#i try so hard to follow people who are supposedly for equal rights but its starting to look like misandry runs rampant here

[bunnyboilewd]

I dunno, maybe everyone on here saying how much they hate men even in little funny Tumblr speak might be damaging for all the trans men trying to escape reality on the "we love gays" site.

Like I'll be scrolling and see so many m/m ships and in the same scroll see "imagine men, ew." "At least I don't like men."

I know it's hehe funny site, but maybe we could also love men and not cringe at their mere existence.

Trans men, cis men, and masc identifying I love you, I support you and I hope you are loved by those around you.

[lilac-5ky]

Roommates from Hell, pt.2 (Toji x Fem!Reader)

Chapter 2: 2912

Chapter 1 | Chapter 3 | Story Masterlist | Masterlist

A/N: Thanks to everyone who read and enjoyed the first part of the story! I'll do my best to update every 1-2 weeks and to keep things interesting. Feedback and suggestions are always welcome, and if anyone wants to be notified for updates, drop your name in the comments and I'll gladly tag your @.

Warning: Flashback, mentions of violence, blood, and sex toys (odd combo, I know)

2…9…1…2

Deft fingers punched in the numbers on the door’s keypad, a practiced crescendo of beeps and bops granting you access to your flat. Hesitant fingers that dropped to the handle, but refused to push forward, instead anchoring you there. Not yet, you mumbled, your eyes squeezing shut as soon as your forehead hit the frame.

Today has been a long day. So long that you barely had a moment to process the line of rapid escalations as it brought you to this very doorstep, with the ghost of your former scarf dangling from your neck. Some people would rather be glued to the little screens of their little phones than discipline their eight-year-old brats who, for some reason, thought playing tug of war with others’ scarves while they busted their gut to make a leaving to be of utmost entertainment.

Some people ought to keep their genes to themselves, you exasperated, untying the fabric from your neck and then balled it inside your bag, zipping the bunny across the seam.

The bunny…

Toji…

It was becoming a habit of yours to follow up his name with a sigh. Sometimes a sigh that meant “What am I going to do with you?” and others coming from a place of deep longing and frustration, meaning “What am I going to do without you?”

He said he’d be home after “snipping some loose ends,” which in his dictionary either referred to him breaking some poor woman’s heart, or quite literally stabbing some equally unfortunate man’s heart out of his body at his job’s demand. Depending on the plausibility of each scenario, you were given a minimum of four and a maximum of six hours to try and make sense of his actions and devise a plan to make this cohabitation work.

You licked your lips for the millionth time that day, gnawing at the chapped flesh with the edge of your teeth. No lip balm could aspire to salvage their sorry-ass state, aggravated by the low temperatures and honed by your continuous munching on them. You’d become so conscious of their existence, that it seemed as if you were trying hard to erase it before he had the chance to realize his goal of kissing them— even when that was a common goal shared by the both of you.

The taste of metal pooled in the hollow of your mouth, your teeth sinking a tad too deep. There wasn’t much reason to keep contemplating that which never happened and that which, perhaps, would never come. You wiped your shoes on the crooked doormat (was it always crooked?) and walked inside, your legs nearly giving out at the sight of two knees dangling from your beloved couch’s armrest.

“Woah, keep it down, won’t ya?”

None other than the voice of Toji reprimanded you as you screamed at the top of your lungs. His body was spilled across your couch, the expanse of muscles barely fitting upon the three azure-colored pillows. A soda —your soda— nested in his palm, while a bag of empty potato chips —your chips— lay on the kotatsu.

“What the hell are you doing here?!?” A trembling hand reached out to where your heart supposedly was, checking whether it was still in its place.

“Watching some travel show about Chikura,” he answered, unfazed and undisturbed. “You like abalone, right? Why don’t we-”

“I’m asking, how the fuck did you get in here?”

“Oh, that,” Toji smirked, lowering the TV’s volume just when the travel host was about to devour a platter full of steaming hot seafood—mouthwatering enough to divert your attention for a second. “Sayaka let me in.”

“Sa-yaka…?”

“Flat hair, narrow eyes— kinda like Izumi Pinko. Walks around with a cane twice her size. Rings a bell?”

“Talking about Ogawa-san?” you asked, a caricature of your crabby landlady taking shape before your very eyes. “She never lets in anyone without a key, though. Last time I forgot mine, she acted as if she didn’t know me and went right past. Had to phone a locksmith,” you sighed, murmuring under your breath about the extravagant sum of money you were forced to pay. “How did you do it? Convince her to open up?”

“How else ya think?” His chin rotated leisurely atop his knuckles.

“You can’t be serious! Y-you fucked her?” Your eyes went wide like saucers, the notion sounding both feasible and surreal.

His smirk sharpened into a sly grin as he stood up, a slight slouch on his shoulders carrying him to your eye level. You couldn’t exactly look away from this proximity, so you began quietly analyzing him. The tight-fitting black tee and baggy training pants that greatly accentuated his hips and shoulders; his work outfit. The overgrown hair that curtained the dark circles of his eyes; evidence of a sleepless night. The absence of scent, not even of dirt, sweat, or struggle. He must’ve actually been working on a bounty, you deduced, your final thought of rationale as he invaded the last bit of personal space you’d left.

“You really think the worst of me, huh?” His tongue circled his lips, prompting yours to do the same as you sheepishly shook your head, the sultry sound of his voice as hypnotizing as his hooded green eyes were.

“You think I go ‘round spreading the legs of everything that moves?” Toji asked again, his tone growing more condescending by the second. “ ‘fraid that ain’t the case, princess. I’m not into goodwill. Don’t do things without merit, either. She asked who I was, got all perky when I said I’m moving in, and then handed me these,” he paused, throwing a bundle of creased envelopes at your feet.

You kneeled awkwardly, seeking the sender’s origin in each logo seal. Water company. Electricity company. Phone company. Insurance company. Even the bills from that one debit card Hinata issued in your name in case of an emergency.

“Could say I paid my way in,” he scoffed, his eyes searching for an inkling of appreciation that he failed to find in your stubborn squint.

“I could’ve handled these myself.”

“Thought you’d say this, that’s why I saved this one,” he tossed another, smaller yellow-tinted paper onto the pile. “Eviction notice. My, you have it quite hard, don’tcha?”

“I don’t need classes on financial handling from someone whose living conditions are entirely dependent on ‘the bimbo of the week’,” you snapped, rising back to your feet with the bills in hand.

Maybe things were a bit tighter these past few months than you’d accounted for, but you weren’t like him. Sooner or later, you paid all expenses through sheer work and effort— a concept foreign to him, who’d rather be thrown into the streets than save a dime.

You weren’t like Toji. Not one bit. You knew that if he hadn’t run into your landlady, you would have definitely paid all your debts off in a month’s time or two, even if that meant devolving your breakfast’s nutritional value to that of instant ramen. You could take care of yourself, just like you’d done for 14 years now. He had no right to interfere because, come next month, you’d—

But the overdue deadlines at the top of each paper spoke louder than your inner thoughts and bravado did. The next month would never come for you. Not in this house, at least.

Defeated, you unfolded the paper, straightening the creases your fingernails had helped create. You hated feeling this way— indebted. The last thing you wanted was for this to turn into just another transactional relationship with an expiration date dependent on the other’s wage.

“Thank you, and,” you mumbled, your stare hiking up his body and stopping at his chest —right about where the difference in your height manifested— “….sorry, I guess. Just thought that with the way you look, and all that-”

“The way I look…?” A winsome smile tugged at his dimples, his left hand weaving through his hair as if he were oblivious to how effortlessly attractive he appeared in his work clothes, every single crevice of his body visible under the little piece of fabric.

“N-never mind.” You tore your eyes away, cheeks flushing bright red at thoughts a friend shouldn’t be having. “How was work?”

“Pretty dead,” he shrugged, using the same hand to rub some of the tension around the crook of his neck. “Don’t see a real challenge rising until that Gojo kid hatches from his egg. Rest die like flies.”

As a regular person with about an average percentage of cursed energy running through your system, you had little understanding of the mystical world of Jujutsu and its sorcerers, all the information you had acquired being bits and pieces that Toji had shared with you over the years. He never went into too much detail about his job but never hid anything either. He killed sorcerers with the same ease he spread butter on his bread.

You really didn’t understand much, and perhaps the keywords “kills for a living” ought to ring an alarm or two, but an outsider like you who didn’t abide by their rules had no right judging those who broke them. Besides, with the way his family had disposed of him as if he were a chewed piece of gum stuck on the back of their sole, things weren’t as black and white as one would assume.

“Gojo, you say,” the name sounding awfully familiar on your tongue. “Is that one of the three big clans?”

Toji nodded, his arms folding over his chest. “Special grade when he ain’t grown any pubes yet,” he scoffed, voice twisting in an unnatural way that could have tricked you into thinking he was jealous of the young boy.

“Are you gonna kill him?”

His brows knitted together, clearly not expecting such bluntness. “Question is, can I? Answer being, for the right price,” the frown he wore subdued into a crooked smile. “maybe. Kid should fetch one good wad of cash. I’m sure many want the six eyes out of the picture.”

Six eyes?

“Just make sure you save some of it,” you mindlessly said, eyes dancing around the room for the first time since you’d entered the house.

There were no real signs of his presence. The duffel bag seemed to be nowhere in sight either. Only his shoes were left by the door right next to yours, a sign you’d completely missed upon entering.

“What happened to your things, by the way? Don’t see ‘em.”

“Took the liberty of sorting them out,” Toji said. “You had a lot more empty space than you made it sound earlier.”

Somehow that statement terrified you— not because you were some overbearing control freak who didn’t want others interfering with their stuff, but because you feared the misplaced items he might have found casually lying around, providing him with all the excuse he needed to tease you to an excruciatingly slow and shameful death.

You went on a parade through the rooms, Toji following in your steps like a well-trained puppy, letting you freely inspect the new “changes”.

In the living room, you spotted a pair of dumbbells lying by the window, heavy enough that when you tried to pick one of them up, it resulted in one loud, unintentional shriek as your feet were nearly crushed, much to Toji’s vile amusement. Then in the bathroom, you found a second toothbrush that shared the exact same color yours did, along with a black fuzzy towel and a men’s deodorant that was missing its lid. You’d have to get another cup for his toothbrush, you noted, and moved along, eventually making it to your apartment’s sole bedroom.

“Where are your clothes?” you asked, Toji nodding in your closet’s direction.

You opened the first door, finding a series of dark-colored shirts, sweaters, and cardigans hanging from the previously vacant racks. You didn’t wear much color yourself, but when comparing the disparity between his almost exclusively black side of the space and the creamier pastels that predominated yours, the clash in taste was indisputable.

Absentmindedly, you run your fingers through his clothes, stopping at the dark blue parka you’d gotten him for his 21st birthday. He wasn’t the type to keep gifts from women, but seeing he’d preserved yours in mint condition filled you with a strange sense of pride.

“Not bad,” you exclaimed, satisfied with how aptly his clothes were displayed until a new worry surfaced. “What about your underwear?”

He glanced toward the bottom drawer, his instep gently kicking against it. You weren’t too sure if that was necessary, and under different circumstances, you’d rather avoid such overt embarrassment, but this was your house first and foremost. Your closet, your drawer, and—

“The bottom drawer…?” The realization struck like a ton of bricks, your pupils widening and then trembling as a breath hitched up your throat, remaining there.

The bottom drawer is where you kept it, perhaps the only thing in this entire household that you’d rather he didn’t see, at the cost of your own life, even. A rabbit, whose little ears tapped in excitement every time it saw you. A rabbit vastly different from the ones that hopped around happily in fields or the one that was weaved through the zipper of your handbag. A rabbit that had kept you company in his place many nights and knew the sound of his name better than Toji himself did.

Sinking to your knees, you felt his shadow loom over you like the shadow of imminent death. You let go of that breath and yanked the drawer open, eyes squinting at the sight of neatly stacked black boxers, their size big enough to make you arch a brow, yet not big enough to completely conceal 6 inches of hot pink. You were safe.

“Looking for this?” A light buzz rang in your ear, your head tilting to meet Toji’s namesake.

“G-give it back!” You dived forward, gracelessly collapsing at his feet when he pulled it out of reach.

“Come and get it,” Toji retorted, wiggling it before your very eyes.

Piecing a loose strand of hair behind your ear, you pounced at him, fingers locking around the silicone and his hand, while he refused to surrender, his thrilled expression revealing just how much he enjoyed the demand in your tone as you bossed him into handing back the vibrator.

“What will I get in return?”

“Wha— why would you get anything?” You gritted your teeth, stumbling forward as he dragged you to him.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” he shook his forefinger playfully. “Finders keepers, losers weepers. If ya really want it, better compensate me first. Oh, look, it has multiple speeds, huh….” he said semi-impressed, revving up the rabbit’s switch to its second and third speeds.

“…What do you want?” You practically begged, seeking a way out of this humiliation.

“Now we talking,” Toji smirked, barely restraining himself from ruffling the hair of the ferocious, albeit cute, beast that attacked him. “2912. What do the numbers mean? Tried your birthday first, but seems like you do have a few brain cells in there,” he tapped at your temple with his free hand, frustration pooling in your eyes. “Then your mom’s death anniversary, your sis’ birthday, that brat’s too— even mine, but no good.

“So, what’s 2912 to you? Indulge me, and I’ll let you have it.”

2912, or more accurately, 29/12. It didn’t surprise you that he didn’t remember. After all, it wasn’t an important date, just another winter’s day from many, many years ago. A day that was all but erased under the thick blanket of snow as it engulfed your tender memories.

A heavy sigh parted your lips, and at that moment, you knew you’d already lost.

“You really wanna know?”

It was the 27th of December.

The 27th morning of a month whose sole notable event was the week-long blizzard that’d condemned the entire nation to a period of absolute and unfaltering inertia. Well, as unfaltering as the in-between downpours let it be, snow washing over the streets in a diluted mixture of ice and mud every two days— streets turning into a dangerous minefield, and hospital beds quickly filling up with broken-boned smarty pants who thought wandering out and about in the heart of winter would be as inconsequential as those dull days were.

You were one of those idiots. Not quite, but you were on your way to join their ranks, every step you took across the frozen pavements of Tokyo threatening to leave you with a bad case of a sprained ankle, or worse, a cracked skull. You regretted wearing those worn-out boots today of all days, but then again, your wardrobe choices were limited to whatever clothing you’d grown out of, and the clothes your mother left behind.

This old suede pair was hers, too. A gift from back when your house was still open to crowds and birthday parties— when it wasn’t just an empty carcass of termite-eaten joists and web-infested corners that could barely welcome, let alone host, the final of its residents: yourself.

Returning to the reason why you’d chosen today as the day to stride across Shibuya —a thermos of soothing Butajiru soup gripped tightly between your mitten-clad palms and a backpack full of advertising fliers for your afternoon job attached to your back— and consequentially, the reason why you sported your mother’s beloved shoes: you had a job interview. Your first non-canceled interview in over two months since your personal inertia began when you were suddenly and unjustifiably laid off.

Those were tough times. The entire country was dipped in despair over the biggest economic recession they’d known. Left and right, people had their jobs snatched from within their grasp in the name of meek excuses such as cost reduction, or merging and buyouts, or even staff redundancy, and who could blame those small enterprise owners, really?

In any case, the cost of running your previous employer’s rathole of a convenience store might have been reduced, but your living expenses weren’t, and the supplementary funds the state provided were running dry. No one wanted to hire an inexperienced, uninsured high schooler. It was too much of a gamble, especially when the contenders were overqualified college graduates desperate enough to work menial jobs for the same breadcrumbs a part-timer would.

You were at your wit’s end. Out of luck and starved for something other than vending machine onigiri. Thirsty for a life you’d probably never be able to obtain. But today wasn’t about wallowing in self-pity. No, today was the day you’d take your first step toward normality and dignity. Today, you marched proudly in your mother’s most prized possession, and today you felt her comforting scent linger in the breeze, giving you the much-needed push to achieve what you’d set out to do.

Live. That was the final request that left her lips, and that was exactly what you were planning to do. You’d live. No matter what, against all odds, you would live.

The headlights at the bustling intersection shone a brilliant green as the herd of sharply dressed businessmen and casually dressed students on their day off pushed forward like a troop of toy soldiers, sweeping you past Shibuya River, where the crystallized waters from below its bridge stilled your grimacing reflection.

It’d been so long since the last time you’d genuinely smiled that your facial muscles barely remembered how to. It looked awkward and forced. Foreign. You’d practiced your introduction days ahead, but that damn smile stood in the way. If only there was a “smiles for dummies” playbook, though you doubted it’d help. Those without a reason to smile could only second-guess the happiness of those who were blessed with it.

As if to further test your theory, today’s misfortune came pedaling right in your direction, a hasty biker knocking the thermos off your hands and onto the water with a faint “sorry” echoing in his stead. You ducked over the handrail, spotting the silver shine a couple of meters away from the river’s brink. You sighed in relief, grateful that the impact hadn’t shattered the ice and that you still had about 45 minutes to catch your interview— more than enough time for you to carry out your flask’s impromptu rescue operation.

You walked over to the bridge’s sideline, where, in place of stairs, an overgrown cherry tree cast its shadow. This was far from sensible, but the cliff wasn’t steep enough to dissuade you. You looped your scarf around a leaning branch and began your descent, the non-existent friction between your tattered soles and the slippery cement sending you to meet your maker as you tumbled down the slope and hit the ground. Shit.

Once you were done lamenting your sheer idiocy, your faulty shoes, the tree branch, the weather forecast, and every Shinto deity’s name you could remember off the top of your head, you pushed yourself onto your knees, carefully rotating each ankle around itself. Not broken. Thank those aforementioned gods you cursed, or else you’d never be able to afford the medical bills.

You shook the snow off your clothes and stood up, stretching both arms over your head, only to realize your blunder had become a lonesome spectator’s object of amusement. The man —assuming that the creature behind you was a man and not some wild beast with the way his jacket fluffed over his skull— was bent in half, knees to his chest, and arms coiled around, the sole distinctive trait that of his sparkling green eyes zeroing in on your plainer orbs.

You could have sworn you heard a chuckle, too, but you weren’t about to start a fight with some unhinged bum at the bottom of a bridge— not when you were one missed bill away from sharing his fate.

Deciding to temporarily forsake his presence, you located the now broken branch and attempted to fish your bottle out, moving as close to the ice as you could. Desperate lunges pushed the thermos further in, your hold on the wood relaxing with each failed attempt until you barely had a grip.

“Excuse me!” you turned at your last resort. “Hi, um… could you please help me out here? I dropped this into the water, and it’s really important I get it back, but my arms can’t reach and the ice is so thin and slippery I just might fall.”

An uncomfortable chuckle failed to appease its tough crowd, with the man remaining lost in his thoughts, his eyes blinking slower than traffic lights during rush hours. It seemed like you’d found the worst person to exercise your communication skills with.

“Hello? Can you hear me?”

“Shut up.”

It was your turn to blink in surprise, your jaw dropping at the man’s barking. You were too shocked to be offended and too offended to question if it was you he addressed, but his next sentence left no real room for misunderstanding.

“I said, shut the fuck up and take it elsewhere. You were the one who dropped it. If it was that important to you, then shoulda taken better care of it instead of avalanching your way down here and disturbing my peace.”

Clapping your hands over your agape mouth, you muttered an apology and faced away from him, coming to your senses a minute later when you realized you weren’t in the wrong. Sure, he could be dealing with some lachrymose life-shattering situation you knew nothing about, but that wasn’t an excuse for him to act like a complete jerk to a fellow stranger in need.

You weren’t sure why you held back from flipping him off. Maybe you’d accepted that dealing with douchebags was going to become part of your new reality as a service worker, or maybe it was because you really didn’t want any trouble with a guy who looked this intimidating even while seated. Either way, you whipped out your trusty branch again and neared the brink, this time using it as a cane to help you tread the frozen waters and snatch your thermos.

You didn’t even get a chance at a victorious cheer when you felt the ice shatter beneath your feet, eager to swallow you into the depths of its bottomless abyss. Or that’s what would have happened if the river didn’t cap at 2 meters, and if a hand didn’t yank you by the scruff of your neck, hurling you back to the shore as if you weighed no more than a snowflake.

“The hell you think you are doing? Got a death wish or something?” the brass voice of your savior accused, belonging to a much more pleasant and youthful face than one would have expected.

The boy was more or less your age, about a head taller with broad shoulders and a toned physique his baggy clothes undermined— much stronger than your average high-schooler, judging by the sheer strength he’d flung your body with. Messy raven black hair rained down to his ears, sloppily chopped into shape by their owner himself. Eyes as green as a thousand springs gone by, and as fiery as the blazing fury scorching them. The only discord in his features was that of a scar on the right side of his lips, begrudgingly moving with each profanity he spat.

Your second apology came as a knee-jerk reaction to his outburst, encouraged by the temporal trance his good looks had subjected you to. You wouldn’t say you had a type, and even if you did, you doubted that a no-good, rude bridge inhabitant was it. However, the only way for you to tear your gaze off of him was to physically force yourself away. The guy murmured something under his breath and moved back to his original spot, arms dangling over his spread thighs.

You were unsure of what to do. The time for your interview was closing in, and no one guaranteed he wouldn’t rip the vocal cords off your throat if you tried to verbally thank him. You had a very bad feeling about this guy, and perhaps you should have listened to your gut rather than nullifying the distance with a peace offering.

“Here,” you prodded a spare cup of soup into the empty space between you.

He arched a brow at your gesture, his irritation gradually melting into curiosity and then acceptance as he brought the cup to his lips and took a hesitant sip.

“Hmm,” he hummed, gulping down some more after he’d made sure you weren’t trying to poison him.

You expected something else to follow, but it seemed like his outburst exhausted his vocabulary. You could always ask what he thought of it, but the thought alone was as scary as going for another suicide dive. So you said nothing, and he did the same. Just two strangers who barely tolerated each other sharing a moment of silence in the snowy landscape.

A short while later, the boy shoved the cup toward you and dug his hand in his jacket’s front pocket, dropping about six crumpled ten-thousand yen bills at your feet.

“For the soup,” he explained as if the notion of spending such an extravagant sum on half a cup of pork loin soup made sense.

“Are you outta your mind?” You pushed the bills back at him, lest your greed take over. “How much do you think this cost to make?”

“Dunno,” he shrugged, no real hurry to reclaim his cash.

Your initial impression was completely false. No bum would ever wave ten-thousand bills around as if they were nothing. No, this guy ought to at least be some troubled conglomerate heir that’d run away from his five-bedroom mansion.

“I’m sure you don’t know how dangerous this neighborhood is,” you said, placing your hand against your heart. “But as a born and raised local, allow me to say that if you keep flaunting wads of cash in people’s faces so recklessly, it won’t be long before you get mugged. It’s your lucky day you ran into me and not some sleazy money grabber, but trust me, not every day’s lucky, and not everyone’s as nice.”

Something about what you said must have resonated with him, considering his frown cracked into a simper.

“I’d like to see them try,” he spoke in a cocky tone that reeked of confidence. “How much for seconds then?”

“Not for sale,” you answered, throwing the thermos inside your backpack.

His weight shifted in your direction, chin balancing against his elbow. “Why not?”

“You see, I’m on my way to a job interview. Figured if I don’t cut it, then the soup will,” quickly adding, “It’s my trump card.”

“What a dumb plan,” he sneered. “If ya wanna bribe someone, better make an offer they can’t refuse. Couple of these work like a charm.”

He waved the money again, successfully drawing your interest when you noticed tiny splotches of red on one of the bills. Blood.

Picking up on the change in your expression, he hurriedly stuffed the cash inside his pocket, his thumbs sticking out in a relaxed grip so as to hide his discomfort. The air grew heavy once more, albeit for a different reason.

Every guess you’d made regarding this guy’s identity clashed with the next one. He was rude, but he’d jumped to your rescue. He looked unkempt yet strikingly handsome. He’d taken refuge under a bridge but was damn loaded. A walking (more like seated) contradiction of a man that intrigued you in more ways than he repulsed you.

“So, what are you doing out here? Did you also fall from up there?” You chuckled nervously while pointing upward.

He smiled.

“That’s a pretty old-school pickup line, if ya ask me.”

“That’s not what I meant!” Your chest pounded against your fleece jacket, hands quick to dispute him. “Did something happen? Why did you end up here?”

He shook his head.

“Did you run away from home?”

He shook his head again.

“Did you get into a fight with someone?”

He thought about shaking his head a third time, but instead, he opted for a groan and hissed about how he should have let you drown.

Your tongue embarrassed you yet again, as you mumbled an apology and cowered in your corner. For some reason, you couldn’t stop apologizing to him, and if that was enough to frustrate you, then it was definitely enough to annoy him. Maybe the time to leave had come. You’d done your part in thanking him, and it was really none of your business to pry into his sad character backstory.

“Well then. It was nice knowing you, and all. Hope you have a Happy New Year’s and a nice life, and let’s never see each other again for as long as we-”

“What if I told you I just killed someone?”

The blood in your veins froze for a reason separate from the cold. You were left staring at him with wide-open eyes and a wide-open mouth that refused to form anything other than a soundless “What?!”

“Thought so,” he scoffed as if he expected the outcome, sorrow lingering in his voice. “Go away if ya don’t wanna end up the same way. I’m still getting the hang of it, and I’m afraid it’d hurt more than drowning.”

But you didn’t leave. Even when that little voice of reason thrashed and begged for you to seize the opportunity and get the fuck away from this place, your legs refused to take another step. Instead, you settled back upon the snowy blanket and stilled your gaze on his face, watching a glimmer of something tune in the green of his eyes.

“W-Who was it?” You feigned calmness.

“Does it matter?” he shrugged.

“Why did you kill him?”

“Does it really matter?” he sighed, reconsidering his answer. “Dunno. Money, I guess. Not as if I had a personal grudge or anything. Didn’t even know the dude up until three days ago. Took him out with a single bullet to his brain. T’was instant since he didn’t move. Painless, too.” He tried to humanize his actions.

You weren’t entirely sold on his story, but on the off chance he was telling the truth, that made him a murderer and you a witness to his crime. Worse, if you didn’t rat on him, it made you an accomplice, and as far as you were concerned, neither was less illegal than the other.

Your hands cupped your mouth completely as you pretended to blow hot air, the reality being that you didn’t want to spew anything too backhanded before thinking things through. Oddly, it all made sense. The reason he sat down there like a puppy kicked by his owners. His devil-may-care attitude and rude comments that meant to throw you off. The blood on the bills and the stain on the hem of his jacket that you’d previously overlooked.

That was all the incriminating evidence one needed to possibly sentence him, and yet you sensed no real danger in his presence. Only a deep sadness that stemmed from his lifeless eyes, making you believe that his so-called victim was none other than himself. He looked as if he hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep in God knows how long, the light in his eyes reduced to a murky shade of jade now that everything was laid bare.

There was so much you didn’t know about this boy, his name included. But you knew that look of despair all too well. If it was because of money, then maybe, just this once, you wouldn’t mind giving him the benefit of the doubt.

“How much did you make?” You lowered your palms.

Your question surprised him more than he thought possible, and his stupefied expression was a telltale sign of that. He flipped both pockets inside out and let the money fall onto the snow, revealing twice the amount he’d held before— a total of 120.000 yen.

