#i am aware most answers can be boiled down to being complicated; even so it has been nice to hear from everyone of different circumstances

[aueua]

people with siblings: how do you feel about them?

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

I don't know. I think it's unfair to pretend Meghan was not protected only because she was not playing by palace's rules.

From articles, Meghan was not just sending emails at 5 am, she was yelling at staff, making them responsible for failures in her plans well after the end of their day. I remember one saying that they ended their day of work, were out and they kept having calls from her and Harry saying their failure ruined everything, that they were the worst or whatever, not respecting their private life. There was also the story about the ice cream truck where Meghan specified that it was only for her staff and that W&K's staff and children should have none of it. It seems to me that at one point someone even talked about how she was not sending information to someone and then blaming that person for not knowing. Someone even said once that some of her ex-staff ended up traumatised and I don't remember hearing that for anyone's staff. Like, Andrew's staff sound annoyed by him and mad, some of Charles' and Di ex-staff are mad but traumatised ?

I mean that there must be a part of truth but to make it the reason it's a bit big to me. Especially as Meghan was leaking from the get go with those "Kate didn't go shoping with me" and her/her team was sending puff pieces and anti-Kate comparison quite early on. I don't think C/C had much to do to break anything (but I do believe they did things - they always do) and we love talking about it but the Fab four thing lasted from february to december (after that, there were too many rumours of feud to make it really believable). It was not a really established thing as Catherine was in maternity leave for most of it and there was holidays. And I do think Meghan sent many of her staff off and that they were the ones leaking (Melissa Touabti, Sam Cohen, etc). If we don't hear things about Camilla and Catherine it's also because their staffs are loyal. I mean, we don't hear of them, neither Sophie, having let down but they are human, they surely have, so it must not be automatic misogyny.

I mean that I admit a part of it can be true. But there were so many things going on that saying she was fed to the wolves by misogyny only doesn't sit well to me.

(I'm sorry, I know you don't have clear answers, it's all rumours but I like your way of thinking and decoding, so I think I'm asking for a theory ? Or if you have more info clearing what I said ? )

You bring up a lot of great stuff too.

Something to keep in mind is that part of doing analysis or a contextualization is being aware of timing and knowledge. I like to use the Rumsfeld theory of knowledge (or the Rumsfeld matrix), which breaks everything down into:

Things we know or the known knowns - facts that we are aware of and understand. This is our knowledge.

Things we don't know or the known unknowns - facts that we know exist but don't understand. This is the gap in our knowledge that research can address.

Things we know we don't know or the unknown knowns - facts that we don't realize we know. These are things that perhaps we've dismissed or overlooked, or things we know but don't understand yet its importance or relevance.

Things we don't know that we don't known or the unknown unknowns - the facts/factors that we aren't aware of, can't predict, don't know. This is uncertainty and risk. These only come to light with the passage of time.

That matrix is further complicated by timing: what we knew then vs what we know now. What we know now will always have more information, knowledge, and facts than a "what we knew then" analysis.

What we knew then essentially boils down to "knowing only what I know today right now, this is what is currently happening." You have to look at the facts as they were known then at {{event}}.

What we know now is essentially "knowing what I know today right now, this is what was happening then." We use the facts, stories, intelligence, investigations, research, etc. that have happened since {{event}} to give context to what was happening at {{event}}.

Let's look at the Fab Four Forum, for example.

The "what we knew then" analysis, using only the facts that we knew in February 2018, is that there was some awkward tension between the two couples (William's laugh at the question if they ever butted heads and Harry's glare), awkward tension between Harry and Meghan (from when Harry chimed in that they needed to plan the wedding first) and awkward tension between Kate and Meghan (Meghan's dagger eyes at Kate). There was also a disconnect between the others and Meghan, given that Meghan wore cocktail attire while the rest wore business attire and that Meghan seemed to do the most speaking. So the analysis is something like eh, no big deal, they were all nervous, it's the first time all four of them were together in a formal public setting, there's a new person coming on board, of course it's going to be a little awkward.

The "what we know now" anaysis, using everything that we know as of March 1st 2024, is that the Fab Four Forum was a disaster: Harry and Meghan had confronted William and Kate for not rolling out the red carpet for her, Meghan had been caught (at some point much earlier) taking photographs of the Cambridge children, Meghan had thrown Kate off-guard by asking for her lip gloss and Kate had upset her by her reaction, wedding planning was in shambles/not going well, the fashion designers were all favoring Kate, Meghan was making demands of the KP staff and bullying people around, Kate was dealing with her brother's mental health crisis, Harry was making demands to be treated like William, etc. and so on. Which is very dfferent from the February 2018 "ah, this is just growing pains from a new person" analysis.

Or look at the wedding. If you were to do an analysis with the Rumsfeld Matrix on the wedding in June 2018, it would be totally and completely different from a Rumsfeld analysis done today in March 2024. Kate's grimace/body language in the official portrait means something very different today than it did six years ago - because we know more today. I remember when the Sussex wedding portraits were released, everyone here was talking about Kate's body language in the photo and there was so much speculation about why she was so visibly uncomfortable. People chalked it up to "she's three weeks post-partum, of course she's uncomfortable, and she's holding Charlotte in her lap to hide that she doesn't feel like herself/her best self."

But six years later: oh, Meghan and Ivy were bullying Charlotte so Kate was in "Mama Bear" mode, Meghan and Harry had insulted Kate over her "baby brain" hormones, there was the quarrel over Charlotte's dress and whether the girls would wear tights/socks, Meghan had slammed the door in Kate's face when she tried to apologize, Meghan was spreading gossip about the Cambridge marriage, Meghan and Harry were throwing wild parties at NottCott that Kate had to keep shutting down, Meghan kept trying to hug everyone, there was a lack of respect from Harry and Meghan for everyone, and she was three weeks post-partum. No wonder she looks disgusted to be there.

Very different interpretations of Kate's body language in that photo, right?

So that's why when you look at everything that's happened, you have to be careful to stay consistent with how you review or look at things. It doesn't really matter if you're looking at it "then" or "now," it's just more important that if you look at it "then," you're not adding facts from "now" or if you're looking at it "now," you're more objective about "then"'s coverage.

If you're looking at something as it happened back in 2018 or 2020 with Megxit, you mainly have to consider only the facts as you knew them back then. In this case, everything we've learned since then adds context that explains why certain actions were taken (or not taken), why certain body language read the way it did. You have to be careful not to mix "now" and "then" events because when you incorporate "now" events into a "then" analysis (or understanding the past by looking at the present), the waters can be easily muddied with assumptions that may or may not be true. For example, William's laugh and response at the Fab Four Forum when they were asked if they ever had any disagreements. Knowing what we know now today, it's reasonable enough to assume that William laughed because of all the "firm" or monarchy-related issues they were having -- but we don't actually know if that's correct. It's more reasonable to assume that William laughed because he was thinking more about the brotherly spats he and Harry get into that has nothing to do with the monarchy or the Royal Foundation at all.

A more effective analysis (or a theory-making exercise, if you will) is when you look at "now" events through a "then" lens. Or, in other words, trying to understand the present by looking at and contextualizing the past. William's hard line and blunt rejection of Harry's attempts to weasel half-in/half-out from Charles is because of the monarchy-related issues, because of the chaos Harry and Meghan caused, because of how they treated their staff and RPOs, because of controversies with charities and the finances, because of their attacks on Kate and Charlotte, because of their demands to censor the free press, because of their exploitation of Diana, etc. And while that still is an assumption (because again, we don't actually know what William thinks), it's a more conclusive assumption and one that's likely to end up validated.

I hope that makes a bit of sense. So getting into your ask...

I don't know. I think it's unfair to pretend Meghan was not protected only because she was not playing by palace's rules.

It wasn't the only reason (and I apologize if that's what I led you to think!). It was probably one of the bigger reasons why she failed, but yes, definitely not the only reason.

From articles, Meghan was not just sending emails at 5 am, she was yelling at staff, making them responsible for failures in her plans well after the end of their day.

Correct. This is what I meant by culture differences in US vs UK. Remember, at the time when all this was happening, Meghan and the palace excused this behavior as "this is how Americans work." (Which absolutely went down like a lead balloon because all the Americans came out of the woodwork saying "no, we don't do this, that's not our work culture." And interesting, the palace stopped saying "it's American nature" pretty soon after this, though Meghan doubled down on it, and has kept doubling down on it.)

I remember one saying that they ended their day of work, were out and they kept having calls from her and Harry saying their failure ruined everything, that they were the worst or whatever, not respecting their private life. There was also the story about the ice cream truck where Meghan specified that it was only for her staff and that W&K's staff and children should have none of it. It seems to me that at one point someone even talked about how she was not sending information to someone and then blaming that person for not knowing. Someone even said once that some of her ex-staff ended up traumatised and I don't remember hearing that for anyone's staff. Like, Andrew's staff sound annoyed by him and mad, some of Charles' and Di ex-staff are mad but traumatised ?

Yes, I remember this too. Either Valentine Low (in Courtiers) or Tom Bower (in Revenge) wrote about this extensively. But again, that's not something we knew back in 2018/2019. We only learned it was this specifically bad in 2022*, which ends up contradicting Meghan's "no one protected me" claims - the palace absolutely did protect her. Not only did it take 4 years for that specific detail to come out, it was also probably discussed in the bullying investigation...which the palace 100% suppressed.

*A lot of people assumed it was this bad before the books came out, specifically because of the "Meghan has an American work ethic which is much more direct and aggressive when you're not used it" defense. There was a lot of discourse around Tumblr then that if you had ever been in a toxic relationship or a toxic workplace, you saw "Americans are direct and aggressive by nature" for the gigantic red flag it was and knew from then that Meghan was nothing but trouble. While there were suspicions, it wasn't as openly discussed until it started being confirmed by the rota and the books.

And also regarding the ice cream story, there's two versions to it. One version is that she was so kind enough to get an ice cream truck for everyone. The second version is that Meghan hired the ice cream truck only for Sussex people and that no one from the Cambridge side (not even the kids) were allowed.

Look at the timing of it. The first version came out in 2018, was promoted heavily by Meghan's PR and KP said nothing. They didn't issue a correction and just let her reap the public goodwill. It wasn't until 4 years later when Low/Bower came along that the second version/the truth was revealed.

Again, the palace protected her. They could've come out in 2018 to say "Meghan bought an ice cream truck and refused to share with George, Charlotte, and Louis" and sat back to watch the public turn on her. But they didn't. They didn't say anything. That's a form of protection.

So because we know all of this now, we can look more critically at why Meghan's attacks failed: because she ignored the actual evidence. What probably happened is that Meghan had certain expectations of how the palace would protect her, and when that didn't happen, she started crying racism and misogyny to anyone who would listen. Now, why did Meghan have certain expectations for what protection meant? Why didn't she understand what she was really signing up for? Why wasn't she appropriately prepared?

Because of Harry. But she can't really blame Harry, right? Not yet at least. She still needs him because he's the one making all the money - Netflix, Spotify, Oprah, Tyler Perry, Jamaica, they don't care about her. They want Harry because through Harry, they get the royal family. But that's all "what we know now." We assumed a lot of this back in 2018/2019, but this wasn't fact yet. These were all "unknown knowns"; things we knew but didn't know how important it was.

I mean that there must be a part of truth but to make it the reason it's a bit big to me. Especially as Meghan was leaking from the get go with those "Kate didn't go shoping with me" and her/her team was sending puff pieces and anti-Kate comparison quite early on.

This behavior of Meghan (the leaking and the gossip, the constant PR and puff pieces, the 'I'm better than Kate' stories) is exactly what I mean by she didn't play the palace's game so the palace didn't do everything they could. I should have been clearer: this behavior/these tactics isn't Kensington Palace's game so of course Kensington Palace wouldn't go to extra lengths to protect her. But this is, to an extent, Charles's game - so Clarence House, and as Charles was the heir then, Buckingham Palace protected her. But I don't think that was what Meghan wanted. I think Meghan wanted William and Kate (but mostly Kate, I think) to protect her or use more of their fame, popularity, and wealth to elevate her to a position equal to them. And when that didn't happen, she turned even more against Kate and started to turn Harry against Kate.

I don't think C/C had much to do to break anything (but I do believe they did things - they always do) and we love talking about it but the Fab four thing lasted from february to december (after that, there were too many rumours of feud to make it really believable). It was not a really established thing as Catherine was in maternity leave for most of it and there was holidays.

