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rogueshipagogo · 2 years

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the time has come. for my big JaneAce Manifesto. i’ve been talking about them a lot for the better part of an entire year on my dead by daylight twitter, but i havent been posting about it Here, or really Anywhere that is easy to access and doesn’t just disappear into the ether after a few weeks. but i really like them and genuinely think they are among the better m/f [not straight. There is a difference] dbd ships, and there’s probably been a Noticeable uptick in content about them since i started uhh requesting it and commissioning it and spreading the word about how epic they are over on That website, so- why not on This website??? buckle up for lots of rambling and big reaches over this games tiny scraps of lore. also sorry if you’re looking at this on mobile, for some reason it keeps getting random formatting issues that literally dont exist in the copy im posting from my laptop so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ its just gonna be kinda ugly

it is simply economical to ship the two hottest characters in any given series. when you ship janeace, you are speedrunning looking at some sexy old people having fun being in love. it’s not rocket science. thread over

no actually. anyways. OK so. this all started bc. a long time ago. i was playing a game as ace where i had a rainbow map and the lens that lets everybody on your team see what you're looking at, right. and i was going around looking for totems and chests and the exit when i realized there was a jane player following me who was pointing at the stuff that was glowing with my map and dancing around all like ‘woah i want that thanks for finding it’. i thought that was rly cute so i moved out of the way to let her open the gates and take down all the totems and have whatever was in the chests whenever she found me. and then the game was over.

But that rly cute interaction just kind of gave me brainworms. afterwards i couldn't stop thinking about how funny it would be to imagine that scenario having dialogue and jane just marching up to ace opening up a chest like ‘hey. Can i have that’ and also how fun and good they would be as a ship if you didn’t look at it like the classic ‘opposites attract’ scenario, and more as if they actually weren't very opposite at all, and were in some ways Very compatible, they just had completely opposite circumstances that made them seem, on the surface, like they were from 2 separate worlds entirely.

like, there’s a handful of janeace content that existed before i got into the dbd fandom, right, and its not Bad?? but it tended to have vibes of ‘this is a stereotypical relationship between a super laid back toxic levels of egotistical manchild and a super uptight prudish nagging woman’, like some sitcom straight people meant to entertain jaded cishet 45 year olds. And i Guess i understand why that’s the obvious trope to apply to the concept of them dating each other. and i Guess i understand why people in the dbd fandom got that impression of them, and decided they Hated shipping them, if it was just going to be nothing but ace being like ‘haha you are so sexy and i am so immature why dont you just be the more responsible one forever’ and jane being like ‘noo stupid man i am so much smarter than you i am le epic girlboss and you are perpetually mentally 25 years old so now i have to be mean to get you to do anything’

but that interpretation is entirely reliant on bad faith takes on Both of their personalities!!

its easy to see jane as a flawless queen of everything without a loosey goosey bone in her body, but that ignores things like her painter cosmetic, where her face and hands are Covered in paint and all her brushes tucked into her hair; or the lines in her biography about her early days as a radio host, where she was fired within months for making too many ad libs and being ‘too frank’; or the fact that her rockabilly cosmetic is from an episode of her show... implying she regularly wears costumes on her show. shes literally from new jersey

its easy to see ace as a lazy asshole who only knows how to manipulate people- but that ignores things like his waiter and fisherman cosmetics, where he’s making an earnest effort to earn money doing honest [enough] work, but simply suffers from low self esteem if he feels inadequate and unprepared, and routinely goes back to being a gambler out of convenience.

i’d also like to take the moment to point out how they Both struggle with mental health issues. i think there’s a tendency in the fandom to gloss over a lot of the issues they write jane as having, making her seem perfect and mature and universally appealing with very few flaws, And a tendency to act like ace’s issues are all there is to him, someone who contributes so little and takes up so much space that it’s hysterical- which does them both a disservice, especially for My intents and purposes of saying wow both of these characters only get by running on alternating manic and depressive episodes. clearly aces entire life is centered around having addictive personality disorder and being in relationships that are toxic for him- in his lore, ace is encouraged to put himself in an extremely dangerous situation by a friend who is amused by watching him embarrass himself, and we get the idea that ace socializes with people entirely on a metric of ‘is this person impressed by how cool i seem when i win’ and ‘is this person just really into watching me lose because its funny and entertaining’, which he might not even be aware of.

clearly jane.... janes entire story is about her childhood trauma. Like i dont want to just have to retype her entire biography and also her tome lore but, in summation, her entire story is about the pressure of the life she had built as a reaction to her childhood trauma and how Even if she hadn’t gotten fognapped, she was likely heading towards a meltdown spiral from taking on too much work, getting too wrapped up in peoples perceptions of her, and becoming obsessed with gaining more influence, to the point of being willing to sell out completely in order to get even a Little bit closer to her audience Really Understanding how much she’s a normal person desperate for people to relate to her pain.

So Now Think About It. they're both among the more charismatic extroverts of the survivors, their livelihoods Both rely on being able to have a good conversation with people and build a really iron clad rapport in a really short amount of time, they both aspire to be sort of fancy and rich and get a lot of attention and clout And, for Both of them, this desire for that sort of life started early in childhood, dreaming about escaping poverty and preconceived notions of who they were. they both have multiple bits of flavortext in game about being naturally optimistic and seeking to share that hopeful attitude with their friends, so i also think jane's method of interacting with people is something that would, like ace's method of interacting with people, not always land.

‘but sunday, she’s an insanely famous self help talk show host!! how could she be Bad at socializing with normal, average, not-famous peons???’ would You want an insanely famous self help talk show host grabbing you by the shoulders just to be like 'dont worry, It gets better :^)' while your leg was caught in a bear trap and you were having your fingers sliced off and your heart ripped out?? and some dudes taking pictures of it?? probably not. People who would be into that are likely in the minority. but you know who Is in that minority???? Ace.

imagine if after Weeks/Months/Years?? of terrifying trials where everyone is getting ripped apart and fangoriously devoured or w/e, jane is Still trying to be helpful in the only way she knows how to her new friends, but they’re all Less than receptive to it. bc you think people like feng min and jake and david, all these tired ass antisocial introverts, want to keep hearing ‘dont worry we can do this’ over and over and over again, every single time this happens??? probably not. at some point they would probably be like ‘wow, jane, that’s great, but im actually? Tired of dying over and over again, and what you’re saying is Not helpful right now’. even her fellow celebrities, like kate and yun-jin and felix, or even just other more sociable and positive types, like meg and claudette and adam, might get really tired of hearing stuff like that as they get shredded up for the 39480459th time.

but it’s the thing that occurs most naturally to jane to do for people when they’re upset. she’s spent Years putting all of her time and money and self worth in being able to do this and watching it make a meaningful impact on people!!! And she’s spent years being validated in her sense of self relying on being that type of parasocial icon for people!!! so how is she going to make it in the fog without getting her heart broken and sent to the void where hopeless survivors go if she cant do the one thing she’s best at??

but then maybe it finally comes down to just her and ace as the last two survivors one night, after getting progressively lonelier and lonelier for what feels like forever, realizing that her Love Language is somewhat inert here, and when she works up the nerve to pull the ‘hey, it’s gonna be fine, we can get out of here’ card on Him??

it finally Works. he smiles back at her and says ‘yeah, youre right!!’ because he is Also a tireless optimist who doesnt believe in bad luck and sees a silver lining to every situation. he’s the guy who is perpetually smiling in order to make sure there’s always at least One person who hasn’t given up hope yet, and knows the value in holding out just long enough to be absolutely sure there’s no possible way to turn things around. he will never pass up the opportunity to look at a bad situation that way- he’s a gambler, the idea of a potential payout for taking that slim of a chance is one of the only things in life he cares about. AND SHE CAN WORK WITH THAT

so the most hilarious thing in the world to me would be if one of the first few times they ever actually speak to each other by the campfire after a trial, everyone is sort of looking around like ohhh god this is gonna be weird, he’s such a little weirdo and she’s so poised and normal

but it Actually isnt weird. for better or for worse, ace is good enough at reading people- and knows well enough just how much power jane has- AND DOESNT WANT TO GET THE SHIT BEAT OUT OF HIM BY A FAMOUS GIRL AGAIN- that he manages to be not a complete loser around her, mostly. she Also has to tap into her ‘talking to normal people’ skills in order to communicate with him initially as well, but even thats just something that would sort of sweeten the deal for her. i’m not under the impression he’d know a whole ton about her before encountering her in the entitys realm, so there’s not even as much pressure in interacting with him as there is with someone who i can easily see being a jane romero show stan before the events of the game, like yun-jin or meg, who she loves and would be friends with, but also still feels a bit obligated to be really put together around, for her images sake. so for her, there’s a bit of relief in making friends with such a comparatively average person, and for him, it’s cool that she even wants to talk to him, and a bit humbling that he can no longer claim to have the most bravado and largest presence out of anyone in the fog.

this isnt to say that they dont have their differences- obviously, she’s a hard worker who wants to come off as entirely self reliant and tireless, and he’s a self professed mooch who wants to just manipulate his way into success without actually applying himself unless it’s easy and fun and makes him look very sexy and cool- but i don’t think thats something that would completely kill their chances of getting along and having a successful relationship. they are adults. they can work it out

in fact its probably for the best that jane has such a well developed sense of self worth, so that when ace fucks up and says something tactless because he’s being a little clown creature, she can swiftly, easily disarm him into taking it back and informing him that he can’t say shit like that, rather than get her feelings hurt or just assume there was nothing to be done about it, like i think a lot of other survivors would do *cough felix cough*. He needs someone who can nip his antics in the bud instead of enabling him. and where anyone else doing that might kind of bug him, in this fantasy universe i have created where i get to dictate how all fictional characters act, it makes sense to me that he would defer to her judgement.

[this is a good a time as any to say I dont fuck with 'ace is unironically sexist' headcanons or whatever, i want him to have moved Past whatever the hell was going on in his tome, as that was Meant to be a painful experience in his past that he’s still hung up over as being one of the worst times of his life, NOT an accurate snapshot of who he Currently is in the game!!! so i dont mean he’s saying and doing Genuinely Problematic things to her or anyone else on a regular basis... he can just be kind of weird and careless]

i like imagining that since she has the status and wealth and influence that he could only Dream of having, its a bit of a ‘whatever she says goes’ situation when she suggests slight changes to his behaviour, within reason. On this note, from the Other side of the fence, jane could eventually have an issue with trying to tailor his personality Too much to her liking- her bio literally says she ‘needed more; she wanted others to follow in her footsteps’, so its easy to imagine there might need to be not just boundaries around reining in his behavior, but boundaries around her tendencies to want to control his behavior in the first place. even their flaws are compatible!!!!!! its nice for me to imagine that there would be plenty of scenarios where jane is the one getting spun out mentally and ace has to be the one to ground her, since at the end of the day, she’s just a normal person caught up in the relentless perfectionism of showbusiness. that their relationship isnt just ‘selfless perfect hot girl fixes stupid washed up scrimblo mans life’, because they Both have valuable things to tell each other and perspectives the other sorely needed. and because honestly??? jane is less content in her life than ace is in his!!! again, on a surface level, it’s easy to see them and think he’s the problem and she’s the problem solver, but its way more complicated than that.

a lot of how i think about them takes place in a post-fog environment- if we’re meant to believe that the survivors in the game will get out eventually, that means we’re invited to consider how they would make it back in the real world. and maybe jane would take this time to say. ‘Well, i can’t really afford mentally to be everyone’s best friend on the tv with a million clothing lines and makeup products any more, now that everyone saw my funeral and all. maybe i should set my sights a little lower and try to just take it one day at a time’. and maybe ace would take this time to say. ‘well that whole experience just taught me a whole lot about what it’s like to care about other people for once. and the idea of being in a casino or bar right now is extremely overwhelming and bad. but What Else am i supposed to do???’ and that’s when they can move in together and she can see what its like to try Less hard and he can see what its like to Try for anything at all even a little bit. it is extremely endearing to me to imagine, like, jane at home painting or writing, and maybe ace has his 2nd or 3rd ever little part time job for underachievers, like being a bartender or waiter, and when he gets home shes there to be like ‘wow you did it im so glad you finally learned to be a relatively productive member of society, i know its your least favorite thing ever but it means a lot to me that you arent fully reliant on all my money also i dont care if you still do gamble shit every once in a while because clearly thats just What Brings You Joy so have fun doing that on your days off still’.

OR!!! flip it turnways: she Does go back to being a tv personality, or writer, maybe talking about what it is she just went through, and needs to come home after the strain of being on tv and dealing with media industry people all day [which was already extremely bad for her, her bio describes her regularly getting migraines after filming] to someone who actually understands the fog and believes her and was there, and spent his day making sure the bed is made and the floor is vacuumed and dinner is ready for her. and you know who can do that??? be a little stay at home himbo wearing expensive pajamas and embroidered slippers, loading the dishwasher while blasting jazz for slutty old men on an expensive sound system in a luxury new york penthouse??? Ace. Again. that’s always what the answer will be here

so we all agree that it’s not epic or poggers to depict utterly useless men riding on successful womens coattails. But. if she makes more money than she knows what to do with, and he actually makes himself useful, Why Not be the sugar mommy rich gf to this dude who has agreed to keep your house running and be your peppy little old man cheerleader in exchange for getting fancy clothes and also lots of hugs and kisses. and also you spent an indeterminate amount of time being tortured to death infinitely in a hell dimension.

I think that’s fine!!!!!!! theres literally no end to the situations in which they can, despite being a high strung girlboss and a manic pixie malewife, get along, and see and value each other for who they are, and how they decide to cope, and what they need, in order to not get utterly lost in the sauce of the weird fucked up mentally and spiritually draining lifestyles they both live. in my honest opinion.

AND THATS WITHOUT EVEN BRINGING UP HOW I THINK THEY’RE BOTH BISEXUAL AND TRANS

#jane romero #ace visconti #janeace

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bookofmirth · 3 years

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ok so this might come off as a bit rambly so please bear with me lol

i've noticed that the acotar fandom has this incessant need to be right when it comes to canon and it really sucks out the funness of fandom. shipping is supposed to be fun but when it comes to this fandom, it's almost like a competition to see who will be more right when the books come out. engaging with theories/predictions about characters and the plot is supposed to be exciting but when it comes to this fandom, some of the theories/predictions are problematic at worst and nonsensical at best. like how can you say with your full chest that you're so confident about where the series is heading in the future because of this or that theory when you're stuck in the past and refuse to see what all of the text is telling you in the present. it doesn't make sense. the selective reading is so strong that it has me looking sideways sometimes lol

i guess my question is why do you think the fandom is so divided when it comes to ships right now? i've seen people say this wasn't the case for feysand and nessian, so what's the difference here?

Oh boy Brielle, I have some thoughts on this. It's complex.

To be clear, I am not saying that this applies to literally every single person who ships a certain way. This is a commentary on the fandom as a whole, and there are always exceptions.

This got really, really long, so I'm putting it under the cut.

I think that one of the main draws of this series, and of sjm's writing in general, is her ships. I think that people get very, very attached to their ships.

I also think that sjm does NOT fully think through some of the choices that she makes when writing. See: the way that she takes from all these different cultures and mashes them together, which could be seen as disrespectful of their origin. She has retconned things, like Mor being queer and Lucien being Helion's son. I think that she thoroughly thinks about some of the aspects of her books, like Rhys's reaction to sleeping with Feyre for the first time, but then really half-asses other aspects of her books, like Mor coming out.

Then, we have your good old misogyny and homophobia - people in the fandom don't like Mor because she hurt the poor bat boy's feelings when she didn't sleep with him, and they don't have a mating bond, but she's never really told Azriel "no", and so every single moment of pain that Azriel has felt in 500 years is Morrigan's fault. And Mor's experience as a closeted queer woman who feels unsafe around the people she should trust the most is completely disregarded by the fandom.

Finally, I think that a combination of these factors has created the monster we know as e*riel, and that the fandom is perpetuating its own mythology.

What all of this comes down to, and the real reason I think that the fandom is behaving this way right now, is that e*riel is dead. It's never happened, it's not going to happen, but because we don't have the clear closure we got with moriel (where people would be accused of homophobia for continuing to ship it), people are still trying to figure out any possible way for e*riel to become canon, though every single sign points to it being a non-issue.

This weird thing where people have to be "right" all the time, and the way that "right" = "canon" is a relatively new development. It's as if everyone in this fandom forgot that they are in fact in a fandom, which inherently diverges from canon.

However, I think that the need to cling to canon is because the alternative would be to admit defeat and say "well, even if it doesn't happen I will still ship e*riel, it's fine, I will live with that." But they don't want to do that. In response, they look at canon so hard that they are reading the white space between the letters to create their theories, which as you noted as largely nonsensical and often fail to take into account who the characters are as individuals, how they are connected to other characters, and why it would or wouldn't be appropriate for them to be involved in various plots.

People could say, as eluciens having been saying since day one, "I really ship this thing but I can see that it might not become canon". But they don't say that. They literally refuse to see any other possibility than e*riel becoming canon.

You pointed out that people are stuck in the past - absolutely. The number of reimaginings I have seen of scenes where either Azriel or Elain has literally zero to do with the scene, but people try to shove one or both of them in there. And this from books ago. People are stuck on the Truthteller scene, and refuse to acknowledge that neither of them have acted on their feelings, whatever those might be, for years. And they ignore the fact that once Elain and Az do act, it goes horribly wrong.

Here are the facts as of right now:

ACOSF is the most recent book. In that book, sans extra chapter, those two had no interaction other than looking at one another.

If we include his POV, then he said it was wrong, we got confirmation that nothing has ever happened between them, she returned his necklace. Elain was aroused, but that does not mean she was ready to even have sex. "Yes" to a kiss is not "yes" to every single sexual act Az can think of. They parted on awkward, bad terms after a scene in which it seemed like they were about to start something. Yikes. Unlike Wings and Embers, they did not end that chapter still thinking of one another. After they part ways, the omniscient narrator does not mention Elain, or Az thinking about Elain, again.

His POV occurs months before the end of the book. They do not interact after that.

Elain has a mate she has not rejected, nor accepted.

So anyway, your question was why are people like this. lol. I think the fandom created a monster, and that monster is clinging to life. It can't accept the idea of morphing into a non-canon ship, though it never was canon in the first place. It had just convinced itself that it was.

There are other aspects to this, that have to do with gwynriel and elucien.

Gwynriel is a new ship, it's almost guaranteed to happen, people are super excited to ship it and give Gwyn all their love. I'm sure they would rather create content for that ship than argue about whether or not it's going to be canon, but they are in constant defense mode. Some people honestly didn't like e*riel before because they don't like Elain, or because they don't like Azriel, and those are valid reasons for not liking it. Why people ship gwynriel doesn't matter. The tone of the discussion is, unfortunately, being shaped elsewhere, which I will mention below.

Elucien is an old ship, older than e*riel. I can speak from this perspective - personally, I have been holding my tongue for 4.5 years. I have been letting people live, and just talking about the things I like. Then when acosf came out, it was like I could finally say all the things I had been thinking about Azriel, because I now had proof that the things I thought about his character (and because of that, about e*riel) now had solid canon foundation. This is 4.5 years of me holding in a lot of shit and finally being able to say it. Sometimes yes, I might take joy in having been right.

I think that a few people are clinging to canon, and that sets the tone for the discourse in the fandom. Someone says "according to page whatever, blah blah blah" and people feel the need to respond, and then it turns into and "I'm right" contest instead of... a fandom... A lot of us like debating. To me, it's fun. But when Person A starts a conversation that's about canon and it actually ignores canon, it's hard to let that conversation go by and just keep creating whatever we want to create. Instead, we respond, and so the tone of the conversation is shaped by what Person A decided to say.

I also think that there is a lack of distinction between theories (what will happen in the future) and meta (analysis of what we have now).

There is also a lack of "I" statements. Opinions are being stated as fact.

idk if there is a way to make it better, other than to just go back to ignoring one another. This whole situation makes me want to throw out every single canon ship I like and create exclusively non-canon content, just for spite. Except I really like doing meta, and so I don't want to. I guess for my point, I'll just keep doing meta, keep creating different content, and keep reminding people that they aren't here to continue perpetuating canon, but to play with it.

#ask #gimme-mor #acotar #antielriel #gwynriel #elucien #acotar fandom #fandom things #fandom history

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yukipri · 3 years

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Bad Batch end of season thoughts/ramble, bc it's been a week and I just wanna get it all off my chest...

(end of season spoilers and very disorganized rambling)

First off, I do want to say that I enjoyed watching the show. It fulfilled its primary purpose: entertainment. It was nice having something to look forward to every week, and even though it wasn't quite what I was expecting, it was fun. The animation was gorgeous, I liked all the references and tie ins. I will likely watch it again, and will watch season 2. This is by no means meant to be a hate post.

That being said, it is critical so please just skip if you're not into that!

The thing is...it takes very, Very little for me to love a clone. He doesn't need lines, or a face, or even a name, and the default is that I will love him. He can even be a little bastard, like Slick, and it's fine. I always want to know more about them, and wish they had more screen time and time in general to develop their characters. So given that we were getting 16 (20 eps total if we count TCW S7 pilot arc) centered around these guys, I was expecting to absolutely adore them by the end.

