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aj28gaming · 3 years

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Nagito's diagnosis?

Okay hear me out, what if the only mental illness Nagito has is extreme paranoia or Nagito is just really paranoid about death?

Now listen

Listen

I get that this is gonna be laughed at a lot and probably treated as a joke

but hear me out

So, regarding Nagito's dementia, I already made these posts https://aj28gaming.tumblr.com/post/650577508025155585/danganronpa-messing-up-nagitos-character-cuz

https://aj28gaming.tumblr.com/post/650633399392944128/nagitos-dementia-and-misuse-of-information

But to be sure, I basically explain how and why Nagito has almost none of the symptoms of Frontotemporal Dementia, he might still have it tho, just not the symptoms

But think about this, the only time Nagito has actually acted "crazy" was when the killing game starts. Before that, all we get is a paranoid, self-deprecating boy used to trauma due to his abusive luck cycle. A boy who also has flawed beliefs in the talented and untalented due to the society of Danganronpa. A boy who fears murder and the death of others more than most.

Now, remember, he only gets crazy (I AM ONLY GONNA TALK ABOUT SDR2 BECAUSE THE LATER ITERATIONS AND GAMES AND ANIME ADAPTATIONS THAT PORTRAY NAGITO PORTRAY HIM INCREDIBLY WRONG) when the killing game starts

A killing game

A game of murder and death

And what does Nagito fear the most throughout the first chapter of SDR2 and throughout Island mode? What does he keep making sure doesn't happen? What does he keep asking Usami about while being extremely scared and paranoid about it?

WHAT DOES NAGITO FEAR THE MOST?

MURDER

HE HATES MURDER

HE CONSTANTLY TRIES TO GET HIMSELF DEAD OR KILLED TO ENSURE NO ONE ELSE DIES

Now imagine having a person who hates murder, who fears the possibility of death surrounding him and is constantly paranoid about it

Now put that person in a killing game, you know, A GAME FULL OF MURDER AND DEATH

So you get someone who fears having death and murder around him, and you put him in a place that is full of that, a killing game

YOU GET THIS

THIS

THIS (also keep in mind, NAGITO SAID IN ISLAND HE LAUGHS WHEN HE GETS SURPRISED, NOT BECAUSE HE IS HAPPY OR HAVING FUN)

See the pattern now

If you trap someone in a place full of everything they hate and fear for their entire life

They go crazy

Now remember the links I sent at the start? In them, I explain how his extreme paranoia causes a lot of his actions to happen

One, his coping mechanism

His coping mechanism is hope

He is constantly in denial about his mental state, about the people dying around him

Not saying he doesn't believe people are dying, I mean he struggles to accept that people around him are dying

He needs to find a reason for all of this despair

For why everyone has to experience despair

Nagito is a person who finds reason for everything, basically constantly tries to find order in his chaotic world

Makes sense since literally and figuratively due to his luck cycle, Nagito lacks control in his chaotic and traumatizing life

So he tries to find a reason for everything despairful that happens to him

Basically, "There has to be a reason for my suffering, right? RIGHT?"

So what does he do? He clings to hope

HOPE /hōp/

noun 1. a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. "he looked through her belongings in the hope of coming across some information" Similar: aspiration, desire, wish, expectation, ambition, aim, plan, dream, daydream, pipe dream, longing, yearning, craving, hankering 2. a feeling of trust. "our private friendship, upon hope and affiance whereof, I presume to be your petitioner" verb want something to happen or be the case.

KEEP THOSE DEFINITIONS IN MIND, TRUST ME WHEN I SAY NAGITO IS TALKING ABOUT THE ACTUAL MEANING OF HOPE, NOT SOME SUPERFICIAL VERSION HE CREATED HIMSELF

So this makes sense right? A person is in a stressful situation which is basically their personal hell, so they cling to hope

Literally

And we get this a lot of the time in real life and in tv shows and movies where people in stressful times cling to hope

So it really isn't a surprise that Nagito does this

So, Nagito isn't worshipping Hope like it's a god, he is clinging to an ideology. He is clinging to positivity, a bright light amidst all the darkness

He is quite literally clinging to hope in a despairful situation, which a lot of people do and most likely the same with you and me.

And again, no, his views on hope aren't due to his own personal opinion of what hope is. The hope he believes in is the literal definition of hope.

Hope as in light amidst all the darkness

He truly does have heroic and good intentions and truly does understand the hopes and despairs of others

He knew Teruteru wanted to continue the culinary legacy and help his mom, that's his hope

He knew Imposter would want to protect everyone no matter what, that's his hope

He knew Mikan killed for Despair, that despair being Junko Enoshima

He knew Fuyuhiko's hope is Peko and that both of them care about each other very much

He knew how similar he and Hajime are and how they are both bystanders and lovers of Hope, for Hajime that Hope being Hope's Peak academy itself and/or having talent

That's why he wants to help everyone's hope. He doesn't want them to escape to "spread their hope to the world," he wants to help them because that is generally everyone's hope in the killing game, to escape and end the killing game. That's why he is also fine with helping the blackened because if he knows all the blackened wants to do is escape

All Nagito wants is for him to be the victim instead of anyone else so no one else has to die if someone must commit murder.

And tbh Nagito has only done 2 things,

One was when he orchestrated his own death so no one else dies during the first trial, but this fails due to his luck cycle

He knew someone would die eventually, and if he didn't do this then either Teruteru would've still murdered someone else or Fuyuhiko would've murdered Mahiru with Peko like in trial 2 due to the next motive

Someone would've died regardless, Nagito just wanted to be the victim to save everyone else. And he needed to make sure only HE BECOMES THE VICTIM which is why he orchestrated it

But alas, his luck screwed it up and Byakuya dies instead.

Second thing Nagito did was try to get everyone killed when he found out everyone were a bunch of terrorists and remnants of despairs. Do I seriously need to explain why anyone would've done this? Especially someone as paranoid as Nagito?

Hell, Hajime almost did way worse because he almost did the complete opposite, he almost pressed graduate so Junko can take over the dead bodies of their classmates and spread despair AGAIN

HOW THE HELL IS NAGITO WORSE THAN THE OTHERS?

HAJIME ALMOST CAUSED DESPAIR ONTO THE ENTIRE WORLD AGAIN AND EVERY OTHER MURDERER MURDERED FOR THEIR OWN SELFISH MOTIVES LIKE TO ESCAPE OR GET REVENGE

NAGITO SERIOUSLY JUST WANTED TO BE THE VICTIM SO NO ONE ELSE DIES AND WANTS TO ELIMINATE DESPAIR

HOW THE HELL IS HE THE CRAZY ONE?

So now I explained how Nagito's paranoia of murder caused him to have a desperate belief in Hope as a coping mechanism in a very despairful situation

Now let's see how extreme his way of coping became. Seeing that he is in his actual personal hell, I would expect it to be pretty extreme.

And it is, a lot of the time.

Even to the point that he uses it to explain the deaths of his classmates and how to cope

Knowing Nagito, he has a habit of trying to find a reason for everything, like a prophecy or reason for his despair like I said before

And how exactly does he do that with the dead bodies of his classmates? He goes and treats them like stepping stones for hope

Basically saying, "Yes, our classmates are dead. But we shouldn't give up, because these deaths, this despair, it's all a stepping stone for an upcoming hope. A future good ending waiting to come, RIGHT?"

I added the right at the end because throughout the game, Nagito doesn't really seem like he only believes in hope. It's almost like he desperately needs and clings to hope.

So no matter what, he has to believe in hope

Because then, what is there left of him to believe in

He is trapped in his personal hell, forced to see classmates getting killed left and right, already experiences and fears the possibility of death and trauma on his normal day to day life, and what's worse is he constantly blames himself due to his luck cycle

He clings to hope, the possibility of a good ending happening in the end

Because what else can he believe in, what else can he live for at this point?

You seriously don't need dementia to explain his actions

All you need to do is remember that all of them are in a killing game

So of course people will go crazy

And knowing Nagito and how paranoid he gets, no wonder he reacts way worse

Nagito isn't crazy, he isn't a lunatic. He is just a paranoid kid who hates and fears murder and despair more than anyone else but is constantly forced to witness it and be subjected to it due to his luck cycle

And to be honest, anyone would've reacted the same way he does, and Hajime is proof of that

Also stop calling him the Joker wtf

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noonegetsleftbehind · 2 years

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//Just kinda really need to get some thoughts out under the cut

I have made no secret here of the fact that I struggle quite a lot with mental illness. I prefer to be open and honest about that instead of hiding my illness away in shame. Do I still feel like shit about it? Yeah. Think that comes with the territory.

Anyways... I fluctuate and some days are better than others etc. I’ve been struggling really bad lately. A lot of CPTSD things have been triggered and I’m just... I’ve been having a super hard time feeling anything more than pretty much utterly worthless and that translates into both my normal IRL things and here. I’ve been worrying a lot about my portrayal subsequently etc. Just sort of feeling like I kinda fail at being a person so why the hell would I be any good at writing a whole ass other person?

I’ve also struggled with gender dysphoria for years. Despite choosing to identify as non-binary, I still just look at myself as a... What the fuck. There’s always the constant feeling of not knowing what or who I am which tanks my self-esteem even more because I barely even feel like a person half the time. My self-image has tanked so hard recently that if I so much as catch myself in the mirror I want to hurl. I don’t like who I see at all.

I swear I am not looking to bitch or seek sympathy. I just... Needed to get my feelings out somewhere and this is typically where I go to write and express myself so. I try not to bother my friends because, let’s be real, so many of us are running on so few spoons and I honestly just want to see my friends happy. It’s more of a suffer in silence kind of thing most of the time for me. Just having a bit more trouble than usual.

The only good thing is the increase in one of my meds has left me with more/enough energy/motivation most days to be on here and writing and interacting. You have no idea how happy I am about that at least. My creativity and writing is my one and only outlet and not having that for so long just killed me. The fact I have this drive back, my wife and my fur babies... It’s honestly about the only thing that keeps me going every day.

So, yeah... Sorry for the rant/negativity I guess.

I love you all, okay? You’re all amazing creative writers and I am so honored and thrilled to get to write with you all and interact with you all. For those that I call friends as well, you mean the absolute fucking world to me and I hope you know what your friendship means to me, especially when I am at my lowest. <3

#|| BSAA File: OOC ||#negativity tw #mental health tw #mental illness tw #body issues tw #gender dysphoria tw #depression tw

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becomewings · 4 years

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The Most Beautiful Moment in Life <I’M FINE>

BTS Universe Story Highlights, pt. 1 / 4

» pt. 2

Introduction

BTS Universe Story, a mobile game published by Netmarble, was released on September 24, 2020. While the majority of the app is essentially a sandbox and engine for users to create their own interactive stories, it also includes official and canon BU content. The first eight segments were introduced between the release date and December 2020, gathered under the title The Most Beautiful Moment in Life <I’M FINE>.

“I’m Fine” is half of the I’m Fine/Save Me ambigram introduced in the Love Yourself era. Notably, all of the BU content available in the game so far falls between events of the webtoon Save Me (also called HYYH0 in its logo) and The Notes 1—chronologically, that is, while bearing in mind that time resets to the morning of 11 April Year 22 whenever SeokJin fails to avert a tragedy among his six friends. I want to assure anyone who is unable to play the game that you are not missing any new, major plot beats from the overall BU narrative. Instead, the stories provide more insight into the motivations and consequences of SeokJin’s decisions in the earlier time loops, as well as more depth to individual characters and their circumstances.

The goal of this guide is to summarize each of the eight stories and highlight noteworthy details, especially if they are not yet present in other BU media. Within each story (which I often refer to as an arc, due to their character-focused nature), episodes must be played successively, but the stories themselves can be played in any order. I will present them over a series of posts in the order they are listed under the <I’M FINE> heading. The Prologue and NamJoon’s arc are free to play; the rest are paid content. Please note that due to the app’s Terms & Conditions, I will not include in-game footage here. The images in this guide are sourced from the official trailers/videos and the live action MVs as appropriate.

Content warning: contains references to death, suicide, suicidal ideation, child abuse, domestic violence, blood, homicide, depression, trauma, PTSD

This guide contains major spoilers and includes references to other BU media

Do not repost, copy, or quote without permission

Game Mechanic

Before diving into the summaries, I would like to address the primary mechanic of the game: the user’s control of character choices at designated moments in the stories. It’s a primary marketing point that the player can influence the progression of the narrative, with a frequent in-app tip also declaring, “stories’ endings can vary depending on your choices.” The latter is not strictly true—and it cannot be true due to the structure of the game. Choices are presented within most (not all) episodes, but each episode is an isolated unit: episode 2 provides the same content regardless of what you choose in episode 1. Since the consequences of your decisions are not cumulative, each episode reaches the same ending, and each decision inevitably rejoins the “main” story path (effectively reducing the script size).

So what is the point of this mechanic? While the system is not nearly as complex as what major platform titles are capable of nowadays (I suspect due in large part to the story creation portion of the game), it does foster a sense of interaction with the narrative that isn’t present in static visual media like comics or film. The episodes with choices also have incentive for replay to discover the impact of changing a character’s dialogue or action. Sometimes the differences between the outcomes are inconsequential, but other times you unearth new details, interactions, or memories that are missing in the other path.

I say this partially in reaction to all of the comments and tweets I read for the game trailers and even Smeraldo Book twitter’s choose-your-own-adventure style teasers with The Notes 2 excerpts released last summer. Many users expressed excitement, through words or memes, about finally being able to give the boys the happy ending they deserved. I don’t fault anyone for wanting that happy ending—I wish for it, too. But no matter what the rather overzealous marketing has claimed, I don’t believe that the canon ending of BU is ever meant to be in the audience’s control. But I do feel that this mechanism fits the BU narrative. It echoes the “countless loops” SeokJin has experienced in an effort to save his friends, the choices he must make at every crossroad, and the butterfly effect those actions have on all of their lives. I think it is reasonable to interpret the simple branching paths in the game as alternatives SeokJin has explored across multiple loops in his struggle to find the “right” way forward. I’d love to hear if you have theories of your own!

Prologue

The prologue is a brief episode introducing SeokJin’s repeated struggle and failure to save his friends. He wakes up yet again in his bed on 11 April Year 22, the beginning of the time loop. After reflecting on the tragedies that keep befalling the others, SeokJin realizes that he has only tried to fix the problems he can see. He wonders: “Have I tried to understand the root of my friends’ misfortunes? How much do I really know about my friends? Maybe I was never brave enough to confront their real scars and the worlds they’ve been living in. But I need to do it. Because it may be the key to saving them all.”

How to Offer a Hand

In this story, SeokJin attempts to prevent NamJoon’s arrest after he gets in a fight with a rude customer at Naeri Gas Station, his place of work. The first episode opens on the night of 11 April Year 22 with NamJoon curling his fists, glaring as crumpled bills lie untouched on the pavement. (The money looks similar to the shot from the I Need U MV.) SeokJin reaches for his shoulder, but NamJoon shrugs him off and strides away to punch the customer who deliberately dropped the bills for him to pick up. The gas station owner runs over at the customer’s furious shouts and orders NamJoon to apologize. He refuses, and police officers soon arrive and charge him with assault. No one listens to SeokJin’s protests that the customer started it first. The man sneers as NamJoon enters the police car. “Do you even have money for a settlement? Hey, you’re done for.” NamJoon is sentenced to prison again, and SeokJin hears glass shattering before the loop resets.

Rising from his bed on the morning of 11 April, SeokJin reflects on his failed efforts so far. He has hit the customer’s car, called for NamJoon in the middle of the incident, and stopped the fight himself, the latter of which caused his friends to avoid him later. The fight has even escalated; the details are unspecified, but the audience is provided an ominous shot of SeokJin speaking to a police officer alone at the scene. NamJoon is not the kind of person who would normally respond to that kind of provocation with his fists. SeokJin realizes that he cannot merely stop the fight but must discover and fix the true cause of it.

With this in mind, SeokJin heads to Naeri Gas Station during the day and tries to engage NamJoon. This is their first time meeting since they both returned to Songju, although SeokJin has experienced it in many loops already. “It’s been a while,” he greets (as he does at the end of the Blood Sweat & Tears Japanese version MV). Before SeokJin can dig deeper in their conversation, NamJoon is called away by his boss. SeokJin enters the small employee break room which serves as NamJoon’s living space when he’s not at the container, hoping to find some clues about his friend’s life. SeokJin locates something bundled in newspapers. If the player chooses to open it, he sees a strange shard of glass inside that may belong to a car or motorcycle headlight. He continues on, finding the book Cosmos by Carl Sagan and a notebook. SeokJin hesitates over the invasion of privacy but decides to read it since he needs all the information that he can gather. The journal entries detail NamJoon’s daily life since returning to Songju: his work at the gas station isn’t too bad despite the occasional rude customer; he purchased a book and hopes to get more in the future; he picked up a second job at a wedding hall to help catch up on bills; his brother NamHyeon got in trouble again, leading to more expenses; and his dad’s health has worsened, with hospital bills after an emergency surgery rising to levels that the family cannot afford. SeokJin knew that NamJoon was the de facto head of household due to his father’s illness but was unaware that it was to this degree. He feels sorry for NamJoon yet is also impressed by his maturity, for NamJoon never writes how difficult his situation is.

