#morality is too objective to assign to a collective

[bugboy-behaviour]

i dont really believe in good or bad people. i mean theres exceptions but for the most part people are just people

[lincolndjarin]

hollow star ⊹₊⟡⋆ ch. one

chapter one : when flesh meets steal

ao3 kofi main masterlist (series masterlist coming soon )

pairing: din djarin x scientist!reader

rating: 18+ mdni - check chapter tags for cws

word count : 6.1k

summary: Din agrees to help you when he's sees the credits you're offering in exchange for protection, after all, it's a simple mission. Artifact retrieval and data collection.

That's what you told him.

And why wouldn't he believe you?

tags: strangers to lovers, horror, non-consensual voyeurism, slowburn, psycological horror, fear

70,000 CREDITS - PRIVATE ESCORT DETAIL : FREELANCE OPERATIVES ONLY

SERVICE TYPE: Discreet Escort / Protection Detail 

DURATION: 2 weeks (approximately) 

LOCATION: Classified - Outer Rim, unregistered planet (coordinates provided upon meeting)

COMPENSATION: 140,000 credits, 70,000 upfront, and the remainder upon completion of the job. (an additional 10,000 credits will be provided for every day of service required after the initial 2 weeks.)

BONUS: Hazard pay negotiable based on situational escalation.

REQUIREMENTS:  Combat experience, (soldier or soldier adjacent is preferable) must be familiar with navigation and willing to travel through hostile terrain. Preferably a ship that does not require a crew and has a solo operator. (negotiable) Must not be affiliated with the New Republic, or any Jedi-aligned factions. 

Private client requiring an armed escort for the purpose of a personal research trip. The objective being artifact retrieval and/or data extraction. No combat is anticipated but the client requests protection against potential scavengers or environmental threats. Client will not be armed. No questions asked, no answers expected, discretion is non-negotiable. 

There’s several blocked lines of text at the bottom of his monitor, encrypted information about the client that makes him furrow his brow. The black screen flickers a bit, his thoughts accompanied by the quiet hum of the space that surrounds the Razor Crest. 140,000 credits is nothing to scoff at, it’s the type of payment he’d expect on a high risk job, or something far more sinister than this. That kind of money is often offered up for jobs that most people wouldn’t choose because of its morality. Hit’s put out on children, or the defenseless. Or at the very least something that would take well over a few months. 

Not this, not a simple in and out escort job. 

The redacted information is concerning. Too concerning, even with the payout promised. His fingers type into the system for a few moments, trying to push through what he knows to be simple defenses put up by the guild before the screen blinks and the text is easily revealed to him. With a pleased sigh he sits back in his chair and reads. 

Client shows signs of previous Imperial affiliation, though not flagged for war crimes. Known history with a classified archives division. Linguist, no combat personnel history. Last known activity listed as an unexplained incident with a vault located at Station Mourna 2. (now sealed.) Was assigned to the Imperial Historical Recovery Taskforce, or I-HRT, division 12. No last known location. No existing warrants or bounties on head. 

The Imperial affiliation stands out to him but it reads like they had very little to do with anything more than their history department. Which seems benign enough and would explain the exorbitant fee. They can simply afford it. 

But there’s just something off about the listing. 

It should be so simple, it’s a clean cut job, a bit clinical, but nothing of the sort would be required of him. It’s the top left corner of the screen that makes him the most hesitant. 

36 applications received, 0 accepted. 

The client clearly requires someone experienced, it can’t even be seen by anyone without a certain guild clearance level but 0 acceptances out of 36? It’s unheard of, even with the pickiest clients. Anyone who would have applied at this point would have been more than qualified. 

Maybe the client is particular about certain things, or maybe they already found someone and forgot to remove the listing. Either way it’s simply too tempting to resist any longer. He needs the money, or at the very least he needs the distance. 

He can’t just keep waiting here, burning through fuel, for something that is never going to happen. 

He enters his guild code, fingers lingering above the send button before finally clicking it. Rocking back in the pilot's seat he lets his head fall back. Accepting the fact that he won’t be receiving a response before the message has even been fully sent out. 

So the immediate chime made by the ship's notification system is more than a shock as he sits back up. 

Congratulations! Your application has been accepted! The client will be waiting for you on : CORUSCANT 

Attached you will find the message provided by the client, best of luck!

I would like to be retrieved as quickly as possible from the Kaelen Memorial Travel Port. Payment will be exchanged immediately after boarding. Your haste is appreciated. 

Dr. Thorne

The response makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He can’t place the sense of dread this all fills him with but unfortunately his mind is made up. A lot of things fill him with dread these days, so he might as well make a little money. 

It’s not like he has anything left to lose.

⊹₊⟡⋆

Sleep doesn’t come easy to him.

It never has, but especially not these last few months. Almost always it’s just simple restlessness, a refusal to turn off the hunters instincts and relax. Waking up in a sweat after a dream of just barely snagging a bounty, or finding himself at the end of a blaster being wielded by one of the many nameless faces he’s turned in over the years.  

Tonight is different though. Tonight he sinks into sleep slowly, but deeply. 

When he wakes up he’s met with a feeling he hasn’t felt in decades. 

The wind. 

Cold, and sharp against his face as he cautiously gets to his feet. He’s standing in a field of ash, no visible sky above, only more grey and smoke. 

He manages to pull himself together enough to realize he’s dreaming but it doesn’t make him any less disoriented. His hands find his face, scratching at the unfamiliar sting of air on his flesh. Looking around and trying to take in his surroundings proves fruitless until something slowly slips through the smoke above him. Swaying back and forth in the breeze until it gingerly lands in his open hands. 

A feather. 

A dainty, black feather.

When he shifts his gaze upwards to find the source he finally finds something else in the endless expanse of space around him. A star. 

Although it’s barely that at all. 

Hanging from a mess of wires is a poorly made steel outline of a star, desperately trying to stay together as a few sparks twitch out of the exposed cables within. It tries to flicker, to turn on but all it manages is a pathetic glow from the hollow space within. It isn’t a normal light it emits either, he immediately recognizes it as the same glow made by the darksaber, instinctively he reaches for his hip to find it but only grabs air. Looking down in search of it forcefully makes him drop down a foot into the ash. 

Before he can find his footing he sinks again, another jolt down so that he’s up to his knees in ash. Frantically, he tries to hold onto something, anything, but there’s only more grainy ash, he finds no purchase as he sinks, quicker, and quicker, unable to hold on any longer he takes a deep breath, preparing for the punishing lack of oxygen he’s about to be faced with. 

And then he wakes up. 

Gasping, and clawing at the single sheet that lines the mattress in his bunk. 

It’s a tight squeeze when he leverages himself out, falling to his knees in the cargo hold of the ship, wildly ripping his helmet off before the air can properly depressurize, giving himself a sharp pain in his temples. He’s too desperate for air to care about the headache he’s gonna have for the rest of the day. 

⊹₊⟡⋆

It’s late. 

The port you’ve requested boarding at isn’t one he’s familiar with. Coruscant is a large planet though, and there’s plenty of places in the galaxy that he’s never been to. As he approaches the first thing he notes is how dark it is. The entire planet is lit up, especially from a distance. The mass of cities and the vibrant nightlife keep the planet well lit. Unfortunately for him, it seems you’ve chosen the only dark patch on the entire planet. It isn’t easy to calibrate the landing because of the lack of light, he can’t see anything clearly but it appears to be completely empty so he picks a random spot and prepares himself. 

The ship hovers above the crumbling refueling station, slowly descending before landing with a hiss of air. For the price attached to the job he certainly wasn’t expecting to dock in such a shitty spot. Unsure of what to expect he makes his way to the loading dock and lowers the ramp, before it even reaches the stone pathway a pair of boots land on the edge. 

Instinctively his hand twitches to his blaster as he assesses the figure. 

Alone, cloaked, and calm. Before him stands who he is certain must be his client. He was expecting a stony faced doctor, someone older, someone that looked like they’d spent plenty of time out in the field. 

Which is why he’s taken aback by the sight of you. 

Doe-eyed, looking out of place in the dark robes that adorn your body, the only out of place thing about you is the small pale scar along your jaw. In one swift motion you drag a large suitcase up onto the platform behind you. 

“Worn, but efficient.” Are the first words out of your mouth as you take in the sights of the ship, as if he isn’t standing directly in front of you. “I suppose this will do.” Nodding to yourself you finally let your gaze settle in him, a smile that doesn’t quite meet your eyes adorns your face. “Hello, Mandalorian.” It’s almost posed as a question, you want confirmation that you’re in the right place despite the fact that he’s standing before you in full beskar armour.  

He isn’t sure how to respond. The client information section of the listing flashes through his mind as he stares. 

Imperial affiliation. 

Your outfit surely suggests that but the rest of you screams inexperienced. He hasn’t ever seen someone who looks so unprepared for a field job. And he finds himself experiencing a feeling he’s only ever felt a handful of times in his life. 

Surprised. 

But you can’t know that. 

He’s supposed to be the seasoned bounty hunter who can handle anything thrown his direction. At least that’s what you’re paying for. Convinced his voice will betray him, he only nods at you. 

“Good, I’m Dr. Thorne, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” Stepping further up onto the ship you hold your hand out towards him. With robotic movements he gives you a quick and firm handshake before immediately withdrawing. Even through his gloves he can feel just how cold you are. 

With every passing second he’s regretting this decision more and more. 

“I appreciate your punctuality.” You rock slowly, back and forth on your heels as you size him up, making no attempts at being subtle. “And you’re taller than I expected. Not an issue, just something of note.” You force a laugh but he still doesn’t speak. Partly because he isn’t the chatty type but also because he just doesn’t know what to say. Your tone is too clinical, like he’s a patient and you’re his doctor. “And you haven’t interrupted me once, which is… polite, I suppose.” He can’t decide if you’re joking so he continues to nod. 

Everything about you is odd, it gives him a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. This is why he doesn’t usually take escort jobs. They require too much talking, it’s been so long since he’s had someone aboard that wasn’t a bounty he can’t even discern if this is typical conversation. You’re too clinical, too detached from your words, if it weren’t for your constant twitching and unpredictable muscle spasms he’d have thought you were a droid. He has to remind himself that you’re just a person, and he’s met plenty of people, some over twice your size, and never once felt intimidated. 

With an indiscernible shiver he shakes off the feeling, after all there is no direct threat here, just discomfort, and he’s more than well equipped to handle a little discomfort. 

“Would you mind directing me to my chambers so that I might deposit my belongings before we proceed?” The naivety of your statement makes him scoff, and briefly his walls break down. You’re about to be in for a rude awakening as he tilts his head to the left, the airlock doors open on a small storage compartment. Clearly a space used to store weapons or fuel, that has been cleaned and haphazardly refurbished with a cot, a steel dresser, and a storage trunk. 

But you are completely unshaken. 

Despite your neatly kept robes and hair pulled back is a strict tie you show no signs of distress at the tiny living space. 

“Well this is easy enough.” You grunt a little, dragging your large bag forward, tossing it into the compartment before turning to face him once more, riffling around in your robe pockets and presenting him with a large satchel that jingles with the sound of credits as you hold it out politely towards him. 

“You don’t seem up for conversation so I suppose we should just get on with it then.” You click your tongue, softly, it doesn’t seem like you even realized that you did it. “Perhaps I should try speaking your language. My plans are as follows; I would like safe and comfortable transportation to my desired location. When we arrive I would like you to accompany me as I conduct my research. It is nothing of great importance, more of a personal project of mine, I’d like to retrieve an artifact for my personal collection. It isn’t considered particularly valuable by any means, it’s just something significant to the niche of research that I’ve devoted my life to. While I am willing to share more information on it I’d rather not and I’d be willing to bet that you don’t want to hear it anyway so I think it would be for the best to keep it that way. I am not anticipating a need for protection, the site was condemned ages ago, but I find that preparing for the worst case scenario is best. You will accompany me. I will examine the ruins, collect samples and data, and when I’m done, we will board the ship and you will bring me back here.” 

Your eyes dart down to the credits and then back up to his visor. 

“70,000 credits, as promised upon arrival. With another 70,000 to be transferred electronically automatically at the end of the two week period along with a bonus for your discretion.” The end of your sentence drifts off to a whisper as you wait for him to accept. 

You barely breathed during your ramblings and his brain is fighting to process everything at the same speed as your voice. 

A moment of eerie silence swallows the space around them, something of significance that he can’t quite place, nor can he discern if you feel it too. A sour taste in his mouth and the feeling of bile rising in his throat, a feeling of being watched, all eyes on him. Waiting for him to make the choice, the right choice. 

And as he thinks it over you react with enough tiny tells to finally let him know that you’re just as nervous. 

You’re in a constant state of motion, even when you appear to be still, as if there’s something under your skin keeping you going. 

But it was foolish of you to even think you could hide from him, he was trained to do this, to read a situation like this with deadly precision, despite how low stakes it might look to an outsider he can feel the weight of the situation, heavy on his chest as his eyes roam the oncoming storm that is you. 

The way your jaw ticks, the subtle flex of the muscles in your cheek as you fight the urge to grind your teeth. Your nails chewed down to the quick, and the skin around them red and angry from nervous scratching and picking. The color of your undereyes is just a little too bright, you’re covering up something with makeup, almost certainly dark under eyes. The scar that runs along the bottom of your jaw is barely visible when you’re facing forward but he can tell it’s old, it healed long ago but everytime you look in the mirror you’re reminded of whatever it was that gave it to you. Oddly enough, the culmination of all of this is enough to finally relax him a bit. It’s what finally makes you human in his eyes.

You put on a good show. 

At first glance he was entirely convinced that you were this mysterious, calculating Imperial doctor, but he can see through all of that with a closer look. You’re a survivor. You’re scared of whatever mission it is that you’re about to embark on, but you’re not the threat you try to discreetly present yourself as. 

“Trust is expensive out here.” The stare of wide eyed innocence you give him makes up his mind as he holds his own hand out and accepts the credits. You visibly exhale when he does. “I just hope that with this, I’ve earned yours.” 

The nod he gives you provides no promises, you’d be stupid to think that he trusts you, but at the very least you’re putting some trust in him. 

And that’s enough to make him speak his first words to you. The question that’s been on his mind since he saw your listing. 

“Where are we going?” He can immediately tell that how ragged his voice is from disuse is startling. He can’t seem to recall the last time he had to speak. 

Politely, and anticipating this question you reach into your robes once more before producing a small slip of paper with coordinates neatly written on them. 

“I don’t know the name of the planet, it’s old and I haven’t been able to find many records of an official title.” He’s quickly realizing that you speak like you rehearsed this all, it’s an odd, robotic, tone. It makes him want to ask more but he knows that he probably wouldn’t like any answer you gave him, the way you speak unsettles him. Instead of dwelling he tries to map out in his mind how long the trip will be from here to this mystery planet based on the coordinates. 

“Should be about two days of travel, is there anything else you need before we leave?” He has rations set aside for the two of you but with the possible end date of this job being ambiguous it’s troubling to think that all you have is one bag. “I have enough rations stored away for four weeks worth of travel, with four days total in round trip travel time I’d advise you to make sure you’re properly equipped.” You aren’t looking at him anymore, instead your eyes wander and begin to study the ship around you. 

“I have everything we’ll need.” He watches as your temperature rises, just a degree or two, wondering if it’s your nerves that are causing this reaction. “I’d like to leave as soon as possible.”

There’s no reason to draw this out any longer than necessary, with his pockets weighed down with his payment he makes a beeline for the bay door panel, with a deafening groan the steel doors slide shut. Ignoring the feeling of your eyes on him he pushes a series of buttons, ensuring a proper seal on the airlock. No going back now. 

“Shall I join you in the cockpit? Perhaps I could properly brief you on the mission and we could exchange pleasantries.” You give him a polite smile but he shakes his head. The last thing he wants right now is more conversation with you. 

“Get some sleep, it’s gonna be a long trip.” He tries to control his tone, attempting a cordial manner of speaking. 

He can’t get to the cockpit quickly enough. Careful to lock the hatch behind him he starts to set the course. It’s a fifty hour trip there, fifty hours until the unknown. Setting the ship for an auto pilot trip he leans back in his chair, taking deep breaths until the blinking light on the control panel breaks him out of his silent meditation. 

The ship's motion detectors. 

He’s never used the security system, he’d had it installed as a sort of baby monitor for the kid but he’d never needed it. He so rarely has anyone on the ship to monitor. 

He fiddles with the controls briefly until the monitor to his left hums to life with the grainy image of you, standing alone right where he left you. 

As you look around the room, taking your time to note everything around you he finds himself fascinated by the sight of you. Being able to watch you from the outside makes you much more interesting. 

When you finally move it isn’t too rushed to your chambers.

Instead you move slowly, drinking in the space. You lift your hand and your robe flows like water around you, and you touch the closest wall. Pacing, circling the room you brush your hand up against everything, not searching or scheming, just feeling. Mapping out the space. You pause in front of one of the many supply lockers crammed in against the interior wiring of the ship, tilting your head as if you’re listening for something. A small, private smile tugging at the corners of your mouth before you move on. 

His gloved hands flip through the switches, cycling through the different feeds until you’re back on the screen, stepping lightly into a cargo hold. 

You’re so careful. You don’t pry or rummage through his things, instead you just do a lap around the room, fingertips dragging along the seams of the walls that conceal panels, the cold steel of storage crates. 

You linger over things like the emergency oxygen masks and the first aid kits, like you’re memorizing their placements. Everything in the room feels your featherlight touch as you slowly trace every edge and curve. He feels like he watches you move from room to room for hours until you finally make your way into your quarters. Instinctively he changes the feed again only to be met with static. A frown forming on his face until he realizes why. 

When he’d purchased the ship he had to calibrate the system to his liking, and he’d marked any rooms used as sleeping quarters as private. He didn’t normally have guests on the ship but he wasn’t a creep. His thumb hovers over the manual toggle anyway, and a thought crosses his mind. 

He shouldn’t be watching you, you clearly have no ill intentions. It would be wrong to keep watching. 

But you’re wearing all those layered robes. 

A concealed weapon isn’t just a possibility, it’s smart. And with your intelligence it should be expected. 

And of course he hadn’t searched you upon boarding, you’re a paying customer, it would have been rude and might have lost him the job. 

He flexes his hand. 

Something about you was off, even the listing had been strange. The wise decision here would be to make sure that everything appears typical. His mind argues back and forth with itself as he tries to justify this, eventually his curiosity gets the best of him. 

Just until you’re done changing, he tells himself. Just to be sure. 

The feed cuts to an unblurred view of your room. 

For a moment you just dig through your bag, and his jaw tightens. You pull out a few notebooks and pens, tossing them onto the cot. Your movements are so much more fluid now, without rush, more natural looking than you’d been in front of him. 

