#lack of context makes this scene sound far more serious that it really is

[lemotmo]

Can we take a minute to talk about how today’s bts clip is the perfect example of how much…for lack of a better word, damage, Lou’s cameos really caused?

Because the show, the writers, the directors, Oliver, the promo teams etc have all been showing and telling us a very specific story. With very specific moments. And very specific scenes with specific beats hit or missed. And it paints us the picture of what the storyline is about. Buck. Buck figuring out this new piece of information about himself. Buck figuring this new piece about himself out and finding his footing with it. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Then we have Lou and the small section of his following who are very loud. They showing a very different story. Lou has used cameo to spread head canon after head canon after head canon about his character, his relationship with Buck, his relationship with other characters. And it’s warped the actual story to the point where it very much goes against what the actual canon events are showing and telling the viewers. The loud BT fans truly believe Buck and Tommy are this match made in heaven, stars aligned, madly in love about to move in together and start planning a wedding, couple. And the loud BT fans think that because the head canons they were told in these cameos, and because they paid for them, they think they hold more meaning than the free episodes that are aired.

But then as we see by the clip released today, and despite all the other issues people have with the scene and how we can interpret the actions not matching what we’ve seen especially compared to how their first date played out, the actual words they have Tommy telling hen and Karen and by extension the audience is “we’re taking it very slow. Bucks setting the pace”

That doesn’t sound like a deeply in love about to move in and get married couple being portrayed in cameo videos to me. It’s the actual canon reality of the show and the BT relationship though. Snail paced speed. Not that deeply developed or defined. Entry level to allow Buck to get his footing in this new reality he’s discovered.

It also gave yet another moment of is this man actual that serious about Buck? Because instead of taking the opportunity presented to him to reassure Hen and Karen, two important members of Bucks family, Tommy once again instead deflected and made jokes at an inappropriate moment that again didn’t land well, based on Henrens faces. Which again, doesn’t sound like the “everyone loves and respects Tommy and is to thrilled he’s dating Buck, he’s got all these connections with the 118” narrative that has been given through cameo videos.

We will probably never know the actual full reason why Lou suddenly cut his cameos off. But I do think this released bts video is a perfect example of at least one of the reasons he did. Because the content and context of them was getting so far off base from the actual canon of the show and story.

YES! All of this Nonny!

Lou's cameos were such a bad idea. I wouldn't be surprised at all if he was told to stop making them either.

He filled these fans' heads with headcanons and wild fairytales about Tommy's completely made up childhood and how he feels about Buck. All while the writers were clearly telling us a very different story. His narrative about Tommy doesn't match the show's narrative. But for some reason a lot of the BT fans don't want to see the canon evidence that BT is not that big love story they want it to be.

On the contrary, the show has been pretty consistent in telling us Buck and Eddie's story and their connection. THAT is canon. All the rest that Lou made up? Definitely fanon!

[nyoomerr]

Do you have any tips for finishing works and getting enough confidence to post them?

sure! just keep in mind that these are tips from my single perspective, and everyone's creative processes are different, etc etc all the usual disclaimers 🙈

↓↓ all advice under the readmore cuz it got pretty lengthy ↓↓

for finishing works, you'll probably have to start by identifying why you don't feel like continuing a particular WIP.

is it a time/energy thing? make sure you're staying physically healthy (good food, keeping hydrated, moderate exercise) and that you aren't forcing yourself to sit down and write at the end of a long day when you've already spent all your mental energy elsewhere. this is one of the lamest points of advice on the whole list but i am being so serious about it.

is it a lack of inspiration? try talking about the fic with a friend, using prompt generators, or thinking back to what originally inspired the fic to begin with. if you started writing the fic for One Specific Scene, go write that scene, regardless of how far out you are from it chronologically! you can always revise or rewrite it later if it turns out that the in-between scenes change some of the context or flow.

is it that you're struggling to get a scene written just right? skip past it and come back later, maybe leaving just a quick one or two line summary of what you want to happen in that scene so you don't forget later. if you can't skip past it, then tell yourself "okay, i'm going to rewrite this later," before trying to write it - if you have already decided that this will not be your final draft, then it can help you feel less hesitant to put imperfect words down.

for gathering the confidence to post a work, it's a bit more tricky...

i think most people want to post things because they want to receive external validation on it... so so valid and relatable 🤝 BUT this motivation makes it hard to actually shut out the factors that can cause nerves (i.e., advice like "turn off comments if you're worried about receiving criticism" is useless, because then you also don't get the positive comments you likely wanted in the first place).

one strategy you could try is starting with a small audience first - just send it to a friend you know will be your hypeman. if you're feeling more bold, you can try sharing it with a discord server or group chat - essentially, narrowing the audience down to people that you know will be supportive of your work, no matter what.

if sharing the fic with your friends actually sounds like the Worst Case Scenario, then i'd instead recommend posting it to an anon collection! if you end up not being happy with the response to the fic, you can pretend it was never yours to begin with - there's no shame in using the anon tool as it was meant to be used. if you end up feeling really proud of the work after the nerves have passed, you can always de-anon it later to tie it back to you!

regardless of how or who you share it with though, my top recommendation is that you sit down and identify every little thing that you're proud of in your work before you post it. write these things out so you don't forget! the people who are going to read your work will not have the same tastes, experiences, and desires that you personally had when you sat down to write the fic to begin with. if they don't like parts of it, it does NOT mean those parts are bad - it just wasn't for them personally!

that can be hard to remember when you're getting feedback, though, which is why it's important to have those things that YOU like about your work written down so you can go take a look at them to remind yourself.

if you try posting a work and afterwards go "oh, that isn't for me, i'd rather just create for myself personally," then that's totally chill! what would be tragic is if you posted a work and then felt so shitty after the fact that it tainted your enjoyment of the creation process itself. that's why, no matter what, please remember that you wrote this fic for yourself, and hold on to the things that you like about it!!

anyway that got pretty rambly but TLDR: 1) figure out why you're having trouble finishing your WIP and tackle that reason instead of blindly pushing yourself forward 2) ease yourself into posting in whatever way is least intimidating for you, no need to jump straight to having an AO3 profile linked to your writing 3) no matter what, make sure you remember the things that you personally enjoy about what you made, and celebrate those things!

[sister-dear]

WIP tag game!

I was tagged by @chocochipbiscuit to post the last seven sentences of a WIP, so here’s a bit of the next installment of the Four and Sky friendship series, this time featuring Twilight!

“All right, all right,” Warriors grumbles, giving in. Twilight pats his collarbone before unwinding his arm from around Warriors’ neck. He understands. He does. The others have to rein him in on occasion when Wild gets injured. 

Now. How to pry what Four isn’t saying out of him without tipping him off?

Edit because the final part is to tag 7 people! So @curiousartemis, @genderfluid-puddle-of-soup, @thescrapwitch, @silverdragonms, @ultralinkyland, @timeturner-jay, @kyoupann

[wingsofkpop]

NSFW Alphabet - Yang Jeongin (m)

A - Aftercare

Despite being on the more inexperienced side, I think Jeongin is responsible enough to know that aftercare is a must following sex, whether it be making sure you both are properly hydrated or helping you change the bed sheets. Because he’s usually babied by his members, this sweet boy treasures each moment he’s able to take care of you for a change though he won’t say no if you request to be the bigger spoon for a night or two.

B - Body Part

Seeing as our dear maknae has apparently gotten buff somewhere over the years, he likely takes pride in his biceps and arms in general as he damn well should. We’ll go more in depth about it later, but let’s just say Innie likes to use his strength in more ways than one… Moving on, Jeongin will never not be a fan of your neck. Mans has a bit of a marking tendency, but hormones aside, Jeongin’s in love with your scent, which seems to be more pungent around thah area. Plus, the crook of your neck also makes a good hiding place when he’s shy.

C - Cum

The only place this man’s cumming is in a condom. He may not be a baby anymore, but he doesn’t want any other baby Jeongins showing up anytime soon. Changbin is already a handful enough as it is…

D - Dirty Secret

Now it’s a bit out of the element here, but Jeongin sometimes gets tired of being coddled by his members. That being said, he’s had some fantasies about proving his growness—fantasies that may or may not include getting caught eating you out until you’re a literal puddle by Chan or Hyunjin, or maybe fucking you into the wall just in time for Changbin or Seungmin to walk through the door. Not wanting to disrespect you or anything, he prefers to keep these thoughts to himself… just don’t ask questions if he starts to get a little handsy during movie nights with the other boys.

E - Experience

Like most of the younger Stray Kids members, I don’t think he has too much sexual experience. He’s probably made out with a girl or two over the years, maybe felt her up a bit, but that’s as far as his hands-on exploration goes. Even so, he probably has a general idea of how things are supposed to go, generously provided by stories from his members and the wonders of porn.

F - Favorite Position

Due to his lack of sexual practice, Jeongin probably has not found his all-time favorite position just yet. He’s eager to try everything he possibly can, so expect to be blown away literally every time y’all do the do.

G - Goofy

Jeongin doesn’t mind getting a little silly during sex every once and a while, but he also knows that a more sensual, serious mood is needed too. The first few times will definitely be more casual and light-hearted, kept alive by his playful grin and mischevious fingers. But even as you two begin to become more mature, that same youthful atmosphere will remain, making it feel like the first time every time.

H - Hair

He probably just lets it do it’s own thing honestly. As long as it doesn’t get too unruly, he doesn’t mind it all that much.

I - Intimacy

Seeing he’s likely never been in a serious relationship before you, he’s all about the ideal, romantic aspect of love making. And while there won’t necessarily be rose petals and silk sheets every time you guys have sex, he knows how to make you feel loved and wanted with just his touch alone. Eye contact is also a huge must for Jeongin—he needs to see your face in the moment, to watch the pleasure overtake your body as he brings you to a headspace only few have the privilege to witness. It may sound cheesy, but I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if he has a secret plan to marry you one day, already knowing you’re his forever person.

J - Jack Off

Innie is young, so it’s no surprise his hormones are a bit on the overwhelming side at times. For him, getting off largely depends on if and when he has a moment to himself, which is quite rare between his busy schedule and lack of privacy in the dorm. That being said, he probably masturbates no more than three times a week. If that.

K - Kink

Alright hoes, I’m gonna start this off by saying Jeongin damn well has some sort of strength kink. We’ve all seen the size of those arms. Now he wouldn’t necessarily manhandle you, but if the moment requires him to pick you up by your thighs, or maybe pin your wrists to the bed cause you’re getting a little too frisky, then a man’s gotta do what he’s gotta do. He also has a HUGE thing when you get all dressed up for him, whether it be in a dress/suit or a lingerie set. Some other honorable mentions of his include marking, praise, and the occasional teasing.

L - Location

Please, please, PLEASE let this man take you against the wall, or anywhere that lets him show off his strength. He turns into some type of beast, I swear—Bonus points if y’all have the dorm to yourselves, because then he will literally take you against every single surface…

M - Motivation

The second you compliment him, this man will be literal putty in your hands. He loves, and I mean LOVES, when you praise him for his stage performances or MV scenes. And don’t let him catch you watching his fancams… or else prepared to get dicked into next year~

N - NO

BDSM is completely off the table for Jeongin. While he doesn’t mind trying something new every so often, he’s just not comfortable treading into the kind of intense territory that would require use of a safe word. He’s also just not a fan of power dynamics in general.

O - Oral

Sorry fam, oral is just not it for Jeongin. It’s nothing against you, he just doesn’t prefer blow jobs because of his tendency to finish too early, and he’d much rather practice other methods of foreplay to get you both off.

P - Pace

In the beginning stages of your relationship, Innie used to utilize a rapid, sloppy pace. After obtaining more experience, his stroke game is much, much better and more fluid, though he sometimes tends to revert back to an awkward pace when he’s close to climax. But like everyone, his skill and confidence will grow more over time.

Q - Quickie

The only time he’ll settle for a quickie is if he’s completely and totally desperate for your touch. But even then, he needs to be sure your session will take place in an environment that is both private and isolated from any other people. But once he’s comfortable and secure, he’ll drive you into the nearest wall with no further hesitation whatsoever.

R - Risk

Nope, nope, nopity, nope. While the idea of getting caught makes him feel all the things, Jeongin would rather not risk anyone actually walking in on you two when you’re being less than innocent. Especially his members, because if they do, he knows he’ll never hear the end of it.

S - Stamina

He’s got pretty decent stamina. Jeongin can usually go for some foreplay and maybe two rounds depending on how exhausted he is from his schedule. Then again, on days he is a bit more on the tired side, he wouldn’t mind sitting back and letting you do most the work.

T - Toy

The most curious boy omg. Innie’s experience with toys probably stems from porn and the dark side of Reddit, so he’ll be utterly fascinated if you own any nifty gadgets of your own. And while I don’t think he’d actively shop for sex toys, he doesn’t mind spicing things up in the bedroom with a couple vibrators, restraints, or sensation play objects.

U - Unfair

Don’t let his adorable facade fool you—this boy can be the WORST tease on any given day. He’s the type of lover that will suggestively trail his hands across your breasts and thighs, then act all innocent when you call him out. Jeongin is also an expert in getting you to tell him what he wants to hear. For example, “You want me to make you cum, baby? How exactly do you want me to do that?…”

V - Volume

Honestly, this man is a moaning machine. And you may hear some cute little whimpers and whines in that mix too… At first, he was probably a bit bashful to make any noise in that context, but after some coaxing and needed praise from you, he’ll never try to be silent again.

W - Wild Card

Let me set the scene for you: You and Innie watching some horribly budgeted rom-com you found on Netflix, and literally just making fun of the entire movie. That is, until the two main leads start making out in the back of a car. Oh, this shuts you both right up, especially when clothes start coming off and the car windows begin to steam up. The scene ends eventually, but this awkward, sexually tense silence still remains between you and Jeongin, and when you look to your blushing lover, you find him poorly attempting to cover his raging hard on. Then, he clears his throat and cutely stutters, “S-So… You wanna… you know?…”

X - X-ray

He’s a bit below average: 4.5-5 inches. But he’s got some thickness to his name.

Y - Yearning

As already mentioned, Innie tends to hold back in regards to his sexual needs for fear of coming across as a horn dog. You two probably do the nasty at least once a week, but I guarantee you can raise that number if you sit your boyfriend down and explain the concept of a mutually beneficial relationship huehuehue.

Z - ZZZzzz

If there’s one thing that Jeongin loves most in the world, it’s being in your arms after a long and stressful day. Whether or not you choose to end the night with an orgasm or two, he’ll settle himself atop your body, using your breasts as his own personal pillows, and just let his tension melt away in the comforting warmth of your touch. And though he’d never admit it, sometimes he doesn’t really mind being babied after all…

[justalads]

this is an essay post that was written in response to an in-depth discussion i was having with another person on a lot of topics. that’s why it’s written like it’s addressing someone. because of that, it is a little confusing on its own (because the things in quotes are responding to things the other person said) but me and the person who runs this blog thought it would be better to make this a separate post, so that people who want to see this response can see it without it being attached to the person i was having the discussion with. we spoke to the person and they said that would be fine. with that being said, this is a very long post. if anyone finds parts of it useful, it will have served its original purpose.

so what i mean about it “making sense” that dream became like that is that it kind of does, you know? i’m saying that the desires were always there. not that he was always willing to go so far for them, or even that they were as strong as they ended up being! after all, there’s a difference between declaring war to reclaim land and people, and making a vault in order to take things that were important to people.

what he always did possess is a sort of “ownership” of the server. and this was probably founded from the fact that it was, you know, his server. he wanted l’manburg back because he didn’t like that people came onto his server and then said he couldn’t have something. and that’s one of his primary points in his conversation with skeppy: the analogy he uses of someone coming into his house and saying he can’t have a table.

and later, in the vault, this is the reason he gives for wanting control: that it is his server. he tells tommy it isn’t supposed to be fair, it doesn’t need to be fair, because fairness implies equality, and he doesn’t see everyone else as having equal claim to the server. so that’s what i mean when i say the signs were always there: his statements match upand paint a path through the story. true, you don’t just “become” a bad person. there’s no reason for him to suddenly get all weird and want ultimate control, if he was completely neutral and peaceful in the beginning. this is why his character is decently written!

and since the potential was there in the first place, that’s what gave him the ability to or put him in danger of doing what he did.

so yeah, it’s true that his spiral was not only his fault, because even someone who thinks they own something is not going to just jump to the lengths that he did. he had other experiences, and saw how other people worked, and then was met by pushback from people when he wanted them all to do what he said. because his house analogy is lacking something: he owns the house, but everyone else lives there too.

it may be “his” server in that he pays upkeep fees, but that doesn’t mean he deserves control over everything that happens on it! if your roommate goes “i want this table and you can’t have it”, even if the house belongs to you, it’s kind of weird to go “no you can’t have it, it’s mine”. especially if all the roommate wants the table for is so they can play monopoly or something with their group. and even more so if the roommate will let you play monopoly if you want to (remember the embassy?), and if you can just buy a new table then what’s the point in getting upset over the one?

i just think you put a lot more of the responsibility on other characters. saying that all they did was villainize him and treat him as pure evil and break his boundaries is wrong because one, no, that’s not all they did, it’s exaggerated, and two, he was also doing things to them! it did not come out of nowhere! and clearly, his mindset didn’t come from nothing, so a personal flaw contributed to it! people who are innocent and care too much about others and are then mistreated do not do what dream did, and we know this because there is a character very similar to that: ranboo.

(i could talk about this for a super long time honestly. it’s very interesting how close they are, and since enderwalk ranboo is just ranboo with all his memories and he helped dream... there’s clearly something that happened that he’s forgotten that’s very important.)

hates conflict, tries to mediate things, cares about the people he loves to a fault. and we don’t see him running around and telling people they can’t build nations because it “divides people”! he has also been hurt and betrayed, but he still recognizes his responsibility to respect others and their agency. the difference between dream and ranboo is that one, dream has a spine, and two, dream thinks of the server as his. dream’s belief is one of the driving causes of his actions.

it’s true that nobody deserves to lose half their friends at once. it’s also true that before he declared war, nobody had any actual negative feelings towards him. they made fun of him for saying his side had more women. he made fun of them for having none. it was playful banter. that’s the thing about the hot dog stream: the tone is incredibly light. wilbur soot, known dramatic idiot, decided he was going to go play capitalism on a minecraft server. both tommy and wilbur at that point had been making various stupid attempts to gain “power”. and none of this was treated seriously, because others were doing the same kinds of things.

you know how many times tommy logged on and got involved in small petty conflicts? pretty much none of them are mentioned in canon again, because at this point, there wasn’t even much of a canon to get involved in. the smp at this point was a place for people to go and do bits. and invoking wilbur’s joke hatred of tommy and those like him seems a little unfair. wilbur’s main bit was calling tommy an annoying child. when wilbur was stealing the blaze rods, it was not an actual attempt to get power because it was not treated as such by anyone, it was treated with the exact seriousness that it deserved: sapnap and tubbo declared themselves the “police”.

what kind of actual control is going to come from taking blaze rods, especially on a server where you can just go get more? and it’s not like theft is really a crime on the server. everyone else chose to play into the bit.

it’s like now, when tommy shows up with a new idea and people who don’t like him start claiming that this is proof that he never learned anything and he was actually bad all along. the church prime thing, l’sandburg, any time he steals something or is rude to jack manifold. because although semi-lore is fun, sometimes people treat it as serious lore when parts of it are not intended to be and then use it to imply things about the characters that don’t line up with canon.

that’s kinda off topic and not really about dream, so i’ll move on

“i’d like to ask you to once again watch the actual stream.”

i mean, yeah. i did watch the stream. i don’t know a lot about george, and i prefaced my thoughts at the start by saying that. obviously attempting to catch up after isn’t as good as knowing the context and plot, (this sounds sarcastic but it is genuine i’m sorry sjhksjs) but i do want to offer this: it’s an opportunity to look at the plot in a different way. you say that you are on dream’s side in this scene, and while having that bias alone isn’t bad, i think it’s a good idea to attempt to see the other side. that’s what i’ve been doing while going back and forth with you; examining my own bias and attempting to look past it, and explain why it’s there.so dream kicks george off the throne. and you say that it’s not bad that dream does it, because george’s monarchy was already a figurehead. you know, i don’t see this as being any better? this means that when dream made george king, he already did it with the fact that george wasn’t really in charge in dream’s mind, meaning that dream was, you know, the ultimate authority. that is a power dynamic. dream has control over who is king of his faction.

when you watch the stream where dream makes george king originally, dream doesn’t really let him know that his power isn’t real. that’s the problem with this situation: the presence of a power dynamic alone is not the issue, it’s the fact that dream was misleading about its presence. dream just tells him “you’re king.” in fact, dream demonstrates more control over eret, by telling them just that they can’t be in charge anymore and george is king now. he tells them to take off their crown, to which they protest because it’s a layer on their skin and it would show their eyes, something they’re uncomfortable with. dream says “i need you to do it. you gotta do it. i mean, i’m not asking you, we have three of us here.”

they physically threaten eret. and by the way, the reason that dream thought eret had “betrayed” the greater smp? eret was attempting to help pogtopia and make things right with the people of l’manburg, something you claim was also dream’s wish during this time (he had switched over to manburg at this point). dream told eret that the king had a duty to remain neutral.

it is only then, when dream tells eret to remain neutral on things, that dream tells eret that the act of being king means nothing. this is where the “what makes you king” quote coms from, by the way. dream has the ultimate control over who is king. but whenever he makes someone king, he doesn’t tell them that. and when dream leaves, eret fully realizes this and admits that dream’s right: they don’t have any power. so what was the point of betraying l’manburg?

if there was no power with being king, why did george accept it? why was there even a king in the first place? the only reason eret agreed to betray l’manburg in the first place was because dream offered them power.

when dream confronts eret about remaining neutral, dream says “my plan is that there’s no manburg, there’s no l’manburg, there’s no pogtopia, there’s just dream smp and there’s dream smp everywhere. and that’s been my plan since the very beginning, i’ve never wavered on that. that’s why i had you betray them, and that’s why i gave you kingship, because i felt like you’d be a good king because you’re neutral.”

ignoring the fact that he’s twisting why he made eret king (they were on the side of l’manburg and he tempted them away), he also claims that his faction only has been his goal since the beginning. this will be important later.

cc!eret confirmed in a twitter thread on their alt that their character was possibly the longest victim of dream’s manipulation.

and finally, watching the stream where dream dethrones george, the thing sticking out to me is how dream is phrasing it. he says that george should step down because people are attacking him, and dream isn’t always going to be able to protect him. and then he says this.

“and i think you’ll just be targeted if you’re the king. and you want to be able to like, get revenge on tommy and stuff, right? so we can work together.”

i kind of wish he didn’t bring up tommy. i kind of wish his main goal at this time wasn’t just going after tommy because he thought tommy was the root of all the problems. and i think this kind of highlights a little bit that when dream built the walls around l’manburg again, it wasn’t just because he was “defending george” or anything, because i don’t think george really cared that much? dream was using the fact that it was george’s house that blew up in order to go after tommy.

after this line, the others all kind of gang up on dream, true. it’s partially for the joke, as evidenced by quackity’s “THE GIRLS ARE FIGHTING!”, but it’s also kind of them being, you know, legitimately angry at his character. and it’s funny that it’s sapnap who leads it. sapnap brings up what dream said, that he doesn’t care about anything except for the disks. dream says that he didn’t mean it, and then george says “then why did you say it?” so dream saying that clearly hurt them, and he can’t just push it off by saying he didn’t mean it once.

and in the end, george doesn’t even agree before dream makes eret king again! george and sapnap are trying to have a conversation with dream about how they feel they’ve been treated, and dream brushes it off with “maybe this isn’t a good time to bring it up,” before ultimately ignoring what they’re both saying because in his mind he has a good enough reason and it doesn’t matter what george thinks.

dream is in the act of passing power over to eret, and george says “i’m still king. i’m literally right here.” dream shushes him. dream also implies that the reason george is getting attacked is because he backs up everything dream says, reducing george down to an extension of his own will or calling him a follower. dream accuses sapnap of trying to divide him and george, and sapnap says this: “i’m not dividing anyone, i stand by george. he’s my king but most importantly he’s my friend.” dream replies that george is his friend but not his king.

i just sort of want to show you the other side here. george and sapnap weren’t just running around instigating conflict any more than dream was. and although george didn’t do anything as king, it meant something to him, because it was a symbol of the trust he thought dream had for him. dream saying he was taking it away for his own good meant he didn’t even trust george to protect himself. he was treating him like a child.

and then when george is silent, listening to everyone debate whether he deserves this or not, dream accuses him of only pretending to be sad. it’s true that he was pretending to cry, but i don’t think that warranted dream telling him he’s “acting like a baby” and that he was a bad king.

sapnap and george had a real point, and dream ignored them. he hadn’t addressed the things he had said that hurt them, and so they raised legitimate grievances with him! dream doesn’t treat their concerns as important, and talks down to george in particular.

ignoring the fact that sapnap and george were also hurting is kind of hypocritical. you’re right, “abandonment hurts you, no matter if the people have good reasons for it or not”. dream said the spirit thing before sapnap did any sort of real leaving him. and dream’s reasons were definitely not good.

i have no idea why you got the idea that george is so awful. he was walking around with his head down. the only one also calling him things like manipulative and a drama queen is, well, dream.

basically: (/hj)

george: :(

dream: you are attempting to emotionally manipulate me

butternut is a master of psychological manipulation

anyway

so sapnap, george and quackity felt betrayed there. they left, and went to mexican l’manburg to try and console george. and then dream shoots quackity and kills him, and tries to attack the others as well. it’s worth noting that quackity also had a reason to be upset at dream: dream’s treatment of l’manburg. dream then shows up and calls george a tyrant. dream never listens to what george says during this, he just continues saying what he already said. dream taking the kingship away from george hurt him more than letting him stay would have.

watching this is painful, because it’s making me realize just how much dream doesn’t actually care what his friends think! he says he cares, and he might think he cares, but then he calls them babies and liars and tyrants. his argument with george here reads like something awful. he’s using the excuse of “caring about him” in order to undermine and insult him, and take the moral high ground. dream essentially tells george that he didn’t make george king out of any respect for him, it was just random. he doesn’t treat his friends well during this scene. i don’t think it’s unreasonable for them to get angry.

when quackity, after sitting in silence for the entire conversation, says he disagrees, dream tells him that he’s just dumb. doesn’t wait to hear his reasons, doesn’t value his opinion, because dream is so sure that he’s right and he knows what’s best for the server, and by extension, everyone.

other interesting things: dream brings tommy into it again by saying he’s what causes all the problems on the server. dream tells quackity to think about what tubbo would think about him picking this fight. dream says that george would probably do anything he told him to do. his entire position is “you guys can think whatever you want, but it won’t change anything.” genuinely, tell me how this is them abandoning him? and when they do drift away later, tell me why they don’t have a reason to? dream doesn’t respect them! he takes their friendship for granted!

“would you consider it justified for all of tommy’s friends (even tubbo who he’s been close with for so long) to abandon him just because he’s said basically the same thing about the discs - like three times?”

thank you for bringing up the disk thing. do you really think that tommy and dream acted the same when saying that an item held more worth than their friends?

think about what the disks symbolize. control over tommy. tommy wants them back because they are a sign of dream having power over him! tommy doesn’t want his abuser having power over him! and yeah! it was a messed up thing for him to say to tubbo that the disks were worth more than him, but he apologized! he understood that what he said hurt tubbo, and he tried to rebuild the relationship! tommy took responsibility for what he said, and tried to be better. notice how afterwards, he was willing to sacrifice anything for the safety of his friends? notice how in the vault he told dream to take the disks and do whatever he wanted with them, when dream switched from threatening the disks to threatening the life of tubbo?

and what do the disks mean to dream? they mean power over tommy. the disks have no power over dream. they are a tool that he can use to hurt and control tommy. and he never apologized for this, because he wasn’t sorry. sapnap told dream that this hurt him, and all dream said was that he didn’t mean it. who is he lying to, then? tommy or sapnap? it was so important to dream that he had ultimate control over the life of someone else that he almost drove them to take their own life. i’m sorry, but this comparison sucks.

people gave dream a chance. people gave him a lot of chances. the disregard he showed for others is disgusting, especially towards his friends, and even more so towards those who he didn’t like. my problem is that though you repeat that you don’t “blame” others for what they did, you still hold them to more responsibility than you’re willing to hold him to, or at least that’s what it seems like. i’ve been investigating the other side through this whole process. and yeah, there are definitely places where i was wrong. but sometimes i do not understand, and maybe that means i should just give up on trying to understand those places. if other people can see things i can’t, maybe we agree to disagree.

i legitimately cannot see dream being the person who was treated the worst here, but let me know if i’m misrepresenting you.

i’m sorry that i sound angry, and i’m not really upset at you, but the comparison of what dream said and what tommy said set me off.

