#because i live in a constant state of wanting to share all the cool history | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

partiallyobscure · 3 years

Text

otp questions from this post <3 I just went ahead and did them with David and Michael lmao. it’s mostly my usual headcanons with my fic as the backstory but you don’t necessarily need to read it to understand. cw for light nsfw but it’s mostly tame.

Who is the most affectionate?

David is disgustingly affectionate. he lives to make people uncomfortable so he would be the absolute worst perpetrator of PDA. he and Michael have gotten kicked out of too many establishments all because David is constantly letting his hands wander. I don’t even think he’s aware of it at this point lmao

Big spoon/Little spoon?

they bicker about it a lot, but usually in bed, David ends up being the little spoon. he tries to start off being the big spoon but he always wakes up with Michael’s arms around his chest, specifically covering where the holes from the antlers were, even though the scars are long gone by now.

Most common argument?

usually comes down to who/what/where to eat.

Favorite non-sexual activity?

they love doing tons of stuff together, but they really like racing, watching bad sci-fi movies, and going on haunted tours around the country. they’ll really go the extra mile for the ghost tours and get huge cameras to hang around their neck and everything and act all tourist-y. it’s a great time.

Who is most likely to carry the other?

David fusses but Michael carries him around when he can or requests it. he doesn’t like to do it too often though because it always reminds him of that first time he did so, thinking he was carrying David’s dead body in his arms.

What is their favorite feature of their partner's?

Michael’s favorite feature is David’s mouth, especially when it quirks up into his signature smirk, but he can also tell a lot about what David’s feeling from what he’s doing with his mouth. David hates that Michael can read him so easily (even with their shared mental connection) and asks how the fuck he’s able to do that, and Michael always gives an enigmatic smile and swipes his thumb across David’s lips.

David’s favorite is Michael’s eyes. he could lose a whole night just staring into them. he can’t quite place the color, but they remind him of how the sky would look at noon and he gets a rush of nostalgia every time Michael looks at him. whenever they light up like when they’re with Michael’s family or when he’s talking about the coolest bike that he saw in town that day is David’s absolute favorite. and when only his eyes turn amber, before the rest of his face follows to match David’s, David falls a little bit more in love every time.

What's the first thing that changes when they realize they have feelings for the other?

not much changed on David’s end since he was attracted to Michael at first sight. he couldn’t let it show though so he just found excuses to touch Michael whenever he could, passing him the joint and their fingers brushing when Michael took the bottle and catching him when they fell off the bridge.

when Michael realized he started to share those feelings, he was confused at first considering everything that happened between them. he wasn’t sure if he wanted to hit David or hit on David when they first met, so those feelings simmered a bit until he could get to know David beyond their history. he doesn’t fully admit it until he realizes he’s the one David is pursuing and he has the ego boost from this combined with knowing there’s more to David than what he allows people to see.

Nicknames? & if so, how did they originate?

David likes how Michael’s name sounds too much to give him a nickname, but will sometimes hit him with a ‘babe’ just to see him flustered. Michael calls him Davey just to make him mad but especially in public.

Who worries the most?

Michael since he still can’t seem to shake the fact that he doesn’t need to worry anymore about human dangers. he still flinches and looks twice before pulling onto the highway and all. but mostly he still worries about his family and their perception of him and whether or not they see him as a bad person, despite their love and support. and of course, he worries about how he’ll be when the day comes that he gets older than them.

Who remembers what the other one always orders at a restaurant?

David knows Michael’s order all too well and specifically chooses restaurants that have at least fifteen kinds of burgers to choose from.

Michael swears David is making stuff up at this point whenever they go to a sushi place or a Thai place and he chooses something new to try every time. he knows David’s bubble tea order by heart, though.

Who tops?

Michael, but they’ll switch whenever David has had enough of Michael being too gentle with him.

Who initiates kisses?

David, but he’ll usually give Michael a look when he wants a kiss and Michael is happy to oblige. otherwise, since David likes gross PDA, he usually steals a kiss whenever he can.

Who reaches for the other's hand first?

David and it’s usually because he has to pull Michael along after he gets lost in his thoughts, more often than not after they feed.

Who kisses the hardest?

Michael. David nipped at his bottom lip once and that’s all it took for his fangs to come out and sometimes, it gets a little bloody.

Who wakes up first?

Michael. he has to practically drag David out of bed most nights because he’s too comfortable.

Who wants to stay in bed just a little longer?

David as stated above lmao. who knows how long dude was batting it up before he could sleep in a bed again.

Who says I love you first?

Michael and it was out of frustration.

Who tells their family/friends about their relationship first?

there’s no one to tell at first since they were keeping it secret, but Star finds out first and is initially upset, mostly about being lied to. grandpa eventually finds out next and then Sam stumbled across them by accident, so...both of them technically spill the beans together each time lmao

What do their family/friends think of their relationship?

Lucy is supportive and likes David a lot. she knows she should probably resent him for turning Michael, but he really seems like a boy who was in a bad scenario and is making due with what happened to him. she also knows Michael has been a good influence on him and trusts the two of them are doing what they need to to survive. her and David bond over shit talking Max and the best kind of wines.

Sam was understandably skeptical at first, but he and David came to an understanding and they’re cool now. they bond over music and David eventually comes around to really enjoying board games because of Sam, mostly because he wins every single game. Sam even refers to him as his brother-in-law.

Star took longer to come around but she mostly listens whenever Sam tells her what they’re up to. she’s also mostly relieved that she dodged both of those bullets and can live her own life how she wants to now, grateful that the boys gave her an escape and that Michael helped get her human life back.

Who is more likely to start dancing with the other?

both of them suck at dancing, but Michael will spin David every now and then when a cheesy slow song comes on, or Careless Whispers and they both crack up.

Who cooks more/who is better at cooking?

when they’re back spending time with Michael’s family, David is usually the one helping Lucy in the kitchen. he’s chided Michael before about joining in, especially with the big holiday dinners but Michael is always there to lick whatever spoons and bowls clean when they make dessert.

they vow to take a cooking class or two while they’re out on the road but never do.

Who comes up with cheesy pick up lines?

Michael. he usually gets them from Sam.

Who whispers inappropriate things in the other's ear during inappropriate times?

David, 100%. inappropriate times being at all times because of the whole telepathy thing.

Who needs more assurance?

David, that Michael still wants to be with him and doesn’t resent him for turning him. but also Michael that he isn’t a monster and that he’s only doing what he needs to to survive.

What would be their theme song?

SOOOO MANY but just from my drive to work today: Possum Kingdom by the Toadies fits TOO well. Michael by Franz Ferdinand too obviously. I’m curating a playlist for them here at the moment if anyone’s interested lmao

Who would sing to their child back to sleep?

please don’t give these two a child

What do they do when they're away from each other?

they’re not usually too far from each other but David gets a little mopey until he can see Michael again. he’s protective so he doesn’t let Michael too far out of his sight. Michael feels a little part of himself missing when David’s not with him, so he’ll do whatever he needs to do quickly or just take David along with him.

one headcanon about this OTP that breaks your heart:

despite all the time David has had to mourn and grieve, he still misses the other boys every day and sometimes it gets really painful. his only regret in life is not easing Michael into the vampire thing more before turning him, but he was under a time constraint from Max so he didn’t have much of a choice. they still get into shouting matches very rarely about whether or not Michael was the catalyst for the other three’s deaths and David’s very deep, hidden fear is that he’ll never learn how to accept it and one day, his emotions will take him too far and Michael will get sick of his guilt trips.

one headcanon about this OTP that mends it:

Michael does blame himself for David’s grief, because how could he not. he feels like the constant source of David’s sorrow when it comes to the boys but also his ecstatic love and it pulls him in two directions. he listens intently whenever David tells him about his past and his time with the boys and asks what they’d say or do if they were there with them right now, and it continues into the modern era. Michael asks what kind of blog Paul would have (music reviews and fashion), what Marko would name his Instagram account for bird photography (vampigeons), and how many followers Dwayne would get on tiktok for posting thirst traps. David knows Michael cares and is trying to keep the spirit of the lost boys alive.

#i miss my fic ok i wanted to expand on it a little 🥺#the fluff overload tag comes in handy here #my fics #the lost boys #david/michael emerson

43 notes · View notes

nsheetee · 5 years

Text

Trust / Love

Pairing: Jaemin x Female Reader

Genre: Bulleted AU, Mafia AU || Angst, Fluff

Length: 7.5k

Details/Warnings: featuring Jeno and Renjun, slightly enemies to lovers, swearing, mentions of blood/guns/drugs, depictions of violence, reader is physically hurt

Summary: You’ve known Jaemin ever since you could remember. You’re a successful duo with several completed missions and a history of working well together, despite not completely understanding each other. When trouble strikes with a rival mafia in town, you and Jaemin realize just how deep your connection runs and that, sometimes, trust is more important than love.

◇─◇──◇────✧────◇──◇─◇

growing up, your definition for “mafia” was different than other kids’ definitions

while some considered mafia’s scary and “bad,” you considered the mafia your father worked for home

especially after you started working there, too

you trained along side jaemin (an annoyingly teasing and charming boy), jeno (his “bffs since diapers” and an equally charming boy), and renjun (who’s sassy and quick-witted personality you melded with)

they all had family who was also in the mafia, and that’s where your connection began

surprisingly, you all flourished in the tough training arena that the mafia instructed you in

and even more surprisingly, you and jaemin worked very well together

everything from quick eye communication to combat fighting

it came as a second nature to the two of you, you didn’t feel like you had to force anything with jaemin

even both of you couldn’t deny how well you worked together

as the four of you grew up and trained, members of the mafia became excited at how skilled the next generation of field agents would be

so everyone was particularly thrilled when you and jaemin were sent on your very first mission at the age of 17

which was just the first of many successful and completed missions together in the next 3 years after that, you and jaemin claiming the title of “dream team”

and when renjun and jeno joined your duo, the four of you were unstoppable

still, whenever a particularly stubborn mission surfaced, you and jaemin were called to fix the problem

but when the mafia’s previous leader died from a heart attack and your father was appointed as the new leader, things in your life changed dramatically

you couldn’t lie: it scared you

your family life started falling apart; eeriness filled your home as your father was always at work and your mother spent many nights asleep by the door waiting for him to come home safely

you weren’t seen as just another field agent anymore, you were now the Mafia Leader’s Daughter

but you were glad that one thing didn’t change: jaemin

ever since he entered your life, he was always a constant (wether he meant to be or not)

you could rely on him to always knock some sense into you (literally, during combat training, or figuratively)

you could rely on him to poke fun at you and tease you

it always annoyed you no matter the situation... but on the inside....

you were content

you were okay

as long as jaemin stayed the same- everything else could change for all you cared

you didn’t really know what this realization meant but you didn’t explore the feeling any further

there was training to do and missions to complete

and the messy feelings growing in your chest would have to be shoved down for now

little did you know, the pressure will get to you, and all of your feeling will soon spill out

◇────✧────◇

as you walk into your father’s office with renjun, jeno, and jaemin, you have a feeling that the location of the brief has something to do with you

for briefs, you usually visit the right hand man who explains the mission to you and gives you your roles

and as you meet the cigarette smoke rising into the air from your father’s bad habit, his eyes immediately locking on you

you KNOW the four of you are being briefed by your father because of you

“sit” he says, gesturing to the four seats placed on the other side of his sleek desk

his voice is commanding and cold- nothing less than expected from a mafia boss

“we have a cache of supplies in a building on the North edge of town...”

supplies = drugs the mafia sells for profit and to fund other “expeditions”

“...there was a drug bust led by the police last night a few streets away from our building. it’s too risky to keep those supplies there; you need to move the supplies to a new location out of town tonight.”

your father puts out the cigarette that had been accompanying his mouth on a crystal ash tray

“jeno, you’ll be running lead. renjun you’ll be driving. and you two…” he looks over at you and jaemin, “do whatever it is you do that makes all your mission successful.”

with a wave of his dismissive hand, the four of you stand up and head towards the door

you share a look with renjun, mouthing a “that’s it?” to him and he shrugs, trying to make his movements subtle

“Y/N.” you stop in your spot, sighing at the looks your three friends send you as they walk out and shut the door behind them

“yes, dad?” you turn around and he motions for you to come closer.

“how’s mom?” he asks and stands from his seat as you round the desk

his tone with you now is different than how it was 2 minutes ago when he was “Mafia Leader”

“mom’s good, she misses you. the usual.” your dad nods his head, looking downcast at the thought of his lonely wife

your mother never wanted to be a part of this business, but she loved your father very much, and still does now

so she sits at home and patiently waits to see him every few days, when it’s safe for him to leave HQ

when they do reunite, the house immediately feels warmer and the conversation fills in the agonizing silence of the house

the looks they give each other after days of missing and worrying about each other almost makes you think it’s all worth it

almost

you have to admit- you feel pity for your mother

you don’t understand how she can sit around the house and just wait for the man she loves to hopefully come home

but either way

you’ve never been in love, you don’t particularly want it right now

but if you did- you wanted it to be as persevering and truthful as your parents’

“I wanted to talk to you about the mission...” your father’s words pull you out of your thoughts, “now that I have this new position, and there are people who know who you are, it’s going to be more dangerous.” he finishes

you nod your head to yourself; your earlier assumption was correct

“dad...” you sigh, understanding where his concern is coming from, but feeling a big annoyed that this change in your lives is affecting how you do your job as well as everything else in your life

“everything will be fine. I have my best friends with me... and jaemin.” you joke to lighten the mood and it works, your father laughing and shaking his head

“you keep saying you don’t like him, I don’t think you realize how well you work together”

“just because we work well together doesn’t mean we’re a good match in everything else”

“is that what it really means?” he asks and you tilt your head, unsure of his question or why he’s probing into this so much

“don’t you trust him?”

do you trust jaemin? or jeno or renjun? do you trust your father and mother and everyone else in this messed up family of a mafia?

there is only one person who won’t let you down like the rest of these people eventually will

and that person is yourself

◇────✧────◇

that night, you and your team set up a plan for the transfer

it was honestly very simple:

renjun is the driver, keeps the car running until you all have to get out of there

jeno, jaemin, and you would do the actual moving of supplies- from the extra info you were given later that day, there wasn’t actually that many drugs kept in the building your father was talking about

it was a small enough transfer that you only needed a van

so after finalizing your plan, you all pack into a black van, renjun in the driver’s seat with jeno in the passenger, and you and jaemin in the back

it’s way past midnight, the moon is barely visible with all the clouds in the sky, and the cool fall wind blows harshly against the van

you look out of the window, curiously gazing at your surroundings as the bumpy road takes you to your destination

you feel jaemin’s gaze on you every once in a while

“are you nervous?” he asks softly and you don’t realize he’s speaking to you until you turn your head to look at him

his head is tilted, brown hair slicked back out of his face, and the stupid way his eyes sparkle even on dark nights like this one makes your heart flutter irritably

“no” you answer harshly and it scares jeno

he jumps and looks back at both of you before rolling his eyes and turning back to face the front

“kids... be nice. no bad vibes before a mission” jeno states in a motherly voice, laced with amusement

“if we mess up something as easy as a transfer because of you two, we’ll never be able to show our faces to your dad” renjun mumbles

“ahhh,” jaemin vocalizes in an indifferent tone, waving his hand in the air before reaching over and throwing his arm over your shoulders.

“don’t you guys know? we’re the dream team.”

you shove his arm off and send him a pointed look

“go dream somewhere else, jaemin” he seems unbothered by the hostility in your voice and removes his arm

the rest of the ride is quiet until you arrive at the building

it looks exactly how you thought it would:

stained window panes dirty with years of dirt build up, the concrete walls of the structure chipped away with erosion, and an overall loneliness blankets the area

the perfect place for hiding drugs

you, jeno, and jaemin move fast

moving stacks of the ‘supplies” from inside the building to the back of the van where renjun counts and secures them

the cold air bites at your cheeks and burns your lungs with the harsh temperature

but you keep working, not stopping until you’re sweating under your coat

jeno and jaemin come up behind you as renjun finishes the last count

“we’re missing two bags” he states and jeno nods curtly

“y/n, let’s go.” just as you turn to walk back into the building, jaemin speaks up

“let me go instead, she’s obviously tired.”

“I’m fine” you speak up and jaemin gives you an uncertain look

he knows what you look like when you’re tired- your eyes droop down in the corners and your forehead scrunches with tension

“I’m fine” you repeat directly to jaemin this time and follow jeno into the building

jaemin starts to follow until jeno turns around and rolls his eyes

“jaemin, stay here. leave her alone.”

jaemin feels slightly irritated- he hates seeing you tired during a mission

a few years ago, during one of yours and jaemin’s first missions together, you didn’t get much sleep on the plane ride to the mission site

unfortunately, gun fire broke out

you kept missing every shot, growing frustrated with yourself to the point where jaemin had to push you away and finish the job himself

he knew how much you kicked yourself for screwing up, for “failing” even though the mission itself was a success

jaemin watches you and jeno walk back into the building, disappearing in the darkness and he can’t help but feel some anxiety build up in his chest

as you and jeno look for the last of the supplies, a clattering sound makes jeno sigh irritably and turn around

“I told you to st-”

the pause in his words makes you stop walking and turn around as well

a group of men stand a few feet away, your posture immediately stiffens at the small cross tattoo they each have under their left eye

they’re all part of the crossmen, a different mafia in town

one that frequently gets into fights with your own

“what are you kids doing here?”

“kids?” one of the men walks forward, eyeing you up and down

“they ain’t kids” he chuckles and your father’s warning from earlier today echos in your mind

“that’s y/n” the fact that he knows your first name and how slimy is sounds coming off of his tongue sends a shiver down your spine

jeno immediately tenses up next to you as the men make their way towards you

he tries to step forward and stop them, but one of them pulls out a gun, making both of you take a cautious step back

jeno curses to himself when he reaches for his waist, the familiar cold metal of his own weapon non-existent, only the walkie-talkie hanging off his belt

this was only supposed to be a transfer

he didn’t bring a weapon

◇────✧────◇

outside of the building, renjun taps his fingers against the back door of the van

“where are they? does it really take this long to find two bags of drugs” he mumbles, but it only makes the anxiety in jaemin’s chest grow

suddenly, the walkie-talkie sitting on top of the supplies comes to life, making jaemin and renjun turn to the sound

“renjun? over.” jeno’s voice spoke through the device, sounding very strained

“copy, over.” he replies and a long pause follows “y/n and I are in a situation, the crossmen are here. over”

once the words reach the boys, jaemin thinks he could kick himself

he knew something would go wrong, he could feel it the second you walked out of his sight

before jaemin could turn and run into he building, jeno speaks over the walkie-talkie again

“leave us. you need to transfer the supplies right now before they find out you guys are here too. over”

jaemin forcefully yanks the walkie-talkie out of renjun’s hand

“I'm going in now, I’ll get you guys out.” before he can even give the walkie back, jeno’s voice speaks up again

“no, I said you need to leave. now. renjun, make sure he doesn’t go in.” the last thing heard over the walkie-talkie are the voices of men speaking loudly before the line goes dead.

after a second of silence, jaemin’s eyes meet renjun’s

“no.” renjun shakes his head, already knowing what’s going through jaemin’s head

jaemin doesn’t say anything as he turns around to walk into the building

renjun grabs onto his bicep, pulling him back to the van

“let me go, they need my help.”

