#though it could honestly also just be his self-loathing getting in the way

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

i guess it’s less that they Completely Understood each other and more that . just. they met each other at the perfect time . they had a bond that could never be replaced . they could be their true selves around each other, even if it only lasted for a year or two . but it still meant so much to the both of them !!! those two years alone meant so much more than the ten years they spent apart and that completely fucking Destroys me . they had something that neither one of them would ever find again and if it’s not Total Understanding then i truly believe it was unconditional love . soulmatism. the feeling of finding your other half . they had each other for two little years and it was the single most vibrant blue spring of their lives

[ohnoitstbskyen]

I know it would probably bring a lot of hate comments but I am begging you to roast the hazbin character designs because I'd love to have someone properly articulate why they don't work so I could send it to people who won't believe me when I tell them. 🫠 Understandable if you don't want to get into it though.

I don't think there's that much there to roast, honestly?

Those designs are clearly an extremely specific stylistic choice, and because that style is consistent throughout the show, it ultimately feels coherent with itself.

There are trade-offs being made. Because Hazbin's design style is SO stylized and so heavy on decoration and detailing, because it puts a lot of emphasis on costuming, it isn't as good at communicating specific character storytelling as a more grounded style could be (it's kind of the same tradeoff that stuff like Genshin Impact makes).

Like, why does Sir Pentious' hat have an eye and a mouth on it that makes its own expressions? Apparently not for very much reason at all, except that Pentious has a bit of an eyes-motif going on in his design and it was one more place to put an extra eye. And that's a valid criticism of his design, but also the entire show is designed like that, so frankly it would be weirder and more out of place if his design alone didn't have that kind of overelaborate decoration going on.

It does create a situation where I have a hard time "reading" the character designs sometimes. For example, Vox, Alastor and Pentious all wear a similar style of suit with upwards-turned shoulders, butterflies and pinstripes. Now, am I meant to read that as Vox imitating Alastor due to his crippling need to replace and outdo him, and Pentious imitating the style of powerful Overlords because he thinks that possessing their level of power will finally give him relief from his paranoia and self-loathing?

Or is it just a design fixation of the creator who keeps putting their characters in suits because that's just what they like? I can't really be sure, because sometimes design elements are used to intentionally tell stories about how characters relate to themselves, their world and one another, but plenty of other times designs look the way they do Because Of Vibes.

But again, that lack of clarity is clearly an intentional trade-off - and the benefit of that trade-off is a design style that is extremely varied, wild, expressive and memorable. Hazbin Hotel seems like a very easy show to draw fanart of, and a very fun show to draw fanart of. Those designs (especially the hyper-expressive faces) are begging to be the subjects of traumatic headcanons, unbearably cotton-candy soft fluff fantasies and weird, taboo, homoerotic power dynamics. Slaps roof of character design, this bad boy can express so much vicarious emotional intensity.

It's very exuberant, very excited about itself and very self-indulgent, it's a style that prioritizes visual impact and visual interest over readability (something which the animators of the show navigate with real skill, props to them) and individual aesthetics over worldbuilding.

And I don't blame anyone for being turned off by that (I certainly was the first time I started seeing those designs going around), but I would struggle to call the show's designs "bad" when they are clearly achieving exactly what they want to achieve.

I have some criticisms, especially re: how the show treats skinny bodies as an unquestioned, desirable default, and employs fatness as a means of alienating and abjecting the audience. That sucks very badly, and is a serious disappointment, and one of the few places where the show feels like it is being cowardly in its design philosophy. But I don't have it in me to do some kind of Hazbin Hotel Sucks And Here's Why takedown, its problems are not unique or extreme enough to warrant it, at least not as I currently understand them.

[vaguely-concerned]

Ever since watching The Wire for the first time, my brain has doggedly kept working away at the Especially the lies of it all, and specifically at how much the structure beneath the different stories Garak tells contributes to the overall meaning of what he’s trying to say. While the contradicting narratives of course expertly obscure the factual circumstances of his getting exiled, using them also allows him to tell aspects and facets of the emotional truth I don’t think he ever could have, if he’d simply told the actual story of what happened. (It’s very Varric-core of him honestly.)

The first story — the ‘oh, you think you know me?’ story — says I have done things that would sicken you if you knew any detail of it. It’s clearly meant to scare Bashir away so he’ll leave him to die shamefully in peace already lol. But it’s also one of his (probably much-needed lbr) little lessons to Julian that are so frequent in the beginning, given while Garak still has some hold on himself — “Don’t be so quick to forgive me if you don’t even know what I’ve done; what would you do if this really were the sum total of what I am?” (And Julian seems to surprise him by going ‘Well, exactly the same thing, because no matter who you are I am a doctor. But I sort of take your point.’)

The second story — the letting the orphans go story — says I have failed to smother my soul in its cradle when it was required of me, and I regret that more than anything I’ve done. To my ears this is the one most shot through with active self-loathing too, which is interesting. He’s officially lost the control he’s been clinging to and it’s about to get ugly. His TL;DR is ‘Sentiment is the greatest weakness of all’, even all the way back here. (Which is the one lesson Julian steadfastly refuses to learn, which I think in turn does some serious rearrangement of Garak’s soul over the course of the show haha. Get uno reversed into the process of loving and being loved without shame asshole.)  This is also where he builds up to admitting to having any sort of need for companionship or closeness at all and — so much worse — that Julian’s role in his life actually has fulfilled some of that need, and he’s DRIPPING with defensive venom over it b/c well I get it Garak vulnerability is scary it can take a person like that. 

(I also feel there’s something honest and forbidden in ‘Suddenly the whole exercise seemed utterly meaningless’. I suspect ‘actually… why the fuck are we even doing this???’ is not a welcome sentiment in an Obsidian Order water cooler environment, no matter what you’re saying it about lmao. The very first seeds of him deconstructing the things he’s been taught about Cardassia and his work might be hinted at here, though they of course take a looong time to come to any real fruition.)   

The third story — the ‘Elim was my best friend’ story — says hey, remember that thing you said once, about how sometimes, you have to be loyal to yourself before you can be loyal to anything else? Well. guess what. I couldn’t even be that lmao. It also furthers that thread of being divided from yourself, split, that having ‘Elim’ as a separate person around in all versions of the story brings in. He’s in control of himself again, but he essentially hands his life and soul over to Julian to decide what should be done with them. 

I’ve done horrible things and it finally caught up with me, I’m getting what I deserve → I let sentiment master me and the fact that I’m too weak to do what’s needed of me shames me more than the evil I’ve done → I fucked up. I betrayed myself and everything I held to, all for nothing, and I have no one to blame for it but myself. But it’s very nice that you’re here anyway, Doctor. (Wow. I didn’t realize quite how isolated and lonely that last one was before right now. The way Tain has shaped him really has just… locked him completely into himself, huh.) We can also see a movement through from a completely professional context in the first story, to an intensely interpersonal and internal context in the last one — even his fake stories spiral in towards intimacy, which I think is what he longs for here even if he can’t quite like. Touch that without the stories as a buffer yet, it’s clearly like touching a hot stove for him to interact with it too directly. 

And you know what I find incredibly interesting the whole way through? Even on his deathbed, where he’s dying from the thing Tain had put in his head, he’s protecting Tain. He puts all the blame for where he is on himself (‘My future was limitless, until I threw it away’), even if he has to employ a strange twisty logic where he’s split himself into two to do it. Don’t get me wrong, Garak has done horrific things all on his own haha, but it’s notable that he almost isolates Tain from that. ‘Tain was the Obsidian Order. Not even the Central Command dared challenge him. And I was his right hand.’ Tain in Garak’s stories is this infallible implacable weirdly distant figure, even now. Indeed, as will make a lot of sense with the revelations further down the line, more than anything it seems the gaze of an abused child desperate for recognition looking up at an idealized (if not in any way nurturing) parent.‘He was retired at that point; he couldn't protect me’, Garak says, as if what he’d need protection from in the first place isn’t Tain himself lmao, as if Tain had no active part in any of this. He never lets blame touch Tain at all. At this stage he would rather consider himself a broken flawed tool than accept that the hands that have wrought and wielded him have ever had any fault in them. AND in the middle of it all, with plausible deniability, on death’s door and knocking meekly to be let in before he must finish the mortifying ordeal of being known and test the even more daunting possibility of being loved, Garak at the same time manages to drop the breadcrumb trail of clues to make it possible for Julian to find Tain if he so chooses and gets in the ‘sons of Tain’ thing too for future dramatic irony purposes. Truly he is the Michelangelo of lying. Every falsehood a multifaceted masterpiece. Elim ‘achieving a state of intertextuality in real life is possible if you work hard and believe in yourself’ Garak. I love him so much. 

I think all of this is why “I forgive you. For whatever it is you did,” works so well, because it too works on a structural level. It’s such a deceptively multilayered response — it has the syntax of a joke, in a way, and it is kind of funny even under the circumstances, but delivered with such earnest warmth and fondness. It’s both recognition and acceptance (forgiveness!). It’s saying ‘I finally understand enough of what you’re trying to tell me beneath and through all that, in whatever way you’re capable of, I see you’ and ‘my answer hasn’t changed (bitch)’. The forgiveness Julian offers here is complete — on principle, and out of personal feeling and empathy (only one of which Garak deigns to respond to during the second story, where he calls it ‘smug Federation sympathy’, placing it more completely on the principle side than it probably is. ‘Dude you’re my friend please don’t just lie down and die in a completely avoidable way on me, who else is going to not only tolerate but actually gleefully enjoy me being annoying as fuck over lunch’ seems to be the subtext that’s a lot harder to acknowledge and invite in for both of them. And yet Tain seems perfectly clear on the fact that Julian is Garak’s friend, which, y’know. Must be fun living with the knowledge that Tain has eyes everywhere looming over you every day haha guess you’d just have to tune that out.) 

Most of all — ’Don’t give up on me now, Doctor’... and he didn’t! He didn’t. Augh. Ow.

[ghosts-bandwagon]

Hii. Can we also get Ghost's version of the hcs you just wrote about how Price is during arguments etc... Thank uuuuuuu xx

Ooh yes I love this one, here’s the Price version for those curious!

Personally, I feel like his anger is implosive instead of explosive. He’s spent so long trying not to be explosive in his anger that he’s overcorrected and wound up making it implosive instead

As far as what would cause the argument, it could honestly be over something so stupid like not washing the dishes after cooking. But as far as what causes the buildup, it’s his own stress from work, maybe you’re having a bad day and snap at him a little, things like that

It seems like he lets things slide but it builds and builds and he wants to say something but he (incorrectly) believes you should just know that he’s getting progressively more and more upset

Eventually he snaps and it’s ugly. He definitely gets really mean, he’s bringing up the things that upset him- even if it happened a month ago, he’s passive aggressive, his tone is incredibly harsh, he’s insulting you without directly insulting you if that makes sense

It’s really hard for him to calm down once he gets going so having patience is so fucking important. Equally, if not more, important is hitting the brakes before the situation starts spinning out of control

If you’re able to catch him before he gets going and you’re calm and apologetic, he’ll pump the brakes. He’s still worked up but it doesn’t get to a nasty breaking point

Even if what set off the argument was his fault and it’s upset you, you have to stay calm and gently bring it to his attention

The argument might go better if you gently suggest taking a few minutes to breathe and come back calmer, even if you’re doing it for yourself it’ll force him to take a second as well

If you’re angry and you’re showing it, it easily becomes a screaming match and no one wins. He reaches a point that he walks away and disappears, doesn’t matter how hard you’re crying, yelling, doesn’t matter. He’s walking out and cooling off and he’s definitely ignoring you

Even when he comes back, he’s avoiding you like the plague. Not only is he still seething but he’s even more worked up about being so worked up in the first place, he hates getting angry, especially if it winds up directed at you

The key to arguments with Simon is staying calm, rational, and being patient and gentle

When things have calmed down, it helps to talk about how to avoid that in the future, remind him that you can only know what’s wrong if he tells you, remind him that you can handle it and that it’s better for everyone in the long run if he talks through his feelings

He completely agrees with you and he’s apologizing for getting so angry, he doesn’t mean it, doesn’t mean a word he says when he’s upset, it just builds and builds and he can’t stop it

When his anger subsides, he’s left with guilt and shame and disgust with himself for getting so worked up and in such an ugly way, he makes it up to you by being extra affectionate, he’s not leaving your side at all, he’s holding on to some part of you

He orders from your favorite restaurant, put on your favorite show, massages your hands, shoulders, legs, anywhere you’ll let him

God forbid he made you cry though, he’s beating himself up so hard. He’s so focused on doing everything and anything to make it up to you, but when you’re asleep on his chest, legs tangled with his, eyes a little puffy from crying earlier, he’s on the verge of tears, his self loathing at its strongest

He’s so torn up about arguing with you, it’s physically painful for him because he hates it so much. He’s not as bent out of shape about it if the argument gets stopped before it begins, but he still feels really rotten for letting it get to that point

[firstkanaphans]

I heartily concur with your interpretation of the Ray/Mew no-sex scene - it absolutely wasn't about sex, it was about Ray pleading with Mew to just give him a sign that he's actually genuine about this 'relationship' - at this point I think Ray wants to be with Sand, but as long as there's a chance Mew is being sincere about this, Ray feels bound to stay with him, not because he's in love with him, but because a) he begged for this (even though I still maintain he wouldn't have had Mew not brought it up again) and b) I don't think he has it in him to actively reject Mew (which in itself is part of the reason they don't work), so imo in this scene he's thinking 'show me something, anything, that allows me to convince myself I did the right thing playing it safe/not going after Sand' and THAT'S why he's so angry - it's not about sex, it's not about Top, it's not even about Mew not being able to love him. And it's not about him just being mad at not getting what he wants. It's about Ray realising that he's thrown away the possibility of real love for the lie that is this 'romance'. And like you said, Mew as good as confirms as much in the final convo. I appreciated Mew's maturity and honesty so much in that scene - it made me do a complete u-turn on his character. Mew realises that Ray wants out of this non-relationship just as much as he does, but he also knows that Ray will never be able to be the one to say it because of the power imbalance between them, so he does it for the both of them, which is a true act of love and friendship. I think for some ppl Ray 'choosing' Sand had to be an A or B scenario, aka Ray could have Mew but chooses Sand instead. But because Ray is a messed up raw wound seeping trauma and addiction and self-loathing and confusion it was never going to be that simple. What we get is more complicated but just as valid - Sand isn't his second option, Sand is who he WANTS to be with, Sand is who he loves, and who he WOULD be with if a) he was better equipped to recognise and understand his own feelings ('when I'm with you I'm so damn happy') and b) he didn't have such a longstanding and complicated (and unhealthily co-dependent) history with Mew. He doesn't drive off hoping to hook up with Sand because Mew turned him down. He seeks Sand out because, if we agree the Ray/Mew fight is the moment they both accept on some level their relationship is fake, then that's the moment Ray allows himself the chance to go after what his heart really wants, which is Sand. Ray doesn't have the emotional toolkit necessary to be able to articulate all this to himself, let alone to anyone else, which is why Mew very gently does it for him. But Mew being the one to break this to Ray doesn't mean Ray's feelings are any less his own. I think of it more this way: Sand is Ray's first choice, but Ray's own happiness is Ray's last choice, because on some level he doesn't believe he deserves it, and so without intervention - from Mew, from Sand - Ray would always continue to self-sabotage (as talked about in the tweet Jojo reposted a few days ago). And slightly but not entirely off topic: I also think nuance is often lost in translation - I might be wrong but I wonder if his words ('why won't you let me have it') are less...yeesh in Thai. Just part of a general thought I've been thunking about deep analysis of foreign language shows when you're reading so much into everything and yet relying on what are often serviceable at best subtitles (for which I'm still eternally grateful!) - SO MUCH can be misinterpreted by just a single word choice, and I sometimes find myself having to choose between taking subs at face value vs retranslating them in my head to what I think better suits the acting/story/characterisation. Apologies for the indecent length of this - I got carried away! Long story short: I agree with you!