And I wanted to love the Bad Batch, I wanted to love them so damn much, and I tried. But I think one of the reasons why they never fully clicked for me was that their thing seems to be "we're unique, we never fit in, we're outsiders in our own home, among the people who are supposed to be our own family, and so we've found our home with each other."

Which! That's usually a wonderful message, and not a particularly rare or unique one either for stories! I usually dig these kinds of stories!

The problem here is the extremely unique situation of the clones. They are literally created to be identical, brain washed to be uniform. They must conform, or are killed off by their creators, and their conformity isn't a choice in the slightest, but one of fear and necessity.

Their uniformity is something that they are also entirely aware of--it's unavoidable, they're clones. Once out in the real galaxy, they all strive to find and establish unique identities for themselves, struggling against a galaxy that just wants them to be faceless products. It's a shared struggle, and all they have are each other, and their brotherhood is sacred as a result. Shunning unique identity is the opposite of who a clone is--it's what they all want.

So on one hand, it's understandable that the Batch stuck out (when all others who would have also stuck out were culled, when individuality isn't allowed). It's understandable that they would have yearned for the brotherhood shared by the other clones, and when they couldn't have it, they stuck closer to each other. It's even understandable that they would feel bitter, having experienced bullying at the hands of the other clones (but isn't it also understandable that the other clones would feel bitter that the Batch gets special treatment, when their own brothers with less-than-beneficial mutations were taken by the Kaminoans to never return?).

And so we have this batch of clones, who the Kaminoans call "mutated," but also specify that their mutations are "desirable" (implying what happens to mutations that are undesirable...). They have their own unique unit, in which they're able to improvise and act freely with seemingly little to no oversight, so long as they complete their mission. No Jedi to obey, no nat-born officers who look down on them. In fact, they look so different from standard clone troopers that most of the galaxy probably don't even know they are clones. They have their own ship (personalized), they have their own possessions (which we don't really see any other clones have), they have their own barracks (probably also very unique), and they even have access to superior weapons and armor (most of the Batch, minus Echo, seem to be wearing modified Katarn-class armor which is supposed to be for Commandos. we KNOW it holds up better than standard trooper armor).

So I'm sure they had some unpleasant experiences growing up, and I do get it. But at least at "present" end of clone wars, they honestly seem to be living infinitely better than all other clones? They still need to follow orders but they have more freedom, and perhaps most importantly, they have clear uniqueness that is denied almost all other clones. And yes, some of the clones on Kamino bully them, but we've seen NONE of the "regular" clones that we know to be particularly nasty to them, and in fact it's Crosshair who starts it by calling them "Regs."

And how does the Batch respond to this situation? By acting superior. It's Crosshair who says and it believes this firmly, and I do feel that the others are likely mostly influenced by this, but it's also true that Hunter, Wrecker, and Tech don't really deny this either. They don't like the "regs," they do act like they're "better." Poor Echo, who they repeatedly seem to forget is in the room, and who they call "machine" and such...yikes yo

So I guess the point is, I just really struggled to feel sympathetic towards them, and was already on a kinda eh about their premise. They're marketed as "the special clone squad"--and yet they're not nice to the clones I love. I thought that wasn't great, but also hoped that the series would work towards them understanding the other clones better, and I love character development so that woulda been fine--but, nothing. A glance from Hunter at Howzer. Extended camaraderie from Gregor, who I feel they mostly just tolerate for the mission, other than Echo who genuinely cares.

And on top of feeling not feeling particularly sympathetic towards what I saw as a pretty privileged group of clones, the Batch seems to place primary blame of their woes on the "regs" themselves, who again, honestly seem far worse off! There isn't blame directed at the people who demanded the conformity from the other clones in the first place, that made it so the Batch couldn't fit in. The Batch was modified due to the Kaminoans (and implied specifically Nala Se). She's the reason why they don't fit in. And the Kaminoans are also why the other clones have to be so uniform, why they must fight to be people and not products.

Bitterness and pettiness can be fine in characters. But it's frustrating to see in a group supposed to be competent and elite, especially when those feelings have consequences. Sure, it sucks when someone throws a food tray at you. You can throw food back. It's not an equal reaction to feel no remorse when you shoot that guy dead in a blaster fight, when for all other clones, having to kill another clone is one of the most horrible, tragic things that one can do (thanks, Umbara).

Fives was the only clone to actually point a blaster at Nala Se.

We know Omega has deeply personal history with Nala Se. She was Nala Se's personal medical assistant. We see her cry when she takes off her head ornament that matches Nala Se. We know that being back in the lab gives Omega complicated, and probably not entirely positive feelings. But we barely learn more about this relationship, other than these glimpses.

And I get the feeling that to Omega at least, Nala Se wasn't all terrible. If Omega grew up with mostly only Nala Se for company, she had to have gotten her sheltered outlook on life, and her willingness to help others from somewhere. Nala Se intentionally let Omega go, to be "safe."

I think Omega's adorable, and I do like her. But I wasn't able to fully love her to the extent I wanted to, because there was always the fear that she was involved in the creation and implantation of the chips. She knows about them, she would have been positioned to do so. I want to think she would never, and I was hoping the show would reassure us of that, but it never did. We don't actually know how Omega feels about Nala Se, or even the chips and their presence in other clones. Instead, all we know is that Omega doesn't like "regs."

And again, "they call me lab scrubber," and "I helped put (or am complicit in putting) mind control devices in their heads," are kinda, unequal. Again I hope it's not the case. But it definitely kept me feeling uneasy throughout the show.

It really boils down to I don't trust or forgive Nala Se, and the Batch's lack of stance against her and the other Kaminoans, and clear distaste for their other clone brothers, really puts them in a situation that makes it difficult for me to take their side entirely.

And then gosh, Hunter. During Crosshair's whole "you never came back for me," spiel, I couldn't help but think he's kinda right. He had 15 episodes. Sure, it's difficult to get Crosshair back. But they could have done something. They could have done research. We could have had scenes of them wondering where Crosshair is, discussions on how best to find him, even if that discussion ended in, "but we can't risk it right now." They could have grilled Omega for information on the chips, which they really shoulda done either way, but especially since that knowledge is important to understanding what (they thought had) happened to Crosshair. Instead, they just ran every time Crosshair showed up. The show could have done better to show that they cared, and were trying, instead of just, y'know, doing chores for Cid. One, "I kinda miss him," doesn't really count as working on getting him back, at least in my books.

The sole exception to all of this, of course, is Echo. Who really, he works with the Batch fine, he's a former ARC and can more than keep up. Skillset-wise, he fits in well enough. But this season really made me wonder why he's with them at all. Crosshair's revelation and true feelings at the end of the season were no surprise to me, as they're consistent with what we've seen of him from TCW S7. But for Echo, a former "reg" to have to work with someone like Crosshair...even if Crosshair thought Echo was "different" enough to accept him, those are his brothers that Crosshair thinks he's so superior to, and has no issue speaking disdainfully about.

The increasing tension between Echo and Hunter, Echo's interest in helping Rex, in helping other clones, in doing something...I do hope they reach a point where Echo demands they go help, or he's leaving.

They gave Crosshair a chance, despite the fact that his choices were willing. I really hope Echo can convince the Batch to help save the other clones who don't have a choice. Because even if the Batch doesn't consider them their brothers, they're certainly Echo's. They matter just as much as Crosshair, and I really hope season 2 shows it narratively.

To conclude, again I'm interested in seeing what happens next, and I want answers about Omega and Nala Se. I find it interesting that they tied the facility where they took Nala Se in with the scientist dude collecting data on Grogu in the Mandalorian and those cloning labs. All of this is interesting, but at the same time I feel like it's trying to build up to Snoke/Palpatine stuff in the sequels which...I don't care nearly as much about, but who knows, could be neat ^ ^;

I'm okay with, and have made peace with the fact that the Bad Batch probably isn't the "clones-centric" show I wanted, and that they'll continue their own story, and probably continue to not care much about other clones in upcoming seasons. That's unfortunate, but alright. I'm interested enough in their story too.

But at the same time...I can't help but think man, if they have the time and budget to do a season 2, after seeing what was (or wasn't) accomplished in season 1...I wish they'd also make a Rex/Cody/Wolffe/"regular clones" show, because in the end, if you're going to do a "clones show"....that's who I want to see most.

If you got to the end, thank you for reading, and being an ear to my ranting ^ ^; Again this is literally just getting this off my chest. If this take isn't one you agree with, please just ignore. For people who did fall in love with the Batch, I'm happy for you, and regret that it just couldn't happen for me. But, I'm hoping that S2 will change my mind, but we'll just have to see! ^ ^;

#the bad batch #bad batch #YukiPri rambles #really i'm not interested in a debate i just want to ramble

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forasecondtherewedwon · 3 years

Text

Scuffed Souls

Pairing: Midge Maisel/Lenny Bruce Rating: M Word Count: 2769

Summary: Despite her declared intention to go get herself a taxi, Midge can't seem to leave Lenny's hotel. Parts of it aren't so bad—the ocean view, the pool, Lenny. She could be persuaded into a little recklessness.

It’s the way he says it—“before I’m dead”—that has her twisting on the soles of her new shoes to turn back towards him with an equally twisted smile that can’t fully perk up to the uncomplicated amusement she usually feels when Lenny cracks a joke. It just didn’t sound like one.

And now she’s probably scuffed the black soles on the wretched, fine-pebbled stone of these slabs surrounding the pool of what’s otherwise a really rather sad hotel. He knows it, she knows it, and she can’t blame him for wanting her to come into his room, if only to liven it up for a few minutes. She wonders if anybody’s ever died here. Wait, she thinks, of course they have. It’s a gracelessly aging Floridian hotel. The count for patrons who’ve left unscathed is probably lower.

“Is that a long list?” Midge calls back to him.

Like the melancholy, reluctant romantic he is, Lenny’s still leaning in his doorway, watching her depart. Until a moment ago. Now he’s watching her stand here in kind of a weird realm: the post-date, non-overnight stay who issued a spoken plan to find herself a taxi like a big girl. She’s loitering. Then again, unlike at home in New York, you can do that here. Loiter your heart out. Cross that heart and hope not to die before you’ve slept with the woman whose martial status changes from minute to minute. Roll the dice! No, that’s Vegas.

Even from this distance, she can see Lenny cock his head in that way he has—playfully subservient as a child and publicly tactful as a monied, middled-aged woman. Some days, he could mirror her mother. What a gag that would be.

“Things you wanna do before you’re dead,” Midge explains with a tight gesture of her arm. Just the elbow down. God, is she nervous? She seems to be suddenly doing an imitation of Susie meeting Lenny for the first time.

“Not really. I think of somethin’ good from time to time and, of course, when I do, I can’t find the paper I started the list on and I have to get a new one… so it never really gets that long.”

“I just wondered. You know, how much time I have.”

“The length of the list determines my distance from death? This I did not know. Powerful,” Lenny notes emphatically, producing the same noncommittal smile from Midge. “I guess I better look harder for the next one I lose. Handy thing to refer to.”

“There’s that,” she agrees, “but also…” She takes a step back in the direction of his open doorway. The pool shimmers at her side. He’s right about the pool. Somehow, a pool at night looks glamorous no matter the courtyard. She hopes she looks half as good. “I wonder if there’s sort of an implication in there that—” Midge rolls a modest hand over the crassness she’d have no trouble blurting out on stage, no matter which of her relatives were in the audience. “—the quality of it would extend your life.”

He’s smiling wickedly at her. She’s gotten away with nothing and has no option remaining but to clutch primly at the handle of her purse with both hands.

“If anybody else told me that,” Lenny warns, “I wouldn’t believe them, but you I know to have been engaged to a doctor, and so I assume that any medical information you may have to offer vis-à-vis sex—” Spoken in a harsh stage whisper that nearly makes her (her) blush. “—comes certified by some type of professional board.”

“I didn’t say it was the truth, I said I wondered whether it were what you were implying.”

“Me? Well, you can’t trust that guy. Still, worth chancing, wouldn’t you say?”

Midge’s scuffed soles have brought her many steps nearer to Lenny than she remembers being in lucid command of. She’s slow-tongued as she stares at his impish expression. Flat-out flustered when he tips his head back with a smile to rest it on the doorframe.

“In there?” she asks with eyebrows arching like the next stop on this tour is St. Louis. She points sideways, where his bedside lamp glows. “On one hand, eternal life—on the other, whatever diseases are living in those sheets.”

“Oh, they’re very well mannered,” Lenny assures her with a casual brushing aside motion. “We split the rent fifty-fifty.”

“Hmm, then I’m not sure there’s room for me in that scenario.”

“The shower’s not bad,” he counters.

“Water pressure?”

“No, cleanliness. Haven’t you ever—” He employs the hand roll she should patent if it looks like that when she does it. Elegant. Prudent. Half what she wants to be and the other half what she has no hope of becoming. “—in a shower?”

Because Lenny’s looking at her like she’ll either sidestep (metaphorically—the shoes have suffered enough these past few minutes without risking anything more than a regular forward walk) or say no, she takes very great pleasure in smiling devilishly back at him.

“A shower sounds luxurious. Never done it in a bathroom with a shower before. You look scandalized,” Midge notes. “Do the diners in your neighbourhood have showers in their ladies’ rooms?”

“You had sex in a diner bathroom? I’m impressed,” he allows.

“Thank you. I needed that. I carry every compliment about the encounter back to my closet and console my wedding dress with it. Poor thing never did look the same after rubbing up against those walls.”

“Is this in your act?” Lenny demands, leaning towards her earnestly. “Why haven’t I heard this?”

“Put it in my act? Lenny, please. I’m a lady.”

“Hence the ladies’ room, I suppose.”

She giggles lightly with her lips pressed together. He earned that last line. Set her face on fire to get there, so she’ll let him have it. Speaking of letting him have it. Midge finds herself dropping her eyes so they don’t get into their second intense staring contest of the night. Can’t look straight ahead, can’t look to the right because that’s where his room is and the bed is highly prominent. Almost too eager. The bed is the bump in the front of a virgin’s pants on prom night when his date’s skirt brushes a little too close as they dance. Those crazy kids. Oh, to be young.

Midge looks left.

“The ocean,” she observes, and says, like an idiot. She even does another fucking gesture towards it, like he’d miss it somehow. “It’s… big.” Clever. Real sharp.

“Bigger than in New York? I think so too. Alligators though.”

“It’s ok, you’re talking to a fellow New Yorker. You can use the real term. Pre-handbags,” she prompts when Lenny gives her an inquisitive look.

He lets her have the wrap joke this time, but he’s more persistent about trying to catch her eye. She gets it. She is still standing here making alligator jokes when she was supposed to be in a car on her way back to the type of hotel it would be kinder not to tell this hotel exists. A hotel containing her parents, Shy Baldwin and his entourage, the boxer shorts Susie sleeps in and forgot to pack when she went to save Sophie’s ass. Hopefully Susie doesn’t need to cover that famous, demanding ass because she left the best equipment behind.

Lenny tosses his coat into his room and pulls the door shut, startling Midge.

“How ‘bout the pool?” he asks as he steps around her, arm extended to point. She swivels (damn, damn, damn, her shoes) and chases him. “You ever done it in a pool?”

“Actually, no.”

“I heard the pause and, trust me, I’m enthralled that you even had to think about it.”

“Did I mention I hit my head doing it in the bathroom? Pretty hard. All my memories before that day are hazy, so it’s really anybody’s guess.”

He gifts her an indulgent little smile and stops at the side of the pool. As she looks on, he removes his shoes and socks. Midge hears herself make the noise she makes when she denies Ethan a cookie only to see Zelda handing one over when she returns to the kitchen. The noise says, Is that wise? when her adult mommy brain knows for damn sure that it’s not. Lenny wets his foot and flicks water at her. The mommy noise had no effect on him at all.

“It’s nice,” he says, clasping his hands behind his back. “Warm.”

“Of course it’s warm. The air’s warm. Everything here is warm.”

“I hadn’t noticed.” When Lenny frowns, it’s tragic. The most tragic thing you’ve ever witnessed. “You see, I’ve been so cold since the end of our dance. I really may die if I can’t hold you against me.”

Midge tilts her head back and laughs.

“You’re worse than the guy I tried to scare off at the bar by mentioning dick jokes. And you’ll die? Really? All of a sudden, I’m the cause of your death rather than the agent of its postponement?”

Though he smiles, his eyes remain soulful. There really is something tricky about trying to be funny when he’s looking at her a certain way. She’s probably returning the look.

“Take a dip with me.”

“Why?” she asks, smiling.

“Because I want to admire you with that rose in your hair without the rest of it to distract me.” He nods down at her dress.

“My outfit is distracting? Terrific. Now I know I wore a distracting outfit on Brye Adler.”

Self-deprecating thoughts trickle away, accompanied by the gentle slosh of the ocean behind them. A rambling, improvised bit about what she’s wearing won’t change the fact that Lenny said what he said and she heard it.

“Are you going to call me a taxi if I keep standing here?” Midge asks.

“I had no intention of reminding you of that plan.” He rests a thoughtful forefinger against his upper lip. “But you do seem to be stuck. You won’t brave the room, but you also haven’t left.”

As though demonstrating how to do it, Lenny crouches and trails his fingers through the water of the pool.

“Still warm.”

He gazes up at her with needful brown eyes. The need feels equal to hers. She’s tired of being the only one needing.

“You have neighbours.” It’s between a question and a statement.

“Ah, they’re all either young and stoned or old and asleep.”

Midge makes a decision.

“Gimme your key. I’m going to change in your room.”

“Change into what? Do you have a bikini in your purse?”

She leans close to snatch the key he’s withdrawn from his pocket for the second time tonight and grins.

“Into nothing.”

Lenny takes a visibly shaky breath, not trying to hide it from her.

“Well, I’ll be here performing the role of guinea pig by stripping for any neighbours who may be watching. Should you hear wolf-whistles…”

“I’ll run right back out and join the audience,” Midge promises.

They smile at each other until Lenny tests the tension by loosening his tie. Her eyes drop to watch and she realizes she’d better go do what she said before he’s naked enough to make her lose her nerve. She hurries, high heels clapping on the stone.

His room isn’t quite as bad as anything she and Susie experienced on their first road tour, but it definitely isn’t anything to write home about. Not that he’d need to, seeing as this is his home ‘til Friday and likely beyond. Standing beside Lenny’s bed, Midge unfastens her dress. For the first time since Joel, she does it quickly. For the first time since splitting up with Benjamin, she does it alone. Beneath the dress, she’s cinched in pretty damn tight and she rubs at the red lines in her skin as she takes deep breaths that she lies to herself about—telling herself it’s the relief of being free of her undergarments. She lays her dress on his coral bedding. She positions her purse on his nightstand. Adjusting the rose in her hair, she slips her feet back into her shoes and dons Lenny’s carelessly-discarded suit jacket. Though it’s no beach coverup, it hides enough to get from here to the pool.

She spots the pile of his clothes before she sees him, head bobbing up through the surface as he slicks his wet hair back and swipes water from his eyes.

“Don’t worry,” Midge teases to his stunned expression as he locks onto her approaching figure. “The shoes are coming off momentarily. I know they’re distracting.”

As if he’s even aware that she’s wearing shoes; his eyes are fixed on her legs as though she’s an exotic species of butterfly and his gaze is a mounting pin.

“That’s all I see when I look at you,” Lenny says, arms thrusting to propel himself backwards across the width of the pool. He halts at the far side and rests his arms on the stones, chest above the line of the water. “One big pair of shoes.”

Midge shoots him a coy smile as she steps out of them, wary to avoid treading on his watch. That’s what gets her: his watch. She stares down at it, resting there, the glass face catching the light, second hand ticking away. Before they’re dead.

“Aren’t you going to close your eyes or something?” she asks, standing in bare feet, Lenny’s jacket, and a rose. “Or are you only a gentleman when it comes to sharing a cigarette?”

“For you, I will go through the charade.”

He places a hand over his eyes. His mouth smiles below it.

Watching him, she swiftly sits on the side, dangling her legs in the water. With tentative fingers, she undoes the first button on the jacket. His hand doesn’t move. She undoes the second. Nothing from Lenny. Jacket open, Midge shrugs it from her shoulders. As she pushes off the wall, dropping into the pool, he lowers his hand.

“Hey!” she complains, spluttering on water, but he raises both hands helplessly, then goes back to holding himself up at the opposite side of the pool. “That was a dirty trick.”

“I would repent if I could find it in my heart to do so, but I just don’t regret it.”

Midge laughs, shaking her head and treading water.

“By the way,” Lenny adds. “The rose looks wonderful.”

She managed to keep all but the very bottom of her hair dry and can feel the flower still tucked between the strands. Fleetingly, she thinks of where she’s supposed to be tonight. What would Carole have to say about a situation like this? Maybe Midge can be the one who knows how a situation goes for once, without warnings or tips. Just… living it. That’s how she gets the material for her act, which what’s happening tonight could never be part of. ‘So,’ she imagines telling a crowd, ‘I finally fucked Lenny Bruce. Plenty of people already thought I had, so I doubt anybody’s still betting on it, but if you had money on it happening in a swimming pool in Florida, happy days!’