“jeno said to go, we need to go” renjun grabs at jaemin's coat, pulling him to the passenger seat of the van and attempting to push him in, but jaemin grabs the sides of the door and the frame

“I know you’re worried about jeno, but he’ll be okay.” renjun sighs before giving him one last push on his chest

jaemin falls into the passenger seat and stops renjun from shutting the door with his foot

“I know jeno will be okay, I’m not worried about him.”

“then what’s the problem?”

the words leave jaemin’s quivering lips before he can fully register what they are

“it’s y/n. I'm worried about y/n.”

the look on jaemin’s face scares renjun

jaemin has always been the strong and composed one out of all four of you

but right now he looks like he could fall apart

renjun can only begin to understand what jaemin is feeling: you and jaemin have always been together during times of trouble

but now you’re with jeno, away from jaemin, and in trouble with the crossmen, of all people

but renjun has a feeling that’s not the only reason jaemin is worried about you

renjun gives jaemin an apologetic look before shutting jaemin’s door and climbing into the driver’s seat, speeding off onto the interstate

leaving you and jeno behind to fend for yourselves

◇────✧────◇

the next time jaemin sees you, it’s the next afternoon when you’re being supported by a beat up jeno as you walk into your mafia’s HQ

jeno is bruised and bloodied, an arm wrapped around you as you hobble in on your right foot, your left foot not touching the ground

jaemin has never felt this much relief

not even when he escaped a bullet to the chest

not even when he was run down by a squadron of police cars at the age of 18

he didn’t move from his spot next to renjun as a doctor takes you away from jeno, leading you to the medical ward

“what happened?” your father asks jeno, who keeps his eyes downward and hands behind his back

“we were captured by the crossmen. I didn’t bring my weapon and they were able to tie us up. y/n had a knife in her boot and when she got it out, one of the guys saw her and... beat her leg with a wooden plank. we barely got out.”

your father and the rest of his men perk up when the crossmen are mentioned

jaemin feels anger rev in his chest, like a black car dripping oil waiting to start a race

you were hurt because he wasn’t with you

he should’ve been with you, not jeno

“what did the crossmen want?”

jeno finally looks up at his leader

“they want you, sir.”

at no point in this entire ordeal was your father angry, but he looked absolutely vexed at the new information

“thank you for handling this well under the circumstances, jeno. I knew I could count on you.” jaemin almost scoffed in the silence, but catches himself in the last second

jaemin loves his best friend, he trusts him with his whole being and would never dare turn his back to him

but jaemin doesn’t think jeno should be thanked

he barely got you out of the situation, got himself beat up and your leg too, and kept jaemin (someone who is very capable) from helping

“what is wrong with you?” renjun asks from beside jaemin, eyeing him with a confused but tart gaze

“there’s nothing wrong with me” jaemin dodges his question, watching jeno as he’s surrounded by some older men in the mafia

they’re all patting him on the back and jaemin can hear the words of affirmation and congratulations at being complimented by the new mafia leader from his spot across the room, making his blood rumble at a near boil

“obviously something is up, you look like a bull and jeno is your red flag”

jaemin sighs, trying to get some tension to leave his body

“don’t you think it’s weird how jeno comes in and is painted as a hero. I mean, look. he’s soaking it in-”

“wait,” renjun squints at jaemin, “are you jealous? of jeno?” renjun suggests

before jaemin can deny, renjun gasps as he sees the affirmation in jaemin’s posture

“no... bro, that’s messed up. he’s your best friend.” “I know. I’m not jealous. I’m just confused.” and jaemin really is

later that night, when it seems like the entire mafia has come through the doctor’s office to check up on you, jaemin walks in by himself

the lights are off, the room is only illuminated by a single lamp that sits on the cupboard next to you and the machine that regulates your heartbeat

jaemin feels the anger from earlier dissipate as he takes a glance over your body, sitting down next to you on your bed

you have some cuts on your hands, but the most noticeable feature is the wrapping around your ankle

“it’s not broken, surprisingly” jaemin jumps at your voice, not expecting you to be awake

he looks over at you as your eyelashes flutter, trying to open

“go back to sleep” he mumbles, sliding closer to you and fussing with the edge of your blanket

“it’s only badly bruised. I got really lucky” you explain further anyway

“...you kept a knife in your boot?” jaemin recalls the story jeno told earlier

despite the pain you must be in, a lazy smile takes over your features and you shine your bright gaze at him

he doesn’t understand how you can look so beat up but beautiful at the same time

and it scares him that the unfiltered thought just ran through his mind

“you taught me that” you mumble, thinking of one of the first times you completed a mission with jaemin

you wore tall combat boots, and jaemin had the idea to put an extra weapon in them just in case anything happened

“yeah, it’s all thanks to me” jaemin replies sarcastically, the guilty anger in his chest returning

your smile fades, confused at his tone but before you could probe further, jaemin shakes his head and makes a bold move

he grabs your hand and gingerly traces his ring finger over the bandages, lovingly rubbing your wrist, and gently pressing his chapped lips on the cuts

you both sit like this for a while, the warm air from the humidifier filling the room along with your and jaemin’s heavy breathing

your relationship was always a bit difficult to explain

you work well together, the amount of completed missions as a duo proved that

but you often didn't understand jaemin

and there were times he didn’t understand you that well either

he doesn’t understand why you couldn’t just trust him- or anyone for that matter

even when he saved your ass multiple times, you still never opened up to him completely

you didn’t understand jaemin for the exact opposite reason:

he trusted people too much- too easily

despite the rebellious streak in him, he rested his well being and life a little too effortlessly on others

it drove you mad

but the types of feelings that are brewing in your chest, rising up your throat, and heating your face are not something that usually comes with jaemin

maybe it came to your attention when renjun visited you earlier, and explained how jaemin was ready to storm back into the building and fish you out of the disaster himself

how renjun had to physically push jaemin into the van to get him out of the scene

and how jaemin told him he knew jeno would be okay, and how he was worried about you- only you

it made your heart race just thinking about jaemin disobeying orders and running into the trouble you had encountered earlier- only for you

it’s all a bit too much too think about, and a bit too scary as well

jaemin’s frame leans over your thighs, his dark hair splayed out over the white blanket on your lap, and the soft light illuminating his tan skin

he doesn’t talk- just rubs comforting circles on your bandages and hums under his breath

you didn’t know this is what you needed to make you feel better

but he did

and maybe you didn’t trust him

but you definitely appreciate him

jaemin fell asleep before he could hear your heartbeat regulator speed up at the way his fingers entangle with yours and his hot cheek presses against your thigh as he slumbers.

◇────✧────◇

jaemin wakes up the next morning with his fingers still entangled in yours

you look more peaceful than you have in the past few days, so jaemin decides to leave you be

but not before one last squeeze of your hand

as he walks away from your touch and out of the room, the anger in him returns-

jaemin is up early this morning, but he knows there’s one person who’s up even earlier

jeno

jaemin finds jeno in the basement, where combat and physical training usually occurs

jeno’s hands are wrapped and a pair of red boxing gloves covers them as he hits a sand bag that’s suspended from the ceiling

jeno’s bruises and cuts are visible from the white cut-off he wears, his sweat highlighting the fact that he has probably been working hard for a while

jaemin walks up to jeno, and jeno catches the wraps around his knuckles and jaemin’s own pair of blue boxing gloves hanging over his shoulder

“you’re up early” jeno can’t stop staring at jaemin’s gloves

“yeah,” jaemin states, “let’s practice” he nods his head towards the boxing ring a few feet away

jeno is confused- jaemin never wants to spar him, especially not in boxing

but as jaemin pushes his gloves on, there’s a dangerous glint in his eyes and it makes jeno a bit nervous

the match starts, jeno throws the first punch while jaemin takes the defense

the two men circle around the ring for a while, throwing and dodging punches, sweat falling to the floor of the boxing ring below them and tension building

jeno notices jaemin gaining energy rather than losing energy

every punch he gets in seems to energize him and soon the roles switch

jaemin is throwing punch after punch at jeno, almost blindly assaulting him

jaemin doesn’t see anything- just jeno’s red gloves as he covers his face and falls on his back while jaemin falls on top of him

jaemin has jeno under him, one gloved fist over his chest as his other raises to strike jeno

jaemin only then realizes what he’s doing- but he holds his ground and the sound of punching and grunting turns into heavy breathing from both of them

“why didn’t you let me help you? huh? why did you have to be such a hero, jeno?” jeno grunts under jaemin’s weight, trying to push him off

“is that what this is all about?”

jaemin’s fist comes down from it’s position in the air right next to jeno’s head, a loud echo sounding through the room and startling jeno into stopping his squirming

“answer my question, jeno. why didn’t you let me help you?”

“because y/n and I had it under control” jaemin scoffs at that

“yeah that’s why she came back to HQ with a beat up leg.” jaemin replies sarcastically and jeno laughs

“so renjun was right? you’re jealous?” jaemin looks away from his best friend, hoping he wouldn’t see the guilt rising in his eyes

jaemin silently curses renjun under his breath before turning back to jeno with more composure

“what if I am? is it that bad that I want to help my friends?”

“friends? are you sure that’s what we’re talking about?” jaemin let’s out a frustrated growl and leans off of jeno, standing up and pulling off his gloves

jeno sits up from his position on the ground as his eyes follow jaemin’s pacing

“tell me what this is about, jaemin. we don’t have to fight.” jeno tries to be reasonable, but his words only frustrate jaemin further

“please, jae. we’re best friends, remember? we always have each other’s backs?” jeno stands and moves towards jaemin

“the call you made got y/n hurt. you made a mistake.”

“no. I know this isn’t about that. tell me what you’re feeling.”

jaemin has never had trouble voicing his feelings, especially not to someone as close to him as jeno, but the words don’t form that easy right now

it feels like his heart is in his throat, and if he spoke it might just jump out of him

“I think... I have feelings for y/n” jaemin confesses quietly, finally dropping his tense shoulders and his head

“so, you finally admit it to yourself” jeno chuckles and moves closer to embrace his best friend

“what?”

“it’s so damn obvious. the chemistry you guys have.. is insane. the way you work together on all those missions... I don’t think anyone has seen anything like that in this mafia before”

“are you saying... she likes me back?” jaemin asks, lifting his head

“ah...” jeno sighs and takes off his gloves, a gentle hand coming down onto jaemin’s shoulder, very different from the fighting happening just a few minutes ago “you know how she is. she’s never open to anyone, she doesn’t trust a lot of people. but I do know one thing.” jeno mutters, and jaemin looks at him expectantly

“I've never seen her look at someone with as much respect and admiration as she does with you. think about how much you’ve taught her, how much you've been a consistent person in her life. not even her parents could do that for her. you might be it for her, jaemin.”

jaemin feels like he can’t breath

he so wants Jeno’s words to be true, and he lets himself believe everything jeno says

so when renjun runs into the gym, out of breath and panicked, with only three words dropping off his tongue

“y/n is missing”

jaemin thinks the new information he just learned is what propels him to do what he does next

he doesn’t know what words to use to identify his feelings towards you, but he knows he’s always been with you and he will continue to be there for you

he doesn’t care that his friends are calling out after him, he doesn’t care if he’ll be under suspension for subordination

he doesn’t care about anything, but you

he’s always been by your side, and this moment in time will not be any different

◇────✧────◇

you wake up in a cold room, but a thin blanket covers your shoulders

your bandaged leg lays on a small pillow in front of you

a cup of water sits on the ground to your left, just in arms reach

the people who kidnapped you are... strangely good to you

a blanket, a pillow, and water are not usually what you expect when you wake up after being kidnapped

but the handcuffs around your wrists and the metal bars that you’re locked behind bring you to reality

the guard on the other side of the metal bars turns around to glance at you, the cross tattoo under his left eye catches under the single lightbulb that glows in the jail cell

well... shit

before you can move again, the sound of boots stomping on the ground echos through the hallway and the guard outside of your jail cell turns to unlock your door

several men, one you identify as the leader of the crossmen, march into the jail cell

“hello, y/n. I hope you’re enjoying your stay.” the leader says sarcastically

you’re trying to remember his name- something your father told you several weeks ago, but you can’t seem to remember

“is this a hotel? I'll give you a 1 star rating on yelp. this place sucks.” you decide to reply back with just as much sarcasm

one of the men from behind the leader tries to step forward but the leader holds out his arm to stop him

“y/n, you’re a smart girl. I know you already figured out why you’re here, especially after your little run in with my boys last night”

“if you think you’ll get to my father through me, you’re wrong” you reply

you knew from the moment you woke up that they don’t want to hurt you- the accommodations provided to you (no matter how poor they are) showed that

but you’re not sure how they would react when they realize that your father will never personally come for you

his guards and your father’s chief of security will never allow it

“oh really? maybe if we give him a little call he might be encouraged to come over? maybe if we... pull your leg a bit... will you beg to see him?”

his eyes hover over your bruised leg, the weak threat leaving his lips

it’s obvious

he underestimates you

and that’s what makes you absolutely livid at the man in front of you

“if you think breaking my leg will make me beg for my daddy, you’re wrong”

the leader sneers at you, but you don’t stop your taunting

“I think you like me too much to hurt me. you tied me up two times in as many days. maybe you have a little crush on me?” you laugh as the leader steps away, his face twisting with anger

he brings his boot clad foot up and stomps down on your bruised ankle, the rubber heel of it ripping into your skin as he twists his foot down

shocks of pain shoot up to your knee and your thigh

you can feel and hear the bones cracking under the pressure

your laughter turns into a loud scream, but the men don’t pay any attention as they walk out fo the cell, their leader following out after them and shouting orders at them in a language you can’t understand

the jail cell locks again, and the heavy stomping of boots fades away

you try to breath through the pain that is pulsing throughout your leg, but a tear slips out of your eye and down your cheek

the pain in your leg is bad, but the pain in your heart it worse

because you know what your mafia’s rules are for someone who is kidnapped:

they get themselves out, or they don’t get out at all

◇────✧────◇

jaemin slyly pushes himself through a window, hopping down to the carpeted floor with the quietness of a mouse

the room is still and the lights are off- perfect for infiltrating an enemies HQ

jaemin knows he’s breaking the rules of his own mafia- he knows he’ll be punished by your father and the chief of security and then probably scolded by his parents

but jaemin doesn’t think about that

he’s only thinking about how to find you- how to get you out

he only has you and your well-being on his mind

maybe since he talked with jeno, it’s making him do crazy and stupid things

like walking out of the room, his head swiveling down both ends of the hallway before attempting to navigate through the maze that is the crossmen’s HQ

maybe it’s because you’ve been partners with each other for so long, that’s why he’s willing to get in trouble for you

and when he hears your scream echo from a hallway, his feet pick up speed as he runs towards your voice that’s filled with pain and fear

maybe he cares about you, and it’s why his stomach churns with hatred for the people who kidnapped you

his fists clench into a tight ball when he walks down a hallway lined with jail cells, only one guard standing in front of a closed cell

the guard notices jaemin coming toward him but before the guard can reach for his walkie-talkie, jaemin raises his clenched fist and strikes the guard across the face

the guard falls from the sheer force of jaemin’s fist, but he’s not on the ground for long

he gets up and tackles jaemin to the ground, completely over-taking him by his size

jaemin struggles with the crushing weight of the guard on top of him, finally getting another good punch to the guard’s face to distract him

jaemin slides out from the guard’s grasp, standing to his feet and swaying a bit as he tries to find his balance

the guard stands up, his hands on his knees as he faces jaemin

“kid, you got one hell of a punch”

“thanks” jaemin breathes out, before launching at the man once again

the guard is out of breath, which is probably why it’s so easy for jaemin to kick his kneecap with the heel of his shoe, grab the man by his collar, and throw him against the metal bars of the jail cell

the man falls unconscious to the ground

after a moment, jaemin finally turns to you

he doesn’t think twice as he grabs the keys from the knocked out guard, unlocking the door to the jail cell and rushing to you

he unlocks the handcuffs that are imprisoning your wrists and the second you’re free, your arms engulf Jaemin’s waist and his wrap around your shoulders

he brings you down onto him, sitting down on the cold ground as you sit in his lap, your fingers twisted in his jacket and his breath heating your neck as you both hold onto each other for what feels like dear life

“are you crazy, jaemin? you’re gonna be in so much trouble” you whimper into his chest and you can feel jaemin shake his head

“don’t care. we’re gonna get out of here and we’re gonna be okay. that’s all that matters.” he lets himself enjoy the feeling of your hair through his fingers and the way your breathing evens out against him for just a little longer before making you pull away

he looks at you with a stare he’s given you many times before when you’re on missions together, but for some reason you read his emotions differently now

your heart stops when you recognize where you’ve seen this expression before

it’s the look your father gives your mother when he comes home, when he’s tired and hurt and confused but the moment he sees the love of his life he finds peace and a sense of security

for once in your life, you never want someone to stop looking at you like this

for once in your life, you want na jaemin to never leave your side

and as the moment breaks and jaemin helps you off the cold, hard ground you don’t feel confused or nervous

when he throws the blanket to the floor and wraps his jacket around your shoulders instead, helping you hobble out of the jail cell and down the hallway- you don’t feel like you have to prove yourself as a good mafia member

with jaemin’s arms around your figure, you let him lead without any doubts or fear

you trust jaemin

and sometimes, that’s a little more important than love

you hop down hallway after hallway until you reach a door, walking in and carefully sliding out of an open window and down onto the dirt ground below

but as he helps you into a black car and drives down the highway, one hand on the steering wheel and the other in yours

you think you might just love him, too

◇────✧────◇

the moment you and jaemin walk into HQ, you’re split apart

you’re carried away by the doctor, again, and jaemin is now under the scrutinizing eyes of your father

renjun and jeno stand to the side along with several other members of the mafia, looking on at what is about to happen

jaemin thinks he has deja vu, but instead of jeno facing your father, it is now himself

“na jaemin. explain yourself.” the chief of security speaks up first and jaemin takes a deep breath, standing his ground

but nothing comes out of his mouth, just air as he sighs and bows his head

“I'll take my punishment now. I have nothing to say.”

