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imagionationstation · 1 year

Text

So here’s what went down…

Ah, yes.

The infamous “Splinter passes on the mantle of Sensei” scene.

Possibly the most misinterpreted scene in the history of 2012turtle scenes. (Perhaps I shall get to the others someday.)

I’ve always assumed that the verdict for this scene was the same for all, and I never knew people hated, or even disliked, Splinter for his choices in this until recently. And it has been eating away at me, because I don’t think ya’ll understand what’s going on here.

Maybe you do, but…

Can I point out exactly what I saw happen here?

Yeah?

Thanks. 🤎

1: Splinter is not sleeping and is ‘distant’, making Leo worried enough to inquire about his health. He’s clearly spending every second agonizing over what’s coming, and meditation is probably his only solace from the burden of his fears. (I do the same thing when I’m anxious. Distract and distance, it helps me feel a sense of- control, I guess.) 2: Splinter does not address Leo’s question. He’s already tried to tell Leo what was going on before this, and now he wants to focus on what he feels is important. His family. He immediately changes the subject (limping in a way that has me suddenly concerned because GUYS HE HURT AND OLD AND GOING TO FIGHT FOR HIS LIFE PLEASE NO-) and asks Leo why he made him leader. 3: Leo awkwardly repeats what he said, “Because I asked to be… You said it wasn’t because of my skills…” (THAT’S ONE INTENSE OF A WEIGHT TO CARRY IF YOU REALLY THINK ABOUT IT, THE HECK-) and Splinter corrects, “I said that only to temper your ego at the time. I knew even when you were a small boy, that you would one day grow up to be the leader of this team.” -Can I just add that he’s not saying this literally. He’s the cryptic, wise, know-it-all sensei. He’s not saying, “I planned to make you soldiers and for you to lead the fight”. He’s saying, “You have always been the one to teach, protect, and lead your brothers, and there was absolutely no one else as perfect for the job.”

Seriously. Lookit baby Leo guarding them while daddy’s away. 💙💙

4: And then he throws everyone watching through a loop: “And when I pass on, to be like a father as well.” And just like us, Leo’s got a whole lot of “EXCUSE ME, WHAT?!” going down.

5: But Splinter’s going stay his cryptic self by clearing no air. (Okay, but let’s think about WHY for a moment. We know our leader in blue by now. If Leo knew exactly what he knew, martyr instincts would kick in hard core, and he would do everything it takes to make sure their father survives. And Master Splinter isn’t going to sit here and let Leo go on a suicide quest. From his POV- He’s old. He’s lived his life. He can try to accept his own death. He will not accept Leo’s.)

6: Splinter imparts this saying that I love with everything in me. “Leonardo. If I can only impart one piece of wisdom that will remain with you forever…” (Ergo, Dude, this is Important. Pay attention to what Imma about to say) “Remember. Giving guidance to your brothers and friends does not come from here…”

“It comes from here…”

THIS IS DEEP, YO. IT SAYS SO MUCH AND IT’S SO SIMPLE-

And people are MAD AT HIM FOR THIS?!

Sorry, sorry- emotions. I’m breathing. I’m breeaaathing… Okay. Yes, I get the gist of the arguments. ‘Splinter made Leo head of the household and that was a terrible thing for him to do. Leo’s too young for that responsibility, he already has the weight of being leader on his shoulders, and that’s a burden his mourning heart can’t carry. It’s cruel for him to do such a thing.’

Or-

And-

@tmntforeverinmyheart and @stardustartist, everyone’s opinion is built off of observations, beliefs, and their own POV on events, and every opinion matters. Thank you for yours. 💚

Now onto mine-

I don’t know what this quote from Splinter means to you guys, but to me, it’s his way of trying to fix things!

I think he finally realized that he done messed up. He knows that he put Leo in a position of ‘I am leader, and mission always comes first’. He’s had plenty of time to see the damage he’s done, and he’s worried of what will come off his family if he doesn’t fix it.

Leo is too far into his head. He isn’t thinking with his heart- “what will happen to my family with me gone?”. He’s thinking with his head, “lives are at stake and I’m the leader- self sacrifice it is.”

Every mission, every step, every choice is a plan, and his life is simply a factor in it. A pawn to be thrown away to complete the important task. It doesn’t hold meaning because of what Splinter told him all the way back in season one, and his father is finally realizing it. (ABOUT FREAKING TIME-)

He’s not telling him “don’t think”.

He’s saying, “Think another way.”

I feel you, @sr200916. A friend of mine said this exact same thing, and I wholeheartedly agree. And here’s some depth into why.

Kids without parents attach themselves to role models. Mother figures, father figures- kids need to be guided, and led, and hugged, and need that one person who can say “it’s okay” and magically the world is a little less dark.

And they’re just. KIDS. They left the sewers three/four years ago! Everything is still so wide and new and confusing and there’s still so much they haven’t learned or experienced- they’re kids.

And yes. Leo is a kid too. But who else are they supposed to turn to?

Karai?

She’s not a parents. She’s gone from enemy, to somewhat friend, to sister-in-college-who-drops-by-sometimes. She’s living her own life. They aren’t going to see her as anything more than their equal. Much less look upon her as a guardian.

April and Casey?

Best friends/honorary siblings. They aren’t going to fit that role.

Mutanimals? Leatherhead? Bishop?

Friends. Equals. People that they trust. But not anyone that they’re immediately going to lean on as a guardian. They need someone who they already look up to and trust to lead and guide them. They need someone who already has their well-being as a number one priority. They need someone who they can feel comfortable going to talk to when he can’t be there to lend advice.

-And I know what some of you are still thinking. But what about Leo?! He’s just a kid too!

And, hey, I’m not arguing. He absolutely is, and in a perfect, fair world, he would continue to have an adult to teach and guide him- but their world is neither perfect nor fair.

All his life, he’s had two solid goals: Make sensei proud. Protect my brothers.

He’s seen as the most mature brother for a reason. He’s had to grow up in a world where finishing school and getting/keeping a job isn’t his main concern. For about three years, he’s spent every night making sure that his brothers stay alive. In fact, he starts doing it almost unconsciously- taking responsibility of his brothers and their missions without filling Splinter in, as shown in Annihilation: Earth! Part 1, when he’s laying out the plans, and Splinter straight up asks, “What is going on?” and Leo brushes him off, essentially just telling him that there’s trouble, but they have it covered.

Splinter is speechless for a moment, but then consents, telling Leo that he’ll be near the cheese phone if they need him.

This is a huge change if you really think about it, and done very subtley. They show us how their relationship has changed- Splinter no longer has the control to give the okay. Leo no longer feels like he needs Splinter guidance or permission. He’s grown up, and he’s leading with a firm hand, just as he was born to do.

And Leo also has experience raising his brothers- who do you think was acting sensei while they were in space?

Fugtoid was Donnie’s mentor, sure, but it was Leo who the brothers turned to when things got out of hand. It was Leo who had to talk sense into them, who always has the last word, who seemed on edge 24/7 as the season progressed, seeing the dangers space held and sending away his team when the evil space station was sent to go boom.

Whether fans like it or not, a leader, a sensei, is simply who Leo is.

There’s a reason he always gets heated and offended when he thinks his place is being challenged-

Leo thrives under that sense of control, and his brother thrive knowing that the control lies in someone else’s hands.

Now, with their father gone, it’ll lie in the hands of the brother that they trust with it most (whether Raph admits it or not) because he’s proven himself time and time again to be able to handle it.

Splinter isn’t stupid. He knows his boys. He knows exactly who Leo’s younger brothers are going to turn to after he’s gone for good this time, and he needs Leo to realize this too. Perhaps he hopes the burden will be easier to bear if it’s given slowly, instead of chucked out of nowhere.

Splinter was not purposefully ‘parentifying’ Leo. There’s a reason he waited so long. Maybe he was never going to say anything at all. Maybe he was struggling with the choice, and when Leo walked in to ask if he was okay, he made a last-minute decision.

Splinter knew it was going to happen. Leo was going to become head of the household, whether or not he said anything about it. It’s how their family dynamic always shapes out- there’s a reason the fans call Leo a mother hen!

It was always going to happen. So instead of standing by and letting fate play out, Splinter decided to interviene.

He wasn’t putting the burden on Leo’s shoulder. He was reassuring his son that he could handle it. He was giving advice on how to take care of his brothers. He was trying to help, not to hurt.

Obviously Leo is going to end up hurting. Obviously, it’s going to be hard. Obviously, it’s going to be a lot to adapt too. For Splinter’s sake- their father is going to die!

But his brothers will be there for him. He may be acting sensei, but we’re shown that they have his back. (Raph’s talk with Mikey on the rooftop is a very prominent piece of proof.)

Splinter knows that no one else can do the job better, and by voicing that he’s sensei, no one else should be able to take Leo’s family away from him. At the end of the day, as the eldest, he will be the one who bears the Hamato legacy (remember, Karai is busy shaping the Foot legacy anew), but unlike Yoshi, Leo will not be alone. He’ll have family and friends to back him up when things get difficult.

It’s a heavy title, but one that Leo is ready to carry.

Except… For one pretty major flaw. A flaw Splinter encouraged, and a flaw that he knows cannot stay.

The martyr complex.

That, is what I believe the “use your heart and not your head” phrase is meant to squash. And I believe with everything in me that it does. Leo’s life is no longer just a chess game. If this pawn doesn’t come home from a mission, his team suffers. His brothers suffer.

He is no pawn, and he can’t afford to see himself as one. He cannot afford to treat his life like it’s expendable. There’s more at stake then just the mission, and deep down in his heart, he knows that. He’s no longer just a leader. He is a father, and he has a family to live for.

And… Can I just add that Splinter’s not just up and abandoning him?

When Leo doesn’t know what to do next after his father is gone- Splinter is there. When it looks like he’s been defeated by the Shredder- Splinter is there. When they face their first real threat since his passing, and Leo is in the dojo struggling with what to do- Splinter is there.

“Leonardo, I know you feel the weight of leading your family, but remember, I am always with you.”

I mean- come on! Even in the afterlife, he’s looking over him!

He knows the burden on his son’s shoulders, and he’s come to help and warn to relieve it, if only a little.

Should he also have appeared to his others sons? ABSOLUTELY!

Could he…?

Well…

Don’t get me wrong- They’d have every right to be upset if they find out that Splinter appeared to Leo and not to them. But I’m sure there was a good reason- Leo mentions “meditating for weeks” after his father’s death at one point, so his spiritual strength, place in front of the altar, and need to speak to his father could have urged down “Mr. Higher Spiritual Plane”.

That’s why Donnie couldn’t see him when he walked in. This wasn’t a ghost doing his own thing, this was a spirit summoned down by Leo. When Donnie startled him, Leo lost concentration, and Splinter disappeared.

But, it’s still going to hurt, knowing he appeared to Leo and not them…

And should he have told his other sons that he was going to die?

….No. Just, no.

For one: He only hinted at the fact with Leo because he felt it was necessary to pass on certain information, to help him prepare for what’s coming. He didn’t give him specifics, no matter how much he begged.

If he told any of the brothers- Donnie would not rest until he pressed him for every ounce of information, Mikey would not have been able to handle the thought of something happening to Splinter, and Raph probably would have died that night on the rooftop trying to stop the prediction from becoming reality.

All of them would have wanted to stay with him after the warehouse fire, and I believe Splinter separated them for a reason.

As the youngest brothers, Donnie and Mikey needed to be shielded from memories that their analytical and photographic minds would not have been able to handle. It would have broken them to see their father die.

Leonardo would spent the rest of his days hating himself for being there and not preventing it. He’d drown in the guilt and fear- because if he couldn’t doing anything, how can he be certain that he’ll be able to keep his brothers safe? How can he be trusted with their lives when he couldn’t even save their father?

This way- Leo knows he’s been sent away, and he knows Splinter’s the reason that he couldn’t protect him. The blame isn’t as strong because he wasn’t there, and that was Splinter’s fault. It’s easier to manage when there’s another to pass on the blame.

Splinter didn’t let him protect him, and by doing so, protected Leo.

Now, Splinter’s sons would have put up a fuss or gotten suspicious if one of them didn’t go with him, so he made an educated choice.

Raphael is the strongest of the brothers. Out of all of them, he’s the most likely to mentally and physically survive the battle. He doesn’t let guilt swallow him like Leo does- he turns it into anger, and uses that anger to defend his family better next time. Out of all of them, Splinter hoped that Raph would be able to handle the memories, and the show basically tells us that he does- his maturity to accepting Leo as sensei was both shocking and relieving.

Now, I’m not saying every choice made here was inherently a good one. There’s a lot of choices made in Splinter’s life that are questionable- but every choice he makes is only in his sons’s best interest. At one point, Splinter was going to run the last of his clan. He was raised to prepare for war. His sensei could have groomed him with a leader mentality, and the notion to never put his life over the sake of his clan’s, since he was supposed to lead them one day.

He’s a single dad living in the sewers who doesn’t understand the internet and fears human contact- the only way he knows to raise his children are based off experiences with his own family, and his culture. Making Leo a martyr was a mistake, and he sees that now.

So to summarize:

No one was being made a parent. Leo is a verified mother hen, and he will lead. Period. It was always going to happen, and Splinter was trying to help lead the way. He probably would have given a lot more advice had his other children not interrupted.

Yes, he made a huge mistake years ago, but now he’s trying to fix that with a simply offering of advice. Follow your heart, not your mind, because at the end of the day, the heart will always lead you and your brothers home.

No, the entire family should not have known. They would have done everything in their power to stop what could not be prevented, and that could have gotten them killed. Splinter would never allow that. Their time was not up. They would not needlessly suffer because of him. Not his boys.

Just a side note: Taking care of his brothers might not be the worst thing for our mourning boy. Not only does it give him something to focus on, but, as an older sibling, I know it sometimes brings me comfort to comfort a young sibling. Maybe it’s some buried instinct in my being to keep them happy and healthy taking over, maybe it’s because I have a tiny bit of control in the moment, or maybe it’s a feeling of accomplishment that helps battle against the aching hurt eating away at me- but it helps. It really does.

It’s not like their infants, or little kids. His brother’s can fend for themselves, and they understand their place in the world much better than they did years ago. They can protect each other.

In reality, the only thing that will change is the hovering knowledge that someone is missing.

Holy chalupa, I just wrote an essay…

Back to the episode!

The rest of this isn’t too deep. So have some reactions:

“I don’t understand… You’re fine, father-”

🎶I can see what’s happenin’ here🎶

HE CALLED HIM DADDY IN A DOJO SETTING AFTER ASSURING HIM THAT HE WAS WELL!

POOR BABY BLUE KNOWS BUT IS STUCK IN DENIAL- 😭❤️‍🩹

“Is there something you’re not telling me?”

Leo, he is trying to tell you! And he could have! If not for literally MILLISECONDS after he asks, Mikey interrupting. Splinter might have clarified! He might have said more! Hinted how he knows! Said he was so proud! Given advice! Cleared the air! THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS-

Ah, these poor naive boys and their bad timing….

Okay, but like, how am I supposed to be annoyed at these faces. AND WHY IS RAPH OH-SO JOYOUSLY COPYING MIKEY- AND DONNIE WHAT IS THAT DEAD-EYED STARE- 🤣🤣🤣

YA’LL ARE MESSING UP MY EMOTIONS IN THIS FREAKING SCENE, YO

I’M TRYING TO BE SERIOUS IN THE MOMENT

BUT EVERY TIME THEY POP UP- 🤣

Okay, but is Splinter immediately taking the invitation to spend time with his sons because he knows that he doesn’t have much longer not the most wholesome thing ever?

He can’t continue this talk with the brothers present, and they’re clearly excited to go, so why not attend and make a few more bright memories before he’s gone?

Also, I deem it illegal for rock music to be this ominous-

I blame Leo for looking despondently after them and triggering bad things are about to happen emotions. Poor blue boi.

Anyway

Splinter is not a bad father. He is imperfect, but every choice he makes is for his sons’ good. They are his world. Their lives will come before his every time, even if that means giving heartbreaking advice before he has to be taken from them. He only wants what’s best for his family.

They are his sons. He is their papa.

And that’s all there is too it. 💚❤️💜💙🧡💚

I freaking love this show…

Thanks for reading!! I did my best to double-check everything that I wasn’t sure about, so that I could be as accurate as possible! Even if I didn’t change stubborn minds, I hope I gave you guys some things to think about!

