#strike has the same interests as doom kids

[weadapt]

I think it’s interesting storytelling how in the beginning of the game Cal says the Sixth Sister’s name, Masana Tide, and reminds her of who she used to be—and it visibly distresses her because it hurts what was done to her and Cal isn’t wrong in what he’s saying. The shocking thing for me was the moment when Cal said “It’s time to set you free”. It was such a surreal feeling hearing Cal say that, those kinds of words, to know he decided it was time to strike her down; it’s understandable because she killed his entire crew, but for Cal to be the executioner in that way was scary to see coming after only experiencing the young kid he was in Fallen Order. Now you really get the feeling Cal has been through a lot, he’s grown as a man since Fallen Order and he’s calloused, not entirely in a bad way given he’d have to be to survive but still in a depressing way, as a result. I know overall and gameplay wise, Cal has killed a lot of people, it’s nothing new, but storytelling wise it’s a serious moment for Cal. It’s a moment you know is going to follow him the rest of the game for character development. After he kills her, it’s made clear by the music and by Cal’s body language that this isn’t a good thing coming from him. It isn’t a triumph. Even BD-1 knows and worries for Cal with his little “Boop…?” and Cal is only able to respond rather shakily, “Yeah… I’m okay”.

When he meets up with Bode and Bravo and they ask him what happened to the Inquisitor, he gives a simple, no emotion, “Dead”. The long pause of Bravo not saying anything in response to me says a lot; it feels like he isn’t used to Cal having a reaction like that.

Then we have Rayvis. Cal defeats him in battle and asks him to join in the fight against Dagan. He doesn’t want to kill Rayvis—“You don’t have to do this”. The oddly tragic part to me is that Rayvis has dreams of seeing Tanalorr again. If Dagan succeeds his dream will be realized, but he’s given up on the dream and wants a warrior’s death now. He wants to die, and in his mind, honorably, by Cal’s hands, and he’s going to force Cal to do it. But for Cal it’s another execution on his part. He pauses before he lifts his saber and kills Rayvis. It isn’t a triumph. Again we’re given a sudden swell of music to tell us the emotion behind the action of killing Rayvis. You can see it’s affected Cal badly. BD-1 seems to ask Cal the same question as before, “Boop…?” but this time Cal doesn’t acknowledge the question and just replies, “We should go”.

Killing Dagan hurts for Cal too. Dagan is a Jedi, someone who held onto the Order, who tied his entire identity to it and all of his goals are focused on restoring the Order and fighting to change the universe. Just like Cal in a way. Dagan is single-mindedly focused on the mission, so obsessively, he lost himself and the one he loved as a result. Cal understands and see the parallel of that kind of drive in his own mission against the Empire and it terrifies him. Dagan could’ve helped him fight the Empire but it became another tragic moment of having to kill a once fellow Jedi. This is another tragedy. Bode doesn’t care about Dagan being dead on the floor but Cal does. Cal has enough respect to place Dagan’s lightsaber on his chest. Cal pauses to reflect but Bode immediately gets back to getting the compass.

We have this interesting arch of reactions to killing his opponents. They were each killed for the mission. It was necessary. They each started the fight against him. No matter the reason though, it’s still very painful for Cal.

Cal is being pushed into this direction of forcing him to question his beliefs and who he is. His whole identity at this point has been tied to the Order, of being a Jedi, and it’s very clear by his conversations in Fallen Order that it really matters to who he is. By the end of Survivor, we have three fallen Jedi: Masana Tide, Dagan Gera, and Bode Akuna. So who is Cal Kestis? What will he become? Is he doomed to fall like they did? That’s what troubles him—“Let’s just say I don’t wanna end up like him [Dagan]”.

He’s afraid he’s going to lose himself.

The fear is almost realized when he’s about to kill another opponent. The one behind the murders of his friends and mentors. Cal’s been killing each of his main opponents up to the point at Nova Garon—this one will be no different. Except killing the man who sent Bode on the mission to infiltrate his team is different. Cal is on the edge of losing himself to the Dark Side. In Fallen Order he pleaded for Cere not to use the Dark Side because “She’s stronger than that”, “[she] still had a choice”. But Cal is failing to remember any of that for himself. He wants to kill because he’s angry, grieving, and in immense pain. Merrin has to bring him back—“This is not you!” There’s a question of whether or not Cal would’ve been able to stop himself if Merrin hadn’t been there though.

When we get to the final battle, Merrin is warning Cal of what’s likely going to happen but he ignores her for a while which prompts her to say, “Well? Say something!” He doesn’t want to acknowledge that Merrin is right and they’re likely going to have to kill Bode, and with that, taking Kata’s father away—a loss of family Cal and Merrin know too much about. So they both try and give Bode every chance to stop and turn away from what he’s done, despite how much Bode had hurt them. Sadly, Cal once again is forced into using the Dark Side to prevent Bode from killing Merrin. It was worth it. It was worth using it to save Merrin. He couldn’t let her be killed. He couldn’t see that happen before his eyes like he had with all of his friends and mentors.

After everything is over, there’s this sickly feeling left behind. Not simply because of Bode’s death, but because of the impact on Merrin realizing Kata has lost family just like she and Cal had, but also because of the impact the death of Bode has on Cal. And after Cal carries away Bode’s body, the music changes to an eerie, ominous, high pitch, minor key when we see Cal board the Mantis. The kind of change in music which lets the audience know there’s something seriously wrong. Things are different now. Cal’s different. And he knows it.

He’s lost in time watching the pyre, reflecting on everything that had happened but also on how grateful he is to Cere, but he knows the impact of her loss will continue to be with him for the rest of his life. Just like Jaro Tapal. Another guiding force in his life is gone. With Cere and Cordova gone, there is no longer any Jedi wisdom to seek out. He’s now alone in that way as a Jedi.

“I’m scared… I almost lost myself… I don’t know if I’m ready.”

Cal and the audience are left with the dreadful realization—

“I don’t know if I’m ready for what comes next”.

[all-pacas]

I saw some of your posts saying how observant and clever Chase is,while also being a "dumb whore". I feel like this is the right place to say that I don't find his "ditzy slut" moments funny in isolation,without taking his cunning,calculating traits into account. If Chase is just a "himbo",it takes away the shock value(not to mention I've seen way funnier "simple dumbasses" than "isolated Chase moments"). On the other hand,a guy who can clearly think on his feet making terrible mistakes that could be avoided by a bit of common sense is a recipe for hilarious "wtf?" moments. Like,I've seen you deduce stuff with striking accuracy with minimal information,how did you come with such an inane conclusion? It's what they call "high intelligence,low wisdom".

Also,I saw a post of you saying Foreman is "book-smarter" than Chase,while the latter is more observant and a "people-person",besides having more "improvising" skills. This is certainly interesting,considering their backgrounds(Foreman was raised in the hood,had some involvement with gangs;whereas Chase was a rich brat with many opportunities. One would think their skillsets would be inverted,lol)

Even before I finished reading this comment, I was planning on making a "he's a high in/low wisdom," so thanks for making that joke for me, lol.

The thing is, Chase is legitimately very lazy. Or like. He works hard and he's very good at his job, but I think it's interesting that both his specialties are… obviously to be a doctor you have to be smart, but he has very hands on specialties. His job isn't to memorize and know everything about auto-immune diseases, his job is to be great at cutting people open and fixing them. Again, I am well aware surgeons and intensive care takes a lot of knowledge! But it's interesting to me, you know? He definitely comes off as less cerebral.

And he's deeply unambitious. He spends half the show in a fellowship, a training program, because he's more comfortable there. Cameron and Foreman have a subplot about writing articles; we never hear anything about Chase doing the same. House literally has to fire Chase to get him off the team. Where Foreman is always desperately trying to prove himself and be the best doctor in the room, and where Cameron is honestly also deeply competitive and demands respect, Chase… we joke about him being spineless, he is spineless, but also he never really seems to mind it. He doesn't care. He does not seem offended Foreman keeps getting put in charge, nor does he really want it for himself. He has the most seniority of the fellows, but never plays it up; he's fine where he is. And I think that's where his 'laziness' comes in. He just… doesn't try very hard. Very rich kid of him, tbh. He coasts whenever possible.

Meanwhile Foreman is a huge perfectionist, and has a huge inferiority complex. He is the first to tell everyone he had perfect grades (he tells Chase a time or two), went to top schools, has a perfect resume, because Foreman derives a lot of his self worth from being able to say that: if he's the best, no one can say he doesn't belong. I think it's because of his background that he's like this: he's a Black man from a Bad Neighborhood and has a Record and he's absolutely aware what that makes him in the eyes of others. He can't afford to be like Chase — Chase can get away with being lazy and unambitious because he's a rich, good looking, white guy (and foreign, at that — but the good kind of foreign, who speaks English as a first language and comes from a rich and successful family). If Foreman acted like Chase — like he didn't give a shit about his career, like he was just working for House for the hell of it — it would look different. It would feel different. Foreman is a perfectionist and has an inferiority complex because his whole life the world has told him he's not as good, he's doomed to "turn out" bad, he won't and can't amount to anything because of who he is. Cameron is assertive and ambitious and gets really touchy when people underestimate or overlook her, because she's sensitive and kind and weak (Foreman himself tells Cameron he thinks she needs to "toughen up"), and so she also constantly has to prove herself, and that she can be a Good Doctor And Leader while still being compassionate and soft. Again, Chase doesn't have to worry about any of this. He can be unambitious and easy-going about his career, because it doesn't really matter to him in the same way. He doesn't have to be the best student or get the best marks and have the best record. He has very little to prove.

And in a way, Chase is in the same kind of perception trap as the others. Not to suggest he has it soooo much worse than Foreman, but because he's a Rich Good Looking Dude, you kind of expect him to be a nepobaby. You kind of expect him to be useless and underqualified and shallow. To coast on his looks and to not have brains and have no idea how to manage in the Real World. It's definitely how Foreman sees Chase — he says as much, and lowkey hates him for it, and fair enough — but again what's interesting to me is where it isn't quite true. Chase is brilliant, when he cares enough to try. His apathy is learned, not born from an easy life; he comes off as cool and easy-going but holds grudges and resentments and trauma about two inches down. He's afraid of rejection and trying and failing, and so stays in his comfort zones. But where Foreman spends all his time and energy trying to prove the entire world wrong, to fight every automatic perception of who he is as a person, Chase leans in to his own facade. I actually think that S8 Foreman is a pretty happy person. I think S8 Chase, Chase MD in House's office, is at least 70% miserable.

[analyzing-people-like-hell]

saw your recent post in the sanders sides tag - here goes:

Some of these are more fun-to-watch than relates-to-me, but I figure listing ‘em all will give you more to work with.

Listed in alphabetical order, except as needed to group sources together.

Alastor, Hazbin Hotel (show)

- He’s charming, confident, very good in his chosen field, and also happens to be AroAce. He appreciates jokes, but can also be intimidating.

Cayde-6, Destiny (game)

- Quick wit, quick shot. Always fun to hear his dialogue during missions and strikes. The kinda guy you’d go to for a good story (or if you’re lookin’ for extra paperwork to do).

Crow, Destiny (game)

- Good guy, interesting situation (read: tragic backstory). Not exactly doomed-by-the-narrative, but…

The Doctor (10th), Doctor Who (show)

- Honestly, not sure why. He’s just fun to watch. (Also, he has a very distinct/memorable way of phrasing things)

Data, Star Trek: The Next Generation (show)

- Yes, I’m Autistic; How’d you guess? (/j) Honestly though, having a discussion with him about humanity/social behaviors/other things would be SO interesting!

Odo, Star Trek: Deep Space 9 (show)

- If Odo and I were in the same room, I don’t think there’d be much talking. But, in a two-introverts-who-got-dragged-to-the-same-party-and-are-avoiding-the-humans-together kind of way. Companionable silence.

Spock, Star Trek: The Original Series (show)

- He’s just cool. (also a HUGE childhood influence towards logical thinking)

Malcolm Reynolds, Firefly (show)

- Protective of his crew, “Has a conscience, and hates it,” no-nonsense, practical thinker, quick wit, stubborn.

Simon Tam, Firefly (show)

- Very good at what he does (doctor), smart, stands by what he believes in (“when you’re on my table, you’re safe”), and who he cares about (his sister).

River Tam, Firefly (show)

- …River is a mood. Specifically, a “leave me alone, I can’t talk now, my brain is full of bees” mood.

Seth, Lost Terminal (podcast)

- He’s an AI who used to live in a satellite, and made his way down to a post-collapse Earth so he could talk to people. He often mentions the intricacies and confusing nuances of human communication, his distrust of plants and salt, and the fact that humans are quite fond of bread and beer.

Susan Ivanova, Babylon 5 (show)

- “No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There’s always a boom tomorrow.”

Michael Garibaldi, Babylon 5 (show)

- If any of the main cast could’ve broken the fourth wall, it would have been him. I don’t know what that says about his character, but it feels right.

Virgil Sanders, Sanders Sides (YouTube series)

- He’s the personification of (Thomas’) Anxiety, but he can be quite brave when he needs to be. When he’s under pressure/more anxious/needs to be listened to, he’ll act more abrasive, but he has a softer side (heh side) he shows when safe. He’s also the secondary brain cell holder of the main cast.

Logan Sanders, Sanders Sides (YouTube series)

- The brain cell (/pos). Also seems to be going through… gifted-kid-burnout-angst-stuff, for lack of a better term. Also nicknamed the Mom of the group, though someone pointed out that he didn’t choose that title for himself, which I thought was interesting.

Janus Sanders, Sanders Sides (YouTube series)

- I think you already saw him in another ask, so I’ll be brief: “You’re not stuck with an ‘evil snake boy.’ *pose* You’re just stuck with a snake boy.”

…After typing this all out, I’ve noticed that most of these fall into one of three categories:

~Autism~ TM (/pos)

Competent, might be an asshole

Protecc/Attacc

I don’t know what that means, but it’s kinda funny.

Have fun!

ANALYSIS #4: 06/11/24

It's about time I start getting around to all these new test subjects. I apologize for the wait, but I'm more than ready to see what you have in store for me here, #4.

I'm not familiar with the majority of these characters, so this could very much be a hit or miss analysis.... Your descriptions definitely aided me a lot, so thank you for that. I guess we'll just have to wait and see if this ends up being accurate at all...

Why don't we see if I got your backstory right first? It's where everything originates, after all.

"LORE":

You seem to be an observer in this game of life. I feel like you've spent a large part of your existence on the outskirts of everything, and the times you have joined the outside world were never completely of your own volition.... You don't feel like you particularly fit in as a "human", yet at the same time everything you feel is all too human. I can imagine it gets pretty overwhelming, and you've probably gotten a lot of heat for it in your younger years. Maybe you didn't have many friends growing up, and the ones you did have probably didn't live up to your expectations of what "friendship" was supposed to be. Maybe you've had friends that took advantage of you and it didn't even click until the damage was already done, or you stuck it out because.. that's what friendship's supposed to be about, right? Maybe you were just left out in general, always the second option unless they needed something out of you. Who knows. There could be a lot variations of what happened in your childhood regarding relationships, but I'm guessing they didn't always make much sense to you. It's probably why you stay on the outskirts so much. If the world won't let you experience humanity for yourself, you can at least watch humanity from afar.

