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mashedcontroller · 7 months

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I'm feeling spicy, time to list everything I think BH outclassed 03 on. And by that, prepare yourself for the most backhanded, hyper specific or wildly vague, and strings-attached compliments you've heard in your fucking life. But actually, the reason I'm doing this is because I think 03 is better than BH in every way that matters. The majority of common points people give BH over 03 typically come down to attempts to make subjective taste sound objective since a lot of shit is really just a difference in priorities and/or genre rather than an objective flaw in the other show.

And, to be clear, 03 is the better show. It has a really strong thematic core and just says a lot of shit that I rarely see other stuff have the gall to say. 03 tackles heavy topics and tackles them well. It left me with a lot to think about, even years after my first viewing. It's a political piece of art that remains relevant 20 years after the fact. On some levels, it was designed to do this. 03 is a character drama that deconstructs a lot of the elements that make up the shonen genre, and it also very clearly had something to say. 03 has very few weak points and has some of the strongest moments I've seen from any piece of media that I've interacted with. I think a lot of its bad reputation comes from people failing to engage with the show on its own terms. I can only speculate on what's going through other people's heads, but expecting it to act as supplementary material for BH is a fundamentally wrong assumption to make about the show. These two shows are trying to accomplish very different things, so judging 03 on its ability to be BH is a boldfaced stupid lens to view the show through.

BH, however, is still a well-made show. Like, I'm more than happy to shit on it, but BH is by no means a bad anime. It's just not as ambitious as people claim it to be. And if it really is one of the best things Shonun has to offer, then that says pretty mediocre things about the genre imo. It's far from a bad show. I think it accomplishes the role of "fun action series" really well, but it also has gaping flaws the moment you decide to engage with the work critically. That's not necessarily an issue that I'll take with its fanbase. The show's got a lot of elements that make it good for cultivating one. Stuff like large casts, likeable characters, emphasizing its worldbuilding, prioritizing action over character work, etc. are all traits that are great for cultivating fandom, and they're all traits that BH has that 03 revokes. But yeah, BH does fall apart once you look at it critically. My biggest issues with it come down to the fact that the show baits you into thinking that it's deeper than it actually is. So, I'll take the bait and look for the deeper stuff and then find nothing, which is where my negative perception of the show comes from, which isn't helped by how common it is for people to take the bait without really looking.

So, yeah, in short, I have a mountain of good things to say about 03. It's an incredible piece of art with so much shit to look into. In my opinion, you're doing the show a disservice to watch it and not put serious analytical thought into what you're consuming. Meanwhile I have a lot of mixed opinions about BH. It's a great show to watch, it's just a terrible show to consume critically. This isn't even me calling people who prefer BH dumb or anything. The show's are just so fundamentally different from one-another that your preference truly does just come down to a mix of personal tastes and how you prefer to interact with media, especially if you're a more casual viewer of either/both shows. The part that makes me angry is how disrespected 03 is in the majority of FMA circles.

The animation and sound design of Roy's snap is really fucking good in BH.

While 03 may have an overall better art direction and visuals than BH, I do really like how juicy the BH animators and sound designers made Roy's fire attack. The fire itself is just so fucking juicy and satisfying. The BH team did a really good job at making that attack iconic. There's no "but actually" here. The BH team just fucking nailed this one aspect.

In general, BH has better special effects than 03. This is absolutely a difference in available technology at the time each show was animated. And while I do have respect for special effects animation; it's often the difference between animations looking really stiff vs getting across their intended atmospheres, especially in the realm of video games. Using a human body as an analogy, the special effects are more like the hair than the skin, fat, muscle, nerves, or bones. Both important but somewhat expendable.

BH's alchemy is much more logically consistent than 03's.

So, there are a lot of reasons for this difference. The two main ones are the BH and 03 can barely if even be considered the same genre of anime. BH is a fun fights-heavy action series with some intrigue plot, while 03 is a really critical deconstruction the genre BH embraces that's more of a character drama with a heavily knit thematic core than anything else.

And their commitments to their genres translate to each show's relationship with alchemy. In 03, Alchemy's rules are much more metaphoric than literal. Equivalent Exchange is the shit because it's representative of the philosophy that Edward clings to; that life is fundamentally fair, that there is some universal justification for everything that happens. And 03 is about tearing that belief into itty bitty pieces. In fact, we learn that Equivalent Exchange isn't even true. Everything about Alchemy in 03 is bound by the magic's metaphorical meaning. Thus, when it comes to fights, characters really just need to be able to loosely justify how their alchemy functions for the audience to go "oh ok." And, in 03, alchemy is fundamentally powered by taking the life force of something and using that energy to do something else. So, you get stuff like the ability to extract alchemical energy from plants in order to amplify your alchemy much later, Edward being able to turn his automail into a gun, Dante's alchemic dragon thing, Scar's arm being the Philosopher's Stone, etc. The point is that you're sort of meant to accept that "yeah thats a thing that can happen." In other words, the fights exist purely for spectacle and the logic behind them is low priority at best. So, the way 03 frames it's combat is that it has to establish rules that exist within their own space and work with those rules. So, it can't circumvent stuff like "Roy can't use his gloves if they're wet" because there's no reason to and giving a talk about how H2O has Oxygen in it would have been horribly distracting in the one scene where Roy does get fucking soaked. Especially since him being crafty in a fight is sold by him just using Havoc's matches + Armstrongs rocks to make frag bombs. Tldr, the way 03 is structured allows if not flat out encourages characters to bullshit during fights. I think the fast and loose usage of alchemy's principles in the earlier parts of the show also make the later parts of the show, where those principals turn out to be false, feel more believable.

Meanwhile, BH's alchemy is operating on a much more literal framework, so the writing has more room and necessity for creative and engaging combat sequences. In a way, the fights in BH are puzzles and alchemy is the tools the characters are given to solve those puzzles, so the fights become engaging because you want to see how the characters solve the puzzles. It's very gamey. That said, I do have to say that I dislike how the homunculi are fit into this system. Their lose condition is having their stones exhausted, which just translates into "they have more HP." Which is very bullshit. The homunculi in BH die when the story tells them to, at least, that's how their lose condition makes it feel.

Both shows heavily rely on the usage of gimmicks to make their fights interesting. For example, Roy uses exclusively fire, which he creates by snapping. Like, I really like how Roy's combat gimmick gets explored in this fight specifically.

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I like how Ed ducks into a crowd in an attempt to dissuade him, and Roy's like "you think I care about collateral damage lmao." I like how Ed thinks he won the fight by slicing Roy's glove, but then Roy just ruins his day by revealing that he has two hands and therefore another glove. I really like how Roy's not taking this very seriously and Ed only wins because of Roy getting a flashback. This fight is just an excellent display of character for both of them and I love it.

Anyways, there are a lot of other character gimmicks. Honestly, 03 is so much better with its character gimmicks during fights than BH is. Like, I could list a ton of cool moments where the character gimmicks get played with. And part of how it does this is that every character plays by their own rules. No character will ever break their own rules, but the universal rules governing what is and isn't acceptable for a fight isn't very consistent. This does fit into 03s themes about how there is no universal truth. But yeah, that's how 03 structures its fights and why characters will sometimes just blatantly ignore the laws of alchemy.

Anyways, in BH, the rules are much less person-by-person and are more like "Alchemists can do XYZ," "Homunculi can do ABC," "Alkahestrists can do UWV," "Chimeras can do RST," etc. So, everyone has similar rules that they have to play by. Which also makes it so much more jarring when someone blatantly breaks those rules. Like, when Edward gets impaled and uses alchemy to not die, it's super jarring because that breaks the laws of human frailty and it doesn't really make sense. It's even worse when Edward fucks with Pride's Stone. Compare that to some of the blatant bullshitting in 03, like where Edward uses concrete to turn his broken automail into a gun. He shouldn't be able to decide when the shots are fired and where's the ammo coming from? But part of the reason it isn't jarring is because him turning his automail into a gun isn't a big deal or even particularly important to the scene he does that in. Or take bullshitting that is more relevant, like Alphonse performing a successful human transmutation. At this point, it's been clearly established that Alchemy's laws aren't true. So, Alphonse breaking them doesn't break audience suspense. Instead, the fundamental logic behind it actually working is tied to the story's central themes.

But yeah, BH's alchemy is a bit more logically consistent than 03's, but there's a very good reason for 03's alchemy to have some logical inconsistencies, which results in BH being much worse at breaking its own rules than 03 is.

A lot of the characters are just easier to get behind and digest in BH.

The entire point of 03 is that these characters are nazis and morally grey as fuck. Meanwhile, the characters in BH are primarily meant to be fun characters that you could comfortably fantasize about being or being friends with. The characters in BH are much simpler than in 03 and the show tends to gloss over their war crimes. Even when it addresses them, there's a billion asterisks and variations of "they're still the good guys." Compared to 03, where everyone is just messy and fucked up.

For example, BH Roy is easier to root for than 03 Roy, but that's because BH Roy is a fundamentally different type of character than 03 Roy. BH Roy is firmly a protagonist while with 03 Roy, he's much more antagonistic and complex. He doesn't solidly fit into the categorization of protagonist or antagonist because he's a bit of both.

And to be clear, I'm not calling the characters in BH simplistic in a derogatory way. A major benefit to simplicity is that you know who to root for and don't have to do a ton of heavy thinking to enjoy the story. That said, I don't think this style of character is necessarily appropriate for a story where the majority of the protagonists committed racial genocide and serve in the military for a fascist dictatorship. BH's characterization would've been a lot better if the story wasn't also trying to cover ridiculously heavy topics.

I've been using Roy as my go-to example since he's the only character to be one of my favorites in both shows, but I think the character who benefits the most from this point is Izumi. In BH, she's iconic. She's a slapstick oriented character who's just a joy to have on screen. In 03, her character writing gives me a lot of mixed messages. She's still very slap stick, but it's just weird in 03 since a lot of similar stuff gets unpacked, but Izumi being outright physically abusive to the Elrics at times just isn't. She's also much softer in 03; most characters are. And I'm mostly just left confused on how to feel about her. She has some great scenes, especially with Wrath, but the character feels a bit disjointed. In BH, she really benefits from being a nonparticipant in Ishval. The writing doesn't have to worry about her being sympathetic in spite of her committing genocide, so she gets to be divorced from the massive fuck up that was that section of the story.

BH has a larger cast than 03. Also, a lot of BH exclusive characters are more likeable than the 03 exclusive characters.

There's a lot of things to unpack here.

So, first thing that's kinda an obvious point is that BH prioritizes making its characters easily likeable to the detriment of its larger themes, 03 makes its characters likeable in service of those themes. So, it's a lot easier to get behind BH Mustang than 03 Mustang because Mustang's warcrimes just aren't that important in BH while they're the most important part of the character in 03. A lot of a character's likeability in BH hinges on the audience's ability to simply ignore the Ishval subplot, which was already a poorly handled subplot. While in 03, their likeability is intentionally contrasted with their war crimes to make a point. That's the primary reason why the characters in BH are more likeable than in 03.

And this also extends to the casts that are either version exclusive or unrecognizable between the two. Kimbly is a perfect example. In BH, he's designed primarily as a fun and bombastic antagonist who blows shit up because it's fun. They also made him extremely fashionable. Meanwhile, in 03 he's genuinely fucked up and views the lives of people as little more than tools to use to further his own goals, which is made interesting by Kimbly not being a top dog (like most villains running with that mindset are). He's at the bottom of the food chain and yet he still thrives under that mindset. BH Kimbly is the more fun character, but that's because BH Kimbly and 03 Kimbly are fundamentally different types of antagonist.

A lot of this comes down to tone. 03 is a much more somber show than BH. Unlike BH, it takes the premise of "child soldier works for a fascist government that partook in genocide a few years back because he wants to fix a mistake that made him and his brother permanently disabled" as a sign that the story is meant to be dark and a little fucked up. Meanwhile, BH tends to gloss over the fucked up shit in favor of selling the power-fantasy aspect of the story. This just results in BH's characters being a lot more fun. The surface level shit is the only thing that really matters to them when looking at BH since the deeper shit is simply shit and not really worth calling attention to.

The cast sizes also exist to further both show's individual goals. BH being about action and badass people being badass benefits from a larger cast because you get to see more flavors of badassery. It lets fights cycle between different styles of combat, which helps keep things interesting. 03 is a character drama. This benefits from having a smaller cast because it allows the show to spend more time unpacking a handful of characters.

There are a lot more badass female characters in BH compared to 03

I'll give BH a "you did the bare minimum" award for being an action show with female characters who are not just eye candy. That doesn't make the show revolutionary. It just says bad things about the genre that this isn't considered the bare minimum. But yeah, in both shows, most of the female characters are subordinate to their male peers. Hawkeye is defined as Roy's henchman. Winry is defined as Ed's love interest/childhood friend, Izumi is defined as Ed's mentor. In some aspects, this is fine. Like, the main characters are Edward and Alphonse, they don't need to draw attention away from them in favor of their own bullshit. But how badass a character is doesn't exactly translate into whether they're feminist.

Like, again, the reason you see more badass female characters in BH than 03 is the same reason you see more badass characters in BH than 03; BH is an action show, 03 is a character drama with some amount of action on the side. They're both guilty of employing sexist tropes. BH tends mix those tropes with badassery, while 03 tends to mix those tropes with character nuance. Doesn't change the existence of the tropes. It's sort of just something that you gotta accept about either show. That doesn't mean that its female characters don't have good moments in either show. Just that they're working from a sexist baseline. Neither show is particularly feminist, but they're also far from the worst offenders out there.

There are a few characters where I prefer their BH incarnations over their 03 versions.

The reason someone might prefer one version's character over another is a bit more nuanced than just which character was written better. The vast majority of overlapping characters fulfill different narrative niches in each story. For example, comparing 03 Lust and BH Lust has always felt disingenuous to me because while it's true that 03 Lust is the more compelling character, a major reason for that fact is that BH Lust was never designed with being compelling in mind. A more apt comparison would be 03 Lust to BH Greed, as those two characters do share the same niche of being an antagonist that makes the audience question the nature of the homunculi and eventually splits off from them. I'd also say that BH Lust and 03 Greed fulfill similar narrative niches as being a minor antagonist that establishes exactly what the main villains are all about and who's death is used as a tool by the authors to reveal exactly what the protagonist slaying them is all about. That's why BH Lust's death and 03 Greed's Deaths are both pointed to as highlighting points in their respective series. They both execute on their niches quite well.

This also accounts for the primary reason why someone may like a character in one show but dislike them in another. BH Mustang fulfills the niche of a secondary protagonist. In 03, he fulfills the role of a pseudo-antagonist / morally ambiguous major character. I happen to really like both versions of Mustang, but it's for very different reasons. In BH, I just think he's funny and has a lot of good banter. That's more or less exactly what he's meant to accomplish there. You're supposed to go "haha funny" and/or "haha awesome" with this guy. BH Mustang falls apart when you critically analyze him because the Ishval plot was mishandled, but his surface level traits are so good that I can just be like "I saw nothing." Meanwhile, 03 Mustang is a character who you sort of have to engage with critically to get the most out of. He's a complicated character and his relationship with the audience isn't a static variable. And there's merit to both approaches of character writing. There's as much value to a character where it's not worth overanalyzing them as there is to a character who doesn't really come into their own until you pull out the tweezers.

So, in case anyone's curious, which characters do I prefer their BH incarnations to over their 03 incarnations? Well, I prefer Barry the Chopper and Izumi Curtis in BH vs their 03 counterparts. Like I said, there's a lot more nuance than "this character was written better in one anime than the other" when regarding personal preferences. So, the reason I prefer BH Izumi over 03 Izumi is that I thought BH Izumi was funny and cool while I just got a lot of mixed messages about 03 Izumi. So, in this case, I think BH Izumi fulfilled her narrative purpose really well, while I have much more mixed opinions on 03 Izumi. As for Barry, it's a similar case where I thought he was really funny in BH, while I think he fell short as a more serious antagonist in 03. In Izumi's case, the failings I have for her in 03 are that I don't think her treatment of the Elrics is put under the same scrutiny that every other character is given. Like, in BH, her being physically violent towards them is played off for comedy. It's the same case in 03, but it doesn't work as well in this context because 03 is the show that turned the short jokes into an important metaphor, so it's really weird that Izumi's slapstick wasn't given the same treatment. And I found that really off-putting. Meanwhile, my main issue with BH Izumi is that the stuff around her failed human transmutation was extremely underexplored, which doesn't stick out as much as the slapstick issue in 03 because Izumi is ultimately a minor character in BH while she takes the mantle of a more major character in 03. Though, personal bias is a huge factor in why I prefer BH Izumi over 03 Izumi, since her specific plot about being unable to bear children just happens to be so alien to my personal life, as someone who's both never had a failed pregnancy, has zero interest in bearing children, and would happily make a magic "goodbye pussy" circle. It's not that this type of conflict can't still be compelling to someone like me, but it's going to require more narrative work than a conflict that I can more closely relate to. Hence, why it's personal bias. Meanwhile, in the case of Barry the Chopper, my preference towards BH's version is a fair bit less subjectively biased. He just fits really awkwardly into the role 03 tries to assign him. The issue is that he jumps back and forth between trying to be fucked up and scary to being a comedic antagonist, which just undermines both aspects of him.

Like, the antagonist for this scene, should end up looking completely alien to the version of Barry the Chopper seen in BH, but that version of Barry is played relatively similar to BH Barry in Lab 5, resulting in the 03 Barry being inconsistent.

And for every character where I prefer their BH version, there are plenty more characters where I prefer their 03 versions. And a lot of that will come down to personal preference.

Armstrong's a great example of a character who on a surface level isn't that far off between 03 and BH, but he just works so much better in 03 than in BH because of the different character niches he fulfills in both shows. In 03, he's a minor character, while in BH, he's a major character. So, in 03, he's not particularly developed. He's mainly a funny guy who has a few shots where he's sad over Ishbal, and then he ends up supporting Mustang in overthrowing the government, which he mostly does in a comedic fashion. That's a pretty apt description for both his 03 and BH incarnations, but I only take issue with his performance in BH. The reason for this is that he's a more important character in BH, so I expect the show to disclose more information about him, which doesn't happen. Like, in BH, I want to know more about how his refusal to fight in Ishval affected him, his relationships, his status, etc. But BH only addresses that through off-handed scenes where Olivier calls him a pussy, which don't really go anywhere. Meanwhile, in 03, first of all, Armstrong did kill people in Ishbal, so the massive question of "how did his time in Ishbal affect him" can be supplemented by other characters confronting similar questions. Thus, the minor amounts of information we are given about Armstrong alongside information we see from other characters who were soldiers in Ishbal like Marcoh and Mustang are more than enough to get across the general picture. Secondly, we actually do get hints at how Armstrong's goofier attitude and kinder disposition impact his career. Mainly during the raid in Dublith where Envy disguised as Bradly says "this is why you never get a promotion." As a minor character in 03, he's allowed to have the nuances of his character be heavily carried by implication. But I can't really give a major character like BH Armstrong that same affordance, especially when those hints are barely given. It doesn't help that Armstrong's backstory in BH very heavily leaned into the story's insistence that the soldiers didn't mean it when they slaughtered Ishval.

Edward is more of a Badass in BH than 03

Ngl, I'm cheating a little with this point because it's like "I agree with this point but I also couldn't give less of a shit about it." Which, that response is, at least, 85% personal preference coming into the equation. I'm not going to say that badass characters never resonate with me, but it's really uncommon because the badass character has to be someone I personally can somewhat relate to, which is a rare flavor of character in popular media. My own experiences with the two characters are that I find BH Edward to be kinda boring as a character while 03 Edward is the most interesting character in the show (as he should be given everything I said about what 03 is trying to accomplish). But it's a lot of the same stuff my general thesis has been; BH Ed is more badass than 03 Ed because BH Ed was written to be a badass while 03 Ed was written to be a compelling character.

The actual reason I wanted to bring up this point is because it's a common enough point I've seen people make when comparing the two shows and I find this point rather bothersome. Maybe that's because I take issue with consistently seeing a rather mediocre character being placed on a pedestal over one of the best protagonists I've ever seen. But it's also more the explanations that bug me than anything. Like, I cannot take anyone seriously who uses calling a character "whiny" as a critique. Maybe it's because you're looking for an action hero who can shrug off shit that would normally be traumatizing, in which case, you're in the wrong genre. Maybe you take some issue with characters being emotional in a vulnerable sort of way. 03 features a lot of characters displaying emotions in a dysfunctional sort of way. Characters are allowed to hurt in a way that doesn't fuel anything other than more hurt. Characters will repress their feelings and that will bite them in the ass. Characters are allowed to be depressed, not in a "waiting for the heroic do shit speech" sort of way but in the genuine "existing is painful, no energy, depression" kinda way.

And this is the point that rubs me the wrong way about the majority of complaints thrown at 03 Ed. It's not that wallowing in your own misery makes for good entertainment, but it's an important part of 03's themes and its point. I can also, just, relate more to this unproductive sense of pain. I have depression, that is what depression looks and feels like. It's unproductive, it's painful, it can't be fixed by someone just walking up to you and giving a dramatic speech. And that's why the way 03 expresses hurt resonates with me in a way that BH's just doesn't. It's low octane, and that's the point. That's what makes it good.

BH's Ending is a lot more Straight-Forwards than 03's Ending

I think that's the best way I can put it without saying something I flat out disagree with. BH, in general, is much more straight-forwards than 03, and the endings of both show embody that. BH is, ultimately, a fun show where the heroes have to take a bunch of twists and turns to come out victorious. Meanwhile, 03 is an extremely messy show about characters being put in fucked up situations and no one coming out of it unscathed. It's about decisions that will haunt you for the rest of your life. It's about situations where the right answer is the one you least want to accept. It's a show about how the people will create doctrines to shield themselves from the truth. And it's a show about human selfishness. The endings of both shows are exactly how their shows should have ended. BH was never going to have a bad ending and 03 was never going to have a completely satisfactory ending. If 03 had a happy ending, the show would've been worse off for it.