Every opinion matters! Thanks for checking out mine!

714 notes · View notes

thesiltverses · 1 year

Note

I don’t know who types up the ask answers on this blog but to whoever’s reading this: how do you all feel about being alive and sentient? What keeps you going, what purpose propels you through this chaotic void? What do you think (or hope) waits for you after your inevitable end? What do you think constitutes a life well lived?

I'm going to answer this in the most wayward and stupidly overlong manner possible, because the previous ask had me thinking about puppets, and I was already mid-way through writing up a book recommendation that's semi-relevant to your questions.

Everyone (but especially people who've enjoyed The Silt Verses and all the folks on Tumblr who loved Piranesi by Susanna Clarke) ought to seek out Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban.

Riddley Walker is a wild and woolly story set in post-apocalyptic Kent, where human society has (d)evolved into a Bronze Age collective of hunter-gatherer settlements. Dogs, apparently blaming us for our crimes against the world, have become our predators, hunting us through the trees. Labourers kill themselves unearthing ancient machinery that they cannot possibly understand.

A travelling crowd of thugs led by a Pry Mincer collect taxes and attempt to impose themselves upon those around them with a puppet-show - the closest possible approximation of a TV show - that tells a mangled story of the world's destruction, featuring a Prometheus-esque hero called Eusa who is tempted by the Clevver One into creating the atomic bomb.

Riddley himself, a twelve-year-old folk hero in-the-making surrounded by strange portents, ends up sowing the seeds of rebellion and change by becoming a conduit for the anti-tutelary anarchic madness (one apparently buried in our collective unconscious) of Punch 'n' Judy.

It's a book in love with twisted reinterpretation, the subjectivity of interpretation, buried or forbidden truths coming back to light (the opening quote is a curious allegory about reinvention and cyclical change from the extra-canonical Gospel of Thomas, which is a good joke and mission statement on a couple levels at once) and human beings somehow stumbling into forms of wisdom or insight through clumsy and nonsensical attempts to make sense of a world that is simply beyond them.

It rocks.

The book starts like this:

On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen. He dint make the groun shake nor nothing like that when he come on to my spear he wernt all that big plus he lookit poorly. He done the reqwyrt he ternt and stood and clattert his teef and made his rush and there we wer then. Him on 1 end of the spear kicking his life out and me on the other end watching him dy. I said, 'Your tern now my tern later.'

Riddley's devolved language - a trick which has been nicked/homaged by many other works, most notably Cloud Atlas and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome - is a masterwork choice which may seem offputting or overwhelming at first, but which has its own brutal poetry and cadence to it, and ultimately which makes us slow down as readers and unpick the wit, puns, double-meanings and playful themes buried in line after line.

(Even those first five sentences get us thinking about cyclical change, ritual and myth in opposition to the dissatisfactions of reality, and 'tern' to paradoxically indicate a rebellious change in direction but also an obedient acceptance of inevitable death.)

In one of my favourite passages in literature and a statement of thought that means a lot to me, Riddley has been smoking post-coital weed with Lorna, a 'tel-woman', who unexpectedly declares her belief in a kind of irrational, monstrous Logos that lives in us, wears us like clothes, and drives us onwards for its own purpose:

'You know Riddley theres some thing in us it dont have no name.' I said, 'What thing is that?' She said, 'Its some kynd of thing it aint us but yet its in us. Its lookin out thru our eye hoals...it aint you nor it dont even know your name. Its in us lorn and loan and shelterin how it can.' 'Tremmering it is and feart. It puts us on like we put on our cloes. Some times we dont fit. Some times it cant fynd the arm hoals and it tears us a part. I dont think I took all that much noatis of it when I ben yung. Now Im old I noatise it mor. It dont realy like to put me on no mor. Every morning I can feal how its tiret of me and readying to throw me a way. Iwl tel you some thing Riddley and keap this in memberment. What ever it is we dont come naturel to it.' I said, 'Lorna I dont know what you mean.' She said, 'We aint a naturel part of it. We dint begin when it begun we dint begin where it begun. It ben here befor us nor I dont know what we are to it. May be weare jus only sickness and a feaver to it or boyls on the arse of it I dont know. Now lissen what Im going to tel you Riddley. It thinks us but it dont think like us. It dont think the way we think. Plus like I said befor its afeart.' I said, 'Whats it afeart of?' She said, 'Its afeart of being beartht.'

While Hoban is, I think, deeply humanistic to his bones and even something of a wayward optimist, the notion of human beings as helpless and ignorant vessels, individual carriers - puppets, if you like - for an unknowable and awful inhuman power-in-potentia and life-drive that lacks a true shape or intent beyond its own continued survival (even when that means destroying us or visiting us with agonising atrophy in the process) conjures up the pessimism of Thomas Ligotti, another big influence on our work and a dude who was really into his marionettes-as-metaphor.

Let's go to him now for his opinion on the thing that lives beneath our skin. Thomas?

Through the prophylactic of self-deception, we keep hidden what we do not want to let into our heads, as if we will betray to ourselves a secret too terrible to know… …(that the universe is) a play with no plot and no players that were anything more than portions of a master drive of purposeless self-mutilation. Everything tears away at everything else forever. Nothing knows of its embroilment in a festival of massacres… Nothing can know what is going on.

Curiously, both Ligotti and Riddley Walker have appeared in the music of dark folk band Current 93, whose track In The Heart Of The Wood And What I Found There directly homages the novel and ends with the repeated words,

"All shall be well," she said But not for me

These words, in turn, hearken back to Kafka's* famous reported conversation with Max Brod:

'We are,' he said, 'nihilistic thoughts, suicidal thoughts that rise in God's head.' This reminded me of the worldview of the gnostic: God as an evil demiurge, the world as his original sin. 'Oh no', he said, 'our world is only a bad, fretful whim of God, a bad day.' 'So was there - outside of this world that we know - hope?' He smiled: 'Oh, hope - there is plenty. Infinite hope, just not for us."

So, we walk on.

We carry this thing that's riding on our backs, endlessly bonded to it, feeling its weight more and more with every passing day, unable to turn to look at it. Buried truths come briefly to life, and are hidden from us again. Perhaps they weren't truths at all. We couldn't stand to look the truth directly in the eyes in any case.

If there is hope, it's for the thing that looks out from our eyeholes, which thinks us but cannot think like us. We'll never get to where we're going, and the thing will never be born. There's no hope for it. Perhaps we don't want it to win anyway. It's nothing, and the key to everything.

The Jesus from the Gospel of Thomas says:

'When you see your own likeness, you rejoice. But when you see the visions that formed you and existed before you, which do not perish and which do not become visible - how much then will you be able to bear?'

Kafka, writing to his father, begins by expressing the inexpressibility of his own divine terror:

You asked me why I am afraid of you. I did not know how to answer - partly because of my fear, partly because an explanation would require more than I could make coherent in speech…even in writing, the magnitude of the causes exceeds my memory and my understanding.

Kafka concludes that while he cannot ever truly explain himself, and that the accusations in his letter are neat subjectivities that fail to account for the messiness of reality, perhaps 'something that in my opinion so closely resembles the truth…might comfort us both a little and make it easier for us to live and die.'**

It doesn't bring comfort to Kafka, whose diarised remarks both before and after the 1919 letter make it clear that he views his relationship with the things (people) that birthed him as an endless entrapment that prevents him from attaining any kind of self-actualisation or even comfort, since he cannot escape their influence or remember a time before them:

I was defeated by Father as a small boy and have been prevented since by pride from leaving the battleground, despite enduring defeat over and over again.

It's as if I wasn't fully born yet...as if I was dissolubly bound to these repulsive things (my parents).*** The bond is still attached to my feet, preventing them from walking, from escaping the original formless mush. That's how it is sometimes.

Samuel Beckett returns again and again (aptly) to this pursuit of a state of true humanity and final understanding that is at once fled and unrecoverable, yet to be born, never to be born, never-existed, endlessly to be pursued, pointless to pursue. From the astonishing end sequence of The Unnameable:

alone alone, the others are gone, they have been stilled, their voices stilled, their listening stilled, one by one, at each new-com- ing, another will come, I won’t be the last. I’ll be with the others. I’ll be as gone, in the silence, it won’t be I, it’s not I, I’m not there yet. I’ll go there now. I’ll try and go there now, no use trying, I wait for my turn, my turn to go there, my turn to talk there, my turn to listen there, my turn to wait there for my turn to go, to be as gone, it’s unending, it will be unending, gone where,where do you go from there, you must go somewhere else, wait somewhere else, for your turn to go again

I’m not the first, I won’t be the first, it will best me in the end, it has bested better than me, it will tell me what to do, in order to rise, move, act like a body endowed with despair, that’s how I reason, that’s how I hear myself reasoning, all lies, it’s not me they’re calling, not me they’re talking about, it’s not yet my turn, it’s someone else’s turn, that’s why I can’t stir, that’s why I don’t feel a body on me, I’m not suffering enough yet, it’s not yet my turn, not suffering enough to be able to stir, to have a body, complete with head, to be able to understand, to have eyes to light the way

From Thomas' Jesus:

When you make the two one, and you make the inside as the outside and the outside as the inside and the above as the below, and if male and female become a single unity which lacks 'masculine' and 'feminine' action, when you grow eyes where eyes should be and hands where hands should be and feet where feet should stand and the true image in its proper place, then shall you enter heaven.

Tom's Jesus makes a particularly Gnostic habit of both insisting that the hidden will be revealed and demonstrating the impossibility of attaining a state where the hidden ever can be revealed. Contrary to C.S. Lewis, we will never have faces with which to gaze upon the lost divine and the mysteries that shaped us, and crucially, as Christ puts it, we would not be able to bear the sight of ourselves if we did.

We will never become the thing that's riding on our backs.

Jesus again:

The disciples ask Jesus, 'Tell us how our end shall be.' Jesus says, 'Have you found the beginning yet, you who ask after the end? For at the place where the beginning is, there shall be the end.'

The Unnameable:

I’ll recognise it, in the end I’ll recognise it, the story of the silence that he never left, that I should never have left, that I may never find again, that I may find again, then it will be he, it will be I, it will be the place, the silence, the end, the beginning, the beginning again, how can I say it, that’s all words, they’re all I have, and not many of them, the words fail, the voice fails, so be it

The final passage of The Unnameable, which often is hilariously shorn and misinterpreted as an inspirational quote about how if you don't succeed, try again:

all words, there’s nothing else, you must go on, that’s all I know, they’re going to stop, I know that well, I can feel it, they’re going to abandon me, it will be the silence, for a moment, a good few moments, or it will be mine, the lasting one, that didn’t last, that still lasts, it will be I, you must go on, I can't go on, you must go on. I’ll go on, you must say words, as long as there are any, until they find me, until they say me, strange pain, strange sin, you must go on, perhaps it’s done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don’t know. I’ll never know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on. I’ll go on. †

We bear this thing that's riding on our backs. We'll never get to where we're going, and the thing will never be born. If it was born, it'd be too terrible for us to bear. There's nothing riding on our backs.

It will never speak us into being.

We keep on calling out into the silence, we keep trying to explain or understand the thing that's riding on our backs, searching for a way to birth it before we die. Our words about the thing are crucial, and they're meaningless, and they're all we have, and they're nothing at all. We cannot name it and we cannot express it, but we cannot stop trying, and we will keep turning back to our words about the thing, obsessing over them, tearing them to pieces, putting them back together.

I'm fumbling at something I can't think or say, but fumbling is all we're capable of. There could be beauty and meaning and comfort in the fumbling, but it's also vain, and foolish, and pointless, and we're lying to ourselves about the beauty and the meaning and the comfort, and we're indulging ourselves pointlessly by going on and on about the pointlessness of it. Nothing can know what's going on. We will never get close enough to understand without being destroyed.

Thomas' Jesus again, warning those who seek to reveal what's hidden:

He who is near me is near the fire.

Riddley Walker, reflecting on the Punch puppet's inexplicable desire to cook and eat his own child:

Whyis Punch crookit? Why wil he al ways kill the baby if he can? Parbly I wont ever know its jus on me to think on it.

If you got to the end of this, congratulations: but the above is honestly the most appropriate patchwork of what I believe, what propels me, what I feel.

As for what comes after life, I think it's fairly straightforwardly a nothingness we are tragically incapable of fully knowing or accepting - it's Beckett's unimaginable and unattainable silence, a silence that his characters' voices keep on shattering even as they cry out for it.

-Jon‡

*I can't remember if Kafka makes prominent reference to Czech puppets in his work, which is interesting in its own right given the thematic relevance (the protagonist in The Hunger Artist is perhaps a kind of self-directing puppet show?).

However, Gustav Meyrink - who some unsourced Google quotes suggest was pals with Czech puppeteer Richard Teschner - did write a strange little story, The Man On The Bottle, about an audience watching a 'marionette show' who are too wrapped up in performances and masks to interpret the reality that they're actually watching a human being suffocate to death.

**Thomas Ligotti: "Something had happened. They did not know what it was, but they did know it as that which should not be.

Something would have to be done if they were to live with that which should not be.

This would not (be enough); it would only be the best they could do."

***Beckett's Malone Dies actually kicks off with a related sentiment:" I am in my mother’s room. It’s I who live there now. I don’t know how I got there...In any case I have her room. I sleep in her bed. I piss and shit in her pot. I have taken her place. I must resemble her more and more."

† I don't necessarily align myself in humour with Ligotti on a lot of this stuff but I imagine he would recognise both Beckett's writing and Kafka's frustrations re explaining the causes of his hatred for his father as sublimation: finding artistic and philosophical ways of sketching the inexpressible horror and uncertainty of our existence in order to reckon with it at a remove without destroying ourselves. A higher form of self-deception, but self-deception nevertheless.

‡Muna's more of an anarcho-nihilist, I think.

#long fucking post just to say 'i don't know'

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daryldixonfanfiction · 9 months

Text

What you fight for! Pt.4- Claimed

Masterlist

Summary: On the road Daryl is forced to join a motorcycle gang in order to survive Whether he likes it or not.

Warnings: age gape, mentions/ attempt to SA, groping, creepy men, kidnaping, angst, possessive Daryl, protective Daryl, fluff and typical twd violence and gore.

WC: 8.9k

Daryl was so tired he didn't realize he had fallen asleep, sitting in the middle of the road with his head hanging in exhaustion. He had just lost the last person he cared for and the point to keep on felt lost. It was that same heavy feeling of defeat when the prison had fallen. His newfound family was gone, his brother and then Julia. He didn't care for walkers nor the world around him, nothing matters at this moment. He just wanted to deseper, ses to exist into nothing.

He wakes when seven men surround him.

Daryl glances as one of the men thread forward, he wasn't gonna get killed by some assholes after all.

“Well, lookit here.” The man spoke.

Daryl proceeded not to move, but when the man got too close Daryl clocks him in the face, aiming his crossbow at his head. The men surrounding him pointed their guns, but Daryl showed no indication of stepping down.

“Damn it, hold up!” The man on the ground ordered.

He looked to be in his mid fifties, rugged with untrimmed hair and beard, the man was the leader of the motorbike gang.

“I’m claiming the vest. I like them wings.” A man from behind spoke, but Daryl’s only focus was on the man in front of him.

“Hold up.” The leader ordered again, and laughed as he stood to his feat. “A bowman. I respect that.” He compliments. “See, a man with a rifle, he could have been some kind of photographer or soccer coach back in the day. But a bowman’s a bowman through and through. What you got there, 150-pound draw weight? I’ll be donkey-licked if that doesn't fire at least 300 feet per second. I’ve been looking for a weapon like that. Of course, I’d want one with a bit more ammo and minus the oblongata stains.”

The abnoxes man from behind spoke again, “Get yourself in some trouble, partner?” And this time Daryl did notice him but ignored him, narrowing his eyes at the leader before him.

The leader continued, “You pull that trigger, these boys are gonna drop you several times over. What you want?” No response, he continued. “Come on, fella, suicide is stupid.” Then he smiled and asked, “Why hurt yourself when you can hurt other people?......Name's Joe.” The leader offered.

Daryl knew how dangerous it was to be on your own and to be truthful he couldn't stomach the idea just after losing Julia. He knew they were bad right off the bat, but what he also knew was he would easily fit in with these types of men, because that was what he did hanging with his brother when he wasn't locked up or wherever the hell he was when he wasn't around. So he stands down, and so does Joe's men.