“Can you see it from way over there?” she asks coquettishly.

“A little.”

“Seeing a rose ‘a little’ won’t do. Do you think Shakespeare only bothered to see a rose ‘a little’ before writing that line about how sweet it smells?”

Lenny shoves away from the side and swims lazily in her direction.

“What does yours smell like?”

“Pool chemicals, probably.”

“An underrated scent.”

Midge’s heart surges and her throat seizes up, tongue awkward in her mouth as he draws nearer. With the glow and distortive properties of the water, his body’s nothing but a blur below the surface, as she’s sure hers is as well.

“It’s like a forcefield,” he notes. “I get close enough to you and, it’s not that the world stops being funny, it’s…”

“It’s that it becomes somebody else’s job to make the joke.”

“That’s it,” Lenny agrees softly as they begin to slowly circle each other.

Gradually, they work their way over to where it’s shallow. Midge’s toes skim the bottom when she begins to uncurl her legs. Her body gets used to the weightless feeling of the water, muscles relaxing, but her heart beats harder and harder. Finally, she cuts across their circle and wraps her arm behind Lenny’s neck as she presses her mouth to his. His hand cups her cheek, then shifts, knocking the rose from her hair.

#my writing #The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel #tmmm #Midge Maisel #Lenny Bruce #Midge x Lenny #the ongoing dick-measuring contest between me and the Palladinos #so what if they aren't aware of it? does that matter?#as a writer I'm really just here to fix the unsatisfying plot points of the Palladinoverse

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pleom · 4 years

Text

swimmer!bang chan [M]

Warnings: heavy angst, mentions and descriptions of depression, emotional abuse, family issues, graphic descriptions of sexual content (cunnilingus, unprotected sex, handjobs, loss of virginity)

Word Count: 8.7k

Something inside you burns. It throbs and pummels against you from the inside-out, wholly unwelcoming, though you wouldn’t say you suffer. You wouldn’t say it’s painful, either. This feeling engulfs you, blending with your senses and the way they interact with each other. Physically, you’d say it’s another part of the experience. Coupled with the vibrations (dull and wide-spaced,) the muffled sounds, the incessant screeching and tapping and cramping and pulling and—

You gasp for breath—a whistle blows—and you can’t swim.

“Y/N, out,” your coach motions for you.

The students around you move hesitantly, but ultimately part for you to exit. Your vision is still blurry, but you manage to pull yourself up the ladder without slipping. You slip on the way to the locker room though, and embarrassedly throw yourself behind the door and onto a bench without abandon.

Your eyes sting, and are probably more red than they usually are after practice. Your skin grays and itches as it slowly dries, so you take a towel to assist both matters. When the only thing keeping your body from fully shrugging off the remaining water is what slides off the tips of your hair, you fling the cloth over your head and sit there, slouched and effectively closing out the rest of the world.

The moments of before are already starting to feel fake—a blur of imagined happenings. The only thing you can clearly recall is your errors, constant and public for all to see (and they did, they most definitely did.) Your lungs cry with the remnants of salt and bleach, and your chest burns with discontent. Discontent that you almost drowned; discontent that your coach didn’t let you drown. (You’ll also be hearing that from your sister later on, when you’ll come home probably coughing and aching, and you can see it already: her prideful and mocking gestures, her feigning concern and doubting your abilities. You sit here, chest gaping, and you know you’ll have no argument against her. She was born with knowledge you had yet to achieve.)

A voice makes you jump. “Are you okay?”

You hope with every fiber of your being you aren’t the person who the question is being directed to. You let it fly over your head, and rub the fabric over your hair to look inconspicuous. Wet footsteps seem to bound straight for you, and in what feels like a second, a shadow peeks from underneath your towel. There’s no use acting like you’re no one, because someone’s standing right before you and seems dead-set on getting you to interact with them.

“Hey.”

Lifting your head, you take in the sight of Chan, all broad-shouldered and pale-skinned to the point you might blame the chemicals in the pool for it. He stands shirtless, though as dry as your throat feels. His class must be after yours.

He doesn’t know you (though you know of him) and it’s clear on his face. Why he bothers to question you, you don’t know. You shouldn’t look that out of place, since a few students like to hide and hang out in the locker rooms alone sometimes. Guess you couldn’t pass off as one of them.

“You don’t look so good,” he says, “Was Coach hard on you? I always tell Dad to go easy on the new swimmers but he never does…”

He sheepishly wrings his towel over his shoulder. It takes you a moment to absorb his words, but when you do, you’re quick to react.

“No, no he doesn’t,” you hesitate, “How did you know I was new here?”

“I come here almost every day to help my dad mentor the students. ‘Think I’d recognize a face like yours.” he takes a step back and seems to take in the look of you. You know he doesn’t mean anything by it, but you shuffle in your seat nonetheless. “Did you just transfer?”

You wince at the question and shake your head. You’re too embarrassed to reveal that you have been enrolled since the start, which for sure would make the air between you even more awkward. You quickly flip the conversation to be less you-focused. “So, you help your dad train the students? You must be under a lot of pressure.”

The coach is pretty ruthless. Every interaction with him leaves your skin feeling prickly; every command and scold, his directions, and even his praises—superficial amidst a deeper frustration. You can imagine an inkling of what he must be around his own son, if he’s anything like your own parents.

Chan tilts his head as if in deep consideration, but ultimately shrugs. He takes you by surprise when he breaks into a slight smile. “No, not really. I’m just here to help, as long as someone succeeds at something new, we mark that as a win in our books. Pressuring anyone helps no one.”

You eye the entrance to the pool. His words don’t really match up to your experiences, and you feel a slight jealousy for those who wound up so lucky. Maybe it’s because you’re a late bloomer, if you can even call it that. His father must’ve been shocked at seeing a girl your age floundering at what most have already nailed down.

“It must be nice having a professional help lead you down their path, the only reason why I took this class is so I could finally have a useful skill under my belt,” you can’t help yourself from rambling, so you shut your lips tight once you realize you’ve nearly thrown a pity party for yourself. Cautiously, you glance at Chan and hope he’s been distracted by one thing or another, or grew bored of you once you opened your mouth. Neither seem to be the case, though he looks at you with mild astonishment.

He motions for you to give him your name, and you do, reluctantly, cautiously, as though you’re making a deal that you can’t take back. When you do, he grins with a face of understanding and gives you his hand to shake. This all feels entirely foreign, disconcerting, and you can’t tell if the wetness between your fingers is nervous sweat or remnants of the pool. You have no time to think about it, because you separate when another whistle blows and students begin to file into the locker room.

Chan’s already left with a grin and a wave, and you’re left tugging on your school clothes with your heart beating waves of fire.

Chan has been on your mind ever since, though that is not exactly a feat. You tend to overthink and hyperfocus on the inane—it’s a fault your family has never let you forget. It’s what brings you to the situation at hand right now.

You come home late, after spending your time at the nearby café to sort out your school work. What you forgot to do was sort out your emotions (crucial mistake) and immediately your mother is hounding your every move. You make a snide comment, under your breath, about the state of the house: it feeds you more despair than actual food.

It ends there.

A snap here, a threat there, and you wish you had left as soon as you came. Your house’s front door slams shut behind you and you swallow that hard lump in your throat the best you can. Here, you’re so focused on that insignificant little action, one of pain and only pride, that you miss the tears and the ringing in your ears and it’s all useless. You’re useless.

The sleeves on your shirt have grown damp from all the wiping, and a thought comes: why not get it all wet? You’re already a hose of emotions, and your mother will yell at your weaknesses; the uncontrollable. Giving her a proper reason to scream seems sensible. Maybe you should empower yourself before she can impose her power on you.

At least, that’s what you tell yourself as you stride towards the school and mentally rummage through different ways of justifying your actions. Who cares if they don’t make sense?

You don’t.

The school pool’s entrance is surprisingly easy to get through. The inside feels especially hollow without the fuss of your classmates and coach. Every step carries its own reverb, and you momentarily hold your breath in case it does, too. But even so, the emptiness of the pool has a strange serenity to it. You bathe in it wholly.

You can’t bathe for too long, so you kick off your shoes and get right to it. You toe the edge of the pool and examine its reflections. You keep your eyes off yourself, only tracing along the ceiling lights and the stars spotted from the window. When the moon starts slowly inching into the view, you plunge.

The water whirls around you in both a menacing and tantalizing way. It plugs all of your senses and you let it. It soothes; it stings. And when you start feeling lightheaded, you resurface.

It takes a while for the blur to leave your eyes and the pounding to leave your ears. However, even with all this sensory overload, you feel blithe, and a full-belly laugh escapes you before you can stop it. You don’t want it to. This is the happiest you’ve felt in months.

Just as quickly, it ends. Abruptly, because someone has made themselves known with a loud clang. It rings from the locker room, and before you can pull yourself out of the water and hide, the door swings open and reveals—

Chan.

He’s already down to his swimwear, and looks unsurprised by your presence here. In fact, he looks somewhat pleased. “You’ve started without me.”

You’re a bit too stunned to respond, and the position of you both suddenly starts weighing on you. You’re on school grounds, way past its lockdown. The dip in the pool has definitely cleared your mind some, and you know now that what you are doing is trespassing. Maybe alone, you could’ve learned to reprimand yourself for doing so, swear to never do it again. But here you are, and there’s a witness.

Chan chuckles, clearly not running through the same thoughts in his own head. Instead, he walks over to your side and kneels, extending his hand. “Need some help?”

You can’t bring it in yourself to argue, so you take his hand and let him pull you out. You collapse very sloppily onto the tiles, the weight of your soaked clothes dragging you down. There’s silence. Your heartbeat slows once you realize Chan’s not intending on pulling any tricks. (At least you hope.)

“I won’t tell,” Chan eases your thoughts, “as long as you tell me the reason why you’re here.”

Despite saying this, there’s no urgency or force behind his words. You don’t feel pressured to answer, so you pay no mind when you do. “Wanted some time alone for myself and this was the closest thing in mind.”

“Did you know the door to the pool would be open?”

“No, not at all.”

Chan hums. He doesn’t seem suspicious of you. He doesn’t question you after that. Instead, he takes a couple steps back, “Well… if that’s all…”

He races forward and dives into the water, splashing your legs in the process. He disappears for a moment, then breaks the surface into a breastroke. He moves languidly, though sharp enough to slice straight through the liquid.

It’s a harsh contrast to you. You start to feel uncomfortable and misplaced now that the son of your coach displays his skill. Imagining yourself in his spot feels daunting, and you have to fight your instincts to just grab your shoes and run.

Back home.

The thought makes you shiver.

“Hey,” Chan floats up to you on his back. “You wanted swimming lessons, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” You’re nervous to see where this is going.

He smiles. “So hop in.”

Your parents didn’t question why you came home late that night. Nor why your clothes were mildly wet. Your sister gave her routine insult–slash–brag and was on her way. You certainly didn’t complain, now that you were left to your own devices, and on it the screen pings with a new message, one from Chan, whose contact you have yet to save.

You stay up all night responding to his texts.

When the next day comes, your loneliness hits harder than usual. You had forgotten what it was like interacting with people for a period of time longer than the length of class. You find yourself looking over your shoulder more often for a glimpse of Chan, even while swimming. And surprisingly, you don’t get yelled at by the coach for being so sidetracked. You’ve accumulated more praises, though you still sense it’s from a place of pitiful obligation.

You come home earlier than usual.

“So you’ve just given up on your education now, huh?”

“What?”

Your head snaps up at your mother’s voice. She stands as volatile as ever, hands splayed over her hips. The house smells flowery; she’s making her special rose petal flan—something she only does as a treat for herself, when things for her are going exceptionally well. These days come rare but welcomed, because usually then she’s as sensitive and motherly as one can be.

Yet today is the total opposite. And you get an inkling as to why: your English test sheet, laid on the kitchen counter.

You wince. Of course she had snooped through your room and saw your failure peeking through your garbage bin.

“I gave you so many chances, so many chances, let you drop out of math for God’s sake! And this is how you repay me? Failing your tests and coming home early? Did you even go to the library today? Have you ever studied in your entire life?!”

Your mom shows no sign of ever stopping her tirade. Her neck seems to have grown redder by the second. Your sister arrives just in time to catch the next part, no doubt excited to have her ego fed as per usual.

“We’ve moved cities, exchanged schools, and transferred jobs, just so you could have the opportunity your sister had. Do you think life was easy for her when we all lived in that garbage bin we called an apartment? Do you think she let that dissuade her from acing her studies and receiving that scholarship?” Your mother points at your sister then, and the looks on both of their faces hit you with two different senses of shame, both equally strong. “Are you honestly willing to undo all of your sister’s hard work? This is how you want to end your senior year? This is how you planned to enter adulthood?”

And with that she takes your paper and shreds it. She leaves you for the living room, sparing not one glance at the way your lips tremble and eyes glisten. It hurts, but in a way, you’re glad she doesn’t notice. It’d only stack another disappointment onto that pile she holds. Your sister’s grown bored of looking at you too, and trots off behind your mother.

Despite your blues, the sun is still up. So you exit the front door and sit on the steps. You wish you had it in you to fight back, no matter how disastrous that might end out to be. Because what your mother doesn’t realize is that it all piles up. You never asked to move to a new city, this late into high school. Everyone’s already bound and wound tight around each others’ fingers—friends, best friends, lovers, all things you’ve rarely experienced due to your momentary presence. You have your acquaintances, those who you would probably refer to as ‘friends,’ but they’re surface-level at best, not people you could ever rely on.

But that’s all she thinks you’re good for: never achieving, or attaining, or accomplishing, only to ever rely on others.

Impulsively, you pull out your cell phone and reach out to the only person nearby that you can.

TO: BANG CHAN

Just had an argument with my mom :(

Not feeling good…

FROM: BANG CHAN

Oh, no :(( are you okay?

Wanna come over and swim? Help clear your head?

The pool doors are open

Legally, this time :p

The slightest grin stretches over your face.

“And that’s how you do a butterfly stroke,”

The other kids of this program have begun to slowly disperse. They’re all younger—freshmen, probably—that make you want to douse your head in shame. The worst part of it all is that Chan isn’t even teaching them, they’ve all learned how to do the basic swimming strokes, and it makes it all the more obvious how lacking you are.

Chan had tried to placate you and tell you that most students aren’t paying attention to your mistakes, but you’re pretty sure that you saw one kid giggle when you came up for air.

As afternoon blends into evening, the lights indoors begin to feel more artificial. Chan pulls you over to a bench once most of the kids have gone home. This is when the awkwardness starts settling in.

“You should come here more often if you’re so worried about your skills, which, by the way, aren’t as bad as you think they are. No one is looking at you funny because of it.”

He pats you amiably on the shoulder. You shrug.

“I’ve already got too much on my plate. I usually go straight to the library to start on my homework. By the time I finish, it’s dinner time and I’ve got to make the switch over to the cafe to finish up my studies. An after-school swimming program can remain an afterthought, sorry,”

“Geez, no wonder I’ve never seen you walking around during class,” he gasps, “you’re up to your neck in work!”

“Yep,” you sigh. “Doesn’t even seem like it’s paying off.”

“How so?”

“My IQ is in the negatives,”

Chan jolts up as though he’s been caught asking an insensitive question, but just as quickly melts into himself. He gently slaps a hand on your arm, giggling. “No, it’s not! But for real, though…”

“I wasn’t lying,” you say, “Hours in the library, and yet I still fail.”

“It happens to the best of us, sometimes,”

“Sometimes being the key word,” you insist. “This isn’t sometimes.”

Chan is silent for a moment. “Be easy on yourself, it’s senior year, you’re allowed to make mistakes.”

You’re tempted to say ‘No, I’m not allowed. I have never been allowed. I’ve been perpetually skidding along thin ice,’ but you swallow it.

“Ok but,” you start, slowly and cheekily. “I’ve yet to see you make a single mistake in the pool. What is it going to take to make the Great Bang Chan, son of an actual professional athlete, screw up?”

“If my friends got here,” he says with a smile. “They’ve always got tricks up their sleeves. Some that they can probably teach you.”

“They swim as well?”

“Yep, but definitely not as good as me as you might’ve guessed,” he jokingly flexes, laughing. Then he sobers. “They’re coming later, if that’s okay with you.”

“Why wouldn’t it be okay with me?” You ask, but you’re already getting up to make yourself more presentable for their arrival. “That means more tutors for me.” And more judges.

There’s a moment of pleasant solitude between you and Chan before his friends trickle in. They enter in small enough numbers that it gives you time to familiarize yourself with them.

Seungmin came the earliest, the most diligent of the crew. He spoke gently and swam even softer. Felix and Jeongin toed after him, and flung water with utmost chaos. Others came and you observed, much too shy to delve into the same antics they toyed in. At times, Chan would climb out and chill with you, prompting the others to take a break and chat alongside. It all mended into a blur as the sky grew purple.

Over the days, you find the presence of Chan’s friends comforting. They’re friendly—obviously—with lighthearted races and pool tricks. They give you an experience you’ve been deprived of since you moved. They’ve taught you well, surprisingly. And it must have also come as a shock to your coach.

He approaches you one afternoon after class ends.

“Y/N, you were amazing out there,” he says. “Haven’t seen an improvement that big in a long while.”

Something about his statement rubs wrong on you. You take a step back, guarded.

“Thank you,” you say, making sure to send a polite smile his way. “Swimming has started to become more fun as the days go by. Really grateful to have made the exchange over here.”

“I’m glad as well. Honestly, I was a bit worried when you enrolled a bit late into this class. Have to keep the students all on the same page, and it’s hard to split the attention,” he sets a hand over your shoulder. “But it seems like you’ll be on the same level as the others in no time! Keep up the good work!”

And like that, your suspicions have been confirmed. Your stomach drops when he leaves, and you mentally beat yourself up for thinking you were in any way competent. A pity-compliment, that’s all that was. That’s all it ever is.

Chan rushes into the locker room and quickly changes into his swimwear. When he sees you, he smiles, pauses to wrap you up into a hug, and is out in the pool in no time. His father watches him from the sidelines fondly, with an expression that clearly holds pride and amazement.

You wonder if you will ever get that kind of look from your parents. Or anyone, for that matter.

That question is still up in the air, weeks later, when your sister intrudes on your swimming class one morning. She doesn’t interrupt or anything. She just quietly stands by the pool’s entrance and watches. You see her eyes trail over the other students and slowly back to you, making silent observations, none of them kind.

When you climb out and class is over, she pulls you to the side. She takes a moment to look you over. “So this is what you’ve picked up since you came here. Impressive.”

“Well, yeah,” you say, and try to move hurriedly to the locker room to escape her. She takes you by the arm, demanding. You struggle shoving her off. “I also need to pick up my books for next class, if you’ll excu—”

“Oh, you don’t have any class to go to right now,” she snaps. “I’ve called. You’re coming home with me for now.”

You freeze, and with satisfaction, your sister drops your arm. “Why?”

“It’s an emergency, one I thought you should know,” a small smile spreads across her lips, and your heart sinks. It can’t be a family emergency, right? Or else she’d be more panicked, right? But if it’s not, what can be so urgent that your sister would have to pick you up from school so early? “Just grab what you need for now so we can go.”

Hesitantly, you nod your head and follow her orders. When you are sat inside her car, you wait for her to disclose any information related to your early departure. She doesn’t feed your curiosity then, only drives slowly and silently down the road to your house. She makes a detour, picks a route that’s longer than your usual, and finally breaks the silence.

“You know how my scholarship gave our Mom a better opportunity at finding a job, right?” It’s a simple question, but set up dangerously and your sweat kicks in as you nod. “And since Dad isn’t the only one working anymore, we’ve got more money to spend, right?”

Right. This is a big jump from the past, when your father only made enough to cover the expenses of the bills and a few groceries. Your mother was met with job rejections left and right, and neither you nor your sister had the time or management to juggle grades as well as employment. At that time, your mother insisted that you focus more on school. She made promises that if one of you hit big, that would be enough of a reward for her. That all her stress and burdens would be paid off. You suppose it half came true. Financially, you were all rewarded.

But rather, all her stress and burdens were pushed in a different direction. You wonder what it’s like to be on the opposite side. You eye your sister, and nod your head to continue.

“So, initially, her plan was to save up to help you out once you graduated. Of course, she knew this was necessary, since there’s no way in hell you’d strike a full scholarship with, you know,” she throws you a sidelong glance, batting her eyelashes. Your hand tightens around your seatbelt. “But she realized, even with a new and improved environment, that your current habits probably wouldn’t strike you one at all. She was forgiving at first. Thought about paying half your tuition and taking a loan for the other. Welp. Then you dropped pre-calculus for swimming and made her rethink her life choices all over again. Good job!”

“Sis,” you hiss, “what does that mean?”

You can’t handle her bullshitting right now. Though you know she has all the time in the world for it. Your surroundings have begun to look unfamiliar, and the anxiety inside you strikes. That’s probably the effect she was going for.