So, yeah, BH's ending is a lot more straight-forward. It's a happy ending where everyone gets what they want more or less. Narrative knots are tied. All that shit. I personally thought the ending was nothing special. Like, it's another happy ending. I can't fault people for enjoying it for that, but it's not the type of thing that's going to stand out in my brain.

Meanwhile, 03's ending does a lot of nontraditional things. There's arguably multiple major plot twists that come out of nowhere and are more of a "fuck you" to the audience than anything else. The protagonists end the series arguably off worse than where they started. Wrath and Gluttony are still alive and haven't had their arcs concluded in any satisfying way. There's no guarantee that the setting or the characters in it will continue to be okay after the series ends. And that's okay. The ending of 03 is very messy because it's meant to be messy because the point that the show is making is that the world is neither straightforward nor fair, which is why you gotta keep doing the best you can to improve it. That's why the ending is uplifting. Even though Edward's in arguably the worst position he's been in throughout the series, having literally lost everything, he hasn't given up, so you, the viewer, shouldn't give up either. Life doesn't end until it ends, so you should live.

And yeah, the ways that 03's and BH's ending function are fundamentally different. I can totally see why one ending would pass someone by. Like I already said, I didn't feel anything watching BH's ending but 03's ending felt very significant to me, and I could totally understand the inverse being true for some people.

Conclusion

People give BH too much credit and shit too much on 03. Like, 03 is just the better show. It's just that 03 isn't designed to be a comfortable watch in the same way BH is. You're meant to leave BH feeling good, you're meant to leave 03 with a lot to think about. If 03 makes you uncomfortable, that's a feature, not a bug. Many of the fan advertised strengths and weaknesses of each show is really just differences in genre.

And while I've repeatedly conveyed that 03 is the better show, that's not because BH is bad; 03 is just really fucking good. It's like comparing Elden Ring to Dark Souls 1; sure they're made by the same developers and have a lot of surface level similarities, but they're so fundamentally different experiences that viewing them through the same lens isn't fair to either. There are a lot of things that BH does well, and there are a lot of things that 03 does well. But it's not fair to say "BH does X thing better than 03 therefore it's better" (or the occasions where the inverse claim is made) because both shows are trying to paint very different pictures, to the point where I don't consider them to be parts of the same genre. There may be similar components, but the way those components are used is very different from one-another. Comparing the two shows makes for interesting analysis, but it's bad for the purposes of actually criticizing either show.

#fma03 #fmab #fma analysis #fma2003 #fullmetal alchemist #fma #fmab critical #that's right i'm using all the tags this time #mostly because i've put a ridiculous amount of time writing this so i'd like it to be seen by other ppl #and yeah responses are good even you don't have much to say I love seeing other ppl's opinions about shit

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myfriendpokey · 2 years

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Mr Advice

My advice to anyone making their first game is, have a good time :^)

Boy, such horrible advice. Who let this guy in. Yes, it's barely worth saying. But I would like to dig more into it, just the same.

To have a good time making games is to think seriously and critically about your own pleasure. It means trying to keep a space free for that pleasure, resisting the temptation to displace it into other, impressive sounding terms like Improvement and Skill and Quality and Hard Work. Which can be like looking at a magic eye picture - you think you see it, then you blink, and find your eyes have automatically refocused themselves somewhere else, somewhere more solid than the little flickering uncertain spot you were looking for. To the extent your pleasure really is bound up in these things, following it can mean gutting them, or twisting them, into something new and unrecognizable that brings you a little closer to what you want.

Having a good time will also likely mean your games are strange - misshapen, erratic, half-formed, weirdly over- and under-developed at the same time. You will have to mutilate your way through the canon of design. A lot of the things you take for granted about the form will turn out to be boring, or hard to implement, or not fit with your own process, or you might feel like chopping them out for whatever other reason. Meanwhile the most trivial things can grab your attention, draw you in. I think that's fine. I don't think anybody needs more well-balanced games - that's the worst of all backhanded compliments, next to "diligent".

Having a good time will mean butting your head against established ideas of audience and commerce, since often these act as substitutions for whatever it is you're looking for from putting out a public work. Terms like recognition, validation, communication, can be vague and mysterious in practice. A small half-gesture from someone you don't know can end up sticking to you more than official forms of response like reviews or metric milestones. I think it's good to drift between spaces while you figure out what you want from them, because often they'll use your own uncertainty about what they're able to offer as a way to lock you in.

Having a good time in this format can be illegal, which I think is fine. Videogames are built on, and kept alive by, acts of crime. There is often something very delightful about feeling like you have all the objects of culture at your disposal, to use and misuse as you may like, and conversations about ownership are often best kicked down the line to some other grey day. Of course the same thing applies the other way around as well. I would advise making your first game free.

Having a good time can mean going against yourself, becoming your own enemy. All your dreams, all your desires and ambitions, can look different in the cold light of the game editor. You may find your attention wandering to something new, you may feel apprehensive about how much tedious dogsbody labour you'll need to do to appease that other version of yourself, the one who dreams. How much loyalty do you owe your own conception of yourself? To use RPG Maker is to be thrown headfirst into this interesting dilemma.

It's often said you should make something small for your first game. It's good advice but I think a bit backwards - I think most first games are made for fun and they come out small, because it's often hard to deal with too much pleasure all at once. We find something we like and regard it warily, circling from all sides. Slowly advancing - well, surely there's not much to this. Surely it'll dry up, or disappear, or turn out to be a puddle masquerading as a lake. Bit by bit you start mapping it out and find to your own disbelief that there's still always more to it than you had expected. You can start small and get bigger or vice versa but I think either way you'll end up feeling like that scale is an irrelevant question. And that what matters is the piecemeal exploration of the lake.

Well, if you have fun making something the result is liable to be a mystery to yourself, even just a little bit - say 1% real pleasure and surprise buried in 99% cludge, inherited forms, obligation, moments of fear and dullness. That's fine and you are already batting higher than many profitable game studios, in this case. The rest of it you will forget, or come to feel like you've outgrown - that one small moment of pleasure will remain in memory as something inexplicable, a point to navigate by. And bit by bit you can accumulate more points - and find they don't lead anywhere coherent, or predictable, that you're chasing a shadow. Buffeted here and there, losing your way, finding it again, finding isolated points of a shape you're never completely able to see.

You could spend your life out here, suspended between these points and dreaming,

-- My Friend Pokey, author of the "Pokey 2000" franchise of shovelware game'n'watch ports.

(image: Paul Delvaux, "Forest Station")

#?#developmentman

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nessieart · 10 months

Text

Teeth pt. 7

|| Our Own Demons ||

WC: 3.6k

AN: jeez this took forever to get out. I think I’ve scrapped it at least twice and had to rewrite a few things. I’m not sure I’m totally happy with it, but here we are!

Warnings: Canon level violence, (and there’s so much in IM3 like what?) made up fantasy elements prob’ly, cursing, no y/n used.

Eventual Tony x Reader.

Summary: The end of IM3.

<<Previous || First || Next>>

-*-

I know what you are. Shift. Do it, or I kill Pepper.

“Don’t!” Pepper shouted, you look over at her and she has a pleading look on her face, she shakes her head.

Beside you Killian sighs, you see him reach behind him and pull out a gun, pointing it unwaveringly at her. “I’ll count to 3, little dog,” he drops you to the floor again. Killian pulls the slide back on the gun to load it and points it at Pepper again.

1 You look from Killian to the gun in his hand.

2 You look at Pepper. She seems fearful now, you’re sure Tony told her about what you are. Maybe in whatever message he left her in that ripped up Iron Man helmet.

You take a deep breath and smile sadly at her.

3 You shift. Ripping the clothes you just put on and keeping your head low. There’s a few gasps in the room, most likely from Pepper and Maya.

Killian bends down so his face is next to yours, he tuts, “See, that wasn’t so hard now was it?” He puts the gun up under your chin for you to look at him, your lips pull back from your teeth into a snarl, no sound comes out as you look at him. That golden orange glow comes up from his chest to his throat and his eyes glow, there’s sparks and fire that bleed from his mouth when he smiles at you. “I’ve got tricks of my own, pretty girl, and I can’t wait to share them with you.”

He brings the butt of his gun to your temple and you waver on your paws for a moment and then collapse. Darkness takes over your vision as you’re lifted with ease over Killians’ shoulders.

-*-

You aren’t sure how long you were unconscious, but when you come to there’s a burning sensation coursing through your veins. You jerk awake, trying to get a sense of where you are. You must have shifted back to human while you were out, the wet concrete under your naked form is rough and hard. There’s a collar around your neck that’s chained to the ground with heavy iron links that connect the collar to the tether.

You try to pull the collar apart and as you go to yank it, it shocks you and you’re jolted with such a high intensity you double over on your hands and knees, panting.

“Don’t try that again,” comes a voice on the far side of where you are. You can hear his expensive shoes click against the concrete and Killians shoes reach your line of sight. He sighs, exasperated and overly dramatic. He kneels down so he’s balanced on the balls of his feet, his arms resting on his knees and you look up at him under your lashes. He brings his hand to your face, and you snap at him, barely missing his fingers. He backhands you across the face and the force is so strong you fall over.

Why the hell was this asshole so strong? And why does every movement burn so much?

You’re panting again and cringe inward on yourself when another wave of that burning sensation goes through you. You’re vaguely aware that Killian threw a blanket on you, the material is rough and scratchy and just touching your skin makes it burn again.

“What,” you’re breathing heavily as you try to sit up, “what the hell did you do to me?” You wrap the blanket around your shoulders and the clanking of the chains shifts as you move. Killian’s still crouched on the balls of his feet, his head tilts a little to the side and he smiles. Gods, you wanted to punch his face in. Or scratch his eyes out. Maybe both.

“Extremis,” he grins, your eyebrows furrow. “It’s the next step to evolution,” his right arm begins to glow that orange color and he moves it closer to you. You can feel the heat from it, and as if on cue your chest glows, it pulses through your body to respond to where his hand is resting a few inches from your sternum.

“What the fuck?” You panic and go to claw at your chest, and Killian tuts again. “What the fuck is this?” This time you growl and lunge at him, he leaps back, and you come up short and the chain and collar stop you just short of him. Another shock goes through you, but you barely feel it this time.

“Evolution comes at a price,” Killian stands, and you notice there’s another person in the room with you. Oh, Pepper… “The full moon is tomorrow, and I can’t wait to see what happens.” And then he’s gone. The heavy door swinging shut with a loud slam that echoes in the room you’re left alone with Pepper in.

“Pepper?…” you hesitantly edge closer to where she’s seated. Her legs are up to her chest, her arms wrapped around them and her head is buried in her arms.

She peers up at you, her eyes are puffy and red rimmed when she lifts her head more. “I’m so sorry, Poppy,” her voice is hoarse and she clears it, “I couldn’t stop him,” her lip wobbles and you beckon her closer, you’re too far and the chain won’t let you move any further.

When she reaches you, you put your hand out for her to grab and you twine your fingers together. “He didn’t put this stuff in you too, did he?” You ask her. Pepper shakes her head and you sigh in relief. “How long have we been here?”

Pepper tilts her head to the side and her eyes grow wide, “Three days, you don't remember?”

You shake your head, “Remember what? The last thing I remember was the hotel room, and Killian making me shift.”

Pepper squeezes your hand, “You’ve been in and out of consciousness since we got here. Killian strapped you to a table and injected you with that chemical he calls Extremis.” She runs a thumb over the back of your hand, and suddenly you’re filled with a sense of dread.

“Pepper…?”

She sighs, “You can’t shift.” Your eyes widen. “He’s been trying to make you turn back for days. He thinks the full moon will force it.”

Your skin is itchy, but maybe that’s just the drug he gave you. You bring Pepper’s wrist to your nose and sniff, and then sigh. “Sorry, I thought maybe whatever it is - Extremis - messed with me biologically,” she still smelled like honey, lavender and lemons, though it was faint. You tell Pepper your name, and she furrows her brows.

“It’s my name,” you give her a small smile. “Tony only calls me Poppy because he said that’s what I smell like. The yellow ones that grow near the mansion.”

Pepper nods, “You kind of smell like a wet dog to me,” she chuckles a little and you join her. It felt nice to laugh, even for a moment.

You and Pepper are fed, it’s not much but it was better than the empty stomach you had. You share the blanket with her and she lets you rest your head on her shoulder. It wasn’t a pleasant nights’ sleep in the least. Tossing, turning, and trying not to burn from the inside out.

All the next day, you were crawling out of your skin. The moon was calling to you and you could feel it in your bones. It wasn’t a sensation you were used to, maybe not since you were little, when you first learned how to shift and what it meant and how important it was to your body.

Your papa always said not shifting during and around the full moon drives supernatural Weres and Shifters mad. Consequences you didn’t want to chance, because the alternative always seemed worse.

But this feeling now, was a lot worse. The burning coursing through your veins and the call of the moon was driving you stir crazy, constantly scratching at your skin and pacing in the small area the chain connected to your collar let you go.

-*-

It’s late evening when the door opens with a bang. You’re sweating so much you’re surprised there’s not a puddle of it on the floor. Killian enters the room and tosses some clothes at you, they land at your feet. When you pick them up to look at them, you realize it's just bicycle shorts and a sports bra.

You’re panting heavily as he makes his way over to you, he jingles a set of keys in your face, “Be a good girl and I’ll take you for a walk,” he’s smirking as he unlocks the collar around your neck. You shove the clothes on and wait for him to beckon you onward. Killian grabs your arm and drags you out of the room, you glance back and Pepper nods at you, you give her a subtle nod back.

“How does it feel?” He asks you once you’re brought to a different room. There's monitors and lab equipment. A few computer servers sit on the far side of the room against a wall. You’re fairly certain that you might be on a ship of some kind.

“Like shit,” you spit out. “Like I’m crawling out of my skin and I can’t get it to stop.”

He hums like he understands, there’s a pout to his lips and his eyebrows furrow in pity. “I have a good feeling about this,” he lets you go and spins in a small circle, his arms out wide.

You don’t realize someone is behind you until you feel another collar around your neck, this is loose and doesn’t seem to shock you when you reach for it.

“What’s all this for?” You growl at him, “You think Tony’s gona help you with whatever this is?” You motion to yourself. You really want to rip this guy's head off. “As soon as I shift, this shit will be out of my system.”

Killian tuts, “Someone wants to pay a pretty penny for you,” your eyes widen, “Mhm, just who you’re thinking of. But, I think I’ll keep you. You don’t know the power of Extremis like I do,” he grins.

You hear repulsors, and then a slam of something heavy landing outside the door to the room you’re in. You whirl around, eyes bright and smile hopeful. Tony!

It’s not, it's some red white and blue Suit. Your brows furrow, and as the suit walks closer it opens up and the President is thrown to the ground at Killians feet.

Killian fake salutes, “Welcome aboard, Mr. President.”

-*-

A little while later, one of Killian’s lackies brings Pepper to where you are; pacing back and forth in the room. She’s apprehensive of coming closer to you, you’ve been gripping the roots of your hair and panting heavily for a while. The evidence looks like you’ve run a 5k on the hottest day of the year.

“I can’t take this any more,” you say aloud. “I’m about to tear my skin off, Pepper, it's driving me insane. I’ve never not been able to shift before,” you look over at her, and she backs away just a little. Your eyebrows furrow, and you look at your hands.

With every beat of your heart, the orange glow is coursing through your body like waves lapping at the shore. You double over, clutching your head, and a scream tears from your throat. There’s hesitant footsteps coming towards you, and you peek from under your lashes as Pepper reaches for you, she wants to comfort you but you can smell she’s afraid. You whimper, and curl in on yourself just a bit more.

And then you hear gunshots from outside the room you’re both in. Your head shoots up and you and Pepper look to the locked door, and then to each other. There’s hope behind her eyes and you’re sure there’s a similar look in yours. She reaches you and grabs your shoulders to pull you up right, and as you settle into her side you can hear a whistle, its faint and coming closer. In an instant a missile collides with the side of the room and you and Pepper are thrown across the space, there’s fire and debris and in that moment you shift.

Your limbs are long, your hands are big, and fingers extend with pointed claws at the tips. Your torso is longer than usual, and a long bushy tail is set above the bicycle shorts that are, miraculously, still on. You wrap yourself around Pepper as best you can, shielding her for the worse of the explosion. Pepper calls your name in a panic and you open your eyes to stare down at her. You’re both trapped under the fallen wreck of the room, there’s a pain in your shoulder and side.

“Are you ok?” Pepper asks, hands in the ruff on your neck, she brings them to your face. Her eyes are wide as she takes in your Shifted form.

You rest your head on the floor, panting slightly, “Yep, just fine. Think there’s shrapnel in my shoulder, though.”

“Yeah, you’re bleeding,” she replies, and you lift your head up with eyes wide as you look at her. “What?”

“You can hear me?”

“Well, yes. You are speaking,” Pepper says as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

While you’re both distracted you miss the sound of repulsors getting closer until there’s motion in your peripheral.

“Girls?” Tony says, his head popping into view as he lays on the floor to look at Pepper and you. You both sigh in relief as Tony reaches his hand into the wreckage pile. “C’mon, out you get,” he shifts closer and things begin to shift above you.

You brace yourself on your hands and knees above Pepper, giving her enough space to crawl out and grasp Tony’s outstretched Iron Man hand. As she gets free, Tony comes back into view.

“Your turn, Kessler, let’s go,” you roll your eyes at his joke, his hand goes to reach for you and the debris begins to shift again and whatever was in your shoulder digs itself all the way through and pierces straight through you.

You yelp in pain, “No, Tony stop, I can’t!” You look at him and his eyes are wide.

He shakes it off and goes to reach for you again, his hand a little closer, “C’mon, baby, just grab my hand,” he says softly. Before you can move to grab his hand, Killian bursts through the floor in between you both, his arms and hands are molten as he melted right through the floor.

Killian pins Tony down in his Iron Man suit, one burning finger pressing Tony down. Killian looks back at you, “This guy bothering you? Oh look at you,” he coos, “I knew Extremis was the right fit for you, pretty girl,” he has a nasty smirk on his face and you just growl back at him.

As Tony struggles to get free of Killians fiery grasp, you try and pry the piece of metal sticking out of your shoulder. It’s slippery with your blood and there’s no good grip you can get to pull it free. You hear a shout in pain and you look up to see Killians severed, molten hand land not too far from where you are. It melts the floor rapidly and as it goes down, the floor underneath you gives way and you fall.

“Tony!” You yell for him as you land on a crane, the heavy metal debris falls with you and your bottom half is pinned and you can’t get free. The metal pipe that was lodged in your shoulder is sticking out more now and you grasp it with both hands and yank it free, grunting in pain as you use the bar to try and wedge it by your legs to get yourself free.

“JARVIS, I need a suit,” Tony says as he runs after you, the crane is slowly making its way across the yard. As you look around, it's dark, there’s Iron Men suits flying around attacking other Extremis enhanced people, you can see the glow from where you are. There’s an explosion somewhere below you and lean your body out of the crane to see a man and the red white and blue suit from earlier swing away from the fire below.

The crane finally stops moving and you sigh in relief. You’re still trying to pry the heavy metal debris of your legs as Tony comes into view, standing on a railing reaching for you.

“Poppy, I’ve got you,” he's stretching as far as he can, and you reach your hand out to him, just barely grazing his fingertips with your own. “I’ve got you, look at me! Don’t look down.”

You’re both straining to reach that extra inch further, “Tony, I’m stuck, I can’t,” there’s a creak and a shudder, and the crane jostles a little, the metal over your legs digging into you a little more and you grunt in pain.

“Honey, I can’t reach any further and you can’t stay there,” he’s pleading, with you and himself, “You’ve gotta let go, I’ll catch you!” There’s another shudder and the debris begins to fall from the crane and as you’re about to reach Tony’s outstretched hand, something explodes not too far away from you and the crane rocks.

You fall.

Tony’s fingers brush yours and you’re so sure he’s going to grab you -

Until he doesn’t.

And you fall.

Tony yells your name, tears and blood mix on his face as he gets further from you.

You can feel the heat of the fire below, your hand still stretched upward as if willing yourself to grasp Tony’s hand as he shouts for you.

-*-

The fire is all consuming when you hit the ground hard. The wind is knocked out of your lungs as you gasp for breath. If you weren’t supernatural you’d be dead from the fall.

Wait a minute.

“Why am I not dead now?” The fire is warm. You know it should burn you to a crisp, but it’s like a warm summer’s breeze in the center of the flames. Looking down at yourself you notice the orange glow from Extremis is barely visible. You were hoping if you Shifted it would leave your system. Seems it was half true.

You can hear fighting outside the flames and you make your way towards the sound. As you round a corner you can see Killian, he’s engulfed in flames and molten. He’s standing over Tony and about to attack him. You grab the nearest thing you can to use as a weapon and charge over to them, lifting the steel beam high, you wind up a swing and knock Killian away from Tony.

You’re panting and breathing heavily as Tony hesitantly calls your name. You look at him and he raises his hands up to you. You’re a good 3 feet taller than him in this new form you Shifted to*. So you lean down a little and he runs his fingers through the ruff around your neck.

“God, Poppy, you scared the devil out of me,” he sighs. “I thought you…”

“What? That I was dead? Cause I fell 200 feet?” You chuckle lightly.

Behind you, you hear a yell and as you turn Killian emerges, angry and on fire.

“JARVIS!” Tony yells, and as he does, an Iron Man suit encases Killian. You run up to him, punch through his chest with a satisfied smirk on your face, giant teeth grinning down at the man. “Blow MK42, J,” Tony says as you back away from Killian. The suit separates and tears Killian to pieces and then explodes.

You sigh, resting your snout along Tony’s cheek, “Thank the Gods that’s over with.” You jolt your head up and look around, “Where’s Pepper?” You ask in a panic.

Tony soothes you, petting you lightly, “She’s fine, Rhodey got her and the President to safety before shit hit the fan. Nice look, by the way,” he says as he takes in your new form.