“no one having respect for him as a person”

people did respect dream, man. he was the leader of his faction. he had a lot of power. his friends trusted him to be a good friend to them. but he didn’t feel like he had an obligation to do that, yeah? and you only get respect if you give it, so they stopped respecting them because he hurt them. he didn’t learn any hard lessons about violence being the only way because he never stopped to consider another way. when faced with a problem, his options were for the problem to go away or he would make it go away: surrender or die.

during the stream where he sets up the walls with sapnap, his message is the same throughout: wipe them out. no mercy. burn their land to the ground, leave no survivors. there’s no love in war. children get hurt in war. this is a warning shot, he says, as he fires into their land. as sapnap burns down tubbo’s house and chat spams “no mercy”. they don’t show mercy because mercy is weak, and they are powerful.

one day i’m gonna write a thing that talks about the greater smp like how people talk about early l’manburg because oh boy

i’d like to see evidence of dream learning that violence is the only way, and only being able to protect himself through fighting. i don’t remember this happening, i remember him generally choosing violence as the first option.

“dream didn’t have an arising god complex.”

a god complex means more than just saying “i’m a god.” there was buildup because that’s how characters work. tommy was also trapped in the prison, and he didn’t suddenly get a god complex at the slightest bit of power, did he? the definition of a god complex is “an unshakable belief characterized by consistently inflated feelings of personal ability, privilege, or infallibility.” dream cannot admit when he is wrong. he feels as if he has a right to the control of the server, and that grows into a state of obsession. and when he’s taking tubbo and tommy down into the vault, he mocks them for thinking he was weak or that he didn’t think ahead.

once dream knew he had control over death, the complex reached its peak, and that’s when he actually admits it. characters that antagonize others already possess traits that contribute to their arc.

and hey, i know that cc!dream says his character is blocked off emotionally. i also know that he’s been given a lot of chances to apologize to people, to be sorry, to admit fault, even in small situations. did dream show remorse during exile? did dream sound like he was being “forced” to isolate and control tommy, or did he sound like an abusive parent scolding a kid for something? when dream beat tommy and tubbo and took them down to the vault, did he sound sorry? the thing about subtext is that it has to actually be there, no matter how quiet, at least a little bit. listen to dream arguing with quackity after george was dethroned and tell me he sees himself as anything other than right.

a few one off lines are not enough evidence to wipe out the rest of his character’s development.

he sounds sorry once he is faced with direct consequences, because that is the only time he is held responsible for his actions.

it’s also a weak argument to say that something is happening when, as you said, we don’t see his pov. it is fair to say that i don’t know if it’s not happening, and that’s a good point. cc!dream’s comments about his character being closed off emotionally can mean a lot of things. for instance, they could mean that his character is willing to do this to himself in order to get control. or it could mean something else entirely, i don’t know. basing an entire fact about a character off something we don’t see at all doesn’t tell us anything useful about the character, and i apologize for doing that.

i guess my reason for saying that was that i don’t see evidence of him trying to get better during pogtopia. if we don’t see signs of him being sorry or attempting to treat other people better, why should we assume that he was doing those things?

“yes, and none of c!dream’s “friends” ever did.”

dream’s friends supported him until he abandoned them and disrespected them. his time in the prison is a consequence of his time out of the prison, albeit an unfair one.

“dream didn’t hurt george.”

dream’s disrespect of george is what hurt him. dream didn’t apologize for it, he didn’t attempt to understand what george was feeling, and he didn’t look for a compromise. and yeah, it was beckerson in the vault. he had a space for mars, he just hadn’t collected it yet. so yes, dream did betray sapnap. if you have legitimate evidence of sapnap doing something that made dream actually upset, before the vault, i’d like to see it. (there might be something lol i’m sorry i’m Very Bad on his lore but from what i’ve investigated i didn’t find anything really important.)

i don’t think puffy saying “this person does bad things” is her dismissing their trauma. and the eggpire and her have both hurt each other. puffy isn’t the Trauma Designator of the server. if there’s an instance of her straight up saying that someone doesn’t have trauma then i missed it.

“she’s another one c!dream was attached to and who failed to ever reach out to him”

i don’t see evidence of this? there was the one stream where the relationship was established, but after that he never tried to seek her out. he doesn’t even talk about her. it’s not a failure from her to not reach out to him, if their connection is light at best. i honestly feel like she was more attached to him than he was to her.

“like she’s doing something extra by being a decent person.”

she’s saying he didn’t deserve to see her because he did bad things! she still cares about someone who has done bad things, but she recognizes that those things are bad. she’s saying the punishment for what he’s done should involve not seeing her, personally, and i think she should be able to make that decision? she doesn’t endorse the rest of his punishment, because she doesn’t know what it entails.

she helped him by thinking he was in the right. she helped him by even trying to understand him, when everyone else could not. she gave him the help that she could by being on his side, by being friendly to him, and after she realized he was wrong she could not do that because he was off preparing the vault! and she had other things to worry about! “could have” is useless because it can mean anything! tommy “could have” not burned george’s house down. would it have mattered, when dream already had it out for him? no!

dream took anyone being close to him for granted. he did not give anything back to them once he started going down the path. if he did something bad to them, and they were angry, that was it for him. he did not attempt to fix the bond, like other characters do when they hurt someone they care about.

“i never said anything negative about them other than describing things they did that had a negative effect.”

here’s my main point: we don’t know they had a negative effect.

you criticize the characters for not taking an action that we do not know the implications of. everyone could have been super nice and worried about dream and that could have changed nothing. that’s why i think the criticism is unwarranted.

their crime is inattention to a situation that some of them did not even know was happening. that’s like saying that techno is “responsible” for some of the pain of tommy’s exile, because he did nothing to stop it. that’s like saying that quackity or tommy “should have” removed the tnt from the button room under l’manburg.

i just don’t get the point of the criticism. because it can apply to any character in any situation, you know? we could say that eret taking back the kingship from george enabled dream into taking more control over his friends, and that eret should have stopped him. we could say that skeppy telling dream he was wrong about l’manburg pushed him further into the role of the bad guy. if you aren’t being negative about the characters, then why bring it up in the first place?

“truly believe they did all those things” they didn’t do anything. if you’re talking about the “actual consequences and effect it had on him as a character”, you have to look at what affects his character.

we can say “sapnap should not have said this to dream”. because that is something sapnap actually did, directly to dream’s face, and it is something that visibly affected dream. considering the conditions of the prison, it is an inhumane thing to say. that’s something i would call reasonable to consider when analyzing dream’s character.

but puffy talking to herself, writing her own thoughts and reactions down? that does not impact dream in any way! and i think puffy thinking internally that dream is a bad person (when she has been given adequate reason to think so) has a lot less impact on Real Plot Events than the stuff that dream actually did.

what is her “fault” here? what harm did she do? what am i excusing? what did she do wrong, and how is the effect of her specifically visible in dream’s actions? he hasn’t mentioned her in months, and it’s my perspective that if he cared, we would know.

if a tree falls in the forest when nobody is around, does it make any noise?

(the person i was responding to linked a thread about how the prison isn’t helping dream and how puffy and sapnap saying he deserves it is inhumane)

that thread doesn’t actually seem to be assigning any fault to puffy, it’s just saying that hearing that kind of thing hurts.

(also, the person who wrote the thread saying “i told you so” is going to have nobody to tell it to. we all already know dream is going to be violent when he gets out, because he told tommy he would hunt down and take revenge on the things he loves. but he’s not going to be violent because puffy didn’t visit him.)

“another person he cared about who didn’t prove to care about him enough to stop him from spiralling or try help at all.”

how did puffy not care about him? what did she do before the vault that showed that? how did she specifically abandon him, by actions of her own will and not of consequences of his? for supposedly caring about her, dream did pretty much nothing to show it.

“if “they don’t owe him anything” is your base argument against someone being hurt via being left by people they care about over and over again until they’re utterly alone with no support system and unhealthy mindsets, we might have to agree to disagree”

we would disagree if that was my point, but it’s not. because that’s not what the characters did. they didn’t all abandon him, as i’ve said. he says that he cut ties with them, but if you say he’s lying when he says that you can disregard it, i guess. and five to six people are definitely not responsible for him. again, you’re critical of them for an action they didn’t take, and in some cases it was impossible for them to take like with tommy, who certainly didn’t abandon him, as hard as he tried to.

“his (dream’s) manipulation is the clumsiest thing i’ve ever seen”

i mean i don’t really find it funny that dream was “bad” at manipulation. and clearly it was powerful enough to work on multiple people, and if he was that ineffective at it it wouldn’t have worked. but i understand what you’re saying, although i disagree with your take on wilbur.

it’s true that wilbur’s smart, but this is again saying things about stuff we can’t prove. if you look at the context of wilbur’s actions next to everyone else’s, they seem pretty tame. and he can play a morally grey character without the intent being that the character was seriously manipulative all along. although i guess it’s nice to think that you’ve solved the code, if “solving the code” means “the majority of everyone else is wrong” then you may want to take a step back.

i think the principle of occam’s razor sort of applies here, and especially applies later to the conversion between dream and wilbur. unless there is strong, strong evidence for a theory that sort of goes against stuff, there may be a better explanation. i’ve scrapped like fifty theories because of this dude hskhdksjsthe things i said at the start about tommy and wilbur’s grabs for power not being serious still do apply, and so does the fact that at the start of the roleplay, the cc’s didn’t see their characters as that separate from themselves. i think it would be kind of weird for cc!wilbur’s intent to be genuine manipulation of his actual friends all along, especially when he wasn’t playing it as a bit.

“that’s precisely what he did and how he got them to side with him in the war.”

nope. he didn’t tell anyone they “needed” to to anything. anyone who joined the country joined of their own free will, and nobody joined during the war, just before and after.

wilbur didn’t really “recruit” tommy so much as they were on a team of causing small arguments. wilbur joined and he and tommy went to go scam people together, while tommy told him about the various other little schemes he had been running. and i don’t really think he was intending to do a real takeover, which is why i called it “weak”. the man told people that potions give you diarrhea. does that sound like the work of a mastermind? no, because it’s the self proclaimed “crime boy”. and that “drug empire” got shut down pretty quick for something that was supposed to last a long time.

“just put “revolution” instead of “business” as a guise of what he was actually doing.”

l’manburg was not the drug empire under a different name. l’manburg was about separation from the greater smp, admittedly because they felt that being stopped from selling drugs was a bad thing, but then they pretty much completely dropped the drugs and the empire throughout the wall vod.

so when he was recruiting people like fundy, he was doing it with the intent of getting them to make drugs with him. he says nothing about dream when fundy joins his drug empire. and yeah, he lied to him originally, but it didn’t work. fundy visited the van and saw through wilbur (and tommy)’s story, and then he decided to join, on his own. because he wanted to make drugs.

a quote from the wall vod:

“we’re starting a revolution, not a war.”

there was no targeted hatred towards dream until he approached them. and i would say the most “evidence” that wilbur was trying to go after dream in any way is the infamous “what’s tyrannical mean” moment. the thing about that moment is that taking a single moment and using it to define an entire period is unfair. it’s not like that’s a turning point, and after that they solely go after dream. they don’t. i agree that you have to watch the actions of wilbur, and his actions at the time were geared towards becoming independent and progressing the condition of l’manburg.

wilbur is honest with eret when they join that they are committing crimes. eret joins because “haha americans bad”. meanwhile, dream is in chat telling eret that there are “three defectors from the kingdom”.

“the only reason people disbelieve this is not because it doesn’t align with canon, but because they assume he’s lying for the sole reason that it doesn’t align with the way they see canon.”

if what revivedbur said agreed with canon, people wouldn’t be pointing out that it doesn’t. watch back the hot dog stream, the wall stream, the first war stream, even the stream after that when niki joins. look at how wilbur speaks, and also look at how he acts. it does not match up with all of what revivedbur says.

early wilbur is naive. he thinks he’s doing the right thing, so he therefore concludes the people against him are wrong. the only fighting back that l’manburg does before war is declared is killing alyssa (and this was tommy’s idea, wilbur was discouraging killing her), because they thought she set the fire. once she told them she didn’t, they gave her back the stuff they thought they had. tubbo still had her pickaxe, but didn’t realize. and for this? the people of the greater smp hunted him down, trapped him in a box, and killed him as well as killing tommy, who tried to save tubbo.

wilbur scolded tommy for killing alyssa. wilbur wanted to focus on building the nation, on declaring independence, and actively ignored the other side. he writes the declaration and he believes in everything it stands for! half the things in there are things that the other people of l’manburg yelled out, that he wrote in as they were being fired on by the greater smp. it comes from all the people.

the declaration of war from the greater smp pretty much says “sometimes you just gotta kill some people, you know?”

i am not disagreeing with you that after the first war, wilbur fell into corruption. it’s implied greatly that this is partially a consequence of the first war, and also partially stems from his fierce protectiveness of l’manburg.

also, if you’re saying that you have never and will never believe wilbur, i would urge you to re-examine that. it’s hard to avoid bias when you refuse to take most things that someone says as truth. i am also curious how you came to this conclusion as you began to watch the smp (if you never believed him at all) and who’s perspective you were watching.

“according to his actions and all known laws of logic” according to the streams and vods that very much still exist, and his actions in them, no, he wasn’t lying since the beginning. did he tell lies? yes, everyone did. was he being untruthful about his devotion to l’manburg when he took arrows for it and died for it? no. it’s pretty clear to see when you watch the vod. his actions speak louder than his words.

so no, it doesn’t make sense for him to be lying since the beginning. it doesn’t make sense that revivedbur’s ideals are a switch from how he was even right before he died, so we cannot trust his memory and his morals to remain intact! the man was alone for thirteen years, speaking of torture.

“he thought l'manberg his and no one else’s, a weapon of power for him to use however he pleases. unlike dream who destroyed himself bit by bit trying to take back what he cares about, because it was not power, but people - wilbur saw no more worth in it and destroyed it instead.”

hmm. i’ll come back to this later.

a point- not everything cc!wilbur says about his character is negative.

a lot of his commentary on his character came after his death, so it encompasses his spiral. i will again suggest that you listen to “eight” by sleeping at last. it’s true he can play a morally complex character, because he does, but he does not play an intentional antagonist the entire time, even in “secret”.

“i was just talking about how hypocritical and downright ridiculous his later accusations are, which you didn’t address.”

how are his later accusations hypocritical? wilbur calls him a tyrant in the moment, yeah. wilbur thinks that he should be able to do whatever he wants, and since it’s the dream smp, he assumes dream is the leader. dream never contradicts this, by the way. wilbur writes in the declaration of independence that “in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one to dissolve the bonds which bind us. disregarding of this truth is nothing short of tyranny.” so that’s what he considers tyranny. when he got stopped from selling drugs and tommy got arrested, he didn’t yell “tyranny”.

mistreatment of citizens by authority and denial of independence is tyranny.

dream and the people of the greater smp hurt and attack the people of l’manburg throughout the wall stream. importantly, since they denied l’manburg independence, the people they were firing and attacking were their own citizens in their eyes. mistreatment of citizens is cruel. upon hearing that l’manburg existed, they became even more tyrannical. thus when wilbur writes this in the book, as they are being fired on, he believes this to be true because it is.

“despite there being no evidence” watch the wall vod. think about the definition of tyranny, and even the different definitions of tyranny.

“a capitalistic empire on dream’s land” so wilbur did have reason for thinking dream was the leader, yes? because it was his land? his “house”? how dream said they were taking back the land that was rightfully theirs? how he called them “traitors to the kingdom”? ignoring the fact that once again, wilbur did not say anything negative towards dream until dream showed up and insulted l’manburg.

wilbur’s form of lying and deception for the drug empire was the norm for the server at the time. we don’t see him pulling this sort of exaggerated bit once he gets into l’manburg, because he’s idealistic and he really believes in it. if you watch tommy’s stream where wilbur first proposes the country, he jokingly says the reason he’s making it is because “americans ruin bits”. also during that stream, tommy asks if they’re making a drug empire, and wilbur says that no, they’re making a nation where drugs are legal.

“didn’t even do that much” hmm. no, i’m pretty sure dream and the people of the greater smp did do the stuff wilbur accused them of. one, he wasn’t directly accusing dream, (because. his problem wasn’t with dream specifically.) and two, the things he said in the declaration did happen?

“they have robbed us.”

to be fair everyone on the server did that lol

“imprisoned us.”

tommy was imprisoned for the drugs and for other things he was involved in, and tubbo was trapped and murdered for a thing he didn’t even know he had.

“threatened us.”

they were fired on multiple times when building l’manburg, they were threatened with consequences for the drug stuff, they told them in pretty clear terms that they were prepared to kill them instead of letting them be independent. the day of the war, dream and sapnap burned down all the trees around l’manburg and lavacast walls around it, saying it was a “warning”.

“killed many of our men.”

again, true. tommy and tubbo in particular died a lot during this time.

so since these things really did happen, how is wilbur lying about them?

“the people he was accusing of being tyrannical were very selective”

one, he accused sapnap of being an american, and it was the americans that were going for them. you don’t need to protect people that aren’t being hurt. most of his reasoning for “no americans” during this time was that anti-mask protests were happening in america, and he was making fun of them. two, the others imprisoned tommy, which does not count as “self defense in an anarchist society”. they accepted tubbo because he was european, and because he was willing to work for the nation like the rest of them. sapnap just wanted a drug dealer.

“dream’s “no factions” thing he had going on also included no government by default, showcased by him having problems with people starting countries.”

if there was no government, why did dream never point this out when wilbur said he was seceding? the server is dream’s faction! he doesn’t want “no factions”, he wants only his faction. dream refers to the server multiple times as a nation, and even a kingdom. anarchist societies don’t have prisons. the prison and the police is a system. if you have an anarchist society, but two specific people are going around arresting people, them going “oh but there’s no government” doesn’t take away the fact that they’re creating a hierarchy, using their own power? they also never claimed that there was no government.

everything that dream said later in the conversation with skeppy also lines up with this. ignoring the fact that there was a monarchy established because it “didn’t have any real power” is disregarding the fact that one, it was there, and two, that there was someone around with enough power to establish it in the first place. i don’t know how to say this any clearer. anarchist places do not have kings.

and anarchy is not the only thing that fits. it wasn’t designed to be a geopolitical drama, they just made the mistake of letting wilbur soot onto the server. so they didn’t need to have a name for the system, because the system was “do whatever you want”, including establishing authority.

“dream had all the reasons to believe they were aggressive and was fully justified in declaring war.”

dream didn’t declare war because alyssa was attacked. he had done stuff to them before that happened, and they got back all of her stuff (again, not by asking and trying to work it out, but by kidnapping someone who genuinely believed they were innocent and killing them as they begged for help.) dream started the official conflict because he declared war. he also started the unofficial conflict. he didn’t think they were aggressive, he thought they were weak.

“if he (wilbur) thought he was being mistreated he could just stop trying to mistreat others”

what, because he had any sort of power? he did stop mistreating others. l’manburg legitimately did nothing to intentionally hurt anyone, and tommy killing alyssa doesn’t count because that was his decision and revenge was already paid out for that. so wilbur stopped scamming people, built the walls to contain his country (he said that they needed nothing outside the walls at some point) and then was attacked multiple times. his mistreatment didn’t stop.

“it was supposed to be his l'manberg.”

wilbur didn’t destroy it because it was supposed to be his and it got away from him, that’s why he held the election: to try and restore peace through attempting to rig the election. he destroyed it because “the thing i built this nation for doesn’t exist anymore”, meaning the freedom it originally granted to its citizens was gone under schlatt. meaning the policy of no violence and using words was ruined. if the thing he built this nation for was power, this would make no sense. he could have taken power so easily. he passed off the presidency.

“something worth having power over” is something important. it is something that can be good for lots of people, and the power over it is what makes it safe. it’s worth having power over because when others, like schlatt, take that power, it is no longer safe.

violence and tyranny had become so much a part of l’manburg that wilbur felt the freedom and peace was gone. so when he blows it up, and says “my l’manburg”, he means it can no longer be used for evil. “my unfinished symphony, forever unfinished”. he saves it for himself by destroying it. so yes, he is being selfish, but not to ruin it for other people. he takes it into his own hands to weed out the fighting, and by doing so takes himself with it. his vision was never complete, because the wars had taught him that the only true freedom, the only true victory (“i won.”) for him was in death. (and then that turned out to be wrong.)

there’s a reddit post that cc!wilbur approved

that explains this a little better than i can, and cc!wilbur commented on it “any truers???” so i think it can be counted as reliable.

this full quote from cc!wilbur about his character (from his hey and stuff podcast) is very interesting. i’ll transcribe it here:

“i decided i was going to make a breaking bad style roleplay, where me and tommy would be drug dealers. and uh, one thing lead to another and i’m the president of a nation losing it due to my own insolence and uh, short sighted naivety. basically disregard for my fellow citizens who i claim to love so much. and a, and a dark, twisted understanding of what is possession. and what is, what is my right.”

i like this quote a lot because it highlights the initial traits that caused his spiral. it also places him as kind of similar to dream. the reason he lost the presidency is that he got too cocky. and the reason his spiral was so selfish is that it was all he could see— when his earlier vision of freedom was shattered by the first war, he didn’t know how to adapt and so became attached to power as it now felt like the only way to keep what mattered to him.

this is emphasized in his conversation with quackity during his second lore stream: that there was a drastic change between the person who made l’manburg and the person running for president. this quote matches up very well with the election arc. wilbur’s motives were different before the election, and they were different after.

once he had the freedom that he wanted, he became scared of losing it and that is what pushed him down. “if i can’t have it, no one can” is on the surface about the power, but the lament for what he once had (freedom in a country without tyranny) is there. that’s why he became so power-oriented. if he did not have control of l’manburg, it could be used to go against his original vision and it would be better off gone.

another good piece of information is cc!wilbur’s comment on his dnd alignment post, where he says this:

“wilbur is on the border of chaotic and neutral evil. wilbur, in his chaotic sense, is a crazy man who wants to blow up his old nation and kill his friends. but, more realistically, in his neutral sense, wilbur is the archetype of a man who had great power and who lost it all due to his own poor choices and negligence who sees destruction as his ratification.”

note the “realistically”.

he feels as if he owes it to l’manburg at the end to blow it up, and he didn’t mind taking himself with it as he thought that nobody cared about him anymore and he didn’t have any more to give.

(related to this, in the dnd alignment post, cc!wilbur places season 1 dream as chaotic evil and says his only motive is chaos. firstly, this would only apply to season one, and although cc!wilbur was working with cc!dream and everyone else to write the plot here, i wonder why he says this instead of saying anything else about dream’s motives. this seems to disagree pretty severely with what you think, but it also disagrees with what even i think about dream during this time.)

revivedbur comes back and has plans because he regrets his past. he hates that he gave up that easily. and he could absolutely lie about his past actions! there is no reason to ignore the contents of an entire war because someone who was alone for thirteen years says it!

“shouldn’t have it” doesn’t mean he was lying when he said he wanted it. he was just wrong, which he knew when he blew up l’manburg and that’s part of why he did it.

“they said they “fought with words”, like that doesn’t sound like a peaceful solution, more like a different approach, and it was because that is what they did”

they said the words thing a lot of times, and most of the time it was used as a “tommy don’t attack that person.” and “fighting with words” is arguing, it is replacing the trauma of real battle with talking it out. l’manburg did stick very closely to their motto of words over violence. look at the contents of the first war.

and once war was declared, wilbur was enthusiastic for it. sounds suspicious from someone claiming to not want war, right? he said it was a chance for them to prove themselves, to prove they could rule themselves. he also said that if they could defend themselves it would be proof. he never went “time to attack them”, and when he said he didn’t want a war in the past he meant that he didn’t want to start one. his being enthusiastic about the war ties into his naivety about running a country. it was also an acceptance in a way, no? it meant that the greater smp saw them as something worth declaring war on.

and it’s heartbreaking seeing him so excited to prove himself, because we know that the experience of the war is what lead to his spiral and his cynicism as president. we know that a few weeks later, he’s going to be crying into his pillow every night.

for the clip (the “something worth having power over and then you get killed by your dad” clip), i kind of don’t know what to say. i don’t think this is a clear condemnation of the entirety of l’manburg’s beginnings, but i do think that i was probably reaching a bit with trying to interpret it. there are definitely a lot of ways to see that, though.

no, he showed it in the first war and he clearly said it. i don’t think somebody who wants to mess with dream is going to not even think about him until he shows up, and even after then largely ignore him until he declares war.

“yes, it was worth something to wilbur, and that worth was power.”

question: power over what? power for what purpose? how did he use that power?

if it was only worth having power over, then why did he give it up? why didn’t he just kill schlatt in the first place? again i think the reddit post addresses a lot of this. original l’manburg was worth more to wilbur than power because he was willing to surrender when his life and his friend’s lives were threatened, and he told tommy it was not worth it to enter a duel and sacrifice his own life for it. after the war, he cared about power over it in order to keep peace, and then he realized that his own desire for power caused him to abandon his morals and he attempted to destroy it all.

“the greater smp did represent anarchy and peace.”

i just don’t think the ideals of the early smp line up with anarchy, and especially not dream’s actions later. he believes in forced peace, and unity under his terms although that belief is more gradual.

“see you tell me you didn’t fall for propaganda and then say this.”

it’s not “falling for propaganda” to watch the streams and interpret them. “propaganda” is defined as an attempt to spread information, often of a misleading nature. it’s what wilbur used during his presidential campaign, it’s what everyone used during the election. i do not base my opinion of his character off things that have been said about him after the fact. i watched the content when it happened.

so what about the facts that one, he wanted peace at the start, and two, that he cared about protecting his nation and the people he cared about is propaganda? it is information that i believe to be true based on my own analyzing of his actions during that time.

wilbur never says this as an attempt to lie to anyone. he wanted peace if it meant he could have freedom, but he would not attack anyone for freedom, he would defend it once he had established it. he wasn’t trying to establish an empire after the drug van stream (he says this in the vod where he discusses his plans for l’manburg with tommy) and the actions of the greater smp were tyrannical. what happened is that later, after the first war, he lost faith in peace because people continued to attack him!

“he did create division for his own benefit the way i see it.”

can you explain the “benefit” that division would give him? because like i said, his goal was his own personal freedom. he wasn’t attempting to divide people, he was reacting to mistreatment, whether perceived or real. and more often than not, people asked to join him, he didn’t try to convince them.

“yeah wilbur said it genuinely to tubbo when he first brought him armor”

as i was going through the old vods, i did find the origin of that quote (the quote where wilbur says “we go in with no armor and then stab them in the back” or something along those lines)! there’s something funny about it though. notice how he says it and then never does anything about it? and how nobody from l’manburg acts on it? because you have to look at his actions, something you emphasized that i agree with. they have more weight than his words. he also said “wanna kiss” to dream, so i don’t think this really counts as “proof” of an ulterior motive, because he said a lot of things.

“you see a pattern already?”

the “pattern” i see of his reactions to conflict in his nation is that he didn’t want to assert control in order to oppress people, he wanted to assert control to keep the peace, by rigging the election so that he had “legitimate” authority. was it a hypocritical? yeah! it reminds me of what dream was doing, too: placing his goal of peace over his wish for freedom of everyone.

the difference is that dream didn’t have any reserves about “starting an army and asserting dominance over his own people because they didn’t respect his authority and he was irritated by it”. weird that that can be used to describe dream as well, huh? and before it can be used to describe wilbur?

this is also after the first war, where wilbur learned a very important lesson! and it’s right before he realizes he’d become what he had tried to destroy. the other person who acts like this never realized this, though. it’s because he was never trying to destroy it. just saying.

“the friendships inside of it could’ve existed without, and would’ve probably been better off without being stained by war”

wilbur did not consider making l’manburg as a severing of relationships between the two nations. he even expresses neutrality towards some members of the greater smp. wilbur didn’t “make people think” they needed l’manburg, he saw it as a thing to devote yourself to, an ideology. he did not force others to think this way, although he encouraged it. people ended up sacrificing a lot for that (against their will sometimes), and so they became attached to it.

