Keith is good at compartmentalizing. Always has been. Sure, he’s not always great at emotional regulation, but when the serious shit pops up? Under lock and key it goes, to be brought out only late at night when he’s feeling sorry for himself and wants to make things worse.
(Okay. His coping mechanisms could be better.)
(He’s doing his best, alright? Life is hard.)
But sometimes, his compartments get too damn full. His brain just gets so cluttered with shit that he has no boxes left to shove the hard shit into, and he just has to handle it. It always sucks. It’s always a million times worse than his late night freak-outs.
This one in particular, though?
This one takes the cake.
If one were to steal a probably-dusty manila file from the desk one of the social workers for the State of Arizona, labelled ‘Keith Akira Kogane’, they would see, clearly labelled, a section called ‘ORPHAN’. Under that section would be a subheading — ‘Death of Father’. If this person were to read further, they would discover that officially, according to the Arizona State Reporting District, Texas Kogane died tragically trying to put out a house fire in the line of duty. His son waited three days for him to return home before walking to the fire station and demanding to see his father, and was then swiftly picked up and brought to the Grass Hills Region Arizona State Social Services Office, and assigned a group home after speaking to a child psychologist and social worker.
That story is, almost entirely, false.
Keith’s father did die tragically and heroically in the line of duty. It was a particularly brutal house fire, and Texas did manage to save the family that was trapped, at the cost of his own life.
What the story fails to mention is that the house was, specifically, home to Keith’s closest friend at the time. The file also fails to mention that Keith’s father often worked long hours, and so Keith frequently spent time at that friend’s house.
The article fails, perhaps most ardently, to mention that the day of the fateful fire, Keith was present at the house. The day of the fateful fire, Keith watched the house go up in flames faster than he could comprehend. The day of the fateful fire, Keith cried for his father, curled up in the corner of a room with a wet t-shit over his face, soot covering his hair and smoke lining his lungs. The day of the fateful fire, Texas Kogane kicked open the door behind which Keith was trapped in a blaze of glory, scooping up his small-for-his-age son in his arms and rushing him safely out of the house, hugging him tightly and pressing the briefest of kisses to his dirty hair before rushing back into the house to save the rest of the family that was trapped inside.
The file fails to mention that on the day of the fateful fire, Keith watched his infallible father sprint into the house, and never make it back out.
Keith doesn’t much like fire. The file doesn’t mention that, either. (Keith knows. He stole it, one day, and read it. It had to be locked away in a little box in his head, too.)
.
.
.
Space happens so goddamn quickly.
One day he’s chilling in his stupid shack with a couple cool lizards, dicking around on his hover bike and tracking some weird energy, and the next he’s flying through a real-life wormhole on a sentient lion piloted by a boy with startlingly striking brown eyes that he kind of vaguely remembers if he squints. And then that wormhole leads him to a real-life alien castle, and real-life aliens (he knew it, Keith knew it, he was right all along, his Pa was right all along, they both were —) and he’s informed by a real-life alien princess that he’s the Paladin of the Red Lion, the Universe’s Guardian of Fire.
And oh, does the bitter taste of irony flood his tongue.
He swallows quickly, desperately shoving the box closed, adding as many mental strips of duct tape that he can. He forces his face into a mask of stoicism (practiced to perfection from years of home after home after home) and prays that no one was looking closely enough to see the lick of terror flash through his eyes.
He’s lucky, that way. No one ever is.
He keeps that dangerous box closed as he frees a petulant mecha lion from a Galra ship that he navigates too easily (yet another box), keeps it closed as he argues and fights with the boy with pretty brown eyes (rival, his rival — his shadow?), keeps it closed as he fights a dictator and the dictator’s general and holds the hand of the same boy who smiles and says they make a great team. Keith holds that box shut with both hands as he nearly fights an alien who tries to take his knife at a space mall and trains with the man who’s like a brother to him, along with a brand-new team he’s supposed to trust with his deepest secrets.