You take in the sight of Tony, he’s pretty worse for wear. Cuts leaking blood litter his face and knuckles. You don’t want to think about bruises and cuts on the other parts of his body. You bend over and scoop him up and he lets out a startled yelp, you jump up on top of a shipping container to get away from the flames and smoke.

“Now what?” You ask as you set him down. You can still hear the repulsors of the couple dozen Iron Man suits flying around. “That’s a lot of suits, Tony,” you glance at him and he hums.

“You’re right,” he responds, raising his hands. “It is Christmas, after all. JARVIS?” He taps his ear

The Clean Slate Protocol, sir? JARVIS says as a suit comes to hover in front of you, it lands and holds out something for Tony to take. He turns to you and gives you the proffered item. You glance down and notice it's another collar. This one’s red with a gold tag.

When you put the collar on a blue light comes on. Good evening, Miss.

You smile, “Hi, JARVIS.”

“Light ‘em up, J,” Tony says. One by one, each Iron Man suit explodes, and it’s almost like the 4th of July.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” You ask, looking down at him. “How are we supposed to get home?”

He inhales sharply, “Uh well,” he rubs the back of his neck with his hand.

-*-

*This is how I imagined what Poppy’s new Shifter form looks like. But you’re free to envision it however you like!

AN: Thanks for reading! It means a lot to me!! Likes, Comments, RBs <3

#tony stark x reader #tony stark x shifter!reader #Tony Stark imagine #mcu fanfiction #Teeth part 7 #Shifter!Reader

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a-tale-of-legends · 2 years

Text

Homesick

Summary: Kiran feels homesick on a cold night in Hisui.

The fire between the two of them burns bright, little specks flying up into the night sky. Sleeping so far away from the already established camp, as well as simply sleeping in the woods of Hisui is bound to cause some trouble. Though, oddly enough, Kiran doesn't mind. It's oddly nostalgic. Camping in the wild. Though Kiran doesn't know where that nostalgia is from. They don't know where any of their nostalgic feelings are from. Are they from home? What is home?

" Everything alright, Kiran?" Ingo speaks up, " You have been spacing out for a while now....".

Kiran's cheeks grow red in embarrassment. The poor man must have watched him space out like a fool. Hisui is no place for such thing. Especially at night.

" Apologies," Kirans says quickly, " I didn't mean to be a source of discomfort," He shifts in his spot, moving his legs away from the fire- away from Ingo- and brings his knees to his face.

" No, no, you're not being a bother at all!" Ingo comforted with a wave of his arm, " I was simply wondering if you wanted to share what was troubling you,".

Kiran eyes Ingo for a second. For all the time he's known the older man, all that he says is 100% genuine. So there's no worry of anything condescending or backhanded. A slight wind blows, causing Kiran to shiver.

" I....this is nostalgic. The camping, the training pokemon," his frowns, " But I don't have any memories that I can place that nostalgia to,".

Ingo hums, put doesn't speak. Kiran continues:

" I have....these hunched that I'm wasn't alone before this," they gesture to all that's around the two, " That they were people I could go too but I just- I just don't remember," Kiran says sorrowfully, their eyes begining to water.

" But I still miss them. I.....I want to go home," their whimper, burying his head into his knees, " But I don't even know what that is,"

Another cold wind blows, and Kiran hugs himself in an attempt to keep warm. The sound of Hisui's night and the fire crackling is all they hear. He tries not to whimper any more than he should, the cold suddenly getting to him- until he feels something drap over his shoulders.

Looking to his side he sees Ingo's coat on his shoulders. Looking up, Ingo gives Kiran a small smile, and a reassuring smile.

" I understand that completely," Ingo says calmly, sitting down next to Kiran, "This place, these people, I care for deeply. But home, wherever that may be, isn't here,"

" Whatever memory you have of your home, no matter how vague it may be, I want you to hold onto it as tight as you can. Cherish them. And never stop feeling them,". Kiran tilts his head at Ingo's words. Cherish vague memories?

" Those memories are what ties you to your home, after all," as if he read Kirans mind. The silence comes back. Kiran is no longer subjected to the cold wind- well, as much as they used too. They bite their lip, pondering on what to say as the fire continues to spark and dance.

" If we ever go back home-"

" When," Kiran blinks.

" Huh?"

" When." Ingo says again, a glint in his eye. Kiran raises a brow.

" How can you be so sure?" Kiran questions. Ingo shrugs, relaxed.

" A hunch. Something brought us here so something can bring us back, hm?" He chuckles a bit, " And Sakura has a tendency to do the impossible, so I think we have good odds," Kiran chuckles as well. Sakura does has tendency to do that, does she? From facing to Nobles to bonding with pokemon, it wouldn't be surprising if she found a way to get them back home.

" That's true..." Kiran yawns, eyes getting heavy. They lean on Ingo's shoulder, slowly loosing consciousness to the dancing fire.

" Ah, I see it is time to depart," Ingo says softly.

" Follow the rules....safe driving....follow the schedules. Everyone smile," Kiran chuckles at that, " Check safety...everything's ready. Aim for a wonderful sleep..."

" All aboard...." Kiran murmurs, closing his eyes and falling asleep. Ingo dares not move.

" You are still so young," he whispers into the night, tugging his coat on Kiran, making sure it's secure. " I am so sorry you have to go though this,". He sighs, and looks up at the starry Hisui sky.

" We will get home. I promise,"

#r writes #pokemon oc #oc: kiran plum #submas ingo #kirans joining the trains uncle gang lol #pla

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lunanheartache · 6 months

Text

look. this is porn. non canonical porn, this does not happen. its also not finished bc i lost the thread (read: dont want to show my whole hog). judge me

expect: d/s dynamics, mentions of longterm orgasm denial / cock cages, nippleplay, lactation, silly med kink that's mostly just crossroads being annoying

it's fallow who suggests it.

as with all things, he is upfront and plain and direct. it's more of a question than a suggestion. no expectation behind it. crossroads could say no and it would be that simple: fallow would accept the boundary gracefully without pressuring him or threatening his job or their relationship.

he doesn't think it would even touch fallow's feelings.

the idea is a little far-fetched anyway. fallow didn't sound like he expected it to work. he had a vague sort of plan to try it, but not much in way of confidence. for a few weeks, crossroads could try the draught they commonly provide new mothers who struggle to produce and see what happens. it would probably do nothing. crossroads is not capable of pregnancy, nor does he have the sort of breasts required for milk. his chest is flat, albeit with a fresh softness to it since cahors, since regular, consistent food, but he hardly has tits. tits in pathetic name alone.

so he tried it.

without saying anything to fallow beyond needing a moment to think on it. fallow, as predicted, let it lie without a word: he hasn't mentioned it again, several weeks in.

when fallow brought it up, he rambled off concerns and thoughts and whatever else his steel trap of a mind spat out. he was not convinced it would work. young mothers try the draught at three times daily, though he would lean towards once daily just to see the effects. best case scenario, perhaps his nipple sensitivity would increase. he didn't think it would cause breast development of any significance. if it did work, it would likely be reversible within a few days of no stimulation, as with mothers who wean their young. any production would be minimal if it occurred, given a general lower end of milk ducts in males. he wouldn't have the same worries about leaking or timing then as nursing mothers. it would be simple to hide, and reversible, and it's just something fallow was thinking about admittedly for a short while that he may have gotten off to, but it is a lot to ask of crossroads and he holds no expectation that crossroads is willing or interested in that, and.

poor fallow was so flustered. crossroads grins at the memory.

the doctor means every ounce of his word, though. it's a strange feeling to trust him so deeply, but fallow proves himself repeatedly and without prompting. when crossroads asked for the key to the cage on his cock last month, fallow pressed it into his hand immediately. no complaint, no needling pressure to convince him out of it. the most he asked was if everything was alright, if something hurt or pinched, if they needed a different size. he accepted the key back just as graciously when crossroads gifted it afterwards, no backhanded, snide comments.

because that's.

it's still disorienting. fallow doesn't demand or expect his submission. crossroads is wholly within his power to upend the dynamic should he be so inclined, withdraw his submission entirely, and it would be nothing more than a discussion as to how he would be interested in play going forward.

fallow's control is- sweet. earnestly, honestly comforting, that stupidly heady feeling of /good/ that he chased for so long and kept getting wrong. by submitting, crossroads does not make himself /less/; he is still fallow's equal, as strange as it feels, and his voice carries just as much weight as fallow's. he will not lose his job if he declines. he will not lose his home, his standing, his safety, access to food, whatever good graces cahors has provided him if he says no. when fallow asks if he would be interested in attempting to induce lactation, he means it genuinely and accepts whatever answer crossroads gives.

it's still hard to believe. but crossroads knows it more than he believes, and that's good enough. surprising fallow with this will be fun. gifting him a new act of submission is exciting. he is looking forward to being fucked into oblivion if all goes well.

when he joins fallow in his office after clinic, it's like always. fallow offers a brief acknowledgement but remains focused on his notes. crossroads sits in the chair at the front of his desk patiently, examining his nails. with winter still lingering at the edges of the day, his fur hasn't made the full shift yet. he's shedding more and more, embarrassingly so, but perhaps more annoying is the dry skin revealed underneath.

all those fur oils and his skin is still dry. bastard. this winter was colder than previous. he won't fuck fallow with flaky skin; leaning down to his bag by his feet, he rummages through the miracled interior and chirps happily when his nails clink against familiar glass. he places a few droplets of a shiny gold-tinged in the palm of his hand, abandons the bottle back in the bag, and rubs his hands together. it smells lightly floral like jasmine, specially made. he watches fallow's dark eyes dart to him and linger before they return to work.

cute.

crossroads leans back in the chair, hands folded neatly across his stomach. his loose shirt looks habitual, worn to allow shedding and more air flow given the still-thick coat, but he dragged a vigorous comb through his body fur to get the worst out already. it's been three weeks of sneaking milk draught, and the loose fabric helps immensely; his nipples are swollen and puffy, and every movement of cloth across them chafes or goes right to his head.

neither is good during work.

fallow, somehow, hasn't seemed to notice. he's said nothing so far. there's something sort of hot about that though, crossroads thinks. what is there to notice? of course he's sensitive and needy. he loves his tits played with. he probably just played with them too much and that's why they're so flushed. maybe he was trying to see if he could cum like that again.

god, that's the other thing. he can't cum. he can't normally, chastity cage comfortable and weighty on his cock, but he's not even getting hard in the metal. using his ass feels stupidly good, always does, but he hasn't been able to cum like that in-

two weeks? maybe. he can't quite remember.

all the stimulation in the world and he can't wrench an orgasm from himself. it's different than the cage. the cage is almost more symbolic. he likes presence behind it, the reminder of it. he gets more than enough pleasure from fallow without his cock, whether he gets fucked or fisted or otherwise.

but now it's like he can't get enough. his cock isn't part of the equation, rarely is, and that's good. but fuck, even grinding his ass on his thickest dildo, the wooden one with those glorious fucking bumps massaging his prostate, just brings him vaguely close to an edge and refuses to step him any closer.

it's- hot. desperately hot. god, if the draught makes him this sensitive and dulls - or removes - his ability to cum-

crossroads bites his lip. okay. "doctor, i- hate to interrupt but i.. might need your help," he says.

"can i finish this note?" fallow asks distractedly, pen scratching away. he doesn't acknowledge the teasing title. he might not have noticed.

"i've been taking the draught," says crossroads.

the pen stops immediately. deeply satisfying. fallow doesn't look up from his desk but his ears go dark. "crossroads," he says.

"three weeks, once a day as suggested. i drink it before bed then i massage my tits for an hour until i fall asleep."

fallow closes his eyes, sits back in his chair. he takes a deep breath, keeping his eyes shut. "that's- i thought you looked different."

crossroads grins inwardly. an excited shiver ridges down his spine. fallow's reactions are always fun. breaking his composure can be a challenge, making it all the more thrilling when it works.

crossroads leans forward eagerly, puts on a shy, needy voice, "i might need an exam, doctor. my chest- ah, it's- embarrassing. i don't know what's going on. i'm so sensitive, it's driving me crazy."

"take your shirt off. show me."

with a whine, crossroads obeys. drags the fabric up and over his head, throws it off mindlessly to the side.

he knows what he looks like. fallow opens his eyes and there's an immediate self-conscious want transparent across his face. he's so cute. his gaze sticks to crossroads's chest. helpfully, crossroads cups the faint swell there in his palms, nipples flushed dark against his pale skin. they're puffy, several times more prominent than before and peaked excitedly. they feel more swollen than even the day before. just squeezing his chest is enough to make him squirm. it almost hurts this time, an unfamiliar soreness.

"fuck," fallow breathes.

"please, sir," crossroads says, "can you help? it's tender. what- what can i do?"

"let- let me take a look," he says, winded.

fallow pushes back in his chair and stands, rounds the desk. his arousal is obvious at the front of his doctor's cloth, but he pays it no mind. blindly, he pulls the chair next to crossroads to his front and sits. his fingers tremble slightly when he raises them.

his eyes flick up to crossroads's face. "may i?" he asks.

"please," crossroads whines, lowering his hands. he leans forward, arching his back to push his chest out. "be gentle though. i'm sensitive..."

"fuck. of course. i'll be- tell me if it's too much."

crossroads loses his breath in a shiver when fallow touches him; his hands are cool, fingers calloused and beautifully rough. he starts tentatively. there's a funny sort of curiosity to him; crossroads imagines the cogs whirring in his head, trying to piece together a small dozen bits of biological knowledge into a functioning theory despite the temptation. he nudges crossroads's hands off, flattens his own palms into a c under the curve of his tits. he presses just a little, squeezing. muttering an apology when crossroads winces, fallow shifts his hands up an inch and tries again. he squeezes more gently this time, kneading almost.

crossroads lets his eyes close. as much as he wants to watch, there's something about focusing on the feeling. letting his body narrow down to fallow's hands on his tits and the dull throb in his caged cock. it's an odd relief. arousal warms in his cheeks, but he feels calm, unhurried. a new way to prove his submission, and fallow likes it transparently. he offers needy little noises that feel almost like a show but they aren't, want plain and honest.

fallow's hands massage his chest and it's sore, distinctly, a fuzzy ache that has a furrow settled between his eyebrows, but. it's not exactly bad. like warm pins and needles, an awareness of his body that isn't normally there. crossroads gasps, the breath almost knocked out of him when fallow rolls his nipples, pinches and tugs and teases.

"doctor, please," crossroads whimpers, grabbing fallow's wrists like he means to pull him away, "is- is the exam almost done?"

"not quite. just relax for me. any tenderness when i do this?"

"this feels- hah, inappropriate-"

"you're doing beautifully, don't worry. this is all part of the exam."

biting his lip, crossroads squirms. he can feel his cock drooling against the inside of his thighs. god, if fallow could make him cum just from his tits, edge him stupid by playing with his nipples while his useless little cock dribbles a puddle between his legs. he moans when a warm tongue sweeps over one nipple, a quick thing; yelps when fallow blows on it, cooling the spit on it until it stiffens.

"doctor, i don't-"

"don't worry. i know it's uncomfortable, but i promise it's necessary. have you tried sucking them?"

"um, what does that-"

fallow cuts him off with a rough thumb over his nipples, hands returning to cup and knead the small swell of his chest. "your nipples are just a little swollen and puffier than i'd expect. i don't know how you hid them under your clothes. they're obscene," he says.

crossroads pretends to balk, leaning into fallow's attentions. "doctor-!"

fallow tightens his fingers around his tits again. suddenly, the weight of his hands vanishes with a sharp inhale.

with a whine, crossroads drags his eyes open. he blinks to refocus. "why'd you stop?"

"crossroads," fallow says, winded, "you're, uh. you're leaking."

what.

looking down at his chest, crossroads stares. white slowly beads at his nipples, swelling before it drip down to his lap. after another heartbeat, it starts again, a little droplet forming over several seconds before it's too weighty and spills off.

oh, fuck.

he can't move. his eyes stay fixed. his hands stay at his sides, twitchy with nerves. his ears feel abruptly hot, embarrassment flooding his face until fallow reaches back out and he has to watch as he rolls one of his nipples between his thumb and forefinger, coaxing a small milky dribble down the side of his hand. fallow exhales shakily.

"i didn't- think it would take," he says.

"fallow," crossroads says desperately, unthinking. he can't look away from his chest; fallow teases his nipple as more milk flows, brings his other hand to its twin to pinch it out. "please."

"is this the first time?"

"i... i don't know," crossroads says. "i- before, i. there was something but i thought- it was just sweat. this. oh, oh, fuck. you're- fuck."

"how do you feel?"

fallows asks this like he can answer. like his mouth works while fallow keeps up his attentions, rough fingers trying to be gentle as he rubs milk from him. it isn't much. but it's something. fallow is milking his tits and there's actually thin rivulets of milk down the sides of his palms and his cock is just soft in its cage and lot above, crossroads's tongue sits useless behind his teeth. his face feels too hot. his ears stay flattened against the sides of his head, embarrassment hiding them away. he can't look at fallow. he can hardly find his voice.

dazed, crossroads giggles. his tail curls self-consciously around his legs and the chair's. it takes a moment to bring the words up. "you're- you're milking me. i can't cum and you're- you're actually- can you- fuck."

"can i what?" asks fallow. his fingers still but don't leave.

"don't stop," crossroads says, whining. "can you- fuck, can i have your cock? i'm so empty. i'll just keep it warm while you milk my tits. please?"

#oc posting: fallowroads #calen writes #nsft fic #i also got distracted thinking abt this bc i was getting caught up in the science #potion of increase ur prolactin

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softersinned-arc · 2 years

Text

december 1547.

She burns. She has been here nearly a year, she thinks—since shortly before the first thaw, if memory serves—and she has wondered more than once what dying would feel like. Her body is failing her, a fragile thing brought past its last desperate efforts, and she is only vaguely aware of anything beyond the sensation of that failure, but she hears their voices echoing around her and she catches a few words, utterly divorced from any context.

“—use her still—”

“—act quickly—”

“—won’t be allowed—”

“—think this is easy?”

She hears another voice, less familiar than the two shouting back and forth: “Save her, please—!” Half pleading, half prayer. Astoria’s eyes flutter open for only a moment and then she feels herself being shoved onto her back, and if she had the strength for it she would let out a wordless noise of pain. Her head is spinning, vision clouded with pulsing waves of black, and she can feel the wound in her throat bleeding still.

There’s something in front of her, mere inches away, something that smells divine. Part of her wants to refuse it, to let the saints and martyrs carry her heavenward or cast her into Hell. (Even the inferno can’t hurt this much.) There are a thousand reasons not to do this. She is in agony, and if she lets herself die then she won’t hurt anymore. She won’t become a monster, a parasite. She won’t damn herself, marking what little is left of her soul as undeserving of salvation every time she kills to survive. Most of all, it is rebellion: she is only useful to them alive. Dead, she wins.

But Astoria lets her lips part, and when she’s too weak to grab for the wrist dripping blood into her mouth, it lowers until she can drink. Once she has the strength, she lifts her hands to grasp her maker’s arm and she devours, without question, without guilt, an animal driven by instincts beyond her understanding.

Death is not a rebellion. She does not win by ceasing to exist. She wins when she endures. She wins when she survives.

She shudders and howls when Elyssa withdraws her wrist, and when Evander murmurs low under his breath to strengthen the chains holding her, and when the dark-haired girl who begged for her life lets out a quiet gracias a Dios and begins to recite a prayer until Elyssa, irritated by the noise, stalks closer to her and backhands her across the face.

They leave her like that, writhing in her chains to face her first sunrise. They find her two days later, half-mad from hunger and shaking, her body curled in on itself and one arm over her head, still in her chains, the other hanging at a sickening angle. They don’t want to know that she wept and screamed and prayed, that the light of the sun left her overwhelmed even in the earliest hours of morning, that she rebelled against her chains until she had torn her arm from its socket and couldn’t get it back, that she felt as though she might starve until she caught a rat scurrying across the floor, just a bit too close, and tore it open with her teeth.

Evander sets her dislocated shoulder while Elyssa holds a girl, not much older than Astoria had been when she first arrived in England, in place, the open wound in her neck bleeding. She descends on the girl thoughtlessly, ravenously, and drains her dry, and she pulls at her chains until she’s broken her own wrist while they watch her. It, like her shoulder, heals quickly, too quickly, and she cannot understand why it distresses her as it does.

That night she covers her ears with her hands and she lets out a low, keening cry to try and drown out the sounds of the church bells ringing to celebrate Christ’s birth. The dark-haired girl waits until she’s lowered her hands, face streaked with red from her tears, and she holds out her own hand until Astoria looks over at her.

“Maristela,” she says softly. “My name is Maristela. We’re sisters, now.”

Astoria stares at her for a moment, and the last shreds of her rationality wonder why this girl—beautiful despite the blood and grime that cover her like a shroud, and good, too good—would want to count such a wretched wailing thing as a sister. Slowly, she reaches out her own hand, and they both strain at their chains until their fingertips brush. Maristela beams the moment they make contact.

“Tell me your name,” she urges, and after several long, silent moments, Astoria manages it, though her voice sounds hoarse and each syllable is pain. Her smile widens at that, and she nods, lowering her hand. “It was agony for me, too. What is it that hurts the most? Your body, or your mind?”

With her hunger sated, it’s an obvious choice. “The noise,” she whispers. “The noise.”

And with that the girl—Maristela, who will tell Astoria later that she’s only been a wearh for a few months now, who will tell Astoria that she was turned under cover of night while she begged for mercy and invoked every saint she could remember and Elyssa Vetri ignored her pleas—begins to pray, her Latin sure, her voice low and musical. Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum.

Astoria closes her eyes and tries to slow her breaths, the already-sluggish beat of her heart. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. She listens to Maristela’s voice, counts the seconds between each of her heartbeats. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. She thinks of her sister and nothing else, the noise of the animals outside the monastery and the drip of water from melting snow near a broken window forgotten in favor of her voice. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen.