“Minus a grand. Felt hungry after,” he admitted.

“Must be nice… With that amount of money, I could have rice to last me until the end of the year.”

“You’d kill for rice…?”

Glancing at his face, you couldn’t help yourself from snorting. You were both too deep inside the twilight zone to be questioning each other’s motives.

“Why act surprised? People like us do all sorts of things to get out of our predicaments, don’t we?” you asked, deciding there were more things you had in common than things that divided you. “Is ‘just money’ a better reason than rice?”

“Nah,” he shook his head. “But if I were you, I’d get myself a pair of boots that ain’t a death trap of its own. Gotta be a special kind of idiot to wear crappy shoes in the snow.”

“These were my mother’s!” you objected, and he smirked. “What about you? Where do you plan on spending all that money?”

“Roppongi probably. Or Kabukicho. Heard the right price fetches you the right type of fun there.”

He couldn’t be serious. Those were two of the most renowned bad districts in the history of bad districts. Drugs, gambling, prostitution— you name it.

“How old are you again?”

“Older than you,” he childishly retorted.

“What’s your name?”

“So you can snitch?” His tongue wet the scar below his bottom lip. “Toji.”

“Last name?”

He contemplated his answer for a bit before proudly stating that he didn’t have one —that he didn’t need one— and then he asked you the same.

“Y/N.” You smiled faintly. “I do have a last name, but doubt the one who gave it wants me to have it. Would’ve asked it back if it had any real value.”

“So we are two fuck-ups,” he— Toji, declared.

“I suppose we are.”

The two of you shared a quiet laugh, the kind that wasn’t heard but felt through the eyes of two kindred spirits entirely content with each other’s presence. Ever since your mother passed, you lived in a sphere separate from other people. Your classmates and those who tried to be your friends could afford the luxury of sharing takoyaki on a school day and going karaoke singing the next. They could attend field trips and leave memories on a string of Polaroid frames.

You didn’t. You couldn’t. There wasn’t a single moment in your life when you hadn’t thought about the cost of milk and the value of one-plus-one deals you convinced yourself you didn’t need. Such were the concerns you had at seventeen. Not boys, no friendships, no university entrance exams, no nothing. You couldn’t afford the price tag of a dream, let alone a tomorrow. You lived for today and for making ends meet, so how could someone like you ever aspire to be understood? How could you ever view yourself as something other than the zeros at the bottom of your meager paycheck?

Your self-exile had no room for others, yet somehow, this foul-mouthed stranger had barged his way in and given you a moment that you couldn’t price. A moment that neither loan sharks nor the bank could ever steal. A moment of your youth.

The thick fingers of a calloused hand came to tap at your knee softly, making you wonder whether you’d missed something during your short period of contemplation.

“When’s the interview?” Toji asked.

“Uhm.” You rolled your sleeve to check your watch. “Ten minutes? There’s still time; the place’s right around the corner.”

“Somethin’ tells me getting your ass over there will take longer than that.” Suddenly, the hand that was on your leg hovered above your head, prompting you to grab it as Toji towered over you. “Let’s go.”

“You coming with?”

“You think I’d rather sit down here like some bridge troll that reels in defenseless damsels in distress?”

You were tempted to answer “yes” to see his reaction, but he resumed talking before you could utter a word. “Won’t say it again. Let’s go.”

And with that, you followed Toji to the other end of the bridge, where the stairs you previously failed to locate mocked you with every little squeak your heels produced, until you stood back at the top of civilization, finding it, unsurprisingly, the same as you’d left it. Thoroughly white and eerily quiet.

Just as you thought your ways would part, Toji took your hand in his rather forcefully and picked up a steady gait that you were made to keep up with, your shoes leaving deep imprints in the snow.

He held your hand all the way to the diner, and although you were truly curious as to why he did that, you didn’t dare ask. You walked side by side in silence, occasional fleeting gazes catching his warm breath clashing with the cold. It was then that you realized how warm his palm felt, despite it being all bare. Warm, strong, and certain. So this is what holding a guy’s hand feels like, you giddily mused.

By the time you reached the front door, you were more reluctant to let go than you’d been to grab his hand, thinking that this was the first and last time the two of you were saying goodbye. Sweat made your fingers slippery. You were anxious. You slid your mittens off your fingers and, on a whim, pressed them tight against his palms, making him the recipient of the first gift you’d ever given. He shot the pink-colored wool a funny look —maybe because the prospect of him accepting such a girly-looking accessory puzzled him— and then lingered for a moment or two before he turned around and waved at you over his shoulder.

“Aren’t you gonna wish me good luck?” You asked when the distance between you began to increase.

“You won’t need it,” you heard him say. “The soup will do.”

And with those final words exchanged, you traded the frigid cold for the diner’s artificial heat and the presence of a prospective friend for that of your boss-to-be.

Just like Toji predicted, you didn’t need luck, and you didn’t need that lukewarm soup either. The man hired you almost as fast as he saw you, sternly announcing that you start come Monday. You thanked him from the bottom of your heart and ran back outside, searching through the various white-painted buildings for that stubborn hint of black you’d not too long ago parted with— which you quickly spotted a couple of alleyways ahead.

“I got the job! You hear me, Toji?” You yelled in utter glee, sensibility alone keeping you from springing upward like a jack-in-the-box. “I’m not a fuck-up anymore; I got it! I got the job!”

You weren’t even sure whether that shadow really belonged to him and whether he’d actually made sense of all your frantic cries, but maybe if you’d hushed a little, then you could have heard a distant voice chiming, “I knew you would.”

It was the 27th of December when we first met, but it was on the 29th that I fell in love with you— the scruffy boy with the snow-laced hair and emptied pockets who ordered the cheapest fries off the menu as my company’s fee.

You had your answer locked and loaded— a trigger waiting to be pulled. A clear shot. One bullet was all it’d take to end it. One word, and the farce you called friendship would fizzle right then and there. A sadistic impulse uncoiled deep within your stomach, hitching up your throat like a vile serpent of temptation spurring your chaste tongue to commit the greatest sin imaginable.

I hate being your friend. I don’t want to do this anymore. Do you have any idea how hard it is?

All synonyms for the same emotion. A gut-wrenching, soul-crushing, and above all, self-destructive unrequited love that made your heart clench at the mere sight of him, pound at the sound of his voice, and hammer at the ghost of his touch. If you could reach deep within your chest and cut that useless thing off the strings that held it in its cavity, you certainly would. You’d hand it over to him and gladly watch him stomp on it with the biggest smile contorting the final expression on your face. You wanted to rid yourself of this pointless emotion, but you knew very well that to destroy yourself meant to destroy him.

The 18-year-old Toji that held your hand on a cold winter’s day as if it were the most precious thing to him. The 20-year-old Toji that came along to meet the sister and nephew you didn’t know you had. The 22-year-old Toji that said he was proud of you when you paid off your parents’ house’s mortgage. The 24-year-old Toji that came to your graduation from state college with blood-stained lilies in his hand, again letting slip how proud he was. The 26-year-old Toji that didn’t hesitate to knock the teeth right out of a handsy prick’s jaw, spending his first and last night in a holding cell. The Toji from the last ten years of your life that never strayed too far away from your sight and always managed to return in time for lunch.

Standing in front of the 28-year-old Toji, you felt more apologetic than ever, wishing that you wouldn’t have let your love for him fester into something so selfish and consuming. Because if Toji left, then you’d still have your sister and her family, but if you left, Toji would have none.

And that was why you could never tell him what that day meant. It was impossible to speak of it with any less fondness than the one depicted in your memories, and as dense as Toji could be at times, he was no idiot. So rather than giving him the answer he thought himself to seek, you retracted your hand and took a step back, forcing the meekest smile your guilty conscience could muster.

“How about an offer you’d never refuse?”

tags: @absoluteindulgence

[byorder-fanfic]

How They Look After You When it Gets Bad: Tommy

Preference Masterlist

Requested by anonymous

Warnings: Reader going through a hard time, jealousy, doubts

Word count: 1407

Author’s Note: I really hope this is alright! In all honesty, I'm not a huge fan of Tommy but I really tried to do this well! And okay maybe I was a little harsh on him but I did try and make it sweet at the end. I hope you enjoy it and I'm wishing you all my best

(Gif by @manie-sans-delire-x) (it was really hard to choose a gif for him cause he always looks so mentally distressed)

You always said Tommy was a control freak. He always denied it, of course, hating any opinion that strayed from his own self-image. It took a bite of your lip to prevent the comeback of that proving your point. He wouldn't listen to you- he was, after all, a control freak. Maybe it was because of the war, or simply because with a chaotic family like the Shelbys at least one of them had to try and maintain order. You supposed it was because of the horses. Horses needed to be controlled, didn't they? They needed human hands to brush their manes and clear their hooves and make their iron shoes, they needed leather between their teeth to keep them on their path and jockeys had those whips to spur them on. You thought that maybe if the rest of the world were horses, Tommy would have an easier time. Who knows why he even decided to go into all this business and politics when it, at its very heart, was surrounded by people. But he couldn't make an empire from horses. Maybe he could keep this manor and expand the betting shop to keep his family working and wealthy, but he would just be a lord in his manor. Like that Lady Carleton that he fancied.

You had to bite the inside of your cheek to stop a snigger at the thought of your Tommy living in the stables for the rest of his life, knowing that an expression of anything other than complete concentration would get you a stern telling off. Despite the threat, you looked up from your paperwork. Tommy was at the head of the desk, the smoke from his cigarette trailing around his head like a phantom crown and a pensive look on his face as he rested against his hand. The portrait of the black mare stood behind him, giving him the imposing look of a king. Hell, he was a king, wasn't he? And that made you the regent ruler- the conditional monarch. You wondered if he thought of May Carleton sometimes when he looked at you. Or maybe he thought of Greta, or Grace, or Lizzie, or Jessie or, Christ, maybe even Alfie fucking Solomons for all you knew. Lizzie said he used to fuck her face down so he could think of someone else. Maybe you were a business partner in all things, someone transactional and useful. Maybe you were a horse. He told you what to do, didn't he? He guided you like he were stood behind, holding you by the reigns. The king of all he has, even his own partner. Even you. Even the ghosts in his head that he wouldn't talk about. He never talked about much to be honest. Just sat like he did now, all thoughtful and noble. A pretty deceiving face. You wanted to ask him, to bear your heart and let him reassure you. But he wouldn't like that. And Tommy was a control freak. 

You got back to your papers, thinking you might as well do something whilst you're here. But the buzzing in your mind didn't stop biting at your thoughts, it didn't stop a tremble as you swooped your pen over the page, and it didn't stop the way your knee bounced under the desk. It was a subtle motion, the kind that was obscured and easily hid. It was something you couldn't stop doing in your nervous state, so it was something that'd have to be secret. Tommy had a plan for today: do all the paperwork, have a little chat about the business, get a drink, and then he'll fuck you. That's what he said he'd do, and Tommy like to stick to his plans. That bloody control freak. That king of the castle that left you powerless and petty as you couldn't even bounce your knee without feeling some scorn for his stupid bloody petty-

"Stop doing that."

His voice was cold as his eyes, an iciness that made you freeze with your knee mid-bounce.

"Stop what?" You gave a tilt of your head, gauging this out of him. You wanted him to admit it. If you couldn't say it, then he might as well do.

He gave a little huff, the cigarette smoke following the action like a bull breathing from its nostrils.

"Stop bouncing your knee."

How the hell could he tell? Maybe those superstitious lot were right about the Shelbys having something intrinsically magic and devilish about them.

"Why?"

Pettiness wasn't your thing, but here you were. Tommy sighed deeply, sitting back in his seat and looking at you with a raised eyebrow. He thought you were challenging him.

"Cause I asked you to."

Ah yes, the king's orders must be met. Even by you, supposedly his equal. But who gave the regent title? Who shared his power with you?

You looked up, giving your most argumentative look, dropping you pen onto the paper. He flinched, ever so slightly, telling you the ink must have spilt onto the paper. As if these documents weren't just ink on paper anyways.

"Why the fuck do I have to do what you asked?"

He tilted his head to the side now, eyebrows raised in complete shock. In return, you scraped your seat back on the floor so that he could see you and the knee you were bouncing. The buzzing in your mind still continued, but now there was that little sick joy in defying Tommy that helped ease the insecurity.

"If you're going to act like a child-"

He was going to make a long list of threats, you knew it, but you cut him off with a laugh.

"Please, Tom, you're the one whose acting like a child." His lips pursed in the same argumentative way as when you told him he was a control freak. "You're the one who insists on routines and plans and not bouncing my fucking knee!"

"Christ, not this again Y/N." His hand smoothed over his creased face, looking so tired of this. So tired of you.

"Who do you see when you look at me?" You asked, making him stop completely. You saw the cogs in his mind turning as he tried to understand the words you were saying. Despite everything, you were quite proud at your little victory of rendering Thomas Shelby speechless. "Lizzie said you used to see Grace or Greta when you came to her. Who do you see for me, huh?" He was shaking his head, words at the tip of his silver tongue that you wouldn't let spill quite yet. "Cause it ain't me, is it? Otherwise I could do what I damn well pleased, like bounce my fucking knee! Or spend a day doing what I want, not this fucking paperwork and fuck you like I'm some whore you're paying to fuck someone else!" You stood up from your chair, towering over him as you leaned over the desk. "I won't have it. I won't."

Something in him seemed to shift. Not soften necessarily, just change ever so slightly. Tommy too stood up from his desk taking a few careful strides around the desk until he just in front of you.

"Come here." Being the control freak he was, Tommy was the one that wrapped his arms around you first, pulling you towards his chest. You easily let him, always feeling slightly safe at the way he handled you like this. He smelled like smoke and booze and mint leaves, but you wouldn't trade your place nuzzling your nose against his neck for anything. You never thought of anyone else except Tommy- why couldn't he do the same?

"I think of you, love." He muttered, voice still calm and undisturbed. "I always think of you. At work, at home, at the fucking stables. You're always on my mind." 

You were still close to him, hearing his heartbeat and wishing you had the ability to sniff out bullshit like the rest of the Shelbys could.

"I know I'm a bit of a control freak, alright? But I'm yours."

You weren't certain if it was his confession of possession, or the admittance of his neurotic behaviour that made you lean back and look at him with the biggest grin you could muster. Your hands found their way to the side of his jaw, bringing him closer to you.

"All fucking mine." 

[voidcat]

— to yearn, and apricate

characters: albedo, you

wc & genre: 1.4k ops & modern au of sorts

a/n: hi hey hii so i've been pestering aqua (@pen-observing) with a genshin mafia au since forever n its like a plan of ours going on?? so it was gonna b one big thing with routes for various characters in the sense of romance, and maybe some 'extras' to follow... this was supposedly be an extra for albedo,, i got ahead of myself

Albedo is watching from afar, as he always does.

A man of logic and science, he watches with a keen eye at all times.

He observes, examines and when the time comes, he builds a hypothesis, only to test it out and follow a course of actions according to the results he receives.

Respected by many in Ordo Favonius, though more rumors and assumptions arise at any place he sets foot, Albedo is nothing if not careful and deducting.

Eyes fixated, he watches once again, turquoise eyes now trained on you.

To talk of or define your relationship with Albedo would be a rather tricky one.

Long past the “hello – hello” basis and few conversations here and there, be on foot or not, occur when needed. But that’s all there is to it: when needed.

Not that either of you seem to mind it; to some, it’s even a story of success that the blond doesn’t ignore or scoff at your presence before him.

And right now, Albedo is watching as you and Sucrose talk by the corner of the main hall. At one thing you say, she lets out a loud and cheery laugh, one not everyone gets to hear personally, (he would know, as he is one of the few lucky ones) and sees the way she looks at you.

Albedo wonders quite often what’s it like to feel.

He sees the way Kaeya and Sucrose look at you and wonders how they feel as they do so, how you must feel. Surely, you must’ve noticed the looks, as you return them in your own way too. Maybe, except for the times Sucrose longingly stares at you from the laboratory, as you converse with someone else on the other side of the room, unaware of the world going around you.

Albedo cannot help but wonder if there was ever a way he could possibly harbor those feelings his friends did, even just for a moment. Not necessarily on the same intensity, and definitely not necessarily toward you.

He thinks back to the night when Sucrose had too much to drink and talked about her university days; filled with joy, a hidden love somewhere and a grief that follows afterwards –as well as a hint of anger directed toward a third party, which piqued Albedo’s interest a little bit.

And though Albedo is bothered at how you appeared out of nowhere only to set your roots in deeper, your existence fits into the empty slots of the puzzle that was Sucrose’s, presented before him that night. The hicks, shaking hands, fists and the sudden change in her voice, hazy eyes staring at nowhere as if reliving a memory long gone. More spirited than ever; with such strong emotions carried in her chest and on her shoulders.

When it comes to Sucrose and you, the pieces fit into place. But for the rest, it only falls deeper in the light of day.

And it’s quite intriguing; how you first entered with a whim, only to display a sense of familiarity you shouldn’t be carrying, no, not when you’re new to all of these, to the people of Mond as of today, to Kaeya’s little side project Albedo prefers not to think about.

Your explanations to these only make way for more questions, even if you don’t mean so.

When Albedo observes Kaeya and you, he can see how his advances stand out more. Flirty banter back and forth, he never holds back his gaze. In his star kissed eye, Albedo can see hints and tints of some emotions, for you and only you.

It’s the way they look at you that makes Albedo grow more and more curious.

To Albedo, the phrase “love makes you blind” has never meant anything. He has seen and heard of people claiming to fall victim of it, that’s as far as his knowledge goes. Albedo has never experienced it himself, no. Yet in their eyes, he sees the truth to the saying.

Some days, when he thinks on it, he fears he will never have the bare necessities to experience it.

However Albedo knows better, as he doesn’t need to experience such emotions to see how blinding you can be.

And for this very exact reasoning, he doesn’t allow himself to be, for he’d be damned if his blindness, even for a blink of time, caused despair upon those dear to him.

And so Albedo keeps watching, not with a devotion like Sucrose’s or something more carnal like Kaeya’s.

He is on the watch, noting and analyzing even the tiniest speck of dust that shall land on your body. As a man of science and logic, it’s only expected of Albedo to be skeptical of things, and wary of you, the newest entry to the equation that surrounds him.

The state of research carries until all of his gathering shatters with a single presence that makes his way into the precinct.

It doesn’t take him long to connect the dots; though the way you’ve frozen up as Sucrose is running around in a frenzy, split on what to do, is more than telling that the balance has been meddled with.

Reaching out a hand on your shoulder, he meets your gaze with a nod and tilts his head toward the direction of his laboratory. Sucrose follows right after, trying to tidy up a bit and making place for you to sit. Turning the lock with a click, Albedo shuts the whole world outside. Yet he manages to catch a glimpse of the man entering.

Baizhu’s name has spread far and wide, known for all kinds of things, though Albedo knows about the shadier side of his business, –all thanks to Kaeya’s little secret project going.

Still, it begs the question how or why you’d be associated with a man such as him, and to end up badly on your end, clear from the way your brain and body reacted.

Just as Albedo assumed he has started finding the answers to his questions regarding you, you bring him a handful more, a new challenge.

He shrugs off the thought for the time being and makes way to you; who is still standing up, eyes fixated on the blurry green.

Placing a hand on your arm this time, he guides you to the spot Sucrose cleaned out already. Slow steps, one at a time, it’s hard to beat the rigidity of the body so quickly.

Sucrose’s concerned gaze heavy on you, yet your eyes seem blank, your expression says you’re out of it, out of this reality.

Helping you sit and leaving Sucrose to settle right beside you, Albedo walks back, closer to the door and leans against one of the counters, arms crossed. For the time being, for your sake, he’ll put aside the theories and the questions that are filling his brain.

By the time Baizhu has left, you’ve come back to your senses; although still acting rather cautious, you’re not disassociating.

Yet what captures Albedo’s attention the most is the look you give him.

Not like the ones you’ve offered Sucrose or Kaeya, or the irritating ginger who won’t stop sticking his nose into everything he sees.

This one you are offering outshines others in more ways than one. Even if it carries a hint of love, Albedo doubts he could recognize it, but he spots emotions of equal value, and gratitude.

For offering the laboratory as a sanctuary or for refraining from asking the questions about a time you’re trying your best to avoid and move one, he is not sure. Maybe it’s this mutual understanding and shared silence the two of you have held since the beginning.

Yet he can’t help but feel content all the same. And before he can notice, a smile creeps up to his face. Though it’s often loving gazes shared between others that catch his eye, only to make him yearn for such experiences and a chance to feel complete; the one you are carrying, for him, feels heavy on him, a feeling in his chest spreading.

Not sure what, exactly.

Even so, he doesn’t need a name to appreciate this rare opportunity, one not even Sucrose or Kaeya had seemed to live.

Albedo has never understood the phrase “Love makes you blind.”

Yet in that moment, he decides he wouldn’t mind going blind if it is your light that’ll caress his eyes.

[neonponders]

This isn’t what @memes-saved-me had in mind for this post but lol (read their tags, they’re delightful) 

Thinking about a younger Billy and an older Steve today ✨

✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨

Billy scratched at the hair on his nape. He wanted to grow it out; really had always wanted long hair. And now, as he peered at the other sophomores trying to fluff themselves bigger to match the juniors and seniors, he just might.

Long hair was in. Mullets, rock star manes, extensions - even the opposite. Women with buzz cuts and pixie faux hawks. Pleasant little surprises in Hawkins, Indiana, and Billy might finally indulge in that.

Plenty in this town was backwards as all hell. Girls wearing white stockings like it was the fifties. Boys and girls alike clearly letting having learned hair styling from their out-of-date parents. Two girls with beehives sat in his English class.

But it was fine, because there was plenty of present-day styling, and Billy wouldn’t get any shit at home for matching his peers.

Cherry Lane. The most backwards spot in Indiana.

But that’s okay, too, because small town people need occupations. Parties.

A cool senior with teased, black hair walked right up to him and handed him a neon orange sheet of paper. He saw others holding similar invitations all day. 

Party on Friday night. Address, dress code, and everything.

Caught him by surprise, that a dress code would be needed for one of these things, but the invitation just said ~casual attire~ and someone in his Advanced Biology class told him that Tina hosts the best shin digs, often with costume themes.

So he went. The late summer evening was still humid as all hell, making the party split between the massive house and the matching yard a convenient way to start a weekend.

He’d had alcohol before. Enough to know he preferred tequila drinks over vodka and gin, but the safest way to wake up the next day was to just stick to beer. No matter how bitter or sharply carbonated some of it was made.

Maybe that’s why he heard people hollering about King Steve.

Keg stands weren’t original to Hawkins, but Billy preferred them next to a bonfire on a beach. But people were really yelling for this king to do the damn thing - 

“Steve, why are you even here? You graduated in May,” Tina’s voice cut through the din.

“I live down the street! You really think you’re making this much noise without me noticing? And all of you shut the hell up! I’ll do a keg stand the day one of you dip shits can actually beat my record.”

Another surprise:

Steve Harrington.

Billy’s dumb luck had him three years behind, so he couldn’t look at that face in the hallways. Sit behind that head of glossy, bouncy hair in European History. He still lived in town, apparently. Right down the street. Billy asked around and discovered he worked at the mall and attended the community college -

“Heard you been asking about me.”

Billy stared wide-eyed over his beer. He recovered quickly, but not before Steve bounced on the balls of his feet, smug. That hair was really distracting.

These people really gossip about everything.

“I didn’t think anybody actually went by a title like that.”

“I didn’t put it on my resume, that’s for sure.” Steve’s smirk grew into a smile. Christ, the guy really had that Indiana, home town handsome thing to his face.

That was dangerous. Billy’s gut told him so, the way it bruised like someone had poked it. And wanted to be poked again.

“Let’s do this properly. Steve.” He held his hand out.

It wasn’t queer to accept a handshake. “Billy,” he replied.

“Hargrove?”

“Jesus,” he scoffed involuntarily, releasing Steve’s large hand. His weight shifted over his feet. “Everybody knows everything here.”

“Not everything,” Steve said. His voice sounded...reassuring? But the way his eyes blinked...and a darkness slipped behind his eyes like a curtain. Adults liked to call it maturity. Wisdom beyond years. Billy called it ghosts. Everyone had ghosts behind their eyes. But...he had a hard time imagining what ghosts this pretty senior in suburban America would already have.

Then again, Billy knew better.

Except, as the party progressed and the weekend flowed into a new week, Billy really couldn’t imagine what made Steve slouch a little, and what made his eyes fade out of a conversation. Billy probably should have put more attention into how much he’d begun seeking the guy out.

He worked in the ice cream parlor at the mall. The uniform was equal measures ridiculous and hilarious, but his coworker was cool as hell. Robin. Not Steve’s girlfriend, even though they carpooled to work and community college.

Steve’s house proved just as luxurious as Tina’s, with a pool to boot. A house which supposedly stayed empty more often than it hosted its own family. Steve notoriously didn’t host parties, which....seemed uniquely odd.

Apart from Billy visiting the ice cream shop, it seemed Steve’s only other visitors were high school freshman. Which was weird. That’s weird, right? Then again, Billy was ball and chained to eight hours a day, five days a week to high school. There was plenty of time for Steve to be with friends his own age.

Except he showed up at the next party on Halloween.

Tina’s house boasted a surprising number of Hawkins graduated seniors, forcing the party all the way out onto the street.

Just like before, Steve manifested beside Billy, announcing himself with fingertips brushing his slowly growing, weak little mullet. “Growing that out?”

Steve’s already heavy eyelids were heavier with alcohol. Billy had his customary cup of beer, but his cheeks flushed for a different reason. He had to rub the back of his neck to make the tickle stop.

“Yeah. Maybe it’ll touch my shoulders next year.”

“Have you trimmed it?”

Billy frowned at him. He’d heard some things come out of Steve’s mouth that were endearing in a ‘bless his heart’ kind of way, and this was among them. “No, that defeats the point of making it longer.”

Steve shook his head and waved for him to follow. “Come here. I’ll trim it.”

“You’re not cutting my hair,” Billy scoffed. And followed.

Upstairs.

Billy did his best not to look around the living room; to see any eyes apart from the ones he imagined on his backside. He followed at a leisurely pace. Not eager to be with King Harrington anywhere...

The guy walked right into the closed master bedroom. Billy stood outside of it, stunned at his audacity and the fact that no one was inside it already - 

“You coming?”

Billy’s not a coward -

Actually he is. But he’s an overeager sophomore with a dangerous crush even more.

Steve dug through the master bathroom’s drawers until he found a pair of scissors in their own case. “Sit on the tub.”

By tub, he meant jacuzzi edge. Billy perched. Steve gripped his shoulder to step into the tub with a comb that smelled of foreign hair product and aftershave. Billy’s nose wrinkled. “Wash that first.”

Then he jumped at the tub faucet turning on right beside his ass. Steve laughed. “Chill out. I’m washing it.”

Billy settled with a disgruntled shake of his head. “My hair is curly. You’re not supposed to brush it at all.”

“You’re in the hands of The Hair Harrington, sweetheart. Just relax.”

His shoulders sagged right underneath the weight of sweetheart.

I’m so screwed - 

Of all people to show up in the doorway, Robin from Scoops showed up with an energy that insinuated more sobriety than the guy wielding scissors.