Standing with your back to the camera your fingers find the ties at your waist, loosening them, the fabric falls off your shoulders. Slowly and methodically you slip off each layer, catching them before they hit the floor, and folding them neatly. It’s a long and arduous process as you go layer by layer until you’ve got a stack on your dresser and you clasp your hands together, finished. 

Now revealed is a thin underlayer, a close fitted tunic and pants that end just above your knees. Clothes meant for sleeping, nothing else. Tight enough to make it obvious that you’re concealing nothing. 

He tells himself again that this is all just a precaution  

His throat feels terribly dry. 

He should turn it off. But he can’t.

Reaching up, you undo your hair, arching yourself back in a stretch that makes his entire justification for watching you suddenly feel twisted and dirty. 

There are no weapons. Nothing hidden. 

Nothing but you. 

And then, you froze in place.  

Halfway through a groan of relief as you stretch, you turn towards the wall. 

Head tilting up until your gaze is facing the camera. 

Not just towards it, right at it.

Your eyes are calm, not accusatory, not shocked. 

That somehow makes him feel worse. A bead of sweat sliding down his forehead and over the bridge of his nose. 

And you tilt your head to the side, just a smidge. Like you’re staring right at him. Like you’re the one observing him. 

He cuts the feed. 

Turning the monitor off entirely as the cockpit goes silent and he’s staring at his own reflection in the now blank screen. Helmeted, emotionless, guiltless. 

He certainly doesn’t feel that way, as shame is starting to set in like cement in his chest. 

Leaning back in his chair he exhales slowly. 

He certainly isn’t going to sleep soundly tonight. 

⊹₊⟡⋆ 

The familiar scent of the motel room fills your head as you rush back in, slamming the door shut behind you with a panicked breath, scrambling for the lock before relaxing. 

It’s a shitty place to stay, with even shittier neighbors. Your research is too important to be kept here, you know that, but you don’t have any other choice. This was and continues to be the cheapest option. Just as you’re setting your bag down your tablet across the room chimes. For the last three months you’ve felt your heart race at the sound of that notification dozens of times, only to immediately be disappointed. Tonight is no different. Your breath quickens immediately, almost to the point of hyperventilation as you dart across the room, kneeling in front of the bed as you type your password into the device. 

[ YOU HAVE : 1 NEW APPLICATION - WOULD YOU LIKE TO REVIEW IT? ]

Out of habit you’re tapping the space where the “yes” icon is going to appear before it’s even there. The screen changes to the applicants guild code, but that’s not the information you’re after, your eyes skip over it the redacted information portion, you’ve already put a system in place that reveals it and you desperately search for the one word you’ve been waiting for. 

And for the first time since you put out this damn listing, you find it. 

Mandalorian 

It feels like your heart stops, you know you shouldn’t get your hopes up, but this could be the one. 

Male, 40 years of age, (estimate) combat capable, well experienced, specialties in location and extraction of bounties, Mandalorian, solo operation. 

He fits all the parameters, even if they’re vague. It isn’t a guarantee that he’s the one you’ve been waiting for but you don’t even think about it as you type in your response, signing it with the name you were given during your time serving the Empire. 

Dr. Thorne 

You hurriedly pack everything you can into your bag before laying down, heart racing, the moment you get a response you’ll be checking out of this hell hole. If the guild member arrives and isn’t the Mandalorian in full silver with a mudhorn signet on his pauldron you’ll just turn around and try again. 

… 

In the morning you have an estimated arrival time and it’s all finally coming together. You tell yourself over and over again to not get ahead of yourself. It’s more than likely that you’ll be checking back into hotel hell tonight. 

There’s nothing left to do at this point but wait. So that’s exactly what you do, you sit by the small window and wait for the sun to set, your eyes locked onto the clock on your tablet. Until finally, a little after ten o’clock there’s another notification chime and you know he’ll be landing soon.

You dress yourself in the only nice clothes you have left, your robes, and travel to what you know to be an abandoned space port. Pulling your cloak more tightly around yourself as the cold settles into your bones. You aren’t standing in the dark for long, soon enough there's a rush of hot air as a ship materializes out of the darkness, landing directly in front of you. You’re absolutely wired at this point. It feels like there’s an electric current running under your skin as a loud hiss fills the quiet air around you and a large ramp lowers itself to the ground and you can see the soft golden light within. 

You’re too fired up to wait for it to hit the ground, careful not to lose your balance you hoist yourself up. Taking in the sights of the ship, forcing a smile, preparing yourself for the wave of defeat that will wash over you when you see him. 

And then you do. 

And he sees you. 

And the weight of the world is lifted off your shoulders. 

Your brain stops working but thankfully your mouth doesn’t, you’re on auto-pilot, introducing yourself, shaking his hand, greeting him. 

Him. 

Standing before you just as you’d dreamed. In a full suit of silver armour, the signature Mandalorian helmet adorns his head. He’s taller than you thought he’d be, more menacing. You aren’t scared of him though, you couldn’t be. Your eyes drift to his shoulder, the mughorn symbol visible from where you’re standing. 

You finally manage to shake off the sense of awe and ask him where your chambers are and he scoffs, how odd. He nods to an open room to your left and you drag the bag carrying your entire life over, tossing it in. It’s a palace compared to the types of places you’ve been living in. It’s clean. It’s safe.

He doesn’t seem to want to talk to you yet, that’s fine, he needs to warm up to you. You just need to get him to accept the payment and then there’s no going back. You grab the credits, the precious compensation that’s going to be your salvation and hold it out towards him. When he doesn’t react, panic starts to rise like bile in your throat. 

He’s just staring at you. 

Suddenly you’re terrified. 

Terrified that he’s changed his mind.

Terrified that he’ll want to negotiate for more money, something that you can’t afford. 

Terrified that you’ve said something that’s convinced him that this isn’t going to work. 

And most of all, you're terrified that he sees right through you. 

That he can see this facade you’re putting on solely for his benefit, this image of a weak and helpless girl, desperately in need of help. You’ve worked too hard to look broken, like a damsel in distress, you’ll be damned if this crumbles now. 

“Trust is expensive out here.” The words tumble out of you before you can stop them. Stupid! He just needs a little time, if you keep pushing him you risk losing everything before you’ve even begun. 

Your heart flutters as he closes his hand around the bag. 

Of course he accepted. He’s going to protect you now, you knew he was the one. 

“I just hope that with this, I’ve earned yours.” You give him a much more relaxed smile. Of course he doesn’t trust you. That’s why he’s perfect. None of this would work if he trusted you immediately. It needs to be slow, gradual, and earned. It needs to be real. And with what likely awaits you at the station you know you will need that trust soon. 

You know you shouldn’t push it, you should go to bed now and leave him to his work but you want him to trust you now, you want him to be everything you know he can be. 

But he doesn’t want that.

He isn’t ready. 

He tells you to get some sleep but you aren’t tired, how can you be expected to sleep at a time like this? You don’t argue though, and you don’t follow him when he retires to the cockpit. You know you likely won’t see him until you land so you familiarize yourself with the ship. 

Taking deep breaths to ground yourself. 

You can’t remember the last time you felt at ease like you do now. 

You’ve spent the last decade in and out of highly hazardous working conditions, and then for a few years after that, you were in and out of the worst hotels in Coruscant. Always running from the thing that just won’t leave you be. 

It’s a breath of fresh air to enter your chambers and know that you can sleep soundly tonight. 

Careful not to wrinkle your only presentable clothing, you fold it all neatly, setting it aside for the days to follow. You’re ready to get into bed when the hair on the back of your neck stands up mid stretch. The all too familiar feeling of being watched. 

That can’t be right, not here, not now. 

Nothing should have been able to follow you here, turning and scanning the walls of your room you don’t see any obvious signs of danger. 

A patch of discolored paint in the corner catches your eye. It vaguely resembles a shadow and your blood runs cold, ever so slowly you tilt your head, trying to see if it’s a trick of the light. Slowly, the feeling of being surveilled eases. It’s just paint, dark patches of paint. 

It’s normal to be nervous. That’s what you tell yourself. 

Good things don’t happen to you.

They never have. 

You deserve to enjoy this fleeting sense of peace, for however long it lasts. 

After messing around with the buttons near the door you manage to turn the lights off. Leaving you in complete and total darkness as you slide under the wool blanket that’s been left on your cot. 

You have no control over the smile that creeps across your face as you deeply inhale the air on the ship, allowing yourself to savor it. 

Oil, iron, gunpowder, sweat. 

With the lights off and your vision completely obscured, your other senses are enhanced. You don’t just smell his sweat, you taste it. The distinct and metallic tang. Him. 

A combination of flesh, and leather, and something deeper, something so uniquely him. So familiar. 

Something that lit up that sharp and all consuming fire inside you. It started as a quiet hunger but has been growing for days, for weeks, for years. 

You feel your pulse quicken and fight to keep your breathing steady. How are you supposed to maintain your composure when you aren’t afraid? When was the last time you didn’t feel a constant underlying sense of dread? Unable to contain yourself any longer, you whisper into the silence of your cabin. The name that you’ve been repeating in your head for ages. 

“Din Djarin.” 

The name that has lived only in your mind reverberates around the small space, as if the galaxy itself was whispering it to you. You’d never spoken it aloud before now. You’d been saving it for a special occasion, it had taken time to learn it, patience, a deep dive into records, and rumors. It had taken quite some time but it hadn’t been hard. Not for someone who knew where to look, not for someone who was meant to know it, not for you. 

You’ve spent nearly a year on his trail, your studies, your life's work, they'd all lead to this moment. To him. 

You don’t have to be afraid anymore. 

He’s real, he’s here. You can feel his presence here, taste him, smell him, feel him. All of him, as he fills the space, you bury your face in the blanket and deeply inhale. The stress and the panic that have been building in your chest for Maker knows how long, starts to melt away bit by tortuous bit. 

You found him. 

And he’s going to save you.

a/n : I'm super super rusty so if this is bad let's blame it on that and hope it gets better lol, love y'all and thank you for reading if you made it this far <3

follow @lincolndjarinnotifs for updates!!

[reyaint]

criminal minds case concept/idea for drs

bc @cyb3rl0v asked. @iamsoldierpoetandking

the post

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

date: June 17 2025.

started: 12:28am. ended: 2:22

i'm not gonna make it very aesthetic bc yeah. anyway. i'm doing this on my phone so it's probably gonna be ugly

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WARNINGS. psychological torture, death game, mentions of death, suicide and kidnapping. 🤷 this is criminal minds idk what you're expecting.

this idea was created by me, as well as the characters i'll mention. so if you use it just @ me. but you're free to use it just like any of my other ideas as long as I get credit. I worked on this earlier today in the car so it may be a bit messy. also I'm very indecisive so of anything isn't all matching it's bc I changed stuff while working on it and was too lazy to fix it. so

inspirations: alice in borderline, alice in wonderland, rafscrap's chorus battles A-L1, A-L2, A-L3.

episode concept: "The Gauntlet"

the case overview

case name: The Wonderland Games

location: abandoned textile factory, outskirts of Mobile, Alabama

victims: 50 young adults (ages 19-25), organized into 25 pairs

survivors: 14 individuals (7 pairs)

duration: 72 hours

the game

50 kidnapped individuals (25 groups of 2) wake up inside an abandoned multi-story warehouse-turned-kill-labyrinth.

each group is fitted with collars — either explosive or injective (with paralytics or toxins), synced to one another. if your partner dies, you die, now or later.

objective: make it through a series of trials. Only 5–7 groups can survive. no one knows how many groups there are, or what the exact end is.

the teams

each team is based on a Wonderland character motif — it reflects their dynamic or design (either ironically or truthfully).

the factory was converted into a multi-level maze with themed rooms representing different Alice in Wonderland scenes. each pair was assigned a Wonderland character identity and given weapons that ironically contrasted their backgrounds or beliefs.

some teams if one is injured they mercy kill or have a mutual sucide because they're gonna die anyway (I got nothing.)

structure

the factory was divided into five main levels, each representing a scene from Alice in Wonderland. the UnSubs monitored everything through hidden cameras, live-streaming to paying customers on the dark web while collecting psychological data on extreme stress responses.

each pair was given a Wonderland identity and color-coded bracelets that couldn't be removed:

- Alice (White) - amadrya & vincent: the main victims being followed throughout the episode(s)

the BAU gets involved

a livestream link is sent anonymously to local police and federal authorities. It’s disturbing — live footage of two terrified young adults in a bloody warehouse.

so far, four similar videos have been leaked in the last 72 hours. At least three confirmed dead.

BAU is called in when the fourth stream features a local college student whose parents had reported her missing two days ago.

Initial theory: black market red-room content, or a psychopathic cult-like game.

the UnSub profiles (BAU)

victims share age range: 19–25. varied backgrounds, but many are college-aged, socially active online, and had some level of recent mental or emotional stress.

garcia finds they were all lured or manipulated to disappear willingly — a "party," “escape room challenge,” “audition,” etc.

the team starts suspecting an inner circle of recruiters — not all players are random targets; someone they trust got them into this.

some rooms involve psychological riddles, others involve moral choices (“You can save your partner if you agree to lose a finger” — that kind of thing).

the UnSubs

primary UnSub - "The Mad Hatter"

dr. markus roberts, 45, former child psychologist who lost his license after unethical experiments on minors. Brilliant but deeply disturbed, he orchestrated the psychological framework of the games. his obsession with Alice in Wonderland stemmed from his belief that only through extreme trauma could people achieve "true clarity" - his twisted interpretation of Alice's journey through Wonderland.

secondary UnSub - "The Queen of Hearts"

rebecca shields, 38, former military logistics coordinator with expertise in surveillance and tactical operations. she handled the technical aspects: cameras, building security, victim transport. her military background made her ruthlessly efficient at the operational side.

tertiary UnSub - "The White Rabbit"

yes I looked up a different way to say third and that came up.

david chen, 32, a tech entrepreneur whose social media company went bankrupt. he managed the live streams, sold access to wealthy buyers on the dark web, and recruited the "betrayers" through financial manipulation and blackmail.

live stream & audience

- average of 2,000-5,000 concurrent viewers paying $500+ per hour of access

- betting pools on individual survivors and pairs

- private chat rooms where viewers request specific challenges

- total revenue exceeded $2 million over 72 hours

- viewers could "sponsor" weapons or challenges for additional fees

audience psychology

the BAU's analysis revealed viewers fell into three categories:

1. thrill seekers: wealthy individuals seeking extreme entertainment

2. sadists: people who enjoyed watching others suffer

3. gamblers: high-stakes betting on outcomes

technical infrastructure

- professional-grade streaming equipment with multiple camera angles

- encrypted servers in multiple countries

- cryptocurrency payment systems to avoid detection

- backup systems to prevent interruption

the games

FLOOR 1: "DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE"

(25 pairs → 22 pairs survive)

duration: 6 hours

each pair wakes up in identical 8x8 concrete rooms with their assigned weapons and character names. the rooms are soundproof but equipped with cameras and speakers. a riddle appears on the TV screen that can only be answered through inflicting harm.

sample riddles:

- "to find the key that sets you free, one must bleed for all to see. The deeper the cut, the clearer the way, but hesitate too long and here you'll stay."

- "trust is earned through sacrifice shared. Show your bond through flesh that's bared. only when both have paid the price, will you roll the loaded dice."

weapons by character assignment:

- Alice & Knight (Amadrya & Vincent): sharpened cross & dull knife

- Mad Hatter & March Hare: broken teacup shards & wooden mallet

- Cheshire Cat & White Rabbit: razor wire & pocket watch with sharp edges

- Queen of Hearts & King of Hearts: playing cards with sharpened edges & decorative scepter

- Tweedledee & Tweedledum: identical curved daggers

- Caterpillar & Dormouse: hookah pipe (metal) & letter opener

- Red Queen & White Queen: chess pieces (sharpened) & mirror shards

FLOOR 2: "THE POOL OF TEARS"

(22 pairs → 18 pairs survive)

duration: 8 hours

the surviving pairs are released onto a flooded floor where the water level varies from ankle-deep to chest-deep. they're handcuffed together and must navigate through a maze of rooms, some containing other pairs. each room has only one exit key, but multiple pairs may enter.

Room Types:

- drowning chambers: water level rises every 10 minutes. pairs must find the key before the room fills completely.

- current rooms: strong artificial currents try to separate the handcuffed pairs. if the chain breaks, both die.

- choice chambers: two pairs enter, but only one key. they must decide who lives.

- trust falls: one partner must go underwater to retrieve a key while the other holds them up. if trust fails, both drown.

psychological elements:

- speakers play distorted children's lullabies underwater

- floating objects include photos of the victims' families

- some rooms have false floors that give way unexpectedly

- mock rescue scenarios where voices call for help from sealed rooms

FLOOR 3: "THE MAD TEA PARTY"

(18 pairs → 12 pairs survive)

duration: 4 hours

all remaining pairs are brought into a large dining hall with an elaborate tea party setup. the room has 18 chairs around a massive table, but only enough food and water for 12 people. a giant clock on the wall counts down from 4 hours.

the rules:

- food and water are distributed around the table

- pairs must remain seated until the timer runs out

- if anyone stands or leaves their chair, poisonous gas fills the room

- the catch: there are only 12 portions, and everyone can see exactly what's available

psychological torture:

- the food is elaborate: roast beef, fresh bread, clean water, fruit - the first real sustenance in 24+ hours

- place cards with victims' real names and photos of their families

- speakers play recordings of loved ones asking them to "come home safe"

- some food is visibly poisoned (marked with skull symbols), creating doubt about all food

The Breakdown:

- hours 1-2: Tense standoff, pairs whispering, planning

- hour 3: First violence erupts when the "Mad Hatter" pair tries to take food from the "Caterpillar" pair

- hour 4: all-out brawl as starvation and desperation take over

I redid 4 because I didn't like it so if the format is different it's bc I didn't look at the other ones and just yapped. I'm tired now so I'm done.

FLOOR 4: "THE QUEEN'S CROQUET GROUND"

(12 pairs → 8 pairs survive)

duration: 16 hours

the surviving pairs enter a twisted maze designed like a croquet court, with high hedgerows creating narrow corridors and dead ends. unlike previous challenges, this is a psychological game of cat and mouse where pairs must navigate through "wickets" while avoiding or confronting each other. everyone keeps their original weapons - no upgrades, no additional tools.

Arena Layout:

- massive hedge maze with 15-foot walls

- nine "wickets" positioned throughout that must be passed through in sequence

- each wicket can only be used by one pair - once passed through, it seals behind them

- central "Queen's Court" area where multiple paths converge

- dead ends contain essential supplies (food, water, medical supplies) but create traps

The Croquet Rules:

- pairs must pass through all nine wickets in the correct sequence (marked with playing card suits)

- only one pair can use each wicket - it permanently seals after passage

- if a pair encounters another pair at a wicket, they must "duel" for the right to pass

- pairs can choose to go around blocked wickets, but this adds hours to their journey

- the first pair to complete all nine wickets and reach the exit wins food, water, and 8 hours of guaranteed rest

The Psychological Trap:

the maze is designed to force confrontations. multiple paths lead to the same wickets, and the hedge walls amplify sound - you can hear other pairs approaching but can't see them until you're face-to-face. the scarcity of resources and the one-way wicket system creates desperation.