NamJoon arrives and asks what SeokJin is doing in the room. If the player chooses to answer “reading” instead of “just sitting there,” SeokJin privately observes that the conversation flows more easily when they talk about books. NamJoon says he must leave and declines when SeokJin offers to wait for him there. SeokJin knocks over a pile of books along with money and receipts as he stands. He thinks it is unusual that NamJoon picks up the books before the money. The books seem to be more than a hobby to NamJoon, holding special meaning. Walking to his car, SeokJin wonders if it is pride or determination not to falter that keeps NamJoon from journaling his grievances. He realizes that money is a constant source of frustration and misery to NamJoon, and that’s why he can’t stomach being insulted over the customer’s dropped money. SeokJin’s new plan is to prevent NamJoon from picking up the money. He also calls Palgok County Hospital and offers to pay the patient bill for NamJoon’s father. Anticipating that NamJoon will be angry if he finds out, SeokJin says the payer is Songho Foundation.

That night, SeokJin returns to the gas station with the excuse that he forgot to fill up earlier. The luxury car arrives with a honk, and NamJoon hurries over to assist. He shakes with anger when the customer drops the money on the ground. “Why aren’t you picking it up? You don’t want it? What’s with that look? Pretty arrogant for a part-timer, aren’t you?” goads the customer. SeokJin intervenes. Whether the player chooses to have him advise NamJoon not to pick it up or to order the customer to pick it up himself, the end result is the same. SeokJin asks the customer, “Why are you harassing a pitiful part-timer?” The customer drives away, and something about NamJoon seems off. His face is expressionless, not mad or humiliated. “SeokJin, you…” He stops. “Never mind. Thank you for your help.” The words sound difficult for him to speak.

SeokJin believes that he has saved NamJoon, although this ending feels sloppy. He continues on in the loop to rescue JungKook and later YoonGi, but uneasiness plagues him. Though he meant to help NamJoon with his actions, SeokJin wonders if he hurt him instead. On 5 May Year 22, he returns to the gas station and follows NamJoon when he leaves work early. NamJoon enters a bookstore, and SeokJin sneaks in after him to watch from afar. He overhears employees talking about NamJoon, worrying that he might dirty the pages of the book he’s perusing. NamJoon is too absorbed in the book to notice one of them calling for his attention. SeokJin recalls a memory from their school days when he found NamJoon reading alone in their classroom hideout: he asked why NamJoon read so diligently, and his friend explained that he found it comforting to empty his thoughts of everything else while focused on the book. In the present, SeokJin wonders how he forgot how much books mean to NamJoon. He sacrifices some of his food and transportation budget to afford them, but they enable him “to endure the weight of the world he’s forced to bear on his shoulders.” After realizing this, SeokJin wants to apologize for carelessly sympathizing with the reality that NamJoon has weathered alone.

The next episode is from NamJoon’s perspective, revealing his excitement over being able to purchase a book for the first time in two months. He wants to buy two but can only afford one. The employee at the register sighs and asks why he leafed through a book he wasn’t going to buy. NamJoon apologizes, and she mutters, “So dirty.” He notices his reflection, clothes worn and smelling of gasoline, and realizes she’s talking about him, not the book. He tries to shake off these depressing thoughts, but he is still not accustomed to this treatment despite experiencing it regularly at work. As NamJoon begins to exit the store, the security alarm goes off. The employees demand to check his bag despite his insistence that he didn’t steal anything. Their certainty of his theft angers him. NamJoon allows them to look through his bag, and they are suspicious of the like-new book in it which he brought from home. One begins to call the police until SeokJin appears, vouching for NamJoon by saying he saw everything. The employees accept that the alarm malfunctioned and excuse their suspicions as a mistake.

Outside, SeokJin asks NamJoon if he is all right. NamJoon is thankful but wonders how SeokJin materialized right when he needed him. “How’d you find me here?” he asks aloud. SeokJin explains that he happened to notice him while walking through the neighborhood. NamJoon wonders if it’s because they said goodbye on a weird note last time. He thanks him and turns to leave. SeokJin calls after him. “I’m sorry. I wanted to apologize. I didn’t mean to upset you that day at the gas station. It was a mistake to have called you pitiful. If my rash actions hurt you, I’m really sorry.” NamJoon accepts his apology, believing it to be sincere, and says that things would have turned out a lot worse if SeokJin had not intervened. Thunder rolls overhead, and NamJoon uses the impending rain as his excuse to depart. He declines SeokJin’s offer of a ride and runs home, feeling his friend’s eyes on him.

Before he can settle down to read at home, NamJoon receives a call from his cheerful mother. She thanks him for paying off the entire hospital bill. NamJoon is perplexed and asks what’s on the receipt, since he didn’t pay it. His mother wants to leave it be, but he insists that they investigate so they don’t get in trouble or sued. She reads that the Songho Foundation is credited as the payer. NamJoon calls the hospital, introducing himself as the guardian for Kim YoungMin, but they can’t transfer him to the administrative department at this time. Disappointed, he looks up the foundation’s website, unable to recall why it sounds familiar. He wonders why a scholarship foundation in the city would get involved with him. Spotting photos of a recent launch ceremony on the site, he recognizes a few people: Songju High School’s principal, the familiar-looking face of the foundation’s chairman, and SeokJin. First, NamJoon forces a laugh, and then it’s difficult for him to breathe. He thinks that SeokJin really had pitied him at that moment. The only thing keeping NamJoon going is the idea of getting through life on his own strength. Why does he have to live like this?

The last episode opens on 5 May back in SeokJin’s perspective. He is confident now that he has saved NamJoon, although it occurs to him that a better alternative may have been to simply pick up the money himself instead of stepping forward. (This decision is enacted in a later loop and depicted in the Euphoria MV.) While reflecting on what comes next to save his other friends, he receives a text from NamJoon. “What’s your account number? I’ll pay you back for the hospital bills. I don’t need your help. I’ll handle my concerns on my own.” Heart sinking, SeokJin wonders how he found out. With a sense of foreboding, he tries calling NamJoon, but no one answers. SeokJin texts him back, pretending that he doesn’t understand, and tells NamJoon to call him. SeokJin’s second attempt connects while he’s gathering his car keys to visit the container. “That’s enough. Just send the account number over text,” NamJoon instructs. SeokJin coaxes him to talk for a moment, and NamJoon asks flatly, “Are you going to apologize again?” SeokJin attempts to salvage the situation, but his friend turns cold when he insists that NamJoon is misunderstanding and that he just wanted to help. “So, why? Why are you helping me?! Yeah, you’re always a good person. You’ve done nothing wrong and I’m the one misunderstanding.” SeokJin apologizes again. NamJoon refuses his request to meet in person. “No, I thought maybe there was a reason for everything you did… But I guess I misconstrued it. I’ll pay you back, so I’d prefer if you stopped contacting me.” Long after the call ends, SeokJin stands holding his phone, feeling that the glass is going to break at any moment. He wants to believe that it’s not over, but hope is slipping through his fingertips.

The episode finishes in NamJoon’s perspective. On 8 May and 9 May, he accepts part-time delivery work and reflects on his three jobs. Whenever he thinks he’s at his breaking point, he focuses on his new goal of returning SeokJin’s money. On 10 May, NamJoon wakes up to his buzzing phone and is called in to work. On a scooter, he passes by a bus stop and notices graffiti. (This is the same bus stop, with matching graffiti, that appears in the Highlight Reel.) Mesmerized, he wonders if it’s TaeHyung’s. As soon as NamJoon looks up, the scooter’s brake fails, and he crashes. The shattered glass on the cold pavement reminds him of the headlight shard and the kid who looked like TaeHyung. (So the piece of glass SeokJin saw in April was really a memento NamJoon retrieved from the scene of the crash in the mountain town, where the delivery boy whom he privately called TaeHyung died. This event is described in NamJoon’s 17 December Year 21 entry in The Notes 1.) NamJoon’s vision grows blurry, and the distant sound of an ambulance doesn’t come any closer.

The arc concludes there, but it obviously marks another reset for SeokJin. It is interesting to note that in this failed loop, NamJoon suffers the same fate that he narrowly avoided in the snowy mountain town before returning to Songju.

Please stay tuned for the next Highlights post featuring JungKook and YoonGi!

#armiesnet #networkbangtan #bangtanarmynet #armysource #dailybangtan #bts universe #hyyh #bangtan universe #bts universe story #bts universe story highlights #seokjin #namjoon #namjin #bts theories

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decayandfanfics · 3 years

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The great book of sayings

PAIRINGS: Tomura Shigaraki x FemReader

SUMMARY: He looks at you, his scarlet eyes fixed on yours, burning a hole through your head, every bit the predator he is, but you are as tough as it gets, so, against your better judgment and any well-founded logic, you answer his silent threat, the animalistic look he gives you with nothing less than a fearless smirk, irises burrowing into his pupils.A clever girl. He thinks, finally labeling you inside his head, cursing himself in the very moment he allows his brain to think of you as more than an asset. He is sure (he knows himself enough to know) he’ll think of this moment many times from now on.A clever pretty girl.

Reader is a typical college student until she gets herself tangled with the league of villains.

WARNINGS: Unhealthy/complicated relationships, violence, Tomura being Tomura, mentions of murder, heroes’ abuse of power, smut, dirty talking.

A/N: This chapter is shameless smut, you are warned. Minors do not interact. go and read a book or something.

Any misspelled words, english is not my native language so i’m trying Helen.As always, let me know what you think!

________________________________________________

Chapter 14 / Chapter 15

Lovers ever run before the clock.

Overhaul really is just an uptight pretentious asshole, but Tomura lets his insulting remarks slide, trying his utter best not to snap.

He was supposed to be in a good mood today, but by the time Chronostasis puts the gun against his white locks, he swears that he will do anything in his power to completely ruin Shie Hassakai for this mess, already struggling to keep his temper at bay.

“I don’t want you to get hurt. That’s all.”

He’s never one to get distracted but it is difficult to stay focus when he cannot erase the feeling of her thighs caging his hips, her words rumbling inside his brain like a prayer for him to come back and take what’s already his.

It enrages him far more than he would like to admit, but he can’t go back if he gets killed, can’t he?

Luckily for them, Tomura kinda lacks that self-preservation impulse at the face of danger, so he stays there completely stoic and delightfully petty between Chisaki and the gun. The thought of her crying because he got his pretty brains scattered all over the Shie Hassakai immaculate floor makes him realize that he has yet another reason to hate Overhaul.

Really, what’s the matter with these people? they just keep adding points to their list, but sure, he will work with what he has (as always) by sending Toga and Twice into their ranks to gain some reliability after Chisaki told him about this ridiculous plan of curing society of quirks like it’s an illness.

And he thought que was an extremist.

It’s a dumb concept, really. People decide to be assholes, to be heroes, villains and such. There is a choice in excluding those like him from society meanwhile hero violence is idolized. But quirks? People don’t get to choose. Shit just happens. You can develop a cute little nice quirk that allows you to make bubbles or something ridiculous like, dunno, destroying everything you touch; but people can help it, it’s just the way it is. Nobody asks for it. Not even Overhaul, not even him.

And, even when Tomura can understand what Overhaul is saying about society being unfair based on quirks, his plan still sounds pretty nonsensical to him, who wants to destroy everything with his own hands, after all is that why he was born with such deadly weapon at the reach of his fingers. It would be nothing short but hypocritical and, despite the irony, he likes to think of himself as an honest person. His goal clashes directly with Overhaul’s, so no, he will keep the league interests to himself and for now will trust Toga and Twice to do what they do best without rising any suspicion about what he’s up to. Chisaki is more stupid tan he looks if he thinks Tomura will make blind eye to the audacity of his challenge and his continuous lack of propriety.

Oh, poor Overhaul. He doesn’t know it yet, but he already lost.

In the meantime, he’ll keep himself busy on more important and exciting matters. Hating Overhaul is something he can use as a motivation for more than just inner monologue, because you see, Tomura has a revenge to plan and a truck to steal.

_____________

Things are different next time he sees you. Something primal and strange born from a sick sense of belonging that fills your interactions after the night you slept together, soothing his temper and bitterness into something warmer and far more intense that pulls and twist and burns to be close to each other.

It's been four days since they left the apartment to prepare the backhand against Overhaul and Tomura is sure that by that hour tomorrow Overhaul will have failed, leaving him as the great winner of his sensei’s title. (Not that he ever needed to prove it, but if Overhaul wanted to pick a fight, he would not be the one to deny his wishes.)

Tonight, however, has nothing to do with all that, not when he’s finally back.

You’ve been waiting for his return by the window, searching for his frame in every shadow, a mug of chocolate warming your hands as the soup simmered over the stove. A warm meal made for him every night in case he decided to return, guessing he would be hungry and cold, wondering if it isn’t too much (but you care for him, so you do it anyway).

A supposition that turned out to be true, but Tomura had another solution in mind.

He’s a starving dog all hunger and demand, a wild vicious thing that looks at you feral and maddened, dripping with want and something far scarier that you don’t dare to name (but you do know, don’t you?).

You are no better than him, not when your fingers had traced patterns with his name across your body, spelling dreams and fantasies from your lips, remembering the way his fingers filled you and you wonder if he touched himself thinking about you too. The answer comes rather messy the moment his jagged mouth whimpers how much he missed you between whispers and moans that to you sound like poetry.

And he takes and takes and takes with deaf hands and sharp teeth, leaving bruises with the shape of his fingertips burned all over you as he bites and scratch and pull-out whimpers and pants from your mouth that echoes the frantic tune of his heart slamming against his ribs because he missed you so much it was painful.

So, he had kissed you feverish, stomping you against the wall desperate and needing for your attention until you had pull him by the neck of his shirt to drag him into the bedroom, his brain completely forgetting about Overhaul’s existence the moment you push him to the edge of the mattress to sit in his lap, pulling the hem of his shirt for him to take it off, too focused in the heat prints your hands leave on his pale shoulders as something roars inside of his chest urging him to imprint his existence on your skin and possess the being that lives inside your bones.

Tomura paints a plethora of purple kisses over your neck and chest as a mark of his touch and your belonging. Something dark and twisted reverbing inside his ribs, inside his brain.

Mine; his mind repeats over and over again until he’s dizzied from the words, drunk in touch as your hands slither all over his sides, his chest and shoulders. His eyes marveling in the way skin holds together every angle of your flesh and the parts where your bones show from inside of your figure when he finally takes off your dress.

So soft, so beautiful and all his.

His kisses become raw and sharp and painful like the electric bond that ties you together by the ribs, all roughness and need, bruising lips and sinking teeth. Your moans and pants mixing now and then with some pained yelps and hisses of his name to call out on his harshness, but he chooses to make deaf ears to your pleas, too busy trying to gorge on your taste.

His teeth sink on your skin leaving marks like crescent moons that he kisses after you cry, pleasure and need pooling between your thighs, a tightness that burn inside your belly as you tangle your fingers in his hair, thinking briefly between the fog of your thoughts that it has grown, that it looks painfully beautiful on him like a crown of silver and moonlight.

Soon enough your legs lock around his bony hips, the choir of soft mewls and pants has become something far more animal; cries filling the room with each touch. White underwear remaining as the last barrier to your skin, leaving a wet stain over the fabric of his jeans.

The room turns unbearable warm as your kisses become more slopy and open, letting him take your mouth just how he likes it as he registers the way the skin of your torso presses against his bare chest, your warmth spreading over, suffocating him.

Hooking a finger on your bra cup, Tomura pulls down and reveals the flesh hidden under the layers of lace, deciding already that this is his favorite image of you. Covered in love marks, wet and underwear ruined, your bra tucked under the curb of your breast. Something obscene and desperate about it, more crude than mere nakedness and it’s exactly how he likes it.

It looks lewd, it looks nasty. It looks like everything he wants to make of you, so he tightens his hold on your waist, making your back curve a little up to latch his mouth to your breast, sucking hard enough to draw a loud moan from your lips as you dig your nails on the muscle of his arms, delight shooting through your spine.

“Ow…fuck…” you pant with each pull of his mouth, and he chuckles darkly against your chest, amused and smug because he has you and he knows it, a sinister part of him (the vengeful scary one that wants to kill and maim and destroy) screaming that you belong to him from now on, that you’ll never leave, that he’ll never let you.

Mine, and mine alone he thinks and the thought sounds jarring and loud inside his head as he leaves bruises all over the skin that surround the buds of your chest, making you gasp over his lap.

