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bookandcover · 1 year

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It has been far too long since I wrote one of these. I’ve gotten out of the habit. I’m also out of the habit of reading thoroughly in the way I long to, and best enjoy. It is thorough reading that lends itself to these reflective writing pieces, to tracking my thought process about a book. I have been in the habit of rushing through books for my book clubs during the busy school year. With the advent of summer break, I hope to return to that depth of reading and reflection. Let’s start with The Vegetarian.

I read this because I loved (and was disturb, challenged, and changed by) Human Acts. Han Kang has a new book out that I hope to read this summer as well. This book has much of the same dream-like thinking, gritty realism, complex psychology, and weighty symbolism that made Human Acts so compelling. Like Human Acts, the choices around narrative point of view (who tells their story and whose story gets told) feel deliberate, strategic, and powerful. This book felt a bit less mature as a novel than Human Acts, which makes sense given it’s an earlier work by Han Kang. I felt that the framework of metaphor and meaning was a bit harder to piece together here. There were more different loose threads and more questions remaining for the reader at the end of the book. I left the novel wanting just a bit more clarity, of the type that I had gotten from Human Acts.

That being stated, there was so much in this novel that was evocative and memorable, and which will stick with me—as imagery, as emotions, as concepts—over the years.

We begin with Yeong-hye’s dream. It’s the dream that moves her to stop eating meat early in the novel. The nature of this dream is revealed only in fragments, as Yeong-hye’s narrative point of view is never included (she is never given a voice, in her own story). In fragments scattered among her husband’s narration, we see parts of dreams (some of which, I later realized, draw on real memories from her childhood). This left me unsure of what Yeong-hye’s dream really was: the dog dragged in circles after her father’s motorcycle until death (later, it’s clear this is a memory)? A strange moment of cannibalism (bodies in a barn, teeth sinking into flesh)? A face in pain that repeatedly confronts her? The weight of all the dead things she has eaten settling over her heart, their bodies in her body? The dream that changes Yeong-hye could be all of these things, one of them, or none. The brutality in all these images is clear.

I deeply internalized this early explanation of Yeong-hye’s vegetarianism because it is—bizarrely, incredibly—exactly like my story. I became a vegetarian more than 13 years ago after a dream. I woke up the next day and I never ate meat again. Full stop. I have a different explanation I often give for my vegetarianism: that week, my town’s last small farm (one where my family had often volunteered our work efforts, and where we had befriended the generational farmer) went out of business. No longer able to survive as a small-scale, local operation in the face of climbing costs and competition from factory farms, the farmer went bankrupt. She needed to get rid of all her animals—about 200 sheep and 200 chickens, and 100 cattle—in 48 hours. My mom and I had helped with this, strategizing together, and my mom made phone calls to plead with people we knew to take some of these animals, so not every one would be sent to slaughter. This experience forms the backbone of my vegetarianism. Despite raising sheep and seeing other 4-H kids sending animals to slaughter, I understood that the real enemy was the factory farm operations in which animals were raised cruelly and unsustainably in order to drive down costs. I wanted to practice what I preached and one small way to do that was to not eat products I knew were coming out of the factory farming system.

This is the rational explanation I give about my conversion to vegetarianism. Even from myself, at times, I think I have hidden away the dream. The dream is what really changed me because—in the dream—I felt everything. I understood the horror of the factory farm on an emotional, not a rational, level. My dream feels hard to explain or share because words don’t adequately capture what it felt like, still so vivid in my memory all these years later. When the topic of my vegetarianism arises, I spend a lot of time not looking at my dream directly. In my dream, I was in a warm, dark space. There was the breathing of hundreds of other animals all around me. I could feel their presences and their bodies pressing in around me. I’m not sure what form my own body took, but I perceived the dream from the eye-level of the other animals. Among them, I felt a kind of individual invisibility, a kind of blended “togetherness.” But then, I suddenly understood what was coming. I saw with crystalline horror the future just in front of us, as we were being funneled out of this dark enclosure and slaughtered. Sliced at our soft throats, second jaws gapping, dangling. I could smell the blood. I could feel the deep terror in my body, like a cramping pain inside me. The certainty of death washed over me, and the need to stand in that certainty, to just anticipate it. I woke up, shocked awake.

The impossibility of adequately explaining how this dream felt to me, and how I woke up changed from it, makes the early fragmentation of The Vegetarian accessible to me. What is it to try to articulate the dream that redirected an essential thing? It’s better for us, the readers, to stay guessing a bit about what, exactly, is the dream. Anything less than this would feel cheap.

Yet, this novel, it quickly becomes clear, is not really about vegetarianism. Unlike Yeong-hye, my conversion to vegetarianism went that far and no farther. Yes, I know the people in my life responded much better than Yeong-hye’s did (in fact, all my immediate family members subsequently became vegetarians), but Yeong-hye enacts a complete disengagement with the exploitative world humans inhabit and normalize on a daily basis. What is this book really about? It’s about control, and gender. It’s about obsession, and art, and self-awareness. It’s about power, and nature, and what makes a life worth living (or ending).

The three narrators—Yeong-hye’s husband Mr. Cheong, Yeong-hye’s brother-in-law, and Yeong-hye’s sister In-hye—play out different responses, different levels of understanding, and different personal battles in the face of Yeong-hye’s increasing mental, emotional, and physical deterioration. While a key theme across the Han Kang books I’ve read is the problematic nature and impacts of the patriarchy (the violence, both physical and psychological, that men are permitted to enact on women), I felt a surprising amount of sympathy of a key male figure in this text: Yeong-hye’s brother-in-law. While Yeong-hye’s husband’s narration is repulsive in its dismissiveness of Yeong-hye’s inner life and personal experiences, and Yeong-hye’s father is revealed to be a key abuser in her childhood, Yeong-hye’s dynamic with her brother-in-law—while problematic—felt more mutually painful to me as a reader. I mention this because the brother-in-law’s narration feels like an area in the book of incredible nuance worthy of discussion. While it would be difficult to disagree about the problematic and outright morally wrong role of Yeong-hye’s husband and father, the role her brother-in-law plays is more complex. In-hye’s horror at discovering her husband and sister’s affair seems fully justified. She seems right to perceive her husband as taking advantage of her sister as her sister descends into madness. However, the brother-in-law seems to exhibit some striking similarities to Yeong-hye in a way that unites and binds them together. His obsession with the image of her Mongolian mark, and the flowers blooming on her, feels reminiscent of her obsession with the face from her dreams. An obsessive image is destroying him (his destruction includes that of his family, his role in his family, and his societal obligations). Distraught with obsession, both characters have something they want to get from the other, something they believe can be achieved by their union: relief. Viewed in this light, the brother-in-law seems as powerless in their affair as Yeong-hye does. Both are desperate, helpless, and mentally overwhelmed to the point of making choices they would not have made under normal circumstances. This feels like interesting commentary on human psychology, on the lengths we are willing to go to alleviate mental suffering, to distract or regain control of our own minds.

During this section of the novel, I wondered whether this brand of “vegetarianism” (obsession with plants, becoming plant-like oneself) could spreading from Yeong-hye to her brother-in-law. I tried to remember (and later Googled) the kind of fungus that inhabits and controls the human brain (turns out, this is only in Science Fiction…) This infectious plant theory feels like a too-literal explanation for a more figurative arc of the novel: what does it mean to consume or be consumed? What are all the different ramifications of consumption, of eating? In the third part of the novel, there is a similar expansion of Yeong-hye’s mental state to include and impact the person closest to her. In-hye’s does not understand her sister’s condition immediately or easily. She struggles to relate to her sister when she, herself, puts “making it work” and “holding things together” above all things in her life. But she comes to understand as she visits her dying sister in the mental hospitality and witnesses the cruelty of stripping Yeong-hye of her agency, of trying to force her back into life by maintaining her body, when it’s her will to live that is being squashed. As In-hye watches doctors force-fed her sister who refuses to eat, she sees the shadows of their past in which she choose stability over freedom (she chose to return herself and her sister to their abusive father, rather than run). She finally truly sees her sister’s transformation, and longing to change states and forms, the way she is “armored by the power of her own renunciation” of meat and, in this armor—like thick skin, like bark—Yeong-hye becomes incredibly plant-like (and increasingly free from her own mind/subjected to the consumption of others). The proximity of nature, the closeness of tree and woman, returns throughout this novel. Yeong-hye insists she does not need to eat, as she—like a tree—feeds from the sunlight. Her choice to not eat meat eventually becomes a choice to not eat at all, or to not eat in the way we humans understand eating…which involves consumption and eradication, rather than transformation.

There are several central images that, as I’ve mentioned, will remain with me. The death of the dog, both memory and dream, is one of these, as Han Kang is excellent at creating literal imagery with powerful metaphorical and philosophical resonance. This brutal scene immediately called to mind Achilles dragging Hector’s body around the walls of Troy, the public viciousness enacted by the victor, the visibility of brutality that is part of the process of control. It is not the same as violence conducted in secret. It is both more honest and more deeply performative. The second wave of metaphorical echo that flowed over me reading this scene was the Stations of the Cross, as Jesus carries the cross to his death and falls the first time, and falls the second time. This echo across the literary ages also highlights the brutality of humans (the acts of violence of which we are capable), but also the longing for redemption which is as fundamentally human as violence. Yeong-hye ate the dog meat. And, years later, her body seeks redemption, a kind of spiritual transformation, to purge that act of violence from the place in which it is held and remembered: the body. The physicality of Han Kang’s writing is as directly confrontational as I could imagine, and she pairs this physicality with deep moral complexity and nuance, so we are left seeking the meaning of these images that we—like Yeong-hye herself—cannot expunge from our minds.

#The Vegetarian #Han Kang #Human Acts #Vegetarianism #tw: descriptions of animal death #important reading #critiques of the patriarchy #South Korean Literature

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hidingfromsav · 5 months

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just finished reading circe and im sobbing, A MASTERPIECE it was such a good read everything was written so beautifully

i'm gonna give it a 4.8 out of 5 ⭐️

‼️ spoiler notes: ‼️

the way that madeleine describes romance makes me want to drive off of a cliff /pos

i went into the book blind on purpose because i didn't want to find any information about circe's story that might've spoiled the book and i'm so glad i did because holy shit !!!!

also the ending??? hello???

"He does not mean that it does not hurt. He does not mean that we are not frightened. Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive."

"I thought once that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing in their hands. All my life I have been moving forward, and now I am here. I have a mortal's voice, let me have the rest. I lift the brimming bowl to my lips and drink."

HELLO?????????

"But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me." 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

the way i had to take to moment to myself after reading that whole sequence, when i say i SOBBED

(also side note, i absolutely love how the story is narrated, i love how it's written in the past tense with comments from circe in the present moment while she's telling the story, if that makes sense. it just gives off the vibe that the reader is sitting with her and she's telling them her story and i love books like that so much. it's been a minute since i've read a book where the character is narrating their own story and almost has a kind of, awareness?)

‼️⭐️ final thoughts ⭐️‼️

- 4.8 out of 5 ⭐️

- Circe's growth throughout the story is 10/10 i love her *chef's kiss*

- Daedalus and Icarus. that is all.

- the worst father of year award goes to: Helios!!! obviously!!!!!!

- and while we're at it, fuck the whole family!!!

- planning a jailbreak for Prometheus as we speak

- on a more serious note would 100% recommend this book if you haven't read it yet, it took me a second to get fully immersed but once i did i enjoyed every second

- i am now terrified to read song of achilles

#books #circe #circe madeline miller #sobbing #im fine #book review #book recommendations #greek mythology #bookblr #book quotes #circe book #madeline miller #just my thoughts #please be nice

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isa-ah · 2 years

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anyway if u, like me, have been looking for fucked up sapphic dynamic with a god awful desperate codependent relationship trying to mutually survive a horrific cave diving trip during late stage intergalactic capitalism with severe body horror and unreality u should listen to horror audios narration of the luminous dead on youtube. 15 hours straight of oh my god i have to sneak it in literally every moment of the day bc I need to know what happens next with a very very nice reading voice & character voices. deeply unsettling i 100 couldn't sleep after a specific scene we listened to right before bed. my podcast resistant fiance sat in for almost all of it bc he was so compelled.

#also the main love interest is a dark skinned black woman and the mc is a light skin pressumably mixed woman #god. god listen i like men but the love interests voice is low and smooth and raspy and i. mommy? sorry

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crimeronan · 3 years

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Ok so I’m into the dreamer trilogy and haven’t read the Raven cycle...what is Declan’s characterisation/journey there?

THIS MIGHT BE THE BEST ASK I’VE EVER RECEIVED. IMAGINE I’M STANDING WITH MY ARMS SPREAD USING DIFFERENT VOICES AND HAND GESTURES TO REENACT THIS STORY FOR A RESENTFUL CAPTIVE AUDIENCE

also declan’s TRC storyline is like. equal parts horribly fucking sad and unbelievably fucking hilarious so. i will try to strike a Balance

FIRST OFF. there is exactly one (1) declan POV chapter in the entire series. it happens toward the end of the last book. up until then, everything we know about him comes from the observations and narration of others.

he is also a very minor character. his importance grows throughout the series, but almost all of his actions happen offscreen. it’s not until the last book that we know exactly how much he’s been dealing with the whole time.

when he’s introduced in the first book, he appears as a plot device. here is a two-dimensional horrible controlling hardass who doesn’t give a shit about anything but his future political career. look at his fake, smug fucking grin. how did someone like ronan end up with a brother like him?? doesn’t matter. it’s a convenient excuse for ronan to live with his best friend in a drafty warehouse, which means more room for YA hijinks!

declan’s introduction scene is Embroiled in Capital-D Douchebaggery. according to the narration (from gansey and adam), he loves to fuck women and then never call them back, cozy up to powerful people, and bitch about how ronan’s ruining his life by being sad about their dead parents. SOME people can just get over their dead parents, ronan!

this intro scene is also Extremely Funny i 100% recommend reading it even if u don’t read the actual series. ronan makes a nasty comment, declan goes “why are you the way that you are” and tries to salvage his date, gansey utters the phrase “man whore”

then later that night things go like. actually bad.

declan shows up at the same pizza place where ronan is with his friends. this scene is gansey pov. gansey runs out to the parking lot to find the two of them Very Literally Trying To Kill Each Other. you don’t see that violence in cdth - there’s only the TINIEST shadow of it when declan confronts ronan over matthew - so i Cannot Express Enough that someone is going to end up hospitalized at BEST. ronan’s already slammed declan’s head on the car, declan’s already grabbed ronan and beaten the shit out of his face, like.

you do not get good old-fashioned Declan Lynch At His Actual Worst in cdth. u might be thinking, THAT guy???? doing THIS????

oh yeah. things are real bad between declan and ronan.

after gansey breaks up the fight (and gets punched in the face for his trouble, albeit accidentally), declan tells ronan that their dad would be fucking ashamed to see him now & that he’s washing his hands of it & basically if ronan wants to go off and fucking die, he can.

this is like. just a couple months after the magical suicide attempt referenced in cdth

in the aftermath of that scene it becomes clear that ronan absolutely unequivocally 100% will kill himself if he has to live with declan. hence. why he’s living with gansey instead. gansey spends that whole night petrified that the declan altercation will lead to another attempt, and for Good Reason

so like, that’s how we first meet declan. he’s an uncaring wannabe corporate asshole who does not give a fuck and who only exists to exacerbate ronan’s mental health issues.

but then the opening of book 2 gets real interesting.

book 2 is where we start learning more about the lynch family. we learn that ronan’s father was a dreamer who sold his creations on the black market, we learn that that’s why he was murdered. we learn that ronan’s a dreamer too. we learn that there are very powerful people looking for the greywaren, an artifact that takes objects from dreams. those powerful people just don’t realize it’s a person, yet.

so here’s the assassin who killed niall lynch.

he goes to declan’s dorm.

with everything we know about declan, the kid should be completely unprepared. he can box, but the assassin knows that, so there’s no real advantage. he’s alone, and he doesn’t have an escape route.

declan pulls out a gun.

this is an unexpected turn of events.

unfortunately he ends up getting beaten half to death with the butt of said gun, because he loses the ensuing physical struggle for the weapon. the assassin is like, i need the greywaren. declan is like, i know it exists but i don’t know what it is. i’ll find it for you. i’ll get it to you. then you’ll leave me the fuck alone

now with everything we know of declan at this point - his attitude toward ronan, his general demeanor, and this new knowledge that he knew about the black market - there’s one obvious question.

will declan sell ronan out if he finds out about the dreaming.

and like, okay. their relationship is antagonistic in cdth but it is NOT what it is in trc. believe me when i tell you that at that point, when you’re reading, you can pretty reasonably go, “oh, god. oh god. oh god please no one ever tell declan what the greywaren is. oh god.”

declan has some other interactions with ronan and the gang throughout the book, mostly where he’s just a hardass who tells ronan to stop causing trouble. adam’s the only one who notices that declan is scared. like bone-deep shaking to the core petrified. about Something.

probably getting beaten to within an inch of his life by the man who murdered his father. that’s the reasonable reader conclusion.

so imagine how everything changes when you find out that declan already knows. that declan’s known about ronan’s dreaming for longer than ronan has. that declan knew exactly what and who the greywaren was, and he lied to a man who was ready to torture him for information, and he got away with it.

suddenly a lot of things recontextualize.

“keep your head down and stop making trouble”? people are gonna NOTICE your magic bullshit, ronan, we do not have time for this!

“stop hanging with that loser druggie friend of yours”? you mean the loser druggie friend who sells on the magic black market and doesn’t care about protecting himself or anyone else?

