#fuck… it was just some shitty little comment that might not have even been malicious. just tone deaf or whatever

[stealforreal]

Future kids - Bakugou Katsuki I

Bakugou meets his son from the future. Just some fluff, with a jealous Bakugou.

Bakugou Katsuki x F! reader

Warnings: none

Bakugou was stomping his way back to the dorms, cursing that stupid nerd Deku in his mind. Kicking some rocks lying in his way, he was radiating murder. Naturally his classmates left him alone to cool off for a minute, even the Baku squad left him alone. They had chosen not to interfere, because they would like to live to see another, thank you very much. 

The stupid nerd had been too close to y/n at lunch today, and Bakugou had spent the entire time glaring at the curly green haired boy. What really made him snap was when she hugged him, and the stupid brocoli went as red as a tomato. She was giggling loudly and seemed really happy at whatever Midoriya had said, and the fiery ash blond couldn't control his jealousy so he stormed off. After class was over Bakugou was the first out the door, not even stopping to insult Denki when he made a bad joke. 

The rest of his classmates were confused, sure they all knew Bakugou to be a hothead. But still he seemed angrier than usual, only the Baku squad had small nervous but knowing smiles on their face. They knew of the explosive boy's crush on y/n, it wasn't totally obvious and they really wouldn't have known had Kirishima not pointed out the subtle things. Like how he never once called her an extra, he still called her idiot, dumbass and such. That was probably Bakugou's version of a compliment, which was probably the reason they took so long to figure out his crush.

So here he was stomping his way back to the dorms, cursing Deku for being close with y/n, Himself for getting jealous, y/n for being too friendly and everything he could curse in general. He stopped dead in his tracks when he felt a little tug on his uniform pant leg, glaring down at the thing that stopped him. Only to be confused when that thing turned out to be a little boy, around the age of 4-5 by the looks of it. Bakugou's brows furrowed in confusion, how did a little boy end up here. UA is one of the most secure places in Japan, courtesy of the League of Villains and other past incidents. 

What caught Bakugou's attention though, was the fact that this little boy was bawling his eyes out and trembling with his sobs. Bakugou didn't know what was happening, he felt incredibly protective of the young boy but didn't know why. He seemed kind of familiar, like Bakugou had seen parts of him somewhere else before. The little boy had big e/c doe eyes, filled to the brim with tears as he stared at the ground. His hair was unruly and a familiar shade of ash blond, he reminded Bakugou of himself a bit when he was young except the crybaby attitude of course. It was weird for Bakugou to feel this protective of anything, and he didn't like it one bit

" Oi brat, where are you parents?" The teenager asked the little boy, crouching down to his level, making the little lad finally pay attention to the stranger he had grabbed. The little boy gasped and flung himself at Bakugou, clutching on tightly to the stunned teenager's shirt. A new wave of tears hit the little blonde, being relieved at the familiar sight of his fathers face though much younger. " D-daddy, I-I was so scared" the little boy whimpered, burying his tear stained face in his fathers shoulder. Bakugou was speechless, he sure as hell was not this kid's father even if it explained the feeling of familiarity. No Bakugou shook his head at the ridiculous thought, this kid was obviously terrified and contrary to popular belief Bakugou would not abandon a lost child " Oi brat, I'm taking you with me back to the dorms. Afterwards we'll find your parents' ' he huffed, Bakugou was going to kill this kid's parents once they were found.

The younger boy began calming down in the older boy's arms, the tears had stopped and he was only softly hiccupping now. "B-but daddy I did find you, I wanna go see mommy" the young boy huffed out, defiantly crossing his arms over his little chest. " Oh yeah, prove it brat" Bakugou smirked thinking he had cornered the little boy in his lie, but much to his astonishment the little boy let out a small explosion in the palm of his hand. Though much brighter than his own, there was no mistaking his explosion quirk.  Bakugou hated to admit that so far the brat seemed to be telling the truth, and he hated even more how his feeling of protectiveness grew at the revelation that this kid in fact was most likely his son from the future. It wasn't rocket science, right now Bakugou was 16 and 100% not a father. Yet here is a little boy that is the spitting image of him as a kid except the eyes, and in this world where quirks exist perhaps time travelling was possible.  

Bakugou's little chat with his son had taken longer than he thought, because as soon as he entered the dorm common room every one in the room snapped their head towards the two ash blondes. The first to break the pin drop silence was Kirishima  " Eh who is the kid, Bakubro" he asked. While Mina asked if he had kidnapped the kid, earning a glare from the explosive blonde. " Daddy, why does Aunt Mina and Uncle Kiri not recognize me? " a little voice asked, making a lot of jaws drop and eyes widened. 1....2......3...... " WHA!!!" The lot of them shouted, questions coming left and right, wanting an explanation as to why this little boy who looked suspiciously like Bakugou called him dad. 

What they all failed to notice was the little boy was recoiling from the loud noise, pressing himself closer and closer to his father. Bakugou noticed this, and thanks to his newfound protectiveness he hugged him closer and glared at them effectively shutting them up. Mostly they were just silenced because the sight of Bakugou hugging and being protective of his supposed son baffled them. I mean we are talking about Mr.Hothead angry Pomeranian, the most blatant rude student in class 1-A if not in the entirety of UA. " Shut it ya damn morons, can't you see you're frightening him" Bakugou sneered at his classmates, not loudly but it was still malicious enough to make a shiver run up their spines. 

Midoriya, who had known Kacchan the longest, was intrigued by this side of Kacchan and unconsciously moved closer to the two ash blondes. Seeing the familiar shade of green hair approach them Bakugou sneered, while his son became ecstatic. " Uncle Izu '' The child yelled excitedly, stretching his arm towards the blushing brocoli boy indicating he wanted to be held. " Ah hell no! He is not your uncle, I won't allow shitty Deku to hold my son" Bakugou yelled, making a few snicker quietly, but what really set them off was the fact his son chopped his head with a little fist. "Oi, why the hell did ya do that for ya brat? Bakugou barks at his son, only receiving a deadpan expression in return. " Mommy said, every time your daddy is mean to uncle Izu chop his head for me, okay baby?" After that announcement they all burst out laughing, while Midoriya tried not to tremble under Bakugou's glare. 

"Speaking of which, who is your mom?, uhm I never got your name, little guy" Kirishima asked the little boy, stating a valid point. Bakugou realized that even though he had known his son for about 5 hours now, he never once asked what the boy's name was. " What do you mean, Uncle Kiri, it's me Katsuma?" Katsuma tilted his head a bit, not really being aware or understanding that he most likely travelled through time. " Well you aren't born in our time yet, mini Bakugou" Kaminari informed the little boy, in his usual teasing voice. " Really Uncle Kami" Little Katsuma asked " Does this mean mommy and daddy aren't together yet?" He asked, surprising the teenagers. Katsuma was surprisingly smart for a kid his age, and after the initial shock from being called daddy Katsuki totally forgot to ask about his son's mother. 

"That is correct, Katsuma'' Todoroki piped up in his usual monotone voice, surprising Katsuma with his appearance. " Uncle Todo'' Katsuma replied coolly, surprising everyone present. The happy bubbly 5 year old had vanished in an instant, and been replaced with a little boy full of hatred. Breaking the little staring contest that had broken out between his son and the damn half n half bastard, was none other than Midoriya's phone. Being the klutz that he is, he ended up answering and putting it on speaker. " Izuku, Ochaco said there was a cute kid at your dorm, so I'm coming over " y/n voice could be heard, instantly Katsuma brightened up again being all sparkles and rainbows again. He tugged at his dad's collar, demanding Katsuki's attention " daddy, daddy did you hear, mommy's coming over" the little ash blonde exclaimed, bouncing in his fathers arms from being giddy. This new information caused everybody's jaw to land on the floor once again.

" WHY, why does Bakugou get the hot chick? '' Mineta yelled in agony, being the little pervert he is, he had to comment on her looks. " Oi, don't talk about my future wife and baby mama y/n like that, I'll fucking blast you to hell" His statement followed by the crackeling in his palm, and the sound of a phone being dropped? Turning around Bakugou was met with your stunned face, eyes blown wide with confusion and astonishment clearly written on your face. " Mommy" Katsuma yelled, squirming trying to get out of his fathers embrace, and slowly Katsuki sat him down. When his small feet hit the floor, Katsuma was sprinting towards y/n with all his might and flinging himself into her arms. Resulting in the poor girl, falling down on the floor in her confusion.

Katsuma buried his face in her neck, sighing happily to himself. The remaining nerves  he had totally disappeared once he saw you. As much as Katsuma was a daddy’s boy, he was even more of a mama’s boy. Katsuma could feel the lack of response coming from his mother, curious and slightly scared he looked at her face. you were absolutely stunned, no response came from you frightening the young boy. Tears began swimming in Katsuma’s beautiful e/c eyes, snapping you back to reality. The sight of a child with tears in his eyes, struck your motherly instincts. Answers could wait, right now there was an adorable toddler with tears in his eyes, and you had to comfort him.

Slowly Katsuma was pulled into your embrace, head buried in the crock of your neck. Arms wrapped tightly around the preciuóus boy, letting him cling to you for deer life. “ M-mommy, I m-missed you, I was s-so scared-d” Katsuma said through sobs and hiccups. Not bothering to correct him, you bounced him lightly up and down in your arms. Bakugou came and helped you onto your feet, putting an arm around your waist. His other hand began stroking Katsuma’s unruly blond hair. 

Around them the rest of the class was still stunned into silence, seeing the small family in an embrace. Most of them had never seen Bakugou look so protective and calm, let alone with a small blush. You would also sport a matching blush if it weren’t for the fact, all your attention was on the young boy in your arms. He looked like a carbon copy of Katsuki, yet his e/c eyes looked exactly like yours. Slowly the sniffles stopped. Instead they were replaced by steady breathing, it seems like the child had a long day because he was fast asleep in your arms.

Slowly you made your way to the 1-A dorm living room couch, with the sleeping child in your arms and Bakugou not far behind you. He made it a point to keep his hand on the small of your back, glaring at the other guys present if they looked at your or his son the wrong way. “ Can somebody please explain to me what is going on?” You whispered so you wouldn’t wake up the young boy, whose name you still hadn’t caught. Your eyes caught Izuku’s eyes, but for some reason his eyes widened and he averted his gaze from you. Izuku is one of your best friends, you met because you and your classmate Hatsume Mei worked on his hero costume and you hit it off. 

With your attention not fully on the child anymore, you now realised that somebody had their arm around your shoulders. Looking to your right where the owner would be stítting, your eyes widened slightly at the person on your right. One of the hottest guys in UA had his arm around you, Bakugou Katsuki of class 1-a was well known in the school. His temper, looks and quirk had made him extremely popular with the female population of UA, though none of them dared approach him. The bad boy image both attracted them and made them keep their distance from him. He wasn’t exactly known for being a teddy bear, so Katsuki hugging y/n closer to him and keeping touching her was not expected.

 “ Oi Flashlight, brat is ours from the future. I don't know how he got here but it’s true. He even has my quirk, you know what this means right ” Bakugou spoke, explaining the situation. The others had left the two of you alone, giving Bakugou privacy to explain the surreal situation to you.  What this means? What did he mean by that? You couldn’t help but ponder the meaning. Turning your head to face him and question him on what he meant, you were met with a very close Bakugou. Bakugou couldn’t contain himself seeing you look so adorably clueless, so he closed the small gap between you. 

His lips were surprisingly soft. He was gentle in kissing you, not knowing how you would react. I mean you had to like him back right? You were sitting there next to hum with YOUR SON in your arms. He smelled nice, it was a sweet scent like caramel courtesy of his quirk. The kiss was slow, loving and gentle, the feeling of his lips on yours were intoxicating. Pulling back from the kiss, Bakugou growled silently, huskily in your ear “Your mine, flashlight” Heat crept up your neck, and you were left softly blushing. “ What are we going to do with him Bakugou?” Still facing Bakugou, you looked at your son from the future. There really was no mistake, he looked like a perfect Katsuki copy with your eyes, and your motherly instincts told that this was in fact your son. 

“It’s Katsuki to you Flashlight ” He corrected you “For now let's go to bed, it’s late. We can ask the squirt questions tomorrow” Katsuki led you to his room, still with a sleeping Katsuma in your arms. His bed was big enough to fit the three of you. You laid down with Katsuma in the middle, both you and Katsuki put an arm around Katsuma. Katsuki intertwined your fingers, and slowly you fell into a blissful sleep. You could ask more questions tomorrow.

But when you woke up, Katsuma was nowhere to be found. Only you and Katsuki were cuddling in his bed. You and Katsuki both came to the conclusion that whatever quirk sent Katsuma here probably sent him back to his own time. “Katsuki, is it wrong of me to miss him already?” You looked at your new boyfriend, looking into his sleepy vermillion orbs. “ If you miss the little firecracker already, why don’t we bring him back” His morning voice was rough, and tickled your ears just right, sending a shiver down your spine. Bakugou's eyes glinted with mischief, as he began kissing your neck. The innuendo not lost on you, the feeling of his lips on a particular spot had you giggling. It was ticklish and stopped him in his tracks for just long enough for you to get a word in. “ Let’s wait a few years okay” He nodded and laid down next to you again, pulling you close.

You would see Katsuma again. Someday.

[alastaircarstairsdefenselawyer]

on the topic of alastair apologizing... let's talk about the Academy. idk, here's my two cents.

EDIT: thank you to @alastairxcarstairs for pointing out that Alastair's hair was natural at the academy, not bleached. I have made a few edits in red! I don't think it changes the idea of my post too much, but it does raise some complications as something that we know has affected alastair deeply (vs a comment about his father & clive which were things he was already feeling and whose traumas to not lie in a comment made) and I think honestly might be one of the only ways for a reconciliation between the two of them, to recognize that they both used shitty ways that the world works against them to hurt each other deeply, and that wasn't right. (also can the two queer "icons" learn to not be racist please & thank)

this got... ridiculously long. I'm sorry. feel free to disagree with anything I've said, it's just my conclusions from what I've read an my own experiences. theres a lot of discussion of bullying, death, and alcoholism.

alastair really didn't say much to or about kit and thomas (except the rumor, which I'll get to in a second) at all. he called thomas names, but it wasn't something that ever really bothered thomas and I think that's probably because alastair never said them with malicious intent.

he said a lot of shit to and about james and his family, none of which james deserved. that's something he needs to atone for.

most of his bullying (except the rumor) with matthew was reciprocated. they both talked shit to and about each other. it doesn't cancel each other out in a way that means it never happened, but its not really something anyone has to atone for imo, just more of a "we both treated each other like shit and that was stupid, let's move on from it and not do it anymore."

the vetis demon... it was a prank. a cruel, scary, idiotic prank. it wasn't alastair's idea, but he went along with it and he helped. obviously it was something very distressing to james and matthew, but they're both fine. I'm not saying alastair should get a pass for it, but clive literally died. they were 14/15 and as someone who lost a classmate at that age, there's a weird sort of guilt about it, even when you had nothing to do with their death. alastair learned the consequences of his actions the hardest way possible, and I don't think people recognize that enough. we don't know much about clive at all. he acted like an asshole, sure, and he was definitely naive and arrogant (a vetis demon???) but we don't know how he treated alastair. was he kind to him behind closed doors? was he always cruel? did he bully alastair? we don't know. regardless, I'm positive that alastair has a lot of complicated feelings about it, and a fuck ton of guilt. because HE can be a better person. HE can apologize and move forward and travel the world and fall in love and get his heart broken and do all of the things that people do after they finish school, and clive never will. alastair learned his lesson, and james and matthew can be reasonably certain that he'd never try anything like that ever again. while he could certainly still apologize for it, I think thats something they can assume at this point without him saying it.

the second one was deliberate, matthew knew that alastair had already told him it was Clive's idea, but he WANTED to get until alastair's skin. he WANTED to make alastair hurt more. he was a child (they both were), and he was upset, and he wanted to make alastair hurt. and he did. alastair snapped.

and, finally, the rumor. the first thing to recognize is that alastair was in a bad place when he said that. he said that because he was in a bad place. all of those^ complicated feelings had just started (clive had literally just died) and to make matters worse, everyone's fathers had rushed to the Academy in wake of the incident except for Elias (thomas pointed this out). then matthew showed up. he started out by calling alastair names, fine, typical. then he said "Has no kind soul thought to inform you that your hairstyle is, to use the gentlest words available to me, ill-advised?..." strike one "...A friend? Your papa?" strike two. then he said "Though I cannot help but wonder whose idea their nasty little trick was" even though Alastair had already explained that it was Clive's idea and why, strike three.

the first one was just racist. maybe he didn't mean it to be, but we know that alastair was self conscious about his hair because of how dark his features are and how alienated he feels as a non-white boy.

the second one was an unfortunate coincidence imo. matthew had no idea what alastair was going through at home or that he was particularly upset about Elias that day because he'd been forced to watch all of the other boys with their fathers.

in matthew's eyes, what he said there SHOULD have been just another throwaway insult, but he was blinded by his privilege as a white boy with loving parents, and anyone who knows alastair's situation can see that it anything other than just a throwaway comment.

I'm explaining all of this not to excuse what alastair did but show how the rumor scene was atypical from his usual bullying. we haven't SEEN enough on paper to make that observation, but we can infer from all of this that that was not how alastair normally behaved. that was how alastair behaved when he was pushed over the edge, that's it.

while he said awful things about Thomas and his parents and Matthew's parents, he was never trying to hurt them, it likely didn't even cross his mind. he didn't start that rumor, and I doubt he even ever actually spread it. there's no evidence that he would be someone to spread rumors like that (something very speculative and secretive, vs something obvious and well-known like what he said about tessa), especially given the rumors around his own family. he only repeated it to matthew because he was pushed out of his limits. it's most likely that he heard the rumor, ignored it, and the ONLY time he has ever spoken it was to matthew that day.

he said it to hurt matthew. that was his only goal. that was his only motivation. he wanted to make matthew HURT. and he did. he really, really did. I think he could see it as soon as he said it. CC has said that he regretted what he said as soon as he said it. he hurt matthew in ways that can never be undone, and I think he knew that as soon as he said it because he has been hurt that way, too.

so, no, I don't think alastair actually owes thomas or sophie or gideon or charlotte or henry an apology for what he said beyond "I caused this person you love very much irreparable harm" because while he said awful things about them, he never did anything to actually hurt them (beyond hurt matthew).

to say that alastair owes matthew an apology... feels a little cheap to me. I don't think alastair will ever genuinely apologize to matthew solely because he doesn't think that what he's done could ever be forgiven. even if he were to become a fucking saint, even if he became the nicest, kindest, most giving man on earth, there is nothing he can say or do that can undo the pain he's caused.

what happened to charlotte and her baby is NOT alastair's fault, nor is matthew's alcoholism (because we could play the blame game all day then - because if it weren't for Elias would alastair have been pushed past his limits? is it his fault? if his alcoholism is because of his brother's death, was all of this just Yanluo's fault in actuality? but that was all in revenge for Wen Yu exterminating a nest of demons, so maybe it's her fault, then? it would never end, and that's not even TOUCHING mother hawthorn's involvement). matthew MUST be responsible for his own actions and choices.

but alastair caused a harm to matthew's psyche that can NEVER be erased. he will carry until the day he dies. alastair may have not intended to hurt him in such a profound was, but he did, and he knows it. he crossed a line that cannot be uncrossed.

this doesn't mean that alastair can't be redeemed or that he can't be a good brother-in-law to james and a good partner to thomas or a good person in general or even that him and matthew can't move past it and learn to tolerate each other. but in his eyes and matthew's, forgiveness is too weak of a concept for what he has done, and I doubt he will even ask for it.

[buckybarnesbingo]

What the Pic?

