#not entirely sure how Jack's whole physicality reacts to the world

[yanderesotherhalf]

Could I possibly get the “you’re shivering take my jacket.” With sunny day jack please? Thank you 💕

Hell yeah first request~! Thank you so much for requesting hun this was a blast to make - hope you enjoy some good ol Jack fluff~

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That’s it, you’re never doing anything for anyone ever again.

…okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration - but given your current predicament you feel as though you’re allowed to be a bit dramatic right now. 

Hands scrub at your face as you swipe away at the water still clinging to your skin; it doesn’t do anything to help, if anything you’ve probably made it worse as you feel droplets dripping down your jaw, and after a moment you give up with a sigh and try to press yourself up against the far end of the shelter hoping to avoid the splash of rainfall that pounds against your temporary cover. You wouldn’t have even been here if you hadn’t agreed to help a friend out with moving - well, friend of a coworker, technically speaking. 

Not getting involved in other people’s business was a motto you tried holding strong to especially while you were at work, but it was all your coworker could talk about. The ‘oh woe is me my friend needs help but I’ll be working the whole day oh no!’’ spiel got old real fast, and if you didn’t have a certain technicolor clown hanging around you, you probably wouldn’t have made it through that damn shift in one piece before you’d caved. When you offered to help, it was an offer just to cover their shift; but when they’d practically skipped into the staff room saying that they’d call their friend and text you the address, all the while thanking you for helping them you realized just exactly what you’d agreed to.

And it’s not like you could’ve said no after you’d already agreed…a smarter person would have but you couldn’t find it in your heart to say no once they’d assumed that you were on board. And it’s that exact unwillingness to rock the boat that led you to spending the better part of your weekend hefting around other people’s stuff and getting it moved from one place to another.

It was a healthy reminder about how much you hated moving. It reminded you all too much of the last time you moved; all the boxes full of stuff that was either strong enough to break a foot if dropped or fragile enough to shatter if it so much as touched something else. Not to mention all the stubbed toes trying to look over said boxes to see where you were going - the sooner this was finished the better had been your only thought.  At least you weren’t exactly alone; Jack rarely left your side in the day to day and this time was no different. He couldn’t exactly help you outright without it raising more than a few questioning looks, but he was more than eager to jump in every time the other movers stepped out to get something else, shuffling around the heavier stuff into the proper place without even breaking a sweat (could he even get tired? You’d have to ask him later.) It made the job easier, and the words of encouragement cheering you on for the things he couldn’t help with made it go by faster than it would have alone, but you were more than ready to go home once it was finished. 

By the time the last of the stuff had been dumped into the house you were exhausted, out of breath, and more than certain that the crocking in your knees meant you were in for a world of pain tomorrow. The sky had already started to grow dark by that point, and even though the new owners were kind enough to give you a well deserved drink after all the labor it was clear that that was as much thanks you were going to get as they none too subtly guided you out of their front door with well wishes for a safe journey home.

Yeah, as though you’d be that lucky. There was already the light splatter of raindrops hitting the pavement and the top of your head as you’d begun to walk, but you were naive enough to think that maybe, just maybe, you could make it back to your apartment before the weather got any worse.

Yeah, you were wrong.

No sooner had you set out, that light drizzle had turned into a full on downpour and even if you had decided to bring a coat there’s no doubt it would have been just as soaked as the rest of you by the time you’d ducked into the nearest bus shelter for cover. Jack, bless his big heart, had at least tried to shield you from the rainfall when it got too bad, but that did little to save you as you could already feel the small puddles in your shoes by the time you’d slid into the tiny cramped space. It offers little in way of protection from the rain and the occasional gust of wind in the wrong direction sends a faint spray of water up into your face, but considering the fact the rain’s too heavy to see down the street going back out isn’t high on your list of options right now and so you’re obligated to stay put. 

“Great, just great.” you grumble under your breath and there’s no hiding the distaste in your voice as you wring out your hair as best as you can, grimacing as water seeps from between your fingers and splatters on your feet - not that you care at this point, it’s not like your shoes can get any wetter anyways. At least there’s seats for you to sit down, and you waste no time in hopping onto the nearest raised bench to kick off said shoes and flip them over, watching as, sure enough, a handful of water trickles out. For a moment you watch the water run through the cracks in the concrete, scowl falling into a resigned acceptance as you slip your shoes back on and bring your legs up to your chest hoping to keep yourself warm as you wrap your arms around your sides. It’s not the most comfortable position, but you at least feel a little warmer, and as your head comes to rest on your knees you feel a bit of relief wash over you at the familiar weight in your pocket.

At least you’d remembered to bring your wallet this time - unless this downpour magically clears up you aren’t risking another mad dash through the street, and if that means sacrificing a few bucks for a dry bus ride back to your apartment you’ll gladly take it.

Speaking of dry…

From your perch you find yourself sneaking a glance over towards your ever present companion, watching him peer out of the shelter with hands cupped around his head as though that will help him see any better through the dense sheet of rainfall thundering as far as the eye can see. He doesn’t look any worse for wear as before; sure, despite being a not-quite-ghost you’ve seen that the world around you still seems to have an effect on Jack - the wind musses up his hair like a real person and the lamppost towering over the bus shelter casts a dull artificial light across his tall figure. Hell, even he’s not safe from the rain, a slight sheen of water clinging to his gloves and dripping down his face as he leans back under the bus stop - but all he has to do is shake it off and just like that it’s like the water hasn’t even touched him. It’s almost comical how fast he’s dried up while you’re still trying in vain to work the water out of your shirt, and you can’t help but feel a bit jealous that you don’t have half of the cartoonishly easy little powers that he seems to have. 

And as though the weather itself is mocking you for your daydreaming another gust of wind tears through the bus shelter, and you bite back a curse with a sharp hiss and curl further in on yourself, trying and failing to keep out the cold. You dig your fingers into your clothes gritting your teeth, shooting a glare up at the darkened sky like that will stop your suffering. Damn, what you wouldn’t give to have something to dry off - too bad everything you’ve got with you right now is either useless or soaked.

Your misery doesn’t go unnoticed for much longer, and you realize that your grumbling has gained an audience once you notice that Jack’s turned his full attention to you. You’ve been around him long enough to know what that look he gives you means ‘everything okay?’. The thumbs up you give in response is supposed to be to reassure him - and to not give away that your teeth are chattering - but all it does is show off just how shaky your hands are from the cold, goosebumps and all.

Jack gives you a sympathetic smile and closes in to stand by your side, taking up the seat next to you. He brings a hand up your face, pressing gently up against your cheek, and almost immediately you watch that sympathy twist into concern as his brows furrow. 

“Oh sunshine, you’re freezing!” he gasps, and you have to wonder that if he can feel that through those thick yellow gloves then it must be worse than you thought.

“I’ll be fine.” yeah, once you’re home, your brain bitterly adds; right now there’s no hiding how miserable you’ve got to look right now. Lying usually earns you a gentle chastising, but Jack seems more focused on the current situation, bringing his hands away from your face and instead taking hold of your own, pulling them close to his chest.

“Here, let’s get you warmed up.” 

Compared to you he’s extremely warm to the touch. Jack’s hands cover yours completely, thumbs rubbing the backs of your hands as he tries working the heat back into them and the fabric of his gloves is nowhere near as rough as you thought they’d be; they're actually ridiculously soft and you can feel your shoulders relax a bit at how comforting this actually is. You’re starting to feel your fingers again by the time Jack turns his attention elsewhere, sliding his hands up over your wrists to rub up your arms. The action is smooth, and everywhere he touches feels just a bit warmer than it was before, but from his position at your side Jack has to lean closer, brushing right up against your side. It’s a surprisingly intimate closeness, but Jack doesn’t seem to notice and that only heightens the ting of embarrassment creeping in for overthinking. No - nope - you’re absolutely not going to entertain that line of thought; instead you settle for just watching him work, gradually freeing yourself from your curled up position

While your eyes are focused on watching him work you fail to notice that his attention’s wavered, and it isn’t until you glance up at him that you realize Jack’s looking at you. The look he’s squaring you with is as bright as always, mouth quirking upwards watching you flush, shrinking a little under his gaze.

“Feeling better?” he asks, and you find yourself nodding. You have to admit that you do feel a little better - you’re still well aware that your clothes feel like more water than fabric but you at least feel a little less frustrated than you did before.

“Good; that’s good.”

Satisfied that you aren’t going to turn into an ice cube on his watch anymore, Jack relinquishes his hold and shifts back more onto his side. As soon as he does so you’re already missing the closeness; he’d been a great help at keeping away the cold, and with him gone you’re reminded of it full force, unconsciously twisting towards him with a grimace when the wind picks up again, sending a fresh spray of rainfall into the shelter. It barely misses the pair of you, but just like that your sour mood is back and you rest fully against Jack’s side, 

“Sorry, guess you’re still feeling cold huh”

Not taking your eyes off of the rain you respond. “Mhm. Would kill for a towel right now.” sparing a look throughout the bus shelter and finding nothing or interest you give a shrug and lean back.  “Or maybe a fire - you wouldn’t happen to have a lighter on hand would you?”

That last bit was a joke, but you don’t miss the nervous chuckle Jack lets out as a hand comes to rest on your shoulder none too subtly gearing your attention back towards him before you can humor that thought any longer. “Ookay, let’s not start any bonfires sunspot; I’m sure there’s something we can do.”

He lets out that exaggerated hum he always does when he’s thinking and you leave him to it, instead turning your attention towards your pockets and the stuff that’s thankfully mostly untouched by the damp. Your phone’s been flat for a while now, but you’ve got your charger; maybe if you were lucky the bus would have some free charging ports and you could let Shaun know that you were still alive-

An abrupt snap of fingers catches your attention, as does the way Jack suddenly straightens up and rises from his chair leaving you almost folding against the bench rail trying not to slip from your spot. There’s no hiding your confusion but your unspoken question is quickly answered when you watch him shuck off his jacket, the plush bright blue fabric sliding off of his shoulders as he twists it around in his hands and holds it out open towards you.

“Oh-uh-Jack you don’t need to-”

“It’s okay! We don’t want you catching a cold now, do we?”

You want to retort, not wanting to take it and leave him with one less layer against the weather; but his words are convincing when you’re still cold and damn if it doesn’t look like it would be comfortable as hell-

“You’re shivering. Here, take my jacket.” 

Honestly that’s all the convincing you need, though you don’t get to answer before you feel the thick garment being draped across your shoulders. It’s heavier than you thought, but the warmth that you’re immediately swaddled in more than makes up for it and just like that you’ve already forgotten why you didn’t just ask to borrow his stuff sooner. The warmth is all too inviting and wards off the cold like a champ to the point where if it was longer it probably could have protected completely from the cold. Letting out a blissful sigh you press your face into the collar of his jacket, greeted by a smell that vaguely reminds you of cotton candy and something sweet - fitting considering who it belongs to. Even without the sleeves it's an immediate improvement from before, and you’re so distracted that you fail to notice that you’ve still got an audience till you hear a poorly muffled snort of laughter. Peeking over the plush blue fabric you don’t miss the smile Jack’s trying to nonchalantly hide behind a gloved hand.

“There we go, don’t you look comfier already~”

Flashing a smirk of your own up at him you make a show of snuggling further into the jacket. “Hope you know you’re not getting this back now.”

“Oh, is that right?”

Pulling the garment a little closer you give a sage nod. “Yup, sorry buddy it’s mine now - sorry them’s the rules.”

Unsurprisingly he doesn’t look at all bothered, if anything that smirk breaks into a grin and you find yourself reciprocating the expression as you both break into giggles, equally tickled by the little moment. The cold still nips at your legs but doesn’t stop you from sliding onto your feet once the chuckling’s died down, and this time it’s Jack’s turn to look confused as you shift to stand in front of him - you don’t match him in height, but you don’t need to for this as you slide your arms through the sleeves of his jacket, stuffing your hands into the pockets and holding it open just enough to still protect yourself from the cold. 

The look on his face is priceless, and you snicker watching him trying to guess what you’re doing.  “Just because it’s mine now doesn’t mean we can’t share - didn’t someone once mention that sharing is caring~?”

You can see the moment the proverbial lightbulb goes off, and his expression goes from confusion, to surprise, before eventually settling on a soft bashfulness that turns the marks on his cheeks just a bit redder. He has to lean down a bit, but with some skillful maneuvering his arms move around you, coming to rest around your back and you shuffle the coat around to cover the two of you. Even with its size it’s not big enough to encompass two people, but Jack doesn’t seem to care. Instead he’s still giving you that soft expression and looking at you as though you’re the sweet one when he’s the one who gave you the literal clothes off of his back to keep you warm and-

Oh. Oh okay so like this he’s a lot closer.

Looking up at him you’re practically nose to nose, and suddenly the roaring wind and ceaseless downpour are barely audible at the sound of your own pulse pounding in your ears. The hands on your back don’t help your heart either, rubbing absentminded circles that make you shiver like you’re cold all over again - only this time you’re burning hot, face almost certainly blushing. Wow you really didn’t think this through; all he has to do is lean down and you’d be close enough to-

The screech of tires knocks you out of your reverie - and just like that whatever moment was there is broken. Pulling yourself away, you almost trip over yourself creating some distance between the two of you; there’s a momentary flash of something across his face, but you barely have time to dwell on it or apologize. A shadow casts over the shelter and sure enough there’s the bus right before your eyes, the bus driver looking too tired and too bored to bother to do anything other than grumble a “ya getting on?” to announce their presence. If they saw that little display they thankfully don’t say anything but that doesn’t stop your face from feeling like it’s burning up as you stumble over to the door fumbling for your wallet. 

You definitely sacrifice more change than the bus fare but you’re not about to argue as you scramble over to the nearest empty seat at the far back and press yourself up against the window. You’ve got no idea if other people can see the bright blue jacket you’re still clinging to as you sit down - after all it is technically a part of him - but that doesn’t stop you from fiddling with the strings as you wait for the garments owner to get on with you, having significantly less trouble getting past the driver and finding his own seat. Jack slides right in beside you, expression now carefully calm compared to before; you suppose that it’s a lot less embarrassing when you don’t stand the risk of actually being caught by people. 

You lock eyes for a moment and he gives you that same bright smile as always, bringing a hand to rest atop your own in an attempt to ease your jitters. It works, and while you can’t verbally thank him without getting a few weird stares you give his hand a firm squeeze in return, finally tearing your eyes away to watch the rain splattered window as the vehicle pulls away from the station. 

[papa-rhys]

Thoughts on Jack and His Borderline Personality Disorder and How It Shows Through His Behaviour - Because I Cannot Stop Analysing Things That Ultimately Aren’t Important

Symptoms/behaviours under the cut because holy hell this guy has a lot of them. Like, honey, are you okay?

Okay, so I’m pretty sure I can trace Jack’s BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) back to his grandmother. His mum abandoned him, which shows a reckless/irresponsible behaviour and her mum had fits of rage that didn’t correlate at all with the trigger (ie; drowning Jack’s cat because he didn’t make his bed). So I think he has a family history of it, with both his mother and grandmother having BPD and passing it down to him.

Either way, Jack definitely has it. In fact, he’s a textbook case of it.

Impulsivity

Spending sprees: he bought a pony made of diamonds because he was bored and throws money at all kinds of ventures to keep him occupied and because he wants to. I really don’t know how else to describe this one lol. He bought a pony. Made of diamonds. Because he could.

Gambling: won some of the things on his trophy shelf through poker and owns an entire casino. Hunting the Vaults themselves were a huge gamble too, especially the first two, since he wasn’t truly sure that they existed. He was prepared to sacrifice a lot in order to come out on top in both his career and his social standing. All in all, he’s reckless.

Binge eating: he doesn’t even like pretzels, but still eats them because he’s either bored or stressed. Talks about food quite a bit in conversation, too, especially his cravings.

Substance abuse: admits to being high on uppers for the duration of the pre sequel (and his time on Elpis as a whole) and tells further anecdotes about drugs and getting high in tftbl.

Promiscuity/unsafe sex: nothing about having sex with Nisha is safe lol. But in all seriousness, there’s no way to prove this one. He does strike me as the reckless sex sort though. No proof, just 7 years of knowing him as a character.

Emotional instability

Inappropriate trigger response: he strangles a man to death for simply mentioning his wife, stabs Lilith for talking about Angel, and tries to kill Rhys for not being sure about his grand plan (more on this later). His response to triggers is disproportionate, often resulting in extreme anger over small things that don’t warrant that intense of a reaction. He gets big angry about almost everything; there’s no middle ground. His reaction is never really “you’re annoying me a lot” or “don’t talk about that, I don’t like it.” His reaction to almost everything is “oh my god I will murder your first born child how dare you-”

Quickly changing mood: aside from being prone to fits of rage at the flick of a switch, Jack also flicks back to “normal” pretty quickly, too. He flips between telling you to kill yourself after surviving the train and then talks casually about his day. He’ll be filled with rage after Angel’s death and then suddenly he’s laughing about you jumping into lava and having fun tricking you into visiting his grandmother. He can be intensely angry or sorrowful one moment and then nonchalant and sociable the next. His moods don’t last very long.

Idolisation/devaluation

Jack does this with numerous people across the games, but the two shining examples are Moxxi and Rhys; Rhys being the most notable. He idolises Moxxi, complimenting her on how attractive she is and how smart she is and including her in his circle of close friends/teammates. Then the inevitable happens and she lets him down and he instantly changes his opinion on her as if he’d never thought she was good to begin with. The same happens with Rhys. Throughout tftbl, Jack is best friends with Rhys and seems to form a one-sided connection with him where he idolises him and thinks they’re going to be best friends for ever and that they’re the perfect team. You cannot make him mad at you in tftbl (trust me, I’ve tried). He’s encouraging to Rhys the whole way through, like they’re brothers. Then the second Rhys displays doubts about something Jack is passionate about, Jack reacts violently and completely devalues Rhys, claiming him to be his mortal enemy and trying to kill him. People with BPD do this often. They have strong convictions and have a tendency to feel betrayed by people who go against those convictions. Jack does this regularly and it leads to the breakup of a lot of his relationships.

Paranoia

He vented a room full of scientists into space, just in case. I mean, that pretty much sums it up, really. Jack is under a lot of stress at this point in the game and stress-induced paranoia is a particularly difficult symptom of BPD. With him already feeling the pressure, the mention of a possible mole is a huge trigger for Jack. Especially since he’s reeling from the recent betrayal from a friend. His brain is already working over time, planting uneasy feelings of distrust and being unsafe. So when he’s presented with the idea from an outside source, he runs with it. Betrayal goes on to become a big button to push in Jack’s life to the extent that he actively betrays people before they get a chance to betray him (ie; killing Wilhelm). Paranoia feeds into a lot of Jack’s bad decisions, particularly in the pre sequel era.

Delusion

Jack wasn’t lying when he told us that he’s the hero. He absolutely was not the hero at all, but he wasn’t lying about it. Because lying about something implies that you know it’s not true, and Jack genuinely believes he’s a good person. The best person, in fact. It’s not a lie because in his mind, it’s the god given truth. He’s massively delusional, even before the events of the pre sequel. He’ll spout all the cheesy 80s movie lines about saving the moon and being the hero and he thinks he’s the protagonist of his own big adventure. We know that’s not what’s happening, but Jack doesn’t see it that way. Another delusion is the idea he has about how much everyone loves him. He thinks Moxxi is obsessed with him and he thinks Angel is being forced to work against him. He cannot conceive of a world in which people don’t like him or agree with him. Because why wouldn’t they agree with him? He’s the hero. Everybody loves the hero...

Intense but unstable relationships

Moxxi, Angel, Lilith, the Vault Hunter; I could go on. Jack’s relationships with people are volatile and rocky, even when they’re seemingly on the same side like with Moxxi or even Nisha (who he forms a tight bond with very quickly). People with BPD feel all emotions intensely, which causes a roller coaster. Jack really likes Moxxi, but then he doesn’t want to talk to her, but then he wants her on the team, but then he gets mad at her for calling him a pet name and beign friendly, and then he’s telling her she’s sexy, and then he’s cursing her, and then he’s hanging pictures of her in his casino. It’s the same with Angel - he subjects her to physical torture, then he loves her, then he’s mad at her for helping the Vault Hunter, then he’s doting on her, then he’s manipulating her, then he’s grieving for her. Everything is a whirlwind.