“i got super weird for no reason about ronan sleeping close to adam”? i don’t have fucking TIME to be homophobic i’m busy with your POTENTIAL TO MANIFEST NIGHT TERRORS IN FRONT OF WITNESSES IN BROAD DAYLIGHT

“i’ll find out what the greywaren is and bring it to you”? i’ll die. i’m making a bargain to die. i’m never giving you the greywaren and i know you’re going to kill me about it and that’s fine as long as my brothers are safe

ronan doesn’t know that he dreamed matthew. declan knows. he’s known the whole time. declan tells ronan in book 3. and then things recontextualize even further, because ronan’s death is also matthew’s, and matthew IS close to declan in trc.

but declan never tells the goddamn truth unless it’s his last option. he doesn’t tell ronan that he knows about the dreaming and he doesn’t tell ronan what specifically wants to hurt him and the lack of communication fucking destroys both of them.

in the last book, ronan realizes declan loves him.

more than that, he realizes declan’s loved him the whole time.

this is when declan finally tells the truth. things are getting bad, plot-wise, and declan is scared, so he comes clean. he tells ronan that niall specifically tasked declan with protecting ronan from the market. he begs ronan to run from the danger. “let’s pour gasoline on everything dad left and start over.”

this is also when ronan realizes that declan’s childhood was very different from ronan’s own. and that niall and aurora lynch were not the same people to declan that they were to ronan. and that their father’s decisions are what’s driven the wedge between him and declan all this time

(he’s still struggling with the cognitive dissonance of this in cdth. i don’t think he knows how to adjust his perception of declan to fit this new information.)

aaaaand the final scene with declan makes me cry every time i read it so instead of summarizing, here’s the important part:

Ronan delivered a sharp tap to the object, and a small cloud of fiery orbs sprayed up with a sparkling hiss.

“Jesus, Ronan!” Declan jerked his chin away.

“Please. Did you think I’d blow your face off?”

He demonstrated it again, that quick tap, that burst of brilliant orbs. He tipped it into Declan’s hand, and before Declan could say anything, jabbed it to activate it once more.

Orbs gasped up into the air. For a moment, he saw how his brother was caught inside them, watching them soar furiously around his face, each gold sun firing gold and white, and when he saw the spacious longing in Declan’s face, he realized how much Declan had missed by growing up neither dreamer nor dreamt. This had never been his home. The Lynches had never tried to make it Declan’s home.

“Declan?” Ronan asked.

Declan’s face cleared. “This is the most useful thing you’ve ever dreamt. You should name it.”

“I have. ORBMASTER. All caps.”

“Technically you’re the orbmaster though, right? And that’s just an orb.”

“Anyone who holds it becomes an ORBMASTER. You’re an ORBMASTER right now. There, keep it, put it in your pocket. D.C. ORBMASTER.”

Declan reached out and scuffed Ronan’s shaved head. “You’re such a little asshole.”

The last time they’d stood on this roof together, their parents had both been alive, and the cattle in these fields had been slowly grazing, and the world had been a smaller place. That time was gone, but for once, it was all right.

The brothers both looked back over the place that had made them, and then they climbed down from the roof together.

#long post #REALLY long post #i haven't reread this so excuse any incoherence #trc #trc meta #not really but??#suicide /#declan lynch #i love my idiot son #replies #Anonymous

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newswcanonprompts · 4 years

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Slave Chips + Anakin Angst time

(who tf had this convo? whoever it was, all your body parts are going on the wall. kneecaps = TAKEN for making me fuckin cry)

The conversation started w/ a Anakin has chronic pain because of a very Loud force presence + all the fun stuff that comes from a childhood in slavery and formative years spent as a general in a war, and then talking about high vs low pain perception

And then Yui hops in with this:

what if Slave masters have technology in the slave chips where they can control their slaves pain perception--Low perception for when they work and high for when they get punished.

The jedi didn't know about it, Qui-gon forgot to mention the chip to the Council

and Watto " forgot " to turn it the high pain perception off as a way of getting back at the Jedi for “stealing” his investment

Oh my God what if anakin thinks they know and choose not to turn it off

WHAT IF HE THINKS THAT THEY'RE PUNISHING HIM FOR QUI-GON BEING QUI GON AND FOR THEM BEING FORCED TO TAKE HIM IN SO OLD

AND THAT FEEDS HIS BITTERNESS OF THEM

AND ALSO STOMPS HIS SELF ESTEEM

Because the pain NEVER stops.

So Anakin never says anything

It makes him think that he definitely cannot tell them about any injuries he has unless they make him unfit to work

And Obi-Wan constantly lectures him too and like he's already being punished he doesn't need to be verbally beaten down too

(note that it’s from Anakin perspective, the unreliable narrator of the year--Obi-wan actually has no idea about the chip)

And when he lashes out because it just HURTS and he can't contain it anymore, he’s berated AGAIN

Also, if the pain perception is controlled, that means the slave chip is still there, which makes the thought process he has about being punished for being taken so old even worse

And then, what if Kix one day finds a chip in Anakin's nervous system, he removes it, and Anakin begins crying with relief

And Kix goes "Sir Why WAS THIS TORTURE DEVICE IN YOU?"

He gets injured enough for emergency surgery and Kix finds the chip that way, meanwhile, Anakin can't have anesthesia for medical reasons, so he's dealing with the surgery awake and feels the moment the chip is detached.

WHAT IF ANAKIN IS FAKE NONCHALANT ABOUT IT BECAUSE ANGST

"Ah? Oh they didn't tell you? I thought it'd be in the brief. That's my slave chip. It's supposed to be there. It means they own me." And kix...kix is aghast.

the Jedi are all crying in a corner at the fact they let a CHILD be tortured for YEARS

Because Anakin admitted to a slave chip. Of being owned. And he calls obi-wan Master

Obi-Wan is absolutely devastated because he tortured the child who he was responsible for and he never wanted to do that and oh force, he's a monster (it’s obi wan so like. infinite sadness to the max)

The clones basically become Anakin's mother hens

WHAT IF THIS IS HOW THEY FIND THE CLONE CHIPS TOO

BC KIX GOES "IF THEIR JETII HAS A CHIP...ONE OF THEIR OWN... WHAT ABOUT US CLONES?"

Also the fact so if this is during the Clone Wars: they've sent Anakin in as a soldier without him even knowing he had a right to not fight

The Council decides immediately to take Anakin off the front and get to seeing a mind healer, before collectively drinking an entire bar under the table

Oh God did anyone ever explain to anakin. In depth. That just because they are called "Master" does not mean they own him?

AS A SLAVE, HE WAS ALLOWED HIS THOUGHTS AND EMOTIONS. HIS MASTERS BEFORE DID NOT OWN HIS MIND. BUT THAT'S NOT THE CASE WITH THE JEDI, IN HIS PERSPECTIVE

(again, Anakin’s perspective, the Jedi didn’t actually know. This somehow becomes an eventual fix it lol.)

Like LOGICALLY Anakin knows that Master to them means teacher but he thinks it doesn't apply to him because they won him and he is still a slave

What if that's the reason he kept his marriage to Padme a secret, not because he was afraid of being kicked out of the Order, but because he would be punished for loving a free person?

YEAH BC SLAVES DON'T GET MARRIED AND PADME WAS NOT ONLY A FREEBORN, BUT SHE IS ALSO, IN HIS EYES, SO FAR ABOVE HIS STATION ITS NOT EVEN FUNNY

Oh, with the removal of the chip and the pain, Anakin gets high from the huge levels of pain-relieving chemicals his body has been producing for years to compensate.

Anakin living in constant fear of punishments, and that's why he always seems so high strung and on a hair trigger

Like!! This whole thing is a web of miscommunication and assumptions

Anakin assumes that the Jedi and whatever know about the chip and chose to keep it in.

He assumes he is still a slave if not in name, then in status

He assumes the council is constantly punishing him for Qui-Gon essentially forcing them to take him in and for his failure to adhere to their code.

He assumes Obi-Wan feels the same, or perhaps he cannot risk going against the council bc they're his elders and he still loves Obi-Wan, bc he sees that Obi-Wan does care for him

(but not enough to free you, a voice whispers in his head that grows louder every day)

Him talking about things with Palpy, thinking the man would be nice enough to free him...

the entire temple is just full of people drinking and crying over Anakin and Anakin himself is currently the most functional person around, trying to convince everyone it wasn't that bad

He doesn't realize that that makes it so much worse. He's all "Really, compared to my other masters. And to masters I could have gone to... you all were kind. I was lucky."

And they despair.

Because how could they still be given that earnest smile, of beautiful blue eyes, shining still with trust and love, when they tormented him, albeit unknowingly, for over a decade?

Anakin is just very relieved to be pain free, and that they didn't know so it wasn't on purpose.

Anakin: You all treated me so well! I had food and water every day, shelter and good quality clothing. You never beat me and my punishments, while sometimes painful, were done with no tricks without cruelty.

“You’re the best masters I’ve had.”

Mace, upon being told this by a very earnest and 100% honest Anakin, knowing full well how he made life difficult for Anakin and didn't like him much, cleared a whole bar of alcohol on his own

While the Jedi are crying, the 501st is willing to go on a murder spree. The Hutts are DEAD.

Everyone say bye bye Gardulla and Jabba

Anakin is just happy and relieved.

Yes there will be talking. He will have to establish boundaries, the order will need to regain its footing.

But Anakin is free, and he has so much love to give.

And now he knows that they never meant for him to suffer.

And maybe he's still high on being free of pain, but now he knows they genuinely cared for him and none of their kindness was because they wanted him to perform well. They were genuine.

Obi-Wan at one point just breaking down and holding Anakin to his chest and sobbing because how did he fail him so badly

meanwhile Anakin's just like "Master, it's fine, I'm fine. Hey crying wastes water, if you're going to cry over something it's gotta be something more major than this. I mean everything's fine, everything's better than fine now, I'm free."

Anakin not quite processing why everything he says makes Obi-Wan cry harder.

Quinlan must be very glad that he never tried to touch Anakin directly.

Anakin's self-flagellation issues are through the ROOF

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torilaa · 2 years

Note

Kreia? ;)

You HAD to ask for the most complicated character imaginable XD! Also one of the most interesting characters (in my opinion).

First impression

Mystic hag lady who I'm veeery suspicious about since she freaking spoke to a Sith weirdo like she knew him. Also, why are you are never happy with what I do, Kreia? What do you want from me? Though I did think she was very interesting character to listen to (her voice actress is awesome). I just HAD to know what her deal was.

Impression now

Kreia is “a cynic” and an “unreliable narrator.” What she tells the Exile should be taken with a massive grain of salt since she has ulterior motives and is manipulating you the entire game.

Also, I find her to be evil, but not in the “mwhahaha” Sith fashion, but in a “I know how to manipulate you without you even knowing about it.” Like Palpatine. That sort of evil, I find, is way more interesting and terrifying. And I love it.

Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss basically.

Favorite moment

When she saves the Exile from being killed by the Jedi Council. All of her lines during this scene are quotable. Also, just all the moments when she dunks on Atton. Very entertaining.

Idea for a story

I’d love to write a character piece! I wrote a very short piece already on how she became Revan’s first Master. I didn’t go too in-depth with what their actual master-student relationship was like and I’d love to write that (it wasn’t all sunshine and daisies).

Unpopular opinion

Yeah...I have a lot of unpopular opinions when it comes to Kreia XD! Essay incoming.

I don’t really agree with her philosophy. I interpret the Force as a literal “force of nature.” It doesn’t care about the “mortals” enough to care if it helps or destroys. Mortals have free will to chose what to use the Force for...and it’s that free will that causes conflict, not the Force. Basically, if human nature didn’t suck, the Force wouldn’t be a problem.

I can see how Kreia came to her conclusion about the Force being the source of conflict in the galaxy though since some “forces of nature” like earthquakes, kill many people and cause conflict. But her conclusion is to then to destroy the Force which is…worse. Sure, nature could be “evil” yet it could also be beneficial. An earthquake could destroy your town…and it would be nice to put an end to earthquakes…but without earthquakes, the tectonic plates stop moving and no mountains….yeah, Earth is dead.

I think Kreia couldn’t stand that she failed. She blamed the Force because if it wasn’t the Force, if she had free will, then her failures were her own. Her ego couldn’t let her take any responsibility for her actions. Kreia would rather risk having the galaxy die without the Force then admit she failed.

This really makes me look like I hate Kreia but I don’t XD! I love her character, I think she’s fascinating. Just...I think she’s flawed. Not 100% correct on everything.

Favorite relationship

Atton x Kreia, enemies to lovers, let’s go.

“You fool,” Kreia says, seductively.

......I’m sorry, I’m joking - I swear XD! Well, I really like the master-student relationship between her and the Exile even if it is toxic lol. I go for female Exile most of the time and I headcanon that the Exile is similar to Kreia (she’s very cynical because of the war). So, Kreia sort of represents something the Exile could become if she allows her grief to fester.

Favorite headcanon

Other than the idea that Kreia was Arren Kae, I like to imagine that she had very high-expectations when it came to teaching Revan (who was labeled a genius - ah, the “gifted kid” syndrome).

To me, Kreia was like those parents who only pay attention to their child if they get “As” and then they force them to take piano lessons on top of that because they want a prodigy child. Then when their child becomes a prodigy, they feel like it was because of them. Oh, and if their child fails, well, it wasn’t their fault. Basically...I think Kreia was a bit of a narcissist. She is the main reason why my Revan became so curious and jumped from master to master. He wanted to impress Kreia so much that he would have read the entire archives to get her attention. Of course...that attention was rarely received :(

Overall, Kreia really shouldn’t have been a teacher/mother figure lol.

#ask game: answered #kotor #kreia

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faebriel · 3 years

Note

ok ok I'm insane and couldn't pick one so have two (no need to answer both if you don't want to)

“You talk to him.” Not kindly, but he does.

“I’m used to him,” he shoots back. “I’m the only person who is.”

That makes Niki feel something, some uncomfortable tug in her chest. She mentally kicks herself. It’s not jealousy, she reminds herself, because despite the near-cliff jumping and the long nights without food and the nuclear fallout that has punctuated her last few months, being jealous of Tommy would be the least reasonable thing she’s allowed herself to be, maybe ever.

“You don’t believe me,” Tommy says flatly. “You never - eugh.” He cuts himself off with another ragged sigh, running a hand down his face. “Look, Niki, it’s - we were all together in Pogtopia, right? But I was there first. With him. And you didn’t see the start of it, it was horrible, and I’m glad no one else saw the beginning of it either but it was still just so shit and he kept saying all these terrible things about Tubbo and Fundy and you and,” he takes a shaky breath, “then, when I died, I saw him.”

Her breath catches in her throat.

Well, the voice in the back of her head whistles. If you were still wondering about all this afterlife bullshit, if you want to know where you’re going after your third life, here you go.

and

“You didn’t even - this isn’t about L’Manberg, Wilbur!” Niki shouts.

And then he stops, breathing hard, and he looks at Niki the same way he does whenever her voice is being drowned out in a crowd - the way he does when he wants to hear her, when he wants to know what she has to say.

“What else is there?” he asks.

Niki freezes. Stock still, unable to move, unable to breathe, ice threading its way through her gut, her chest, her shoulders, chilled down to the bone. With slow-dawning horror, she can feel hot tears welling up behind her eyes, sitting in her throat, threatening to spill over into a sob. She swallows - to keep her cool, to stay calm, to keep it together -

And then, something in her chest just snaps.

“You said you’d come back for me!” she cries, and her voice hitches on the lump of tears at the back of her throat and god, she sounds absolutely pathetic. Wilbur’s face softens immediately, which somehow just makes her feel even worse. “In Manberg. When Schlatt put me in prison, and you and Tommy were in Pogtopia, you said you’d break me out when it was safe. I waited for weeks , Wilbur. It was… it was horrible.”

“Niki…” a kaleidoscope of emotions flicker across his face, and he seems unsure which to settle on. “We got you out though, right? After the festival.”

“You looked for the button first,” she says quietly, and he stills.

Her sniffling sounds embarrassingly loud against the quiet background of night.

thank you sm!!! i’m gonna put these under the cut because they got a little long sorry (tw for discussion of suicidal ideation)

to preface: tommy is kind of the accidental but incredibly necessary invisible support beam for niki and wilbur’s making amends in bitter. niki cannot accept wilbur’s actions and apology without first acknowledging her own actions and making steps towards an apology, because otherwise it kind of falls flat? in that ending scene niki finally gets what wilbur is feeling and wilbur finally gets that someone else knows how he feels (it’s not perfect 100% yet, but…. that’ll get explored later)

onto the actual snippet! “tommy talks to wilbur - not kindly, but he does” was very important to me! tommy has stuck by wilbur ever since pogtopia, but the tragedy is that he is not equipped to deal with wilbur’s issues, and it shows. wilbur’s first stream after revival depicts this really clearly, where tommy tails wilbur around the whole time but insults him, is still stuck on calling him the villain, physically fights him at some point, etc. on one hand this isn’t healthy but on the other hand tommy is actually around, which is more than can be said for basically any other ally wilbur has had on the dsmp, maybe excluding his dad, who literally killed him lmfao.

this whole issue is exacerbated by the fact that tommy believes that he is the only person who properly understands wilbur, the only person who gets what happened to him, and feels like wilbur is generally his burden to bear. he failed to stop wilbur from both 1. hurting other people and 2. killing himself after the pogtopia-manberg war - and he doesn’t trust wilbur not to do either of those things again, so he’s stuck hovering around wilbur while wilbur is inadvertently setting off his own trauma and feeling responsible for any way he might fuck up and hating that but not wanting to leave. tommy’s memory isn’t perfect and he isn’t a perfect narrator, what he remembers from pogtopia the most were the scariest parts and that’s understandable but it means he’s holding wilbur to the worst expectations of behaviour (and he does so very vocally). the others showed up later, sure, but in tommy’s eyes he’s the only one who saw wilbur’s descent, and by the time they showed up wilbur had already changed irreversably. tommy tries to rationalise this by splitting the ‘different wilburs’ apart from each other in his head (he does this in canon too - there’s one quote from like late 2020 where he says he and tubbo need to keep on going for who wilbur used to be, not who he became, even though they’re,, the same person), and no one challenges that perspective, so he just keeps doing it even though it’s not healthy for him or wilbur.

