#it is also quite infamous for making people who are not at all delusional feel as though they are insane

[shirkers2018dirsanditan]

sometimes mental illness is a “logical” response to your situation. it’s not a matter of your perspective, but of your actual literal circumstances. that is a key element of criticisms of psychiatry. it is designed inherently to individualize all problems

[monin1ca]

Tearing at the seams (Chamber x reader)

Word count:1.7k

Warnings: Angst with comfort at the end (because I hate bad endings), suggestive-ish, cursing, mentions of wounds, google translated french

Synopsis: Being Sage's intern was challenging, and it took time to understand how to use your powers in the desired way. Your training has brought you to this stage, where you are tending to the protocol's flirt; Chamber.

Fortunately, he escaped with only one wound in his torso and one shot in his shoulder. Sage already did most of the work and tasked you to apply the antibiotics and change the bandages on Chamber. You had “history” with the gunsmith; back in high school, you developed feeling for the infamous heartthrob Vincent Fabron. Being the naive idiot, you were, you confessed to him on the last day of school. Only for him to be called by his parents to leave ‘right this instant.’ He gives you what you think was a fake smile, “I’m sorry, I’ve got to go-” leaving you there- heartbroken and all alone, your beating heart tearing at the seams. 

Being Sage’s intern was a tough job; learning how to use your radiant abilities and use them for how they were intended; was a long journey. Though, now you were fully capable of controlling them. Sage’s clinic was also quite hectic, ranging from minor cuts and bruises to dead people being brought back to life. You could only imagine how stressed Sage was before she took you in, but now? Holy shit.

Some agents were chosen to partake in an infiltration mission to their mirror world; the damage to the agents was considerable. The selected ones were Sage, Omen, Jett, Fade, Sova, Reyna, Chamber, and Viper. Your mentor came home with a few gunshots- not too significant. The rest? It was a different story- Sova broke a few bones of his ribcage, Jett blacked out, Fade got substantial gunshot wounds, Omen’s shadows started leaking out of his armor, Reyna dislocated her ankle, Viper inhaled too much of her mirror’s nasty toxins and who else were you forgetting… Ah, right. The man you were tending to Chamber…

But when you were recruited into the Valorant protocol and saw the French man- You decided to pretend your silly little confession never happened, and he never brought it up. Though lately- you started falling for him again; it was idiotic. All the playful banter and flirting made your heart beat so much faster, the sweet gestures he does for you. You feel delusional because you keep thinking- ‘I dont see him doing this to other people. It makes me feel… special’ You know, you know. But you learned from your mistakes and told yourself never to confess to Chamber.

You snap out of your train of nostalgic memories and knock on the room where Sage said where she left Chamber. “Oh?” The injured man’s muffled voice reverberates through the door, “Monsieur, I’m here to tend to your injuries.” You shouted, hoping it was enough to be heard through the thick door. “Ah, Y/N? Come in; the door is unlocked.” You opened the door to be greeted with a strong scent of cologne; the room was intricately decorated with white and gold. You shuffled awkwardly into the room; you looked around the room, seeing the male in his canopy bed. The tops of the bed held a translucent curtain with gold lines coming down on it, and soft duvet sheets crumpled due to Chamber laying down lazily. Everything in this room reminds you of how poor you were compared to him. You strode to the bed and placed your materials on the nearby nightstand; you noticed his iconic glasses and gold watch that probably costs millions. Vincent wasn’t wearing his vest and tie and was only wearing his white button-down. Which told you he was already anticipating your arrival. You sigh deeply to yourself,

‘Let’s get this over with before I combust.’

“Alrighty, mister, how are you feeling right now?” You inquire, looking at everything but him. “I was doing ok, but I feel better now that you are here.” The latter winks, and you playfully roll your eyes at him. “May I?” You gesture at his torso, and he smiles. “Please, knock yourself out.” Chamber pats a spot on his left, motioning for you to approach and do your work. You strolled to his side; the bed dipped at your weight when you placed your knee. Your hands slowly made their way to the buttons; you could feel his eyes on you. Even though you felt like prey being watched by its predator, you continued unbuttoning the attire. It felt like eons when you finally reached the last button, your hands dangerously close to his lower half. Once you finished, you quickly pulled your hands away to avoid the awkwardness and pulled them back up higher to remove the first plaster. ‘His torso looked like it was a frame of a greek god. Shit, what am I thinking?’ You shook your head to get rid of the thoughts and focused on removing the plaster as painlessly as possible. It was so adorable how flustered you were on Chamber’s end, The tippy top of your ears with multiple shades of red, and how you avoided eye contact with him. It was just so adorable~ You placed your left hand on his abs to have support and used your right hand to peel the plaster slowly; you heard the french man hiss and groan in pain at the action. ‘God, that sounded so hot.’ “Just a little bit more and- There.” You chirped, relieved that it was partially over. You threw the old bloody plaster in a nearby bin and got the antibiotic; you opened the medicine and squeezed it onto a soft cotton pad. “I’ll apply this special antibiotic that should sanitize, clean, and remove the scar of your wound. It might hurt, but you're a big boy, right?” You explained to him; he chuckles at the last part of your sentence. “I am a big boy, mon Cheri. Though take it slow, I’m enjoying every aspect of this.” You were stunned, “I- W-what ever… Weirdo.” You lowered your head, hoping your hair was long enough to hide your face. You slowly rub the cotton pad on the gunsmith’s skin and hear the knee-wobbling hiss again, this time caused by the shock of the cold medicine colliding against his skin. At last, you were finished; you threw the used pad and grabbed the fresh new bandages. 

“Can you sit up a ‘Lil bit? I need a little allowance to wrap this around your body.” The male complies obediently, sitting up from his pillow and waiting for your move. You go closer and start wrapping the bandages around his body, your hot breath against his chest. His breath hitches as you slowly begin your little ministrations, as you were wrapping the bandages around- You notice that he has had previous injuries before this, the faint, faint scars proving it; sure, it was normal, but you never saw him get hurt before going into the protocol.  You were so lost in your train of thought Chamber had to point out you were adding too much fabric. “Were you enjoying the view that much, Cheri?” You were not going to lie to yourself, and you were enjoying the view. “Yeah, I was.” Now it was his turn to blush; he was silent after that one. ‘As you should, Mr. Heartthrob’ You chuckled to yourself, and you moved closer to him; Placing your hand and legs over him for stability, you almost looked like you were straddling Chamber if people walked in and saw the scene. “I’m going to treat your shot in the shoulder; I’ll go a bit closer, yeah?” He gives a slight nod, his accentuated cheeks still dusted in pink. You leaned closer and slowly removed the old plaster; the slight sounds of the plaster ripping off his skin made you shudder. You can only imagine how much he went through in his past injuries; Chamber notices the sadness on your face. “What’s wrong, mon ange?”  His hand reaches your face, gentle hands caressing your cheeks. You leaned into his touch, clutching the used plaster in your hands. “I.. Just- can’t imagine what you went through before joining the protocol..” You brushed the faint scars on his body; his body hitched at your touch. You feel like the air is being sucked out due to the heavy tension between you, your heart pounding against your ribcage.

Silence… 

Suddenly, Chamber drops his hands lower, grabs your waist, and pulls you closer. “You are too good for me.” You yelp at the sudden action, and his slightly dry lips meet yours. You felt like your heart was going to burst out of your chest, perhaps when his lips touched yours, time stood still, but the beating in your chest only grew stronger. As your knees grew weak, you fell forward to his embrace; you could only concentrate on how smooth he was against your mouth and how completely he had taken over your senses. Chamber clouded your thoughts; all you could think of was Chamber. You moan slightly on his lips, signaling to pull away. He understood and pulled away; your head was spinning not from the lack of air but from why this was happening. You had millions of questions, but you could only muster “Why?” He laughs, “Well, the simplest explanation is; I like you too. And this tension? I could not stand it.” You wanted to pinch yourself to see if this was all real, but the loving look on his face told you this was all too real. “B-but my confession from all those years ago-” “My parents sent me home because,”  he cut you off. “I was drafted into the military; they wanted to send me far away. They’ve always thought I was incompetent and needed a so-called boost.” The truth behind his scars and why he left you behind the school amazed you. All these questions finally had answers; your eyes were filled with tears. “Ah, mon amour, don’t waste your pretty tears on me.” He says as he wipes your stray tears, “You still have to finish patching me up after all,” The male chuckles; you can’t hold back anymore, your heart tearing at the seams, not because it got broken. Now it is because your love for him is starting to overflow.

Author's note - THIS WAS INSPIRED BY ONE OF THE PROMPT THINGY I REBLOGED! HOPE YALL WILL ENJOY THIS ONE^^

[sneakydraws]

i wanna see fifty five goldfinch pieces 💔💔

OKAY!! So I have this little series I like to call the great decompartmentalisation of Theo decker... Let me walk you through it. I promise there's art after the massive paragraph of meandering analysis alright

You know how Theo's life is segmented into these distinct episodes? And how he himself is split into multiple different identities, and how much shame and fear there is associated with the idea of those identities mixing? For example: the straight a student living a completely, delusionally idyllic life with his adoring mother and the vanilla teenage troublemaker breaking into people's summer homes with his shady homoerotic bestie. When the two identities come into contact via his suspension, it leads to the most traumatic event in Theo's life, and honestly I suspect that might be the origin of this tendency towards compartmentalisation... I could go through the whole book here but the most prominent examples are Theo panicking at the thought of Mrs Barbour or his therapist finding out about Hobie, his cutting himself off from New York when in Vegas with his other shady homoerotic bestie (the amount of times Vegas is compared to an alien planet...) and his dual post timeskip identifies of charming antiques salesman/fraudulent art stealing junkie. And this often manifests in Theo's reluctance to let people from his different periods interact - see him rushing to stop Boris from talking to Pippa, and him keeping Hobie in the dark about the blackmail, and isn't it kind of weird that the barbours - Theo's soon to be legal family - don't really interact with Hobie and Pippa? Anyway. Basically I thought it would be cool to make a series of little vignettes of theo allowing the people and places and things that represent various versions of Him to interact and thus symbolically healing the disconnected parts of himself... Or something. I have more ideas scribbled down but somehow the only ones I ended up with proper art for is the various holidays (which, holidays are also a weirdly prevalent theme in tgf? Idk whats up with that but it's a good tool for this purpose) so we have:

Christmas Eve at Boris's, featuring Pippa and Hobie - I feel kinda bad for only ever portraying Boris with polish customs but let's be real I'm just using him to show off my own heritage lol. In Poland the main Xmas celebrations happen on Xmas Eve, traditionally with the appearance of the first star in the sky. You eat the mostly inoffensive barszcz as well some truly vile shit, such as mushroom and cabbage dumplings, mushroom and cabbage salad, other items made of mushrooms and cabbage, and finally the most disgusting dish of my life: Jewish style carp. No, it's not quite the same thing as gefiltefish, although that's the Wikipedia page you might use to get to the actual dish. All washed down with compote which I hate. You also break and eat communion wafers while wishing each other stuff, which Pippa is doing with popchyk here hehe

Christmas breakfast as a little bonus despite it not having much of a tradition - I associate it with lots of hams/cured meats, gherkins and maybe Tatar sauce (yum). Much superior to the Xmas dinner imho. Really I just wanted Theo and Boris to have a moment to themselves haha

Christmas proper at the barbours, featuring Boris and Tom cable! I could talk about all the tension and who's diffusing it but honestly I think y'all can draw your own conclusions lol. I just think it would be really funny for the infamous dis-engaged couple to each bring their delinquent boytoys and for Boris the drug dealer to actually come out looking superior

Vegetarian friendly Thanksgiving at Hobie's, as tradition requires! I think he'd love to throw one of his big Thanksgiving parties purely for all of Theo's families to get to know each other... you know, kind of an elaboration on that Thanksgiving illustration I drew a while back! This would be before all the Christmases I think. Boris is winning Mrs Barbour over with his roguish charm lol I think old ladies would like him... Theo in the corner freaking the hell out as per this project's mission statement lmao

And on a slightly different note I wanted Theo Pippa and Hobie to all visit weltys grave. I'm borrowing slightly from the polish tradition of all saint's day, when you clean, decorate and light candles on the graves of loved ones.

[rare-and-beautiful-things]

Union with an s/o that also has a dark past ( could be in another district or city )

wow, mysterious~ okay, so it would all totally depend on what kind of dark past we're talking about and on their current attitude tbh... and since you didn't specify I'm just gonna do whatever I want lmao :)

so, the reader here was the leader of some dark infamous gang based in another district, and they weren't known for their benevolence (more like tyrannical style of ruling and cruelty). but after most of your guys betrayed you, you had to flee in yeongdeungpo. you also had time to reflect, so you decided to not get involved in this shit anymore and just live a normal live, unless someone tries to mess with you. and yet here you are, finding yourself with a union member... what a mess!

Union with a s/o who has a dark past

Donald Na

you couldn't tell for the life of you how you ended up with donald after so much thinking done, after your decision to just stick with a normal life. you just couldn't not get in this mess. you only hope that he at least doesn't know anything about your past: even back in the days you've always been very protective of your identity.

for a while, everything is fine. you talk business, and then you talk philosophy, and then you talk nice smaller things in life. you meet up at nice little cafés, unknown to most people, then at hookah bars and lounges, then in his office in Yeoinaru. people always feel small with donald na, but not you. you feel like a god, you feel like he's a god too, but somehow you don't want to warship or curse him. you want to see him for who he is, you want to stay, you want to help. you want to revive your empire or to start a new one, but luckily you're not quite delusional enough to actually try that.

so for a while everything is fine and more. and then it's not.

you understand it when you think you see one of your guys - one of these traitors - on the other side of the street. even if you know you made enough mistakes in the past, you can't help being bitter. you tell yourself it's your imagination and go on with your day, but it's not, and you see them more and more often. you think they came for you, but they did not. they came for yeongdeungpo.

donald is forced into a confrontation and, though he's good with confrontations, it makes you feel guilty. would everything be the same if you were another kind of leader before? would anything change if you never joined the gang? no use thinking about it now, you'll have to deal with the consequences regardless.

in a more favourable scenario you tell donald the truth yourself. in a less favourable one someone else tells him about it, and then he comes to you to discuss it. there's some suspicion from him, some annoyance about not having the full info from the start.

it's fine though - surprisingly so. he's not actually angry, not exactly punishing. his calm demeanor makes you uneasy. donald informs you that you'll have to make it up to him, help him destroy the assholes from your past gang. it's gonna be painful, but not as painful as you might have expected. not as much drama as you might have expected. you can do it.

so you do it. you think the air itself is clearer when it's over. it's easier to breath. donald trusts you more now, and his trust is overwhelming. he doesn't hate you for this - actually, your past only made your relationship stronger. and you finally feel ready for something new. for building something new. not as a tyrant, but as yourself, together with a person you care for.

he cares for you too.

Phillip Kim

it was easy for you to meet this particular asshole. he hangs out with other people often, eating and drinking and signing karaoke, and perhaps someone invited you some time, or perhaps it was all a big coincidence, a mix-up. you met each other anyway, and phillip always finds himself attracted to people like you - someone powerful, strong, with a sway over people. someone who's about to change something, even if they don't even know about it themselves. he cannot help himself, and neither can you - it's in the way you walk, talk, in the way you carry yourself. perhaps it's one of the reasons your gang was your gang in the past. but you know all too well: it was never enough. it never will be.

he has a way with people too - his own way. some compliments, some subtle bribery, expensive liquor and gifts. he notices things you like and focuses on them specifically. you feel special. he feels you're special too, and before long this feeling becomes attraction, more simple and more complex at the same time.

it's easy for you to talk to him - he makes sure you feel that way, makes sure to change the subject if you seem uncomfortable, to use words and phrases that make you smile. you cannot help but like him, even though you know it's not all natural. it's easy for you to open up to him, to let something slip. perhaps it makes you a bit wary - but it doesn't change. you let something slip, and Phillip catches it and never lets go.

he digs until he finds something. he asks his friends, and they ask their friends, and their friends ask someone else, until the information goes all the way to Phillip. he has some pieces of the puzzle now, and he's smart enough to figure out the rest.

it fascinates him even more. you fascinate him. your past, your present, your future. your image and your presence. everything about you. he feels like he's found gold, real gold, and it's even more overwhelming then when he met donald - because unlike with donald, this time he's the only one who truly knows about you.

he doesn't tell you right away that he figured you out. he wants you to tell him yourself, to confirm that he's as special for you as you're for him. he'll try to push you gently in the desired direction, and if you give in he'll be thrilled.

if you don't though? he'll try again. and again. he'll protect your secret from the other people too. if you do not budge, at some point he'll just... let you know that he knows. he'll just start discussing with you something from your past, in his usual tone, and when you understand that he knows and freeze, he'll put you at ease like he's done all this time. he'll tell you he's not threatening you, that he just wants to talk, that he won't tell anyone unless you give your consent.

Phillip will push you to be even better, and by better he means better in exercising your power, more powerful, revolutionary. he'll see your normal life as wastefulness, a waste of your endless potential. you don't deserve to be normal. you deserve the best - to be your best self too. it's bad if you don't see eye to eye, but if you do? if you actually want more, want to be more? there's no one who'd be better for you.

Jake Ji

jake is normal. jake is nice. you'll never think he's in the union if you just see him on another the street. he pays for his comic books, and he laughs when someone tells a good joke and not when someone bullies his classmates.

he's nice. good, even. you start to notice him, to recognise him, and sometimes you even want to talk to him, but you do not dare. he's good. you - even with your newly found normal life - are not. so you stick with being glad that people like him exist at all and imagining what hanging out must feel like.

it's alright. he comes to you, introduces himself and invites you to hang out with him and his friends. it feels good - so good you wonder if you actually deserve it. it feels light and easy and right. you laugh more then you have in years, and it's your real laugh, not some twisted sarcastic version of it. it's like a dream, warm, filled to the brim with light and happiness.

he tells you to come hang out with them again, and you do. you go to an internet cafe, and Timothy absolutely destroys everyone. the next time you go watch a football match between two middle school teams. the next time you go to anime convention.

you start to notice more and more that it's just you and him. that it's just the two of you most of the time. it's fun, and though you enjoy hanging out with his friends too, being alone is just... different. special. his eyes are even warmer then usual, his hands are gentler.

you don't know he's not all sunshine and rainbows until a group of delinquents traps you both in a dead end of a narrow street. you prepare to protect him, your pretty sunshine boy, but instead you see a tiger. a violent animal living under his skin, finally making an appearance. he's holding back - it's so clear to you, it's heartbreaking and ridiculous at the same time. he thinks you'll be scared of him if you see him for real, if you see him fighting for real. he thinks you will be afraid, and he does not want it because he thinks you're nice.

you cannot help but laugh. it's a bitter sound, and you haven't laughed like that since you met him. jake looks at you and chuckles too, just a bit, as if he's not sure if he should. if you're laughing at something he would find funny.

you end up seating at the front of a 24/7 store, drinking flavoured milk and talking. completely honest for the first time. jake tells you about the union, then about his brother. you tell him about your gang, your ex-friends betraying you. he complains about the union business and the dirt, and you tell him how you want to live a normal life now. he whispers that sometimes he wants to just start beating people without holding back, and just continue beating them until he can no longer feel his hands. until he's satisfied. you take his hand in yours and say "me too".

you continue to hang out, but it's different now. honest, true. real. you kiss. then you decide to try and fight each other, and even your fight is perfect. satisfying. you feel like you finally drank some cold clear water after years of thirst. and you're alright. you're normal - in the way only you can be.