“the original dream smp was this but actually true instead of just being a front.”

ah yes, the dream smp with absolutely no hierarchies. nothing like mister “my house” at all. no “my land”, no “my server”, no “the king has no power”, no “it’s the dream smp”. /s

“wilbur didn’t fear for anyone’s safety”

hmm, no, wilbur did fear for everyone’s safety. you know, when they were being attacked continuously throughout the war? and when he finally surrendered because they were being threatened and killed?

“the dream smp was already safe”

dream and sapnap need better ways to “keep the server safe” than by blowing up people who wanted to go off and do their own thing and posed no threat to the greater server.

i don’t know how to provide “evidence” that dream and the others attacked l’manburg? the evidence is the fact that they did. again, wilbur’s initial goal was not conflict with the greater smp, it was emancipation. when tubbo was taken hostage and killed, shot at, robbed multiple times of materials it had taken him hours to get, and had his old house burned down simply because he was part of l’manburg, those were the reasons that tubbo ever fired a shot at them in the first place!

when wilbur lead his people out on the first day of the war, it was to negotiate. they dodged the arrows and went to the embassy, where they were then trapped and driven back into tommy’s house. it was then that they fought back. self defense. i don’t know what else to tell you.

“trying to end the war as soon as he could” is kind of misleading, because it implies that dream hated the violence. he just wanted to win as soon as he could. he didn’t care what he had to do to win it. no mercy.

the dream smp was not freedom because when you try to leave freedom, it doesn’t hunt you down and try to destroy you. anarchy doesn’t call you a traitor when you leave. and yeah, dream was real friendly to tommy when he continued the disk war when it first settled. and of course when your friends join a different nation, the most logical course of action is to murder them repeatedly! /s

the definition of anarchy includes personal freedom, the exact thing wilbur wanted. anarchy does not include authority, it is firmly opposed to it. i think i would place the early greater smp as more of a stateless society, if i had to put a name on it (again, i am extremely wary to do that because it wasn’t written as anything with a name. this is also a mediocre take that i don’t really believe because dream had his own faction.). a stateless society is one of the goals of anarchism, but does not encompass the entire belief.

dream’s main motivation was that he didn’t want anyone being independent. it didn’t matter who was leading it.

and i’m sorry, but you can’t just take away evidence by saying “he was lying” when there is no proof he is? if you take this conversation at face value it makes more sense! (this is about the conversation between wilbur and dream right before the “independence or death” scene)

“both sides had their losses and were ready to harm the other” what did the greater smp lose. its people? its land? there was other land, and the people could still remain friends. some of them did. dream even says before this that yeah, l’manburg is losing. and wilbur here is attempting to downplay that loss, claiming they’re on even ground because that’s what he wants to happen. he is trying to appear stronger than he really is. he’s bluffing, but it doesn’t work.

i don’t like saying “nobody’s the victim” here when one side was getting absolutely whaled on by the other. wilbur has the ability to be genuine, and he does. if he was trying to “play” the victim, he would exaggerate the damage his side had suffered. his words and his actions match up, and this is a pretty different circumstance from him doing a bit. he is a victim. that’s just straight up true.

i’m not surprised that you think this way, as you’ve said you were on dream’s side since the start, but i’d like to once again ask you to examine where you got these perceptions.

dream offering them “chances” was just offering them surrender. that’s not merciful, and it’s not fair, either. and he may not have wanted to hurt them, but he sure didn’t mind doing it. wilbur wasn’t sewing some kind of anti-dream propaganda in his nation while the battle was going on, the hatred for dream came from the fact that he was attacking all of them.

“colonize” is a bad word choice for what l’manburg was. nobody was living on that land before they got there. the land should have belonged to nobody, so why did dream get so mad about “his” land being taken? what about that specific area was so important to him, when he did have the ability to visit?

wilbur was pacifist, he was not the instigator, again i have to say i can’t offer up proof if you’re convinced that he was lying. when he fought back later it was in self defense. please watch the vods. and recognize that wilbur’s actions election era are consequences of his experiences revolution era.

i genuinely don’t understand what you mean by comparing this to exile. please rephrase your point. if you’re comparing what dream did to tommy to wilbur trying to stop dream from hurting him and his people more i have to say that’s a... questionable take. it’s probably a bad idea to make exile comparisons if you’re going to use them to victim-blame, as that’s very antithetical to exile as a whole and kid of ironic.

“i mean, what other choice was there?”

no, dream had a lot of choices. he did not offer them a peaceful way out. he declared war and then he attacked. it was then that he told them many times to surrender. and no, wilbur didn’t push them to go and die, evidenced again by the times he used himself as a distraction so that they could run, and that he didn’t want tommy to do the duel but ultimately respected his decision and his freedom.

“dream constantly asked them to give up instead of fighting.”

dream has a responsibility to not attack kids. dream also has a responsibility to attempt any sort of peaceful negotiation. tubbo was boxed and murdered before war was declared, and tubbo personally had done straight up nothing to the people of the greater smp, and he didn’t even know why he died until tommy saw that alyssa’s pickaxe was mixed in with his stuff.

if wilbur claimed to wish to prevent violence, and then he did, or at least attempted to, i don’t know why you think it’s untrue. calling someone a rude name is not equal to murder. “verbally violent” means pretty much nothing and was coming from both sides.

(this next part is about the “let me be your vassal” scene in pogtopia)

“there’s a theory wilbur legitimately thinks dream selfish”

i mean, yeah. i think that kind of sums it up. wilbur was appealing to dream’s personal goals. i don’t see how he was shut down though. he already helped pogtopia, so him being asked to further help someone from pogtopia shows that they trusted him enough to tell him the plan.

i’ve watched the clip a lot of times and i think that the meaning can be ambiguous. i am using dream’s other actions during that time to determine how much of an effect i think it had on him. i don’t think he got “shut down” in any sort of meaningful way here.

“he didn’t seem to hold even that against him as he tried to help get back l’manberg with him.”

if dream didn’t hold the disk thing against tommy then, he sure decided to get mad about it later (he brings it up when arguing with quackity), despite the fact that he had also re-opened the conflict in the past.

“i believe they (dream and tommy) had genuinely been friends once.”

sure, i think they were friends before dream did what he did with the disks, and allies during early pogtopia. dream still decided to switch sides and team with manburg because schlatt offered him the book. this is, ironically, dream abandoning tommy.

“he has a sense of responsibility (not control) over the people on his smp.”

i think it can be responsibility and control. most of the responsibility is misguided, and lots of it is just actual control. i don’t know where you’re getting a lot of this.

and i do not know where you got that his fatal flaw was caring too much? he “cares” in the way of having control! he doesn’t care about the well being of others as long as he thinks he’s right. i’m just saying that he sure could have walked away, because he did just that later when he sided with schlatt. it’s not a speculation about his character when it’s something that he did.

him walking away did not entail complete surrender to wilbur. there were a lot of other things he could have done, but i don’t want to get into “could have”’s as i don’t really think there’s a point. wilbur was attempting to convince him, yeah, but that didn’t mean it was true. we know that wilbur was lying about wanting ambition.

also, i don’t think dream was allied with pogtopia because he liked them or he was trying to be better or anything. he said in “tyrant” that it’s because schlatt was worse, and wilbur didn’t have any ambition to expand.

“maybe you misunderstood something i said, but no, he definitely didn’t.”

okay, so since dream didn’t think wilbur was a villain, wilbur was not “pressuring him” into becoming one by helping him. my point was that dream didn’t think that, and wilbur didn’t care. sorry for not making that clear, i was asking a rhetorical question.

(i said here that “someone calling someone else out for hurting them is not the same thing as villanizing them,” and they responded with this)

“yeah, they are. and dream was villanized.”

oh boy.

vilify: to utter slanderous and abusive statements against, to defame.

(i probably should have been saying vilify instead of villainize because they mean the same thing but i straight up did not know it was a word, sorry lol)

slanderous means false and malicious. abusive means offensive and insulting. defamation is things that are not true.

if somebody says, “this guy punched me.” that would not be vilifying them. it is a true statement with a neutral tone. if they add “he is a bad person”, that could possibly be seen as abusive, as it is insulting, but the point of vilifying someone is that you are making them out to be someone they’re not. it involves the use of lies and continuous exaggerated language. slanderous and abusive. abusive only is not enough to classify something as vilifying.

someone reacting to something dream did by calling him a name is not vilifying him. it is true that he did the thing, and it is also true that the person saying it believes it. it is rare that someone criticizes him without real reason or goes overboard (the person who really does this as far as i can remember is tommy), and when tommy does so it is almost always reciprocated. so we have dream and tommy constantly vilifying each other, and other people saying negative things about dream and sometimes vilifying him, if they lie about it. he sometimes vilifies them.

my point is that vilification is not wilbur telling niki, “dream burnt tubbo’s house down”, despite the fact that he calls dream a bad guy. it’s not slanderous because it is true. dream assisted sapnap with the act. vilification is not tommy explaining to ranboo what was happening during exile, or telling dream that dream makes him worse. “someone calling someone out for hurting them” implies truth, and it doesn’t necessarily imply abusive language, but it doesn’t matter because it’s true.

maybe we were going off different definitions of vilify. but when we’re accusing characters who are victims of abuse and manipulation, we need to be careful with what we accuse them of.

anyway

wilbur saying he wanted to use the tommys of the world was left in the drug van stream. tommy himself was pushing a lot of the “dream bad” stuff because he had more experience with him. when tommy was confused during those two scenes (vassal scene and revivedbur calling dream his hero)it was because he believed that wilbur respected him, and wilbur working with or idolizing someone who had hurt tommy in the past was a contradiction to that belief. wilbur does not question tommy’s anger during the vassal scene because he doesn’t care that dream is bad, and when he is revived he either does not believe it or does not want to acknowledge it. revivedbur cares a whole lot more about power for the sake of power than wilbur ever did.

again, tommy isn’t stupid. he has his own reasons for not liking dream, and the disconnect comes from a place of trusting wilbur.

by the way, wilbur left the vc before saying that tommy didn’t care. he was talking to himself (and chat). and he was more fearful that tommy was leaving than angry. plus, he didn’t actually force tommy to give up his house: there was miscommunication between them and the embassy was the power tower in the end. wilbur just wanted confirmation that tommy would spend time in l’manburg. it’s true that he went about it in a bad way, though.

he didn’t push patriotism onto them, they were also excited about the country. there were other scenes beside the tyrant scene, and the amount of times wilbur had to tell tommy to shut up about how great the country is is a lot higher than the one time he had them call dream a tyrant.

true, that scene (scene where wilbur asserts his authority as president) is before pogtopia. it’s also after the war for independence. i am not saying that wilbur should have said any of that stuff. i’m just pointing out that it wasn’t always like that.

also i do not really see “you’re never gonna be president” as a taunt or manipulation or anything. i think wilbur genuinely believed that having tommy in charge of the country would one, get them into more conflicts, and two, mess up tommy mentally. being the president sucked and wilbur knew that. wilbur was not kind to tommy. but a lot of stuff that’s pointed at as manipulative is pretty clearly wilbur’s own paranoia spilling over in a desire to protect tommy, ie saying that tubbo would betray them. wilbur genuinely thought that and he was trying to warn tommy.

“tommy, when i said you’d never be president, it wasn’t a challenge. it’s true. you’re never going to be president.”

tommy’s life has been hard, that’s true. not disagreeing with you there. but not every adult has been using him the whole time. and if you’re looking for fault, i would personally look at the guy who killed him three times first, just saying. other things had impacts but there’s a clear scale.

“tommy formed an attachment to them as a result of the disc war, not the other way around.”

so yeah, initially it was a shallow trade: the disks for the armor. once that conflict was resolved, and tommy apologized, that should have been the end of it, yeah? especially since tommy now had a stronger connection to the disks? that would have been nice.

the problem is that dream took them back for no reason. because he did, he went back and dug up tommy’s whole front yard and spawned months of conflict after. having “leverage” over someone like that is kinda messed up! it’s not like tommy was going around committing mass murder every tuesday, he got in scraps with other people on the server who also committed petty crimes. so i can’t really blame tommy for wanting them back, even though he stole them.

and if dream didn’t care about the disks, why did he later use it as “proof” that tommy caused all the trouble on the server? if they were so worthless to him that he gave them to skeppy, why did it matter that tommy stole them?

i don’t know what you mean about this being the only way dream could control people. the amount of genuine fear other characters felt when he logged on was there for a long time. he held a lot of power on the server, and a lot of his control was physical, evidenced by exile in particular but also the wars.

when he did ultimately use connections to control people, that was still a bad thing.

“his friend’s house got burnt down and he wanted the person who did it to be held accountable?”

okay, george’s house got burned down. do you remember the initial punishment that dream proposed? probation for tommy until he was eighteen. and when dream was arguing with his friends, he pointed out that the only reason l’manburg was being held hostage for tommy’s crime was that tommy was involved in the government. he said that if tommy hadn’t been involved in the government, he probably would have just hunted him down and killed him.

also, someone responding to this pointed out that dream was trying to frame tommy for things at the time. dream was intentionally creating other conflict in order to get to tommy. dream did not care about the house. he burnt down other people’s houses.

that’s not “holding someone accountable”. that’s not even close.

“he was taught this from experience”

the leather from the horse was used to blackmail him after he had already started doing that to people. you know how tommy mimicks him? that’s what was going on (still bad that he did it but like. come on.) so that may have been the push that caused dream to cut his own connections (so that nobody could ever do that to him again, and he would have no chance of failure), but it didn’t just happen to him for no reason: it was a behavior he taught someone else.

“he did genuinely think he was a villain before the war”

tommy called dream a lot of stuff before the war, and most of it was unprompted by wilbur. a lot of it was also, like you said, two friends joking around. just because wilbur taught him a new word (he didn’t really tell him what it meant though) doesn’t mean he was manipulated into using it all the time or something. and i’m pretty sure tommy got a decent definition of tyranny later, when the greater smp decided to attack l’manburg before anything went down.

“it’s just a character acknowledging what people who looked deeper into the narrative already knew.”

what i’m saying is that narratively, wilbur has an extremely good reason to be biased right now. taking anything he says as truth doesn’t solidify an interpretation as truth. there has to be enough evidence to actually back the entire thing up in the first place, and i’m just not seeing “wilbur was always going for power and division” as solidified by his actions during the first war.

and again, tommy’s not stupid, and the entire time tommy is yelling at him! tommy knows something is off! if people also in the story are saying “this isn’t right”, i feel like they’d know? tommy was also part of l’manburg, he has an opinion too. so when he says “we founded l’manburg because we knew dream was the bad guy”, he’s talking about why he did it. and he brings up a good point: “you say you did it to stick it to the man, but you’re idolizing dream, who is the man”. (paraphrased i don’t know his exact words but this was his point) this shows that wilbur’s motives have changed, even from what revivedbur will say.

(they linked three twitter threads here. i don’t know if relinking them here is a good idea as the whole point of this separate post is to disconnect the two sides, but the threads were by dr3amofagame on twitter, for reference purposes. i’m not going to link the independent threads but i think people can tell which ones i was responding to.

if this is wrong to say who made them please let me know, i do not know how Any of these websites work. if you’ve read this far, please don’t try to like,,, look up who any of these people are (especially the person i was debating with. don’t do that /srs) and send anything bad to them. that’s the whole point of this separate post. if anyone sends negativity directly towards people because of this post i’ll bite you)

that first analysis has some Opinions. oh man.

i don’t know man i’m just going to point some things out:

-the person who wrote the thread pulling the “child” card makes me laugh because tommy had committed more crimes than wilbur at that point. ah yes tommy innit innocent child being horribly dragged into a giant war by evil wilbur /s

-wilbur did not call dream a tyrant before dream showed up and made fun of their land

-wilbur did not legitimately think dream a tyrant when he told tommy and tubbo to call him that. neither, really, did tommy and tubbo. it was a joke. like infinite women. like dream saying “i’m evil” when he was blowing up creepers on their land before the battle. like dream and sapnap being all “down with the british”.

-their attitude on that changed when the greater smp begin exhibiting tyrannical behavior (before war was declared!).

-“having tommy and tubbo fight his battles and build his walls” is just untrue

-the l’manburg anthem was, one, not written by wilbur (he commissioned someone to do it on fiver), and two, was written after the first war. they sing it in the stream where niki joins. so yeah, at that point, they did emancipate from the brutality and tyranny of their rulers! it doesn’t say who the rulers are (therefore it’s. not blaming solely dream.) but pretty much all of them were brutal!

-also oh my god this thread has a lot of things that wilbur just straight up didn’t say (or do).

-“would rather die than submit to your tyrannical rule” is a quote from the speech wilbur gives before dream lights the tnt. dream had done stuff to them at that point. this is out of context.

-i don’t want to seriously critique this thread because a lot of it seems more like something emotional than an attempt to start conversation, and i can’t really go against that.

-the main argument, that dream did nothing before being irreversibly forced into the role of the villain does not really match up with what happened.

-there’s a lot less of people calling dream a villain than people seem to remember.

-and also, dream was lying about wanting l’manburg to be something. he says to eret a few days later the quote that i included a while back, that his goal has always been for there to be one faction: the dream smp. note that at this point he’s officially on manburg’s “side” now. he also says he has never wavered on this from the beginning. so he’s either continuing his manipulation of eret and lying to them, or he’s just saying that he wants l’manburg to be something to wilbur and tommy to try to get them to trust him. and hearing him yell “YES!” after the explosion? i’m inclined to think it’s the latter.

okay, so then looking at the second analysis:

-once again, calling wilbur a colonizer? there is a definition of that word that matches up with his actions, but that definition is something establishing itself in a place. by that definition, everyone on the server is a colonizer. so calling just wilbur that seems... a bit weird, considering that the common definition does not match up with what he did.

-“got his (wilbur’s) entire side killed” ignores the fact that it was Dream And His Friends Who Killed Them hghfnjgnfm

dream: wow wilbur you’re bad at this war thing

wilbur: please stop killing us

dream: how could you do this to your people

wilbur: you??? declared war???

dream: no you don’t understand. i had a really good reas—

sorry sorry i’m just. yeah

-also this thread reminded me that “tyrant” (the book) exists and yeah, i do see your point that dream did care about tommy (a little bit). i just wonder why he turned against him again? and why dream is willing to admit here that l’manburg was peaceful, and also that wilbur was not like schlatt in some key ways?

-and again i don’t see wilbur calling dream a villain during the vassal scene.

-some of this thread is just speculation. i’m not going to consider “wilbur may manipulate dream in the future because they had a conversation in the past”, especially because revivedbur’s mental state right now is godawful, because i don’t think it holds any value to examining the past. the important part is the breakdown of the vassal scene.

-i’ve already said what i think about the vassal scene. dream wasn’t getting tossed around during that. just because he’s quiet doesn’t mean he’s being manipulated? and wilbur isn’t going “you think this”, he’s asking dream what he thinks by paraphrasing what wilbur’s heard from him before, and adjusts it once dream corrects him. i do think this one is more open to interpretation though; this is just my opinion and it doesn’t have a lot of stuff to back it up lol but i’m not convinced either side has much evidence

and the third analysis:

-dream had no idea what kind of government they were setting up there. he didn’t ask, so he wouldn’t know if it was a dictatorship. and again he was allowed on the land, he just never built the embassy. the “no americans” rule was weakly enforced during the first war, and the reason wilbur got so serious about it later is that the americans were the ones who went after him and killed everyone during the war! so he had a reason to want them off. objectively a bad reason? maybe

-it would be cool if dream said “hey don’t do this here’s why” instead of stomping off during negotiations and then coming back to beat them up and declare war. he didn’t though

-the problem people have with greater smp vs. l’manburg is scale. the greater smp was quite literally infinite, and l’manburg was a small space. there wasn’t anything important in l’manburg that other server members needed to get to. people could still leave to visit their friends. they didn’t legitimately hate americans. but nooo, you can’t have the table because it’s my table. what if you do something bad with the table? remember when you tried to sell people “better air” for three dollars and then took someone’s air conditioning? you just want power! i’m going to go bring back rubber bands to pelt you with.

anywAys moving on

no, i do agree with you on the sam stuff. for some reason i was under the impression that cc!sam was uncomfortable with being depicted as torturing dream a while back, but with the stuff happening with quackity now, i’m reasonably sure that doesn’t apply. they don’t retcon stuff that was intentional but there may have been something taken back a few months ago before they planned this.

but yeah, clearly the prison stuff is awful and messed up. that’s why i noted the thing at the start of the reply: i am in no way saying that anything sam or quackity have done to dream since prison hasn’t affected him. these are things that i see as having visible impacts on the character.

(i pointed out that dream originally commissioned the prison)

i understand that it’s frustrating to hear that used as an excuse, but i wasn’t using it that way. i was pointing out that neither of them deserve it. during the vault stream, dream tells tommy that his plan is to put him in the prison. he says that exile was “perfect”, and the only issue was that tommy could get away. putting him in the prison fixes that.

so yeah, what dream was planning to do to tommy is different than what’s happening to him. but the reasons that other people wanted dream in the prison match why he wanted tommy in there: like you said, it’s a vault. it’s so he can store him and use him later, to give attachments and thus power and control over others.

tommy’s original plan was to kill dream. ultimately, he didn’t want him to suffer more, he wanted him gone. nobody on the server knew yet that death was limbo, and tommy probably thought it was mercy for someone like dream. dream was the one who brought up the book, as an attempt to save himself. he will say whatever he needs to say to avoid death, because anyone would (except someone like wilbur who’s. accepted his role. you know?) so he’s the one who reduced himself down the the book, saying if he goes, so does it. that’s when sam suggests the prison.

true, the arc is dark. this is where sam’s actions become corrupted and he loses sight of some of the responsibility he claims to have. it’s also the arc where dream lied to tommy that he had changed, and pressured him into staying by saying he was his friend. it’s the arc where dream kills tommy, and doesn’t allow sam to come get his body for days. it’s the arc where dream gets even worse, whether because of his time in the prison or because of his peaked god complex, probably both.

and again, my problem is that criticizing characters for actions they didn’t take is pointless. it tells you not much about the character, and considering the circumstances of what dream had done it does make sense for none of them to step in! they are looking at the fact that dream had an entire vault dedicated to controlling them. they are seeing that dream was fully prepared to murder tubbo and lock tommy away forever to be used. they are witnessing tommy giving dream exactly what he got.

so “acknowledging” this does nothing useful! we do not see these actions (or lack of) specifically affecting dream. i can tell you what dream told people he was doing, and it matches up with things he had done in the past, and there are moments he denies the narrative that you say drove him to do this. but i can’t really prove anything when you say he’s lying here because it fits how you interpret the story.

it’s what you’re saying people are doing to revivedbur: saying he’s lying without any proof, when with him there is evidence and he has the motive to lie. when revivedbur lies, tommy calls him on it. tommy doesn’t call dream on it. i’ve laid out why i think it’s not true, and i’ve seen stuff in early canon that directly contradicts what revivedbur says. occam’s razor! many pieces of evidence versus a few statements from someone who at that point commonly lied about things like that.

dream standing by while tommy and the other citizens get killed in l’manburg by his own orders isn’t very peaceful or non-tyrannical of him. tommy was enforcing an eye for an eye, and to be honest? i don’t think “kill your abuser” is such a terrible message to send, despite the fact that we know that tommy’s coping mechanisms come from a bad source. and tommy was far from free of what dream did to him, as evidenced by later when he again attempts to mirror what dream had done to him in the past.

yeah, i read your analysis of the interaction (skeppy and dream arguing over l’manburg). that’s not the only interpretation. skeppy doesn’t call him the villain. he is repeating back to dream the actions that dream took, and dream tells him he’s making him sound bad. skeppy wasn’t influenced by any “propaganda” you think l’manburg was putting out while they were getting murdered. skeppy was an outsider who was calling it as he saw it.

and if other people saw what dream was doing as bad, maybe he was... doing bad things? for bad reasons? skeppy was critical of dream for his actions. talking over somebody does not certify it as “twisting words”. skeppy was accusing him of doing the actions, like “so you did this? you started the war?”. dream was defending the logic behind his actions, like “well i did it because.”

basically

skeppy: hey it’s kind of. messed up that you killed a bunch of people. you know? you kind of just attacked them out of nowhere

dream: no no no you don’t understand. i had a really good reason

skeppy: i don’t see a reason?

dream: you’re making it seem like i didn’t have to do this

skeppy: you d i d n ‘ t

and skeppy didn’t finish the conversation with “you’re lying” or “you don’t know what you’re talking about”, he just told him he was wrong! as in his actions were cruel and needless! “people must have hated coming to your house”.

(they asked me to name one person who dream cut off first)

okay, name one? puffy. sam. punz? he did cut them off, he straight up told tommy he did it, and making a place in the vault for fran when sam had done nothing but work with him? and they didn’t “show up ready to kill him”, they showed up to see what he was doing. so he tells tommy he abandoned them, and indirectly tells them with the spirit scene. sapnap and george noticed this, and called him on it, but he just said he didn’t mean it?

if dream “wasn’t as close” with sam/puffy/punz, why are we putting responsibility on them for his actions.

so sapnap and george walked away from him, but because he did something to them. and puffy didn’t abandon him. punz didn’t abandon him, punz got paid off because that’s what punz cares about: money. he’s a mercenary.

using “they left him first” for sapnap and george doesn’t allow for why they left him: because he wasn’t treating them fairly. he isn’t their parent, he’s their friend, and he wasn’t acting like it.

“he was hurt and abandoned to the point” “he ended up hurting people doesn’t negate the fact he was hurt himself first” “the environment they all were a part of pushed him this far, and that’s just what happened”

so you’re saying it’s right that the reason dream did bad things to people is because bad things were done to him first? because dream was definitely the one who got attacked first during l’manburg. because he just cared so much about george that he kicked someone out of society just to defend his honor. /s and then, because his real purpose was protecting george, he went back and tried to make things right with george because it wasn’t about tommy? oh wait, he didn’t. he focused on only tommy. because george’s house was an excuse.

“that’s just what happened” is a bad take on “people got abused”. the fact is that dream started a lot of the conflict. looking at the retaliation and self-defense that people did towards him and saying “he got hurt a bunch that’s why he did the later bad stuff” completely negates that he started it? and his “retribution” was always exponentially worse than the actual crime committed?

dude, i’m just trying to point out that the story says he cut people off. yeah, he was hurt at times, but that is not an explanation for what he did. it’s not even a logical cause, because we do not see it affect his character. the subtext has gotta be there. the fact that he was hurt does not make him any more justified.