Distorted self-image

Oh boy. Jack has this physically and mentally. Mentally in the sense that he thinks he’s a good person when he actions are abhorrent and also because he’s massively insecure. BPD often comes with a lack of identity, which causes insecurity to begin with. Throw that in a pot alongside some childhood abuse, betrayal, work place bullying, and grief, and you got yourself a big pot of insecurity soup. Put plainly, Jack doesn’t really know who he is at his baseline. His personality and interests and ideas and needs all change on an hourly basis. He morphs to suit his circumstances. He can be open, honest and down to earth when he’s trying to trick Rhys. He can be full of worry and desperation when he needs you to head to grandma’s house. He can be cunning and clever when he’s tricking you into killing Wilhelm. He can be fatherly, he can be nasty, he can be torturous, he can be laid back, he can be clever, he can be ignorant, he can be sheepish, he can be cocky. He’s everyone and no one all at once and this probably leaves him feeling very hollow and empty; which is another symptom of BPD. In the physical sense, Jack issues with self image are pretty clear. He wears a face over his face to hide his face. Yup. And he does this because he thinks he’s disgracefully ugly. This scar he’s so vehemently protective of is something that defines his whole persona going forward. He literally claims himself as Handsome Jack, forcing people to adhere to the idea that he’s so attractive that it should be his title. Even though he doesn’t feel that way and does everything he can to hide the real him. He thinks he’s hideous and he struggles between loving himself and hating himself because of it.

Fear of abandonment

Aaaand here we are at the crux of the problem. BPD boils down to the intense fear of abandonment and this is probably what guides Jack for most of his life. His father died, his mother literally abandoned him, his grandmother neglected him, his first wife died, second wife left, girlfriend and friends betrayed him, and daughter killed herself to get away from him. Abandonment is practically coded into Jack’s DNA at this point and every time it happens, it confirms his fears more. He clings to Moxxi after she betrays him - taking her ideas to try and rile her up and even going as far as to recreate her entire bar in his casino because he wants to keep her presence around. He fights tooth and claw against Angel’s rebellion, begging both her and you to stop what you’re doing and leave. The only time he begs you is when he’s facing perceived abandonment, that’s how strong the fear is. His final words to Angel are “I’ll still forgive you.” Jack isn’t a forgiving man by any stretch, but he’ll say anything he has to in order to prevent her from leaving him. He’ll stalk people, he’ll manipulate them, he’ll lie to them or keep them physically locked up - all to prevent them from abandoning him. The worst possible thing that could happen to Jack is that, and we see the spiral he slips into after Angel. After Moxxi. After the Meriff. After his wife. He can’t bare the thought of someone leaving him and he’ll do anything and everything to prevent his fears becoming a reality.

So yeah! There it is, I finally got around to posting it lol. There’s probably a lot more little details that I’ve forgotten, but I cannot think of them right now. I’ll probably update if I think of any more! The tl;dr is that almost all of Jack’s behaviour can be linked to massively untreated BPD. He needed meds and therapy, but he didn’t get them and he spiralled as a result.

[k-s-morgan]

What would you say would be the great but rarely used, mentioned (?) Will's quotes about Hannibal that show his depth of feeling for him and show that Will does love Hannibal. I know the most frequently used ones, but what do you think are the underappreciated moments?

What a great question! Here are the ones I recall and that I rarely see mentioned. If anyone who’s reading this can think of more, please share them too! 

You’re supposed to be my paddle. It’s said at the very start of S1, and it shows the trust Will already puts into Hannibal, which is amazing, considering how hostile he is to people in general and especially to psychiatrists.

I don't know what's worse. Believing I did it or believing you did it... and did this to me. I felt so betrayed by you … I trusted you. I needed to trust you. Will is playing on Hannibal’s emotions here, but I think what he says is absolute truth. He sounds so wistful and sad - he really feels all this. It’s not the idea of Hannibal being a murderer that hit him hard, it’s that Hannibal betrayed him.

You've never condemned me. Not even under oath. You've always been my friend. Same here: he’s playing Hannibal, but what he says rings true. There is once again wistfulness in Will’s voice - Hannibal was his friend and it meant the world to him, but now he doesn’t know what to think. He doesn’t understand why Hannibal is trying to help him after putting him in prison.

I have to deal with you. And my feelings about you. Sounds so deeply personal and romantic, in my opinion.

I envy you your hate. Makes it much easier when you know how to feel. Will confessing to Peter that he can’t hate Hannibal no matter what he did, and hence he can’t bring himself to kill him even now.

Where else would I go? This is so striking - Will confessing that Hannibal is the only person he can confide to, his safety net and in a way,  his home.

Will: I tried to murder Dr. Lecter.

Margot: Did he have it coming?

Will: What do you think?

Margot: Can't say that I know.

Will: Neither can I. - This is a lot, coming from Will. Hannibal betrayed him, killed Abigail, murdered who knows how many innocent people, including Beverly, and yet Will isn’t sure Hannibal deserved having Matthew sent after him.

Hannibal is good enough for you. Considering the context and the emphasis he makes when he spits these words at Alana, he’s jealous, and this jealousy is about Hannibal and his affections. 

Could you be happy there? This is what Will asks when Hannibal tells him that if he’s ever arrested, he’ll be living in his Mind Palace. It’s such a simple but powerful question because Will knows Hannibal might end up arrested because of him, and he’s worried about his happiness. He needs to hear that Hannibal won’t be miserable. 

Hannibal: You would deny me my life.

Will: Not your life, no. - Will is no longer capable of killing Hannibal, and it’s important for him to make Hannibal understand this. 

We have a mutually unspoken pact to ignore the worst of one another in order to continue enjoying the best. - Almost a love confession, the same one as “Because he was my friend and because I wanted to run away with him.”

Now, the entire brilliant Primavera is a big and loud love letter from Will to Hannibal. Here are my favorite quotes (I’m changing pronouns in Will’s discussions with fake!Abigail because he’s talking to himself there).

He left me to die... But I didn't. He was supposed to take me with him. We were all supposed to leave together. He made a place for us. Why did I lie to him? The wrong thing being the right thing to do was too ugly a thought. He gave me a chance to take it all back, and I just kept lying. He wants me to find him. After everything he's done, I would still go to him? Yes. - You can see his mental struggle, him being torn between love, guilt, and resentment. 

Later:

This is what Hannibal sees when he steps inside the frescoed walls of his own mind ...But this isn't Hannibal, it's just where he begins. Beyond this, far and complex, light and dark, is the vast structure of his mind. A thousand rooms, miles of corridors. Everything he remembers, wonderfully and fearfully reconstructed. Hannibal is well armed against the physical world, but there are places within himself he can't safely go. But I can. If I find them. And that's how I'll find him. - Will is so incredibly reverent and admiring here, I love it.

I do feel closer to Hannibal here. God only knows where I would be without him ... I still want to go with him? Yes. - This says everything: Will acknowledges how crucial Hannibal is for him, how he can’t imagine himself without him now, and how much he craves his presence.

Will: You couldn't catch him when he was just a kid, what makes you think you're going to catch him now?

Pazzi: You.

A small, polite scoff from Will, unable to take his eyes off the small stairwell to the catacombs.

Will: What makes you think I want to catch him? ...  You don’t know whose side I’m on. - Will openly admitting to a police officer that he’s siding with Hannibal.

Hannibal... I forgive you. - One of the most heartfelt things Will has ever said to him.

Chiyoh: How do you know Hannibal?

Will: One could argue, intimately. - This come across as Will flaunting their relationship to Chiyoh, who he perceives as a possible threat.

A part of me will always want to [slip away with Hannibal]. - I’m forever amazed at the things Will keeps saying to Jack.

Please. You need to get over yourself, whatever self this is, Bedelia. You expect us to believe you somehow got lost in the hot darkness of Hannibal Lecter's mind? - I seriously can’t believe Will said this. Could he sound any more jealous?

You helped Mason Verger find us. - I love how he refers to them as a team in front of Alana, even though Hannibal literally tried to saw his head open when they were found. Sounds like Will is resentful of the fact that they were interrupted o_O 

I have to see Hannibal. Very simple words said to Jack in E8, but their meaning and the way Will phrased it... Will doesn’t need Hannibal’s help with the case, we know it because we saw him easily reconstruct the crime hours before that. But he’s not even really hiding it well! He doesn’t say, “I have to discuss this with Hannibal,” he says, “I have to see him.” There is a palpable difference between the two.

All conversations with Bedelia, but especially this jealous gem:

Poor Dr. Du Maurier, swallowed whole. Suffering inside Hannibal Lecter's bowels for what must have felt like an eternity. You didn't lose yourself, Bedelia, you just crawled so far up his ass you couldn't be bothered ... Have you been to see him? 

In the next conversation again:

Will: Have you had any contact with him? -  Jealous Will is the best.

I'm not fortune's fool. I'm yours. Will looks at Hannibal, clearly expecting him to react to his teasing, and then he’s so affronted when Hannibal ignores him.

The divine punishment of the sinner mirrors the sin being punished. Chilton languished unrecognized until Hannibal the Cannibal. He wanted the world to know his face. (And now he doesn’t have any). - This sounds like Chilton was Will’s courting gift to Hannibal. Instead of choosing more valid reasons for his actions, he focused on Chilton’s desire for popularity and him mocking Hannibal. 

Hannibal said those words. To me. - Will is so proud to be seen as worthy by Hannibal, and he can’t help but throw it into Francis’ face.

Hannibal: Save yourself, kill them all?

Will: I don't know if I can save myself. And maybe that’s just fine. - To me, this sounds like Will confesses he doesn’t know if he can “kill them all”, meaning Hannibal first and foremost, and that at this point, he doesn’t even mind. The long stare their exchange afterward speaks volumes about their feelings.

[neutron-stars-collision]

The Art of Inversion

Neil x Reader

Chapter 3 - Too Close for Comfort

Previous Chapters: Chapter 1, Chapter 2

Summary: Your training at Tenet is going perfectly well until it’s thrown off balance with the arrival of Neil, who brings chaos and surprising news...

Warnings: Swearing.

Author’s Notes: So once again this very long, for which I’m sorry. Please let me know what you think! Thanks for the inspiration to my friends, as always! Enjoy!

The first few weeks of your training went by in a mad blur. After day two you realised that to avoid spending ages in the car you had to move into the Tenet building. There you had a cosy room with a bed, desk, a bathroom and relative peace. That is if the more extraverted agents were not partying in the mess hall or the common room. You usually spent the evenings alone, not having the energy or motivation to socialise. Sometimes you also felt as though others perceived you differently for reasons unknown.

Maybe because you have been recruited by one of Tenet’s top agents personally?

Your days have been spent either learning about physics and the theoretical side of the inversion or in the sparring hall, trying to dodge inverted punches and kicks. While all the talk of entropy and nuclear fission usually made your head hurt, it was the hand in hand combat that was the bane of your training. Having absolutely no prior experience in various fighting styles, you often got beat up by the fellow recruits. You certainly preferred guns to fists.

Neil has been gone for weeks as well. You knew that most likely the details of the mission were entirely classified so you never asked. But you sometimes did wonder if he would ever show up again. You had to admit that you did hope so. It would be a shame to never see Anna beam like that again.

This day started like any other in that regard. You woke up and got ready for the first class – geography of Tenet, so lessons covered all the different branches with the turnstiles and how to get from one to another when inverted. After that it was the classic combat. You took your position and acknowledged the partner for the hour – a boring guy named Jack who would sometimes hit on you. And today was not going to be different…

“Hello love” he grinned way too widely

“Hi” you answered back dispassionately, praying for the class to start

“You’re looking good today” Jack smirked, trying to look flirtatious and you rolled your eyes.

Pairs all around you were beginning their training and you wanted to cut the small talk short as soon as possible.

“Please, can we get on with this? I really don’t have time” Jack pouted but complied.

Soon you have begun the session. At first, you managed to block his punches and kicks really well, even hit him a few times when he seemed too busy staring at you to react. But then as the pace picked up, you lost the rhythm. Soon you were breathing hard and your body was aching. While Jack wasn’t pulling any punches, he quickly got worried, seeing you pant and wince. He took a step back and asked:

“Everything alright with you?”

“Yeah, just need a breather” you smiled apologetically.

Suddenly, just as you looked up at the front of the hall where the teachers were stood, a dirty blonde head caught your eye.

It can’t be… you scrunched your neck to see better above the students and your eyes met the unmistakable blue gaze. Neil was staring right at you through the crowd.

Shit. Before you could let your thoughts run away too far, Jack began the training again. Without a warning, he aimed a punch towards your shoulder and you barely blocked it. You were desperately trying to focus on the sparring, but the curious mind kept returning to Neil. You ignored it for a while, but then you looked up again. The blue eyes were on you for all that time. That was also the moment when Jack aimed a punch at your jaw, certain you will be there to block it. You were not.

Next thing you knew you were lying on the floorboards, with a throbbing pain in your jaw and Jack staring at you in shock.

“I…I’m sorry! I thought you’d be ready…” he stuttered and held out a hand to help you get up.

Fuck!, you swore and grudgingly accepted the help. But as soon as you were back standing, you had to run. You couldn’t risk meeting Neil right now. And you were pretty damn sure he saw the whole thing happen. Looking at Jack, you breathed out:

“Sorry, I’ve got to go” and quickly pushed through the crowd to the side exit, praying that you will not be followed.

You got lucky and made a hasty escape to your room where you could finally let your emotions loose. Which in this case meant punching the desk and letting out a stream of favourite swear words. Once that was done you sat down on the bed and covered your face with your hands. You hated embarrassing yourself like that in front of people. Let alone people like Neil.

Finally, after wallowing in self-pity for ten minutes, you got up to shower and change. But you only made it as far as touching the bathroom door handle when you heard a knock.  Somehow you knew who it was and hastily smoothed down your hair before opening the door. Neil stood there, with that sickening grin and tousled hair.

“How did you know which room is mine?” you asked while eyeing him up through the crack in the door.

“Hello to you too” he smirked “Anna told me where to find you”

“Of course” you muttered and opened the door wider to let him in.

“What was that?” he watched you with that sly smile, as though excited about the prospect of annoying you.

“Nothing” you sat on the bed and watched as he took the time to look around your small room.

You noticed that he had ditched the suit jacket and had his sleeves rolled up. The exposed forearms were covered in a few fading bruises and cuts. You stared at them a bit too long and quickly looked down at your lap, desperately trying to find something to say. Normally you liked silence, but in this case it made your thoughts wonder way too much.

“So you’re back then?” you asked, cringing at how stupid that sounded.

Neil sat down on the desk chair opposite you and nodded.

“Yeah, for now the world ending has been averted” he joked lightly, and you smiled, suddenly aware that you have missed him.

He searched your face for a short while before asking:

“I take it you don’t like combat sessions?”

“What gave you such an impression?”

“Well that was an impressive knock-out” he winked, and you groaned, causing him to laugh.

“Was hoping you’ve somehow missed it” you admitted while looking away at the wall.

His intense stare was starting to make you feel self-conscious. After all those weeks of not seeing him you have forgotten what it was like. Sometimes you even thought that maybe Neil was just a figment of your imagination. But he was most certainly real. And right now was still looking at you, searching for something. He found it when he suddenly got up and kneeled right in front of you. You stared wide-eyed as he reached out and touched a sore spot on your jaw, making you flinch.

“Sorry” he apologised “Is this where you got hit today?” gently he traced the bruise that was beginning to form.

“Think so” your voice came out huskier than you expected.

“There’s a small cut” only now you felt the sting “You should get that cleaned up” he noticed and met your gaze steadily.

You realised with a surprise that he was looking at you with worry. He was close. Way too close. You felt the rush of adrenaline and jumped up, nearly knocking him on the head in the process.

“I’m fine” you mumbled “I’ll check it now” you moved towards the bathroom.

But once again it was not meant to be. Neil placed his hands on your arms and pulled you down to sit on the bed.

“We’ve done this before” he glared at you “And I’m not taking ‘fine’ for an answer this time” you could just stare “Now, where do you have the first aid kit?”

“Shelf behind the mirror” you watched as he went to the bathroom and covered your face with your hands.

You always hated being the centre of attention. Being cared after like this. Because it meant that you were not strong enough in the first place. It was easier to just be entirely self-dependent, to never ask for help. And now Neil has seen your weakness twice. It was too much. Just as you have begun to consider bolting away, he emerged, armed with gauze and glass filled with water. He set them down on the bedside table and turned towards you. He must have noticed your struggle because he frowned and took a long look at you before asking:

“Is everything alright?”

You forced yourself to meet his gaze and nodded.

“Because you don’t look alright right now”

“Thanks, you know how to compliment a girl” you joked dryly, trying to stop the line of uncomfortable questioning.

It worked as Neil burst out laughing and looked at you incredulously. The downside was that you could no longer run away. So you accepted his beckoning to come closer and lifted your head to give him better access to the cut. He soaked the gauze in water and carefully cleaned the wound, all the while perfectly focused on the task. Although you could not see him you imagined the look of concentration on his face. Once the cut has been disinfected, he covered it with a small band-aid and gave you a quick once-over. You lowered your head and watched him out of the corner of your eye. After he was done with the inspection, his hand was still gently touching your jaw, with thumb caressing your neck just below the ear. You stared at him with lips parted in shock, wondering if he was aware of the movement. You shifted slightly and that broke him out of the reverie. His eyes met yours, and he smiled softly, not stopping the delicate caress. Now that you knew he was aware of his actions you felt your face heat up. To try and break the tense silence, you decided to speak up:

“Thank you for this…” your voice was incredibly hoarse.

“Of course” he smiled wider “Couldn’t have you walking around bleeding”

His hand had stopped the movement but was still placed on your neck. You could not process how close he was. Your brain kept reminding you how you did not really know him. How it can go wrong. The urge to run away was back, possibly at the worst moment. You quickly turned your head away. Neil looked at you with surprise but before either of you could say anything, a knock echoed in the room. You turned to Neil:

“You expecting anyone?” he asked.

“Certainly not” you frowned and went to open the door cautiously.

On the other side there was a tall man of a soldierly posture with a buzz cut and a pleasant looking face. You looked at him quizzically, but he was staring right past you:

“Anna told me I’d find you here” he addressed Neil, who came up to stand next to you.

The two men then had a rather peculiar silent exchange which started with the soldier smirking while looking at you, and Neil responding with a small shake of the head and a grin. You had enough of that.

“Sorry, but who are you?” you asked, while staring at them both.

“Apologies, ma’am” the newcomer grinned at you “I’m Ives” he extended a hand and you shook it.

“Ives is leader of our squad unit” Neil explained, and you nodded.

“I’m…” you opened your mouth to introduce yourself but got cut off by Ives.

“Oh I know who you are” you stared at him confusedly “Neil told me about you” that knowing grin again.

You noticed with a surprise that Neil looked somewhat flustered. But he composed himself quick enough for you to dismiss that idea. He cleared his throat and asked:

“Anyways, what brings you here Ives?”

“TP wanted me to discuss something with you” your ears perked up at the mention of the Protagonist, the mysterious founder of Tenet “And there will be a small gathering later in the common room with all the squad so thought you might want to join” Ives smiled at you “Both of you”.

Neil looked at you expectantly and you nodded:

“Sure, I’ve got nothing better to do”

“You won’t regret it” Ives grinned “Mate can we talk in private?” he turned to Neil.

“Yeah, I’ll meet you in the briefing room in ten” they shared one last cryptic look and Neil closed the door.

You stared at him, still unable to forget the way he looked at you mere minutes ago. And the moment you have shared. But now the spell has been broken, and you did not know what to say. Luckily Neil seemed to be doing fine as he threw you the signature soft smile:

“Sorry about that. Ives is a pretty straightforward guy” he explained, and you laughed, feeling the tension dissolve.

“I can see that” you held his gaze a little longer before adding “You should go discuss the classified stuff with him. Might be something important”

Neil looked hesitant. Finally, he must have made up his mind because he reached out to squeeze your hand. A familiar gesture by now.

“Shall I pick you up later for the party?” he asked.

“Sure” you smiled “Though calling it a party makes me regret the decision to participate” you admired the grin he sent you.

“No need for that, you’ll do great” he winked and without further word left your room.

Now finally you could panic in peace.

***

After stressing for a solid hour about what to wear, you decided to just put on the comfiest t-shirt and jeans. Most agents and recruits rarely dressed up anyway. Apart from Neil, naturally, but you had a feeling he was an exception in most things. Once you got ready, you sat at the desk, trying to finish the assignments for the classes. That was a very bad idea since your brain was mostly busy panicking about the party and analysing what happened before Ives came. When that desired (and feared) knock sounded in the room, you rushed to open it. You were almost happy Neil has not changed into an expensive suit.

“Ready?” he smiled, and you automatically beamed back.

Have I become like Anna already?, you cringed at your reaction. But there was no time to marinate in shame as Neil practically pulled you out of the room without waiting for confirmation. You stared at him, surprised as the door to your room slammed shut.

“Are we that late?”

He just grinned and started walking down the corridor. You shook your head amused before jogging to catch up. When you both entered the common room you first noticed that they have reorganised the space by moving the couches around. Now they formed a large circle in the middle of which there was a table set with beer and wine bottles. There was also music playing from the speakers. And there were at least ten people in the room. At that observation you swallowed hard. You were never good with meeting new people and the idea itself made you anxious. But looking at Neil marching in confidently and shaking hands with everyone you realised that you might have to overcome the fear. The moment you stepped through the threshold all eyes were on you.