I have a feeling your home life wasn't all that great? It wasn't particularly terrible-- you're grateful for what you were given-- but you wish there were things that were done differently. I think this also plays into the whole "disconnect from people" bit. Maybe they cared for you, but it was clear they didn't understand you, and it can be a little hard to be grateful when somebody's care is always... a little off? If that's the case, I bet it probably feels worse knowing that you can't really blame them for not understanding. Things are probably better now as you've grown, but there are things that still sting just a bit. Also for some reason I think you were homeschooled.... No reason why, it just came to mind, and I've learned trusting my gut makes my analyses more accurate. I'd like to see if that ends up being true.

Another thing that my gut keeps telling me is that the tism is strong in this one. You've already confirmed that, but I specifically feel like (i'm assuming you're diagnosed based on how you phrased "yes, i'm autistic") you were either diagnosed at a pretty early age or you were late diagnosed (probably because of icky-ew gendered stereotypes in medical fields) and it explained a whole hell of a lot of your childhood, to the point where you're surprised you weren't diagnosed way earlier in life. Heavily leaning to the latter, by the way, but the first still has a 5 to 15% chance of standing. Either way, it depicts why you'd feel such a heavy disconnect from the people around you. It's as if everyone was given a script to life, meanwhile you're forced to improv it the whole way through. Do you see life as a game? How much time have you dedicated to perfecting your skills, believing that perfecting them would be the key to winning these petty social games? Are you sure you're not still lost? Just some food for thought.

Anyways, with that all in mind, let's see what really goes on inside that head of yours...

THE TRUTH:

You still resent the world in a way, don't you? I can't shake the thought that there's still a resentment buried inside you that's been bubbling for a while. Maybe it's lessened a bit, but you can still feel it resurface every now and then. It's as if sometimes a reminder will come your way and it's another crack added to that bottle you've been storing all your emotions in. Like another poke at the confines will unleash everything you've been working on trying to maintain. I don't think it's spilled over yet, but I think we both know it's certainly not far from tipping over. You surprise even yourself with how much you've managed so far.

Part of you has lost your vulnerability. I'm not sure when or how, but I think it goes back to that disconnect from people. I don't think you've met anybody who's completely understood you yet, which has probably led to constant misunderstanding from everyone else. That kind of persistent detachment is bound to make anyone lose parts of themselves. If that's what happened, I'm sorry they took that part away from you. You deserved to be yourself without being shot down over and over, you still deserve that. It really is a shame that the world is too blind to see the beautiful depth in your soul. Complexity is never a flaw. Complexity is rarely even "complex". The world just needs to learn how to appreciate you at your core, and I truly hope they're able to see that in you soon. 

In fact, why don't I detail some of the complex beauty that I can pinpoint? If the world can't see it, then it only makes sense if I spell it out for them.

YOUR BEST TRAITS:

You're very attentive. You also seem to have some pretty good wit. That not only makes you a really great analyst, but I think it'd make you a pretty great comforter too. You're able to analyze and recognize patterns in people, and you seem to still hold a great appreciation for people despite how isolated people have made you feel. Despite always feeling like an outcast, there's still a part of you that cares. Those are qualities that truly great comforters have. However, with how confusing relationships with other people can be sometimes, I can also see why that would hinder your ability for it and turn you away. Nevertheless, the foundation is still strong. You're still strong. Use that to your advantage. Take back the life that you deserved. Show them that you are not the painting they've made of you.

I just feel like you're really funny for some reason, and probably pretty chill while still being able to stand your own ground and opinions. That's a highly respectable mix of traits to have, at least in my eyes. You also for some reason remind me of that main guy from Magnus Archives. I've never listened to Magnus Archives though. All of the information I know about that podcast has come from random clips I've stumbled upon and rants from my friends who are into it. But from the information I have on him, I view him as a weird little autistic guy who's always a little tired, a little witty, maybe a little too obsessed with analyzing sometimes, also probably on the aroace spectrum. However, he's also a hard worker who-- when he cares about people-- he really cares about them, and if he likes you then you could probably drag him just about anywhere (even if he grumbles the whole way through). Now I have zero clue if any of that is true to his character, but I feel like it could maybe fit yours, and I at least think people like that are a pretty special find. 

Also, you're just a wee little guy. A little snake boi even.

And with that, I think I'll leave my thoughts here and take my bow.

With utmost gratitude (and hopefully utmost accuracy),

Dr. WZ

[eagna-eilis]

The metaphysical mechanics of Anakin's Force Ghost are the single biggest mystery of the period between RotJ and TFA to me.

If he can Force Ghost, or at least sometimes, then what governs what he can and cannot do, and who he can or cannot speak with?

If he can appear to others the way Obi Wan, Qui Gon, Yoda, and eventually Luke can, it makes very little emotional sense unless something is blocking him.

I like to think that Anakin, in death, had enough respect for Leia not to appear to her. His actions killed her real mam and dad, the people who raised her into a kind, strong person with integrity in every step. He tortured her, he destroyed her homeworld and her culture. He wouldn't be so stupid as to think that a nice father-daughter chat would solve everything.

I like to think that he loves her from an observational distance, and brims with pride at every step she takes for the galaxy that he injured gravely and so nearly destroyed. So like Padmé, her justice-seeking Naberrie qualities nurtured like rare orchids by Bail and Breha, who were themselves so principled and just. Anakin might also see the ways in which she is not like any of the senators or royalty who made her who she is. He might want to take credit for the parts of her that are so brave, so impassioned, so willing to challenge any authority she sees as unworthy or unjust. Obi-Wan told her, when she was very young, that this was her inheritance from Anakin. But Leia doesn't want anything from him, and he understands. So he spends time watching, in grieving pride, at what his daughter became in spite of him.

I also like to think that at a certain point he would have to try, if he could, to intervene in what was being done to her family. In my heart there is no version of a redeemed afterlife Anakin who does not try to save another Skywalker child from what he went through.

He would have tried to materialise, blue-aura-lit and kind eyed, into the living room of a Chandrilla apartment, to try to soothe the terror and discomfort of a tiny child levitating cambiblocks and breaking glass in distress. He has far more experience with child murder than child rearing, but by the Force he'd damn well TRY.

It probably wouldn't work, and I think some of us fans (esp those who love the sequels or those who are more interested in the Skywalkers than the Disaster Lineage as a family) deserve to know why.

Why, in my headcannons, does Anakin spend years trying to send thoughts of 'no kiddo that isn't me, I'm me, your grandpa, and I can tell you that your mom and dad love you so much and that those other voices are full of bantha-poodoo, please trust me, please believe me, please hear me' out through the Force, only for them to never find their way to their intended recipient?

Why can he not appear to Leia and say, 'I know you don't want to talk to me and I don't want you to have to endure the distress of talking to me but it's about your kid. I can't make the past alright, but let me please give you the information you need to stop the cycle repeating'.

Why can't he warn Luke? 'There's a storm coming and the lightning is not natural. You have seen that lightning before, standing right by my side, and it comes from the same source. Our nephew dreams things that are not his own. Consider striking him and you will doom the world, but also our family. Don't let the Darkness guide you, its only goal is to make more Darkness.'

There are several potential answers, of course.

The first is that Anakin can get through but nobody listens. It's a steady stream of 'stay away from my child, stay away from my academy, don't corrupt our future with the evil of the past'. This option reflects negatively on Luke and Leia, but it also feels true to traumatised families. I'm a firm believer in the fact that Luke, Leia, and Han as having unwittingly done poorly by the next generation of their kin does not 'ruin' their characters, it makes them more sympathetic and human, and so it doesn't upset me if this is the option. It's bad parenting and good storytelling.

The most obvious answer is of course, Palpatine. He can block Anakin's access to the likes of Luke, Leia, and Ben. This means that a dead Palpatine is still torturing a dead Anakin. Excuse me while I cry for a thousand years. Now either this means that Palpatine thinks Ahsoka is small potatoes and it doesn't matter if Anakin can see her in the WBW, or that Anakin could only communicate with Ahsoka BECAUSE she could enter the WBW. So, considering that the Ahsoka show takes place after 'Last Shot', it still makes no sense that Anakin doesn't go 'please see what's going on with Leia's kid, I'm worried about her and about her lil guy.'

The third option is the one that I find genuinely upsetting. Not in-world upsetting, but what-are-they-doing-with-our-story upsetting. It's also the one I find the most likely:

DLF in general and Favroni in particular are pushing Disaster Lineage out in front, and trying to sublimate the Skywalkers. I see Ahsoka as Anakin's sister, and I don't think it is inappropriate for him to love her the same way he loves his children, his grandchild, or his brother Obi-Wan. It makes emotional sense for him to reach out to her, and love is not a finite resource.

But a set of wider storytelling choices is highlighting that the most important inheritance of the story is Yoda to Dooku to Qui Gon to Obi Wan to Anakin to Ahsoka to maybe Sabine, or Jacen Syndulla. I feel in some ways that shifting Anakin's attention, or the context in which we encounter him, may give the audience a sense of the greater legitimacy of the Disaster Lineage to the long term future of the galaxy.

I have ZERO problem with this being the thread by which Force training is maintained in the GFFA through the sequels and into the post-sequel era. I prefer it to watching my beloved Rey of Jakku doing it all alone.

I have a HUGE problem with the idea that we may never get more Skywalkers in context with one another. And more importantly, the idea that we really shouldn't care about what happened to them after Return of the Jedi. That the sequels don't matter.

Anakin is the greatest silence in the sequels. I suspect that they didn't get Hayden back because they were still nervous of prequel hate (sweet summer children that they were, not knowing that the penis-brains were gunning for them, too). Many of us hoped that the New Republic Era TV series would inflect upon the ST the way that Clone Wars inflected upon the PT.

So far it really hasn't.

[heliza24]

@megfeiny left this comment on one of my posts:

“If you're up for it, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the Lucia scene in S1.E5. Simon's exasperation combined with his inability to resist Wilhelm's vulnerability is so powerful. And that hug!!! Oh my god. I have no words. It's just beautiful.”

So I thought I’d write a little installment of my intimate scene analysis series about this scene. (You can find the other posts in this series here, here, and here). I was especially interested to revisit it because I know some people really love it, but I haven’t really thought about it separate from the other things going on in that episode before. So let’s dive in and see what we can discover. 

The atmosphere of this scene is really off the charts, isn’t it? Sometimes I feel like a broken record talking about the beautiful lighting in all of the intimate scenes but it’s incredible here. I like that there are some candles lit on the windowsill of the classroom, giving an in-universe light source so it feels natural. But there’s also no way just a few candles could create such a soft, golden effect across the entire classroom. So hats off to the cinematographer for making the lighting feel both realistic and heightened at once. I love the way it transforms the classroom, which has often been a place where the differences between Simon and Wilhelm are reinforced (think about Simon realizing he has to basically bribe the teacher to give him the same grades as the rich kids) into a private sanctuary where they are equals.

I think it’s worth pointing out too that this scene isn’t without its strife; I think you can tell that Simon especially feels conflicted about Alexander taking the blame for the drugs. But as @megfeiny points out, Wilhelm’s total emotional vulnerability is what allows Simon to still connect to him, despite those conflicting feelings. And the way that the classroom feels out of time, separated from the rest of the school, reinforces that this is the only place that Wilhelm feels like he can be that vulnerable.

The image of both boys in their Lucia gowns is also really striking. They look like angels, which reinforces the idea that they’re in their own sacred world. White is also the color of innocence, and the gowns have very childish looking collars.  This is the last moment of innocence that Wilhelm and Simon have together before the video. I also think it’s significant that everyone is wearing a Lucia gown in this episode except August. I am not Swedish and am not super familiar with the Lucia tradition, but I know it’s about bringing light in the long, dark winter. That’s a thing that Wilhelm and Simon are both about to need, and August is the one causing the darkness in their lives. 

I’ve already written about the needle drop used here, Samurai Swords, in my post about the music in the show. But I love how it seems to apply to both Wilhelm and Simon and August, and how its melody really captures the sadness and desperation of the scene. 

I also think one of the reasons this scene is so effective is the editing. The way it cuts back and forth between Wilmon and August uploading the video creates a sense of urgency. These two events are happening at the same time, and we can feel Wilhelm and Simon’s time together running out. I also love how Sara and Felice both have significant scenes in this sequence as well (Sara seeing August, Felice giving Sara the role of Lucia). This is one of the moments where all five characters feel perfectly balanced. (Another editing/camera thing that I love, that isn’t about Wilhelm/Simon: the slow push into Sara watching August upload the video through the door of the library. It lets us feel the emotional and physical distance between Sara and August in that moment, but also captures her curiosity and his feeling of doom at being caught).

I also just have to shout out Edvin and Omar’s acting in this scene. The way Simon sighs with frustration when Wilhelm says that Simon is “the only person here he can actually talk to” even as he stands up to embrace him, and the way that Wilhelm is kind of shrunk into himself from all the stress, is just so well done. And of course the way they’re hanging on to each other for dear life in that hug is so affecting.

I think those are all of my thoughts! If you have another scene you want me to look at in more depth, my ask box is open.

[kingdarkstalker]

Sorry if you’ve spoken about this before but I really wanted to rant to someone about this!

About Sunny & Starlight: I was initially quite happy that Sunny rejected him bc I was excited a male character wasn’t going to get the ‘reward’ of having his feeling reciprocated and “getting the girl” or whatever AND that Starlight remained friends with her instead of hating her for rejecting him and being a sulky baby (never minding how she discarded Starflight after he became blind), bc I thought that was a good lesson for kids! but!

i’m not even totally mad that Tui made Starflight feel this way towards what is literally his adopted sister because I think any abused kid with zero love from their parental figures kept isolated like that might develop inappropriate attraction to their siblings, adopted or otherwise, and could work through that once they got out of that situation, met other people, and learned how things work, but the issue is that Tui never addresses this, probably because she didn’t even think about it.