[free-pancakes]

Hi hi - really love your Drabbles. May I ask for a “way of the househusband” levihan au?? It’s totally okay if you don’t wanna !! Also just wanted to know your drabbles always lightened up my day whenever I was down. LOADS OF LOVE ❤️❤️❤️🙈 also pls hydrate if you haven’t already. 🥰

Jean looked down at the piece of crumpled up paper in his hands.

“126 Forest Ln.”

Erwin had told Jean to check up on him—Jean had no idea what had happened to his old boss, Levi. He had been one of the most infamous Yakuza members known to the world. But suddenly, he retired. They all thought he was delusional, that one day he would return. But he never did. It had been years... no letter, no call, no nothing. Only recently did he hear about it, and it was to be under wraps. Erwin had finally made contact with Levi, and here was his address, in his hands. Jean was absolutely terrified, but he had been tasked to do this, to check up on his intimidating, fearsome old boss.

Jean walked up to the address, a small, neat town home—pristine flowers and shrubbery outside, much cleaner than the plants in each of the identical houses lined up on the street.

Could Erwin have given him the wrong address? Levi? Living... here? Sweet old suburban neighborhood, parents pulling their kids in wagons, young people walking dogs, middle aged men mowing the lawns?

It must have been wrong. But just to make sure he could tell Erwin he made an honest attempt, he walked up and knocked on the door.

The door creaked open to reveal a short man wearing a navy blue tracksuit with the sleeves rolled up the elbow, revealing dragon tattoos all over his forearms. Over this, he wore a white apron with the words “Kiss the Cook”. He wore yellow tinted sunglasses on his face, held a whisk in his hand and... a golden wedding band on his ring finger.

“L-Levi?!” Jean sputtered. Shock was written all over his face, but after a few seconds, he felt the beginnings of a laugh reaching his lips. He was quickly cut short as he flinched in response to Levi’s signature glare.

Oh it was Levi, alright. But this was... different, to say the least.

—————-

“And you met because... her cat pooped in your yard?”

“Yeah. Why, you got a problem with that??” Levi said with a glare, as he held a large knife in his hand

Jean grit his teeth as he flinched a bit—“No, no! That’s... great Levi, I’m happy for you.”

Levi looked back down and continued to chop up vegetables. He was clearly making a lot of food, and it smelled great. Jean never knew Levi could cook. He wondered what else he didn’t know about Levi.

“Will I get to meet her?”

“Yes, and you better be nice, today’s her birthday.”

He continued to cook and at some point threw a broom at Jean asking him to help clean up. As Jean swept around the little house, he found the two cats Levi had mentioned. The black one looked quite annoyed at the other who kept walking in circles around him, purring and licking at him every few steps, but it clearly tolerated it. He tried to pet it but it hissed and Jean ran back to the kitchen.

Levi suddenly shoved a lighter into Jean’s hands, and Jean stared at the beautiful cake he was holding.

“Levi did you make that yourself??”

Levi smacked him. “Just light the candles you idiot!”

And just as Jean finished lighting them, the front doorknob rattled.

As Hange walked in, Jean stared in awe. She was beautiful, hair tied up in a messy ponytail, wearing a sleek navy business suit, and clubmaster glasses.

“Hey stop staring and sing!” Levi muttered darkly, and the two of them began to sing happy birthday to Hange.

Her eyes lit up like the sun, her smile lighting up the whole room. “Aw Levi...” she sighed. She walked up to the two and blew out her candles.

“Come on Hange, I made all your favorite foods,” Levi said as he walked into the kitchen, leaving Jean alone with Hange.

“Wait Levi, who’s our guest?!” she called out, and she heard something like “an old work friend” under the sounds of dishes in the kitchen.

“Ah, nice to meet you!” Hange said with a grin, and ruffled his hair. Jean froze— she was so warm, in every way. How did Levi end up with such a kind soul?

“What’s your name?”

“Jean. Nice to meet you.” He said with a small bow.

She pushed him towards the dining room to sit down, inviting him to stay for dinner—he could hear Levi grumble and complain about it in the kitchen.

“Aw Levi, don’t be such a grump, let the kid stay!”

Jean watched as Levi stood in front of the stove top, stirring, and Hange walked up behind him, and laid her chin on his shoulder. The cats suddenly appeared, meowing and rubbing their bodies up against Levi and Hange’s legs. Hange took her finger and picked up a little bit of whipped cream on the cake and wiped it on Levi’s cheek. She laughed while giving him a small kiss on the top of his head.

It almost looked like Levi was about to smile—Jean thought this whole situation was quite shocking, but he couldn’t help but feel happy for Levi. It gave him hope that he could find a better life with a certain girl he worked with. But that would be a later problem. The issue that bothered him now, was that he was 100% sure no one would believe him if he explained exactly what Levi was up to after leaving the Yakuza.

[clairecrive]

“Useless planning” - Sirius Black x reader

A/n: this is my first time writing Sirius even though I love him to death and he's my favourite... I lowkey think I didn't do a good enough job but oh well. Here it is, I hope you like it anyway.

Warnings: none, fluff all the way

Word count: 3K 

(let me know if you wanna be added to the taglist)

(I know this is Billy but I thought the sub to be quite fitting)

Insecurities were normal. Everyone has them. And the same went with flaws and imperfections. Nothing to be ashamed about. That's what y/n and Marlene were trying to convince Lily about. Of course, it's easier said than done but acknowledging the fact is the first step into accepting them.

"James tells me that they're beautiful and that I shouldn't worry about them but I don't know. I don't like them." Lily had confessed to feeling self-conscious about her scars and stretch marks and reticent she was in letting James see her body for this very reason. Of course, the boy you love telling you that you're beautiful the way you are is certainly flattering but not problem-solving in this case. At least, y/n thought so and let her friends know.

"I don't think seeing it that way is going to help."

"When has James helped to make something better?" Marlene snickered making y/n roll her eyes and Lily glower at her.

"They don't have to be beautiful and you don't have to look at them in that way. They're just natural, you know? There's a reason you have them, meaning that it's your body's reaction to something." Sometimes, it helped using the scientific approach. Others, however, sharing was indeed caring.

"And in fact, everyone has them. Look." So pulling her skirt up a bit, y/n showed the marks that adorned her thighs.

"How are you so confident about them?"

"I'm not, actually. And it has taken me a long time to accept them, let alone show them this way." In fact, it had taken a long time for y/n to come to terms with the way her body was and to accept it and love it. It was still a work in progress if she had to be honest. But she was not ashamed to wear shorts or mini skirts now and that was indeed progress.

"And, I'm not saying that James is wrong or anything. I'm sure he told you that because they're a part of you and that boy cherishes the ground you walk on like you're a saint or something. He just wants to help and that's sweet of him. I think though, that this is something you have to come to terms on your own too." Y/n felt like adding. By all means, James' efforts were appreciated but she didn't want her friend loving herself through someone elses' love.

"Y/n's right. Don't think you're beautiful because Jamesie says so but because you are." Marlene agreed before throwing a chocolate frog in her mouth.

"So you're saying that Sirius telling you you're beautiful didn't help you even a bit?" Lily threw with a suggestive raise of eyebrows pointed at y/n who barely shrugged not wanting to indulge her.

"It's like with Remus, you know? He has five people telling him that he's the most precious human being on this heart and that his scars hardly make him less attractive but does he agree? Of course not. And yeah, us telling him certainly helps but it's something he has to realize himself or the situation won't ever change." But she couldn't help herself and had to add, "Besides, Sirius says that about every girl at Hogwarts. It's hardly helpful."

"She has a point." Still munching on her sweet, Marlene agreed yet again even though this time her tone had grown sombre. It had been a while and she was over it but she had been one of those girls to make the mistake of fooling herself into thinking that Sirius was going to give her more.

"He doesn't look at them the way he looks at you though." Stubborn as always, Lily insisted.

"I'm sure it's 'cause he sees a challenge."

"If only he knew you liked him."

"Why don't you tell him, then? He's been after you since the year started." Following up on Marlene's lead, Lily wondered.

"Don't get me wrong, I like him alright. But I'm not interested in what he can give me."

"Mindblowing sex?" Marlene pointed out in an a-matter-of-fact tone

"Fleeting interest and attention." To which y/n sternly replied.

"His attention is hardly fleeting seeing as it's been months."

"Lily, why are you pursuing this? We both see how he is with girls and I refuse to end up like that."

"There's nothing wrong in liking someone and letting them know." Lily got defensive, maybe because she was thinking of James. Whatever the case, she wasn't going to change y/n's mind. She was not being delusional, just pragmatic.

"They're pathetic." Marlene snickered and even if y/n agreed to some degree, she ignored her.

"No there's not. It's the end result that I'm referring to." Y/n conceded but the problem wasn't that. It took a lot of courage to publicly pursue someone, that she had to admit.

"Which is?"

"Heartbroken," Marlene answered solemnly earning a nod from y/n.

The group of girls were utterly clueless about the material they had provided for the aforementioned guys who were currently under the invisibility cloak.

Remus rosy-cheeked but flattered at y/n's words. Not that it was the first time he had heard them but it was always nice to feel appreciated. James was glad that his efforts were not noticed by everyone but especially by Lily even though he didn't like the fact that she was still worrying about something that seemed so meaningless for him. Peter looked bored to death as he couldn't be bothered with girl problems while Sirius was pouting despite the fact that the girl he had been chasing for months had confessed to liking him back.

But that pout was short-lived as Sirius Black was known for being a man of action. Now that he knew why y/n was so reticent in giving in to his flirting, he had the key to solving this problem. The smirk he was so infamous for took its place on his lips while a plan was already forming in his mind.

"Stop blushing, Moony, we tell you that every day and so does y/n. Now c'mon I have a girl to woo." And with that, he pushed everyone away and filling them in on his plan when they were out of the girls' earshot.

The first phase of the plan was to take place in a couple of hours at lunch. He was to show that his attention was solely reserved for y/n and her only. Sirius knew that he had a reputation and even he was aware that he was a big flirt. While he knew that it was completely harmless, he could see how it looked in y/n's eyes. Or in everyone's really.

So when lunchtime came around, Sirius took his place at the Gryffindor table. Y/n usually sat with them, on the bench across from him and beside Remus. Deep in conversation with Moony, she didn't notice him sitting down but he didn't do anything to grab her attention. He waited patiently for y/n to be done with whatever she was talking about with Remus to finally speak.

"Hello there, angel. Aren't you looking cute tonight." The plan was in motion, his charm: on.

"Hi, Sirius." And yet, y/n appeared to be unbothered.

"I heard you got into a little of a catfight."

"You made it sound like we pulled each others' hair or something."

"Isn't that what happened?"

"Of course not. I was just telling Moony what happened, he can fill you in." She said dismissively while gathering her things.

"Why don't you do it?" Sirius tried to keep the desperation out of his voice but given the smirk Remus gave him, he was failing. Just like the first phase of his plan.

"I have a class to attend Black." Rolling her eyes at him, y/n stood up not before leaving a kiss on Remus' head, " see you later Moons."

"Don't I get a kiss too?" She heard Sirius' cry of indignation and didn't even turn around to respond.  

"My kisses are for those you can appreciate them and you get far too many of those from others to do so."

"I swear if I didn't hear her before, I'd say she's head over heels for you," Sirius complained to his friend slouching in his seat. His eyes following her silhouette until y/n walked out of the room.

"She's my best friend." Shrugging his shoulders, Remus brushed away his worries. Yes, y/n was affectionate with him but she had always been this way. There was nothing romantic behind her gestures.

"We've known her the same amount of time, why is she so comfortable with you than she is with me? You're not the one constantly flirting with her."

"She's cautious about opening up with people and as you've heard before she doesn't trust you with her feelings." He pointed out what Sirius already knew given her previous confession. The first phase of the plan had seemingly failed. Y/n hadn't stuck around long enough for him to put it into motion but he had not lost hope yet.

"You seemed to have your work cut out for you though, Pads," Remus said after a while and told him about the fight he had mentioned when he first sat down. Apparently, some girl was complaining to one of her friends about him and the way he had treated her. What had made y/n compelled to butt in and defend his honour though, was that the girl had twisted what actually happened, spreading instead some nasty shit about him to no doubt get her revenge. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, after all.

"You know how much she hates confrontations and arguing but she went straight into one for you. It must mean you've done something right."

Sirius couldn't help the smile that found its way on his lips at Remus' words. He had gathered as much seeing as he knew her well. They had been friends since first year after all. Also, because that meant that he didn't need most of the phases of his plan but one: earning y/n's trust.

He knew that he had it in some quantity seeing as you were friends. He just had to nudge her to take a step in the direction he knew she wanted to take but was too afraid to.

So, when your last class ended, he made sure to be waiting for you outside. As always you were one of the last to get out, Marlene and Lily on your side.

"Since when do you specialize in chaperone activities, Black?" Marlene snickered when she noticed him leaning on the wall.

"Only for the fairest maiden of the kingdom, of course."

His charm was one of the things he was most known for but he had never been able to work his magic on you in that way. One day, you were talking with Remus about some books you were reading and how enchanted you were with old stories and myths and legends. Sirius of course had no idea what you were talking about, not having read that particular book, but he was familiar enough with the subject thanks to his education. So he had started talking like a medieval knight just to catch your attention and maybe to annoy you but he was pleased to notice the amusement in your eyes and how you'd respond to him in a similar tone, playing along with him. Whenever you two started talking like this, the others would always look at you weirdly but none of you seemed bothered by it, least of all Sirius. Whatever he could do to make you smile, he'd do it gladly.

"And to what do I owe the pleasure, dear sir?" She played along and Sirius was counting on it. He briefly threw a suggestive look at Lily who seemed to understand as she pulled Marlene away ignoring her protests.

"Oh no, the pleasure is all mine, my lady. Would you give me the honour of coming with me? I have a surprise for you." And to top it all, he offered her his arm. Y/n didn't know whether to roll her eyes at him or indulge him but she'd be lying to herself if she said that she wasn't intrigued.

"How can I say no when you ask so politely, sir."  And so she took his arm and followed him through the hallways up to the Astronomy Tower. Y/n knew what this place meant to Sirius. They had even spent a lot of time there together. It had kind of become their place when they needed some peace and quiet or to simply spend some time together away from the noisiness of the common room.

"I'm here to prove that I'm worthy of your affections, my chérie." He solemnly said after you sat down. If this whole thing had been somewhat normal between you, this was certainly not and it definitely took her by surprise.

"What are you talking about?"

"I know you like me, y/n."

"That's hardly a secret, Sirius. We're friends, of course, I like you."

"I mean, you like me as I like you. Not just as friends."

"Who told you?"

"Most importantly, I know why you're refusing my advances."

"Look, Sirius-"

"Please, let me say this first and I promise that I won't bother you after if you say no." Despite the pun he and his friends would always throw around, he wasn't known to be this serious and he hardly ever was. Taken back by the sheer determination she found in his eyes and in his tone, y/n simply nodded and let him talk.

"I understand your reservations, if I were you I'd be thinking the same. You know me though, y/n, better than most and you know that I care about you. I can see why you'd be afraid of opening your heart to me but I swear I wouldn't be insisting so much if I wasn't sure that this is what I want." y/n had never heard Sirius talk about his feelings so freely. She'd be lying if she denied how his words touched her, her heartbeat would give her away.

But there was also something else on stake.

"It's not that, Sirius."

"Then what is it? Don't you trust me?"

"I do trust you. It's just- I don't want to get heartbroken and ruin our friendship at the same time."

"If you trust me then why are you so sure that I'm going to hurt you?" Sirius wears his heart on his sleeve, that was one of the things y/n had always admired him for. How brave he was to always show and tell every that went pass his mind. Now, seeing him like this, arms crossed on his chest, his eyes flashing, her heart helpelessly hurt and she almost winced at the fact that she was hurting him.

"Oh no, Sirius, no. I don't think you'd do that willingly. After all, it's not anyone's fault if you lose interest in me or just stop caring for me in that way. And when that happens, I'm not sure I can go back to just being friends. Thus, ruining our group of friends and that is not something I'm willing to give up to attempt whatever it is you're proposing." She quickly tried to explain, desperate to make him see that it wasn't about him, not completely. Mostly, she was afraid. Afraid of admitting her feelings for him, afraid of indulging them knowing that when you have something special, it means that you can lose it.

"That goes both ways you know." But Sirius was always able to see right through her. And he knew what he felt and now that he also knew how she felt, he wasn't going to go down without a fight.

"I did not wake up yesterday and realized I have feelings for you, Sirius." she scoffed, not telling him that she had been in love with him since they come back from the summer break in their third year. They were now in their fifth.

"It didn't happen to me neither. If you haven't noticed, I've been chasing you for months."

"Yes, while always having an alternative option on the go."

"I thought you had learned by now not to listen to rumours." Sirius tilted his head in a way that reminded y/n of an adorable puppy.

"When it comes to you and girls, Sirius, they're not rumours. At least, not the part that interested me."

"What do you mean?"

"I know that you treat them right and I know that you don't offer them more than what you give them. Those are rumours they spread in hope that other girls will stay away from you and you'd go back to them. But you do get with them. Sure, Katy was talking bullshit about you being an asshole and I know that's not true but I also know that you have been with her."

"A year ago."

"Then why is she still talking about it?"

"Don't know, angel. I'm pretty memorable if I do say so myself."

"So, you're saying that you haven't been with anyone in a year?"

"I've been too busy with you, chérie."

Well, that was news. Y/n had to admit that she hadn't seen this coming. And it definitely changed things. Sirius had been right when he said that she knew him better than most. And so, when she looked into his eyes, she knew that along with smug and cocky he was also being honest.

"Well, I've just checked your agenda, my love, and it seems it will be so for quite some time."