Honestly, I agree with all of this and couldn't have said it better myself. I don't have much to add, but I will pull out some of my favorite lines for a TL;DR:

"At this point I think Ray wants to be with Sand, but as long as there's a chance Mew is being sincere about [their relationship], Ray feels bound to stay with him, not because he's in love with him, but because a) he begged for this...and b) I don't think he has it in him to actively reject Mew."

"So imo in this scene he's thinking 'show me something, anything, that allows me to convince myself I did the right thing playing it safe/not going after Sand' and THAT'S why he's so angry - it's not about sex, it's not about Top, it's not even about Mew not being able to love him....It's about Ray realising that he's thrown away the possibility of real love for the lie that is this 'romance.'"

"I think of it more this way: Sand is Ray's first choice, but Ray's own happiness is Ray's last choice, because on some level he doesn't believe he deserves it, and so without intervention - from Mew, from Sand - Ray would always continue to self-sabotage."

As for the question of translation accuracy, I actually did a little digging into this. The line that was translated as "Why won't you let me have it?" was literally บอกกูมาได้ป่ะว่าทำไมมึงถึงไม่ยอมให้กูเอาสักทีอ่ะ (bòk goo maa dâai bpà wâa tam-mai meung tĕung mâi yom hâi goo ao sàk tee à), which can more accurately be translated as "Can you tell me why you won't let me have it?" I know that's not a huge difference, but it turns an accusatory statement into a legitimate question. Ray's not just stomping his foot because Mew won't give him sex. He's asking for an explanation. [Insert disclaimer about me not being a native Thai speaker here.]

[mermaidsirennikita]

Louis de Pointe du Lac, as originally written, could be regarded as one of lit's most famous "also rans", someone who was originally positioned as Thee Tragic Figure of the series, only to be almost immediately superseded both in the readers' and the author's minds with Lestat. Like, you know Louis because of the original book, but Lestat is the one everyone talks about, Lestat drives the rest of the series, Lestat has all the best lines.

And the movie, as much as I personally don't like it, only sort of dug this further into the pop cultural understanding of the story. Brad Pitt is at his most "I am relying on pretty" boring and sulky; when there is a performance, it's largely annoying. And Tom Cruise... I mean, it's literally nothing next to what Sam Reid does in my mind, but it was at least very off-brand for him at the time, and he was doing SOMETHING, and he (and Kirsten Dunst) have the most iconic Moments, the camp, the arguably most memorable part of the movie (the very end with the Sympathy for the Devil cover playing us off).

So it's honestly SUCH a testament to the innovation of the show's writing and the brilliance of Jacob Anderson's performance that Louis has been reinvented, not only as a compelling protagonist, but as a character that is EASILY as complex and multilayered as more traditionally antiheroic/villainous types like Lestat and Armand and Claudia. He's more than the beautiful, tragic object of Lestat and Armand's affections, he's more than the guy telling us the story.

Louis is self-loathing and self-aggrandizing; he's victimized by Lestat, and he manipulates Lestat, very aware of his own emotional hold over him (might we note how much agency Louis had over Claudia's turning, and how Lestat in no way would've done that if not for Louis... and that act was arguably one of the most selfish in the series, if emotionally understandable). He's controlled by Armand, yet we get hints that he's actually quite dangerous and perhaps in some sort of self-delusion about just how dangerous he is (and Assad certainly plays Armand like he's nervous as fuck about Louis knowing the truth--and I don't think that's JUST about the possibility of Louis leaving him once he finds out).

Louis tells himself that he loved Claudia more than anything and that she was his "spark in the dark", when we see that in reality their relationship deteriorated over time and continued to do so, even after the person who was seemingly a wedge in their relationship was vanquished. We see hints, perhaps, that Claudia was no more the ideal daughter in his mind than Lestat was the ideal lover.

And that last scene in the premiere? When we're not sure who the "you" is? Sad and kind of horrifying, too. Because like--what will Louis do to Claudia to further his own love and obsessions? Who does Louis prioritize more--Claudia, Lestat, Armand? Maybe none of the above. Maybe himself and what or who he thinks will stave off his own loneliness, his need for love and validation and, yes, power.

None of this is a criticism of the character. The show already did something SO good and SO smart by turning Louis from a white slave owner to a Black man with money and social standing, still so held back by the laws and environment of his day. Vampirism gave him agency, yet the show, in season one, showed the potential for Louis to still be the perpetual tragic victim (in episode five especially). And maybe they'll still slip up and do that.

But increasingly, with the reveal in the s1 finale and the s2 premiere, I think we're getting the implication that the thing Louis could be protecting himself from mentally (with some help from Armand--I don't think Louis's memory issues are all Vampire Magic, though) is something horrible that he did. A choice he made. Because Louis does have agency, and the narrative allows him to be someone with conflicted desires and a complicated sense of self. Someone who doesn't love PRETTILY. Someone who is manipulated and manipulates.

Like, I've joked about him being this kind of like vampiric Helen of Troy because of the allure he holds for powerful figures like Lestat and Armand, but I also think it's so powerful to explore the way that Louis uses that appeal and ALSO makes fucked up decisions on his own because he is... into being adored, frankly. Even if the people who adore him also hurt him. He gets caught up in his own romanticized retellings of his life story, whether heartfelt or tragic, because in those retellings he can pretend that he had no choice, he had no ability to say otherwise.

But like--Louis could have stopped that woman from being decapitated, potentially. Louis didn't have to walk away from human affairs. He chose to do so, just like he chose to beg Lestat to turn Claudia. Just like he chose to deny her Lestat's true death.

And I think there's like, an attempt to reckon with this in the unreliable narration of the books, but I also think that this is so dependent, in Anne Rice's version, on spinning to Lestat... That Louis's culpability and untruths are overshadowed by his Everything. Here, the story lets us soak in Louis's mind, and Jacob Anderson's performance really seals that. I find it so smart.

[eepyuii]

frostbite — pt. 11

pairing ; childe x gender neutral!reader

content ; childhood friends to “rivals” to lovers, slowburn-ish

cw ; several mentions of blood, torture and killing (could you guess that it’s dottore related) as well as mentions of self-loathing

notes ; sorry folks, no childe this time! this is the dedicated sumeru chapter, i am not dwelling any fucking further on it or i might die. this chapter is also solely focused on the relationship between reader and scara! bonding about your fucked up boss with the bitchiest little cockroach on earth <33

honestly pretty happy with this one, it’s got the exact depth of character that i’ve been wanting to add to the reader, their internal moral conflict, their skepticism toward gods and their eternal guilt as to what they’ve gone through with dottore. as well as how they’re definite besties with scaramouche!!

finally, just ignore the nahida logic toward the end- i don’t CARE if it doesn’t make sense in the lore for her to be able to do that and also DONT MIND the self insert of the name i gave to my wanderer. ok goodbye.

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you wish someone had warned you of how cold nights in the rainforest were.

leading up to this trip, you were only trying to mentally and physically prepare yourself for the extreme weathers of sumeru, obviously more directed towards the desert. you expected to only be hit with scalding heat that you’d never once see in snezhnaya— but in the rainforest, where you’d been stationed, it was shivering cold during nighttime. cold is no stranger to you, unspokenly so, but the chilliness in sumerian air was different from the one you grew up with. snezhnayan cold was dry and sharp, like microscopic shards of ice constantly nip at your skin, which you’ve long since learned to bear— though sumerian cold was overwhelmingly humid and smothering, like a—

“can you stop shivering? the sound of your joints shaking is gonna give me a headache.”

oh, that’s right. you were in a room with that brat.

for a moment, for one shining moment you’d forgotten you were in a damp workshop, dottore branded, in the middle of the rainforest with the doctor’s most promising little experiment— the balladeer. it’s only been a few weeks into the collaboration between the sages of the akademiya and the fatui, to create a manmade god out of scaramouche with the electro gnosis he’d previously disappeared with. even thinking about everything that was explained to you about the project made bile rise up to your throat.

“is there even anything inside that porcelain head of yours to ache?” you snarl back.

scaramouche scoffs, you can’t tell if he’s annoyed or amused by your response.

“watch your tongue, vermin. wouldn’t want me to call your boss over and see how fast he finds a new squirming roach to refill your position.”

“for someone destined to be a god, you seem to really rely on a ‘mere mortal’ like dottore to get your way.”

“you cower in his presence like a cornered lamb and then start running your mouth the second he’s away, don’t even try to act as if you’re better than me. you never will.”

“it’s funny that you think someone with an ego as catastrophically big as yours could ever become a real god.”

scaramouche inhales sharply, his eyebrows furrow further as a manifestation of how irked he’s become.

“the gall you have to criticize my divinity… i heard of what you did in liyue, y’know— your little.. moment of unfaithfulness. you were only lucky that the imbecile of a harbinger you were up against wouldn’t dream of hurting you.”

the mere indirect mention of ajax makes your heart stutter—you’d only ever admit to yourself how much you wish you were still back in the golden house facing off against foul legacy instead of here. anything but here. the balladeer, somehow, seems to sense that you space out slightly at his words and presumes his snark.

“unlike him, if you decide to join that pathetic traveler and try to stand in my way, i won’t hesitate to crush you into a fine pulp.”

your fists close so tightly that your nails begin to dig into your palms. “at least i have somewhere else to be and someone else to get to! you have nothing but this, if this fails you’ll stay in this form and remain stuck in dottore’s grasp until he gets bored and finds a better lab rat to experiment on. you chose to isolate yourself in the grasp of a fucking monster like him up to the point where this stupid project is all you have in life and it’s all you’ll lose when it goes shit!”

your outburst seems to have finally broken through scaramouche and you can tell that if he had any veins under his skin, they’d be tensing through it at this moment from how vexed he becomes— if he had any blood, it’d be slowly seeping through his bottom lip from how hard he bites it. even though he’s strapped to a wall of tubes and machinery inside the workshop, he launches as far forward as he can like he means to strangle you where you stand.

“i could end your depressing excuse of an existence right this second if i wanted to!” he practically barks out, his words echo through the empty metallic room as you give up on retaliating. silence invades the space between the two of you while you both pant from how much you’ve argued.

this always, inevitably seemed to happen whenever you and scaramouche interacted— you’d back and forth like bickering siblings until both of you were entirely too pissed off at each other to keep going. it was pointless. knowing someone as ‘take-no-shit’ as the balladeer, you’d expected for him to have reprimanded or even just kill you off for your insolence long ago, but he does nothing and your arguments just happen again and again. you can’t tell if it’s because he recognizes you’re one of the few people who has enough of a brain to try to humble him cleverly or if he’s planning a bigger, more painful demise for you lest you stop overestimating your authority before him.

“why…?” he growls lowly, but this time it doesn’t sound like intends to verbally berate you— rather it sounds like he’s just… frustrated. maybe even with himself.

“why are you so sure that this’ll fail? even if you have that idiot to go back to, you still put your career and your life at risk by working for dottore. why? why do you work in fear of him and skepticism of the tsaritsa’s cause?”

you chuckle bitterly. “i had no choice. if my homeland wasn’t so reliant on its military, i would’ve never even considered getting a medical degree in the first place. and,”

you pause, flashes of dottore’s cruel scarlet gaze stab at your mind and you physically flinch slightly. it seems it hadn’t settled into your chest how imprisoned you were as definitively before— you talk big talk but you’re just as trapped as scaramouche.

“a-and he forced me to. i blinked once and suddenly there was blood on my hands that wasn’t mine and an assistant title over my head.”

scaramouche is silent. you can feel his stare on you but, once again, it doesn’t feel as though he scrutinizes you. a smaller, more hopeful part of your brain whispers to you that he might even be sympathizing with you— even if he’s so convinced that this is righteous, that his godly destiny is finally within his grasp admittedly because of dottore, he still fucking despises that man. probably more than you do, given how much he’s been prodded and tested by him over the years of his position within the fatui.

“would you kill him?” he asks suddenly, the question hangs heavy in the air of the workshop. his tone is quiet and deliberative.

“w-what?” your breath is briefly taken from your throat.

“if you could. if you had the chance to wipe his livelihood off of teyvat, would you do it?”

your mind blanks. it’s equally a simple question and the hardest one you’ve ever had to answer in your life. it’s about an innate desire for liberation, for closure— if you just could would you? but then… it’s also about opportunity, about the possibility of you ever stumbling across the chance to finish him— if you would could you?

now that you think about it, you’ve never considered dottore to be someone killable. he’s always been so up high, so entirely unreachable to anyone around him. the second fatui harbinger is a heavy crown, perhaps not for him to wear but for you to bear witness to. it’s almost as if… he’s the untouchable god here, he’s the culmination of unjust divinity that you so loathe, not scaramouche. it was never scaramouche.

you have your answer.

“no.”