I find it interesting that not once do any of the DoD refer each other as siblings; I know Webs and the others never called them siblings and they all knew they weren’t related to each other but I find it interesting that Tui seems to think non biologically related kids of the same age raised like this wouldn’t conceive of each other as siblings,, Tui obviously sees them as friends and we are meant to as well (since she never calls out this pseudo incest) bc apparently she can’t conceive of children of different “races” (essentially) thinking of each other as siblings—they can only be friends and (in Starflight’s case) potential love interests

I know the subject of Sunny’s unknown hybridization was meant to be a mystery throughout most of the story, but it’s so uncomfortable how the kingdoms are so racially homogenous that even a multiracial org like the Talons of Peace can’t even conceive “hey maybe this SandWing looks different because she has mixed heritage” because that’s just how fucking uncommon interracial couples are AND it’s even more uncomfortable because Sunny is constantly made out like she’s a freak or defective because she lacks some SandWing traits,,, Burn (?) literally wanted to stuff her and put her on display because her appearance is so striking; it’s literally so fucking bad

let’s not talk about the fact that the biggest interracial couples (esp Foeslayer/Arctic) literally have doomed relationships and aren’t allowed to be happy; I haven’t finished arc 3 yet and I really want to like Blue/Cricket (esp cause I headcanon Cricket as autistic) but Cricket’s feelings for Blue seem to limited to how uwu pretty he looks and I know Blue is Empathetic & Pacifistic but Cricket is still from the oppressor class, and she hasn’t seemed to fully reconciled with that role, nor has Blue seemed to accept that reality, they both just keep insisting Wasp is the only bad thing and not the system they grew up in, and unless Tui confronts this, I can’t get behind their relationship, it’s just more of the same Jade Mountain Academy wishful thinking that once the Bad Thing is over, everybody can forgive each other and we don’t need to deal with anyone’s trauma or hard realities

theres nothing i love more than when you guys give me essays detailing exactly why and how and what is wrong with WOF and you always word yourselves so well. thank you so much cause you're absolutely right

[milfglupshitto]

perfect square

in which acquaintances and decisions are made that will forever alter the shape of the universe, and one is added to three

content warnings for non-graphic and loosely described violence, torture, child endangerment, and death

Their paths cross the first time on Tell’s flagship, the Starsfall (more intimidating in Gryss). The child is at most five, and based on recognizable phonics and tone of voice definitely not allowed to be in this part of the ship. The girl’s scramble out of the way of a blow that the assailant hasn’t even decided to bring down is as automatic a response as Eli’s subsequent move into the strike’s path. It’s a gambit that yields satisfactory results: Tell’s regularly-scheduled mutilation session has to be irregularly rescheduled, with most of the Sculptor’s subsequent ire targeted at the overzealous guard, and the child slips away unnoticed in the aftermath.

Lying that night on the cold metal floor, sensory edges dulled by the acrid burn energy weapons tend to leave and that heartache that tends to come on when a stranger reminds you of a not-stranger you can’t quite get to at the moment, he is hazily aware of a tall figure crouched near the door on the other side of the cell. Being in not much condition to do something about it, he lets the vaguely familiar figure be. The next time he sees her, in full armor but recognizable by her posture and maybe more pertinently by the way she silences the humming containment field on her way out of the doomed ship, Eli is able to place just where he knows her from. Acting on instinct just as automatic as the move to protect the kid, he resolves not to tell Lani— or anyone else— about the little girl or her mother.

Rescued by pirates more opportunistic than altruistic but nevertheless decent hosts, recovered by a CEDF scout ship that almost didn’t answer their hail, rehabilitated sort of by doctors clearly lacking in xenobiological expertise, and finally restored to his pre-capture command after a turnaround that none who care to comment think was nearly long enough, one year after first “meeting” the child Eli finds her again when her mother shoots him out of the sky.

During the odd pair’s life-or-death jaunt through the woods of a collapsing planet (he had been on an aid mission, undercover, noncombative, but no one on any side has time to cry foul play with all the devastating groundquakes and whatnot), a year’s worth of questions are asked and answered, back and forth. Eli learns that the child’s name is Jona, and her mother’s name is Mirri, and her father is no one worth mentioning (the status of the father was not asked after to begin with). He learns further that Mirri can cleave a boulder twice her size in half with a standard vibro-glave, and it’s this and his near-fatal curiosity that keep him from running as fast as he can back towards the smoke of the ship’s wreckage and away from wherever she’s leading him to, even though she’s fairly injured and he’s fairly not. Mirri alone out of her associates has made the connection between the human prisoner kept more on a whim than out of genuine interrogative interest and the Hegemony’s increasing loss of its captive navigators. She is playing for amnesty for her and her child in exchange for one of the Ascendancy’s most covert operatives, and does not ask if he thinks it will work. He thinks she knows the answer.

Mirri learns that the strange human who is back in the field much too soon based on what little she saw of Tell’s handiwork and the clean-up involved has three daughters of his own, the youngest about the same age as hers. She learns that they began showing the signs at about the same age as Jona did. She learns that the human man’s children are not human, and that he found them after her people had gotten to them, and he knows very, very well what she has tried, is trying, to save her daughter from. He does not ask if she has met the others like his children, if she has played a role in the nightmares of someone he rescued, or the end of someone he couldn’t. She thinks he knows the answer.

As they reach the safehouse, and her daughter, and Mirri’s rotted blood refuses to stop flowing despite what are clearly the best efforts of the human who’s still so ghastly thin a whole year after Tell that even in this weakened state she could probably snap his wrists with a whisper, she makes peace with the fact that she is going to die, which is not hard to accept after a lifetime of dangerous work, and that Jona is going to live, which is a little harder to reckon with. Forces from every side converge on their location, and she determines to stay and buy them more time to run (and less time to see her bleed away), and Mirri sends her heart away with the human, whose name is Eli, whose daughters’ existence he never mentioned even once during six months of Tell’s finest work, whose thin arms support Jona’s weight like he could carry her until the end of time and a little while longer, while Mirri tells her daughter goodbye.

[blastoisemonster]

Medarot V Susutake Mura No Tenkousei: Kuwagata

As a kid, Medarot's cartoon never striked me as something I'd watch with actual interest. Without anything interactive to back it up for us in Italy, there was no doubt that the franchise was doomed from the start; even nowadays I wouldn't be able to watch any episode, the plot feels way too childish and character behaviour feels clichè at best, abrasive at worst. But it's in its graphics that the world of bots really stands out. Growing up and approaching my drawing career with more seriousness, I happened to study different mecha designs overtime and went once again back to Medarot as they were a good example of toony, organic and simplified robot styles; Horuma Rin gave these metal characters the same squishiness of flesh, giving them expressions, personality and life: his human style ain't nothing special, but then again they're not under the spotlight in this case.

Graphics are the exact reason why I find Medarot games much more endearing than its anime: it's their perfect emulation of Pokèmon-syled RPG proportion and assets that washes me with a strange sense of nostalgia in every single screen. Despite never having played these games before, they still all feel so familiar. This gaming saga has evolved alongside Pokèmon and many of their subsequent choices, from the card-game spinoff to how the GBC sequels look, seem to have been influenced by Pikachu and friends. I haven't taken a look at the most recent chapters, but I'm willing to bet Medarot also has recently stopped using a grid-based navigation in favour of 3D free roaming on the map. :P I'll be definitely taking advantage of the translation patch to play its "first gen" in its entirety.

[thequietmanno1]

Thelreads, MHA 272, Replies Part 1

1) “Let`s see how many heroes will bite the dust, on Chapter 272: Good Morning!

Ha, fucking, ha, Horikoshi.”- Let’s see how many heroes will be the dust! Certainly going to be hard to sift them out from the rubble. 2) “Oh boy I have a feeling this town is in for a makeover…”- First the town, then the country. Tomorrow, the world! 3) “Oh boy, been a while since we last saw this batch of kids. Glad to see Bakugo continues to be an ass, I was worried he could`ve changed while I wasn`t looking.

Now, being rude is understandable, but refusing a chocolate bun? Unforgivable. I hope Shigaraki teaches you a leason, I hope he kicks your ass for that sin”- Bakugou’s here to do his job, not to accept charity. He’s at least dialling the assholishness down a little from the licence exam. 4) “massive oofs in the chat for this poor writer, I have a feeling he is about to have a bad time.

Don`t worry man, they are just going to dust the place a bit while you`re gone…”-Hopefully he saved a copy of it to the cloud… 5) “I see that manga boy from class 1-B is there as well… “-Koji’s Quirk at least gives hope of the animals in the area being evacuated, though whether they ran far enough once the crumbling started is another matter… 6) “And now back to the ominous warning.

But alas, none of them know the End approaches. They are oblivious to their doom, blissfully unaware of the horrors that this way come.

He`s coming

And no one will be able to stop him.”- If only Izuku had had more time to train, but alas, AFO and Tomura aren’t interested in waiting for a strong opponent to crush beneath their heels, they want to get started now… 7) “Yeah, sure thing number one, now if only you could tell him how the fuck to do that, because holy shit, I think that`s a bit of a tall order, even All Might on his prime wouldn`t be able to do anything.”- Decay was already a dangerous power for All Might to face in a fight back when Tomura was starting out with a weakened, slower version of it. One Touch, and his mighty muscles would start to break apart. It wasn’t an issue because of how fast All Might was, and his ability to create air gusts, but that was before Tomura modified himself to a level comparable to All Might, with a stronger version of Decay backing him up, and the original AFO Quirk pre-loaded into him, along with all its accumulated and varied powers. The only way Izuku has a chance now is if he can somehow unlock all the remaining Quirks of OFA and utilise the full power of the Quirk safely without tearing himself apart in the next 5 minutes, before Tomura tears him to pieces anyway. By the same token though, there really isn’t anything or anybody else on the heroes’ side who has a realistic chance of stopping Tomura but Izuku, precisely because of the immense full power of OFA he possesses. Even if he’s far away from the hospital right now, Tomura can steamroll any opposition in the way until they finally throw down. 8) “Yeah, trust me, it won`t be long before you guys are hit full force. And Shigaraki won`t even be nearby, his power is just gonna reach you from this distance.

There`s no escaping the End”- His hatred is all-consuming, and now it literally consumes everything around him. 9) “Why are you talking like goddamn Dormin from Shadow of the Colossus?”- Tomura wanted the power to strike even the godlike AllMight from the earth. Now that he’s gained it, he’s become something….other than human in the process. 10) “…

Shit, that was actually chilling, no pun intended.

God, things are about to get fucked, aren`t them?”-Tomura didn’t even kill him because he was a threat or could warn the heroes, he killed him to steal his cloak to warm himself up. The mentality of ‘destroying everything’ around you understandably would result in a lot of death, but now human lives matter let to Tomura than getting small creature comforts, which is arguably a final insult to X-less, that he died for so petty a reason. 11) “Oh boy, I think Gran Torino already saw something. He seems to be the one that realized that something bad is approaching.”- Speedy reflexes are only useful if you can sense the encroaching danger in time to use them before it’s too late. Gran Torino didn’t get that old by not being able to tell when it’s time to book it. 12) “THE END HAS ARRIVED

RUIN COURSES THROUGH THE EARTH ONCE AGAIN

RUNNING IS FUTILE

THE END HAS ARRIVED”- This moment genuinely feels like something out of a horror film, like an unstoppable force of nature has been unleashed upon the world, akin to a curse from a deceased ruler buried in a tomb from long ago bringing a plague upon the lands to torment the living, a plague that cannot be fought, only endured and, maybe, survived. 13) “OH YEAH, I THINK IT`S TIME WE START RUNNING”- Unless you’re Iida, Tensei or Koichi, I genuinely doubt the average hero has a hope of being un outrun the flow of Decay upon the ground. That wave was unleashed from the Hospital and reached the city in under 3 minutes or less – that’s just too fast for most people to escape from even with a motor vehicle. Tomua said he wanted to be sure to obliterate everything with his amped-up Decay, and now, nothing that walks upon the Earth. can escape him. 14) “WELP, SEEMS LIKE THE OL` DOC GOT WHAT HE WISHED FOR

HE HELPED BRING RUIN TO THE WORLD

AND AS A REWARD, RUIN SHALL GIVE HIM ITS

BLESSING

…”- His goal has been achieved, the genie is out of the bottle, and now there’s nothing the heroes can do to thwart it anymore. He’s lived twice the lifespan of a normal man solely to achieve AFO’s ambitions, and if those ambitions involved tearing down everything the heroes have created and he gets caught in that? A fair price to pay, to his twisted mind. @thelreads

[loki-zen]

On reflection, I still think Sollux was kind of a nothing character in a lot of ways, but I feel like he is Up There for Best Typing Quirk (a subject I have vague notions of going into in more detail at some point)

(The tags to block if you’re sick of Homestuck content are ‘stuckhome syndrome’ and ‘godammit hashtaggart’ btw. I seem to be pretty good at remembering to tag this particular thing so on this occasion I can credibly commit to continuing to do so.

I also aim to write at least some posts - including this one - in a way that makes them accessible to people with only passing knowledge of the series who might be interested in my Writerly Musings on shit.)

It does the same thing as Vriska’s or Aradia’s quirks, in terms of representing both something conceptual and something physical about the character (Vriska’s habit of inserting 8s or doing things in 8s referring to both her eight-pupilled left eye and her spider motif; Aradia’s 0s connoting emptiness/nothingness as appropriate for a goth kid doom prophet, but also resembling her blank pupil-less eyes). Sollux is the troll associated with the Gemini symbol and thus duality, and he’s also physically a mutant with many doubled-up attributes; two tiny horns on each side of his head (which the doubled and lowercase is kinda resemble), heterochromia, too many teeth etc.

It directly and recognisably references 1337 5P33K in ways that got lost with a lot of later-appearing quirks. I enjoy this conceptually because it plays in to the way ‘trolls’ (an alien species) and ‘trolls’ (as in internet trolls) are deliberately equivocated throughout their early appearances (in which they communicate with HS’s original human protagonists only through chat programs).

(it is also relevant to note that, as standard, dialogue in HS is presented in the form of a chatlog, even if the characters are in one another’s physical presence.) (characters who talk to each other being in one another’s physical presence is rare enough early on that by the time this happens you’ve gotten used to the format and it barely strikes you as odd)

But the reason it’s the Best One is that Sollux has a lisp (because of all those teeth), so it’s the only typing quirk that does both of the above things but also directly conveys how the character’s dialogue sounds! I found it very easy, once I got into the swing of it, to read the 2s in place of the Ss as ‘a character that represents the way a lisped S sounds’, which was very satisfying, because it’s not exactly a ‘th’. (I’d say there are arguments on this front for some of the others - tAVROS’S sTYLE does fairly well at conveying hesitancy for instance- but none as directly as Sollux.)

[imperiuswrecked]

I’m a bit confused on something. I was re reading that recent X factor adventure the one from the x men legends run, you know with dr doom and the terrorists in latveria? Anyway i liked it a lot but I still can’t tell if X factor we’re actually good guys. Admittedly I haven’t read every single issue of this line up from the 90s only a few so far so maybe I’m missing something important but I can’t help but feel there is a massive flaw behind the concept of a government sponsored mutant strike team. I love it dont get me wrong the government wanting a team made up of mutants who can handle mutant affairs helps the politics of it all feel much more weighted and interesting- but it all comes down to the question of which missions are they expected to act on? It’s all well said and done getting more involved with mutants and giving them a platform to lead the charge on their own affairs i really do think the concept of the team is fantastic in that regard but of course then you get missions like ‘freedom fighters in latveria protest for democracy’ and then X factor have to apprehend them but there’s no follow up at all to the dictatorship in the country.Anyway I was just wondering if you knew anymore on that, is there an acknowledgement or elaboration of this flaw at any point in the 90s run?