True, yes. But again, what we know now vs what we knew then. What we knew then was that Fab Four was the future of the royal family and the Royal Foundation. It's important in the "what we knew then" analysis because of how it was going to influence the monarchy's future.

But on the other hand in the "what we know now," it was just pure disaster - and prematurely rolled out, exactly for the reasons you listed. First Kate went out on maternity leave a month after the Fab Four Forum, which put them back as the Terriffic Trio but subbing Meghan in for Kate (and literally too - remember the ANZAC Day service at Westminster Abbey when Meghan sat between William and Harry in Kate's position instead of on Harry's left?). Then they were launching The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who needed to be able to stand on their own two feet away from the Cambridges which led to the whole Sussex branding effort. Then the public/press turned on Harry and Meghan and William booted them from KP and then William booted them from the Royal Foundation and "Fab Four" was dead before it even started. Now it's a joke, a sarcastic reminder of the palace machinery shoehorning Meghan into a place she didn't belong in because Harry's demand to be equal to William because they were both sons of Charles and Diana, grandsons of The Queen.

So once again...it all comes back to Harry.

And I do think Meghan sent many of her staff off and that they were the ones leaking (Melissa Touabti, Sam Cohen, etc). If we don't hear things about Camilla and Catherine it's also because their staffs are loyal. I mean, we don't hear of them, neither Sophie, having let down but they are human, they surely have, so it must not be automatic misogyny.

I mean that I admit a part of it can be true. But there were so many things going on that saying she was fed to the wolves by misogyny only doesn't sit well to me.

Exactly -- you see it very clearly that the issues are more nuanced than how they were first presented to us. That's the benefit of "what we know now"; we see things much more clearly because we have more facts, more knowledge, more "known knowns" and we've been able to reassess the "unknown knowns."

Meghan doesn't see it this way. She's still stuck on "I was fed to the wolves because misogyny" because she didn't get exactly what Charles and William got. She didn't understand (or she refused to understand) that she's never going to be equal to Charles and William, but it's not because of misogyny. It's because she's the married-in wife of the spare.

If she didn't get what she wanted, if her expectations weren't met, if she wasn't prepared, if she was sold a bill of counterfeit royalty, that's not Charles's or William's or Kate's fault. It's the fault of the man she married, the man she conned and duped and gaslighted and manipulated with his dead mother's perfume she married, the man she decided to have children with, the man she loves.

But she can't turn on Harry yet. So she blames misogyny. Now, yes, there probably was some misogyny involved, especially in how the press treated her. But to blame the whole kit and caboodle on misogyny?

When all the facts clearly show that "her truth" isn't the truth? When all the facts show that it's because she didn't follow the expectations and rules set by her bosses at Kensington Palace? (And yes, William and Kate were the bosses because they were the priority principals/royals.) When none of the other married-in wives have these problems? When all the facts show that it was her husband, the one person she insists is absolutely blameless, who created these problems?

Sure, maybe back in 2018 or 2019 it was misogyny. But it's not misogyny anymore, no matter how hard Meghan tries to gaslight people otherwise.

I hope this helps, anon, or at least gives you some things to think about.

And as always, apologies for writing another essay. I didn't mean for it to get this long.

[thebreakfastgenie]

Look, I have had a really bad week at work (narrator: it was Wednesday) and I have a splitting headache so possibly I am coming across as more inflammatory than I intended. However, it does not feel like you are reading my messages in good faith.

Obviously Trapper’s name was given to him by the writers; every aspect of his character was. That’s how fiction works, and I am well aware of that. The reason I find his name objectionable is that it’s emblematic of an era of the show that has aged the most poorly, with the lighthearted and/or misogynistic depiction and discussion of sexual assault (or, as you pointed out, other misogynistic themes) that other characters like Hawkeye aged out of to an extent but Trapper never got the opportunity to. These feelings are then compounded by the fact that I don’t find the character as written particularly compelling; perhaps if I did, I would more easily be able to overlook those things. This is not an insult to the character or to anyone who likes the character. It was intended purely as an explanation of why I do not, in answer to your comment about how you don’t understand why people don’t love Trapper. Nor was I trying to “lecture” you about the false rape allegations as a misogynistic trope. I was trying to establish that I agreed with you and show evidence in the text of how this is a valid reading but still one that I do not ascribe to.

Regarding your post about Colonel Potter; I believe that you posted that while I was typing my previous message so I did not see it until after I submitted the ask. I thought about sending a follow up to address that but thought it was unnecessary.

When you have time I would like to see your thoughts on the remainder of the ask I sent because this was never intended to be some kind of Trapper shitflinging fest: that was intended just as an offhand closer to my actual point which is how the show approaches the subject of cheating in different ways with different characters and how this makes those characters more or less sympathetic to audiences and some reasons I thought that might be. Specifically I’m interested in your views on what I raised in my second ask, the ones about cheating with only a physical component (casual sex), married characters falling for characters other than their spouse, and long-standing affairs with a stated intent to continue to carry on the affair in a romantic and sexual way (even if the character does not intend to actually follow through on maintaining the relationship).

Since you mentioned how Potter is the least sympathetic because his adultery took place outside of the context of war, I’m also interested in your views on Frank as a character who is implied to be a serial adulterer (having a lasting affair with another woman prior to the war also).

I'm sorry that you had a bad week but you don't need to take it out on me. You can make your own post, you know? I'm also a bit tense with anons these days since I've been called a c*nt and told to kill myself. Full disclosure I'm also drunk now.

I don't see how Trapper's name can possibly be "emblematic" of that era of the show, when that very era of the show chose not to use the origin story for it. There are parts of the show that have aged poorly, although not many. I simply don't agree that Hawkeye "aged out of it." The show did stop doing storylines like that, but the history of how the show handled women is complicated. We saw less of the nurses later on. Episodes like Inga and Hey Look Me Over were both about Hawkeye treating women poorly, though those were intentional so he learned his lesson. So is Who Knew to an extent. Margaret's fear of being raped if she's captured is treated seriously maybe once. And men get this treatment too; Hawkeye's joke about a stewardess forcing herself on him in Adam's Rib boils down to "men cannot be sexually assaulted."

I understand that you don't care for Trapper, but treating him as emblematic of what you don't like about the early seasons is not rational or objective. You forgive Hawkeye because you like him. That's okay, but I don't sympathize or take that seriously. I also don't think there's a question that the early seasons are better, both artistically and politically. So you won't get far with me saying you dislike them. There are a couple moments that make me cringe, but while I'm normally pretty sensitive to misogyny, I don't feel bothered by the early seasons much.

I do think your point about romantic vs purely physical affairs is interesting. I think which one is "worse" depends on what the partner who was cheated on thinks. But I do lean toward finding purely sexual affairs easier to forgive, especially in the context of MASH. I'm not going to tell someone who's been drafted and is seeing everything those guys are seeing that it's wrong to turn to sex for comfort, whether he's married or not. That's me. A romantic affair, where another relationship is being actively pursued, is a different thing. I think just having feelings is beyond your control (so BJ is in the clear with Aggie) but acting on them is something else.

Like I said, I appreciate the reasoning, but my comment about not loving Trapper was an aside because someone said they couldn't understand not loving Charles, but casually placed Trapper at the bottom. I get Trapper not being someone's fave, but I find the hate he gets just doesn't make sense to me! You can explain it, but I'm still not going to feel it. I don't think cheating is that important to his character.

Yes, we crossed; I wrote that post about Potter before I saw your ask. I wasn't thinking about Frank when I said Potter is the least sympathetic. But Potter cheated on the woman he loved. Frank doesn't love Louise, and if he had a spine he'd just get divorced. I find Frank and Margaret's affair fairly sympathetic, because I think they're in love, and for a while they're happier with each other than anyone else. Frank is never going to marry Margaret and deep down she knows it, but he'd be happier if he did. Their affair is hardly the worst thing either of them do, being Army supporters and Republicans. Their hypocrisy is worse than their adultery, judging Hawkeye and Trapper for sexual activity while doing the same thing. Frank having affairs before is scummy, but it's also consistent with his character and again, not the worst thing he did. He's just not a good person. He's a great character, which is why I rank him so highly. But I do find his pre-war affairs unsympathetic. Man up and get a divorce if you're so unhappy.

The war makes me very sympathetic, because sex is a comfort, a distraction, a way of feeling human under insane circumstances, when home doesn't even feel real and there is a very real chance you might die. If I were married to one of them, I'd have simply said the relationship was open until they got home, but even so I'd forgive them for whatever happened. I think the bigger issue is the double standard, like we see with Henry and Lorraine, but even then, being home alone for two years is hard but it's not the same as being in a war.

Edited to add it felt like you were lecturing me because from your phrasing I felt like you were telling me it was misogynistic like I didn't know and literally say so.

[krispytidalwavesheep]

Hopes and Dreams II

First of all: HOW AMAZING ARE YOU PEOPLE?! You gave me so much serotonin. All the reblogs with added tags, all the comments and favs and all the new followers, you are amazing. I will add a taglist for future chapters, so if you wanna get tagged, hit me up, and you will be added to that list. Seriously, I love you guys. ***

“Will you be able to walk?” Alcina asked and you just shrugged and motioned for her to lead the way. You walked in companionable silence for a while, which gave her the chance to take a longer look at you. You were pretty tall, even though you were still rather small compared to Alcina. She was pretty sure that you were taller than Heisenberg though, and that made her feel odd. You held yourself with a confidence she wouldn’t have expected after everything that happened in the last few minutes, reminding her again that you were not unfamiliar with the supernatural. It unnerved her to no end, and she found herself wanting to solve the mystery that surrounded you. Where did you come from? Exactly what is it what you were doing here? Would you turn into a threat or into an ally? Alcina wasn’t stupid, far from it. She knew that Mother Miranda’s hold on the Lords was slipping, Heisenberg’s silent plotting was proof enough. Did Mother Miranda know that you were here? Alcina sure didn’t, and the other Lords didn’t mention a stranger roaming the village and the surrounding woods. Although Heisenberg mentioned that an unusual amount of Lycans had disappeared. 

Her eyes roamed your figure again. Your hair was kept in a neat undercut, colored in a hideous blue that still looked good on you. You were clad in a black Hoodie and equally black Cargo pants, as if the cold didn’t bother you at all. It was the middle of the winter and yet you strolled through the cold as if it was springtime. Which made her wonder if you were really just a mere human. Everything she experienced with you implied that you weren’t ordinary and that intrigued Alcina greatly.

“You could just ask me about myself, you know?” you said and smiled up at her knowingly. Alcina flustered and wiped some non-existent lint from her long dress. So, you were aware that she was watching you.

“We usually don’t see strangers in these parts, especially ones who seem to know more than they should. Which raises the question why exactly you are here?”

“Considering that we just met, my lady, it wouldn’t be wise to reveal my whole tragic backstory. And further considering that I don’t know if I’ll see the light of day ever again if I were to enter your castle, forgive me if I won’t trust you with my motives yet. All you need to know for know is, that I am a traveler and have been for my whole life. I search for artifacts, among other things, that my benefactor can sell for good money. He took me in when I was just a child and took great care in training me. He is the closest thing I have to a father figure, although most people think me insane for the trust, I have in him. And as for why I am in Romania, I don’t really know to be honest, or wasn’t when I first got here. It was a gut feeling telling me to come here, and I find that I can trust those feelings, whenever they arise.” You said and stretched.

“I won’t keep you locked in the castle if you don’t give me a reason to mistrust you. There is a reason why no one come to these parts, so I am very wary of strangers. I have daughters to protect after all.” Alcina said, musing about what you said. If you were a traveler looking for artifacts, it would explain why you look at the supernatural as if it was a normal occurrence.

“You will have to see for yourself then, but I can assure you, that I am not here to hurt you or your daughters. My last mission… Didn’t go well and I originally came here recharge a bit, if you know what I mean. Again, forgive me if I am being too careful, but I have more enemies than I have friends, and I really like living.” You said carefully and Alcina kept staring at you. You didn’t seem dangerous to her, how could you, looking like you did, but she was still wary. She felt the sudden urge to protect you from whatever enemies you were talking about, but you were strangers. That realization hurt her more than it should, but with your past lives, it was so different. She always knew who was in front of her, whenever she met you, but this time around was just so complicated.