“What? Wanna say something?” Tomura teases watching your expression, your eyes going wide the moment he slides your panties to the side and press his fingers inside you without warning.

“T-oh…Tomura…fuck…ow” you try to articulate but the words come out as blurred whispers.

“No bickering now?”

“Oh god…Tomura…please” you cry trembling, mouth watering with every touch of his palm over your nerve.

“Please what.”

You hide your face on the crook of his neck to bite him hard enough to make him bark an excited laugh, rejoicing in the fact that you are marking him too, before hooking his fingers inside you to make you moan loudly; hips moving automatically as one of your hands reach the hem of his pants and unbuttons his jeans to touch him back.

“I want you inside.”

He lets out a pretty hiss the moment your fist close around his length, caressing him tentatively until finding a pace, giving you a little victory over his rough teasing.

“I wanna tear you apart” he growls reaching deep inside of you, a wolf like grin slicing across his face baring his sharp teeth “you are a mess. All wet and begging for me to fuck you.”

“Tomura…”

“Fuck…you are so wet, all for me…my good girl, my good girl.” The words pour out of his mouth in feverish tone as his other hand clear the hair off your face before catching your lips on his again.

“Tomura, please…”

He snaps, turning you onto the mattress to climb over your body, throwing his jeans to the floor before leaning between your thighs as his hardness brushes over your clothed center. His patience has run thin though, so he yanks the panties by one side, closing all five fingers over the piece of fabric that flews to the floor before transforming into dust.

He lines up with your center, feeling the intimate touch before thrusting deep into you, ripping out a high moan that makes your eyes roll back and your nails dig into his shoulders, leaving scratching marks all over his pale skin in an attempt to steady yourself as your walls burn with the stretching.

No, he isn’t gentle this time, he just can’t bring himself to be soft when he feels like the awful infatuation he’s been harboring inside is about to tear his ribs open, pouring out for everyone to see the bloody mess you’ve made of his heart. So, he thrust hard like punishing you for it, snaping his hips fast and deep into you, trying to leave a bruise mark inside as well as one of his hands tangles between your hair, pulling and making you scream to the rhythm of your creaking bed.

He bottoms out the moment his arm hooks under your knee, as you tangle your other leg over his waist, giving him deepest access into you, his tip planting kisses against your cervix, rough friction and raw closeness sending you over the edge because he’s fucking you hard, making sure your screaming can be heard from the hall of the building.

It's brutal, yet you give him everything he wants and more because you like it like this, you like it because is him. The warmth of his body covering yours and you wonder if he can feel it too.

The terrific need of holding onto his body, his wicked smile, his bruised heart. The horror of your attachment to a person like him and what this represents, at the brim of ruining your life for love…

Love.

You are so in love with him.

“Look at me” he demands pulling your hair, a feral snarl across his sharp face darkening his features before kissing you hard, his tongue filling your mouth in lewd motion. “Fuck, you are so tight…I wanna split you in half.” His voice is a coarse and maddened sound against your lips, so close and intimate it’s scary because he’s sinking so deep it feels like he’s trying to rearrange your insides and his words do nothing but intensify the heat.

“Fuck…Tomura…it hurst…you’re so rough…so rough” You manage to blurt out, eyes boring into his.

“And you love it, don’t you?” he snarls tightening the grip on your hair. “You like how it feels…like I’m gonna split your pretty cunt in two. Huh? Say it, say it…”

“Fuck…yes…yes”

“Yes what.” He barks in a particularly harsh thrust that makes you scream like a wildling.

“I love it…fuck…like that…I love it…I love it.”

“You are mine…you hear me?” he prays over your mouth half ordering, half begging for you to go down with it and say that yes, that you’ll never leave him, that you’ll stay with him “All mine to fuck, mine, mine, mine, MINE!” he growls with every thrust as the bed slams hard against the wall until you are a babbling incoherent mess.

His brutal pace and words get you quiet soon, too much to even make a sound and hardly even allowing you to breathe, too concentrated in the feeling of his length and him smashing into your ending wall as the overwhelming touch of his hips and his abdomen on yours burns your skin.

The brush of his hair and ragged breathing fanning over your cheek is the only compass of time while the tightness in your belly threatens to snap the moment your teary eyes meet his, mouth on mouth without even kiss, but you smile to him, your warm hand caressing softly the skin of his jaw as he tears into you, feeling incapable of telling him what the voice of your mind has been playing over and over again.

I’m in love with you.

Like sensing your thoughts, his hands abandon your hair. Four trembling fingers cuddling your cheek, carefully and almost scared before closing his eyes, letting his forehead rest on yours as he whispers sweet words of praise only for you to keep, still forcing himself in and out of you. His mouth watering to the sight of your bouncing breast still trapped by your bra.

“ow…I’m gonna..Tomura…I’m gonna…”

The snap of his hips become erratic when finally you come undone on him, eyes rolling back and a cry that tears your throat open when your walls clench around his hardness making him moan as he keeps thrusting in and out, reaching his own end soon after; his hand closing tightly into a fist over the mattress as he grunts with his face hidden on the crook of your neck, filling you warm and slick until he goes soft inside of you.

Tomura pulls out and rests his head on your chest, his heart hammering against your belly, still trying to catch his breath; his fingers tracing mindless patterns over the shape of your waist, as your hands slide between the tangled locks of silver, lips laying little pecks over his crown.

Time slows down, minutes passing and quiet settles, he notices.

Quiet inside of him.

This is all he wanted from the moment he crossed the umbral of your door months ago. The insufferable itch silenced by the calming thump of your heart, fluttering softly behind the gate of your ribs and he wonders if maybe you’d have a room by your core where he could lay his bones to finally rest for a minute from all the rage and hate that burdens him.

Maybe you do have one, hidden and unspoken, a mirror of the one you occupy in the graveyard of his chest where he holds you beautiful and bright and…everything he doesn’t get to hate.

Yeah, he thinks you do. After all, he’s lying in your arms, isn’t it? You had caressed his face and marked his neck and back, all teeth and nails, to then crown him with a wreath of kisses, your body soft and still under his weight, while your hands brush carefully through his scalp.

He knows the feeling, he’s not stupid…but he doesn’t get to speak its name yet.

Is not that bad, after all. Being attached to you and the lullaby of your heartbeat could make him better, smarter, stronger. You could be another reason to fight and destroy. After all, in a society as rotten as this one, you’ll never be allowed to walk by his side if not by putting a bounty on your head too.

What the media would say about you? Would they catalog you as an S class villain? since your quirk is as deadly as it gets, you would be feared and hated. You can practically kill by just looking at someone and he’s not even sure if you really need to look to your target, after all.

And yet you are the kindest person he knows. If someone of the hero commission knew about this, you’d be hunted down despite your service as a doctor, despite your resolution to help whoever needs it, despite caring for those rotten and downthrown. And since you are critical of the system, you’d be reduced to just another animal to put down. Just like him.

Tomura swears he’ll decay every single person on the world before let that happen.

“Tomura…”

He rises his head to look at you, a question drawn across his face.

“Can you…move a little? My bra is killing me.”

“Ow…sorry about that.” He apologizes, curious eyes over the mark that the elastic has left over your skin as he sits by your side.

“Can you help me? I can’t reach the clip…”

“Sure…”

You bend over to give him better access to your back, feeling his fingers brush over your skin carefully, before liberating you from the elastic straps incrusted on your flesh.

Tomura leans forward, placing soft kisses between your shoulder blades, letting his forehead rest over your spine and the touch is so sweet that it makes you wonder if maybe he does feel the same as you.

You get your answer when his hand moves forward to cup your breast, middle finger carefully up, as the other slides down between your thighs, making you sigh, feeling his hardness brushing your hip.

He nuzzles against your cheek, until you turn to kiss him deeply, warmth pooling between your legs again as his fingers play lazy between your slick entrance and the bundle of nerves. This time though, you take your chance and turn over, sitting on top before taking his wrist to lay kisses over the soft skin of his pulse.

Your quirk flares alive and before Tomura gets to catch on your intentions, his hands stand secured high against the headboard.

“What the…ow fuck!” He moans the moment your hand close over his length, pumping until he’s losing his breath, a ragged laugh scaping his jagged lips “fuck…you are an evil woman.”

“I should be proud if you say so.”

You accommodate over him, lowering until he fills you, pushing his previous release deeper into you.

Your pacing is torturingly slow and intense, soft moans and sweet whispers between languid kissed. Tomura watches hypnotized how your hips ride over the place you two connect, his crimson eyes half lidded as he lets you take him, before finally releasing your hold.

He touches you carefully this time, palming over the curve of your hipbone and your belly, index finger up as he wonders how deep is he, trying to feel himself from the outside, before pushing down to sink deeper into you, hitting the fragile spot where he makes you cry.

“I like you like this…” he speaks softly, looking you up from behind his eyelashes as you ride him slowly.

“How” your word is a whisper against his lips.

“Bare…” he rasps, his voice luring you into his embrace, spilling sweet nothing into his ear as he mumbles over and over again.

“My good girl…you are so good for me…”

This time you reach your peak softly. A sweet thing that fills you gently; walls fluttering around his oversensitive length while you keep rocking him until he stuffs you again, finally both falling back into the mattress side to side, already drifting into sleep, both tired and content.

A light touch catches your attention before falling unconscious. Tomura´s pinky hooks on yours as a silent plea, so you spill a peck over his shoulder before resting your temple on it, a sweet gesture that makes his heart tremble with fear and excitement for all the right reasons.

So, he does what he wants, sliding his arm under your neck and moving your head to rest on his chest. Over his heart he lays a fist for you to grip gently by the wrist before finally crowning you with soft kisses as the steady beat of his heart lulls you to dream.

Chapter 16 (soon)

#shigaraki x reader #tomura x reader #bnh fanfic #self insert #shigaraki tomura #tenko shimura #shigaraki x you

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iamanartichoke · 3 years

Note

Why would Loki believe what Mobius tells or shows him? Frigga's death-film could be faked, Loki's responsibility for it might false, saying he always fails and causes death etc. ... where's the proof? Yes, the segments were selected to manipulate his emotions and align him with the TVA, and there's self-loathing, but he's also supposed to be smart and familiar with how lies work. Maybe he's playing along to escape and do what every Loki who ever existed and created a variant did: what he wants.

[please blacklist spoiler tags: #loki tv series spoilers, #loki series spoilers, #loki spoilers]

Well, here's the thing.

(under the cut for spoilers + length)

Objectively, I agree with you - that is, I fully recognize and agree with the characterization of Loki being intelligent and also manipulative (and therefore more than familiar with the art of lying), and I agree that it would be really, really hard to manipulate Loki without him realizing what you're doing and figuring out how to counter it and manipulate you in return (and you won't figure it out as quickly).

However. I don't think Loki is impossible to manipulate, or that his intelligence and innate capacity to lie (often and well) mean that he's immune to falling prey to someone else's schemes, when those schemes are rooted in/relying on all of the rawest vulnerabilities that Loki, as a person, possesses.

Loki's tragic flaw (or one of them, in my opinion) is that his emotions can and often do get the better of him because they are the result of how thoroughly and bone-deeply he hates himself. In Thor 2011, for example, Loki's initial plan evolves from trying to delay Thor's coronation into trying to simultaneously destroy Asgard's greatest enemy (and, presumably, destroy the monster within himself) and trying to prove his worth as a prince and a son to Odin. Were his plan to succeed, the only thing he would ultimately gain is validation that he has equal value to Thor. (Certainly he knows that Odin will wake up and Thor will eventually return; like, there are no long-term goals for keeping the throne here.)

Point being, everything he's orchestrating becomes motivated by emotion over logic and, ultimately, he doesn't really lose so much as he gives up because Odin rejects his plan - and, therefore, rejects Loki - and it hurts him so badly that he attempts to kill himself. He literally can't live with the pain it causes him.

So, I mean, we already know that Loki is deeply emotional and immensely insecure. We know that he's felt inferior and out of place his entire life, only to have those feelings validated by the revelation of his being Jotun and the rejection of his effort to prove himself as worthy as Thor.

We also know that a literally suicidal Loki ended up going through an extremely traumatic experience with Thanos and, furthermore, he has now failed pretty majorly in "taking over" Earth. Loki's in bad mental shape and, I mean, there's his proof right there that Mobius is right and that he always fails and causes death. He failed in Thor 2011 (and caused death). He failed in Avengers (and caused death). He believes himself to be worthless, deserving of rejection; he is emotionally unstable and has untapped reservoirs of pain under the surface.

He is, in other words, in an absolutely ideal place to be manipulated by Mobius. He doesn't seem to believe what Mobius tells or shows him at first - asking where Frigga is being kept, not believing the events that haven't happened to him yet, arguing back against every point Mobius makes, etc. But, as the scene wears on, you can tell he's becoming less and less sure that it's a falsity and more and more uncomfortable and upset because Mobius is unrelentingly digging at everything Loki's ever feared about himself.

That's the state Loki's in when Mobius selectively shows him the most painful scenes from his future.

Not to diagnose Loki, bc I am not qualified to do so, but to project a little bit - as an emotionally unstable person myself, who has struggled with mental health for as long as I can remember, I can very easily see how Loki would believe Mobius at that point.

It's like, imagine that you have all of these fears about yourself and they color the lens through which you view the world. I mean, Loki's experiences have definitely contributed to his poor self worth, and his family and culture have fucked him up - no imagined slights here - but when you hate yourself enough, it can alter how you perceive every little thing.

You may blame yourself a little harder for things that aren't your fault. You may too quickly assume that someone else thinks the worst of you when they may not think anything in particular about you at all. You may feel completely and utterly alone and hopeless about that ever changing because why would anyone want ever want to love someone as worthless as you?

Now imagine you've done some really bad things and, deep down, you feel guilty about them. You didn't enjoy doing them, but you did enjoy how powerful they made you feel, and that makes you a bad person, too. You weren't even wanted as a baby, for fuck's sake; you were literally abandoned for no discernable reason besides possibly being a runt, aka being born wrong.

These are all things you feel, and then here comes this person who is showing you events that have happened that he shouldn't know about, he's telling you information about yourself that he shouldn't have, he's showing you that he's got the resources to figure you and your life out and then he tells you to your face - while showing you even more failure and death in your future - oh hey, everything that you fear and everything that you feel? Yeah, that's all valid. You are irredeemable. You are responsible for death and destruction. You are unwanted, both by your family and by existence itself. You're only here so that others can have someone to stand on while they climb to the top. You killed your own mother because you're so selfish and vengeful! God, how do you even live with yourself, you destructive waste of space?

I mean, again, call me biased and paint me as projecting my mental illnesses on Loki but if it were me, no amount of intelligence or experience with lies would be enough to not believe every single word Mobius said about me (and about the situation).

It's certainly possible that Loki is playing along to escape; I mean, we know that he does eventually escape, though whether he gets captured again or not remains to be seen. But I think that, at the conclusion of the episode, Loki has just been broken down enough by everything he went through that day (it was a really rough day for Loki) that he's like, yknow what, just - okay, fine, tell me what I have to do bc I'm all outta options here.

(Actually, to be completely honest, I think there's both going on - Loki is resigned to being stuck with the TVA but also he probably recognizes that, at some point, he's going to get the opportunity to escape and might as well play nice until it comes along.)

So, yeah - I completely buy how that scene went down in regards to Loki believing Mobius.

#thank you for the ask!#asks #charlotte replies #loki tv series spoilers #loki series spoilers #loki spoilers #loki pokey artichokey #i will never be over loki #mobius dick #tw mental health #tw suicide attempt mention #tw suicidal ideation #tw depression #tw gaslighting #tw psychological abuse

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youllallriseintheink · 3 years

Text

Repeating the Cycle

I thought I’d write a little story about ink infection, as well as Sammy’s role after he was transformed. It’s inspired by Shazzbaa’s theories (I’d say which, but we don’t want spoilers, now do we?)!

I’ll tell you guys later tonight about the future writing projects I have planned.

---

Sammy awoke in his sanctuary, as he had many times before. He hadn’t been to his apartment in... well, days anyhow. He felt better when he was near the ink. He tried the door to exit his private sanctuary, and it was locked. “Is this a sign?” he asked his lord. “Is it time?”

Yes, his lord spoke back.

Sammy smiled- smiled rather weakly, as the pain from his ink infection had been wearing on him heavily. “Finally.”

All the waiting. All the sickness. All the fear. It was time to see what it was all for. And his lord had assured him, with the comforting voice of a father to a young son, that it would be worth it.

Sammy dragged himself over to the leaking pipe that hung from the ceiling of his sanctuary and turned on the ink supply. Ink sputtered down onto Sammy’s face and clothes, and he fell to his knees, hands outstretched and mouth open as though he was staring into heaven itself. His heart was pounding. He was shaking from adrenaline, and not even being surrounded with, covered in, and consuming the ink that normally numbed his symptoms seemed to be helping. This had to be fear instead of withdrawal.

