#this is just related to literal evidence of will being twelve

[chirpsythismorning]

[elijahs-dumps]

The Infantilization of Wylan Van Eck (within the soc fandom)

Hi! This is my first tumbler post ever, which is like super scary I wont lie. But I've had this project I've been working on since October and I'd love to share it with people, so here goes nothing!

Infantilization or to infantilize someone means to treat them as a child or in a way that denies their maturity in age or experience, and it qualifies as a form of mental abuse. 

This treatment is common in fandoms, although it obviously isn't done in a hateful way on purpose. It’s often directed towards characters who are more innocent, more kind, or more anxious than the other characters within the universe. Or, sometimes these characters are literally just the youngest of the group. Some examples of this include, Entrapta from She-Ra and the Princesses and Power, Varian from Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure, Number Five from The Umbrella Academy, Hunter from The Owl House, Little Cato from Final Space, and even Peter Parker from the MCU.

However, most of the traits found in characters that are infantilized are also traits found in neurodivergent people. These traits include, missing social cues, being easily excitable or restless, often feeling anxious hyper fixating on something (usually related to science or math), being an outcast from the rest of the group in some way, and so on and so forth. Therefore, infantilization within fandoms is pretty problematic on its own. People (usually online) think that characters with these traits should be babied or pitied or demeaned in some way, even though neurodivergent consumers usually relate to these characters because of those same traits. 

Some evidence of Wylan being infantilized can include; the fact he's only referred to as cute or synonyms to that, while the other Crows or their actors are often sexualized more. People saying or implying he's smaller, weaker, or even younger than the others. And of course, people saying Kaz and Wylan are father and son... which is something I'll come back to later.

Why Wylan?

To better understand why exactly Wylan is receiving this treatment exclusively from the fans, we need to fully analyze the Six of Crows duology, which is exactly what I did!

When we are first introduced to Wylan in chapter seven (Matthias’ POV) of the Six of Crows, we see him sitting at the table and doodling while occasionally chewing on his thumbnail. He doesn't speak until Inej voices her doubts in Wylan’s demolition abilities. Jesper says Wylan “barely knows his trade”, and Kaz mentions that Wylan is “new to the scene”. Matthias also makes a comment about how Wylan “looks like he’s about twelve”. When Jesper and Inej continue to complain about Wylan being their demo man, Kaz tells them that Wylan is doubling as their insurance policy because Wylan is Jan Van Eck’s son, the rich merchant who’s paying Kaz and his chosen crew 40 million kruge in exchange for breaking Bo Yul-Bayur out of the Ice Court. This immediately makes everyone in the room think less of Wylan because of his privileged past.

This introduction sets up Wylan to the readers. His reserved body language, along with his inexperience and Matthias’ comment about his young appearance gives the impression that Wylan is more childish than the other Crows.

In the next chapter (Jesper’s POV) as the Crows react to the reveal of Wylan’s identity, Kaz tells Wylan that he’s “passable at demo, but excellent at hostage”. Jesper calls Wylan a “baby merch” and insists that Kaz leave him behind, less he slows the crew down. Wylan is annoyed that Kaz and Jpeser are talking about him as if he isn't in the room. Then, Kaz tells Wylan that the only reason he hasn't been mugged or jumped in the three months since he left his father’s house is because Kaz placed him under Dregs protection. In fact, Jesper even says that Kaz has been “coddling Wylan”. Jesper proceeds to call Wylan useless as he and Nina belittle Wylan for living in the Barrel “by choice”. This is also where the nickname “merchling” comes from. When the group continues to go back and forth over Wylan’s skills, Kaz repeats that he’s only bringing Wylan along because he doesn’t want to leave their hostage alone in Ketterdam. This makes Wylan the only Crow that wasn’t hired for their abilities, Wylan’s passable demo skills are simply a bonus. It’s a way for Kaz to keep the crew small and avoid splitting the money even further. 

This entire exchange and interaction between our six main characters lays out the groundwork for the dynamic between Wylan and the other Crows for the majority of the first book. Everyone else in the room believes Wylan is just another spoiled rich kid. They make fun of him for his lack of street smarts, and the money he was born into. Wylan never really fights back too much when it comes to comments from the others, which just reinforces the idea that he came from a cushy lifestyle where he never had to learn how to defend himself verbally. Wylan’s inexperience and innocence is often mistaken for stupidity by the characters, and therefore the readers. 

Kaz saying, “Always hit where the mark isn’t looking.” Only for Wylan to reply with, “Who's Mark?” is a great example of this. (Still chapter eight, Jesper’s POV.)

In chapter nine (Kaz’s POV) we see how Kaz views Wylan in his inner monologue. He says Wylan seems out of his depth, and even though he’s only a year younger than Kaz (making Wylan sixteen)  he still looks like a child. Kaz describes Wylan as a silk eared puppy in a room full of fighting dogs. This pushes the concept that Wylan is more childlike than the others further onto the audience. 

Additionally, in chapter eleven (Jesper’s POV), we see Jesper quite literally call Wylan “kid” during the attack at the docks, even though they’re also only one year apart. And in chapter fifteen, Matthias refers to Wylan as “the soft one” within his own inner monologue.

Since Wylan doesn't have his own point of view chapters in the first book, the reader’s entire understanding of this character is formed through the eyes of the other Crows. So, what we’re hearing about Wylan in the first book might not be entirely accurate, which is something people often forget. Part of the reason why the fandom treats Wylan the way they do is because of the way the Crows describe and talk to him throughout the entire series, The reader learns to rely on the others’ opinions on Wylan in order to learn more about him. 

All of the evidence I have shown so far, and even some smaller things I haven't included, plants a certain mentality in the reader; Wylan doesn't have the same knowledge as the other Crows, so he must be weak and gullible. Weakness and gullibility are often traits associated with the “younger-one-of-the-group” trope, or the “Kid Trope”. So, since Wylan is displaying behaviors that we as media consumers have grown used to attaching to characters who are literal children, Wylan must be a child, or at least be treated like one. 

However, the Crows don’t treat Wylan this way because they truly believe Wylan acts like a small child, because he doesn’t. Wylan’s behavior is perfectly normal, it simply sticks out in contrast to the harsh environments all the others have been exposed to. They treat him this way throughout the book as a sort of condescending joke, they belittle him for the stereotypes surrounding his upbringing and little else.

Still, like I said, the Crows’ mindset on Wylan is all the reader is exposed to for the entire first book, so the reader will subconsciously assume Wylan must be doing something to earn this odd treatment from the others. Sometimes readers don’t understand that it is not Wylan’s wealthy and sheltered background that makes him different, it’s the fact that the others are all criminals, murderers, soldiers, and convicts. Wylan is the only “normal” Crow on a very surface level, so his innocence is bound to stick out more.

As the first book continues, we see that there’s more to Wylan’s past than he lets on. We see first hand how smart and capable Wylan truly is, as his character grows with the story. It begins in the fight at the docks in chapter eleven, where Wylan uses his own flash bombs to help Jesper out.  In chapter thirteen, Wylan openly questions and even challenges Kaz after he throws Oomen overboard, which shows great courage on Wylan’s part. This pattern of questioning Kaz when no one else really does is a common theme when it comes to Wylan. We also see Wylan explain who Pekka Rollins is to Matthias in chapter fifteen. This shows that he’s not completely incompetent, and is at least somewhat aware of what goes on in the Barrel. Then, in chapter seventeen (Jesper’s POV), Wylan expresses his natural curiosity and desire for knowledge about anything, from the mechanics of the Ice Court moat to the design of Jesper’s guns. All of this builds to chapter twenty-two, where the Crows are attacked on the ice by Grisha who were sent by the Shu, dosed on parem. Wylan does a lot of heavy lifting in this fight with his bombs, and everyone is impressed. Jesper even makes a comment about how Wylan’s “earned his keep” now. 

Small moments like this that showcase Wylan’s natural resourcefulness and strength are crucial to communicating with the readers that the Crows were wrong about Wylan in the beginning. As Wylan’s true nature begins to develop further throughout the first book, we slowly see the Crows and their attitude towards Wylan change. It becomes more positive. In the future, when Wylan makes an ignorant comment, the others don’t poke fun at him as much. They’ll tell him to be quiet at most.

By the final climax of Six of Crows, chapter forty-six (Kaz’s POV), we find out Wylan cannot read. Jan Van Eck is open about his hatred and mistreatment of his son. When Jesper jumps to Wylan’s defense, he goes as far as to say Wylan is smarter than most of the others put together. Jesper is in love with Wylan at this point in the story, so his words might be a little exaggerated. But there’s still truth to them. This entire scene serves as evidence that Jesper and the other Crows have realized Wylan’s intelligence and worth, so they don’t even think twice when they find out Wylan can’t read or write. 

If all the Crows’ preconceived notions about Wylan were proven wrong before the end of the first book, then why does the fandom still view Wylan in such a problematic way? 

Blame Booktok

This is all mainly tied to modern day book consumption, and the obsession with “tropes”. Online reading communities such as “Booktok” or “Bookstagram” have normalized interpreting even the most complex characters through simple archetypes. This is something all six crows are a victim of, in fact, most characters within all kinds of media are. 

A good example of this within Six of Crows is Kaz Brekker himself. Kaz, within “Booktok”, is often lumped together with several other male YA love interests in books, like Aaron Warner or Cardan Greenbriar . They all usually share very few qualities, like having violent tendencies, being extremely protective of their loved ones, and acting cold or mysterious towards others. Regardless of the fact that all these characters are so complex and different, from their relationship dynamics, to their morals, to their backstories,  readers still often view them as one in the same because of videos online pointing out very minute similarities. A broader example I would use is the way the Hunger Games series was often marketed and discussed as if the love triangle between Peeta, Gale, and Katniss was the main focus of the story. But really it was just a subplot to a more serious and heavy narrative.

People will often focus too much on singular tropes because it makes books easily identifiable and marketable in this new era of self-publishing and online purchasing. It’s easier to judge a book by its cover if you have a broad sense of what might be inside based on the small character details or scenarios other readers liked from it. But what does that have to do with Wylan? 

Well, because people often talk about books or even whole genres on a surface level, they also discuss characters on a surface level. This lazy form of consumption is what often leads to mischaracterization. People can obviously understand complex characters like Wylan, so it’s not a question of intelligence. Fans online are just used to discussing things within books fandoms in such a simple way and viewing a character through the lens of one trope. They’ll put the character in a box, and Wylan just so happens to check all the boxes for a character who would be infantilized. Even though there are interesting things about Wylan besides his “innocence”, people are less inclined to talk about it. In short, viewing Wylan as just another character who falls under the category of a simple stereotype is easier than including and discussing his nuances. 

So who is at fault?

When it comes to talking about a more harmful fandom behavior, like infantilization, it’s important to keep an open mind. Sometimes, it’s the creator’s fault for writing a character in a problematic way, not the fandom’s fault for interpreting it that way. So, is Leigh Bardugo at fault here for writing Wylan in this light? Or is it the fandom’s fault for not looking past the obvious parts of a character? 

I don’t think it was Leigh Bardugo’s fault. If you take the second book, Crooked Kingdom, into account then you can clearly see that the way Wylan is disrespected in the first book is something he’s dealt with his whole life, especially from his father. Wylan has been taught to believe that his reading disability makes him useless as an heir, and as a human being all together. This is one of the reasons why we never see Wylan truly snap back in an aggressive way in Six of Crows when the others insult and belittle him. A big part of Wylan thinks that the others are right about him being useless. Obviously, Wylan couldn’t have had his own POV chapters in Six of Crows, because then that would spoil his father’s true motives. However, I think the fact we didn't get to see his point of view in the first book serves another purpose. Wylan’s low self-esteem is definitely a major thing he needs to overcome in his personal story within Crooked Kingdom. So for the readers to fully understand this, we needed to view Wylan from an outside perspective. First, we get to view him as the other Crows do, as someone sheltered and weak who’s in way over his head. Then, we get to see why Wylan is the way he is. I think this sort of reverse style of character writing is really interesting and more fun to read. But still, not every reader accepted Wylan just because the Crows started to warm up to him. So by extension, this is also why Wylan is one of the most hated Crows. Nevertheless, I think the way Leigh Bardugo chose to write Wylan is inevitable for the story and vital to his character! It wouldn't feel the same if we didn't get to see how the others viewed him first. 

The fault lies with the fandom when it comes to Wylan’s infantilization. But, are people online really just lazy when it comes to discussing characters, or is something bigger at play here? I think it’s both. People do misinterpret Wylan’s strong and resilient character because of laziness and the normalization of oversimplification and overconsumption within the book community. But this treatment is also rooted in subconscious ableism. To better explain what subconscious ableism truly is, I’ll be taking a deeper look at a specific dynamic.

Kaz and Wylan (are not father and son)

Despite these two characters only having a one year age gap, the fandom often views Kaz and Wylan’s relationship as one similar to a father and son dynamic. Which is understandable to a certain degree. Kaz is the very first person Wylan ever told about his reading disability. Kaz had Wylan placed under Dregs protection the minute Wylan set foot in the Barrel, which may have been for Kaz’s own selfish reason, but it still kept Wylan safe for a while. There are a couple scenes in the books where Kaz will give Wylan advice about life in general, or about having a disability, not just about being a criminal. We see Kaz take getting Wylan justice for his mother and stealing back Wylan’s inheritance very seriously. Wylan even starts to pick up some of Kaz’s mannerisms and facial expressions. All of these could be viewed as things a father and son would do, despite how small the actual age gap is. However, the fandom seems to take this relationship to the extreme, from fan fiction and fan art, to getting the characters’ actors involved. 

It’s somewhat because of very minute subconscious ableism. People naturally view Wylan as younger because of his demeanor, but also because of his disability. The opposite is true for Kaz. His physical disability makes people naturally view him as older than seventeen in their minds. This is due to long standing ableist tropes within the media. People with mental disabilities are often depicted as stupider in some way, so they need to be babied or coddled. While people with physical disabilities are often depicted as very ill, or very old. 

This might seem far fetched, but it’s true. And it’s quite obvious if you look closely enough at anything from books, to movies, to TV, to games! These are just some of the harmful stereotypes we see in our world every day, 

How to fix this issue

Now, of course people aren’t just going to stop misinterpreting characters or stop viewing them through small scale tropes all together. But keeping yourself educated and aware is a good way to stop promoting these harmful stereotypes. Listen to the voices that are being affected in these situations! In this case, it’s people with mental or physical disabilities. Be sure to take into account what they have to say on matters like this one. Allow yourself to take the criticism and learn from their experiences or feelings. It’s important to be empathetic and kind to one another, and acknowledge that sometimes we do problematic things without intending to. When talking about characters with disabilities, it’s important to remember what they represent, and the fact that you can't always say whatever you want just because the characters are fictional. 

As always, if you’re ever unsure about whether something you feel or think is harmful towards a certain community, never be afraid to ask questions and do your research!

[miyamiwu]

Link Click – Everything We Know about Agents and their Abilities as of Season 1

Our WiFi is still down, and I used up most of my data to download all episodes of season 1 so I can rewatch it (and because I hate streaming shitty mp4s online). Since I can't start on Season 2 right away, I might as well just consolidate all the info we have from Season 1.

Now, before I start, let me just define the word "agent" that I used in the post title. Link Click's title in Chinese is 时光代理人 (shiguang dailiren), which literally translates to "Time Agents." As such, I'll refer to those with special abilities as an agent. Whether or not all agents have abilities related to time is something we don't know yet for sure.

I rewatched in the original Chinese audio with two different English fansubs (I won't refer to the official subs because those were terrible). Text in square brackets are my inferences. You may not take those as facts.

If you find any of the info here to be inaccurate, just send me an ask or tell me in the notes!

Episode 1

Lu Guang’s Rules

1. They have only twelve hours in the photo.

2. Cheng Xiaoshi must follow Lu Guang's instructions and not mess with anything.

3. They have to disregard the past and the future.

---

1. Cheng Xiaoshi is the one who enters photos, and Lu Guang is the one who leads the way.

2. Cheng Xiaoshi's eyes turn yellow when using his powers, while Lu Guang's turn blue.

3. The person Cheng Xiaoshi becomes will also inherit his yellow eyes.

4. Cheng Xiaoshi's body in the present time disappears while he is in the photo.

5. Only Lu Guang knows what will happen next in the events of the photo. Cheng Xiaoshi has to rely on his instructions.

6. Lu Guang was able to tell Cheng Xiaoshi what exactly to write in Emma's report, [indicating that what he sees in the past is very detailed].

7. Cheng Xiaoshi inherits [to some extent] the feelings and memories of the person he becomes.

8. While Lu Guang is asleep, he loses his connection with Cheng Xiaoshi.

9. Lu Guang can record [and very quickly at that] what Cheng Xiaoshi sees in the past. This is evident in him being able to immediately obtain and put into his phone the information Cheng Xiaoshi scanned on Mr. Zhu's laptop.

Episode 2

When Cheng Xiaoshi enters a photo, he becomes the person who took the photo.

Episode 3

1. Cheng Xiaoshi does not inherit the physical limits of the person he becomes. This is evident in how, even though Chen Xiao is nearsighted, Cheng Xiaoshi's vision remains the same.

2. Once the past is disrupted, Lu Guang can no longer see, to some extent, what happens next.

Episode 4

1. Cheng Xiaoshi can leave the photo by clapping his hands.

2. Cheng Xiaoshi has no control over the original host's body's instinctive reactions. (Like Chen Xiao's heart beating fast when he meets his first love)

Episode 5

No new info in this ep

Episode 5.5

They cannot enter a photo that has already been used.

Episode 6

1. When Lu Guang uses his abilities on a surveillance video, then within twelve hours, he can have a panoramic view on all surveillance images within one kilometer. However, blind spots in the video also become his blind spots.

2. When Cheng Xiaoshi enters a surveillance video, he doesn't have to become someone else. He can enter as himself.

3. Even if it's a surveillance video, they still only have twelve hours to work with it.

Episode 7

1. [When entering multiple photos/videos, especially those of which times overlap, then the photo/video Cheng Xiaoshi enters later will be changed based on any history changes in the photo/video that comes before.]

2. Multiple Cheng Xiaoshi's can exist in the same timeline.

3. While Cheng Xiaoshi is unconscious in the photo, Lu Guang loses his connection with him.

4. Even if he becomes a child in the photo, Cheng Xiaoshi still has the strength of an adult.

Episode 8

Even when Cheng Xiaoshi cannot clearly hear what is being said to him inside the photo, Lu Guang can still record it. (Lu Guang was able to record what Dong Yi said to Xu Shanshan even though Cheng Xiaoshi wasn't paying attention.)

Episode 9

1. Cheng Xiaoshi can enter a photo on his own by clapping his hands.

2. To be able to communicate with Lu Guang while in the photo, Cheng Xiaoshi has to clap hands with him upon entering.

3. Cheng Xiaoshi enters photos as the executor, and Lu Guang is the observer.

4. While Cheng Xiaoshi was screaming in the trunk of Liu Min's car, which was right before he exited the photo, light was emitted. I don't know if this was just an artistic effect, or if there was actual light in the scene at that time.

Episode 10

No new info in this ep

Episode 11

1. [Although it wasn't shown where Cheng Xiaoshi was when he entered Xu Shanshan's photo, we can assume that it was still in the living room like usual because we see Lu Guang sitting there like always. If Xiaoshi had been anywhere else, Lu Guang should've brought up some questions. Thus, we can further assume that Cheng Xiaoshi can exit from a photo and end up in a place different from where he entered. He entered Xu Shanshan's photo from the living room, yet he exited into the dark room to meet the murderer.]

2. [During his fight with the murderer, Cheng Xiaoshi would disappear into a photo after landing a hit on him. We then get a brief glimpse of what happens in the photo. It is unknown if the murderer can also see what Cheng Xiaoshi sees while in the photo. However, after disappearing, Cheng Xiaoshi can still communicate with him. I'd like to assume, then, that after hitting the murderer, followed by a clap to enter the photo, Cheng Xiaoshi forms a connection with the murderer like what he does with Lu Guang. The murderer can then see what Cheng Xiaoshi sees and hear what he says even after the latter enters a photo.] Edit: this has been disproven in season 2

3. In all of the other victims’ photos, Cheng Xiaoshi had become the one who personally took the photo (we can tell by who has yellow eyes). However, in Emma’s family photo, which was taken via setting a timer on the camera and leaving it on the stand, Cheng Xiaoshi did not become Emma and had instead entered as himself. We can see him standing at the side while Emma and her family are together. This is in contrast to all the rules set before. Not personally holding the camera should not be a factor because Episode 2 had shown that it doesn’t count.

4. The murderer has red eyes and can walk just fine. They say they weren't the one who wanted to kill those people, and then they calls themselves an agent. (I will now use they/them pronouns to refer to the red-eyed agent because we don't know their actual gender yet.)

5. Liu Min, without the red-eyed agent, has black eyes and lame legs.

6. Liu Min has no memory of what the red-eyed agent does while they're in control of his body.

7. The red-eyed agent can kill the person they're possessing and it won't kill them.

8. The red-eyed agent does not have to be right next to a person in order to possess them.

9. [The red-eyed agent can possess multiple people at the same time. We see "Qiao Ling" attacking Lu Guang and "Liu Min" killing himself happen one after another. It is unknown whether or not these two events actually happened concurrently and were not just shown to us in that order as a creative effect.]

10. Cheng Xiaoshi was kicked out of the video after Emma fell to her death. We can tell by how he suddenly appears again in the living room with his hands still outstretched in reaching for Emma (which means he didn't clap himself out of the video). I don't know why this happened. Cheng Xiaoshi entered a surveillance video, not a photo that Emma took. The video shouldn't be tied to Emma's life.

---

And that's all! If I missed anything, just say it in the notes. Just please don't spoil me of any new info from season 2 🙏

Edit: a season 2 version of this post is up!

[seancamerons]

1, 10, 15, 16

Thanks for leaving me some fanfiction asks too!!

How long ago did you start reading or writing fanfiction? Damn, I had to been when I was around about twelve or maybe thirteen. I don't know if anyone remembers the-ndotcom message boards, various Degrassi message boards (mainly Degrassi boards aka DB, anyone around, I honestly doubt it?), and of course, fanfictiondotnet my online life in the mid-2000s.💗

When I was third grade, I remember writing things that resembled fanfiction. Typically based off of some shows I saw (such as Sabrina the teenage Witch, TGIF line up was awesome) or books I read like The Boxcar Children or Junie B, for these writing journal prompts for school the teacher would assign us. When I say it's all cringe and embarrassing as hell, Let's just say I'm glad no evidence of that writing existed. That wasn't even the tip of the iceberg there, I also wanted to *be* a friggin' author. I'd even include these cheesy bios for each 'book' I would make for myself bc I'd always see them in books I read in childhood.

