choosing foreign consorts was ever definitive or the start of a standard of native British consorts (after all, after Henry VIII all consorts were foreigners until 1936), if we're choosing anyone to be the one to break tradition it was Elizabeth Woodville. Woodacre's whole argument is:

[...] The comparisons have revealed that Elizabeth Woodville shared more common ground than might be expected with her foreign predecessors given her Burgundian heritage and the opprobrium that she received due to the promotion of her family. While the Rivers Woodville clan might not have been foreigners, the resentment caused by their increased power and influence and the advantageous marriages that they made demonstrate that the root cause of the criticism of the queen’s family at court was not necessarily rooted in xenophobia, rather jealousy that the queen’s relatives had an unfair advantage to boost their careers and finances over that of other noble houses and courtiers. Given these similarities with the situation of previous queens, it could be argued that the real “break” with the tradition of foreign consorts comes with Anne Neville, rather than Elizabeth Woodville, who could be seen as a more liminal or transitional figure between foreign and native brides.

I wanted to highlight that part because yes, the Woodvilles were not foreigners, the prejudice they were subjected to was classism, not xenophobia. It's important to discern between the two, and as Laynesmith argued in the Elizabeth Woodville chapter, the Woodvilles have been courtiers and servants of the crown since Edward III. They weren't the family of a foreign queen who suddenly had to be integrated into the land: Elizabeth's father and brother were barons in their own right and had been famous servants/supporters of Henry VI when Edward IV came to the throne. Their elevation to even more positions of prestige caused discontent among some, but it was not the process of integrating foreigners into a court they didn't know. As you said, although Edward IV used Elizabeth's foreign relatives to gloss up her standing, they weren't an available financial and military network that Elizabeth could tap into in times of crisis.

I think this volume's analysis suffered from leaving out Elizabeth of York (even if her chapter was allocated to the Tudor Consorts volume, I don't see why she should have been excluded from the convo about the impact of the Wars of the Roses on queenship altogether). For example, she and Anne Neville had a lot in common in their situation when it came to the support they were able to gather for their husbands. As Laynesmith once said, 'Whereas identification with Anne Neville's kin gained Richard III the support of his northern subjects, identification with Elizabeth of York's kin aided Henry VII in gaining an entire kingdom'. It was not a deliberate break with tradition, so much so both Richard III and Henry VII looked for foreign brides after the demise of their wives, and actively sought foreign brides for their heirs.

It wasn't a deliberate choice to break with the advantages that foreign marriages could bring, it was a necessity created by internal war as much as external wars had dictated the choice of foreign brides, as pointed out by Nigel Saul. Of course, this outlook is more valid when it comes to Anne Neville's first marriage to Edward of Lancaster because it truly entailed becoming queen and bringing a whole political party to support her husband's claim, whilst Anne's marriage to the king's brother, as anon pointed out, was never meant to put her into the position of queenship. Anon's comparison with Mary de Bohun was very apt in my opinion too. Anyways, I agree with you, anon.

[darling-i-read-it]

May Queen

Pelle x reader

Word Count: 3.7k

Warnings: being indoctored into a cult, murder, suicide, basically the plot of midsommar

Author’s Note: This can be seen as a sequel to ‘Hug’ or it can be read on it’s own!

yeah i was a little excited that you guys wanted this one lol I don’t know if you can tell. I’ve seen this movie enough, it was about time I did something within the events of the film. I also referred to the script so some of the lines will be familiar! I hope you all enjoy!

Requested: by anon, omg your pelle fic wow; would you consider doing a sequel to it that either takes place during the events of the film or just before they arrive at Pelle's commune?

Requested: by anon, I would LOVEEE to see a sequel with pelle cause that was a pretty good fix and I think he deserves a bit more attention, I personally would like to see something happen during the events of the movie just because I think it would be interesting to see but that's just me

I don’t own these characters. They belong to author/director/creator

(not my gif)

“You think that Pelle asked you to go just because I’m going?” Dani asked, messing with her fingers. You were standing beside your bed, packing your suitcase slowly. Dani had already packed; she didn’t like to be unprepared.

“I don’t know...maybe he thought you would enjoy yourself more.”

“You’re acting like I’m the one who’s been dating him for these couple of months,” she told you. She was sitting on the bed, looking up at you. You nodded a bit, putting another pile of clothes inside.

“I know. I guess I’m just nervous. Meeting his whole group, going to where he grew up. I mean. I really like him. What if I fuck it up?” She shook her head and reached over to grab your arm. You looked her in the eyes.

“He really likes you. I can’t remember the last time Christian looked at me the way that Pelle looks at you.” Her eyes were honest. It made you feel bad. You should have gotten her to break up with Christian when you got the chance. But it was too late now; you were all going to Sweden.

“I suppose you’re right. Per usual.” She smiled weakly.

“Finish packing.”

=======

Pelle almost wanted to tell you about the whole thing. When he was on the plane, it crossed his mind to let you in on the whole scheme of things. The May Queen, the festival, all of it.

But he bit his tongue. That was tradition.

You arrived in Sweden well and took the trek up to where the first stop was. It was beautiful. Truly, it was stunning.

Pelle held your hand the whole way until you arrived at the first spot. There were people around the grassy hills, scattered around. Pelle got out of the car.

“These are other people from America that my friends have brought!” he exclaimed. He gestured to the many people around. You looked around, gazing at the nice afternoon. He grabbed your arm and started to drag you along.

“Hey, don’t rip it off!” you joked and he eased up.

“Sorry, I’m quite excited!” You smiled sweetly at his happiness.

“Me too!” He approached some people and started to introduce them when a man behind you started to yell. You turned around quickly, surprised at the loud noise. Pelle turned around too and his smile only grew.

“If you’ll excuse me,” he said and then ran over to the approaching man. They embraced each other, hugging tightly.

“Everyone, this is my brother Ingemar. Ingemar this is Christian, Dani, Mark, Josh and my girlfriend, Y/N,” Pelle said. Ingemar followed where Pelle pointed, shaking hands with everyone. He paid special attention to you, his smile getting wider. You could tell that he and Pelle were related.

“Nice to meet you all. This is Simon and Connie from London,” he said, gesturing to the others behind him. “Simon and Connie this is Pelle and...all the names I just remembered two seconds ago,” Ingemar said laughing. Simon and Connie said hello. “Perfect timing by the way.”

Ingemar pulled out a bag of mushrooms from his pocket. Your eyes went wide.

“We just took these five minutes ago. Haven’t even started feeling the effects yet,” he explained.

“Oh shit!” Mark said, happily.

“Do you all want to take it now or should we get settled in?” Pelle asked.

“Fuck it, let’s take it now!” Mark said. You weren’t too sure about that. You trusted Pelle and everyone of course but in the new environment...it rubbed you the wrong way. Thankfully, Dani turned to speak to Christian about it.

“I think I want to get settled in first.” Christian was about to speak but you cut him off.

“Me too. You guys go and have fun, we’ll keep each other company,” you said. Pelle turned to you.

“Are you sure? I assure you it’s safe,” he said in a soft voice. You smiled kindly and put a gentle hand on his arm.

“I know! I just wanna get settled. Dani and I can handle ourselves, I promise.” He gave you a longer look, just to check that you were alright and then nodded. You turned back to Dani who grabbed your arm desperately.

“Thank you,” she whispered. You nodded.

“No thank you.”

=====

It wasn’t until the next day, Dani’s birthday, that you were able to get on further. You and Dani played some card games that you had brought with you while you waited for the effects to wear off for everyone else.

Christian came over to sleep beside Dani, still high. Pelle came over to you and braided your hair and then unbraided your hair, making very long sentences that didn’t make sense to whisper in your ear.

But when you arrived at the commune it was bright and sunny. Pelle rushed around, hugging people and introducing you and the group to everyone. You were able to get some blankets to sit on the grass, while everyone got their things together.

There was a group of girls dancing around in circles, wearing all white.

“You should go join,” Pelle suggested, gesturing to you and Dani. She shook her head a bit.

“Oh no, I’m too scared,” Dani said sheepishly. You nodded in agreement.

“Maybe another time.” Christian stood up.

“Hey can I join…” he started turning to Pelle.

“You’re American. Just jam yourself in,” he said. Christian nodded and walked away. “I think I’ll join him,” Simon said and was quickly followed by the rest of the group except you, Pelle and Dani. There was a moment of silence as you watched them go.

“Hey, just real quick,” Pelle said, digging for something in his pocket. He took out two pieces of paper and handed them to you and Dani. You both opened them to reveal gorgeously drawn pictures of yourselves wearing flower crowns. “For you Dani, think of it as a birthday present. For you Y/N, I imagine it’s a thank you present.”

“Oh Pelle,” Dani said. “It’s beautiful, thank you.”

“Thank you for what?” you asked, brushing your finger over it. He smiled and shrugged.

“Just a thank you.”

“Well thank you for it,” you said. “I got Dani a new sweater. Christian forgot.” Pelle raised his eyebrow and you shared a look.

“I forgot to tell him...it’s my fault,” Dani explained. You shook your head.

“I tend to disagree,” you muttered. You folded the picture back up and put it in your pocket. You put your head on Pelle’s shoulders “But I think Christian is rude.”

“Perhaps you are too judgemental,” Pelle mused. “But I tend to agree with you regardless.” You and Dani laughed a bit. “We should probably go and catch up with them in case they get lost.”

=====

You got settled in in one of the large buildings, plenty of beds against the walls. Pelle was on the bed to your right while Dani slept on the one to your left.

“All right, beauty rest! Tomorrow’s a big day!” Pelle announced. You had one of the books you had brought open on your lap but you looked up at him.

“What’s tomorrow?” you asked.

“First of the big cerinomines,” he said mysteriously.

“So you’re just going to be weird and cryptic?” Josh asked, laughing a bit. Pelle pauses and then took Josh's notebook, writing something inside. You made an attempt to look but it was not a word that you recognized.

“What’s that?” Christian questioned. Pelle shrugged and laid down in his bed. You faced him, on the bed beside him.

“What is it?” you whispered to him. He gave you a teasing smile.

“It’s hard to explain.”

“I will come over there and tickle it out of you,” you threatened. He chuckled and turned around so he wasn’t facing you. But he put his arm back behind him, reaching across the space between your two beds.

You grabbed it and rubbed his knuckles anxiously.

=====

There was a very odd breakfast the next day but you tried not to judge. You wanted to really appreciate Pelle’s culture and understand it. He had admired you for your understanding and he knew you would make an effort.

That’s why he chose to love you.

You were the obvious choice.

After that you walked out to a cliffside where most of the people were already out and lined up. You were curious to find complete silence. Everyone was silent as it happened and you were able to do nothing but watch as these two elderly people stood up on top of the cliff.

When the first person, a woman, jumped, you grabbed Pelle, putting your hand in front of your mouth. He grabbed you and wrapped his arms around you but it didn’t change the look of serenity on his face.

Simon was standing next to Ingemar yelling as the man approached the cliffside.

You had your face in Pelle’s arms. You were shaking.

“It is the way of life,” he whispered to you. Simon was still screaming. Another elder was talking to him and you could feel Pelle want to move toward them but he stayed beside you. “It is our way of recycling them and their gifts.”

You pulled away from him and shook your head a bit. You met Dani’s eyes. She wasn’t showing much emotion other than shock. You didn’t blame her.

“They’re dead,” you whispered. He nodded and put his hands on your upper arms.

“And it is an honor to have died that way.” You weren’t sure how to feel. You wanted to be understanding, to try and understand him and his ways. You would want that from him. But he should have prepared you more for that.

You walked over to Dani and walked beside her on the way back to the houses.

=====

“I’m leaving,” Dani said.

“I don’t blame you.” She was already packing a bag. You sat down on your bed, head in your hands. You took a deep breath and leaned back on the bed.

“Are you coming with me?” she asked. Her voice was shaking. She was clearly shaken up by all of this.

“No,” you muttered. “I’m not leaving Pelle yet.”

“Not even after that?” Her voice was quiet but it was urgent. You shook your head a bit.

“I just have to talk to him. He should have warned us more, of course but....it’s what he’s been raised to believe is normal. I don’t think I should think of it as a bad thing.”

“We just watched people die!” You stood up off the bed and put your hands on your upper arms, steading her.

“You can go home and I will not blame you. In the slightest. I just think I should stay longer,” you told her. She nodded solemnly. She took a deep breath in through her nostrils and nodded again.

=====

Before bed that night Pelle approached you. You were standing outside of the bed house, leaning against it to try and clear your thoughts. You almost completely ignored him but in the end you locked eyes with him as he approached.

“I’m sorry I didn’t give you adequate warning,” he said sympathetically. He grabbed your hand and held it. “I thought you would understand but I know now that it was wrong of me to assume.” You shook your head quickly.

“I understand it was just...a shock,” you muttered. He nodded and kissed your forehead softly.

“You are completely safe here. I want you to know that.” He looked you in the eyes when he said it. You believed him. You nodded back and gestured to the house.

“Let’s get some shut eye huh? And maybe warn me if we see another person...you know.” You made a slicing gesture across your neck. He laughed gently and nodded, placing a hand on the small of your back and leading you inside.

=====

Dani walked up to you, still distraught but less so. You were standing beside Pelle the next day as he kneeled in front of the ground picking some vegetables. You turned to her as she walked up, ready to handle whatever she was about to throw at you.

“Hey,” you said, taking the step away from Pelle and toward her.

“Hi. Did you see Simon left without Connie?” she asked. You raised an eyebrow and shook your head.

“Seriously? What a dick.” She clearly felt a little bit off put by it so you lowered your voice. “You think it’s weird?” Dani nodded a bit.

“I don’t know...it’s a little weird. They seemed so close.” You nodded. They did seem close.

“I don’t know...something to keep in mind I suppose.” She nodded quickly in agreement.

======

Dinner that night was simple pastries. You were pleased. The last food they had given you wasn’t your kind of taste. You sat between Pelle and Dani again.

“Have you seen Connie?” Dani asked you quietly. You shook your head.

“Excuse me but I know what happened,” a man sitting beside Mark said. “Her boyfriend called the landline from the train station. She begged us to drive her so we took her down to the station.” You nodded slowly, glancing at Pelle. He shrugged, seemingly in agreement.

“Why would Simon leave without her?” you asked quietly.

“I can see you doing that,” Dani muttered at Christian. You wanted to laugh so you turned to Pelle, sneaking a smile. He shrugged with a smile on his face also.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Christian asked.

“Nevermind.”

“You wouldn’t do that,” Pelle said quietly, so only you could hear. You ate a bite of the pastry proudly.

“You’re damn right.”

======

One of the important books was stolen that night. They announced it at breakfast.

“Where is your friend Josh?” one of the elders asked, after breakfast. You, Christian, Dani and Pelle all stood in front of the two elders, caught like a deer in headlights.

“I know. We have no idea,” Christian said.

“He and your other friend disappear in the same day. You understand how that looks.”

“Yes obviously, but we swear to you we are not a part of this,” Christian said. Dani shuffled a bit.

“We did see Mark go off with one of the girls last night,” she said.

“Which girl?”

“Inga,” Pelle said.

“But Mark wouldn’t have done this. Josh, though, he came to bed with us, and when we woke up, he was gone. And if he did take that book, I just pray you understand we do not identify as friends of his, or collaborators, or anything. I certainly don't vouch for him and we'd be so embarrassed to be connected to this in any way,” Christian explained.

“I feel responsible,” Pelle said. The elders nodded a bit.

“Well you and Odd can go looking. Perhaps you can redeem them,” one of the elders said. You didn’t want Pelle to leave. You didn’t like it when you were separated here. You believed him when he said you were safe but...it was still a little odd. “You two will be going with the women for the day’s activity,” he said to you and Dani. “And Siv asks to see you in her house,” she said to Christian.

You glanced at Pelle as he left. He grabbed your hand and squeezed it, almost saying ‘do well!’.

=====

You and Dani got dressed in white shirts with flower crowns. It made you a tad bit nervous but at least you had her.

She gestured to the drink they were handing out. Cups had been given to both of you to drink it.

“Can I ask what’s in this?” Dani asked one of the girls.

“It’s...tea for the dancing competition.” You raised an eyebrow but took a glass anyway. Dani looked back at you and you shrugged.

“I’ll beat you,” you muttered.

“Try me.”

You both took drinks of the tea.

Your head became fuzzy the second it hit your throat. You hadn’t taken those drugs before hand and you almost didn’t want to do it now but it was already done. Your feet were moving along with the girls, tossing bodies left and right it felt like.

You lost sight of Dani very quickly.

You were running and jumping and laughing until the elder lady yelled to stop then you kept dancing.

Dancing, dancing, dancing, dancing.

Dancing.

It seemed to go on forever. Your mind was hazed, your head hurt, your glances were so quick they gave you whiplash. You were smiling brightly when they announced they were down to the final eight. You finally saw Dani again, in the eight with you.

All of the fallen dancers had sat off on the side. You saw Christian, looking hilariously out of place. And Pelle.

Your heart swelled with love for Pelle. You could barely know anything else for a moment as you stared at him.

You couldn’t see it but in that moment, Dani believed she learned how much she hated Christian.

Then more dancing.

People were speaking and then it was just you and Dani, holding hands, dancing around in a circle, tired and out of breath. She stared at you and a smile went over her face as she held your hand.

And then she tripped. You stopped dancing and someone ran up to you, putting their hands on your shoulder.

“It’s over?” you asked.

“You are our May Queen!” they yelled. You were still hazzed. Each face looked the same. The people running up to you were strangers but you felt nothing but warmth for them. They placed a different flower crown atop your head.

Pelle ran up to you smiling brightly.

“Wow! May Queen, my love!” he said, giving you a strong kiss, both his hands resting on your cheeks. You were smiling brightly and then he was gone. You didn’t want him to go.

They carried you on a platform to a dinner table where you sat at the head, Dani beside you and Pelle on the other side as usual.

One of the elders stood at the end of the dinner.

“Now it is traditional for the May Queen to bless our crops and livestock. And after the luck you just inherited from that salt herring, we should all be doubly encouraged.” You looked around nervously.

“Can Pelle come with me?”

“No. The Queen must ride alone.”

You were starting to come to your own and realize how crazy this all was. How did you get here? How would you get out of here? You found yourself hoping you didn’t get out of here though. This felt like home. Some form of home. As you walked to the carriage you saw a glimpse of the pride on Pelle’s face.

It made you immensely happy.

======

They made you do a ritual in Swedish and you did your best with the limited knowledge of the language you knew. You went to Siv’s house, where she blessed you. You wondered where Dani was. You hoped she was alright. You should have let her become the May Queen. You should have let her win, just so you knew she was alright.

The women left you alone for only a moment where they ushered Pelle into the house with all of the beds where you were. He was still smiling that bright smile as he rushed up to you, hugging you tightly to him.

“You have no idea the amount of honor and pride you have brought to me. I am so very proud of you,” he said, cupping your cheeks. You tried not to get too flustered with your smile in return.

“So I get my picture up on that wall?” you questioned. He nodded pleasantly.

“Yes you will!” He kissed you passionately and you let him, allowing him to dip you a bit. “And you will be allowed to stay here, with the family.”

You didn’t even react. You didn’t feel the need to.

“With you?”

“Yes of course. You will be mine and I will be yours.”

You nodded happily.

“Where is Dani?” you asked.

“She is alright, she’s with the other women preparing. She is also going to stay.” You wanted to laugh of joy with that. “It is time for the final of the ceremonies,” he told you. “You will finally be able to give Christian what you think he deserves, if you wish it.”

He placed an even larger flower crown atop your head.

“And a dress as well, to fit a Queen.”

He gestured to the large flower dress in the room you hadn’t even noticed. He kissed you once more.

“It is time for the final ceremony. I’ll help you put on the dress. Are you ready?” he asked. He looked at you patiently. You nodded.

“Yes, I am.”

[ouyangzizhensdad]

Hi! I don't know if you have already talked about this before, but what are your thoughts on the scene in CQL where WWX says something along the lines of "If I have to be killed by them in the end, I prefer to die by your hands" to LWJ? It is considered one of the best and most significant moments between CQL!WangXian, but I personally don't see novel!WWX saying something like that. What do you think? (I love your blog, btw!)

Hi anon,

The line, as I understand it, is meant to convey: "if people hunt me down, it does not necessarily mean I deserve it; but, knowing you, if you end up hunting me down, it would mean I deserve it and so I would accept it". I am not sure that I would call that inherently romantic as some people do since it is a line that makes as much sense in the context of a platonic relationship, simply demonstrating a strong sense of trust and connection and understanding (which I guess is why it fits with zhiji which is itself not an inherently romantic word). It also speaks to wwx's perception of lwj as a righteous person, and his own desire to be righteous.

Out of context, thus, I have no issue with that line and it could be very effective and powerful within the narrative! That being said, I find that it is muddied by the context before and after since it creates a certain sense of confusion in regards to lwj's motivations during that portion of the story: until then, when lwj does not step in to offer more proactive assistance to the man he called his "zhiji", is it because he thought wwx was not being righteous? Moreover, it makes the situation at Buyetian more confusing; if wwx said he trusted that if lwj wanted to stop him it would be for the right reasons, why does he get so upset thinking that lwj is there to stop him? In cql he says: "Lan Zhan, I knew it. That one day we would have a real fight" which is a line that is partially in the novel, since there it is followed by "You’ve always found me disagreeable no matter what". Even the production realised it did not work with the new narrative they had created, although they failed to see how much the first sentence depended on the second to make sense from wwx's perspective. In the novel, wwx thinking lz and him would clash makes sense; in cql, especially after that declaration at Qiongqi Dao.... it doesn't. If he trusts that lwj would only stop him if he were going down a wrong path, why did he expect a fight? Why is he not listening to lwj? Why is he fighting him? And the short answer is.... because the fight happens in the novel and they seemingly did not stop and think whether it still made sense with the stuff they changed in the adaptation, or whether they needed to add more to the story to make it make sense.

