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ashintheairlikesnow · 3 years

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Quite at Home in Hell

For @whumptober2021 day six & day 21: blood-matted hair & hunger

CW: Vampirism, blood drinking, noncon touch, creepy whumper, sadistic whumper, biting, captivity, dehumanizing language

Vampire Chris AU Masterlist | Follows directly from this piece

Thanks to @boxboysandotherwhump for helping me with the German & @alittlewhump for helping with the French!

1918, the Western Front of WWI

The prisoners are held in a small, hastily constructed sort of barracks far too close to the front lines.

Gefrieter Erich Eeten knows why, of course. The hope is that his own people will hesitate before they blast this bit of dirt apart, that they will be concerned enough about killing their fellow soldiers that they’ll give up a few key moments of pause to the French, the Americans, and the British. Give them the advantage in a firefight.

They want to shield themselves with the bodies of the men in this tent, unwashed and dirty, who are exhausted from a day spent digging trenches for their enemies to hide in.

He can’t exactly blame the Allied powers for it.

It’s a brilliant bit of strategy, if less and less effective as men on both sides become so battle-hardened that they cease to care about their own lives, let alone each other. Still. He’d almost rather be at one of the true POW camps further away from the front lines, where the Red Cross at least comes to check on their treatment.

Here, so close to the front, there is no one keeping watch on what happens to them at all… and the longer the war draws on, the more viciously they kill each other, the more the prisoners kept here too far for oversight feel like they are teetering at the edge of some terrible invisible cliff.

There’s a stiff breeze outside the tent, whipping the heavy, waterproofed canvas edges. They’re flapping a little, making a sound that Erich will one day hear in his nightmares. The cold sneaks in through the slight space between tent and ground, and the men in here are huddled together for warmth, sharing the meager blankets they are given.

At least, though, their captors are officially the French.

Say what you will about the blasted frogs, they never deny their prisoners a nip of strong cognac to help hold off the cold. The Americans, on the other hand, seem to be laboring under an enforced lack of good liquor, not just for prisoners but for their own soldiers, too. That seems a worse crime than nearly any other, in circumstances like this. To force a man to be a cruel killer without even a nip or three to soothe his conscience… to Erich, it sounds like brutality.

There’s a bit of a scuffle outside the tent, and the prisoners look up. Erich is at the back, leaning back against the rough frame of a cot he sleeps on at night, cards in his hands wrapped in strips of bandage cloth just for warmth. What happened to his gloves, he’s no idea. Probably one of the Allies took them for a souvenir.

The canvas wraps work well enough.

“Au garde-à-vous, prisonniers! Sur vos pieds!” Erich knows the voice - it’s the main guard of the tent they sleep in, a man named Alain who looks entirely too old for war. Here he is, anyway, all moustache and silvering hair, pulling open the entrance of the tent, moving the flap aside.

Erich glances left and then right, meeting the eyes of his fellow prisoners, and the half-dozen of them that share this single small tent push heavily to their feet, shifting apart as much as the tent will allow, hands behind their back.

His stomach dips, a low drumbeat of dread alongside his heart. Something tells him this isn’t a social call he wants to be part of.

He’s even more certain when a tall, thin American steps into the entrance, nearly silhouetted by the dim, barely-there light behind them. Their hair is long, in a loose plait with parts undone, and their eyes gleam, briefly seeming to glow in the dark. Erich is reminded of his mother’s cat, who would stalk mice at night and whose eyes did just the same when light hit them.

He feels very… mouselike.

They wear a medic’s uniform, but it’s a little tattered. There are unrepaired bullet holes through the heavy woolen tunic, and they move with grace and disdain for how heavy wet wool must be, how itchy and uncomfortable. As if it simply doesn’t matter to them.

Because, of course, it doesn’t. The damn thing is a walking corpse, baring fangs in a grisly smile.

“Hello, soldiers,” They say, in a voice that isn’t quite a purr. “You all look a fright.”

“Verdammte Blutsauger,” Lukas Müller mutters to his right.

Erich hates the bloodsuckers. Everyone does. They come with the Americans, monsters brought from the shadows as a kind of secret weapon. Erich has never seen vampires out in the open before - back home, they are creatures of hiding. They live in cellars and basements and houses with the windows painted in thick matte black. They sweep along the streets at night, a risk for anyone who stays out too late.

But they’re not part of anything.

Here, they’re death itself, demons quite at home in hell.

Oh, sure, the Americans claim they use them only for bringing the injured back to safety - and some of them, he’s sure, are kept to that purpose. Some kind of ability to deny the truth of them, if there are enough seen doing only what the official story claims.

Erich, though, has seen one dispatching wounded German soldiers one by one left behind in a field, killing them before they can be recovered by their own people. He’s seen one with fangs buried in the throat of a man who would otherwise have lived. They’re listed as medics, but those things are what keeps the Germans on their own side of the battle lines after dark, and everyone knows it.

His own side brings canisters of poison gas. The Americans respond with an army laced around its edges in abominations the gas can’t touch.

The vampire sighs, faintly disappointed. “No good morning for me from my audience?”

Erich speaks the best English out of them all - his grandmother was English, taught it to his father in the cradle, who taught it to him. It’s made him more or less the spokesman for his small group of prisoners, and for the larger group when they are moved and briefly allowed to interact with the others. He clears his throat, stepping forward slightly. Lukas and Vilhelm, on his other side, nudge him just a little with their shoulders. It’s meant to be support, he supposes.

He feels like he’s being pushed onto a target painted on the floor, one invisible only to him.

“Good morning,” Erich says, voice flat, letting his accent roll far more heavily off his tongue than it needs to, turning good into gut. It’s always good to let the enemy believe you know less than you really do, so he pretends that English comes with difficulty and not ease. “Should you not turn to ash?”

Their eyebrows raise just slightly, not quite in amusement, and they give a brittle little laugh. “First off, Fritz, that’s a myth. Secondly, it’s not even morning. Probably close to evening now, honestly.”

Erich rolls his eyes. Lukas mutters something under his breath next to him, but the slight creaking of their boots seems to cover it too much to be understandable. Erich sighs, heavily. “Then why did you have us say to you good morning, Blutsauger?”

“Because it’s funny that you don’t know what time it is, of course. All right, who here is Fritz, who is Hans, and who am I just going to call Kraut?”

“No one here is named Hans and no one is Fritz, fangs.” Erich tips his chin down slightly, a lock of greasy brown hair falling into his eyes. “May you drown in holy water.”

He spits at the vampire’s feet.

He feels a pang of regret when the vampire turns to look at Alain, the French guard and points back at Erich, cheerful. “I want that one. He’s rude.”

“Das ist pech,” Lukas whispers.

When Alain simply stares at them blankly - and Erich knows Alain speaks English, they’ve spoken before in a tongue they had in common when neither spoke the other’s mother-tongue - the vampire groans. They don’t seem to know Alain is pretending not to understand them. “Fine. Let’s try this again. Je veux cet homme, s'il vous plaît.”

Alain’s expression tightens a little. He nods, and he won’t look Erich in the eyes as he draws the entrance open a little wider. “Emmenez-le alors.”

“Merci beaucoup,” The vampire says, giving a little bow. Erich backs up, but there isn’t anywhere to go, and none of them is armed. Besides, any resistance is met with removal of meals, with being denied the smallest comforts that make this bearable. With the possibility of all of them being handed over to a vampire, not just one.