“God abandoned us,” Astoria rasps when she’s finished, and Maristela lets out a quiet, sympathetic hum before she begins her prayer again.

There’s no sleep to be found but Maristela stays awake with her all night, sings her hymns, recites the psalms, gives her an anchor, the only anchor she’ll know.

october 1669.

“When we can leave France, I want to find it.” Astoria’s fingers trace idly along the lines of his palm before she cups her hand beneath his. She bows her head, red curls drying unevenly after her bath, pale shoulders bare, and she presses a kiss to his palm. Her lips linger for a moment and when she meets his eyes again, her own are suspiciously wet.

She doesn’t speak of this. Not with anyone else, at least—she only ever tells him.

“Do you remember where it was?” His voice is as soft as her own, as if he doesn’t want to startle her, and not for the first time Astoria is filled with an impossible warmth to recognize all the little ways he lets his affection for her show: how he matches her tone, her volume, when she’s frightened to try and soothe her. How he catches her chin in his hand almost as soon as she’s lifted her lips from his palm, and strokes a thumb across her lips as if to remind her that now, she isn’t alone.

Astoria shakes her head and Baldwin only nods. She thinks if she asked him, he’d raze the entirety of England to the ground. “Leo will remember, no doubt.” She frowns after a beat, then adds, voice tinged with some embarrassment, “I got out into the village the winter before I was saved. I must have killed twenty people before they got to me. There can’t have been that many monsters leaving that kind of devastation in their wake in a single night, that same winter. I don’t know if it’ll be enough, but—”

She shrugs, a little helpless, certainly ashamed, and Baldwin surges forward to press his lips to hers. She thinks of the lives ended at his hands, those same hands gathering her closer to him, one splayed out against the small of her back and the other slipping into her hair. She thinks of the violence he has, in over a thousand years, meted out like divine justice. He is a killer, no doubt closer to a monster than most of the other wearh they know, a warrior above all else, and when he settles those hands against her skin she thinks she’s never been safer in her life.

may 1649.

"Do you remember who I am?”

“Yes.” He looks different. Taller. Wider. His hair is longer. His beard is cleaner. But she knows those eyes. She knows those hands.

“Do you know why I’m here?” she asks, gently, and Evander nods.

“I told her you’d survive.”

Astoria lets out a quiet laugh, and she raises an eyebrow. “Please don’t beg,” she says, rather sincerely. “I would like to remember you with some dignity.”

They always understood one another better than his sister might have imagined. In those early days he tipped her chin up tenderly and he wiped the tears from her cheeks and he said you’re lucky, you know. You’re lucky that someone loves you enough to teach you how to survive. He fed her when Elyssa wouldn’t, in those early days of her transformation, and on the days she was too weak to fight he’d wash her the best he could, show her what semblance of humanity he could still afford to show. She learned later that he had urged Elyssa to save her. There are moments she almost forgives him—as much his sister’s victim as she had been, commanded to become a weapon in her service. Some piece of her, in those days, was grateful for the promise that she was loved because she knew he believed it to be true.

Other days all she can remember is the withered husk of Maristela’s body, drained entirely of blood as a part of another of the siblings’ experiments on the limitations of a wearh’s power. Other days she all she can remember is her sister’s body and Evander’s knife sliding across her throat before he sat back to observe, taking note of the time it took her to heal and the blood lost before then. He opened the cut twice that day, once just before he hung her by her ankles to see if she could still survive it if she was bled like meat.

He offers up a sad smile. “I won’t beg,” he promises. “You never did.”

Perhaps in another world she could have loved him—her cousin, her godfather, her guardian. Perhaps in another world he stayed his hand.

In this world she crouches beside him as he hangs from his ankles, nearly an hour later, and she presses a kiss to his forehead before she promises him that he’s lucky, really. Lucky that someone loves him enough to kill him.

She thinks he might be proud of her in the moments before he dies. His worst failure and greatest achievement at once: a student who surpassed him, stroking his hair back while he’s bled dry.

june 1548.

They repeat their experiment for a third time: how long will it take for a vampire to bleed out?

By some miracle she survives it. Twice. It’s enough to make her wonder if perhaps God hasn’t abandoned her, if perhaps He is punishing her now on earth.

This seems more likely, she thinks, when she looks to where her sister should be and sees nothing. Even so, she’ll take it, if it means she sees tomorrow.

april 1548.

They bury Maristela in a shallow grave in the gardens on the other side of the monastery. Astoria still swears she can hear the insects and beasts that feed on what’s left of her sister.

november 1556.

“Leave her,” Elyssa insists, but Evander is less sure.

“We need to kill her.” He’s adamant on that point, and Astoria—barely conscious though she is—is present enough to be at once offended and flattered by it. “The enchantment on the chains will fade faster now that I’m—” His voice falters, and he gestures towards himself. Dead. Wearh. He flounders for a moment before settling on “—different.”

“She won’t survive that long. She’s half-starved and she’s weak. And if she does live, she will be so hungry that the second she breaks the chains she’ll kill what’s left of that village, and the Congregation will send someone to put her down. Matthew Roydon is in London. You think he won’t do it?”

Astoria says nothing. Even if she had the strength to speak, she doubts she’d know what to say—what is there to say, after that? After Elyssa had sliced her open like she wanted to take stock of her organs, and left her to seize in a pool of her own blood and watch as they gathered the last of anything that could be used to identify them.

“She’ll live.” Evander’s voice is dark and angry, and he casts her a suspicious glare. “And then she’ll come for us.”

And here Elyssa laughs, and she reaches up to tip her brother’s chin down until he’s met her eyes. “Then we kill her then. What help will she have? Wearh are powerful only in a pack. They gain strength from their families. Where is hers? The witches will kill her if the Congregation does not. She’s an abomination in their eyes.”

She prays and she hears no answer.

If God hasn’t abandoned her, then He is crueler than she imagined—no loving Father would allow her to decay like this, surviving off the rats foolish enough to scurry within her reach and waiting for the day she no longer has the strength for even that. What little strength she has, she spends on screaming—at God, at herself, at everyone, at anyone. In the endless hours that stretch between her meager meals she counts her sins. Wrath, envy, greed, lust, pride, gluttony. Sloth, if only out of necessity. Nothing has ever been enough for her and now she’ll waste until she simply ceases to exist, erased from time and space so that it’s like she was never there. Her sins are countless; she always finds one or two more each time she returns to the question.

Soon even the rats learn to avoid the monastery. She howls and wails and screams but no one comes, and she imagines that they must think it haunted, after what she did last winter. It is haunted, she supposes; she’s as good as a dead thing.

Soon she forgets even the sound of her sister’s voice.

When her savior finds her, nearly two months later and too weak to break the chains that hold her even though the enchantment has long since faded, she is more animal than woman and he says the same thing her tormentor had: that without a family she is powerless. That alone, she will not last much longer.

She cannot think of him as family, but for now, he’ll have to do.

march 1763.

“My love,” she says, and the anger in her voice melts at the sight of him; he is unmoved by the macabre setting (an empty operating theater is, somehow, more disturbing than one filled to capacity) or the brutality to which he will bear witness. “My—mother—was fond of experiments. I feel the most incredible need to respect her inquisitive nature. And you have taught me everything all these years—perhaps you can be my student for now. Would you mind terribly?”

Crucified to the operating table, thick iron nails holding her in place, Elyssa stares up at her in utter loathing, but it’s the hint of panic, the promise of real fear in her eyes that has Astoria half-desperate to see it through, eager to chase the euphoria of knowing that she is, for the first time in two hundred years, safe.

“I would be honored,” Baldwin says, and Astoria’s heart swells with love for him. Not many men would watch her do what she’s about to do and love her more for it when it’s over. “Shall I take part or simply observe?”

Astoria picks up one of the surgical instruments—some kind of blade—and she considers it for a moment. “Observation, I think, at least to begin. The subject of today’s lesson is how to kill a wearh. Shall we begin?”

He is an apt pupil.

june 2019.

They’ve slipped past the guests, past Matthew and Diana and even Ysabeau and Marthe, all of them too caught up in the sheer joy of their family surviving so long to notice a couple of errant attendees making off with a couple of glasses and an unopened bottle of wine.

As his gift to her, in honor of her marriage to his son, Philippe promised her secrets, and he delivered: a passageway here, a hidden staircase there, the panel in the wine cellar where he stored his favorite vintages so he wouldn’t have to share with anyone else, and in the case of Les Revenants, the information that the easternmost tower was just barely taller than the others, and had the best view of the moat at night when the stars and the moon reflected off its placid surface. It had been one of their precious few ties together—whenever she found herself somewhere new, in yet another of the de Clermonts’ infinite residences, he would slip an arm through hers and take her aside to give her a wonderfully abridged and otherwise useless tour, always swearing her to secrecy with everyone but Baldwin.

He sits behind her, his back to the stone and her back against his chest, and they listen to the distant sound of laughter. Astoria is playing a private game tonight—every time she is overcome with anger or disgust at the family she refills her glass—and she’s not sure if she’s winning or losing, if the reprieve is so welcome. Unbidden, she reaches back to card her fingers through Baldwin’s hair, and he responds by tightening the arm around her waist.

“I think we should congratulate Diana after this,” she hums, and she can imagine Baldwin raising his eyebrow at that, even though she’s not sitting in a position that allows her to see him. “After nearly two years of nonstop disruption, she’s finally getting our family together for a relatively normal time.”

He lets out a snort of laughter, careful as he reaches around her to take another drink from his glass. The bottle they’d sneaked out is nearly empty, and they should be getting back, even if only for appearances, but neither one moves to stand, even if they both know they should.

“I wouldn’t call things normal,” he says gruffly, but when she does maneuver just enough to sneak a look at him, there’s a smile playing at his lips. “A witch with our seat will take some getting used to.”

“Is she still making you call her Dr. Bishop whenever you email back?”

His only answer is to groan, and Astoria laughs at that, and she laughs louder when Baldwin squeezes her around the middle in feigned disapproval. “I have a greater appreciation for your—interactions—with Ysabeau, at the very least.”

“Passive aggression is hard work, my love. You have your battlefield; I have mine.” He lets out another huff of laughter, and Astoria settles back against him, satisfied. “Never a dull moment, eh?”

“Do the benefits of marrying into the family still outweigh the costs?” he teases, and Astoria turns around in his arms to face him, bright-eyed and warm.

She curls one hand against the side of his neck, brushes her thumb back and forth against his jaw. “There have been some—obvious benefits. Marrying you. The life we’ve built. The dogs. Our children, even the ones that annoy me.” She hesitates, then, and she leans just a bit closer, lips curling into a wicked smile. “And there’s a comfort in knowing that whatever else, no one could accuse me of having daddy issues when the rest of our family is right there.”

He rewards her with a laugh, near as loud as her own this time, and beautifully real, and she thinks she’s never loved him more.

#i. all you have is your fire and the place you need to reach. ( character development )#tw: abuse #tw: violence #tw: graphic violence #tw: murder #tw: suicidal ideation #(there will be pure softness tomorrow but tonight there's. death.)

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morgana-ren · 2 years

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how do you think shigaraki would react to his s/o asking him to “be mean to them” while theyre. fucking

this is so vague but i hope youre picking up what im putting down

Trick question! Shigaraki is always mean in the bedroom!

Ask him to be meaner, and you'll get backhanded. What? You asked and he delivered. Too much? Not enough? Not enough. He'll do it harder next time.

He's a bit of a sadist. He likes to watch you squirm and beg and cry, mewling and wiggling beneath him like the weak little thing you are. He can do anything he wants to you and you'd be powerless to stop him, so why even try? Just lie there and take it like a good girl and let him do whatever he wants to.

He can't help it-- Well, maybe he can. It's just that you look so cute a little roughed up. Blossoming bruises and a bit of blood welling on the swell of your lower lip. Teary eyes and swollen lids as he calls you his crybaby slut. Praising you for taking his cock so, so well with your jaw clenched in his fingers, forcefully puckering your face into a little pout before prying your lips open to spit between them.

It's adorable. Practically sends him feral. It's your own fault for tempting him. He can't help himself.

Don't think he misses the way you clench around him when he calls you his filthy little whore. You like this. He knows you do. You cum hardest when he degrades you and uses you like a toy. Your holes were made for him to use, and he'll do so however he likes. He knows and you know it. He can feel it in the way you mewl for him, swallowing his open mouthed pants and groans, begging him for more.

Does anyone else in the building like it? Like hearing the rhythmically banging headboard against the hollow walls and the breathless grunting and moaning that can be heard all the way down the hallway? No. No they do not. The sounds of slapping and crying and hissing insults is more than a little disconcerting.

Still, Tomura could give a fuck less what they like. It's you (and himself) he aims to please. And he's fairly certain he's accomplished that by the way you scream his name and cuddle up close when he's finished cumming inside of you for the umpteenth time, smothering him in affection.

#Morgana and friends #Shigaraki x Reader #not very nice stuff #Still need a tag here

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jean-kayak · 3 years

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Saw some cute couple tiktoks and it gave me an idea for a fluffy request!

Just some hc’s of lwaizumi, Ushijima, Suna, and Hinata not understanding the stereotypes of black women when their gf is anything but that. She’s gentle and nurturing with them, can be firm but does so because she cares, calls them sweet nicknames with a smile on her face, makes banging bentos and dinner, and when she’s not wearing any makeup or accessories; her natural beauty just flexes on them with the sun shining on her melanin.

I just want these boys to simp and be like “Aggressive? Loud? Ratchet? *looks around* Where?” But if someone says sumn racist or calls their queen ugly, shit will be on sight.

A/N: Here you go, anon! Hope you like it! (i lowkey made these really long)

💪To say this man is enamored by you would be a massive understatement

💪You have him so far gone, and he wouldn't have it any other way

💪One of his favorite things about being with you is waking up next to you in the morning

💪The sun hits your skin just right, and he swears up and down you're glowing

💪Of course, no one believes him so he takes a picture to prove that you look ethereal, bonnet and all, and you feel your face heat in embarrassment when you find out he's been showing that picture to his friends

💪Since he has to wake up so early in the mornings, he's very careful when he gets out of bed making sure to not wake you

💪But before he gets out of the door, you're always right there, handing him his lunch before cupping his face in your hands, planting soft kisses on his forehead, nose, and lips

💪And if he could fall in love any harder, he definitely does every time you do it

💪He was working with the team at the gym, and he was getting dressed after showering, wanting to fall right into bed with you when he got home

💪He's smiling like a dork at his phone, reading over a text that you sent him, when someone gets his attention

💪It's someone he's become acquainted with, asking him who the person is making him look at his phone the way he is

💪He proudly shows him a picture of you (thankfully nothing embarrassing), and the guy's reaction confuses him

💪"I bet she's annoying, yeah?" he jokes, and Iwaizumi just squints at him, an irritated look on his face

💪The guy laughs his first comment off before making another one. "Like super loud? You know what I mean?"

💪Iwaizumi scoffs darkly as he shakes his head. "Nah, I don't know what you mean, but you don't want me to find out."

💪The guy's playful demeanor drops fear slightly appearing on his face at his tone

💪"Say something like that again, and I'll break you in half." He puts a light tone on his words even though he's dead serious

💪"Have a nice night," he adds, giving him a hard smack on his shoulder before walking out of the gym a lot angrier than he wants to be

💪But he can't help but think about what the guy said, and he hopes that no one's said anything like that to you

💪He finds you with your back against the headboard, scrolling through your phone, the TV playing

💪He drops his bag, instantly flopping down on top of you, and you chuckle softly as you run your fingers through his hair, your nails lightly scratching at his scalp

💪He's so tired that the feeling has him falling asleep instantly, and you ask him how his day was, and he tenses when he remembers the last conversation he had

💪You notice and stop moving your fingers, and rub your hands over his shoulders instead. "You okay, Hajime?" you ask concerned

💪He looks up at you, a look in his eye you can't read. "If anyone says any disrespectful shit to you, let me know, okay?"

💪You at him in confusion but nod your head anyway, and you know he'll tell you when he's not seconds from sleep, and he gives you a warm smile before pressing a soft kiss on your stomach before he finally conks out

🌾You were probably one of the first people to ever make him smile widely

🌾The first time his team sees it, they're more than shocked, and they constantly tease him about the fact that there's someone that could make him smile that big

🌾He loves coming home to you after practice or games, the house filled with the smell of his favorite food

🌾Sometimes he won't even eat, would rather spend his time in your arms until you make him eat

🌾He's always finding himself at a war with himself, the appeal of going out for a morning run sounding awful compared to staying in and laying with you

🌾He would probably do anything you say, whether that's easing up at practice or making sure he's following a new diet that he's been put on which means that, no, he can't have dessert tonight

🌾He comes home one day, crashing in the bed, and you instantly notice that his shoulders are tenser than usual

🌾Your soft is voice but firm as you scold him telling him, "You shouldn't push yourself so hard, baby"

🌾And that's all it takes for all of the tension to drain out of him along with your fingers playing with the hair at the nape of his neck

🌾For a while, you remained a mystery to the team, only Tendou knowing who you were

🌾And it was all because they just outright ask to see what you looked like, so he claims that it just never came up lmfao

🌾So, everyone is surprised when you walk in, and when they see his face light up, like, instantly

🌾They've never seen him move so fast off the court before, all of them floored

🌾He gives you a kiss on your forehead before promising you that he'll be home early and that he won't overwork himself, and then you're out of the gym

🌾He walls back to the team with a light blush on his face, his lips still upturned in a smile as he reads the note you left on his bento

🌾But as soon as he gets to the team, that same stoic expression is back on his face. "What is everyone standing around for?" 💀

🌾He's one of the first people out of the shower after practice, eager to get home, and he's slipping on his shirt when one of his teammates walks up to him

🌾He's slowly working his way up on actually getting playing time, but he just wants to get home, but tunes into the conversation anyway

🌾He asks him if the woman that walked in during practice was his girlfriend, and he gives him a dumb look at his nods his head once

🌾The guy chuckles lightly before saying, "I bet they're all the same, right?"

🌾Ushijima raises an eyebrow at him. "Excuse me?"

🌾The guy scoffs softly, and as he's about to respond, he slams his locker a little more aggressively than usual, making the guy jump

🌾"You should refrain from saying anything disrespectful about my girlfriend and instead work on your shitty receives," he deadpans, his voice hard before he walks out

🌾He didn't want to even begin to answer the conversation, hating how it sounded like the guy was putting you into a certain group

🌾His shoulders are tense when he comes home for a different reason when you hug him, and he's looking at you, but not saying anything

🌾"What're you thinking about?" you comment, lightly pressing on the wrinkles on his forehead. "What's wrong?"

🌾"If anyone says anything awful to you, you tell me immediately," he says quickly, his voice so serious that it makes your eyes widen

🌾"Okay?" he urges, cupping your face softly

🌾"Yeah, of course," you say, nodding quickly, and he smiles before giving your forehead a soft kiss

🦊There's literally nothing that this man doesn't love about you

🦊Like Iwaizumi, swears up and down that you're glowing when the sun hits your skin the morning

🦊If you're sitting anywhere in the house where the sun hits your skin through the blinds, he'll just stare at you until you finally call him out on it

🦊Has whole albums on his phone of just you, and you and him, it literally takes up a huge portion of his phone storage

🦊He's your biggest hype man, will literally have many photoshoots with you

🦊If y'all are driving around and the sun hits you just right, he's pulling over so that you he can take pictures

🦊This man also becomes a huge cuddle when you start dating, or more like he always wants to be wrapped in your arms or on top of you in some way, shape, or form

🦊This is mostly because your touches are so soft, that it puts him to sleep instantly

🦊It could be your fingers running through his hair, your hands rubbing up and down his back, or when you massage his shoulders after a game

🦊His soft snores fill the room like five minutes after you start

🦊He is very aware of the stuff that you have to deal with, microaggressions and all, and he's quick to shut it down

🦊Matter of fact, it's probably one of his favorites things to do

🦊He likes watching the people who make the backhanded compliments lose all of their bravado lmfao

🦊There was one time where he was hanging out with Atsumu, catching up with him, and he ran into someone that he vaguely remembered from high school

🦊Somehow you came up in the conversation, and Suna was more than proud to show him a picture of you because you're like smoking hot and he loves showing you off lmfao

🦊But he already knows where the conversation is going when he sees the guy's reaction

🦊"Isn't she like--" His comment is cut off when Suna squints at him, Atsumu hiding his chuckle being his hand

🦊"Isn't she like what? Hm?" he hums. "What stupid shit are you about to say?"

🦊The guy tries to backtrack, but Suna cuts him off. "Oh, no, please say whatever you were about to say, I'm all ears," he drawls, his eyebrows raised, having way too much fun

🦊The guy's babbling now, stuttering over his words, and Suna claps a hand down on his shoulder. "Pull that shit again and I'll kill you, yeah?"

🦊He gives him a wink before squeezing his shoulder hard. "Nice talking to you," he jokes before he walks away

🦊And best believe that he will fight anyone that thinks that shit is okay

🍊He's constantly floored by you

🍊When his eyes first landed on you, the world disappeared around him, and it still does every time his eyes land on you

🍊Stares at you a ton until he just tackles you in a hug or kisses

🍊This happens a lot lmao, and you've just learned to let it happen

🍊You're always there making sure he's taking care of himself like making sure he's drinking enough water when he's out in the sun for a long time

🍊He literally eats everything that you cook, and this man eats a lot

🍊He always asks you to come with him whenever he's playing volleyball out in the sand

🍊He tells you it's because he just wants you to be there to watch him, but he's mostly watching you and how your skin glows under the sunlight

🍊He comes up with cute, corny captions whenever he posts pictures of you

🍊Like, "my sunshine under the sunlight," corny stuff like that 💀

🍊His energy seems to be even higher whenever he's with you, and sometimes you have to put your hands on his shoulders to stop him from bouncing

🍊He always asks you to put sunscreen on his face because he likes how softly you apply it, and you always kiss his forehead before you put it on, and it makes him swoon

🍊His friends tease him about how his attention span on actually playing volleyball drops whenever he brings you with him

🍊And he's like "can you blame me???"