“h-huh? why?”

the balladeer is visibly taken aback, his shoulders roll back slightly and his head leans backwards into the wall. sheer incredulousness overtakes his features before it blends into suspiciously— he’s looking for you to elaborate justly on the choice.

you chuckle. “even if it’s.. not exactly right, i’d love for nothing more, trust me. but comparing the two of us… i think you deserve to stab him in the heart more than i do. you’ve known him for longer and that’s a misfortune few people have.”

his breath hitches. it seems he wholeheartedly did not expect that to be your reason for hypothetically letting go of the chance to make sure dottore feels as much pain as he’s cause you— for it to be so he can return what the doctor has done to him over the years. scaramouche analyzes your expression, as if he’s desperately looking to find the logic in your sympathy, after all you barely know what he’s been through. all you’ve been told is that he was supposedly a puppet prototype created by the electro archon, hence his attachment to the relative gnosis— but beyond that, you can’t even begin to imagine what sorts of hardships he’s been through to turn out as hostile as he is. yet this was still your answer. he looks aimlessly toward the ground defeated and… if you dare to say, he’s trying to hide how much your answer affected him.

“foolish human… once i become a god, it won’t matter wether that doctor lives or not.” scaramouche dismisses with a growl and your suspicions are confirmed.

—

at some point of this project, you became thoroughly convinced that you’re a terrible person.

most of your time has been spent inside joururi workshop, overseeing the construction of scaramouche’s godly form— shouki no kami, it’s been called. even overseeing is a gross overstatement of what you do here, which is essentially nothing. you’re a medical professional specialized in, well, human patients and with the closest thing to a patient here being a doll created by an archon, there’s little for you to do.

within these rusted metal walls, you’ve had more than enough time to think over everything— especially how you work for possibly one of the most terrible people in teyvat and do nothing but cower in his shadow while constantly praying that he gets what he deserves without doing anything about it. you’re pathetic. you’ve since met the traveler and paimon in their current stay in sumeru, they’ve told you about their ventures and investigations around the land in the midst of heroically trying to solve the nation’s problems and have specifically reported to you about their discoverings on a scholar named zandik and his atrocious actions, you don’t need to think twice to wonder who he’s become.

you recall paimon’s look of horror while she retells what they found about zandik murdering a classmate, how adamant he was about investigating a ruin killing machine that took several of his peers, his involvement with the investigation of eleazar, the hospital in the desert— and hearing it all, you couldn’t even muster fake shock. all you do is watch that man do unthinkable, inhuman things without even batting an eye, it’s all normal to you now.

you’re a terrible person.

you can’t even bear to recall the forest ranger the traveler and paimon befriended, that they told you about— collei, an unfortunate victim of eleazar and even worse, former… patient of the doctor. you don’t think you could ever muster up the audacity to look her in the eyes if the two of you ever met. collei is partially why you don’t dare to leave the workshop if unrequired, any venture around the rainforest could very likely lead you to stumble into her and be forced to face the very personification of your guilt.

you spend so much time deliberating over all of this and yet… you still blindly follow after the traveler, paimon and a small girl when they enter the facility.

you hide within the shadows and pipeways of the workshop, watching the three brave souls solve the overly complex and arguably unsafe pathways of the place and waiting for them to unlock the marbled elevator leading to the larger area where scaramouche’s fo— err… shouki no kami rests to await the final touches.

when the puzzles are completed, you move to stand beside the structure of the lift and the traveler is the first to spot you as they arrive. she presents you a small, friendly smile, you don’t think you’re deserving of it. you think you’re much less deserving of the immediate kindness you receive from the small girl who came along with the two travelers. she speaks so wisely and patiently, with a distinct aura… it’s like a change in the air, you’ve only felt it twice— near the tsaritsa’s quarters in zapolyarny palace and during your dinner with zhongli. she’s an archon.

your hands close into fists, nails digging into your palms— you’re so tired of entangling yourself with godly beings. yet… your feet still take you inside the chamber, your fingers still tingle with slowly growing cryo energy, your body still mindlessly wants to help sort this out. nothing will fix what you’ve done, what you’ve been an accomplice to and what you’ve allowed to happen, so why are you still here? why are you still trying to help your friends by sustaining them with your healing capabilities, why are you still putting yourself in the frontlines of danger just to provide the most minimal assistance?

you want to say it’s because you’re itching to see scaramouche get his ass handed to him, but… that’s not it. why isn’t that it? he’s so arrogant and condescending, even more now that he’s so far into divinity— he’s never looked at you as if you were an ant to crush quite as much as he is now. he attacks you so mercilessly, like he promised he would, like your answer to his question truly meant nothing to him. he’d evaporate your and dottore’s existence all the same with his new powers, it leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. though, that taste could also be the blood invading your lips from all the injuries you’re sustaining.

scaramouche, or whatever it is he wishes to be called now, has pushed you to your physical limit and he’s done without breaking a sweat. so why is that something tugs at your chest when he’s desperately clawing out of his cushy seat inside shouki no kami to reach for the gnosis that’s just been torn out of his chest? why do you swallow hard when you hear his nearly crying pleas, or more so threats since it’s scaramouche, for nahida to take anything but the gnosis— his wails that he’ll never go back to what he was before?

and moreover, why do you sprint to catch him, despite how entirely hurt and exhausted you are, when the tubes on his back finally give way and he proceeds to fall from the absurd height of his mechanical form? why do your eyes sting when you fail to catch him and he hits the ground with a devastating cloud of smoke? why is there a warm wetness flowing down your cheeks as you spot a crack on his pale porcelain skin, obviously a consequence of his hard impact against the marbled floor.

and the most vexing question of all— why does nahida let you stay as she whisks away his unconscious form?

—

it’s ironic how much you hate gauzes.

they’re so itchy… they prick at your skin and press uncomfortably against your injuries— you’re only lucky you’re usually tending to others’ wounds rather than receiving them. in fact, the other way around occurs so rarely that you don’t even remember how you got hurt this time. it truly, wholeheartedly escapes your mind and you consider yourself to be someone with a good memory.

every time you try to recall how you got injured, it’s like a buzzing sensation in your brain, a hurtful one, that doesn’t reveal a single mental image of the situation. you’re almost beginning to consider the possibility that you just fell from your bed while sleep and fell so hard that you had to be bedridden in sumeru city while dottore took off to the motherland without a glance back. but to be fair, he’s probably still fuming internally from having to shut down all of his clones at once before the new, young goddess of wisdom.

personally, you’d say it serves him right for uh.. f-for err… what was it again?

gods, you must’ve hit your head when you fell from your bed— that has to be why you’re struggling so hard to remember what dottore was doing in sumeru, the very reason you were transferred here so abruptly.

though, you don’t dwell on the matter for much longer, as nahida, the traveler, paimon and… an unknown person walk into the little room inside the sanctuary of surasthana that you were given. all four of them stare at you expectantly, especially the individual you’ve never seen before— you note that he wears a ridiculously wide hat.

“so… did you intend for them to remember?” paimon asks with uncertainty, still looking at you up and down.

“…no, you idiot. did you forget that i intended to erase myself from the world?” the stranger scoffs toward paimon, you’re slightly unnerved by his rudeness.

he looks over to you and you swear that his gaze unhardens in the most microscopic degree, as if he’s saddened that you… apparently don’t remember something.

“there just—“ he pauses with a sigh and looks toward nahida. “there has to be another way, right?”

the small archon proceeds to gaze down at the floor aimlessly, finger tapping her chin and quiet hum escaping her throat as she thinks deeply. she shakes her head in disappointment.

“directly, no— i can’t extract memories of theirs that don’t exist anymore due to your wish. the closest thing to that would be for me to replicate the compilation of memories i showed to you, only narrowing it down to the moments between the two of you. they’d be watching their past self from your perspective.”

the strangers gaze lights up, once again in the slightest, and he nods vehemently. “yes yes, try that.”

you feel like you’re in a fever dream, or an out-of-body experience where you’re not present in the room at all as they continue to discuss something to do with you that you couldn’t decipher to save your own life. you frown and stand up frustratedly.

“i-i’m sorry, are any of you gonna explain what in teyvat is happening? what memories, what wish? i mean— who even is this guy?!” you gesture to him incredulously.

nahida quietly steps over to stand right in front of you and cups both of your hands into her own with the softest, most gentle hold you’ve ever felt. she looks up at you with equal patient and shoots you a sympathetic smile.

“y/n, please answer this honestly, would you trust me to do this? i know we only met recently, but i promise you i would not take a subordinate of the doctor under my care after they willingly injured themselves to assist me, only to put them back in harm’s way later.”

your eyebrows furrow with confusion once more— you willingly hurt yourself for nahida? not saying that you’d never do that with full consciousness but… how in her majesty’s name could you have possibly injured yourself to the extent you’re currently recovering from?

she chuckles. “that is how you would expectedly react to such a wild reveal of information. but what i am attempting to do next is with the full intent to help you remember what happened. i can’t promise it will fully work, as i’ve never done this before, but i’ll do my best to make sure it will not damage you in any way— past a mild headache, i’d say. i just need you to trust me.”

gods, how could you ever say no to such a soothing presence like nahida’s? there isn’t a single bone in your body that thinks she’s lying to you. plus, the stranger looks at you with such innocent expectancy that there’s an odd pang in your chest, though you don’t know why it’d ever react like that.

you face nahida once again and nod firmly. “i trust you.”

her smile widens with satisfaction and she steps away from you, turns slightly to the side, closes her eyes and joins her palms. after a few seconds she produces a small, blindingly glowing green orb. it’s got several specks of stylized sigils radiating from it, ones that are signature to nahida’s abilities. you give each person in the room a quick glance and they all grin up at you as a silent wish of good luck— except for the stranger, who looks ever so slightly anxious.

you touch the orb.

the first thing you feel is the forewarned headache, it hits you with full force instantaneously. next is horrifically blurred images of… you, from someone else’s perspective. in one image, you’re looking unsuredly at the person, as if it’s a first meeting and not a friendly one— you note that the background seems to be dottore’s lab. next is another environment resemblant of dottore’s work and you’re found in the dead center, yelling with at the person with genuine, irreplicable anger— you note that the perspective is taller than you, as if the subject is physically taller than you or… mounted to a wall or something. finally, the most blurred image of all, you’re sprinting toward the subject from afar with terrified tears forming at your eyes, arms stretched out in front of you as if you’re trying to catch something— you note that you’re upside down in the perspective and it’s in motion, as if the subject is actively falling head first into the ground.

your head really fucking hurts.

your brain is entirely unsure of what to do with the information it’s fed but… what does it mean for you? that you knew the man in front of you and physically forgot of his existence? now what— you still can’t put a name to the face, or the face to someone you know at all!

the stranger seems to recognize exactly what you’re feeling and steps up to exclaim.

“dottore— would you kill him?”

and it’s like everything clicks.

suddenly, you remember everything. you’re hit with a frying pan to the head’s worth of memories, of familiarities and it all clicks with the point of view you were shown. he’s here, he’s okay. and he’s very obviously not a god anymore.

your mouth hangs open as immediate tears gather at the corner of your eyes and you examine him up and down. he’s wearing different clothes, they’re blue and turquoise now— and most of all, he’s got a shiny new anemo vision hung over the left side of his chest. no, more importantly than that, the crack on his porcelain skin is gone. you’re so relieved.

“n-no.” you manage to get out in a shaky, sob-y voice, big relieved smile on your face.

he’s forced to suppress a chuckle at your answer, one that he fails at hiding before you could fully register it. he looks to the side and pulls his hat slightly downwards.

“glad to see you haven’t lost your head, worm.”

you laugh warmly, tears freely flowing before you pause for a moment— sure you’re happy to see him again but… what was his name again? it’s at the very tip of your tongue, to the point where it’s frustrating. it just never comes out.

“wait, uhm— this’ll sound weird but… w-what do i call you? i don’t know if i’ve fully recovered my memories, i just can’t figure it out.”

“wanderer.”

“wanderer..? i-is that a proper name or a title, are you—“

“i’m not going back to the fatui. i have no business there.”

“oh…”

“don’t sulk. i’ll still get my revenge on dottore later.” he teases.

the traveler nudges.. wandere’s side and he coils away with a scowl briefly, before the notices the knowing look on her face. he takes a moment to understand what she’s implying.

“and i suppose… there is another name, i’m not as used to it.”

“what is it?”

“…kunikuzushi.”

“kunikuzushi…” you sound it out and nod with an approving smile.

“i like that.”

taglist ; @kentply @osaemu @rain-and-a-nice-nap @koichirana

[partywithoutsmiling]

Do you think you can tell us what happens in would tour specifically at the end when the strings are broken? Is branch there? Does the world go gray or does it stay colourful because their technically is more strings? Oooooo how do the leaders react/find out about this random gray troll who sum how has made more strings?!?!

I think Branch would be there for sure

Skipping ahead of the timeline, after the events of the 1st movie- and realizing Poppy did miss him, he would be rather reluctant to leave his Tribe again for a while (his reawakened crush on Poppy certainly not helping matters)

However, he has now been on the move for so long, that staying in one place indefinitelly gives him jitters (and bit of a spoiler, but he did manage to meet at least one of his brothers on his travels, that made him realize that perhaps this Wanderlust is hereditary to an extent)

Also ever since returning to Pop Village, he came to realization that King Peppy seem to know more about the wide world than Branch had suspected; before, he just thought that the Pop Troll's ignorance stemmed from their isolation and decades of selective culling- knowledge and histories are bound to be lost and forgotten in that case, but given the nervous glances Peppy sends his attire and his rock guitar, Branch can put one and one together.

But Peppy doesn't ask and Branch doesn't offer any explanation, and while Poppy is curious enough to ask Branch where he went, she doesn't push when he just says 'away'. She still remembers when Branch just up and disappeared one day and no-one cared to notice that for weeks- to an extent, not even her, even though she is the most aware of his prensence than anyone.

After that fiasco with the funeral, Poppy just figured Branch holed up himself in his bunker to sulk- or so she thought- and will come out when ready. And truthfully, she thought that it was, for once, a good idea- because the mood of the community was not great, when it came to the grey troll, and she herself was at loss what to say or do to make it better. She could hardly defend Branch's actions for all that she understood his freakout (at least a little bit)

It was only when more time than usual passed that she grew concerned- while the other trolls around her didn't.

A little bit of angsty idea was that Branch, in his shame, left behind both Floyd's vest and his old Hideout Plan, as those were two mementos that really tied him to his old life, and Poppy- with bit of brute force- managed to get her way into the bunker and found both.

She was really just a teenager then- and was suddenly forced to come to a reality where a Troll that was supposed to be her responsibility as a future Queen just... left. Left, because he felt so unwelcome in the Village- unwelcome in her presence- that feelings themselves driven him away.

