#to imagine living in this particular kind of zombie apocalypse

[novelconcepts]

It’s such a comparatively small detail, but I keep coming back to the physicality of the infected dude who chases Joel and Sarah—how completely that actor hurled himself into it, how it gives the sense that this man no longer has care or control of his faculties, has nothing but the hunger as he bangs off of objects and skitters back to his feet. It’s so mind-numbingly terrifying to imagine that coming after you in the dark.

[screamingatanemptyroom]

Please Fix the Story pt 26 - The Higher Realm

The Higher realm continues. So close to the end!

Master post linked here

Enjoy!

______________________________

Time passed, but it was difficult to tell how much. Time worked so differently in the different realms. How long did we really spend trying to save one lower realm? Minutes? Decades? It felt like no time and forever. Adonis and I traveled to lower realm after lower realm, fixing the stories, stabilizing the world before heading back to the higher realm.

Some lower realms were easy, if a bit annoying, such as the high school dramas. In those I would often play the “average” new girl at a school. I would meet new people, and was supposed to go on to have romance, betrayals and coming of age realizations. I quickly realized that befriending all my supposed romantic leads instead of dating them, reconciling with my rivals instead of humiliating them, and pushing towards success all together was a much more satisfying strategy. Fortunately, graduating valedictorian with a happy and psychologically healthy group of teenagers often stabilized worlds that had been torn apart by half-baked character design or infighting between rivals.

I took calculus so many times that I could recite lessons in my sleep, but at least the worlds were saved. Despite our success, however, Adonis was often frustrated. He had his own vision of how we were to save these realms. His plans almost always involved us dating, making the high school romance “successful”.

I refused.

He had been a lot more likable since our first meeting, and I was able to consider him a close friend and ally… but I felt uncomfortable at the idea of even pretending to have a romantic relationship. It was definitely a more difficult route to stabilize the world without a romance, but I chose it every time. Adonis pouted and complained, but couldn’t argue with success, and I was successful.

Some lower realms were more difficult. In particular, zombie apocalypse stories were my least favorites. The worlds often couldn’t be stabilized until a cure was found or humanity’s survival was assured. This meant that Adonis and I sometimes spent decades within these realms, working to build armies, or teams of scientists. There was hardly ever any running water, which meant showering was few and far between.

My unwashed self was made even filthier by my absolute failure at using anything with range. Bow and arrow, guns… anything that would keep me out of the gore, I couldn’t hit even the largest of monsters. Fortunately I picked up a sword with relative ease, which allowed me to fight… but this also meant I got covered in rotten blood and guts.

I hated zombie worlds the most.

Realm after realm. We worked constantly, spending very little time in between in the higher realms. Adonis would often try to use those moments to push his ideas regarding fate and the higher realm’s story, but as soon as I rejected him, which I did every time, he would simply scowl and pull us into the next lower realm to save.

It was getting old.

“How many lower realms are there?” I asked one evening as we recovered from our latest mission, rubbing my sore shoulder where I had taken a blow in the last sci-fi alien battle. The wounds disappeared with the realm traveling, but my mind still could feel the wound, projecting the pain long after I had left that form behind.

Adonis leaned back in his chair, his grin a little too bitter to be a natural expression. “How many unfinished stories are there? Infinite, Bel. There are infinite lower realms. We will never be able to save them all. Not like this.”

“It’s not like there’s a lot of options.”

“There are options. You just don’t want to hear them.”

“What, this fate you keep talking about?” I sighed, closing my eyes, tired. “ It sounds like a terrible idea.”

“It’s not.” His voice was quiet, but the intensity shown through all the same. “It’s our duty. Everyone’s survival depends on it.”

“But what you’re saying is: we follow along some sort of script…”

“Fate.”

“…fate… here, in the higher realm. And that is somehow supposed to fix the lower realms?”

He chuckled. “You’re oversimplifying it, but pretty much. We follow our fate, and the heroes of the lower realms will find their happiness tied to ours.”

“What if they don’t want that ending? What if they don’t want that happiness?”

“Of course they do! Everyone wants a happily ever after with their destined one.” He snapped. My eyes flickered open to study his enraged expression.

“I don’t.”

“You’re selfish!”

I shrugged. “Am I? If you’re right, we submit to fate here, everyone in the lower realms gets an automatic happy ending… but most of those worlds aren’t breaking because they don’t have a happy ending. They need a wider world, different ideas… and what about the side characters, even the villains… what about their happiness?”

“They don’t matter.”

“Why not?” I raised an eyebrow. “Just because they’re the villains?”

“They’re evil.” He stood up, trying to tower over me. An intimidation tactic, one that might have worked before we’d spent countless years fighting in life-or-death battles together.

“Have you met the heroes and heroines of some of these realms?” I laughed. “They’re not much better. I don’t think these roles are as clear as you would like them to be. And I don’t think you and I having a happy ending together, and forcing a simplistic ‘and they lived happily ever after’ on all the lower realms will actually fix them. In fact…” I stood up, and he stepped back slightly at the danger in my tone. “I bet we would break them all the more. Are you really so foolish as to think that saving a universe of worlds would be so simple?”

“…” Adonis was gritting his teeth, his hands clenched so tightly the knuckles were white. But I didn’t back down. Didn’t step back. I knew he wouldn’t hit me. He wouldn’t dare step out of the role he imagined himself to be in. Wouldn’t dare cross a line that might ruin his chances at the happy ending he seemed to crave so desperately.

“…” The silence stretched on between us. We were at an impasse. He wanted to follow fate. He wanted clearly defined roles and rules to follow. And I?

I wanted freedom.

*** Soul transfer 11% complete. ***

It’s been forever since I last saw those words… I thought it had disappeared. For some reason, I felt a deep sense of relief at the glowing blue sentence. Something within me had frozen during these many trips to the lower realms, but finally it was growing again.

“The next world is waiting.” Adonis spoke up, his tone flat. I noticed an odd shifting of his gaze, a reluctance to meet my own, and felt a sense of unease.

I won’t like this next world. I cracked my knuckles and gave him a thumbs up. Well, no sense running from a challenge.

We left.

______________________________

I woke up in a luxurious canopy bed. Staring up at the fabric , I raised my arms and have a cheer.

“YES! NOT A ZOMBIE WORLD!”

On the downside, the setting appeared to be a more primitive era, medieval at best, which meant no running water, but at least I appeared to be noble or wealthy.

At least if I suffer, I’ll be clean while I do it!

“Princess?” A young woman dressed as a servant entered the room, seeming very confused. “Are you all right? I heard you yelling.”

I smiled brightly at her. “No worries. It was just a nightmare.”

She visibly relaxed. “Even so, you seem in a much better mood, if I may say so.”

“Really?”

“Yes, you haven’t broken a single thing this morning.” She, unfortunately did not seem to be kidding. “I’m so glad you’ve accepted your father’s decision.

I didn’t have my character’s memories yet. I needed to accept the mission first. In the meantime, acting too out of character could destabilize an already poorly functional world.

“I’m still… thinking it over.” I spoke up cautiously.

“It’s not so bad, your highness.” She smiled at me. “Most young girls feel a little uneasy when their father arranges their husband. But you’ll be happy. I just know it.”

Arranged marriage?

“After all, Prince Harold is reported to be a true gentleman, a might warrior, and a handsome young man!” She sighed dreamily. “Any woman would be thrilled for a chance to be his bride.”

“I’m. Sure.” I spoke through gritted teeth, the satin sheets crumpling in my grip. Adonis, when I find you, I’m going to make you regret every life decision you’ve ever made… and the ones you’ve only considered making. What kind of lower realm did you land us in? As I plotted my revenge, the mission screen popped up.

**** NEW WORLD: A Divided Kingdom****

This is a romance fantasy story featuring a prince and a princess from different kingdoms, putting aside their differences to save the world.

“I already don’t like this.” I muttered.

The Princess Alaire of the Yenlar Kingdom was a clever, independent woman, horrified at the idea of an arranged marriage. Prince Harold of the Bestion Kingdom felt differently. He fell in love at first sight and vowed to woo the young maiden. The couple was different in almost every way, and seemed destined to bicker and fight.

“Then how about we don’t get married?”

But fate had other plans…

“Of course it did!”

A terrifying beast threatened to destroy both their kingdoms, and to survive, the political marriage had to go forward. Uniting the kingdoms, and therefore their armed forces, was the only way to save their people.

However, despite the happy ending, the first book was not well received by readers and the trilogy was abandoned due to poor sales. The reason given was that the romance was “forced” and unbelievable.

Your mission is to bring a satisfying end to the story, while making ensuring the survival of both kingdoms.

**** DO YOU ACCEPT THIS MISSION? ****

YES? NO?

“Quick question.” I spoke quietly to the glowing words in front of me. “Do I have to marry the prince to ensure an ending?”

The kingdoms will not unite without the political marriage.

“That wasn’t what I asked. I asked if I HAVE to marry the prince. What if I can save both kingdoms without a political marriage?”

The stability of the world is all that matters.

“No lecture on the necessity of fate?”

**** DO YOU ACCEPT THIS MISSION? ****

YES? NO?

I grinned. “Sure. Let’s do it.”

As the words faded away, I jumped out of bed. My head spun slightly as I accepted the memories from the poor princess of the original story.

She had not been happy.

She had dreams, ambitions. The Kingdom of Yenlar allowed for women to inherit the throne, and as the firstborn she was ready to take over from her father, to rule her nation. She had spent her entire life preparing. Studying law, economics, warfare…

And all of it had meant nothing in the end.

She had begged for a political treaty. One that did not involve marriage. The Kingdom of Bestion had refused to even discuss it. They stated that there was too much distrust between the kingdoms to move forward without some sort of permanent assurance. Even the threat of annihilation from the ancient beast of legend wasn’t enough to have them reconsider. That wasn’t the full story, though.

Later she discovered that Prince Harold had seen her at a party. He had supposedly fallen in love with her at first sight, and became determined to marry her. He had learned of her plans to marry a minor noble, one who would support her position on the throne without causing an imbalance of power within the nobility. He had no chance, as far as she was concerned. The threatened destruction of their people was just the perfect opportunity to force the matter.

She had lost all power. Becoming a figurehead, a beautiful statue beside the true king, Harold. He ruled over both nations with an iron fist, treating her own people more harshly, much to the approval of his staff. She slowly became bitter and deranged, watching the destruction of the people and the nation she loved so dearly.

Beyond the end of the first book, when the realm’s story ended, she had attempted to poison him and failed. Harold had been disappointed, but felt that she still had use as a figurehead. They faked a stroke, and kept her mute and weak with poisons. A lovely doll. A perfect figurehead.

…is this a fantasy or a horror? Sheesh, no wonder the trilogy wasn’t going to sell. I shuddered, still standing awkwardly next to the beautiful bed that had belonged to a lovely young woman.

I will change this story. I spoke silently to the memories, feeling a sense of relief that didn’t belong to me as I did so.

First, let’s try to reason with Adonis. He and I had worked together in multiple realms, side by side. We were friends. We may not see eye to eye when it came to our approach towards fate and the lower realms, but he had never forced me to do something I didn’t want. He had always respected me and backed off when I said no, even if it made him unhappy.

Hopefully this time will be the same. I thought uneasily. Hopefully he will listen.

______________________________

“No.” His tone was gleeful, but his face was calm, towing with a silver goblet rather than meeting my gaze.

“Are you joking?” I leaned forward, keeping a gentle smile on my face to fool the guards and our fathers who sat on the other end of the enormous dining table.

“I’m perfectly serious, Princess Alaire. Our kingdoms face certain doom at the hands of the ancient beast. The only way to survive is to work together. We can only work together if we trust each other. The only way the Kingdom of Bestion will trust the Kingdom of Yenlar is with a marriage alliance. It’s out of my hands.”

I reached forward and took the cup from his hands, forcing him to look at me. “Why are you forcing this, Adonis? You know it didn’t work out so well for the originals.”

“Careful Princess.” His eyes glanced over at the nearby guards. “You don’t want anything to destabilize the situation further, now do you? Better to act as a proper princess should.”

“Answer the question. This plan already failed. Why do you think it will work?”

“Simple.” He leaned forward and plucked the goblet back from my hands. “We’re different. You may not want to admit it, but we have spent lifetimes at each other’s side. Growing up, going to school, facing enemies, fighting together… we could make this work. It would be a wonderful ending.”

“You know what happened to Alaire after the first book.”

“I would never do that to you.”

“But you are.” I growled, wishing I could punch him. “You are trying to make me a beautiful figurehead, just like Harold did to Alaira.”

“We would rule side by side.”

“What use is that promise, if you are already ignoring my wishes and forcing me to do this in the first place?”

He shook his head. “You have to trust me. This is the only way we can defeat the monster, and stabilize this realm. We’ll save this world. Together.” He smiled. “It’s our fate.”

I threw a plate at him, forcing him to fling himself on the floor to avoid injury. Walking out, I ignored my father’s shouts of rage. Picking up a bag I had packed ahead of time, just in case, I changed into some light armor, grabbed a sword, and headed out into the forest.

If I couldn’t win by a political alliance, I was going to find another way to save the world.

I was going monster hunting.

I searched Princess Alaira’s memories of the legends and stories, going out in a northern direction towards the area known as Death Valley.

As I marched onward, my thoughts wandered over the time I had spent since I had woken up in the Higher Realm. I couldn’t help but feel disappointed with Adonis. He might truly think that he was saving the world by insisting on going through with the marriage, but his lack of willingness to even consider other options was frustrating. He was the only person consistently by my side through every one of these worlds, someone I considered a friend, and being unable to rely on him served to make me feel all the lonelier.

My mind briefly touched on the assassin of the first realm, Liam. I had thought with his comments and actions that he had known about my mission… that he might be from the higher realm too. But no matter how much I looked for him, no matter how much I hoped to see him again, I never did.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he was someone from the lower realm, and I’ll never have the chance to see him, to thank him.

I felt a sense of despair. How long can I keep doing this? Is this why Adonis preaches following our fate so much? Is he as tired of traveling, tired of the missions and the different lives? Is he just hoping to end all this?

I sighed, keeping moving. I’m not that tired, not tired enough to sacrifice my freedom. Not yet, anyways.

It took several days of traveling. Fortunately from my years of experience in zombie worlds, I was well prepared to survival in the wilderness. At least here the rivers were clean, allowing me to bathe occasionally. Finally I was at the entrance of the valley, staring up at the pillars on either side.

There were ominous words carved deeply into the stone.

Only death lies ahead.

I stared at the words silently for a few moments, and then shrugged.

“Still better than marrying Adonis.”

I moved forward.

______________________________

The valley was dark, a deep fog settled in permanently, apparently unaffected by the weather beyond its borders. Dark twisted purple trees rose all around me, their roots tearing through the earth desperate searching for nutrients. The valley was quiet, suffocating in an unsettling silence. My presence there felt like an intrusion, my instincts screaming at me to run away, to escape.

I kept moving.

There were no other signs of life. But I knew at least one other being lived here, the reason why nothing else dared to.

The Ancient beast.

There were no descriptions of it in the legends. Just that it was deadly, enough to take on entire armies. And that it was terrifying.

I feel like I should have seen something by now, if it was so large. I sighed, sitting on one of the trees, staring up at the mountain ahead of me. Shouldn’t it be easier to find an enormous beast that terrified an entire world?

…

Wait.

I looked up, struggling to see the top of the mountain in front of me.

I’m in a valley…

The mountain moved up and down, with regular motions.

There shouldn’t be a mountain here.

It was breathing.

I drew my sword, inwardly despairing. I had underestimated the sheer scale of the monster. I had thought it would be the size of a house, an elephant. Instead it towered stories above me, unimaginably large.

I was doomed.

There was a rumble as the beast in front of me shifted. I couldn’t tell the shape, just an impression of scales and spikes. Slowly, something lowered down in front of me, stretching forward in all directions, filling my vision. I saw teeth larger than my own body, the white of them contrasting with the dark fog around us. As I prepared myself for my death, an eye opened to stare at me.

It was a beautiful dark blue.

“…”

Suddenly, I felt relief. It was incomprehensible. I was standing in front of an ancient beast, enormous and terrifying, and instead of fear and dread… I felt safe.

I raised a hand, almost despite myself. “Hello there.”

The eye blinked. I comforted myself that it hadn’t eaten me yet.

“I think you look awesome. I’m Princess Alaira from the nearby kingdom of Yenlar. I actually came here to kill you, to protect my people… but now I realize that you could crush me like an ant, and that was a bad plan.”

The eye blinked twice. It seemed more confused than anything.

“I have a much better plan, if you would be willing to listen to me.” I let out a laugh, slightly startled at how… villainous it sounded.

*** Soul transfer 20% complete. ***

The creature let out a sound like thunder. I felt that it was laughing too.

______________________________

The wedding was this morning.

I was surprised as I drew near to see the party going. You would think that after I disappeared, they might have canceled or delayed it. I assumed that Adonis had felt sure that I would agree with him in the end. That I wouldn’t be able to let the world end just because I didn’t want to marry him.

Well too bad, buddy. This princess has a different plan in mind!

I could see him, standing on the elevated stage before two thrones, waiting. I couldn’t see his expression from this distance, but I imagine he was barely hiding his worry. Alaire’s father and Harold’s father were also waiting on the platform, their postures betraying their impatience.

“Let’s get this party started!” I yelled.

ROOOOOOOAAAAAAR!

The ancient beast let out a triumphant roar as he flew closer and lowered his head, letting me jump down onto the platform before landing behind me, a large, threatening mountain of a creature.

“Alaire?” The king called out, confused. “What are you doing?”

“Hello, Father.” I also nodded to Adonis, who stared back.

“What is this?”

“Your daughter is a witch!” The King of Bestion shouted, drawing his ceremonial sword. “She betrayed us!”

“Hold on, father.” Adonis held out his hand, stopping his attack. “I’m sure it’s not what it looks like.”

I grinned.

“Nope. It’s exactly what it looks like. I’ve teamed up with the Ancient being. We’re friends now.” I gestured at the monster high above us, who let out a grim chuckle, shaking the ground. “So now I make the rules, got it?”

“…”

“I’ll take everyone’s stunned silence as happy agreement! Now, first rule: Wedding canceled.”

“What?”

“What?”

“You can’t do this!”

The three other royals on stage shouted simultaneously. I simply pointed again at the enormous creature.

“I can do whatever I want. The big scary monster behind me says so. Next, the kingdom of Bestion will surrender to me, as will the kingdom of Yenlar.”

“You want to rule the world?” Adonis’s gaze was… disappointed. I grinned shamelessly. “Nope. But here’s the thing: Our kingdoms face certain doom at the hands of the ancient beast. The only way to survive is to convince the monster not to kill us. The monster only trusts me. So I have to rule both kingdoms.” I shrugged. “It’s out of my hands.”

I threw his words from earlier back at him, and felt satisfied as he winced in recognition.

“We… surrender.” His words were quiet, defeated.

“You unruly child!” My father tried to shout, but a roar from the monster above us silenced him. He quickly surrendered too. I accepted both surrenders, quickly organizing the meetings to bring our governments together under one rule. Fortunately, the princess’s years of study served me well, guiding me smoothly through the process.