“circle of violence” does apply (not all of them, though). but in this situation, it’s a kid stealing someone’s lunch money, and then the other kid breaks their nose. the first kid punches the kid, the second kid puts them in the hospital. when the retribution dream gave was always worse than whatever happened to him, the issue is not “look at the people hurting him”, it’s “stop him from hurting people”!

so clearly dream needs some kind of therapy (not from puffy though i’m not letting him near her /hj), because just killing him would be a permanent solution but it would upset people who like his character. the prison is awful and not going to work. my personal solution for him is to send him out somewhere a long way away, so that nobody he’s hurt has to see him again. maybe people that wanted to go with him could, and it would be like a new smp. but when that idea was proposed, tommy said darkly that he was always going to come back. maybe it’ll be the solution in the future. who knows.

if the mistakes were unintentional, why criticize the characters for them? and what about “the environment” besides the other people changed how dream thought? a lot of it was internal.

we have him exiling tommy as a weird, desperate plea for friends (not really) when he very much could have gone back and spoken to the people who were his friends. we have him continuously saying that tommy causes all the problems, and he needs to be “restrained” or “controlled” or whatever other excuse he came up with for taking away a person’s free will.

we have him obsessing over the disks, and we know it’s not about the disks, it’s about power over tommy and power in general. he says this in the vault. he says this at the community house scene. his progression is towards a twisted sense of possession, same as wilbur, oddly enough. but they are different in that wilbur is possessive over the idea of freedom that he created with l’manburg (and having power over that) and dream is possessive over control over all.

wilbur’s idea is ruined. he tied his sense of self to the nation and when it was used for corruption (kind of by him and mostly by others) he saw himself as corrupted and decided to take them both out so that they couldn’t hurt anyone. he admits his own fault to the point of self destruction.

dream’s idea is threatened. other people live there, other people want to do things, and so he becomes so attached to the idea that it’s his server and he will do anything to control opposition. he cannot admit his fault unless forced to.

wilbur would do anything to control a tool of power, because he wanted to not use it as that tool. wilbur wanted anarchy at the end. he says so in his last presidential speech. his naive views about freedom from the start of the server had worn off, as he saw people use power as a tool in a way that he had never intended or meant to use it.

wilbur created the election so that he would have an actual authority over the land, and he could stop the fighting of its citizens. he thought he knew better, kind of like dream did. this is when his motives get the most twisted and selfish, he wanted peace so bad that he would take away freedom for it (like dream). but when he lost, he accepted it, and that’s the difference. he saw the desire for control in his own actions, and hated himself for it. that’s why he wanted to blow up l’manburg, to take away the tool for power and the person who had been tempted to use it.

wilbur was a good leader in the political sense (dream admits this in “tyrant”) but when he stands before the rubble of l’manburg and calls it his, he’s saying that his rule would only lead to destruction. anyone’s rule would. power corrupts. l’manburg ruined is his l’manburg, it’s his original vision of complete freedom laid out before him, and tracked to its inevitable end.

so then, you would say, dream was right, yeah? he didn’t want l’manburg. but wilbur before he explodes l’manburg doesn’t like dream. he thinks dream’s right in that factions lead to oppression, no matter how good the intentions, but he also knows that dream was a little too willing to hurt them and that dream doesn’t believe this. dream does not want anarchy, he wants chaos but only if it gives him control. he treats the smp like his country, and once again, power corrupts.

went off there, sorry. dream and wilbur are similar but different in some very important ways.

sapnap had been hurt by dream before the vault, and as dream didn’t see himself as in the wrong, he didn’t reach out. sapnap was with pogtopia (wait this might be wrong i do not remember but he was definitely on l’manburg’s side during doomsday) because tommy had shown him more kindness than dream, and that was originally dream’s side. dream just turned on them for the book.

and sapnap also witnessed dream mocking tubbo, making fun of tommy, exposing ranboo. he heard dream going off about how tubbo was so stupid for thinking dream was his friend, for thinking dream cared about him. why would sapnap side with dream if dream was showing no signs of even wanting him?

sapnap accused dream of that, and dream did not listen to him. he could not see the other side: he was so convinced that he was right. we do not know if sapnap went into the vault with the intent of killing dream. i’m pretty sure most of them were there to see if what tommy had said was true. and then, sapnap saw that it was.

nobody abandoned him because of the vault because he had already abandoned them. they just made it mutual. it being a “consequence” of stuff doesn’t make it any less of a messed up, power hungry thing to do, and some of them had done nothing to him before he decided he needed to control them. he was planning to use friend to control ghostbur, who he had already taken advantage of and tried to kill once.

“people do not decide to isolate themselves for no reason.”

true, people don’t cut themselves off for no reason. the reason was power and control. i once again have to emphasize that nobody forced him into this: it was a spiral. other people didn’t do everything “first”. the small taste he got of his own medicine was a poor mimic thrown at him by someone he had done terrible things to. he started spiraling before the spirit scene happened. and if people are telling him he can’t achieve peace, maybe they’re just... right? did he go up to someone and go “i don’t know how to make this server peaceful :(“? because if he did, and if they then pointed at his long list of war crimes and told him not like this, i don’t really see that as anything more than a consequence for things he had already done.

someone can lie about what they want. maybe he did originally want peace, or maybe he was lying to himself that he did. l’manburg did not invite war. he wanted unity above peace, and that “unity” dissolved into “control”.

it was a defense so that nobody could control him the way he was going to control them. cutting himself off was out of fear, yeah. collecting everyone else’s items? power and control. he says this a ton of times, sometimes not even out loud.

i did rewatch the vault vod. that’s how i got all the quotes of him stating his motives. i’m not saying it was a healthy thing to do at all. i never said dream was mentally healthy, i said he had a god complex and he was obsessed with control. someone’s bad mental state can hurt others as well as themself, and they’re still responsible for the others and for trying to be a better and more respectful person. that’s why revivedbur’s “apologies” mean nothing right now.

“he lists his reason for starting the war as them declaring independence, so i don’t think it really matters when the official document was sent.”

it does matter a little bit, actually. they were already attacking l’manburg before official war was declared. they also attacked them during the peace period. wilbur wrote the declaration as he was standing on the roof of the caravan, being shot at by the greater smp.

a country becomes independent when it officially declares itself to be independent. they were still united; it was tyranny.

when dream saw that l’manburg was writing the declaration, he scrambled to declare war. he had reopened and started other conflicts in the past, and involved himself in places he did not need to be. it’s true that a response is a response, but you cannot treat all responses the same way. quackity’s “response” to the things dream had done (killing tommy among those) was to torture him. we do not consider that good, or fair, or “just a response”, we consider it cruel and unusual punishment.

the greater smp fulfilled the words that wilbur had not yet written in the document, and that’s because they weren’t a prophesy, they were a history.

“...would be completely honest about (dream’s motivations in the vault) in front of his biggest enemy. /s”

i don’t see evidence that dream wasn’t being honest. what did he have to lose by it? tommy could do nothing to hurt him. so yep, he would be honest about it. and he’s listed his reasons as power before. he also has the ability to tell the truth about his motives.

dream does not see tommy that way. he sees him as someone whose only positive contribution to the server is attachment. he tells tommy that evil is relative, and to dream, tommy is the evil one. in fact, he says that tommy is evil lots of times. he only says that tommy sees himself as a hero when he’s trying to convince him to let him kill his friend. dream is using tommy’s black and white perception to get him to do what dream wants. he only says tommy sees himself as the hero, not that dream sees him that way. dream does not care about who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy, because he’s not idealistic like wilbur and he’s not a kid like tommy.

him making a joke about building the prison with a “little bit of evil” doesn’t matter because next line he says that tommy’s evil to him. dream isn’t playing the villain, cc!dream is. cc!dream is playing a character that is antagonistic towards others, and he plays into it and jokes around with it, as other people playing antagonistic roles have in the past. cc!wilbur does this a lot during the election and pogtopia. cc!techno hints at it with his “ah yes, blowing up a country, we must be the good guys”.

it may sound like a character because someone’s playing it, but it’s not dream.

this video matches up with some of my points here, but it’s also framed like an english class. it is an interesting meta argument, and one that i would say i partially agree with, but as we’re not really arguing on terms of meta it does not act as a general opposition to your argument. the intent of the authors does not dictate how you see the story, but it can help with interpretation of it.

dream’s words during the vault scene sure do line up with his actions for the months before that. so yeah, no discredit to cc!dream. he’s playing his character. and it’s not like he’s unwilling to make him sympathetic. he’s done so in the past (and is doing so now) and the fact that he does not do it during the vault, and downplays the tragic part of it (him losing his friends) sure makes it seem like the main point here isn’t “poor dream”, it’s “poor tommy”. they’re telling a story. it has a moral.

dream being reserved about his plans may be shown in the fact that nobody knew about the vault (except punz i think?) until dream was ready to put it into play. he generally is quiet about what he wants, he just cares a lot about it and will do a lot to get it. he’s not one for speeches unless he’s trying to make a point. the point here being that tommy is trapped. dream’s capable of explaining his thoughts. tommy asks him why and invites him to share, so he does.

this isn’t really a “nobody can interpret it like this”, it’s just pointing out that the events of canon are there and should be fully considered. character dream’s perspective of the story is biased, so people can look at it and be correct in how dream sees the situation, but “how dream sees it” and “how the story goes” do not necessarily line up.

conflicts dream has started besides the vault? okay.

-reopening the disk war by digging up the hidden disks

-declaring war on l’manburg the first time

-burning down other buildings in order to frame tommy

-blowing up the community house (or having it done for him)

-attacking l’manburg again with techno and phil

(didn’t start really, but inserted himself into when it wasn’t his business:)

-helped pogtopia

-gave wilbur tnt

-sided with manburg in the fight

-built walls around l’manburg

-demanded tommy be punished

-took personal responsibility for exile and used it as a way to isolate tommy

there’s also this post that describes things dream has done in general. the tone of the post is biased, but the actions were canon. some of these may be “retribution” but they sure were uncalled for.

so when he exiled tommy, that was about “unity”? big happy family except for one guy because “he causes all the problems”? it doesn’t matter whether he believed he was in the right for his motives. the vault does not make sense for peace or unity. it is a twisted, controlled unity. what i’m saying is that he uses peace as an excuse for his actions. he had to exile tommy, tommy would have just gotten worse. he had to declare war on l’manburg, it was a necessary evil. because nothing screams “peace” like declaring war and killing the other side, right?

those may be his actual motives in the early scenes, and he thinks he’s doing the right thing. this changes with the vault. he no longer uses this as an excuse, his “excuse” is that he has a right to it. his self proclaimed motive is power and control, and unity through that. so why not accept that as his motive when he says it there?

“becoming a control freak as a result of feeling the loss of control over your own circumstances isn’t equal to dehumanizing the people you’re trying to control.”

nah dude he absolutely dehumanized them and took away their agency? he describes tommy as a pet and a tool, minutes before he switches and describes himself as the book. this could also be used to make an interesting point on how he sees people as their values, in item form. so he’s using one item to control another. tubbo’s a pawn, tommy’s a tool, techno’s a weapon, he’s the book.

he calls george a baby, and makes decisions for him. by planning to using the items to control the people, he was prepared to take away their freedom and agency by emotionally manipulating them. he did this to tommy. agency is the capacity of someone to act. he takes away that ability in order to have control.

he’s not just a control freak over his own life, the problem is that he does it to others. again, we’re talking true freedom here: the ability to do anything, even things that we would consider morally wrong. he takes away george’s power, which is revealed to be nothing. he then swiftly turns and tells him that if he tries to overthrow eret, he would be a tyrant. not acknowledging that dream just overthrew a king and stated in a new one, he hypocritically calls george the tyrant for planning to do that.

(i didn’t even notice this until now, but it’s actually interesting: dream is extremely hypocritical here, unless, of course, he sees himself as having more claim to who is king. now why would he think that? a hierarchy, perhaps?)

“which is understandable seeing as you’ve said already you never tried to look deeper into him, but it’s incorrect nonetheless.”

i said that before this i had not attempted to examine his character in a sympathetic light. that’s what i’ve been doing. his wish to “fix” his home is really just a wish to control his home, which is pretty evident when you look at right before exile. the smp was peaceful then. tommy had committed petty crimes before, and george didn’t even really care about the house. it was minimal damage. dream jumped at the opportunity to convince everyone else that tommy was the real problem (speaking of propaganda and vilifying).

and “he was getting better until the sixteenth” disregards that he threatened eret, enabled wilbur (however you interpret that, he still enabled him), and sided with schlatt for power reasons even though he said he would help pogtopia. giving pogtopia some stuff doesn’t make him the “good guy” because pogtopia were not the good guys! that’s the point! he sided with them because wilbur had less ambition than schlatt, and therefore posed less of a threat to the greater smp! he wasn’t helping them just purely out of the goodness of his heart. he didn’t think schlatt was right, he abandoned him very quickly, but he could have just taken the book and dipped. he fought in the war. he took the book for personal gain and he placed that above the trust of pogtopia.

“he wasn’t on a power trip at all, he didn’t have a god complex up until the prison stripped him of all his dignity and then threw an opportunity at him, and he wasn’t trying to prove anything to anyone.”

power trip: an activity or way of behaving that makes a person feel powerful

exile and the vault, arguably before that a few times as well. there are a few quotes that emphasize this.

dream’s god complex was already there in the vault. that’s why he was scared enough of being controlled that he shut everyone else away: he wanted to secure himself even more as the sole power.

and exactly. he wasn’t proving anything to anyone else, he was proving it to himself. therefore he also wasn’t trying to “prove” he was big and bad and evil and irredeemable, he was trying to feel confident about his own power!

if he doesn’t care if he’s thought as of evil, why did it supposedly drive him into the spiral? if he stopped caring about it, that would also explain why he was indifferent towards it (because he was indifferent towards it, every time someone called him that, indifferent or angry). he didn’t think he was evil because he thought he had a right to what he was doing. so he pushed himself into wanting more control, after seeing something he identified as a problem: tommy. you’re right that that’s part of what makes him tragic: that he stopped caring about what he owed to anyone else. that’s why he hurt them.

“it’s likely and fits perfectly into his character arc in canon.”

people who are emotionally repressed still show emotions, they just don’t show them as often. dream shows emotions but he does not show the specific emotion that would give evidence to this theory. i’m saying that claiming something is deeply rooted in his character (not the emotional repression, that’s confirmed) when he shows no sign of it doesn’t line up with canon. it’s more of a theory than an analysis.

“it is good storytelling because cc!wilbur pulls it off brilliantly.”

cc!wilbur still played a complex character! his behavior changed significantly after the war, but there is evidence that he was a certain way during the war. his character grew from that point but my argument is that he was not always a liar about important things and that he genuinely believed in the values he formed l’manburg for. if you want to watch wilbur being power hungry and hypocritical, rewatch the election arc.

actions, not words. cc!wilbur pointed out hypocritical things his character said, but that just shows he was playing a flawed character. people using the wall thing as some kind of proof that he was evil is stupid because part of the idea behind the wall was poking fun at america. it was “look, this is what you guys do”.

his early character was passionate and naive. cc!wilbur was aware of this. he was still a chaotic crimeboy, the nation was founded on drugs. but not everything he did was “for chaos” because again, he played a multi-dimensional character. he can make jokes about politics.

“his main support system left by themselves.”

i’ve already explained why i think dream broke most of his own bonds. again, there’s textual evidence to support this and actions as well that line up with it. and lots of people were willing to help dream. he didn’t murder all those people by himself.

“it also seems you’re strongly biased against c!dream, which, to be fair, the majority of the fandom is.”

it’s true my bias is against dream. it’s also true that my reasons for that bias are backed up by moments in the story where he clearly states his intentions, and a lot of the evidence to the contrary is, to me, one-off moments that can be interpreted in many ways. a lot of the bias also comes from the fact that he did pretty bad things and i’ve been watching this for a long time.

this post is pretty much what i’m saying, i guess.

alright @flypaw here it is :]

~ Lad 2

[jadoue1999]

The X-Men and the member they lost - Chapter 4

Summary: This chapter references the 6th episode of WandaVision and the events from Wanda's point of view in my previous story in chapter 2-3-4. I recommend reading those before continuing, but the best would be to read the entire story. I hope you enjoy this chapter.

Previous parts: Chapter 1 , Chapter 2 , Chapter 3 , Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, 

Chapter 4: Regrets

The episode continued with both the twins talking directly to the camera. Erik frowned at this unusual situation, was this how television worked past the eighties? Billy was dressed up as some sort of magician and was talking about Halloween. The two brothers argued about the true meaning of the holiday, one saying something about being someone else for a day and the other one saying it was all about candies and scaring people. Erik smirked, from the little time he had been with Peter, he, too, would have probably said the same thing had he been asked. Speaking of him, he had yet to appear. Thankfully, he didn’t have to wait long as the twins moved to the living room, where he was laying on the couch, sleeping. The metal bender was still feeling uneasy about the blonde hair. The boys talked, the one wearing the cape seemed suspicious of him. They argued about waking him up, but he beat them to it.

“Blood is thicker than water, I show you!” Peter screamed as he sped off the couch. The twins yelled and started pacing around the couch as Peter used his speed to circle around the sofa. Erik smirked despite himself, it might have been a pretend, but the speedster really did seem to have a good time with his fake nephews. The scene cut to Wanda going down the stairs wearing a costume she qualified as a fortune teller. Peter watched her, unimpressed.

“Wow, that is so...”

“Rad!”

“Lame”

He frowned, that was a little strange, and rude. Charles probably felt his confusion since he turned to him. His gaze was enough to inform him that he too found the line strange. It switched to a reference to their childhood to which the redhead seemed confused about. But that didn’t make sense, she had casted him as Pietro; surely, he would have his memories as well? The husband walked down the stairs wearing a frankly ridiculous costume. Peter also made fun of him by trying to guess what he was dressed as. Vision walked to his wife and seemed to challenge her authority once again. He quickly moved on and pointed out how Wanda hadn’t really talked about her brother before. The scene cut to him and the twins playing games. Then the android decided to go off on his own, to which Peter stepped in.

“Don't sweat it, sis. I got the old XY chromosome. Uncle P to the rescue, uh?”

Raven spoke up at the strange line, “is- is he referring to the X gene? I know it doesn’t make any sense since it doesn’t seem to exist in this universe, but it’s so specific...”

Erik agreed with the shapeshifter, while it technically made sense in the sitcom word; it was way too specific to just be a throw away line. Was Peter conscious to a certain degree? He secretly hoped not, he must have been suffering greatly if he was.

Peter then asked about balloons and shaving cream, something that had apparently happened at the manor before because Charles sighed suddenly in exasperation. He was vaguely whispering about the clean up it took after one of his pranks. Peter and the long-haired twin sped off at Wanda’s complaint about their lack of costumes, coming back with matching ones and spiky hair. From what Erik could gather, they were probably dressed as runners, their hair up perhaps meant that they were going fast? He had no idea; he had never really dressed up for Halloween before.

The scene cut to the neighborhood where everyone was out and trick or treating. He had never seen so many town resident active at the same time, and now there were children. Erik noted with curiosity that the ratio parent to child didn’t really make sense; not enough kids were out for the number of adults present. He suddenly had an idea.

“Charles,” he said, turning to the man, “with that many residents, perhaps Wanda’s hold is weakened; can you read any of their mind?”

The telepath put a hand to his head in concentration and stared at the screen for a few seconds. His gaze didn’t falter as he desperately tried to make contact with the poor townspeople. After a moment, he shook his head.

“There’s something blocking me from seeing into anyone’s mind; I’m betting Wanda has something to do with it.”

Erik sighed in defeat and turned back to the screen, the children were off, and the redhead was questioning Peter.

“You're testing me.” He told her accusingly, she widened her eyes at the accusation, apparently not fond of being so easily read.

“No, I'm not.”

Peter raised his hand in surrender, showing he didn’t blame her. “Hey, it's cool. I know I look different.”

“Why do you... look different?”

Erik stared at the screen anxiously, Wanda was definitely aware that something was wrong. How could Peter answer anything that wouldn’t sound suspicious? He had always been quick to find something to say, hopefully he would still have it, even mind controlled.

Peter tilted his head, acting nonchalant. “You tell me. I mean, if I found Shangri-La, I wouldn't wanna be reminded of the past either.”

Whatever that place was, he had never heard of it, but the context made it seem like a perfect place without remorse. The children came back, asking for more candies and Peter suggested to use superspeed to be more efficient. That was... strange to say the least. He was running with the boys without worrying about whiplash, they were holding on to his belt. They really seemed happy, like any uncle and his nephews. Slight worry crept into his chest as he noticed that his speed now showed up on camera; something it never did before. Was he slowing down for the sake of the show? Also, there was a little blue lingering behind him. Raged filled Erik as he realized that Wanda had changed the aspect of his speed to match her late brother’s. She had erased his name, his hair and now his speed; was there something this woman couldn’t and wouldn’t do to fulfill her fantasy world? 

She went to talk to the neighbor on the left, Herb if he remembered well. It turned out that Vision wasn’t actually on duty, which meant he had broken out of her control for now. That assumption was right, the next scene showed the android walking through the neighborhood, feeling uneasy about his surroundings. He smiled to some passerby as he noticed a couple putting up decorations. Except they were not.

“Is this a common occurrence?” He questioned his friend. Both adults were stuck in a loop, the woman was in the process of hooking up a ghost, but she lowered her arm before she ever reached the fishing line. The husband in the back keep picking up and putting down a bucket.

“No, it isn’t,” said Charles. He frowned as a tear rolled down the woman’s cheek, ”they are trapped in their minds, but unable to do anything. Wanda is sidelining them because they’re not useful to her right now, but they have to keep acting as they would be if she were there.”

Erik stared at the wall, deep in thoughts. They were all suffering, that meant... “Is Peter stuck in his mind as well?” The telepath was silent, but it was enough to confirm his fears. “I wish he could have told me earlier, perhaps I would have been enough to save him from this fate.”

Charles shook his head with a serious face. “Don’t say this, old friend, even I did not sense anything amiss the night of his disappearance. As for knowing earlier, Peter didn’t tell anyone other than Raven. She’s the one that told me.”

He looked at the screen where Vision was still observing his surroundings with discomfort. “Watching this woman puppet my son on her show just serves as a reminder that I missed nearly thirty years of his life. And even now that I’m aware of his existence, I can’t do anything to save him from this nightmare.”

Charles stopped him from saying anything more as he put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Erik, Peter is a very secretive person. And as much as he rambles like his life depends on it; we never knew his real name or the fact that he had a twin sister.”

He had to give it to his friend, Peter hadn’t really spoken much about his past to anyone. But had he been aware that he had a son, could he have made a difference?

The screen now showed Vision walking away and it cut to a commercial. Erik didn’t watch much as he was contemplating what the episode had been so far. He had seen horrible things in his life, but Wanda’s little perfect life was unsettling. There was no record of how she made it in any of the files, it just appeared out of nowhere. The only other person he had seen displaying a power that was close to what the redhead was doing was, ironically, Jean; the other redhead he knew at the mansion. He had seen her unleashing hell to destroy En Sabah Nur back at Cairo and had been impressed since.

He was pulled out of his thoughts as Kurt panicked at whatever was going on at the television. The little boy was slowly decomposing. He wasn’t sure was had happened previously, but he watched in disbelief as the boy’s cheeks hollowed out and his eyes slowly disappeared. Then all that was left was a skeleton as the screen showed a picture of a yogurt brand.

‘Yo-Magic! The snack for survivors!’

What was that commercial? What did it even mean? Was there a threat looking to consume Wanda’s magic or was it a metaphor for what was happening to all the citizens? Everything in this show seemed to have a double meaning. He really should have paid attention. The screen switched to Wanda, Peter and the boys. They were walking in front of a theater that showed movies that hadn’t come out yet. Well, except maybe parents trap but he doubted it was the original one. Peter was complaining about having to return the candies and Wanda was teasing him about being a bad influence. The speedster turned to her, offended.

“I'm just trying to do my part, okay?” Erik frowned, his part? Could he be aware about his predicament? If so, why not try to escape? Or perhaps she wasn’t able to completely subdue him, and he ended up being casted as someone that knew too much for his own good. There was no telling what was going in the speedster’s head. Peter continued his rant, explaining his purpose, “Come to town unexpectedly, create tension with the brother-in-law, stir up trouble with the rugrats, and ultimately give you grief. I mean, that's what you wanted, isn't it?”

His remark earned a general frown from the viewers in the room, what did she want?

Wanda narrowed her eyes at him in suspicion, “What happened to your accent?”

Peter didn’t let her get to him as he snapped back, “What happened to yours?” That caught her off guard, though Erik couldn’t think why. Perhaps she was supposed to have an accent? Her files did say that she was from this Sokovia place in Europe.

Kurt suddenly spoke up, “I know Peter can be sarcastic, but he’s being very rude. He’s never like that normally; is that his role or is it him being conscious and trying to hide it?”

The teen had a point. The speedster was hyper and excited, but he wasn’t rude. The lines he was forced to say definitely didn’t sound like something he’d just blurt out at someone he was supposed to consider family. Peter continued talking about being shot for no reasons and hearing her voice calling to him. That was definitely the other brother’s memories, that was for certain. Erik wasn’t sure how to feel about this. Did it mean that his son would now be stuck with a double set of memories trapped in his head? Was he torn between two versions of himself? He couldn’t dwell on his questions as the children came running back. “They've got full-size candy bars a few blocks up. Mom, can we go?” Tommy was suddenly gone in a blur and back in an instant, with candy bars in his hand. He looked proud as he exclaimed, “Next stop, Cavity Town!”

The excitement on Peter’s face was something that made Erik smile. He found himself wishing that the circumstances were different, perhaps Peter could have reacted the same way to a student. The way his eyes gleamed up and his mouth turned into a wide grin seemed so genuine, so much like Peter. “Right on, little dude! Chip off the old Maximoff block. You've got super speed!”

Wanda and Peter looked at each other with pride in their eyes. If Erik hadn’t known better, he truly could have believed that they were siblings. They simply felt right together. He watched as Tommy broke into superspeed, running all around the place as Wanda slowly began to get more serious. Peter, though, was grinning like a mad man and repeatedly nodding in approval as the mini speedster raced through the street. Their fun was cut short as Wanda grabbed her son, stopping him abruptly. He frowned at her movement, if there was one truth about Peter, it was that once he started, he couldn’t be stopped by anyone. He was simply too fast. It was because of his superspeed, no one could touch him. It had to be the same for Tommy. How could she even see the young speedster in the first place? Let alone being able to grab him without any whiplash. Wanda then warned them to not go past Ellis Avenue. From her tone, he had to assume that it was the end of the barrier.

Raven turned to Charles, “he has superspeed, is he a mutant?”

The professor continued to look at the screen. “By how it manifested so suddenly, we have to assume that they are. The real question is, did Wanda steal mutant children from our dimension or are those children her own?”

The next few scenes were unexpected to say the least. Vision had found the dreaded Avenue and realized that no one was moving. He switched to a futuristic looking suit and flew in the air. The voices of the residents were echoing in the screen. Vision spotted a lone car, which ended up being Agnes’. She wasn’t moving either, that was unsettling since the woman usually was always so full of life. The robot did his best to question her, but she seemed barely aware of her surroundings.

“How can she even move at all? No one else is,” chimed in Raven.

That... was a valid question. Perhaps the fact that she was usually so close to Wanda gave her a slight immunity against the end of the barrier? He didn’t have time to tell his idea, Vision suddenly woke up the neighbor. It didn’t help much though, she confirmed that it was Wanda who controlled them and then started freaking out. He put her back under the spell and she drove away. The scene cut away as he was nearing the barrier.

Peter and Wanda were walking through the straw maze and sat on one of straw bundles. They talked a little about their parents and how she truly was living her best life. Then Peter pulled a face that was very unlike him and started questioning her. That made no sense, he was pushing for information Wanda should have known. Was there something else in this town talking through his son? She looked frightened for a moment, but Billy ran to her, screaming about their dying father. He was a telepath. Both twins apparently had mutations.

‘Don’t sweat it, sis. It’s not like your dead husband can die twice!’

This remark greatly angered Wanda and her eyes glowed red as she blasted him into nearby decorations. She turned to her son and made him focus on his claim. Judging by the screaming outside of the base, Vision had gone outside the town and the twin sensed it.

The broadcast suddenly cut off.

An alarm blared through the base, ringing loud enough to feel the vibration. Shouts outside of the bunker quickly made them aware of the situation. The barrier was expanding. The three other people with him were quickly picking up their stuff, but Erik couldn’t move. She had blasted his son away, like he was nothing. Was he dead? He hadn’t moved at all, he hoped he was just unconscious. Charles was grabbing his arm, telling him to snap out of it. The world suddenly caught up to him, they were in danger, the barrier was expanding. They had to get away.

He got to his feet, trying desperately to not think about Peter and the pain he had to be in. They ran out of the bunker; the barrier was already beginning to move towards the base. Soldiers were scrambling around, trying to get into cars and escape their upcoming fate. No one was paying attention to them, so Charles turned to the teenager.

“Kurt, you have to get us out of here,” the young man was frozen in place, staring at the approaching red wall. The professor pulled his arm, “Kurt!”

The blue mutant snapped out of his trance and told them to hold on to him. He closed his eyes in concentration, but they didn’t move. He opened his eyes in fear before closing them and trying again. “I- I can’t!” He panicked, “I’m sorry. This is my fault; I can’t do it!”

Raven gave him a reassuring smile and encouraged him to try again. He nodded and concentrated once more. After a few agonizing seconds, the world melted into a puff of smoke and they reappeared a mile away from their previous spot. Erik felt a nausea similar to the one he felt back when Peter broke him out. He looked around with a smirk. They had done it; the boy had succeeded. They looked at each other and laughed in relief, Kurt had saved them. They would live to fight another day, they were- they were-

Not far enough.

The red wall was still moving towards them with increasing speed. There was no escape now, the teen was too exhausted to try moving them again. He grabbed Charles’ hand and braced for impact. The telepath warned them to try to hold on to whatever they deemed was their story. Perhaps they would be able to remain unaffected if they could block their minds from Wanda’s control. He quickly followed his friend’s advice and focused on his life and the reason he was here.