🍊Like, all you could be doing is laying there while you're reading or on your phone and he'll stop in the middle of the game or during a break and kiss you before going back to playing

🍊And let someone say something disrespectful about you, and his happy demeanor literally disappears

🍊Some guy that joined their game one day when they were down a player made some comment like "is that your girlfriend? Really?"

🍊And the pride he was beaming about being your boyfriend changes

🍊The smile falls off of his face, and he's stepping closer to the guy, his face goes hard

🍊And he lowers his voice so that his words are out of your earshot

🍊He gives him a dark chuckle. "Say it again, I dare you."

🍊The guy's eyes widen at his tone, and then that signature smile is back on his face. "Watch what you say next time, or I won't hesitate to find you."

🍊The guy is taken aback, and Hinata just walks away, making his way towards you

🍊You haven't seen him yet, and he's laying down on top of you, and you protest about him being sweaty and covered in sand

🍊"You know I love you, right?" You bristle in surprise, a small smile on your face before you nod

🍊"You're amazing in literally every way, and don't listen to anyone that says anything different."

🍊You're confused at the sudden declaration as you reply with, "Thank you, Sho. And I love you, too."

🍊And then he's smiling widely at you, brighter than the sun before he's pecking you on the lips before getting off of you and running back towards the court

#iwaizumi hajime headcanons #hajime iwaizumi headcanons #ushijima wakatoshi headcanons #wakatoshi ushijima headcanons #suna rintarou headcanons #rintarou suna headcanons #hinata shoyo headcanons #shoyo hinata headcanons #iwaizumi hajime x black!reader #ushijima wakatoshi x black!reader #suna rintarou x black!reader #hinata shoyo x black!reader #haikyuu headcanons #haikyuu!! headcanons #hq headcanons #hq!! headcanons

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itsallanimeandgames · 3 years

Text

Suppression (1)

Alpha Hanamiya Makoto x Omega Y/N

Omegaverse | Angst | Drama | Romance

Warnings: Language, Violence, Mature/Suggestive Content

Hanamiya Makoto discovers you aren’t an alpha.

Mentally you had prepared yourself for the looks and rumors. You practiced responses to all the backhanded compliments and questions that were sure to come. The society you lived in was all about status.

Kirisaki Daiichi is a school with high promotion percentage. It's known to be popular among children from rich families and those with a higher social standing. The only flaw was that it accepted all genders. It fell behind the elite all-alpha high schools that catered to that cream of the crop of the twenty percent alpha population.

That’s the kind of school you were expected to attend.

The fact that you, an alpha from an affluent all-alpha family, had entered Kirisaki Daiichi instead of an all alpha school like your brother left many wondering what was wrong with you. They never suspected the truth but made theories of their own.

The most popular of them all was that you were somehow lacking intellectually. Those who had only heard of you but never seen you thought perhaps your looks were to blame. Be it looks or intellect, they all came to the conclusion that you were unloved or unwanted by your family because of your flaws.

In a way they were correct. They may have never outright verbally expressed it but it was clear enough in their actions and roundabout remarks. You were their greatest failure. Compared to their first born who excelled beyond their expectations you were best forgotten.

It wasn’t always like that.

Up until middle school you had experienced that one percent. There was nothing you couldn't do thanks to your influential family.

It was something your younger self took for granted.

Your father was a renowned author of medical journals who had retired from practicing medicine and your mother a former national tennis champion. Their firstborn, your brother, profited from his inherited good looks and became one of the highest-paid models in the world, recently he even began entertaining offers to transition into acting.

It was a family of strong alpha lineage.

Breeding between alphas is incredibly difficult. Having two children was seen as nothing short of a miracle and so you were extremely doted on by your family as a child.

All that changed in an instant...

One unfortunate day in middle school. A routine school physical identified your second gender as Omega.

“How can this be?” Your mother tightened her grip on the sheet of paper that stated the results. There in black and white was the undeniable truth.

Your father’s once loving gaze turned into one of pity that eventually seemed more like resent. There had been rumors within his family. Several generations ago there had been an Omega on his mother’s side. Now it would seem such rumors were confirmed.

From then on you carried the burden of being living proof of a tainted family history. However your father wouldn’t allow such a huge revelation be brought to light. He paid quite a sum of money to keep those involved silent on the matter. He even went as far as using his old connections in the medical field to forge medical documents.

On paper and to the public you were an alpha.

Your remaining childhood was spent perfecting the lie. A private doctor, knowledgeable on omega physiology, was brought in to monitor and administer the best suppressants for your individual case. It was vital to keep you from going into heat. A collar would be a dead giveaway of what you truly were thus, it was forbidden for you to ever wear one.

For a child that grew up loved to suddenly have it all taken away...

The shame of being an omega in a family of alphas weighed heavily on you but there was nothing you could do. You’d rather put up with these circumstances and live as an alpha in everyone else’s eyes to the alternative.

Society was hard on omegas. They were victims of discrimination, assault, and persecution. Often you heard on the news how unfortunate omegas suddenly went into heat in public. They would be unwillingly mated or worse, paired with someone for the rest of their lives.

Ignorance truly was bliss.

If you could live peacefully as a fake alpha despite your personal life, so be it.

That morning when you left for school your father was nowhere to be seen. He was most likely upstairs in his study tapping away on the computer as he wrote his latest work. Your mother appeared shortly before you left only to give you a last reminder to keep up the family’s image.

You agreed to play the part your parents asked of you.

During the entrance ceremony you sat up front, in the second seat. It seemed you had placed second in your year. The fact that there was someone who scored higher than you was a testament to the school’s admissions.

You heard the whispers.

“Isn’t that her?”

“I heard she didn’t go to the same school as her brother because she didn’t pass the entrance exam.”

“She must be a recessive alpha.”

Even the slightest glance their way would validate their gossip and you were above giving them the attention they wanted so you kept your eyes forward focused on the current speaker at the podium.

\\\

You kept to yourself, never socializing with anyone more than you had to. You gave vague and straightforward responses to questions in order to avoid their prying into your personal life.

It was typical ice princess behavior in their eyes.

And although some talked behind your back for it, others admired the fact that you didn’t try to establish yourself as the social queen of the school just because of your social status. There were plenty of other girls itching to have everyone on their beck and call.

Yet, alphas were known for being sociable charismatic people so you had no choice but to participate and feign a social life.

That’s when it all began. Countless people asked you to join their club or sport. The golf team was especially earnest in their pursuit. At one point their freshman recruiting officer who doubled as the manager of the team somehow became a close acquaintance.

“Come on Y/N,” The short girl quickly packed her stuff at the end of class. She needed to get to the club room quickly but wouldn’t miss another opportunity to convince you. “It’s co-ed,” she wiggled her brows trying to entice you with the opportunity to interact with boys.

“Sorry, I’m not interested.”

“Hmph,” she exhaled puffing her cheeks. “Fine I give up for today but I’ll keep annoying you until you accept.” She ran out of the classroom at full speed.

You had to admit her passion for the team was admirable.

It was unfortunate that you liked her because you couldn’t open up to her and truly become friends.

But by far the most unfortunate thing was the fact the staff saw you as an opportunity to boost their image. After a few months they began to work up the courage to approach you.

“Miss Y/N, can I talk to you for a second?”

The bell had just rung, signaling the end of the school day. Everyone had left in a hurry except for you and those who had no choice but to stay since they were on cleaning duty.

You nodded your head and followed him as he lead you down the halls.

“Miss Y/N we couldn’t help but notice you haven’t signed onto any extra curricular activities. Here at Kirisaki Daiichi we require that every student go beyond academic success.”

You sighed perfectly aware of what he was getting at. In middle school you had been part of the Tennis club as a solo player. It didn’t require much interaction with others and was the sport with the shortest season. The circumstances allowed you to go about your heat period without complications. Everyone at that school bent over backwards for you considering your lineage. It was perhaps the only time you were thankful for your mother’s influence.

“This school doesn’t have a tennis team,” you very matter-of-factly pointed out “And I’m not interested in any other sport.”

“Then how about starting one.” Kirisaki Daiichi was also willing to do whatever it took to boost their image. If you, the daughter of a national champion, were to start and lead the team it would be idealistic propaganda. Many more affluent families would be interested in the school.

“That sounds like a lot of work.”

Hanamiya smirked when he caught onto your conversation with the teacher. He hadn’t thought much of you when you sat quietly at the front of the class. It was interesting though to see you so blatantly shrug off the teacher.

“Then what if you were to simply coach the other girls? We will put the team together and you instruct them.”

“A student coach?” That seemed far better but would still require you to interact with others often. The closer you became to others, the more chances there would be for someone to catch on to your frequently scheduled absences. After a moment of silence you looked up at the teacher to acknowledge him. “I’ll think about it.”

With those final words you walked away towards the school gates. Just as you were about to pop your earphones in you heard your name being called.

You turned around to see Hanamiya Makoto standing surprisingly close to you, enough to merit you taking a step back. All you knew about him was the fact that he was in your class and through the halls you had heard his name one or two times.

What business did he have with you?

“Don’t bother with the old man’s request.” Hanamiya kept his distance as he proposed an idea to you. “Come be the basketball team’s manager.”

“I don’t know anything about basketball.”

“You don’t have to,” he smirked.

-TBC-

A/N: My favorite manga site is down so here I am writing instead of reading. It has been a while since I saw KNB but my passion for the bad boys is still alive. It will be getting dark and mature so read on with caution.

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whump-me-all-night-long · 3 years

Text

The Jewelry Box: Carnelian’s Undoing

my contribution to Spiral Day, started by @brutal-nemesis

Did I cry while writing this? Absolutely, it was like Niagara Falls over here. This is probably one of the most emotionally draining pieces I’ve ever written. It took me several different sessions, spread out over quite a few days, to get it completed. It’s also one of those where I feel like it’ll never be really and truly ready, so here it is anyways. I hope y’all enjoy it because this was one piece that I was extremely nervous to post and share.

Taglist: @newbornwhumperfly @unicornscotty @itsleighlove @whump-scribbles @getyourwhumphere @skunkandgrenade @penny-for-your-whump @lektric-whump @just-a-whump-lover @thelazywitchphotographer @restrainthenmaime @angstyachesplus @lilbitwhumpy @leaderofthebeanarmy @aquard-skaii @whumprincess @thatgaysnail @finaldreams1106 @reveriedeludesme @kemonoinuzuka @circlingravens @whumpasaurus101 @spicy-wendigo @femmewithadhd @wafflestakethecake @lonesome–hunter @as-a-matter-of-whump let me know if you want to be added/removed!

CW: thoughts of death, like so many thoughts about death, that’s basically the entire piece, acceptance of death (not in a suicidal way, more in a “I’m okay with dying” type way), beating, painful wound cleanings, noncon touching (nonsexual), implied death (but no real death), referenced grief, intimate whumper, creepy whumper, pet whump, being sold, noncon drugging, please please please let me know if I missed anything, this is a rather heavy piece and I want to make sure everyone can read it as safely as possible!

Masterlist

He was laying there, unable to move, every single inch of his body aching, a pain he’d never experienced before. Distantly, as if from another life, he heard screams, sobs, pleas that went unanswered. He wanted to move, to get up and comfort the person that had become his entire world, but he was stuck; he couldn’t move a fraction of an inch, no matter how hard he tried.

Soon enough, the horrible sounds of grief and guilt and death were replaced by the shallow, near-silent rattle of his own breath and the pounding of blood in his ears. He knew there was something important that he needed to do, something that he knew his life depended on, but he couldn’t remember what.

So instead, he just stayed there, his broken body sprawled out on the hard floor, blood pooling out from under him like a halo of death.

There was movement around him, stirring him from the half-conscious daze he was in, delirious from pain and blood loss. He blinked slowly, vision so blurry he couldn’t make out a thing, surprised to find his eyelashes meeting something wet.

Am I crying? When did I start crying?

A hand in his hair pulled his head up, the part that had been pressed into the floor feeling damp and sticky. Dark eyes met his own glazed gaze, and he saw the flash of teeth. He would’ve flinched if he could, but he couldn’t.

“Hey there, sugar,” a low, soft voice said. “You took your punishment so well. Played your part like a champ. Now my sweetheart’s breaking, all thanks to you. I knew you’d be absolutely perfect.”

For some reason, he started crying harder at that. No, he thought, I didn’t want to do this. You made me do this. He can’t break, not now.

Not over me.

The other dropped his head back down, and he went back to drifting, letting all the thoughts fall out of his head.

He woke next to the tap tap tap of footsteps. Blinking groggily, he tried to sit up, tried to get up, but the pain lancing through his body prevented him from doing more than rolling over a couple inches.

A shiny shoe resting on his cheek, pressing his head down, kept him from attempting it again. A face settled in his line of sight, and his lip curled.

The Jeweler stared at him for a moment, a pleasant smile on his face. “Hello, sugar,” he said, removing his foot and replacing it with his hand, which stroked his face in a way that made him want to push him off, but his body was still not responding to him.

He swallowed several times before cracking open his mouth. “What-” His voice was rough and hoarse, sending a cough through him. “What did you do to, to me? Where- where is he?” Panic started overwhelming him, crashing over him and pulling him down, drowning him.

He couldn’t remember anything. He had been in his cell, whispering with his world, and then there was nothingness, blankness, emptiness. Tears pricked in his eyes, and he took a shaky, shuddering breath that ended up sounding like a sob.

The Jeweler moved his hand to comb through his hair, still softly smiling. “Shh, shh,” he soothed. “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about any of that. You don’t need to remember any of this. What you need is to forget. You’re going someplace new, and you’re leaving all of this behind. Okay, sugar?”

He tried to shake his head, but it was barely more than a twitch. No, no I don’t want that. Please, don’t kill me, don’t make me leave, I can’t leave him, please.

The Jeweler laughed softly. “My silly sugar,” he said, voice dripping with condescension. “Just relax, okay?”

“Please,” he managed to whisper before his head was set back down.

The Jeweler stood, grabbing something out of his line of sight. When he did see what it was, the fat tears rolled down his face even harder. The large needle, filled with a menacing amber liquid, came close to his neck, piercing it easily with him weak and nearly paralyzed. His mouth opened to whine softly at the cold flooding into him, before it withdrew and was left alone again.

His eyes found the Jeweler and he sobbed, begging, “Please, not this, anything but this.” He just smiled.

He didn’t so much as wake up next as he did rise to consciousness, suddenly and roughly. Hands, too many hands, were touching him, grabbing him, manhandling him.

A low groan slipped out of him as he tried and failed to open his eyes and he heard a muttered curse.

“It wasn’t supposed to wear off yet, was it?” someone asked in a hushed voice.

“Who cares?” someone else responded. “It’s not like it’ll remember any of this anyways.”

He whimpered and the hands resumed their work. He could feel them harshly cleaning out his wounds, bandaging them up. The people surrounding him were thorough, his gently throbbing muscles telling him that much, and it felt like an eternity before they were done.

He sighed as they set him back down, ready to slip back off to oblivion, but then they were back, pulling at his clothing, taking it off-

He yelped as the cold air hit his sensitive skin, struggling against the hands. Weak as he was, it barely affected them, but he still heard several more curses as flailing limbs knocked into them. A backhanded slap had him stilling, though, knocking all the fight out of him and leaving him even more dizzy and disoriented than he was before.

He let them pull new clothes onto him, although they felt less like clothes and more like scraps of cold, thin cloth that barely covered him. He shivered and whimpered, high in his throat, face burning, desperately wishing he was anywhere else in the world.

Another voice joined the fray, this one too painfully familiar. “Is he ready?”

A chorus of “yes, sir”s followed, and then hands grabbed at his arms, lifting him up and dragging him along. His head rolled wildly, completely out of his control.

After what felt like an eternity, he was dropped yet again onto cold floors, crumpled in a heap. He whimpered as his head knocked against the hard tile, eyes struggling to stay open.

Distantly, he heard the Jeweler barking orders. He let the words wash over him, floating around him, unable to pierce his drug-induced bubble of semi-consciousness.

Instead, he let his thoughts drift back to him. The him that had started all of this, that he’d known since day one, that had helped him and held him, guided him and encouraged him. The him that had loved him. The him that he had loved.

It took him several moments to realize that he was crying again, silent, salty tears dripping down his face, causing the small cuts littering his skin to burn faintly. He knew he was about to die. He wasn’t scared. Angry, yes. Sad, yes. But scared? No, he wasn’t scared of death at all.

He used to be scared of being stuck in this hell on earth for the rest of his life, of never escaping, always stuck in this stasis. Now, he was scared of leaving him behind, not knowing what was going to happen to the person he was about to die for. Wherever he went after this, he didn’t want him to follow very quickly.

No, he wanted him to escape, to forget, to live. He wanted him to find someone else, someone new, to make him happy, who understood and forgave. Maybe one day he’d tell this new person about the old one, the one who had been sacrificed to get him there.

There was only one regret he had. The one thing they’d sworn never to say, he wished he had said. And he wished he had heard it in return.

I promise, if I make it out of this, the first thing I’ll do when I escape - when, not if - is find you and tell you that I lo-

He was yanked out of his thoughts by hands grabbing him, lifting him. One last tear rolled down his face, into his hairline. He took a deep breath, one of his last. He felt ready to die. He didn’t mind dying, not for this reason.

He wondered, vaguely, how he would go. Would it be a bullet? Fire? Knife? Poison?

It was none of those things.

He was placed inside a large wooden box. His hands were easily tied behind his back with what felt like silky ropes, and his ankles were forced together with the same material. A cloth gag was placed in his mouth, securely fastened around his head. He blinked slowly, confusion evident on his face. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go.

Somewhere above him, the Jeweler stood, seen through flashes of dark hair and pale skin, sparkling teeth and bright eyes. He reached down into the box to cup his cheek, stroking a smooth thumb over his skin, pressing lightly into a blooming bruise there.

“Just a bit beat up, right, sugar?” he said, almost.. gently? “By the time you get there, you’ll be nearly back to full health, I dare say.” There? Where was there? “Just close your eyes now, and stay calm, alright? You’re doing such a good job here, making me a wonderful sum along with a new business associate. You’ve really been the perfect Jewel for me, sugar.”

The hand withdrew, and he almost found himself missing the warmth of it when the light above him was cut off, something large being placed over the top of the box. It wasn’t until a painfully loud whirring sound started that he realized that it was the lid, and it was being drilled down, secure and unable to be broken.

Then the box was being lifted into the air and he went rolling as much as he could, unable to stop himself due to his restrained limbs. There was a hard thump and he banged his head against the side of the box, immediately losing consciousness.

When he woke up next, he was still in the box. It seemed like it was in some sort of plane, gliding smoothly through the air, occasionally tilting to one side or the other. He breathed in a ragged breath, most of his memories coming back to him. As he struggled to pull himself up into somewhat of a sitting position, he remembered three things, three very important things:

One. His name was Carnelian. He’d all but forgotten the name he had before that. The name that mattered was Carnelian.

Two. He was supposed to be dead, but he wasn’t. Instead, he was being sold, shipped off to God knows where, to God knows who.

Three. He had to get back to Sapphire. He had to find the love of his life again, rescue him and tell him that he loved him.

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gellavonhamster · 3 years

Text

ghost stories

Suicide Squad (2016) || characters: El Diablo feat. everyone else || post-canon, sort of a fix-it

ao3 link eng || this was first written and published on ao3 in Russian in 2016 but I didn't attempt to translate it into English back then.

Harley is the first to see him.

She catches the smell first. Something appears to be burning, and she checks cautiously if there is something wrong with the coffee machine. She doesn’t find anything suspicious – not that the appliances about to flame up smell like that anyway. Could it be that there’s a fire starting? That would be funny, but seems like there’s hardly a chance. It is the smell of a bonfire at the beach, of the fallen leaves being burned in the yards in fall, of a melting candle in the church; weirdly, all this at the same time. A smell that seems too pure for Belle Reve, for Gotham, for everything that makes up her life these days.

Harley looks around once again – and springs to her feet like she’s been stung.

Chato Santana is standing next to her cage.

“Diablo?” she whispers, unable to believe her eyes. She would’ve thought she’s lost her marbles if there were any left to lose.

“Harley,” says Diablo, and it’s his voice, his shy, sad smile, his eyes and his tattoos, and Harley squeals in delight as she rushes to him. The bars of the cage are live, so she only dares to stick out the tips of her fingers. He touches them with his hand – certainly alive, certainly not a product of her mind being tortured by boredom and monotony – and she laughs.

“You’re alive, alive, alive! How did you survive? And how did they let you in?”

“It’s a long story. And I don’t think I have much time,” Diablo looks guilty. He’s still holding her hand and looking at her so earnestly it’s almost worrying. “Harley… don’t go with him.”

“Huh? What do you mean, honey?”

“He’s coming here. Don’t leave with him, Harley, stay. It sounds strange, but this would really be for the best.”

“Don’t leave with whom?” she can’t follow him. He gives her a melancholic look – and suddenly disappears. Without any smoke or flames or any other special effects. She can’t wrap her head around how it happened – it’s just that he was here a moment ago, and now there’s no one beside her, and she’s reaching out towards nothing.

“Diablo?” she calls, and when she gets no answer, she decides to get things straight by asking the guards. What kind of cruel joke is this? Only one person is allowed to joke here, and that person is her. “Hello there! Mister jailer, yoo-hoo! Where’s my friend?”

No one is in a hurry to respond. Finally, one of the armed-to-the-teeth guards approaches the cage.

“Why are you yelling, lady?”

“Where’s my friend?” Harley asks petulantly. “He was here just now, and we didn’t finish talking. Where did you take him?”

“There was no one here.”

“What do you mean ‘no one’? I just talked to him!”

The guard examines her from head to foot. Looks like he’s chewing gum, which, combined with his empty apathetic stare, makes him look like a cow.

“Definitely crazy,” he sums up, and leaves. Irritated, Harley forgets to take caution, hits the bars and falls down on the floor right away, writhing in pain.