Participants: @ariasfandom, @rebelmeg, @wolfnprey, @ladydarkphoenix-blog, @bookdragon13, @liquidlightz, @jeminamoonnight, @caiti-creative-corner, @ribbonsflyingoutthewindow, @ibelieveinturtles

@ariasfandom - Bucky started watching Oobi and wanted to make an OC of it

@rebelmeg - all sam wanted to do was sleep in.  that was it, that was all he wanted out of a saturday.  which, of course, was the first thing his annoying houseguest decided to ruin, with a fist in his face at the crack of dawn.  a fist wearing googly eyes.  "bucky, what the hell?"

@wolfnprey - This is the default picture Clint sends out when he's judging. Bucky retaliates by posting his own in the vents and hides Clint's arrows.

@ladydarkphoenix-blog - Bucky gets caught watching kids(Sam's nephews, Clint's kids, insert kids here} unaware but has no idea how to entertain them so somehow ends up telling stories with his hands playing characters that are surprisingly effective

@bookdragon13 - Bucky gets drunk on Asgardian mead and thinks it’d be hilarious to put googly eyes on his metal hand and make it talk for him the rest of the night

@liquidlightz - Being an Eldritch deity apparently wasn't as awe inspiring as he'd always assumed himself to be, given that his host was entirely un-phased and thought it was funny to make puppet hands out of him and make up silly stories.  The fact that he found this insult highly entertaining was even worse for his ego.

Keep reading for more!

@bookdragon13 - Bucky buys that for Clint after staying with him for a couple days. Clint absolutely loves it Of course

@rebelmeg - "likl.  likl?!  who approved that?  how did that make it to store shelves!  this is a disgrace!" "bucky, you really need to calm down." "i'll calm down when that travesty is removed from my sight!" going shopping with bucky is never boring.

@ladydarkphoenix-blog - Bought as a gift for himself because Bucky found the misspelling hilarious and it would bug the most important of his guests by making them guess if he didn't notice that little detail or what was happening in his head. Watching them try to deal with it gives Bucky much joy

@wolfnprey - The group stares, unimpressed, as people in the gallery move around them. Nat and Tony insist that the artist is just fucking with people, while Sam and Clint argue over how deep the meaning is. Bucky takes one look at Steve and knows his friend is dying a bit inside at how low art has stooped in the modern age. Bucky's nice enough not to comment that it's made out of a damn shower rug.

@ariasfandom - "Bucky, we live together. I know for a fact you didn't "wake up like this"

@liquidlightz - In the morning, his boyfriend told him how beautiful he looked, and how amazing his hair was, despite having mussed it all up during their passionate evening before.  Apparently Bucky didn't suffer from bed hair but from magically self-smoothing hair.  Ok, so maybe he used his magiks a little to keep it looking so good, what was the harm in that.  So when Bucky saw this in a store he just had to get it and put it by the foot of his bed.

@ladydarkphoenix-blog - Bucky never thought he'd be turned into a dog. He also never thought he'd be staying with Clint and his dog or that the kids in the building would try to disguise him like this

@rebelmeg - bucky wasn't sure to think when he opened his door one morning to find a dog on the step wearing graucho glasses.  he also wasn't sure if he should trust the note tied to the dog's collar that said, "pet me, i'm yours."  but either way, the spaniel was pretty cute, and it turned out to be a snuggler.  worst things could happen.

@ribbonsflyingoutthewindow - If you're going to name your dog Professor Diggory and you're going to ask Bucky to dogsit him, you should be prepared for the fact that Bucky’s going to accidentally make him an internet celebrity. Groucho glasses and the ability to pose very still for a picture while Bucky holds a pretzel between his lips is the easiest way to have a booming Instagram account in under a week. Bucky and Professor Diggory are practically professionals now. Don't be jealous.

@rebelmeg - it has happened every time.  every single time he goes to the mcdonald's closest to his house, they manage to mess up his order somehow.  actually, he's starting to suspect it's on purpose.  there had definitely been a smirk on the guy's face when he handed bucky his order through the window.  that might explain why his request for a cheeseburger with just ketchup had nothing but ketchup between the buns.  hmm.  this might mean war.

@ibelieveinturtles - Sick of working long hours at minimum wage, dealing with shitty customers amd an even shittier manager, Bucky decides its time to try that malicious compliance thing.

@ladydarkphoenix-blog - What's happened to customer service?!?! Back in his day if you made a simple request for a burger with only ketchup the kitchen was smart enough to know what you meant. Were they messing with him? Can they not figure out what a simple order meant? Bucky sighed and shook his head. He'd had worse dinners

@ribbonsflyingoutthewindow - So Steve's got a fuckton of allergies and quite frankly, Bucky doesn't even know what they all are, so telling the person at the drive thru that Steve wanted "a McDouble with just ketchup" was a precautionary action. He thought because he knew Steve was allergic to onions and dairy and mustard that it was safer to ask for only ketchup (probably Steve's only known safe-listed condiment) and potentially not be the one to accidentally murder a man he cared deeply about. But seeing Steve later open the hamburger bun to reveal a bun with a single squirt of ketchup inside made Bucky literally faceplant into his car horn. That was not what he fucking meant.

@rebelmeg - swaying gently in the tropical breeze that smelled like ocean and flowers, bucky smiled to himself.  he was staring up at the clouds and palm trees overhead, his hammock creaking just slightly.  off to his right, his favorite person in the world was sprawled on a towel on the sand, soaking in the sun and drinking some kind of fancy umbrella drink with a silly straw.  best vacation ever.

@ladydarkphoenix-blog​ - Steve made jumping out of planes seem so easy. He never needed a parachute, never seemed to have the aches and pains after. With a sigh, Bucky stared up at the sky. At least he had a good view.

@ribbonsflyingoutthewindow​ - Pic Summary:When Bucky, Sam, and Natasha agreed to share an AirBnB for their Hollywood vacation, they'd only planned to see some famous sights and maybe try to pose with someone as famous as the monkey from the Pirates of the Caribbean films. Then they'd discovered that arguably the two hottest actors in the entire film industry, Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, were sharing the house next door! Overnight it became a bet and then a high stakes fight to the (okay, not actual) death to see which of them could meet one of the two actors first. Bucky hadn't exactly been spying while he was standing hidden behind an open gate on their temporary neighbor's property, but he must have been well hidden anyway because the moment he went to run and hide, a sleek convertible pulled out of the drive and directly into a fleeing Bucky. He kind of hates that his first thought upon opening his eyes and looking up to see only trees and a cloudy blue sky above him was that at least he'd probably won the bet.

[shotsbyshae]

Colors

Hunter Steve Series Masterlist

Warnings: Language, Murder, Bloody, Little Smut-ish

Words: 2.9k

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader

Summary: A hunter turned vampire makes for the deadliest hunter around. What happens when an old foe decides to make their own breed of assassins?  Song: Colors by Halsey

You’re ripped apart at every edge,

but you’re a masterpiece.

Sleep.

You've always considered it the most important part of any day.

It doesn’t matter where or how outdated the motel is or if the mattress feels like a slab of concrete against your back, sleep is you time. You've always done just fine on your own, sleeping alone was never an issue.

Then you woke up one night – some shitty room outside of Denver – found yourself curled into him. One pillow was somehow supporting both of you, his arm draped across your waist lazily. He had stirred slightly with your movement and his arm tightened, pulling you closer to his chest. You had nuzzled your face against his neck as he rested his chin against the top of your scalp.

It should have felt suffocating.

But it didn’t.

It was something different – something you hadn’t felt since becoming a vampire.

Safe.

It’s in the middle of the night when they come. Finding you and Steve curled into one another – sleeping peacefully – at your most vulnerable. They are in the room before either of you are aware of it, bright LED flashlights blinding you before a there’s a sharp pain in your neck. An angry snarl rips from your chest as your fangs descend and you reach, feeling a gloved hand there with a syringe. Everything starts to go numb and you try to fight, but it’s pointless as they drag you from the bed. From the glow of the flashlights you can see Steve wide-eyed with fear and anger as five – no six – men restrain him. One of which has a syringe jabbed into the side of his neck as well.

It happens in the blink of an eye. One minute your tucked warmly against him on what you had commented earlier that night to be a not too shabby mattress. Now, you’re being thrown into a van wearing nothing but a pair of black boy shorts and one of Steve’s blue t-shirts. You try to keep your eyes open as the doors to the van slam shut, but it’s useless. Whatever they injected you with working at record speed.

The sound of the engine starting is the last thing you hear before everything goes black.

12 Hours Earlier

“Wraiths?” Steve questions, standing beside you as the two of you have a faceoff with four individuals across the bar. Three men and a woman stare angrily back at you. One of the men takes a step forward, a boney spike protruding from his wrist in a menacing fashion.

“Yep,” you respond. “Wraiths alright.”

This is a milk run – Steve can handle it.

There’s only four of them.

You watch as Steve twirls the silver angel blade in his hand before he stalks towards the monsters. You smirk slightly to yourself as you hop up onto the bar, crossing one leg over the other. You lay your blade on the wooden bar beside you, leaning over to grab the bottle of bourbon nearest you.

The fighting ensues and Steve is ducking and dodging as the three men attack. The sickening sound of the blade slicing through skin fills the empty bar and you know the woman is sneaking around to your left, but you’re doing one of the things you enjoy most – watching him work.

It’s probably not healthy.

Most would assume it has something to do with your bloodlust, but that’s not it.

There’s something about the realness of it. Kill or be killed. The two of you teetering on the edge of life or death, your heart beating so hard and fast you can’t hear anything but it pounding against your ribs.

It’s raw – pure.

Steve’s a fighter – he was born for it – made that way. He’s quick on his feet and it’s almost like a well-choreographed dance the way he moves, dodging every attempt they make at stabbing him with their wrist spikes. He’s the only one left standing, chest heaving, and blood splattered. His hair falling across his face as he glances over to where you sit.

“Really? You want some popcorn?” he questions, resting his hands on his hips.

You hold the bottle of amber liquid up with your left hand, “I’m good.” Your right hand slowly gripping the handle of the blade laying at your side.

“You know –” Steve begins attempting to warn you of the woman, but stops as you move quickly, throwing your blade across and into the chest of the monster.

“I know,” the woman falls to the floor as you smirk before taking a swig from the bottle in your hand.

Steve walks across, pulling your blade from her before moving over to where you sit. He lays both weapons on the bar as you uncross your legs, stretching them out to hook around his waist.

“Is this what it’s come to now?” Steve questions, taking the bottle you offer him as you pull him closer with your legs. “You watch while I do all the work?”

“You didn’t need any help,” you comment playfully. “Besides, I like to watch.” Your fingers brush the hair from his forehead as he pulls the bottle away from his lips.

He stares at you, chest still heaving from his fight, eyes a deeper, darker blue, and you can practically feel the adrenaline surging out of him. There are blood stains spattered across the green shirt he’s wearing and up the side of his neck.

“Well, maybe next time,” his voice is low. “You work – while I watch.” He sets the bottle on the bar beside you, hands moving up your denim clad thighs. “You’re not the only one who likes it.”

He kisses you innocently enough, but after a few moments his kisses become more desperate – hungry. With one swift motion, he’s on top of you. The shattering of the bottle as the bourbon falls to the floor echoes throughout the empty room.

“Steve,” you breath against his mouth. “Really – here?”

He lifts his head, boyish glint in his eyes as he smiles down at you before glancing over at the four dead wraiths lying in the floor, “I don’t think they care.”

You shake your head with a laugh as his lips move along your neck before he nips at your pulse point. He feels your breathing falter and he nibbles a little harder, until he hears the low snarl in your chest.

“Easy with the – teeth,” your whisper turns into a hiss as he bites hard. Your fangs descend, fingers digging into his biceps. You know he did it on purpose. He enjoys riling you up.

“Says the vampire,” he pulls away with a smug smile, confirming your thoughts.

It happens so fast, Steve doesn’t even feel it until you have him pinned to the bar, straddling him. You watch the surprise on his face quickly fade into desire as his eyes travel up your body. He likes to bring this out in you – the feral creature you can be. He’s been addicted since the first time you slammed him into a wall while feeding on him.

You lean close to him, pressing your hips further down onto him – hard – throbbing almost. Your voice low and challenging as you whisper against his ear, “You started this.” You bite into his neck – thick, warm, blood filling your mouth quickly. A moan slips from him and you grind your hips against his methodically.

When his hand moves for the button on your jeans, you grab it quickly, pinning it and his other hand above his head. It elicits a small laugh from him, but you continue to roll your hips against him as you drink from him.

His voice is strangled as he tries to communicate, but you silence him with your mouth.

All tongue and teeth, copper and bourbon.

Showing your strength without fear.

He loves when you take control like this.

24 Hours Later

He had fought back when they took you, managed to capture one of the men while the others escaped. The only person who might have answers to where they’d taken you and Steve’s hell bent on getting them.

Steve’s staring down at the bloody man in the chair, he’s obviously taken quiet the beating. Steve’s right hand rests against the side of his thigh, the skin on his knuckles broken and bleeding as his pistol hangs loosely in his fingers.

“You’ve seen the last of her,” he says cryptically.

Steve stares angrily at the man in front of him, “What do you mean?”

“You heard me,” the man replies simply.

He clenches his jaw, rage coursing through him as he raises the pistol in his hand, aiming it at the man’s head, “Where the fuck is she?”

“Kill me if you want Rogers,” the man states flippantly. “Won’t change the fact she’s gone, and she isn’t coming back.” He stares at Steve for a moment before continuing. “They have her now.”

“Who’s they?”

“Hydra,” the man answers maliciously.

Confusion sweeps across his face, “What do they want with her?”

“They got word from one of their informants in another organization about a hunter who was turned. How she’s one of the best killers he’d ever seen,” the man states. “Don’t you think that would pique their interest?”

“She won't work with them,” Steve says strongly.

“They don't expect her to,” he responds raising an eyebrow. “They want to make more like her.”

The realization makes Steve nauseous and he swallows the bile rising in his throat, “Make more – how?”

With a small, sadistic laugh the man answers simply, “With her blood. How else?”

***

Steve’s able to get a general location for the facility where they’re keeping you, but he’s desperate and running out of options. So, he calls the one person he knows who might have an idea on exact locations of Hydra bases. Once he gives Barnes the information, he has coordinates dialed up and the quinjet en route to the base within minutes.

“What would Hydra want with her?” Sam questions from his seat.

Steve takes a deep breath, knowing this conversation was coming, “About that –”

***

The noise from outside the room you’re in stirs you awake. It’s not the safe, warm, comfort you feel when you wake up beside Steve. This small dark room unrecognizable. You don’t know how you came to be strapped upright to this cold, hard slab of steel, or how long there’s been a needle stuck in the vein at the bend of your elbow. The small plastic tubing full of dark red liquid as it drains your blood into a large bag below.

You try to break free of the restraints with no avail as the outside noise draws closer. Your mind races with questions – unsure who took you or why they want your blood. What the commotion is outside becomes your main concern as the doorknob across from you tries to turn. Feeling so weak in the face of possible danger isn’t something you’re used to and your heart races against your chest.

The door is forcefully kicked in and the brightness from the outside light blinds you momentarily as a dark figure approaches you. You turn your head away as the person gets closer – your fear apparent.

“It’s okay,” a familiar voice says. “It’s me – yea, I have her.”

“Buck,” you look back at the person in front of you in confusion.

“We gotta go,” he states dropping the blade in his hand to the floor before he pulls the leather cuffs from both your wrists. “Now.”

You slowly pull the needle from your arm as he jerks the restraints from your ankles. As soon as you take a step the light headedness takes over – room spinning out of control – your legs buckle.

“Shit,” Barnes says, looping his vibranium arm around your waist for support. “Come on, doll. Let’s go.”

“Steve,” you say his name questioningly as the two of you make your way out of the room.

“He’s here,” the man replies, glancing down with a small smirk.

Your bare feet hardly graze the concrete floor as Barnes moves quickly down the hall, speaking into his comm, “Heading down the south corridor. Yea – she’s lost a lot.”

“Who did this?” you manage to ask. “What’s happening?”

“Hydra,” Bucky says quickly. “They want to use your blood to make assassins like you.”

His statement sends a hundred different thoughts rushing through your mind, like how Hydra can’t just make assassins into vampires. They couldn’t control it. Does that mean Bucky knows that you’re a vampire?

A loud crash from in front of you makes Bucky stop moving and you feel him tense as pulls you behind him – shielding you from whatever is coming.

He relaxes after a moment and you hear another voice, “We have a problem.”

Sam.

You step from behind him, holding onto the cool metal arm for support. Your eyes meet Steve’s instantly and you see the relief wash over him as his pace quickens. He hands Barnes his machete as he pulls you into his chest tightly and you feel his lips press against the top of your head.

“This is great,” Sam’s voice states. “I’m glad your okay and all, but there’s like twenty hungry vampires heading this way.”

“They already started experimenting,” Bucky comments.

“You okay?” Steve’s hands are on your face as he tilts your head up to look at you.

“I’ll live,” there’s a small smile there and he kisses you gently.

“Good. We could use the back-up,” he responds with a smirk, pushing his sleeve up and offering you his wrist. “Full participation – no popcorn.”

“But,” you whisper hesitantly, eyes glancing over at Barnes and Wilson.

“It’s fine,” Steve says. “I told them.” You glance between them again before nodding and taking his hand.

“Oo – oooh fangs,” the level of disgust on Sam’s face as your fangs descend and you bite into Steve’s wrist is priceless. “Really – just like that? Ugh –” He makes a gagging noise as he turns around.

“Trust me,” Steve comments. “You’ll want her at full strength.”

Sam looks over at Barnes questioningly with his brows furrowed and the man shrugs his shoulders in response.

When the Hydra agents reach the hallway, you recognize the crazed look in their eyes. The bloodlust making them chaotic which makes them a little more dangerous.

“Be careful,” you remark to the men standing next to you, wiping the blood from the corner of your mouth with the back of your hand. Steve gives you a small nod of understanding before the agents in front start advancing.

“Don’t you need a weapon?” Wilson glances to you suddenly aware you have nothing to fight with. The half-smile on your face is all the answer he needs. “Oh – okay.”

The fighting ensues and you keep the others in sight as they fight off the agents – all fangs and angry snarls. You slam your fist through the back of one of the men, grabbing his heart in the palm of your hand and ripping it out. His body falls limply to the floor and Sam looks from the bloody organ in your hand up to you – eyes blown wide.

“Damn,” he remarks under his breath.

The fight lasts minutes and hours at the same time, as you bite into the throat of a woman who tries to attack Barnes from behind as he’s decapitating another vamp – ripping it a chunk of her neck out with your fangs. He turns quickly, watching as you toss the woman aside, blood dripping from your mouth onto the front of Steve’s shirt.

“Thanks,” he nods, and you smile because there’s no judgement in his eyes at your ruthlessness.

When it’s over, only the four of you are left standing, all blood splattered and sweaty.

“Steve,” Sam looks over to his friend.

“Yea,” Rogers responds breathless, brushing his hair from his face.

“Remind me never to piss Twilight off,” Wilson says, and you place your hands on your hips as you narrow your eyes at him.

“We need to burn this place,” Bucky remarks, ignoring Wilson. “All your blood – it’s gotta go.”

“He’s right,” Steve says. “We need to burn it all.”

***

The fire gives the small living room a cozy feel as you settle onto the couch. You had phoned Donna about staying in her cabin – motels were off limits for a bit.

“Sam’s face,” Steve comments as he walks over to the couch.

“They seemed to handle it well though,” you remark as he sits down, and you scoot closer to his side.

“I watched you,” he says quietly. “You ripped out a woman’s throat – with your teeth.”

“She was going after Barnes,” you reply.

“I know,” Steve says, fingers lazily gliding up and down your arm. “Sometimes I forget how dangerous you can be.”

You glance up at him, “I’m sorry.”

He shakes his head, “Never be sorry for who you are.” His other hand moves to the side of your neck. “You’re dangerous, smart, and there’s no one I’d rather have by my side in, or out of, a fight.”

A smile crosses your lips and you comment, “Thanks. I did kill like ten vamps today in just a t-shirt.”