Fast forward to 2003, my first fanfiction (when I knew I was writing fanfiction) was a doozy for Degrassi written about Sean, Craig, and Emma in some weird season 2 timeline with a love triangle, an ill-fated camping trip, Sean's newly sober mother made an appearance in the form of a camp organizer desperate to reconnect with her son and bring him home much to his chagrin, and other things I forgot about and wouldn't wanna think much on. I was basically winging it. I'm afraid it's gone. I had notebooks and notebooks filled with stories around this time.

10. Worst writing habits? Abandoning and giving up without a doubt. A horrid habit that becomes tempting when I get writer's block, and then I just start the hell over and make something totally new and forget about it drop it like a bad habit, and the cycle comes back around like a shitty boomerang. I then will read the old one months or even years later and be filled with regret or have five million new ideas for said abandoned story. Maybe then I rework it in the future someday or in a whole dif story which has been done before. I am already my own worst critic, but I hate super flaming, negative criticism that shit doesn't help anyone except be tempted to give up.

Some fic I abandoned needed to be, such as the Zoemund vehicle in a weird alternate season thirteen titled The Starlet and Dealer. Not that I need to explain myself, but I didn't feel right writing something portraying a couple with literally no chance on any planet, not even interested in men on the whole didn't make much sense. Also who would read that considering all that? It's available on fanfictiondotnet who cares? I moved on it's never gonna have an ending.

Backtrack has more of a chance of getting an ending, and yes, it's an *almost* ten-year-old fic, just saying.😄😄😄

Another habit is simply beating myself up, comparing myself and just simply hating on myself which I gotta stop doing. Honorable mention, stuff like not being in the mood to write, or getting too much on my plate and then not writing.

15. One-shots or multi-chapters? Multichapters Angst? Yes. Fluff? Yes. Smut? I'm not that brave ha, not for a lack of trying. I usually do the ol' Disney-style cut away. I'm so lame. Hurt/comfort? Yes. Fantasy? Nah. Romance? My bread and butter🥰. Which one is your favorite? Hmm I'd say romance with multiple chapters all the way! Which one is your least favorite? My least favorite is when the protag gets pregnant and the whole story is just fucked after that because it just doesn't interest me. It's just so unoriginal and a little predictable. Unpopular or popular opinion who cares, not every love story or romance ends with a baby or a pregnancy 🤷‍♀️. I'm down for a wedding that would be something fun to tackle in writing. No, really though, out of the listed, I'd say I don't care for fantasy.

16. What’s your favorite headcanon or trope? For semma related fic's stories, I like incorporating things such as emphasis on photographs, flashbacks to past events, and some other memories from their past relationships with one another or things we didn't get to see. For example, Emma had this little box with moments like movie ticket stubs, Sean's old denim jacket (before he started wearing hoodies), Emma's retired dolphin pants, obviously photographs, a few burned mix CDs, letters, and or notes passed from class, and more miscellaneous items.

As for Emma and Jay another Degrassi pairing I write often, for example, I like including a treehouse motif. It's a long story, but in my invented backstory for Jay, Connie (Fancy) is his mother, She left his father for Mr. Edwards (Darcy and Clare's father) she met at the strip club. They had an affair resulting in pregnancy so there's a drama with that. Obviously, Jay and Darcy clash (naturally) and act like they're not related at school is an arrangement beneficial to both for Darcy's popularity and Jay had a reputation to uphold and also there's Jay's young maybe five year old half-sister from Randall and Connie named Christina affectionately nicknamed Chrissy. Jay resents his mother for leaving their father and making this new family with these stuck-up people he seems to detest and what it did to his father who had fallen in a reclusive depression since their divorce.

Chrissy idolizes Jay and serves as an honorary shipper for Emma and Jay, and sometimes provides comic relief. At Jay's dad's house is where the treehouse comes in, and Jay's super attached to it and his father too who he is still close with. The treehouse is a special spot for Jay. He eventually brings Emma into his world and treehouse, and the setting symbolizes a lot in their relationship. All this lore was created long before Jay or Darcy had a canon backstory or last names purely based on speculation. There's also related Jay/Alex lore about their past relationship, invented things from their dysfunctional childhoods. I also have a host of headcanons for Emma, Manny, and JT's childhood memories growing up together.

For tropes, I dig the first love/true love, mutual pining, enemies to lovers, slow burns, and secret relationships/forbidden love is always fun to write. I recently attempted a fake dating story Faking It/(a03)

This all is a lot of fun to write. Thanks Emma! I hope you also like writing responses to these type of questions! I’m always available and down for more questions about fanfiction! 💌

[ragingstillness]

Shadow and Bone spoilers - random thoughts from my notes (e2)

I love that this stolen painting of the fold is now our indicator that they're in the crow club.

Why doesn't Kaz tell anyone anything?

Blowing up the crow club is a scorched earth drama queen move and I approve.

"The barrel doesn't belong to kings it belongs to bastards" - ICONIC SHOWSTOPPING WE LOVE LOVE LOVE TO SEE IT

Quoted directly from my notes here: "Give me Ben you fuckers"

Why is Alina trying to seduce the Darkling in the tether?

"You're already dead" oof the foreshadowing

So cute Genya is looking for David and the Darkling is promising he'll find him. It's yet more evidence of how much he cares for all Grisha. He's rescuing them. Now that I think of it, how did Genya end up in a cage anyway? Was she back at the Darkling's encampment in Kribirsk and not on the skiff?

More Genya/David I love this song.

"Fear in a smaller glass is instinct" I am finally actually engaged in the crows' storyline

Nina's love for waffles continues.

Ballsy of the writers to tell us that Helnik had sex off-screen and refuse to show it to us.

Quoted directly from my notes here: "why does Hellgate look like a pair of boobs"

If the Shark Tooth in the side of Tamar's head isn't considered unusual why did everyone act like the bonding of the stag collar was some horrific thing. Not related to this scene just a thought I had, do you need a Durast for every implantation of an amplifier?

Why aren't they showing us Alina dreaming of the sea whip and the firebird? Seems odd after showing her dreaming of the stag and a simple dream flashback wouldn't take much of the runtime.

"You think the three are connected" is it somehow not common knowledge that Ilya created all three? Duh they're connected.

It's sweet that the Darkling knows the names and stories of everyone he ever rescued, really shows he cared.

Genuinely quite surprised that even Inej doesn't know the history with Pekka because in season one she seemed to.

"You're not just sunshine sunshine" lol

I'm kind of in love with Fruzsi but why have we literally never seen her before and why is she filling the role of Ivan or Fedyor? Also, finally we get to see a tidemaker, we've seen almost every other iteration.

The map that Alina had seemed to show the seawhip being in the sea but suddenly it's on an island?

Killing the seawhip was ridiculously easy. Also, the stag wasn't inherently violent, even when its territory was invaded, why was the seawhip violent?

Is it just me or is Nina chubbier this season? Maybe it's just the multiple layers and cloaks and bustle. I can't help but think that they took into consideration the criticism that Nina wasn't "truly" plus-size and this is how they dealt with it.

Inej's leather pants are everything.

I've been told that in the books Jesper is deeply and unrequitedly in love with Kaz but ngl I'm glad they didn't lean in on it and just had Wylan make one suspicious comment.

"My wraith" death, death for Pekka Rollins for a thousand years.

This Morgens character came out of nowhere and the show's acting like we're supposed to know him. And why is he wearing the Daredevil suit and dressing like one of the twelve from Junni Taisen?

Jesper remembering Wylan while lying on top of him is peak disaster bisexual behavior and I approve.

When are they ever going to run out of animal metaphors for Inej and the Crows? It's just constant all season.

Jesper stopping while being strangled to give Wylan a thumbs up is yet more peak disaster bisexual behavior.

I can't help but notice that Aleksander is spending a ton of time in these first episodes perilously close to the fireplace. Is he experiencing some sort of eternal chill/wasting sickness thing like Baghra does?

TW: SELF HARM MENTION

Ok what was he going to do with that hot poker? Burn the hole in his hand a little deeper? Like there's just nothing given as a reason besides the plot insisting that we need to learn about the tether. (I can't help but think of this from a self-harm angle)

Jessie's got some dance moves. It gives me Benedict Cumberbatch learning to Pop-Lock for Dr. Strange vibes.

"My Alina" - cute in fic where they're in a relationship, creepy in all other contexts including this one.

[notgreat-notterrible]

#3. Ok, web designers should be paid more

We had a couple of stressful midterms here, our first semester at BCIT. Coffee and late nights studying, sure, and then we went and got it over with. Brief pain. The whole band-aid.

I never lost more sleep than I did worrying about our personal website assignment. Like advanced psychological torture, this is how you induce elevated levels of stress and severe sleep deprivation. Step one: blank canvas. Step two: worth 30 marks.

And these ain’t any old completion or “you tried” marks. Some requirements were clear cut: a set number of pieces of work/projects to show off and some necessary pages (about, contact, privacy policy). Anything else is up to you, and on you, if you know what I mean. You can spend hours building up block by block and coming away feeling accomplished when you see it take shape and come together, and then the next day you can spend hours trying to figure out why this plugin isn’t doing the thing you need it to do, Googling for help, trying a same-but-different-plugin, dropping in bits of HTML somebody on Quora left on a tangentially related issue twelve years ago, and then convincing yourself that your site will be perfectly fine without that cool feature you really wanted. Like an art form, there is no such thing as time management. There is only messing around and messing up.

Nobody sets out to make a shitty website. But it might end up that way because 1) they literally can’t see colour 2) this font screams “fun” 3) “what do now?” and 4) “oh god, what did I just do?”

Numbers 3 and 4 are interchangeable but also just kinda states of being, all throughout the process?

Once we hit the ground running with our domains and hosting and our about pages, we had carte blanche. Free reign, but with a looming deadline. Like players exiting Vault 101 and stepping out into the wasteland for the first time: breathtaking freedom, but oh so barren and, oh yeah, you’ll probably die out here so get moving. Building a website is fun until you run into a problem.

My portfolio of writing (as well as video and audio work) came together quickly. Wasting my time is my number one hobby and I had no shortage of things I’d worked on previously, good and bad. And if it’s not evident by now, I just *love* talking about myself. I could big up all these things I had rotting away on my hard drive with fun descriptions no problem. Another requirement squared away.

Then it came time for the home page. Here I struggled. Thinking about it began to keep me up at night. Because this was no longer a question of learning the site editor and adding fancy bells and whistles, it was a visual design problem. At this point all I had was pages full of text and media and PDF embeds. It was maybe one step up from whatever we came up with in our Grade 9 Info Tech class, where we learned how to build a simple webpage with HTML. Open tags, close tags. It struck me that even though things are basically drag ‘n drop templates or pre-made themes in EasyWP, with barely any effort you can still create a site that looked like it was made by children—in other words, a real early Oughts-ass looking website. Where were the safety rails? Nobody should have that terrible power. Really irresponsible, is what it is.

I already talked about myself in my about page, I already talked about my work in their respective content pages, so what would my front page say or even look like? It’s 2022 and I haven’t typed a specific url into my address bar in actual years. My daily web experience begins with some sort of feed (it’s Reddit, Reddit is my only feed). So I felt like a moron when I had to Google examples of pretty cool front pages.

But I found one that caught my eye. It had attitude. From the photo choice to the lettering. The gears in my head turned. I found an old photo somewhere in the Cloud some friends and I had taken a couple years ago down in Birch Bay, Washington. An Insta-worthy glam shot. It became my new website cover photo, and it makes me laugh every time I pull up my homepage because what you don’t see (I cropped out), attached to the hand I’m holding, is my buddy’s shockingly hairy arm. And my website was always called “From the mind of Jordan Wong,” from day one. It knows what it's doing. It was only fitting I go with this layout.

I handed my website in and the next day I rolled into class with utmost confidence. Like I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. Our instructor, Paul, told us right away that he had a look at our websites… and he’s giving us a week to work on them some more.

It’s a gutpunch that didn’t register until I went up to the front of the room, to show off my website to everybody on the big screens, and Paul told me he looked at mine last night and it was one he actually wanted to talk about. Site functionality issues, I think it was he said. Well god dammit I was already in the captain’s chair and all I could do was plug in the address and hit go with all eyes on me. It felt like an ambush.

So he didn’t like the homepage. Or something. He referred to it as “bold.” Well I told myself, it was a stylistic choice and I stand by it! I liked my magenta/orange colour palette (Zune colours, I call ‘em), I liked that you had the words fade in all cinematically like that, even if you had to scroll down a little. The icon columns were too far down (they were originally below the cover photo). I didn’t see what the big deal was. So I sat on it another few days, and that weekend I came down with a pretty nasty flu? Virus? Whatever it was, it made me sweaty and feverish and put me on the couch for the entire week.

The night before the stupid site was due again, I knew what needed to be done and got myself into a sitting position and got to work. Cover photo: widescreen fix. Don’t know how to do it properly with Photoshop content aware fill and it looks jank. Okay, just live with it. Move my navigation icons higher, assume the user doesn’t know how to scroll down. Done. Now what? The navigation icon columns Paul helped me implement are breaking the hyperlinks on my rightmost column—and only if I mouseover from the right? Google has no solutions. Resizing the column widths does nothing, nor does changing the number of columns there are. Disaster. I was about to delete the columns completely when I decided to try throwing an animation on that block.

Whatever it did, it worked. It made the Contact icon and text link clickable again.

Except… that animation wouldn’t fire off at the same time as the title. I had to scroll a tiny bit down before it did. I refreshed and tried again. Nothing again until I scrolled. I panicked.

Oh my god, Paul’s going to think I’m an asshole, I thought. I assure you, I wasn’t deliberately trying to make visitors scroll down this time. Moving the blocks as high as they could go did nothing. Adjusting the height of the cover photo did nothing. It was already 12 o’clock midnight and I needed to wake up at 6:15AM for school, still feverish. (There was an un-skippable engagement for another class: a 20-minute meeting that I waited in my car almost two hours for, by the way.) I couldn’t go to bed until I’d solved the issue. I went so far as to try rebuilding the entire front page from scratch but had to stop when I couldn’t remember how to get my cover photo stretched full screen, nor could I remember how to get the font for my titles the same as it was previously. (Protip: copy block, paste block.)

In the end I think I got it. I had a block of similar icons on another page that I copied over and just swapped the icons and links. This one seemed to play nicer, seemed to fire off its animation at the same time as my bold, beautiful title text, so all hyperlinks worked. The moment I saw that, I saved it up and called it a night. I didn’t want to touch it again lest something else break.

So that was my foray into web design. A minute to break, a literal hour to put back. Hours spent writing content and organizing layouts, and hours wasted trying and failing to put in new fancy features. Dreaming too big and getting slapped back to reality. For instance, I went through four or five different PDF embed plugins before settling for embedding Google Drive PDFs with an iframe. Not the prettiest but it'll have to do. I was really, really trying to get the flowpaper plugin working.

I’ve always been a form over function guy. Sue me. But I’ll stick to my guns: I know what I like. Even if I need to find a workaround. The Fantastic Mr. Fox clip I have on my contact page, technically against the rules of the assignment by way of implementation (so a pretty easy fix) but when pointed out the first time, before Paul could elaborate, I couldn’t have been more resolute and quicker on the draw when I said, “I’m keeping that.”

Wanna check out my site? jordan-wong.com

EDIT: Reviews are in!!! One website critic (it's Paul) gave it 29.5/30! I definitely won't let that go to my head or anything.

[ourfavesareautistic]

Martin Crieff is Autistic

Character: Martin Crieff

Canon: Cabin Pressure (radio series)

Actor: Benedict Cumberbatch

Why we think they’re autistic: Cabin Pressure is a hilarious British radio comedy featuring four main characters and set almost entirely within an airplane. Martin Crieff is the rather young and inexperienced captain of the plane. Martin has always been obsessed with airplanes from the time he was a young child, and there is plenty of evidence that this is and always has been his special interest. In one episode he states that he’s wanted to be an airline captain since he was six, and when asked what he wanted to be before that, he says he wanted to be an aeroplane. In an early episode, he replies to a joke at his expense by the first officer Douglas by explaining how while Douglas was reading other things, Martin was busy “rereading Principles of Climatology for Pilots and underlining bits in red.” Later in the series we discover that Martin has a second job as a delivery man, because the way he got to be Captain over the much better qualified First Officer was by agreeing not to take a salary. His one and only goal and real joy in life is airplanes - flying them, reading about them, visiting museums about them. Martin frequently takes this very literally and believes in following rules to the letter. In the episode titled “Fitton,” the crew are going through different procedures and as part of his written procedure for an emergency he includes, “Captain dons cap,” which inspires jokes from the others he doesn’t understand. It becomes clear as the series goes on that Martin doesn’t have a lot of friends outside of the rest of the crew of the airplane, and it appears to have always been this way. Autistic people frequently find it hard to make or keep friends, or just simply don’t feel a need to have friends, preferring to be alone. He is also very awkward much of the time when interacting with anyone outside of the other three main characters. In one episode the crew is preparing to fly a very famous actress as their only passenger, and Martin is clearly quite nervous to meet her and rehearses exactly how he should address her when he meets her. This exchange from “Newcastle” perfectly shows Martin’s awkwardness in social situations and new people, and his total and complete obsession with airplanes and being a pilot:

Martin: So... Linda... you're a pilot.

Linda: Yes?

Martin: Yes, obviously, sorry. That wasn't a question, that - that was just a preliminary statement before the actual question I was gonna ask... which is... How long have you been a pilot?

Linda: Twelve years.

Martin: Twelve years, right, twelve years, well... that is not a long time or a short time... And... do you like it?

Linda: What?!

Martin: Being a pilot?

Linda: Yes, I do. Do you?

Martin: Yes, I do. I like it. Like you. I mean I like it like you do, not I like it like I like you, I don't like you. I mean I don't not like you, I just... I don - I don't like you as much as I like being a pilot.

Linda: Don't you?

Martin: Well, not yet. I - I mean I'm sure, if I got to know you, I'd like you more than being - well, probably not more than, because I LOVE being a pilot and I don't suppose I'd love you... well I suppose I might. No - I mean... I'm just gonna go and have a wander down the cabin now.

Why It Matters: All autistic representation matters. Martin Crieff shows an example of someone with a lifelong special interest who worked hard to achieve his goal related to that interest. It shows someone who is ultimately successful at what they do, and is eventually able to form relationships with others when he is ready and chooses to.

Challenging Tropes: Not much to say on this one. Martin is the stereotypical media autistic - white, male, cisgender with a relatively stereotypical special interest.

Bonus: John Finnemore, the writer and creator of Cabin Pressure, who also played the character of Arthur, has been asked about whether Martin Crieff is autistic, and his response was that he didn’t deliberately write him that way but believes he is on the spectrum.

“That's an interesting point. Yes, I think he may well be on the spectrum somewhere, though as Miss Pear suggests, probably nearer the Asperger Syndrome end than full-on autism. But I did not set out to create a character with the condition, so let's say it's present, but undiagnosed. (It has only just occurred to me that AS sometimes impairs motor skills and co-ordination, so it's possible that the very thing that gave him such a drive to become a pilot was also what stood in his way...)”

Also, Benedict Cumberbatch has played several other characters (Sherlock, Alan Turing, Stephen Hawking) who are or were likely autistic, and there is some speculation that Cumberbatch himself might be undiagnosed autistic.

(source)

[drxwsyni]

Petrified (pt. 9)

Yandere Erasermic x f!Reader

SERIES MASTERLIST

a/n: This part is really short, and honestly not that good. But seeing as this whole series is a mess, not much is new lmao. Thank you to @sawamooora for beta reading ilyyyyy <3 <3 <3

*Sidenote*: Please let me know if you’d like to be added or removed from the taglist!

3.4k words

Warnings: Descriptions of past dubcon, gaslighting.

Waking up, you wished the metaphorical blanket of comfort wasn’t ripped off of you the moment you opened your eyes.

It was an uncomfortable contrast.

While one blanket was ripped off, a real, physically tangible blanket weighed down on not just you, but the two sleeping men who had you sandwiched in between them. Seeing Hizashi on your right, and Shouta on your left was all you needed to be plunged into a dreadful confusion.

Your body hurt. An ache creeped through your spine as you sat up, only to realize you were completely bare. If the pain spreading across your skin wasn’t enough of a clue as to what had ensued less than twelve hours ago, then the evidence marring your body would be.

An intense throbbing radiated from your backside, prompting you to lean over on your elbow. Pulling down the covers, your eyes landed upon the black and blue patterns littering your skin, trailing down to the tops of your thighs. It seemed that both your wrists and hips were adorned with similar bruises, the only difference were those being distinctly fingerprint shaped. No one position completely alleviated the ache.

A sting emanated from your neck and shoulders as you lightly traced over the series of wounds, feeling remnants of bite marks and long scratches. In examining the bedsheets, you were convinced that the patterning of the fabric wasn’t tricking your mind. Little blotches of blood were just barely visible where you once laid.

An indiscernible cloud still hung over your mind, even if it was only slightly there by now. A fog that was muddling your memories, blocking whatever had gone down between you and the men at your sides. Nothing you could recall really felt concrete, at least for now―the possibility of memories returning over time being not all that unlikely. In the present however, the only indicators to tell you what happened were the marks they left behind.

And based on those―you were certain that it was never something you would’ve agreed to.

The morning sunlight was beginning to stream into the room, breaking through the small divides of the curtains. One glance at the alarm clock placed on Shouta’s nightstand told you that it was just over half past five.

On a Sunday morning, neither of them had anything to do. Naturally, the two were still sound asleep. You envied how peaceful they seemed, bathed in morning light, free from worry―a contrast to the nauseating unease you felt.

Becoming more and more horrified by the second, drowning in your thoughts and grasping at what they had done to you, the only one thing that stood out was your need to get the fuck out of there.

As carefully as possible, for fear that one move too harsh would wake one, if not both of the so called heroes, you peeled back the blankets from your battered form. Proceeding to crawl down to the foot of the bed, you gave a glance over your shoulder―just to confirm that the two were still sedated in slumber.

You let out a shaky breath upon confirming that they were, returning to swiftly taking your leave. But in the split second, when a whimper of pain left your lips, body doubling over at the burning enveloping your core as you settled your weight to stand—you were immediately sure their perception as trained heroes would alert them to the noise.

Though still, the steady rise and fall of Shouta’s chest, and the now relaxing sound of Hizashi's light snoring, put your nerves at ease―even if only a little.

Your clothes from last night weren’t in the bedroom, but neither were theirs. In finding a steady trail of frantically discarded articles leading to the living room, you could finally abandon the suffocating atmosphere that was their home. Freedom was the only thing on your mind as you hastily dressed yourself and grabbed your bag from the foyer.