and then limbo happened and, oh geez, THAT didn’t help jhfaskjjfsa

tommy is on a bit of a knife edge with niki in this fic. niki’s in this state of “ok, he’s annoying whatever, i’m moving on”, but all tommy knows is that she tried to kill him that one time, disappeared off the face of the map, joined a book club with two people who definitely do not like him, and now is just acting weirdly mellow and polite. she is not someone he wants near wilbur bc what the fuck is she gonna do? what is he gonna do? who knows. he’s frustrated that niki doesn’t seem to acknowledge how he’s feeling (especially bc once upon a time she would have been someone he trusted to acknowledge them - they were friends, they fought together) and he’s taking a big step by telling someone about his concerns here, especially bc tommy doesn’t really like talking about them at all. he wouldn’t be saying absolutely anything to niki if he didn’t truly believe she should stay away from wilbur, even if he’s wrong about him. (sometimes i think i write tommy as a little too emotionally mature here but it all goes out the window when wilbur’s brought up. idk if that balances it out)

ok onto niki: this is the first she has actually heard of limbo! she’s only just come around to the fact that resurrection is possible at all. death is kind of a touchy subject for niki both in general and re: wilbur in the fic - she’s coming off of a period in her life where suicidal ideation was, uh, a big thing (whether you want to read that into canon or not is subjective, that’s just the angle i went with in this fic). the sudden existence of a life after death, miserable as it is - and whether she really believes in such a place, when it only exists in tommy and wilbur’s words - that is a lot of information for her to absorb all at once. death is a weird connection point for tommy and niki here, coming right off of the fact that they’ve just acknowledged each other having those problems - tommy, out of, yknow, altruism, would very much like to keep niki out of that place, and niki is quietly reckoning with the fact that that is where she would have sent him. the concept of limbo from the perspective of a character with no experience of it, even secondhand, is so interesting to me like what kind of eldritch location would you feel like you’re living in asghjkl

(also - i gotta be honest the jealousy angle here but mostly when she’s talking later about dream not deserving wilbur’s companionship kinda came out after this post came across my dash while writing. whoops /j)

fun fact, this is the very first snippet of bitter that i ever wrote! all the way back in may!! this is like the moment of the fic - it's where the miscommunication that niki and wilbur have been having is shattered entirely - and so sticking the landing was uhhh kinda important to me lol.

wilbur's entire being in this fic is basically consumed by L'Manberg - he equates his self worth to it entirely. in his eyes, everyone (rightfully) hates him because of what he did to L'Manberg, because L'Manberg was corrupted and he himself with it, etc. niki tries to tell herself this, and while it definitely does form part of her issues with him, it was the betrayal that causes her this much pain - that he seemingly brushed her and their friendship off entirely when he supposedly left her for dead in manberg. because here is what we as the audience know: wilbur couldn’t leave niki in trouble when he heard her life was in danger, even when he was trying to find the button (pretty much the only thing he sees himself as having left at this point) and so he returned. here is what it looks like from niki’s perspective: wilbur told her to wait in manberg until it was safe to come to pogtopia, laid the place with TNT, went to blow up the place, and only returned when he couldn’t find the detonator (and then the first thing she saw him do in pogtopia was encourage the pit behaviour but that’s not what we’re talking about asdfgh). that is massive miscommunication and it’s been brewing between them for months - to make a quirky little reference to the title, niki has been carrying that anger with her so long it's gone bitter. it was never just about l’manberg with niki - not that anger, not her and wilbur’s friendship (hence the little flashback earlier in the fic, bc niki’s relationship to anarchism and statehood or statelessness juxtaposed with her friendships with wilbur and eret - she loves l’manberg bc she loves wilbur, but she loves eret too and those national ties don’t undermine that - is Real Interesting to me) - so when wilbur asks what else there could possibly be (because in his mind, what else could she have bothered staying around for?), she just fucking breaks.

“Niki freezes. Stock still, unable to move, unable to breathe, ice threading its way through her gut...with slow-dawning horror, she can feel hot tears welling up behind her eyes” - prose discussion time! heat and cold are two big throughlines in this fic - particularly for niki, cold is what she is. admittedly when i started with it i mostly wanted to subvert hot = angry and cold = dead but i kinda ended up enjoying this take on it for what it is instead of just as a subversion (also i like the idea of revived people running hot, their bodies r working hard to keep em going). she’s holding onto her feelings and refusing to deal with them, she’s frozen over. descriptions of cold are key to niki’s mental state throughout the fic - cold weight on her chest, feelings of frostbite when she and wilbur hug the first time, ice cold water during the dinner scene, waking up in the cold flat, etc. this was an attempt at describing a more visceral feeling of like, when you’re really mad and you can just feel the adrenaline running through your veins. always felt more cold than hot to me. when she starts to cry, the facade she’s been putting on is finally thawing out and cracking the ice she’s buried her feelings under. (also gives an excuse to write warm comforting hugs towards the end /hj). it’s a loss, it’s catharsis, it’s a whole mess.

and ofc this is all news to wilbur and he feels terrible, because as unintentional as it was, he really really hurt her - because the destruction of l’manberg fucking sucked but above all else wilbur hurt the people he loved because they loved him so much and not in spite of it, because they cared about him so deeply and his death was a massive blow to them. this hasn’t even dawned on him, because how could it? he respects deeply niki (lowkey respects her opinion more than his own at this point) so he has to listen, because it’s niki (“and he looks at Niki the same way he does whenever her voice is being drowned out in a crowd - the way he does when he wants to hear her, when he wants to know what she has to say” - because he does), and what she says fucking floors him. in his eyes, he failed her by putting her in danger and then by destroying her home - the idea that she valued him and their friendship so much flies entirely over his head until this moment, and he is forced to re-evaluate the mindset that has motivated him since… basically since pogtopia! the way i write wilbur is like… yes, he’s one of niki’s closest friends and he’s more aware of her insecurities and issues than most (which is why he does always take the time to listen to her, etc) but he does over-idealise her a bit. tbf, i think he does to some extent with everyone (calling tubbo strong on the anniversary stream, for example). also the fact that he really wasn’t around for niki’s lowest moments as a character! he still thinks of her the way she was in l’manberg - confident, steadfast, respected - and this moment shatters that for him as he realises exactly what effect he and his death had on her and everyone else, not just by his actions, but because they loved him and cared for him so deeply.

sorry that this got horrifically long!! and thank you so much for sending snippets in <3333

#ALSO SORRY THIS TOOK TWO WEEKS. LMFAO #asks #thespoonisvictory #dvd commentary #< i have successfully coerced a discord server into doing the dvd commentary on a regular basis and it is the BEST thing

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aria-chicken-flugget · 4 years

Text

The Brothers (+Undateables)

React to A CRONCHIE MC

MC who’s joints crack randomly OR has Joint Hypermobility Syndrome

For @offbrandmilk and The Simp Club 😂✌️

The Brothers ~

Lucifer 🔥

Y’all are chillin in his study as he finishes up his work when *CRONCH*

He snaps his gaze up, that disgusted surprise on his face at the noise

“MC... did you- did you just make that noise?”

“Ah yea, sometimes my back cracks randomly when I get up lol.”

*Disgust intensifies*

“Do you... need assistance of some kind, perhaps?”

Would relax and sigh with relief when you say no

“You humans never cease to amaze me.” “Thanks!” “... That wasn’t a compliment.” “:(“

Would Glare TM each time it happens, making you feel increasingly self conscious

Until he’ll inexplicably soften - “MC...” “Yes?” “When -“ he’ll huff, “Doesn’t that hurt you? To do that...?”

His brows downturned, blush upon his cheeks as he attempts to examine the latest CRONCH

If yes, will personally see to it that you are looked after during those times - “it’s not that bad Lucifer! Really!” Does not register lol

If no, will revert back to being vexed or ‘disgusted’ by it, especially in public

Clicks his knuckles, on purpose, with a sickening crack

“You hypocrite!”

Mammon 💵

You’re messing with the Levi, having taken a treasured figurine to ‘sell’ when you drop it

“Hurry up would ya? He’ll catch up!”

You squat to pick it up when *CRONCH*

In the heat of the chase, silence falls dead

A solid minuet of Mammon frowning between you and your knees before anyone speaks

The Most Expressive Derp TM

“Wha- what the heck was that?!”

You rise, brushing it off with an exasperated sigh “It’s nothing, happens a lot.”

“We don’t even make that noise when Lucifer punishes us.”

Would occasionally steal glances thinking he’s being surreptitious about it when you finally ask “What is it?” Would fiercely deny it

“Pfft Me? THE GREAT MAMMON? Starin’? Ha - in your DREAMS Human.” Blush

*Spongebob narrator voice* 5 Seconds Later

“Ok so what if i was starin’, huh? It was weird!”

... “You’re fine though, right? It didn’t hurt ya doin that to get the toy of his, right?”

... “Mammon! Would you stop looking at me like i’m going to snap in half if you breathe?!” Blush

Levi 👾

You’re doing a co-op match of a horror game you’re trying with him - things get jumpy when *CRONCH*

You’d bent your arms ‘inhumanly’ at a jump scare, accompanied by a CRONCH

Levi thought it was the game that made that sickening crack

You wish you could frame the horror stricken expression that turns to face you after a dumb moment

His face unmoving, his eyes flit to your bent back arms and your casual smile

Error 404, Levi does not compute

You break the silence with a laugh, “Oh yea i’ve got hypermobility -“ bends arms further

He snaps out of it with a “Wooooaaaaaaaahhhhh!!” “Eek!” As you tease him a bit further

“The game’s scary enough!” “LOLOLOL”

Actually finds it really cool

Quickly gets you two to cosplay and roleplay usuing your ‘Special Ability’ as he’d call it

Would 100% roleplay kinky and try to do it himself, too

Fails

Satan 📚

He’d be teaching you how to play chess in the library. Silent focus, from jovial to tense... until *CRONCH*

Raised brows as he meets your blushing features. You scratch your head, nervous for disturbing the silence

He frowns, a smirk tugging his lips, “Did you just make that sound?”

“I didn’t do it on purpose to put you off or anything -“ “Good. Or else i’d have to punish you.”

You try not to combust at the unintentional insinuation

Otherwise lets it slide, finding it ‘odd’ or ‘quirky’, even endearing...

Likes that he’s the first and only brother to know about this ‘quirk’ of yours

Barely notices it/doesn’t mind at all

That is until, you CRONCH in the silence he requires in order to read dense text

He eyes you darkly as you CRONCH for the fourth time in a row - you wince

“Sorry!” A harsh whisper before you creep out to CRONCH your back elsewhere

Smirks as you leave, shaking his head before calling you back in - as though it were an ‘inconvenience’ to do so

Asmodeus 💋

He’d drawn you a bath in his own king sized tub, ready to spoil you rotten for your spa day

You’d sunk into the tub with an appreciative hum as he began rubbing massage oil in your wrists

He’d set the mood PERFECTLY as usual

“How am I supposed to control myself when you sing so sweetly?” Wiggly brows

There wasn’t a crick, nor a crack... BUT A *CRONCH*

He freezes, you peel your eyes open with a suppressed smile. He makes a choked noise, the mood having been shot dead

“Honey... what the hell was that noise?”

Knowing full well it was your wrists that made such a deafening crack

You giggle at his tense expression, as he asks “So are you secretly an eighty year old, or?”

You explain you have joint hypermobility syndrome, which is sometimes painful

After getting over his initial freak out, he pampers you EVEN MORE

“You come to me if it hurts honey, ok?”

Your pain is his pain, though he may not show it, he actually gets intensely upset if something truly hurts you

Beelzebub 🍔

You’re chilling in your room together, with take out from a new chain beside Hell’s Kitchen, both making happy yummy noises as you eat

*CRONCH*

Beel pauses mid bite, but shrugs and keeps eating. Maybe there was lettuce in his burger after all?

You remember - sauce! Can’t eat with Beel without the full experience!

“Hey there’s some Hellfire sauce in the kitchen lemme grab it real quick -“ “:)”

You get up to get it when - *CRONCH* there go your ankles again. Welp.

His eyebrows raise a second, “MC... are you ok?”

You smile, laughing off how that happens sometimes

He frowns in thought before shrugging with a laugh alongside you, “Fair enough.” Seems legit lmao

He’s seen weirder shit and is still unfazed by it so he does not give a flying fuck lol

“As long as it doesnt hurt.” “:)”

If your joints/limbs were particularly sore or even dislocated that day, he would gently scoop you up and carry you anywhere <3

Belphegor 😴

Your napping in his arms as the little spoon, just between wake and sleep as he snuggles into you. You shift to get comfy when *CRONCH*

He freezes, you freeze too, trying not to laugh

“MC...” he begins groggily “What the fuck was that noise you just made?”

You explain sometimes you just CRONCH. It be like that sometimes Belphie, it do

He doesnt believe you, especially since you’re laughing as you explain it

“No really! I’m serious!” “Then why are you laughing?” “Because it’s funny! You’re reaction pfft” “>:(“

“If your weird human body wakes me up i’m not gonna nap with you again.”

He doesnt mean it

*Goes to leave because you CRONCHED* “Well, where do you think you’re going?”

*Visible Confusion* He flashes a cocky grin, “You’re not skipping out on being my Pillow.”

Grabs your CRONCHY wrist and tugs you back under the covers for more snuggles

“But you said -“ “Shut up and sleep”

*Kisses your forehead* “:)” <3

The Undateables ~

Luke 👼

He’s baking treats for you, Beel and Simeon when you offer a hand when you see him sturggle with the tray and *CRONCH*

The Most Disgusted Face TM

Almost drops the tray on your feet

“What in this disgraceful Devildom was that noise, MC?!”

“My joints do that sometimes” with a shrug and laugh as you #Take 2 with the baking

Turns his nose up “That was a horrible noise no wonder the demons love you so much.”

Tries and fails to act prim and proper as he carries the tray from your grasp, only for Beel to tackle the tray and eat the first batch

This ’Chihuahua’ is all bark and no bite, doesnt mean a word

After a silence, he’ll ask quietly, “Are you... hurt by it?” Little blushy face

If no, he’ll smile and turn his attention back to the sweet treats. If yes, he’ll be a sad puppy

“I’m alright, Luke! Don’t worry.” “Ok :)”

Will fight any demon anyone who may question or mock you over it, even though it doesnt bother you

“ChOtTo MaTtE! >:(“ #NotSoSilentProtector

Simeon 😇

Your walking to class together at RAD when he drops his books. You insist on plucking them from the ground for him when *CRONCH*

Surprised Pikachu Face TM

Breaks into That Smile TM and laughs with you at your cronchie knees

“That was... certainly an interesting noise.”

You don’t need to explain, but you do for the record so to speak

He gets weirdly curious about it, Is it all humans? Do you enforce cronchie joints upon your young? Mandatory or compulsory to be a human with cronchie joints? “:’)”

Will try to CRONCH too out of curiosity

It doesn’t go badly per se, but it doesn’t go well either

“Simeon, stop before you hurt yourself.”

Similarly to Beel, is hardly fazed by it at all when considering some shit this boi has seen

“Oooh like what?! *~*” He smiles all Innocent TM “You don’t want to know.”

Innocent my ass

“Now I wanna know more!”

Solomon 🧙‍♂️

He’s showing you some magic to prank the brothers in a sneak attack when *CRONCH*

He eyes you with That Smirk TM and bursts out laughing with you

“Hey! Me too!” *CRONCH* his knuckles

You two start CRONCH Wars

You act out lines of Star Wars to each other ever since and CRONCH, terrifying the Demon Brothers and Purgatory Hall

“MC, I AM your father.” *CRONCH*

Somewhere nearby, Lucifer holds the bridge of his nose with a deep *sigh*

You both sneak attack the others with CRONCHES, scaring the shit out of them

apart from Beel or Satan. They don’t notice or see it coming, respectively

You did it once to Lucifer. You did not want to do it again ... *~*

You start to slowly recruit others to the CRONCH wars, starting with Levi and Mammon

“When will this nonsense end?” “THE CRONCH WARS NEVER END, LUCIFER. NEVEEER.”

Would CRONCH next to you when you’re asleep to freak you out

*CRONCH* “Solomon... why are you in my bedroom?”

Barbatos 🕰

He’s showing you how to prepare the Hellfire cigar rolled cookies so that you can teach Lucifer, when *SPLAT*

...

Jk, it’s ofc a *CRONCH* - but i nearly got ya! haha ok sorry i’ll stop

Anyway, *CRONCH* go your shoulders as you bend over a simmering tray to get a whiff

Your eyes pop open as you hear the sickening crack and Barbatos makes a small surprised choking noise

You lift your gaze with a nervous smile only to see him smirk

“That was a... curious noise, MC.” That small chuckle behind his gloved hand, “Is that a regular occurrence?”

Laughs it off, shrugs. Surprised he didn’t see it coming when he quite literally knows all

Ignores it from then on

However will chuckle behind that glove if the timing is particularly humourous

Will seem unfazed if it hurt you, but his actions would speak for him.

Making you tea and checking on you more frequently, even if you’re not at the palace

Would snark anyone who comments on your CRONCHINESS like the diva he secretly is

Diavolo 👑

You’re visiting the palace on your best behaviour, taking a stroll with Diavolo when *CRONCH*

He’s smiling through a frown as he tries to work out where the noise came from

“Was - was that you, MC?” That Laugh TM head tipped back, tears in his eyes laughing

“Hahah such fun!” *CRONCH*

He CRONCHED his arms to CRONCH with you, only he CRONCHED too far

His arms are stuck in their newfound ‘unsightly’ position

Puppy eyes as he can’t seem to UN-CRONCH

Your turn to burst out laughing, he quickly joins you

Lucifer’s hand flies to his chest when he sees you two return - “MC... did you have something to do with this?” Glare

You flush, about to fight your case when Diavolo steps in with That Smile TM

“I wanted to joint in!” “...” “;)” *FacePalm*

“It was fun, you should try it Lucifer!”

Satan snickers at the double meaning - “Fun? Lucifer doesn’t know how to have fun.”

Diavolo pulls those Sad Puppy Eyes TM

By the end of the night Lucifer literally bent over backwards to make Diavolo happy lolololol

Don’t take these too seriously! Mostly a shit post for the simp club lolol - hope they made you smile! ✨

#obey me #obey me headcanons #obey me brothers #obey me undateables #Obey Me Boys React to #om! swd #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me levi #obey me satan #obey me Asmo #obey me Beel #obey me belphie #shitpost #meme

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tanakavox · 3 years

Text

A look into the multiverse chapter 8 SAOA

Many thanks to my friend friend @bssaz97 for his work on the reactions. And TheGoldenBoy2188 for the strict for SAOA making writing easy. The next reaction will be a suprise so stay tune.

Amidst the streets of Mantle, Whitley Schnee walked towards a destination while wearing a disguise consisting of a coat, scarf, shaded glasses, and a flat cap. He had a mission and he would not waste this opportunity!