X-Factor/All New X-Factor is flawed, it's not a perfect concept, and that's what makes it interesting to read. Imo it's about compromises and deals, by joining X-Factor the team members think they will have some say in how things are handled and they think by being on the "inside" aka with Government/Private Corporation support it will be better than being on the X-Men where they are limited by things/constantly in danger of being labeled Public Enemy #1. The og X-Factor series does have moments when the team clashes with the decisions the government makes, like in issue #78, Havok is unhappy because he wasn't consulted.

In this same issue the big problem is that a doctor is claiming they can remove the X-Gene in unborn children if the parents want so they won't have mutant kids. Valerie Cooper is the team liaison between X-Factor and the Government and is telling the team the mission is to protect the doctor from being murdered by the Mutant Liberation Front. Rahne is extremely upset by this, why should they protect a doctor who wants to use his science to keep mutants from being born, this goes against what Rahne believes in. Alex tells her she doesn't have to go on the mission and asks if anyone else wants to opt out, Quicksilver takes the option to be left out of this mission for personal reasons.

So who is right here? The team that claims to be working so they can handle mutant issues on their own is suddenly faced with this mission and how should they handle it? We have a character who has spent time researching DNA and how to remove the X-Gene before birth, a doctor who wants to give parents the choice of having their kids be born as a human or as a mutant.

And a group of Mutants who want to kill him because he is killing their future, (if you think this has something to do with the writer remarking on abortion rights then yes, its not the neatest and best way to write something reflecting real life situations but this is the comic I first thought of so I thought it would be good to use an example for your question.) and they want to kill the doctor.

As I see it, X-Factor is not about "heroes saving the day" it's about people trying to make the best choices they can live with and having to deal with political red tape.

For your question about X-Men Legends (2021) #5-6, Valerie clearly states what X-Factor's mission was, saving the people in the building who were being held hostage.

"And what about Doom?"

Well what about Doom? What should X-Factor, an american government supported mutant team should have done about Doctor Doom? The leader of a nation? About the issues of his country?

“I don’t like it anymore than you, Johnny, but Doom is a Head of State with Diplomatic Immunity. There’s nothing we can do to him.” - Reed Richards - Spider-Man/Fantastic Four #1

I know people don't tend to treat fictional countries as anything but setting but if we stop to think about this in the context as it is presented, this is a political situation, the Latverian Embassy is protected under certain laws, Doom himself has diplomatic immunity and rights as a leader of a nation, and that’s why Quicksilver was sent to get Doom to deal with this situation.

If X-Factor were to do more then Doom (if he so pleased) could use that as a launch point to call for justice, he could claim the Americans violated laws via their proxy X-Factor, and it would have been an even bigger political mess. As far as X-Factor is concerned, saving the innocent people was as far as they were willing to get involved in this mess.

Why doesn’t X-Factor follow Doom or try to end his dictatorship?

Other characters have tried this before, it’s actually something that happens in Fantastic Four comics, where Doom is no longer the leader of Latveria and the Fantastic Four were trying to keep the country together (Fantastic Four 1961 #503).

The thing is, not a lot of fans care about the background or politics of Doom and Latveria, and so while its simple to ask why isn’t Doom dethroned? In comic lore it’s not that simple; Doom is a dictator but also he is a beloved figure and a hero to most of Latveria, he was the leader of a revolution to overthrow the ruling class who did harm to the country and its people, and when he was gone other countries try to take over Latveria, there is always a power vacuum when Doom isn’t there. Doom isn’t some simple Super Villain living in a volcano lair. Doom is a Power and it shows in the ripple effect of his absence. So like X-Factor comics, there is often more than just “good guys” and “bad guys”.

I much prefer comics to be like this, where actions have consequences and you have to think about what each side represents in the story. Hope this helps answer your question Anon.

[thehomothings]

Analysis of Kite's conflicting moralities, relationship with death, and the toll reincarnation may take on one's psyche

So, today I decided to compile all the thoughts I have had about Kite's interesting worldview since the first time I saw him into one post, mostly for my own sake, really. If you're familiar with the few posts I've made, you know it's gonna be a mess, but hopefully a comprehensible mess.

A heads up, this is going to be spoiler-heavy, and very much deal with subjects of death and dying as a whole. Also, some of these conclusions are drawn from my own experiences and close brushes with death, I'm not going to go into much detail but it might get personal and definitely dark. I'm not even sure if I can call this a meta-analysis, and I'm obviously no expert, so mayhaps take all of this with a grain of salt.

Been getting into drawing lately, and during the more simple and mindless part of the painstaking process of dotting every single star in this, I let my thoughts wander through the latest part of the fic I'm writing, and I got a better grasp on what exactly made Kite such an elusive character to me.

I'm not quite sure why I got so attached to Kite. Perhaps it was the air of tragedy surrounding him, how despite his sordid past he remained still open and gentle even if outlined by a healthy dose of cynicism.

But sometimes, I think it's the fact that he is so paradoxical. He's brave, yet fears death to such a degree that creates a whole Nen ability around it, is a pacifist yet will not hesitate to spill blood for his own sake or someone else's. Despite the many ultimatums and warnings of 'I will not protect you', he gave his arm and then his life to save Gon and Killua. He approaches each hunt and battle with a clear plan of action in mind, but his Hatsu takes the form of a roulette that gives him random weapons which are never what he wants, but what he seems to need for that exact situation, which he cannot dispel without using. When he draws a weapon, the decision is locked in and his or his opponent's fate is sealed. That's why each time he dubbs his weapon a bad roll. Every time he has to gamble, he sees himself as having run out of luck. When it comes to having to choose between himself and somebody else...well, there had never been a choice. In fact his aversion to using it may feed into its sheer power that we, unfortunately, saw too little of.

Let's go over his very first appearance when he saves Gon from the mother Foxbear.

It's not hard to see the strain searching for Ging has put on him; he's rash, prone to anger and punching a child for daring to get into trouble. In his mind, he's failing at his most important task, has not yet earned the right to call himself a hunter despite being in possession of his very own hunter license.

After killing the mother Foxbear and raging about having done so, he says this interesting line:

So yes, he finds killing for any reason rather irksome as most would do, yet I think something deeper caused him to absolutely lose it in this scene:

He had not been aware of Gon's identity, and despite being an animal lover and a naturalist, he made a choice to save the human instead of allowing nature to run its course. In fact, he says: 'No beast that harms a human must be allowed to live.'

How does one weight one life against another? How is the worth of it determined? The value of life... an impossible choice he's faced with and a choice which he seems to regret to some degree.

The Foxbear cub.

Here, he's speaking from experience, a tangible loss he has felt himself, and a hard and bitter life he does not want to impose on the cub.

His backstory is exclusive to the 2011 anime adaptation but there are hints alluding to it in the manga, for example, the fact that he does not seem to know his birthplace, or:

The choice of words is chilling.

Reading between the lines, one could draw the conclusion that he is an orphan. Something supporting this hypothesis is how he visibly deflates after Gon tells him his parents have (presumably) died.

So we see he is willing to go against his own moral code of not killing as to not doom another living being to the life he led, a lonely, hopeless existence that could barely be called one. He saw it best to put down the cub rather than leave it to die a painful, slow death.

The reason Kite himself isn't as cynical and cold-hearted as one would be after witnessing cruelty in its rawest form is those small crumbs of human kindness which he may have found in Ging.

It was not only a chance at an honorable life being Ging's apprentice gave him, but it also 'saved' him from being broken and twisted into what he hated and worst of all, death.

If we take that one minute of backstory as canon to his character-which I find myself inclined to do- these quirks of his make much more sense. He lived on the run. He lived on the knife's edge between giving up or pushing forwards. He lived as so a wrong move could be the difference between survival and the end.

Between rock and a hard place creates a mentality of black and white, absolute good or extreme evil, this or that. Except in reality, it's much harder than that. Deciding who to save and who to strike down is a heavy burden to bear.

It's almost easy to see how struggling to keep surviving could lend itself to a crippling fear of death and subsequently developing a Nen ability which once more goes against his own moral code in order to give himself a second chance...yet something about it strikes me as unlikely when I look at it this way.

Living life knowing it could end at any moment has the opposite effect, at least for me it did. One comes to accept that it is fleeting and while not eager to let it go, when death eventually and inevitably does come, there is no fighting it.

Especially when there is no hope that tomorrow will be a better day than this one.

Frequent near-death experiences numb one's fear in a way, even if it drives them to take precautions that render it unlikely to happen again and results in c-PTSD, but still, it does. It sparks a certain nihilistic view of 'if it all can end so easily, then what's the point of it all?'

Unless there are things to live for, a sure promise of a better future, and Ging gave Kite that. When he faced the threat of losing his second chance at life:

Really, what else could lead someone to develop the ability of 'the hell I'm going to die like this'?

I think a separate event, an even more brutal near-death experience that almost cost him his life as the hunter he so strived to be set him off to develop the secret roll of Crazy Slots, what I call Roll No.0, Ars moriendi. Unlike other weapons, it cannot come up in random and is directly summoned by him, or better said, summon by his overwhelming will to keep going and hopelessness of fighting a losing battle. I don't believe roll No.3 was the weapon that allowed him to reincarnate. I've named that one Wand of Fortune, a sort of armor instead of an offensive weapon since I find it hard to believe Kite, a Conjurer, would not focus on defences as well, and I will go into both mechanisms of these weapons hopefully in his backstory.

Despite knowing this battle to be a pointless one and being acutely aware of his soon to be demise, he did not immediately draw Ars moriendi, no, he stayed back and fought for the sake of the boys, kept Neferpitou occupied until they could reach safety. We can see evidence of this in the aftermath of the battle that seemed to have gone on until dawn, a torn apart landscape only signaling a fraction of the devastation that was Kite's power unleashed. It still wasn't enough.

In the anime sub I watched, when Gon apologizes to Ging about Kite's death, Ging said a sentence that infuriated me, because it belittled the utter suffering of the NGL trio.

"He would not die in your place." (No screenshot, sorry)

And I remember practically shouting at the screen, screaming 'how could you possibly say that? Of course he did. He absolutely did die in their place. How could you not know your own apprentice? Why-'

It was only last night that it hit me why Ging would say that.

Once upon a time, maybe Kite would not have given his life for anybody under any circumstances, even if he had a way out of it all. He would still need to die to come back to life.

His Thanatophobia could be attributed to the (possibly untreated) PTSD of the near-death experience in his later life, being so certain of dying that finding himself alive afterwards drove him to never want to go through that again. He quieted his fear by creating a sort of a loophole, that even if he lost the battle he would remain. Ging remembered that, but as evidence shows, something changed. Maybe he healed a bit, perhaps growing up dulled his fear to a certain degree, but eventually when it came down to his life or another's, he didn't choose himself.

Now, I can hear you saying 'but he didn't die, so what are you going on about??' And so I reply: Yes, he is alive, but he did die. He experienced that painful, horrible moment of staring death in the eyes and thinking 'This is it, this is the end', went through the actual process of having his soul removed from his body. And that moment stretches into infinity, ten lifetimes condensed into the mere seconds before oblivion.

Dying isn't so hard if one stays dead.

It's not so easy to open one's eyes and find oneself alive again after that, no matter how much that is the heart's desire. It's difficult, nigh-impossible to reconcile with life and walk amongst the living when everything had been so final, when death had been accepted to its fullest.

So Kite awakens, the twin of Meruem and back from the dead, his mind and identity both intact and fractured. In that he is Kite is no mistaking, yet he is not the same gentle pacifist whose first reaction upon sensing a monster's aura was to shield two kids from it at the cost of his arm.

I don't think many of you are familiar with Zoroastrian ideology, but Togashi is known for loving his religious imagery, and it's not only Christianism he derives inspiration from (evidence of which can be seen all over Kite's character and resurrection).

In Zurvanism-a branch of Zoroastrianism- there is talk of the twin spirits: Ahura Mazda -epitome of all that is good- and Ahriman -epitome of all that is evil-, the parent god Zurvin decides that the firstborn may rule in order to bring "heaven, hell, and everything in between."

Upon becoming aware of this fact, Ahriman forcibly tears through the womb to emerge first. Sounding familiar yet?

Zurvan relents to this turn of events only on one condition: Ahriman is given kingship for 9000 years, and then Ahura Mazda may rule for eternity.

Meruem ruled for 40 days, his death leaving the throne vacant for ant Kite, wearing a dead girl's face and seeming to be brewing some nefarious plan. No more is there any sign of that unrelenting pacifism and the sanctity of life he held so high, losing his own may have only served to show him how meaningless the pain and suffering he went through had been, dying only to be reborn as a member of the species that killed him. It may be that he has no desire to rule over the remaining Chimera ants or create an army of his own-

Yet I dread to think what a broken mind possessing limitless power might do to the world.

And that's it. If you made it this far, thank you for reading! If you found it interesting, stay tuned, as I think a lot and I will make it your problem.

[writefightandflightclub]

At ease, soldier (Santiago “Pope” Garcia x fem!reader)

What is this? This is 8/10 one-shots/blurbs for my “friends to lovers” event. (More deets in pinned post). The prompt is “I’ve never seen you dressed-up like this and **** you’re hot.”

Summary: when Santi moves in with you following his divorce, he didn’t anticipate seeing you in THAT DRESS. It does things to him, and has him reevaluating everything he feels for you, and everything he thinks he knows about home.

Author’s note: this has divorced!dad!Santi, so it’s a bit different (marriage / child not with reader). This might not be my best thought-out one-shot ever, or my best portrayal of Santi, but it is what it is. I personally think the thing reader does is adorbs, fight me if you disagree :P I really hope you like it! <3 Thank you as always for reading, commenting, and sharing. It means the world.

Rating: M/E (18+ ONLY, Minors do not read or interact. Thank you.)

Word count: this is not as long as some of the others! Hurrah!

Warnings: masturbation (m); Santi has super sexual thoughts about reader and they’re not together- they are written but not said out loud. theme of divorce but not too angsty. few mentions of shared custody / parenting (not reader’s child). Food mentions. Swearing. Kissing. Lmk if I missed any.

GIF: @realoscarisaac​

Tagging: @isvvc-pvscvl​ @anetteaneta​ @stardustkenobi​ @casifer-is-king​ @foxilayde​ @tlcwrites​ @aellynera​ @kindablackenedsuperhero​

“Hey, look. Thank you for this,” Santi says, softly and sincerely as you cross him again in the hallway, halting you with a hand on your shoulder. The heat from his palm bleeds through the thin fabric of your t-shirt and you consider wresting yourself sharply away from the pleasant torment of him. At the same time, you consider leaning in to his warm chest and staying there, so help you, curled like a leaf against the sturdy trunk of him.