Daryl looks at Joe, “Daryl,” he offers his name in return and joins them. But only for the time being he tells himself.

The day went by fast, he hanged back, none of the men showed any interest in talking to him along the road, he wasn't much of a talker himself, he rather be left alone. The group reminded way too much of Merle and his life before everything was overrun, but he rather not think about that. He thought of her, of Julia, over and over again. Twisting everything that went down before losing her. Meaby If he had done something different or just been fast enuff, just maybe Julia would be here, walking by his side.

They set up camp in the wods to rest for the night.

The forest floor sadly reminded him of her, her soft snores, the little sounds she would make and how easily she found comfort in him; he had taken it for granted because he thought they would have more time. It felt like she would appear right there beside him, that yesterday was no more than a bad dream.

He didn't long for sleep to take him but neither did he want to be awake.

Daryl woke at dawn.

Unable to stand the way he was feeling, he went off to fend for himself, leaving the stuff he had scavenged on the road at camp.

It was good game for rabbits, he could tell by the tracks. Patiently waiting for the rabbit to come within shooting distance. He kneeled, steadily aiming, elining the crossbow to get the perfect shot. One steady breath and he fired. His bolt hit the target but so did someone else from behind. Daryl gets up and looks at the same man that had wanted to claim his west, holding a compound bow, giving him a smug smile.

“What the hell are you doing?” Daryl said angrily.

“Catch’n me some breakfast.”

Daryl walked towards the dead rabbit, “That’s mine.”

“My arrow’s the one that hit first. Cottontail belongs to me.” The man insisted as of fact. Daryl kneels, taking out the arrows of the rabbit and continued, “Been out here since before the sun came up.”

“You see, the rules of the hunt don’t mean jack out here. Now that rabbit you’re holding-,” Daryl tossed the man's arrow, he could care less about what he had to say, it was his and he could tell him nothing. “Is claimed, boy. Claim whether you like it or not. So I was you, I’d hand it over. Now, before you get to wishing you ain’t never even got out of bed this morning.” The man threatened.

Daryl walked up to him, closing their distance, caring himself with confident strides. He knew what this was but he could care less, he wanted simply to be done with the conversation, “It ain’t yours.” Daryl told him. But the man had sensed Daryl's sullen demeanor ever since he joined them, the man began, in knowing.

“You know, I’ll bet this bitch got you all messed up, hmm?” Daryl ignores the man's insinuation “Am I right?” The man said, smiling, Daryl gave him a glare and prosedes to walk past him.

“Got you walking around here like a dead man who just lost himself a piece of tail.” He taunts, and that got Daryl to stop in his tracks, angel wings facing the man. “Must have been a good’un. Tell me something. Was it one of the little’uns? ‘Cause they don’t last too long out here.”

Daryl had always struggled keeping his temper at bay, controlling it. He could feel that dark part of him slowly coming back, that part of his past he thought he had left behind sins finding his newfound family. But they were all gone. He had tried to control it, to refrain himself from giving the abnoxes man the satisfaction of getting a raise out of him. He tried to stay calm, and at some point it seemed easier. He had been more in control of himself - hiding his emotions from enemies and friends alike. But every word leaving the man's mouth made him feel pure, burning, animalistic rage. He didn't care about the repocations his actions would have. If he wanted to rile him up, he would show him exactly what happened to those who crossed the line. The urge to simply make the man shut his fucking mouth -to inflict pain. He could see himself doing it, enjoying it even.

If Julia knew what he was thinking, what he was about to do, she would surely fear for what his hands were capable of. But Julia wasn't here, so what did it matter?

Slowly Daryl reached for his knife, unholstering it, gripping the hilt as he had become completely clouded by rage. Every muscle in his body was tense with adrenaline pumping through his veins. Daryl charged towards the man, but in the same second Joe held him back before he could even attempt to stab him and calmly stepped between the two men, breaking up the fight that was about to unfold.

“Easy, fellas, easy. Let’s just put our weapons down. See if we can’t figure out what’s really the problem here, huh?” Joe spoke with calm.

Daryl held a cold unforgiving gaze upon the man that only could be described as a death glare. The man kept smiling that shit-eting grin, his reaction had clearly satisfied him as if this was all a game. But this was no game for Daryl, If Joe hadn't stepped in the moment he did, he would be a dead man right now.

The altercation that morning had him a lot to think about. There were rules so things wouldn't get so tense within the group. As Joe had put it, "Going it alone, that ain't an option nowadays. Still it is survival of the fittest. That's a paradox right there." When the members wanted to mark something as their own they said the word "Claimed." And Daryl had denied to claim anything, he thought the whole thing was stupid as he believed there were no rules no more, he had his own code of course that he followed like the law itself.

The day continued, Joe and Daryl walked along one another along a raile road with the grope infront of them. Daryl thought the leader was alright by him, it didn't mean he liked him, he could stand him and hold a conversation, though Joe was the one who mostly did the talking as Daryl was a man of few words. Their conversation shifted focus to Daryl when Joe asked,

“So what’s the plan, Daryl?

“How so?” Daryl asked in return.

“You're with us now, but you ain’t soon?”

“Yep.” Daryl confirmed looking at the ground as they walked. Joe continued trying to get a concrete answer out of him, “So what’s the plan?”

To be truthful, Daryl didn't have a solid plan yet, but now when Joe asked him he found his first thought was of Julia. He didn't know what had happened to her other than being kidnaped. He didn't know if she was dead or alive. But he had convinced himself that she was alive somewhere. Maybe her optimism had rubbed off, it wasn't like him to be hopeful, but it was what had kept him going so far. Daryl shrugged trying to find the right way to put it, without giving too much away.

“Just looking for the right place is all.”

“Oh, we ain’t good enough for you, huh?” Joe sarcastically remarked. Daryl scoffed thinking of his altercation this morning with Len, “Some of you ain’t exactly friendly.”

Joe smiled, “You ain’t so friendly yourself. You know you need a group out here.”

"Maybe I don’t.”

“No, you do.” Joe insisted. “You should be with us.”

A walker snarls ahead, the men in front take care of it and their pleasure of taking it down doesn't go unnoticed by Daryl. Joe continued, “People don’t got to be friendly. We don’t have to be nice. We don’t have to be brothers in arms. We just got to follow the rules. You claim. If you steal, you keel. I know that sounds a little funny, but nobody laughs when something goes missing. And you don’t lie. ‘Cause that’s a slippery slope indeed.”

"What happens if you break ‘em?” Daryl asked.

“Oh, you catch a beating’. The severity of which depends upon the offense and the general attitude of the day. But that doesn't happen much because when men like us follow rules and cooperate a little bit, well the world becomes ours.” Joe looks ahead to an auto parts garage aside the track and orders the grope, “Right there. It’s our abode for the evening.”

Everyone began to head towards the entrance but Daryl doesnt follow, he looked to Joe and said “Hey. There ain’t no us.” Joe turned and faced him, “You leaving right now?” Daryl doesn't answer. “No?” Joe questions him, “Then it sure seems like there’s an us.” Joe turns and heads towards the entrance, then turns again,

"Are you a cat person, Daryl?" His words made him freeze, and he looked up at Joe. "I am," Joe continued, "Loved 'em since I was three years old. Vicious creatures. Anyway, I'll tell you, and this is true. Ain't nothing sadder than an outdoor cat that thinks he's an indoor cat."

Daryl thought about that for a moment before he followed the others into the building.

Daryl knew what Joe was getting at. Daryl had always told himself he was better off alone, but deep down, he knew in his heart he wasn't. The more he twisted and turned the idea, if he decided to join these men maybe it was the right thing to do. And he was gonna find Julia, he was surely gonna spot a lead of her along the roads they seemed to stick by. Daryl was never gonna tell the others of his plan, he didn't trust them in that sense. The moment he finds a leed he's going to ditch them without hesitation.

The others had claimed the vehicles as their bed for the night and his reluctance to give in to this claim thing they had going. He still thought that keepers' find mentality was stupid and therefore left him no other choice than to simply lay down on the cold cement floor. But Daryl was too tired to care, he just wanted to be in his own thoughts for a while, chewing on one of his cinnamon sticks, calming the urge for another cigarette after he had smoked some with Joe earlier that day.

One of the men approached him. It was Len. Daryl could tell he was up to no good. Ever since he had run into these guys, Len had been set on making his life hell. Len began with an accusing tone, “You’ve got to be kidding me. Christ.”

Daryl glanced up at Len from where he laid on his back and sat up fully, his attention now on him.

“Give it here.” Len ordered, stepping into his personal space.

“You step back.” Daryl said warningly.

“My half was in the bag. Now it’s gone. Now ain’t nobody around here interested in no half damn cottontail except you.” Len points an accusing finger towards the now standing Daryl. “Ain’t that right?”

“You’re the only one still thinking about that crap.” Daryl groweld back.

Len stepped towards his stuff and demanded again, “Empty your bag.” Daryl takes his bag and steps back in the same motion, creating a distance between them, Daryl warns again more firmly this time, “I said step back.” Len gives him glare. Joe interferes like last time and snatches the bag to investigate Len’s accusation and questions, “Did you take his rabbit, Daryl? Just tell me the truth.”

Daryl could feel anxiety bloom in his chest, because he knew this could gow south, though he had done nothing of what he was accused of. Liyn was strictly forbidden, if Joe decided he was guilty or suspected him he would be punished by the group or as Joe had put it,’kach a beating. And that fact alone made him even more angry towards Len.

“I didn’t take nothing.” Daryl hissed in defense.

Joe emptied Daryl’s bag on the floor, revealing the other half of the rabbit was indeed there. Daryls head snapped to Len. He fucking new that muther fucker had planted it there when he whasen’t looking.

“You put that there, didn't you?” Daryl confronted Len angrily, stepping closer. “When I went out to take a piss! Didn’t you?!” Daryl pushed Len back enuff for him to stumble back a step. But Len keeps on his accusation pointing a finger into his chest, “You lied. You stole. We gonna teach this fool or what, Joe?” Len said through his teeth like venom.

Always the calm and composed leader he was in these situations, Joe calmed, “Whoa, whoa.” Stepping between them with his attention to Len who was the most railed up at the moment, “Now, Daryl says he didn’t take your half of the rabbit. So we got a little conundrum here. Either he’s lying, which is an actionable offense, or…” Joe smiled and laughed, “You didn’t plant it on him like some pussy, punk-ass, cheating, coward cop, did you? ‘Cause while that wouldn’t be specifically breaking the rules, it’d be disappointing.”

“It would.” Len nodded in agreement, “I didn't.” he insisted.

“Good.” Joe said with a nood. He looked at Daryl and breathed, “Well…” Joe throws a right hook in Len’s face making him descend to the ground.

“ …teach him a lesson, gent’s. He’s a lying sack of shit. I’m sick of it. Teach him all the way.” Joe commands and the men begin to kick and beat Len on the floor.

Lens grunts of agony filled the garage.

A part of him didn’t agree with Len getting punished or more how he was beaten by the others, the unfairness of it. But then he turned his back, the commotion behind him. Daryl was a man of survival and knew to play his cards right. Daryl blocked the relentless kicks and grunts from the commotion behind him, laying back just like he did before Len had interfered. Everything became background noise, blocking it all out like many times before. And when the men Dragged Len outside, closing the door behind them to continue whatever they were doing, everything was quiet again.

Daryl dreamt of Julia that night, a common theme since he'd lost her. He dreamt of holding her like he never dared to do, he wished he had. But he had always been too shy to act on his feelings. So he held her just a little tighter knowing when he woke, Julia would no longer be in his arms.

In the early morning the group heeded out. Daryl was shocked to discover they had beaten Len to death and left him in a ditch outside, impaled with his own arrow. For a moment he was taken aback. He had seen cruelty before the world became what it was but it never meant it didn't affect him. Len was an asshole but this didn't feel right.

Just as he was about to cover Len's body with a blanket, just like what he had done for Julia back at the golf club, he remembered what he had done, framing him. That this would have been him, lying in a ditch, with his bolt through his eye.

Whatever pity he had felt was gone and he went along with the others, hanging back with Joe who seemed to like talking to him and to be honest he didn't mind. It distracted him from the ace that only seemed to have grown each passing day.

Passing Joe’s white lightning between them as they conversed or mostly Joe conversating as Daryl preferred to listen, but Joe didn't seem to mind, he seemed like one who liked to talk. Daryl took a swing frome the homemade alcohol,

“I ain’t been lit at dawn since before everything fell apart.” Daryl confessed.

“Fell apart.” Joe ecod. “I never looked at it like that. Seems to me like things are finally starting to fall together. At least for guys like us. Living like this, surviving. We’ve been doing this from the start, right?”

And Daryl had. He had been living in this world before walkers roamed the earth. Fighting and surviving he had done as long as he could remember, it was the only thing he really knew. Back with his group they described it as the end of the world, as if the world had stopped and their lives had come to an end. But for him it had only just begun, he was free, more free then he had ever been before. Maybe he was made for how things are now, like Julia had said that night. He tried not to think about it too much, because if he was, Julia wasn't.

Upon a road, the forest now behind them, one of the men in front looked at the road sign, “Just a few more miles.” The man informed the group.

Daryl was the last to pass the sign. He looked to Joe beside him as he grew curious, “So is that where we’re headed?”

“So now you’re asking?” Joe questioned and Daryl confirmed. “That’s right.”

“We don’t like to stay in the same place, we like to be on the move. It keeps us from losing our edge. But that doesn't mean we don’t rest our legs once in a while. I think you will like it. Last time we found a neighborhood like this one we got lucky.”

Daryl thought that made sense. Before the prison they survived going from house to house, then went on the road when they had enuff to last them for a while before doing it all over again.

“Claimed.” Daryl said before the man in front could grab the wild strawberry plant. The man said nothing and continued along as Daryl picked up the plant by the road, then shoved the lone strawberry in his mouth, “What you mean by lucky?” Daryl asked Joe.

“That got your attention?” Joe said, amused.

"Yah."

Joe continued. “You should have been there. Got our hands on a little bunny, pure as snow I tell you. They are very hard to come by these days if you know what I mean? She gave a hell of a fight but you know how women are saying the opposite of what they want, and I know she wanted it, they all do. Shure wished she lasted longer, but you know how those little ones are?”

Daryl didn't say a word, he couldn't seem to find them. Because what was there to say when someone talked so freely of such horrific actions that made you physically ill?

An unsettling feeling settled in his gut. He knew then he needed to ditch these guys, sooner than he had planned but he had to play along for now.

It’s jarring, the ringing in her ears and the sharp pain coming from the back of her head. Her eyelids felt heavy as they slowly fluttered open to darkness. The ringing in her ears fade as the hum of an engine slowly wakes her oriented body. A seat belt was strapped over her chest, her body tilted towards the passenger's side window, eyes slowly found focus of the night through the window, watching trees speed by along the lone country road, clouds were wisebulle by the moon's soft light and she tried to remember why she would be in a car but it hurt. The last thing she remembered was the prison, but then a low voice, a voice of a man she hadn't taken notice of speaks, her whole body goes rigid to the stranger beside her.

“Worried you were never gonna wake up, you took quite a hit.”

The man was dressed in a clean police attire, fully equipped. It was out of place. Groomed and was clearly well taken care of with short kept hair, his receding hairline indicating he was in his late 30s. Julia looked at the man and spoke in a small timid voice.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta.”

“How did I end up here?"

The man looks at her, giving her a smile she finds difficult to read, but it makes her skin crawl and her heart pound. His focus returns back on the road ahead.

“Had a lead on some guns that were pretty far out. That’s when I spotted you, wiggling in the road.

And Julia says nothing, she just stares perplexed, trying to remember past the blanks she tries to fill, but it’s all so difficult.

“Can you remember your name?”

“Julia.”

The man echoes her name to himself, he looks at her, his gaze taking her in.

“A pretty name for a pretty girl.” He muses in an unsettling way making her avoid his lingering gaze.

But then…. She does remember something or more like someone.

Daryl

She remembers fighting a walker but then everything went black and now she's her. Clearly the hit to her head had been hard enough to affect her memory and she hoped it would all come back. Trying to process everything she looks down and blinks a couple of times before her gaze falls on the man once more and speaks more desperate this time, with the thought of Daryl in her mind.

“The man I was with, did you see him?”

The man glances at her, clenching the sterling weal enough for her to notice, but his expression does not change and he tells her without looking her way.