She felt drawn to you, even with your boyish looks you were still immensely attractive to her, and the way your blood sang to her made you all the more alluring. More than ever before if she was honest. But that is the problem, you were still familiar to her, but not as much as before and it scared her. You still had the potential to destroy her, even if you didn’t know about that.

***

You could practically smell the curiosity rolling of Lady Dimitrescu. She was wary of you and yet there was something in her eyes that you couldn’t quite place, even though it made your heart soar to new heights. She was as much a mystery to you as you were to her, and you felt so drawn to her. Like a moth to the flame. You briefly wondered if it had something to do with her nature. She seemed like a careful person, but considering from what you heard in the village, you totally got that. Which is why her next question caught you quite a bit off-guard: “Do you actually have a place to stay or are you just roaming around the forest, picking fights with Lycans?”

“Are you offering, my lady?” you said, wearing a Cheshire grin and wiggling your eyebrows. The blush that colored the Lady’s cheeks was worth every punishment you could possibly get from that comment. You still valued your life though, so you said: “I don’t mean you any harm. I just enjoy some friendly banter and it has been ages since I felt comfortable enough to do so. To answer your question, no, I don’t really have a place to stay. I’m helping someone with their housework every now and then though, so as a thanks they let me sleep on their couch whenever possible.”

“What kind of housework?”

“Nothing much, some cooking and general repairs.” You shrug and the smile she gave you was positively sinful when she asked, “What else are you able to do with your hands?”

It was your turn to blush and blushing you did; you even felt the tips of your ears go warm and it didn’t help at all that Lady Dimitrescu started chuckling. Still, you weren’t one to miss an opportunity so you said “Well that’s for you to find out, my lady” with a smaller voice you would have liked. How had one woman such a power over you?

“Hmmm, maybe I will, my dear,” she said and winked, making your brain short circuit. You stumbled in your steps and her hand steadying you didn`t help one bit. Sparks shot through your arm when she touched you and you felt something niggling at the back of your mind. No one ever had such an effect on you, no matter how stunningly beautiful they were. Suddenly, shivers ran down your spine, and not the good ones, so you took a protective stand in front of Lady Dimitrescu and said “Careful. Someone is watching.”

And just as you spoke the words, a shadow descended upon you and your instinct started to kick in. Your knife was out in seconds, a voice in your head urging you to protect your Lady. So, when the shadow descended upon you, you had it pinned down, snarling furiously. You felt your fangs elongating and your sense grew ever sharper. Well, seems like the cat was out of the bag now.

“Let go of me!” the girl you had pinned to the ground snarled, but her attempts to flee were futile. 

“Give me one good reason to not kill you on the spot. How long have you been stalking us?” You snarl, feeling your blood start to boil.

“Let go of her, dear. She had no ill intentions.” Lady Dimitrescu said, and against all odds, you calmed. Huh. That had never happened before.

“Is this a new plaything, mother?” the girl asked, and you started snarling again, but a hand at the back of your neck made you freeze.

“Don’t be rude, Daniela. She is our guest, and she needs some medical attention. So be nice.” Lady Dimitrescu said and the girl, Daniela started pouting and muttering something under her breath. You were still on edge, bare containing the snarl that wanted to leave your throat. The hand around your neck tightened in warning and another shiver ran down your spine. One of the good ones.

“So, I was right about you. You are not entirely human.” Lady Dimitrescu purred, and you had the sudden urge to bolt and hide away. You noticed how much she must have hold back until now, the danger rolling of on her in waves was something you never once encountered.

“I told you that something happened to me. If you promise not to harm me, I will tell you what happened. But I can promise you that I am no danger to you or anyone else, if not properly provoked.” You said and dusted of your knees. She let go of you and turned to Daniela, conversing with her in Romanian. Daniela looked at you with sudden intrigue and a nasty smile. She practically screamed trouble, and you weren’t sure if you could handle it.

“Come now, it isn’t far anymore. Daniela will alert the castle of our arrival, to avoid any nasty surprises.” Lady Dimitrescu said and led you away. And sure enough, a few minutes later you reached the castle gate, three figures awaiting you. One you recognized as Daniela, so the other two must be her sisters. One of them looked at you with mild interest, while the other one looked at you with a spark of recognition in her eyes. Had you met before on one of your travels? You were pretty sure that wasn’t the case, but let it slide anyway, since you had bigger problems right now.

“Bela, would you please prepare the sitting room in the west wing? I will need some antiseptic and bandages, warm water would be wonderful too. When you are finished with that, prepare the guest room next to mine. We will talk later.”

The one who seemed to recognize you from somewhere left in a flurry of… bugs? What the fuck? 

“Cassandra, Daniela, please prepare a light super. I will talk to you two later two. Just bring the food into the sitting room when you are finished, yes?” The order was given gently and in another flurry of bugs, you were alone again.

“You can explain yourself when I am cleaning and dressing your wounds. Come now.” She said and led you into the castle. You were still processing the abilities of her daughter, so you followed her silently into the dimly lit entryway. *** Taglist: @imdreamingblo

[genshin-impact-writings]

(I hope I did this right)

Howdy barista, can I get a:

Medium

Caffe latte

Hazelnut syrup

Whipped cream

Thief Venti X prince/princess reader

Thank you so much for your request! Here's your drink, my dear: A medium caffe latte with hazelnut syrup and whipped cream on top. I hope you enjoy! <3 (Reblogs are very much appreciated.)

Prompts: Hurt/comfort + royalty!AU + “Stay with me, please.” + “I don’t think I can do this anymore.” (400 followers event: JJ's coffee shop)

The price of freedom – Thief!Venti x royal!reader (gn!reader)

Growing up in a palace and being the only heir to the throne had always been tough for you. Between endless lessons about etiquette, history, politics and dancing you barely found the time to be yourself – or to have fun. Your whole life was strictly planned out by your parents, starting from the things you would do throughout the day through to the person you would marry in the near future.

And you were so sick of it. So sick of it that you had decided to break out of the golden cage around you to finally get some time for yourself at some point.

Therefore, sneaking out of the palace after dark had become a habit a long time ago. It was the only time where you felt like you could be yourself, like you could be truly (Y/N) without having to live up to your parents’ unrealistic expectations. When you were out there, you always felt like you could finally breathe again. There were no responsibilities, no lessons or meetings with members of the court who wanted to sweet-talk you into supporting their grand plans for the kingdom once it was your turn to claim the throne. It was so tiring to listen to their seemingly endless monologues which were nothing more than the jabbering of bumptious old men, at least in your opinion.

But the thirst for freedom wasn’t the only reason for your nightly wanderings. No, there was something else to it, something far more important than escaping your royal duties for a while. Well, not something, actually. Someone, rather.

Venti, the mysterious thief with the beautiful aqua-colored eyes who had tried to steal your wallet when you had first met and instead stole your heart. Up to this day, he hadn’t returned either.

Not that you minded it, though. Falling in love with Venti was the best thing that had happened to you in a long time, although you couldn’t deny that your relationship made your life a lot more complicated than it already was.

And it had gotten even worse when your parents found out about it. You would never forget the mixture of utter disgust and confusion in your mother’s eyes when your father confronted you about everything this morning. It still made your blood boil to think about the way they had spoken about Venti.

A worthless waste of space, your father had called him. As if he knew anything about him! They had no idea who Venti truly was and how happy it made you to be with him. Or maybe they knew and simply didn’t give a damn about your happiness, just like always. Why else would they insist that you’d never see him again?

“Don’t forget who you are,” your mother had said before telling you to go back to your studies, as if they hadn’t just shattered your whole world into a million pieces with a few words.

But you weren’t planning on giving your happiness up so easily. You weren’t the docile lamb they wanted you to be. No, you were strong and independent and hell-bent to fight for your right to be happy, even if it meant breaking your parents’ hearts.

One last glance at the palace, the place you had called home for so long, then you took a step towards the center of the town. Then another one, and another one, and before you even realized what you were doing, you were running.

Running away from the life you no longer wanted. Not when you weren’t allowed to share it with Venti.

*

You found him in front of the tavern where you had first met, showing some sleights of hand to bystanders who rewarded his tricks with polite applause.

Hesitatingly, you waved at him to catch his attention. When he saw you, a smile flashed over his face, his pretty eyes sparkling with joy while he started to gather his belongings, uttering apologies to the people who complained that the show was already over. “Come again tomorrow,” he chirped. “I’ll be here.”

You greeted him with a smile which he returned before grabbing your hand and dragging you into a less crowded area of the town. “You are insane,” he mumbled, just like he always did. “What if someone recognizes you?”

“Hence why I am wearing this,” you replied and pointed at the hood of your cloak that covered almost your entire face. People would have to come incredibly close to you to recognize you, and so far, that hadn’t happened. Or maybe it did because how else had your parents learned about your relationship with the infamous thief?

“I wanted to see you,” you added a little breathlessly as you tried to keep pace with Venti. Ignoring his cheerful “Obviously!”, you continued, “Please, it’s serious. My parents – they know about us.”

He stopped dead in his tracks, causing you to bump into him. When he turned around to look at you, the careless expression in his eyes was gone and replaced by a seriousness you had never experienced with him. “Say that again.”

You bit your lower lip- “My parents know about us. They have forbidden me to ever see you again and I-“

“You’re here to tell me that this is the last time we’re seeing each other, right?” Venti interrupted you, his voice shaking ever so slightly, although he was really trying to keep his composure. He had always known that this day would come – but he had never expected it to hurt so much. He wasn’t ready to lose you.

“No, silly, I’m here to ask you to run away with me.”

“(Y/N), please, don’t make it harder than it- wait, what?” He stared at you in utter confusion, completely taken aback by your words. “What did you just say?”

You gently squeezed his hand, locking your gaze with his. ��Run away with me.”

For a few moments, Venti didn’t say anything. Your words kept echoing in his mind, your wonderful proposal to leave the kingdom to start a new life elsewhere – together. But could he really do that to you? You were born to rule over this kingdom one day, you grew up in a sheltered and luxurious environment and knew basically nothing about the world out there. How could he take all of this away from you just because he was too damn selfish to let you go?

“Why?” he finally asked, very well aware that you had expected a different answer. You were disappointed; he could see it in your eyes.

“Why? Because I love you! Because I want to be with you!” you replied, your voice getting louder with every word. “Because – because I feel like I can’t breathe in this damn palace where every step I take, everything that I do is observed and judged by my parents.”

Suddenly, there were tears in your eyes and you didn’t even bother with blinking them away. “Venti, I – I don’t think I can to this anymore. I constantly feel like I am not good enough, like I’m not the heir they want me to be and I – I just can’t go back there. Please, don’t make me go back.”

The tears were streaming down your face now, the sheer amount of sadness in your eyes tugging at Venti’s heartstrings. He hated to see you cry and knowing that he was the cause for your tears only made it worse.

“You will lose everything you have,” he finally mumbled. You sniffled. “I know. But I don’t care, don’t you understand? All of this means nothing to me when I can’t be with you. You are what matters most but if I have to, I will leave this kingdom alone. I want you by my side but I won’t beg you to come with me.”

It was only then when Venti realized how serious you were about your whole plan. You were ready to leave everything behind to start a new life – including him if he decided to stay which meant that he would lose you forever.

“Stay with me, please,” he said, the words coming out of his mouth before he could stop himself. Now he was the one begging you not to leave. “We’ll start a new life somewhere else; we will leave this kingdom if you really want to but – please don’t leave me behind.”

You wrapped your arms around his waist, burying your face in the crook of his neck. “Thank you,” you whispered your breath warm against his skin. Venti kissed the top of your head.

He still wasn’t sure if it was the right decision to leave everything both of you knew behind but as long as you were together, he wasn’t afraid to find out.

Taglist: @blissmal, @aimicoos, @sunsaturnn

[ask-fantasy-sanders-sides]

So, wait, toes Remus know that Virgil is a dragon too?? if he does, did Virgil tell him or did he just figure it out?

It wasn’t too long after their escape from the prison complex that Remus got irritated.

He didn’t regret dragging the strange assassin along — after all, Remus probably wouldn't have been able to escape without him — but he was getting more and more frustrated with his lack of response to...well, anything.

Remus has attempted more than once to scare and/or gross the stranger out with diatribes of gore and violence, but that hasn't phased him at all. Really, Remus thinks he probably should have expected that response from a dark-elven warrior, but it was a little jarring to have his usual monologues accepted with little more than a cursory glare. It didn't help that he had to speak to the soldier in the goblin language, which neither of them knew well enough to share many complex ideas.