Bloody hell, you pasted a small smile on your lips and looked at all the faces. But before you were forced to introduce yourself, Ives did it for you:

“This is our new recruit, Y/N” everyone smiled at you “She’s friends with Neil, so we’ll probably see more of her” he added, and you felt your cheeks heat up.

You looked at Neil and once again would swear he looked slightly uncomfortable. But before you could think about it more you got swept into the circle by Ives and tried to remember names of everyone introduced to you. After the initial small talk, you sat down with a glass of wine, hoping to be able to just listen to others talk and fade into the background. But it wasn’t meant to be…

“So how do you like the training?” a woman asked, that you believed was called Wheeler.

She was looking at you with a pleasant smile which gave you the needed courage.

“It’s not too bad. The whole physics side of it makes my head hurt sometimes but then it’s all so fascinating” you saw a few understanding smiles and nods.

“Well I can help you with the physics if you ever need it” Neil spoke up suddenly and you looked at him across the table.

He has been weirdly quiet since you came in but was evidently listening to the conversation. He was looking at you with a small smile which you mirrored as a way of thanks. You were very aware of the company.

“But yeah I don’t mind the training” you tried to finish the thought “It’s very different from the stuff I did at university and that’s refreshing” you grinned.

“Heard you don’t like the combat training” Ives smirked, and you glared at him.

So everyone knows now…, you groaned mentally.

“What’s the basis for this assumption?” you didn’t want to give up your dignity without a fight.

With satisfaction, you noted the surprised grin he responded with.

“Got my sources” he shrugged “And that bruise on your jaw is a pretty good clue too”

“What can I say, you got me there” you put up your hands in surrender and he laughed.

“No shame in that though, love” your eyes widened at the nickname “I’m sure you’ll get better at it with time” he winked, and your eyes got even wider.

At that point someone luckily started another topic that you were not familiar with so you could focus on dealing with what just happened. You felt someone stare at you intently and looked up to see the well-known blue eyes boring into your face. His expression was somewhat sombre, and you briefly wondered if he could be jealous. You shook your head at the ridiculousness of the thought and took a large sip of wine. Neil was still looking at you and only stopped when he got asked about a recent mission. You listened curiously:

“Well it was nothing out of the ordinary. Inverted weapons dealer, murky transactions and a proper gunfight in the parking lot” he shrugged, and you wondered if that’s what the future holds for you.

“Any fuck ups this time?”

“Just a small… misunderstanding” Neil raised his arms to show the bruised forearms and the others laughed.

Then the conversation shifted towards more mundane things and you were happy to just listen. You have been pleasantly surprised by the camaraderie you noticed between the squad members and Neil. You have been asked a few questions about your past which were a nice change to the anonymity you got used to during the training. Sometimes you would look at Neil, giving in to curiosity. He was either listening to the conversation or joking with the rest, making use of the infinite charm he seemed to possess. You were not surprised to see that everyone seemed to like him. After a while you lost the sense of time and were pretty sure you had enough wine to regret it in the morning. So when someone mentioned that it is past 1am you groaned out loud and got up. The world swayed before your eyes and you waited another moment to adjust before speaking:

“Sorry I need to go now or else won’t survive the shooting training tomorrow” you smiled apologetically.

“Good luck with that!” Ives sent you another cheeky grin and you laughed.

“Thanks, will be needed” with that you moved towards the exit, waving goodbye.

You started walking down the corridor when you felt a hand touch your arm unexpectedly. You jumped up at the contact.

“Didn’t mean to startle you” Neil smiled, and you glared at him.

“Then maybe you shouldn’t creep up on me” you both continued down the hallway “Why did you leave the party?” “I’m quite tired” you glanced at him surprised “And because I have something important to tell you”

You stopped in front of your door and you leaned on the wall.

“The Protagonist wants to meet you” your eyes widened “That’s what me and Ives talked about before. He said that TP is interested in you and wants us to come to the HQ’s as soon as we can”

You stared at him in shock. It didn’t make any sense.

“Why?”

“No idea” he shrugged, and you were shocked to see him clueless “But I’ll go with you and I want us to get the plane on Friday after your training”

“That’s the day after tomorrow” you frowned, thinking about everything you would need to do before boarding on a plane to the US.

“I know. But from my experience I can tell you that if TP says something, it’s best to listen to him” he added, startling you with the serious tone.

He must have noticed how scared that made you because he reached out to touch your shoulder and gave it a gentle rub.

“Don’t worry about it for now though. I’ll arrange everything for the travel and will come by tomorrow afternoon with details” he let his hand fall to his side and you instantly missed the touch.

You raked through your head for something to say.

“So you’re not disappearing this time?” you asked finally, letting yourself eye him suspiciously.

“Certainly not” he grinned and watched as you opened the door to the room. When you got in, he added:

“But it’s good to know you’ve missed me” the playful sparks made you want to punch him in the teeth.

Instead, you just rolled your eyes pointedly, way too tired.

“G’night, Neil” you muttered and started closing the door.

“Sweet dreams” he whispered and disappeared into the darkness of the corridor.

You covered your head with your hands. This is very inconvenient, you thought while wondering how you got yourself into this situation.

[pvremichigan]

Until We Meet Again. [Arc Drabble]

TW: Vomit, blood, alcoholism mention, murder mention, memory loss

“From the look of it, I think I only need one more. Does it have to be specific? ...”

“No... Alright, makes things a lot easier. Yeah... Yeah make sure you keep contact with him, keep trying. Do whatever you gotta do.”

The voice on the other line spoke back, giving Mich a short verbal response.

“I appreciate the help. I do. One more and... Yeah, I’ll head over. When?”

The woman looked outside the window, her heart sinking the more she thought about the outcome. This was now or never... And if she hesitated, she wouldn’t be able to go through with it. It’s just her... Just her at this point. She can’t deny the fear that built up inside, but time was running too thin.

The house was nearly covered inside with sticky notes about reminders and tasks, labels and tips. It looked like a damn video game tutorial... Everywhere there was SOMETHING about something or someone. Names scattered the notes, scribbled the more she had to remind herself. This morning she had gotten confused and a bit startled at the sight of two wolves in her house. She had no idea what to do, especially considering they were following her. It took far more than a half an hour to remember that those are her own dogs... Not wolves. Their names slipped her mind more often than not.

She was a mess...

“... I’m going to shoot for tonight. Can’t stall anymore. Don’t wanna risk any of the souls losing value.”

She sounded so unsure. It was as if she was pulling away by the minute. Her brain screamed that she didn’t want to do this but at this point, she really has no choice. It’s either this... Or lose herself to the brink of death.

“Yeah- Yeah I’m still here. Just thinking. I know, I’ll uh...”

It’s getting dark.

“I’ll head out now. I’ll be in touch. Thanks, Carter.”

As soon as the call ended, the weight of Mich’s body seemed to drop her down on the couch. Her legs had given out and her hands began to shake. She felt extremely ill, blocking her mouth with her fist just in case. Her blood chilled her body, everything felt cold and numb aside from the sensation of a rapidly beating heart. Funny... Her heart doesn’t even do anything for her, yet it can still react to her mind and emotions. It certainly didn’t help the situation.

Her skin grew cold. Her face pale... All she could do was sit stranded on the couch with an anxiously bouncing leg. The sound of the world tuned out. It was only ringing... Ringing that grew louder and louder. For a moment she could’ve sworn she heard it outside of her mind. It sounded so close, so real... And so utterly loud. Her eyes stared forward in contempt, her entire being practically frozen in this loop of doing nothing but break internally. This was a prison for her, this fear had been the warden keeping her in place and refusing to let her truly approach her mistakes with vigor. The fear creating a cowardess she had to face in any reflection she walked by. The fist didn’t fix anything... A wave of blood forced it’s way out of her throat and past her lips, an unprepared silent wretch as she was forced to hunch forward, splattering onto the carpet. No bile, no mucus... Just pure blood. Her nerves got the best of her. The last time this happened... It was right after she had shot Ryan dead. She stared in shock, frozen yet again as the shaking grew worse. In that moment, flashes of that miserable night sparked in her mind. All six shots... The tears that dropped from her eyes... And the final view of Ryan desperately and weakly reaching to her before his body went limp... And he lay there dead. Since that moment, her life had spiraled downward. One mistake led to years of agony and misery.

The paralysis caused by her fear had broken as she ran her hands over her face, tired and stressed from everything that had to be done. There were too many thoughts of regrets and ‘what ifs’ and ‘if only i’... But no matter the rate of those thoughts that haunted her in this moment, it still didn’t change the fact that what was done, was done.

It had been over 3 years now... Compared to her lifespan, it was such a short time to deteriorate her mind. She never recognized the importance of a soul until her actions truly came to bite her in the ass.

Now she has no choice but to risk everything to fix her biggest mistake.

The movement out of the corner of her eye had caught her attention. the larger dog... B... The larger dog... The big one... The older dog... Why couldn’t she remember his name? Mich felt the sting of tears burn the entire area around her eyes as she truly realized in that moment how far gone she was and how there was no turning back. Her own dog, her main boy and she couldn’t even remember his name. As the reality of the situation hit, her heart had shattered into pieces. Louder and harsher than porcelain could ever dream or glass could ever achieve. The strongest material out there had shattered within it’s final moments of stability. What could anyone make of a pile of rubble, sharp and dangerous to bother with? There’s no gluing that back together.

There’s no mending that object that had been beaten by the owner and those around her. There’s no salvaging what she had.

The woman got up, legs growing weaker as she slowly and weakly made her way over to the dog. The ears of the boy lowered a bit, noticing his mother’s energy was like nothing he had sensed before. The redhead fell to her knees, wrapping her arms around the dog. The dog she owned and knew... But could not name. Her silent tears dampened his coat as she continued to hold him. This was her physical apology for everything. Everything this dog witnessed through these years. He watched her heart shatter after Brandon... Then swell after Ryan. He met his new brother who he loves dearly. He noticed Mich fall into a habit of alcoholism... Smoking more often. Altercations happening frequently if not daily. There were people she had made mad pounding at the door. The casualties and violence had skyrocketed, and there was less remorse to be found in her actions. He watched his mother fall into the worst parts of her life... Watched her breakdown after that floating man came into the picture. He watched her begin to avoid Riley and stray away from him. He watched her flinch at Riley’s name... He watched countless nights of her getting drunk and crying herself to sleep. He even watched several weeks straight go by where she didn’t get up from the couch once. Then slowly but surely... He watched her forget everything she’s ever known. Her legacy, her empathy, her mind, her family, herself... And the most painful part, her own dogs. Beaux head seemed to push against hers, as if he were holding her back to tell her he forgives her... That he still loves her. He always will.

That’s his mom...

It had been a while that she had remained on the floor with Beaux. Nearly an hour of an unmoving embrace. During that whole time she tried her hardest to recall his name... She felt like a failure when the point came to where she just couldn’t. This was it. This was the final stage of it all. If she doesn’t get to it soon... She will never be able to finish what she started.

She’ll never be able to heal.

“I don’t know your name, I’m sorry... But if I come ba- ... When I come back, things will be different... I promise. I promise you, big guy. I’ll do better. I’ll be better. I’ll be a better owner...”

“I’ll be a better mom.”

She nodded into his fur to assure him she’d return. Whether he understood her or not, the verbal promise was also a promise to herself. She will return. She doesn’t have a choice. She has things to do here... People need her.

But how long will it be...

“Take care of your brother...”

Sniffling a bit, she tries to break away to stand up, but Beaux kept his head locked around hers for just a moment longer. Strained whines nearly whistle tone whistled through his muzzle. He didn’t wanna let go... But knowing his time was up, he finally let her stand up. The whining still rang, as if his last plea for her safety. Beaux grew anxious, his paws adjusting and shifting as he sat. She gave him a tight smile, patting his head and bending down once more to give him a soft, loving kiss on the forehead. One more pet and she had to pry herself away. Not looking back, she headed down to the cellar to collect everything she needed. By everything, she means everything she needed. Because for a couple of months, or even years...

She won’t be coming back.

Jack hadn’t been home that day. It made it much easier for her to leave without a trace. She grabbed the bag full of things she needed, heading back up the stairs. Her gaze was glued to the door, her steps coming to a halt as her body forced one more hesitation.

‘It’s now or never.’

That was all she needed to break the concrete around her feet as she forced herself forwards to the door, grabbing the handle and forcing her body to twist it. As easy as a task that it was, her body’s fear was the biggest obstacle there was. A war had ensued within her, but the first battle was a success as Mich finally pried the door open and dragged herself out. She shut the door behind her, locking it up and taking a step away from the house to look at it as a whole. The memories she had... The pain these years have brought upon her. All that was to be left in the past. It’s time to finish this... It’s time to move on.

A shaky breath, she took one last good look at it. A long moment of preparation and perseverance... One last good look... Before she turned on her heel and took her final steps away. She can’t go back now. There’s no going back.

She didn’t look back.

‘Until we meet again.’

[thetomorrowshow]

i will make the sky collapse ch. 6

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Last chapter, but don’t fret--there is a sequel in the works! So far, it has just surpassed the length of this one! Expect the first chapter in a few weeks! It isn’t finished yet, so if there’s something particular that you want to see in it, let me know!

cw: blood, claustrophobia, violence, broken bones, depressing thoughts of death, hallucinations, slight gore within a hallucination, doctors

~

Crutchie wasn’t sure how long he had been locked in this closet. It was always pitch black, unless Snyder was in his office on the other side--then some light peeked in through the crack under the door.

For a long time, Crutchie had just cried, scared to death and certain he was going to die alone in this tiny space. Eventually, though, Snyder had enough of it, and had opened the door just to scream in his face and kick him a good few times. Now Crutchie just lay there, curled up on the floor, arms wrapped around his knees. He watched under the crack with tired, red-rimmed eyes, occasionally seeing a pair of shoes walk by, mostly seeing nothing but the legs of the stool and the beginning of Snyder’s desk.

Crutchie was alive, but exhausted. He’d slept for some amount of time, but surely not long. He still felt sticky all over, coated in blood and sweat as he was. He’d made a big deal over how small the space was, but he wasn’t sure that he could move anyways. His legs felt permanently affixed to his chest, his arms impossible to move from where they were curled. His stomach complained every couple of minutes--now that he’d gotten some food into himself, it was all offended that it wasn’t regular. Not that he thought he was ever going to see food again--or water, for that matter. Crying had left him immensely dehydrated. Every bone in his body was in complete and utter agony (he was almost certain his left arm was broken in some way). All of these ingredients added up to overwhelm his senses, making it so that Crutchie was unable to react to anything, motionless and barely present.

Still, he tried to hold onto the thought that he was alive. It had been his mantra this whole time, he couldn’t let it slip away now. Not like all his other thoughts. All that existed in Crutchie’s world right now was pain and discomfort. Even trying to discern whether or not Jack would have signed that paper was too much to handle. So instead, Crutchie stared at the small bit of light through the crack, and repeated the same phrase over and over--I’m still alive. I’m still alive. I’m still alive--until his brain turned to mush.

-

Every time Crutchie was conscious of his surroundings, not much varied. Each time, he wondered how long he’d been out for. Then he’d slump against the floor and stare into the office, if the light was on in there. If not, he closed his eyes and went back to nothingness.

Everything felt so . . . slow. Feverish, almost. He couldn’t have been here all day, right? Not that Crutchie could really remember what a day felt like. He must’ve got his head knocked pretty good.

Even his vision was blurry at this point, causing everything to seem shimmery and even less real than before. He tried to call out once or twice--even if he was coming to beat him, Snyder would at least break up the monotony enough to keep him safe--but his throat couldn’t make a single sound. At some point, he was certain that he’d been gagged. Reaching up, though, the only thing sealing his mouth was the same tacky blood as was covering the rest of his body.

When, at some point, the light in the room had been off for a very long time, Crutchie thought it might be nighttime. Or it might only be an hour later, just Snyder had left. Or maybe he just forgot what light properly looked like. It could be any of those, but Crutchie tried to believe it was nighttime. If it was night, it was another day he had survived the Refuge. Another day he was alive. Another day the strike continued. Another day Jack wasn’t found.

He could sacrifice himself for that.

-

Even though it was maybe-night, Crutchie didn’t sleep. He didn’t even close his eyes, except on occasion to blink. He just lay there, feeling the life drain from his body with every rattling breath. He’d been proud of how he’d smiled through the punishments so far, but now he wasn’t sure that he would ever smile again. He couldn’t even move his mouth. It had been so good for sales, too.

Not that it would matter, he reminded himself. Unless he gave Snyder the information, he was going to die in this closet. Assuming he was here until Snyder decided to beat up on him again, or until he talked. Maybe he was left for dead here, or maybe in the morning, he would be dragged out and put back to work. Even if he was sent back to work with the other boys, he wouldn’t last longer than a day after this. He hoped he’d be released to go home, as unlikely as it was. Not that it really mattered.

Crutchie had lost everything in the strike. Both his life and his position as a newsie had been forfeit as soon as the cuffs had closed around his wrists. His pride had vanished then too--there was no way he could make it with the other boys when they’d seen him taken down so easily. He’d barely been able to fight back, so even if, by some miracle, he found himself in the lodging house again, they would never take him seriously.

His crutch was gone, somewhere, presumably either broken or on the side of some street. Jack had first found it for him in a garbage can outside a pawn shop, then helped him clean it up and add padding made of an old shirt. Without that crutch, well-loved and useful, Crutchie would never walk out of here--and that was assuming he could get the other things back.

Last of all, Jack. If what that paper said was true, Jack was already halfway to Santa Fe. He had always promised Crutchie that they were family, brothers, would die for each other. Well, here was Crutchie, ready to hold up his end of that deal. Where was Jack? Gone. Probably.

Without anyone to shout against, Crutchie was finding it easier to believe that Jack would leave him. This closet was crowded with his demons and he couldn’t escape, could only blink slowly as the despair teamed with his physical agony to take him down. This closet teemed with torment, and Crutchie couldn’t even move.

A silent sob rose in the back of his cracking throat.

-

Crutchie was drifting.

Sometimes he wasn’t sure what was real and what wasn’t--was he in a closet? Under the floorboards? That felt more accurate, with all the thundering footsteps coming from above. He had been forgotten, stuffed into a coffin under the floor like he was already dead, like his body was something shameful that had to be hidden away even before he breathed his last.

Other times, he thought he could hear voices. So many boys, and even a few girls, all just talking over one another: fast and then slow, excited and then scared, angry and then joyful. Sometimes it grew so loud that Crutchie put his hands over his ears, crying and begging for quiet, before the darkness snapped into clarity and he realized that not only were his hands still curled against his chest, but there was no noise, not even from him.

Sometimes colors danced before him, flashy purple and green and orange, then slowly became dogs, colored strangely and barking and growling and attacking him, tearing his body to shreds right in front of him. He couldn’t help but laugh, though, even as their fangs dug into his flesh and pulled out great chunks of it. They were dogs, and funny-looking ones. He’d always loved dogs.

Every once in a while, though, he was conscious enough to tell real from not. In those moments, the closet was dusty and suffocating and made his spine itch under the white noise of pain. The office was silent, maybe dark, the stool that was visible under the crack still and shadowy. In those moments, Crutchie could feel his forehead burning, practically radiating heat, could feel the chills that wracked his entire body. In those moments, Crutchie felt relief, mixed with disappointment. Relief, because at least there was no floor above him, no screaming voices, no silly dogs devouring him. Disappointment because he was still here. Disappointment because Jack hadn’t come for him. Disappointment because he hadn’t faded away.

Those moments never lasted. The clarity was gone as soon as it had come, and Crutchie was back to whatever feverish dream was next. Every time he began to drift again, though, he sent out a prayer to whoever was listening, just asking that all the boys would be fine and the strike would succeed. He needed his brothers to have a better life, a better fate than his own. They had to survive, even though he wouldn’t. They had to.

-

When Crutchie woke next, it was back to the dark room. The voices from his last hallucination seemed to have bled over into reality, which was honestly frustrating. Why couldn’t this just end already?

Until the light switched on, and Crutchie realized that the voices might be real.

He blinked once or twice, his swollen eyelids sticking, trying to figure out what they were saying. Even in his mostly-dead, delusional state, he could’ve sworn he’d heard one of them before.

“--No idea,” one of them was saying. “At least--doesn’t--where--Snyder?”

Crutchie repressed a shudder, knowing it would sap him entirely and he wouldn’t hear another word. What were they talking about?

“No,” the other one--older, he thought--said. “If--somewhere--ought--him already, eh?”

“I don’t know,” and that was definitely the familiar voice. Was it . . . a . . . Crutchie actually . . . couldn’t remember. Who he would know, that is.