I also want to expand on the former point. In the novel, it is made very clear that one of the reasons lwj does not do more until buyetian to help wwx is because it is 'not his place'. Having pushed away wwx at many points during his youth, when he finds wwx using modao and wants to proactively understand and help him, a line ends up being clearly drawn by wwx and jc, something which obviously upsets him but which he can only accept:

“It is not that I want to denounce him,” replied Lan Wangji.

“Then why do you want him to go back to Gusu with you?” Jiang Cheng asked. “Lan-er-gongzi, why is it that, at such a point in time, GusuLanShi is not working with the other sects to kill the Wen-gao and is instead still hanging onto its inflexible ways?”

[...] Seeing how unconcerned he seemed to be, Lan Wangji lowered his voice. “The path will affect not only your body but your heart as well (此道损身，更损心性。)”

“Damage or not, or how much damage, I am the one most aware of its cost,” replied Wei Wuxian. “As for my heart, it’s my heart after all. I know what I’m doing.”

[...]

Lan Wangji stepped closer. He seemed to be about to speak again when Wei Wuxian closed his eyes.

“After all, on the topic of my heart, what could other people know about it? Why should other people care about it?”

Lan Wangji paused.

“……魏无羡 [Wei Wuxian]！” he yelled, suddenly angered.

“蓝忘机 [Lan Wangji]！” Wei Wuxian had been angered as well. “Do you really have to make things difficult at such a point in time? You want me to go to the Cloud Recesses to be confined and punished by GusuLanShi? Who do you think you are? What right does GusuLanShi have?! You really believe that I won’t refuse?!”

Hostile energy formed between the two of them. Over Bichen’s hilt, Lan Wangji’s knuckles turned white.

“Lan-er-gongzi, right now, the chaos with the Wen sect hasn’t been stopped yet.” Jiang Cheng’s voice was cold. “We desperately need forces on our side. People do not even have the time to care for themselves, why would GusuLanShi be concerned about a matter so removed from their sect’s? Wei Wuxian is on our side. Do you want to punish our people?”

[...]

“Apologies for saying something so blunt, but even if we get to the bottom of this, Wei Wuxian is not from your sect. It’s not in GusuLanShi’s place to punish him. No matter whom he goes back with, it wouldn’t be you.”

Hearing this, Lan Wangji’s expression froze. He looked up at Wei Wuxian, his adam apple fluttering.

“我……[I….]”

I have seen people point out that lwj had his own sect matters to attend to during that period which meant that he was not free to just up and leave his life to help wwx, which is of course not untrue, but I think that saying that without considering the importance of this exchange we will end up missing the point. From the first time he realises wwx is using different methods, lwj wants to bring him to the CR to figure out what happened and offer him help. We also know from little details such as during empathy with nmj that he did go out of his way during the sunshot campaign to offer support to wwx in his on way, within the line that had been drawn. And, on his end, wwx continued to draw this distance between them such as with his 'thank you and sorry'. It is not coincidental that the two chapters where lwj is in yiling are called "汉广". Literally, "the han river is wide" it is translated by ExR as "Distance" to capture in one word the metaphorical/literary meaning of it; that there is a distance so vast between them that it cannot be crossed. In short, the novel goes out of its way to reinforce this sense of distance between them at this point of their lives.

As the tide of public opinion starts to turn on wwx, lwj also clearly wants to hide him away from the dangers of the world, to protect him. He wants to bring wwx back to the CR; but wwx is not willing. He wants to protect wwx; but it is not his place. It is only at Buyetian, where the stakes and risks are so high, that he disregards this distance, and does something more drastic to try and protect wwx--although, in the end, seeing how vehemently wwx refuses his help, he brings him back to Mass Grave Hill and goes back to his own sect to receive punishment, alone.

However, in cql, this idea that wwx thinks no one knows his heart sort of falls apart since he volunteers that he thinks of lwj as his "zhiji", setting the ground for that later line about being fine dying by his hand. Moreover, does this admission that they are zhiji not knock down this sense of distance, this idea that it is not lwj's place to care and worry for wwx? Does it not negate everything wwx told him when he first discovered him after he started using modao and make them start afresh? Is wwx saying that he'd be fine dying by lwj's hand not implicitly bringing him as a agentive presence in his life?

Moreover, in the novel, their past interactions make it easy for wwx, especially a wwx surrounded by resentful energies, to mistake lwj’s intentions, thinking he only seeks wwx for judgement and condemnation. This is why the fight between them at Buyetian makes sense, why wwx's perception that they would always end up in a real fight and that lwj always found him disagreeable holds up even though there are plenty of proof to the contrary. Yet, after his rebirth, we are shown that wwx would have been open to receiving lwj's help if he had only understood him better, something that happens only after they get to spend more time together. After all, just after the flashback quoted above, an half-awake wwx urgently grabs onto lwj and tells him: "“I’ll go with you, take me back to your sect! (我跟你走, 快把我带回你家去！)”. We can wonder of course if wwx would actually have risked putting lwj in danger or in trouble by acting on this desire, but it is clear that he would have wanted lwj to be by his side just as he does after he is reborn, now that he has had the chance to spend more time with lwj which allows him to understand him better--something however cql!wwx gets to do in his first life enough to consider lwj a zhiji by then.

If cql!wwx considered lwj a zhiji, and lwj confirmed they were, why encourage this sense of distance between them and keep pushing him away? Of course, if the script had provided us with new context to bridge this line at Qiongqi Dao and the distance that continues to linger between them, it would have been fine--after all, characters can act in contradictory ways, can have multiple and conflicting motivations, can act irrationally for a number of reasons. But instead we only have this sort of vague emptiness, that of course most cql viewers are more than happy to fill with extrapolations that are hardly supported by the 'text' of cql, but which help them believe that the series is extremely deep and intentional.

In short; the cql production team is able to think of good lines and ideas but really suck at keeping all the balls in the air and connecting all the dots especially when it comes to what it takes from the novel in the context of the changes it made, which ultimately makes the story weak because a story is always more than just the sum of its parts.

[lokeanwelcomingcommittee]

I’m guessing y’all get a lot of people asking if they should work with Loki, I’m gonna ask the opposite. What’re some signs that you should NOT work with Loki, whether he’s not the god for you or you’re not in the right time in life to start working with him?

Hi!

I want to preface my response by stating that there isn’t really any hard line where starting a devotional relationship becomes an objectively bad idea. Different people have different beliefs about what role religion should play in their lives. Different people have different preferences and goals. What’s good for someone may be harmful to someone else. So, with that in mind, I’m not implying that anyone who disagrees or has gone against my advice here is automatically unhealthy, abusive, etc. If it works for you, then it works for you. I’m only trying to provide a starting point to examine the viability of a devotional relationship based on my own subjective experiences.

- You don’t want to. It might be obvious, but it bears repeating. There are a lot of reasons why you may not want to work with Loki. Maybe you’re wary of working with deities. Maybe you’re part of a different religious tradition and don;t care to branch out. Maybe you just don’t feel drawn to him. But honestly, the reason doesn’t really matter here. You don’t have to worship anyone you don’t want to worship, and it’s okay to respectfully decline a god who approaches you.

- You don’t have the time or energy for the relationship. We can only do so much. Whether it’s because you already have a lot on your spiritual plate or because other aspects of your life are already a lot to handle, it’s a good thing to be able to do an honest evaluation of where you’re at and admit that you’re at your limit. You can always revisit the issue if your circumstances change.

- You feel pressured or coerced. It’s normal to feel nervous about interacting with a new deity, or to feel existential dread when your worldview is shaken, or to be awed by a god’s vastness and power. But it’s a massive red flag if you’re staying in a relationship purely because you fear the consequences of ending it. This applies whether the pressure is coming from a god or another human. Check out the BITE Model for more on the methods that cults use to recruit.

- Your religious practice would be unsafe for you. Maybe your living situation makes religious expression dangerous. Maybe your practice is exacerbating mental illness symptoms. Remember, you aren’t helping Loki by dying or otherwise putting yourself out of commission, especially when we’re talking about activities like food offerings or meditation that aren’t materially helping other people. Your health and safety come first.

- You haven’t done your research. Obviously, you don’t need an M.Div. or something to start exploring your spirituality. But it’s good to know the basics of what Loki is about and the religious tradition you intend to worship him through before diving in.

For starters, you don’t want to do something offensive--to Loki, to your co-religionists, or people whose culture you may unknowingly be appropriating. You don’t want to invest too much time or money or get too emotionally entangled in something before you know if it has a chance of working out. And most of all, you don’t want to end up building your spirituality around something that’s verifiably false, only to be devastated when that falls apart, or worse, dig in your heals and deny the truth to protect your feelings.

- You aren’t open to growth or change. And I honestly don’t say this just because Loki is widely seen as a god of change. Any god you cross paths with is going to open your eyes to new ways of seeing the world. Worshiping any god is going to change, to an extent, the way you live your life and the way you behave towards others. If this wasn’t the case, there wouldn’t really be much point in worship, would there?

Loki can force you out of your shell, if breaking free of this sort of stagnation is something you’re trying to achieve. But sometimes, people actively want, perhaps even need, a fallow period. A new devotional relationship obviously does not facilitate that.

Beyond that stuff? I honestly feel that Loki is great at meeting someone where they’re at. I’ve seen advice that you shouldn’t worship Loki if you aren’t prepared for a massive upheaval in your life, but I’ve gotta disagree with that. Loki won’t wreck your life for the sake of wrecking it. He breaks things to rebuild them better, and not everyone is in a place to rebuild from, or indeed, a place that needs to be dramatically broken. I’ve seen advice that you shouldn’t worship Loki if you can’t take harsh criticism. While, yes, he’s capable of being very blunt and won’t tiptoe around hard truths that he feels you need to hear, he’s also capable of reading the room and being gentle where gentleness is called for. I’ve seen advice not to start worshiping deities if you’re mentally ill, and that’s just ableism.

There’s never going to be a time where you know everything there is to know or have your life perfectly in order. So if it’s something you truly want to undertake and you can say that desire is coming from an informed place, I’d personally say that’s a sufficient greenlight. Best of luck to you, wherever your path leads.

- Mod E

[sillyguyhotline]

17. “How is any of this ok?” with Joe and Sara maybe?

dude im gonna be completely honest i havent written anything in like a month so i think the quality isnt gonna be great but here goes nothing

God, Sara missed the feeling of home.

Every semblance of familiarity and comfort she’d once found in the town she’d grown up in, the house she’d spent her childhood running through, now felt chillingly foreign.

Perhaps it was the heavy burden of knowledge weighing fresh upon her shoulders: ASUNARO’s corruption seemed now to peer slyly around every corner, no matter where she went. She still didn’t know how much of the town had rotted away under its grasp, how much of the town its poison had pervaded… but she was probably better off not knowing.

Whatever was left of Midori, that miserable mix of pulsing blood and electronic emotion, had been ground to bits inside that coffin… but Sara couldn’t ignore the creeping fear that his burning, ever-present gaze would appear out of nowhere and terrorize her again.

But he wouldn’t. The death game was over, and they’d promised they would never hurt her or any of her loved ones again.

Most of the loved ones she still encountered day-to-day, gruesomely blood splattered and sitting like corpses propped up hastily in a corner, would be safe no matter if ASUNARO was fresh on her tail or a thousand miles away. What a cruel price to pay for safety, to never be hurt again.

They still lived on if Sara closed her eyes tight enough, if she listened to the twisting words of the hallucinations and let them convince her she was monstrous. But the second she dared to open her eyes, she knew they’d be dead again. Life worked in terrible ways, and that was all there was to it.

Joe’s house had always been a second home to her, ever since the two of them became friends. Joe was the farthest cry from Sara in terms of social interactions- it had taken at least 3 months for Sara to trust Joe enough to invite him over, but Joe had insisted she hang out at his house the very same day they became friendly enough to exchange more than a sentence with each other.

There was a certain sort of comfort to the warmth of his house, the constant scent of cooking food pervading the air and the little trinkets scattered in every corner. No surface of his house went without decoration, in its silly little way. It was full of pictures, too, some carefully framed and some dangling from the wall by pushpins, but Sara got the sense that none of the photos went unloved. Most of them were occupied by an orange-haired man, often carrying a younger Joe (back when he was still sporting that atrocious crew cut). Sara always assumed it was his dad, but thought it would be impolite to ask… particularly when the weeks stretched on and Sara had yet to meet that mysterious orange-haired man.

Eventually, pictures of Sara began to join the collage on the wall- pictures taken as she butchered yet another pop song during karaoke, or when they went out to get food, or when she mistakenly sat down on a traffic cone during gym (after many protests from Sara, he took that one down). As silly as the pictures were, and as obvious as it was that Joe had waited for the most embarrassing moments to take them, it was sort of sweet in a way.

Joe’s mother was always kind to her, though there was a constant weariness in her eyes that Sara always felt a bit uneasy about questioning. Sometimes she’d let the two of them cook things in the kitchen, but more often than not they’d go up to Joe’s room and screw around in there, with video games or music or the 50 times Joe tried to persuade Sara to climb out the window and sit on the roof with him before she finally agreed.

As rare as it was for Sara to agree to sit on the roof, it was even rarer for Joe to agree to study with her, much to Sara’s chagrin. Joe had always walked a fine line between passing and failing, but Sara had to admit he walked it well. When she did manage to convince him to study, though (usually the day before final exams), they’d sit on the cushy couch in his living room and somehow manage to bother each other as much as possible while feigning concentration.

The couch hadn’t changed after several years- Sara could tell that much the minute she sat down on it and avoided the urge to break eye contact with Joe’s mother. It was still well-worn, a couch that likely should have been replaced at least a decade ago but had never really been disposed of. Loose threads were protruding from the cover, drawn out from years of visitors fidgeting with them.

Sara shifted uncomfortably in her seat, the slight motion making her sink deeper into the couch’s soft cushioning. She’d only spent one minute in the house and was already sweating, whether from the heat of the home or the thousand-yard stare of the woman sitting across from her.

Ryoko was there, too, sitting to Sara’s left and gazing listlessly at the well-trodden carpet beneath her feet. …Ryoko.

Sara cast a hesitant glance around the room, duly noting the photos covering the walls. Not a single one of hers had been taken down, but several more photos had appeared with Joe’s beaming face featuring prominently in them. Joe’s presence was always enough to fill a room even when he wasn’t speaking; it took a lot to fill in the gaps left by his absence.

God, she missed him.

The wind whistled against the window-screen; Sara had memorized the familiar creak of the wooden window frame being lifted up to welcome in the mild autumn air. Sara had always thought of autumn as a beginning- she loved summer as much as any other kid, but as the haze of the weather began to wind down she was quick to grow impatient and look forward to the school year, to being productive again. Joe had always disagreed with her.

“Fall is the literal death of fun,” he’d complained once, walking home with Sara after finishing the first week of school. “Couldn’t they have pushed back the first day of school by, like, another week? You think if we got enough people to sign a petition, they’d give us an extra week of summer?”

“Oh, come on, we both know even if you had an extra week of summer you’d just be complaining a week later,” Sara had teased back.

The death of fun. It certainly felt like that, Sara decided. She’d never feared the looming darkness of fall and winter quite so much before. But now, she supposed, there was no sunshine who’d weather it with her.

“Well… Sara?” Joe’s mother spoke up, voice hoarse with the sound of repressed tears in her throat. Sara recognized the sound all too well.

There was no resentment in the woman’s eyes when Sara made eye contact with her. No anger, no frustration, nor had there been any in her measured motions when she welcomed Sara into the home. It didn’t take any words for Sara to tell that there was no blame to be foisted upon her.

She was still Joe’s best friend.

“I’m sorry to have dragged you out here on such short notice.” The woman’s voice was weak. “I don’t know all the details of what happened, of course. Haven’t heard anything, aside from the little tidbits the police told me when I dropped by the station.”

Sara’s shoulders stiffened at the mention of the police, at the idea of them pleasantly answering her questions as though they weren’t just as complicit in that tragedy as ASUNARO had been.

“And…” the woman glanced down at her hands, toughened from a lifetime of working. “I know something terrible happened to you. The circles under your eyes are darker than midnight, I know it’s so selfish of me to be dragging you out here, but… I haven’t slept a wink for weeks. Been so worried about Joe, and about you too.”

She nodded in the direction of the black-haired girl who hadn’t spoken a word the entire time. “Ryoko’s been worried about the both of you, too. Your parents weren’t answering the door, so she went to me. I hope you’ll forgive the two of us for disturbing you, Sara, but… you have the answers the police won’t give us, don’t you?”

God, her gaze was piercing.

“...Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

It was taking everything in Sara’s power not to look at the vacant seat to her right. If Joe was there, he would have been laughing and lightening the mood, completing the circle that had been left so jarringly empty.

But they wouldn’t have been having this conversation if Joe was there.

Ms. Tazuna nodded slowly. “This means the world to me, Sara. Don’t forget that.”

Sara did her best to muster a smile. “Don’t worry. I won’t.”

The woman gave another nod, eyes defocusing as though even now, she wasn’t quite sure why she was there. “Alright. Alright. Well, then��” She cleared her throat uncomfortably. “Guess I should get right to the point, yeah? Is he… is… how is he…?”

So she still hadn’t quite let go of that little thread of hope, even after seeing Sara return home safe and alive with no best friend in tow. Who was Sara to judge? When hope was the only thing to cling to, it only made sense to cling to it like a lifeline.

Sara twisted her hands, the same old nervous habit she’d had for years, and wondered briefly if she’d picked it up from Ms. Tazuna. How terrible it was, to carry the news that nobody, much less any mother, ever wanted to hear.

“I… I’m sorry, Ms. Tazuna. He didn’t make it out alive.”

Sara hadn’t expected the hush that immediately fell over the room. She’d expected immediate tears, the grieving cry of a mother in pain. Instead, the room became muffled, still as a painting captured in time.

Slowly, Ryoko looked up from her bitten-down fingers, eyes rimmed red already. Ryoko had always been an emotional person, the only person Sara knew who could fluctuate from full-on sobs to cheerful giggles in less than a minute. Sara was so unused to the look that was now filling her eyes- cold, solid misery. As though there were no tears in her eyes left to cry, no more tragedies to bemoan. Just a deep and horrified comprehension of just how many things in her life had gone wrong.

And, slowly, Ms. Tazuna began to cry.

Tears had become so uncomfortable for Sara to bear witness to. Was it selfish of her to look away? It couldn’t be, not when every raw sob reminded her of the art student seeing her first (and certainly not last) death, of the broken sibling openly weeping over apologies gone unspoken, of the unknowing siblings screaming their throats out with pleas for death so the other could survive.

Especially not now. Not when every tear rang in her mind as a reminder of cold tubes piercing her best friend’s chest, of his corpse slumping and falling in a pool of blood, because oh god he wasn’t supposed to have lost so much blood, how was he supposed to live without it, of the clickclickclickclickclicking rising in volume while her attempts to save him grew feebler and feebler.

Her hands were bloodstained, no matter how many times she tried to scrub them clean. Those dreadful hands of hers had failed her, failed Joe, failed the women sobbing openly in front of her.

She swallowed back the apologies that always rose in her throat as Ms. Tazuna rushed to sniffle back her tears.

“I… god, I… he’s really gone?”

Sara couldn’t bear to look her in the eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

“Please… please tell me it was a peaceful death. He didn’t… suffer too much, did he?”

The resounding wave of clicks flooded her mind. “It was as peaceful as I could make it. I… he smiled at me, right before he died. I’d… very much like to think that means he was happy when he died.”

“What happened?” Ryoko’s voice came out rough, the first of it Sara had heard in weeks. “Joe told me, after our date, that he was going to walk you home, and then neither of you showed up at school the next day. And now… it’s been three weeks? And Joe… Joe’s dead? What the hell happened, Sara?”

“God,” Sara mumbled, mesmerizing herself with the twisting motions of her own hands. “I’m not sure if you’d even believe me if I told you. I don’t even know if I believe what happened myself.”

“I’d believe anything.” The sentence was firm. “I just want to know what happened.”

Sara nodded wearily. The familiar weight of her bright orange ponytail was notably missing- the day after she’d escaped, she’d demanded the hairdresser cut her hair short and crisp. She shuddered every time she thought about the ponytail brushing against her neck as she spent each argument screaming and protesting for her life. Even worse was the memory of how carefully Joe had styled her hair, forsaking his usual clumsiness to braid every strand with a remarkable tenderness. She didn’t want to remember any of it- even though, as the locks went cascading to the floor, she was reminded starkly of Keiji’s bleach-stained trauma response.

“For some reason, something to do with the mafia, we were kidnapped. And pulled into a death game. There were twenty of us, including me and Joe. I- I’m not going to get into all the specifics. It’s going to make me sick to my stomach if I do. But… they made us play this sadistic fucking game to narrow down the competition. Based on cards. Joe drew a bad card, and… they executed him.” Something in Sara’s throat tightened as she finished speaking, and she fell silent.

“Just like that?” His mother’s voice came out as a hoarse whisper. “How… how’d they kill him?”