This war had been civilized, in some ways, before the Americans brought their monsters.

It’s not actually true, but in this moment it comforts him to pretend it, to have a place to put his furious disgust as the vampire’s thin, long fingers close around his arm and yank him forwards with inhuman strength. They’re clicking their tongue against the top of their mouth in a strange animal way. Erich thinks again of his mother’s cat, making just that sound watching birds outside the windows.

“May your hands be pressed into the holy cross,” Erich snaps as he’s forced out into the freezing humid air outside the tent. There are others walking around - a war camp is never less than controlled chaos, no matter the time of day - but none of them will look at him. No one acknowledges him, although they’ve all seen this before. They know what’s going to happen here.

“Je déteste ça,” Alain mutters.

A bell is rung, clanging in a discordant note, and soldiers move into the POW tents. Erich is led towards a pole in the center of the ring of prisoner tents, something that a half-century ago might still have been a flogging post, a punishment for mutinous men.

“Crosses don’t really harm us,” The vampire says, careless and casual. “Very little does, actually. I’m a big fan of garlic, for instance. Silver, though…” They hum, dragging a fingernail over Erich’s wrist. “That hurts.”

He jerks his hand back and free, only to have the vampire laugh, bright and brilliant, and grab him again, spinning him around until they’re behind him, chest pressed to his back, using that demon strength to twist his arms up his back until his bones creak and ache, forcing him forwards towards the pole.

“I hope you have silver shoved down your throat,” Erich manages, but his heart is pounding in fear as the vampire grabs his hair and jerks his head to the side, forcing his cheek against the rough-hewn wood. Splinters bite into his skin and he grunts as his arms are moved, forced to encircle the pole. His wrists are tied with rope, leaving him looking a little ridiculous, as if he decided today to go for a hug.

Another rope goes around his shoulders, keeping him in this awkwardly pressed position. He tries to kick back, pulling viciously, but then his ankles come next. The rope goes from them to small metal hooks driven hard into the ground, keeping his legs more than shoulder-width apart. He can’t kick, or even balance himself. He must rely entirely on the pole he’s tied to in order to stay upright.

“I’m going to enjoy you,” The vampire murmurs.

Behind Erich, the sounds of a crowd gathering begin. Soft mumbles, exhalations of surprise and disgust. He closes his eyes against the rush of heat he feels - more rage than tears - knowing the prisoners are being brought out to witness this, to be shown what could happen to them next.

It does an excellent job of making them grateful for every day it’s not.

The French commander of the POW camp is barking a running list of commands to his men, but Erich doesn’t speak enough French to clearly understand them. Someone comes close by behind him, and he jolts as there’s a clap to his back. There’s a laugh behind him, not the vampire but someone else.

He manages to see from the corner of his eyes. A different American, of course. Comfortable enough with the vampire to get this close to them.

“Isn’t this a sorry sight,” The American says, and laughs. “What’s the prize for, fangs?”

The vampire lifts their hand, gently brushing Erich’s hair from his eyes. He spits in their face, this time, and is gratified by a flash of very real anger that briefly overtakes their constant amusement. They slowly wipe the spit away, then clean their hand - sort of - on Erich’s uniform.

It’s so dirty they’re probably even less clean after that than they were before.

“Reported a desertion. Now I get fresh food.” They lean down, meeting Erich’s furious hazel eyes. “I’m so hungry, Fritz. All the time. Imagine being surrounded by schnitzel and cabbage as far as the eye can see, and you’re not supposed to eat your fill. Imagine how empty you would feel.”

“Fick dich.”

“What, you won’t even curse at me in English anymore?” The vampire pouts, lower lip sticking out. He hates them more than he’s hated anyone during this godforsaken war. “Come on, you have to understand how hard this is for me, right?”

Erich ignores them, jerks his wrists again, trying to yank himself free of the ropes through sheer force. His back already is aching from being slightly bent forward, his thigh muscles stretched. He does the only thing he can think of - he slowly, with effort, drags his face along the wood and manages to turn away, and look the other direction.

“Well, fine. I suppose you’ll be mad at me for acting like you all eat schnitzel and cabbage, too,” The vampire says behind him. He doesn’t dignify them with an answer. He fixes his eyes, instead, on a point in the dark roiling clouds in the sky, above the remaining trees.

“The prisoners are well-positioned to witness,” A French officer states, speaking with a light, dancing accent but without the difficulty and hesitancy some of the regular infantry have. “You may feed when ready, Private Saathoff.”

That gets Erich’s attention. “Saathoff?”

“That’s right.” The vampire laughs, stepping up behind him. Their fingers move through the hair that curls, grown a little too long, over the back of his neck. He shudders with disgust at the intimacy of it. Their mouth moves close to his ear, but there is no heat of breath. Only the brush of lips. “Ich bin Deustcher, genau wie du.”

“Nothing like me,” Erich grinds out with his teeth gritted together so hard his jaw is already aching. He presses his forehead into the rough wooden pole and closes his eyes. He takes a deep breath.

If he’s going to die…

“Vater unser im Himmel,” he begins, halting. He hasn’t seen the inside of a church since he was fourteen, and that was twelve years ago now. Still, the words to the Lord’s Prayer come easily, more muscle memory than thought. “Geheiligt werde dein Name. Dein Reich komme, Dein Wille geschehe, wie im Himmel so auf Erden-”

“Zu jeder anderen Zeit hätte ich dich als Haustier behalten.” They use his hair to jerk his head back, and their fangs jam into his neck with a flash of sudden agony.

It’s a white-hot pain that races down his spine to the very tips of his toes, and Erich screams, the sound strangled and thin but still echoing, bouncing off of trees and tents and back into his mind, crashing like the shells that slam into the earth.

Lukas jerks forwards as if to run to help him and is pushed back by one of the French soldiers, their expression set in a grim line. They have to twist Lukas’s arms behind his back to hold him as he shouts, angrily, that this isn’t fair, it’s against the laws of conduct.

There’s laughter, at that, from their captors.

The other prisoners grumble and shift uncomfortably, look at anything but Erich whenever they can, but they can’t escape the sound of his horror, of his pain.

There’s no pulse of the much-spoken-of venom. There’s no numbness to drift in, there’s no fog to cloud out his awareness of what is happening to him. Every muscle of Erich’s body is tensed tight enough to snap the bones they wrap around, the veins standing out in his throat as if giving them a roadmap of where the food can be found.

He didn’t know vampires could choose not to use the venom.

He didn’t know they could make it feel like this.

When his scream dies, he can’t get enough breath to make another. All he can do is let out high-pitched, thin whimpers and cries. Spots dance before his eyes. Beneath the sound of his heart pounding in a sudden panic to push more blood faster to replace what is being lost, he can feel - can hear - a low rumbling sound against his back.

Erich has heard the rumors that vampires purr, and now he knows they aren’t rumors at all.

He can feel it right through his back, just barely. It’s a vibration that would be pleasant if it didn’t seem to be somehow making everything hurt even worse, waking up his nerves the way the venom is supposed to deaden them. Their hands are closed around his ribs, pressing the tips of their fingers rhythmically against them, as if playing a piano, as if he is dough to be kneaded, as if he isn’t human at all.

As if he’s nothing but a field mouse that found his way into the wrong house, and the vampire is the housecat who has waited too long for a living toy to torment.