Maze Elements:

- speakers hidden in hedges play whispered excerpts from victims' betrayers: "She was always too trusting... I had to do it... they said they'd kill my sister..."

- mirrors embedded in hedge walls at turns, forcing victims to see their deteriorating state

- some paths lead to alcoves with photos of victims' families and recordings of loved ones pleading for them to come home

- false wickets that lead nowhere, wasting precious time and energy

- the hedge maze shifts - some passages close or open randomly, separating pairs

Vincent and Amadrya's Navigation:

they use Amadrya's pattern recognition to map the maze and avoid other pairs initially. vincent's protective instincts keep them moving efficiently. they encounter Marcus and Jenna (the "Dormouse & Caterpillar" pair) at the seventh wicket after 12 hours of navigating.

The Confrontation:

Marcus and Jenna have been in the maze longer and are more desperate. they've been surviving on minimal water and no food. when they see Vincent and Amadrya approaching the seventh wicket:

"You think you're so smart, don't you?" Jenna snarls, exhausted and desperate. "Always one step ahead, always surviving. Well, this wicket is ours."

I love descriptive words (end me). I'm better at writing essays and things than dialogue.

the fight happens in the narrow corridor leading to the wicket. there's no room to maneuver, no escape route. It's brutal, desperate, and exactly what Vincent and Amadrya had been trying to avoid.

eliminations:

- two pairs die from dehydration after getting lost in false passages

- one pair eliminates another in a wicket confrontation but both partners are mortally wounded and die before reaching the exit

- Marcus and Jenna are killed by Vincent and Amadrya in the encounter described

- the remaining eight pairs (including Vincent and Amadrya) are too exhausted to continue fighting effectively

The Aftermath:

by the time the surviving pairs reach the final wickets, they're moving like zombies. the maze has broken them psychologically - they've heard each other's most intimate betrayals, seen themselves become killers, and lost all sense of time and direction. the hedge walls seem to close in, and several survivors show signs of severe claustrophobia and panic attacks.

FLOOR 5: "THE FINAL JUDGMENT"

(8 pairs → ? pairs intended to survive)

duration: Indefinite

the final room is a circular colosseum-style arena with tiered seating (empty, but cameras everywhere for the live stream audience). weapons line the walls - everything from the previous challenges plus new options like crossbows, swords, and maces.

The Final Rule:

"Only one pair may leave Wonderland. Prove you deserve to return to the real world."

What Actually Happens:

by this point, all survivors have been awake for 48+ hours with minimal food and water. they're running on pure adrenaline and survival instinct, but their bodies are shutting down. when they enter the final room, instead of fighting, they simply... stop.

the standoff:

- Amadrya can barely stand; Vincent holds her upright

- other pairs lean against walls or sit on the ground

- no one picks up weapons

- some survivors are crying, others stare blankly

- the silence stretches for over an hour

UnSub reaction:

the UnSubs expected a final battle royale for their paying audience. the passive resistance isn't part of the plan. they begin pumping in stimulants through the air system.

breaking point:

just as the UnSubs are about to flood the room with adrenaline-inducing drugs to force violence, the BAU breaches the facility.

the main victims being followed

amadrya tavens - ALICE

- age: 19

- height: 5'6

- nationality: american (greek-native american)

- occupation: dancer

- betrayal: stabbed by her friend after being led away during a party

- her weapon: a cross with a sharpened tip. amadrya is pagan, not Christian (ex- Christian due to religious trauma.)

I'm not hating on christians. I used to be one myself. People with religious trauma exist

seen as the "reluctant heroine" — calculating, quiet, and observant.

Initial reactions: silent fear masked by cold logic. tries to find puzzles or clues instead of violence.

her guilt trigger: she was betrayed by someone close. Religious trauma complicates her morality.

first kill triggers her spiraling — she dissociates, tries to make sense of it through rules, logic, pattern recognition.

in later rooms, she becomes the one who executes hard choices if Vincent hesitates.

lee vincent - THE KNIGHT

- age: 19

- height: 5'6

- nationality: american (korean-white. wasian)

- occupation: mechanic

- betrayal: held underwater by his friend but not killed. he was knocked unconscious.

- his weapon: a dull blade

Initially takes on protector role — logical, practical, emotionally detached.

but it’s Amadrya that keeps him grounded.

moment of humanity: after their second kill, he notices Amadrya’s hands shaking and physically grounds her (hand on shoulder, forehead to hers, soft-spoken).

his inner wound: He feels disposable — betrayed by a close friend. now he's clinging to survival not for himself, but because Amadrya needs someone who stays.

The "Alice" Theme:

they're navigating a twisted wonderland where logic is warped, but Amadrya's pattern recognition helps decode the madness while Vincent keeps her grounded in brutal reality.

[aquaholicsanonymousworld]

Between Objections

Pairing: Matt Murdock x Reader

Summary: She left Nelson & Murdock to escape the chaos of the Castle case. She thought she was doing the right thing, putting herself on the side of justice. But fate—and Matt Murdock—had other plans.

She left Nelson & Murdock because of the Castle case.

The moment she saw Matt and Foggy take Frank Castle on as a client, she knew it would end in disaster. She had argued with them for days—about the ethics, about the optics, about the fact that Frank Castle was not just another client. He was a walking war zone. And while Matt had, as always, defended his stance with infuriating logic and moral high ground, she wasn’t buying it.

It had been the final straw. She left, took a job with the prosecutor’s office, convinced that she was putting herself on the right side of justice. But the irony wasn’t lost on her when she was assigned as the lead on the same damn case.

She hadn’t expected to go head-to-head with Murdock in court again. And she really hadn’t expected it to be on the Frank Castle case.

When she’d taken the job at the prosecutor’s office, she figured their rivalry would fade, that their verbal sparring would be nothing but a memory. But now, facing him across the courtroom, it was worse than ever.

Frank Castle sat on the witness stand, his expression unreadable as she stood before him, poised and professional, her legal pad clutched in her hands. Across the aisle, Matt sat at the defense table, his head slightly tilted, listening.

"Mr. Castle," she began, measured and firm, "you've admitted to killing over two dozen people. You’ve acknowledged that every single one of those deaths was intentional. Do you deny this?"

Frank exhaled sharply. "No."

"And yet, you expect this jury to believe that you acted out of necessity rather than malice?"

Frank’s lips pressed into a thin line. "I don’t expect them to believe anything. I expect them to know the truth."

She nodded, pacing slightly. "The truth being that you think the law doesn’t apply to you? That you can decide who lives and who dies?"

Matt leaned forward slightly. "Objection. Counsel is putting words in the witness’s mouth."

She didn’t hesitate. "I think Mr. Castle’s actions have already spoken for him."

The judge gave her a warning look, but allowed her to continue. She turned back to Frank. "Would you say you regret your actions?"

Frank's stare was cold, unwavering. "I regret that I didn’t get to them sooner."

A tense silence fell over the courtroom.

She took a slow breath, willing herself to remain steady. "No further questions."

She moved back to her seat, her heart still pounding, barely making eye contact with Matt. She could feel the heat of his gaze on her, the tension stretching between them like a taut wire. When he rose to begin his cross-examination, she braced herself.

"Mr. Castle," Matt began, his voice calm, collected, "You said you regret not getting to them sooner. Tell the court—who exactly are they?"

Frank’s jaw clenched. "The men who murdered my family. The ones who got away. The ones who still walk free."

"And do you believe the justice system failed you?"

"I know it did."

Matt turned toward the jury, his movements precise. "Ladies and gentlemen, you've just heard Mr. Castle admit that his actions were not out of some reckless disregard for life, but from a system that turned its back on him. He is not a murderer without reason—he is a man who has been left with no other options."

She clenched her jaw, fingers gripping her pen so tightly her knuckles ached. He was good. Too good. And he knew it.

"You can't justify this, Murdock," she muttered under her breath as he returned to his seat.

Matt barely turned his head. "Watch me."

The tension between them had sharpened, cut deeper, like a live wire sparking between every word exchanged. The trial was brutal—Castle was unpredictable, the case itself a mess—but somehow, the real fight felt like it was between them.

After one particularly heated session, she stormed out into the hallway, Matt close behind. "You’re impossible," she hissed, spinning to face him. "You twist everything, make it sound like I’m grasping at straws."

Matt, despite his usual calm, took a step closer. "I argue the law. If you’re losing, maybe that’s on you."

Her breath caught. He was too close, his voice low, almost daring. She should push him away, argue back. But the frustration, the tension—it wasn’t just anger. It was something else entirely.

"You—" Her voice faltered. His lips parted, and for a split second, neither of them moved.

Her hand clenched at her side, then lifted, fingers curling instinctively into a fist. The tension between them crackled, sharp and unrelenting, and for a moment, she imagined what it would feel like to let the frustration out the way she wanted—to throw a punch, to land it cleanly against his jaw, to win something between them for once.

But she hesitated. The weight of the courtroom still pressed against her, the heat of his breath too close, too steady. Her fingers uncurled, dropping back to her side as she exhaled sharply, eyes darting around like she could find an escape from whatever this was.

Then, before she could stop herself, she grabbed the front of his tie, yanking him forward. And he let her.

The moment their lips crashed together, the fight changed. It wasn’t about the courtroom, about Frank Castle, about winning or losing.

It was about this.

And as hard as she tried, she couldn’t stop getting involved with them. Every time she tried to draw a line between herself and Nelson & Murdock, something happened. An overlapping case, a shared witness, a complication that kept dragging her back into their orbit.

And of course, that was exactly when the elevator doors opened.

"Oh my God," Foggy’s voice rang out first, somewhere between horror and sheer amusement.

Karen made a sound that was suspiciously close to a giggle.

She pulled back immediately, pushing Matt away, face burning. "This isn’t—" she started, still standing far too close to him.

"Oh, please, continue," Foggy said, grinning like it was Christmas morning. "Don’t let us stop whatever... this is."

She let go of Matt as if he burned her, straightening her blazer with quick, precise movements. "This is nothing. His tie was crooked," she said flatly, looking between Karen and Foggy to see if they believed her. "Or untied. Something like that."

Karen raised an eyebrow, glancing at Matt before looking back at her. "Right. And I’m sure fixing it required that much... proximity."

Matt, of course, was infuriatingly composed. He adjusted his tie like he wasn’t just kissing her senseless in a courthouse hallway. "We were just discussing legal strategy."

Foggy snorted. "Right. You guys always argue with your faces that close together? Should I be worried about court-mandated PDA?"

She cleared her throat, willing the heat in her face to disappear. "It was—uh—situational."

"Situational," Karen echoed, nodding. "Right, right. Very lawyerly of you."

She glared at Matt, who looked far too amused. "Say something."

"I think they’ve covered it," he said smoothly, and God, she wanted to wipe that smug look off his face.

Preferably by kissing him again. Which was not going to happen.

Foggy slung an arm around her shoulder as they stepped into the elevator. "So, how long until you two start throwing legal briefs at each other in the middle of a trial?"

She groaned. "I hate all of you."

Eventually, it caught up to her. She got thrown off the Castle case after her superiors questioned her ties to Murdock and Nelson. Conflict of interest, they called it. She called it a waste of her time. And maybe, just maybe, it was a relief.

Because whether she wanted to admit it or not, she missed them. Even him.

[leaguecollectorsanxiety]

ezyone in the runeterra universe is a ship that goes hard because theyre opposites in every way you can imagine

[yap and sometimes i dont where im going]

they're an unstoppable force (ezreal) and unmovable object (yone) and it's literal!! yone is to shadows and ezreal is to light!! ezreal is someone who travels to new continents and exploring the world outside of his home, refusing to stay in piltover. yone is bound to ionia and well, basically left to carry 'too many responsibilities' (one of them included being both a mother and father to yasuo). it basically caused yone to feel responsible for the all of ionia. instead of dying, he fused with an azakana in order to become undead and continue to relinquish evil out of ionia. ezreal has an uncontrollable moral compass compared to yone!!

while both of them had dead parents, yone had to accept it at an early age. and we know that ezreal is in denial. whats interesting is that they both chose a similar decision after that. ezreal went out of his way to a tomb, risking his life and gaining a gauntlet out of it. instead of moving on tto the afterlife, yone ends up wearing the mask of the azakana. first of all, it's the refusal of death here. second of all, the gauntlet and mask are kinda a metaphor for their identities. yone has commented that he forgets what his face is, beneath the mask. on the other hand, ezreal was kinda mage-less until he got that gauntlet. third of all, after they obtain these new 'accessories', they kinda do the same thing; collecting. for yone, he ends up obtaining mask from every azakana he hunts. ezreal is out there snatching relics because it's part of his family's history. (since he doesnt like to see himself as a piltovan, it wouldn't it make sense for him to connect with his family's trade more??) overall for them, it's a way of figuring *something* out. kinda neat.

anyways.... azakana gravitate to people who carry heavy, negative emotions. and boyyyyyyy ezreal has untreated everything(asdfdjfd)?? he hides it all, but it's extremely concentrated within him. and uh. not only can yone sense it, but he *kinda* has azakana infused to him. like. yone WILL gravitate to ezreal whether he likes it or not.

but at the same time, yone would rather try and help ezreal. he can clearly see the things that haunts ezreal. if anything, yone is able to see the true ezreal beyond cockiness. (insert yone going "i can fix him" and then cut to a shot of ezreal)

as for ezreal's (potential) reaction to yone, he's definitely going to seek out the person that could definitely kill him. but it doesn't stop there. yone's out here hunting demons. and putting himself in danger too. and he's kinda dead. and ezreal.... he has no fear to all of these parts of yone. instead, he's going to be drawn in too. (and he would like to grab some of those azakana masks off yone too).

however, i can see ezreal squinting at yone when they meet. how he cannot ever travel outside of ionia. all the responsibilities he CHOOSES to carry. how yone was able to accept the death of his parents. his patience. overall. ezreal has clear signs that he was an only child and yone has eldest sister syndrome.

not to drop a caitvi mention, but this is kinda caitvi-coded. (someone born in a life of luxury as a single child having to meet the eldest sister who went through hell, having no choice but to fight, and feeling regret over the fate of their younger sibling)

another thing that i want to just drop are mirror mention(s)

i dont know, they are almost pure opposites of each other. and yet. they would feel incredibly drawn to other. and like. if we were to assign birthdays by their actual release date (aka not the musicverse signs), their astrology signs are pisces (ezreal) and leo (yone), and apparently that compatibility is basically "they are fascinated by their opposites, that it could just as well break them" (it can be amazing, if it does happen).

anyways my laptop's fan is not having a good time and will end the post here. please feel free to share your thoughts because i like to learn about other takes on the ship.

[ironaparrot]

i wanted to bring this up because i know i make memes and jokes about the shadowtale characters and such.

Shaster (Gaster) is a genuinely horrible person. he's manipulative, mentally, physically, and emotionally abusive and manipulative. he's an egotistical narcissist who views other living and non living things and creatures as objects to be toyed with and experimented on.

Shadow has never been in a great state of mind. he's been pessimistic and nihilistic, and has reached the point of truly believing nothing matter before. part of the reason he's doing good now is both because he has friends he know cares and because he was fucking tired of being so sad, and moping all the time. he hated feeling down and like nothing all the time. the numbness almost felt worse then when he was actually crying and it was much more overbearing. he got tired of it. he forced himself out there. and he's actually doing better because of it.

Ash (Papyrus) tries his best to make people happy as much as drains him. he just wants to keep hope alive and keep people smiling. Papyrus is arguably at one of his lowest points currently. He feels hatred for his brother, uncertainty for his father, and is drained beyond belief. The only person he feels like he can truly vent to and just collect himself about is Mettaton. He hates Shadow for abandoning everybody, he has existential dread due to the existance of the multiverse, and doesnt understand why Gaster is making him keep it a secret, as well as the augmentations related to the void.

Raspberry (Mettaton) Is trying his hardest along with Papyrus to keep moral high, and people happy. he knows how much people really rely on him and need him to be at tip top best. its draining, but he knows it has to be this way. Him and Papyrus are very close and he thinks Papyrus is his closest friend, and is concerned for his sudden change in appearence, attitude, and he can just tell theres something building up thats going to boil over at some point.

Flowey is constently afraid. he's afraid of the infected and uninfected alike. he doesnt know where chara is and he doesnt remember chara being the one who killed him initially. the only time he gains some semblance of comfort is when frisk falls, and when he eventaually finds chara again.

Chara lives with the guilt of being the one who killed Asriel. she hates herself for it but knows it had to be done or else she would have died. she tries over and over to convince herself it was okay but she cant help but hate herself for it. the fact she ran away weighs heavily on her mind because she knows that to the dreemurr family they lost two children in one night. chara was eventaully found and kidnapped by gaster for a while. she was experimented on, abused and treated like a labrat. now that gaster has her with the rest of the survivors she's being blackmailed to stay quiet about what gasters real motives are to the people or else flowey will find out how he really died.

Plasma (Grillby) has almost given up completely. his daughter is infected and is slowly turning, its hard to keep people fed. he knows things are slowly going down hill and he's just waiting for the snowball to speed up at this point. the only reason he still gets out of bed in the morning is that way he can keep people fed, do his part, and because the somehow still alive burgerpants is too mentally unstable to do it himself. He's also being blackmailed by muffet.

Muffet is a crime boss essentially. she blackmails, threatens and harasses. she knows she's important because she can grab whatever remaining supplies are left from places the actual people assigned as guards cant thanks to her many many spiders. she views people as a means to get rich, and thats it. she, if anything, enjoys the apocalypse because it causes people to be reliant on her.

The AU is really screwed. Especially with the characters. Some are trying their best and losing, others have given up. Some aren’t even good people and are just using the apocalypse to achieve what they want because they can. So, enjoy. It’s less telling new info, and more putting things into perspective!

[starlessleep]

⸻ ( sandra oh, 53, cis woman, she/her ) — Look who it is! If you take a look at our database, you’ll find that STELLA KWON is a a MORTICIAN that works in SECTOR 4. According to the file, they’re a mutant with the power of WISH GRANTING. That must be why they’re FOCUSED and INDULGENT. If you ask me, they remind me of martini glasses, old film reels, signs glowing at night, wrinkled hands. They are affiliated with NOBODY.

basic information:

character name: Stella Kwon

nickname (s): Stell, Star

face claim: Sandra Oh

mutation status: Gen 1 mutant

birthday: uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

sexuality: uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

moral alignment: uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

occupation: Former actor, current mortician

work sector: Sector 4

affiliation: Unaffiliated 

3 positive traits: anticipative, dutiful, imaginative

3 negative traits: overly alert, complacent, moody

biography:

Stella’s mother dreamed of fame. The money, looks, status, and everything that came with it. She was willing to crawl and kill to get to the top if needed be. Her brief modeling career was cut short after contracting the X virus and attempting to kill her newborn daughter, infecting Stella in the process

The cure was a miracle. Life could go back to…well…as normal as life could be when it was littered with natural disasters. Stella was raised to burn brighter than her mother’s shadow - and the fact that her mutation made her, quite literally, glow certainly added to it. 