His name was Erik Lehnsherr, he was a mutant, he had lost his family because of the Nazis and he had traveled to a different universe to find his son, Peter.

The wall crashed over them, he felt everything around him pulsing.

His name was Erik Lehnsherr, he was a mutant, he had lost his family and he had traveled to a different universe to find his son, Peter.

He felt Charles slipping away from beside him.

His name was Erik Lehnsherr, he was a mutant, and he had to find his son, Peter.

Raven kept calling for him, telling him to hold on.

His name was Erik Lehnsherr, and he had a son.

The teen he had been traveling with kept apologizing, but he wasn’t sure why.

His name was Erik Lehnsherr.

The woman had gone silent.

His name was... Erik.

He was alone, had he always been alone?

His name was...

It was...

What was his name?

***

Notes: Props to anyone who can tell me what was my reference for Erik going into the Hex (Not Marvel) Thank you for reading, reviews are always appreciated! Next chapter: Charles the Xtraordinary has a visitor

[clearlynotjanus]

Loceit Week Day 7 Teaser: Anniversary

This one got really long & admittedly I still need to give it one more pass through before I can be really happy with it, but for all intents & purposes, this one's complete enough to be put here! I found myself really disappointed with how this fic unfurled over the last two months of writing it & I came to the conclusion that Loceit is just a ship that isn't well portrayed through the same kind of big conversational moments that Moceit shined in. That being said, I'm still proud of the writing & hope people enjoy it anyway!

Anyway enjoy this teaser! & as always, if you’d like to be on my tag list to be @’d in works like this as well as my fic related stuff, give this linked post a like or send me a message. If you have any questions or suggestions, my ask box is always open! If you would like to get the rest of this fic early access, please consider subscribing to my Patreon. If you’d just like to support my work or request a writing commission, please consider donating to my Ko-Fi. Thanks so much for being an awesome audience 💛

CW: Anxiety, crying Word Count: 5960 (Teaser: 1223) Genre: Hurt/Comfort Rating: Teen Ships: Loceit

@sanderssidesangsttrash​ @catalinaacosta​ @whatishappeningrightnow​ @anxiousbean4404​ @vexelore​ @the-dead-and-the-decaying​ @serpentinesomebody​ @poptartsaysurloved​ @robertdownerjr​ @dangitsbrightinhere​ @iamuncomffy​ @sanderdarksides​ @evertriedsoywithyourpopcorn​ @dragonfander @virgilstarantula​ @a-rudethude @indubitably-emo @gay-artist-626​ @cosplayhanna​ @edupunkn00b​ @wouldntyou-liketoknow​ @awesomerandomgirl1​​​

“What happened that day?” He asked in a hushed tone, respecting the intimacy of the topic.

“Remus never told you?” Logan replied, finding that hard to believe.

“He did. He told me how it went for him. Patton told me his experience as well.”

“So you already know.”

“I don’t know your experience,” Janus insisted and Logan’s brows furrowed.

“Are you implying that my experience differed from everyone else’s?” Defensiveness crept into his voice despite himself. Janus shook his head.

“Everyone’s experience differs every day,” He paused and Logan rolled his eyes at the ambiguity. “You were the youngest,” Janus conceded, spelling out what he meant. “Of course your experience was different.”

Logan sighed and pushed down his guard. Janus was right. It made sense that his perception of that day might contrast greatly with the others’, as much as he didn’t like to think it did. Logan stared at the floor, his eyes becoming distant as the scene of that day played out. 

The voices in the hall had woken him up. Logic blinked at his clock; it was just after seven, which was fine enough. The alarm would’ve woken him up in half an hour anyway. It was mostly Creativity’s voice he could hear, though nonspecifically. If someone was responding, Logic couldn’t make it out. “I woke up to Remus’ voice in the hall at seven-thirteen that morning,'' Trying to tune into the words echoing from outside his door, he sat up and felt his stomach lurch oddly. A sense of foreboding filled him. “I got out of bed and went into the hall.”

“You didn’t change first or brush your teeth?”

“No,” Logan blinked at the interruption, his tone suddenly tinged with offense.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” He rushed in frustration. “Why?” He flipped the question with venom.

“It’s just,” Janus shifted against the couch, his tone thoughtful. “You always insisted on doing that, every morning. Before you did anything else,” Janus chuckled at the memory. “You’d come out of your room, already dressed, and head right to the bathroom, no matter what was going on.” Logan’s forehead creased deeply; did he used to do that? It sounded very much like him, but the way Janus described it almost felt foreign. “So I’m just wondering,” his voice and expression gained an edge as he reached his point. “Why did you skip that on this particular morning?”

Logan debated the question. The answer that immediately came to mind was because he heard Remus’ voice and he had sounded angry, but Logan could tell there was a deeper response Janus was asking for. He attempted to recall the exact sensations of the morning; mild annoyance at being woken up, a stomach ache that crept up on him as the minutes ticked by, a slightly quickened heartbeat ...

“I was worried,” Logan realized in a whisper at the floor. He pulled in a quick breath as he met Janus’ eyes again. “Something felt...wrong, and I wanted to know what was happening first.” Janus gave a small smile and nodded deeply.

“Continue.”

Logan licked his lips and turned away again.

Remus stood over Morality, who was disheveled on the floor with strips of what appeared to be paper in his hands. Roman seemed to be half heartedly holding Remus back with a loose grip on his shoulder. The scene wasn’t incredibly new; Creativity and Morality rarely got along, though usually it was Self Preservation that intervened. Logic wondered sleepily where the older Side was, figuring it’d be wise to intervene in the meantime regardless. “I saw Remus, Roman, and Patton in the hall, outside where your door used to be.”

“Did you notice it was missing instantly?”

“No,” Logan whispered, shaking his head. “Creativity, what are you doing to Morality?” The tensions remained high as he approached with caution. Not even Morality looked up.

“Nothin’,” Remus continued to glare down at the crumpled teen. Confusion crossed Logic’s expression; clearly something was going on. Context clues provided enough evidence that it was Remus who instigated it, but Logic didn’t want to believe that. As brash as Creativity was, he wasn’t mean usually. If he was hurting Morality, there was probably a reason. “But you should ask him what he did with Pwezzi.”

“Self Preservation?” Logic looked at the empty wall finally, realizing chunks of the wallpaper were missing where his door usually stood. The drywall stared back at him solemnly. “Ah,” He said, deflating all the air in his lungs. Logic’s heart sank as he suddenly understood, feeling very stupid for not having noticed the glaring inconsistency sooner. “His door is missing?” 

“It...wasn’t until I had asked Remus what he was doing to Patton that I understood.” “Yupp,” Remus’ tone was caustic and impatient. Logic frowned. Why was he blaming Morality for this? Were they not equally upset?

“He blamed Patton,” Janus continued the scene from what he knew from the other points of view. “Did you?”

“No,” He answered automatically. “Well, there’s no need to hurt Morality for that,” Logic rushed, “I bet he has an explanation, you just haven’t given him time to say it,” At least Logic wanted to believe that Morality had an explanation. He wasn’t the greatest at explaining himself or anything in general really, but if he were the first to realize Self Preservation had gone missing, then surely he had something useful to say. “Morality?” Logic pressed, feeling his own impatience rise. He leaned to the side to meet Patton’s eyes, goading, or perhaps begging him to please, for once speak clearly. “Care to explain what’s going on?”

“I mean, yes, in a way and for the most part after a while, but,” Logan’s voice abruptly cut off. The words on his tongue tasted bitter like bile; like his insides were forcibly regurgitating a truth that had settled deep in his stomach lining, forming a heavy pit for the last fifteen years. Logan’s eyes burned again as he looked down at his white-knuckled hands. His lips quivered with restraint. Suddenly the room felt far too hot.

“Who did you blame at first?” Janus whispered and Logan exhaled a sob as his head fell.

Patton didn’t have anything to say that morning, or any morning as the days trudged on. In Logic’s young mind, the memory never made much sense, and no recount of the event was ever given. Days turned into weeks into months; mild misunderstandings with Morality turned into arguments into fights. Months morphed into years and adolescence had nothing good to offer for Logic who began equating emotions with childishness. He shoved his down and forced a neutral expression. The world was splitting; serious or silly, repressed or emotive. Though deep down Logic knew better, he lacked the nuance it took to convince Morality otherwise. A nuance that existed in another Side, one that was now gone. One that had, in all of Logic’s conceivable and unexplained perception of reality, left. The one that had left Logic alone to fend for himself against the wolves of black and white thinking. Doomed him to inadequacy. 

“You,” The word spilled out in a pitchy tone that Logan didn’t identify with as tears quickly fogged his glasses. Disdainfully he discarded them and in the same motion, Janus reached to place a reassuring hand between Logan’s shoulder blades.

continue reading

[esmeraldablazingsky]

I’ve finally hit my limit on the number of bad takes on the Lan parents I can see before I have to lay out all the reasons I disagree, so hello, I’m Blazie, and in this essay I will justify my visceral dislike of the assumption that Qingheng-jun married/imprisoned/had sex with Lan-furen against her will.

    Warning for mentions of rape (in context of Interpretations I Really Hate) and a very, VERY long post below the cut.

    Before I start going off about the finer points of all this, I want to make sure people are on the same page regarding what we actually know about what went down with Qingheng-jun and Lan-furen. What I say is based off the EXR translation of MDZS, for the sake of clarity, and although I don’t think the exact wording should be too important, feel free to let me know if you think I’ve missed an important bit of nuance or something (the whole story is in Chapter 64.)

    The story we get is told by Lan Xichen, and it goes like this: a young Qingheng-jun falls in love at first sight with Lan-furen, who doesn’t return his feelings, and at some point kills one of Qingheng-jun’s teachers over unspecified “grievances.” Although he’s understandably very upset over the murder, Qingheng-jun sneaks Lan-furen back to Cloud Recesses and officially marries her in order to announce to his clan that anyone who wants to hurt her has to go through him.

After that, he locks Lan-furen in one house and himself in another as a form of repentance. Wei Wuxian speculates that this was because “he could neither forgive the one who killed his teacher nor watch the death of the woman who he loved. He could only marry her to protect her life and force himself not to see her.” 

    A central detail of this story that I think people don’t give the import it deserves is that aside from marrying and protecting her, Qingheng-jun’s other option was to let Lan-furen be executed by his clan. His purpose in marrying her wasn’t just for kicks/out of a possessive sort of love, it was so she wouldn’t straight up die. How she felt about this arrangement isn’t stated, but I’ll get into that in a bit. In addition to that, Qingheng-jun and Lan-furen live separately, which was apparently purposeful on Qingheng-jun’s part, and runs counter to the interpretation that he intended to take sexual advantage of Lan-furen.

Though there aren’t many concrete details in Lan Xichen’s retelling, he does specifically inform Wei Wuxian that his mother never complained about remaining in her house. What exactly this signifies is unclear— whether she was simply putting on a brave face for her sons, or whether she was in fact at all content with the situation— but it at the very least serves to further muddy the waters on how she and Qingheng-jun felt about all this. 

Beyond what Lan Xichen and Wei Wuxian are saying out loud, there’s also quite a bit of subtext in this scene, especially in light of later events and revelations, like Lan Xichen’s confession for Lan Wangji at Guanyin Temple. 

So what is Lan Xichen trying to convey with all this? There’s a lot of memes about this scene, most of which err too far on the side of Himbo Airhead Lan Xichen for my liking, but one that I do find amusing emphasizes how Lan Xichen draws parallels between Wangxian and the story of his parents (Lan Xichen: [flute solo] please use your one brain cell to connect the dots.) If Wei Wuxian hadn’t completely lost his memory of Lan Wangji defending him against his own clan elders, one would assume that Lan Xichen’s story would have had a much better chance of hitting home. 

In hindsight and side by side, the parallels are much clearer— Qingheng-jun, “ignoring the objections from his clan… told everyone in the clan that she would be his wife for the rest of his life, that whoever wanted to harm her would have to pass through him first.” Similarly, according to Lan Xichen in Chapter 99, “for [Wei Wuxian,] not only did WangJi talk back to him, he even met with his sword the cultivators from the GusuLan Sect. He heavily injured all thirty-three of the seniors we asked to come.”

In that context, it makes a lot less sense to interpret Qingheng-jun as an aggressor towards Lan-furen, as in Lan Wangji’s case, the narrative clearly establishes that his actions are to secure Wei Wuxian’s safety. The action of Taking Someone Back To Cloud Recesses is— okay, actually, it’s a little more nuanced than I took into account when I started writing that sentence, so let me go a little deeper into Lan Wangji’s actions and how they relate to his father’s, story-wise. 

My intent is not to dive into the terrifying underworld of novel-versus-drama discourse, but simply put, Novel!Lan Wangji as he is written isn’t exactly the poster child for clear consent. (I’m going to entirely leave off the extra chapters for the sake of everyone’s sanity, so I’m just talking about the main body of the novel here.)

He means well, and I’m sure we can agree that he does actually love and want the best for Wei Wuxian, but his lack of communication on this point means that he accidentally gives Wei Wuxian the impression that he wants to imprison and/or punish him in Cloud Recesses at least twice off the top of my head (pre-timeskip, as we know, and post-timeskip immediately after Dafan Mountain when he actually drags Wei Wuxian back to his room.) 

That all likely has something to do with MXTX’s narrative kinks and regular kinks and all that, and can absolutely be taken with many grains of salt. However, these events establish how easy it is to misinterpret the action of Taking Someone Back To Gusu as an attempt to imprison rather than protect them (much to Lan Wangji’s chagrin.)

Failing to communicate his purpose to Wei Wuxian doesn’t mean that Lan Wangji actually had any intent of hurting or caging him— that was just a misinterpretation on Wei Wuxian’s part, and we, as the audience, find that out in due time— but as written in the novel, it can be really uncomfortable to read. Because of that, many people choose to accept CQL canon regarding Lan Wangji’s more possessive actions or mix characterization from different adaptations, which, to be clear, I completely understand and respect. 

However, Qingheng-jun doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt as often, which I frankly find baffling, because nowhere in the text does it state that Lan-furen objected to being taken back to Cloud Recesses, while even Wei Wuxian clearly objected the first few times. In fact, while we’re on this note, I’ll take it a step farther— I find it baffling that people seem to default to an unsympathetic view of Qingheng-jun, because nowhere in the text does it state that he overruled Lan-furen’s wishes in any way. The text doesn’t clarify a lot of things, actually, and that is part of the point. 

The narrators of MDZS are, in many situations, highly unreliable. This is, presumably, very purposeful! MDZS can easily be read as a sharp criticism of reputation and mass judgment and the concept of condemning people without knowing their motives! And I don’t want to sound mean, but guys… did any of us learn anything from that? Here, I’m going to put it in meme format for a second to convey what I mean. 

MDZS: It’s easy to condemn someone as a villain if you don’t know their story or the reasons behind their actions

MDZS: Anyway, here’s a character whose story and reasons behind his actions you know nothing about

Some Parts Of This Fandom: Ah, a villain 

    Memes aside, here’s what I want to point out. It’s entirely possible to assume Qingheng-jun was a bad person who disregarded a woman’s wishes in marrying and confining her when all you have is Lan Xichen’s (actually very neutral, thank you Lan Xichen for being an eminently reasonable and concerned-with-evidence character) account of what happened. It would also be at least that easy to assume Wei Wuxian was just an evil necromancer if he hadn’t un-died and brought his own story to light, or even to believe that Lan Wangji had somehow tamed Wei Wuxian into submission and being a respectable cultivator if you were an average citizen of Fantasy Ancient China with nothing but rumors to operate on. 

    The thing about Qingheng-jun and Lan-furen’s story, then, is that there is nobody left alive who knows the full tale. Nobody knows what they thought about anything, really. Nobody even knows why Lan-furen killed Qingheng-jun’s teacher. Wei Wuxian asks why, and Lan Xichen can’t tell him, but I think the best answer would be something along the lines of I don’t know, Wei Wuxian, why did you kill people? Your guess on the motivations of your own thinly disguised narrative parallel are as good as anyone’s. 

    So, while it’s not technically impossible to assign darker motives to Qingheng-jun, the cautionary tale of MDZS seems to warn against that exact assumption. 

    I’ve refrained from getting too salty on a personal level thus far, but now that I’ve said a lot of the more logical and story-based points of my argument, I will say that at least some of my annoyance with the interpretation of Qingheng-jun as a possessive rapist and Lan-furen as his victim stems from the fact that I just think it’s straight up boring. Where’s the nuance? Aren’t you tired of reducing these characters to the flattest possible versions of themselves? Don’t you just want to add a little flavor? 

    In a slightly more serious phrasing of that criticism, I find that making Lan-furen a helpless prisoner strips her of whatever agency she might otherwise have. To be fair, she’s more or less a non-character in keeping with the general state of the MDZS universe, but making her a damsel in distress only consigns her more deeply to hapless, milquetoast innocence. 

    It’s perfectly valid to enjoy ladies who have done nothing wrong, ever, in their lives, but like… Qin Su is right there, if that’s your ball game. There’s also really no need to make Qingheng-jun someone who doesn’t respect women. Isn’t Jin Guangshan enough for at least one universe? 

    Anyway, ultimately, you do you. I don’t like arguing on the internet, and will just ignore things I don’t agree with (or write an 1800 word vaguepost) like a mature human being. I’m just saying, if it’s a cut and dry tale of imprisonment and assault you’re looking for… you probably don’t want to turn to a woman who committed a murder and a man who loved her enough to forfeit everything to keep her safe. 

[aj-illustrated]

*pulls up a 97-slide PowerPoint* I’m so glad you asked

Ben is an OC co-owned by me and @finnoky! The short of it is that he’s an orphan who Varian helps save from a life of crime, and who later gets adopted by Quirin!

More about him under the cut:

Age: About 12

Birthday: He has no idea, but thinks it might have been sometime in the autumn.

Likes: Quirin, Varian, farmwork, tending to the sheep, his dog (Achilles), the Challenge of the Brave (spectating and later competing), adventure stories, head pats, strawberries, friendly roughhousing, drawing

Dislikes: Cramped spaces (he’s claustrophobic), people hugging him, carrots, books with complicated words, cold weather, any kind of tight or scratchy clothing

Fun Facts:

Ben meets Varian about nine months after the end of the series.

He’s good friends with Kiera and Catalina! They’re the only kids his age who can beat him in a fair fight.

He eventually grows to be taller than Varian, and absolutely uses that fact to tease him.

He’s an excellent pickpocket, though he hasn’t stolen much of anything since Quirin took him in.

He’s got a knack for drawing— he’s not too good with words, so he finds it easier to express himself with pictures. He’s also a leftie!

He’s been almost adopted several times, but Quirin is the only foster parent who kept him around for longer than a month.

Backstory: Ben is an orphan who’s been given a raw deal in life, and as a result is kinda pissed off at everyone and everything all the time. The orphanage he grew up in was lacking to say the least, and he spent much of his early childhood being routinely abused and neglected, often lashing out in aggression at those he deemed to be a threat (which was most people). He eventually starts getting into trouble with the law and is tossed in prison for multiple counts of petty theft and assault, and it’s around that time that he meets Varian, who is helping to reform Corona’s prison system and is disgusted to see that they’re still punishing children as if they were adults.

He gets Ben out of prison, but the orphanage refuses to let him come back, so Varian convinces Quirin to take him in. Quirin agrees for a few factors: 1. Ben reminds him of Varian when he was going through a rough time, and how Quirin wasn’t able to help him then, 2. He’s not getting any younger and could use some help around the farm (plus Varian has been worried about him getting lonely, now that Varian has basically moved into the castle), and 3. The kid deserves a shot at having a healthy, stable home life.

Ben only agrees to go live with Quirin because trying to survive on the streets is no picnic, and also because he’d really rather not stay in prison for any longer than he has to. He figures that it won’t last, anyway— Quirin will lose patience with him and kick him to the curb, just like every other foster parent/guardian he’s been handed off to. He gets very confused (and a little annoyed) when Quirin turns out to be incredibly patient and willing to give him as many chances as he needs. In response, Ben acts out and does everything he can think of to convince Quirin that he’s rotten to the core, but nothing works.

Ben doesn’t want to get his hopes up or let himself get attached. He manages to annoy everyone else: the other villagers, Varian, even Eugene (who visits sometimes), but never Quirin. The most he ever gets out of him is an irritated sigh.

Throughout all of this, Ben is also finding out that he kinda likes helping out on the farm, and he’s pretty good at it, too. He’s very strong for his age, and a fast learner.... except for one thing: he can’t read. The orphanage had tried to teach him, but it never really clicked and they had long since given up on him, so he just never learned, instead relying on pictures and context clues to figure out the meaning of written words. As he continues to grow more attached to Quirin, he starts wanting to be better, to deserve the love and acceptance Quirin is offering him, so his self-consciousness about reading (among other things he doesn’t like about himself) really starts to bug him.

While he's sociable and generally gets along with other children, he does have the flaw of a short temper. So when he's targeted and called out for his apparent lack of academic intelligence, things get ugly, fast, and he gets in a fight. When Quirin asks later what it was about, Ben is reluctant to tell him, and is even less enthused when Quirin later suggests enrolling him in school.

He eventually admits to Quirin that he’s illiterate, expecting to get belittled or even compared to Varian (who is an actual genius and is kind of intimidating to Ben). But Quirin.... he doesn’t care that Ben can’t read, and even offers to help teach him or find him a tutor if he wants to learn. It’s after letting himself be vulnerable and accepting Quirin’s help that Ben starts to wonder if maybe... maybe he has a shot at being part of a real family.

He starts to let himself feel at home in Old Corona, thinking (or rather hoping) he’s found somewhere he belongs... as much as he hates to admit it, he really likes it here. So he tries to keep on the straight and narrow so he can stay longer, even making an effort to be nicer to Varian (who is more than happy to help him with his reading and is the one to introduce him to the Flynn Rider series). For the first time, Ben’s future is looking bright.

Until he loses his temper again.

On a visit to the capital, he passes by his old orphanage and gets in an argument with one of the kids he used to know (and wasn’t on particularly good terms with). The argument quickly gets personal, and then physical, and Ben takes it way too far— by the time the guards arrive on the scene to break it up, the kid Ben was fighting is a bloody, mangled mess, about a minute away from passing out. The guards don’t care what awful things that kid said to Ben; all they care about is that this boy with a history of violence and petty crime just savagely attacked another child, and Ben is swiftly arrested and taken to the dungeons.

At this point, Ben has cooled down enough to realize just how serious his situation really is. Even if they let him out of prison to go back to Quirin, he’s sure this is the last straw and that Quirin won’t want anything to do with him— he’s violent and dangerous, and no matter what he does he can’t seem to stay out of trouble, even when he really does try his best to be good. He hates himself for blowing his one chance at finding a home and family, and consoles himself by thinking that it was only a matter of time and at least the wait is over (boy’s got some raging self-loathing issues if you haven’t noticed).

Varian gets word that Ben’s been arrested and heads down to the dungeons to hear his side of the story, but Ben is too ashamed to even look him in the eye. Ben was told by the guards that, although he won’t be left to rot in the dungeons or thrown onto a prison barge (as per the new regulations regarding juvenile justice), he’ll be sent away to a correctional facility for delinquents— aka, reform school. Ben has no idea what to expect, but based on what the guards have been saying about it (very loudly, just outside his cell), it sounds no better than regular prison.

Varian is having absolutely none of this and contacts Quirin to tell him what’s going on— Quirin is up at the castle within the hour to try and bail Ben out, or at least renegotiate his sentence. However, since Quirin is not yet technically related to Ben— for the past year or so, he’s legally been closer to a parole officer than anything else— the law states that he can’t actually do much to interfere with Ben’s bail or sentence, especially since the boy is a repeat offender and is now classified as a menace to society.

Instead of giving up on the situation, Quirin decides to become Ben’s legal guardian right then and there, whipping out the adoption papers he’s been keeping in his vest for weeks— he’s been wanting to ask Ben if he’d like to be adopted for a while now, but he could never find the right moment. Now seems to be as good a time as any.

It takes a day or two to sort things out (Nigel and Fred both aren’t too keen on releasing a violent criminal for any reason, even if that criminal is like twelve), but Varian is able to pull some strings with Raps and Eugene to give Quirin full guardianship over Ben. Meanwhile, Ben is expecting he'll be shipped off any day now— when he sees Varian come back down to the prison with a guard, he expects it's to say goodbye... not to remove his shackles and lead him back upstairs to the throne room, where Quirin and Rapunzel are waiting beside a stack of paperwork. They only need one more signature to make the adoption official: Ben’s.

Luckily, Varian and Quirin have been helping him practice writing his name, and once he signs, Quirin tosses Raps the bail money (which she had whittled down to like two coins) and they head back home— Ben’s permanent home.

Ben’s story is a result of many many rambles between me and Feen on Discord, and I don’t think we’re gonna be stopping anytime soon— Ben is such a fun OC to flesh out XD

Feen and I are actually running a Q&A for Ben over on Feen’s Instagram story, y’all should go check it out!

[qawsslate]

newbies

another nct drabble, short story, one shot, scenario? 

genre: fluff probs

tw: none

pairing: Renjun & reader

a/n: idk bro read at ur own risk, i used google translate for a thing but im hoping it makes sense in the context, feel free to interact :)) 

____

"Renjun-ah it’s fine. You, of all people, know how forgiving she is.”

“Ya! Haechan, don’t say it like that. Renjun-ah it looks really nice she’ll love it.”

Haechan and Jeno were gathered in Renjun and Jisung’s shared bedroom attempting to calm the nerves of the older Dream member. He had just finished a painting he had been working on for the last month in prepation for Valentine’s Day. He knew you weren’t expecting anything as in Korea, the traditional practice was for the girl in the relationship to give the guy chocolates, but neither of you were big on the specifics of things like that. You both shared the sentiment of holidays but were also practical in the ways you gave gifts to each other. Last Christmas, Renjun had given you a new winter coat since the one you’ve been using since your teenager years had begun to literally tear at the seam. You often brushed off his nagging of buying a new coat with protests of the coat still doing its job. 

“Renjun, the coat is fine. I’m still perfectly warm” 

“Y/n, I can see the thread that’s keeping the arm sleeve attached to the rest of it hanging off. I bet if I pull it the whole thing would fall apart. Here let me show you.” 

He reached down and pretended to yank the thread which prompted you to gasp in amused disbelief.

“Ya! Don’t you dare! Did you really pull it off?”

You looked down at your arm trying to assess if in fact the fabric on your body was still a piece of wearable clothing.  

He laughed and just embraced you in a hug.

He had followed up the new winter coat with a flower plushie you had commented that was cute a week ago in a shop, his favorite scented candle so you could be reminded of him when he was away on a schedule, a neck massager because he thought you spent too much time at your desk, an insulated bottle so you would drink more water and not coffee, a polaroid camera for the memories and random Chinese snacks you really liked. He was very practical yet considerate, and it made your heart swell. You almost cried thinking all of it was too much and he had to hold your face in is hands and make you look at him so he could tell you that you were worth it. 

What you didn’t know that he also wanted to gift you with a necklace but second guessed himself too much to the point where he took the small box out of the pile of gifts only minutes before he gave you the heap of presents. Mark was the only member he told about the necklace beforehand but Renjun unfortunately had forgotten to inform his loveable hyung of his inaction, a problem that presented itself the morning after Christmas.

“Y/n! Merry-day-after-Christmas! How was Christmas with Renjunnie? Did you like the necklace?”

You, Mark, and Renjun had been sitting at the Dream dorm kitchen table eating leftovers from the small dinner Jaemin had made at 3am. Thankfully the rest of the boys were still asleep so the damage could still be contained. Renjun choked on the green tea he had been drinking but quickly recoverd.

“Neck massager hyung. The Korean word for neck massager is 목 마사지기. Ahhh, it’s because he’s a foreigner.”