And similar to Branch, Poppy had no idea other trolls existed- there was only the Village and the Bergen Town, and all the dangers that existed between it. It was unspoken rule that to leave the Village meant a certain death- and here she was, holding Branch's iconic vest that he never ever takes off, holding a yellowed scrapbooked plan of childlike wonder, that revealed a familial history of heartbreak and abandonment (after all, she knows these names, she knows Brozone songs and trivia by heart)....

Honestly, She and Branch probably came to be peas in a pod, when it comes to feeling of self-loathing and lack of self-worth.

After all, perfect Queens don't allow their subject to become outcasts

Perfect Queens don't turn blind eye towards unjustified shunning

Perfect Queens don't certainly drive away their friends to perish in the wilderness

And for the next 4 years- especially after the uncomfortable realization that only handful of people even care that Branch was gone- she felt deep guilt and suppresed grief very keenly, plagued by what ifs; what if she went to him the day after the funeral, what if she checked up on him that very night- would he had stayed? What if she never pushed him like she did, secretly delighting in crafting the most annoying glitter-spewing invitations, knowing it irritated him What if she was kinder, respected his refusals better, listened to his warnings

Would he had stayed?

And honestly, up until the point that he returned, she had no answers, and thought she would never got any

So after their reunion, she burns with questions and curiosity- and holds it back, because he already left once, and she is terrified to push him away again, this time for good. Because that's what she focuses on now- he came back.

Of course, that relief changes nothing when mere seventh months after their peace with the Bergens- after they repaired their village, after Poppy got used to having Branch by her side, singing, dancing, playing, harmonizing

She is suddenly feeling like thrown into a cold water when he tells her he wants to go traveling again, and all the fears and past grief comes rushing

I believe they would have quite the row about it- unknowingly reminding Branch of the night his brothers argued and left, which only pushes him to be angrier- while Poppy uses her outburst to hide the irrational terror she feels

So it ends with Branch storming off in a huff and Poppy storming off in a huff- but when her senses catches up to her and she is quite panicked to make ammends and to sooth the argument over, Branch is long gone

Few more months passes, and while not as cheerful, Poppy tries to keep herself upbeat- then the invitation comes, Peppy finally admits to there being more kind of trolls, and to her it is like Oh, of course.

The excitement returning, she now has secondary goal to her 'unite the tribes together' under big party- she just knows Branch is living with one of the tribes now- and she is right, when she encounters him in Lonesome Flats

(Well, after he learnes that she got thrown into jail for her Crimes against Music that is pf)

Branch, naturally, still has no idea about the Strings (as he dipped out before Peppy gave that piece of history away) but learning about them now doesn't give him any more peace of the mind. Contrary to his first mindset in the original plot- where he wanted to avoid the other trolls altogether- he is now stalwart defender of all genres, and hates the idea of any of them disappearing.

(A side note: in his wanderings, I think the only rulers- or would be rulers- that he had met was Delta, Trollex and Barb; Trollex had just been freshly crowned and Barb has not been queen yet) (He and Barb probably struck a very odd friendship- where Branch had no idea he was hanging out with the princess of Rock- namely because Rock Trolls didn't use the term of 'prince' and 'princess' for their heirs- and he probably told her all about his travels) (Hearing that she is behind this mess makes him feel horrified. Did he gave her the idea to try and take over the world?)

Anyway, events happens, the finale comes- the final showdown XD

Only, the fight plays out quite differently

Branch and Barb being friends, he confronts her about what she's doing and quite stubbornly gets into her face about her ideas. Dares her to change him the way she wants to change everyone- dares her to erase him, like she dreams about

It makes her hesitate for sure- she already went so far, and wont be stopped now. Expression hardening, she aims her guitar at Poppy and strikes the chord- not expecting Branch to jump between them.

This event probably doesnt have the desired effect that she imagined. Had Branch had been just a normal Pop Troll- or as close as to one genre as one can get, he would have been Zombified without any issues.

But with the Power Chord, it's Strings against Strings- and the results are probably quite... explosive. Devastatingly so.

Only, Branch has an unknowing advantage- his seventh String, shining so innocently from his hair among the others.

When it comes to matching powers, the Royal Rock Guitar looses, pathetically so- and as the stage around them explodes, so does the guitar, taking the power of music with it, leeching everything of colours and light, untill nothing but darkness and greyscale remains.

Except for a singular troll that stands tall and proud in the middle of it all, injured, sure, but colourful, rainbow heart shining through the fuzz on his chest, the strings in his hair glowing brighter than ever XD

[lunarspiral1127]

X-Men 97 episode 6 *SPOILERS*

Shi'ar Empire/Space

Honestly, I wasn't expecting to see them and get an update on Xavier in this episode cause I thought this was gonna be the full Lifedeath conclusion, so more focus on Storm. But, I think it's nice to see how he's doing.

This is the first time we see Deathbird AKA Lilandra's sister in the X-Men animated series, and I like her look.

Gladiator is such a stoic bad@$$. Ngl, after seeing him fight after so long, Superman popped into my head. I think it was the powerset he displayed.

Ronan and the Kree! I wasn't expecting to see them cause we never had the Kree mentioned or shown in the previous show, so this was a nice surprise. Aldo, it's so refreshing to see Ronan the Accuser in his more comic- accurate outfit. Cause, I've only recently seen him and the Kree in their MCU outfits, so seeing the classics was nice.

Noticed Vulcan during the beginning....kinda awkward cause he's Scott's other brother. Dunno if they'll do anything with that, but then again, they didn't do much with Havok in the previous show.

It's good to see Xavier healthy again, but why hasn't he checked up on the X-Men during that year? Why didn't he let them know that he's okay? Is it because of that black hole?

Didn't know Xavier was interested in being Lilandra's....pet....psychics be kinky.

Xavier talking about Magnus....oh god, when he finds out what happened to him....

Man, even in space, mutants can't catch a break! Xavier gonna be emperor along with Lilandra, and these sunsofbeeches hate it cause he's Terran AND a mutant. Like, can the mutants EVER get anything nice?!

Xavier was willing to forgo his memories on Earth and of his friends and family. Just to be with Lilandra....god dammit, this show really is a soap opera.

Xavier educating the Shi'ar council, Deathbird, Gladiator, and even Lilandra on their system and why it's bad was pretty funny. Dude was going back to being a teacher. And, I thought he was succeeding until....

The vision. Now, he knows what happened to Genosha, and he gotta go back. Good, cause they need him more than ever. I just wish it didn't have to break him and Lilandra up. Like, can we have a good relationship that doesn't end in a breakup, death, or have way too much drama, please?!?!

GAMBIT!!! 😭 It still hurts! But, the vision could also be foreshadowing that he'll become Death of the Four Horsemen. And Magneto wasn't there, so does that mean he survived?!

Storm, Forge, and the Adversary

Storm called Forge "my love". She was mad at him earlier, but I guess despite the anger, she loves him too and understood that he tried to help her despite what he did.

The Adversary is spooky. I didn't get how they appeared, but from what the show says, the demon appears to feed on the self-loathing, so they sensed Forge AND Storm and came to them.

Storm's fear of tight spaces comes into play. The Adversary used her fear against her which almost worked. First time Forge was able to banish the demon, despite being poisoned, and the second time, Storm overcame her fears and doubts and got her powers back.

Oh yeah, MISTRESS OF THE ELEMENTS IS BACK!!! 🤩 She even got her iconic black outfit with the tiara! I'll miss her classic white outfit, though. And she got her long hair back! No offense to the mohawk.

Shoutout to @stormandforge for talking about how she got her powers back cause I was so confused and sleep-deprived. What makes the most sense was the machine Forge used worked. It's just that she had some kind of mental/psychological block going on with her powers and had to overcome it to reactivate them. Kinda like how Peter lost his powers in Spider-Man 2. As for how she got her outfit, well, Storm, in the very first episode in the previous show, used her lightning to change outfits. So, I chopped it off to that. Yeah, lightning doesn't work like that, but she looks beautiful! The hair was actually what I was most confused about cause she had a mohawk, and suddenly, her hair got long again? I thought some parts of her head was shaved. So how did her change? Same way as the outfit?

Forge is cured, so fingers crossed these two will be together and not end poorly and messy as it did in the comics. Please, I just need one good relationship in this freaking show that isn't gonna end in tragedy.

And she knows about Genosha. God, I really hope she doesn't get survivors guilt over this. But, we need her and Xavier more than ever with what's to come.

The rest

Y'know, it was one thing for Trask to be involved with the massacre, but Mr. Sinister? I wasn't expecting that. I thought it was the FoH or Apocalypse or maybe Nimrod. Either way, I'm mad now that I know who's responsible cause how dare them kill Gambit, Magneto, Leech and the others, and hurt Nightcrawler and Rogue! I really hope that they find a way to finish him off for good and make it hurt like hell!

NIGHTCRAWLER GOT TO BE PART OF THE INTRO!!! 🤩 Does that mean he's gonna be finally part of the X-Men? Will we ever get him using his swords? Cause they keep teasing that!

I just wish it wasn't at the expense of Magneto and Gambit's intros. Man, I was bracing myself, and they had to do that and the recap! UGH, IT STILL HURTS! 😭

The episodes have really alternated with multiple storylines in this show. The previous one usually focuses on one story at a time.

So, that's pretty much it. Good episode. One more episode left until even more trauma will be inflicted on us cause 8-10 are gonna be a doozy.

[princess-of-the-corner]

Sorry, just discovered your public knowledge au, its hilarious. I think 'realistically' I like the Only Miraculous wielders & whoever they tell knows version as it could feel a bit less cracky though it'd still beg why they don't bring other heroes in to collectively stomp Gabriel as they know his location. Though that just has me imagining him palming it off on his various rich friends like a hot potato. Anyway two main thoughts:

`1: For the just Holders know AU, Gabriel owns up to his motives right away & almost convinces the kids. Except Fu shows up & reveals that its basically a monkeys paw and more people will die if he makes is wish. Gabriel insists he s smart enough to work around that (He also just doesn't care) but Tikki & Plagg are like, "Literally we have no control over this, it goes to shit every single time, sorry."

In essence, its his ego and control freak nature that mean Gabriel refuses to give up even when he and everyone else know he should quit. Its probably kind of a sad/rough start for Adrien especially, but also leads to very quick positive vibes with Marinette & more direct mentorship.

2: Rogercop be like

Chloe: Well, seeing as you won't do your damn job, how about our classes two super heroes show you up? Adrien: I am one hundred percent down for that except I can't find Plagg! Marinette: Ya know I've wanted to try this anyway, Luck Charm! (Gets a Plagg doll with his head snuck in the bracelet) Well that answers that.

Later

Tikki: How did you even get stuck we can phase through soli matter.., Oh this is interesting and maybe concerning. Chloe: What can it do magic, is it a Miraculous? Plagg: Well its tied to a Miraculous, where'd you find this?

Chloe: Back of my mothers cupboard? Andre: You aren't meant to have that (Tries to snatch) Chloe: Why, what is it!? Can it do magic?

Andre: If by magic you mean mind control you- don't break it you'll explode! Chloe: Why do you own a mind controlling bracelet that only works on me and kills me if it breaks and why was it in a fucking dust covered pile of half forgotten trash!? Andre: ... Its your mot- Gabriel's fault, blame him, now I have a meeting to get to bye! (Runs away)

Butterflies appear Adrien: Dad, glad you could... Make it. Gabriel: Well I am here now, also the Amok's treatment is very much 'not' my fault, it is like that because your parents don't love you.

Adrien: DAD! Gabriel: I am a magical empath son, I know it to be true, your mother and I were much more careful with your Amok & sealed it away so it could never be used against you or damaged. Those two tossed it in a cupboard once they realized it couldn't just rewrite a babies personality, or any personality, to not need things like food or affection, if they hadn't already made the announcement they'd have probably smashed it or given it away. Gabriel: By it I mean Chloe.

Chloe: Oh... (Uses the Amok to turn herself 'off' IE pass out) Gabriel: Dammit, I was hoping the truth would cause her to explode in a rage never before seen and become my most powerful Akuma! I can't even use this self destructive self loathing, she's too depressed to even transform! (Leaves)

Honestly this started out kind of funny then I made myself sad.

Gabriel: I wonder if I should mention the sister they had made as a replacement. That one didn't turn out how they wanted either but they did skip the baby phase.

GOD the chaos there.

But also yeah the AU is mostly crack because tbh I can't see an identity reveal happening that doens't immediately lead to an ending one way or another.

But also OOF.

[cosmicjoke]

Alright, so... Chapter 210 of "Vinland Saga"...

Excuse me a moment while I go cry in a corner.

Shit, man, this chapter got to me hard.

Spoilers ahead, for anyone who hasn't read it.

I'm so scared Thorfinn is going to die. He was shot full of arrows, just like his father. Hild saved him, and my immediate question is, "how?". Did she have to kill to save him? To get him on her back and carry him out? The fact we aren't shown what happened after she shot her arrow makes me think she did. Or did she manage to do it while only wounding the natives? She only had four arrows left, and there were more than four natives in pursuit. If she did have to kill to get him out, then I wonder how that's going to impact Thorfinn himself, assuming he survives. To know Hild will have had to take on that burden, of taking a life to save his, would be devastating to him, I think. In it's own way, it would almost be like a condemnation to him of his pacifist philosophy, that because he didn't want to kill, the burden of it has now fallen to another. I know Thorfinn would blame himself, even though this situation truly wasn't his fault, and spun out of his control due to forces beyond his power.

I really didn't expect this turn of events. I thought Thorfinn and Hild would take care of the pursuers in the forest and then make their way to the village. But Thorfinn clearly has a punctured lung from the arrow he took for Einar, and now he's been shot full of arrows, which, at the moment, I'm honestly having a really hard time seeing how he'll survive. His condition also totally takes him out of the game in terms of defending the village and its people at all.

And now Hild and him are faced with Plmk, and I have no idea if he's hostile or not. If he's hostile, they're fucked, which makes me think he's going to end up helping them, somehow. But even if he does, it doesn't do anything for Thorfinn's condition. Like I said, I'm really scared at this point for him.