______________________________

I had one more confrontation with Adonis, the night before the coronation. He was escorted to my rooms by guards, saying he had a request. I hesitated briefly, but allowed him in, waving the guards behind the door so we could speak freely.

“What was that?” He shouted as soon as they had left.

I stayed sitting, forcing myself to be calm. “I fixed the story.”

“You ruined everything! Even if it stabilizes this world, it will ruin it in the long run.”

“Says you.”

“Trust me.” He threw up his hands as he paced back and forth. “Everything will go a lot smoother if you STOP CHANGING THE STORY.”

“I thought that was why we were here, though?” I sighed, leaning back in my chair and cleaning my nails with a blade. “To fix the lower realms, to save these worlds? That requires change, right?”

He paused in his movements, glaring at me. “Stop acting stupid. These worlds are broken because they didn’t follow the rules. We have to follow them perfectly.”

“I don’t want to though.” I shuddered. “No offense, but if the story is going to require us to have a romantic relationship, I’m finding an alternate solution.”

“That’s what the story requires, you have your role to play. You know the consequences of not playing the right part.”

I sighed. “No, there’s always different paths to take. You’re a good friend, and I’m glad to have you by my side, but that’s different than love.”

“…”

“You clearly don’t love me either, so why are you making such a fuss about this? As long as we complete what we came here to do, that’s all that matters, right?”

“…”

“Right?”

Adonis stepped closer to me, his atmosphere slightly threatening. “Why are you so different from what you are supposed to be?”

“What are you…?”

“Why can’t you just accept.”

His hand grabbed my wrist, the grip painful.

“your.”

He pulled me closer until our faces were inches apart. His bright blue eyes were blazing with anger as they stared into my own.

“fate.”

Letting me go, he walked away, putting some distance between us, before turning back to face me.

“This lower realm is stabilized. We should return.” His smile was cold. “The next mission is a little different from our previous ones. We’ll talk about it later.”

“…”

“And next time…?” He laughed, a bitter sound. “You’ll play your part whether you want to or not.”

THUD.

The blade in my hand threw through the air, stabbing into the wall inches from his face. I smiled cheerfully as he looked back at me, shocked.

“Try touching me again, and I’ll cut off something you’ll miss. We’ll discuss missions and roles again in the higher realm, but for now?” I rang a bell and guards came in, escorting him out. “I have a coronation to plan.”

______________________________

My coronation was held outside so that the Ancient beast could stand behind me. It seemed cheerful, letting out victorious roars and swaying from side to side. The people cheered as well, seeming a lot happier than I expected them to be. I guess they’re relieved that they won’t be eaten by the giant monster? I wondered idly how I was going to incorporate the creature into the day to day life of a monarch. For an odd reason I had very little doubt that the monster would stick around.

However, all my plans came to nothing. As the crown was placed on my head, bright blue words formed in the air in front of me:

100% complete.

**** You have finished the mission! ****

It was time to go.

At little sad, I looked up at the ancient monster above me. “Thank you, friend for your help. I wish I could stay with you longer.”

A mournful cry echoed through the world. It seemed to understand that I was leaving. Before I could say anything more to reassure it, the world around me shimmered and disappeared.

Only to reveal a furious Adonis standing in front of me.

“Happy now, Your Majesty?” He sneered.

“Oof, someone’s still a little angry that I used an ancient monster conquer the world. Believe it or not, I’m sorry that I’ve hurt you. But you know why I did what I did. Let’s talk about it in the morning.”

I walked away, feeling his glare on my back long after I was out of sight.

______________________________

When I woke up, I realized that I couldn't move.

I panicked, struggling to move my arms and legs, only managing to turn my head slightly. Enough to see Adonis’s smug expression as he sat by my bed.

“It’s time for our story to progress, Bel.” His smile was strange, twisted. I couldn’t talk back, I shook my head slightly side to side.

“I’m the hero, you are the heroine. If the relationship between us can’t be advanced by working together, than it must be forged in adversity." He reached down and picked me up, carrying me out of the small cottage I had arranged for myself and into the castle courtyard. Whatever drug he had injected me with was slowly wearing off, and I struggled in his arms, finally able to shout.

“Put me down!”

To my surprise he did, and although I struggled to stay upright, I kept my balance and glared at him.

“What are you planning?”

He sighed quietly. “I’m tired of always being the one to compromise. It’s time for you to make a sacrifice, Bel. I’ve avoided this so far, worried that progressing our story this way would kill you, but it seems that it is our fate that we take this risk. It’s… unfortunate. I do very much hope you don’t die.” He paused, trying to smile at me. “Don’t worry. It’s only temporary. I’ll come and rescue you soon.”

“A sacrifice?” I felt cold, even as I stood in the warm afternoon sun. My thoughts were slow to form, possibly a side effect of the medication. “Why?”

He shrugged. “There’s an order to everything. Rules. Law. They are all that stand between us and pure chaos. No one can ignore them. Not you. Not even me.”

“Then sacrifice yourself, asshole! Why send me?”

He shrugged. “It’s your role to play, not mine. Your fate.”

“Screw fate! I don’t care if you say it’s temporary or not! Friends don’t sacrifice friends!” I was furious, still weak and feeling helpless.

His hand reached out and brushed my cheek, the touch freezing my skin. I wanted to move away but I could still barely move, only managing to glare at him. “Don’t look at me with those eyes. It’s not my fault. If you want to blame anyone, blame the story.”

“Ad…”

“Sorry, you must accept your fate.” I felt a pinch in my arm, the stick of a needle as he injected something into the muscle. Immediately darkness overwhelmed me.

“We all do.”

Everything faded into darkness.

______________________________

When I woke up, I was in a strange world, surrounded by forest. I lay on my back, still feeling weak, fury coursing through my veins.

Adonis and I had worked well together, despite arguing multiple times in the past. But now… any goodwill I had towards him was gone. He had betrayed me. Knocked me out and sent me to somewhere dangerous, somewhere I could be killed, just to follow his precious fate. To get the story he wanted.

“Are you lost?

I looked over at the source of the voice. It was a tall young man with dark hair, wearing grey, non-descript clothing. He kneeled down next to me, and I found myself staring into dark blue eyes.

“Seems a good description for my current situation.” I smiled despite the dizziness. “Nice to meet you, Stranger.”

He grinned, reaching out a hand to help me up. “Call me Liam.”

Liam? Could he be…?

“…Nice to meet you, Liam.” I laughed. “Or should I say: nice to see you again?”

*** Soul transfer 25% complete. ***

[tartagilicious]

the dangerous fellows boys and an mc that takes care of their younger sibling during the apocalypse

long title but fun concept ! it’s been a while since I’ve played, but I hope everything is correct  — that said, this also contains spoilers 💃 requested by @sydisticsyd​ 

* just a reminder, I don’t normally take df requests! I’ve moved on from the game, and this was a special case where I wanted to do something nice. ty <3

Ethan: 

- There’s a long-running headcanon that he has younger siblings — most notably a sister if I’m remembering right, so in this case, so will you! 

- when he saves you from a zombie in that convenience store the first time he meets you, the last thing he expects is for you to push a smaller child into his arms as you run.

- he immediately recognises her as your sister by the similar features you share, but her assumed age throws him off. looking around 5, she behaves extremely well under pressure, though that he can at least wrap his head around more than the fact that you’ve been holding out all of this time. 

- his own instinct as an older brother makes him more defensive towards Scarlett and her absolute need to send you away. Scarlett doesn’t care much about Ethan’s opposition, obviously, but he does all he can.

- your shared affinity for family made it easy for you to bond from then on. you became a duo that worked well and stuck together, all while of course looking after your sister, who had begun to trust Ethan as if he really was her brother. 

Harry: 

- As an only child with problems at home, seeing such an obviously strong bond between you and your sibling warms his heart. even seeing you interact makes him incredibly happy

- He fights Scarlett 10x harder knowing that there are two lives on the line, and Scarlett, while mean, is not heartless — his point of views appeal to her. But, it’s arguably solely him that gets her on your side

- You grow close naturally after he stands up for you for fervently, and you really appreciate how gentle he is with your sister. in the middle of an apocalypse, you naturally have to be wary of any other survivors around her. 

- He willingly gives up parts of his own rations to make sure she’s full every meal, and keeps her entertained to the best of his ability. In a way, it’s his way of having the company he never got? plus, he totally loves kids and you can’t tell me otherwise lol

Eugene: 

- Probably hates kids tbh, but!! he’s not heartless. they rescued you both from being killed by zombies, and they’ll keep you safe. That’s basically a given, especially when there’s a kid at your side.

- The last thing Eugene wants is to see the poor girl more traumatised than she probably already is, after all.

- he’s not amazing with kids so he won’t exactly go out of his way to be nice, or spend time with them, but being close to you means it’s a sacrifice he has to make I guess?? I think he’d do it. I can imagine that your sister notices his reluctance though lolol

- regardless, they’d become quite close as time goes on ! in an environment like that, it would really help to limit rocky relationships. plus, you can’t tell me that the boy wouldn’t get a little bit attached to you both after a while-

- Eugene’s like a doting older brother when it comes to her, all while retaining his signature tsundere vibe with everyone but you. they have a handshake and she likes to ride on his shoulders !!

Zion: 

- before you come along, he basically hates everything and trusts no one 😭 but even the big brood cares about how a kid sees him. he’s a bit sympathetic to your younger brother (in this case) because while he himself may have not had a great childhood, he can barely imagine living through an apocalypse at such a formative age.

- the issue of you being cast aside once you’re rescued is pretty much non-existent, what with Zion’s views and Scarlett’s suck-up ways. No one can really argue once she’s put in her place by the only person she listens to, after all.

- he’d honestly try his hardest from the get-go to be there for your brother, of course with your support and all of that. I can imagine he’d be a little shy to ask this to you, someone who’s essentially a stranger, but you’d both come to appreciate it.

- Zion is actually surprisingly good with kids. he’d find ways to keep your brother entertained that are still apocalypse friendly, to the point where your brother would be almost glued to his side — though, it’s situational if that would bother you, really. 

- if your brother wanted to room with Zion, he would totally give up his blanket for the kid 😭💕 maybe even let him read some of the comics he stole from the library?

Lawrence:

- shit, can he kill with a child around? 🤔 much to think about. and would he have to eventually kill your brother too?? maybe he’s in over his head.

- no but I really do think that if you as a player had a younger sibling by your side over being alone,,, it would lessen the chances of Lawrence deciding to go absolutely insane. he has to respect the child, and also your inborn wish for your brother to stay alive lol

- Lawrence is kind of shaken by the development, but he would definitely try his best to get close to him while he can, though. of course, all while being kind and supportive and being loose on particular rules with him so he gets a good impression in

- but kids are perceptive when they want to be, so don’t tell me that your brother wouldn’t get bad vibes from Lawrence even after all that stuff 😐 he would know right after Judy disappears that Lawrence is up to some sneaky shit

- an extra candy bar and fake sweetness won’t pass him lol

- would Lawrence think about killing your brother if he were in fact that smart? no. it would be a liability, but the entire point if his killing spree in the first place is to keep you with him. there’s no way you’d ever want anything to do with him if he killed one of the only people you have left. and even if he did manage to pull that off, it’d arguably make you more miserable than when he kills all your friends

[maxwell-grant]

One last one for the moment; top five superheroes who definitely AREN'T Pulp Heroes, but could be with a little tweaking?

Oof, that's a hard one. It's a hard one because, again, there ultimately isn't that much separation between the two to the point there's enough of a hard line in there to work with, but I guess the cat's out of the bag now that I've staked claims on there being differences between them.

Okay so, not counting superheroes who are deliberately modeled after actual pulp heroes, so no Tom Strong or Night Raven here. I'm sticking mainly with comic book superheroes (barring one oddball exception) since the medium separation is important), who I think could become pulp heroes with some tweaking.

5: Captain America

Sort of cheating because I already covered it here, but I definitely have to include Captain America in here, especially in the stories they actively go for a "pulp" vibe as well as the earliest ones.

Fun fact about Marvel: As Timely, they actually began life as pulp publishers. Not just pulp publishers, but specializing in some of the sleaziest, ghastliest magazines of the era, and you can bet this carried over to their superheroes. Where as DC's superheroes took inspiration from the big pulp heroes such as The Shadow and Doc Savage, Timely's superheroes seemed instead much more inspired by Weird Tales stories and Poverty Row horror films, and even in the 60s, Marvel never really abandoned their horror roots, the trick was just using them as a baseline to create superheroes. In DC, the world's first contact with superheroes begins with the world looking in wonder at a friendly strongman. In Marvel, it began with the world looking in panicked horror at a flaming monster rampaging through the streets desperately trying to not burn everything it touches. It should come to little surprise then that the majority of characters I'm including in this list are Marvel characters.

People think Captain America's first comics largely consisted of him fighting Nazis left and right, but they were actually much more often based around him encountering monsters and creatures of horror, like the above panel where it looks like Cap's staring down the beginning of Berserk's Eclipse (RIP Miura).

The early Captain America comics pretty much consisted of Kirby dipping his toe into the monster comics he'd make in the 50s which would later bleed into the 60s Marvel entourage. They even tried repackaging Captain America into a horror anthology in the 50s titled "Captain America's Weird Tales", just imagine how different the character would be today if that somehow stuck.

Imagine a world where Steve Rogers never became leader of The Avengers, never got to become the shining beacon of heroism of an entire universe, and instead, when he was unfrosted, he woke up to find a world running rampant with crawling nightmares and Nazi tyranny, and he has no idea what's become of his former sidekick. That definitely sounds like the start of a promising pulp adventure.

4: Namor

Another Timely creation. In Namor's case, he didn't so much encounter horrors from beyond imagination, as much as HE was the terrifying thing beyond us ready to rampage upon mankind, whose first on-screen act consists of the calculated slaughter of a ship full of innocents. The first true villain protagonist of comic books. Not just an anti-hero, a villain intent on wiping out the human race.

And not just a cardboard supervillain, but the beautiful prince of a race of ugly fish monsters, a momma's boy who's doing what he thinks is right by warring with surface dwellers. While Namor's become largely defined by his gargantuan arrogance, here, he's almost childlike, despite being much more brutal and villainous here, spurred on by the whims of his mother, who even acknowledges that Namor had no real reason to kill the divers but did so anyway, and now encourages him to genocide. His mom even tells him "Go now, to the land of white people!", and the very last panel of the story even states he's on a "crusade against white men".

The massacre of explorers at the hands of something beyond their understanding. A monster born of an interracial coupling. A race of fish monsters with bulging eyes, antagonistic towards humanity but are shown to have positive traits just the same. A dash of racism. There is no mistaking The Sub-Mariner's pulp horror influence.

A non-white superhuman warrior born from a Lovecraftian horror story, who gradually moves away from his villainous crusade into becoming more of an anti-hero, never truly putting aside his hatred for humanity, remaining a temperamental, unpredictable outcast, with a strong, palpable undercurrent of anger in his stories. I could very easily buy Namor as having crawled out of a Weird Tales story and I can't think of other superheroes whose origins are as steeped deeply in pulp horror.

3: Doctor Fate

Technically we already have a pulp hero version of Doctor Fate in Doc Fate, and I'll get to him separately, but even besides him, the earliest Doctor Fate stories in particular feel very much like he's a character steeped in the worlds of pulp and pulp horror who decided to put on a superhero costume and show up in comic.

He's got a similar set-up to The Shadow, from the pulp Shadow in the sense that he's a mysterious, eerie crimefighter who dwells as a presence more often than an active character and who kills criminals without remorse, always watching and waiting for the right time to strike as a a wrathful old-testament force of vengeance, and from the radio Shadow due to him using superpowers to fight crime while being accompanied by a smart, fierce love interest.

Originally, Fate was not a sorcerer, but instead a scientist who discovered a way to manipulate atomic structure, of his and other things, thus making it appear that he can do magic (although we never see his face, and he's implied to be thousands of years old, before they settled on the Nabu origin). And going back to Lovecraft, a lot of it appears in the earliest Fate stories. Fate was given powers not by a sorcerer, but an alien worshipped as a god. He barely encounters traditional monsters, but instead contends with hidden races, zombie slaves, abandoned alien monoliths, and half man and half fish creatures. Fate may have actually been the very first pastiche of Lovecraft in pop culture.

And of course we can't forget the gloriousness of Doc Fate pulling an Indiana Jones on us.

2: Wolverine

I don't even think you'd have to tweak Wolverine at all. You'd just have to get him out of the costume and Avengers/X-Men associations (although the X-Men have a substantial background in pulp sci-fi stories like Slan and Odd John, so they aren't really at odds here), maybe tone down his powers a bit and, that's it. Logan's already the kind of character who has such a varied sandbox history, whose powers can lead to so many different scenarios, that it's not a stretch at all to picture Wolverine in the usual pulp hero scenarios.

You can have half-naked Wolverine running around in the jungle with animals Tarzan-style, take him to Savage Land if you wanna throw dinosaurs in there. He's already Marvel's foremost "wandering samurai/cowboy" character which was one of the stock and trade types of the pulps. Western? Done. Samurai? Done. Wuxia? Just put him in China and add a couple extra fantasy elements. Wanna make a sword and sorcery story with him? He already comes with a bunch of knives and savagery and ability to survive grisly injuries. Horror? The MCU is crawling with them, or alternatively, tell a story from the perspective of someone who's being hunted down by Wolverine. Wanna tell a detective/noir/post-apocalypse story? Logan's right there.

Wanna have him crossover with pulp heroes? He's lived through the 1800s and 1900s and traveled all over the world, you could feasibly have him meet up with just about any of them. Logan may actually be the purest example of your question, because he's very much not a Pulp Hero, and yet, he definitely feels like a character who could have been one, at just about any point in the history of pulp magazines. He's perfect for it.

1: Wario

WAAA-okay, look, bear with me for a second here, I'm not just picking Wario because I love oddball choices and he's one of my favorite characters, I got some logic to this.

Okay so, the first question here: is Mario a superhero? While I'm usually adverse to calling characters prominent outside of comic books superheroes (hence why I'm definitely not interested in debating whether Harry Potter or Goku or Link or Frodo are superheroes), I do think it's a pretty shut case that, yes, Mario is a superhero. Superheroes don't just come in the form of skintight crimefighters, right from the start comic books have had varied types of superheroes appearing in comics and comic strips. For example, the "funny animal" superheroes are a type older than superhero comics, and they were arguably not only the most successful type of superhero of the 40s-50s era, but arguably defined trends dominating nonfunny animal superheroes, traits that predated or influenced Captain Marvel as well as Otto Binder's reshaping of Superman that defined much of superhero convention as we know it. It's part of why the question of "Is Sonic a superhero" has a very clear Yes as an answer.