“It means you’re fucked,” she lets out a loud laugh, “you’re not getting any help from her. Or Dad for that matter. Better start counting your pennies, sis!”

And just like that, the tightening in your chest explodes. You feel as though you’re suffocating, each intake of breath amounting to none. Your body grows hotter and you’re wracked with shivers, and stuck inside the cramped space of your sister’s car leaves you no space to handle your panic attack.

You’re overwhelmed by the thoughts of what’s to come. Getting into college—now a complete uncertainty—just to be lost in debt, and there’s nothing to do about it. You lack life experience. You’ve been holed up and relying on the bare minimum to get you by. The only moment you have been able to hold your head above the water, and your own family has dunked you back underneath. You’re struggling to win a sabotaged race.

“By the way, don’t tell Mom I told you,” your sister says, now pulling into your driveway. She chatters in a low voice, as if she doesn’t want the world to listen in on your conversation. “It’s our little secret. Just like how it was mine and hers.”

You find yourself not coming home at night. Where you stay is just about as much of a mystery to them as it is to you. You’ve huddled yourself in the locker rooms some nights, using sheets and water bottles as cushions. You’ve cornered yourself in classrooms. Hell, you’ve even holed yourself up in your family’s car, in the backseat, on the floor so that onlookers can’t peep and tattle your nightly whereabouts to your family (What a disgrace that would’ve been). But you’ve always made sure to come back home at the lick of dawn, just before the rest of them would get up and bang down your door looking for answers to ‘where’ve you been last night?’ and ‘what time did you get home?’ and you’d answer ‘the park’ or ‘friend’s’ or ‘convenience store,’ and ‘at midnight.’ Just late enough for it to be believable. No one’s ever up that late, and if one were, they’d probably be tired or drunk off their ass to notice your absence. No one’s ever called your bluff, a heartbreaking realization that you’ve come to appreciate.

Chan, though, walks into the pool at just the wrong time. You’ve just gotten used to the stench of bleach and chlorine when he nudges you awake on your makeshift bed of thin sheets and soaked homework paper. You dash up, searching and grabbing for your phone to check your alarms (How did you miss it? Was it on silent? A dead battery?). Chan chuckles as if your panic is the funniest thing he has ever seen.

“You’re fine, school’s not open till another hour and a half,” he picks up on your confusion. It seems to settle into his own features. He’s got swim trunks on, and a towel slung over his shoulder. From the corner of your eye, you note the darkness of a not-yet-risen sun. “I just decided to come in early for quick practice.”

An awkward pause and an understanding nod to himself later, he kneels. “Hey. What are you doing on the floor here?”

His eyebrows knit and his worry looks even more pronounced in this dark blue reflection of… life. How pitiful you must look. He’s probably wondering if you’re that dirt-poor, that sleeping on tile might be considered a luxury to you. But even so, you can’t bother to be embarrassed by yourself at the moment. He’s pulled you out of the comfort of unconsciousness, so now you’re fighting your natural reactions to the biting cold and solid ground.

It hurts. You’re sore and your face is blue and all you can think about is crying. It hurts that your options are either this or your home, and the fact that you chose this.

“I’m fine,” you nod meekly, “Just…napping,”

Too overwhelmed to map out a convincing lie, you prepare yourself for the defenses. This is going to sting Chan and you are sure going to regret it later, but fuck it. You’ll deal with the consequences once you’ve showered under hot water and mulled it over at breakfast.

Chan reaches for your shoulder, palm warm, and helps you sit up. “Why are you napping on the floor?”

“Because if I nap in the pool, I’ll drown.”

Chan almost cracks, and you consider that a victory. But he just as quickly wraps an arm around your shoulders and pulls you into his chest, one hand laying over your own. “Don’t joke about stuff like that. I’m serious. Are you okay? Did…something happen at home, again?”

Something’s always happening at home, and that’s the part that drives you nuts. Your old friends can handle you complaining about spontaneous spats with your sister every once in a while, but would go madder than you if they heard every single crisis that went down behind your walls. You have to bite and swallow every time.

You shake your head. “I tried swimming last night. It went about how’d you expect, and I knocked out on the floor immediately after. Not sure how you can do it, Chan. Honestly, everyday I respect you a little more.”

He chuckles, arm tightening around you for a pulse. “No one’s born a pro. And I promise you, you’re on your way to becoming one.”

You feel as though you’re on your way to becoming no one. You try to voice this as inconspicuous as possible.

“What if you disappoint someone because you’re not there yet?” you ask, “What if they wanted you to be a pro since the very beginning, and because you’re nowhere close, they end up mad?”

“Who’s mad? If it’s about my dad, I promise you he’s not—”

“No, it’s not him.Forget it.”

“Is it—” he inhales, “Is—Is your family upset? Is that why you’re here?”

You don’t respond. It’s enough of an answer.

“I’m not sure what they said to you, but just know they’re wrong. We all improve at our own pace, and we’re not better or worse for it. You need to give yourself patience, ignore them, just—”

“Chan, I can’t ignore them,” you snap. You pull yourself from Chan’s embrace and bury your face into your knees. Your eyes burn as the emotions take over you. It doesn’t hurt less as time goes on. “They make my life a living hell and there’s nothing I can do about it. I don’t know how to do anything. I’m the very definition of useless, and the worst part is that they all know, but no one helps. I can’t leave them or else I’ll just end up… here.”

Sobs start to wrack through you, and you can’t do anything to stop it. You’re tired of wallowing in self-pity, in others’ pity, but you’re at a loss for what to do. You wish you weren’t an adult with the tendencies of a child, only there for others to look after. No one’s taught you what it takes for that transition to happen, to grow independant, to discover skills and utilize them. They’ve just thrown you in the deep end and disregarded you when you drowned. You wish you weren’t so helpless. You wish you had some help.

“I wish I knew what to say,” Chan murmurs. He’s wrapped his arms around his knees and seems to gaze into the pool. Every once in a while, he passes you a glance, but ultimately, he leaves you to yourself.

The sun has slowly started to rise, and the birds have begun to chirp. That’s your cue to get out of here, though even now you’re running behind schedule. Your eyes sting and you hope your walk back home is enough to soothe them back to normal.

Chan stands up when you do, and quickly interrupts you by the doorway. His face is sullen, concave, and heavy as though he bears the same amount of burdens that you do. Who’s to say he doesn’t?

“Just… We’ll figure this out, okay? Together.” He meets your eyes. “I’ll wait at the pool for you. As soon as they start acting up, come here immediately. Don’t let their words intimidate you.”

“Okay,” just when you think this conversation’s done, he pauses you again. A beat passes. Several. And then he leans in—

His lips press against yours, soft and warm, and are off in an instant. You don’t have enough time to savor the feeling.

He smiles and says, “I don’t want you to be in any danger, whether that be at home or otherwise, okay?”

You smile. An unnamed pressure lifts from your shoulders. “Okay.”

You feel a bit guilty, keeping Chan out of his own home during the nights and mornings. You have to fight to reassure yourself that this is out of his own volition. He certainly doesn’t seem bothered when he spots you on your way to the pool’s entrance. And he’s found ways to help the time pass faster. Be it games, studying, or making out.

Yep, he’s introduced a new activity to you, though you can’t really complain. But it doesn’t change the fact that the pool’s tile and linoleum, all cold and hard, is not meant for a person to sleep on. You’ve started checking the other for bruises and marks that could be left behind in your wakes, literally.

Over time, it’s become a routine. A sad one; one that shouldn’t be necessary, but you force yourself to think of it in a positive light. That’s also something he’s been teaching you while you stay: how to manage your inner thoughts, how to turn those demons into angels, even when the devil is really, really trying you. It’s helped ease your wounds, and you avoid your family enough for them to not reopen them.

Finally, that’s his last lesson. Family is both permanent and temporary, and you’d be glad to know that the permanent ones are those you keep, and hold tight, and never ought to lose. While temporary family could always be cut off, and should be, because what’s the point of family if they won’t be there for you all the time? He’s made sure to look you deep in your eyes when he said this, voice clear and low, and just a bit unsteady. You take your time digesting that one.

You’ve got trouble with your family, and one night, after more than a week’s passed, you get into trouble with someone else’s.

You had arrived at the pool a tad bit early, you supposed, and had already laid out all your blankets and card games when the entrance clanged open. You were about to reveal a new game you’d discover online to Chan, only to be met with a voice much deeper than his.

“Y/N.”

Your head snaps up and immediately blood rushes to your ears. Coach dangles a set of keys in his hand, and seems–rightly–surprised at your appearance. But you can see the moment he understood what he saw. A person’s pity can only extend so much, and you know exactly where yours lies.

You don’t even have to wince.

School break has just started, and of course you’re grounded.

On one hand, you’re happy you don’t have to face your coach after being caught trespassing. His face held a look of rage and disappointment, and you don’t want to witness that any more than you have to. The resemblance between him and Chan are uncanny.

But you’re home. That doesn’t spell out comfort for you at all.

You and Chan send messages back and forth to each other consisting of “i miss you”s and “sorry that happened”s. You rant to him about how fed up you’ve been, and you feel relieved for the first time in a long while, because finally, someone is there to listen, judgement-free. Chan suggests sneaking into your house for the night a couple of times to see each other, but you reject, saying that your mother’s too eagle-eyed for that to happen.

Once break is over and school is back open, your family keeps their eyes locked on you like a hawk. You no longer can stop by the library for homework or studying, instead they demand you return back home immediately once school’s over. Your father insists on helping you study instead, and although you know it’s not out of the pure kindness of his heart, you accept it for the time being.

Swim class is awkward, now that both you and Coach Bang have to pretend to not have gone through that whole ordeal. But you can feel his gaze linger on you when you plunge underwater. You have no idea what he thinks of you now, after all this, and you’re too embarrassed to ask Chan.

One day, Chan approaches you before swim class begins.

“Mind if I take you out for a bit?” He asks. You slyly look at the clock ticking away by the door to the pool. You have just about a minute. Only a minute to get ready. “It’ll only be for a quick moment. You’ll be back in no time and if you don’t, I’ll cover for you.”

You squint suspiciously at Chan. “What’s this about?”

“A surprise. One my father will absolutely understand.”

When it puts it like that…

It’s a quick ride to where Chan ends up taking you: a bizarre little creek tucked behind several neighborhood houses. Its water runs fresh, uncontaminated by human interaction, feeding into the thick brushes of land and trees. It’s a beautiful sight indeed, but wholly inconsequential. You look to Chan for a clue as to why he brought you here.

He seems lost in himself and nature. Slowly, he jumps over to the rocks and gazes into the creek’s depth. For a moment, you think he’s just brought you to admire the scenery, so you’re shocked out of your own stupor when he speaks. “My father used to bring me here when I was a child. He used to bring the whole family out for a swim.”

You hum and silently make your way closer to him. He still dashes from one stone to another, calm and in thought. “My earliest memories of training began here. It was the best, surrounded by natural sounds and protected by the rocks. It isn’t too deep, just about perfect for my height and age. Eventually we started coming here less and less as my Dad took up calls and schedules. We all grew older and busier, till we just abandoned it. But sometimes I come here when I need to give myself a break and really think.”

You’re brushed shoulder-to-shoulder together now. Your balance isn’t as good as Chan’s, and you end up slipping and stepping into the creek every other second. He happily keeps a hand near your waist and hoists you back up whenever needed.

“Do your neighbors ever come here?”

“They’ve got their own gardens to tend to,” he nods towards the houses. “No one other than me has come here in at least a decade.”

He eyes you as he says this. It’s his own little safe haven. And if he’s so sure that no one has snuck in yet, that means you’re the first to enter it.

The realization makes you bow your head, flustered. Chan hums satisfactory by your side. You both listen to the birds coo and the bugs chitter, soaking in nature’s creations. When Chan notices you finally getting a bit restless, he takes your hand and leads you to the rocks. Your legs slightly dip inside the creek, its water soaking through your clothes, but you don’t mind. It’s coldness is welcomed as the sun soars higher into the sky.

“Here’s not like the pool,” Chan says, fingers toying with the ends of your hair. “There’s no chance anyone will catch us here.”

The implication is not lost on you, especially with the way he looks into your eyes as he speaks. Incidents of the past come to mind, but they’re quickly replaced by thoughts of the future, such as: his lips on yours, your hands in his, and most importantly—

“I know,” you hastily respond, “I know.”

And the moment is clear. His lips are definitely on yours, and your hands are in his, but also on his; and over his arms; and grasping his shoulders. And most importantly, his body surrounds you and he’s hugging you to his chest. Your breath runs low, and you can’t tell if it’s because of his arms or his lips.

Either way, you embrace it all.

He leans you on the rocks. He’s grinding and you feel something…hard, brush against you. It fills you with heat, both subtle and scorching and when he presses that against you again, his hand slowly travelling down your body, you stiffen and pull back.

“Chan, I—” You gasp, “I’ve never done this before…ever… and—”

“Hey,” He says, “It’s fine. We can stop if you want to.”

And he pauses, slightly moving backwards to give you some air to breathe in. You listen to your heart beat in your chest, use that rhythm to help calm you down. Once it slows, you’re still hot as before, though it spreads from somewhere deep in you.

“It’s—,” you stutter, “I want to do this. Now.”

A knowing grin spreads across Chan’s face, and he gently lowers himself over you, settles a kiss, quick and harmless, on your lips, then pushes onward.

It’s rough and gentle all at the same time. Both overwheling and manageable. You’re up to your hips in water, having slid down the rocks, but you can feel that you’re wet for other reasons.

Chan pulls backs and mouths at your neck, fingers unfastening the buttons of your clothing and tossing them haphazardly. You’re pretty sure you hear a couple splashes as he does so. He kisses down your chest, your tummy, and then hooks his arms around your bottom and lifts you. He helps you back on the rocks and holds you in place as he focuses on you.

“Turn over,” he commands. He’s still standing within the creek itself, chest level with your waist. The request takes its time to settle in your mind. When it does, your face starts to burn, but you follow his order nonetheless.

Like this, you lay flat on your stomach on the grass and your legs swing over the rocks and into the creek. Chan softly tugs your pants down, just far enough to expose you. He delicately places his hands on your cheeks and spreads them. And—

Oh.

That’s his tongue. And he’s dragging it over you in a way that makes your toes curl. You tighten around nothing, not until he does you the favor of adding his fingers to the mix. He slides them into you easily, pumping them while his tongue does its work on your clit.

And now you’re clawing at the grass and dirt and rocks. You can feel yourself lightly kicking Chan in the chest and shoulders, but he only squeezes your hips back, invitingly.

Soon, you’re cumming around his fingers and can’t help yourself from slowly sliding down the rocks and into the creek. Chan does his best to soften your descent, then turns you around to face him. His face is glimmering with both your and the creek’s wetness, hair laid down by sweat, lips plump from how much they’ve been pressed against you, God he just looks so erotic and amazing like this that you tug him in for a kiss. You taste yourself (at least you think that’s you) and it’s not the most pleasant, but you don’t mind because he doesn’t mind.

“Do you…?” You breathlessly motion for his member. He grins and looks down at you as if you’ve just asked him a silly question. And similarly, he plants a light kiss on your nose before diving for your lips again.

“Next time, baby,” he says, “Right now I just wanna feel you.:”

So he pulls you flush against him, arms roaming around your body. When you’re both red-faced from kissing the lights off each other, he helps you climb out of the creek.

Neither of you are really thinking when you hit the ground, him on top of you and his length sliding over your folds. He’s teasing, but you’re too excited to hold off for any longer, so you wrap your arms around him and pull him chest-to-chest, crying with your impatience.

With a chuckle, he gives in, sinking into you. You’re surprised at how well you take it. He fills you up so nicely, so intensely. Each thrust sends you into another fit of heat, your core burning and tightening around him. Chan nuzzles his face in your shoulder, and with every pump of his hips, he teethes at the skin of your neck.

Every feeling is amplified when he’s folded around you like this, and as time runs out, another orgasm makes its way through your body. Chan groans appreciatively and leans on his arms to plant kisses all over your lips, face, and neck.

“Good girl,” he whispers. “Let it all out. Let me feel you.”

You cry out when he abruptly pulls out. He kneels beside you and wraps a hand around his length, hastily jerking himself to completion.

You watch in entrancement, the way his face scrunches up, and the way his whole member and fist shines and you’ve suddenly got a craving to put your lips on his dick.

You hesitantly bring a hand over to it first, to test the waters. His movement stutters, then slows down once he realizes what you’re trying to do. You sit up and bring your other hand to his cock. Cautiously, you start to pump them.

“Don’t be scared,” Chan chuckles, “You can squeeze harder.”

Your grip tighten, but not too much, and you try again. Small, airy grunts fall from his lips. His hips start thrusting with your hands. You watch as the head of his cock disappears and reappears into his foreskin, shimmering with the mix of you and his pre-cum. It’s strangely appetizing.

You lean down to put you mouth on Chan’s dick without much thought. His hardness is cushioned by your lips, and his skin is silkier than you initially imagined. But it’s at this moment you realize you have no idea what to do.

You look up at Chan, and he groans at the sight of you at this angle. But then, a fond smile makes its way on his face and he lifts a hand to gingerly comb through your hair.

“It’s okay,” he laughs affectionately, “I’ll teach you another time. For now…”

He brings his hand back to his cock and finishes himself off. You deflate a bit, disappointed you weren’t able to give him his orgasms that he so desperately deserves, especially after getting you there twice. But he’s already on the ground alongside you, holding your face in the palm of his hands and pulling you into a loving smooch.

“That was amazing,” he moans, drawing out the loudest kiss sound from both of your lips. You both giggle in response. “I couldn’t be more happy you decided to give yourself to me.”

“Wasn’t planning on giving myself to anyone other,” you say. You climb on top of Chan, squealing as you try to indulge in the high-famed post-sex cuddles you’ve heard so much about. Chan squeezes you back with the brightest and most-dimpled grin you’ve ever seen.

Eventually, the mirth wears off, as the wind picks up and you’re immediately reminded that you’re both outdoors, off-campus one might say, but most definitely not on school grounds, when you absolutely should be.

You lay back, groaning when you check the time. Late. “My mom is going to kill me.”

It seems as though you can’t stop making mistakes and screwing your chances. The school year is almost ending and you feel like your life might end with it. You try to think more positively, but as the seconds tick by with neither of you racing back towards the school, the worse you feel.

Chan shuffles about. “Your mother isn’t going to kill you.”

“How would you know?”

He pauses; takes a moment to inhale.

“I told my dad about what’s going on at home, hope that wasn’t intrusive,” he says, and your heart stops. “He understands what you’re going through and regrets acting that way. He’s willing to take it all back. In fact, he says you’ve gotten so good at swimming lately, that he wants you to help mentor the kids. It’s a paid opportunity.”

His hand falls over yours. “I’m also seeking ways to get you away from there. My home’s got a guest bedroom, and I’ve been convincing my mom to clear it out.”

“You mean…”

“I do,” he says, “Some of us are not blessed with the most supporting families, and that’s okay. Because you have people that care for you, we care for you, I care for you, even if your family…cares for you a bit less.”

It hurts to hear him say it. Hurts even deeper to know it’s true. But the warmth in his gaze soothes you even just a little bit.

The dangers of going home is always a threat that hangs over your head, but if there’s one thing you’ve learned since meeting Chan, it’s that you don’t always have to go alone.

When the time is clear, when you’ve found support and built up confidence, you confront your family.

You tell them that you’ve had it. You no longer keep your whereabouts a secret, you no longer let them intrude on you anymore. You tell them that you’ve found a job, that you’re now able to support yourself from here-on-out. You are no longer financially, emotionally, or physically bound to them whether they like it or not. When you’re done, you don’t even stay to observe their reactions, though you can hear your sister snickering over your shoulder.

Chan’s there to give you a ride to his house, once you’ve packed up enough for a week. He says he’ll accompany again next time. Or maybe there won’t be a next time.

You are rewarded for what you have achieved, rather than what you can, and you can leave the past remnants behind and rediscover yourself in a new way, confidently.

I must salute smut writers, because every single time i’ve attempted to write smut I’ve struggled, ugh… but anyways………….

hope you guys liked this! if you made it this far, that is. ^^ this was edited by @jaeminlore who was really kind enough to do so!

#bang chan #stray kids #bang chan scenarios #bang chan smut #skz smut #skz scenarios #stray kids scenarios #stray kids smut #bang chan angst #stray kids angst #skz angst #bang chan fluff #stray kids fluff #skz fluff #bang chan fanfic #stray kids fanfic #skz fanfic #.mine

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silverducks · 3 years

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Game of Thrones - Jaime Lannister

A rambling character study of Jaime Lannister from Game of Thrones.

Introduction

Ok, so nearly a month since I finished watching Game of Thrones, and I’m still not over how it ended. Like some things I can reconcile myself too, some things just annoy me when I overthink what happened and some things - ok one thing in particular - is just not letting me go.

And that is the way the show ended for Jaime Lannister.