It was not every day that he could simply leave the manor without Father's permission or notice so he needed to be quick but not noticeable. He had waited months for this day to arrive. Whitley had pre-ordered the latest MMO game of his favorite game series a week before the initial release date and had come to pick it up. Having connections in the right places certainly did have its benefits. The only downside was he had to acquire his prize somewhere outside of his father's notice. So what other place to go than Atlas's sister kingdom.

Outside of his notice, a young white haired faunus woman with sheep ears followed close behind him. Fiona Thyme was out picking up some food for the rest of the Happy Huntresses when she noticed an unfamiliar person walking around. She knew almost everyone on this side of Mantle, so a new person popping out of the blue was very suspicious. Normally she would have reported this back to Robyn but upon further inspection she recognized who this person was.

It was the sole son of the worst man on Remnant and the newly appointed heir of the Schnee Dust Company, Whitley Schnee! Why was he here in Mantle?! Fiona determined he was up to no good and decided to follow him. Wherever the SDC goes, trouble usually follows!

Whitley finally arrived at the destination he was seeking… the Post Office! Now all he had to do was open the door, enter the establishment aaaaaand- stare dumbfounded as the inside of this place was a theatre.

"What the-? This isn't the post office. Where am I?!" Whitley shouted at no one in particular.

"Ah-ha! Caught you right where I- Huh? Where the hell? This isn't the post office!" Fiona also dumbfounded.

"Whitley?" Both Weiss and Winter stated in a mix of shock and disbelief at seeing their little brother. Maybe some hostility on Weiss part.

"Weiss? Winter? How-?"

"What the hell is this?!" A loud female voice shouted as four more people arrived out of nowhere. Consisting of two normal sized humans, a bunny faunus and a very large man.

"Coco/Velvet/Fox/Yatsuhashi!" Teams RWBY and JNR said collectively.

"Oh hello everyone! This… is a surprise! When did you get to Vacuo?" Velvet asked the group.

Fiona turned towards the new strangers, "Vacuo? What are you talking about? You're all in Mantle?"

"I'm most certain we're in Vacuo at the time." Yatsu spoke.

"You are in neither at the moment." Ozpin spoke up.

"What the- Teach? Weren't you supposed to be dead?!" Coco confusingly points out.

"I believe an explanation is in order."

*One short but informative explanation later*

"Wait so we were brought here to watch… alternate realities?" Fiona says after she and all the new arrivals had been told everything about the theater.

"We call them viewings but yeah pretty much." Ruby said.

"Hold on, I can understand why all of you were brought here, seeing as you all are huntsmen and huntresses. But that doesn't explain why I'm here." Whitley, having taken off his disguise.

"A great question indeed." Weiss mutters.

"I think I have a theory." Blake stepped forward. "So far now, I've noticed that the people who are here have at least some involvement in the viewings that we have been seeing. Remember that one viewing we saw of Whitley being stuck inside a video game?"

"I was stuck in a video game?"

"Also if you die in the game you die for real." Nora added.

Whitley's eyes widened at the implications.

"Well you're still stuck as far as we know. But apparently you're very good at the game so you might be fine." Jaune clarifies. Slightly feeling guilty that his alternate is the one who traps him there.

"Oh joy, now I'm trapped inside a place against my will in two realities!" Whitley throws his hands in frustration.

"Oh boo hoo! Is the rich boy gonna cry because nothings going his way today?" Fiona says in a mocking tone.

"Oh I'm sure you would know so much about crying and complaining about trivial things, thief." He shot back at Fiona.

"At least I think about the people of Mantle! When was the last time you thought of someone outside of yourself, Schnee!" Fiona retorted.

Winter sensing that this conversation was going nowhere stepped in between her brother and the happy huntress.

"Enough! None of us came here by choice so let's just stop this pointless arguing and move on."

Fiona huffed, "I couldn't agree more." She stomped away from the two siblings and found herself a seat in the theater.

Winter sighed, "It may not be ideal but as long as you are here Whitley, I would just suggest sitting tight and wait until you or all of us are able to leave this place."

"Hmph, very well. Thank you sister, it almost sounds like you care." Whitley took his leave and found a seat that was about four seats away from Weiss's team.

"Isn't there anywhere else you want to sit," Weiss practically hisses.

"Oh but Weiss it's the only seat that's close enough to you." Whitley affirmed.

Weiss groans in frustration, 'Hopefully it's only for one viewing…'

An acoustic guitar plays in the background as a montage of the events of and post-Episode 1 appears on the screen and a narrator began to talk.

" A month had passed since that fateful day. When everyone's world got all twisted, leaving them stranded in a castle in the sky. Since then, 2000 poor souls came to an abrupt and tragic end. Some by bad luck, others by sheer stupidity. I mean, really. Why would you just stand in fire? Anyways, that didn't bother The Kid none. He only cared about one thing, and one thing alone. Himself. 'Cuz in a game of life or death, you either live... or you die."

The scene transitions to Shirou leaning against a wall with an annoyed look on his face.

"What?! Two thousand of the players have died already!" Ruby yelled, tears starting to form in her eyes.

"Not surprising, seeing as many of them looked weak last viewing." Cinder coolly replies.

Many huntsmen and huntresses glared at the red clad woman. She paid them no mind.

"Well thank you very much Narrator, you're doing a wonderful job of explaining the total death count of this video game prison." Whitley commented dryly.

"Oh, WOW. What brilliant insight! It's so deep it loops right back around to being stupid." Shirou snarked.

"The Kid ranted at no one, it slowly dawning just how alone he truly was" Narrator continued..

Whitley's eyes narrowed, "Am I being sassed by the narrator?"

"Maybe you said something to piss them off." Fiona added.

"Wait, what was that?" Shirou asks, shocked.

"He asked the sky, like a preacher to his silent gods."

"What gods? What are you talking about?! It's all bullshit metaphors with you!"

"He cried, not knowing the difference between a simile and a metaphor. The tininess of his brain dwarfed only by the tininess of his di-"

Whitley's eyes narrowed and face twitched at how much of an annoyance this narrator was being.

Weiss was doing her best to conceal her smile but was failing and breathes out a laugh. She was enjoying the exchange that her brother was going through and found it amusing. Her team gave her a side glance while Fiona and a few others laughed at the roast session the young Schnee was being given.

"Narrator off." Shirou commands the system with an annoyed tone.

"YOUCANSILENCEMEBUTYOUCAN'TSILENCETHETRU-" The narrator got cut off.

"Dick."

"Thank gods that's over, that narrator was extremely rude." Whitley sighed thankfully now that the narrator was silenced.

Weiss and Fiona grumbled that their fun was ruined.

Fade into December 2, 2022, on a strategy meeting led by man called Diabel. He gave a big smiled out to the crow

"Hey everyone. Thank you all for coming to our little powwow. Now, I know many of you may be discouraged by the fact that 2000 people have died so far."

" WHAT?!" A player screamed

" 2000 PEOPLE ARE DEAD?!" Another screamed.

"IT HASN'T EVEN BEEN A MONTH YET!"

"OH MY GOD, WE REALLY ARE FUCKED!"

"Pretty much, sucks to be you!" Mercury laughed.

"These are the people that have to survive this game. Honestly what was blondie expecting," Emerald facepalms.

"Hey! Just because they've lost numbers doesn't mean that they have to lose hope!" Ruby glared at the two assassins.

"And I know even more of you are a little down because we haven't even cleared the First Floor yet." Diabel added, trying to keep the smile on his face.

"WE HAVEN'T?!"

"I THOUGHT WE WERE ALMOST DONE...!"

"You were saying." Cinder looked back at Ruby.

"Well…" Ruby trailed off, thinking of a way to defend these players.

Diabel's smile wavered

"Uh, you guys do know there are 100 Floors, right?"

"WHAT?!" A crowd of players yelled.

Diabels sighed a bit.

Ruby, despite her best attempts, also sighed and sat back down.

"Oh jeez, I am just making things worse. Point is, we found the Boss Room!"

The crowd gasps.

"Now, we've formulated a few strategies with some help from the beta testers-"

"BETA TESTERS?!" A voice yells out.

"Oh goddammit!" Diabel groaned argnily

A player named Kibaou jumps in.

Kibaou, what do you want? Diabel looked tired addressing this player.

"Beta testers? They're the reason we're stuck in this game!" Kibaoyu sneered

Many that heard this player's statement and quickly frowned at his blatant accusations towards these 'beta-testers.'

"This guy can't be serious, right?" Coco stated.

Dianel looked at Kibaou flatterausted at the stupidity of the statement he heard

"What?! Do you have any evidence to back that up?"

Kiabrou scoffed at the question. "Pfft! Evidence. I don't need no evidence. Isn't that right, Jesus?" He points to a player named "Jesus"

" It's pronounced "Hey-Zeus", and I don't know you."

"Wow, really selling your reasoning by having no one else to support your claim." Jaune stated while crossing his arms.

"Well, they still should have helped us newbies!" He exclaimed

"If I might interject...:" A deep voice called out.

A big muscular man gets up and comes to the stage.

Velvet taps Yatsu's arm excitedly, "Hey you're in this game too Yatsu! …oh gods you're in this game too."

"So it seems," Yatsu, doing his best to keep a straight face.

Coco lowered her shades along with a confused look. As far as she knew, Velvet was the only one who played video games on their team. Unless...

"And who the hell are you?!"

"I am known by many names.", "Closed eyed demon. The memory easer., "Hooked clawed tiger". But you? You may call me... "Velvet".

"Velvet huh? That's a... pretty masculine name." Kibaoru said adwarkley

"Shouldn't be. It's a woman's name." Velvet replied casually.

"Damn it. I had a feeling but I didn't want to be right." Coco cursed quietly while shaking her head.

"Wait, why would Yatsu have a character named after me? That doesn't- ...Oh ...oh my gods." Velvet's eyes widened at the implications, tears starting to build. That is until she felt a nudge on one of her shoulders. She turned her head and there was Yatsuhashi looking at Velvet with a gaze that said, 'It's not your fault.'

"Kay, I don't know how to talk to you."

"Good. Then you can shut up and listen. Does everyone here have this book in their inventory?"

" Yeah.

" Yes."

"Yup."

"Yeah."

" No... Wait, can I change my answer?"

Velvet/Yatsushi held up a book to show to everyone.

" This book is full of tips and strategies on how to survive this game, put together by the beta testers. Everyone read it, yet some people still died. The beta testers did everything they could."

"Yeah, that means Mace Hair has no reason to blame the beta testers!" Ruby points out.

Many of her friends nodded and Yastu's team smiled at the sound defense his alternate presented.

" Actually, I didn't read it." One player chimed up.

"Yeah, I didn't read it either."

"I skimmed it."

"OH COME ON!" Many members of the audience shouted in agitation.

"What? Didn't ANY of you read it?! It is literally a matter of life and death." Velvet exclaimed

"Well, dude. It's like 80 pages." A player pointed

"2000 people are dead!"

"THEY ARE?!"

"Again. These are the people that have to survive this game." Emerald reiterates.

Brief pause. Shirou looks shocked at their stupidity.

"I am so done with you people." Velvet mutters, walking off the stage.

" What do you mean "you people"?" A player asked a bit offended.

The Faunus in the room narrowed at their eyes at the implications made by that player.

"What do you mean, "you people"?" Fiona asks no one in particular.

Velvet and Kibaou take their seats.

Diabel continued with the meeting. "So, as Mister Hooked clawed tiger was saying, this book has some great strategies, including how to beat the First Boss, Illfang."

He clears his throat and starts reading from the guide.

"So as you enter the Boss Room, he's gonna throw wave after wave of disposable minions at you... and you must answer in kind."...?

"Uh, what?" A player asks, mirroring Diabel confusion.

Many in the audience reacted just as confused. All except Whitley, who had a good feeling where this was going.

Diabel continues

"Send the weaker players first. Good rule of thumb: If a player asks you for gold 2 seconds after meeting you, front lines."

"Ha, serves 'em right!" Kiaboru said with a laugh

"If they hijack conversations to rant about their political views, front lines."Diabel said with a smirk looking at Kiaboru.

Kibaou went pale. "Aw, shit."

"Ha! Serves you right!" Nora laughed.

"If they ask female players for pics of their boobs, front lines."

"OH BULLSHIT!" One player screamed out in rage.

"THAT'S DISCRIMINATION!" Another one howled.

"BOO!"

Many of the women in the theater frown at the way those players reacted. Winter was more than certain that those players were the type that participated in the mentioned acts the speaker spoke on.

Diabel smiles and waves them down. "Now, now, people. I think there are some valid points being made here. Now, it goes on to say when Illfang's health goes into the red, he's going to switch from his axe and buckler to something called a "Talwar". At that point we should initiate a strategy called "The Final Solution" and- I'm just gonna stop reading! Jesus, who wrote this thing?"

Shirou giggles evilly.

"Of course Whitley wrote that book." Weiss sighed.

"Why sister, it sounds like that didn't surprise you in the least." Whitley pretending to act hurt.

"Please. The manipulative tone of the text almost makes one sound too much like you." Weiss bit back.

"Well I suppose you would know." A wide smile on Whitley's face.

Weiss scoffs turning her head away from her traitorous brother.

Team R_BY and Winter watched the exchange and sighed.

"Okay, so the guide's a bust. But it'll be fine. I'll come up with a great plan for us." Diabel smiles at the crowed.

"Like what?"

" Well... we... could... Uh... Uhhhh... I'm open to suggestions."

"Woah, guys, we could- we could, you know, like, group up and-"

"And hit it 'til it DIES!" Another yelled finishing the other player sentence

"Woo, nice!"

"Yeah!"

" High five!"

The two hive five.

"Well. It's something, right?." Velvet does her best to be optimistic.

Many of the more experienced members of the theater shake their heads.

"That's... a good start. But let's hear some other suggestions."

"I'd like to hear more about this "Final Solution"." A player in a german accent piped up.

"Fuck it, group up." said Diabel said tirely.

Shirou slides down the seats towards a girl, named Fiona, who's on her own.

Fiona blinks in surprise, "Oh my gods, that's me! I'm in the game! Hey other me, stay away from the Schnee!"

"You have my condolences." Weiss says to the sheep faunus.

"So, why aren't, uh, you joining anyone's group?" Shirou asked.

"I have my reasons." She said mysterioly

" Is it because you're a girl?"

"No. It's because... I don't know how to play."

"Because you're a girl?"

Many of the females and males who enjoy video games, such as Yang, Ruby, Velvet, Nora,, Jaune, Oscar, Ren, surprisingly Mercury and Emerald, along with Fiona herself, threw questioning glares towards the current heir of the SDC. Weiss and Winter glared at him as well but for other reasons.

Whitley looks around to see all the glares directed towards him. "Why are you all looking at me? I said nothing."

"No!" Fiona snapped. "It's just... I don't know how to open the menu."

"What?" Both Fiona and Whitley asked.

"Jinx!" Nora shouts.

"What?!" Shriou looked at the girl in shock. "But you can't do anything in this game without the menu. How have you survived all month?"

Cut to Fiona holding a piece of bread. She is staring at it intensely. "HOW DO I EAT YOU?!" She screamed at it.

Many laughs were had at the poor girl's predicament, despite some of them doing their best to not do so but could not help themselves.

Fiona slowly sank into her chair, covering her face in shame. Her alternate was the utter definition of a newb player.

Back to the present.

"It's... been a challenge…" She muttered before looking at Shirou. "What about you? Why haven't you join the others?"

"Oh, lots of reasons. Mostly because they're a bunch of mouth-breathing neckbeards who think "LMAO" is how French people laugh."

" Ha ha, that's so Le Mao!" Said one player far away causing to Shirou shudder.

Whitley in the theater also shudders in disgust. If these were the people that he would have been surrounded by inside the game, then he too would have avoided them like a plague.

"Wow. You certainly... speak from the heart."

"Funny, I thought I was speaking from my mouth. But, eh, shows what I know about biology." He said with a smirk.

"No one else wanted you in their group, did they?"

"Shut up! It was mutual!"

"And who would blame me? Have you seen the players of this game? I'm honestly surprised they lived this long."

"You're just saying that 'cause no one wanted a smartass on their team." Fiona smirked.

"I'm sorry, were you speaking Menu Girl?" Whitley nonchalantly retorts.

Fiona's face grew red in embarrassment and agitation. She wanted nothing more than to raise her hand and activate her semblance right now. 'Give me a reason Schnee, I dare you.'

It cuts back to Diabel smiling and clapping his hands.

"Alright, looks like everyone's grouped up. Get plenty of rest tonight, people! We leave at noon!"

A player groans "Noon?"

"That's so early!"

Diabel sighs. "Alright. What about 1 o'clock?"

" Dude, come on!"

" God, fine! We leave at the crack of... 2:30, I guess. Lazy butts…"

"Christ, I'm gonna have to set my alarm."

Everyone in the theater did not have high expectations for these players as they would face their first challenge.

Cuts to December 3, 2022 Floor 1: Illfang's Tower, 7:30pm. Everyone's at the Boss Door and everyone except Diabel is exhausted.

"Okay, so there were a few more stairs than we realized. Apparently real life athletic ability translates into the game. Good to know." Diabel looked out to the sad sight in front of him.

"Oh, god. I can feel my lungs trying to kill me." One player whined.

" Is this sweat?!"

" I peed a little."

" Jesus, this is sad." Diabel said with a grimace.

One player vomits.

"Congrats Jaune, someone else has now become the new Vomit Boy of this viewing!" Yang exclaimed.

Jaune rolled his eyes at her attempt at making him feel better.

"Fuck it. Why don't you all just take a Cheetos and Mountain Dew break, and we'll reconvene in an hour."

1960 Batman-Esque transition with Cheetos and Mountain Dew.

" Dammit, guys! I was kidding! You weren't supposed to actually take an hour!" Dibal said in a rage."God, we've lost so much time. Let's just do this already! You all know the plan!"

Illfang jumps into the center of the room and roars. Kobolds pop in, and an error message pops up on the third one that says "Error: "Sentinel_ " not found."

Ruby and Nora laughed at the mob that got glitched.

"Alright, men!" Diabel began,"Form up and-"

"EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF!" A player screams

The armies converge on each other.

"Are they serious! You can't just go gung-ho in a boss battle!" Jaune exclaimed at the increasingly apparent, dim-witted players.