Her mouth hung open like she had come with something to say, but then she sputtered through laughter. “Oh shit. Are you consenting to this?”

Billy rolled his eyes. “If he cuts my ear, I’m beating his ass.”

“I’d appreciate more faith from you, Buckley. I cut your bangs for you.”

Billy chirped, “Really?” admittedly feeling a bit better.

Steve intercepted with the order, “Are you gonna play music or what? I’m so tired of Tina’s music.”

That’s how Billy wound up in a bathroom with college freshmen trimming his ends and styling his hair while Steve and Robin shout-sang to Whitney Houston.

It was great.

Steve curled the top of his hair so he had ringlets falling over his bold brows. Steve, who had his hands all over Billy’s head until he washed the hair down the drain and filled the tub for a bubble bath. Billy scrutinized himself with a handheld mirror until Steve wrapped his arms around him and they tumbled backward into the wet landing.

Tina was hardly pleased to find the three of them making a mess of the jacuzzi, but she sassed a quick thank you for warding off people trying to fuck in her parents’ bed. Billy didn’t have words; only laughter at Robin putting her hair into a wet mohawk and Steve piling bubbles onto his head.

Steve insisted they go back to his house afterward. “It’s November and we’re soaked. Your car will be fine. I can come back and park it in my driveway if you’re that worried.”

That wasn’t the problem.

“It’s fine that your parents are never home, but mine will only recently lifted my curfew for good behavior.”

Somehow, he convinced Steve and Robin to drive him back to his house, at the expense of letting them change at Steve’s first. Billy had his eyes on a beautiful Camaro and was just a few more months of allowance and part time jobs away from having her.

It was his first time in Steve’s house. He had to admit, he preferred Tina’s layout and decor, but he got to wander around. He saw Robin use one of the guest rooms. He saw Steve’s....incredibly boring room. And said as much.

“A prison cell has more personality.”

Steve laughed. “Yeah, you’re right. Are you ready to go?”

It wasn’t until Billy lay in his own bed that those words tumbled through his brain. His fingertips moved through his still-styled hair. It felt better with those dead ends gone. Steve did a good job. Steve liked Whitney Houston and Blondie and a little of everything, really. Steve cared about his appearance enough to be a self-taught stylist.

Steve didn’t have a lot of furniture in his room. Clutter on the dresser and desk, sure, but all of it monochrome or neutral colors. Steve who had an old BMW, house, and surely a bank account to match, but didn’t buy anything in excess. Like he wasn’t allowed to, or something. Billy indulged every scent he got on things he wanted, but Steve didn’t.

Steve had a nailed bat in his trunk. Billy heard it rolling around on their way back to his house, and finally bent over to look under the seats and saw it.

Steve was a walking contradiction. A contradiction who smelled good but didn’t say much when Billy and Robin talked about history. Who started giving Billy free ice cream but never asked about Billy’s stepsister. Who gave Billy rides and gave him the hookup to the high-paying neighbors of Loch Nora for mowed lawns and dogs walked.

Steve helped him get his car sooner than he would’ve otherwise but didn’t ask for anything in return.

Steve, who was always available for a good time, but looked sad when left with his thoughts.

Billy didn’t take well to not being the center of attention. He’d grown up with an interrogation lamp over his head, and sought positive interaction everywhere else. He got so much of it from Steve, that the occasions where Steve bumped against him...refused him, or ignored him, or reminded Billy that he was a rinky dink sophomore lit a match in his belly. And he’d swallowed gasoline for too much of his life.

“That’s something a virgin says.”

Billy couldn’t even remember what he’d just said. He was already, instantly, seeing the glow of embers on the fringe of his vision. “Excuse me?”

Steve shrugged as he got up from his couch. “It’s whatever. It’s fine. Just showing your hand, is all.”

Billy couldn’t believe it. Steve was either the biggest idiot in Hawkins - which he knew wasn’t true considering there was a real cesspool that smoked underneath the bleachers - or he was so far in denial that Billy had a whole new reason to be pissed.

An involuntary sound left Steve when Billy came up behind him and pushed him against the wall underneath the stairs.

“You don’t know anything about me.”

Billy wasn’t some cute sophomore. He stood toe to toe with Steve, barely an inch shorter. If this is what it took for Steve to realize that, fine.

To realize that Billy wasn’t some teenager scared shitless of a girls’ bra -

Steve regained his footing, and closed the distance between their mouths. It was small, soft, and brief. Rationality should have made Billy step away. Punch him, maybe. But Billy wasn’t rational. His shock held him statuesque, barely breathing while Steve moved a hand to cradle the side of his head and neck -

A sound left Billy this time, as Steve angled his mouth over Billy’s. Where he learned Billy was scared, so scared of Steve. His body dashed rationality against the wall and kissed him back tentatively, and then earnestly, just trying to keep up until Steve’s other hand framed him in. As Steve pushed against him until Billy walked backwards to have himself pressed against the wall.

He felt drunk as his hands let go of Steve’s shirt to hold onto the curvature of his ribs. He panted while Steve kissed his throat and washed Billy’s senses with his warm, sweet fragrance; his hair brushing Billy’s face and inspiring him to turn his face into Steve’s scalp. Inhale him into his lungs.

Billy didn’t know what game they were playing. But Steve outplayed him.

[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Recaps: Volume 8 “Midnight”

Happy Saturday, everyone! I’d like to extend a formal congratulations to every Cinder fan in the community. Criticisms of the writing aside, you all struck gold with twelve whole minutes devoted to your fave and I’m absolutely thrilled for you.

We again start with a dark screen and some audio, in this case Cinder’s scrubbing. This technique—along with closeups on eyes—is a real favorite of RWBY’s this volume, to the point where I think they’re a little too enamored with it. But at least this is just a preference, not something that actively harms the storytelling in any way, so it’s welcome to stay. This time, unlike our premiere, we stay on Cinder as her life is summed up with three events intercut with one another: scrubbing floors, getting taunted by boys, and the sound of heels making their way towards her. It’s clear that Cinder leads a poor, miserable life, if her dirty clothes and stronger guys throwing her around is any indication, but all that changes when the rich woman says “I’ll take her” and Cinder is transported to a better life in a wealthy hotel.

At least supposedly.

Here’s my problem with the worldbuilding. This moment has Witcher vibes and Witcher, in turn, built itself off of a trope seen a hundred times before: A young woman is treated terribly by her family, is whisked away by a wealthy/powerful caretaker, and though her life has arguably improved, she quickly learns that the new world she’s entered is just as dangerous and harsh as the one she left. In Witcher’s case, Yennefer is a disabled woman abused by her family, bought by Tissaia, and taken to Aretuza where the other girls hate her and the curriculum is potentially deadly. Cinder is a poor woman arguably abused by her family (scrubbing)/the locals (fights), is taken by an unnamed woman, and whisked away to the swanky hotel where the daughters hate her and the work is potentially deadly due to shock collars. The difference between these two setups is that Tissaia bought Yennefer because of her magical potential. Why does our hotel lady take Cinder?

I mean yeah, obviously she wants a slave, but it’s a little weird isn’t it? Usually when a young woman falls headfirst into a new and questionable life, there’s a solid reason for her entry. This woman—whose lack of a name also says something about the worldbuilding—could have hired anyone she pleased to abuse. As we saw in regards to Atlas and Mantle in the past, every city has its poor and downtrodden. So what made her go out to some random farm and snatch Cinder up? It just, as always, feels a little too convenient. Cinder didn’t enter this life because something about her characterization or origin justified it, the plot simply ensured that she, out of everyone possible, and with very little reason, was the one chosen to follow The Plot™ .

It also messes with the Cinderella parallels. Originally (or “originally,” going off of Disney here which is likely what RWBY is using as a template too) it’s her step-family that abuses her and yes, we recreate that via the hiring (“hiring”—I doubt she was paid), but Cinder was already scrubbing floors back home. Her status as the servant already existed. So why change locations? Why not just keep Cinder as an abused farm girl, or have her a part of the hotel family right from the start? Part of the reason why Cinderella resonates is because of the contrast between the happy life with her father and the new, horrific life she falls into once he dies. Which is then further contrasted by the rest of the outside world. Fairy Godmother, Prince, and party-goers alike are all presented as kind, decent people. They represent the “real” world that Cinderella can escape to. By making Cinder’s original life horrible, her new life worse, and everyone connected with that life cruel and/or indifferent (with the exception of this one, special huntsmen)… you paint a very different picture of the world as a whole. Which is something RWBY has been vocal about trying to accomplish—it’s not a fairy tale—the only problem is with how these moments are undermined the second the story wants Ruby to ~Believe in People~. Cinderella is a story about enduring and eventually overcoming temporary hardship. Cinder’s story is about endless hardship that creates villains. A dark and fascinating story… but how does that fit into last week’s episode where Ruby told the whole world about Salem, expecting them to band together in peace and harmony? This is how Remnant’s world treats people when there’s not a global crisis, and Cinder isn’t even a faunus.

Which, I want to make clear going into the rest of this recap, does not excuse Cinder for her actions. At all. I think there are some complicated acknowledgements to be made in terms of her abuse and the Huntsmen’s responsibility in it continuing, but that does not give Cinder a blanket pass for all the horrific shit she has pulled over the years. Cinder didn’t just defend herself from abusers, she became one. More on that in a minute.

First though… is the Huntsmen’s name Rhodes? Did we hear that in the episode? If we did, I totally missed it because I have a note here about the one important character not getting a name. So yeah, idk. If we got this from more supplemental info, bad RWBY. If I missed it, bad Clyde. Either way, I’ll use that name going forward.

Back to the plot at hand. The hotel is, as said, populated by indifferent and shallow people and there’s no desert nearby, so I presume we’re supposed to be in Atlas? (Why did this woman buy a girl from another Kingdom?) There are customers getting drunk, flirting, and generally just enjoying their wealth, which harkens back to Weiss’ comment in Volume 4 about all their problems being superficial. We’re introduced to the owner’s two daughters who are, as expected, quintessential Mean Girls. 

They love ordering Cinder around, not just with hotel chores, but personal ones as well like, “rub my feet”… despite the fact that this place is massive and must have an equally massive staff to stay in business. Why aren’t the girls terrorizing anyone else? Again, it makes sense for Cinder(ella) to be the focus of their abuse when she’s in a single household, but transplanting that to a hotel raises a lot of questions that RWBY hasn’t bothered to examine. You can’t move a story like that and not think about what further changes that would evoke.

See, RWBY could have done something interesting here by considering some of those other changes. Like having one or both step-sisters be the one to help free Cinder from her abuse, playing the villain before becoming the fairy godmother. Up until she turns villain instead of hero, this is just Cinderella’s story copy and pasted into RWBY. It’s moments like this that should make us wary of using fairy tale allusions as evidence for our readings and theories. Whether RWBY is deconstructing or upholding a story varies wildly, and we never know what we’ll get until we actually see it on screen. Even then we can’t count on a choice remaining consistent, as we saw with Ironwood’s deconstruction being tossed out the window in Volume 7.

Cinder is originally just as meek as her fairy tale counterpart too. We don’t hear her speak until the owner is about to leave when she simply goes, “Food?” The sisters laugh at her and a roll is thrown to the floor with the comment that she should get busy because it “looks filthy.” I quite like that moment. Your job is to ensure the floors are clean enough to eat off of—literally.

We see a montage of Cinder doing just that, lots of chores, with a new song listing all the tasks she’s now responsible for. During this, Rhodes is seen in the background and witnesses when Cinder (presumably) first uses her semblance by heating up the brush and chucking it at the sisters, creating a massive cloud of steam.

 It’s that moment which “earns” her a shock session with her necklace and I’m staring at the screen, a little open-mouthed. I mean, that’s the second child torture we’ve seen this volume (with Cinder being ten here). Again, I’m not making a specific accusation, just going, “Really?”

Also, note the anti-faunus sign. Nothing like continually showing us racist establishments rather than actually writing a story that deals with the racism needless put into the story world. I’d like to remind everyone of my previous comments this Volume about how the story works hard to paint Mantle as sympathetic, but refuses to show anything that does the same for Atlas citizens, people who are in just as much danger with Salem as an equalizer. A whole city is not actually made up of shallow racists, the show is just showing us only those people to create a simplistic “They’re all bad” reading that encourages us to reject Atlas and, by extension, Ironwood. Weiss is walking proof that Atlas citizens are both complex individuals and capable of bettering themselves. If we can come to adore the Schnee heiress, we should be questioning why nearly every other citizen is painted as an abuser, too wealthy to care, or has conveniently left the story (Rhodes dead, Klein gone, Whitley rejected, etc.).

As Cinder is being tortured, we see that she’s forced to say, “Without you, I am nothing.” Now see, this is excellent... in theory. This is the kind of line we needed to hear with some consistency over the last seven years (if RWBY still insisted on waiting that long for a backstory), setting up that this line is clearly engrained in Cinder and she repeats it on instinct. Instead—to my recollection, anyway—we only get it this Volume, in two episodes. If it appeared before then it wasn’t notable enough to remember. I commented on this before, but it wasn’t a, “Ah, this line must be important” reaction, it was a “Lol why is RWBY using the same line twice? That’s weird.” By only giving it to us twice before the backstory and in such a short timeframe, the impact of this reveal is lost. We’re only now realizing that the line is important, rather than coming to realize why.

Our writers know just enough to recognize what techniques work, but not enough to have figured out what makes them tick. They get that providing a RWBY-vised version of Cinderella is cool, but not how to adapt that 100% successfully. They know that repeated lines have power, but not how to create good setup for the reveal. They know the camera should use closeups, but not what moments are important enough to warrant that. RWBY, eight years on, still feels like a newbie writer copying what the great stories are doing without yet understanding why those aspects work and, thus, how to recreate them.

I mean, Cinder’s backstory appearing now attests to that most obviously. I waved at the Cinder fans before, but the reality is that most viewers don’t care, either because Cinder herself is so bland, and/or because the story waited too long to make her a little more interesting. This entire flashback was handled badly simply by virtue of it arriving over seven years past the character’s introduction. 

So after this torture session Cinder steals Rhode’s sword. We hear some dialogue in the background of him getting pissed that it’s missing and the sisters promising to find it, implying that Cinder will have this tool at her disposal for a while. Instead, seconds later he’s found her hideout and confronts her. I don’t know if I’m impressed with Rhode’s skills, or rolling my eyes at how contrived this all is. Chuck in the question of whether Cinder was talented enough to steal the sword out from under him, or if Rhodes was stupid enough to leave it lying around, and I’m edging towards the eye rolling.

He dodges Cinder’s attack, rolls her more weapons to prove he’s not here to hurt her, and acknowledges that she’s not getting “the most fair treatment.” Okay, here’s where things start to get complicated. Rhodes tells Cinder she shouldn’t run away because then she’ll be running her whole life (don’t really agree with that). He likewise (rightly imo) tells her not to straight up murder them because look, no matter how much of a shit stain someone is, I can’t condone slamming a sword through their chest on an individual’s say-so (especially when two of those people are also kids growing up under an abuser, like Whitely). So what’s left? Rhodes says Cinder can train to become a huntress. At ten years old, she has seven years to prepare for the exam.

But she has to stay with her abusive family until then.

My problem is far less with the claim that this “has” to happen and far more with the writing’s failure to tell us why. Cinder could have begged to come with Rhodes and he says she can’t because… idk. Make up a reason. He doesn’t make enough to feed the both of them. It would be too dangerous out on missions without training and he doesn’t have a permanent place to stay (hence using the hotel all the time). He could even go the “They’re your legal guardians” route with more explanation because it’s arguable that Rhodes had no idea about the collar. Doesn’t mean Cinder’s treatment isn’t “that bad” in his eyes, just that he might not have known the extent and thus thought it was preferable for Cinder to put up with “just” being insulted and overworked until she’s 17. That this life that he only has a partial picture of is preferable to the life she’d have at his side. Something to explain the stakes here, the risks, and why he took this stance. 

And/or give us a reason why Cinder doesn’t try to run, a suggestion I make very cautiously because it’s not my intention to put the responsibility solely on her. This isn’t meant to be a “Just save yourself! It’s easy!” claim. Rather, it’s an acknowledgement that young, barely trained kids go out into the world all the time in this show—Ruby, Oscar—and it’s an acknowledgement that Cinder tugged off her collar easy-peasy. The point is, practically speaking, Cinder could have left and braved the streets like Emerald did… so give us a reason why she decided to stay. Maybe she’s scared of living on the streets, acknowledging that a little food and a place to sleep is better than nothing. Maybe she’s scared that if she doesn’t have a direct connection to the hotel (convenience), Rhodes won’t train her anymore. Maybe, as an abuse victim, she can’t articulate why she won’t leave, she just can’t. Something to acknowledge these gaps because, right now, we just have the fandom going, “See? This is why the huntsmen are all evil cops. Rhodes took the lawful route and look where it got Cinder! He’s the responsible adult in this situation, so it’s all his fault.” Problem is, this take ignores: 

The fact that our heroes are also huntsmen and were pretending to be huntsmen before they had those lawful licenses. So what does that make them? We can’t continually criticize these professional roles without criticizing our heroes’ use of them as well. Ruby just ensured the world would take her message seriously by introducing herself as a huntress. We can’t condemn these laws and privileges while likewise letting Ruby continue to use them however she please. It’s okay if she’s a part of the system, because Ruby is inherently good! That’s not how this works. I’ve just described every American cop show that tumblr is currently turning against: The system is corrupt and needs to be overhauled, but our protagonists are different. 

The story fails to tell us why Rhodes won’t do more outside of a single line about Cinder being of legal age. That just acknowledges that age has some bearing on his decision, not whether it outweighs other considerations (can Cinder survive if she leaves?), or whether Rhodes even has a full picture of what’s happening to her (the collar). The takeaway is that we don’t know what his though process was because RWBY didn’t show it to us, not that his thought process is automatically awful. 

Rhodes, as a literal stranger entering her life, is not 100% responsible for what happens to Cinder. I know people don’t want to acknowledge that because leaving a child in that situation is absolutely horrific, but if RWBY wants to be ~realistic~ (and it does) then we need to acknowledge that reality too. If you saw a child employee getting yelled at in a hotel and then found her with your sword, would you rip the collar off her neck and be like, “Congratulations, you’re my child now”? Nice as that trope is, probably not! Or hell, maybe a lot of you would upend your life and risk legal action to whisk them away, but a lot of other people wouldn’t... and they're not the devil for doing what they can within the bounds of the law. The idea that because Rhodes unexpectedly had one (1) encounter with Cinder means he’s now responsible for her life and outcome is, well, crazy. “But, Clyde, you can’t just see that kind of horror and not do something about it.” You’re right. You know what you do? Tell the authorities. But does Remnant have the equivalent of social workers? We don’t know! Which means we can’t assume that Rhodes didn’t call them just because he’s a bad person. Or maybe they exist and the fandom considers them too corrupt to be useful, like so many other authorities in this show. So… what else is there for him to do? There doesn’t seem to be anyone above Rhodes that he can turn to, he doesn’t (for whatever reason) want to essentially kidnap Cinder and start a new life with her, so what’s left? Try to give Cinder a healthy relationship and a way to escape in the long run, which is precisely what Rhodes did. 

Honestly, I’m kind of salty that this guy went out of his way to help her, he saw what everyone else saw and was the only one who would help her, but because he didn’t do more—because he didn’t entirely upend his life and/or risk arrest to take her away to this hypothetically better situation—the fandom is acting like it’s his fault Cinder killed her abusers. It’s not. Cinder made that choice.

At the end of the day, blaming Rhodes reveals the expectation that it’s his responsibility to solve this massive problem purely because he had the bad luck to be the one Cinder stole from. That’s like telling a teacher who learns about abuse from a paper that following the lawful channels and going out of his way to assist the child in other ways is responsible when the kid murders their family one day. “Why didn’t you just barge into the house and take the kid?!” Because there are a hundred reasons why that would go incredibly badly? Rhodes can’t help Cinder if he’s in jail. Rhodes can’t help Cinder if she ends up dead on a mission while following him. Rhodes can’t help Cinder if their attempt at escape fails and she bears the punishment. 

The only thing I think Rhodes did absolutely wrong was giving Cinder the sword while she was still under the owner’s thumb. Stupid, but not cruel. And again, stupid does not equal blanket responsibility. I’m likewise seeing, “Rhodes gave her the sword and thus it’s his fault that Cinder got in trouble. It’s his fault they died. What was Cinder supposed to do, not defend herself?” Are people forgetting that Cinder stole the sword herself in the beginning and then readily accepted it again? She had agency in obtaining weaponry and what she wanted it for. Are people forgetting that, in accepting it, she likewise accepted the risk of keeping it hidden in the hotel? Are people forgetting that the time skip shows this happening years later and that Rhodes clearly thought Cinder was past her murderous streak? Are people forgetting that Cinder killed the owner by snapping her neck and resisting the shock collar, no sword required? She could have killed them any time she pleased based on the crime scene, whether Rhodes had given her a weapon or not. The weapon was just the catalyst that, truthfully, could have been caused by anything else. Cinder snaps when they find the sword and she’s tortured. Cinder snaps when she drops another tray and she’s tortured. She had planned to kill her abusers and never completely let go of that. 

Honestly, I’m just annoyed that we have another good hearted, takes action, does his best and makes some mistakes character getting blamed for everything another character chose to do, erasing their agency in the process. Rhodes did not abuse Cinder. Rhodes did not force her to kill her actual abusers. And Rhodes is certainly not responsible for what Cinder later becomes. Could Rhodes have done more? Of course, but every character could always do more. 

The tl;dr is that this complex situation needed far better setup in the show and the fandom needs to stop using that lack of setup as “proof” that characters are horrible people when they fail to magically fix said complicated, badly explained problems. Cinder chose to murder three people. Whether that was justified in the face of her abuse is up to you to decide, but it was still her choice. Please stop blaming the adult male characters for the choices the teenage girls in this show make. RWBY is too convoluted and attempting to tackle too many complex issues to reduce that to, “Every man here is the evil, responsible party and ever girl is a #queen. Even when they go on to murder Pyrrha ^_^” As a woman who would very much like to be rooting for the mostly-woman cast more than I now do, this isn’t the feminist take people want it to be.  

But I’ve jumped waaaay ahead. Let’s backtrack a bit.

That first interaction between Rhodes and Cinder is super weird because the camera keeps covering Rhodes’ face and I don’t know why. 

We segue into that montage of him training her for presumably years (Cinder’s hair changes) until we see him giving her the sword in what’s meant to be a moment of pride and trust. Soon after, Rhodes (randomly) comes back to the hotel when everyone else is asleep and hears noises in the back. Moving to check them out, he discovers that Cinder has murdered the two sisters and is in the process of murdering the owner, throwing back the line, “Without you, I am nothing, but because of you, I am everything.” Again, much more impactful if this had been a line we’ve associated with Cinder for years now, not a couple of episodes.

After she breaks the owner’s neck (damn, strong hand!) she tells Rhodes she doesn’t have to run anymore. Cinder clearly expects him to be happy for her and is shocked when he takes out his weapons.

I’m sorry, this is not a “betrayal.” Could Rhodes have just let Cinder go? Sure. Should he have? Given what she becomes, that’s very debatable! Rhodes clearly thought he’d helped her grow into someone who was not inclined towards murder (giving her the sword) and thus is probably going to be a little rattled when he walks in to find her killing three people. Again, there are obvious differences given the level of abuse Cinder seems to have suffered in comparison, but imagine that Glynda, after teaching Weiss for years, walked in on her killing Jacques and Whitley in revenge. Is she supposed to just ignore that? Shrug her shoulders and wish her well? I know a lot of people consider that the “fair” outcome given the inclusion of abuse, but that’s because we’ve had an omniscient view of Cinder’s history and insight into her emotional state. Rhodes doesn’t have that. All he has is his oath as a huntsmen to prevent things like, you know, murder sprees. I’m not going to delve into the overall ethics of a judicial system, either in RWBY or the real world, and thus I’m not going to make any naive claims about it being fair—it’s fucking not—but I don’t think the answer to these systematic problems is, “Why wouldn’t you just let the teenager murder three bad people and then go on her way? She totally deserved it!” Rhodes is not in a position to decide that, which is the entire point of having a judicial system in the first place. 

So Rhodes wants to bring Cinder in. Kind of like how Clover wanted to bring Qrow in once he had an arrest warrant. I can’t emphasize enough that wanting to start a legal process rather than letting clearly guilty/potentially guilty people go because they WANT to is not a “betrayal.” Regardless of what teen dramas may have taught us, you don’t have to potentially throw your own freedom and your morals away because you found out a friend is wanted by the authorities. Or you walk in on them currently snapping someone’s neck. There are options other than, “Believe your friend is right without question and help them hide the bodies” (looking at you, Maria, Pietro). Whitely is not insane for going, “Hey, can you not make me an accomplice to a crime by forcing your way in here with a bunch of fugitives?” I’m constantly surprised by the number of fans who can, in one breath, condemn characters for not throwing a middle finger up at the law and in the next praise Jacques’ arrest. Do we want to benefit from this system or not? If yes, that means you have to weigh which laws can be broken (such as in a protest), which should be obeyed (bring murderers and wanted men in), all while working to change the laws that are prejudice and aren’t working. 

Anyway, they fight. It’s short and sweet, backdropped by the large clock striking midnight, hence our title. I’m incredibly suspicious of Cinder breaking Rhode’s aura first, given that she’s still the student in training, but here we can more persuasively say he wasn’t fighting seriously, given that he then stupidly rushes towards her without a weapon. Still, that would be the second time now that RWBY has relied on elite fighters “holding back” to explain how the kids in training beat them, the first instance, of course, being with the Ace Ops.

Rhodes does rush Cinder though when she hits the wall and breaks her own aura, clearly concerned. She uses the moment to stab him with both swords. He uses his last breaths to put a hand on her head, conveying that he doesn’t blame her for how this all turned out.

Then Cinder pulls off her collar with a single snap and looks up at the broken moon, crying her single tear.

I’m dragging the flashback for multiple reasons, but I want to emphasize that I think this episode is leagues better from what we got last week. Absolute night and day. It’s just that, as always, improvements are incredibly comparative in RWBY. It’s not really good for numerous reasons… it’s just better than what we’ve gotten before. It’s “great” provided you go in with standards buried in the ground.

We then return to the present as Cinder wakes up in Salem’s whale. This scene gives us a great shot of her grimm arm, so cosplayers take note!

Emerald arrives soon after and immediately rushes to her side, expressing how worried she was. She grabs Cinder’s grimm hand without hesitation. Honestly, I don’t care much about either character… but this single frame activated some sort of ship button in my brain.

Not fully because I’m personally not drawn to toxic relationships in fiction (which, as I’m about to explain, would absolutely be the case here), but just the tinniest bit. Because I’m a sucker for monstrous people being loved despite their monstrous nature, so having Emerald take that hand over the other is like a ship speed run for me.

I’m predictable, folks.

But we need to talk about less happy things for a moment. I mentioned above Cinder becoming an abuser herself. I hope I don’t need to lay out the laundry list of murders, attempted murders, sabotage, and general taking-over-the-world-ness she’s engaged in since Episode One. Don’t let a sad backstory erase all that. Hell, for all we know the hotel owner had a horrific backstory too! Doesn’t justify how she treated Cinder. The point though is beyond her clear status as a villain, we now know that Cinder treats Emerald just like the owner once treated her.