I know I’m like 2 years too late on the GoT bandwagon and no one cares anymore. But I’m writing all these posts because I still care, having recently experienced what you all went through 2 years ago. And I know what I’ll be posting will have all been posted countless times before and discussed in the fandom years ago. But I kinda need to still get my own thoughts written down and outta my head.

Before I go on though, I just want to add in here that I do still love this show and, even right to the very end, think the acting, crew, music, sets/scenery, costumes, basically everything was pretty much amazing. That is except the writing, which, went downhill after series 4. Before then it was pretty much amazing too (not always perfect (is anything?), but so darn good!)

Now, turns out when I came to write down my thoughts on Jaime’s ending, I had even more than I realised. Basically it’s turned into me writing one massive analysis of Jaime’s character based on the show. So I’ve split it into separate posts, with this first one more of an intro, a summary of my thoughts and overall opinion on Jaime and a bit of context on my own experience with Game of Thrones.

Now, spoilers for Game of Thrones ending

I’ve read/watched a lot on the internet since I saw those episodes (series 8, episode 4 and 5 in case you weren’t sure) and I know a lot of people don’t like how they ended Jaime’s story in the show either. But I’ve also read a lot of comments where people did like it, or at least thought it made sense. The reasons they give make no sense to me, but it’s made me think and overthink and analyse way too much about how they did end his story.

So, in order to try and get them out of my head, I’m putting them down here. It’s a long, pretty rambling read, split up into a few parts because it got so long. Across the posts I’m going to go through my own understanding and perception of Jaime’s character and his arc and why I think they completely ruined it in episodes 8.04 and 8.05. I’ll then focus on some of the main reasons I’ve seen why people think it did make sense, and why (even though I maintain everyone is entitled to their own opinion) I completely disagree. Jaime’s character arc was annihilated in the show even more than Kings Landing. And that is more than a bit frustrating.

Now, just a bit of background to add some context to my thoughts; I basically only got around to watching the show a few months ago (I’ve not read the books yet). I basically binged watched the entire show and am now just a little bit reeling from it all! LOL! Also, as I did binge watch it, it meant I didn’t spend time between episodes/series really analysing/theorising etc. I had a few ideas and thoughts, but not to the depth it would have been had I needed to wait impatiently for each new episode. This means I think my viewpoint is of the show as an overall whole, rather than each separate series, because it kinda all rolled into one. This may, or may not, have affected my opinion and so this analysis of Jaime Lannister and my disappointment in his ending. It also means, having only watched the show once, I’ve probably forgotten or missed bits. However, since I finished the show, I’ve watched a lot of YouTube videos and read a lot of stuff on the net about it, including in comparison to the books. (And I maybe rewatched some of my favourite scenes just a few times…) And now I am analysing and theorising and thinking about this show way too much! LOL!

So I guess my viewpoint isn’t one of ignorance, but it might not be quite the same as someone who’s been invested in the show from the start.

Like most viewers, I pretty much thought Jaime = evil villain for most of the earlier series. He had the odd moment, but it wasn’t until he did that speech with Catelyn about the conflict of all those oaths he’d taken that I even started to take note of his character. And then series 3 happens, where he has his road trip with Brienne, loses his hand, saves her from a bear and basically starts his wonderful path of character development. And basically manages to go from a guy I pretty much do not like at all at the start, to one of my all time favourite characters ever.

Also, I’m definitely a Brienne/Jaime shipper and did wish them to have a happy ending. However, I pretty much never thought the show would actually even go there, let alone make it happy. In fact, I actually did my best to NOT ship them for such a long time because, being Game of Thrones, I knew it was very unlikely to end well. But, then yeah, their intense staring contests kept on happening and darn it, the way that Jaime’s voice breaks when he says Lady Brienne and him giving her a priceless sword, and what the sword represents and…

Ok, well, yeah, I could gush about them all day, but anyway, I ended up not being able to fight the ship any more after series 6 and THAT tent scene. But, even then, I still didn’t think the show would make it canon, like it would just leave it all open ended/make up your own mind kinda thing.

And then we get to series 8. Like we have a whole episode (that is actually named for their very storyline) with Jaime just staring at Brienne, being all dorky around Brienne and then, if that wasn’t enough, he even KNIGHTS Brienne! I mean, this is epic for this ship! And I would have been ok (not happy, but satisfied) as a Brienne and Jaime shipper if that had been it.

But then no, then he barely leaves her side in the fight against the dead in the next episode – they fight side by side with their two halves of one whole swords, each risking their own life for the other multiple times. And then in the next episode (where I don’t think there’s barely any scene where they’re NOT right next to each other) the show DID make it canon. Like it actually did go there, they slept together (in an adorably awkward scene I love). Heck, Jaime then even chooses to stay in the North and be with Brienne, even though he hates the North. Like this was just epicness of all proportions and I got so excited and all those shippy feels I was trying to hold back just came rushing out and then... and then...

THEN that scene happens. He leaves her. Like WTH…

Anyway, more on that in another post. I guess what I’m trying to say is that as much as I ship them, my issues with Jaime’s ending is less about his relationship with Brienne, and more just his complete 180 on character development. Jaime’s arc has been heavily influenced by Brienne, but it is still amazing in its own right. As I didn’t expect Brienne/Jaime to ever happen (so when it did and then got taken away in the very same episode, it’s incredibly frustrating and gives even less credence to what does happen), it’s not why I’m so annoyed and disappointed with what happened to Jaime.

I’m annoyed because they took all this amazing character growth over 7 series and then screwed it all over in less than two episodes. No, that’s not enough. It was a complete and utter character assassination that completely undermines and destroys 7 series worth of investment and development, completely nullifying everything Jaime went through as a character.

So, yeah, I’m a bit annoyed, but that’s because it makes no sense and it’s bugging me enough to write this whole series of posts. Because I can’t let it go. And having read people justify, even like it online, it’s made my inner analysis thought train go into override. And I’m sorry if these posts are like I’m preaching to the choir, or writing such obvious stuff and repeating myself, I’m just trying to get it all out my head as coherently as I can. Hopefully allowing me to move on a bit.

#Urgh #I need to sit in a corner and try to cheer myself up again before I can write anymore #Maybe watching some Brienne and Jaime fan videos will help cheer me up #And also simultaneously depress me even more.

#Game of Thrones #Jaime Lannister #Brienne x Jaime

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calpalsworld · 3 years

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Not "autistic anon," but also autistic, (being called maybe ableist made me want to put this out there before go to bed) i thought Zane was depicted that way purposefully by the writers. He has stereotypical traits like taking things literally, and has an actual humor switch. The writers have done things with Zane before like have him lose bodily autonomy (during that one Wu's teas short) and did something with his voice be it making him unable to be understood or talking too loud and the forced pirate voice by Jay. (what you're doing isn't too different from that, right?) I thought it was just a little iffy to distort his body and memory bc that could be interpreted as something not that I'm sure what exactly, it's some kind of disability. I dunno. I'm not good with putting this to words. I hope this makes sense.

Sorry I went to bed but now I’m awake 😭

Also I ended up totally spilling all my thoughts here rather than only specifically replying to you please forgive me context: my scary zane concept design, & my ninjago rewrite i refer to a lot

Im a little confused but I think I get what you're saying? You're saying the Ninjago writers absolutely DON'T write Zane well (you listed examples of this) and you don't want me to fall into the same trap?

I had the opposite logic earlier. I thought: If Ninjago writers made Zane have stereotypical autisitic traits while also being a dehumanized robot, I may as well embrace it, say he is autistic blatantly, while also making him do funny/cool non-human robot things, so its clear as possible the two aspects of his character are literal and separate and not a metaphor for each other. But you're right! I do have a choice and I dont have to embrace things! :)

Like there were a couple ways I was gonna reject the original, for example, I never wanted Zane to have a funny switch, and I hated how other characters could fuck with Zane and he didn't even care 😬. I want to change that stuff. So youre right, if I am changing shit like that, it would be counterproductive for ME to GIVE him MORE traits along that theme. 😬😬😬 I should try to feel less obligated to portray Zane like he originally is. I still like the concept of "scary zane" (for reasons i explain below the cut) but I might tone it down a bit like with the claws and weird proportions and shit. I’d def make him look more skeletal and undead. That was my original intention, but i didnt execute it as good as I could have.... idk if anyone could tell thats what he was supposed to be like...my bad! But rn I dont wanna redesign him I wanna draw other stuff like normal alive Zane. Sorry LMAO 😳. Like I said in some earlier asks I think, I think Im gonna focus rn on how I should portray season 1 normal not dead Zane so thank you and feel free to share any other Zane thoughts ^_^ SOME OTHER THOUGHTS:

Also I Wanna Argue Some Stuff But I Understand its a Weak Argument Since All of This Context was Just In My Brain (so don't take this as an argument, just as me rambling): I don't want messed up things to happen to Zane and for it to just be ignored. I think if Zane is going to have fucked up things happen to him, as all characters must, its best for it to happen during a season where he actually addresses his feelings about being a robot (learning to accept that he will always be himself, regardless if hes "human" or the "original" or whatever. (thats how I always interpreted his emotions)). But I wouldn't have the other Ninja be very phased by Zane's looks because the whole point is they already love who he is (seasons 1-3 were about getting to know Zane) and now Zane himself just has to learn the physical, robot part of him is okay. Its about person-hood rather than humanity. Because the season focuses around Zane's soul, and because he lost his original body, I feel like I could mess around with his current, temporary body and have fun and make it scary. Because that body should be irrelevant. I understand it possibly being upsetting for an autistic character to be designed like this, but other people I talked to see it the opposite way. They find it comforting for him to look so different but still be himself and be so loved. SO IM ABSOLUTELY NOT saying its wrong to be bothered or to hate it or to feel any way. Just that I personally think it would be cool for Zane to be portrayed with a little spice lol, so thats why I like scary Zane for season 4.

Another Thing I Wannna Say But Is REALLY Hypocritical: (this isnt directed at anyone I just REALLY want to say this) I know I say "this is Zane but scary, he looks like fnaf" so he's obviously dehumanized, but I always felt like "scary" is more of an objective fact. Its an instinct. But what's "not human" is subjective. I think there is a problem with saying anything different from "average" human is dehumanized because that could extend to real people. Lol I know its bad for me to compare FNAF-ass Zane to real people, but I mean he could be real. People can have exposed teeth, and people can be shaped weird. And when someone first sees a person who looks like that they'll probably think "woah those features are scary" by instinct. And that surprise doesn't make someone ableist obviously. But bring that person’s humanity into question is NOT an instinct, and is fucked to shit. This is kinda a bad point for me to make since its about the fictional FNAF Zane I drew, and I am NOT implying ANYONE was thinking like this. [especially not the original asker anon who I am totally forgetting about at this point OOPS]. But I just thought it was an opinion of mine I couldn't go without mentioning when talking about dehumanization and disabilities.

^^^ I think you (anon) understand what I mean and might’ve said the exact same thing as me if you were writing a long ass response? I think this because you started to bring physical disabilities up and you said it was "a little iffy." ^_^ So we agree, but I don't see Zane's relation to real life disabilities as "a little iffy" I see it more like "complicated"? IF THAT DIFFERENCE EVEN MAKES ANY SENSE?????? I feel like a lot of things about Zane are really just complicated and need the right context, rather than the concepts necessarily being wrong -- NOW THAT I THINK ABOUT IT! THATS THE WHOLE REASON I DO THIS STUPID REWRITE! XD thats why a lot of my rewrite SO FAR has been the same concepts and plot beats, but different dialogue n specifics and such. I like a lot of concepts in Ninjago but I dont think they were presented correctly.....! :( So I guess all we can do is wait and see if I make Zane offensive or not....???

Also something about the memory part - yeah i agree i was surprised no one thought that was weird to make jokes out of his memory issues..... BUT I am like 100% firm on making his memory take longer to come back because I think its stupid how quick Zane was able to recover from literally dying. Like its just dumb to me. Hate it. (also bc memory & soul mechanics is ummm kinda important in my rewrite.... for reasons). Another memory thing btw, I was going to make his original amnesia come from hitting his head in an attack against the Skulkin when they stole his dads corpse, rather than his dad fucking choosing to make him forget. (its a sweet & iconic scene, but Um, WHY?!!!?!?!?!?) He has to follow data recovery instructions he finds in his dads diary. I think in that context it makes moments of memory loss somewhat different for Zane's character? Instead of loss of autonomy associated with disability, its a literal violent loss of autonomy associated with being traumatized by physical force. Idk how to phrase it exactly but I think that makes some vibes different?

Sorry, I think I got really distracted, and I don't know if I responded well to your points. Because uhhhh I think I agree with your stance actually? If I understand correctly? Fuck Ninjago writers for making the robot lose autonomy (a stereotypical robot theme) while also making him seem clearly autistic (NOT A HAPPY THEME FOR AUTISTIC PEOPLE) and not addressing it. And also auuugh Zane with a weird body is a difficult topic - kinda sussy pretty iffy.

Lol anyway idk if this made any sense and I REALLY rambled on you. but this was nice 👉👈 more Zane criticism pls love you and i love zane. i hope u dont feel mad at me because then it would be weird that im saying that lol. if you do feel mad at me tho you can send another ask (ILL TRY TO JUST LISTEN NOT RAMBLE NEXT TIME) but assuming ur chill rn, love you thnx

Take this page, don’t mind cole’s ass.

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asterekmess · 4 years

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(I was gonna save this for tomorrow, but FUCK IT) Eyyy, still being salty over here. Pls block the tag ‘rant’ if you don’t wanna see anymore of these. Or maybe ‘anti-scott mccall’ though, tbh, I’m not sure how much fun it would be to follow me if you aren’t anti-scott mccall. I’m pretty vocal abt disliking him.

ANYWAY.

I wanna talk about the concept of Derek being a ‘creeper’ because of all his wandering around the lacrosse field, at lydia’s party, etc. And by talk about, I mean ramble about incoherently. By which I mean, please know that I’m not trying to insult or fight anybody who makes this joke or uses this concept in fic or whatever. I’m just ranting bc I love this boy and his trauma makes me sad.

ANYWAY. (This is insanely long, so I’m adding a “Read More”)

I just have a lot of feelings about people seeing Derek as a stalker/creeper because he keeps showing up at lacrosse practice and in Scott & Stiles’ rooms, etc. It gets mentioned in loads of fics (I see a lot of “Creeperwolf” which I think is supposed to be an endearment?) (And there’s lots of fics that talk about how ‘you used to be/are really creepy, following us around’ Again, not judging) (Dude it’s even a whole tag on AO3 ‘Creeper Derek Hale’) and it’s joked about a lot in fandom (the vine with the ‘every step you take’ song and the swans on the building comes to mind). I see it a lot, and dude, it hurts me.

Let’s look at Derek’s current mental state and what he’s been dealing with, going all the way back to Paige. (Or, tbh, his birth) Derek is a werewolf. He was born a werewolf, to a family of werewolves. He grew up within the supernatural world, in a whole different culture to humans (honestly, my fury at the lack of werewolf culture/history/worldbuilding is worthy of its own post. Let me know if by some ungodly chance, you actually wanna hear my thoughts on it.) and presumably the number one rule in all of werewolfdom is “Keep the Secret.” Now, Derek’s fuckin’ 14/15 (I put his birthday on Christmas, like most of fandom, and if his house burned down when he was 16, in the spring, and he was dating Kate for a while before, he would’ve dated her when he was 15, and we don’t know how long there was between paige and kate, but let’s give him a summer of mourning. So. 14ish with paige) and he starts dating this human. He’s kinda shit at keeping the secret, implying that either he’s only dated werewolves before, or she’s his first girlfriend ever (also implying that maybe some of the people on his basketball team are werewolves, bc they don’t seem to notice his weird way of talking [pack members maybe? fuck, my heart]) and he’s maybe not as careful as he should be. (More implications arise, and we begin to build our own history. If Derek was never taught not to say dumb shit like ‘i caught a scent’ then was he even in public school before freshman year? Were the Hales all homeschooled before high school to help keep the secret? How soon do wolfy abilites arise? Do they hit with puberty? Fuck, I digress.) He says some dumb shit, and Paige gets suspicious. Of course, he doesn’t know that, and he has some kind of meltdown about her eventually finding out his secret. We hear from Peter (who’s villainized, so we’re not supposed to necessarily believe what he says, but what we see in the flashback doesn’t make a huge amount of sense either so *shrug*) that he enlists Ennis to bite Paige, believing that if she is bitten she won’t spill the secret and she’ll be more inclined to accept that Derek is a werewolf. Now, she fucking dies. Paige dies in Derek’s arms because of this, and he finds out at the last second that she already knew the secret. He feels guilty enough abt getting her killed but now he’s got a whole new batch of guilt from finding out that apparently he’s so bad at keeping the secret of his ENTIRE SPECIES that she found out he was a werewolf. She could’ve exposed them all at any time. He had to be terrified. Next, he’s 15/16 and he meets a gorgeous older woman who presumably showers him in affection, and all the horrors that go with that whole situation (I don’t wanna go into detail, because obviously). But again, whether Derek tells her himself or she just knew or she finds out, whatever it is, Kate knows Derek and his family are werewolves. AND SHE KILLS THEM ALL. Derek has no clue what the fuck is going on. All he knows is he is the only link between Kate and his family, which must mean that it’s his fault she knows about them. Once again, he’s revealed the Big Secret and people Died. He and Laura bolt to NY for six years, where presumably they live in hiding thinking the Argents are coming after them to finish off the Hales. Then Laura gets sent a funky letter and goes back to Beacon Hills. Now, we have a lil more confusion (i’ve got a whole buttload of issues with the timeline, but let’s not get into that now) because he says he came looking for Laura, but later he mentions that he knew she was in Beacon Hills and was searching for...whoever burnt down their house...that whole plotline confuses the shit out of me (derek knew kate did it. he blamed All the argents, but he knew kate was involved. So why was Laura looking for the pendant. and if he didn’t tell her then why was he looking for the pendant?? And what did the pendant have to do with the deer and the spiral?? Halp.) but whatever. He shows up and finds his sister dead, the hunters arrive in town the next day, and suddenly there’s an angry alpha Attacking Humans.

We’re finally in the present. Derek has lost what little family he had left, except for a catatonic uncle. He already has two instances in his past where the worry of keeping werewolves a secret has caused deaths. And now there’s this teenager. No, actually, two teenagers. One who was bitten, and one who shouts out “You’re a werewolf!” in the middle of the preserve, instantly figuring out a centuries-old supernatural secret. Derek is fucking terrified, and things are only getting worse. This kid who got bitten? Derek follows him to see if he’s really a wolf, to find out if he knows what’s happening to him, if he believes the other teen. He finds the kid JUMPING OVER PEOPLE’S HEADS in broad daylight in front of everyone. Derek might’ve had a couple verbal giveaways but this is just ridiculous. Then, even better, the kid goes on a date on the FULL MOON with THE YOUNGEST ARGENT. There’s about a billion reasons to follow Scott to the party. It’s a FULL MOON, for one. HE’S WITH AN ARGENT for another. And of course he can’t just walk into the party. He’s fucking 22 for fuck’s sake. This is a high school party. He’d get arrested. And of course he doesn’t introduce himself to Scott beforehand. He has no way of knowing if this kid is on the Alpha’s side. He’s the Alpha’s Beta, it would make perfect sense for him to be obeying the Alpha. OR since he’s with the Argent, maybe he’s working with them. Maybe he’s a plant of some kind. a hunter pet. Laura was used as bait to catch Derek, why not Scott too? But he sees quickly that Allison has no clue what’s going on, at least with Scott, and he takes her home and steals her jacket to lure Scott into the Preserve where he can’t hurt anyone. Then, when he sees Scott get chased by the hunters, with no Alpha coming running to protect him, he decides “Alright, guess this kid’s my ally. Gotta protect him.” Yeah. He says some weird shit. But the evidence points to Derek not knowing much about bitten wolves. He tells Scott that he doesn’t know how to train a bitten wolf, but he does know how to help Scott recover memories (the memory loss appears to only happen in the early days of shifting, which lends more credibility to the possibility that born wolves don’t start shifting properly until later in life [puberty being the most likely milestone] and he therefore has experience with that, but not with the kind of control Scott needs, that he’s known his whole life). Born a werewolf, he’s never considered the bite anything other than a gift. He also just lost his entire family, so sue him for trying to find some kind of connection between them. (It honestly makes total sense for him to use the term ‘brothers’ bc he KNOWs Scott won’t understand the concept of ‘pack’ yet) So, now that’s decided to help Scott, to protect him, he goes back to the school. SURELY now that Scott knows what he is and how dangerous he is when stressed, he’ll reign himself in during lacrosse, or even just back out of it altogether. There are lives at stake here, be them human, or if Scott exposes the secret, werewolves. SURELY this kid wouldn’t put everyone in danger over a fucking game. But no. Not only does he keep flaunting his abilities, but he SHIFTS ON THE FIELD. If Stiles hadn’t Dragged Scott out of there, the entire supernatural world would be EXPOSED by this ONE KID. Derek passed Terrified about a hundred miles back. He’s gotta be fucking out of his mind with fear. I don’t blame him even a little for threatening Scott. If Scott’s not gonna do the right thing on his own, then threatening him is worth it if people don’t DIE. Then, bc Scott’s a pissy baby and goes to shout at him and be a fuckwad, and Stiles is nosey and neither of them have boundaries (I love Stiles, but fucking seriously, digging up a grave?) Derek gets ARRESTED. He pleads with this lanky teen who is brave enough to climb into the cruiser with a WEREWOLF. Who’s FRiends with a Werewolf. Who figured it out so quickly. He pleads with him to understand how dangerous this is, to stop his friend. And Stiles looks like he’s gonna, but Scott bolts bc of the wolfsbane (Which...listen if I’m being really salty, a deep bitter part of me genuinely wonders if he was that freaked out, or if he overheard Derek beg Stiles not to let Scott play, and Scott ran away from Stiles so he wouldn’t get told no, bc he wanted to play.) and by the time Stiles finds him he’s already dressed for the game. And DEREK WAS RIGHT. Scott DID lose control. He DID shift on the field. At LEAST one human saw him shift, and the coach for the other team knew something was up too. He DID expose them, and he did it further bc Jackson is suspicious now. Now, I’ve reblogged a gifset of it before, the moment when Derek shows up at the lacrosse field and finds Jackson standing in it after Scott’s run off, staring at a glove with a claw hole in it. He is watching his worst nightmare come true. Scott has exposed them and Jackson is going to figure out werewolves, just like Stiles did. He knows right that instant that people are going to die. I’ll reiterate what I said in the tags on that gifset. It’s extremely likely that Derek bit Jackson out of self-preservation. Jackson had been threatening to tell the hunters and the entire world if he didn’t get what he wanted. The safest thing to do was give Jackson the bite so that at least he would be putting himself in danger too if he exposed werewolves. He forced Jackson to have to keep the secret for himself because he knew Jackson wouldn’t do it for anyone else. (And he knew Jackson had some self-preservation, compared to Scott, and wouldn’t want to expose himself.)