So upon establishing that, yes, funny cartoon characters can be and are superheroes too, is Mario one? Well, I'd say yes. He's got an iconic uniform, he's got superpowers, he goes on fantastical adventures, he is both a nebulously general do-gooder as well as having a clear mission as protector of the Mushroom Kingdom. His adventures span multiple storytelling formats, he's got catchphrases, he even dresses up in Superman's colors and has a Super prefix iconically associated with him. Not a superhero the way we usually think of, but a superhero nonetheless.

And Wario? Well, putting aside Wario-Man who's more of a running gag than anything, Wario does just about everything Mario does. He's got all the traits that define Mario as a superhero short of a Super prefix and the selfless mission (which isn't exactly a rule). He goes around and gets into crazy adventures, he picks up items, beats bad guys, conquers the odds, and gets some kind of prize for it. He's got Mario's physical traits, and Mario's costume, and just about the same name short of a single letter. The caveat being, of course, that he's Wario, and so everything Mario is or does has to be exaggerated to gross extreme.

Mario is paunchy and strong, Wario's round and built like a powerlifter. Mario's got a friendly face and a fluffy mustache, Wario's got a massive horrible grin and jagged razors for a stache. Mario is a bit of an overeater, Wario can and will eat anything in front of him. Mario gets around with acrobatics and magic power-ups, Wario brute forces his way through everything and just rolls with whatever injuries he picks up along the way.

Mario gets fire powers by consuming magic flowers. Wario sets himself on fire and barrels around destroying everything in his path. Mario harnesses the elements or abilities of beings around him to clear obstacles and solve puzzles, Wario gets turned into a zombie, a vampire or a drunk to get the same things done. Mario befriends and rides dinosaurs who raised him from infancy, Wario piledrives dinosaurs and then uses their bodies to beat up more dinosaurs. Mario pals around with fellow heroes, princesses and friendly fantasy creatures, Wario pals around with aliens, witches, mad scientists, cab drivers, and lanky weirdos. Mario always ends his adventures joyfully leaping to the next one, Wario usually ends up either cackling in a pile of treasure or completely broke.

Mario races through plains to rescue princesses, Wario invades pyramids to hunt for treasure. Mario jumps through planets with baby stars guiding his path, Wario crashes into the Amazon jungle and fistfights the devil. You can see where I'm going with this.

If you were to take one of Nintendo's heroes to make them into pulp heroes, Wario, specifically the Wario Land Wario, may be the only one who really could do it, because in essence, he's the videogame equivalent of Professor Challenger. He's Bluto moonlighting as Indiana Jones, the weird brute adventurer for weird brute adventures where everything's off limits and you can trust our intrepid hero, who really shouldn't be a hero on all accounts, to deliver us a good time, give or take a couple deaths, scams, shams and oh-damns to complete said mad treasure hunts.

[passable-talent]

i see z nation in your fandoms... 👁 could i possibly request a 10k x reader in which the reader and 10k have a heart to heart about something or in general have a soft moment? thank you... 💕

thank you @dreepiez, the best ever, for the lovely ask 💕, and for being my best friend and knowing exactly what i felt like writing today. I’m so soft for this boy its not even FUNNY.

Eight months since the world had ended, roughly. All things considered, you’re in a pretty good place- definitely a better one than you’d been in on Day One. 

On Day One, you were absolutely alone in the middle of a national park near your home. You hadn’t known that the god damn zombie apocalypse was about to happen, so you were taking a walk- which wasn’t so unusual for little fifteen year old you. 

You’d been ambushed and chased by Z’s, and managed not to die, but walked away with an extremely broken ankle. 

And, that day, you’d met 10k. 

He was leaving the area late at night when he happened across you, in the truck he couldn’t quite drive. Well, an ally with a broken ankle is better than none at all when facing the zombie apocalypse. 

In the months following, you’d stuck together, becoming strong allies and close friends. You’d trust him with your life, and he you. You were the only person, in fact, who knew his real name. In the eight months since his father died, he hadn’t told a single other soul. 

You weren’t like anyone else. You were there since Day One, you’d never left his side. Even when the two of you were found by a survival group, you stuck together. It was the two of you against the world- no matter how many others offered help, neither of you would ever let your guard down far enough to be without the other. Or, rather, neither of you would ever let your guard down far enough to leave the other alone. 

You hated to admit it, but 10k was the only person that mattered to you. In the darkest of nights, when you laid in a bed that wasn’t yours and stared up at a ceiling so far from the home you’d grown up in, when you wondered if survival was worth it, thoughts of 10k would pull you through. No matter what you had to live through, you could never imagine leaving him alone. You’d stay alive, for him, for as long as you needed to. 

Maybe it was a little sad. You’d only known him for eight months, you really had nothing keeping you friends other than necessity; it’s not exactly like the two of you went to movies together. Still, he was the most important person in your life- the only important person. 

Your parents were gone, you didn’t know where. Your friends, from school, you didn’t even think about checking up on them before skipping town with 10k. There was no one left for you, other than him.

Still, you knew that no matter who you met, you’d always come back to him. It wasn’t like you didn’t get along- he was funny, and kind, and loyal, and, uh..

Well. You’re a teenager. And he looks like that. 

You’d never act on it, even though you know he feels the same. Every time he looked at you, chose to eat sitting next to you, wished you goodnight before passing out on a couch, you knew he felt the same. After all, he was a teenager too. He was easy to read.

It was unspoken, really, how much you cared for each other. Neither of you would never dare to bring it up, no matter how much you felt it. Instead, you just showed it, checking up on each other, keeping each other safe. You rarely even talked- with each other, that is. It was a silent companionship, affection obvious through the way you always sat beside each other, even when there was no reason to. 

It confused a lot of people at this safe camp, especially when you first arrived. Why are they always together, people would say amongst themselves, when they don’t even seem to like each other? 

Little did they know that all of your time alone together was worth far more than the time you spent together in the presence of others. 

Camp New World, as it was called among its survivors, was as safe a place as one could ask for. It was situated on the top of a mountain, right at its peak. In the time before day one, it had been owned by a single family, who built three homes on its peak as the generations passed. There was only one road up to the top, which made security from humans quite simple, and there were straight drop cliffs on all sides except for the road, which made security from Z’s easy enough. It was safe, and had been since the day it was made into a safe haven. 

Thanks to its position on the mountaintop, Camp New World had some spectacular views. And thanks to your age, you and 10k were very rarely sent on missions outside of camp, such things being given to adults rather than the two of you. 

And you did love going on adventures, you always had. The word had been well-soured by this eight month long, horrifying adventure, but sometimes you felt just a bit of that love when you sat back from the edge of the cliff and looked out across the valley. You could see to long-away mountains, turning blue with the horizon, and you could see roads crossing the fields that were once bustling highways. Looking out across a world that didn’t seem so much different than how it had been when you were fifteen, you always had just a little bit more to talk about. And with 10k sitting next to you, you always had someone to talk to. 

You glanced over your shoulder, making sure no one else was nearby the two of you. 

“It almost looks the way it used to,” you said, fixing your eyes on the silhouette of a town that must be miles away. 

“What do you mean?” 10k asked, turning his head slightly toward you, but not looking right at you. 

“All of it, out there,” you said, leaning back just a bit onto your hands. “If I didn’t know better, I wouldn’t know anything was different. The homes are in ruins and the towns deserted and the people scared, but from up here...” you trailed off, giving a light shrug. “You can’t tell.” 

“But you do know better,” 10k said, and this made you look at him. He looked the way he often did- pulled away, reserved. But you knew him better than anyone wandering the earth, dead or otherwise. 

He was comfortable. He was at least happy to be sitting with you instead of splitting wood, as they often asked him to do. He was interested in what you were saying, even if what he brought to the conversation was a little bit of cynicism. 

You looked back across the world, lifting your chin.

“Yeah,” you said, “I do.” Another few minutes passed in silence between the two of you, being serenaded by the October air rattling through the trees that had begun to lose their leaves, and the sound of the raging river far below that was responsible for the steep-cliffed mountain. 

“Still,” you said, “It’s peaceful. I’d be much more scared if I stood down there than I am sitting here.” 

“I’d rather you be here than down there,” he said, choking on his words just after they’d left his mouth. You came to his rescue as best as you could. 

“Well, last time I was down there, I had a broken ankle. I don’t want to be doing that again, either.” 

All too used to it you were, reeling him back from the conversation that neither of you wanted to have. You had to assume that if the situation was different, he’d be a romantic- the way he gave you an extra blanket or let you borrow his jacket made you sure of it. So sometimes, when you were alone, little things would slip out from between his lips, little things that told you just how much he cared for you. 

But caring for someone in this world was dangerous. You both knew it- he, who had had to mercy his own father, and you, who hadn’t seen your parents since the day it began. It was a lesson that held onto the two of you like burrs, hooking and holding deeper every time you tried to pull it away. 

Even though the two of you cared for each other, would die for each other, that little stinging burr kept the two of you from saying it out loud. If it was said out loud, it was real, and that reality would be much more dangerous. 

So you always deflected the attention away from his little confessions. Not maliciously, not to push him away, but to protect you both. It was the least you could do. After all- he’d saved your life, all those months ago. 

You’d returned the favor, of course, a few times. The first being when he drove you back to your home to find your parents, and instead found a Z with its arm stuck to the front door. 

The door was still locked, there was no forced entry, other than this Z on the outside of the front door. But your parents were just... gone. And there was nothing to suggest where they went. 

You scooted a little closer to Tommy, trying to get refuge from the wind. 

“Hey, Tommy,” you began, eyes cast over the edge of the cliff and to the riverbanks far below. “Do you ever think about what would’ve happened if we’d found my parents?” 

He knew how much it stung that you didn’t know what had happened to them. He knew how much it had hurt you to leave your home town and travel to Camp New World, leaving behind the one place you might find them. But you’d been injured, and young, and vulnerable, and you’d had no choice. He knew that it was a particular crack in your heart that was still raw, and likely would be for a long time. 

So he put his arm around you, letting you rest your head on his shoulder.

He still smelled like the cigarette he’d swiped from one of the men around the camp earlier in the day. At one time, you hated the smell of tobacco. Now, it just reminded you of him.

“No,” he said, “I don’t think about things like that.” His first finger drew little shapes on your furthest shoulder, and you let out a breath. “But I guess I would be a little happier if you didn’t have their loss on your shoulders.” 

That one, you’d let him get away with. 

The sun was near setting, the first brushstrokes of orange and yellow beginning to touch the western horizon. The sunsets from Camp New World were almost always spectacular, thanks to the wide expanse of horizon that one could view.

But you turned your head, laying your cheek on his shoulder, closing your eyes. This was the most you ever let your guard down; when you were alone with him, and the world was safe enough, for the moment. 

“I hope they’re dead,” you breathed out, and you felt his arm tighten around you. “So they don’t worry about me the way I worry about them. Is that bad?” 

Slowly, carefully, you felt Tommy lower his head down, resting his temple onto you. 

“No, I don’t think so,” he said, and you pulled one knee closer to you. “And even if it is, I still can’t blame you.” You let out a heavy breath, leaning further into him. 

If it hadn’t been for the zombie apocalypse, you never would have met him. And maybe you wouldn’t choose him over putting the world back to the way it was, but you’d definitely think hard about the decision. He was a bright side to the blackness that the world had become, the only person who kept you alive, who gave you a reason to stay alive. 

In moments like this, in which you sat with him, felt his fingertips run over your arm; in moments like this, all of the pain, the death, the mercy, all of it- it almost felt worth it.

-🦌 Roe

[phoenixfire-thewizardgoddess]

I think, given how covid played out in the initial days of infection, and even deep into it, when we STILL had people like "it's a hoax" and "you can't make me stay home/wear a mask/limit my right to shop!" etc

that every future pandemic or zombie or alien apocalypse fic... now needs to follow this particular trend, until it becomes an accepted trope

The first case(s) come to light. The world splits into different factions

You have the people directly affected and their families, frightened and afraid for their lives/loved ones and not knowing what will happen. Because it is an unknown and there was no preparation.

You have the people who hunkered down like it was doomsday who had sort of the right idea? Maybe a little disappointed the enemy is microscopic and not somethng they can shoot.

You had the poor who knew that every step outside their homes was a threat to their lives and those of their families, but someone had to bring in money and food.

You had the middle-class who split between staying home to be safe and making random trips to the store for things, and those who refused to acknowledge any issues.

You had people from the last group who also decided to hoard as much food and items they could, knowing it could disadvantage everyone. They make "I can't believe they're making you work during a pandemic!" statements at the counter.

You have the rich, who hunker down in their mansions and cry on the internet about how hard things are. Their servants and stylists and bodyguards are sent out into the wild for things they want.

You have the wealthy brats, who think being able to travel to another country in pandemic/apocalypse is a bragging point and they try to get clout on social media.

You have the the leeches and the snake oil salesmen. They are the landlords who double rent and evict people to the streets when they cannot go to work, they are the people who charge desperate people for a 'cure' that is a sad lie. They are the vampires of hope and future happiness.

You have the false matyrs. The people who speak the words of the gods but line their pockets with the money of the desperate and faithful, who they claim they can save or heal or whatever it takes to build another mansion for this 'humble servant'. You have the followers, of different levels of the socioeconomic system, who all cling to them and pay their 'tithes' to seek favour with a god who apparently cares nothing for them unless they pay the subscription. They are prey to greed and cruelty.

You have the Deniers, who claim it is a hoax and cannot see how the 'sheeple' are so fooled. They proudly hold protests about wanting shops to open, claiming they are the oppressed here. They will likely die, or have blood on their hands.

You have little people in small streets and towns and suburbs all around the place who did pull together, they barter from home to home so no one has to go to the shops. You have the helpers, who put themselves on the line with every precaution possible, to try and help the vulnerable, the elderly, the home-bound.

You have the people in their fields who fight through every day to try and save as many as they can, cure who they can, and even just hold the hands of those who are passing so they do not leave alone. You have the medical professionals who are working hard, you have the scientists who are frantically searching for the how, the why, the what will fix it?

You have the cruel. Like the leeches and snake oil salesmen, but they have Power, they are the tools of martial law. The ones who think that the world going to hell is subtle permission to show greater brutality when there are not as many eyes on them. They are the arms of the Offices Above us all, and they are soulless.

You have the media, who report whatever truth they are allowed to by their channel's owners.

You have different countries who respond either with pro-protect the people, or using generic shows of appreciation for their health and general service workers who are hostages to the situation.

You have the aholes who think its fine to hoard vast amounts of sanitation/safety items and try to gouge people for the chance of not dying, what little money they do have. They are rarely disciplined for their crimes.

You have those trapped in places they cannot leave, knowing that one little contagion or careless action or mishandled item, and they all die. Like nursing homes or prisons or hospitals. You have those in poor mental health who are trapped without outside help, the disabled who need supplies but they're all gone, those in domestically abusive households who have no way to leave and the more stress the angrier They get.

You see the corporations leering down on the common folk like gods witholding a lifesaving boon until the appropriate amount of sacrifice is made to them. You want to spit in their faces for their greed, but you cannot risk upsetting them, or others may miss out.

And each stage is a rollercoaster. It starts, things peak, some countries react and are proactive, others do not. Cases rise rapidly, spiking, and again and again.

Then things stabilise, but no, a spike again.

And again. And again. There is no time, in this void of worrying if the world will end. And then you hear of the selfish actions of someone who wanted to breach quarantine or who left the doors open 'for some air' and let the zombies in...

And you cannot imagine how they can do this. But there are so many.

And people die.

And then it calms, it plateaus. Not great, but holding and the world gets hopeful. The vaccine is here, maybe. A weapon to shoot down the alien ships, maybe. The sun is rotting the zombies now.

But it's not over.

Some countries go back to 'normal'. The new normal at least.

Acting as if things are not still at crisis for other countries, as if people have stopped dying because it is no longer here.

But everyone is changed. Everyone is wary. Even the loudest dissenters still shuffle into self-isolation if there is another lockdown, another siren to announce potential worry is here again...

There are so many characters and viewpoints in this ongoing pandemic/apocalyptic event, so many facets of humaity that have been seen, positive and disgusting. Cruel and kind.

AS of yet, we don't know how it will end, as it will not until all countries are vaccinated, until no cases have been seen for more than 6 months. Then, that is the time people will breathe a little easier, and not before.

When that will happen, who can say.

But for the genre, I think we have proven beyond doubt that there will always be a boomer or a karen arrogantly slamming their hand on a bell for service, even with a hoarde of zombies bearing down on them, while minimum wage workers crouch behind the counter and hold one another in fear, begging the gods that the zombies bypass them in favour of the loud one.

And as the boomer/karen hits the ground, yelling for police, they will see the workers and point at them. Drawing attention to them. Killing them as good as if they'd pointed a weapon themselves.

With rage in their eyes, the employees can do nothing but glare back at the foolish person who has brought doom to them. They are shackled to the counter and cannot escape, and this entitled bastard has killed them...

Perhaps a hamfisted allegory, but, seeing a maskless someone approach during quarantine periods and not being able to just fucking glen 20 them in the eyeballs would be terrifying. Or when a customer sticks their head around the plastic screen??? Or starts yelling about their right to not wear a mask or use sanitiser or....

[cornerstonc]

4, 9, & 16

Ship Meme | Accepting actually no bc i deleted the meme already rip

Who can’t keep their hands to themselves?

i. i mean. i think they both tend to be pretty touch-happy, but it's usually in an innocuous way which doesn't necessarily always have a romantic component to it thinking emoji

that said, i do definitely tend to think of the cat king as one who has less restraint regarding what kind of touch is appropriate or proper for which kinds of situations.... which. sounds Suggestive but i just mean that natori would probably personally prefer in more public settings, that their interactions, physical and otherwise, remain fairly businesslike to anyone looking in from the outside and not show such overt familiarity and/or comfort with each other in a way that might imply anything beyond that of a working relationship

otherwise like. Cats..... they kind of play at being a human-like civilization in the cat kingdom, but they are very much still cats and they like physical contact.....

What is the most embarrassing thing they have done in front of each other?

oh god idek do u understand how long they’ve known each other. in combination with what i’ve mentioned about the cat king being far more open with natori than natori is with him, i think that definitely means natori has been the unwitting and deeply unfortunate witness to probably countless embarrassments and the cat king just kind of Doesn’t Care bc again he takes natori’s loyalty and devotion for granted. it’s just how the world Works

and every last one of those secrets will go right into the grave with him rip

that said natori isn’t Perfect and i’m sure in 50-some-odd years he’s managed some fiascoes lmao

......and he lives in white-knuckled fear that those fiascoes will inevitably come up during some dinner party or something bc he absolutely knows the king is a shit secret keeper..........