Renjun laughed a little too forcibly and tried to signal to Mark as much as humanly possible without bursting a vein that the necklace gift was aborted. By some Christmas miracle, Mark had somehow picked up on the hint and quickly corrected himself. He even added a white lie to support the neck massager fib, quickly sputtering that he had helped Renjun pick out a neck massager with the recommnedations from his mom, his aunt, his grandmother, and his cousin who was some sort of professional massager. You answered honestly that you had yet to put it to use as you forgot to charge it last night. You weren’t sure if it was the happiness hangover or lack of sleep after Christmas Day that made you think Mark and Renjun were acting strange, but you became distracted from dwelling on their behavior as Haechan and Jisung came into the kitchen. The mood quickly shifted and Renjun felt like he could breathe for the first time in what felt like an hour. You had become preoccupied in helping Jisung follow a recipe on how to make American style pancakes and scolding Haechan for handing the gullible maknae wrong ingredients. After a few minutes Renjun had excused himself to check on Jaemin and Jeno, and Mark announced he had to use the bathroom. Once out of earshot from the mess in the kitchen Mark turned to Renjun,

“You didn’t give it to her?”

“No, hyung, honestly I got too scared. What if she didn’t want it? What if she thinks I’m going too far? What if it’s too serious all of a sudden?”

“Well, don’t you want to be serious with y/n?”

“Of course. More than anything. I just don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Renjunnie,” Mark placed his hands on his shoulders, “you are doing great. Do whatever feels right to you. But if you’re only doubting yourself I think it’s still a good idea to give her the necklace.” 

Renjun still looked conflicted and mindlessly opened the door to Jaemin room then Jeno’s. 

The four proceeded back to the suspiciously quiet kitchen to find Jisung sat at the table and Haechan and you making the rest of the pancakes. When Jaemin asked what happened, Haechan responded,

“We wanted to make sure you guys still had a place to live.”

The necklace matter had been dropped and about a month later all those repressed emotions Renjun had came back. It was two nights before Valentine’s Day and both just wanted a quiet evening. Renjun planned to cook a dinner at your apartment and the whole thing felt innocent until he thought about how you guys hadn’t even been officially together for more than a year. He suddenly felt the pressure, the implications, the underlying tone of something like giving you a piece of jewelry. His plan was to just give you a painting. He had carefully recreated the scene of the park where he first saw you. You had been pushing children on the swings. He had thought you were a babysitter of some sort until you waved to the kids goodbye and saw the nearby adults scoop them in their arms and walk away. Then he saw you swinging by yourself. He never revealed this to you during your first official encounter as he didn’t think it would be smooth to open up with, “I’ve been watching you swing by yourself at the children’s park.” He also hadn’t been initially sure if you were the same girl he had wistfully observed, but you had once planned a park date at your favorite spot.

“It’s actually quite near your dorm, we could walk there if you’re up to it? Sometimes I play with the kids. It’s gotten to the point where some of the mothers have recognized me.”

Renjun immediately knew you had been that girl he had observed in what felt like a lifetime ago. He knew that one day he would really have to treat Chenle to a meal for introducing you both. Renjun also knew if he had admitted this to Chenle now he would never let it go and it would somehow inflate the size of that kid’s head even more, but he added it to the list of things he loved about his younger member. 

Renjun had carefully recreated the details from his memories of those days, paying particular attention to that coat you refused to give up on and he had just finished the painting when Haechan decided to burst into his room.

“Renjunnie! Have you ate? Let’s eat.” 

Renjun had been so absorbed with his doubts that the sudden interruption almost made him fall off his chair. Renjun almost gets as easily startled as Jisung, but the magnitude of his reaction made Haechan take a step back and immediately set off his signature mischief.

“Ya, is the innocent and pure boy doing something naughty? You know you should really lock your doors Renjun-ah”

Renjun scrammbled to find something to cover the painting. His tidy desk space provided no aid and his next move was to flip the whole thing over deciding to deal with the consquences of the still wet paint later, but Haechan moved quickly and pulled Renjun’s arms up away from the canvas.

“Ya, what’s this?”

“Nothing. Heachan, please.”

Renjun sighed. He had no problem in any other situation to fight the boy who always tested his limits, but with the awkward sitting position he was in, Renjun knew that there was no logistically sound way to physically fight Haechan at the moment. 

“Oh, it’s just another painting. Why were you so freaked out- YA! Is that y/n?!”

Haechan dropped Renjun’s arms, his first mistake, as Renjun took the opportunity to lunge towards the painting. Haechan proceeded to yank the back of the wooden chair -- his second mistake -- and he called out for reinforcements.

“JENO-AH!”

Jeno was not surprised that the bickering quickly took place, but was also concerned with the intensity of Haechan’s scream. Jeno regretfully entered the space of what would ultimately disrupt the otherwise peaceful morning and listened to the chorus of Renjun’s mild curses and death threats and Haechan’s shameless happy teasing although he was the one in the headlock.

“Ya, you two. Can we just go eat?”

“Jeno-ah, grab that. QUICKLY.”

Curiosity took over and Jeno obeyed. Renjun knew that although Jeno lacked in the desire of fighting members, he made up for with his physcial strengh. Renjun was quite aware that Jeno could quite literally pick him and Haechan up to stop the sqaubble. Renjun gave a frustrated sigh of defeat and sat back down at his desk while Jeno and Haechan sat on the nearby bed to fully observe the art piece.

“Is this y/n? It’s really good.”

“Our Renjunnie is growing up so fast. It’s cute to see you in love.”

The casualness of Haechan’s sentiment in dropping the L word set off alarms in Renjun’s brain but curiously not his heart. He quickly pushed off whatever deer in headlights reaction he showed and calmy took the painting back from Jeno. He decided to just tell the two that it was for Valentine’s Day and mumbled that he wasn’t sure if you were gonna like it. 

"Renjun-ah it’s fine. You, of all people, know how forgiving she is.”

“Ya! Haechan, don’t say it like that. Renjun-ah it looks really nice she’ll love it.”

Haechan sensed it was the right time to get serious. 

“Renjun-ah. Honestly. It’s a really good painting. She’ll love it. That girl loves everything you do.”

Jeno hummed in agreement.

“Injunnie, it will be okayyy.”

Jeno’s speciality in dorm-only aegyo gave Renjun comfort. It almost brought back a sense of normalcy in Renjun’s emotions. He was also grateful to Haechan although no matter how much the boy made it a sport to annoy him, he could still be mature when it counted. He thanked God that the necklace had been safely hidden in a drawer and considered the many ways the situation could have escalated if the two boys saw that the painting gift was not the main source of his anxiety.

Renjun thought it would be best to change the subject from his insecurities about his love life. Love, he thought, there was that word again. 

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

hi i have a tendency to not end my fics well, lemme know what yall think

[elsewhereuniversity]

When I first started here, I called myself Ada, because my wordpress as a teen was adamantiumhalfdragonx523 and it was the first thing I thought of when they said I should pick a nickname.

...I know, it’s kinda ridiculous, and I was hoping to present a somewhat more mature persona at college. But at least Ada is an actual name, and I could claim it was after Ada Lovelace instead of my RP blog.

Anyway, I dove into class quickly. Engineering, with an accidental minor in physics: I liked the required courses so I took a few electives, then realized I was only like nine credits away from qualifying for a minor so I went for it. Got immediately bogged down by homework as usual, barely scraping C minuses through humanities requirements and getting extensions wherever I could. I’ve never been good with time management? It’s the adhd.

There were always rumours of strange things happening on campus, but I mean, it’s college. You get drunk larpers and people hallucinating moving shadows from lack of sleep and old buildings with confusing layouts and it’s enough for weird rumours to be spread for months.

There was this weird girl who moved in a couple doors down from me: she turned up around March, I think she was a transfer? Her roommate literally burst into tears and ran away down the hall when I mentioned her, so I didn’t push it. It was a bit weird but I guess they were close with their previous roommate? Don’t know why they left, maybe they dropped out. Anyway, near the end of the semester the girl — she went by hazelnut, I think — invited me to this pre-finals rager out in the woods. I think it was late April, maybe the first of May? Mysty (my roomie) said not to go but I was feeling pretty prepared for my exam so I figured I’d go check it out. She kept, like, tutting at me, and made a big show of pouring salt lines at the window and door and around her bed? I don’t know how you can pour salt sarcastically, but she managed.

It was a pretty decent party, honestly, all through the woods. There was obviously much wilder stuff happening deeper, bright lights and screams and music and stuff, but I met up with a group I vaguely recognized from some class or other, spent a good couple hours playing, like, a music-based chase game around this awesome spiderweb of a slackline rope course someone had set up in the trees, falling off laughingly as we got progressively drunker. Also Cuttlefish (trans dude, marine bio major) with the Bluetooth speaker started skipping erratically between songs with dramatically different genres and beat structures until we all ended up tackling him to make him stop. I was just thinking of heading back to dorm when this girl with really cool dark-fantasy makeup stumbled out of the trees, obviously in distress.

She was dressed in this kinda ragged-but-flowing translucent robe thing over incongruous muddy cargo shorts, barefoot, exhausted-looking, and screaming about being chased. Lark (short girl, I think geology major?) immediately grabbed some big hoola hoops I’d been ignoring (I mean, when there’s a huge multi-tiered rope course with ladders and slack lines and trapezes, hoola hoops don’t stand out) and threw one over Spider-makeup-girl immediately, who kinda collapsed to the ground sobbing in apparent relief, and Lark yelled for everyone else to sit in one as well. Something something salt circles? So we did, kinda bemusedly, two to a hoop.

Spider-girl’s chasers burst out of the trees a moment later, and, like, I had figured Elsewhere must have a pretty substantial cosplay community, considering the larping I’d heard people talking about, but damn these guys’ costumes were good. One had to have been like six and a half feet tall, but they were on tall digitigrade stilts that raised them closer to eight, if you included the mask, and the other had this really clean 4-arm rig and I swear the arms were moving separately. Like, I’m an engineer and I couldn’t figure out how either had put the costumes together, the movements were so smooth they looked practically natural. I hope they get into whatever film studio or props company they want, the prosthetics were definitely movie quality.

Anyway, they came bursting out of the woods, making growling sounds, but they both stopped abruptly when they saw the probably-ridiculous sight of nine twenty-somethings sitting in plastic circles on the grass. I expected them to start laughing, but they were really deep in character.

They kinda circled around us for a moment, sniffing the air. I wanted to comment on their costumes, but everything seemed super serious all of a sudden. Then one of them spoke.

“Have they trapped you, weaver? Do you take salt chains over calm oblivion? Do you think they can hold you against the hunt?”

Their voice was kinda deep and raspy, oddly resonant in the chill night air, like I was only hearing part of it. This was obviously part of some scene, but I dunno. Spider-girl was curled into a ball, shaking, and I felt these guys were taking it too far.

There were a couple moments of tense silence, then Lark spoke up.

“Our bargain is with her, not with you. Leave, or wait out the dark. We aren’t moving.”

The four-armed one literally hissed at that, raising up this ragged crest along their back and flexing all four of their clawed hands.

“If you take her, human, then you take her debts. How certain are you, that you believe yourself capable of filling them? Do you think her gifts worth the cost of her entrapment?”

I still couldn’t tell how the rig was working, there wasn’t much space in their costume for complex pneumatics or anything, which was kinda annoyingly obscure. Was it just puppetry? How the fuck did they get the arms to DO that? And the tall one’s mask, were those articulated eyelids AND ears?

“She is ours, human, hunted and caught. You mettle in affairs of what you know not.”

The big one was circling faster now, striding long-limbed on those stilts. They sounded ominous, but I saw a loophole there, so I spoke up.

“You obviously didn’t catch her? She escaped long enough to find us, and if I understand the setting of your game well enough, we count as scenery or props, not players on the same level as you. So it sounds like she got away on her own and found a hiding place she can wait out the sun, which means you lost and she’s free. Go bug someone else.”

They both roared at that, making charging motions towards us, but thy kept pulling up short about two feet away from the hoola hoops. I’m not gonna lie, it was super intimidating, but they didn’t seem like they were going to get any closer? After like five minutes of this, the tall one broke and ran into the trees and the four-armed one followed, both shrieking.

We stayed in the hoola hoops after that. I would have liked to go back to the dorms, but any time any of us moved Lark started shrieking at us to stay still because it was “dangerous” or whatever. Cuttlefish turned the music back on and we ended up playing a trivia game someone had on their phone. It was super uncomfortable but it could have been worse, especially since I was still pretty drunk, so it was all a kinda pleasant foggyness. I must have dozed off at some point because next thing I knew it was a bit brighter and spider-girl was standing over me.

Her makeup was even better in the twilight, extra eyes and weirdly-textured skin and everything.

“If you are, as you said, merely scenery in which I have found my own escape, then I owe you nothing.”

She looked around at all of us, then at Lark, who was getting up with a murderous expression, then back to me. Up close, I could see my reflection in her eyes, including the six fake ones. They looked intimately real.

“Your words unwind me altogether, even from your would-be friend,” she whispered, just to me, “and I owe you, gift for gift.”

Then, suddenly, she was gone. I saw her bolt to the rope course and up one of the support ropes, much further up than I’d noticed it went, until she disappeared into the treetops. It was impressive.

Lark yelled at me a bit, something something she could have made us all rich? I don’t know, I don’t understand the larp setting well enough to understand the context. And then I went back to my dorm and collapsed into bed. I only got three hours of sleep before I had to get up and take my exam, but I did pretty well on it anyway, got a solid 83%.

Couple days later I heard a sound at the window, and when I went to investigate I found a bundle of fabric on the sill. Unwrapping it, i found a hooded knee-length asymmetrical vest thingy with this really cool greyscale-geometric pattern on it, made from the same flowing material as spider-girl’s robe. It fits perfectly. Mysty made a bit of a fuss when she saw it, but calmed down a bit when I told her the context. I’ve been wearing it ever since, it looks really good over jeans.

Anyway, yeah. Probably the weirdest story I have, though there are some solid contenders, actually....College, you know. Stuff happens.

AO3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21751201 (wrote this back in December, forgot to submit it)

[one-boring-person]

Just A Babysitter.(Part Seven.)

The Lost Boys x reader

Warnings: major character death, blood imagery, alcohol use

Context: (Y/n) is left alone at the cave whilst the boys go to avenge Marko's death, but she has a horrible surprise coming her way.

A/N: I changed my mind about this being the last part as it is just too long to be left as it is, so there is another part which will most likely come out later today.

Part One , Part Two , Part Three , Part Four , Part Five , Part Six , Part Eight

Masterlist.

My joints have finally gone numb by the time the sun has set, the ache of sitting on the cold hard floor for hours on end eventually fading away as I continue to ignore it, my mind still preoccupied with more serious matters, like the dead vampire lying with his lifeless head in my lap. Dried blood crusts my clothes and skin, the sensation uncomfortable but also unnoticed as I smooth my fingers over the mess of blonde curls atop Marko's limp head, my eyes never leaving his glassy, blank ones, my tears having dried some time ago, one hand holding onto the patched jacket he's always worn, the fabric stained and grimy now from the crimson liquid gathering around the hole in his chest. At some point, I'd taken the stake out of his chest, the crude piece of wood sliding out of the cold flesh with ease, another rush of blood accompanying it as I threw the makeshift weapon across the room, barely registering as it clatters to the ground a little way away. Since then, I've barely moved, my back muscles cramping from the crooked position I've settled into, the pain seeping away as time goes on, the chill of the cave stiffening my joints considerably.

It takes a hand placed on my shoulder to finally shake me from my trance, the appendage belonging to a concerned and grief stricken Dwayne, the tall vampire giving me a reassuring look as he crouches to my level, moving to pull my body into his, wrapping his arms around my rigid form briefly before he joins David and Paul, flying from the dark cave with incredible speed, all three of them riled up and ready to do anything to avenge their fallen friend. If I could, I'd join them.

After they've left, I stay where I am, my energy dwindling as I fight to stay awake, having done so all day, my body finally forcing itself to rest. Grudgingly, I decide to give in to the urge, knowing there's nothing I can do but wait for them to return, laying myself down beside the body of my friend,  ignoring the icy chill that seeps into me from the hard ground beneath me, the rock not making a particularly comfortable surface to sleep on. Resting my head on my hands, I tuck my knees into my chest and curl up into myself as best as I can, closing my eyes with the intention of falling asleep.

Nightmares plague my fitful sleep, visions of the rest of the boys, as well as Marko, all bloodied and wounded harassing my subconscious as it tries to rest, my eyes unable to open and tear themselves away from the horrifying scenes in my head as I writhe about. In each dream, I try to help them, to save them from the same fate that Marko has received, but each time I am unsuccessful, my mind conjuring up vivid images of David, Dwayne and Paul as they gasp for life, blood spilling from their lips, eyes flashing as they slowly fade into a deathly blankness, skin paling from the lack of life coursing underneath it. Fear soaks into my conscience, rooting itself into my very being as it tries to grasp the idea of living without the family who has cared for me for so long, protecting me when my biological family could (would) not, providing me with the best life I could ever have hoped for. Somehow, tears manage to force themselves out of my eyes, wetting my cheeks once more, though I don't realise this until I come to again a long while later.

My eyes crack open, eyelashes sticking together from the salty tears that have dampened my skin, a deep chill settling into my muscles from the air around me, reawakening the pain in my joints from before. I move to get up, stretching out my limbs and back as I go, wincing as I hear several audible cracks as my bones realign themselves, my movements stiff and slightly uncoordinated from the lack of change in my position, a pounding headache starting to set in from how dehydrated I've become. In my head, I know I should get up and get something to drink, or to eat, or I'll really suffer later, my body already protesting against my abstinence. Groaning, I force myself to my feet, giving Marko one last look as I go, still trying to come to terms with the fact that he's gone and won't wake up in a minute to take me for a ride on his motorcycle, or have a race to the Chinese takeaway shop, where we'd undoubtedly steal the food we've been given.

Another wave of grief washes over me, but I choke it down before I fall back to my knees, instead going to the entrance of the room, aiming to get to my room where I know there is food and drink, something I've made sure to keep in the cave just in case. It takes me longer than normal to emerge back into the darkened expanse of the sunken hotel, no light coming in from the outside, proving to me that it is still night, even if it is early in the morning, the icy air surrounding me feeling unwelcoming for the first time in four years, making me shiver uncomfortably as I duck into my own room, my clothes too thin to be a suitable covering. As I enter, I make the decision to change my clothes completely, needing to part with the bloodied shirt and jeans I was wearing the night before.

Changing into another band shirt and dark grey jeans, I pull on my leather jacket before grabbing the bottle of water and tin of cookies from under my bed, taking the remaining whiskey from five nights ago as well after a second, craving the strong burning alcohol to reawaken my numbed mind. Sitting on the bed, I open the water and take a deep drink from it, relishing the sensation of the liquid flowing down my dry, raw throat, my body relieved to finally receive hydration. I follow this with a good few cookies, not really enjoying them too much but needing the food desperately, as well as a swig of whiskey to wash it down, wincing as the fiery drink burns the insides of my throat, feeling warmer a minute or so after it's settled into my stomach. I repeat these motions a few times before I become aware of something: voices floating in from the front of the cave, and not friendly ones, either.

A low growl leaves my lips as I make out Michael's voice amongst them, anger and fury igniting inside me alongside the confusion; what the hell is he doing back here, alive? Putting aside the alcohol, water and cookies, I edge closer to the doorway, staying out of sight as much as possible, straining to hear what is being said, yet more confusion rising in me as I hear sounds that I'd associate with dragging heavy objects across the floor.

"...should we leave them here? In the middle? Or should we move them back into one of the inside rooms?" Michael asks his companion, or companions, voice breaking off every few seconds from the strain of carrying a heavy weight.

"Let's just leave them here. They won't mind." A gruff voice I recognise from the day before answers, an agreement rising from another who sounds very similar. The two kids with stakes.

"What about (Y/n)? What should we do about her?" This time it's Star's voice, the sound cutting deeper than the others, a stronger sense of betrayal flaring up in me as I try to keep myself quiet, not quite believing what I'm hearing.

"I hadn't thought about that. Should we find her?" Michael muses, the sound of something dropping echoing around the room, three others joining the first.

The others are silent, the two kids obviously having no idea who I am, Star seemingly considering what to say.

"No, I don't think that'll be entirely safe. She has a tendency to react rashly to things like this. I'm surprised she didn't do anything earlier." The girl responds, voice decisive, "I really do feel bad for her, though."

"You do? Why?" One of the kids asks sounding disgusted by the idea.

"Because they were her only family, and she was close with all of them. She'll really suffer."

What does she mean, they were my only family? They are my only family. A small voice in my head starts to tell me something, but I refuse to listen to it, unwilling to even consider what she is implying.

"I know, I feel bad, too. Maybe we can come again tomorrow night and speak to her? She could come live with us." Michael suggests, drawing a silent scoff from me at his stupidity. What makes him think I'd live with someone like him?

"I really don't think she'd accept the offer, but we can only try." Star responds, sounding unsure of herself, her voice getting quieter as they seem to leave the room, eventually cutting out completely when they get far away enough. I wait another five minutes before venturing out again, finding the braziers lit, the flickering flames throwing shadows and light everywhere. What I see in the centre of the room, beside the fountain, makes me stop, my heart nearly seizing as I catch sight of them. I can barely move, my eyes remaining fixed on the object of my horror, disbelief initially filling me until grief replaces it, my mind drowning in it once more as I finally find the ability to move, my legs taking me over to them. Lying on the floor are four bodies.

One is horribly familiar, two barely recognisable, the fourth unfamiliar to me.

A strangled sob leaves my lips as I collapse to the floor beside David's corpse, the blonde vampire's features pale and drawn in their deathly state, his muscles limp and lifeless under my hands as I grasp at his chest, unwilling to believe that what I'm seeing is real.

"No, no, no! This can't be happening, please tell me this isn't real! No, please, wake up, David, please, wake up! You can't be dead! You can't all be dead! No, no, no!" I all but scream out, tears exploding out onto my cheeks as I frantically look for signs of life, taking in the two other bodies to his right. One is nothing but a skeleton, and the other is a mangled mess of blood and torn flesh, but they are still known to me: the skeleton is still wearing the bracelet I gave him the night before, and the leather jacket under all the gore is unmistakable. Paul and Dwayne, both dead.

"Please wake up, David! Tell me this is fake, that this isn't happening! I can't be alone, not again! Please, don't leave me alone!" I cry out to them, eyesight blurry from the tears pouring out of them, my body heaving as sobs rip themselves from me, my head falling to David's chest, ignoring the dried blood coating his shirt, as well as the rigidity that his death has brought to him. Grief and despair once again assault my mind, tearing me from the numbed state I was in before, my throat quickly becoming raw as I continue to plead with no one in particular, wishing the vampires would just sit up as they were before and reassure me. As it is, I'm left with the dead members of my family with no one to comfort me, my body nearly wrung dry from all the tears I've cried in the past twelve hours, my only companions the corpses lying around me.

I remain there for what feels like hours, but what is in fact only one, until I notice something: the first rays of sunlight coming in from the entrance. Slowly but surely, they edge closer to the corpese on the floor, the unfamiliar one remaining in shadow as it is protected by the water fountain. As the first ray reaches the skeletal remains of Paul, the discouloured bones immediately catch fire, orange flames engulfing the body of my friend in seconds, my eyes fixed on them with horror, until I jump into action, wrapping my arms around David's torso as I start to drag him towards the shadows, my body weak from the lack of movement it has done, guilt and anguish racing through me as I watch the rays catch Dwayne's mangled remains, too, greedy flames instantly bursting into life as they do so, the sunlight only continuing on in its destructive path, creeping ever closer to David's feet. My muscles scream at me as I fight to pull the heavy body out of harms way, my strength nearly failing me multiple times, my feet slipping on the floor slightly.

Thankfully, I manage to drag David into the darkness of my room in time, the corpse remaining untouched by the sun even as the other two are consumed by the fires it has produced. I can only watch as they burn, tears streaming down my face at the sight, the overwhelming grief pushing me to my knees as I finally give up, a strangled, agonized scream ripping from my throat as I curl up into a ball, consumed by sorrow and despair, the loneliness I haven't felt in years crashing over me once again, reminding me of the night they found me, my body beaten and broken by the side of the road, my parents having finally kicked me out, a thirteen year old with no where to go. They'd taken me in, caring for me as much as they can, giving me a better life than I could ever have hoped for, replacing the hole in my heart where a family should've been. Old wounds have been reopened, bleeding grief back into my system as they once had when they were new, the pain just as crippling as before, if not, more so.

Eventually, I feel black spots start to appear at the edges of my vision, slowly advancing until I can't see any more, my body relaxing into unconsciousness, the emotions finally becoming too much for my mind to handle. Almost in relief, I allow myself to give in to the urge, falling deeply into a state of unconsciousness as I collapse beside the corpse of David, the truly dead leader of a murdered coven of vampires.

[warriorsredux]

RE: Feedback for the Redux.

(I wanted to give you really in-depth feedback. Unfortunately, it ended up being way longer than I anticipated. I figured it would be easier to send this as a submission rather than breaking it up into a million smaller asks. I hope that’s all right!)

Note: I put this under a readmore to save space, but I have read it all and thoroughly agree with it. Thank you so much for the feedback, man!

Before I get into the nitty-gritty, I want to briefly talk about my personal relationship with Warriors - not because I want to talk about myself necessarily, but because I want to provide some relevant context. You see, I was first introduced to these books in 2004, about when I was nine years old. You could argue, in some ways, that these books defined a large part of my childhood, and were extremely influential into my teenage years and early adulthood. When I wasn’t fantasizing about colonies of talking feral cats, I was gleefully writing fanfics and roleplaying online. Those were my first tentative forays into writing, and would ultimately set me on the path to refine and hone those skills in the years to come. I was obsessed with the mythology and lore of this world, with the sprawling cast of characters, with the steady publication of new entries into the series.

Now, kids tend to not have the best critical thinking skills. Which is why it took until my late teenage years to realize that my cherished books were really, really not that great. The mythology and lore that I’d praised were starved of any creativity, steeped in the cliches of the fantasy genre, and prone to collapsing under their own weight when subjected to even the smallest amount of scrutiny. The characters that I adored? They were blighted with similar cliches, lacking in any sort of growth or development or depth; sustained only by archetypes and whatever retcons the authors thought would sell the most books, either through hype, drama, or fanservice. Exacerbating all of this was the publisher’s insistence on milking the franchise for whatever profit nostalgia could still yield. They weren’t writing more books because they had new, interesting ideas they wanted to explore - they did it because this series was (and still is) fucking lucrative. As I thought about these things more critically, and became more informed on social issues, it became impossible to unsee the uglier aspects of the franchise - the ableism, the queerbaiting and lack of representation, the depiction of minors and adults (Dustpelt and Ferncloud, Thistleclaw and Spottedleaf) having romantic or sexual relationships, the blind nationalism and eugenics/persecution of minorities (non-Clanborn cats) and characters of mixed descent (half-Clan cats). People far more informed and far more eloquent than myself have discussed those issues in-depth elsewhere, but suffice to say, I was understandably upset by these things. No amount of nostalgia could blind me to those flaws.

And yet, for some reason, I never really stopped loving Warriors. Or put more accurately - I never stopped loving the potential of Warriors. That was the thing that I kept coming back to. The wasted potential of a series depicting the lives of feral cats, and their brutal struggle to survive in the wilderness, all the while deeply immersed in their own complex societies and cultures. It became painfully clear to me that the thing I loved about Warriors was the sandbox nature of the franchise, and all the ways fans were able to explore that untapped potential. With that realization now achieved, Warriors slipped into the back of my mind, accruing cobwebs as the years passed. Occasionally those dormant thoughts stirred whenever I saw a piece of fanart on my dashboard, or I passed a new release while browsing the local Barnes & Noble. Sometimes I even entertained the fleeting thought of writing AU fics again. But by and large, Warriors had been retired from my thoughts.

And then, in 2017, I found the Redux.

While writing this segment I had several false starts, in no small part because I didn’t know what to talk about first. It was like someone had gone through my thoughts with a steel-toothed comb, and took every disappointment, every what if, and turned it into a reality. Holy shit, look at this blog! Look at the meta commentary! Look at all of the worldbuilding! I could clearly see just how much passion and attention to detail was put into developing the plot and the characters. How many hundreds of hours went into correcting the broken genetics of the canon characters. Suddenly, the Clans had culture - real, living, breathing culture! There was a pantheon of deities and demigods. A deliberate intention behind the naming tradition beyond slapping two words together because they sounded pretty or made for a trite pun. This. This was the story Warriors should have been. This lone blog managed to conceive an original lore for the Clans, while further developing the canon plots beyond their base elements. What three authors failed to do, one person achieved on their own.

You made forgettable characters interesting. And you made interesting characters unforgettable.