Listen, I just. I just get so sad watching Derek sneaking into people’s rooms and standing on the edge of the field and showing up in the locker rooms. He’s trying to help. He’s trying to protect. He wants to be there in case Scott does something stupid (which he does, again and Again) to protect him, even after Scott REFUSED to help him stop a SERIAL KILLER because there wasn’t anything in it for him. Even after Scott fucking blackmails him by leaving him hanging on a grate with wires plugged into his side and his abuser on their way back to hurt him, he still helps him protect Allison (who watched him be tortured and did nothing. [He still has the capacity to acknowledge that it’s not her fault. That she couldn’t save him. He doesn’t blame her for it and he certainly doesn’t want her to die.]) He wants to keep his Betas safe. He stands in the parking lot waiting for them to test Lydia because he doesn’t want them to have to go through with killing her alone (and he only tries to kill her because she DOESN’T pass the test [although I admit it’s a dumb test] and because the kanima is KILLING people. More people have died and I don’t know how the fuck Derek manages to keep standing, let alone having such capacity for empathy and optimism and sarcasm after everything he’s dealt with. He’s constantly being hunted by hunters or humans, or fuck even Scott himself, since every time Scott gets upset he blames Derek for everything (I’m still fucking disgusted that he turned up at Derek’s place and accused him of murdering his own sister.) And STILL he shows up. No matter how many times he’s shoved away and ignored and yelled at. He shows up and he stands on the fringes and he waits for the chance to help.

And what’s creepy about that?

#personal #rant #Fuck i love Derek and I'm so fucking sad #i have a lot of feelings okay?#like I said #i'm not judging people who use the concept in fics or who make the jokes or whatever #i'm just talking about my own feelings #anti-scott mccall #Meta Ramblings

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really-sleep-deprived-nerd · 4 years

Text

You deserved better. We both did.

Warnings: Manga spoilers

Summary: “Aren’t you tired?” Izuku asked. “What, is this fight too exhausting for you, little hero?” Was Shigaraki's answer, if you could call it that. “Yeah, but that's not what I meant. Aren’t you tired of being crushed under the responsibility of holding a power that is bigger than you? Of destroying your body in a desperate attempt to control it? Of having the weight of the world on your shoulders?” Izuku clarified, eyes trying to focus on Shigaraki. Shigaraki paused for a minute. “Yeah.”

Or: Midoriya and Shigaraki talk

Link for ao3

They had been trying to kill each other for god knows how long. It had probably been only some hours but it felt like months had passed since Midoriya started to fight Shigaraki. At this point both of them were beaten and broken on the ground, trying to catch their breaths for a minute while Dabi had his little shitshow of a family reunion, when this question ripped itself out of Izuku:

“Aren’t you tired?” He asked, his filter already gone thanks to the exhaustion.

“What, is this fight too exhausting for you, little hero?” Shigaraki asked, in a smug tone that should not have been used by someone who was more dead than they were alive.

“Yeah, but that's not what I meant. Aren’t you tired of being crushed under the responsibility of holding a power that is bigger than you? Of destroying your body in a desperate attempt to control it? Of having the weight of the world on your shoulders?” Izuku clarified, eyes trying to focus on Shigaraki. Shigaraki paused for a minute.

“I-Yeah.” His answer was quiet, and his scratchy voice sounded, perhaps for the first time since he was a child, soft. “You too?”

“Yeah.” Midoriya admitted, trying to shift to a position that made his broken body hurt less but promptly giving it up as a lost cause. “All Might briefly explained to me how his power worked before I accepted to take it, and I did. I chose it because I wanted to save people but this- this is too much to deal with by myself.”

“At least you could have said no.”

“Wh- All for one foced his power on you?”

“Not exactly, I took it because I wanted it, I needed the power to reach my goals but I think-I think that was his plan. That the only reason he rescued and raised me was because he knew his time was running out and he needed a pawn to continue enacting his will. I think he always saw me as a means to an end, not as an apprentice, nevermind a person.” He paused, and then added, almost as an after thought, “Also, apparently I’m the grandchild of All Might’s mentor, so he killed two birds with one stone with me: Get a successor and make your mortal enemy suffer while you are at it.”

“YOU ARE-” Midoriya started to exclaim, but it just sent him into a coughing fit, so he had to take a breath and try again, “You are Shimura’s grandchild?”

“Yeah, that used to be my name too. Shimura Tenko. But I can’t quite remember the last time anyone used it.” He paused, a faraway look on his eyes. “I think it might have been my sister before she…” He trailed off.

“You had a sister?” Midoriya asked, absolutely dumbfounded, still trying to process that bit about him being Shimura Tenko.

“Yeah, and parents too. What, did you think I just spawned fully formed out of thin air like a poorly programmed NPC?.”

“I-No, its just, you are this terrifying villain, a looming threat so big that sometimes I forget that you are, well, human I suppose.” He explained and then looked horrified at his own answer, “Oh, boy. That-that's not a good mentality for a hero to have, of course you are human, every villain is a human, is a whole person, not just a vague representation of evilness.”

Shigaraki’s laugh was an incredibly bitter sound.

“Hey, you are just a brat, it’s fine if you forget that sometimes. When I was really young I used to think of villains as some sort of scary boogiemen too, that's normal, the problem is when full grown ass adults that dare to call themselves heroes still think like that.”

“It might be normal but it isn't fine and-”Midoriya paused, looking like he was going to throw up, “You are right.”

That managed to throw Shigaraki for a loop.

“What the fuck did you just say?”

“You are right. Heroes shouldn’t be allowed to think like that.” He answered, “God, how many villains are rotting in prison when instead they should be in a rehabilitation program?”

“And there we have another reason for me to want to burn this entire society to the ground.” Shigaraki drawled back, a dark amusement coloring his voice.

After that they were quiet for a while, until:

“What happened to them?”

“Mmh? To whom?”

“Your family” Izuku clarified.

“They all died. My quirk manifested in an extremely violent way and I killed everyone when it did. The only thing left of them were their hands. My father deserved it, but I miss my sister.”

“Fuck, you were- you were just a kid, that��s-that’s fucked up.”

“Yeah, guess I was born to be a villain.”

“What? No! It’s fucked up that it happened to you! It was an awful accident and I’m sorry.”

Pause.

“I don’t- I don’t think it was an accident. Not with my father at least.” Shigaraki admitted

“You hated him?”

“Yeah. He was a controlling and abusive-wait fuck I can’t make fun of Dabi anymore, I got daddy issues too, goddamn it.” Shigaraki started to ramble, causing Midoriya to snort.

“That’s a can of worms I’m not going to open, but I guess it's fair. Besides, you couldn’t have been older than 5”

“I wasn’t.”

Pause.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Shigaraki asked curiously.

“For what happened to you. Everything. Your family, your quirk, All for one. It’s-It’s awful. You deserved better.”

“Don’t pity me, hero.” Shigaraki scoffed.

“I don’t, it’s just the truth. I’m sorry no one helped you. You needed a hero and no one was there, and that’s on us. That was an awful, irreparable mistake on our part and you deserved better.”

“I…” Shigaraki paused for a second, at a loss for words, then he continued with a quiet: “Thank you.”

The silence came back for a couple of minutes, then, Shigaraki broke it.

“Did you know I wanted to be a hero?” He asked. “Before everything, I mean.”

“You would have been an incredible hero.” Midoriya replied sadly.

“With my quirk?” Shigaraki scoffed.

“Hey, a friend of mine is training to be a hero and he has a brainwashing quirk and its the coolest thing ever, don’t even try to pull a but-I-have-a-villanous-quirk card with me. And yeah, you’d have been an incredible rescue hero, like Thirteen. Have you heard of them?” Izuku asked, always happy to talk about other heroes.

“I haven’t.”

“Their quirk is called black hole. It works kinda like a massive vacuum that allows them to dispose of debris really quickly, but by itself it has the potential to be incredibly destructive. Like your quirk. You would have been able to save so many lives it's ridiculous.” Izuku explained and Shigaraki just got really quiet for a minute, and then, really softly:

“I really would have been a good hero, huh.”

“One of the best, probably.” Midoriya agreed, sadness and regret in his voice.

#midoriya izuku #izuku midoriya #shigaraki tomura #tomura shigaraki #tenko shimura #shimura tenko #bnha #bnha fic #one for all #all for one #boku no hero academia #bnha manga spoilers #They could have been really good friends in another life

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b-rainlet · 3 years

Note

Gotham for the fandom ask thingy.

(I ran here so fuckin fast you have no clue)

Hello anon! :D I will answer this now, so you don't have to wait any longer but also....this would be very nice to answer through gifsets...(maybe when I am feeling up for it).

For now, have this:

(It's not proof read because I just sat at this for several hours and I don't wanna look at it anymore).

Favourite Male Character

You mean...besides the obvious answers?? :D

Ngl, it's S2 Jerome. I love that little twink with his parental issues and his tragic backstory and I wanna see him happy. There's a reason I have a bunch of AUs where he ends up having a family (mostly in the form of Lee as his Mother) and gets some actual help instead of being ostracized for being a mentally ill person snapping after years of abuse.

(This also ties into my very strong feelings regarding the fact that nobody actually helps the people at Arkham. And I don't mean the main villains there, I mean all the inmates who get treated like shit and are left behind on the regurlar (remember in S2 when Arkham was about to explode and nobody was talking about evacuating the inmates???? I do).

Other than that, one of my faves is also Jonathan. Which may be a little surprising because I barely talk about him but he was my favourite character throughout the show and he had way too little scenes.

(Kinda telling that the characters I latched onto are both helpless teens who were fucked over by the people who were supposed to protect them and can both trace their villain origin story back to Jim Gordon not caring enough about them lmao).

But the cast is big and varied enough that I actually like everyone? Butch, Zsazs, Penguin, S1 and 2 Ed, Jervis, Harvey, Jim......I like them all!!

(Special shoutout to 514A too, he was soft and baby and I wanted to keep him safe and sound really desperately).

(Another special shoutout to Barnes!! I didn't expect to like him when I first saw him, given he looked like he was gonna be mean and stoic and all, but I ended up really liking him and his story!)

Favourite Female Character

Let's just pretend Ecco doesn't exist for this answer ajdkaskaslj.

I fell in love immediately upon seeing Ecco but all! the women! are so!!! good!!!!

I especially have a soft spot for the side characters. I mean, upon first watching I got attached to Alice (even though she only features in two episodes lmao), and also Kristen Kringle - who isn't talked about much within Fandom, but she was pretty and her and Ed were actually quite cute but then she had to die for him to become the Riddler which was...pretty much telling us from the beginnning 'The woman here die to advance the men's plots'.

Barbara was also a big surprise to me because I figured she'd be the female love interest and nothing more but!! her and Jerome were the best thing in S2 and also the most entertaining thing about the Maniax Plot. (In several ways, I think I had the most fun watching this show during S2 , it was just. Good).

Also upon being in this Fandom and thinking about certain characters a bit longer I also really like Vicky Vale. And Montoya. And I wish they had kept both around for longer.

(I also wish they wouldn't have made Vicky a love interest for Jim. Or Sofia. No love interests for Jim except Lee and Barbara please).

Also Selina!! I love both Selina and Tabitha with all my heart - which may also be surprising because I barely ever talk about Tabby but I contain multitudes aklskddsm, and while I like sharing my horny thoughts about Ecco, I also love to think about Tabby and daydream about her being happy and exploring her (and Selina's) issues with showing weakness and affection and their strong loyalty regarding people that they trust.

I just.....women. Women good.

(Women also deserve to have more character than just being somebody's love interests and I have enough wips that completely sideline the guys to focus on the woman instead lmao).

Least Favourite Character

I don't have many characters that I hate??

I generally tend to instantly love everybody unless they are specifically made to be unlikeable. (I also spite-like characters who are hated for petty reasons, I just have a lot of love in my heart and not much energy for hate lmao).

But there were characters who annoyed me while I was watching.

For one, I think Gotham has a variety of super entertaining villains, but the main villains of each season tend to be....boring.

Safe for Strange they all kinda fell flat for me. Theo. Kathryn. Ra's Al Ghul. His Daughter. Mostly because their plotlines were less exciting than stuff like Jerome's carnival or Mother and Orphan's Hotel of Horrors.

Or their motives seemed a lot less understandable than the ones of the other Batman villains who pretty much always come from a place of suffering and abuse and break/snap under the pressure that's put on them (continuing this take of Gotham creating its own villains by leaving behind - mentally ill - people that need help, which I think is very true to most - if not all - Batman villains).

And then you have some characters that simply suffer from the fact that the show was cut short - which is pretty much any and every S5 character that had way too little screentime, but in this specific case means Jeremiah.

Because I disliked Jeremiah a lot while watching.

Without wanting to step on anybody's toes, him and Nygma are probably the two characters on this show I ended up disliking the most.

Mostly because Miah felt like a very cheap copy of Jerome and to this day I think it was a bad idea to replace Jerome with him, since Jeremiah - to me - seems like a super flat character.

Maybe if we had gotten him without meeting Jerome first, just having a Joker character introduced in S4, maybe I would've adored him, who knows.

But in comparison to Jerome...no. Just no.

(I will spare you from any longer rambles, but I think if you follow me, I talked about the ways Miah is lacking for me before).

My made up version of Miah though? I love him.

With Nygma it's even worse because I adored him. I instantly liked him. I was 100% behind him right up until the godawful Isabella plot happened and then it just all went to shit so quickly, I couldn't stand seeing him on screen anymore.

It's surprising that I didn't stop liking Oswald but to me, Oswald pretty much stayed the same while Ed became all bitter and hard and I just miss dorky S2 Ed you know?

It actually got so bad, I completely turned my back on Nygm/obblepot as a ship because I was so severly disappointed and I barely talk about Ed because I just can't stand what they did with him.

(Another victim of bad writing).

Favourite Ship

I'm just gonna stick to canon ships because I don't ever shut up about my Fanon ships so you probably know which ones I love the most :D

There isn't much romance going on within Gotham if I think about it - apart from Jim - which I definitely prefer. You wouldnt guess it from my blog, but I am not a fan of too shippy stuff because in most cases it just means sex scenes and I can live without those. I want action! Blood! Dead People! Not a two minute make-out session between two bland characters!

I gotta admit that Ed and Lee have some cute scenes and I would definitely ship them if I didn't dislike S4 Ed so much (S2 EdLee tho?? Yes).

Also I thought Jim and Lee was okay and Baby Batcat was quite cute at times but mostly I don't care about the canon ships.

I do ship Barbara and Jim though :D

I remember right before they hooked up in S5 I was like: 'I wouldn't mind if they got back together' and then went 'yay!' when they did and I wouldn't have minded a little more 'Will they?? Won't they??' between those two and them just having the mother of unhealthy relationships on this show.

(Also Jim/Barbara/Lee poly relationship but we can't have everything).

Favourite Friendship

So many good relationships on this show!

I need to rewatch the show soon because I probably already forgot about most of them but from the top of my head: Oswald/Butch and Oswald/Zsazs

Which were both then done dirty lmao. One by having Oswald be overly petty (one of the few times I was like...Pengy...wtf...) and the other by passing up the obvious opportunity to have Zsazs find out who really killed Falcone and just...letting Oswald and Victor never interact again.

Then of course Ivy and Selina which also gloriously fell apart. Just like Ivy and Oswald.

(Gotham isn’t the best when it comes to maintaining friendships).

And the biggest and most grandious friendship of them all: J Squad.

(Who have too little scenes together honestly and then also simply fell apart after Jerome died. Consistency who?)

Favourite Quote

I don’t know, I don’t have many quotes in my head from the show. Me and my niece mostly reference: “Yeah, that’s a spoon.” - “IT IS ALSO A FORK!!1!!!”

Also: “Gotta Go! Gotta Go! They’re after me and the Scarecrow!”

(There are some dialogue blurps I have written down somewhere because they are inspriration for gifsets but in order to be able to just recite some of them from Memory, I would have to watch this show way more obsessively).

Worst Character Death

I don’t even gotta say anything do I? :D

But I think the character death that actually made me cry was Jerome’s first death. I clearly remember crying because...he just wanted recognition! And praise! And instead he was used as a pawn and betrayed by someone he idolized and he was only 18! My poor little meow-meow!

Seriously, the only things that make me cry on this show: Jerome’s first death, any and all mention of Bruce as a baby - told by an emotional Alfred, any and all Bruce/Alfred interaction at all and Solomon Grundy.

This made me so happy you have no idea Moment

I seriously need to rewatch this show, it’s been so long :D

But I remember being pretty excited for the J Squad Team Up - because I was like ‘If I were Jerome I would definitely work with Tetch and Scarecrow since they’re also in Arkham atm’ and then he did!!

And I also distinctly remember in S3 that I was close to falling asleep right when they scene came on where Oswald realizes his feelings for Nygma and let me tell you - it caught me so off guard, I was awake instantly lmao.

(I knew that people shipped them but I was so used to mlm ships being popular when they only have a handful of scenes and are platonic friends that I didn’t expect them to actually have a possibility of being canon).

From then on I was super pumped for them to deliver on that ship but well....we all knew what happened asnksnndk.

Saddest Moment

Aside from the already mentioned scenes in the character death column, the scene where Bruce leaves and Selina runs to the airport. I always liked Selina but she wasn’t a priority character of mine (much like Bruce isn’t) but then that scene happened and in an instant, I felt super protective over her.

She is now my baby. My daughter. My beloved wife. She deserves everything and most importantly she deserves better than Bruce Wayne.

(Coincidentally that was also the scene where I decided I don’t care much about Bruce asldjkjlj. I absolutely adore early seasons Bruce though).

Favourite Location

There are so many different locations, I don’t think I can adequately answer this with my spotty memory :D

But I always loved the few episodes where Alice features, because I love how her scenes are shot so probably the little carnival Jervis prepares for her.

Also!! Jeremiah's church!

Or Commissioner Loeb's secret house (Especially the Attic).