“My t-shirt,” he remarks salaciously. “Trust me – I noticed.” His lips move just below your ear, kissing you gently before he whispers. “Watching was fun.”

Later, your body jerks you awake from a nightmare. You were back in the Hydra facility and it was so cold and damp. You feel Steve’s arms tighten around you. Rolling over to face him, you see him looking at you groggily from moonlight streaming through the window.

“You okay?” he questions sleepily, and you nod with relief to see his face.

Your mouth captures his quickly for a moment before you respond, “I am now.”

Settling against him, you breath a sigh of relief.

Happy to be here with him.

Warm.

Safe.

[syekick-powers]

rambling about emotions and self-control

i think one of the things that pisses me off the most when family members criticize me is when they say that i’m “bad at controlling my emotions”. first of all, I have ADHD and bipolar simultaneously, my emotions are a hundred times fucking stronger than yours. secondly, i am actually excellent at controlling my emotions. i am the kind of person where if i am having a panic attack, you might not have any fucking clue that i’m even having anxiety unless i state directly that im having a panic attack. ive had PAs so bad where i legit thought i was about to die and not a single shred of that world-ending panic touched my external affect for a second. part of my fucking trauma revolves around having to hide my distress to avoid freaking out other people, which means that i learned to develop a diamond fucking grip on my external signs of distress. it’s deeply maladaptive in some situations, but in other situations it’s equally as useful. and yet because i am very animated and exaggerated in my persona, people assume that i just let my emotions fountain everywhere uncontrollably and that i’m just a waterfall of feelings.

incorrect. every bit of exaggeration in my affect is deliberate. i am not acting like a clown because i can’t control myself, i am purposefully choosing to exaggerate to convey my feelings more effectively. if i don’t want you to know what i’m feeling, you will never ever ever find out. there are some people i interact with on a regular basis whomst i fucking loathe deeply, and yet any time i interact with them i am completely personable and friendly. when im streaming video games on a high difficulty and get frustrated from having to do the same part over and over and over again, i never get tilted on stream. i dont yell or rage, and in fact the more frustrated i become the more blank and expressionless my affect turns. when i was playing dead space 2 on zealot difficulty on stream recently, all of my viewers were complimenting the fact that i spent at least two collective hours on trying to beat the final boss and yet still did not get visibly upset or pissed off once.

yes, my emotions are strong. i have two separate disorders that both have “emotional dysregulation” as some of their biggest negative side effects. my bad moods feel like a fucking firestorm most of the time and strong emotions are very difficult to handle and control. sometimes, my emotions get the better of me and i snap or get irritable. but the only time i’m irritable is when i feel physically and emotionally like utter dogshit and the bad mood impacts my ability to hold back my emotions. the truth is that in my day to day life there are dozens of fucking things that irritate the living hell out of me and i choose to discard my frustration rather than stay mad about something trivial--either that, or i feel the frustration intensely, but bite it back and don’t say anything because i’m not in the mood to pick a fight. if i’m being pissy with you, it’s because i’m completely fuck-out of all mental and physical energy that i would otherwise use to hold back my irritation. there is nothing left to burn. there aren’t even fumes in the tank. this bitch empty, so prepare for the yeet.

the problem that i run into with my family members is that this internal struggle to contain my emotions is completely invisible to any external viewers. they’re not me, of course they can’t see what’s going on in my head. what makes that an issue is that they don’t see the twenty fucking times i got irritated and managed to control my temper through the frustration, they only see the five or so times i lose control. my efforts are invisible to everyone around me, so when i finally do get fed up and make a snippy comment or complain, it seems like i just let my emotions get the better of me all the time.

to be fuckening honest, if the people who criticized me lived one fucking day in my shoes, the extremity of my emotions would exhaust them within hours. the thing is, i’m 25 fucking years old, which means i’ve lived with this shit for over two fucking decades. i have learned to control myself to an extent, and, being honest with yall? it fucking exhausts the living shit out of me all the goddamn time. it’s like my brain expends all my mental fuel reserves on overclocking my emotions as hard as possible while leaving no fuel left over for activities in the day that i actually need to do. it’s part of the reason i’m so fuckdamn tired all the fuckdamn time. but i’m not bad at controlling my emotions when i actually have the energy to do so. in fact, i’m so good at suppressing them that half the time, people don’t know i’m upset at all. to a certain extent, i’ve gotten used to how extreme my emotions are, and have started learning to predict what sets me off so i can make an effort to avoid the negative stimulus and save myself the frustration. i’m just really fucking tired of people accusing me of not controlling my emotions well enough when god fucking damnit you have no idea how hard i’m actually fucking trying!!! it feels like i’ve gotten so good at hiding my distress in my day-to-day life that now people have no fucking idea how shitty i actually feel until they poke me one too many times and i fucking bite their finger off, and then assume that i just randomly blew up on them with no reason or justification. that i’m just behaving like this to spite them personally.

i promise you im not fucking behaving randomly. in fact, my frustration triggers are actually pretty fucking consistent. the same bullshit behaviors will always piss me off; what changes on a day-to-day basis is how well i control the extremity of my reaction. if i’m having a good day, i have enough fuel stores to go “meh, whatever” and brush it off without being too bothered for very long. if i feel like shit, my ability to control my response is hampered and it becomes much harder to bite back a snippy comment. i’m not lashing out to be malicious or spiteful. i’m lashing out because you’ve been doing this shit every day for the past two fucking weeks and today i’m just too tired to deal with this fucking bullshit anymore. my reaction is not a sudden unprovoked blowing up of a bomb. it’s “you poked the caged animal one too many times and now it’s going to fucking bite you to make you stop because it has no other way to express its frustration”.

i try to be clear and concise with my boundaries, and frankly i don’t think they’re all that unreasonable. i like to be able to decide when and how i do a task on my own time rather than being pushed and pulled and jabbed and pressured every step of the way. i like to be able to have my own space where people have to get my permission before entering suddenly so that i feel like i have a safe place to hide when i’m overstimulated. i like to decide when and where i want to engage in socialization, and for how long. i like being able to decide when i’m ready to do a task, rather than having a task suddenly shoved on me with no warning or being pressured to do it before i’m ready. i do not like being gifted objects i did not request (and often actively requested not to get) and then being expected to be grateful for something i didnt even want in the first place. i don’t like gifts coming with invisible price tags and obligations that can change whenever the gifter decides they want more out of me. and i absolutely cannot. fucking. stand. passive aggression. all of these things do not really seem all that unreasonable to me, yet time and time again people treat me like i’m just asking for so much more than they can possibly give. and you know what? 75% of the fucking time when someone crosses one of these boundaries all i do is Make A Note Of It and go along with the boundary violator’s wishes anyway, because i actively decided that making a big deal out of them crossing my boundaries is not worth the effort of asking them to change their behavior, because throughout my entire fucking life i’ve been constantly treated as the irrational, unrealistic, crazy bitch for trying to set those boundaries. i’ve been taught time and time and fucking time again that defining my boundaries is too much to fucking ask. so when someone does violate my boundaries, there’s a little “Sye will remember that“ popup and absolutely zero expression or reaction. which means that yes. when i finally get tired and can’t bite back my frustration any longer, it’s because you’ve done the exact same thing to me two hundred fucking times previous and i don’t have the fucking patience to suck it up and deal with it anymore. im done with your shit.

so yeah. i’m a little bit fucking sick of people telling me that i have poor self-control. the fact that you think i have no self-control is an indicator of how good it actually is, because i’m so fucking good at hiding my distress that you don’t even have any idea how absolutely like a fetid mound of horse shit i feel like until my fuse finally burns all the way up. i can contain a 10-out-of-10 ‘i’m imminently about to die’ panic attack so well that not a scrap of that panic shows up in my external affect for even a second. i can suppress my pain on stream when it’s at a 7 out of 10 intensity or higher and be fucking on stream playing video games and commentating and show almost no sign of discomfort except for an intense concentrating face. don’t you fucking ever tell me that i’m bad at controlling myself. i’m a goddamn adult. i’ve learned how to control 90% of my fucking emotions so well that i could be holding a conversation with you imagining myself breaking your fucking nose and show absolutely zero sign of external hostility. i am good at controlling my fucking emotions. the problem is that my emotions are so world-endingly, apocalyptically intense that sometimes i just get too fucking tired to hold back, and then that’s when i bite. i’ m not just lashing out randomly with no provocation. i’ve been tread on a million fucking times and took it with a smile and you had no fucking idea. just because i bit you doesn’t mean i did it because i have no self-control. self-control? self-control???? don’t you fucking talk to me about self-control you headass bitch. i have a fucking supernova coming out of my brain and you’re telling me im weak for not being able to bite it back when your emotions have about as much intensity as a bowl of lukewarm porridge. don’t ever fucking criticize me for not being able to control myself when you’re playing life on easy mode and i’ve been stuck on expert all my fucking life. self-control. don’t you fucking talk to me about self-control ever again. you have no idea what the fuck you’re even talking about. fuck off.

[lesbiskam]

A (not so) Simple Analysis of Ele and Edo’s First Date (or why I didn’t hate this clip like I normally do)

I was going to make a “in this essay I will...” thing but then I accidentally wrote the dam essay... whoops :) it’s under the cut

First, I’m going to address the overall vibe I got from Ele, which is super important. Ele seemed very defiant the entire time, which may seem bad, but stick with me. In my opinion, Noora seemed very uncomfortable as soon as she greeted William. It’s almost as if you can feel the power imbalance. Noora has been forced to go on a date with William, and she almost seems scared because of it (almost). However, Ele really seems to hold her own. True, she doesn’t really want to be there, but she doesn’t seem intimidated, she just seems straight up pissed (which is completely understandable). It’s very clear from the start that Edo really has no power over Ele, and every thing she does is her own choice and not because she feels like she has to. (If you don’t see what I’m feeling, then I’m sorry, because I really don’t know how to explain the vibe.)

Now, some people might sit there and think “but why is this little detail so important?” Good news, I can explain that too :) Ele might have said that this wasn’t a real “date” and she might be right, but it that doesn’t mean it isn’t important. This is the first time that Ele and Edo really start to get to know each other. This “fake date” sets up their dynamic for the entire season. In the case of William and Noora, William seems to have far too much power over Noora. Noora also loses her confidence and becomes weak throughout the season. Both of these things start on the very first date. The power dynamic stems from the vibes on the first date, regardless of if it’s fake or real. By making Ele angry instead of (kinda) intimidated, it gives Edo no power over her. Without this power, Ele will not be able to be manipulated as easily. (Edo won’t manipulate her anyway, but that’s besides this point.) This change in the power dynamic lets Ele make her own decisions far more easily, without manipulation, which is crucial to a healthy relationship.

(Also, I don’t know if this was purposeful or just how it ended up. It could just be a coincidence, but it makes a big difference in my eyes.)

But now onto the actual content itself:

Like all the Williams, Edo starts by sharing his memories with Ele. Ele sees this as a tactic to try to win her over and not genuine, but this isn’t necessarily true. Yes, he is doing it to get into Ele’s favor; yes, he probably rehearsed it. But I don’t think these things are particularly bad in this situation. He doesn’t have malicious intent to manipulate or confuse Ele’s feelings, he just wants Ele to understand/like him.

Okay when Edo tries to say he didn’t force Ele? A lie. And we all know this. he blackmailed her into going on the date, and then twists things into his favor, as Ele said. But, thankfully, Ele doesn’t back down on her stance. She does not let Edo’s shitty behavior change her thinking. (I will also say that Edo is not a complete shit because he eventually does agree that he shouldn’t have texted Silvia because she would have seen it as flirting.) (Although, I’ve always thought it was really shitty how “William” thought it was okay to force “Noora” to go on a date, even if it was just honoring a deal.) Anyway, Ele was good about not giving in to Edo’s shitty-ness, which is pretty important imo. By Ele saying that she did it out of love for Silvia instead of liking Edo (and not giving a counter argument to this point), it shows that Ele is the correct one in the situation, which was not the vibe from the OG.

Ele is very sassy and amazing when saying why, exactly, Edo is a shit. And most of these are true. But when she calls him sexist, I disagree. Edo was a major fuck boy in the past, and many people would say this makes him sexist. (Personally, I would classify this behavior as sexist, but as asshole-ish, but that’s irrelevant.) However, I disagree that Edo is sexist. He head-butted a dude for calling a girl a slut. (Ele, however, still sees these actions as wrong, which will inevitably be addressed later in the season.) From a writing standpoint, I don’t think slipping that into the conversation was a coincidence. They (as in the writers) did it on purpose to show that Edo isn’t actually “sexist”, despite displaying sexist/dick-ish behavior in the past.

Now, normally, I hate when “William” compares how he insulted “Vilde” as to when “Noora” insults him, but in Edo’s situation, I understand more of where he’s coming from. The Edo/Ele insult match felt more equal to me. Ele seemed a little bit harsher/ruder and Edo seemed a little less harsh, so this comparison is understandable. I still disagree with Edo, but I understand where he’s coming from and I don’t think he’s being manipulative like William was.

And of course, the dreaded rhetoric about how one comment can’t destroy a person’s self-esteem. There are multiple things I want to address about this whole thing, but the first is that I disagree with the statement, like many people. The right well-placed words can absolutely plant seeds of doubt that spiral into annihilation of one’s confidence. Second, I think it’s important to state how Edo said it was “really difficult” to destroy someone’s confidence with one comment, not impossible. This seems pretty small and trivial, but to me it really shows how Edo is not trying to prove something. He’s not saying “this is how it is, I’m right, and you’re naïve”, he more of saying “this is just how it seems to me”. Third, I need to address how Edo thought about it before he said it. Really thought about it. He was open to discussion. He wasn’t shooting Ele down, he was talking with her. He was just trying to explain himself. Fourth (this is the biggie), I think it’s really important to recognize the context of the situation. Edo did not say anything that should have destroyed Silvia’s confidence, and it didn’t destroy her confidence. (As a refresher, Edo never said Silvia wasn’t good enough, but just asked why she was behind the boy’s bathroom.) The comment was made to make Silvia embarrassed (which is really shitty), and it worked. But it was a short-term embarrassment, not a long-term blow to her self-esteem. So, in Edo’s mind, it would make sense to say that a comment like that shouldn’t destroy someone.

Then, Edo admits it was wrong what he did. He admits that he what he did wasn’t fair to Silvia. Yeah, it was pretty half-assed, but it’s a start. He isn’t perfect, and admitting that he was wrong is a big thing. AND, he didn’t seem to say it just to make Ele like him, he actually seems to recognize that what he did was wrong (god, what a low bar…).

Again, another dreaded rhetoric. He asks Ele to look at the situation from his perspective. Cue eye roll. However I have to say that the way he said it seemed a little better. It felt less like “I’m right and you’re wrong blah blah blah” and more of “I’m not as big of an ass as you think I am”. He only wants Ele to understand where he’s coming from. He just desperately wants Ele to like him. He’s not being manipulative or anything like that. And… I understand his sentiment.

Okay, now let’s just take a long second to appreciate how he didn’t let Ele compliment him when he didn’t deserve it. You know what that is? Growth. As much as he wants Ele’s compliments and praise, he doesn’t want it if he doesn’t deserve it. Ele tries to compliment him on apologizing to Silvia, and but he calls out his behavior anyway. If he just wanted Ele to like him, he wouldn’t bring this up, but now we can see that he actually cares about being a decent person. He doesn’t want to manipulate Ele into thinking he’s a good person, he actually wants to be a better person for Ele (cue the “awwwwww”). He wants Ele to genuinely like him. He wants to actually earn her approval.

And that little “you’re right” “I know” exchange? 10/10. 1) She’s right and he should say it. 2) Gotta acknowledge his growth for admitting that he’s wrong and she’s right. 3) That was really cute (I’ve actually dreamt up this scenario before, so when it actually happened? I lost my shit, guys).

When Edo gets the call, you can see how bad he doesn’t want the date to end. He hangs up once, then apologizes for having to answer. He really just loves being around Ele, even if she’s roasting him. And obviously Ele doesn’t want the date to end either. She runs after him, being all cute and asking what’s wrong.

But then she breaks his Ele-shaped heart by asking if her debt is payed. His little “you don’t owe me anything” is just so painful. He’s just so sad that Ele doesn’t want anything to do with him, and that she only ever saw the little date as something she owed. He wants so badly to mean something to Ele. Remember, he really wants to earn her approval. He tried so hard to show her that he was a better person than he was a year ago. And this probably feels like a stab to the gut to him. After all this, Ele still doesn’t like him. The approval he wants so bad is denied. As a person who constantly seeks other people’s approval, can I just say big oof?

(TL;DR: this date seemed better imo even though the changes were actually minuscule)

((Also, I’m very sorry to those who actually read through all of this, you’re braver than any US marines. This was ridicouly long, repetitive, and unnecessary. And in the longest paragraphs possible. This was ruch a rant...oops.))

(((AND a big thanks to @skamitaliasubs for providing translations <3)))

[yesvac]

Cool Kids Never Have The Time (stozier)

au where stan and richie don’t know each other but as classmates, richie is the class stoner, and stan smokes weed for the first time with him : ) 

warning: drug use

length: about 3k

The first hit of the bowl is a bit too much to handle, in Stan’s opinion.

It’s not like he’s a nerd, per say. He wouldn’t be qualified as one in most people’s minds. He’s actually quite cool, in his opinion, but in the social ladder of their high school, he’s not particularly topping the charts. He’s got friends, sure, but those people are not considered “cool kids” or “popular”. One of his friends, Ben, called him “the King of the nerds,” once.

So Stan wouldn’t say it’s surprising that he became friends with Richie Tozier. Yeah, Richie is… a bit edgier than most people he knows, and Richie doesn’t go to school as often as he should, but it’s not like Stan’s counting his attendance, or looking over at Richie’s empty seat at the beginning of class every day. Psh, why would he?

But that doesn’t quite explain how Stan got to be in this situation, holding a “bowl” up to his lips while Richie lights the end.

He surely didn’t mean to get in this situation. He’s not a bad kid. He stays away from drugs, and when he gets invited to parties with alcohol, he politely declines. In his high school career, and in all of the 18 years of his life, he’s gone to one real party. He left in twenty minutes.

But what was he supposed to do when Richie passed him a note in Economics, reading “you want to come over to mine later?”

When the note was dropped on his desk, he was dumbfounded at first, for multiple reasons. His heart was racing as he tried to process it. First thought: who the fuck passes notes anymore? this isn’t middle school. And then: wait, Richie Tozier wants me to come over?

Then he thinks of what he might like to do at Richie Tozier’s house. Oh.

Stan blushes at his thoughts. He shouldn’t allow himself to think things like that about boys, but he indulges occasionally. Probably more than most guys would.

He looks across the room to where Richie’s sitting and he’s a bit spooked when he sees that Richie is already looking at him, with this little smirk on his face. Swallowing his anxiety, Stan nods in Richie’s direction, and the butterflies that reside in his tummy are making a bit of an uproar as a grin appears on Richie’s face. Richie mouths to him slowly: meet me by my locker after school.

Fuck. Stan’s fucked if he wants a good grade in Econ, because any and all material is lost to his mind after that.

-

A few hours later when the final bell rings, Stan tries to convince himself he hasn’t been waiting for the moment that school ends, but he can’t, not truly. His friends have been bugging him about being absentminded and not participating in their conversations mentally, but he reckons that’s okay for one day.

He tries not to run to Richie’s locker, and instead settles for a brisk pace over to a black mob of hair and a jean jacket faced the opposite way. Briefly, he is immobilized with nervousness, but when Richie glances over to where Stan is standing awkwardly a few feet away, he loudly spits out, “Hi!”

At first, Richie looks a bit judgemental, but his expression softens, and the corners of his beautiful mouth tilt upwards. Stan’s running his fingers through his fringe and pushing it upwards because Jesus, he’s sweating already. Calm the fuck down and stop being so gay, he thinks, but Richie’s smile just makes his knees feel weak. “Hey, Stan the man.”