“Wait!” the person continued. There was a little bit of noise that Crutchie couldn’t discern. This was exhausting. Couldn’t he go back to being under the floorboards? “He took--why, if--can’t--out his crutch?”

His crutch?

“--believe--you certain--alive?”

Was he?

For some reason, Crutchie had to prove it to himself. He was alive. He cracked open his mouth, blood flaking off, trying to say something. Nothing came out. He ran his dry tongue over his split lips, and the taste of blood, the sensation of something, anything, brought his world into slightly sharper focus.

“He has--be,” the voice said, and--Katherine? Wasn’t she--what? “Crutchie is strong--just give up!”

They were looking for him.

Sure, Crutchie was dying, but he had to get out of this closet. Maybe if Katherine was here, Jack was too. Then they could go to Santa Fe together, with all the rest of the boys waiting for them there. All of them, even those who had left.

He just didn’t want to die alone.

Crutchie reached down deep within him, past exhaustion and nothing and non-existence and agony and despair and into the last reserves of hope. And with it, he pushed, pushed as hard as he could, to make some sort of sign appear. Something to show he hadn’t given up.

His right hand fell from curled around his chest to the floor.

“--was that?”

Silence, in which Crutchie continued to stare and see nothing. He barely even processed the sound of footsteps moving closer, until something was rattling the door his knees were pressed against.

“Locked,” a gruff voice said, “but something--in there. Find the key, Miss Plumber?”

Something began to bang against the door, making them shake even harder and so loud, and Crutchie wished the dogs were back. The loud voices were always the worst--he just wanted to go quietly. Instead, this awful noise rattled his brains around. He opened his mouth again, meaning to ask it to stop. No sound came out.

Then a click from the doorknob, and then--

This time, Crutchie screwed his eyes shut, unable to handle the intense amount of light that was now bathing him. He vaguely registered a gasp, so he did his best to squint up at whoever was there.

That was definitely Katherine, but he had no clue who the man was. Wasn’t Jack, wasn’t Snyder. Didn’t matter.

“Oh, Crutchie!” Katherine said, her mouth slightly behind her words. Her face was filled with horror; the man beside her had disapproval etched into every line of his face. That was bad, very bad. Crutchie shut his eyes again.

He opened his mouth for a third time, trying to say something normal like Katherine, what are you doing here or wow, am I pleased to see you or goodbye, but again, nothing came out.

“Water,” the man said, “and quickly, Miss Plumber. I’ll get him out of all of this . . . blood.”

Crutchie couldn’t even flinch as someone picked him up, with a bit of trouble--his clothes were stuck to the floor. He tried to focus on the air--fresh, open, with room to think. He pried open his eyes again to see the man leaning over him.

“Can you tell me your name, son?” he asked, not unkindly, but just sternly enough that Crutchie felt an unpleasant shiver run through his body. He couldn’t speak though, and couldn’t move, so instead he blinked twice--less as an answer, more as an acknowledgement. Adults hated it when you didn’t acknowledge them.

The man’s mustache bristled, and he pulled a handkerchief out of nowhere. Crutchie realized he had water now, as he dipped the cloth into it and rubbed it across his face. Crutchie let a bit of breath release through his nose in a sigh, his eyes rolling back and closing. Where had such cool water come from? He was happy to die now, it felt so good.

“Crutchie, please stay awake,” Katherine said, and Crutchie frowned a little bit. He was just relaxing, not taking a snooze. What was her problem?

A hand took his and he hissed as his bruised and broken fingers were made to move, but opened his eyes when the hand left. It was so strange, having a soft touch on his face and in his hand. He wanted it back.

Crutchie met Katherine’s eyes, silently begging to have her hand back in his. Instead, she began to pull off what was left of his shirt. “Oh, Crutchie,” she said again, peeling it away from his skin. “Sir, we need a doctor.”

The man brought a cup of water to his lips, pausing in his ministrations. Crutchie opened his mouth obediently, was too tired to choke when it spilled down too fast. It felt nicer than it had on his face--bringing moisture to the cracks in his throat, spreading relaxation to the rest of his body. For the first time, Crutchie properly realized that he’d been arranged so that he was lying flat on the floor, arms and legs spread instead of curled up.

“Send one of my men,” the man said, and Katherine was gone in a moment. Crutchie lifted his chin slightly, trying to show that he wanted more water. The man noticed, tipping some more into his mouth.

Something touched his neck and Crutchie flinched back, remembering Snyder’s hand gripping his throat so tightly he couldn’t breathe. It immediately left, and Crutchie looked up to see the man holding the cloth away from him, staring at Crutchie’s neck like it had personally offended him. Where was Katherine? She was good at talking things through, maybe she could explain who this was and what was happening.

“A doctor is on the way,” Katherine said, coming back into Crutchie’s field of vision. A doctor? He grimaced, shying away from the nearly empty cup of water. He couldn’t afford a doctor. Why would he need one, anyway?

Crutchie swallowed a few times, trying out the noises he could make. The cloth was back to rubbing his face, sometimes ghosting through his hair. Crutchie coughed lightly, then grunted. He grunted again, shaking his head minutely.

“What is it?” Katherine asked, and suddenly she was right in his face. He only continued to shake his head, making the motions larger until it hurt his head too much. He grunted once more, not quite able to move his tongue properly to make words.

Katherine understood though, somehow. She rolled her eyes. “You need a doctor,” she said. “Stop being difficult about it. I’ll pay, or Governor Roosevelt if he’s willing.”

Crutchie wasn’t quite sure who that was, but he closed his eyes and sighed as deeply as he could. Why was Katherine here? Shouldn’t she be helping with the strike? Why had Snyder even let her in?

He must have been making some sort of noise, because Katherine shushed him gently, once again holding his hand. He relaxed a little bit, allowing the man to wipe away some of the dried blood on his chest and Katherine to gently rub life into his fingers. He was alive.

-

The doctor’s examination was far too long for Crutchie’s comfort, and happened on the floor of Snyder’s office. The doctor prodded him all over, frowning and muttering. He said something to Crutchie--incomprehensible, of course--then gripped his left arm tight and--

Crutchie’s world exploded into pain; he was sure he would be screaming if he had a voice. Instead, he distantly was aware that he whimpered. His hearing and sight had cut out completely, his head was spinning, his arm suddenly numb.

“--set. Nothing much can be done--ribs, but rest. Is it--turn over?”

Katherine was up close again, smiling tensely, breaking through the non-sight. “Crutchie, the doctor needs to see your back. Is that all right?” she asked loudly, her words slow.

Crutchie stared at her floating face. Why was she talking like that? It wasn’t until after she nodded that he realized she was waiting for an answer. What had she asked?

He nodded a little too, then panicked as she and the doctor took him by his shoulders and pushed him onto his stomach. His ribs ached, back spasming painfully. He choked out a few tears.

A hiss of a breath came from behind him as someone cut what remained of his shirt off his body, using water to loosen it enough to come unstuck.

“Stitches, on a few of these,” the doctor said. “The others are too old. They’ll scar badly, but these that are still bleeding should leave nothing but a tiny mark after I’ve stitched them.”

Crutchie grimaced. He’d gotten stitches once, hadn’t he, from an older newsie several years ago after falling onto a particularly sharp stone. This was different than that, though--for one thing, it was probably going to be more than four stitches. For another, this was a person he didn’t know or trust working on a part of his body that he couldn’t see. Instead of pushing himself away with non-existent strength, though, Crutchie just gritted his teeth and closed his eyes.

It was over after several long, agonizing minutes, at which point the doctor turned Crutchie back over, handed Katherine a bag of bandages, and told her to wrap his entire chest and any other part of his body that he would allow. Crutchie looked down at himself to see that he was mostly clean, and shuddered at the multitude of ugly gashes in his flesh. The doctor also gave her a bottle of something, then tipped his hat and left.

The other man was also gone, but Crutchie wasn’t sure how long ago he had vanished. Now it was just him and Katherine: her dabbing a warm, soapy cloth on his wounds, him making little choked noises in the back of his throat at each stinging touch.

He looked down to see his left arm--the one that had hurt so much when the doctor wrenched it--was wrapped up heavily, barely moveable. Was it broken?

Crutchie blinked, and there was a cup of something hovering in front of his mouth. He let his mouth fall open, catching the bitter drink as it trickled down, bringing relief to his throat but a bad taste to his mouth. He coughed a few times as it was pulled away, then steeled himself for speaking.

“K-Kath?”

Instantly, Katherine was there, patting the cloth at a cut on his face. “Yes? What is it?”

Crutchie thought for a moment. There was so much he could say. Did he want to ask how she was here, what was happening, who the other man had been? How had Snyder let them in? Where were the boys? How long had he been in the shadowy closet? What day was it?

“W . . . did . . . we win?”

Katherine smiled, and Crutchie couldn’t find the energy to even move his mouth in response. “Yes. Yes, we won. You won.”

Crutchie closed his eyes, twitching when Katherine poured some of the stinging water onto that bad cut on his chest. They won. His sacrifice hadn’t been for nothing. Maybe he’d even been a catalyst. Maybe, because they were thinking of him, they won.

Crutchie let himself bask in that selfish dream, feeling the present fading away. He could sleep properly now, now that there were no walls forcing him into a tiny ball, no thugs kicking him around, no boys coming to the window in the middle of the night. He could sleep. They won.

[therewrites]

We Are Who We Are Overall Thoughts *spoilers*

This review will be discussing briefly some of the episodes so far, so SPOILERS

So I started watching the HBO original series, We Are Who We Are, and I am conflicted. When I initially watched it, the dialogue made it hard for me to enjoy it so I stopped. Then after a couple of weeks after its airing, I thought, what the hell? And this time, I was pleasantly surprised. I always maintain the belief that pilot episodes are either boring, messy, or just bad so I try to push past it in order to get to the good shit. The pilot for We Are Who We Are was...I’m not sure how to explain...different? It certainly wasn’t bad and it made an impression on me, but this show as a whole is hard to limit by just a few words. It’s really something that you should watch and experience yourself.

It was only after the first 3 episodes that I began to understand the tone and mood that Luca Guadagnino was trying to convey. A lot of the time, the dialogue is abrupt and choppy and can make no sense. It can be frustrating, especially when you have two characters that aren’t communicating effectively. But I think that was the point. Guadagnino is a very realistic director, he captures the most realistic elements in a film. A lot of the conversations between characters is meant to emulate real life. Like, what the hell do you say when a conversation becomes awkward? Well, nothing sometimes.

While Guadagnino’s typical cinematography may suggest whimsy, in WAWWA’s case the small structured and synthetic model of the military base is juxtaposed to the very concrete characters. When I started to view the show less as simply a televised airing of fictional characters and problems, and instead looked at them as people, I began to really enjoy it. 

Take the main character of Fraser, played by Jack Dylan Grazer. Fraser is meant to be seen as an extremely complex and troubled kid, but the difference between him and every other teen in a coming-of-age drama is that he isn’t polished. His drinking and drug habit isn’t framed as romantic or beautiful, in fact most of the time it’s portrayed as his weakness of sorts. In the first episode, Fraser has one of his mothers drive him home after getting pretty wasted and Luca graces us with a direct shot of him throwing up. And before that, Fraser is stumbling on a bridge when he drunkenly falls and cuts his face. Everything the character does is messy, uncoordinated, yet extremely real and relatable. Hell, in one shot you can clearly see him do a Naruto run!

Caitlin/Harper is a character that I enjoyed watching, as well. Jordan Seamon did a fantastic job and I really connected with their character. Initially we see Caitlin as this mysterious girl, and in the pilot we are meant to assume that their relationship with Fraser is supposed to develop into a romantic one. This is not the case as it seems that Caitlin is trying to come to terms with who they are. The biggest shift in Caitlin’s character isn’t their friendship with Fraser but probably when they get their period. 

This was a moment that even I related to, even though I am cis when I first got my period I didn’t tell my mom until the day after. The possible confusion and shift in their reality that Caitlin felt was only heightened with the conflict of their boyfriend wanting to be more physically intimate, and Fraser’s eventual discover of Harper. I would have like to see exactly why Fraser seemed drawn to Caitlin. I’m assuming viewers were supposed to think that Fraser is attracted to her, or something. But both Caitlin/Harper and Fraser are queer coded and their respective sexualities are alluded to not being straight. It would’ve made their standing as platonic friends more clear if this had been established stronger. 

I definitely think the writer could have devoted more time to giving certain characters proper conversations. It would’ve given more development to certain characters and better context for things. However even without that, there is a lot that the audience is showed that can’t be told through dialogue. The power struggle between Sarah and Richard being one. So far, there hasn’t been any explanation as to why they have a such a volatile relationship other than Richard being a homophobe. 

Through deeper inspection, I was able to interpret it as: Richard may heavily resent the fact the Sarah was promoted to Colonel and not him. It is never made clear who has the better credentials, Sarah or Richard, but assuming that she was the one promoted it is a safe guess. This may be highlighted by the fact that Sarah is a women, and also gay. Even before episode 7, it was clear that Richard did not respect her authority. I also interpreted it as Richard being upset that and openly gay women was promoted instead of him, a black man. 

Of course this is just based on my own personal knowledge of how the U.S. military can be towards people of color and LGBTQ+. Regardless, the competitive tension between two parents is palpable without needing dialogue to explain.  

When conflict happens, I can kind of figure out which characters are going to react and which one’s will stay silent. I think the show is trying to accomplish a drastically realistic and raw series. It took me while to adjust to it, but by maybe the 2nd or 3rd episode, it starts to grow on you. Despite not liking a good majority of the characters, I was very surprised by how invested I was in them. 

Like, Danny is my least favorite character because he displays very abusive and explosive tendencies, and doesn’t seem to care about the world around him. However, getting glimpses into his character and seeing how Richard ignores him for Caitlin/Harper, his suicidal thoughts, and how he is trying to reclaim his cultural and religious background makes me empathize with him. 

Even though I hate his character, I can see that he is struggling. I appreciate the way that this show freely shows dark skinned black boys dealing with mental health issues, and personal development. Rarely are issues like suicide talked about in the black community, so seeing Danny talk about it and Craig offering(admittedly poor)comfort was touching. This is a general vibe that I get from nearly all the characters on WAWWA. I also appreciated the how Danny is actively trying to convert to Islam. In shows, rarely is Islam ever portrayed in a positive manner. Especially when female characters are shown to be struggling with their religion, Islam is shown as this barrier that prevents them from living life. Hopefully it goes without saying that the “taking off the hijab” as a way to show that a female character is “liberated” is overplayed and does not offer any respect to the countless Muslim women who choose to wear hijabs. 

Now I think the pacing of some of the storylines could have been handled a bit more gracefully. Like how we jump from Fraser and Harper being kind of enemies(not really but you know what I mean), to just them hanging out in Richard’s boat was jarring. I would have at least liked to see the scene of them talking on the rocks at the beach. It would’ve given more insight on Caitlin/Harper’s character and also on Fraser too. Also how quickly Maggie and Lu(Jennifer but I love the name Lubaba, it’s my aunt’s name)jump into a physical affair. I just would have liked to see a build up of tension between all these characters but I don’t think this entirely ruins the plot. 

I was very iffy when I learned that the show would be focusing on trans identity and gender and sexuality, but not actually hire a trans male actor. I was afraid that the show would completely botch the experiences of being transgender, and honestly I don’t have the authority to speak on whether or not this affects the quality of the show. I am cisgender, and only can empathize with this particular situation as much as I can. But I would like to hear to the opinion of someone who is trans and elaborate on the ways that they did/didn’t like Jordan Kristine Seamón’s portrayal. 

Now at the time I’m writing this, the season finale has yet to come out. But I’d also like to briefly discuss the most recent episode and how it developed Jonathan and Fraser’s relationship. I was VERY worried that Guadagnino was going to take their relationship in the direction of inappropriate. While nearly all the depictions of Jonathan and his actions have been trough Fraser’s pov, it didn’t stop me from side-eyeing some of the interactions they shared. Of course after it was mentioned that Jonathan was supposed to be in his late 20s, nearing 30 I was immediately uncomfortable with the very flirty behavior he exhibited. 

So when the scene of Fraser going up to his apartment after Craig’s death, I was very on edge. If Guadagnino had gone the extra mile to show an even larger age gap then I would’ve been pissed. While I enjoyed Call Me By Your Name, the implication that sexual relationships between barely legal teenagers and adults well into their 20s was sensual is something that I see as very weird now that I’m older. So seeing Jonathan as the object of Fraser’s affections made me extremely warry. 

And honestly, I’m still surprised that the scene even happened in its entirety. I’m sure that Jack was not in any danger of being exploited but there were definitely points while watching I thought, what the fuck is going on? I was very worried that it would escalate, but I was happy to see that Fraser was the one who stopped it from going further.  It made sense to me that this scene took so many liberties to be as graphic as possible without being too graphic, in order to show why a situation like that would be scary and confusing for Fraser. It wasn’t lost to me that Marta and Jonathan were the one’s initiating all the sexual advances. They held all the power in that scenario, even more so because Fraser is younger and has the tendencies to not make the best decisions. Though it seemed that Fraser was trying, he knew that the situation was fucked up.

I’d like to hear what JDG felt and thought doing this scene. What was his character’s thought process?

I’ve seen a lot of people compare the show heavily to CMBYN, which is fine. Besides certain cinematic parallels that people pointed out, I don’t see the clear comparison. CMBYN is more of a love story and it’s more polished than WAWWA. Now when I say tat, I don’t mean it as a negative. Rather, We Are Who We is obviously more devoted to realism and its characters. I appreciate the inclusion of more LGBTQ+ people and black main characters with development, something that CMBYN lacked. And for some people who didn’t like the show based solely on the fact that it wasn’t a CMBYN tv show, I suggest just going into it with no expectations and enjoy the mess. 

And I’d also like to take a moment to commend Jack Dylan Grazer for his job in We Are Who We Are. All of the main cast are amazing actors and actresses and did a really good job bringing their characters to life. Though, I had always associated JDG with supporting roles that, while highlighted his acting talent, only put him in a one-dimensional light. As good as It 2017 was, JDG’s role of Eddie is only meant to be seen as a comic relief. In WAWWA, I was able to forget that he was teen actor, Jack Dylan Grazer, and really see him as Fraser. It’s worth mentioning that in a GQ interview, Grazer also mentioned how this role made him reevaluate is approach to acting. 

And after reading an interview he did with a Interview Germany, with him saying he spent months in Italy reading the script and trying to perfectly craft this character, I was immensely impressed. I hope that he knows that all his hard work payed off and made a really dynamic and interesting character. I really hope that in the future JDG continues with more mature or multi-dimensional roles because he displayed that he has the talent to do so. Him being so young makes me optimistic in knowing that he is definitely going places in his career. I also hope that there will be a season 2 of WAWWA because despite having hour long episodes, the show still felt way too short. There is a lot about Fraser’s character, and all the others’ characters, that I want more information and analysis on.

[cordria]

Regret

It was his mother’s birthday.

Danny Fenton slipped through the portal, careful not to be seen. He knew just what to get her - a flower from the depths of the ghost zone. It was a brilliant green rose-like flower with red leaves and thorns rumored to have some sort of magical properties. Danny wasn’t entirely sure what they were, but he knew his mother would love experimenting on it.

Kicking off the little spit of land the portal was located on, he spiraled into the wastes. He’d be home in a couple hours at most. Nobody would even notice he was gone.

--

Vlad Masters settled down at his desk, fingers brushing over the phone. It was Maddie’s birthday today. Slowly, his finger traced up and down the back of the handset, debating what to say. Last time, they hadn’t parted on the best of terms. Vlad was certain she was still harboring a bit of a grudge.

Perhaps he should just send a card.

“Oh grow a pair,” Vlad hissed at himself, picking up the phone. 

The phone rang and rang and rang.

Vlad almost felt relieved when it clicked over to the overly-full voicemail and he got to hang up. Now he could send a card, and not find out what sort of things Maddie had to say about their last meeting.

--

Maddie Fenton was too busy to answer the phone. She was sitting at the kitchen table, staring down at a mess of data, trying to make sense of the numbers. It was just about to come together in her brain - she could feel it - and there was no way she was going to start over just to answer the phone when it was likely a computer telemarketer.

The data showed a bit of information Maddie had taken to calling the resonance-factor. She would send a ping of sound into the ghost zone, much like sonar, and collect data from its reflection. They were using it to create a map of the zone near the portal and track how the ghost zone’s physical layout changed. But she had noticed this strange echoing noise in the sound, and the echoing noise had been slowly getting worse and worse. Now it was messing with the data they were getting back so much their maps were no longer accurate.

But what was causing it? How to stop it from interfering with her exploration? 

--

Danny curled past Skulker’s lair, noticing that it was much quieter than normal. Generally the hunter’s home was a cacophony of noise from his captured prey. Today there were just a few lonely mewls of sound. He hesitated, but shrugged and kept going. Who knew what went through that ghost’s mind.