“Well, well, well,” she whispers, playing the recent events over in her head. Chato was very much corporeal – not a ghost, then. Yet the guards didn’t notice him, and then he vanished into thin air. Harley thinks about the being Chato transformed into by the end of the battle – an ancient one, as if straight from the walls of some Aztec temple. Could some petty bomb kill such a being? Could the Enchantress’s brother have survived too?

“I am friends with a god,” she informs the ceiling. “Incredible.”

About an hour later, her Puddin’ comes for her, and she forgets the advice Diablo gave her.

Croc sees him on the night of the same day. He knows for sure that it is night thanks to the TV listings – the only reference point for time and days of the week that he has. Not that it was bothering him too much, truth be told. Monday or Sunday, every day in Belle Reve is a carbon copy of the day before. However, Croc doesn’t complain. He has a roof over his head, water, food – even better food than he used to have in the sewers in days gone by – and a TV, and it is honestly not too hard to do without such extras as companionship and fresh experiences. Still, he is glad to see Diablo. Even though first he lunges at him with his fangs bared, because he doesn’t immediately recognize him and supposes that Waller and company are sick of feeding him and decided to kill him. Or to put someone else in his quarters, which would have been no less audacious.

“Croc, it’s me,” Diablo hastens to say, and lights up a flame over his left palm – so unusual and out of place in the dampness of Croc’s cell. Croc freezes and watches the flame for some seconds. That must really be Diablo; there are hardly many people in the world capable of such tricks.

“Hey, man,” Croc says. “Whatcha doing here?”

“Just checking up on you.”

Well, that must definitely be Diablo. Croc knows that there are hardly many people in the world who’d care to check up on him, but that sounds like something El Diablo would do. Back then, during the mission, he was friendly, asked “You okay?” after each skirmish, and could clap him on the shoulder without shuddering. And there are definitely even less people in the world that would touch him willingly.

“Did they just let you in like that?” wonders Croc. Diablo gives him a slight smile.

“They don’t know I’m here.”

“So you’re, like, a ghost?” Croc asks. It occurred to him from the very beginning, but it sounds particularly joyless when said out loud.

Diablo gestures vaguely. “I’m still figuring it out myself, to be honest.”

“Hmm,” Croc glances over his cell. A bag of food on the cot catches his eye. “You want a burger?”

“Nah, I’m good. Save it for yourself.”

“They’ll bring more today, I’m telling ya.”

“Then I want one.”

“Then you’re not a ghost,” grins Croc, and the fact that Diablo doesn’t flinch or try to look away also proves that this is the real Chato Santana, because most people don’t like seeing Croc smile.

And so he and Diablo, who kind of is a ghost but kind of isn’t, sit there eating burgers and watching some crap on MTV. Life has taught Croc not to be surprised by anything, so everything’s fine.

“So what happened after the bomb went off?” Croc asks. Diablo opens his mouth, and then closes it again, apparently at a loss how to explain.

“I was smoke,” he speaks finally. “Then I was flames. Then I became myself again.”

“I see,” Croc replies, although, of course, he can’t see shit.

“Who are you talking to?” comes the guard’s voice from behind the door. “Hey, scum!”

Croc puts the burger aside.

“Wait a bit,” he tells Chato, gets up, and heads for the door.

When he comes to the bean hole, the guard already looks like he regrets calling him.

“No one,” Crock smiles as widely as only he can, and the guard, who isn’t among the people able to watch him smile without blinking an eye, steps back reflexively. “But come inside, and I’ll talk to you if you wanna. How about that?”

When he turns around, Chato has already disappeared, and Croc could have assumed he has dreamed it all, but there are two half-eaten burgers on the cot, not one.

Digger sees him next, and he isn’t even amazed. The bastards keep drugging him with all sorts of shit to calm him down. Usually after the shot he just lies there, feverish, and can’t even move, let alone stand up, but who knows, perhaps they’re testing some new poison on him. Or they’ve started using something stronger because they noticed that a couple of hours after the usual stuff he’s already able to yell, bang at the door, and do everything he can to get the best of them while cooped up inside. Or it’s simply that there’s already so much of this shit in his blood that it’s impossible not to have any screws loose, try as he might to keep them in place. In any case, he’s not exactly shocked when, as he tosses and turns on the floor after another injection, he turns his head and sees El Diablo, large as life and twice as ugly.

“Fuck me sideways,” Digger says. He doesn’t have any energy to be mad yet. “I must be tripping.”

“You’re not tripping,” Diablo objects.

“You died. So I must be.”

“I didn’t die either.”

Diablo sits down cross-legged on the floor next to him.

“Has it crossed your mind that if you stop getting on their nerves, they might start treating you better?” he asks.

“Go to hell.”

“Message received.”

There’s a footfall outside; a whole bunch of people must be running somewhere.

“They’ve turned the entire joint upside down,” says Digger, because it’s been ages since he has spoken to anyone who’d at least pretend to listen, so a hallucination will do. “Blondie escaped.”

“I know,” Diablo replies gloomily. “I tried to warn her not to go with the Joker, but she didn’t listen to me.”

“Why warn her?” Digger asks. Harley Quinn is no bosom friend of his, but she kind of tore out the heart of the witch who kind of tried to end the world, and anyway, teammates probably should take interest in each other’s lives. Probably. He’s never really made sense of that teamwork stuff. “What’s he gonna do to her?”

“At best, what he always does.”

Two tiny figures of fire appear on Diablo’s open palm – a man and a woman. The man backhands the woman across her face, and she falls down. Digger watches the dancing flames with fascination, and meanwhile in his head, bit by bit, stroke by stroke, a plan starts to take shape. He wouldn’t be Captain motherfucking Boomerang if he fails to use any opportunity that turns up – even a ghost of one.

“Listen, mate,” he begins cajolingly. “If you’re really here and it’s not just me tripping… help an old friend out, won’t you? I’m fed up with being stuck here, you know.”

“I’m not gonna help you escape,” Diablo says calmly. “How do you imagine that would even happen?”

“Can’t you just burn the entire Belle Reve to the bloody ground?”

Diablo smiles.

“I can,” he admits. “But I won’t.”

The next thing he knows, the son of a bitch is gone without a trace. Anger and offence must be giving Digger strength, because he manages to leap to his feet. Like a lunatic, he thrashes around the cell, looking for at least some kind of proof that someone else was here a moment ago.

“Oi!” he shouts, knowing damn well that the guards have long stopped listening to what he has to say. “Grab the devil! A convict escaped! Hey, wankers!”

But he’s feeling lightheaded, and this shit must be really strong, and he collapses, badly hitting his head.

Tatsu sees him next – late at night, in her apartment. She’s a light sleeper, and wakes up as soon as she hears footsteps. The sword is close at hand, and she grabs it instantly, blade swishing through the air.

“Who’s there?” Tatsu asks, and then repeats in English. “Who’s there?”

There is nowhere to hide in her bedroom. The only furniture is the mattress and the pair of chairs she uses to hang her clothes on. Everything is on the floor or on the windowsill – weapons, her laptop, the book she tried to read before going to sleep but could not concentrate on. It is an ascetic, comfortless dwelling that does not look permanent and is not supposed to become so. Fate and Amanda Waller, though, seem to have other plans in this respect.

There is nowhere to hide in her bedroom – but someone’s definitely walking in the antechamber; she flings the door open – and sees El Diablo, standing by the entrance and looking around. In a blink of an eye Tatsu is next to him, and the blade of the Soultaker is pressed to his neck.

“Katana, it’s me,” Diablo says, unfazed. “Chato Santana.”

“Chato Santana is dead,” she says through her teeth. Chato Santana was a gangster who killed, albeit by a tragic accident, his own family – but she fought side by side with him, he sacrificed himself to save the world, he called their squad his family and died for them. That is enough for her not to let anyone use his name as a cover. “Who are you?”

“I’m alive,” Diablo replies. He puts his hands up to show he’s unarmed, and forks of flame appear on his palms. “Or sort of.”

Sort of.

Tatsu lowers the sword and looks warily at the man standing in front of her.

“How did you…”

“You’re gonna have a new mission soon. Demand that Waller tells you everything.”

“About what?”

“I couldn’t overhear that,” he says with regret. “But…”

Something knocks on the window. Tatsu turns around quickly, but that must’ve been just a tree branch hitting the windowpane. When she turns back to Chato, he’s already gone, and her apartment is silent.

It’s just four in the morning, but she can’t make herself fall asleep again. Having poured a cup of tea, Tatsu sits down on the mattress and thinks, think, thinks about what just happened. Tatsu believes in ghosts – her sword is teeming with them, so she wouldn’t say that her worldview is shaken. Still, this is strange, very strange. What did he want to tell her? Why did he disappear so abruptly? Like… a broadcast was interrupted.

Colonel Flag calls her at daybreak and tells her that there’s a shoot-out between two gangs on the outskirts of Gotham, with metahumans on both sides. When Tatsu arrives at Belle Reve, it turns out they must have considered it to be not enough to ruin her Saturday morning, because she is asked – more like ordered, actually – to escort an inmate from his cell, an inmate who attacks anyone who tries to enter and has already injured three guards with his bare hands, and it’s not reasonable to sedate him before the mission, and “he’s likely to obey if it’s you, Katana” – the last is Rick’s argument, and if he told that to her face and not on the phone, she would have had to strain every nerve not to hit him with something.

No one tries to attack her when she enters the cell of Captain Boomerang – Harkness is sitting on the floor quite still, his arms around his knees, and when he notices her, he even smiles with bruised lips.

“Hello, gorgeous,” he says. “Am I hallucinating you too?”

“No,” the question is unexpected and confuses her. “Why?”

“Well, they keep injecting me some crap, and lately I’ve been seeing things,” Harkness explains peacefully, even eagerly. His voice is quiet and hoarse, which, combined with his Australian accent, leads to Tatsu being barely able to make out half of what he’s saying. To hear him better, she crouches down next to him, still gripping the sword hilt – there is no telling if he isn’t just making her come closer to take her down and bolt. “Saw the devil yesterday.”

“The devil?”

“Our devil. Día… de fucking Muertos. Chato Santana.”

Tatsu gives a shiver and, having lost her balance, half sits down, half falls on the dirty floor.

She isn’t the only one to have seen him. She isn’t the only one he wanted to send a message to.

“Hey, luv,” Harkness frowns and reaches out to touch her knee lightly. “You all right?”

“Same as you, more or less,” she wants to reply, which of course would mean she isn’t, not at all.

“What did he tell you?” she asks him instead.

When Floyd sees him, he is hardly surprised, since the others have already warned him. Boomerang, Croc, and Katana tell him everything while they’re waiting for the helo, and had it been just Boomerang, who believes inexplicably that he has a sense of humour although he certainly doesn’t, Floyd most likely wouldn’t have believed his ghost stories, but it is even harder to believe that Croc, let alone Katana would agree to take part in such pranks. Which is why he listens to them closely and takes note: okay, then he doesn’t have to worry about his mental heath if the late Santana suddenly appears out of nowhere to give some advice or share some news or simply ask how he’s doing. So the four of them keep whispering to one another like kids at the back of the class until their transport arrives – just the four of them, which is a pity. If there is anyone on the team that he had missed a little, it’s Harley. Floyd knows some things about the Joker, for it isn’t possible, as they write in the papers, to belong to the criminal world of Gotham and not know anything about the Joker. Floyd knows what Flag had spilled to him when visiting him in his cell or escorting him there after a visit to Zoe. Floyd thinks that in his entire lifetime he hasn’t understood a thing about love – is it even possible to understand it, on the other hand? – but he feels like the mad and brilliant Harley, Harley the whimsical, Harley the loving deserves better.

“What’s with the gossiping?” Flag inquires suspiciously.

“Nothing!” Croc and Digger answer in unison, in unison, and Floyd facepalms because seriously, are they in some cheesy movie or what? They don’t tell Flag anything yet, but Floyd is almost sure that sooner or later Santana will visit him as well, because Flag is one of them too, after all. Not that he’s even trying to deny it; no one’s making him drop by Floyd’s cell every other day to chat about some nonsense through the steel door.

So Floyd is hardly surprised when, as he makes his way behind the dumpsters loading one gun after another, he notices a familiar, head-to-toe-tattooed figure standing nearby.

“There are snipers on the roof over there and around the corner of the shop,” Chato says instead of greeting. Floyd nods.

“I noticed.”

“Eight men in the drugstore on the other side of the street. Each with a machine gun.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve just been there.”

“Got it,” there’s no time for lengthy conversations. No time to say: glad you’re alive, man. No time to ascertain: are you alive, though? So he thinks over the plan of action, making a mental note to ask all these questions later, when there are no bullets whistling past their ears.

People like them deserve no guardian angels, frankly speaking, but they may have managed to earn one for all of them.

#suicide squad #el diablo #harley quinn #killer croc #captain boomerang #katana #deadshot #rick flag #dc #talk talk talk #my fic #gella talks skwad #this might have been the most challenging to translate so far #i'm so used to bookish slightly outdated speech and most of my fandoms allow that #and then bam modernity. ugh #also i know nothing about the geography of the dceu!united states. sorry about that.

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candy-and-writing · 4 years

Text

Siren Song

This is my entry for @mermaidxatxheart challenge #jamies500writingchallenge with the AU Siren/Sailor. I decided to kind of put a twist on it, so I hope it still fits!!!

Summary: You are a Siren. Your voice is an aphrodisiac that lures people into a spell. The only way they can break your spell is if they sleep with you. Steve accidentally hears you singing after a mission.

Warnings: dub-con, smut, drugging, gags, restraints, fingering, oral sex, Steve waiting too long for the woman he loves

A/n: Feedback is welcomed and appreciated! I was a dumbass and waited until the day before this was due to write this, so if there are any error, please let me know :)

I am NOT responsible for your media content consumption. This work is not intended for those under the age of 18 due to explicit sexual content and/or dark themes. By reading this work you agree that you are at least 18 years of age. I do not consent to have my work posted on any third party app or website; if you are seeing this work anywhere other than tumblr and archiveofourown, it has been reposted without my permission.

"What's your status, Siren?" Tony's voice came through your earpiece. You finished flattening out the line of your dress, taking a sip of your champagne before you answered.

"So far, so good. I have eyes on the target, let me finish my drink and I can engage—"

"No!" Steve spat in your ear, making you flinch. "Y/n, do not engage, do you understand?"

You scoffed. If Steve didn't want you to engage, then what was the point of you being here? At this point, you weren't even batting any eyelashes at anybody—under strict orders from your Captain not to.

"Come on, Sailor," you purred. "I can help. Let me do my job."

"You use your power on me again, I'm gonna quarantine you," Steve growled. You chuckled at his threat.

"Then what exactly is the reason I'm here, Captain?" you asked, taking another sip of the overtly expensive drink you held. "You want the target incapacitated, I can incapacitate him for you. It'll be easy."

"Incapacitated, not oogling over you."

"You got a problem with my powers, Sailor?"

You heard Steve sigh. "You know that I don't. I got a problem with the men here, especially the man we're trying to catch. He doesn't have a good rep with pretty dames like you, I'm trying to keep you safe."

"You think I'm pretty?" You feigned surprise, bringing your hand to your chest to mimic shock.

"That—" he paused for a moment before letting out an aggravated breath. "That's not the point and you know it. Just keep your distance for now, when we're ready we'll let you know."

You sighed. "Yeah, that's not happening, Cap. Sorry."

"Y/n—"

You turned off your comms, swaying over to your target, a man named Viktor Yakovich. He was a HYDRA lackie known for sex trafficking and importing drugs in and out of the Harbour. You passed him, fingers dragging along the chest of his iron pressed suit, rolling off his shoulder and when you looked back to meet his eyes, you winked.

The wide-eyed, jaw-dropped expression he wore showed you he was enthralled. He watched as you sauntered to an empty seat at the end of the bar. You ordered a drink, a fancy strawberry vanilla tequila cocktail with a misconstructed french name. You watched the bartender make your drink, pouring different liquids into the mixer. He shook the tin almost violently before he poured the drink into a cocktail glass, adding three small strawberry slices into your glass. You thanked him as he handed it to you and took a hefty sip.

Just as you finished the last of your cocktail, Yakovich stood leaning against the bartop, eyeing you with a level of lust that had chills running down your spine.

"I'll have a double whiskey on the rocks," he said to the bartender, his accent thick, "and another of whatever the lady is having."

"Extra shot of tequila, please," you added. Viktor smirked at you.

"You are quite beautiful," he commented. "What brings you here?"

You made up some story about your father being too sick to attend the luxurious gala himself, so he sent you as his representative. It was a story engraved in your brain, a caring daughter worried about her poor father's health. His liver was failing, you told Yakovich.

Yakovich was quick to give you his sympathies. You thanked him, sipping on your new drink. Gathering your courage, you set your hand on his thigh, rubbing your thumb softly against the fabric of his trousers. You watched his eyes widen, his shoulders raised as his breathing hitched.

"Why don't we go upstairs?" Your voice lowered several octaves. Yakovich grinned, offering you his arm.

Your head pounded as you regained consciousness, groaning. You're vaguely aware of the pain in your body, the heaviness in your legs and how your arms almost felt numb. The dim light above you all too bright as you clenched your eyes shut in protest, grimacing. Your mouth was dry, the corners of your lips ached, and you felt a piece of plastic lodged between your teeth. You tried to bring your hand up, but something was keeping your arms rooted in place. As your mind became clearer, you saw your wrists were tied to the edges of the chair, arms pulled taut at your sides. You were gagged and tied down. Great.

What was the last thing you remembered? Yakovich had taken you to his hotel room above the ballroom. You remembered you had kissed him, he had pushed you against the wall. He moved you to the bed after you felt a sharp prick in your neck and then—and then it went black. The damn bastard had drugged you. But how had he gotten out of your spell? That wasn't supposed to be possible.

"Well, well, well. . . looks like the little dove is awake." The rich Russian accent sounded oddly humorous, which sent a shudder up your spine. Footsteps echoed against the chipped concrete. Yakovich stepped into view, a wicked grin plastered on his face. You frowned at him, tilting your chin up defiantly. He chuckled at you, roughly grabbing your chin. "I know all about you, little dove. You were HYDRA's most powerful weapon, made the Winter Soldier look like child's play. But. . . you defected. How come?"

You shrugged. Mumbled through your gag some jarbled excuse. Really you were just making noise. Yakovich sighed before backhanding you across the cheek, your head snapping to the side with a sharp crack. You bit down on the plastic wedged between your teeth, a yelp getting stuck in your throat.

"Oh, dove. You make such lovely noises. It is such a shame I won't get to hear more. Kill her now."

A knife was at your throat. You held your head up, glaring at Yakovich. There was a crash, shards of glass shattering on the cement floor. Something flew past your head with a deafening whoosh, Steve's shield striking Yakovich square in the chest, sending him flying. The knife had left your throat, Tony blasting the blade out the man's hand as Sam drop kicked him.

Steve was in front of you, reaching to unbuckle the gag behind your head. He threw it to the ground, his hand cupping your cheek.

"Hey, Sailor," you rasped, your voice hoarse.

His thumb brushed over the red marks at the corner of your mouth. "Are you okay?"

"I had it handled," you smirked. Steve chuckled incredulously, dropping his head.

"You're unbelievable," he laughed.

He tore the twine that was wrapped tightly around your wrists. He rubbed the dark red marks, trying to get the blood flowing back in your hands. He whispered something that sounded similar to 'oh, baby', looking at the marks surrounding your wrists.

"Let's get you out of here. Okay?" Steve's hand went under your knees, your arm draping the back of his neck. He carried you out of the warehouse, the quinjet parked a few meters away. Steve sat you on the exam table that came up from the floor. "The others will be here soon, okay? They just gotta take care of Yakovich."

You nodded, swallowing. The pain was starting to set in—your head throbbed in sharp pains, your wrists were burning in piercing pulses. You were so dizzy, your world spun around you until you had to hold onto Steve. He looked at you, concern swimming behind his eyes as his hand covered yours over his bicep.

"I'm fine," you said weakly.

Natasha, Tony, and Sam boarded the quinjet.

"Hey, kiddo," Tony smiled. "How you doing?"

"Never better," you grinned. "Where's Yakovich?"

"Local police are gonna hold him while we get you back to the Compound," Natasha said, "then Tony and I are going to bring him into S.H.I.E.L.D. . . . What happened?"

You shrugged. "I don't know, I-I thought I had him. We were upstairs, I was—um, you know. . .." you scratched the back of your neck. "And then it just went black."

"I thought people couldn't resist your powers?"

"They're not supposed to be able to." You frowned, rubbing the bridge of your nose. There was so much pressure building up in your head, you just wanted to take some aspirin and sleep for a week.

"You gonna need medical?" Sam had his arms crossed, a frown on his face. You shook your head.

"I'll be fine."

"Y/n," Steve said sternly. Natasha went to the front of the jet, pressing buttons and flipping a switch. The ramp pulled up and sealed the entrance as the engine roared to life.

You sighed. "I'm fine, Sailor. Seriously. I just need a hot shower and to get out of this dress."

Steve tried to argue with you. "You might have a concussion."

You reminded Steve about the serum that was coursing through your veins. The same one HYDRA had forced into you, the same one Bucky had coursing through his veins. Except it didn't make you strong like him or Steve. It had done something to your cells, and with a few genetic alterations, HYDRA was able to give you your powers.

And HYDRA wondered why you left.

You let the dress slip off your body, leaving you in a lacy pair of wine red panties and a thigh holster. You discarded the holster, sliding the lace off your legs before stepping into the shower.

The water was warm, soothing your taut muscles. Your shoulders were so tight they felt like concrete. You sighed, leaning your head back into the water stream.

You left the bathroom clad in a towel, your hair damp. Your head felt better than it had when you arrived at the compound. Your wrists were bruising, the dark red marks encircling your wrists turning a violent purple. You had a bruise forming on your cheek, too, from where Yakovich slapped you.

"Hey, F.R.I.D.A.Y?" you called.