I lived for every scrap of content you created - the asks, the deconstructions, the amendment posts, the art, even the fucking shitposts (because they were just genuinely wholesome and funny). The Redux wasn’t just a source of entertainment, either - it introduced me to the idea of writing an AU that was sustained by meta-analysis, and grounded in critical reception of the series’ flaws (both technical and social). Your work eventually inspired me to create my own Redux-style worldbuilding/AU blog for a series that has similar issues to canon Warriors.

The Redux deserves all the praise it gets, and you should be extremely proud of what you’ve accomplished. Even if the Third Arc wasn’t finished or the Fourth started, it was still a helluva ride, one that I’m so glad I got to participate in.

But, of course, you asked for feedback, so I can’t spend the entirety of this post throwing roses at your feet. So, onto the constructive feedback.

I think a lot of my thoughts are going to echo what other people have previously said, but for me, the biggest setbacks in the Redux were the following:

[1] Pacing. This is going to sound weird, but this isn’t a criticism of the Redux’s length. Rather, it’s more about how that time was spent. While I really like how you adjusted aspects of the Redux’s plot in order to still tangentially align with the books’, it sometimes felt like the chapters were there just to connect points A and B. I knew this was a retelling of the original series, so I already had a vague idea of what the general storybeats would be. What appealed to me was how the story would get to those points. Let me give you an example: in Arc 1, we’re told in chapter 10 that Murkpelt is roaming the territories, and poses a threat to the Clans. Immediately in chapter 11 we’re taken to the scene where Firepaw finds her while escorting Spottedleaf. We’re told about ThunderClan’s efforts to track her prior, and about the looming tension in the wake of this invisible threat. But that’s the thing - we’re told that by the narration in just a paragraph or two. We’re not shown what that looks like. The setup is supposed to be everyone being on edge, but Bluestar’s lounging by the stump when the scene begins. It’s a little dissonant, and it has the unfortunate problem of contradicting the narration. It would’ve been so cool to see a chapter or two where Firepaw’s still trying to immerse himself into Clan life, and his questions are met with terse answers or impatience. Undercut his (and the reader’s) learning with other characters being brusque with him, or short-tempered, or something. And then that could lead into Greypaw or Ravenpaw consoling him and explaining why the situation is so serious. Then Firepaw could ask something like, “Have there ever been instances like this before with rogues?” Which could organically lead to a conversation where Greypaw or Ravenpaw bring up relevant lore/worldbuilding. It’s little stuff like that which would’ve helped with immersion and pacing. I think it would have balanced the two out, by providing pseudo-downtime where the audience experiences the world as the characters do. (If that makes sense.) Or, to provide another example: we never get to see Tres Idiots mentoring Snowpaw. In chapters 5 and 6 of Arc 3, we see Raventhroat struggling to develop a signing system he can use with his apprentice; and then, after a few chapters he’s perfectly narrating the Bright-Eyed Crow to Snowpaw. I think that showing us scenes where the two were actually working out the kinks would have done more to develop Raventhroat’s character arc. He went from being a meek, timid apprentice to an eloquent warrior, and him becoming a mentor is supposed to be a definite part of that journey. It would’ve have been so cool to have plot-relevant scenes broken up by smaller ones where we watch Raventhroat gain confidence through each small success he makes with his apprentice. I’m not sure if I’m conveying exactly what I want to say, but I guess the TL;DR would be something like - I would’ve gladly welcomed either more chapters, or longer ones, if it meant we got more scenes like this.

[2] Utilization of the worldbuilding. You mentioned this already in response to another ask, but if you could go back and change anything, it would be incorporating more lore/adhering the Redux to its lore more strongly. Your worldbuilding is perhaps the strongest part of the Redux by far. You gave us a conlang, traditions, folk stories, Clan stereotypes - so much fascinating material - but it feels like its integration was based solely on whether or not it was relevant to the plot at hand. Unless there was a reason why it was brought up, then we’d never get to see a ThunderClan cat freaking out near a ShadowClan seer and refusing to approach them at a Gathering. Or listen to Mistfoot share a poem with Greystripe and Fireheart (after being goaded into it by Silverstream). Or watch as Redtail politely interrupts the elders and asks for their opinion on an important matter. Or listen to the Clan getting together after a loved one dies and share stories about their life. Or watch as Sandpaw/Dustpaw use their age and seniority over Firepaw to terrorize him with stories of Yrrun and Terror. On one hand, I absolutely understand why a lot of lore was relegated exclusively to the Amendment section - it’s important to strike a balance between what’s interesting versus what’s relevant. You don’t wanna just throw worldbuilding trivia at the audience apropos of nothing. On the other hand, I really wish I’d seen a much larger integration of your worldbuilding into the story, because it’s so fascinating and so god damn good.

[3] Utilization of the characters. One of the things you tweaked, that I absolutely loved, was choosing to introduce Silverpaw in Arc 1 at a Gathering. Not only does it create a realistic basis for her friendship with Tres Idiots, but it fixes the canon’s issue of her saving Greystripe out of nowhere and then developing a relationship on that alone. That was fucking great! Same thing with Rainpath - it was so awesome for Fireheart to get a friend in another Clan (ShadowClan, of all Clans). It broke the mold, and their interactions were just delightful. But outside of those examples, sometimes it kinda felt like the side characters didn’t really exist? I remember an old piece of writing advice, but I can’t recall who it’s attributed to: “Treat your side characters like they think they’re the main characters.” Because they absolutely are. I might be some passing stranger in another person’s life, barely a blip on their radar, but I have my own vibrant story. Everyone does. In the Redux, it sometimes felt like minor or side characters weren’t living their own lives outside of their interactions with Fireheart and his friends. Mousefur’s the most fluent speaker of Fang in ThunderClan? Cool. How did she learn that skill? Who taught her? Does she have a friend in WindClan who’s been teaching her new words at Gatherings, or whenever they happen to cross paths while on border patrols near Four Trees? Not only is that character trivia interesting, but it could provide foreshadowing/become relevant later on. When the Clans meet to discuss how to deal with the dogs in Arc 3, perhaps someone suggests having their most fluent Fang speakers act as interpreters/diplomats, and try to broker some sort of peace/understanding with the dogs. Things like that. Basically, it would’ve been nice if Fireheart’s life intersected more with the goings-on of his Clanmates, or if his own goals/agenda were sometimes inconvenienced by the goals/agenda of others.

I think those are my major criticisms. More integration of lore, a slower/steadier pace that accommodates showing over telling, and finding ways to have the personal lives of minor characters interact with the story. Maybe adding in some additional subplots that are congruent with the main plots, and occur simultaneously, in order to keep chapters busy. That sort of thing. I hope what I provided wasn’t overwhelming in any way, and ends up being useful for either the Redux or any of your other writing projects.

As an aside, thank you. For creating this humble niche community within an even larger fandom. For asking for feedback from your readers. For being someone who makes mistakes, but eventually endeavors to learn from them, and ultimately, become a better person. I know this sounds kinda sappy, but I really do mean it. <3

(For the record I wrote this at like five in the morning, so if there are any grammatical errors I’ll be kicking myself in the ass for those.)

[maatryoshkaa]

young god | chapter 7

chapters: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | epilogue |

word count: 5.5k

warnings: mentions of mental disorders, foul language, graphic descriptions of violence, mentions of alcohol

description: from jisung’s psychoanalysis to the crime investigation, nothing seems to be adding up. jisung and hyunjin have an unpleasant first encounter, and a conversation with hyunjin’s grandmother leaves you with more questions than answers. hwang hyunjin wanders the streets like a ghost, and the police are hot on jisung’s trail.

watch the trailer here!

07| seeing ghosts

You unlocked the door to your apartment and stepped in, the space as dark and cool as a tomb. 

You made a beeline for your room and chucked your bag onto the desk, rummaging through your closet for a comfortable hoodie. With a relieved sigh, you flicked on your table lamp and let the warm glow soften the darkness. The sun had gone down during your walk home, the busy sounds of the city hushed by the chirping of crickets and the rustle of the evening breeze. Jisung had held your hand the whole time -- two or three of his fingers gently hooked around yours and lightly swinging back and forth as you walked.

He had waved you goodbye from the stairwell -- heart-shaped smile and all -- but even as you propped open your laptop and shuffled through your notes, the feeling of his fingers lingered on your skin. You felt the blood rush to your face as Jisung’s voice -- soft and achingly vulnerable -- echoed in your ears.

Promise...you’ll never leave me?

You slammed your notebook down with unnecessary force, violently shaking your head as if trying to fling the thoughts away. Damn it, y/n. Focus! The notes you had scribbled looked as if they were falling off the lines of the paper. With a deep breath and a light slap to your own cheek, you began typing them up.

Patient: Han Jisung

Age: 20

Memories and short bits of dialogue flashed in your mind as you read over the papers. 

Session One. 

Patient has undergone mandatory psychological evaluations in the past, in educational institutions. 

Mentions racing thoughts, rapid heartbeat, and possibly palpitations when in the presence of the therapist. **(May simply be conversational and therefore unreliable). 

Suffering from nightmares as of late; sleep problems. Appears uneasy when speaking about said problems. 

End of session.

You frowned. Straightforward enough. Slightly strange, if read out of context -- but nothing that stuck out in particular. Biting your lip and shrugging, you flipped to the notes from today.

Session Two.

Questions were focused on family and childhood. Patient looked 

Your fingers stalled on the keyboard, Jisung’s expression from earlier flooding your memory. How his eyes had widened like a deer in headlights’ when you’d asked about his family. And -- had you been imagining it? -- they way his voice had wavered when he finally answered. Frowning, you shook your head -- no, no. You were probably just overanalyzing things, right? 

Still, you found yourself typing out the one detail that had always been nagging at the back of your mind --

Patient looks upset at any mentions of family and childhood

At this, you hesitated again. You had barely known the boy for two weeks. There were things that Jisung wasn’t telling you about his childhood, that was for sure -- but wasn’t it normal not to know everything about each other yet? And it’s not like Jisung comes from a broken family or something, you thought. After all, he did say that his mother loved --

You froze.

Slowly, as if like a ghost was whispering in your ear, you felt an icy cold chill trickle down your spine, Jisung’s hollow voice echoing in your mind.

“My mother...like I said, she loved unconditionally. Patient, nurturing, kind...everything, well, you could ever want from a mother.”

Loved?

Past tense?

Your hand shot for your notebook and you practically ripped through the pages, looking for any other quotes you had written down.

“I don’t think my family was like everyone else’s.”

“My mother’s eyes were always so...loving and caring.”

Your eyes widened, a horrible sinking feeling in your gut.

“It sounds like your mother loves you a lot, then, huh? That’s so cute.”

“Y-yeah, she did.”

“Your father?”

“I wasn’t close with him. He was never...never around, so…”

What the hell had happened to Jisung’s parents? 

You barely suppressed the urge to bang your head against the table. Am I stupid? How had you not noticed what he’d been saying? What else had you glazed over and swept to the back of your mind?

You reached into your bag and pulled out your textbook, mumbling under your breath as you scanned the glossary. Mood swings. Nightmares. Anxiety. You’d read about this combination of symptoms before, hadn’t you? Sure enough, your fingers landed on the page you had been searching for.

POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER

The words glared coldly back at you as you read aloud, “Patients who suffer from PTSD are those who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event in the past. Any mentions or reminders of this event can trigger the patient and send them into a distressed state. Symptoms include…” you felt a lump in your throat and swallowed thickly. “Nightmares, inability to concentrate, and an exaggerated startle response at any mention of the traumatic event.”

Your thoughts immediately wandered to Jisung’s sudden flashes between moods -- his bright, blinding smiles, easily swept away by the cold, stormy look in his eyes. How he sometimes seemed so far away, expression glazed and unfocused. And now, with what he had mentioned about his family…

Jotting this down with an increasingly uneasy feeling in your gut, you continued flipping through the textbook, skimming through familiar case studies and theories. Words leapt out at you from the pages and made your stomach turn: Abusive childhood. Case study: Jeffrey Dahmer. Psychopathy. Case study: Ted Bundy. 

You held your head, groaning, and slammed the textbook shut. Were you really looking at serial killer cases to compare your boyfriend with right now? If Jisung could see you, he’d probably think you were being intrusive and paranoid -- trying to diagnose someone just because a couple of symptoms matched up. You’d been lectured in class over and over again that it wasn’t your job to speculate and form baseless assumptions -- rather, that was exactly what made an irrational therapist, but...it almost felt like you were trapped neck-deep in quicksand. The more you tried to stop thinking about the secrets Han Jisung seemed to be hiding behind his dark eyes, the deeper you found yourself sinking.

It was nearly midnight by the time you finished the outline of your report, cicadas languidly chirping outside your window as you leaned back in your chair and yawned. In the end, you had included a bit of everything -- from the most harmless theories to the darkest case studies. Skimming over your notes warily, you shut your laptop and rolled into bed, completely drained. Speculations. That’s all they were -- it couldn’t hurt to write down all the possibilities, right? 

You shook your head before finally drifting off to sleep, a relaxed smile on your face.

What were the chances that Jisung was hiding anything serious, anyways?

────────

Bang Chan threw another shot of espresso down his throat, not tearing his eyes from his papers. His fingers were vibrating slightly from the amount of caffeine coursing through his veins, and he swore he could feel his heartbeat all the way to his toes -- but frankly, he couldn’t care less.

He’d received the crime scene files an hour earlier -- sketches, photographs, coroner’s report, witness statements. He’d spent the better part of the night arranging and rearranging them like a madman doing a Sudoku puzzle. Everything was fanned out now, his desk looking like a filing cabinet had exploded all over it. Cold cases, his own theories, even research he’d done on the side…

And yet not a single damn thing was adding up.

Every lead Chan had gotten had steered him into nothing but dead ends. He’d never seen anything like it -- the same type of killings, occurring within the walls of what was supposed to be the safest school in the country. They had occurred at irregular intervals at first -- a handful in one month, followed by a four month period of uneasy quiet before the killer had struck again. He could count the cases off of his fingers by now; Chan had read them so many times, raking through the files for even the slightest of clues.

First, it had been an arson in one of the health sciences laboratories -- one male student pronounced dead at the scene, ghastly chemical burns having melted away most of his facial features.

Then there was the body found hanging from the rooftop of one of the dorms, skull practically crushed from blunt force trauma.

The list went on and on, small details linking what had otherwise seemed like a spattering of anonymous murders. The killer was a pyromaniac, for sure -- more than half of the deaths were fire-related -- and might as well have been related to the Hulk or something, because the rest of the victims had been killed -- seemingly -- by bare hands.

Even Minho seemed reluctant to answer his questions, and Chan couldn’t blame him -- the sheer lack of evidence found at each crime scene was embarrassing. He could hear the coroner’s exasperated voice in his head:

“No fingerprints -- the killer probably wore gloves. No murder weapon, so no DNA to sample off of, either. Heck, there isn’t even that much blood spattering to analyze, Detective.”

That ruled out the usual causes of murders taking place in Miroh Heights -- drunkards who took a bar fight too far, crimes of passion, domestic violence. No, Chan shook his head, his brain feeling like mush slopping around in his skull and making him wince. They were dealing with someone much, much more complex.

Chan had a fistful of blond hair in one hand and a cup of nearly-empty coffee in the other. What was this killer’s M.O.? Serial killers almost always had a motive, and their victims usually had some things in common. Chan flipped through the victims’ profiles, gears in his head beginning to turn again despite his drooping eyes.

Na Jangmin, Victim #1. Cause of death: Smoke inhalation and respiratory burns. Chan remembered interviewing his classmates, and being surprised at how indifferent they had been about the supposed tragedy.

“He never saw us as his classmates, you know. He’d pick on the first-years like fresh meat. They say half of the new med students dropped out because of him.”

Interesting. He flipped to the next file, tapping his pen against his lip.

Park Beomsoo, Victim #2. Cause of death: cervical fracture and asphyxiation from hanging. Found nearly decapitated and swinging from the rooftop balcony of a dorm building. What had been interesting about this case, however, was the sheer amount of date rape drugs found in the man’s system during the autopsy.

“Rohypnol, mostly,” Minho had informed him. “Along with traces of GHB -- enough to cause brain damage for life. The man was likely already knocked out for good by the time he was hanged.”

This had been baffling until Chan had investigated further, and found out about the man’s reputation.

“He’d slip pills into girls’ drinks at the club,” one of his friends had told Chan, “and was proud of it, too. All he’d brag about was how many half-conscious girls he’s taken advantage of.”

Chan exhaled with a low whistle. That couldn’t be a coincidence -- the killer had to have known about Park’s disgusting habits. So the victims did have something in common -- although it wasn’t like any case he’d ever seen before.

None of the victims had been, per se, good people. They were, interestingly -- and revoltingly -- enough, monsters of another kind. They were people who wouldn’t be missed, simply because they were hated so much already.

Huh. A killer targeting killers. Interesting. But how? And why? Did the killer have some sort of fucked-up sense of justice?

He tapped his fingers anxiously. All his hopes lay on the evidence they had collected from the Yellow Wood attacks -- but the crime lab had yet to hand it over to his team. He grimaced at the memory of the body, whose head had caved in completely and rendered the victim practically unrecognisable. How could there not be a single trace of incriminating DNA from something so...brutal? And then there was Yang Jeongin, who, as far as he knew, was still in critical condition at the hospital. If only he would wake up, maybe Chan would finally get a lead…

Chan didn’t even notice the sun beginning to rise outside of his window until the first ray of morning light pricked at his eyes, making him blink in disoriented confusion. His burning pupils flickered to the clock. 6:25 A.M. Damn it.

He kicked his chair back and threw on a wrinkled suit jacket, stuffing all his notes into his briefcase before promptly stepping out of his office. Work never ended for Detective Bang.

Chan glimpsed his reflection in the shop windows as he made his way back onto Miroh Heights’ campus, running his hands through his hair in a feeble attempt to tame his bedhead (was it even a bedhead if he hadn’t touched a bed in 48 hours?). His eyes caught the familiar storefront of Glow Cafe and he immediately steered himself towards it. Wouldn’t hurt to grab himself a fresh cup of coffee, and maybe he could look at the crime scene again with fresh eyes.

The barista -- Hyunjin, was it? -- was scrawling something on the chalkboard sign propped outside, stumbling to his feet and brushing the chalk dust off his hands when he saw Chan approaching.

“All right, Hyunjin?”

Hyunjin gave a small smile that looked more like a grimace, his tired eyes wandering behind Chan. The detective didn’t have to turn to know he was staring at the spot Jeongin had been found -- the barista looked like he was seeing ghosts. Chan took a deep breath before plastering a reassuring smile on his face, throwing an arm around the younger boy’s hunched shoulders and steering him into his cafe.

“I’m gonna need you to make me a cold drip, kid, because I feel like dea--” he caught himself, clearing his throat awkwardly. No death. No death. “Like shit. I’m feeling like shit.”

But Hyunjin didn’t even seem to hear him, wordlessly making his way behind the counter and starting the coffee machine.

Chan watched him and sighed, pulling out a chair and collapsing over a table. Seconds later, the diner door swung open, the windchimes ringing brightly as two familiar faces walked in.

“Good morning, Chan. How’s--bloody hell, you look like death.” Woojin’s eyebrows shot up when he joined Chan at the table, looking the sleep-deprived detective up and down. Behind him was Han Jisung, backpack slung over his shoulder.

Chan grimaced and checked his reflection in one of the empty glasses. Sure enough, his eyes were puffy and ringed with layer upon layer of dark circles, and his mop of dandelion hair was at the point of no return. “To hell with it. What brings you two here this early in the morning?”

Jisung and Woojin exchanged a look before Jisung spoke up, grinning his usual sheepish grin. “I set my alarm way too early and couldn’t fall back asleep, so I went out for a morning walk. We bumped into each other, and were both in need of some coffee.”

Woojin nodded, pulling out a chair for the younger student. “I take it you’re here for the same reason, Detective?”

Chan grinned. “Guilty as charged, Captain. How--”

A sudden crash rang through the empty cafe, cutting him off. All three heads snapped up to see Hyunjin standing over a broken pot of coffee, glass shards splaying all over the floor tiles and the dark, bitter liquid seeping into the crevices. 

Chan jumped to his feet, holding his hands out. “Hey, you okay? Don’t move, I’ll get a mop. Uh, where do you keep your mops?” The detective’s voice trailed off when his eyes landed on Hyunjin’s face. The barista’s hands were still frozen in place, but his eyes were livid and staring straight at Han Jisung.

“Why the hell are you here?” Hyunjin was speaking through gritted teeth.

Jisung blinked. “Is...is it too early? Sorry, dude, I can leave if--”

“Why are you always interfering with the investigation? You were at the crime scene for no particular reason, and now you’re here again.” Hyunjin’s voice was getting louder and louder. “It’s pretty damn suspicious if you ask me--”

“You seem to be more of an interference than me,” Jisung replied, standing up abruptly. All childlike humour had vanished from his expression. “Rushing the investigation, hanging around the crime scenes despite not having an ounce of experience.”

“My friend is in the hospital, and nobody fucking knows why--”

“Jisung!”

All four men turned towards the direction of the voice, and saw you waving cheerfully through the window. Unbeknownst to the situation, you pushed open the glass doors and ran up to a bewildered Jisung, reaching up to ruffle his hair. “What brings you here?” You turned to Hyunjin. “Hey, ‘jinnie, I just thought I’d come early today, since I’ve been arriving late for the last couple of shifts. You know Jisung? He’s the blind date!”

You smiled at Chan and Woojin, who both nodded back but seemed at a loss for words, their gazes flickering between the two boys and you. Hyunjin’s face of confused shock mirrored Jisung’s, words finally spilling out of both boys’ mouths at the exact same time.

“This is your boyfriend?” “This is your friend?”

You blinked, taken aback at their raised voices. “I--yes? B-but--”

Hyunjin narrowed his eyes at Jisung. “So you’re the one y/n’s been talking nonstop about? Is this a joke?”

Your stared at him. “Hyunjin!” Your eyes fell on the shattered coffeepot at his feet and you yelped. “Holy frick, what happened? Hold on, I’ll get th--”

You were interrupted by Jisung shoving his chair aside with a loud bang. His expression wasn’t exactly angry, but you could see his fists and jaw were clenched so tightly they were shaking violently. “Fine. I’ll get going, then.” He looked to you, sighing. “See you later.”

You opened your mouth to reply, but Hyunjin cut you off. “No, you won’t.” 

Giving Hyunjin one last long, wordless look, Jisung strode out of Glow Cafe.

When he had gone, you turned on Hyunjin, fuming. “Hwang Hyunjin, what the fuck--”

“Do you really have to date him? Him?” Hyunjin threw his hands up in exasperation.

“Why on earth are you so worked up about who I date?” 

“The guy’s suspicious as hell, y/n! I have a bad feeling about him. And I don’t fucking like it.”

You sighed, reaching behind the counter for a dustpan and rag. Woojin took them from your hands and handed the rag to Chan to clean the spill, and you turned back towards Hyunjin. “Look, I know you’ve been shaken up lately. We’re all on edge, Hyunjin. Lashing out isn’t going to help.” You rubbed his back gently, and, despite his expression softening slightly, his brow remained furrowed. Exhaling slowly, you tried to change the subject. “Is your grandma awake? We should make sure she takes her medicine.”

After making Chan and Woojin a new pot of coffee, you and Hyunjin headed upstairs to the studio apartment where him and his grandmother lived. Here, the walls were made of old red brick, foggy panelled windows letting in weak strains of sunlight. Still, Hyunjin insisted it was cozy, the wooden frame bed his legs were too long for shoved against the windows, his architecture sketches and designs hanging from the walls. Down the hallway was his grandmother’s room, which Hyunjin paid much more attention to than his own -- keeping it as clean and comfortable as possible.

Hyunjin’s parents lived and worked abroad, leaving Hyunjin in the custody of his grandparents. The moment he’d gotten into Miroh Heights, he’d moved into the shop his grandmother had started, and had eventually also taken up the responsibility of storeowner once her dementia had worsened and his grandfather had passed away. Nowadays, she seldom got out of bed, Hyunjin being the only one taking care of her and keeping her company.

When you entered her room, Grandma Hwang was sitting up in bed, a newspaper in her hands. Upon closer inspection, you saw that it was the morning paper from two days ago: MURDER AT MIROH HEIGHTS, with the burnt-down flat on the cover.

Hyunjin quickly pulled the newspaper from her hands, tucking it away under his arm. “Don’t let her read the newspaper,” you remembered him telling you once, “I don’t want it to upset her. I don’t know why, but she’s started saying these strange things ever since the murders began. I don’t want her dementia to get worse.”

“Good morning, Grandma Hwang,” you smiled at her, patting her hand. She turned to you, looking as if she were staring straight through you. Hyunjin reached into her bedside cabinet for her medications. “Have you taken your medicine today?”

Slowly, the old woman shook her head, her eyes landing on the newspaper under Hyunjin’s arm. “Familiar…”

You frowned. “What’s familiar?”

She lifted a crooked finger, pointing straight at the burnt-down flat. “The old Han house...from years ago. So familiar. So...so long ago…”

Hyunjin and you exchanged a look. Are you sure she’s just rambling? You mouthed at Hyunjin, who nodded, but his expression was unsure. I’m gonna get her some water, he mouthed back, and disappeared from the room.

A few moments of silence passed as you watched the old woman, the soft morning glow smoothing out her wrinkles. Not being able to suppress your burning curiosity, you blurted, “Why--why is it so familiar?”

Her brow was furrowed in deep concentration but her eyes were blank slates, hands gesticulating meaninglessly. “Pastries...the pastries, need to deliver the pastries to all the houses. All the houses except the Hans’--” she shook her head wildly now, voice trembling. “No, no, not the Han house!”

You could feel your heart leap to your throat, a cold sweat beginning to form on the inside of your palms. Even if she was just rambling, like Hyunjin claimed, it made you extremely uneasy. “Why not the Han house?” You pressed, your own voice quavering slightly.

“Nowhere to go, my dear, nowhere, nowhere, went up in flames--” she gasped, hands clutching her face as she babbled. “So much burning, Lord help me...and...and everyone...burned to ashes...except for that tiny, little boy. Crawlin’ out--”

You heard Hyunjin clear his throat from the doorway, and the old woman’s voice faltered. He was holding a tall glass of water in one hand and shot you a look as he reached for his grandmother’s box of medications. You turned back, hoping she would continue, but her eyes were already glazed over with the fog of forgetfulness. 

As she swallowed her medicine, you turned to Hyunjin. “She was talking about...about delivering pastries.”

“Mm. Back in the day, when she still used to run the store, we did pastry deliveries,” Hyunjin explained, stroking his grandmother’s hand absently as she finished the glass of water. “She used to go door to door, around the neighbourhood, handing out baskets of them.”

You nodded slowly. “Was...was there ever a fire in Miroh Heights? A really big one, like -- like a house burning down.”

Hyunjin gave you a weird look. “A fire? The deliveries stopped around 13 years ago. I wasn’t there, you know. Whatever she told you, don’t listen to her. Her memories get all mixed up.” He saw your expression and frowned. “What? Did she say something weird?”

You bit your lip, but shook your head. “No. Nothing at all.”

────────

Jisung tore down the darkening backstreets, not knowing where he was going and feeling like the ground beneath him was spinning wildly out of control. Fucking hell. He had barely sat through his classes without losing it, the paranoia eating him from the inside out like a parasite. The air was cool and damp, the sky crammed with grey storm clouds knitting together ominously.

They didn’t suspect him, right? There was no way they knew it was him.

Imagine his barely concealed panic when he’d run into police captain Kim Woojin first thing in the morning. They’d talked about his major, the weather, everything but the investigation. And Chan -- the detective had greeted him just like he always had.

It was just that damn Hwang Hyunjin.

“You were at the crime scene for no particular reason...it’s pretty damn suspicious if you ask me.”

Bloody hell.

No, no, no. He couldn’t let them find out. Everyone knew Hwang Hyunjin had been showing the early signs of post-traumatic stress disorder from finding the delivery boy half-dead in a pool of blood. There was no way they’d take him seriously. 

He began limping as he wove through the alleyways, the foot he’d dropped the rock on still throbbing from the impact. He turned a corner briskly -- and slammed headfirst into a stout middle-aged man.

“I’m sor--”

“Look where you’re fucking going, punk,” the man screamed, the foul stench of liquor hitting Jisung’s nostrils and making him stumble backwards. The man was clearly homeless, judging from the state of his clothes and his matted hair. He must have wandered onto campus while the gates were still open. His milky eyes were squinty and he was swaying, an empty beer bottle swinging precariously in one hand.