Cinder was “rescued” from her life on the farm by the owner. Emerald is “rescued” from her life on the streets by Cinder.

Both realize over time that the situation they’re now in is actually worse.

Both reiterate that they “owe” the other “everything,” with Cinder having that shocked into her and Emerald seeming to willingly believe it.

The owner treats Cinder as a slave. Cinder treats Emerald as a slave. “Both of you, get out. I’ll let you know when you’re needed.” The only difference is that Cinder’s orders were things like “Scrub floors” and Emerald’s are “Convince an audience this girl attacked our ally.”

Both use threats to keep the other in line: the owner with her shock collar and Cinder with her Maiden powers. Cinder doesn’t need to resort to violence (yet) because Emerald adores her, but the threat is always there. 

There are even visual similarities this episode, such as kneeling and gem necklaces, though I acknowledge fully that those are just interesting details as opposed to anything like persuasive proof. 

The point is that Cinder became exactly what she hated, she just turned the dial up to eleven by going after the whole world instead of a single child. “But Cinder never had a chance to be anything else.” Sure she did. Blake and Weiss are proof of that. Even if we believe that Cinder was doomed to be a villain due to the extent of her abuse, what does that say about the hotel’s owner? We don’t know anything about her history, so what if she was abused too? Does that mean she was always “doomed” to treat Cinder that way? Does that excuse everything she did to her because she supposedly never stood a chance of becoming anything else? Of course not.

Though very iffily done, this is a commentary on the cycle of abuse. Each case is horrific, but it doesn’t excuse what comes later. Every abuser was once an innocent child and every innocent child has the capability of becoming the next abuser. Cinder’s life up until now was beyond awful and yes, she lacked a lot of privileges that others had to help them head down a better path, like Weiss’ wealth. On the other hand, she lacks other difficulties that would make that path harder for others, like Blake’s status as a faunus. Everyone has a choice to make: Will you treat others the way you were treated because that’s “fair,” or will you decide to treat others better than what you were dealt? There are lots of aspects that factor into the likelihood of someone choosing the latter—which is why I really like Rhode’s hand on Cinder’s head, acknowledging his understanding that she’s an abused kid taking the only path she thinks is available to her—but individual agency is by no means removed from the equation. Cinder escaped her situation and decided she’d never be powerless again. What does that mean to her, perhaps becoming a community member who works to prevent abuse like the kind she suffered? No, it means grinding the entire world under her heel until she’s the only one with power left.

This GIF continues to be the only one I need.

(No, the fact that it comes from a cop show and I’m using it for such an anti-law, anti-establishment story/fandom isn’t lost on me.)

(Also, if anyone is curious, this is why I love Ozpin. Out of everyone in this cast, HE has suffered the most, tenfold, and yet he still chooses to be kinder to those than they’ve been to him.) 

Anyway, I should really stick to the plot lol. Cinder realizes that her waking up means that they’ve lost, which I still think is BS. Cinder needed a win to come across as a formidable villain again and the likes of Neo, Emerald, and a Maiden with years of practice under her belt should have wiped the floor with a scientist, retirement grandma, and a girl who got the powers an hour ago. But I again digress.

Mercury reveals that he will no longer be following Cinder’s orders because Salem has a special job for him. They’ve all been told to meet on the bridge.

Then we cut to Ozpin and Oscar.

My poor boy is a mess and Ozpin is in the process of begging Oscar to take a “break.” “I would like to express again that this is my burden to bear, not yours.” Take note, fandom. In a few moments Hazel will accuse Ozpin of being a “coward” because “All this time, it could have been you, but you let him suffer.” I just know a bunch of people will be going, “Yeah! Ozpin just let a kid get tortured instead of him. WTF??” Okay 1. We should always be suspicious of agreeing with the takes villains have and 2. Oscar just refused to let Ozpin do that. It is—again—his choice because he thinks that Hazel is “holding back” with him. Oscar is being a brave and logical dude trying to make the best of this situation for both of them. Don’t take that away from him just to make Ozpin look bad. What would we even want him to do? Take control back? The fandom has been yelling at Ozpin for that since Volume 5.

So they’re going back and forth when Oscar suddenly announces that they “can’t leave yet. This is our chance.”

Ozpin even says he thinks Oscar must have taken one too many hits because… yeah. What? Long story short, Oscar recognizes that they’ll never be this close to Salem’s subordinates again and that they should try to undermine her from the inside out, just like she’s done with the world since she knows she can’t take on everyone at once. I love Oscar taking charge here, I love them speaking in unison, I even love the hope of achieving something epic while in captivity despite my own belief that Oscar should break and reveal the Lamp’s password. What I don’t love is:

Another messy, unexpected belief that Salem made her choices because she “knows” she can’t win any other way. Except that—like Ruby’s line in the recording—Salem’s current attack blows that idea out of the water. She IS taking on the whole world. Granted, Ozpin and Oscar presumably don’t know that the whole world literally knows of her existence now, or that Salem was smiling about it, but they do know that she’s attacking Atlas head on. What else is that except a declaration of war with all of Remnant?

The idea of undermining Salem from the inside via Hazel. For anyone who reads my other metas, I just said that this idea wouldn’t work because Emerald isn’t the one torturing him, the one character who has consistently demonstrated hesitation (or, now, Neo). Hazel despises Ozpin so much that he would never listen to him. He despises him so much he doesn’t even see Oscar as his own person… at least he didn’t before. That’s been retconned now with Hazel going “easy” Oscar and having an actual conversation with Ozpin. Whereas before, he was slamming Oscar into walls and screaming about how he’s going to kill the “murderer” of his sister. They basically softened his character to make this plan possible.

The fact that this scene came about without Oscar and Ozpin ever getting to reconcile their problems. Last we saw them, Oscar was saying how he hated that Ozpin came back and refusing to acknowledge their merge. Now, they’re working together like they’ve always been solid allies. I get that the danger they’re in helps to put it all into perspective, but why can’t we get a few lines of them hashing this out? Or at least putting things aside until they’re out of Salem’s clutches? If you don’t need to re-write Hazel’s character with “he’s going easy on me” lines, you can use that space to deal with the conflict we’ve already established. Especially given the strange choice to have Oscar refuse to give up control and be the one coming up with this plan... but then Ozpin does take control and (maybe, see below) enacts it? I feel like we’ve missed huge chunks of this story. As it is, I wonder if RWBY will bother coming back to this. The questions of if/how Oscar will accept Ozpin and if/how he’ll reveal this secret to the group feels like they’re being swept under the rug and it will likely go unnoticed by a lot of viewers simply due to how intense the kidnapping plot is.

So things are a little messy, but otherwise enjoyable, and they’re about to get downright confusing. For me, anyway. See, Hazel reveals that he follows Salem because she can’t be beaten (cue my continued worry about Ruby telling the whole WORLD). She “can’t be stopped. She’s a force of nature,” and Ozpin is fighting a “cause with no victory, no end.” He yells back that “Someone has to try!”—bless this man—and then looks down at the ground going, “Salem can be fought. Unless… she brings the Relics together, if that happens…” and mentions summoning the Gods.

So here’s my confusion. The scene makes it feel like Ozpin is planting some sort of seed in Hazel’s head. He and Oscar JUST got done agreeing to try and undermine her from the inside out, then we get this line that feels like him “accidentally” dropping a secret that will turn Hazel against her. Except… Ozpin doesn’t lie here? The line isn’t useful to them as far as I can tell. They are screwed if Salem gets the Relics. …Right? Because if not, why the hell have the heroes been working so hard to keep them out of her hands? So I can’t decide if:

A) This scene is just written badly and none of this is part of the plan to undermine Salem.

B) Ozpin is going, “NO. Don’t collect the RELICS. That would be the WORST THING EVER /s” in an attempt to trick Hazel into doing it anyway and this is somehow supposed to hurt Salem, despite being presented since Volume 5 as the worst outcome for our heroes? 

C) Ozpin specifically wants Salem to make the mistake of summoning the Gods because he thinks he’s completed his task? Or something? But what in the world would make him think that—especially without seeing Ruby’s message (not to mention the lack of unity that mess should cause)—or what makes him think the Gods would just destroy Salem regardless of what he’s achieved? If summoning the Gods was ever a defeat Salem option, why hasn’t he done it before?

I’m leaning towards A just because it makes the most sense by far, but that would also mean we had Ozpin and Oscar decide on this plan, have a chance to start this plan… and then didn’t actually do anything. Yelling at Hazel for following Salem isn’t a new strategy, they were doing that before, so what’s new? Or has the new strategy not been revealed yet? Idk, as happy as I am to see them being BAMF together, I’m slightly unsure about how it all hangs together. I’d much rather have an internally consistent and clear outcome that’s predictable (Oscar breaks or just holds out until rescue) rather than what appears like a super cool, badass, unexpected plot on the surface… but crumbles once you poke at the foundation a bit.

So whether Oscar and Ozpin started this plan or not, they’re dragged into the throne room where they’re forced to kneel before Salem. Yikes. She sits on her throne with the Hound, who I’m only now realizing could be read as a messed up Toto

We learn that Tyrian heard from Watts about his incarceration and hacking Penny. What? Okay, I took the time to go back through “Amity” just to find this screenshot.

That’s not a working Scroll! Idk what I thought Watts might do with it at the end of last week, but it wasn’t send a full, uninterrupted message to Salem that updates her on everything that’s gone down in Atlas. This thing is toast! Moments like this make me question how much communication there really is between the writers and the animators, despite last Volume’s disaster with Oscar telegraphing his punch like whoa. Are we still getting that level of miscommunication? 

Salem then punishes Cinder for disobeying her by hurting her grimm arm. See, this here (for me, anyway) is the mark of a newbie writer. When the moment first started I went, “Oh nice. Just like the shock collar!” Then the scene made that abundantly clear by cutting to flashbacks of Cinder in her collar. That’s too heavy-handed. We already got the parallel, but then the show went, “Do you get it??” It shows that the writers are too scared that the viewers won’t get it, that their nuance will be lost, so they scramble to make it as obvious as possible, rather than trusting in their own writing.

And if you’re like, “So you want RWBY to be more clear and also… less clear?” the answer is, sadly, yes lol. The things that are already confusing due to retconning and inconsistent themes need to be made explicit, whereas the details that are already strong don’t need an in-your-face, “Okay, but did you really get the parallel here? We’re just making sure.” It’s like launching into explaining why a joke is funny when it’s already landed vs. telling a nonsensical joke and then waiting for the laugh that will never come. RWBY struggles in both areas.  

Salem delves into this speech about how this is actually all her fault and she should let Cinder spread her wings or something. AKA, go free Watts and track down Penny. Then you can have your precious Maiden powers. 

There’s a massive earthquake across Mantle and we watch a + medical symbol go out. Again, heavy-handed. We don’t need that in order to understand that the whole city shaking while the grimm look happily up to the sky is a bad thing.

We cut to Winter listening to the Ace Ops complain about Penny. She tells them to act like the elite they are, likely because she hates how they refer to Penny as “junk.” Still being set up to betray Ironwood, I bet. During this scene we learn that they have “confirmed visual of her leaving Amity. She appeared to be malfunctioning.” So Penny is alive? Also, they have eyes on Amity Tower and were able to see Penny leaving, but didn’t see any of our trio coming to launch it in the first place? Did Ironwood want it to launch? Did they see Cinder? I just don’t know.

Before they can get there though a message from Jaune comes through. Serious kudos to Team JNY for asking that “anyone” respond/taking the personal risk of calling for help in the first place. They’re finally putting—as Harriet says—they’re own selfishness aside in favor of the greater good. Yang obviously hates that it’s “you guys” they ended up with, but she’s not outright attacking the Ace Ops or anything. I’m like,

Excellent job, Yang. 

Jaune is a little harsh in his panic. He said in his message that a “large mass of grimm” is heading towards Mantle and then when Harriet leads with asking about Penny, wants to know what’s wrong with her. Why are you asking about Penny when lives are in danger and “it’s” (the grimm) are “right there”? Except he, uh… points at nothing. There’s the chasm with (I presume) the weird grimm goo down it? Not sure based on the shot, but the Ace Ops expected a “mass of grimm” and then land to see no grimm anywhere nearby. So yeah, they’re more focused on the missing Maiden than the seemingly imaginary enemy Jaune is freaking out about.

They only get on board when the river launches itself at Atlas.

So the goo is, like, sentient before it becomes individual grimm? Or Salem is controlling it from her whale? Either way it’s BAD.

I want to briefly gripe about how the hell everyone is watching this. What, is there a camera conveniently trained on this one random part of Atlas’ underside and everyone’s scrolls tuned into that the second the attack started? It seems far-fetched, to put it mildly. In RWBY’s favor though, I want to acknowledge that we finally have appropriate expressions for the situation! This is good!!

I’m going to level with you all. My notifications have known no peace since I made the mistake of criticizing the adored trio that is Ruby, Weiss, and Blake. I thought supporting Ironwood would get me heat. Nope. Not supporting the main girls is what did it and honestly? I shouldn’t have been surprised. Last week I pointed out that having them smile and, in Ruby’s case, coo during a moment of horror is not good animation and implies some pretty uncomfortable things about their overall sympathy level. The image in question: 

It doesn’t set a good tone, especially when we add in what we’ve gotten for Ruby’s group across the rest of this volume. The counters of, “They need and deserve a break. Why won’t you let them be happy?” fall flat when we ignore that this group has been animated as consistently goofing off post-premiere. Sneaking into the guarded military base of a former friend? Tube shenanigans! Need to find your way around? Funny Penny moment! Semblance reveal? Cutesy chibi explanation! Need to do more sneaking? Silly coffee plan! Nora gets electrocuted? Joke about how awesome that was! Even Wiess telling Whitley to go to his room reads as funny to the audience.

Ruby in particular has been a problem, given that she’s our main character and the others’ leader. We take our emotional cues primarily from her. Alongside being a part of all these fun and games, her animation during more serious moments has been less than stellar. This is Penny when Nora goes down.

This is Ruby, Weiss, and Blake. No worry, just focused on the fight.

This is Penny when the fight is over.

This is Ruby, Weiss, and Blake. No worry, just chatting about suspicious activity.

This is Penny in the airship, worrying about Nora and the situation they’re in. This is also Ruby in the airship, apparently not worried at all.

This is Ruby when she learns her uncle is in jail. Is there shock? Fear? Horror that he might be in serious trouble? No, she just maintains the same emotion she had before: fury at Harriet.

So when we reach them watching the recording and they look like this:

No, I’m not convinced that this trio is taking the situation seriously, or that they really care about the people involved. I know they’re supposed to care, they all obviously care from a meta perspective, but the “obviousness” of that only exists in our personal understanding of the characters if we don’t see it on screen. I completely believe that Penny is worried about Nora because she’s animated expressing that worry. I completely believe that JRY are in the middle of a warzone because they’re (mostly) animated as fearful and angry. The rest of Ruby’s team has a scared line from Blake and Weiss holding Nora’s hand, whereas the majority of the emotion across this adventure has been indifference or playfulness. That’s a problem given how horrible the events of this Volume have been, most of which the group is aware of. 

All of which is an incredibly long-winded way of saying that this

finally feels appropriate. Well done, RWBY. 

Alright, this recap is already over 7k long so I want to return to our plot with the summarized: IRONWOOD WAS RIGHT. He said they couldn’t withstand a head on attack by Salem and he was right. It literally took seconds for her grimm to burrow into Atlas, knock out a tower, and disable the shield. Everyone still claiming that leaving is useless because it’s oh so obvious Salem’s grimm could fly however high it wants (when did we learn that?) are ignoring that leaving was at least a plan with some kind of hope attached to it. And, given her focus on the Staff, may have saved Mantle by drawing Salem’s attention away from the city. The point is we don’t know. All we do know is that Ironwood tried to do something in the face of hopeless odds, Ruby’s team stopped him, and now look, everything is awful. No one could have possibly seen that coming. 

Salem: “It’s time.”

I’m very pleased that Salem is finally using the tools at her disposal. Upon reflection, I still don’t buy why she had to wait. “Well, she was waiting for the grimm goo.” She couldn’t have used flying grimm to take out the tower? Take a burrowing grimm and give it wings? She couldn’t have used the goo that was apparently inside her whale the whole time?

It’s all very convenient. In the sense that we’re drawing out the volume by having the villain inexplicably hang back, despite not having a good reason to. In the sense that—unless Ruby’s message comes back to bite her—the villain’s passivity also conveniently let the heroes accomplish the one goal they were desperate to achieve. All of that’s still not good, but at least the Volume seems to be moving out of the “not good” category and into the “slightly better” territory. 

Although, as I just acknowledged to a friend, RWBY seems to alternate for me. Every time I have an episode where I think, “Okay, there are still massive problems here, but I can see a glimmer of hope” the next episode is inevitably the pits. 

Still, grabbing onto that hope with both hands: Atlas should be decimated, folks! Grimm are swarming, our idiot heroes herded everyone directly under the city, the world should be panicking, and the cold should still be killing people if the story remembers that it exists. At this point my only question is wtf our heroes are supposed to do next, but regardless of what the plot gives us, it’s going to be wild. You all know what’s coming. Next week is our final episode before a two month hiatus, which means we’re going to witness all kinds of awful and then end on a six week cliffhanger. It’s inevitable, so best to emotionally prep for that now lol.

I don’t believe we have any Bingo updates, with the exception of edging towards a few: “Winter betrays Ironwood,” “Army of grimm conveniently doesn’t kill any civilians,” “Atlas somehow survives,” and “Ironwood dies” being the most notable. We’ll have to see what, if anything, gets checked off next Saturday.

As always, thank you so much for reading (I feel like I don’t say that enough :D) and I’ll see you next week! 💜

[Ko-Fi]

[thecottageinthedark]

Sorting Glass-Maker’s Dragon

I’ve been working on this for a looooong time, and finally it’s complete enough to post. I’m using the Sorting Hat Chats system, basics of which are explained here by its inventors and here by @wisteria-lodge.

A lot of GMD is flexpoints and inferred stuff, but this is, at least, the way I read the main eight.

Chuubo: Snake Primary, Badger Secondary. His Snake ambition isn't immediately obvious because it's backwards to us; he's an Imperator and a god of dream and probably the Spirit of the Age, but those were just things that happened upon him. He doesn't want fame or fortune; he wants a peaceful human life, or at least a human-style one, and his drive to achieve this has literally reshaped the world itself while still being, at its core, all about him.

His Badger Secondary is hard to see because of the one big gimmick in the way; the Wish-Granting Engine, that supposedly allows instant results with no work, and the way he uses it whenever possible. But the thing is, the WGE is both dependent on his Secondary and in some senses what he uses when he can't draw on that Secondary itself.

Badger Secondaries have to mean what they do; they put in hard work when and where they are motivated to do so. For Chuubo, that's not schoolwork, which is where he as a high schooler is socially expected to, and so he gets a rep for being lazy. Where he does put the effort in, is with his friendships, and in 'learning the ways of Fortitude'. With those, he doesn't cut corners. He doesn't pull out schemes. He patiently and consistently puts in the work. His Secondary is on full display in the way he persists in trying to be friends with Leo, even in the face of Leo's hostility. Chuubo doesn't try to win Leo over with subtlety or with grand gestures; he just doggedly carries on offering support, company, and good-natured teasing.

So where does the Engine come in? Think of the Wishing Map. It's the friendships and connections he's worked at creating and maintaining that help Chuubo's wishes to succeed. Wishes based on whim are almost certain to go wrong.

The wish for a best friend is maybe the most telling part of all. Or rather, what happened after it. Because despite having acquired Seizhi through unnatural means, it never once occurs to Chuubo to continue their association by those-to lean on miraculous or mundane coercion and create a relationship that all goes one way. Having acquired someone to love him, he just proceeds to love them back, with a generosity of spirit that is entirely genuine.

Like a lot of Snake Primaries, Chuubo has a Primary model that he uses to fill in the gaps where his ambitions and his loyalties aren't relevant. His is a kindly and expansive Badger Primary. He lives in this model most of the time-until there's a threat to his inner circle or to his hard-won quiet life. Then he'll set the model aside and act from his real Primary to keep hold of what's his. (Being a snake sometimes helps.)

Seizhi Schwan: Snake Primary, Burnt Snake Secondary. Like Chuubo, their huge ambition is for something that most people just get handed on a platter; to be real, to matter, and to be loved. Their Primary and his instinctively understand each other about this-and also understand each other perfectly about the importance of treasuring and being treasured. (They're all but making big eyes at each other and swooning, in fact.)

Seizhi's Primary is somewhat wobbly in one regard; they're the sort of Snake who has kicked themself out of their own inner circle. After all, they reason, they're not real-not yet, at least-so why should they value themself? There's nothing there to value. This is linked to the burning of their Secondary; their supreme and miraculously-enhanced ability to fit into any social context is something that gives them pain, because it's just more unreality. Over and over they reach out, hoping that this time they've found a destiny; over and over, they stop sustaining an Intention, and the whole thing fades away. Even mundane uses of the Snake Secondary toolkit feel tainted-deceit and lies-and that's a problem, because this is the best and most practiced skillset they've got. They're trying to cover up this lack with a Badger Secondary model, because that's what they feel like they should have, what a Real Person would have-the slow grinding authenticity of method. (Possibly this decision is linked to Chuubo being a Badger Secondary.) But they don't like it. It feels like crap. It doesn't even work that well. And when they're in trouble, they drop the attempt to  Do Things The Real Way and start shifting and adapting and reacting like the Snake they are.

As of the start of GMD they're still hoping for the magic to happen, to wake up transformed into a Real Person who bears little to no resemblance to the 'fake self' they despise-for the Badger model to smother the Snake to death. The situation's in flux. Under pressure, they might begin to find ways to accept themself for what they are, and realise they are loved already; but it's just as likely that they will crack and fall into despair. If that happens, they'll probably Burn their Primary too, cutting themself off from Chuubo and from anyone else in their inner circle. This they'll frame not as a way to protect themself, but to protect the inner circle. A fake person has nothing real to give. How can they inflict such a horrible creature on the people they love? Might as well feed them fairy food and watch them starve, as do something like that.

That unpleasant possibility aside...unlike Chuubo they haven't yet created a Primary Model when the game starts. They might do so during the course of it, though-they will, after all, need to make a lot of decisions, and they won't always be able to relate those back to 'will it help me become real' or 'will it help Chuubo'. I don't think they're likely to copy Chuubo's Badger for this; it fits him fine, as an inherently peaceful Serpent, but Seizhi is an Actual who has had to fight just to exist, and isn't prepared to lay down arms just because things are now somewhat better. What'd work better for them would be a valorous and fierce Lion Model based on that of their brother Laodemus, or a wider Snake Model with an inner circle encompassing 'everyone I know' or 'the whole of Town'.

Leonardo de Montreal: Lion Primary, Lion Secondary. This poor man.

Oh, he'd love you to believe he's a Double Bird, or a Snake/Bird mix of some kind. He'd probably pick one of those Houses out if he had the choice! But that's...actually for pretty superficial reasons. He likes science so he figures he's a shoo-in for the 'smart person house', he's snappy and standoffish so equally he thinks he's in the 'mean asshole house'. But in the SHC system neither of those really fit.

Let's look at his Primary first. He's not a Snake, right away-because he doesn't have an inner circle and he's okay with that. There's no 'my people, who are most important' and 'everyone else'-even when he's not leaning on his Friendless wound, when he's prepared to concede that he cares about Chuubo or Jasper. If he were a Snake, those two would be the most likely inner circle candidates-but they're not in there. Not because he doesn't care, but because he doesn't do the Snake style caring where his people are the centre of his world and the place he gets his morality.

Where his morality does come from is the Song of Hell, his 'love for the wicked'. It's intuitive, not constructed, and centred in himself, not reliant on others. (When he loses his heart, he doesn't draw up a systematic list of ethical principles to live by instead; he creates the Mechanism of Original Sin, which emulates the feeling of having an internal conscience as well as the function.) And the fact that he's a fallen angel means that at some point in his past he gave up Heaven on ideological grounds. The Song of Hell is just right, and therefore he follows it. Any justifications he makes for that decision come after the fact. And so he follows his Song, and becomes heroic-it's not just Jasper he saves, he's got a whole Thing about helping people. That's Lion Primary.

And though he's smart, he doesn't act Bird under pressure; he charges. He responded to Jade's death by first ripping out his own heart to save her daughter, then marching down to the BA to throw down with its Headmaster. He probably has a Bird Secondary model to help with Science, though-and he uses this model to back up his real secondary. Charge in throwing nightmare devices at the problem.

Natalia Koutolika: Bird primary, burnt secondary that's probably Bird or Lion.

Natalia's frozen heart sounds like a Petrified Snake thing, but it's not any specific person that makes her realise thawing is a possibility-it's Fortitude. And that's not because Fortitude is nice, the way a Badger might un-Burn on being accepted into a welcoming community, but because it's magical. The rules of the universe work differently here...so maybe that means things can be possible for her now that weren't possible back on Earth.

I thought at first her primary was burnt, but...freezing her heart made her lose faith in human goodness, and in her capacity for being happy, not in her ability to discern truth. She trusts her cynical System; actually, I think her looking like a Petrified Snake is down to that thing Birds do where their systems often come out looking like the other Primaries. Natalia has decided that the Petrified Snake morality is the true one...but when she arrives in Town, she reconsiders, and begins to edit.

Her Secondary is where she's burnt. Because part of the cynicism of her Primary System is the idea that there's no point trying. Use whatever methods are available, who cares? They won't work, because you can't do anything that matters-the world doesn't work like that. Most of the time she'll use Bird or Lion methods because those come easily to her, given she's a genius and a martial artist, so it's probably one of those. But then again...she doesn't seem to get any joy from them. I think her Arcs will (hopefully) involve healing the burning-and that could look like learning to trust in her charging or her knowledge base, or like finding that what she really feels Right about is putting in the work like a Badger or thinking on her feet like a Snake. (Burnt Badger secondary would be especially poignant, as it'd be her learning to rely on community as a source of strength.)

Jasper Irinka: Bird primary, Bird secondary.

She starts out with her system based on her mom's Heaven-style Lion primary; it doesn't work, and leaves 'a hole in the world' for her. So she starts looking for ways to make it work by picking up ideas from all sorts of people-her dad, her friends, the Moon Prince and assorted other NPCs-and either adjusting it by adding these in or making a new system entirely. And her matching secondary helps her to do this very effectively. Her Primordial ability to shape herself as she likes by growing limbs that she can then use and discard as she pleases is really Bird Secondary-and the fact that those limbs manifest from other people's Hopes? 'I know a guy' Bird.

Sure, she inspires people. But it’s not a Lion inspiration-being so completely and ferociously her own glorious self that others are attracted to her radiance. Jade probably worked like that, from what we know of her, but Jasper inspires because she deliberately does things to inspire Hope in people, using a toolkit of stuff she’s picked up.

(And of course Leo is fascinated with her-not just because she's 'Jade Irinka's daughter', the shine on that would wear off fast-it's that she's a Double Bird like what he wants to be! And she in turn is loving Leo's double Lion because that's what she thinks she's supposed to be like!)