--

Vlad signed the card with a flourish and set it in the envelope. It was a beautiful card that straddled the difference between felicitations and apologies for his latest choices. He stared down at the hunter green envelope, Maddie’s name already written in silver ink. Oh, how things would be easier if he could just explain the cause of his behavior.

But he couldn’t. That was just the way it was. He would simply have to do better.

He pushed away from his desk, deciding to invisibly drop the card in her home instead of mail it. As he flew out of his house and into the air, Vlad debated where the best place to leave the card was. Despite his initial leanings towards her pillow so she would read it before she went to bed and tenderly hold the card in her sleep, he decided the kitchen table would be more appropriate. 

She was probably going to shred the card anyways, and the paper shredder was in the kitchen. He might as well be realistic - and perhaps she’d be appreciative of the fact that she didn’t have to walk as far.

--

Maddie scribbled on a piece of paper, creating a graph of her odd data. It was an s-shaped curve, growing slowly at first, then quickly, and was now slowing down again. She sat back in her chair.

She’d seen graphs like this in the ghost zone before - it was actually the most common energy growth pattern in that world. Ghosts themselves used a very similar pattern when they were going to be blasting something. A slow gathering of energy, then a quick spike in power, followed by a slow pooling of energy until it hit the appropriate level to create the blast. Of course, in ghosts it happened over tenths of a second instead of over days like this one.

The end of her pen went into her mouth and she chewed at it. 

The graph was hinting at the idea that the ghost zone was in the final build up to something. Perhaps some sort of energy release.

But what? And why?

--

Danny flew deeper into the ghost zone, more and more feeling an odd sense of dread. Of course, a sense of dread in the ghost zone wasn’t exactly unheard-of, but this was definitely a weirder feeling than normal. 

He hesitated at one point, hovering in place and looking around. There were very few ghosts around, and they were mostly the really small ones. 

It was almost like something was… wrong.

He frowned, debating just heading home, when he saw a glowing spot of red and green. “Hey!” he said, grinning and diving down to the floating bit of rock. There was the flower he was looking for! “Perfect.”

Digging a pot and a shovel out of his bag, he settled down next to the flower and started digging it out of the ground. 

Then he’d head home.

--

Vlad’s feet settled on the ground outside of FentonWorks. He paced back and forth for a moment, gathering up the courage to enter into the home. Hopefully his last computer hacks preventing the Fenton’s security system from recognizing him were still in place. Otherwise he’d set off every sensor in the home.

He walked through the back door, making sure he was invisible, and into the kitchen. He hesitated, noticing Maddie sitting at the messy kitchen table, chewing on the end of her pen. That threw a wrench into his plans.

Perhaps he could now leave the card on her pillow… And steal Jack’s at the same time.

He tossed the idea out of his head and walked over, glancing down at what she was doing. Energy graphs. Really basic ghost zone physics that even he understood. So why was she worrying over them?

He squinted closer. An echo in her sonar data.

Resonance.

He let his card fall to the ground, feeling his stomach drop. “Shit,” he whispered.

--

Maddie heard someone breathe a quiet, “shit,” from right behind her ear. She tensed and twirled, weapon going up before she even had identified the fact that there was nothing there. She waited, gun up and aimed towards where the voice had come from.

There was the slightest of cold breezes. A ghost.

“I know you’re there,” she demanded. “How did you get into my house?”

The ghost shifted into view - the vampiric one that was always tormenting Jack. “Why, hello my dear,” it said with a greasy smile.

“Hello nothing,” she snapped. “What are you doing in my house?”

“Why,” the ghost hesitated, “I’m looking at your data. And what an excellent graph you’ve made.” 

Maddie’s eyes narrowed. That wasn’t the whole truth, obviously. The ghost hadn’t known about her data until it had already entered her home. But, based on the quiet exclamation from earlier, the ghost understood the purpose of the graph. And she was… curious. “What does this mean?” she asked, gesturing towards the papers with one hand, the other keeping the gun steady on the ghost’s face.

“It means we need to shut your portal down.”

“Ah… no. I don’t think so.” Maddie tipped her head. “Not without an excellent explanation.”

--

Danny grinned, slipping the shovel back into his backpack and studying his prize. Yeah, he’d done a hack-job on it’s roots - but who would have expected a ghost flower (a dead flower?) to have such an extensive system of roots? Hopefully he hadn’t killed it. He grabbed the pot, tucking it under his arm, and glanced around.

The quiet was unsettling. And there was this… it wasn’t quite a noise. Danny couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but it was something like the rumble of a really low, low tone. That he could feel in his stomach more so than his ears. And it was getting louder.

“I’m going to get out of here too,” Danny muttered, shooting into the air and heading back towards the portal, plant firmly tucked under his arm.

--

Vlad didn’t really have time for an explanation. He needed to shut down the Fenton’s portal, then head home and shut down his own. If he was right, he didn’t need the collateral damage ending up in his town. The city didn’t have the budget for it, and the city’s insurance agent had been quite clear that they weren’t going to cover any Fenton-related damages any longer.

But the weapon Maddie was holding was a powerful one. It would hurt, and perhaps cause permanent damage. He had little choice in the matter.

His fingers curled behind his back, clasping each hand. “Ghosts are immortal, yes? Then there should be an infinite number of them... us, clogging up the ghost zone. So there’s a natural balancing mechanism in the ghost zone. When too many ghosts start to build up in one place, too much energy is taken from the environment and the ghost zone reacts to it by annihilating all the ghosts in the area.”

He watched her blink and take that in.

“When the blast wave goes by, you don’t want to be in the vicinity. Your home doesn’t want to be in the vicinity.”

“I’m not sure that sounds…” 

She was speaking too slowly, obviously trying to think through it, and Vlad simply did not have the time for it. “I can come back and give you the longer explanation and spend hours explaining the data to you, but we do not have a lot of time right now.” 

Her lips tightened. But then she nodded. “I don’t trust ghosts, but I can accept the data points in that sort of direction. You leave, I’ll shut down the portal.”

“I’ll help-”

“You’ll leave.” Maddie’s voice booked no room for disagreement. 

Vlad was quite sure that doing anything other than vanishing would get him shot. He narrowed his eyes, waited a beat more, then vanished and headed home.

--

It took Maddie almost a minute to make sure the ghost was gone. She was spooked by the fact that it could get into her house in the first place - there was a bug in the detection equipment that would need to be sorted out relatively quickly - and had to track down a secondary detector before she was willing to let down her guard.

Shutting down the portal was another story. It was powered by the ghost zone itself, now that it was up and running, and pulling the cord would simply shut down the doors and sensing equipment. There was a way to shut it down, she just didn’t like doing it.

But the ghost had looked spooked. And the data… was pointing in the direction the ghost had indicated. Whatever huge energy blast was building in the ghost zone, she wanted nothing to do with it in her home.

She swore softly and picked up the Fenton Shut-er-Down-her (she hadn’t named it), weighing the grenade-like object in her hand. It would create a huge blast of foam that would block energy from accessing the portal from the other side, shutting it down as effectively as snuffing out a candle by cutting off the oxygen supply.

It would be killer to get the thing reopened. Weeks of work. On the word of a ghost.

Maddie sighed, pulled the activator on the device, and tossed it through the portal, thumbing the doors shut behind it.

--

Danny was twenty feet from the portal when the foam exploded. He pulled up fast, startled by the rapidly expanding white goo. Within seconds, the portal was completely buried.

He settled down on the bit of rock, feeling the environment around him shaking with the force of the whatever-it-was. He walked up to the foam, reaching out to touch it. It was steaming hot and sticky, still bubbling and growing like some sort of alien monster.

Behind the wall of foam, the green glow of the portal vanished. Danny felt the portal shut off deep inside him, like a punch to the gut.

“That doesn’t bode well,” he whispered, setting down the flower (he could come back for it later) and glancing around. “This is unsettling enough for now, let’s just get home. Vlad’s is… that-a-way?”

He took off at top speed.

--

Vlad made it home in nearly record time (not that he had ever timed it, of course, he was far too old to be timing how fast he could fly). He slipped right into the hallway, walking up to the picture that hid his portal. The button clicked under his finger, and the giant painting slid to the side. 

He had a similar problem to Maddie’s - portals are not so easy to shut down when they are powered by the ghost zone itself - however he had a much less elegant and far more expensive solution. He turned the power controls up to maximum. In a matter of moments, the portal would overload, fry the circuits, and cause a controlled blast out into the ghost zone. It would destroy everything in the area (and his portal) but the damage on this side would be minimal, contained by the portal’s door.

“Horrible timing,” he informed the ghost zone as he heard the portal start to whine. He’d known this was coming; the density of the ghosts had been getting too high. The energy in the ghost zone had been feeling more and more fragile. But he’d just been getting settled, got the ghosts to understand to leave him alone, and everything was getting nice and quiet. 

His finger hovered over the controls for the door.

--

Maddie stared at the dark portal. A portion of the foam had come through to this side, effectively gluing the portal shut. Behind the doors, no doubt the device was filled with the steaming foam, covering all the circuits and wires. 

Jack was going to be very unhappy when he got back with her ‘surprise’ birthday cake.

There was a short-ish window of time before the foam set up hard. She would have to start cleaning.

“Danny!” she called. “Come help me get this cleaned up!”

Silence.

--

Danny found the floating purple football and pushed it out of the way. “Found you!” he said, diving forwards.

The portal’s door was closing. Danny picked up speed, but he wasn’t going to make it. In the small space left open, Danny could see Vlad staring back at him.

“Vlad!” he called. “Wait!”

There was an odd expression on Vlad’s face as the door slammed shut, locking the portal shut and locking Danny into the ghost zone: regret.

Danny hovered, not entirely sure what to do. He rubbed his forehead, starting to get a headache from the constant throbbing. Then he turned. He had two options left - Clockwork and Frostbite. He had to get to one of them. They would know what was going on. They’d help.

He had barely started flying when Vlad’s portal ripped itself to shreds. Danny screamed, tucking into a ball and avoiding the worst of the shrapnel. he tumbled out of control, his arm flashing bright pain. By the time he drifted to a stop, goo was oozing down a huge slice in his arm and his ears were ringing and he wasn’t entirely sure which direction was up.

It took a precious few minutes for Danny’s mind to start working again. He flew in the direction he hoped Clockwork’s tower was, worried. Both his parents and Vlad had shut down their portals. The deep sound was getting worse, and the silent emptiness around him was starting to get terrifying.

He flew faster and faster, pushing himself to his limits. He had no idea what was going on, but he wanted out of it.

He hoped this time he wouldn’t be too late.

[hakaibunshi]

2020 fanwork highlights

Rules: It’s time to love yourselves! Choose your favourite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought into the world in 2020. Tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works! 

※  ※  ※

Thank you so much @kuriboh-i-choose-you for tagging me??... I am not good at this, but I will try to do something positive for once, I guess, and shamefully plug my own work........................(?) °_ °’’ 

feat. puzzle - scandal - pride - wish - dragon - kingcrab but tagging others first because this is going to be too long.

※  ※  ※

So many have already done this, but I was not able to find @pridefulrose @life-0r-death @shinayashipper @tenderwulf @the-kings-of-games if they already did this, then I am sorry, I miss a lot of stuff all the time ...

(And I am also sorry for tagging people who have never even interacted with me  人(_ _*) but I enjoyed their works so I am tagging anyway, please forgive me and ignore me if you want to)

※  ※  ※

O P I A 

[Puzzleshipping | ~12K]

He is used to seeing the world through Yugi’s eyes and filtering each experience through his thoughts; A thing was never just a thing but whatever Yugi saw in it. But not anymore. He watches his own fingers move closer, pushing in between the other’s until they finally all lock in place. He doesn’t know what that feels like to Yugi, but he sees their hands loving each other. And has to fully acknowledge that it is wonderful.

“No.” His voice feels comfortable for the first time. Along the length of his leg, Yugi’s ankle brushes in placid motion up and down. Bashful yet intrigued, Atem pays attention to how his body reacts to all these physical breaches. He also thinks back to what had happened in the photo booth.

Overall this story has just taught me so much; it needs to take a spot here. It was the very first time I have ever participated in a fandom event. It was the first time I wrote for Puzzleshipping, my first time writing Fluff, first time writing FOR someone else.

The pressure was so real, and I struggled so much along the way, but at the same time, this was the thing that catapulted me back into the fandom for real. After this, it seemed impossible to turn away again, and I realized how much I love not just writing but putting effort into writing. Polishing it, fighting against it if needed.

Break A Heart

[KingCrabshipping | ~12K]

Jack, who stood a head taller than Yusei, leaned down, hovering his lips over the fair skin of Yusei’s neck, sending hot breath on its path. Yusei’s desire was audible through his short breaths, but he didn’t care, not that he was keeping it a secret. The image in his head was Jack biting him to pieces, and it made him shiver. “Come on then, Yusei.” Jack’s voice was heavy, even if he hummed his words. He leaned in until he could feel the buckles of Yusei’s jacket against his chest. The beast's teeth playfully caressing the shell of his ear, Yusei couldn’t hide the vibration it sent through his body. “Fight me.”

This needs to be here not because it is especially great, it really isn’t, BUT it was something I wrote for me and for me only because this is what I wanted and needed and for once I really did not care if others would like it or not. And that was kind of special for me. Also this ship. It just makes me lose my shit, I love it this much.

A Wish Granted

[Wishshipping | Dragonshipping | ongoing]

“Ain’t as bad as it looks,” he felt the need to say. “Most are older.”

Yugi turned away and reached for the towel, wringing it in his hands. Already, just the sound of it had some bizarrely calming effect. “Sorry…, I didn’t mean to stare. I didn’t think you were hurt this badly.” He spread the towel across both his hands and gestured to Katsuya to lift his hand. Some water dripped onto his thighs but it didn’t seem to bother him.

“As I said, ain’t all fresh.”

“They were fresh once.” He slowly started to rub the dirt and dry blood off the skin, evidently taking great care not to put too much pressure at first, not to cause him any pain.

“Well, they don’t hurt anymore.”

The faintest, saddest smile hushed over Yugi’s face and for a moment Katsuya thought he might start to cry. “Hm… just looking at them hurts”, he said under his breath, as if to himself.

Katsuya thought about that for a second but stopped before he, too, could feel it.

My baby. Although it is constantly taking the back seat to make space for ongoing smaller projects and fandom events, this is so close to my heart. Jounouchi’s POV because I love him and I feel way too connected to this boy.

Even tho this is getting long: Inspired by @kuriboh-i-choose-you I will also put here a special mention [Scandalship WIP haha]:

HEAVENSENT 

is the first thing I started writing in 2020. And until now it is the one I most want to write but also rarely find the correct headspace to do so. But I want to share a little something here then, if I might~

It is a story of Kaiba trying to travel to the afterlife, but traveling into the past instead, whoops.

[Scandalshipping | Prideshipping | WIP]

(of chapter 2)

A strange and new insecurity bewitched him. Was he meant to bow? No one ever taught him about this. But he did not feel like bowing to the other, instead, he lifted his chin ever so slightly. “I was worried not to be able to communicate.” “I wouldn’t have a language barrier get in the way of my revenge. Now, where are my clothes? Don’t make me ask again…” The audacity had Atem nearly choke on his breath. Wasn’t it too much to talk like this, no matter who he was? “It would appear the servants have taken it to clean... I will make sure it will be returned to you. You shall forgive the insolence.” He thought about calling the guards in, but didn’t want to interrupt the time between them quite yet. Once the priests found out about his awakening, they would be all over the case. “May I ask your name? I wish to at least address you properly. Forgive me for not recognizing you should there have been a way for me to kn-” “Seto Kaiba.” Seto! By Rah, if this was a joke, he wished it to come to an end already. Besides him being interrupted yet again when all he did was try to be polite, to have his dearest’s name be used atop of his shape, how much insult would he have to tolerate? “Seto….?” “It is unfortunate… I thought I should have left a lasting impression on that ghost of yours.” “I’m afraid I don’t understand.” “Yes, I’m aware. It’s rather obvious.” Searching for his composure, Atem pushed aside the blinds, pretending curiosity as to what was happening outside, where nothing was happening at all because the whole world was happening right here. He sensed it through the vibrations inside his chest. Alarmed by the sound of naked footsteps behind him, he turned just in time to hurry and push himself between the door and Seto Kaiba. “What are you doing?” “Out of my way, Pharaoh, I will find the lackeys responsible for my clothes vanishing, and I will get them, hopefully before someone dares to rub them against a stone down in the Nile.” His trembling palms raised toward Kaiba's chest, Atem managed to stop his motion, incredibly cautious not to touch him. “There is nothing wrong with the Nile, but I am trying to be understanding. However, will you please consider your appearance and withhold from exposing yourself like this to the entire court. The guards might think you a mad man. I ask you to stay here, I will get your dress back for you.” “You better be quick about it.” “Just...” Atem did not appreciate the language at all, but the worst of it was that the harsh fold between Kaiba’s brows, the disregard in the air between them and the light garment made his knees weak. “Just stay here. And stay quiet. If you cause trouble, I-” “I got it.” He turned away. “Just get on with it.”

This is so long, how awful, I apologize !!!!! but also ... greatful if anyone at all reads through this x.x’’’’’ 

ヽ(´ཀ`」∠) 彡3

[theangelwithashotgun8]

Even MORE FAHC BS!

A continuation of this but you don’t gotta read that to understand this. Basically a look at Ryan and Gav’s relationship is, apparently, my newest FAHC AU

-

"This is Gavin." His new boss had said as he plopped a toddler in his arms, "You're his new bodyguard."

If Ryan was being honest, he'd taken up Ramsey's offer because he had nothing else going for him. Very few people were willing to take on the quiet, creepy, kid who looks like he was too young to be on the streets. Being a glorified babysitter is not the kind of job Ryan thought would be what gets him out of sleeping in alleyways or behind dumpsters, but he's that special kind of desperate so he just hefts the toddler onto his hip and nods.

He doesn't actually have to do much at first. Jack and Geoff are very involved fathers, often sitting on the floor for "tummy time" as they encourage their son to speak. Ryan doesn't know how hardened criminals like them came across a baby of all things, one that doesn't look a thing like them, but he tries not to think about it. Gavin is a happy and healthy kid, that's as good as it's gonna get.

But things get progressively harder whenever they go out. Gavin doesn't like his stroller, will scream bloody murder the second he goes anywhere near it, so Ryan is usually left carrying him or holding his hand as they walk. Turns out, Geoff has a lot of enemies and all of them want him and his family dead. Jack can hold his own, but Gavin is a literal baby and can't do much.

Ryan has always been okay with violence, had bloodied his own knuckles to protect his own and he's quick to react to threats. He's young, barely out of his teens, but he's vicious and ruthless and does it all with a smile on his face and Gavin on his hip. No one touches the kid when Ryan's around.

~

It’s been a year since Ryan moved in and Gavin still won’t speak. He babbles a lot, blows spit bubbles, and ecstatically points or walks over to the thing or person he wants.

But he won’t talk.

Geoff and Jack are in a mad race to get their son to say their name first. It usually involves bribery of the highest form, but it never works.

A small part of Ryan thinks he shouldn’t care, he’s just supposed to keep the kid safe, but he’s grown… Fond of the small family that took him in. So he comes home form the library with at least 10 different parenting books, all of them saying that children will speak when they’re ready.

“So you’re gonna talk when you’re ready, huh squirt?”

And Gavin, fist jammed in his mouth, blinks up at him with innocent eyes before giggling. He waves his spit covered hand around in excitement and says,

“Rye! Rye!”

The entire apartment goes silent at that. Had he? Did he just?

“Rye! Rye!”

Ryan cries as he scoops the toddler into his arms and though he threatens dismemberment if that fact ever gets out, Jack and Geoff can’t find it in themselves to really believe him.

~

Gavin is four.

It’s Jack’s birthday soon and Ryan is standing in the middle of Macy’s with Gavin perched on his hip as he scans the rows of handbags and necklaces. Right now the little monster is content to chew on his fingers and tug Ryan’s hair.

Jack had recently started her physical transition, now that they had the funds for surgeries she decided to bite the bullet and go for it, and he wanted to be supportive of her. Hence, staring at handbags and jewelry and wondering why he never thought to ask Jack what her favorite color was.

On his hip Gavin squeaks and slaps his hand on Ryan’s face.

“Okay, that’s it.” He says as he places the four year old on the ground, “You have legs. Use them.”

He still takes Gavin’s hand to make sure the curious boy doesn’t wonder off, “We’re buying a gift for mommy. What do you think she’d like?”

For a moment he thought the kid wouldn’t answer, but then he pointed at a display case and Ryan laid eyes on a gold necklace with green gems arranged like laurel leaves. It was simple, pretty, and would look nice against the dress she bought for herself last Christmas. If she and Geoff went out on a date it would be perfect.

“Good taste, Gav.” He said as they walked over to the case and politely asked for it.