"Is that a threat or a promise?"

"A bit of both."

"I'm more than fine with it, angel. Now, give me a kiss and bring me to heaven."

[suzu-kun22]

Not Quite Invincible

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30488721

Prompt: Hallucinations Fandom: Jujutsu Kaisen Pairings: Nanago, Satosugu Warnings: Illness, mentions of past canonical character death Summary: Nanami returns home to find a sick and delusional Gojou, talking to his long-gone best friend.

@badthingshappenbingo​

If there are any specific prompts you’d like me to write and any specific scenarios/fandoms/pairings you’d like me to write for, just send in an ask!

Story below the cut!

To most, Gojou Satoru seems invincible.

To most that encounter him, he seems as though nothing bothers him. He doesn’t seem to know how to take a hit, what with an ability that stops just about everything from making contact and a tendency to reach speeds incomprehensible to most human eyes. To most, he is flawless. A beacon of hope. The pillar that holds up the feeble roof of Jujutsu Sorcery. Were it not for Gojou Satoru, would the institution even still be standing? It’s a question that has been posed many times, and yet it’s never one that Nanami Kento has seen answered in a way he finds satisfactory. 

Still, for all of his power, for all of his strength, and for as many opponents that have fallen to Gojou Satoru, there are still things that even one such as he is weak to. There are still things that can leave him as vulnerable as the child that he pretends to be. There are still things that steal that confidence from his voice and leave him doing just about everything that he possibly can to cover up the shaking that’s left in its wake.

Apparently, Nanami Kento is one of few privileged enough to see it.

“What are you doing in my house?” Nanami asks with eyes narrowed and arms crossed over his chest. He had walked through the door to find a pair of shoes that were most certainly not his and a pitch black coat hanging on one of his hooks. Nanami owned nothing black. He had discovered, while working in a boring office where the only goal was money, money, and more money, that black made him look far too uptight, and made him feel the same way. If he was going to be saving people, he would be better served wearing a less depressing color. 

There’s only one person who Nanami knows well enough to suspect them of being in his house, who also wears a black coat and... whatever the hell those shoes even are. How frustratingly annoying, that it’s also the man known for his ability to inflict just about anyone he speaks to with a migraine that just might last days, depending on his mood. If Gojou Satoru is feeling particularly annoying today, then Nanami will have to make sure to stock up on painkillers. If he’s feeling just mildly frustrating, then perhaps Nanami will manage to kick him out the door with minimal incident.

“Hmmmmm…?” There’s a long hum coming from the lump on Nanami’s couch. Wrapped up in blankets, Nanami can barely make out a head of ethereally white hair resting against one of his throw pillows. “…oh, you’re home?” The voice is familiar, but also not. It’s obviously the voice of Gojou Satoru. There’s no way that Nanami would ever be able to mistake that voice for anyone else. And yet, there’s something off about it. Something shaky, quiet, weak, vulnerable, and maybe just a bit broken. 

“Yes. What are you doing in my house?” Nanami repeats his question, and there’s a long minute with no answer. Then the pile of blankets shifts, groans, and settles once again. This is going to take a while, it seems. “Are you going to answer me, or are we going to stand here all night?”

“…head hurts.” The pile mumbles. “Stop talking so loud–“ A hand pokes itself out from the mountain and waves at Nanami, as though asking him to quiet down. “–Shouko said… uhhh… somethin’ about sleeping until it goes away,” Gojou’s voice says with an edge to it that Nanami doesn’t recognize and most certainly doesn’t like. He furrows his brow, reaches down, and shakes the pile until it lets out another loud groaning sound and rolls over. Finally, there’s Gojou Satoru’s face. His signature blindfold is nowhere to be seen. His hair is even more disheveled than normal. His eyes are squeezed firmly shut and Nanami can make out beads of sweat on his brow. His skin is flushed, and Nanami would be willing to bet that those scarily blue eyes hidden behind lids are glassy. 

“You’re sick.” Nanami states, and Gojou seems to flinch at the statement. “Why did you not go home?” Nanami asks with a raised eyebrow. Gojou lets out yet another groan and rolls over, tucking his face into the back of the sofa and hiding himself from view once again. Honestly, what a child. He can’t even be bothered to look Nanami in the eyes when they’re speaking. “Gojou–“

“Satoru.” Gojou interrupts. “When’d… When did you stop callin’ me that..?” 

Nanami blinks. He stares, for a moment, unsure of what to do. As far as he remembers, he’s never used Gojou’s given name. Certainly never to his face. He reaches a hand forward, trying to rest it on Gojou’s forehead to feel for a temperature. The moment his fingers brush against the man’s hair, however, Gojou almost seems to jump away. Nanami pulls his hand back. Stares, for a moment, before reaching forward again and this time managing to rest his fingers against Gojou’s forehead. He doesn’t pull back, despite the intensity of the burning that he finds there. 

“Mmmmm…” Gojou hums. “…your hand’s cold, Suguru.” He whispers, and it gives Nanami pause. Of course it does. What else is he meant to do, in response to that? 

“Gojou, I’m not Getou.” Nanami says, because he can’t think of anything else to say. Gojou has a fever – which was obvious even before Nanami rested a hand on his forehead – which seems to be high enough to be giving him delusions. Nanami wonders, briefly, how the older of the two of them could be irresponsible enough to let himself get so sick. Then he remembers that the older of the two of them is Gojou Satoru, infamous for his strength and his complete and total lack of responsibility. “Why did you come here?”

“Missed you,” Gojou mumbles. “Ahhhh, prolly shouldn’t have said that. You’ll never let me live it down,” Gojou laughs. It’s humorless. Nanami hates the sound of it. “…Shouko said somethin’ about staying in bed… but bed is super boring when you’re alone,” He grumbles, turning his head as though going to look up, but his eyes stay firmly closed. Nanami wonders, absently, if the six eyes serve to worsen his headache or improve it. “…been a while since we could hang out, Suguru. How’s the afterlife treating you?” Gojou’s lips quirk up, into a smirk. Nanami could spot how fake it is from a mile away. “Having fun in hell?”

“Gojou.”

“Awww, c’mon!” There’s a shakiness to the happy tone that Nanami is certain most would miss. Most, however, haven’t known Gojou Satoru quite as long as Nanami Kento has. Most would assume that he’s playing some sick game with himself that no one else is allowed to get in on. Nanami knows better. “…j-just cause I killed you… d-doesn’t mean that we can’t still…” Gojou breathes a heavy exhale. As though something is pressing on his chest and Gojou can’t quite shake it. Nanami sighs. No matter what he says, it doesn’t seem to be working. For now, he might as well try and do something about the fever. 

Gojou continues mumbling. Nanami crosses the living room and makes for the nearest bathroom. Once inside, he collects a rag and a basin, quickly filling it with cool water and allowing the rag to soak in it for a moment. With a sigh, Nanami lifts the basin and makes his way back to the sofa. Gojou has shifted slightly. His eyes are still closed, but he’s lying on his back now. One arm is slung over the back of the couch, and the other is resting on the floor. Normally, Nanami would comment on what a messy pose it is. Now is not normally. 

“Stay still,” Nanami commands, setting the basin down beside the sofa. Gojou mumbles something that Nanami can’t quite make out – aside from the use of the name Suguru once again – but otherwise complies. What a strange sight, a Gojou Satoru who actually follows orders. 

Nanami lays the damp folded cloth over Gojou’s forehead. It causes the white-haired sorcerer’s brow to furrow and his lips to twist into something of a grimace, but he doesn’t complain. The thought briefly crosses Nanami’s mind to take a picture. He can think of countless people who would appreciate a picture of the world’s strongest Jujutsu sorcerer in such a state. But the thought fades as quickly as it came. No matter how satisfying it might be to see someone as strong and insufferably annoying as Gojou humbled like this, that’s no excuse to take advantage of his pain for something so petty. 

“…’m sorry, Surugu,” Gojou mumbles. His hands clench into fists and then unclench once again. “…’m sorry… d-didn’t wanna kill you.” There’s another moment of silence. Gojou’s breathing is labored and maybe a bit pained. Nanami wonders, for a moment, how Ieiri could even allow him to head anywhere on his own, if he was this sick. The thought is quickly replaced, however, with– 

“…miss you,” Gojou whispers.

Nanami feels something ache in his chest. 

He buries it. Like always.

“Go to sleep, Gojou. You’re sick.” Nanami gives another command. The last one worked well enough. Perhaps all it takes to get Gojou Satoru to actually listen for once is to give him a high fever and a bit of delusion. It just might be useful information, somewhere down the line. 

“Mmmm… fine,” Gojou mumbles. His eyes stay closed, but the expression on his face relaxes a bit. “…see ya later… Suguru.” It’s the last thing he says, before his breathing begins to even out and his muscles lose a good amount of their tension. Nanami breathes a sigh of relief. He can only hope that the fever will break before Gojou wakes up again.

Gojou Satoru seems invincible, but Nanami Kento knows that he’s far from it. 

As satisfying as it is to see the mighty Gojou Satoru humbled, Nanami can’t say that he wants to see any more of it.

[representativecharacters]

Characters: Castiel, Dean Winchester

From: Supernatural

Representation: mlm (*see “issues” section), abuse survivor (Dean) 

Their Importance: Dean and Cas are two characters that many in fandom viewed as LGBTQIA+, with the common belief being that Dean Winchester is bisexual. 

There’s a lot about Supernatural and Destiel, and Dean in general, which I’ll go over in the “issues” section, but I think many people in fandom didn’t expect for the show to actually go anywhere with them - until 15x18, when Cas confesses his love to Dean. It’s riddled with issues, yes, but just speaking as a bi girl who’s been watching Supernatural for a decade now, watching Cas confess his love for Dean was just so incredibly validating. It validated that I - and other fans - weren’t delusional when looking for representation from Cas (and Dean). Cas is a wonderful character and gave a new life to the show, and has been a fixture of the show for 10 years. While like with every character he has his ups and downs, he is a kind, loving character, and the only main character who actually survives the show. Despite the issues on the show, knowing that Cas is canonically LGBT+ is something that’s comforting and validating to me, and continues to be so even as Supernatural kind of trainwrecks around everything else. 

For myself, watching the show, I saw a lot of myself and my journey in Dean. Watching him grow and develop as a character, and try to experience happiness and find comfort in his found family was wonderful for me to see. I started this show when I was a young closeted kid, and I clung to Dean in a way that I didn’t fully understand until years later. I didn’t actually expect him to be explicitly mlm in the show, and for the most part, that didn’t happen - until the Spanish dub. There, we see the romantic reciprocation to Cas, and that’s something that is real and cannot be taken away. In fact, although it was said that it was a “rogue” translator, the episode will not be redubbed, so it is canon in a version of the show. Despite the fact that he didn’t get canonized in a way I expected or would have ever hoped, it still does give me some joy to know that he is canonically LGBT+ (and in my opinion, bi, although there is no actual label given to Dean). Even if it’s not in the version of the show I watched, I can go back and watch the Spanish dub of the episode and see that representation happen onscreen, and that means something to me. 

Issues: The issues list for this show is a mile long, so I’ve split it up into sections and put most of it under a read more:

Dean + Canon Rep: Trying to wade through if Dean is actually canonically LGBTQ+ was....a struggle, to say the least, and I almost didn’t put him into this submission. If you watch the show in English, Dean never once actually reciprocates feelings for Cas, states that he’s into men, or is even confirmed to be in a relationship with other men. Although for many, it is implied, the average audience member may not see Dean as canonically LGBTQ+. However, in the Spanish dub of the show, when Castiel confesses his love to Dean (which is an explicit romantic “I love you”), Dean says “y yo a ti”, which is a reciprocation of Cas’s romantic confession. This post is very long as it is, so I want to link to @destielintheimpala’s timeline of events that occurred for Supernatural and I think it best lays out all the issues about 15x18-20, why it’s been so difficult trying to figure out Dean’s sexuality in canon, why fandom is upset, and can clear up any misinformation. This situation also goes into queerbaiting quite a bit (something Supernatural is infamously known for), which you can read in this article from @thecoolestfreakyouknow. 

Reading Dean as a queer character as well - having a character who is queer (or queercoded) and an abuse survivor and then immediately killing him off is also a huge problem. As mentioned in the link above, Jensen Ackles himself felt uneasy about Dean’s ending, and many Dean fans felt the same way. To have a character suffer through abuse and traumas for 15 seasons, imply or straight out have him be LGBT+ (depending on the canon), and then immediately killing him off in the finale is needless to say, an odd choice. 

Also, with Dean being an abuse survivor - his father, John Winchester, is commonly shown to be neglectful throughout the show, and Dean has to raise his younger brother Sam by himself most times. He expresses trauma from the experiences he’s had growing up with their father and being forced to hunt at a young age. However, the show weirdly seems to flip flop on their portrayal of John, despite also specifically stating that what he put his children through was child abuse. They have Sam telling John that he did the best he could, they have characters excusing away John’s actions, etc. - it was like the writers themselves couldn’t figure out if they wanted John to have been an abusive parent or not. The show ends with John in Heaven with Mary - thus absolving John of his actions and putting him in the same Heaven with the children he abused. 

Castiel: Cas confesses his love for Dean in 15x18, but gets dragged away to a void called “The Empty” immediately afterwards, where he’s meant to be suffering for all of eternity. Cas does get out of The Empty, and even helps to rebuild Heaven - he’s actually one of the few characters to survive the finale - but he never appears onscreen again after 15x18, so fans’ last image of him is getting dragged away to The Empty. Dean never has a follow-up conversation, and there was only one line referencing Cas’s fate, so many fans believed he was still in The Empty suffering.

As the timeline linked above shows, the situation around Destiel is an odd one - the Spanish dub, cast’s overall silence, the lack of Misha Collins in the finale all led fans to believe that something was switched around last minute in terms of Dean’s sexuality and Destiel as a general ship. Obviously, this is speculation unless someone from the show explicitly comes out and says that fans are correct, but it’s included in the issues section because - regardless of it it turns out to be true or not - it’s such a big part of the issues currently surrounding Supernatural and canon representation. In any case, however, Castiel’s confession in 15x18 gave fans hope where they may not have had hope before, and then it was unceremoniously dropped with no real follow up - from a writing standpoint, it isn’t good writing to confirm a major character as queer via a love confession and then never go back to that plot point. While I’m happy that Cas is canonically queer and I’m not trying to say that I would rather not have more representation, I do look back on the show and wonder, with the story that made it to screen, what the actual point of writing that in was. 

As mentioned before, Castiel was a main character on the show for 10 years - while I’m glad that his character survives the series, to not have him show up in the final two episodes (particularly the finale, and especially after canonically making him LGBTQ+) felt like a slap in the face to both the character and the audience who loved him. 

Miscellaneous treatment of characters: In general, Supernatural has many problems in its treatment of female, characters of color, and LGBTQ+ characters. Alongside being incredibly underrepresented in the show, if they do show up, they are commonly tortured, treated poorly, and/or killed off (if not all of the above). Even thinking about their recurring characters who are also representative - Kevin, their only recurring Asian character, is killed off and appears as a ghost multiple times, Charlie, who is a lesbian, gets killed off and replaced in the show with an Alternate Universe version of herself, Eileen, a Deaf woman, gets killed off and then is brought back and is implied to survive the show, but like Cas, never actually shows up in the final two episodes even though she’s Sam’s girlfriend. I can think of very few minority characters in the show in general, much less those who got any type of happy ending. 

[prince-toffee]

She-Ra #0

- Karma -

[Two Years After The Defeat of Horde Prime]

Plumeria

The moonlight of the many Etherian moons rained down and coated the greenery of Plumeria. Plumeria was one of the smallest kingdoms on the planet, there wasn’t anything fancy or kingdom-ly about it. No enormous castles, not even real towns, just a bunce of tree-houses and empty fields. Which in a way was perfect for the refugee clones, the open fields were filled with makeshift tents, with tired, injured, and or defective clones with conditions that had to be looked after, taking up residence in them. Over the two years more and more shelters accumulated since the defeat of Prime and his main armada. It all worked out fairly well, with the clones populating the ground and the Plumerians residing in the trees. They much like most Etherians had mixed feelings about the clones, some were more welcoming than others. Fortunately brawls didn’t break out as often as in some other parts. It was clear that the Princess of the land, Perfuma, wasn’t too thrilled about their presence, but she put on a smile and played nice.

Modulok wasn’t quite sure what the title of ‘royalty’ or ‘Princess’ meant on this world, but it seemed as if the success criteria involved owning some land since there were apparently hundreds of Princesses, some with kingdoms the size of a town, or a nightclub, believe it or not. How the political landscape worked, he did not know. But he didn’t really care either. It was peaceful that was all that mattered to a surgeon and medic like Modulok. The settlement at Plumeria was one of the smaller ones, nowhere near as developed and packed as Doormat or the New Salineas. And again that’s why he liked it, quiet, far away from anything and everything, a grasshopper here, the rustle of leaves there. However something always seemed to go out of its way to find him. Case in point his quite drunk brother, Vultak, who barged into Mod’s tent in the middle of the night.

Vultak clumsily stumbled into the tent, two glasses of some sort of alcoholic drink in hand. He set the glasses on the operating table Mod was currently working on. Before Mod could protest, as he opened his mouth Vultak raised his pointing finger up to him to stop him. V then proceeded to drag a chair from the side to the operating table. V sat down and took a swig emptying one glass. The drunk clone just stared dazed at the patient Modulok was operating on, but caught a glance coming from Mod that was disapproving.

“Do you mind?”

“Not at all, carry on.”

That drew out a sigh from the medic, he was all too familiar with those snappy comebacks as well as his delusional pessimistic rants and ravings, which Mod was sure were about to follow. The two just looked at each other, a sedated individual between them, it was quite a comedic scene to be hold if there were a third party observing.

Modulok had lost his arms in one of the countless wars and had replaced them with cybernetics which could split in two giving him the total of four arms to work with. As a defect Modulok had blood red lenses, eyes and teeth. Not to mention his skinny frame, and lack of weight, and inability to gain weight. He wore a black and red tech suit, not bulky like Hordak’s, much thinner with tubes and cables hanging here or there. Under it you could see his bones and rip cage pressed tight around his skin, in some areas the white bone broke through the skin forming vein-like patterns across his body - common side effects for defects. A unique defect to Mod was that his skin was coloured red, it didn’t mean much, but others thought it looked neat.