There are a lot of cool locations, I gotta gif some of them soon :D

#Long Post #To do

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adhdvane · 3 years

Text

Talking about GW/U&F Under the Cut because it’s gunna be a long ramble

S here’s my rankings (I want to save these and post them in this entry for myself, I want to better keep track of how much I do so I can keep a log of how much stupid effort I end up putting into this godda.mn event each time to see how my progress goes) Individual:

i’m like both proud and dead (ignore dark team, this was fire favored but final rally zeus is light, so kill him with dark team). i could solo nm 100 just fine, like much better than pervious events, including the last wind gw in June 2020 (which does tell me hey, you’ve improved a lot on your fire team in the past year), it’s just soloing nm 100 took like ~10 minutes and required me paying attention. by day 3 burn out was real (despite there being no 24 hours interlude this year because of server issues delaying prelims, lol let me tell you when i went to check the prelims on my break to find out oops sorry we’re delaying prelims a day bc ppl had issues last night when we started at 3 am your time, rip). nm 95, you see, that i could make a full auto team for and just summon the devil and skill cast a couple of the skills click attack and then full auto, and ignore the game for like 4 to 4:40 minutes. so while i did do some nm 100 runs, i mostly defaulted to nm 95 (on another note i could 1 turn nm 90 with my break/od team bandit tycoon/5* tien/summer bea/5* zeta and so during prelims and round 1 that felt really good). on the one hand it hurts that i ignore my main fire set ups for favor a full auto team (rb/sieg/heles/izmir) but like how else do i survive doing that many godda.mn raids without total burn out (and i mean the only difference is playing relic buster instead of lumberjack so no using my prized ullikummi and swapping tien out for heles bc tien is less full auto friendly bc you don’t want her buff skill activating before her damage. also i mean it was nice to let heles get exp so i got her to lv 100 during the event bc i’d leveled her to 95 prior. she has some good damage nukes, and her additional atk/def down stackable meant coverage when sieg or izmir’s didn’t land properly). besides i still got to use my main fire set up and ullikummi when i did the nm 100 runs (look i love my fire ullikummi + lumberjack i will never shut up about how good it is and how happy i was i went through with it originally for a harp memeing only to discover WOW ITS JUST REALLY GOOD FOR MAINHAND PERIOD EVEN WITHOUT HARP MEMEING GRID). sure running nm 95 was. technically not optimal in terms of time/meat/tokens/honors but it was fckin optimal for my SANITY.

crew (day 4 at top - day 1 at bottom):

first of all slkdfsjk can’t believe i actually stayed above top 30,000. WOW THAT IS DEFINITELY A FIRST. third slkdjgsldf 3 of 4 won, one day i’ll get 4 of 4. tbh surprised i managed to win the last one (THE ONE AT THE TOP) (i was... i was raiding from 3 pm - 4:40 am it was bad... i wanted to hit the 400mil individual mark for the reward bc i was close and like it would suck if i was only a little bit away)... it did feel good to actually win some though, i haven’t had victories in a while because despite the fact every gw i was definitely getting more honors than i had the previous one it was getting harder to solo shit when i’m against crews with multiple ppl participating. (HELL LAST GW, THE WATER BOSSES, WAS THE FIRST TIME I ACTUALLY MANAGED TO GET BACK INTO FCKING MAKING THE SOLO C TIER AFTER SEVERAL GW WHERE IT DIDN’T HAPPEN BECAUSE THERE WAS A BIG LEAP IN HOW MANY HONORS THAT 36,000 CREW HAD AT THE BOTTOM. also like lol at work so i can’t really start doing prelims until i get home bc i decided i wanted sleep in the morning)

other:

:) oh boy a single sunlightstone shard that’s going to sit there forever and never do anything bc how the fck am i ever going to do this 10 times. draw box fcking 50 is what i’m on. it takes 10k to empty. i would need 8k more tokens. i would get 100 tokens per extra zeus run.... im not doing 80 more zeus runs... i’ll .... just have to hit “toke draw 100 times” 21 times to use the rest of the tokens which is annoying. i guess. AND NOW WE COME TO THE REASON WHY I PUT SO MUCH GODDAMN EFFORT INTO THIS GW. gbf is a bastard man that wants me to 5* the rest of the eternals (5 of them) before i can transcend shisu to 140 ( ´•̥̥̥ω•̥̥̥` ) i hate it. so in order to get enough rev weapons to work on my next 5* i needed to 36 box for fif (i have 1 fully uncapped copy of her rev from when i was initially going to have to recruit her normally but then seeds of redemption happened in 2020 and i got her free + 50 five-star fragments, since i already had a fully uncapped copy i thought fine she’ll go next bc less weapons needed and also i have one of every other element 5* so i wanted to do her or song either way. plus maybe if i can 5* her i can actually go do that gilbert quest lol). i WOULD HAVE LOVED TO BOXED NW QUARTZ. I WOULD HAVE LOVED TO HAVE BOXED NW QUARTZ AFTER I 36 BOXED HER. BUT I KNEW IF I DID THAT, I WAS PROBABLY GOING TO INEVITABLE HIT BOX 46 BC OF THE RATE I WAS GOING AND IT WOULD FORCE ME BACK TO REV STAFFS AND I’D END UP WITH EXTRA COPIES WHEN I COULD HAVE BEEN STARTING THE NEXT SET I NEED. so instead of boxing the quartz i wanted after i switch to harps and IT sUCK. also depending on if i get the harp draw from the 2000 token i have left... i might continue zeus farm until i get it bc then at least i’ll have an even uncap on my harps (4 fully uncapped, bc i actually had a 1* harp in stash already.... bc those were FROM RANDOM DROPS I’D GOTTEN FROM GW IN THE PAST)

uhg anyways... this was like one of the first times in like a very long time that i didn’t fully burn out by day 3/4. i pushed through to the end like a godda.mn maniac. even in my early days i often just went lol im done on day 4... last gw i thought i was insane bc i got like ~158mil total honors (and EARTH IS LIKE ARGUABLY MY LEAST DEVELOPED). and this time i got over 400mil :) next one is going to be hell because my wind has be improved to 100% double tia crit and i have a my developed full auto team. oh fcking boy.

#sammy liveblogs about granblue #sammy no #dumb text post #sammy be quiet #stuff i logged for my own record but also i just need to info dump this off my chest somewhere uhg

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iwishiwasacuteghost · 4 years

Text

The Everlasting Couch - Part I

Warnings: None? (Please, let me know if you think I need to add any).

Summary: Alex’s sister, Y/n, died before the boys did, and then she sees them play at the Orpheum with Julie.

Word Count: 1200+

Masterlist

Chapter I

Being dead has its perks. I get to go anywhere and everywhere I want. I can see any concert and I can be on any movie set. It’s nice. There are disadvantages, I can only interact with fellow ghosts, lifers and ghosts don’t mix. I have two favorite places to be in the afterlife, in the abandoned building I made my own this past year, and the Orpheum where both my band and brother’s band had been competing to be the first to perform there. If you played the Orpheum, you were guaranteed to be big someday.

‘Julie and the Phantoms’ is on the sign tonight, they must be newcomers, I’ve never heard of them, but any music is good music when it’s free and if they made it to the Orpheum then they must be decent. I pop in just before a girl comes on stage, Julie, and she starts singing. Then, a boy that looks just like my brother appears playing the drums and I can’t believe the similarities. At least, not until Reggie appears followed by Luke who is flickering. They absolutely crush their performance before disappearing and I don’t get a chance to grab their attention, to show them that I’m still here and to talk to them again. I haven’t seen them since the night I died. I missed them though I wish they weren’t here like this, I wish they hadn’t died too.

I pop backstage and knock on Julie’s dressing room door. She opens it and I step inside while her friend behind her is giving her a funny look.

“Julie, what are you doing? I didn’t hear anything. Come on, we have to pack up your stuff and head out.” Her friend says.

“What do you mean you didn’t—“

I cut her off. “I’m a ghost and I need to talk you, please.”

“It’s another ghost, Flynn.” Julie gives her friend a look and she walks out mumbling something about how her friend became some kind of ghost whisperer without her and to meet her outside.

“So, you need to talk to me?” Julie asks after closing the door.

I pause trying to decide what to say as I pick at one of my fingernails with a different one. “Your band…my brother is in it; his name is Alex. I died before him, so I didn’t know, I thought he was somewhere being old, but I saw him and then he disappeared. I figured you might know where I can find him? Please, I’ve only been wandering around for a little while and I was just getting used to everything and moving on, but now, my brother is still here and I just really want to see him and the guys again.”

She gives me a sympathetic look and starts tearing up. “I am so sorry. Their unfinished business was to play here and I think they passed over at the end of our performance.” My face falls. “Hey, but, you can come with me, we were practicing in my studio which used to be theirs, so if you meet me there, then we can talk about them, I’d love to trade stories with you and just hang out. It could cheer us up both up a bit?”

“Thank you. I’ll meet you there. I’ll see you in a bit?” She nods.

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I decide to poof to a street nearby the garage-turned-studio and then start walking, because I don’t want to get there too quickly and I need to process the fact that my big brother and his band died just like my band and I did. If our parents hadn’t been so awful to Alex, I’d feel worse for them, but I only feel a little bad that they lost us when we were both so young, although really they’d already lost both of us the moment they didn’t accept Alex for who he was. I can’t believe they’re here though. I finally would have people to hang out with in the afterlife, my band had gone off to do something that I chose not to follow them to. I’d seen a few other ghosts here and there, but most of the time it had just been me, my music, and whatever random objects I’d found and decided to keep. I approach Julie’s house and see the lights are on in the garage so she must have beat me here and already be out there.

I knock gently on the garage doors and hear shuffling and whispers before Julie opens the doors and Alex tackles me with a hug.

“Y/n! Julie told us she talked to you and she kept us from losing our souls after we didn’t cross over, and I missed you so much.” He pulls back and just stares at me for a second while we smile at each other. The moment is quickly interrupted by Reggie pulling us into another hug and him forcing Julie and Luke to join in too.

We’re all crying but smiling as we let go. Reggie rambles for a short while about what they’ve been doing while Luke is silently staring at me. “Hey Patterson. I guess you guys really did beat us to the Orpheum? You all crushed it by way, though, I might’ve been better.” Alex laughs as he messes up my hair.

“In your dreams, Y/n. We were going to play the Orpheum the night we died, so even before we died, we were going to beat you.” He says.

“Yeah, okay. Well, it’s not like you were all older than us and died after us anyways, Lukie-Pookie.” I stick my tongue out at him before realizing something. “Wait, where’s Bobby?”

Luke and the other boys frowned. “Y/n. Bobby didn’t go to get street dogs before our show with us, so he didn’t die and now he’s ancient.” Alex explains as he places a comforting hand on my shoulder.

“You died by street dogs?” I ignored the Bobby issue for a second as I held back a laugh.

“Yes! And then Bobby changed his name and stole our music, my music! He didn’t give us any credit, never even mentioned us, he just pretended we never existed and used my lyrics to get rich and famous by himself!” Luke was starting to get worked up. I gently shrugged Alex’s hand away and hugged Luke.

“I’m sorry. He was always selfish, even while we were together, but I never would have thought that he would do something like that to you guy, to you.” I patted his back before pulling away.

Reggie interrupted, “Don’t worry, we’re going to find a way to get back at him. We tried haunting him once with limited success, but we’re not giving up entirely.”

“Well, guys, I’m so happy that you get to stay and that Alex’s sister is here, who can stay as long as she wants by the way, but I have to head to bed so I’ll see you all in the morning. Great performance tonight everyone and good night!” She waved as she started heading out, before stopping and adding, “And don’t wake anyone up by playing music without me!” and then left, closing the doors behind her as she went.

“So, should we all sit and talk or…?” I looked around at them each.

“Yes! We have to swap ghost stories and I need to spend some quality time with you. I spent way too long thinking my weirdo little sister was gone for good.” Alex said as we all sat on the couch that was miraculously still there after all of these years.

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Please let me know if you notice any spelling/grammar/etc errors or if you want to be on the taglist for future chapters. Also, comments and feedback are appreciated. Thank you for reading!

#julieandthephantoms #jatp #julie molina #luke patterson #reggie jatp #alex jatp #reader #reader insert #alex jatp sister #bobby jatp #i will mention the couch in every chapter #lukes couch that is somehow still there in the garage studio

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mikejaffa · 4 years

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Magikal Musings and Ramblings

SPOILERS AHEAD FOR NEW MUTANTS AND X-MEN TITLES FROM THE 1980s TO THE PRESENT DAY Even though Kispesan is blocking me, and I only read her post because it was reblogged by somebody else, I still wanted to chime in on the discussion she started when she wrote: “How do you feel about all of the focus that Magik gets in comics at the expense of all of her teammates? I swear since Extraordinary she's been written as this uber competent powerhouse who gets a scene showcasing how awesome she is in every issue. Rosenberg's Dead Souls, Uncanny and the Empyre mini were all especially egregious. We barely ever get to see Dani and Shan do anything in comparison.” I’ve been a fan of Illyana ever since I stumbled on Magik #3 at a newsstand at Sangertow Mall in Utica, NY; I can see the book in the comics stand as I write this. Its cover really grabbed my attention. So I was pleased when they brought her back years ago, and I thought she deserved a turn as New Mutants’ team leader. But she has been overexposed...and this isn’t new. I mentioned Magik #3. Looking back, it’s easy to see that the Magik limited series and New Mutants vol. 1 #14-21 were Illyana’s origin story and introduction to the team. So no surprise that the Demon Bear storyline highlighted her sorcerous abilities; Chris Claremont had planned that all along. But he made long-lasting missteps along the way. Rahne calling Illyana things like “Witch!” and “spawn of Satan!” was inexplicably dropped after New Mutants vol. 1 #25. There’s no hint anywhere as to how Rahne and Illyana resolved that conflict, yet resolved they had to have resolved it. One day it was happening, then it was not. And in 2018, Dead Souls #2 had Rahne say that Illyana had “always been weird,” with no hint of how she went from “spawn of satan” to “weird.” Rahne’s religious objections were there when ‘Yana was front and center and then dropped. If Claremont had given it no more thought than that, he’s done his characters a disservice. This leads to the present day and Illyana’s recent exposure. It can be summed up in two words: the movie. It also effected Rahne’s physical appearance in “war children” and may have precipitated retconning in a line about Illyana being “weird,” although I won’t know for sure until I see the movie on Google Play. (When is it getting on Google Play, anyway? Will I be alive then?) The movie also snagged Kitty. It’s cleared to me she was killed off and left dead for several months so Lockheed could bond with Illyana. That way, when people who had met Illyana through the movie would pick up a book which had Lockheed perched on Illyana’s shoulder. And Illyana has been exposed beyond the X-Books, appearing in Savage Avengers. But again, it’s because of the movie; I won’t be surprised if Illyana reappears in the next Dr. Strange movie, and odds are Rahne won’t be in that one. I guess a badass blonde with bangs does well with 18-25 year old males. Ok, with 55 year old ones, too. But as much as I love the character, pushing her like crazy for commercial reasons...it’s just the wrong reason.

Not that it’s all been bad. “Dead Souls” hinted at Illyana’s vulnerable side. And the odd moments between her and Rahne, even if they were the product of the rectal school of creative writing, hinted at an interesting dynamic. It would have been great if the book had become an ongoing series and those issues could have been explored further. Sadly it was not to be. “Dead Souls” came to a crashing halt, Rosenberg fed Illyana and Rahne into his X-Men meatgrinder (killing Rahne in the most ludicrously implausible way possible), and now they are back with no mention of exactly Illyana “came back” or any other issues before. In fact, I can’t think of any moments in the new book when they had any dialogue other than some lines about coffee. I guess whatever Rosenberg had in mind in “Dead Souls” has been forgot about (along with all the men Kitty had relationships with, including the guy she almost married, and how Illyana flirted with Roberto da Costa, but that’s another pet peeve for another time).

And then there’s Dani. Historically, Dani was the leader of the New Mutants. Illyana being leader in “dead souls” was explained as Dani being, um, indisposed. But now she’s back. What are her powers? We’re not seeing them. Is she the team leader? Does the team even have a leader? Is Illyana actually part of the team? If she is, why is she running around in an Aku cosplay instead of the team colors?

And I’m concerned about what the movie might portend for Illyana and Dani’s relationship in the comic, although that is based on a spoiler. But in the aforementioned classic books, an evolving friendship between Dani and Illyana was one of the story points. In New Mutants vol. 1 #18, Dani narrated that Illyana “trusted me with her secrets--things she hasn’t told the X-Men, or even her best friend, Kitty Pryde. It hurts that I won’t do the same.” Going forward to vol. 1 #24, Claremont wrote, “Of all the New Mutants, only Danielle Moonstar has seen Illyana in action within this eldrtich land where her will is absolute law. That experience forged and strengthened the two young women’s friendship.” Yet what I have heard about the movie indicates Dani and Illyana are more adversarial, at least at the start, a complete contradiction of comic book canon.

So what does that mean for Dani going forward? Does she reassert herself as New Mutants team leader, or will she be Illyana’s second banana? Will the team even have a formal leader? And where does Illyana fit in if she won’t wear her yellow and blacks anymore? Will Illyana and Dani be friends, or will there have to be an edge between them because of how they were written in the movie?

So to summarize my long answer to a short question, while Illyana is one of my favorite character’s, she is being pushed too much for commercial reasons, ie the movie. And there is a laundry list of issues involving both her and her relationships with Dani and Rahne that are either being ignored or handled in a way I’m not comfortable with.

#illyana rasputin #magik #rahne sinclair #wolfsbane #dani moonstar #mirage #the new mutants #new mutants movie #new mutants

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thebibliomancer · 4 years

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Essential Avengers: Avengers #216: “... To Avenge the Avengers!”

February, 1982

"Avenge us, Tigra! The Molecule Man must die!”

Eesh, the Avengers plus Silver Surfer have gone full Hamlet’s Dad on Tigra and she’s gonna cat Molecule Man and his plush himself to death. But he’s ready for it.

But why? Well...

Last time: Silver Surfer inadvertently gave Molecule Man the idea to eat Earth. The Avengers and the Surfer teamed up to stop him but he just Molecule Manned their sweet gear into nothing, captured them all, and then stomped them under a giant boot-o-matic crusher! Except Tigra who he kept around because he wanted someone to talk at and because Tigra had claimed that she liked him!

This time: “Tigra... the Last Avenger!”

Nice touch that the book name inside the book has been changed to match even if the cover hasn’t.

That is a tough hat to wear. Did you know its only been a little over a week since she joined the team?

And in that time she got thrown into space by an Elf-Queen, watched a founding Avenger have an emotional breakdown and try to kill his friends to make them like him again, had her soul set on fire, been repeatedly harassed in public, and watched the whole team be killed with her life only being spared because she begged for her life!

Is this the worst week and change in Avengers history? IT MIGHT WELL BE!

“She was spared. The fear of death has drained away now, leaving only emptiness behind. She has never felt so alone.”

This narration set in the same panel where Molecule Man is all but slapping the giant boot and going ‘this bad boy can crush so many fucking Avengers in it.’

Well really, its more like

Molecule Man: “Well, cat-lady, they’re dead! Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, and that Silver Surfer guy -- squished flat by my giant boot-o-matic crusher! You know, I made this thing out of molecules from a scrapyard! Yessir, I believe in recycling!”

But that’s about the same level of dissonance between jolly goofus villain rambling and hollow despair.

Anyway, Molecule Man calls her out on being such a bummer because she’s moping over there when he’s feeling good about killing the Avengers and really Tigra try to consider how he feels geez.

So she shakes off the despair and asks hey what exactly is Molecule Man going to do with her?

Tigra: “Am I going to be your mate or...”

Molecule Man: “What? Nah! I never got along with girls! I mean, you know... that way! Yessir, mom always warned me about... that! And she was right! You can be my friend! No! Make that -- my pet! Here, kitty, kitty!”

Wow.

That. That dodged a bullet in a cool Matrix bullet time way right into another bullet.

Let’s please not get too creepy with this, huh? You listening to me, comic published nearly forty years ago? Let’s not get creepy!

Molecule Man decides to be a responsible pet owner and feed his pet. He can control molecules so obviously it should be no trouble to just rearrange them into any configuration he--

Okay, its apparently really hard to make food! Way too complicated!

He’s going to be an irresponsible pet owner and not feed Tigra. And meanwhile he’s going to chow down on some undifferentiated mush or possibly a pile of dust. Its all molecules so its all the same to him.

Tigra didn’t even want food but asks him where the bathroom is.

Molecule Man: “Bathroom? Hmm... well, I really don’t understand how plumbing works, so I couldn’t make a bathroom! If you want, though, I could sort of fake it...”

Tigra: “No, I’ll be all right! i just feel a little sick...”

Molecule Man: “So go be sick for a while! I’ve got to get started on my little project anyway! If I’m going to eat this stupid planet -- I’ve got to prepare by clearing away all the living things from a few square miles of land.”

And he gets started! A giant ridge of land just peels up from the ground, like Molecule Man is skinning a fruit before eating. Also a volcano erupts. Pretty sure there weren’t any volcanoes in New Jersey before now.

Fairly sure.

Outside the dome, thankfully the army has been evacuating everyone in a fifty-mile radius or else a lot of people would be dead. VOLCANO.

Then the Fantastic Four arrive.

Yayyyyy! Oh whoa whoa, Fantastic Fourrr!

They’ve got the best Molecule Man mashing record so they’re here to do what they do do.

Which in this context is fail like champs.

Ben Grimm the Thing tries to shatter the dome with a punch and no dice. Then Human Torch cranks up to nova flame and applies the heat of a sun on one little spot on the dome.

Johnny about wears himself out doing it and still no result.

Guess Iron Man, Thor, and Silver Surfer > a pinpoint miniature sun.

Meanwhile inside, Molecule Man tells Tigra hey get a load of this. And then he levitates a couple billion gallons of water from the Delaware River and dumps it on the Fantastic Four, plus the army, washing them away.

Invisible Woman: “Reed, it -- it doesn’t seem possible!”

Mr. Fantastic: “Everything is made of molecules, Sue! Anything is possible for the Molecule Man!”

Molecule Man far too hax.

But meanwhile, gasp, the Avengers weren’t actually all killed in a book with their name on it! This is unprecedented!

And Silver Surfer is ready to explain their unlikely survival of giant crushing boot.