_____

Hizashi Missed Call (7) 10:48 AM

Hizashi Text Message (16) 10:32 AM

Shouta Missed Call (3) 9:54 AM

Shouta Text Message (5) 8:12 AM

It would seem the shake in your hands would be uncontrollable until the foreseeable future, sighing as your phone lit up once again. Perhaps it wasn’t the wisest idea to disappear with no warning, knowing how the two could be when they weren’t in the know of your every move.

Yet, if they knew just how downright terrified you were to stay until they woke up, maybe they’d understand your unceremonious leave of absence.

Unfortunately, they didn’t. Neither of the heroes seem to be all that knowledgeable of how they affected you, what they did to make you fear them.

For so long you tried to bury that anxiety you felt with them. They crossed the line of innocent concern a long time ago with their intrusiveness. And now, with the marks they left behind, spanning across your body and leaving a searing pain as an unignorable reminder of just who they were under their doting facade―you couldn’t simply disregard what this relationship had turned into.

It was toxic.

The safety they should provide feeling ripped away in their presence.

It was suffocating.

Even when you were alone, there always seemed to be an inescapable weight upon your shoulders, mind guessing as to when you’d see them next.

It took you until now to realize it, until they’d done something you couldn't quite ‘forgive and forget’―but you finally knew their tactics, what they’d been doing all along. They were predatory in every sense of the word, targeting your weaknesses to seek a self satisfying goal.

With each missed call and unread text message, you cursed yourself for not fighting your way out of their grasp before it became nearly inescapable. That, and there was a painful tinge of shame riddling your body with how you’d let them handle you.

Most of last night was all but impossible to recall, but the existing memories told a clear story. They made you feel good, really good. Even in whatever stupor they’d placed you under, it’d be impossible to forget the intense and repeated sensations the two men made you reach.

The thought alone had you nauseous, knowing the circumstances of how you ended up like that.

In any case, the idea at the forefront of your mind was that there’s no time like the present. Especially since you were quite literally adding fuel to the fire by ignoring them. You couldn't change what they’d done to you, but you could change what happened going forward.

It was simple―you never wanted to see the two faux heroes ever again.

Hizashi had been trying to contact you for the better half of the hour. But what really bothered you was how Shouta stopped doing so a while ago―better to know what he was up to than the radio silence that only made the pit in your stomach worse.

Though it wasn’t all that bad―it would be easier to stomach the voice of Hizashi, especially over the phone, given what you were about to tell him.

A new call came through. On the final ring, you answered.

“...―Shou’, I’m not gonna stop till she―”

With the sudden absence of noise, it wouldn’t be hard to believe that the call had ended. Though, silence between the three of you was never short. Never before, and still not now.

“...(Y/n)?”

Your jaw clenched in worry, hearing Hizashi use your first name instead of a not so endearing pet name. Laced with the exhausted sounding disbelief, you could tell even over the phone that he wasn’t doing so good.

Part of you almost forgot to respond, his voice alone bringing you back to last night. When you did, you winced at the unintentional shake which you couldn’t control.

“Y-Yeah, I’m here.”

“Oh, thank god. What―Where did you run off to? Gave us a damn heart attack when you weren’t in the house.”

For someone so physically fit, Hizashi sounded like he just ran a marathon. Although, you suppose given the scare you put him through, the out of breath reaction was understandable.

And relatable, as your heart rate was beginning to pick up, anticipating how they’d soon handle your message.

“I, uh...I went home before you guys woke up…”

You could practically see the perplexed expression on his face, the sound of confusion coating his words.

A small laugh of disbelief came through the speaker. “Well there was no need for that, sweetheart.”

As if your body was trying to expel the extra energy from the adrenaline you were using to have a steady conversation with him, you began mindlessly wandering around your apartment.

“I just didn’t...feel comfortable? N-Not after what happened, I mean―last night shouldn't have happened, at all. So I left.”

The two heroes were back in the living room of their home, where they found your stuff missing in the morning. Shouta’s eyes narrowed at your words, hearing them clearly over the speakerphone. He shared a glance with his partner, the latter seated on the couch and nervously bouncing his leg.

“I’m not so sure I’m following. I don’t wanna embarrass you or anything, knowin’ how shy ya get, but...you were screamin’ our names last night. Don’t see how ya could’ve had a bad time, songbird.”

That detail in particular was one of the many occurrences from then that escaped you. With your memory being in shambles, it was pretty much a ‘he said, she said’ when it came to what happened.

...Pretty much.

The things that did stick, well...you almost wish they didn’t.

While all the fleeting events you knew of didn’t leave a good taste in your mouth, certain details made you sick to your stomach.

“I’ll never get sick of seein’ ya like this, songbird.”

The ones you couldn’t explain, and left far too many possibilities of theoretical context. Most of them being a worst case scenario for you.

“…You saying we should speed things up?”

Or, the ones that could be easy to pass off as playful teasing, if it weren’t for the darker undertones that made your wild imagination run rampant.

And when the things they whispered lowly into your ear became a jumbled mess of inebriated nonsense, you could still rely on memories of their touch. How they held you, early in the night when you weren’t completely lost to both natural and unnatural chemical influences. The sensations of frustration, only met with feelings of being restrained. They way it felt almost practiced, as if they were planning to do whatever they did long before it actually happened.

Unconsciously, you wandered into your bedroom, anxiously pacing all the while. The safety of its familiarity was sedating, to an extent.

You shook your head, trying to figure out how you’d get your concerns across to the two men. “That’s...That’s not the problem. Well it is but―the whole thing was just a bad idea.”

A muffled, irritated sigh could be heard. “No, something must be going on with ya. It’s probably better we talk this out in person, yeah? You home right now, sweetheart?”

In typical Hizashi fashion, he failed to respect your boundaries. You let out your own sigh of annoyance, spinning on your heel to face your bedroom’s window.

“There’s nothing―”

...You were most definitely certain that you closed your window before leaving yesterday.

Forgetting that you were in the middle of a very heated conversation, the hand that was holding your phone to your ear fell slightly. With the one that was free, you pulled the frame closed.

…

And it creaked back open.

The latch was busted.

Deft fingers grazed the metal frame, where it would typically snap shut, and stay shut. While it wasn’t untypical for these kinds of things to break, knowing that your apartment complex wasn’t exactly the newest, the fault didn’t sit right with you.

And, when you set your phone down, using one hand to hold the window closed, the other to keep it in place by fastening the lock, you found that too equally damaged.

...Almost like someone tried to leave out the window, in a hurry at that. Which would explain it being left open, and how the aggressiveness of the action would render the whole thing completely useless.

The sound of your name being called through the speaker brought you back to the main issue at hand. Picking up the phone, you could only continue where you left off.

“There’s nothing else to talk about. Whatever relationship the three of us have...I don’t want to be a part of it anymore.”

You managed to shock yourself with that, not actually believing you had it in you to really put your foot down.

Hearing the radio silence that followed, you knew he was more shocked than you were.

It made you wonder if he was more fucked up on one substance or another than you were last night—the sheer level of denial Hizashi was in over the whole thing.

“...Don’t talk like that, gonna give me another heart attack. Two in one mornin’, that’s awfully cruel, dontcha think?”

You were always one to shy away from confrontation, but now was not the time for that. The chance to cut your ties with them in this moment was as best as you would likely ever get.

“I’m not okay with what this has turned into, Hizashi. Not remotely comfortable, and—“

“Where are you, (y/n).”

...

Shouta’s voice.

“...This isn’t something we should discuss over the phone.”

It shamed you that all Shouta had to do was address you in that low, gravely voice of his, and you were instantly regretting every decision you’d made since picking up the phone. He certainly had an effect on you; no matter how many times you dealt with his tone, you could never quite get used to the sternness.

You swallowed dryly, still eyeing the unnaturally broken window.

“I-I’m not telling you where I am. You need to respect my decision on this…”

But if they couldn’t respect the privacy of your own home, why would they care about your newfound insistence?

...

The thought of the two men being culprits to the property damage popped intrusively into your head. Wildly associating it to be an explanation to the fragments of blissed out proclamations, whatever “seein’ ya like this” meant.

Your grip on the cellphone faltered, a shake seizing your hands.

No, they were heroes.

What purpose would they have breaking into your apartment?

Because if Hizashi was referring to somehow having already seen you in such a compromising position as the one him and his partner coerced you into…

You took a step back from the window.

“It’s not something you have to like, b-but neither of you guys cared about what I wanted last night.” With the slight crack in your voice, you winced knowing they could likely tell how hard it was to be firm in your ways with them, only making their job easier. “You...you went too far―that’s why I’m so upset.”

Shouta’s words, as always, effortlessly sent a pang of anxiety through your system.

“You didn’t know what you wanted last night, we made that decision for you. And judging by how you didn’t exactly try to put up a fight...” The small, almost inaudible chuckle only made his claims tear you apart more. “...I’d say you were more than happy with our decision.”

Never failing to find the exact things to say to shut you up, to put you in your place, Shouta remained confident with where things were going since he took control of the conversation.

You fumbled on your words, not quite sure of what would be the best argument to deny his statement.

“T-That’s―”

“That’s the truth, and you know it.”

I can’t even remember half of what happened last night, is what you wanted to say.

You wanted to scream at him, really. The two of them loved assuming they knew everything―what was best for you―despite the clear evidence that they in fact did not.

Naturally, all you could actually do was run from wherever this conversation was headed. It was obvious you would never reach an agreement with them. All they’d want to do was take, take, take. Make demands like they were in charge of you.

You knew that you’d never be able to get through to them.

And honestly, you didn’t have the energy to even try.

The point of answering their call was to finally end things, and that’s all that was left to do.

“...I don’t care what either of you think, whatever happened last night—I didn’t want it. Just...don’t try to contact me again. Goodbye.”

When you finally pressed the ‘end call’ button, you expected to feel that weight of their unrelenting presence lift off of you.

...It didn’t. But you probably shouldn’t be surprised. It’d take time to calm down, all you really needed to worry about now was returning your life to how it was before meeting the two all those months ago.

Another call came through in seconds, startling you where you still stood in your bedroom. Shaking slightly from lingering nervousness, you hastily declined it, not checking to see who it was from. Fingers flying across the screen, you blocked both Shouta’s and Hizashi’s contacts from your phone, proceeding to delete the existing conversations.

A small step towards getting back to normal.

Just one of many.

_____

Trying to conceal the slight limp in your step as you walked to work on Monday was both difficult and mortifying, each sharp pain shooting through your abdomen an unwelcome reminder. A cold shiver ran through you, prompting you to shove your hands in your pockets for warmth.

The changing seasons meant you’d have to work on moving around the shop’s layout. Bringing more delicate plants inside, swapping them out for seasonal ones that could handle the chill in the air. A task that you wondered if you would have to complete yourself.

With the days growing shorter, you noted the dusk already settling over the sky, drawing near the start of your 5pm shift. The orange hues dancing in the clouds were certainly a beautiful sight. Your gaze repeatedly found its way back to the sky as you walked down the sidewalk.

The closer you got to work, the more vibrant it seemed.

Strange indeed.You passed it off as the darkening night merely amplifying the remaining light of the setting sun.

Turning down another street, you could hear the approaching sound of sirens. A firetruck soon whipped past and continued down the road, making you shuffle towards the inside of the sidewalk. The piercing noise left an uncomfortable ringing in your ears.

When such an irritating reaction to the blaring never completely faded, you realized that was because it was just more distant sirens, multiple of them, sounding off in the direction you were heading.

You picked up your pace.

With another glance at the sky, you began to see not just the orange hue intensifying, but also a distinct plume of black smoke.

...

...It’s not...it can’t be…

Soon enough, your leisurely walk picked up speed. The ache in your gut from both physical wounds and growing anxiety making you nauseous.

Barely taking precautions to watch where you were going, you focused only on the direction of your shop, and the beacon of light that seemed to be right on top of it. Mindlessly placing one foot in front of the other, feeling like the end of the road before you turned the corner was only growing further away with each step.

The unpleasant smell of something burnt met your senses—faint, but there nonetheless.

You couldn’t lie to yourself, whatever was up ahead, it wasn’t good. But it couldn’t be what you were thinking.

Not your shop.

No. You’d turn the corner, and it would be fine.

The small boutique would be where it always was, nestled in between two buildings, waiting for you to start your shift.

Things would go back to normal, just like you’d planned.

…

The wailing sirens met your ears in full force. A stifling air, unnaturally hot and acrid washed over you, causing you to instinctively clamp a hand over your nose and mouth.

In gradually coming to the worst realization of the night, your free hand braced the brick wall of the building next to you, knees nearly buckling.

Thirty feet away, lighting up the street to be as bright as day, was your workplace completely engulfed in flames.

[evidence-based-activism]

Okay! So, I decided to go ahead and go through the sources linked by @aliciabenissa on this post. Mostly because I really hate when people try and debate the literal definitions of words with me. @radkindoffeminist I thought you may also be interested in this since you commented on this post. Before beginning, I want to reiterate again that non-academic sources are still useful rhetorical devices. Essays, speeches, anecdotal evidence, and other sources have a role to play in both academic and non-academic discourse. It is disingenuous however to pass off an non-academic source as academic (and it is also a rising problem within many academic fields). First source (McKee, 2007a) used a self-selection survey sample of about 1000 people, 82% of whom were male. I had to go to a separate article (McKee, 2007b) to get that statistic. Additionally, the response rate to this survey was only 7.3% (very low). Further, this article is concerned exclusively with the effects of pornography on porn consumers, entirely neglecting the industry itself. The ultimate conclusion of this study is that people who consume pornography tend to think it benefits them positively. This is unsurprising, considering we tend to avoid ego-dystonic behaviors. In fact, previous experiments have shown that we tend to adapt or world-views to fit our behaviors, so as to avoid cognitive dissonance. Nonetheless, this source was an academic source. The second source (Orlowski, 2012) is not an academic source. It was published in the “Modern American” a student run, non-peer reviewed publication at the American University Washington College of Law. This is not a study, meta-analysis, or or review article, and is best characterized as a position paper. I don’t want to get too far into the content of the paper, but suffice to say, the paper argues that non-obscene pornography is protected under the first amendment. Curiously, the author posits that the current definition of obscenity is a reliable measure for deciding what pornography should be allowed, despite the definition of obscenity being notoriously unreliable and obscure. The third source (Friedersdorf, 2016) is also not an academic source. It is essentially an opinion essay published in The Atlantic. The main argument used is based on population studies, a methodology challenged in this study (Kingston & Malamuth, 2011), which you will note, is an actual peer reviewed academic article. The fourth source (Diamond, 2009) is academic! It’s also challenged by the same paper mentioned above (Kingston & Malamuth, 2011). The other main finding of this work is that people only want porn to be restricted from children, and think it’s fine to have available. Again, I don’t find the fact that porn consumers believe porn is fine to be surprising (see the discussion of the first source above). This article is also entirely focused on consumers. The fifth source (Pornography, n.d.) is a Psychology Today article that references the fourth source. Along with a study similar to the first source (McKee, 2007a). The same criticisms clearly apply. Nevertheless, the authors of that particular study (Hald & Malamuth, 2008) actually take the time to point out these problems with such a study design, and explain how the survey results actually support the arguments about desensitization, which is common component of anti-porn arguments. Source six (5 Reasons Watching Porn Together Can Be Good for Your Marriage, 2013) is a HuffPost article. It is not academic. The ideas presented are inane at best, and offensive at worst. Source seven (Moyer, n.d.) is also not an academic article. It is published in Scientific American which is a popular science magazine. The studies and arguments used in this article have already been debunked above. Source eight (Park, 2010) references source four (Diamond, 2009). It’s also not an academic source, as it is published in Time which is a magazine. The article also take an anti-pornography stance, describing the results as “provocative” ultimately unreliable and problematic. Source nine (McCormack & Wignall, 2017) is an academic source with a small sample size (n=35) of all men. It again is entirely concerned with the consumers of pornography, and relies on self-report of positive/negative effects. I explained how this is a flawed methodology in my discussion of source one (McKee, 2007a). I cannot verify if source ten (Wasserman, 1996) is an academic source or not. Based on what I’m able to access it looks like a position paper. Source eleven (Why Criminalizing Rape Porn Is a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Idea, 2014) is non academic. It is an opinion article in an “Internet Newspaper” called The Daily Dot. It’s entirely an appeal to emotion and references several of the above debunked arguments. Source twelve (Prause & Pfaus, 2015) is academic. It’s also about whether or not men who view porn experience erectile dysfunction, which, frankly, isn’t one of my main concerns about the sex industry. Since I know this is the only reason why some men will stop watching porn however: the study’s findings are strongly rebuked in a subsequent comment (Isenberg, 2015) that lays out several methodological and analytical problems found in the report. The final source (The 8 Best Sites to Watch Ethical, Fair Trade Porn, 2017) is not academic. It’s another opinion article with no sources (but plenty of links to porn sites) on The Daily Dot (the same as source eleven). It barely presents an argument at all, so I’ll just link you to my posts on how porn cannot be legal because it doesn’t comply to OSHA and a short opinion post on the violence inherent to porn. So, in summary: 8 out of 13 sources are non-academic, 4 out of 13 sources are academic (2 of which are directly challenged and all four of which have significant methodological issues), and 1 source is unknown. Of the twelve sources I verified, they were all entirely concerned with pornography consumers; neglecting “sex workers” altogether. (Hopefully, I don’t need to spell out why that’s a problem.) And @aliciabenissa I genuinely hope you aren’t sending sources like this to your supervisors and calling them academic. I strongly suggest using databases from your library or institution (such as ulrichsweb) to verify the legitimacy of sources.

A reminder for everyone that I have several essay posts discussing literature on the sex industry in my “sex industry” tag. This post may be a nice place to start for literature on how porn affects the consumer and I challenge other pro-porn articles in this post. Also take a look at this post for a nice summary article on the nordic model.

[Citation list under the cut]

5 reasons watching porn together can be good for your marriage. (2013, March 7). HuffPost. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/5-reasons-why-watching-po_b_2766968

Diamond, M. (2009). Pornography, public acceptance and sex related crime: A review. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 32(5), 304–314. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijlp.2009.06.004

Friedersdorf, C. (2016, April 7). Is porn culture to be feared? The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/porn-culture/477099/

Hald, G. M., & Malamuth, N. M. (2008). Self-perceived effects of pornography consumption. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 37(4), 614–625. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-007-9212-1

Isenberg, R. A. (2015). Viewing sexual stimuli associated with greater sexual responsiveness, not erectile dysfunction: A comment. Sexual Medicine, 3(3), 219–221. https://doi.org/10.1002/sm2.71

Kingston, D. A., & Malamuth, N. M. (2011). Problems with aggregate data and the importance of individual differences in the study of pornography and sexual aggression: Comment on diamond, jozifkova, and weiss(2010). Archives of Sexual Behavior, 40(5), 1045–1048. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-011-9743-3

McCormack, M., & Wignall, L. (2017). Enjoyment, exploration and education: Understanding the consumption of pornography among young men with non-exclusive sexual orientations. Sociology, 51(5), 975–991. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038516629909

McKee, A. (2007a). Positive and negative effects of pornography as attributed by consumers. Australian Journal of Communication , 34(1), 87–104.

McKee, A. (2007b). The relationship between attitudes towards women, consumption of pornography, and other demographic variables in a survey of 1,023 consumers of pornography. International Journal of Sexual Health, 19(1), 31–45. https://doi.org/10.1300/J514v19n01_05

Moyer, M. W. (n.d.). The sunny side of smut. Scientific American. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamericanmind0711-14

Orlowski, J. (2012). Beyond Gratification:The Benefits of Pornography and the Demedicalization of Female Sexuality. The Modern American, 8(2), 53–71.

Park, A. (2010, December 2). Study: Making pornography more accessible may curb child abuse. Time. https://healthland.time.com/2010/12/02/study-making-pornography-more-accessible-may-curb-child-abuse/

Pornography: Beneficial or detrimental? | psychology today. (n.d.). Retrieved July 19, 2021, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/homo-consumericus/201001/pornography-beneficial-or-detrimental

Prause, N., & Pfaus, J. (2015). Viewing sexual stimuli associated with greater sexual responsiveness, not erectile dysfunction. Sexual Medicine, 3(2), 90–98. https://doi.org/10.1002/sm2.58

The 8 best sites to watch ethical, fair trade porn. (2017, December 16). The Daily Dot. https://www.dailydot.com/nsfw/guides/porn-ethical-premium/

Wasserman, M. (1996). Positive, powerful pornography. Agenda, 28, 58. https://doi.org/10.2307/4065758

Why criminalizing rape porn is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea. (2014, June 18). The Daily Dot. https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/criminalizing-rape-porn-terrible-idea/

[irondadfics]

I’m looking for fanfics where Peter is Tony’s biological child and he goes missing/gets kidnapped as a young child. He is raised by someone else and doesn’t know he’s Tony’s son. I’ve already read Lost Boy and Things I Almost Remember on archive of our own and I wanted to find stories with a similar plot.

WHEW! It’s kind of a long list, but we did our best finding several fics that feature both BioDad!Tony and Peter being kidnapped at a very young age. ENJOY!!

PETER IS TONY’S SON BUT THEY WERE SEPARATED WHEN PETER WAS A CHILD REC LIST

Lost Boy by winterda

Isaac Stark disappeared from a crowded park a few months shy of his third birthday. There were never any signs of him, and no arrest were ever made in connection to the case. It was as if the toddler had simply vanished off the face of the earth. Twelve years later, Peter Parker has a really bad day, which only get worse when his prints are put through the system.

Things I Almost Remember by IcedAquarius @icedaquarius31​

Peter's past is not as it appears. It all starts one day with a genetics project and slowly spirals into something Peter never could have imagined.

hydra's not a home by tempestaurora @tempestaurora​

At 6 years old, the son of Tony and Pepper Stark, Peter, is kidnapped, never to be seen again. Or, so they thought. Ten years later, while raiding a HYDRA base, the Avengers come across a new, enhanced individual, working for the enemy: in black spandex, with a tendency to stick to walls and shoot webs from his wrists, the Black Spider is a pain in the ass in more ways than one.

If They Knew All About You by MsHermia

Tony Stark had lost his son when he was only 2 years old, stolen away in broad daylight with nobody the wiser of what exactly happened. Years later, Tony has just made it through the disaster with Ultron. He is trying to keep himself and the team together but relationships are strained and tempers are running high. Then a random turn of events leads to his path crossing with that of a particular vigilante. They are strangers to each other, or so they think.

Peter Parker is on top of the world. After a few shitty years, losing his parents and then losing his Uncle, things are finally looking up. Sure he lives in a crappy little apartment with his Aunt but he might have just found his mission in life.