There is no prayer, in pain like this. There is no thought beyond the body’s fight for survival and the mind wanting to flee from it, if surviving means this feeling will not end. There is nothing but the feeling of his blood being pulled forcefully out of his body, nothing but his nerves screaming to escape it, nothing but the bite of the ropes that ensure he can do no more than jerk in his bonds and choke on his agony.

It feels like forever - and like a moment - when their fangs pull free, their cool rough tongue lapping at the wounds to close them, purring against his ear with contentment. Their fingers knead into his skin a little bit longer, drawing the moment out as he slumps against the wooden pole he’s tied to. He’s only standing because of the ropes.

Pain rolls through him, breaking against the edges of his body from the inside, like the smaller waves after a storm falling onto a beach already strewn with debris. He slumps. His own breath is a rasping wheeze, taking far more effort than it should.

Nein, Erich, Erich stirb nicht��” Lukas’s voice comes from somewhere so far away, filtering through the noise in Erich’s mind slowly. He can’t even begin to form a response. His mouth won’t answer his commands. It only hangs open, panting, pulling in the chilly air over his tongue. He starts to shiver as the breeze hits the cold sweat in his hair and on his neck, cuts through his uniform somehow.

He doesn’t have enough blood left to warm himself.

Their tongue licks up his neck behind his ear, matting his own blood into his hair there, sticky and hot. It starts to cool and dry immediately in the cold air. Erich’s stomach twists.

“Oh, he won’t die,” The vampire coos, petting through his hair slowly. Their nails scratch at his scalp. “Not today.” Their mouth presses back against his ear. “Thanks for the meal, Erich. And for being so entertaining. Maybe I’ll find you after the war. I’ll buy you a beer… and some schnitzel.”

They push themself away from him, turning away to wipe a bit of blood from the corners of their mouth, and walk with a jaunty step through an opening that appears in the ring of watching prisoners, whose eyes follow them with apprehension and no small amount of fear.

When Alain comes up to untie him, Erich simply collapses into the Frenchman’s arms as soon as he’s free of the ropes. Lukas is allowed to move up to stand at his other side, putting Erich’s limp left arm around his shoulders, while Alain supports his right. Erich lets his head fall into Lukas’s shoulder, hitching his breath as he forces down a sob.

“Wh… why do you let them do this?” He asks, his English slurred with the exhaustion that means he is dragged with his boots carving paths through the mud back towards the tent.

Alain is silent until Erich is dropped onto his cot, the hard frame digging into Erich’s back right through the thin mattress. He glances over his shoulder, the three of them alone in here for the moment, and then looks back.

“It is believed that this is how we will win,” He says, and pats Erich’s hand. “My apologies. I do not believe in the monsters, but I am not the one to run this war.”

“None of us are,” Erich says, weakly. He closes his eyes. “We are only the ones who must fight in it.”

There’s a pause, and Alain’s exhale is audible in the quiet tent. “I will ensure you are given extra meat rations tonight, and I will find you some schnapps. Essaye de dormir, maintenant, si tu peux,” he says with soft regret lacing his voice. Then there is a shuffle of footsteps, and he’s gone.

Lukas shifts and sits with his back to the cot, in the same position Erich was in before. He swallows, picking up the abandoned cards from the game they’d been playing, looking over Erich’s hand. “You’d have won, you know, on the next hand,” He says in German, before he reaches out to grab the others’ cards and reshuffle the deck.

“Do I still get my… my winnings?” Erich can barely move his lips to speak. He’s so tired. So, so tired. He can feel his hands starting to shake, now that it’s over, the trembling moving slowly up his limbs, stuttering his breathing.

“My share of the liquor? Not on your life.” Lukas pauses, and then his tone gentles as he looks Erich over again. “You know what... of course you can. You’ll need warmth. What did the bloodsucker say to you, anyway? I couldn’t hear.”

Erich thinks about the promise to find him after the war, about the way they spoke into his ear as if he were little more than a toy top to be spun at their command. In another time, I’d keep you for a pet, they had whispered, before they bit down.

He shakes his head, slowly. “Lies,” He answers, and feels the softer-edged darkness of sleep begin to take him.

“Lies?”

“I hope… I hope they were lies.”

For the moment, at least, he is too exhausted by the present to feel terror for the future.

@mylifeisonthebookshelf @insaneinthepaingame @keeper-of-all-the-random-things @burtlederp @finder-of-rings @newandfiguringitout @astrobly @endless-whump @pretty-face-breaker @gonna-feel-that-tomorrow @doveotions @boxboysandotherwhump @oops-its-whump @cubeswhump @whump-tr0pes @downriver914 @whumptywhumpdump @whumpiary @orchidscript @nonsensical-whump @outofangband @what-a-whump @thefancydoughnut

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blogs-of-our-lives · 5 years

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I’m sorry to say this, but this may very well be the last of the Blogs of Our Lives post.

I’ve had a lot of fun writing for this, but it’s just not what I want to do with my life. And as much as I enjoy it, it’s taking time away from other creative projects. For my tens of viewers, it’s not the end of a chapter, but the beginning of a new one. Thank you all for reading, and believing that I can make something wonderful and funny out of trash. I just want you all to know that deep down, from the bottom of my heart, no matter how much love I have for you all, I will never ever ever love you as much as I hate Brightburn.

Brightburn suuuuuuuucks. It sucks sucks sucks. I couldn’t wait until later in the post to say that. I had to lead with how trash the movie was, and now I’m going to spend the next couple pages explaining why it’s trash. It’s so bad that I – shitty movie connoisseur, who is making himself watch Days of our Lives and write about it – hated the movie so much that I decided to write a whole paper about it just to prevent someone else from being tricked into seeing it.

I will start with the only good thing about the movie. The concept. Brightburn is about a young kid (I’d estimate about sixth grade) who discovers he has super powers akin to that of a god. He has super strength, he has super speed, he can fly, he can shoot lasers out of his eyes, and he’s almost indestructible. Essentially Superman. It’s not a particularly original idea, but I was intrigued with the fact that the kid seemed to almost immediately become evil. This isn’t particularly farfetched. In fact, psychopathic traits are fairly common amongst children. The brain isn’t done developing, and in some senses the child is a psychopath. Kids simply grow out of it. Luckily, kids are small, they’re weak, they can’t drive, they can’t vote, and they can’t even get a movie ticket to an R rated movie like Brightburn, which I refuse to grant the respect of italicization. The amount of damage a kid could do is extremely limited. So the idea of a middle-schooler with superpowers is kind of terrifying. Imagine a child without empathy who you can kick your ass. If you tell them to go to bed, they can throw you through a wall. And it’s not a one in a million chance the kid will be a psychopath. Plus, when I was a kid I used to think when it rained somewhere it rained everywhere. It blew my mind that it was raining in my hometown but not in my friend’s town. When my dad was a kid he was terrified of this movie called Killdozer. About a bulldozer that came to life and killed people. In his words, “What are you going to do, hide from it? It’ll just bulldoze everything.” Kids are idiots.

Side note, I hope it’s not lost on anyone that I italicized Killdozer but not Brightburn. It’s intentional. I respect a movie about a killer bulldozer more than a $12 million movie.