“You were alone.” Her stomach drops and her eyes grow wide. “If I didn’t save you when I did, you’d be dead right now.” Julia’s strong reaction goes unnoticed. “One was eyeing your thighs when I showed up. But I got there first.”

His hand travels along her thigh, feeling her over the fabric of her skirt, slowly revealing her skin underneath. She lets out a small noise of discomfort and freezes just like many times before, like when boys in school had touched her, or smacked her ass in the corridors. Freezing like a deer caught in headlights, she doesn't dare to move a muscle.

“Jacket that rotter up.” He said and Julia could hardly breath.

A sickening panic blooms in her chest that travels through her whole body. Recoiling from his touch in discomfort and disgust he only keeps on feeling her up with his fingers slowly traveling up her thigh. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to move away from the man's groping hands. And when he spoke once more she wanted to throw up, crawl out of her own skin, because his words were just as sickening as his hand on her skin, that was now dangerously close to the hem of her panties.

“It would be nice to have a pretty little thing like you. You're like a little girl. A pretty little girl. I bet your mother told you ‘don’t talk to strangers. But I’m no stranger. I’m Gorman. I wouldn't hurt you…mmmh…your skin is so nice and soft.”

Julia couldn't speak but she was screaming inside of herself for him to stop, to not be touched without consent like many before had dune. Julia's heart hammered in her ears, her breath rapid as she trembled in terror beneath his touch.

Often Julia struggled to tell the difference between good and bad people -but that look in his eyes and the unsettling way he touched her, ignites an instinct inside of herself, screaming she has to get out, she’s in danger, that this man wants to do something against her will. Her hand reached for her knife, but he of course had taken it. And she knew she could not kill him nor had the will to inflict pain to another person. She was nothing like Daryl, fearless and strong but that made her only think of him more and grew more desperate as she all but whispered.

“Please turn back, he must have made it.”

But Gorman turned angry and grounded out “As I said, you were alone! And I think you're safe here with me!”

Julia didn't know what to do, she felt so lost and scared without Daryl and she knew she had to do something. She begged again and again to stop the car, for him to turn back, to let her go. But he got so angry and aggressive towards her, making Julia turn to complete fight or flight when she for the first time acknowledged her arm was locked up in handcuffs in the car's door handle. Realizing this man had locked her up, to do what she did not dare to name, and that look in his eyes of evil and lust, Julia knew he was a sick, sick man who would and had done unspeakable things.

In an attempt to somehow stop the car she threw herself over the steering wheel, desperately fighting to take control. But he was so much stronger. The tiers made an awful squealing sound as Gorman fought against her. He looked away from the road to pull her free hand off the sterling weak but the next second everything stopped…

Daryl was hanging back as they reached their way to the rich neighborhood, big houses with overgrown yards that once had been neatly kept by the owners were now abandoned.

The plan was to slowly disappear as they began looting the area for supplies and he would be on his merry way to find Julia. But just as he was about to slip away something ahead caught his eye. And for a moment he thought he had miraculously. Somehow. Found her.

A black car with white a wight cross.

Daryl's stomach plummeted, his steps slowing down.

The others walked past the car and began to clear the first house on the block, not notesting their newfound companion lagging behind.

Slowly, Daryl approached the car, he had to know.

There were tire marks on the asphalt indicating something had gone wrong, something terribly wrong. The car had crashed into a tree, the front window was cracked and the hood was all buckled up by the impact. When he rounded the car to investigate the inside, he swore his heart stopped beating. His head was pounding and his body began to sweat. He felt so stiff, but at the same time like his legs were going to turn to jelly. He had felt this feeling before, back when he found Merle reanimated as a walker and when he thought Carol was dead.

The interior was smeared with gore and guts. Both front seats were bloodied, there were no bodies, just bits and pieces indicating there had been a walker feast, likely the same night he’d lost her.

Daryl picked up a knife that had fallen to the floorboard on the drivers side, not far from it lies the diary. With the last traces of Julia in his hand, Daryl knew enuff of what had happened.

A part of him accepted it, as all the evidence was there, but the other part of him was in denial.

Knees buckled beneath him, he couldn't feel the pain of the ground digging into his skin. He felt like throwing up, guilt pounding in his head, telling him over and over, another death was on his hands, his fault, only adding to that mental list of all the people he'd lost. It feelt so heavy he didn't know if he could stand up again. No tears were shed though his eyes were burning, it was like he couldn't cry.

Hollow and empty -he was nothing again. Because what was he when he couldn't protect the ones he was supposed to? He couldn't protect his blood, his family, his friends, his people…He couldn't even protect Julia.

All he wants is to see her again. Hear that sweet voice and tell her what his sorry ass really wanted to say. There were so many things he wished he had done differently now when he knew he had last her. He regretted the cruel way he had spoken when they got drunk, how he had been so ruff and cold towards her when all she had been was nothing but kind.

Julia was too good for this world and he was a maid for it.

Daryl could recall every moment they'd shared. He didn't realize he had become so attached to someone he had known for such a short period of time. But he had never met anyone like Julia before. Julia was the first girl who was genuinely nice to him, who so deeply cared for him. No questions asked and she was there. She never blamed him when he said cruel things, because she understood he never meant them. She was never uncomfortable to be close, embracing him, holding his hand, seeking comfort or to give him comfort, and it had all felt so good. It was like she could strip him bare with her eyes and truly see him for who he was, and that feeling, he had longed for his whole life.

Just when he began to believe in hope, even when he had lost her, he believed there was that little chance he could find her. Because that was what he did -he found people. But this was not what he had in mind.

Beneath all that hard exterior his heart aced teribully as Julia's soft voice rang in the back of his head.

"I’ll be gone someday…" "Stop…" "I will. You're gonna be the last man standing. You are. You're gonna miss me so bad when I’m gone Daryl dixon…"

If she only knew how much he missed her now.

"There are still good people Daryl…" "I don’t think the good ones survive…"

And Julia….was one of the good ones.

Daryl didn't know how to face what had just happened, finding the car the way he did. For selfish reasons he wanted to forget her -all of them. So he pretends he doesn't care, that he isn't broken once again.

Killing the cigarette against his skin, Daryl felt a sense of relief from the pain in his chest, but it lasted only for a moment. He had opted to venture to the other part of the neighborhood until he stumbled upon a few walkers in the mostly walker free eria, and it was strange as it was clear that there had been evidence there had been more just days ago. They were snarling, dragging their feet towards him from the garage door they had been banging on.

He could have easily just jogged off and they would have left him alone, but the anger inside of himself didn't let him. There was this satisfaction in his outlet when killing them, and it was a much needed relief, much like bak at the golf club.

The walker's body’s lies on the yard of the house, he scans the abandoned houses around him then looks to where the walkers had been trying to get in and heads towards the garage. Inside he realizes he's stumbled across a car, he removes the tarp of the truck and opens the hood finding the battery is missing, making him sigh in frustration slamming the hood shut. He shakes his head leaning against the hood, then notices a green refrigerator that seemed to be working. Stored batteries and containers labeled Sulf and Sid inside and Daryl knew he could get it back running again. Going back outside he finds one of the walkers carrying the key to the truck, the owner of the house was smart but not smart enough to get infected.

Going through the stuff inside he finds an All Purpose Charger and hooks it up to the truck battery. Estimating it would be fully charged in the early morning as the truck was in a fairly good condition like the battery itself. But the thing was he didn't know where he would go, did he even want to go now when he found a good truck that would take him wherever he pleased? Maby new Mexico? He had always dreamed of going there bak when he was a kid. But what was the point?

He couldn't find one.

The late afternoon sun glowed on him as he walked down yet another street until finding where the men had settled in one of the bigger houses. And why Daryl decided to join them inside, he didn't question, he just did, his body moving on its own.

The men gave him a look but didn't dare to say anything of his ruffed up appearances, it was obvious something had happened. They notest him, then went along with their business. They got the message to not ask, it was his business and it was clear this group did not not care for one another like his group had, the only thing they cared about was claiming and keeping to Joe's ‘self proclaimed rolls’.

Joe was held up defusing a quarrel in the living room and Daryl opted to one of the bedrooms upstairs, shutting the world out but his mind would not let him rest.

Daryl had lost many along the way; it was nothing new, it was inevitable. But this time was different. It hurt more, the pain was straight up unbearable. It didn't make sense why this time would be different, but it was, and there was no denying that.

Sinking into the comfort of the bed he reached for his back pocket and began to look through the diary, flipping through pages. There was an artistic streak the way she had written small poems and drawn sketches of animals, flowers and people from the prison he supposed. The writing was crooked, a little hard to read with the misspelling, but he didn't mind.

Soon the exhaustion of los had caught up to him, he fell asleep with the book over his heart with the map Marlene had given to him all the way back when she had begged him to take her, and he had promised to keep her safe. He had failed her too.

Daryl didn't know how much time had passed, the setting sun outside told him he had slept at least an hour. Comotion down stairs had escalated, something about one of the men lying and getting punished for it.

Joe telling him “his rules” was effective, putting them in line or whatever he had said seemed like bullshit. Sitting up with his legs off the bed, arms resting on his knees he could hear arguing and pleading from the man that was accused of lying.

“No, no, no please. Please, don’t. Please!"

A loud thud followed by a pained scream of the man down stairs filled the house as the others laughed in amusement. Daryl could have interfered if he wanted to, but he couldn't find it in himself to care, it wasn't his place to interfere nor his business.

“Oh, God!” The man groans in agony.

“You plan of finishing the job?” One of the men said. “Yeah. I’m getting an earache and I know he’s just gonna let his ass squeal.” Answered the other.

“After what he did, the man deserves to bleed.” The third man said.

“Y’all stay down there if you want.” The fourth man said and began to walk up the stairs to claim one of the two bedrooms left before the others could, still handling the man down stairs. The man searched the rooms until he settled for the one next door to him. The door must have been locked but eventually he heard it open and close.

Daryl opted to busy himself looking through the room knowing he wasn't gonna find sleep again. Engrossed in the impressive Metallica collection Daryl didn't pay much attention to the mens chatting frome down stairs, not hearing one of the men halloring.

“There’s a woman shaking up in here.”

Immediately it got the rest of the men's attention. Finding a newly washed shirt disappointed some, but Joe ordered them to be ready for anything in case the owner of the shirt would return and possibly cold return with others that could be a threat. The four men dispersed, Joe watched the front porch as the others gathered their guns to watch the sides from the inside of the house.

A thud from the other room caught Daryl's attention for just a second, but didn't think anything of it as no other sounds were made; he turned his attention back to some motorbike magazines. Flipping the third page there was another thud, it was distinct, more like a struggle. Strange. Then there was another voice, a faint, muffled, ‘No -coming from a woman.

There was clear sense something was not right, his gut told him so and it had never proved him wrong before. The instinctive feeling of something wrong was enough for Daryl to step out from his room to approach the door where the noise came from. Then he listened in just like he did when hunting, tilting his head he heard trashing coming from the bed inside, making him draw his knife by muscle memory, his hand was around the door knob, turning it, pushing the door open. And there was nothing that could have prepared Daryl for what was unfolding behind that door.

His world stopped.

In a span of mere seconds, Daryl went through three intense stages of emotions. From shock taking in what unfolded before him, Julia very much alive lies on the bed, with a man on top of her holding her down with one hand strangling her and the other hand groping her between her legs, as she does everything in her power to escape. Then came the realization. There was the smallest choking sound as her face was filled with such terror and fresh tears streaming down her face, making his eyes sting. Lastly, came the rage. His hand tightened around the hilt. Rage scratched at the back of his skull right at the base. Right where emotions turned to turmoil, he could feel himself giving in to that anger, that darkness. The man had almost exposed her under the skirt, her panties on soon to be ripped off. While one hand was pressing around her throat his other hand moved aggressively between her legs. The man had the most vile expression Daryl had ever witnessed, making his blood boil, vision turning red and he demands, his voice low and deadly.

“Get your fuckin hands off her.”

Julia tried to escape the man's hold, trashing beneath him with her feet, kicking and scratching fingernails in an attempt to free her throat. The lack of oxygen made her vision turn blurry, darkening round the edges, she could feel how her limbs weakened and her strength slowly leaving her.

Julia had hoped it was all just a bad dream. But there was so much pain, it hurt too much to just be a nightmare and she knew the horrifying truth…This was real. The idea to simply let it happen, to get it over with seemed like a better option at some point.

It would happen but it would be over, she told herself.

Just as Julia was about to give in to her fate, the pressure was gone and she could breathe. In and out. Fresh air filled her lungs as she gasped and coughed, fingers gently touching the sore skin on her neck. Julia struggled as she moved carefully to the center of the bed, vision returned though it was still a bit blurry she could make out the commotion on the floor in front of her. She saw the back of another man on top of the man that had attacked her just seconds ago. There was grunting, heavy breaths drawn along with the unmistakable sound of knuckles thudding against soft damaged flesh.

Julia stared wide eyed, her breaths heavy, she was no longer coughing but a hand remained on her throat. The man below the stranger didn't fight back nor move, the man had been beaten to death, a pole of blood expanding on the floor of crimson red. The stranger stood to his full height turning to her, but Julia didn't look at him, her eyes were fixed on the monster that had tried to force himself on her in the vulnerable state of sleep. As if she waited for his limp body to come back from the dead and do it all over again.

But that moment never came.

Daryl had been lost in his anger but the moment he remembered Julia was there, very much alive, he stopped. Daryl stands there watching her, she is disheveled, her beautiful curly hair is a mess, her cheeks raw and soaked in tears, and her eyes have blown wide. She was still in her skirt and camisole. She didn't notice he was standing there, and all he wanted was for her to look at him, to know he was here, that the man would no longer harm her.

“Julia.” No response, he tries again, “Julia, look at me.”

And slowly he can see her reacting to his voice, finally acknowledging his presence. Her eyes landed on his bloodied hand then the knife in his other. Their eyes met and all he saw was fear, fear of him. Panic bloomed in his chest, realizing Julia didn't recognise him, as if he was the same man as the one bleeding out on the floor. The thought of her being afraid of him was devastating, unbearable even.

Daryl didn't know the way his hair covered his eyes, the way the knife looked in his hand as the other was drenched in blood, all Julia could see was a monster. .

In Daryl's eyes Julia looked like a wounded fawn, and maybe that was what she was in that moment? And just in that way he said carefully.

“It’s me. It's just me.”

Desperately he tried again when she didn't respond, putting his knife away, his palms facing her, being as non threatening as he possibly could.

“You know me. Daryl. Remember?"

And Daryl could see the shift happening behind her fearful eyes to recognition. He didn't move, just simply stayed where he was, afraid he would only frighten her in her timid state.

Stiffly Julia crawled out of the bed, slowly but carefully standing to her feet. She felt so shaken from the way she had woken, in the most terrifying way possible. It was difficult to stand, even to draw in air. But hearing the voice she never thought she would hear again, and she had to know the man before her was him, she wiped the tears away, moving towards him.

Daryld watched her slowly approach him, and he had to strain himself not to grab her, pulling her into his arms, knowing he had to let her come to him.

Julia grabbed the fabrike of his shirt looking up where his eyes would be, covered by dark strands of hair that had fallen to a mess. When Daryl looked down, his dark pools of blue met hers and Julia knew then it was him, it was real.

Julia reached for him, both hands now grabbing at his shirt, face buried into his warm chest, his beating heart thumping under his skin.

Julia inhaled shakelly…And said.

“Daryl.”

It was fragile the way she said it and immediately relief washed over him. Finally Daryl dared to touch her, holding her close with both of his big arms swallowing her smaller form. She smelled of her natural scent, with a hint of shampoo and all the sweet things that reminded him of her. All of her was soft, welcoming and full of life, just how he remembered her, and he said softly in return.

“That’s right.” he breathed out, cradling the back of her head with a hand, “It’s me. It's just me.”

But their reunion was cut short by the men down stairs growing impatient with his absence, and the man he’s just beaten to death. The evidence on the floor and the blood on his knuckles.

Daryl knew the moment they realized what he had done, they would surely kill him, ‘teach him all the way’, like they did Len. The chilling feeling of knowing, knowing and knowing what these men had done, what they could do, knowing Julia would suffer a horrific fate she almost did just moments ago settled a sense of horror in him.

But nothing was going to happen to her, he was going to make sure of it.

Julia dried her tears once more as Daryl grabbed her pack and gray cardigan that had been thrown to the floor, then approached her feeling a sense of urgency and panic even though he stayed calm for the sake of her.