Keith squeezes that box shut with every ounce of mental strain that he has, and then some. He grits his teeth and tells himself that fire is good and warm and powerful and life-ending and frightening and —
His bayard unlocks a blazing canon, flames sweeping out and brightly illuminating the stifling emptiness of space, burning everything in its path, and the box bursts open.
“Holy shit, Keith!”
“Yo! Is that a flamethrower?”
“Excellent work, kiddo.”
“‘About time you caught up, Mullet.”
The words are distorted, far away. His team’s transparent excitement fans the flames wreaking havoc on every carefully sealed box in his head, turning strict lines to ash and reducing his head to embers. His skin burns as bright as a sun, sweat dripping down his forehead, and smoke fills his lungs until he’s coughing, wheezing, choking to death —
He has no idea how the rest of the training goes. He has no idea how he manages to keep upright, with his vision swimming in and out and his hands slipping off the controls. He has no idea even how he manages to stay alive with flames licking him from the inside, burning him to a crisp from his bones out to his skin. He has no idea how he manages to land Red in her hangar, how he keeps from turning to ash in the pilot’s seat. How he manages to rip off his seatbelt with hands that have turned to burnt coal and rush down the ramp on legs that are simmering flames.
“Ay, Greñudo! What’s keeping you? You’ve been locked in here for half an hour, Shiro’s got a firecracker up his ass worrying — Jesus Christ, Keith, what’s wrong?”
What’s wrong? What’s wrong? Can’t he see? Can’t he feel the flames that lick up Keith’s skin and burn him up? Can’t he feel the heat of Keith’s destruction? Do his eyes not burn from the brightness of the fire?
How is Keith alive? How is he standing when his lungs have stopped working, cooked in his chest? Keith tries to inflate them, to force them open with clean air, but it doesn’t work, they don’t work, the smoke is choking him and killing him and there’s no Pa to save him —
A shock of freezing cold gently touches his neck, his cheek. A breath is startled into his lungs.
They work again.
“Smoke’s cleared,” Keith croaks, because it must be, now that he can feel the cool air trickling down his throat again. He takes large, gulping breaths, taking in as much air as he can before the smoke returns and he suffocates again.
“That’s it,” Lance soothes. “In and out, starboy. Your lungs are clear, yeah? There’s no fire, no smoke. Feel that air. In and out.” The coolness on Keith’s cheek spreads, following the shape of his cheekbone, back and forth, again and again.
Lance’s thumb.
His hands, on Keith’s cheek and on his neck.
“Y’r hands’re cold.”
Lance cracks a smile. “Iron deficiency.”
“Oh. You should —” Keith’s breath shudders as it regulates. He realises his hands are clenched on Lance’s wrist. “—you should eat more red meat.”
What is he even talking about?
Lance smile gets a little wider. It softens his eyes again, deep and brown and dark, like they looked after Sendak. Keith likes it when he smiles at him.
“I’m a vegetarian. That’s cute of you, by the way.”
“Oh. I didn’t know that.” It takes Keith a moment to process Lance’s other sentence.
This time, his face gets hot for a whole different reason.
“I didn’t — I didn’t mean —”
“Hey. Cool it,” Lance orders, tapping Keith between the eyes. His lips are still curved into a smirk. “You’re coming down from a gnarly-ass panic attack. The last thing you need is to freak out again. Keep matching my breathing, okay? You’re doing great.”
“Never thought I’d hear you say that,” Keith manages between his still-heavy breaths. The redness has yet to recede from his face, but he’s pleased to hear Lance’s quiet laughter.
“Yeah, yeah, Greñudo. Treasure it, ‘cause I’m not saying it again.”
Keith swallows, tightening his grip on Lance’s wrist. Greñudo. That nickname again, but it’s not malicious. Teasing. It’s the softest he’s ever heard Lance say it.
“What’s that mean? Grendo?”