She worked as a child model, then actor as her name grew. Her mother had made a wish, something that seemed so simple and straight to the point: for Stella to see fame the way her own mother was never able to. For quite some years, it seemed to work with little repercussions. Stella didn’t have to worry about call backs. Just when everything seemed in her grasps, it all fell apart. She was pregnant by some forgotten, unimportant fling. Sick and miserable for months, the second stone dropped when her agent found a new, more dazzling client who didn’t have as much difficulty with dressing or the responsibility of a child. The third terrible thing occurred when her mother passed, and Stella’s desire for fame went with it. Her mother had gotten her wish, but at the cost of her own life. 

Stella settled back with her father, who lived a quieter, more humble, and stable life than her mother ever had. He taught Stella his trade - tending to the dead, and stood as her rock while she collected herself. 

The past years have been spent taking over much of her father’s positions in a far quieter world. Acting and performing almost feels like a long distant dream, that Stella can hardly believe to be real, until she gets the rare occurance of someone asking for her autograph. She finds herself looking to the stars and wondering which life she has lead actually belongs to her - or if it even matters, at the end of it all.

questionnaire:

how do they feel about living in sol city? have they always lived there or did they travel from another settlement?

Stella has lived in Sol City her entire life. She knows it could be better…but that the outside world could be a lot worse too.

do they trust the council’s leadership? why or why not?

A general rule of thumb, Stella doesn’t trust most politicians. There’s the rare decent one here or there…but for the most part, she remains pretty off put by them.

if they chose their sector and profession, why did they make that choice? if they didn’t, why not? were they happy with their assignment or not?

Working as a mortician was originally her father’s job, which she eventually inherited. It was never the sort of path that she expected for herself. She does enjoy helping people, and likes how quiet it can be…but the job can grow sad and lonely after enough time has passed.

what’s one object that they always keep on their person?

After her mother passed, Stella inherited all of her jewelry. She almost always has a pair of her mother’s earrings on.

what is your character’s ability (or abilities)?

Wish Granting

are they gen i or gen ii?

Gen I

what can your character do? what are their strengths?

As the name suggests, Stella can grant, quite literally, any wish.

what can’t they do? what are their weaknesses?

Through trial and error, Stella has learned she can only grant three wishes for each person - for their entire lives. Her wishes don’t work on herself, and something of equal value must be given in return for granting said wish - either willfully or by force.

is there anything else you’d like to specify about them?

When she was a child and going through her mutations, Stella’s blood also changed. Her blood glows. A light shines through her skin, and if she were to cut or bleed, her blood has a near blinding effect to it.

[pixelsandpins]

There’s this extraordinarily silly thing that happens on TikTok every year like clockwork. One batch of users talks about the one- tw0- three- hundred books they read that year. Another batch is utterly baffled at these numbers to the point of conniption. “How is it possible?” is the cry they lift to the heavens. “Don’t these people have a life? I work for a living.” And it drips with condescension and pity or, worse, accusations of falsehood.

But all you have to do is the math.

Say we consider an average reading speed of 200-250 words a minute and a typical book length of 70k-100k words. Using these numbers, you can knock out forty to fifty books just reading an hour a day. Up that to two hours, that’s one-hundred books. Increase that to the four hours that the average person watches television a day, and there are your two-hundred books easy.

Then we start calculating for at-work or commute audio-book listening. For jobs or care-giving roles with a lot of downtime. Account for shorter books and faster readers, and we’re not looking at am impossible calculus.

If we establish that the numbers work out, then what’s the problem? There’s still a level of incredulity that this can’t be possible. That there simply isn’t enough time in any given day. Then a high-volume reader will lay out their week. It will include five hours of reading on a Saturday.

“Well, I don’t want to do that. I hang out with my friends all day Saturday.”

“Okay, then you have a slightly different set of priorities.”

And oh. That’s where it all starts to break down.

It should be a very neutral statement. A person with kids has a set a different set of priorities than someone without. Maybe you prioritize seeing action movies in the theater over comedies because tickets are expensive and those are the types of movies that are best on a larger screen. We make these little sorting choices all the time.

And sometimes you’re in a situation where your priorities are stacked for you. You can’t necessarily help job, school, or familial requirements eating into leisure time. But presuming you have any leisure time at all, there’s going to come a moment where the only obstacle is choice. Do you read a few chapters of a book or watch an episode of a television show?

Again, that should be a neutral crossroad. If you want to watch television, watch television. Visual mediums aren’t inherently worse or better than textual one in terms of intelligence or narrative conveyance. But we’ve assigned a moral quality to reading. Books are “better” for you than everything else. And while, obviously, you could make an objective case that reading a book is probably better for you, intellectually, than something like mindlessly scrolling a meme page on Facebook, who says everything we do has to meet this specific standard?

Maybe, some days, it’s better for your mental health to giggle at videos of bunnies flipping over their food dishes. Maybe the part the brain that you want to stretch one night is the part that the does the virtual trigonometry to bounce energy orbs off a wall to heal a critically endangered Spider-Man who will be extremely ungrateful for your efforts.

Yet that element of morality remains.

So if you’ve not deconstructed those assumptions, and you’re looking at a high-volume reader, they may read as “more moral” than you. They’re “better” than you. Which the high-volume reader doesn’t think at all. And when the high-volume reader says you can make the choice to read more, too, it sounds like moral condemnation.

Collectively, we struggle with the idea that we are the arbiters of our own circumstances. Our default state, too often, is that we “can’t do” a thing.

“Oh, I’d love to start writing/drawing/working out/picking up some other skill-set.”

Do it.

“I’d love to make more time to read.”

Then do it.

It’s only when you divorce that moral element, when reading becomes a thing you might choose to do among other things, that you stop thinking about reading as having more value than it does. Then you actually might make that choice more often, because, suddenly, that pressure’s lessened.

[teamob11]

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Workforce productivity insight software uses data from various touchpoints within the business. The system collects information from employee time-tracking tools, project management software, collaboration platforms, and even communication channels to gain a comprehensive understanding of employee behavior and productivity levels.

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[aedasb]

A2 | Real Time Expression

Improvise the concept from A1 into a new conceptual approach

From assignment 1, I have mostly done research about large scale artworks; such as the Cedar Point Reeds where it utilises data and applies it onto a kinetic sculpture where it reacts with the movement of those nearby. This can be said to be a prominent example of new media art and the use of technology within an artwork. On the other hand, the second artwork I’ve researched focuses on the visual aspect; ATMA KIRANA uses led panels to display graphics of what the artist perceived of his country’s values. It interacts with digital and morals of people around them, reminiscing on the value that one culture shares yet portrayed in a form of new media.

I plan to create something reactive, although wanting to do something that can interact and react to human motion as inspired from Cedar Point Reeds; with time constraints and limited knowledge, I decided to do a medium both physical and virtual. With this I want to apply inspiration from ATMA KIRANA as well, where graphics are used. By combining graphics and audio interactivity, I believe it will give an interesting and plausible outcome.

Improvised & Simplified Using effective technology

As many appreciate physical artworks, I want to combine both physical and the virtual plane. With that I’m my I would like to reiterate a previous artwork, which is an acrylic on canvas, and apply AR to enable the audience to scan the artwork and see it comes alive into another form within their phones. Though with my limited knowledge, I will use a third-party application, Artivive, to make the processes of applying AR easier for both me and the audience.

To elaborate further, AR transforms the art world and generates immersive, interactive settings. Artists can use AR to add digital aspects to traditional works, such as soundscapes, animations, and interactive features that viewers can experience using smartphones. With the help of this technology, audiences may interact with virtual objects superimposed on sculptures or see paintings come to life, enabling more dynamic narrative and greater interaction. Additionally, AR increases the reach and effect of artistic expression by providing virtual displays that can be viewed from anywhere in the world.

Storyline Concept

I wanted and artwork that focus on human emotions and how no emotions stay constant thus constantly changing. With that in mind I have chosen an artwork that I will be reiterating, which is ‘Emotion of Hana’ , an acrylic on canvas. The concept of the artwork is to capture a series of emotion throughout the day; Each coloured Patels are representing a form of emotions thus explains the arrays of colours and how the four significant colours in the background are used to categorise the timeline of when the emotions take place.

Emotion of Hana by Aida M. 2023

The story behind ‘The Emotions of Hana’s’ name, from the title, this can be ​considering a word play as ‘Hana’ can be portrayed as a person, but ​it also means flower in Japanese which I see as a symbolism to ​all the participants of this data collection which are females and ​representing the look of flower visual wise.

New Media Technology

Procreate (software)

FlippaClip (software)

Artivive (software)

Phone

With this artwork, it enables interactivity with the audience, having AR implemented would be a good option as it is not too complicated for the audience to interact with due to the nature of AR being able to access from their phones and scanning the artwork only. With that say the AR part of the artwork would be animating the flowers, thus after scanning the artwork will come alive with movements through the phone. This gives the audience a new view than the traditional acrylic on canvas artworks. As most paintings on canvas are most likely static. AR allows me to break that and make the artwork animatic.

[ohshit-itsyagorl]

I agree with this, yes, but. My entire life I’ve been under the impression that the true star of Disney’s Mulan was Li Shang, in the background, having a very hardcore bisexual crisis for a good 3/4 of the movie.

Anyway, the Christianity bullshit comes after the fact. There was a lot of homoeroticism they later tried to pass off with a “he knew all along”-type spiel, a “you just know, you know?” Which.

Is just not a thing. The whole point is that no one knew. The entire division has a collective stressy-depressy episode about leaving their good friend Ping behind because he turned out to be an AFAB person.

And then Mulan shows up wearing a dress, with a plan that will get them into the palace when what they’re trying isn’t working, and, look—

It’s not about men and women and how both are good at different things. It’s just not.

It’s about how gender doesn’t matter.

The cold, hard truth about that point in the history of china is that Mulan should have been executed, and the other troops, seeing her in the imperial city, although desperate for a better way to do things, should have also killed her for treason. They didn’t look at Mulan and see a way in because she was wearing a dress and they could too. They looked at Mulan and saw someone who was smart and strategic in a time of desperation, who had saved their lives before and they were all banking on her being able to do it again.

These are soldiers that grew up being told about and in the presence of women pushed into roles that inspired songs like “A Girl Worth Fighting For”. That kind of relearning just doesn’t happen that fast, on a neurological level. They didn’t trust Mulan because they could get in if they acted like girls. They trusted Mulan because Mulan is Mulan, and Mulan is Ping, and that’s all they needed.

Women can do things. Celebrating women doing things we are capable of doing as novel or special or revolutionary as a moral of the entire movie - which is so chock-full of life lessons just waiting to be teased out if you’re just willing to look - is frankly a bit insulting.

It’s impressive that Mulan was able to pull off living in an army camp because her situation was so wildly inconvenient in that regard, and also dangerous because of her sex assigned at birth. It’s impressive that Mulan can fight and think the way she can, but unlike what a lot of older generations or watered-down explanations might convey, it’s not because she was a woman.

It’s because that’s really baddass. It would be and still is baddass no matter what gender identity someone chooses for themselves.

Mulan being a woman is only so important to the plot as the adversity she faces in response to it. She is not baddass in spite of it, and neither is she baddass because of it.

She’s baddass because she did some pretty freaking cool things. In my objective, professional opinion, mulan’s gender is mostly important for plot inconvenience than any sort of life lesson or take away.

It’s a big part of the plot, and it adds heavily to the circumstances that make what she did so baddass, but it did not inherently contribute to the amount of baddassery she posseses.

Now, none of this would pass as any sort of well-written argument, because it reads like a joke that turned into a snake-shaped, tangent-flavored soapbox rant with the structural equivalent of a tissue in a hurricane.

However. I don’t really care all that much, to be honest.

What is tumblr even for, if not soapbox rants about subversive gender stereotyping in the morals of (allegedly, just to cover bases) religiously fueled animated children’s films with absolutely boppin soundtracks?

“Women can do stuff too!” As a moral takeaway is just a wee bit depressing, mate.

If you haven’t seen Wish yet and you love Disney, do not go see it. I am telling you now. It is ripping out the hearts of the Disney movies you love and then waving their corpses around as if celebrating those hearts.

I’ll explain why, again: the message of Wish? Awful. Anti-Disney.

But they've been doing this for a long time. Saying one thing with their movies, and saying another with their PR and Disney Parks Soundtracks.

I'll explain.

Main Idea of Disney's Wish (and the You Are the Magic theme park song and merch): "The power to make your wishes come true is in you."

≠

Most Disney Movies' Idea on How to Have Wishes: "Do what's right, (trust a higher power) and something even more wonderful than what you wished will happen."

Don't try to argue with me about this. You have to look underneath the slogans and the sweater designs and the song titles to what the stories actually support to acknowledge this.

Because you can’t say “do what’s right” has power unless you answer the question “who gets to decide ‘what’s right?’” (Which, coincidentally, is a question Wish brings up and then doesn’t answer.)

Audiences of Disney used to accept that wishing on a star was much like prayer; there’s something you long for, and it’s out of your hands, but you wish for it and you do what you know is right in the meantime. And you’re not crushed, you’re not downhearted, because somewhere in your mind you trust that the combo of those two things—wishing on a higher power and diligence to do what’s good—will be what makes your wish come true.

Trust in a higher power—COMBINED WITH:

—diligence to do what’s good.

The Blue Fairy (higher power) gave Geppetto his wish specifically because he had demonstrated commitment to do good, whether he got what he wanted or not. The Fairy Godmother (higher power) gave Cinderella her wish specifically because she kept on being kind and good to low creatures like mice and wicked stepsisters, whether she got what she wanted or not.

Do you know why that combo (higher power + diligence to do good) is impactful? Timeless? Important?

Because it’s selfless. You want something, but you’re not going to sacrifice doing the right thing to get it. You’re not going to focus so hard on making what you want a reality, on your own, that you miss out on things that could be more important than what you want. And, you’re not so self-focused as to believe that if you don’t do it, it won’t get done.

Jeez, that’s the whole point of The Princess and the Frog!

Tiana wishes to have her own restaurant, and she believes that only her own hard work will grant that wish. She misunderstands her dad’s advice before he dies. She isn’t willing to trust a higher power combined with her own diligence to do good—she only trusts her own ability.

It’s not until she realizes that Ray, the character of faith, was right all along that she learns—what she wished for was too self-focused. It wasn’t complete without love. Something bigger than herself. And getting that was never going to happen just based on her own hard work.

But you know what? It was never going to happen just by a “higher-power” flavored shortcut, either. Because Facilier offers her her wish if she’ll just trust him, no hard work needed. But what does she say?

Trust in a higher power + diligence to do what’s right = selflessness, and getting more than you could have ever wished for. And if your wish is selfish, doing those two things will change your wish into something selfless.

More examples? Get ‘em while they’re hot, in case Wish made you forget, just like the current #NotMyDisney executives have forgotten, what real Disney wishes are for.

Belle wishes to have adventures in the great wide somewhere--but when she's imprisoned and that chance is taken from her it's not reversed because she worked hard to make her wish come true. It's granted because she gave up her wish for her father: she just did the right thing, regardless of her wish. And in the end, she does get what she wished for, which is adventure in an enchanted castle...and much more, because she gets true love, a throne, and a castle full of friends.

How about the One Who Started It All? The one Wish is failing to pay genuine tribute to?

Snow White wishes for someone to love her, and he does--but when they're separated, she does not exercise power to make The Prince come back to her. Instead, she loves who she can where she’s at—the Dwarfs. In the meantime, she has faith that he will keep his promise, and that pure trust in a higher power outside of her control is a big contributing factor to why the Dwarfs come to love her, and learn from her...and in the end, even more than she could've wished happens. He does take her to his castle, but she also has seven new friends who also love her, and the Queen is dead. And she didn’t need to use “the power in her” to work harder and get it done. She just needed to not focus so much on herself at all.

How about a male main character? One who’s wish starts out selfish, but after learning to wish on a higher power and be diligent to do the right thing, gets more than he could wish for?

Aladdin wishes to be somebody different (somebody he believes Jasmine could love, somebody who lives in a palace and is respected and “never has any troubles at all.”)—but doing everything in his own power for that wish proves that it was selfish all along; so he switches to doing the right thing, regardless of if his wish comes true, and he gets even more than he could’ve wished. He gets real love with Jasmine, he gets his friend Genie, and he gets to be free from feeling “trapped” because he doesn’t have to hide who he is anymore.

Or Simba?

Simba wishes to get to do whatever he wants as King—but when Mufasa dies and he’s convinced it’s his fault, it isn’t for that wish that he goes back to Pride Rock to confront his past and his Uncle. It’s because he had an encounter with a higher power—his father—that helped him to realize his wish was selfish all along. He gives up the selfish wish, and he goes back to take his place as king, not so he can do whatever he wants, but so that he can take self-sacrificial responsibility that comes with ruling. And because he just does the right thing, finally, he gets more than what he wished for.

How about something more recent? Zootopia.

Judy wishes to make the world a better place by proving she can be what she wants to be and catching bad guys—but when she tries to make her wish happen on her own, in her own abilities, she fails and is forced to realize that she should’ve been looking for help by understanding “bad guys,” like Nick. It’s only after she humbled herself, admits she’s wrong, and changes her wish from “proving I can be what I want and catching bad guys” to “proving that understanding each other makes the world a better place” (much less self-focused) that her wish comes true—and so much more. She does make the world a better place, and she does get to catch bad guys, but she also gets to befriend one who was a good guy all along, and become all-around more effective at her dream job.

This is how Disney always has been. Because it’s at the heart of good storytelling, and even life (not to get too dramatic.)

The power is not in you. Because it’s not about you. Self-sacrifice, faith, and doing the next right thing regardless of if you get your heart’s fondest desire is what makes more than just your wishes come true. And there has to be belief in a higher power to make that message powerful.

But Wish?

Not only is it bad at showing instead of telling. Not only is it lazy and soulless.

But it’s characters rip the Star out of the sky and say “don’t wish on this. Wish on yourself, to get what you wish for. You don’t need a higher power. You don’t even need to sacrifice to do what’s good—whatever you do is good, because you are the one doing it.”

That is wrong. That is not true, and it is not powerful. There’s no sacrifice in focusing on or placing your trust totally in yourself, and it undoes every good thing Disney has done up until now.

And it undoes it on the 100th anniversary, and it flaunts Easter eggs of the very things it’s undoing.