Jisung lunged forward, ripping the bottle from his hands, and in one savage motion broke it over the man’s nose. The man howled in pain and Jisung raised the jagged glass again, ready to plunge it straight through the man’s open mouth -- he knew this motion well, he’d done it so many times he’d lost count--

But when he stared into the man’s bleeding eyes again, he saw a flash of your face. And he felt his entire body seize up, his arm stopping dead in its tracks.

You smiling at something he’d said. The way you’d hide your face behind your notebook when you were flustered. The smell of your hair when you hugged him tightly. The warm, familiar feeling of your skin brushing his when you ran your fingers through his hair--

The broken bottle slipped from Jisung’s hands, crashing onto the cobblestones. The man was whimpering, nose still spurting bright red blood. Jisung’s gaze flickered from one of his milky pupils to the other. Blind. He let go of the man’s tattered shirt collar, breathing hard as he turned around and did the only thing he seemed to know how to do.

Jisung ran.

Above him, the sky rumbled with deafening thunder before the clouds split open, sheets of rain pouring down on him as he stumbled down the streets. Blood was welling in his hands, crimson and sticky, and he wasn’t even sure whose blood it was anymore. All Jisung knew was that he needed to find you. He needed you by his side, to tell him it was okay, to say you would listen. To make him feel sane again.

He made it onto the main road and spotted a figure in the distance. Squinting through the rain, Jisung made out the shape of a taller man stumbling towards him. Before he could muster up the energy to turn away, the man had already reached him, hands shooting out to grab Jisung’s shoulders in a vicelike grip. Blood roaring in his ears, heart leaping to his throat, Jisung forced himself to look up.

It was Hwang Hyunjin.

Jisung immediately shoved his blood-soaked hands into his pockets, forcing himself not to yell when shards of broken glass dug and sliced into his palms. His mind was racing, running over a million possible things he could say. But Hyunjin didn’t even look down -- his gaze stayed on Jisung’s face, eyes glassy but narrowed.

Jisung realised with a start that the barista had been drinking. 

Hyunjin’s face was twisted into an expression of raw, tormented grief -- the kind of sadness that could only be felt when one was heavily intoxicated. “I s-see him ev’ry time I close m-my eyes,” he suddenly choked out, and Jisung didn’t have to ask to know he was talking about Jeongin. “His c-cold hands, the pool of b-blood, the poor kid--”

Jisung tried to wrench himself from Hyunjin’s grasp, but the barista didn’t budge. This was bad. He had to get out, had to get away, before Hyunjin sobered up and recognized him--

As if he could hear Jisung’s thoughts, Hyunjin’s grip on him tightened, the barista’s voice barely a whisper. “Who are you, Han Jisung? What are you hiding?”

Jisung felt his heart stop. “There’s nothing--I’m not hiding anything!” He stammered, feeling Hyunjin’s dark gaze bore into his own. The blood on his hands were beginning to seep through his pants, and it took all of his willpower not to cry out in pain. There was blood on Jisung’s face, too; he could taste it trickling into his mouth with the rainwater, but he could only hope it was too dark -- and that Hyunjin was too far gone -- to see.

Just as abruptly as he had grabbed Jisung, Hyunjin let go of his shoulders, looking like he was either about to cry or throw up. The taller boy pushed past Jisung, shambling down the street and disappearing into the thick veils of rain. Jisung watched him go, a sick, hollow feeling in his gut.

Above him, the rain began to fall harder.

────────

You woke with a start to a crack of thunder, eyes snapping open and your chest heaving. Your clothes were soaked through with a cold sweat. You’d had a nightmare after going to bed early, but any recollection of it was already beginning to fade away.

There had been a killer in your dream, covered in hot, crimson blood and surrounded by endless fire. Screams and children wailing echoed in your ears, but no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t remember the killer’s face.

On your bedside table, your phone buzzed, sending your heartbeat into overdrive. Calm down. It was a dream -- just a dream. Shaking, you reached for your phone, reading the notification that had startled you. And just like that, you blood ran cold again.

DANGER

ACTIVE SERIAL KILLER AT LARGE

10:44 P.M. AN ATTACK HAS OCCURRED ON CAMPUS. POLICE BELIEVE THE PRIME SUSPECT IS THE PERPETRATOR OF THE MIROH HEIGHTS MURDERS. THE KILLER IS STILL ON CAMPUS.

MIROH HEIGHTS IS ENTERING LOCKDOWN.

REPORT ANY SUSPICIOUS PERSONS TO MHPD IMMEDIATELY. 

RESIDENTS STAY INDOORS.

You nearly dropped your phone, fumbling with it to check the time. 10:46 P.M. This was real. This was happening. Bits of your nightmare came back to you in hot flashes. A sudden burst of lightning and a rumble of thunder sent you burrowing underneath the covers, terrified tears beginning to form in your eyes. Pulling the comforter close, you pressed the Phone app and called the first person you could think of.

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

Be--

“Hello?”

You let out a breath you hadn’t realized you were holding as soon as Jisung’s familiar voice filled your ears. “I-I’m sorry,” you gasped, voice trembling uncontrollably, “did I wake you?” 

There was a long pause before Jisung finally answered. “No, of course not. Is everything alright?”

“I--I’m scared,” you mumbled, chewing on your lip. The sound of Jisung’s voice, and even his breathing, was already beginning to calm you down. “Did you -- did you get the alert too? There’s a s-serial killer on campus right now.”

Jisung’s legs had threatened to give way the moment he heard your voice, pressing his phone to his ear like a lifeline. Despite your voice sounding small and shaky, he felt his erratic heartbeat beginning to steady. He quickly skimmed over the lockdown notification, cursing underneath his breath. Shit. Breathing hard away from the receiver, he tried to sound as calm as possible when he brought it back towards his mouth. “Yeah, I just got it.”

Your ears strained, and you frowned -- you swore you could hear something that sounded like heavy rain coming from the other end of the line. “Are you...outside right now? Get home as soon as possible--”

“I’m home,” Jisung interrupted you, a small smile in his voice. “Bad service, yeah -- a lot of static. Probably the storm outside.” The lie tasted bittersweet on his tongue. His hair was drenched in water, dripping onto his face as he spoke. Even through the tinny phone, he felt a rush of warmth fill his hollow chest, the corners of his parched lips tugging upwards. He could almost see you curled up in blankets in your bed, hiding from the storm outside. 

No, he corrected himself with a pang, you weren’t hiding from the storm.

You were hiding from him.

Jisung unclenched his fists, broken glass falling from his palms and leaving half-moon shaped cuts in his skin. You’d called him the moment you felt scared. You had trusted him. Jisung felt the water droplets sting at his wounds, his hand feeling as though it were burning away. 

Who am I?

Was he the boy you loved, the one who made you laugh, the one who made you feel safe?

Or was he the depraved serial killer that sent everyone he loved running?

You heard Jisung clear his throat on the other line. “Listen, don’t be scared, okay? The killer, he -- he won’t hurt you.”

You laughed, just the sound making Jisung’s breath catch in his throat. “How do you know?”

Jisung tilted his head back, face to the sky, feeling the torrents of rain wash away the tears that had begun to well up in his eyes. With the hands of a wanted murderer, covered in blood that wasn’t his own, he pressed the receiver closer to his mouth, lips curling into a sad smile.

“I just do.”

[charmed-henry]

Shark Bait Oo Ha Ha | Heric

Previously on Baywatch... 

Baby There’s a Shark in the Water

Date: 20 May 2021 TW: None, other than some discussion of the attack

@maritimeericandersen

Henry and Eric make a plan.

HENRY

If only Eric were here. That was what Henry kept thinking throughout the attack. Eric would know what to do. And a part of Henry resented that, just a little bit, because this was such a clear example of why the Order needed him… but there was no time to dwell on that. People were avoiding the lake, sure, but they wouldn’t forever. Even with this creature undoubtedly lurking below the surface. Henry needed Eric on this, and fast.

Henry texted Eric to meet him by the gryphon statue after his last class, and he was relieved when Eric did show up. He didn’t waste any time with pleasantries. “You heard about what happened, right?” 

ERIC

Eric had not heard anything, actually. Like a man avoiding spoilers of the world cup he had gotten through without hearing a word about what had happened up at the lake. It hadn’t reached him during work or class or while he was walking around campus— probably due to his thick skull and lack of his own surroundings. 

So he didn’t really think anything of it when Henry texted. It seemed like a normal enough message with nothing to kick up a fuss about. He walked down from his dorm ten minutes from when Henry said he’d be finished and stood beside the statue, thankful for the sun despite the breeze that still held a chill. Eric looked up periodically from his phone and when Henry finally appeared he smiled, only for it to turn into a confused frown at Henry’s opener. 

“Er— no?” He shook his head, shifting his stance to a more alert position. What happened could have meant anything, good or bad. “What’d’ya mean?” 

HENRY

Henry groaned. He knew Eric was taking a break from the Order, and Henry respected that, in a sense, but to not have heard anything at all? What could possibly be so all-consuming in his life that--

Never mind. Henry knew it was the same sort of thing he used to get in trouble for during training, and part of how they became friends. Being daydreamers. What was important right now was to catch Eric up, not berate him.

“At the lake. Candace was attacked. By some sort of sea creature. She’s, er-- she’s okay now, but we didn’t catch the creature that did it, and it might still be lurking there. Waiting for its next victim. I need your help, Eric. I know you’ve… stepped back from the Order, but this sort of thing is exactly why I’ve been sent here. And I need your help,” Henry explained, desperation shining in his eyes. “We need to find out what that was. Until we do, the lake won’t be safe for anyone.”

ERIC

Now that was not what he had been expecting to come out of Henry’s mouth. At best, that he had proposed to his bird or something, at worst, that the Order had found out he was alive and was coming to actually kill him. 

But an actual ocean dweller? Here? In Swynlake? Eric knew he had come looking for answers, for a mermaid to give those to him, but he hadn’t actually been counting on finding one this far inland— let alone one bold enough to attack. They had to have known it would put a target on their back. 

“I’m glad she’s okay— thanks to you, I presume.” (Even though Henry had said we, but he was taking that to mean a general term for the people of Swynlake, not any one specific person.) He let out a breath, a hand coming up to brush over his mouth as he took a moment to think. 

“Of course, of course, yeah. Anything you need, mate.” Eric hadn’t done this in well over a year but he couldn’t imagine denying Henry. And this was the opportunity he had been looking for when he came here. If he could just talk to this thing, maybe all of this will have been worth it. “Did you get a look at it? Or Candace— did it try to drown her or was there an actual wound?” 

HENRY

Henry let out a sigh of relief. Even though he trusted Eric to have his back, sometimes he just felt like he didn’t know what Eric would do anymore. He had a whole life here, new friends and school and a new purpose-- and Henry did, too, in some ways, but at least he stayed on the lookout for opportunities to prove himself to the Order. He wasn’t sure if Eric cared as much as he did.

But no matter what, they would always be like brothers. And they would always be there for each other. Henry was sure of that, and he felt a bit silly for doubting. 

Then he remembered the scene and winced. It was painful to relive, to be honest. “Er… yes, it bit her in the leg. Seemed to be trying to drag her underwater, but Rose and I were able to fight it off.” Wait. Did Eric know about Rose? Was it okay to tell him about the Huntsclan? “She’s okay now. Got her in an ambulance right away and it ended up being not too deep of a wound. But I worry about what would happen if we hadn’t been there. And the lifeguard was absolutely useless.”

ERIC

Eric did not know about Rose, but Eric also didn’t know that Rose knew about them. Within the context of Henry’s story, he assumed she was just there willing to help out a friend in some serious distress and paid that detail little to no mind. He nodded along, eyebrows raising briefly at the mention of the lifeguard and huffed— sounded about right. Wasn’t like a magic friendly place like this was going to think to train their staff on things like this. They would just issue an apology after the fact and move on. 

“Then we’re probably not dealing with a siren.” They let their voice and the victim themselves do all the heavy lifting. It felt odd to be back in this mindset. He had not thought about hunting or training in well over a year and he didn’t know what it meant by how easy it was to return to this part of him. Eric hadn’t expected that it would have left him so quickly, it had been apart of his life longer than it hadn’t been, but still. Would he even be able to carve it out? Or would it always be there whether he wanted it or not?

“What about its flukes? Did you get a look at ‘em? Were they pointed like a fork, rounded, or erm— shaped kinda like a crescent moon?” He drew the shapes in the air with an index finger. It mattered to figure out if they were dealing with something that was shaped for speed or for marathon swimming. 

HENRY

Henry wished he had a better recollection of the scene as it had happened, but the whole thing was something of a blur. What had mattered the most was getting Candace to safety. This was why it was better to work with a team, Henry thought. Rose was there, of course, but she had been busy helping Candace. Once again, Henry wished Eric had been there…

But it was too late for that. Henry would just have to try and remember. “Er, it was a sort of pointed tail, two fins on the end, dark gray. Sort of tough-looking, like a shark, not the sort of shiny scales you would see on a siren. Does that help at all?” Henry looked at Eric hopefully.

ERIC

He nodded absently as he continued to think over the next course of action, but stopped when he caught sight of Henry’s expression. Eric reached out to give his shoulder a squeeze. “Hey, it was a high stakes situation. I’m just glad you managed to make it out of there, let alone remember what the bloody thing looked like. And you saved your friend before it could do any lasting damage. You did good, Henry.” 

Eric gave Henry’s shoulder a gentle shake before releasing him. “Any little detail helps. Like you said, from the sounds of it we’re probably dealing with one that comes from a deeper part of the waters. It’ll make it harder to spot, and if it’s built for speed a paddle boat won’t cut it.” 

They were going to be out favored going in if they took it on in the water. (On land was a different story, but the problem with that was identifying the slippery bastards while they pretended to be human.) “We’ll have to create a trap and draw it out again somehow. Hopefully it’ll come back to the water— assuming it ever left.” 

HENRY

This was the thing that Henry struggled with. Especially hearing it from Eric, seeing that encouraging look in his eyes, feeling the reassurance of Eric’s hand on his shoulder. Henry wouldn’t dare admit any kind of weakness to anyone in the Order… except Eric. So he wanted to take what Eric said at face value, to nod and smile and agree with him. But those images haunted Henry.

So he just nodded grimly instead, looking down at his hands. Better to push all of that emotion down, because Henry worried if he started to say something genuine, it would overpower him. Focus on the mission. Focus on the threat. Henry wasn’t going to let this happen again.

“A trap…” Henry repeated, trying to imagine what Eric meant. “With some sort of food? Or something else? I’m not using Candace as bait--” he added quickly, determined. “I’m not going to let anyone else get hurt. We’ll handle this the old-fashioned way, you and me. And maybe Rose, too, she knows what we’re dealing with.”

ERIC

“Jesus, Henry, what do you think I am? Some kind of lunatic? No, we aren’t going to use some poor girl as bait.” Eric scoffed, shaking his head like Henry had gone completely barking. Then he added, like it was obvious,“We’ll use me.” 

This time Eric caught on to Henry talking about Rose because erm— what? He let out a little huff of laughter, eyebrows coming together briefly as he gave Henry a look. 

“I don’t understand. Why would that matter?” A hand came up to scratch the back of his head before something dawned on him. The hand raked forward through his hair, moving to point at Henry when he pulled it back down. “I thought your girlfriend’s name was Ashleigh? Ginger, right? Or is that Candace? Or have they both—? Wait, I’m sorry, who’s Rose then? Are you—?” 

Eric’s eyes widened and he looked around them to make sure no one was close enough to be listening in (you know, now that the conversation was important to keep a secret) before lowering his voice and leaning forward. “Did you call it off? Or no? No judgement, I just never thought— I mean you were just so infatuated with erm— it was Ashleigh, wasn’t it?”   

HENRY

Henry was snapped out of his pensive funk by three ludicrous things that Eric had just said. One, that Eric intended to use himself as bait (??); two, that Ashleigh and Henry had broken up (???); and three, that Henry and Rose were somehow a couple? (????????). Henry stared at Eric in horror, not even sure where to begin.

“What? Eric, no-- I-- that’s-- just, no. Ashleigh and I are still together. And I really wouldn’t want to get her involved in this, it’s too dangerous. Rose is just a friend, she’s been working with the Order here in Swynlake. She’s part of a certain, er, sort of version of the Order from the States. And she’s a very good hunter, that’s the reason I suggested bringing her with us. Candace is-- never mind. Long story.” It would be too complicated to explain what was going on between Henry and Candace right now, considering Henry didn’t even really know where they stood.

He shook his head. “Anyway, if it’s alright with you, I think Rose should join us. But back to what you said, you want to use yourself as bait? Haven’t you had enough near-death experiences?”

ERIC

Eric stared back at Henry with a very dumbfounded look on his face as all of that explanation unfolded. He didn’t know which one was more bizarre, that the yanks had once again stolen from them or that they’d let women train with them— not because Eric had anything against it, but the Order was still being fuddy duddies about that. Also what was she here for if she was from America? Wasn’t that place like the wild west? Filled to the brim with Magicks that needed to be taken care of? 

“My bad. Sorry. Too many names to keep track of.” He blinked, frowning slightly to himself before shrugging it off. Well at least Henry wasn’t stepping out on his girlfriend. Eric had always thought him to be loyal so that version of Henry would have completely dismantled his perception of him. “If you trust her that’s good enough for me, mate. Just uh— make sure she’s on the page, yeah? About me and the whole I’m-not-actually-dead-but-don’t-tell-the-others-that.” 

Clearing his throat, and moving away from the topic of social drama he had no idea would turn out to be a minefield before stepping into it, Eric nodded. “It has to be me. I’m the one with the most experience with these sorts of things. And you’ll be there, so I’ve got nothing to worry about.”

HENRY

Henry gulped. Eric, like many members of the Order, tended to walk a line between “honorably brave” and “completely reckless.” He had a feeling that, if he were in Eric’s position, if this were Henry’s expertise, he would probably suggest the same thing.

“Fine,” Henry said grimly, recognizing that this was one of those situations training had prepared him for when he needed to do the dangerous thing. It would just have to be worth it. He would be there for backup after all, wouldn’t he? “I suppose you’re the expert here. Just tell me what you need me to do. As for Rose… I think if I explain the situation to her, she’ll keep it quiet. I’ve never mentioned you to her before, but I don’t know if the others have. So it’s probably best to come up with a cover story. Unless, of course, you’d prefer that I just leave out the fact that you were ever in the Order. Up to you.”

Honestly, Henry hated this. The secrecy and the lying. He still felt guilty about not telling the older guys about Eric. Being in the Order meant constant secrecy, but you were supposed to be completely honest and trusting with your fellow Princes. But Henry needed to protect Eric by any means necessary. So if this was what it took, fine. Didn’t mean Henry wasn’t a little annoyed about it, though.

ERIC

Eric, too, was tired of all the lying and sneaking around. The phone Ollie had given him was a blessing but also a curse considering how easy it was to go scrolling along social media. The amount of times he’d almost accidentally liked something or hit the wrong thing when he fumbled the phone was one too many. Imagine the panic Grim would go through seeing a notification that Eric had liked his most recent post. 

“No, that’d just make her wonder why you got me involved besides feeding me to it. Plus, if we’re going to do this together, can’t go in first thing lying to her. Then she wouldn’t care for what I had to say. No, we’ll just tell her the truth. I’m Eric, I faked my death for reasons, and no one can know I’m alive. Or in Swynlake.” He shrugged, thinking it wasn’t that big of a deal since he and Henry had been doing it for months now. Again, if Henry trusted this girl and gave her his good word then Eric figured it would be fine. “I seriously doubt they’ve talked about me. It’s been well over a year— old news.”

He rubbed his finger under his lower lip as he tried to think of what supplies they needed versus what they could realistically scrounge up. “Alright, I’ll work on getting a net big enough for this and can probably take whatever meat the market’s throwing away for bait. In the meantime, you get together whatever weapons you’re comfortable using and a bloody good light for this. Oh and— clear your night time schedule. There’s no telling when or if this thing’ll be back in the water anytime soon.”

HENRY

Henry wondered if maybe they should have gotten Tom involved. He knew about sea creatures, and Henry was a little less worried about him getting seriously endangered by this sort of thing. Not that Henry trusted Eric any less, of course, but the fact remained that Eric had almost died once. Henry still got worried about losing him again. Tom seemed older, more sure of himself.

But getting Tom involved meant getting everyone else in the Order involved. Exposing Eric’s identity. And, truthfully, part of the reason Henry was involving Eric in this was because he hoped it might remind Eric why being in the Order was worth it. Maybe he would come back on his own, reveal himself to the other guys and rejoin the Order. But in order for that to happen, Henry had to let him stay in hiding for now.

“Right,” Henry said seriously. “I’ll tell Rose as much as she needs to know and we’ll work on getting some weapons together. She’s really good with a knife, I’ll tell you that… When are we doing this? I have a SDG concert this weekend, and Ashleigh and I like to go out to dinner at least once a week, but other than that, I’m free.”

ERIC

He scratched at his temple, one foot kicking out to lean his weight against while he listened to Charming go on about concerts and dates. It almost made him want to give a random day and then go off and do this on his own. Not because he was annoyed with Henry having a life but because Henry had a life and people and things to look forward to. What Eric wanted to do (capture this thing, not kill on sight) wasn't the safest bet or their protocall. If things didn’t go the way he wanted well— he was already dead. 

But he wouldn’t do that to Henry. After all, he had come to Eric with this and not the three greatest Prince’s the Order had as he knew that this could be an opportunity for Eric to get the answers he had been searching for. It would feel like a bigger betrayal than having pretended to be lost at sea. He would just have to make sure that he had Henry’s back just as much as Henry had his. 

Eric smiled, nodding when Henry had finished. “Yeah, alright, Mr. Popular. We’ll schedule around you then. Whenever you haven’t got something going on, we’ll go stake out the lake to see if it’s out there. In the meantime, just be on the lookout for anyone exhibiting the signs. Now that there’s confirmation one’s here— could be anyone.” 

[keeperofhounds]

Minority Report (Quirkless)

Hello, I am a college student studying abroad in Japan. I would like to share the similarities and differences between the United States and Japan. This is to expand and teach others about how Japan is like to people from the outside.

This story was inspired by @aconstantstateofbladerunner who wanted a story that expanded on the world of My Hero Academia. Note this story takes from modern day Japan, but as an American it might not be entirely accurate. 

Recently I bore witness to an event that shook me to the core, there was a student. Normally this wouldn’t matter if I were to describe him, I would go so far as to say that he looked like he had a bad attitude. You could see it with the way he carried himself and glared at everything as if it all personally offended him. Yet, I don’t want to focus on him, that student will be mentioned later. What I want to focus on is another student who was at that event on the same day.

At first glance you can tell the other student is nothing special. In fact he’s very plain with nothing special about him. I would even say that he might be shy with how he held himself, trembling, looking at the floor when the heroes were talking to him. Not that I blamed him those talks were actually scolding.

You see dear reader, this boy did something crazy, he went running towards a villain, and from what I heard that same boy was quirkless. Let me give you some context on what was happening before this kid came running into the scene, throwing his backpack and clawing desperately to give a victim breathing air.

Earlier in the day at around 3:30 pm (roughly the time when schools let out) a villain with a sludge like quirk robbed a store. Luckily the occupants at the time were not seriously injured after the villain left, in a stroke of luck All Might, the symbol of peace happened to be in the area and gave chase. At some point All Might lost the villain in the sewer system which can be described as long winded and confusing, which allowed the villain to find a hostage.

After some research after the story broke the hostage's name is Bakugo Katsuki, he is a middle schooler with a quirk that allows explosions to be set off from his hands. When he was caught, the student tried to get away as any reasonable would try to do in this situation, this in turn caused complications. The heroes were unable to find a way to extract with the sludge villains clutches.

I’m not going to focus on them, what I want to focus is on the other boy. Despite all my investigation I could not find the name of the boy in any publications about the incident. There was one thing that stood out however and it was the boys status. He was quirkless.

At first I was surprised, but then I was impressed, not unlike a blind person learning to play the piano, or a deaf person learning to sing. Although these might be poor comparisons given the situation it did answer some questions I had in mind, but also bring some more questions. I finally knew why the heroes were scolding him, but I also noticed they were praising the other boy.

Not to rub salt on a wound or blame the victim, but the boy made things worse not only himself, but the people around him. Not to mention the heroes stood frozen as a child ran into the fray doing only enough to give another time to breathe. It’s a small thing, but it mattered the most.

Knowing this, I would have expected people in the area to talk about what happened. News stations talking about how this kid brought enough time for All Might to swoop in and save the day, but nothing. They talked about the victim, they talked about All Might, they talked about the villain, but they never talked about the other boy. 

What happened? In the United States the local news stations are always about bringing up local heroes, even if it’s as simple as inviting a stranger into their home for thanksgiving after a mistaken phone call (the stranger accepted), but nothing in Japan. It was as if the other boy was erased from the narrative all together.

I was simple to figure out what happened, the people involved were embarrassed. I couldn’t fathom about what made this kid different until I really thought about it. While in Japan I noticed an unusual tell when it came to people introducing themselves, they always said their names, and the types of quirks they had. This was especially true with children when my co-worker brought them to work.

It really started to make me wonder, but I didn’t want to make any assumptions. I knew that Japan had some issues when it came to how they did things. I know the United States still has issues when it comes to descrimination and racism, but when you really look around there is something clearly wrong. In Japan not once have I ever seen or heard of any people without a quirk.

I asked a few of my co-workers in the college what was up with that, and they told me that they didn’t think that quirkless was still even a thing in this country. Which made me wonder even more, I didn’t like how flippant the dismissal was from my friend. Another stated that the hate speech on the internet they have found in chat rooms has increased.

According to NGO reports, incidents of hate speech against minorities and their defenders, in particular, on the internet, grew. The national law on hate speech applies only to discriminatory speech and behavior directed at those who are not of Japanese heritage and is limited to educating and raising public awareness among the general public against hate speech; it does not carry penalties.

Further research shows that “Quirklessness” is a disability in Japan, with similar protections to any other disability by law. The Basic Act for Persons with Disabilities prohibits discrimination against persons with physical, intellectual, mental, or other disabilities affecting body and mind and bars infringement of their rights and interests on the grounds of disability in the public and private sectors. The law requires the public sector to provide reasonable accommodations and the private sector to make best efforts in employment, education, access to health care, or the provision of other services. The laws do not stipulate remedies for persons with disabilities who experience discriminatory acts nor do they establish penalties for noncompliance. Other law mandates that the government and private companies hire minimum proportions (2 percent) of persons with disabilities (including mental disabilities) or be fined. Disability rights advocates claimed that some companies preferred to pay the fine rather than hire persons with disabilities

Nonetheless, persons with disabilities faced limited access to some public-sector services. Abuse of persons with disabilities was a serious concern. Persons with disabilities around the country experienced abuse by family members, care-facility employees, or employers. Private surveys indicated discrimination against and sexual abuse of, women with disabilities. While some schools provided inclusive education, children with disabilities generally attended specialized schools.

Mental health professionals criticized as insufficient the government’s efforts to reduce the stigma of mental illness and inform the public that depression and other mental illnesses are treatable and biologically based.

As I write this article, I am appalled at the complete lack of protections and descrimination faced by the minority. It’s as if they don’t exist in the eyes of the public and the government. There this one article written by a reporter, who covered a murder, but some how they spun it to make it sound like it was the victims fault. The victim was an elderly man who was attacked while on his way home with some groceries. Apparently there were many witnesses, but no one was willing to come forward.

Interviews stated that people assumed that someone else would help, that a hero would come to save the day. Others just didn’t care, assuming that the injuries weren’t as bad they looked. The perpetrators were never found and this murder became a cold case. To me this is clearly a hate crime, but to them it’s nothing, but another statistic in a growing trend.

I feel pity for that boy who ran, but at the same time maybe it’s better if people don’t know he’s quirkless. I bet life is difficult, I just hope that someone else see’s a good kid and sees what he has other than what he doesn’t. We need more people like him, because some people are too busy being full of themselves. 

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Sections of the text is not my own but taken from https://www.state.gov/reports/2018-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/japan/ (This in regards to italic passages)

If anyone has ideas on what should be brought up next, please leave a message. Not to mention any other reliable sources of information about Japan.