“Stan the man?” he makes out, and the nervousness is coming back again, and he thinks for a moment that maybe he’s actually judged this situation completely wrong. Is this… an insult, or a nickname? It’s not like Richie is perceived in the eyes of the school body as a nice guy, really. Stan’s not sure. But… maybe he saw him looking at him. Maybe he’s angry. Maybe he knows Stan’s gay somehow, and trapped him here, cornered against a locker. Maybe coming here was the worst possible idea.

His mind tells him to take a step back, so he does. “I- I actually think, that I have to, I have to go,” he stammers. “My mom, uh. My mom needs me to take care of our… Our iguana.”

Stan doesn’t have an iguana. He facepalms mentally.

But then, Richie says the unexpected: “Is something wrong? Are you okay? You look pale all the sudden.” He extends an arm to rest on Stan’s shoulder and despite his best efforts, Stan can’t find it in him to think there’s anything malicious about him.

Sure, Richie’s wearing black ripped jeans and some old, beat up Doc Martins that look like they’re from the 80’s, but he’s also wearing a jean jacket with pink patches and embroidered designs. Yes, he’s got a septum piercing and he skips school, but his eyes and smile are so soft that Stan can’t be intimidated. He melts at the gentle hand on his shoulder.

“I’m fine,” Stan manages, and he can tell his face is hot. “I just remembered that I, uh, don’t actually have to be home, so nevermind. I can come over to yours.”

Richie laughs, and the way he tilts his head back while laughing makes Stan’s heart hurt. “Okay, it’s not iguana-care day. I see,” Richie teases, and surprisingly, Stan doesn’t feel targeted or anything by the tease, just wants to laugh along with him, so he does. It feels natural and organic to be laughing with him and he wants to do it forever. “Let’s go, I can give us a ride.”

There’s something mundanely enchanting to Stan about boys who can drive. Well, maybe it’s just boys. Actually, maybe it’s just Richie.

He coughs awkwardly as he gets into Richie’s vehicle. It’s an interesting one for sure. “Sorry if it’s hard to close the door, Ol’ Gertrude is getting a bit rickety. But we won’t die.” Stan laughs, as if it’s a joke, but Richie looks at him seriously. “Probably.”

He’s not lying when he says that the car is getting old; there’s rust all over it and it does take two or three tries for Stan to fully close the door because for some reason, its locking mechanism doesn’t work. The seats are all busted in some ways and Richie has seemed to fix it by using duct tape strategically, but Stan can still feel the springs poking out in some places. There’s dice hanging from the mirror. It’s a hot day, but there’s not air conditioning, so Stan can feel the perspiration on his face, but the way the windows roll down and Stan can stick his fingers out to feel the air as Richie drives is therapudic and organic.

Richie’s fringe is fully pushed up by now, his face slightly flush as he drives with one hand. He’s trying to explain music to Stan, and Stan suddenly realizes what Richie’s actually passionate about.

“Call me a hipster - really, I am - but the stuff nowadays is really shitty. Too much autotune, and electronic music sound. I’m not into it. Prime music was the 80’s and 90’s - alternative was the best then.” He’s trying to get a CD out of the compartment in front of Stan and Stan takes it over from him, sliding the CD out of the case and helping Richie slide it into the disc player. It immediately plays Track 1.

“Fuck, this is a classic,” Richie comments fondly, and Stan thinks swear words don’t sound quite as crude coming out of his mouth.

Shakedown 1979

Cool kids never have the time

On a live wire right up off the street

You and I should meet

He finds himself fascinated with the way Richie looks, carefree and happy as he drives and sings along to the song. Stan’s not sure if he likes the music better than what he listens to, but he’s sure that he likes Richie singing it better than anything he’s ever heard, ever.

Too soon they arrive at Richie’s house, and as they get out, some anxiety clouds Stan’s mind because what the fuck are they going to do, anyways? He’s not like, socially incapable, but Richie and him have never really talked ever, and they don’t seem to have very many common interests. Nevertheless, they enter Richie’s house and it’s nice, cozy. His downstairs is painted in light pastel yellows and he feels comforted at the decor.

When Richie shows him his room, it’s like walking into a completely different building from the rest of the house.

First of all, it’s painted a light blue, but that’s barely visible through all of the posters he has up. There’s movie posters for every award-winning movie he can think of in the last 30 years. Also, there’s posters for, yes, 90’s and 80’s alternative and rock bands, and Stan thinks if Richie knew that the only real 80’s and 90’s music Stan knows is the boybands, then he would be scolded severely (he can’t help it - his first boy crush was on Justin Timberlake). There’s also tacked up photos of what look to be torn pages from National Geographic of locations around the world. Stan recognizes what looks to be a busy Japanese street, a waterfall somewhere, the badlands, and a photo taken in a desert with a crowd of antelope. He has a bed and in the corner of his bedroom, a sofa, and then a computer desk with a computer chair - he sits down at his chair and looks up at Stan, and Stan sits on his bed lightly.  His bedroom is also slightly messy, disheveled in a way that isn’t too unacceptable. There’s an indistinct smell that he can’t quite place.

Stan feels slightly overwhelmed.

Richie begins talking about something related to music again, and he syncs his phone with a speaker in his room and plays some song Stan can’t place, one he’s never heard before, and he zones out a bit to what he’s saying, internally freaking out that he’s at a hot boy’s house on his bed while he’s being ranted at about good music, until Richie says something that shocks him into listening.

“Wanna smoke weed?”

While Stan knows it’s unattractive to sputter, apparently he can’t help but be not cute around Richie. “W-what did you say?” Because he isn’t quite sure he heard right, even though he knows internally exactly what Richie said.

“Did you want to smoke some weed? I have four grams and a bowl if you wanted to. My parents aren’t home and won’t be ‘till later. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, really. It helps me relax though, and makes the music even better,” Richie says, and he giggles a bit at the end. He raises his eyebrows at Stan, obviously expecting an answer, but Stan’s not sure he can give a comprehensible one.

Oh god, he’s about to get high for the first time with the hottest dude in his class. This is what he knows, because he knows for a fact he’s not going to be able to say no to Richie’s smile, even if he’s kind of scared of inhaling smoke and getting high in general, and his mom raised him to stay away from drugs.

“Yes,” he says. Of course. Idiot.

So that brings them to where they are now. Richie is opening up the window to his room, and he retrieves a wooden box from a discreet place at the top of his messy closet, and he opens the box. There’s some oddly shaped things Stan doesn’t recognize, and it occurs to him that Richie probably doesn’t realize that he hasn’t smoked weed before. “I haven’t smoked weed before,” he comments casually, and Richie looks at him incredulously.

“Really, Stan the man? Never smoked?” Richie asks, and Stan nods. “Figures, with your straight A’s, and all. You just need to be roughed up a little. Live life and all that shit.” Stan nods again, and pretends that he doesn’t want Richie to rough him up in every way. “I’ll guide you through it.”

Ten minutes later and they’re both sitting on Richie’s sofa facing his window, and Richie’s holding what he calls a “bowl”, which in reality looks nothing like a bowl and actually looks more like a pipe made of glass or ceramic material, Stan doesn’t know. It’s blue and shiny, and it’s stuffed with weed at the end. Richie tells him the process of it, how you’re supposed to hold your fingers over one part of it, and then light it, and then inhale, and then release your fingers, and then exhale after you’ve held it for a moment. But try as he might, all of those instructions escaped his mind, because when you’ve got Richie Tozier one foot in front of you and you’re about to get high with him, it’s quite hard to focus on little things.

“Got it?” Richie asks him, and Stan wants to have got it, but he hasn’t got it. He shakes his head, and Richie laughs. He feels bad for a moment, but not for long, not really. “It’s okay, Stan. I’ll hold the bowl for you and I’ll light it too. All you have to do is inhale, and then exhale when you’re ready.”

Stan nods, and he doesn’t feel ready quite yet, but it’s not like he’s going to say no because god, Richie is beautiful and he’s holding the bowl up to his lips and Stan’s going to hell for being so gay, he’s sure of it. It occurs to him that he’s practically on Richie’s lap right as Richie lights the weed, and says “GO!” to him, and he inhales the smoke from the bowl, and immediately chokes.

Richie had told him that he’d probably cough, but this was nothing like he’d imagined. He choked on smoke and coughed to try to get the toxicity out of his throat. He keeps coughing, and he’s honestly surprised at the amount he coughs before he can stop, really. He’s practically wheezing out of Richie’s window, and Richie is chuckling at him slightly. When Stan finally stops coughing, wiping the water out of his eyes, he sees Richie from his blurry vision taking a hit and he looks practiced and masterful. The smoke leaves through his nose and he takes a breathe of air calmly. No coughing at all.

“What the fuck? How did you do that?” Stan laughs, and he coughs again at the end of his sentence, and finds himself in another minute-long coughing fit. He wants to stop, he really does, but there’s an insistent tickling at the back of his throat and he must look like an idiot.

However, there’s a warmth at his shoulder and he looks back at Richie, smiling warmly at him and he feels comforted with just a glance at the boy next to him, and he can feel the anxiety melting off of him by the minute. “If you’re a loser pothead like me, then you’re good at this. But don’t aspire for that,” he laughs again, and holds the bowl out to Stan’s mouth again, and Stan tries to pull himself together for another hit again, and he inhales like before. It goes down much smoother than the first, but he still coughs with his exhale.

“Is there a way to make this any better than it is? Like, my eyes won’t stop watering and I’ve got this tickling in my throat that isn’t going away,” he complains to Richie as Richie takes another hit. It occurs to him mildly that his lips were wrapped around the same thing that Richie’s are, and tries to make that fact not matter to him, and fails. “I don’t get the glamour of this yet.”

The way Richie exhales the smoke out of the window through pursed lips makes Stan’s spine tingle a little bit, in a way that only Richie’s looks can do. Richie laughs dryly again. “Eating and drinking make it better. I’m sure the high will hit you in a few. You’ll feel it, and you’ll know.” As Richie relaxes against the sofa, he gets the feeling that Richie is already feeling it.

“How am I supposed to know if I’ve never experienced it?” Stan presses, leaning forward a bit, closer to Richie. Richie gives him a devious smile in return, cracking his knuckles before placing a hand on Stan’s shoulder, which is warm and welcome.

“You’ll know, Stan the man. You’ll know.”

A few minutes later, they are both lying on the floor and looking up at Richie’s ceiling. The lights are off and Richie has glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to his ceiling which Richie is entranced by, as they listen to more music. Stan feels… something, but he isn’t sure if it is from the drug he just smoked or the feeling of laying so close to Richie.

Richie suddenly turns towards him, still horizontal, and says, “Stan the man.”

“Yes?”

“How do you feel?”

Stan’s fingers grip the carpet around him, letting the fabric touch his hands and feel the texture and everything around him. “I feel a little different. Like everything’s slower.”

“Your eyes are red as hell,” Richie comments, laying a hand on Stan’s arm. Tingles shoot through Stan from the place that Richie touched him. He internally facepalms at how sensitive he is, and tells himself to calm down.

Stan sits up a bit, and looks at Richie’s face, examining the way that the weed has affected him. “Your eyes are red too, you know. So shut up.”

“You’re so handsome, Stan,” Richie sighs, and Stan’s eyes widen. He’s unsure if he heard Richie correctly, and where that compliment came from, and what the implications are, and whether it could just be a platonic comment, and his mind is racing with thoughts while he stares blankly forward.

Richie’s eyebrows furrow. “You good?”

Stan sputters, “yeah. I’m good. I think it just hit me.”

Richie smirks, an irritatingly attractive tilt of the mouth, and Stan wishes he could kiss it off of him, so he does. He grabs Richie’s wrists and pulls him forward, and their mouths collide clumsily and Stan is feeling so, so unorthodox.

But it’s good. It’s really good. Richie is warm and although he is bony, his hands seem to have an instinct of their own and perfectly clutch Stan’s face, aligning like they were made to fit, and Stan’s whole body feels like it’s tingling as he moves his lips against Richie’s, kissing him. Richie seems to be pressing forward, responding emphatically to Stan’s movements, and Stan pulls away to breathe and to look at Richie again. He can’t believe himself.

Richie’s face is flushed, his cheeks pleasantly red, and Stan thinks he looks better than ever. His eyes are blown-- from use of illegal substances or from kissing, Stan isn’t sure-- and he looks exhilerated. Stan is internally satisfied that he can make Richie look like that.

Turning down the volume of the music, Richie smiles back to Stan, and his hands move along Stan’s arms like he can’t stop touching him. “I guess I’ll have to have you over a lot more often, Stan the man.”

[honeybee-babe]

Sharing is Caring (Except When You’re Sick) Part 4

Part four of my collab Sick!Klaus and Sick!Luther fic with @hargreevesstyles!! It can also be read on her blog. :)

As Vanya zoned back into the conversation, Diego was in the middle of scolding Klaus who had accidentally spilled his soup. “Be more careful, Klaus. You burned your leg pretty badly!”

“Sorry I was fucking sneezing, Diego! It’s kind of hard not to burn yourself when you’re eating boiling hot soup and you have to sneeze every two seconds,” Klaus explained.

Diego bit, “How about you put the bowl on the table like a normal person?”

“Why are you being a dick?” Klaus shouted.

The room fell silent.

“Seriously, Diego, fucking lay off. You keep saying you’re concerned about me but all you’re doing is yelling at me and making me feel shitty!” Klaus ran his hand through his hair. “It’s making me more miserable than the incessant sneezing!”

Diego didn’t say anything.

“Whatever, I’m going upstairs,” Klaus muttered.

Vanya interjected, “No, don’t. Come on, Klaus, stay down here. Finish up your soup and then I’ll go into the living room to watch a movie with you.” Klaus didn’t say anything, he just kept staring at the ground. “I’ll let you pick and I’ll make us popcorn.”

“Fine. But only if Diego won’t be there,” Klaus snapped. “Ihh-hitschue! Fuck! Hihhh...huhh….”

“You alright, Klaus?” Allison asked as Klaus’ breath continued to hitch.

“Fucking fanta-hahhh-fantastic….oh god….hihhh….”

It was Vanya’s time to shine. Without calling attention to herself, she tried to channel the energy and the waves around her. She focused as hard as she could on using the energy to vibrate along Klaus’ septum. Klaus looked like he was on the cusp of sneezing when Vanya got an idea. She ceased her powers all together, and Klaus’ hitching breaths halted.

“Oh my god it tickles so bad,” Klaus whined. He scrubbed as hard as he could to repel the itch. Vanya controlled the waves again and sent a malicious vibration zooming around Klaus’ entire nose, and then she stopped it almost a second later. Klaus’ breath hitched wildly and he then lost the sneeze.

Vanya was amused with her powers, so much that she honestly had forgotten that she was toying with Klaus.

“I ha...a...have to sneeze so...hihhh….so fuckingbadly-hahhh….oh my,” Klaus sniffled. He took a tissue and blew his nose. Vanya tried to use her powers to push energy out of Klaus’ nose, seeing if that would help him clear his nasal cavity any better. And it did. Klaus was left a little sniffly, but he could breathe.

Now that Vanya knew she could do that, she went back to messing with Klaus’ need to sneeze.

She teased him for another few minutes or so and then she really realized what she was doing. Klaus had tears running down his cheeks, his nose was running wildly and he had a tissue poised in front of his nose--not quite touching his face, more like hovering in front--so he could catch the impending sneezes, if they ever came. When Vanya saw how miserable she looked she realized she needed to give him the satisfaction he was craving. So, she did all she could to intensify the tickle with as much power as possible.

As if on cue, Klaus’ breath hitched wildly, deeper than he normally would, resulting in an abnormally powerful sneeze from his frail body.

“Huhh’ENXtshyuu!!” His curls bounced wildly as his face snapped forward into the tissue. Vanya flinched; she hadn’t expected that out of him. None of his siblings had. They stared at him in surprise, spoons held halfway to their lips.

“Jesus, Klaus—”

“N-not done - heh! HhhrETDZshiew!” Klaus snapped forward into the tissue again with a slightly less powerful explosion. “HiehHTShiew-xnGST! Fuhh-nXGTshyuu-fuck!” As they died down in intensity, they increased in rapidity, falling one on top of the other. “Hih’eshyuu-nXGt! xxngt-ishyuu! Hh’tschiuehh!” In a last ditch effort, Klaus pinched the damp tissue around his nose. “hh’xgtsh! ihh’ngxt! Hh’nxshiuu - hih!” He paused for a moment, mouth agape and eyes squinted, before his shoulders settled down again and he released the breath in a sigh. “Sorry,” he mumbled, voice small as he rubbed at his nose with the remnants of the tissue.

“Sorry, what was that about not being sick?” Diego asked.

Klaus rolled his eyes. “You know, you could say, like, bless you, or something. You don’t need to skip straight to the bitchy comments.”

“You’re sick! That’s all I’m saying.”

“I’m leaving. For real this time. Vanya, sorry, I’m not in the mood for a movie.”

Without giving anyone else the chance to speak, Klaus stood up and strode out of the room.

“Diego, what the hell?” Allison rose her voice.

Diego said, “He’s sick!”

“Give him some fucking sympathy then!”

“Hhh-hhieshhiew!” Came from the hallway.

Vanya called, “Bless you!”

There was no response, just the sound of stomping on the stairs and then the slamming of a door.

Vanya added, “Really, Diego, you have to give him a break. This honestly seems more like allergies than it does a cold. He might not be sick, and even if he is you have to lighten up on him!”

“No, he needs to take care of himself! If I have to see him in a damn hospital bed one more time, I-“

“Diego he has a cold! And he might not even actually have one!” Allison argued.

Diego tried, “I-I...I’ve just seen him really sick. It’s always bad. H-h-he gets so weak and...and he…”

“Take your time,” Vanya said.

He took a deep breath. “I’ve seen Klaus almost dead too many times. When he’s sick it gets bad fast. I can’t see him like that it-it breaks my heart!” Diego explained. “It’s easier to show my concern through anger than it is through actual concern.”

Both Vanya and Allison felt a pang in their hearts. Diego and Klaus had remained in touch and all of the others knew it. They were the closest out of the siblings, well except for Ben who literally was almost always with Klaus.

It didn’t surprise either of them that Diego’s anger was really just poorly disguised worry.

“Still, Klaus is...fragile. He’s gone through a lot,” said Vanya.

Diego knew that and he understood it perfectly well. There was just something inside of him that became overwhelmed with concern whenever Klaus wasn’t feeling well or if he got hurt. Diego was always the one there for Klaus when he overdosed or when he was mugged or when it was the middle of winter and Klaus didn’t have a home. He had seen him with pneumonia, bronchitis, hypothermia, and several bad injuries. Diego knew that whenever Klaus caught something little it would become something nasty because he never took care of himself.

This always led to Diego becoming overprotective and being on edge for the entire time that Klaus was sick, and it only got worse as it happened more frequently. Maybe it was the fact that Diego knew nothing about this illness. He hadn’t seen Luther at all yet and he figured he might as well go and see what Klaus was up against.

“I’m going to go see how Luther’s doing. I’ll stop by Klaus’ room on the way back and see if he’ll let me talk to him,” Diego announced.

When he arrived in Luther’s room, Five was sitting on his bed chatting with the ill boy. Diego knocked as he walked in.

“How you doin’ Luther?” He asked.

Luther rasped, “Been better. What are you doing up here? Who’s watching Klaus?”

Diego chuckled softly. Luther was always trying to make sure his team was doing well. “He and I aren’t on the best terms right now. I’ll check on him later though, okay? How are you really feeling?”

“It’s so awful, Diego. I’m pretty sure my skin is melting,” Luther said. He coughed productively into his elbow.

“You should get to bed, Luther. I’ll grab the humidifier from Klaus’ room,” Five said. Before Luther could protest, Five blinked out and back in with the humidifier. He set it up quickly.