Vultak was far more odd and different, some clones even called him the strangest clone alive. One of the oldest living too. V was a defect too, defects liked to stick together, at least most of them, not Modulok specifically. Vultak was thin too, like a walking toothpick. Vultak’s top half of his head was a red glass-looking dome resembling a radar display. No eyes. However a long witch-like nose. And shark-sharp teeth, though that was common with all clones. Possibly his most iconic aspect were his retractable wings being able to extend out of his under-arms, unveiling metallic feathers as sharp as knives. Various experimental technology was incorporated into his arms, giving his wings the ability to cause micro-hurricanes, and gusts of wind. And flight, obviously.

Also, he was thousands years old.

“V, you clearly want something so just say it and get it over with, the less time I spend with you the saner I’ll remain.” Modulok stated tiredly knowing fully well conversations with V could be exhausting. He leaned on his right arm which he placed on the table.

“What? Come on, can’t a brother just want to hang out with his other clone brother from another mothership?...” Mod was unamused and unphased, in the pause and silence his expression did not change. “And also my dearest, most awesome, talented brother, who is a doctor... I could... use some of that reeeeeally good tastin’ medicine that only a certified medic like you can hand out.” Vultak gave him a smile and tilted his head.

Mod gave him an eye roll, “I am not handing you the pills!”

“Oh come on, Mod! This stuff’s getting out on the street anyway! You’re not upholding some moral high-ground, you’re not holding society together! Come on, please, just one.”

Modulok waved him off, shaking his head. “Absolutely not. And I’m not trying to up hold anything, I don’t care what happens out there, but it just so happens that when some stupid non-sense takes place out there it means I’ve got more work here.” In a way he was right, Modulok was the most famous medic from the Galactic Horde, known across countless galaxies, being a defect medic and a medic for defects, that increased his infamous status. If anyone, any clone was in need of aid they turned to him for help, to say Mod was busy would’ve been an understatement. “Don’t even get me started on those pills that Hordak and Dryl made, I have no idea what they were thinking.”

The Isle Pills. Small capsules of biochemical engineering, synthesized from the ‘infected’ ‘tainted’ plants of Beast Island. That was the way people described the island, there were many theories about the landmass, a lot of scary campfire stories, disputes about whether it even existed. Its existence was apparently confirmed by the Princess of Dryl. Something about backstabbing and being imprisoned on the island, the clones weren’t sure, and they didn’t care much. But the nature of the island had been kept secretive, partially perhaps because the lab-partners studying the location don’t know many thing about it either.

It is also to be noted that they, the pills, weren’t meant for wide spread public use, apparently the Drylian Princess herself was against the production of it. But somehow they got out. Modulok was sure Hordak wasn’t thrilled that his experimental treatment for his defection was being distributed like hot buns at a bakery sale.

The pills have an altering affect on the consumer’s mood and how they perceive reality. Where the island would have enraptured an individual in their own fears and insecurities, somehow those mad-scientists altered the effect of the flora to envelop the individual in numbness and sleep-like paralysis. Hordak no doubt developed the pills as a way of coping with his defection and all the pain that came with it. So the product became quite popular with other defects. Including V, to no surprise. The pills were addictive and seemingly untested, and someone was making a profit off of it no doubt.

“They probably weren’t thinking, that’s what! If you ask me that Hordak guy is insane. All his bad decisions always seem to bit us in the rear.” The infamous Hordak, a general from a previous life, a defect that was sent to the frontlines by Prime personally, some even have speculated that he was meant to be Prime’s next bodily vessel. So in a sick twisted way, that defect saved him. Funny how life works.

Hordak somehow ended up on Etheria, he doesn’t even know how, somehow he amassed a large following and took over half a continent, destroyed a lot in the process. People hate him, his face, and that means of course many weren’t thrilled about hundreds of thousands of clones falling from the sky and finding a home and shelter on Etheria. Honestly, Modulok didn’t like him much either. Vultak unlike Mod actually quite liked Hordak as he served under him once, V trusted him.

“Mod, they would’ve hated us with or without him at the helm, at the end of the day he’s one of us, the whole universe hates us, we gotta stick together.”

“Where’s your ‘screw everything’ mentality gone to?”

V downed his second glass and wiped his mouth, “Washed away and washed down...” V just stared at the now empty glass inspecting it suspiciously as if he was looking if the glass was withholding additional liquid from him. It became obvious that V was thinking, contemplating something, he placed the glass down with a ‘clink’ on the table. “...I’ve been getting the nightmares again. And it’s getting worse, it always does. It’s not long ‘til the nightmares start coming out during the day, while you’re awake.”

Modulok understood, of course he did. He too had went through some harrowing experiences, war is never a good thing for the mind. Mod was an excellent surgeon and doctor, he can do some miracles with scalpels and bandages, he could take care of physical wounds. But there were wounds and scars that he couldn’t heal.

Vultak continued, “Do you believe in karma, Mod?” The question gave the medic pause, he didn’t quite know how to answer that, and he was sure this was one of those questions you don’t answer as V was going to no doubt continue and give his own answer. But the short reply would’ve been ‘no’, Mod didn’t believe in any higher power or any metaphysical concepts such as fate or destiny, it all rather felt far-fetched to him. “That our actions and deeds from our previous lives affect and decides our fate and fortune in the future?

That the future takes roof in the past? You do good, you have good fortune, a good life awaits you. You do bad, you have bad fortune, hell’s coming your way. Revenge and retribution on a cosmic level. It’s the universe’s way of punishing the evil and the wicked, that’s us by the way.

And we do deserve it, don’t we. I mean we’re literally walking, breathing, war machines, our sole purpose was to destroy, perpetuate war and cause all around carnage.

Everyone always wants to blame Hordak for Etheria hating us, but every single one of us has had a part in conquering half the damn universe! Countless worlds either chained or turned to dust, all thanks to us, all of us.

All the terrible things we’ve done, and now what? We just get to have a happy ending? No. No, no, no. Karma’s just getting ready, reeling back, ready to backhand all of us to oblivion. We gotta suffer first... Karma’s balance, karma’s proportional. Which isn’t good for us since we did a lot of wrong-doings. Remember the Siege of Denebria, the War for Primus, the Taking of Trolla, the centuries-long Massacres at Epsilon-19, everyone wants to forget that hellscape death-trap. But we just can’t, some things claw their way back to the surface from below all that brainwashing-sauce.

And that’s just the horrid stuff we remember!... Can you imagine how many lives we’ve forgotten? How many years we’ve lost? How many people we’ve forgotten? That four eyed freak robbed us of everything that made us, us!... All that stuff’s gonna bite us in the back.”

Modulok simply listened, he was used to V’s rants and ravings, but all that... seemed different. Usually V made out everything to be a joke, never taking anything serious, he was a jokester. The nihilistic joker seemed to be subdued, some sort of seriousness, some existential dread on his face. Vultak was genuinely opening up to Mod, and he appreciated that. But it was a shame they had to get drunk first before having conversations like that.

Mod became gradually more worried as V continued with the dialogue, after he paused and just began to stare blankly at his glass again Modulok responded, “I appreciate you opening up, kind of, V, I just wish it didn’t take the influence of alcohol... [sigh] Look, V, I know tomorrow is never certain, and that we all carry the weight of scars on our brittle shoulders... but please believe me when I tell you, that everything will be okay, everything will get better. Don’t drown yourself in poison. The world’s not falling apart, and neither should you.” Mod placed a hand on his brother’s shoulder, trying to comfort his friend.

Vultak simply looked up at his brother, his face blank, he knew Mod meant well, but it didn’t help much to comfort him. And so V hopelessly replied, uttering almost a warning, “Just you wait doc, the sky’s gonna come crashing down on our heads.”

[forestwater87]

Tales of Fandom Past: Harry Potter and the Shipping Slaves

So, in my spare time I read a lot, lot . . . lot of fandom_wank. A lot. More than should be possible, considering it’s a dead website linking mostly to other dead websites, but I’m a woman addicted to drama who has the gift of long periods of quiet at work, so I’m working my way through almost 2 decades of fan history and it’s just fascinating.

Fandom, back in the ‘00s? Was so much more wild than it is now.

Plagiarism! Fake suicides! Fraud! Theft of real people’s actual money! Stalkers, both real and made up! Fanfic writers so popular they finagled it into mountains of free stuff and a book deal! Everyone was really gross and homophobic! 

There were no rules, and that made it a terrible and incredibly fun time to be part of a fandom.

And we’re not talking enough about it. I guess that’s where I come in.

I’m interested in telling these stories -- not in the incredible level of detail of the MsScribe Saga or the Cassie Claire Plagiarism Debacle, but enough for us to all have a moment to think: Hold on, what the fuck was fandom doing during the entirety of the Bush administration?

A lot, it turns out. Much of it totally wild.

Today’s topic: Shipping wars are as bad as slavery

Date: August 2005

Fandom: Harry Potter

Supposed topic(s): Shipping, canon

Content warning(s): Accidental and ironic diminishing of slavery, complaints about political correctness and free speech, racism in general, lots of hurt feelings and drama

"Now, I'm not black, but boy, do I feel for the black people. If I lived in the 1800's, I wouldn't keep slaves, and if someone has a difference of opinion than me now, that's fine, believe what you want."

Background

In August of 2005, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince had been out for a little less than a month, the film version of The Goblet of Fire wouldn’t come out until November, and the last Potter movie had been released over a year ago. In terms of shipping, fans had just discovered, to either their delight or horror, that Harry/Ginny and Ron/Hermione were canon; while some would continue to hold out hope that there would be a last-minute reversal of expectations, most of the fandom both on and off the internet was in agreement: 

The shipping wars were over, and the Harry/Hermione fans (a.k.a., H/Hr fen, or “Harmonians”) had decisively lost.

The Harmonians’ ire seemed to have been pretty evenly split between J.K. Rowling -- who they felt had let them down -- and the R/Hr and H/G shippers (a.k.a. “Herons” and “Chocolateers,” respectively, though I’m not sure anyone actually used those terms for themselves; they appear to have been given from without), who were taking a victory lap. Depending on one’s perspective, this was either a long-overdue celebration by two groups of shippers who’d faced the fandom’s ire for approximately 5 years and were now vindicated, or it was the tactless gloating of sore losers who were thrilled to get one over on their hated enemies. Either way, tensions were no lower just because canon had decided the victors, and the battleground seemed to shift from the books to the movies -- where shippers of all kinds were in debate over which romance would win out onscreen.

Enter Emerson Spartz, a teenager in charge of one of the most popular fansites at the time and king of creating controversy . . . who had very strong opinions about shipping, and Harmonians in particular.

The Inciting Incident

Emerson had already incited the ire of Harmonians by calling them “delusional” in an infamous interview with J.K. Rowling. The wound was still raw, having come shortly after the release of Half-Blood Prince, and in some circles Emerson was already Public Enemy #1.

Therefore, when Emerson was one of two “anti”-Harmonians interviewed in a San Francisco Chronicle article about the shipping wars, some fans cried foul.

More responses can be found in a summary of the incident here, but personal favorites include a letter sent to the author of the SF Chronicle piece:

The majority of Harry/Hermione shippers are not merely upset that we didn't get what we wanted in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. That makes us sound childish. While I'm forced to admit that there has been much bile and vitriol posted on various H/Hr shipping sites, the majority of us are reasonable people. What really hurt our feelings was the way the Mugglenet/TLC article made it seem as if J. K. Rowling herself felt we were really dense, missing her "anvil-sized clues." Emerson's subsequent "apology" for the harsh words directed at the Harry/Hermione 'shipper community was a non-apology, which you [the author of the SFC article] would have known if you had done more than just take his word that he apologized. He simply used the "apology" as an opportunity to issue another dig. I suppose not much better can be expected from a child of 18 who has suddenly become a bit of a celebrity. But I do expect better from a colleague; a professional writer. ...

You have assisted one side of the argument and failed to represent the other. Did you attempt to interview the webmasters of any Harry/Hermione shipping sites or did you merely cut and paste posts that were pointed out to you by Emerson and Melissa? Your article shows no evidence that you made any attempt to give the other side equal time, so to speak, and as a result, you have contributed to the perceprtion [sic] that ALL H/Hr 'shippers are irrational, bitter, spoiled brats. And that's quite unfair. (Hughes, 2005, paras. 13 & 18)

Or this comment in a Harmonian forum by a disappointed reader: 

History is written by the victorius [sic] (or something like that), isn't it how the saying goes?. I'm afraid we are witnessing it firsthand. Herons feel they are the winners on this war, and as such, they feel they have a right to treat us anyway they want to, and they think we have no weapons to defend ourselves since even J.K seems to have sided with them. Even if most of us are pretty reasonable people, at this point anything we say in regards of J.K's apparent disregard for our feelings (thoughts, opinions, whatever), will be gladly taken as the lashing out of sore losers. ::sigh:: I say, just ignore Emerson, he's just some lost kid desperate for attention. And how good can the guy who wrote this article be if he didn't bother to check the facts before he went slandering us?, not much me thinks. (Remolina, 2005, para. 21)

These responses, while perhaps silly or overblown, were not enough to make history. That honor belonged to a Harmonian going by the username Panther.

How, one might wonder?

The Blowout

Ya know, come to think of it, people like Emerson were probably the kinda people that started slavery. I mean, think about it, they thought the slaves were animals, just because they had different colored skin. Emerson thinks we're stupid and delusional for having different beliefs. Get the similarities here, people? Now, I'm not black, but boy, do I feel for the black people. If I lived in the 1800's, I wouldn't keep slaves, and if someone has a difference of opinion than me now, that's fine, believe what you want. (Panther, 2005, paras. 23-25)

The reaction was immediate and explosive from Panther’s fellow Harmonians. Some understood and empathized with Panther’s view; they saw it as a bit hyperbolic, but agreed with the underlying point being made.

I can see where they were going with this...a different analogy would probably have been better. Maybe the religious persecution during Mary Tudor's reign, or the Salem Witch Hunt/Trials, the religous [sic] crusades, the wars in Bosnia etc. We harmonians are being "persecuted" for our differening viewpoints/perspectives. (Anndee Granger, 2005, paras. 30-32)

The belief that H/Hr shippers were being persecuted for their beliefs was a pervasive one, and extended to fans, Emerson and other fandom “authorities,” and the author herself.

No, what we are experiencing is not at the same extreme level because of the world we now live in, but the base level is still the same. The base level taking us back to different beliefs and views without the ability to be heard in the correct manner, and yes it does feel like a form of persecution. (*Under your Skin, 2005, paras. 36-37)

While not on the same level as slavery, the intolerance of their ship did call to mind other examples of discrimination and bigotry:

Of course no one is dying because of this, but all in all we are being persecuted for our different beliefs. "Bloody" Mary Tudor, killed Protestants because she so hated their different views on Christ. This is an extreme indeed, but the mentality behind it, the vitrol [sic], is the same. (Andee Granger, 2005, para. 38)

This extreme point of view, while widespread, was not universal among the Harmonians. Many of them were . . . understandably appalled by the comment and those agreeing with it:

No wonder other people find it easy to portray us as reactionary and vicious. Some of you bloody well are. (jane99, 2005, para. 43)

I agree that it is very vicious and out in left field . . . Slavery was an oppressive movement for hundreds of years, resulting in the deaths of millions. I would hardly regard that with 'shipper treatment, nowadays. However, the schoolyard bully is a very appropriate analogy, in my opinion. Hopefully you understand the difference. (myrhlyn, 2005, para. 52)

The Response

NarcissaM brought the subject to the outside world by posting it in fandom_wank -- a defunct LiveJournal specializing in fandom drama, which now exists primarily in archives -- and the result was universally disbelief and amusement. The responses ranged from insightful, if crass, commentary . . .

Emerson did not kill your dog, tell you that Santa wasn't real, and touch you in your swimsuit areas. And the more I read the more I'm convinced that H/Hr fans aren't angry because what he said was insulting, they're angry because what he said was *accurate*. (iczer6)

I'm also wondering where keeping slaves was a matter of, y'know, people having different beliefs, and not the subjugation of an entire culture by another which had more money and more powerful weapons, and needed a lot of manual labor but didn't want to pay for it. (slackerbitch)

To good old-fashioned sarcasm and snark:

That's not the stupidest thing I've ever read, but it's in the top five. (Anonymous)

That's right. There is a conspiracy, Hermionians! The world is against you and want to take a shit on all your fan fiction! XD (Anonymous “Mary”)

QUICKLY! SOMEBODY CALL A WAAAAAHBULANCE! WE HAVE INTERNET PERSECUTION! (aerobot)

F_W, known for good and ill as a site that takes nothing seriously except the desire to laugh at themselves and especially others, took the slavery comment and ran with it:

So how much does a healthy H/Hr fan with good teeth go for these days? (xero-sky)

Which H/Hr's are in the big house and which ones are working in the fields? ... We didn't land on Plymouth rock, Plymouth rock landed on us! *throws up the fist* (prettyveela)

If we're going to start enslaving delusional people, I want to start with the scientologists. Who's with me? (ladybirdsleeps)

Big Daddy Heron:*hits the H/Hr fan with a whip* Your ship name is H/Hr, H/Hr! Say it! H/Hr shipper: H-Harmony (sewingmyfish)

Bully for the slaves! In fact they would have been sooo much better off if all we 21st century people could trade places with the whites that lived back then. Not only could we tell them to get a life, none of us would have kept slaves! (chief)

You know, just like slaves, they have to work out in the hot sun for no wages and be beaten and whipped and raped and sold like cattle deal with an author not writing the fictional pairing they wanted. (slackerbitch)

Mere hours after the controversy was reported to F_W, a user named ahiru created some icons to celebrate the controversy:

And with some more chuckles about the inherent ridiculousness of such a claim, the fandom and its onlookers dropped the subject.

For a few months.

The Aftermath

In November 2005, some users rediscovered the icons made by ahiru and found them insensitive and racist. This is immediately reported to F_W not once but twice, and the folks there were no longer entertained, responding with less amusement than outright hostility. A couple of F_Wankers understood to at least some extent why there might be people who didn’t love the icons, though they did generally come down on the side of parody and feel those upset were missing the point of the joke. A lot of F_Wankers were upset about political correctness and free speech, and were eager to point out the oppression faced by other groups of people.

Someone anonymous entered the fray with racist guns blazing, and was summarily eviscerated by gleeful F_Wankers.

After that, the dust settled, and all was quiet on the fandom front . . . at least, until the next inevitable disaster.