------

This is an AU story obvious by some of the tags. I'm starting out a few weeks after Age of Ultron took place. Civil War will be a thing. Other than that I'm not too concerned about sticking to every canon detail and storyline.

Finding Their Way Home by ElliahRose

Peter Benjamin-Edward Stark went missing on a Tuesday. For months the entirety of the New York police department, as well as anyone else the Starks could convince to join, searched for the tot. He was only three when he was taken and for four months, two weeks, and four days, Tony Stark and Pepper Stark (nee Potts) worried and fretted over their beloved child.

Peter Benjamin-Edward Stark was murdered on a Friday. A ransom call gone wrong spelt the end of the child’s life. The world grieved as the kidnappers gleefully told the devastated parents they’d find his body in the morning.

They never did.

Twelve years passed and the family was still grieving, and Tony Stark worked tirelessly to find his only child’s killer and gain justice for his son.

Meanwhile Peter Parker was having literally the worst day ever. He just wanted to help make the world a better place, but instead he got stabbed. That's just his luck, isn't it?

missing, presumed dead by hailingstars @hailing-stars

They hadn’t had a funeral for Peter.

There hadn’t been a casket or a service inside a church.

There had been, before Tony decided in his heart that Peter was gone, candlelight vigils and pleas on the media for whoever had taken him to bring him home. Neither of those did any good. Neither of those brought Peter home.

OR

Tony Stark's son gets kidnapped when he's two. Twelve years later he comes back.

I told you to be better (and you became the best) by HaruK

Tony was blessed with a healthy baby boy, and for once in his life, was actually happy. Until everything derailed and he had to send his son away to keep him safe, because those related to the Stark family, one of the worlds biggest and most targeted families in the black market, always end up hurt. With a new name and identity that Tony himself doesn't know, the young baby was wiped off the map, his existence erased, never to be heard of again. . Years later, Anti-hero Iron Man meets a local superhero vigilante and Tony becomes surprisingly close with young Peter Parker.

The Curly-Haired Boy In The Paper by Svn_f1ower @svn-f1ower​

When Tony sees the blurry, grey scale photograph of someone he thought he had lost years ago, he follows the trail to a newspaper company, to a hospital, to an adoption agency, to the police station and finally to May Parker's house.

hold him tight & don’t let go by jessicagoddamnjones @farremoved

Peter Stark went missing when he was four years old.

Eleven years later, he’s found.

Only now he’s Peter Parker by day, Spider-Man by night, and he doesn’t like the idea that his entire life is a lie.

Rise from the Ashes; Just to See You Again by Mintstream @iwritedumbshit​

Tony Stark didn't expect Mary Fitzpatrick, or the news she delivered. He didn't expect that he would become a father, or that he would actually enjoy it. He didn't expect Penny to love him just as fiercely as he did her.

He didn't expect to lose her so soon.

In the wake of the loss of his daughter he tried--tried to do right by her. He became Iron Man, he was an Avenger, he protected his world because he couldn't protect his daughter, but through it all, he hoped to be reunited with his daughter.

He didn't expect to be alive when he was.

AKA the biological daughter kidnapping AU no one asked for. Hope you read, and hope you enjoy.

Updates on Saturdays.

Coming Home by inkinmyheartandonthepage

AU – Peter Stark was kidnapped when he was just three years old. Tony and Pepper never stopped looking for their boy. Years later, Peter finds his way back home.

A Change In What We Knew by Imissyoutoo @imissyoutoo

Tony scoured the floor behind Steve as though his one-year-old son had somehow crawled to him, before finally, he looked up. The realisation dawned on him like an eclipse; the decaying darkness hiding the sun. Hiding his son. Because his boy wasn't there.

”Where is he? Steve? Where's my son Rogers?!” At only a year old, Tony Stark’s son is taken, leaving him shattered. Little does he know, his journey to find what is lost only begins twelve years later. In the most unlikely of places, and all because of two words.

”Hey kid.”

I Found You by honestchick

Tony had a son; he raised him for two years until someone kidnapped him. Tony was devastated and heartbroken. And who would have thought in Starks Expo, he’d be able to see his son once again?

move back home forever by chasingflower @evahmohns

The results say he’s not actually Peter Parker.

They say he’s Peter Stark. You know, the one who’s been missing for 10 years.

Yeah. He knows.

Soon You'll Get Better by lostinmorewaysthan1

Peter Stark was kidnapped. That was all anyone knew. He vanished into thin air, no traces left behind, when he was eight years old.

Six years later, on one of the final raids on the HYDRA bases, they find an enhanced assassin, with super strength and the ability to climb walls. No one imagined that it would be Peter. Least of all Tony.

With no memory and brainwashed by HYDRA, Peter Stark goes home and tries to recover.

Let This Road Be Mine by CommunicationFlail

Ten years ago, five year old Peter Stark disappeared. When the trail went cold, the case was closed. Now new evidence has been brought to light and Tony will stop at nothing to get his son back. No matter how many fakes he has to meet. His son is out there, and he will find him.

Return to me, the one I love so endlessly by SuperHeroTiger @superherotiger

James Edwin Stark was born on the 10th of August 2001, and for the first time in his life, Tony Stark cried tears of joy.

All the fears, all the dread that had once consumed his soul washed away with a single look at the baby’s gentle features, so familiar and yet so distinctly unique at the same time. Tony made many promises that day. Promises to love his son, to protect him, to always be there for him.

On the 10th of August 2002, James Edwin Stark was stolen in the middle of the night, and his father’s world came crashing down. Shattered and alone, Tony whispered the same promise he’d made to his son the day that he was born.

‘…My love for you is endless…’

Fourteen years later, hidden away from the world in a forest of pine, Peter Beck would dream of a day he might get to see the towering city of New York. And when a wounded stranger stumbles onto their property a week out from his birthday claiming to be a famous billionaire from New York, his dream might just come true.

Once Lost Now Found by FreckledAvenger11

Peter Parker was just trying to get used to life without his uncle. He wasn't expecting to find a familiar face in an article about Tony Stark's missing son. Follow Peter on his journey to discover just who he is. Is he Peter Parker? Is he Spider-Man? Or is he someone else entirely? Just who is he and what secrets died along with his parents in that plane crash?

So He Walks The World Alone by Miola014

This is a story 'bout a broken boy With his headphones in just to block out the noise Of everyone around him telling him the way to go So he walks the world alone Wondering if it gets better Or if he's always gonna feel empty forever So he gets lost tryna find another way back home As he walks the world alone

Or

The Kidnapped Peter Stark AU that I promised y'all!

[chirpsythismorning]

I'm loving your theory lol, although even if he survived, that wouldn't explain mike knowing him since they were 5 😔

Exactly.

There's a lot of things that don't add up. Like in all fairness, Will himself doesn't appear to have any memories of being at Hawkins Lab, nor do his friends and family ever mention him being there pre-s1 from what I can tell? And so, how would that work?

And even though it's a popular theory that El recognized Will from the lab in s1 (definitely possible still), wouldn't she have brought it up in some capacity after meeting him officially in s2? Or even now that they're literal 'wonder twins' by s4? Even if Will forgot and she remembered him, wouldn't she feel compelled to say something?

It would only make sense if they both forgot because their memories were repressed in some way. Which isn't even a reach bc they are the characters with the most memory/memory loss references. El's s4 arc was legit her recovering a repressed memory related to the Hawkins Lab Massacre. And so would it even be a stretch to assume that if Will had been there too, being the only other kid to survive presumably, he would've also had to have repressed it somehow? Most likely not even by choice?

Out of all the supporting and conflicting parts of this theory, what has me stumped most of all is Brenner.

Brenner shows little to no interest in Will.

You could argue that he did in s1, because when Will went missing he took an interest in the case, even went to Will's house to the shed to see it for himself. He was presumably also involved in the government cover up regarding Will's body.

Though beyond that, they don't have any sort of relationship, which is weird?

You could argue maybe Dr. Owens and Will do, especially by s2 when Will was technically involved with Hawkins Lab after returning from the upside down. And so it's not like he doesn't have a connection to the lab at all. There are even parallels of both el and will being filmed with a bunch of people watching them from another room intrigued. Like the potential is there. But something is definitely missing.

Is it possible because of the events of the Hawkins Lab Massacre, with El literally banishing Henry, Brenner kind of blocked out any sort of regard for Will's potential abilities? Like yeah sure he survived the Massacre just like El. But instead of Brenner wasting his time on 'the boy that survived', he'd probably rather focus on whatever the hell El just did and how he can use that to his advantage.

That's the only way I could really understand it? Them being fine with wiping his memories and sending him back into the real world to combat some of the bad press they were dealing with?

What I do like about this theory, is that right now currently, we don't know for certain why the hell Will was targeted by Venca in the first place, and so this could answer a lot of those questions nicely.

Will went missing roughly 3-4 years after the massacre, and so Will, being Twelve, and a survivor, would've understandably been next in line since Eleven refused to join him.

Still doesn't explain how Joyce or even Jonathan wouldn't have known. I get that it's possible Lonnie could've been sending him to get tests done, but from what I could tell the situation for the kids at Hawkins Lab was more on a permanent basis?

Like I could see it if he was only there on a volunteer basis similar to s2, but otherwise, I don't see how everyone would forget or never again acknowledge how Will spent a good portion of his childhood in a lab.

It starts to fall through at that point.

Even still, I think I'm sort of 50/50 right now. A lot of the evidence supporting it is staggering, like this was something people were hypothesizing about pre-s3.

And so me literally stumbling across a lot of this evidence on my own in a matter of moments upon rewatching, and without anyone influencing me to start that theory, like... it's kind of surreal.

I'm only now discovering that there is in fact discourse about Will as Twelve within the fandom on here, but in all fairness, the evidence supporting it has been enough to intrigue even the most casual of viewers. Things like the birthmark reference, the rainbow ship feeling like a reference to Hawkins lab, or how El and Will have been paralleled in intricate ways since the very first episode. It's got somewhat of a good foundation as a theory because there is evidence of people picking up on those hints from the beginning, and taking time to ask others if they thought it might be hinting at something. So I do feel I can give it that.

There would definitely need to be a lot of answers.

I think certain details like Will having a birthmark on his right arm, and all these other little things hint at this very likely having been an idea from the beginning, which is a cool thought.

It would mean that even if now we don't think there's enough evidence to support it, or that theres too much contradicting it, if they did in fact come up with this from the beginning, then there's probably a proper explanation for a lot of it, assuming it has always been in the back of their mind.

I've been thinking about rewatching the show from this perspective recently, to see if anything jumps out at me.

It was honestly terrifying uncovering the Twelve theory in a matter of moments though. Like just literally rewatching those scenes, I felt like I was watching them for the first time. I was shocked. It didn't take much to convince me, it was almost too on the nose.

[ginkgomoon]

Helios- A Character Study

I have always been fascinated by Helios so I’m especially excited about this post! If there’s any other additional information you would like to add, ask, or discuss, feel free to send an ask or a post so I can adjust and clarify for you. But before that, I have other things I want to add that are important regarding my blog- I will be expanding and analysing other characters in MLQC, so not to worry Victor, Kiro and Lucien (and Shaw, Eli?, Savin?) stans! I has't not hath left thee! In addition, before every analysis/study that I do, I will post a hint (such a quote) that will foreshadow the upcoming character/topic I will be covering. I know it’s not necessary and literally nobody does it but this is great fun for me so I also want to try to make it fun for you guys to approach my blog and my work! This is a spoiler buffet. Please don’t read if you don’t want to be spoiled! This is probably the longest post ever on my blog so enjoy :)

“You either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain.” -The Dark Knight

Who is Helios?

??: Do you know what Helios means? The mocking in his face had returned. He suddenly came close and placed his hand on the window behind me. I was imprisoned in his arms and couldn’t move. His eyes drilled into my own. I felt that if I showed even the smallest hint of discomfort or fear, he would use that as an excuse to push me away. MC: Helios is the sun god from Greek mythology- ??: I don’t like that name.

Helios is the God of the Sun, sight and a guardian of oaths. He is seen to be riding a golden chariot to bring the sun across the skies each day from east (where the sun rises) to west (where the sun sets). 

Kiro has lots and lots and lots of sun, light, dark and shadow imagery attached to him. Kiro is noted to be everyone’s sun, especially for MC and vice versa as she’s noted to be the one to chase the darkness away with Kiro following through. When he has those stage moments as his idol identity, it’s expected for him to be the guiding light (especially for his fans, the Kirophiles)- “the sun” and “hope” as to what “Kiro” represents, without any impurities associated with that persona. Which is ironic for Helios, who dressed mostly in black without the blonde hair, to have that same name as the God of the Sun working in BLACK SWAN- the organisation with the name literally having “black” in it as well. 

“If Kiro is this exuberance and this life, Helios is the opposite of that. It’s what if we took someone who stopped finding reasons to be happy, who stopped finding a lot of things to be passionate about and was just trying to get on day by day- they react to the things that happen to them, rather than going out to look for adventure. Helios lacks a lot of emotion that Kiro has.” -Sean Chiplock, Kiro’s VA

Kiro and Helios

“If I had a dark side… I should hide it from others, right…? Can I really be imperfect?”

There had been a lot of discussion around Helios in relation to his transformation, whether he was acting and what Kiro’s connection with BLACK SWAN is. 

To clarify, yes- Kiro is Helios. Helios is Kiro. Just like how Kiro admitted to MC that he’s also the hacker KEY. Helios is just one of the personas that Kiro has (which I will expand on in a future post). This, however, does not hinder negatively on Kiro’s personality, but introduces us to another side of him, one that shows effective in-depth characterisation. Especially when we first view him as the cheerful idol with the power to passively attract others. Kiro first gave off the certain impression to Sean Chiplock that you “don’t take off the calm and quiet person, because you don’t want to see the other side of them”. 

Kiro and Helios, which one was the real him? Neither? Or both? -Clinic Date

Before MC has her first encounter with Helios, we have to look more into Kiro’s background and childhood. 

Kiro was experimented on as a kid. He didn’t know his name, his birthday or where he came from. Through the experiments of genetic modification, he obtained his evol. Only when MC and the original KEY came to him, did he really strive to fulfil his sense of purpose of “we shall stand in darkness as we defend the light”, and also to protect MC back. His mentor used to be the original Helios, one of the twelve-ranking positions in BLACK SWAN, but went missing when Kiro was 15. Been given the name Kiro, using his idol identity, accepted this as Helios and as of the leader of BLACK SWAN to rid Leto- the true evil of the Season 1 timeline.

It is evident that he does genuinely care about his fans, his career and music despite all of this. This aspect of him is very much true (we see that he exposes a person scamming his fans in Chapter 3 and that in his various dates he dedicates his work to comforting his fans in their everyday lives). However, with this much love and support from everyone with very few knowing his true intentions and darker past, it is easy to “trip up” upon these identities, in a way that he would feel so lonely (as I reiterate what I said above) that everyone would think he’s the perfect man (not saying he isn’t because we all know he is!) without any troubles or experiencing difficulties climbing up the ranks to be where he is now- especially with his evol being charm and control. He would wonder if it’s really him or his evol making people act this way towards him (why he has this much love and attention). 

In reality, every teacher who has met him adored him very much. But because of this, Kiro always remained in fear. From the beginning to the end, he had felt that the love and care from others was akin to smoke - surging at first, but from thereafter, dissipates gradually. -CN Stunning Young Idol Rumours and Secrets

He’s like a little sun with no dark spots at all. No wonder people say people say he has a super power. He seems to be loved by everybody… -Chapter 3-1

“A lot of people adore me, but only when I’m doing my thing on stage. They wouldn’t want to see me now...” -Visiting Hours Date 

It would be incredibly hard for him to keep this standard and uphold these burdens with his identity as Helios and KEY as well- where everyone would believe those personas of him to be the “vice”- the “evil”, in morality play. Because when the people who love you only know and love this side of you, what becomes of you when you lose it all?

Superstar Kiro was a little angel who received the admiration and respect of thousands and thousands of fans. What the hacker KEY sounded like was someone with malicious intentions.

-

Kiro didn’t know which one of his identities was more famous. Though of course, nobody would correlate these two polar-opposite identities together. -CN Heavens Home for Children Rumours and Secrets

He always looked so carefree in front of people, smiling and laughing. But when he was alone in the corner, he always looked so solemn and tired. Countless times, Savin had wanted to talk to Kiro about his work, life and feelings but with just a few words, Kiro would always put him to ease. -That Boy Makes Me Worry Rumours and Secrets

However, behind his brilliant smile, I could occasionally feel something different. It was like paper that couldn't be penetrated. After all, he was a superstar. Ordinary people like us wouldn't understand their world, they must have one or two faces of their own behind the screen. -Secret Base Rumours and Secrets

In the makeup room, sitting on the sofa, Kiro had lost some shine he had under the spotlight and looked a little bit exhausted.  -Confession Date

In a way, Kiro still staying so pure and happy when others are around is because he doesn’t want people to suffer like he did. He had an extremely rough time when he was young, but his beliefs, light and hope that MC gave him allowed him to fight for better days. 

I then thought about the superstar Kiro many years later, who was always shining and effortlessly charming. This made me really sentimental. How many things must he have been through to become strong enough to bring light to other people? -Echoes of Time: Parisian Salon

She looked so pretty when she smiled, and she also had a father who loved her dearly. She was definitely… someone who deserved to live the most. -CN Top Experimental Subject Rumours and Secrets

His dazzling smile conceals something underneath, just like how the dazzling sun shrouds darkness underneath. Hidden in the depths of his own secrets are things even darkness doesn’t know of. If darkness had a mind of its own, it might think it doesn’t fit with this pure and simple youth. Just as how everyone thinks of him as a simple, innocent Kiro, the sunlight casted on him, able to pierce through him completely, with rays of light refracting onto the floor.  Actually, since a very long time ago, he no longer was a youth… But now, for her sake, he’s willing to become a youth again. -CN Youthhood Rumours and Secrets

The thing I like most about you is that you never admit defeat and you always stay positive. Every time I see you it's like you’re this brilliant sun and I feel charged of energy. Maybe all the lonely times I’ve been through... was so that I could meet you. -Confession Date

When they were younger, they were together as test subjects for evol. MC promised him donuts. He gave her a stuffed teddy bear. Kiro tried to help MC escape but they got caught and separated. They had spent quite some time together, so Kiro would be able to recognise MC once they had met again. Kiro had to replace another child for a top experiment, and the workers thought he’d die anyway as he was too weak. But still, he had survived and became the first and only successful subject. MC showed him that there was kindness- light- that still existed in the darkest of places. And in the darkest parts of his heart, there was MC to light those areas up for him :)

“Look, this world is so beautiful, and you don’t need to be afraid anymore.” But till now, he has yet to find her. But he remembers her eyes. And one day, he will find her within a vast sea of people. 

Kiro remains speechless- quietly listening to the little girl speak. The little girl struggles to pull on his hand. Their fingers interlock together, the warmth from her palm gradually coursing into Kiro’s heart. “Don’t be afraid. I’ll protect you.” Kiro turns to look at her - to look at her perseverant brown eyes, looking at how the corners of her lips turn upwards. Kiro slowly learns how to curl the corners of his own lips from her. It’s the first smile to have appeared on his face.  “This time, I’ll be the one protecting you.” Kiro says excitedly. He stands outside the airport, staring directly at the sun. “I’ll find you, and protect you. I even have a mountain of souvenirs stored in my luggage- I’ll give them to you! And my purest heart - I’ll give it to you too!” -CN Youthhood Rumours and Secrets

Helio’s Transformation

“Because only you can awaken me from darkness, no matter when.”

When Kiro transforms to Helios, it mainly affects his physical appearance. His hair grows longer and changes to colour, and his black (and super cool) NIRVANA tattoo appears. When he is weak, the tattoo fades (seen in Clinic Date.)

Nirvana- a transcendent state in which there is neither suffering, desire, nor sense of self, and the subject is released from the effects of karma and the cycle of death and rebirth. It represents the final goal of Buddhism.

I looked at his silver hair. It looked very natural with no signs of hair dye. In the serene moonlight, it was very beautiful. It wasn’t dyed, and it didn’t look like it turned silver because of an illness or something. -Chapter 17 

Helios’s ring also plays part of his transformation. This is ultimately connected to BLACK CABIN and the 1908′s White House Explosion- when evol was born. From this high-dimensional space, Kiro is able to take on as Helios- who also known to be BS’s first generation of god. He can change upon his will, and influences from BLACK CABIN/QUEEN can cause him to lose control.

The golden hair mixed with the bright silver. He raised his finger, and the silver ring flashed. He muttered quietly, as if speaking to the ring and to himself. -Behind The Curtain Part 6: After Returning 

Moonlight shone through the window, illuminating his silver hair with a golden glow for an instant. He buried his face in his right elbow, and large beads of sweat formed on his brow, as if a kind of uncanny transformation was occurring. “NOT NOW!!!” He howled hoarsely, his eyes now golden in the darkness. Residual power inside the Quarantine zone appeared to be affecting him. Violent forces jolted in the tiny space, and coursed through his obsidian ring. -Night Watchman Rumours and Secrets

Chapter 14

He turned and looked at me, his face a pallid white. His smile was still gentle. Suddenly, I felt intensely uneasy. 

MC: “We’re going in, right?”

Kiro didn’t answer, his eyes intent on me gleamed with a flash of golden light above. When I looked carefully, I discovered his eyes turned into this exquisite gold like pure amber, or crystallised time. 

Kiro: “I command you…”

I have never heard him sound like this before. Stiff, stern and solemn.

“All within my range of control belongs to me. Now walk onto the rooftop, lock the door, and don’t let anyone in… including me... Don’t be afraid. You’ll be okay. I said before, I will definitely succeed this time. I will always protect you.” 

In saying this, he believes that his own sacrifices are necessary, no matter what the situation is. Kiro is willing to dim or even smother his own light and sun for MC to be safe and happy. 

A black figure suspended in the air behind Kiro, just like scythe-toting Death himself… I seemed to see a golden-winged bird fly by, like a ray of light crossing the sky, leaving a temporary light trail in my vision.

“Death”, “golden-winged bird”, and “light”.

This sentence was highlighted in the chapters’ outline from the chapter contents. This implies the symbolism of the phoenix bird- the mythical bird that rises from the ashes and is reborn again. Kiro was captured by BLACK SWAN as punishment and had undergone modification- and was resurrected as Helios.

Chapter 17

He was standing in front of me. Half of his face was hidden in the shadows, but I could see the sharpness of his eyes and eyebrows. He took the notebook away from my hands before I could finish my sentence.

As MC gets tied to the table, flashbacks from suppressed memories emerge. We see Kiro and MC together being test subjects. (Fun fact- Kiro and MC’s blood type is O!) 