[byneddiedingo]

Liam Neeson in Schindler's List (Steven Spielberg, 1993)

Cast: Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes, Caroline Goodall, Jonathan Sagall, Embeth Davidtz. Screenplay: Steven Zaillian, based on a book by Thomas Keneally. Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski. Production design: Allan Starski. Film editing: Michael Kahn. Music: John Williams. 

Amid the nearly universal acclaim for Schindler's List, two major criticisms are often heard. One is that Spielberg tends toward the sentimental, especially at the end of the film: He lets Schindler's remorse at having not been able to save more Jews from the Holocaust go on too long, and the appearance of the surviving Schindlerjuden with the actors who played them is an unnecessary extension of the film's already clear moral statement, blurring the distinction between documentary and fictionalized narrative. The other objection is that the appearance of the girl in the red coat during the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto is a too-showy use of film technique in what should be a gripping, realistic scene. The former objection is a highly subjective one: For many, the film needs something to soften the harshness of the story's catharsis. For others, the answer is simply, "Let Spielberg be Spielberg," a gifted but traditional storyteller whose vision of the material he chooses is invariably personal. It's the second objection that gets to the heart of what film criticism is all about. I think David Thomson, in his brief essay on Schindler's List in Have You Seen ... ?,  puts the objection most provocatively when he observes, "With that one arty nudge Spielberg assigned his sense of his own past to the collected memories of all the films he had seen. All of a sudden, the drab Krakow vista became a set, with assistant directors urging the extras into line.... It was an organization of art and craft designed to re-create a terrible reality done nearly to perfection. But in that one small tarting up ..., there lay exposed the comprehensive vulgarity of the venture." I can't be as harsh as Thomson, for one thing because when I saw the film in the theater shortly after its release in 1993, I didn't notice the red coat -- the one note of color in the middle of the black-and-white film -- because I am mildly red-green colorblind. (It's difficult to explain to the non-colorblind, but those of us with the color deficiency usually see the color in question, but it's not quite the same color that the normally sighted see.) I did, however, notice the little girl: The framing by Spielberg and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski puts her in the center of the action and makes her search for a hiding place evident even in a long shot. What I did miss that time was the reappearance of the girl's body in a stack of corpses later in the film, something that would be evident to anyone who had earlier seen the red of the coat. Later, when I saw the film on video, after having read about the controversy over the red highlight, I was able to perceive the color -- not so intense for me as perhaps for you, but once brought to my attention inescapable -- and to be shocked by its reappearance in the later scene. And when I watched the film again I realized the function of the "arty nudge": When we first see the girl in the red coat, we see her from the point of view of Schindler (Liam Neeson) himself, on a hillside above the ghetto. And when we see her body, we are seeing it again from the point of view of Schindler, visiting the cremation site where Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes) has been ordered to burn the bodies of those killed in the liquidation of the ghetto. It is a subtle but effective move because it coincides with (even perhaps precipitates) Schindler's decision to try to save as many of his Jewish workers as he can. Is it "arty" or "tarting up" or "vulgar"? Perhaps it is, but it's also effective filmmaking. And only the fact that the Holocaust remains so large and sacrosanct an event in the moral history of the West raises the question of whether "effective filmmaking" is inappropriate to such a subject.

[hermitcraftheadcanons]

Hermitopia AU Masterpost 1 [COMPLETE]

This is a gathering place for the events of the Hermitopia AU, as well as art and writing resulting from it (art and writing listed at the bottom). Please read the AU introduction and rules here before submitting! Feel free to join the discussions on the HCHC discord server!

(Disclaimer/PSA: All points are asks contributed by the community, the mods take no credit for the ideas within them)

If you would like specific credit in the masterpost, please sign within the text of the ask! (A dash and a signature at the end should do.) Asks not signed will be treated as anonymous.

Summary posts:

Not all elements of plot and character will be summarized, but here are a few basic things you may want to be familiar with before submitting an ask! (Unless you are purposely aiming to create an [ALTERNATE] idea for a Hermit)

1 - Starting positions and each Hermit's powers (based on the submissions from Day 1)

Summary post 2 - Interpersonal connections (based on Day 1 and 2 submissions)

Make sure to check out the second masterpost here for more up to date information, including newer art and writing!

Asks:

- (copied ask) [summarized mod comment]

- Hermitopia | Scar was experimented on by Cub. He gained dangerous powers and wings that resemble a dragon’s, but he keeps both hidden. Unless someone makes him angry. He has no idea who gave him his powers. Eventually he and Cub decided that they wanted to control things beyond their corporation, so Scar ran for mayor. (there are things to fill in but im lazy) [Scar assumes he got the powers in an accident during research. He enjoys having them but has no idea that they were intentional.]

- Hermitopia AU team ZIT is a superpowered crime-fighting trio!

- owing to a very particular set of guidelines he put in place, Joe can now copy powers if he sees them in use and can reverse-engineer how those powers are used. needless to say, this is massively overpowered in the right hands.but it got worse. at some point, there was an... incident... on ConCorp grounds, something to do with a mass amount of entities causing time dilation -- and Joe was caught in the thick of it, unable to be rescued for a while.the problem is, he got out by piecing together how the time dilation worked.needless to say, Joe... has a ridiculous powerset. so he chooses largely not to use his powers anymore unless it's absolutely dire or petty enough to shrug off as a random occurrence. nobody needs to know that one of the most powerful Unaffiliated in the city is standing right in front of them... especially not ConCorp.

- doc was a former high ranking employee of concorp before he volunteered for an experiment and it went horribly wrong. since then, the company has tried to erase any evidence of his existence. doc is now seeking revenge for all that the company did to him and is determined to tear it apart

- HI ok follow up asks will be sent later when my thoughts are coherent but concept: cleo has like super messed up healing powers where she can make healing go Too Far. also i pin her as unbound, considering, like, everything - shovel-shuffle

- So, his power was meant to be super-regen, right? except things don't always quite go to plan. Someone volunteered for the powers surgeries and is arguably dead. Etho is a name shared by the many many clones that developed themselves out of the leftovers. They're not quite individuals, not quite a hivemind. Any one of them has no fear of death because the others will continue, but they all act independently around their overarching goal. (which I won't snitch about) - DragonKay

- Bdubs was a hero. Key word? Was. He climbed the ranks through the government, he was a loyal and dutiful member of society, and he used his plant manipulation powers to subdue evil-doers without hurting them. But he’s always been a friendly guy, and he couldn’t help himself—talking to the Unrestrained, especially those in custody, was interesting! ...but it’s a slippery slope to walk, being friendly with the enemy and not sympathizing to their cause. Nobody knows where he is now, but there are rumours of a vigilante with similar abilities, and his three compatriots, two of whom he helped escape from ConCorp... They call themselves the nHo. - slimetek [Bdubs deserted Concorp while helping Doc escape after his experiment went wrong]

- Concorp managed to make a device that allows animals to speak or translate their thoughts into writing. This means that the good old mayor Scar has a certain cat giving some advice on how to run the city.

- Iskall is an assasin/mercenary against their own volition. An accident they'd rather forget almost killed them, and in exchange for their freedom and free will they got to live as a cyborg. Though its hard to forget with the implant that covers their eye and the limb of cool metal hanging at their side - @ghastly-ghostie [Iskall works for Concorp off-books, bound by the debt owed to them for the life saving experimental modifications]

- so I think grians original powers could be like cloning, but something goes wrong and the clones are different people. as a result of the duplication process, some funky magic rocks are made. the clones decide to take most of the funky rocks and run off, leaving grian with one rock that gives him some new abilities and the clones' rocks give him others. also uhh mechanical wings bc yes. so grians plot is him trying to find them while also causing problems on purpose. infinity stones. update to my grian ask from earlier, I had better ideas: the rocks are old like magic things that grian finds before the cloning and ends up collecting, but his clones snatch them - simplyskipper [some of the alternate Grians are aligned with different factions in Hermitopia, while the locations of others are farther or unknown]

- Hermitopia- Impulse has solid-light powers. He has golden crystals implanted in his hands, which he can reflect light through to solidify it into all sorts of shapes. This can be used to make barriers, projectiles, and much more, though more detailed constructs take more time.- @mleemwyvern

- Hermitopia AU Poultry man is a well-known chaotic neutral leaning towards good, as a one of the unrestrained.

- I think Team ZIT should be a little be wild card-y, that's how they act after all! [they are employed by the government for standard crimefighting, but they don't always take Scar's word at its intended meaning and often play a bit on the chaotic side when given instructions]

- [Hermitopia AU] False is an antihero/vigilante type who's specialty is not defined by powers or the such, but just... the absolute skill of being able to dual wield two (more sci-fi era) short swords. Maybe someone upgrades them to be "enchanted" (electrical, fire, etc. something that tech could do well probably). She's willing to be paid-for-hire, but if you go past her moral line she's also willin' to backstab you. -- @cheshire-vex [she's a free agent who sort of drifts between Concorp, the government, and whoever else will pay her on a job-by-job basis]

- Hermitopia impulse has more connections then one may think. He has ties to people pretty much everywhere, for reasons unknown. There is a 100% someone will come and greet him wherever he goes. [the greetings are usually friendly]

- Hermitopia Au! Keralis is a hero who most people wouldn't expect to be too skilled at fighting. His power is similar to hypnosis so he has no need to get very physical. Yeah, that changed when some bastard villain decided to attack his friends shop. [that incident caused his employer Scar to realize his untapped potential for protecting people and assign him to a few more high-stakes jobs]

- Hermittopia!TFC was one of ConCorp’s first experiments and as such his powers are a bit less...refined then the others. He has geokinetic powers, allowing him to psychically control rocks and other earthen materials. He used to be one of the VEX programs top graduates, but has since parted ways with them for unknown reasons and now operates his own plans of keep crime in Hermitopia under control. -lechairpourriedegrianri [he is considered Unaffiliated and both Concorp and the government largely leave him to his own devices, since he is helping to keep the city together]

-Wels doesn't have powers. He does have a super-suit made of fire and heat resistant carbon fibre (like the material used for the space shuttle) and has a built in hologram projector. One time, he used the hologram projector to project an image of himself, which everyone thought was a clone. He didn't have the heart to tell them otherwise. (AKA everyone thinks Wels has powers but he doesn't) -Silverwolf53 [he got the suit in Project VEX]

- To follow up on the Impulse ask- Team ZIT are a space-themed superhero team. Government-aligned, at least for now.Tango has meteor-like powers, he can shoot fire from his hands and feet and often uses this to propel himself at high speeds. Zed has gravity powers! He can increase or decrease the density of any object, to the point of making small black holes. They all have space-themed costumes, and it was probably Zed's idea. - @mleemwyvern

- TFC was the first participant in project VEX

- Grian was an attempted success. It fixed some problems with Etho's unintended cloning, but at the same time created some problems of its own, seeing as the clones appeared to have a life of their own.It's fine, though. It's probably fine

- I would say Grian is unrestrained, a bit like Etho, Chaotic in his own way. Does not activily Try to hurt people, but does mostly what he wants for fun.-Ciara

- Xisuma is a civilian- he has hero friends, but despite all their teasing he’s never wanted to go through VEX training. But in the night, the unrestrained Void walks the streets [Void is a symbiotic creature made of nothingness that uses Xisuma's body as a substitute physical form]

- Bdubs was such a good man... he could be trusted to look after Doc, couldn’t he? Somebody had to oversee him, somebody who was reliable and would never, ever consider betraying the mayor and ConCorp...They let their guard down, and Bdubs got curious. Bdubs made a friend.And then they lost him.- Slimetek

- The hels hermits are considered evil by default. How do you spot these clones, how could you protect yourself? Well in the past it was a lot easier, just look for their red eyesNowadays contacts exist but that doesn't stop people trying to call the police on tango, calling him a hels. Hes netherian, they have unnatural eye colours and their iris fills the entire eye, hes not evil but if people keep doing this hes gonna be!

- Beef woke up from his brain surgery to receive telepathy powers, took one look into the mind of the overseer, and noped put of there as fast as he could go.He's on very public record. After all, the mind control he may be capable of is a very convenient explanation for anyone who turns against concorp... ~DragonKay

- Hypno can’t control minds.They say he does. It’s why he’s named Hypno, after all.In reality, he can’t control people like that... but he can control what they see.Your best friend might look like your greatest enemy. A pit of lava might look like solid ground. A 100-foot drop might look like a step down.It’s a good thing he’s a hero, and a good thing he keeps his true powers hidden beneath a guise of low-level hypnotism. There’s no telling what he could do if they let him go. [he works for Concorp, helping to protect VEX trainees from people trying to harm them before they get a chance to finish the program, as well as keeping other resources safe]

- The 9th Street Incident [referring to an earlier Impulse comment] was a friendly greeting. That particular version of Etho just thought that drawing weapons would be a friendly greeting for Impulse, but Tango and Zed seem to disagree

- They still don’t trust Bdubs. He was with the government for a long time, and things are hard out there on the run. Besides, they don’t know what he got up to there. ConCorp could have any sort of information on him, something that might scare him back.Bdubs understands this. He doesn’t want to go back. He’d hate to go back....but they think he will, and maybe there’s something he’s not telling them. An ace that ConCorp has yet to play.- Slimetek

- Mumbo works for concorp as an engineer specialising in robotics, most recently taking on the task of maintaining Iskall's cybernetics that somehow they just keep damaging. Iskall assures him they're just.. very clumsy. So far Mumbo hasn't caught on.

- Ren's power is that hes a werewolf, but he only found out when he was in his late teens with his childhood friend Iskall. He still feels guilty about it, he did kill his best friend afterall. Or so he thinks.He's lived off grid ever since, too overwhelmed with grief and guilt to rejoin society. Most assume he's dead too - @ghastly-ghostie [Ren dropped Iskall off to Concorp as a last ditch effort, running away before he could see whether they took his friend in or not. They did, starting Iskall's plotline. Iskall told Concorp about Ren's abilities, triggering a panic in the Concorp ranks at the fact that Ren is a superhuman being created by some force other than their own project]

- Where does Void come from? The same place all powers come from.Little did they know, something survived the crash and has taken a human host. Maybe it's not the only one...No, that place is not Concorp. Concorp's original goal was to develop technology by reverse-engineering from a crashed alien spaceship. These aliens did gene-editing the way some people do nose jobs, so they adapted that technology, too.~DragonKay

- i've already said a bit about it in the discord but i have hermitopia cleo brainrot. joe being there was able to save her by giving her the regen powers along with her puppeteering telekinesis power. anyways cleo is presumed dead, sent by concorp into a mission as fodder basically until zit could arrive. but now there's is one (1) bitter undead vigilante against concorp that is presumed dead

- Stress’s name has a few meanings in relation to her. Whenever she gets too angry or /stressed/, she transforms into the StressMonster, a monster that feeds off of other people’s stress to become more powerful. Luckily, the monster is rarely seen, but does terrible things when she is. She’s one of the most feared creatures in Hermitopia. Stress hates her and tries her best to hide her from her friends, but it can backfire sometimes. - @guster-animations

- to follow-up on Joe being presumed dead: remember the time dilation incident he was stuck in? ConCorp figured it was best to cut their losses and not try to send anyone in to rescue him -- it would be a pointless mission. so they abandoned him, quietly announced that he had died in the line of duty, and put the affected area under high security clearance in order to prevent any future accidents. they figured he was already dead. and Joe figures, given that they up and abandoned him, maybe it's for the best that they continue to figure just that. he changed his last name to "Hills" -- a joke about the biome containing the time anomaly -- and otherwise proceeded to stay under the radar. he still uses the time dilation area as a base of operations, sometimes; it's very useful to have a hideout that people physically cannot get into/out of without his direct assistance. is he nursing a grudge, coming up with some convoluted scheme to get back at the paramilitary group for abandoning him? or does he just want to live a relatively normal life off the grid? who knows. that's the Joe [REDACTED] Hills difference. -@betweenlands

- False has some big scary power that is almost Eldritch she just happens to prefer a sword and doesn’t really care for who she works for as long as they’re paying... (they don’t need to know of the power that had harmed the ones she loves the most)

- Keralis once encountered Void sulking around where Xisuma worked. So fearful for his friend’s safety, he used his power on Void and told him to go away. Apparently the charm is still active, because if Void spots Keralis anywhere, he’ll turn tail and run. No, it’s not because he’s scared. Absolutely not.

- Grumbot serves as a sentient supercomputer created by Mumbo for Grian. Grian is using Grumbot for... various activities, all of which harmless, but a certain evil clone [Helsknight] has reverse engineered the technology. Concorp would like for Mumbo to give them the tech, but mumbo stuck some eyes to the computer, got emotionally attached, and refuses to give up his baby boy.

- When Impulse hears his friend/colleague Bdubs has been "taken over" by the mind-controller [Beef], he wants to go on an off-the-books mission to rescue him! Just giving up like they were told to isn't in his nature.Of course the rest of ZIT are with him. Heroes save people! It's what they do!~DragonKay

- Hermitopia is a mixture of sleek futuristic and cyberpunk in terms of style. It really depends on where you live and work (ik this doesnt include any hermits but whatever) - @ghastly-ghostie

- I wonder if Cleo's overactive healing powers affect herself and if any injuries she receives immediately heal over like wolverine or deadpool

- Ren used to be friends with Cleo too, but then she died. Strangely enough, she died on the same day that Ren killed Iskall. Ren’s lost all his friends. It’s hard living in isolation when there’s no one left that even cares about you. (Unless— no, that’s impossible.)

- I was thinking about Biffa, like you do. And Biffa would totally be some robot that was created by Project VEX in its early stages, however they realised fast that it was easier to use humans and give them powers, maybe its not their strong suit with robots. But Biff went sentient and glitched and was scrapped so hes just out there doing his thing. Hes a wildcard and plays for which side he wants at the time, sometimes he'll help or sometimes hes the one causing trouble. He looks pretty similar to a android like in Detroit:Become human but hes a bit uncanny and eerie, maybe its the eyes or the blood red armour. Powerwise, he's got more strength than a human does, mainly because he isn't limited like others are. try not to get punched by him, it'll hurt! [He's convinced Concorp will destroy him if they find out he's alive and Unaffiliated] -lucodak

- Going off of my thing about hermotopia impulse having friends everywhere....this may include the nho. Okay, they beat him to a pulp on one of his solo patrols once, but theey felt bad n patched him up! He has to keep it a secret. He brings them dinner alot. And checks in on them.