Do not be afraid, the voice comforted, you will have ascended in mere hours. I promise, you will be safe and healthy. I promise, it will be better than anything you’ve ever experienced.

“Thank you! Bendy, hear my praise! I want what you have for me! I crave your embrace!”

Sammy took a long suck of ink from the pipe, then laid down on the floor. He was weak. so weak.

That’s it. You’ve made it. You need only wait now.

Sammy trusted Bendy. Bendy told him that everything he’d done and experienced in his life- even the nightmarish last few years- was leading to something. It told him that everything was okay.

Sammy didn’t know how much time had passed when he felt Joey tying up his ankles. With some struggle, he sat up and tried to push Joey off of him, but it had little effect. Before long, Joey had finished on Sammy’s ankles and was straddling his chest to tie up his hands. The last thing he saw with his biological eyes was Joey’s knife slitting his throat.

When Sammy woke up, the voice of his lord was gone. By trying to make a toon out of him, Joey had robbed him of his ascension and severed his connection to him.

---

Grant awoke in his office to the horrid ticking of his Bendy clock and the array of whispering voices that had plagued him since early in his infection. The clock’s small hand pointed to six, but Grant had no idea whether it was morning or evening. Months of ink infection had ruined his sense of time. He tried the door to his office and found that it had been locked from the outside by chain and padlock. Grant laughed at the absurdity of it all- his life had spiralled into a nightmarish fever dream.

“Does this mean it’s time?” Grant asked.

Yes. Your time is almost up, the voice answered, and for once, Grant trusted it. He felt almost too tired from illness to care.

“I’ll do anything you ask to stop it.”

No response, except for those muttered voices. Grant hadn’t expected one- the voice rarely had his best interests in mind. He shuffled over to his desk and pushed aside some papers to go back to sleep- possibly for the last time.

And then he saw it- a report from Joey that he’d received mere days before his symptoms had started- ending with the words “Fix this or I’ll have your head!” angrily scrawled at the bottom.

That was it. Joey had done this to motivate him. He just had to figure out how to keep the studio from bankruptcy and he’d be cured!

Yes! Yes! You’re right. Fix it! the voice yelled.

Adrenaline flooded Grant’s system as he jerked open his filing cabinet with shaking hands in search of the necessary files to fix the budget. This was his one chance to survive. The muttering voices were screaming in his head- ear-piercing. His head felt ready to explode.

“Shut up and let me focus!” he screamed.

Ink will soothe your symptoms.

That was something that the voice had told him frequently. He hadn’t given in to it yet- not much, anyhow- because common sense told him that ink was inedible. It was also his sincere belief that the voice wanted to kill him. The voice had told him, back before the physical symptoms had become obvious, that he was merely losing his mind and needed to hide it from everyone, lest he be institutionalized. Then, as soon as the physical symptoms had taken root, it had changed its tune- he was losing his mind, because he was ill with an incurable, supernatural disease, and no hospital could help him, and going to one would only guarantee that he would be a test subject for the limited time he had left. Listening to it then had gotten him into this position, and he wasn’t eager to listen to it again.

But this was life or death. He opened the supply on the ink pipe that Thomas- for some reason he didn’t understand- had installed in his office, and drank deeply.

The voice- the muttering- the headache- it all stopped. Silence. Finally.

Grant’s hands were covered in ink now, and were sure to soak any paper he used. I can’t let that stop me. He dropped to his knees and started painting calculations on the floor.

The numbers didn’t add up. Not a single one. Was his mind was too frayed to do basic mathematical functions?! How could he fix anything, let alone this insurmountable debt, while he could barely think straight?! Calm down. Stay calm. Try again. Life or death. Time is money. What will Joey say?!

From the cracks within the wall, Sammy watched as Grant spiralled into panic and tears, and turned his office inside out trying to find anything that could help, expressing his fears through wall-writing, and attempting escape the room. Poor thing, Sammy thought, remembering the pain and uncertainty of his own ink infection, but soon I’ll be able to teach him the truth.

It had been years since Sammy’s sacrifice. Not only did Sammy still work for Joey now that he was a failed toon, Joey had him on a schedule. Every day at 11:00 AM, Sammy would ooze through the walls of Joey’s office for their morning meeting. Sammy wasn’t particularly happy about doing anything for the man who had turned him into a failed Boris just as he was about to fulfill a higher destiny, but the voice had once told him that to follow Joey was to follow his lord, and now those previous words (which Sammy had recorded and studied every day) were all he had left as a doctrine to follow. Sammy hoped that with enough obedience and service, his lord would see past his ruined body and grant him his destiny.

Joey’s demands were often difficult, but they were simple: sacrificing specific people into specific toons, and looking after the infected. Joey rarely sacrificed people on his own anymore, and instead relied on Sammy to do the dirty work of knocking people out, killing them on pentagrams, and then dealing with the resulting dead body, blood and ink-stains on the floor, and whatever abomination came out of the ink machine. Looking after the ink-infected was easier: keep an eye on them, and once they become too infected to be useful, lock them in their offices or in infirmary rooms and take them to their prison in the basement come night. Sammy had overseen the infection of nearly thirty people by now and had sacrificed dozens.

Thankfully, Joey’s demands were not very time-intensive, and he had plenty of time for his passion: teaching the lost ones about their lord and saviour, Bendy.

The lost ones lived in a prison in the very basement of Joey Drew Studios, along with the failed toons. Sammy’s sermons were some of the only times they were allowed out of their cages, and so they were always happy to see him.

Some agreed with him. Often, these were the same ones who had heard a comforting voice as they were infected- generally those with a religious background. Others thought him insane. Their voice had been different- wrong- hallucinatory- and quite often threatening. Sammy had these lost ones do penance in order to find their way to Bendy. Some found him, leaving Sammy feeling accomplished, but also jealous that he could never have what they had. Hopefully, his lord would see the wonderful work he was doing and one day ascend him along with the rest of them- because surely, that was not their final form.

Today’s meeting was like any other. Sammy waited in the walls until Joey’s 10:30 client left, and then slithered out before him.

“Anything to report?” Joey asked casually, as he looked over some paperwork. These meetings were usually uneventful.

“Two people are currently under quarantine. Three more are infected but still able to work for now. Everything is fine- except for one small detail. One of the people under quarantine is destroying his office out of fear. If you’d like, I could tie him up snug until he transforms, or force-feed him ink to speed the process along.”

Joey considered this. "Hmm... well, I do need an Edgar. He would work as well as any. Are you sure he’s close to transforming?” All ink-infected people had strange beliefs and delusions (except for Sammy, of course- his visions were absolute truth), but by this point in their infection, they were generally too tired to do anything destructive- especially ones like this one, who had increased the duration of their infection by resisting the urge to drink ink.

“It will be a matter of hours,” Sammy assured.

“Well, that’s not convenient, but I do have lunch right after this. I’ll get the Charley down to the basement, and you get the Barley and Edgar. The Barley’s name is Lacie Benton, and I’d suggest you knock her out before taking her anywhere- she’s a tough one. But the Edgar shouldn’t be a problem, right?”

“No... I suppose not.” Severely ink-infected people were, without exception, very weak, and Sammy was stronger now than he’d ever been as a human.

“Alright! See you down there as soon as possible.”

Sammy nodded, slunk back into the walls, and cursed everything, especially his order to obey Joey Drew. A severely ink infected person had never, and would never, produce a good toon- part of their souls had already been connected to the other lost ones. Joey must have known that, but he still insisted on stealing the people that were meant to be Sammy’s to guide, probably because in Joey’s mind, killing a person was murder but killing a lost one (or someone who soon would be a lost one) was not. Joey didn’t see his people as equally human, and it sickened Sammy. Nonetheless, he slithered through the walls until he came upon Grant’s office.

The office looked like a madhouse. The floors and walls were coated with repetitive writing. Furniture had been strewn about. Grant himself was curled against the ink pipe in his office, covered in so much ink that Sammy had thought he was already transformed before he realized he still had hair. The poor thing had tried so hard, while so sick, at something so futile. Sammy had his orders, but he wasn’t going to lay a hand on his sheep-that-wouldn’t-be until he had to.

Sammy slithered out of the wall- slowly, so as not to scare him.

“Who are you?” Grant asked. He sounded so tired of all the supernatural surprises that he barely cared.

“I’m here on behalf of Joey Drew,” Sammy began.

“I’m so sorry. I tried... but I couldn’t. I suppose you’re here to kill me, aren’t you?”

“No. I’m here to give you congratulations. The others in your department were able to use these brilliant calculations,” Sammy gestured widely at the messily scrawled gibberish on a wall, “to make a plan. The studio is going to avoid bankruptcy, and you’re going to be cured. Come with me.” Sammy offered Grant his hand. Grant took it, and Sammy helped him up.

“I-I don’t understand. I don’t understand how-” All of those calculations... Grant would have guessed that they were worthless.

“Shh... you’ll be clearer-headed soon. Just come with me, now. I can’t be out there where everyone can see me, but go to the elevator, go to the bottom floor, and I will be there. I promise- you will be fine.”

“Thank you so much. But, my door-”

Sammy slithered back into the wall. Grant heard the click of a door unlocking, followed by the clink of chains falling limp. His office door was unlocked. Do I trust him? Grant asked himself. This day kept getting stranger. If I don’t, I’m guaranteed to die. I have nothing to lose.

Sammy slithered into the wooden floor of the elevator and only reappeared once the elevator hit the very bottom.

“I’m sorry,” Sammy lamented “I want to lead you to Bendy. I want you to find peace as one of my followers. But it is not in the cards.”

The two made brief eye contact- or would have, if Sammy’s face weren’t covered in mask. Grant, obviously, had no idea what Sammy was talking about. Then, Sammy grabbed Grant’s hair, slammed his head against the wall a few times to knock him out, tied him up for sacrifice, and left to find Lacie Benton.

#Bendy and the Ink Machine #my fanfiction #sammy lawrence #grant cohen #joey drew

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maplecornia · 3 years

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chapter 22

𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡 𝔠𝔬𝔲𝔫𝔱: 4.36K

𝔰𝔲𝔪𝔪𝔞𝔯𝔶: You watched them from the sidelines ever since you were a young teenage girl. Now you’re grown up, they’ve returned after 2 long years and everything has changed. What happens when you pull back the mask and find the darkness within? What happens when you see that they’re broken?

𝔞/𝔫: our first full introduction to all of BTS! I hope you're all excited ^^

Why did there have to be a meeting today of all days?

Yoongi scowls in the back of the car, trying his best to work on the small music app he’s downloaded for free on his phone. Letting out a small growl, he throws the phone aside, frustrated and annoyed.

“Absolute trash.” He snarls, staring ahead with nothing but malice in his eyes. The driver flinches a bit at the dark aura emanating from the back seat, and slowly rolls up the little partition glass that separates the two.

You know...just in case.

Yoongi notices the small act of distance and rolls his eyes, scoffing. He doesn't have to apologize. He can have a bad attitude if he wants. His schedule was supposed to be completely free today, a day where he could work on the album quietly. It was supposed to be a productive day, one where he could hole himself up in his studio and work and work until he made music that was perfect for their comeback.

Perfect for BTS.

Narrowing his eyes, he mutters a string of curse words under his breath for the 7th time that morning.

Then he got the call. That there was an urgent meeting for BTS to attend. A meeting that would affect the future of the company.

Running his hands through his hair, he tries to refrain himself from punching the car window out.

"What the hell is that even supposed to mean?!" He screams in aggravation, causing the driver on the other side of the partition to jump, startled. Not paying any mind to the driver currently struggling to restart his heart, Yoongi sighs, positioning himself on the seat so that he's comfortably lying down. Looking up at the ceiling with his soft, sparkling eyes, he tries to calm down. See things in a brighter light, try not to care so much. It's just...things are so frustrating to him.

All.

The.

Time.

Raising his hand to cover his eyes, he tries to remember a time when things had been so hard. He remembers training, debut, remembers the struggles of rising to the top, remembers injuries, exhaustion, remembers quarantine and tireless motivation…

Each moment seemed worse than the last. Every time they conquered a new struggle, another presented itself. As though they were walking down a road filled with multiple storms. A road that was destined to tear them apart, scatter them and leave them for dead.

Suga didn't think it would be so hard to leave. They were only gone for 2 years and yet by the time they got back it was almost as though the world had either forgotten about them, replaced them, or turned against them. Smiling bitterly, he raises his dark eyes to the ceiling once more, his hand curling into a fist at his side.

"You really fooled us didn't you...?" He mutters, his voice soft, but cold. Shivering with forgotten remorse. His hand rests itself safely over his eyes, shielding himself from the world. Trying so hard not to lose himself, he fights back the tears, barely able to struggle out the one word he's been holding back for so long.

"ARMY…"

Closing his eyes, he fails to catch one solo tear that falls, trailing a lonesome streak of wet painful memories across his soft ivory cheek.

He doesn’t remember the rest of the drive to the studio, choosing instead to block everything out and focus on releasing the dark cloud shrouding his mind. He’s learned how to deal with the pain, how to erase it, ease it safely and securely back into the inner corners of his mind...his heart. It's an endless procedure, falling and picking the pieces back up again. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times he may lock them away...they always come back, stronger and worse than before.

At least he’s learned to keep it inside.

At least he can safely hide.

And pretend everything is alright.

As the car pulls to a stop, Yoongi seriously considers skipping the meeting and staying home. Maybe then he wouldn’t feel like crap. Maybe then he’ll be able to forget...at least for a while. However, as soon as the car pulls up, the driver immediately opens the door and cuts the ignition. Yoongi groans from the back seat, glaring up at the ceiling just as his driver opens his door, and nervously waits for him to exit.

Muttering under his breath about how some people are such pussies nowadays, Yoongi reluctantly sits up, gathers his things and exits the car. Paying no mind to the nervous driver, he stares up at his company building. His face hidden in a shadow, he bites his bottom lip, his hand clenching around the strap to his backpack.

Since when has he regretted coming here?

Since when was he afraid to see what may lie on the other side?

Shaking his head free of such thoughts, he groans, the dark cloud surrounding him only growing. Today’s just a bad day, he really needs to pull himself together. Sighing, he rubs his hand over his face before heading towards the building. Each step seems to weigh him down, blur the world around him, bring him further and further into his mind.

A dark mess of music notes and compositions.

Of torrents of pain and broken promises.

Of hidden fears and memories.

The mind of a man past his breaking point.

But then he hears the voice.

“Yoongi!”

Just as he’s opening the door to the building, it calls out from right behind him. That one voice...that one sweet cacophony holding brotherhood and love, is enough to draw him back to reality. It’s enough to break the hold the darkness had had on him. Smiling softly to himself, he turns and meets his eyes with a soft steady look of his own.

“Hoseok.”

Jhope smiles broadly at the mention of his name, and finishes running across the distance to his hyung. Clapping his hand around his shoulder he chuckles a bit as they walk together inside. Yoongi smiles at him a bit, but looks away before Jhope could notice.

If he was being honest, any one of his members have the same effect on him. Every one of them...the hidden parts to the family they have struggled so hard to build...they make everything okay. They make everything worth it.

If Yoongi were to suffer…

Then it would be okay.

As long as it was all for them.

“Hyung, why do you think PD-nim wanted us here this early?” Hoseok asks, breaking his hold on his friend in order to stretch as he yawns. Yoongi doesn’t answer, brooding a bit over how his work got interrupted once more. First it was Namjoon, over a stupid assistant, now its Bang Sihyuk?

“Whatever it is, I hope he has a good reason for interrupting me.” Yoongi mutters darkly under his breath, startling Jhope a bit. Jhope flinches, and noticing the change in Yoongi’s mood, steps away a small distance, chuckling nervously.

“Were you working on something important?” he asks as they walk inside the elevator, headed to the office on the top floor. Yoongi scoffs as he presses the button and the elevator doors close.

“I sure hope it was. It was for our new album, which is due no less than a few months from now! Namjoon and I still haven’t even gotten the beat down for the title track...and now this?! What could possibly be more important?” Yoongi sighs, collapsing against the cool metal walls against the elevator. Cold and indifferent, he stares at his warped expression in them, wondering if that’s enough to protect himself.

But...

What does he need to protect himself from?

Jhope regards Suga with a soft look, almost pitiful. He’s found that when he gets like this, sometimes it’s just best to leave him be, to let him work it out on his own. But right now…

Is this really the best way to solve things?

The look on Yoongi’s face is familiar, and yet different from all those times before.

Hoseok finds that he can't read it, he doesn’t recognize it. Something about that…

Scares him.