White walls. A deserted lab. A cold med table. And a blond boy with agony in his face. Next to him lay a brown-haired girl who was unconscious. …Was that me? I looked at the blood pouring out from the IV. Tears came from my eyes. Kiro… Our lives were connected long before. But where are you now?

She finally realises that Kiro was that boy from the orphanage.

 AND I JUST REALISED SOMETHING. HAS HELIOS NEVER OUTRIGHTLY ADMIT THAT HE’S NOT KIRO? LIKE HE NEVER SAID “NO”?? 

MC: Are you really not Kiro?

??: How long are you going to keep calling me by that wrong name?

(Yes, it’s technically the wrong name because right now he’s called Helios but he’s also technically still Kiro!)

He didn’t sound particularly annoyed, but I felt saddened.

MC: I…

I looked at his face. Every line, feature- they resembled Kiro, but at the same time wasn’t.

MC: I’m sorry… I must be wrong…

I hung my head low. His face may resemble him, but his expressions were so unlike Kiro and I didn’t want to see that.

But my intuition told me that my hunch was not wrong. If that was correct, then one of my paths was already sealed.

-

Helios: What makes you think that I wouldn’t? You already know where I’m from. Why are you being so naïve? I shook my head. MC: Kiro wouldn’t do this to me… An unknown emotion flashed in his eyes. 

Poor Kiro, having to pretend to not know MC and act so cold towards her. It must have been incredibly hard and painful for the both of them. Please just LET THEM BE TOGETHER. 

Kiro isn’t risking MC see this darker side of him. He truly doubted if anybody would accept him as Helios, because he was just so used it before as an idol having to act so perfect on screen, showing everybody what they wanted to see.

-

“MC. Step a meter away from him, and close your eyes.

The golden flashes in his pupils were the last thing I saw before I closed my eyes.

“I command you to forget what just happened. And I command you to forget about me. Remember, I’m just Helios.”

My memories were being erased bit by bit. Kiro was fading from my sight. His smiles, his eyes, his warmth… all of them became vague like a fog and disappeared. I tried my best to hold onto them, but it was all in useless.

Kiro… Even the name I tried to hold on till last was wrenched away from me. He watched silently as MC closed her eyes and blacked out in his arms.

“I’m sorry…”

He apologised again quietly. His eyes that once held warmth and brightness were again now filled with shadows.

“I will find the truth that you’re looking for. I don’t want you to bear that heavy burden. I’ll come back to you some day, but not today. Don’t remember my dark sides. In your eyes, I will always remain Kiro to you. After I take care of everything, things can go back the way they were between us. This time, I’ll make sure that you don’t have to wait long.”

-

“He looked a lot like Kiro. But it wasn’t him.”

In my palm was a small candy glistening in the sunlight. On impulse I unwrapped the paper and put it in my mouth.

MC: Apple flavour…

It somehow crossed my mind that it was Kiro’s type of flavour.

He wants MC to still have faith in him, and to trust in his abilities to protect her, as the candy is a motif for their relationship and exchange towards each other. (This was the same back in the orphanage when they were together too.) However, as his identity as Kiro, not the Helios she encountered. (Dramatic ironyyyy)

“We shall stand in darkness as we defend the light.”

Thorns Date 

In the photo, Kiro looked completely different from what he usually looked like. On the glistening water, a youth held a birdcage, with a glint of melancholy in his drooping eyes. This was the last set of photos before quitting.

-

Kiro asked for my praise with shiny begging eyes, as if the prior sorrow and blue were all my illusions.

-

We stood very close to each other, yet at this moment, I felt there was a formed gap between us.

“MC, do you think the imprisoned bird can get out of the cage?”

-

There seemed to be a ray of golden light flashing through my mind but I couldn't catch it. (The thought that Helios came to see her?? Yes.)

I remember his distance, his apathy, yet puzzling familiarly. 

Helios saw the magazine falling from my bag, his face flashing with complicated emotions I couldn’t comprehend. And I felt the familiar feeling of being touched deep in my soul. 

“You like gazing at me a lot.” 

-

Standing at the edge of the dark abyss, he opened his arms and leaned backward without hesitation. He fell straightly like a folded winged bird in the moment. (Similes, metaphors and symbolism galore!)

-

I sat on the ground limply and closed my eyes to avoid the dazzling light. This scene felt so familiar as I had experienced such a farewell.. Why? 

My senses told me this man was Helios, yet the feelings from deep of my heart were so real. 

“Helios! Do you… know how the imprisoned bird can get out of the cage?” 

“Why do you think I will answer this question?” Behind such eyes, there seemed to be something else I couldn’t make out in the shadow.

I seemed to see him unfold a pair of black wings on his back and about to flutter away. No more cages could imprison him and nothing could make him stop. Helios walked from the bright light into the shadow. 

He recalled her last question and her sad and confused eyes. Suddenly he recalled an ancient story. There was a kind of bird. It was always trapped in the thorns of fate from the moment of its birth. If the most beautiful thing was doomed to be exchanged with the deepest pain. He would overcome all obstacles to come back to her. And be her sun again.

The story that Helios recalled could be The Nightingale by Hans Christian Andersen. 

In Ancient China, one of the forests lived a nightingale, who sang so beautifully everybody would stop and listen. The nightingale was renowned to be the best wonder out of all the things that the travellers abroad had ever seen. However, the Emperor of China didn’t know that such a bird existed, and demand to have it found.

The bird had come willingly to sing for the Emperor, singing so sweetly that tears came out of everybody’s eyes. The nightingale lived in the court thereafter, until one day the Emperor had received a mechanical copy of the bird, golden with precious gems and all. The nightingale had left, and all the courtiers had said that it was an ungrateful creature. It was therefore banished from the empire. 

The mechanical bird had stopped working, only being able to play once every year. Five years had passed, and the Emperor fell ill that nobody expected him to live. Death had arrived to the Emperor as he prayed for the bird to sing a note. The living nightingale had appeared again, and had come to sing out of trust and hope for the Emperor. Death went to look at the Emperor’s renowned garden as the Emperor was thankful for the bird’s singing. She sang again, and the sun rose through the window and as everybody thought the Emperor had passed. The Emperor wanted the nightingale to stay by his side but it refused. It cannot live in the palace, but promised to visit the Emperor to sing to him. 

A black figure suspended in the air behind Kiro, just like scythe-toting Death himself… I seemed to see a golden-winged bird fly by, like a ray of light crossing the sky, leaving a temporary light trail in my vision.

Similar to Chapter 14, in this date, Kiro is represented as the bird, trapped in the cage. He had to release what everyone wanted him to be- Kiro, the shining sun/bird trapped in the cage under their control- ironic how his evol is absolute control because his charm would have drawn people this way in as a result. And the only way to be free was to be resurrected, to escape, to disappear from public view- to become free as Helios.

Light Pursuit Date 

“Will you forget me?”

Kiro was becoming faint like a water mist. Panicking, I reached out to grab him but he slipped away from my fingers. An invisible wall had come between us and I couldn’t get close to him. This one step was like an unbridgeable gap between us, but it was like a line that we could never cross.

Will I forget Kiro? That sudden question in my head became clearer, and made me tremble in panic.

-

He had the name of a sun god, but even I couldn’t feel any bit of warmth.

MC: What is Helios here for?

Helios: We meet again, MC.

This was the first time that Helios called me by my name. He was brusque as ever, but there seemed to be a small amount of yearning in his voice. He did not act the way like the Helios that I used to know. His attitude and manners were surprisingly refined… like he was acting out a whole different persona.

-

The music changed into Por Una Cabeza- the tango song that I was very familiar with.

(I absolutely love the intertextuality that the game has. It’s a Spanish tango song that was also appeared in Scent of a Woman starring Al Pacino where the tango scene featured a blind man dancing with a woman who didn’t know how to dance and was scared of making mistakes. This correlates perfectly for MC and Helios. MC’s body is reacting to Helios as if he was Kiro...)

I didn’t drink, but I felt drunk somehow. Otherwise how else would this reachable warmth and illusion of intimacy familiar? 

We were so close to each other, but the distance between us was only one step away, but a step we could never cross.

-

Helios looked up when he heard my voice. His eyes seemed to have trouble focusing. His blue eyes wavered like a lake sprinkling with sunlight. Surprisingly, there was sorrow, and naivety in those usually unfeeling eyes.

He lowered his head and his chin rested on my shoulder. I have never seen Helios so vulnerable. His hands were wrapped around my waist, leaving no space between us. Helios didn’t answer and continued to keep me pressed to his body. There was a deep aura of loneliness and bitterness about him that was barely discernible from his cold exterior.

-

Because to me, you were familiar to someone I deeply care about. Because my soul resonates when I am close to you. Because…. of a ridiculous assumption. Did I reach the edge of truth? Or was I just deceiving myself? A thick fog was obscuring me from seeing the truth clearly. I didn’t continue talking or thinking. MaybeI was so vaguely aware that this was the closest I could get to him. Only one step away but a distance I could never close.

MC is also scared. She’s in turmoil. She wants to know the truth but she’s also sitting on the fence with it. Especially due to the memory wipe. It’s like, “maybe it’s better if I don’t,” and “I think you are that someone I care so much about but I can’t be sure about it because even if I ask you, you won’t tell me, and I don’t know what to do.” 

:(

Stardust Date

Kiro: That’s right. I’m going to a far, far place. And I will stay there for a very long, long time. Don’t cry when you start missing me. MC: I’m not going to cry!

Kiro: But I will. So promise me, alright? Don’t forget me, even if I leave. 

Two days afterwards, I heard him talk to someone on the phone. I’m pretty sure it was his voice, but it sounded like he was a completely different person. 

What was he trying to hide? Did it have anything to do with his “leaving”? Was it out of his own will or was he involved in something under duress?

-

The confident smile on his face as he glided his fingers across the keys fluently, showed his passion for this show. As songs were played after another, he became more focused. I could tell from his expression that he was fully immersed in this performance. As long as he was given a stage and music, he’d become the centre of attention no matter what position he was in. However, the more passion I saw, the more I was scared for his “leaving”. He is the sun- what will happen to his supporters when they lose him? And what about me? What will happen to me?

Light and Shadow Phone Call

MC: Is that melancholy in your voice? It’s unlike you to be down like this.

Kiro: Really? Does everyone think I’m that shallow?

MC: Of course not. But you are the brightest and warmest sun, so it’s easy to be touched by your optimistic side first.

Kiro: But right now, the sunlight is getting too strong that it’s scorching…

MC: Hmm? Is it? right now it’s sunset where you are?

Kiro: Yes. I’m sitting atop of Namibia’s Dune 45 and everything is red. Even the sun is sinking low.

MC: Soon, it will sink beyond the horizon.

Kiro: Yes… Miss Chips, Since you say I’m like the sun, and the sun eventually sets...

Kiro: If I have a dark side, I should hide it from others, right?

MC: Why should you hide it?

Kiro: Because, I don’t want to show you and I don’t want to disappoint others.

MC: But you’re just you, Kiro.

Kiro: I am who I am?

MC: Yes. Why can’t a sun have shadows? Even the real sun has sunspots! People who really care for you will love both the warm sunny side and the occasional dark, depressed side.

Kiro: But I always feel...

MC: Everyone has a side they want to hide in the shadows. No one is expected to be required as perfect. That applies to my little sun as well.

Kiro: Can I really be imperfect?

MC: Absolutely. To me, all sides of you are worth cherishing.

Kiro: Thank you, MC.

MC: What’s there to thank?

Kiro: Because… only you are willing to see the weak and plain side that I’m hiding and accept both my light and my shadow.

MC: That’s why I’m your own personal tree hole! I’ll keep your sorrows tucked away for you!

Kiro: Thank you Miss Tree Hole. I’m so lucky to have you. In fact, you are my sun who gives me light to embrace the world every morning. Thank you, for always being there by my side.

This call is so significant for Kiro, and his battle between light and dark. After his evol went out of control, he’s afraid of hurting his fans and MC. Similes and metaphors are used to compare his evol/different personas as the sun and how it will soon go down. He confronts the truth that he will also have to leave the public view soon, and uses this opportunity of the call to confirm what MC thinks if he had imperfections/shadow sides. And of course, to thank her before he leaves. 

Chapter 21 (Winter World)

He was so fast that his moves were a blur. He dodged every attack and landed his own with grace and strength. It was like watching a silver moonlight dancing in flowing moves. 

-

“You seem to be completely ignorant about how weak you are.”

I was trapped in a little cage he made with his body against the wall. The cruelty in his face crumbled the last of my shields. he didn’t stop there. He leaned in with his whole body hemming me into the confined space he created. 

Helios: Weaklings should learn to survive on their own. No one will teach you that. 

MC: I don’t want to be a weakling forever.

Helios: Then you better figure out how to become stronger.

He dropped his sarcastic tone. Instead, each syllable fell from his mouth with  upmost earnestness. 

Helios: Use all your strength. Every method you can think of. Abandon your past...even abandon yourself. If you can’t do that, then just go back tot the world you came from.

-

1562 clutched tightly on his friend’s blanket, refusing to let go. However, in the end, he was shoved onto the ground because his strength was too weak. He had collided so hard that he couldn’t get up for a long while.  -CN Top Experimental Subject Rumours and Secrets

If MC hadn’t come, then there would be no real sun in his life. He would only have artificial light. And he would be right- Helios would be just Helios. He wouldn’t bother much about fans or music, but using this identity to climb the system. He had to learn the hard way on how to survive. Nobody was there for him, thus it would be harder for him to feel empathy towards others in situations other than this. 

The sun had risen completely. The increasing bright light drowned everything that belonged in the darkness. Helios remembered that day a long time ago. In the darkness, the withered hand touched his head and said faintly, “become Kiro, be the so-called “sun”.

At that time, he had lowered his eyes, nodded blankly, and simply walked out into the night, emitting a false light that was not his own. But today… Helios looked off into the distance, and seeing the dazzling morning light, he remembered the girl… At that moment, he saw the real sun.  -Between Light and Darkness Rumours and Secrets 

From “Behind The Curtain”, MC fell into the space-time gap and was saved by Helios. Even though he couldn’t see her as they were in different dimensions, she could be influenced by him. This wasn’t the first time that he’s tugged on that bond tying them together to BLACK CABIN. Thank you Helios also for helping bring MC back to her original world.

Chapter 28

Kiro: You should know about everything that I’ve done.

MC: I know that... you’re Helios.

Kiro’s eyes flickered and blinked at me. The golden hair under the now eclipsed sunlight seem to have an extra glow to it. Kiro: Is my name really that important?

MC: Why did you hide it from me? I trusted that you would tell me. That no matter what name you had, you really wouldn’t change...

Kiro: If a superhero were to turn into an arch-villain, would those who always believed in him lose hope? What he want most is for you to be a fairy, free of all cares. Not getting hurt, not getting worries, whose only responsibility is receiving signals and joy and happiness.

Kiro: However, if she is determined to go do something difficult, and she wants to bear this burden on her own... then I wish for her to be a little superhero, who can fly through it all with ease.

Chapter 29

“Don’t get all angry. The person beside you didn't even notice any difference between us. Or put it another way, it seems that “you” aren’t important in this role that you’re playing. Anybody can replace you.” -Anole

Anole is wrong (and just jealous). MC did notice, and plus, he probably wouldn’t have survived in the top experiment that Kiro had undergone in the orphanage. That was something only Kiro would have survived, with his willpower and determination in his heart to make a better life for himself and MC- something that Anole clearly lacks.

-

I had never seen Helios laugh before. His smile wasn't as dazzling as his golden-haired counterpart’s, but one could say that if the former him was the sun, then his smile was now a gentle moon.

THE IRONYYY. Helios is finally okay with showing this side of him to her, from watching her go through trials and tribulations in the Winter World with the other Helios- of course he wouldn’t want any danger to be near MC, but knowing that she can handle anything after all that she went through, he now knows that it’s better for her to be with him instead. Also he learnt how to smile from her and now he’s smiling again as Helios and I’m just so happy

Whether in the face of violent, nefarious enemies or a wave of blood and bullets, he’d never shown any fear. I got the feeling that he was somehow nervous, or even afraid. Was it because he had to return into the spotlight, back the shower of roses and applause?

Well… when he decided to give all that up and step into the darkness with no turning back, what was he thinking then?

-

He leaned on the wall and rested awhile, staring intently at the black tattoo on his right arm… he looked at himself in the mirror. His silver strands of hair were tingled with gold, as if bathed in sunlight. And for only that one time, he didn’t avert his gaze from the desire in his eyes. It was like looking at a self portrait—so distant, yet so familiar. It was only now that he realised: this was the moment in his life most worth reliving. Once again, he had become Kiro.

In the PV/Karma (photo down below), we see him wearing black- not as Helios but as Kiro! Again, ironic how he’s holding a comeback concert he’s wearing black, a colour that represents darkness and shadows. It had been noted in the Snooper Rumours and Secrets that this is way out of Kiro’s style wardrobe. However, this signifies a range of things. The two personas are “merging” as he no longer hides this persona to MC- they’re one in the same. It has always been this way and will never change. The colour black also means power and authority, but can mean fear and grief. This is the same outfit when Kiro was doubting himself in the Light Pursuit Date as well. 

Right now, if we’re talking moon phases, Kiro right now is in “the void”. Meaning he’s “nowhere”. He’s Kiro but he’s also operating as Helios. He feels nervous to go back but it does come so natural for him to be in the spotlight. He feels stuck at crossroads with himself, especially when he got forced back to perform by Anole. 

Ultimately, it’s like he’s saying “no matter what becomes of me, I will always stay true to you.” And I think this is perfectly translated as Kiro says, 

“Miss Chips, wait for me.”

(”Wait for me as I fight for us both. So you don’t have to suffer.”) But we suffer either way.

His light and sun has always come from MC. He will always keep running towards his sun, no matter which persona he embodies. This, we can be certain on. (New Season 2 Chapters please don’t oppose this LOL.)

“I await you at the end of the opposite path.”

[ooc-but-stylish]

freezedive:

I think I said it in one of your other beautiful posts, but I thought I’d mention it again. All of the ridiculous cutscenes did give us a golden nugget of information on Luna that most of us who are brutally critical of her (like you and me), suspected all along: Luna openly admits to Gentiana that she doesn’t think she has anything to offer Noctis outside of being an oracle. And Gentiana makes it worse by speaking in fancy words by saying some bullshit about her being the oracle is her being human or something and that she is fulfilling her true calling and that is what Noctis needs? Idk but it reeked of emotional manipulation. 

I hold little to no regard for Ravus because there’s evidence Luna was being brutally beaten right under his own nose while he was busy being the Emperor’s lapdog thinking it could maybe give him the power to save his sister? The man should have opened his eyes and defended her against the men that kept them jailed

I happened on this reply to roxainn’s post while trying to recapitulate all my other FFXV critical posts and reblogs on the way to making new ones. 

Crawling back to find anything about this point, I find that it was posted 3 years ago. But at least I reblogged the reply to it.... and missed that it was literally @ ME. Goddamn did I slack.

But here’s my reply, 3 years late, which should elaborate on where I stand on this.

Yes, the flashback that gets triggered by a random creepy little girl in Tenebrae is about Luna and Gentiana. Somehow the little girl knew about that conversation even though she wasn’t there to witness it first-hand? Or maybe Noctis was imagining what the conversation would be like between Gentiana and Luna off of the vague suggestion from the girl, and it’s just him telling on himself that his imagination of Luna says all that? Otherwise the not-altogether-tinfoil-hat theory says it’s Gentiana in the form of a little girl, telling Noctis something that IMO should piss him off but just makes him sad and guilty because Luna loved him so much, don’t you see. She loved him so much that after wrapping her entire life around him, she’d just want to keep that going for the rest of their lives!

Gentiana opens the conversation with, “At first, the father had mourned the fate of his chosen son. Yet in Tenebrae, the two found solace. It was not the Oracle who assuaged their fears. But the girl…she holds…the true power.”

Then Luna replies, “I have little to offer a king, other than the voice afforded the Oracle. Nevertheless…” She turns to look at the wedding dress. “And—I’m afraid he might find this foolish… But…to be together with Noctis again, even if only for a short while… It…would mean the world to me. I do not seek to guide him, merely to stand beside him.”

The exchange is all types of fucky.

First off, she was twelve. What comfort could she have offered Regis and Noctis? What comfort was she capable of when Sylva was right there, an adult with experience of an Oracle and a personality thanks to a presumable full life not hampered by grooming of the gods? 

Second, every other scene of Luna as a child is of her telling Noctis his duty, and that it was her duty to see it through. Did that assuage his fears-- the fears he didn’t have at the time since he never knew the entire meaning of his fate and was being told a saccharine, embellished version of it by Luna right there? Did that comfort Regis, knowing a little girl would also die to protect his son if the gods wanted it, but that she wouldn’t have the will to avert their fates whatsoever? 

Third, even she thinks Noctis would think her desire to be with him is foolish. So... was she expecting that Noctis himself didn’t have feelings for her or want to spend time with her of his own volition for reasons outside of her job? She was looking forward to a marriage with no emotional security, where her desires are one-sided and unreciprocated, and the man she cares for think she’s worthless outside of her powers? She would’ve been willing to put herself through that, given a choice?

We know what we know and think what we think, but the fact that this was placed right in the vanilla game and no one thought that was wrong, and instead they doubled down on it in patches, is pathetic on their part.

Moreover, what does The Girl have, that was separate from The Princess and The Oracle? Every facet of her being wrapped around Noctis since age 4. She was nothing but her duty by the time Noctis met her; they had no scenes where they acted as children would. Even supplemental/promotional art for other XV media and related locales cement that. Little Luna serves Little Noctis pastries, she’s not seen eating with him. Luna teaches Noctis how to play piano, she’s not playing with him. Dawn of the Future came out with its own art, and Noctis is afforded the liberty to sit in a chair, and his son(?) sits on his lap, while Luna and her spitting image child(?) are both on their knees, looking up at the dudes. 

In most of their art together, Luna and Noctis are either not meeting each other's gazes, she's bending or kneeling to him, or he's supposed to be holding her close but he hover-hands her, or there’s that one time where they took a selfie and the picture was of their Pocket Edition versions. They’re still not looking at each other in that one. And it’s not canon.

Anyway yeah, any conversation Gentiana has with Luna about Noctis is emotional manipulation on Gentiana’s part, but the writers manage just enough to make everyone involved seem creepy and reprehensible in their own way. 

In DOTF, Luna has a death soliloquy that confirms she sunk into the water at the end of the game’s Chapter 9, but the soliloquy is about how she was prepared to die even at the age of 12, and she put on a smile and resolved to be strong for Noctis’s sake, so that he wouldn’t remember her having a look of despair. There’s a line there about how she would cry herself to sleep but Gentiana would wipe her tears. Gentiana does nothing else except allow her to cry and wipe her tears afterward, and makes no effort to save her from her fate or at least take her out of terrible situations so that she would cry fewer tears. But there is cut dialogue from the game, and used in the novel, where Gentiana revealed herself as Shiva when Luna was <16 (probably still 12 at the time), when she thought she was being held back from forming the covenants, so there’s that. And Luna still somehow ignored that this meant Shiva allowed Sylva to die, and thanked this useless goddess for her nonexistent generosity. 