Then, there were his rages. Remus wasn't really himself in that state, and he knew he was quite the sight to those who had never heard of a barbarian. He's pretty sure that if he had some foggy awareness of the assassin being disgusted or even mildly intrigued by his berserk mode, he would have remembered them. As it stands, nothing.

Then, there was his trump card: The first time Remus let out his true form and went berserk on a few guards, the assassin barely even noticed the difference. Remus dismissed it at the time, assuming they had just been busy doing their thing and hadn’t seen him do it. But, as they were sneaking away from the castle spires the next day and he had to dispose of some noble-looking witnesses, Remus definitely saw the assassin look at his wings.

Still he made absolutely no reaction! He doesn’t seem to react to much of anything, unless he’s being mad at Remus for yelling too loud or missing a swing. Admittedly, being able to spark annoyance in the stuck-up soldier is a little fun, but even his moments of anger are few and far between.

This is the first and only time someone has seen Remus’s kick-ass undead angel wings and not had a damn thing to say about it, and Remus can honestly say he hates it.

So, now that they’re finally outside of the Colony walls (and Remus doesn’t have to worry about the assassin chewing him out for making a scene,) Remus smirks deviously at the unsuspecting drow.

“Hey! Watch this,” Remus shouts, then closes his eyes to focus.

He reaches deep inside himself to connect with that boiling mass of discordant energy — a frothing core of divine light that’s spoiling rotten and necrotic, burning away the mold, healing, and then spoiling again, over and over with each beat of his two hearts. As he’s practiced ever since he was a child, Remus grabs that energy and pulls it out, dismissing a weight in his stomach that he hardly notices until it's time to let go.

The instinctual protective glamor that hides his true form dissolves in the firelight of his true essence, as bone-like angel wings, void-like eyes, and a tidal wave of smoke pour out of Remus like air from a popped balloon. A sickly green glow outlines his irises, his scars, and emblazons the emblem of a sword over his chest. He can feel it as the energy unfurls, how the world spins and sears into focus, how his senses grow sharp and breathing is suddenly so much easier than it’s ever been before. This is what he truly is, how he really looks, and it is a figure that strikes fear and awe in every creature who has the misfortune of seeing it.

All except one. Apparently.

The assassin simply stares at Remus, stone-still as Remus’s whole fucked up magical girl cutscene plays out point-blank in front of him. The fear-inducing necrotic gas rolls past the assassin's feet and into his lungs, but nothing happens. A few seconds pass, and he still hasn’t moved, but he’s clearly not gone into shock or anything of the kind.

Eventually, the assassin gets the impression that Remus is expecting a response. So, he cocks his hip out to one side and folds his arms, mimicking the facial expression that he’s gathered humans make when they’re confused: a pointed eyebrow raise.

(Given his usual glowering expression, it comes across more like sass.)

The minute passes, and though Remus feels the smoke dissipate and his eyes and scars return to normal with a sinking feeling in his gut, the wings remain. Instead of dismissing them, Remus throws his arms out wide with a growl,

“Seriously? That’s it? You’re not scared!”

“Scared?” The assassin parrots lowly.

A wide smile stretches across his lightly-freckled face. In the space of a blink he’s behind Remus, gently peeling the barbarian’s tattered shirt away to get a better look at the base of his wings.

He lays one ice-cold hand against the divot between them, touching him clinically, like he’s trying to figure out how solid Remus's wings are. His hand smooths gently across the stump where flesh gives way to semi-transparent bone before Remus's brain catches up. He shrieks and jumps away from him,

“What the shit are you doing?!” Remus squeaks, eyes wide as saucers. He would be more embarrassed by how absolutely unthreatening he sounds right now if he didn’t still feel the shape of that hand on him like a brand.

(He decides that this is more because of the supernatural nature of his wings, and not because Remus hasn't been touched that carefully by another person since he was like eleven. He doesn’t have time to unpack that feeling whatsoever.)

“You told me to look.” The assassin teases, openly laughing at Remus’s expense.

Then, — and Remus could swear he’s doing it slowly just to make sure Remus sees him — the soldier takes a deep exhale, and his purple eye flashes a soft glow. Suddenly, his body evaporates until he is a cloud of shadowy smoke. This smoke quickly blends in with the surrounding darkness of the cavern, and before Remus can get a word in edgewise, the assassin has re-solidified and is poking his back again.

“StoOOP TOuching me!” Remus yelps and spins around to face him, face red as blood and hands up in a defensive position, “Since when could you do that?!”

The assassin rolls his eyes at this, his hands falling to his sides. Now he takes a moment to think, before reaching down to untie his dagger belt and pull his tunic loose.

“What are you doing?” Remus protests louder, covering his eyes with his hands.

The assassin doesn’t respond.

Though he’s reciting curses in his head and trying very hard to respect this stranger’s privacy, Remus’s curiosity quickly gets the better of him.

He peeks out between his fingers to find the soldier shirtless, his white hair parted and pulled over his shoulders. He looks up at Remus with a completely unimpressed stare.

The assassin reaches out to grab one of Remus’s hands, then turns to show Remus his back.

Remus stares for a moment, eyes tracing the thin, ragged lines of a latticework of scars. They stretch across and around the assassin’s back, some older and some deeper. Most seem to have been inflicted by animals or monsters rather than weapons.

Remus feels no sense of pity at the display — he’s got his own patchwork of scars and his own complicated relationship to them, but over all he sees them more as a mark of survival, as stories to tell. But, he is definitely curious, and his mile-a-minute brain is already spinning outrageous tales to match each and every mark.

Then the assassin guides his hand up towards the top of his back, just alongside his spine. The skin there feels leathery, and significantly warmer than the skin of the elf’s hand, though the heat seems to be emanating from someplace lower on his spine. It’s also slightly off-color, a bit lighter than the skin around it. Whatever this is, this scar is old.

Remus traces the outline of it up, then off to the side as it tapers to a thin line between his shoulder and the base of his neck. The assassin’s ears twitch at the gesture, and Remus’s hand flinches away.

He turns to look at Remus over his shoulder, his neutral grimace returned.

“We are the same. Shadow and wings. You are kitrye'maelthra, right?”

“I don’t know what that is.” Remus frowns, always frustrated when the assassin sneaks an elven word or two into their rare conversations,

“I’m not super good at reading energies, but you don’t feel like an angel… You have wings??”

“No.” He frowns, his gaze becoming soft and distant, “Not anymore.”

“Oh.” Remus sighs, now reeling at the possibilities.

What sort of dark elf grows wings, and how can they be removed? He winces at the phantom pain to his own wings as he parcels through every guess. Did a monster tear them off? The scar was so smooth, it seemed more like they had been burned away with acid. Did he fall into the pit of a living ooze, or maybe it was a punishment from some cruel cultist—

“Yours are broken.” The assassin pries, still staring at him while Remus zoned out.

“Broken? No they're not!”

“You have no skin.” The assassin remarks, like that should have been obvious, “And you look like a ghost.”

“Wait, skin? Like a bat?” Remus laughs, imagining it. He shakes his head, “I’m not supposed to have skin! —Well, I mean, I am, but also feathers. Y’know, like a bird?”

“Bird?” The assassin repeats, like he doesn’t understand the word. He probably doesn’t, goddamn Underdark.

“...Ehh, forget about it. I’ll show you one when we get up there.” Remus shakes his head.

The assassin pulls his tunic back up and re-ties it. While he waits, a sudden thought knocks Remus out of his gruesome imaginings.

He thinks he probably shouldn’t ask, but it takes him all of three seconds to snap and say it anyway,

“Hey,” Remus hums offhandedly, like he’s not extremely invested in knowing the answer, “If you could ‘go ghost’ or whatever this whole time, why didn’t you just poof yourself out of that cell?”

(“And why did you stay to help me?” Remus refuses to add, because he is not that attached to his little stray-criminal monsterboy, goddamnit. He refuses.)

The assassin doesn’t answer or turn back to him, simply staring off in the direction of their path.

Remus huffs and rolls his eyes,

“Fine, damn, keep your secrets. Bet you just can’t hold it that long~”

“Don’t xhandal me, lotha mal'dhalaruk. Usstan orn da'urzotreth dosst et'zarreth.”

“Again, I do not know what the fuck that is.”

[tunedtostatic]

Back in August, I posted a big wordy essay about how I think the handling of disability in the season two finale of Starship Iris came as close as a work of fiction can get to misinfo with the potential to cause harm. Given the nature of the internet, I geared up for what I thought was every possible outcome: disagreement, agreement, some of each. Maybe inevitably, the outcome for the first couple of months still managed to catch me by surprise by being something I hadn’t thought to expect, signs of reading but not much verbal response. (This past month, it did get three responses from people saying they were glad they’d read it, which decreased my worry that I’d screwed up big time in a way that I and my initial beta reader, who participates in fandoms but not this one, hadn’t realized.)

Originally, I wrote about these issues because I think they’re important to talk about and because I wanted to rip off the bandaid of an initial conversation. After neither of those things happened, I want to push these issues a little again, mostly for the boring and somewhat selfish reason that I think a conversation about them is going to come up sooner or later, whether because what I wrote is out on the internet for new listeners to run into or because new listeners get to the season two finale and go “WTF,” and I keep fretting that the initial rip off the bandaid starter conversation will pop up at the most awkward possible time, like the middle of the Yuletide fandom exchange or the beginning of season three.

In an earlier draft of this post, I followed the previous paragraph with a paragraph that boiled down to “Can we start a conversation about this?” But it was kindly and correctly pointed out to me that since “conversations” online are often contentious and painful, it might be helpful to say why I want to start a conversation, beyond a general “I think it’s important to talk about this, and that conversation hasn’t started yet.”

I have several answers to What are you looking for out of this? I’m interested in hearing from other people. I think conversations about disability are important. I’m not immune to the desire to do some good old-fashioned complaining. And I wanted to find ways to talk, without pressuring anyone, about ways to be aware of this stuff when creating fanworks. But at the end of the day, the problem I had with the work was its potential to spread misinfo, so what I most want is to spread accurate info. Even if people reading this are all over the place when it comes to agreeing, disagreeing, or having other thoughts on the parts that are subjective fiction crit, I hope the real world statistics I included here can provide information on issues that can come up for anyone.

The essay I wrote this summer was very long, so for this post I wrote a summary. These issues are complicated, and while the essay isn’t perfect I think the long form at least let me try to address them with more nuance than is possible in a shorter version, which is why I’m keeping it metaphorically linked (and actually linked, but in the notes so Tumblr doesn’t eat the post LMAO).

Thanks again to L for beta reading the original post and Sanvi (windywords123) for beta reading this one!

[Couple of edits, Nov 28: I’m kicking myself a little for including the thing about timing, since I don’t want anyone who runs across this later to feel like I was giving this post an expiration date. I still wish this stuff was a little more widely known and discussed and am happy to do so Whenever.

Added a TL;DR below. I realized this is still kind of long, which is in and of itself an accessibility issue. Also, a family member and possibly a friend are about to start listening to season two, and I wanted to come up with something actually short that I could adapt and send to them.]

• The scene where Arkady tries to kill Krejjh, and describes herself with apparent accuracy as a time bomb who will inevitably hurt the people she loves, is a cliché half-century-old trope about combat PTSD that doesn’t match closely to reality. In reality, any kind of violence or aggression due to PTSD is rare (between 8% to percentages in the 30s, with the variation coming from differences between studies and definitions, like whether screaming at people was included), and within that small percentage, violent/aggressive actions due to anger, stress, irritability, or a startle response are much more common than violence/aggressive actions due to losing touch with reality during a flashback.

• For both anger/stress or a flashback, the violence/aggression is more likely to be someone screaming, throwing/hitting an inanimate object, or shoving or hitting someone who startles them or gets in their space—lethal violence due to someone losing touch with reality and thinking they’re somewhere else or a person is someone/something else is possible but extremely rare. Yet so often in fiction, people with PTSD are portrayed as automatically lethally dangerous.

• I’m one of the small fraction of people with PTSD who have lost control and done something violent/aggressive. It isn’t that I don’t think we should ever write about that in fiction. The problem is seeing something painful and horrible reduced to an inaccurate, cliché fifty-year-old trope, in a context that gives its inaccuracies credibility.