As the elevator dings, and Yoongi immediately steps out into the hallway, it takes Jhope a moment to follow suit. Silent, he watches the back of Yoongi, trying hard to understand him, figure out what’s going on with him. It frustrates him that right now, when he needs him most is when Jhope has no idea how to help him.

Can he help him?

Biting the inside of his cheek, he looks at his feet as they make their way to the meeting room. He knows that ever since they were separated, ever since the military enlistment, no one has been the same. Once beloved by the world, they found themselves facing the fear of being forgotten. Of entering a world where no one cares about who you are...only how strong you can be. An honorable service, but a taxing one, something that would change a person.

And so it has changed Bangtan.

For Yoongi, it drove him further into himself. Into the depression of darkness he had tried so hard to avoid. Without his sources of light, without that grasp on hope he had before...he found everything fading away. He found himself fading away.

How easy is it to find yourself again?

How easy is it to turn everything back to how it was before?

For anyone who knows...it’s near impossible.

So he’s trying, he’s trying his hardest to turn it into something that he can live with. Into a strength he can look back on and say he grew from. Another obstacle that he has defeated in his pathetic excuse he calls a life…

But what can he do right now?

Except fall deeper and deeper into the darkness which becomes so alluring to him. He finds himself longing for it, he finds himself wishing to end it...because what is he fighting for anyway? He already reached the top...and now he has to make his way back up again? What is that supposed to mean to him? How is he supposed to deal with that?

They said they would stay with them.

They said they would wait for them.

But they lied.

They moved on, they forgot.

Was everything they ever did…

Did everything mean nothing to them?

Entering the meeting room the pair of them are greeted by noise. The familiar noise of joy and laughter Bangtan carries with them everywhere, just happy being with the other...no matter how many hardships they may face nor how much the darkness may cloud each of their minds...as long as they're together, nothing else matters. Yoongi can’t help it…

He smiles.

It happens on its own accord, without warning. It's just...seeing them, seeing how happy they are despite everything makes him feel a bit of happiness, a little ray of joy, a little speck of pride and amongst them all he finds what he’s been looking for all along.

Hope.

The one thing stronger than his fear.

“Yoongi! And Hobi hyung! You guys made it!” Jimin practically barrels into Yoongi as Jhope closes the door behind the two of them. Laughing like a maniac, Jimin squeezes Suga so tightly that it's hard for him to pry him off.

“Seriously Jimin, you saw me just yesterday, you act as though it’s been years.” Suga sighs, placing his backpack in one of the many chairs in the meeting room as Jimin pouts. Jhope chuckles at his expression, rubbing his hair affectionately before following suit.

“It feels like it’s been years! Have you forgotten that we only got back a few weeks ago? I’ve missed our hugs--” Yoongi places his hand expertly on Jimin’s face, stopping him as he moves in for another hug. Growling, Jimin gives him a glare and Suga raises his eyebrow.

“What was our deal about hugs?” Jimin pulls away at the ultimatum and dramatically deflates into the chair next to Yoongi as he sarcastically recites the “deal”, deepening his voice and flattening it as much as he can in order to match Suga’s.

“One free hug a day...any other extra will cost you.” While Suga rolls his eyes, he can’t help but crack a smile as everyone else in the room laughs along and Jimin sits up in the chair, chuckling to himself at his great impersonation. Well...great in his eyes. Shaking his head, Yoongi looks around at the room, smiling at the familiar faces he finds meeting his own.

There’s Jin, who hasn’t stopped laughing, his unique laughter carrying through the room, half hurting everyone’s ears, and half bringing them joy and happiness. Yoongi always forgets that it’s actually possible to miss that strange windshield laugh.

There’s Taehyung who sits next to Jin and rolls his eyes a bit at how hard he’s laughing, before chuckling softly to himself in quiet happiness. Yoongi still can’t believe that there was ever a time he didn’t cherish Tae as much as he does now.

There’s Hobi who has just settled into a chair right next to Yoongi and laughs that contagious laugh that strikes hope and joy into even the darkest of hearts. Suga still remembers when that laugh first entered his life.

There’s Jimin who has just tackled Suga into another hug before dancing away and laughing almost manically. Yoongi lets him off the hook, smiling softly to himself because if he were being really honest...he would want those hugs every day of his life.

Then there’s Namjoon, the one who watches over them all, a small but distant smile present on his face. As Yoongi raises his eyes to him, he can’t help but feel a bit of nostalgia.

His first friend.

His best friend.

Perhaps the only one who could understand him and yet…

He always seems so far away.

Namjoon, as though feeling Suga’s gaze on him, slowly flickers his eyes over to him and is startled by what he finds.

He sees the darkness shrouding his dear friend's mind. He sees the cry for help. His heart pounding with worry and trepidation, he bravely meets Suga’s deep conflicted eyes and tries to pick them apart, solve them as though they were a problem only he could untangle. He hasn’t seen this face for so long, he hasn’t seen this kind of fear in his friend before. His chest constricting, he almost wants to hold onto Yoongi and hold him tight in his arms until he makes everything better.

As though it were his job to make everything better.

His brow crinkling with concern, he opens his mouth in order to address him, but an outburst from Taehyung who is looking out into the hallway cuts him off and the connection is broken. Yoongi almost immediately looks away, leaving Namjoon to continue to stare at him, in deep thought.

"Where's Jungkookie? Why is he so late?" Tae is asking as he leans back in his chair to stare out the see-through glass that encases them inside the meeting room. Jimin, coming up behind Tae, almost makes him fall as he pushes the chair down so that Tae meets his eye.

"Wha…" Taehyung begins but Jimin cuts him off.

"That's rich coming from you Mr. MickeyD." Jimin snorts at the reference to the soaked bags Tae brought as a peace offering yesterday, before letting go of his chair and leaving Taehyung to teeter slowly to a stop. Jin, picking up on the let's tease Taehyung memo nods and leans forward in his chair as though invested in the conversation.

"Yeah, where were you yesterday? You took an hour to get here TaeTae…" he coos, reaching forward to touch his hand but Tae pulls away grimacing. Jin laughs before pulling away and Namjoon rolls his eyes, ignoring the small smirk growing on his face.

"Stop it guys, he was helping Yen, my new assistant manager." Namjoon explains as he pulls out his phone to check any new notifications. "She fell during the afternoon rush in the lobby yesterday and hurt her ankle. Tae was helping her to the hospital. That's why she's not coming in today."

At that comment, Jimin's face goes a bit cold, and he glances at Tae in the corner of his eye. Tae nods frantically in agreement to Namjoon's statement almost as if he were clearing his name, and Jimin can't help but feel a pang of disappointment.

Tae used to tell him everything…

So why does Namjoon know this and he doesn't?

It wasn't that hard to explain...he would have understood...so why?

Why couldn't Taehyung talk to him instead of having to turn to RM?

Tae swallows hard to see if they all believe him, his heart pounding a bit fiercely in his chest. That was partly the truth...but Namjoon doesn't know the whole story. Nervously glancing at Namjoon in the corner of his eye, he can't help but fidget a bit.

The only way he was able to keep Yen home was to get the all clear from RM. And in order to do that...he had to tell him that you were hurt. And so that's exactly what he did...it just wasn't entirely the truth.

Looking down at his hands, he holds them tightly, faintly remembering how your hands felt in them. If he told Namjoon about what happened, who knows what he would have thought? Besides, Taehyung doesn’t want to tell anyone about that day. He doesn’t know why, he has nothing to hide but…

It's almost as if he mentions it to someone else…

It’ll become theirs and not his.

“In any case, we’ve been waiting long enough...where’s BangPD anyway?” Suga wonders quietly, not bothering to hide the frustration in his tone.

“Good morning to you too, Yoongi.” At the voice, the 6 of them freeze, and slowly turn toward the door, which was closed once before, but now occupies three significant figures. Suga tries hard not to wince, but as he meets BangPD’s dark eyes, he can’t help it. The other members seem to shrink due to the tension rising in the room as the door closes behind the newcomers. This isn’t exactly a situation they would like to be present for.

“Jungkook!” Jhope cries as he scans the three faces, and sure enough there he is standing attentively behind BangPD. He smiles a bit as Jhope calls his name, and waves to them but when BangPD walks into the room, Jungkook follows closely behind. The third figure, a tall and slender woman, closes the door behind them.

Namjoon glances towards her a bit curiously, trying to place where he may have seen her before. As she sits in a chair near to the door, a reasonable distance from the rest of the others, she glances towards him as well. As their eyes meet, Namjoon barely has time to notice the small flecks of gold circling in her brown eyes before she looks quickly away. Raising his eyebrow, he shrugs before turning to BangPD who is setting down a few papers and documents in the head chair of the meeting room.

“Sir, what exactly is going on? Why did you ask Jungkook to text us all to meet here? Is it something to do with the album?” BangPD smiles at Namjoon’s quick wit as the rest of the members glance at each other a bit confused. He’s the only one who figured out that BangPD was the one behind that strange text last night. Sitting down, BangPD meets Namjoon’s stern but curious eyes, trying to pick apart the complexity hidden behind their depths.

“The reason is simple. We needed to confer with you 7 as shareholders in the company.” Taehyung sits up from his once relaxed position at the sentence, turning attentively towards BangPD-nim. He glances toward Jungkook to try and read his expression, but Jungkoook avoids his gaze. What exactly are the two of them planning?

BangPD nods to the woman sitting attentively in the back and she nods back, pulling out a computer and walking to the head of the table. She opens it and begins connecting it to the stereo system. Yoongi crinkles his brow at the curious setup. Once the woman is finished, she nods toward BangPD before heading back to her seat next to the door.

“Before we can do that however...there’s something you need to hear.”

With that, BangPD presses play and once more...your voice fills the room.

It instills a hush over each of them. Each one of them, even the woman in the back, is visibly affected by the emotion in your voice. The soulful pain that you carry through each note you sing takes them to a world which only they can see; drives them to emotions they have never felt before.

Jin goes completely still, trying his hardest to hold back the tears which are threatening to spill over and wet his cheeks. He wants to hurt whoever made you feel this way. Whoever made you sing like this...as though you were crying out for help.

Jhope’s expression is blank, completely out of character for him. But he can't help it. At the sound of your voice, he is unable to keep the mask up for any longer. It falls, shows everything underneath, shows what he really hides behind his smile. He can hardly feel it as the single tear runs down his cheek.

It takes all Jimin has not to break down into tears right then and there. He stares at the computer as though that would help him reach you. Help him to erase the pain that has affected you deep inside. As though he could erase in you what he could never erase in himself.

Yoongi has closed his eyes, leaning his head back in the chair he sits in. As though if he were to open them, the voice would disappear and the beauty he sees behind his eyes would go with it. As though it's the only anchor keeping him from completely fading away.

Namjoon finds himself searching through his mind, trying to figure out where he’s heard this voice before. Where he’s felt this kind of pain, this deep level of sadness and insecurity. Trying to remember why he can find some familiarity in it. Why he feels as though he’s home and safe.

Taehyung is petrified. He’s heard this voice before. He has it saved safely in his pocket at this very moment. He helped the owner of this voice home the other day. He can still feel her touch on his skin.

Frantically, he glances toward Jungkook once more. How was he able to get this recording? Was he there? And if he was…

Then was that moment Taehyung shared, that one break in time where he could only see you, that one moment where he knew, he just knew that you were perhaps the only one who could truly understand him…

When he couldn’t understand himself…

Did it mean nothing at all?

Jungkook smiles to himself now as he sees the room which is alight with your voice. As he sees the way they change, the way they are affected, how it seems as though they have been healed with the sound, the beautiful world which your voice brings to each one of them. When he sees the way your voice alights in them a new fire, a new flame unable to be doused, he sees the true purpose behind your voice behind you.

A light that was meant to be shared.

As the song ends, though he’s sad to see it go, this time he’s sure that he’ll hear it again.

That he’ll hear you again.

In the silence, the ones who remain have a hard time coming back to themselves. It's as though they are wandering in the dark, now that the world they were able to see has disappeared. Almost as though they had forgotten how to live, how to breathe without that utopia in their mind.

But the main thing is that suddenly, all at once…

They felt as though they had been healed.

Even if it was only for a moment.

“Her name is Yen.” BangPD’s voice breaks through the fragile silence, catching everyone’s attention, including Jungkook. Clearing his throat, Bang Sihyuk opens your file, passing it forward on the table. Everyone is able to see your ID picture, where you were born, your current number, your family members, your current address...even your social security number. It’s all there, for each of them to see and to immediately know…

“She has recently been hired as Namjoon’s assistant in Jaejin’s absence.” BangPD explains, but this is something they already know. They share a look with each other, recognizing that this is the same girl who brought a smile on their face yesterday.

“Now that you have heard her voice, let’s get down to business.”

The same girl who was hours late for her first day.

“The real reason I called you all here is because we need to make a decision.”

The same girl who turned Namjoon into a frantic mess.

“A choice that may make or break this company.”

The same girl who turned Jungkook into a dumbstruck teenage boy.

“A choice that involves this voice, that involves Yen.”

The same girl who helped Taehyung find himself...even for a little while.

“As shareholders for this company this affects each and every one of you.”

Though the rest may not have met you...they all saw the picture.

“I called you here today to ask you…”

They saw in you the same charming girl that everyone else had seen throughout the day.

“If the 7 of you would agree to signing this girl on as a trainee for our company.”

The one behind this voice.

Is the same girl who tried to stuff an entire bowl of salad in her face.

𝔫𝔬𝔱𝔢: crazy crazy

chapter 23 here

check the Infinite Stars masterlist for more chapters

check my BTS masterlist for other BTS content

check out my masterlist for other kpop fanfics

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thegreatestofheck · 4 years

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Little Village {Finale?}＊Outer Banks＊

find the other seven parts here!

word count - a lot but not too many warnings - Swearing, fighting, that whole deal synopsis - An unwanted person shows their face and everything changes. tagging - @apoguecalledjj @ijustreallylovethem @deathcompass @lolitstiana @jxpiter-sxturn @parkerpetertingle @diverrdown , @ponyboys-sunsets, @outerbanksbro, @alexandracheers, @x-lulu a/n - I think there might only be one more chapter after this depending on how this goes down, so that’s exciting. Also, thank you to @raesficrecs for giving me the motivation to finish this chapter. I’m sorry to everyone else that it has taken this long. Also, I wanted to let everyone know that it has been a little bit over a year since the start of this story which makes June now 19 and all of the Pogues 18 or older. Just so ya know. Also, after this chapter, if you want to do requests of what you’d like to see from June and the Pogues, let me know! Because I think this is the end of the plot that I had planned. Okay, back to the story.

“Okay, the two of you have got to knock it off.”

This was the fifth week in a row that the dinner table had been silent save for the brief crying of Eleanor. June and JJ sat on opposite ends of the table as far away from each other as possible. John B sat somewhere in the middle, eating his soup with a scowl on his face. But he had enough.

“I don’t know what the hell is going on between the two of you and, frankly, I don’t care. But you are really bumming me out.”

JJ scoffed, his eyes fixed on his bowl of soup as he obnoxiously sipped from his spoon. John B looked to June, who rolled her eyes and picked up her bowl of soup and made for the nursery.

“Dude, what did you do?” John B asked his friend.

JJ just shrugged.

June leaned over the crib, smiling as she waved a stuffed giraffe over Eleanor. The Little Pogue grinned, quiet laughs coming from her as she stretched up her hands for the plushie.

“My sweet girl,” June mused, reaching toward her daughter and stroking her cheek with a finger. “What would I do without you?”

Life carried on.

JJ stayed away. He was barely ever at the Chateau when June was. She knew that he was over sometimes when she wasn’t around, to talk to John B or to see Eleanor. Part of June wanted to ban him from her property entirely, but that felt cruel. She knew how much Eleanor meant to him, and taking that joy away from him for her own mistakes didn’t feel right.

She spent a lot of her time at Kie’s house with Sarah and Eleanor. They tried hanging out at the Cameron abode, but June felt tense every time she saw Rafe. He always kept his distance, but June struggled to trust him, even if she was working on forgiving him.

The day that Sarah finally told John B that Rafe had come back, June cried in the bathroom for an hour. John B was as stubborn as she was. And he hated Rafe more than most everyone else except maybe Pope and Sarah. June was barely surviving without JJ. She couldn’t handle losing Sarah as well. It felt as though her little village was falling apart and there was nothing she could do to hold it together.

John was angry. He was hurt. He was scared. But he loved Sarah more than he hated Rafe. He held her hand as she cried. He forgave her for not telling him sooner. He kissed her forehead and told her that he wasn’t going anywhere.

June knew he wasn’t going to the Cameron house as long as Rafe lived under the roof. He had a hard enough time having lived there himself for a while.

Knowing that she wasn’t about to lose another one of her friends, June could finally breathe again.

After John B told her everything that had happened with Sarah, he saw the distant look in June’s eyes and reached across the table to grab her hand.