For whatever reason they had to add a passage where Luna superimposes the image of an eight-year-old Noctis onto the adult version-- quote, "the image of him as a child, burned into my eyelids, overlaps with his now-grown face"-- even though Noctis has canonically sent her photos of him as a teenager (15-16, around the time he met Prompto in high school, see: Brotherhood). Granted, that's a translation from Luna's voice actress reading an excerpt as if it were first person POV. The English version says she sees the child image first, then the adult version is superimposed. Then not much after that there's a passage where Noctis smiles as his child self and it was "that smile she loved that had been in her heart all these years, giving her strength, always and forever".

So she was groomed and turned into a shell since age 4, believes she has no value outside of her job and turned her grooming on a similarly vulnerable child, and her strongest image of him, the one she fell in love with and kept in her heart, is of the helpless boy that promised her the world without knowing the cost. The smile of the carefree boy that didn't know his journey would end with his soul annihilated. It couldn’t have been that hard to have her see an image of him as the 30 year old True King of Light that he would become. At least she'd sound a little less like a weirdo who continually places herself (and is placed by the narrative) as below him, unworthy of him, etc. but also has strong feelings and memories toward a goddamn child.

Re: Ravus: you already got a reply to that, but for real? Ravus was also shafted by the plot and beaten down by terrible, amateur writing. The narrative shits on him as if it’s written by a high schooler or otherwise emotionally arrested adult trying to push a Mary Sue Protagonist. The modus operandi for those stories is that everyone who disagrees with the protagonist in any way has to suffer tremendous humiliation including but not limited to death, because the Protagonist Is Just So Good And Perfect And Always Right. 

Nothing Ravus does justifies his treatment in-game or in-fandom like he’s a one-note out-and-out villain who wanted nothing but to kill Noctis and disrespect his sister, to the point where his corpse is defiled multiple times in Chapter 13 and he’s twisted into a perversion of himself that begs to die.

Chapter 13 has Noctis land next to Ravus’s corpse and all his letters to Luna, and Noctis has piss all to say about it, either out loud or to anyone. He looks at the Sword of the Father, glances at Ravus, and without a word takes the Royal Arm and lets the Magitek arm-- still dripping, still gross-- fall onto Ravus’s body and doesn’t even move it.  

He had no way of knowing beforehand that Ignis and Gladio knew of Ravus being killed. WE didn't even know they saw security footage until Ch13V2 was added in. Noctis happening on his late fiancée's dead bro sounds, I don’t fucking know, like something you’d want to tell everyone else about later. Along with the letters he wrote evidencing that he intended to return the Sword of the Father to Noctis!

An aside: The Letters from Ravus are just weird to behold; it isn't 100% clear whether Luna ever received all of those letters. She had to have received the first one, at least. But the idea that Ardyn intercepted even one other letter so that Luna never heard from her brother between Tenebrae and Altissia is farfetched. He shouldn’t be able to intercept those messages as if they were delivered conventionally. Luna has a pair of magic space-bending Shiba Inu that send letters instantly across continents. If she’s sparing their use to send Noctis one-liners and stickers but can’t afford that for Ravus to send her discrete updates on Noctis’s status, she’s a piece of shit. 

They do meet in Tenebrae as Ravus wanted her to, and they have the conversation where he gets on her case about her “throwing [her] life away” for Noctis. So chances are higher that Ardyn only got a hold of all three letters after Luna received them and no sooner, but then he shouldn’t be tossing letters from Ravus at the dude’s body when it makes more sense for him to toss down letters to Ravus, since the writers wanted to make a point of Ardyn having a vicious streak. It makes way more sense for Ardyn to deprive Ravus of Luna’s writing, then insult him with them post-mortem, unless Ravus’s notes were really all he could acquire, meaning Luna never once wrote back to her brother. 

The Doylist explanation is that the writing team sucks and couldn't be assed to think of anything for Luna to say because they didn't think of her at all. The Watsonian explanation is that Luna’s a piece of shit and that tracks with her in Kingsglaive watching her brother burn alive in response to the Ring, but ignoring him and running to Regis’s aid instead, but then the rest of the plot presents her as morally pure through her white clothing and “unconditional, self-abnegating love” for Noctis.

Back to the topic: I don’t know, maybe I’m being old fashioned, but Noctis should’ve given more of a shit that his dropping the Magitek Arm on Ravus’s body was probably what turned him into a mutated abomination begging to die, and he thought so little of Ravus that the dude isn’t even in the glimpse of "people who helped me get this far" in the Beyond. Ravus doesn’t even get a spot to wish Noctis and Luna well on their afterlife wedding, not that it makes any sense for any of them to have words to say since Noctis is already dead, no one was there with them, and none of the bros expressed any sign that they knew that Noctis was bound to get married after his sacrifice (he sure doesn’t mention it in the final campfire scene and that’d be a better place than any). But anyway, Regis is in the Beyond at Noctis’s side even though he never told Noctis a damn thing and still never spoke to him from within the Ring, but Ravus? Nah, he’s the real asshole somehow and doesn’t deserve any recognition whatsoever.

The only other characters I know of that have a remotely similar dynamic to Noctis, Luna, and Ravus (lovers, but the girl has a straight-edge protective brother working for the bad guys) is Nero, Kyrie, and Credo (see: Devil May Cry), but as much as I think the writing in that series is hokey as fuck, at least the writer(s) for DMCs 4 and 5 had enough sense to make the love story simple and based it from a line from Amagasaki City-- “I love you, so I love the city that you love.”-- and opted against portraying Credo as an outright villain because if Nero killed him, Kyrie would resent him for it even though she knew Credo was working for the same Order that threatened her life. 

Shouldn’t Noctis care about the shit Luna cares about even if he has no personal investment in it or it’s inconvenient to him? Shouldn’t he care about Tenebrae and its prosperity? or about Ravus? Nah, it’s okay, Noctis doesn’t have to respect Luna’s love for her brother or her kingdom because for all intents and purposes, she doesn’t care for Ravus or for Tenebrae as much as she loves Noctis. Her love for Noctis and her looking forward to the wedding is what matters here.

The yaaaas queen vicious clapback from Kingsglaive!Luna about how Ravus is the Empire’s dog is especially rich coming from her when she’s fellating the gods all through the game even though Eos’s equivalent of The Holy Bible says the Hexatheon’s Revelations destroy cities and that undoubtedly means people are killed by the gods, and their summoner is complicit, because there’s no such thing as a perfect evacuation. See: "Revelations left great devastation in their wake, with entire cities being laid to ruin," noted in the Cosmogony long before the True King even exists. 

Luna herself didn’t see a problem with this and helped in the effort, with no regard to the collateral damage she would cause with the summoning: bonus points for the part where Leviathan is hostile to humanity and threatens to eat every living being if Noctis fails! She had even less regard to the damage Niflheim would cause in their attempt to kill the gods even though she was first-hand witness to them sacking Insomnia. Waking and defeating Titan deprived Lestallum of the meteor they derived power from. Waking Leviathan destroyed Altissia. Luna’s refusal to leave Insomnia when told to by Regis led to her being used as bait and taking the whole of the Kingsglaive out of Insomnia in time for their Face Heel Turn and Insomnia being destroyed. Everything else leads to the eventual World of Ruin where people also die. 

All because she killed herself prematurely from the covenants and didn’t hold back the longer nights as she promised to the public’s face and on her honor as Oracle she would do. Her dying words in Chapter 9 were her being completely satisfied with her fate because “[her] prayers were answered, [her] calling fulfilled”, even though the calling requires that she dies and she should’ve known better than anyone that her death, even if it was for Noctis’s ascension, would endanger the rest of the world for 10 years and helped the Starscourge spread. But instead of fighting for her own life to stem the plague for as long as possible, she let herself die under the belief that "Noct can handle this" to give him the chance to be the revered King of Light. She also didn’t make a single appearance on the world of the living in her spirit form during those ten years until Noctis needed help with a piddly imitation of the Magic Wall, only then does she come down in her ghost form with seemingly all of her power intact, and summons five of The Six as if Noctis can’t easily do it himself.

But Ravus is the lapdog? Luna’s the one with her “ends justify the means” behavior and what looks like general neglect for actual human beings.

Anyway, Ravus stabs Caligo in the back and kills him, and that move only makes sense in light of the idea that Caligo was manhandling Luna as seen in the Dawn trailer. Ravus was 16 when Tenebrae was overrun, and there’s no reason to believe he was magically immune to institutional abuse, so there’s a high chance that he was abused by the Empire too, held resentment of that, and waited for the time he’d be able to retaliate with no repercussions. Gentiana as a goddess is 1000000% more on the hook about letting Luna be beaten than Ravus is, since he saw his mother die in front of him while Regis ran away. Regis had the power of the Ring and could have used elemancy to put out that fire, or void magic to banish Glauca and his MT army, didn’t do that, but he totally spares enough magic during the treaty signing to toss around Thunder spells straight from his hand, cast barriers, and summon some Royal Arms straight at Iedolas, and that’s bad enough. Gentiana who’s been the Fleuret family attendant since Luna was born and also is Shiva who can freeze people with her fingertip had even less excuse to let that fire rage, to let Sylva die protecting her son, and to stand by and allow her ward(s) to get thrown around by some random Imperial soldier.

[shreddedleopard]

Twelve-million more reasons Historia and Levi are part of the Endgame. With Pictures.

You can read the first post I made on this here:

10 reasons it would make narrative sense for Levi and Historia’s character arcs to end together.

(This is the mega-evolved version.)

Okay, I’m going to put this out there now, and before you judge me, please just read the posts. You don’t have to agree. This is just an idea. But it makes a stupid amount of sense, at least to me. So here's your fair warning (and now I'm being bold): If you don’t want to potentially be spoiled, Do Not Read On.

Here’s the Theory:

Historia Reiss will give birth to a half-Ackerman child, and together with Levi, from the ashes and ruins of the world Eren destroyed, they will welcome the dawn of a new age for humanity, where Ymir’s curse and the power of the Titans is extinct.

I know. I sound like some crazy, Rivahisu nut. Granted, I am, but I’m not mad enough to make a claim like this without a shit-ton of evidence, because it’s such a damn twist it feels like it can’t be true. But just humour me.

Here’s the theory, then we’ll look at why it makes sense and how it might have been foreshadowed. Please note: I have less clue how this will tie in to Eremika endgame, so I haven’t mentioned this as much, but obviously that will be the other very important side of this coin.

10 months ago (In Japan, full term pregnancy is counted as 10 months), at the banquet celebrating completion of the new railroad, Levi and Historia, having had 3 and a bit years to bond over their shared experiences and become close, may have gotten carried away together and shared one night of being a bit more than friends. She’s well into her 18th year at this point, just to clear that up. This resulted in Historia getting pregnant. Okay just stay with me; I know. I know. I sound crazy. But hear me out. So this pregnancy, contrary to the belief of the MPs and rest of the damn world, was the complete opposite of planned. Historia tells Levi, and Levi immediately panics. Because, to steal Kenny’s famous line, Levi thinks to himself ‘I can’t be some kid’s dad.’

 Levi does what he always does best, and shuts down into business mode, telling Historia she will need to cover it up somehow. Historia does as he asks, probably reluctantly, because she really has developed very deep feelings for him during the timeskip, and finds some farm hand to take the blame, likely saying she made a silly mistake with some random and the father doesn’t want anything to do with the child, and so she needs a father for the child not to be illegitimate. Which is her worst nightmare, because of course, that’s what she was. Levi watches the exchange hidden in that famous hood, feeling very conflicted, because although he cares about her, he thinks it best if no one knows that it was him that got the Queen pregnant, and of course, he’s duty bound, with a vow to fulfil, so he has no time to be worrying about a family. (Silly Levi!) 

How ironic this conversation would be if this theory were true. Remember, Historia was completely willing to eat Zeke if needed. Instead, she got pregnant, unplanned, nothing to do with any plot or selfish wishes, just the result of a spontaneous act of love by two people who’ve grown to care for one another a lot. ANYWAY.

Because we know Levi actually has a good heart, he feels immensely guilty for all of this; he's just a product of his upbringing and thinks he doesn’t know the first thing about families, so it's better for all involved if he not be. See where this is going? The old cursed history repeating? Making the same mistakes as our parents? Plus, Levi is bound by his duty. He is incredibly important to the military still, and he cannot just abandon this for any of his own selfish wishes. He’s supposed to be the one to vanquish the beast titan. 

Cue ten months of Historia looking hella depressed and hopeless, and Levi being even more of an asshole than usual to everyone, and not really wanting to say too much at all, as well as making some terrible workplace decisions (lol) poor boy be distracted.

Look at his face 😭

Yes Levi. A month. Which means Historia is now due and you’re still stuck with beardy, without a solution and pretty soon no reason for the MPs not to turn the mother of your child into a Titan.

That’s what that face is. I thought he looked a bit weird first time I read these panels 🤔 He didn’t know about the wine. We see that later. Anyway, I keep getting distracted, stop. I’ll come back to this.

But fear not; Levi will have a choice to make. 

So this is where it gets a bit more iffy for me, because I'm not sure how it would work, so this could be a way off, BUT. I believe it will come to light that the combination of Royal and Ackerman genes will somehow cancel out a person’s ability to turn into a titan and connection through paths, thus making them truly ‘free.’

The founding titan has the ability to change Eldian physiology, according to what Zeke learned from professor Xavier. 

EDIT: Okay so here’s where I’ve had to tweak this a bit in light of there latest chapter. So we just had Zeke in PATHS. With none other than our second resident genius, and as proclaimed by Eren, the saviour of humanity: Armin. What do our boys have a conversation about? Reproduction and the importance of the small moments in life - it’s these little moments which matter, regardless of the desire or need to recreate. Interesting how both the leaf and baseball link back to what their ideas of ‘family’ became. If Historia and Levi were to be in the same scenario in PATHS, what would their items be? What truly means family to them both? 

Perhaps Armin and Zeke realise what is needed to lift the curse of the titans - maybe a blueprint for genes which can cancel out the connection to PATHS and the founder? If only they had a child with a new type of Royal-Ackerman DNA which might fit the bill ... 

Here’s Levi’s moment. He, with Historia, has created such a child - completely by accident, because of one of those ‘moments’ that both Armin and Zeke mention - moments that are simply just about enjoying what you have with no sense of how it might relate to anything bigger - a real rarity for both of them, considering their roles and constantly being asked to think about the good of humanity as a whole. What a beautiful irony, that in the moment they chose to be selfish and, to use freckled Ymir’s own words, really live for themselves, they set a chain reaction in motion that would ultimately save humanity. 

Where does this leave Eren and Mikasa? Good question. I believe Eren will die once the curse is removed, because tragically he is the character that has been forced to choose humanity over his own personal relationships. As Isayama has said before, Eren is a victim of the story. Mikasa will be the last thing he sees, hence the original dream at the start of the manga, where he wakes up crying. Something like this. But probably a lot better. Yeah.

Out of the ashes of the old world, a new one will be built, but through Historia’s kindness and love, and Levi’s guilt and understanding of what was sacrificed in the past, society will not repeat the same mistakes. The final panel could be Jean holding his child, perhaps with Mikasa, if she ever manages to get over losing Eren. That would be vague enough so that Isayama was able to show it to us already without spoiling much. Or maybe Jean’s dead and it’s not him at all. I don’t know. 😭

Right. Okay. So now you’re going, sweet story, but uh, there’s no way Levi could be the father. He’s so much older. Isayama wouldn't write a moment of romance like that. Not with him and Historia. YOU’RE JUST CRAZY.

Well this is where it get’s interesting. LET ME SHOW YOU. It’s foreshadowed literally everywhere. Right under our noses.

There is so much symbolism.

Dedicate your heart to what? has been Levi’s question recently. What are they all fighting for? What is he fighting for? How will he give meaning to his dead comrades sacrifices? Is killing Zeke really the extent of it? Is vengeance the true meaning of their sacrifices? Or is it something a lot more hopeful?

The answer is shown to us in the opening credits. And the ending credits. Several times. 

Levi says so himself - he keeps messing fulfilling the vow up - why? Why is he so worried about killing Zeke? 

Eren has the same questions to consider. Which PATH is the right one to take - revenge and violence with the rumbling, or love ... with Mikasa. We are literally shown what their choices will be in two virtually identically designed panels, which I’ll show you. Tragically, Eren’s choice is taken from him. He is a victim to the story - he must chose the path that saves humanity. Levi and Eren have been bound together through the theme of choices, and taking the ones which leave you with the least regrets, throughout this entire manga.

The upcoming anime episodes literally plot out the timeline of Levi and Historia’s changing attitude to one another, and then Historia’s pregnancy, it’s just so cleverly subtle. Isayama even tells us when/ during what event her child was probably conceived by just dropping dates in from other, seemingly unrelated plot lines.

Zeke gives pointed comments to Levi constantly - every other line of his is either a different jab at Levi about Historia’s pregnancy, a veiled question, or a reminder that he’s under the pressure of a 10 month time limit to do something about him, or Historia will have to eat him once she’s given birth. We start to see Levi unravel because of this, and make mistakes over and over.

It’s in official art. It’s in the soundtrack. Its in music videos. There’s interviews from Isayama that, when read in light of these ideas, suddenly take on a whole new meaning.

Isayama even trolls us. He’s laughing in our faces, the madman. Like, gotchu 🤣 suckers. While we’re all on Reddit and Twitter like, ‘Levi’s character has become so stagnated! He’s making such poor choices or not giving anything to the plot at all. All that’s left for him now is to give up and die! Be at peace, your story is over.’ OOF. Or, ‘Historia has just been forgotten! She’s become such a pointless character. Isayama just got bored with her and sidelined her.’

I’m going to try and write stuff up in the rough categories below, but these might change. I’ll link them when I’m done, and then pin this post. I’m a bit of a rambler so heads up - this may take a while 😅

There’s also a ton of people I have to mention who have contributed to this - I didn’t spot it by myself. I’ll tag them in the finished post too.

Historia and Levi’s Miscalculation: A manga tale featuring the Jaeger Bros., Pt. 1

Historia and Levi’s Miscalculation: A manga tale featuring the Jaeger Bros., Pt. 2

Historia and Levi’s Miscalculation: A manga tale featuring the Jaeger Bros., Pt. 3

Ackerman-Royal Bloodline and Levi’s Choice Pt. 1

Levi’s Choice Pt. 2

Suns, Moons and Songs

Akatsuki No Requiem - Right theory, Wrong guy

The Farmer and The Cattle Farming Goddess, or WHAT’S IN A NAME.

Mistakes of our parents and breaking the cycle

Memories from the future & Levi’s Guilt

Watch this space. And hold on to your pants. If I’m right, I’m getting very drunk.

[scaryscarecrows]

Will Trade Soup for Intel

Potential Gotham Knights ‘verse. For those who did not see the trailer: Bruce is dead (pfft, suuuuure he is), Jim Gordon is dead (Jim, no!), the Court of Owls appears (this is gonna be bad), Batgirl and Robins 1-3 have guardianship of Gotham. For this piece: Penguin is also dead. Dove has his operation. And the flu. :p

***

Tim’s not sure where he thought Jason was going to take him. Honestly, because it’s Jason, he was sort of thinking, ‘seedy hole in the wall where retired hitmen go’. Or something. Or maybe an orphanage, or an under-the-bridge camp; the Alley Kids don’t throw bottles and needles at him, unlike the others. They demand rides.

(Yeah, it’s funny but also scary to see the Red Hood, known for his duffle bag of heads, giving a little girl a piggyback ride.)

This is not one of those places. This is some apartment building in midtown with a doorman and everything. And, y’know, it’s daytime, which...they don’t operate in the daytime that much unless they’re undercover, and they don’t appear to be. Jason told Tim to dress like a real boy and stick his domino on in the elevator, but he’s wearing what he always does; jeans, hoodie, heavy boots. And he’s carrying a brown bag that smells like soup. No helmet in sight, and Tim knows he won’t wear a domino now. They bug the scar*, he says.

“Where are we?”

“To see an old friend. I’m out of other ideas.”

“What, are they a conspiracy professor or something?”

“No.”

The doorman waves them through and they wait for an empty elevator. Jason presses the third-floor button and settles in, adjusting the bag in his arms. For all the crap they give...gave...Bruce about theatrics, Jason’s no better. He lives for building the suspense. Tim had nearly murdered him again for that stupid monk joke. Asshole. Ten minutes from his life, and for that? Humph.

A cotton face mask whaps him in the chest while he’s adjusting his domino and he frowns.

“What.”

“You’re fragile, and she’s got the flu, which is why we’re here in the daytime. I’m basically immune after my, um, upgrade points got cashed in, but you are a Victorian maiden who'll probably turn it into tuberculosis and die and I can’t deal with Dick after that.”

Huh.

…

Whatever. You lose one spleen…

He puts the mask on, too, making sure Jason sees his glower, just as the elevator dings to a halt.

Tim starts to suspect they’re not invited, exactly, when Jason shoves the bag at him and drops down to pick the lock. Though he does knock and call, “Don’t get up!”, so.

“There. Give me that before you spill something...hey, Miss Marquis! I brought soup!”

…

Jason couldn’t have just told him this, why?

There’s furious coughing in the other room, followed by movement, and a minute later Dove shuffles out, wrapped in a blanket and wearing what appear to be bunny slippers. She looks terrible.

“For the tenth time, I don’t care how immune you think you are, you’re going to get sick and I can take care of myself.”

“Haven’t gotten sick yet,” Jason says cheerfully. “‘Sides, it’s, like, partly a bribe.”

Dove doesn’t look convinced. Tim’s not convinced, either. Jason, when left to his own devices, can and will out-mother-hen Dick. He’s just usually scarier when he does it. More like Alfred.

Before any further argument can happen, Dove starts coughing again and winds up clutching the doorframe with one hand and holding the other up to keep Jason at bay.

“Thought you were gonna take Theraflu,” Jason says sulkily. Dove reaches up to pinch the bridge of her nose.

“I will take it if I need it, Hood.” Tim sympathizes. Theraflu tastes like sadness. At least Robitussin is nice. “I promise this isn’t my first flu, I am fine. ” This is not a battle she’ll win. Tim knows. Tim has tried and failed. Jason had loomed at him and told him, oh-so-nicely, that he would take the Theraflu or that it would breach his defenses. “What do you want.”

Jason holds up the bag.

“Fridge or bowl?”