“‘Grendo’ means nothing,” Lance replies, amused. “But Greñudo means disheveled. Messy. Slang for —” he tugs gently on the hair at the back of Keith’s neck — “mullet, like this travesty.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, ‘oh’.”
Keith slowly moves his hand up Lance’s arm, from his wrist to his elbow. He stops when Lance’s breath hitches, simply resting on the smooth skin, but continues on when Lance doesn’t stop him, slowly tracing the lean muscles and bony joints down Lance’s bicep, his shoulder, his side, settling at his waist. Lance’s hands have stilled, but remain on his cheek and neck, cradling his face.
“You channeling your Gomez, huh, Mullet?” Lance asks, but his voice isn’t it’s usual barbed wire, but soft; quiet and stuttering.
“I liked Starboy better,” Keith says quietly. All the burning pain has quietly slipped away from his body, leaving only a soft, tender glow behind, like the amber embers from the campfires he and Pa used to have on late nights.
It’s not scary. It’s — warm, even. Comforting.
“I bet you do.”
Keith says nothing. He stays right where he is, pressed to Lance in three different places, the coolness of Lance’s skin pulling the burning heat from Keith’s bones.
“Are you always this cold?” Keith asks. It’s not what he wants to say — what does he want to say? — but it’s what he can manage, standing so closely to Lance, the quiet scent of his floral shampoo pushing out the smell of smoke caught in Keith’s nose.
Lance hums. “You always feel like you’re running a fever?”
“Yes. Worse since I started piloting Red.”
“Guess I’ll have to help you cool down, then.”
“Guess so.” Unbidden, a smirk fights its way on Keith’s face. “That would make us a pretty good team, huh?”
It takes Lance a moment to react, but then he does, pulling away with a groan and a smack to the back of Keith’s head.
“There you go,” he admonishes, “bringing up fake bonding moments are ruining the real one we were having. Can’t let things go, huh?”
Keith shrugs, but the smile stays out on his face. “Can’t let your lying ass keep getting away with it.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Lance says, rolling his eyes. He hesitates a moment, then darts forward and grabs Keith’s hand, yanking him towards the door as he power walks out of Red’s hangar. Keith stumbles after him.
“Let’s go,” Lance says, once Keith’s got his balance. He glances back at Keith, small smile showing the barest hint of teeth. “Starboy.”
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Modern ZoLu AU where Zoro and Sanji are initially closer friends with Ace & Sabo cos they are closer in age and don’t have much to do with their younger sister Luffy except that Sanji one called her cute for which Zoro called him a creep bc of age difference (Luffy still a minor).
Now Zoro was gone for two years to train sword fighting with Mihawk and reconnects with old friends when he’s back. He goes to a party at Ace’s place and meets a cute boy with messy hair and an energetic personality. Zoro’s automatically flirting with him. At first Zoro had no idea who he was but he had known Zoro and dragged him into conversations and around the party.
Sanji comes in later. Within the last two years he had a lot of realisations about himself and isn’t as straight as he used to be. (How much he changed is up to you)
Anyway, now he greets Zoro by calling him a creep in return. Zoro doesn’t understand why and Sanji has to explain to him that the boy he’s chatting up is Ace & Sabo’s now little brother Luffy who went from girl to boy by cutting his hair short, getting top surgery and somehow gain a scar under his left eye.
Zoro instantly panics about what Ace and Sabo are gonna do to him. But can’t find the self control not to flirt with Luffy. He’s irresistible. At least Luffy isn’t a minor anymore.
Help 😭 What do you mean age difference? It's only two years- But yeah, Zoro would use any opportunity to call Sanji a creep so I believe that would happen somehow.