“This all your stuff?”

Julia could only nod as she put on the cardigan and Daryl noticed it was more in a need to cover herself up after being exposed in such a way she had been.

The relief she had felt dissipated the moment she recognised voices of men, coming from down stairs growing lowder and impatient.

“I thought Dan and Daryl got that.” one man said, then the other, “What the hell are they doing up there?”

Daryl listens closely to every word shared below, with his eyes never leaving her, as if she would be goon if he did.

“Get them the hell up.” Joe ordered urgently.

Julia froze in fear as Daryl turned serious in contrast to her, hugging her pack in a death grip to keep her shaking hands at bay. Julia could feel herself becoming smaller, as if she couldn't follow along with what was happening.

The gears were turning behind his eyes, then Daryl nodded to himself, a decision had been made. And he said while keeping his voice down, yet firm.

“Hey, you see that clawset?”

Julia acknowledged it across the room, but no verbal response was made. It was difficult to register when dissociation began to wash over, preventing words from forming. But she forced it down when she could feel his hands grabbing her shoulders, groundingly, pulling her both figuratively and physically back to reality.

“You’re gonna stay in there, and you don’t come out until I say, okay?”

And Julia could not say anything in return, as if she was mute. But when she heard footsteps heading upstairs she could feel that twisting feeling in her gut she had felt in the car, finding herself spacing out once more, no longer looking up at him.

“Dan, Daryl, get your asses down here!” The man heading upstairs said, but of course got no answer in return. “Yo, you hear me?!”

“They’re not gonna come anywhere near you.” Daryl firmly told her, shaking her by her shoulders, “Look at me.” It was an order, an order that demanded attention. “They're ain’t gonna come anywhere near you. All you gotta do is stay put, stay quiet and don't come out until I say. Can you do that for me?

Julia stairs and stairs, pleading with her eyes for something -she didn’t know. It was about seconds before the man would enter and time was running out, she knew. But Julia didn't want to be without him, to be separated. But at the same time she knew it was something she had to do.

Even though she was scared, scared out of her mind she reletend. To do what he had asked of her. Julia trusted him with her life. Before she moved, to hide, Daryl’s hand cradled her face affectionately, as if he needed to touch her, to remind himself she was indeed there, what was at stake. His thumb moved, caressing her cheek gently as he provided, softly.

“Good girl."

If the situation had been different, Julia was sure she would have smiled in return.

Never had Julia seen the look Daryl had in his eyes as he had now. It was worrying, it went beyond protecting her, and it looked like he was -well like he was about to do something very terrible, and she knew there was nothing that could be done to stop it.

His touch didn't last long as he urged her to hide. When she was consumed by darkness in the safe space of the closet, Julia wished she had said something more than simply his name.

There was now way of telling how much time had passed.

The screams and the fight from down stairs had stopped and Julia wasn't sure she wanted to know what Daryl was doing, what he had done. Knowing Daryl could beat a man to death with his bare hands, Julia knew that was probably what had happened and it made her feel -well, she didn't really know.

The house was completely silent, it was unsettling in a way, not knowing if Daryl was alright, or hurt. Even though she had been told to stay put, she couldn't. The silence was too unnerving, making her leave the safe space of the closet, stepping out into the bedroom, cracking the door open, Daryl had closed when leaving.

“Daryl.” Julia called out, “Daryl, are you alright?”

Then there was movement down stairs, sounding as if something heavy was being dragged across the floor.

"Stay! Don’t come down here!”

His order made her flinch, he wasn't angry but it was clear he didn't want her coming down. Julia assumed it had something to do with the unmistakable dragging on the floor. Doing as she was told once more she stayed put, and she couldn't help but stare at the dead man on the floor. She was still coming down from what had happened, welding herself to get it together. Crying was not gonna make it better and she was no child, she was a grown woman, it was time she acted as such.

Drying the evidence of her face as she sits on the floor, Daryl emerges, wearing a different jacket and a red machete attached to his belt. And Julia couldn't help but stare as Dary was - well. Covered in blood.

Pt.5 Masterlist

#apocalypse #daryl dixion imagine #daryl dixon #daryl dixon fanfiction #daryl dixon smut #fanfics #twd fanfiction #the walking dead daryl #whatyoufightfor!

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pentrologram · 9 days

Text

What Normal People Do - 2

Simon and Johnny have a new neighbour. cw for implied sexual content/aftercare. skip to 'The next morning' <3 ao3! ghost/soap/gn!reader (established ghoap)

Show Me Yours, I'll Show You Mine

The guilt isn’t all-consuming, he finds.

He and Johnny had explored having more partners together more than once- but usually, the third was only interested in a fling, nothing serious.

Simon obviously had no reason to think that you would be different. Obviously. But that night when Johnny presents to him a strawberry-printed jockstrap with a sly smile,- “Strawberry sex stall, remember?-“ Simon just can’t help but imagine if you were there.

It’s wrong of him, he knows. The only time he had seen you, you had been distressed. Enough so that Riley, a trained service dog, had noticed a way away and practically sprinted to you.

…But something about your demeanour had lured him in. So after he gets a cool rag and cleans Johnny and himself off, curling around Johnny’s back like he's a planet finding its orbit, he murmurs what he was thinking about. He knows Johnny won’t shame him- they’ve done much worse than absently think about someone else watching in during their intimate time.

Johnny looks over his shoulder at Simon with a crooked grin.

“Me tae.” He says. Somehow, Simon is not surprised. “Wish ae’d gotten bon’s number.” He grumbles.

Simon shakes his head.

“It probably wasn’t meant to be,” Simon says. “So distressed. Hard to imagine they’d’ve taken kindly to it.”

Johnny groans.

“Tae reasonable. ‘D’ve fallen for mae charm!” He protests.

“Unlikely.”

“Ae don’t like ye.”

Simon grunts.

“Sleep, Johnny.”

——————

The next morning, Price and his wife are supposed to be coming over to the flat and so Johnny is tasked with taking the dog out to a local coffee shop while Simon cleans the flat.

Riley is quiet on her leash while Johnny mills about, waiting for the overworked barista to shake together the coffees.

He doesn’t realise until he’s halfway through the counter that he’s been casing it.

Bad dog, he chastises himself, slumping against the wooden panel of the wall.

He manages to rein himself in for maybe five minutes before he inevitably looks around again- but this time he is rewarded.

Standing a little to his right is you, smiling down to your phone. Like a sane person, he slides right next to you.

“Seems like ye’ve got a love-hate relationship wif’ that thing,” Johnny says, nodding to your phone.

You look startled and confused as you look at Johnny and then recognize him.

“Oh! No, um. I got broken up with yesterday.” You say, bashfully. “Had to move out and find a new place on short notice.”

“And ye got the place?”

“Yes. It’s very lovely. Rent’s maybe a bit much but I’m sure I can budget it… It’s such a great stroke of luck that I’ve found it under 24 hours.”

Johnny nods.

“O’ course. ‘M glad fer ye.”

“Thank you.” You say with a shy smile. Johnny grins at you.

“Och, no need tae thank me.”

Johnny watches your pretty mouth open to refute him when the barista calls out your name. He rolls your name around in his head for a while before the barista’s tired voice calls for a ‘Tommy’.

He takes the coffees, grumbling under his breath about how Johnny wasn’t a hard name, actually, and rather easy to hear, thanks, Riley loyally at his side.

It’s only halfway through brunch and Simon’s scones that he realises he hadn’t even gotten your number.

He glumly retells the events of the morning once the Prices have left to Simon, who ruffles his hair a small bit.

“Not meant to be, Johnny,” Simon echoes.

A new tenant is moving in, Simon offhandedly tells him shortly after. Johnny only thinks about you and your ex a little.

——————

Johnny nearly wants to call Simon to laugh in his face. Oh-ho, ‘not meant to be’ his arse. Bonnie is right there, in the produce section, frowning down at a list. For the second time, he slides up next to you.

“Well, lookit tha’!” Johnny exclaims. You look up from your intense staring and blessedly at him; earning a grin from him and a friendly clap on the shoulder.

“How’s the new flat?” He asks.

“Oh, it’s better than the photos,” you say, pleased.

“‘M glad, bonnie.” He says.

“Bonnie?” You ask.

“Don’t worry about it! How about this weather?” Johnny all but yells.

You spend perhaps more time than you should with Johnny; chatting about absolutely nothing and everything at all. At some point, grocery shopping leaves your mind and Johnny ushers you to a nearby café so you can converse in peace.

——————

The next day, as Simon leaves the flat with Riley in tow, he sees you pulling a few boxes into the flat next to them.

Oh, Johnny’s going to love this.

He leaves you alone because he is not Johnny and his unlimited confidence, opting to take Riley out on her walk the long way around the building.

By the time he's back, you are outside, fiddling with the locks on your front door.

He decides to talk to you; it'd be the neighbourly thing to do, right? Surely he can spare a little time to get to know Johnny's self-proclaimed bonnie.

"Need help?" He asks, materialising behind you and making you jump out of your skin. You whip around and then Simon understands the appeal you have to Johnny.

You're golden hours outside and fresh fruit in dinky plastic cups; you're like summer before it's too miserable and when spring is still lingering by. You're domestic and perfectly so- not heavy-handed, no, done with a perfect sort of delicacy that he can still imagine you hard-faced at a PTA or an HOA meeting or whatever it is normal people do in their free time.

The time it takes for him to decipher what it is in you that Johnny adores is the same amount of time it takes for you to recognise him.

"No, I'm okay. Um, thank you, though." You say, almost shyly. Simon thinks he likes you, too.

"Did you just move in?" He asks. By then, Riley has recognised your scent, making her tail wag rather aggressively.

“Yes.” He sees you hesitate for a moment, and then: “Do you… live here?” You ask.

Simon grunts. “We’re the flat over.”

“Oh!” Your face brightens. “Well. Thank you for offering to help, neighbour.” You say with a beaming smile which is so bright he can’t help but let the corners of his lips quirk up into a little smile, too.

He says goodbye and you do too, and Riley gets one more head butt before he leads Riley over to their flat.

Johnny is already there, sprawled out on the couch while watching some cooking show on the TV. He gets up when he hears the door open, though, to give Riley some pets. She borfs and Johnny borfs back.

“Dogs, the both of you,” Simon grumbles as he takes off Riley’s harness and throws his keys onto a little table by the front door Johnny had bought aeons ago.

He slides all three deadbolts into place while Johnny leads Riley to the kitchen for her dinner.

“Oh, Johnny,” Simon says as he hooks up his coat. “Your bonnie moved into the flat next to us.”

Johnny stops pouring kibble into Riley’s bowl.

“Yer kidding?!”

“No.”

Johnny honest to God shrieks and forgets all about Riley’s dinner, racing to the door like a cartoon character. Simon stops him with a firm hand on the shoulder.

“No. They just moved in. They’re probably tired. Let’s be considerate and wait till tomorrow, yeah?” He says, and Johnny visibly droops. His expression softens and he presses a kiss to Johnny’s temple.

“We can bring them food tomorrow. How about you make your muffins for them?” He suggests. That, at least, makes Johnny settle.

——

The next morning, Johnny and Simon are at your door at an acceptable time. Simon forced Johnny into waiting a full two hours after they woke up before they went to your door.

It was a little like a child on Christmas morning; so excited that they can’t think of anything but that one thing.

Johnny practically sprints out of their flat when Simon just sighs after he asks if they can *go see the wee bonnie, please, Si?* for the umpteenth time in an hour.

He’s standing outside your front door now, muffins in tow and a still-tired Simon hovering behind him. He knocks for the second time and then lo and behold is his bonnie. Maybe a little ruffled from sleep but just as bonnie as the last time he saw you.

“Hello, you two.” You say, smiling.

“Hi! Ae made ye muffins. Tae help settle ‘ta the new flat.”

“Wow, thank you. You didn’t have to. Here, come inside- I’m sorry, it’s a mess,” you apologize. There are boxes strewn about, dragged around, things overflowing from inside.

“You got here last night?” Simon asks as Johnny sets his muffins down on your kitchen counter. You nod.

“Can I make you some tea?” You ask, already rummaging in a box labelled ‘kitchen’ for your kettle.

You chat idly while the water boils and you look for tea bags and mugs.

“Sorry, no sugar. Or creamer.” You say as you pour them two generous mugs.

Then you talk about leasing dates, the landlord, the best parking areas, the cheapest takeouts, and things to do around.

At some point, their mugs run dry and you go to their flat over for lunch and even more conversations.

By the time you leave, it’s half past five and you have a full feeling from companionship.

#ghoap #ghoap x reader #gn reader #dog owner ghost #riley (the dog)#slow burn #strangers to friends to lovers #not beta read #we die like men #vivi's writing

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dragonfirerogue-writes · 2 years

Text

I Got You

Quinn Fabray x Reader

Footsteps echo through the near empty school halls as Quinn rushes through. She was done with everyone around her. Her idiot boyfriend, her idiot baby daddy, her idiot nemesis who insists on being "nice" to her. Hell, she was done with the baby growing in her belly, but she couldn't run away from that.

Finn had just found out that he wasn't the baby's father and pitched a fit. He and Puck fought, everyone looked at her with pity and she just couldn't deal with it anymore. So she ran.

The blonde managed to find an empty classroom and settled herself into a corner. The tears she was holding back finally fell on her face as she began to sob quietly. Her life was spiraling downwards and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

After a moment, her cries subsided. When she moved to wipe her tears, Quinn was startled by a handkerchief in front of her. Following the line of sight, her hazel eyes met yours.

Quinn hadn't realized that you were in the classroom since she just rushed in. She scared you, but it felt awkward for you to say anything while she was crying. You figured you'd have to get it over with anyway and make yourself known.

Her eyes narrowed at you. Quinn was used to people having ulterior motives. You just smiled in response and gestured to the handkerchief again. Once she took it, you backed up.

"Didn't mean to intrude." You bowed your head slightly. "I was here when you came in. Figured this was the least awkward way of popping up." Turning away, you start packing your thing. "I'll leave you alone though."

"Wait." You turned back to the blonde at her command. "How do I know you're not going to tell anyone about this?" A frown pulled at your lips. Sure, Quinn's fall from grace was well known throughout the school, but what more could you do to her? And for what reason?

"How would that help me? I've got no stake here. I'm a nobody." You walk up to her and kneel down to her level. "Besides, I'm not gonna kick a person when they're down. You've been through enough. Lemme be the person who's nice to you just because." You shrug with a lopsided smile. "So, if you need anything from me, I got you."

You stand once more and finally leave, letting Quinn have her moment alone. But she wasn't crying anymore. In fact, her heart stuttered at the sincerity you emitted. She wasn't entirely sure if she fell just a little in love with a stranger or not.

-----+++++-----

As the week progressed, Quinn kept finding you in the crowds. It was like her eyes were automatically drawn to you when you were in the vicinity. She even realized that you shared a few classes with her. In her observations, Quinn realized why you never stood out. You kept your head down. You spoke when only spoken to in class. You seemed to weave through the crowd with ease. It was fascinating.

It was one of these moments in observation that led to your next encounter. Quinn was watching you at your locker when a few jocks surrounded her. She only took notice once they blocked her view.

"Lookit the fallen princess, fellas. Daydreaming about your throne?" The boys laughed, drawing attention. "Y'know, we should baptize her into her new position as the Loser Princess." One of them stroked his chin in thought. "But with what?"

The jocks shared sinister grins as they each revealed large cups in their hands. Quinn braced herself for the slushie attack knowing full well she was trapped. As the boys reared their arms back, she closed her eyes, only to feel a body press her against the wall and cover her.

Within a short span of time, you somehow made your way between the jocks before their attack launched. You used your slightly larger frame to cover Quinn and take the full brunt of the slushie assault. The boys laugh, not caring that someone else got slushied, only that someone did.

"HAH! Looks like the princess found a knight in slushied armor!" Guffaws echoed the hallway as the jocks leave, high-fiving each other.

You wipe the cold beverage off your face before turning to Quinn. "Hey, you ok? They didn't get you, did they?" The blonde only shook her head, staring at you in disbelief. You respond with a grin.

That snapped Quinn out of her stupor. She grabbed your wrist to pull you into the nearest bathroom. "C'mon. Let's get that stuff off before it stains your skin."

While your t-shirt was beyond saving, you were lucky enough to have a flannel shirt around your waist to wear in lieu of it. Thankfully, it took minimal slushie damage. Quinn helped to clean off the remnants of red dye off of your skin, paper towels piling in the trash can.