"Yes, Miss L/n?" the A.I responded.

"Can you play some music for me? My 'Calm' playlist, please?"

"Of course, Miss L/n."

A Lana Del Rey song echoed through your room. You thought it was called 'Love song' but honestly, you couldn't be sure. You hummed along, drying your hair with a separate towel.

In the car, in the car, in the backseat, I'm your baby

We go fast, we go so fast, we don't move

"I believe in a place you take me," you sang, eyes closed, scrunching the water out of your locks. "Make you real proud of your baby."

You stood, grabbing a lavender and cedarwood lotion off your dresser. You sat back down on your bed, bringing your leg up.

"Oh, be my once in a lifetime—" You rub lotion up and down your leg, massaging it in. "Lyin' on your chest in my party dress."

You dropped your towel, moving to your drawer chest. You grabbed a pair of white cotton panties that were a size too small and an old Yankees shirt that was too big. It used to be Steve's, but one day he was doing laundry and the shirt shrunk. You snatched it before he could throw it away.

"Dream a dream, here's a scene." You pulled a pair of green fuzzy socks over your feet. "Touch me anywhere 'cause I'm your baby."

You turned around, running into a solid wall of muscle. You yelped, Steve grabbing your arms to steady you. You looked up at him, frowning.

"Hey, Sailor, whatcha doing?" Steve was silent, staring at you intently. His eyes were dark, pupils blown wide as they raked up and down your form. "Steve?"

"I've never heard you sing before," he commented, his voice a few octaves lower than you've ever heard it. "Your voice is beautiful."

Your eyes widened, inhaling a sharp breath. You thought you had set F.R.I.D.A.Y up so when you told her to play music it also activated her soundproofing protocol. Tony assured you no one could hear you.

"O-o-o-o-o-kay." You twisted out of Steve's grasp, holding your hands out in front of you. "I think you should go. Go take a cold shower or something, okay?"

"Oh, but, sweetheart. . . you said I could touch you anywhere."

You slowly stepped around him, Steve stalking you with a dark look. Your knees hit the bed and you crashed down, looking up at him in—in what, fear? Anticipation?

Steve hooked his finger under your chin, tilting your head up. He looked down on you, a crooked grin splitting his lips. You swallowed, looking at his smooth, plump lips. You quickly looked up to meet his gaze, his bright blue eyes swallowed in lust. You called out his name, your voice barely above a whisper.

And then his lips were on yours. A small whimper died in your throat, his lips soft as they moved against your own. Your eyes fluttered shut, Steve's grip on your chin tightening. His knees came up to rest on either side of you, straddling you. He pushed you down, leaning down to cup your cheeks as he sucked at your bottom lip. His heated length pressed against your center. When his tongue pressed into your mouth, you pushed against his chest again only to have him press your hands against the mattress.

Heat pooled in your core as you felt the effects of his arousal. It was a lot like secondhand smoking, the way it affected you. Steve was hooked, caught in your trap like a fly in a spider's web.

"Steve. . . Steve, wait." He pulled away, his hot breath hitting your lips, your noses almost touching. "You don't want this—please, snap out it."

"Come on, Siren," Steve smirked. "All that flirting. . . and you didn't see this coming?" His lips met your neck, trailing kisses down the column of your neck. Your lip trembled as he sucked a bruise into your skin, in the juncture between your shoulder and neck.

"Steve, please. You can fight this."

A hand trailed up past the hem of your shirt. "Oh, I don't wanna fight it, sweetheart. Look at you, all dressed up for me in my shirt, pretty as a picture."

His hand palmed your breast. You pushed against his chest, trying desperately to get him off. He nipped at your collarbone, pinching your nipple until you yelped. He shushed you, pushing the shirt over your head and up your arms. He ripped the fabric apart effortlessly, manhandling you to lay across the bed before he grabbed your wrists. Using the shreds of the old shirt he tied you to the bars of your metal bed frame. You were surprised by the amount of panic that fled through you as you pulled against the makeshift restraints, the cloth digging into the bruises around your wrists.

His lips teased your shoulder while he gently played with your breasts. He added the slightest pressure as he squeezed, your breasts fitting perfectly in his hands as you shuddered out a breath.

"Oh."

"That feel good, baby?" Steve mumbled into your neck. You helplessly nodded, whimpering as he rubbed his hard length against you in a rhythm that had your traitorous body moving your hips against him.

You tried to remind yourself that it was the effects of your powers, that both of you were under a spell and this wasn't real. It wasn't intimacy, this wasn't you and Steve so madly in love with each other it drove you insane. It was raw, unadulterated hunger. Nothing more than a spell.

"Steve, please," you whimpered, a particular grind against your core making you gasp. "You know how this is going to end—do you want that?"

"I want you, that's all that matters."

You cried out Steve's name as his lips latched onto your nipple, rolling the other sensitive bud between his fingertips. Steve couldn't mean that—if he wanted this, that meant you couldn't force him out of your spell. He was bewitched until he fucked it out of his system.

Steve's fingertips danced down your torso, hovering over your belly button and stopping at the line of your underwear. He traced the edge of the garments, mouthing at the spot where your neck and shoulder met. His fingers hooked into your waistband and he pulled your panties down your legs, dropping them on the floor. Steve groaned, inhaling your scent.

"Smell so good, baby," he murmured, "bet you taste even better."

Your cheeks flushed. You weren't sure you wanted him to put his mouth on you. It was wrong, Steve wasn't in his right mind. He wasn't thinking straight.

A strangled moan left your lips as Steve plunged two fingers into your slick heat, looking for the spot inside you that could shatter you. That coil inside you was tight, threatening to explode and send you over the edge. You began to babble mindlessly, endless pleas of 'Steve, please' and vulgar curses. You struggled against your restraints, trying desperately to touch him. You wanted to feel him. He pumped his fingers in and out of you slowly, drawing out the stimulation.

Then his lips were on the little bundle of nerves just above your entrance. You squealed, bucking your hips into his face. You thighs clenched around his head, pushing his face impossibly closer to your center. He removed his fingers from your entrance, leaving you feeling desperate and empty. You whimpered at Steve, gasping when his tongue darted into your entrance.

He devastated you with his mouth, his tongue teasing your aching clit again and again until the little bundle of nerves was vibrating. As soon as you felt your release forming, he'd move back down to your entrance, teasing it in and out of there just deep enough to have you begging for more.

"Taste so good, baby." He hummed into your flesh, sending vibrations up through your clit, his hips rutting into the mattress. He pushed the pads of his fingers up, still teasing your bundle of nerves and that was all it took. You cried out, the coil snapping like a taut rubber band, your hips involuntarily jerking as you cried out and struggled against your bonds.

Your entire body was buzzing, your limbs boneless as you panted below him. Steve climbed atop you, fervently pressing his lips to yours. You could taste yourself on him. Licking your lips as he mouthed at your jaw, you closed your eyes. Your brow was sweaty as you tried to catch your breath. Powers or not, you hadn't cum like that in a long time.

When you opened your eyes, his knees were wedged between your thighs, the tip of his cockhead at your entrance. Steve hummed, brushing himself against your wet folds. You dug your teeth into your lower lip, trying desperately not to whimper. Steve leaned down to kiss your cheek before he pushed into you slowly, his thick cock stretching your walls.

Your breath left your lungs, a cry breaking in your throat as Steve groaned into your ear, your silky heat clenching him like a vice. You pulled against your restraints, wincing as pain burned your wrists. He shushed you, nibbling at your shoulder as a means of distraction. When he bottomed out, a growl reverberated through his chest.

"Fuck." Steve's hot breath hit your ear. "You feel so good, Y/n. So tight."

You preened as Steve picked up his pace, easily falling into a hard and fast rhythm. You screamed into his chest, Steve pushing your legs up and effectively folding you in half, the new angle allowing him to hit deeper. You were losing circulation to your hands by how hard you were pulling against the strands of fabric but you didn't care. All you felt was Steve and the way the tip of his cock hit the tip of your cervix.

Your orgasm came out of nowhere—rose so quickly and crashed over you like a tidal wave, sending you reeling. You screamed, seizing up and convulsing around Steve's cock. Steve cursed, feeling you pulsate around him. Black dots invaded your vision as Steve slammed into you harder, faster, and then pulled out suddenly, hot spurts of cum shooting onto your lower stomach. With an animalistic groan, Steve fell to the side.

It took several minutes for either of you to gather your bearings. You were still tied to the bed, breathless and coated in cum when Steve rose, the color in his eyes returning.

"Y/n, I—" Steve faltered. The guilty look in his puppy-dog eyes making your chest flutter.

"Can you just untie me?" you said quietly. "Please?"

"Oh—yeah. Um. . . yeah." He undid the knot, letting you bring your hands down and sit up. He felt his heart skip a beat at the fresh marks around your wrists. He jumped off the bed and for a moment you were worried he was going to run away, but he gently handed you his shirt before pulling his pants over his hips. "Hold on, okay? I'm gonna get you a rag." You watched him disappear into the bathroom. You pulled his shirt over your head, massaging your wrists gently.

Steve came back into the room with a damp rag. He handed it to you, hesitant to sit down as you wiped yourself off. "Y/n, I'm so sorry."

"It's not your fault." You tossed the rag on the floor, looking down at your wrinkled sheets. "Just—I should have been more careful about singing."

"No—no, don't blame yourself, sweetheart."

"Listen, I'll go to Tony in the morning, tell him what happened." You sighed. "Maybe he can fix F.R.I.D.A.Y's protocol. I'll ask to be removed from missions, too, if that's what you want—"

"No, no. Y/n, I don't want that." Steve groaned. "I'll talk to Tony. I'm the one that invaded your space. I caused this, I'll fix this."

You bit your lip, ringing Steve's shirt in your hands.

"What is it?"

You sighed. "Nothing, it's just. . . I just Siren Song-ed you into sex and—and you're my friend, I don't want this to ruin things."

"It won't ruin things," Steve promised. "I was actually hoping we could. . . maybe go get some—you know, actually, never mind. It was a bad idea."

"Steve," you smirked. "What is it?"

Steve sighed. "Would you want to go get coffee with me? Maybe tomorrow?"

A smile spread across your face. "You wanna get coffee with me?"

"Yeah. I was gonna ask you after the mission, but things went a little. . . sideways."

You breathed out a chuckle. "I'd love to get coffee with you."

"Really?"

"Yeah, really."

Steve let out a sigh of relief. "Good, good. I'll pick you up after the briefing tomorrow? We can go to the coffee shop in town with all the books?"

You smiled. "That sounds great."

"Good." Steve flashed you a toothy grin. "I'm—uh—I'm gonna let you get some sleep, okay? You've had a long day."

You scoffed, slipping your legs under your covers. "Yeah. Goodnight, Sailor."

Steve stood in the threshold, shirtless and sweaty, his hair messy as he peaked past the door. "Goodnight, Siren."

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comfort-questing · 3 years

Note

Just checking in to suggest a fever for the next installment of Sienna being taken care of 👀

what comes later the day of this

"Kali, dear?"

Kali Belladonna blinked back to consciousness in the thick warmth of the night, with the crickets shouting outside the open window, and looked up from her blanket on the floor to meet her husband's shocked expression.

"I didn't know we'd gotten... a guest."

Guest - of course. Kali shook herself and yawned. "She came last night, while you were gone. We're her last resort, I suppose."

Ghira paused by the sofa and reached down, his wide hand unbelievably gentle, to brush Sienna's thick hair back from her face. His mouth twisted in sympathy.

"Do we know if anyone's after her?"

"Nobody yet." Kali got up, going to hug her husband around his shoulders, pressing her face into his back. "Glad to see you home safe, anyway. The flooding wasn't too bad?"

Ghira's voice rumbled through his bones into her ear. "We didn't lose any lives or houses. Just someone's shed that was frankly barely standing to begin with, and a few pieces of - " He broke off. "Kali, she's burning up. Let me go find some water and I'll be back."

She let go at that, of course, and knelt down by the sofa instead. Sienna was shivering despite the warm room, sweat standing out on her forehead, eyelashes dark on her tawny skin. She flinched and whimpered again at the touch of Kali's hand, but without any sign of awareness; the heat of her skin was startling, even after Ghira's warning.

"Shhh," Kali whispered, not moving her hand away, some vague attempt at grounding her delirious friend. "Shh. I know, I know it hurts."

Ghira brought fresh water and a cloth, then, and hovered worried behind her shoulder as she bathed Sienna's forehead. The startle her friend gave at the touch of the lukewarm water made Kali wince in sympathy.

"Do you have any idea what happened?" Ghira, still gently practical.

"Assassination, it sounds like, and a coup." Kali wrung out a bit of the cloth over Sienna's dry lips, hoping to see her swallow a few drops at least. "By an old friend of ours, apparently."

It didn't take too much guesswork, that. Or else it didn't matter at the moment. Anyway, Ghira didn't ask again.

Sienna shuddered again, twisting restlessly under the sheet, stained already by blood leaking through her bandages. One hand fluttered towards Kali's and grasped her wrist with surprising strength, the other reaching down in the motion Kali well remembered as the drawing of her weapon.

Kali dodged easily out of the weak backhand swing that followed, and bit her lip in sympathy as Sienna gasped in pain at the effort.

"Shh," she said, once more. "You're safe, all right? You're here with us."

For a moment Sienna's eyelids fluttered upward, under the tousled dark waves of her hair. Whether she recognized the faces above her in the faint lamplight - Kali kneeling, Ghira towering behind - or not, Kali couldn't tell. But her breath went out in a shuddery sigh, and when Kali wiped the damp cloth across her forehead again, she did not pull away.

#rwby whump #ladywhump #hurt comfort #fem whump #whump drabble #crow returns #crow writes a thing

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commentaryvorg · 3 years

Text

Digimon Data Squad Dub Comparison Episode 1 - There Are Monsters Among Us!

This is a companion to my commentary on the original Japanese Digimon Savers! Reading my commentary on the original version of this episode (which you can find here) is recommended before reading this dub comparison.

Original name ~ Dubbed name

Masaru Daimon ~ Marcus Damon

Yoshino Fujieda ~ Yoshino “Yoshi” Fujieda

Captain Rentarou Satsuma ~ Commander Richard Sampson

[Since several characters share the same name between the original and the dub, quotes from the dub will always be in italics, while quotes from the original will not, in order to distinguish them.]

First off, can we talk about the characters’ dub names? The dub doesn’t actively draw attention to its setting much (but then again neither does the original, really), but it also does not change the fact that this is taking place in Japan and these characters are actually Japanese, despite that we’re hearing them speak English. Some of them keep their Japanese names, too, even if maybe they have slight shortenings of them to be easier for a Western audience to remember. But then some characters’ names are randomly changed to completely English ones, even though these characters are apparently still meant to be Japanese and living in Japan. It’s just strange – if they’re okay with keeping some of the Japanese names, why not keep all of them?

(Honestly, despite my complaints, I am kind of a little glad that they changed Masaru’s name in the dub, because Marcus comes across somewhat of a different character to Masaru for reasons I will be discussing at length. In that sense, it’s convenient to have different names to differentiate them by.)

Kudamon: “He’s a renegade to begin with. We have no choice but to dispose of him.”

~~~~~

Kudamon: “The target is a renegade. We must catch him before he gets out.”

This is actually more reasonable than what Kudamon says here in the original.

Satsuma: “The only ones who can keep Digimon under control… are Digimon!”

~~~~~

Sampson: “Only a high-level DATS agent can capture a Digimon.”

The original version of this line was already awkwardly expositiony, sure, but this one just doesn’t make as much sense. The point is not that Yoshi is a high level DATS agent, but that she has a Digimon partner.

The dub completely replaces the original’s soundtrack. I did a shoutout to the BGM here in the original, and I also want to do a BGM shoutout here in the dub! This piece here is very different sounding from Provocation Infinity but still gives a similar sort of actiony gung-ho feel appropriate for Marcus and Agumon being fighty dorks, and I like it. It’s used often enough in moments like this such that it’s the only dub theme aside from the evolution theme that I’ve become able to pick out and recognise the melody of, even though this is only my second time watching the dub. Though I don’t know what the dub soundtrack’s titles are (actually, after having a look, it seems like the dub OST was never released, so nobody does), I like to think that this one is probably Marcus’s theme based on the moments its used in, so I’m going to be calling it Probably Marcus’s Theme.

Marcus: “This is my training ground!”

This park is apparently specifically his “training ground”, even though it’s just an ordinary park that anyone can visit. Um, okay? (More on this at the end of this episode.)

Masaru: “I’m the number one street fighter in Japan, Daimon Masaru-sama!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “One day, I’m gonna be a champion ultimate fighter!”

They’ve changed “street fighter” to “ultimate fighter”, which, okay, makes him come across a bit less like a delinquent, fair enough. But a noteworthy difference is that he’s only trying to be the best ultimate fighter. Masaru, on the other hand, feels like he already is Japan’s number one street fighter. This change still sounds fine and in-character enough on the surface, but it’s a meaningful distinction that will become quite relevant further in as we get more into Masaru’s character, so keep this in mind.

Marcus: “Fans all over will chant my name! They’ll say, ‘Marcus Damon is the best!’”

I get that what the dubbers are going for here is something equivalent in spirit to Masaru using -sama on himself. But there’s other, simpler ways to do that – just have him call himself “the great Marcus Damon”, or something like that.

As it is, what they’ve done here is make it seem like, apparently, Marcus has fans, or at least he wants to have fans. Which is not even remotely the point of his fighting thing in the original, nor will it be in the dub, either. He’s not doing this for recognition from others; this is something he’s doing entirely for himself.

Yoshi: “Raptor-1 can talk…?”

This was not a thing implied in the original – that apparently, Yoshi (and presumably therefore everyone else at DATS) hadn’t even heard Agumon talk until now. I guess they’re going for giving more of an explanation as to why DATS treated him like a monster, but I find it difficult to buy that Agumon really wouldn’t have said at least some stuff while trapped at DATS HQ. (“I’m hungry,” if nothing else, right?)

Lalamon: “Yoshi, he’ll destroy the human!”

Oh, boy. This is one of those English dubs that refuses to directly acknowledge the concept of death because apparently the poor kiddies can’t handle that or something. I will attempt to not rag on it every time it does so – only because that’d get really boringly repetitive – but I will be talking about it a lot in future episodes when death becomes quite a story-important thing that is happening.

For now, let’s just point out that it sounds really silly to talk like a human can be “destroyed”. There’s plenty of other ways to get across that Agumon is dangerous without directly referencing death that would sound more natural.

Marcus: “Then I’ll knock you out like I did these guys!”

Masaru did not mention the fact that he was responsible for beating up all the dudes this early on. I guess here in the dub, Yoshi just isn’t paying proper attention, because she’s going to continue to assume it was Agumon who hurt all the students.

Kudamon: “He’s too dangerous.”

~~~~~

Kudamon: “We cannot let this escalate.”

I am sad that the dub lost the fun “who’s too dangerous?” double meaning of Kudamon’s original line.

Yoshino: “Hey, you! Get away from him! You’ll only lose if you fight him!”

Masaru: “Huh? This isn’t about win or lose! This is about fighting man-to-man!”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “You can’t fight that creature! He’s too dangerous!”

Marcus: “Huh? Look, toots, I’m the dangerous fighter here! And I don’t need any babysitter to hold my hand!”

We really, really did not need Marcus being vaguely misogynistic by calling Yoshi “toots”, or by implying that she’s nothing but a babysitter. We really didn’t.

This also replaces Masaru’s original line that has that fun aspect of him not even caring about winning and just wanting to have a good challenging fight with a worthy opponent, so we lose that, too.

(Though, ignoring the misogyny, I do enjoy Marcus responding to “he’s too dangerous!” with “hey, I’m dangerous”.)

Agumon: “Yeah! It’s man-to-man!”

~~~~~

Agumon: “That’s right! This is between him and me!”

Agumon then also isn’t able to agree about this being man-to-man, and this just becomes a less interestingly nuanced “stay out of our fight”, rather than really about the kind of fight they want to have.

Masaru: “Got it? Now stay out of this!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “This is a fight between men, so stay out of it!”

Having removed Masaru’s reference to men a few lines earlier, the dub does something which is going to be extremely rare by its standards and actually adds in a reference to men here. …Unfortunately, because they’d also added in Marcus’s random misogynistic lines earlier, this comes across much more like it’s about gender, and he’s just essentially saying “we don’t want any girls in our fight”. Which, no. Masaru talking about manliness is never actually that much about gender at all, despite the word he uses.

Masaru: “I see you’re pretty brave.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “I dunno what you are, but you’re goin’ down!”

We lose the sense of Masaru having respect for Agumon challenging him in place of some basic I’m-better-than-you trash talk. And this also adds in Marcus calling Agumon a what, rather than a who, indicating that apparently Marcus is paying some attention to Agumon’s species and is seeing him, at least a little, as not quite worthy of the same respect as a human.