Rinley Yatskaya: Badger Primary, Lion Secondary. Of course the Storyteller Arc kid gets the 'protagonist sorting'.

Rinley's stated purpose in their playbook is to be the social glue of the party, and their powerset makes them really good at it. They first save then make friends with Prince Eduard despite their family's feud with the Rats, and when they see Iolithae in the Titov shrine, they go to rescue her, because Eduard and Iolithae are people and that matters more than Eduard being a Rat or Iolithae being a dangerous sacred horror. In other words, they're a beautiful Universal Badger. As far as Rinley's concerned, you don't just see someone who's injured or imprisoned and then not help them, even if they're meant to be an enemy on ideological grounds or even grounds of prudence. And to help people, they jump right in and Do Something. That's textbook Badger/Lion.

Principal Entropy II: Exploded Badger primary, Badger secondary.

This guy is just community-building and caretaking all over the place. He shows up, he does the work-as the Angel of Fortitude he's literally fixing potholes and curing peoples' ailments! And he's doing that by going to the people and creatures of his Gardens, calling in favours.

And he's doing it because people are important. The denizens of the Evil Island, the people of Fortitude. 'All things can earn their recompense through love'.

The problem is, though-he's doing the dehumanisation thing that Badgers are so infamous for. He's not going 'some people are Enemies Who Must Die, and therefore are not really People', though, which is the usual form of the trope in fiction. That's the mode of a Badger at war, and E2 isn't fighting a war. He's going 'some people need to be Sacrificed for the Greater Good of the Community'. And that's not an easy thing for a Badger to believe. If he was an Idealist, or Snake who is comfy prioritising an inner circle, he could just hold that belief without problems. But being a Badger, he can't. If he sacrifices people, he has to either feel horribly guilty about it...or stop thinking of them as people.

One big group he tends to dehumanise are School students. School exists to create tools to fix the world. It's okay if he makes students into cursed Hall Monitors, it's okay if he turns SEED students into prototype world-trees and weirding walls. That's what they're for.

He also dehumanises himself. He's Other Than Human, Set Apart. He refuses to acknowledge his needs, and overworks himself-he's even, at game start, nullified two Divine Health Levels to make his Code Novae binding on the Evil Island, meaning that if you can get past his Immortality power he's actually the squishiest PC of the lot. So he's an Exploded Badger, sacrificing both himself and others to his community.

Miramie Mesmer: Bird Primary, Badger Secondary. She shares this sorting with her former self, Melanie Malakh.

Melanie's Bird Primary used the Bleak Methodology as her truth system. Coupled with her persistent, hard-working Secondary, this combination made her a star student at the Bleak Academy-a 'prodigy of hatred and despair'. However, when she left the Academy, things fell apart for her.

At the Bleak Academy she'd been sheltered from experiences or ideas that could provide any real challenge to the Bleak worldview. Because of that, her system wasn't as robust as she thought-and she didn't know how to shore it up or how to cope if it shattered. Which-along with the glass dragon-it did; her time in Town, the things she had seen and done, had led her to doubt the truth of ultimate futility. The last straw was the dragon itself. Melanie, through the work of her hands and mind, had created something that was not futile; a master-weapon that could destroy Town, just as she had intended. The very fact that she was able to do that gave the lie to the Bleak Methodology. Unable to deny this truth but just as unable to live with it, Melanie Fell so hard that-as Strategists sometimes do-she lost her identity and became a new person.

Unable and unwilling to use Melanie's system, Miramie has begun to construct her own, drawing on various sources-the communal and peaceful mores of Fortitude, Hideo Hayashi's belief that even unlikeable misfits do not deserve to be left alone without support systems, the other Archive kids' idea that outcasts should stick together, and Chuubo's Snake prioritising of personal ambitions and loves. Since she's not had much time to do this, it's nowhere near finished-but it looks likely to be robust. It also seems to me that she's likely to be able to edit it as she needs rather than Falling-or, if worst comes to worst, to Fall but get back up as herself, rather than shattering again or reverting into Melanie Malakh.

Her Badger Secondary is a contrast to Chuubo's, as where his is socially based and linked to personal relationships (Courtier Badger), hers is more focused on the more usual definition of 'work', and on community in the sense of history and tradition (Bookkeeper Badger). It's her Secondary she brings to bear on the tasks of setting up a cafe from scratch and helping maintain the Archives. It's also what she uses to keep herself going under the weight of the world's wrongness, to keep making art even though it's doing so that activates her Curse. She just keeps slogging away.

I can also see the Badger Secondary in Melanie's construction of the glass dragon. She sat herself down with Hideo Hayashi and learnt glasswork from scratch, putting in the time and effort to both master this new skill and to bring Hideo himself fully under her control. Simple, honest work, even though used for deeply destructive ends.

IN CONCLUSION:

Chuubo: Snake primary, Badger secondary, Badger primary model Seizhi: Snake primary, Burnt Snake secondary, unhealthy Badger Secondary model Leonardo: Lion primary, Lion secondary. Bird secondary model Natalia: Bird primary (with a system that starts out looking a lot like Petrified Snake), very burnt Secondary that is likely Bird or Lion Jasper: Bird primary, Bird secondary Rinley: Badger primary, Lion secondary Entropy II: Exploded Badger primary, Badger secondary Miramie: Bird primary, Badger secondary

[suitov]

Soulmates (Kamuegi Week)

“But if I hadn’t met you, I would eventually have loved somebody else.”

Makoto turned his head in Izuru’s hands. The brush fell still in response. He said, with a slight frown, “That’s not a very nice thing to say.”

Izuru did that falling-silent, ducking-his-head-so-hair-fell-over-his-face thing. “Do you... not find that reassuring, then?” It was the I-said-something-wrong-and-I’m-not-sure-what voice Makoto had heard a few times recently.

He shrugged uncomfortably and settled back against Izuru’s legs. “Not really, Zuzu.”

“I apologise. ...Why?”

Makoto’s conversation skills often got a workout, these nights. If he wasn’t trying to coax Izuru to speak at all, against whatever those people were filling his head with all day, he was figuring out how to explain really obvious things that somehow were not really obvious to Hope’s Peak’s resident supergenius.

The brushing started up again, which helped.

“I guess people like to feel special, Izuru, especially to their... their... someone important to them.”

“Special?”

“Yeah! You know, stand out. Isn’t that why you joined the, you know...”

“I don’t remember why h... I joined,” said Izuru blandly, and ran his warm hands over Makoto’s ears, smoothing and tucking back excitable clumps of hair. “Must real people feel unique to feel special, then?”

“Yeah. I think so? It helps? I mean, there’s nobody else like you, is there?” That would certainly be interesting, he guessed. More dark wisps roaming the campus at night in search of... whatever it was Izuru searched for. Interest? Guidance? Mildly clumsy teenage boys to braid his hair and let him do theirs in exchange? Makoto didn’t think he could handle more than one. It was hauntingly sad to think about.

“But, I love you,” said Izuru haltingly, “because you are ordinary. Ordinary and good. You have no measurably superior insight, yet somehow you always know what to do.”

“I don’t! Half the time I feel like I have no clue what I’m doing.”

“What I mean is... things are so easy for you.  I asked you about joining a despair-based terrorist organisation in order to destroy the world and you could tell immediately that it was a bad idea.”

Makoto snorted so hard he felt his hair antenna wiggle in mirth. “But Izuru, anyone could have told you that. And anyway you wouldn’t have followed through with it! You’re a good person. That’s why I love you.”

Izuru’s hands stilled. A silky lock of hair slithered down Makoto’s face and curled on his chest.

“...paradoxical, how one so entirely ordinary can be so significant and so unaware of it, yet one supposedly ‘special’...”

“Huh? What’cha say, Zuzu?” Makoto brushed aside the long hair to join the rest of its party and gripped one rock-steady knee to help himself up until they were face to face.

“...if you wish to feel...” Izuru’s gaze returned from distant shores and made landfall on Makoto’s cheeks. “Then it is decided. We are now soulmates.”

“W-we’re what?”

“You are familiar with the concept, yes? We are destined to love each other because of how unique you are. I have just determined this using science.”

“We are?” Makoto tilted his head and pursed his lips. “Wait, are you fooling me again? This is another thing like when you said the government had declared I was a puppy in human incarnation, right?”

“There was no evidence to disprove that,” said Izuru calmly, “nor this. Therefore we are now soulmates. Our relationship is destined and we are officially optimal for each other. Therefore, we are equally special.”

“Awww.” Makoto cupped Izuru’s cheek. “You’ve been silly before, but I never thought I’d hear you be that soft.”

“I am not soft. I'm actually very evil.”

“Ohhh nooo, the evilness of the very cute guy who was just giving me a head massage!”

Izuru’s knuckle kissed the tip of his nose with suspiciously un-evil-seeming gentleness.

“Although... now you said it, that seems like it could be a little sad. What if we didn’t work out? You’re saying we’d never find anyone else... Izuru, that’s super sad!”

Izuru shrugged. “That presumes we have only one soul.”

“Well, yeah,” said Makoto, climbing onto the bench and dangling his legs over the back rest. “That’s kinda how it works.”

Izuru looked off to the east, where the sun was preparing to kick off its blankets and rise. “Assuming souls exist at all, I think I may... have two...”

“Huh?” Makoto’s feet stopped swinging out of surprise. He’d never expected to see Izuru look wistful, of all things.

“Besides, you yourself have two talents, so who is to say you don’t have an extra soul as well?”

“That’s super not how it works, Izuru. Well, I don’t think so. I’m not sure, actually.” Philosophising was hard, so Makoto chose to be gay instead and captured a warm, tan-brown hand to kiss.

They had some time before Izuru had to sneak back into the lab. Makoto wished he didn’t have to go back to that place at all. Well, at least Makoto could charge him up so fully with kisses that whatever they did to him today, it would never crush his spirit.

That was a soulmate’s job, right?

Probably.

It certainly wasn’t the most onerous task in the world.

--- --- --- ---

“...wait, I have two WHAT?”

--- --- --- ---

@kamuegi-week >:)

[realityhelixcreates]

Beta, Theta, and Me Chapter 7: The Invisible Cage

Chapters: 7/?

Fandom: Thor (Movies), Avengers (Movies) Marvel Cinematic Universe

Rating: PG

Warnings: Relationships: Loki x Reader (But not right now),

Characters: Loki(Marvel) Additional Tags:  A/B/O, Sorta, More Of An Exploration Of Life And Self Expression Within An A/B/O Framework, Loki Does What He Wants, But Loki Does Not Actually Do What He Wants, Antagonistic Bosses, Loki Has A Throne Now, But It’s Not What He Wanted

Summary:  Loki and his servant discuss the nature of freedom.

You found yourself hiding in your apartment for several hours that day. Loki had gotten a call-the first you could remember-and had instantly bid you leave his presence. In fact, he said he would have preferred you leave the building altogether, but it was suddenly pouring outside, so you'd opted to hide out in your room instead.

You didn't know what would cause him to act that way, but you'd tried to use the time to take a nice relaxing nap. But the sound of rushing wind had rattled the tower, and someone had entered Loki's apartment without bothering to be quiet about it.

Shortly after that, the shouting had begun.

So much for napping.

You opened your door just a crack, and peered out into the round living space down the hall.

Thor was there.

THE Thor, the God of Thunder himself, the only man you'd ever thought might make a good case for monarchy.

He was pacing back and forth in front of Loki, gesticulating broadly, both of them speaking in raised voices. You didn't understand the language at all, it was round and bouncy, with long rolled R's, and rock hard consonants. They didn't seem to be fighting; this was not a shouting match with each other. This looked like shared anger, a common indignance over some other subject.

They discussed loudly with one another, Thor standing across from Loki, around the little table where you shared meals. He was drawing something in a note book, tapping the paper for emphasis, while Loki took up the pen and drew something else. Eventually, the loudness died down, both men becoming absorbed in whatever plan or problem they were going over, and you hid back away in your rooms, satisfied that there wasn't going to be a fight.

They were more than a little frightening when they shouted. There was power in those ancient voices, and it jellied your insides. What must it have been like for people, hundreds of years ago, to hear these beings speak? It wasn't surprising that bygone societies had been built around them.

Thor left eventually, with grim laughter, but seemingly on good terms. When you slunk back out into the hallway, Loki remained at the table, writing in his notebook. He seemed tense, but not angry.

“So...” You started. Loki blew out a long breath.

“I desire some kind of sweet confection.” He said. “If you do not already know how, please learn to make some kind of cake or cookie, and then do so.”

“And then...”

“And then eat some with me.”

Dismissal then. So be it. He'd tell you, or he wouldn't, what business was it of yours?

It was time to level up. It was time to learn how to make cookies.

                                                                         ******

You knew that if this were a movie, or TV show, smoke would billow out once you opened that oven, and your cookies would all be burnt. But that's not what this was, and your cookies were actually fine. A little flat and crispy around the edges, but perfectly tasty. Loki seemed to take extra pleasure in their crunchiness, a detail you filed away for later. He was still agitated, but it was like a swift current at the bottom of a calm stream. You found yourself a bit afraid to step in.

“What do you think freedom is?” He asked abruptly. He'd been back into his extra-long-titled philosophy books again. You'd been trying to convince him to move on from Keirkegaard, but the existentialism spoke to him.

He'd had you sit with him next to his huge fireplace, and sing a few times now, and he even translated excerpts from his books for you in order to discuss them with you. He liked your somewhat cynical, layman's view on these lofty subjects, even seemed to find validity in your sometimes frustrated “I don't know, why should it matter?” answers. This time you thought about it for a while.

“I think it doesn't actually exist. It's an unobtainable idea.” You said.

“Care to expand?”

“Well, okay. So what is freedom? That's a really tough question, right? Like, for some people, its 'not being discriminated against because of skin color' or something like that. For others, it as simple as financial stability. But both of those have something in common with what I think is the average definition, which is 'not being beholden to capricious authority figures'. But is that even possible? I mean, say you're a king.

Not literally!” You exclaimed, as Loki opened his mouth. “But as a king, there's supposedly no higher power than you in all the land, right? But...you also have responsibilities. Burdens. You have to rule, and you have to do it well, or you won't be king for long. You still, in some part, owe your time and effort to the people you rule. You aren't free. You can't just do whatever you want, whenever you want. The people won't put up with it. Eventually, they'll rise up an overthrow you, maybe even kill you. It happened a lot.

But if you go with the Divine Right idea, even though you're telling the peasants that they have to do whatever you say because it's God's will, it's still admitting that you answer to a higher power. Therefore, you are not free, because you are under the authority of a deity and supposedly have to abide by their rules and doctrines. If you don't, your Divine right to rule may be revoked and again, if you have ruled poorly, you'll be overthrown and killed.

You can't even reach freedom by removing yourself from the chains of society. Take yourself off to some deserted place with no other people around, and you can do whatever you want, right? Except you still have to eat. You still need shelter. You still have to spend a lot of time dealing with those things. You are still trapped by the laws of nature. Try to defy them, and you will be killed.

Even in death...either there's no afterlife, and you just stop existing at all, and therefore can't engage in concepts such as freedom, or there is an afterlife, but it follows the rules of the god who created it, and you have to follow those rules while you're there. There's no such thing as true freedom. It can't be achieved.”

“How does that make you feel?” Loki asked softly.

You shrugged. “Not as frustrated as I should, I guess. I don't feel strongly about it. What am I supposed to do about it, rebel?”

“Isn't that what your parents did?”

“Yeah, and they're both dead!” You exclaimed. Loki fell quiet.

“I'm sorry.” You said. “It's just that everyone who finds out about them expects me to be like them, but I'm just not. I'm not their opposite, but I'm not...them.”

“What happened to them?” He inquired. “I don't actually know about them, save for what you have alluded to.”

“You have a phone, right? Look up the 'Joyful Liberation Compound'. I'll clean up these cookies.”

You washed the dishes and cleaned up all the flour and crumbs. When you joined him at the table again, he was staring at his phone, expression grim.

“Yeah.” You said.

“You are the only survivor.” He stated.

“Yeah, because I ran away when I turned seventeen. Had to smuggle myself out in the back of a supply truck. They didn't let us back outside once we came in. Only very carefully vetted individuals, high in the pecking order were allowed back into the outside world, and then only to recruit or bring back supplies that we couldn't create at the compound. 'Liberation' was right in the name, but we were very Not Free.”

“Brave little thing.” Loki said. “It must have been very difficult to make that choice.”

“We joined when I was fifteen.” You said. “I was only there for two years. Not like the other kids, who were raised there, or spent most of their lives there. They didn't know anything else. Now they never will.”

“Your government baffles me sometimes.” Loki said. “Billionaire slavers are elevated rather than criminalized, yet they're perfectly prepared to raze an entire compound to the ground? With everyone inside? Even the children?”

“They were an accelerationist cult.” You pointed out. “They thought the end of American civilization was coming, and that they were supposed to help bring it about.”

“And your government is full of dominionists and fascists.” Loki pointed back. “This seems nothing more than one civil deconstructionist cult destroying the competition while it is still small.”

“Yeah, it sucks all around.” You agreed heatedly. “That's what happens when you have one set of laws for a favored class of people, and another for everyone else. The scum rises to the top and then chokes out everyone else...Sorry.”

Loki regarded you sourly. “You speak very freely, brave thing.”

“Is it different where you come from?” You asked.

“Yes, actually. We have an unbroken line of succession that oversees a thriving and prosperous culture, kept that way by firm, yet judicious leaders.”

“You tried to take over a whole planet by force!”

“I intended to fix your crumbling infrastructure and even out your unbelievable inequality issues.” Loki insisted.

“By enslaving us all? Making us all equally subservient to you?”

“There is a difference between bravery and foolishness.” He warned. “I meant to rule as a benevolent god. You do not wish to see me vengeful!”

You snapped your mouth shut. His Alpha scent intensified when he exerted his personality, but it was the power in his voice that shivered through you.

You hated that. You hated it. The scent made you so uncomfortable, dredged up so many tainted memories. And the vocal power of an Old God squelched your spirit. You sat, still and quiet, practically radiating resentment.

After a few moments of extremely uncomfortable silence, Loki sighed.

“It would not have worked.” He admitted. “My intentions were not pure. I would certainly have tried, yes, I would have given my best effort, but there were...other...factors.”

“What other factors?” You asked. Hadn't your real boss, the one that paid you, the Tony Stark one, asked you to find out things about this exact subject?

Also, you were curious. What was the secret? What had brought the great god Loki low?

His mouth opened and then closed. No sound came out. As you watched in growing confusion, his face began to twitch, twisting into a grimace, his eyes filling with frustration. Breath hissed through bared teeth, his fists clenching over the armrests of his wheelchair. Sweat broke out on his forehead.

“Loki? Loki! Stop!” You exclaimed. “Stop, you don't have to! Stop!”

Loki let out a groan of pain, then shoved you away when you grabbed his hand. You fell right on your rear.

“Get out of here!” Loki roared. “Get out of my sight, and do not show your face again today!”

You scrambled to your feet and rushed to your apartment, slamming the door behind you. Your organs felt like water, as you slid down the back of your door, flinching at the sounds of destruction coming from outside.

What was that? What had just happened? Did it hurt him to try to speak of what happened to him? It had seemed like some painful, physical battle. You fumbled for your phone and called your real boss.

[bakugou-simp]

⚠️SPOILERS for bnha, and the heroes rising movie⚠️

I have rarely voiced these opinions, but I think it's about time I did.

See, there is a fine difference between ships and what is more likely to be canon, for me at least. As of right now I do not believe that bkdk will come anywhere near to being a canon romantic relationship, not only because of the type of manga/anime bnha is but also because of the development and change that would need to happen in order for it to even be possible. For the type of manga, I also believe Izuku or Katsuki being with anyone of the same sex is also out of the question. Horikoshi has put two transgender characters (and supposedly a bisexual character) in his manga, yes, but I do not see us getting anything more than that.

I am a multishipper through and through however, and I ship almost anything you can name that isn't incest, pedophilia, or abusive. Kirideku, for instance, and Todobaku as well. I like those ships, I think they're very cute and make a lot of sense. The only ships I don't like (I won't name them) I dislike purely because of the people who ship them. The way they act completely disgusts me.

But let's take a look at why BakuDeku, in my opinion, is commonly misunderstood.

I think there are a lot of misconceptions about the BakuDeku ship, and I don't say this just because I personally ship it.

Katsuki

Season 1, as soon as Katsuki was introduced I hated his guts. I couldn't stand watching him bully Izuku, let alone telling him to go and jump off of a building. I wanted to reach through the screen and punch him myself. I don't take things like that lightly, and so I thought to myself I will never like this character. Even as time went on, season 2 and all the way up to season 3, I couldn't stand him.

He was an abusive person terrified of his childhood friend becoming something that perhaps he feared that he himself could not. He's disgusting towards everyone, showing only disrespect and arrogance.

When he was kidnapped is when things started to change for me.

Not just his reaction alone-- "Deku, stay back"--but also Izuku's. Izuku is one to forgive way too easily, in my opinion, but I doubt he forgives someone if he truly doesn't think they deserve it. So for whatever reason, Izuku thinks Bakugou deserves his trust and forgiveness.

If you look at it like this-- Izuku knowing Katsuki better than anyone else, not only from his observations but as well from his up close interactions with the other. Taking this into account, maybe Izuku knows something we don't about Katsuki. We know for sure his mother was borderline abusive--as seen from that conversation with Todoroki as well as just how she treats him--, but is that all? We can't know for certain, but it seems that Izuku might.

Let's say that none of that is true, let's go ahead and say that Katauki is just what he seems to be: an arrogant prick with a superiority complex. Even so it's impossible to say that he hasn't changed at all.

Take this scene for example. Just from this scene alone, from this one thing that he tells a kid he doesn't even know, you can see how much he's grown from when he was 14 years old.

This is turning into more of a Bakugou thing rather than a bkdk one, but hang in there. This is important too.

He has gone from believing that he is the best of those around him, thinking that everyone else will only get in his way, to recognizing that he has weaknesses just like everyone else. That in its self is a feat to be praised, but top that off with the realization that if he keeps putting others down he'll never see his own weaknesses and you've got one heck of a character development process. Granted, that won't be enough to make up for things he has done in his past.

So let's take a look at his past, shall we?

Raised in a home with, while loving, a push over father and a brash and aggressive mother. Whether or not she realized what she was doing, or even if she had been raised in the same way and doesn't see it as wrong, the way she yelled at him undoubtedly rooted something not short of some sort of trauma (disclaimer: I am no expert on trauma) into him. Not only that, but she probably pushed him to be better. Constantly; be better, you aren't good enough, you call that trying? So on, and so on.

Being told his entire life that his quirk is amazing, those around him letting him believe he is an undeniable leader, all of that has made him into what we see in the beginning.

Even before he got his quirk he probably thought he was better than those around him and that they also knew that, that they would follow him for protection or some sort of recognition from great power.

So, we have a 14 year old who thinks the world eats out of his hands. He sees Izuku, quirkless Izuku, as something not worth his time. Someone as great as him has no reason to play around with someone as worthless as Deku.

There is obviously the hinted at miscommunication, as shown during the Deku vs Kacchan 2 fight. The fact that apparently Katsuki sees everything Izuku does as looking down on him, mocking him, calling him weak and so on.

As a person who struggles with this, I can assure you it really is hard to tell the difference between someone genuinely wanting to help and secretly saying they don't think you can do it. Obviously I realize not everyone looks down on me, but because of the need to be independent and to prove myself to those around me, it feels like every outstretched hand is going to burn me when I grab it. Katsuki is far worse in that regard than I am, so I can only imagine how hard it is to admit to himself that someone is offering help and not mockery.

So let's say this entire time, their entire lives spent together, Katsuki has seen Izuku--someone who was quirkless--as one of the many people who doubts his abilities. Of course he's going to treat him worse than he treats others, but none of that makes it okay. None of that, any of this, erases what has been done.

That being said it does create a bridge for his redemption, for a deserved forgiveness, and yes I truly do believe he will earn that forgiveness.

It's going to take a long time for him to grow into the fact that accepting help doesn't equal to accepting defeat, and that offering it doesn't equal to the belief of weakness.

Katsuki, in my opinion, started to see his faults around the time be befriended Kirishima. Kirishima is strong, so obviously Katsuki is going to want him on his side, but there is more to it than that. I truly believe that Kirishima sparked the change in Katsuki, or at least held the match for the flame to be sparked.

Kirishima and Katsuki's friendship is what I imagine Izuku and Katsukis's might have been like if Izuku had gotten a quirk, as that is all that mattered to Katsuki. He never cared much about the person attatched to the quirk, only how it might help him. Meeting Kirishima, a person who believes everyone is strong and that they can do anything they want with the resources handed to them, must have irritated the piss out of him. Another person who seemed to think that the weak could be strong.

Being around that kind of thinking will eventually rub off on you, however. Even off onto someone like Katsuki. Especially after seeing Izuku's potential with his own two eyes.

So all of those thoughts of Izuku being a weak nobody turned instead to thoughts of Izuku being a threat to him and his goal. It's better than the first, but it really doesn't do well for them being anything other than rivals.

So, right now in his character development process? BakuDeku even being friends seems like a far off thought.

So now, let's take a look at Izuku.

Izuku

His entire life he's been told by Katsuki that he is lesser, he will amount to nothing, he's completely worthless. That never stopped him from arguing, denying, or wanting to be a hero. Finding out he has no quirk didn't stop him, and being told he might as well die didn't stop him.

Izuku is a wonderful person with a huge heart, a heart that wants to save every single person it comes across, and a heart that sees the best in everyone around it.

He went from being someone in the background, never standing out or doing extraordinary things to a person who will stop at nothing to save one single life. He no longer lingers at the sides, or fears his own abilities. He strikes with confidence in himself, in his peers, teammates, and all of those around him. He uses the hearts of those he wishes to save as a boost to help him win the day.

Meeting Iida and Uraraka, and many other amazing individuals, helped him realize that there are people who believe in him and want to see him succeed. Not everyone will treat him like Kacchan, or only see him as being in the way.

Do I believe that he had to have resented Katsuki in some way for some amount of time? Absolutely. In fact, he might still.

Him forgiving Katsuki wasn't out of the others development at all. It was out of his own achievements, his own confidence, that he was able to come past all of that negativity and believe in himself as a hero. For that reason, he was able to at least not hurt from what Katsuki done to him, if he hasn't yet forgiven him.

Sadly I don't have a lot to say about Izuku's development, or his thought process, but I do know that Katsuki has always been his image of victory, and I do now believe that he can finally see himself as his own image of victory. Or at least, more than just his tormentor.

Heroes Rising

I want to talk a little about the events of heroes rising, dispite it not being a canon part of the universe. It has been said that the movie was what Horikoshi imagined the end of bnha to be, and that is what I'm going with here.

In the movie Katsuki is still his usual superior self, treating Izuku the same as he always has. When there is no immediate danger, and even during a fight neither of them expected to walk away from. Now this may be do to Horikoshi changing it to fit more into just an alternate period of the present instead of perhaps a more time skipping version, but I am not aware of that being false nor true.

Even so, Izuku showed the same amount of care for every individual person as he always does. Katsuki on the other hand, he seemed to care just a little more than his typical self.

Even going as far as to use Sero's actual name when he's calling out, concerned for the other.