“I have something to say” jaemin is surprised to hear your father speak, but he keeps his head bowed

“I've watched you grow up to be the man you are now, jaemin. you’ve always been confident in your skills, and you’ve always had that damn part of you that never wants to follow the rules. I've always wanted to show you that you should get rid of that piece of you, but I can’t bare to do that anymore.”

jaemin slowly lifts his head at your father’s words, peering at him through his lashes hesitantly before lifting his chin all the way up

“you saved my daughter. you didn’t think about the consequences, but you’re willing to own up to them now. that’s how I know you’re worthy of a place in this mafia.” you're father reaches out a hand and jaemin slowly takes it in his grip, shaking it in agreement

“thank you, sir.” jaemin manages to choke out

“that being said, no matter how thankful I am for what you did, I still have to suspend you from missions until further notice. those are the rules in this mafia. I'm sure the chief of security will have more to say on this matter but for now, go get bandaged up.”

the crowd disperses and jaemin is led away by one of the doctor’s assistants

suspension until further notice is not a punishment to be taken lightly

jaemin has no idea when he’ll be back to completing missions

or if he’ll ever get back to completing missions

years and years of training could have just been flushed down the drain

but as jaemin walks by a door in the medical ward, he catches the sight of you laying in a bed

renjun is by your side and he says something that makes you smile, a feat considering the amount of pain you’ve been in since jaemin rescued you

he doesn’t remember the last time you truly smiled without pain behind your eyes

he decides his new mission can be to make you truly happy

it’s the least he can do, considering the amount of happiness you’ve brought him

suspension until further notice never sounded better

◇────✧────◇

you peek your head around the corner of the door, your eyes scan over the room until they land on jaemin

he sits on a bed, one of the doctor’s assistants cleaning the cuts on his face while jaemin holds an ice pack to his chest

jaemin notices you at the doorway and perks up, making the assistant look at you as well

you feel awkward with the multiple gazes on you, but jaemin breaks the silence

“she can finish this up, right?” the assistant nods and walks out of the door

you secure your crutches under your arms and hop towards jaemin

the entire way to him, jaemin can’t take his eyes off your leg

it’s now in a cast, wrapped in a light blue color, and you seem to have a hard time hopping to him

when you do reach him, you lean the crutches on the side of the bed and pick up the cotton balls and hydrogen peroxide left by the assistant

“my ankle is really broken this time. I guess I wasn’t as lucky as I thought” you try to joke, but jaemin’s serious gaze doesn’t break

“jae, stop looking at it like that”

“I can’t. I'm mad.”

you carefully cup his cheeks and bring his face towards you, forcing him to look at you and continue cleaning the last open cut on his cheek

the past few hours that you and jaemin spent apart were a mixture of uncomfortable silence in your own room, your extremely loud friends barging in and telling you how your father called jaemin his “son,” thanked him for saving you, and explained what jaemin’s punishment is, and then some more silence that left you stuck in your own thoughts

you knew from the moment you held tight onto jaemin when he got you out of that jail cell that things would be different between you two

it was something you were always scared of happening

you didn’t think you could handle it if things changed with jaemin

he was your constant- your sun that you know would always rise up in the morning and your coffee that you know would wake you up

but as you contemplated on how to approach jaemin, you realized you weren’t as scared as you thought

you realized that you missed jaemin- not just now but whenever he was away for a long time

and the new sensation of the way his arms feel around you and his breath tickling your skin repeating in your mind was not helping to keep your head on straight

so before you collected yourself and walked into Jaemin’s room, you promised yourself one thing:

things are going to change for the better

they have to

jaemin is now stuck with you whether he likes it or not

little do you know, jaemin likes that idea

a lot

as you think this over in your head, jaemin notices your continuance change and his eyebrows furrow

“what’s wrong?” he asks, setting down the ice pack and his cold hand coming up to your thigh to steady you, “is it your leg? you should sit-”

“no, it’s not my leg. it’s you.” jaemin stops talking at your confession, worry growing in his chest

“m-me?”

“yeah, how stupid could you be? running in to save me like that. I was fine.”

“you were not fine” jaemin rolls his eyes

“I was, and now you’re banned from missions until who knows when. how are we gonna keep our successful mission streak if you can’t even go on mission.”

“how are we gonna keep our streak if you can’t even walk- ah!” jaemin yells as your fingers pinch his bicep at his comment

“I’m serious, jaemin. that wasn’t the smartest thing you’ve ever done.”

“I’m serious too, y/n. I wouldn’t be able to go on without you.” the mood in the room shifts along with jaemin’s words

when your eyes meet, you both try to hold strong faces but the timidness in your gazes is noticeable

“you’ve done a lot for me. thank you, jaemin.” you whisper as your hand pushes his brown hair away from his face

this was it- the moment you and jaemin have been waiting for, without even knowing you’ve been waiting for it

jaemin opens his knees and helps you between his legs with his hands on your thighs

you gasp as he makes you sit down on his thigh, arms securely around your hips and he leans into you

his lips part in wonder and his gaze roams over your face, not as if he’s memorizing or just appreciating, but as if he’s seeing you in a new light

“trust me when I say, you’ve done a lot for me, too.”

“I do, jaemin. I do trust you”

his eyes turn soft and his lips stretch in his famous smile, brightly beaming up at you, before leaning in and connecting your lips to his

you both can’t help but smile into the kiss at first, happy and dumb from the new and exciting feeling

and then jaemin pulls you closer, if possible, and pushes his lips against yours slowly, making sure to love on every inch of them to let you know how much he appreciates this moment- how much he appreciates you

kissing jaemin is just like working with him

he knows you and you know him and everything fits together as if you’re the pages of a new book that are pressed together, or two pieces of fabric that were cut only to be seamed to each other

when you pull away, his eyes stay closed and his lips hold the lingerings of a smile

“open your eyes” you whisper, wanting to see the beautiful mocha eyes that have found a special place in your heart

“no, I don’t want this to turn out to be a dream” he says and you laugh, leaning in again to kiss him once, twice, and a third time

his smile widens, but his eyes don’t open

“open your eyes, this isn’t a dream. I'm really here. I'm really yours.”

your words of encouragement and affirmation makes him peel his eyes open, looking up at you

there’s that look again

the look of stability

of love

and of trust

you’re sure you’re looking back at him the exact same way

◇─◇──◇────✧────◇──◇─◇

1K notes · View notes

innenofutari · 4 years

Text

On Goro Akechi’s morals and forgiveness (character analysis, but also just a very rambly post)

Akechi is… a very interesting character, I have no doubt about this. Also my favorite of course, if you hadn’t figured that out yet by this giant text you’re about to read (sorry). I have a lot I want to talk about in regards to him since he is so intriguing and we actually don’t have that much info about how his thought process works so it leaves a lot of room for speculation.

In any case, in this meta in specific I’m going to be talking about Akechi’s...morality(?), forgiveness and his relationship with regret. I’m not sure if that’s the best word to define this but I’ll roll with it for now. I’ll try to be fair and talk about things as I personally see them, it’s totally fine if you don’t share my views! Now, onto the actual meta.

Starting off, as people are obviously aware, Akechi is a morally gray character, a darker shade of, but he’s a sympathetic and tragic character nonetheless. That much is undeniable, he was written to be sympathetic, even if I’d argue Atlus did a pretty poor job of it in Vanilla (he was still my favorite ever since then though lol) but he’s reached his true potential in Royal, which makes me immensely happy to see. I get so unbelievably happy whenever I see people saying Royal changed their perception of him and started to like him more! But even then, there are a lot of people who just can’t forgive him for what he did, and that’s only natural. I personally think that, if you don’t try to sympathize with Akechi and truly, truly try to understand his mind and history, you’re doing him a huge disservice. But, forgiveness is something that everyone is free to think and decide if he deserves it or not. In Akechi’s case, I feel like forgiveness is something much more personal to the player, and this shows between the Phantom Thieves too.

There is a visual novel I hold very close to my heart called Umineko no Naku Koro Ni (which I’ll be quoting relentlessly throughout this entire post) that illustrates what I think better than I could put into words, so I’ll be quoting that scene with a few tweaks for better context:

“You said you understood the culprit’s motive.”

“...Yes.”

“Is that motive… a satisfying explanation for why they’d [commit murder]?!”

“Who knows. That’s for you to decide. Even if I say it’s satisfying, that doesn’t mean it will satisfy you. …You have to decide that for yourself.”

I really like this. It reminds me a lot of Akechi’s situation. I firmly believe that this has no “objective”, “most correct” answer to, just your personal feelings, which are the most important. I, as a player, do forgive Akechi, I want him to have a happy ending, another chance at life, manage to live happily with Akira and have some fun for once. That’s what “forgiveness” means to me in this situation, but while some people may empathize with Akechi, they still can’t forgive him. They think he should stay forever in jail or die since he cannot be redeemed in any way in their eyes. Where do I wanna go with this endless blabbering you ask, and I respond, I just want to try and see Akechi’s actions through two different lenses.

Well, I personally don’t like downplaying the crimes he committed and dumbing it down to “he was being manipulated” because, even if this is not false, it is not entirely correct either. Akechi is so fun to speculate about because he’s a character who is always clashing against himself in various ways as if he was in a constant state of internal turmoil, and this is not very different.

Akechi himself made the choice to go to Shido. It is extremely unlikely that he didn’t know he was going to be using his new powers for murder. He may have been very young, but despite the fact that he was a child forced to mature prematurely, he knew exactly which type of person Shido was. When he walked into that deal he was aware of the consequences and had fully made peace with the fact that he’d be taking another person’s life. Now, I’m not saying that Shido never manipulated him because he did, but not with that particular choice.

This alone tells plenty about Akechi’s morals. I believe that Akechi indeed has some level of empathy for other people, but I sincerely doubt he feels especially bad about the Okumura-like people he had to kill. He might feel bad for the family of the victims or just feel nauseated with himself, however, he doesn’t regret a thing. As if he had grown numb to it. ...Until a certain point, that is, but I’ll talk about that later.

I would also like to elaborate further on Akechi’s continuous conflict with himself, and this particular piece of Maruki’s confidant immediately reminded me of this:

He’s talking about Akira here, but isn’t it interesting to note that Akechi’s internalized and externalized realities are, in contrast to Akira’s, the farthest they could possibly be from each other? His sense of justice, childlike desire to be loved and seen as a hero, in contrast to the cold-blooded murderer he had become? It’s like there are two people fighting it out inside of Akechi’s brain (lol) which must cause him a lot of distress. I don’t believe that Robin Hood is a ruse or that his Detective Prince façade is entirely fake. The way I see it, they are his ideal, which he strayed so far away from he lost grasp of who he himself is.

In my opinion, Akechi has never cared about fame the slightest bit, he used all of that as an opportunity to act out the person he wished he was, just and virtuous, while still being the feral murderer and bloodstained person he is today. These are two integral parts of him that he has never known how to reconcile. It’s interesting to note that in the third semester he was the one who since the beginning advocated firmly to return to the harsh reality but he had spent the entire game living in the comforting “detective prince” dream he made for himself until the engine room scene happened.

With the third semester context, the engine room becomes so interesting because that scene is akin to Sumire finding out she’s not Kasumi. It’s a cold bucket of water thrown straight to Akechi’s face and telling him to wake up from this lie he made to comfort himself and face reality: he is no hero. Despite the fact that he is, too, a victim, he is simultaneously a murderer who perpetuated with the cycle of his father’s aggressions and he cannot escape that fact. Worse, he was being manipulated all along and his revenge plan and arguably his only reason to live AND justification for his actions was completely crushed.

Once again, this Umineko scene illustrates what I think Akechi’s situation up until that point was like:

Akechi rationalized every awful, inexcusable thing he did as, “It’s for my revenge’s sake” and ran with it. He was incredibly blinded by his hate and ignored the weight of the consequences of his actions up until that point where everything came crashing down right in front of his eyes. There is no excuse and no justification for that.

However, Akechi was also abused himself. There is no excuse for what he did, but is getting back at the person who took everything from him so reprehensible a thought? Is wanting justice against someone who essentially ruined your life not understandable? Many people like to say “cool motive still murder” or things of the like, but I’m asking you again to put yourself in his shoes.

Yet AGAIN with a Umineko screencap:

I played this the other day and one of the first things I thought of was Akechi. A lot of people draw parallels between Akechi and Adachi, but that’s just so damn wrong and make me lose my hair so much and become completely bald because that couldn’t be farther from the truth and I’m gently asking you to reconsider. In the pic above, Adachi would fit the “homicidal maniac” mentioned to a T, and while Akechi is by absolutely no means free of guilt and much less a stellar person, his crimes were moved completely by his heart.

For the people who use his choice to become Shido’s hitman to say Akechi does not deserve any kind of forgiveness and that he’s a murderous maniac, I ask you to at least think of what state of mind he was at that moment. Think very hard about it, imagine how completely bleak life must have looked like then, to the point that he risked everything on murder.

This is nothing more than my speculation, but I believe Akechi’s thought process at that moment was something along the lines of, “I have nothing to lose since my (current) life is completely meaningless". It was as if he had reached such a numb state he chose to forgo all his morals and humanity in pursuit of at least one thing that would give his life meaning, that being his hate for Shido, which I also think was the only emotion he ever truly understood well ever since his mom passed.

Since Akechi is all about conflicting emotions though, I would also like to remind you how vulnerable Akechi really is to any kind of affection. His “childlikeness” that Robin Hood represents was, by all accounts, still there. Akechi has a desperate need to be loved while simultaneously putting up walls and wearing masks, making it extremely difficult to have any kind of meaningful relationship. This is something that Shido thoroughly takes advantage of, too.

That’s also why one of his lines to Akira hit so much harder for me, following this reasoning. “If only we had met a few years earlier,” expresses many emotions at once. If Akechi had known something other than misery and hatred during that period of his life he would not have latched so thoroughly to that revenge plan. Akechi simply had nothing to lose, since he had nothing at all.

I mentioned earlier that Akechi doesn’t regret a thing, which I still think it’s true. Before he had met Akira, he truly did not regret a thing, but meeting Akira caused him a lot of strife because not only Akira is a person whose whole existence flaunts everything Akechi could have had if he hadn’t fallen into fate’s trap, but Akechi also experiences happiness through his connection with Akira. Hanging out and talking to him truly makes him happy, and it’s something more genuine than he’s ever known. Yet, it’s too late, because his choices were already set in stone and he had already pulled the trigger with no way to take any of the bullets back.

That’s why Akechi is so confusing, so controversial and sometimes uncomfortable to think about. There is no clear line between good or bad, he just is something in the middle. Akechi is both a person who ruined a lot of people’s lives with no regard whatsoever to the consequences but also a victim rebelling and retaliating against the person who took everything from him and made his life a living hell. That’s why it’s so hard for not only some players to form opinions about him but also downright uncomfortable for the Phantom Thieves to think about. There is no objectively best answer for what he deserves. It just doesn’t exist. Should he spend the rest of his life in jail, or dead, because his crimes were inexcusable? Or should he be given another chance at life to learn to be happy? It’s entirely subjective, and that’s why he’s so great to think or discuss about.

Aaand that’s it, I’m grateful you read so far, hope I didn’t piss anyone off, also not gonna pretend this wasn’t very self indulgent because of the amount of times I quoted Umineko in it. Anyways, thank you!

SIDE NOTE: I didn’t write this recently, it had been sitting on my drafts for some months now and I found it again today and decided to just release it into the wild because why not? I think this was meant to be much longer than it is and to elaborate more eloquently on a lot of points I brought up (like the PT with Akechi) but alas, I lost the train of thought and so it Perished.

#goro akechi #meta #p5r spoilers #persona 5 #p5 #persona 5 royal #character analysis #long post

133 notes · View notes

qqueenofhades · 4 years

Note

Could you expand a bit on the "death of expertise"? It's something I think about A LOT as an artist, because there are so many problems with people who think it isn't a real job, and the severe undercutting of prices that happens because people think hobbyists and professionals are the same. At the same time, I also really want people to feel free to be able to make art if they want, with no gatekeeping or elitism, and I usually spin myself in circles mentally thinking about it. So.

I have been secretly hoping someone would ask this question, nonny. Bless you. I have a lot (a LOT) of thoughts on this topic, which I will try to keep somewhat concise and presented in a semi-organized fashion, but yes.

I can mostly speak about this in regard to academia, especially the bad, bad, BAD takes in my field (history) that have dominated the news in recent weeks and which constitute most of the recent posts on my blog. (I know, I know, Old Man Yells At Cloud when attempting to educate the internet on actual history, but I gotta do SOMETHING.) But this isn’t a new phenemenon, and is linked to the avalanche of “fake news” that we’ve all heard about and experienced in the last few years, especially in the run-up and then after the election of You Know Who, who has made fake news his personal brand (if not in the way he thinks). It also has to do with the way Americans persistently misunderstand the concept of free speech as “I should be able to say whatever I want and nobody can correct or criticize me,” which ties into the poisonous extreme-libertarian ethos of “I can do what I want with no regard for others and nobody can correct me,” which has seeped its way into the American mainstream and is basically the center of the modern Republican party. (Basically: all for me, all the time, and caring about others is a weak liberal pussy thing to do.)

This, however, is not just an issue of partisan politics, because the left is just as guilty, even if its efforts take a different shape. One of the reason I got so utterly exasperated with strident online leftists, especially around primary season and the hardcore breed of Bernie Bros, is just that they don’t do anything except shout loud and incorrect information on the internet (and then transmogrify that into a twisted ideology of moral purity which makes a sin out of actually voting for a flawed candidate, even if the alternative is Donald Goddamn Trump). I can’t count how many people from both sides of the right/left divide get their political information from like-minded people on social media, and never bother to experience or verify or venture outside their comforting bubbles that will only provide them with “facts” that they already know. Social media has done a lot of good things, sure, but it’s also made it unprecedently easy to just say whatever insane bullshit you want, have it go viral, and then have you treated as an authority on the topic or someone whose voice “has to be included” out of some absurd principle of both-siderism. This is also a tenet of the mainstream corporate media: “both sides” have to be included, to create the illusion of “objectivity,” and to keep the largest number of paying subscribers happy. (Yes, of course this has deep, deep roots in the collapse of late-stage capitalism.) Even if one side is absolutely batshit crazy, the rules of this distorted social contract stipulate that their proposals and their flaws have to be treated as equal with the others, and if you point out that they are batshit crazy, you have to qualify with some criticism of the other side.

This is where you get white people posting “Neo-Nazis and Black Lives Matter are the same!!!1” on facebook. They are a) often racist, let’s be real, and b) have been force-fed a constant narrative where Both Sides Are Equally Bad. Even if one is a historical system of violent oppression that has made a good go at total racial and ethnic genocide and rests on hatred, and the other is the response to not just that but the centuries of systemic and small-scale racism that has been built up every day, the white people of the world insist on treating them as morally equivalent (related to a superior notion that Violence is Always Bad, which.... uh... have you even seen constant and overwhelming state-sponsored violence the West dishes out? But it’s only bad when the other side does it. Especially if those people can be at all labeled “fanatics.”)

I have complained many, many times, and will probably complain many times more, about how hard it is to deconstruct people’s absolutely ingrained ideas of history and the past. History is a very fragile thing; it’s really only equivalent to the length of a human lifespan, and sometimes not even that. It’s what people want to remember and what is convenient for them to remember, which is why we still have some living Holocaust survivors and yet a growing movement of Holocaust denial, among other extremist conspiracy theories (9/11, Sandy Hook, chemtrails, flat-earthing, etc etc). There is likewise no organized effort to teach honest history in Western public schools, not least since the West likes its self-appointed role as guardians of freedom and liberty and democracy in the world and doesn’t really want anyone digging into all that messy slavery and genocide and imperialism and colonialism business. As a result, you have deliberately under- or un-educated citizens, who have had a couple of courses on American/British/etc history in grade school focusing on the greatest-hit reel, and all from an overwhelmingly triumphalist white perspective. You have to like history, from what you get out of it in public school, to want to go on to study it as a career, while knowing that there are few jobs available, universities are cutting or shuttering humanities departments, and you’ll never make much money. There is... not a whole lot of outside incentive there.

I’ve written before about how the humanities are always the first targeted, and the first defunded, and the first to be labeled as “worthless degrees,” because a) they are less valuable to late-stage capitalism and its emphasis on Material Production, and b) they often focus on teaching students the critical thinking skills that critique and challenge that dominant system. There’s a reason that there is a stereotype of artists as social revolutionaries: they have often taken a look around, gone, “Hey, what the hell is this?” and tried to do something about it, because the creative and free-thinking impulse helps to cultivate the tools necessary to question what has become received and dominant wisdom. Of course, that can then be taken too far into the “I’ll create my own reality and reject absolutely everything that doesn’t fit that narrative,” and we end up at something like the current death of expertise.