After their big cross-counter…

Agumon: “I wasn’t ready. But you won’t get me this time!”

~~~~~

Agumon: “Hey! I wasn’t ready! I was waitin’ for you to say, ‘One, two, three, go!’”

The dubbers completely missed the point of the original, “I wasn’t ready.” Original-Agumon’s line comes across as “I wasn’t expecting you to be that strong, but now I’ve got the measure of you”, like he’s gained more respect for Masaru’s strength. Meanwhile dub-Agumon is just whining and acting like Marcus totally cheated rather than acknowledging his unexpected strength.

Agumon kicking Marcus in the crotch is cut, replaced with a rather cheesy-looking comic book POW sort of effect across the whole screen.

There’s a cute acoustic guitar BGM here for their bonding moment that I like, especially after recognising its melody and realising that this is a variation on Probably Marcus’s Theme! That seems very appropriate.

Agumon: “You’re… pretty good… for a human.”

Geez, what a backhanded compliment. Apparently dub-Agumon still sees Marcus as below him simply because he’s human, rather than fully acknowledging his strength regardless of species.

Agumon: “Let’s call it a draw.”

This line fills a silence, stating something that was already perfectly well implied in the first place by the fact that they’re no longer fighting and yet there’s no clear winner. It shouldn’t need to be said. In fact, it makes it seem a lot more like this fight really was just about winning or losing to both of them, when in the original that was never the point.

Rather than “Aniki”, which, okay, works fine in subs but can’t really be kept in a proper official English dub, Agumon calls Marcus “Boss”. I guess this is acceptable, but I feel like it would have been better for them to lean into the “big brother” meaning of aniki, rather than the “boss” one, for reasons I will be grumbling about a lot.

Masaru: “Aniki?”

Agumon: “Yeah. You’re the first person to acknowledge me as a full-fledged individual, Aniki.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Boss?”

Agumon: “Yeah. Y’see, you’re the only guy who’s ever matched me blow-for-blow in a fight before.”

So, in this version, Agumon gaining respect for Marcus has absolutely nothing to do with Marcus treating him like a person. It’s just because of his strength, nothing else. Way to lose that really fun little bit of nuance and character depth on both sides.

(Also, what does Agumon even mean, “before”? It’s not like he’d have been able to have proper fights that weren’t just defending himself while trying to escape until now.)

Agumon: “That’s why, from now on, I’ll be your follower!”

~~~~~

Agumon: “That makes you the boss. From now on, you give the orders and I’ll faithfully follow!”

Matching Agumon in a fight shouldn’t really suddenly make Marcus the boss who gets to order him around, should it? Plus, here’s Agumon explicitly saying Marcus can give him orders, which was not at all part of the arrangement originally. This whole thing has such a different tone to “you treated me like a person when nobody else did, so now I look up to you and will be loyal to you.”

Marcus: “I never thought one day that I’d have an employee that’s as funny-lookin’ as you are.”

Oh, boy. Meanwhile, instead of “follower”, we have… employee. That is even more completely missing the point of the aniki-and-follower relationship of the original. If they didn’t like the gang connotations of “boss”, maybe they should have gone for “big bro” instead, perhaps? But no, they just doubled down on the “boss” in a totally different and inappropriate direction. Marcus has apparently just started up a small business.

The heartwarming BGM gets a record scratch as Yoshi reminds them she’s still there. I admit, it made me chuckle.

Yoshi: “So, are you gonna come quietly, or do I have to use force?”

Marcus: “Who’s she talkin’ to, you or me?”

I do enjoy this – a little implication that Marcus has some experience with being treated in a similar way, perhaps by the regular police.

Masaru: “It’s the aniki’s job to look after his follower. I’m not handing him over to you!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “I’ve never had an employee before, and I’m not turning my only one over to you!”

Instead of Masaru doing this out of feeling like it’s an aniki’s responsibility, Marcus is making it about himself. He doesn’t want to lose his new and only employee. Like Agumon’s just a possession of his now. Nothing about how this is something that should be expected of him as a boss.

Later, at the tower, as Agumon asks Marcus to help him evade DATS:

Marcus: “What am I getting myself into this time?”

I enjoy this too. More implications that Marcus is used to getting himself into all sorts of Trouble.

Agumon: “I’m starved!”

Marcus: “Well, suck it up and act like a real man!”

Again with the dub adding in references to manliness that weren’t there originally, as if Marcus actually has a concept of manliness that will continue to be a running theme. Haha, I wish. Get ready for me complaining about the exact opposite of this in basically every other dub episode.

Agumon: “I’m a growing boy!”

How does Agumon even know this phrase? This is an entirely human concept. Dub Agumon will be doing a lot of this, awkwardly invoking human ideas that he shouldn’t have any conception of.

Yoshi: “Yum. I love chocolate pudding – it reminds me of being a little kid again!”

Yoshino’s coffee jelly gets localised into chocolate pudding, because I guess coffee jelly is more of a Japanese thing that Westerners might be unfamiliar with? I enjoy the added detail that it reminds her of being a kid and that’s why she likes it.

Masaru: “I don’t know anyone by that name!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “I have no idea who this ‘Raptor-1’ is!”

Marcus’s line loses the technically-not-lying and respecting-Agumon’s-identity of the original line. He does know who this “Raptor-1” that Yoshi’s talking about is, even if that isn’t actually his name.

Masaru: “How’d you know my name?”

Yoshino: “You yelled it out earlier for everyone to hear.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “How do you know my name, anyway?”

Yoshi: “I know everything about you.”

No pointing out that he yelled it out earlier like a huge dork. Instead, she just really leans into the DATS-are-creepily-authoritative vibe that she already had a little of in the original.

Yoshi: “Born April 2nd in Tokyo, blood type B, Ootori middle school eighth grade.”

Him being born in Tokyo was not a detail mentioned in the original. And also probably not true in the original, since the series is set in Yokohama and there’s no indication that his family moved here. The dub is presumably still set in Yokohama even though it’s never mentioned, just because the scenery is that of Yokohama, so I guess they’ve just established some dub-only canon that the Damon family moved home at some point. This will actually come up briefly later. I am shocked that I’m saying this.

At least, props to the dub for mentioning Tokyo and making it pretty overt that, yes, this is set in Japan. (You know, with this Japanese guy called Marcus.)

Yoshi also does not explicitly specify Marcus’s age, only that he’s in eighth grade. Which (I’m pretty sure, though I’m unfamiliar with American school grades and may be wrong) would make him fourteen anyway, at least assuming he hasn’t been held back at any point. Keep this in mind, because this will also come up later.

Yoshi: “…and you now live with your mother Sarah and your little sister Kristy, who looks up to you even though you generally act like a jerk.”

First of all, how the hell does DATS have so much information that they even know how his sister feels about him?

Second of all, more importantly, way to just tell us that, hey, did you know, Marcus is A Jerk, hey, guys, you’re supposed to think he’s a jerk, because… he fights things, I guess?

The reality? Masaru is not a jerk. Not even slightly. He’s reckless and hot-headed and will fight anything that poses a challenge, but that is not even remotely the same thing as being a jerk to people.

But apparently the dub doesn’t understand this, and they seem to think that being a jerk is somehow meant to be one of his most noticeable character traits. And I guess they’re trying to present the idea that he’s going to slowly grow into being a nicer person through the power of Digimon and friendship? Which is not at all any kind of arc that Masaru is going to have, because he is not actually a jerk in the first place.

If it was just this one line that seemed to think this, I wouldn’t be that annoyed. But one of the biggest things I’m going to be complaining about with the dub is the fact that they actually do change Marcus’s character significantly to make him noticeably more of a jerk than Masaru ever was. We’ve already seen a little bit of this sort of thing going on so far in this episode, with how they’ve removed focus from the bits with Masaru treating Agumon like a person and instead made it all about fighting, and specifically winning those fights. But, oh boy, there’s going to be a lot more, to an extent that it has to be deliberate.

And aside from me just finding this very frustrating as someone who deeply loves Masaru’s character to see him distorted like this, I also can’t help but boggle at why they would ever want to do this at all. Why would you deliberately adapt a character – the main character – to be less likeable than in the original version of the work? How does it not occur to you that this is only going to make your new audience enjoy the work less? I do not get it.

Lines like this one here are even worse, because they blatantly violate “show don’t tell”. Along with making Marcus act like a jerk and showing us that, the dub’s narrative is also telling us that he’s a jerk and insisting we should think that about him instead of letting us make up our own minds. It’s so lazy and heavy-handed. There will be more like this and I do not like it one bit.

Yoshi: “I’m with the Digimon Data Squad.”

I guess the Data Squad really is its full name in the dub. Even though the acronym is still DATS. Don’t ask me how that’s meant to work.

Marcus: “That’s a great story, dollface, but what’s it gotta do with me?”

Can we not with the Marcus being casually misogynistic? Can we not? (Thankfully, this isn’t going to be a recurring thing. Other ways in which Marcus is being made less likeable will be, but at least not this.)

Marcus does not say anything about assuming Agumon was just a frog. Since Masaru having thought that is going to be relevant again later in the series, this is a loss of not just a moment of amusing dorkiness but something actually meaningful.

(One thing that is very clear about the dub is that, with a few exceptions, they do not appear to have watched ahead to see the whole series first and are just dubbing episode-by-episode. For a series like this with quite a strong overarching plot and lots of little things like this that get callbacks, that means that a lot of this overarching sense of cohesiveness will be lost, simply by accident, because they didn’t realise there was something important there worth keeping around. This is another thing I will be talking about a lot.)

Yoshino: “As long as you keep running from DATS, Raptor-1 will only starve to death.”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “If you don’t return Raptor-1 to us, he’ll starve to death!”

This is a little different. Yoshino was only trying to get Masaru to come to DATS, supposedly to pick up some Digimon food. Yoshi, meanwhile, wants Marcus to bring Agumon to DATS. Which on the one hand is a more helpful strategy for what she’s trying to achieve. But on the other hand, he doesn’t bring Agumon, because obviously the dub can’t change the episode that much, so instead we’re just left with that awkwardly not being what happens despite it being brought up.

Yoshino: “You…”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Thank you.”

The hint that Yoshino is gaining a new respect for Masaru from his desire to help Agumon gets lost here, in favour of simply a thanks-for-finally-co-operating. Might partly be just lip-flap’s fault – the Japanese “you” is two syllables – but still, Yoshi’s tone of voice could at least have done some of the work to imply the same as the original, and it doesn’t really.

Kudamon: “This is the boy that put Raptor-1 under control? He doesn’t appear to have any special power, at any rate.”

~~~~~

Kudamon: “Interesting that this is the boy who fought Raptor-1, because nothing about him indicates that he’s able to fight at that level.”

We lose any implication that Satsuma might have been telling Kudamon things about Masaru offscreen, and instead here’s dub-Kudamon simply refusing to believe the evidence of his own eyes. You literally watched him fight Agumon on your screen. He very evidently can fight at that level.

Kamemon: “Enjoy.”

Marcus: “I’m not thirsty.”

Kamemon: “Suit yourself.”

Kamemon actually says words in the dub as he brings Marcus tea! This was very bizarre to me when I’m used to original-Kamemon, who almost never speaks at all.

Masaru: “Just hand over what I came for.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Just say what ya have to say and stop wasting my time!”

Apparently the dub has forgotten that Marcus only came here to pick up Digimon food for Agumon, and suddenly he expects to be receiving a speech here when he shouldn’t.

Masaru: “Renegades?”

Kudamon: “Yes. Raptor-1 has already entered the human world and injured humans. He cannot be allowed to go free.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Why are you calling him a renegade?”

Kudamon: “Because Raptor-1 has already entered the human world and made contact with human beings, so he can no longer be allowed to go free.”

I would complain that it’s a bit much that Agumon’s getting in so much trouble simply for meeting humans in the dub, and not specifically injuring them like they were assuming in the original. But, as it turns out, the original is also going to call Digimon simply meeting humans a “crime” in the next episode, possibly as part of its early weirdness. So, eh, this isn’t really the dub being any sillier than the original here.

Satsuma: “Daimon Masaru, you should work with us to create a bright future for both humans and Digimon!”

~~~~~

Sampson: “Please co-operate. The future relationship between humans and Digimon depends on you returning Raptor-1 to us.”

Also, apparently Sampson isn’t actually trying to recruit Masaru to join DATS with this speech. I can understand the logic behind changing that, since Satsuma was going about that whole thing weirdly vaguely.

That said, saying that the entire relationship between the two species hinges on this one Digimon being returned doesn’t make any sense. So I get the feeling that the implication of what Satsuma really wanted in the original line just went completely over the dubbers’ heads, and they simply thought they were translating his intent directly and made it sound rather silly as a result.

Masaru: “What the hell is this? Stop pestering without even listening to what I have to say first!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Why not? Because I don’t owe you people a single thing!”

We lose the fun subtle Masaru-y nuance of him caring about being given a chance to express how he feels here. Though I suppose it’s also relevant and illustrative that Marcus is implying he would help them if he felt like he owed them, showing a sense of responsibility there.

Masaru: “…but have you even considered why he suddenly showed up in this world? He admired this place! He admired this wide world, filled with things moving around that he’d never seen before.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Have you thought about why he came to the human world in the first place? What if he didn’t have a choice? Maybe things were bad for him back in the Digital World!”

This would be Marcus being sweet and thinking about how Agumon feels… if it wasn’t for the fact that Agumon told him he doesn’t know about anything except the institution, and therefore clearly didn’t deliberately try and run away from something bad in the Digital World. Pay attention to your foll – uh, employee, Marcus. Masaru’s line there had somewhat forgotten or misinterpreted what Agumon had told him, but Marcus’s is doing so to a much greater extent.

Masaru: “But if he starts rampaging, then I’ll be responsible.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “And if he gets into any sort of trouble, I’ll claim full responsibility for his actions.”

This sounds like a perfectly reasonable translation, but the dub version of the sentence does not work nearly as well to foreshadow the thing that the original line is foreshadowing and this makes me sad.

Marcus: “But only if you give me some food for him!”

…This is immediately following the previous line. So I guess, since they never give him any food, Marcus doesn’t end up obligated to take any responsibility for Agumon getting into trouble. (Even though that’s still what he is going to do when they think Agumon’s attacking the hamburger shop. But this makes him come across like someone who’s less willing to do so no matter what and has less of a strong sense of responsibility.)

Kudamon: “It looks like you’ll have to take responsibility sooner than you thought.”

~~~~~

Kudamon: “Do you now see how hiding him has created a security breach for all of us?”

This change makes a fair amount of sense, since original-Kudamon was being unreasonable by insisting Masaru should take responsibility for Agumon’s hunger when that was really Yoshino’s fault. And it also fits with the fact that Marcus never actually promised to take responsibility since he wasn’t given any food.

Yoshino: “So this is where you were hiding him. Since he’s nowhere to be seen, it must be him who attacked the hamburger shop.”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “So this is where you were hiding Raptor-1. A lot of good it did you, since we confirmed it was definitely him who attacked the hamburger stand.”

No, you didn’t! How did you confirm a thing that isn’t true? If this is Yoshi lying, that’s just a dick move; she doesn’t even have anything to gain from it. It feels more like this was the dubbers not paying attention and missing the original’s meaning, which is very obviously that Yoshino was assuming based simply on the fact that Agumon went missing. But he didn’t actually attack the hamburger stand! Did they not even watch ahead to the rest of this episode to realise that?

Marcus: “Why’d you attack a hamburger stand?”

Marcus asks this of Agumon after finding him with his head dorkily stuck in a trashcan, not really all that close to the explosions and flames. Way to jump to freaking conclusions after basically just finding proof that Agumon isn’t the culprit, geez! …Though I suppose that can be partly blamed on Yoshi inexplicably insisting he definitely was.

Agumon: “Huh? I didn’t attack anything, but a hamburger sure sounds good!”

Agumon should not know what a hamburger is. Again with his dub version knowing more human things than he should.

Kudamon: “He hasn’t been tamed. I don’t understand why he’s fighting alongside human beings.”

This just makes no sense. What the hell does “tamed” even mean? Doesn’t it just mean “has become willing to work with humans”? Because if so, he evidently has been tamed, actually. Just sounds frustratingly like Kudamon trying to insist he Knows Better than this nobody kid, and I don’t think that’s meant to be his character.

Agumon: “Aniki! He’s really strong…!”

Masaru: “Doesn’t that just fire you up!?”

Agumon: “Y… yeah!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “No! Agumon!”

Agumon: “Boss! I’m fine, but could you lend a hand?”

Marcus: “Ha! How about I lend a couple of fists!?”

The dub’s version of this exchange is kinda still cute, but it loses that fun nuance that Masaru loves how strong their opponent is, and that Agumon is learning to agree with that idea thanks to him.

Yoshi: “That thing will tear you to pieces!”

See, here’s a way to avoid directly using the word “die” or “kill” while still making it clear that’s what she’s referring to, without awkwardly acting like humans can be “destroyed”.

Masaru: “When you’re in a man’s fight, you’re already risking your life! The moment you get scared of dying is the moment you’ve lost the fight!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Besides, the ultimate fighter is always willing to make the ultimate sacrifice!”

This significantly changes the meaning here, and instead Marcus is apparently consciously willing to get himself killed if necessary, even though the kinds of fights he’s been in before really aren’t something that’s actually worth dying for at all. Masaru’s philosophy of acknowledging but then choosing to brush aside the potential risk in order to fight better makes more sense, because he’s not actually intending to die for anything.

The dub’s changed version of this line will also not work for the callback that the original line is going to get later in the series. I’d talk a lot more about why not, but, spoilers, so I’ll save that for then.

There’s a brief snippet of music here during the Anime Sads that appears to be a sad piano variation of Probably Marcus’s Theme, which feels appropriate. I don’t remember it from my one previous dub watch-through, but I hope it gets used in some of the future much more substantial moments of Marcus being sad about things.

Masaru: “You… How dare you hurt my follower!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “It’s… It’s fightin’ time!”

We also lose another future callback here. But on the other hand, “it’s fightin’ time!” is going to become Marcus’s catchphrase that he uses basically every time he fights (a dub-only catchphrase that Masaru has no equivalent of, and that I’m really pretty happy with), and this moment when he’s avenging Agumon getting hurt is definitely an appropriate moment for it to start being a thing.

The dub’s term for Digisoul is, instead, DNA. Luckily for the biologist in me, who would otherwise be tearing my hair out over this, this stands for something entirely different from deoxyribonucleic acid, because boy would it being that kind of DNA make absolutely zero sense. It’s still pretty awkward that it happens to be the same acronym as a commonly-known thing that it could easily be mistaken for, mind you.

I don’t know why they couldn’t just keep the term Digisoul, though. It’s a perfectly good term! It can’t even be that the dubbers have some kind of oh-no-religious-references objection to using the word “soul”, because that word is also in the dub’s opening song that we’ll be hearing every episode.

Old man: “By mastering this technique, your Digimon can Digivolve.”

Um, sure. The technique of waving your glowing hand over the Digivice is definitely something that needs to be “mastered”.

Marcus also yells “DNA Charge!” out of nowhere for the first time. But in his case, the old man never actually mentioned the word “charge” when telling him what to do here, so it’s even less clear how he knew that was what he was supposed to say.

Alas, the English dub does not dub the original evolution songs in Digimon. The evolution music instead is an instrumental version of the dub’s opening song, which, though I prefer Believer, is an acceptable replacement in terms of creating a similarly triumphant mood.

Marcus: “That’ll teach ya! Don’t mess with my employee!”

Oh my god, wow, way to completely unintentionally mood-whiplash the triumphant moment by reminding us that this huge powerful dinosaur is actually just your subordinate in the new small business you’ve set up here, Marcus. A small business of punching everything.

Agumon: “Aniki! I’m hungry!”

Masaru: “What the hell… That’s so anti-climactic…”

~~~~~

Agumon: “Boss! I’m hungry.”

Marcus: “What else is new? I’m just glad you’re safe.”

This addition is cute. Originally Masaru’s just referring to the anticlimax of Agumon devolving so fast.

Masaru: “How about going for a hamburger?”

Agumon: “Does that taste good?”

~~~~~

Marcus: “How about a nice hamburger?”

Agumon: “Ooh! With cheese, too?”

On the one hand, at least the dub remembered the fact that this Agumon somehow already knows what a hamburger is. On the other, this raises even more questions in terms of how he also knows that they can come with cheese.

Yoshino: “But that one’s already injured 13 students!”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “But Agumon still injured fifteen men!”

Remember how the original tried to calculate fifteen minus one and got thirteen? Well, the dub tried it and got fifteen. Somehow each of them managed to get this very simple sum wrong in a different way.

(And yes, the dub did also specifically have Lalamon sense fifteen humans at the park in the beginning. Actually, it flashes back here to a part where Yoshi was then relaying to HQ that there are fifteen victims, but that was before she saw that Marcus was still standing. I guess it’s plausible to assume that Yoshi herself forgot to subtract Marcus after that and this is her mistake rather than the writers. Not convinced that’s the case, though.)

Also, told you the dub would forget about the part in the beginning where Marcus yelled out within Yoshi’s earshot that he beat up the dudes.

Marcus: “Those were some punks claiming to be ultimate fighters who wanted to train in my area, so I fought them for it, and guess what, I won!”

This begs the question: how the hell is that park supposed to be Marcus’s training ground? Surely, it’d make most sense as a training ground if it was where people regularly come to challenge him to fights? Instead, he only fought the dudes there because he wanted to drive them away from his training ground, so that he can continue to train there, alone, in a perfectly ordinary park that isn’t a gym or anything like that. How is he supposed to train there without opponents? Does he just, like… punch the trees?

I understand if the dub wants to make Marcus have slightly less of a teenage delinquent vibe, but the resulting implications they have here instead are just amusingly nonsensical. It does not seem like they actually thought about this very hard at all.

Overall differences

Overall, the dub of this episode shows a pattern of things generally making a bit less sense and having a bit less nuance, and Marcus in particular being just a bit less interesting and distinctive than Masaru. This is going to be such a regular pattern for every single dub episode that I probably won’t even bother to remark on it in most of these summaries going forward.

In terms of more specific effect on how this episode comes across, I think the most noticeable shift is that the sense of Marcus’s empathy towards Agumon despite his species is watered down slightly. Perhaps most notably, Agumon did not become loyal to Marcus because Marcus treated him like a person, but instead just because he matched him in a fight, which is less meaningful.

The terms “boss” and “employee” also give something of a different vibe to their relationship than in the original. Obviously the dub had to localise “aniki” to something, but I don’t think this was the best choice. This’ll be a thing in every episode, of course, but I’m bringing it up here because this is where it starts.

Then there’s the part where one of Yoshi’s lines casually established that Agumon had never spoken before. As much as this doesn’t make any sense to be a thing – why would he not have spoken while being held in DATS? – I guess it makes it slightly more reasonable that DATS then sees him as just a monster? Though they should also be changing their tune quite quickly when they realise he can speak, which of course they don’t. I guess this could have been an attempt to justify the original’s issues with DATS’s attitude towards Agumon… but not a very effective one.

#digimon #digimon savers #digimon data squad

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