Anyway, that was the only good part of the movie. The concept. Now I’m going to tear it apart, starting with the pacing. Nobody really knows or cares about the pacing when it’s done right. When it’s done wrong, the movies often feel like they stagnate or are rushed in parts. Brightburn is one of the worst examples I can think of. The buildup just drags on and on and on and on. By the time [SPOILER ALERT] Brendon (or whatever the fucking kid’s name is) turns evil, we had been sitting in that theater for a solid hour. Maybe more. That’s two thirds of the movie (including credits) that was spent just building up. So now, when we finally get the action payoff, it felt like the movie was rushing to the end. The kid destroys most of the house, kills four people, and then blows up a plane in like twenty minutes. It’s like trying to write on a piece of paper and running out of room so you have to make the letters smaller and smaller to fit on one page. But it’s a thousand times worse than that, because the paper had a set length. You could plan out where the letters needed to go and how big they can be. A movie isn’t made with a length in mind. So it’s like reading a sentence but the letters get smaller and smaller for no clear reason. It felt like they didn’t know how to end the movie so they just threw some crap together and tried to play it so fast we wouldn’t realize how trash it was.

On to the acting. I have no real complaints. The mom and the dad did pretty good jobs. Even the kid did a decent job. At times it was pretty weak, but I think most of that was on the writing.

Fuck the writing. The Chekov’s guns of the movie were stupid and obvious. In one of the first scenes, the mother whistles during a game of hide and seek in order to get him to whistle back, like an off-brand Marco Polo. My editor literally leaned over to me (like two minutes into the movie) and whispered “I bet that’s going to come back later.” It did. Later on in the movie, the dad comments to the mom that it was strange Braxton had never broken a bone or even got a cut. Like two scenes later, the kid finds his space ship and immediately cuts his hand on the metal. Sure enough, it comes back later in the film, in a way so stupid that I’m going to struggle to put it into words. The mother jumps to freedom from her house and somehow cuts her hand during the fall. She looks at the cut (which is shaped exactly like Bryson’s and positioned in the exact same place), looks at the barn where the spaceship is hidden, looks back at the cut, and says (I’m paraphrasing) “The spaceship! It’s the only thing that can hurt him.” The biggest sign of a bad writer is when the characters think about what they’re about to do, say what they’re about to do, and then do it. JUST DO IT. I remembered the garbage scene from earlier in the film that established the only thing that can hurt him. Who was that line for? Children who weren’t paying attention? The film was rated R. Maybe they assumed the only people they could trick into seeing this trash were too stupid to follow a plot. And yes, I’m one of the idiots they tricked into watching it. Jokes on them, now I’m tearing their movie apart on my blog with tens of readers.

I’ve told you guys about I, Frankenstein. The movie was worse than that. At least the writing in I, Frankenstein, while bad, followed a formula. There was never a point in which I rolled my eyes, it just in generally wasn’t particularly good. Brightburn, on the other hand, was aggressively bad. It was like all the different facets of a movie (acting, special effects, writing, pacing, visuals) had a competition to be the worst part of this dumpster fire of a film. I’m being too hard on the special effects. They were just wildly unmemorable, not actually bad. But somehow, incredibly, Brightburn was even worse than the sum of its parts. At a certain point, I looked up and started watching the blinking light of the fire alarm. There wasn’t really a pattern to it. I was fascinated. At another point, during the resolution of the movie, a man sitting behind me got out his phone and made a phone call. And you know what, I don’t blame him. It wasn’t like he was taking away from the experience. I was glad he was having more fun than me.

Something I didn’t realize until now, when I looked up Brightburn on Wikipedia to trash how much money went into making it ($6-12 million, so honestly they used the money pretty well), was that it’s called a “superhero horror film.” I took a class my last year in college about Horror as a genre, and the running theme of the class was the question what is horror? I’ll define horror as best as I can, and you are all free to agree or disagree as to whether or not it’s true. I personally do not consider Silence of the Lambs to be a horror film, though it is scary. It’s a crime film. Even if the film contained supernatural elements (like, say, if Hannibal Lecter was a ghost and rather than breaking out of prison he comes back to life), it would still be a crime film. On the other hand, I consider the movie Friday the 13th (the 1980 film with Kevin Bacon, not the trash remake) to be horror. Even if the film contained no supernatural elements, it would still be a horror film. Friday the 13th Part 1 doesn’t actually contain anything supernatural, but if I mentioned one that does (Parts 2-12) I wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity to remind everyone that a young Kevin Bacon not only dies in this movie, but also has a sex scene. It’s arguably his strongest performance.

Returning to my point, a universal part of horror seems to be the haunting. It doesn’t need to be a ghost haunting, it could be a human haunting as well. I’m sure it exists, but a movie about a stalker could easily be classified as horror, depending on the tone of the movie. Hell, The Gift was a great horror movie, and nothing supernatural or even particularly out of the ordinary took place. Looking at IMDB’s top 10 horror movies of all time, it lists The Evil Dead, The Exorcist, The Shining, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, Alien, The Thing, Nightmare on Elm Street (trash), Psycho, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Of these movies, I haven’t seen Psycho, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, or The Exorcist (at least not all the way through). In every single one of the films I have seen, the characters are haunted by some kind of being. In some movies, they’re hunted by it, and in others (particularly the Exorcist), they’re tormented by it. But either way, a haunting is an essential part of every movie. In Silence of the Lambs (IMDB rated it as the 14th best horror movie, naturally), the killer never haunts the characters. He’s a menace, a killer, and a danger to everyone, but he doesn’t haunt them.

Brando from Brightburn never haunts anyone, except for a ten second scene where he spies on his crush, which was honestly more cringey than creepy. So no, it’s not a superhero horror movie. It’s not a horror movie. If you want to call it anything, call it science fiction. The kid’s an alien, for Christ’s sake. Isn’t that like the number one test to see if you’re watching sci-fi? Right now, if you google “horror movies,” Brightburn is one of the first 10 images to appear. THIS IS UNNACEPTABLE.

I’m sure I’ve talked about this before, but horror has always been a trash genre. I don’t want to give off the impression that I’m the horror equivalent of a comic book nerd writing about how The Avengers ruined my childhood and it was all wrong because they got one detail wrong from the source material. [Side note: I really enjoyed Endgame, and at the time of writing this, it is the number one highest grossing film of all time, and honestly it deserves it more than the trash blue cat people movie. It was a really satisfying ending to one of the largest franchises of all time]. Even the golden years of horror, the Friday the 13ths and the Nightmare on Elm Streets and Halloween, are all just… pretty good. The writing was competent, the music and cinematography were original and not bad, but it’s not particularly scary, and it looks like every horror movie will eventually become that way, except for the ones that rely on cheap jump scares. That’s the nature of horror, I suppose. It preys on a current and relevant fear, and as that fear becomes irrelevant, so does the movie. So when I complain about modern horror, I complain about the cheap, shitty writing that goes into by uncreative and unoriginal people that disappoints everyone. Modern horror is an easy paycheck. It’s cheap and it’s surefire. The Brightburn garbage raised $30 million dollars on a budget of $6 million. Pet Semetary, Crawl, and Annabelle Comes Home raised a collective $366 million to a collective budget of $66 million. That is a fucking absurd return on investment. None of these movies (except for Crawl, kinda) did anything different. Pet Semetary was a remake. Annabelle Comes Home is a continuation of the Garbage Cinematic Uni-garbage-verse that spawned from The Conjuring. So horror has become a yearly money-maker for big production companies. Just put out some trash that will surprise (not scare) people, and watch the dollars roll in. Financially, this is the golden age of horror. They can make anything with a jump scare and make MILLIONS.