“I’d rather not say.” There came the gushing sound of blood pulsing through the tubes. “He didn’t suffer too long” - she hoped - “but it was a gruesome way to die. I don’t want to think about it, please understand.”

It took a moment for his mother to register the words and nod, face still painted with horror.

“Why… how did the two of you even end up there in the first place?” Ryoko spoke up again. “You said something about the mafia? How the hell are you two connected with the mafia?”

“I don’t know how I am,” Sara responded immediately. “It must be something with my family. I couldn’t control any of this, I swear, but… Joe wasn’t meant to end up there at all.”

Ryoko paused. “He… he wasn’t meant to end up there?”

Sara swallowed back the lump in her throat. “The game… it was something that was being prepared for ages. There weren’t just a few ragtag kidnappers behind it, there was an entire organization. Even the police were involved. They ran AI tests, hundreds if not thousands of them, trying to calculate who’d be the most likely to win. And… when all the numbers came back, the person most likely to win… was me.”

She spread her arms wide, baring her sins and her cruelties to the world, and in that moment felt distinctly like the angel of death Keiji had branded her to be.

“They needed something to drag me down, I guess. Make the odds more balanced. So they dragged Joe into this fucking mess. I guess they thought that him being there would keep me steady enough to make everything fair.” A cold hand, dripping with tendrils of phantom blood, caressed her chin with a lethal grip. “...They were right.”

Ryoko’s gaze had gone cold again. “So Joe died just because you cared about him? What the fuck kind of death sentence is that?”

Sara shook her head numbly.

“Why did it have to be him?” The heartbreak in Ryoko’s voice was clearer than day. “So many people love you, Sara, why did it have to be him? Hell, I’m your best friend too, aren’t I? Why couldn’t it have been me? I’m a much worse person than Joe ever was, I deserved to be in his place way more. Couldn’t they have killed me instead?”

Sara winced at the growing desperation in her best friend’s voice, the raw crack she knew all too well. It should have been me, it should have been me, it should have been me. Sara could have almost fooled herself into seeing a crisp aquamarine when Ryoko’s hair flashed into the light.

“Ryoko… it could have been.”

The girl fell silent.

“They had files on you too. They knew how close we were, they knew how much you meant to me… but Joe was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And they fucking killed him for it.”

Oh, how she wished she could go back to that balmy early-autumn night, see the smile on Joe’s face and listen to his lighthearted laughter again. The desire to keep one’s friend safe had become a crime deserving of a death sentence.

Ryoko’s eyes remained locked to Sara’s, devoid of any dullness. In the look they exchanged was a deep, sinking understanding, one that had nauseated Sara to the core the first time the realization struck her.

It was by no crafty strategy that Joe had died instead of Ryoko, no favoritism biased against the kindest person either of them would ever know. It was a simple, terrible twist of fate. Ryoko could have taken his place had she done something as inconsequential as offering to walk Sara home instead.

But she hadn’t.

It took everything in Sara’s power to avoid wondering what would’ve changed if she had.

“How is any of this okay?” Ryoko broke the silence weakly. “They killed him- they could have killed me, too. He was seventeen. Seventeen. How did anybody let this happen? How did this happen, Sara?”

“I- I don’t know.” Ryoko’s wrath was simmering; even though Sara knew truly that she wasn’t the subject of the anger, she still felt scalded. “I miss him so much, Ryoko. I watched him die, and nothing in my power let me save him. I miss him, Ryoko, I miss him every waking minute of every day. We were supposed to escape together and get out safe and pretend this never happened, but…” the tears were beginning to well up again. She couldn’t bear the thought of breaking down in front of anyone, especially not over him.

“I’m going to go make some coffee,” his mother interrupted suddenly. She’d been noticeably quiet, but the still-fresh streaks of tears painted down her cheeks told the story she didn’t need to vocalize. “Some coffee, and some snacks. And we’ll keep talking from there, alright? Do you guys have your phones?”

The two girls nodded uneasily.

“Please… find any pictures you have of him. I want to make this wall as bright as possible.”

Without any other words, she hurried out of the room, and it fell to silence once more. Outside the window, the cool autumn breeze began to stir the leaves in the air, gusting forward to brush against Sara’s cheek just as the hallucination had done mere minutes ago.

And the Tazuna household began to feel more like home again.

[hiddendreamer67]

Caden’s Very Long Night

I’m still figuring out a title for this work as a whole, but here’s part 3 of the chronicles of the human outcast Caden and the mysterious giant Markus!

word count: 1,173

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 (here) | Part 4 tbd

=========================================================

Caden didn’t sleep at all that night. He stayed up late into the dark hours, peering into the bonfire’s glow as he contemplated how things had changed so quickly. The flames no longer towered high above him, the embers now just tall enough for Caden to convince himself it was a regular fire pit, if a fire pit was twice the size of town square.

Caden let out a long sigh, thinking about how just 24 hours ago he had bid Elizabeth a good night, worried what might happen to his best friend when the wretched letter was discovered come morning. Caden didn’t envy Elizabeth, knowing that should the author be revealed there would be great consequences. Last night Caden hadn’t gotten much sleep either, tossing and turning as he debated whether or not to out his friend. Visions of Elizabeth being tossed to ravenous monsters plagued Caden’s guilty conscience enough that when the sun rose Caden vowed to keep his lips shut. In the end, his vow was for nothing.

The human lad tensed, listening to the howls of beasts off in the distance. Closer still, Caden could hear the steady in and out of Markus’ breathing. It was strange, how peaceful it became to listen to that powerful rhythm, gusts of air sucked in and out without even a spare thought. So much power contained in a single being. 

Markus could have crushed him with little to no effort, snapping his limbs between those mighty fingers, now curled casually (comfortably?) against his chest as the giant lay beside the fire. Markus, were he more beastly, could have ripped him to shreds and tossed his remains to the forest dwellers. Markus could have even wiped his hands of all responsibility, leaving Caden to his fate tied up against that stake in the clearing.

And yet…

And yet.

Caden sighed, his weary shoulders sinking as he reflected on past events. Caden had been sheltered inside the walls for all his life; out here, it felt like a lawless world. Caden knew none of the rules. He needed to learn quick, lest he get punished yet again for something he didn’t intend.

What did Markus want from him? The giant seemed like a regular person, albeit a hundred times Caden’s height. Markus had rescued Caden, releasing Caden from bonds and sharing his food for the night. Did that mean Caden owed him now? Back in the village, a debt unpaid was unforgivable. One must always break even with his neighbor, lest the neighbor take payment into his own hands as is his right. Not in good conscience could Caden ignore such a command, not wanting to think what sort of justice Markus would seek in retribution.

But what of worth could Caden possibly provide a being so massive? In the scope of the world outside the walls, Caden amounted to nothing. A mouthful, perhaps, to a ghoul. 

Caden grimaced, once again reminded of the beasts that prowled just beyond the tree line as they screeched their awful yowls into the night. He had no doubt that were Markus not there, the beasts would have attacked Caden already. Would they still dare to get close enough, even as Markus slept a scarce amount of meters away? His eyes played tricks on him, causing Caden to see ominous glowing gazes peering through the trees. 

Suffice to say Caden did not have a restful night.

By the time morning rays finally began to peek over the horizon, Caden had not gotten an ounce of sleep. He rubbed at his eyes, feeling exhausted but just as restless as before. He couldn’t sleep, not when his life was very much so still in danger. Caden missed the safety of the walls, the security that going to bed in the night all nestled in assured him he would wake again. Here, Caden feared one lapse of judgement would cause his demise.

Behind him, Markus began to stir, and immediately Caden’s attention was drawn to his giant companion. He watched with slight trepidation as Markus gave a wide yawn, exposing Caden briefly to that gigantic throat which could swallow him whole.

Markus threw an arm over his eyes, blocking out the sun as he grumbled nonsense to himself. Caden shifted, uncertain the protocol for this sort of event. It certainly felt dangerous to get anywhere near Markus in his sleepy state, let alone rude to wake his possessor. 

Thankfully, the question was answered for him as Markus once again removed his arm, turning on his side to slowly open his eyes. Upon seeing Caden, Markus blinked. “Oh. Right.” He spoke, voice still rough with sleep. “Still here, are ya?”

Caden nodded. “You told me not to run.”

Markus snorted. “If I knew it was that easy to catch little guys like you, my job would be a whole lot easier. Well, not ‘like you’, just little creatures. Not sentient. Prey and the like.”

“I beg your pardon?” Caden raised his eyebrows, not liking that response one bit.

“M’ a hunter.” Markus raised a hand to his head, combing through his bedtime scruff. “Guess that’s the easiest way of describing it, nowadays. Kind of pick up odd jobs and ends to make it to tomorrow. It’s rough out here, you’ll learn that soon enough, so don’t go judging me, yeah?”

“Sure.” Caden didn’t fully know what he agreed to, but he wasn’t in a position to go disagreeing with a giant. Not to mention, Caden was quickly realizing ‘safety’ was not something he’d find out here in the world. 

“Right then.” Markus grabbed a spare branch with ease, three times the length of Caden’s entire body. The human quickly scooted out of the way as Markus reached over him, prodding at the burnt out coals to see if there was any life left in them. “Hungry? I reckon I’ve got at least a bit more bread. Game, too, but we’d need a fire for that, and personally I’m not keen on sticking around much longer.”

Caden swallowed down his fear, trying not to think about how Markus’ shadow engulfed him completely. “How come? Where- where are we going?”

There was quiet for a moment, Markus slowly turning his chin down to raise an eyebrow at the tiny figure beneath him. “We?”

Caden hunched in on himself, now feeling incredibly uncertain about his place in this world. Did the giant think he couldn’t handle himself? Would Caden not even be granted the opportunity to prove he could pay back the debt? “W-we.” Caden repeated, his voice stuttering but his choice certain. “I want to earn my place.”

Markus squinted down at Caden, seeming to consider the human’s short response carefully. Caden forced himself not to retreat further, putting on a mask of bravery as he stood straighter and looked Markus directly in the eye. He watched the giant’s expression carefully, taking note of when Markus’ lip seemed to twitch upwards.

“Alright, pint-sized.” Markus smirked, turning back to the fire. “‘We’ it is.”

[andguesswhat]

The fool on the hill - Chapter 7

Yeah, well… Probably not what you’ve expected…  But for me this is them as well…

The Clown and the Circus Bear

*

So everything had been perfect. 

Owen had felt genuinely happy. He thought Tom was fucking adorable, he wanted to kiss him, wanted to fuck him. 

The moment on the hill with him was definitely something he would always cherish, always remember. This deep feeling of affection combined with this immense tension, the thrill, this feeling that yes, the other felt the same, wanted the same…

And as fucking frustrating as it was that they were interrupted and didn’t kiss, he had loved that, too. It was like being in a cheesy movie where the tension was ramped up yet again with a cheap director’s trick.

He took a deep breath. 

But now this. 

It had been like this before. 

Sometimes when he was genuinely happy, he would suddenly get this fear of losing everything. Like he wasn’t allowed to be this happy. So the happier he got, the more likely he was to crash. 

And this morning he had crashed, and crashed hard. 

A dark cloud of thick cotton already surrounded him, numbing and suffocating him. And there was nothing he could do about it. 

He had managed to get through the day and pretend everything was fine. But now he was on set at this birthday party of Natasha's and he felt completely out of place, like he didn’t belong here. Everyone around him was laughing too loud, talking too loud and he just wanted to get away from it all. 

Of course, after yesterday on the hill, everything was pointing towards him and Tom kissing tonight. Because why not. They should have fun at this party and then at some point.... kiss... right?

And it was that very expectation that caused Owen to crash. 

The excitement that he had felt yesterday was gone. Instead there was this fear of somehow not meeting the expectations, of doing something wrong that would destroy everything.

He hated it. 

Knowing that this was just some kind of sick mechanism in his head and he wasn’t able to do anything about it. He hated feeling like shit when this happened, but he bit his tongue and just smiled through the pain.

He saw Tom talking to people, saw him searching for eye contact with him, beaming at him, winking at him but Owen avoided him, always went somewhere else, far away from him. He felt a twinge in his chest at each smile sent his way and he finally couldn't do it anymore, so he disappeared behind some backdrops and got to the areas that were only illuminated with emergency lights. 

He had always loved that. Wandering through abandoned, dimly lit sets. He loved the atmosphere it created. But now he was just enjoying the darkness and a break away from all these laughing people. 

With a big sigh he sat down on the steps in the TVA interrogation room, resting his arms on his drawn knees, and closed his eyes. 

Why the fuck…!

He didn’t want this. 

He just wanted to be happy. 

He had been happy. 

So what was wrong with him?

Why had he to be like that?

He really hated himself. 

He wanted to drown this feeling in alcohol but he couldn’t risk falling even deeper.  

To think about his kids in these situations sometimes helped. Sometimes it made it worse, made him think he was the worst dad of all. 

Since he had come to Atlanta to work on `Loki´ everything had been so good this far. 

Even his current sleeping problems had stopped. He had felt calm. Content. Confident. 

Meeting Tom was one of the best things that had happened to him lately. He felt good in his presence. Safe. It was something he hadn’t expected. So he had cherished the time he had spent with Tom on and off set as something really special. 

And working on `Loki´ had been a blessing, too. The script was crap if he was honest. But due to that they had so much fun, so much freedom to try things out, to improvise, to just see what they came up with and it gave him the urge to write again. If it was for him, he would already do prequels, sequels and spin-offs with Mobius. He just loved it. He loved playing Mobius.

It really had done him so damn good. 

Owen contorted his face. 

So why?

Just why the fuck had it to be like this?

He heard someone coming. 

Saw Tom looking for him…  

With a bottle of beer in his hand. With a concerned look on his face.

“Hey…” 

With his fucking soft voice that Owen loved so much. 

“Everything alright? I don’t… I don’t want to bother you when you want to be alone. I was just… worried.” 

Being as sweet and caring and polite as always.

And it hurt Owen deep down in his chest. 

“No.. no, you don’t. I just… “ He didn’t know what to say.  

He just knew that he didn’t want Tom to leave.

“Can I sit down?” Tom asked carefully. 

Yes, please. “Sure.”

So Tom sat down next to him, looking at him with big questioning eyes. 

Yeah.. he should probably explain something. 

“I’m sorry… Tom.” Owen began. “I…”

He hated it. “I’m a mess...”

But Tom just looked at him compassionately and waited, so Owen continued. 

“I… have problems… sometimes.. mental problems… So I get sad sometimes… when I’m supposed to be… happy… when I am happy… It is some kind of dysfunction in my head. Like.. Well, like the happy clown gets sad…”

He sighed.

“And I’m really sorry… Because I guess.. you have expected something else… tonight… But I’m not good for you… I guess, I’m not good for anybody when I’m like this…” 

Tom squinted his eyes and pressed his lips together as if he was disagreeing but trying not to say anything. So Owen emphasized his point.

“I just can’t… give you what you want. I wish I could. But I just can’t.” 

He shook his head and looked down at the floor because he just didn’t know why he actually couldn’t.  

“I know this is hard to understand…” He knew how fucking stupid this all sounded. Why don’t you just do it if you want to? What’s the problem? They always say… 

He closed his eyes, feeling ashamed of himself.

“I do understand…” he heard Tom say softly.

Owen lifted his head to look at him. He was looking right back at him, with so much compassion in his eyes, and he continued speaking. Quietly. 

“Well, I don’t know… I mean everybody feels different, everybody has different… problems.. challenges… I don’t get sad when I’m happy.. But I do know what the sad side of a clown feels like… or actually more the sad side of a circus bear… which I am… Or was… I don’t know…”

Owen had to laugh a little at that. “Tom, the circus bear… Sounds like a cute children’s book.”

Tom smiled. “Yeah… .  I don’t know. Maybe it’s some kind of ADHD,” he shrugged his shoulders, “… but I’ve always done what people wanted me to do. And people wanted me to do really stupid things… . And I just did them. I loved the attention, I loved being liked… and to be loved… so I did more and more without really knowing why… And it really took me a long time to realize that…" he looked at the ceiling lost in thoughts, "I have worked constantly for 6 years in a row… I’ve sort of done every movie they offered me.. I have no idea how many interviews I gave during that time… how many stupid things I did… and all that just to not sit in that bear cage after the show…. And feel lonely and redundant…”

Owen felt his heart ache hearing all this. He didn't dare to breathe, didn't want to break this fragile bubble that they had somehow built here.

“And at some point I really lost it, I got so tired of it all… But you’re stuck in this wheel … " Tom’s hand made a circle," and you don’t know how to get out of it… I didn’t know who I am or what I wanted…” he sighed and nibbled at the label of his bottle. “I think I’m better now. Know how to take all this. But this doesn’t make me immune, you know. It will always be there…”

He took a deep breath, straightening up his back and looking directly at Owen.

“I’m sorry… I don’t want to be whining here.. I just want you to know that I know how it feels to be sad… when from the outside looking in... it seems that you don’t have any reason to.” 

Owen was deeply touched.

“Thank you…” he whispered. “Thank you for telling me…”

Tom gave him a reassuring look.

And then he got this Hang-on-I-have-to-think-about-something look on his face. 

Owen loved thinking-Tom. 

Watching Tom think always made Owen feel like a little kid at Christmas that couldn’t wait to see what was in the box. A quote? An adorable metaphor? 

“So… If you’re unhappy because you were happy…” Tom began. 

And Owen immediately loved how Tom had changed his voice to a more chatty and juvenile tone. 

“It’s sounds quite awful when I have to think that I am the one making you unhappy, so I’m going to reverse it: You being unhappy … does it mean that you like me… ” he gave Owen a challenging look. “…a little more… than a little?” 

Owen laughed. He shrugged his shoulders mockingly and showed a little space between his thumb and his index finger. “Yeah.. maybe a little more.”

But Tom didn’t seem to mind the mockery because he looked at Owen severely and said -  in his soft voice again -, “I can wait then.”

Owen didn’t know what to feel, he smiled a small smile but it came from deep in his heart and he hoped Tom would notice. 

“Thank you.”

Somehow he wished Tom would just grab him and kiss him. 

But it wouldn’t be Tom if he crossed the line. It wouldn’t be Tom if he didn’t respect him and his condition. 

And as much as Owen wished he would cross it, it showed him two things. 

One, that Tom was even more damn lovable. 

And two, that he himself was the one who needed to free himself out of there. Nobody else could. 

But he was determined to do it.  

He had to get better soon, if for no other reason than he could finally kiss Tom. His favorite Brit with his nonexistent lips. 

And now, now he leaned forward and wrapped his arms around Tom. Held him close. And he was fucking glad that he could do it.  

“I’m sorry…” he whispered. 

“Don’t feel bad about it…,” Tom whispered back. “I want you to know that I don’t expect anything... And just as you are, you are good for me.” 

Tom’s word were soothing, his voice was soothing, Tom was soothing. Like he had been from the start.

“Thank you,” Owen said again and because he couldn’t resist, he added, “my little circus bear.”

Tom snorted. “Don’t! Just don’t!”

Owen grinned. “Yeah, I thought you are more of a pussycat anyway.”

And even he knew it would take some time before he felt right again, before he felt carefree again, he was fucking glad. 

That Tom had somehow turned this fucking sad situation in something lighter and beautiful. 

And that Tom had shown him a spark at the end of a hopefully not so long tunnel.

*

[arcticdementor]

In a democracy, every vote is supposed to be equal. If about half the country supports one side and half the country supports another, you may expect major institutions to either be equally divided, or to try to stay politically neutral.

This is not what we find. If it takes a position on the hot button social issues around which our politics revolve, almost every major institution in America that is not explicitly conservative leans left. In a country where Republicans get around half the votes or something close to that in every election, why should this be the case?

This post started as an investigation into Woke Capital, one of the most important developments in the last decade or so of American politics. Although big business pressuring politicians is not new (the NFL moved the Super Bowl from Arizona over MLK day), the scope of the issues on which corporations feel the need to weigh in is certainly expanding, now including LGBT issues, abortion laws, voting rights, kneeling during the national anthem, and gun control.

…

As I started to research the topic, however, I realized there wasn’t much to explain. Asking why corporations are woke is like asking why Hispanics tend to have two arms, or why the Houston Rockets have increased their number of 3-point shots taken over the last few decades. All humans tend to have two arms, and all NBA teams shoot more 3-pointers than in the past, so focusing on one subset of the population that has the same characteristics as all others in the group misses the point.

I think one reason Woke Capital is getting so much attention is because we expect business to be more right-leaning, and corporations throwing in with the party of more taxes and regulation strikes us as odd. We are used to schools, non-profits, mainline religions, etc. taking liberal positions and feel like business should be different. But business is just being assimilated into a larger trend.

Corporations are woke, meaning left wing on social issues relative to the general population, because institutions are woke. So the question becomes why are institutions woke?

…

Through the lens of ordinal utility, in which people simply rank what they want to happen, we are about equal. I prefer Republicans to Democrats, while you have the opposite preference. But when we think in terms of cardinal utility – in layman’s terms, how bad people want something to happen – it’s no contest. You are going to be much more influential than me. Most people are relatively indifferent to politics and see it as a small part of their lives, yet a small percentage of the population takes it very seriously and makes it part of its identity. Those people will tend to punch above their weight in influence, and institutions will be more responsive to them.

Elections are a measure of ordinal preferences. As long as you care enough to vote, it doesn’t matter how much you care about the election outcome, as everyone’s voice is the same. But for everything else – who speaks up in a board meeting about whether a corporation should take a political position, who protests against a company taking a position one side or the other finds offensive, etc. – cardinal utility maters a lot. Only a small minority of the public ever bothers to try to influence a corporation, school, or non-profit to reflect certain values, whether from the inside or out.