"You didn't have to do that, you know." Her hazel eyes stared right into yours. She had been wiping down your face and now held it still. "I've been slushied before. And now you're a target by association. It's only gonna happen more often."

A smile spreads on your face as you take her hands in yours. "I wasn't gonna let that pretty dress get ruined." A gentle squeeze of the hands. "Besides, I don't care about getting an icy facial. I'll bring spare clothes and a towel. You and your safety though? I care about." Quinn takes an unconscious step towards you.

"But why?"

You shrug, tucking the blonde's hair behind her ear.

"I feel like it. I don't know why, but I'm drawn to you. And not just cuz you're stunning." Quinn ducks her head at the compliment. You give her a moment before tilting her head back up by the chin.

"It's gonna be a rough ride in the coming months. I'll help however I can." Before Quinn could protest, you shushed her. "I mean it. If you really wanna pay me back, you can find a way, but I'm not asking for anything. Like I said before, I got you."

Quinn was overwhelmed with emotion. Maybe it was the baby hormones, but she felt such a swell of gratitude towards you. Without thinking, she leans in and gives you a quick peck on the lips. It surprised the both of you, but you recover almost immediately.

"Well, I guess that's a start." You grin, only to have Quinn push your face away, mainly due to her own embarrassment.

"C'mon. Let's get out of here before we're late for class."

She takes your hand to lead you out and doesn't let go until you absolutely had to part ways.

#quinn fabray x reader #glee imagine #quinn fabray imagine #quinn fabray #a dragon tries to write #how often will i say slushie in this gods forsaken fic?

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future-dregs · 18 days

Text

Ep. 1 & 2 Bullet Points

I was gonna post my thoughts about the episodes in real time, but then I got caught up in it and didn't do that. So now, I'm summarizing.

------

Sam had houseplants in his windowsill.

Can't decide if Dean was pacing around and making noise to test Sam/give him a heads up and see how he'd react, or if that was just him being a kinda inexperienced kid.

I like that Sam was fighting with his whole body. Like, he brought his feet and legs into it. Comes across more genuine that just punching. (Also his little end of spar pat on Dean's arm? Mwah. Falling back into the rhythms already.)

Sam kept his hand scythe. In the house. Didnt leave it as far behind you claimed baby. Because as Dean said, you know what's out there.

That's two "Sammy"s, an arm across the back of the diner booth and an in unison talking moment in close succession. Dean's playing for keeps.

John fucking Winchester. Freaked out by a vengeful womans spirit for real, or ninth level cat and mousing your kids?

Dean getting thrown and pressed over the hood of the car and his "squeal like a pig" comment are stacking up in my brain. Debating about if I wanna make a sexual abuse post or not.

Also, people have been saying from the day the show aired, but that is the second time Dean carried him out.

I dont want to talk much about Mary right now, theres some episodes in later seasons with her that I havent seen, so I dont feel I have enough contact to say something accurate. But I will say this- she knew better, and she should've done better, cause it ALL comes back to her and what she did and didnt do. She doomed her family, and everyone who touched them.

I think Dean was circling around to try again. In hindsight we know he was hanging out for hours before coming in (and oh how bitter bitter it is to see him young and "careless" like that, and have to amend it knowing how very very frightened he actually was) so I think it stands to reason that Dean would skulk around a little longer afterward as well.

Episode 2!

First off, really like that Sam's dream, though still with that beautiful early season low saturation, has more color, and brighter colors (pink in the bouquet, red candles, ect) than the real world does.

Also very funny to see Dean being the one who wants to open up and talk about feelings, and dealing with loss in a healthy way.

Also Dean offering the car to Sam for comfort because that's how Dean feels in control and comforted is killing me.

"Lookit this friggin bear!" My love my love I'm kissing you on the face.

Y'know you never see those shell necklaces anymore? But they kinda rocked.

Also I'm not gonna get pedantic about them getting the mythos wrong (don't get used to it, I LOVE being pedantic, esp with things I actually know about), so I'm not gonna mention it again, but oh! they got the mythos wrong.

Now. I've mentioned this briefly before, but its intriguing to me that in an episode about a corrupting hunger, we see Sam start down the path of vengeance AND get horny over his brother. He's growing enamored with Dean again, and he's watching him when he interacts with other people, looking for threats. Both physical, and not.

(I have a whole separate post in the works about Sam standing bodily between the victims and the threat, but suffice to say, babydoll I love you and you chosen efforts towards goodness from the bottom of my heart.)

Back to above point. Girl of the week kisses Dean's cheek, Sam comes over, sits on that side of him, and stares at that spot on Dean's cheek until he gives him the keys.

Fly by night away from here/change my life again/fly by night goodbye my dear - they knew how to use their music for effect. Also my introduction to Rush, years ago. Thanks guys.

So I think that about covers the thoughts I thunk while watching. Next time I'll try to at least make active notes if I'm not live blogging through it.

#Supernatural #I need to come up with a sorting tag for this I guess #Some stuff I have plans to go back and hit with more detail later #📺#1.01 #1.02

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thebibliomancer · 8 months

Text

Essential Avengers: Avengers West Coast #51: I SING OF ARMS AND HEROES...

November, 1989

Guess who's BACK... and guess who aren't too sure they're HAPPY about it...

Well, Hank and Jan don't look too happy about it. Neither does US Agent. Lookit him frown, the gwumpy pumpkin. Wonder Man looks like he has dull surprise going on. I cannot fathom Robot Human Torch's expression. The man would do great at poker. Wanda looks like she's offended. That's a "how dare?!" expression if I've seen one. And Vision looks like he's staring directly at the sun and isn't sure why people keep screaming at him to stop.

So my guess is that Hank, Jan, John, and Wanda aren't happy about it and the others may or may not be happy about it.

They might have been more pleased to see Iron Man if he hadn't just flown through a perfectly good wall for no reason.

Last times in Avengers West Coast: Iron Man left the West Coast Avengers because of the Armor Wars arc in his own book. Wow, that was a while ago.

At the end of Armor Wars, Iron Man faked his own death by letting the government blow up an armor full of blood. When more Iron Manning was needed, Tony Stark just built a new suit and claimed he'd hired a new bodyguard/superhero.

And now, all these issues later, he's back to rejoin the Avengers because he's become more dependent on his armor due to stuff happening in his solo. He figures more time stuck in the armor, might as well be putting it to good use.

Also happening, Wanda has had the worst fucking period of her life (so far). Her husband got disassembled by the government, her teammates don't seem to care, her children keep blinking in and out of existence whenever she's not paying attention, evil bacteria shoved her full of goo until she became a mutant supremacist, the robot Human Torch came back to life to take the hottest robot on the team role from Vision. Just a lot going on!

I sure did talk about Wanda a lot in this issue featuring Iron Man.

Anyway.

Iron Man.

What a shiny guy he is.

Yeah. The Avengers (West Coast) aren't thrilled to see Iron Man.

Because: who even is this Iron Man?

US Agent John Walker is not privy to all the details of Iron Man's identity. But he does know that the original Iron Man was supposedly killed and a new guy took over.

Original Iron Man may have been a founder of the Avengers but New Iron Man is just Some Guy. Some Guy who can fuck off if he thinks he gets to swan in and get automatically put on the team.

Iron Man understands that he doesn't get any special consideration and says he's willing to go through whatever initiation process the Avengers consider necessary.

US Agent is a big company man so even though he's maybe the leader of the Avengers possibly? (he's done literally zero leading and nearly zero interacting with the team), he storms off to go call his handlers in Washington so they can tell him what to do.

With him gone, that just leaves Hank, Wasp, and Wonder Man who all know that Tony Stark is Iron Man. Or was. They know that at certain points, Tony Stark has been Iron Man.

(Way to just spill the beans in front of an Iron Man that you don't know whether he's Tony or not, guys)

So they ask Iron Man straight up if he's Tony.

For some reason that would probably make sense if I was reading Iron Man, Iron Man apologizes and says he can't say.

I do want to read olde Iron Man. One of these days, I want to dig into that backlog. He's one of the prominent Marvel characters I haven't read significant material from pre-2000.

Anyway.

On the other side of the compound, Scarlet Wanda and Vision.

Wanda is in a mood. Because she's been in a mood Byrne's whole run because shit keeps happening to her. Possibly goo related shit.

Vision: "It surprises me that you did not wish to stay for the meeting with Iron man, my wife. I am curious as to your reason..." Scarlet Witch: "Please, Vision... I know you're programmed to use words like 'surprised' and 'curious,' but I wish you wouldn't. It only emphasizes how much more robotic you've become." Vision: "My apologies, Wanda. It was my impression you wished me to sound as human as possible." Scarlet Witch: "Human? Why would I wish that, husband? Why would any mutant worthy of the name wish to associate herself with humans?" Vision: "And yet... you are a mutant, and for years, you have gladly associated with the Avengers -- most of whom are human." Scarlet Witch: "A passing weakness, Vision."

Okay. Seriously. Did nobody think to de-gooify her after that Absolom University adventure? Give her a medical check or anything?

I'm getting a little perturbed with how little a shit this era of the West Coast Avengers seem to give about each other.

Nobody noticed Tigra was going nuts. Nobody bothered to do anything as Wanda has clearly been emotionally spiraling. Wasp decides to help Wonder Man undermine Wanda's marriage.

You all suck.

Wanda is behaving like a jerk now but at least we know external factors contributed. The rest of you just suck.

Anyway, Wanda and Vision reach their quarters and find Agatha Harkness waiting for them there.

Hi, Agatha.

Are you the Agatha that does horrible shit to Wanda to teach her something or the Agatha that's helpful without being traumatizing?

I feel like Wanda is a couple pieces of straw from just breaking so maybe considering the latter approach today.

Also, maybe consider calling ahead.

The last time Wanda and Vision saw Agatha, in the second Vision and the Scarlet Witch series, Agatha was burned at the stake.

She tells them that being burned at the stake sucked but that's not what she's here to talk about.

She's here to talk about Wanda's kids.

Wanda's weirdo kids. To talk about them and to understand what precisely they are.

Scarlet Witch: "They are only children. Normal in every way!" Agatha Harkness: "Normal, Wanda? With a mother who is a mutant and a father who is a synthezoid?"

Rude.

Agatha tells Wanda that her kids are far from normal and if she hadn't been busy resurrecting herself, she would have been here sooner.

Agatha Harkness: "But you already know yourself, that when you are not thinking about them... they disappear!"

Vision asks if that's true but Wanda denies it. BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY AS A GOOD MOM SHE IS ALWAYS THINKING OF HER KIDS AT ALL TIMES 100%.

Agatha pulls the nuh uh on this. There have been recent times where she was too distracted in battle or knocked unconscious where obviously she wasn't thinking about her kids. And wee baby Thomas and William just cease to exist during those times.

Remember those times? All those times they disappeared, freaking out the governesses? Who tried to report it to Wanda and got fired for it?

Wanda refuses to listen to this. Literally putting her hands over her ears and shouting she won't hear it.

Eesh.

Agatha tells Vision that Wanda will need his strength and love more than ever and oof is she behind the times. The government took away his capacity to love! Bad timing!

Elsewhere, up in the sky, a bird, a comet, a (robot) human torch!

Jim Hammond took off when the Avengers grouped up to meet with Iron Man. He took the time to fly over the countryside for about a half hour, just get an idea of how much things have changed.

And he's amazed! To him, it looks like 400 years have passed instead of just 40.

He lands back at the Avengers West Coast Compound and lands right into some drama without even trying.

Ann Raymond saw him being all human torchy and mistakes him for Toro. And when she realizes he's Jim Hammond instead, she, of course, gets upset because for an instant she let her hopes get up and now she's been reconfronted with the fact that her husband died in an entirely stupid and unnecessary way.

And now Jim knows Toro's dead too and is also emotionally staggered by the news.

Also: demons.

Flaming fireballs! Demons!!

Robot Human Torch gets immediately slapped into the pool. A sad casualty of being the first one the demons run into.

But Ann screaming alerted the other Avengers and they assemble and start walloping demons.

Hank Pym suggests that if a bunch of demons suddenly show up to the Avengers West Coast Compound, why there's only possible explanation.

Iron Man: "You mean it's MASTER PANDEMONIUM?? But the last we saw of him, he was being swept away by the river of oblivion... deep in the realm of Mephisto!"

Hank Pym makes a mental note of Iron Man knowing about the Avengers' last encounter with Master Pandemonium. Because Tony Stark Iron Man was on the team at the time. So is this Tony or did Tony just brief New Iron Man on all his Avengers' cases?

I don't know why Tony isn't telling the Avengers he's him so I don't know how tense it should be that Hank is piecing things together.

Anyway!

US Agent comes out to yell at the commotion and he's not really alarmed by a sudden invasion of demons. It does make him punchy so he starts punching.

Robot Human Torch pulls himself out of the pool. He's soaking wet but all he has to do is FLAME ON! to boil the water away.

Then he can "show these demonic delinquents how we used to deal with their kind back in the 50's!"

Did... you deal with a lot of demons in the 50's specifically?

Wasp takes note that the demons don't seem to be after anything and aren't really trying that hard to kill the Avengers. So why are they here?

Whoops, they're a distraction.

While the Avengers are outside fighting the demons, Master Pandemonium busts into Wanda and Vision's quarters right when Wanda is about to have a nervous breakdown over everything that's happened to her over the past few weeks.

Agatha Harkness tries to ward off the demons with her witchcraft but Master Pandemonium tries belches hellfire in her face.

Gross.

Vision tries to do the intangible fisting thing he does which either works great or doesn't work at all.

Whoops, this is one of the times it doesn't work at all.

Master Pandmemonium just blasts out demons from his arms to overwhelm Vision.

Leaving only Wanda to face him, as she boasts that nothing can withstand her hex power.

Although she seems to fend him off and force him to retreat, she doesn't notice until he's gone that one of his demons snuck behind her and yoinked the children.

He drags the poor, probably innocent tots down to probably Hell.

What does he want from them?

Well, first, he wants a captive audience to recap his entire backstory.

Villains gonna villain.

He was an actor man who drunk drove himself into a bad car crash that cost him his arm. As a big Hollywood type in the 80s, he was big into the occult?? Apparently? So he called upon dark powers, promising his soul for his arm back.

Mephisto was bored and decided this would be funny so he replaced the guy's arm with demons. And then he replaced all his limbs with demons.

Mephisto's sense of humor is beyond me.

He didn't want the guy's soul so he ripped it out, broke it into five pieces, and scattered them around.

Master Pandemonium has been searching for them since, trying to become whole.

He found one with the Cat Demon People of Tigra's origin. But whatever Englehart was planning for this dude, he didn't get around to. Guy got one soul piece back and then dropped out of the plot.

So Byrne is bringing back that plot thread.

Master Pandeominum declares to these two stupid children who don't understand any of this that kidnapping them will allow him to replace his missing 4/5ths of a soul much more efficiently than all his aimless searching up until now.

Now, I know where this is going already. It is renowned, infamously.

But try to make your best guesses before I get to the end of the issue. See how close you get.

Anyway.

In the pressing urgency of some innocent children being kidnapped... the Avengers all sit down to discuss classic sitcoms.

That's a fair response, to be honest.

But here's how the conversation unfolds.

Instead of leaping into action, the Avengers sit around and quiz Agatha on how she's alive again. Even though she keeps telling them it was fucking magic and it's not going to make sense to their science brains.

Wonder Man chimes in that HE's seen Bewitched so he can vouch for Agatha's point.

So Wanda starts yelling at him for talking about television when her children are kidnapped.

Wasp tells Wanda to settle down. Clearly they're treating this with all due urgency! Since, y'know, maybe her kids are fake as shit. Maybe they've just stopped existing again like all the governesses said.

And that's when Wanda does her a slap.

Granted, her mutant supremacy is not called for but, yeah, the Avengers are all a bunch of jerks now who can't muster a bit of urgency when a demon man kidnaps some children.

Wasp isn't even hurt because of her small size. But she is concerned that Wanda said that thing the way she did about humans.

Anyone else concerned? Nobody else reacting? Okay.

Wanda begs Agatha to help her follow Master Pandemonium.

I'm surprised we didn't start with that but I've already made clear how I feel about how the team is reacting to this.

Master Pandemonium tried to hide his path but Agatha took precautions when he first arrived so she can trace him. But Wanda can't do it alone! So... will the Avengers step up to action when a witch very lightly implies that they should?