And then there was Thorfinn's dream sequence, which was just heartbreaking in the extreme. His vision of Thorkill, basically saying 'I told you so', saying war would come to Vinland, no matter how hard Thorfinn tried to avoid it. And even more devastating, Ivar and then Einar, blaming Thorfinn for everything. We see here in Thorfinn's subconscious his true feelings, rooted in a sense of failure. We see how badly Einar's parting words to him have affected him. Einar's anger and bitterness toward him. I've spoken before about how it would, in many ways, be the ultimate sacrifice to his ideals, if Thorfinn were to lose Einar's friendship, his first and best friend, and the man who gave him a sense of purpose in life beyond his quest for revenge against Askeladd. If Einar truly ends up turning against him, if he refuses to leave, and takes the path of war, I don't see how their friendship can continue. Maybe that will change when he sees Thorfinn's condition, but realistically, I think him seeing what's been done to Thorfinn will only fuel Einar's rage and refusal to give up what they've built.

God, Thorfinn wanted so badly to make a land of peace, to atone for the sins of his past by creating a land of peace and saving more lives than he took, but now it's all gone to hell, and people have been killed. His vision of Einar telling him his experiment has failed, and that it was an important experiment, because it shows how peace can never really be achieved, shows the depths of Thorfinn's despair, I think, and the depths of his self-loathing. This is truly just a tragedy playing out before our eyes.

It's made all the more poignant, I think, by Hild's words to Thorfinn, telling him not to lose heart, telling him he wasn't wrong about anything, and if only the world were full of more people like him, maybe there really could be hope for a world without war. She calls Thorfinn precious, and I think that's true. But tragically, as we're seeing, the world isn't filled with people like Thorfinn, and that makes Thorfinn's dream an impossibility. There's always going to be someone who wants to start a war, there's always going to be someone who wants to take what isn't theirs, there's always going to be someone who wants to hurt you or those you love and care for, no matter how much you try to talk them out of it. The world is too complex and brutal for pacifism to ever be a reality, and that is a tragedy.

I don't know what's going to happen back at the village at this point, either. It seems to me anyone could die. Thorfinn was their best defense, and now he's out of commission.

Ugh, man, this chapter hit me on a deep, emotional level.

Don't die Thorfinn. I'll be devastated if you do.

Also, just again, shout out to Yukimura's art. I don't know how this guy does it month after month. His art is second to none.

[fallingintolife]

Oh, Come On!

Request: Reader proposing to dean and dean getting legitimately mad because he wanted to propose first

Summary: You and Dean had never intended on falling for each other in the first place, but here you both were years later and now it was time for someone to pop the question. Or maybe two someone's…?

Pairing: Dean Winchester x reader

Warnings: A few curses, and of course some angst…but mostly all the fluff 💕

Word Count: 1,462

A/N: @smiling-girl I'm sorry this one took me a little bit but I really hope you enjoy it! It was fun to get into Dean's character and I'm kind of excited to do it more 💕

If you asked anyone who knew Dean Winchester if they ever thought he'd settle down, get married, and leave the hunter life for an apple pie one, they'd immediately tell you there was no way. Dean had always said that that life just wasn't in the cards for him. Until he met you. You were a hunter at a young age just like Dean and had also never seen yourself settling down with anyone. Which was why you and Dean had even started hooking up in the first place. It started with just flirting, then hooking up when you were both in the same area on a hunt, to helping each other on hunts, to then meeting up wherever you could even if you weren't exactly in the same area. That was when things went from casual hook ups to having real feelings for each other.

You both tried to deny your feelings because that wasn't part of the plan! You both had never planned on actually caring for each other and…falling in love. A few fights and self-sabotages later you both finally came to the conclusion that you both would at least try to give this a shot. Because you both knew how this would most likely end but were at peace with that.

Fast forward five years later and now here you are, living in the Bunker with both of the boys and more nervous than you had ever been in your entire life. Which…damn, that meant something since you had been hunting since you were eight… This decision though would either end with you and Dean being engaged (which was the best case scenario) or end with him rejecting you meaning you would have ruined the best relationship you had ever had. (worst case scenario…which to be honest was probably more likely going to be the outcome because you'd  never had good luck to begin with and neither had Dean…) You wanted this though. And God willing you hope Dean did too…

Tonight you and Dean had scheduled a date night, meaning going on a drive in Baby, grabbing dinner at the local diner, and then parking in an open lot while looking up at the stars before you both headed home. It was going to be the absolute perfect time to propose to Dean. Rather he'd like to admit it or not Dean loved a good chick flick, and proposing under the stars while in Baby? If that wasn't the picture perfect part in a chick flick then hell- you didn't know what was.

Dean actually hadn't even noticed that you had been nervous all night. Because truth be told, Dean was also battling with the same thoughts and feelings as you were.

Dean had tried, really tried not to fall for you. He tried to push you away, self sabotaged, and even yelled at you, thinking that one of those things would make you run for the hills. The irony about the whole situation though was that you tried to use those same tactics on him. Which just showed him that you cared just as much as he did, and that you were just as scared to fuck it all up. Dean and you had talked about how people like them didn't get happy endings. There was no apple pie life for them. They knew that when they did finally die that it would be during a hunt. That was when Dean had come to the conclusion that you were both on the same page. That was when he proposed that you both should give your relationship a try. To his surprise you agreed. He honestly didn't think you'd stay. I mean, who wants to be with someone like him? A ticking, self-loathing time bomb? You apparently and shit, if that's what you wanted, knowing good and well about the consequences…he was okay with that.

So, now, here he was driving to an empty lot that he always drove to for you both to look at the stars and finally propose. And he was terrified.

Because he loved you. Dean Winchester loved you. So he at least had to ask you to marry him. I mean, he didn't think you'd stay as long as you had in the first place. He had to try and if that meant him having to beg you to stay because he didn't know what he would do without you? Well then he'd do it because dammit- Dean would do anything for you.

Before you knew it, Dean had parked Baby in what became her normal spot here when you came. The radio was playing quietly in the background and the night sky was particularly lit up, full of stars tonight. This was it. You could do this.

"Um…Dean?" Clearing your throat you looked over at him, both of your eyes meeting.

"Yeah sweetheart?" He raised an eyebrow at her, gently pushing a stray lock of hair behind your ear. It was now or never.

"Um I…do you remember what you told me when we finally decided to give this relationship thing a shot?" Dean sat back for a second rubbing his chin in thought, and then laughed.

"I'm pretty sure I told you that you must be bat shit crazy if you thought being with me was a good idea, which you replied with-"

"Right back at you Winchester." You cut him off as you laughed reliving that moment. You then took a deep breath as you looked into his green eyes.

"Look Dean…I…I think that neither of us thought this would work out…but by some miracle it has. And I know that hunters don't have happy ends, that- that's just how it goes…but I don't need a happy ending like in a fairytale or-or a rom-com. As long as I am with you I'm happy." Your hand shakily pulled the small ring box out of your jean pocket and held it in front of him.

"Dean Winchester, will you marry me?" You held your breath, eyes locked on his, praying if not for him to say yes, then at least for him to say something…

"Son of a bitch!" Okay well…maybe not that…you definitely weren't expecting that to come out of his mouth and with such an angry tone…so you had now found a worse worst case scenario…

"Dean…I'm…I'm sorry. I- I just…I'm sorry. Forget I said anyth-"

"You couldn't give me five more minutes? And in Baby! I can't believe you'd steal my thunder like that!" Dean was squeezing the bridge of his nose in what seemed like…frustration? So now you were confused. Really confused. Before you could even ask what the hell he was talking about he was holding his mom's ring in front of you. Wait. He was…he was going to propose? To you? Tonight? "You didn't even give me the chance to pull out the good stuff or anything." You stared at him incredulously when you realized what the problem was.

"Wait. Are you-are you mad that I proposed to you first?" Dean let out a huff.

"Well…yeah! I mean I had this whole speech planned out and you beat me to it…" Dean was staring down at the ring he held in-between his fingers. He was more angry with himself that you felt like you had to propose because you never thought he would. However, that was not your thoughts at all.

"Ask me." A slight whisper, just loud enough for Dean to hear, made him look up at you. A smile was slowly appearing on your lips as tears, happy tears, began to glimmer in your eyes. "Ask me." You said again. He couldn't help the grin that appeared on his face as he held the ring out to her with one hand, and gently caressed his thumb against your cheek with the other.

"Y/N, sweetheart, will you marry me?"

"Yes. A thousand times yes!" You immediately kissed him, happy tears falling down your face (and some from Dean's, even though he'd never admit it…). Dean slipped the engagement ring on your finger.

"Yes. To me, wanting to marry you too, you know, since you asked." You let out a giggle of delight, placing the pure silver ring on his finger.

As much as it frustrated Dean that you had beat him to the punch at first, once he realized that you did actually want him and you wanted to be with him; nothing else mattered. Nothing but you and him for the rest of the time you both had left. If you were both gonna go you were go out together and that's all Dean could ask for, was for you to be by his side for the rest of his life.

[johannestevans]

Rescue Dogs

Do you like traumatised young men with no sense of agency or bodily autonomy? Of course you do.

Do you enjoy a narrative where the once-chosen one has to live with not being chosen anymore, not being important anymore, no longer being the hero everybody wants and needs? Do you enjoy a narrative where, having been chewed up and spit out by their destiny, that ex-hero wonders if they should ever have been a hero at all?

Do you like the idea of the aforementioned mentally unstable young man stalking his ex-PE teacher, who he tried desperately to get to fuck him at school, but never would? Do you like the idea of that ex-teacher, lonely and isolated and miserable and more than a bit self-loathing, finally giving in and actually fucking him?

Do you like reading about abuse victims trying to come to terms with everything that's been done to them? The ways in which they've been failed - and the ways in which their instinct is to fail others? Do you like seeing characters who are utterly fucked up by being CSA victims, but are trying their best anyway?

Do you like when one member of an honestly fucked up and unbalanced relationship is trying desperately to convince his more vulnerable partner to seek help? Go to therapy? Realise that he deserves better?

Do you like it when men identify just a bit too much with abused dogs?

If the answer to any or all of the above is yes, I think you might really like my serial, Rescue Dogs, which is about all that shit and more, and you can read it online for free!

Rescue Dogs

Rated E, M/M. Cecil Hobbes finally gets Valorous King to try a new adventure: therapy. Cecil Hobbes, an ex-PE teacher disgraced and looked down on in his hometown, has a new partner: Sir Valorous King, a knight of the realm, once a child of prophecy, and Cecil’s stalker. A few months into their relationship, Cecil finally convinces Valorous to see a therapist, on the condition that Cecil attend one himself.

Read on Ao3 (free) / / Read on Medium (paid) / / Read on WorldAnvil (free)

Want to give it a try?

First chapter is here:

It wasn’t accurate to say that Cecil Hobbes had never lived with someone in his house before. Of course he had – he’d never been married in his life, and by definition none of his relationships really lasted more than two or three years, but he’d had lads in his house, over the years, here and there.

For a few months at a time, he’d had old army mates stay in the house while they got back on their feet and found a job elsewhere; he’d had lads whose families had kicked them out, or who couldn’t make up money for rent on their own flats.

And he usually had dogs, tended to have at least one, sometimes two or three.

Cecil was a man who liked to be on his own, but to be on his own didn’t mean that he needed to be the only person around. He’d grown up in a crowded house as a young lad, a lot of his older brothers still around – then they’d all gotten jobs, Randall and Vic had died, and suddenly it had just been him in the house with his mum and dad, and it’d been… Odd.

In the army, though, you were never on your own even if you were on your own, and it was the same once he was teaching.

But he’d never—

It was his house.

He’d bought it, took out the mortgage as soon as he’d started teaching in Lashton, and he’d put all his savings into it to make sure he could fucking pay off the thing – which was why he had no money now, yeah, but also meant he had a house to come back to once he was out of the nick. Even when there were people in his house, seventeen-year-olds he’d fucked twice and then let sleep in the spare room while they were studying for their exams, or old mates he’d served with who were knocking on doors all around until someone hired them, they were guests, whether they stayed for three weeks or a year and a half.

Valorous King, with whom Cecil Hobbes was recently involved, invited himself into Cecil’s house like it belonged to him too.

The first time he’d come in, it’d had been after drugging Cecil with a poisoned cigarette and knocking him out – the intention had been to make him dinner, dose him with some sort of souped-up magical Viagra, and make sure that Cecil fucked him.

He’d gotten distracted, though, by the state of Cecil’s house. Cecil’s house, which since he’d come back from the nick had gotten messier and dirtier because he didn’t have many friends any longer and he didn’t bring anyone he fucked home with him: he’d come in, seen it was filthy, seen there were bottles and cans and fag packets everywhere, seen there were piled up dirty dishes, dirty clothes, and like he was a born fucking housewife, he’d just started cleaning it all up.

Cecil had woken up groggy and out of it to a cooked dinner waiting for him in the oven, and his very own infamous stalker telling him he’d done his washing and put out all his bins.

It’d been months since then.

Cecil’s house was cleaner that it had been since he’d fucking bought it, all of his clothes clean and pressed and put away, all of his fucking documents and records organised and put into file boxes.

He’d always been quite a neat guy, depression notwithstanding, and he didn’t actually have all that many possessions in the house, but Valorous took cleanliness and neatness to the extreme.

He kept having arguments with the dog.

“Ruby!” said Valorous, and Cecil looked up from the paper, watching as Valorous came into the house either from work or the gym – he smelt of sweat and heat and his skin was shiny with it, and Cecil’s hands twitched with the urge to pull him up the stairs to fuck him while he was still tired, lick the sweat off his chest.

Ruby had been chained up in a yard for the first two years of her life, was intermittently shouted at and beaten by the family she’d come from, was terrified of kids and other dogs. She didn’t know what to make of Valorous King – she needed a calm, easygoing hand, not a fucking neurotic little prick.

“Why’s your toy on the floor?” Valorous asked, brandishing a squeaky carrot. Ruby was stood on her feet with her head forward, her big brown eyes doleful as she looked up at him, and she nervously wagged her tail. “It goes in here.”

Valorous put the toy in the labelled box – he’d bought her a set of three kids’ toy troughs, split into squeaky toys and plushes, balls, and chew toys. Cecil had only bought her a set of three to see what she liked – Valorous bought her new toys all the time. As soon as he put the carrot in its box, he frowned, getting to his knees and swapping toys between the boxes, putting them where they were supposed to be.

Ruby stayed on her feet, watching him cautiously, and then slowly came forward, reached into a box, and took the carrot out.

“Are you playing with it?” Valorous asked sternly.

“She still doesn’t really get how to play with toys, kid,” said Cecil quietly. “She just likes to hold them.”

Valorous reached out, and it was funny, watching them be nervous of each other – Valorous was careful about holding the carrot by the corner, staying away from Ruby’s mouth.

Ruby dropped the carrot and left it in his hand.