In an evenly divided country, if one side simply cares more, it’s going to exert a disproportionate influence on all institutions, and be more likely to see its preferences enacted in the time between elections when most people aren’t paying much attention.

…

Here are two graphs that have been getting a lot of attention

What jumps out to me in these figures is not only how left leaning large institutions are, but how the same is true for most professions. Whether you are looking by institution or by individuals, there are more donations to Biden than Trump. Yet Republicans get close to half the votes! Where are the Trump supporters? What these graphs reveal is a larger story, in which more people give to liberal causes and candidates than to conservative ones, even if Americans are about equally divided in which party they support (and no, this isn’t the result of liberals being wealthier, the connections between income and ideology or party are pretty weak). Here are some graphs from late October showing Biden having more individual donors than Trump in every battleground state.

…

In the 2012 election, Obama raised $234 million from small individual contributors, compared to $80 million for Romney, while also winning among large contributors.

…

In September 2009, at the height of the Tea Party movement, conservatives held the “Taxpayer March on Washington,” which drew something like 60,000-70,000 people, leading one newspaper to call it “the largest conservative protest ever to storm the Capitol.” Since that time, the annual anti-abortion March for Life rally in Washington has drawn massive crowds, with estimates for some years ranging widely from low six figures to mid-to-high six figures. March for Life is not to be confused with “March for Our Lives,” a pro-gun control rally that activists claim saw 800,000 people turn out in 2018. All these events were dwarfed by the Women’s March in opposition to Trump, which drew by one estimate “between 3,267,134 and 5,246,670 people in the United States (our best guess is 4,157,894). That translates into 1 percent to 1.6 percent of the U.S. population of 318,900,000 people (our best guess is 1.3 percent).” Even if the two left-wing academics who did this research are letting their bias infuse their work, there is no question that protesting is generally a left-wing activity, as conservatives themselves realize.

People who engage in protesting care more about politics than people who donate money, and people who donate money care more than people who simply vote. Imagine a pyramid with voters at the bottom and full-time activists on top, and as you move up the pyramid it gets much narrower and more left-wing. Multiple strands of evidence indicate this would basically be an accurate representation of society.

Another line of evidence showing that the left simply cares more about politics comes from Noah Carl, who has put together data showing liberals are in their personal lives more intolerant of conservatives than vice versa across numerous dimensions in the US and the UK. Those on the left are more likely to block someone on social media over their views, be upset if their child marries someone from the other side, and find it hard to be friends with or date someone they disagree with politically. Here are two graphs demonstrating the general point.

…

There’s a great irony here. Conservatives tend to be more skeptical of pure democracy, and believe in individuals coming together and forming civil society organizations away from government. Yet conservatives are extremely bad at gaining or maintaining control of institutions relative to liberals. It’s not because they are poorer or the party of the working class – again, I can’t stress enough how little economics predicts people’s political preferences – but because they are the party of those who simply care less about the future of their country.

Debates over voting rights make the opposite assumption, as conservatives tend to want more restrictions on voting, and liberals fewer, with National Review explicitly arguing against a purer form of democracy. Conservatives may be right that liberals are less likely to care enough to do basic things like bring a photo ID and correctly fill out a ballot. If this is true, Republicans are the party of people who care enough to vote when doing so is made slightly more difficult but not enough to do anything else, while Democrats are the party of both the most active and least active citizens. Yet while being the “care only enough to vote” party might be adequate for winning elections, the future belongs to those at the tail end of the distribution who really want to change the world.

The discussion here makes it hard to suggest reforms for conservatives. Do you want to give government more power over corporations? None of the regulators will be on your side. Leave corporations alone? Then you leave power to Woke Capital, though it must to a certain extent be disciplined and limited by the preferences of consumers. Start your own institutions? Good luck staffing them with competent people for normal NGO or media salaries, and if you’re not careful they’ll be captured by your enemies anyway, hence Conquest’s Second Law. And the media will be there every step of the way to declare any of your attempts at taking power to be pure fascism, and brush aside any resistance to your schemes as righteous anger, up to and including rioting and acts of violence.

…

From this perspective we might want to consider this passage from Scott Alexander, who writes the following in his review of a biography of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The normal course of politics is various coalitions of elites and populace, each drawing from their own power bases. A normal political party, like a normal anything else, has elite leaders, analysts, propagandists, and managers, plus populace foot soldiers. Then there's an election, and sometimes our elites get in, and sometimes your elites get in, but getting a political party that's against the elites is really hard and usually the sort of thing that gets claimed rather than accomplished, because elites naturally rise to the top of everything.

But sometimes political parties can run on an explicitly anti-elite platform. In theory this sounds good - nobody wants to be elitist. In practice, this gets really nasty quickly. Democracy is a pure numbers game, so it's hard for the elites to control - the populace can genuinely seize the reins of a democracy if it really wants. But if that happens, the government will be arrayed against every other institution in the nation. Elites naturally rise to the top of everything - media, academia, culture - so all of those institutions will hate the new government and be hated by it in turn. Since all natural organic processes favor elites, if the government wants to win, it will have to destroy everything natural and organic - for example, shut down the regular media and replace it with a government-controlled media run by its supporters.

When elites use the government to promote elite culture, this usually looks like giving grants to the most promising up-and-coming artists recommended by the art schools themselves, and having the local art critics praise their taste and acumen. When the populace uses the government to promote popular culture against elite culture, this usually looks like some hamfisted attempt to designate some kind of "official" style based on what popular stereotypes think is "real art from back in the day when art was good", which every art school and art critic attacks as clueless Philistinism. Every artist in the country will make groundbreaking exciting new art criticizing the government's poor judgment, while the government desperately looks for a few technicians willing to take their money and make, I don't know, pretty landscape paintings or big neoclassical buildings.

The important point is that elite government can govern with a light touch, because everything naturally tends towards what they want and they just need to shepherd it along. But popular/anti-elite government has a strong tendency toward dictatorship, because it won't get what it wants without crushing every normal organic process. Thus the stereotype of the "right-wing strongman", who gets busy with the crushing.

So the idea of "right-wing populism" might invoke this general concept of somebody who, because they have made themselves the champion of the populace against the elites, will probably end up incentivized to crush all the organic processes of civil society, and yoke culture and academia to the will of government in a heavy-handed manner.

To put it in a different way, to steelman the populist position, democracy does not reflect the will of the citizenry, it reflects the will of an activist class, which is not representative of the general population. Populists, in order to bring institutions more in line with what the majority of the people want, need to rely on a more centralized and heavy-handed government. The strongman is liberation from elites, who aren’t the best citizens, but those with the most desire to control people’s lives, often to enforce their idiosyncratic belief system on the rest of the public, and also a liberation from having to become like elites in order to fight them, so conservatives don’t have to give up on things like hobbies and starting families and devote their lives to activism.

[ruby-whistler]

I recently took your latest survey and I was having some thoughts like I tend to do and thought I would try to understand your POV better and give some insight into mine. I wouldn’t consider myself a “apologist” for any character and actually really hate how the term is used, but in general I disagree with the main opinion I’ve seen on your blog which is that Dream should get a redemption arc. However, my reasoning isn’t one that I see you commonly argue against. (Being that dream shouldn’t get a redemption arc because he’s done bad things.) You always ask some interesting questions, I enjoy taking your surveys, I’ve done all the ones I’ve seen on my dash. So I’d like to in turn ask for your opinion on some things and see your opinion on my POV, if that is ok with you. I just find it interesting to discuss.

the view I see a lot of Dream apologist have is that everyone should have the opportunity for a good ending, which is true.

But I feel like it kind of misses the point of well, we are discussing characters, not real people. Now of course, what we say and write about characters can still have an impact, but I feel like sometimes this fandom in particular goes too far down the route of seeing these characters as people. To the point where anything said about the character is seen as proof of that persons morals, and not something said about a story.

For example, going back to the point about how everyone should have the opportunity to heal, I think that is true. But the fact of the matter is, not everyone will. It’s not realistic. So it makes sense that in stories, not ever y antagonist will have a redemption. I think there’s a huge difference between saying you don’t want a character to heal in a story, and saying you don’t want someone to in real life. For me it completely depends on how well it would work narratively in the story, not how much I think the particular character deserves it.

There’s a reason why the whole “power of friendship” trope is often mocked. It’s because it’s anticlimactic. It takes away all the stakes, leaving you with a rather stale, and hard-to-believe ending. People who have had a considerable downward spiral often can’t be completely derailed by a simple “no, this isn’t right” or a brief act of kindness. To better explain this I think it would help to take a step back from the story and characters we are attached to and just take a look at different stories that are pretty well known. Just to kind of put what I’m trying to say into perspective better.

I’ll take Marvels Infinity war/endgame as a example here because I think a lot of parallels can be drawn from Thanos to c!dream. (And I used to be really into marvel.) What with the whole “greater good” “one big happy family” thing they want to achieve through harm, murder, and total control. Also the disc war finale was literally pulled from endgame lol. With both characters we can see they have at the very least a not terrible motive. If you look closely enough it’s possible to sympathize with them. Less so for me with c!dream simply because we haven’t gotten a real solid backstory or reasoning from him, besides pieced together fanon that we have no real way of determining the accuracy of yet. But I get that some people do really like the character. But keeping along those lines of comparing the two, they’ve both done a ton a very terrible things, and don’t seem to feel any regret for them. (Actually, scratch that, there are scenes that imply thanos at least did feel somewhat bad about what he was doing, another reason that he’s more sympathetic for me. Of course you could claim that c!dream is less emotional or just doesn’t show it, which could be true, but there’s also the claim that he just doesn’t care, which could also very well be true. Again, we sadly don’t have too much insight to his character, which is a shame in my opinion. I’d like the see more of the writers intent.)

So the reason for my comparison is to ask this question, taking away all bias. do you think that giving thanos a redemption arc would of been the right way to take the story. Again, I think both their arcs are easily comparable, seeing as the dsmp pretty much took direct inspiration from those movies in the latter part of season 2. This might be a bit harder to answer if you haven’t seen it but you could easily look up a summary if you wanted to, or just take my word for it that they are pretty similar lol.

Becuase, if the answer is no, then I’m not sure how much some of the points you’ve made on this blog hold up. Besides being based off your liking of the character, which is valid. (there’s a reason why fanfic and fanart exists) but that doesn’t mean that such a ending would be good for a story. Again, I can understand why you would want a redemption for c!dream, just like I want my favorite characters to have a happy ending, but that doesn’t mean I actually want it to happen. Above all else I want a good story.

Just to clarify, I’m not asking if you think these characters deserve redemption. I’m asking if you think it would work well narratively and give a solid conclusion. Because, like I mentioned earlier, this is a story. We arnt discussing the fate of real people here. Having a villain not be redeemed is not the same as saying people who have done really bad things should not be redeemed. Likewise, having a villain be redeemed isn’t saying what they did was ok. Villain redemptions can be well done, but they have to make sense narratively and be satisfying. In this case, I personally believe a redemption for Dream would not be interesting or compelling in the slightest, for the same reason I don’t think endgame ending in a redemption arc for thanos would be interesting or compelling in the slightest, despite the fact that I like both characters.

Part of the reason I brought up marvel at all is I want to kind of reframe the story, because I feel like this fandom has a oddly unique way of viewing the characters and story. Like I mentioned, the characters are often discussed like they are real people. Discussing c!dreams fate is treated like your discussing the fate of a real man, not a character in a story. I think there are some possible reasons for this. For one, all the characters are somewhat attached to their steamers counterpart. So, we feel more attached to them as a whole, and they feel more like real people. Another reason could be that you can watch almost any perspective you like, and leave out any ones you wish to as well. It’s a bit like a choose your own adventure book. So, in a way, pretty much every character could be considered a protagonist.

Which is where I can see a possible argument against my point. In a story where every character is the protagonist, the only satisfying outcome would be one that pleases fans of every POV. Which is where I can see this argument take place of “well, do you think ___ deserves a good ending? Then what about ___?? Surely you must think everyone does, or you just have bad morals!”. It’s a unique situation that I don’t think I’ve seen before. Of course, everyone has their favorites in a story, but the difference here is there are no supporting characters or solid antagonist.

And honestly, I think originally Wilbur saw the possibility of that problem arising, which is why he once stated that he wanted the characters to serve the narrative, not the other way around. It’s interesting that we didn’t have nearly as much discussion like this back when Wilbur was writing, because the story was much more conventional. But by the time we got to season three, that sentiment had been pretty much completely thrown out the window, leaving us with what we have today.

This is why I personally prefer the previous narrative. On one hand, this current way of story telling is very unique, and has a lot of potential, but comes with a lot of downsides. Conventional story structure just,,, doesn’t work out as well. Which is why I personally see the best course of action as using Dream as the overall antagonist. Giving Dream a tragic backstory, hidden motives, and eventual redemption arc just wouldn’t do much for the story in my opinion. Sure, it would make people who enjoy and sympathize with his character happy, but it runs into the problem of all the storylines being very separate. Like yeah we can have a separate redemption arc for each and every character, but I just don’t see how we would get an actual story out of that. I think a central villain could really pull things together, but at the moment it’s unclear if that is what they are going for. I guess we’ll just have to see where things go? Maybe there’s some answers to our questions in the aforementioned Dream lore stream? I personally believe he is being written as a central antagonistic character, but I can see where the opinion that he is not comes from, despite not personally wanting the story to take that direction.

I know this is very long, and I apologize, but seeing as you often make surveys and things asking for others povs, which I would imagine results in pages of paragraphs, I figured you wouldn’t be opposed to this. I’d like to hear your opinion/thoughts, but if you don’t want to respond I am fine with that.

alrigh, putting this one onder the ol’ cut because the ask is long enough /lh

so, i don’t actually take “everyone deserves to heal” as an argument why c!dream should have a redemption arc - more like an anti-argument for why he shouldn’t. my main reasons for why i believe he should be redeemed is 1. it’s the only thing that makes sense for the story 2. it’s the thing that makes the most sense for the character 3. he just genuinely deserves better after what he’s gone through 4. at this point anything else would send a really bad message 5. he’s the perfect character with the perfect setup to get one. it’s not just because i like him.

i don’t take what people say about characters deserving redemption as proof of their real life morals, or an example for how they’d treat real people, however i can still say these takes are atrocious, make no sense, or even upsetting and make me want to interact with the person less. they’re often born from bias and are completely illogical from both an objective and a philosophical sense, which is why i speak out about them, not for real life morality issues. this fandom has some of the most ridiculous and unsettling views of the story i’ve seen.

stories are not meant to be 100% realistic. art is supposed to have an improvement of real life - redemption arcs in stories that are well-written aren’t invalidated just because in real life, people don’t become better more often than not. if all bad people became good people, that would be cool actually - it’s not what’s gonna happen in real life, but doesn’t mean i should be opposed to it if it’s pulled off well.

alright, full disclosure, i have never watched a marvel movie in my life. i don’t plan to, really, i read books instead of watching movies most of the time. with the limited knowledge i have of thanos, i’d say some parallels can be drawn, but they’re not the same character at all, nor is their personality, story, or narrative the same. we have gotten confirmation on the fact his goal is peace and for people to get along, and i don’t know what you mean by “pieced together fanon”, but people believe or deny what they want, so whatever. i’d argue he’s easier to sympathize with, but then again, i haven’t watched marvel movies, so in my mind thanos is less a “sympathize” and more of a “understand his motives” type of guy.

i think that if thanos was a character in an environment of less than thirty people, with a home he owned and his family torn apart and divided, becoming more and more ruthless in attempts to stop people from starting long-winded conflict, who has proven again and again to care about people, but employ horrible tactics less despite and more as a result of it, and was defeated and abused in a cruel prison system for several months, while the narrative deliberately shows of his humanity - then yes, i think he should be redeemed. if that is not thanos, then perhaps you should’ve chosen a better comparison, or not used one at all.

seems very out of character to me. perhaps if you think c!dream and thanos are really the same person, you should start considering actual canon more than your own feelings about the character. just a suggestion.

i myself think that everyone on the smp deserves to heal and be redeemed, however i think c!dream will be the only person to get an arc in the upcoming months, because everything is pointing towards the fact and at this point it is pretty obvious the story has picked that option to go with. this is purely story and narrative-based, and my feelings match up with it more than the other way around.

i believe that a redemption arc for c!dream would, because of recent as well as older developments, be the only compelling and interesting writing choice in the upcoming arc. you disagreeing - well, i guess that’ll be your opinion until you’re proven wrong or not. however i strongly disagree because of the themes, narrative and characterization that seem to strongly disagree with you on the subject as well.

cc!wilbur’s literal last wish when leaving the writing was to keep all characters morally grey, no overall antagonist or protagonist. and the writers did a hell of a good job with that, however i guess the fandom wasn’t ready for darker and more philosophically difficult themes to be explored so they promptly switched to a pure black-and-white view of the story (which cc!wilbur straight up criticized them for), i think to try and gain a moral high-ground or something?? idk, they ruined the thing for themselves though, it was definitely not the writers’ fault.

there is no “the story” from a narrative stand-point. all of the characters have wildly different narratives and outlooks. if c!dream’s redemption wouldn’t do much for the story you are watching? honestly why should i care, the dream smp is more complex than that.

if you think c!dream should stay the overall antagonist, maybe you’ve already lost track of the lore. quackity at the moment seems to be the character with the most potential to make a negative impact on several characters’ narrative (hence becoming an antagonist of at least part of the overall story) while c!dream is stuck being the literal victim of his in a prison that is deliberately framed by the writers as dehumanizing and corrupt. if “this character’s vulnerability is being exposed and he is being actively traumatized and outdone by a different villainous character” doesn’t scream “extremely likely redemption arc” to you, i don’t know what will.

c!dream hasn’t been the “central antagonist” for the past six months and there are like three characters already fighting over filling in the spot. if you don’t want the narrative to take that direction? i am sorry, but i don’t think there is much you can do about it.

[kingreywrites]

So Pardon The Dust

Fandom: Tangled

Word Count: 2493

Summary: When they arrive in the Dark Kingdom, the king has been dead for years.

Note: this is bittersweet, but the idea couldn’t leave me alone, and i had to write it out! so yeah, edmund’s death is heavily talked about, be careful if that’s not your thing! I just love Destinies Collide, and love what-ifs, so this story was born from there asghdh

Read on ao3

When they arrive in the Dark Kingdom, the king has been dead for years. 

They don't know that. What they do know is that once their travel in a shaky gondola over an immense rift ends, everything seems too easy. The kingdom is dark, cold, smells of dust and rust permeating the air, and it makes it hard to imagine that anyone has ever lived in such a place. But Rapunzel's hair pushes her forward, and they don't spend any more time thinking about it. 

They enter the equally dark and cold castle, searching for the moonstone. 

Desperate for a flicker of warmth, Lance lights a fire in a lifeless living room with no windows. Eugene's gaze is drawn to a painting, throning above the fireplace and depicting a man and a woman he presumes to be the king and queen. 

He cannot explain the deep uneasiness he feels at the sight, or even why he can hardly tear his eyes away from the picture. His heart is racing, and he explains it by blaming it on his concern for Rapunzel. 

The queen's smile remains etched in his mind as he moves forward. 

The king has been dead for years. They don't know it, but Eugene finds a room filled with overhanging statues and, sitting in front of a gigantic door, is a tiny skeleton covered in too big clothes and dust. A dark crown still hangs grotesquely on its head, but the first thing Eugene sees is the purple gem necklace between the fingers of its single hand. The same as the queen's in the painting. 

Eugene has a bitter taste in his mouth. Rapunzel holds his hand, also upset, and he remembers that they are here for her, and for her destiny. He holds her fingers tighter between his, and they move toward the door. 

The ghosts are… certainly a surprise.

Death is not something new to Eugene, yet he can't help but feel nauseous when the king's ghost appears so close to his own skeleton, eyes full of a melancholy and anger that only he understands.

He doesn't seem to be capable of speech. He just groans and attacks, mindlessly guarding the stone that cost him his life. When Adira arrives to help them, she calls him Edmund, a soft grief in her voice, and Eugene keeps the name in a corner of his head. Edmund. Not a ghost, not a skeleton, but Edmund, who protected his kingdom until he died trapped within it.

Finally, Eugene is the one who destroys his statue. He cuts off its head, and tries to forget how a few seconds before, it was his own that could have been lost, if the king's axe had not struck beside it. Luck saved his life this time.

Adira asks Rapunzel to enter the moonstone chamber by herself. She says that it's her destiny, and hers alone. Eugene wants to protest, worry burning in his heart, but he doesn't even have the time - Rapunzel looks at Cassandra, and announces that the three of them will go inside. He should be relieved, but he can't help but take another look at the king's- Edmund's body. Many people have died for this stone, and the more time passes, the more terrified he is of what awaits them on the other side. He knows death, more than any other member of this group probably; he's been around it personally. He promised himself when he came back to life, that he would never let Rapunzel die the way he did, slowly and violently, when she has so much to live for.

He doesn't know where this promise will lead him. 

When they arrive in the Dark Kingdom, the king is dead. They enter easily, and though the ghosts of past rulers stand in their way, the path to the moonstone is far from the most difficult adventure he has ever experienced. Eugene is worried, of course he is - he's afraid of the conclusion of their journey, afraid of what he cannot predict. Rapunzel tells him she loves him, and he almost wants to throw up, because they're in the middle of a kingdom murdered by that exact stone Rapunzel intends to grab. I love you too, he thinks, but can't manage to say, because the words sound like a goodbye, and he's not ready for that. He'd die one thousand times for her, if she asked him to. He'd die for her against her will too, if necessary, but he knows he can't get in the way today. As desperate as he is to protect her, he knows how much she values being able to draw her own path.