• When I looked up PTSD and violence to find citations for the essay, several articles talked about the trope: “Most of us are familiar with the classic movie trope — a character with PTSD doesn’t recognize that he’s no longer at war and violently lashes out at the people around him,” as a 5 Myths About PTSD article put it. You can feel everyone’s exhaustion with it.

• In real life, the false belief that people with PTSD and other stigmatized mental health conditions are automatically severely dangerous leads to and exacerbates stigma and what is presumed to be “justified” violence against people with mental illnesses, a vulnerable minority who are statistically more likely to become victims of violence than to harm others.

• This podcast’s realism around other serious real world topics, with Violet’s anxiety and Sana’s depression being portrayed in a realistic way, seems to at least loosely imply that its portrayal of PTSD is accurate as well (and the fifty-year-old inaccurate lethal violence PTSD trope scene is indeed content warned as a “PTSD episode.”) This adds to the degree to which this trope is part of a harmful pattern.

• Because “harmful,” as compared to “unpleasant,” “benignly inaccurate” or “I didn’t like it,” is such a heavy thing to say about a story, I think that when using The H Word in fiction criticism, it’s important to untangle the different things people can mean when they use it:

1. “This was a trauma trigger for me.” Neutral, not a value judgement (and shouldn’t be used as one, IMO).

2. “This story is part of a harmful pattern.” This is my central criticism of the Arkady strangling Krejjh section of the scene, which is part of a longstanding pattern of fiction portraying PTSD inaccurately. This pattern as a whole contributes to real life false beliefs about PTSD, which contribute to negative consequences for people with PTSD.

3. “This story harmed me [by being published] [by my experience of reading it].” I think this one is slung around a little too much on the internet. If it isn’t something like creative nonfiction that exploits real people, a work written by a stranger probably isn’t “harming” a reader through their experience of reading it. There’s a grey area—I don’t want to imply that no one should ever conceptualize, for example, reading something deliberately bigoted against a group of people you belong to as “harm.” But I don’t think saying a work of fiction “harmed me/harmed readers” is often a fair, or harmless, thing to say.

4. “This story on its own has the potential to cause harm.” This is the really complicated one. Like “harmed me [past tense],” it’s an intense thing to say, and like “harmed me [past tense],” it tends to get slung around on fandom social media about any work people think is part of a harmful pattern. I don’t think fictional stories have anything close to the amount of power that the news or a scientific journal has to transmit misinformation that impacts people’s ability to understand and react to real situations; however, I think that fictional stories, especially in some contexts, do have the power to do so.

• I think the second part of this scene, where RJ resolves the situation by overpowering Arkady with a gun, falls under the category of stories that have the potential to cause harm.

• Harking back to Arkady’s lesser of two evils speech, I know RJ threatening to shoot Arkady was not being presented as a good thing, more of a “problematic but endearing way of showing they care about her.” But it’s written as the successful resolution of the scene. “People with PTSD might become lethally dangerous at any time, and a way to solve that is to involve someone who can overpower them with a gun” is a…not-good combination. While things happening in a story doesn’t mean people will act them out in reality in a 1:1 way—I don’t think one podcast scene is going to single-handedly influence someone to replicate it in reality—putting that combination of ideas in a podcast that usually portrays not only mental health conditions but also the consequences of various ways of dealing with those conditions in a realistic way gives that combination of ideas a credibility that it should not be given.

• “Mental health crisis” and “Someone else has a gun” is a very dangerous combination, and there are many real life tragedies resulting from people assuming it’s a good combination. More than fifty percent of people who are killed by police in the US have a disability. Given the number of people harmed and killed by police during mental health crises, I do know for sure that we need to stop automatically seeing “Involve people with guns” as being the “safest” choice.

• In real life, when someone’s mental illness is causing them to act in a way that is immediately dangerous to themself or others, calling 911, choosing to intervene yourself, and choosing to do nothing each create different types and amounts of risk, which vary depending on the situation. If you don’t live somewhere with actual good psychological first aid services or other nonviolent public safety response, or within calling distance of anyone trained to help, it’s usually a matter of picking the least-bad choice.

• In my own life, there have been times when I chose to call 911. Sometimes it’s necessary (for example, co-occurring medical emergency), or it’s the least-bad option. So, I’m not going to tell anyone they should never call 911 in a mental health crisis. But a lot of people die every year because “Involve someone who can overpower the person in crisis with a gun or other type of potentially lethal force” (in my current city, emergency medical responders sometimes kill people or use unnecessary sedatives or force against them, sometimes because police tell them to and sometimes on their own) is seen as a good and safe option.

• I hadn’t expected a scene like that in this podcast, since it’s typically thoughtful and realistic about other serious real world topics, from other mental health conditions to characters’ LGBTQIA+ identities. There’s only one thing I sometimes give a heads up for when recommending the podcast to friends, Violet’s relief at Arkady killing that guy in 1.05/6 so that he wouldn’t live with the disabling injury Arkady had inflicted on him. Speaking of nightmare ableist tropes—but the idea of “killing/letting a disabled person die as an act of mercy,” while horrific, is very present in our culture and something that a lot of people have never been put in a position to question, so it seemed like less an endorsement of “It’s better to be dead than disabled” and more of an example of you don’t know what you don’t know.

• In the later scene in the season two finale when Brian tells Krejjh he can’t stay on Telemachus because he’s wiped from their last mission and needs a steady supply of oxygen, I was initially ready to be enthused about a scene where Brian’s crew supports him in making the right choice for himself. But with Brian's What if you have to choose between getting me an oxygen tank and saving someone else question, Brian’s hypothetical presence on the ship is reduced to the pros and cons of how his disability would potentially impact those around him, a viewpoint from which people with disabilities are seen too often in fiction and in life.

• Being physically disabled is more complex than a binary slider bar going from less to more of a burden to the people around you. In a more three-dimensional view, non-negotiably seeing disabled people as people reveals the networked importance of accessibility and inclusion (in this example, how might taking a step back and finding a way for Brian to travel safely with Krejjh in their aid work make it more likely that they and the ship will be ready to respond dynamically to the needs of disabled passengers?)

• As a less heavy comment on the Arkady-Krejjh scene, back in the realm of just finding the experience of reading the scene unpleasant (I’m a sometimes reader/sometimes listener, which is why I keep talking about reading this episode rather than listening to it!), another reason I had that punched in the gut, caving in on yourself feeling when I read the first part of the scene was because of how it was used as melodramatic entertainment in a work that usually draws a line against using other heavy real world topics that way. (I don’t think stories using serious real life stuff as entertainment is inherently bad—I mean, that’s how fiction works. In this instance, I don’t think any of those three things would have felt as viscerally crappy to read if it wasn’t for the context of the three of them together: the inaccurate fifty-year-old trope, it being lovingly described for the audience’s entertainment, and that coming out of left field in a work that was typically more tasteful about other mental health conditions.)

• I don't think we should be trying so hard to be careful about “avoiding ableist tropes” that every work is as interesting as a saltine—mentally ill people enjoy twisty mental illness horror for a reason!—and I don’t want us to worry so much about “Not portraying people with mental illness as ableist stereotypes about being dangerous” that we ignore the fact that sometimes some mental illnesses do cause people to act in ways that are dangerous or, sometimes, lethal, most often to themselves but sometimes to others as well. “Accuracy” and “tastefulness” aren’t important across the board. But I think the context of when tastefulness and (actual) accuracy are important matters.

• In the longer essay I wrote, I also talked about how problems with portraying disability are not limited to this audio drama, and many audio dramas are not great at portraying disability (and while stories are just stories, it’s hard to feel like the audio drama community’s frequent ways of viewing fictional disability are completely separate from the ways the community often sees real audience members’ disabilities as a burden...lack of accessibility, &c).

• I also wrote about a lot of other connected topics (BTW, still looking for more people interested in talking about or potentially working together on future pretentious writing on audio and accessibility and on ‘How to audio drama fandom??’, so let me know if you’re interested! Okay, end commercial break) but I’m focusing back on disability in Starship Iris season two for this post.

• Back to TSCOSI, I also wrote more in the longer essay about potential ways that fans (who are interested; I’m not trying to guilt trip anyone who isn’t) can make the fandom more welcoming to people with PTSD and other mental health conditions after season two was Like That, with the disclaimer that obviously I don’t speak for everyone with PTSD. I can summarize it kind of easily since I’m representation checklist averse: If you’re thinking about ways to avoid taking the tropes in these scenes at face value, whether through “Let’s pretend that never happened,” engaging with them in a researched way, having a disclaimer that you’re writing inaccurately for fun, or any other thoughtful approach, that’s the solid opposite of unknowingly echoing the ableist stuff.

• I originally took the long essay approach because of how complicated all of this is, so I’m metaphorically linking the longer essay again here for More Nuance. But, hopefully, this gets at the context I most wanted to talk about, and covers the real world information that I wanted to share with those who don’t have prior knowledge about this stuff. Thanks for reading this.

TL;DR: The scene where Arkady tries to kill Krejjh is a half-century-old cliché trope. In reality, any kind of violence or aggression due to PTSD is rare (between 8% to percentages in the 30s) and much more likely to be caused by anger, stress, or a startle response than a flashback. For either cause, it’s much more likely to be something like screaming, hitting an object, or shoving or hitting someone who gets in their space.

This cliché in a show usually realistic in its mental health representation is part of a pattern of people with PTSD and other stigmatized mental health conditions being portrayed as automatically severely dangerous, which contributes to real life false beliefs that exacerbate violence against a group of people statistically more likely to become victims of violence than to harm others.

In this context, the successful resolution of the scene being RJ overpowering Arkady with a gun is a harmful combination of ideas. More than fifty percent of people killed by police in the US have a disability.

What if you have to choose between getting me an oxygen tank and saving someone else reduces Brian’s potential presence on Krejjh’s ship to how his disability would potentially burden those around him.

[padfootagain]

The Perks and Pleasures of Being an Actor

Hello!!!! Here I am with my first little drabble for Ben's week!! We are only a few days before his birthday, and I'll be posting drabbles and one-shots all week for the occasion, participating in the event hosted on @benbarnesbirthdayparty​ ! Today's writing prompt was 'the perks or pleasures of being an actor', so here is my little cute piece for it!

I hope all of you like this cute little fic, and have fun this week for the event!

Pairing: Ben Barnes x reader

Word Count : 1671

There was one good side to being an actor.

Actually, there were many, and Ben being passionate about his work was not the kind to deny it. But overall the good things that had come out of his career as an actor, and everything it had changed in his life, there was one thing that stood above everything else. One thing that was better than the rest. And if he were to be fully earnest, it was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

And it was you.

As he stared at you reading a book in his armchair, wearing one of his comfortable and warm jumper and an old pair of sweatpants, relaxed and soft, he had to admit it at least to himself.

He studied the curve of your lips and the bridge of your nose and the shape of your cheekbones and the colour of your eyes and the little crease of your focused frown. He memorized it all, carved it in his mind, a memory to be remembered when you would be apart. If you had caught him staring, you would have asked him to stop, shying away from his intense gaze and hiding your features behind your book. You would argue that you had barely gotten out of bed and hadn't even taken a shower yet. That you looked dishevelled and sleep-deprived. And he would joke about how proud he was to be the cause of your sleepless night, making you groan in embarrassment, probably. Meanwhile, in his head, he would think about how much he adored seeing you like this, in your comfy clothes and relaxed demeanour.

Sometimes, it was hard though to say all that he felt. Maybe it was because you made him feel too much. Maybe it was because deep down he was still afraid you would end up walking away. Maybe he was simply not ready to let out every truth he held on his tongue. It didn't really matter. He reckoned he could just wait for a little longer before telling you all this. He had told you he loved you before, after all. You knew how he felt, you simply... weren't aware of how deeply his feelings for you ran in his bones and soul, that was all.

As he watched you peacefully reading a novel in his home, his mind travelled back to the day he had met you. How hot it was on the set of Westworld, and how painful his foot was after his clumsy self had broken his toe a few days before. He had broken a prop during a scene and you were the one to come on set that day to replace it. He always felt guilty for breaking anything on set, and so he had walked up to you to apologize. He remembered how you laughed at him, brushed his remark away. It was nothing, you said, happened all the time. He could hear your voice speaking to him for the first time all over again so vividly. He reckoned that it was surreal, the way he remembered all the details about you. And if he felt guilty every time he broke something, this oil lamp was the only object he didn't feel bad about shattering. It had allowed him to meet you, after all.