Yes. They finally get their asses in gear and jump through the swirling magic portal.

Even US Agent agrees that where Wanda goes, the Avengers go too. Which is a big team player moment from the guy who doesn't seem to realize he's leading a superhero team.

Watching from the time Limbo that isn't the demonic Limbo or the game Limbo, Immortus freaks the fuck out.

This wasn't how things were supposed to go for his vague yet menacing plan!

And he can't do anything to alter the flow of events because, I dunno, he can't touch demonic realms. So if anything happens to Wanda, he won't be able to protect her!

Dun dun dun??

I wonder what his vague yet menacing evil plan needs Wanda for?

Back at the Avengers, Hank Pym asks Jim Hammond Human Torch to stay behind to watch the Compound.

So despite making a big deal about him joining the team last issue, with WANDA BRINGING HIM BACK FROM THE DEAD, he gets to sit on his ass for the rest of this story.

What a weird writing decision.

Byrne is all over the place with all the subplots he's juggling for this book and a lot of them just get backburnered hard.

Iron Man gets to go. And he hasn't even officially (re)joined the Avengers at this point. They don't even know if they can trust him because he won't admit to being Tony Stark to his closest friends, for some reason.

The Avengers and Iron Man arrive in a seemingly peaceful fairy tale glade but Agatha's floating head warns them not to trust it.

And the very scenery attacks them a few panels later so. Yeah. Floating Head Agatha called it.

In the distance, past all the killer foliage, Wasp spots a building made of twisted agony.

The Avengers fight their way through the angry vegetation and Scarlet Witch blows open the twisted agony fortress front door with her probability manipulation.

But they find that Master Pandemonium is ready for them. Waiting for them.

And he's done the dumbest thing possible.

He's attached Billy and Tommy to his arms so now he has literal baby hands.

It's horrifying.

It's also the dumbest thing possible.

He's so proud of himself for thinking of this.

Was this where you would have guessed him kidnapping some babies was going to go?

Also, jamming babies onto his arms seems to have filled in two points on the star shaped hole in his tum tum.

I used to like what a silly concept Master Pandemonium's entire deal was. But he's ruined it by going even dumber.

For shame, everything that went into making, publishing, and printing this comic book. For shame. You took a perfectly goofy villain and you ruined him.

Follow @essential-avengers and maybe like or reblog. I appreciate being appreciated.

#avengers #essential avengers #west coast avengers #Master Pandemonium #US Agent #Wonder Man #the Wasp #hank pym #dr pym #Scarlet Witch #the Vision #robot Human Torch #Iron Man #Agatha Harkness #Immortus #for some damn reason #this ends on a really dumb note

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gunpowdercarousel · 1 year

Text

Is there a term for the cliche in fiction where a villain is suddenly supposed to be sympathetic because oH tHey HaVe a FAmiLy? Like yeah he's evil and wants to destroy the world but LoOkiT hIs cUtE DauGhTer. Yeah he's a genocidal maniac but hE lOvEs hIS wiFE.

It can be done 'well' but so often someone's family just feels like an accessory. It's like women in refrigerators, the adorable wife and daughter just exist to be this thing that's meant to make him sympathetic.

OOoooOOOOoh he's so TRAGIC. His WIFE is DEAD.

Don't you feel BAD FOR HIM NOW?!

OOOOOoooOOOOOOh OH MY GOD HE DID IT ALL FOR HIS FRAMLY?! OOOOOOHMYGOOOOOD this is SO ORIGINAL.

Yeah I get it you're really writing such a fascinating and tragic and nuanced character. Oh my god, I'm blown away by the concept of a villain who cares about TWO PEOPLE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD. WOW. One of whom is his WIFE and one of whom is his CHILD.

OH MY GOD WHAT TRAGEDY WHAT DRAMA

#writing #cliches #tropes #writing tropes #you can all think of AT LEAST ONE villain like this #i am willing to give ketheric a slight pass because we at least meet his daughter #and she's her own character #and NOBODY is sympathetic to ketheric #so like whatever #plus he's obviously horribly in the wrong and nobody is making excuses for him

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barb-l · 1 year

Note

Lycoris Recoil- What is it about? I am curious because of your posts.

It's about orphan girls taken in by a secret organization to basically be child soldiers and assassins called Lycoris(there's a male counterpart called Lilybell if ur curious but they're not important rn). One of the protags is Takina, an emotionally constipated girl who supposedly got kicked out for disobeying direct orders. But in reality, she disobeyed orders to save a teammate. Nobody just considers that cuz she's just so shit at showing that she cares about people 😭

So she gets kicked out of hq and made to work for Lycoris Recoil, a tiny branch of the main hq that works smaller jobs. They only have one Lycoris named Chisato, who is the best of the best but is a problem child bcuz she does whatever tf she wants and refuses to kill no matter what, going so far as packing med supplies for enemies.

These two are just an absolute blast to watch. Takina is quiet and proper and mission focused while Chisato is easy-going and honestly the coolest fictional girl ever. The progress of their friendship is so well done and by the end of the show, you can see why they have literally become each other's ride or die.

Just lookit this scene where Takina goes from being uncomfortable about showing affection in public--

--to purposely doing something embarrassing just to make Chisato smile snnsnsnsjsb

The show also has interesting side characters. Takina and Chisato are only ever heavily hinted, but Chisato has a canonically gay adopted dad, so that's neat. Although the plot isn't anything new, it's very engaging, and really well-paced. The action's really good, coupled with great comedic timing, witty jokes, and superb voice acting. And it just... It has a lot of heart you know? When a show has that, it definitely gets me.

#lycoris recoil #sorry that is so much more than u probably asked for #but in a little bit in love with this show rn #fyi those screenshots were already in my gallery bcuz i live posted my reactions on twitter lol

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the-moth-from-elsewhere · 8 months

Text

HEY

do you like Picrew?

Do you have characters?

DO YOU WANT TO BLOW UP ELSIE’S NOTIFICATIONS?!

cool, so do I.

HERE’S THREE PICREWS! TELL ME ABOUT YOUR CHARACTERS! JUST RAMBLE ON ABOUT THEM! TAG YOUR MUTUALS IF YOU WANT! I WILL PROBABLY READ ALL OF IT!

while this is made mostly for my friendos and acquaintances in TAOCC, I know that Picrew chains tend to breach containment. So don’t feel like you can’t do this.

So…

HERE’S THE THREE.

“Oh, gosh, they’re a doll now”

This is Dusk and she is very cool and also can see you through the screen :3

”Plushies awwww”

Here’s Aoki the sad rain blorbo. He’s trying his best.

“Oh look there’s two of em”

Dusk and her boyfriend fiance, Jessy.

do as many or as few as you’d like. More insanity under the cut. Feel free to use these as well.

One person:

”Bottle of Wholesome”

”But…but what if RPG”

“FRILLS”

“Please sir I am trying to get my homework done”

”Sweaters. Frick yeah.”

“*hair flip* :D”

”I just really like the way they draw hair”

“going to a Hatsune Miku concert”

“I just really like the way they draw hair, part 2.”

“Yunno what? Mermaid Picrew. Why not?”

“Eh??”

Two or more people:

“AWWWW LOOKIT A HEART AWWWWWWW THEY SO SMAAAAALLL”

“Ah, yes, dramatic manga /pos”

“Girl help I’m drowning”

“Bon appetite”

“Putting your loved ones into a goldfish bowl, for the funsies.”

“Oh hey there’s more”

“The missile is eeby.”

“Hypothermia lol”

@feiar @iciatheguardess

#Picrew #rb chain #here we go lol #Rb game #picrew game #picrew chain

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vorish-wonderland · 2 years

Text

Floyd is upset, bored, and hungry. Riddle just made a replica of an old shrinking potion from the Queendom of Hearts. What could possibly go wrong?

Includes: soft/safe vore, Floyd being himself, unwilling prey

✮✶Let's Play Hide & Seek~!✶✮

☆ﾟ⁠.⁠*⁠･⁠｡ﾟ☆ﾟ⁠.⁠*⁠･⁠｡ﾟ☆ﾟ⁠.⁠*⁠･⁠｡ﾟ☆ﾟ⁠.⁠*⁠･⁠｡ﾟ☆ﾟ⁠.⁠*⁠･⁠｡ﾟ

Jade and Azul have very strange ways of punishing Floyd sometimes.

He ate some food he wasn't supposed to, so you know what they made him do? They made him stand perfectly still for two hours while holding plates of food in both hands, and everytime he made a movement the timer reset.

So now, he was upset, bored, and hungry.

And then, he realized exactly how he can kick this boredom!

"I'll go talk with Goldfishie! That'll be fun!"

Meanwhile, Riddle was trying to study something, just trying to get his work done.

Studying in the library is usually quite peaceful. Right now, he's studying early potions. The one he's currently attempting to replicate was first documented in the Queen Of Hearts' domain, a clear and tasteless liquid in a bottle with no label other than "Drink Me". It's said that whoever drank it would shrink immediately.

Now he just needs someone to test it on...

"Hey Goldfishie~!!"

Oh dear Seven.

"Goldfish, Goldfish, Go~old~fish~ie~!" Riddle sighed in annoyance. Floyd is the last person he wants to be around him while he has an experimental potion with him. "Hey hey, what are you doing right now?"

Then, Riddle had a good idea.

"Well, Floyd, I was just about to test this potion I made! Would you mind drinking it for me?" Riddle asked, a forced smile on his face.

"Sure, I guess. But only if you give me food after, I'm really hungry..."

"Of course, that can be arranged."

Floyd grabbed the small vial and poured the liquid into his mouth. He swished it around for a bit, before looking like he got an idea.

He grabbed Riddle's face, and kissed him directly on the lips.

Riddle was surprised. Not only by the sudden kiss, but also by the rush of liquid entering his mouth.

Riddle swallowed without thinking.

"Agh- What was that for, Floyd?!" Riddle angrily asked.

"I thought it'd be more fun to see your potion used on you~!" Floyd said, a wide smile on his face.

It was a slow process. Riddle got smaller, smaller, smaller... as Riddle shrunk, Floyd's mouth was starting to water.

"Like I said, Goldfishie, I'm feelin' hungry~ And you, lookit you! You're so small and cute, why I could just eat you up right now~!" Floyd licked his lips. "But that's no fun, is it? So Goldfishie, I think I have a fun idea... why don't we play hide and seek~?"

"H...hide and seek...?" Riddle cautiously asked. He finally stopped shrinking, and he was now about the size of a large goldfish.

"Yeah! You hide, and I try to find ya!" Floyd explained, a smile on his face. "If you win and I don't find you, then... ehehe... I won't eat you~!"

Floyd crouched down to Riddle's level as his stomach growled.

"I'll give you 30 seconds to hide, Goldfishie~"

Floyd closed his eyes, and started his countdown.

Riddle had no idea where he could hide. Of course he'd much rather not play along with Floyd's games, but what other choice does he have in this scenario?!

Riddle jumped down from the chair he had been standing on. It hurt his legs when he landed on the floor, but thankfully not enough to keep him from trying to hide.

There's a book lying page-down on the floor over there! He could probably hide under that, right?!

Riddle ran as fast as he could towards the book. He tried his best to lift the book so he could hide under it, but it was so... heavy at this tiny size.

"Ten seconds Goldfish! Better have a good hiding spot!"

In a panic, Riddle got down on the floor and army-crawled under the pages of the book, hopefully that'll hide him well enough.

"Eh, it's close enough to zero. Ready or not, here I come~!!"

Riddle's heart was beating out of his chest. He knew that Floyd wasn't lying or joking, he's seen Floyd eat people before. Seeing that was like a scene straight out of one of those horror movies he's seen Ace watch. The sounds, oh Seven, the sounds. Muffled begging for help and mercy mixed with squishing and gurgling and... oh, it was terrifying to watch. And sure, Riddle always saw those people completely safe and unharmed the next day, but... still, it's horrifying to think about.

"Hmm... where are you, Goldfish~?"

Floyd's eyes darted over to the book on the floor.

"You're really bad at hiding, you know that~?" Floyd asked, causing Riddle's heart to drop. "Then again, maybe I just have an unfair advantage." Floyd picked the book up off the floor, to find Riddle's tiny trembling frame. "Us morays have a heightened sense of smell, for hunting purposes... you actually smell really nice! Like roses... I wonder what Goldfishie will taste like~!"

Floyd grabbed Riddle by the leg, and picked him up off the floor. Riddle was pulled through the air, now dangling precariously above Floyd's open mouth.

"Floyd... you can't be serious about this... r-right...?" Riddle nervously asked.

"Hm? 'Course I am! I'm real hungry, y'know~ And you happen to be the perfect size~!" Floyd giggled to himself.

"No no! I-I'm still too big! There's no way you can eat me without choking!" Riddle desperately yelled, even though he knew that wasn't true.

"My throat and stomach are pretty stretchy, actually~! I'm sure you know I've eaten full-sized humans before, y'know, as a punishment for contract breakers... something as small as you won't be a problem at all~!"

And then, he dropped him.

Floyd played around with his defenseless little Goldfish. He swished him around, pressed him against the roof of his mouth, teased him with his razor sharp teeth, tasted every last inch of his body...

And then, he swallowed.

It took a few tries to get all of him down, but eventually, that poor little Goldfish was sent sliding down his throat.

Riddle was not having a good day.

He was large enough to make a small bulge in Floyd's middle, but thankfully (for Floyd, not so much for Riddle) not enough to be seen without his shirt off.

He contently laid down on the floor of the library, a hand on his stomach, a blush on his face as Riddle tried to move around.

"FLOYD, GET ME OUT OF HERE THIS INSTANT!" Riddle yelled, punching at the walls of Floyd's stomach.

"Ehe! That kinda tickles, Goldfishie~!" Floyd laughed. "And relaaaaax, you're safe in there."

"Safe? SAFE?! Do you not pay attention in biology classes?!" Riddle yelled.

"Merfolk biology's a lot different than human biology, Goldfishie... just trust me, you'll be safe." Floyd explained. "I just wanted a snack. Ehehehe... and you filled me up perfectly, Goldfish~"

"You know, that's not exactly a very 'comforting' thing to say to someone you just ate." Riddle sarcastically said.

"Whatever. I hope you don't mind me keeping you inside me for a while, hehe, you just feel so good in there~ Maybe you should make a contract with Azul! I sure would love for you to break contract so I get to eat you again~!" Floyd happily said.

"I personally never want to go through this again. It's uncomfortable, tight, hot, and very wet." Riddle pouted.

"Oh shush, it's not that bad. Now stop complaining, just let us both relax~"

Riddle sighed.

There's not exactly anything he can do about this.

He'll have to find some way to get back at Floyd for this some day, but for now...

It's probably best to just give Floyd what he wants. Who knows what he'll do if not...

#i thought of this and couldn't not do it #i know i said i wanted to do all the housewardens before anything like this #soft vore #safe vore #twst vore #twisted wonderland vore #gt vore #v.ore #v/ore #sfw vore #v0re #floyd leech #riddle rosehearts

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fujomod3r · 10 months

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Thoughts on Fashion Dreamer

Fashion Dreamer is the latest title from syn Sophia, and sort of spiritual sequel to their previous series Style Savvy (Style Boutique in Europe and わがままファシオン / Wagamama Fashion in Japan). The premise of the game is to become a fashion influencer or muse in a virtual world called Eve. This is done by collecting/copying clothing items from other muses (both pre-set NPCs and player created muses encountered via online features) or by unlocking clothing patterns to craft your own items. These items can then be used to create outfits known as Lookits for yourself and other muses. Some muses request specific conditions such as certain colours, styles or items to complement a particular article of clothing. Completing these requests rewards the player with more currencies to unlock and craft more items. Creating lookits and using the rewards to unlock items to create more lookits forms the central loop of the gameplay. Progress, or perhaps more nebulously, your 'success' as an influencer is tracked by how many 'likes' your lookits receive and how many 'followers' you accrue. In reality these are only virtual scores and not related to the online/social features at all.