He wants to grab the moonstone first because he loves her, and because he loves her, he stays back.

That's not the case for everyone. He notices too late Cass running for it, and Demanitus' warning echoes once again in his ears, mocking now that the only thing he can do is try to pull Rapunzel to safety as the world explodes in colours. The king is dead, and their friendship with Cassandra is too, the shadow of Gothel haunting Rapunzel once again despite how much she deserves to be free from it. Cassandra flees, Eugene hurts his arm when she pushes him away, and Rapunzel runs after her, desperate to salvage what can be.

It doesn't amount to much, in the end.

Things settle down, as much as they can while Rapunzel still sits listlessly near the broken bridge Cassandra left behind, and Eugene goes in the castle again, in search of bandages this time. His left arm hurts.

He doesn't expect to find Adira, standing silently in front of... Edmund. Her back is rigid, her mouth in a straight line, but when he calls her name, he sees a foreign melancholy in her eyes. He doesn't know her that well, but there's a lot Eugene can understand from looking into somebody's eyes.

Adira sighs, shoulders lowering, and he's sure she hears his unsaid question. "I shouldn't be surprised," she says, but it's clear that in a way, she is. "I… knew, that King Edmund was not well, when we left. I often considered that he might very well be…" she trails off, her eyes falling on his body again.

"It's different to be sure," Eugene responds softly, his voice loud in the silence of this immense room. Watching them - Adira, and this skeleton, barely hanging together enough to recognise a human shape - it was difficult to conceive that once upon a time, they had stood here together, alive and happy, perhaps. He can't imagine what it feels like to see an old friend this way, with no warning. "Adira…"

"It's okay, Fishskin," she smiles, and in her voice, he could hear the echoes of all the time Rapunzel told him she was fine, because she didn't know how to act when she was not.

He barely knows Adira. Both because he didn't ask, and because she didn't want him, or anyone, to know her. But he can guess easily that her life had never been one of peace, not even before leaving the Dark Kingdom, and losing contact with the other members of the Brotherhood. He doesn't think she's unhappy, per se, but he- he knows, they all know, especially now after everything that happened, that anger and fear and grief are not emotions that should be let to fester until they explode. Maybe it's his worry for Rapunzel speaking; maybe he's confusing everything, and Adira is simply dealing with the situation the way she wants to, but before he can think better of it, Eugene takes a step forward, and asks her if she wants to bury the king's body.

"To- To give him a better resting place," he explains awkwardly, her eyes piercing right through him. He's ready to say sorry and hope she doesn't kill him for overstepping her boundaries, but, to his surprise, she softens, a genuine if sad smile on her lips.

"Actually Fishskin, that's… a great idea."

And so they do it. Adira finds a bear hood that the King used to wear - Dabney, she says reverently - and they place his bones in it, carefully moving everything in tandem. They don't really talk while doing it. There's not much to be said. Eugene thinks of this king, who was so desperate to save his kingdom that he doomed it, and he thinks about death, too. About how lonely it is.

Adira leads them down a few corridors, and they emerge in a small, grey looking garden. They walk until they find an unmarked tombstone.

"The queen," Adira announces shortly, and Eugene wonders if she helped bury her too.

It's not the first time Eugene digs a grave for someone. He remembers starkly getting out of the tower with Rapunzel, both of them entirely different people than who they were before, and finding a cloak and ashes at the bottom of it. He remembers how quietly distraught Rapunzel had been, and how he had proposed to bury what was left of Gothel.

Shaking his head, he tries to think about something else, but it's hard given the situation. His arm aches at each of his movements. Surprisingly, Adira breaks the silence, and that's enough to distract him.

"I often disagreed with King Edmund," she says, without looking at him. "He was a good king, but his duty to the moonstone blinded him to the bigger picture, and I was afraid that it would lead him, and us, to lose everything. I was right, as I often am," she chuckles, but there's no mirth behind it. Simply grief. Something that can't be quite put into words.

"How did he lose his arm?" Eugene asks, voice low as they finally lower the bones into the ground. His eyes catch the sight of the necklace falling aside, and when they're done, he picks it up, thumb running over the smooth surface of the gem.

"The queen died," Adira whispers. She's looking at the necklace too, when he raises his head. "Edmund's grief led him to act on the anger he had been repressing for too long, but the moonstone was much more powerful than he imagined. Its retaliation costs him everything he held dear."

Gently, Adira takes the necklace from him, and Eugene can't explain the impulse that makes him want to hold onto it for a little while longer.

He's sentimental, he reasons. There's something deeply touching about this man dying while looking at the last thing connecting him to his late wife. These are good explanations, but neither of them addresses the unease and bitterness rising in Eugene's throat. He doesn't understand it himself.

Adira looks at the necklace for a long time, emotions he can't name in her expression. Memories she will not share make her frown, and Eugene feels more and more like he doesn't belong in this moment.

"Should we… bury that with him?" he asks awkwardly. Adira bites her lips, and finally shakes her head.

"This necklace was special for the queen. I know she intended to pass it down to her children."

A terrible voice in Eugene's mind reminds him that it's too late - they both died, and that necklace, that tradition, died with them too. He's hit by the tragedy of it all again, relentlessly reminded that the king passed away long before anyone could try to save him. And they would have, Rapunzel would have convinced him to let her through, she would have given him faith, Eugene is sure of that. He thinks that's why he's angry, too. The king has been dead for years, maybe, alone and desperate until his very last moments. And Eugene, Eugene wishes to go back in time, and give him another chance, get him the help he needed before it was too late.

He has never been good at accepting unhappy endings.

"When… When King Edmund banished us from the Dark Kingdom," Adira continues, "he also made another sacrifice. He sent his son away, when he was barely a baby, to be raised far from the moonstone and its dangers."

Son. A baby, sole survivor of the royal family, who probably doesn't know he is. A baby, who isn't one anymore now, but who is probably alive, and the thought is enough for Eugene to feel something new - he'd call this hope, but he's not sure that it fits. Closure, perhaps.

"You want to give their son the necklace," he smiles shakily.

"That's what needs to be done," Adira agrees, before putting away the necklace in her pocket. The gem catches the moonlight one last time, shining brighter than before, and it's easier for Eugene to let go, this time. "However, I did not keep track of the prince. I don't know what became of him, after we left, but I will keep searching until I find him."

"Hey," Eugene grins, wanting to lighten the atmosphere a little, "you searched for the mystical and maybe non-existent sundrop, and you found it, so I'm sure a prince will be no trouble. And if you need anything, we'll be happy to help," he adds, more earnest this time.

There's a newfound warmth in her eyes, and she inclines her head, acknowledging his words. The situation feels easier, somewhat. They finish replacing the dirt on top of the king's body, and Adira places a little stone to mark the emplacement.

The king is dead, and Cassandra is gone, but Eugene wants to believe that they all can find their own healing in time.

One wrong move reawakens the pain in his arm, and Adira gauges him when he flinches. She tells him that if there are any medical supplies around there, they're probably in the King's personal quarters.

With her instructions, it's not too hard to find them. The bedroom he finds is enormous, which only heightens how empty and dark it feels. Blindly, Eugene makes his way to a window, and pushes the heavy curtains away, letting the moonlight flood the room, and reveal the ambient dust like as many little stars in the night sky.

One side of the bed is unmade. Next to the other, there is an empty crib.

His heart is racing, and he can't explain it. He turns to the bedside table, and does find what appear to be bandages, next to a pile of papers, so close to the bed that it is easy to guess that the king often looked at them. 

Eugene approaches. He tells himself, without much conviction, that he should not look. That even in death the king deserves to keep his privacy. Whatever these papers are, they must have meant a lot to him, keeping him company in his darkest hours, and Eugene doesn't belong in this story.

It only takes him a step, and a second, to recognize his old wanted posters.

[sweater-daddiesdumbdork]

Welcome To The Pack 

Build Up of Tension

Summary- 8.4k Alpha!Steve x You. Morning after attack, Steve shows you around, Bucky follows the Tracker, Natasha is brought back by Alpha Tony and Pepper. Warnings- implied abuse. 

A/N- Im really in awe at the response and I hope this story continues bringing people happiness. Moodboard made by @omega-nicole​, I love it babes, thank you so much for taking the time to read and put it together for the story. Thank You to everyone who reads from all the Wolves  🐺❤

Chapter Two/ Pack Master List

You were sitting out on Steve’s back deck for the rest of the night, sleep? It wasn't something you could bring yourself back to do. Crawl back into that bed with the memory of waking up the Pierces tracker looming over you with nothing but the moonlight edging his outline. Even your wolf paced back and forth in your mind, shaking herself once in a while to dispel the tension lacing your body. Around your shoulders Steves jacket rested, warding off the early morning’s damp chill rolling off the lake nearby. Nearby the large Alpha was settled in the opposite deck chair, his feet stretched to lean on the deck railing, bare feet crisscrossed at his ankles, and his arms crossed over his chest, head tipped forward so his chin rested on his chest. You couldn't help but watch him on occasion while he was lightly sleeping, your nose pressed in the collar of his jacket, inhaling his comforting scent.

<You should crawl in his lap.> Your little wolf whined as you took in that heavy male scent once more <I would at least feel better.>

We're not disturbing his rest anymore then we already have, he should have gone to his own bed last night.

<He would have if you went with him so he could have kept us safe Y/N>

You grumbled at your Little Wolf, not needing her to point out things you didn't want to admit to yourself. You could already feel the Full Moon Runs bonding starting to sharpen, just being in his home was tying you two together, and that human side was scared of that connection. You've seen bondings that were all one-sided, the other losing themselves completely to there partner that they turned into a husk. Nothing more than property to the other. You shuddered at the idea and turned back to face the lake, watch with a new fascination at the way the light broke through the pines, beams dancing over the rippling water that lapped at stony grey shores. The soft haunting lilt of mourning doves ripping through the upbeat morning songbirds just starting their greetings scattered through the forest The Compound was settled right in the middle of. This was more fascinating then assessing the possibility of being an Alpha Mate, you lied to yourself over and over, sure that would make it true.

After Steve was sure the Trackers were removed, he had gone inside to find you earlier that night. You weren't hard to find, the glass door leading to the back of the cabin wide open and he could see your silhouette sitting in the alpine chair you had sat in just a couple days ago for the first time. He wanted to insist you come back in, put you back to bed, you needed the recharge after the run as much as he did. You and your wolf needed rest in order to shift properly again, but he couldn't find it in his heart to demand you do such a thing. Twice in a short period of time, he had already took away your willpower to disobey him, and he wouldn't again, not this night. Instead the Alpha picked up a jacket he had hanging, his Wolf rumbled protectively while he stepped outside. “Hey” He said softly and holds the jacket open which you willingly leaned forward, he had set the jacket around.

When you willingly accepted it, Steve resisted pulling you into his arms, let his hands relax you in his lap, against his chest where he could envelop you. You weren't his. And with that, he settled down, to stay out with you as long as he did. The silence drifting far beyond his back deck. It encased the forest much like the fog rolling off the water frequently did. You made no effort to talk, and he didn't either. His Wolf, diligent with perked ears and flashing eyes watched over you in the only way he could, nearby, in silence. Finally a lone howl echoed back to the two of you, and Steve tilted his head listening to it. The pack mate informing that the Tracker had crossed the border, and they were following along the line to make sure he didn't attempt to return.

Now that he could relax a bit more, letting his head drift to rest against his chest, never truly falling asleep. Steve still was aware of you nearby, of the pack running the border tracking the intruder, every breath in brought him news of the stirrings of other members settling back in the early morning hours that there was a tinge of unease with them. Unease, some of them were worried about what the stranger might have brought with her. The Wolf slowly sunk down to a lay, processing everything Steve was giving him. <We will need to take care of any doubts, she belongs here. At our side, she is ours>

We will handle any that have an objection to her being here. I wouldn't turn any away that was a danger to the pack.

<They will point out the Trackers, that she brings danger.> He pointed out, resting his head down, muzzle crossing over his paws.

She can't help the danger that follows her. She is just trying to start over.

Satisfied with your answer, the Wolf remained silent, watching over the one he considered his. Neither beast nor man chose to point out that they didn't disagree with the 'she is ours.’

When Steve stirred hours later, he tipped his head back to yawn, stretching his jaw, and arms lifted over his head to reach for nothing really. He dropped his feet from the deck. You stirred next to him, shifting in the seat to face him, giving a soft smile of the collar of his jacket that you were cocooned in. You had drawn your feet up and now it had encased you like an oversized hug. It made the wolf in him very pleased to see you covered in his clothing, his scent would cling to you to any other wolf that passed you. “Morning” He said his forearms draping over his knees and letting his upper weight fall against them, leaning in closer towards you.

“Morning Steve.” Your Little Wolf, is preening at the Alpha, seeing his 'Wake Up’. “I hope we didn't wake you up. But now that your awake, I did want to say something.” Your Little Wolf perked, and knowing the thoughts edged in your mind, she gave you a growl. <Stop that right now.>

“Not, not at all Little One” He rubbed on his face with vigor and paid attention again. “what's on your mind?”

It all kind of rushed out, you could feel what you were saying shattering your heart and the Little Wolf snapping at you in anger for what you were saying, her growls first and foremost at your mind that it even muffled what you were speaking. “Steve, it's not going to stop, I know Pierce. For everyone here, it will be safer for me to leave, and be seen leaving... “ You could see the moment his eyes went from a hazy blue to sharp and warning, Steve’s jaw clenching under his beard, it ticked.

“The only way your leaving Y/N, is if you want to. Not from fucking fear, or intimidation from anyone. If you want to move on fine.” His wolf bristled, all the fur on his ruff standing on end, traveling down his back in hostility at the very idea she should leave cause of danger. And much like yours, was very vocal. Steve overlooked that though, knowing it was simply his drive to keep you with him at all costs. “But this is your home as long as you want it to be.”

<I knew he wouldn't turn you away Y/N, I bet his wolf is raging at the very idea of it.>

I had to, he has to know the danger being here could mean for his pack. If anything happened to them... I couldn't.

<Our Pack. Steve is stronger then Pierce. You have to learn it's okay to trust in your Alpha.>

Trust, what was that really like? You haven't trusted anyone since you matured and was forced into finding a suitable mate to be paired with, continuous threats at being collared beaten into you until that day finally came. You didn't even realize Steve moved to a stand, and his hands cupped around your face until he tipped your face up to look at him, his thumbs sweeping over your cheeks, and his brow creased in worry. “Y/N? Hey, you hear me?” His voice snapped you out of your thoughts and your eyes lifted. His warmth started to seep into you, making you want to uncurl from his coat and right around him. Your breath hitched a moment, and you could feel your Little Wolf start to stir, your own body aching to press into his hold, feel him against her, over her... Quit It!

<That wasn't because of me Y/N> The Little Wolf snorted

Fuck

Who would have guessed just a simple touch would send Steve spiraling high, he immediately picked up the way your heart sped up and your sweet honeysuckle scent wafted in that intoxicating way that told him to drop his head, taste your lips, lick down your skin till you were saying his name in that breathless manner. His pupils blew in his arousal, a light hazing of yellow gleaning over as the beast started craving more. “I understand Steve.” Your voice, soft and inviting. He had to pull away before he dragged you down on the porch and... snapping out of it, he pulled his hand away, growling out softly. “Good, this is your home now Y/N.”

Quick to escape inside, Steve went one way to prepare for the day, and you remained curled up in the Alpine chair, your forehead pressed to your knees, chastising yourself for the way your body responded to him. The way your Little Wolf constantly fought for it, the way you were simply scared of it. This wasn't anything like the other times, when Pierce would present you to an unmated wolf, there wasn't the same fear in his hands that there was in any of theirs. And that... fuck that terrified you.

Steve needed to step away, get a clear head. This was nothing like with Alana, and as he wrenched open his front door, Bucky and Sam already headed up the walk to meet with him, Steve played it off as he was expecting them. Not running away from you sitting on his back deck, looking at him with those wide eyes of yours that looked innocent, but stirred something much more than that. “He's still nearby, we have a tail on him, but he looks like he's getting ready to move,” Sam said as they both came up on the porch, not picking up on Steves distracted presence at the moment.

“Mmhh... I want to know where he comes from, where the pack is settled in. That alpha isn't going to be okay with having one of his wolves killed.” Bucky didn't flinch a bit when Steve mentioned this. He was doing nothing more than protecting the pack, and although he was hesitant with you, he would do it again. “Call Stark, I want Natasha here now. It's about time we see how well that training of his works.” Sam immediately pulled out his phone and started preparations. Bucky leaned up against the railing, and eyed the Alpha for a moment, arching his brows. “How did it go last night? Your wolf push for more?”

Steve glanced at him and rubbed the back of his neck. “No, he was satisfied she was safe, but that run, her staying here... It's different this time, not like before with Alana. She's scared, of what her old Alpha is capable of. Y/N actually considered leaving, she brought it up this morning. We had a moment just before you two showed up.” From behind him, Steve was acutely aware of you in the kitchen, doing what he now realized was a morning routine for you, Scooping grinds into the filter, pouring water into the canister... And Bucky watched Steve get slightly distracted, the curve of his mouth lifting at the corner hearing you. “You got it bad man...”

“Shut up Bucky.” Steve snapped back at him.

“No, I mean it. Even now you're so fucking tuned into her that you can't hide it. Hey, maybe I was wrong earlier, and you should actually see where this takes you. I thought at first you were just being your usual self, needing to save someone and got distracted cause she was unmated, but this... this isn't like that at all.” Bucky gave a shrug. “Maybe this is what Sam is always going on about with Sara. I know I've never bought into that soul mate stuff, but maybe you two are compatible. Just don't be so fucking stubborn, a'right?”

Sam turned back to the two of them, Steve drifting from all the Bucky just laid on him to his news. “Nat be back by tonight Tony said., he's going to fly in. He asked if there was some kind of trouble since it was a rush, but I told him to get ahold of you later, then you just tell him what you want.” Steve nodded. “Bucky trail him, just don't let yourself get caught. He will probably recognize your scent.” Steve started to feel better now that things were happening, his wolf to, and just as the men left, you stepped out onto the porch, bringing him a cup of that coffee you just brewed. Steve accepted it gratefully, letting the caffeine ease into his system.

“How about I show you more of the area Y/N?” he suddenly offered, his eyes looking you over momentarily, your blush spotting your cheeks at the attention. That made him smile, seeing you get a bit bashful on him. “Works canceled, need a part to fix the machine, and there are some good beaches to run on nearby, if your up for a shift so soon.”

< Let's do it Y/N! I can handle coming back out.>

You sure? We haven't slept to recharge.

<Running with Steve will be enough of a recharge for me.>  

You dipped back your mug, and eyed the Alpha over the rim, he waited so patiently for your answer, that you grinned at him and nodded. “Would love that, I will meet you back out here in just a few minutes.” Taking his mug, you escaped inside with the door ajar, and cleaned up right quick. Steve thought nothing of it, and simply waited. He was surprised though when you didn't necessarily come back out, but your wolf trotted out to greet him, “Oh! well aren't you quick Little One.” Holding out his hand, you mouthed it lightly and his other came up to brush over your head and down your neck, chuckling. “Guess I gotta catch up.” You flashed your eyes up at him and gave a wolfish smirk before bolting out of his hold and off the porch, hightailing it for the woods you had run in the night before. Steves wolf was now ramped up, pushing for a shift and Steve started peeling off clothing off right there on his porch, tossing and kicking it away.

<Hurry up! she is halfway to the border before we even get close.>

I'm fucking going as fast as I can! as soon as Steve lost his sweats, the wolf burst forward, and the heavy alpha was sailing off the steps, landing heavily on his front paws and as soon as his back legs spring back underneath him, Steves off, following where he's seen the light-colored she-wolf disappear into the shadowed depths of the forest.

His Forest.The she-wolf was exploring His Forest.

Steve had been running these trails since he started shifting, and his eyes slit almost closed to protect from flying debris every time he pounded into the pine needled trails, and under low hanging branches slapping at him. Your scent clung to the cool air under the towering pines, fresh and enticing 'catch me Alpha’, his muzzle weaved back and forth following it till he shot past it, and spun mid-trail to backtrack, leaping off into the unbroken ground, and weaving around trees. Heading for the edge of the lake, where he caught sight of you pacing ahead, your ruff hanging around your neck swaying back and forth in your trot. Your ears flicking back when you heard him, but the oversized Alpha had effectively caught up to you and before you could spring away once more, he crashed into you, the two of you rolling and nipping at each other sharply, all in play of course.

Once you land on his chest, you make a growing noise while shaking a mouthful of his silver fur, making as if you were mad at his antics. Steve twisted so you slipped off and pinned you down below him, making you bare your fangs at him. A large oversized tongue swiped over your muzzle and he bounded away with a howl, twisting to slap at the ground with his front paws, enticing you to play. Very cat-like, you slithered forward through the grass and sprang at him, chasing after him as he barreled away, leading you closer to the lakeshore.