"What?! No! Goddammit guys!" Diabel begins to bark out orders. "Squad B, quit attacking the Boss and keep the Sentinels off us! C, D, stop attacking from the front! Do you even know what "flank" means?! Squad F, for fuck's sake! Stop playing Bejeweled! *Groans* Squad G, get in there and help A and B!"

"Got it!" Shirou said with a nod rushing in.

"Don't talk back to…" Diabel did a double take."l Holy shit, really?!"

"How is Whitley the most sensible minded player in this game?!" Weiss asked.

"Weiss, have you seen the other players?" Blake asked her in a deadpanned tone.

"...Yes you're right, that's actually too much of an insult." Weiss admits.

Shirou attacks a Sentinel, leaving Fiona to finish it off.

"Okay, Fiona! What you're gonna wanna do here is-"

Fiona lets out a Battle Cry and kills the Sentinel in one hit.

Fiona in the theater perked up at this display, "Oh my- I can fight! Oh thank gods I can fight!"

Shirou eyes widened in shock "Wow, I thought she was hopeless, but her technique is flawless. If I didn't know any better, I'd say she's even better than I-"

"Hey Shirou! I killed the thing and now it says I have XPs! Is that bad? Am I dying?! Fiona cried out to him in fear."

Shirou rolls his eyes"Or... maybe... not."

"Miss Fiona, either your alternate is very lucky or is very out of base with technology. I can't tell which it is." Whitley stated.

"Shut up Schnee, she's trying!" Fiona defends her other self.

Illfang's health drops into the red. He snarls at the players and he tosses his weapons.

"Alright, men! This last part's gonna take careful coordination…" Diabel ran towards Illfang. "which is why I'm just gonna do it myself!"

Diabel charges his weapon art. Illfang draws his Ōdachi.

Ruby's eyes widened, "OH NO!"

Shirou looked and saw the weapon and his eyes widened calling to Diabel. "Oh shit! Diabel, look out! That's not a Talwar! It's an Ōdachi!"

"What's the difference?!" Diabel ask still running towards Illfang.

"Well, a Talwar is of Indian descent while an Ōdachi is Japanese! While both are primarily slashing weapons, the Talwar was favored by cavalrymen, as opposed to an Ōdachi which was mainly used for dick measuring!" As Shirou is talking, Illfang starts jumping off the walls.

" What's your point?!" Diabel asked impaintely.

"Well if you let me finish, I was getting to that! You see…"

Diabel gets hit by Illfang, screaming in pain.

Many of the huntsmen and huntresses in the theater either gasped in fear or looked away at the surely doomed player.

"What's happening? Did I miss something?" Fox called out.

"Oops." Shirou sheepishly said.

Illfang hits Diabel again, sending him flying.

"DIABEL!" Kibaou yelled out.

Illfang pops down in front of Kibaou and roars. A message pops up "Bonus Item: Soiled Pants". Above Kibaou

"Hey, rare drop!' A player said cheerfully.

Mercury laughed at the joke while most of the others were disgusted by the fact that that achievement was unlockable.

Shirou runs over to Diabel and holds him up.

" I was trying to say an Ōdachi's a little bit longer than a Talwar, so it'll have more reach and do a bit more damage."

"And why couldn't you say that first?" Diabel asked weakly

"Yeah you dummy! You almost might've killed him!" Ruby cries out.

Whitley was actually taken aback by that statement. Sure he had moments of pride and arrogance, sometimes he looked down on people but he didn't believe he would ever intentionally kill someone.

" I like to think of myself as a teacher. Anyway, drink this."

Shirou tries to give Diabel a healing potion but he stopped Shirou shaking his head.

"No. It's better this way. I just can't do it anymore. I had such high hopes at first. But now? Our best player is a girl who thinks DPS is some kind of sex thing." Both turned to glance to Fiona.

"I know. It's weird, right?"

Fiona sulked more into her chair.

"You're clearly not like the rest of them. How do you stand it, Shirou? Where do you draw your strength?" Diabel look at Shirou like a sage.

Shirou sigh and drops his wisdom onto him. "I've been playing MMO's a long time, Diabel, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that lions do not concern himself with the opinions of sheep. Just take that little voice in your head that tells you to be tactful and understanding... and shoot it. Shoot it in the goddamn face."

" You are so wise. If only I'd met you sooner. Perhaps, things would have been different. You must lead them now. Show them this game can be beaten." Diabel let's go of Shirou wrist.

Weiss was taken aback that this man was actually willing to place trust in this alternate of her brother. This stranger who barely even knows him placed the lives of all the players into his hands. Much like how she tried to trust Whitley once… this caused a bitter frown to grow on her face in recollection. Even if this was a different version of him, it was still Whitley in her eyes.

Shirou smiles fondly at Diabel. "Another life... in another time... I think we could have been friends."

"I... doubt it." Diabel gasps out before turning to shattered glass, dying.

" Well fuck you, too!" Shirou said angrily his smile dropping into a frown.

Fiona slips in by Shirou's side and began to lay out a plan.

"Alright, Shirou. Here's what we'll do. One counters his blows to knock him off balance and the other switches in to attack. Rinse. Repeat. Victory."

Shirou looked at her with one eye. "You came up with that, but you can't open a menu."

"Shut up!" Fiona cried out.

Illfang roars and they take off running toward him.

"Alright, so you counter and I'll attack!" Shirou yelled to Fiona.

"What? No, it's my plan! I should attack!" Fiona yelled back.

"Fine, just get ready!"

Shirou makes a battle cry and counters Illfang's attack.

"SWITCH!"

Fiona moves in and gets her cloak destroyed by Illfang before attacking revealing white curly hair and sheep ears.

" See? You almost got yourself killed! I'll attack him!" Shirou yelled again and began to attack Illfang.

"Oh, that was a fluke, and you know it! He's mine!" Fiona yelled back.

Fiona attacks Illfang.

"Oh shit. They're actually giving that boss the work!" Coco called out.

"He's mine!" Shirou yelled.

Shirou blocks Illfang's next attack, but Fiona attacks him before Shirou can do so himself.:

"Mine!" Fiona screams

"NO! HE'S! MIIIIIIIIIIINE!"

Shirou slices Illfang and he explodes. Everyone is stunned. Lame party kazoo sound effect and a banner with the word "CONGRATULATION" appears.

"Yeah!" A player cheer.

This caused almost everyone in the audience to laugh. Despite the dark humor of it all, it was still pretty hilarious.

"What happened? Did they win?" Fox asks

"Oh yes, I'm sorry Fox! They beat the boss and a victory banner came out."

"...heh." Fox chuckled.

Shirou is panting. He gets an item as a reward for defeating the Boss.

"Congratulations!" Velvet said, patting him on the back. "That was even more impressive than that cat that learned to play."

Cut to a player with a cat's head, with another player staring at it.

"Meow."

"Huh what did you know?" Yang replied.

"Oh my god! You guys can see it too?! So I'm not crazy! Isn't that great, Jesus?!" We see things from the players' perceptive, with a giant hallucination of Jesus Christ looming over the crowd.

"That's right, Jeffrey. Now... kill them all." Jesus said, his voice growing darker.

"As you command, my Lord." Jeffrey whispered.

"Somethings very wrong with that guy." Qrow states.

"I honestly agree with you, Branwen… Blegh! That left a horrible taste in my mouth." Winter stated.

Cut back to Velvet talking to Shirou. The other players are applauding his victory.

"You've led us to victory, Shirou. These men and I will follow you to hell itself. Now... address your people." Velvet is smiling and pushing Shirou to the crowd.

Shirou gets up and smirks. "I always knew this day would come. Ahem. Fellow gamers! We have traveled far and up many stairs to get to this point. Fighting side by side, noobs, and leets, alike. I'd like to take a moment to say that I couldn't have done it without the help of each and every one of you."

"Aw, that's a nice thing to say-" Velvet was cut off when Shirou counties.

"Of course, I'm not a liar, so I'm not gonna say any of that."

"Oh shit."

"I thought as much." Weiss states.

Shirou grins look at the group. "I mean, really. I could've done this whole Boss Fight myself. But to be fair, I guess you did absorb a bit of damage for me, which was nice. You were an adequate meat shield, and no one can ever take that away from you."

"Fuck. Fuck! Shut up! SHUT UP!" Velvet started to say.

"So for those of you who came in late, and that one guy playing Bejeweled back there... shoot for the stars... it'll make it more fun when I kick you back into the dirt."

"You're not better than us!" Kiaboru said.

"Yeah! What makes you think you're so cool?!" Nora shouts to the screen.

Shirou equips the coat he got for beating Illfang and smugly looks at the group."My sweet-ass coat begs to differ."

"Dammit, he's got us there." one player muttered.

Shirou ascends the stairs out of the Boss Room. Fiona follows him and grabs him by the shoulder. "Shirou, wait!"

Those in the audience looked on at Fiona's alternate in hope. Surely she could turn him around after their excellent display of partnership.

"I want half." She said, staring at him blankly.

That hope was quickly squashed, shot at, and finally burned to death via gasoline and cracking a fire dust crystal.

Shirou turns to her confused. " I'm... sorry. What?!"

"I want half the coat. I did half the work, I should get half the coat." Fiona explain and extends her hand for him give it to her.

"No! It's not fabric I can cut! It's just a bunch of 1s and 0s!" Shirou was getting frustrated.

"Fine, then give me the 1s."

" Fuck you! I want the 1s!" He groans and open the menu. "I am not having this argument. I'm disolving this party." Shirou opens his menu and "Di-solves" their party.

"Shirou! If you walk away with my half of the coat, I will make your life a living hell!" Fiona screamed.

"You know what? Fine! I'll give you the damn coat! Just send me a trade request."

"A... what?"

Fiona's eyes widened as she watched from the theater, "No…"

Shirou grins viciously "Oh, it's quite simple really... Just open your menu." Shirou starts laughing maniacally as he walks out the doors as Fiona screams at him:"YOU SON OF A BITCH!" At him.

Outro Plays.

Fiona screams, "I can't believe the nerve of that-! GRAAAAH!"

"Can you please stop screaming! You're going to cause everyone's ears to bleed." Whitley said while using a handkerchief to rub his ears.

Fiona huffed then matched off, going to another place in the theater.

"Well that was interesting. So you all say there's other viewings where we see other worlds besides this one." Coco asked the group.

"Oh yeah, we've seen a couple worlds ourselves, but only a handful I'd say." Yang admits.

"Well as long as we're here, we might as well take time to catch up." Velvet smiled.

"Yeah, this will be great! It's almost like we're back at Beacon, right Weiss? ...Weiss?" Ruby looks beside her but noticed that her partner was not with them anymore.

In another side of the theater, the all three Schnee siblings stand together. Both of the youngest siblings look at Winter who brought them here.

Winter clears her throat, "I understand that there are some… tension between the three of us during this viewing. So I asked you both here so that we may come to terms with our situation."

Weiss scoffs, "Come to terms with him! I highly doubt that."

Whitley crosses his arms, "Yes it does seem like a lost cause Winter."

"Enough! Both of you!" Winter raised her voice causing both of her younger siblings to go rigid. "I'm not expecting you to get along or even apologize to each other at the moment. What I ask is if you two can at least act civil with one another while in the theater?"

Both Weiss and Whitley looked at each other and sneered at each other.

"Why of course I can be civil with Whitley. It is a virtue of a lady to be civil at all times." Weiss said with hidden venom.

"Quite true, but being civil is also a quality an heir of the Schnee family must cultivate as well. So I look forward to spending this immeasurable amount of time with you my sisters." Whitley said with his best presentable smile.

"Yes, how I enjoy us taking this time to reacquaint with each other." Weiss said while one of her eyes was twitching.

"Well then sister, shall we?" Whitley gestured for Weiss to go ahead of him. Almost would have been believable if one did not notice the glint in his eyes and his strained smile.

Winter watched as both Weiss and Whitley walked back to the auditorium where everyone else had remained.

"...This can only end badly."

Hope you enjoyed.

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jippy-kandi · 4 years

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Digimon Adventure: 2020 – Episode 19: Howl, Jyuoken (Review)

Thoughts on the nineteenth episode of the Digimon Adventure reboot series.

This was a decent episode, especially compared to the previous one. The end was worth it!

I appreciated that the narrator (recap) said “Sora and the others” and not “Koushirou and the others”. Yes, Sora, take your third place back please. :P

I liked seeing a lot of digimon (even their silhouettes) that I didn’t recognise. Makes this reboot seem more “new”.

Taichi: “Sora, Mimi-chan, Jou-senpai!” Taichi showing how you should use honourifics. Learn, Koushirou-san. :P

I loved the other kids in the real world. Jou going to the police was so nice! He’s still so over-the-top but I’m used to him now, lol.

I can’t believe Taichi’s mum didn’t ask about him at all, oy vey. “Is my son dead in a ditch somewhere?” COME ON! And just hands off her child to an 11-year-old? (Albeit momentarily . . . though I think she won’t be seeing them again for a while!) She is totally not a responsible mother, and it’s really annoying how unrealistic she is. :P (HOW ON EARTH DID SHE BIRTH TWO SPECIAL CHILDREN?)

Sora is going to start her babysitting services with Hikari! Next up, her future brother-in-law, Takeru. :)

Leomon to the rescue! And he’s . . . OK, but so overrated. :P The only thing I find interesting about him is that he is voiced by Hiroaki Hirata, who also voices Yamato’s father and adult brother in another universe. Yamato was talking to his daddy/bro! :)

I appreciate that Yamato thought about Neamon. This is why he’s my favourite character. :)

The troopmon are totally sand people from Star Wars, especially with how they were fixing Valvemon. And . . . they are extremely bad shots. Every movie/show does this - where bullets miss the protagonists - but it’s a bit too much when they’re missing them 100% of the time, when the heroes are running in a straight line. At least have them dodge for cover or something! Fire these troopmon, Devimon. You can afford a better army.

It’s so silly that the only time the lasers hit is when Leomon shows off with his blade. He had to deliberately move his blade in order to actually connect with the lasers, LMAO.

Leomon: “It’s too easy.” You can say that again. I’m surprised you haven’t already won the war! :P

That was a very nice Taito moment where Yamato “saved” Taichi from Bullmon. Thanks, Toei, I appreciated it. ;)

I generally do like that the kids are more a part of the action with their digimon now. But Yamato riding into battle on Garurumon is a lot more feasible than Taichi somehow being superglued to Greymon’s head, lol. He literally doesn’t move at all when Greymon is moving, and it just looks silly. XD;

The reveal of Takeru at the end in a test tube (a la Ripley in Aliens) was amazing and made up for what was otherwise a pretty ho-hum episode for me. And Angemon is captured as well! Exciting.

I honestly liked the other kids in the real world + the Takeru end the most. I’m super into the Takaishida brothers since tri. (best siblings in Digimon, fight me), so I hope the reboot does their relationship just as well.

But I’m pretty sure I’m in the minority where I didn’t like their relationship that much in Adventure, lol. I’m a middle child with both an older and younger sibling, and I 100% thought Takeru was so ungrateful of Yamato, who was just being a typical protective older sibling (IN A WORLD FULL OF MONSTERS!). :P So I hope the reboot doesn’t play out their relationship in exactly the same way as the OG, although I think they will go down that route . . .

Anyway, still super excited for next week! :)

#digimon #digimon adventure #digimon adventure:#digimon adventure 2020 #chosen children #taichi yagami #yamato ishida #sora takenouchi #koushirou izumi #mimi tachikawa #jou kido #takeru takaishi #hikari yagami #review #screenshots #spoilers #hello lil takeru~

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twoidiotwriters1 · 4 years

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Written In The Stars C (Harry Potter xF!Oc)

A/N: Part 100! Wow, finally a number that won’t take all the space on the masterlist lmao great bc let me tell you, next book has A LOT of chapters

P.S. Friendly reminder that I have a playlist on spotify for this story in case u want to listen to the songs while reading :) -Danny

Words: 4,912

Series’ Masterlist

Previous Chapter // Next Chapter

Chapter Thirty-Five: Strings of Magic.

"NOW!" Harry yelled; he didn't think he could have held on for another moment anyway — he pulled his wand upward with an almighty wrench, and the golden thread broke; the cage of light vanished, the phoenix song died — but the shadowy figures of Voldemort's victims did not disappear — they were closing in upon Voldemort, shielding Harry from his gaze —

And Harry ran as he had never run in his life, knocking two stunned Death Eaters aside as he passed; he zigzagged behind headstones, feeling their curses following him, hearing them hit the headstones — he was dodging curses and graves, pelting toward Cedric's body, no longer aware of the pain in his leg, his whole being concentrated on what he had to do —

"Stun him!" he heard Voldemort scream.

Ten feet from Cedric, Harry dived behind a marble angel to avoid the jets of red light and saw the tip of its wing shatter as the spells hit it. Gripping his wand more tightly, he dashed out from behind the angel —

"Impedimenta!" he bellowed, pointing his wand wildly over his shoulder at the Death Eaters running at him.

From a muffled yell, he thought he had stopped at least one of them, but there was no time to stop and look; he jumped over the cup and dived as he heard more wand blasts behind him; more jets of light flew over his head as he fell, stretching out his hand to grab Cedric's arm —

"Stand aside! I will kill him! He is mine!" shrieked Voldemort.

Harry's hand had closed on Cedric's wrist; one tombstone stood between him and Voldemort, but Cedric was too heavy to carry, and the cup was out of reach —

Voldemort's red eyes flamed in the darkness. Harry saw his mouth curl into a smile, saw him raise his wand.

"Accio!" Harry yelled, pointing his wand at the Triwizard Cup.

It flew into the air and soared toward him. Harry caught it by the handle —

He heard Voldemort's scream of fury at the same moment that he felt the jerk behind his navel that meant the Portkey had worked — it was speeding him away in a whirl of wind and colour, and Cedric along with him... They were going back.

"It's gone," Mel said.

"Who's gone?"

"The thing..." Mel blinked rapidly, feeling a void where moments ago Harry's voice had been. "I–I... I can't hear him... He told me he could see our parents."

"Professor?" Erick ran back into the tent, "They're back."

Dumbledore stood up and left. Mel stood up too, but her legs wouldn't stop shaking, Erick stopped her, holding her in place.

"You shouldn't."

"What?" She tried to push him away. "Don't be stupid..."

"Mel, you sounded like you were dying," The boy said in exasperation. "You're not well!"

"I don't care!" She fought to get past him.