It's by no means a perfect game, and I want to share my thoughts on what its shortcomings are, but what really prompted me to write this is looking back on the reaction to the announcement trailer. When the game was first announced during a Nintendo Direct, commenters instantly brushed it off as trite and uninteresting, many demanding it be skipped to show off more Mario or just any other game with a more 'masculine' appeal. Similarly, many streamers and youtubers reacting to the Direct mocked or derided the game for seemingly no other reason than it being 'feminine' coded or "for girls" which is extremely disheartening to see. Before the trailer had even shown any gameplay, thousands of commenters had already declared the game worthless. I'm perfectly capable of just dealing with this anti-feminine attitude, but imagine how comments and reactions like these affect the many thousands if not millions of players who are interested in this kind of game? Players with 'feminine' tastes, interests and hobbies deserve to be catered to as much as any other player. It really sometimes feels like some people never mentally matured past 8 years old, recoiling in horror from 'girly' things as an immature assertion of their own masculinity.

I don't expect all players are going enjoy something like Fashion Dreamer. I just like to imagine the world is wide enough for games like it to exist and not be mocked or dismissed outright as though they're intrinsically less worthy than other types of game. Being marketed primarily at people with 'feminine' coded interests isn't inherently a bad thing and it's truly saddening to see how easily people fall into this immature way of thinking.

With that said, Fashion Dreamer isn't perfect!! Far from it. To put it bluntly, the game currently lacks features and activities outside of creating outfits and taking photos. Previous games in the series had narrative arcs for different characters, shopping and restocking, decorating your apartment / boutique as well as activities like going to music concerts. While Fashion Dreamer allows the player to walk around Eve at their leisure, it lacks detail that would make it feel more alive. The differently themed virtual worlds or Cocoons all have the same small set of activities (that is, a photo booth, a makeup stand and gacha machines) and a collection of more or less random NPCs, meaning they end up feeling like different desktop wallpapers rather than different places. The narrative of becoming a fashion influencer is potentially a very interesting topic for exploration, especially given how relevant social media has become in the fashion world. There is also the potential for an exploration of how social media facilitates communication, expression and friendship, whilst at the same time discussing the negative impacts social media can have on people. As it stands, the game feels empty and lacks the charm of its predecessors.

Gone are the unique clothing brands of Style Savvy, with their specialisation in particular styles or items. Every item in Fashion Dreamer either comes from a single generic default brand, or is created by players. Whilst the ability for players to create their own brand is interesting, this too ultimately feels quite shallow. With all items being drawn from the same pool and with limited options for colours (and basically none for customisation such as rolling up sleeves, opening/closing outerwear etc) there's not really much incentive to 'follow' or even collect items from another player's brand. Especially since you can usually unlock the item for yourself with a bit of effort anyway. Creating your own 'brand' in this way is far less rewarding or sasitfying than creating, customising and stocking your boutique store was in the previous games. Some remnants of that feature are present in vestigial form in Fashion Dreamer, namely a custom showroom where players can display furniture, decorations and fashion items, but there's never any reason to visit your own showroom, much less those of other players. You enter the room, spend 15 seconds admiring different colour variants of the same items you have, mutter 'nice' to yourself then leave. It's unfulfilling to say the least.

It's bad enough that the clothing and brands lack personality, but the characters themselves also seem completely dessicated and one-dimensional. Where previous games had characters with distinct personalities and corresponding tastes, the NPC muses in Fashion Dreamer have much less to say and no strong preferences. Their single sentence barks don't give them much flavour and really only serve to remind you of what their 'gimmick' or 'thing' is supposed to be ("I like surfing! Surf's up! Cowabunga! Can't wait to hit the waves man!!"). Their requests for Lookits don't seem unique to their personalities (the surfer dude has asked me twice for formal suits without even trying to lampshade this by explaining why), and so far I've yet to have any muse object to an outfit or item I selected for them. Again, a comparison to Style Savvy highlights what is absent here. In Style Savvy, goth characters would balk at bright colours, characters preoccupied with elegance and sophistication would turn their nose up at distressed denims or graphic printed t-shirts. It's not as though these personalities were particularly deep, but their preferences had to be taken into consideration when recommending or selling items. Requests from muses in Fashion Dreamer on the other hand seem to be essentially random. Building a rapport with customers by talking with them or meeting them out in the town in Style Savvy felt rewarding as it let you learn more about their personality, and so better tailor your fashion recommendations to suit them. The muses of Fashion Dreamer simply repeat the same barks at every level of friendship and have much less to say about themselves or their lives making them and the world they inhabit feel much more shallow.

While Fashion Dreamer does away with having to worry about money limiting your creativity, it instead replaces one currency with 4. Instead of using money from sales to restock your store, the player must now accrue 'likes', 'keys', 'gacha tickets' and 'coins' which are used to craft clothing, unlock new designs or purchase room decorations and single-use photo props (don't ask why the VR flower evaporates after a single VR photo, it just does). The conceit of being in virtual world evaporates quickly and seems to serve mainly to hand-wave away the various abstracted elements of the game world such as the ability to instantly copy outfits and change on the spot. Grinding for these 4 abstract resources feels far less rewarding than seeing the revenue of your Boutique store increase, allowing you to buy flashier styles and splurge on store decorations.

Again I feel the need to stress that this change in focus from running a high-street boutique to being a fashion blogger in the Matrix isn't necessarily bad, but it doesn't do anything interesting with this theme, serving mainly to provide a poor simulacrum of social media 'number go up' dopamine hits. Gaining 'followers' on Fashion Dreamer isn't a reward for effort, it's literally just a numbers game since almost every action in the game rewards you with followers (which is perhaps more realistic than I'm giving it credit for). The actual social features of the game are simplistic but cute, allowing players to 'follow' one another and create or request Lookits for each other based on their multiple-choice answers to 5 simple questions (or totally ignoring that and dressing them like a Splatoon character). However it all feels quite shallow since you never interact directly with other players and so don't get to enjoy show off your unique look.

Finally, while Fashion Dreamer allows you to now create a masculine avatar (an option sorely lacking in the previous games which simply assumed the player to be a girl), the range of fashion options for masculine body types seems a lot smaller than the feminine options. It also doesn't allow masculine muses to wear feminine clothing (shoes, hats and earrings are all considered unisex, but all other clothing items are locked to a single gender) and vice versa. It's a shame to fall down here because the game has clearly made steps to be more inclusive, with a wider variety of options for skin tone, hairstyle and a 2nd gender (Ghee whizz! How come your mom lets you have two genders?). Further, the range of body shapes is still extremely lacking, with a selection of ~10 slim bodies of different heights. Overall, the game shows a real lack of interest in exploring the world of fashion, and nowhere is that more obvious than its lazy emulation of typical body/beauty standards we see everywhere else.

I know I've probably come across really harsh and critical here, but it's only out of a frustration at seeing what a strong basis there is for a game here. The character models and animations are great, and there aren't enough games that provide players like myself with the ability to indulge in playing dress-up for its own sake. Ultimately, I do want to see this game or others like it succeed because I loved Style Savvy and want developers to continue making games that dare to be unapologetically feminine in what they're about and who they're appealing to. I'm just disappointed overall in the lack of polish this particular game has. It honestly feels unfinished which is why I want to hold back from being too harsh.

Do I think this game is worth buying? Not really at the RRP, but if you're interested in some extremely light and somewhat mindless entertainment theorycrafting fits and taking a few cute digital selfies, just be warned that you won't get much else out of it. The soundtrack will start to grate on you as well, so make sure to line up a playlist of your own.

#fashion dreamer #syn sophia #style savvy #girls mode #style boutique #lookit

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hisui555 · 7 months

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Hazbin Hotel thoughts : Foils 4

(Foils 1 here)

(Foils 2 here)

(Foils 3 here)

Masterpost here.

(Or the one where I'm starting to think I'm not really creative with title names.)

Anyway, I'm on a roll (seriously, what's happening. Motivation is perking up from its deep slumber. Didn't happened since last October. Is it a full blue moon tonight or...?) and I did say I was gonna talk about Lucifer and Sera, so here goes.

Lucifer VS Sera, and for good measure Charlie VS Emily. Both Lucifer and Sera come from Heaven (revelation of the century, wow, I know - oh lookit dat, my sarcasm is awake early today), happen to both be Seraphim (with Lucifer as one of the most powerful and Sera having been involved in the creation of Earth apparently, if Ep 1's intro is to be believed) and a parental figure to their younger charge : Lucifer is Charlie's literal dad and Sera is a mentor motherly figure to Emily. They also both want to protect the ones they love, but go about it in different ways : Lucifer made a deal that no hellborn demons are hurt during the yearly Exterminations, while Sera enforces Heaven's flawed system to keep the heaven-bound souls and Emily joyful and safe. However, hurt Charlie and Lucifer will come down on you like a meteor, despite having spent time estranged from his own daughter, while Sera keeps Emily out of the loop despite always being with her (they are no on-screen scenes of Emily alone up to now, even if at one point Sera did separate to talk to Adam, which means that Emily was showing Vaggie and Charlie around on her own, off-screen).

This is fairly interesting to see that while Lucifer - due to depression, growing cynism (10 000 years at least of waking up each morning and being met first thing looking out of the window by Hell's cesspool of sin and violence - the reminder of his broken dreams and awful unforeseen consequences of his well-meaning gift of free will) and plain just life going sideways with his wife missing for 7 years and his daughter going down the same road as him, also unintentionally hurting Charlie by not supporting her dreams (at first) - is not much involved in Charlie's life but still wanting to reconnect with her and is ecstatic when he has the chance to ("My daughter wants to see meeee !"), Sera is always present in Emily's life, working together with her ("It's my position as the Head Seraphim to protect our people at all costs ! And it's your position to keep them happy and joyful") in tandem : one takes care of the technical side, the other of the emotional side of things. Bread and circuses (funnily enough, Lucifer and the other Sins have a circus theme going on) - yet she's more distant and disconnected from Emily, keeping her (and the majority of Heaven) in the dark and using her position to uphold the status quo over what Emily wants or feels. Lucifer, while reluctant at first, actually agrees to help Charlie the way Charlie would like it to go, and is there to pick her up when things go south, fully supporting her once he comes around (More Than Anything and Finale).

Sera and Lucifer are also kind of two sides of the same coin : the latter is a known dreamer, extremely creative and open-minded, which blew up in his face when he changed things, unintentionally made shit hit the fan and got casted down to Hell for it. Sera on her side upholds the rules, doesn't dare to question the system, strives to not change a thing even if she seems to deeply regret how it's done, and lives in constant fear of her or her loved ones suffering Lucifer's fate. At the point of the first season, both are motivated by the same thing : fear, especially of losing or seeing their loved ones hurt, and especially this exact thing happening to their daughter figure - a very relatable thing. Yet Lucifer, after some prodding, chooses to fully stand by his daughter's side (and what's more, she (unknowingly) succeeds !) while Sera feels forced to squash Emily's hopes with the intention to spare her anguish and pain. At the end of Ep 6, both have disappointed their daughter figure at least once, but Lucifer did it in the past and strives to get better, while Sera is currently doing it and worsening things (in Ep 8, she's probably keeping Emily from intervening in any form about the Extermination). Lucifer, the fallen angel, dares to go where Sera, the high seraphim, would not, overcoming a fear Sera still can't shake off.

Quick aside, they make a nice foils triangle with Carmilla : Sera on one side as an angel not changing the status quo even if it's flawed and even if it brings her anguish and she has to put her daughter figure's feelings down for it, Carmilla on the other side as a demon who broke the rules by defeating the undefeatable to protect her daughters no matter what and helping out indirectly, and Lucifer in the middle as a fallen angel that has tried but given up, ending up doing a pendulum swing from one side to another, both with his own daughter in mind too - first not supporting her dream to avoid her getting crushed, then saying 'screw it let's do it' and standing by her side no matter what. Probably not intentional, but the fact that he starts with his more angelic form (ep 5) like Sera and ends up in his more demonic form (ep 8) like Carmilla when at peak protectiveness is smile-inducing to observe.

Charlie, Emily, Odette and Clara really should organize a tea party sometime.

Which brings us to Charlie VS Emily. Not gonna lie, they're a lot alike (the sun also rose today, also, breaking news : water is wet), idealistic, optimists, two piles of sugar sweetness in the shape of a young woman (chronological age notwithstanding) with a certain naïveté to them - basically, they're each other's counterpart in their respective realms of Heaven and Hell, as high-ranked figures in charge of seemingly less important stuff that actually have their weight : Charlie is the Princess of Hell and founder of the Hotel, wanting to repent Sinners, while Emily is a seraphim in charge of making citizens in Heaven happy. Both strive to bring joy and kindness to their own people and fully believe in their cause, so it's no wonder that they immediately click very well together. In Welcome To Heaven (both the song and episode), Emily is absolutely gleeful in meeting both Charlie and Vaggie, can't wait to show them around, and openly welcoming no strings attached (which contrasts Sera's tempering : "You're gifted to be here", and "of course it's just temporary, I'm sorry you can't stay" - she's quick to remind everyone that it's not where the two demons belong).

However Emily looks like a Charlie that's still sheltered. To be fair, while Charlie is, in some measure, still naive about her own world (though not naive enough to think every Sinner wants redemption), with not-really-thought-through plans (Puppy dog kisses and puffy-wuffy clouds, anyone ?), has grown up under the protection and love of her parents, and is ready to Fluttershit the shy (yes, you read that right) out of everyone who comes knocking, she's still out there working for it (even during Exterminations, as seen when she found Vaggie), knowing it'll be a hard road and that she's going to get rebuked a lot. She's also more or less on her own, at least since 7 years, estranged from her parents and managing the Hotel alone (later with the help of her girlfriend since 3 years). Emily on her side, from her own point of view, lives in a world where nothing is wrong (as far as she knows), has been kept away from what's really going on (though no fault of her own) and is always around her mentor, having the task of keeping people happy. The moment the truth is out, her world shatters ("What are you saying, let me get this straight - you go down there and kill those poor souls ?!") and the pedestal her mentor figure was on, in her eyes, completely falls apart. However, just like Charlie, she shows inner strength and maturity, immediately calling out and condemning said actions, showing that she's not a child to coddle - just like Charlie who is capable of showing a more competent and dangerous side. They also have both less human forms (Charlie's demon form, Emily's seraphim form) that partially pop up when they become emotional or agitated (the horns and eyes for Charlie, the halo and torso eyes for Emily).

Where Charlie rekindles her bond with her father, realizing how much alike they are and at one point having believed in the same dream before also rekindling said belief, Emily on her side ends her episode realizing how different she is from Sera, who fed her beliefs and morals she herself doesn't hold - and rightfully calls her out on the hypocrisy, because just like Charlie, who's out during Exterminations to help her own people, she's willing to risk herself (falling) for what she believes is right, fair and just. Is it any wonder why the joined duet of Charlie and Emily is such a cathartic banger ? Everyone together now !

If Hell is forever then Heaven must be a lie !

If angels can do whatever and remain in the sky !

The rules are shades of gray, when you don't do as you say,

When you make the wretched suffer just to kill them again !

As a side note, I also wanted to talk about the representation of Heaven itself : I was awaiting the classic "everyone looks like humans with wings, back to how they looked like on Earth for the Winners, with some form of uniformization", just like St-Peter basically. But the show did me one better : Heaven is just as diverse as Hell - there are animals, anthros, monster-like people, some have still object-heads and item-like bodies, just with a vaguely gold-and-white aesthetic and some angel wings. There are things that crawl, fly, twist, people with multiple eyes and limbs, fangs, gills, scales and fur, just like Hell. The only ones uniformized (and looking like flat-out classic demons) are the Exorcists - and those are the fanatics hellbent on carnage and suffering. When Sir Pentious ascends, he's still a snake, just with a more angelic-like design. Take Molly's wings out and put her in Hell, or stick them to Angel Dust and put him in Heaven, and you won't see the difference. Heaven dips just as much on the "monster, abomination, humanly incomprehensible" side as Hell, and just like Hell, not everyone is a jerk (even if not everyone is nice either. Right, Adam ?) : Emily is genuinely kind and open-minded, St-Peter is accomodating, and despite agreeing to actions that bring the misery to thousands of people, Sera is sincerely compassionate and regretful of her decisions (even if she believes them necessary - funny, since she was the one to call Charlie "misguided" earlier).

Again, it's a spectrum. There's no real box to fit people in, simply because here, Heaven and Hell are just like us humans : flawed. They have the big lines down, but the edges are blurry, and a lot of people fall through the cracks. They're like two districts of the same city, each on the opposite side of the road. Once more, people being people.

Again, Masterpost here.

#hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel thoughts #hazbin charlie #hazbin hotel charlie #hazbin lucifer #hazbin hotel lucifer #hazbin sera #hazbin hotel sera #hazbin emily #hazbin hotel emily

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