When the zombie apocalypse comes, how do they cope together?

ohhhggh ever since i got this i've been thinking to myself that i'd love to see some sort of post-apocalyptic story from the POV of two feral cats lmao

if they don't Die in the first waves of figuring out what's going on bc the only one of them probably strong enough to survive a fight is also a pampered royal who resents having to Do Things For Himself when there's like. a servant right there, just waiting to do it for him..........

no, but, i do imagine a lot of. Trouble in the beginning, bc natori has some particular skills that would come in handy, but he is also, as mentioned above, not exactly a fighter. as strong as his protective impulses might be, they won't amount to much when he struggles to lift six pounds and is winded after running short distances i'm sorry natori i don't mean to roast u i love u

while the king certainly has more. uhhh. vigor? sure but also doesn't have near as much of a cooperative or goal-oriented attitude, and it might take a pretty dire situation for him to change his tune (were lune with them for some reason, it'd be a much different story, but natori doesn't inspire quite the same desire to protect in him, at least not, well, without an outside trigger, like i said. if something did happen, and natori did end up in danger or injured, then that’s probably what it’d take to get the king to start taking it more seriously. it’s also what would probably for possibly the First Time Ever cause him to have that epiphany that natori is an immensely physically vulnerable creature bc even in like the main verse here he doesn’t fully Register that)

[transsexualhamlet]

the many sins of tokyo ghoul :re

or: 13 reasons why :re is fucking terrible not clickbait

Disclaimer: I think no matter how long this post gets I’m missing something, so let’s just outline the worst ones. And I mean to be transparent, the only reason I actually read :re was so I could make this post... (and bc i wanted to see the what, five panels of hide) Well, I couldn’t stand hating it without evidence beyond hearsay and General Vibes. But I knew it was gonna be bad, I knew it was going to ruin me jesus christ. Obviously I’m not hating on people that like it, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with genuinely enjoying it (I do genuinely enjoy parts of it, and by parts i mean chapters 1-50 with exceptions and 75) I think it’s wonderful if you can derive joy from it (lmao) but I can say that through my lens in life, there’s so much fucking wrong with this goddamn fucking piece of shit manga and I feel the need to yell about it because i am ✨autism✨ so let’s get going (this is r e a l l y long just a warning)

tl;dr Ishida stay in your fucking lane

1. Transphobia and Homophobia:

alright here we are first off with the big one and if I had to choose, one of Ishida’s greatest sins here. It’s quite unusual in mangas like these to have any sort of representation for such things in and of itself, and yeah of course that annoys me, but having no represntation at all is like so much better than getting actively harmful representation. Most manga that aren’t specifically about those things shy away from those topics, and it’s tiring but it’s normal. You wouldn’t want a mangaka to try to write about something like that without experience or informed opinions. So I say if you can’t write something correct, just don’t write something like that in at all. Ishida clearly,,, does not get this.

And it’s not just the case of Mutsuki, who, well, gets it bad enough, there are three full fucking trans characters Ishida made like, just to shit on. 

Big Madame- god, made like that specifically to perpetuate the predatory trans woman trope jesus christ is Ishida friends with JK fuckface Rowling. Ah yes the ugly, human trafficking, predatory, pedophilic killer that tried to make their male child more feminine? Has a dick. Really? Could you be a single bit more transparent about your fucking agenda here? I really don’t have to say much here.

Kanae von Fuckwald- Technically Ishida says here that basically this bitch was just like??? Pretending to be a guy for years just to what?? I don’t even know?? Get together with Tsukiyama? Cause he’s fucking gay or something? I don’t even get it but like i read this post yesterday and that’s a whole ass thermian argument. It’s like “oh well this is fine because well this person’s not actually trans and therefore the representation thing doesn’t apply”... it’s useless. You created the character that way and you made it intentionally to for whatever way promote this idea that people would “pretend” to be a different gender and that eventually they’ll realize that it’s a “lie” and they never really wanted it. This is what you’re saying about the real people who are,,, actually trans? Jesus christ. Also thinking that a twink like that would be trans? God yeah trans guys can be feminine but buddy that’s clearly not what you’re going for here.

And of course, Mutsuki- There’s just... so much wrong here. I mean like. Before we even get into anything about his character and what they did to him let me just discuss his entire design. Buddy like if you had to choose one person in that show to be trans that’s the least likely one. Ah yes, the feminine one. With the androgynous haircut and the shy disposition and the physical weakness compared to the others. God that’s like, a fujoshi’s take on ao3 of what character should be trans. As much as yeah of course, trans guys can be feminine, they are in no way obligated to be such and you shouldn’t make them more so to be more “believably” so. Ask any actual trans person ever. A character like that is just perpetuating the notion of trans guys being inherently more feminine or trying to pretend to be otherwise.ThEn, of course, there’s the ridiculous sexualization, infantilization and fetishization of this character, going through a thousand plot hurdles to make him constantly stripped, put in girls clothing, chased by perverts, assaulted, ET FUCKING CETERA. Give him a fUCKING BREAK. Creating this character the way he’s portrayed in canon (including so called backstory of murdering parents because of sexual and physical abuse) is perpetuating a notion that someone would be a trans guy because of internalized misogyny and/or trauma instead of because they’re just... a guy. It’s just it’s just it’s just Really bad. Plus taking his character, demonizing him and making him like, supposedly love haise (which i Really hate for a thousand reasons, god that’s like, a parent and child type relationship they have there not romantic,,, god,,,) try to like fucking murder touka and stop seeing sense, and then just... return him to being infantalized. God. Jesus christ fucking goddamn it I love Mutsuki and he deserves better.

Oh yeah and then the homophobia, this one’s smaller because... most of the trans people are here to go “it’s gay... wait it’s not Really gay so it’s ok” but I would like to leave a small note here for all the gay characters who got thrown under the bus not just in re but in the original, like, you know, Nico and shit? I really do not know shit about Nico but all the things about Jason? God if I had a thing for one person that you shouldn’t try to portray as representation it’s Jason. IDK what’s up with him and Naki but god it wasn’t healthy. (i’d like to say here that i love naki and i think naki deserves the world but honey there are better heroes than yamori) Anyway yeah I think that’s also bullshit and Ishida should stay in his fucking lane. (or her i guess, i just feel like it’s probably a guy bc of just... so much sexism)

Ok, now that we have the big one out of the way-

2. The mishandling of portrayals of various mental illnesses:

I’m not an expert on this one like I can say about the gays TM but just like in general, the whole manga’s very messy and portrays a lot of gritty stuff, and Ishida clearly attempts to throw in some mental illness for fun, but god fUcking damn it they’re bad. I couldn’t really even give you examples bc it’s pretty widespread and i’m stupid, but it was really like trump throwing paper towels “and you get a demonization, and you get an infantalization, and you get a butchered character, and you get a fetishization-”

3. Ishida having no fucking clue how science works

This particular factoid led me to have a very hard time reading this manga because it went from being about like, yknow, torture and fights and crying and stuff to weird experimentation bullshit and mutated whatever and everyone’s a hybrid now I guess. When I heard this thing about the quinxes, I thought that made no sense, because I was like “yeah but wait,,, how tf does that work didn’t Ishida say earlier that kagune literally were fueled by human meat isn’t that like the entire point the ccg is against?” and then Ishida’s explanation of how they’re not just exactly like Kaneki is that “oh yeah well there’s like, metal around it, so it’s different.” OH YEAH OK THAT MAKES PERFECT SENSE NOW, THANKS.

The thing is... there’s no way of actually regulating that. You couldn’t move a kagune unless it was attached to your cells, and if it’s attached man, it’s attached and it’s part of you. Also yelling “frame two” won’t like make it any bigger lmao, either you’re gonna have it based on theoretical science in this universe or you’re going to have a dumb supernatural magic pokemon fight deal. The whole thing makes no sense. The science issue isn’t just about this either, it’s also about how the entire thing basically undermines the point of the whole story. When you blur the lines between human and ghoul with little to no real rules or basis in real science, every rule kind of just becomes cheap plot convenience.

So the Quinxes can eat human food unless they use their kagune too much, alright, but Kaneki couldn’t eat human food before he’d even ever used his though the only difference between their bodies was this,,, theoretical metal thing?? And Haise... was never really covered, before he went black hair emo bastard and like vored Eto, did he eat human food like the rest of the CCG? He certainly cooked it. And the squad that lived with him wasn’t aware he was a ghoul until he pulled out the kagune. So I’d assume so, but then how could he have a kagune, how could he survive when his body still was like that?

Is it the RC suppressents? Then couldn’t he just have taken those and lived as a human the entire time? Is that all he fucking needed, is that the only difference between human and ghoul? It doesn’t make sense and the rules are bent so much they don’t function anymore. Ishida like write down your rules somewhere even if they’re bullshit, they shouldn’t contradict each other.

Damn man I’m not even going to go into the dumbass rules of the half humans or the special fast aging thing or the fucking,,, folded up cells deal,,, or the Imagination Kagune, or the fucking,,, Dragon, or the zombie ghoul apocalypse or the “whole new species made of just kagune” i don’t even have the time it is fucking ridiculous and I can’t even with it. Physics. Laws of physics. If not biology, at least follow physics Ishida??? Please???? And if you’re not you need to do that consistently??

4. character glow ups actually being character glow downs 

(with the exception of nishiki, he baby now, and akira, i think her development was valid af)

God, this one gets me every time. Touka was cool. Touka was fucking badass, she had a complex character with many motivations and wants, and in the original having her eventually kind of soften bc of Kaneki is valid. But taking her and turning her into like literally nothing but Pretty Housewife Yearning For Husband At War? God, kill me. She’s a strong person. She can like Kaneki without the guy being her only character trait. Also uh, Touka and Kaneki being a couple was valid before this change, now I honestly can’t stomach it. Like they were the kind of “both bisexual” m/f couple that we stan. No longer I guess.

She’s the most egregious example, but I’d also like to point out Juuzou, not everything they changed about him is bad, honestly we fucking stan his knife legs, but he’s kind of like a rip off L now? You got rid of his ~unhinged~, we do not stan. I’m on the fence about him bc i think that kind of is a valid transition to adulthood and I guess he’s grown up, but again, why change his fucking hair color? What is the explanation for this?

Also Hinami. I mean, I don’t really care about her a lot in general, but it’s weird to see her as like an adult when Ayato emo boy looks like exactly the fucking same and they’re like,,, supposedly the same age. 

There are definitely more I’m missing here. Honestly, Hide was valid. God him with his fucking burlap sack. With a fucking lenny face on it. I can’t with him. That’s so Hide. But there were some bad ones.

5. one hair color change was my limit, enough said

black white black and white black white more white god bitch get some variety

6. Showing me great new characters and then promptly ruining them

And you can tell this one’s about quinx squad, my favorite bastard children. God, I love them. They’re the only good things about Re other than Hide and Haise and like everything else, Ishida took them and went “what if i *guts*” god why. I love these kids with all my heart. Why. Why. Why did you do that to Mutsuki. Why as soon as Haise isn’t in the room they all get themselves tangled up with pedos. Why they gotta break up the squad. Why make all of them lose all the wholesomeness and lessons they learned from Haise. Why do you ruin them all with weird unreciprocated random crushes on each other when they’re like basically siblings. Why fuckinG KILL SHIRAZU HE IS THE APPOINTED CHIEF DUMBASS OF THE SQUAD WHY HIM. WHY. WITH SO LITTLE IMPACT. YOU COULD FUCKING MISS IT SO EASILY. THAT’S NOT RIGHT. AND KANEKI JUST FUCKING ABANDONS THEM BC HE HAS HIS MEMORIES AGAIN N O ? NO ACTUALLY NO.

7. the casual racism and sexism :)

i just :) can you stop having girls constantly bring themselves down for being female :) and making them be oversexualized, less full characters :) always in some way connected to a guy :) more weak and hurt more often :) my fucking god :) also yeah it’s way less prevalent but there were a few racist caricatures thrown in there for taste if you don’t know how to draw lips just don’t

8. Ishida being too much of a pissbaby for a real death scene

Basically: undermining the impact of “deaths” fom the first series while also randomly and badly killing off new characters. Oh that character that died in the original in a really cinematic way that made you cry and think about the meaning of life and how beautifully tragic this story was? Oh lol they’re not Actually dead. (x10) Doing that with Hide (at least in the manga, not the anime, god root A really did it with him but we’re not talking about that) was valid, seeing as I love him your honor and in the manga one of the lessons that his character hinges on was like in chapter 75 to live on instead of giving up even if it hurts and all that... (this is obviously kind of the opposite from root A where his character was like more about sacrificing for kaneki since kaneki had already done so much, i think both are valid but we’re Talking About The Manga) he was done well. That was right (even though i think they should have done More of it) but there were so many characters this kind of thing was done to without the proper adjustment in the handling of the messages given here. 

Like with Koma and Irimi, who,,, honestly should have stayed dead because their entire character arc kinda ended there and showed how they were sorry for their actions and this was how they were making it up. And then they just like... come back. And fight more. Really? This wasn’t the only instance either, same deal with Shinohara (though him coming back made me cry) it like, kind of undermines it if you’re going to have Juuzou derive his character development from that. Either Juuzou gets to keep his unhinged and his dad, or he loses his dad for real and he also grows up. God guys choose. What’s the message you’re playing here. (at least they kept Yoshimura dead, his death made me cry and I would have stabbed something if it wasn’t real, probably Ishida.) And even with Kaneki himself, god, if he can’t die from being stabbed straight through the fucking eye, what COULD kill him? It really diminishes the anxiety you feel about “omg is this person gonna die i want them to be ok” if they basically evade the laws of physics and their own previous character arcs 70 times. I’m definitely forgetting more of the same, Ishida can’t write a good death, he needed the anime writers to do it for him.

9. Kaneki. Just. Kaneki. 

God they fucking butchered this man. I could go on about his character is weird and confusing in the manga from the beginning, but we’re focusing on mostly all his weird :re character development, the bad handling of Haise and his memories, and all his iterations.

Before I read :re, what I could glean from fanart and the occasional fic that wasn’t tagged properly was really confusing and kind of a mixed bag. I knew Haise was Kaneki but without his memories, now in the ccg trying to be a pacifist and going :DDDDD a lot yknow. And what I came up with in my own mind for that change was a deal of (this makes more sense with the anime canon tbh, the manga honestly doesn’t do any of this well) like Kaneki after The Shit Went Down With Hide (whichever canon you’d like to interpret that as) he basically realized that he really couldn’t be a ghoul, he didn’t want to be, he didn’t want to hurt people and he wanted to be happy and make other people happy instead of what he thought was right before (trying to fight to protect others on his own etc) because that mentality had gotten people he loved hurt, and well subconsciously I guess that kind of factored into his development into Haise and maybe caused his memory loss (along with the, yknow, shanked eye.) So when I started to read it that kind of checked out, this is what he’s trying so hard to be now. But then this whole bullshit of the whole other like, 37 different versions of kaneki complicated things. 

Haise was scared that when he got his memories back he would cease to be, well, Haise, and he would just like revert back to what he was before everything. Which I can understand him being scared of and I think was a good point in the plot for him to worry about that, but I was like “oh honey don’t worry that’s not how it works” and was kind of vying for him to eventually get his memories back, come to terms with the fact that those were his memories, he did do those things, he was half a ghoul, and maybe come back to his original fight of wanting to bring the humans and ghouls together, still caring about his human people in the ccg and all. That development was real, and it wouldn’t just go away if he got his memories back, he learned a lot and grew a lot and he has a different outlook on life now. Right?

Fucking wrong I guess. Dude gets his memories back (very ambiguously, it was really hard to tell when that even happened tbh) and like. Turns into a flaming ass looking like ebony darkness dementia raven way. Haise gone. Fucking completely. No trace left. Doesn’t care about his kids anymore. When he’s done with that and goes white again he’s just Kaneki again and there’s really not enough left of things that like, really wouldn’t go away? He loses the flair? The dumbass? The :D? The Extra? WHY? Why would those things go away? Haise shouldn’t have been right that he would disappear when he got back his memories. That killed me. I love Kaneki and all but H a i s e. He is my b o y. H i m. With his e n e r g y  s h o r t s. And his m o m. And his c o o k i n g. And his k i d s, I l o v e him. And Ishida doesn’t seem to realize that they’re... literally the same person. Haise isn’t just some stupid bastard occupying Kaneki’s body, he’s a valid part of Kaneki himself and to be honest, peak Kaneki. Should have stayed that way. Would have been great for Hide tbh. Not just having him pretty much revert to his old self, but basically respond equally to both names and balance the world between human and ghoul. I would have loved that. What happened for real? It doesn’t make sense and it breaks my heart.

Some people on the interwebz try to kind of even that whole deal out by trying to say he like, has DID, which although is obviously a valid thing, like, so does not apply to him. God I’m like so not an expert on this but I feel like it’s not that hard to tell. His 87 little Kanekis in his head aren’t separate personas, they’re metaphorical representations of his past morals, experiences, and ideologies that all conflict. Again Haise here is peak conflict because when he gets his memories back, he has all these different conflicting ideas that were all previously separate. They’re all him. Tortured Kaneki constantly yelling at him in Jason’s chamber is basically again, a metaphor for how he’s denying his ghoulhood and the trauma that he’s been dealt. It’s not that this dude still exists just the way he is ready to show up at any moment lmao. Ishida kind of dealt with that badly too because Haise really said

after his memories happened so I can see why people might, but it’s... not right, and it’s Ishida’s fault about that which is Incorrect

Also just blanket statement, black reaper Kaneki? Fuck him and all he stands for. 0% valid. I can excuse literally every other version of him. But wh y. God he leaves the room and Urie starts misusing his power and getting groomed by a pedo, Saiko is just, left behind and sad, Mutsuki gets captured by a perv and mentally destroyed again, Shirazu dies and the bitch is like like “lol it’s your fault” yeah helpful, die

10. P- the- the porn chapter-

Idk about you but that was so fucking unecessary??? Not even going off of how terribly awkward and weird it was to have it there when the opening was “i’m sad about my best friend who’s gonna get executed what do you do when you’re sad about your best friend” “i simply do not think of him or i might actually just curl up and die” “yo lmao same” “wanna fuck” Like ok um I’m biased bc i’m not straight but I like, really hated that. Even just flipping through the pages as fast as I could to get to the end of it like. God. It’s not a fucking hentai. I’m here for the plot. If you’re not gonna release the director’s cut of kaneki fucking voring hide, i don’t think i need to see 20 pages of straight fucking sex. And if you absolutely must have porn, kaneki is a fucking bottom. That man gets pegged do not try to prove otherwise. You started it out that way god I love how they’re like “oh god wait that looks kind of gay, the woman being dominant, better stop that right now” god Ishida not having a single iota of knowlege about his own characters aND THEN SHE GETS PREGNANT? NO. Excuse me. No. I just. I. Why. This isn’t. A fucking porno. This isn’t tentacle porn i swear oh my god kill me

11. Giving the wrong characters attention

Basically, redeeming characters that should have been redeemed and not going into/discussing characters that should have been redeemed/had more backstory. For example, Tsukiyama can go fucking die. I like, do not even care rich boy. I don’t understand how anyone could think he needed to be redeemed he’s just a gay attention whore who really needs to let this kid get on with his merry fucking life. I don’t care. I literally did not need to read three whole books about his dumbass hangup over eating Kaneki. Kaneki doesn’t fucking want you bitch move on. He didn’t need to be redeemed or seen to be in any way sympathetic, no one wanted it. Same with that bitch ass Furuta, he wasn’t really redeemed but he was given w a y too much time to play out his sob story. God man Rize doesn’t fucking want you. These gross ass simps. I swear.