He’s moving in with you, following the long, drawn-out process of his divorce. It has been a long time coming, but his marital house -which he has lived in alone going on a year - has finally been sold-off and split with his ex. And so, here he is, treading lightly and making himself small in your home - as if this isn’t somewhere he’s been loud and brash and welcome ever since you bought the damn place.

You can tell he’s grateful. He’s expressed it enough times. It’s the apology in his eyes you can’t stand - as if he’s some kind of burden. He’s been through a lot, but you want him to walk tall, instead of stooping under the weight of his “bad decisions”. He blames himself for a lot of things that you don’t think he ought to, not least the collapse of his marriage. She had cheated; although, he insists there were problems long before that. Perhaps even right from the beginning. He’d always been a travelling soldier, and even after he was discharged he couldn’t bring himself to stop.

“I promise. I’ll be out of your hair as soon as I get back on my feet,” he adds, self-consciously smoothing a hand over his scruff.

You smile softly. His promises still mean something to you. Even if he hadn’t seen through the promise of his marriage, you know he had tried. You know his word is never given lightly.

It’s hard. To start again, all over again. You know. You, yourself, were rattling around in a house too big for one, bought for two, perhaps meant for more - but that hadn’t worked out either. You’d had to forego promises you made as well.

“There’s no rush. Honestly.”

There isn’t. Between the legal fees and alimony, and carving up his assets, Santi needs a little time to get his finances together before he can consider his own place. You’re happy for him to take all of the time he needs. Out of the options available to him, you had been both the preferred one, and the last to offer. The other boys don’t have space. He’d considered a houseshare, but he needed somewhere his little daughter, Ava, could still come to stay on weekends.

You have space. Ava adores you. You were spending a lot of time with Santi anyway. For all those reasons, it was a no-brainier. You’d only hesitated so long in offering due to your impossible, undying love for the man. Did you really want to do that to yourself? To torment yourself with him, in your home?

“It’s no problem at all, but I do need you to haul this stuff inside a little faster, okay? I still have a date tonight, slowpoke.”

“You got it, boss.”

You chuckle, punching him playfully in the tricep, and traipsing out to the lawn to pick-up another box.

Perhaps it was ludicrous to go on a date tonight, of all nights, but at least you admit to yourself that it is an exercise in majorly over-compensating. It is some conscious attempt to signify how Not Into Him you are, and you are hoping -if the guy is cute enough and the sex is earth-shattering enough- that perhaps you could even convince yourself.

Aside from your well-established feelings for him, this whole arrangement is pretty dangerous. Santi is too easy to be around, and if you let yourself sink into the cosy bubble of his company, you fear you will never think to look for anyone else again. Whilst that would be just fine with you - Santi, on the other hand? He’s never been interested in you like that. Probably hasn’t ever entertained the idea of it. Besides, the timing between you two - even if there was something there- has never been quite right. There was always some mission or woman or man or bad decision getting in the way.

You sigh, as you bend and pick-up a box, feeling like your date is already doomed as thoughts of Santi swirl relentlessly in your head.

You can hope, perhaps, that it won’t turn out to have been a terrible decision to invite him into your home. Perhaps living with him will even help you get over him, once and for all, in a way that nothing and no-one else has managed to. You could discover all of his annoying habits and start bickering over whose turn it is to take the bins out until you hate each other, perhaps? However, somehow you think this is unlikely - when you’d broken up with Malik, Santi’s presence in your house had gotten you through. His laugh and his warmth had curled into every corner of this structure and nestled there, driving out all of the cobwebs. Santi made this house a home again, before he ever lived in it. In a way, you dread to think what will happen now.

“Make yourself at home, okay?” you encourage - this time as you cross him on the landing. “Put your stuff wherever. Take up some space. Hang your guitar above the fireplace. Hell, get a new one. Hang that too.” That had been a point of contention with her. “Paint your bedroom black, like you always wanted when you were a kid, whatever you want.”

Santi smiles warmly at you as he gets the message you’re so desperately trying to hammer home. You don’t want him to shrink himself into a corner. You want him to be at ease here. You want him to feel welcome.

With words escaping him, Santi’s hands wind around the back of your head, and he casually leans over, planting a quick but heartfelt kiss of gratitude, right in the middle of your forehead. “I love you,” he says freely, and, as he trots abruptly down the stairs, you only wish he meant it in the same way your heart sings its reply.

You do want him to relax here. He’s carried so much for so long. He’s carried it halfway around the world and back again, and the man deserves the break.

****

“Can I ask your opinion?” you call through his new bedroom door, cracking it and poking your head in as he responds affirmatively.

“Sure, come in.”

Santi watches as your body follows the path of your head, the slow reveal of your striking dress oddly tantalising, and sending a subtle surge of heat through him which he wasn’t prepared for. 

“How do I look?” you say apprehensively, holding out your palms before doing a little half-swivel, one hand poised on your hip.

Santi’s extremely conscious that his eyes widen, and he swears he must look like a cartoon, feeling like they’re popping out of his head in surprise when he clocks you.

You’re wearing a form-fitting, flattering dress. It’s long, and it hugs you perfectly where it touches, with subtle hints of leg and cleavage where the luxe material gives way to soft, inviting skin. Your hair and make-up are different than usual too, and you really look the whole package - so much so that Santi takes a minute to form a coherent thought, beyond the low whistle he expels when he sees you stood before him.

Shit - he knows it has been too long since he said anything, and yet all he can muster from his slack jaw is a feeble croak.

Wow. Holy shit.

Santi is a little thrown. Your body looks amazing. You look sultry and sexy, and like sex-on-legs, if he’s honest. He tries to think or speak, but he’s not sure if he’s ever seen you dressed-up quite like this, and you have him feeling more than a little stupefied.

He gulps.

It’s not as though you look transformed, or anything. You’re an attractive woman, always, and the dress simply highlights that. No change there. But the way he’s responding to you is something new, and not something he entirely understands. Perhaps he simply became so used to seeing you clad in fatigues and sweats and overalls, usually covered in mud and sweat and blood. Perhaps he’s spent so long schooling himself into believing you’re someone he couldn’t and shouldn’t hit on -his friend- that he simply buried it. Buried it under his missions and his marriage and his house and his divorce. But now that all of those things are gone, and all the silt stirred-up, perhaps there is space for it to resurface? Now that, for the first time in a long-time, he feels at ease, and, here you are, looking like that?

Oh boy. His eyes trail over you further as though he can’t get enough. His gaze snags on the places the dress clings to you, providing a subtle outline of your form. He lingers on the places where you’re practically busting out of it- he likes those places especially.

He likes it a little too much, he realises, as he experiences an involuntary rush of blood to his cock, and he subtly rearranges his hands in front of him to disguise the fact as he stands to attention for you. 

Fuck, what would Frankie say? Santi thinks, as he reaches for literally any wholesome thought where none seem to exist - in his mind nor his vocabulary - while he’s looking at you.

“You look nice,” he manages to say, but that’s not how he’s phrasing it in his head. Not at all.

I wanna shove my tongue between your thighs, honey. I want you to slip those red lips down on my dick until you drain my balls dry.

“Nice?” you bristle. “Nice, Santiago? I don’t want to look nice.”

“How do you want to look?”

Naked, on my bed? Or, maybe that dress hitched all the way up. Those juicy hips of yours being marked by my hands as I bounce you on me until I fill you up.

You cross to the cheval mirror at the opposite side of the room, further examining yourself.

Holy shit, you look good from the back too.

Santi may be a lapsed Catholic, but he certainly feels like he needs to visit confession with the thoughts he’s having about you right now. He swears he must have started visibly sweating.

“I don’t know,” you say, softly twirling. “Bangable, I guess? Come on, you’re a straight, hot-blooded male. If a woman turned-up to a date wearing this, would this do it for you? It’s not too much?”

He gulps. “Yes. Yep. For sure. That’ll do it.”

When you flick your eyes back to him, with a soft, humble smile, laced delicately with an inner confidence, he finally has a wholesome thought again:

You’re beautiful.

“I think it’s a little too much... but I guess we’ll find out,” you sing-song, his eyes following your hips as you wiggle back to the door, before turning back to him over your shoulder. “Do you have everything you need before I go?”

He looks at your plush red lips. He licks his own.

I need you on your knees.

Oh well, he’d managed to be wholesome for all of two seconds. That was something.

“I’m good,” he pushes out. “When will you be back?”

“Don’t wait up,” you breeze. “He has a nice pad, so if it works out I think we’ll be heading to his place.”

His place?

Santi can’t help but wonder why he’s suddenly imagining what sounds you might make underneath another man. Hell, whether he could double the intensity of those pretty noises under him instead.

This is not ideal. This is not ideal at all, when he hasn’t even made it through day one.

He hasn’t felt this... aroused in a long-time. Not since long before things went south with her. He hasn’t been this hard for a woman in just as long. He’s been hard in the sense of a mechanical, routine need, sure, where he has the basic need to pleasure himself; but this is something else. This is potent. This is lust, raw and consuming. This is not a general need, but it is startling in its specificity.

As you leave, and he takes himself urgently out of his pants, he understands that this is all for you. Moreover, as he winds his hand around himself, and works his shaft to the thought of you, he has the best orgasm he’s had in a long time.

When he’s done, he has some severe post-nut clarity, feeling guilty that he has moved into your home and spilled himself on your sheets to the thought of you; on day one, no less. It’s not very respectful.

But at the same time, he’s caught in a spiral. It’s like you have flipped a switch in him.

And, as much as he feels a little guilty, and a little terrified by the sudden onslaught of his desire, he feels oddly at ease. He already feels at home.

****

Santi is curled-up on the couch when he hears your key rattle in the door, and you tread in looking just as breath-taking, but a little more sombre than earlier. Having already shed your coat and kicked-off your shoes at the door, you collapse into the arm chair opposite him, your dress ballooning momentarily with a waft of air.

“It didn’t work out,” you explain solemly, answering the question on the tip of his tongue. He flicks off the distracting TV he was half-watching to give you his full attention.

“How?” he asks, leaning unconsciously forward in his seat, his eyebrows raised and mouth curling in a soft sympathetic smile. “There’s no way he didn’t like the dress.”

“Oh, he loved the dress. But I didn’t love him. He was a bit of an ass, actually. I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“You okay? Did he hurt you? Say something to you?” Santi searches your face urgently, his eyes suddenly intense and muscles coiled. “I’ll fucking kill him.”

You lean forward in your own seat and pat him on the thigh. Your perfume wafts over him. You smell delectable. “Stand down, Garcia. You’re fine. I don’t need anyone knee-capped. I’m just tired.” You stand, and his chin tips up to follow you. “Gonna wash-up and go to bed,” you add, tiredly. “Your night okay?”

“Yep. Fine,” he says briefly, more concerned with you. You look a little sad. A little wistful, he thinks. “Think I left my entire box of underwear in ‘Fish’s car. But that’s tomorrow’s problem.” He smiles up at you gently, with those deep, brown eyes of his, as that earns a light laugh from you. He saws his hand over his chin, gaze remaining soft as he watches you disappear and bid him goodnight. You swing around the doorframe as your hand clutches it, a trail of diaphonous fabric floating after you, as though you are a vision which could disappear in a cloud of smoke. It scares him that you would, he realises. He’s usually the one who disappears. Who retreats.

He watches you slink away, his mind already busy, working on how he might pick you up from your slump, and he plods to the kitchen.

You are upstairs in your en suite when he calls in to you, and, once you admit him, he transfers a steaming mug of sleep tea to your night-stand as a little pick-me-up. A small token, but one that makes you gasp in a breath, looking at his thoughtful gesture in confusion and surprise. “Thank you. That’s sweet of you.”

“Don’t sound quite so surprised,” he says thickly as he approaches you where you hover next to the sink. “Just because she ditched me doesn’t mean I’m a total write-off. I do have some redeeming qualities.”

He wraps his hands around the back of your head and he pulls you to him, planting another kiss to your forehead; but this time, in the dusky bedroom light, it hits different. It is slower and softer, and he looks far more comely. It sends a hot flare of yearning through you, blazing into every nook of you.

“I know that,” you say steadily, your fingers and thumb reaching up to play idly with the hem of his t-shirt sleeve. Your fingers brush his arm before you check yourself, turning away from him and towards the sink so that he can’t see your desire catching like a flare - and instead you continue to cleanse the make-up from your face, grateful for the cover the activity provides. “In fact, maybe I should have gone to dinner with you,” you snicker, innocently, before you think of the full implication of your words. “Sorry. I didn’t mean like that...” you hastily backpedal. “Just because we live together I’m not planning on getting ideas.”

“It’s okay,” he says, voice low and steady and soothing enough to halt your ramble. “You can go getting ideas if you want to.”

You whip your head towards him, a gulp trailing down your throat, as you see the vaguest hint of a suggestive eyebrow, of a smug smile dancing at the corners of his lips. You will yourself to remain in place; to avoid the call to lean in to his inviting lips or chest - even if he’s not giving you any signal that he would move away if you did.

You are hot aren’t you? Santi thinks. More than that; you are beautiful too. Now that he’s allowing himself to notice it, he can’t stop noticing it.

Seeking air, and space, the world shrinking to a dot, you tear yourself away from the sink and stride out into the bedroom, posting yourself at the door and signifying it is time for him to head out too. He takes the hint, and he comes to stand opposite you in the hallway, hands shoved into the pockets of his sweat pants.

“How are you doing?” you ask breathily, not knowing what has come over you but trying to push this heady, unravelling feeling away. To bundle it up and bind it back down. “First night in a new place?” You consider it, chiding yourself. “I should have been here. This whole date thing was stupid.”

It’s not a new place at all though, Santi thinks. In fact, he doesn’t think he’s ever been somewhere more familiar. Anywhere more like home. Not even with her - Ava notwithstanding, of course; that little girl is his pride and joy.

When Santi doesn’t answer, his eyes softly glowing at you instead, you reach to fill the silence, lest you fall all the way into the pit of yearning. “Maybe us living together is a bad idea. This is day one and you’re already counselling me through a bad date.”

“What else are friends for?” he smiles meaningfully. Gratefully, again. You can tell what he’s likely thinking. He’s thinking about all the times you have counselled him through years of bad decisions. You’ve always been there for him.

“Right.” Friends, you remind yourself, as the hall-light pools around him like spun gold.

He reaches his sock-clothed foot out to gently bump yours. “Well, don’t take tonight too hard, okay? You’re a catch.”

Feeling bashful, you fold you arms and smile, looking down at the floor and away from the vision that is him.

You kick your foot out to boop his in return, with your sizeable, fluffy slipper. “Well. You’re pretty bangable too, you know. Someone will snap you right up, as soon as you’re ready.” 

Someone.

He turns his mouth downward, and tilts his head to the side. “Hmm,” he says as if considering your point. “Kinda looking for a little more than a bang though. I want someone who can be my best friend too. And... best friends? They’re kinda hard to come by.” 