The air went from dark trees shadowing you to damp freshwater, begging to be played in and lapped at. Of course with the air so heavy from the moisture, it carried the Alphas scent better, and soon you were whining with need, pulling Steve up short when he heard the sharp noise, ears perked and the tip of his tail, cricking in concern for you. Trotting back, and inhaling against you, his muzzle poking around, to search where you might be hurt, is when he caught the reason why. Dragging in your aroma, the Alpha started nipping in affection at your neck as you tilted it, careful not to bite hard, his tongue lolling over your forehead and ears, over your eyes and muzzle.

Essentially any who come near you would smell him, that you were his and his alone. He wasn't willing to share your and would kill any that threatened the two of you, anyone who would dare lay an unwanted hand on you. In return you rubbed your chest against his, licking under his chin, and nuzzling against him in respect for who he was, his leadership of the pack and yourself. Your wolf had no qualms giving herself to Steve, it was only your human selves that made this complicated. The two of you weaved around each other in circles, a courtship dance before bounding off together to escape the treeline and stretch out in a run across the stony beach, crisscrossing back and forth in harmony. Neither pulling ahead of the other, although Steve was well aware giving the chance to let loose, you could easily outtake him.

Both of you slowed to a trot, shoulder to shoulder, brushing up against each other once in a while before pulling apart, you tilted towards the water's edge, and bit at the water, spraying it in play. Steve sat at the edge, tilting his head watching as you pawed at it with a growl, wading in further with your tail happily wagging back and forth. Finally you slipped beyond where you could reach and started swimming in short bursts. Steve on the other hand was content to watch you play, settling himself down with a groan on the stones, his head following your back and forth movements in the water. His ears perked when you disappeared for a moment underneath, only to see you pop back up closer to shore and slowly making your way out.

Your wolfish grin gave you away as dripping wet you padded up to him. Making him flash his canines at you in warning. You faltered a bit, but then continued on, the warning rumbles getting deeper as he followed you, pinning his ears back. You came close enough and then shook vigorously, spraying the scrambling Alpha, who returned to wrestle you to the ground, unable though to catch you, the two of you started dancing across the beach again in play. Bowed bodies, slapping forepaws on the ground, high waving tails, barks and yips at each other.

Further away, Sam and Sara sat just out of your two’s sight on a ledge, watching there Alpha do something he never really did with another. Sara's head tilted up to her mate, whining excitedly and nuzzling into his fur, before moving to a stand and she padded away to give their Alpha privacy. Sam watched with a tilt of his head at the courtship dance a moment longer before spinning away to join his mate, the two of them running in a similar manner to the deeper forest. Down below, the two of you sprinted off again, Steve leading you back into another part of the forest, continuing to take you around the lake for the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon, human worries aside. The wolves were enjoying the freedom these forms got to enjoy. You two only returned after exhaustion started to set in from the quick shifts and night before.

You stumbled into Steve once you two reached The Compound. Shouldering you forward and nudging you to go up the steps before him, you push inside the house while he shifts right on the porch, grabbing clothes and stuffing legs into a pair of pants once more, the rest of his clothing hanging off his forearm. Digging the phone out of his pocket, he checked to see if he missed anything while away with You. Sure enough he had a few messages. One from Buck- He's on the move, i’m following behind. I will be sure to let you know where we end up. The tracker must have been traveling by the road, and knowing Bucky he probably stole a vehicle in town. The next was from Stark- Pepper and I will be up with Natasha soon Steve. Steve arched a brow reading the New Yorks Alphas message. He had forgotten the New York Alphas were coming to.

But he wasn't surprised, Steve would welcome him, the two Alphas having made a pact years ago.

<We have to keep Stark away from our mate.>

She's fine, we're not mated and he has his Pepper. Stop worrying.

<You were there when her Little Wolf called to us. I bet she's just waiting for us inside now, and you should go take care of her, she's tired.>

Curious to see what you were actually doing, He went inside, calling out your name, and you came out of your bedroom, rubbing at your eyes with a yawn. “Mmmh right here. I'm starving.” Again you were wearing just his shirt, and what seemed to be nothing else, since they fell to mid-thigh, and he groaned softly just seeing it.

<You could go see you know what's under the bottom of that shirt..> The wolf rumbled, and Steves nostrils flared to hold himself back, the wolf snickering at the human's reaction.

Yes, I could... The wolf licked his muzzle, suddenly very interested in this new change, pushing up from where he had been resting to a stand. Pushing, for the Alpha to claim her. Steve inhaled her scent, the sweetness of her committed to memory now, but he really wouldn't get enough of it, and it took away his common sense, no he wanted her in a way Steve had never wanted a she-wolf. Not even Alana could compare to the way you have him captured. And you didn't even know.  

Your hair cascaded down over your shoulders as you brushed past the Alpha, sniffing the air for something. You followed your wriggling nose around, opening cupboards and such. Steve leaned on his elbows, watching with a quirked brow as you would go to tiptoes to spin the other way, searching still with closed eyes, the tip of your nose lifted.

“What are you looking for Little One?” Steve chuckled in response when you yanked two cupboards open, scanning boxes.

“I'm looking for... THIS!” You arch up to reach well above your head whining as your fingertips just can't reach the red cereal box with Capn' Crunch on the front. The back of shirt lifting to show the flowered panties you were wearing, and Steve's heart jumped in his chest, the Wolf rumbling at the sight of you all stretched out, trying to catch the box. “Steve can you help me please?” You bit your lip in your efforts. Steve pushed off the counter and wrapped his hands around your hips to lift you, making you yip in surprise while looking back at the Alpha who was smirking. “Go ahead Little One, get your prize.”

Your hand grasped around the box, and he eased you back to your feet, his chest brushing against your back and making your breath hitch in your throat, resisting the urge to arch back into him. The tension rippling between you two makes you swallow, and take a few shallow breaths. You can feel his fingers grasping the curve of your hip a little harder than normal, that maybe his breathing stopped in the moment, waiting to see how you would react. Your Little Wolf stretched, a silent movement in your mind till her yellow eyes snapped on in a glow, rumbling softly. <Reach out for him Y/N...> Your body as if against your will turned to face him, looking up into vibrant blues that were searching your face matching the way yours were, your gaze falling from his eyes to his lips, the plump softness that even though the rest of him was hard masculine, they weren't. You couldn't lie having thought about them skimming down your body while you laid in his guest room in the night, when he was just on the opposite side. To feel his hands as they were now, but not with clothing between the two, just completely bare, skin to skin. To feel the Alpha cage you in so you had to submit to him... Steve’s head started to lower, and yours tipped up, both drawing in deep breaths drowning in each other's aroused scent.

So when the sharp knock sounded at the door, Steves hold on your hips tightened at you tensing and the alpha growled in an aggressive way that sounded nowhere close to human. You immediately pulled back, clutching your cereal box at your chest and the connection was lost. So fragile in it's beginning that it shattered as soon as the knock snapped them both back to there surroundings. Steve's wolf was snarling at whomever was on the other side, and Steve just rumbled when he saw you retreating away from him, and to disappear down the hall towards the guest room. Fuck... Rubbing the tension off his face, he called out “Come in.”

The door popped open to Natasha strolling in, the redhead smirking and her green eyes went up and down the tensed Alpha, cocking a brow. “well hello to you to. Sent you a text message but...” Her nostrils flared and a knowing look simmered in her eyes. “See you've been busy.” Steve rolled his eyes at the she-wolf, beckoning her to come on in, whatever there was, it was done for this moment. “I heard Tony came with Pepper as well?” The Alpha asked her as she settled in a stool, nodding. “Yea, Sam and Sara are with them right now, discussing the broken equipment so you have a few minutes. I told them I would let you know they were here.” Natasha looked around the dwelling, picking up little signs of you here and there. “And your woman. I heard you took in someone off the border.”

“She's not MY woman.” Steve corrected her. “How soon can you join Bucky on the road.”

<Yes she is Steve. You just have to bond with her.>

That's correct I haven't, so she's not mine.

Natasha tapped her nails against the marble countertop, studying Steve. “No... no she's not. Not like you two connected on the full moon run, no one saw you two run as a team. No ones noticed all this mess right here... “ Natasha waved a hand at Steve as if confirming the rumors she's been told. “Or that there was a perfectly good guest cabin at the other end of The Compound set up just for such an occasion. Can't feel the tension in here at all, nope.” Natasha smirked at her Alpha. Why did he send for her again?

<Natasha is one of your strongest wolves and she doesn't just bow down cause your Alpha. Fuck I missed her.> The wolf howled to his packmate, clearly siding with her.

Steve was getting so tired of everyone pointing it out to him, and he rumbled out as he turned away from Natasha and snapped the cupboard you had opened closed. “You didn't answer my question about Barnes.”

“Yes of course Steve, I can probably hit the road in the next hour and meet up with him. I just need the details. Welcome home Natasha, we missed you Natasha” she grumbled. 

“Sorry Nat, I missed you since you've been at Starks.” Steve apologized and went back to business, Steve filled her in before he went to go meet Tony and Pepper.

In your room you were sitting on your bed, stuffing a mouth full of Capn' Crunch in your mouth, chewing without enjoying it. Your mind was to busy processing what had happened, those urges riddling through your gut that you never felt before. Your Little Wolf paced back and forth, sniffing the air once in a while to catch the she-wolfs scent in the kitchen. <What is she doing here? Is she trying to take Steve from us?>

“When the hell you get jealous?” you happened to say out loud, and the Little Wolf twisted in your mind, going to lay down, acting disinterested. <I'm not. Besides, you were the one who almost jumped him.>

Another mouthful of cereal and a mumbled. “With your help, what the fuck was that. It's never been... like that before,” you recalled the heat pooling so low, your skin tingling to press closer, rub against him. You, Little Wolf, snickered low in your mind, and you gut clenched at her next words.

<The start of your heat when you're in the proximity of a male you're compatible with Y/N.>

Oh shit.... oh shit oh shit oh shit. Your eyes widened and you whine loudly.

<Oh shit is right...>

“Y/N? I'm headed to go meet with a visiting set of Alphas... “Steve's voice came closer to your door and you rolled off the bed, grabbing shorts and stuffing them on, right when his head popped in the door.

“Be right with you.” you say hurriedly, and his gaze takes in your rushed features.

“Oh, you don't have to by any means, I was just letting you know.” He mentioned, but you shook your head and pulled your hair back into a ponytail.

“I'm ready.” You smoothed your hands down your shirts and fuck didn't you just look cute with his tee all tied up one side again and shorts, getting a bit sunkissed in your skin.

“Okay, we can walk with Nat, so you can meet her.”

Heading out to wander to the garage where Tony was, the two women exchanged greetings, and followed a bit behind Steve, checking each other out. The Little Wolf just stared at Natasha while you shook her hand, you smiled at her. The Little Wolf tilted her head, still checking her out. You weren't sure if that was a good thing out not. Usually the wolf knew right away. After a few moments of silence, the Little Wolf announced to you. <Shes not a threat, you can read it, Steve is like a brother to her, just her Alpha.>

Seriously? That's what that was about?

<Someone has to look out for him>

And as soon as that happened, things just fell into place. That five-minute walk ended with you and Natasa laughing at some story she was telling you, how Steve once fell off his own dock into the lake, you were snorting, Nat was smirking, Steve was looking over his shoulder at the pair of them, hiding a smile, and saying in a much sterner mocking alpha voice.  “Do I have to separate you two?”

Natasha looked at you, and snorted in the most unwomanly like way. “He thinks he's tough, Y/N, he's a softy I swear. Alright, if I'm gonna meet up with Barnes, I gotta go. See you two crazy lovebirds around.” Nat shot out as she walked away, you blushing and Steve moaning to himself. Fucking Natasha. From the open doorway, Sara leaned against it, and reached inside to push a button, the main door lifting to show Pepper working with Sam looking over the parts inventory, and Tony was at the workbench, twiddling with the broken part from the other day. “Fixed it! I mean, something any genius can do. Oh hey Steve.” The New York Alpha grinned over his sunglasses at him, wiping his hands clean on a rag. “Nice to see ya, how have you been? We've been GREAT, thanks for asking.”

“Hello Tony" Steve uttered, and you shyly stayed behind him for a moment, not missing the slight aggravation in his tone. But it warmed when he greeted the other woman. “Pepper, I'm sure Sam is making you quite an order list.” The other woman chuckled, tucking her tablet back in her bag. “Its not to bad Steve, about half as much as last time.” She went over to Tony and leaned into him slightly, his arm immediately going around her waist. Steve decided to let you be for now, sensing that you were a bit nervous at the newcomers. He knew you would come around when you were ready for him to introduce you. 

“Thank you for escorting Natasha back, it was very generous of you.” Steve reached out his hand and the two men shook, Tony rolled his shoulder in a nonchalant way. “No biggie, Pepper, and I been needing to do something away, and I wanted to check on Wanda and Pietro.”

“Well Pietro isn't here at the moment, he's doing a deal with some investors for me out west at the moment, I sent that email to you, but Wanda I'm sure will be more than thrilled to see you.”  Sara already had stepped away to go find her, and Tony nodded. “Yes, but first Steve, we need to talk. Privately.”

You tensed up a bit and Steve let an assuring hand rest in the small of your back instinctively. All is okay Little One... “Of course, how about we go back to my office, Pepper knows her way around well enough. This here is Y/N by the way, she just arrived, so she's not entirely familiar with everything quite yet.”

Sam stepped forward and winked. “Come on you two, let these two have at it. In fact, I think today would be a great day to do a community meal. You two want to help me set up?” Steve was relieved to see you brighten up at the idea, and with a parting look to him, you went off, discussing what needed to be prepped. Tony waited till they were out of earshot.

“Brock and Alanna popped up on the council's radar again. They seemed to have joined a pack, selling unmated wolves off.” Tony started sharing and Steve guy clenched. “I'm aware of the pack... that's actually where Y/N came from. Showed up on the border, running from Trackers. The fuckers actually had the balls to cross into our lands, and into my fucking cabin to remove her. Why I needed Natasha back. She's the only one I trust getting us more inside information.”

Tonys gaze went back to you following his Pepper and Sam, shaking his head. “Getaway? How... I've been told they have that whole pack under the fucking strictest rules by there Alpha, Pierce. He's a real piece of work. In fact, he's part of the reason the council is getting uneasy. They are selling off unmated wolves to human hunters, although we have no proof. Yet. Just a body of a young wolf slaughtered online, bragging. We're trying to look into it... but... “ he shook his head, growling from deep in his chest, the situation obviously had the other Alpha tense.

“Even more reason to dismantle them, Tony, they are disrupting the laws we do have, exposing us to the world that's not ready for us, and basically torturing. Our own kind. It's not like the humans can be blamed in this.” Steve said darkly. “I have no problem going down there myself and taking care of it. Especially if Brock and Alanna are involved. I should have ended Brock that day, but... “

Tony looked at Steve and nodded. “Yes you should, but that was then, and this is now. Look, don't do anything too rash, okay? Council isn't going to want an all-out pack war until we have all the facts. Just have Natasha collect, not assassinate.”

Steves wolf growled at Tony, flattening his ears. <Who made him Alpha of the Mountain Pack?> Steve snapped his own teeth in irritation, and cast the man a sharp blue-eyed glare. “I will do as I see fit with my wolves. Natasha will do as I ask.” With that he pushed off to go back outside, and join the people gathering tables together to bring out to the middle of the compound, Tony stood there for a moment, watching this large family that even welcomed his Alpha partner Pepper as one of his own, and worried for what was to come. As the voice to the packs about what the alpha council issued as law., a council set up specifically to protect the wolves, he couldn't help but feel he was thrown in the middle. Steve had always been against the monitoring of the wolves, but never put up much of a fight cause he saw the benefits it did do. Little did Steve know they were now drawing up new laws, and they would be enforced sooner rather then later if this mess with Pierce wasn't resolved quietly. Tony just couldn't see how that would happen.

The atmosphere later that night turned into a party, lights strung up around the trees, and a large bonfire, everyone brought more food then even a huge pack could eat, and now people were either dancing or sitting around the fire roasting marshmallows. Steve you watched from the corner of your eye laughing with a group of others he sat with, sharing a beer. You sat with Pepper, Tony and Sara just talking, your feet stretched out towards the fire to warm them. Tony was talking to Sara with his arm hanging around Pepper, about some program he had set up with other Alphas. And you held up a hand as if you had a question. Tony gaze fell on you and he barked out a laugh. “You got a question for the professor, lay it on me kid.”

“Why was Natasha with you in the first place, and Wanda... She's your wolf?” Your brows arched, and from across the fire you could see Steve push to a stand, looking around till he caught sight of you lounging in the grass, starting to make his way over. “Ahh, yes. One of my.. OUR proudest little organizations.” Tony corrected once Steve reached them, the long-legged man falling to sit next to you, leaning back on one hand and nodding. “Yes, ours is correct. It took a while, but Tony was diligent with convincing other Alphas to join in the idea.” Tony grinned all proud of it while Pepper looked at him, parting his chest. “Down boy down.”

“Not what you usually say to me Pep, but we will let it slide.” Tony teased her, dropping an innocent kiss to her cheek, and he returned to the question. “So we take wolves that can easily travel, not have too many obligations in the pack, and play them in an on-hands internship in another pack. Natasha and Clint, have extraordinary skills they learned from being in the human's military programs. Something I have a hand in the human world. In exchange Steve has two of my best more natural magic wolves. All this here, just strengthens there natural abilities, as well as Steve being somewhat really good at managing an industrious business.” Steve shook his head in embarrassment, and you grinned at him, seeing the flare-up of warmth in his cheeks. “You're overselling it Tony.”

“Your logging corporation has reached the top in the area. You choose to keep it small time and you know it.” Tony snorted at the other Alpha. “Anyways, although us Alphas don't get along for long periods of time in each others company doesn't mean we can't work together. So far not too many packs are willing to “loan” out there wolves as they see it, but those of us that do, it's created stronger bonds and our wolves are getting the education they need to succeed in this life. Any questions?”

You shake your head, getting an understanding of what they were doing. “No, I think I'm all set.” You naturally fall into Steves side, your eyes starting to feel heavy. Your wolf is quite happy in this moment, warm from the fire, settled in a loose ball napping in your mind. You try to pay attention to the conversation, but it's becoming harder, cause it's so warm, and Steve smells so good and relaxing. Not the lust-driven like before, but this time it's more of just him. A masculine pine and woodsmoke, a bit of just him that has no other explanation, the desire in your body to curl into him was strong, and instinctively you pressed into his side a bit more.

Steve looked down at you, eyes half shut and curled up into him a bit, he wondered if you knew you were even doing that. You felt different too him, he let his nose brush lightly near your hair, but didn't quite pick up on what it was. And he would keep you like that, even with Peppers and Tony’s gaze falling frequently to the scene while they chatted with Sara, who also was yawning,if he was able to. Sam arriving to check in on Sara, catching her yawn. “Still tired from the Run?” In which Sara nodded and took his hand to stand. “You know what, I know I'm exhausted as well" Steve piped up and you nodded at Tony and Pepper to in agreement. Pulling away from him, Steve felt a bit deflated having to lose you like that. “If you two aren't headed home tonight, your welcome to use that Cabin at the end.”

“Thanks, Rogers, we will probably head out in the morning, see if Wanda is ready to come home or not. See you all later.” Tony sprang up rather quickly and helped Pepper up, the two of them leaving hand in hand. Steve turned his attention to you, but you were already standing and stretching, making Steve groan at that little bit of skin flashing on your belly before you offered a hand to help him up. Steve stretched himself, his back flexing beneath the shirt, and scuffed his boot through the burning logs, scattering sand to kill the fire for the night. You waited till he was ready, and the two of you headed towards the dark cabin by the lake, each saying goodnight and going to your respective bedrooms, both to debate with your wolves and be frustrated. Even after your shower, you could feel your need to breed starting to take effect, your body heating more, and urges long dead inside of you taking hold.

Another state over Bucky stood in a wooded area in a crouch, once in a while pulling out his cell phone and having it on the dim setting, muttering to himself. “Come on Natasha.. where you at?” He had gotten a text hours ago from her saying she was almost there, and he already had time to skirt around at least the northern border of where the Tracker had crossed back into with his fallen brother. It was not quite as large as The Mountain Packs land, but still fairly large. He suspected Pierce didn't visit this end as often as he should from the scent lines. Or there was heavy human traffic, cause the packs border stopped at a tree line edging the town, and there were ATV lines everywhere. Within minutes he was checking his phone again, and sure enough there was no call from Natasha. “Fucking hell Nat... “He moved to stand up, when there was a hot growling breath behind him, and he spun around to almost smack into a slender red wolf, she bounced back before getting wailed, her green eyes dancing in laughter as she sidled back up to the man, licking his face.

Shoving her gently to get away from him, he snapped at her. “Must you do that? Sicko... One of these days I'm really going to hurt you.” The she-wolf flipped her muzzle up at him in a 'bring it’, wagging her tail. Buckys features softened slightly, at Natashas play. “Yea I missed you too. But don't come to close, they know what I smell like. You ready for this?” She bounded to him once more, licking his cheek before disappearing into the brush leading to the border.

“Well answers that" Bucky sighed as he rubbed his cheek dry. From further off, he heard Natasha's sharp howl, holding the White Wolf in him back to answer, Bucky waited, and sure enough another series of howls answered in a threatening tone. Moving to a stand, he wandered closer, staying out of sight to watch what happened. Natasha paced back and forth along the border, throwing her head back now and then to howl, taunting the pack's inability to get to her faster. Then three rather shaggy wolves came trotting up, circling around her, snapping at her face and haunches to try to get her to flinch, submit to them. The she wolf merely yawned at them, waiting for the invitation to cross over. Thats when Bucky saw him. He smelled like an Alpha... Kind of, even though he wasn't nearly the size of Steve, and even the smaller Tony. Bucky was confused for a moment at what he was seeing. But Pierce had a  staggering stride, the way his head was held up and even his tail, higher ranking than those skirting around Natasha, trying to get a reaction out of her, they all lowered drastically in his presence.