Especially, in the way he treated Izuku suggesting giving him one for all just so they could win the battle.

They both knew what this would mean for Izuku, and it's pretty obvious Katsuki didn't want to do it at first, but he's not clueless. He knew that Izuku was right, without two one for all's they and everyone on the island would have died. Throughout the process never once does he say anything about himself, he's only ever concerned about what would happen to Izuku and about saving the island.

Izuku was willing to give up his dream for an entire island, because that is his dream. His dream is to save lives and become the greatest hero, and saving an entire island is exactly that. He trusted Katsuki because he knew All Might would, and if All Might would trust this quirk with a person such as Katsuki, clearly others besides us, Katsuki and Izuku can see his development.

Their Relationship

Now, in regards to the actual conversation of misconceptions. I do believe that at first glance, that being not taking into consideration home life and miscommunications among these two in their own time, any sort of romantic relationship for these two would be seen as abusive. Because right now, if they both weren't more busy with training to be heroes rather than relationships and for some reason decided to be together, that's what it would be. Katsuki has a lot of things to sort through in his own head, and after he gets that settled they both have a long road to being able to be anything close to friends.

So being rivals is the best for them at the moment. They are each others core motivation, the reason they push and push themselves even when there's nothing left to push. Which over time is going to build a strong connection, more than what they have.

Eventually I do believe they could be friends, a hero duo is even more likely as they've already proven just now as training heroes that they work well together.

That being said if anything romantic were to come of it, it would be in a much later date.

Another misconception might be that bkdk shippers either ignore the way Katsuki has treated Izuku or just don't see it at all, which may very well be true about a lot of younger (or even older) people who might just see their rivalry as some sort of romantic tension. Which happens a lot in anime. However many of us see this ship and see the development, the huge development that will take place in order to be something more, and that is something we would absolutely love to see.

Shipping (for me personally)

I think that most ships in this fandom have good reasons for being shipped, and even if they don't as I've said there is a difference between shipping something and thinking it will become canon.

Personally, I think any ship becoming canon would ruin the manga. I see bnha as something that is perfect without any building romance, that being said a little background romance wouldn't hurt.

As far as relationships among the students goes, I'd hate to see any of them actually start dating. At this age, when they're doing things that are far more important, it doesn't seem like the right decision at all. That doesn't stop me from reading fanfictions, or looking at fanart, or saying that I ship two or more characters together. It's all harmless fun, until you turn into an Anti. I have absolutely no respect for antis and I severely hope they never interact with me.

In conclusion

I do not think that bkdk will be a canon ship in the mangas current timeline. That however, doesn't mean I can't ship them or think that eventually something could come of all of their character development.

Like it or not a good part of Izuku, his development, his personality, his dreams and life goal come from Katsuki. They come from knowing him nearly his entire life, from seeing him as a symbol of victory since they were kids and even up until now.

You can dislike bakudeku as a ship, you can ship other things and all that, but to deny that they aren't important to each others entire character-- and yes I do mean both of them, Katsukis's character also revolves a lot around Izuku--is to be blinded by your "hate" for the ship or even for Katsuki as a character. BakuDeku as a friendship/rivalship is way more important than as a relationship, and I think that's something everyone who loves either of them needs to respect.

The entire reason that they are were they are right now is because of All Might, their shared admiration for a strong hero for different aspects of said hero. That he never loses, and that he always saves everyone. Both traits make up their own respective heroes, Izuku and Katsuki happening to be opposites on that spectrum.

Their current existence thrives off of each other. Where they once looked to All Might for motivation, they now find it amongst themselves. As seen many times, when Katsuki asks Izuku "when are you going to hurry up and make that quirk your own?" You can choose to see that as him looking down on Izuku, but all I see is him wanting Izuku at his fullest potential so they can both give their all against each other, while at the same time with each other (though I doubt the second part is what Katsuki is thinking, those are just my thoughts.)

All in all, they push each other to be better, and I can't help but respect that.

(I'm sure there will be at least one person who will come around and reblog this just to say how much they disagree with me and why I'm wrong, so if you're that person I'd appreciate it if you just didn't. Your opinions are your opinions, but I'm not going to tell you that you're wrong so I don't want to see you telling me that. Thank you.)

posted on tue, Aug 25th

[sevenincubistolemyheart]

Blood Bag

Au: Mafia

Tag list: @xsunnyhoseokx 

Rating: T

Potential Triggers: Kidnapping, Nonconsent(for Vampire biting only), Manipulation, Character Death

Pairing: Kim Namjoon x Reader, BTS x Reader/OT7 x reader

Genre: Horror, Drama

Length: 4.3k+

Summary: When Kim Namjoon came to give a lecture to your Public Speaking class you couldn’t help but be vaguely annoyed now that you had someone to direct your irritation at. After all, there were so many groups who would go unnoticed in the wake of these 7 boys' success. When you accidentally make eye contact with him and run into him at a cafe while doing your assignment on his lecture things take a dangerous turn and you find your feelings of unease about the boys were correct firsthand.

You'd first met him when you were in college in Seoul. The transfer program was no joke nor was the workload but you wanted to excel in your job as a translator. You'd heard of BTS of course. Who hadn't? They'd all but taken over the world with their reputation.

Still, you'd be lying if you said you weren't a bit bitter.

After all; so many groups worked just as hard as them yet would fail due to lack of sales or notice in the wake of their triumphant success.

It just...made you frustrated. More at the industry than anyone in particular...but then he came in and suddenly there was a source to direct your irritation at.

He held himself with confidence as he walked into your lecture hall for public speaking, clearly projecting the image of the ever secure in himself leader everyone knew him to be. Girls were whispering among you frantically, nervous giggles leaving their lips just from his presence alone.

It made you uncomfortable and caused you to cringe.

Even without your resentment, he was a person. Not a fucking light-up toy to “ooh” and “ahh” at.

You looked down at your notebook to begin doodling aimlessly as he seemed to be conversing quietly with your equally star-struck professor.

It was almost enough to make you groan aloud. Was there no-one who realized how ludicrous it was to act like this over a single Human being? It wasn't like he was giving up his life for them. He was just giving a single lecture, and probably being paid handsomely to do so.

You didn't realize you'd unintentionally made eye contact until Kim Namjoon himself smirked knowingly at you.

Your heart jumped up to your throat in fearful surprise as a blush filled your cheeks, even as you straightened your back and forced yourself to glare defiantly into his copper irises.

His smirk only widened in response...and then he began speaking, stalwart gaze never leaving your own in a clear test of wills.

Words can’t properly describe the effect his words had on the class. You swear you could hear a pin drop as they all immediately rushed to quiet themselves and barely breathed.

Truthfully, you barely registered them; too lost in his hypnotizing gaze for a moment, the way his eyes seemed to refuse to unlock from your own had you swallowing nervously...and then your gaze hardened and you dropped it as you instead began intently scribbling in your notebook.

You refused to act like all the other cattle surrounding you.

You would not be tricked by this charismatic deceiver.

Unbeknownst to you, said deceiver hid a cunning smirk behind his hand as he watched you scurry out the second he was done with his lecture.

How absolutely intriguing.

-----

'Nothing is quite as motivating as fear. Well; except maybe love and adoration.'

That was the first line on your paper on Mr. Namjoon's lecture. You stared at it, feeling the truth of it yourself as you thought back to the flush that had filled your cheeks.

Irritation at him getting to you bubbled in your gut until a voice broke you out of your thoughts.

"That's supposed to be about me? How do you figure?"

His voice was husky, like he'd just woke up; he was referring to your assignment as he leaned right over your shoulder to look at your screen. You tensed at the close proximity and slammed your screen shut as you whirled on him with a scowl.

“I don’t see how it’s any of your concern, sir. I have an assignment to do so if you wouldn’t mind…”

You motioned for him to leave through gritted teeth in some form of a smile.

He observed you for a few moments before a chuckle left his lips and he stood up to his full height and grabbed your wrist and began walking away with you just barely managing to stuff your laptop into your bag before he relinquished that from you as well with a flourish.

“Where are you taking me? Let go of me right now or I’ll scream.”

Your voice was a venomous hiss and he stopped abruptly, making you bump into him, He turned suddenly and you stopped breathing as he cornered you right in front of the cafe and leaned down to coo into your ear, voice so soft you could barely hear it.

“Try it. Draw attention to us. Your identity will be found out, you’ll be doxxed and you and your family will be tormented. Not to mention I have your laptop and it sure would be a shame if you had things on here you didn’t want others knowing to get out. If that’s what you want; then by all means scream.”

You were left with no choice but to stumble after him, heart now beating a mile a minute as he turned on his heel and walked away, dropping his grip on you as he knew you’d follow.

You were right. He wasn’t what he pretended to be...but then...what was he planning to do with you now that he’d intentionally outed himself to you? Why did he?

Your mind spun with questions as he walked until you both reached a nondescript black vehicle. He held the back door open for you but you knew the action wasn’t gentlemanly. The smile he wore was too threatening; his eyes held no emotion as he held your bag firmly in his grip.

You steeled yourself, raised your chin and got in the back as he shut the door; sealing your escape route and leaving you entirely under his control.

You felt like a helpless moth, knowing the flame would spell the end but still completely enraptured, drawing ever closer to your own demise.

What could you do to get out of this? There had to be a way.

You reminded yourself to stay calm, knowing if you panicked he’d see it as yet another weakness to be taken advantage of.

How did he know you so well? Were you truly so easy to read? You thought for sure you’d hidden your annoyance at him well but even so...he was a minor inconvenience on your radar. Hell, you never thought you’d see him again after that lecture save maybe at the presentation where you read your oral presentations on him!! And even that was a long shot.

“How did you know where I was and what do you want with me?”

The question was blurted out before your filter could hold you back and Namjoon turned to smirk at you as the driver continued on stoic as ever.

“You really are a bold little thing aren’t you?”

Your eyes hardened even as a shiver went down your spine at the almost predatory glint in his eyes. You couldn’t let on you were afraid. You just had to be strong until you found an opening to escape.

Or so you tried to think until a lithe arm wrapped gently around your throat and tugged you against the back of your seat so you couldn’t turn to look to see your captor.

Their voice told you they were male though and you didn’t so much as breathe as he cooed near your ear at Namjoon, leaning his chin on your shoulder as his free hand played with your hair affectionately.

“Isn’t she fun though? We haven’t had one with such spunk for a while…”

Namjoon snarled in retaliation as your eyes showed your genuine terror at the realization that this boy had been lurking behind you this entire time out of sight.

“There is no we. She’s mine Jimin. Back off.”

The arm relinquished its hold and you whirled to meet playful brown eyes. Jimin? He...was one of the other members of BTS that much you knew. And that he was supposedly the “pure” one of the group. Ha. Your frustration finally spilled over into genuine panic.

“What the fuck do you people want from me!? Threats or no so help me the second you stop this car I will scream. Blackmail me, try and hurt my family if you want; your reputation will be the main one to suffer and I will make sure you go down.”

There were a few beats of tense silence before Jimin’s sharp laughter abruptly broke it before he brusquely cut it off and you tensed at the feeling of a sharpness on your throat, swallowing nervously as Jimin spoke quietly into your ear, voice deathly calm.

“Look at you, trying to threaten us. Naughty girl. Maybe I should teach you some manners, put you in your place~”

"Jimin!"

Namjoon's animalistic snarl cut through the air and you could hear the pout in Jimin's voice as he pulled away, pink hair blinding your vision momentarily as he hopped from the storage area into the seat beside you.

"Ahh, you're no fun hyung~"

Your mind was spinning. Now, your life was truly at risk. Sure Jimin had the strength advantage and you were also under Namjoon’s control as you had no clue where you were going but now there was a knife involved. Jimin had a weapon. Your carefully constructed mask was starting to crumble and you didn’t realize you were crying until Jimin brushed away a tear with a joyful giggle.

You hastily wiped the rest away as you wrenched yourself away from his touch, pushing yourself as far towards the window as you can as you looked out it, trying to get a sense of your surroundings and attempting to calm down and control your breathing.

Damn it. Why were you so weak? This was not the time to panic.

Namjoon glanced back at you, watching you with quiet contemplation shining in his gaze.

Silence filled the car then and you eventually managed to doze off, occasional silent tears falling from your eyes as you hid your face in your arm as best you could.

Maybe when you awaken next you’ll be back in your favorite cafe and this would end up being nothing more than an unbelievable nightmare.

-----

You slowly returned to consciousness, cuddling closer to the warmth enveloping you; breathing slow and even. You awoke with a start scrambling to get our of the person who was holding your grip as you realized you were moving.

"Who are you? Where am I? Put me down!!"

Namjoon sighed merely tightening his grip on your legs, holding you with one hand supporting your bottom as the other pressed your shoulder into him so you couldn't scratch at him or hit him.

"God, you're loud. Relax. We're almost there. Jimin went on ahead to warn the others."

Your mind caught up with you as you remembered how you got in this situation and what had transpired beforehand.

Others? Like Jimin? Would they all be so violent, ready to slit your throat if you put up too much of a fight?

Namjoon must've sensed your fear because he let out another heavy sigh.

"No-one is going to lay a hand on you or hurt you. Just be a good girl and cooperate okay? We just need to figure out why you seem to be immune."

"Immune to what? And why are you acting so nice all of a sudden!? You're the one who kidnapped and threatened me in the first place!!"

You hissed, eyes sparking with anger. At least you felt validated since he was indeed as off as you'd felt he was the first time you laid eyes on him.

Namjoon merely shrugged and went quiet, choosing to let the two of you remain in silence as you walked.

You huffed, crossing your arms.

"...I can at least use my legs, can't I? Seeing as I have no idea where we are you can trust I won't run."

Namjoon barely spared you a glance before he shook his head.

"It's not safe. If I put you down; the forest will take you. You need me to get through here safely. Otherwise, you'd be nothing but fodder."

You sagged in his grip, finally just giving up. This didn't make any fucking sense. He had to be delusional right? Absolutely off his rocker talking about forests taking you. Hell, they probably all were crazy. Jimin did hold a knife against your throat after all.

By the time Namjoon has led you into the cozy wooden cabin in the woods you were starting to doze off again- only awakening when an excited voice broke the silence.

"Ooh! Hyung you found her? She's the one with the shield right? She somehow saw past your magic?"

You jolted, turning to look with wide eyes at who you guessed was the youngest one thanks to his apparent innocence.

Another unfamiliar voice groaned audibly

“Wait to go Jungkook if she wasn’t, we would’ve either had to alter her memories which we don’t have the energy to do right now or kill her.”

The words didn’t register until you locked eyes with the broad-shouldered tall male and you took a step back on instinct at the cool glint in his eyes, bumping into Namjoon in the process as the beginnings of panic began to make your stomach churn again.

“Why don’t you all just shut your fucking mouths? You’re making her scared.”

Namjoon muttered.

You jumped in surprise, a sharp gasp of pain escaping your lips as a boy suddenly appeared in front of you, black hair and red eyes staring you down as he gripped your upper arms with an amount of strength that had you wincing.

“Maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing if she can resist our charms. Tell us sweetheart have you figured it out yet or do we need to spell it out?”

His voice was little more than a low rumble and you felt your breathing starting to pick up as tears of both pain and being overwhelmed pricked at your eyes.

“Please. I just want to go home!! I don’t care what you are or what you want with me! I’m just a college student for God’s sake!!! What could I possibly have that you want!?”

Your voice rose in reaction to your emotions and the boy gripping your arms gave you a smirk that had you freezing in place in fear. Or rather, you thought it was fear.

You couldn’t move.

“Wrong answer. As for what we want…? For starters...I suppose I am a bit peckish. What about you Jimin? You haven’t eaten since yesterday yeah? Come have a bite.”

Your mind was spinning, trying to process what was happening, what they were saying and why Namjoon wasn’t doing anything to help you. He defended you earlier why wasn’t he-?

You would’ve screamed if you could have at the sharp sound to your left- the familiar sound of bones breaking as Namjoon’s lifeless body was tossed to the side, a little ways in front of you by a new blond male who had entered the living room.

Yet another new face appeared in your peripheral as a man with dark brown eyes and hair to match came into view, a self-satisfied grin like that of a naughty little boy on his face as he giggled at your horrified gaze.

“Don’t look so scared baby. He’ll come back. I’d worry about yourself~Name’s Hoseok."

The blond boy-Taehyung, if you were remembering from that perfume ad correctly, stepped over Namjoon’s body carelessly.

“Namjoon get too big for his britches again? Honestly, he could use that big brain of his for more than showing off his manipulation skills he’d see we're all just as equally gifted Some of us just choose not to show it off as much.” He raised his index finger to his lips, shooting a playful wink your way.

“That’ll be our little secret, okay Hutie~?”

Jimin snorted as he slung an arm around your shoulder, making you slam your eyes shut in terror.

“Hutie? What kind of stupid nickname is that?”

“Human and cutie together? Aww c’mon! It totally works Jiminie!”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Yah! You're just jealous you couldn’t come up with something so cool on the fly!”

You would’ve screamed if you could.

Namjoon was dead and these two were bickering over nicknames!?

“Can we eat now? Please? I’m gonna start without you.”

Yoongi grumbled, catlike red orbs making your stomach do a backflip.

“Heh. Cute. Look at you all worried even though Namjoon’s the one that kidnapped you. Trust me, he wasn’t doing it out of the pureness of his heart. He just wanted the first bite. Oh. And you’re right in your guess. We’re Vampires.”

He responded, but that didn’t bother you. What bothered you was that he was apparently in your head.

His smirk widened as you tested your theory.

‘Yoongi’s my name doll. And yes, you’re not going crazy. I can talk in your mind like this too as well as hearing your thoughts. See since I’m the one that paralyzed you, I have complete control over you, including that. I’d explain more but like I said...I’m famished after having to hold back so long.’

You wanted to cry out, scream, beg...anything to make him stop as his lips approached the soft, vulnerable skin of your neck but there was nothing you could do. The feeling of his sharp fangs against your neck made your eyes widen in remembrance of Jimin’s assault earlier. ‘Not a knife…’ You heard Yoongi snicker against your skin as he purred in your mind. ‘I am glad Namjoon held him back. I’m glad it gets to be me to take you.’ You finally got back your ability to speak and move just as he bit down and you felt your knees give out along with a loud gasp of surprise. If Seokjin hadn’t lunged forward to wrap his arms around your waist from behind you surely would’ve been overwhelmed by the pleasure that hit you and fell to the ground.

“Wow, she looked so surprised!”

Jungkook giggled and you weakly grasped at Yoongi with trembling fingers to wordlessly tell him to stop as you bit your lip as hard as you could to frantically keep from making any sounds, instead catching Jimin’s shirt in your grasp.

As pink hair tickled the side of your face you knew you'd made a mistake. He positioned himself in front of you, leaving you no choice but to see the smirk on his face before he leaned down to nuzzle the opposite side of your neck to Yoongi who was still relentlessly sucking away, the only sounds leaving him the occasional hum of delight or sigh.

"Don't worry angel. If you think one is good, let's see how you handle two~"

You could hear an almost resentful edge to his voice; you guessed it was because Namjoon had held him back earlier but in any case, just as he was about to bite down Seokjin interrupted him.

"No. She'll lose too much blood with how much Yoongi has taken. Not to mention she'd probably pass out from pleasure first with how blown out she looks right now."

You saw Jimin's eyes darkened in anger as he raised his head and while you couldn't see Seokjin, the faux innocent yet dangerous tone in his voice was enough to make you shiver.

"You remember how it felt for you when we Turned you, don't you?"

Jimin froze and you swore you saw him flinch though just as quickly he was on the other side of the room with a final wordless snarl.

“Good boy. And Yoongi; that’s enough.” When he didn’t respond, he repeated his name voice growing sterner.

“Yoongi.”

He didn’t so much as grunt in acknowledgment. In fact, it seemed like he only redoubled his efforts and you were genuinely getting lightheaded and losing strength when there was a blur of brown and Yoongi was pulled off of you by his hair.

He hissed and writhed in the other Vampire’s grip, switching between trying to get back to you and gnashing at the younger-looking boy's hands.

“Try it again. Go on. Lunge for her one more time. I fucking dare you. You won’t have a piece of her again for a month. I’ll make sure of it.”

Jungkook’s voice had dropped a few octaves and you watched in awe as Yoongi held his gaze for a moment before he growled and finally sagged in his grip in submission, making Jungkook simply nod once and release him.

You saw Hoseok taking a worried few steps towards you as Seokjin finally released you, thinking you’d gotten your bearings and come down from the sudden assault. You barely registered the feeling of something being pressed to where Yoongi had bitten you before the world spun and a strong grip caught you as you swooned and fell forward. You barely registered the gust of air that ruffled your hair lightly and then you were being laid down gently on a bed in another room. You’d barely registered whoever caught you must've carried you with inhuman speed before you fully fell unconscious.

-----

When next you awoke, it was with a start as you looked around in a frenzy and stumbled out of the bed. You all but fell out of the room you’d been left in as you stumbled into the living room looking around as you tried to get a solid grasp on your surroundings and regain your bearings.

“Hey! Calm down, you need to rest you’re not fully recovered yet!!”

The slightly scolding voice by your ear made you flinch as you looked up to meet Taehyung’s gaze. Your eyes narrowed in distrust as you looked around and reluctantly let him lead you to the sofa where Seokjin and Hoseok were both waiting.

Jungkook sat on the chair diagonal to where you were sitting observing you curiously.

“Here. Drink this. You need to replace some of the blood you lost and this will help.”

Taehyung’s explanation permeated your thoughts as you observed the bottle of cranberry juice in your hands.

“It helps promote blood flow around the body by lowering the stress on your blood vessels. Given you’re going to be our blood supply and all-”

You hopped to your feet in fear at his words but Jin grabbed your wrist, easily halting you with his superior strength as he shot a vaguely miffed glare at Taehyung.

“...Couldn’t you have used a little more tact? Honestly. I know it’s tiring wearing masks for our fans all the time and we have a Mortal who knows what we are now but she’s still a Human being with emotions. You know how sensitive they are.”

Taehyung shrugged.

“What’s the point in hiding it from her? She bears the mark of the Bangtan clan now. Even if she tried to run, it’s not like she could get far in the forest. Even if she did somehow make it out, If she tried to talk about what she’d witnessed no-one would believe her.”

Jungkook hummed in agreement.

“Tae’s got a point. We’re the most popular boy band in the world. People think we’re in a management building in Seoul right now when we’re right in the center of Fae lands.” He clasped his hands behind his head with a smirk. “Making that pact with them was a damn good idea. It’s the perfect place to take our donors and other blood bags.”

“What makes you think I’ll even willingly go along with this huh!? You can’t keep me locked in this place forever! I have family, friends who will notice that I’m missing!”

Seokjin’s polite smile turned a bit strained and his grip tightened slightly on your wrist.

“Funny. You say that like you’ve got any damn choice in the matter. We’re superior to you in every way. And honestly? All we have to do is bite you if we want you compliant for a little while. Our saliva has a potent aphrodisiac to you Humans, it’s why you became so overwhelmed and couldn’t really fight back. In smaller doses than what Yoongi gave you we can keep you nice and calm for as long as we desire. And that’s not even taking into consideration our physical superiority over you. As for your friends and family...well.” His eyes tinged with a darkness that had your eyes tearing with despair. “Easily deal with. We have the money to make it go away without so much as a snap of our fingers.”

“In other words..”

You gasped sharply as Jin finally released your wrist and Namjoon raised your chin to look into his eyes, a self-confident smirk on his face at your shock and horror as he looked down at you both literally and figuratively.

“You’re entirely at our mercy babygirl. Oh. And Taehyung. Kill me again like that and I’ll break every bone in your body next time when it’s your turn. You know my neck is sore as Hell because of your little temper tantrum.”

He grunted as he cracked his neck in an attempt to loosen it some.

There were so many questions spinning in your mind. How was Namjoon alive? What was the deal with the immunity he mentioned earlier? Where exactly were you?

But...in the end, did it truly matter? Did any of it matter? You were going to be nothing more than a slave to 7 boys who were fooling the world with their fake smiles and charms while using you as their constant source of sustenance.

If only you hadn’t locked eyes with Namjoon that day. Maybe he wouldn’t have known. Maybe you would be in class right now, or eating brunch with your parents. But instead you were here; in this house, now no more than a simple meal.

As you sunk into the couch in defeat you sighed, closing your eyes.

What were you going to do? What could you do?

This was the end. A bad one perhaps...but an end nonetheless.

[anika-ann]

The Line between Respectful and Stupid - Pt.2

Safe and Sound

Pairing: Steve Rogers x reader       Word count: 2400

Warnings:  medical blood, swearing, attempt at humour… and starting on the fluff

Summary: A gunshot wound, an exasperated Steve. Yeah, you did great. But it seems the Captain has some aces in his sleeves and you might be in for a pleasant surprise. Also, you’re never taking pain-meds again. Ever. 

Story Masterlist

SHIELD’s idea of a safe house was very different from yours.

For one, you didn’t expect a safe house to look so homey and romantic. You suspected you’d learn better once you’d be inside, but when Captain Rogers parked in front of a nice wood-faced cabin in the middle of nowhere (seriously, you had almost missed the turn he had oh so confidently took, blame it on the blood loss), you were seventy percent sure he had made a mistake and now wanted to ask for directions.

“Alright, let’s get inside. There should be medical supplies, food, anything we could need,” he announced, getting out of the car, circling the vehicle and opening your door before you could win the war with the door handle. “Told you to keep the pressure.”

“Sorry, Sir,” you shot back automatically, not sure what you were apologizing for. It was just the tone he said it in, like a disappointed parent or something.

You followed him to the door as he knocked four times next to the doorframe; one of the wooden desks moved up, nearly making you jump. It revealed a panel with a keyboard and you quickly looked away as Captain Rogers entered the right combination. Now this felt more like SHIELD and less like a vacation residence.

“Shall we?”

This time you actually did jump, quickly following him inside. You passed the welcoming committee in a form of the hangers, stepping inside what seemed to be a common living room. And wow, SHIELD spared no expense on its safe houses.

The room was spacious, wood-faced as well, fluffy carpet in the middle, creating a pad under a coffee table, bordered by an elegant seaweed sofa and two armchairs in the same colour. The thing was, there was no fabulous view on a TV. There was a fireplace instead.

“Holy shit,” you breathed out, not quite realizing you had stopped dead in your tracks so you could blatantly stare.

“Yeah. I know. Tony likes to have his luxury. Sit on the couch?” his voice slowly trailed off as he disappeared god knew where.

You eyed the couch warily, not sure you should be getting near that fancy thing. You were bleeding, for god’s sake and the thing looked like it cost a shit-ton of money.

Also, did he just say ‘Tony’? As in… that Tony?

Captain Rogers reappeared with a frown on his face and an impressive box with medical supplies in his hands.

“Something wrong with the couch?”

“Did you just say ‘Tony’?”

“Yes. Now would you sit down?” he challenged you and really, who were you to oppose Captain America? If he was telling you to sit down and ruin Tony freakin’ Stark’s property, who were you to protest? You shuffled towards the sofa, seating yourself heavily.

You winced when your arm throbbed with the ungraceful landing.

Your commander placed the first aid kit on the table, pulling an armchair to sit opposite and sort of side-by-side with you. You watched his hands open the box as if you were hypnotized, accepting the bottle of painkillers with his firm ‘two pills’, swallowing the dose and ignoring the bloody taste which they took after your hand.