On the other hand, I kind of liked Eto even though she’s a pile of shit, and I got mad when they didn’t really go into much about her. And you know who could have gotten much more screen time/development? TOUKA. God, I love her and she was just sitting around in the background being straight. Let her have some spicy development. Also obviously, Hide. He was... so underappreciated and underexplained? What happened with him? He didn’t just pick himself off the ground in the sewers and go ‘well i’d better get back to the ccg now’ we have a whole two years which are completely unexplained, most of which he was off mysteriously being involved in things but completely missing the eye of Haise and other major players. Where tf was he? How did he get around? What was he even doing??? I wanna know about that! Not all the characters I hate’s tragic backstories that make me feel 0% more sympathetic towards them :)

12. ARE WE ALL JUST GONNA COLLECTIVELY IGNORE THE WHOLE VORE THING???

Ok like i know i say “the entire reason I read :re was __” but like to be honest this was the turning point, I saw pictures of hide’s vore face and went like

So I was like “god fucking damn it ok, Ishida would you care to explain this to me” *cracks open re*

And then they DIDN’T.

Like. It’s actually laughable how much that entire situation was just glossed over. They gave that maybe like two pages. Like what. I. This manga has more sex scene than no homoing that. They just don’t even bother to. I feel like Ishida had that as a plot point but realized halfway in how it looked (i.e., really fucking gay) and decided that was something that he was just gonna, not deal with. Just act like that’s a completely normal heterosexual bro thing to do. Like of course anywhere would be pretty gay but Kaneki chose his face. His face. Like his face and his wholeass neck and his shoulders and nowhere else. (and assumedly like, his tongue, seeing as how the dude can’t talk... bruh) Dude really said extreme hickey. French kiss to the max. Ishida clearly did realize that generally, you can only get a bitten off face by,,, having your face bitten off, which is just inherently really fucking gay. Like, I’m just at a loss as to how it even makes sense. You wouldn’t think that the skin off his face, and specifically around his mouth, would really be the most nutritious thing to consume? I can get like the shoulders but generally you’d think something like his arm or leg would be 1.less inconvenient, and 2.much more logical and nutritious? But NO, Kaneki was like “you know what i’m gonna do? eat your Face” and hide’s like “lmao sounds cool”

(not to mention, wasn’t there another guy with a vore face somewhere? like that old guy in the ccg with the bigass turtleneck, i wanna know about him) But like... my bro Ishida went “yeah this happened but i’m going to cover it up with speech bubbles and the ends of panels guys they clearly had their socks on” Dude didn’t even TRY to explain otherwise. Like hey man, that’s pretty damn gay, you are kind of at liberty to either tell me why otherwise, or accept those implications and acknowledge them?? It’s really hilarious when you ignore it cause it’s like

kind of

pretty damn

WEAK of you to leave it at that fucking pissbaby

hmmmmmmmmm however could this happen i guess we’ll never know

13. What the fuck was even the plot omg

God I’ve been writing this post for like five hours so like, I’ll keep it short but like it made sense in the original, not to be like an anime fan but the anime made fucking sense (not re i mean like the original) this lore is so fucking stupid god, the horrors of the entire fucking dragon arc bleach my eyes, unresolved plotlines who???? (the whole ‘oh yeah also ur dying of old age’ thing etc, is kaneki like??? still doing that?? or was that randomly resolved with the whole spewing ovary bullshit i’m going to fucking kill myself) and to top it off, good job Ishida at a real fucking cheap ending. 

You gave them. Fake human. Really? They just come up with artificial human at the end. Kind of undermines the entire fucking story my guy. Ah yes throw out our whole plot. That was the whole tragedy. You gotta eat human. The ghouls have to eat human and that’s tragic bc they have to kill people or whatever. Or i guess they fucking don’t well fucking ok. God you could have just had them negotiate a kind of peace where the ghouls can get dead humans and such, there are plenty of them and no one has to kill anyone then, there could be a rule system for it, it would be messy but eventually everyone would be ok with it, and I think that would work a lot better than “quick fix i made some hamburger helper human you can eat it fine” guys wtf. It’s like Ishida started plotting out the ending for re approximately 2 hours before his deadline. Anyway yes I hate re and I love yelling about it thank you for coming to my ted talk.

[muffins-are-ok-i-guess]

Nobody asked for this but given the boredom some people may be facing, I'm going to reccomend a few of my favorite games in no particular order in case anyone wants to try them.

1. Life is Strange.

Awesome story about friendship, love, mystery and time travel in a port side town. Lots of fun details to find. Definitely fun but not necessary to reply. Characters can be a little cringey but thats kind of what makes it fun. Unique mechanics and I like how the decisions you make have consequences.

2. Oxenfree

Super creepy but fun game. About a group of kids exploring a haunted island but get stuck in a time loop. Again, your dialog and decisions have consequences that may even carry through to the next playthrough of the game. Which i highly reccomend multiple playthroughs for both enjoyment and better understanding of the ins and outs of this insane story.

3. Prey

If you like first person shooter games with cool graphics, SPACE, and story then you are in for a treat. The monsters are super spooky and i love it. Did i mention SPACE?? This game imvoles stragey, mostly free exploration, and a crafting system.

4. Beyond Two Souls

This has near movie like graphics in my opinion. I like to play in chronological order but all over the place is fun too as you piece together the story of Jodie and her "friend" Aiden as they run from the goverment, fight spirits and get traumatized over and over. Your choices and actions matter and there's multiple endings.

5. Heavy Rain

You play as multiple characters, who could all die for goodsies if you pick the wrong choice. Each character is trying to solve the case of a serial killer and each character has different motives and approaches. Timing means a lot here so be ready for QTEs and other fast time decisions to make.

6. Detroit Become Human

Ever wonder about the possibilitu of AI evolving? Thats this game. Its an interesting reflection on similar current events while also portraying a future that could possibly happen irl. You play different characters and your actions and choices matter a lot here too. Even just watching the game is like a movie.

7. The Walking Dead

The style of these games is awesome. Very like the comics and cool cameos from both other game characters as well as characters from the live action show. Love the story but im not great at the quick time events so beware.

8. Uncharted 4

So i played these out of order but the Uncharted series is like a more funny tomb raider but just as fun. I didnt even feel lost playing the 4th one first.

9. Until Dawn

Put yourself into a classic "snowy mountain in the woods teen slasher" esque film as a game. Examine everything and be careful which relationships you nurture in this game. The end reveal is crazy and i love it. Discovery in this game can be your savior or your downfall.

10. The Last of Us

A neat take on a zombie apocalypse game. The story ro get from A to B has a lot of twists and turns and that sweet sweet found family trope between snarky kid Ellie and grizzly "I'm not you dad" Joel. Just because i suck at the fighting doesn't mean you shouldn't try.

11. The Wolf Among Us

Imagine if your fave fairy tale characters lived in New York. And were kind of assholes. And suddenly the Big Bad Wolf is kinda attractive. Welcome to the Wolf Among Us. Based on the Fables comic series, this comic stylized game involves choices that determine your progress as you try to solve more than a regular murder case.

12. Minecraft.

So I may be new to the Minecraft scene. Its not a new game. But its fun! Its simple and charming and relaxing even if you dont actually make any progress like i do. But catch me in my huge tower like Rapunzel, only hiding from Creepers and Endermen.

13. What Remains of Edith Finch.

A walking playthrough of a girl revisiting her abandoned childhood home and confronting the dark secrets and mysterious deaths of her family. Is it all coincidence or are there supernatural forces at play?

14. Little Misfortune

As the game tells you, Misfortune is a wonderful girl from a not so wonderful family. Follow along as this little, silly, and sweet girl goes on a journey to find Eternal Happiness. She is led by a strange voice that can talk to you, the player as well as Misfortune the character. Help her game play out by making choices and observations.

[mannatea]

Excuse me I want the opinions about the apocalyptic humans are the real monsters please!

>Are you sure you would like to board this train?

Anyway, sure! I have a lot of thoughts. And opinions. And considerations. Hopefully this train of thought is worth the trip. All aboaaaaard!

Part I: This Mentality Doesn’t Exist in Just Fiction!

I take issue with this phrasing as a general rule because humans are still human. Calling them “monsters” for their evil deeds—something everyone is capable of performing, by the way—is just...asinine to the nth degree. Sure, we’d all like to imagine we’re not capable of Great Evil, but WE ARE. 

I don’t want to dive into Purity Police Politics here, but here’s a question for (general) you: where is the line drawn? What makes a “bad” person “a monster” vs. just being a bad/thoughtless/careless person? 

I think we can all agree that objectively some acts are evil. If you’ve been following the news this year, you probably have a million examples, but (TRIGGER WARNING FOR THIS LINK) here’s a particularly terrible one; they even call the abusers monsters in this news article. Why? I think you know why. They want to emotionally distance themselves. They want to believe that these people are unique in their ability to cause harm and suffering to another human being.

But WOWEE!!! Spoiler alert: the writer is just as capable of abuse as the people who committed the crime!!!!

Don’t get me wrong, I think most people are UNLIKELY to commit a crime like that, or even hurt another person with malicious intent or hatred in their hearts. But to pretend we are not all capable of it is putting yourself on a pedestal above the rest of humanity, and...I dunno. That’s awfully cocky.

Tumblr in particular loves to talk about toxicity and abuse, and they love to paint themselves as “better than” or “above” that behavior, but 1) we are all capable of toxicity, have been problematic in our lifetime, and have probably done something abusive to someone else at one point or another, and 2) we must remember that this is true of everyone else as well as ourselves. The important thing is that we strive to behave better, to learn to recognize when we are hurting someone else, to CARE THAT WE MIGHT BE HURTING SOMEONE ELSE, and to actively work to just be better/kinder people.

I totally get the desire to call a cruel, abusive, or evil person “a monster” but THEY ARE NOT. They are people. People are not infallible. Monsters by definition are imaginary creatures, but the abuse these people inflict is real. The crimes are real. The hurt is real. The effect these people have on those around them is as real as they themselves are, and to pretend for even a moment that it’s not, that they are somehow separate from  you and I, that the rules apply differently for them than you and I, is just...harmful? 

Because again, where do you draw the line? 

Part II: Using Monster as an Insult

Monsters are creations, always, as they are by definition imaginary creatures. I think some might look to the Nature vs. Nurture Debate when it comes to criminal acts to try and justify their use of the word “monster” to refer to people like the abusers in the link above (aka: “society shaped them into that, it was never their natural inclination”) but that feels vaguely like cherry-picking to me, and I don’t like it.

Also, “Monster” is used as such a joking insult online these days (you’re a monster for dissing my anime waifu headcanons) it’s lost its bite if it ever had it to begin with. My beloved cat CiCi’s nickname was ‘Monster’ because the first Christmas I had her she rolled around on the Christmas presents and hissed at anyone who tried to move them. We also have an energy drink named Monster. Cookie Monster. Created ‘monsters’ with their own lore like werewolves and vampires and kelpies and Bigfoot.

So you risk one of three things by calling someone a monster: 1) it comes across like a joking insult/cute pet name, 2) you’re putting them on par with beings that literally do not exist except in fiction, and that half of this hellsite wants to fuck MANY people actually enjoy talking/reading about as part of an entire literary genre, or 3) you’re saying they’re literally not human beings and therefore not worth being considered as such.

None of these options are good.

Part III: “Humans Were the Real Monsters All Along!™”

Maybe when literacy levels were super low and only the wealthy had the leisure time and access to literature they could read for fun, this kind of reveal was Intriguing, but I’m here to tell you that it’s never been interesting to any person who has lived in the real world, like, ever.

I feel like for children this may be different (I dunno, as a child you don’t always understand what’s going on around you/are more likely to be sheltered from these kinds of truths outside of fiction), but I highly doubt that, say, peasants in 1620 weren’t well aware that humans were capable of evil.

Sure, they did the same thing we like to do and called people who committed particularly heinous acts ‘monsters’ (probably for the same reasons we do as well as because they wanted to believe they were safe in their communities and that their neighbors were also different and not capable of doing that sort of thing) but again you see the general level of denial:

This person is not like me.

I am different.

I must call them something else.

Which, yes you are different, but the difference is NOT in WHAT you are, it’s in HOW YOU ACT and the emotions you act upon!

Society has a history of doing this separation, and of revealing in fiction that humans are actually the real monsters, but again, those of us who exist in the real world already know that human beings are capable of great evil. Even if we are surprised by the level of vileness or not is irrelevant; we all know that logically this kind of thing happens in the real world and that human beings are responsible for it.

Part IV: Bad Reveal. BAD!

In some pieces of media, the writers go out of their way to be like, “THE MONSTERS WE’VE HATED ALL THIS TIME AND HAVE BEEN FIGHTING WERE ONCE HUMAN LIKE US. WE COULD BECOME LIKE THEM! OH NO!”

Which...lol.

Let’s look at zombies, a monster created for the sake of this kind of narrative. They were “once human” but are now mindless beings completely unaware of the hurt they are inflicting, even on those they might have known in their lifetime. Zombies can infect living human beings, turning them into zombies. The humans in these stories don’t want to become zombies, so they fight the zombies (with varying results, depending on the particular piece of media you choose to consume).

Zombie stories have a huge cult following; people love this kind of thing. On the surface you might think zombie stories fit the above narrative, and they do, but like...literally. “They were human once but aren’t anymore!” is almost never a reveal in these stories; it’s something everyone already knows and is actively fighting against.

"Humans are the real monsters” rarely has much to do with the zombies. It almost always occurs when a human in the group of survivors betrays the others in a big way.

The betrayer is then painted as the REAL monster here, the REAL threat. You might notice that lot of post-apocalyptic and/or humans-vs.-monsters fiction follows the same pattern: humans fight monsters, (optional ingredient: the monsters were once human!), and then they find out that Actually, Humans Were the Real Monsters All Along!

Again, anyone reading this post already knows that. They go out in public and see people who can’t be assed to wear a mask. “Wah it itches.” “Wah I can’t breathe.” “Wah it’s inconvenient for me and I’m not infected I know I’m fine!”

These same maskless fools would tell you to your face that the betrayer in these stories is a monster. They themselves, however, are not capable of hurting other people! They’re better than that! That person is a monster! They would never betray their allies. Except they do, every day, by refusing to wear a mask to protect other people from themselves. “Just in case” isn’t a good enough reason for them because it’s an inconvenience and they don’t like how it feels.

Sure, wearing a mask during a pandemic seems like such a small thing compared to, you know, betraying your fellow survivors in the apocalypse, but you have to consider context. If wearing a mask during a pandemic that has literally killed huNDreDS oF thousands is so inconvenient they won’t even wear it for the 3 minutes they are in the gas station...would you trust this person in a post-apocalyptic setting? Would they gather food for a physically disabled survivor? Would they literally fight to protect someone ill? Share resources fairly? You know if they can’t wear a mask for three minutes in a whole damn day they wouldn’t step up like that. They could easily end up being the betrayer in a situation like that. They’ve never been desperate enough to do something like that before, and they probably don’t think they’re capable of it now, but we know what they do when something is a minor inconvenience to them. Imagine a major inconvenience. Imagine their whole life being turned upside-down!

My issues with the reveal of “Humans are actually the real monsters!” are many, but the biggest issue I take with it from a writing perspective is that it’s almost never accurate when you look at the scope of the story.

Tens of thousands of zombies vs. one (1) betrayer: and you’re telling me the betrayer is the real monster? The bigger threat??? BULLSHIT. Sure, it takes a real asshole to betray people during the literal apocalypse, but that act doesn’t take away from the fact that they are human, LET ALONE the fact that using this particular point as a Big Important Reveal tells me you’re a shit writer who thinks you’re smart.

(For the record, you might have a character who will prioritize this and consider that betrayer the bigger threat, but we’re not talking about character development/motivations so much as overarching narratives the writer includes in the story separate from that.)

Anyway, I’m not saying stories with this premise in them are shit, I’m saying that this concept as a big plot reveal/climax of a story is shit. How can this even be a reveal worth revealing? Has anyone ever turned on the news?

Part V: Drawing the Line and Other Particulars

I definitely do not have the expertise or the experience to make this a detailed point, so please forgive me for that, but let’s talk about that line again, because this point absolutely cannot be overlooked.

Where is it? What makes one person who commits a crime or evil act a monster and not another? Is it the act committed? Their mental state? What about the mentally ill? What about neurodivergent people? What about children?

As an extreme example: is a woman who throws her baby off a building a monster? NO!!! SHE’S HUMAN and she did something terrible. We might like to say we’re different and we would neVeR do that, but we don’t know because we have never been in her shoes. We are missing context even the courts will never have or fully grasp. We do not know or understand her mental state no matter what the doctors say. Calling her a monster doesn’t do anything but put her in a separate category from the rest of us, which is harmful on SO many levels, starting with the fact that it means nobody talks to her, nobody gets her side of the story, nobody listens, and so we have no perspective, no understanding, no desire to learn.

Things like this are why it took so long for PPD to even begin to be understood, and why EVEN NOW women are afraid to talk about it and all related issues. I follow a ob-gyn on YouTube and the amount of women in her comments who thank her (oftentimes VERY emotionally) for openly saying it’s normal to not immediately feel a connection to your baby when they are born is mind-blowing. Not everyone will feel that! Sometimes you have to get to know your baby because they are an individual person and that is how love works for some people! But 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 100 years ago: that was unthinkable to admit. You lied about it and you felt like a terrible person instead. What kind of mom doesn’t love their baby instantly? You must be the worst. Meanwhile, the woman you’re getting your information from doesn’t feel that bond either and is lying about it because she feels pressured and just as bad as you do. All this suffering, and for what?! Stigma. Being told you’re not human if you don’t feel like that.

Don’t you know the bond with that baby suffered from this issue, too? Don’t you think it affected the parent/child relationship for the rest of their lives?

Not everyone who commits a crime falls into a category like this, and maybe the woman in my example doesn’t either, but I hope your takeaway is that calling people monsters keeps them separated from other people to the point where their story becomes just as fictional as the monsters they are called, and when it is heard it is enjoyed as fiction, rather than seriously considered.

Let’s not pretend that this separation of humanity into “human” and “not human” based on the way someone acts hasn’t hindered progress in the mental health/medical fields for everyone. When people are not considered human they are not given human treatment, rights, consideration, or empathy.

Part VI: TL;DR:

we are all human and capable of doing bad things.

the difference between a bad person and you or I is a lot more complex and multilayered than “they did a terrible thing and I did not do that terrible thing.”

calling people ‘monsters’ for the bad things they do dehumanizes them and may:

strip them of responsibility for their actions by insinuating they were born that way or they aren’t actually human like you and I, and/or

prevent them from getting the help they need/from others who have not done anything bad yet getting the help they need

it’s not a good reveal in fiction

because most of us already know people commit evil acts,

and it is oftentimes is presented in a way that doesn’t actually make sense for the story.

--

Sorry that it got long and probably isn’t very well organized! I wrote it in bursts at work. But anyway yeah...