I don’t know what the point of all this is. I’m not telling the genre to do better, because it’s doing pretty fine. Midsommar and Us both got pretty good reviews. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark looks pretty good. It’s not like all the talent dried up. There’s still plenty of creative and original people working on horror movies, and they’re making some really good stuff. I guess it boils down to me hating Brightburn on a deep, personal level, and I’m not really sure why. I watch tons of trash. As I type this, I’m looking at my collector’s edition DVD set of Under the Dome. It’s garbage. Truly truly terrible. But there are scenes I liked. Shots I liked. It was made by people who were bad at what they do, but they were still creative. There’s this one episode where the government tries to blow up the dome, and everyone inside thinks they’re going to die. All the characters, thinking they have minutes left on earth, all finally do something. The plot unravels into something much, much, much simpler, as all the characters stop lying or trying to hide their motives. Everything untangles for just a moment, and after they survive the blast unharmed, it leaves the question what next? Sure, the conflicts were childish and silly, and the character arcs were (to put it nicely) poorly handled. But they tried to do something well, and for just a moment they struck gold. There’s nothing like that in Brightburn. There’s not a single scene that I can look at in the movie and say you’re on to something there. Keep working. If I were given the script and a blank check and told to write a better one, I would strip it down to the foundation. I wouldn’t rewrite it, I would delete everything except the core premise and start over.

It just really really hurts, having to type out that this movie was worse than Under the Dome.

I know it’s too late to convince anyone not to see Brightburn. And that’s fine. Sometimes the world moves too fast for you to make a change. But I just want you to know deep down how much I hate that movie. I resent it for wasting my time, my energy, and my money. It’s worse than Days of our Lives.

Fuck you, Brightburn.

Thank you for reading. It means a lot to me.

#brightburn #horror #superhero #movies #the end #fuck this movie

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faveficarchive · 5 years

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Creative License

By Ella Quince

Pairing: Xena/Gabrielle

Rating: PG-13

Synopsis: A very different take on the Warlord AU.

"Bring in the prisoner," growled the warlord.

Then, while waiting for her orders to be carried out, she paced impatiently in the tight confines of her field tent, stopping only when she heard the approaching sounds of muffled cursing and scuffling boots. By the time the guards had dragged a very noisy young woman into the tent and thrown her to the ground, the warlord had schooled her angular face into an impassive mask. Her body, however, was rigid with tension, adding an aura of menace to her already considerable height. Even her mane of hair, brushed into an ebony wave down her back, seemed to bristle with fury.

After a single glance upward, the prisoner's protests strangled into silence.

With slow deliberation, the warlord took note of the young woman's appearance: plump figure, worn skirt and faded blouse, a homely face framed by long, mousy blonde hair. She looked tired, and a little dusty, but otherwise hadn't suffered any harm at the hands of her captors.

The warlord dismissed the guards with a brusque gesture, her gaze still locked on her newly-won prize. Reaching down, she easily pulled the prisoner up onto her feet. Her calloused hand lingered on the young woman's wrist, then finally dropped away.

"So..." drawled the warlord, taking a polite step back from her captive, "you're Gabrielle, the bard from Potidea."

"Y-yes, that's me," said Gabrielle with a proud lift of her head. Unfortunately, her attempt at bravado was compromised by the slight trembling of her chin.

"I'm Xena... Warrior Princess. I think you've heard of me." The warlord's smile didn't reach the ice-blue of her eyes.

The prisoner nodded reluctantly, then flushed a deep, deep pink. "I...I...can explain."

"I don't want an explanation — I want you to stop."

"Stop? I can't stop! I'm a bard and those stories — "

"Those stories are making it very hard for me to do my job," said Xena, her mouth set in a grim line. "In fact, you're the worst threat I've ever faced."

"Me?" squeaked Gabrielle. She cleared her throat and continued at a more normal pitch. "But I'm... I'm just a wandering bard... you're a mighty—"

"Stop that!" roared Xena. "That's exactly what I'm talking about!" With a weary groan, she dropped down onto her camp bed. "All that 'mighty warrior' stuff — people are starting to take it seriously, for Hera's sake. At least once a month I get a challenge to my 'reputation.' Sometimes, if I'm lucky, that reputation works to my advantage — I've practiced that steely-eyed gaze you describe and it's scared a few combatants away before they even drew their blades."

"Really?" said Gabrielle, breaking into a delighted grin. Animation transformed her plain features into something approaching beauty. "That's great! I've always loved that look of—"

"BUT," cut in the warlord, "most of the time I have to fight them off."

"But you win!"

"Oh, yeah," said Xena with a harsh laugh. "There's nothing like having a few archers in the trees to keep the odds in my favor."

Gabrielle sank down onto a low bench across from the warlord. "You had them... shot?"

"Yes, little bard, I did. In the back, usually, so they wouldn't see the bolt coming."

"But how could you? That's not a fair fight!"

"If it was a fair fight," spat out Xena, "I'd be dead by now, because — your stories to the contrary — I'm not the best warrior in Greece. I'm not the best warrior in this gods-forsaken province. By Hades, I'm not even the best warrior among my own men."

A puzzled look crossed the young woman's face. "Then why do they follow you?"

Xena shrugged. "I'm a good administrator." She colored slightly at Gabrielle's incredulous look. "I can read — which most of them can't — and I'm very organized. I insist on a clean camp, with a decent cook, and I pay them on time. What most warlords don't understand about their armies is that soldiers get tired of life on the road, and little details, like having a comfortable place to take a crap, can forge more loyalty than epic conquests."

"Quality of life issues..." muttered Gabrielle pensively, then shook her head. "Nope, nope, I can't work with that. There's no drama in being a good administrator."

"Speaking of drama," said Xena in a peevish tone. "Every year you make my past bloodier and bloodier. That story about me impaling all those Amazons..." She shuddered. "Gave me the creeps. It's a damn good thing there aren't any Amazons near here or they'd have tracked me down and killed me for that massacre. And Hope and that Dahok demon gave me nightmares for weeks."

"Sorry about that," said Gabrielle contritely. "It's just that audiences expect so much from me now, and it was getting a little boring telling the same old tale about us traveling around Greece saving villagers from petty warlords."

"Is that why you had me drag you behind my horse?" demanded Xena. "Because you thought it was exciting? If I'd really done something like that — and you'd lived, which is highly unlikely — you should have run away from me! Fast! Instead you're still hanging around, business as usual." She shook her head. "That doesn't make any sense at all, dramatic or otherwise."

"I was getting to it!" said Gabrielle hotly. "I drafted this really wrenching reconciliation story, where we worked out all our problems..."

"And?"

"Well, it was too touchy-feely for the tavern crowds, so I shelved it for the next festival, and then never got back to it because I was working on another travel arc."

"To India?" asked Xena.

"Hey, you really do keep up! That's my newest material."

"I've never been to India," said Xena, a trifle wistfully. "Or Chin..."

She drew herself up, assuming a commanding air that was completely at odds with her next words. "In fact, I haven't done any of the things you claim I've done. So, bard, I can't help but wonder — why me?"

Gabrielle remained silent, her expression suddenly blank and unreadable. She really was plain looking, thought Xena, when she wasn't smiling. "Hey, come on, Gabrielle. You owe me."