Once Pierce approached her, the others stopped, all dropping to there bellies, Bucky tensed watching as he stared Natasha down, she slowly lowered, not nearly as the others did, but low enough that she could flash her neck at him, and he accepted. Now she was in, as they started to head further into the terrirotry, she gave a slight wag of her tail for Buckys benefit.

<I don't like this.. > The white wolf growled, uneasy shifting, and Bucky agreed with him. It felt wrong. I know... I don't like it either. Why we're sticking around for a few days, just in case Natasha needs a quick way out.

<Something is not right with them, Pierce is no Alpha, he looks like he's supposed to be a beta. How did he get this pack?> Bucky turned to leave back towards the road when his entire world went black, something hit him right in the head and the man just crumbled. A laughing voice sniggered as they prodded him with his foot. “Now we got both these bitches. Throw a collar on him and let's get out of here.”

Back at Steve’s cabin you tossed and turned in your bed, sweat slicking your body, and your breaths were soft gasps of fear, your eyes screwed tight as you were stuck somewhere in your mind. Flashes of being screamed at, a belt snapping above you in a threat as you huddled on the floor. A hissing voice you were too familiar with. “You will fucking bond with him, he played good money for you!” Your eyes would lift to see a male strut close, his hands fisting in your hair to drag you across the room. “I paid for a willing female, she's already refused both bites. I want a refund. If the bitch ain't gonna submit, I don't want her. ” It all swirled together in a jumble of memories, and your wolf was frantic trying to snap you out of it, pawing and throwing her body against the wall of your mind she was trapped behind. She even tried using her fangs, to break you loose, screaming. <WAKE UP!> and you did, snapping awake you sprang out of your bed, panting, eyes wild as the looked around for an escape.

Then it all came back, you escaped, you were with The Mountain Pack, and Steve was the alpha here. Steve... you don't know what compelled you to do it, but you padded out of that bedroom, the smell of fear following you, and you lightly scratched at his door with a whimper. Waiting for your Alpha to come open it, to let you in, keep you safe from the memories. That was what Alphas did, they were protectors. When the door open and Steve tilted his head curiously, rubbing at his face, he immediately perked. “Y/N? What's wrong?”

Your fear his him first, that acrid stinging scent that mixed with your honeysuckle ferns immediately made his heart jump in his chest, set his wolf on edge looking for danger. You look so small in his doorway, your eyes wide and you voice was so soft he barely heard it.

“I don't want to be alone.” And he inhaled your scent, it was more than that, fuck, she's close to being in heat. It was a risk to Steve, it could send him into a rut, and then there would be no stopping the two of you. No matter what you both actually wanted. But he stood there looking at you, and he knew that he couldn't turn you away. Stepping back, his bedroom door opened further in invite, and you stepped in, this time without hesitation, the door closing out the rest of the world.

Tag List- @what-is-your-plan-today @p8tn0lish @jtargaryen18 @onetwo3000 @princess-evans-addict​ @patzammit​ @fckdeusername​ @alexakeyloveloki​ @ayamenimthiriel​ @irishflutiegirl​ @mery-be​ @djeniiscorner​ @irespostthingsiwanttoseelater @rinkashirikitateku @fallenoutofrose​ @caffiend-queen​ @southerngracela​ @titty-teetee​ @bohemian-barbie​ @vicky199625 @omega-nicole​

[passivenovember]

Tetherball : Harringrove April Day One

Also on ao3

--

Steve put his seatbelt on that first day, when Billy stepped out of his chariot across school grounds, taking inventory of things as they were. Life as Steve knew it.

Nancy in the seat next to him.

First period chemistry, English, Geology, lunch. Steve took note of the periwinkle tones in the sky, the rumble of the cafeteria on pizza day, the smell of the library and the way the books turned on you if there were late fees to be settled.

Everything fell into bullet points across worn pavement.

Then versus now. Before and after.

Steve said goodbye to planet Earth that day, whether he knew it or not. Whether he found it favorable. The rumble of an engine beneath his feet changed Steve's perception, and the weight of two blue medallions grew and grew until Steve had learned the facts.

William Hargrove went by Billy. And he had tumbled in from California, presumably naked on a sea shell, where Billy’s stepsister doused hatred like a flame in the ocean under skies full of seagulls and cotton candy wisps.

He wore elevens in converse and a large Hawkins Phys Ed t-shirt that popped seams across his biceps but went soft and wavy in the middle.

Not like it mattered, though.

William went by Billy and he called skins as soon as coach blew the whistle. His t-shirt never made another appearance after that.

--

That's all Steve needed to know, right? The basics. California and step sisters, William instead of Billy, and the sound of rubber on polished oak.

But that's the funny thing about revelations.

Facts are different when colored by opinions, and Steve felt them dropping like coins from the hole in his pocket. As he got to know Billy the bullet points that had taken over Steve's mind rippled and glimmered in the light of first period. Changing.

He observed.

Wondered.

Obsessed.

Developing thoughts about who Billy was and, eventually, the person he pretended to be. Steve wasn't interested in the line Billy drew around the two halves of a whole. Any of the masks he wore in the cafeteria around princesses and prom queens versus the man Steve saw in second period English, who was.

Soft spoken and thoughtful. Every pastel shade in the sky versus brash and heated sunsets over barley.

Flame and sea, like a burning ship at war.

Steve wasn't interested but he learned anyway. Took notes, eyes tracking the brush of Billy's thumb on his bottom lip, brows pinching in concentration as he deciphered the root of a poem in ten seconds flat. The curl of his lips when we took his paper from Mr. Terrine. How he always had an extra pencil for anyone who needed it.

Before long Steve aced his exam in AP Hargrove and failed where everyone else said it mattered.

Got himself a tutor.

Blue eyes to pin him in place, pink lips to seal the passage between worlds. Steve wasn't interested in spending his afternoons under a tetherball, smacking brightly colored plastic out of his face as Billy read to him from a textbook while his sister. Max (step sister, Billy's voice supplied), kicked some girls ass on on the skateboard during softball practice.

"Should we try it once more?" Billy's patient. Steve wasn't expecting that.

He smacks the ball away again. "I've learned a lot about you, but I wasn't expecting this."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Y'know." From across the playground Max teaches her girl how to kick flip. Steve doesn't think that's right. He shrugs anyway. "Smarts. Like, AP biology, Valedictorian, Brain stew smart."

They've been studying together for weeks.

Four weeks. Seems like more with the slide of Billy's shoulder against Steve's arm, blonde ringlets dodging the tetherball as it swings overhead. Billy's fingers brush the open faced textbook, mouth serious but eyes soft. Sparkly, like a discarded bag of glitter.

"Maybe you should pay more attention to the prose."

"Maybe I can do both at the same time." Steve fiddles with the edge of the notebook, nodding as Billy grins. "Alright, goldilocks, tell your silly little story."

He does.

The green eyed boy in the powder blue shirt standing next to you in the supermarket recoils as if hit,

repeatedly,

by a lot of men, as if he has a history of it.

Steve leans back against the rusty iron pole, feeling the weight of the tetherball on one side of his head, and. The brush of golden curls on the other. He closes his eyes, feeling a voice more than hearing it.

That is not your problem. You have your own body to deal with.

The lamp by the bed is broken--

"Are you following?" Billy asks. He moves, knees drawn up so the book is balanced close to the curve of his chin. Close to the split in the universe. "We're getting into muddy waters here--"

"'S not that muddy."

"Sure it is." Billy's cheeks flush, pink paint across the bridge of his nose. He moves against Steve's arm, elbow knocking into ribs. "Tell me what you think is happening."

Steve thinks about it.

Knocks Billy's arm away gently, closing his eyes. "Read some more and then we'll talk."

Billy does.

The lamp by the bed is broken. You are feeling things he is no longer in touch with a nd everyone is speaking softly, as if not to wake one another.

The wind knocks the heads of the flowers together. Steam rises from every cup at every table at once.

Things happen all the time.

Things happen at every minute that have nothing to do with us.

Billy stops reading and Steve peeks at him through an eye half-lidded, curious. "Is that the end of the story?"

"Poem."

"Huh." Steve straightens, moving his legs this way and that. "Felt like a story."

Billy mirrors him exactly, closing the textbook and grabbing his pencil. "That's interesting."

And the way he says it. While flipping through his pea-green fivestar spiral, makes it feel wrong. Stupid.

Steve smacks distantly at the sky. "No it's not."

"Sure it is. Siken's poems are very lyrical. They paint images, vivid images, and sometimes I can imagine myself doing what the lines convey."

Steve grins. "You can imagine yourself in bed with another man?"

Steve isn't interested in the answer but he's interested in the feeling, the glint of emotion behind a wall of powdery blue. It doesn't seep through the cracks, though, it's contained. If Steve wants to find the center, he'll have to dig.

Billy doesn't miss a beat. "If that's what you think the poem's talking about, sure."

"Of course that's what it's talking about."

"How so?"

Steve laughs at that, rubbing against Billy's side. "You sound like a scholar."

"Is that so wrong?"

"No." Steve says thoughtfully. "'S cute."

Billy doesn't crack. Not in the way Steve's used to. No fingers in his hair, spinning spools of gold as he peeks at Steve through thick lashes. Instead he makes a note of it, whatever it is they're saying. Scribbling Steve's interpretation on one side of the blank page, dividing the two halves with a thick black line.

Billy intends to find the truth. "The protagonist is in love with the man at the supermarket? Is that what you're saying."

"I guess."

Billy rolls his eyes. "Your intent has to be clear. Poetry is all about interpretation; if you don't attempt to bridge the divide--"

"All right, Einstein." Steve plays along. "Sure."

Billy's eyes flash victorious as he clicks the pen trigger. "What makes you say that?"

"The way he's obsessed with him."

"The way the narrator is obsessed?" Billy leans forward, intent. "With the man in the grocery store?"

"What makes you deny it?" Steve wonders, folding his legs beneath him so they're crisscross applesauce.

Billy leans back against the pole, casual and easy. "I'm not the one failing English."

"No, but you are the poet." Steve counters. "Dude, I know you have an interpretation. I know you have thoughts, so. Just tell me."

Billy turns to face the playground.

Max skates circles around her girl, smiling in the way Billy does when he's got Steve pinned on the court. Like a predator. Pushing and pulling back just enough to leave the girl chasing after her, enough to catch herself before Max has a chance to get her claws out.

It's incredible, Steve thinks, how much Billy is just like his sister.

"I think he's using him."

Steve cocks his head, curious.

"The man with the blue shirt." Billy opens the textbook and reads the part about the lamp again, peeking up at Steve through frizzy curls. "The narrator says we are feeling things the man is no longer in touch with."

Steve leans forward. "Like love?"

Billy thinks about it. "No."

"Connection, then."

"If they're sleeping together it's more than just sex." Billy counters, "More than just carnality."

Which.

Steve frowns. "People fuck all the time without connecting."

"Really?"

"Yeah." Steve thinks about rattling down his list. The girls, the guys, the one night stands and bullshit post-game hook ups.

Billy fiddles with the edges of his notebook almost. Shyly. "People have sex because they're in love."

Steve snorts. "There's a million reasons to fuck outside of love."

Billy's eyes flash hard with.

Something. He bares his teeth. "Yeah? Like what?"

"I dunno. Breakup sex, makeup sex, sorry for burning a hole in your prom dress sex--"

"Gross."

"Point is." Steve looks at Billy. Studies him, the freckles across his upper lip, the scruff along his jawline. "Sex and emotion don't have to exist within each other."

Billy stares back at him, eyes wide and distant. Closed off.

He writes something on Steve's half of the notebook. "I disagree."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." Billy tosses his pen to the ground. "Our narrator says the man in the blue shirt has a history of being hit by other men."

"So?" Steve has trouble following at the best of times, and this.

The way Billy is worrying the skin on his fingers, nails catching and tearing in places they don't belong, feels important.

Billy shrugs. "Why would he sleep with a man without knowing his heart?"

"Maybe he just wants to feel something."

"Or maybe he wants to connect." Billy turns to look out across the playground once more, fingers tugging at the edge of his notebook. "Maybe he's existing in this bubble, like. This silent world with a tiny room where everyone is speaking softly out of respect. Maybe he chooses the wrong person because it's better than feeling half alive."

Steve knows they aren't talking about the poem anymore.

He tugs the notebook from Billy's hands, flipping through a million and one handwritten theories and observations. Billy lets him. Lets Steve look through his life and into his mind before handing the spiral back and asking, "Have you ever picked the wrong person?"

Billy doesn't say anything and then; "Yes."

"How come?"

"Everybody's wrong if you squint hard enough."

Steve nods, looping his arms around his knees. "And I'm assuming you didn't sleep with any of them."

He doesn't expect Billy to answer. It's not like they owe each other anything, honesty or otherwise. Billy leans back against the pole once more. From where their bodies are pressed together Billy feels feverish. Incendiary.

Billy clears his throat. "Or the opposite."

Which catches Steve off guard.

Billy watches him for a moment, eyes dark and serious. "I don't think the narrator sleeps with the man in the blue shirt. Maybe he intends to. Take the guy home, make a couple drinks, blaze trails into something previously unknown to him or maybe just. A feeling he hasn't felt in a while. But intimacy isn't always about sex."

Steve snorts. "I can't think of anything more intimate than being inside another person."

"But you are inside them, just. Not in the way you expected."

Steve glares out over the playground. The sun will be setting soon, blacktops and brown fields painted in shades of red and orange. The whole world will catch on fire but Steve feels the beginning, coals glowing bright red under the line of his ribcage when he turns to find blue eyes on him.

Dousing the fire, or maybe.

Raising the stakes. His eyes flit across Billy's forehead, brushing over his lips and coming to rest on his eyelashes. Feathery and soft, like the arms of a teddy bear. Steve licks his lips, going up in flame when Billy's eyes track the movement.

"I lied." Steve says.

Billy doesn't look away. "I'm not sure what you--"

"The first time a boy ever kissed me." Steve says. "When a boy kissed me because he wanted to, that was more intimate than anything I'd ever felt before."

Billy's gaze falls impossibly lower, tracing the swell of Steve's lips. "How did it feel?"

And he says it like.

He couldn't possibly know.

And Steve says, "Like my heart was taking root," like.

Let me show you.

Billy takes a deep breath. "I don't think I've ever felt like that."

"Never?"

"Not once."

From across the playground Max's answering laugh makes Billy's skin turn gold. Caramel, ice cream topped with sugar. Steve feels his body inching closer, mouth opening as if to taste love on the air.

[alsanderecho]

Tales of San Derecho: The New Press Secretary

The formation of a whole new state from the parts of two others should have been a surprise for the nation after a national election but it wasn't. Its new boundries encompassed part of southern California, as well as land in Arizona. There was very little fuss about its existence for the general public, as if it had always been there.

But there were those who did ask questions about how this new territory came to be. Some of them traveled to the newest state in the union, seeking the answer. These are their stories, along with those who found themselves now residing in the state of SAN DERECHO...

====================

"Shannon, something strange is going on."

The reporter looked with one raised eyebrow at Sheila Gerrolds, his editor. The both of them work at the Q-News, a website dedicated to reporting on national events and international happenings important to the LGBTQ community.

"Strange, how?"

"I mean, do you remember Joaquin Guerrero?"

Shannon had to think for a few moments before he remembered the outspoken gay Latino activist, which immediately struck him as being wrong somehow. Hadn't he done an interview with him during last fall's gubernatorial election in San Derecho?

"Y...Yeah. But not until you mentioned his name, Sheila. That's...weird."

"Exactly my point, Shannon. And he's not the only one..."

The editor rattled off about a dozen more names, and memories of these gay and lesbian activists flooded Shannon's memories. And again, he was at loss at how he could have forgotten them, considering some of them had been long-time friends/

"What's going on here? Where did they all go?"

"That's what I want to know. Over dozen of the most prominent LGTBQ activists go missing  on the West Coast over the last year and no one is raising a stink about it? There's a story here, an important one."

Shannon nodded in agreement, his mind already honing in on who might be responsible for these disappearances.

"And you think the new governor might be involved somehow."

"Precisely. You know what his platform was during the election, and now some of his biggest critics are missing? It just stinks to me."

"Right, I get it. Guess I'm going back undercover..."

Sheila nodded, aware that her best reporter had spent a good portion of the election last year infiltrating a certain candidate's campaign. Despite the success of getting on the inside, the whole thing hadn't turned up any actionable material.

"Yeah, but I want you to be careful. We don't know what is really going on here."

"I get it, but we've got to find out the truth. And maybe, we can bring this bastard down once and for all..."

====================

Getting an invite to the governor's mansion had been pretty easy, as Shannon's cover identity was intact and uncompromised. Still, he was being careful, as this whole thing was more than a bit like walking into a hungry lion's den carrying chunks of raw, bloody meat. If the governor or any of his people got even a hint of who he really was, it could go very bad for him very quickly.

Maybe that's why he waited in the car for so long before finally mustering his courage to approach the front door and ring the bell. The wait for an answer seemed to drag on forever until the door clicked open. Standing there was the governor's chief of staff, Jonathon Grey. Dressed in a dark grey suit, the man was the very image of the hyper-conservative types that the chief executive of the state San Derecho liked to surround himself with.

"Ah, Mr. Jones. So nice to see you again. It has been awhile, hasn't it?"

Shannon nodded affirmatively. He hadn't been this close to Grey since election night, and he was trying to ignore how attractive he found the man. It was a little bothersome because he reminded him of someone else...

"Yes, Mr. Grey. I needed sometime to figure out things after the election. But now, I think I know what I want."

"Excellent. The governor will see you in his study."

This surprised Shannon, who hadn't been aware that the governor even knew who 'Shane Jones' was. Every instinct the reporter had was screaming this was a set-up of some kind, but it was not something he could walk away from. Because despite the danger, it was an opportunity to get even deeper inside this crooked administration and find out what happened to his friends...

"Lead the way then."

====================

The study was a comfortable room with oak paneled walls and high shelves stocked with numerous leather bound books. In the fireplace, flames crackled and suffused the room with a flickering glow of yellow light. Shannon was ushered inside by Grey, who remained outside but closed the doors behind him. An almost faint click told the journalist that he had been locked in as well. He took a few cautious steps into this den of conservatism until a voice called out for him to "take a seat."

Said seat was in a thick leather chair with a high back and wings on either side of its occupants head. It was set in front of a dark oaken desk behind which sat the governor himself, his fingers steepled and a grin on his face. On his desk was a framed picture of him and his blonde wife. Shannon couldn't quite recall her name before his host spoke.

"Shane, welcome. So glad you've come for a visit. Can I offer you a drink?"

The gray-haired politician motioned to a small bar set into a wall behind him. Shannon shook his head to say no as the governor seemed amused at the response. The older man's expression then became serious.

"Now, can we dispense with this pretense, Shannon?

The millennial reporter was caught off guard by his real name being spoken aloud by the governor. He tugged nervously at the maroon sweater he wore, trying to laugh it off. But the man behind the desk wasn't having any of it.

"Please, don't insult my intelligence or that of my staff, Shannon. We've been aware of your true identity and the website that employs you for quite some time now."

"I..I..I don't know what you're talking about..."

"I said to NOT insult me, Shannon."

The gay journalist shuddered slightly, as the governor's voice resonated with a surprisingly arousing air of authority. He had to keep his head about himself.

"Alright, fine. I am who you think I am. Do you know why I'm here?"

"Of course. You're here to investigate what happened to my most outspoken critics in the LGBT community. I did wonder how long it would be before you or your editor would notice. Anyone really..."

Shannon said nothing, trying to remain focused on his surroundings. If this man was this free with his words, then this had to be a some sort of trap...

"Please, please. Do relax. I'm perfectly happy to tell you everything."

"Is this some sort of trick?"

"No, it's merely the truth, Shannon. Isn't that what you really want to hear? The truth?"

Shannon nodded, feeling a calm settled over himself. It was strange, but the words coming from the Governor's mouth seemed to be the source of this new tranquility. The smile of the older man's face confirmed it.

"So, shall we begin?"

====================

Shannon sat there, dazed. He wanted to get up, and flee this place but for some reason, he found himself just sitting there listening to the Governor talk.

"You see, I think there is someone inside you who wants to come out. A better you, a hetter you, Shannon. All you have to do is listen to my voice, and let it guide you to a new....perspective and understanding..."

The reporter nodded numbly in agreement.

"This modern world is losing touch with its past. Things were so much simpler before all of this social justice nonsense overtook everything. Black and white, right and wrong. Don't you think?"

Another nod, but it was accompanied by a rippling of Shannon's clothes. His sweater seemed to moving of its own accord, the material clinging closer to his body now. Sudden, it pulled itself so tight that it ripped apart at the shoulders, and revealed that underneath were the sleeves of a crisp white button-down dress shirt that hung a little loose on his arms.

"A simpler time....black and white...right and wrong...man and woman..."

The part of the sweater that remained was fluttering as most of it split into two thin straps that looped over his shoulders, reconnecting into a y-shape via a triangle of brown leather from which another strap clipped its to the back of his jeans. In the front, the new suspenders settled into place as brass snaps clamped down Around his neck, a heavily starched collar unfolded itself, sending a line of buttons down the front of the dress shirt. A rustle of fabric revealed that the last piece of his old sweater had curled itself under the collar and knotted itself into a long tie.