“Fridge, please.”

“Tea?”

“If I say yes, will you settle down?”

“For now.”

She sighs and totters over to an armchair.

“Fine.”

“What kind.”

“I’ve got some sort of zinger tea in there, that would be very nice.”

Jason vanishes into the kitchen. Dove sinks into her chair, pulling her blanket tighter around her shoulders, and waves at the couch.

“Siddown, Robin.”

“Sorry we broke in,” he says, because Jason won’t. Dove just shakes her head.

“This isn’t the first time or the last time,” she says. “At least you used the door...if you need a drink or somethin’, help yourself.”

Jason comes back, steaming mug in his hands.

“I’ll get it,” he says. “Bird boy here shouldn’t touch the kitchen.”

Slander.

“Nightwing’s worse.”

“Still. Here y’go.”

“Thanks, honey.” Dove leans up to take it before shooing him back. “Now. Why are you here.”

Jason settles onto the couch next to Tim and leans forward, worrying at his lower lip.

“This is going to sound crazy.”

“Well, that’s interesting.”

“Do you know anything about the Court of Owls?”

Dove snorts, coughs, and takes a sip of her tea.

“What?”

“You know…beware the court of owls that watches all the time, ruling Gotham from a shadowed perch behind granite and lime. They watch you at your hearth, they watch you in your bed. Speak not a whispered word of them--”

“Or they’ll send the Talon for your head, I know the rhyme.” She takes another sip. “It’s a scary story to keep kids in line, you know that.”

“We thought so, but.” He shrugs. “”Had a run-in with...something...last night that, um. Looked a little dead. But not dead like me, dead like...I don’t know. It was like it wasn’t human anymore. Or ever. I don’t know.”

Well, that’s a surprise. Tim wonders if Jason just straight-up admitted what happened or if Dove got it out of him or from some other source.

“Croc’s not human, either, kid.”

“No. This thing...I didn’t...I broke its neck and it fucking twisted it back into place.”

Dove frowns.

“You’re sure?”

“Uh-huh. And before that I emptied literally twelve bullets into this thing and it didn’t even flinch. I’m telling you, something wasn’t right and it was wearing an owl mask.”

Tim nods.

“There have been four murders committed with daggers that have owl insignias on them,” he says. “We think these two things are related.”

“Owl daggers?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Can I see one?”

“I brought a picture. The daggers are police evidence.”

“Like you boys didn’t borrow one,” she says, but sits up when Jason comes over with the phone. “I’ve seen something like this before.”

Well, that was unexpected.

“When?”

“Years ago, now. Penguin had one that he got from who-knows-where. It went missing one night-we chalked it up to Catwoman and let it go-but we did have people offer to buy it a few times. Generous offers, too.”

“He wouldn’t sell?” Odd. Penguin loved money almost as much as his pet birds. “Can you remember who offered?”

“Rich men, you know the type. They like...oddities.”

Tim does know the type. During Dick’s stint as Batman, he’d stumbled upon an auction house that specialized in some nasty things, including a very particular crowbar.

(Jason, as far as Tim knows, has no idea about this.)

“Did he say anything about it?”

“No. He put it in his office, in a little case, and honestly, I sort of figured someone had tried to kill him with it. He was funny about things like that.”

That’s an understatement. Penguin had been very proud of the bottle in his eye, among other things.

Dove starts coughing again and ends up setting her tea on the end table. Jason’s halfway over there when the coughs turn to sputters and she manages to wheeze out a, “Fine. M’fine.”

“This is why you should take Theraflu.”

“Honey…”

“I can make--”

“Hon.” He shuts up. “I’m okay. It’s just the flu, give me another week and I’ll be back to normal.” She takes a shuddery breath and picks up her tea again. “I promise. Now. I don’t.” Another shuddery breath, but no coughing this time. “I don’t know anything else off the top of my head, but. Little fuzzy.” She tugs at her blanket until it’s closed around her neck, just under her chin. “If anything comes up, I’ll let you know-ow- shit --”

The coughs don’t stop this time and she winds up bent nearly double, arms curled up to, presumably, brace her ribs. Ouch. When they finally wane, she’s red-faced and wheezing and looking fairly well miserable. Tim’s just about to nudge Jason when she stands up, clutching her mug in white, shaky fingers, and says, “I am going back to bed. Lock up behind yourselves.”

“Can we do anything?”

“No, hon. But thanks. You boys.” A finger goes up and she sort of... hics ...but nothing happens. “You boys stay safe. Don’t do anything. Anything reckless.”

Reckless? Humph. They’re not reckless. Adventurous, is Tim’s preferred term. So one time he leapt off a building knowing his grappler wasn’t working. Dick caught him, like he knew he would. It was leap or be eaten, and being eaten was by far the uglier choice.

“Reckless? Us?” Jason mock-gasps. “Thanks. Soup’s in the fridge. Want me to make you a Thera--”

“ No. Thank you.”

THE END

*I’m debating on whether or not that scar is Joker-related (could be an aborted Glasgow?) OR Batarang-caused: maybe Bruce hit his face rather than his throat in this version of UtRH. Either way, ow.

[imagineaworlds]

I Love You (Part Twelve) -- Aaron Hotchner

Written By: @desperately-bisexual​

Request: None.

Warnings: Murder. Kidnapping. Literally everything Criminal Minds.

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x Greenaway!Reader

Word Count: 9160

Timeline: Season 2 Episode 15. Morning after part eleven.

In the morning, Hotch opened the trunk to the car and crawled back in beside me to start coaxing me awake. I wasn’t sure of when he had left in the night, or if he stayed to sleep with me but got an early start, and I hadn’t even realized that he closed the trunk while I was asleep so as to ensure that no one disturbed me. He was dressed in a new suit, though, and his hair was combed back, so he had clearly been up for some time. The sun was out, and it seemed like it had been for hours. I couldn’t believe that he let me sleep for that long. He promised that it would only be a few hours and then he’d wake me up and we would get back to work. But it was already late morning and I was just being told that it was time to start working.

I hurried out of the SUV’s trunk and scrambled to my feet. I patted down my hair to get rid of the frizz and adjusted my clothes as well as I could. Hotch crawled back out of the car to tell me what was going on since I clearly had no clue. There was another black SUV parked in front of Tobias Hankle’s house now, along with the Sheriff’s Department. When I asked if the new car was for Garcia, he told me that she was already inside with Morgan, trying to see what they could get off the computer.

Hotch slammed the trunk shut as I stormed back up towards the house. Inside, JJ and Emily were just waking up in the living room, too. They were both sitting upright, but neither of them looked alive enough to have been working for hours on end like Hotch had been. Garcia was sitting in the computer room with Morgan hovering over her shoulder, just like Hotch told me. I walked further into the house and found Gideon sitting at the kitchen table, going through some papers and books he found laying around in the house. He must have had the same thought I did last night that there was something in one of the thousands of papers scattered about where Tobias might have taken Reid.

“What did you guys find?” I heard Hotch ask back down the hall in the computer room.

I retraced my steps back into that room to find Hotch leaning over Garcia’s other shoulder as she started presenting everything she found.

“Well, if I’m being honest, we’re looking at a pretty smart kiddo who got his hands on some very expensive hardware. This setup is absolutely brilliant, but everything on the computers relates to kids shows, online shopping for toys, pictures of cute dogs, and so on. I didn’t find a single hint of evidence that this guy had been watching anything concerning— even the video games he plays are the cutsie ones, not the murder ones you would expect.”

“It would make sense if Tobias’s submissive personality is the one who is tech savvy,” Hotch put the pieces together. I guessed that he had told the team about my suspicions of Tobias’s first personality being a child because everyone nodded like they knew what he was talking about. “But it doesn’t explain how his other personalities can be so violent. Garcia, keep digging. Look for any kind of conflicting searches or odd times when he’s not at his computer. Just keep digging. There has to be something there.”

“There’s not, Hotch,” she insisted. “There’s nothing. Not even the videos he posted to the internet.”

We all furrowed our brows and tilted our heads slightly in confusion. “That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “He would have kept them for Raphael and his third personality. They would have wanted to watch them over and over again to relive their suffering.”

“Well, sugar cakes, I don’t know what to tell you. This guy is completely clean.”

“He must have another computer hiding somewhere. Y/N, take Prentiss with you upstairs to go through all of the bedrooms, see if you can find anything else,” Hotch said to me.

I nodded and headed back to the living room. Emily was on her feet finally, but JJ was still sitting down, staring at the wall opposite her. I wondered if it was really the best idea to keep her at the house and not just send her back to the hotel, but it was Hotch’s choice to keep her on the case. If she wanted to stay and he was letting her, there wasn’t much I could do beyond worry. Emily saw me standing in the doorway, though, and when I made a gesture towards the stairs down the hallway, she caught the hint and joined me.

“Hotch wants us to go through everything upstairs,” I told her on our way up.

“Everything?” she questioned.

“Everything. If we find another computer, we’ve hit the jackpot.”

“Garcia couldn’t find anything on the computers downstairs?”

I shook my head. “Nothing. He has to have everything stored somewhere… It’s just a question of where.”

We started with Tobias’s bedroom, the very same room I had gone into last night to start looking around before Hotch made me go to bed. Emily confirmed my suspicions of Hotch telling the team about what I discovered about Tobias’s submissive personality when she went through the list of things I found in order to find her bearings. I listened as she ran through it all in her own mind while simultaneously walking circles around the room to see if anything would catch my eye suddenly. I walked over to his bookshelf and ran my index finger over all of the different spines while reading through the different titles. He had a lot of what you would expect a middle schooler to have in his bedroom, whether it be from an assignment at school or general interest in reading. What stood out the most, however, was all of the journals on the bottom shelf. They weren’t clearly marked in any way, but as I pulled one out to investigate further, I realized that each of the journals was from a different year of his life. Every single day, every single detail, every little thought he ever had was in those journals.

Emily walked over to the bedside table as a thought occurred to her while in the midst of running through my own evidence with me. She pulled the drawer open and started digging through whatever was in there. I put the journal back where I found it and started circling the room again.

“Hey, look at this,” she told me.

I walked over and looked over her shoulder. She held up a list of Narcotics Anonymous groups in the area. So Mr. Hankle was an addict. It would explain the mental stability and how the different personalities were constantly fighting for power rather than being controlled by the abuser. There was a name, phone number, and an address on the piece of paper— likely a sponsor if Tobias ever ended up taking his NA meeting seriously. The list looked old, though, and Emily seemed to notice it, too. I backed away and scanned the room with my eyes.

“We’ll take any lead we can at this point, though, right?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Something’s always better than nothing. Maybe the man listed on there will know something about how to find Tobias and Spencer.”

“I’ll go visit him later, then.” Emily set the paper down on the table so that we could keep it for evidence when we would leave the room. “I think I’ll take JJ… I think she needs to get out of this house.”

“That’s a good idea.”

Emily knelt down on her knees next to the bed and lifted up the comforter to see if there was anything hiding under the bed. I approached the bedroom wall opposite the bed and started at the art work. The art was just drawings of cars, planes, and trains— similar to Jack’s bedroom wall. If Tobias’s first personality was a kid, then the wallpaper made sense, but there was something off about it. The seam between where the wallpaper started and ended around the room was dirty and worn out, like someone had been constantly touching it and picking at it. I stepped forward and started peeling at the top corner. It came off the wall easily, no pull or stick to it.

“Emily,” I called her attention over. She pushed herself up to her feet and gasped when she saw what I saw. “Honora Patrum Tuum…” I didn’t know what that meant, but Emily was the linguist of our team, and she was standing right there. “Do you recognize it?”

She walked up to my side to get a better look with me. The wall beneath the wallpaper had been covered with the words: Honora Patrum Tuum hundreds of times, all in steady cursive— not like you would see from a kid. Someone else wrote it. Either Raphael or the abuser personality did this. Perhaps the translation would tell us which of the two did it.

Emily handed me something that she found under the bed before pressing her palm to the way. “Honor thy father.”

I looked down at what she had handed me. It was a full pill bottle with Tobias’s name Sharpied onto it. I spun it around to look to look at the label. It was certainly for Tobias Hankle, but that wasn’t what caught my attention. It was medicine to help him with his mental health and to help control the voices in his head. Since it was full, it made sense that he had flown so far off the handles. Not to mention, the expiration date was almost as old as the NA list we found. If he started going to NA, he probably realized that pills just weren’t for him, so rather than find a way to stop abusing them, he just stopped altogether, which was how Raphael and the abuser took over.

“There’s still no computer,” Emily sighed, stepping away from the wall. “Maybe in the father’s room?”

I shrugged again. Our best bet was the father's room, because if there was nothing in there, then we were screwed. We would have to start from square one. The computer wasn’t downstairs, that much we knew, and after just tearing apart Tobias’s extremely clean room and coming up empty handed there too, there was only one lasat place to look and pray to find answers.

I set the pill bottle on top of the NA list on the bedside table then followed Emily into the father’s room. Tobias and his father’s rooms were polar opposites.While Tobias’s room was perfect and neat in every way, his father’s room was a wreck. It looked like a hoarder threw up in there at least three times. Nothing was organized, papers and books were scattered everywhere, and his bed wasn’t made. If there was a computer or any other clue in that room, it would take forever to look. There was really no time to waste, so we got to it.

Most of the junk lying around was meaningless. There were dozens of old newspapers, food wrappers, old and broken computer keyboards, and so on. What was of interest was the bibles stacked neatly on the bookshelf, but there were torn pages and passages scattered all around, just like we had found at both of the crime scenes. For a second I stopped to think about how that could be, and came to the conclusion that one of Tobias’s personalities must have been picking up these pages and passages from the bedroom and picking the ones that made sense for each sin and took them to the crime scenes. Raphael was the archangel personality, he was most likely to do so .

There was no computer, unfortunately. We probably combed through that entire room twice over the span of four hours, and nothing of use actually turned up. Just as I predicted, we were going to be starting back at square one, which just meant that we were much further from finding Reid than any of us would have cared to admit.

“What now?” Emily asked in defeat.

“Take JJ with you and figure out if that name on the NA list is worth anything,” I recommended.

There was a knock at the door. “Find anything?” Hotch asked us, peeking into the room. 

Emily and I turned to him. “No computer,” I answered, “but Emily has a lead and wants to take JJ to go take a look.”

“Alright.”

“There’s a bunch of journals in Tobias’s room, and even more in here. It might be worth looking through them to see if we can find anything out about his favorite spots around town, see if there’s anywhere that we could check for Spencer.”

“We’ll start going through those with you while Emily and JJ head out, I guess.”

I nodded. Emily and I filed out of the room after Hotch and followed him down the hall. She went back downstairs to go talk to JJ, meanwhile Hotch and I started collecting all of the journals in Tobias’s room. I carried as many as I could and he grabbed the rest before grabbing a few more from the father’s room. We headed downstairs together and dropped everything on the table in the kitchen where Gideon had just given up on his task of looking through the loose papers laying around the house. I guessed that he didn’t find anything of use, and I was just hoping that wouldn’t be the case with these journals.

I sat down next to Gideon and Hotch headed back into the hallway to grab more journals from upstairs, but we were all stopped in our tracks when we heard Morgan yelling Hotch’s name outside like he found something of interest. Hotch turned around and headed for the front door. Gideon and I stood from the table and chased after to see what was going on.

Both Morgan and Hotch had their guns already out and pointed down at a cellar door that was half covered by leaves. Morgan looked to Hotch for a silent signal, and Hotch gave a small nod up. Morga opened the cellar door and took a step in with his weapon raised and his finger on the trigger. Gideon and I watched from the side, my fingers crossed behind my back that we would find Spencer down there alive. I knew that it sounded far fetched and entirely possible, but I just had to hold out hope, right?

“Tobias Hankle! FBI!” Morgan warned, moving further into the cellar, Hotch close on his tail. “Tobias!”

“They won’t find him down there,” Gideon said to me, already turning back to go into the house.

I didn’t budge, though. I stood my ground and watched the cellar to see who would emerge. There was movement again on the ladder in the cellar, and Hotch came up. Morgan followed shortly after, but there was no Tobias and no Spencer. Just empty hands and defeated faces. I asked them what was down there, and Morgan told me that they found Tobias’s dead father, which wasn’t very helpful to our case. Hotch stepped off to the side to call the sheriff and the coroner so that they could clear the scene down below. I sighed and walked back into the house. Gideon was right, and he knew it, telling by the look on his face that said: “I know I’m right, but I wish I wasn’t.”

Morgan and I sat down with him in the kitchen and each picked up a journal. A few minutes later, Hotch came back in to tell us that the sheriff was on his way with the coroner, but we should start looking through the journals for any clues. He sat down next to Morgan, across from me, and we all started skimming. A thought occurred to me as we were all reading that if Spencer were with us, he would’ve read all of the journals in under two hours and had the whole case solved even before that.

Square one was just as shit as I thought it would be. Tobias and his father had written hundreds of journals, each depicting every hour of every day for years. I was taking notes on anything I found slightly interesting, but for the most part, it was all religious ramblings; and for Tobias, there were many entries about his father’s “punishments”, and each of them were described in graphic detail. I couldn’t believe that anyone would do those things to their own children… One would have to be the worst kind of deranged monster to think that any of those “punishments” were alright.

While we were all reading, the coroner was in the cellar, taking a look at the body. We knew that it wasn’t ideal for him to look at the body down there, but we needed answers fast, and we couldn’t afford to wait around for them to drive an hour into the city just to tell us the time of death. It, unfortunately, had to be then and there. Few hours later, the sheriff came into the house with his hat off to tell us what the coroner found before leaving to finish up some more examinations and tests.

Tobias Hankle’s father had been dead for about six months when Morgan and Hotch found him. Something about that time frame struck me as odd and I started sifting through my notes to find what I was looking for. Six months ago, in Tobias’s journal, he went for two weeks without writing anything. And then suddenly it started back up again. Something happened during those two weeks. Tobias’s stressor was his father’s death, and his father abused him, and Raphael always wrote for Tobias when he was the forward personality, and—

“I’ve got it,” Hotch said with a eureka-moment-like tone. He started reading from one of Tobias’s journals, “‘Father is sick. He wants me to put him down, but I say that the bible tells us we shall not kill, and he tells me to honor thy father. I don’t know what to do.’ That was on December 6th. Two months ago. Tobias’s father had already been dead for four months according to what the sheriff just told us.”

The bedrooms, the journals, the behaviors, and the crime scenes all pointed to one thing: Tobias’s abuser personality was keeping him in check. Outside of his delusions, Tobias was actually abused by his father, and now Hotch was claiming that two months ago, Tobias was still writing about his father as if he never left. And maybe that was the case… technically. Tobias’s father died, but lived on as Tobias’s third personality: the abuser. Tobias was the submissive, Raphael was the dominant, and Tobias’s father was the abuser. That was why they were so scared of him— That was why he took over the commentary in the first video. And that was why he could make Tobias do all of those horrible things.

“Garcia!” I called, scrambling to my feet. I nearly tripped over the journals we had laying on the floor as I ran out of the kitchen and across the hall into the computer room. She spun around in her chair, putting down her nail filer before I could catch her using it. “Try logging into the computers as Tobias’s father— Charles Hankle.”

She scrunched her brows, “Didn’t the killings just start, and he’s been dead for six months?”

“I know. I know. I just have a hunch about something. Humor me?”

She shrugged, figuring that there was no harm in trying. “Sure thing, buttercup.”

Originally, we thought that there had to be another computer somewhere in the house that would have all of the videos and concerning evidence on it, because Tobias’s computers didn’t seem to have anything bad on them— but that was because Tobias didn’t like those things. His father did. His father was the psychopath, he was the reason they were killing, and he was the one who would want to watch the videos again. If there wasn’t another computer, it was because they would just log into different accounts.

“Y/N?” Hotch questioned as the three men came into the computer room. “What is it?”

I turned to them, excitement coursing through my veins. “Charles Hankle is the abuser personality. Think about it, Tobias’s room upstairs is in tip-top shape because his father would beat him if anything were out of place— but the Latin on the wall was written by an adult, telling by the handwriting and the use of cursive, and also the fact that Tobias wouldn’t have done that. His father did it. His walls say “Honor thy father” in Latin, and that was Charles’s argument when he wanted Tobias to kill himself, taking all three personalities down with him. When Tobias finally refused, that’s when the stalkings started, and later the killings.”

“I got it,” Garcia cheered quietly. We all changed our focus to the computers, which were all playing different videos of murder, rape, bombings, Church sermons, and so on. “Holy moly.”

“We need to start profiling Charles. He’s likely the one who decided where they took Reid,” Hotch said.

“We’ve got a problem,” the sheriff told us, walking into the room while still pocketing his phone. “I just got a call from the station. A local electronics store was robbed last night. The suspect took one camera, one tripod, couple of SD cards, four computers, and a satellite.”

“Sounds like everything this guy would need to start up his operation again.” Garcia commented, shutting of all of the horrific videos playing on the computers. “Wait—” The screens went entirely black, and I figured that she had just shut them off, but when she seemed shocked, I knew something was wrong. “Oh, my god…” she whispered under her breath as the computers all turned back on remotely and started playing one video.

I gasped as I saw Spencer sitting in front of a camera, tied to a chair, his face all bloodied and beaten. He looked tired and defeated, his head hanging low and his shoulder drooping. His wrists were bound together, his feet tied to the chair beneath him, and his mouth gagged by a cloth. Garcia started typing as fast as she could, knowing that we would want answers just as much as she did.

“Garcia, can you track this?” Hotch asked calmly, but he was keeping his fingers close to his lips, which was a telltale sign that he was silently panicking. 

She shook her head, “He’s streaming this from his home computer. It’s just for us. I won’t be able to find him.”

Spencer raised his head as someone walked into the room with him. Tobias stepped in front of the camera and pulled the gag from Reid’s mouth. “Your friends are watching,” Tobias told Reid, pointing to the camera. Reid made eye contact with the lense, which was virtually us, though he didn’t know it. “See those vermin?” he pointed to something behind the camera. Reid nodded shortly. “Choose one of them to die.” Reid shook his head this time. “Do it,” Tobias violently pinched Reid’s face in his hand. “Do it, boy!”

“That’s Charles,” I whispered, pointing at the screen. “Neither Tobias nor Raphael would lash out like that.”

“I won’t choose who gets slaughtered and have you leave their remains behind like a poacher,” Reid hissed bravely in Charles’s face.

Charles let go of Reid, “Choose one to die or they all die.”

“I’ll… I’ll choose who lives,” Reid compromised. He swallowed hard and looked at the camera again before looking at whatever was behind. “Far… Far right screen…”

Charles grinned, knowing he had won this round. “Marilyn David. 4913 Walnut Creek Road.”