This year is particularly fertile for these kinds of misinformation efforts: a plague without a vaccine or a known cure, an election year in a turbulently polarized country, race unrest in a deeply racist country spreading to other racist countries around the world and the challenging of a particularly important system (white supremacy), etc etc. People are scared and defensive and reactive, and in that case, they’re especially less motivated to challenge or want to encounter information that scares them. They need their pre-set beliefs to comfort them or provide steadiness in a rocky and uncertain world, and (thanks once again to social media) it’s easy to launch blistering ad hominem attacks on people who disagree with you, who are categorized as a faceless evil mass and who you will never have to meet or negotiate with in real life. This is the environment in which all the world’s distinguished scientists, who have spent decades studying infectious diseases, have to fight for airtime and authority (and often lose) over random conspiracy theorists who make a YouTube video. The public has been trained to see them as “both the same” and then accept which side they like the best, regardless of actual factual or real-world qualifications. They just assume the maniac on YouTube is just as trustworthy as the scientists with PhDs from real universities.

Obviously, academia is racist, elitist, classist, sexist, on and on. Most human institutions are. But training people to see all academics as the enemy is not the answer. You’ve seen the Online Left (tm) also do this constantly, where they attack “the establishment” for never talking about anything, or academics for supposedly erasing and covering up all of non-white history, while apparently never bothering to open a book or familiarize themselves with a single piece of research that actual historians are working on. You may have noticed that historians have been leading the charge against the “don’t erase history!!!1″ defenders of racist monuments, and explaining in stinging detail exactly why this is neither preserving history or being truthful about it. Tumblr likes to confuse the mechanism that has created the history and the people who are studying and analyzing that history, and lump them together as one mass of Evil And Lying To You. Academics are here because we want to critically examine the world and tell you things about it that our nonsense system has required years and years of effort, thousands of dollars in tuition, and other gatekeeping barriers to learn. You can just ask one of us. We’re here, we usually love to talk, and we’re a lot cheaper. I think that’s pretty cool.

As a historian, I have been trained in a certain skill set: finding, reading, analyzing, using, and criticizing primary sources, ditto for secondary sources, academic form and style, technical skills like languages, paleography, presentation, familiarity with the professional mechanisms for reviewing and sharing work (journals, conferences, peer review, etc), and how to assemble this all into an extended piece of work and to use it in conversation with other historians. That means my expertise in history outweighs some rando who rolls up with an unsourced or misleading Twitter thread. If a professor has been handed a carefully crafted essay and then a piece of paper scribbled with crayon, she is not obliged to treat them as essentially the same or having the same critical weight, even if the essay has flaws. One has made an effort to follow the rules of the game, and the other is... well, I did read a few like that when teaching undergraduates. They did not get the same grade.

This also means that my expertise is not universal. I might know something about adjacent subjects that I’ve also studied, like political science or English or whatever, but someone who is a career academic with a degree directly in that field will know more than me. I should listen to them, even if I should retain my independent ability and critical thinking skillset. And I definitely should not be listened to over people whose field of expertise is in a completely different realm. Take the recent rocket launch, for example. I’m guessing that nobody thought some bum who walked in off the street to Kennedy Space Center should be listened to in preference of the actual scientists with degrees and experience at NASA and knowledge of math and orbital mechanics and whatever else you need to get a rocket into orbit. I definitely can’t speak on that and I wouldn’t do it anyway, so it’s frustrating to see it happen with history. Everybody “knows” things about history that inevitably turn out to be wildly wrong, and seem to assume that they can do the same kind of job or state their conclusions with just as much authority. (Nobody seems to listen to the scientists on global warming or coronavirus either, because their information is actively inconvenient for our entrenched way of life and people don’t want to change.) Once again, my point here is not to be a snobbish elitist looking down at The Little People, but to remark that if there’s someone in a field who has, you know, actually studied that subject and is speaking from that place of authority, maybe we can do better than “well, I saw a YouTube video and liked it better, so there.” (Americans hate authority and don’t trust smart people, which is a related problem and goes back far beyond Trump, but there you are.)

As for art: it’s funny how people devalue it constantly until they need it to survive. Ask anyone how they spent their time in lockdown. Did they listen to music? Did they watch movies or TV? Did they read a book? Did they look at photography or pictures? Did they try to learn a skill, like drawing or writing or painting, and realize it was hard? Did they have a preference for the art that was better, more professionally produced, had more awareness of the rules of its craft, and therefore was more enjoyable to consume? If anyone wants to tell anyone that art is worthless, I invite you to challenge them on the spot to go without all of the above items during the (inevitable, at this rate) second coronavirus lockdown. No music. No films. No books. Not even a video or a meme or anything else that has been made for fun, for creativity, or anything outside the basic demands of Compensated Economic Production. It’s then that you’ll discover that, just as with the underpaid essential workers who suffered the most, we know these jobs need to get done. We just still don’t want to pay anyone fairly for doing them, due to our twisted late-capitalist idea of “value.”

Anyway, since this has gotten long enough and I should probably wrap up: as you say, the difference between “professional” and “hobbyist” has been almost completely erased, so that people think the opinion of one is as good as the other, or in your case, that the hobbyist should present their work for free or refuse to be seen as a professional entitled to fair compensation for their skill. That has larger and more insidious effects in a global marketplace of ideas that has been almost entirely reduced to who can say their opinion the loudest to the largest group of people. I don’t know how to solve this problem, but at least I can try to point it out and to avoid being part of it, and to recognize where I need to speak and where I need to shut up. My job, and that of every single white person in America right now, is to shut up and let black people (and Native people, and Latinx people, and Muslim people, and etc...) tell me what it’s really like to live here with that identity. I have obviously done a ton of research on the subject and consider myself reasonably educated, but here’s the thing: my expertise still doesn’t outweigh theirs, no matter what degrees they have or don’t have. I then am required to boost their ideas, views, experiences, and needs, rather than writing them over or erasing them, and to try to explain to people how the roots of these ideas interlock and interact where I can. That is -- hopefully -- putting my history expertise to use in a good way to support what they’re saying, rather than silence it. I try, at any rate, and I am constantly conscious of learning to do better.

I hope that was helpful for you. Thanks for letting me talk about it.

#history #long post #anonymous #ask

76 notes · View notes

radicalcommonsense · 4 years

Text

Radical Common Sense: Introduction.

Though we all may be very different, we likely have one thing in common: In one way or another 2020 has changed each and every one of us. As if these last four years hadn't already filled our brains to the brim with political jibber-jabber from the mainstream media. I think we can all agree that the news has been persistently focused on politics (more specifically allegations against President Donald Trump) and that it has been a constant noise buzzing all around us, effecting each and every one of our lives. When we turn on the radio, when we scroll through our social media feeds, when we're on the bus, or eating peacefully at a restaurant and the person behind us is talking a little too loudly. As if all of this weren't enough to endure, the pool of politics became much, much deeper for us to swim in when we were locked up in our homes for months on end. I lost my job on March 15, 2020 when we were forced to close. I was fortunate enough to be able to continue to live comfortably with my boyfriend, but the time on my hands felt endless for the next 6 months. Like many I first went mad and began organizing every closet, cabinet, and sock drawer. I held so much pint up and nervous energy in my body that I felt like I was in a constant state of sticking a fork into an electrical socket and could burst into a series of sparks, burning to a crisp at any moment. I began dowsing myself in CBD products to try and keep my cool. I started painting, reading a ton and took an online Interior Design course???

Once I had finally grown somewhat accustom to my new and strange life of gardening, day drinking, reading on the balcony and pretending that I was a retired old woman, that's when the riots started happening. The shutdown alone had caused even more friction to rise between both ends of the political spectrum. Conservatives voiced their objection to government overreach while Leftists called people jogging outside without a mask "grandma killers". There was certainly ignorance shown on both ends of the spectrum, but the point I'm making here is that the tension was growing with each and every day that we all were forced to stay home, leaving our means of having any income in the hands of Daddy Government. I did my best to limit my social media intake, but even 5 minutes scrolling would reveal a whirlwind of very strong and accusatory opinions of the shutdown, Black Lives Matter, racism, systemic racism, systematic racism, another cancelled syrup bottle or comedian who wasn't politically correct in a stand up act back in 1994, white privilege, voter fraud, total Covid-19 hysteria and a whole lot of shaming those who didn't follow suit with the mainstream narrative. There were people fueling these fires and if you dared to question their motives you were on the chopping block, also embarrassingly known as Cancel Culture.

We all know what it is, but I am afraid to think of how many of us have actually experienced it. I certainly did when I shared a video of a BLM event happening in Chicago. This video was particularly alarming because the crowd of "peaceful" protestors were so extremely organized in their attack. I felt overwhelmed with fear watching as they took their giant "Black Lives Matter" sign made of pvc pipe, that stretched across what looked like 6 lanes of highway, hid behind it, changed into all black clothing and then proceeded to use it as a shield as they grew closer to their target. Once they were close enough, the pvc pipe was pulled apart to reveal that it had been constructed from pieces of pipe that they had sharpened to a nice and lethal point. They then began to throw these sharpened pieces of pvc pipe, along with frozen water bottles, frozen cans, rocks and explosive devises at police officers who appeared to be standing back, allowing the protest to happen without interference prior to this attack. So much so that most of them were even unarmed, not expecting violence to prevail on either side. (Feel free to watch the video to see for yourself.)

This certainly wasn't the first video I'd seen where "peaceful" protestors were being destructive or even gruesomely violent, but it was the first that made this movement look like a well organized militia, inspired by an organization which I believe has a Marxists, or communist agenda. When I shared my fears about this, calling the movement "violent" I received quite a lot of hate from the friends I'd somehow collected on Facebook over the last 10 years. They urged people not to support my creative endeavors. People took screenshots of the post and shared it on their other social accounts (completely out of context as the video was of course removed) in attempts to reach an even bigger audience. I received direct messages from total strangers who called me racists, among other things. I had already been “cancelled” by some close friends prior to this for going to the beach on the day it re-opened in Daytona and posting about it with a caption that suggested it was safe to be outside. This idea seemed to really devastate some people and they made sure to let me know it as they called me the following names: Laughably f*cking stupid, Karen, Privileged, Nazi, uninformed, insensitive, stupid b*tchh, flat-earther, ignorant f*cking b*tch, racist, a “Trumper” and the ever popular white privileged b*tch. These are just some of the insults that I can remember off the top of my head.

My message here is not meant to invoke pity, or rage, or anything in between, but it is necessary for me to give you some back story as to what led me to my obsession to understand something very few people care about today, the Truth. I knew that the ideas I was hearing, coming from the mouths of the majority were wrong, but I wanted to understand why and I wanted to be prepared to defend myself, since it had been made abundantly clear to me that, that was going to be necessary. So, I delved even DEEPER into politics, government, American history and the criminal justice system. I am happy to say that this thirst for knowledge led me back into school, where I'm finally finishing up my associates degree (and getting straight A's). But I digress. Time went on and I calmed my little hummingbird heart over the dramatic smearing of my name (which had previously been widely accepted due to my Leftist blabbering of things I didn't really understand) and I continued to quietly read and research. I dared to peer my head back into the land of Social Mania and posted yet again on Facebook. This time I felt I had something to say that was rather mild on the offensive scale... that proved to be incorrect. A friend of mine had shared a video with me of a fallen soldier whom he'd fought beside in Iraq. They had grown close and the video showed as they draped his casket with the American flag. The message he sent attached to the video said "this is why I'll always stand for the flag." I found his message really touching and shared the video along with what he had said (of course not mentioning his name out of respect). Later that day I received a message from a previous co-worker that was quite belligerent and sloppy, but somewhere in his (I'm assuming drunken) rage he asked the question: "Have you been radicalized or something?"

We are living in a world where the narrative has completely shifted. It is no longer radical to preach about the wonders of what Communism "could" be. It is no longer radical to loot, riot, burn down churches, kill police officers and even innocent child bystanders so long as it is under the guise of social justice. It is not radical to want to uproot your countries entire political system in order to replace it with a "better", socialist/communist one that has proven to not only fail but ruin/end the lives of millions. It is now radical to suggest that we should honor our flag, those who fought for our freedom and to simply lift ourselves up to stand for the American flag.

It is now racist to celebrate the 4th of July, insensitive to celebrate Thanksgiving, homophobic to practice Christianity and don't even think about subjectively acknowledging the accomplishments of Christopher Columbus. In fact, don't dare to celebrate the intellect of any of our founding fathers. It is now radical to be proud to be an American. It is radical to support a free-market economy. It is radical to defend straight white men against any and all accusations as they are the "obvious" oppressors of all. People will gasp if you question the effects of Drag Queen Story Hour and you're likely just "uneducated" if you don't understand why the nuclear family is outdated.

In summary, do not practice critical thinking and especially not Common Sense. Just repeat after the mainstream media and you might be spared from exposing your truly "radical" ideas about traditional American values and your love of oppressive straight white men.

I will continue to write about these topics as well as covering current events from the perspective of someone who is dedicated to understanding the Truth, how we can connect what we’re seeing today to human History & to earn a better understanding of human behavior. I do not intend to use this as a platform to rant vigorously about my own personal feelings. Rather to defend what I believe to be Common Sense values.

22 notes · View notes

kalyan-gullapalli · 4 years

Text

Post # 149

To err is human...

For the past few days, I have been watching a 8-part, one-hour-each, docu-series called The Test: A New Era for Australia's Team on Amazon Prime Video. I just finished it and am bursting to share my thoughts on it. But a little bit of background first.

24th March, 2018, was a day of infamy in the annals of Australian cricketing history!

On this day, in Cape Town, South Africa, on Day 4 of the 3rd Test between visitors Australia and home team South Africa, Cameron Bancroft, a rookie Australian was caught tampering with the condition of the ball with a yellow sandpaper. He then tried to hide the sandpaper in his underwear. Jeez! What was he thinking? Did he not know that there are at least 50 cameras on the cricket ground these days? No one can scratch his back without being caught on one of the cameras.

Steve Smith, considered the greatest test batsman after Sir Don Bradman, because of his stratospheric batting average in tests, was the captain of that Australian side. Dashing opening batsman, David Warner, was the vice-captain. Apparently, Warner was the mastermind of this incident. Steve Smith supposedly knew what was happening, but chose to look the other way. Basically, the Australian team cheated on the cricket ground! And got caught!

The backlash was swift and severe. Though the ICC penalties were light - Bancroft was fined 75% of his match fees and Smith was banned for just one match, Cricket Australia, the national board for cricket in Australia, came down really harsh. They conducted an investigation of their own. Following public admission of guilt from all three players, Australia's Prime Minister at that time, Malcolm Turnbull, phoned Cricket Australia's chairman directly to express his disappointment and concern, stating that strongest action be taken. Smith, Warner and Bancroft were banned from playing all forms of cricket for 12 months. They were flown back midway from the series and replacements flown in immediately. They lost their IPL contracts that year. Product endorsement contracts were cancelled. Darren Lehmann, though not a guilty party, stepped down as coach of the Australian team.

Australia was rocked like never before. Warner, Smith and Bancroft had shamed the proud, cocky nation. Ex-players shook their heads in disgust and expressed their anguish, in public, on international TV. Someone said that this was the biggest scandal since the underarm ball of the Chappell brothers.

There was a huge debate whether the 12 months ban was too harsh. Personally, I didn't think so. I think they deserved every month of the ban. But public opinion was split. Harsha Bhogle said, "I honestly do not believe any other country would have handed its captain and lead player a one-year ban for attempted ball-tampering." ICC saw how steep Cricket Australia's penalties were and made their punishments steeper!

For a while, Smith, Warner and Bancroft mulled taking legal action against CA, but then decided against it. They decided to wait out their ban, straighten themselves in their own heads and hope to come back to the sport again.

The Australian cricket team, arguably the best in the world, was depleted. Their two best batsmen were not available for selection. The rest of the team was scared of its shadow. Morale was low. There were questions about "culture". Australia and Australians were always competitive. They pioneered sledging & other psychological games and called them "getting under the skin of competition." Now somebody crossed the line and the nation had lost respect!

Tim Paine (who?) was made captain and Justin Langer was made coach. Their job - to rebuild a team and regain the lost respect in the eyes of their fans - the Australian people.

I honestly thought Smith, Warner and Bancroft were finished. I didn't think they would ever come back to play for Australia. And I thought Australia was finished as a team to reckon with, for a long long time.

Smith, Warner and Bancroft did come back and play for Australia again. Warner and Smith were the champions of Australia's dream run till the semis in the World Cup 2019. Smith was the player of the tournament when Australia successfully regained the Ashes later that year. In a year and half, Australian cricket was back on its feet. They are not invincible yet, but they are no pushovers either.

And that to me is an exciting story. It is a story of comebacks. It is the story of the triumph of human spirit. It is the story of a few individuals, a team and a nation, owning up to their mistakes, accepting responsibility, bearing the consequences of their actions and making sterling comebacks. And earning back respect!

The Test - A New Era for Australia's Team is that story. It is a behind-the-scene, real time account, of the way the team regrouped under Coach Langer. Like me, you will wonder how a camera (more than one actually) got into the Australian dressing room and followed each and every player's each and every move or action, reaction, emotion, for 18 months? The answer is - this docu-series was authorised, sponsored and produced by Cricket Australia. I wonder how the players and support staff felt about the constant scrutiny. I guess they didn't have too much of a choice.

The 8-part series takes us through the 18-month journey that the young Australian team took, first without Smith and Warner, through the series against Pakistan in Dubai, then against India at home, then against India again in India, their World Cup campaign, with Smith and Warner back in the team (Bancroft too) and finally the Ashes series.

Coach Justin Langer demonstrates why he, along with Haydos (Matthew Hayden), was the best opening bat in the world in his time. With his usual grit and perseverance, he lays down the process of becoming world class again. This mantra keeps repeating again and again throughout the series.

1. Focus on the next ball!

2. Trust the process to deliver the result.

3. Let not temporary setbacks waver your faith on the process.

4. Keep the noise out of the equation.

It was fascinating to see how individuals responded to the process. Usman Khwaja bats for hours and hours in the scorching heat of Dubai to save the test against Pakistan. Nathan Lyon becomes a powerful weapon in the Aussie bowling arsenal with his frequent fifers. Pat Cummins emerges as the leader of the fast bowling pack. Tim Paine (who again?) begins to come on his own and shapes up into an amazing captain. To my mind, he becomes the first Australian captain I like (not just respect) - a nice guy! That's definitely a first for an Australian captain. Over time, Aaron Finch emerges as the ODI and T20 captain. Then Smith-Warner-Bancroft are back. The series shows how they integrated back into the team, their dream world cup campaign till the disastrous semis against England and their phenomenal 2-2 Ashes result.

The journey wasn't smooth, nor was it easy. The series shows candid dressing room conversations, post match meetings, strategy discussions, coaching staff meetings, some selection discussions and so on.

One particularly touching scene was the post match team meeting the day after they lost to England by 1 wicket - the one where Ben Stokes plays and plays and plays, probably the best innings ever, okay, maybe one of the best innings ever - to prevent Aussies the series win. The match was Aussies, till Ben Stokes decided he didn't want to lose yet. Morale in the Aussie camp was low. Coach Langer swallows his own disappointment and holds the meeting to discuss what went wrong and how to do things differently next time. That one was tough to watch. My heart went out for Tim Paine and his team.