“What’s wrong?” he asked her.

“It’s nothing.” She smiled at him. “I’m just glad you and Sarah are working through it.”

John B knew his sister. He could read her like a book. Something was very much the matter. But she was as stubborn as a mule and she wouldn’t budge once she had decided on something. And June had decided that nothing was wrong.

~~~

The Heywards invited the Routledge’s over every week for a family dinner. Sitting at a table that didnt wobble with food that wasn’t heated up in the microwave was always nice. But June liked the company more than anything else.

Two parents, her brother, one of her best friends, and her baby. It felt like family.

They laughed, talked about their days, made jokes, teased Pope.

This week, John B left early. Kie was helping him study for a test he had that week.

Pope took June out to the back where they had set up a rundown basketball hoop. June had never been coordinated athletically. She failed miserably at anything sports related. But Pope liked to help teach her.

They stood out in the cold while Mrs and Mr Heyward coddled Eleanor.

June huffed in irritation as she tossed the ball, missing the basket entirely but hitting the backboard.

“What’s on your mind?” Pope asked, making a perfect basket.

“How much I suck at this,” June said.

Pope would have laughed if he hadn’t been so worried about her.

“What’s really going on?” He asked and tucked his ball under his arm so she couldn’t throw it again.

She looked at him with pinched eyebrows.

“Nothing.”

“I don’t appreciate being lied to, June.”

“I’m not lying-“

“You’re very clearly lying to me.”

June made a face that looked like she was sucking on a lemon. She finally sighed.

“JJ brought a girl into the house,” she said finally.

“Isn’t that against the rules?” Pope passed her the ball.

June bounced it against the ground and nodded her head.

“So you revoked his Eleanor pro ledges?”

“More like I revoked his me privledges.”

“Ah.”

June threw the ball and missed again. A glare settled on her brow as she went to retrieve the ball.

“Is it the rule breaking you’re upset about or the fact that there was another girl in the house?”

“What’s the difference?”

“One is you being protective of Eleanor and one is being protective of you.”

June paused, looking at Pope with her scowl. But he didn’t back down.

“I’m not following.”

“You don’t want girls in the house because that’s strangers you don’t know hanging around your baby. Understandable. You also don’t want girls around because you know the only reason JJ does it is to shove your face in the fact that it’s not you.”

June threw the ball again, but this was anger. She hurled it at the backboard as hard as she could and watched as it hit the ground.

“There it is again.” Her words were quiet because she was afraid if she let herself talk any louder, she would be screaming.

“There what is?”

She whirled around to face Pope, her eyes cold as steel.

“Everyone thinking they know me. You, Kie, Sarah, Rafe. You think you have me figured out.”

Pope didn’t say anything, but his face spoke volumes.

“You think if I was in love with JJ I’d be the first to know it?” Pope raised his eyebrows almost in shock but June didn’t see it as she turned in an angry circle. “I wouldn’t need everyone going around telling me how I feel!”

With her back to him, June was able to let out a heavy sigh, calming her nerves.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have yelled.”

“No worries,” Pope said. “Maybe it’s not that we know better than you, but maybe we’re seeing things from a perspective you’re not.”

June turned around slowly, hands on her hips.

“You really think I’m in love with JJ?”

“I think you need him.” Pope picked the ball of the ground. “And I know he needs you.”

He tossed the ball June’s way before heading back toward the house. June caught the ball with a heavy breath. She stared at it in her hands for a few moments. Looking up at the basket, she absently threw the ball and turned to follow Pope.

She didn’t see the ball go through the basket.

~~~

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” June said, a little louder than she meant to.

The little old lady she was trying to serve coffee too looked up at her.

“What’s wrong, dear?” The woman asked, not mentioning the fact that her normally very sweet waitress just swore.

June couldn’t tear her eyes away from the car that had just parked in the parking lot. She knew that car. Its license plate number was seared into her head, the sound of the plastic die clanking together already echoing through June’s head.

“I’m going to send another waitress to serve you, Phyllis, okay?” June said. Even as she spoke, June didn’t take her eyes off of the car, or the person sitting in the front seat.

“Oh, um-”

“Kay, thanks.”

June spun around and almost ran for the counter. She gently grabbed hold of another waitress’ arm and pointed toward Phyllis, who stared after her with a concerned look in her eyes.

“June, you okay?” The waitress, Cedar, asked.

“Just peachy.”

June glanced behind her as the bell of the diner rang. She swallowed a yelp as she ducked and scurried for the kitchen, where she hoped her manager would be.

David saw her practically hiding behind a pile of dirty pots and raised an eyebrow.

“What are you doing back here, Routledge?”

“David!” June stood up straighter and shot a glance out to the house, where a man was beginning to pace around, looking for someone. “I need to take the rest of the day off.”

“What?”

“I’m feeling-” June faked a cough. “Ill.”

“June, you worked while eight months pregnant. I don’t think you’d want me to send you home over a cough. What’s going on?”

June scowled, but glanced back out toward the man. He didn’t look a day older than when she had last seen him, a little more than a year ago now. She ground her teeth together before looking back at David.

“My ex,” she said, nodding toward the man. “Fred.”

“Eleanor’s father?” David sounded purely shocked as he snapped his head around to catch a look at Fred.

“He’s not her father,” June snapped, before realizing the tone she was taking with the man she was currently begging to let her off work. “Dave, I just-“

“You don’t have to explain anything, Routledge. We’re pretty light today. Take the day off.”

June let out a steadying breath and nodded her head.

“Thank you.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah.”

June grabbed her things from her cubby before making for the back door as quickly as possible. Hurrying across the parking lot, she forced herself to keep her gaze on her car. She just had to reach her car.

“June!”

She startled, gasping as she tightened her hands around her keys, but she didn’t turn around.

He said her name just like he always had; irritated, as if she was always rubbing him the wrong way.

June was 17 when she met Fred. He was a Kook and he promised to help her and John B out with DCS until she turned 18 and could take care of the both of them. Fred was 26. She thought she owed him something when she turned 18. Next thing she knew, she was pregnant and he was throwing her out to the street.

June didn’t cry over him. She had never been attached to him. But she was afraid of him. Part of wondered if he would come back to try and claim Eleanor as his own. He was on and off Kildare for business trips and it appeared he had just returned.

“June, I know you can hear me.” June kept walking, refusing to even acknowledge that he was there. “Damn it, June,”

She heard him walk closer to her. She thought about booking it, but she didn’t want to show him fear. She didn’t want him to have that satisfaction. So, she let him get closer. She let him run after her.

Fred grabbed her by the wrist and she spun around to face him. She hadn’t seen him in over a year, yet he already looked much older.

“What do you want?” she asked, curling her hand into a fist in her pocket.

“I want to talk to you.”

“Do you now?”

“June-“

“Dont ‘June’ me. I’m not a child, Fred. Not anymore.”

The muscles in Fred’s jaw tightened as he stared down at her.

“I want to see my kid.”

June let out a bitter laugh.

“You...you’re not serious right now.” From the unchanging look in his eyes, June could tell he was. “You don’t even know your own child’s sex, why in the world would I let you anywhere near us?”

“I have every right, as the father-“

“I’m not having this conversation in the diner parking lot,” June said and put up a hand to cut him off. “Your not seeing my child, ever. Goodbye.”

She turned toward her car.

“June, don’t walk away from me!”

She did.

As soon as she was safe in the car and the doors locked, June pulled out her phone. She barely looked at it as she pulled out of the parking lot, but as she glanced down, she realized that the only person she could think to call was JJ. He’d want to hear that Fred had come back. He’d want to meet her at the Chateau to keep her and Eleanor safe.

The line was ringing before June could stop herself

But JJ wasn’t talking to her. JJ wanted nothing to do with her.

After two rings, June hung up.

She considered calling John B, but she didn’t want her brother to get arrested for a real murder, which is what would happen if she told him that Fred had showed up at her workplace. She found herself calling Kie, her throat thick as she tried to calm the shaking of her hands by squeezing the wheel until her knuckles were white.

“Hey, June, whats up?”

“Fred showed up at work today.”

“You’re shitting me!”

“Nope. I’m going to pick El up from the Heywards, would you mind meeting me back home? I don’t really want to be alone right now.”

“Of course. I’ll be there.”

“Thank you.”

June knew that Kie would have a thousand more questions that she didn’t want to answer, so she hung up and threw her phone into the passenger seat.

All the way to the Heywards, her heart pounded against her ribcage. She had nightmares about Fred coming to reclaim Eleanor, of endless custody battles, of all the dirt on her family that Fred could dig up.

Just the thought brought terrified tears to June’s eyes. Breathing became difficult, as if someone was squeezing her chest. If she lost Eleanor, June wasn’t sure what she would do. She would just die, she supposed. Hot tears rolled down her cheeks as she tried to suck in breaths that just wouldn’t go down. With her arms shaking, she pulled over to the side of the road until she found a way to calm down.

June shut her eyes, placing both of her hands against her chest. She breathed heavy, shaking breaths in through her nose as she tried to slow her sobbing. She had friends in high places now. The Cameron’s would take care of her. The Carreras would too. The Heywards would do anything to help her. Everything would be okay. She just needed Eleanor in her arms. Then everything would be okay.

Pulling back onto the road, June wiped away her tears and set her sights on the Heyward household.

Mrs. Heyward asked a few questions when June pulled up five hours early to pick up Eleanor. June answered them shortly as she plucked Eleanor off the ground and held her tight to her chest. The girl was almost six months old. Half a year. She was still so small.

June tried not to cry again right there in front of Mrs. Heyward. These would be tears of relief as Eleanor cooed and babbled, knotting June’s hair inbetween her fingers.

“My dear, are you okay?” Mrs. Heyward asked.

June finally looked at her, eyes classy, and she nodded.

“It’s just been a long day. Do you mind if I take her home early?”

“Not at all.”

The two packed up Eleanor’s things and Mrs. Heyward helped June pack of all into her car.

“You know, girl, if there’s anything you need, you just have to ask.”

June buckled Eleanor into her car seat before looking back at her friend.

“I know. Thank you. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

June could finally breathe as she drove back to the Chateau, knowing that Eleanor was in the back seat just behind her. Every few seconds, she would glance in the mirror, just to make sure she was still there. Eleanor babbled to herself, looking out the window as she shook a small giraffe.

Finally back home, June took no time to pull Eleanor from her car seat, abandoning everything else. She just wanted to get inside, to feel safe. Once Kie was there, maybe she would go out to retrieve it all, but all she needed now was Eleanor.

The small girl didn’t even seem to notice her mother’s frantic mood as she clicked her tongue and pulled one June’s necklace.

June was half way to the porch when the front door opened and out stepped Fred.

She let out another gasp and turned her body, shielding Eleanor from him.

“It’s a girl,” Fred said, almost teary eyed.

“Stay back,” June said.

Fred took a step toward them and June took a step back. Eleanor stopped making sound, finally seeming to realize that something was wrong.

“She’s beautiful.”

He took another step.

“I said stay back!”

Eleanor let out a quiet cry at her mother’s harsh tone. June wanted to tell her that it’d be alright, but she refused to tear her steel glare away from Fred. She was afraid he would leap if she looked away for even a second.

“I just want to talk, June, and to see our daughter.” Fred took a few more steps, but fear held June where she was.

“My daughter.”

Fred let out a heavy sigh and lowered his head.

“Why-”

“You left me,” June said, her voice low and suddenly full of tears. “I needed you and you left me.”

“You didn’t love me.”

“I was a kid!” Eleanor let out a quiet cry and June held her tighter. “You left. You left me alone.”

“And I’m back now. That should count for something.”

“You can’t reap what you didn’t sow, Fred.”

Fred’s soft, almost mournful look hardened into something fouler. He took one, two steps toward her.

“June!”

She whipped her head around just in time to see JJ running toward her. A smile started to spread across her face, but it fell quickly. She was already in one fight, she couldn’t handle another.

JJ slowed to a stop in front of her, resting one of his hands on the back of Eleanor’s head before brushing the back of his fingers against June’s cheek as if to check and make sure they were both alright.

“What are you doing here?” June asked him a low voice.

“You called.”

There was almost a ‘duh’ sound to his tone, as if she should expect nothing less from him.

“And you came?”

“I’ll always come when you call.”

“I understand,” Fred said with a bitter scoff, drawing both JJ and June’s attention back to him.

JJ stepped in front of June on instinct, standing between her and Fred.

“What?” June snapped, her scowl returning to her face.

“This is why you won’t let me back into your life? Your screwing your brother’s best friend?”

JJ tensed, his hands clenching, his jaw tightened, the muscles on his arms bulging. But he stayed where he was. June kept her eyes glued on Fred. She could smell a fight brewing. JJ would defend her, as he always did.

“Get the hell out of here, man,” JJ said. His words were strong, unafraid. June remembered when he told her how terrified of his dad he was, how he couldn’t even look him in the eye most of the time. He had told her once that it made him feel like a coward, like a scared little boy.

She hadn’t ever seen him that way. He had always been the first one to defend his friends, to defend his family. Even if it meant getting his knuckles bloody. He didn’t care about the consequences.

June saw no trace of a scared little boy now, his ocean blue eyes a calm tempest waiting to explode.

Fred didn’t even look at JJ, his own piercing gaze fixed on June and only June.

“You know, even when we were together, I always thought you were low. You were too easy. I knew you’d shag anyone that gave you the time of day, but he’s low, even for you.” Fred’s words were venom, sinking deep into her skin, paralyzing her.

“Don’t talk about him like that,” June said, but her voice shook, betraying the fear that made her stiff.

Fred laughed. He was laughing at her. Laughing because she was afraid.

“I can still help you. Get you and the baby out of this dirty house, away from your dirty friends. She can still have a good life,” Fred told her, his tone becoming soft again.

June glanced at the house behind Fred, with it’s popped out nails and it’s torn mattresses and it’s dusty bookshelves. She looked at Fred’s new shoes, his shiny rolex, his perfectly styled hair. June glanced down at Eleanor, the light of her life, her sun against the darkened sky.

“You know she’s better off with me,” Fred said. Tears sprang into June’s eyes. “You don’t want her ending up like you.”

Like a dog let off it’s leash, JJ lunged forward suddenly, letting out a cry of rage. June’s eyes widened as she cradled Eleanor’s head to her chest. She watched JJ cross the yards in a few strides, landing a solid punch against Fred’s jaw before Fred even saw him coming.

It wasn’t until JJ hit him again that June felt Fred’s spell on her fade. She turned from the fight, holding Eleanor close, and she ran.

June ran back toward the car as fast as her legs could take her. Eleanor cried as June’s feet thundered against the ground, the sounds of skin hitting skin trailing off behind her.

Once June was safe by the car, she threw open the door and set Eleanor inside the car seat. For just a second, she let herself glance back toward the fight. Fred had JJ up against the wall of the Chateau, an arm across his chest. JJ’s lip was already bleeding. They were both breathing heavily.

June buckled Eleanor into the car seat, closed the door, and slid into the front seat.

She sat there, with her hands on the wheel, breathing heavily. She should drive away, get Eleanor somewhere safe. But she looked out of her window and Fred was pounding JJ’s face in.

JJ, who had held her hand while she gave birth.

JJ, who hummed Eleanor to sleep when June was too exhausted to stand.

JJ, who remembered her birthday even when June didn’t.

JJ, who defended her honor by any means necessary.

JJ, who came to her whenever she called, no matter how mad at her he was.

June threw open the door, slamming it shut, and locked the car. She tucked the keys into her pocket and ran back toward JJ as fast as her legs could take her.

JJ never once left her when she needed him. She was not about to let him down now.

June hurled herself into Fred with as much force as she could muster, knocking him off his feet and away from JJ. She and Fred hit the ground at the same time JJ did. June rolled through the leaves, the wind knocked out of her. JJ staggered to his feet and grabbed hold of Fred, but he had recovered quickly. He gave JJ one good punch, and he toppled to the ground.

June forced herself onto her feet and stepped between Fred and JJ just as Fred swung a harsh right hook. June yelped as his fist collided with her cheek. Her head spun as she hit the ground a second time. Vision blurring, all she could see was the world tilting as Fred bent down to pick something out of the leaves.

The keys.

“No!” June reached out with her hand and grabbed hold of Fred’s ankle just as he started for the car.

Fred tripped and fell over, his forehead hitting the hard ground. He tugged on his leg in an attempt to free himself, but June dug her fingernails into his skin like claws. Even through his $900 pants, he could feel the sting of her grip. She clawed her way to a better grip on his calf. He kicked at her, hitting her shoulder, but she didn’t let go.

Another car pulled up into the Chateau front yard.

“June!” Kie jumped out of the front seat almost before the car was fully stopped.

“The keys!” June cried out. “Eleanor....the car!”