Your heart hammers in your chest. His tone is casual, but his eyes are earnest, and your desire unravels like spools of red ribbons from your core.

The way he’s looking at you, from beneath his lashes, a smirk developing at the corners of his lips has you almost collapsed to the floor with yearning, and you think, if he doesn’t step away from your door soon, you will find it hard to resist the temptation to drag him inside - if he’s willing. You will be tempted to let these ribbons wind around him and coax him to you.

However, Santi simply lets his comment hang in the space between you as you fumble for a response, before turning away and shuffling down the hall and towards his room. 

“Goodnight, hermosa,” he calls, the pet name lighting you on fire. Beautiful.

“‘Night,” you call back to him, as casually as possible, before disappearing hurriedly inside your door and throwing yourself face down on to the bed with a silent scream.

Santi, for his part, reaches his respective room, and throws himself backwards on to the bed, having to fight the urge to run straight back to your room and kiss you senseless, if he’s honest. As he sighs out a huge breath and brings his hands up to his face, a light chuckle befalls him, and he has to consider what’s so funny. He lands on it quickly.

She - his ex-  must hate this living arrangement, he realises. She’d always thought the two of you had something. She’d insisted. Had gotten mad jealous over it too. In all honesty, Santi had never seen it. Or, not at the time, at least.

Perhaps the timing had never been right.

...Not until now, perhaps?

****

The atmosphere is different in the morning. More settled, thanks goodness.

You’re up earlier than Santi, and you get to work in the smaller guest bedroom, which you had kept off-limits to him the day prior. When you’re ready, you call down to him - he’s in the kitchen getting a head start on breakfast- insisting that he comes upstairs.

He pads up to find you in the hall, stood with a huge smile plastered on your face.

“I have a surprise for you,” you announce to him, and, a curious, happy look blooms over his sharp features.

“Okay,” he says, oblivious, but his interest piqued as you swing the door open and hustle him inside ahead of you, clinging to his t-shirt.

“It’s not finished yet,” you explain from behind him as he moves his head to look around the room, freshly painted and carpeted, and entirely different to how it looked before. “Ava still likes purple, right?” you say to his back, delight infusing your voice as he takes it all in. “Oh, and the birds-“ you point “-the boys and I each painted one. Benny’s is super wonky. I know it’s cheesy as all hell, but we wanted to remind you that you -and Ava- you’ll always have us as family.”

Santi doesn’t say anything. He can’t. He’s speechless with gratitude. It is all he can do to look around the room and take in all of the details. The little bed and princess canopy, the shelves lined with a few books to start her off.

This is something he didn’t dream he would be able to give Ava again for a long time. At least, not without some coordinates and a shovel.

He rasps one hand over his stubble, and you come up beside him, seeing that his eyes are full with tears, and his face pinched, as he fights to supress his emotions. He doesn’t cry often, and there’s not a lot that can reduce him to tears, so you can tell from his reaction how much this all means to him.

Your voice and your manner softening, you slot both of your hands around one of his and give him a squeeze there, before rubbing soothing circles into his back.

When you speak again, your voice is full, cracking with emotion. “I know this can’t be easy, Santi. And you need to know that you are home for Ava, wherever you are, whatever happens. But I thought this would help a little too?” He sneakily thumbs away a tear from the corner of his eye as your words overwhelm him. “I hope I didn’t take too much of a liberty,” you continue, looking around the room, and wandering deeper into it. “Thought I’d get it half-done and then you could choose the rest with Ava tomorrow?” 

You turn back to him, smiling over your shoulder before turning all the way, your expression bright and hopeful and everything he hasn’t been able to muster for himself.

Still choked-up, Santi takes a few steps forward to meet you in the centre of the room, his long lashes beaded with diamond-like tears. He takes your hands in his, one to each side, and he presses his forehead against yours.

“Thank you,” he rasps, his voice full of holes, and your own eyes overflow too as his hands squeeze yours, happy that he’s happy, and sad that he’s in pain too.

After a few moments like this, the yearning creeps in, and, lest it invade everything, you extricate yourself from him gently, padding towards the door and offering, in a soft voice, to give him a minute alone.

“Wait,” he says, his voice catching you as you reach the hallway, evidently yielding a great deal of power for such a breathy thing, and it halts you in your tracks. “Can I try something?”

“Try what?” you ask, your heart and your voice fluttering in tandem, as Santi moves towards you in the hall with purpose.

“Can I kiss you?” His eyes search yours, brimming with emotion and softness and yearning too, his thumb and forefinger coming-up to clasp your chin tenderly in his grip.

“Is this a good idea?” you babble, as his lips hover moments from yours, and you are drawn to him with an achingly slow gravity. “You’re emotional, and you’re rushing and maybe you’re projecting or... maybe a million other things and I... really like you,” you say, raising your hands in between you, your palms pressed to his chest as your voice catches on hooks in your throat - keeping him at a slight distance before you can succumb to him. Immediately, he stops his advances, one hand winding gently around your waist. “Santi, I mean, I really like you,” you elaborate, you voice brittle and coming undone.

As much as you want this -have wanted this-you couldn’t face being one of his whims or mistakes or bad decisions. You couldn’t face being something he ended up leaving behind. He means too much to you for that.

Sensing your pain now, Santi smiles softly at you, not angry or offended in the slighest, but nodding in understanding. Tenderly, he trails the pad of his thumb along your jawline, and across your lower lip. He still finds apprehension in your eyes, and so, instead of the kiss he craves, he holds your head gently with one of his hands, and he dips forward to plant a soft, lingering kiss on your forehead, your eyes fluttering closed and a single tear spilling out of you as it lands.

Then, he pulls back, both of you wearing watery smiles, and feeling more than a little frayed around the edges.

“I get it,” he admits, nodding slowly. “On paper, this seems like another of my bad fucking ideas, doesn’t it? But...” he explains softly, eyes shining at you. “I feel as though I finally have things figured out. I feel like I know where I’m supposed to be.”

You nibble on your lower lip, a tentative, shy smile brewing. “Guess that was one powerful dress I wore last night, huh?”

“Hmm,” he considers, with a gentle chuckle. “It was, for sure, honey. Honestly though? This sports bra and overalls get-up is doing it for me too,” he admits, with a lopsided grin, nodding down at your DIY outfit. 

You examine his eyes in disbelief. You can’t believe that he’s looking at you like that. Like you’ve always wanted; and yet... you essentially knocked him back, your nerves and anxieties getting the better of you, despite his lips being moments from yours.

“Look, I’m sorry,” you gulp, eyes heavy with apology.

“Don’t worry,” he says, tilting his head towards the end of the hallway. “Let’s go make some more coffee. Also, I think you deserve some pancakes, sweetie.” He offers his hand to you and with a gentle song in your heart you take it, Santi leading you back downstairs into the kitchen.

You giggle, suddenly giddy as you shake out your remaining nerves and shock and doubts. As you settle.

By the time you watch Santi open-up the cupboards and search inside, turning back to you to ask if you want chocolate chip pancakes, a tiny note of delight in his eyes, he finds you looking at him with a gentle heat, brewing and eddying and clasping him in its tendrils, dragging him under with you. It causes him to double-take as he looks between you and the food-stuffs, until you have his whole attention. Until the world around him shrinks to you.

“Santi,” you suspire, tugging on his t-shirt to spin him towards you, your voice shaking like a leaf. “You took me by surprise up there. Any chance we can... C-Can we... try that again?”

A gulp trails down his throat, mirroring the heat sinking and settling into your core, even with the mere anticipation of his lips brushing against yours; of feeling his warmth where you have long been cold. You watch his tongue darting out to whet his lips, and it is as though you are already parted for him with the motion, your own lips already spread to accomodate the way he will delve into you, opening you up for him.

Then, Santi surges forward, hands holding you securely yet softly at your back and gathering you to his mouth, as if he is parched of you, all the yearning collapsing in on itself in one final surge as he flows into your arms. Yet, for all the force of your yearning meeting in the middle, and for the harsh initial crush of your lips, when the wave crashes, it is delicate and soft, his hand cupping your face and his tongue a delicate interlocuter, uttering promises against yours. Promises you are sure he will keep.

As the kiss deepens, you truly feel him, hard and sturdy everywhere around you except for this molten, supple tongue which courses into your being like a trail of fire. His kiss is like starlight tossed into a dark pit. You are lit but your hunger will never be sated; and instead you will kiss him and devour him again and again, opening yourself up to him to feed the dark.

Suddenly, with this kiss, his warmth is on you and filling you and one with you, unravelling, and you wonder what you ever did without it. How you ever felt at ease with this yearning within you; although, you suppose you didn’t. You suppose you longed for this divine quickening and stilling, this slickness and friction. You longed to feel him, and most of all, you longed for him to yearn for you in return.

And, finally, as the kiss wanes and you hold each other tightly, Santi considers that although he planned to stay in your house for a mere few months, he has a feeling his stay by your side will be far longer. And, on your side, as you hold him against you and this house feels like a haven in ways it never has before, you are content in the knolwedge that your travelling soldier is finally at ease.

Finally at home.

A home for one, but meant for more, finally fulfilling its purpose.

[logicalbookthief]

Things Left Unsaid -- An Analysis of Rei & Touya

Apparently Rei has been getting a lot of flack lately, all of it undeserved, and since I had a post analyzing her relationship with Touya in the works already, I figured no time like the present.

Disclaimer #1: There are a lot of issues with the writing for Rei’s character that have nothing to do with her and everything to do with how the storyline is using her, which I will address and examine.

Disclaimer #2: I’m someone who, while always curious as to what kind of relationship Rei had with her oldest son before he died, never thought it would be revealed that Touya was close to his mom. I don’t think you get the Dabi we see in Chapters 290-295 without him being so warped by his relationship with his father yet so dependent on his attention that he was willing to kill his brother and himself simply for his father’s acknowledgement.

But that’s what I find so interesting about Rei and Touya -- it’s a relationship that mainly consists of regrets and things left unsaid. There isn’t the anger or resentment Dabi feels for Endeavor, because that intense level of emotion sprung from the loss of the father who used to be his whole world. His feelings toward his mother seem more amicable, but also more distant.

And while she could’ve done some things differently in regards to her oldest, I want to make it clear that the distance between them was very much by design.

After all, Touya was the end goal of their marriage. It was never any secret as to why Enji wanted to marry her and to some extent Rei must’ve realized that this child was not meant to be hers: the child was the transaction, the thing she was needed to create, to give to her husband. Of course she loved Touya and was likely his primary caregiver for most of his life, but there was no doubt that once his quirk manifested and he could begin his hero training, his life would be dominated by his father. Which is what happened.

Here, I would like to point out something I noticed in the flashback chapters. We never see any panels of Enji alone with any of his children during their infancy -- even with Shouto, the perfect child he longed for, we see Rei holding Shouto, sitting by him as he sleeps. Enji is there tangentially. Once Shouto begins his training, that is when we see him with his father.

So to see Enji with Touya when he was a baby, prior to his quirk manifesting, strikes me as a big deal. But it makes sense if you remember that he’d placed all his hopes, dreams and expectations on his firstborn. Initially, it doesn’t look like he even considered the possibility that Touya wouldn’t be his successor or that his little eugenics experiment would fail; this was his first, most optimistic attempt at a masterpiece. So I don’t believe it’s far-fetched to see him spend more time with Touya right off the bat (it’s what will make the eventual abandonment all the more crushing).

However, Rei isn’t seen at all in the snippet of Touya’s infancy, despite us knowing she was relegated to the caregiver role. Rei is literally out of the picture. Compare this to how she features prominently in Shouto’s infancy or how we see her holding a baby Natsuo. You could argue that, hey, we don’t see her holding a baby Fuyumi either, but there’s other scenes where Fuyumi’s attached to her mother’s hip or crying over her being hurt. Things that suggest a closeness, when the only scene we get of just her and Touya is one where they’re at odds. 

As we move further into Touya’s childhood, though, Rei becomes the only voice we hear advocate for him against his father. I’m referencing two specific instances:

When Enji coerces her into having more children to replace Touya now that his father has deemed him a failure, something she knows will hurt their son deeply.

And after Touya lashes out at Shouto, which Rei doesn’t blame on Touya, but rather on his father. She delivers such a satisfying condemnation of his actions, probably the most cutting one Endvr’s received to date, and it so accurately sums up one of his major character flaws.

How can you call yourself a hero when you can’t even face your own son?

The tragedy of it all is that Rei never said any of this in front of Touya -- it was always said in private, just to her husband. That alone took courage, yes, but it would’ve meant everything to Touya to hear her condemn his father aloud. Instead when she does speak to him, she says this:

It’s why I can’t wrap my head around that scene in Ch 302, where after Enji admits he didn’t know what to say to Touya, Rei replies, “Neither did I.” 

When we’re shown in flashbacks during that same chapter that she did understand her son. “He just wants to be acknowledged by you” is quite the indication that she, at the very least, understood the cause of Touya’s turmoil even if she couldn’t fully relate to it herself. So why can’t she say any of this to him?

The answer is in the way she addresses Touya, as it is nearly identical to how Nao addresses Tenko in this scene:

Both Touya and Tenko grew up in similar households: the father had all the power, physical and financial, so the mothers were left to try and comfort their children in a way that didn’t go against their husbands’ desires -- and so, to use Tenko’s own words, they would “reject them with kindness.”

So it’s no wonder that Touya lashes out at his mother after she suggests he pursue other things. He isn’t five like Tenko was, he’s thirteen and has a much clearer understanding of why she says this and why it’s a bit hypocritical, since he’s aware of her situation, too.

Just as she was bound by her family, who wanted her to marry Endvr for the money and status, he’s bound by the expectations of his family. I’m not sure if I’ve seen anyone else touch on this detail, but when Touya states that he knows his grandparents sold his mom into marriage so his dad could have a child, we could infer that Touya knows enough to realize that his mother might not have necessarily wanted him.

Not him specifically, but any child — the story has neglected to flesh her out beyond her marriage and motherhood, so we have no idea if Rei wanted to become a mother prior to this arrangement, despite how much she loves her kids now — although it is possible that he might’ve internalized it this way.

So you have Touya, who at least knows with certainty that his father wanted him to exist, yet he comes to understand that his father only wants him if he can meet a specific set of expectations, and if he cannot, he’ll be discarded. If he can’t surpass All Might, he can’t fulfill his reason for existing and his father will have to replace him. So to have his mother urge him to follow a path other than becoming a hero would mean, to Touya, accepting that he is the mistake he fears he is. Of course he isn’t going to respond well to that.

I don’t like when people try to compare Touya’s reaction in this moment to Shouto’s when Rei tells him he isn’t bound by his father’s blood, using that to paint Shouto as the “good” child and Touya as the “bad” one. They didn’t react differently because of any innate sense of goodness or lack thereof -- they reacted differently because the situations are different.