It was cool to see some greats of Aussie cricket come into the camp and assist Coach Langer and his staff. Ricky Ponting was Assistant Coach for the World Cup campaign and Steve Waugh joined the team for the Ashes tour. Their interactions with the players and comments and expressions during key moments during the match, caught real time, are fascinating.

But to me, the one person I will watch the series for - again - is Steve Smith. The docu-series begins with Steve Smith being disgraced, deservingly, for his involvement in the scandal. There is a scene where Smith is being escorted by a team of about ten odd security people in the airport - the narrator says, like a common criminal. Of course, we have all seen Smith cry on national and international TV in his oft-repeat-telecast press conference admitting his guilt. I cannot imagine what this man must have gone through. It could have crushed him. Infact, there is a scene where he says he almost decided to hang his boots. But he didn't. He came back.

In the World Cup in England, everywhere he went, he was booed and heckled. There is a scene where Justin Langer is caught making a remark about the booing crowd, "These guys behave as if they have not made a single mistake in their lives." Maybe they have, maybe it is just Karmic justice. The Aussie crowds have been bigger assholes in the past. But this is not about the crowd. This is about Smith. He played out of his skin. He was never the greatest ODI batsman. But he was the pillar of the Aussie batting during that campaign. His was the prize wicket. The match was not over till he was out. He was one of the key players who were instrumental in Australia going to the semis, second on the league table, just below India. And for a team rocking just about an year back, that was not bad. Of course, the semi finals against England was forgettable.

Then came the Ashes in England. More intense booing. Everytime he came in to bat, tens of thousands welcomed him with booes. But that Ashes series, Smith was para-normal. He says, he was in a bubble. He says, the levels of concentration he achieved were super-human. The results show. Two hundreds on his return test, one each in both innings, a double hundred in the fourth test, 774 in a five test series in which he didn't play in one of the tests because of an injury, 300 plus more runs than the second best batter in the series (Ben Stokes, another Superman) and 400 plus runs more than the second best Aussie batter (Marcus Labuschagne).

What will forever be etched in my heart's mind is - When Steve Smith got out for 25 odd runs in the rain-shortened last test (his last innings of the Ashes) and started his walk back to the dressing room, the erstwhile hostile English crowd at The Oval stood on its feet and applauded its adversary all the way back to the pavilion. Steve Smith lifted his bat, acknowledged the ovation, went into the dressing room, acknowledged the pats-on-his-back from his team mates and sat in a corner of the dressing room, a satisfied smile on his lips. It was redemption. He had earned back his lost respect. The world had acknowledged him to be the best again. I could feel that moment for him.

The story of the comebacks of Smith, Warner, Bancroft and Australia is an extraordinary story, but in no way unique. Australia themselves have gone through a similar rebuilding phase in the 1980s post the World Series Cup turmoil. South Africa came back stronger after the Hansie Cronje scandal. India became a world beating side under Saurav Ganguly after the match fixing scandals of 2000. There are other such instances.

What caught my imagination is the story of the indomitable human spirit. A human being can be down in the dumps one day, and comeback the next. Nothing is permanently gone. Lost wealth can be regained, lost respect can be re-earned, the mistakes can be pardoned if they are owned and accepted. Life doesn't judge. Life offers second chances, third chances, multiple chances. Infact, every moment of life is an opportunity - to scale new heights or comeback from behind!

22 notes · View notes

simsadventures · 5 years

Text

After All: Chapter 7: Please

Summary: Tony learns about Hannah, and has a real problem remaining cool. Meanwhile, you spend your time with Bruce, and as Bucky sees you with him continuously, he gets a little jealous.

Warnings: angst, angry Tony, jealousy, fluff, swearing

Word Count: 2461

A/N: I got carried away with the Tony bit a little, so my apologies. Anyway, thank you everyone for the positive feedback, means a world to me. Love you all 3000!!

Series Masterlist __ Masterlist

< Previous Chapter

Tony was seething. He was sitting in his chair, listening to all Bucky had to say, even if it took all his willpower not to jump at him. His relationship with Bucky was almost nonexistent, and he was on the team pretty much only because Steve insisted on it, and swore he would take care of his friend. Tony never went on a mission with Bucky; fortunately, the world being a little less crazy nowadays, so the whole team rarely got together on missions.

He was well aware that Bucky did all those things, even killing his parents under mind control, but that didn’t mean he had to suddenly like him. And Bucky wasn’t that fond of Tony, to be honest, he thought of him as a narcissistic asshole, but he never let his emotions get the better of him. He knew he was lucky to be on the team, to have a safe space, and on top of it all, friends bordering with family. The two of them never really tried to spend some time together, so it was a surprise for Tony when he saw Bucky marching towards his office.

He was pissed not only at Bucky and Hannah, even though his anger was primarily directed towards those two. He was also mad at himself. He gave you a job, hell, he did everything he could to persuade you to come and work with them. He thought of you as one of the most brilliant scientists and inventors of this era, and he needed you on the team. He promised you the best working place you could imagine, and here you were, bullied by members of his team. He obviously didn’t pay enough attention to you, because if he were, he could’ve seen what was coming.

Even when Bucky finished the whole story, Tony remained calm. He was sure if he spoke up, he’d actually kill someone. So he took a few breaths and closed his eyes, trying to think of the best thing to do. He knew he had to fire or at least transfer Hannah fro screwing up with people like that. His problem was Bucky. If he could, he would send him flying out of the window behind him, and just the thought of it made him smile a little. Yup that would make him happy for sure and Tony would bet you’d like to see it too.

But as much as he wanted nothing more than to hurt Bucky, he knew it wasn’t an option. Not really.

“What do you propose I do, Barnes?”

Bucky stared at him, dumbfounded. He expected a lot of things, but not a calm and collected Tony. At least on the outside, anyway. “I can’t really tell you what to do with Hann-“

“Oh, I’m not asking about Hannah. I’m asking you, what do you think I should do with you? I understand that you had pretty much no idea that Y/N is not a HYDRA agent. But you still hurt her pretty much, from what I hear. So can you tell me what I should do with someone like you? Because let me tell you something. I would be ecstatic to punch the living hell out of you, I really would, but I don’t think it’s my place. I don’t think I have the right to punish you. I believe that whatever Y/N’s got for you will be punishment enough. So, be on your way, and I advise you to try and stay clear of me for at least the next two days. This calm demeanour will wear off rather quickly.”

Bucky widened his eyes a little, nodded sharply, and walked out of Tony’s office. He expected to be sidelined from missions for a month, or something like that. But Tony was right. Every second that you didn’t speak to him, and genuinely didn’t care about him, hurt ten thousand times more than anything Tony could do to him.

As soon as Bucky left Tony’s office, Tony shouted at F.R.I.D.A.Y. “Friday, I need you to send agent Burks to my office, ASAP.”

“Yes, sir. Agent Burks is being informed.”

Tony just hummed and stared out the window. He knew she was a reasonably good agent, but at the same time, this country had many good agents, so he wouldn’t miss her. Hell, he didn’t know what she looked like. He was sure that the second she comes to the room he’d know immediately, but at the current state, no face was coming to his mind. He patiently waited, gave few orders for FRIDAY to sent out, until he heard the door open and close.

He turned around and there she was. As he thought, he was aware she was one of the agents, but that was all he could say to their relationship. Even his relationship with Barnes was stronger, Tony thought, and the thought almost made him snicker. What a paradox!

“Sit down, agent Burks, there are some things we need to discuss.”

Hannah had to idea what would Mr Stark want. She wasn’t aware of anything she’d done wrong, so she could only hope this was some kind of promotion or a pay raise.

“You wanted to see me, Mr Stark?”

She smiled sweetly. She was, indeed, a beautiful woman, but Tony couldn’t care less. One, he had Pepper, and she was the most beautiful woman on Earth, and two, this woman in front of him was a lying bitch trying to get somebody’s attention by hurting other people. And Tony couldn’t stand people like that.

“It got to me that you’ve been acting unprofessionally lately. You have anything to say for yourself?”

“M’ sorry? I’m not aware of me doing anything wrong, sir.”

Right, Tony thought and smirked. If she at least had the decency to come clean and beg for forgiveness. Not Tony’s, of course, but still.

“So you’re not aware you came with a fairytale that one of our best scientists is a spy, and you also didn’t put this very idea into Bucky’s head, then?”

There was a silence in the room. Tony could have sworn he saw all the thoughts running through Hannah’s mind, while she was trying to think of some lame excuse.

She wanted to speak up, but Tony stopped her. “You know what? I don’t even wanna hear it. You’re a good agent, I’m willing to acknowledge that much. But you are obviously a shitty person, and, to be honest, I, nor anyone else wants such a person around. But because you are good at your job, I’m not gonna fire you. You will be transferred to the CIA, with whom, as you might know, we collaborate very closely. They are always in need of more people, and I already sent a message to their headquarters, and you are very welcomed there. I didn’t tell them about what you did, but trust me, if I found out that you’re still doing shit like that? I will make sure everyone in the States knows, are we clear?”

“Sir, yes, sir!” Hannah all but saluted him and ran out of his office. He sent a few other agents to her room, making sure she really leaves and leaves without talking to you. That was Tony’s primary mission. Tony thought the whole thing was a success, nobody fought him, and everyone was doing exactly what he wanted them. Good day at the office, he thought and made a mental note to come by your lab the next day, to see if you were ok and if you knew that Hannah was no longer part of the team.

—-

The day Tony came to your office was one of the happiest in the latest history. At first, you were pretty shaken, because you were that kind of person who never tried to make a problem to others, especially by going to the boss and complaining. But it wasn’t you, and it kind of surprised you when you learned that it was actually Bucky.

You knew about the relationship Tony and Bucky shared, so you were confused as to why he would go to his “boss/colleague” for you. Because from what Tony said, it seemed that, indeed, Bucky went there so that Hannah wouldn’t bother you, primarily. What surprised you, even more, was that Tony was actually speaking in a very positive tone about Bucky. Not friendly, of course, but in a way that you saw that Tony sympathised with Bucky. After he left, Bruce came running towards you, asking you what that was all about.

When you told him the whole story, Bruce insisted that the two of you had to celebrate getting rid of that bitch. Bruce had a lot of emotions towards Hannah, and you knew that her only luck was not meeting him in a hallway somewhere. It could have been the last she did, for that matter.

It was a Friday night, and you invited Bruce over to yours, to watch a movie and eat a shitload of popcorn. That was your kind of perfect Friday night!

You decided that Superman vs Batman was the greatest choice for the night, and settled on the couch. Not that you were paying much attention to the movie, thanks to Bruce’s constant babbling. He finally asked Natasha out, and you had to prep him for his date the next night. You were telling him about great places to have dinner in Brooklyn when suddenly, you heard a loud knock on your door. Bruce was standing up to get it, but you pushed him back into the couch and went to answer it yourself.

When you opened the door, you saw Bucky standing there, three packs of popcorn in one hand, and a bottle of wine in the other. It was Friday night, he thought that he could start mission “Redemption” by going back to your favourite activity. It was an olive branch, you knew that, but there was no way in the world that you’d throw out Bruce and let Bucky in. And having the two of them together was a bit risky too, Bruce was still on the verge of breaking Bucky’s jaw whenever he saw him.

“What are you doing here, Bucky?” you wanted it to sound harsh and distant, but all you got out of yourself was a meek little nothing. You were a pussy, you thought to yourself and inwardly rolled your eyes at your behaviour.

“I thought we could watch a movie, Y/N. It’s Friday, you know?” he smiled, and you couldn’t help but smile back at him. He really was a handsome man, you gotta give him that.

“It’s nice of you, but I already have company. Maybe some other time. Goodnight, Bucky.”

You could see that Bucky’s eyes roamed across your little apartment before his eyes landed on Bruce. He clenched his jaw, mumbled his Goodnight to you both, and was on his way.

You were aware of how it looked, you and Bruce watching a movie on Friday night, with a blanket previously draped over the both of you. But you were just good friends. You shrugged your shoulder and gave your full attention back to Bruce, who was a very hopeless man when it came to the woman. He might have had 7 PhDs, but he lacked a basic course in being around women he wanted to impress. It would have offended you a little if it weren’t Bruce. But you let it slide and told him all about the first day touches and all that. Although, you were quite sure it would work differently with the Black Widow herself.

Next time you saw Bucky was in a gym. You wanted to get in at least some form of shape, and Bruce offered that he’d go with you. Hulk was bulky and all, but he had problems lifting a heavier bag.

You were both on a treadmill, chatting freely, sometimes laughing so much so had to step to the side so you wouldn’t fall off that devilish thing.

Bucky was sparing with Steve, who learned about what happened and beaten the crap out of Bucky. All seemed to be good now, so it was harmless jabs here and there. Bucky was looking at you and Bruce, and his breathing got heavier. He couldn’t help it but saw almost red at the moment. He wanted to be there with you. He wanted you to feel comfortable enough with him to laugh like that. Damn, he loved your laugh. It never ceased to make him smile as well. He couldn’t believe he lost the privilege to make you laugh because some bitch told him to. He was even more stupid than he thought.

Steve stopped as well, following Bucky’s gaze, and smirking lightly. “What is it, jerk? Little jealous, are we?”

“Shut up, punk. I’m not jealous, and I’m definitely not jealous of Bruce!”

“Sure thing, buddy. I think we both know the truth. Why don’t you talk to her, huh?”

Bucky sighed and turned to face Steve again. “You think I haven’t been trying? But every fucking time I try to apologise again, or just simply talk to her, Bruce is there, like a loyal puppy.”

“Oh, and who’s fault is that, bud? If only you spoke to me, made sure that Y/N was really a target, you could’ve avoided this situation altogether. But because you are scared to love, scared to show your real self to someone, you all too eagerly shoved Y/N away. I would like to help you, my friend, but that’s something you gotta realise on your own. Because that girl? She is gold, and I think you know that too. So if I were you, I’d put my head out of my ass and beg her for forgiveness, even if it meant fighting Hulk.”

Steve finished his speech with a punch to Bucky’s ribs, which sent him to the floor. “That’s for trusting someone more than me.” He smirked and helped Bucky off the ground.

Bucky looked in your direction, where you were now stretching, your ass in the air, and he gulped. Hard. You were gold, inside and out, and he would get you back. He simply had to. There was no other way.

You looked in Bucky’s direction, knowing well enough he was watching you stretch, so you gave him a good show of what he was missing. You were no Hannah, but you were yourself, and that was enough. There was a little, a tiny part of you which hoped it would be enough for Bucky as well. And by the way he was adjusting himself just by watching you, you wanted to think it was.

/ Next Chapter >

After All:

@iheartsebastianstan @kneel-begyourpardon @owlyannah @readermia @kolakube9 @ibookishqueen @thewintersoldierswifu @emogril @the-melancholyfeels @pinkleopardss @supervengerslock @the-soulofdevil @jessyballet @sebbbystaaan @bxrnsfeyson @38leticia @sparkling-gayyyy @paradisiacalsparks @deansbbysblog @eileenalone @lustgardn @wantingtobekorra @backflip-into-a-garbage-can @voltage-my2dlove

If you’d like to be tagged comment/message/send an ask. If you like the story, please reblog :) any comments are appreciated, even the critical one. Always a space to get better, so let me know what you guys think.

#bucky #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #james bucky barnes #bucky barnes fanfiction #avengers #avengers fanfiction #bruce banner #tony stark #mcu #mcu fanfiction #marvel #jealous bucky #multiple chapters #after all #the winter soldier #the winter solider fanfiction #the white wolf #black widow

615 notes · View notes

fymagnificentwomcn · 4 years

Note

Women of Ottoman make me so sad especially when people hate on them. Those women lived horrible lives. Most of them were kidnapped, sold, thrown under a psycho Padisah. How can you wait for them to care for your kingdom? Of course they were going to survive for themselves and for their children. None of them deserves the hate they get. I hope God put all of them in peace. No human should go through such terrible things.

Totally agree Anon.

Women from Ottoman Empire cannot be for example compared with women from the West – first and foremost, they were slaves that at the very beginning lost their families, homes and even had to change their name and religion to have any chance at making a new life. Some lost their families very early, and often it also affected them emotionally when they grew up without having familial bonds. Even as consorts, they were one of many, and they had no legal status outside their children, Even mothers of princes other than hasekis were referred to as “Mother of Prince X” in records, and mothers of daughters were even more invisible. They had a very limited access to outside world, there was no way a woman could ascend the throne as a ruler in her own reign, other than as regent. Not to mention all matters connected with fratricide and kafes, it was living in constant fear. It’s hard to compare them to European queens, who had more stable and safe position even if they also had to face misogyny and oppression .

It was no fairytale, even in the show that didn’t show a lot of atrocities involved in slave trade and focused on those women who still somewhat “succeeded”.

I will use this opportunity to discuss some double standards about those who succeeded vs. those who didn’t pertaining to the TV show, but will later come to the crux, I promise.

The faux feminism in this fandom is astounding to me,including the glaring obvious double standards depending on who fan favourite is - and fan favourite is often who is simply “the coolest”, “most victorious”, “most stylish”, “most lucky”, generally young, beautiful, badass, and successful, not sad or depressed. We all know reactions to Hürrem and Mahidevran doing the same things back in original MY - when Mahidevran did awful things to Hürrem, she was just pathetic jealous woman, but when Hürrem did multiple times the same or worse things to other women it was “yass queen” and she ‘fights for her love, so touching, so strong, so great, self defence”. Suddenly Hürrem is allowed to do so because she”s “not like other girls, so not like these pathetic dumb losers”. Hürrem was strong, cunning, and smart, but she also had one clear advantage over all her “enemies” - the love of the most powerful man in Ottoman history. She made multiple mistakes too, but could always count on Suleiman turning a blind eye or forgiving her - something that Mahidevran or others could never count on.