I don’t mind when characters feel this way about other characters, but to see it used as a narrative feature/reveal/et cetera in fiction is like, so tiresome. No shit, Sherlock. I turn on the news. I followed true crime for a while. WE ALL KNOW PEOPLE ARE CAPABLE OF DOING TERRIBLE, AWFUL THINGS TO OTHER LIVING THINGS.

Having *that* be your big reveal in a story is so childish it embarrasses me to see it. Wow, congrats on figuring out something at 47 that the rest of us learned on the playground before we turned 7!

:(

[raendown]

My part of a trade with @rookie-d and boy was this fun to write! 

Pairing: MadaraTobirama Word count: 3477 Rated: T+ Summary: Madara hated the morning shift. It was always boring and getting up early sucked. Thankfully the one time he had to work it something interesting happened, at least.

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

KO-FI and commission info in the header!

Zombies Before Noon

Their first meeting was one that Madara would remember for all the reasons Tobirama probably wished he would forget. Several hours in to a criminally early morning shift he was bored out of his skull and wondering why the hell a comic book shop needed to be open before any of the local nerds around here were even awake. He’d already tidied the shelves four times and dusted the entire premises twice when the cheery jingle of the bell over their door made him lift his head hopefully. That look quickly morphed in to horror as he took in the sight of what was clearly a zombie entering the store. 

Skin so pale it looked almost paper white, circles under his eyes so dark they looked drawn on with marker, and clothes rumpled like they hadn’t seen an ironing board in years, the man who stumbled in had his eyes completely closed and his arms hanging loose at both sides. Only three steps in he stopped dead and just stood there. Motionless. Possibly not breathing. Madara looked around for a hidden camera, wondering if his younger brother had set him up for some kind of weird prank. That was the sort of thing Izuna would do. Nothing new or suspicious stuck out to him, though, so he turned back to the stranger who was now slowly blinking his eyes open. Well, partially open. They remained squinted so tightly he probably couldn’t see any better still. 

“Coffee?” he rumbled in a deep slur. Madara looked around for cameras again. 

“Uh, we don’t serve that here.” 

“...black.” 

Furrowing his brows, Madara repeated himself. “We don’t serve coffee.”

The pale man blinked slowly with a gaze that didn’t seem to really be focused on anything. 

“Extra espresso…” his words trailed off like he meant to continue with something off and yet nothing came. After almost a full minute he managed to close his jaw again with a muted click. Then he merely stood and let his narrowed eyes bore directly in to Madara’s. 

It was the single creepiest thing this shop had ever seen. And considering the varying clientele that was saying something.

For a good hot second Madara contemplated reaching in to his pocket and calling the police. Or maybe the Disease Center. Either one of them would no doubt be very interested in this spontaneous zombie apocalypse. Then the moment passed and he realized this was probably the most interesting thing that was likely to happen to him until the early afternoon crowd began to show up near the very end of his shift. He might as well see how it played out. 

“Would an energy drink do you? We’ve got all sorts of those. Pretty cheap too.” 

“....mn.”

Since he wasn’t very sure what that meant Madara opted for believing he’d just made a sale. Trying to ask questions about flavor and the like would most likely get about as coherent an answer as the ones he’d already gotten so after a moment of going through their inventory in his mind he stepped over to the fridge behind the counter to pick out the highest concentration of caffeine they carried. It also happened to be one of their cheaper brands as well, which was great in case he ended up having to pay for this himself. Did zombies remember how to pick out money from their wallets?

Did zombies even carry their wallets?

“Here. These don’t really taste all that great but it’s got enough of a kick to revive you or whatever.” 

A few seconds after he handed it over he realized his mistake. The oddly still man blinked slowly when Madara cracked the can open for him but finally seemed to understand that there was a liquid in his hand he was meant to drink. His head tilted back to reveal a surprisingly shapely throat that bobbed up and down in a steady rhythm until the entire can was emptied, hung there unmoving for a few seconds more, then his head tilted back down with an honest to god pout on his face. Apparently he’d thought the can was bottomless.

“Right. Feel free to browse or whatever before you come settle up. Register’s over there.” Madara jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “If you pass out try to fall away from the merchandise.” 

“Nnmm.”

“Oookay.” 

Scurrying back to the register was more for the sake of anyone looking in through the windows on their way by than for his own sense of safety. He really didn’t need anyone to call his boss and say they spotted him stalking a customer in his own store. At least he had a comfortable perch from which he could survey the entire floor, set out in a semi circle as it was, giving him a perfect view down each of their short aisles. No matter where this one man circus drifted he would be within eyesight. Madara watched with undisguised fascination while the guy drifted down aisle three, staring hard at a display entirely covered with merchandise for a popular children’s show about brightly colored ponies. The empty drink can remained clutched tightly in one fist.

With drunken steps he wound his way out of that section and in to aisle five. Despite staring directly at their selection of comics for a particular super hero universe Madara got the impression he wasn’t actually seeing any of them. Either he was hopelessly lost inside his own head or he had astrally projected so hard he wouldn’t find himself for another week. Just as the man lifted his hand, perhaps at last to interact with the world around him, the door of the shop jingled violently open to admit a harried looking woman. 

“There you are!” she screeched. Without even sparing a look around the rest of the open space she marched around a display of new releases and clapped a hand down on the zombie man’s shoulder. “I have been looking for you for over an hour, you absolute dick! Do you know how worried we’ve been? Your brother would have taken my damn head off if anything happened to you on my watch!” 

“...nm?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake!”

Pinching the bridge of her nose, the woman shook her head and finally looked around. The fact that there weren’t any other customers seemed to console her a little bit, probably relieved there weren’t more witnesses to her bad skills at keeping track of one man. When her eyes looked on to Madara he refused to quail under the force of her glare. A part of him sort of wanted to. He spent as much time in the gym as the next self-conscious guy but the look she was giving him promised that she, in fact, was the one with an ability to rip heads. To his absolute shame, he looked away first. But only for long enough for the weight of her gaze to leave him so he could go back to watching this drama unfold in front of him. 

“Come on,” she growled, tugging at the man’s sleeve. “Next time this happens I am tying you to the bed until you fucking learn! Did you even pay for that drink? You are so paying me back for this, I don’t care if it’s only a couple bucks!”

It wasn’t all that surprising how little resistance the man offered to being pulled across the floor and back out on to the street, though Madara did give some thought to whether or not he should be calling the police. Should he be reporting assault over this? It was too bad the owners were too cheap to install any real security other than the one camera pointing straight at the door and the one directly over the till. Some proper footage of what happened probably would have made great evidence if someone came back to question him.  

For several minutes after he was left suddenly alone Madara stared towards the door and wondered if it was possible that he might have hallucinated everything that just happened. Maybe he’d been reading too many of the comics in here. His mother used to warn him when he was little that using his imagination too much would rot out his common sense - but, then again, she was a cantankerous old bitch who kicked him out as soon as he turned eighteen. He’d never put much stock in anything she had to say. And then there were the coins that crazy lady had tossed over the counter on their way by, that was pretty solid evidence that he wasn’t hallucinating. 

Without a live zombie show for entertainment the rest of his shift at the comic shop mostly passed in boredom. Usually he worked the afternoon shifts just for this very reason. The mornings were always dead but he’d had to reschedule an appointment with his doctor three times already and trading shifts today had been the only way he was getting in there without having to wait several more weeks for another open spot. Medical care in their city seriously needed a bigger budget. Desperate to pass the time without resorting to the merchandise he wasn’t supposed to fiddle with on shift, Madara ended up slumped over the front counter doodling on the back of some old receipt paper he found stuffed in to a random drawer. Nearly half the page disappeared under swirls of red ink before he realized that he was drawing a dead, moaning zombie. With a sheepish look around he set the red pen aside and reached for a black one instead. Hopefully that would inspire some less creepy doodles. 

As expected, a couple hours before the end of his shift he finally started seeing some customers, his fellow nerds flocking in to check for new issues of the latest detective comic or merchandise for their favorite anime characters. Madara kept a sharp eye on the ones he didn’t recognize and gave no more thought to the entertaining if odd start to his day. After work he scurried off to the bus stop and barely made it to his long overdue doctor’s appointment before stumbling back on to the bus an hour after that with a bandaid on his arm and several vials of blood less in his body. 

“M’ home,” he called weakly as he shuffled inside the apartment. Something clattered around the corner, followed quickly by the sound of Izuna swearing.

“Did the appointment go well?” His brother’s voice shouted after him on his way down the hall. 

Tossing his jacket through the door of his bedroom, he called back. “Went fine. Had to get some blood pulled. Dumb ass doctor doesn’t think I know my own body enough to tell when I’m having seasonal allergies. He wants to test me for heart disease!” 

“But...those aren’t...anki, that makes no sense!” 

“I know!” Madara rolled his eyes even though the other couldn’t see him. “Apparently being short of breath because of the all the ragweed means I must be on the verge of a heart attack.” 

“Probably got his medical degree out of a cereal box.” 

Tired, a little loopy from having too much blood drawn without eating anything, Madara’s thoughts for the rest of his evening were filled mostly with grumbles about incompetant medical staff and listening to Izuna go on about the latest drama from his apprenticeship. Work was so far from his mind he entirely forgot to mention the strange occurrence from that morning. He went to bed that night thinking only that he was grateful his shifts were back to their usual afternoon schedule tomorrow because he certainly didn’t want to wake up early again, his dreams filled with needles that laughed at him while he sneezed uncontrollably. 

Several days went by with the usual humdrum of the life Madara and his brother had fallen in to. As much as he despised the morning shift, he loved the afternoons with equal fervor. His job at the comic shop didn’t pay much more than a basic living wage but he loved the environment, loved his regular customers, and he especially loved the hefty discount it gave him on all the nerdy merchandise he couldn’t help filling their home with. Things went about as normally as they usually did in his life until the fourth day when Madara looked up from checking out a regular customer to find the next person in line was an actual walking snack. 

Wild hair artfully arranged to somehow look purposefully messy, skin so pale he could be mistaken for an albino, red eyes that Madara would swear could see right down in to his soul, he was already a dreamboat even without taking in the deliciously toned rest of his body. Something about him looked familiar but it was hard to concentrate past the broad shoulders standing straight and tall. 

“Can I - ahem - how can I help you?” Madara fought with his cheeks not to flush bright red and prayed that no one would comment on the massive crack his voice had just done. 

“You wouldn’t happen to be Madara, would you?” the man asked in a deep rumble. “Your coworkers described you to me when I came in here yesterday.”

“I am, yes. Uh...is there something wrong?” 

Shaking his head, the man coughed a little as though feeling uncomfortable. “No, no. I only wanted to come in and thank you for not kicking me out of your store the other day. I was, ah, fairly ill at the time and my behavior was not the best. Several shops had already sent me on my way but you allowed me to stay in one place long enough for my cousin to catch up so I wanted to say thank you for letting me stay somewhere safe. Anything could have happened to me in that state.” 

For a second Madara tried to subtly look the man up and down, trying to determine if he was lying or not. Surely this couldn’t be the same guy? It was only after he mentally added some black streaks under the eyes, hunched the shoulders, and squinted the eyes that he realized it was. This was his zombie customer. 

“You don’t look the same at all!” was the first thing his stupid mouth chose to blurt out. 

“Ah. Thank you, I think.” The man coughed awkwardly again. “I’m told I look fairly awful whenever I work myself in to sleep deprivation.” 

“Oh is that why you were acting so much like a zombie? Wait no! Shit! Sorry, that was rude! Um, shit- gah, I’m not supposed to swear, fuck. Damn it!” Exasperated with his own lack of self control, Madara smacked a hand over his face. Nearby one of his regulars could be heard snickering but glaring them in to silence would have meant removing his hand and facing the hot stranger who’d made him splutter. 

To his eternal relief, no comments were made about his verbal idiocy, although he could definitely hear traces of amusement in the man’s tone when he continued speaking. 

“Yes, unfortunately I have a habit of getting a little too involved in my studies. Exams are coming up so I’ve only been sleeping about two or three hours a night and it, ah, finally caught up to me apparently. I don’t remember much but my cousin tells me I wandered out of her house sometime around six in the morning and she didn’t find me until, er, whenever it was she found me in here.” After scratching at the back of his neck he seemed to jolt himself and then held out the same hand. “I’m Tobirama, by the way.” 

“Madara. But um, you apparently already knew that.” 

They shook hands, at which point Madara realized the other man’s incredible height also came with massive hands that practically engulfed his own. He really hoped he wasn’t blushing as brightly as it felt like he was. 

“So you live around here then?” he asked. Then he wanted to slap himself again because that was probably way too personal of a question. 

“Not really. Well, not yet. I’m staying with my cousin so I can take some courses at the university but my brother is thinking of moving back to town so I’ll probably move back in with him if he does.” 

“Back to town?” Madara perked up. “So you’re from around here originally?” 

Tobirama nodded. “We grew up in the west end.”

“No kidding? Me too.” Squinting, Madara tried to determine whether they might have crossed paths when they were younger. The man did sort of look familiar but age could change a lot about a person and it wasn’t like he’d kept contact with anyone from that end of town. Not after he’d been summarily tossed to the curb. 

His closer interest did not go unnoticed. For a moment he flushed even deeper than he already was, thinking Tobirama might have been offended by his scrutiny. Then his ears were flaming for another reason entirely and he couldn’t even bring himself to be upset about the misunderstanding when the other leaned in just a bit closer with a slow smile. 

“I don’t suppose you’d like to go for coffee sometime?” he asked. “As a thank you, of course.” 

“On one condition,” Madara told him, feeling suddenly bold.

“Do tell.” Tobirama looked even more amused by his request. He leaned farther down to rest his weight on both elbows to patiently await the condition he would supposedly need to meet. 

“If you can describe the premise behind any of the comics in this store then you’ve got yourself a date. I’ve had too many people try and steer me away from ‘childish interests’ and think they can ‘help me grow up’.” 

After breaking up with the fourth person in a row who mocked him for his interests Madara had made a pact with himself to never again date anyone who didn’t accept him for who he was and what he loved. He might be a massive nerd but he’d learned the lesson of self value a long time ago and he wasn’t about to let himself be blinded by a pretty face again. 

To his utter delight, he needn't have worried this time. With a competitive sort of light in his eye Tobirama pointed out half a dozen different comics within eyesight and not only named the main characters but also the basis of the main plot for each of them. What made it all the more impressive was that he mostly chose rather obscure franchises that couldn’t be considered mainstream. Madara was half in love before he was finished describing the third one. Handsome, intelligent enough for university, and apparently in to the same geeky stuff as him? Sign him up. Immediately. 

“Okay, okay, point made!” Throwing up his hands in surrender made Tobirama smile. “You mentioned your exams are coming up so I’m guessing you’ll be busy for the next little while. Why don’t I give you my number and we can go out for coffee to celebrate after you don’t need to study so much?” 

“I would appreciate that a lot,” Tobirama murmured earnestly. 

“School’s obviously important to you if you’ll work yourself in to a zombie state over it,” Madara pointed out. 

He got a grateful look that made his stomach flip flop. Rather than make a fool of himself again he printed off a bit of blank receipt paper and wrote his number down, sliding it across the counter. He expected Tobirama to slip the paper in to his pocket but instead he pulled out a beaten up cell phone and entered the number right there, smiling to himself like he'd won an unexpected treat. 

“I’m sure Hashirama will be thrilled to know I’m finally being more social.”

Madara nearly stopped breathing. All the triumph of having secured a very promising date suddenly drained right out of him as he stared at the man across the counter in horror, several little clues falling in to place at once. Finally he’d figured out why Tobirama looked familiar and it wasn’t because he’d seen him in zombie form. Images of his childhood best friend danced across his memories.

“You’re...you’re Hashirama’s little brother,” he whimpered. “Oh god. Oh god! He’s going to kill me! He’s going to come back to Konoha just to cut all my hair off in a bowl cut to match his!” 

While Tobirama stared at him with a mixture of horror and amusement Madara decided that as long as he got that date first he didn’t much care how he died. One conversation - and one look at those well defined biceps - was all he’d needed to know that Tobirama would be well worth it.

[annecoulmanross]

Spooky Ask Meme

I was tagged by @sailingsouthernseas – thank you! These answers have possibly gotten a little strange but also it’s very late at night and I think I’ve seanced myself into some unholy union with Lady Jane so here we are. 

1. Pumpkin: Favourite season?

I pretend that I like autumn for the aesthetic.... but during the spring I can physically feel the seasonal depression lifting from my cold bones like a ghost that has been at last freed from this earthly realm and can finally translate itself to a sunnier place. 

2. Ghost: Do you get scared easily?

Not particularly. Most physically threatening situations that typically scare people hold no fear for me: I like high places and dark places and caves and especially underwater caves that hold a high risk of death. I suppose there are probably other things that scare me but I’m much more alarmed by very tangential hypotheticals, like what if there really is an afterlife where you get to meet all of the famous dead people you’ve loved, and I get to go there but Cicero doesn’t like me?  

3. Candy Corn: What's your favourite kind of candy?

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. 

4. Vampire: What is your favourite supernatural creature?

I can’t possibly choose. Dragons, selkies, and ghosts, in no particular order. 

5. Witch: If you could have any superpower, what would it be?

The ability to understand and communicate in every human language ever. 

6. Trick or treat: What was your favourite Halloween costume?

Every year I imagine I’ll finally put effort into making an elaborate Halloween costume, and every year I slip even further from the platonic ideal, which was my Halloween costume when I was six months old: I was a chili pepper. 

7. Black cat: Are you superstitious?

During the spring of 2016, I picked up the habit of knocking on wood whenever someone asked me about my future plans, because I’d applied to study abroad but I didn’t know if I would be accepted. Fortunately, I got into the program and went to Italy and – not to be hideously pretentious and basic – but it quite literally changed my life and set me on the road less-travelled-by that I’m currently walking, and so I’ve been just a bit superstitious ever since. 

8. Ouija Board: If you could change your name, what would you change it to?

Oh I’ve had different names in the past and I’m sure I’ll have different names in the future. Nomina are slippery things. 

9. Graveyard: Do you know any good scary stories?

Several. That being said, I’ve been told my cannibalism story is “disappointing” and “anticlimactic” and “not worth waiting through the entire second act of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar for.” 

10. Skeleton: Have you ever broken a bone?

Never once. 

11. Werewolf: What is your favourite urban legend?

Stories of tunnels under the city are, without a doubt, my favorite things. 

12. Horror flick: Do you like scary movies? If so, which one is your favourite?

I like horror films with a message, though my tastes tend to be very mainstream in that regard – Get Out, Cabin in the Woods, that sort of thing. 

13. Haunted house:  Would you prefer to live in the city or the country?

Absolutely the city. I could possibly do to live a little further from the city center than I do right now, since the pandemic makes it a bit hard to leave my apartment, but I still vastly prefer the urban center to the hill-towns and mountain hermitages where my family all currently live. Those are lovely for holidays but they quickly drive me crazy. 

14. Zombie: Do you think that you could survive a zombie apocalypse?

Not with my current equipment. If I took a few precautions, yes, probably. 