"Black...White...Right...Wrong...Man...Woman..."

The words battered into Shannon's head, as he tried to understand what was happening. He was afraid as he could something or someone stirring in the depths of his subconscious, drawn to the power of those words. If he'd only realized that his fear was only going to quicken the pace of his transformation...

====================

"You're not the first to hear my message, Shannon. Far from it. And you won't be the last, But I digress a little. I did say I'd tell you the truth, didn't I?"

Shannon couldn't respond, his body frozen as new changes begin to effect him, this time below his wait. The jeans he'd been wearing were shifting, denim softening into a light blend of cotton as blue was leeched away and replaced with a dark brown. Crisp creases snapped into place down the front of the developing trousers.

"You see, I didn't always have this...influence over people. I'm not sure where it came from really but it showed up when I was just starting my political career. I discovered that my words had an effect on people, especially those who disagreed with me. Not only did they come around my point of view, but some of them actually completely changed!"

A leather belt slid into the loops at Shannon's waist and tightened itself as as if locking him into his fate.

"Do you remember Lizzy Dion? Probably not, I suppose. She was my opponent for mayor during my first re-election campaign. A very outspoken advocate for gay rights, and a tough debater. That old bag really had me on the ropes during our first head-to-head if I'm being perfectly honest. Might've beaten me too, but oddly she disappeared before election day."

The governor chuckled a little, as if at some private joke before he stood up and came around the desk to seat on its corner. Shannon wanted to curse at him but...why? After he'd done a lot for this reporter, hadn't he? He didn't realize he was starting to grin.

"Of course, I'd soon meet my beloved Lisbeth and she became my first real supporter in my rise to the office I currently occupy. The perfect politician's wife really."

Shannon nodded in agreement. The governor's wife was a real smart cookie, and quite the looker too. He blinked, not sure why he found a woman to be attractive, let alone that woman. But his cock? It knew what it liked and that blonde matriarch really got its attention!

"Getting back on track, with my wife by my side, I ascended the ranks of the Republican party swiftly. I had a great staff as well, picked up all along the way. You'd be surprised how many times I got asked where I found so many loyal and dedicated people..."

The clothes which had been hanging a little loose on Shannon grew more fitted now, as his lanky frame began to fill in with muscle. It was still lean, but now held more strength than one might expect. His butt tightened up, as his old sexual practices were wiped away. He'd do a lot for a story but letting someone get past his backdoor? Never!

"Like me, boss?"

"Exactly, my boy. How are you feeling now?"

"I feet great, boss. But I'm still a little confused about why you're telling me all of this..."

The governor grinned at the still changing reporter, who was coming along nicely. The fading Shannon's feather and poofed hair was starting to slick itself back, darkening from brown to black in the process. His once smooth chin had squared itself out, and the first signs of his trademark five o'clock shadow were gracing with each passing moment.

"Just a little refresher, son. After all, you're working on my next address to the state, right?"

The reporter nodded enthusiastically. He'd been working on a real firecracker of a speech for the governor. His grin widened to reveal a set of white teeth that seemed to sparkly. A thump came the floor next to him, where his smart phone had been pushed out by his transforming pants. It had shifted and twisted, glass splintering into nothingness as it became a leather-covered notepad out of which stuck his favorite pen.

"Good, good. Now where was I again?"

"You were talking about your loyal staff, boss."

"Right. I don't know what I'd have done without you or Joaquin..."

Looking up from his notepad and the notes he'd been busily scribbling in it, Stanley Journo stared blankly at his employer and mentor as the strange name crossed his lips, A shrinking part of who he used to be seemed to be rallied by its mention.

"Who, boss?"

"Jonathan?"

"Oh...right."

And just like that, that last bit of Shannon faded away as he realized what had happened to Joaquin Guerrero. But the man sitting in the chair now didn't really care about that anymore, because he had more important stories to cover.

"That's should be enough for the speech, boss, I'll have it on your desk first thing in the morning."

"Great, Stanley. But I do have one more task for you tonight. In your capacity as my press secretary, I need you deliver a message for me..."

The governor pulled out a tape recorder and presented to the retro-styled journalist. The snarky grin was now permanently plastered on his ruggedly handsome face, as he tilted up the fedora resting on his head.

"Whatever ya' say, boss..."

====================

Sheila had not left the offices of the Q-News, her concern for her best reporter telling her that she needed to be here just in case. But she didn't even notice that she could no longer recall that reporter's name as she spoke to her girlfriend on the phone.

"Listen, Elle, baby. I'm gonna be home late tonight... It's a big story and I'm waiting for...

A knock on the door caused Sheila to jump out of her seat a little. As she finished up on the phone, the door swung open to let in a tallish lean man dressed in a dark grey vest and brown slacks. A cigarette hung from his lip while a old-fashioned press pass rested in the band of the fedora that rested atop his slicked back do.

"Heya, Chief. I got a scoop you just gotta hear to believe..."

*CLICK*

"You see, I think there is someone inside you who wants to come out. A better you, a hetter you, Sheila... All you have to do is listen to my voice, and let it guide you to a new....perspective."

[spade-riddles]

Submission:

Hi there! I’m the anon who asked for a conversation about what we (as Kaylors) actually fear from Karlie and Taylor letting the world assume Jerk is the baby’s bio dad. Switched to submission format because the Tumblr word count is tiny and asks get eaten and muddled, which makes it really hard to express yourself properly 😅

First I wanted to say thank you for engaging in a mature discussion about this. I really appreciate it. A lot of other blogs have either stopped believing Karlie and Taylor are together any more, or are more idealistic and don’t want to even talk about a less than perfect outcome to this story. It’s frustrating because while I understand the need for optimism (I feel that need too!) I don’t want us living in la la land and feeling disproportionately upset if we don’t get our perfect ending. 

So. I should probably lay out where I stand: I think there is a high likelihood Karlie and Taylor will let people assume the baby is Jerk’s, at least at first. My reasons are simple. 

1) The baby is due very soon. Taylor is used to sneaking around and we’ve talked before about how she is able to live in secrecy. The pandemic has definitely made that easier for her. But a baby is a whole different ball game. It will be frankly exhausting to sneak around pretending she’s not a mom, hiding her baby. And the more she hides it, the higher the risk of it being exposed by social media and becoming a huge gossip story. Taylor Swift’s secret baby! Kissgate was bad enough, I don’t think Taylor would want to risk a Babygate.

For this reason, she’s going to move soon to incorporate Karlie back into her life. Probably as a new single mom friend who is staying with / spending a lot of time with her after her marriage break up. The story may even go out that the feud rumors were bogus all along and the girls were good friends the whole time, and Taylor gave  Karlie the strength to leave her bad relationship. I expect Tay to be named godmother, which will allow her to be seen more with bub while the full picture is waiting to fall into place. 

2) So Taylor and Karlie are being seen together once more. Taylor looks like a great friend, Karlie’s image is slowly being rehabilitated as Taylor goes on a charm offensive, and the baby is a fixture in Taylor’s life that people think is sweet, but don’t really question because she’s supposedly still with J*e. 

No-one talks about J*sh at this stage. No-one interacts with him on social media, and they do their best to limit any media mentions of him as “Karlie Kloss’s baby daddy”. This is easier than it seems. Taylor has connections at Vogue, Karlie owns W, and Tree is an expert at shutting down unwanted stories. Any publication that wants future access to Taylor or Karlie will play ball, because why wouldn’t they? No-one is that invested in linking Karlie to a past beard forever, and no-one wants to bully a newborn child over a connection insiders will know isn’t even real. Sure, Scooter and his Page Six sock puppets will probably churn out articles stirring the pot, but that’s nothing new. The girls can ignore it or deflect attention, as they do now. 

3) Stage three of the plan sees the resurgence of “Kaylor” as a thing people are shipping. Hardcore fans will obviously know they’ve been together all along, but the wider public will start to wonder if Taylor has deeper feelings for Karlie, or if Karlie left her husband because she hopes to “get back together with” Taylor and take another go at their 2014 relationship. People start to link past songs to Karlie and speculate that lingering feelings for her “best friend” are what has stopped Taylor locking it down with J*e. J*e is boring and only seen on miserable pap walks with Taylor, but Karlie is seen hanging out with her and their friends in happy, seeming domesticity. People begin to talk about how much like the old carefree Taylor Tay seems again. The sunshine effect in full swing. 

4) Eventually Toe break up and Kaylor are revealed to be in a relationship. You’ll never please the homophobes but by now most fans are happy for Taylor. Taylor, who has de facto raised the baby since birth, jokes that she’s “daddy”. Karlie gives a more serious interview about what a wonderful parent Taylor is and how she has always considered her as much the baby’s mom as she is, because she was there all along and never gave up or walked away. She won’t be drawn on her ex husband but does make a statement about “what a great influence” Taylor is on their child. Etc etc. By now we’re a few years out from the Trump administration and J*sh is still known and disliked, but is hardly a household name. He was only ever “famous” (I use the term loosely) for being Karlie’s beard. 

People can disagree with me on this. Yes, his family are odious and will be in trouble for years to come, probably. But J*sh has always been a fringe member. He’s not Jared or Ivanka, who people really know and hate. He’s more like his father - people know he’s shady like the rest of them, but most people couldn’t immediately pick his face out of a line up, and they don’t know the details. I’m sorry, but it’s true. The general public don’t care about Jerk half as much as Kaylors do. Once he loses his celebrity connections he’ll fade from public consciousness. You think I’m kidding, but I’m not. How many people reading this right now would know if Dick Cheney passed them in the street? Not many, I’m guessing. Time passes and memory fades. People will “know” he’s the father, but in a fuzzy way, and soon enough it will fade to the point where this is brought up as surprising information. People won’t even remember she was married to him. It’ll become weird trivia that no-one really wants to talk about anyway, because it seems disrespectful. 

5) At this point, people either assume Jerk has a private relationship with the child, or they notice how Karlie never ever talks about him and speculate that he’s estranged from the child. It’s likely Karlie and Taylor would then go down the route of having Taylor officially adopt the baby at this point, though a public marriage would probably predate that, and all these things take time to roll out and seem natural. Even U-Hauling it!

If J*sh is smart, he’ll keep quiet during all of this. If Kaylor were smart, they would have engineered reciprocal NDAs, where Karlie can’t reveal their marriage was fake, but Jerk can never speak about the baby in return. And I think he might go along with this policy of silence. Remember, what he was always getting out of the arrangement with Karlie was that he appeared straight. Why throw all that away? He won’t want any real involvement with the baby, because it isn’t actually his. But it suits him that people think he got a woman pregnant, and it suits him that he can pretend to be a dad. Just “a private dad” who doesn’t see his kid much. Yes, we might get some annoying stunts where he tries to pretend, but if Karlie and Taylor continue to never give him any oxygen, it’ll eventually reach a stage where people can choose their own version of reality. Some people will think he’s involved and some won’t, but most people frankly won’t care either way. 

And I do think that’s the ideal scenario for both of them. Sure, Karlie could eventually leak gossip stories suggesting he’s not the dad. But that would be a hit to her reputation at a time when she is actively trying to rebuild it. WE might all be passionately anti-Jerk and gleeful at the idea of a cheating narrative, but I don’t think it would go down so well with the wider public. He may be from a scummy family but he’s always been viewed as “the one who’s not as bad”, and Karlie still made the apparent choice to marry him. Even if he was scum it would look bad to treat him like that after pretending she loved him .To say that she cheated with some meaningless random guy and got knocked up by him, and this other dude has never even been involved with the kid … . I won’t mince words here. It would make Karlie look terrible. People won’t be saying “ha ha he got what he deserved”, they’d be saying “ wow, Karlie is a sloppy mess”, “wow, how cruel to get knocked up behind her husband’s back”, and finally “wow, Karlie seems so unstable, she’ll treat Taylor badly too and bring trouble down on her head. She probably only even got back with her because she didn’t want to be alone. Taylor should RUN!“ 

This is NOT the impression they want people to have of Karlie. Which brings me to: 

6) Karlie’s reputation has suffered enough, and Taylor knows it. Taylor is no stranger to pivots, and she’s no stranger to playing the long game. What’s most important to her at this stage? I think it’s that she gets to live a free and open life with the woman she loves and the child they’re raising together. I don’t think she cares who is assumed to be, basically, the sperm donor. She will be daddy with this plan, and that’s what counts. So yeah, I think she would go for it. It’s a sacrifice I think she would make. 

And really, if he’s not involved in the baby’s life, is it even a sacrifice? We all talk about the “association” around here, but the child won’t have any actual contact with him and Taylor can freeze out any mention of him in the media. There is no actual threat to the child that I can see. Letting people assume he’s the father is NOT the same as letting him into the baby’s life. Kaylor not correcting people’s assumptions doesn’t mean they’re going to actively stunt with him. They can just choose to say nothing, the way they did with the “feud”. 

What’s the worst that will happen if people assume the baby has K*shner DNA but is estranged from the family? Seriously, people. Give me answers.

Not just “I don’t want people to think Taylor’s baby has his icky genes”. Because genes don’t make a person and they don’t necessarily make a family either. Taylor’s love and parenthood would not be ANY less if it was assumed she was the adoptive mom with no biological link to the baby. The baby would not be assumed genetically evil for having a few chromosomes from that awful family. Tr*mp’s own sister has been one of his biggest critics, remember? Genetics don’t dictate your politics or your moral compass.Only a fool would actually seriously accuse an innocent baby of being some kind of devil spawn, just because they thought it was Jerk’s. 

The K*shners can’t claim or take the baby. They can’t force Karlie and Taylor to stunt with them. So there’s no “using the baby to whitewash Jerk’s reputation”. There’s no putting the baby in danger. And the media aren’t going to bully the baby, because it’s poor practice and would make them look terrible, as well as costing them potentially lucrative future relationships with Karlie and Taylor. 

Taylor isn’t “letting Jerk take credit for her baby” either. Not if they refuse to stunt and if it plays out the way I described. Taylor will eventually get recognition as the baby’s real other parent, while Jerk is phased out. Taylor is patient. For the end game I believe she could stand a few months of this. 

 I’ve turned it over and over in my head and this is the only realistic solution I can see. All our other theories - Karlie pretends to be Taylor’s surrogate, Karlie pretends she slept with someone else, Karlie and Taylor expose the fake marriage, all of those theories - they all seem like wishful thinking. They would never be credible outside our tiny fandom of people who want any memory of Jerk purged forever. (Not possible. The Jerklie history will always exist on the internet, just like Taylor’s supposed “relationship” with Calvin.) We just have to let it go. Separate our heightened negative feelings from the actual likely long term consequences. 

This is what will probably happen, if we’re being really sensible and honest with ourselves. We need to stop being so absolutist and thinking it’s the end of the world, because it really doesn’t have to be. It can be just a bump in the road instead. I think we’d all be a lot happier if we adjusted our outlook about this possibility, to be honest. This all or nothing way of thinking is creating so much unhappiness and stress, I hate to see it. We need to just breathe! 

I truly believe we won’t get everything we want - but good things are coming. 

This is so long, sorry! But I had a lot to say. 

Yours, 

let’s call me, Pragmatic Anon

[the-cocky-bitch]

Ok, I guess this episode of Loki was mildly improved. I only disliked a few things, like everything Loki and everything to do with him. They have really decided to make him a basic classless unfunny joke, huh. Everything about him is wrong and makes for a really tedious watch. I feel like this show will ruin Loki for any future marvel movies. He was one of the most compelling villains (and anti-heroes, on occasion), right there with Erik Killmonger and maybe Hela and Vulture. By that, I mean complex villains, who do truly horrible things and who you want to see defeated, see justice served for what they’ve done, but also some of their beliefs or motives ring true with you. Now all that complexity feels gone, or at the very least, vastly diminished.

Even his body language is wrong. I might have to rewatch the movies to compare (if this show doesn’t kill any enjoyment I have for the character), but he is usually much more agile, much more graceful and much better hidden in the shadows. True, he moves in the shadows a lot to create more drama for his showy reveals, but as the God of Chaos those dramatic reveals were part of the charm. There was a sleek style, both when moving and when attacking, almost stalking at times, his movements were more contained and inward-drawn, his body language was careful and more controlled, like someone who remained vigilant (before his mental break and megalomaniac episode, and even then it’s still there, just more obscured) and watched his back. Like someone who was used to watching his own back, even when fighting with allies. His movements here in the show feel clunky and too much over-the-top for no reason. When he fights, he is efficient, but not the cunning and contained style he used to favour, but more brute force. He is still graceful, but I don’t see anything of his predisposition to ambushes, to take out his opponents by surprise, to cleverly use distractions and illusions and slip a knife in someone’s back.

I think one of the things that threw me off the most for some reason was the repetition of the pose where both his hands are on his waist, elbows flared out and feet widely spread. What is even that? That has never been part of Loki’s body language, doesn’t fit with either his movements in the shadows, his grabs for power, his dramatic moments, or even his despondent or vengeful moments. It doesn’t fit with any of his casual body language, either. He’s always been elegant, and his movements calculated (again, unless he was in a traumatic moment, or in a power grab moment). The overuse of these encompassing and dramatic movements and poses for no reason make them lose their potency, and makes them feel so jarring every time I see them. Another thing, what’s with the constant fake laugh every time he is caught in an act (which is a lot) and he turns around to face the person who saw him this time? It’s like he expect that chuckle that is meant to sound condescending, but just comes off as fake and delusional, to what, stop people in their track? And he is subsequently stunned when, shockingly, his “brilliant” plan doesn’t work.

Also, what was that with the alcohol and getting drunk? We’ve never seen Loki drink so much, not even on Asgard in Thor 1, at the feats. We’ve seen him sip alcohol, but I rather got the impression at the time that he disdained the warriors who got so drunk and so loud and unaware, though, I admit, that might have just been disdain for the permeating warrior culture as a whole. But Loki would have never got so drunk in enemy territory. He should have reacted like Sylvie, and been on his guard and looking for openings, instead of exposing them like that. I keep expecting Loki to be looking for some advantage, some angle to play, but he just...doesn’t. He just bungles his way into messes and doesn’t even try to wriggle himself out, like we’ve seen him do (Loki always got into a lot of messes, but he also got out of a lot of them). He’s acting like a bottom-barrel version of Thor from before Thor’s punishment and subsequent growth, but even worse and without any of Thor’s good character traits. No charm when talking to people, no leadership skills, nothing. Loki also doesn’t have any motivation, nothing that particularly drives him, no complex desires, just go with the flow.

I think the writers must have been trying for Ragnarok!Loki, because that movie was so much fun and got popular real fast. But if that’s what they’re trying to do, they’re a long way off. Ragnarok!Loki was much better thought out. I felt like that was much more natural, a nice character progression for him, where he still looks after number one, but his traumas weren’t so fresh, he was free of Asgard prison and Asgardian expectations, he was having fun. Since Thor had grown, he no longer took Loki’s baits and just reacted with good humour, which forced Loki to face that he might miss the closeness he had with Thor. A lot of people have written excellent essays on why Loki in Ragnarok was brilliant, why it was so important that it was him who started the destruction of the Asgard for what the imperialistic culture had done to him, and they’ve done it much more eloquently than I ever could, so I’ll leave it at that. But all those things in Ragnarok make sense, his more light-hearted behaviour makes sense in the circumstances, and he still delivers powerful emotional moments. But here there is nothing to explain his behaviour and the emotional moments fall flat, because they’ve been trivialized and used too often.

I have a massive issue with the scene where Loki was talking about Frigga. Um, excuse me, but the line “She was good. Purely decent” is so incredibly out of place and so patently untrue, that I had to rewind the scene just to make sure I’ve heard correctly. She might have loved Loki, Loki might have loved her, and he might have softened towards her through all her visits and never giving up on him and then her death might have deeply hurt him, but I would never accept a line like that. His relationship with her might have been much better and much less complicated than his relationship with Odin, or even Thor, she might have been the one to mostly support him and teach him magic and apparently encourage him that he would be able to do anything, but still she remained silent. She remained silent about his heritage in all his years growing up, about his treatment by Odin, about the constant unfavourable comparisons with Thor. She never stopped people from talking about Jotuns as though they are monsters around Loki, even though she must have realized that it’s inevitable that he would learn the truth. She just stayed silent and/or supported Odin publicly, even if she disagreed with him in private. She only stepped up after Loki was imprisoned, that was when she finally decided she would fight for her son and won’t stop. True, Loki was deeply grieved and changed by her death, but part of that was that she died. There would have been a much longer and harder road to full reconciliation if she wanted to repair her relationship with her son that her silence damaged. So for a Loki who never experienced her finally fighting for him, relentlessly visiting him and talking with him, to say that line is absurd. He might grieve when he saw her die and learned that he led the intruders to her, that might soften his bitterness, but it is still wildly out of character for him to say Frigga was purely decent. I would have expected him to look pained, to refuse to speak of her, to say how he loves her, but everything is twisted up, how it’s incredibly complicated. If you’ve spent so long loving someone, you still love them, even when the relationship breaks, even when you hate them for what they’ve done or what they’ve been complicit to. I understand complicated feelings about family. I would have loved to see that here, Loki looking torn, simultaneously grieving for his mother, and still feeling the bitterness and betrayal of her silence. That would have given so much more complexity to him. But instead he went on to wax poetics about her without a hint of bitterness, or hurt. That was infuriating, and that’s with the fact that I actually enjoyed Frigga’s character.