After a few minutes of talking to Luther, Diego could see the good it was doing for Luther’s cough. The dry air in his room must have been suffocating him before. Diego moved closer into the room and sat down on Luther’s desk. He wanted to be close to him but there was no way in hell he was going to let himself catch whatever it was Luther had.

Somehow for a guy as big as he was, Luther looked gaunt. His face had an alarming pallor which threw Diego off greatly. Luther’s normally stern expression was replaced with an exhausted one, as if he hadn’t slept in days. Diego guessed that he probably hadn’t been able to sleep well for the past few nights.

“Hh...Klaushandmeatissue-hhK’TschOO! Hh-k’ISHHIEW!” Luther sneezed into his blankets, then accepted a tissue from Diego.

“It’s Diego, by the way. Not Klaus,” Diego said.

Luther wiped his nose as much as he could. “Sorry, I think my fever is messing with my brain.”

“It definitely is. You should have heard him earlier,” Five laughed. “Speaking of, though, we should take your temperature again. It’s been a few hours and you’ve had some medicine in you for quite a while.

Diego picked up the thermometer and handed it to Luther so he could do his thing. After the thermometer beeped, Luther said, “100.7, that’s not bad.”

“Yeah, well it’s still not good.” Diego took the thermometer and put it in his pocket, making himself a mental note to fucking clean it this time. “When can you have more fever reducers?”

Luther shrugged.

The Hargreeves’ were not the best at understanding the concept of time--save for Five--especially when they were ill. Diego did the math in his head and told Luther his schedule of doses, but then he doubted that Luther would ever remember any of it so he wrote it down on a sticky note next to his bedside table.

“Will you check up on Klaus for me?” Luther asked. “I haven’t seen him in a few hours and...I don’t know. I don’t want him to be feeling as miserable as I do.”

Diego nodded, “You got it, big guy. Call me if you need anything, or just get the human teleportation device to grab it for you. I’ll come back in a little while and tell you how he’s doing, okay?”

After gaining confirmation from Luther, Diego walked into the hallway. Instead of turning into Klaus’ room he walked into the bathroom first. He didn’t really know how to wash a thermometer properly but he took a washcloth and soaked it in warm water and a tiny bit of soap and scrubbed down the tip of the thermometer. After a few good scrubs Diego decided it should be clean enough and he took it to Klaus’ room.

He went to open the door but it was locked.

“Klaus, can you open up?” Diego asked.

“No.”

Diego sighed, “Please, I just want to talk to you. I want to apologize, okay?”

“I don’t want to get up.”

“Manifest Ben for two seconds and have him do it?” Diego suggested.

Sure enough, Ben opened the door. Diego was about to thank him but he disappeared quickly. He looked at Klaus and frowned.

“Hey,” Diego said.

Klaus muttered, “Hi. What was it you wanted again? To bully me some more while I’m already not at my prime?”

“Why aren’t you at your prime?”

“Forget it, Diego. I didn’t mean it.” Klaus turned his head so he didn’t have to make eye contact with Diego anymore.

So, Diego forgot it. He said, “I just wanted to say I’m sorry about earlier. You were right, I shouldn’t have been so rude to you, it’s just...I get so worried about you, Klaus. You know that I’ve seen you several times on what I thought would be your deathbed. When I see you getting sick or even having the potential of getting sick...it scares the shit out of me. I’m always scared that if you get a cold it’s going to turn into pneumonia and then it’s going to kill you! You’re j-just so...so unpredictable and your body seems to hate you and it terrifies me!”

Diego didn’t even realize that he was ranting until he finished. Klaus had his crooked old smile on his face.

“It’s alright, Diego, don’t worry about it. I know you were just looking out for me.” He set his knitting needles down and pushed himself up on his elbows, patting the space beside him on the bed. Diego  reluctantly sat down, just barely perched on the edge, still tense with guilt. “I’m sorry, too. I overreacted, you know how I can get when I’m - when people take care of me.” Diego relaxed a bit and cracked a smile.

“Yeah, I know. Remember December of 2015?” Klaus actually shuddered a bit at the memory; Diego had made him to go to the hospital on Christmas Eve, and he’d ended up spending four days there, with the worst pneumonia of his life, coupled with unintentional withdrawals. And he’d been a total dickhead to Diego every time he’d come to visit, accusing him of holding him hostage and “ruining Christmas” for him.

“Ahh, jeez. Why did you have to bring that up? You know I’m -ht’shjuh! Enxgt-eh’tschiew! Sorry.”

“Bless you. Yeah, I know.” Diego was reminded of his purpose there, and he held he thermometer out for Klaus. With a sigh, Klaus put it in his mouth. He’d resigned himself to the fact that he might have a fever when the warmth he thought had come from eating the soup didn’t go away after a half hour.

When it beeped, Diego grabbed it from him before he could read it. Even despite their previous conversation, he didn’t trust Klaus to tell the truth if his temperature had risen.

“99.5.” Diego’s face fell, and he looked at Klaus with worry. “That’s a fever.”

“Well, shit.” Klaus looked towards his crossed legs, refusing to meet Diego’s gaze. “I guess you were right. Sorry for being such a little bitch.”

“Hey, don’t be sorry.” Diego took the thermometer back. He bit down on his lip as he watched Klaus shrink in on himself a bit. “Hey, Vanya and Allison are gonna watch a movie, if you still want to. I don’t think they started yet.”

“I don’t know,” Klaus’ voice was small. “I’d probably ruin the movie by sneezing every five seconds.” He rubbed at his nose harshly as if he needed to prove his point any more than he already had.

“They’re gonna watch Legally Blonde 2.” Klaus perked up a bit at that; they all knew it was his comfort movie. “Come on, let’s go get you medicated and then I’ll make some popcorn.”

“Ugh, fine!”

Before they could even start the film, Diego had to run to the store to buy more corn kernels (Klaus insisted on homemade popcorn), actually make the popcorn, and run upstairs to check on Luther. Which led to him calming down a panicky Five (“It only went up .3 degrees, he’ll be fine!”), and giving his brother another fever reducer before insisting he call it a night. If anyone asked, he definitely did not tuck Luther in.

By the time they’d popped the film in, it was 9 pm, and Diego was exhausted. He was squished between Allison and Vanya on one couch, with Klaus sprawled across the other all by himself. He also had his own bowl of popcorn, which he’d claimed was a necessity now that he was confirmed to be sick, and he might be contagious.

To no one’s surprise, Five turned down their offer to join them. Klaus wasn’t sad about it; he’d bitched about the “tonal inconsistencies” and continuity errors the whole time they’d made him watch it the last time Klaus was sick, and the whole film had lost its charm.

Within the first half hour of the film, Diego was starting to drift off. Klaus’ surprising lack of sneeziness (thank you, Vanya) only made it easier for him to fall asleep for minutes at a time. Still, he refused to go to, bed. They all knew he was only staying up to make sure Klaus went to bed at a reasonable hour. Vanya had taken to lightly touching his shoulder every few minutes, in response to which he would suddenly stir and mumble, “I’m awake!”

It wasn’t until he started snoring for the third time that Klaus finally lost his patience and manifested Ben, who yelled at Diego that he would watch over their sick brothers while he slept. Allison and Vanya giggled as Diego frantically nodded and ageed. He checked Klaus’ temperature one final time (“99.2°, let’s hope it stays that way”) before calling a night.

Not long after he left, Allison announced that she was going to bed too. And although she pulled off a convincing fake yawn, Vanya and Klaus both shot each other identical looks. They knew she was just going up to check on Luther. Vanya confirmed that suspicion after the film ended, when she went up to check on him herself, only to find Allison already quietly fussing over him. She watched as Allison pulled the blankets up to his chin, noting his new t-shirt and the clean set of sheets on his nightstand. Once again, Vanya slipped out of the room just as quietly as she’d came in.

Klaus hadn’t managed to make it upstairs to his own room before he started dozing off on the couch. He was tired anyway, and the pills made the ghosts a bit quieter. And with Ben at his side humming some silly old song, it was impossible for him to not fall asleep.

[larissel]

Day 6: Mafia

Fandom: Legend of Korra

Ship: Baavira

Words: 2060

Summary: Don’t mess with the Beifongs, for mercy isn’t given out freely.

A/N: I hope you all enjoy my teaser fic for my The Sinners Walks These Streets series. It’s a Mafia AU I’ve actually been developing for years now; be sure to closely look out for a series of oneshots and a multi-chaptered fic. I won’t reveal too much details just yet, but feel free to send me asks about it~

[AO3]

This was great, just dandy and real wonderful; the night surely couldn’t get any better at this point onward. Baatar had his phone in his hand, staring down at the darkened screen with a vacant look on his face. It took a moment for his brain to process what just happened, a frustrated sigh left his lips when his charger was nowhere to be found before throwing his phone over to the backseat of his car where it landed next to his Switch…that’d died on him too. His arms were crossed together, leaning back against his seat. “You said the guy would be here tonight.” Baatar uttered dully while checking on the time for the umpteenth time of the night. They’ve been sitting here since eleven at night—it’s almost three in the morning.

“I never did said what time he’ll show up, did I now?” Kuvira drawled out, not looking up at him as she filed her nails.

“Are you sure he’s going to show up?” He turned his attention out of the window, his nose almost wrinkling at the sight of it all. It’s cold and wet out there, looking like it stinks of rain and shit but a shitty weather is the least of everyone’s concern. Anyone who has ever lived here are aware of the dangers of living in this city and how these streets are filled with the lowest of the low scums, how lazy the cops are and who don’t know how to do their jobs properly, and the leading people of this city are corrupted and were all mere puppets to the ones who are actually controlling this city. But to both Baatar and Kuvira, this was home.

“Trust me, he will,” Kuvira said as she shot him a look, taking her compact mirror out. “Why don’t you vape? Or maybe play some music?” She suggested, fixing her hair.

Well he would, but he unfortunately left his favorite vape pen back at the club. He relented to her other suggestion, doing what he was told to do when he turned the stereo on. Music immediately blared out from the speakers, wincing when the entire car practically shook before he lowered the volume down to a level that won’t ruin his hearing. He looked over to Kuvira to see she’s unfazed, watching her reapply her makeup on. He’s being half-honest when he says this, good for her that she has something to do to keep herself entertained and occupied, unlike him, there is not much for him to do. All he can do now is to sit and wait, counting how many people came by—which is zero. This part of town is empty, abandoned for quite awhile and hardly anyone ever comes here. It was a perfect place for business.

“Your screams will whisper,” Kuvira sang along with the music, “hang on you, twisted transistor.”

He’s hard now, blushing. He started to slide down in his seat ever so slightly, listening to her sing; she has always been quite good at it. Her voice was angelic and soft, but there was nothing gentle and sweet – the song itself was far from sweet – in her tone. It sounded almost malicious as if she was hinting for what is going to come. Frankly, it was sexy—oh yeah, he’s definitely turned on.

“You’re staring,” Kuvira said, smirking as she shut her compact mirror. She turned to him, looking at him with a raised brow. “Is there something you would like to share with me?” She asked.

Baatar shook his head several times, looking away from her piercing gaze. He said nothing to her, covering his mouth with his hand while bouncing his leg up and down. His face was red, oh there is no point in hiding it, she definitely knows.

“Don’t be so shy,” she said to him teasingly, leaning closer to him with her chest pushed up to his view, showing off her cleavage. “You don’t have to be, we’ve been so close for so long.” Her voice became more seductive, resting a hand on his chest. She could feel how tense he became, seeing how his throat bobbed and how his eyes would look over to her chest, and seeing him rubbing his hands up and down on his lap. Oh she knew that look on his face, grinning when she leaned up to his ear.

“Want me to suck your cock?” Her breath was hot, tracing the shell of his ear with her lips and felt him shivering. She started to rub his chest slowly, moving her mouth down to his jaw, leaving tiny kisses and nips; her hand moved down to his groin where she cupped his member. “You’re hard.” She purred.

“Oh do shut up.” He couldn’t take it anymore, groaning and shifted in his seat. He grinded against her hand, the night has been long and he was tired, not having the patience to deal with her damn teasing. “Blow me, will you?”

“I would,” Kuvira smiled, leaning back with her attention shifting away from him to the window, “it seems our guest of honor has finally arrived.”

“What?!” Baatar cried out incredulously, his attention shifted to the window too. “For fuck’s sake, the bastard decides to finally show up!” He growled, annoyed.

“Let’s get to business now,” she said, pulling out her handgun.

“I…I thought we were just here to talk,” he commented, eyeing the weapon.

“Oh we are.” She cocked her gun. “We’re here to deal with this traitor on the orders of your mom.”

Damn traitors, when will they ever learn? This wouldn’t be the first they’re dealing with such nor is this the last, some hard lessons obviously still needs to be learned. People truly are dumb enough to betray his family – one of the most elite clan to be fear – despite the many warnings. “Shouldn’t we wait for Wei and Wing?”  

“Your brothers are busy right now with their own little assignment, but don’t you worry,” she said, getting out of the car. “I’m the muscle.”

“Let’s just get this over and done with,” he said, following her out of the car.

“Hey, Han!”

The man named Han turned to the voice who called out to him, seeing Kuvira was making her way over to him, confused to see here. He was supposed to be meeting with—his eyes slowly widened, what the hell is she doing here?! Unless… ‘Oh no, no, no.’ He’s in a deep shit of trouble. He turned, taking off—

BANG!

Han grimaced, stopping in his tracks. He didn’t get the chance to even move, turning slowly to see Kuvira had her gun raised up in the air. She brought the barrel down to her lips, delicately blowing the smoke away.

“I didn’t give you permission to leave,” she said, her voice as cold as ice. “If you take another step I will make sure the next shot will go right between your eyes. Do you understand me?”

Han nodded his head, feeling himself starting to sweat. “I won’t run.” He needs to stay calm—or at least try.

“Excellent!” She was smiling now, her cold demeanor from before disappearing. “Continue to be a good boy and cooperative, I might you live.”

Han’s eyes flickered over to Baatar, seeing how the man stood there behind that vixen of a woman with a bored look on his face and arms crossed together, watching without interfering. Damn brat, he looked like he wants this to be done and over with, he would’ve sneered at him and maybe spit at him, but that was too risky with her here. His eyes moved back to Kuvira, seeing her stalking to him and circling around him like a lioness ready to tear her prey apart.

“So what brings you out here at this hour?” Kuvira asked as she gave her gun to Baatar who took it silently.

“I just—” He took the moment to clear his throat, doing his best to keep calm, “—wanted to go for a walk.” And maybe if he doesn’t move too much, she won’t smell his fear.

“Don’t you live at the other side of the city?” she said, raising a brow at him.

“It’s a beautiful night,” he replied.

“It’s fucking shitty,” Kuvira grunted as she began to pat him down. After a few seconds passed by, her hand stopped on his groin, she frowned before she gave the spot another pat.

“All you have to do was just ask.” He couldn’t help himself, letting that comment slip out. “I would have gladly given it you.”

“Oh please, don’t make me laugh. You wouldn’t even know how to satisfy anyone, and let alone, a blow up doll.” She rolled her eyes, slipping a hand down into his pants and gave him a look of pity. “You’re not even average.” She tsked at him as she pulled out a bag of ecstasy from his pants; it’s worth more than thousands of dollars.

“Has anyone ever told you stealing is wrong?” she drawled out, waving the bag in front of his face. “More so on betrayal?”

Han knew he had been caught, why else are they here? Though, he had hoped maybe, just maybe, he could’ve gotten away with it. “They made me do it!” He blurted out.

“Do you know how many fucking times I have to hear that excuse?” she scoffed, throwing the bag over her shoulder where Baatar caught it easily. “And the many different variations I have to hear?” And like a switch, her demeanor changed once more, all humor was no longer present in her tone.

“Angel dust, LSD, weed, etcetera, etcetera—” She enumerated with her fingers. “Sorry doesn’t cut it, money was lost because of you. You stole from us. You stole from her.” Her back was turned to him.

Han straightened his back, blood rushing up to his ears and feeling the adrenaline coursing wildly through his veins. He wasn’t sure if that was the drugs doing all the work or if it was instinct that’s making his mind run wild, but he’s not going to wait and ponder when he quickly drew his gun out now that she’s not looking. He wasn’t going to waste any more precious time. A cruel smirk curled its way onto his face, his finger on the trigger and was ready to pull. “You stupid bitc—”

“Fuck!” he screamed out in agony. His gun fell onto the ground before he quickly followed, falling onto his knees; his vision turned hazy with tears, clutching his bleeding hand with a horrified look on his face when he noticed a knife protruded from the back of his hand. He was in a great deal of pain, looking up to see Baatar stepped forward with a cold fury thundering in his gaze, this was all his doing. He should’ve known he wasn’t as harmless as he look, after all, this is the eldest son of the Matriarch. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to—please have mercy! I’ll tell you everything I know! I will tell you the location of my—”

“Your boss should be dead by now.” Kuvira’s back was still turned to him, she just received a text message from Wei and Wing. She walked back to the car only to stop by Baatar’s side, placing her hand on his shoulder. She could see the fiery rage burning in those eyes of his, oh he is definitely heated right now and knowing how it greatly angered him to see Han made an attempt for her life. It’s pretty hot to see him like this to be quite honest. She bit down on her lower lip, eyes sparkling with excitement; oh yeah, she’s definitely turned on. Maybe there’s a hotel they can find and go to after this is all over to celebrate. “Do you want to finish him off, darling?” Her arms were wrapped around his waist, pressing herself against his side and stood on her toes to kiss the corner of his lips.

“Do say hello to the rest of your boys in hell for us.”

Baatar raised the gun up to Han who kept on crying and pleading for his life, but it simply fell into deaf ears. “Don’t mess with the Beifongs.”

[the-erudite-library]

Villainy pt 1: The Big Bads

okay i’m going to just admit right now that this post is a little biased, but i’m a salty, overanalyzing fuck so i’m going to write it anyways.

for the sake of ease of understanding, lets pretend that all the antagonists in this story are actual villains (villainy describes a malicious intent where as antagonism describes a character who is direct opposition to the protagonist) and ignore the biased narration of the series being that it’s told from a first person perspective (more on why that makes understanding the characters in this series shitty and confusing can be found here). I care a lot about the antagonists in this series and so it just feels right that i write a fucking essay based entirely around how cool they are, their wasted potential, and why some of them are just way, way cooler than others. I’m just going to go ahead and cover all the supposed villains rather than just the big bads, and i’m probably going to massively overestimate their complexity and actually try to work out a narrative for all of them because a lot of these supposed villains are actually rather sympathetic characters when they’re looked at from the right angle and honestly the narrative kind of treats them like garbage. I’m not saying that any of them were totally justified in their actions, I just think that sometimes the plot and writing of the story is so aggressively vague, biased, and nonsensical that it can be difficult to understand them.

I genuinely think that Jeanine is the best antagonist out of all of them, and I’m sure that that can be fiercely debated because really it depends on what you mean when you say ‘best’. What I mean is that I appreciate the way that there are all these little breadcrumbs for people to draw their own conclusions about her but nothing that ever really redeems her as a person, also that she’s really the closest to an actual villain that the story ever gets. I already talked about how she’s really not in the post linked above and also in this one, how she’s really a morally gray and complex person. But what I also love about her is that she’s so incredibly straightforward about everything. For the most part, she doesn’t waste much time with theatrics or melodrama, she just does the thing (aside from that one thing with the water tank in the first book that was really kind of out of character for what had just been established about her and i could not have been more glad when they changed it in the movie). Her plan makes sense, the goals are clear and her methods are obviously well thought out; I wouldn’t at all be surprised if she spent years putting it all together piece by tiny piece without anyone ever seeing it coming but by the time they did there was no stopping it. She went to great lengths to protect her own image even after the Abnegation attack and for the most part it really felt like it was just Tris and her scrawny little army up against this massively powerful woman who had the whole city at her beck and call (if you ignore the fact that the insurgency never really lost a battle of course). She suffered no fools and for the most part seemed to keep everyone at an arms length; no one knew the full scope of the plan but her and no one could ever get close enough to eventually betray her. She built up an empire of people that she held together for quite some time. Even as the war began to tip out of Erudite’s favor, no important people ever seemed to even try to leave (Jack Kang is the only example that I can think of that didn’t die before things really began to fall apart for Erudite, which leads me to think that she didn’t have all that many important associates to begin with). She was kind of one track minded and completely relentless in chasing down her goals, and it made her terrifying because you knew that she was just never going to stop until she got what she was after. She wasn’t above using any and every dirty and underhanded tactic at her disposal so long as it got her what she wanted. She wasn’t an antagonist that could be handled easily or quietly; stopping her required amassing an army and half-destroying the entire city because anything less would have been snuffed out before it could gain any traction because she was just that powerful. She always seemed to be one step (or ten) ahead and defeating her ultimately required having not much of a plan at all or a plan that not everyone was clear on because chaos was the one thing she couldn’t break down, compartmentalize, and ultimately conquer.