Now what? Was he going to thread the needle for you as well?

You finally found the courage to speak again, self-conscious at the display of care. This wasn’t right. You were supposed to be doing these things. Sure, you were a bit indisposed, but still. It was not common for a commanding officer to treat baby agents in kinder gloves.

“You don’t… you don’t have to do that. It’s not—it’s not required from a captain to treat ordinary agent’s wounds. I don’t want to bother you,” you whispered as he put on gloves, stopping in mid-motion when you reached out for the supplies.

“Keep the pressure,” was his answer and you obediently retreated your hand from his playground and pressed again, trying your best not to faint at the dulling pain. “You know, I really wish SHIELD would draw the line between respect for superiors and stupidity a bit sharper.”

Oh. You gulped at the harsh words, a lump growing in your throat. That sounded more like superior-inferior relationship.

“I’m sorry, Sir.”

He must have picked up on something in your voice, because he looked up at your face with intense brilliant blue eyes that widened a fraction.

“Oh, no! No, I’m not calling you stupid!” he hurried, suddenly sounding guilty. “Sorry, that came out wrong.”

Superior or not, you had to admit that his obvious discomfort – embarrassment even – was endearing. It took you by surprise. Your voice softened involuntarily, following his example.

“It’s alright, Sir.”

He sighed, indeed threading a needle as if he was about to patch you up. Which he probably was. You weren’t sure what to think of that.

“See, this I what I’m calling stupid. Hierarchy, system, it’s important, following rules and orders… but the training is focused on it too much. Clearly, you wouldn’t be able to stitch it yourself and if you were, it would take longer, which would equal bigger blood loss. It’s like they are trying to kill people’s common sense.”

You thought about his words, your mind racing as his eyes focused on the growing stain under your palm. You couldn’t believe you just heard Captain Follow-The-Rules say this.

He reached out to your arm with scissors in his hand, hesitating only inches away. His gaze found yours, blue shining with severity.

“May I?”

You didn’t dare to blink under his gaze seeking answers in your eyes, effectively making you lost in his. Jesus, what was he doing to you? How? And was he seriously asking for permission?

“Of course, Sir.”

You eased the pressure, making space for his hands and his surprisingly gentle fingers felt around the fabric before deciding it did need to be removed and he used the scissors, clean cut from the end of your sleeve to the torso of the tactic gear since the injury was very high.

The torn fabric fell apart, revealing a bit more skin than you would think was necessary, but you were not about to complain – especially since it wasn’t anything incriminating.

“Should have bought you dinner…” he muttered under his breath and you couldn’t help but chuckle. He shot you a horrified glance at the sound.

“Oh. I wasn’t supposed to hear that…. Sorry, Captain.”

“I think we’re past ‘Captain’ and ‘Sir’, Agent. It’s Steve,” he offered softly, and again, who were you to deny him? “And my ma’ raised me right, alright? In fact, I should have bought you flowers, too.”

As the moment was getting more surreal each second, his handsome face displaying what could be an attempt of a smile only emphasized by his words, you couldn’t help but laugh.

“They didn’t warn me you’ll be funny, S-- Steve.”

“Oh? What did they warn you about? And this is gonna hurt, sorry.”

He poured a fair share of disinfectant into the wound and you would swear your arm was about to burn down. You flinched back with curses falling off your lips and tears in your eyes.

“Shit, shit, SHIT-“

“Sorry. Doesn’t look as bad as I thought it would though. Not exactly a graze, but not straight through the middle either. And I’m waiting.”

You knew what he was trying to do with the question. He wanted to distract you. And to be honest, his unreadable expression, his sharp jaw and heavenly eyes would be working on their own, but you humoured him. After all, he was being so nice to you, so nice, sweet even….

Through your gritted teeth, you strained several words. “Well. That you’re a… a hard-ass and a tight-ass.”

His eyebrow shot up nearly to his hairline and the expressiveness surprised you enough to breathe in and out.

“That so? Gonna start with the stitches now.”

You forced more air to your lungs, bracing for the pain, tears in your eyes. You tried to focus on what else you had heard about him, words spilling from your mouth.

“Yep. He hates when you don’t follow his orders. Harper here left his position the other day and Rogers looked like he was about to kill him on spot, they said.”

“Oh, Harper. I remember him. It was a stupid move to leave his position. He could have died – or get his teammates killed. So… I admit I might have been hard on him. But it was for a good reason.”

“You remember him?” you blurted out, taken aback.

“Yes. Black hair, scar above his left eyebrow, right? Tall, not so graceful all the time.”

“Huh—Shit-“ you cursed when he prodded a tender area – well, more tender area than the rest, which meant something, okay.

“Sorry. What else do they say about me?”

“That you’re either a— an asshole full of yourself or really crazy since you supposedly yelled at Fury the other day.”

His lips twitched, the movement fascinating you. “I didn’t— it wasn’t yelling. We… had a little disagreement.”

“Uh-huh.” You weren’t convinced, but decided it was best not to probe.

“Anything else?”

You huffed. If it wasn’t for his extremely focused face, you would think you two were just chatting over a coffee. And for the pain. There was a blinding yet dull pain throbbing through your right upper limb – a limb that was shockingly still attached.

“That you’re a badass. Naturally.”

“They really use the A word when talking about me a lot, don’t they? One would think about himself he’s an ass, hearing all that,” he joked lightly, and wow, Captain America was able to do that? It wasn’t for the first time! And he said the A word! Maybe it was Steve Rogers coming out to play? An actual person?

“Nah. I’m sure that the tight-ass thing is just ‘cause it is so tight…”

Steve’s hands froze in the middle of doing a stitch, his whole body tensing. You were mortified when you went over what you had just said.

“Oh god, I did not say that.”

Captain America, or Steve Rogers, whatever, was a good man though. He just cleared his throat and continued his work. Except there was a bit of a smirk on his lips that felt nearly cocky. For some reason, there was a hint of embarrassment too, a touch of crimson in the tips of his ears that definitely hadn’t been there before.

“Oh no, go on. The pain-meds apparently make you very honest. Tell me more.”

“I’m sorry, Sir, that was not-“ you stuttered, letting the wrong – right? – addressing slip in again and he sighed.

“Relax… and I mean it, relax. I can’t finish these stitches it you’re tense like this…. Good.”

You watched him for few moments, silent. You hadn’t been lying when saying all of the things that were rumoured in the halls of SHIELD about him. But you couldn’t help but being stunned by the man in front of you, the picture so different from what you had expected it to be.  

“Thank you for doing this,” you whispered sincerely, rewarded by a small smile.

“Well, what kind of a gentleman would I be to let you bleed out? Not to mention blood is hard to get off the expensive cushions and floor, so…”

“Alright, I’m adding ‘smartass’ to the list of your rumoured features,” you decided, grinning right back at him.

How was he putting you at ease? He was… he was… him. The legend. And yet… the sound of his laughter echoed in your heart right now and you saw nothing but a simple man, laying down all of his shiny armour. It was refreshing and freeing.

You wondered if it made him breathe easier too.

“I guess you’re not wrong there. Here, all done,” he announced, placing a bandage over the rather neat stitches. Huh, artistic. Any other hidden talents?

“Thank you, S- Steve.”

“My pleasure.”

He stood up, stripping his gloves and tossing them in a nearest trash can before walking back to you, locking his once again serious eyes with yours.

“Why don’t you lie down? There’s a bedroom right there. Come on, I’ll help you.”

You let him support you from your healthier side, grateful he was there when your head spun with the movement.  

“I’m bloody and sweaty,” you mumbled absently, leaning onto the wall of muscle. Oh yeah, there was no other way, you could be ashamed later. At least you didn’t explicitly felt around his abs and pecs with your fingers. Or the huge arms – and they were calling out for you to touch them, alright.  

Just… shut up, thoughts.

“Good thing I won’t be the one doing the laundry then,” he hummed, walking you to another room. Your eyelids felt heavy all of sudden when you saw the king-size bed almost in your reach.

“Thanks— wait, where are you gonna sleep if I take the bed? There’s another one somewhere, right? You won’t have to sleep on the couch? ‘Cause I don’t think that you’ll fit there with the shoulders of yours. They’re like really, really broad – oh geez, I need to stop talking.”

Your words slurred into a mumble, but he seemed to decode your cryptic speech, because he chuckled, helping you to land on the bed – not before pulling the covers away so he could later tuck you in.

“I won’t sleep anywhere. I have to wait for the response to our distress signal… and watch over you, because I think I might have overdosed you with painkillers and I don’t want you to stop breathing while I’m having a nap.”

You thought you frowned; you weren’t sure though, losing the control over your muscles gradually. “Shit, I‘m sorry to keep you up. You’d deserve a nap.”

“I’m good. You, on the other hand, were shot. Now get some rest,” he sounded as if he was smiling. You smiled automatically at the idea as his light footsteps faded away.

“…hey, Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you for saving my life. And… ya’ know. Taking care of me. I know you don’t have to do that,” you whispered with the last remains of strength you had. But this you needed to say.

The man in question sighed.

“I really do. Goodnight. Feel better.”

You were out before you heard the door click shut.

Part 3

I know the fluff is a bit bloody, but… there is fluff, right? 

If by any chance, anyone wants to be added to tags, let me know. 

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@mermaidxatxheart​

[imagitory]

Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker review [SPOILERS]

Hey, everybody! So I just got back from seeing the newest Star Wars and...whew, am I tired!

For those of you who want a spoiler-free review, I’ll just say that there’s a reason people are so split about this movie. In some ways, I could argue that TRoS is trying to be its own stand-alone thing, and it does so by shoving in way too many plot beats and new characters without enough development or even a satisfactory conclusion for them...and yet at the same time, it tries so hard to evoke the original trilogy like The Force Awakens did, whether through iconography, cameos, or other kinds of fanservice. To put it very simply, if you disliked The Last Jedi, you might come out enjoying this more, since this movie and its director clearly shared your view, but even if The Last Jedi is a flawed film, I feel it still ended up having better direction, character arcs, and storytelling than this film did.

For those of you who don’t fear spoilers...journey on.

The Good!

+Just like in the other installments in this new trilogy, there were some great action moments. I liked when Kylo and Rey were fighting over the First Order ship with the Force, pulling it back and forth like they had previously done with Anakin’s lightsaber. Poe’s lightspace jumping in the Millennium Falcon was a cool trick, and I actually really enjoyed the short suspenseful bit with Poe, Finn, Rey, and the droids sneaking around in the wintry planet Kijimi, too.

+The trick at the end where Rey passed Kylo Anakin’s lightsaber through the Force and the two battled side-by-side while in different locations was neat. I might’ve liked to see that trick used differently (see below), but it was still really cool.

+Poe and Finn were acting like SUCH boyfriends during this entire movie. I don’t care how much “NO HOMO” J.J. tried to slap on these guys in the script (and I’ll discuss that in a minute), these two were friggin’ boyfriends and that was canon, end of story.

+I liked that Leia was able to mentor Rey, and Leia’s death was appropriately sad. It felt like I was mourning Carrie all over again, especially since we’re so close to the anniversary of her death.

+It was kind of cool to see Luke’s old X-Wing again. I might’ve had it reappear in a different way, but it was still cool.

+Rey hearing all of the Jedi in her head for the first time when she was facing Palpatine at the end was great. I might’ve pushed it further and made it more visually interesting, but I’ll get to that in the more negative section.

+For all of the rather unnecessary fanservice, there were a few music cues that really worked -- namely, the Imperial March echo when Rey arrived in the old throne room on the Death Star, Leia’s theme upon her death, and the Jedi theme when Poe saw the fleet of reinforcements arriving.

The Not-So-Good...

+The Reylo-ness of it all. *dodges knives* OKAY. LISTEN --

If you’re a Reylo shipper, then good for you. I mean that sincerely. But I’m sorry, I am convinced that this ending could only have been satisfying to you if you were on the Reylo ship from the very start due to your own personal shipping preferences, because there is NOTHING in the films that justifies the powerful emotional bond that these two supposedly share. Rey and Kylo only met two movies ago, and in both movies, Kylo showed no interest in improving himself and being a better person. None. I don’t care if Rey “sensed” goodness in him -- that is a terrible, weak short-cut for a writer to use, to tell us that Kylo is good without showing it to us. We still see him slaughter people en masse in the very first scene of this movie. We still see him trying to force Rey to join him, even if it puts the people she cares about in danger. We still see him hooking up with Palpatine -- FRIGGIN’ PALPATINE -- after he’d only just rid himself of Snoke. I don’t care if Kylo thinks he can get rid of Palpatine like he did with Snoke -- I don’t care if he’s conflicted and worried about Rey -- we the audience see no evidence that Kylo has truly changed his ways and is worth saving. Leia SACRIFICED HER LIFE to try to help him -- for what?? I know she’s his mother, but I’m sorry, Leia: if your husband couldn’t save your son from himself, why would you be able to? Why didn’t you almost dying in The Last Jedi not affect your son more, if he really cared? Why was calling his name all you had to do? Why didn’t you do that before he started killing all these people? Because it wasn’t dramatically convenient? Because he was fighting Rey at that exact moment and the writers needed to find a way to end that action scene that otherwise could’ve ended with either Rey or Kylo dying? And I’m sorry, but this whole storyline resulted in the one thing I’d dreaded more than anything would happen in a story that shipped these two -- Rey became a tool to Kylo’s redemption. Rather than standing apart as someone with no legacy who builds her own through being a good, noble person, she became defined by her familial and romantic relationships more than she was by her actions. I know Rey ended up defeating Palpatine in the end, but most of her screentime still ended up devoted to her “bond” with Kylo Ren and showed how her love brought him back to the Light. Because seriously, screw the love Kylo’s parents showed him, or Luke showed him -- all they did was sacrifice themselves trying to help him while also standing by their morals and never being tempted to fall like Kylo did -- no, only Rey could’ve brought him back to the side of Good.

And before any of you even try to wave the Sith Lord of my Heart, Darth Vader, in my face, as Snoke said in The Last Jedi, Kylo Ren is no Vader. Vader was tethered to the Empire and to the Emperor, thanks to the injuries he sustained on Mustafar that left him trapped inside his mechanical suit -- if he’d left the Empire, he would’ve died, and on top of all that, he’d already lost his entire family and turned everyone he’d ever cared about -- who were all Jedi -- against him by falling to the Dark Side. Vader had been Anakin -- a slave who was bought out of enslavement by the Jedi, who then turned around and taught him to -- to borrow a phrase -- “conceal, don’t feel,” even if it meant turning a blind eye to the death of his wife and unborn child. Kylo Ren turned to the Dark Side because...honestly? WE NEVER GET A GOOD ANSWER. The best I can get from the films is that Kylo Ren was manipulated by Snoke, who went on and on about how powerful Kylo was and how he should use that power to “bring order to the galaxy” and stuff like that, and then one night Luke held a lit lightsaber over his head for a minute. That justifies falling to the Dark Side and slaughtering all the wittle Jedi? No! And yet Kylo never once has to grapple with what he did -- he never has to make amends. He’s just forgiven, like that! And although Vader likewise never got the chance to make amends, his sacrifice means more than Kylo’s because Vader, through his sacrifice, finally learned the true meaning of love after an entire lifetime of knowing so little of it. The only people who had ever loved Anakin either died or left him -- Kylo always had people who were willing to forgive him, and he spat in their faces. Vader had no one, until his son discovered who he was and tried to reach out to him. And when he reached out, Vader didn’t stab him through the chest or immediately brand him with the murder of his evil master -- Vader followed orders and brought Luke before the Emperor, yes, but when Luke was about to die, Vader saved him.

Kylo Ren’s story could not and SHOULD NOT be Vader’s story, so giving him the same ending is completely unjustified and mismatched with the story being told. Even if the story of a girl and a guy saving each other with “the power of love” was somehow equal in emotional resonance to that of a son trying to reconnect with his father and his father sacrificing his life to save him, that story of a guy and a girl was not built up properly, as we never get much backstory about why Kylo fell, much action on his part to acknowledge his mistakes, or rationale for why we should care about him despite what a terrible person he was and still is. He cares about Rey -- great! Does he care about the Resistance? Leia? Luke? Han? Lando? Chewie? ANYBODY excluding himself and Rey? Han as a Force Ghost at one point suggests that Leia will never die as long as they remember what she stood for -- since when is that something KYLO REN ever cared about?! Leia DESPISED the Empire and Darth Vader, and yet Kylo Ren and the First Order have done nothing but wrap themselves up in their rhetoric and iconography!

On that note, though, I will acknowledge that Kylo Ren, as a character, has always given me certain troubling real-world-like vibes, and that may be part of the reason why it really infuriates me that the movie tried to redeem him. Kylo Ren is a privileged young man from a respected, powerful family who embraces and romanticizes the atrocities of a previous generation, resents others (rather appropriately, a young woman and black man with no greatness in their family names) for taking what should be “rightfully his,” and vows to bring things back to when that previous evil institution was in its full glory -- isn’t that exactly what modern alt-right Neo-Nazi types do? Romanticize the Third Reich and the Klan and wrap themselves up in their supposed “glory,” while being nothing but a pale, pathetic, anger-driven imitation? Even if you don’t personally see Kylo the same way I do, I hope you will at least respect that -- given this lens I see the character through -- it makes sense why I dislike any attempt to give this character sympathy.

+ *inhales heavily* ...Rey...is a Palpatine. *groans in aggravation* J.J., ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS? Did you not get why Rian Johnson made Rey’s backstory the way he did, or were you just so in-line with anti-TLJ fans that you wanted to spit in his face in film-form? I know a lot of people were pissed off when Rey was determined to be a “nobody” after what felt like hints of a more developed backstory in TFA, but I seriously can’t help but think that those people missed the point. Rey being a nobody and yet being talented in the Force fixed the whole problem brought up by the Midiclorians in the prequel trilogy -- namely, the thought that you can only be born special, because of your genes. With Rey not being a Kenobi, or a Skywalker, or a Palpatine, it says, “Yes -- you don’t need to have been born special. Anyone can tap into the Force, because it is everything, as are we.” This is even why it’s hinted in previous movies (and once or twice in this movie, though it doesn’t go anywhere) that Finn is Force-sensitive -- Finn, a ex-Stormtrooper! But by turning Rey into a Palpatine all along, J.J. has once again made the Force only something that a select few can tap into -- only special people can have the power needed to stand up to evil. Sure, ordinary people like Poe and Finn can blow things up, but only special people like the Skywalkers and the Palpatines can stop the Sith from destroying the entire rebellion. Instead of this being a story about a girl who had no legacy and yet earned the title of heir to the Skywalker legacy purely through her noble heart and selfless deeds, this became a story of two people -- one from a good family and one from an evil family -- having to come together to deal with their family drama and save the galaxy. Maybe some people wanted to see that from the start, but frankly I didn’t, and even if that story could’ve been told well, it was not the story that we were set up to watch, after we saw The Last Jedi. It also irritates me because of how much the film tries to play Rey’s parents SELLING HER ON JAKKU as them “saving her” from Palpatine. I call BULL. Even Luke was only “saved” from Vader by being given to relatives on a backwater planet -- Rey’s parents ABANDONED her. If you thought that Frozen 2 retconning Elsa and Anna’s parents’ attitudes toward Elsa’s magic was problematic, whoa, boy, have a gander at this. (I actually kind of like Agnarr and Iduna as individual characters in Frozen 2, but I actively have to distance Frozen from its sequel because of canon discrepancies like this.) Rey’s parents didn’t need to have a “good reason” for dropping her off on Jakku -- this film even acknowledges that Rey’s real family is the family she found: Finn, Poe, BB-8, Chewie, Leia, and the Resistance. Rey’s parents could’ve been assholes. Many people’s parents are assholes. Rey is not their child anymore: she is a Skywalker, and that’s all that matters.

+Oh yeah, and speaking of The Last Jedi, NOTHING matches up in this. J.J. literally wrote two complete movies and shoved them together in this one in a vain attempt to completely retcon the last film. Poe earning back his position in the rebellion after learning a lesson about not always barreling into danger without thinking? His character arc has vanished and he shows no more talent for strategy or leadership than he did before. Rey only seeing herself when she was looking for her family? Nope, turns out she was a Palpatine all along: the Force was just trolling her, I guess. Kylo accusing Rey of killing Snoke? Doesn’t come up at all. The young boy using the Force to pick up the broom? Never appears. The signal sent across the galaxy asking for help? Poe says half-way through the movie that nobody came, so it may as well have never happened. Rose and Finn? No mention of the kiss on Krait or anything -- they act like they barely know each other, and Rose has almost no screentime. Even Lando’s return, which should’ve been great, happens when he appears on this random India-like desert planet -- why was he there? Why does he no longer live in Cloud City? Wasn’t he its leader? Wouldn’t he have better fit in a planet like Canto Bight, one that was glitzy and kind of seedy, instead of a pastoral place like that? It’s like reading the first six books in the Harry Potter series, only to end on a version of Deathly Hallows where -- surprise! -- Hermione was actually a pureblood witch all along and she’s actually related to the Lestranges and also Hagrid pops up in Godric’s Hollow to save Hermione and Harry from Nagini for no reason at all, plus Ginny is just a side character now and the author seems to want you to think Harry likes Hermione even if Ron and Harry totally have more chemistry but NO HOMO YOU GUYS COME ON.

+Hahaha, on that note, WOW, have I never seen a film more desperate to try to prove to its audience that its two male main characters are not totally boyfriends. Even though J.J. decided to placate angry fanboys by rather unfairly marginalizing Rose Tico (come on, she may not have been written the best in Last Jedi, but you’re not going to fix that by IGNORING HER ALL TOGETHER), he still thought it best to introduce two new female characters, Zorii and Jannah, who both could’ve been very interesting if they’d had their proper amount of screentime and development, but instead only serve to be substitute “love interests” for Poe and Finn. That might sound harsh, but they literally have no other substantial relationships that get explored in this movie outside of the ones with their respective “guy.” It felt like the film was going, “Look -- Poe’s not gay! He’s got history with this chick, and he gives her a look at the end! And look -- Finn’s not gay! He might’ve been trying to confess his feelings to Rey which totally made his not-boyfriend uber jealous BUT THEY’RE NOT GAY YOU GAIS, and he’s doing stuff with this girl, who was also a Stormtrooper!” Sorry, film, but methinks you doth protest too much. (Even Poe’s actor Oscar Isaac apparently thinks so.)

+Another theme from The Last Jedi that I loved and J.J. clearly didn’t is that the dichotomy between “Jedi” and “Sith” doesn’t inherently equate “good” vs. “evil,” and therefore just because the Sith are evil, it doesn’t mean that the Jedi -- who preached detachment from all affectionate emotions and familial ties -- were right. Even the Resistance is flawed. It’s actually something the prequels and the Clone Wars TV show preach too, and it brings so much more grayness to the Star Wars mythos. In The Rise of Skywalker, however, the Jedi and the Resistance are just seen as the good guys, period, end of story. Who cares if it results in your story being shockingly simplistic and oddly shallow, when compared to the rest of the Star Wars universe?

+The treatment of the Stormtroopers in this movie was actually kind of infuriating. We consistently get reminders about how the First Order’s Stormtroopers were child soldiers who were stolen from their homes and brainwashed, as evident by both Finn and Jannah, and yet throughout the entire movie, they still get cut down in the hundreds without care. Even Finn -- an ex-Stormtrooper himself -- shoots them up like they’re NPCs in a video game! For a film trilogy that did something so powerful by showing the humanity underneath the white helmet, we sure got a film that didn’t give a shit about these people unless they had their helmets off.

+Speaking of the First Order, I saw the Hux-as-the-traitor “twist” coming and I hated finding out that I was right. Honestly it could’ve been played very interestingly if Hux maybe tried to overthrow Kylo and take over the First Order himself, therefore showing how Kylo’s fear-stoking and hatred don’t bring out any loyalty in his followers, but it only results in Hux immediately getting axed off and replaced with another First Order officer we’ve never seen in any of the previous films and therefore don’t care about. Why couldn’t we have reused D.J. the hacker from the previous movie as the spy, or better yet, have the “spy” actually be Kylo, leaking information that he thinks might coax Rey to the Dark Side? The last two films built Hux up as an interesting character, but he was tossed out even more unceremoniously than Commodore Norrington was in the Pirates films.

+This problem of “replacing one antagonist with another out of the blue” is replicated on a large scale with the return of Palpatine. This entire film series has been centered on Kylo Ren and the First Order, but all of a sudden, out of nowhere, we’re just expected to turn all of our focus onto Palpatine and the Knights of Ren, both of whom have had no bearing on the story previously. It could’ve been cool to learn more about the Knights of Ren, but we don’t learn anything about them -- we just see them suddenly being there, when they’d never been there previously. As for Palpatine...did we REALLY need him brought back? Really? The First Order was a threat because they’d wrapped themselves up in their romanticized, false view of the Empire -- that was a choice they made. It didn’t have to be because Palpatine was secretly alive all along and was pulling the strings -- people can do things of their own accord, without a grand, evil mastermind coming back from the dead out of nowhere. Kylo Ren finally got out from under Snoke’s shadow in The Last Jedi and I was so excited to see him come into his own as a villain, but instead all he did was skirt around the coat-tails of Palpatine the entire movie, and it was really disappointing. I WANTED a final confrontation between Kylo and Rey in the climax, like the films had been building up to -- instead all we got was a half-baked “redemption” for Kylo where he teams up with Rey to fight somebody else who just wandered into the story out of nowhere. Even Palpatine’s plot didn’t make any sense -- he tells Kylo for the first half of the movie that they need to kill Rey even though Kylo really wants her to turn to the Dark Side instead, only for Palpatine to (I guess) change his mind at the last minute when Rey arrives in his lair, and yet they play it off as him having planned for that to happen all along because he needs Rey to kill him so she can become one with him and all of the other Sith -- look, I know Palpatine’s whole characterization is hinged on him being a criminal mastermind, but all I want is some consistency! How are we supposed to know what the threat is if we don’t know what our villains want?

+“The Force” is used to rationalize a lot in this movie, from where Rey decides to walk to what plot devices our heroes will need later to why our characters do what they do. Even Finn, who in The Force Awakens accented that he made a choice to break away from the First Order because he saw what he was doing was wrong, now apparently believes that the Force decided that he should join up with Poe and Rey...and I just don’t like that, let alone buy it. The Force was never equivalent to “destiny” -- yes, Anakin was the Chosen One, but he only fulfilled it because the Jedi believed in it enough to train him and he fulfilled the prophecy in a way no one could’ve imagined...and even so, the Force doesn’t dictate everything. Everything is part of the Force, and the Force is part of everything -- but it shouldn’t just be a deus-ex-machina that moves the plot along or does whatever the author needs it to do. For instance, why can the Force suddenly heal wounds?? Since when is that something it can do?? If it could do that, and someone largely self-taught like Rey can do it, then why didn’t Jedi Master Anakin or Obi-Wan ever do that? Why didn’t Anakin use some of his life force to save his dying mother? Why didn’t he think to use it on Padme, or why didn’t Obi-Wan use it on Padme? Why didn’t Luke think to use it to save his father? The only reason why the Force can do that now is that the writers needed to justify why Kylo could give up his remaining life force for Rey, but in order to do that, they give the Force an ability it’s never had previously and doesn’t match up with the previous canon.