Further Reading

The Interview that sparked the Emerson outrage

An offshoot of Harmony that believes in Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson’s undeniable chemistry and romance

A collection of Harmonian controversies, 2006-2010

Other HP controversies

[femalechibiblogger]

My Top 10 Most Tragic Villains

1. Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader

Anakin Skywalker is one of the most important characters in the Star Wars franchise. In the first movie, Anakin is only mentioned and is described as being a skilled Jedi Knight, a good pilot, and was also a good friend. Even in the prequels and cartoons that came years later, Anakin is shown to be kind, caring, and determined to save those closest to him. However...no one would have expected a great Jedi and friend to become the most infamous villain in the series. Anakin’s darker feelings, such as anger and jealousy, made him vulnerable to the Dark Side of the Force. When he has visions of his pregnant wife, Padme, dying in childbirth, Anakin is determined to do anything that he can to stop his vision from coming true...including betraying his friends, killing children, and helping a Sith Lord conquer the galaxy. However, Padme still dies, and Anakin becomes the Sith Lord: Darth Vader. Anakin had lost everything...his friends, his wife, everyone...and now all he had left was Emperor Palpatine and the Empire. But for many years, Anakin was unaware that his children had survived: His son Luke, and his daughter Leia. In the end, Anakin chooses to save Luke from Palpatine, and dies knowing that his son never gave-up on him. 

Despite Darth Vader having been a villain, he is only a villain because he was deceived and tormented until he lost everything and everyone who loved and cared about him. For many years, Anakin was haunted by his past actions, and lived in great regret of what he had done. But in the end, we see that he still had some good left in him, as Palpatine could never destroy Anakin’s love for his children. 

2. Arthur Fleck/Joker (2019)

Arthur Fleck is the main character of the original DC Comics story in the movie, Joker. Arthur is shown to be a mentally ill man who suffers from uncontrollable laughter due to a brain injury, who lives with his delusional and emotionally disturbed mother. Arthur worked as a clown, but his dream was to become a comedian. However, Arthur had been mocked by many people in Gotham, which caused him to kill three men who were harassing both him and a woman on a train. Arthur’s actions cause an uproar consisting of people who are either poor, unemployed, mentally ill, or all of the above. As the story progresses, Arthur discovers from shocking truths about his life: His mother had lied about him being the illegitimate son of her former boss, billionaire Thomas Wayne... His mother was actually his adoptive mother, and that he allowed her boyfriend to abuse Arthur...abuse that had caused him his head injury which is the reason for his uncontrollable laughing. Tired of being lied to and ridiculed all his life, Arthur kills his mother, dresses up as a clown, and kills people on live television. Not only that, but the protests that Arthur had unintentionally caused resulted in the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne, whose murders were witnessed by their son Bruce. 

This is one of the few stories that actually features Joker’s backstory. This movie is not based off of any comics, and is therefore an original story. While Joker is one of Batman’s most dangerous villains, this may be one of the greatest portrayals of his former self. Arthur Fleck had suffered his whole life, until he snapped and would become one of the Gotham’s greatest threats.

3. Simon Petrikov/Ice King

The Ice King was the main antagonist of the cartoon, Adventure Time. Throughout the series, Ice King would attempt to kidnap princesses, especially Princess Bubblegum, and would often fight the two main protagonists: Finn and Jake. However, Ice King’s past was unexpectedly revealed in the episode, Holly Jolly Secrets. At first the episode is comedic and shows videos of Ice King’s hilarity...but it all becomes serious and sad near the end. Ice King is revealed to have once been a human named ‘Simon Petrikov’, who specialized in mysterious, supernatural artifacts. Simon had a great career, and was madly in love with his fiance: Betty. But one day, Simon found a mysterious crown buried in ice and snow. When Simon put it on his head, it gave him visions that made him act insane without him even realizing it. This drove Betty away, and Simon began to slowly change physically, emotionally, and mentally. In the end, Simon was driven completely insane and lost all memories of his past. His obsession with princesses is because he used to call Betty his ‘princess’...though he did not remember calling her that. In the series finale, Simon is freed from the crown’s power and is returned to his old self.

While Ice King was introduced as a comedic villain, and was the main antagonist for most of the series...he is still a tragic villain do to him once being a sane man with a good life, but began to lose his mind because of the crown’s magic. At least he was transformed back into his old self, in the end. 

4. Mr. Freeze

Mr. Freeze is one of the most famous and tragic villains in the Batman universe. Mr. Freeze is, of course, a villain who uses the cold in his crimes. But in the past, Mr. Freeze was a scientist named ‘Victor Fries’ who had a loving and caring relationship with his wife: Nora. Victor loved Nora more than anything in the world. But at some point, Nora was diagnosed with a fatal disease with not long to live. Desperate to save her, Victor had Nora cryonectically frozen in order to keep her alive until a cure for her illness was found. Unfortunately, however, the equipment malfunctioned, causing the lab to explode in ice with Victor in it. Victor survived, but the explosion caused his body to only be able to survive in extremely cold weather. Nora had also survived...but her condition was even more serious than before. Victor created a suit to help him live, and began to commit crimes so he could continue keeping his wife alive.

Mr. Freeze’s motive for his crime spree is his wife’s life. He would go to extreme lengths to save her life...even if it meant becoming a bad guy.

5. Zack Foster and Rachel Gardner

While number 5 on the list consists of a duo...Zack and Rachel make one heck of a team. Zack and Rachel are the two main characters in the anime, Angels of Death, in which all of the characters are, in fact, mentally unstable individuals who like to kill people. 

As a child, Zack had lived with his mother until her boyfriend set him on fire for his own enjoyment. While Zack survived this attack, his mother abandoned him at an illegal orphanage, where many other orphans were mistreated and starved by the couple who owned the orphanage. Zack was forced to bury the bodies of the orphans who died there, and was treated as a pet by the couple. One night, Zack watched a slasher film, which gave him the idea to stab the couple to death while they slept. Afterwards, Zack left the orphanage and was soon taken in a blind, homeless man who was the first and only person to ever show him kindness. However, the man was killed by a couple of sociopaths. Zack found out and killed them. For many years...Zack would kill people who were ‘happy’ and lied to him, thus earning him the title of a serial killer. 

Rachel had lived with her parents before the start of the series. Rachel’s father was a cop who had a drinking problem, which resulted in several fights between him and his wife. Both of them blamed each other for Rachel’s lack of emotions, but only stayed together because of Rachel. Rachel’s father saw her as an insane girl, and her mother hated her and would even beat her. One day, Rachel found a stray puppy and wanted to keep it, but her parents wouldn’t listen to her and just kept on fighting with each other. But later on, she went back to where the puppy was and it bit her. This caused Rachel to blackout, but when she came to...she saw that she had killed the dog without even remembering what she had done. She then “fixed” the puppy by sewing it back together, thus “making it her’s”. When Rachel returned home with the puppy that night, her father snapped and stabbed her mother to death. Rachel witnessed it and ran back to her room, with her father chasing after her with the knife. Rachel took out a gun that her mother had hidden from him, and shot her father in self-defense. Rachel then sewed her parents’ bodies together, as her way of “fixing” them and creating her “perfect family”. A week later, the police arrived at the house and saw Rachel with the sewed up puppy and her parents. The police thought that Rachel was a surviving victim who was in shock, and was sent to a mental institution for treatment. 

Zack and Rachel are quite complicated, as they have both protagonist and antagonist qualities. They both kill people and use each other to escape a building full of death traps and killers...but they also care and understand each other, as they have both suffered years of abuse to the point of developing murderous instincts.

6. Dr. Doofenshmirtz

Dr. Doofenshmirtz was basically the main comedic-antagonist of the cartoon, Phineas and Ferb. Doofenshmirtz is the arch nemesis of Perry the Platypus, and is always making some kind of ‘inator’ device to conquer the Tri State Area...though many of his “evil” plans backfire and are not really THAT evil. Though the reason why Doofenshmirtz is an evil genius, is because of his bad childhood. 

Both of his parents neglected him, he always lived in the shadow of his younger brother, his only friend was a balloon, no one ever came to any of his birthdays, he was forced to wear dresses after his brother was born, and he was even disowned at one point and was forced to live with ocelots. So, yeah...it’s no wonder he turned to a life on crime. 

Doofenshmirtz is quite hilarious and not very evil...but his terrible childhood makes you wonder how he hasn’t killed anyone! At least his arch nemesis and teenage daughter care about him. 

7. Denzel Crocker 

Denzel Crocker is one of the main antagonists of the cartoon, Fairly Odd Parents. Crocker is a fourth grade teacher who is obsessed with catching fairies...which makes the people around him see him as crazy. Of course, there is a reason for his obsession with fairies.

When Crocker was a child, his single mother worked two jobs and left him with an abusive babysitter. Because of this, he had fairy godparents...just like Timmy Turner. His life with his fairies was the only time in his life when he was happy. However, after Timmy went back in time and accidentally revealed that Crocker had fairies, his fairies were taken away from him and his memory was erased several times. People even forgot all of the good things that Crocker had done with his fairies, and was now hated by the townspeople. Because his memory was erased more than once, his appearance changed...but he still did not forget the existence of fairies, only forgetting that he himself had fairy godparents as a child.

Crocker’s obsession with proving the existence of fairies has caused him to become a laughing stock, to the point where he was expelled from Harvard, was denied funding for his fairy research, lost his girlfriend, and he never moved out of his childhood home. Crocker is capable of building extraordinary machines and is quite smart, but he wastes his talents on trying to prove the existence of fairies. If only Crocker had never became obsessed with fairies, he may have been able to live a normal and decent life.

8. Wellies

Wellies are the residents of Wellington Wells in the game, We Happy Few. Wellies are known to be decent citizens in Wellington Wells...but their minds and emotional states are from from decent. They kill or throw out anyone who becomes a Downer (a person who either won’t take Joy, or cannot take Joy due to having a bad reaction towards it). But their villainous characteristics are all caused by denial and drug usage. 

In an alternate timeline, England surrendered to Germany during WWII and the citizens of Wellington Wells were forced to send their under 13 children on a train to Germany. The children never returned, even after Germany lost the war, and all of the townspeople were so traumatized by what had happened that they now rely on a drug: Joy. Joy is a pill that makes people forget the past, and put them in a state of constant happiness. The Wellies are addicted to this drug, as they cannot bear to remember what had happened to the children. To make matters worse, their whole civilization is now on the verge of collapse due to many problems caused by them always being on Joy: Broken machinery, plagues caused by pollution, towns beginning to collapse due to poor maintenance, starvation due to lack of food production, and a government who cannot bear to face the reality of their situation and would rather be on Joy than solve the problem. 

Because of their reliance on Joy, Wellies are completely unaware that the town is collapsing, and would rather be in denial than face reality. 

9. Mary

Mary is the hidden antagonist in the game, Ib. At first, Mary appears to be an innocent girl who claims to be trapped in the Fabricated World like the main protagonists, Ib and Garry. However, it is revealed that Mary is actually a girl from a painting who wants to escape the Fabricated World by replacing either Ib or Gary in the real world. 

Depending on the game’s ending, Mary either replaces Ib or Garry in the real world by leaving one of them behind in the Fabricated World, or is defeated by Ib and Garry and remains trapped in the Fabricated World. 

Mary was the last painting made by the artist: Guertena. She saw him as her “father”, because she was created by him, and was devastated by his death. Mary is very lonely in the Fabricated World, and wants so desperately to exist in the real world. Mary would do anything to become real and have a friend and family of her own. Years of loneliness can make a person desperate and insane.  

10. Zombies

Zombies are always the villains in anything zombie-related. They are undead humanoids who eat human flesh, and drive survivors to do questionable things and fight for survival. 

However, there is something that some people seem to forget: Zombies used to be normal, ordinary humans who did not become zombies by choice. They were turned into zombies either because of a mysterious virus, or a nuclear weapon that mutated them into creatures of the undead. 

Zombies do not remember who they once were, and some even end up killing and eating their own loved ones without even realizing it. They have basically been ripped of their humanity and are now walking shells of their former selves.

[sworn-unbeliever]

28 - Irenic

((Dear @abeat​ requested a story where Teremy and Joey make up after their fight in Argy-bargy. Here it is! Also, this entry was supposed to be short. What happened?))

wc: 2,462

As soon as Teremy stepped into the Pugilist’s Guild, box of goods in both arms, a familiar blue-haired lalafell wearing green and white gear waved to him.

“Teremy, is that you? Long time no see!”

Teremy placed the crate down gently on the receptionist’s table and turned to the lalafell. To her, Teremy placed his right fist in his left palm and bowed. “Nice to see you again, Chuchuto.”

Upon hearing her name, the lalafell smiled and returned the bow. “Yes, it has been quite some time since you’ve last stepped into the guild, hasn’t it? I can tell that you’ve kept up with your training. You’ve grown bigger in more ways than one. Your sleeves hardly fit you.”

Teremy scratched the back of his head. He had no idea how to respond to that statement.

“However,” Chuchuto pointed a finger to her mouth. “There’s something different about you that I can’t quite put a finger on. Here, kneel down so I can see your face better.”

Teremy did so, now crouched down in a squatting position. Chuchuto placed her hands on Teremy’s cheeks and looked deep into the miqo’te’s eyes.

“Yes, I believe I understand now,” said Chuchuto. “You finally look like you’ve gotten some sleep and are more well rested. You’ve finally toned down that crazy training schedule of yours, have you? Youth is wasted on the young, so Master Hamon says. It’s good to see you so dedicated, but not to the point you’ll burn out before your time.”

Those words… they sounded oddly specific. Teremy narrowed his eyes slightly. “How would you know about that.”

“So I am right?”

“... How did you hear about this?” Teremy folded his arms.

Like a true martial artist, Chuchuto didn’t flinch at the first sign of danger. She remained as calm and composed as before. “A friend of yours stopped by the guild a few days ago.”

“A friend?” Teremy repeated. Who? Alex? Maroda? Holly?

Or possibly…?

“A dunesfolk lalafell with blonde hair and donned in dalamud red garments?” Chuchuto asked. “At any rate, he came to the guild asking for advice about a friend who had been overtraining to the point his nerves had reached an all-time high and disrupting his sleep schedule. By the sounds of a physically taxing eight-hour day, this schedule sounded suspiciously like yours.”

Teremy glanced to the side. Was his training schedule that infamous that even Chuchuto took notice? “What did he ask?”

“He asked for advice on how to help his friend ease into a more relaxed schedule. Still physically demanding, but less so as to not overtax one’s body.” said Chuchuto. “He sounded greatly concerned. If I didn’t know better, I’d say even worried.”

Worried.

Teremy’s list of suspects narrowed down to one. His companion. His friend. The one who had picked a fight with him out of the blue over this.

Joey. He had been asking around?

* * *

His mind still brimming with questions, Teremy once again found himself unable to sleep. Once again, he thought to take a walk just outside Cedarwood. And once again, he found himself perched upon the same rock as before. At this rate, he may as well just lift the rock and hold it over his head until his body caved in. Perhaps he rock would fall on his head and knock some sense into him.

Thankfully, a less fatal solution appeared with the sound of a young, familiar voice. “I thought you’d be here. Are your nerves still keeping you up?”

Teremy glanced to the side and saw that Joey had suddenly appeared and now sat beside him. “What’s your excuse?”

“I just have weird sleeping hours.” Joey rubbed his eyes. He lied. Teremy knew that the lalafell had stayed up to see him. Or so the miqo’te’s ego assumed. “I heard it takes at least three months for the effects of overtraining to start wearing off. You know, the heightened nerves and all that.”

“I heard from Chuchuto at the Pugilist’s Guild that you were asking about that.”

Joey’s red eyes opened wide. “Oh, you heard about that. Eh heh…” He pressed his stubby fingers together. “Yeah, I went to the Pugilist’s Guild, the Gladiator’s Guild… even that Widargelt guy. They all had something to say. After that, I asked Reo about her advice and she made that plan.”

At first Teremy was about to get up in Joey’s face at the mention of this overtraining thing. But when Joey continued to talk, that anger subsided into wide-eyed surprise. So Teremy’s ego hadn’t assumed things. “You went through all that trouble—”

“—for your sake, yeah.” Joey nodded once.

Teremy stared at the ground by his feet. “I-I don’t know what to say.” Here Teremy had thought that Joey was acting like those people who gave unsolicited advice for the sake of doing so. But not only had Joey been worried, but had been asking around to formulate a plan to help him. Teremy had no idea what to say. Or think.

Joey looked up at the sky. “The other day, you asked what would I know about protecting people and fighting in matters of life or death. I thought about telling you many times, but I guess now is as good of a time as any to tell you. Of what I'm going to talk about, you don't have to believe me. But please hear me out.”

The lalafell stared up at the sky as he gazed upon the stars for words and answers.

"I'm a dimensional traveller. I work for a being outside of time and she sends me to various worlds on missions. In this case, it's to find our missing friends who had died from a rebellion I took part in. According to her findings, some of them have reincarnated here on Eorzea.”

Joey took a deep breath and paused, his hands clenching his knees.

“In my home world, mages, if found, were persecuted. Experimented on, forced to have their energies reversed. All by this group that called themselves strong people and deemed us weak. I was part of a group that tried to find and shelter them. We were always on the run. And many of us were kidnapped and killed, some right in front of my eyes. Some of their souls… were even…”

Teremy heard a quiver in Joey’s voice. He looked down to see the lalafell’s red eyes staring not at anything, but a distant past somewhere beyond the reach of a normal gaze. His tiny hand trembled on his lap. Unsure of what else he could do, Teremy put his larger hand on Joey’s to hopefully help the lalafell feel more grounded.

“In the end, many of them will never reincarnate. Some will. But many won't. But in the end, only two of us survived, one being me. And I will never forget those times they had died. I could have saved them, but I didn't.” Joey shook his head. “I won't make that mistake again. I, too, have many people I want to protect, and that's all the weak people like me who can't call themselves strong. Who have been beaten down and who can't fight for themselves.”

Had Joey told this story to anyone else in Eorzea, would he have had a hand waved at him? Told he was delusional? What kind of bard’s folk tale did he conjure off the top of his head and all that. All to justify his weird quirks? But to Teremy, every word Joey said explained so much about the lalafell. From Joey’s hatred of strong people, his fear of training, his utmost instinct to throw himself into the heat of battle like a desperate animal on its last legs with nothing else to lose. Joey’s desire to help others. Bolster and take care of him.

A same kindness that extended to Teremy himself.

“If I can help it, I don't want to see someone else die. Not while I still have the means to fight,” said Joey. “I want to show weak people like me that we, too, have worth. We, too, can fight.  Perhaps individually we are weak, but together we can join forces.”

I get that. Is what Teremy wanted to say. But his words failed to leave his mouth. All he ended up doing was wrap his arm around the tiny lalafell and hold him close in a tight embrace. The same kind that Aunt Jocelyn used to give Teremy so many years ago. Joey hiccuped, his chest trembled, and soon the emotions he could no longer contain flooded out in a well of tears. Teremy hugged him tight. Not that hugs could bring back anyone from the dead or beyond. All Teremy could do now was give some meager comfort to this tiny lalafell’s immense sorrow.