Telling Shouto that he didn’t have to be like his father comforted Shouto, who only knew his father as the bully who hurt his mom. He associated his father, and his father’s fire, with all of that fear and pain -- and thus, he associated the part of himself that took after his father with those feelings. She wasn’t denying his dream of becoming a hero, only assuring him that when he became a hero it could be whatever kind of hero he chose to be, that he wasn’t doomed to be like his father.

Whereas what she tells Touya sounds a lot like what his father told him, which was to give up on being a hero and pursue other aspirations.

Encouraging Shouto to become his own version of a hero still falls in line with what Endvr ultimately wants, which is for Shouto to be a hero capable of surpassing All Might. Whereas this is what happens when Touya continues to train to do that against his father’s wishes:

This is where the framing begins to bother me and where Rei’s characterization becomes inconsistent. 

So in this scene from Ch 302, we see Enji abusing his wife for “letting” Touya continue to train, punishing her for her “failure” to stop him. Obviously, none of that is Rei’s fault. If anything, Enji would be more responsible for preventing Touya from hurting himself since he’s the reason his son is hurting himself in the first place.

Moreover, the fact that he hits Rei over this sort of muddies the water of an previously-established narrative. Since the Sports Festival arc, we’ve known that Endvr abused his wife because she tried to interfere with Shouto’s training. It got to the point where she was terrified of her husband and it drove her to a breakdown. Why introduce this new aspect to the abuse, when it was already established that a) he was physically abusive and b) his motivations for abusing her were explicit to the audience? 

I’m not saying it doesn’t make sense that a man who hits his wife for one reason could find another reason to do it and justify his actions to himself. And while the scene does portray Endvr in a bad light to show how wrong his actions are, literally draping his figure in shadow, why does it even dare to suggest the idea that Rei was remiss in her duties as a mother? Again, the scene isn’t even necessary, since the narrative has long-since showed the audience that Enji abused his wife. 

By itself, the scene would read as further exploration of how Rei was victimized and how it affected her children. When you look at it with the chapter as a whole, though? Remember, this is the chapter where Rei claims that all of the family shares the blame in what happened to Touya, displacing some of the blame that rightfully rests on Enji. 

But my major gripe with this scene is how it reframes the sole moment we get of Rei and Touya alone. Because we know that Rei understands Touya, based on her confrontations with her husband in Ch 301 & 302. Rather than encourage him to be what he wants or acknowledge that his father is in the wrong, however, her advice falls in line with what Enji wants -- to stop Touya from training. And this comes after a scene where we see Enji beat his wife when she doesn’t stop Touya from training.

With all that in mind, it could potentially be read as Rei trying stop Touya for the sake of protecting herself and the family -- I don’t think it’s coincidence that in the scene where he hits her that we see Shouto, Fuyumi & Natsuo all as witnesses who are very distressed by what’s happening to their mother -- at the cost of Touya’s need to be validated. And if executed well or at least better than it has here, that wouldn’t be a bad choice of narrative per se, and it would fit into the pattern where the households the villains were raised in -- notably Shigaraki, Dabi & Toga -- mimic the society they live in, just on a smaller scale.

Except. Does that sort of narrative make sense based on what we already know about Rei?

Certainly, it is natural to want to protect yourself under physical and/or emotional duress by appeasing your abuser. This sort of complicated dynamic appears in the Shimura family, too. Just like in the house that Kotaro built, the Todoroki family revolves around the desires of the abuser and is dictated by his whims.

I would argue that Nao does give us a well-written example of this narrative. From the beginning, it’s established that she loves Tenko dearly. But in the house her husband built, there’s no room to love her son as he deserves. She prioritizes the feelings of Tenko’s father for the sake of maintaining peace in the household and this is established quickly and plainly.

Early on in the flashback, Kotaro exerts his control over the house, while Nao + her parents look uncomfortable. Despite this, we watch as they comply with his rules, all at the expense of Tenko’s feelings. When she stands up to Kotaro at last, it is not where Tenko can see and already too late. It’s a painful story, full of regret and sadness, but it is consistent from start to end. Nobody feels out-of-character or there to prop up anybody else.

So why doesn’t Rei feel as consistent in this narrative?

Because it doesn’t fit with everything we knew about Rei prior to her abuser’s subpar redemption arc.

The way she interacts with Touya would make sense, if this was how she was portrayed from the start. However, her behavior in Shouto’s flashback -- where she was first introduced -- contrasts what we get in the later Todoroki flashbacks.

Let’s compare this to the scenes in Ch 302. Here, Rei interferes on Shouto’s behalf. She advocates for her son in front of Shouto where he can hear. She stands up to his bully/villain and tries to protect him, while also validating his feelings in the process. Directly after this, Enji hits her, not for failing to comply with his demands, but for defying him. 

It is difficult to reconcile this Rei with the Rei we get in Ch 302. And if you try to find an in-story reason for the inconsistency, the options either do a disservice to Rei or make things even more painful for Touya. But I’m sure most of you have realized that I’m going to suggest a reason for this inconsistency that goes beyond the canon.

Because when Rei was first introduced in the story, Endvr was unequivocally the villain in the Todoroki family, not some misguided patriarch trying to atone for his “past” mistakes. Years later and in the midst of his redemption arc, the narrative seems to be intent on making this man more palatable to readers, and it’s used Rei at every opportunity to prop up his efforts to be better. Often, though, it takes some of the heat off Enji by displacing it onto other family members, most significantly Rei & Touya.

Like, you can literally see the difference in the frame from early in the manga to now:

Ch 39: Endvr trains his five-year-old to the point where he’s throwing up due overextension and being punched by a fully grown adult who is also his father. Rei tries to protect her son and gets slapped by Endvr. All the blames rests squarely on Endvr, who is clearly the aggressor and painted as the villain here.

Ch 302: Endvr hits Rei for not preventing Touya from sneaking out to train, knocking her to the ground. Again, Endvr is clearly the aggressor, but oh this time it’s not driven solely by his selfish desires it’s also cocnern for his son; Rei is the victim but oh she also should have been watching him more closely, and oh well why was Touya going out in the first place, when everyone has told him to stop and he knows his mom will get punished for it?

Honestly, I can understand where some people have mixed feelings over Rei’s character, particularly since the writing has done her such a disservice recently. With that being said, however, it takes a minimum amount of critical thinking to recognize that while you can criticize some choices she made, you cannot hold her to the same standard of accountability as Enji, it’s absurd. The power imbalance was obviously tipped in Endvr’s favor, always.

It is a shame, too, that we can’t have more discussions that don’t turn into some readers (a lot of whom are attempting to make Endvr sound less horrible than he actually was) trying to demonize her. It’s doubly a shame the story itself doesn’t bother to flesh her out as a person, instead using her as a prop, because the complex relationships she has with Touya -- with all her children, really -- has plenty of room for exploration. 

Like, there was no reason to add this new dimension of resentment due to her spouting Enji’s words back at Touya, when there was already a source of tension supported by previous canon -- the neglect the Todoroki kids suffered because Rei couldn’t be the parent they needed, due to her declining mental health and eventual breakdown.

Or, if you want to complicate their dynamic further, why not add something that focuses on Rei and has nothing to do with Enji? We learn in the flashbacks that Rei agreed to the marriage more-or-less to please her family, lamenting that she “intended to smile through it to the end,” essentially admitting that her hope was she could grin and bear it. It is telling that she had this attitude before entering her marriage; evidently, she was raised with the idea that she should be acquiescent to her parents’ whims and not express herself if she was only going to be contrary. Maybe she didn’t know how to deal with Touya’s very expressive, very emotional outbursts as a result. And her inability to respond would be the exact opposite of what Touya was seeking.

Not to mention that Touya died, and for the last decade, Rei was under the impression she had lost her son forever. He died while she was hospitalized, torn up with guilt over what she did to Shouto, only to find out that her other son died in a frankly horrific manner, and she could do nothing. By the time she would’ve found out, it was too late to even try to do anything. I can’t imagine what she must’ve felt in terms of regret alone, plus her grief. And I’m still mad we were robbed of her reaction to Touya being alive, because now suddenly there is a chance to do something, to change what was once written in stone.

Or what about Touya’s feelings for his mother, that have yet to be given much depth? As the oldest and most aware of his existence, it seems like he was the first to truly understand his mother’s situation and I can’t help but wonder: If Touya knew he vessel for his father’s ambition, and his mother was sold into role of creating/caring for him, did he question her love for him? Once he found out one parent’s love was conditional, it wouldn’t be a leap for him to consider it for the other. And yet if that’s true, Dabi doesn’t appear to hold any ill-will towards her for that. He was angry at her hypocrisy, because he knows she should understand, but her words to him didn’t reflect that.

All of that is fascinating and so much better than what we got in canon, so far at least. I’m hoping for them interact in the present at least once before the end of the series, and I think they will, but as to how satisfying a reconciliation it’ll be, I guess we’ll have to wait to see how the Todoroki plotline progresses from here on out.

[tg-headcanons]

Hai! Thank you for this blog it gives me life. How does the cat get out of the bag for Amon and Akira that the *mysterious and aloof* Golden Retriever is actually Hide? How do they react to the betrayal of learning that the sweet little intern Nagachika has actually been a double agent sabotaging their work The Whole Time?

Oh they are UNPREPARED

Both of them are traitors, they know that, so they should be in no place to judge. They’ve carried the guilt of loving a ghoul and hiding his identity, of talking to ghouls in secret without reporting them, of continuing to work for the CCG while knowing exactly what they’re doing and being unable to do much to help Seidou. They stay because they want to protect him and this would give them an advantage, and they thought they were the only ones

Hide. Poor sweet, stupid, naive Hide. He’s a good guy, he’s barely more than a kid, and he expressed interest in the quinx program. They gave him the endorsement to test for his eligibility, not expecting him to pass, but when he had an RC count high enough that he was tested for ghoul dna he was selected for the surgery. They couldn’t help but feel like they doomed him, to being in the middle of all the violence and killing, but when they told Seidou how his old friend was going to endure a similar torment to him without knowing how awful it is, he seemed oddly quiet. Seidou knew but he couldn’t tell them just how much Hide is already involved. He’s ghoul enough to know he can’t reveal that sort of stuff, so they didn’t know

Hide’s surgery was a complete success, the other quinx were as well but they didn’t come close to him in terms of how fast he got the hang of it. During that assessment for rank placement where things went wrong, he still ended up killing a strong ghoul (at least he said he did and they had no reason not to believe it was him who killed the body near him) and had been selected to more or less head the quinx

Around the same time, a lesser ghoul has been getting more active. The Golden Retriever has never been linked to any killings before. He was only seen here and there following the Rabbit or Eyepatch or even the Devil Ape, but he never fought. Not until after the quinx project was well under way and suddenly he started appearing out of nowhere during raids and extermination’s and attacking investigators. The way it fought was strange, it didn’t fight to kill, but to incapacitate. It crushed quinques, trapped people, or slashed at Achilles’ tendons but never made any attempts to attack those it has already rendered helpless. His rank was moved from a C to an S. While he may not be very lethal, he is very dangerous especially with his close contact with several high priority ghouls

Hide was never suspected. Not when he tried to include the quinx in odd behaviors he claimed helped ghouls to relax, not when he recommended Mutsuki and Shirazu look into changing their prescription meds to different brands that “might work better with all the ghoul body stuff” with striking accuracy, not even when he fought utilizing his bikaku like a real part of his body and not just a weapon. Like a ghoul

It wasn’t until hide came to them, asking to talk, that they even suspected anything. He looked nervous, checked for cameras, and told them that he’s sorry and wished it didn’t have to be this way. He thanked them for being good friends and helping him get this far, and that he hopes they’ll forgive him when they find out. He leaves without explaining more

And find out they do when a public televised address from the CCG is hijacked by masked ghouls who present damning evidence of Corruption. That the Washuus are ghouls, that there has been a ghoul dietary vaccine that allows them to eat food for years that has never been shared, that peace is possible and the only ones standing in the way are the doves. When the ghouls took off their masks to drive home their statement of wanting to work with humans for a better future, one was horribly familiar. It’s Hide

When they see him the next day, they go to him. They get Seidou to finally lead them to where he works with the other ghouls and he takes them as there’s no point in hiding them anymore. There, sure enough, is Hide. It’s hard for them to voice what they feel. They’ve been betrayed. They betrayed him. They wish they never knew. They wish they knew sooner. They wish he had trusted them enough to tell them he was in their side. They understand why he couldn’t. They’re angry at first, but in that place where there’s finally a peaceful route, they can finally be with their boyfriend in public, they can finally know the names and faces of these ghouls they’ve tried so secretly to avoid killing, it’s hard to stay angry. They hate that they were allowed to remain in their guilt at dooming a naive intern, but in awe of how well that “naive intern” played them perfectly. Akira punches him. Amon buys him a drink.

[allegra-writes]

“The Devil all the time”

Hunter!Tom x Demon!Reader

Supernatural AU

NSFW

Warnings: Smut

"Break the silence, damn the dark

Damn the light..."

The Chain - Fleetwood Mac

Forget everything you thought you knew, you had every reason to be afraid of the dark when you were a kid. In this world where monsters are real, the Holland brothers hunt them so normal people can continue to live in the bliss of ignorance.

But when something goes terribly wrong, Tom will do anything to save his brother's life, including selling his soul to the devil. Well... Not exactly the devil, but close enough.

You don't need to watch Supernatural to read this AU

MY MASTERLIST

He knew it was you, even before turning. He knew it as soon as he heard your deceptively delicate footsteps break the supernatural silence that had fallen over the forest the moment he had buried the little metal box in the old crossroad. Tom didn't want to think about what it meant, having such an intimate knowledge of you to be able to recognize you by the cadence of your steps, being so in sync with you that he could tell whenever you were in the vicinity. 

So he used his favorite deflection technique whenever it came to you.

"Y/n? What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this? Sorry, did I say nice girl? I meant evil skank"

The insult didn't phase you. None ever did. It was hard to take them seriously when you knew how many nights he fell asleep with your name on his lips, after pathetically releasing himself into his own hand, or fucking his boring girl-next-door girlfriend, chasing orgasm over unsatisfactory orgasm that would never completely satiate him. Because it wasn't your face the one contorted in pleasure looking up at him from the mattress.

"You called. I came" You batted your lashes, sweetly. "I always come when you call…" 

He gulped, the innuendo not lost to his ears. It threw him off guard, like it always did. 

"I would have thought this would be… beneath you" Tom cleared his throat, looking away, trying to regain his footing, "collecting a deal, like a vulgar crossroad demon"

There was nothing vulgar about the soul of a Holland. But he didn't need to know that, so you just shrugged,

"Queen Rowena has an interest in you boys. She finds you entertaining. I'm just being a good subdit" 

He scoffed,

"Funny. I would have never peg you for a sub"

You took a step closer to him.

"You don't have what it takes to make me submit, Holland" Your hot breath fanned over his skin, setting his skin on fire. Making his blood boil. You had a way of doing that, of bringing out the worst in him. Of making him lose control. And you thoroughly enjoyed it, poking at the bear until the claws came out, laughing at the carnage.