- Beef is the perfect cover-up for Bdubs’ desertion. ConCorp doesn’t want any other employees getting bright ideas, now, do they? Nor do they want employees getting nosy and trying to figure out where Bdubs went. They don’t have to tell people what Beef’s powers are. They just release that he developed powers after brain surgery, and a rumour that he was spotted lurking around before Bdubs suddenly betrayed ConCorp... and people draw their own conclusions. -Slimetek

- xB is pretty sure he’s supposed to be evil.I mean, that’s what sentient AIs usually end up being, according to a quick internet search. And yet he’s... not. Or maybe he’s just on the wrong side. - Slimetek

- Yes impulse is friends with the nho....what he doesn't know? He's....easily susceptible to hypnosis. Very easily.......Of course, after impulse is basically a very tired n warm cuddle bug, so, cuddle piles tend to happen after all information is spilled. He must've fallen asleep at their apartment again! Whoops! But it's okay.....they take good care of him if he does! [Beef is using his mind reading ability on Impulse without his knowledge, to make sure that he hasn't spilled their location and to predict the government's next moves. He feels slightly bad about it but feels that it is necessary for the nHo's survival.]

- So far, Grian has only ever encountered two of his clones, NPC Grian and Robot Grian. Technically three, if one were to count Ariana Griande. Grian doesn't really, but some do. [Ariana Griande is a popular musician in Hermitopia who is building a career using the magical stone of voice enhancement she recieved through the cloning process]

- To handle the two Grumbot issue: the one working with Helsknight can be Jrumbot, a legion of robot drones meant to work as Grumbot’s physical form that ended up being hijacked by Helsknight and turned against ConCorp

- There...aren’t a lot of “normal” animals left in Hermittopia. ConCorp took one look at the animals populating the city and decided that, hey, they could make some improvements. Species after species, they modified their behavior, appearance, internal structure, whatever they could fix, tweak, or add. They were just improving their lives and the lives of the citizens of Hermittopia, after all, but the new animals quickly outcompeted the old for resources and habitats. And if it makes it easier for ConCorp to stick a camera in one or two of them, or set up robotic animals to keep a better eye on the city, no harm, no foul, right?(Bonus: there is one (1) singular cat left in Hermittopia, resulting in a spy movie-style heist where two teams of Hermits attempt to “rescue” the cat simultaneously. The cat keeps wandering away from both teams. Shenanigans ensue)- Adonis [the cat is Jellie, who orchestrated the competition between Team ZIT and Cleo and Joe for her own entertainment, getting away from both parties in the end]

- The Leak:Not all mutations are the result of controlled experiments! If some alien tech got away from the crash site, concorp never would have picked it up. It might have got into nature, not as refined as they made it in the labs but causing little changes here and there. Ren may have become a werewolf from being bitten by a mutant wolf~DragonKay

- Impulse is able to use his powers to create illusions or male things appear invisible! Sort of. After all, light dictates what we see. It takes a lot of focus, though, so it's not that practical. -@rayveewrites

- The one thing Hels wasn't able to steal was the cloning technology, hence his hostility with Concorp -- he needs the cloning device, because how else is the void going to get a body of their own? - SilverWolf53

- *glances at the hermitopia werewolf ask* okay but what if the same mystery people who made ren into a werewolf also created jevin, and maybe Etho? idk if either of them have been given any hermitopia headcanons yet lol. but im sure the same people who made a werewolf could make a sentient slime (or perhaps rescue one) or make... whatever etho is. [Since the "second organization" is an incorrect assumption believed by Concorp, Jevin was created when he came in contact with a waterway contaminated by The Leak. Concorp assumes he was created by an opposing organization and not by accident, and therefore would like to bring him in along with Ren.]

- hermitopia - mumbo and grian were friends back when cloning experiments were still happening (or . as friendly as you can be with someone who's treating you like a lab rat), but after everything went wrong and grian escaped, mumbo has his memories wiped nd thats why he's trusted w iskall's stuff? bc he inherently remembers working on high-level things without knowing where he learnt it - muscle memory, yk?anyway massive angst with grian maybe recognising mumbo, but not the other way round, and trying to rekindle their friendship? and that's where grumbot comes in? -gin [Mumbo's memory was wiped so that he would forget the deadly purpose of Iskall's cybernetics, which he was working on at the same time as the Grian project in the background. Mumbo does not remember creating Grian's mechanical wings or Iskall's arm and eye, and he has no memory of either individual previous to "meeting" Iskall as the person assigned to his repair and upkeep.]

- Etho doesn't so much have powers as he is powers. All the powers the ‘original’ had went into creating him; now he just exists, as whatever sort of being he is. Not a human one, that much is obvious. ~DragonKay [Etho has no powers beyond the hivemind and his training, due to the error in the experiment that caused the clones]

- Mumbo started the button as a joke. A nonsense social expirement to see how much people want worthless signs of status. Unfortunately things got out of hand, and violent too. But hey! It's not his fault that the five special anomalous stones were misplaced into the prize dispenser! It was just chance that they fell into the hands of the clone of the worst gremlin in the city! Don't fire him! [He was not fired, but Cub was Decidedly Unhappy with him for a good long while]

- Void mostly trashes ConCorp facilities- trying to figure out if any of his siblings survived the spaceship crash, but occasionally he’ll pilfer from a bakery, because X is a health nut and Void just wants a gods damned cookie [Void very much dislikes unseasoned chicken]

- If the Stress Monster gets too big, too dangerous, Cleo is sworn under oath to Stress to zap her with her healing powers. Cleo doesn’t like to do it, overhealing a stressed Stress makes her so calm she gets knocked out for a couple of days, but Stress can take a small comfort in the fact that at least one person out there can stop her

- Ooh with the self healing Cleo she'd be able to develop a small amount of super strength, with how the mind keeps from going full throttle because it would destroy the body once she gets over it it's hysterical strength whenever she wants [it is quite painful, but a good backup plan]

- Being a hive mind of disposable clones that can spawn new copies at will, it can sometimes be hard for the Etho Entity to remember that it is indeed a big deal for other people when they get hurt. This can make him come off as callous to those around him, placing him firmly in the "villain" category in most citizen's books, but he really doesn't intend any harm!

- Grian used to be tall, but then the cloning happened. With each clone they stole a little bit of his height making him the short man he is today. He needs to capture those clones and get his height back. [Grian isn't entirely sure how to accomplish this, but he's dead set on trying! He misses being tall!]

- While Grian was perfectly fine with Ariana Griande living her own life, he did insist on one thing.Her "older brother" getting backstage access whenever she was on tour. He's very proud and supportive of her and her music career.

- Mumbo is perfectly content working in tech, watching the other hermits get up to crazy shenanigans. Except of course, there was that one time he was out testing some new gear and accidentally saved a crowd from some villains... and there were all those times after too...But hey! It’s not his fault that people like him, and he certainly isn’t going to get caught by Concorp during his after hours activities. [Mumbo considers himself an accidental hobbyist, not thinking he has the nerve or the skill for proper hero work. Time will tell if he's right about that or not...but unfortunately, he probably is. This should be fun.]

- There’s still some people overseeing VEX, even over Cub. They’re the ones that push Cub to do certain experiments or to scrap one. They’re the ones to give Cub the decision for Iskall’s life debt. Scar was under them too for the longest time, but eventually he wanted out. Cub still wanted in. They were still in the right, right? That’s what they tell him. He’s starting to doubt it. [Cub is way too invested in everything he's built to even think about going rogue now, but he does resent and occasionally question the judgement of his superiors increasingly as his project begins to fail more and more often. He also fears that Scar's shift in career will be seen as a betrayal, rather than as a tactical attempt to gain the company influence in the government.]

- Been thinking about the impulse + nho asks and just,,, what would happen if concorp/the government found out? It cant be good with interrogation/hypnosis on both sides (incase you cant tell,, the brainrot got me as well) (apologies if this is a mess im excited) [Hypno is assigned to set up an illusionary conversation to make Impulse reveal nHo location to Concorp and government agents while thinking that he's actually talking to the nHo in a random encounter]

- The one mind Beef can't read is Etho's. Their hivemind is just too weird for him to comprehend. If he ever tries to listen in, it sounds like just a bunch of static from an old TV.

- for hermitopia au!: Out of most of the heros, the most reckless may be team zit. sure they tell themselves they'll plan out missions but it's hard when they share a braincell and tango just runs in. impulse and zed share a look everytime and have to run after him to make sure he doesn't get too hurt or overwhelmed by the enemy. in their defence its hard to plan ahead against an enemy when you dont know what they are thinking.-lucodak ["You might not have known what they were thinking, Tango, but we'd generally like you to know what you're thinking!"]

- i bet ConCorp really wants to make it out like theres some secret shady organization creating all these people with mutations, rather than their own operatives deserting and their own failure to contain dangerous chemicals... whether its malicious coverups or just ignorance to the fact they messed up, wonder what would happen if that sort of thing came to light...? [If they found out that the unintentional superhumans were a result of the poorly-contained crash site? Cub would lose his job...maybe worse. If Cub found out (and he hasn't, yet) he would do everything in his power to keep that information from his superiors.]

- (paraphrased) Impulse accidentally walks in on heroes and agents breaking down the doors of the nHo's hideout and confronting them. Scar claims that they did so on information Impulse himself provided and thanks him for his service. Impulse, feeling confused and betrayed, resists Hypno's attempts to illusion him back to Scar's side and flees the scene with the nHo, knowing very little other than the fact that he doesn't want to be manipulated by the government any more (and still not knowing that Beef has been reading his mind)

- Impulse may have been labeled a traitor. But do you really think that Impulse, secret rebel, starting to learn how dangerous and corrupted Concorp really is, wouldn't let his best friends know about the danger they might be in? I think Team ZIT is more loyal to each other than to the government. - @mleemwyvern [ Impulse's first stop after escaping with the nHo is to find a place to secretly meet Tango and Zedaph and tell them about the way he was tricked. It takes a lot of explaining and a lot of trust, but they eventually decide to believe his claims and are left with a choice: will they openly go rogue and become a target along with Impulse and the rest of the nHo, or are they better off using their established image and reputation to keep an eye on the government heros' movements from the inside?]

- (two asks combined, paraphrased) Ren runs out of supplies and decides to head back into the city, confident in his ability to stay off the grid after so many years of experience and such a long time away. Once there, he runs into Doc, and they hit it off quite quickly. However, the more Ren talks the more Doc realizes - with his ex-Concorp knowledge - that Ren matches the description of Iskall's main target exactly. He warns Ren, who is then faced with the knowledge that Iskall is alive and assigned to kill him...so many questions and so many tears to follow...

- Why did Hermitopia start needing heroes? When the Unrestrained started to appear, if course. Why did the Unrestrained start to appear? A question asked a little less. When did the VEX program start? When did they start taking more risks? When did they stop caring about certainty and safety and shift towards trying to push boundaries they weren't ready to? People can be so enamoured with the concept of superhuman abilities, something bright and glorious and good- and perhaps they could have that too- they don't ask all the right questions. It's all an elaborate game of damage control, don't let the flashy heroics fool you, they've made mistakes, terrible, terrible mistakes, and now there are villains running loose with powers they fooled ConCorp into giving them. Are they villains? Are they victims? Does it matter? They're causing problems. [Project VEX has developed into a solution to its own problems, a self perpetuating cycle...one that Cub, as a businessman, is very familiar with. It's what keeps the wheels of industry turning. It's what keeps innovation creeping forward. It wasn't intentional, not this time...but if it keeps his project alive, he'll take it.]

- One time, Jevin had narrowly dodged being captured by Concorp. He was laying low in the forest out of town, when he had a run-in with some sort of wolf creature. Thankfully, claws and teeth couldn't exactly hurt him anymore, so he just played dead until it gave up.When the moon set, the wolf-thing slowly transformed into a human being. Ren was horrified at the thought he'd lost control and hurt someone- again- but Jevin assured him he was fine. Jevin got the feeling that the werewolf needed a friend, and Jevin himself needed a place to stay for a while... -RayveeWrites [Ren and Jevin are not currently in the same location, but they each have a means of contacting each other for help if needed]

- Worm Man wasn't a well- known super, but plenty of people have noticed that he seemed to vanish at the same time Team ZIT first started active duty. Those people have also noticed that one of the members has a very similar power set to WM.Officially, that's just a coincidence. Officially.-RayveeWrites [Zedaph was trying to get some unofficial practice while still in training in the VEX program]

- A common misconception is that Bdubs conjures up his vines from nowhere. He can't.Like any plant, his vines grow from seeds. They grow unnaturally fast, when Bdubs wills it, but they have to come from seeds. Where do these seeds come from, you may ask?Well, a long time ago, Bdubs ingested some strange fruits. Somehow, in wild defiance of human biology, the seeds contained in those fruits worked their way into his muscles and germinated. Some of the roots worked their way into his brain and fused into it; the rest spread through his muscles, grew beneath his skin, coiled around his bones. Thanks to the way the vines connected to his brain, Bdubs is able to command the vines, and their magic, at will.The vines produce seeds; some stay in his body to replace the old ones when they die, and most work their way into a pair of 'seed pods' in his wrists. Bdubs provides the nutrients, the energy; the vines provide the seeds, the magic. As an extra bonus: if the vines were to be totally removed from Bdubs' body, he would be at best extremely weak, and at worst dead. The vines have grown into his muscles, to the point where they've essentially replaced them in some areas. It's fortunate that they connected with his mind so early on, otherwise he'd be dead. -RayveeWrites [Concorp developed the fruit, and the fact that Bdubs is evidence of the unlikely success of that experiment makes them all the more angry at his betrayal]

- A lot of excellent xB information (it's too long to copy but please read it it's very good)

- Iskall has exactly one (1) failed assignment. That assignment? The kill or capture of Stress. Stress and Iskall have been, or should it be were now, friends for a very long time, since before Iskall even met Ren. So one can imagine the stress this causes Iskall, to be told to kill his one remaining friend that he knows is alive. Of course, this stress is quite enough to to Stress's Stress Monster into one it's strongest yet seen forms, allowing for Stress to then get away. (1/2)(2/2) Of course, Con Corp doesn't- and can never- know the true reason that Iskall cannot kill or capture Stress. If they knew, if they subjected Stress to the same hell he's in- no, that cannot happen. So Iskall hires False to protect Stress, to interfere whenever they send him on a mission for her. Luckily, False is good at keeping secrets when she wants to, and this one she'll keep. But as far as Con Corp knows, Iskall has severe stress and trauma from being a cyborg, and that's why he fails. [This all adds up to a monumental waste of Concorp's time and money, which also results in False getting payed, so all parties involved are happy except for Concorp >:)]

- Impulse would take a bullet for his teammates, and he knows they might be about to take one for him, keeping him updated on what's going on government side of this... slander. Still, Tango and Zed are great actors, and if he didn't know better, he might be a little worried they would *actually* be hunting him down in the name of justice [Tango and Zed are now being sent on missions to retrieve Impulse, which they must pretend to lose believably. They occasionally overestimate their friend's abilities and give him a few more close calls than he'd like, but overall the ruse is holding up.]

Writing:

- Wels, Hels, TFC, and Grumbot

- Bdubs Concorp promotion and desertion

- Joe Hills in his time dilation hideout

- Etho clones, ZIT, and the nHo

- Keralis and Void

- [ALTERNATE] Reveal of Impulse's situation with the nHo

Art:

- Impulse suit design

[bobohu4eva]

Pink Lace - Chapter 3

Characters: Baekhyun x Reader

Genre: College AU, stripper AU, fluff, smut, slow burn

Summary: Baekhyun, a philosophy professor with mysterious wealth, got himself completely fucked over a girl who can’t let him into her life.

Word count: 5k

Warnings: mentions of sexual assault, sex work, adult themes/situations, eventual smut

Tag List: @smolbeanmika @leave-me-in-the-summertime @totallynerdstuff @bbhmystar @nana-banan @kimyhappy @thegreatandi @geniusloey   @deligxt @baekwifey @rockerbbhyun @lovebuginlove @bellamendoza

Masterlist

Class on Friday was less terrifying. You arrived earlier than you had Wednesday, and sat with Lucas as you’d promised. 

You told yourself that Baekhyun was just another one of your professors, and you needed to get your head on straight and pay attention, especially since the class was already more challenging than you’d thought. You were starting to get worried that you’d embarrass yourself by doing poorly, and you definitely didn’t want Baekhyun to think you were stupid. You knew you weren’t, but you also knew that this class wasn’t your strength. 

You noticed Baekhyun walk in and take a seat at his desk. He looked happy to see you back in his class, and this time without you trying to avoid him. You gave him a shy smile, still feeling fairly awkward around him. 

“So that party’s tonight, any chance I can still convince you to come?” You heard Lucas say next to you, flashing you a smile.

“I told you I’m not really a fan of parties, sorry.” You responded, avoiding his eyes and fidgeting with the things on your desk.

You were acutely aware of Baekhyun listening to your conversation from his desk a few feet away.

“Aw come on, even if I’m there? I promise it’ll be fun.”

Baekhyun was listening. And he felt his face harden and fists clench at the boy’s pushiness.

“I have homework, I don’t have time to go out.” You looked at him now, trying to get the point across. You just really didn’t want to go.

“But it’s the first party of the year! I promise you won’t regret it.” He continued anyway, now grabbing your hand. Baekhyun narrowed his eyes. 

Panicking slightly, you blurted out “I can’t anyway, I have work” as you pulled your hand away from his.

Baekhyun cocked up an eyebrow, wondering what’ll happen next.

“Work? Where at?”

“I’m a waitress, at a bar across town, you wouldn’t know about it.” You stammered, building on your lie.

Baekhyun quietly chuckled to himself, now obviously amused. Especially when he knew what your real job was.

“But what if you got someone to-”

“She said she didn’t wanna go, so drop it.” Baekhyun suddenly interrupted, voice calm but stern. Before you and Lucas even had time to react, he was getting up from his desk and starting the lecture, and you found yourself opening your notebook.

As the class went on you understood less and less of what Baekhyun was saying. You were quickly learning that philosophy meant reading lots of things that were old as hell, and nearly impossible to understand. Your own notes weren’t even really making sense to you and you knew you’d have to go back over them later if you really wanted to understand the material. Who knew philosophy would be such a bitch of a class.

Near the end of class, Baekhyun started handing out a short pop quiz and you felt yourself getting nervous.

When he handed you yours, he mouthed “good luck” with a smile. When you read the question you cursed yourself for having been so distracted the first few days. You had no idea what the difference between moral relativism and objectivism was anymore, nor any of the other things he’d talked about. Despite taking notes, it was just too difficult for you to make sense of the things he taught with so many other things running through your mind.

Baekhyun noticed how stressed you looked as he watched you stare down at your paper. Every time you’d start to write something, you’d stop and erase it. Time was ticking by and you didn’t have much left until he’d collect everyone’s papers.

This wasn’t like you at all. Usually you could remember things easily and ace pop quizzes without a problem, but Baekhyun was too distracting. Especially when you knew he was watching you and you knew he was waiting to see what you’d write.

Eventually you started scribbling down something incredibly vague and almost definitely incorrect, but at least it was something.

Although Baekhyun could tell you were struggling with the assignment, he still found it amusing to watch you as you tried to figure it out. He lost count of how many times you brushed your hair behind your ear, only to have it fall right back in your face again. He could almost see the gears turning in your head as you mulled over the question and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen something so cute.