The two sat like this for an unspecified period of time. Perhaps minutes. Perhaps hours. Joey continued to cry and Teremy continued to hug him. Soon, the stars faded out from a greater radiating brightness as the sun rose into the horizon. With the dawn marked a new day. Like hope. Or perhaps a reflection of a new revelation—a past way of looking at Joey that Teremy could no longer unsee.

Joey wiped his eyes on his coat’s forearm. “I'm probably talking nonsense and wasting your time right now. Only one person outside of this ordeal has believed me before. I’m sorry. I’m not sure why I told you all that. Maybe to tell you where I’m coming from too. Anyway, gonna be tired all day, but what can you do. Insomniacs just have to deal. Thank you for hearing me out.”

Teremy had a feeling to let go of Joey. Before Teremy could say anything, Joey flew off into the distance on his flying chair, no doubt manually hovering to Gridania to give himself time to think. Teremy would have done the same had he possessed his own flying chair. But as for now, Teremy continued to perch on the rock. What could Teremy have possibly said in regards to all that? During their fight, the miqo’te lashed out at Joey from his own anger. His own conclusions. And now his perceptions had turned into a large question mark.

All Teremy could do was get ready for a new day at Fortunes & Fancies. No doubt Joey would be there. Then what? Feeling the weight of his guilty world on his shoulders, Teremy trudged back to his apartment.

* * *

The next day, Teremy showed up at Fortunes & Fancies right on time. He pushed the door open with a half-awake palm strike and tied his apron around his narrow waist once the door let him through. Right away, he heard chatter from Reonora the store owner, Rosemary the retainer, and Joey. As soon as the trio saw Teremy, they halted their conversation and turned to face him.

“Mornin’.” Teremy nodded to them.

The trio looked up to see Teremy at the door.

“Good morning, Teremy.” Reonora smiled.

“Good morning, Mr. Teremy!” Rosemary waved.

“Hey, neph-neph!” Joey raised a hand in greeting.

A pang of guilt stabbed Teremy in the chest as soon as he saw the dunesfolk. Teremy steeled his resolve as though facing off against a powerful foe. Do or die. “Hey… uh… Joey, I…”

Joey tilted his head slightly.

Reonora looked between the two males in the room. She smiled, knowing—or hoping—about the event that may or may not transpire. “All right, let’s rally tasks for today.” She clapped her hands and winked at Joey. “Come with me, Rosemary.”

“Yes, mistress!” Rosemary smiled cutely and curtsied.

After Reonora’s many hugs, kisses, and gushing over how cute and adorable Rosemary was, Reonora picked up her plainsfolk retainer and headed downstairs. Soon, the oriental partition downstairs slid shut.

The silence between the two only lasted a moment. “Now your turn to hear me out.” said Teremy.

Joey hopped up on the counter so he could look at Teremy face to face.

Teremy performed an eastern bow.  “I was wrong. About you.”

“Eh…?”

“I misjudged you. I have no excuses. You’ve been looking out for me since we’ve traveled together through Norvrant and I’m the one who slapped your hand away because I… you’re right. I always think I’ll never be good enough.”

Joey scratched his cheek. “And I did say you underestimate yourself too. Which you do.”

“There’s that! But… ah… I…” Teremy took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I’m really. Truly. Sorry. I’ll make things up to you sometime.”

Joey narrowed his eyebrows. He folded his arms and looked back at the miqo’te, eye to eye. Suddenly, Teremy felt a sharp sting on his left arm. Not even telegraphed. No, Teremy had seen that punch coming. The miqo’te’s guard had been completely down; he had left himself completely at Joey’s mercy so that he had told his senses to not do anything. Joey looked up and smiled a little.

“There. Play punch. Now I forgive you,” said Joey.

Teremy chuckled and returned the smile. “Fair,” he said and rubbed his arm.

Joey’s smile immediately melted into concern. “I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”

Teremy pretended to wince. “I deserved that. I’m gonna feel that all month. You’re stronger than you look.”

And concern immediately burned into anger. “I TAKE IT BACK! I DON'T FORGIVE YOU ANYMORE! HIGH INSULT!!”

Teremy laughed. The lalafell pounded on his ‘wounded’ arm, but Teremy felt nothing but bats from a kitten’s paws. As Teremy laughed, he felt all the tension ebb away from him—that feeling of being scolded. Nothing more than concern. That feeling of that he was wrong. Yes, he had been. And he had people who cared about him enough to make things better for himself. And that feeling that he had fought with a friend with his insecurities as a guide. Seeing Joey’s honest reaction made everything feel better.

Still, Teremy had one more thing to say. The miqo’te took a deep breath and calmed down. “… Hey, uh, Joey…”

Joey tilted his head slightly again.

“I just wanna say...” Teremy scratched the back of his head again. “I have no words to express about what you told me. I can only imagine. That must have been hard for you. But you’re not alone anymore either. I’d like to imagine I’m sturdy. This body is made of tankbusters after all. And I’m too stubborn to die. At the very least, I’ll be around.” He jabbed a thumb at himself. “You can count on me too. For anything. Except talking. My itty bitty wit meter runs on a single-digit daily quota.” He cleared his throat. “Need something or someone taken down? Just give me a call. I’ll be there.”

Now it was Joey’s turn to smile. “I’d like that. Thank you.”

[thephantomporg84]

I have complicated feelings about the reboot, it's kind of a shame that it was rewritten after the backlash. It seemed way more interesting than what we got by the 2010 teaser. It'd still be way more grimdark in spirit than DMC but at least it'd probably be better? The protag not being insufferable would be a plus. I wish they at least shared what the original story was. I know that the reboot is an old discussion but it's so clearly the skeleton of what it was planned to be, and it makes me sad

Nah it’s cool! It’s still interesting to bring up — I’m not one of those people who are just... unreasonably nasty about the reboot despite my distaste for it. I pretty much agree. I think there are some good ideas in that game, and that, on a whole, it’s not a terrible video game. It’s just a terrible DMC.

I’m with you, though — I’ve always been curious as to what the original story was, despite my dislike of a dark and gritty DMC as a whole. It’d still be nice to know. I feel like going full grimdark would have been better for the core content of this series versus the pseudo-intellectual conspiracy theory-tinged bullshit the reboot had to offer.

I feel like there are some changes you could make to the reboot as it exists to make it a much more interesting story. It’s... ah. Well. None of this is a great improvement, but just pulling from my memory of that game and a lot of suggestions that others have made for how they’d fix it (I think this has all been compiled once or twice on YouTube as well, for the the most part), this is what I would have done:

From jump street, the infamous succubus scene has to go. That is quite possibly the most cringe thing I have ever sat through in a video game and, to date, it makes my skin crawl thinking about it. Anyway.

Donte always came across, to me, like he’s trying to do an impression of Dante while lacking the original one’s wit.

I think Donte should have turned out to be an imposter. Let him be someone Dante saved or someone that saw Dante at work when they really shouldn’t have. Something like that. A good copycat — like a version of the guy that’s running around ‘wearing hockey pants’ in The Dark Knight.

Leave the sloppier fighting mechanics alone — he’s not trained like Dante and should, as a consequence, be left open and vulnerable a lot.

Real Dante has to keep saving him because of this. A Dante that’s just starting out would easily get fed up with doing this pretty quick and probably go off on Donte. Donte then seeks out demonic power like other DMC villains have done and slowly becomes a villain himself. Donte being delusional and copycatting Dante also could explain the darker depiction of things and the way Limbo works in this game. It makes all the galaxy-brained conspiracy theory bullshit type of vibe the game gives off (to me, at least) make more sense.

Vorgil shouldn’t have been Vergil or even Donte’s sibling — just some conspiracy theory wackadoo that Dante sees as a brother/listens to. Maybe even mistakes him as a missing brother (that he doesn’t even have) because he overheard Dante’s brother Vergil is actually missing or something.

They still plot to assassinate Kyle Ryder (Mundus) and his demon army/overlords or whatever (like the Bill O’Reilly stand-in). That basically stays the same.

At some point though, as they fight their way through these demons, the other shoe drops:

(:

Get to the late stages of the game. Get to Kyle Ryder’s office to kill him. He’s just a greedy fucking pig of a man, but he’s not a demon. Real!Dante shows up around this point to essentially stop a misguided, but ultimately-not-terrible kid from committing what would be a very public execution. Tries to talk him down despite Dante probably not being much older than this dude.

The Bill O’Reilly Clone and whatnot probably had it coming, but a lot of the ‘demons’ killed were just regular people that worked for Ryder or whoever. Not killing ‘Mundus’ still doesn’t just wipe the slate clean for all the domestic terrorism stuff they’ve been doing to satisfy their delusions and crackpot conspiracies up ‘till now.

This makes Dante vs Donte and Dante vs Vorgil the last fights of the game. Maybe Vergil was being manipulative from the sidelines the whole time and that’s the ultimate ending or something. You could end the game on a sinister note and open it up for a sequel or something. I think the original leaves the ending open, too.

Doing all this then changes the tone of the game from this fake-deep, frankly really uninteresting meta commentary on the power behind media and consumerism — which is more than a little hilarious and hypocritical for a $60 USD piece of media for consumerists — to a meta commentary about mental health and the absolutely insane lengths some people will go to (and things they will convince themselves of) in order to commit horribly dispoportionate acts of violence and terror against people whose worldviews and practices they disagree with... something that, ultimately, has a lot more staying power in the current social and political climate we live in. It’s been done before, but I feel like the game would have had more relevancy. And given that Ninja Theory was already planning/working on Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, they would probably have been more in their element this way.

All that said, though: the mental health message is kind of tired as well, especially in the wrong hands, and the game still woulda been better in its own franchise. Or marketed as an AU/reinvisioning versus a hard reboot.

Also, outside of the actual game: Someone should have muzzled Tameem Antoniades’ stupid ass with a quickness the microinstant he started spewing his unfiltered bullshit. He did more damage to that reboot more than anything in-game ever could have.

[hatari-translations]

Kappsmál (25.10.19) - translation

Kappsmál is a game show on RÚV about the Icelandic language; I think it started this year. The title itself is a play on words: kappsmál means an issue or aspiration of great importance to someone, but it's a compound of "kapp" (race/contest) and "mál" (which in the actual word means an issue, but also means language).

On October 25th’s episode, Matthías was one of the contestants on this show, his teammate being Alma Mjöll Ólafsdóttir, his housemate and one of his partners in the Little Kettle Theatre Company (Ketiltetur) in 2016, which I've translated an article about before. Thus, I have taken on the Herculean task of translating a game show about Icelandic wordplay. Oh boy. Strap yourselves in.

I'm not going to translate every word that is said; I'll translate Matthías and anything that provides context to something he says, but otherwise mostly give the gist of what's said. However, I will be explaining everything that's going on in the show, what the rounds are about and the words, wordplay and grammatical concepts involved. So this is going to be one for my Icelandic-curious readers!

The female host (Björg Magnúsdóttir) begins by introducing it as the show where Icelandic is "the alpha and the omega". She asks the male host, Bragi Valdimar Skúlason, what he's been up to tonight, and he says that he's been thinking about words that share the same letters and go together, which he calls "Siamese words", such as "traust sturta" (a sturdy shower). What kind of vehicle do you travel on between countries? "Iðulega galeiðu" (usually a galley).

Björg introduces the contestants, asking each one what they think is the most difficult Icelandic word. The first is actress and playwright Vala Kristín Eiríksdóttir, who says she was about to use "ströggla", which is slang, an Icelandicization of the English verb "to struggle", to describe her difficulties with the word "spúla", which means to wash something with a high-pressure water pump; some people say it's "smúla". Bragi agrees that people are divided on the matter; he grew up saying "spúla" but then he started working at a freezing plant and they'd say "smúla".

Her teammate is actress Júlíana Sara Gunnarsdóttir; the two of them form a comedy duo. Júlíana's most difficult word is declining the word "ær" (a female sheep). This word is one of a few that are infamously counterintuitive and people get them wrong all the time; the four cases go ær - á - á - ær. Björg says that, but then Júlíana challenges her on the plural, ær - ær - ám - áa. (The plural actually is more intuitive than the singular, but Björg still admits defeat.) Bragi quips, "Þess vegna var kindin fundin upp", or "That's why they invented the sheep", except that he's obviously referencing the word "kind", which also means a sheep but is easier to decline.

Matthías is introduced next, as a "playwright, hater [hatari] and of course Eurovision contestant. Matthías likes to fry asparagus in butter and garlic and enjoys boiling beans in a pot and putting into taco shells." His most difficult word is "ímyndunarveiki" - which is apparently officially defined as hypochondria, but in casual usage I've always felt it to mean being delusional or just overly lost in flights of fancy. Literally, this is a compound that means "imagination sickness", and Matthías says, "Because why is that a sickness?" He asks why it's not "ímyndunargleði", which is literally "imagination joy". When -gleði is used as a suffix, it tends be a word used to describe someone who enjoys something - e.g. "vinnugleði" for someone who's enthusiastic about their work - so "ímyndunargleði" would just mean "liking imagination".

Matthías goes on: "I think that's hard. Why is it a sickness to be imagination..." Björg suggests there's a kind of shame to it. "Yeah, it's a kind of imagination-shaming." Júlíana says, "That's how a playwright thinks." Matthías says "Yeah, isn't it? Why... I don't know. It seems very loaded, somehow. That's why I'd like to suggest ímyndunargleði."

Alma Mjöll, journalist, twin and author of opinion columns and stage projects, apparently likes to make guacamole for the aforementioned taco shells, because she and Matthías live together. Her most difficult Icelandic word is "brúðkaup" (wedding), which is a compound of "brúður" (bride) and "kaup" (purchase). She doesn't want to get married until this word has been changed, because of the dodgy connotations of that compound. Matthías nods. She also doesn't like "gifting" (marriage), which like in English implies the bride is a gift. Björg asks how she feels about "að ganga í hjónaband", another alternative that literally means "to go into a couple bond". Alma doesn't feel like that's neutral either, but some of the others suggest that's just a bond between individuals; she says she'll think about it.

Björg says "So you two just want to exterminate those two words." Matthías says "Yes. We're here to exterminate."

Next, the teams get names, which are created by Bragi by taking letters from their combined first names and making a word out of them. For Vala Kristín and Júlíana Sara, Bragi suggests Vínsala (a wine store), Snúllar (snúlla is a sort of general cutesy nickname, along the lines of "cutiepie"), Vínkjallarar (wine cellars) or Kínarúlla (Chinese roll), but ended up on Sjakalar (jackals). For Matthías and Alma Mjöll, he suggest Maísmjöl (corn flour), Tímatal (reckoning/calendar), Mjaltatíma (milking time) or Maltöl (malt beer, very popular in Iceland), but settled on Smjatt (the sound that you make when chewing loudly). Alma Mjöll gasps and calls it perfect. Matthías says something in response to this but I'm not quite sure what it is; it sounds like "Wasn't Smjatt going to come tonight?", but I'm not sure what he could be referencing there and I can't hear it super clearly.

Finally time for the actual game show! The first round is "The letter", where the contestants are given categories, and they're supposed to come up with as many words as possible that fall into this category and start with a given letter in ten seconds. For this episode, the letter is V.

Sjakalar go first.

The first category is "Men's names". They come up with Valur, Vignir, Vigfús, Valdimar, Villi and Víðir, all pretty common Icelandic men's names.

Next, they get "Animals" and only come up with "valur" again (which means a falcon in addition to being a name).

Next, "Verbs". Vaða (wade), velja (choose), vera (be), vakna (wake), vilja (want), vona (hope), and vita (know).

Then, "Cities". Varsjá (Warsaw), Vilnius, and “Volga no that's a river.”

"Jobs". Viðgerðarmaður (repairman) and verkamaður (labourer).

Next, they go over the answers. Bragi adds vatnabuffall (water buffalo), villisvín (hog) and vambi (wombat) to the animal category, and Björg suggests vampíra (vampire), though that one's obviously pretty dubious. They get 17 points all together.

Next, still a part of the letter round, they're supposed to see pictures of things that usually start with a V, only they're supposed to come up with new words for them that don't start with a V.

The first picture shows lipstick (varalitur). Vala comes up with "litastifti" (color stick). Júlíana starts to say "túss-" (marker), but doesn't manage to finish what was presumably meant to be a compound in time.

Next they get waders (vöðlur). Vala comes up with "vatnabuxur" (water pants), but unfortunately that also starts with a V. Then "buxnahlíf" (pants cover) and "fiskigræja" (fishing gear).

Then a flashlight (vasaljós), for which Vala suggests "ljósastöng" (light stick). Júlíana says "ljósapera", which is totally not a new word, it's just the word for a lightbulb. Vala comes up with "lýsiskaft" (lighting grip) and "ljósatæki" (light machine).

Next, a steamroller (valtari). Júlíana suggests "bílatrukkur" (car truck), Vala "vinnutæki" (work machine), then Júlíana "bílatæki" (car machine).

Finally, a vampire (vampíra). Vala suggests "blóðkona" (blood woman), "dauðadís" (death woman) and "dauðavera" (death creature); Júlíana "blóðmaður" (blood man).

Out of these, Bragi considers the lipstick, flashlight and vampire categories to have received valid contributions, with "litastifti", "lýsiskaft" and "dauðadís". I'm guessing this is judged subjectively. For this, they get six points, ending with 23.

Next up is Smjatt, still with the letter V, starting with the things that actually start with V.

For the category "Women's names", they come up with Vala, Valgerður and Vigdís, plus Matthías says "Vonheiður" and "Valheiður", which are not actually names but do sound like they could be, and Alma says "vinkona" (female friend) and "vorheiða", which are definitely not names.

Next, "Clothing". Matthías immediately says "vatnabuxur" (the water pants from earlier), but unfortunately doesn't come up with the original word, "vöðlur". Then "vínfatnaður" (wine clothes), and Alma says "vorklæðnaður" (spring clothes). Matthías adds "vorklæði" (spring clothes again) and "vorhúfa" (spring hat).

Then "Adjectives". Matthías says "vænn" (good), Alma says "vongóður" (hopeful), Matthías says "vær" (peaceful, as in sleeping peacefully), Alma says "veikur" (sick) and "veiklulegur" (sickly).

"Machines and tools". Matthías says "vísindaglas" (science glass, which is not actually what we call a vial).

"Companies". Matthías says "Velcro" (not Icelandic, but okay), Alma says "Valitor" (which is). Matthías says "Vinabær" (friend town), which actually exists and is apparently a place that hosts bingo. Alma says "Viss ehf.", a mobile phone insurance company.