Valorous gave it one squeak, smiling when Ruby’s ears tipped up and her mouth opened in more of a smile, and then he threw it – Ruby watched it sail across the room, politely baffled, and then looked back into the box.

“No, no, Ruby, we’re playing with the carrot,” said Valorous.

Ruby picked up a toy scarecrow and looked at him hopefully.

“Ruby, get the—”

“Good girl, Rubes,” said Cecil, and watched the way her face lit up, her tail wagging a little bit more, her ears perking up even more. She still didn’t wag her tail like another dog might, but they’d get there.

She wasn’t pissing on the floor inside anymore, had mostly grasped that she had to go outside for that, although she still didn’t ask enough for Cecil’s liking, so he was taking her out several more times a day than she really needed – the third or fourth time she’d pissed on the floor in the kitchen Valorous had burst into tears out of sheer frustration, and Cecil had sent him back to bed to keep him from making her even more nervous than she was.

 She’d kept trying to lick his face as he’d scrubbed the tile after, her whole body shaking, neither of them having any fucking idea what to do with each other.

Valorous looked back at Cecil, his face pinched.

“Take the scarecrow,” he said.

“But she won’t chase it.”

“So don’t throw it. Just take it and hold it out to her.”

When Valorous did, Ruby mouthed at the scarecrow’s head, chewing on the corner of it, looked mostly down but kept glancing up at Valorous’ face. Valorous squeaked the toy, and she jumped, but then took the scarecrow by the head and tugged it back, taking it back to her bed and lying down.

“She looks so sad all the time,” complained Valorous, going to pick up the carrot and putting it in its box.

“She isn’t,” said Cecil, and got to his feet, dropping the paper aside. “She’s being rehabilitated, lad. She’s not gonna act like a normal dog for a while – may be that she never does. It’s not her fault.”

“I’m not saying it is! Just— Doesn’t it make you feel bad? Looking at her? And she’s… sad?”

“Broken?”

“She’s not broken,” Valorous snapped.

“No,” Cecil agreed, not smiling but feeling the urge. “Come upstairs, I want to choke you while I fuck you.”

* * *

Cecil worked in a gym three or four days a week – recently, it had been four days more often than it was three, and now and then he even worked five. It was taking time, what with the reputation he had around Lashton at this point, but it wasn’t exactly a big fancy gym where people really gave a fuck who or what he was, and no matter how much some of them disliked him, he was good at training, good at fighting, good at what he did.

Sometimes, people came in and sneered and asked if he was that nonce, and he shrugged and said, “People call me that, don’t mean it’s true,” and put them to work if they didn’t walk out immediately.

Then they’d hear him working with other guys, pushing them hard, and they’d change their tune a bit, ask him for notes.

Valorous King, though, was a cop. He mostly worked murders and violent crime, and despite what an active little fuck he was, he did a lot of his work within the office – he collated data and evidence, put his freaky, analytical mind to contradicting statements and marked them out.

Cecil was fully aware that when Valorous King did interrogations, he got results – he was also aware that when he’d joined up, a sort of shudder had gone through the fucking population, because everyone knew who Valorous King was, and of all the pigs they could go head-to-head with, they didn’t want one like him.

The lad was fucking feral, and everyone could tell that just to look at him, just to talk to him, but when he stood right across from someone and bored holes into them with their eyes, they talked before they even fucking meant to.

He was a celebrity, of course. Sir Valorous King was a knight of the realm, had been since he was a teenager – he’d killed dragons, griffins, wyverns, led armies into battle, fought duels, jousted, had championed arenas across the country and abroad.

The lad had been on the fucking postal stamps in 2015.

“Do you think I should be in an institution?” he demanded when Cecil walked in the door.

Cecil took this in, unzipping his jacket and hanging it up – Ruby didn’t come to greet him because Valorous was sitting on the floor in her bed, and she was laying over his lap, her big blunt head rested on his belly, but her tail wagged as Cecil came closer.

“No,” he said, coming to crouch on the floor, and Ruby leaned forward for Cecil to scratch her big cheeks, but she kept her body in Valorous’ lap, not wanting to let him get up, not knowing when she’d get to sit with him again if she did. “Who told you you should be?”

“Sergeant Stark says I’m a hazard,” said Valorous. “That I’m unstable. That I shouldn’t be around the public.”

“David Stark? He used to beat the shit out of his daughters, and two out of three of them had eating disorders at school. I wouldn’t base your fucking persona on his recommendations. What did you do?”

“Told a witness that she was being a cunt.”

“… Alright,” said Cecil. “Starting to see his point.”

“She was being a cunt. Her daughter’s in hospital, and all she’s fucking talking about is how it’s her daughter’s fault for wearing this fucking dress or going out at night, or what fucking ever.”

“I’m not an expert on police procedure, lad, but I’m pretty sure regardless you can’t go around calling witnesses cunts.”

He leaned forward, burying his face in the top of Ruby’s head, squeezing her, and Cecil kept a careful eye on her body language, making sure she wasn’t stiffening up or uncomfortable, but she was surprisingly okay with being held and hugged, and Valorous never did it for too long even though he wasn’t too great with dogs.

“Of course,” said Cecil, “you knew that. You knew he’d react like that, that no one would think it was justified.”

Valorous shrugged.

“You want to take the dog for a walk?”

“Do we have to muzzle her?”

“Yeah,” said Cecil. “If we don’t muzzle her and she bites another dog, we’ll have to put her down. Besides, the muzzle is good – people see that she has a muzzle on and they keep their dogs away from her.”

“But she doesn’t bite them unless they get too close,” said Valorous. “It’s not like she runs up to other dogs to bite them – she keeps herself to herself, she only bites out of self-defence.”

“Yeah, but she’s a big dog,” said Cecil slowly. “She’s stronger than most of the other dogs, big, she has strong jaws. She can do a lot of damage that a chihuahua couldn’t.”

“I don’t like how people look at her,” said Valorous. “They look at her like she’s a bad dog, because she’s got a muzzle on.”

“She doesn’t know that,” said Cecil. “She doesn’t give a fuck – she’s a dog, she doesn’t know if anyone’s judging her. All she knows is that she’s allowed to go for walks and exercise, and she’ll be happier with no other dogs anywhere near her.”

Ruby was looking between them, but she didn’t twig what was happening until Cecil went over and took her muzzle off the hook, and then she skittered off of Valorous’ lap and rushed to sit at Cecil’s feet, her tail wagging hard.

Valorous stayed sitting in the dog bed, bringing his knees up to his chest and looking very small, and watched Cecil slide the muzzle onto Ruby’s face.

* * *

It was three in the morning when Cecil woke up, bleary-eyed and not really with it. He didn’t move immediately, just watched Valorous on his feet beside the bed, rifling through Cecil’s end table and collecting what he found there – cigarette packets were dropped into a little plastic bag, Cecil’s long-expired passport was placed aside, bottles of lube and sensation gel and tubes of chapstick and a tin of chest rub were lined up on the bed.

“Jesus, lad. You got OCD?” asked Cecil.

“You’re awake?” asked Valorous, not looking away as he pulled out two empty boxes of paracetamol, flattening them and then tossing them into the bag with the cigarette packets. “You want a cup of tea?”

“I’m not awake,” muttered Cecil, raising his chin and yawning, rubbing at his eye. “Get back in bed, fuck.”

“What’s OCD stand for again?”

“Obsessive Compulsive Disorder,” said Cecil, lifting the blanket up, and Valorous slid underneath on his belly, pressing right up against Cecil’s body, sliding one of his knees in between Cecil’s thighs – it was fucking freezing, and Cecil clucked his tongue, wondering how long the little prick had been out of bed.

“You think I have it?”

He wasn’t even offended, obviously. He was barely paying attention, his eyes defocused, the hand that wasn’t settled freezing cold between their chests on the pillow, his fingers tapping against the fabric.

“Could be,” murmured Cecil. “S’not like I’m an expert. How long you been awake?”

“Dunno.”

“You sleep at all?”

“Sure.”

“How long?”

“Dunno.”

Fuck, but it was creepy when he was like this, barely awake and moving through life in a fucking haze, not really with it – listening but the way that a robot or an enchantment could listen, to follow basic instructions but not really get that you were talking to him, really talking to him.

He’d already cleaned out most of the rest of Cecil’s house, had scrubbed the living room and the kitchen and the bathroom and the spare room from top to bottom, had torn up the fucking carpet in the living room and rolled out a new one, bought new curtains. Everything in Cecil’s house was clean, freshly laundered, free of stains, organised, except the bedroom.

He glanced down at Valorous’ hands, trying to get an idea of how wet or rubbed raw they were, but they didn’t look too bad – he hadn’t been scrubbing anything before he started in the bedroom, or at least, it didn’t seem like it.

The lad must’ve been like this, at school.

Cecil recalled moments in PE classes where he’d come in and be uncomfortably quiet and intense, moments where he scared the everloving shit out of the students that had brains in their heads, and didn’t so much as intimidate the stupid ones until after he snapped and looked ready to beat them up, but he’d still be a little bitchy, a little snappy, still alive.

That had been once he’d been at school, though – maybe in the dormitories at St Idloes, he’d been like that, or at home with the other Kings.

Cecil had never really talked much to Maybeetle, who’d been the pastoral care expert, or the dormitory matrons, and while he’d talked once or twice to the school counsellors as much as he’d done his best to avoid it, they’d never talked about Valorous King, only about other shit in passing, sometimes other students.

And he’d never gotten the impression that any of the other teachers at Idloes understood King as well as Cecil did himself, saw him for what he was – they either thought he was some sort of glorious fucking hero ordained by the king regent, or they thought he was troubled and they were scared to have him in their classroom.

Cecil reached up and put his hand in Valorous’ hair, pulling hard, and Valorous blinked a few times, leaning back into Cecil’s hand and looking at him askance, his lips parting.

“Huh?”

“You have a nightmare?” asked Cecil, and studied the slight darkening of Valorous’ features, the shadow that came into his eyes.

He had blue eyes, obviously, had to be a blue-eyed boy – they seemed normal enough from far away, but once you were up close with him like this, you could see it wasn’t a natural colour, that it was too pure and lacked the texture of colour that an iris was meant to have. It was a crystalline blue, looked more like water than the inside of someone’s eye. There was a note in his medical record at school that his eyes had changed colour from a magical incident, probably the one that laid him up in Camelot that first time, for those months of recovery.

“Mm,” said Valorous, and shrugged his shoulders, but he looked awake now, glancing around the room and shifting closer, straddling Cecil’s thigh and putting his hands on Cecil’s chest, pressing on the flesh, his thumbs sliding over his sternum. “I dreamt that I ate your heart.”

“Oh, right,” said Cecil, unenthused. “Prophetic, do you think?”

“I don’t have prophetic dreams,” said Valorous, with a sort of blunt certainty.

How long had Valorous King been the favourite pet of the king regent?

Since he was thirteen or something, thereabouts, and Myrddin had kept Valorous under his hand, on and off, until he was twenty-four, Cecil thought – when he’d been at school, he’d go off to Camelot for lessons and extra tutelage for weeks at a time, to compete in tournaments and championships, and once he’d finished school he’d been in the army, although never as part of the rank and file.

He’d been in with some of the battle mages, Cecil was aware, for a little while, but mostly he’d be off in splinter groups or commanding smaller units, or he’d be the face on a battle to scare the shit out of whatever poor, ready-to-slaughter cavalcade of sacrifices was ready ahead of them.

No matter what he was doing, it had been with Myrddin Wyllt’s personal attention, until he’d gotten some new student – Cecil had read about her in the papers the last few years, some alchemist necromancer, impossible to photograph without a sort of haze distorting the picture – and lost interest in his old favourite.

He hadn’t asked questions about it, but he assumed that the break-up had come after that, and that was when Valorous had come back to Lashton, thought to be a copper.  

He suppressed his smile, recalling when Myrddin had taken Cecil’s face in his hands and stared deep into his eyes, had told him he had no destiny to speak of unless he chose to make one of himself, and that he had no Sight. He’d only been a lad himself, eighteen or so. It was part of the reason, Cecil supposed, that Myrddin had picked him out of the line-up to use as a fucktoy instead of any of the other soldiers – because he meant nothing to nobody and never would.

Of course, there wasn’t any such thing as someone who had no destiny: even men like Cecil Hobbes had futures, in a literal sense. Knowing Myrddin Wyllt, it could well have been that he fucked Cecil knowing that one day he’d take up one of Myrddin’s leftover protegés – except that neither Cecil nor Valorous would ever have fucked the other were it not for Myrddin in the first place.

Cecil considered himself a man somewhat intolerant of prophecy and future-divining, if not outright allergic.

“That’s for the best,” he murmured. “Of all the hearts you could eat, you’d not want a smoker’s.”

“I’ve eaten hearts before,” said Valorous.

“Still beating?”

“Mm.”

“In the arena?”

“Yeah, but not people’s hearts, not other knights,” he clarified. That was good – thinking about the arena woke him up completely, and he was wide awake now, sitting in Cecil’s lap, his arse resting on his thighs, his expression focused, concentrated, a little severe. Frightening, obviously, but that was Valorous King for you. “A drake’s heart, once, and a chimera’s. I bit into the heart of a mist wolf, and it was half vapour in my hands, and when I bit into it, it really was like biting through thick, thick air. Outside of the arena, not really, but there was a skirmish at Victim’s Peak, and I duelled their company captain. I bit into his heart once he was dead – I didn’t… I never planned to. I didn’t mean to, I mean. The whole thing is kind of a blur, actually, I remember putting him on the ground, and then I just remember snatches – his heart set my mouth on fire when I bit into it, the same way popping candy does, you know when you feel that sharp thrill from it?”

“Victim’s Peak is deadland, Valorous,” said Cecil. “Whose fucking army were you fighting?”

“It’s not deadland,” said Valorous, looking confused, but then his brow furrowed, his lips pressed together. “Fuck,” he said. “Is it? That would explain why I went like I did. I tore through all of them after their captain like they were made of paper – they had to wash me off with a hose before I could go inside.”

“It was deadland when I was there,” said Cecil quietly, gently squeezing his waist.

“It probably still was,” Valorous said now. “Do revenants taste like popping candy?”

“If they do, I doubt anyone’s written it down.”

Valorous looked at Cecil very seriously, all of a sudden, and asked – demanded, really – “When did you first get raped?”

“Uh,” said Cecil, “I was seven. My dad came home drunk, very drunk. He’d made me fondle him before that, suck him off a few times, but that was when he first buggered me.”

“What about your mum?”

“She never touched me.”

“No, I mean… Why didn’t she stop him?”