She ran for it, she needed to see he was okay. The exact moment she arrived, she heard Fudge said:

"Dumbledore — he's dead!"

Mel's breathing stopped for what felt the hundred time that night, she pushed past the crowd until she came face to face with the scene. Harry and Cedric were laying on the grass, one of Harry's hands was closed tightly around Dumbledore's wrist, the other was holding onto Cedric... Cedric's body.

"Harry, let go of him," Fudge said, kneeling down to take him away.

Harry wasn't looking directly at anyone, his eyes would lose focus, he was disoriented, but his hand remained closed.

"Harry, you can't help him now. It's over. Let go," Dumbledore spoke.

It was all true, all she saw while she was in the middle of that... trance, it was all real.

Mel gawked and covered her mouth, she was definitely going to be sick. People walked past her, pushed her in all directions as she stood there, just listening.

"He wanted me to bring him back," Harry muttered, blinking rapidly as he struggled to look at Dumbledore's face. "He wanted me to bring him back to his parents..."

"That's right, Harry... just let go now..."

Dumbledore help Harry stand up, he stumbled a bit, his leg was still bleeding, exactly as she'd seen in her dream.

"What's happened?"

"What's wrong with him?"

"Diggory's dead!"

Mel stirred into action, she got closer and put one arm around Harry's waist without even asking, supporting his weight on her even though she was just as weak. Harry looked at her in a daze.

"You were there," He told her.

"I know," Mel panted, trying to steady their bodies. "I promise I would..."

"He'll need to go to the hospital wing!" Fudge exclaimed next to them. "He's ill, he's injured — Dumbledore, Diggory's parents, they're here, they're in the stands..."

"I'll take Harry, Dumbledore, I'll take him —"

"No, I would prefer —"

"Dumbledore, Amos Diggory's running... he's coming over... Don't you think you should tell him — before he sees — ?"

"Harry," Dumbledore then noticed Mel standing there as well, and he looked at them intently. "Stay here —"

There was so much noise, all Mel wanted was to take Harry away, have a nap in her old bedroom... they could lay in silence forever until things were back to normal...

"It's all right, son, I've got you... come on... hospital wing..."

"Dumbledore said stay," said Harry.

His voice was soft and childish, she could tell by the way he kept his eyes closed that his scar was hurting. She felt so much like a child too: small, weak. Her energy was long gone, she didn't fight when a pair of hands pushed her along, guiding them back to the castle.

"You need to lie down... Come on now..."

The screams were dying, she heard the thumping of Moody's leg against the floor. She should've been worried, but she was so tired...

"What happened, Harry?"

"Cup was a Portkey," Harry replied clumsily. "Took me and Cedric to a graveyard... and Voldemort was there... Lord Voldemort..."

"The Dark Lord was there? What happened then?"

"Killed Cedric... they killed Cedric..."

"And then?"

"Made a potion... got his body back..."

"The Dark Lord got his body back? He's returned?"

Flashes of her nightmare came back and forth as Harry narrated.

"And the Death Eaters came... and then we duelled..."

"You duelled with the Dark Lord?"

"Mel was talking to me..."

"You were?" Moody addressed her then, eyes suddenly wide. "How?"

Mel gulped, her mouth felt like sand. "Thought I was dreaming..."

"After you helped my wand... did something funny... I saw my mum and dad... your dad... they came out of his wand..."

"In here... in here, and sit down... You'll be all right now... drink this..."

She looked up. They weren't in the infirmary.

"Drink it... you'll feel better... come on, now, Harry, I need to know exactly what happened..."

As Moody poured a liquid down Harry's throat, she looked back to the door and felt something heavy on her chest. It was locked.

"Voldemort's back, Harry? You're sure he's back? How did he do it?"

"Harry..." She whispered.

"He took stuff from his father's grave, and from Wormtail, and me," Harry said, not listening.

"What did the Dark Lord take from you?" said Moody.

"Blood," He showed them his arm. Moody barely flinched at the sight.

"And the Death Eaters? They returned?"

"Yes," said Harry. "Loads of them..."

"Harry..."

"How did he treat them?" Moody asked quietly. "Did he forgive them?"

"Why does that matter?" Mel said, cursing internally for forgetting her wand back in the tent. She couldn't muster enough strength to do wandless magic.

"There's a Death Eater at Hogwarts!" Harry gave a start. "There's a Death Eater here — they put my name in the Goblet of Fire, they made sure I got through to the end —"

Harry tried to stand, and Moody pushed him.

"I know who the Death Eater is," He said.

"Harry," Mel tried again, this time louder.

"Karkaroff?" Harry was shaking. "Where is he? Have you got him? Is he locked up?"

"Karkaroff?" Moody laughed. "Karkaroff fled tonight when he felt the Dark Mark burn upon his arm. He betrayed too many faithful supporters of the Dark Lord to wish to meet them... but I doubt he will get far. The Dark Lord has ways of tracking his enemies."

"Karkaroff's gone? He ran away? But then — he didn't put my name in the goblet?"

"No," said Moody slowly. "No, he didn't. It was I who did that."

Mel whimpered before she could stop herself, sinking further in her chair. The nightmare wasn't over.

"No, you didn't," Harry said, still too confused. "You didn't do that... you can't have done..."

"I assure you I did," said Moody.

"He's not Moody," Mel said. "He's not the real Moody, Harry..."

Moody pointed his wand at them.

"Ah, Miss Dumbledore, you knew! Told you to leave it to the adults, didn't I? But true to you nature, you kept digging... I guess I should be happy you're still young and gullible to listen to what you're told, otherwise I would've had to kill you."

Mel curled up scared to death, there was nothing she could do against a Death Eater, weak as she was.

"He forgave them, then?" Moody said, turning to Harry. "The Death Eaters who went free? The ones who escaped Azkaban?"

"What?" said Harry, his eyes wide with disbelief.

"I asked you whether he forgave the scum who never even went to look for him. Those treacherous cowards who wouldn't even brave Azkaban for him. The faithless, worthless bits of filth who were brave enough to cavort in masks at the Quidditch World Cup, but fled at the sight of the Dark Mark when I fired it into the sky."

"You fired... What are you talking about..?"

"I told you, Harry... I told you. If there's one thing I hate more than any other, it's a Death Eater who walked free. They turned their backs on my master when he needed them most. I expected him to punish them. I expected him to torture them. Tell me he hurt them, Harry... Tell me he told them that I, I alone remained faithful... prepared to risk everything to deliver to him the one thing he wanted above all... you."

"You're insane," Mel choked out, trying to muster enough force to push him away, but she barely could've lighted a candle.

"You didn't... it — it can't be you..." Harry stammered.

"Who put your name in the Goblet of Fire, under the name of a different school? I did. Who frightened off every person I thought might try to hurt you or prevent you from winning the tournament? I did. Who nudged Hagrid into showing you the dragons? I did. Who helped you see the only way you could beat the dragon? I did. It hasn't been easy, Harry, guiding you through these tasks without arousing suspicion. I have had to use every ounce of cunning I possess so that my hand would not be detectable in your success.

"Dumbledore would have been very suspicious if you had managed everything too easily. As long as you got into that maze, preferably with a decent head start — then, I knew, I would have a chance of getting rid of the other champions and leaving your way clear. But I also had to contend with your stupidity. The second task... that was when I was most afraid we would fail. I was keeping watch on you, Potter. I knew you hadn't worked out the egg's clue, so I had to give you another hint —"

"You didn't," Harry said hoarsely. "Cedric gave me the clue —"

"Who told Cedric to open it underwater? I did. I trusted that he would pass the information on to you. Decent people are so easy to manipulate, Potter. I was sure Cedric would want to repay you for telling him about the dragons, and so he did. But even then, Potter, even then you seemed likely to fail. I was watching all the time... all those hours in the library. Didn't you realize that the book you needed was in your dormitory all along?

"I planted it there early on, I gave it to the Longbottom boy, don't you remember? Magical Water Plants of the Mediterranean. It would have told you all you needed to know about gillyweed. I expected you to ask everyone and anyone you could for help. Longbottom would have told you in an instant. But you did not... you did not... You have a streak of pride and independence that might have ruined all."

She had to think, she had to do something. She'd seen Dumbledore sending a type of Patronus the day Krum had been stunned, but she couldn't send that, there wasn't an ounce of happiness in her at the moment, but she had to send the message... Her heart jumped, Mel had the answer in her pocket.

"So what could I do? Feed you information from another innocent source. You told me at the Yule Ball a house-elf called Dobby had given you a Christmas present. I called the elf to the staffroom to collect some robes for cleaning. I staged a loud conversation with Professor McGonagall about the hostages who had been taken, and whether Potter would think to use gillyweed.

"And your little elf friend ran straight to Snape's office and then hurried to find you... Looking back I see I should've pushed all the information onto Miss Dumbledore's hands!" He laughed. "I kept an eye on her, always helping, not only that, but she solved everything twice as fast! I'm sure she would've helped you solve the second task in less than a week if you would've let her... seems to be the only person you actually listen to..."

Moody kept both eyes on Harry, she slowly reached for her pocket and pulled out the golden watch. She tampered with the buttons as silently as possible.

"You were so long in that lake, Potter, I thought you had drowned. But luckily, Dumbledore took your idiocy for nobility and marked you high for it. I breathed again... You had an easier time of it than you should have in that maze tonight, of course. I was patrolling around it, able to see through the outer hedges, able to curse many obstacles out of your way. I Stunned Fleur Delacour as she passed. I put the Imperius Curse on Krum so that he would finish Diggory and leave your path to the cup clear."

She read her own message:

NOT MOODY. HELP.

Mel pressed the button.

A minute after, four figures started to form on the Foe-Glass -she'd read about it- and she tried to keep Moody's attention on her and Harry so he wouldn't look back.

"I knew," Her voice was destroyed after the hour spent screaming. "You're right– I was going to tell Dumbledore tonight all I knew..." Which was practically nothing, but Moody doesn't have to know that. "I saved Harry–"

"I see that," He spat. "I won't kill you until I know exactly how. I underestimated you, Aberforth's descendant couldn't be that much of a nuisance, but alas... It's true what they say about the women of your blood. As for Harry... imagine how the Dark Lord will reward me when he finds I have done it for him. I gave you to him — the thing he needed above all to regenerate — and then I killed you for him. Both of you. I will be honoured beyond all other Death Eaters. I will be his dearest, his closest supporter... closer than a son..."

"I'll tell you everything but I want to know something too," Mel blurted out, her adrenaline helping to keep a steady voice. "Why did you take Crouch?"

Moody's eyes widened, it was a wild guess, but correct nonetheless judging by the way he reacted.

"The Dark Lord and I," said Moody, "have much in common. Both of us, for instance, had very disappointing fathers... very disappointing indeed. Both of us suffered the indignity of being named after those fathers. And both of us had the pleasure... the very great pleasure... of killing our fathers to ensure the continued rise of the Dark Order!"

Mel frowned, that didn't give anything away! Not unless... but it was impossible, he was dead, Sirius watched as the dementors buried him...

"You're mad," Harry said, "you're mad!"

"Mad, am I? We'll see! We'll see who's mad, now that the Dark Lord has returned, with me at his side! He is back, Harry Potter, you did not conquer him — and now — I conquer you!"

Her eyes moved from the man to the Foe-Glass, the faces were crystal clear.

"WE'RE HERE!" She yelled, damaging her vocal cords even further. "HELP!"

Moody raised his wand, but Mel grabbed Harry by the neck of his robes and covered both of their bodies.

"Stupefy!" Someone yelled behind the door, bursting it open.

Moody fell backwards, the boy held onto her and looked around, coming face to face with Dumbledore, Snape, McGonagall... and Erick, white as a ghost.

Dumbledore stepped into the office radiating power, he stared down at Moody and turned him upwards. Snape followed, eyes fixed on the Foe-Glass. Professor McGonagall and Erick went to them.

"Come along, children," she said softly. "Come along... your mother is waiting for the both of you, Mel... hospital wing..."

"No," said Dumbledore.

"Dumbledore, he ought to — look at them — They'd been through enough tonight —"

"They will stay, Minerva, because Harry needs to understand," Dumbledore insisted. "Understanding is the first step to acceptance, and only with acceptance can there be recovery. He needs to know who has put him through the ordeal he has suffered tonight, and why. Mel–" He raised his left hand, Erick's watch was hanging from it, "though you figured it out, I believe you haven't heard all there is to know. Stay."

"Moody," Harry said shakily, still holding tightly to her arm. "How can it have been Moody?"

"This is not Alastor Moody," said Dumbledore. "You have never known Alastor Moody. The real Moody would not have removed you from my sight after what happened tonight. Mr Flint ran after me and showed me this, saying it was a message from you– and I knew..."

Dumbledore pulled out Moody's flask and a set of keys.

"Severus, please fetch me the strongest Truth Potion you possess, and then go down to the kitchens and bring up the house-elf called Winky. Minerva, kindly go down to Hagrid's house, where you will find a large black dog sitting in the pumpkin patch. Take the dog up to my office, tell him I will be with him shortly, then come back here. Mr Flint–" He handed the watch to its owner. "Go to the Minister, tell him to come here as soon as he can."

Dumbledore walked over to the trunk with seven locks, fitted the first key in the lock, and opened it. It contained a mass of spell-books. Dumbledore closed the trunk, placed a second key in the second lock, and opened the trunk again. The spellbooks had vanished; this time it contained an assortment of broken Sneakoscopes, some parchment and quills, and what looked like a silvery Invisibility Cloak. Harry watched, astounded, as Dumbledore placed the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth keys in their respective locks, reopening the trunk, and each time revealing different contents. Then he placed the seventh key in the lock, threw open the lid, and Harry let out a cry of amazement.

He was looking down into a kind of pit, an underground room, and lying on the floor some ten feet below, apparently fast asleep, thin and starved in appearance, was the real Mad-Eye Moody. His wooden leg was gone, the socket that should have held the magical eye looked empty beneath its lid, and chunks of his grizzled hair were missing. Harry stared, thunderstruck, between the sleeping Moody in the trunk and the unconscious Moody lying on the floor of the office.

Dumbledore climbed into the trunk, lowered himself, and fell lightly onto the floor beside the sleeping Moody. He bent over him.

"Stunned — controlled by the Imperius Curse — very weak," he said. "Of course, they would have needed to keep him alive. Harry, throw down the imposter's cloak — he's freezing. Madam Pomfrey will need to see him, but he seems in no immediate danger."

Harry did as he was told; Dumbledore covered Moody in the cloak, tucked it around him, and clambered out of the trunk again. Then he picked up the hip flask that stood upon the desk, unscrewed it, and turned it over. A thick glutinous liquid splattered onto the office floor.

"Polyjuice Potion... You see the simplicity of it and the brilliance. For Moody never does drink except from his hip flask, he's well known for it. The imposter needed, of course, to keep the real Moody close by, so that he could continue making the potion. You see his hair... The imposter has been cutting it off all year, see where it is uneven? But I think, in the excitement of tonight, our fake Moody might have forgotten to take it as frequently as he should have done... on the hour... every hour. We shall see."

Dumbledore pulled out the chair and sat down, his eyes moved from Moody to her, a glint similar to the one he adopted during her lessons.

"How did you know, Mel?" He asked calmly.

"I didn't," Mel confessed. "I mentioned it to Erick this evening, I didn't know for real until now..."

"You must have seen the signs either way if you suspected..."

Mel told him everything and Dumbledore listened when she mentioned Crouch, and Moody's reply to her question, his eyes returned to the fake Alastor Moody.

"So it was Crouch..." Dumbledore let out heavily.

Then, before Harry's very eyes, the face of the man on the floor began to change. The scars were disappearing, the skin was becoming smooth; the mangled nose became whole and started to shrink. The long mane of grizzled grey hair was withdrawing into the scalp and turning the colour of straw. Suddenly, with a loud clunk, the wooden leg fell away as a normal leg regrew in its place; next moment, the magical eyeball had popped out of the man's face as a real eye replaced it; it rolled away across the floor and continued to swivel in every direction.

Harry saw a man lying before him, pale-skinned, slightly freckled, with a mop of fair hair. He knew who he was. He had seen him in Dumbledore's Pensieve, had watched him being led away from court by the dementors, trying to convince Mr Crouch that he was innocent... but he was lined around the eyes now and looked much older...

There were hurried footsteps outside in the corridor. Snape had returned with Winky at his heels. Professor McGonagall was right behind them.

"Crouch!" Snape said, stopping dead in the doorway. "Barty Crouch!"

"Good heavens," said Professor McGonagall, stopping dead and staring down at the man on the floor.

Filthy, dishevelled, Winky peered around Snape's legs. Her mouth opened wide and she let out a piercing shriek.

"Master Barty, Master Barty, what is you doing here?"

She flung herself forward onto the young man's chest.

Mel was faster, she caught Winky and stopped her from touching the man.

"You is killed him! You is killed him! You is killed Master's son!" She squirmed in her arms.

"Stop it!" She grunted. "He's all right!"

"He is simply Stunned, Winky," Dumbledore nodded. "Severus, you have the potion?"

Dumbledore sat Barty Crouch and poured a few drops down his throat just like he'd done to Harry. Winky was no longer fighting, she was hiding her face behind her skinny hands.

"Rennervate," He said, pointing his wand directly at the man's chest.

Crouch's son opened his eyes. His face was slack, his gaze unfocused. Dumbledore knelt before him, so that their faces were level.

"Can you hear me?" Dumbledore asked quietly. The man's eyelids flickered.

"Yes," he muttered.

"I would like you to tell us," said Dumbledore softly, "how you came to be here. How did you escape from Azkaban?"

Crouch took a deep, shuddering breath, then began to speak in a flat, expressionless voice.

"My mother saved me. She knew she was dying. She persuaded my father to rescue me as a last favour to her. He loved her as he had never loved me. He agreed. They came to visit me. They gave me a draft of Polyjuice Potion containing one of my mother's hairs. She took a draft of Polyjuice Potion containing one of my hairs. We took on each other's appearance."

"Say no more, Master Barty, say no more, you is getting your father into trouble!"

Simpler than what she'd thought. It felt surreal, how close she was to the truth and yet had decided to ignore it she was because it just felt too crazy.