It didn’t take Kie long to figure out what was going on as June clambered over Fred. She tore the keys from his hand, ignoring his shouts of protest. She forced her aching body onto her feet and ran to meet her friend.

“What’s going on?” Kie asked, glancing back at Fred as he tried to push himself out of the dirt.

“Take Eleanor to Heyward’s,” June said, pressing the keys into her hand. “I’ll meet you there.”

“But, June-”

“Go!”

June turned toward the house and Kie ran toward the car without any more protesting as JJ managed to get to his feet and drag Fred back into the dirt.

“She’s not your daughter,” Fred said through the blood in his teeth. “She’s mine.”

“You weren’t there when June was throwing up every morning,” JJ seethed, grabbing the man’s shirt and pulling him upward. “I was.”

JJ landed a punch against his face.

“You weren’t there the day that Eleanor was born. I was.”

Another punch.

“You weren’t there on the nights that June couldn’t sleep. I was.”

Fred tried to scurry away, but JJ held him tight.

“You haven’t changed a single diaper, read her a single book, taught her a single thing. I have.”

JJ raised his fist to hit Fred again, but before he could, June stepped out through the front door.

Both he and Fred turned to look at her as she cocked her shiny new shotgun.

JJ’s lips parted in surprise as June pointed the barrel at Fred, whose eyes went wide.

“Where did you-”

“I’ve had men break into my house to try and kill my friends,” June said before JJ could finish his question. “This might have been useful then. It’s proving useful now.”

JJ let go of Fred’s bloody shirt and Fred slid his hands into the air as June slowly stepped forward, her target fixed on him.

“June-”

“You get off my property and you never come back, you hear?” June said as she took one step down the porch stairs. “I don’t want to see your face, I don’t want to hear your name.”

She stepped down the stairs until she was on solid ground. JJ backed away slowly, hands up like Fred’s were. She must have had a look in her eye because JJ looked almost...afraid of her.

“If I hear of you coming anywhere near my daughter, I will not hesitate to pull this trigger, do you hear me?” Her voice was low, but it no longer shook. Her hands were steady, her gaze fixed. She knew her aim would be true and so did Fred.

“Eleanor deserves a father,” Fred said.

June’s eyes blazed red hot and she took a few dangerous steps toward him, thundering like the clouds above and he scurried away from her.

“Don’t say her name,” June growled. A final warning. “Eleanor has me. And she has a family. A better family than you could ever provide. Now, get. The. Hell. Off. Of. My. Land.”

Fred glanced over at JJ, who must not have given him what he wanted because Fred pushed himself to his feet and scrambled off toward wherever it was he hid his car.

As soon as he was out of sight, June lay the gun on the ground and pulled out her phone. Kie was on speed dial.

“Kie?”

“June! Are you okay? Is JJ-”

“We’re fine. We’re okay. Eleanor?”

JJ walked up beside June, his face a mess of blood and dirt, but there was concern in his eyes. June looked up at him, her heart pounding in her chest.

“She’s asleep already.” June let out a breath of relief and so, it seemed, did JJ. “I’m half way to Heyward’s. Do you want me to turn around?”

“No, no. I’m going to clean JJ up and then we’ll meet you there.”

“Okay.” Kie was silent a moment. “Are you sure you’re okay, Jue?”

June let out another heavy breath and nodded her head.

“I am. Shoot me a text when you get there.”

“Will do. I love you.”

“Love you too, Babes.”

June hung up the phone and shoved it back into her pocket. She felt the far too familiar sting of tears and pressed her hands against her nose to block them out. She had spent too much of today crying already. She didn’t even know what she should be crying about.

JJ put a hand on her shoulder and turned her to face him. June closed her eyes, almost unable to see the mess that was his face.

“Come here,” he said, his voice soft and quiet as he pulled her in for a hug.

JJ’s hugs were usually the bone-crushing kind. He had a tendency to wrap his arms around someone’s waist and squeeze them until there was no more breath left in their lungs. June was used to that kind of hug. But this was gentle. He put his arms around her neck, folding her into him. June kept her eyes closed, kept her hands pressed to her nose, but she rested her forehead against his chest. And they just stood there. For a few moments, they just stood.

Until June got to comfortable with the smell of his cologne and the way he smelled like the salt waves and the sandy beaches. Until she remembered that the last time they spoke, they were screaming at each other.

She pulled herself out of his embrace and felt a sudden chill run up her spine, as if all the warmth had just been drained from her body.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” she said, not looking at JJ as she turned to walk into the Chateau.

She knelt in front of him as he sat on the edge of his bed, dabbing a wet towel against his knuckles. The air was so thick from all the things they never talked about, they could have cut it with a knife. Both of them knew that the last time they were in this room was the last time that they had spoken, that JJ had been trying to tell June how he felt and she had run away from him. They both knew it, they were both thinking it, but they never said anything.

“I think you’re all patched up,” June said finally, the first words spoken since they at down. She stood and smiled at him as best as she could.

“Your turn,” he said.

“What?”

“You’ve got a pretty nice shiner there, Jue.”

“I think I can take care of a shiner, J,” she told him, an easy, teasing tone on her voice.

But JJ didn’t seem to be joking.

“Let me take care of you for once.”

Her playful smile fell.

“You’ve always taken care of me,” she said.

JJ lifted his hand toward hers. He hesitated for a moment, recoiling his fingers, before stretching them out again and taking her hand. June stiffened, but JJ finally relaxed. He stood and silently maneuvered her to the side of the bed where he had just been sitting.

She sat down, breath caught in her throat, heart beating out of control. JJ knelt onto the ground, just as she had been doing and picked up the cream that she had just been lathering his skin with. To get closer to her, he pushed her knees apart just a little, and settled between her legs. June’s throat swelled even tighter, painfully aware of how close to her he was sitting. He pressed gentle, calloused fingers to her cheek, where the skin had split and a bruise was starting to form.

June winced and he froze, his beautiful blue eyes meeting hers.

“Did I hurt you?” He asked, words quiet.

“Never.”

JJ’s eyes dropped from her eyes to her lips before coming back up. June couldn’t help but do the same. He let his hand lower from her face to rest against her thigh. He was drawn to her, like a moth to a flame and he didn’t care how badly he’d be burned for it.

June couldn’t help it either. She let her legs spread just enough so he could lean in closer, but she was almost unaware that she was doing it.

“JJ,” she breathed.

It was supposed to be a warning, her telling him one last time that this was a mistake. But it came out like begging. She heard in her own voice how desperate she was for his lips against hers, for his heart in her hands.

She closed the distance between them, pressing her lips against his. She had always imagined his lips would feel scratchy and dry from all the time spent in the salt and the sun. But they were soft. Chapped, but soft.

She could feel him hesitate and she wondered if she should pull away, but then he leaned into her even further, even harder, knocking her almost off balance and back into the bad. June lifted her hands to her face to keep herself steady, to keep his lips against hers. JJ’s hands were on her hips, pulling her in closer.

He pounded against her senses like the waves against the shore. He was everywhere. She could taste sea on his tongue. She could smell the sand in his hair. She could hear the raggedness of his breath. She could feel his skin beneath her nails, his hands clawing at her hips. And even with her eyes closed, she could see the man he was kneeling in front of her.

But it was over all too soon.

JJ pulled away, turning his face to the side. June’s heart dropped into her stomach. She struggled for breath as she watched him. She closed her parted lips, bringing her hand up to her face for just a moment.

“I-I’m sorry.” June stood and stepped away from him, his hands falling away from her. “I shouldn’t have....I-I’m sorry.”

She ran a hand through her hair, her cheeks flushed from embarrassment and shame. She’d really done it this time. She’d completely ruined her relationship with one of the people she loved the most.

June wasn’t sure what to do with herself. She turned toward the door, then back to JJ, wondering if she should grab the cream that was left abandoned beside him, then decided against it and turned back toward the door.

“It’s not you,” he said, still not looking at her.

June froze. She glanced at him, but his gaze was fixed on the ground as he sat back.

“I mean, it is you,” he said again and finally looked at her.

It was like taking a thousand daggers to the heart. She would have rathered Fred punch her in the face a hundred more times then see the look in his eyes as he said those words.

“JJ, I-”

“Because I know that’s not what you want.” JJ pushed himself to his feet, wiping his palms against his jeans. He kept himself where he was, a good few feet away from her. “Maybe it’s something I want, but I know you don’t and I don’t want you to feel like you have to anything you don’t want to.”

June breathed in deeply through her nose, finally beginning to understand.

“Maybe...maybe it is what I want.”

JJ gave his head a slight shake.

“Don’t say something you don’t mean,” he said.

“I-” She swallowed the lump that formed in her throat. “There were so many times I wanted to tell you, but I just couldn’t.”

“Tell me what, June?”

From the way he spoke, he already knew what she was going to say.

“I’m just so scared of losing you.”

“Tell me what?”

“It feels like everyone that I...everyone that I love is taken from me. El was almost taken from me today and I-”

She stopped, letting her eyes find JJ’s. He stood there, his body on edge. As if waiting for her to say one thing, just one thing. She just had to have to courage to say it.

“I love you, JJ,” she said. “Of course I love you.”

He took no time crossing the room and closing the distance between them. He put her face in his hands and dipped his head down to capture her lips in his once again. She put her hand over his, rolling forward onto her toes so she could reach him better.

His kisses trailed from her lips across her cheek and to her jaw, lifting her chin ever so gently to nip at the skin of her neck.

“I love you,” he whispered against her skin, sealing it with a kiss.

June couldn’t help but smile, especially as he returned his lips to hers.

He knotted his hands in her hair, needing to be consumed by every piece of her. June pulled him closer by his shirt until there was nothing but atoms between them.