Another step, and you could physically feel it: The hate, radiating from his every pore, his mind screaming with it. He hated you. He hated your kind. He hated your beauty. He hated the pretty white dress you were wearing, so pure and innocent, glowing like a beacon in the dark. A lure, guiding uncountable men before him into perdition. 

But above all else, he hated that, even then, he couldn't help but to want you. Fervently. Desperately. Irreversibly. 

"I came here to make a deal" He croaked, cursing himself internally for showing weakness. 

"Let's negotiate, then," you replied, stepping away, mercifully letting him breath. 

"My brother-"

"I know" You interrupted, sounding bored already, "Reapers everywhere are going berserk. Who, oh who, will get to reap the soul of a Holland?" 

The wind picked up, making your long dress billow around your legs. You twirled a little, admiring the way it moved. Tom's eyes were glued to you, almost hypnotized. Partly because you were too dangerous to be left unsupervised even for a second, partly because you looked beautiful like that. It had never been more obvious to him that you were an unearthly creature, you didn't belong to this world. There, surrounded by greenery, barefoot, swaying softly under the twilight light, he wondered how could anybody ever mistake you for a human.

"Of course" your apathetic voice took him out of his revery, "being reapers, watching them go wild is rather boring. I swear they are the most uninteresting beings of all creation" 

That made him see red.

"Boring? Boring?!" He knew his voice was rising with every word but he just couldn't help it, "They're waiting for my little brother to die!!"

"Which could happen any minute now," You reminded him, all playfulness gone from your demeanor, "so if you wanna strike a deal, I suggest you start making me an offer worth my time"  

He was taken aback by that.

"I- My soul in exchange of a wish, and you collect it in ten years" He tried and failed not to think about what that implied: vicious, invisible hounds of hell tearing apart his body and dragging his soul to hell, "Isn't that the usual deal?"

You scoffed,

"After all the things you did in your life, what makes you think your soul doesn't belong in hell already? And if your brother dies, that is one less Holland on earth to worry about. You and your brothers have managed to become a big pain in the ass for us…"

He pulled out a knife, a strange one, with runes in the blade. You arched a brow in recognition

"The Winchesters' knife. Are you threatening me, little hunter?" 

Your lack of reaction was another blow. He had hoped you'd be more impressed than that. Nonetheless he turned it in his hands, offering you the handle.

"I'm throwing it into the deal" 

To his surprise, you didn't immediately take it from his hands, choosing instead to pace the clearing, deep in thought. 

The truth was you couldn't care less about the knife, it wasn't more dangerous to you than a toothpick. And while it was true it could certainly damage your queen, she had a far better weapon to protect herself: You.

But it did confirm your suspicions about the Hollands having access to the old Winchester arsenal, which meant they had access to something way more dangerous than that rustic weapon made of steel and bone. A book, made of ancient dark magic and human skin, written in blood. A book that was precious to queen Rowena and by extension to you: the Book of the Damned. 

The Hollands were a family of extremely talented, yes, but old fashioned hunters. The stab first, ask questions later kind. They probably had no idea what they had in their hands… but you did. 

"Very well then," you finally declared, "this is my offer: Your soul and that knife in exchange for sweet Harry's life and one year for you to get all your businesses in order" 

Tom felt all the blood drain from his face. One year. Just 365 more days to live, before an eternity of torture in hell. 

"O-one year?" He breathed.

"One year" You confirmed, "More than enough time to go see the Grand Canyon, eat the world's spiciest burger or whatever you have on your bucket list" 

The disdain in your words only made him hate you harder.

"Not nearly enough to live" He replied through clenched teeth. You rolled your eyes, 

"You're a hunter. You lead short, violent existences, charging head first towards what most humans run away from. Things faster, stronger, more powerful than you, surviving each encounter out of sheer luck. Killing one monster after another, until that luck runs out. Because the monsters? Unlike you who rely on it everyday, they just need. One. Single. Lucky. Strike." You punctuated every word with one step in his direction, until you were face to face again. Until, for the first time ever, you could see the fear, the desperating hopelessness he kept hidden inside, reflected on the warm coffee of his eyes. You knew a lesser man would be already crying and begging for Mercy.

Tom wasn't like other men though, that was the whole point. 

"Or…" You soften your tone and your stance, letting your fingers ghost over the back of his hand, his whole skin erupting in goosebumps. That was the very first time you touched him. Ever. 

And it was as if nobody had ever touched him before, the light caress enough to set every nerve ending, every single one of his cells, alight.

He was so distracted by the sensation and his body's response to it, he almost didn't hear your next words over the sound of his own pounding heart. 

"Or you could keep your little pocket knife, and even have your ten years if…"

"If?" He struggled to focus.

"You let me borrow a book"

His brows furrowed in confusion,

"A book? What book?"

"Any book of my liking, for as long as I want" You shrugged it off, "Do we have a deal?"

There was a catch there, it was obvious. He knew he was going to regret it but, what choice did he have? 

"Deal"

Your smile was blinding, luminous. If he didn't know any better, he would have called it angelical. Now, that was one ridiculous thought.

"What now? We seal it with a kiss?" His eyes fell to your lips, so soft looking and inviting. He wasn't eager to put his mouth on a filthy demon and doom himself. He wasn't. 

You chuckled, but there was no humor behind it.

"Oh no, darling. This is big. This is special" You're special, "A simple kiss just won't cut it…"

No. You couldn't mean… could you? Was there no limits to your hatred for him? Did you really want him so defeated, so humiliated? 

"What do you want?" He spat through gritted teeth.

"The same thing you want" You put your hands on his chest, rising to your tiptoes to whisper in his ear, "The same thing you have wanted ever since we first met . The thing that's obsessing you..."

"I don't know what you're talking about"

You smirked,

"You can lie to your family, you can even lie to yourself, little hunter... But you can't lie to me." 

He couldn't hide, you could see every fantasy, hear every single one of his thoughts of you on repeat, like a prayer in your direction. Just like he couldn't hide the way his skin was burning now for you, the way his blood rushed south, the way all logical thought left his brain, his iron grip on his emotions finally breaking as he snapped. 

Lightning fast, in just a blink, he twirled you around, your back hitting the rough bark of a tree, as he towered over you, demon blade to your throat, every inch of his body pressed against yours. His eyes were ablazed with rage, and passion, as he surged forward, striking you with his best hit.

He kissed you. 

Lips vicious against yours, teeth biting and scraping only to soothe the offense seconds later with his tongue, until he was dizzy, light headed with the lack of oxygen and the taste of you. The hand not holding the knife to your neck fell to your breast, squeezing the pliant flesh with enough force to cause pain on a human woman, merely making you moan. He swallowed the sound, letting his fingers trace your waist, your hips, clawing at your dress until he finally, finally, felt skin under his fingertips. 

It was better than anything his mind had conjured in his feverish fantasies in the dead of the night. The skin of your inner thighs velvety soft, as they parted under his touch, the sweetest sounds leaving your lips as his fingers found your naked core. You weren't wearing any underwear, probably never had. The realization that, in all your past encounters and fights you had been standing there, just feet away from him with nothing under that damn dress hit him like a truck, making his head swim. 

He searched between your folds, and suddenly his fingers were inside you. He was inside you, a part of him was buried deep within you, within your silky heat, claiming you as his, if only for the night. 

And you were so wet for him, and only getting wetter as he pumped his fingers in and out of you, scissoring them, opening you up until he was able to slip a third one in, fucking you with his hand in earnest. You were sobbing, clutching at his biceps, head thrown back in pleasure. He took advantage of that to suck bruises on your neck, only to see them fade before his eyes. Your skin tasted clean, smelled like wild flowers and rain. Ozone. Lightning. Like those coursing through his veins with every cry, every delicious gasp you made. 

He found the perfect spot inside you, the one that sent sparks through your nerves with every stroke of his calloused fingers. 

"This what you wanted?" To make him lose it? Lose his mind, himself, in you? "For me to make you come on just my fingers, like the little slut you are?"

The floor disappeared from under his feet as you sent him flying away from you, a searing pain exploding at the back of his head as he landed, sprawled at the feet of an old, dying oak. With blurry eyes, he saw you stalk towards him, all power and cold, controlled fury. 

"Let's get one thing straight, Holland. I'm not one of your sluts" You sneered, "and I'm definitely not your basic bitch of a girlfriend. So you better start showing me a little respect, are we clear?"

He gulped, sitting up. He had to be seriously fucked up in the head, for his cock to be twitching inside his pants at your threatening tone.

"Crystal" 

"Good" You declared, coming to a stop right in front of him, standing between his parted legs, "Now, let's put that mouth of yours to a better use"

He knew that image was going to be forever tattooed on his brain: You standing in front of him, holding the skirt of your dress up, waiting for him to put his mouth on you. Tom took a moment to admire you, before delving in, flattening his tongue over your slit, before drawing tight, precise circles on your clit with the tip. God, you tasted so divine it was messing with his head; something as dark and corrupted and twisted as you, feeling so exquisite, so perfect, so heavenly to his every sense. 

He helped you hook your knee over his shoulder, his other arm snaking around your leg, pulling you even closer. You could feel his smirk against your cunt the moment he realized your legs were shaking, but you couldn't find it in yourself to care, not with his wicked talented mouth devouring you like a last meal, rocking your whole world, making you see stars behind your closed eyelids.

You always knew that man would make the stars fall. 

Tom kept on, penetrating you with his tongue as far as it would go, his whole face moving against you. The slight burn of his scruff felt delicious against your delicate labia, as he used his fingers to open you up like a flower, separating your petals to get to the delectable nectar inside. You were close, he could feel it, the obscene sounds you were making, the waves of sweetness falling on his lips feeding his ego, filling him up with pride. By the time the night was over, you'd be unable to forget him. He would make sure of that. He would make you come, over and over, until the only thoughts left in your brain were of him, the only word your lips knew how to speak was his name. He would mark you, like a bloodstain, like you had done to him. 

Almost there, he almost had you. Your muscles were locking, your walls starting to tremble, when a loud crack resonated over his head, and you stepped away on unstable legs, breathing hard. You didn't even need to breathe, it was just his effect on you. He made you feel human. And it was both exhilarating, and terrifying. 

You took another step back, but he took hold of your ankle, tugging hard enough to make you fall on his lap, white skirt covering the place where his hands were fumbling with his zip, with his boxers, aligning himself with your entrance.

"Fuck!" He cursed, as you sank on his rock hard cock, not giving him any time to get used to the feeling of you around him, before starting to move. 

"How does it feel" You taunted, "fucking a monster? Is it as good as you dreamed of?"

Better. You felt even better. Tom hadn't thought it was possible, but he loathed you even more for it. 

"Shut up" He growled. 

You leaned forwards, breath hot against his ear,

"Cause you feel amazing, Tom. Your cock feels like heaven" 

His hand tangled in your hair, keeping you in place as he crashed his mouth to yours again, the other fumbling for the buttons at the back of your dress, tugging and pulling, tearing at the fabric, in his haste to feel more. More of your skin against his, more of the body that had been his hyper fixation for far too long. 

You sat up, still grinding on his cock, letting the tattered dress fall to your waist, watching in satisfaction as his eyes went wide, zeroing on the way your breasts bounced in sync with your hips. 

Reaching up, for a glorious second Tom could feel one perfect pebbled nipple against his palm, the roundness, the weight of your soft flesh on his fingers; before an invisible force pinned his hands to his sides. 

You tsked.

"Still don't get it, do you little hunter? This?" You let yourself fall all the way down his thick cock, hard, tearing twin moans from his mouth and yours, "This isn't about you. This is about me." 

Leaning back, you braced yourself on his strong thighs, changing the angle, changing your movements to a slower rocking against his pelvis. The friction against your clit was perfect, the feeling of his big, throbbing dick so deep inside you, stretching you like no one before, sending electrical pulses through your spine. It was decadent. It was ecstasy.

It was torture. Underneath you, Tom was sobbing, eyes bright with unshed tears, fighting in vain against his bonds. He needed it faster, harder, anything to help tilt him over the edge you were keeping him on, your sweet cunt too tight, too good around him to allow his cock to soften, your rhythm too leisured to let the tensed, strained coil inside him to snap. You were uncaring, using him remorselessly to get yourself off, your little moans getting higher in pitch the closer you came to your climax. Tom felt himself getting higher just by looking at your beautiful pleasure ridden face. You cried out, and suddenly it was happening, you were coming, pulsating around his cock, falling apart on top of him.

And the ground beneath him quaked. The sky above his head bled, the blue twilight torn open by lightning, and thunder, despite the fact that there wasn't a single cloud marring its diaphaneity. You fell forwards, hand braced on the tree, next to his face, ridding the aftershocks of your orgasm until the end. 

"No!" Tom cried when, after a few seconds of catching your breath, you dismounted him, letting his dick slip out of you. 

You arched a brow,

"Something you want, Tommy?" 

He locked his mouth shut, gritting his teeth. You smiled, amused, knuckles stroking his still iron hard cock.

"Do you need more, little hunter?" You enveloped him in your hand, moving it up and down his member, watching the head disappear under his foreskin, "Do you need to come?"

He banged the back of his head against the bark.

"Yes!" He finally admitted, "So badly…"

"Then beg" You commanded, stilling your hand. He snapped open the eyes he hadn't realized he had closed. Oh, if looks could kill…

"Never" He hissed, livid.

"Very well, then" You picked up your pace, pumping him fast, your grip almost too rough. He gasped for air, feeling the telltale tightening of his balls, the coil inside just about to break under the tension. But you must have felt it too, cause your hand let go of him altogether. Too late, he understood what you were doing.

One beat. And then another, and he was coming all over his t-shirt, orgasm completely ruined. 

He cursed, tears escaping through the corner of his eyes, fingers digging into the moist ground under his hands. You chuckled, cruelly, standing up and stepping out of your shredded dress. He could have ganked you with the demon blade in that moment, he really could have, except his hands were still pinned by an invisible force at his sides. 

"Let me go, you bitch," Tom growled, tossing, fighting against his restraints to no avail, "aren't you done?!"

"Not quite." You smiled, mockingly sweet, "Just one more thing before I leave. Don't worry, it will only hurt for a minute…"

He renewed his efforts to escape, as you bended over, reaching for his chest, white hot pain burning through his ribs. He almost cried out, but what he saw stole the voice from his throat, turned his blood into ice inside his veins, leaving him shaking, jaw slack and mouth open in a soundless scream: 

You, naked and gorgeous and terrible. Transfixed, eyes glowing with a supernatural indigo light, the shadow of two massive, bended, broken wings projected on the trees behind you.

Not a demon, he thought. You're not a demon.

You smiled, and it was terrifying.

"No. I'm the thing demons have nightmares about" You replied out loud to the words he had only said in his mind, "And now, little hunter, you belong to me. Mind, body and soul"