Jeanine and Tris’ dynamic is interesting to say the least, and not in a shippy way but in like a very genuinely compelling way. I’m going to include movie canon in this because despite how shit the movies were about some details, others were greatly improved upon (i.e. replacing the water tank bullshit with a straight up execution, it may have been a little bit less dramatic but it was far more in line with Jeanine’s character). From the very moment they meet, Tris is full of snark and sass no matter how inappropriate it may be in the moment. What they have isn’t so much witty banter as it is Tris making really disrespectful comments and Jeanine starting off as being polite about it and she just gradually loses her patience. They clash on the deepest level, not really equals but complete opposite. Let’s be honest with ourselves; Tris was not more powerful than Jeanine, she was not smarter, in the grand scheme of things she wasn’t stronger either. Which makes the fact that she was able to best her really interesting. Jeanine doesn’t handle chaos well and Tris is almost all chaos. It’s hardly a game of chess and more like one person losing and deciding to knock all the pieces off the table...which in and of itself is a kind of victory I guess.

Evelyn is...an interesting villain. For the most part, she seems to be a person driven largely by hatred and fear as a result of years and years of suffering and pain piling up on top of each other like some sort of sedimentary rock of trauma. She very well may have started out as someone who was simply just power hungry, or maybe not power hungry but just ambitious. I highly doubt she was cut out for Abnegation and there is a lot of evidence that she’s Divergent (if she’s not then it’s kind of unclear exactly where she would fit, Erudite maybe). From the way that things are set up in the Four novellas, it sounds a lot like her plans have been coming together for a long time too and that they have been the complete and total focus of her life. She brought together potentially thousands of people, made them obey her, made them fight and die for her, but most impressively she made them stick by her for years when they had absolutely no reason to. It’s kind of insinuated, if not outright said, that Evelyn is completely self made and that everything that the factionless are they what are because she built them up like that. By all accounts, she is just as impressive as Jeanine and quite the force to be reckoned with. However, her reasons for doing what she does make her all the more interesting. Like I said, perhaps she might have started out with a simple desire to be powerful and that may have been why she picked Abnegation in the first place, in hopes of getting on the council (i’ve seen that theory tossed out in fanfic before and it actually makes a lot of sense). But Marcus’ treatment of her and the way that many of the Abnegation are just so willfully ignorant, the way that they will go to great lengths to protect their image as a faction (and by extension, Marcus’ image as a leader) even if that means turning a blind eye to the fact that she was being abused must have been much more than disillusioning. It certainly couldn’t have done any good for her emotionally and by the time Four reunites with her for the first time in his novella she is a far cry from the woman that he knew as a child because she had to become someone else entirely just to survive. 

It obviously spurred a powerful desire for revenge within her, not just against the man who wronged her but against the faction system as a whole that neglected her and held her down. When she finally saw her chance to take that revenge it wasn’t her capitalizing on the war, on Dauntless’ fracturing, Abnegation’s destruction, and Erudite getting less trustworthy by the day. No, it was her perceiving a hairline fracture in the very foundation of the system that wouldn’t become anything threatening for literal years. Much like Jeanine, she stacked the deck in her favor long before anyone knew what she was doing; and in her case she had the extra advantage of nearly everyone who knew her thinking she was dead. Evelyn’s Factionless and Jeanine’s Erudite were two very powerful and very similar forces led by two very powerful and very similar women, and honestly it’s a damn shame that we got Tris constantly butting in and all but bending fate in her favor when we could have had a delightfully destructive and complex war with Jeanine and Evelyn as the central focusses.

Especially because Evelyn has a flat, kind of boring, and frankly rather irritating relationship with Tris. I think they maybe say a few sentences to each other ever, despite Tris hating her and wanting so badly to fight her. And I get it, Tris hates her for abandoning Tobias and that’s kind of understandable I guess, but given the fact that she was meant to be one of the big villains in book three one would think that there would be more of an interaction. I mean, sure, they had that one thing at the beginning of Allegiant with the interrogation scene but I’m like 90% sure that was the longest conversation they’d ever had or ever would have and it’s disappointing. 

And then there’s David, the disappointment of the three big bads imo. Generally most elements of Allegiant were disappointing and frustrating, but David was honestly one of the worst elements. He was sort of cooler in the movie, and by cooler I mean a hell of a lot creepier especially regarding Tris. Combine his relationship with Tris in the movie with the fact that in the books it’s very heavily implied that he had unrequited feelings for Natalie and it makes his relationship with her both fascinating and unsettling. Of course, that’s all wasted because those two qualities are exclusive to the book and movie respectively, therefore making his relationship with her sort of flat in both. He doesn’t really have all that much “screen” time in the books at all, at least not in comparison to characters like Nita and Matthew. He had virtually no personality and the only reason I’m including him here at all is because of the role he plays in the Allegiant movie. I’m not saying that he has the same potential or deserves the same amount of plot focus that Evelyn and Jeanine do (mainly because they just have had more time for their characters to build), but honest to god if VRoth was going to make genetic damage a metaphor for oppression (don’t get me started on how badly that was handled) at least, maybe, i don’t know, give the oppressors more than a vague and distant role in the story. I’m not in any way saying that the issues between the GD and GP people should have been highlighted, because god knows that VRoth would have just handled it poorly and I would legit have probably set something on fire. And David doesn’t need to be humanized, what he needs to be is a direct counter to Tris’ ego. If absolutely nothing else that should have been the role of all the Bureau characters save for Amar and George. Tris lowkey kind of doesn’t know how to be wrong and thinks that she knows better than absolutely everyone, and when she’s revealed to be something ~special~ again in Allegiant she became even more of an asshole. She very obviously did think that the genetically pure or the Divergent or whatever were better than the genetically damaged and it goes unacknowledged to the point where i’m just convinced that it’s completely accidental. She’s completely unsympathetic to the actual oppression that the genetically damaged face. 

But I digress.

David is honestly too distant and vague as a character to be analyzed very closely, which is unfortunate because he could have paralleled real people with real sociopolitical philosophies.

[momestuck]

Epilogues: Candy, Ch 22-26 [Epilogue 5]

/So a lot of heavy shit has happened, though worse is yet to come (I’ve been warned of an onscreen sexual assault in chapter 32).

Everyone’s been having babies and funerals! It’s a busy time.

(note: csa mention in chapter 23, though it does not occur in the narrative)

Chapter 22

This is another John-Terezi text convo chapter. There’s been a three-year timeskip. And... it’s raining ghosts now.

So I guess that’s what became of the whole ghosts in the Furthest Ring thing?

We also learn that, on top of the breeding restrictions, trolls are banned from rising beyond certain levels in government. Jane is, we learn, pretty much running the government behind the scenes, because what makes fascist movements tick is one evil person, obviously.

Karkat’s the one with a backbone at least...

JOHN: and karkat...

JOHN: he’s gone completely off the grid!

JOHN: at first we all assumed that the reason he ran away was because he got fed up with his shitty poly relationship.

JOHN: which was probably part of it, honestly. but now i keep seeing his face on all the resistance posters!

JOHN: i think they may have actually put him in charge?

TEREZI: H3H

TEREZI: 1 4LW4YS KN3W H3 H4D 1T 1N H1M

This situation is only exacerbated by the ghosts. So that means characters who were very definitely dead in the main storyline can show up.

Gamzee has been apparently spreading this religion of ‘redemption arcs’ by ‘making out with people’, and doing some kind of milk-based ‘baptism’. John, meanwhile, asks about the ethics of kidnapping baby Tavros from his horrific parents...

We get to bare witness to Gamzee ‘redeeming’ the ghosts of Feferi and Eridan. Which involves Eridan going on about Feferi’s feet and Gamzee mashing their faces together to make them ‘kiss and make up’.

Jane, it seems, is going full Condesce in more ways than one:

Just then, a dark shadow passes over the park. The crowd falls silent as they raise their heads to watch a drone ship pass by overhead. Its design is insect-like, splitting into many jagged branches, each decked out with weapons and cameras. It’s completely silent, and encased in armor with a bright red finish, smooth and seamless. It’s often cited by Jane as the crown jewel of Crockercorp’s various military contracts with the government.

...including literally building her spaceships, and sending them out over the Troll kingdom.

So we’re basically going to have the Holocaust allegory in here I guess? Fucking hell.

chapter 23

We get more words towards Roxy’s steady character dissolution...

It’s not like Roxy had ever been argumentative, exactly. He just seems to remember someone from his youth who was somewhat more contrarian in spirit than this person he’s married to now.

Back when they were dating, John thought she was acting a little off. Not quite in a bad way, but perhaps a little too “in love,” too fast. At least she still seemed like herself most of the time. But since the wedding, every year that goes by, she seems to become just a little more conciliatory. Not just toward him but toward life in general. She indulges Harry Anderson liberally and almost thoughtlessly. She doesn’t care that her best friend is slowly turning into an executive overseeing the corporate arm up the puppet ass of a ruthless dictatorship. She still thinks Gamzee is being sincere about all this “redemption” bullshit, even though he’s been casting an increasingly dark and hungry shadow behind Jane: a malicious royal vizier to her burgeoning imperial persona.

So John’s going to do something, and hopes that it will make things feel ‘real’ again... which is to say obviously what he talked about with Terezi, kidnapping/rescuing Tavros Crocker. Well-intentioned, but... I do not anticipate this going well.

We learn a little such as... Jane’s planning to outlaw human and troll marriage, which would retroactively hit Rose and Kanaya. Which I guess is the final straw for them. (Frankly it should be well past the final straw for all of them. They should all be with Karkat by this point!)

Also Jane and Jake are in ‘auspistice counselling’. We witness a loud row, in front of Tavros...

TAVROS: It’s fine,,, my parents are kismeses after all,,,

like, fuck.......

It’s a birthday party for Harry Anderson (John and Roxy’s kid), and Jane’s gift is, well, a fucking imperial drone!

sometimes I picture V’s gleeful face as we see the next thing she’s got for us... and now you lick the clown’s armpit... jane’s making the Holocaust but for fictional space aliens...

John awkwardly finds an excuse to be alone with Tavros, to convince him to run away. The kid dialogue is convincingly naive.

The possibility of child sexual abuse (by Gamzee) is raised, but it’s made clear this isn’t the case: what ever else Gamzee is in this version, he doesn’t rape children. However, that the situation is overall abusive in just about every other way is more than clear. Tavros, on his part, seems to be very keen to leave once he’s convinced John can escape Jane’s security.

I have a feeling the imperial drone may become relevant again shortly.

Jade, however, witnesses what John’s trying to do. She insists it will just make everything worse... (also Jake has an ‘execution dance off show’ because yeah...)

Whatever weird character corrosion has hit them is finally raised...

JOHN: if there was another way we would have found it by now!!!

JOHN: but there isn’t one, because everyone’s been all... brainwashed by marriage, or whatever the hell happened over the last few years that made things be this way!

JOHN: it’s like everyone just talks past each other all the time!

JADE: john...

JOHN: i’m the only one who ever seems to realize that something...

JOHN: that something’s WRONG!

Tavros sadly can’t get a word in edgewise as they start having a go at each other - John calling out everything that’s wrong, the way Jade forced a relationship on Dave and Karkat, and... and the noise is loud enough that Jane arrives on the scene.

John finally has a go at her with all the latent awfulness that’s been building up to this point. The fascism, the way she’s treated Jake, the Gamzee thing... the narration has put us very much on his side, centred his perspective, but his friends won’t hear it. And his windy powers destroy the room. So that’s something.

John runs away.

Comment: the mostly strict John viewpoint makes me wonder if there’s any degree of unreliable narration. All the same, most of the stuff is pretty undeniable.

chapter 24

This one begins with an interesting exchange:

JADE [alt-Calliope]: the timelines are interacting again.

ARADIA: ooh do you hear anything interesting

SOLLUX: don’t be s0 n0sy aradia.

To me the implication is that a lot of the ‘arrivals’ in this timeline - alt-Calliope in Jade’s body, the ghosts - are as a result of things that might be happening in the Meat story.

Through alt-Calliope’s eyes, we see Terezi and John’s conversation. Terezi is lost, in more ways than one, in the dreaming void searching for Vriska. She’s also experiencing derealisation... John, apparently in a mood for dropping harsh challenges, tells her point blank that Vriska is either dead, or, not worth her time for leaving her in doubt for so long.

alt-Calliope explains that what is at stake is not the destruction of this universe - but those of them here are ‘the lucky ones’, who live ‘beyond the reach of the prince’. She doesn’t bother to explain what is at stake.

Meanwhile, John and Terezi talk depression. There’s some really vital Terezi dialogue here...

JOHN: please. please come home.

TEREZI: TH3N WH4T

JOHN: umm, i dunno.

JOHN: we hang out and stuff?

TEREZI: JOHN YOU ST1LL DONT G3T 1T

TEREZI: 34RTH C 1S *NOT* MY HOM3

JOHN: do you really miss alternia that bad?

TEREZI: 1 D1D FOR 4 LONG T1M3

TEREZI: MOR3 TH4N K4RK4T 4ND K4N4Y4 D1D 4T L34ST

TEREZI: BUT 1 H4V3 NO 1D34 4NYMOR3

TEREZI: 4LT3RN14, VR1SK4, SGRUB

TEREZI: 1M SO CONFUS3D 4BOUT WH4T 1 W4NT

TEREZI: UGH, 1 THOUGHT TH4T NOT K1LL1NG H3R WOULD M4K3 M3 F33L B3TT3R

TEREZI: BUT 1NST34D 1TS L1K3 1 R3TCONN3D 4 HUG3 CHUNK OUT OF MY SOUL

TEREZI: 1 3R4S3D 4N 4CT1ON OF R3GR3T 4ND GR13F...  

TEREZI: 4ND JUST TURN3D 1T 1NTO SOM3TH1NG 1 C4NT STOP CH4S1NG 4FT3R

TEREZI: M4YB3 WH4T 1 D1D W4S N3CESS4RY TO S4V3 3V3RYON3 3LS3

TEREZI: BUT 1T SUR3 D1DNT S4VE M3

oh terezi....

terezi is giving up. she tells john she texted, echoing his words, to ‘give him the courtesy of closure’. and that she’s going to let herself die, alone in the Furthest Ring.

this is the ‘sweet fluffy’ branch huh

chapter 25

finally an update on what’s going on with Karkat!

he’s been somehow appointed ‘Commander’ of the rebellion, with good old Swifer Eggmop as one of his comrades! I’m so glad Swifer is having a role. Karkat is not all that pleased about the successes of his rebellion:

KARKAT: SO FAR ALL THIS “TROLL REBELLION” HAS AMOUNTED TO IS A WHOLE LOT OF DICK ALL, WITH AN ADDITIONAL SIDE SERVING OF JACK SQUAT, FOLLOWED UP BY A FINAL COURSE OF GETTING TO WATCH OUR TOP ANALYST, CLIPER BORDEN, BEING FORCED TO DANCE TO AVOID LIFE IMPRISONMENT IN A LABOR CAMP ON LIVE TELEVISION AND MAKING A COMPLETE ASS OF HIMSELF.

It’s all a weird mix of surreal and grimdark, much like the Alpha kids’ backstory in Homestuck proper. There’s hard labour camps... making cake; a ‘pastry-based shadow dictatorship’.

Rose and Kanaya are at least involved somewhat in the troll rebellion, and transport of the Mother Grub has been arranged.

Anyway, Karkat’s typically grumpy internal monologue is interrupted by the sudden arrival of Meenah from another dimension. A living Meenah - equipped with a Ring of Life. John asks if she got it from Calliope, but Meenah insists she did not. (Possibly she got it from Andrew Hussie himself? I’d have to watch Cascade again probably...)

Meenah, it seems, is fresh from battling Lord English - apparently without success. But her massive army of ghosts arrives with her... and she’s willing for Karkat to take charge and order her around, as long as he does it with a suitably commanderly demeanour. Does this mean the rebellion now stands more of a chance? Meenah is ruthless (she was the Condesce in another life), though capricious... Karkat is honest and direct and angry about the right things, but rather prone to getting lost in it.

Also he still won’t text Dave, and won’t let Rose talk to him about it.

chapter 26

Back to John, who’s thinking about messaging Terezi again - presumably in the hope that she is not, in fact, dead?

He’s getting a good old mope on about the seeming fakeness, non-’canonicity’ of life on Earth C. But after some ‘melodramatic contemplating’ in this vein, he’s interrupted by his dad’s car.

I’m going to be very curious if the Meat route explains how all this stuff got into the Earth C universe.

Unfortunately, what John finds in the car is... not his dad, but a bit of Terezi’s blood. From which he concludes... he’s never going to see her again, there was never even a possibility of it.

Feeling derealisation more than ever, John just screams a lot.

Damn lol, this story is making me care about John Egbert of all people!

epilogue 5

This is the episode where the whole idyll comes crashing down. Things aren’t ok, things weren’t going to be ok, trying to pretend things were ok just made everyone miserable.

I am sufficiently depressed that that rather appeals as a narrative - much more than a ‘happily ever after’ ending. But it’s not over yet.

Hopefully there’s yet hope for the characters I like to find some manner of escape from this latest hell, develop out of the worst selves they’ve built... Roxy, at least, I hope can change, stop being this non-person...

[lalunangel]

Ojo.