When he got up to collect everyone’s quizzes you were still frantically trying to finish your paragraph. When he got to you you were almost finished. You looked up at him, silently begging for more time, and he gave you a soft smile. He went to take the papers from the rest of the students in your row first before eventually coming back to you. Yours was the last paper he took, and you cringed as you saw him start to read over it immediately as he made his way back to his desk, brows furrowed.

Once he’d collected the quizzes from the students they were free to go, making you the last one in the room with him again.

“Thank you.” You said. “For giving me more time. I promise I’m not stupid it’s just been hard for me to focus.” Baekhyun was glad you seemed comfortable enough to talk to him like this, and couldn’t fight the smile that was creeping onto his face. 

“I know” he looked at you with sincerity “you can go home” he looked over at the door “I’m not gonna make you stay again. I’m sorry for Monday. That was mean.” You could tell by the way he looked down at his desk after he finished speaking, he really was sorry.

You felt a small smile start to form on your lips.

“It’s okay, I shouldn’t have freaked out so bad.”

“No, I shouldn’t have talked to you like I did. You were obviously uncomfortable, it was a dick move to make you stay.”

You giggled, pleased that he could admit he acted poorly. “It’s okay, really. I was just in shock.”

“Well it won’t happen again.” He gave you a smile so full of warmth and you couldn’t help but smile back. “Don’t forget that essay is due Wednesday night.”

“I can remember a simple due date Baekhyun. I told you I’m not dumb.” You rolled your eyes, walking towards the door.

“It’s still Mr. Byun when we’re here!” He yelled after you playfully.

“Okay Baekhyun!” You yelled back, waving as you walked out the door.

Baekhyun’s face hurt from how hard he was smiling, very much pleased by how you seemed more comfortable today. He silently patted himself on the back for it, relieved that you wouldn’t be a nervous wreck every class anymore. Your answer on the quiz hadn’t been too bad either, despite how stressed you’d looked.

Hopefully, just maybe, this meant you would start opening up to him more.

~

You spent Friday night doing homework as planned, and when Saturday morning rolled around and you started getting ready for work, you started to worry about whether or not Baekhyun would show up. You both hoped he’d show up just for the money, and dreaded the awkwardness if he did. You decided to just assume he wouldn’t show and go about the night as if he didn’t matter.

You added some last touches to your makeup, opting for something natural and glowy to go with your glittery pink outfit you’d packed for the night.

“I like the outfit tonight” Dave said, winking at you as you checked in. “New shoes?”

“No. I got these a few weeks ago.”

“Come on Candy, loosen up.”

You cringed but gave him a smile anyway, not wanting to get on your manager’s bad side.

For the first time in months you were going to have to spend a Saturday night trying to talk to random guys to sell dances, something you hated. Half of them would likely waste your time anyway, the other half would give you money but you never knew what bs they’d try to pull when getting their dance.

You stood by the bar, facing into the room looking for someone who didn’t seem too bad. Eventually a group of guys around your age came in and you sat down with them.

“So what’s your name gorgeous?” One of them asked you, already slightly drunk.

“I’m Candy” you told them, asking for their names as well. They all introduced themselves and soon went back to laughing amongst themselves, until a waitress showed up.

“Shots of patron, and two for the lady” one of them ordered, and you didn’t object. In the back of your mind you were still worried about Baekhyun showing up, and drinking would easily help you forget.

You took the shots. And then two more. Your stomach felt pleasantly warm, and you kept laughing at whatever the men around you were saying, though you didn’t really listen. You could hear your words slur together when you spoke, but the comfortable haze felt nice to you and you let yourself get lost in the feeling.

Eventually they ordered a 3rd round, at which point you were thoroughly tipsy and probably shouldn’t have had any more, but with the thought of Baekhyun still in the back of your mind, and the alcohol clouding your judgement, you swallowed down the fifth and sixth shots with little thought. Although by then you weren’t counting anymore. They went down like nothing, body already numb to the sting.

You were laughing at something someone said, mind going hazy from the liquor as everything around you began to go blurry. You tried to stand up but nearly fell, having trouble standing on your heels on your own. You sat back down, closing your eyes, and the room felt like it was spinning out of control. You vaguely heard the chatter of the men around you saying something, but before you had time to process their words everything went black.

Next thing you knew, your head was on Baekhyun’s lap and he was staring down at you.

~

Baekhyun wasn’t sure if he was going to go that night. As much as he wanted to see you, he wasn’t sure you’d want to see him there again.

As the night went on he tried to distract himself, grade some papers, watch some TV, but nothing worked. No matter what he did, you were stuck in the back of his mind. He wanted, needed to see you again. As long as he paid you, you wouldn’t be too mad to see him there, and two of you could just act like it was any other Saturday night, right? 

Not wanting to think about it too much, he got his shoes on, grabbed his wallet, and walked out the door.

When he arrived, he didn’t see you at the bar where you usually stood and waited for him. Upon looking around the main room of the club, he didn’t see you either, and his heart rate started to go up. What if you were stuck in a VIP room with some creep who was making you uncomfortable?

Baekhyun started to wander around the room to look for you. He checked every booth and could see every table, you had to be upstairs in a room. He hated to admit it to himself but even just the thought of you being up there with someone who wasn’t terrible bothered him. Thinking about you grinding on strangers at all made his stomach churn.

To calm his nerves he stood by the bar and ordered himself a drink, and not even a minute went by before there was a girl standing in front of him.

“Hey handsome, what are you doing here? You’re awful cute to be in a place like this.”

She started to touch Baekhyun’s arm and he slapped her hand away, turning around and gulping down his drink.

The girl frowned, but persisted anyway.

“So why are you here? Looking for some fun?”

“I’m looking for my friend.” He replied, eyes still scanning the room, ignoring her.

“I’m sure I can show you a good time too you know..” she stepped closer, blocking his view of the rest of the room.

Baekhyun dug in his pocket and pulled out a 50, holding it up with an annoyed look on his face.

“It’s yours if you leave.”

She took the bill, scoffing and turning around to walk away. Baekhyun faced his back towards the room and kept his eyes on the stairs, waiting for you to come down.

10 minutes went by, and then 10 more. Baekhyun couldn’t help but get more and more nervous. He knew it was pretty rare for people to spend that much time up there. He ordered himself another drink and started getting fidgety, trying to distract himself from worrying too much. 

A few more girls came up to him, but he quickly sent each one of them away.

After about 15 more minutes you finally appeared, and Baekhyun’s worst fears were realized when he saw you nearly unconscious, basically being carried down the stairs by 2 men. Immediately his mouth went dry and he felt his stomach do a flip.

You had your arm around one of the men’s shoulders, and the other had his hand on your lower back as you clumsily made your way down, nearly falling several times. You hadn’t even put your top back on, probably too wasted to notice it was missing anyway. The two men sat you down in an empty chair near the bottom of the stairs and went back to their group across the room with disgustingly smug looks on their faces. Baekhyun would’ve loved to walk right up to them and deck each of them in the face, but the last thing he needed now was to get himself kicked out while you were alone, completely incoherent, and surrounded by strange men. He cursed himself for not being able to do anything about them, but you were more important now.

He quickly made his way over to you, crouching down in front of you and grabbing your hand between his as he desperately tried to get a response from you.

“Hey, it’s me, say something.”

You could only mumble something incoherent.

“Can you open your eyes and look at me?”

You just shook your head slightly, brows furrowed.

“Fuck” Baekhyun whispered. He saw other people beginning to give him weird looks, and decided to take you to a room upstairs. “Come on, let’s get you out of here.” He slung your arm around his shoulder and kept a firm grip on your waist as he got you to stand up. 

He helped your mostly limp body up the stairs, and into the room. He let go of you for a second, and immediately you fell onto the couch, hitting your head on the wall in the process. He flinched, hearing the impact.

“Shit” he heard you say and saw you rub your head where it made contact with the wall.

“Sorry.” He knew you couldn’t process his words in your drunken state, but he said it anyway.

He handed you your bra, which had been dangling off one of your arms when you came down the stairs and he helped you get it back on. He helped you out of your shoes as well and laid you down on the couch. He sat down and you put your head in his lap, curling up against him and quickly passing back out. He gently rubbed the bump on your head, and heard you hum at the feeling. He looked around to see your money bag discarded on the floor and when he picked it up to set it on the small table in the corner he noticed it was empty. Those creeps had stolen your money and left you without paying.

Baekhyun looked at his watch and took his wallet out of his pocket. 10:04pm.

He stuffed $800 dollars in your bag, and looked down at you asleep in his lap as he stroked your hair.

The whole time you slept Baekhyun couldn’t help but run his fingers along the lines of your jaw, lips, and brows. Although he hated that those guys had gotten you like this, now, peacefully asleep in his lap, he thought you were the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. He ran his thumb across your cheek and noticed your eye twitch, and then open. As you looked up at him, he knew you were still too far gone to understand what was happening.

“What’sgoingon” you slurred, rubbing your eyes and sitting up.

“Some guys got you way too drunk, and then you hit your head.”

“Ohhhh” you sighed absentmindedly, not really having heard or understood what Baekhyun said.

“Come here, you’re still drunk.”

You seemed to listen, laying your head back in his lap and dozing off again. Another hour went by and he looked at his watch. It was after midnight, so he put another stack of cash in your bag. The movement seemed to be enough to wake you up this time, and when you opened your eyes you were a bit more aware of your surroundings. You shifted to lay on your back, looking directly up at him.

“Baekhyun” you groaned, still fairly drunk “why are you here?”

“I’m here every Saturday night.” He replied simply, smiling down at you in his lap. Gently he moved a strand of hair out of your face, and you felt yourself go red. Although you were now sober enough to know something was very wrong, with the way he looked at you in that moment, with so much warmth and admiration, you couldn’t help but feel warm and fuzzy inside.

You closed your eyes again and smiled, enjoying the feeling of Baekhyun caressing your cheek with the back of his hand in your drunken haze. No matter what shit had gone down earlier in the night, and why you were here with your head in his lap, this felt like bliss. You could’ve stayed like that for hours, just enjoying his gentle hands admiring your face.

“What time is it?” You asked lazily.

“12:15.”

“Fuck.” Your head snapped up and you sat next to Baekhyun, immediately feeling dizzy due to your intoxication. Head pounding, you rubbed your temples to try to relive some of the pain. “It’s that late? You never stay this late.”

“You’ve been sleeping for a while now.”

“Huh?”

“How are you feeling?

“Kind of drunk... and my head hurts. But what happened?” You slurred your words slightly, alcohol still apparent in your system.

He looked at you with sorry eyes. “Well, some assholes got you fucked up out of your mind. After I got here they came down the stairs and basically just dumped you into an empty chair and left, so I took you up here to sleep it off. You hit your head too, so be careful.” He rubbed the lump on the side of your head again, making you groan.

The terrified look on your face told him all he needed to know. He was about to see you cry for the first time, and he felt his heart drop.

“W-what? They took me upstairs?” A tear escaped, and more followed. “Who?”

“I don’t know. Some younger guys. I’d have beat the shit out of them if it wouldn’t get me kicked out.” You sensed the anger in his voice as he spoke. “Your bag was empty too by the way.”

Slowly you started piecing things together in your head, stomach churning with disgust and now fully crying.

“W-what, h-how did I-”

“No. This wasn’t your fault.” He interrupted, afraid this would happen. Afraid you would blame yourself. “They were assholes. They knew what they were doing.”

In reality, Baekhyun blamed himself. He knew you’d probably been nervous about whether or not he would show up. He should’ve been there earlier. But all that mattered now is that you were okay. At least physically.

As you sat next to him, head in your hands crying, he felt helpless. All he wanted to do was hold you tight and tell you all the things he was too scared to say out loud. But all he could manage was a comforting hand on your shoulder.

Your sobs got more intense and he was caught off guard when you threw your arms around him, head buried into his chest as you kept quietly crying. Reluctantly, his arms found their way around you as well, holding you as you shook in his arms.

“Hey hey, it’s okay, I’m here, you’re okay now. I’m not gonna let anything happen to you.” He said softly, rubbing soothing circles onto your back.

“Thank you” you choked out between sobs. Embarrassed, but still too drunk to stop yourself, you held on to Baekhyun tighter and tighter. You hated to admit it but you already felt much better with his arms wrapped around you. The gentle feeling of his chest rising and falling against yours, compared to your erratic breaths, felt like heaven. “Thank you, l-I’m sorry.” 

“Shhh” he said, stroking your hair. “You don’t need to apologize.”

“B-but you stayed here with m-me the whole time.” You sobbed.

“That’s okay, I came here to spend time with you didn’t I?”

“Why are you like this? W-why me?” You asked, leaning back to look at him.

Baekhyun sighed.

You’d avoided the question when you were sober for a reason. You knew Baekhyun liked you too much, more than he should, and you didn’t need to know the details. It would only make you feel more guilty later. But now, with alcohol to give you courage you didn’t hold back.

“You know how much I like you.” He responds quietly, giving you a soft smile. “It’s stupid, I know.”

Another tear fell, and Baekhyun was quick to wipe it away. Even with makeup running down your face he looked at you with a tenderness that made it difficult to feel anything but a comforting warmth.

You stared at him, trying to find some form of deceit in his eyes, some hint that he was just messing with you, but all you saw was his admiration and care for you.

Another sob rolled through you and you wrapped your arms back around him. He held you like that for a while, and slowly the tears lessened and you calmed down a bit.

You pulled away from him and looked around the room, realizing where you were and thought to yourself how silly it all was. You were in a dance room, just sleeping on the couch all night as Baekhyun stayed and made sure you were alright. Every other time you’d been in here with him, your ass was on his lap grinding on him.

“Do you want a dance or anything?”

Baekhyun just laughed, “Don’t worry about me, I’m just as happy doing this. As long as I get to spend time with you.”

“Okay.” You said, but you made yourself comfortable on his lap anyway, legs stretched across the couch. You wrapped your arms around him again, and rested your head on his shoulder. He put an arm around your waist and you just sat like that for a while, enjoying each other’s embrace.

He hadn’t been lying, he’d take this over a lap dance any day. To have your arms around him like this, not because he paid you, but because you wanted to, for him nothing could beat that. The skin of your waist felt so soft beneath his palms, he thought he must be dreaming.

The sober part of you wanted to scream at you to get up. But when Baekhyun’s hands felt so warm and comforting on you, the drunken haze took over and you just basked in the feeling. In the back of your mind you knew you’d regret tonight’s events later, but now it felt too good to ignore. With your head resting on his shoulder and the sound of his heartbeat in your ear, you just felt right. Like this was where you were supposed to be. 

“Do you want me to take you home soon? I don’t think you should be driving yourself tonight.” Baekhyun asked, and your lips pulled into a pout. 

“Can we stay like this a little longer.” You lifted your head to look at him, and when you made eye contact, Baekhyun couldn’t help but grin. 

“Of course sweetheart, if that’s what you want.” 

Your heart skipped a beat at the pet name. That was the first time Baekhyun had called you anything like that before. He usually just called you by your name (or in the past, your stripper name). You didn’t mind, but you couldn’t help but find the word heart fluttering nonetheless. You laid your head back on his shoulder, and watched as he slowly ran his hand up and down your thigh. 

“You have such pretty hands.” You told him, reaching for the hand on your thigh. He didn’t respond, only laced his hands into yours, rubbing the back with his thumb. You kept silencing the voice in the back of your mind that was screaming at you to get up, to push Baekhyun away. But when his presence was this sweet and comforting you just couldn’t bring yourself to do so. 

“Everything about you is pretty.” Your face burned red at his words. “So, so beautiful.”  

“You’re pretty cute too.” The alcohol did a good job of bringing the words out of you that you’d usually know better than to say out loud. 

Much to your dismay, Baekhyun moved you off his lap and got up, putting his hand out for you to stand up as well. 

“Let’s get you back home, it’s late and you’re still drunk.” At first you pouted again, but you eventually agreed. You grabbed his hand and got your shoes back on, following him back down the stairs. Your manager saw and gave you a strange look, but you ignored it. You went back to the dressing room to change and met Baekhyun again in the parking lot. Being seen leaving with customers looked bad, and after being upstairs for hours with him you didn’t want to raise any more suspicions. 

 You spotted him leaning against a black Audi, and you let him open the door for you and got in. You told him your address and he pulled out of the lot. For most of the car ride home you were silent. You still felt bad that Baekhyun had come to see you just for all of this to happen, and now he was having to drive you home too since you had gotten too wasted.

“I’m sorry, for everything. You just wanted a fun couple of hours and you got stuck babysitting my drunk ass.” 

“You know I don’t mind, I’m just glad you’re safe now.” He said as he was pulling up to your place. He parked, but looked over to you before getting out. “Can I give you my number? You don’t need to use it if you don’t want to, but I just want you to have it so you can call me if you’re in trouble again.” 

You looked him in the eyes again, looking for some sort of ulterior motives, but found them filled with nothing but care and warmth. “Okay.”

He looked surprised, but you just handed him your phone and let him put in his number. 

“I don’t want you to think you have to text me or call me or anything, I just feel better knowing you can contact me if you need someone.” 

You smiled. “I know.” 

Baekhyun got out to open the door for you, and when you stepped out you found yourself wrapping your arms around him again tightly.  “Thank you. Seriously, I don’t even wanna think about what could’ve happened tonight if it weren’t for you.” 

“You don’t have to keep thanking me, it’s no big deal. You know I’m happy as long as I’m with you.” 

You didn’t want to let go. The feeling of your head resting against his broad chest and his arms around you felt too sweet, too good to be true.

He’s the one who breaks away first. You could see his eyes scan your face, spending especially long on your lips. Your face heated up as you noticed the proximity between the two of you. 

“I, um.. I should get inside. Thanks for the ride.” You said, grabbing your bag  and quickly walking to the door. Baekhyun waved you goodbye and waited until you were inside to get back in his car and drive himself home. 

You almost immediately threw yourself into bed and passed out, but Baekhyun couldn’t stop thinking about your words and actions from earlier. The way you clung onto him as you cried, how happy you seemed to be sitting on his lap cuddled up to him, how you’d called him cute. His mind raced with the possibility of you maybe, possibly, being able to like him the way he liked you. He told himself it was just the alcohol, that you would never have acted like that sober. 

But he couldn’t help hoping he was wrong. 

As the night went on he only found himself falling deeper and deeper into thought. With nothing but the darkness of his bedroom to keep him company, he felt hyper aware of the emptiness around him. 

Baekhyun hated sleeping alone already, and with the thoughts of your sweet words and actions running rampant in his mind, it felt impossible. How was he supposed to relax when you had just called him cute? The night drew on and on, but Baekhyun didn’t sleep. Not when the feeling of your hands around his body was still so fresh in his mind. 