"The dementors are blind. They sensed one healthy, one dying person entering Azkaban. They sensed one healthy, one dying person leaving it. My father smuggled me out, disguised as my mother, in case any prisoners were watching through their doors. My mother died a short while afterward in Azkaban. She was careful to drink Polyjuice Potion until the end. She was buried under my name and bearing my appearance. Everyone believed her to be me."

"And what did your father do with you, when he had got you home?"

"Staged my mother's death. A quiet, private funeral. That grave is empty. The house-elf nursed me back to health. Then I had to be concealed. I had to be controlled. My father had to use a number of spells to subdue me. When I had recovered my strength, I thought only of finding my master... of returning to his service."

"How did your father subdue you?"

"The Imperius Curse. I was under my father's control. I was forced to wear an Invisibility Cloak day and night. I was always with the house-elf. She was my keeper and caretaker. She pitied me. She persuaded my father to give me occasional treats. Rewards for my good behaviour."

"He was there during the Quidditch Final," Mel spoke. "Winky was looking after you, wasn't she?"

"Yes."

"Did anybody ever discover that you were still alive?" said Dumbledore. "Did anyone know except your father and the house-elf ?"

"A witch in my father's office. Bertha Jorkins. She came to the house with papers for my father's signature. He was not at home. Winky showed her inside and returned to the kitchen, to me. But Bertha Jorkins heard Winky talking to me. She came to investigate. She heard enough to guess who was hiding under the Invisibility Cloak. My father arrived home. She confronted him. He put a very powerful Memory Charm on her to make her forget what she'd found out. Too powerful. He said it damaged her memory permanently."

"Why is she coming to nose into my master's private business? Why isn't she leaving us be?"

"Tell me about the Quidditch World Cup," said Dumbledore, addressing to Mel's question.

He told them about how he fought against the Imperius Curse, Harry's wand and the rage towards the Death Eaters' that woke him up completely. How Wormtail found him thanks to Bertha Jorkins and how they subdued his father in order to have a free will himself. She was right about him stealing from Snape, about him attacking Moody during summer. She'd been right.

"But your father escaped."

"My master sent me word of my father's escape. He told me to stop him at all costs. So I waited and watched. I used the map I had taken from Harry Potter. The map that had almost ruined everything."

"Map?" Dumbledore glanced at her. "What map is this?"

"Potter's map of Hogwarts. Potter saw me on it. Potter saw me stealing more ingredients for the Polyjuice Potion from Snape's office one night. He thought I was my father. We have the same first name. I took the map from Potter that night. I told him my father hated Dark wizards. Potter believed my father was after Snape."

She avoided Dumbledore's eyes, ashamed of her own doing keeping the map a secret.

"For a week I waited for my father to arrive at Hogwarts. At last, one evening, the map showed my father entering the grounds. I pulled on my Invisibility Cloak and went down to meet him. He was walking around the edge of the forest. Then Potter came, and Krum. I waited. I could not hurt Potter; my master needed him. Potter ran to get Dumbledore. I Stunned Krum. I killed my father."

After he was done with his story, all they could hear was Winky's cries.

"And tonight..." Dumbledore continued.

"I offered to carry the Triwizard Cup into the maze before dinner. Turned it into a Portkey. My master's plan worked. He is returned to power and I will be honoured by him beyond the dreams of wizards."

The insane smile lit his features once more, and his head drooped onto his shoulder as Winky wailed and sobbed at his side.

Next Chapter —>

Taglist.

@dee123ksha @vampiregirl1797 @siriuslysirius1107 @stardusthigh @mikariell95 @vernon-dursley @thesuitelifeofafangirl @tomshollandz @kylosleftbuttcheek @reverse-hxlland @bloodorangemoonlight @omiwashere @t-rexs-world

#twoidiots writing #hp fanfic #Harry Potter #harry potter fanfiction #harry potter xoc #WITT fic

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makeste · 4 years

Text

BnHA Chapter 262: A Fierce Bad Rabbit

Previously on BnHA: The hospital raid squad, which had two jobs consisting of (1) not letting Ujiko get away, and (2) not letting any of the Noumu break free to go ravage the countryside, impressively failed at both of these tasks (or so I assume) in a remarkably short amount of time. The EndeavorZawaMicLock squad were all occupied with having a very destructive fight in the hospital lobby, leaving my girl Miruko, Goddess of Courage and First of Her Name, to do pretty much all the heavy lifting, which, fine!! Except that Ujiko remembered that he had a bunch of High End Noumus just floating there waiting to be activated, and he was all “!!” and fucking activated them, and like five of them went after Miruko all at once and smashed her into a bunch of machinery and glass tubes, which frankly should have killed her but it didn’t because she’s a fucking boss. But now it’s just her (and Crust, who might do something too, but for now JURY’S STILL OUT) against all these guys while Ujiko speeds off to grab Tomura and abscond. So basically everything that could go wrong has already gone wrong so UH. OKAY.

Today on BnHA: Miruko kicks ass. Then she checks her watch and sees that there’s still time for her to kick more ass, so she does. Then there is still time, because this chapter is all about her kicking ass! So she kicks even more ass!! It’s great!! I have no complaints!! She decapitates a man with her thighs!! That’s a thing that really happens!! Also she loses an arm but WHO HASN’T LOST AND/OR BROKEN THEIR ARMS IN THIS SERIES, REALLY. Everyone is doing it. Somehow she manages to make it look cool because Miruko. Miruko can strangle a man with a cordless phone. She can kill two stones with one bird. Miruko makes onions cry. Death once had a near-Miruko experience. Mirukoooooooo. Anyway the chapter ends with Skeptic warning everyone at The Ol’ Villain Hotel that the heroes are coming, so basically WELCOME BACK, EVERYONE, this manga is back with a vengeance.

guys I’m gonna try to do this recap fast because I’m seeing Heroes Rising tonight at 7:30! and I’m so excited! and for those that asked, yes I do plan on doing some kind of write-up about it, though it’ll all be from memory after the fact so we’ll see how that goes. but !! I’ve waited 84 years for this ahhhhh but anyway so in the meantime let’s see what new and creative ways our heroes are finding to screw this up even more

(ETA: I did it but this thing isn’t edited for shit lol. after I get back I’ll give it a more thorough readthrough so sorry if I missed any really obvious errors! also there are probably way more exclamation points than usual which may or may not be a plus or minus.)

look at this helpful announcement

High End Noumu approaching, everyone. you have been warned. just in case you somehow failed to notice?? IT’S RIGHT THERE Y’ALL LOOK OUT

lmao FINALLY

MORE HEROES. YOU ALL CERTAINLY TOOK YOUR FUCKING TIME, but hey welcome to the party. and none of that “I don’t see how that’s a party” sassy shit either. you all know what I’m talking about so get out there and have fun

so they’re standing there all “it’s a talking Noumu!” and YEAH. that’s what I’ve been fucking trying to tell you. thank god someone finally fucking said it out loud so that hopefully the EZML squad can finally take notice of this as well. like guys. bigger fish?! get to frying!!

so now Crust is all “there are more of them ahead, Miruko’s in danger!” which, again, thanks for finally letting everyone else in on this formerly exclusive scoop there pal. ‘preciate it

I... really do not understand Crust’s quirk at all. I’m just gonna own up to it

what is this. what does “zuga” mean fx-wise. why did those scale things on his arms get so big. what are they made of. what’s happening

oh it turns out that if you scroll and read more instead of pausing for ages to ask dumb questions, the thing you were asking about might actually be explained in great detail in the very next panel

but what are they made out of though. and why “Crust”?? ah well I suppose that’s a question for someone who actually cares more than I do

by the way the quality of this scan is actually really good so far, I gotta say. we’re only two pages in, true, but they either cleaned this up really nicely, or this was a much higher-quality scan than usual. either way I am appreciative!

lol this poor Noumu is shook

what did I name you two weeks ago, again? Rusty?? anyways he’s doing his best you guys. gambare my dude, though actually you do need to die, so that’s too bad though

Crust is all “you pitiful living corpse!” with tears in his eyes because he’s dramatic! but jokes aside I do appreciate that he has compassion for these monsters who are all still basically innocent victims at the end of the day

does anyone else actually hear that funny-sounding anime narrator guy in your head nowadays when you read panels like this lol

I can hear the voice so clearly and it’s great

only ten times the strength of a normal human, guys. that’s actually not that bad. I’m only half joking lol. because obviously your average hero is going to be much stronger than a so-called “normal” person too, yes? and I’m pretty sure Miruko has the strength of like 30 humans but I may be overestimating her just slightly but am I though

oh lol I apparently did not learn my lesson about doing commentary before I’m done reading hahaha

so High Ends are on a different tier of their own above even the “high” tier. well that’s just. yeah that sounds more like the “we’re still fucked” update that I was expecting

oh wait, seriously??

are you telling me that all of the High Ends were actually cultivated from villains? so maybe not completely innocent, then? is this Horikoshi’s way of trying to make us feel marginally better about the fact that the heroes are shortly henceforth going to have to exterminate these guys with great prejudice? I mean they’re still basically slaves to Ujiko’s programming now though so that sucks

also I missed this earlier but the narration here basically just confirmed that Noumu are all made from corpses. which I kind of suspected, but the still-very-much-alive Tomura would then be a glaring contradiction to that, no? or is that why he’s so special. anyway I do appreciate that we’re getting a lot of much-awaited answers in this Noumu arc, but some of this is also just raising more questions. gotta be patient I guess

speaking of Tomura, Ujiko’s back in the Tomura room, so. I assume some absconding is soon to occur

oh shit!! so there’s another panel explaining that “artificial transplant of quirks” requires surgery and then three months of stabilization time following that. sooooo I’m pretty sure this mofo just confirmed that he gave Tomura some shiny additional new quirks, so that’s nice! that’s real fucking great! I know we were all eyeing Tomura skeptically and thinking to ourselves “this is almost just right, but needs more death”

wait, what?

“I was already dead anyway” meaning that he knows there’s no way out for him? and so he doesn’t have a secret way out of the lab?? ??? can that really be true?? our intrepid heroes actually did their job right and the villains had no contingency plan?? oh my god I am so terrified of letting my guard down lmao I still refuse to believe this at all

and is that Tomura who’s at 70% stabilization? that would seem to fit with the timeline we were given. holy shit is he unboxing him early fsdfkjalsdk are we about to go from “fucked” to “exorbitantly fucked”

and why am I strangely excited about it sob!!

HAHAHAHA OH GOD

so this is how liberty dies. with a beep

also fuck you all, now it’s at 71%?! couldn’t leave it at a nice even number for us, could you? you just had to throw that extra percent in there at the last moment to fuck with us all

anyway did you all catch how fucking ripped he was there though? like boiiii whaaaaat. clearly his abs are already at 100%

OH MY GOD

DOES NOTHING FUCKING FAZE THIS BEAUTIFUL, RULE-BREAKING MOTH

HAHAHA

RIGHT??

HOLY FUCKING MOLY

friendly reminder that Dabi was all good and ready to throw down with both Endeavor and Hawks (who were admittedly weakened by that point) that one time a while back, but then Miruko showed up and he was all “lol nope I think the fuck not” and warped out of there. Dabi, whose quirk is so powerful that its only apparent downside is the fact that it roasts him alive as well. that Dabi took one look at Miruko and decided he likes having his spine intact and fucking vamoosed, because that is the smart fucking thing to do when this girl shows up smiling at you the way that she is smiling at these Noumu now

anyway. fucking Ujiko knew he needed at least five High Ends to even stand a chance of slowing her down, is all I’m saying. y’all better respect the FUCK out of Miruko, everyone. it’s the law

anyway. so. quirk: bunny. can smash rl gud

someone needs to ask Horikoshi the fuck kind of rabbits he has been hanging out with. applied that “and more!” part pretty fucking liberally huh. WHO DID YOU SAY TRIX WERE FOR AGAIN, CHILDREN??

NOBODY THROWS MIRUKO IN THE BRIAR PATCH AND GETS AWAY WITH IT

fffwhatttttttttt

that would be our good buddy Max Rebo. so that’s definitely not an elephant trunk-like thing then. we may need a new name for you

on a side note, I never thought we’d meet another character who looks more like Katsuki than Mitsuki does, and yet every damn week Miruko is proving me wrong. goddamn she is great

lmao wait maybe that wasn’t Max at all, but Jester. because this is clearly Max over here

so Girl!Noumu is a water bender, Jester can do... something weird with his hair, and Max can do anything an elephant can do if that elephant was also powered by steam. nice

HAHAHA BUT MIRUKO IS ALL “KICK!!!”

HOLY FUCK HOLY FUCK!!!

HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT. I WOULD READ AN ENTIRE MANGA OF JUST THIS LMAO THIS IS TOO MUCH ADRENALINE I CAN’T

JESTER’S WEIRD SPIKY ROCK HAIR IS SLICING HER ARM AND SHE’S ALL “THAT HURTS YOU JERK!!!!” AND GETTING READY TO FREAKING PILEDRIVE HIM I CAN’T, THOUGH!?

SDKFJLDKSJFLKJ

HER FATHER PEPPY TAUGHT HER THAT. BARREL ROLL ALL OVER THESE BITCHES!!

WHAT THE FUCK

FUCKING QUIRKS!!!! THOUGH!!!! WILLLLLLLLLD

SDKFJLAS;DHK OH MY GOD OH SHIT

real talk this is the scariest fucking quirk I’ve ever seen I was like what the fuck looking at her arm and then I saw him doing the twisty hand gesture and just. fuck. YOU’RE NOT CRIMSON RIOT AT ALL YOU’RE SOME PSYCHO TELEKINETIC BITCH AND I FUCKING HATE YOU!!

NO!!!!!

fuck fuck fuck. I’M SURE HER ARM’S GOING TO BE JUST FINE AND DANDY AFTER THIS GUYS, DON’T WORRY. THIS MANGA HAS SUCH A SERENE AND TRANQUIL HISTORY WITH ARMS. ISN’T THAT RIGHT DEKU

though on the plus side, if she does lose that arm we can count on her to somehow instantly become like 50x more attractive, which I’m pretty sure might cause the very fabric of the universe to unravel but it would be worth it

(ETA: SHE DID AND IT WAS!!)

MADAME PRESIDENT!! MY QUEEN

OH HELL YERRRRRR

fucking hell guys I’m running out of exclamation points and excited things to say here. AND SHE JUST KEEPS GOING! LIKE HER MOM THE ENERGIZER BUNNY BEFORE HER

I’M SORRY UJIKO DID YOU THINK FIVE HIGH ENDS WAS ENOUGH?! MAYBE NEXT TIME WE MAKE IT TEN, HOW ABOUT THAT. FUCK OFF

lmao holy shit I can’t stop laughingggg

well Crimson, at least you get to die happy. is she literally going to crush his face between her thighs. is this entire chapter just one big prank on me. if Miruko was the protagonist would this series have ended in the first chapter. trick question, the answer is it never would have started to begin with because she would have killed All for One years ago!! how much would it cost to hire Miruko to come kick away all of my problems for me

hello good afternoon everyone this is a real panel that really happened in this manga

I don’t even know what to say about anything anymore

sob she’s all “YEAH RIGHT” and SNAPPING HIS FUCKING NECK WITH A FUCKING TRIANGLE CHOKE, THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING, FUCKING LOOK!! AT!! THIS!!!

we’re not even gonna make it to 300 chapters. Horikoshi held off for as long as he could, but eventually Miruko couldn’t be contained any longer and he had to unleash her and she instantly went and reckt every last fucking bad guy out there until there was nothing left. who are the kids even going to fight. nobody that’s who. go back to school kids

SON OF A BITCH WHAT IS HAPPENING

THIS IS THE MOST VIOLENT THING I HAVE EVER FUCKING SEEN AND YET SOMEHOW I SWEAR I CAN HEAR ANGELS SINGING. RESPLENDENT

SOBBING!!!!

“S’POSE I SHOULD GET THIS ANNOYING THING CHECKED OUT BEFORE I BLEED TO DEATH OR SOME BULLSHIT.” WHAT AN INCONVENIENCE. JUST A FUCKING FLESH WOUND. NOBODY USES ARMS THESE DAYS ANYWAY

“IF THE ONLY WAY TO STOP YOU IS BY CRUSHING YOUR HEADS THIS WILL BE WAY EASIER THAN HOLDING BACK ON A NORMAL VILLAIN.” SOB THIS IS MIRUKO’S WORLD AND WE’RE ALL JUST BEGRUDGINGLY ALLOWED TO EXIST IN IT. MY BARONESS

DID YOU JUST TOURNIQUET YOUR DISMEMBERED FUCKING LIMB WITH YOUR OWN FUCKING HAIR ONE-HANDED FFCKCK KCKCLK JUST MIRUKO THINGS

Miruko also saw Horikoshi getting ready to end the chapter after 17 pages and was like “EXCUSE YOU THERE” and he backed off because he actually likes having a fucking head thank you very much

LMAO AND NOW OF ALL TIMES WE’RE CUTTING BACK TO THE OL’ VILLAIN RESORT. SIGH

Skeptic seems to have finally cottoned on to them being in some kind of trouble. huh

how does he know it was Jin who screwed up?? did he realize that Hawks betrayed them oh shit!?!

OOP HE’S SOUNDING THE ALARM

AND THE CHAPTER IS ENDING. BUT I’M NOT DONE SCREAMING. AHHHHHH well anyways I’m off to watch my children kick lots of ass on the big screen. assuming I can get this posted in time with zero editing whatsoever lol I’ve got like... an hour. WE SHALL SEE!

(ETA: we did it lol just barely! this whole thing is probably a giant mess but oh well! Mirukoooooo)

#bnha 262 #miruko #mirko #ujiko daruma #I already forgot his new official name ah well #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste spoiler recap #makeste reads bnha #no time for tags!!#movie!!!!

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poormeowmeowcollector · 3 years

Text

A Wild Game Of Survival

Pairing: Dark Loki x Female Reader, Loki/Sigyn

Warnings: Major Character Death, Violence, Language, Dark, Loki (he is a warning). Each chapter will have individual warnings.

Summary: In a world where everyone is immortal until they meet their soulmates, I expect to have a nice life with them and I was so wrong.

Notes: yes, it has first person narration. It's an old one.

Chapter 3: Captured

Warnings: Violence, Loki, hate on sex workers, kidnapping, hostage, starvation, dehydration, biting, infections, cursing, mentions of sex assault (not graphic and doesn't happen. Loki is bad but not that bad)

Summary: hospitality gone wrong

Notes: this is the darkest chapter in the piece. You can hate on Loki for this one, he had it coming.