Being an actor also had its disadvantages, though. The fact that he travelled so much was both a curse and a blessing. He had seen so much of the world thanks to his job, but he had to spend some time away from you. And as you worked as a set designer, your suitcase was often packed and ready as well. Fame was a strange thing, and he was grateful to not have the attention that others had to carry with them. He reckoned that his life was pretty normal these days. Still, the media and rumours was a world he had to keep at bay for you. It made everything complicated. It made his life lonelier than he wished it to be, most of the time. Until he met you, of course.

There were only a few weeks left before he would have to fly away to New York for work, while you'd be heading to Canada to start building sets there. And for a moment he hated both of your jobs for causing you to be apart for a few months. It was because he was an actor that he wouldn't be able to wake up by your side every day for a while, and for a moment, he wanted to drop everything so he could just keep you close.

All he wanted then was to walk over to your spot on his armchair and hold you close.

And he could for now, so he did.

He grazed his fingertips across your knuckles first, touch so gentle it was almost ghostly. His tender gesture made you look up at him, offering him one of these warm smiles that never failed to brighten the whole room.

He gestured you to move over to let him settle with you in the comfortable piece of furniture. You snuggled against him, warm and content, the scent of your shampoo overloading his senses and making his head spin.

"How's your book?" he asked, wrapping his arms around you to draw you even closer, until you rested your head against his shoulder.

"Good so far. Want to read it too when I'm done?"

He hummed in quiet agreement, pressing a kiss to your hairline. You readjusted your book in your hand to hold his fingers too, and he traced the calluses across the pad of your fingers and your palm, traces left by your work building all kinds of objects and sceneries. He brought your hand to his lips too and kissed the centre of your palm.

"What do you want to do today?" you asked absentmindedly, your mind still half-focused on your book.

"This," he simply answered, a smirk making its way to his lips.

"This?" you frowned, looking up at him.

"Cuddling with you all day. Or maybe not just cuddling at one point this afternoon..."

He added a wiggle of his eyebrows for good measure, making you burst into laughter.

"Subtle, Ben... Very subtle..."

"I'm always subtle."

"Of course."

"You don't like my plans?"

"Hmm... I might let myself be tempted..."

"You might?"

"We could also get ready, take a shower and get dressed. And we could take a walk this afternoon."

"Where would you like to go?"

You shrugged, capturing his gaze into yours. As usual, he found himself unable to look away.

"I don't know. Wherever you want. But it's sunny outside today. It would be a shame to stay inside."

He nodded, seeming lost in thought, and for a moment you reckoned that he was looking for a place to go to for the afternoon. Eventually though, he rested his head against his armchair, his lips barely brushing your temple, with just enough contact for you to feel his warm breath against your shivering skin and his voice send vibrations all the way down your spine.

"Can I be honest?"

You felt too good to gather the strength to speak, so you merely nodded instead. It was a quiet moment, soft and fragile and ephemeral that would break at the first movement, it would seem. Ben too seemed to feel this way, because he whispered his question, his deep voice barely loud enough for you to hear him.

"I'd rather stay in today," he went on. "Just you and me. Just like this. Doesn't matter if you want to read or watch TV or whatever. As long as I can hold you close like this, I'm up for it."

Your smile grew even more tender.

"You're adorable, you know that?"

He wanted to answer that perhaps it was just because he loved you this much. Maybe he was just so enamoured right now that he didn't want the world to slip into the cocoon your arms created for him. Maybe he loved you enough for you to be all that he needed.

He had time to tell you all that, though. He had time to show you how much he cared. In moments like these, he felt like they two of you had all the time in the world.

Instead, he leaned down to reach for your lips with his and give you a loving kiss. And when he pulled away he could read in your eyes that you knew what he had almost uttered anyway. You could feel it in the way he kissed you with so much care, and how he held you close as if worried you'd slip through his fingers otherwise, and how he touched you so gently like he was worshipping you.

But then again, maybe it was time, after all, to actually let you hear what he meant to say but hadn't been brave enough to speak out loud until now.

"I really love you, you know that?" he asked, his eyes almost black in the morning light as you lost yourself into their depth. His voice was a little hoarse, too many emotions boiling through his chest for him to contain them. You gave him a touched smile in return, traces of happy tears glistening in your eyes. "I mean it. I'm really... deeply in love with you."

"I know. And I really love you too. You win. Let's stay in today. We should watch something on Netflix."

A mischievous smile made its way back to his lips.

"You mean... just Netflix or... Netflix and chill?"

You both broke into laughter, and for a long while, the morning light bathed a room filled with love and happiness thanks to the two of you.

Yes, being an actor most definitely had its bright and darker sides. But if only for allowing to meet you, he reckoned that he had no regrets in choosing such a demanding career.

*************************************************************

Taglist : @ponycake27​ @horsesreign​ @xinyourdreamsx​ @jbluevelvet​ @notkeppeki @daynigt-dreamer-stuff @fudgeflyss​ @stuckupstucky​ @snek-shit @suchatinyinfinity​ @i-padfootblack-things  @buckybsarmy @heyohheyitsgabi​@jigsawlover10 @emyyjemyy @addictedtofictionalcharacters​ @staringmoony​

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@presstocontinue @ilmiopiccolounivers0

[mepheesto]

small thoughts on M’s route book 3 demo

ok so, me and @silverletters are waaaay too invested in this shit and just spent the last half an hour thinking about that damn breakfast scene in M's route book 3 demo and I'm just let's take a couple of steps together please - mind the spoilers, goes without saying, I'm just gonna cut this for extra carefulness:

We know M is so shielded from their feelings it's appalling, but they also have a very strong, bursting emotional response to things, and are extremely aware on a subconscious/background level of the emotional responses of those around them. I like to think it's somewhat linked to their sensitivity, but I digress. We also know all of their teammates (except F to a degree, but still not in an invasive way) have this wonderful habit of letting their companions be themselves and respecting boundaries and personal histories - they're a family, and UB has a special chemistry and understanding of each other to a silent, perfect level. However much I would love to see especially N just screaming in M's face, we all know this is not going to happen. F would most likely make some snappy comment to try and trigger some deeper thinking, to just nudge M's point of view towards a light they themselves can't see. A is tricky - part of me can see them going "ok, well, that was it, you're done playing games, can we move on" but luckily they're not that much of an ass at this point  - and will probably be very grounding and practical as usual, but still conscious of the higher value of respecting one's wishes and wanting to see them happy; thus probably moving more towards something along the lines of  "I did tell you this would complicate stuff, what is your plan now". But all of this would probably not work on M, let's be honest. If that's the case, the answer would be "I don't know", some sneers, some stuttered aggressive response, and mostly confusion. Our good ol' local grumpy sack of garbage and obliviousness would just be even more confused. Noticing everyone's sadness (small digression to N being especially in pain cause it's their people, move to me crying in a corner cause N is too precious for coherent words) and being more and more alienated, both by their internal turmoil and what's in the eyes of those around them.

Add that to the possibility the detective has brushed off the comment in the bakery, and seems perfectly fine with continuing their relationship as a mainly physical one, no strings attached. Of course M doesn't realize yet to what extent, but what they said there in a moment of denial and panic, in Hailey's face, is obviously not true to them. Now, let's add that to how Mishka (I 'd gather) keeps all options at pretty much the same pace, trying to guarantee the same depth and exploration of the relationship to all "flavours" of a route we may take.

So, either the detective went crying and ran or they were embarrassed, or rolls with it, doesn't matter. Something in M still clicked, and they don't like it. M likes it easy. They love to be lucky and be left alone in their functional little world with no further stimulation that would just irritate them. But this, this comes from inside them. This can't just be shut down. They'll try regardless. I can perfectly see M trying to make it simple again, acting as if nothing happened, trying again to move to a comfortable known area of this relationship, and ground it to their usual physical interactions. But of course, now that something has changed, it's not enough. Whether the detective complies or not, something will be missing. Be it just that sex is no longer enough, or that being denied now hurts even more and stirs the waters of that internal turmoil more. They're more and more confused, skittish, easy to enrage and constantly annoyed and dissatisfied. Snappy, avoidant, and maybe even reaching a point where they themselves refuse the sexual encounter - or make it cold, shallow, frustrated, awkward. And, obviously, feel like shit right after.

M so far has not been so fast at understanding any of the rules of this new game, and I don't expect them to be suddenly struck by lightning on the way to Damascus. Oh, no. We're probably gonna fight with this through the whole third book. That, added to maybe some softness slipping here and there, just seeping through the cracks, at the worst times. A soft eye, a cuddle, an attentive, natural, intimate gesture that causes yet more boiling to the surface and more pain.

Idk about you but I am not ready for this ride and I am screaming - and still OH BOY CAN'T WAIT TO SEE ALL OF THAT aaaand I'm out of coherent thoughts and words, time to go back to my cave, if you need me just follow the pained sighs

[headinthe-fridge]

My Grandfather’s Lawyer (pt.6)

⁂ – Ushijima Wakatoshi x reader –  ⁂

warning: nsfw, swearing

Summary: Your grandfather, Washijo Tanji, disowned your mother when she was pregnant with you and her hatred towards him was passed on to you. Now, your estranged grandfather wants you to leave your life in Tokyo and come live with him in his estate in the Miyagi Prefecture.

You took a day off and a 6-hour trip, intending to give him a piece of your mind before disappearing from their lives forever. You didn’t expect to see an ailing and fragile old man. Your day trip stretched into weeks and soon, you patched things up with your estranged family and warmed up to everyone -except to one: Ushijima Wakatoshi -your grandfather’s lawyer.

He thinks you have ulterior motives in reuniting with your grandfather.

You weren’t suppose to care what he thinks of you. His opinion didn’t matter.

But it did.

Masterlist

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

AN: As promised, here’s part 6! This was a double udpate so if you haven’t read part 5, link is above this! :))

-----

“Well, here’s something you should be afraid of.”

It’s been two weeks since your episode with Ushijima at the hospital garden. Because of your conversation with him, the moment you slipped back inside your grandfather’s ward, you immediately told him that you would stay, for a time. 

Of course, your grandfather was ecstatic and his happiness made you momentarily forget you major irritation for Ushijima Wakatoshi -who, in your opinion is the greatest villain of all villains in the ‘The Story of My Life.’ 

How dare he? How dare he use emotional blackmail against me? You fumed.

Your cousins were elated and excited to have you as well, except for Hoshina. Not news, you were kinda expecting that. Your first problem was clothes. You didn’t bring any when you boarded the train that day but the twins were quick to help you with that. So you spent three days running around the mall, going on a shopping spree -you tried to avoid ridiculously expensive branded clothing but the twins just kept on deviating towards it.

You mentioned your financial concerns to Kuroo but he shrugged it off, saying you had 22 years worth of money to splurged -care of your grandfather. That didn’t help much with your guilt but nothing you can really do about it.

Next was your job back in Tokyo. You gave Kiyoko the heads up that you won’t be returning home, indefinitely, and the cafe manager, despite his disappointment, had no other choice but to find a replacement -which he found in Hinata Shoyou, a friend’s friend.

So far, your stay was pleasant and you were steadily building your relationship between your cousins (save Hoshina) and your grandfather. Hoshina was complicated, there were many time when you thought she was going to approach you, in a peaceful manner, but then proceeds to glare and scowl at your at the last second. It bummed you, honestly. You never had a sister (and so did she) so you wanted to reallyyyy bond with her. But, she was as stubborn and hard-headed as you are. 

You asked the twins one time where their parents are and they said Kuroo’s parents are on a business trip in Singapore, their father (your uncle, second eldest) is in Sendai, managing his own business -a publication- their parents were divorced and they rarely see their mother who has her own family in Southern part of Japan. Hoshina’s are in Tokyo, securing a deal for the family business.

While your grandfather remains the company president, Hoshina’s father is the CEO and her mother the COO. Despite being the youngest son, it seems her father was the most reliable when it came to business.

So all in all, these two weeks sped by unceremoniously. Your aunts and uncles were quite excited to meet you as well. And you were relieved that Hoshina’s attitude wasn’t from her parents. 