"All right, all right." The young woman's voice was low, but melodious, as she explained. "A few years ago you rode into Potidea to barter for supplies for your men and...." she took a deep breath, "and you were the most amazing woman I'd ever seen. I wanted to follow you and learn to be a warrior just like you." Her face took on a pinched look. "Only I was too scared. I stayed in Potidea, dreaming, always just dreaming, about the life I could've had if I'd been brave enough to try. After awhile I began to tell other people my fantasies about that life — and they loved them. Sooo... I just kept elaborating on Xena and Gabrielle's adventures together. Travelers assumed I was a bard, talking about my real experiences with the Warrior Princess, and the tips got better and better. The next thing I knew, I could afford to leave Potidea and make a decent living traveling from town to town... and I owe it all you," she finished in a whisper.

"That's...uh...." Xena cleared her throat, "that's very flattering... but I'm not like your warrior princess. I'm not the least bit... dramatic."

Gabrielle smiled, and Xena observed once again that surprising transformation of the bard's features from plain to beautiful. "Actually, I'm not that disappointed. The Xena I've created for my stories would probably be a little too intimidating, unless I was as fearless as the Gabrielle of my stories... which I'm not. In fact, you're a much nicer warlord than I expected."

"That's probably because I'm not a very successful warlord," sighed Xena. "I get by, but not much more than that. And now, because of all those tales of yours, towns are starting to expect my army to help them with problems rather than conquer them."

"Oh, but that's wonderful!"

"Mostly they need a hand with road construction or plumbing; sometimes we save a harvest from the ravages of an early frost."

Gabrielle looked a little crestfallen. "Those quality of life issues again. What is it with people? Everyone insists on being so... mundane. That's why I take a little creative license with my plotlines."

The warlord scowled darkly. "Like implying I've bedded half the warriors in Greece? As if. Just for the record, the ones who aren't sleeping with other men would rather bed a tavern wench who wears homespun linen instead of leather. All this," she waved a hand at her leather and armor, "is equipment. If soldiers thought it was sexy they'd be too distracted to survive their first battle."

"Interesting point. That never occurred to me. I just figured, since you're so beautiful—"

"Which reminds me," said Xena gruffly. "That's another one of those rumors that's making my life difficult. Everyone thinks we're a couple, so they get indignant if I'm too friendly with the locals."

"I didn't start that rumor," said Gabrielle hastily. "It was other bards who just sort of... assumed... and then they took my material and added these... twists to the narrative." She blushed and muttered, "Very inventive really... if you go in for that sort of thing." She peered up from beneath her bangs with a shy look of curiosity. "Do you?"

"Do I what?"

"Go in for...that kind of thing?"

The warlord swallowed hard, then said, "I move around a lot. Makes it kind of difficult to keep a relationship going."

"You haven't answered my question."

"In case you've forgotten," snapped Xena, "I'm the warlord and this is my interrogation. So stop changing the subject — which is you and your infernal stories!"

The bard cringed, her shoulders hunching as if to deflect a blow, but she relaxed a little when she realized that Xena's fuming wasn't going to erupt into violence. "Funny, I never expected you to take much notice of me... or my stories... but if you did, I always hoped that you'd be... pleased." Her voice seemed to choke up for a moment. "Anyway, I'm really sorry I've caused you so much trouble, and I promise to stop now."

Oddly enough, Gabrielle's concession didn't appear to please the warlord.

"But how will you make money?"

"I'll work with some of my other characters, maybe Meg and Joxer."

"You'll starve," predicted Xena dourly.

"Okay, so they're not too popular, but I'll get by. After all, I can't continue with my Xena chronicles now that I know they're hurting you."

"Oh, it's not so bad as all that," said Xena uncomfortably. "Besides, even if you stop, all the other bards will keep on going. The damage has already been done, so I've given up expecting my life to return to normal."

"Then why did you have me abducted?"

Xena shrugged, her glance sliding away to study a shadowed corner of the tent. "Curiosity, I guess. Since we spent so much time together in your stories, I started to wonder what you were really like."

"Oh.... Well, as you can see for yourself, I took a little creative license with Gabrielle, too. I'm not brave and resourceful... or beautiful."

The warlord's gaze stole back to the young woman's face. "I'm not disappointed," said Xena softly. "You have the nicest smile I've ever seen.... and it takes courage to stand up to a warlord, even a battered old has-been like me."

"Is that how you see yourself?" asked Gabrielle, her brows drawing together in consternation. "Because as far as I'm concerned, you're still the most amazing woman I've ever met."

"You need to get around more," said Xena dryly.

The bard just smirked. "I get around plenty, thank you very much... enough to know what I want."

When Gabrielle leaned forward, an emotion resembling panic appeared in the warlord's eyes, but she held her ground. When their lips touched, Xena closed her eyes entirely. And when the kiss deepened, a low moan signaled her surrender to the bard.

"Ouch!" muttered Gabrielle, suddenly breaking away from their embrace. "That armor stuff is sharp."

"Sorry." Xena appeared quite flustered, although whether from the kiss or its abrupt interruption was unclear. "It's been a while since I've done this."

"We'd be more comfortable if you took off the metal parts," said Gabrielle firmly.

"Yes, yes, I suppose we would." But the warlord didn't move. In fact, she barely seemed able to breathe.

"Here," said the bard, her fingers gently tugging at a buckle. "Let me help."

With a mute nod, the warlord allowed herself to be disarmed. The bard fumbled a bit with the unfamiliar fastenings, but both of them were too distracted to notice. And by the time Gabrielle had slipped off Xena's breastplate, arm guards and bracers, they'd built up enough momentum to keep right on going.

"The warrior princess is a little better endowed than I am," confessed Xena, aware that the leathers she was pulling off had hidden her flat chest and bony build.

"That's okay," said Gabrielle, stripping her blouse up over her head. "I have enough wealth for the two of us."

"And so you do," whispered the warlord in awestruck appreciation of the bard's generous figure. The renowned washboard abs were nowhere to be seen, but Xena didn't mourn their absence. When she laid Gabrielle down on the cot and covered the bard's body with her own, Xena felt as if she was sinking into two feather pillows, and it was the most exquisite sensation she'd experienced in years.

Gabrielle's arms circled Xena's neck, drawing her close for yet another burning kiss. When the bard finally let go, they were both rather breathless. "I've always wanted to be ravished by a warlord."

"I could have sworn," murmured Xena, as insistent hands worked their way down her back, "that I was the one being ravished."

"Ravished by a bard...." Gabrielle shook her head. "Nope, no dramatic potential there."

"Speak for yourself," said Xena with an appreciative moan as those sure hands reached their goal.

They didn't bother with coherent conversation beyond that point. So it wasn't until much later, after they had collapsed into a companionable tangle of limbs, that Gabrielle said, "I've been thinking about our problem."

"What problem is that?" asked Xena, nuzzling the bard's hair. By candlelight, it had the reddish highlights she'd always imagined to be Gabrielle's color.

"The problem of all those combat challenges and the need for you to keep a lower profile."

"I can take them on," muttered the warlord, before breaking into a wide yawn. "Kill 'em all."

"Down, tiger," said the bard with an indulgent chuckle. "You don't need to prove anything to me. No, I think the time has come for the Warrior Princess to retire. It would feel... weird making up new stories about Xena. You're too real for me to use as inspiration anymore."

"So what's your plan?" Xena's voice was slurred with drowsiness.

"A spectacular, gore-strewn farewell for the Warrior Princess. Lots of fighting and dismemberment. I can even off a few Amazons for good measure. Maybe work in a crucifixion. Yeah, that would be an awesome way for her to die."

Xena grimaced, encroaching slumber pushed back by her queasy contemplation of the bard's scenario. "You have the most morbid imagination."