Frankly, even Hürrem vs. Mustafa was often treated more as Hürrem vs. all this “pathetic” women that fought for Mustafa’s case aka Mahidevran or Suleiman’s sisters in fandom. Suddenly Mustafa cannot even defend his own mother because he immediately had it coming for “choosing the wrong side”. Even if you disapprove of him defending/not abandoning his mother, e.g. choosing to poison him sounds a little disproportionate, don’t you think? I said it and I will repeat it again – Hürrem is a character very similar to Cersei – yes, she suffered a lot because of a system devaluing women and yes she’s a survivor and a strong woman who managed to make life for herself in that system – but she’s not a feminist character because she actually only uses the system to her own advantage (and often perpetuates it), and actually displays a lot of traits of internalised misogyny, voicing multiple times how she is different from other girls and this is why she must be the only one by Suleiman’s side, while other women aren’t even entitled to dream about such things. She condemns Mahidevran for wanting to be the only one and being jealous, but then when Suleiman is with other woman she’s all “I’m not like pathetic Mahidevran, I must be the only one”. Same with multiple comments that she often makes… Hürrem was sassy &sarcastic, and had many good comebacks, but it makes me sad how people often cheered on and applauded those worst ones that again display internalised misogyny, like her mocking Mahidevran why she cares about her appearance so much when she doesn’t have a man to share a bed with? Or her again being all “I will give birth to many boys, and you won’t even give birth to a girl”. Again, that whole society was misogynistic and other women also were influenced by it, like they all wanted to give birth to a boy mostly…but often it is about status and wanting to raise/maintain rank, while Hürrem boasts the fact that she gives birth to many boys as again a trait to show how special&strong she is, even part of her reaction to Mihrimah’s birth is her unable to accept the fact that she could give birth to a girl and being disgusted by the fact.. yes, she accepts her later on and her reaction does also stem from being aware of how misogynist the system is, but it shows precisely that – yes, she is influenced by the system and suffered because of it, but at the same time she begins to display same behaviour that she suffered from, tries to cut herself from others in disadvantaged position. And yes, not all characters had similar reactions to giving births to daughters, and mind you Hürrem already had a son&became sultana, plus was Suleiman’s clear fave that could hope for more children. She wasn’t in the worst situation, even Hafsa and Suleiman were very happy at birth of a girl and nobody criticised her for it. Conversely, in MYK Kösem states multiple times that she wants to give Ahmed both sons and daughters, and when she’s pregnant with her second child, she says she wants a girl now for a change. Even when Ayşe hopes for a boy so that Murad’s anger may be melted, she’s happy about Kaya’s birth&clearly loves the baby from the start & is distraught when she is taken from her. Hürrem was never intended to be viewed as feminist, always justified heroine.. this is why instead of making her first bad deed be a revenge on Mahidevran, who had treated her horribly and unfairly, she attacked the person who was most kind to her of them all and who recently went through the same exact shit. Some people hate Gülnihal, but then say Hürrem wasn’t a homewrecker because she had the right to make life for herself in harem.. true, but so did Gülnihal, and it’s not like she could refuse to go to Suleiman’s chambers pls. It wasn’t to be seen as right, it was clearly shown that Hürrem can be both the oppressed and oppressor at the same time from the start. If they had wanted to make her character only all about revenge, they would have again made her gone after Mahi, not innocent Gülnihal, her “best friend”. And people going how Mahi is irredeemable, but with Hürrem it’s so okay because she’s cool while she slays..eh. I admit I never liked Hürrem because personally she never appealed to me, but I totally get why people stan her because she’s an interesting, three-dimensional character (and yes she does have a softer side too), I’m just bothered by some making her some empowered heroine who is excused for everything by the fact that she was a slave and suffered a lot because of it – because you know she is not the only one who went through the same shit – the harem is full of such women, for start. Even statesmen like Ibrahim or Rüstem are slaves (of course as men they have more opportunities for a career etc.), eunuchs attending ladies are slaves… This whole system is based on slavery, yet she often behaves & talks like she’s the only one who lost her family, was kidnapped & mistreated.

And even Nurbanu becoming her successor was accidental because she actually wanted her dead later, though of course Nurbanu was still clearly inspired by her. She never intended for anyone to follow her example and to make her elevation become a permanent element of Ottoman system, and it’s symbolised by her decision to bury the “ring of power” (lol) with her (though of course what Nurbanu did with taking it anyway was plain disgusting).

I think that trying to examine why this character behaves like that is more interesting than simply go YASSS QUEEN.

Thus said, I hate these reductive“takes” calling these women “bitches” because yes there are complex reasons why some of them have become pretty cruel, so while there are no excuses for some of the behaviour, the simple word “bitch” does not cut it at all.

/Yes, I discussed Hürrem here because out of all MY/K characters she seems to be the least hated among major female characters & biggest fan favourite,/

Anyway, the point is that neither Hürrem nor Mahidevran are the villains of the story. The show makes it clear in its last episodes that Suleiman is the true villain – he was the most powerful man at that time, when the padisah’s position was truly strong, as Gülfem put it in the finale “even leaf cannot fall without your approval”. He’s not as dumb or passive as it may seem at first glance -of course he needs to pretend to be objective and just, but he has his own agenda just as everyone else. Moreover, he pretended to be the one trying to ease conflicts… yet he was often the one enhancing them. Even from the start when he gave the ring he had promised Mahidevran to Hürrem&and in many ways humiliated her… then he did the same with giving Isabella necklace he had promised Hürrem. Bah, it was clear he often enjoyed making Hürrem jealous because it flattered his ego. He ultimately even enhanced the conflict between Selim and Bayezid to get rid of the latter, who was “the more dangerous son”. He was always pulling the strings.. he allowed Selim to buy Bayezid from Tahmasp by the way he conducted negotiations because he knew Bayezid would get rid of his brother on the road. It’s practically what Gülfem says to him in last episode again. He knew what backlash was directed at him following Mustafa’s death and he didn’t want another son killed in front of him. As Mahidevran said in the final episode to Mihrimah “It was your father who chose the lives we lived for all of us”. He was the one that determined the fate for everyone. And even if Mihrimah did not want to admit it in any way in front of her mother’s enemy, she pretty much understood then that Selim was also her father’s puppet in a way and it’s my guess why she ultimately decides to leave the palace instead of plotting revenge for Bayezid (and we know she would eventually be back). It was Suleiman who was pulling strings all along throughout the whole show, even sometimes by choosing to refrain from acting.

In MYK, the situation is different that we deal with incompetent, weak or even tyrannical sultans, who are also sometimes danger to ordinary people or break the Imperial law. Kösem acts here like the protector of sultanate and again we see different standards. Can you imagine how criticised Kösem would be if she had used similar methods to Murad’s or even once had gone to on “night spree” and executed people for banning all these dumb prohibitions? Yet for many Murad is the “cool guy” and “poor misunderstood Murad”. Calling Kösem a tyrant.. please you have an actual tyrant here. Look how much criticism she gets for saying “I’m the state”, while Murad calls himself “shadow of God on Earth” , “sole owner of the Ottoman Empire”, “I’m the justice” , “true death” etc. all the time and he’s “badass”. Or how she’s criticised because she dared to try to influence the Divan to convince Murad to change punishment for his prohibitions. She’s an “usurper”, not the guy who enacts unjust law and oppresses his subjects.

And here we come to crux – look at how Suleiman is treated in MY, everyone is flattering him, he’s the one who for most time isn’t blamed for what is happening, everyone strives to be in his good graces, his sons step on their toes around him and idealise him even when he behaves like a total asshat. Even when he dies people try to remember him for his “magnificence”

Now look at Kösem, a female ruler, who was turned by scapegoat by people when something went bad and she had far less freedom to make choices and yet far more criticism, blame shifting and insults thrown her way. Suleiman is credited “for making sacrifices for the Empire”… but he really didn’t have to execute all the people he decided to kill, and his decisions truly affected everyone badly and led to further mess, starting from Ibrahim’s.. It was especially visible in case of Mustafa – he was obviously innocent and didn’t intend to rebel, but after what happened rebellions did begin.Conversely, each difficult decision that Kösem made led to stabilisation in Empire and prevented unrest, yet what she does is interpreted by some as “wanting power for sake of power” because woman cannot act in favour of state nation or dynasty – there’s only personal interest or power hunger. Her life is clearly framed as tragedy both by the “curse” of her witnessing the death of everyone she loved and her death being a parallel scene to her capture - because she was never truly free.

Interestingly, IMO Suleiman for all his talent and his achievements, fucked up the succession issue – succession by combat truly began to run its course during that period & no longer even fulfilled functions for which it was practiced – to put on the throne “the strongest” contender, one with the biggest support, also most successful military commander – while it’s true that era of conquest was naturally over and Empire had to become more sedentary, it still doesn’t make Selim the strongest or best suited candidate for the throne after Suleiman – his not going on campaigns etc. and being more of palace sultan had nothing to do with him recognising the transformation, but simply lack of interest in state matters and preferring to have fun than to rule. He wasn’t some demon, but he was terribly passive & lazy. And him not being a warrior was the least of his problems. Suleiman had extreme power and authority, he introduced first law reform after Mehmed the Conqueror – the fact that he allowed such contest (and well his sons didn’t even wait for his death to start a civil war) was a bad decision when it came to long-term planning. Some may say maybe he would have done something concerning move to seniority if one of Hürrem’s sons had been the eldest… maybe, but we will never know. Contrary, while all Ahmed’s sons died during Kösem’s lifetime, we know her legacy connected with anti-fratricide law lived on – after her death fratricide was a rare occurrence with only a few special exceptions in specific circumstances.

Of course there’s also the matter that Suleiman’s era and Kösem’s era were totally different – here it was even a success to manage to stabilise Empire. And here we need to stress how important context is – I always stress how important it is to assess historical figures in context – for me it’s hard to even compare, let’s say Kösem and Hürrem, because they lived in different ages and fulfilled different roles, let alone comparisons between historical figures from other parts of the world, perhaps even from different age. I can’t understand e.g. why Peirce compared Kösem and Turhan to Elizabeth I and Mary Stuart in Empress of the East – both situations were completely different, the only thing they had in common was that there was a power struggle between two powerful women, which ended with one of them executing the other (and we don’t even have 100% confirmation of Turhan ordering Kosem’s execution because such thing wasn’t officially in her power). I appreciate Peirce a lot, but TBH this comparison was just dumb for a professional historian.

Kösem’s case really shows how loss of innocence may be used as weapon against you – very early on, she gets the lesson even with Ahmed – the moment she first became involved with scheming following the death of her father, he got mad at her for the duration of her whole pregnancy – he didn’t ask why she had done it or any other details – she wasn’t his “ideal fantasy” from the portrait anymore and this was what mattered – and only then changed his mind when after so many futile attempts made by Kösem to talk to him, she finally forced him to listen to her explanations & motivations, and subsequently he became all “I will make everyone pay for every tear of yours & for making us endure pain of separation”. Ah okay, but don’t forget about yourself ;) And once Kösem stopped being “şehzade’s dream” with death of Ahmed and was truly her own political leader, she became to be more and more exposed to this with the passing of time and once she acquainted more and more power.

And don’t forget some male historians praising Turhan for “giving the power back to the rightful hands aka men”… it tells you all, and it’s false anyway, since it didn’t mean Turhan losing interest in state affairs and only caring about the harem (and honestly, “Köprülü was “her man”, she didn’t choose someone she had no influence upon). That was what she decided the Empire needed at that particular moment, not because she realised that politically involved women sucked lmao.

- Joanna

#ottoman history #magnificent century #magnificent century kosem #muhteşem yüzyıl #muhteşem yüzyıl kösem #answered #you know guys all these answeres were written during all these months the blog was on semi-hiatus #and as I did a lot of rewatch #I put a lot of my thoughts during rewatch to these answers #I doubt they will be as long when I open the askbox again tbh #mods opinions

130 notes · View notes

justbutch · 4 years

Note

How & why do you keep going? i'm butch and plain exhausted. Lifelong intolerance and bullying of my being, then my only butch friends all transitioned then this mess in lgbTQ everything, now i get constantly theythem'ed, and dating is shittier to top it off. COVID doesn't help but i just think about offing myself because i dont see a point at all in existing. To me butch lesbianism is a futile deluded joke at this point. We're nothing. Nothing meant to be sustainable. We're a mistake. Nonsense.

Hi there, I’m really sorry that you are feeling so low. Things can be really though sometimes, and like you say, the pandemic sure isn’t helping :/

I know what you mean; it is hard to keep going when it feels like your way of existing seems fundamentally incompatible with people’s worldview. Of course, butch lesbians have never been particularly well accepted in society, but the additional homophobia and marginalization of butch women within “queer” spaces is particularly depressing. And even in somewhat accepting spaces, it can get just plain lonely. It’s not easy to feel so left behind.

As for why & how I keep going, there are actually quite a few reasons:

The main one is: there is more to life than gender. Don’t get me wrong, both my sexuality and the shit I experienced due to being female matter to me, and not being able to talk about this completely openly with people and therefore never being really understood even by people who matter to me is actually quite painful. However, that doesn’t erase the good things in my life. I get to pet cats and float in rivers. I get to spend time with people I like (less so now of course, but this is not forever). I keep my plants alive (or at least I try to). I try to be kind and to make the world a slightly better place. Sometimes, when I feel a bit better, I make art. Sometimes I walk around in the woods until I can’t see any other people anymore. No gender there, just trees and birds and the smell of moss. This is probably something where I have a bit of an advantage from being somewhat older, but I also have some straight normie friends whose opinions on queer stuff tend to range from “of course trans people are valid, but saying that gender identity changes your sex is kinda dumb” over “I just don’t understand any of this weird stuff” to “if she talks about her girldick one more time I’m gonna scream”. They do not relate to my constant ruminations on gender identity or my frustration with queer homophobia, but we can hang out and make pizza, play board games and complain about the general state of the world…and I can even talk about being female without being accused of causing people’s suicide. That helps.

I think there is worth in the butch identity. I know that it’s not the cool thing at the moment, especially of you add “woman” to butch. It’s old-fashioned and not in line with many branches of gender ideology and maybe people do think I’m a joke, but that’s on them. I am female and I am like this and that is okay; I do not need to change anything about myself just to be. I do not need to perform nor curate how other people perceive me. While womanhood exists, it will have to make space to include me. There is both revolution and a certain peace in that thought.

Things will not stay like this forever, so much is certain. Having followed the discourse at least peripherally for quite a while now, things have already changed a lot, rather rapidly, over the last few years and seeing the multiple contradictions in opinions even within queer spaces it’s highly unlikely that we have somehow now reached a stable equilibrium. Of course, this does not necessarily mean that things will change for the better (just look at the last few years), but it’s also not a given that it won’t. Maybe we can contribute to that, but I’m definitely sticking around to see what happens.

As lonely as it can feel sometimes, especially with a lot of my former role models recently coming out as not-really-a-women-and-definitely-not-an-icky-terfy-homo-lesbian, we are not, in fact, the last two butch women around. There might not be many of us, but butch lesbians are still a thing, both younger (often desisted or detransitioned) ones and older ones. There are lesbians not just surviving, but thriving away from mainstream queer spaces. There are people talking about the dysfunctional dynamics. There are people who are trying to rebuild community. There are people who understand, although it can take a lot of effort to find them.

I know how important it is for me to see other butches just…exist, so I want to be this person for other people. If I can show even one baby butch that it is possible and totally okay to be like this, that would be worth it.

None of this is really new. Homophobia has been around for a long time, and so has been the hatred of butches (or masculine female people in general), often even within lesbian spaces (radical feminism e.g. has some fairly nasty history there)…and butch lesbians still existed, whatever they may have called themselves at that time. Yes, the homophobia in the queer community is a particular betrayal and I don’t think I will ever get completely over that particular disappointment, but if hundreds of years of persecution didn’t stop people from being gay, neither will queer theory.

In many ways, it’s not like all the former butch women are truly gone. This doesn’t mean that there is no real loss there, there definitely is: of community, shared language and even shared experiences, because living your life as a trans man or nonbinary person is different from existing as a butch woman. But people don’t just stop being female/afab and homosexual when their identity changes and there is still a lot of overlap in experiences, especially when it comes to transmasc butches, FTM/butch cuspers and many nonbinary/agender lesbians. And while there are currently many people who really hate acknowledging that, there are also people who don’t (especially in private). It sucks that talking about this can be such a minefield and navigating the ever-changing rules regarding approved terminology and ideology can definitely be really stressful, but I still think that it is worth trying to build these bridges. Although I also think it’s also totally okay to draw back when needed for self-protection (I can’t be around surgery talk and every time I hear an enby say something along the lines of “I’m not a woman, I’m a human being” I want to scream).

When nothing else helps, there is always spite & anger. I am not going to let this homophobic bullshit be the end of me. That at least keeps me to going long enough to go back to the forest and smell some trees and stuff.

Hang in there! I really hope things will get easier again soon. But even while things are hard, I think it’s still worth it.

#tw: suicide mention #my post #butch identity #gender stuff #queer homophobia

14 notes · View notes

beginagainbugle · 4 years

Text

What: Erik sits with The Daily Planet for an interview about Genosha: who they are, what their government is like, their hopes for the future. Tagging: Erik Lehnsherr ( @master-of-magnetism ) & Kara Danvers ( @maidenxfmight ) Warnings: Holocaust mention, genocide mention, death mention, injury mention

KARA: “You ready?”

Was she? Kara’s jaw hurt from how hard her teeth had been clenched. The notes on her page seemed to jump off, the contrast too high. There was too much noise. The cameraman’s heartbeat pounded like a drum against the inside of her skull. She’d rather be home, tucked under her blankets with her ear-muffs on. Room dark.

“Yeah, I’m ready.” If she tilted her glasses down, she could see him. If she cared less, she could fry through the wall that separated them. Someone said ‘bring him in’ and Kara pushed her glasses up her nose.

ERIK: This, he’d expected. The world had turned upside down over one long weekend, and everyone was still trying to make sense of it all. There were mixed responses to the change of status quo, thus far, and news organizations had been clamoring for a word from the leader of the world’s newest sovereign state.

If Erik had his way, he’d be there now, but it was important to go through the motions this early on. It was strange but freeing to be able to walk the streets of New York without concealing himself.

The producers were chatting at him now, presumably trying to prep him, but Erik was more focused on trying not to smack at the hand of the makeup artist tapping powder on his face. As it turned out, he didn’t have to–she was brushed aside by the producer, who had one hand pressed to his earpiece. “Right through here.”

It was Kara. Because of course it was. He knew, he’d been prepped, but his ribs still twinged slightly at the memory of the last time he’d seen her. Even so, he plastered on a cool smile, settling himself into the chair opposite her. “Ms. Danvers.”

KARA: She waited until he was seated across from her before meeting his eyes. She looked at the set of the cameras, the rug beneath their feet, the small coffee table with the obligatory glasses of water that sat on top, him. He looked the same, and her heart moved double-time in her chest. Rao, she didn’t want this.

But she kept her gaze firm, and she refused to back down. He’d told her to embrace her anger, and she was learning. She found a polite smile for the sake of manners, and the camera crew around them. “Mr. Lehnsherr. Shall we get right to it?”

The less time she spent with him, the better. She gave a nod to the cameraman, keeping Erik in her periphery as she watched him count down. “Welcome, ladies and gentleman, to another Daily Planet exclusive. Today we’ll be talking with Erik Lehnsherr about his recent acquisition of Genosha. He has been a vocal proponent of mutant rights for years; a war that only last week ended in a showdown with government authorities. Mr. Lehnsherr, thank you for coming in today.”

ERIK: The cast of her eyes made something between his still-sore ribs and his stomach twist itself into knots. She glanced around the studio, eyes cutting back to him every few moments, and Erik knew intimately that particular sort of wariness. The importance of keeping eyes on a threat without making eye contact and risking the response to that. He could feel the way her heartbeat sped up in her chest, even behind the carefully maintained mask of neutral interest.

She had almost killed him. Could, still, if it came to it. And yet she was afraid. Furious, too, since the heat in her eyes was only just banked, but he knew the signs of fear nevertheless. (She was looking at him like he’d once looked at Schmidt, and he wasn’t… he wasn’t like that. Was he?)

Erik looked away for a moment, shoved whatever that was squarely back into its box. Now was not the time. (Never was preferable.) Focus on Genosha. Only Genosha. Not Kara, not Raven, and definitely not Schmidt.

And then the cameraman was counting down, and Erik plastered back on a cool smile, watching the camera light flick from red to green. Compartmentalization. He settled back in his seat, demeanour shifting into the suave steadiness Kara had become acquainted with in the Before. “It’s my pleasure, Ms. Danvers. The world has changed very quickly, in the last few weeks, for everyone, and I’m honored to help provide what I can of clarity and perspective.”