Bragi thinks Vonheiður and Vorheiða should totally be names. When he gets to the machines and tools category, Matthías asks, "Can you help us a bit there?" Bragi suggests "vélsög" (chainsaw), "vélbor" (power drill) and "valtari" (steamroller). All in all, this got them 14 points.

Next, for the new words that don't start with a V:

First, a crib (vagga). Alma suggests "barnarúm" (child bed), Matthías "barnadýna" (child mattress) and then "barnadýnugrind" (child mattress frame), Alma "barnagrind" (child frame), which is very unlikely to catch on because it's frighteningly close to "barnagirnd" (pedophilia). Matthías says "barnahristir" (child shaker), which is hilarious, and "barnasvæfir" (child put-to-sleep-er).

Then, a glass of water (vatnsglas). Matthías says "glesill" (an actual proper non-compound neologism deriving from "glas" with a vowel shift), "drykkjarfang" (drinking utensil, already a word) and "drykkjarberi" (drink carrier).

Next, a waffle (vaffla). Matthías suggests "Belgíuskonsa" (Belgian scone), "Belgíubrauð" (Belgian bread), "Belgíuvinur" (Belgian friend) and "Belgíumatur" (Belgian food). Alma says "ekkipansa" (not a pancake), which is also amazing.

Then, some grapes (vínber). Matthías suggests "Ameríkurúsínur" (American raisins), and Alma starts to say Brazilian something but the time runs out.

Finally, an alarm clock (vekjaraklukka). Alma says "klukkuvinur" (clock friend), Matthías says "morgunhani" (morning rooster, also a term for an early riser) and "morgunfjandi" (morning devil).

Bragi judges "barnasvæfir", "glesill"/"drykkjarberi", "Belgíubrauð"/"Belgíuskonsa" and "morgunfjandi" to be valid, and thus they get eight points, ending with 22.

The next round is "Óorð", which can mean slander, but is literally "Un-words". In this round, they will see four words, of which one does not exist: it's an unword. The contestants need to guess which is the unword and what the other three words mean.

Sjakalar start again. The four words are "Draumhugi" (dream mind), "Draumsvæfa" (dream sleeper), "Svefnpungur" (sleep scrotum) and "Bliksvefn" (flicker sleep). They guess that the unword is draumsvæfa; svefnpungur sounds like it'd be fake, but something about it sounds familiar. They are correct. They also correctly guess that "draumhugi" is basically equivalent to the English word "dreamer" - someone who daydreams. Matthías suggests maybe such a person is ímyndunarglaður; Vala suggests "ímyndunarvirkur" (imagination-active).

For svefnpungur, Vala first thinks of a sleep mask but she knows that's not it. Júlíana suggests it might be similar to "svefnpurka", which is a gently derogatory term for someone who sleeps a lot, like "sleepyhead". Then she suggests maybe it's just a pillow. This is incorrect, so they ask Smjatt for their take. Matthías asks as an aside whether it's svefnpurka or svefnburka, but the answer is inconclusive (it's definitely svefnpurka, what). Alma suggests either it's where you put your money while you sleep, or it's somebody who's really grumpy in the morning. Bragi explains that it's actually just bags under your eyes. (I have never heard this word, but it makes a lot of sense.)

They guess bliksvefn is dozing off shallowly. That's wrong. Matthías suggests when you fall asleep suddenly. Bragi explains it's actually REM sleep (where your eyes flicker), which immediately makes sense to everyone. Icelandic compounds can be cool and transparent like that.

The next batch of words, for Team Smjatt, is "Næturgöltur" (night hog), "Náttsvín" (night pig), "Náttfilla" (night membrane), and "Blóðnætur" (blood nights). Matthías says, "I think it's suspicious that that filla doesn't have a y" - fylla is a common word meaning fill, filla is a word that I had to look up in a dictionary just now. Alma comments on how there's both næturgöltur and náttsvín; Matthías says "Yes, they're trying to trick us." At "blóðnætur" he just blinks and says "I have no clue. We are being lassoed into a trap." Matthías thinks the unword is "náttfilla", because what is a filla without a y. Alma thinks it's næturgöltur. They go with næturgöltur, but it's actually náttsvín. Alma thinks náttsvín sounds cuter than næturgöltur.

Now they're supposed to guess what næturgöltur is. Alma suggests someone who misbehaves in their sleep. Matthías suggests, "Someone who sleepwalks, makes noise, swears..." Then he suggests maybe it's a nocturnal animal, maybe in forests. This is wrong, so the question goes over to Sjakalar. Júlíana says it just makes her think of her husband, who snores a lot.

Bragi explains it's actually not "göltur" as in hog, it's a different word that means wandering - so næturgöltur is wandering in the night. Matthías asks if the animal is actually derived from this other word, which Bragi says it is!

Time for the mysterious náttfilla. Matthías and Alma jokingly pronounce it as if it were Swedish, then Matthías says, "I'm just going to admit that I have no idea." Alma suggests maybe it's a piece of clothing. Bragi throws it over to the other team; Vala says she thinks it's derived from "fullur" (full) and that it means when you get a full night's sleep, but as Bragi points out, she got confused there; if it were derived from fullur it would have a y. Vala can hear her mother's disappointment in her. Bragi explains it's actually a nighttime fog.

Finally, we're looking at blóðnætur. Matthías says "See, we had vampires, or night women, or what was it - death women. So that's where I'm at." Alma suggests, "Something bad happened this night." He agrees; "The blood nights, where a lot of people died. They were great blood nights." Bragi says they're on the right track, but not quite. Sjakalar suggest it's when the sky is red at sunset. My guess would have been that it means a period, as in menstruation, but no, apparently it's "the time just after a man has been slain, when the thirst for revenge is at its peak". #relatable, eh?

All in all, Sjakalar got seven points, and Smjatt got zero, leaving Sjakalar with 30 and Smjatt with 22.

The next round is "The Pump". In this one, a combination of letters is displayed, and then each contestant in turn has to name a word starting with this exact combination of letters in a few seconds; if they fail, they're eliminated. The letters are "Tja", and:

Vala: tjara (tar)

Júlíana: tjald (tent)

Matthías: Tjarnargata (Pond Street, a street in Reykjavík)

Alma: tjaldur (Eurasian oystercatcher, a bird common in Iceland)

Vala: tjasla (to patch something together)

Júlíana: "tjassa" (not a word; she's eliminated)

Matthías: tjatta (Icelandicization of "to chat")

At this, they stop. Bragi is doubtful. Matthías says "Young people do it every day." "Doesn't that have a ch?" asks Björg. Matthías says he thought the Icelandic version had a tj. "I thought it was such a progressive language." For what it's worth I agree with him; c is not a letter in Icelandic and if you're using the word at all it should be spelled with a tj. But it's not yet in the dictionary of modern Icelandic, so Matthías is out. We continue:

Alma: tjaldbúðir (camp)

Vala: tjaldvagn (wagon)

Alma: tjaldstöng (tentpole)

Vala: tjaldútilega (tent camping)

Alma: "That's not a word! tjald...aðu" (pitch a tent, imperative)

Vala: tjaldsvæði (camping ground)

Alma: tjarnarhringur (a circle around a pond; might be, for example, walking around the Pond in Reykjavík)

Vala: Tjarnarbíó (Pond Cinema, a theater near the Pond in Reykjavík)

Alma: tjarnardrulla (pond mud)

And at that Bragi stops her; it's not in the dictionary. With that, Sjakalar get five more points, jumping up to 35. Matthías says "I'm still in shock about the chat." Bragi says he has a certain sympathy for him.

The next round is "Þvers og kruss", which is an idiom meaning "all over the place" or "back and forth", but it's reminiscent of a crossword; þvers means across, and kruss is apparently a sailing term but sounds like kross (cross). It's basically like two simultaneous rounds of hangman, where the two words cross each other, and the teams take turns guessing a letter, which might help the other team.

Team Smjatt gets to pick which word they want; they pick across/horizontal. Björg asks why, and Matthías says with a shrug, "She asked what my feeling was, and I just..."

To help, they're told the words are both birds. (Matthías says something, but I can't make it out.)

For the first letter guess, Matthías and Alma guess T, which appears twice in the other word but not at all in theirs.

Team Sjakalar guess Ð, but there's no Ð in either word.

Next Matthías says, "We want E." There is one E in their word, and Matthías says "Smjattið er ekki dautt", or "The chewing isn't dead," obviously referring to their team.

Sjakalar guess I, of which there is one in their word.

Smjatt guess S, of which there is none. Matthías says "Þetta er ógeðslega spenandi", which means "This is incredibly exciting." You may recognize the word "ógeðslegur" from Klámstrákur; it literally means "disgusting", but in this adverb form it's used frequently as a generic intensifier.

Team Sjakalar guess U, which is in their own word again.

For their next guess, Matthías and Alma are whispering to each other. Matthías suggests N, and Alma goes "Yeah... no!" Matthías says "But then we're just out." Presumably they're thinking of the fact it's very likely N is in Sjakalar's word as well (it's one of the most common letters in Icelandic). They end up going with K. Matthías says "We're still just shooting in the dark." Luckily, there are indeed two K's in their word.

Sjakalar guess Ú. (Note how U and Ú are considered completely separate letters in Icelandic.) There is an Ú in their word, and at this point I know it's "Turtildúfa" (turtle dove).

Smjatt is still having trouble. Matthías: "U...O?" Alma: "No, stop." Matthías: "I'm just saying, taking a shot, taking risks." Alma: "Okay, take risks. You do that." So they guess O, which is in neither word.

Sjakalar guess F. They've probably worked out their word too.

Matthías asks if they've guessed B yet, which they haven't. "We might maybe want to guess that." Bragi says "Very good letter, one of the best, but it's not in these words." Björg says "Það eru smá áföll að dynja yfir smjattið", which you might translate as something like "There are some setbacks raining down on the chewing."

Sjakalar guess L, which is of course also in their word.

Matthías is confused that there isn't an I at the end of theirs - a word ending in -ki would be pretty typical. (Their word is probably actually something ending in "kráka", or crow.) Matthías: "H!" Alma: "M!" Matthías: "Or M!" But then they both go with H, which is not in either word.

Sjakalar guess D, predictably enough, but it's also the first letter of Matthías and Alma's word. At this point I figure it's probably "Dvergkráka", or "dwarf crow" (Western jackdaw).

Matthías and Alma are still puzzled. Alma jokingly says "The bird Dekk", "dekk" being a car tire. Matthías says "We were just talking about this at home, Googling bird species. We didn't do it." Alma: "We didn't." Matthías: "Did you?" Alma: "I didn't." They go with R, of which there are two in their word, but unfortunately one overlaps with Sjakalar's.

This means Sjakalar have only one letter left, and they guess A and complete their word. Matthías says something like "Nú kannski kemur í ljós hvað þau voru... Fórnir til að ná árangri", or "Now maybe we'll find out what they were... Sacrifices for success”; not sure what he’s getting at. Bragi asks Team Smjatt if they know their word yet, but they look confused, and instead Júlíana guesses dvergkráka, at which Matthías and Alma clearly feel very stupid. Bragi calls it "A very nice bird, a friend to its friends."

Either way, Sjakalar have won the round and get ten points for it. They're now at 45 to Smjatt's 22.

For the next round, both teams have a bag with Scrabble tiles representing "Turtildúfa", except the D has been replaced with an S, and they're supposed to make a new word out of them, as long as they can, in sixty seconds. Bragi adds, "It has to be in the dictionary. No tjatt."

While the teams work on it, Björg and Bragi discuss how tjatt really should be at least in the slang dictionary, because people use it.

As the sixty seconds finish, Matthías asks, "Does it have to be in the nominative case?", which is the "default" case for words, the one you'd actually find in a dictionary - it doesn't. Their word is "súldar", which is the genitive case of "súld" (drizzle). Bragi muses it could also be the name of a country; Matthías says "The sultan of Súldar?" Sjakalar's word is "saltur" (salty). Alma: "Does that exist?" Matthías: "That exists." Alma: "I'm joking."

Bragi tells them they could theoretically have made the words "fúlastri" (a bit weird-sounding, but a form of "fúl" (grumpy/annoyed, feminine)) or "litfastur" ("color-stuck", something that doesn't change color easily). Matthías says "That would've been cool." "Trúlausi" (atheist) and "trúfasti" (faithful) are both also in there; Matthías says "Ah, we didn't see the 'trú'."

Either way, each team gets six points for making a word six letters long. They're now at Sjakalar 51, Smjatt 28.

It's time for another round of The Pump. Björg says "We're hearing groans of anguish from the contestants." Matthías: "It was so stressful last time." This time, rather than finding a word starting with the given letter combination, they must find a word with that letter combination in the middle of the word, but not at the start. The letters this time are "ölv".

Matthías: "Not the most pleasant word to start with, but ofurölvi!" (super drunk)

Alma: fölvi (paleness)

Vala: bölvun (curse)

Júlíana: völva (seeress)

Matthías: völvuspá (seeress prophecy; he makes a face at this, probably because he's actually thinking of the ancient poem Völuspá, but they give it a pass)

Alma: "ofurölvasssss... ohh!" She's out.

Vala: tölva (computer)

Júlíana: Sölva (masculine name)

Matthías: tölvuleikjaforritari (video game developer, I love him)

Vala: tölvuskjár (computer monitor)

Júlíana: mölva (smash to bits)

Matthías: "I'm just stuck on the computers. Tölvumús?" (computer mouse)

Vala: tölvuhleðslutæki (computer charger) - but she's too late and she's out.

Júlíana: tölvutækni (computer technology)

Matthías: tölvuleikjamót (video game tournament)

Júlíana: tölvutakkaborð ("computer button board" - she was obviously trying to say "tölvulyklaborð" (computer keyboard) but apparently this counts)

Matthías: tölvuleikjaleikmaður (video game player)

Júlíana: "Grölva?" Obviously just guessing, and this is not a word; she's out.

Thus, Matthías wins this round, and they get five points - 51 to 33.

The next round is called "Frasakássa", or "phrase casserole". They get a grid of letters and are supposed to find a line from an Icelandic pop song in it. After a few seconds Matthías asks, "They can be diagonal?"; they can be, but not backwards. Matthías and Alma end up getting it: "Haltu í höndina á mér og ekki sleppa" (hold my hand and don't let go), a lyric from the song Í síðasta skipti, which was apparently one of the Söngvakeppnin entries in 2015; I didn't follow the contest that year and don't think I've ever heard this song before.

They can get extra points by naming the songwriter(s). Smjatt guess Friðrik Dór [Jónsson]; Júlíana says Ásgeir Orri [Ásgeirsson] and Pálmi Ragnar [also Ásgeirsson; they are brothers]. They're all well-known songwriters, and it turns out all three of them worked together to write this song, so neither team gets points for that. Team Smjatt gets ten points for being the first to find the phrase, though, bringing them to 43 points. Matthías balks at getting ten whole points for this. Júlíana says yeah, it was hard, and Vala adds she'd started screaming a sentence from one of the Passion Hymns.

It's time for the final round of the night, "stafapressan" (Letter Press/Letter Pressure). They can choose a six-point, twelve-point or eighteen-point question. The way this works is that they get a phrase and a grammatical form to put it in; one team member has to say it out loud, and then the other has to spell it correctly.

Team Smjatt go first because they have fewer points. Alma says, "We could win." Matthías says, "You have to take risks to succeed. We did that for the last round." So they go with an eighteen-point question! Alma volunteers to spell, leaving Matthías with the task of declining the phrase correctly. When Björg asks if he's ready, he says "Oh my god."

His phrase is "velgja volgan elg" (to warm a lukewarm moose). They want this in the imperative singular superlative plural dative. (You may note there's both a singular and a plural in there. What they mean by it is that the imperative should be singular but the noun plural - that is, commanding one person to warm multiple of the lukewarmest moose. In Icelandic, the adjective is declined and pluralized along with the noun.)

Matthías doesn't take long to say, "Velgdu volgustu--" and then he pauses to decline "elgur" in the definite plural to be absolutely sure: "Hér eru elgirnir um elgina frá elgunum - velgdu volgustu elgunum." "Are you locking it like that?" "Yes." Very confident, and totally correct. Alma also spells it out without problems, and they get their eighteen points, putting them at 61 points, suddenly ten points ahead of Sjakalar. Bragi notes that "elgjunum" would also have been accepted.

It's time for Sjakalar to decide which difficulty they want. Júlíana notes that she's just thinking of winning, for which they'd need twelve points; Alma says "No, Vala, think of your mom!", referring back to Vala's earlier comment about how her mom would be so disappointed in her getting something wrong. But they decide to go with the twelve points, and Júlíana steps back to be the speller.

Vala's phrase is "sigggróið ilsig", or "a callused flatfoot", and they want the dative singular comparative definite form: the more callused flatfoot. With some difficulty, she comes up with "sigggrónara ilsigisins" - but unfortunately that's the genitive and not the dative, which she would definitely have known if she were putting it in a sentence, but it's confusing keeping track of all those grammatical cases under pressure. Júlíana panics at the looming time limit and also fails to correctly spell what Vala just said, and all in all they definitively lose the round, leaving them still with 51 points to Matthías and Alma's 61. Team Smjatt has claimed victory!

When Bragi explains Vala's error and that it should have been "sigggrónara ilsiginu", Alma quips, "A common mistake." Júlíana notes that she didn't think there was much of a difference between the difficulty of the twelve-point phrase and the eighteen-point phrase, which Matthías agrees with, and I have to agree too; I honestly think I probably would've had more trouble with sigggrónara ilsiginu than velgdu volgustu elgunum. (The latter was worth more points because it's three words rather than two.)

Vala says Júlíana's probably going to break off their professional relationship; Alma says it would've been worse if they'd lost, because they live together. "If I'd screwed it up in the final stretch with the moose..." Matthías: "Matthías, get out on the street."

Finally, for the viewers at home, they ask for social media suggestions for a word for the divider that you place on the conveyor at a store between your stuff and the people before and after you. Vala suggests there's already a word for that - "vöruaðskilnaðarferna", or "product separation cuboid" (or rather, presumably they're going for cuboid, but as it is the word "ferna" is exclusively used for cardboard containers around liquid, like milk cartons or juice boxes). This is an extremely, extremely awkward word and Matthías goes "Ugh!" Me too, Matthías.

As they ask for people to post their suggestions on the #kappsmál hashtag, they say "Just spray it out!", which just reminds me of Griðastaður, but that's probably not intended to be a reference.

[littledreamybeth]

Painful reality

A/N: I dunno what this is....I hope no one is too much disappointed xx kinda like based on something that I’ve experienced..