Garcia was typing a mile a minute to pull up information about Marilyn David. Gideon pulled out his phone and started dialing the number Garcia found for Ms. David. “Marilyn David. This is Agent Jason Gideon with the FBI. If there’s a computer open near you, I need you to close it right now— Please, ma’am, just do it. We’ll be sending another agent over to make sure you’re alright.” He hung up as fast as he could without bothering to give her any answers as to what was going on.

“You’ve done your part for now,” Charles said, moving towards the camera. “Now it’s my turn.” And the stream cut out.

“So now what?” the sheriff shrugged. “Wait for a 911 call and hope we get there in time?”

Morgan huffed, spun around on his heels, and stormed out of the room. He hit the wall with a closed fist on his way out of the room, and I chased after him to make sure that he was alright. He kicked one of the wooden chairs in the living room, sending it over onto its side, and then he just kept kicking at it. I ran over to him, grabbed his shoulders, and pulled him away from the chair. He stumbled back before trying to catch his balance and push off of me.

“You can’t do this right now,” I told him, my eyes following him as he went to kick the chair out of the way one last time, then sat down on the couch angrily. “You need to keep a cool head if we’re going to find Spencer.”

His foot was tapping against the wood floor as anxiety coursed through him. “They shouldn’t’ve split up,” he finally admitted. “They knew better… If they knew Hankle was the Unsub, they should have stayed together.”

“No one could have known. This isn’t anyone’s fault, Morgan, just like we told Hotch yesterday. We can’t keep blaming ourselves when it’s not going to help anything.”

“Reid is out there right now, being held against his will and tortured, and you want to talk to me about calming down? How am I supposed to do that when one of us is out there, waiting for our help?!”

“It’s valid to worry,” I told him as I sat down beside him. “We’re all worried, and we’re all doing the best we can to find him. But if we lose our minds, who’s going to help him, huh?”

“We should be out there right now, knocking on every door.”

“That won’t help and you know that.”

“We have to do something! We can’t just sit around and wait for something bad to happen—”

“We just got the 911 call,” Hotch informed us from the doorway. “Someone has to stay with Garcia and the journals. There has to be something else of use in them.”

“We’ll stay,” I offered. Morgan looked at me with his jaw practically on the floor. “You’re not thinking clearly enough to go out there,” I whispered to him. “Do you trust me?” He nodded. “We’ll stay here with JJ,” I turned back to Hotch. JJ wasn’t going anywhere either. She needed to get out of the house, and she did with Emily for a bit, but she didn’t need to go to another crime scene quite yet; not after what happened in the barn last night, at least. Hotch nodded and left to go meet Gideon and Emily in the car. “Let’s see if Garcia can get back into Charles’s computer,” I patted Morgan’s knee before pushing myself off the couch. I held my hand out for him and he stared at me for a fleeting moment before taking my offer. I pulled him to his feet. “Reid’s a smart kid. He can handle himself. I promise.”

“I’ll believe you when I see it for myself.”

Garcia, Morgan, and I were all sitting in the computer room together while she worked on searching the rest of Charles’s computer and we read through more journals. The rest of the team had been gone for hours at the crime scene, and the sun was already down, bringing another day without Reid to an end. Reid’s chances of survival fell significantly as the sun set and the moon rose. We all knew it, JJ most of all as she worked quietly on her own in another room. She was still beating herself up for not being with Reid, and I wished that there was  something I could have done to ease her conscience, but I also knew that she just wouldn’t get over it until this was done and we were all home safe.

Around hour four of sitting uncomfortable in that stuffy computer room, Morgan accidentally let out a yawn. He hadn’t slept in days, and even though I was worried about him and I wanted to tell him to get some rest, I knew that he wouldn’t listen. Even if I begged and pleaded, or even decided to drag him onto the couch myself, he’d find a reason to not go to sleep. It wasn’t worth wasting my time to try and argue with him. And even though we had all heard him yawn and we were all reminded of how tired  everyone was, he dodged Garcia’s attempt to send him to bed by saying that he was going to make some coffee, and offered us some. Garcia quietly passed on his offer, but I took him up on it before returning my gaze to the journal in my lap.

A few minutes later, Morgan came back and handed me my coffee before silently turning to leave again. When I asked where he was going, he told me that he needed some air and some time alone to think. JJ came in a few minutes after that. She looked upset, and I pieced together that they must have had an argument of some sort in order to shake both of them like that. We didn’t like fighting amongst each other. We all loved one another like family, and we knew that fighting like children was just a waste of time when we could always be spending that energy on solving the cases. But whenever emotions were high and we didn’t get enough sleep, tension always seemed to build in the team. Morgan had been trying to put blame on different people all day because he was so stressed about Spencer, and JJ had been blaming herself anyhow. It wouldn’t have surprised me if one of them told me that their argument was about who to blame and why.

JJ sat in Morgan's seat, “I want to watch the newest video.”

Garcia and I turned to her. We hadn’t even watched it yet. We were waiting to hear from the team about the crime scene before watching it— but also because Garcia wasn’t sure if she wanted to watch it yet, and Morgan was still battling with the fact that Reid had to make the choice of who had to live and who had to die. That shouldn’t have had to happen in the first place, but watching the video was just going to be the nail in the coffin for everyone’s already shitty moods. But JJ wanted to see it for some reason, and I deduced that it had to do with whatever she and Morgan talked about.

“If I can’t watch this video and stomach it, then I have no right to be in the field,” JJ admitted.

“It’s not a competition, JJ,” Garcia said.

“I know. I just need to see it. Please.”

Garcia brought up the video, but she didn’t play it yet. She stepped away before she could start it because she knew she didn’t want to watch with us. If JJ wanted to, and I was willing to stay, then that was our choice. But she wasn’t going to stick around, and I couldn’t blame her, honestly.

I pressed the spacebar and the video began. There was a couple sitting on their couch in their home. From what I could tell, the computer was sitting on a table in the corner, just out of their field of view. The man stood and left to get something off camera while the woman got more comfortable on the couch. After a minute or so, the man returned with a bottle of wine and a corkscrew. The woman smiled at him as he sat down beside her. Tobias snuck into the living, wearing all black, and covering his head with a hood. He approached the back of the couch and immediately slashed the man’s throat. The woman screamed and tried to get away, but Tobias grabbed her arm and forced her back on the couch.

Headlights from the road outside of Tobias’s home turned towards the room we were sitting in as the team came back from the new crime scene. I could hear Morgan outside asking Hotch about what they found after the car turned off, but my gaze didn’t pull away from the computer screens. Tobias grabbed the female victim by her hair and started dragging her over to the computer in her living room. She sobbed and slapped his hands in an attempt to make him release his grip, but he didn’t let up. He commanded her to stare into the camera. The front door of Tobias’s home opened just as he slit the female victim’s throat in the video.

JJ and I jumped in our seats before turning to the hallway behind us. Hotch and Morgan walked past while discussing the new evidence. Gideon came into the computer room to see what progress we had made over the past five hours or so. There wasn’t much to tell, though, besides the fact that Tobias had posted the video to the internet. To everyone’s disappointment, we hadn’t made much practice since Tobias originally took Reid, and it was clearly starting to annoy everyone.

Gideon asked me to play the video for him after I told him about it, and I obliged. JJ stiffened in her seat as the video started over. She had to know that she didn’t have to watch it again, right? I didn’t understand why she was trying to push herself and challenge everyone, even though we didn’t think any less of her like she only assumed. Watching it a second time wasn’t going to prove anything, and it certainly wasn’t any easier to watch.

As Tobias sliced the male victim’s throat open, the video cut out. Gideon asked what happened and I insisted that I wasn’t sure. I stood and hurried to the living room in search of Gideon’s technical aid. As I started to explain to her that the video turned off half way through Gideon’s examination of it, we heard JJ yell for the rest of the team in a panic. Everyone ran to the computer room. Gideon was sitting in my seat, JJ in hers, and Garcia hurried to her own right in front of the keyboard. I stumbled a few steps in the room as I realized what JJ had called us in for. The video of the murders had cut out because Tobias took control of the computers again, and now he was streaming live footage of Reid again.

“Confess your sins,” Charles said. I knew it was him and not Tobias or Raphael because of the voice. Charles was more baritone and Southern, like how a stereotypical Southern priest would sound.

“I haven’t done anything,” Reid responded calmly. Charles raised his fist into the air before landing a punch of Spener’s jaw. Reid moved with the punch to avoid more damage and pain. Smart kid. “I haven’t done anything!” he yelled more desperately this time. Charles punched him again. “Please… Tobias, help me…”

“He can’t help you. He’s weak.”

Garcia was shaking at the keyboard, trying to find a new way to hack into Tobias’s set up. I believed in her. I knew she could do it, even when she was panicking like we all were. She just needed some more time.

Charles slapped Reid around a few more times before grabbing his long hair and pulling on it to make him sit up straight. “Confess. Your. Sins.”

When Reid refused again, Charles punched him straight in the nose, so hard that it sent Reid and his chair flying backwards. With Reid’s wrists tied together, he couldn’t protect his body from the impact, so he had the wind knocked out of him. He gasped for air desperately, but  he couldn’t get enough oxygen in the short breaths that he could manage. He started convulsing on the ground and foaming at the mouth. What had Tobias been doing to him when the camera was off? We were missing something crucial.

“He’s killing him,” Garcia cried, taking her hands off the keyboard after failing to find them again.

Spencer suddenly stopped moving and breathing. Charles grinned widely before stepping out of the room they were in. The video didn’t end, though. We just had to watch as Reid laid… unconscious… or dead? I don’t think any of us were sure. Either way, if he wasn’t dead yet, he would be unless someone helped him soon. Even if we wanted to, we wouldn’t be able to save him on time while he was like that. If, by some miracle, we happened to find them at that exact moment, by the time we got to wherever they were hiding, it would be too late. Charles wanted us to know that, and we wanted us to watch our friend die.

JJ turned away from the computers and hid her face in her hands, Morgan punched the wall as hard as he could again, Garcia cried harder as Gideon put a comforting hand on her shoulder, and Emily, Hotch, and I just watched in shock. It was going to end soon if it hadn’t already. The son of a bitch had won.

Charles suddenly hurried back into the room and crouched beside Reid. He put his ear up against Reid’s chest to listen for a heartbeat before sitting back up and putting his hands on Reid to start performing CPR. I mumbled to myself the question of what the hell Charles was doing. Why would he want to punish and kill Reid, only to come back moments later to help him? Because it wasn’t Charles… It had to have been Raphael or Tobias. They would have been the only ones who would care enough to help Reid. And then I remembered how Reid begged for Tobias’s help… Tobias had been helping Reid while the camera was off. They had befriended each other. That was why he was trying to resuscitate him.

Reid gasped for air and woke back up. Garcia gasped and sighed with relief. Everyone else released the tension in their shoulders, too— myself included.

“Wait,” Emily said. We all turned our ears to her, but kept watching the stream. “When were the last murders called in by Tobias?”

“9:04,” Hotch answered.

“And when was the video of the murders posted?”

Garcia typed away at the computers for a moment. “9:23.”

“That’s only a nineteen minute difference,” I said. “Garcia how long would it take to upload that video?”

“Two to three minutes, maybe.”

“Let’s call it two,” Morgan said. “That means that, even if you’re going approximately 60 miles per hour, Tobias would have to be within a 19 mile radius of the crime scene.”

“Garcia, pull it up on a map,” Hotch ordered. She pulled up a map of the area, then narrowed it down to the nineteen mile radius. “JJ, call the sheriff and tell him to put roadblocks surrounding that area.”

JJ nodded and ran out of the room to go call the Sheriff's Department.

“Look,” Gideon pointed back to the stream of Spencer.

Tobias was helping Spencer back up into the chair. Reid coughed and wiped the spit around his mouth away with his sleeve. “Thank you, Tobias,” he whispered breathlessly.

“You came back to life…” It wasn’t Tobias’s young, child-like voice that spoke, nor was it Charles’s deep, commanding Southern accent. It was something more proper.

“Raphael…” Reid identified him. “Thank you.”

“I didn’t do anything. Someone brought you back from the dead. Something brought you back.”

“It was CPR. Science. Just science, Raphael. Nothing else—”

“How many members are on your field team?”

Excluding Garcia, since she hardly ever came out into the field with us, our team included: Hotch, Gideon, Morgan, JJ, Emily, Reid, and me. Seven of us. Seven archangels— including Raphael— vs the seven angels of death. Raphael was one of the archangels, he would know that we weren’t angels, but his delusion made him believe that we were the seven angels of death, and that was how Reid was brought back to life.

“Tell me who you serve,” Raphael demanded.

“I serve you,” Reid answered, calm again.

“Then choose one to die.”

“What?”

“Your team members. Choose one to die.”

My eyes raced between the entire team to see what they were thinking. They all just looked shocked. None of them seemed to be thinking of ways to help… And neither was I, I supposed. What else were we supposed to do?

“Kill me. I choose me.”

“No. You’ve proven to me that you can’t die. Satan favors you. Choose one of the others. Now.”

“No.”

Raphael pulled out a pistol from his jacket and pointed it at Reid’s forehead. Everyone was tense again. Charles wanted Reid to suffer when he originally tried to kill him, but Raphael was only trying to do one thing: prove that the archangels were better than the angels of death. In his mind, it didn’t matter if he shot Reid, because he would come back to life and they would start over. But from where we stood, we knew that wasn’t the case. If Raphael were to have shot Reid, he’d die immediately.

“Choose one of them.”

“No,” Reid answered again.

Raphael pressed on the trigger, and I jumped in response, but nothing fired from the weapon. My brows furrowed in confusion. Raphael pulled the hammer of the pistol back with his thumb and demanded once again that Reid choose. When Reid refused again, Raphael tried to shoot again, but nothing happened. They were playing Russian Roulette. Reid was one of the smartest people on the planet. He knew nearly everything about the world— but had a proclivity for science and math. Russian Roulette was technically a game of chance, yes, but Reid knew the odds and statistics of the game. He knew how to push his luck. So when Raphael asked again and Reid denied again, I didn’t jump when Raphael pulled the trigger again.

“Alright, fine,” Reid gave in. He found it. “I’ll choose.” He lowered his head in defeat, “I choose… Aaron Hotchner.”

I let out the breath that had been building in my chest and instinctively grabbed Hotch’s hand from his side. Hotch squeezed my hand reassuringly. Why Hotch? Why? They had been through so much together. He could have picked me. We weren’t close. He had no reason to like me— In fact, he actually disliked that I challenged him so often since he was Mr. Know-It-All and always had to be right. He could have picked me, but he chose Hotch… Why…

“He’s a classic narcissistic,” Reid began explaining, “he thinks that he’s better than everyone else, and he treats Y/N better than everyone else on the team, which puts us all in danger. Genesis 23:4— ‘Let him not deceive himself and trust in emptiness, vanity, falseness, and futility, for these shall be his recompense.’ That’s why I choose him.”

Hotch let go of my hand and stormed out of the room. Everyone watched him leave, but I was the only one who chased after him. “Aaron, you can’t take what he said to heart. He’s just doing what he has to do to survive.”

Hotch turned away from the bookshelf in the family room in order to face me. He was holding a bible in his hands, skimming through a few pages. “I don’t care about that,” he insisted to me. “I know that he had to give an answer.”

“You’ll be fine here with all of us. Nothing’s going to happen—”

Hotch looked up from the bible as the rest of the team came in. “I’m not a narcissist.”

“We know, Hotch,” Gideon responded. “He’s not in his right mind—”

“No. Stop. Listen. Alright, everybody, right now, what’s my worst quality?”

We all glanced at each other silently. Did he really want to know? And why? It would just hurt his feelings. Spencer had already hit the nail on the head just a minute ago, why would Hotch be searching for more answers?

When no one answered his question, Hotch spoke up again, “Fine, I’ll start. I have no sense of humor.”

Only sometimes, I thought to myself. But that was because I knew him better than anyone else on the team. He liked to smile around me and we liked to have fun together, but our home life was very different from our work personalities.

Everyone took Hotch’s first words as their chance to speak up about what they disliked about him. JJ said that he was always too bossy and he felt like a bully, Morgan said that he acted like a drill sergeant, Emily said that he never trusted women as much as men— which… good on her for bringing it up.

“Right. So I’m all of those things, but none of you said that I ever put myself before the team, because I don’t. There was a time when Reid and I argued about the definition of classic narcissism, and he knew that I would remember that. Genesis 23:4— ‘I am a stranger and a sojourner with you. Give me property, forbear a place among you that I may bury my dead out of my sight.’ He wouldn’t get it wrong unless it was on purpose.”

Reid quoted something about how narcissism was a sin in the eyes of God, knowing that it would blind Raphael and catch Hotch’s attention. The real quote, however, was about cemeteries and how to properly dispose of the dead because they’re impure. Reid was telling us that he was being held in a cemetery. I should have seen it sooner. Earlier, during the first stream, Spencer said something that I should’ve caught. He said that he wouldn’t choose one of the four potential victims Charles had been eyeing to be slaughtered and have their remains left behind. His voice had fluctuated on the words “slaughtered” and “remains”. Originally, I just thought that it was because he was nervous, but I realized that he was trying to tell us before and we didn’t notice.

“Garcia!” I called, running back towards the computer room. “Look for slaughterhouses inside that radius.”

When Emily and I first met with the coroner to examine the first two victims, we all noticed that they had been killed in a way similar to animals in slaughterhouses, and we really thought that it was a dead end because there were so many possibilities, it would have been impossible to narrow it down to one slaughterhouse in Georgia where Tobias had been before. But now we had a smaller area to search, and we had something else: the cemetery. It had to be a family property if there was a cemetery on the farm grounds.

“Found it. Marshall Perish,” Garcia said.

“Tobias said something in his journals about staying clean and keeping away from Marshall,” Morgan said. “That has to be it.”

We all hurried to the cars outside while Garcia sent us the address of the plantation. With six of us going there, and seven of us coming back, we needed two cars. Gideon drove on with JJ and Emily riding with him, and Hotch drove me and Morgan. Hotch led the way, speeding down the dirt road and for the highway. It was dark out, but the headlights and the flashing police lights lit the way.

Hotch was quiet during the drive, and Morgan cleared his throat and shifted in the back seat uncomfortably. He had asked them all to tell him the truth about himself, and they did just to help him prove his point, but now everyone seemed on edge because of it. It isn’t easy to look your friends in the eyes and tell them what their worst qualities are, then move on like nothing happened. I hoped that Hotch knew that he wasn’t really those things all of the time. Just because the work personality he had built for himself painted this image of him being a constant hardass, it didn’t mean that was who he was. I knew that he liked to smile, laugh, joke around, tease, have fun. He liked to hold my hand, kiss me, hold me, tell me how much he loved me every chance he could get. I knew that he was a good dad who would do anything to give Jack the best childhood he could possibly have. He liked to tell me not to give Jack too much attention or gifts, but he liked it even more when I would do it anyhow. It made him happy that I was happy, and that Jack liked me. That was who Hotch really was.

The plantation was practically abandoned when we arrived. There was a farmhouse on the front of the property where the family lived, but everything beyond that had been neglected by them, including the slaughterhouse out in the woods. We sped up to the decaying building and all jumped out of the cars.

I adjusted my vest slightly by pulling it down from my neck before following Hotch and Morgan inside. Reid wasn’t there. The chair that he had been tied to, the camera that was recording him, and all of the computers Tobias stole were all there, but not Dr. Spencer Reid. I cursed under my breath and lowered my weapon.

Hotch told us that there was no time to waste, that they had to be hiding out in the woods somewhere, and we needed to go looking for them. Morgan and I broke off together to head towards the left, Gideon and Hotch paired up to go towards the middle path, and JJ and Emily went towards the side. The cemetery was just out in front of us, where Hotch and Gideon would likely end up meeting Morgan and I. We decided to start there, to see if they were trying to hide behind the gravestones or the trees that guarded the cemetery.

Suddenly, a gunshot echoed throughout the woods, sending the wild animals nearby into a frenzy. Morgan dashed before I could towards the sound of the gunshot. I was hot on his heels, trying to keep my flashlight up for him so that he wouldn’t trip on something while running. Hotch called Reid’s name from just right of where we were running, and I knew that they were all close to us.

We found the cemetery. Morgan jumped the gate after noticing that Hotch was struggling to get the gate open. Just as the rest of us were about to jump it, too, Hotch kicked the gate open forcefully, and we all filed into the cemetery with our weapons and flashlights raised.

“There they are!” Hotch yelled, aiming his flashlight at the opposite end of the gated area. “Reid!” Hotch hopped over a short gravestone before holstering his weapon. Spencer was crouched over Tobias’s dead body. “Reid,” Hotch repeated with relief. He helped Spencer to his feet. “You okay?”

“I knew you’d understand,” Reid croaked before throwing his arms around Hotch.

Hotch patted Spencer’s back, “Of course I would. You did the smart thing, kid.”

They parted and before anything else could happen, Morgan grabbed Reid’s shoulder and turned him around before engulfing him in a hug. We all watched as they swayed slightly, Morgan holding Reid as closely as he could without breaking him. Hotch bowed his head and silently made his way out of the cemetery and towards the cars. My eyes followed him as JJ went to hug Reid now. I caught Gideon watching me and he stared at me like he was daring me to not go after Hotch, but I couldn’t help myself.

Hotch was leaning against the grill of the car, his arms crossed over his chest, and a frown glued to his face. I walked over to him silently and leaned against the car, too. “You know that I love you, right?” I asked him, both of us staring straight ahead. He hummed a “yes” while nodding slightly. “You’re not a bully.”

“I’m fine,” he insisted.

I wanted to tell him everything that I loved about him, everything I had thought about in the car, but finding the right words to tell him seemed impossible. There was so much I wanted to say, and there weren’t enough words or ways to go about it. It didn’t matter if he had the toughest skin on planet Earth, he couldn’t actually stand there and tell me that his team telling him that he treats them like shit didn’t bother him. I knew him better than that. But I was failing to find the right words to make it clear to him that he was the best person I had ever met in my life. There was no way I could have ever loved him if he weren’t the amazing, kind, funny, and perfect man I knew. He was a great leader, partner, father, and person overall. The entire team respected him, and they knew that he always meant well when he was being too much of a hard ass. But I knew that wouldn’t ease the feeling of slight betrayal that was grabbing a hold of his heart as we leaned against the car together. 

I reached out to grab one of his hands and uncrossed his arms. There was one way to tell him everything I meant. One way that would stick and actually matter. One thing that would only matter most to him. One way to make him forget about what the team said and just focus on the positive. One thing that I was always dying to tell him during every second of every day.

I grabbed his chin between my fingers like he always did for me when he wanted my attention, “I love you more than anything.”

His eyes softened, his shoulders relaxed, and his frown faded before turning into the slightest of smiles. “I love you, too.”