"Oh, no — this is going to be an epic love story. I'll kill myself off, too. Trust me, this can work."

"And then what?"

"I suppose I'll create another hero, a woman who does something different. Like fighting bacchae instead of warlords. Yes, that's the ticket! I bet I could dine out for weeks on the opening story alone."

"Yeah... yeah, I suppose you could...." Xena propped herself up on one elbow and studied the bard lying beside her. For two such very different-looking women, they fit together remarkably well on the narrow cot. "You know," she said, with a rather poor attempt at nonchalance, "now that my army isn't doing very much looting and pillaging, the men get kind of bored at night. It would raise morale if I hired a bard to entertain them."

"Really?" Unlike the warlord, Gabrielle managed a quite convincing casual tone, but then she'd had a lot of practice on stage. "Just how long could you use the services of this bard?"

"Well..." The warlord's voice was strained with apprehension, but she stalwartly marched forward. "Morale is very important to a good administrator. I think we'd always need a first-class bard around... one like you."

"Why, Xena, I thought you'd never ask."

Despite Gabrielle's teasing tone, Xena had to wipe a few tears off the bard's cheeks. With a contented sigh, the warlord said, "I was a little worried you'd say no. You don't seem to like happy endings."

"I try to avoid being predictable, but sometimes a cliche is just what a story needs."

"Like happily ever after?" ventured Xena.

"Yeah," said the bard. "Like happily ever after."

And her smile stole Xena's breath away.

#xena #xena warrior princess #xena/gabrielle #xena/gabrielle fanfiction #pg-13 #femslash #fanfiction #author: ella quince

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chameleon-of-the-fandom · 6 years

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Repetitive Treatment: Chapter 10

Words: 1195

AN: This is the final chapter. I can’t believe this was as popular as it was! Thank you so much for the love!!!!! Please stop by my inbox for feedback or just comments in general. I am thinking about taking requests, since life is getting chaotic for a bit. What do y ’all think?

A few days later, Toni can't take it anymore, she's watched you and Sweet Pea dance around each other's feelings. You both had confessed your feelings to her. Actually, Fangs had told her about Sweet's feelings for you while he'd been drunk. If only you'd both buck up and tell each other; but, noooo, that's too hard. It's been 3 days since he had to leave you at home for Serpent business, and called Toni to keep you company. So now, she decides she'll play matchmaker. All she needs to do is get Sweet Pea to reveal his feelings for you, and the rest will follow, or so she hopes. She wonders if she can rope FP and Hog Eye into helping. She knows Hog Eye know, because she'd accidentally told him last night while venting about the emotional eggshells you and Sweet Pea are walking on. Maybe it'd be better to just stick to Hog Eye that way she doesn't have to tell anyone else. She waits for Hog Eye to arrive so she can inform him of her plans. Toni watches as Sweet Pea makes his way into the bar first, FP and Fangs following closely. There must be a mission. Toni wonders why FP continues to send Sweet Pea on missions with (Y/N) being a possible distraction. Oh well, wasn’t any of her business. Finally, Toni spies Hog Eye walking through the doors.

Sweet Pea stands in FP’s office with Fang, waiting for FP to start the conversation.

“Thank you for taking Jug’s place, Sweet Pea. My trust in him has been dwindling, as leader of the Serpents. Someone had been keeping the Sheriff off our backs. This only started after Jughead joined. But, how’s (Y/N) doing?” He asks, concern in his voice.

“She’s alright. Doing better every day.” Sweet Pea is proud of you and it leaks into his voice.

“Good. Let that girl know: anything she needs, we’ll help. She’s always there for us. Also, tell her she won’t have to worry about Alex after the hearing. I’ve got Serpents pulling at the reins to get their revenge on the boy.” FP smiles.

“Great.” Sweet Pea smirks darkly.

“Anyway, that wasn’t the only reason I called you both back here.” Fangs and Sweet Pea nod, “The other reason being, apparently we have a leak. We are going to beef up security around (Y/N)'s house, and she can’t know. But the cause for this is somehow the Ghoulies found out about her situation with Alex, so this is just in case. I don’t want them to have the chance to even try anything. Understand?”

“What did they do to tip their hand?” Fangs raises an eyebrow.

“Alex was beaten pretty good by one of theirs while in holding.” FP states.

As they walk out, Sweet Pea turns to Fangs, “(Y/N)'s parents are home tonight, so I figured I’ll head over later. Game of pool?”

“Sure!” came Fangs enthusiastic reply. They head over to the pool table, making their bets.

Toni and Hog Eye watch as Sweet Pea and Fangs play a round of pool. When Sweet Pea wins, per usual, Toni makes her way over there quietly.

“Sweet Pea. I need to talk to you.” She murmurs to the boy chalking a cue stick. He pales at her tone.

“Ye-yeah. I’m on my way.” He stutters.

She leads him upstairs, to an isolated area before asking, “How’s (Y/N) doing?”

Sweet Pea narrows his eyes in suspicion, before answering, “Good. She’s working hard and getting better every day.”

“Just curious. I heard some guys talking about her down at the quarry. About how they were interested. I let them know she’s single, so….” Toni lies. She hadn’t overheard anyone say they were interested in you. She had overheard a few Serpents talking about you and how they wished they had seen his face when he got busted.

“What?” Sweet Pea nearly bellows at the smaller girl. Toni nearly grins because she knows that Hog Eye is feeding you the same lines, except about Sweet Pea. But the fury on the face in front of her tells her it might not be a good idea.

“Woah. Is she not single? She clearly isn’t dating Alex anymore. So what’s, or should I say who’s, the issue?”

“Damn it. I like her, Topaz. And now I’ve got to deal with competition? Fuck.”

“Maybe you should tell her, otherwise she might let herself be snatched back off the market. Just sayin, Sweets.” Toni holds her hands up in surrender as Pea shoots daggers at her with his eyes. She watches with a smirk as he storms off, presumptively in the direction of your house.

Sweet Pea storms up to your door, and throws it open, as he noticed that your parents’ car was gone. He spots a flickering light coming from your bedroom, and makes his way down the hall.

“(Y/N). We need to talk.” He says in way of greeting.

“Yes, yes, we do.” He is taken back by the force in your tone, as you sit on your bed. Needless to say, it’s been a while since you used that voice.

“Me first.” Sweet Pea insists.

“Okay.” You nod your head and clasp your hands together.

“Apparently, Toni heard some guys at the quarry talking about how they were interested.” Indifference shines in your eyes. “Please let me take you out. Don’t go out with those other guys, please. Just give me a chance?” The near pleading is out of character for him, but you think that’s the cutest thing you’ve ever seen.

“Of course. But I’ll have you know, Hog Eye overheard a few girls talking the same bout you. But you asked first.” You winked.

“Is the reason for the passion that was in your voice?” Sweet Pea was almost beaming.

“No.” You crossed your arms with a smile on your face, so he knows you’re joking. He gently climbs on your bed and hugs you to his chest, glad you were his.