KARA: “I’m sure our viewers would love some of both.” Kara’s fingers ran over her edges of her notebook. He looked as comfortable in the hot seat as he had in that alley, with a cigarette held loose in his fingers and fire dancing in his eyes. She had to remind herself this was a job, just a job.

She loved what she did, truly. Journalism hadn’t only been about following in Clark’s footsteps, it had been about sharing the truth. Her own planet had died, and everyone she knew along with it, because her parents had kept the truth to themselves. She wondered what truth she was trying to expose here. Genosha wasn’t only for Erik. It was for Scott, for Jean and Gabby and Lorna. Twisting it for them wouldn’t actually help.

Her own feelings didn’t matter, and she tamped them down as best she could. Even when her skin crawled, even when her heart hammered out of her chest.

“Let’s start with your vision for Genosha. It’s obviously new, and will have much growing to do. Tell us about it now, and where do you see it going in the future?”

ERIK: The mention of Genosha made the smile a bit easier, a bit more genuine. He was proud of what they’d accomplished, proud to be able to talk about it.

“My vision is, and always has been, a place where mutantkind can be safe from the oppression we’ve faced for so long in human societies. I lived in Israel for some time, many decades ago, and I quite took to the idea of creating a space where a people that had been roundly oppressed on a global basis could live freely in close community with their own kin. That’s why we offered mutants, and by-birth metahumans, automatic citizenship eligibility. And the island is coming along well, so far. We have a diverse set of mutants on the island who are willing and able to help shape our peoples’ new homeland. There are teams dedicated to terraforming the island and fostering fauna growth, teams dedicated to construction, and then, of course, the Council, led by myself, that will be shaping our national policies. We’ve been able to swiftly secure resources and funding for business growth. In the meantime, transportation between New York City and Genosha is easy–all that’s required is a security check at the border.”

KARA: It had always been hard to argue with Erik. His history had more than earned him the right to his anger, and his love for his people shone through in every word he said. She thought of Jason, and blacks and whites, and all those grey areas in between. What happened to her felt so black and white, wrong, but Erik saw more shades of grey than she did.

Her hands skimmed over her notebook, a movement she worked hard to quell, and her eyes never left Erik. “An admirable vision.” More than a vision, a reality literally growing not too far from where they sat. There was a notable enough pause between one question and the next that her cameraman poked his head around his screen. A question burned on the tip of her tongue, and she swallowed it back. “What would you say to mutants or metahumans who want somewhere safe, but who were possibly…spooked by the violence it took to create it?”

ERIK: A long silence settled between them, in the wake of her noncommittal response, and Erik didn’t falter in demeanor even as the cameramen and producers exchanged confused glances. Silence had a tendency to reveal truths–and there one was, plain as day in the question. Plain to the two of them, anyways.

“Many of us grew up surrounded by violence–if not from the beginning, then certainly from when our powers became clear. Whether it was experimentation, harassment, familial abuse, workplace discrimination, or something else, every single one of us has stories they can tell. And I am sorry that more violence was necessary to break us free. But we tried warnings, we tried negotiations. It is my honest opinion that we went above and beyond our obligations to try for peaceful resolution before the seige, even after they murdered a mutant hero in the middle of Central Park. The X-Men spent years trying to protect humans from threats, even at their own peril. Professor Xavier was happy to welcome students into his home whose families were either unwilling or unable to house their mutant children. We wrote op-eds, we made speeches, we penned explicit warnings that war would come if we weren’t brought to the table to help smooth things out. Instead, humans only raised the stakes.” There was only a hint of anger in his tone, most of it stubbornly crushed under the facade of careful diplomacy. Most, but not all.

“Some of the methods necessary to our win were unfortunate, I’ll freely admit. But it got people to listen, finally. And now we have our own place, where we are building the peaceful society we’ve never had the chance to live in for ourselves. I want the mutants and metahumans who watched their TV screens for that long weekend to know that I didn’t build Genosha as a victory pyre. It is not meant to be a symbol of constant war. It is meant to be for all my people what I always wanted myself–a *home. A safe haven. Nothing more or less.”

KARA: A safe haven. Kara let herself smile, despite the way her heart still hammered against her chest, how she had to remind herself to sit still. It was the message she’d wanted to get out, after all. The only thing that had pulled her out of the moment of shock following Snapper’s given assignment was the thought of ensuring the message of hope that was Genosha itself would get out.

That Erik somehow answered her unspoken question in the process of answering her actual question was unimportant.

(It still curled tightly in her chest, settled heavy on her shoulders. She still had to swallow against the nauseous feeling of it in her throat.)

The room seemed to shift around them, the tension rising in the wake of the small strain of anger in his voice. Kara remained steadfast in the center, “You built peace at the end of a war you’ve been fighting a lot longer than just one weekend. And it is peace, for any mutant or metahuman who wishes to enter.” Alien was notably absent. The tension in the room told Kara it wasn’t the time or the place to point that out. This was about Genosha. “For anyone looking to enter, what do you think day-to-day life will be like for citizens of Genosha? What can they expect in the ways of laws, economy, relations and movement between other countries?”

ERIK: The next question was expected, wasn’t a surprise, but his heartbeat ticked up in speed once, twice, thrice before he took control to slow it down, gaze and steady smile still aimed at Kara before he turned to the camera.

“In some ways, Genosha won’t be all that different from what our citizens are used to elsewhere. We have the same basic laws meant to keep the peace. We’re building small businesses, infrastructure, greenhouses for food supply–exactly what you’d expect to find in any community. Obviously, given the nature of our citizenry, we intend to have a large space in society for the use of powers and abilities. No mutant needs to be afraid to use their abilities on Genosha–if you need help learning to use them, Xavier’s Institute has been the golden standard of that sort of education for years. People will find their place in our society where their interests and skills meet, and that is on particular display in the High Council, whose names and positions I do believe I sent over. Warren Worthington is in charge of our Ministry of Commerce due to his expertise in business. Jean Grey is heading up our Ministry of Health and overseeing the construction of our healthcare system due to her medical experience. Charles Xavier is responsible for our Ministry of Education, for obvious reasons. I’ve taken great care to select an experienced and trustworthy Council to guide the direction of our growing country, and they in turn are excellent at scouting talent to best fulfill their own responsibilities.” And now to relations. The truth wasn’t something even those close to him knew, yet, but he knew the story that needed to be told. The one the world needed to hear so they wouldn’t decide Genosha was too much a threat, after all. “As for diplomatic relationships, building and maintaining good relationships with other nations is of paramount importance. We want to serve not only as a safe haven, but as an advocate for our people abroad, improving conditions for mutants and metahumans who may not wish to relocate. As I mentioned before, movement into and out of Genosha currently requires only a security check at the border. We’re working on the creation of passports and visas, so it’s possible that the border may tighten in the future, but such is the case for any country. Border security varies based on the political landscape—and we’re making a good-faith effort to be far more open than I think most new countries would be in such close proximity to one with which they recently finished a war. I want to extend my thanks to the U.S. State Department for their willingness to work on forging a positive working relationship between our nations despite the obvious rocky history.”

KARA: His heart ticked up, and Kara zeroed in on it. She watched the expressions play across his face, his smile steady but the moment between the question and his answer notable. Her fingers danced across her notebook, and she wanted to push. It was half her job, wasn’t it? Get answers. But there was a stark difference between sitting across the table from someone demanding answers for an article in print, and sitting in front of a myriad of cameras.

“That brings us to the actual layout of your government. Are you looking at a democracy, wherein officials are elected after the initial establishing of the country is done; a constitutional monarchy?” Her lips ticked up, imagining Jean with a crown. But that would mean Erik falling into a soft life somewhere, finally at peace. The race of his heart and the anger flashing through his eyes before she’d flown away from Genosha told Kara peace was still so far away for Erik Lehnsherr.

ERIK: He could see the questions burning on her tongue by the way her fingers curled around the pen and skirted across the page, as if she were mentally imagining it filling with all the answers she wanted to demand.

But she was not alone with him, for better or for worse, the both of them were on camera, and there were lines, professional and personal, that she wouldn’t cross. Not here.

“Certainly, that’s along the lines of my vision for what lies further down the line. I believe that people deserve a right to be represented by their government–something which was decidedly not the case for mutants in America, before the recent restructuring of the Accords. That’s one of the primary reasons I established the Council; of course, I could hardly be expected to do all the work on my own, but large decisions for our country are meant to be discussed by myself and relevant Council members–or for the most important decisions, amongst the entire Council. I can understand that from the outside it might look like simply delegating tasks, but my Council is meant to lay the groundwork for a deliberative body that makes decisions for our people. For purposes of ease, in these early days, I have the final say as of now, but I chose people that I trust to be honest with me, not simply tell me what I want to hear. I’m confident that the decisions we make moving forward will be what’s best for all of our people. But in short, yes: I intend for our country to eventually shift officially to a constitutional monarchy. Eventually, my hope is to abolish the monarchy entirely, but that would obviously be quite a ways in the future.”

KARA: So Jean could end up in a crown. The thought was oddly comforting, even while her heart continued to race. She wanted to do Genosha justice, ensure any mutants wishing to find peace knew there was a place for them. There were viewers who wanted to know everything, and Kara just wanted to be home. She wanted to be somewhere she couldn’t hear his heartbeat.

Her eyes dropped to her notebook, where most of the questions had already been asked. “Of course, of course, yeah. One more question, Mr. Lehnsherr, and we’ll let you get back to what I’m sure is an incredibly busy job building an entirely new country. And again, thank you for taking the time to talk with us today. It means a lot, not only to The Planet, but to so many who are looking at Genosha with so many questions, and even hope.”

She wanted to ask him to promise against violence in the future. She wanted to ask him if had any regrets. She wanted to ask him selfish things she already knew the answer to. She swallowed them down. “If you close your eyes and you imagine Genosha five, ten, fifteen years in the future, what does daily life look like, the culture, the…food, the smells? Is religion engrained in the culture? What does it look like when Genosha goes from an upstart to a home?”

ERIK: She was sitting there asking him what the future looked like, and Erik had to bite the inside of his cheek to refrain from laughing. That was the question, isn’t it? Erik had spent his whole life fighting for a better future, but in all honesty? He’d never expected to live to see it. He’d long ago resigned himself to the idea that this fight would kill him–that he could open the door for others, but wouldn’t make it to the other side.

But here he was, now, and he didn’t know what to do with himself. He could never concede that–not to his family, not to his people, and certainly not to his enemies. He was pushing through, helping construct this new world step by step, but the final vision was still shrouded in clouds on the horizon.

( He should be dead, should’ve been in Raven’s place– )

Erik smiled at the camera and pretended that he’d ever had the optimism to sustain a dream. Pretended that the dreams he’d once had hadn’t been squashed by the people watching this broadcast, all the little humans snuggled up under their blankets at home, again and again and again. Pretended that his dreams hadn’t been massacred in Auschwitz, and burned in Vinnitsa, and killed again by a bullet in Cuba and another in Central Park a decade later. “Genosha is open to all mutants and metahumans, from all over the world. Every one of them will bring different traditions with them, a different piece of fabric in the quilt. As we grow together, new traditions should spring up, native to Genosha, to our species.” They needed to move away from human traditions. Away from humans.

“I see children who can claim a homeland rather than a host, able to play safely in our communities and learn their powers while surrounded by people who can provide the guidance they need. Genosha will be built on community for our people, not competition–all of us working for collective benefit instead of individual wins at the expense of our kin. I see my people using their gifts freely, creating new advances that will change the world. I want a city centre that showcases the best we have to offer–restaurants filling the air with the smells of their food, boutiques of creative wares, monuments commemorating our best and brightest, a government that works efficiently to meet the people’s needs as thy arise instead of being bogged down in political disagreements.”

Erik sat forward, eyes shining with earnestness. “Most importantly, I want every single resident to feel the words I’ve been pushing for years: mutant and proud. Or metahuman and proud, as the case may be,” he tacked on with a chuckle. “Regardless, I want my people to embrace their true nature, their true power. Perhaps some would paint that as a religion: I wouldn’t go that far. I am a Jewish mutant, and I am proud of it. At last our people have their freedom. And if I do my job right, we will never be afraid again.”

KARA: A small silence followed the answer. The cameras took a moment to focus on his face, and Kara tried to parse through everything he’d said. She wanted it for them. For Scott, Jean, Gabby, Lorna. A place to be happy and themselves, to grow and thrive. Again, alien was notably absent, but she pushed it aside.

This was the end, a goodbye, hopefully without the ‘see you later.’

“That sounds…wonderful. Thank you again, Mr. Lehnsherr. I’m sure you have much to do. And thank you, viewers, for joining us tonight. This has been a Daily Planet special.”

The red lights on the camera ticked off one by one, and Kara was out of her seat in an instant, almost suspiciously fast. She gave a polite ‘thank you’ and a smile, and offered her hand to shake because that’s what good reporters did. That’s what the camera crew expected of her. She made it out of the room, down the stairs, into the alley before the rolling in her stomach caught up with her and she bent over the studio dumpster.

#char: Kara Danvers #char: erik lehnsherr #topic: siege #media: discord #submission

7 notes · View notes

aguard1ente · 3 years

Note

1, 9, 18, 20, 27, 73, 92, 100 ! sorry if thats too many :)

1. are you bothered by your cosmic insignificance?

i am indeed like i think about it and i get this weird feeling of vertigo because who wants to be devoid of meaning you know but at the same time it’s kinda cool to be a part of this huge thing no matter how small your impact is - it’s still impact and i like to bring that thinking into my immediate surroundings, which ends up being more fruitful than thinking about my tiny presence in the universe lol

9. would you be happy with a life without romance?

absolutely not omg love and romance are literally the foundations of mankind and i would be nowhere if i didn’t feel all kinds of love and connections and i also need my silly little constant romanticization and even if this is solely referring to romantic love……right now i’m overly expectant to share my life with someone lol.😔please

18. are you religious? do you think your religion is ‘correct’?

i’m not religious and although i have no idea about any religion like formally i still believe in spiritual connections with the world and i feel like there’s those kind of forces everywhere - in bonds, in nature, your own existence.. like i believe in that feeling of unity that grows in your chest whenever you look at a really big tree or laugh a lot with your friends but maybe this is just one of the many ways i feel history

20. do you want a grand adventure?

man i kinda do like my gemini self just wants to live grand things but at the end of the day the thing i long for most is comfort and security and being with my loved ones like little happiness is still happiness etc i don’t really need those grand things actually but they’re nice sometimes

27. are you afraid of growing old?

man not at all i actually look forward to it i’m always expectant to see what kind of person i will be what things i will learn what people are going to come into my life i love change and i change a lot myself ,plus the older you get the sexier you become it’s the truth

73. would you fight for your country? do you feel a sense of loyalty to your nation?

fuck no i don’t have any kind of loyalty to my nation or the institutions capitalism is wicked and nations mean nothing if you’re not the one who rules them and in the end of the day the state will never look out for your needs so why would you defend it

92. do you speak multiple languages? which do you dream in? what language would you want to learn?

my mother tongue is spanish and i know how to speak english and french (in like an intermediate level?) and i also learned how to read in russian and korean just for fun but i don’t understand any of it. most of my dreams are in spanish but i’ve had like a couple of dreams with phrases in english that i was able to remember very clearly when i woke up which doesn’t happen with the spanish ones but anyways i’m speaking a lot i would like to be fluid in french and learn german / japanese / russian / so many more because i’m obsessed with how differently your mind works depending on the language and i wanna KNOW it all

100. what belief do you have that isn’t logically grounded, but you still firmly believe in?

i can’t think about anything so i’d say..maybe astrology? like i think it’s mostly right but it’s still kind of a myth despite its historical backing but yeah i believe in astrology it’s fun it’s introspective and very helpful And it’s sexy

#thank you for sending in so many though<333 #i do enjoy my speaking #much love 💗💗#Anonymous

1 note · View note

sordm5 · 4 years

Photo

F:NV OC as a companion

General

Name: Mason Shepherd McCoy (in-game, appears as:) Mase

Location: Grub n’ Gulp rest stop

How to obtain: Pass either a Guns check of 70, Confirmed Bachelor, or pay 200 caps to hire him. Will not follow if idolized by NCR or Caesar’s Legion.

Companion Wheel

I think we should travel together: “We make a pretty good team, huh? Sounds good.” / (With ED-E) “Sure- uh… what’s with the floating… metal… orb? Actually, it looks kinda cool.” / (With Rex) “Travel together? Yes. And I’m not just saying yes because I want to pet the dog.” / (With companion) “Are you starting up a caravan or something? Looks like you’ve got enough company for now.”

Use Melee: “That’s not… {sighing, grumbling} Fine.”

Use Ranged: “Exactly what I was thinking.”

Open Inventory: “Ya know, my bag’s already kinda full. But go ahead.”

Stay Close: “I’ve got your six… uh, Six.”

Keep Distance: “Sure. Doesn’t matter to me.”

Stealth: “Let’s get the advantage while we’re unseen.” / “They won’t see it coming.”

Back Up: “Right. Sorry.”

Be Passive: “Good call. We should scout our enemies before engaging.”

Be Aggressive: “Shoot first, strategize later? Not my style, but all right.”

Use Stimpak: “Ahh… I can feel my hands again.” > “{relieved} Thanks. I owe you one.”

Wait Here: “Fine by me. I’ll just… be checking over my rifle while you’re gone.” / “Don’t get into too much trouble.”

Follow Me: “O Captain, my Captain.”

Send to the Lucky 38: “Isn’t it a little stifling in there? {sigh} All right, but I’ll be waiting for you.”

Send Home: “I see. No worries. I’ll be at the Grub n’ Gulp, let me know if you change your mind.”

Injured: (HealthHalf) “{pained} Getting pretty rough here.” / “{out of breath} Could use… a stimpak? Maybe?” (HealthQuarter) “{dying} Didn’t… picture it like this.” / “{dying} Can’t- can’t see.”

Death: {Death Noise 2}

Aggression: Aggressive

Confidence: Brave

Assistance: Helps nobody

Karma: Neutral

Perks

Scout’s Honor: All lever-action and bolt-action rifles do an additional 15% damage (stacks with other applicable perks)

Inventory

(Unavailable via trade) Mason’s outfit, Mason’s bag, Ranger brown hat / Mason’s rifle / (Available via trade) Whiskey x 3, Stimpak x 2

Quests and Recruitment

General information:

Mason can be found at the Grub n’ Gulp Rest Stop. During the day, he will be found wandering around the premises, at night he will be sitting by one of the fires. While sitting, his unique rifle will be unequipped and laying beside him. It’s marked as an owned item, but it can be stolen. If you steal his rifle while detected, Mason will become hostile. If you steal the rifle undetected, it will change Mason’s dialogue. Both outcomes lock you out of recruiting him.

Completing any quest that isn’t affiliated with a faction while Mason is in your party will acquire +1 ‘like’ point. At 3 points, dialogue about Mason’s past will become available to the player. At 5, dialogue that triggers Mason’s companion quest will become available.

Mason will leave if 3 Caesar’s Legion quests are completed while he is in your party. A dialogue will be initiated after 1 quest, warning of his dislike for your actions. You can convince him to stick around, or decide to part ways if you profess your allegiance to the Legion. After the third quest completed, Mason will initiate dialogue and tell you of his disgust at your deceit of convincing him to stay. He will leave the party and no longer be able to be recruited by the player.