He knows he still looks young, that the baby at his feet doesn’t help that image, but this is Los Santos and fuck if retail workers don’t already see too much weird shit. The cashier doesn’t even hesitate, just tells him the price and doesn’t bat an eye when he pays in cash.

All she asks is, “Do you want that wrapped?”

As they’re walking home Ryan knows they’re being followed. They aren’t subtle about it, not in the slightest, and Ryan feels more irritated than scared. Gavin starts to sing some stupid song he heard on Blue’s Clues and it’s then that Ryan feels a trace amount of fear. He tries to shake them, but what they lack in stealth they make up for in persistence. He’ll have to take them out then.

He turns to a parking structure that’s empty and surrounded by construction cones. The upper levels are unstable, but the city’s workers are stretched too thin and it’s sat abandoned for months. It’s the perfect spot for a confrontation. He rushes to hid Gavin near a part of the cement wall that’s fallen away. It’s a tight squeeze but Gavin is small for his age, he’ll be safe, out of the way, and out of sight.

“Stay here, okay? Don’t come out until I come to get you, don’t make any noise, and don’t look.”

“Is this real?” It’s their special code for when things are very serious and Gavin needs to be quiet.

Ryan nods as he tucks Jack’s present into his arms, “Very real. Hold onto this and don’t let go, okay?”

“Okay.”

When they come for him, Ryan is ready.

A part of him used to wonder if he should worry about how easily he kills, at how much sick joy he finds in feeling sticky blood on his fingers, but whatever innocence he had is gone now and he doesn’t worry at all. It scares Geoff and Jack, sometimes, at how efficient he is at his job, at how calm he is when the slaughter begins, at how effective his torture methods are. Sometimes he causes pain just to cause pain and that concerns and frightens them, just a bit, but they love him and how good he is with Gavin so they keep quite about it. They aren’t angels, they won’t try to act like them.

When he’s done there’s little left of the damn thugs. With their entrails and squares of skin thrown here and there the parking structure has turned into a macabre mural. He’ll have to come back later to burn the whole place down. They had screamed, but no one bats an eye at that anymore in Los Santos, he has time to hide the evidence.

He looks at himself, at the jacket stained with blood, at the boots that are sticky with things he doesn’t want to think about, and decides he should be cleaner about it next time. He shrugs off the jacket, wipes his hands off with the cleaner insides, and throws it somewhere he doesn’t care about as he turns to the crevice where he hid Gavin-

And he froze.

Gavin stood there, in full view, staring around him with wide eyes. Ryan closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. He doesn’t mind that Geoff and Jack are scared of him, but Gavin… Gavin is different. He’s had the kid on his hip since day one, he’d changed his diapers and argued with him to eat his vegetables. They watched cartoons on Sunday together and giggled whenever Ryan made a funny face at him. He was the one person in the world not scared of him, and now he’d ruined that.

When he opens his eyes agin Gavin is still standing there, but… But he isn’t scared. He looks curious, a little grossed out, but not scared. He’s still looking at Ryan like he always has and a part of Ryan wonders if he should be concerned with that, but he’s too thankful to think about it too much.

Ryan walks over and kneels down so he can see Gavin eye to eye. The boy blinks up at him and then gives him a blinding smile. Ryan reaches out his hand and without hesitation Gavin takes it into his own.

~

Jack loves the necklace, and hugs both of them close, “My good boys.” She says and Ryan’s chest fills with warmth.

~

Gavin has just learned how to climb a tree when someone manages to sneak past his guardians. A loud shot rings through the forest. It doesn’t hit, but it scares the boy so much that falls from the branch he was perched on. They had all moved too slow and now their boy has a broken arm. The second Ryan reaches Gavin he throws himself over the younger boy, rears back, and fires into the trees where the bullet came from.

A body falls, limp and useless, to the floor. They don’t even bother finding out who he is, who he works for, because Gavin is more important.

At the hospital Gavin clings to Ryan, sniffling miserably at the doctor who sets his arm and places it in a cast. It was a clean break, she says, it’s a good thing they brought him as soon as the did.

“It’s Summer.” She assures the adults because all three of them are shaking like leaves, “Lots of kids get into things they shouldn’t. You aren’t the only ones who brought in an injured kid.”

She doesn’t know that someone managed to sneak past them, had known they were heading out into the woods for a picnic, had known exactly where to hide. Someone had known what they were doing.

Geoff manages to thank her. That night they pack up the house and Geoff uproots them to England. He hadn’t even asked Ryan if he wanted to go with them, had just told him to pack up his shit and be in the car in an hour.

Ryan was family now, he wasn’t going anywhere.

~

Gavin takes to England like a duck to water. He’s adapted to the lingo in a way his guardians haven’t quite figured out and he even has a strong Oxford accent.

He’s also now 14 and an absolute menace.

“It’s just a movie with my friends!”

“And I’m saying that you can go, but Ryan needs to go with you.”

And Gavin, honest to God, stomps his foot. Even in England, so far from the influence and notoriety Geoff had built for himself, Geoff is not someone to be messed with. The only one who can act so casually towards him is an annoying twig of a teenager who looks two seconds away from either crying or throwing a fist.

“I’m fourteen, Geoffrey! I can take care of myself!”

“You can barely lift the milk jug you asshole!”

Ryan thinks that now might be a good time to intervene. Usually Jack keeps the two of them in line, but she’s at the store and so it’s left to Ryan to be civil.

“Look.” He says, drawing attention to him, “Gav, you know that Geoff is right.”

“But-“

“And Geoff knows that you’re old enough to go to a movie by yourself.” He takes a deep breath, “So. We’re going to compromise. I will drop you off at the theater. None of your friends will see me, I promise, and I’ll go see something else at the same time. Does that sound fair to the two of you? I’ll be close enough if something goes wrong and Gavin still gets independence.”.

Neither of them are too happy with it, but they take it. Gavin comes home without a scratch and Geoff breathes a little easier.

~

Gavin grows up, he graduates from high school and no one knows who cries more Ryan or Geoff.

Shortly after Gavin’s 19th birthday they move back to Los Santos.

Ryan has changed, has finally grown into himself and cuts an intimidating figure. There are whispers in the street calling him Vagabond. The city learns to fear his black skull mask as much as they fear Geoff.

Gavin hates being useless and asks Jack to teach him to fly and Geoff how to drive. He asks Ryan to teach him to fight. Despite his sporadic methods, Gavin is actually a skilled pilot and Jack beams with pride, even though he’s a dunce with cars and hand to hand combat. His first experiment with throwing knives destroyed a lamp and Geoff has since banned him from trying it.

He’s on surer footing with long distance weapons, but he’s more talented with his words.

Gavin has been weaseling things out of them since he could talk, and for a while they all thought they gave in because it’s Gavin and despite it all he’s their kid and they love him. Except it works with complete strangers, with just a word or two Gavin is conning people for everything they’ve got: money, possessions, sympathy… You name it, he can take it.

Geoff tries him out as a front man for a negotiation with some up and comer who’s getting too close to Geoff’s territory. Gavin smirks his way through the meeting and he doesn’t just take what he wants, he talks until the other man is gladly giving everything they want to them on a silver tray.

Gavin is good, very good, and he’s a bit vain with that knowledge. It all goes fine, until he tries it on an older mob boss, one with more reach and influence, and the older man just laughs and pats Gavin on the head. They all bristle at that but he just smiles.

“You are good. But your eyes cannot lie.”

He takes to wearing sunglasses after that.

Slowly Gavin starts to change his look. His hair gets dyed blonde and styled with gel, he keeps his nails trimmed and buffed. He drapes himself in gold and wears button ups and skinny jeans to all his meetings. His smirk never falls.

And then one day it does.

~

Ryan’s been doing this for a long time, but getting shot still sucks. He hisses and drops to his knee, glaring through his mask at the assholes who have him surrounded.

“The mighty Vagabond. On his knees before me.”

“Oh fuck off and kill me already.”

The blow never comes. Blood sprays from the head honcho’s mouth and Ryan blinks, stunned, as he tumbles forward, an arrow stuck in his head.

What the fuck?

There’s chaos all around as, one by one, gang members drop like flies, each with a green shafted bolt in their heads. Gavin steps out from the shadows, glasses gleaming in the last as he flips his hair out of his eyes. In his arms is a crossbow, one he’d bought last week as a joke, and Ryan feels like his brain is running a marathon.

Gavin’s trademark smirk, the one that makes Los Santos gulp because they’re going to lose something and they can only hope it’s money and not something they actually care about, but now… Now Gavin is frowning as he drops the crossbow, uncaring of the clatter it makes, and he kicks a corpse out of his way as he crouches down to Ryan’s level.

“Are you okay?”

He’s never seen this Gavin before, the one who kills easily and so… Abruptly.

But then Gavin pushes up those sunglasses and he sees those hazel eyes looking at him the way he always has and Ryan’s heart melts. Gavin blinks once, twice, and then his mouth turns up into a blinding smile.

Gavin reaches out his hand and without hesitation Ryan takes it into his own.

[fictionadventurer]

OC asks: Sarah: 97-100; Lionel: 93-96; Jack: 89-92; Eliza: 85-88; Daniela: 79, 82-84; Alessando: 75-78; Floriano: 70-72, 74; Lucia: 66-69; Marata: 62-65; Jarrock: 58-61 ("crowed" meaning "crowded" presumably); Bastian Diriks: 54-57; Lady Diriks: 50-53; Lorenz Fortuin: 46-49; Anya: 42-45

Alright, here we go.

Sarah

97. Where do they live? Who do they live with?

She lives in an old house near the university. She technically has her own apartment (later gets Eliza as a roommate), but Lionel and Jack share a larger apartment downstairs and she’s basically allowed to come in and out as if it were hers.

98. How do they calm themselves down?

Go on long walks, rant to someone (or no one) and/or furiously write down everything she thinks about what’s bothering her.

99. Are they co-dependent?

She’d bristle at the suggestion that she’s anything less than entirely independent, but she relies heavily on Lionel.

100. Are they a day, or night person?

Mostly a day person, except for the occasional late-night intense writing/studying session.

Lionel

93. How do they deal with stress?

Ignore it and hope someone else figures out how to handle it. And play the piano a lot.

94. Do they have a more submissive or dominate personality type?

In a house with Sarah and Jack, almost anyone would be submissive by comparison, but even by normal standards, he’s a person who prefers to step back and let other people handle the problems in life.

95. Do they have a pet?

He had a bird for a few days until Sarah objected. He didn’t put up too much of a fight because he was starting to find it distracting.

96. Do they have a stash of weapons?

Nope. He wouldn’t have the first clue what to do with a weapon if you gave him one.

Jack

89. Can they remember a lot of information at once?

Yes. He remembers everything and it drives Sarah nuts. (Especially since the only things he can’t remember are when he needs to pay his portion of the rent or clean his part of the apartment).

90. What is their occupation?

Right now, a student of languages (which ones depends on the world I build around him).

91. Do other characters respect your OC, if so, is it out of fear? Or do they respect your OC because they like them?

Lots of people like him. Plenty of people are even impressed by him.  Few truly respect him. (Jack is not among those chosen few).

92. If they were given minutes to live, what would they do? Who would they want to see and say?

He’d try to figure out a way to get out of whatever situation leaves him with only minutes to live.

Eliza

85. Are they self motivated?

Extremely. Once she decides to accomplish something, there is nothing that will keep her from doing it.

86. How do they cope with anger?

Stabbing things. She tried taking up embroidery once to serve this purpose, but the holes were too tiny to provide a satisfying level of destruction. Now, she usually just takes a pen and goes to town on a poor innocent sheet of paper (and the desk/table beneath it) until her temper is satisfied.

On a less destructive level, she’ll step back and figure out a plan to overcome whatever’s making her angry.

87. Have they ever been in a situation where they were helpless?

She does not believe in being helpless. There’s always something that can be done, even if the something is impossible to accomplish by any normal standards.

88. Are they organized or messy?

Very organized about projects and plans. Slightly messy when it comes to organizing her living space. Very messy about tending her hair.

Daniela

79. Is there someone in their life that they care about more than themselves?

She cares a lot about her father.

82. Are they good at mental math?

She’s decent. She can usually compute basic math with a little bit of thought. If it gets too complicated she needs pen and paper.

83. Do they get along with others?

Yes. She makes a point of being pleasant, not standing out, and not offending people.

84  Are they lazy?

Not usually. A very solid work ethic, but some days you just need to relax.

Alessandro

75. What is their biggest fear?

Being useless.

76. What are their goals?

Keeping the kingdom from falling apart. (Though this is a hard question to answer when I still haven’t figured out the exact political situation in the revised imagining of the story).

77. How do they go about achieving their goals?

Advising Floriano from afar.

78. Do they have a fight or flight response?

If there’s any flight involved, it’s a strategic retreat so he can figure out the best way to fight.

Floriano

70. Do they like themselves?

Before he was crowned, yes. After he was crowned, it seemed like his every trait and tendency was something that made being king that much harder.

71. Who do they dislike?

People who disrespect Alessandro or their late father.

72. What is their motto?

Never give anyone reason to hate you. (This motto has been very difficult to live up to after being crowned).

74. Have they ever been abused?

After he becomes king, he deals with a lot of verbal abuse (behind his back, but done in ways that it’s impossible for him not to find out about it).

Lucia

66. What is their pet peeve(s)?

When people wear clashing colors. It drives her nuts and she can’t look away. 

67. Do they have a disability?

Not officially. Sometimes has trouble concentrating, but not to the level of disability.

68. How do they react to getting flowers?

She will spend the entire day making sure everyone sees her flowers and appreciates her flowers and knows how much she loves her flowers.

69. Would they ever wear a flower crown?

The problem would be getting to to take off the flower crown.

Mirata

62. How do they relax?

Sing. Swim. Pray. All things, unfortunately, that she’s not allowed to do openly on land.

63. Have they ever harmed anyone and regretted it? Verbally or physically?

She’s got a quick temper and a sharp tongue that get her in trouble frequently, and she almost always regrets it after a day or two.

64. Do they like to dance?

She loves it. Unfortunately, her style of dancing is also one of those things the land-dwellers frown upon.

65. How do they get around their environment? Examples - horses, bike, vehicle

She’s used to getting around by swimming or boating. On land, she will always choose walking over any form of transportation that involves horses.

Jarrock

58. How would they come across to other characters? Examples- messy, lazy, childish, caring etc.

He seems like the serious, dutiful son; an impressive soldier who’d never step out of line or have a thought or emotion of his own. Unless you happen to witness one of his bursts of temper that reveal his very passionate underlying emotions.

59. Do they have a phrase they use over and over?

Not really. (That’s the kind of thing that I’d have to figure out over the course of writing the story).

60. In a crowded room are they in the corners, sides, or in the middle?

On the sides, present and watching carefully, but not getting too deeply involved.

61. Are they comfortable being in a crowded room?

No. He’ll stay for just as long as he’s required and he’ll leave the second he’s able.

Bastian Diriks

54. How do they cope with sadness?

Find something to distract himself--before, it was working with stars, now it’s listening to music. It also helps to find someone who’s having a worse day than him and try to help them out.

55. What is something they care about?

Loves working with the stars. Loves the family business. Continues to care about both even after the stars took his sight and the family kicked him out of the business side of things.

56. Would they die for anyone/anything?

He’d die for his family. Half of his family would prefer it if he would.

57. What do they do when they are happy?

He can get, like, obnoxiously cheerful. Drives people nuts.

Lady Diriks

50.Do they enjoy the arts?

She’s a leading patroness of the arts, so yes.

51. Do they like science?

She likes being thought of as someone who likes science (because that’s almost as fashionable as supporting the arts) but she doesn’t really understand it, so she learns just enough to nod along and seem knowledgeable when someone else is talking about it.

52. Are they more emotional or logical?

She’d says she’s entirely logical, but there’s more emotion driving her than she realizes.

53. How do they deal with their emotions?

Bottle it up. Deny it ever existed. Then take it out on the people around her.

Lorenz Fortuin

46. When is their birthday?

Not a clue. I’m not 100% sure they even use Earth’s calendar (they probably do). The most I’ll commit to at this point is that his birthday is probably in the winter.

47. Are they quick to judge?

He’s very quick to latch onto his first impressions of people as being the correct ones, and it can skew his judgement, but he’s willing to change his mind if given enough contrary evidence.

48. Do they have anything they are trying to hide from others?

He’s always trying to hide his lower-class origins.

49. Do they act different around different people?

All the time. He’s a very different person when he’s hanging with the upper crust than when he’s only with fellow artists or people of lower classes.

Anya

42. Are they close with anyone who is going to screw them over?

How did you know this was the whole point of the story? (Okay, he doesn’t quite turn against her, but it’s a close thing at some points.)

43.How do they adapt to different situations? Do they adapt at all?

She’s pretty good at going with the flow--being observant, staying quiet when she’s not sure what the right response is. But when she comes up with a plan of action, she acts upon it, and doesn’t always think through the consequences.

44. How do they speak? Examples - Are they soft spoken, hot heated, vulgar

Has a strong lower-class accent marring an otherwise pleasant alto voice. Very strident voice when she has strong emotions.

45. Are they opposed to violence?

When it’s directed against her, yes. When she needs to defend herself or her people? Absolutely not.

[sicklovesongff]

Chapter. 2

Jon

Bon Jovi, Whitesnake, Guns ‘n Roses, Kiss, Poison, Van Halen, Def Leppard, Warrant, Motley Crue e and of course, Skid Row. All those bands were rock 'n roll monsters. They were all reunited in a single world tour. The most expected tour of the century. The tour that would knock out more than eighty countries.

Jon was familiar with the work of almost all of those bands, some of them he even had the albuns like: Kiss, Warrant, Poison and Motley Creu. Others he started to know little by little. Some of them, really good bands and some of them, like Skid Row  and Van Halen, he had personal relations.

Van Halen he knew even before he had his own band. He was a crazy Van Halen fan and met David Lee Roth on a bar, after talking to him for five minutes, David became one of his best friends and one of his most estimated fans. David was one of the craziest guys Jon ever met. He really likes that stupid moron.

Skid Row was another story. His best friend used to date the vocalist Sebastian Bach during some years and Jon could say, without any fears of being wrong, that the time they were together was one of the scariest moments of his life.

He had no idea how Lizzy or Sebastian were still alive. The truth was, by the things he saw when they were together he kinda expected one of them to be dead and the other one in jail before the relationship was over.

Sebastian was possessive, controller, jealous and suspicious all the time. Lizzy always had a free spirit, at the moment they started to date, Jon knew everything would end up really ugly.

Sebastian never tried to physically hurt her, not that Jon had noticed. On the other hand, Lizzy had already thrown so many things at her ex that it was more than usual for Sebastian to go on stage with his head bandaged and a black eye. To say the least.

Explosive was the right adjective for that relationship and Jon really felt at least apprehensive every time Lizzy said she was going to sleep at her boyfriend's house. She almost always showed up at dawn at his house, her eyes stained with tears of hate and the news on tip of the tongue, Sebastian was in jail.

The day Lizzy finally decided to put an end to that relationship was one of the happiest days in Jon's life, after all he really feared for his friend, but finally she was free from her ex.

But being on the road with Skid Row was making him nervous. What if everything went back to how it was before? What if for some reason Lizzy changed her mind and wanted to go back to Sebastian? Well that was her call, right?

-Ready to go? - he looked up and saw her standing at the door looking at him with a smile. She was wearing a short denim skirt, a black blouse with white letters written “Bon Jovi” falling out from her shoulders and tied at the navel, she too was wearing a pair of black leather boots that went to the knee leaving her legs that were already quite thick, even thicker.

-Of course I am. You ?

-Sure. Let’s go already. I’m getting uneasy.

The two picked up their bags and got on the tour bus, it was time to leave.

Lizzy

When we arrived at the hotel where we were staying, I went to my room, threw my bags there and ran straight to Jon's room, when I pushed the door I saw that he was already ready to leave.

- I was going to your room. - He said with a shrug. - ask you to have dinner with me, shall we?

I nodded, Jon ran a hand over my shoulders and we headed for the restaurant.

The hotel was huge, certainly the most luxurious I had ever seen. When I looked around I saw that we were not the only band that was already there, I saw people with Kiss, Def Leppard and Van Halen t-shirts, good, David was already there.

I kept looking around and noticed something, Skid Row, yes there was a person from the band's staff and something inside me jumped, so Sebastian was already there too.

-Jon and my favorite babe. – I looked up to see David Lee Roth, yeah, I knew he was already there.

David was somehow discreet for his standards, he was wearing tiger-print pants and a flourishing green T-shirt.

-David, it’s really nice to see you. – I said with a smile. – are you alone?

- I arranged to have dinner with a friend, but that son of a bitch hasn't arrive yet, so…

-Ah, ok.

- And then? How are you? I haven't seen you in a while, where have you been?