Your train of thoughts came to a halt when your phone rang. You placed down the glass of water on the countertop to reach for it in your pocket. Your cousins were all busy -of what, you didn’t know, but they all had lives before you came so accepted that fact that you’re gonna be alone for the rest of the day, while your grandfather is having his rest -you just came back from his room. As for Ushijima -well, you don’t give a damn about his whereabout. You haven’t spoken to him since the hospital incident.

“Kiyoko?” You asked upon answering but a different voice spoke over the speaker.

“y/n-chaaan, are you not coming back?” Cried the person at the other end of the line.

A soft chuckle escaped your lips. “Hey, Tooru-chan, I miss you too.”

Oikawa Toruu was your senior in high school. He was the one who got you interested in the medical field so you always looked up to him as your mentor. He is currently completing his residency at a hospital in Tokyo.

“I was about to comeback home but my grandfather got sick. I decided to stay to take care of him.”

“Please tell grandfather-chan to get well soon. Iwa-chan misses you too.”

You smiled fondly at the mention of his boyfriend. These two are quite inseparable. You talked for a while, catching up and hearing stories from back in Tokyo. You felt homesick all of a sudden, you missed your friends.

“Yeah, I’ll see you soon. Call me anytime!”

“Byebye, y/n-chan. Love yah!”

“Love you too, Tooru-chan.” You replied affectionately and ended the call. You were about to reach for the glass of water again when someone spoke.

“So, Tooru-chan, I gather, is someone special to you?” 

You whipped your head around, facing the lawyer with a scowl. The man had a deep frown on his face, shooting daggers at you -well, what’s new with that?

“So the real reason why you wanted to go back to Tokyo immediately was because someone was waiting for you?”

“A respectable lawyer wouldn’t eavesdrop on personal phone calls.”

“I heard you mention your grandfather’s condition so I got curious.”

“And why would it make you curious?”

He clicked his tongue. “Well, let’s just say I was beyond surprised when you decided to stay when the last time we talked, you were vehement on going back to Tokyo. I can’t help but wonder what your grandfather promised you to make you stay. More so, he put me into work after the two of you talked privately.”

“Promised? What do you mean? And so what if he made you work, don’t you work for him?” You asked though you already have a hunch on what the lawyer meant.

It made your blood boil to say the least.

“I’m his lawyer and I am the first to know everything that he wants to do with his properties and wealth and to whom he will bequeath them.” He said nonchalantly but you knew there’s an underlying meaning. “I always remind him to work on his last will and testament but he always put it off. Then all of a sudden, right after he talked to you, he called for me to arrange the documents.”

“Look, I don’t know why you’re telling me this but I do know that the nature of your work doesn’t involve betraying your client’s confidentiality.”

“I’m certainly aware of that but that is if the client wants it to be confidential. In the case of you grandfather, he hides nothing from his family, and with you as his grandchild I know that one of these days, he will talk to you about it -that is if he hasn’t told you yet.” He explained then smirked. “Or am I right that in one way or another, you influenced him in his decisions?”

Your jaw clenched at what Ushijima was insinuating. “You keep talking in circles. If you want to say something, spit it out! Get straight to the fucking point.” You spat but it didn’t affect the man a tiny bit.

He scoffed before advancing towards you. “Why are you so angry? We’re just talking, why be so defensive?” He took another step but you held your ground. “Guilty? Tell me, is that your condition with your grandfather, to give you almost everything and in return, you will stay here?”

Anger welled up within you, churning your insides, red filled your vision and the next thing you knew, your palm collided with Ushijima’s cheek with full force. A loud slap reverberated around the hall while your palm felt numb.

You didn’t give a damn, not even when Ushijima’s eyes burned in fury as he cupped the reddening cheek.

“So after knowing that you’re a Washijo heir you think you have the right to do that?”

If looks could kill, you would be laying dead by now

But you can’t lose to him. You don’t want to lose to Ushijima Wakatoshi. “You think you can scare me? Think again. I’m not sorry I slapped you and I’ll do it again -wholeheartedly if I must, the next time you accuse me of something that never crossed my mind!”

“You’re really brave, huh.” He dropped his hand and took a step even close, staring you down. “Well, here’s something you should be afraid of.”

In one swift, his hands caught your head and whatever you wanted to say got stuck in your throat when Ushijima sealed your mouth with his in a searing kiss.

Part 7

Taglist: @thegrumpyhag​ @sushij1ma​ @valoryess​ @yakus-yakult​ @ly-nia​ @ushi-please​ @plutoglass @kokofirebangbomb​ @strawberryy-milkk @melanieacademy​ @defunkitatedmess​ @lunarknox​ @wtoshii​ @kyomihann​ @multishippers-trash-blog​ 

[ahgaseda]

two can keep a secret || chapter 07

⇥ synopsis : when your father reveals his intention to remarry, you find an unlikely confidant in Mark, your soon-to-be stepbrother, but what began as a revenge fling ironically becomes far more complicated...

⇥ warnings : this story in its entirety includes but is not limited to strong language and dialogue, recurring alcohol and drug use, and explicit sexual content, and is intended for an adult audience only!

Only the sound of forks and knives clinking against dishes filled the dining room. Your parents always insisted on at least one family dinner per week. It had been less than a day since your fight with Mark and now you were forced to sit across from him until everyone had cleared their plates.

Mark ate like a man starved, uncaring as he stuffed his face. Your father was no different. The men said nothing whilst they filled their stomachs. Meanwhile, you poked at your steak and Mark’s mother kept looking around the table.

“Did the two of you have a fight?” she asked suddenly.

You glanced up, like a deer in headlights. Mark didn’t slow down. He swallowed what was in his mouth and simply shook his head, as if anything between you and him was inconsequential.

His mother turned her gaze to you, expectant.

“I’m sorry. I just… don’t feel very well,” you told her, offering a placating smile. It wasn’t a lie. Your stomach was in knots almost constantly since you saw those positive pregnancy tests.

“You do look pale, honey,” she crooned.

You swallowed nervously. Did you?

Mark looked up at that, giving you a scrutinizing glance. His first instinct was to worry. Had the fight and pregnancy scare stressed you to the point of illness? Before he could say something potentially damning, your father spoke up, “My daughter never complains of being sick.”

You could hear the concern in his voice.

“Don’t force yourself to eat if you feel unwell,” he continued. “You can be excused and go lie down if you need to.”

“Thank you,” you said softly, tears gathering in your eyes. You desperately wanted to get away from Mark. Rising from the table, you grabbed your plate and pushed your chair back into place. After discarding the uneaten food in the kitchen, you placed a kiss on your father’s cheek.

Then, you bolted. Locking the bedroom door behind you, you hid yourself beneath your blankets, crying until you nearly fell asleep. How were you going to tell your father that you were pregnant?

Mark set down his fork and leaned back against his chair. Was being in the same room with him that torturous for you? Because it damn sure was for him, but at least he managed to endure it.

He missed the feel of your skin and his fingers in your soft hair. The way you laughed when he tickled you or showed you something funny on his phone. How you snuggled up to him when you were sleepy and tangled your legs through his when you were cold. And the handful of times you had spoken his name in your sleep, letting him know he was on your mind even in your dreams.

Mark sharply cleared his throat and decided he needed to bury himself balls deep in another cunt until he forgot about you.

Jackson was reliable for two things: hyping up his friends when they felt like dying and organizing booze-filled parties on extremely short notice. Mark was in need of both, though he favored the latter.

When you stepped out of your bedroom, Mark was doing the same across the hall. Another downside you had forgotten about; your rooms faced each other.

You stopped in your tracks, still clutching the doorknob. Mark finished pulling on his leather jacket and met your eyes.

“Jacks is having a party,” Mark said, emotionless.

That stung. Jackson always texted you an invite to his parties. If he hadn’t, that meant Mark told him not to, which meant Mark didn’t want you to know how fucked up he was going to get.

Or that he was going to fuck around with other girls.

Flashing a brief, awkward smile, you told him, “Have fun.” Then, you brushed by him before any more words could pass between you.

Mark stood there, watching you go and battling with himself. Guilt manifested first, but he shook his head, hoping to shake the feeling away.

You hopped in the car and drove off into the night. You wanted to stay at your best friend’s place for as long as you could get away with. You didn’t want to be in the same house as Mark for a while. The secret was smothering you. Only you knew about the baby in your womb. Every time you laid eyes on Mark, you remembered you were carrying a piece of him inside you. And he had no idea.

Mark preferred drowning in alcohol than in his sorrows. Even as he chased another shot, throwing it back with a grimace, he thought about you. He couldn’t shake the image of you in his head, naked in his arms as you lulled him to sleep.

And now he couldn’t have you. He fucked it up.

You had given him a peace Mark didn’t think he was capable of anymore and it was gone as quickly as it had come. Gripping another shot tightly in his hand, Mark stared off into the distance as a realization sank in.

Jackson appeared at this side, clapping a hand on Mark’s shoulder. “How goes it, brother?”

“I’m in love with her,” Mark whispered.

Jackson froze. He knew exactly who his best friend was talking about. Rubbing his chin, Jackson glanced around to make sure no one was listening in and whispered, “I didn’t invite her. Like you wanted.”

“Good,” Mark said, downing another shot.

“Mark, do you need to talk about…,” Jackson started.

Mark rose from his seat and growled, “Where’s Leah? I know she’s around here somewhere.”

“Yeah…,” Jackson trailed, voice sympathetic. Leah was known for being easy. She was also known for having her eyes on Mark since the first time she saw him.

Mark spotted her in the crowd and headed toward her without another word. He approached her while she danced, wrapped an arm around her waist, and whispered in her ear, “Still want me to fuck your brains out?”

Leah couldn’t drag him upstairs fast enough.

Mark kissed her hard and rough, but she wasn’t you. Her hands felt like ice against his warm skin. Her legs were stiff around his waist. Mark could only picture you beneath him.

Leah, on the other hand, was ready to devour him. She stripped down to her bra under him and unbuckled his pants, reaching for his cock and letting out a moan. She gripped his half-hard shaft and nipped at his neck.

Then, Mark did the unthinkable.

He whispered your name.

Leah grabbed his face, pushing him back and scowling at him with wide, shocked eyes. “What did you just say?”

Mark blinked through his tequila-induced daze. “What?”

“Oh my god, you said her name,” she exclaimed in horror and quickly rising jealousy. “Your fucking stepsister!”

“No, I didn’t,” he stammered.

“I heard it, Mark. Holy shit. Are you screwing her?”

“What? No!”

Leah scrambled out of the bed, snatching her shirt and tugging it back on like she had finally discovered shame. “That’s disgusting.”

Rage and hurt boiled inside Mark until it spilled over and promptly exploded. Angrily, he shouted, “She’s not my stepsister!”

Leah blinked, a twisted smile pulling at her lips. Rather than deny, he justified it. “Oh, you are so fucked.”

Mark understood by the look on her face that life as he knew it was officially over. “You have no idea…,” he huffed in defeat.

You were a mixture of relieved and devastated that you didn’t see Mark at classes the next day. There were a few times your schedules overlapped and you would pass each other in the hall. He must have gotten drunk enough to warrant a hangover from hell.

But Leah made sure to shoulder check you as the two of you crossed paths.

“What the hell…?” you snapped, ready to slug her for staggering you backwards.

“Slut,” she snarled back, shoving past you to continue on her way.

You stood there shell-shocked. Leah never went toe-to-toe with you and you were tempted to pound her into the concrete as you protectively put a hand over your lower stomach.

Fortunately, your best friend appeared and looped her arm through yours, whispering, “Honey, haven’t you heard the latest gossip?”

You rolled your eyes. Never did you give a shit about gossip. “You know I have zero social media presence.”

She pulled you behind a corner and spoke in hushed tones, “It’s about you!”

“Me? What did I do?”

She bit her lip and told you, “Mark was in bed with Leah at Jackson’s party last night.”

Your heart sank somewhere below your chest, into some bottomless pit never to crawl back out again. “Oh.”

“And he said your name!”

The world came to a grinding halt around you.

Mark said your name while he was in bed with another woman. For all you knew he was finishing inside her and he literally called out your name.

You would think about the implications of that later, but for now, your focus was on the fact that it was becoming common knowledge on campus. Which meant word was spreading like wildfire.

“Oh god,” your friend murmured, saying your name in disbelief.

Your brow furrowed. “What?”

“I see your face. It’s true. You’re sleeping with him, aren’t you?”

There was a pause while you swallowed the lump in your throat. Eventually, you muttered, “It’s complicated.”