“Oh my god, Y/N! Turn around!” My friend spoke hysterically while she had her eyes trained somewhere behind me. She was acting completely insane, as if she had seen a ghost or something out of this world. Her pupils were dilated widely, her mouth almost dropped to the ground. I had never seen her being caught off guard like this before. Whomever she saw right now, must’ve been somebody famous- we were sitting at a restaurant which was a personal favorite of many artists after all.

“You won’t believe who’s right behind you!” She whisper-yelled at me, lowering her head in order to hide herself from that person, being afraid of getting caught staring at them. Wild muttering broke out and I saw some young girls sitting at the tables next to us pulling their smartphones out of their pockets and starting to take pictures.

“Just look!” (Y/F/N) urged me and pointed at the person’s direction. “You’ll regret it if you don’t.” I rolled my eyes and took a sip from my soda first. Then, trusting her words, I slowly turned around to look at the stranger who had stimulated a little chaos at the restaurant. And when I did, my heart had nearly burst out of my chest and my cheeks automatically began to redden. Never in my life had I expected to see him somewhere else other than television. Having him standing there just a few meters away from me, breathing the same air as I did, seemed so unreal to me. I must have been dreaming, so I pinched myself only to find out that this moment was not a dream- it was pure reality.

I wanted to laugh. Not because it was funny but because I couldn’t really believe it.

He looked very different in real life than on pictures. Definitely more handsome, but he was shorter than I had expected him to be. If I would have stood next to him, my head would’ve definitely reached his neck.

Harry wore a simple blue T-shirt along with shorts and white trainers. His grey hat covered his freshly cut hair. It was quite bizarre that he had chosen to wear it since we had high temperatures outside, but I knew he had to hide it for the upcoming Met Gala. Truth to be told, every hairstyle suited him, however, his decision to get his hair cut had completely destroyed my hopes of getting ‘royal Harry’ back. That was my absolute favorite look on him. The more excited had I become when he had let his curls grow out for over a year, and I was so looking forward to seeing his long locks returning, but well, there was no chance anymore. He should do whatever he was comfortable with. My job was to accept his choices.

“He looks so unreal, doesn’t he?” (Y/F/N) said, steadying her hand under her chin while she was gazing at Harry with a dreamy look attached on her face. Yes, he was. There was no doubt.

“Who could’ve thought that we would see Harry Styles up close someday?”

My gaze followed his movements. We saw him hugging a man who gestured at a blonde girl instead, and when he had spotted her, he bent down to give her a hug. I could hear a faint “Congratulations” escaping his lips. Lucky girl, I thought. I wished my father had pulled out such a surprise for me.

“Do you think we should say hello to him?” A glint of hope appeared in my friend’s eyes. I just shrugged with my shoulders.  

“I don’t think we should,” I said. “He’s busy right now, don’t you see?”

(Y/F/N) sipped her own drink until she had noticed that everyone but me secretly recorded Harry with their phones.

“Wait, why don’t you take any pictures?” she questioned. I looked at her seriously.

“Would you approve strangers to take pictures of you?” I asked her, “Maybe he doesn’t want to be photographed.”

That some people shamelessly took the advantage of taking photos of him, as if he was an animal or something, really disgusted me. I was never a fan of it. I always told myself, that if I would ever be lucky enough to meet Harry in person, I wouldn’t ask him for a picture or for a signing-no, I would simply ask for a hug because being in Harry’s arms, feeling his warmth and listening to his heartbeat against my ear seemed more intimate and a way more worthy than just a simple picture on which he wouldn’t smile anyway.

Besides, I, myself, would be totally crept out knowing that a person I don’t know anything about would possess pictures of me. The thought alone let a shiver run down my spine.

I didn’t want to do anything I had no consent of. I wasn’t like other fans at all.

It enraged me to find out that some fans had the opportunity to encounter Harry, but also had the audacity to behave like a rude brat. I mean, why couldn’t you just be kind to him just as he is kind to you? I would never do that to him. Something else which disgusted me the most were stalkers. People who had no idea what privacy meant and who ran after their idols as if they had nothing important to do with their lives. People, who followed them to their hotels and simply bothered them. Young girls who believed that those delusional Wattpad stories would become somewhat real. As if Harry would fall in love with them the second his eyes had met theirs. I pitied them, but I understood them too. Reality hurts much more than phantasy, so we create our own dream world in which we have control over everything just to ease our conscience. I didn’t even want to think about how many girls had already imagined Harry to fall for them, didn’t want to know how many girls thought about kissing him and having sex with him. Because it simply would make me jealous. Pathetic, right?

Are you familiar with this feeling, too? I despised it from the bottom of my heart when someone else, other than me, referred Harry as “the love of their life”. Why couldn’t I be the only one to say that? I hated sharing him with the entire world, and he wasn’t even mine. I was just a fan of his. And it hurt. Horribly.

For me, he was my entire world, but for him, I was a stranger, unimportant. He wouldn’t even know that I existed if he hadn’t shown up here.

A click ripped me from my thoughts, and I noticed that (Y/F/N) had shot a picture of Harry. When I looked at her, she just shrugged and reasoned, “Who knows when we’ll see him again? I want to have something to remember by.”

I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t the one to tell her what to do and what not.

I faced back at Harry, observing him before he would leave eventually. He made a short conversation with the girl and her family, shaking hands with everyone that he could. I smiled at his respectful gesture. He was one of the kindest persons I’ve ever known.

It was just a matter of time until he would be out of my sight. What should I do? Go to him and talk to him, asking for that infamous hug that I was desperately craving for? Or simply sit on my chair and do absolutely nothing except for staring at him from afar? I would regret if I didn’t do anything, however, I didn’t want to be one of those desperate fans, too.

But then, something happened.

For a moment, his gaze landed on our table. While (Y/F/N) started squealing like a maniac, I couldn’t react at all. I only felt the rapid beating of my heart against my ribcage. I wanted to raise my hand, to give him a sign that I was aware of his presence, however, my body refused to obey me. I sat there like a heavy stature, unable to move.  

Harry did not know that he had created a tornado of feelings inside of me. My head was spinning around. However, what gave my heart a big crack was his blank facial expression that he gave us. The worst- he didn’t smile at all. He didn’t even wave, even though (Y/F/N) did. I really wished he had. He would’ve made me the happiest girl on the entire galaxy. But what had I expected anyway? Like I said, Harry would never love me the same way I loved him because this was how life worked. Cruel, but true. I had to accept it.

When fans slowly began to surround him, Harry was said to leave, and that’s what he did. He didn’t spare a glance at my direction again. He only went around the corner and disappeared, leaving me with a heavy heart. I had longed for his attention. Just a final look would have sufficed. But it never came. It was too late now.

Tears prickled my eyes. I turned back to face my friend, however, my gaze was directed on the table the whole time, even after our orders had arrived. I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I was trying hard not to cry in public.

My short experience with Harry Edward Styles taught me that no matter what happened, I would never mean more to him.

Because I would always be nothing more than…

just

a

fan...

____________________

sucks to be me

@hes-writer, @fangirl-moment-x

[roger1na]

careful ch5 - john deacon x reader

summary: you are a ballet student at the royal ballet academy. To pay for your tuition, you work part-time at the celebrity gossip magazine, Seven. One fateful day you’re sent to interview a band on the rise, Queen, post-concert and befriend the sweetest man on the planet.

word count: 2.3k+

warnings: swearing

author's note: i'm so happy w all the positive comments i get you guys have all my uwus <3. i've realised FAR too late that brian's supposed to have hepatitis right now so ig in this universe it didn't happen, let's save our boy from some sickness. i think if i can keep to plan, careful should be twelve whole chapters! i don't want to start any new series before it's complete, i'm prone to abandoning projects if i don't really stick with them.

[ch1] [ch2] [ch3] [ch4] [ch5] [ch6] [ch7] [ch8]

chapter five

There was a certain routine to being in love. The butterflies you got every time you wrote about him in your diary. The softness of your heart when you heard Queen play on the radio and perked up your ears to hear the often forgotten bassline.

You soon learned that ‘till next time was code for next week, when John brought you lunch again, letting you hold his hand and tease him about his thick curls and shy smile. The late July sunlight played with the shadows on his face beautifully. Sometimes you felt as if you could just stare at his face forever, get lost in his features. Rose comforted you, saying it was part of falling in love. It terrified you, as a thought. But you hadn’t even properly kissed yet. The thought was ridiculous.

“What’re you thinking about, love?” You let the term of endearment roll of your tongue nervously, relying on British culture to keep your true meaning hidden. You had been walking for quite some time in silence after enjoying lunch in Kensington.

He hesitated slightly before replying. “The new album is so Freddie, Brian and Roger. I feel like the bass is lost.”

“You wish there’d be more bass?”

“Well, I don’t mind not being in the spotlight all the time…” he trailed off.

“But?” You encouraged him.

“I miss songs like Liar. Where I had a solo and all that.”

“You should write your own song, then.”

He looked at you, eyebrows raised, incredulous expression plastered across his face. You laughed and shrugged. “I know none of the songs on Queen and Queen II are yours. Why don’t you give this one a little Deaky twist?”

“Yeah but I can’t sing.”

“Bullshit, you have a great voice.” You stopped walking and turned to him. “I at least like it.”

A small redness spread across his cheeks and he avoided your gaze. “Well, uh,” he stumbled over his words.

“And also, if you want something a little less serious, why not play a bit of a practical joke on them? Something silly and stupid, Freddie would go bonkers for that.” You trailed off before smiling softly. “And, uh, Liar is my favourite song. Especially the bass.”

“You flatter me.”

“I’m serious.”

“I am too! They’re going to have a laugh.”

“Well then, make it into a funny song. Then they’ll laugh for the humour and you won’t feel bad if they insult your poetry or whatever.”

“You really think I should do this?”

“Absolutely.” You took hold of both of his hands and grinned.

You were caught in the moment just staring into his eyes. They were a wonderful shade of grey, occasionally looking dark and black in the shadows and sometimes twinkling like diamonds. You kept going back to the concert where you’d met him. The mischievous glint in his eye kept bringing you back to the silver glint of his bass strings.

A camera shutter snapped behind you, startling you. John’s expression changed from happy to apprehensive and his stance became wary.

“Was that a paparazzi?” The word sounded so silly. So fictional. He grimaced and nodded as some college student with a pimply face and shaky legs ran off with expensive equipment, and probably a picture of you and John where you looked madly in love. Or completely ridiculous. Your skirt suddenly felt too short, your shirt cropped too low and your hair messy.

John’s grip on your hand tightened. “Can we just go back?” You mumbled, embarrassment creeping in your voice.

John looked at you, worried. “Yeah, of course. You alright?”

You nodded, but you didn’t even convince yourself. He lead you back to the office through various shortcuts and darkened alleyways, hurriedly making sure nobody followed you. Once you arrived at the big glass doors to your office he apologised profusely.

“I’m so sorry, I should’ve been more careful.” His eyes were sad.

“Hey,” you grabbed his cheeks and squeezed them together slightly to make him form a smile. “Don’t worry about it,” you assured him, although your knees were shaking slightly.

“That’s not normal, I promise.”

“I believe you.” And you wanted to. But fear was creeping in your heart.

“‘Till next time?” He asked nervously.

“‘Till next time,” you promised him, squeezing his cheeks one more time before turning and rushing to the office.

A cloud hung over you as you walked over to your desk, heart beating rapidly, blood rushing in your ears. Williams was whispering something to an intern who looked like he was about to pee his pants at the sight of her, knees clicking together in fear.

You didn’t feel like challenging her anymore. She had a superiority complex. And she definitely hated competition in the workplace, although your intention was not to rise through the ranks. She saw women as something to weed out. You never understood what made her put herself against you, until you were warming up for an audition, and you realised that all the other dancers were looking for the same prize you were. But today, you gave it no thought.

For the first time ever, it properly hit you. John Deacon was famous. He went on tours and played for lovesick fans and probably had an army of teenage girls ready to tear him to shreds if the opportunity presented itself. Or maybe you were being delusional and he was just slightly more known than usual. He was a niche, he was a bass player. He wasn’t in the spotlight that often. Maybe.

You boiled coffee for yourself in thought, stirring in cream and sugar and taking a thoughtful sip. Would your mark on the world be a paparazzi photo with a guy you maybe-dated? While he had an incredible legacy? You’d be like one of those girls in a fan photoshoot which got terribly famous - only to remain anonymous. It was all so complicated.

The office had grown quiet when you returned from the canteen. Several people shot you pitying looks and Williams didn’t look so confident anymore.

“What’s going on?” You whispered to her, suddenly uncomfortably aware of yourself.

Nat left her front desk quickly, hiding something behind her back. “Y/N, sweetheart, don’t be mad…” she trailed off before handing you a copy of the Sun’s evening paper. “It just came in print.”

On the front page there were tons of different news. About celebrity scandals and weird locals. And then a small square image on the right corner of the page. John, with a dopey smile on his face, holding hands with a girl. It was you. Stupid grin and eyes for only John. And the title of the article made you sick.

Queen’s mr. Deacon hanging with the wrong crowd? Somebody should warn you…

Earlier today Queen’s John Deacon was spotted with a girl who works for the infamous gossip magazine Seven. What’s the girl fishing out of him? More on p.13

The article itself was maybe an eighth of a page, accompanied with two pictures. The one on the cover and one where you were entering the office building. But it was pictures of you. It was tarnishing you. You were going to be sick. What would he think if he saw this? You set down the paper and stormed to the bathroom before anybody saw your tears spill over your cheeks.

You stayed like that for a while, occasionally thinking you were brave enough to face people again. Then you caught sight of your red, swollen face and bleary eyes and retreated back into your stall. You mulled things over and over again. Was it always going to be like this?

You were at the office long after hours. Eyes stinging from crying and wiping them with sandpaper-like toilet paper.

Nobody tells you this, but crying from embarrassment and humiliation is the worst type of crying. With every tear that falls, you are reminded of how you messed up or how somebody decided that your actions were something to laugh at. With every sniffle you remembered that you had to go back and face the world, even though your knees were weak and your moral low.

While you were busy letting yourself get run down, the office had emptied. The lights were off and you could hear a lone janitor whistling as he cleaned. You sat down at your desk, pulling your knees to your chest, the chair creaking under your weight. Your sniffle echoed too loud.

You sat there for a while, feeling abandoned by the world. You let yourself be vulnerable and the press snagged onto it. You let yourself fall in love and now half of England thought you were scheming slag.

Your eyes drifted around your desk and landed on the locked drawer where you kept your diary. You fiddled with the lock a bit before it clicked open.

It was filled with memories from the wonder of late july. John this, John that. Ballet had trailed off the pages. You still danced. Every day but saturdays and sometimes even then. Your toes were bleeding often and your ankles hurt and you barely slept because your job started early and ballet ended late. But you had forgotten how much it used to eat up your happiness. It was the only thing that brought you joy. Now that John was part of the scene, you had a break every day. Like an entry to a whole nother universe for half an hour. Where he told you about photography and birds and basslines and you explained how all ballet dancers were evil because every understudy hoped for the failure of the prima ballerina. It was change and it was great. The fear in your heart was losing the fight.

If Rose could astral project, she would’ve appeared to you right then and there, screaming at you to call him.

You dialed his number and picked up the phone. It rang a few times before he answered, nervous on the other line.

“Hello this is John Deacon here,” he announced and then made a small tsk noise with his mouth.

You were so overcome with the relief of hearing his voice that you only managed a small sniffle.

“Y/N? Are you okay?”

You took a deep breath. “Yeah. Yeah.”

“You sound like you’re in tears.”

You laughed blearily. “Yes well, a bit. Don’t pick up the Sun today.”

“Ah, I see.”

“You read it?”

“Well, I know where you work. I’m still fine.”

You pressed your face into your hand. “God I feel like such an idiot.”

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s not your fault, y’know? I should’ve realised. You’re John Deacon of Queen.”

John’s heart stilled. You didn’t sound bitter, just sad. Like you were done with everything. The lunch dates were a bad idea. The ballet lessons and the phone calls and the pampering. Bad ideas. He was about to open his mouth but you stopped him.

“I’m all in.”

“What?”

“Paparazzi and bad reputation and all stupid things included. All in.”

“What?” He was struggling to grasp what you were trying to get across to him.

“I feel like… I was one foot out of the door? I was nervous and hesitant to fall for somebody. And when I saw that article, it was maybe the worst moment of my life so far.”

“This isn’t very convincing.”

You started laughing on the other end. “Oh, you’re right, I need to clarify. I looked through my diary and so much has happened since I fainted at that concert. I’m all in. No hesitation anymore.”

“You keep a diary?” You could hear his teasing smirk through the phone.

“That’s what you got from me pouring my soul out to you?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t pick up on the subtext that I’m definitely kissing you the next time we see?”

“Oh?”

“I’m going to hang up now-”

“No wait! Tell me more.” He urged you, laughing on the other end.

“You sure? You don’t want to tease me anymore?”

“I’ll stop, I promise.”

“Okay,” you giggled. “So, Swan Lake by my class group has its opening night next week, Friday at 8pm. And I was hoping you’d join me. Or join the audience, I suppose.”

“I get to see you dance?” His voice was alive with joy and wonder, in an almost childlike way.

“Yes, yes! That’s what I mean. That’s part of all in. You get to see me dance.”

“That sounds wonderful.”

“Yes I agree, I am wonderful.” You laughed.

He scoffed on the other end. But his heart was palpitating. He was overcome with happiness. It’d been strange, courting a girl who was so carried by art, so immersed in dance that she could let herself go for weeks on end just to keep up with it. Seeing her work come to life was the biggest prize he could’ve gotten from making time for you, bringing you lunch, making sure you didn’t starve yourself for the work.

“What made you decide you’d want to kiss me?”

“It’s been too long, hasn’t it? There’s been too many almosts. To hell with almosts.”

“Have you drank something?”

“No!”

“You promise? I won’t wake up tomorrow and you’ll have forgotten all of this?”

“Of course not, I’m responsible.”

“Sure.”

You chatted for a while. He was such lovely company. So full of adoration and respect and wit. He had such a way with words. You felt deep longing in your heart. You also felt relieved, like five years worth of missing love was finally replaced with the warmth of another person.

“I think I’ve got to go now,” you whispered when the janitor entered your section of the office. “I’ll see you friday.”

“I can’t wait.”

“Bye, John.”

“Bye, Y/N.”

You set down the phone, adrenaline making your hands tremble ever so slightly. You wiped your face one last time before taking your things and leaving the office. There was a spring to your step which echoed in the empty evening London streets. You could hear the bellowing of drunks from the pubs and the crying of a baby from a nearby apartment. But it didn’t really mean anything to you anymore. You were flying on the wings of love.

God you felt ridiculous.

***

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