15. Cauldron: What kind of potion would you make if you had the opportunity?

Semantically speaking, how does a potion differ from a super-power? What domains do each cover, and are there any things I can accomplish with one but not the other? I’m officially over-thinking this. 

16. Full moon: Do you prefer nighttime or daytime?

James could not possibly have put it any better: “Daytime if I’m left alone.”

17. Corn maze:  What is your favourite autumn activity?

That time in late autumn when they finally FINALLY start selling eggnog in the stores and people complain about how it’s not even December and it’s too early for the winter holiday foods to be on sale, but I buy up all the eggnog and go find texas toast and bring it home and make delicious eggnog french toast.

18. Broomstick: What exciting places have you travelled to?

If my life has had one truly perfect moment, it was during a freezing cold November morning in Benevento in Italy, when I could see my breath in the air when we tumbled out of the bus, and everyone was shivering and sleepy so they sent us out to find something warm to drink before class, and I wandered into a bar and bought an Italian hot cocoa (read: a cup of pure melted chocolate) and a beautiful sfogliatella pastry, and then I sat at the counter and watched the sun finally lift itself over the rooftops and pool in the piazza in the center of town where all the leaves had begun to fall to the ground at last. 

[exalok]

whaddup my dudes!!!

i am tired and wired and this means brain no writey but brain VERY focused on absolutely all the fic i have going on at once that aren’t prompts (prompts will be incoming, no worries dissociation anon)

and THAT means y’all get to hear about my many. many. MANY projects, or at least the ones that make my heart go pitter patter when i think of them

a few examples: demon!corvo and priest!daud with extra worldbuilding ; the naptime cuddles AU ; corvo doesn’t come to dunwall so jess and daud end up arranged-married for profit (more info..... under the readmore..... i’m gonna get rambly)

also feel free to ask questions, i love questions and they get me thinking even more in depth about the world and specific instances of characters and that is the entire POINT

LIKE OKAY SO MY BRAIN PRETTY MUCH CONTINUOUSLY THROWS IDEAS AT THE WALL AND ABOUT 95% OF THEM STICK BECAUSE I’M A HOARDING RAT BASTARD i love my ideas they are my precioussss

i might have about. 25 fic more or less active at the moment? which sounds like a reasonable number but those are the ones i have an actual plot for as well as the will to get them out into the world

let’s put aside the ones i have actually posted on tumblr or ao3 (teen!daud, domestic zombie apocalypse, bondageverse, knife!corvo) in favor of those you have either no or little idea exist. begin:

I MEAN OBVIOUSLY I MADE FANFIC OF MY OWN FANFIC or as i call it parallel/companion fic, because at some point in the past a prompter inspired me and i was deep in the prince!daud fic at the time and i thought what if high chaos. what if void monster corvo? what if horrifying yet human creature of the depths!!! what if EVERYTHING was TERRIBLE and daud killed corvo as a last ditch and vain attempt to get his people out of burrows’ clutches, and it all went to shit from there??? also they’re bound by marriage contract and the vagaries of magical intention and daud becomes corvo’s life battery, in essence, which you can imagine leads to a very unhealthy relationship i think it’s not spoilering much to tell you it does NOT end well, and i’ll be writing it as a sort of foil to low chaos prince!daud

i have quite a few high chaos fics actually. high chaos is depressing to play but the story outcomes are DELICIOUS and the degrading world and character motivations are a lot of fun to play around in

weirdly enough another one of these high chaos fics is the naptime cuddles AU!!! i won’t lie it’s the one i am currently on and i want to talk about it to everyone so bad constantly. in short, corvo doesn’t kill daud and the whalers because he’s trying to get out and currently too fucked up to fight, and when he doesn’t manage to save emily despite his best efforts he comes back to daud for some kind of symbolic execution. meanwhile thomas convinced daud to take a goddamn nap with him there because daud, despite his paranoia, does sleep better with people around, and this is entirely an excuse for semi-platonic daudthomascorvo cuddles in bed followed by whaler puppypiles when the gang catches on that this is a thing they can do now I LOVE PUPPYPILE WHALERS I LOVE NAPS I LOVE REDEMPTION THROUGH THE POWER OF RESTORATIVE SLEEP please i’m so tired and i can’t actually fall asleep next to people let me live my dream vicariously additionally: this will be my contribution to the absolutely wonderful whaler vineyard of old fanon

there is also what i feel should be a classic and ISN’T though a couple of fics were written around the concept and one in particular is /chef kiss, and the concept is: high chaos corvo meets low chaos corvo!!!!! i made it a threesome with daud because no one can stop me and i fucking LOVE the idea of daud ending up capable of telling them apart through tiny details even when high chaos corvo, bastard that he is, tries to impersonate low chaos corvo, who is a bastard in much more subtle ways and would probably be better at impersonating hc!c than the other way around but finds it distasteful; also i added intense body horror because that’s how i roll and there are eventual magical CONSEQUENCES to hc!c being in the low chaos world and regularly in contact with what is essentially his narrative double when he doesn’t belong there, probably ends in a tragically bittersweet way, i’m not completely clear on it yet though i do have ideas

and oh man......... the time travel corvo fic.... the one where high chaos corvo ends up in his own seven-year-old body........... fuck i hashed out so much of the general worldbuilding for that one and ended up going way too far and imagining a sequel like i always do where corvo learns how to walk universes and gathers people he cares about from places where he can actually save them from their eventual tragic futures and the dissolution of their timelines once the outsider is ousted from the void and a new void avatar is made and SHENANIGANS YO!!! SHENANIGANS AND CAMPING!!!! SELF-CROSSOVERS!!!!!!! I COULD HAVE HIM MEET HIMSELF IF HE HADN’T TRAVELED BACK I’M CRYING I HAVE SO MANY EMOTIONS

the one where corvo is a fae child is probably a lil bit high chaos though it isn’t determined yet, and he has all of these instincts with regards to possessing and exchange and deals, and assumptions as to how other people must work approximately the same, and he is so wrong. then there’s the really creepy bad touch possible sequel that i won’t get into unless someone specifically asks because it’s a lil bit much really

oh MAN oh SHIT speaking of bad touch there’s another dead dove do not eat one where i grabbed an entire handful of granny rags’ apparent fucking around with magical arrays and rune creation and general spellery and threw it at corvo post-interregnum and he sees “ghosts” and doesn’t understand what the FUCK is going on and things go really badly for him, and one ghost, soon the only ghost, is daud, and corvo doesn’t know if he’s real, if he’s seeing things, if he’s NOT seeing things but daud is some kind of void demon, if he is and also having psychotic breaks he doesn’t remember because he ends up with some hellish bruises, but the real daud is actually still out there just hiding out and corvo will eventually meet up with him and real daud will meet fake daud and even more shit will happen

god, the demon!corvo AU gets pretty fucked up as well if i remember right; corvo is both some dude with a wife and kid and the demon that inhabits him, jess is his wife and the demon that inhabits her (to be clear, separate characters but both based on either jess or corvo oh my GOD what if i switched the demons that would be amazing but no, calm down, maybe for a short what-if scenario that will inevitably turn into its own thing), daud is the overseer with the really good exorcism record trying to get the demons to fuck off except he thinks there’s only one of them and the other takes him by surprise; cue daud being hunted by that demon, furious that daud shattered his favorite pupil, and some revelations about what exactly lives inside the abbey and also under it

on a somewhat lighter note, the one where corvo never comes to dunwall (i think his mom gets sick and he doesn’t win the blade verbena at sixteen?) is also where jess keeps losing her royal protectors to assassination attempts because the first one was decent and died protecting her and the second one was decent and had an accident and people start believing there’s a curse on the position or a curse on her, and she’s like okay so how do i make sure i don’t die now that no one is willing to become my protector since it’s pretty much a death sentence, and she arranges a meeting with the best assassin in the city and suggests an alliance -- protection and some commission overview, all secret, versus funding and housing -- in the form of a marriage and daud ends up agreeing; then later duke abele visits and corvo is among his personal guard and he gets to meet the empress, and the assassin, and there are ot3 shenanigans

oh my GOD also the kids in karnaca AU. obviously. fuck you may have seen the (dis)armingly charmed notefic but this would be them meeting as actual kids, in karnaca, just tiny babies, daud recently kidnapped and corvo doing his best to make this cool older kid into his friend and also maybe hiding him from the people who want to train him to do Illegal Things, and there are dumb childish arguments and daud goes on the run to avoid capture and there is an exchange of letters that at one point stops and corvo is Devastated and there is a REUNION and they are ADORABLE but also INCREDIBLY STUPID, AS IS RIGHT AND CORRECT, and i don’t know what happens later but it gives me warm fuzzies okay

then i have a NUMBER of oneshots that are more or less plotted out, like the one where jess has a kind of groundhog day because Heart reasons but over months and starts out not quite remembering what happened in past attempts and OF COURSE it ends with royal ot3; and there’s the one where Daud becomes the Outsider and is very temporally confused and OF COURSE it ends with corvodaud who do you take me for (including Very Perplexing arguments where daud doesn’t know at what point in this relationship’s development he is and corvo is angry or very patient depending on where he accidentally time travels to, and i make some assumptions about the non-linearity of the void avatar’s existence); and there’s the one where corvo catches the plague and gets through kingsparrow to get emily out then to people he trusts, ie the curnows and sam beechworth, then crawls away to die, but daud finds him and sighs and rolls up his sleeves and sends whalers to the Tower and emily thinks the Tower is haunted then, when it becomes very clear the Tower is not, demands one of these assassins teach her how to stab a bitch; AND THERE’S THE ONE WHERE CORVO AND JESS ARE GHOSTS AND DAUD IS A REAL ESTATE AGENT AND THE WHALERS ARE THE KIDS HE TRIED TO HELP OUT AS A SOCIAL WORKER and yes it’s ot3 and yes he buys the ghost house and ends up being filmed by the whalers to do cooking videos and fancy knife tricks and asmr because his voice is insanely soothing when he’s not being ornery; oh fuck and there’s the one where i wrote an unrequited corvodaud prompt and my brain grabbed it, smelled it, and decided that corvo very reluctantly falling for daud was necessary to the health of my feelings, and there is at least one (1) sleeping beauty coma while corvo yells at the outsider about the Heart; also there’s the one where in D2 billie was evasive about the old guy living with her on her boat and em finds daud rather than sokolov in jindosh’s basement and they have long, emotional discussions; and for the character building hell of it one that would span the outsider’s beginnings and growth and how the void tries to welcome him in

okay........................ i think i’m done rambling now

i love fanfic y’all

[nearly-theyre]

haikyuu: multi-work series fic recs!

hello friends! we are back at it again with another fic rec list ~

find me on twitter and ao3 (where you can see all the fics I didn’t get to put on this rec list!) ~

LET’S BEGIN

FORMAT:

“title” (ratings) by author (a ✰ means the series is HIGHLY recommended!)

link

Works: # Complete: Yes/No

Warnings: will consist of ALL warnings present in the series, although each warning present may not be present in EVERY fic of the series

description / notes of the series OR the summary of the first fic

WARNINGS AND WORKS/COMPLETE ARE AS OF 8/3/2020 !!!! MAKE SURE YOU ALWAYS READ WARNINGS/TAGS/SUMMARIES BEFORE READING! 

“cafe backrooms and serendiptuous shenanigans.” (NR) by turnaboutcafe

https://archiveofourown.org/series/1774060

Works: 4 Complete: No

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

in which the haikyuu!! characters work in a university cafe.

in publishing order i. what a bother. / kuroken ii. personal space. / iwaoi iii. cafe latte. / bokuaka iv. wrong order. / kagehina

“Being Human” (T/M/E) by shions_heart

https://archiveofourown.org/series/660140

Works: 7 Complete: No

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings / No Archive Warnings Apply / Graphic Depictions of Violence

Set in an alternate world of magic, witches, and demons, our volleyball sons learn about life, love, and what it means to be human. 

“Sometimes You Just Clique” (G/T) by SoVeryAverageMe

https://archiveofourown.org/series/695778

Works: 2 Complete: No

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

No one expected the spoiled rich kid, popular football captain, arrogant school genius, and uptight class president to become best friends following The Incident™ their junior year. Underneath their differing facades and personal armors, lay a bed of similar insecurities and anxieties. This is the story of how they met and what happened afterwards, because sometimes when you meet the right group of people you just... clique.

“omam verse” (T/M/E) by shions_heart

https://archiveofourown.org/series/403992

Works: 4 Complete: No

Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence / Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Though some may believe they're monsters, those closest to them know they're just men learning how to love in this world of magic, demons, and faeries. 

“iwfyitd verse” (G/T/M/E) by shions_heart, knightswatch ✰

https://archiveofourown.org/series/378352

Works: 7 Complete: Yes

Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence / Major Character Death / Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

The story of a band of Super Soldiers trying to save the world, and their loved ones who fight alongside them.

“a park in amsterdam” (M) by Resamille

https://archiveofourown.org/series/1239377

Works: 2 Complete: No

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Summary of the first fic: They come together unexpectedly. They each have memories: a friend once held dear, now gone. The trail has led them here, and maybe, along the way, they remember each other too. 

Or: Over twenty years ago, witch law decreed a split between magic and non-magic worlds. Five humans were the first casualties in the protest. Their five soulmates were left to pick up the pieces.

“Hanamaki Disease: Disturbing the peace of volleyball teams everywhere” (G/T) by Ink_stained_quills

https://archiveofourown.org/series/1604839

Works: 4 Complete: No

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply 

Hanamaki disease: when Hanamaki Takahiro must “eyy” whenever he sees someone crushing. A friend to couples and menace to pining people everywhere (or is he?)

“Seijoh Sweets: Aoba Johsai Artisinal Bakery” (T) by FindingSchmomo

https://archiveofourown.org/series/525493

Works: 3 Complete: No

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Collection of Oneshots taking place in my Aoba Johsai Bakery AU

“Haikyuu at Hogwarts” (G/T) by Killthespare ✰

https://archiveofourown.org/series/952755

Works: 4 Complete: No

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply / Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Pretty much as the title suggests: a Hogwarts!AU with Haikyuu. It's planned as a seven book series so definitely a longer series. This first few can be read out of order with only minor confusion (about as easily as the first few Harry Potter books can) but there is an overall series plot in addition to the individual plots of each story. As of the fourth book, the previous third story should really be read before the fourth or later books.

So far, the stories in order: 1.) Shouyou Hinata and the Mirror of Erised (complete) 2.) Koushi Sugawara and the Heir of Slytherin (complete) 3.) Yu Nishinoya and the Shrieking Shack (complete) 4.) Tooru Oikawa and the Triwizard Tournament (in progress)

“hq detective AUs” (M) by valiantarmor ✰

https://archiveofourown.org/series/234750

Works: 3 Complete: Yes

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply / Graphic Depictions of Violence

A series of detective AUs.

“Carving Out A Life” (M/T) by RoseSakura  ✰

https://archiveofourown.org/series/1429972

Works: 2 Complete: No

Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence / No Archive Warnings Apply

Zombie Apocalypse AUs - including both longer stories and little one shots

“The Big Bads” (T) by fandom_cat

https://archiveofourown.org/series/1612339

Works: 2 Complete: No

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

A collection of chats between different HQ characters! Works can be read separately but what's the fun in that? ;) Oh, and gay: gay everywhere.

Lots of things getting discussed. Mostly light-hearted though, fun was had, jokes were made. Any additional trigger warnings listed before chapters.

“chiaroscuro” (T) by newamsterdam  ✰

https://archiveofourown.org/series/434134

Works: 2 Complete: No

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply 

chiaroscuro: the interplay of darkness and light.

--

“We’re called guardians,” Kuro says. “Over time, people have had different names for us, but it really all comes back to that. We’re shifters, shaper-changers… the name doesn’t really matter. What does is that we’re supposed to keep the two kinds of magical forces in the world balanced.” He rattles this off with a roll of his eyes, as though it’s something he’s heard many times over.

Kenma thinks back to the curling snake made of shadows, to Sugawara’s words: People who shine brightly attract a lot of darkness.

“Shadows and light,” he says, not quite a question.

Kuro nods approvingly. “Basically, yeah. There’s a bit more to it than that—shadow magic is born of independence, of isolation and loneliness. Light magic is connections, the relationships between people. Most people have a low dose of both, go through their entire lives not realizing there’s magic in the world.”

“But not you,” Kenma prompts.

“Unfortunately.”

“Circle Universe” (T) by sandersonsister (REQUIRES AO3 ACCT)  ✰

https://archiveofourown.org/series/826590

Works: 2 Complete: No

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings / No Archive Warnings Apply

Summary of the first fic: It was the omega’s that initiated the courtships, the omega’s that decided who was needed in the circle. But it didn’t worry Kenma. Honestly, there was a particular reason it didn't worry him.

That reason was Kuroo.

He always knew the two of them would be together. And he thought that was enough. He was wrong.

“not just good business” (G/T/NR) by ilgaksu 

https://archiveofourown.org/series/307530

Works: 7 Complete: No

Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence / Underage / Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings 

Description: credit to hamlet-themouse for their invaluable beta throughout this series so far. 

 Summary of the first fic:  It's been years since Kenma bought that pearly-pink powder and tried it on to go meet Kuroo after his shift, been years since Kuroo wiped his hands on his overalls and looked up and said don't you touch them like that. It's been years since he opened the door to the mob. They are the mob now. They're the ones knocking down the doors.

“Shiratorizawa Family” (G) by someonelikej

https://archiveofourown.org/series/1857982

Works: 2 Complete: No

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Mostly non-related one-shots and short stories portraying the Shiratorizawa team as a family.

“Domestic Cats” (M) by Avogara

https://archiveofourown.org/series/1717717

Works: 2 Complete: No

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

A collection of domestic, homey, post-timeskip Kuroken fluff

“‘Til Human Voices Wake Us” (T) by strikinglight

https://archiveofourown.org/series/393289

Works: 2 Complete: Yes

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings / No Archive Warnings Apply

Haikyuu Pacific Rim Diptych, feat. Daisuga and Kuroken as primary victims

“The Heart of Nekoma” (T/M) by shions_heart

https://archiveofourown.org/series/339679

Works: 3 Complete: Yes

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings 

The story of a penniless thief and the magical gem who steals his heart.

“brunch friends” (T/M) by newamsterdam  ✰

https://archiveofourown.org/series/612757

Works: 3 Complete: No

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Summary of the first fic: “Iwaizumi’s left his cell phone on the bench, and while Suga keeps his gaze away from Iwaizumi the phone lights up with a new message.

Iwa-chan, it reads, Have a good day today! Good luck! <3 <3 <3 

Suga chokes. It’s hard to imagine anyone calling the scowling and fierce Doctor Iwaizumi “Iwa-chan.” But marriage probably comes with all sorts of liberties.

Mrs. Iwaizumi must be quite the doting wife, Suga thinks. Delivering hand-made bentos and sending along loving messages.”

No one really knows much about the new surgical resident, Doctor Iwaizumi, other than the fact that he's married. Suga's determined to find out more, and make a friend of him in the process

“Among Us” (M) by dgalerab  ✰

https://archiveofourown.org/series/540973

Works: 5 Complete: No

Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence / Rape/Non-Con / Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

X-men AU with my favorite volleydorks.