*TIMESKIP*

Six weeks later, you’d just had your casts taken off that morning, and that afternoon, you’d gone to Alex’s hearing where he’d received 1.5 years in state prison, as well as having to register as a violent offender for another year. Alex had not shown any remorse for his actions, even after being offered a chance to lessen the sentence if he apologized. On top of all that, your nightmares were no longer every night, now they were once a week. Of course, helping with that was the weekly therapy trying to get you to believe, not just know, that you were loved and were not deserving of the abuse Alex put you through. Your parents had also allowed Sweet Pea to spend the night once a week, if your door stayed open and no funny business happened. That had also helped calm the nightmares. Sweet Pea had been with you every step of the way, and tonight, you were both going to the Whyte Wyrm to celebrate all that had happened today. So much good news, and other than yourself, everyone was back to normal.

THE END

Chapter One; Chapter Two; Chapter Three; Chapter Four; Chapter Five; Chapter Six; Chapter Seven; Chapter Eight; Chapter Nine

tags:

@answer-the-sirens

@quinn-e-dawson

@writing-yj

@chipster-21

@serpentmo

@falling-stars-never-cry

@poolpartyingwithjaws

@acidparadox

@theyouthfulmoon

@fallen-for-fall

@multifandomphenomena

@shanetoo

@xdontxcare

#riverdale #sweet pea imagine #sweet pea x reader #fp jones #toni topaz #fangs #southside serpents

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words-writ-in-starlight · 7 years

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The Great Animorphs Reread, Part 10

Book 10: The Android

AKA “Dogs are literally too good for this world, the first main character dies for a bit, and we learn about the motherfucking Chee”

All right, let’s get the easy stuff out of the way so that I can dedicate this whole thing to an epic tirade about the Chee. Motherfuckers.

Bats. Spiders. Except for the roaches, it’s a superhero extravaganza. The plan to get the Pemalite crystal is so beautiful and intricate…right up until that critical moment of “how the fuck do bats carry anything” at the end there. SPOILER ALERT KIDS, BATS DON’T CARRY THINGS. These fuck-up children are too cute, I love them so much. And then they murder a bunch of dudes and they’re still too cute. My dearest kids.

It’s hysterically funny to me that K. A. Applegate looked us all straight in the eye and announced that dogs are literally so great that the only explanation is that they are actually the merging of wolves with the souls of a race of aliens so highly evolved that they knew only joy and love and light. Like. That’s literally her mission statement with this book. “Appreciate dogs because they’re better than you.” I know little to nothing about this woman, but I guarantee that she is a dog person.

I think this might be the first time they’re all a heartbeat away from being massacred in their battle morphs, but that kind of depends on how you want to split the hairs of ‘almost dead.’ Marco, as usual, gets the worst of it, and is all dead, so there’s nothing left to do but go through his pockets and look for loose change. No, wait, wrong childhood obsession, nothing left to do but electrocute him back to life.

Marco has issues, Ax is a mess and someone should take his human morph away because the boy is a hazard, Rachel in her grizzly morph is everything I want to be, Tobias is my own predatory sweetie, Jake is great, Cassie has morals and stress, yadda yadda yadda, okay that’s all now time for the rant.

Radical statement: I don’t like the Chee. At all. Fuck the Chee. And I’ll tell you why.

The Chee aren’t into violence: okay. Sure. They’ve been around a long time and we should probably all be grateful that they aren’t into violence, because wow that would be alarming. Forget the Yeerks—the Chee Empire, coming soon to galaxies near you. I honestly don’t have a problem with the fact that the Chee aren’t into violence, they can live their lives—or rather exist their existences—and I’m not going to fuss with that.

Although as long as we’re on the subject of the Chee living their lives, it’s pretty fucking rich for a race whose code is total and complete pacifism to be keeping Yeerks prisoner in their craniums. Like, far be it from me to make any defense of the Yeerks, but that. That is pretty ice cold. And it’s just pretty hypocritical to me for a race to preach utter pacifism while holding a living creature—Yeerk or otherwise—imprisoned within their own body. That is just pretty rich.

Here’s my ultimate hangup, the bitter dislike I’ve held on my tongue since I first read this twelve years ago. The Chee watched their creators slaughtered by the Howlers, and they couldn’t lift a hand to protect them. The Chee watched their creators waste away from a quantum virus, and they could only preserve some scrap of them. They have doubtless watched crimes and cruelties that would make a human slip over the precarious edge of sanity thatfast. And after all that, after all that life and with all that purported wisdom and perspective, they are choosing—choosing, because they have the crystal—to throw Earth to the Yeerks to preserve their own comfort.

Look, I’m sorry, I know this is going to sound cold-blooded, but one single Chee who was willing to sacrifice their peace of mind and ease of living in order to stand beside the Animorphs and do battle could have turned the tide of the war. They could have preserved countless lives, saved untold numbers of people from infestation, ended the war so much more quickly. One Chee. I’m not even saying all of them have to take up arms, I’m saying one Chee could have taken it in the teeth and said, “Yes, this will be horrible and it will be bloody and I would have screaming, weeping nightmares for the rest of my life if I slept. And I will do it anyway because it must be done, and if I can’t live with what must be done, that’s something I’ll handle down the line.” And yeah, it would have been awful and traumatic and bitter to swallow. But ultimately the Chee are choosing their own peace of mind and ease of sleep (metaphorical sleep) over the lives of the entire human race, the entire planet. Over the lives of the six child soldiers who have to shoulder an entire war, completely and ruthlessly, because there is no one else.

The Chee are at fault for that. They bear some of the burden of the lives lost, both to death and to infestation. They have blood on their hands because they had the power to do something and instead they chose to stand back and let the Animorphs carry that crushing weight. They are not a bastion of morality, they are not the final redoubt of ethics. They have a choice, the exact choice that the Animorphs are offered—and I don’t care to hear about how the Chee can’t forget. The Animorphs are six children who will have to carry the memory of murder and pain and blood for the rest of their lives, and I don’t see the Chee harping on that. The Chee and the Animorphs face the same choice: fight to save the Earth by doing things that will make them scream and cry and throw up for years to come, or stand back and do nothing and watch the world fall while they sleep safe. The Chee choose to stand idly by, and in my book there are few greater sins.

And the Animorphs offer Erek sympathy, and understanding, and they don’t shout at him that he swore that he would help them, that they are all alone fighting a war far too big for them, that they need help and there is no one else. So I feel like at the end of this book, the Chee definitely do not come off with the moral high ground. It’s the Animorphs, who habitually do all the things that ruin Erek so completely, who kill and bleed and do terrible things, who walk away as the example of how to not be shitty.

Even if they’re NOT willing to take violent steps, the Chee could do something, anything, they have MASSIVE amounts of information about the Yeerk invasion force at their disposal and presumably they’re the best hackers on the planet, in addition to being incredibly strong and durable and being able to project any hologram they want. They could definitely do more than just. This. Jesus.

TL;DR: Fuck the Chee very much, thank you, and I understand Jake’s move at the endgame. Desperate times call for nuclear measures, and the Chee are definitely that.

#animorphs #the chee #the great animorphs reread #the android #book 10 #i will not be moved on this #fight me #seriously the chee could do plenty of things that don't include homicide #also how do their 'injury' calculators even work #like #okay #they can't kill stuff #fine #bring information #hack the yeerks #but does that count as harming the yeerks by enabling the animorphs to fight them?#if yes: doesn't refusing to take those actions count as harming everyone the yeerks injure?#shouldn't the chee suffer a logic short because of this?#if not then why aren't they channeling huge amounts of information to the animorphs #g o d #are they even able to do medicine or does doing stitches count as 'doing harm'?#i'm so fucking annoyed with them #on a watsonian level #i understand the doylist reasons but i'm fucking furious #idiot teenagers with a queue

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