I have a lot of stories where eyes would touch my skin and harm me just because I had something they lacked.. But the last time I had gotten it I was 14 and I assumed I was finally acceptable by the nature of adult women and men. I was not. In North Carolina a pair of evil eyes grazed and racked my body in a little black dress and green cardigan. My sister said I looked like Marry Poppins. I felt cute and empowered. But that entire night I sat there.. She was staring at me.. I assumed it was because my hair was red.. And I looked like christmas. I have it written down in a journal I took with me.. About how this woman made me feel. I was uncomfortable under her gaze and slowly I started to weaken and feel sick. I got cold chills and the fever I broke befire boarding my plane shot up. I was shaking. When they introduced me as one of the bridesmaids I felt everyones necks break to judge me.. But her eyes never left. I know it was her because her boyfriend spoke to me and I didn’t know and I laughed and told him I was only 19... and not interested. He laughed and said he understood and I was glad we moved on from it but her tension never broke with me. I finally had enough before my meal even arrived.. My eyes were itching and burning. My skin was crawling. I needed to go to our hotel room. I ran back. I left and sat on a chair taking my normal medicine to ease my throat and head of the pounding. I took my antidepressants and decided when it kicked in.. I would be okay and that a shower was necessary. I kicked off my cute shoes.. And pulled my cardigan off.. And i eventually pulled my dress off... but the moment my undergarments came off my breasts and thighs were in agony.. i started shaking.. crying naked on the restroom floor.. pain.. pain.. my eyes swelled up and everything was thick milky white... everything... blurry... I cried... I knew no one would come back for hours but i cried... and cried begging for someone to come help me... i couldn’t move. My fever felt high before but here my skin was on fire.. i crawled to the door and climbed up and put on pajamas... and crawled to my bed and cried more... I woke up to hands.. hands on my skin.. cold.. “Breathe Angel.. please breathe” I didn’t think much of that comment but i gasped for air after listening.. cold hands and when i opened my eyes... my dad was there and i cried.. i screamed it wasn’t fair... and when i closed my eyes again and opened my sister was there crying... “You stopped breathing” the bed drenched in my sweat.. My skin felt clammy.. I could have died here and no one would have known.. I opened my mouth and said “I want dad” and she cried and hugged my arm and said “I’m here don’t go” and i gasped for air more just to calm down my pulse.. I couldn’t breathe.. My eyes hurt. It hurt to look. my body was in flames still and i still had chills... I couldn’t swallow.. i couldn’t talk for long.. all i did was cry.. like a mute baby.. i fell asleep again after.. tons of hands on my body when i woke up “is she okay?” “why is her skin turning that color” “can she breathe” “she’s not contagious so why is she still sick” “we need to take her to the emergency room” “i can’t afford that” “angel please don’t die here” and i didn’t feel like i was going to be okay.. but i didn’t think i was going to die. I just thought my skin needed to be washed inside and out and my bones soaked in milk. I woke up hours later gasping for air again and someone’s gloved hand shoved down my throat and i gagged on it and cried... whoever it was grabbed my swollen tonsil and pulled their fingers back out and said “the blood is from her throat” and i clung to their arm hoping they’d take care of me.. they’d help me.. my eyes open but all i saw was white... and then i screamed “MAKE IT STOP MOM” and she touched my forehead and said “I’m trying baby i’m trying stay with me” I must have stopped breathing a lot.. i must’ve been coughing up blood on my pillow.. i must’ve been bad to see because that night felt like days alone.

so many people came in and out of my room that night and at some point i got annoyed with hands touching me and pain shooting shock waves through every part of me.. so i said “Egg. Ojo. Please” and my mom automatically understood my demand.. and she waited for my water and my egg to be room temp and she prayed over me and rubbed it across my skin. I don’t know why I thought of this pain as the same of ojo.. but it was.. and I wanted it gone.. an hour after she blessed my skin i could open my eyes and see the world.. my egg had fried in the water.. i was in a downward spiral fast and with my fever being so high... and not able to be broken.. and no medicine helping... i could’ve been in the hospital the next day.. i opened my eyes and the family my tía was marrying into was standing by my bedside looking about ready to take me.. but when i opened my eyes and my body temp had reduced back to its normal heat.. they hugged me.. and i laughed weakly.. my swollen throat.. gone... my headache gone.. my shitty vision gone.. my breasts and thighs no longer hurt.. and i could stand on my own.. i could breathe.. everything i was experiencing was gone.. and grandma and my sister saw me sit up and ran to my side and my sister was crying... “I thought you were going to die you stopped breathing a lot and the blood was everywhere” and i just smiled and said “Death could never take me away from you” and i laid my head on her shoulder.. I wasn’t going to die. But i felt close.. and i kept seeing and hearing my dads voice.. and i kept calling out for him.. but it could’ve all been a dream.. I took a shower and dressed more modest like.. but i shouldn’t have to.

I shouldn’t have to change my dress or my style for the sake of some assholes confidence. I shouldn’t have to hide MY BODY. It’s my choice and no matter what IM NOT ASKING TO BE RAPED OR GIVEN OJO! I was livid and at the wedding that same girl was wearing a slutty outfit and before i graduated i was soft and kind and forgiving BUT ILL BE DAMNED YOU HAVE A GOOD NIGHT WHILE YOU CAUSED ME SO MUCH SUFFERING THE NIGHT BEFORE! So i spilt meatballs and vegetables and ranch on her. loved your jumper, hated you. it was stained and it looked awful and she had to go change INTO SOMETHING MORE MODEST! FUCK YOU! My grandma played with my hair and told me “She deserves it but you should’ve let what was coming come” and i said “More is to come when envious eyes poison innocent skin” and true to form we were playing with fireworks at the wedding venue and her new dress got burned for flirting with someone else and her boyfriend cheated on her with one of my older cousins. And she was mad at me as if i had invoked evil. ALL I WANTED WAS FOR YOU TO SMELL LIKE MEATBALLS! The universe is tired of your shit and let you have what you deserved. I didn’t laugh because that’s ugly. But my grandma looked at me and said “The universe doesn’t show you always but it loves you more than you could imagine” and i said “She hurt other girls before me. It was bound to happen. It’s just unfortunate for her that the universe does side with me more often than not” And it does. Every ounce of pain and suffering i’ve found that the world brings it back times three to people who harm me. My mom.. I don’t want to explain but she got hers after she had wished me dead.. and all i replied was with the same malicious comment she said to me. my sister.. i’m sorry you didn’t deserve this but at the same time you should’ve just stopped when i asked. my ex boyfriend/roommate YOUR EYESIGHT IS GETTING WORSE BUT ITS BECAUSE ALL YOU DID WAS CHEAT ON ME SLUT! Anyone who’s ever been rude and hurt me severely has been met with something awful and I dont hope for terrible things.. but they come. They come they come they come. if you wish to cast blame.. Theres a protection spell on my skin from my great grandmother... that blesses me... from when she met me... to now.. until the end of time.. She saw what they would do to me.. and blessed me. So as long as i am alive... i will never worry about seeking revenge myself. it comes on its own. but i really did wanna throw meatballs at her because i wanted to wear my cute dress and dance and be happy.. but like i say. It’s coming. The universe broke my heart for the last time and watched me rise from those ashes laughing and surviving.. i might not be evil but whatever it is that desires me to live is. it’s not afraid of consequences either.

[lerrengwesten]

The Peninsula, Chapter 6

Journey through the Woodlands and some looks into Teltra’s past and how thing have changed in 10+ years weeeee

No actual violence but some non-graphic discussion of it and some very blunt talk of death.  Also characters being jerks but really, that’s something inescapable in this story, pretty much everyone except Teltra and maybe Loreaft are awful in their own ways. 

The next morning was foggy.  Diffused rays shown between the branches of the trees around them and across the sleeping bodies of Teltra, Vlevetsi, Loreaft, Vtegnaselecene, and the stranger.  Four of them gradually arose as they awakened at their designated times.  Vtegnaselecene didn't move, she was due to remain dormant until next summer.

Just as Telta had finished blinking the sleep from his eyes, the stranger went right back to talking.

"Oh, say, I've never told you my name, that's something relevant.  I'm Bygovir.  Anyways, back to the Tanonuim topic.  Yeah, so a lot of them can't stand Woodlanders because-"

He bit his lip a moment before talking.

"I really need to get a move on, Bygovir... Maybe if you show us the way we can continue our chat?"

He was admittedly fascinated by the subject, just a bit frustrated by Bygovir's... enthusiasm for it and nonstop rambling.  But it would be good background noise for travelling, and help keep some of the edge off going through a questionable territory like this.  

"Oh, sure thing!  Now where are you lot off to?"

Loreaft just stared, still unsure about Bygovir.  But she still spoke up, as quietly as a Fsemacea could.

"A place beyond the Woodlands"

"Yeah, but in which direction?"

"Do I have to share?"

"If we're going there, yes.  Come on, I'm not one of those Atochengra freaks. I'm a stalker, not a fighter, and not even the malicious sort, just a nosy creep who likes learning the details of others' lives because it's fascinating."

"I'm still worried."

He motioned towards Teltra.

"Look, I'll give this guy my coathanger if that makes you feel any safer.  He can't even use it to bend himself and without it I'm no threat to you.  Without that, I'm a little pipsqueak who's a third your height and some tiny fraction your weight, what would I do?  Swat your shins?  Trip you?"

"But I would still be directing you specifically to a place where my kind could be attacked by your kind."

"Look, I don't know anything past the feet of the mountains, all I can do is get you to the edge of the woods and then you're all on your own.  You won't be leading me to whatever this place is unless it's right on the border."

Loreaft glanced at Vlevetsi, who was resistant as usual, before sighing and turning back to Bygovir.

"I suppose this shall be safer than going off alone with these savage creatures around. The place I'm looking for is a gap between the mounts in the very north reaches."

"That's better.  But my, don't you sound like a Tanonuim speaking of Woodlanders like that!"

Vlevetsi suddenly jumped in.

"Stop saying that word."

Bygovir chuckled and rolled his eyes, ignoring her completely.  

"It's probably best you not say such things to their faces.  You are in their world now, and they easily outnumber us."

He gestured to the woods where they had come from and the group followed, tracing a trail that wrapped around the lake.  It had once been heavily worn, but clearly not used for a while and small weeds were growing up.  Teltra was surprised by how thin the trees actually were here, as he could easily feel the sun's warm at his back.  Even stranger was how regular their positioning was.  Clearly the larger trees here had been replaced at some point by a Far Spirit.  Yet smaller shrubs had since sprung up wherever they pleased.  This Bygovir must have been right about this being a little-used entrance now, as even the spirits seemed to pay it less regard.  But he soon would come to an even less expected sight.

The woods cleared out and ahead was a large, rolling meadow of nothing but neatly trimmed grass.  And more worrisome, they saw their first moving brown form. And then their second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth.  Teltra stalled.  

But Vlevetsi did not.

"They call them Woodlanders.  But they are in a meadow."

In typical Fsemacea fashion, the group was alerted by her volume.

"What's the sound?"

"What a strange voice."

"It's much too deep and soft and loud"

"Oh, it's an outsider."

The largest of the group strolled up to the visitors.  Teltra at first went rock-still, then began shivering violently, unable to contain his nerves.  His breathing softened a bit as they gave him alone a look more confused than anything.  

"Never seen you before.  Sure look like someone from around here, though.  Awful tall, though. So maybe you're just an imposter.  Seen a few of those before."

Teltra bristled at the last comment.  

Several others chimed in.

"He's strangely slender and still to be one of us.  I have to agree."

"Pretty good imitation otherwise if you ask me."

"Yeah, those are some impressive stripes."

And then a somewhat cracked older voice.

"You dolts.  Don't you know a modern Lteiasecl when you see one?"

The speaker looked him up and down, narrowing their eyes.  He flinched as a scaly hand reached towards him and brushed his fur backwards, uncovering several tiny silver scars and some slight ridges along the surface of his skin.  

"He's real.  No outsider would have nicks like that. And the ridges are a tell-tale sign that he's a Lteiasecl alright.  Though I guess that sad sap Solossco is too but he sure doesn't have the scratches."

The group loosened a bit, still not understanding what the one in charge meant by Lteiasecl.  Teltra gave them all a nervous wave and grin as he smoothed back his fur and relaxed himself as he realized the threat was dissipating.

"Oh, I know Solossco.  Yeah, he's my sibling in design, I guess we're both technically Lteiasecl, but that term doesn't mean the same thing out there as in here.  We were good pen pals for a while until he stopped responding and I don't know why.  What happened with him?  Did someone lose his message one day?"

Their leader swallowed.

"Erm.. he's unwell.  But it's probably not the best to go into any more detail so soon.  It's got nothing to do with you, anyways."

Someone butted in.

"Solossco's gonna die because his shitty spirit never replaced parts because he's made weird and it would be fucking expensive to so in his current state."

"Don't be so blunt Apatner."

"You can't deny it."

Teltra was quiet.  

"Well, that's why I said I wouldn't go into detail.  But welcome.  I think I might have seen you once or twice a couple years ago, what's your name?  I'm Nerevtha."

"Teltra."

"Mm, yes, I'm certainly heard of you."

"You don't hate me, do you?  Think I'm an imposter?"

"No, of course not.  Maybe you're built a little odd but in these last few years I've seen stranger things labelled as Woodlanders by the spirits.  Like those Tanonuim your little pal there loves so much.  You may be big, but they're even more graceful than you Lteias and have horns and love their little circus tricks so much they're basically just outsiders dressed up as us."

Bygovir spoke up.

"And you've forgotten about the worst one.  That Htolgia freak with all those holes in him and freakishly thin limbs.  Makes Teltra look like that big white Nyoccel everyone talks about."

Teltra felt himself go quiet again, realizing both that he might be free of their scorn but that it had merely been transferred to some other poor sap.  He suddenly felt rather uncomfortable.

"H-how about we continue on our way Bygovir this was a lovely chat but we're just passing through here thank you very much."

Nerevtha cocked her neck at his nearly indecipherable speech.

"That was... sudden.  But if you insist, I suppose."

Teltra grabbed at Bygovir's arm and dragged him along as he continued in the general direction they had been going before.  The Fsemacea seemed relieved to not have to listen to the creatures they so abhorred yabber on more, though they clearly couldn't show it on their faces.  He tried desperately to hide his agitation by walking as gracefully as he could.

Bygovir squinted up at him as they hustled along.

"What the hell was that about?"

He was silent, continuing to storm on while trying to hide the fear and slight anger of his face.  For once, he was glad Loreaft and Vlevetsi kept to themselves.  

"The whole outside-insider thing....bothers me.  Stuff from the past."

"Psht, why should it?  You're not a Tanonuim or hybrid or anything."

"It feels to similar to how some of the insiders used to... treat me back then."

"Eh, whatever.  We've got places to go.  You shouldn't get so worked up over the past, pal, plenty of things have changed in here since then."

He darted a slight glare at Bygovir but remained otherwise silent. ------ They reentered the woods after passing through the meadow.  This was much more like the place Teltra remembered from his early days.  Straight, narrow pines stretched up on either side of the thin trail as it seemed to wind on endlessly.  There wasn't much undergrowth to stop them from straying off it, but the fog and expanse of  identical pine trees was discouragement enough.  Getting lost out there was no mortal danger, but would be miserable and exhausting once the visiting spirits all departed and left them there for days until their Far Spirit found them.  With that, all they could do as they went progressively deeper was go onwards in a single-file line.  After the events in the meadow, Teltra wasn't in much mood to talk. Bygovir was willing but had no desire to do so knowing how sensitive his three companions were.  Much like other older creatures, particularly those of the Archer, he favored a brash, unfettered lifestyle free of unnecessary rules and hated censoring himself.  Thought he was also secretly saddened since he'd finally found someone to listen to him rattle off about his fascination and an promptly lost him.

The silence continued, stretching on for hours.  The fog hung thick in the sparse woods, refusing to fade as well.  The landscape too remained unchanged, not even a boulder interrupting the occasional curves of the path. Still the nostalgia of smell kept Teltra on high alert.  His yellow eyes shifted back and forth, waiting for someone to burst from the fog. But there was nobody there.  Just the cool sand beneath his feet.  That was the one thing he liked about the Woodlands- temperatures tended to be cool and constant, which was nice since temperature changes and long, hot days made his legs ache. Even though he felt lonely between his good impression with Bygovir being shaken and the two Fsemacea remaining distant as ever, their presence was nice on its own.  He felt safer with someone by his side out here.  Woods like these were common places for the largest and most irritable to rampage through, and meeting them was always an unpleasant experience.  

The truth was, much as the Far Spirits abhorred violence, it was common down below, even among their own creatures.  It ran the gamut from an otherwise well-mannered Fsemacea slapping another for gossiping to the notorious wire-spawn brutality of Atochengra.  Though in general, things were becoming more peaceful.  Younger creatures preferred to show others up rather than resort to fighting, and the more violent older creatures slowly died off.  But in the Woodlands, a place that was cursed to be old-fashioned by its very nature, casual violence continued, despite the worst offenders dying off or being made into Tanonuim.  Teltra had been inclined to extremely peaceful, even by outsiders' standards, drawing ire from both more traditional and violent Woodlanders back in the day. They would call him cowardly for not involving himself directly in conflicts, or an imposter for not acting as Woodlanders ought to.  He was fast enough to usually escape them and avoid physical confrontation, with one exception.  

A breeze rattled some tree branches up high, making him jolt out of his trance.  No, nobody was there.  He tried to reassure himself but couldn't stop his quick, heavy breathing remembering him.  He really didn't want to have to talk to Bygovir but just maybe he'd get a bit of reassurance.  

"Uh, Bygovir, can I ask you something?"

His gaze was flat and mildly annoyed.

"What?"

"Is Vitabre a Tanonuim?"

"Yep. Totally is.  The greatest Tanonuim of all.  He was born to be that kind of thing....  

Ahaha, of course not.  He wasn't in any kind of shape for that in his last days."

Teltra blinked and felt himself stop.

"He's dead?"

"Of course, he's been gone for a good four years, seven if you want to start from when he first went dormant."

He picked up his stride again, feeling a wave of slightly guilty relief.

"Positively nobody liked that fat furball when he was alive.  Visitors hated him, Necchmia hated him, Ehtstunisa hated him, even his Far Spirit knew he was a mistake before he was even finished.  Not to mention all the death rumors he attracted, Nsteamarek wasn't even sure if he was a murderer or not they were so rampant.  All she figured out was that one of his legs gave out and did some minor damage to a bunch of visitors  and they modified him after that and he was never the same.  Not as vicious, just utterly pathetic.  Had to have been about when you left."

"Ah."

He certainly never liked Vitabre.  He was terrified of him, really.  Moreso the idea of what he would do than what he managed to do.  But now Teltra couldn't help but feel a little bad for him.  Regardless of his actions, he couldn't imagine living a life where absolutely nobody liked him.  Sure, he was lonely himself with how he had previously never found a group to fit in with, but at least he made the visitors happy. And even though he may have also been a mistake, at least he was a happy accident.  

There was another breeze.  He shivered on reflex.  But not fear, as he now realized.  That thought sparked something within him.  Perhaps he wasn't so scared of the Woodlands or the others in it anymore.  It had been ages since he'd even last seen them, and the ones alive and physically intact had surely forgotten about him.  Maybe even dropped the whole imposter thing in general.  The ones in the meadow certainly hadn't done the latter, but they also seemed civil enough.  Which was a small change for the better. Surely the same would apply to the others.  After all, it had been a good decade or so since he left.  At the very least, they seemed to resent him less with these new Tanonuim wandering about.  And with more collected emotions on both sides now, perhaps he could change them.  He hated the idea of jumping on the idea directly and preaching to them, but going about it subtly surely might do something.  

Lost in thought, he hadn't paid as much attention to his surroundings, and was surprised to see that the terrain had grown wetter and more rocky.  Dense coverage of palmettos filled in the gaps between the trees, making the path a bit less foreboding, but more constricted with the low walls beside it.  Things were suddenly looking very clear to Teltra.  He had been here before.

He looked around and quickly found confirmation in the form of a burned-out foundation.  He never knew where it had came from, but had been told it was some atrocity that occurred years before his creation.  It was the only thing Thendru and Gillorn said to him despite the three all belonging to the Great Banenhaxer.  Which was a shame in retrospect, they were older and had probably seen a lot of interesting things.  It made him wonder where they were now.  With everything else that had occurred while he was gone, he wondered if they were still around somewhere.  While outsiders only lived half a human lifespan or less, it was not uncommon for Woodlanders to twice as long or more.  They were cheaper and more practical to fix and so long as their spirit would continue to replace parts of them each year as needed, they could be sustained eternally. Though for all he knew they were Tanonuim now.  From what he remembered, they certainly fit the criteria.  No longer popular, decent-sized, good physical condition, not too historically significant.  

"I know where we are now, Bygovir.  We're close to the northern mountains."

"Yep, we're entering one of the more populated areas."

"Any Tanonuim here?"

"Just Nyoccelivel."

"Don't know that name, who were they before?"

"The River Nyoccel."

"Ah."

"You want to just go around this time instead of through?"

"Let's go through, actually."

"Oh, changed you mind?  Well, suit yourself."

In a few minutes, the clearing was upon them and Teltra's face lit up as he saw two familiar white forms.  Two thin, twitching tails, two long torsos crisscrossed with darker stripes, four small ears pricked upright.  Until he noticed that one had red paws, the other blue.  Thendru and Gillorn each had a yellow or green one. He scratched his head as he tried to rationalize it, until they turned around and he saw their long faces and small, dark eyes.  He was wrong.  No way that could be them.

[murasaki-murasame]

Danganronpa V3 Liveblog Part 12 [Chapter 4 - Daily Life]

If you die in the game, you die in real life the other, bigger game called Danganronpa V3.