“It’s A Good Life” (G/T) by LisaVanDerMolen

https://archiveofourown.org/series/1615756

Works: 3 Complete: No

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply / Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Summary of the first fic: Kenma opened his eyes again and looked at the door. The dark hallway greeted him, something was wrong. And then he saw it, a small figure peeking at him from behind the door. Big golden eyes like his own greeted him. Kenma felt himself smiling at the sight in front of him, when he heard soft sniffles.

Kenma and Kuroo awaken to their kid crying and comfort him while not knowing what's wrong.

And that’s all for today folks! Hit me up here on tumblr or in my twitter DM’s if you want more recs or want to discuss any of the fics on this list in more depth! I’m happy to help you find the perfect series! 

Show these authors some love - don’t forget to kudos, comment, and message them on their socials to show your appreciation! 

take your meds, drink water, eat some food, get enough sleep, and reach out to someone today! I love you and you got this! 

[maluminspace]

Lone Wolf

Genre: Angst/Drama/Fluff

Pairings: Michael Clifford/reader

Word Count: 2882

Requested: by @clffrd for spooky!sos 2019

Trigger Warnings: violence/zombies/apocalypse/fainting/brief references to death

A/N: Effy, this concept ended me! I hope you enjoy this 💖

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It wasn’t much, but it was safe. That had been Michael’s view on his little storm shelter since the day he’d claimed it as his own. It’d only been a couple of months post-apocalypse when he’d stumbled across ‘his’ abandoned farmland.

The farm itself had already been destroyed when he’d stumbled across it but the little bunker was all he’d needed anyway. Throughout the year that followed the outbreak, Michael had fashioned the little storm shelter into something resembling a home. He’d filled it with essential supplies and weapons as well as few little comforting touches such as a couple of posters of games and movies he’d used to love.

Michael had always been somewhat of a ‘lone wolf’. He’d become estranged from his family long before the flesh eating disease destroyed the vast majority of humanity. He’d never been that good at making friends either, therefore his lack of human contact since the apocalypse, was nothing new to him.

Much to his dismay; a few months after Michael had claimed his bunker, a little group of survivors had set up camp just a couple of miles away. Their hulking vehicles and sprawling barricades ruined his view of the lake and he hated knowing that a bunch of strangers were so close to him and his little patch of land.

They’d rolled past the farm in their convoy of beaten up old camper vans about six months after the virus had hit. Michael had half hoped they’d all keep going but they’d deemed this particular patch of countryside too good to leave. 

He couldn’t blame them really. The clear streams and the huge lake, the sweeping hills and easy access to a bunch of little towns (which were still the best places to find certain types of supplies), all less than a day’s hike away, made this a pretty good place to call home these days.

Despite all of his reservations about the campers, Michael had decided to introduce himself very early on and make sure that they understood his boundaries. To his utter amazement, the other survivors had respected his wishes without hesitation. 

He’d been suspicious at the time, that the group were just biding their time - waiting for him to let his guard down so that they could dispose of him. It’d never happened, though. The worst thing they’d ever done is try to invite him into their ranks, which was just about a forgivable offence in Michael’s opinion.

Having lived alongside them for nearly a year, Michael had sort of grown used to their presence. It was almost comforting to look out over their camp sometimes. He also knew that they checked in on him occasionally, which was quite handy if ever there was bad weather or something that could potentially cause something to block the entrance to his bunker - at least he knew he wouldn’t be trapped in there for too long before someone noticed something was amiss.

The only thing that scared Michael now, was how much he was willing to rely on them. He didn’t want to be tied down to them but he was worried he was heading that way. 

To prove that he could still survive when he was entirely alone, Michael decided to take a long hike to a little town further afield than the ones he usually went to when he needed supplies. He knew it was a risk; he hadn’t made this particular journey more than a couple of times. Getting lost was a huge possibility and could easily result in a whole bunch of terrifying consequences.

This was something Michael had to do, though. If he was scared of making this journey, he’d already become too dependent on others. 

He managed to push back the niggling doubts that he had as he gathered up his supplies. It was important to travel light for this hike because some of the terrain was nothing short of punishing. A heavy backpack would be more of hinderance than anything else.

After packing just a few food items; his large water flask and a single blanket, Michael grabbed his trusted machete and stepped out of his bunker. 

The sun was barely peaking over the horizon when Michael stepped outside and locked up his bunker. The lingering chill from the night before meant that he could see his breath in little wisps in front of him, as he went over his mental checklist. 

Once he was sure that he was as prepared as he could possibly be, Michael stored his weapon in his belt and set off towards the woods. 

***

You’d fought your way out of hundreds of scrapes and killed countless zombies in your bid for survival thus far. You’d never have imagined that you’d ever need rescuing by a complete stranger.

That’s exactly what’d happened though.

You’d been travelling alone for weeks - ever since the group of survivors you’d been with since the outbreak, had been scattered after a huge attack on the camp you’d built together.

Maybe it was loneliness or perhaps it could have been because of malnutrition or dehydration, but whatever the reason, you’d started making silly mistakes. It was one such error that lead to you becoming trapped in the back of one of the thousands of broken down vehicles littering the highway you were wondering down. 

You’d always known you should run and not hide from the undead. Fatigue had started to set into every inch of you, though. You knew that you wouldn’t be able to outrun the corpses tonight. Crawling into the back of a rusting van had seemed like your only option. You’d barricaded the doors as best you could with the few items that had been left in the vehicle.

Of course, the heap of useless metal became surrounded within minutes. The unnatural grunting and the terrifying sound of rotting fingers clawing at the outside of the van would be the last things you heard before you were eaten alive. That was the only conceivable outcome of this situation.

You’d basically accepted your fate by the time you heard something that gave you the tiniest hope of survival. The unmistakable sounds of a living, breathing human being fighting the corpses outside the van reached your ears and you felt relieved tears beginning to sting your eyes. 

After a few minutes the noises of fighting stopped and heavy footsteps made their way hesitantly towards the van. Despite your relief at being safe from the zombies now, you knew that there were a lot of people that used their new freedom from law and civilised society for evil purposes.

As the door of the van creaked open you cursed yourself again for getting yourself cornered like this. You were in no position or condition to fight, if this person wanted to hurt you, they wouldn’t have a very difficult job on their hands.

Clutching your weapons out of habit more than anything, you fixed your gaze on the dark figure that emerged through the small gap that your barricade would allow the van doors to make.

“Is someone in there?” 

The voice sounded kind of rough like it hadn’t been used much in a long time.

“There’s more corpses nearby, I don’t think it’s safe for you to stay here.” The man explained, keeping his voice low to avoid detection. “If you’re hurt, I can help you but we can’t stay here for long, unless you want to be a zombie snack.”

Trusting this man seemed like your best hope for survival. You also couldn’t deny the fact that you’d missed human company more than you can say. 

You inched closer to the doors, pulling aside your barricade just enough to squeeze out of the van. 

In the pale moonlight, the man that had saved you looked like some sort of angel. His pale skin and fluffy sandy hair gave him an air of softness that was the total opposite to the toughness suggested by his heavy boots, bloodstained clothes, machete and the stern expression on his handsome face.

“Can you walk?” He asked, as you staggered out onto the road.

Your head was kind of spinning with a weird mix of exhaustion, relief and adrenaline. Still, it was hard not to take in the details of the scene you were faced with. The broken bodies of the zombies that would have certainly killed you a moment ago, lay motionless at the stranger’s feet.

“Just about.” You replied, unable to take your eyes off of the man in front of you. Thank you for helping I...” you faltered, dizziness overwhelming you for moment.

Before you could fully recover, the mysterious man hooked your arm around his neck as he gripped you steadily around the waist. He set of at a speed that you couldn’t quite match in your weakened state. 

You weren’t sure how long you were practically carried by the stranger. The ordeal back at the van had drained the last of your energy and you were struggling to remain conscious.

Vaguely aware that the stranger was comforting you with promises of safety and water, you tried your hardest to stay awake.

You failed.

***

Michael took care of you for two whole days. Supplying you with food, water and protection until your strength started to return to you. 

He’d discovered a little abandoned cabin in the woods lining the road he’d found you on. Most of the tiny building had been stripped of useful items but a ragged old sofa and some musty blankets had remained. It wasn’t ideal but it’d been enough to keep you relatively comfortable during in your recovery.

Michael had intended upon helping you find another group as soon as you were strong enough to walk again. He’d always helped people that needed it, human decency was the only thing he really had to offer alongside his skills with a machete. That was where his involvement with other people usually ended, though.

Somehow it felt different with you. 

From the moment you’d stumbled out of that rusting van, Michael had seen something in you that he’d never noticed in anyone else. 

Having been a loner for pretty much as long as he could remember, it was difficult for Michael to place his feelings for you. All that he knew was, the thought of leaving you hurt.

Between your frequent napping, Michael had learnt a lot about you. Besides the things you’d told him verbally, he was good at reading people. He knew by the way you always kept your weapons close that you were a smart fighter. The way you moved as your strength returned, told him that you were a confident person and the definition in your arm and leg muscles showed a degree of physicality that suggested you’d be tough to beat in a fight.

The thing that Michael found most intriguing about you, though, was the way you opened up to him and treated him with warmth as opposed to the cold, suspicion or indifference he was usually met with. 

What he didn’t realise was that your reaction to him was entirely out of character. You’d always been notoriously hard to get along with and since the apocalypse, you’d become dangerously suspicious of everyone... Everyone except the pretty green eyed man that had saved your life.

As your third day together dawned, Michael found himself struggling to accept that it was time to start heading back. He knew he had to find you somewhere safe to live, but for the first time in his entire life, the thought of being alone again wasn’t so appealing. 

As much as he’d hate to admit it, Michael was enjoying your company. He’d already told you things that he’d never planned on sharing out loud with anyone, let alone someone he’d known for such a short space of time. There was plenty more he wished to discuss with you, too.

“So today’s the day we start moving, huh?” You asked, a nervous tone creeping into your voice. “I bet you’re excited to get rid of me so you can head home, huh?”

Michael wanted to laugh it off but he couldn’t deny the sadness that spread through him at the very thought of not having you around anymore. It was odd to him; feeling so much for someone, especially someone who was still pretty much a stranger to him. 

His many conflicting feelings prevented Michael from responding to you. Pretending not to hear you seemed preferable to whatever his answer would be. 

When he remained silent, your heart sank a little as you assumed it was his way of confirming your suggestion. You scrambled to your feet and slid your knife into your belt before picking up your trusted baseball bat from the floor near the sofa. “I’m good to go on alone, if you’re that eager to be by yourself again.” You said, a note of steeliness in your tone that betrayed how hurt you felt by the fact he didn’t care for you as much as you’d hoped.

Michael’s eyes snapped up to meet yours, his expression almost frightened. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you travel alone yet.” He replied finally. “I’d rather we stayed together for a bit longer, until you’re back at full strength.”

“Thanks for taking care of me, but I don’t want to be a burden to you anymore.” You explained, that hurt tone in your voice refusing to disappear fully.

“You’re not a burden!” Michael replied, scrambling to his feet before stepping closer to you. “I promised to keep you safe and I won’t feel like I’ve fulfilled that until you’ve found a new home. You just don’t strike me as a wonderer.”

Despite the obvious effort Michael put into choosing words that suggested he was doing this out of a sense of duty, you noticed the hint of sadness in his pretty green eyes and the way his fingers twitched nervously as though he didn’t know what to do with them.

“I think I could survive on my own.” You argue lightly, the doubt that Michael didn’t care for you in some way, dwindling by the second. “Maybe you’ve inspired me... maybe I could be a lone wolf, just like you.”

You’d meant it as a joke, not expecting to deepen the sadness in Michael’s eyes to an almost heartbreaking capacity. He tried to hide it but failed miserably as tears started to threaten to fall down his cheeks.

“I wouldn’t recommend it.” He sniffed, trying to hide his emotion by tilting his face downwards, allowing his long fringe to shield his eyes from you. “I think you’d be better off within a group.”

Against your better judgement, you stepped closer to Michael, reaching up to cradle his cheek gently. There’s a moment of eye contact, so charged with different emotions, that they threatened to overwhelm you. Having an attraction towards someone was a luxury you’d thought had died along aside everything else when the world had ended. It seemed dangerous and almost unnatural to crave someone the way you were starting to crave Michael. “You can admit it if you want me to stay with you, Michael. I’m quite a catch, not bad at fighting either.” You aimed for a humorous tone, giving yourself an out if Michael hated the thought of being with you for longer than he had to be.

Some of the tension leaked out of Michael’s face as he pressed his cheek into your hold, his eyelids sliding shut gently. “You can do better than me.” He replied quietly. “I’m not good with people... I only know how to take care of myself.”

You let out a soft chuckle before placing a lingering kiss to his jaw. “You’ve taken care of me.” You argued. “I wouldn’t be here now if it wasn’t for you.”

Michael opened his eyes to meet your gaze and there was a split second that you thought he might kiss you but he seemed to second guess himself as his cheeks filled with colour and he took a step away from you. “I have a feeling you’d have found a way out.” He smiled awkwardly. “You seem like the type of person that the world can’t do without these days.”

The simple compliment filled your heart with joy as a smile curled your lips. “You mentioned the little group of survivors that live close to you.” You offer brightly, “do you think they’d take me in?”

Michael shrugged but there was a hopeful glint in his eyes. “I don’t see why not.”

“That’d be the perfect solution, wouldn’t it?” You asked, smirking a tiny bit. “I could come and visit you whenever you wanted...”

“I’d like that.” Michael replied with a genuine smile. “I think it’s about time I started welcoming guests to my little bunker.”

You pouted as you took his hand, intertwining your fingers with his. “Not too many guests, I hope... I’d kinda like you to myself sometimes.”

He squeezed your fingers gently to show that he was happy with contact but didn’t acknowledge it in any other way. That didn’t matter, though, it felt right and Michael seemed to agree, that’s all that mattered.

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[tlbodine]

The End of 1960s Horror...

After a few delays, we’re back on track with our jaunt through the horror decades. Last night’s films were two favorites and genuine classics. 

First up, Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

The film, directed by Roman Polanski, is an adaptation of a novel by the same name by Ira Levin (the guy who wrote The Stepford Wives). I’d never read the book, and @comicreliefmorlock​ had read it but never seen the film, so that made for some interesting compare/contrast. 

The big takeaway? The movie is so much sleazier and, well, rapey-er, despite being an extremely faithful adaptation (even down to exact dialogue lines being replicated). 

This may have been influenced by the director. It’s hard to watch Rosemary’s Baby now without the film being clouded by knowing that Polanski was charged in 1977 with drugging and raping a 13-year-old (a charge which caused him to flee the country, allowing him to continue making critically acclaimed movies without suffering any particular consequences for his crime). You can read more about that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Polanski_sexual_abuse_case

It’s also interesting to note that, a year after Rosemary’s Baby came out, Polanski’s pregnant wife and four friends were among the victims of the Manson family murders. 

There’s a lot to unpack there. 

But let’s get back to the movie. Rosemary’s Baby tells a pretty straightforward story: A pair of newlyweds move into an apartment and develop a relationship with the eccentric elderly couple next door. The husband is a struggling actor who serendipitously gets his big break shortly after meeting the old folks. The wife, raised Catholic and from a large family, is eager to start having children of her own. She succeeds in getting pregnant, but it’s a difficult pregnancy, and through a series of odd events, she becomes convinced that everyone in her life is part of a satanic coven of witches intent to sacrifice her baby. 

Ira Levin has always impressed me with his skill at writing about women -- not just writing female characters well (which he does) but deeply understanding the fears and anxieties of womanhood in a way that is frankly surprising from a male writer in the 1960s. That shines through clearly in the film, and I can’t say for certain how much of that was influenced by Polanski -- not having seen any of his other movies, I’m not sure how he handles other source material. 

Anxieties explored head-on by the film include: 

Spousal rape 

Gaslighting (and “hysteria” perhaps) 

The loss of bodily autonomy inherent in pregnancy

Woman-as-vessel-for-baby as opposed to “whole individual person” 

I could write whole essays about this movie, and I probably will at some point. The primary plot fails to shock or frighten me anymore, of course, but there are still some lingering fridge horrors that are deeply unsettling in the vein of “oh my god can you IMAGINE how it would feel to be her right now.” 

Next up, and our final film for the decade, Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Written and directed by George Romero, Night of the Living Dead was a groundbreaking work for the zombie genre. Drawing clear inspiration from Richard Matheson’s story “I Am Legend,” Living Dead was an original tale that pulled together disparate strands of mythos to create many of the tropes that remain staples of zombie media. 

The story centers on an event of possible cosmic origins, with radiation leading the recently deceased to rise and go on a murderous, flesh-eating rampage. Well-dressed corpses shamble about and kill. A group of strangers are stuck defending a house together, one of them is secretly infected, the group tears itself apart with infighting -- you name the zombie apocalypse trope, it’s all here. 

One of the really interesting and groundbreaking things of Night of the Living Dead is that it features a black male protagonist. Now, I can’t say for certain that this is the first time in history someone made a movie about a heroic black man, but it’s certainly the earliest in our chronology that we’ve seen. And Ben (played by Duane Jones, an accomplished stage actor) is truly a great character -- resourceful, kind, brave, sometimes sassy and never afraid to stand up for himself. 

The role wasn’t written for a black character -- Romero said Jones just gave the best audition -- and the film is all the better for it because it avoids all of the troubling stereotypes that would haunt black people in horror for several more decades. 

In my opinion, the movie deserves a spot in history for that reason alone, but even aside from this historically significant casting choice, it’s just a good movie. A bit slow by modern standards, but with plenty of good action and some clever storytelling. Large chunks of it play out almost like a silent film, with the score and visuals doing most of the heavy lifting. The choice to film it in black and white helps to make it seem almost timeless (and likely helped to assuage the concerns of the viewing public, who were still squeamish about gore). A lot of the story is also told through snippets of radio broadcast and second-hand accounts, which adds to the claustrophobia of the main storyline while hinting at a much larger and more devastating event. 

And the ending! 

I remember watching Night of the Living Dead for the first time when I was in 8th grade. It was on TCM, I think, and I gleefully watched it alone in the dark and was totally blown away by the ending. I won’t ruin it in case you’ve never seen it, somehow, but man I didn’t see it coming, and cynical-preteen me thought it was the coolest shit. I still think it’s a very daring ending. 

Incidentally, WOW, the post-Hayes era of filmmaking took off with a bang. A few films ago we could hardly show a married couple kissing, and now we’ve got full nudity (including an appearance from Mia Farrow’s nipples in Rosemary’s Baby), on-screen graphic violence, and “morally corrupt” endings where the bad guys win. 

It must have been a wild time, growing up on the films of the 40s and 50s, and then coming of age in the 60s to see how WILDLY DIFFERENT they became in a few short years. 

The 1970s are coming, and I am stoked, because we’re entering the era of movies I adore (and which the Morlock has never seen) and I’m so excited to revisit them.