No matter the universe, Zoro is down bad for Luffy. But I honestly think Luffy would be the one to approach him first because he finds Zoro interesting and he remembers him from when he used to come over two years ago. So they start talking but Luffy doesn't mention that they know each other already, and Zoro is instantly captivated by this guy's stupidity because that's what happens in every AU with these two. They're just equally dumb and in love. Soulmate type of thing. They're flirting or, you know, doing their version of flirting. In which 'Do you want to see my swords?' isn't a sexual innuendo but like, genuinely, Zoro is talking about swords the whole time and Luffy loves it.
Zoro doesn't find out that's Sabo and Ace's brother until Sanji tells him. Sanji won't stop laughing and saying he's completely fucked because his older brothers go feral whenever somebody tries to touch Luffy, but Zoro doesn't pay much attention to it. I think he wouldn't care, tbh. Luffy is independent and he can make his own decisions.
I personally think it'd be hilarious if Luffy and Zoro started dating or having something romantic going on and the only reason why Ace and Sabo don't like it is not because they're overprotective (they are not, actually, those are just rumors and actually the only one who acts kind of protective is Sabo) but because Zoro? Really? Zoro? He's such a gym-bro in every universe and he won't shut up about swords. The only thing he's good at is maths and he won't stop falling asleep everywhere. The guys love their friend, but Zoro???? Besides, Sabo is just worried this relationship might distract Luffy from studying (<- Older brother who raised Luffy like he was his own really doesn't want Luffy to stop studying like Ace did. There's a whole drama about it because Luffy doesn't want to study either but it's different with Ace and-- Yeah. You can tell where this is going).
I think Zoro wouldn't be scared at first, and when he is a bit concerned for his safety is only because Sabo has that "Hello :) What were you two doing so late at night together? :)" type of mom creepy energy.
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On Daenerys, Colonisation and Race Discourse within the ASOIAF Fandom
This has been on my mind for a good long while and honestly, as much as I would like to leave discourse in the pits, it has been bugging me intermittently over the past few weeks.
Far too many of you get on here and call people who like the fictional dragon-riding family, neo-Nazis and that sentiment is so prevalent, that white people feel comfortable telling me a black woman that I am a neo-Nazi for rooting for Daenerys Targaryen. I am upholding neo-Nazi power fantasies for wanting to see a little girl live at the end of a story. I am a neo-Nazi for wanting to see the rape survivor have the family she aches for and children with the man (or men) she loves.
Then, those same people go on spiels about how the systemic erasure of those who sing the song of the earth and other old races is not colonialism. That their removal from their home is not displacement but an agreement between two equal parties. The fact that the only place where those who sing the song of the earth exist in the present timeline is north of the wall, surrounded by the bones of their dead, is not a travesty. That the expulsion of the old races from their home isn't that bad and should not be condemned.
Instead, people argue, completely seriously, that the harm that the First Men and Andals have caused is centuries in the past, so essentially the slate has been wiped clean. The logical leaps that are required to arrive at such a boneheaded conclusion are truly mind-boggling, and those who make such arguments are not good people.
I am unsure how one could read those books and come away with the impression that the old races do not mourn the loss of their home. I am unsure how one could read The Last of the Giants[1] and Ygritte’s reaction to both the song and Jon’s dismissal of the ethnic cleansing of the giants then believe that the old races and the free folk have moved past their displacement.
In Westeros, from the Wall to the broken arm of Dorne, they all speak one language despite the fact they are all different ethnicities and they all landed on the shores at different times. That is not the case in Essos, we have been introduced to at least six languages and in A Dance with Dragons, Tyrion notes that the Valyrian spoken in the Free Cities has evolved into nine distinct dialects, and they are well on their way to becoming different languages.
How would a continent as large and diverse as Westeros maintain its hegemony over the people if not for forced assimilation, discriminatory practices and violence? The brutal repression required to keep one house in power for thousands of years is nothing to sniff at. The suppression required to keep the vast majority of Westeros worshipping one (or seven) gods. The systems in place ensure that language does not grow or evolve amongst the highborns at least.
Centuries before Aegon's Landing the maesters were the definitive educational authority and even now centuries after, nothing has changed. The grey rats still decide who learns what and when they learn it. There's one in every highborn home, all correspondence passes through them, they are the healers and the councillors.