Thoughts under the cut.

Well this sure got weird. I expected the Neo World Program to come up soon enough, but not THAT soon, and I didn’t expect it to literally be the Neo World Program, even though the virtual world itself is obviously different to the one in DR2.

On that note, they sure are making a lot of references to DR2 in this chapter in particular. I’m even pretty sure that ‘Miral Falls’ was the name of the resort in DR2.

Anyway, in terms of the death that happened at the very end, I honestly wasn’t expecting it to be Miu. I genuinely thought that she was going to survive this one, and follow the tradition set by Asahina and Akane, of the fanservice-y girls surviving to the end. Huh. If she can die, though, maybe Gonta can break the curse of bara characters always dying.

Seriously though, I was genuinely unspoiled on this, and I didn’t see it coming at all. I guess it was pretty obvious in the final moments leading up to it, but Kaito’s mysterious disappearance also made me wonder if he’d gotten killed off instead. I’ll talk about him later, though.

Even though this whole part is basically one huge DR2 reference, the scenario within the virtual world itself felt very Banshee’s Last Cry-esque. But with how the murder actually played out, the comparison isn’t very strong.

Before I talk about anything else, I should comment on the start of the chapter in case I forget. That sure was one big plot tease with that video from Rantarou. I assume that it was a video he recorded for himself from before the killing game began, though the fact that we got a title card saying ‘a few days ago’ before it played was suspicious, since it’s been much longer than a few days since he died.

Anyway, they obviously cut off parts of it to avoid spoiling us too much, but from what they showed, I can gather that Rantarou was a part of a previous killing game that he survived through, and that he apparently wanted this current game to happen, and to win it. Welp, guess that plan of his immediately failed, since he was the first to die. It does make me even more curious about what his deal is, and how we’ll even find out about it at this point.

I think we already got a hint at him having done a killing game before [just in terms of the characters commenting that he sounded like he’d done this sort of thing before, I think], but getting more confirmation of it’s now making me wonder if maybe the Monokubs might somehow be related to other people that might have survived alongside him. DR1 had six survivors in the end, so maybe a similar thing happened with Rantarou’s group. I’m not sure. There’s not much to go on. But on this note, I’ve been meaning to say for a while that the Monokubs are suspicious as fuck, and sometimes it feels like they vaguely allude to a previous killing game that happened. Like that one time one of them talked about someone dying on a battlefield, and in this part we saw Monotaro mention someone called Kaoru [which may have been a reference to something I’m not aware of, though]. I’m not sure what to make of them, but they seem like they’ll probably play a big part in the overall story.

Given that Rantarou clearly made this tape in advance for him to watch during the killing game, I wonder if he got a chance to watch it before he died. I wouldn’t be surprised if he did, since he seemed to know a bit more than he let on. I wonder if we’ll find this tape if we ever find his lab.

Also, him referencing the idea that the killing game will end when two people are left makes me wonder if the game might actually go in that direction. I feel like the game’s been bringing that rule up a lot more than in the previous games, at least, so maybe this time we’ll get a scenario where the killing game actually winds down to it’s natural conclusion, instead of it being stopped partway through. I’ve always wanted to see what a three-person trial would be like.

I’m hesitant to assume this will happen, though, since it’d require six whole murder mysteries to happen, which is more than the previous games had. But if we get one more case of three people dying over the course of one chapter, then theoretically the chapter six case would then be a three-person trial, and we’d be left with two people left after the execution. So it could happen. We’ll see.

I still don’t have a clue about that tile in the courtyard. It kinda looks like there’s one word per line, and the first ones seem to be ‘the world is mine to’, but I can’t guess at the rest. And some of that guess might already be wrong. It sounds kinda . . . foreboding. I’m not sure what to make of it.

Oh, and I forgot to mention it last time, but I’m really suspicious about the ‘voice in Keebo’s head’. It sounds really important, but I’m not sure what it might be, specifically. Probably some sort of program that was installed in him ages ago. The question is if the voice is helpful or malicious, especially if Keebo really does whatever it tells him to do.

I’ll talk about the overall murder soon, so for now I’ll just talk about characters for a while.

Kokichi flips back and forth between being kinda endearing and incredibly fucking evil and irritating. Also he somehow managed to one-up himself in creepiness with that one expression he made during his scene with Monokuma. Good god. I just knew he’d fuck things up and do something to set up a murder, even if he probably didn’t kill Miu directly. I wonder what he found with that key card, and how it lead to him [presumably] messing with the virtual reality program somehow.

Also I’m not super happy about the prospect that he might be into Shuichi in a really yandere sort of way. I wasn’t sure if he was just teasing him before, but that whole ominous ‘I do everything I can to make the person I like notice me’ thing makes it seem pretty serious. But, like, on the one hand, I guess the basic fact of one of the dudes being not straight is nice, but on the OTHER hand, of all the dudes??? The one who I hate the most??? Oh well. At least now I’m starting to get a clearer idea of why people seem to ship him and Shuichi. Right now it just seems like an awful, toxic version of Komaeda/Hinata, so I can’t get behind it at all. At least Komaeda was able to feel genuine love and admiration and respect for those around him. Also him being really misogynistic toward Miu is kinda even more groan-worthy now. OH WELL. I just know this dude’s gonna survive so I guess I’ll have to deal with him until the very end. That’s not a spoiler, though. I have no idea if he’ll survive. It’s just that he seems like the sort of character who’ll survive.

I’m really starting to warm up to Himiko as a character now, although the fact that Tenko had to die a more or less pointless death to set this up is still hard to swallow. Thankfully Himiko is taking her message to heart, and is trying to move forward, even if she’s getting ahead of herself a little. I’m glad I did that training scene with her and Gonta. That was adorable. And on that note, Gonta continues to be a precious cinnamon roll who is too pure, too good for this sinful earth, but maybe he’ll break the Bara Curse [tm] and survive.

Tsumugi and Keebo are still weirdly . . . empty characters to me, but I like them well enough. Tsumugi in particular seems to have some interesting things going on in her backstory, with the occasional references to her having dealt with debt in the past, and having had to do some presumably seedy jobs to pay them off. The bar scene in her lab was clearly meant to be sexy, but the implications of it kinda depressed me a little. I probably won’t ever bother doing her free time events before the game ends, though, so for now I have to just take what I get given with her.

Keebo is also still weird to me, for reasons I’ve gone over before. I imagine he’ll be important later on, but for now he’s just . . . odd. I still can’t help but get hung up on how weird it is that his ‘persecution complex’ is played as a joke, when he spends the entire game dealing with people making genuinely rude and demeaning comments to him, again and again. It just makes me kinda uncomfortable. It’s at least kinda bizarrely lacking in self-awareness for a game like this to be like ‘hahaha look at this dude getting worked up over nothing’ while simultaneously indulging in jokes about people being shitty toward him all the time.

I was never the biggest fan of Miu, but I’m sad to see her die. She was at least over-the-top enough that I couldn’t help but find her funny. And even if she was a genuinely rude and obnoxious person sometimes, she was still obviously trying to help everyone find an escape from the killing game.

This chapter is going even further to cement my undying love for the Shuichi-Kaito-Maki trio. They’re so wonderful. I love that we’re actually getting to see the step by step process of them becoming friends, in a way that feels really realistic and believable. I love seeing them all be mutually supportive but incredibly awkward at it. The nightly training sessions in general are a really nice way to show how they’ve been getting closer. They also really illustrate how different they are. I love the running gag of Shuichi trying and sucking at doing exercises, while Maki’s doing them really fast, and Kaito’s just laying on the ground being like ‘do you ever, like, just contemplate the vastness of the universe?’. I fucking adore these kids. I did not at all think I’d love them this much before I started playing the game.

The more we learn about Maki’s backstory, the more I like her. She’s great. I really like that a lot of the backstory she gave us originally is actually true. It’s just a neat detail, that she was actually for the most part telling the truth to everyone at the start, even if she was lying about the major thing she needed to hide.

I can’t help but feel terrible for her, though, with everything that she got put through. Seeing her going down the bumpy road toward normality and redemption is pretty heart-wrenching. I just want her to be happy.

Kaito is basically my heart, my soul, my beloved purple space boy, and it kills me inside that he’s being set up as the obvious culprit for this chapter. Am I going to spend a third chapter suspecting him? Probably. Do I feel guilty about it? Yes. And even if he isn’t the killer, there’s the fact that he clearly has a terminal illness of some kind that he’ll probably die from.

I also managed to marathon through the rest of his free-time events in this chapter because I figured he might actually die in this chapter so I should get his events done just in case. I was going to try and talk to Kokichi in the one session where Kaito wasn’t around to talk to, but he kinda blew me off.

I did not expect how Kaito’s free time events would go, but they were hilarious. I wasn’t expecting a multi-part story about how Kaito conquered the sea and the lands as a kid before deciding to treat the entirety of space as his final conquest. He’s amazing.

Also the end of the fourth free time event makes it pretty obvious that Shuichi is gay as fuck and has a massive crush on him. I’d rather not get into any sort of a discussion that’d involve words like ‘ambiguity’ or ‘canon’ because uuuuugh I’m so tired about that, and I’d prefer to allow myself the experience of relating to a fictional character rather than tell myself I’m interpreting things wrong, so I’ll just go down the path that makes my experience with this silly anime murder game the most fun, and say that, again, Shuichi is gay as fuck and has a massive crush on him. I already felt before that all of Shuichi’s monologues about how Kaito completes him, how he can be truly happy around him like he’s never been before, how they balance each other out, how he’d never met anyone like Kaito before, etc etc, were pretty damn gay, but then Shuichi himself went and found himself acknowledging how gay he sounds. I mean, at least the game in general acknowledged that Shuichi’s feelings and thoughts toward Kaito are, y’know, exactly how you act toward someone you have a crush on, to the point that even Shuichi was like ‘I-I shouldn’t be talking about another boy like that’.

But, again, even though I kinda doubt he’s actually intended to be gay, I’m just gonna choose to interpret it as him being in denial about his sexuality. Especially since I prefer that interpretation much more than seeing it as the game trying to genuinely say that it’s wrong for a boy to feel that way about another boy. [Also even if DR3 kinda fell into the pit of the Bury Your Gays trope, it at least still portrayed Juzo’s feelings as being genuine, and Junko’s homophobia as being an act of villainy, so it’d be a bit depressing if Kodaka went from that to being unironically homophobic]. It didn’t really come up again by the end of the series of free time events, but even so, this is how I’m seeing it. 

This is also part of why it’s going to literally destroy me if Kaito dies, especially if he becomes a killer who Shuichi has to prosecute, because on top of how I already love Kaito a whole lot, I’d also be stuck imagining how horrible Shuichi would feel about it. I feel like having to go through an experience like that might honestly break him inside, and make him unable to trust anyone again.

Anyway that ended up being a bit of a long rant even though I said I didn’t want to do one, but oh well, I can’t help myself. I’m so used to talking about this sort of thing that it just kinda happened, lol.

[Also just as a precaution, this rant isn’t an invitation for people to send me any kind of spoiler about this topic, or any other topic. Trust me when I say that I really don’t need to know.]

But anyway I love these three kids and I know that they’re going to go through even more traumatic shit before the game ends, so that sucks.

I guess I should finally comment on the actual murder itself, lol. I didn’t really expect it to take this long to get to this point.

I’m honestly kinda surprised that the murder seems to have happened in the real world. With how much time they put into explaining the mechanics of how the virtual world worked, it’s odd that it looks sorta like someone just strangled Miu in her chair. But the fact that there’s so many specific mechanics to how the game world works makes me think that it probably IS relevant to the case, and we just don’t know how yet.

To address the elephant in the room, they’re really setting Kaito up as the obvious suspect. He just mysteriously vanished right when Miu died, as if he logged out in order to kill her outside of the game. I stopped playing immediately after the Deadly Life title screen, so I’m not sure what he’s up to at the moment or what he has to say about all this.

The fact that they’re making him seem like the obvious suspect, and the fact that we got that ominous scene at the end of chapter three that definitely implied that he was desperate to leave the school, makes me think he’s probably not the killer, since that’d be too easy. But I can’t help but worry that it really might be that simple, and maybe this chapter will just be difficult in the sense of it being emotionally difficult for us to suspect Kaito. Which, I mean, is definitely true, but still, it’d feel a bit . . . lame.

Though then again, Kiyo was signaled pretty early on as chapter three’s culprit, but that also had a lot of complicating factors that made it hard to pin all the blame on him until the entire mystery came to light. But you get what I mean. The game might not be above making the culprit kinda obvious.

I feel like a big question here will be whether Miu was killed inside or outside the game, because that really does influence how I would go about guessing at a culprit. If she died in the real world, then someone could have just logged off, walked over, and strangled her or something, in which case the rules of the virtual world seem largely pointless, aside from the fact that after Miu kicked down the bridge, only Shuichi, Kaito, Tsumugi, Gonta, and Kokichi would have been able to access the log-out phone, unless someone in the chapel group found an alternate way across. But limiting it to those five people isn’t saying much when Kaito is the obvious suspect right now, since the bridge being down wouldn’t have impacted his ability to log out and kill Miu.

Similarly, if Miu died in the game, somehow, then the bridge thing means that the suspect list would instead consist of the other group, of Keebo, Himiko, and Maki, if we ignore Miu for obvious reasons. But I’d be surprised if any of those three killed Miu in the game itself, since I thought all of them would have been in the chapel at the same time, thus making a murder there seem pretty unlikely.

Part of the issue is that I just can’t guess how someone could have gotten across the bridge without the signboard. Well, specifically, it feels like everyone would have had the same lack of ability. Theoretically someone could have picked up the signboard from downstream, went across it, killed Miu, and knocked it back down the river on their return trip, but that still doesn’t narrow it down much. I guess only the mansion group would have had a chance to do that because of where the signboard ended up, but that . . . doesn’t really change the suspect list at all. Especially since everyone has the same level of physical strength, so even that doesn’t work as something to differentiate the characters.

For the most part I just feel kinda skeptical about the idea that Miu was actually killed outside the game. At least directly. It definitely looked like she’d been strangled, but in hindsight I don’t think I saw anything that actually looked like a strangulation tool aside from her normal chokers, so maybe her body was just reflexively responding to the sensation of strangulation, and not actually trying to tear off something specific that had been used to physically strangle her.

But the idea that she died in the game itself certainly complicates things, with how it was set up. Aside from what I’ve already discussed, two weird things that stick out to me are that Miu was seen walking outside, and Shuichi heard Keebo scream. I forget if it was Keebo or someone in the mansion group who said they saw Miu outside, but if she was seen outside the mansion then that’d seem really weird, since she was the one who knocked over the only bridge to the mansion area, and she probably wouldn’t have been able to retrieve it. I also can’t imagine why she would have gone over there after knocking over the bridge. In general her whole attitude in this whole part seemed kinda off, like she was hiding something.

It confuses me even more, though, that Shuichi would have heard Keebo screaming. The game already explained that neither sight nor sound travels through the world loading screen thing, so Shuichi shouldn’t have been able to hear Keebo’s voice from the other map. I can’t quite remember all the exact details, but I remember being immediately confused about it all.

I’m also, uh, not entirely sure what the toilet-paper was there for, but I guess it’s probably a clue of some kind.

Anyway, I feel like until I do the investigation part, there’s no real clues pointing to any of the other three people from the chapel group, other than the weird detail of Keebo’s scream, so I’ll focus my preliminary guesses on the mansion group.

Obviously Shuichi isn’t the culprit, unless he pulled some sort of a Kaede trick on us and did stuff off-screen during the time-skip that happened while he was investigating the kitchen. Either way I’m ruling him out for now.

Tsumugi also seems unlikely as a suspect. I guess technically Shuichi might have been able to not notice her leaving the dining room while he was busy in the kitchen, but still. I kinda doubt it. I might be wrong about my memory of how it happened, but even if Miu was apparently seen near the mansion, I doubt it was Tsumugi cosplaying as her. Although that makes me wonder, like how Kaito’s avatar seemed to not have whatever illness he has in real life, maybe Tsumugi doesn’t suffer from cospox in her avatar form. So maybe she could have cosplayed as her. I have no idea why she’d do that, though, other than to maybe confuse people. I’m also wondering if she might have been able to somehow mimic Keebo’s voice, which would explain how Shuichi could have heard it, but I don’t think that’s something she could do, even ignoring her cospox issue.

Kokichi seems waaaaay too suspicious in this chapter in particular to be the culprit. We literally saw him talk about how he’d be down with becoming the new blackened, and we saw him talk to Monokuma about his plans to set a new murder in motion. So it’d be weird if he did it, but I guess he was somewhat unaccounted for, although Gonta should be able to verify his alibi.

And on that note, I also doubt Gonta did it. He seems too genuine in his desire to not kill anyone. But who knows.

So that basically just leaves us with Kaito, who’s obviously super suspicious because he apparently logged out before anyone else and could have killed Miu in real life afterward. Of course, anyone else in the mansion group, even Tsumugi, could have just logged out and then back in before everyone got alerted about what happened to Miu. So in that sense, he’s not the only possible suspect. But he’s still suspicious. Especially since I feel like the toilet paper was probably dropped from the ceiling, which makes that a piece of evidence that, uh, technically points in his direction,  I guess, even if I have no idea what it could mean. I imagine it’s also pretty important that since he was on the roof he would have had access to the binoculars, so he could have seen stuff that was going on. Although he wouldn’t have been able to see into the chapel zone.

The whole detail of the world loading screen seems way too important not to be relevant, which is why I’d be a bit surprised if the murder happened in a way that involved not even doing anything with it. In general that’s how I feel about a lot of the details in this case. I imagine that a majority of the evidence will be based around the mechanics of the virtual world, including the way that the headset and it’s plugs work, which Miu also described in too much detail not to be a relevant detail, so logically it should more or less all be relevant. So the idea of Kaito just logging off and strangling Miu in her chair feels too simple, and too separated from all of the mechanics and rules this chapter spent time setting up.

But I still can’t really begin to guess just yet how else Miu could have died, and how all these rules could be relevant to the case. Hopefully it’ll feel a bit more clear once I do the investigation part.

If the case is indeed more complicated than it seems to be, then I hope that it means Kaito isn’t actually the killer. That’d be nice. I’ll probably still suspect him for the entire trial, though, like always.

As I said above, I feel like I have far too little info on the chapel group to go on in terms of suspecting them, so my suspect list at the moment is basically just Kaito, with Tsumugi as a fairly distant second place, and Gonta as an even more distant third place. The only person who I even vaguely want to point any fingers at in the chapel group is Keebo, but it’s hard for me to put him on my suspect list.

So with that in mind, I feel like I’m setting myself up for another chapter two-esque scenario where I focus intently on Kaito and get surprised by the real culprit. The way that I can’t even really begin to imagine how anyone other than Kaito could have done it in a way that makes use of the rules set up about the virtual world is making me nervous.

And on the note of the rules about the virtual world, I feel like the set-up with the two coloured plugs in the headsets will probably come into play, but I’m not sure how. They raised the question of what would have happened if someone installed it wrong, but even she didn’t know what it’d do. So it’s hard to speculate about it.

I’m also very suspicious of the fact that Kokichi probably tampered with things somehow with the key card he had, and whatever that gave him access to, but that’s also one huge question mark in this equation.

Also, just as a final note, I’ve basically been saying that I suspected Kaito starting with chapter two, but I guess I technically suspected him in chapter one as well, though not very intently. I think back then my suspect list for that case was Shuichi, Tsumugi, and then Kaito and Tenko tied for a more distant third place. But still, I guess that technically means I’ve been suspecting Kaito to some degree or another for the entire game, which is a bit depressing considering how much I like him and don’t want him to be a killer.

Anyway that’s about it for now. I’ll probably play the entire rest of this chapter tomorrow. I’m going to be bracing myself for some intense sadness, on the off chance that Kaito really is the killer.