First chapter previous chapter AO3 next chapter

I woke up in a dark room, a small lamp on top of my head being the only light. I saw a door with no handle but no windows, and a small toilet. I was underground.

The door opened and I proceeded to slam my kidnapper with a blast of light, but his Darkforce swallowed it and left me panting.

"If you don't want to die of fatigue, you should stop attacking me with Lightforce. I will consume it," Loki's voice said in an imitating tone. He had the upper hand and he knew it.

"Open the hole, whore," He commanded, his fingers squeezing the right place to force my mouth open. His other hand took a spoon and shoved it inside before closing my mouth and nose.

"You sick bastard," My full of hatred comment made him cast an empty smile, some faint lines popping on the edge of his eyes.

"What? You expected a five star hotel? Maybe some hugs and soft kisses on the forehead? Didn't they teach you how cruel life is?" He mocked.

I was unchained, so I attacked him physically. He easily grabbed my hand and his green force held every muscle of me.

"Listen well, you little whore, for I will say this once. If you attack me again, I will pull off your limbs and let you starve in these four walls, dying while covered in your own piss and shit." He spat, jaw clenched in anger.

"You lie." I said more to myself than to him.

"You wish I do, darling," The sick smile was still on his face. I relaxed, knowing that I should wait for the right moment before I strike.

"Good whore… You became a whore, didn't you? "Pay me $100 and I am yours tonight," Oh, what we do for survival…" His words hurt like lemons in the wounds, but I hid it under a cold face.

"I would rather a thousand lifetimes as a "whore" than one as a killer," I shot back, his smile widening.

"What do you think you will become after you kill me? A heroine? You hate me for killing my soulmates but you dream about the same act every time you close your eyes. You are funny, the funniest I met. A funny whore," The way he used that name again and again scared me. Did he want to rape me before killing me.

I didn't speak, and it only pleased him more.

"What's the matter, dear? Did the snake bite your tongue?" He chuckled, his cold hand grabbing me by the jaw when I broke eye contact and forcing me to look at him.

"Rule two if you don't want to starve, never break eye contact. I want to see the fear and hate in you," He demanded. I didn't react, I just waited for him to let me.

He did it after a few moments, a bottle of water falling beside me before he left. I waited until I was sure he was not watching before I emptied it.

I needed a plan to get the hell out of here. I can't use Lightforce, not until he's too weak to use Darkforce. So, I will have to weaken him with physical strength. Unexpectedly, while he's vulnerable. I have to wait until I find a hole in the armour to poke. Then I run, or I kill him. Or, I wait for the right moment to take away his new toy, to take my own life. The next one can carry the mission to kill him, if I fail.

But for now, I have to play his game and wait.

~~~

Later, I wish I knew how much time later, the metal door opened again. Loki walked in with a tray of food.

"When did I order and I don't remember it?" I asked, more curious than hateful.

"You need food to stay strong enough for me to feed. Apparently, your Lightforce gives me strength. You are more important alive than dead, make sure to stay like that." He spat. So, that was his plan? To milk me? He left the tray in front of me and sat half a meter away, his eyes pinned on me.

"What are you doing?" I asked, my eyebrows raised.

"Waiting for you to finish your food. You have five minutes to begin eating before I force it in your throat." His voice was still plain and cold, but I didn't buy it.

"You won't," I commented, sure he was lying. Too sure. And like Icarus who floated too high, I got burned and fell.

He grabbed the tray with the rice and held me with his magic as he grabbed me with one strong hand by the jaw.

The fever made him slow. I grabbed him by the back of the head and slammed him hard on the toilet. It would not kill him, but the concussion would be awful and the infection would make it worse. I jumped up and ran like my life depended on it. Because it did.

"Swallow or choke," He demanded again. I swallowed only after the lack of air made me dizzy. I then bit his hand.

"Ouch, you bitch!" He yelled, taking the bleeding hand away from me. I didn't answer, preparing my next movement.

"Got anything to say? Like an apology before I let you die in here?" He was furious, I knew it. But I would not be a disciplined sheep.

I opened my mouth only to spit on his face, hitting my aim in the eyes. He raised the non harmed arm, ready to slap me before he lowered it again and chuckled.

"You shouldn't waste your fluids like that," He said before leaving, taking the full tray with him.

I am fucked.

~~~

Probably three days passed, if I judge on my symptoms.

Peeing was in the past, and so was sweating. I was lost in my mind, trying not to faint. I knew that if I closed my dried eyelids, they would not open again. But their weight was getting more and more.

He didn't lie, he was determined to let me die in here.

My body was too weak to move, not having to piss or shit helped with the embarrassment. I could feel a strong pain in my right, probably my liver screaming at me. But I couldn't do something. I was trapped, abandoned to die.

My eyes finally closed as I let go and gave up, tired of being a human raisin. I was about to dive into nothingness. But something changed.

I felt something liquid on my lips. Water. Sweet water. I drank and drank and drank, I thought I would explode. I stopped only after the source dried out. I then casted my light to heal me, since I was strong enough.

That was a mistake.

I opened my eyes to see Loki grabbing me, an empty bottle on his one hand and the other one covered in darkness as he was feeding with my light.

"Let me heal, at least," I hummed, my voice still too weak.

"You did." He answered shortly.

I sighed, waiting for him to finish before I can heal myself. He soonly let me, the black hand revealing a bandage on the palm, exactly where I bit him.

"Did you learn your lesson?" He asked. I didn't speak. Another mistake.

"Answer when I speak to you!" He yelled, his good hand slamming the wall behind me. But I didn't flinch.

"I can bite you and you need me to fix it. Also, am I still delirious or are you sweating in a cold room?" I listed the information I obtained. He was indeed sweating and he looked paler, weaker. Light-headed, feverish, infected. He bled when I bit, and his mouth was dirty. I infected him. I am still weak. But high chances are that I heal and he worsens. I had my chance to leave.

He looks annoyed but too tired to argue.

"The lesson is that you don't bite," His voice came out throaty, I noted and nodded. He left me a tray of food and another bottle of water and sat half a meter away. I had to play with his rules, until I am strong enough to escape.

So, I grabbed the spoon and started eating the soup in silence, not looking up at him as he was watching me. It was a plain and salty thing, probably canned and heated, but my hunger made it taste like heaven. I only stopped when the kidnapper interrupted.

"That doesn't sound good," I commented as Loki was clearing his throat, trying to get his breathing in control after a pretty bad coughing fit. That's why he took my Lightforce, he needed it to heal himself. But it was not enough.

"Mind your own business, whore," He barked, voice still raspy.

"Touche," I basically sang and started eating again, ignoring him completely this time.

After I finished, I pushed the empty tray at him, knowing that he didn't trust me with the spoons and forks. He simply grabbed it and stood up in a smooth move, turning on his heels and leaving before closing the door. I plastered my ear on the door, waiting until his steps vanish before I heal myself completely, drink some more water and fall asleep to gain back my lost energy.

It was the best decision I made in that room.

~~~

I woke up when a hand banged the metal door. I was on my feet when I saw an extremely weak Loki, like I predicted, standing in there.

"Can you cast Lightforce?" His Old Norse accent was so hard I barely understood him. I nodded.

"Do you want to feed or to heal?" I asked, quickly catching up with the situation.

"Healing," He mumbled and laid on my stomach without a warning.

"What will I get in return?" I bargained. We both know who had the upper hand now.

"A week," He answered shortly, and a bad coughing fit stopped him from speaking more.

"Damn… That infection really got into you… I think I should clean up my mouth," I mumbled.

"When?" He asked, mocking me. I could feel how much he was burning against my stomach.

"My schedule is pretty flexible," I smiled.

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mara-dine · 4 years

Text

On P5R ending (true end) song v.2 - translation and analysis

part one was here - I’m only feeling things here but still xD

Okay so first of all, the following translation of the song lyrics is made by me so if you somehow want to copy paste them somewhere, please link the source, thank you <3 The original japanese and translated lyrics you can find at the very end of this post.

My point here is to prove that the lyrics are Akiren’s feelings towards what happens with Akechi so the post is going to contain some Persona 5 Royal spoilers. It gets a bit shippy.

And now let’s get this party (of feels) started.

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I need to say this - I had a second of doubt there, because I thought those lyrics could as well suit Yoshizawa sisters, if one wanted to dig that way. It doesn’t though, because the subject/narrator is using the 僕 (boku) pronoun, which is reserved for males. If the lyrics were meant to be gender neutral or so, the more neutral 私 (watashi) would be used. That’s why I’m 100% sure it’s from Akiren’s perspective, and I will only give you more proof ;)

Let’s start-start.

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Our light

That night I realized my dream was (just) a dream, I close my eyes fixated on you. The warmth, hands one on another, the voice, if I wake up it will all disappear into a dream.

The whole thing is kept within the dream-reality contrast. The night here is, I think, more metaphorical than anything, since it’s deepening the symbolism and refers to the association of night and dreaming.

It doesn’t have to, though, since at the very beginning of the new arc, Akiren ‘wakes up’ in the school, wearing his inmate clothes, thinking something is wrong and that he needs to go back. He follows the butterfly which we know is supposed to be the form Lavenza takes in the places she can’t fully materialize in.

I think it isn’t such a literal reference though. I’d say it refers to Akiren noticing the weird things happening around him, realizing they weren’t like this before and they should be impossible. Then we jump straight into gay the moment Akechi walks into Leblanc. Akiren can’t help but be surprised, he stares at the detective, who is supposed to be held at the police station or wherever his interrogations are being held at the time. He closes his eyes, as if to hold the image of Akechi being there in his mind for longer.

I think the next line is pretty obvious and really surprising, if we agree on my little theory, because it straight up tells us about Akiren’s feelings. Akechi, who was supposed to be dead in the first place, comes back into his life for the second time this... week I think. Akechi, who Akiren has a really strong bond of rivalry and at the same time deep mutual understanding with. He wishes for Akechi to continue being a part of his life, as he gives him the kind of stimulation no one else does. Akechi is very, very special to him. You can basically say, he is Akiren’s dream.

Even if we can’t ever meet again, even if the time we spent together transforms into pain, Please guide me with that pain, towards the night sky full of stars that illuminate me.

Now we are thrown into the hole of pain and suffering. We got to know that Akechi’s miraculous return is Maruki’s doing. Akechi is Akiren’s justice arcana, not only because he always speaks of justice and sticks to his own. He is a sort of counterweight and at the same moral compass to Akiren, they complement each other in many ways. Interacting, sharing thoughts, getting to know each other, it all leads both of them to build up even more resolve to stick to their own justice. So, even if Akiren decides to reject Maruki’s offer, not folding, not running away, following through with his own justice and his own truth, even if it means he is going to lose Akechi again, and the memories of the time they spent together will transform into pain, even then, Akechi will still continue to be his guiding light. He will always remember him, he sort of wishes for Akechi too look over him from... well, I guess, the afterlife. He will always live in Akiren’s heart as pain and regret of not being able to be together more, not being able to save him, but also as everything he was to him while still alive.

I was able to meet you in that sweet, sweet fairytale kingdom in distorted world. You quietly closed the mouth that said “even if it’s false happiness, it’s okay”.

This line is a bit more complicated than it looks like in English (actually, the whole song is like this, but if I started to explain all the hidden meanings and my translation choices it would take too much). I need to say here though, in the original it’s 甘い甘い (amai amai) which can actually mean two things. It’s used both as sweet and naive. I chose to use sweet here twice, but I think in japanese it’s supposed to be a bit ambiguous, as naivety is something Akechi often accuses Akiren (and other people) of, even if not directly (ex. there is this line of his where he says Akiren coming just to see him is ‘brainless sentimentality’).

The fairytale kingdom is of course a way to refer to Maruki’s perfect world where all dreams come true, it’s one way to see it. The other is distorted world, and it’s ultimately how the people who are aware of it’s falsehood view it. This way of putting the contrasting views together shows the dilemma Akiren stands before. He needs to confront it and make a choice, which in any outcome will result in gaining one thing and losing another.

Then, a really important line, one of a few that adress someone (Akechi) as ‘you’. In japanese it’s expressed through the verb that can mean close (something) up as well as shut (someone) up which I think is amazing in a way, since the Black Mask Akechi would rather shut up this mouth full of lies. There is an omanotopeic adjective there though, which indicates he did it quietly, gently. At first I thought it’s literal. That it’s about Akechi shutting up Maruki, so his words won’t affect Akira, since the thing there is basically a quote, it’s also gramatically written that way in the lyrics. But the quietly/gently thing kept bothering me, and I think in the end it’s like this: Akiren, in his heart, was tempted to agree to Maruki’s deal, to his perfect world. But Akechi, holding on to his own beliefs and resolve, made Akiren realize he can’t disrespect his wishes by being selfish. Akechi kept fiercely rejecting Maruki’s world, not wanting to be controlled by someone ever again, set on forging his own path, his own truth. Akiren couldn’t go against it.

It’s, I think, one of the reasons why this song plays only when you get the True End. It’s because you do things following Akechi’s wish, inspired by him to fight for the truth and the real.

When there comes a day when memories start, you will be gone, it’s the path you chose yourself, Even if walking it is always heartrending, towards the stars of tomorrow that I’m aiming for.

I think this part was the hardest of them all to translate, it’s again pretty ambiguous, not only because of the used words though, but the different ways you can chop the sentence at. You can translate it both as “it’s the part you chose yourself” or “the part one choses for themselves” and following this you can also chose to translate it in first person view as “the path I chose for myself”. I think all of them are pretty cool but I chose to follow the logic of the consequence, since it appears after yet another ‘you’ I decided to go with that. It also goes well with the thing about Akechi choosing his fate himself. He chose to reject Maruki’s world even if it meant he will disappear again, he strongly believed it’s better to die than live in a reality forged and controlled by someone else. He made that choice, like he made every other choice in his life before, aware of the consequences, even if they were painful to the point anyone else may have broken down. He doesn’t have any regrets, even if it’s hard and kills him in the end, because it’s the path of his own choosing.

‘The day when memories start’ it’s a pretty literal translation, but I’m fairly sure it’s about the fact that the time everyone spent in Maruki’s ideal world will be overwritten once again to how it should have gone if not for the distortion. So the day when the Phantom Thieves steal his treasure and defeat him is going to be the day when everything goes back to normal and the memories start being the true ones again, not falsified, and the false ones erased.

The stars of tommorow, the future, the goal both Akiren and Akechi are aiming for, even if their methods differ, is the same. Akiren hopes that if they continue going on, their paths will lead them to the same place, where they will be able to meet again.

When I wake up, the real world comes back, different than yesterday. Because the sadness is important, I’m going to keep on living tomorrow.

Now that the decision has been made and Maruki defeated, his treasure stolen, everything is going back to normal. Akiren wakes up in the real world again, it’s a different world than day before, because it’s the real one again. He thinks about Akechi, about the sadness engraved in his own heart, but he is going to keep going. He is going to keep his promise to Akechi. He is going to live with this sadness as it’s the memory of him, the proof that he lived and that he was important.

Even if we can’t ever meet again, even if the time we spent together transforms into pain, I’m going to overcome even this pain, greater than (the pain that comes from) surpassing the tears I shed

Akiren doesn’t cry, it’s not the way to remember Akechi. It’s hard, but even though his tears would naturally flow, he is surpassing them, he can only shed them in his mind. It’s in a way unfair. He can’t really speak to anyone about it, he can’t tell the true story, honestly there is probably noone who could understand the bond that was born between him and Akechi, who could understand Akechi himself. The pain of the loss is even greater than that though. He may never meet Akechi again, but he is set on keeping the promise they made till the end. Because now, it’s not the end, he will keep on going.

And I will grab it, perfectly clear sky, our light, floating eternally.

It’s very important, as it’s also the title of the song. ‘Our light’, the light that belongs to them both. The hope, the justice, the truth, the image of it clear as the perfectly clear sky. He will hold out his hand and grab it, he will keep it in his hands, his, mind, his heart. He won’t let go of it, it’s their mutual dream and goal, it’s something they share and something that will allow them to meet again.

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Thank you for reaching the end of this post... xD If you have any thoughts on it, don’t be shy to share!

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lyrics:

Our light

That night I realized my dream was (just) a dream, I close my eyes fixated on you.

The warmth, hands one on another, the voice, if I wake up it will all disappear into a dream.

Even if we can’t ever meet again, even if the time we spent together transforms into pain,

Please guide me with that pain, towards the night sky full of stars that illuminate me.

I was able to meet you in that sweet, sweet fairytale kingdom in distorted world.

You quietly closed the mouth that said “even if it’s false happiness, it’s okay”.

When there comes a day when memories start, you will be gone, it’s the path you chose yourself,

Even if walking it is always heartrending, towards the stars of tomorrow that I’m aiming for.

When I wake up, the real world comes back, different than yesterday. Because the sadness is important, I’m going to keep on living tomorrow.

Even if we can’t ever meet again, even if the time we spent together transforms into pain,

I’m going to overcome even this pain, greater than (the pain that comes from) surpassing the tears I shed

And I will grab it, perfectly clear sky, our light, floating eternally.

僕らの光

夢を夢と気づいた夜　君を見つめ瞼を閉じる

温もりも重ねた手も声も　目覚めれば微睡みへと消えて

僕らが二度と会えなくても　過ぎた時が痛みに変わっても

その痛みでね導いてよ　僕を照らす夜空の星へと

甘い甘いおとぎの国　君と会えた歪んだ世界

偽りの幸せでもいいと告げる口　君がそっと塞ぐ

思い出の始まる日��なる　君が消えた自分で决めた道

歩くのさずっとせつなくても　僕の目指す明日の星へと

目覚めて現実が来る昨日と違う悲しみが大切だから明日を生きていく

僕らが二度と会えなくても過ぎた時が痛みに変わっても

その痛みさえ超えていくよ　流す涙乘り越えより高く

そして掴むよ　澄み切った空　永遠に浮かぶ僕らの光を

#persona 5 royal #persona 5 royal spoilers #p5r #p5r spoilers #persona 5 the royal #persona 5 the royal spoilers #ending song #true ending #true end #translation #akira kurusu #akiren #ren amiyama #akechi goro #goro akechi #akeshu #akira x akechi #akiren x akechi #joker x akechi

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