“She wasn’t really in any position to stop him any more than I was, lad,” murmured Cecil. “The woman was a nervous wreck, and she drank to cope, same as he did.”

“Same as he did?” Valorous repeated, looking abruptly angry. “What, like, he raped you as a coping mechanism?”

“Dunno that I’d put it like that,” said Cecil. “He was a veteran, all his friends had died in the war the first time around, then his first and second wives both died. First one died of cancer, but the second one was gangraped and murdered, that was in the fifties.”

“What war?” demanded Valorous, suddenly petulant, and it made Cecil laugh. Ignoring him, he went on, “You don’t mean World War 2.”

“I do,” said Cecil.

“How fucking old are you?”

“Me, I’m fifty-four,” said Cecil. Valorous opened his mouth, and Cecil said, “He was forty-nine when he got my mother pregnant.”

“How old was she?”

“Twenty-something.”

“Ugh.” Valorous said, making a face, and Cecil laughed again, demonstratively grinding his cock up against his arse. “This is different. You can’t get me pregnant.”

“Don’t worry, baby, we can keep trying.” He filed away the flutter of Valorous’ lips and the slight widening of his eyes in the back of his head, committing that expression to memory, to come back to later. “He was always drunk when he fucked me. Had to be – would sob after, sometimes, cry his fucking eyes out, say he was sorry, that he’d never do it again, that he’d kill himself. He never did – and he whored me out later, which isn’t typically what someone does when they’re really fucking sorry.”

“You’re so calm about it,” said Valorous quietly, staring down at him, very serious, lips pressed together. “I couldn’t be calm about something like that. Am I the first person you’ve told?”

Cecil shook his head. “I went to a group in prison.”

“Group therapy?” asked Valorous, wrinkling his nose, and Cecil stroked his hands over the back of his arse.

“Not really – it wasn’t that structured, it was just a talking group that happened to be run by a counsellor. Most of ‘em were rapists, sex pests, convicted nonces. I remember one lad got upset when I said I only ever fucked legal boys, asked if he thought it made me better than him, and I said, yeah, mate. ‘Course I do.”

Valorous was used to being able to make people uncomfortable, especially by asking questions like this, and Cecil could see he was a little uncertain and uncomfortable with just how comfortable Cecil was, how unbothered he was talking about it, answering questions.

“You never raped any kids?” asked Valorous.

“Nah,” said Cecil quietly. “When I was still a kid myself, I fucked other kids – started when I was twelve, fumbled about with lads my age. Once I was in the army, I fucked a few of the sixteen-year-olds who joined up, but I tried to skew older.”

“But you’d rather fuck actual kids?” demanded Valorous, his voice hard and brittle in a way that made Cecil’s stomach do an anxious flip, even though he had no business feeling fucking anxious about anything.

“Young teens make my cock hard, sure,” he said. “Thirteen. Twelve. Eleven. But I can look at a boy and think about what he’d feel like without turning him into a sex toy, breaking him open. A lad like that is a human fucking being, believe it or not.”

“Me?”

“You? Are you a human being?”

“Would you have fucked me? When I was eleven?”

“I didn’t fuck you when you were eleven, despite having pretty easy access,” said Cecil, arching an eyebrow. “I think that answers that.”

“Why not?”

“You’re offended?”

“Maybe I am,” said Valorous. “I wasn’t a sexy enough child?”

“Sexy enough to wank over, maybe,” said Cecil, shrugging. “Not sexy enough to become a rapist over.”

Valorous’ hard eyes turned gooey, and Cecil felt even more sick, although this time it was worry for the state of Valorous’ fucking head instead of self-loathing. “You wanked over me?” he asked, voice agonisingly soft.

“Not when you were eleven, no. Later, sure. When you were fifteen and started bending over and displaying your hole for me like an aspiring child bride. Did you ever think about what would have happened, if I’d actually fucked you? What it would have felt like to be fucking your PE teacher? Not the sex, lad, not my cock barely fitting in your teenage arse, the way I’d’ve made it hurt, but the secrecy of it. The fear. Knowing I could get you expelled, ruin your life, threaten to take anything I felt like away from you if you ever stopped pleasing me.”

“I was pursuing you,” said Valorous, and Cecil stroked his hands over the muscled globes of his arse, squeezing slightly. “I was a fucking celebrity – I was a hero, the king regent’s own. If I’d asked his majesty to kill you, he would have.”

“That’s what you thought at the time,” said Cecil. “You didn’t know me and him knew each other.”

Valorous’ expression faltered, his lip shifting as he bit his lip.

“And, lad, fuck Myrddin – I had my own reputation for safeguarding as a teacher. If I’d gone to your dorm head and said I was seriously concerned about sexual abuse, he’d’ve been on it like a car bonnet, had you transferred somewhere else, put you in therapy.”

“I would have said that you were the one abusing me,” said Valorous.

“Maybe they’d have believed you,” said Cecil, shrugging. “But I doubt it. Even before you lasered in on any man who’d let you suck his cock in the vicinity, I was known for reporting abuse and keeping an eye out for that.”

“Do you wish you’d done it?”

“No.”

“No?” asked Valorous, and leaned forward in Cecil’s lap, looking down at him. “You never think about it? I was smaller then – bet I would have been tight. You’d have been the first man inside me, first man to fuck me. Open me up. I’d be shaped for you my whole life.”

“Very hot, sure,” said Cecil lowly, aware that his voice was gruff with sex, that his cock was half hard. “But I’d have been the nonce fucking a fifteen-year-old student, knowing what I was taking from you.”

“But I fucked other people, so you wouldn’t have been tak—"

“Valorous,” said Cecil. “I’ve had enough of this, now. I’m fucked in the head, lad, we both are. We want things, need things, that in’t right, not for anyone. The difference being that when you want to scrub something until your fingers bleed, you don’t ruin anyone’s fucking lives forever. Raping a fifteen-year-old, on the other hand, tends to have that effect.”

“It wouldn’t have ruined my life,” said Valorous. “It would’ve been better. I wouldn’t have fucked all them other men, if you’d just fucked me. You would have looked after me better, wouldn’t you? You would have been nice, you would have treated me the way you treat me now. You’re fixing me, aren’t you? Making me better?”

Something in Cecil’s chest felt raw and open and wrecked at the way he said it, the way his eyes were open and vulnerable and wanting, and Cecil wanted to be sick, wanted to scream, wanted to shove Valorous off him, wanted to wrap him in a blanket and put him back to bed, wanted to strangle Myrddin Wyllt with his bare hands.

“Is that what I’m doing?” he asked in a very low voice, aware of the hoarseness in it. “Fixing you?”

“I’m better,” said Valorous, almost defensive. “No one else ever tried to make me better.”

Was he better?

Cecil didn’t think so. Every day he saw Valorous King, he seemed even crazier than he had the day before, but then, he had no fucking idea what he felt like.

“If I’m making you better,” said Cecil, “why don’t you take me up on therapy?”

He’d suggested it before. Half a dozen times, he’d suggested it, that the lad go and see someone actually qualified to have a look in his fucked-up head and try to fix it up a bit. As with every other time before, he scrunched up his nose and his lips and his face, and glared down at him.

“Why?” he demanded.

“Because I’m not qualified to fucking fix you,” said Cecil. “I rescue dogs, not knights.”

“If therapy’s so good, why don’t you go?”

“Because I don’t want to.”

“Well, nor do I! I won’t go unless you go.”

“You’ll see a therapist if I see a therapist?”

“Yeah.”

“Fine, okay. I’ll go.”

Valorous’ mouth dropped open. “What?”

“I’ll go see a therapist, in’t no skin off my back, s’not like I haven’t done it before. If it means you’ll go, I’ll go too.”

Valorous was looking at him in the devastated, indignant way that he looked at Cecil when Cecil managed to pin him on the floor or get a punch in when they were sparring – Valorous was a lot stronger, faster, smarter, and younger than Cecil was, so he shouldn’t be able to, and he always took personal offence when Cecil managed it.

“But—”

“Going back on your word, lad?”

Valorous set his jaw. “Fine,” he said venomously, and then, in the same spiteful tone, “You can fuck me now.”

“Oh, can I?” asked Cecil, and put his hand around his throat, listening to the way he choked and grinning at the sound. 

* * *

It had to be angels.

Faeries didn’t much believe in the concept of mental illness, not to mention the fact that the concept of therapy to most of them was a bit like going up to a stranger and giving him your name – it was weakening yourself to no imaginable benefit, making yourself vulnerable by giving away your secrets, giving away means to control or overpower you.

But it had to be angels – it had to be people that were guaranteed, as a matter of course, not to trust the king regent anymore than they would anyone else, people who wouldn’t be intimidated by him, people who weren’t vulnerable.

Cecil didn’t kid himself – if Myrddin Wyllt realised Valorous King was getting therapised and took it upon himself to go into his notes or eavesdrop on his sessions, that would be precisely what he would do. Trying to inure the process from Myrddin spying on it would be pointless and stupid to try, and would in fact only encourage him to do so when before he might not have been interested – the really important thing was that when Valorous talked about him, talked about the king regent, whoever he was talking to treated both Valorous and Myrddin as if they were people, not demigods, and acted accordingly.

The last thing Cecil wanted was to put Valorous on a couch, finally have him open himself up a bit, look internal, and say something critical about Myrddin Wyllt or the crown, and be shut down by some fucking royalist who couldn’t stand to hear it.

“Are you taking on new patients at the moment?” he asked quietly.

“You want to make appointments for two people,” said the doctor, looking down at him. Doctor Majok was a tall, slim man with a shaved head – he wore round glasses and a green cardigan over his shirt and tie. He’d been in the waiting room when Cecil had come in, and as his receptionist went over something on the computer with someone else, he’d gestured for Cecil to follow him into his office.

“You a telepath?” asked Cecil guardedly.

“No,” said Majok. “My sisters are, if that’s a concern for you.”

“In’t a concern. Just asking.”

“Paulette Fields told me that a man had been looking for two places as new patients, with concurrent appointments,” said Majok, picking up a teapot and gesturing with it, and Cecil gave a stout nod of his head. “You would be Cecil Hobbes?”

“Yeah.”

“Have you any experience with therapy or counselling before now, Mr Hobbes?”

“Yeah,” said Cecil quietly. “After I was discharged from the army, I had to do some screening sessions with a psych to make sure an injury in my hip wasn’t psychosomatic, but it turned out to be magical damage to one of the nerves. And when I was inside, I was court-ordered to talk through anger management strategies, as well as going to a support group for sex abuse survivors.” He said it through almost gritted teeth, feeling like he was burning himself saying it, but he knew that being honest now was better than being found out later.

Majok nodded seriously, not looking deterred as he passed him a cup of tea.

“And what are you looking for from therapy?”

“I’ve been trying to get the lad I’m sleeping with to come, and he won’t go unless I go,” said Cecil honestly, keeping Majok’s gaze and not breaking it. Majok looked mildly surprised, his eyebrows raising, but he didn’t look angry or disgusted, which was good. “He needs it, I think, because I’m not qualified to… And it’s not like I can’t benefit from it. But I’m here ‘cause he needs to go, and this is the only way I could get him to agree.”

“This is why you want appointments at the same time?” asked Majok. He exuded an incredibly calm, collected air, and Cecil felt himself let out a breath, wondering if it was contagious for mundane reasons or magical ones. “So that you can ensure he goes?”

“Nah, he’ll— He’s told me he’ll go, he wouldn’t back out on his word now he’s said it,” said Cecil. “But if we go at different times, he’ll spy on my sessions while I’m here.”

Majok blinked.

“He— Look, I suppose Paulette Fields in’t the only person who called you. I bet Karen whatever the fuck also let you know we were looking, and that angel counsellor at the hospital, too.”

Majok didn’t say anything, his expression completely blank.

“I was his PE teacher, at school,” said Cecil. “Then last year he was stalking me, and he still does. Stalk me. Follows me around, goes through my phone, goes through records of me. It’s pretty much a guarantee that he’s gonna try to go through your records for his own notes and mine – but if we go at different times, he will listen in on my sessions, and I don’t want that to be the point of this. I want him to focus on his sessions.”

Majok took a sip of his tea, taking this in.

“And I’m a paedophile,” added Cecil, figuring he might as well shove the knife all the way in, while he was at it. “Non-offending, don’t rape kids, don’t look at child porn, none of that. But I’m attracted to kids, teenagers. Just in case that’s a deal-breaker.”

“Is that why you were worried I was a telepath?” asked Majok, and Cecil pressed his lips together.

“Common courtesy, in’t it? S’not like you want that dropped into your head.”

“Distressing thoughts and urges are my profession, Mr Hobbes,” said Majok, almost gently. “I’m not here to judge the thoughts in your head – my purpose is to help you heal from old wounds, to better live with what’s in your head, and arm you with tools to cope with those distressing thoughts and urges.”

“Yeah, well,” said Cecil. “Most therapists don’t want a nonce sitting on their couch, profession or not.”

“Has that stopped you from seeing out professional help before?” asked Majok, sharp as a scalpel. His eyes were so dark behind his glasses they were almost black – it was a very calming colour, Cecil found. “The knowledge that the stigma of your condition might make some offices turn you away?”

“When I was younger, sure,” said Cecil. “But I’ve read up on it. Trauma, paedophilia, sex offences. A lot of it, I read the, uh, literature. Stopped looking, while I was a teacher, because I knew if I did go to someone and got reported, I’d be liable to lose my job.”

“You don’t teach anymore?”

“I got put in the nick for GBH,” said Cecil. “Can’t teach after that – I work in a gym now.”

“And your partner?”

“It’s Valorous King,” said Cecil, and watched Majok’s face. His eyes really widened now, the colour seeming a tiny bit lighter with more light on it, but still very dark, and his eyebrows went right up, his forehead wrinkling.

“Ah,” he said. “I see.”

“If you can’t take us, if you had any recommendations for—”

“We can take you,” Majok interrupted him. “If you’re comfortable, you and I can take sessions together – and we can arrange for Sir Valorous to take an appointment with one of my sisters, if the two of you call us at the same time.”

Cecil stood there for a second. “Just like that?”

“Just like that,” said Majok.

An uncomfortable pit formed at the base of Cecil’s stomach, and as Majok stared at him, he drank more of the tea, even though it was hot.

“Why don’t we get some intake forms for you and Sir Valorous?” asked Majok reasonably.

“Yeah,” said Cecil, trying to ignore the roiling nausea inside him. “Why don’t we?”

“Are you frightened?” asked Majok.