He was so close to what he yearned for more than anything, yet still so far. 

Next Chapter

[writing-with-olive]

The Stonewall Riots of 1969

1) Current State of Being (it was not good, fam, not good)

To set the scene, we’re in the late sixties. We’ve won the second World War, and suddenly everyone’s dealing with the fact that the patriotic frenzy America has been whipped into isn’t really having the same purpose it used to. Thing is, everyone’s still really heated along the basic lines of DEATH TO COMMUNISM AND ALSO COMMUNISTS. During the war, this was helpful. It created a sense of unity. But once the war was over, attention turned inward.

At this time, there was also research that queer people were "sex perverts" and a government report even came out saying

"The lack of emotional stability which is found in most sex perverts and the weakness of their moral fiber, makes them susceptible to the blandishments of the foreign espionage agent [...] the pervert is easy prey to the blackmailer.

This same report also cited a case of a gay man "who's homosexuality was used by the Russians [who were communist] to recruit him as a double agent before world war 1." Basically, the overall gist was that gay people were believed to either be communists now, or they would become communists because their brains were weaker.

Alrighty, but why were they easy prey? First, when it came to communism, they were just as susceptible as anyone else, but after steep laws against queer people were passed, blackmail became pretty real.

So... yeah, let's talk about a couple laws that were in place in the late sixties, shall we?

For the crime of sleeping with a consenting partner in the privacy of your own home you could face anything from:

A light fine

Five, ten or twenty years in prison

A life sentence

Electrical shock therapy

Castration

In addition, to target trans people, police had also dug out a law from the nineteenth century that was originally passed to supress angry tenant farmers who would don disguises and demonstrate against their landlords (law found in subsection 4 of section 240.35 of the New York Penal Code). The law stated that individuals could not wear more than three items of clothing that did not match their assigned gender at birth.If an officer thought you were breaking this law, they could arrest you and take you to a bathroom or similarly private location and have an officer who matched your presented gender either do a strip search or pat you down there to see if things matched.

Things got especially bad when New York realized they’d have to “clean up the place” in preperation for hosting the World Fair. In part, this meant a heavy crackdown on the gay community, and by extention, gay bars.

2) The Genovese Crime Family and Stonewall

At around this time, the Mob was starting to notice that gay bars were an excelent source of profit - since the prohibition era (1920-1933), limited access bars and speakeasies had popped up everywhere and since the gay community already couldn’t be themselves on the streets, they retreated to these more sheltered locations.

Three mafia members decided to open a gay bar because ohhh boy could you rake in some serious profit. Combined, the three of them put up $3500 to “renovate” the Stonewall Inn (which had gone through itterations of being a straight nightclub, straight bar, and gay restaurant in a sort of irregular cycle). 

Renovations included building a stage to dance on, painting the walls black, and getting a jukebox. No running water, no fire exit, just the bare minimum. It certainly wasn’t legal.

When they opened (as a bottle club to get around pesky liquor laws), the bouncer would look through a little slat in the door and if you had a codeword or looked sufficiently gay, he’d let you in. You then had to sign up to be a part of the club (about a dollar) and write your name down on a sheet of paper. Of course, no one wrote down their real names. 

The liquor in question was stolen, to begin with, and then heavily watered down with... questionably clean water, and then sold at about three times the original price in half-cleaned glasses (glasses were dunked in a bucket and then reused). Since none of the patrons really had high expectations anyway, they went with it. Needless to say, however, Stonewall was not a particularly nice place to be.

With all the money the trio raked in, a cut had to go to the Mafia man who controlled the district, and another cut went to paying of the notoriously corrupt 6th Precinct, to avoid getting the whole place shut down. 

Because they were payed off, the police would only conduct their mandated raids early in the night before things got going, and on weekdays - this was when there weren’t a ton of people there, and it was easy to make it look like nothing was amiss.

3) The Raid (this is where shit gets real)

First of all, the thing is - no one knows why it happened. It just.... did.

On June 28th, 1969, at about 2am, the night was in full swing. The bar was crammed full of people dancing and drinking. The air was stuffy as usual and quite dark. 

Then the bright flourescent lights come on - the signal that there was a raid and to seperate and to look less gay. The police came through, and called that they were making arrests. Everyone needed to line up against the wall and have their ID’s ready. Of course this was an issue, because just about everyone was legally not supposed to be at stonewall. 

As the police began taking people outside, a crowd was going - raids at this time were... unusual to say the least. Some of the queens went into the back of the police cars without much of a fight - obviously they were terrified, but it didn’t look like there was much they could do.

One of them, however, and no one knows who for sure, was having none of this. Though Marsha Johnson and Sylvia Rivera have both been suggested as the starter of the riot, both have denied it, saying it was someone else. Storme DeLarverie, however, has both accepted and denied it was her. In an interview where she confirmed herself as the starter, she described her reaction, saying:

“The cop said ‘Move f****t’, thinking that I was a gay guy. I said, ‘I will not! And, don’t you dare touch me.’ With that, the cop shoved me and I instinctively punched him right in the face. He bled! He was then dropping to the ground - not me!”

She then turned to the crowd and yelled “why don’t you all do something?”

This was when things transformed. Objects started to fly. It was like someone had just punched a hole through the dam holding back the collective anger of the queer community.

A lot of the queer street kids, homeless, desperate, and with nothing to lose, were at the forefront of the fight, throwing anything from stones to pennies to bottles. Here’s the thing: no one really liked Stonewall - it wasn’t particularly nice or inviting or anything like that, but it was THEIRS and they were going to fight like hell for it.

Those being pulled out of the Inn started fighting back too - throwing what they could, kicking, punching, pushing back against the police. Marsha Johnson, a woman some have referred to as “basically a lesbian superhero” even climbed a telephone pole and threw an unidentified heavy object at a police car, shattering the window. 

It was chaos and the crowd was still building. The flying objects didn’t stop, and it wasn’t like anyone had great aim - they were just as likely to hit a fellow protester - but there was a sense of comraderie and it made the police nervous. They were calling for reinforcements, but none were coming.

Finally, one of the police chiefs decided they had to retreat into Stonewall. They grabbed a few people as hostages and dissapeared inside, and barricaded the door. The inside of the Stonewall Inn was a wreck. The jukebox had been smashed. Same with the stage, the bathroom mirrors, and the cash register. Broken furniture was strewn on the floor.

Outside, the rioters had yanked a parking meter out of the ground and were trying to bash their way through the door, using it like a battering ram. Each thud made the officers even more nervous, and the captain, realizing things could turn from bad to horrific and deadly commanded his officers not to shoot unless he shot first. He went up to each one, commanding them individually by name, saying that if they shot without his direct sayso, they would be spend the rest of their police careers with only the worst possible jobs. To their credit, no one shot.

Outside, reinforcements finally arrived, armed in full riot gear - helmets, plastic shields, those club/baton things. They came forward in a full on phalanx. Then it started getting really ugly. People ended up lying on the sidewalk with blood coming from their heads or injured in other ways. The crowd started falling back, step by step. Finally, many of them ran.

But not to flee. Instead, they went all the way around the block and came up behind the reinforcement officers. Surprised that there was a new attack coming from behind, it was the police that began to loose the ground, and were forced to retreat back, back, back.

It was into the late, late hours of the night when the riots finally died down to nothing, the last of the crowd finally dispersed, exhausted.

4) The Next Day (aka a giant middle finger to the cops)

The shattered glass sparkled in the morning light the next day - a tribute to what had gone down the night before. 

That night, the crowds around stonewall were huge. And it wasn’t just the queer community - the anti-war protesters and Black Panthers had joined in, standing against the even larger ranks of officers. The night before was a tipping point, but if momentum was to keep going, there needed to be sustained effort.

Inside, the Inn was back to normal. The Mafia had repaired the stage, gotten a new cash register, and even replaced the jukebox. It was if the efforts of the police had never even happened. Throughout the night, the queer community went in and out as though everything were totally normal - as if the police didn’t matter.

The riots were even worse than the night before, but the police couldn’t gain any ground.

Despite what was happening and the triumphs of the queer community, the press was a little less enthusiastic, aiming to diminish what had happened, taking the viewpoint of the police, or claiming the riots happened because of a celebrity’s death, and not the decades upon decades of oppression.

5) The Impact (how we got to today)

A year later, a lot of the Stonewall participants gathered to commemorate the movement. There were now several activism groups that had grown since the riots, but there needed a way to keep it growing - keep the flame from dying out.

One woman proposed that they have a march like the Civil Rights movement and Anti-war protesters were having. As soon as the question filled the space, there was unanimous consensus. Yes - they were to march.

It was terrifying. One member remembered fearing that only ten or so people would show up - that it was only going to make them into a laughingstock and nothing more. Indeed, many people had shown up with popcorn to “watch the f*gs” - it was seen almost as a show or performance. 

But the moment was anything but. When the member looked back, in apprehension, what he saw wasn’t ten or the anticipated couple hundred people. No more than two thousand people had joined the parade. And not just the queer community - straight New Yorkers were there too. It was a moment of solidarity, and a demand for justice.

Every year since, there have been pride marches around the country, memorium to the community, and to the fight we’ve been fighting for a very long time, and to the patrons of Stonewall Inn who finally decided enough was enough.

6) Sources (because apparently trusting an unsourced tumblr posts is seen as an academic no-no)

(all in MLA because I just copy/pasted them from my research notes and also MLA feels official and all that)

Yardley, William. "Stormy DeLarverie, Early Leader in the Gay Rights Movement, Dies at 93." The New York Times, 29 May 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/05/30/nyregion/storme-delarverie-early-leader-in-the-gay-rights-movement-dies-at-93.html?_r=0. Accessed 12 Apr. 2021.

Brown, Dalvin. "Marsha P. Johnson: Transgender Hero of Stonewall Riots Finally Gets Her Due." USA Today, 27 Mar. 2019, www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2019/03/27/black-history-marsha-johnson-and-stonewall-riots/2353538002/. Accessed 12 Apr. 2021.

Burey, Jodi-Ann. "'It Wasn't No Damn Riot': Celebrating Stonewall Uprising Activist Storme DeLarverie." The Riveter, Feb. 2017, theriveter.co/voice/it-wasnt-no-damn-riot-celebrating-stonewall-uprising-activist-storme-delarverie/. Accessed 12 Apr. 2021.

Carter, David. Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution. 2nd ed., New York, St. Martin's Griffin, 2010.

Duberman, Martin B. Stonewall. New York, Plume, 1993.

Edsall, Nicholas C. Toward Stonewall: Homosexuality and Society in the Modern Western World. Charlottesville [Va.], U of Virginia P, 2003.

Kristi K. "Something like a Super Lesbian: Storme DeLarverie (In Memoriam)." The K Word, edited by Kristi K, 28 May 2014, thekword.com/2014/05/28/something-like-a-super-lesbian-storme-delarverie-in-memoriam/. Accessed 12 Apr. 2021.

---. "Something like a Super Lesbian: Storme DeLarverie (In Memoriam)." The K Word, edited by Kristi K, 28 May 2014, thekword.com/2014/05/28/something-like-a-super-lesbian-storme-delarverie-in-memoriam/. Accessed 12 Apr. 2021.

"The Stonewall You Know Is a Myth. And That's O.K. | NYT Celebrating Pride." YouTube, uploaded by The New York Times, 31 May 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7jnzOMxb14. Accessed 12 Apr. 2021.

(not in mla sorry) - PBS’s Stonewall Uprising (documentary)

++++

tagging: @veryunoriginal and @doggo038 because yall seemed pretty interested. Also my usual taglist: @candlemouse @bookdragonfanish @book-limerence​

If you want to be added/removed from any of my taglists, let me know! taglists found pinned to the top of my blog :D

[shadow-sovereign]

Part 1

I’ve got another Ryuji/Jin-Woo fic idea in an au world.

Let’s start with the setting: It’s a low tech world where everyone has magic. There’s no cars or computers, but they have magic-powered appliances like fridges and blenders. And the continent is broken up into different kingdoms.

Magic beasts roam the world, though I’m still debating whether it’ll be a natural occurrence or a result of gates. Could be a mix of both. Either way, it means they need Adventurers or Knights to deal with said creatures and protect the public.

In this world, people can grow their magical potential through training, though once they get to a certain point, it becomes harder to advance. Like, everyone naturally has a plateau point where it becomes harder to get stronger, and it’s different for everyone.

This story centers around Jin-Woo and Ryuji, who are Knights in King Go Gun-Hee’s army. Ryuji is the General (the top position) and Jin-Woo would be a...Captain? I imagine the top ranks going Captain, Commander, General.

At this point, Jin-Woo is in his twenties and stronger than Ryuji, which is why he’s gotten Captain rank already. But the King (who’s in charge of top ranking promotions) wants his Commander class to have more experience leading missions.

So, I imagine the backstory of this being that Jin-Woo joined the military when he was 16 (the youngest that they’re allowed). He was in training for two years, where he occasionally ran into Ryuji and developed a bit of a crush.

At 18, he started going on missions, protecting civilians from magical beasts. He discovered that he has a beast taming skill (somewhat rare!), which got the King’s attention. The stronger someone’s magic is, the more beasts they can tame, so the King assigned some tutors to him, to focus attention on training his magic to grow.

It even got him Ryuji’s attention, who likes to recruit strong Knights into his division. (Commanders have their own divisions and Captains have teams. The general has his own division too, but he’s also in charge of the entire army.)

So, Ryuji and Jin-Woo started training sometimes and going on missions together. By the time Jin-Woo is twenty, his small crush has turned into full blown infatuation and love. But he never makes a move, because Ryuji is known for sleeping around. (Not necessarily deep commitment issues like in ‘My love is a fire’ but he just doesn’t pursue people for long-term relationships. Open to the possibility, but he doesn’t go looking for love.)

Ryuji is also known for how proud he is of being the strongest fighter in the country. He doesn’t like competition. (Rumors even fly that he’ll try to take the crown when Go Gun-Hee passes, whether he’s named heir or not).

At first, Ryuji isn’t threatened by Jin-Woo’s growing strength, just excited for another strong fighter under his command. But then Jin-Woo passes his second in command and he starts getting worried. Then agitated.

Jin-Woo notices what's going on, but even with him trying to hide how fast his power is growing, it quickly becomes obvious when he surpasses Ryuji. It completely sours their growing mentor/mentee relationship.

Ryuji grows resentful of Jin-Woo’s power, jealous and threatened that someone is stronger than him. He can’t entirely avoid Jin-Woo, not when they’re sometimes the best two for a mission, but he puts distance between them.

Jin-Woo is not happy about that at all. He tries being nice at first, but when that doesn’t work, he tries out various ways to get Ryuji’s attention. (Like with kids, negative attention is better than no attention at all.)

He’s never deliberately rude, as he doesn’t want Ryuji’s dislike of him to grow, but he starts trying to banter with him. Finding what will make Ryuji respond, maybe bringing out his competitive side.

Though what they’ll compete about, I’m not sure. It can’t be purely physical activities that Jin-Woo could brute force his way through with strength. But maybe skill-based activities that Ryuji has just as much chance of winning, especially since he’s older and has tried out more things?

But their competitions won’t be the main focus of the fic, so I won’t spend too much time mulling over that.

So, the main timeline of the fic will be when Ryuji is in his forties and Jin-Woo is in his late twenties. I’ll probably have a chapter or two for the backstory, then get into the main plot.

I’m still working on some of the exact details, but let’s say there’s some tension with a neighboring country. They’ve had some skirmishes with them and Go Gun Hee’s efforts at diplomacy aren’t yielding much results, so it looks like a war might be brewing.

Ryuji decides that this is a golden opportunity. He’s been wanting to rule for a while now, but he has doubts that Go Gun-Hee will name him as heir and trying to forcibly take over after his death will have its own complications. Maybe he doesn’t want to spark a civil war in his birth country?

So, he decides that he wants to take over this ‘enemy’ nation. But how to do so?

He’s got some strong, loyal allies who might be willing to help out. (The S-ranks that were in his guild in the canon world.) They’ll be fighting the enemy soldiers, anyway, but they would need enough power to get a foothold into the country. To make their way to the capitol city and defeat that nation’s ruler.

His mind flashes to Sung’s beast taming ability, envious. If he had that skill, he could create an army of loyal soldiers. And then inspiration strikes. Just because he doesn’t have the ability, doesn’t mean he can’t make use of it. But how to get Sung on board?

He’s known Jin-Woo long enough to know that he has his own moral code. One that might balk at disposing of a foreign royal to put someone he doesn’t get along with in charge. (He doesn’t yet realize that the rivalry with Jin-Woo is one-sided.)

So, the odds of him convincing Sung to help him take over a country seem low. He goes looking through his library, searching for possibilities.

In this world, people can have a wide range of gifts, some that need specific circumstances to unlock. So, he’s been collecting books about obscure magic, both to see if he might have some of these gifts, and to know what to test his loyal people for. To see if they have any useful gifts that can be unlocked.

And he comes across a very rare form of magic, a type of control magic. Not mind control, but using mana to control another person’s actions. But it’s not something that can be learned.

Ryuji almost gives up on the idea, until he reads a detail that some with this gift can enchant an object to act as a control object, and the control of said object’s abilities can be transferred to another.

[That was a clunky way of saying it, but it’s basically this. Person with ability enchants collar. Gives control of collar to Ryuji. Now whoever’s wearing the collar will be forced to obey Ryuji.]

It seems like the perfect solution, but how does he find one of these people?

With a great deal of searching. Luckily, he does have a network of people that he can ask to keep an ear out for rumors of someone with this gift.

When he hears of something that seems promising, he goes on a trip and finds someone with that gift. [It probably won’t be from his pov, though. Jin-Woo will just notice that he’s gone for a while.]

And when he comes back….he somehow gets the collar on Jin-Woo.

Somehow.

I haven’t figured that part out yet.

Tricks him into it, maybe? Makes a bet with him?

Perhaps the collar will latch onto Jin-Woo’s neck if Ryuji gets it close enough.

The collar is powered through the wearer’s own mana, so Jin-Woo can’t just overpower it. Supposedly. In reality, Jin-Woo gets the sense that he could overpower it. (The same way the giants in canon were able to overpower that barrier Yuri Orlov put up.)

But Jin-Woo holds off on trying to break free because he wants to know what the heck Ryuji wants badly enough to put a slave collar on him. (Sadly for Jin-Woo, Ryuji is only focused on getting an army and not anything...else.)

And I think I’ll have part 1 end here, with part 2 being on pillowfort. Because Jin-Woo’s reaction to the collar isn’t exactly PG. I don’t want to post anything not SFW on tumblr, in case it gets deleted.

I don’t post a lot on pillowfort, but it’s for anytime I have a not SFW story idea I want to share. And if tumblr ever gets deleted off the internet for some reason (like getting sued into the ground), then you’ll be able to find me on pillowfort. It’s my backup website.

https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/2283048