Alternatively, NCR and other faction quests can be completed without accumulating any dislike points. However, if you reach ‘idolized’ with the NCR, Mason will initiate dialogue saying he’s uncomfortable getting involved with politics. He will leave the party and only be able to be recruited again if the player’s NCR reputation goes down. (Anything below ‘idolized’ will allow him to be recruited again, this includes mixed reputation like Good-Natured Rascal, or Smiling Troublemaker, etc.)

If the player has completed Mason’s companion quest, he will continue to follow the player into the Independent Vegas/Yes-Man questline. If the companion quest is not completed, Mason will leave the party leading up to any Second Battle for Hoover Dam questlines, regardless of faction.

Recruiting:

Mason is a busybody that feels a sense of duty towards accomplishing jobs he’s commissioned for. For this reason, he finds the Grub n’ Gulp a convenient location – lots of travelers and caravans, often times needing an extra pair of hands, rolling in and out of Vegas. If the player has 30 completed quests, proving themselves of a similar mind to running jobs, the dialogue to recruit Mason will be available, no other requirements necessary.

If the player has less than 30 quests completed, you can convince him to travel by either a Guns check, a Confirmed Bachelor check, or by hiring him as a guard (200 caps, one-time payment).

Mason has a proclivity for rifles and other ballistic weaponry, and if you can impress him enough with your knowledge of firearms, he will take to you and agree to tag along on your journey. Similarly, one can pass a Confirmed Bachelor dialogue and try to appeal to Mason by offering him company. In Mason’s introduction dialogue, he makes it apparent that he isn’t one for making friends, and a male player character can test this knowledge with Confirmed Bachelor, asking him if he’s really happy being so lonely.

If all else fails, you can pay 200 caps, promise him a share in all loot, and hire him. All methods result in the same outcome of recruitment.

Companion quest: “Funny How Time Slips Away”

After meeting the requirements, Mason will have segmented dialogue about his history. He will tell the player of how he left home as a boy, and made his way in the world by starting work early on in life. He never intended for his leave to be permanent, but the longer he was gone, the more he felt returning was an impossibility.

Mason never had any blood relatives, but there was a group of people that made a community out of their shared loss, and built themselves up as a makeshift family, and began to thrive as a salvage scrapping and farming village. He left them behind, reluctant to let anyone get too close to him, and still feels regret over this decision. But either his pride, or his shame, has prevented him from returning.

The player will get the quest “Funny How Time Slips Away”, and can then agree to take Mason back to key places that he first visited after leaving his former home. (The Mojave Outpost, the playground near the drive-in theater outside of Primm, Goodsprings.) Mason will initiate dialogue after each visit, and speak about his memories for each location.

Once all locations have been visited, and all dialogue exhausted, Mason will initiate another dialogue, and speak about his urge to return back to the village. He will warn the player that his absence might take awhile, and that the village is on the eastern fringes of California – a few days walk out. The player will have the option to either encourage or discourage him to return.

If encouraged, Mason will leave the player, and be gone for 5 in-game days. When he returns, he will send a message to the player via courier, saying that he’s waiting in the Goodsprings saloon, and to come see him soon. (This is delivered in a similar fashion to “ED-E My Love”.) Upon meeting, Mason will thank the player for encouraging his trip, and say he thinks he made peace with both his former home, and his decision to leave.

As reward for quest completed, Mason will divulge that the scrappers of his village gave him some schematics for his rifle. He will then give his rifle to the player as a show of thanks, and tell the player not to worry about his combat prowess, as he can now make another rifle.

With the upgrade, Mason’s Rifle fires an extra projectile that consumes no ammunition, and has a base damage of 72, with a DPS of 93.6, making it the highest damage and DPS unique Hunting Rifle in the game. It has a built-in 3.5x scope, similar to its cousin, the Paciencia. Unfortunately, it cannot use Hunting Rifle modifications.

If discouraged, Mason will still give the player his unique rifle, thanking the player for their input, but it will not be equipped with upgrades. Its base damage is 52, with a DPS of 72.8, making it the same damage as a standard Hunting Rifle, but higher DPS than the Paciencia. The rifle, in this state, is the same one you can steal before ever recruiting Mason.

After this, Mason will use a normal hunting rifle, or whatever weapon the player equips him with, and will be unable to craft another unique rifle, making him less powerful than the alternative outcome.

Ending Slides

If their personal quest is never completed…

Whatever Mason was trying to run from by keeping himself busy, it caught up to him in the end. Work could no longer silence his inner turmoil, and so he wandered into uncharted territories. He was never heard from again.

If the Courier sides with Legion…

(Completed “Funny How Time Slips Away” and convinced Mason to stay) Mason saw the signs of the rise of Caesar’s Legion, and quietly took his leave of the Mojave. He wandered out north, into untamed lands, looking for respite, but ultimately learned to live each day on constant guard. Thoughts of the Courier filled him only with regret…

(Completed “Funny How Time Slips Away” and convinced Mason to return home) Though the Courier helped Mason find home, in the end, Mason only felt the sting of betrayal. He returned to his home village in California while there was still time, and warned his family of the Legion victory. With great sadness, they packed up their belongings, leaving behind many things they could not carry, and fled north, in search of new lands to settle.

If the Courier sides with NCR…

(Completed “Funny How Time Slips Away” and convinced Mason to stay) At first, the rise of the NCR gave way to many job opportunities. Mason returned to the Grub n’ Gulp, keen on taking up new offers for work. But as the NCR settled more into the Mojave, the work grew scarce; NCR gave more power to larger companies like the Crimson Caravan, requiring work contracts and full-time employment. Eventually, this new trade system pushed Mason out of the Mojave, in search of freer opportunities.

(Completed “Funny How Time Slips Away” and convinced Mason to return home) As the NCR settled into the Mojave, work around Vegas began to dry up, and the Crimson Caravan absorbed most smaller, independent companies. Without a task to set his mind to, Mason decided to return to California – to his home. At the village, Mason took up full-time weapon repair, a welcome addition to the farming and salvaging, and grew to be at peace with the NCR rule.

If the Courier sides with House…

(Completed “Funny How Time Slips Away” and convinced Mason to stay) With the rise of Mr. House through his securitrons, business and travel around the Vegas area grew to newer heights, and Mason found himself preoccupied with many different opportunities.

(Completed “Funny How Time Slips Away” and convinced Mason to return home) Mason returned to his former haunt at the Grub n’ Gulp, and took job offers as they came through. Business slowly increased as the NCR withdrew from the Vegas area; Mr. House’s rise to power making Vegas a veritable boomtown. He often found time to make his way back home to California, and share new repair and salvage techniques that he picked up from his different employers.

If the Courier makes New Vegas independent…

(Completed “Funny How Time Slips Away” and convinced Mason to stay) The chaos that ensued in the larger Vegas area shortly after its declared independence, drove away all semblance of organized trade. Riots became the new norm, and Mason soon found himself being called upon for different assistance. Medicine delivery, and treatment of the injured skyrocketed, and Mase was not of the proper mindset, nor skill-set, to help with the turmoil. In the end, he found it best to leave the Mojave behind.

(Completed “Funny How Time Slips Away” and convinced Mason to return home) The chaos that ensued in the larger Vegas area shortly after its declared independence, drove away all semblance of organized trade. Riots became the new norm, and Mason soon found himself being called upon for different assistance. Because the Courier had helped in his time of need, Mason persevered and applied all knowledge that he could to help Vegas re-establish calm and civility. After order was restored, business and trade were slowly re-introduced. Mason found himself at home in this new independent Vegas, but, even so, he made it a point to occasionally visit his family in California.

(I know there are different variables for each ending, like upgrading the securitron army, etc. But this was already getting so long, I just left it at the choices in Mason’s questline.)

#fallout #fallout new vegas #fnv #oc shepherd #this is definitely an au version of mase's character #i can't picture him having home or a family in his canon form #that type of stuff scares him too much

7 notes · View notes

motherofwoofers · 4 years

Text

Chapter 7 I'd Rather be Hibernating

As Marinette closed the hatch above her, and settled into the dark of her room, still chilled from the lack of power to her heater, she pulled the hoodie to her face. Luka's smell enveloped her: cool, spicy, and a hint of salt water. As if the very ocean had claimed him over the years. She sat there, legs bent over to her side, bundled in his jacket, beyond calm and satisfied.

She opened her eyes when her bed shifted, glowing green eyes holding her stare. They slowly blinked at her, but maintained their intense gaze. He made no move to come closer, even less so to speak.

"It seems everyone knows who I am," Marinette grumbled, letting the hoodie fall from her face. She felt oddly bereft once it was no longer caressing her face. There was no response in the dark. Annoyed Marinette climbed down from her bed, maneuvering around her dark room through memory alone until she found the space heater and cranked it up. The warm glow lit the room, and the deep shadowed figure on her bed became illuminated.

Chat Noir's suit had changed over the years. No longer the bell-ed and adorable bachelor of Paris. He was still quick, refined, and full of attitude. But he was sharper now. Less forgiving. A house cat turned panther. His appearance had altered to reflect that. Deep metallic green reflected in well placed stitching, finger tips no longer prickly, but full clawed. He was svelte. Suit clinging and moving in a way that showed he was lethal: deadly. Restrained. He had once shown deeply hidden matte spots in places along his suit.

Before the reveal.

Before the betrayal was known.

But now he no longer reflected anything but himself. His mask had shaped aggressively soon after that, ears in a constant state of irritation. The last 2 years had helped ease those harsh lines. It would take far longer for Chat to find himself again though. Find true peace. Until then, the cat miraculous gave him a way to control that anger. Siphoning off the overflow into power.

Marinette climbed back into her bed, unceremoniously making him move out of her way. She pulled the covers out from under her pillows and unfolded a pink and white spotted blanket to wrap her shoulders in. She refused to speak to him until he broke the silence himself. It took long moments of avoiding his intense stare. She took the opportunity to reflect on the scent of calming still wrapped around her *Menthol? Mint?* she felt it was the latter that made up the cool undercurrent of the scent.

"I was under the impression I was the only one who had figured it out." His voice was low. It had been a voice that had at one point made her breath catch and her cheeks warm. It no longer did. It was a voice that reflected everlasting partnership; trust. But butterflies didn't flutter in her chest. She had the feeling they hadn't fluttered in his for some time as well. Marinette waited for him to continue- he didn't.

"I was unaware anyone had. I thought I was better at hiding my identity than I thought I was. Apparently I underestimated my team. Foolish, I know. I needed to though, Chat. It endangers those who know. I can't add anymore danger to your lives." She couldn't match his gaze as she rambled, picking at a stray thread she would need to clip.

"It was," he sighed, before turning his attention away, settling into a tension-less pose. Weight heavy in his shoulders. A weight he would only reveal to her.

"Dangerous?" She questioned, as he settled his back against her wall.

"Foolish."

"Oh." She was quiet.

"Things have changed. But your protection is still paramount. You should know that by now." Chat didn't mince his words, but was hushed all the same. Silence fell between them again for awhile. The only sound the humm of her heater.

"I just-"

"I know why you did it," he cut her off. "Doesn't mean it was the right choice though. I was hurt for awhile once I'd figured it out. Felt like just another betrayal… but I know it wasn't. It was the kindest thing you could have done. A choice and responsibility that you harbored. So I never said anything. I watched though. I was there for you at every turn. As you were for me," he was quiet again. He looked down at his hand that held the miraculous ring, flexed the fingers. "These powers. A dream come true. An out. But for some of us- it's the weight of the world." He let his hand drop to her duvet.

"I'm sorry I never told you," Marinette pulled her knees to her chest. Curling her arms around them, staring down at the heater.

"I know you are."

The warmth and quiet wrapped them up once more. The silence empty but comforting. A natural balance in the room, like the feeling of true neutral. A room temperature you couldn't feel. They would always be the embodiment of yin and yang- in their part of the world at least. But while it was the ultimate balance, it had also left them balanced with eachother.

At first they hadn't figured it out. *She* hadn't figured out why she was so drawn to Adrien, and Chat to Ladybug. It was a desperate grasp to feel your other half. It had eventually led to their civilian selves having a short fling at some point. But it had ended quickly. She had more on her plate than she thought she could handle at the time- she had handled it though. And Adrien's life had begun to spiral. Things coming to light and coalescing in a way that couldn't be ignored any more. Needed to be faced.

Then it had exploded.

She had realized soon after that, that they had ached for eachother because of who they were and the miraculous they held. The feelings of love, merely a confused feeling of infatuation and need.

But as she had realized it, he had also turned away from everyone else as well. He was wounded deeply. Truly orphaned. The miraculous team had rallied around him, keeping him as grounded as they could to keep him falling into something he couldn't return from. Even more difficult when they had discovered that Nooroo's gem had been snatched right out from under their noses. The police had stormed into the Agreste mansion as the battle was ending. The raging carnage shaking the very city.

It had been a moment. Perhaps even a heart beat that the butterfly had been released from between Miraculous hands. Then it had been gone. As if it had never been in the room at all.

Chat had taken the loss as a failure of his own actions. It had been gasoline to his raging inferno.

The team had searched and scoured. Finding nothing. Not even whispers. Then some sort of strangeness had happened in Spain. Turkey. Ukraine.

Akumas.

A pair of miraculous had been awoken in Moscow, a Guardian chosen. Then the akumas had dissapeared again.

Until six months ago.

When Monarch had found Paris.

The butterfly wielder wasn't set on stealing other miraculouses. They had waited to see if she had true plans. Battled the akumatized victims at every turn. Watching them become more and more dangerous.

Monarch just wanted to sew chaos. She used all emotions. Anything strong enough to catch her attention- she snatched.

A father brimming with joy at the birth of his first child. She had seized that. Twisted it.

The akuma had built a tower. A tower in which he had held his wife and child, far from everyone. Brambles and vines with thorns thick as arms had climbed the bricks. Preventing any from coming closer. Then he had begun to collect all the infants from Paris, gathering them in his tower. He had been *protecting* them. Even from their own parents.

But Monarch struck at random. She would akumatize multiple victims in a week, and then disappear for awhile. Becoming impossible to track. Without a true goal, they had nothing to go off of. They found political elections or grand scale decisions afflicted, but not all. And none of them in line with each other.

Just chaos.

Her victims intelligent. Guided. Without anger blinding many of them, they were more focused.

Encounters in summer had been one challenge. The cold weather becoming an entirely different battle ground.

But Monarch had slowed her own actions. The butterfly miraculous beginning to affect her as well as the rest of them. The cold difficult to function through.

Marinette found herself close to drifting off as the room warmed. Then Chat shifted once more.

"Did you tell him?" It was quiet. Barely audible. Something in his tone held back.

"No." A deep breathe washed out of his chest and he closed his eyes. "He's known." She mumbled into her knees, the hoodie having snuck back up against her chin.

"Mmm," was all Chat replied with. He slid his fingers along her comforter. They had history together. Nothing would change that. "I trust him." Marinette wasn't aware that she had craved his approval of the situation until he spoke it aloud. "When did he…?"

"Before the.. before," she couldn't find the right words, but he nodded all the same.

"I'm not… *happy* about it," his voice had gone back to his normal tone. No longer raw. She gripped the loose fabric of her fleece pants. "I know how he feels. I've seen it. He hides most of it. Keeps it hidden beneath layers of coy and natural caring. He's smooth, I'll give him that," Chat chuckled. "But I'm not… hmmm. I don't… We're not together. But it's hard for me to see you wearing someone else's clothes." His eyes slid to her, gleaming in the dark. They both knew she still had a few of his things. From the heated nights they'd shared. Though they had kept it a secret from others.

"I want something real Chat," she met his eyes. Held them. "I want to try at least. I want to feel again, in the open this time. We had… we had what we needed at the time. You and I. But I had something with him, too. Something warmer and deeper, than us," something *real* she added to herself. It had been real between her and Adrien, but it hadn't been the real she craved. "Luka…Luka is-"

"What you need now," he finished for her. Marinette could only nod in response. The dim light of the heater filling the space between them again. "I came here to see if you were alright. You weren't performing well in the last fight. Deep winter is settling in early this year. I don't know what went wrong. But I know something did. I could see it all over his face. See the fear he keeps buried deeper than most can see. I see it, though. I know where to look now." He began to shift his body, moving into a crouch. Chat would leave soon.

"I know he escorts you home. Or close enough lately. Filling my position," she watched the muscle in his jaw flutter, before he unclenched. "I needed to be sure. But when I found your bed empty, I stayed. I've only been waiting a few hours." He maneuvered to her roof hatch. "It seems I didn't need to worry, though. Even without his jacket his scent is wrapped around you. I can barely tell where he ends and you begin..." he looked away from her. "I'm not happy to step back. But I know you're safe. And that's what truly matters."

Then he was lifting himself through the open door, preventing most of the newly shifted snow from falling in.

"Thank you, Chat," Marinette whispered to him. Well aware he would hear her.

"Always, M'Lady," and then the door closed softly. She couldn't hear him leap from her balcony or roof. But she hadn't been able to hear him for a long time.

It took awhile after he left, for her mind to settle. To absorb everything from the last day or two. Things had changed. Perhaps they had already changed, and she had yet to notice them. But things had definitely shifted. And even though her heart ached from the words that had been said between her and Chat- they were merely things that had not been voiced yet.

The room had finally warmed to a sweltering level, and sleep tugged at her once more. Marinette settled into her bed, shifting beneath the covers until she was thoroughly bundled. Cradled as if she wasn't alone.

She felt alone though. A feeling she hadn't recognized she felt, until the space beside her had been filled, and was now empty again. His smell was strong beneath the covers with her, breathing him in and out within the cocoon. She craved the feel of him, once more.

The teenager he had once been, had always been strong, resilient. Skilled at making any situation feel natural. He had held and cuddled her even when she had pushed them all away, in her stress. But it had never felt forced to ease into his side, drift off against his shoulder. His gentle touches and brushed fingers as he exchanged things with her. It had always been natural. Normal. Second nature.

He pushed and pulled her in a dance she hadn't realized she was waltzing in. So focused on the fire around her, never realizing his steadying presence. A presence that he maintained into adulthood. There had been moments when he had pulled away from her. She had felt them distinctly. The lack of connection was noticed. But he always drifted back. Whether of his own accord or a string she subconsciously tugged him with. A rhythm that beat between them seamlessly, even when the harmony of Ladybug and Chat Noir drowned things out, by pure force alone- he was there.

A quiet spark protected in a glass deep within her. Hidden behind that fortress she had built to keep everyone out. She had tucked it in there, close to her heart, but out of sight. Never allowing it to bring him harm.

But he *knew* now.

Had always known.

And she wanted to bring that small spark back to life, just to discover it was already a flame. A flickering flame within it's own gilded lantern.

Marinette offered small bits of kindling to the flame. Wanting it to shine, to illuminate the places within her, that were *her*. That were *Marinette* and not Ladybug. Not the Guardian.

But the whole of who and what she was now. All parts of her.

She wanted to cling to that flame and watch it thaw all the places the winters of her life had frozen over.

Chapters 1-20 can be found on AO3 :)

#lukanette #miraculous ladybug #luka couffaine #chat noir #mlb fanfic

8 notes · View notes