+If we’re talking about the Force, though, I have to write a separate bullet point accenting this -- WHY. DOESN’T. FINN. USE IT?? The film clearly likes the thought of Finn being Force-sensitive, but it’s too cowardly to just make Finn a Jedi. When Kylo and Rey were fighting over the ship, why didn’t Finn do something to help?? Why didn’t he blast Kylo or, more relevantly to this discussion, show off some of his latent Force talent by helping Rey yank the ship back? Why didn’t Finn use his Force ability to reach out to Rey while she was fighting Kylo, or fighting Palpatine? He could’ve been the one to wield Anakin’s lightsaber and fight side by side with Rey in that final battle, if Kylo had been the villain like he should’ve been. Maybe Finn confronts Commander Hux inside the command post while Rey’s fighting Kylo, and when Rey tries one last time to connect with the Jedi of the past, she’s able to connect to all of the Jedi, living or dead -- including Finn, as he also has been nurturing a talent in the Force! Through their new mental connection, Rey and Finn are able to help each other, while also being surrounded and spurred on by the corporeal, translucent spirits of Anakin, Obi-Wan, Yoda, Mace Windu, Ahsoka Tano, and the rest, all appearing and disappearing one after another around Finn and Rey as they fight. Poe should’ve been commanding the troops from above in Luke’s old X-Wing, it being the only ship he could get his hands on (because I’m sorry -- Han gave Rey the Falcon, she should be the one using it, yet this film just stubbornly kept her out of the driver’s seat for some reason), giving them all of the support he could from the air so that the rest of the First Order can’t interfere with the four-way duel between Finn, Rey, Kylo, and Hux. Maybe when the electricity in the ships gets messed up, Poe’s even able to remember something Rey or Finn told him to tap into the Force enough himself to keep himself airborne until he’s able to crash-land safely. While Hux and Kylo fight to destroy their opponents individually, each seeking glory and victory solely for themselves, Rey and Finn fight together as friends, taking lessons from the Jedi that are their mentors but also standing apart from them and being better than them.

+This movie really felt like two stories smashed together because there were way too many plot lines that were dropped like a hot potato not long after they were introduced. Finn having something to tell Rey? No conclusion. 3PO getting his memory wiped? Resolved quickly a few scenes later with little fall-out. Chewie supposedly getting killed? We find out within minutes that he survived. All of the new characters we meet, like Zorii and Jannah? They get one or two short scenes each where we barely get to know them at all. Even the India-inspired planet I mentioned earlier gets blown up because the First Order thinks it’ll upset the Rebellion and get them to come out of hiding, but...this film is the first time we’ve even seen this planet! We barely spent any time on it! This is really the obvious first choice of a planet whose destruction would upset the Rebellion? We don’t even know any of the characters who live on it personally! At least when Alderaan got blown up, Leia’s parents were on it, so we feel sad for Leia’s sake, but we haven’t built up any emotional investment in that planet that was just blown up.

+Along with this movie feeling like it had too much stuff in it, it also felt very, VERY long. The pacing was very bad, with there being no organic rise and fall to the action and the climax really just feeling like a bunch of plot turns stacked haphazardly on top of each other. When I came out of the theater, I even heard a little boy say to his dad, “That was really long,” and I had to agree with him. It’s not even that long compared to other Star Wars movies, but I just felt like I was being yanked around by the arm throughout the entire run-time, so rather than feeling invested in what was happening, I found myself tuning out and wanting the filmmakers to just get to a point.

Overall, I really don’t think I can recommend this movie. Every Star Wars fan should probably see it, and it’s possible that quite a few of you might get more out of it than me if you disliked The Last Jedi and want to see a movie that “sticks it” to that movie for whatever reason...but even if you do, surely you would agree that stories should not be written like this, where one part is completely invalidated by another and there’s no build-up for anything that happens? Stories should not be just something that you’re passively pulled through by the author -- they should engage you: make you feel for the characters, make you think about its themes, make you guess what might happen next. A story doesn’t mean less if you can make educated guesses about where the story might go if you see where it began -- it also doesn’t mean less if it subverts old literary or canon tropes. But this movie didn’t subvert anything -- instead it openly contradicted and retconned just about everything in the last movie, to the point that Rise of Skywalker clearly wanted to be two movies but didn’t have enough development or care put into it that could prompt a real emotional reaction from its audience. In short, it ended up being an overly complicated, watered-down retread of Return of the Jedi with none of the power in its supposedly “bittersweet” ending. The first two installments in this trilogy got me excited for a new take on Star Wars, to the extent that I for the first time actively looked into the fandom surrounding the films instead of just enjoying the films on my own. It’s therefore quite disappointing to me that the trilogy had to end on such a weak, petering note.

Overall Grade: D

[samueldays]

A persistent elision

Related to that previous post, let’s look a bit more closely at how consistently the Pulitzer-Winning Respectable Sources lie by omission. I’m going to look at the NYT in particular. Here’s a formatted Google search which finds their mentions of “Trayvon Martin” in the past year, so you can experiment yourself with filters and personalized search results.

https://www.google.com/search?q=trayvon+martin+site:nytimes.com&tbs=qdr:y

How often do they say Martin was committing violent assault upon George Zimmerman, and Zimmerman shot in self-defense? Surely that’s an important fact that should prevent one holding up Martin as a poor innocent victim and an example of the terrible racism supposedly keeping blacks down.

The first is a meta-page with no content, just links to other pages.

The first page there doesn’t mention Martin’s assault.

Since the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012, Mr. Leonardo, a Queens-born artist, has focused on social justice art, dealing with issues like the numbers of black and Latino men in prison, racial inequality, police use of force. “I Can’t Breathe” is a self-defense workshop where participants learn how to escape the chokehold that killed Mr. Garner, as Mr. Leonardo tells them that police will interpret self-defense as resisting arrest.

Not the second either.

Since Trayvon Martin was killed in 2012, the deaths of black people at the hands of law enforcement or white vigilantism (and the drawn-out cases that result from them) have consistently dominated news cycles, often graphically so. Cellphones, Facebook Live and even Snapchat have been crucial in uncovering how these events occurred.

The third also ignores the assault, tangentially mentioning Zimmerman:

After Mr. Martin was killed, the police invoked the Stand Your Ground law when they initially declined to arrest George Zimmerman, who had fired the weapon. Mr. Zimmerman argued that he acted in self-defense but did not offer a Stand Your Ground case. He was acquitted when a jury found he was justified in pulling the trigger.

The fourth is the most honest so far, and I credit it:

The Florida law came under scrutiny after the police invoked it in declining to arrest George Zimmerman after he fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012. Mr. Zimmerman said he shot Mr. Martin in self-defense after the teenager punched him, slammed his head against the sidewalk and knocked him to the ground. A jury found Mr. Zimmerman not guilty of murder or manslaughter charges in 2013.

The fifth is right back to wringing its hands over the poor innocent dindu nuffin in a way that ideally should discredit BLM, but in practice credits Martin. “Confrontation.”

Mr. Arbery was killed three days before the anniversary of the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed African-American teenager whose confrontation with a Florida neighborhood watch captain, George Zimmerman, helped ignite the Black Lives Matter movement.

The sixth, again, shows how Martin’s thuggery is largely irrelevant to his iconization.

LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Udonis Haslem called the team meeting. They had been talking about the killing of Trayvon Martin for a week or so, mulling over what it meant to them as black men, processing it as fathers, trying to formulate a response to it as athletes and role models. [...] “We are Trayvon Martin,” James captioned the photograph they took there, heads bowed and hoods up. The Heat would take the floor that night with calls for justice, and Martin’s name, scrawled on their sneakers. Other players in other cities soon added their support to the campaign.

The seventh google result I get is just the first link from the meta-page in the first result, which I covered already.

The eighth:

“Mom,” I said, “we are refugees.”

In 2013, when George Zimmerman was found not guilty of second degree murder in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin — a black child gunned down in his own neighborhood, branded a thug in a hoodie — I knew I had to leave America.

The racism that had become all too familiar to me as a black woman was too much to bear.

Ah, yes, the racism of shooting people who are beating one’s head in. Can you not bear the thought that you might accidentally knock a man to the ground, climb on top of him, punch him in the face, and then get shot by racism?

But I should blame the NYT, not the paranoid interviewee. This fear of “racism” is to a great extent driven by NYT and other propaganda.

The ninth article: 

MIAMI — The mother of Trayvon Martin joined hundreds of demonstrators at a rally in downtown Miami on Sunday, demanding racial equality following the death of George Floyd last month at the hands of a white police officer in Minnesota.

Sybrina Fulton joined the demonstrators who carried signs that read “Stop Killing Us” and “We Are All Equal” at the Torch of Friendship, a 60-year-old monument erected as a welcoming beacon to the city’s Latin American and Caribbean neighbors. The protest organized by several churches was one of several across Florida on Sunday.

Fulton’s unarmed son, Trayvon Martin, was killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer, George Zimmerman, while walking back from a central Florida convenience store in 2012. The teen’s killing helped plant the seeds of the Black Lives Matter movement, which grew after the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York.

“unarmed” and “while walking back”. (contemptuous spitting noises)

Finally, the tenth is by a law professor, rather than a garden-variety urinalist, and it’s still deceptive.

Despair over Michael Brown’s death and the fact that Mr. Wilson faced no criminal consequences for it catapulted the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter — first used in 2013 after the acquittal of George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin — into national consciousness. It catalyzed a cultural renaissance by drawing attention to the problem of police violence against and abuse of African-Americans and, more broadly, by celebrating blackness and protest.

If you hadn’t followed the evidence at trial, you might have concluded from this article that Zimmerman was getting away with murdering children, rather than Zimmerman being acquitted because Martin was first beating Zimmerman’s head hard enough to cause a fracture and two black eyes.

[snorinlauren]

The Best Horror Movies Streaming On Netflix Right Now

The number of digital platforms on which fans of horror movies can find a good scare is just as frightening as the films they have available to stream. In fact, there is even one that specializes in bringing the best the genre has to offer (and then some). Of course, for those who only have so much time and money at their disposal, settling on Netflix to help deliver the spooks would not be a mistake.

There are enough horror movies available on the popular platform to keep you streaming into the wee hours of the night, mainly because you will not be able to sleep. Among the many fears you would be facing during this binge with iconically creepy classics, modern masterpieces of the macabre, and even some of Netflix’s own ominous originals, one you should not have to worry about is the fear of disappointment.

That being said, we understand that some phobias are more challenging to get over than others, so allow us to be a beacon of despair and point you in the right direction of what the best horror movies currently available to stream on Netflix. We figured that 13 would be an appropriate number, starting with an influential cult favorite that arguably pioneered the “cabin in the woods” thriller.

The Evil Dead (1981)

A weekend getaway and an old cabin becomes an unrelenting nightmare for one man (Bruce Campbell) after his four friends are possessed by an ancient spirit that turns them into grotesque and cruel creatures.

Why It's A Good Option for Horror Fans: Writer and director Sam Raimi became the patron saint of low budget indie horror with The Evil Dead, that remains a timeless classic of astonishing influence that spawned two campy sequels, a brilliantly brutal remake, and a hilarious TV series that serves as a perfect send-off for Bruce Campbell's chainsaw-handed hero, Ash Williams.

Stream The Evil Dead on Netflix here.

Poltergeist (1982)

A family seeks help when their youngest daughter is kidnapped by malevolent spirits that have invaded their suburban home.

Why It's A Good Option for Horror Fans: From producer Steven Spielberg and directed by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre creator Tobe Hooper (well, depending on who you talk to), Poltergeist is an essential haunted house picture for how it expertly taps into traumas that people of all ages an relate to and may lead you to develop new fears as well, such as television static, perhaps.

Stream Poltergeist on Netflix here.

Child’s Play (1988)

A single mother (Catherine Hicks) enlists the aid of a homicide detective (Chris Sarandon) after discovering that the doll she bought for her young son (Alex Vincent) is possessed by the soul of a dead serial killer (Brad Dourif).

Why It's A Good Option for Horror Fans: Before there was Annabelle, there was Chucky, who may not have been the first toy responsible for giving children nightmares, but certainly became every horror fan's favorite of that kind upon the release of Child's Play, a classic slasher but pokes great fun at modern commercialism.

Stream Child's Play on Netflix here.

The Silence Of The Lambs (1991)

To catch a deranged murderer who skins his victims, ambitious FBI trainee Clarice Starling (Academy Award winner Jodie Foster) enlists Hannibal Lecter (Academy Award winner Anthony Hopkins), a former psychiatrist and notorious cannibal, to help get into the mind of a criminal.

Why It's A Good Option for Horror Fans: While the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences may prefer their choice for the Best Picture Oscar in 1992 not be called "horror," with Anthony Hopkins' chilling performance and breathlessly suspenseful direction by Jonathan Demme, it is hard to imagine The Silence of the Lambs in any other category.

Stream The Silence of the Lambs on Netflix here.

Candyman (1992)

A graduate student (Virginia Madsen) investigating Chicago myths for her college thesis becomes especially interested on the story of a supernatural entity with a hook for a hand whom locals believe can be summoned by saying his name five times.

Why It's A Good Option for Horror Fans: Tony Todd created quite a "buzz" in black horror history as the title character of Candyman, a creation from legendary writer Clive Barker based on the deliciously creepy concept of an urban legend whose existence depends on those who believe in him.

Stream Candyman on Netflix here.

Insidious (2011)

After their eldest son (Ty Simpkins) inexplicably falls into something even doctors hesitate to call a coma, a family (led by Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne) begins to fall prey to a relentless evil that seems to follow them whenever they try to escape.

Why It's A Good Option for Horror Fans: Director James Wan and writer Leigh Whannell, the dynamic duo behind Saw who have since gone onto great successes on their own, created an indelibly frightening new classic to the haunted house sub-genre with Insidious, particularly for a nearly unprecedented twist that might actually have you thankful when it keeps you up at night.

Stream Insidious on Netflix here.

Sinister (2012)

Desperate for another bestseller, a true crime writer (Ethan Hawke) moves his family into a house where a disturbing murder took place, which he plans to research for his latest masterpiece, only to learn that the truth behind the incident is much worse than he could have imagined.

Why It's A Good Option for Horror Fans: Oscar-nominee Ethan Hawke became an unexpected "scream king" after playing the tragic hero of Sinister, from Doctor Strange and The Exorcism of Emily Rose director Scott Derrickson, which is, arguably, the most ferociously unsettling supernatural crime thriller ever made.

Stream Sinister on Netflix here.

Creep (2014)

An amateur filmmaker accepts a request over Craigslist to film a terminally ill man's final message to his son, but quickly comes to regret the decision when his host's progressively concerning actions lead him to question if he is the one about to expire.

Why It's A Good Option for Horror Fans: Conceived by its own stars Mark Duplass and Patrick Brice (the latter of which also directs), Creep is an underrated found footage gem that mostly lives up to its name (with a almost equally haunting 2017 follow-up that is supposedly the second of a planned trilogy), but the biggest shocker is how mumblecore pioneers Duplass and Brice essentially improvised the entire story from scratch.

Stream Creep on Netflix here.

The Invitation (2015)

A man brings his girlfriend to a dinner party hosted by his ex-wife and her new lover, but is immediately, and unshakably, convinced that something sinister is afoot.

Why It's A Good Option for Horror Fans: As this tenuous, high-wire act from director Karen Kusama progresses, you may not be sure who among these party guests, even Logan Marshall Green's protagonist, is worth your trust, but one thing I can confidently guarantee is is that the final moment of The Invitation will rupture your brain.

Stream The Invitation on Netflix here.

Train To Busan (2016)

An emotionally distant businessman's commute for his young daughter to visit her mother turns out to be a one-way trip into hell when someone carrying a virus turning people into mindless cannibals invites herself on board.

Why It's A Good Option for Horror Fans: Not only is the live-action debut of Korean filmmaker Sang-ho Yeon’s one of the most exciting and clever zombie films in recent memory, but Train to Busan, which has spawned a highly anticipated sequel, also succeeds as a moving thriller about the sacrifices we make for ones we love.

Stream Train to Busan on Netflix here.

Terrifier (2017)

Two beautiful late night partygoers (Jenna Kanell and Catherine Corcoran) are in for the worst Halloween of their lives when they fall prey to an unfriendly clown who has plenty of sadistic trick and treats in store for them.

Why It's A Good Option for Horror Fans: If you ask me, Pennywise has nothing on Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton), the future slasher icon whom the title of Terrifier appropriately refers to for his whimsically morbid imagination and tenacious blood thirst that makes director Damien Leone’s third feature a masterpiece of unapologetic shock and "ugh."

Stream Terrifier on Netflix here.

In The Tall Grass (2019)

A pregnant woman (Laysla De Oliveira) and her brother (Avery Whitted) follow a young boy's cry for help into a large field of high-growing grass, but it soon it becomes apparent that there is no way out.

Why It's A Good Option for Horror Fans: Based on a novella by father/son writing duo Stephen King and Joe Hill, In the Tall Grass is a survivalist thriller with startling fantasy, engrossing mystery, and a menacing performance by "scream king" and The Conjuring star Patrick Wilson that makes this Netflix original one of the coolest surprises in horror of its year.

Stream In the Tall Grass on Netflix here.

Tucker And Dale Vs. Evil (2010)

An idyllic vacation in newly purchased cabin turns into "a real doozy of a day" for a pair of well-meaning hillbillies (Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine) after an awkward misunderstanding with some young campers leads to a bloodbath.

Why It's A Good Option for Horror Fans: The old slasher trope of shady country folk is turned on its head in a most brilliantly hilarious, yet uncompromisingly graphic, way in Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, which may prove to be perfect way to end your Netflix horror binge: with a morbid laugh.

Stream Tucker And Dale Vs. Evil on Netflix here.

What do you think? Have we captured all the best haunts on Netflix, or is the absence of your own favorite horror flick the scariest thing you saw on our list? Let us know in the comments and be sure to check back for additional information and updates on the freakiest genre in cinema, as well as even more rattling recommendations of movies and TV shows you can stream, here on CinemaBlend.

What is you favorite horror film currently available to stream on Netflix?

[bloody-fists-beating-hearts]

It’s a Fallout76/Bethesda rant

Bethesda just released Fallout 1st, a horseshit pay-to-win subscription system for their absolute cum-bubble of a game, and while it’s getting the flack it deserves there are people already putting on their kneepads so they can gobble down Todd Howards entire turgid cock, and as someone who likes rpg’s way too much this irked me, so have a massive and barely coherent rant i took off the discord because why not.

I want to start off with this:  Every good thing about current fallout comes from the fanbase. The stories people tell, the headcanons, the fanfics, the art, everything fans do for it is made with more love, and more thought, than anything Bethesda’s writing and games design team has done in the last 10 years

Now first of all, I haven’t bought or played 76. People are gonna stop me right there and go ”well you haven’t bought it how would you know its bad!!” yeah, I’ve never eaten dog shit either but I can pretty well guess that I ain’t gonna fucking like it.

I knew the second he said "there are no npcs" with actual enthusiasm that this game was gonna be shit. And if you give me 2 seconds to gloat, I never bought the game and I knew this was gonna happen and I was RIGHT so suck my fat hairy nuts all those fanboys who pre-order things mindlessly just because there's a brand name attached to it. If there is anything you take from this its DO NOT PREORDER. BRAND LOYALTY IS FOR BOOMERS AND BOOTLICKERS. FOR FUCKS SAKE BE SMART WITH YOUR MONEY.

Games like this are fucking 80-90 dollars or more in Australia so I actually have to think about whether this momentary distraction is worth almost an entire days paycheck, and I’m still looking for employment which means I actually haven’t bought shit in a while (side note, anyone wants to commission me for 10 dollars I’ll draw damn near anything. God I need to make rent)

Every executive at Bethesda seems to be playing catch-up to EA's monetisation scheme. Beth has abandoned their model of single-player rpg's in favour of a "games as a service" model. Fallout 76 seems to me like its a weird experiment for just how far they can stretch this and still make money. It actually makes me wonder if they are 

 a) just completely unaware of fanbase response [no idea HOW]

b) are running into financial problems and are doing this out of desperation

 c) todd howard is still mad that obsidian made a better fallout than he ever could and he's doing this out of spite 

  Games as a whole has become much like the movie industry where publishers will throw big buckets of cash around to development teams, and those teams have CEO's and higher ups that throw lavish meet n greets and have nice fancy suits and cars and then treat their development teams like shit, overworking them to the point of exhaustion, because the product has to be on time for release dates that are scheduled to be the most profitable (christmas is a notable one). 

And those products are consistently bland, shitty, shallow experiences. Narrative cum-dumpsters that are purposefully made to toe the line as safely as possible, to be open to as wide as an audience as possible so they can make the most money, and Bethesda is a huge offender. Skyrim was fun, sure, but it was watered down to fuck, it had shitty dialogue, it had bland one-note characters, it had a simplified skill system. It was impossible to lose. Seriously, try and fail a fucking quest in skyrim, other than one or two, it's a hand-holder of an rpg, but it has a huge community of fans that put in monumental effort, for free, because they like the Elder Scrolls, and they like the world bethesda made. 

  Then Bethesda goes "hey, that watered down thing we made got huge! lets release it about 12 more fucking times, with some of the SAME bugs, with the SAME content, with the SAME limitations and Yes, we absolutely expect you to pay for it, again. Then they release the remastered edition which, to their credit, is free to anyone who already bought the legendary edition (on PC), and does actually have updated 64bit capability and some graphical enhancements (that aren't anywhere near what some goober in his basement cooked up in his spare time, but whatever). Then, seeing that Skyrim was so popular, with kids especially, and made money, they turn their sights to fallout 4, a game that was so anticipated that someone made a fake countdown and caused a small meltdown on tumblr/social media when it was revealed to be fake (i was part of that fiasco, i remember the hype, i was there goddamnit)

So Fallout, a franchise that literally has its theme as its FUCKING TAGLINE, an ADULT game that is equal parts crude, gory and humorous. A game that satirises the cold war era of american my-country-tis-of-thee blind loyalty and openly mocks the way war was idealised, and shows that not even the literal end of the world could either stop humanity's lust for blood or its desire for conquest. Games that showed you the growth of the world - from shady sands to the NCR, from the vault dweller to arroyo, shit actually happened in the games, the world didn't just stop turning when the bombs dropped. A game where you you become a porn star for fucks sake, and it's funny. 

So Bethesda sees that, makes something like it (fallout 3) which is good, but a little rough around the edges when you look at it too hard. But the way they suck you into the vault, the way they build a relationship with your dad and your way of life is immersive as fuck, so when you leave the place you actually feel like you're leaving something important, not just finishing the tutorial

then they outsource a Fallout game to obsidian, because hey, we saved your franchise by buying it off you, but if you can make an entire game in one year and get a metacritic score of 85 we'll even throw in a bonus. And fuck me sideways and in the ear, if the obsidian devs didn't work themselves harder than a 4-armed hooker. And they made a game that on release was a clusterfuck of bugs, because they were given an unrealistic time limit and missed the metacritic score by ONE POINT so bethesda goes "nhey heh sucks to suck" and fucks them off the franchise forever. EXCEPT (and I admit I'm biased here) the game is good. The game is actually really good when you remove those bugs, and people start forming attachments to it, and mentioning how bad fallout 3's writing is by extension. 

  So Todd and Co. in his infinite wisdom, decide that the only thing a fallout rpg needs is 50s aesthetic and fuck all else, and he releases a game so watered down it can't even be called an rpg. And its not. There are no skills. There are barely any dialogue checks. Instead of dialogue, Nate/Nora is a flat, samrish individual that is either "yes sir right away sir may i have another", "yes but i'm gonna make an unfunny quip about it" "this option pretends to say no but its gonna give you the quest marker anyway". 

The game drops any pretence of difficulty by giving you a deathclaw, a minigun and some power armour in the first 10 minutes, allowing you to effectively reach late-game power levels with some minor scavenging for ammo or cores. Then the game ropes you into some inter-faction war that realistically you wouldn't give a shit about, because some spud in a cowboy hat fucking deputizes you into a military general because you shot like 4 raiders from a rooftop (with a minigun. in power armour. making you nigh-invulnerable to bullets). You're sad about your son about 3 times the whole game and then you're on your merry way to mowing down humans left right and center without a care in the world. God fallout 4's writing is so stupid it gives me an aneurysm.

 Remember the part about resources wars and america only having the veneer of a strong country while riots, inflation, and resource shortages tore it apart from within? Bethesda doesn't, have an eerily stepford pastel coloured glimpse at a world that was totally fine, nothing wrong here, shame it got nuked oh well moving on

Your spouse? yeah you love them, they're said 2 whole sentences to you then they died, be sad because you totally loved them and it is totally sad that they are dead. Your weird play-dough son shaun, you love him so much, you even tickled him on the chin once, okay he's gone off you go to chase him - woah now, don't chase him too hard we have all these side quests for you to do! What would be the narrative reasoning for a supposedly distraught parent to fuck around boston instead of finding their goddamn child? fuck knows! just go pick up some goddamn wood and get to base building sonny-jim! 

Companions? yeah, they're fun, we gave them a romance questline and it's thus: if you pick enough locks and pass a minor charisma check maccready will be ready and willing to tell you about his sick child, and then he'll ride you like a stallion. Talk to him like, 4 times, and he will be your bosom buddy for life in about 3-5 days if you just pick locks like a fucking madman, because character growth is hard and counting beans is easy.

 Also your son is a part of the faction we were talking about! something about synths, remember that one questline from rivet city that barely anyone actually remembers and was an interesting time waster at best? Well get ready to do that same quest but about! 15! more! times! because we could not think of anything else to write about synthetically produced humans that assume peoples identities other than having them as a hamfisted metaphor for slavery. Why do they take over people's identies? Well because the institute needs them to aasdkfjdh kshshshsh t9oe of course. 

Speaking of hamfisted metaphors, here's the underground railroad, named after the underground railroad that actually mattered, except this time its the same thing but synths. They are so top secret that the only way to find them is to follow the only bright red line in a street that is exclusively green-brown otherwise, and then enter their super secret password, which is "password"

They are then, like every other faction, absolutely willing to trust you, at face value, no questions asked, because have to actually do something or require a skill check might make this hard for people under the age of 12 to play. Then you go do whatever fuckin shit you do, I stopped playing at this point, and then you find out your son is actually 60, you guys have a tearful, 10 sentence reunion, then he diesthe whole reason you were out here in the first place dies, and you react appropriately, which is to say you say his name really sadly, and then go back to mowing down raiders with reckless abandon

And then 76 gets released, bethesda drops all pretense of fallout still being an rpg. You want a story? Fuck you, pay up. Its retro future and thats all that makes falloutSatirizing war mongering? You can nuke things in this game and its totally fine, its actually the goal, because fallout has nukes in it right? Pay us 10 dollars and you get army olive drab spraypaint because hurrgh war is fun and great, wasnt that the tagline from the first game?The more i rant the more angry i am because people put their heart and soul into writing this. The lore and dialogue is actual work that someone researched and loved and felt proud of and now  it's becoming a hilariously meta parody of itself. 

Honestly FUCK bethesda and and fuck todd howard for his pisspoor cash grab. Not even worth calling it a video game anymore