“Scared shitless.”

Majok nodded his head, picking up a pen and passing it over with a form, still calm, still on an even keel. “It’s understandable to feel frightened,” he said, “and not at all uncommon. Anxiety unites almost every patient, whether they’re starting therapy for the first time or returning.”

Cecil stared down at the intake form, slowly nodded his head, and filled in his name.

[andreal831]

Hi! Got here from Tik tok and you really like Elijah.

Just some conversation I wanted to share was how scary I think they made Elijah in the originals. Note that I don’t actually have any attachments to the characters so I might be stating things blantely. Another theory to why I believe the originals is “darker” than TVD.

This is because of Elijah. In TVD- Elijah helped all of his siblings. In the originals his character got a bit retconned.

In the originals, the entire plot-line of Elijah serving klaus was probably a perverted survival of the fittest ideology. Which he then subconsciously re-animate the trauma of not helping Niklaus , because deep down Elijah knows his reason was absolutely terrifying(self preservation).

I say re-animate trauma because Elijah says he too was “beaten without mercy.” So it’s not like he could’ve helped. But he had to convince himself he should’ve even though it wasn’t possible.

If it were possible than I would completely buy into it. But the writers explicitly say it wasn’t possible.

And because of that* he needed to devote himself to Klaus. Which makes sense because it is shown that Elijah is self loathing.( I can bring up examples if you want) And self loathing because he knows his facade is based on self interest and not nobility. They already say he isn’t noble and already pretends to be. And nobility is doing good for others without self interest.

And -I don’t know why but it seems like he pretends to love his siblings. Apparently he got rid of Finn because he wanted to be the oldest and the most respected in that manner. (The writers put this somewhere) . And he did so because … survival of the fittest.

And even Elijah’s actor admitted Elijah’s pretend love for his siblings.

In all honestly I don’t know why Elijah couldn’t love his siblings. The writers kinda just wrote it as such in the originals. -They hinted Elijah didn’t care about Rebecca’s happiness.

In TVD he wanted all his siblings out of the box . In the originals we see Elijah help Klaus out them there.

*saved Klaus from Mikael

BTW

(The entire klaus asking Elijah to run away with him when they were human -I don’t fully understand that,yet took the time to think about it)

Hi love, thanks for following!

Honestly, my biggest response to most of this is: poor writing. I could write a whole novel on this.

The CW is known for prioritizing ratings over the quality of the show and TVDU is no exception.

The Originals was definitely meant to be a darker show. They aged up all of the characters and focused more on the fight for survival rather than the teen romance we see in TVD.

So when I say the writing wasn't good at times, it's because the show let the audience drive it. Klaus was a favorite so they made a whole show around him and his redemption, often sacrificing the characters/development in order to push the narrative they believed would be most popular. So we see things like Kol and Finn's characters getting completely sidelined and Elijah being absolutely obsessed with Klaus when that wasn't the case for all of TVD.

I also like to think the writers intentionally made the Mikaelsons very biased in their storytelling, but it likely was just more inconsistent writing. But to me, it is more important to watch how they behave rather than what they say. Elijah and Klaus have a tendency to tell stories from the perspective of Klaus, discrediting even Elijah's own struggles/trauma.

I also think too much was put on Elijah at a young age. I see a lot of the fandom angry at Elijah for not protecting his brother when it is clear all of the siblings are just as terrified of Mikael as Klaus is. And I also would find it surprising if they all didn't receive some form of physical/emotional abuse from Mikael as children (remember Klaus was initially Mikael's favorite). But, as you said, Elijah and Klaus have convinced themselves that Elijah failed him as a way to shift blame from Klaus onto Elijah. Elijah is very much viewed as the parent of the family despite their parents' existence and even the failures of their parents are somehow blamed on Elijah.

I do think a lot of Elijah's attachment to Klaus was because he felt guilty for not protecting him better as a child. Childhood trauma has a way of sticking with you and can create a lot of negative trauma responses. But, in my head at least, it is also because that is his closest sibling. We see Elijah is born at a time of upheaval and depression in his family and is often neglected by his parents. To me, Klaus was likely the first person Elijah ever felt a bond with, ever felt love for/from.

I also think you are spot on with the self-loathing. People love to say Elijah pretended to be noble. But he never did. Others said that about him and he didn't necessarily correct them. Yet when we hear him talk about himself, he very much views himself as a monster (hence the red door). He is very aware that his entire motivation in life is protecting his family and he will cross any line to do so. He is also aware of how messed up that is. But this is exactly why you often see him as the one to volunteer to do the worst of the worst deeds. He is still attempting to preserve his siblings' redemption and, since he views himself as a lost cause, he continuously sacrifices his chance at redemption to save his family.

Now, where I think the show failed was how Elijah treated the rest of his siblings, especially Rebekah. I don't think he got rid of Finn to be the oldest (he never had an issue with Freya). But I do think he didn't move to save Finn because he resented him. Finn never protected Elijah, rather he often made things more difficult for his siblings. Elijah had to step up because his older brother refused to.

But I still don't buy that Elijah wasn't trying to protect his siblings for a thousand years. We only see about 1% of their life. But from what we can gather, Kol was locked up around 30-40% of the time and Rebekah was daggered for decades at a time. We don't know anything really about Elijah's experience with the dagger, but we know it has been used on him in the past. But like you said, Klaus asked Elijah to run with them when they were kids, but Elijah wouldn't leave the rest of his siblings behind. He prioritized all of his siblings, not just Klaus. So there was this shift in TO where Elijah was all of a sudden prioritizing Klaus over everyone else. They even apply it back to flashbacks, but it really makes no sense for the character we saw in TVD.

I think an aspect of him not protecting his siblings could be fear of Klaus or fear of isolating Klaus. He didn't act until Klaus had pushed him too far. But at the end of the day, it likely is just bad writing in order to prop Klaus up. The writers always wanted Klaus to have his redemption and didn't really care about the other characters. If no one believed in Klaus' redemption or fought for him, it would be harder to get the audience to fight for him. Klaus had to end up being the good sibling that they all loved so they had to sacrifice the one who actually made the most sense for the part.

Basically, in my opinion, Elijah loved his siblings more than anything and would have made any sacrifice for them. We see it through his actions (even if he's not always great at showing it) more so than the words/storytelling. He sacrificed himself countless times for them and would have died for them, not just Klaus. Unfortunately, the show was hell-bent on being centered around Klaus so we lost a lot of good character development.

** Side note, I don't tend to trust anything Daniel (the actor) says about Elijah. He did an amazing job with the acting but he very much did not pay attention to themes or overall storylines

[skydigiblogs]

honestly thought i would have a lot more to say about adventure 02 but like

i just finished episode 50 and the jist of my thoughts really are "yeah this is better than i remembered it being"

overall, an extremely ambitious follow up to digimon adventure, balancing a lot of plot points and an attempt at having a more cohesive storyline than "bad guy of the arc but suddenly it's apocalymon." in 02, most of the bad guys lead from one to another, in a way that seems much more intentionally thought-out than everything up until the dark master's arc in 01. even the one-off antagonists (dark ocean and demon's crew) played into the larger narrative, and weren't necessarily treated as one-offs so much as chances to expand the scope of the lore and use it to the narrative's benefit.

(although i do think it's a bit sad we never saw follow up on demon going "oh, you all are going to regret sending me to dagomon's ocean SOOOOO much")

also a lot of lore. so much lore. 01 introduced the fact that homeostasis has a bunch of agents that look like gennai, but a2 kept suggesting they're all copies (put a pin in that for my tri rewatch, much as i am loathe to rewatch that one). there wasn't any elaboration, but it is an interesting idea, and unfortunately i understand why it was kind of hastily noted and dismissed (the world tour arc had a lot to get to).

also the dimensional makeup of the digimon franchise got a lot more fascinating in 02. in 01 gennai mentioned that the gate could lead to all kinds of different places, but 02 actually takes that a step further in the lore, showing us the dark ocean and the dimension of dreams (even mentioning that the latter is pulled from by the digital world).

but it does maintain some of the problems i had with the original adventure in that i do wish more of the kids got to see their mega forms. :/

(i know tamers fixes that somewhat, then frontiers backpedals, but. you can't get me to rewatch frontiers lmao.)

furthermore, it does kind of suck that we're still left to wonder about ken's adventures in the digital world. we see ryo and millenniumon in his flashbacks to the adventures, but for audience members who missed out entirely on the wonderswan games, it makes it so we have to trust wormmon's word that ken was a kind person in the past. it's shown to an effective degree in the show, especially with his flashbacks to his childhood after the chimeramon arc.

it also makes narrative sense that they didn't feel the need to go over a story that's already happened, because that likely would have taken too long for 02, which already had so much going on. but maaaaaan. i do not want to play the wonderswan games, frfr (though i know there are fan translations out there for 'em).

i do love ken's arc though, as frustrating as him struggling with self-doubt is to watch. i'm glad the writers didn't make it seem too easy for him to forgive himself, because that's hard even if you weren't the vessel for like. All That Shit. i'm giving this boy a weighted blanket and hot tea.

tl;dr: compared to the oftentimes fever-dream like qualities of 01, 02 feels a lot more narratively focused in its story, and i think that really works to its favor. not a flawless season, but none of the digimon seasons are. a successful sequel to 01, much more so than i remembered from my last rewatch of the dub in 2020.

[consistentsquash]

2023 HP Slash Fic Recs (January to August)

My favorite slash fics written in 2023! Full disclosure everything is Snarry except one fic which is Sirius/Albus + Snape/Albus.

In the Margins of What We Know by Malora (January)

Snarry, 27700 words, epistolary fic

Snarry doesn't really get a lot of epistolary fic. So when I saw this one I was super excited. Love it. Really creative fic with a lot of scope/worldbuilding without a lot of words.

Magic and Botany: The Bamboo Forest of Li Xian (book excerpt) A bamboo forest is unusual compared to other forests in that its growth happens beneath the surface. The Bamboo Forest of Li Xian, in fact, could be considered one organism. There is a single root system for the entire forest. Two shoots of bamboo, seemingly distant, can be connected in ways that are not easily seen.

Check out the rest of the Snarry Adopt A Prompt Fest 2022.

  This Mirrored Perspective by @likelightinglass and zalil (February)

Snape/Harry/Tonks, 8000 words, PWP, Dirty bad hot wrong

Ok this is my OT3 and I don't really take questions. But this is my OT3 because of Likelightinglass writing An auror, a professor and a potioneer walk into a bar. This fic has a totally different vibe! It's intense, psychological, dirtybadhotwrong porn with peak self-indulgence. Definitely NSFW.

That nagging sense that he didn't deserve it.

  Night Skye by @titconao3 (March)

Snarry, 11500 words, OTP comfort food fic

Heartwarming OTP fic! It's the best Snarry comfort food fic I read this year. Good vibes, sexy high chemistry, loving/intimate feels, brilliantly characterized, beautiful settings.

“One day…” He shakes his head and looks up at Harry, his eyes like coal. “Today,” Harry says. “Today, Severus; that’s what matters.” This is how, finally, Harry gets Severus to agree.

  Coda to "Soft Touch" by @perverse-idyll (April)

Snarry, 3,300 words, Soft

Have recced before. Will rec again. Because everybody needs to read it for the soft tender vibes. Not really soft. But compared to the intense angsty fic this is a coda for, I feel like it's optimistic and soft and I just feel so happy for my OTP.

"Can a man not toss off in the privacy of his own room without being accused of sabotaging his bloody health? If you can't trust that I have a vested interest in my own recovery - "

Snape spotted Harry, and a flush raced from his collar up to his hairline, exquisitely pink beneath his unnaturally smooth skin. But although he swallowed his tirade, Snape didn't seem particularly put out by having practically shouted his masturbatory claims to the entire office.

Check out Soft Touch the perfect dysfunctional/dirtybadhotwrong massage fic which inspired this coda!

  Devotion by @danpuff-ao3 (May)

Snarry, 27000 words. Intense/dirty bad/hot/wrong.

Exactly what I want from my Snarry! Honestly Danpuff is bringing the oldschool vibes of Snarry back with a bang in their fics every single time and I am just super spoiled now. Snarry forever :D Also love to see Danpuff going into longer fics this year!

Though the worst crime of all is Potter’s. "Did you want to die?" Also The boy knows — he knows — he can take anything he wants. That bitter surrender is surrender all the same. That the force of Severus’ loathing is fed by his longing.

Pro tip - Read Contempt together with this fic. Check out other fics from Snarry-a-Thon 23

  Much Ado About Asmodeus by @ac1d6urn (June)

Snarry, 18100 words, Fluff

Fluff and crack! Really love the oldschool trope parody vibes of this fic. I actually haven't read something like this in a pretty long time. Going on my rereads! Also going on my holiday season reading list :D Also love to see Acid's insane prolific streak this year. I feel super spoiled as a reader! <3

Harry squinted against the rain and promptly attempted to expunge the phrase "Ventus Vultuosus, swish and flick when in a bind!" from his memory. Ugh. Curse you, Common Weather Weathering Spell #13! That'll be the last time I trust anything Witch Weekly puts out in fine print. (Except maybe that last fruitcake recipe.) Now that he thought about it, Auntie Annabelle's Advice Column on "Ten Ways of Bewitching and Beguiling Your Mr Right" didn't seem so reliable either, especially considering some of those later suggestions, and maybe even those in the middle too. Those were a bit wild.

  Promises, promises... by SerenaEW, @acydpop (July)

Snarry, 5000 words, Fluff

Aww!!! The Snarry Summer Fluff I was totally praying for and really needed! Perfect Snarry Bang opener for my reading <3 Also the art! <3

Severus was looking at him, telling him, with only a glance, to shut up before you say something utterly idiotic. The expression on Jamie's face looked nearly identical.

Check out the other fics from Snarry Bang 2023

  Brillig by eldritcher (August)

Dumbledore saying "You disgust me" to people in his life but also meaning "I disgust myself". The more he sees himself in the other person, the more disgusted he gets. Intense, intense beautiful fic. But also healing because he finally overcomes that.

He disgusts you. Ratty, bony, skulking, pleading, raging, raving, frightened of the shadows and frightened of the fog, frightened of you. "You did not save Lily!" he yells. "You did not save James!" he weeps. "You did not save me!" he whimpers, and huddles into himself and trembles as if the North Sea is in his very veins.

Also the math works out!!! Snape/Dumbledore + Sirius/Dumbledore = Snack by proxy actually.

Check out the rest of the spectacularly beautiful Frabjous which contains some of my all time favorite fics.