And nothing would separate them again.

~~~

By the time they got the Heyward’s, everyone else had arrived. Kie filled them in on what she knew and, little as it was, it was enough to keep everyone satisfied. They didn’t ask June questions as she walked through the door, an especially cheery JJ on her heels. John B stood from his chair and wrapped her in a tight hug, holding her for a few seconds. She in turn wrapped her arms around his waist, more than happy to hold her baby brother for a few moments.

“I swear I’ll kill him,” John B whispered to June as JJ sat around with the others to begin recounting the story.

“Fred or JJ?” June teased.

“Depends.”

John B kept his arm around her shoulders even as she pulled away from the hug to find her daughter. Eleanor was sleeping peacefully in Sarah’s arms, who rocked back and forth and hummed a quiet song.

“Do you want her?” Sarah asked quietly.

“You hold her,” June said, settling in beside Sarah. “I can admire from afar.”

She looked over at JJ, who was half way through his dramatic rendition of him beating Fred’s ass. Pope laughed, Kie scolded, Mrs. Heyward tried not to smile, Mr. Heyward scowled. Sarah kept cooing at baby Eleanor, who didn’t appear disturbed by the commotion going on around her. June tucked her finger into Eleanor’s blanket, feeling her tiny hands grab hold. John B, who sat on the side of the couch, leaned down and pressed a kiss against June’s head.

“Love you, Junebird,” he whispered.

“Love you too, Bird,” she replied.

They say it takes a village to raise a baby. Whoever they are, they might be right. But June didn’t have a large village, an overly wealthy village, or a village of perfect, spotless people. She had just a little village. It was a little broken and a little messed up, but it was her village.

And she wouldn’t trade it for the world.

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rainbuckets8 · 3 years

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Why you should watch RWBY

TL;DR:

Summary: RWBY is an epic fantasy with themes like found family, the struggle to remain hopeful, the younger generation growing up, villain redemption, and systemic evils.

Strengths: RWBY has unique and memorable characters. The show is smart. It has excellent cinematography and animation. It has representation. It tackles hard topics. It’s got incredible music and it’s free on RT’s website.

Weaknesses: RWBY has some early growing pains, specifically volume 2’s finale, as well as budget and polish. Later on, volume 4 is weaker than the rest. Volume 8's finale is extremely distressing for a lot of viewers (and we haven't seen the follow up to those events yet). The fandom can be bad at times.

Misinformation: The early volumes being bad, the racism plot line, and the animation (not the same as “budget and polish”) are not as bad as you may have heard from YouTube.

Suggested viewing order

Red Trailer, White Trailer, Black Trailer, Yellow Trailer

Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 3

Volume 4 Character Short

Volume 4

Volume 5 Weiss Character Short, Volume 5 Blake Character Short, Volume 5 Yang Character Short

Volume 5

Volume 6 Adam Character Short

Volume 6

Volume 7

Volume 8

(I did my best to make this spoiler-free. When there are spoilers, they’re worded ambiguously enough that someone new to the show would never guess what’s going to happen just by reading this.)

What to expect

The world of Remnant is filled with monsters called the creatures of Grimm. Warriors called Huntsmen and Huntresses defend humanity. Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang go to school to become the next generation of heroes. Together they make Team RWBY (pronounced, “Ruby”)! Joining them is team JNPR (“Juniper”), made up of Jaune, Nora, Pyrrha, and Ren. But evils even more dangerous than the Grimm are ready to make their move, and school quickly becomes an afterthought…

(I mention these next two topics specifically bc they can immediately turn someone away based on bad expectations.) There is a fantasy school setting, but RWBY is not a show about school. School topics are not a dominant idea: it seems to resemble a setting like Harry Potter, but the actual focus of the show rarely touches on things like classes or homework or tests, and we quickly move on. There is romance and it has a role in the plot, but RWBY is not a romance show. On the scale of romance in FMAB to She-Ra, RWBY falls somewhere in the middle.

What is RWBY about, then? RWBY is like an epic fantasy or high fantasy, despite first appearances. Perhaps not every genre convention is followed, but at its core, RWBY is about an epic struggle of good and evil.

RWBY contains themes such as found family, the struggle to remain hopeful, the younger generation growing up, villain redemption, and systemic evils.

Strengths of the show

The characters are unique and memorable. One of the cool things is that they all draw inspiration from a real life fairy tale, myth, or something else. They designs are all top notch. One character who died with extremely little screen time even got so much fandom love, they included the character in a mid-hiatus short later. The characters have unique weapons, too; in the world of Remnant, a weapon is an extension of ones’ soul, and they reflect the variety of their owners. They’re also just plain cool; Monty was famous for following the “Rule of Cool.” And their individual stories are all compelling and interesting.

The show is smart. As a fandom, we generally pick up on the narrative hints the creators are dropping. And our predictions usually come true, but not in a way that makes the show predictable and boring. We very rarely guess exactly what will happen, but we have some similar idea of it. It’s just excellent foreshadowing.

RWBY also likes to play with tropes, as an extension of this. Often it will challenge them, or subvert expectations. In other cases, RWBY uses tropes to avoid showing us what we already know will happen. This occurs in both characters and plot. For example…

SLIGHT SPOILERS FOR VOLUME ONE FOR THE REST OF THIS PARAGRAPH: Jaune’s entire character arc is about trying to be the anime protagonist, and learning that he doesn’t have to do things alone, and it’s ok to be a support main. The show sets up the narrative in a way that looks like, oh of course the direction it will go is him becoming the main character, but then it destroys toxic masculinity instead.

Our characters are smart, too. Plot-induced stupidity generally doesn’t happen. (A few big mistakes or errors in this regard aren’t actually the fault of the narrative, either, but animation and miscommunication and failure to execute. And those aren’t common.) It goes beyond just “not being dumb,” however. The villains’ plans are incredibly clever, and our heroes sometimes even guess at the usual “plot twists.”

The cinematography is just incredible. There are numerous freeze frames with extreme attention to detail that reveal character motivations or arcs or foreshadowing, there are many effective cuts and moving parts, there are soooo many parallels and callbacks, and visual cues such as lighting and color all are used appropriately to convey emotion and assist the narrative. It is one of the biggest overlooked strengths of the show, imo, simply because a lot of people in the fandom don’t notice these things as much for whatever reason, or else don’t give as much praise about them.

The animation is extremely good as well. Budget issues and technology issues aside (which means a lack of polish), the actual animation? The fight choreography, and all the other parts of animation that aren’t just “expensive CGI” are all wonderful. You can have very shiny, polished turds after all, and RWBY is like the opposite: not very polished, especially early on, but very well animated. All the trailers, volume 1 episode 8, the volume 1 finale, the volume 2 penultimate episode, and basically everything else hold up extremely well even today. If anything, the worst fight animation was in volumes 4 and 5 because of Maya growing pains, and those are an example of being more polished, but not necessarily better animated. Animation of faces has always been good, animation of characters has always felt lively. Aside from a few small actual hiccups (that one person running across rooftops for instance), it’s well done.

There are LGBTQ+ characters. The treatment of one of the recent trans characters, in volume 8, was nothing short of amazing. They worked with a VA who was trans. The moment of canon confirmation was important to the character for backstory, because of course that affects the character’s life, but not the only important thing about the character. The representation is not in-your-face or pandering. And there is a split of representation among the main cast and the minor characters, with promises of more to come (notably they’ve said they’re working on more mlm for future volumes, too).

RWBY is not afraid to tackle hard topics. It deals with things like mental illness, systematic racism, and cycles of abuse. It’s not because the show is trying to earn “gritty and dark” points, it’s because those are some of the topics that real people have to struggle with as well. And the show handles most or all of them very well, in a way that shows respect and an honest attempt to depict these things as best they can. (NOTE ABOUT VOLUME 8: THERE IS A VERY DIFFUCLT CONVERSATION CURRENTLY HAPPENING. I am on the side of, let’s wait and see what happens next because the story isn’t over, so we haven’t really seen the fall out. But I understand why this paragraph feels really difficult to agree with if you've seen the volume 8 finale. I trust the track record of the rest of the show, personally.)

As an example, the show has a theme that villains are rarely evil just because. A lot of villains choose to do bad things because they were hurt in some way. Some lived in poverty; some were hurt by racism; many of them are victims of abuse. But the show doesn’t make excuses for them. It’s possible to be both sympathetic and still choose evil over and over again (that’s called tragic). The ones who eventually do try to do good again are not always forgiven, either.

The music is amazing. I can probably count on my hands the number of times I’ve heard someone say otherwise, which is astonishing when you consider this fandom.

It’s also free on RT’s website. (A paid, “FIRST” subscription removes ads and lets you see new episodes one week early, but they all eventually release for free.)

Weaknesses of the show

Early volumes’ growing pains exist, much like most or all other shows. (Even some of the greatest were not immune to this, like ATLA.) In this case, however, it’s a little bit rougher. A large reason why is that this was kind of the first big thing from RT to ever come out. If you remember back almost a decade ago, their only other big thing at the time was RvB, which was machinima. They pretty much started from scratch with everything, from assets to VAs to animation to writing. Imagine if a random twitch streamer, like Ninja (idk who’s popular these days) said one day, “OK let me just direct something that’s intended to be the next great movie series of all time, like Star Wars, with a $4 bill and an iPhone camera.” Then went out and actually made something. Of course it would be rough…but then it turns out the movie is actually really good. And then you get to watch over the next several years as everything gets better and better until it’s honest-to-god comparable to the MCU. That’s kind of what happened with RWBY.

One specific growing pain was the volume 2 finale. Pretty much everything else up until that point, I love about the show. But the finale just fails to deliver on the build up of tension from other episodes. Some of it is because of later plot developments that we didn’t know at the time; some of it is because of just not great writing; some of it is because of just not great animation; and yes, some of it is budget. Regardless, it’s a low point for the show.

Speaking of, the budget for the early volumes is super small. The infamous volume one shadow people, the infamous person jumping across the rooftops in volume two, and just production quality isn’t high compared to a major release from some established studio. These are real weaknesses of the show that for some people, make it unwatchable, and if that’s you, that’s ok.

One last weakness of the show, the screen time per episode, especially early on, is NOT a full 20 minutes like you may expect of an anime (or anime-inspired-western-media, for those of you who will die on the “RWBY is not an anime” hill). This is a trend that has stuck with the show, a shorter run time per episode, for generally the entire lifetime. On one hand, it means it’s a little less daunting to catch up or rewatch than the number of episodes might imply. On the other, early on, some episodes have a little weird pacing. It also means the writing had to adjust for this, so while RWBY got really good at telling a story within a shorter amount of time, there’s also challenges with that too. Perhaps one of the notable ones is the pacing, with slower moments sometimes feeling like it takes up too much screen time, or not enough. Volume 4 was a particular struggle for the crew, both because they switched animation engines and also for the story.

Common complaints that I don’t agree with

I don’t agree that the early volumes were actually bad overall. Growing pains, yes, but not bad. I attribute that complaint to overly focusing on one character’s storyline, back when it wasn’t clear there was so much more to come and before people realized the show would challenge the tropes instead of falling into them. It’s pretty much just volume 1 when people say this anyway, most of them I’ve heard admit that volume 2 was a lot better (except the finale) and almost everyone loves volume 3. And looking back on it, I do think volume 1 holds up.

Tying into this, the racism plot line is another common complaint. I don’t think it’s actually executed quite that badly. I think it makes sense for there to be regional differences in the amount of racism we see, it just so happened that we only saw a very small and isolated environment, Beacon, for much of the early volumes. (Incidentally, that’s actually similar the environment I myself grew up in.) It’s not perfect, though. But there’s no doubt that the later volumes do a better job portraying this. Again, I attribute it mostly to people not knowing how long the show would run for at the time, so of course if that’s all we saw, it would’ve been bad. But it’s not. I have a lot of respect for Miles and Kerry for even attempting to handle the racism topic in the first place. And for the faults that DO exist in this plot line, I credit them for learning and growing past that too, and doing better in later volumes.

The animation is not bad. I’ve already touched on that earlier, but people confuse “budget and polish” with “animation.” Give me RWBY any day over Michael Bay’s Transformers: no matter how much polish those robots have, they’re still a confusing mess to try and follow. And the polish isn’t even an issue once we get past the growing pains of Maya and get a bigger budget, because wow does this show look good now.

Between these three complaints I hear about often, I think those are the biggest ones. And they’re all generally done in bad faith, based not on just those but on other more provocative statements people also make with them. That’s part of my issue with the fandom, specifically the vocal but small parts of the fandom, because they’re just repeating these things from early days that aren’t true. But YouTubers gotta get those rage and hate clicks somehow, right? Unfortunately it discredits the show a lot and influences other people’s opinions into not giving it a fair chance, because it’s become a narrative of “RWBY IS BAD” when they all won’t shut up about it. So yeah, fandom can be bad, join at your own discretion. (Of course, all fandoms have annoying parts, and my interactions with the fandom have been good overall, otherwise.)

Onto other complaints, some say the cast is bloated. I don’t agree, but I don’t think this one is in bad faith. I think we get the important characters as much screen time as we can, and the minor characters don’t actually detract from that; one of the differences between good minor characters and bad ones, is that bad ones take up too much time. RWBY has a ton of characters but many of the minor ones don’t actually take up too much time. So it appears bloated, but actually I don’t think it is.

Finally, a small word on the no-no topics. Adam, and Monty. Adam is like the champion of the Monty topic. Which essentially boils down to “Miles and Kerry are ruining Monty’s vision for the show.” Toxic fandom is truly awful and I have no respect for anyone who says anything like that. Shame on all of you. This isn’t really anything negative about the show, but the fandom, and tbf all fandoms have toxic parts. But toxic fandom can be a real and valid reason to not watch a show. Thankfully they seem fewer in number these days, but I think they’ve evolved into hiding behind other characters or topics, so you know. Beware. Again, it's not too hard to avoid them or block them, and my interactions otherwise with most fans have been good.

#rwby

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rachelbethhines · 4 years

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Tangled Salt Marathon - Rapunzel Day One

This is decent episode, and one of the few that isn’t filler in season two, but because there are problems with the over all character acs, there’s problems here with episode too.

Summary: Rapunzel and Cassandra come across an abandoned magic stall while searching for parts of their destroyed caravan. The stall contains a wand of forgetting. Cassandra impulsively wishes that Rapunzel would "just forget about everything" when she was tired of her trying to patch things up between them, which results in Rapunzel regressing to when she was still in her tower with Gothel.

The Episode Order is Confusing

So this and The Brothers Hook aired on the same day. Now in the production order listing, Rapunzel Day One is suppose to come before The Brothers Hook and that’s how it’s ordered on Disney Plus. Which is where I’m watching this marathon and getting all my screen caps.

However The Brothers Hook did air before this episode according to Wikipedia. Also Hook Foot is nowhere to be seen with nary a word. So placing The Brothers Hook before would indeed make more sense in that regard.

Yet Raps and Cass aren’t fighting in The Brothers Hook, so I don’t understand how this was supposed to originally work. What’s the correct viewing order here? Is Hook Foot just off screen with Fidella this episode, or is Cass and Raps ignoring their big fight in The Brother’s Hook?

For Someone With a Disability Now, It Doesn’t Seem To Affect Things

Ok, to be fair, they do show Cassandra practicing here and later in Mirror, Mirror trying to relearn how to use her hand, and indeed physical therapy for injuries is a thing. Yet, two scenes isn’t enough to establish that. She regains usage of her hand really quickly and far too easily, given the type of injury it was.

Disabilities, even unseen ones, still impact your everyday life. Yes, they don't ruin your life; you can still do things. But they don't just go away and you have to deal with it.

Finding that balance between not making a character useless, while still recognizing that there are things that they struggle with when writing disabilities is a line that writers have trouble with. But if you’re not going to put in that effort needed to pull it off tastefully then don't introduce the concept.

One Step Forward; Two Steps Back

Rapunzel recognizing that there is a problem, and wanting to fix it before it gets worse, can be viewed as progress. After all, avoiding the issue is why things got so bad between her and Varian. But, she’s still failing to see why Cassandra is upset and so goes about things the wrong way.

And keep in mind, Rapunzel does have every right to be mad at Cassandra, just the same that Cass has a right to be mad at Rapunzel. Both girls screwed up.

Yet, it’s only Rapunzel’s side of things that Rapunzel cares about, and therefore nothing actually gets resolved.

This could have been a decent conflict for season three, but that’s not where the writers take things so we’re just spinning our wheels here.

It’s also kind of shitty that Cass is the only person that Rapunzel is willing to put effort into righting things with. She still doesn’t give a crap about Varian, nor any other villain in the show.

Well I Guess This Has to Come Before The Brothers Hook

They have the caravan in Brothers Hook, don’t they? I mean how else did they meet up with Hook Hand? But if that is the case then where is Hook Foot now? I don’t know.

Cassandra’s Hurt Hand Only Matters When It Concerns Her Relationship With Rapunzel and Not How It Affects Her Character as a Whole

An extension of what I was saying before, but it shows the fundamental problem with the writing for Cassandra. The writers only think of her as a conflict for Rapunzel and not as a person with like her own life and shit.

Long Time, No See Owl

As soon as Hook Foot goes unceremoniously missing, then Owl shows up. I don’t think he’s been seen since season one, yet they act like he’s always been here with the group.

Why is continuity and consistency so hard for this show?

The Saporians Are Indeed Homeless, But Don't Expect That to Ever Be Brought Up

So things to note.

This isn’t a village. It’s an encampment. What we see here are destroyed tents and caravans. The only permanent structure is a short stone wall.

Secondly, the magic book they find has the Saporian symbol on it, and indeed the Saporians use the wand of oblivium to take over Corona in S3.

What we can gather from this is that the Saporians were driven out of Corona after the first war. They’ve been living as nomads for centuries without their homeland.Yet their most recent settlement was destroyed by the black rocks sometime before season one started, along with most of their possessions and means of living.

All of this would explain their motivations, goals, and why they picked now to try and take over and not just any other time.

But don't expect any of that to be brought up or remembered by anyone come season three. We can’t have any po the bad guys, save for Cass, being sympathetic now can we.

Also, just a side note. It’s funny how apothecary is treated as magic and alchemy as a science in this world, when in reality it should be the opposite way around.

This is Not an Apology

If you gotta throw a ‘but’ in there, then you haven’t really apologized.

Rapunzel’s not sorry for Cass getting hurt. She doesn’t recognize nor understands why Cassandra feels the way she does, and she’s even attempting to try to. All Rapunzel cares about is how Cass being upset makes herself feel. She’s putting in this effort to ‘talk about it’ because Cass being outwardly angry at her is inconvenient to herself and nothing more.

Rapunzel Still Hasn't Learned Boundaries

Didn’t we already have this conversation back in season one?

And like, yes, it’s not good for Cassandra to ignore her feelings, but what Rapunzel does here by pushing isn’t a good thing either.

What's most frustrating though is that neither learn anything from this. Just like they didn’t learn anything in Under Raps or Goodbye and Goodwill.

It’s aggravating to see the writers give us an actual conflict that’s worth having the mains fight over, only to be undermined by previous episodes and then thrown away altogether.

So How Come the Wand Only Erases Part of Rapunzel’s Memory and Not All?

Like, this is suppose to be set for season three with Frederic and Arianna losing their memories. Yet despite Clementine using a similar wand, it doesn’t have the same effect on them as it does on Rapunzel here. They lose all their memories and sense of identity, while Raps just forgets a few years.

Speaking Forgetting How Things Work

Where did this handy dandy book with the cure go when Frederic and Arinna lost their memories? Why didn’t Raps go looking for it then, or force the Saparoians to give her the cure while they were in her custody?

So This Plot Point Kind of Back Fires, and Winds Up Undermining Everyone’s Relationship with Rapunzel

First off, just repeating New Dream scenes from the movie, but with Cass in Eugene’s place is ill advised given the direction that the show went in. Whether you ship Casspunzel or not, it’s important to recognize that ‘sisters’ is what they are intended to be in canon. That’s the direction that Chris went with them, whether we like it or not. So either no one on the show knows how to write platonic female relationships, or this is gay baiting. Take your pick.

It’s also lazy.

But most damaging is that this only shows that Cassandra only liked Rapunzel when she was naive and stupid, and not the Rapunzel we have now. Tie in how her friendship with Rapunzel is based off of validation to begin with and we got a very unhealthy relationship, and not one that should be rooted for, despite the show wanting you to do just that.

They even go so far to repeat the lines from the flashback in the last episode, as if this was a positive thing in their dynamic, instead of recognizing it for the really mess up thing that it.

Then there’s the Eugene side of things that this calls into question.

We know Eugene loves Rapunzel through thick and thin, but how much of their relationship is based off their first adventure together and not about how they work together in the here in now?

Did Rapunzel just simply latch on to Eugene because he’s the first person that she met who wasn’t her mother and wound up being nice to her? If anyone else found her, would she be in a relationship with them instead? Is it healthy for her to never look for anything else? How much does Rapunzel actually like Eugene, for himself?

Then throw in Eugene’s over idealization of Rapunzel in season three, they’re lack of communication issues, and Rapunzel’s crippling need to always be right, and I can’t say if New Dream should be what we’re rooting for either.

This isn’t a Casspunzel vs New Dream thing, nor is it a personal dislike of Rapunzel herself. Rather, it’s a very serious question about the nature of Rapunzel’s interpersonal relationships vs her character development, and how that has to change things on some level, and if it’s still worth having those relationships now that she herself has changed so drastically.

Is everyone being fulfilled? Is everyone getting what they need still? No? Then, why are any of these people still together?

That needs to be addressed by the narrative now, and it never is.

So Why Would You Say That Cass?

Rapunzel doesn’t know where she is and therefore has no idea what direction the tower lies in. If you’re heading south back to the camp then just say the tower is south. In fact it actually is south because you’ve been traveling northeast to the Dark Kingdom for months now, according to the map in Rapunzel’s Return. So what was the point in lying about that?

In in effort make Rapunzel look smart, they had to make Cass look dumb and that’s not good writing. If you needed Rapunzel to suddenly not trust Cass then there were other better ways. The drawing she placed in her pocket should be enough on its own to tip her off, and all she has to do is reach into her pocket to put like a rock she found in there and then find it that way.

So When Did Rapunzel Have Time to Build This Elaborate Mousetrap?

This would have taken hours, it’s not even been minutes.

There’s making Raps competent and then there’s turning her into an overpowered invincible heroine.

Now Pascal Is Missing

Oh is he with fucking Hook Foot now?

He was right on your shoulder Eugene.

If you’re going to have characters conveniently missing then establish that first, preferably in a visual way and not with exposition.

So Rapunzel is Treat As In the Right Even When She’s Not

So Cassandra opening up about her feelings is treated as the solution to the problem, but it’s really not, or it shouldn’t be anyways. She can recognize she lied about the wand without having to doing something she finds uncomfortable, and it’s not like Rapunzel right now has any frame of reference for what Cass is talking about.

All this amounts to is giving Rapunzel a free pass on her earlier bullshit.

Also if Cass repeating a phrase Rapunzel said earlier was all that was needed to jog her memory enough to trust her, then why couldn’t Eugene done the same? He was right there.

This Doesn’t Resolve Anything

Ok first off that’s not what friends do. Friends actually work through shit. Friends make sincere apologies. Friends forgive each when they do.

If you’re not doing that then you’re not friends and you should just leave.

No one, not Raps, not Cass, ever apologizes for what happened in the Great Tree. They never try to understand what either of them did wrong, nor do they put effort into fixing themselves or addressing their issues and flaws.

And you know what? That would be a valid reason for their falling out in season three. But it’s not used as such, so any resolution to their conflict there winds up feeling hollow.

Conclusion

This episode, like with the Great Tree, gave me hope that this was all leading somewhere. Now it’s just a bitter reminder of how screwed up the writers’ morals are in this show, and how poorly planned everything was.

#tangled #anti-tangled #anti-rapunzel #anti-cassandra #tangled the series #rapunzel's tangled adventure

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