The circular logic gets even more blockheaded when you factor in the fact that Daenerys is far from the only white character in the books. She is not the only character who wishes for home. She is not the only character who draws strength from her ancestors, her bloodline and her magical creatures.
Cersei draws strength from her family’s iconography, and the Stark children (Jon included) all draw strength from their direwolves, their home and their blood. Sansa, Arya and Bran wish to return home and their home was built on the indiscriminate murder and displacement of the indigenous peoples. Their home is built on centuries of rape, murder, exclusionary practices and sexual slavery.
However, if we give the nonsensical argument that time erases crimes air; the Starks, Lannisters and Tullys are warring to settle personal grievances in the present timeline. As a consequence of that war, thousands (a modest guesstimate) of small folk, minor nobles and even some major ones have been raped, tortured, maimed and killed.
Despite all this, no one writes meta after meta about how Sansa and her siblings must surely die for justice to be had for those who sing the song of the earth, the free folk, the giants and all the old races that fled beyond the wall.
People write meta about Cersei and how she must die, but those are typically more misogynistic nature. They typically argue that she must die not for the “crime” of being Lannister, but for the “crime” of being Cersei and “ruining” Jamie.
I would not mind criticisms of Dany and her peace-focused approach to ending slavery because the approach is naïve and she gives the slavers far too much ground. However, she is learning, growing and self-critiquing. At the end of A Dance with Dragons, she has decided to embrace fire and blood, her knight is breaking the false peace which is a necessary step forward.
What I find offensive is people saying that she should have planned better before she abolished slavery. And that the death, violence, and sickness that arises from her quest to eradicate slavery is somehow worse than the death, violence, and sickness that already existed in Slaver’s Bay.
This argument often downplays the horrific conditions and suffering that exist(ed) under the slave system in Slaver's Bay. Such arguments are often in poor taste and prioritise the lives and comforts of the slavers more than the people they have enslaved.
I would not mind criticisms of Dany if people applied that same critique even-handedly. The same people who believe that Jon and Bran have done much to rectify the evil that their ancestors perpetuated believe that Dany has not done anything to right the wrongs of her ethnic kin. They praise them for the non-existent steps that they have taken, but in the same breath, they condemn Dany for not being able to immediately end the plague that is slavery.
It is perfectly alright to not like fictional characters, no law requires you to like certain fictional characters over others. However, what is not right is making broad accusations about those who do, it is beyond the pale. It is disgusting, and annoying, and trivialises real-world issues to score cheap points against fictional characters.
Equating the survival of a teenage survivor to the restoration of a fascist house or neo-Nazi power fantasy when such designations do not exist in the world of ice and fire is strange behaviour. Saying that the teenage survivor will eventually be manipulated and raped (again) before ending up dead on her manipulator's blade is also strange behaviour.
Dismissing the horrors of colonialism, especially when the text shows you that the involved parties are still affected by it, is not normal and often veers into real-world imperialism apologia. While criticism and analysis of characters and their actions are valid and even encouraged, it is essential that we do not resort to sweeping generalisations about other people and that we keep criticisms of characters grounded in the text.
[1]
Ooooooh, I am the last of the giants, my people are gone from the earth.
The last of the great mountain giants, who ruled all the world at my birth
Oh, the smallfolk have stolen my forests, they’ve stolen my rivers and hills.
And they’ve built a great wall through my valleys, and fished all the fish from my rills
In stone halls they burn their great fires, in stone halls they forge their sharp spears.
Whilst I walk alone in the mountains, with no true companion but tears.
They hunt me with dogs in the daylight, they hunt me with torches by night.
For these men who are small can never stand tall, whilst giants still walk in the light.
Oooooooh, I am the LAST of the giants, so learn well the words of my song.
For when I am gone the singing will fade, and the silence shall last long and long.
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