See, Silver Surfer wasn’t quite as knocked unconscious as the three Avengers so he played possum. When Molecule Man put the Avengers plus Silver Surfer in the crushing boot and when it was just about to crush, Silver Surfer used the Power Cosmic to disintegrate the bottom part of the boot so that the Avengers and him fell to a lower floor. Completely uncrushed!

So that’s good.

The bad is that Silver Surfer has to report that Tigra is still in Molecule Man’s clutches.

The awkward is that Iron Man and Thor lost their armor and hammer respectively so Cap is like ‘wait, what are Tony Stark and Perfectly Normal Dr. Donald Blake doing here??’

So Tony and Don come clean about his secret ID.

Tony Stark, Actually Iron Man: “I feel a little foolish about keeping that secret from you till now! I’m sure Don feels the same way...”

Donald Blake, Dr. Thor: “Right, Tony...”

So now Cap is in on the secret which previously bound Tony and Don together as the Best Friends Avengers Who Aren’t Beast and Wonder Man.

Remember when they discovered each other’s secret IDs? Good times. Well, weird times. That was the issue when that hates-robots group suicide bombed Vision for dating a meat woman.

Also, Tony was only wearing underwear under the Iron Man armor so Don gave him his suit jacket to wear as a loincloth. Mighty nice of him.

Silver Surfer has just been standing on the sides not caring about all this secret ID nonsense or personal drama so he chimes in to point out that Molecule Man is going to eat the planet unless they stop him.

Cap decides that he and the Surfer have to strike before Molecule Man realizes they’re alive. Tony and Don have the important mission to hide somewhere safe.

Tony and Don object to being sidelined. Strongly.

Tony: “You think Iron Man is just a suit of armor, Cap? Is that what you’re saying?”

Don: “I found this rod to use as a makeshift cane! It won’t change me into a thunder god, but it’ll help me get around -- if only to draw fire!”

Tony: “Like it or not, we’re with you!”

Don: “The Avengers stand assembled, Captain America! Now, lead us!”

Cap: “All right! I get the message! I should have known better than to think you’d -- I mean, you two are the best...”

Tony: “Save it, Cap! We’ve got work to do!”

Aww.

This is everything I could have hoped for out of secret ID reveal. Cap starts thinking of them as civilians now that they have real person names but ultimately it brings them closer as teammates.

I love it. Granted, I love it because my favorite form of Avengers is a group of friends and set of interpersonal dramas roughly shaped like a superhero team.

Later, in the nighttime and in the room that Molecule Man made for Tigra.

... Wow, Molecule Man.

Wow.

So we’ve got a giant cat shaped bed. A giant, terrifying cat head on the wall. And a giant ball of yarn. But not giant sized cat tree? Fie and shame.

Anyway, Tigra is sitting on bed lamenting and decrying the Fantastic Four’s failure. Especially as it pertains to her situation.

Tigra: “I -- I just can’t believe the Fantastic Four failed! How could they let me -- and the world down like that? How could they? Right now, Reed Richards is probably locked in his lab trying to invent a gizmo that’ll pierce the dome! Hmf! Who knows how long that might take? The Molecule Man plans to eat the Earth tomorrow morning!”

Nothing like a nice filling breakfast, I guess.

She grants that Reed doesn’t know there’s an everyone’s-deadline so instead Tigra bemoans that it’s all up to her.

Tigra: “I should have tried to jump him today! I can’t believe I didn’t! I was standing right next to him a couple of times! I’m cat-quick! Why didn’t I lunge at him and claw him to shreds before he could move? Could it be because my muscles felt like jelly -- ? I was trembling -- ? In shock -- ? Afraid of him? Hey, shouldn’t I be? I mean, I saw him crush my friends to a bloody smear! And I had a spooky feeling that he was somehow, secretly ready for an attack -- and hoping I’d give him an excuse to dice me into furry cubes!”

And because this is a Tigra character beat page, she also thinks about how easy the hero gig used to seem when it was for smaller stakes. But with the actual literal fate of the world at stake... “I never thought that when the big test came I’d be a scaredy cat!”

But she remembers what Cap said during the Ghost Rider story that its not wrong to be frightened if you don’t let fear dictate your actions.

So she creeps out into the night to Molecule Man’s bedroom.

Oh, that’s a neat touch.

Her shadow on the wall looks a lot like a tiger because her hair curls at the end like a tail.

Neat.

So anyway, she doesn’t understand how Molecule Man can be so confident that he’s just sleeping with his door wide open and with no defenses and wonders if there’s a trap or whether he’s just counting on her to think that there’s a trap.

She’s about five seconds from a full-blown I know you know that I know that you know episode.

The only way to find out is just go for it so she creeps into the room. The garish room.

This is even more wow than Tigra’s room.

But as she creeps into the room and up to the enormous, ridiculous bed, she realizes that she has to kill him. If she attacks and doesn’t kill him with the first strike, what he could do is too horrible for her to imagine.

But what she doesn’t realize is that Molecule Man isn’t sleeping soundly and isn’t unprepared.

He’s stretched monomolecular filaments across the room, too thin for even Tigra to spot.

Now usually monomolecular filaments is one of those ‘oops I’ve been cut to pieces by invisible wires’ thing. You’ve probably seen it in a couple of anime. But this is more like a bunch of cans on a string.

Tigra breaks one of the filaments while she creeps forward. Something that she couldn’t possibly know but which instantly alerts him.

And his response is a “Oh, ho! Just wait’ll she tries it! This’ll be fun!”

Because Tigra’s instinct was correct. Molecule Man was keeping her around just to kill when she finally tried anything. Its been a game. See how far he can push Tigra and how messily he can deal with her when she loses.

This is pretty tense stuff! Well, it lasts a page so it doesn’t overfocus on this specific tense scenario but still!

Tigra: “I’m in range! All I’ve got to do is spring and... and kill him! He murdered my friends! He’s going to destroy the whole world! I’ve got to kill him! Come on, lady! Do it! What’s wrong? He deserves it! He’s a murderer -- ! A rotten little wimp! He calls you ‘kitty’! Kill him! I hate him! I hate him! but... i just can’t kill him!”

And apologizing to Cap for not being able to go through with it, she slinks out of the room trying to think of another way.

Inside the room, Molecule Man sits up disgruntled, just not understanding at all why she didn’t go through with it. There’s no way she could have known that he was ready for her so why wouldn’t she try to do a murder!

And then as Tigra is wishing she had someone to talk to, someone grabs her and pulls her around a corner.

Boom, a comedy after all that one page of tension.

And it’s Cap because there’s like four people it could have been.

Tigra is elated that the Cap is alive, that she’s not alone anymore! And she tries to confess that she attempted to kill Molecule Man to avenge the Avengers. That maybe she should have because now she might lose them again!

Tony: “You did fine, Tigra! Relax!”

But she doesn’t feel like she did fine so she tries to explain that she let the Avengers down by giving into cowardice. She told Molecule Man she liked him to stay alive.

Cap: “Good strategy, Tigra -- preserving your life so you’d be able to carry on the battle!”

She tries to explain it wasn’t strategy so much as being terrified but she gets distracted because she’s just realized that in this group of Cap and Silver Guy there’s two people she doesn’t know.

Cap: “Dr. Don Blake, who’s secretly Thor and Tony Stark who is Iron Man’s alter ego!”

Her mood immediately flips.

Tigra: “You guys are really Thor and Iron Man? Really? And it’s okay for me to know? Really?”

Tony Stark: “Why not? Somehow those secrets seem pretty trivial, what with the world on the verge of being the Molecule Man’s breakfast!”

He says that but he still looks pretty annoyed at Cap just blurting it out.

And geez, Cap, you gotta let people reveal their own secret identities. Or make up some dumb excuse that everyone instantly believes.

Its the done thing.

In terms of Avengers drama though this is pretty good. Thor, Cap, and Iron Man have been working together for a really long time. Even though Cap didn’t form the Avengers he’s basically been there so long they consider him an honorary founder.

Cap learning Iron Man and Thor’s secret identities can be a ‘we should have told you sooner!’ thing.

Tigra just joined the team! Like a week ago!

They need to work together now and there’s probably no smooth lie that could paper over where Iron Man and Thor went and why these two are here now but its probably still a little galling that Cap just blurts it out to the newest person on the team.

Its great. I’d love to see the repercussions of this.

Anyway, time is short so Tony gets to explaining the plan.

He found his broken armor and managed to scavenge enough bits and pieces to make a little device he’s calling a screamer. It’ll emit a high-pitched noise that should disorient Molecule Man.

And then the device just poofs into smoke in Tony’s hand.

Whoops, Molecule Man overheard their plan to beat up Molecule Man and also heard Tony call him names.

So he pulls together all the loose dust in the room and uses it to strangle Tony.

Wow, they’ve gone from having a “layered assault” to watching someone literally choke on Molecule Man’s dust. That’s got to be the quickest turnaround from hope to nope.

Tigra goes wild, rushing at Molecule Man and screaming that she shoulda killed him before and she’s damn well going to scratch his face off now!

But Molecule Man asks her to talk to the hand. Zing.

Puns.

Although “Don’t scream at me, Kitty! ‘Cause I’ll slap you down!”

Sure. That’s good wordplay too.

Having just been comedically (although seriously) WHAP!’d across the room, Tigra has her own words to say.

Tigra: “You -- you weak, slimy excuse for a human being! How could I have stooped so low as to humble myself to garbage like you? So you’ve got power! Big deal! You were a nerd before -- you’re still a nerd! You were a mistake! You shouldn’t even have been born! You crybaby! All you do is blame the world for your own inedequacy! Go on, kill me, nerd! I despise living in the same world with you!”

Wow. She really took all those personal details he shared and slapped him upside the head with them.

Goes to show. Don’t try to destroy the world. People will have rude things to say.

Meanwhile, Cap and Silver Surfer are trying to save Tony but can’t clear the super condense dust faster than Molecule Man gathers it.

Cap tells Tigra to get Molecule Man because that’s their only chance but Tigra is too hurt from being slapped by a giant hand.

Molecule Man: “I’ve got to hand it to you guys, it must’ve taken some doing to escape my crusher! This time, I’m going to make sure you’re dead! Hmm... someone’s missing! But who?”

And he’s done process of elimination and realized that the guy Thor turned into is missing and figures he ran away when Entirely Normal But Furious Dr. Donald Blake tells Molecule Man to grit his teeth.

And then Molecule Man runs off yelling because Dr. Donald Blake can throw down. He possibly broke Molecule Man’s nose with that one punch.

Good job, Dr. Donald Blake.

With Molecule Man not focusing on the dust thing, Tony is free of the dust thing but unconscious. Dr. Donald Blake tells the others that he’ll take care of Tony and that they should go chase Molecule Man since they can run better than he can.

So Cap, Tigra, and Silver Surfer go off in pursuit of Molecule Man.

Silver Surfer reminds that he can track Molecule Man’s unique energies. Cap helpfully points out that they can also just track the trail of blood drips from Molecule Man’s nose. And Tigra goes ‘also I can smell him’ because its good to have three different ways to find a guy.

They find him in some sort of throne room (curled up in pain on the throne) and charge at him. But he’s not in the mood for their shenanigans.

So he sends a tidal wave of molecules at them.

Cap shouts for Silver Surfer to do something and he does do something indeed.

The Surfer blasts the wave of matter with the power cosmic so hard that it transmutes into raw energy and just explodes through the top of the palace in a beautiful pyrotechnic display.

It also completely exhausts the Surfer and he just kind of plops down for a nap right there on the ground.

Cap tells Tigra to watch the Surfer and then goes to take the Molecule Man on alone.

This isn’t a great plan but also their already small roster has kind of dwindled to this point.

And maybe Cap sort of doesn’t want to throw Tigra at Molecule Man when she’s already been hurt and was voicing all those doubts earlier. Can’t say for sure. She’s about to offer for help but Cap is like ‘WHOOPS NOW OR NEVER!’

Molecule Man must be in a whimsical mood, I mean more so than usual have you seen what he’s been getting up to? Because he converts some of the furnishings into a bunch of stars to shoot at Cap.

Its funny because Cap wears a star. It’d be ironic if he got smacked in the face with one, probably.

But Molecule Man activated Cap’s speechifying and that buffs him because nobody likes hearing Cap talk about freedom and justice and doing right more than Cap probably.

What I’m saying is that he leaps and gambols between the stars and I feel its because he has Stuff To Say that he’s doing so well.

Cap: “You make me sick, mister! They say power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and you’re living proof of it! You might kill me! After all, I’m just an ordinary man -- but men like me have always found a way to bring high-and-mighty tyrants like you to their knees! There’s never enough power to save madmen like you -- from ultimate, bitter defeat!”

WAK!

And perhaps it wasn’t just his agility that was improved by inspirational speeching himself. Because he knocks Molecule Man down with that one punch and he doesn’t get back up.

Or maybe Molecule Man just has a glass jaw.

Don Blake and Tony Stark show up and Silver Surfer wakes up but he runs in with the rest anyway for some reason. Tony tells Tigra to watch Molecule Man while he has an Important Debate with Cap.

See, Tony has realized something. Knocking down Molecule Man is just the first step. If Molecule Man gets back up, he might start eating the Earth again and the Avengers might not be able to stop him.

So he asks Don Blake if there’s a medical way to just sort of keep Molecule Man knocked out.

Don Blake: “How? We can’t just keep hitting him on the head -- this isn’t a T.V. show! I mean, how hard do you hit him? How many times can you do that before causing serious brain damage... or death?”

Realism? In a comic book? What are YOU doing here??

Anyway, Tony doesn’t see any other option but to kill Molecule Man.

Cap protests that Molecule Man is a human being with rights to due process and a trial by jury of his peers!

But Tony is convincing the others. As an Actual Doctor, Don Blake doesn’t like to hear this. He wants to save lives. But he can’t refute Tony.

And Silver Surfer also seems on Team Tony.

Silver Surfer: “I understand what it is to sacrifice one life so that a multitude, a world might live! It seems clear that this Molecule Man cannot be imprisoned or held in check! He... must die to save the Earth... though I could never bring myself to slay him!”

Don’t you have the power cosmic? Surely there’s a power cosmic option available?

To be fair though his the power cosmic might be exhausted at the moment.

Still. Geez, Silver Surfer. ‘He gotta die but 1-2-3-not-it’ is really how you’re playing this??

Meanwhile, Tigra has decided that being asked to watch Molecule Man implies a certain duty perhaps even responsibility to tell him how much he sucks. Which is a lot.

And recall that she’s already told him how much he sucks earlier in the fight. So she has found a second wind in telling him how much he sucks.

Tigra: “You little jerk! Don’t you see? Cap was wrong! Power very seldom corrupts! It usually doesn’t change anything! It just magnifies what’s already there, whether it’s good and noble or evil and petty!”

“You were a nerd before... now you’re a powerful nerd! Big deal! Dummy! The shame of it is that with your power you can build... you can contribute! You don’t have to be a loser anymore!”

“Why are you such a fool? Why can’t you see that killing a planetful of people doesn’t make you even -- it just make you lonelier than ever!”

Wow. It feels like Tigra could hypothetically be talking about all different kinds of entitled nerds who then become the jerks as adults!

Anyway.

Tony and Cap are still arguing.

Tony, at least, isn’t going to ask someone to do something he wouldn’t do himself. I.e., he’s going to kill Molecule Man himself and save four billion people.

Cap: “Tony... please! I can’t let you do this!”

Tony: “You can take me in for murder afterward, Cap, but for now, stand aside! I’m warning you...”

Cap: “You’ll have to go through me, Tony...”

You’re warning him, Tony? You don’t have armor. You don’t even have pants. What are you going to do to supersoldier Captain America?

Logic aside, what strikes me is how much this foreshadows.

Before Civil War contrived that superhero registration, the big hot button superhero debate issue is whether superheroes should kill in extreme circumstances.

Spoilers for the NINETIES but the Regular and West Coast Avengers will come to schism and Cap and Iron Man will basically break up over whether or not to kill the Kree Supreme Intelligence after it engineered a war that killed 90% of the Kree people on purpose.

Shooter is long gone by that point but I guess someone is going to pick up the thread.

Because the debate doesn’t get settled here or rather does, sorta, in favor of Cap but not in a way he expects.

Interrupting the sad fist fight between Cap and a nearly naked man, Molecule Man pops up and tells everyone that Tigra has convinced him to turn his life around.

Tigra: “Guys, Mr. Owen Reece and I have talked, and, well, I convinced him to give himself up!”

Mr. Owen Reece: “Yes, I want to start seeing a therapist!”

Cap: “huh?”

Mr. Owen Reece: “I know I’ll have to go to jail... but that’s okay! It’ll give me time to think things out! I’ll make an opening in the dome now so you can call the authorities!”

Don Blake: “s-sure!”

God, that is just great. I love this as a resolution so much. This is a resolution that Squirrel Girl would bring us, although we’d get more of the actual convincing.

Still very, very good. Good to be optimistic in comics sometimes. Sometimes villains can seek redemption if only a cat yells at them long enough.

Although I think the best part is how baffled everyone is by the plot twist.

So with but a “Soon...” caption, the police have come to pick up Mr. Owen Reece and brought Miss Hanrahan who is going to be his therapist.

Holy crap, a therapist in Marvel who isn’t Doc Sampson but will work with superpowered nonsense!

Can we bring Miss Hanrahan back??

A couple things I like here.

One is that Mr. Owen Reece has changed off-panel into a suit instead of his supervillain costume. Now that’s him making an honest effort.

Two is Very Annoyed Tony Stark in the back of the pack of Avengers. He’s wearing a handkerchief as a mask because someone might recognize him as Tony Stark and then wonder ‘hey why is Tony Stark here.’

Three is the proud smile from Tigra when seeing Mr. Owen Reece meet his therapist.

Melts my heart a little.

Before he goes away to jail, Mr. Owen Reece takes a quick sidebar with the Avengers.

He retroactively feels just awful about ruining their various gadgets so he decides to make right.

He reintegrates Mjolnir, Toomie the surfboard, and Cap’s shield exactly as they were. Original molecules and all! They were so weird that he remembered where they all went.

As for Iron Man’s Iron Man armor.... look, he did his best.

Mr. Owen Reece: “But your armor, with all those complicated electronic gadgets is just too tricky for me to reassemble! You needed something more proper to wear till you get home, though -- so I whipped up some red and gold cloth and made you an Iron Man leisure suit! I hope it’s okay!”

Amazing. Simply incredible.

Although I think my favorite part was Mr. Owen Reece realizing ‘hey Iron Man should be wearing pants!’

Anyway, he also takes apart his Molecule Man Doom Fortress and puts those molecules back where he found them. More or less. He tries.

And, yes, he does rebuild the entire town of Netcong, New Jersey. Except the plumbing.

In a funny call back to Reece admitting he doesn’t really understand plumbing, none of the plumbing in the rebuilt town works.

Later, back at Avengers Mansion, Silver Surfer is offered a spot on the team but turns it down.

FOR THE PATHS OF DESTINY DO BECKON HIM DOWN A LONELY ROAD THAT MUST BE TRAVELED ALONE

Its the only who he has ever known. Except for all the time he spend with Galactus. Or the Defenders. Or later on when he has a companion to take on space nonsense.

Tigra also takes this time to say farewell.

Tigra: “I’m just not in the same league as you guys! I mean, sure I’ve got lots of super-ability, and, usually, I'm even pretty heroic -- but not up to your standard! I mean two of you, without your powers, no less, really showed me what it’s all about back there! And let’s face it, you guys mess with some heavy-duty opposition! I think I’ll quit while I’m ahead!”

Noooooooooo

But but but Tigraaa you were a source of joy and fuuuuuuuun

You only joined at the end of #211! It’s only been about a week in-universe!

Darn.

The three other Avengers all say their goodbyes.

Thor reminds her that she was the one who turned around Mr. Owen Reece but Tigra says she got lucky.

Iron Man gives her one of Tony Stark’s cards and tells her to call Tony Stark who is definitely not him anytime she needs anything.

Jarvis even tears up at her leaving, although he denies it because a good butler never dies on duty and then blames his allergies.

And then Tigra is off. Damn. If I didn’t know who might be joining the Avengers soon I’d be completely inconsolable instead of just very.

So now the Avengers are down to just three members. That’s not a team. That’s a crossover. Probably why Jarvis wonders if a membership drive is in order.

NEXT: The return of... Yellowjacket, the Wasp, and Egghead!

I’m game for Wasp coming back! Don’t think it likely that Yellowjacket is just going to come back to the team just like that! And Egghead? The villain who blew up a city with a killsat and killed Hawkeye’s brother? Unlikely recruit!

(No I know that’s not what the NEXT means)

Hey, follow @essential-avengers because the Hank Pym just keeps happening. Like and reblog too please. Be sad with me that Tigra is gone.

#Avengers #Molecule Man #Tigra #Captain America #Iron Man #Thor #Silver Surfer #essential avengers #essential marvel liveblogging #Tigra the Last Avenger #would be a good name for a book #Molecule Man is bad at bathrooms and being nice #never before has a flimsier plan so immediately fallen apart #the Fantastic Four have a brief cameo and they don't enjoy it

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