-Japan. –Jon said quickly, gesturing with his hand for David to sit next to him, but instead he came around the table and sat next to me. - we were on tour there.

-I see. Hey babe, I’ve heard something hot. Is it true?

-If you tell me what you’ve heard, maybe I can say if it’s true or not.

-Bach is in the past? I mean, you really dumped the guy?

I took a deep breath before making a positive nod.

-Yes, he is. We broke up.

David couldn't help laughing out loud.

-David!

-I’m sorry. - He said lowering his head to face me more closely. - but, babe was about time, wasn't it? I thought you two were going to kill yourselves, you know?

-You and me both. – Jon said and I raised my middle finger and showed them both.

-Why don't both of you go fuck yourselves?

-I love when she talks dirty. – David said with a smile, Jon joined him.

- You know what? I'm tired of both of you, I'm going for a walk around the hotel

.-Skid Row is here alredy! – David said and I turned around to face him.

-I’m not afraid of Sebastian.

I followed my way looking around, I didn't want to meet him, but I wasn't afraid either, if we bump into each other great, it was good to put an end to this stupid apprehension right away.

Motley Crue and Warrant were the two entourages I saw arriving as I passed through the lobby, I really liked both bands, but Warrant in particular had something that fascinated me, their sound and lyrics were just perfect, I had all the CDs that they have released so far.

I walked a little further and went to the terrace, the night was quiet and when I saw how dark it was I remembered that I had promised to have dinner with Jon and decided to go back.

As I walked down one of the corridors, I ended up bumping into someone, my first reaction was to apologize, but then I noticed who it was.

-Lizzy?

-Ah, hi Sebastian.

He was there staring at me like I was a haunt. Sebastian was more charming than normally if that was possible. Black trousers and a white Skid Row tank top, his long straight blond hair was in disarray and he was sweaty, he seemed to have made a big effort recently.

-I didn't know Bon Jovi had arrived. - he said simply throwing his hair aside in a carefree gesture, I kept watching him, I was always fascinated by the way he did that.

-Yeah, I think we were the first to arrive, you know how I…

-Yeah, how you are with being late. - he said simply. - I remember that well.

I stared at the floor, that conversation was getting a little uncomfortable.

-Well I have to go, I arranged to have dinner with Jon and I think I left him alone with David, so ...

When I turned to leave I felt Sebastian hold my arm tightly, I turned quickly to face him. Hadn't he really changed? During those months that we were apart nothing, exactly nothing had changed in his head? In mine I knew it had.

-Sebastian, let me go. – I said.

-I just want to talk.

-We don’t have anything to talk about. Just let me go.

-There's nothing here that you can throw on me. - he said smiling, was it supposed to be funny?

-I'll count to three.

I knew my meeting with Sebastian was going to suck, I just didn't know it was going to be this early.

-One two Three. - He told me, but he didn't move, he stayed there still holding me and looking at me closely.

-Sebastian I’m serious, please let me go.

He didn't move, he seemed to want to react, but he just didn't have the strength. I knew what was going on inside his head, Sebastian and I didn't have a normal relationship, it was like we needed each other to breathe and that was hard to overcome. Sebastian had always been more in love with me than I was with him, so he was more reluctant to leave everything behind, it was as if I was a necessary evil in his life, I was not.

-Sebastian if you don’t let me go, I’ll start screaming.

-People here are used to screams, so I don’t think they will care.

Shit. How about now? I didn’t want to make a scene, but he was asking for it.

-As I said, nothing here to throw at me.

As soon as he said that I saw a bottle coming, flying from nowhere. It almost got his head. A centimeter closer, Sebastian would be on the floor right now.

-What the fuck…?- he started looking around.

I took the opportunity to set myself free and looked around. As soon as I saw the bottle I noticed it was a Jack Daniel’s one, the official drink of the fucked up stupid rockstars.

-Weren’t you asking someone to throw something on you? – the voice made me look up and as I did that I saw, not just one person, but four.

They were together, aligned as they were some kind of gang or something like that. All of them were wearing black clothes and their faces were swollen, like they didn’t sleep in ages. I knew those guys, actually the whole world and the whole industry knew them.

They were the infamous...

Motley Crue.

As I looked at them closely I noticed that three of them were caring bottles of Jack, except one, the bass player, Nikki Sixx.

-Did you throw the bottle at me, Sixx? – Sebastian asked looking at him.

Nikki Sixx shrugged.

-Weren’t you asking for that? Or did I get wrong?

I looked at him and saw something I’ve never seen in my entire life. His eyes. Something in his eyes scared the hell out of me.

-I Wasn’t even talking to you. – Sebastian said, his eyes staring at Nikki Sixx like he was about to kill him.

-No? I’m sorry, I just heard you saying that you had nothing to throw in your direction and I thought I could help you out.

-I was talking to her, and said SHE didn’t have anything to throw at me.

In a very fast gesture, Nikki Sixx turned to Tommy Lee and took his bottle of Jack, throwing it again in Sebastian’s direction.

-WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR PROBLEM, MAN? – Sebastian screamed, the whole Motley Crue started to laugh.

-Sorry, I heard the word throw, I thought you were asking again.

Sebastian just stared at me again before going on his way. I followed him with my eyes. Shit, shit, shit!

When he disappeared I looked at the four guys in front of me. The older one, the guitarist Mick Mars just took a breath and passed by me as I was invisible. The blonde one, the lead singer Vince Neil, winked at me as he passed.

-Are you ok? – Tommy Lee, the drummer and one of the terror twins asked when he got closer.

-Yeah. – that’s what I had the strength to say.

-Nice. See you around babe.

When Tommy Lee left Nikki Sixx got closer to me.

-Thank…

-Whatever. – he said bumping into me before leaving.

I stayed there. Looking at him as he walked away. What the fuck is wrong with that guy?

[morshtalon]

Dragon Quest II

Well, it's been a while since I wrote a review on something. I've played a number of games in the meantime, but none of them really gave me anything I felt was worth talking about or that hasn't been talked about before, so I just keep them in the backburner of my mind for possible future reference.

However, I feel like current circumstances make for a good time to dig up one of the games I wanted to share my thoughts on for a long time, and that I had beaten before even writing the first review I've ever "published". That game is Dragon Quest II.

Part of the reason why I held off on it for so long is that I don't think my review of the first game is all that great, and another part is that, again, I don't feel like I've bunched up enough good stuff to say, even though I really wanted to talk about it ever since I played it.

But hey, by far and wide my post popular post is technically related to Dragon Quest II, so why not cut to the chase and do it, right?

Anyway, to say that the first game took off in popularity is an understatement, it being the seminal harbinger of an entire genre of gaming that would soon take the world by storm. You would think that means this would be the time-old tale of "runaway success game making company executives pressure developers into slaving away at a sequel with suffocating deadlines". However, planning for DQII apparently began before DQI was released. 1986 was a different time, I guess. A time when the industry was fledgling enough that it wasn't that much more than a group of dudes banding together to bring an idea to life, and then - not a moment of hesitation after that idea comes to fruition - immediately start brainstorming ways in which they can build on it to give birth to new, more complex explorations of the concepts they had just tackled.

I believe this is why it's good to go back and play these games in their original versions, in chronological release order. Nowadays, it's virtually impossible to innovate. Back then, almost every big-time franchise was always finding ways to breathe fresh air into the structure of their games. Though Dragon Quest isn't the most innovative when compared to the likes of Final Fantasy, they were still making great strides into the codification of the type of game they had pioneered. With that knowledge in mind, one can really appreciate the evolution by going back and exploring these things as they grew with the times. And hey, Final Fantasy still wasn't around by the time DQII came out, so once again, they had to rely on ideas from western RPGs they liked.

In my opinion, II is the first jRPG that actually feels good to play, if you can put yourself into the mindset of an 80's gamer. The designers felt the 1v1 battles of the first title were boring - a sentiment which I share - and put in different groups of enemies as well as extra party members for you to find. One thing that some of these old RPGs that only let you target a group of enemies does is drawing only one enemy sprite on-screen to represent the entire group. Surprisingly, this game does not do that, even though it predates all the ones that do. It draws every enemy on-screen, which doesn't seem like much nowadays, but it's very appreciated nonetheless. Sure, it came at the cost of battle backgrounds (all fights in this game are set against pure blackness), but they did the right thing. The party itself follows what would become a typical archetype of 3-person groups: One character who is a jack-of-all-stats, balanced between physical prowess and magic, one who is focused on physical combat (in this game, this character actually has no magic capabilities whatsoever), and one who is a pure mage. Perhaps surprisingly, because these structures hadn't become tropes yet, the main character is the physical one, and he's also pretty much the most reliable party member by a reasonable margin, even though all he can do is attack normally. Balance issues aside (we'll talk about that later), I honestly sort of dig this arrangement. It's a little bit of a breath of fresh air to see the main character in an RPG rely completely on his weapons, and in the future, in any DQ title that has a reasonable degree of character customization, I always try to make the protagonist a physical powerhouse, to match the one from this game. It hardly ever works, but hey, it just goes for show that I enjoyed it while playing. Given that the other party members join you as you progress through the game at specific points, that also means the complexity of magic spells is added to your arsenal slowly, getting you used to it without feeling overwhelming. Sure, the game is simple enough that it wouldn't be overwhelming regardless of how they had set up the pacing, but I never felt like any of the times I struggled were because of insufficient knowledge of the game mechanics. So, the battles are fun enough, and they feel just right in terms of complexity vs. focus. The strategies to win are simple - really, the whole game is very simple - but it does its job well, and it allowed the developers to have near-perfect control of the game's difficulty curve. As a result, it is also - almost up to the end of the game - pretty nice, even if the whole thing is on the challenging end of things. At the end, it gets... A little special. We'll get to that later.

Let's take a step back and look at the gameplay outside battles. First of all, the story is... sparse, to say the least. Not as much as the one in the first game, and supplemented in the international version by a frankly kick-ass introduction that gives the experience a certain tone and atmosphere I appreciate a lot, but still, it's 1987. jRPGs were... not so much about the story back then, if you can believe that. In fact, they were more like an extension of a point-and-click adventure game. DQII is, essentially, a big fetch quest. In a different story, one that has enough plot points that you can sense a type of underlying narrative progression, I would not enjoy having the game interrupted by a blatant collectathon. However, the fetch quest aspect is basically the soul of this entire game. The extremely loose story paves the way for an experience that boils down to pure exploration and combat, with light elements of puzzle-solving woven in, using the fetch quest premise simply as a background to leave the developers with fertile soil to plant their little tricks and enigmas without worrying too much about how it would all connect rationally. And here, we witness an aspect of old games that could only spring about as a byproduct of limited graphics, ill-defined representations of the setting's reality, and a healthy disregard for common sense, things that were the style at the time. The puzzles, and sometimes just the exploration, violate logic quite heavily. Traversing through a monster-infested castle to get to a point that is technically outside the castle, but you can't just walk around it because most of the outside grass tiles are exit tiles that warp you back to the world map? Sure, why not? Having dedicated "teleport-room" maps that only serve the explicit purpose of housing a teleporter to another part of the world, except for one which also houses a chest with an essential item if you walk along the right border of the map, but not the identical-looking left one? Mario 2 hid a goal post inside a secret too, so yeah! Throw that in! Stairs down in a brick islet surrounded by water which brings you to a room that's... Also at water level? We hardly have enough tiles to go around, let alone a set to represent underwater or underground rooms, so whatever! Nobody cares! And, honestly, I truly don't care, either. If a game is up to, let's say, willfully forgo a bit of logic in order to formulate a creative puzzle to play around with your expectations, then all the more power to it. I honestly feel like puzzles nowadays are too sectioned-off, contained within a single room in a single dungeon, ready for the player to walk in, solve it, move on to the next point in the flowchart and never think about it twice. When puzzles are woven in so closely with the world, requiring the player to think outside the box at all times, as they're out there exploring, it makes the whole game feel like it's working together to make a point, and helps reduce that feeling one gets when playing RPGs where there are very separate elements of gameplay that... Don't really connect to each other very well. Sure, you're blatantly aware you're playing a videogame at all times, and it's not super great for immersion, but this was a time when there just... wasn't enough memory for immersion. It was a constraint that naturally gave way to challenges that capitalized on its own limitations, and therefore, created a type of immersion of its own, where the player is completely sucked into their own thoughts, holding a notebook with a rough sketch of the world map in their hand (yeah, I might have done that), taking notes and thinking where in the world could that last crest possibly be?! I think DQII hit that sweet spot of looseness vs. clarity in the narrative that helped these wild, nonsensical elements flourish. I really don't know how other people react to this sort of thing, but I don't care. I had a good time with it, and soon after this game, everything RPG started to become more focused on story. That's definitely not a bad thing, but I felt a kind of clear, developer-to-player kind of communication from these small bits of wrongness that made me more aware of the time, effort and creativity put into it by the people who were making it. I realized that, were I in the shoes of the dude who was making all this crazy stuff, I'd be stoked to see my friends trying to solve them. I'm not trying to be sentimental, that's how I honestly felt while playing that part with the teleporter and the chest. In any case, I appreciated it.

Then you get to the road to Rhone.

Though, apparently, the game was not pressured into deadlines by higher-ups, I did read something about one of the guys in the team offhandedly setting a deadline that turned out to be just that little bit too tight, requiring it to be delayed from November 1986 to January 1987. This, along with the fact that, at the time, the second title in a franchise had the habit of being designed for people who were hardcore fans of the first game in that series, might go a little ways into explaining why everything starting from the road to Rhone is absolutely fucking brutal. Every element of the game that, previously, was a tad questionable, leaving that little itch of worry in the back of your head, returns here with the express intent to make your life miserable. I have a high tolerance for difficulty, one that is even higher for RPGs where, for the most part, there are always ways to slightly circumvent it and make your life easier. The simplicity of design in DQII means that this is not the case here, and from this point on you're expected to not only have the skill and familiarity you've accrued while playing, but also a very healthy amount of luck to go with you, otherwise you will die. And rest assured, you WILL die. In fact, due to the specific way in which the player's mortality rate skyrockets in Rhone, it's almost not even a matter of the game being "hard" in the traditional sense, because it doesn't exactly require you to be strong enough or smart enough anymore, it just requires you to be patient enough to slowly trudge through the mountain of corpses of your former attempts until you figure out how to minimize your risks to the lowest degree they possibly can be minimized, then hitting that sweet spot of luck and control that finally allows you to reach the end of the game. This particular way of handling things means that, after you hit about level 30 with the main character, further leveling will only render you negligibly less likely to die, and the effects are not strong enough from level to level to even be clearly noticed. But what exactly makes it so hard? The answer is primarily RNG. When you reach the end, you will begin to notice just how much RNG there is through the whole game. Starting off, the turn order is entirely random. There is an agility stat, but I never found any evidence of it actually factoring into who goes first in battle (instead, it's a carryover from DQI that calculates your base defense). If there are more than three enemies, you're at a disadvantage, but even if there aren't, a stray run of bad luck - which is guaranteed to happen given the density of random encounters - means you're gonna have to scramble with enemy attacks, and they are perfectly capable of leaving you in such a state that it would take a miracle to put yourself back in shape, if they don't just wipe you out instantly. Now, remember, two of your three characters have magic. However, at this point in the game, enemies have a large amount of magic resistance to all kinds of different spells, and magic resistance in this game means that there is a chance the spell simply won't work. If it does, it deals full damage. If it doesn't, it deals none at all. I don't know about you, but I almost never take my chances with low-accuracy, gimmicky stuff in other games. This one renders all spells like that given enough time. If you decide to rely on physical strength, the main character is the only one who will bring you any significant results. The pure mage at this point in the game is far more efficient at support casting than direct damage, and the balanced character is - memetically, at this point - incompetent at both, and also sucks as a physical fighter, so once again, you're boned on that front. All of a sudden, running away becomes an alluring strategy. However, once again, there is an ever-prevalent random factor to it, so the pressure is on in all fronts. The game becomes a challenge of carefully planning out how to simply survive each encounter. Do you take the chance and run? If you fail, you'll be wailed on by the full force of the enemy party, and will likely be too weak to attempt mounting a resistance. Do you take the bait and unleash the full force of your attacks? What if they all target different enemies in the group? You won't deal enough damage to kill one of them, so you'll suffer heavy retaliation and waste precious MP that could be spent on healing spells. Did you win or escape successfully? You've only lost about 20% of your health, but some encounters can relieve you of the remaining 80% before you can even act, so do you spend MP healing or do you trudge on because you already don't have that many to go around? If you make the wrong decision at any of these break points - and rest assured, there won't be a shortage of them - you'll either die or get so close to death it will be almost irrelevant to keep going. And then, it's back to the last save point. Rinse and repeat many times until you clear the road and get to Rhone proper, for one final save point and one last, grueling stretch of game before the final boss. Here, the game introduces enemies that have, no joke, a move that kills your entire party and has 100% accuracy. Typing it out, it sounds like hyperbole, like i'm salty that I died so much and am exaggerating the things the game does in order to trick myself into believing that it was super impossible times infinity, but no, it's true. To be fair, there isn't a high chance the enemy will perform this move, but when they do, there's absolutely nothing you can do to save yourself. Just reset the game when the screen turns red. Other than that, the rest of the lovely cast of enemies rounding up the final waves are more than capable of just killing you the regular way, so keep your wits about you like you did back in the cave and grind yourself up until the stat bonuses start getting negligible, because now, you need to face five bosses in a row. Right, okay, technically you can go back and heal yourself right before the last one, but I didn't know that, so if you're an idiot like me, try to get ahold of a Wizard Ring, as well. It's the only way to heal MP, and can be used multiple times until - you guessed it - it randomly decides to break. After that, you just have to contend with two bosses that use a move that heals all their HP when it gets low, so you also have to roughly keep track of their state in your mind so you can unleash a full round of attack before they can get in that heal. Unless your spell doesn't hit them, of course. Or they happen to go first. Or you just barely miss the threshold of HP that will actually kill them. Oh, and be careful! One of the other bosses also knows the instant death move. He won't use it often, but 30 or so attempts in, you're likely to see it once or twice.

Then, the final boss can randomly spawn with a number of hit points between 75% and 100% of his assigned value (every enemy does that), and you're gonna deal an average of about 15% damage per turn to it. Sounds easy at first, but he will take you out in either one or two moves, and...

...Here's the motherload...

...He has a 1 in 16 chance of casting the full heal move at any point in the battle. And he WILL do that the first 2 or 3 times you get to him, sucking you dry of resources and smashing your face all the way back to the save point to try the 5 bosses again, so it's back to grinding attempts until you have another mostly hopeless shot at him.

But when you get him, man...

When you do it...

*sigh*

Anyway, this was a long, rambling, focus-shifting tangent just to correctly capture the degree of luck and randomness that constitutes the final stretch of Dragon Quest II. How does it impact the rest of the game? Well, I still appreciate it for what it did right, and there's a small, strange part of me that actually thinks the insane difficulty perfectly fits the stakes that the game set up, but it is, nevertheless, very hard. And once again, it's the kind of hard that is virtually impossible to circumvent. For any average, non-god-tier player, there is no alternate way of tackling the simple-looking, but highly controlled challenges in this game that trivializes it. You can't change your party, you can't buy extra spells, you can't really use stat-up items to change stat configurations in any significant way. You just have to keep trying and hope it works, and for the first few dozen times, it won't, so you'll just have to deal with it.

Still, it shows, even up to the end, that the DQ team has a certain grasp of consistency in design that will slowly grow and adapt as the series embraces new complexities through the years. DQII stands as somewhat of a black sheep in the series (as the second titles of old franchises often do), but I think it has its place, and it's surely a wild ride. Also, if you can get yourself into the mindset of late 80's design, I can assure you it won't ever be boring. Maddening, sure, but not boring. It's more fun in the midgame, in my opinion, as for someone who is very used to RPGs, it can be exceesingly simplistic at the start and too hopelessly uncontrollable at the end, but I feel it deserves a score of 7 out of 10. It's pure gameplay, and, for what it's worth, you WILL get an intense experience. Just be ready to shake, a lot. And pad your walls.

[junkyardlynx]

“Hi, senpai!”

Gudao froze for a second, that single word piercing his heart far more effectively than any lance. The collection of days he spent in that underwater digital hell had created an almost elementary fear of the word. It seemed to herald the arrival of heartbreak and pain - he’d only just come back, and he had not come back whole.

Of course, no one in Chaldea knew. Explaining seemed futile, as the Seraphix oil rig and it’s dark secrets had been retroactively removed from his current place in the timeline. Dismantled at the start of 2019, they said. It seemed easier to let sleeping dogs lie on the ocean floor, rather than drag things that had never come to pass up to the surface. 

“Hey, Mash.”

He spun on his heel, one hand rubbing the back of the head as he waved two fingers at her in a peace sign. He smiled, closing his eyes so that she couldn’t look into them. It hurt to be looked at. He’d climbed through seven hells and obtained scars mental and physical to show for it, but this new pain stuck like fat meat to his ribcage. 

It made sense, really. 

He’d died. 

Not this him, but another. This him, but not him. From the same timeline, but different. A different set of circumstances.

A beautiful swan had saved him.

A cruel swan with shattered wings, nestled in the muddy lake. Cruel to others in a superficial way, meant to create distance. Cruel to herself above all others because she blamed herself for his once upon a time death.

She’d died. 

She was gone, a whisper of something that couldn’t have been. A doll, filled up with emotions and sent to break itself upon the digital waves to fulfill a purpose that wasn’t hers. She’d rebelled, and that rebellion was beautiful. The doll had become a girl, so terribly human in her final moments, even as she transformed her broken arms and porcelain legs into a weapon meant to save a single person. She had never run away. Her entire existence was an arrow, shot straight and with beautiful resolve. She kept moving forward.

He shut his eyes a little tighter as Mash approached him, feeling hot tears pooling behind them. He brought his hand up to his mouth, feigning a yawn. It was easier to play the “dopey, tired young Master” right now. It usually was. 

“Ah, are you alright, senpai?”

“Oh, yeah. Just a little tired...”

“In that case, let’s do some morning calisthenics! We have to wake you up, you’ve got some summoning trials to run.” 

Mash grabbed his hands a little forcefully, pulling him into a set of jumping jacks. He laughed a little, jumping with her, but his heart wasn’t in it.

“That BB girl said you’ve got some extra work to put in today. Who is she, anyway? She just sorta showed up the other day.” Mash’s inquisitive stare was innocent and joyful, and that seemed to make things worse. Gudao turned away. 

“Ah, like I said. There was a little singularity blip or whatever and apparently she’s from the moon? I stopped asking questions, I’m pretty sure she just lies about everything.”

Like how she said he could see her again. That was a lie, wasn’t it? “...got it, with any luck we’ll see each other again.” Bullshit. I’m not stupid, he thought. I may joke around and may laugh and react in awkward ways, but I’m not stupid. I’ve been doing this a lot longer than anyone should have to. Alter Egos aren’t registered in the Throne. You can’t summon them. Someone would have to forcibly write them into the throne. I’m pretty sure that just me thinking she’s a heroic existence isn’t enough. Even though she helped save us all. 

“Hmmm. Well, alright. I’m going to go feed Fou, and then I’ll be along to cheer you on, senpai!”

“Thanks, Mash. See ya.”

He was ashamed at how fast he turned away and marched down to the summoning circle. His emotions and attitude felt like he was betraying Mash, even though he never saw her in that way in the first place. She would always be his precious and best friend, but something new had blossomed in his heart in SE.RA.PH. A sickening, stabbing sort of...love. This was getting too complicated for him. It was always just about lofty goals like saving the world and those he could reach in front of him. 

Now it was about seeing one person again. Even if she didn’t know him, even if she never knew the things she did for him. To see her again meant that the stray little bit of data he desperately grasped as he was rayshifted back was true, that the binary world of 0′s and 1′s in that abyssal paradise was something meaningful even though it’s existence had been erased.

Just a small scene. A whisper as the spear that broke through time bent the back of lust’s keeper. A flash of light, heat, and a few simple words.

“...But our hearts will be linked. Always.”

Shaking his head to clear out all unnecessary thoughts, he brought something out of his pocket while stepping into the summoning circle. When aiming to summon a particular Servant, it helped to have a catalyst directly related to that existence. 

A small, tattered blue ribbon. The physical form of the memory he had grasped with his own digitizing hands in the final few moments. An impossible miracle.

Gripping it tightly, Gudao began to work as a cancer from the moon observed him from the control room, that unreadable smile on her sweet and unjust face. A cruel and kind face that lied when it suited her and told the truth when it amused her. There was nothing that made her love humanity more than moments like these, full of desperation and hope. She spoke to herself, as if lamenting something.

“Ah, you really are an idiot, aren’t you? ‘I’m just an Alter Ego in his eyes.’ For being a part of me, you sure are dumb.”

[spectral-musette]

So I saw the new live-action Aladdin last night.

Like Beauty and the Beast (2017), this was a direct remake of the animated musical from the Disney Renaissance, songs and all, with a new script following the same storyline. BatB (2017) worked a little better for me, personally, I think, but that’s quite subjective, and I can definitely see people preferring Aladdin (2019).

This movie faces the similar trouble of BatB in that Aladdin (1992) is such a beautiful film that it would be very difficult to improve on it without just making a unique film rather than a remake (more in the style of Cinderella (2015), for instance). But the degree to which we follow the storyline of Aladdin (1992) and faithfully re-stage those songs makes direct comparisons inevitable, and, in terms of my own preference, Aladdin (1992) is usually coming out on top.

Visually speaking, it’s very colorful and appealing, but it doesn’t quite have the same distinctive palette that Aladdin (1992) does. A lot of the settings (while beautiful) seemed to be CG, so while having a sense of not occupying the real world wasn’t necessarily bad for this type of over the top fantasy film, I think I could’ve used a little more grounding.

The one thing that 2019 has over 1992 is casting people of color. I thought the cast was great, and any nitpicks I have with characterization come down to the script, not the performances, which were excellent.

I’ve marked any plot points that significantly differ from Aladdin (1992) as (SPOILERS) and with a strikethrough.

By musical number:

 Arabian Nights:

I actually quite liked this. The friend that I was in the theatre with said she was a bit thrown by the recognition of Will Smith’s voice, but it didn’t bother me. The new lyrics were good, and I loved the use of the verse from the old animated tv series (“take off and take flight/may shock and amaze” etc.).

One Jump Ahead:

This was the song I struggled the most with. The slow down of the tempo absolutely didn’t work. To me, this needs to be a fast-paced song to convey the adrenaline and momentum of the scene. By tying it to a slower, heavy beat, it felt positively plodding. The singing was certainly fine and I liked Aladdin’s voice a lot, but the tempo was killing me.

Jasmine’s New Song (Speechless):

Jasmine absolutely needed at least one more song. This one was fine; it sounded a bit pop, but I’m sure the original songs sounded pop at the time too. I think I’d have to give it another listen to see how it fits with the musical themes of the new score and with the other songs.

Friend Like Me:

Not much change in content from the original song, but different delivery, of course. If you are able to like Will Smith’s take on the Genie despite it not being the same as Robin Williams’, you’ll probably be okay with this.

Prince Ali:

Somehow felt very stagey, not in a bad way? Again, pretty similar to the original song, though I did note the “correction” from “brush up your Sunday salaam” to “Friday salaam”.

A Whole New World:

Pretty singing of a pretty song, no major lyric changes. The friend I was with complained about the slow tempo of this one, but it didn’t bother me the way that One Jump Ahead did.

Prince Ali (reprise): DIDN’T HAPPEN D: and I missed it a lot. Reprised “Speechless” instead, which was certainly dramatic, but the lyrics seemed lackluster here. A big feature of the classic Aladdin songs is that they tend to be wordy and eloquent (Howard Ashman’s touch, I guess, and no doubt Tim Rice too), so it felt a little out of place.

Surprisingly, we didn’t even have a pop cover of Speechless for the end credits. Maybe I was spoiled by three new songs that I liked in BatB (2017), but I felt like there was room for more additions in this film.

By major character:

Aladdin: Mena Massoud was excellent, loved the boy. Adorable as heck (the eyes and the smile), and very charming. His singing was good, though I felt like he could’ve used a little more of a chance to impress. The physicality of the role was amazing, both in his parkour scenes in Agrabah, and with the (SPOILERS) dance number in which the Genie is controlling Aladdin’s movements. The performance of doing complex dance steps while selling that he wasn’t in control of his own body was superbly done.

The thing I missed most about the animated version of the character was that this Aladdin didn’t quite seem to be quite the quick-thinking trickster that Animated Aladdin is. There’s an element there, but it didn’t come across as strongly to me. Animated Aladdin takes to the role of Prince Ali pretty handily, and his missteps are when he overacts it, being too much like how he thinks a prince should be. In contrast, New Aladdin is pretty paralyzed by nerves, which was charming in its way, just different. There’s also a change that we see New Aladdin stealing valuables to make a living, (though clearly not a great one) as a pickpocket, compared to Animated Aladdin who we only ever see steal food for himself and others (despite his klepto monkey). The dynamic with Genie is different too, less openly affectionate, but that’s also a factor of Genie’s change in characterization. I think it also is factor in inter-character dynamics that Animated Aladdin skews a bit younger, still a teenager, while New Aladdin is more grown up, a young man.

Abu: Abu’s CG face was a little uncanny valley to me. I think I would’ve preferred to see something more like the performance of Jack the Monkey in the PotC films, even if it wouldn’t have been quite as expressive and human-like as animated Abu. However, I do get that working with animals is pretty tough, and I see why the choices were made.

The Genie: Will Smith was doing his thing, and I didn’t really expect anything else. I warmed pretty well to his take on the character. He absolutely doesn’t do the quick-quippy motor-mouthed slapstick style of Robin Williams’ Genie, and it’s probably better that way. His performances of the iconic songs were solid, I think, striking a balance of nostalgia and novelty. How an individual viewer might want that balance to lean is going to vary, though.

I thought the film might’ve undersold the Genie’s longing to be free of the lamp. This was especially noticeable in the scene where Aladdin tells him that he can’t use his third wish to free him. Original Genie reacts with hurt and betrayal, New Genie redirects the conversation to be about Aladdin continuing to lie to Jasmine about his identity, buying his own con, as it were. Part of it is that New Genie is a little more emotionally reserved, plays things a bit closer to the (absent) vest. I think the case could’ve been made that Genie never really expected Aladdin to follow through on that promise, but as it was, it just didn’t quite ring true.

(SPOILERS)

I did really like the storytelling framing of the beginning of the film, but I thought it was underused! It would have been charming to Princess Bride the whole narrative, with the kids interjecting occasionally, and seeing the story through their eyes with their father playing the role of the Genie. Let the audience buy the storytelling device, and at the end when the kids are expressing their incredulity that such a story could be true, the reveal to the audience that their mother is the princess’s handmaiden would’ve been enough to leave the ambiguity – is the Mariner really truly the Genie, or is it just a story? I think that could’ve been lovely.

Princess Jasmine: Naomi Scott is beautiful, has a lovely voice, and gave a charming performance. I do wish they had cast someone who looks a little more like Animated Jasmine, but I don’t dislike New Jasmine. Giving Jasmine a strong motivation to become a leader, be her father’s successor, and make a positive difference in the lives of the people in her city was nice.

Jafar: While still menacing, Jafar lost some of the gleeful mustache twirling evil of Animated Jafar. I missed that high, cruel laughter and the disdainful aristocratic bearing. I do understand avoiding some of the iconic lines, but unfortunately the replacements weren’t… as good. New Jafar had interesting aspects, but it seemed like some of his story arc might’ve gotten left on the cutting room floor. It really seemed at first that we were implying that Jafar had actually murdered Jasmine’s late mother, but the movie just never picked up that thread. It wasn’t a bad performance, just a different character.

Iago: Iago seemed sort of in limbo between being a true magicians familiar, a fully realized character as in the animated film, and just being a parrot. I think going entirely in either direction would’ve been an improvement over what we got (mostly parrot behavior with occasional phrases that seemed to show independent thought). I think Jafar suffered a bit from this reduction of Iago’s role too– is it harder to have a dark comedy double act with an actual realistic parrot? (Parrot owners probably disagree)

Dahlia: An original character, and an interesting addition: Jasmine’s handmaiden (allowing Jasmine to pull some Padme-style who-is-the-real-princess shenanigans early in the film). She was charming, sweetly awkward at times, and (SPOILERS) though the b-plot romance between her and the Genie wasn’t quite pulled off with the panache it could’ve been (it’s no Lumiere/Plumette, okay?), it was cute and I liked it okay. Interestingly, her features were probably a closer match to animated Princess Jasmine.

Carpet: Probably the most faithful to the characterization in (1992). I have always adored Carpet, and I thought the gestures and movements of the CG version nicely captured the spirit of the original, though I think with comparatively less screentime? I genuinely reacted with anxiety every time Carpet was in danger even though I obviously knew everything was going to be all right in the end. #I can’t believe it, I’m losing (my heart) to a rug

There were definitely moments that I felt like a sequel was being set up, which is an interesting choice considering how notoriously bad The Return of Jafar is. That said, I do think you could absolutely pull some story elements from that hot mess and Aladdin and The King of Thieves (which is charming in its way but still direct to video quality) and actually make a film that would be able to flesh out this new version of the story and blossom outside the shadow of the original animated film. I’m not sure that’s going to actually happen, but it would be interesting to see.

[vankoya]

Saviour of the Good Days.

➢ A Christmas drabble series based on this list!

Genre | Sense8 AU.

Pairing | Jung Hoseok / Feminine Reader.

Conspectus | Even the worst days can have some good in them. That good, always, arrives as the same person. The one that your entire body and soul is inexplicably entwined with.

It has been a very, very bad day.

Indeed, it has been one of those days where you wake up and have an overwhelming feeling that you should most definitely not leave your bed, because nothing good will come from it. And although you eventually roll yourself to the edge of your mattress and lethargically drag your limbs into an upward position; although you think it can’t be that bad, just get on with it; the whole world unforgivingly crumbles to shit around you, and you get caught in the rockslide.

It was a case of one bad thing after another. A pile of small inconveniences that built and built, slowly becoming more unstable with every new weight added to the mountain. First, there was realising that you forgot to buy a new jar of coffee granules yesterday afternoon, and so you could not make yourself a cup of liquid adrenaline the instant you awoke. Then, there was knocking a half-full glass of water over important documents during your nine-to-five at the office. Later, there was your card declining when you tried to purchase a Christmas gift for your best friend, and the sudden flash of remembrance that rent money came out at midday and, to make it worse, you still do not get paid for another three days.

Now, your car has broken down on the side of the road in the middle of a small snowstorm, which is terribly classic because you abso-fucking-lutely despise snow in general. This right here is the breaking point; the collapse; the crush of your body beneath the weight of all the shitty things that have occurred today. This right here is the cherry on top of the shit cake of shitty shit things, and like a flooding riverbed, your barriers break down and you sob the frustrations out.

“What the hell,” you furiously whisper through a sniffle, forehead resting against the steering wheel of your car as snow pelts down on the town outside. “What’s up the world’s ass today? Is it ‘poke fun at ___’ day?”

“Want me to fight the world for you?”

The voice, while more familiar than the back of your own hand, nonetheless makes you jolt in your seat with a short squeal. Some sensates say that you never get used to it. Having a group of people in your head who share all of your senses, your skills, and can mentally materialise right beside you, although their real bodies remain to be separated from you by thousands of miles. Others express that it takes time. Rather than living as individual people, you learn to be a cluster of minds that coexist all at once, and the intermingling of your lives becomes as natural as before you became connected by the souls.

You are at the midway point of the spectrum.

“Depends,” you say, voice still a little choked with your emotional outburst. “Will fighting the world revive the documents I spent hours working on, only to ruin them completely with my damn elbow colliding with an misfortunately placed glass of water?”

He makes a contemplative sound. “Maybe not. But watching the world get punched in the face by my fists might make you smile, at least.”

At that, there is a watery curl of your lips, and you lean against the headrest of your seat, tilting to the side to face him. Jung Hoseok, who you have mentally, physically, and emotionally been connected with for little beyond a year now, is already watching you with an adoring smile. A South Korean mechanic from a city called Gwangju, who towers over you in height with messily styled hair the colour of the night sky at its darkest; juxtaposed by his bright, sunshine-like features; doused in gold. Even the dreary weather cannot suck the honey from his skin. He remains to attain a soft, pleasant glow that you swear brightens every time his mouth shapes itself into a waning moon, shimmering like sunlight on a calm ocean.

Perhaps, the visible radiance is just your imagination. Then again, you cannot necessarily trust anything you see in your head, these days.

“There it is,” he coos. The thick, fur-lined leather jacket that he wears gives a muffled squeak when he reaches over the gear stick to pat your thigh. Although he is all in your mind, the touch feels as real as ever; sets warmth aflame in your cheeks. “Now that seeing your pretty smile has been ticked off my to-do list, what’s happened here? The car has broken down?”

You wipe at the silvery tracks on your face with your mittens, inwardly hoping you do not look as much of a wreck as you feel. “Something like that. There was a bang, and by the time I pulled it off the road, it had completely stopped.” Hoseok goes to open his mouth, but you swiftly cut him off, already able to see the question he is going to ask by the playful twinkle of his eye. “And no, I haven’t run out of gas. I still have half a tank left, smart ass.”

Hoseok chuckles, directing his gaze out the windshield where the road is being painted white. “Well, my next best guess is that you’ve popped a tyre.” He twists so he can face the backseat, eyeing your spare black parka. “I’ll need your help. Can we use that to keep ourselves shielded in this mini storm? Wait, do you even have a spare tyre?”

“Yes, and yes,” you confirm, already pulling the parka into your lap. “The jack should be in the trunk, too…” Your voice trails off when you take in Hoseok’s attire of the leather jacket, combat boots, blue jeans, and a thin sweater. Most certainly not suited for snow, nonetheless a snowstorm. “Are you sure you won’t be cold?”

“I’m not literally here,” he reminds you with a smirk, unlocking the passenger door. “As long as you’re warm, I’m warm too. I’m feeling what your senses are feeling, right now.”

At that, your feeble heart stutters, and you avidly attempt to not focus on the thought of him feeling something a lot less innocent than the cold weather. “R-Right. Okay. Let’s get to it, then.”

The pair of you stumble into the already calming storm, heading straight for the trunk. Hoseok pulls out the spare tyre and the jack, while you remain huddled close to him with the parka pulled around your bodies in a feeble defence against the assaulting white. It is rather fascinating to observe him changing the tyre; the concentrated, determined frown of his features; the deft movements of his bare hands as they skilfully work. Under his breath, he mutters to himself, as if vocally making his way through the steps. His tousled fringe falls in his eyes, and he keeps having to blow it back with short, slightly irritated huffs. You know that you are ogling like an idiot, but you cannot help it when everything he does is just so… insanely attractive.

Hoseok seems to catch onto this by the time he has completed the job, and you are darting your eyes away from his face where they had been embarrassingly burning holes for the past ten minutes. He notices how closely you are crouched beside him; the parka-shield surrounding the two of you in a cosy cocoon only serving to force your body-warmth to share the space. Around your huddled figures, the storm has completely relaxed into peaceful snowing. Out the corner of your eye, you can see the way his expression softens, melting like butter.

“T-Thanks. For this. I really appreciate it, Hoseok,” you mumble in a pathetic attempt to cover up your ridiculously intense staring. When you go to drop the parka away, no longer a necessity, he softly catches your elbow, halting the action. You pray to every deity that he believes your watery gaze is due to the icy weather.

“No need to thank me, I’m happy to help,” Hoseok says gently, squeezing your elbow. The warmth of your face ignites into that of a pot reaching boiling point. His own cheeks light up in a rosy flush, and you wonder if that is your own senses reacting with his own, or if they are solely his, making him blush completely by themselves. “If it makes you happy, I’m happy.”

There, you realise how near his face is to your own. There, you think that you could move forwards three inches, and you would be able to kiss him. There, Hoseok seems to understand the same idea that is running its dangerous course through your mind, because he slowly, incrementally, leans, and leans, and leans–

A car door slamming shocks you out of your intoxicated daze. You physically fall backwards from your crouch, collapsing into the snow with a surprised shriek. Almost immediately afterward, a flustered, middle-aged women wearing a pink beanie with a giant pompom on top is offering her hand to you.

Hoseok is nowhere to be seen.

“Oh my goodness! I’m so sorry for frightening you, darling!” She says in a high voice as she helps you back to your feet. “I saw you all by your lonesome on the side of the road, and couldn’t help but worry. Did you pop a tyre? Oh- Wow! You changed that all by yourself? How impressive of...” 

The woman continues to ramble on, but your attention has been snagged elsewhere. Still stunned from the almost that was finally about to occur; that was yanked away from you at the last second, like teasing a dog with a bone. And then, suddenly, all you can focus on is a familiar hand gingerly curling around your wrist.

A pair of silky, warm lips pressing to your cheek.

“Merry Christmas, ___,” Hoseok murmurs into your ear, planting another soft peck on the lobe, drawing fire in its wake. “I hope your day gets better.”

“... Gee, I remember when my husband nearly drove us into oncoming traffic when I– Honey, are you okay? You look like you’ve just seen Big Foot!”

Note | Sensates are a ‘cluster’ of human beings who are mentally and emotionally linked, able to sense and communicate with each other, as well as share their knowledge, language and skills. Please watch the show. It is phenomenal.

All Rights Reserved © Vankoya. No translations, reposting and/or modifying of the material is allowed without my direct permission.