She tilted her head and tried to be gentle. “Sweetie, I know he’s technically not your stepbrother yet, but your parents are getting married. It’s happening.”

You seethed, “I’m well aware of that.”

Your best friend hesitated, watching you carefully and noting the emotions gathering on your face. “How long has it been going on?”

You didn’t hesitate to answer, “Since they got engaged.”

She gaped. “For Christ’s sake.”

“He made it better, okay? We feel the same way about them getting married and it just… we were gonna get into self-destructive behaviors anyway. Turns out fucking each other was the most convenient.”

It was hard to tell who you were trying to convince.

She simpered, but certainly didn’t condone it. “You’re in love with him.”

You wanted to scowl. “Am I?”

“When I said he was in bed with Leah, you were devastated.”

You shook your head and shrugged. “I just felt betrayed, that’s all.”

She placed a tender hand on your arm. “They didn’t screw. Apparently they were about to and he dropped your name. She hauled ass out of there.”

That surprised you.

You held up your phone, expecting a text or missed call from Mark and finding nothing. “I need to go,” you told your friend, bidding her goodbye and heading for your car before she could grill you for more juicy gossip.

Hopping behind the wheel, your phone rang and you immediately answered, “Hello?”

“Hi, we got your message about seeing Dr. James. You’re not due for your well woman’s exam just yet, so I was calling to see what kind of appointment you needed.”

It was your doctor’s office. You forgot you called.

Fighting back tears, you looked around the parking lot and whispered, “I… took a few home pregnancy tests and they were all positive.”

“I understand,” said the receptionist kindly. “I can work you in the day after tomorrow. She can confirm the pregnancy and discuss prenatal care or other options with you. Does that sound alright?”

Voice trembling, you replied, “Yes, that would be great. I really appreciate it.”

Meanwhile, Mark ditched the rest of his classes to drown himself in a video game. He was screwed, there was no doubt about it. He checked his phone again for the thousandth time - still no word from you.

He let his head fall back with a groan. You would have heard by now. The girls you tended to hang with were some of the mouthiest he had ever known. They would be itching to spill the tea all over you.

There was a knock at Mark’s bedroom door. He set the controller down and leapt up anxiously, expecting it to be you. God knows, he just wanted you to hold him and lie to him that everything would be alright.

When Mark opened the door, his heart sank.

There stood your father and his cheeks were the color of the fires of Hell itself.

“Mark,” he said stiffly.

“Yes, sir.” Mark held his breath, his heart beating violently against his ribs.

Your father clenched his jaw and hissed, “How long have you been having sex with my daughter?”

chapter 06 ⇤ chapter 07 ⇥ chapter 08

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[romeo-the-cactus]

Narrowly Avoiding Feline Scurvy

The world’s fucked (again), I’ve got a dissertation to write, so naturally I’m back on my bullshit.

Reader is away on an off-grid mission, and Natasha misses having her roommate around to hug cook for her. Suddenly cat.

There is a cat in Natasha’s apartment.

This is unusual as Natasha does not own a cat, and, as far as she knows, neither do you.

It’s also unusual because the cat appears to be waiting for her, sat up straight in the hallway and seems to be asking her and what sort of time do you call this?

The look on the sleek black cat’s face is so reminiscent of your face when she’s late coming back from a briefing, or a mission, or a night out with Clint, that she shrinks slightly before remembering she doesn’t answer to a cat, shakes her head at how used to having you around she’s become, and, frowning, walks past the cat to take her takeout to the kitchen.

You’ve been away on a top-secret, no-contact mission for just over a week, she’s doesn’t even know what it’s about, only that it required you and your shifting powers specifically. It’s your first since moving up to her floor of the tower - after complaining about walking all that way (into and out of the elevator) any time you wanted to bug her - and she’s already really missing your company. And your cooking. But mostly your company, someone waiting to ask her how her day was with a cup of tea and an overly thought-out playlist in the background.

And if she’s been wearing your hoodie all day, it’s because the laundry got mixed up, not because she went into your room and picked it up off the floor because she’s missed the way you wrap her right up in a hug until all she feels is warmth and all she smells is you.

It’s only once she’s dumped everything into one big bowl, your voice in her head calling her an absolute heathen, and brought it to the sofa with her to eat while watching the kind of trashy she pretends to hate whenever you’re around, that she realises the cat is now sat on the sofa looking as judgmental as a cat possibly can, and when the Love Island intro starts she could’ve sworn it raised an eyebrow – do cats even have eyebrows?

Where the cat came from and how it got into one of the most secure buildings in the world seems like a question for tomorrow, so she turns up the volume and digs into her sweet and sour egg fried Singapore satay crispy fried chicken duck noodle rice on skewers rolls.

She wakes up halfway through Ice Road Truckers to find the cat fighting with the bowl, every time a paw comes out to try and get at the scraps, the bowl spins away from it. Rubbing at her eyes, Natasha takes pity on it, picking out a soggy prawn cracker and holding it out to the cat, who looks almost embarrassed as it nibbles at it.

She looks at the tv as she scritches between the soft ears.

4:37 am.

Time to properly go to sleep.

After a moment’s deliberation, she lies back down, emptying the remaining prawn crackers onto the floor. Her room is all the way over there and this time you’re not there to nag her to go to bed for the sake of her joints, so what’s to stop her.

10 minutes later, just as she’s dozing off, there’s a tickly nudging at her foot. She nudges it right back.

Then the meowing starts.

Natasha stubbornly covers her head. She will not be bossed around by the world’s most judgmental stray.

Then there is a weight on the cushion and a single claw digging into the hand gripping it tightly over her ears. That’s just not fair. Natasha growls and tries to tug herself free, but the demonic fluffball just starts moving around on the cushion, meowing throughout. That’s it.

She shoots up, swinging her legs out.

‘Fine! Fine, I’m going, I’m going, shut up!’ she whines, with all the dignity she can muster while wearing her roommate’s clothes, one foot in dinner debris, and a cat sending her to bed.

‘I’m going, Liho’ she hisses, remembering the stories that had always creeped her out as a child. Now it seems appropriate for the misfortune of this cat turning up when she just wants some time alone. Or time with you. Either way, she’s not getting that, and while your absence may not technically be the cat’s fault, she’s looking for someone to direct her grumpiness at and the cat will do for now.

The cat follows her right to her bedroom door, making sure she does as she promised.

Maybe the cat has her best interests at heart. That is a ridiculous thought and she really needs to get some sleep.

Liho stops outside her door, looking up at Natasha as if in question. Natasha scowls at them.

Then she thinks about how cold her bed is. Thinks about how much she misses you barging into her life and filling it with hugs and homecooked meals and warmth.

She looks down at the fluffy cat, sighs, and pushes the door wide open again, shrugging towards the bed. She quickly falls asleep with fluff wrapped around her neck and the thought in her head that she’d expected a stray cat to smell much worse and much less comforting.

Aside from the minor hurdles of waking up with a cat’s ass in her face and Liho remaining unforthcoming about how exactly she’s ended up in Natasha’s life, the two of them settle pretty smoothly into a routine over the next few days.

Natasha gets up early to train, leaving Liho the remains of her breakfast to eat (soggy cereal, generally, but judging by the milk moustache the cat has when Natasha returns every morning she (Natasha is now around 80% sure Liho is a she) doesn’t mind), gets back, pretends not to like the cat for a bit, then feeds her some sandwich and definitely doesn’t give her little kisses while she reads or works or watches more trash tv. Sometimes Liho follows her around the tower, and a surprising number of people either don’t notice or don’t care that the Black Widow seems to have become a Cat Mom.

In the evenings she spoons some of whatever dinner she’s cobbled together from takeout, other avengers’ leftovers, and her limited (to sandwiches) culinary know-how onto a small plastic plate which sits next to her own for Liho to nibble at while she eats. After a couple repeats of the first nights battle to get Natasha to her own bed, she accepts the state of affairs and lets Liho lead her to bed at a semi-reasonable time, where she falls asleep with the little black cat asleep on her chest.

A few days later when Steve and Bucky ask about the cat perched on her shoulder, Natasha’s explanation is mostly made up of (careful) shrugging, and some quiet smugness when she notices Bucky’s quiet chuckle at the name Liho.

The little smirk gets wiped off her face when Steve so casually says ‘Oh, I just figured she was back from her mission’.

That makes Natasha stop for a minute and thinks about the numerous times Liho has taken care of her, nagged her, and made her smile the past few days, and looks up to where the cat has stopped nudging at Bucky’s stubble and is now looking straight at her.

Steve presumably takes Natasha’s sudden silence as concern for your wellbeing, reaching out and grabbing her shoulder.

‘I’m sure we’ll hear from her soon, Nat, don’t worry,’ he says, giving her a pat.

She blinks up at him, plasters on a smile, then takes “Liho” and heads back up to your apartment.

She sits the two of you down on the sofa and, scratching between your fluffy ears, tries to get some answers.

‘So, the mission finished?’

You walk around indecisively, which Natasha takes to mean it’s complicated.

She sighs, her lips pursed.

‘I take it you’re stuck like this.’

You swing your head up towards her, a duh plain as anything on your little feline face.

‘Don’t look at me like that! You’ve not exactly been helpful yourself! You couldn’t even have tried to tell me?’

At that the cat in front of her looks down, stretches out and rests her head between her paws, adorably sheepish, Natasha thinks, stay on task, but you suddenly look downtrodden, look ashamed. Being stuck as a cat, unable to communicate, reliant on Natasha (who hasn’t exactly been the perfect pet parent), and with the guilty, frustrated feelings she knows you get whenever a mission doesn’t go to plan.

She’s never seen a cat look so close to tears.

Instinctively, she reaches out to stroke between your ears, and then instead picks you up and holds you to her chest, smoothing your fur and planting little kisses on your head, a stream of quiet apologies flowing from her mouth as you purr against her. That night the two of you are both too exhausted to make it to Natasha’s room, falling asleep curled up to each other on the sofa.

Sunlight streams into the living room. It’s warm. It’s really warm. Natasha is absolutely boiling, and with her eyes still closed tries to roll out of the hot spot, at which point she tumbles to the floor, becoming immediately aware of another body tangled up with hers.

She opens her eyes.

She immediately closes them again, one hand covering them tightly as she starts to wildly gesticulate with the over at the very sleepy, very human, very naked you in front of her.

As she spouts rapid-fire, incredulous ‘WHAT?’s in English, Russian, and about six other languages, you wipe the sleep from your eyes and blink up at the apparently freaking out spy sat across from you.

‘Mornin’ Tasha.’

She stops, lowers her hand, and looks you in the eyes with a look on her face you can’t help but reach across and pull her into your arms, ignoring the fact you’re currently naked as the day you were born.

‘Tasha, everything’s okay, it was just a weird week,’ you reassure her, feeling definite tears on your shoulder.

Eventually she seems to calm down slightly, and pulls back, avoiding looking at you as she shyly admits ‘I really missed you this past week,’ and part of you just shatters at the sight of this absolute badass, ridiculously capable woman who you’ve looked up to for years looking so lost at the thought of a life without you in it. You want to smother her in love and hugs and kisses and warm home-cooked meals and soft blankets and be there every day to ask how she is and prove that you’re not going anywhere as long as she still wants you there.

But Natasha hates wallowing in emotion.

So instead, you whisper ‘I miss you too’ conspiratorially in her ear, give her a quick kiss on the cheek, wink, and as you walk towards the kitchen with a shake of your ass just subtle enough for plausible deniability, call out over your shoulder ‘loved all the kisses but your cat caring definitely needs work, I’m amazed I didn’t get feline scurvy!’

Natasha Romanoff, ex-assassin, The Black Widow, sits back on her haunches, blinking, mouth slightly open, hit with the realisation that she is absolutely smitten with this dork.

‘The hell did you do with the salad I made?’ she hears from the kitchen.

A smile spreads across her face. Smitten might be fun.

[writerrachelspangler]

A Hierarchy of Tops

What the actual hell, y’all? Nothing to see here, except Katherine Hepburn giving us all the look that makes our collective gay insides instantly clench up then immediately liquefy.  

What is that gut incinerating reaction? I can’t say for sure, but I have been thinking about it a lot, and I’m going to offer 3 possible suggestions:

Attraction (obviously). 

But there are many levels to attraction. There’s like a woman walks by and turns your head attraction, or A-list celebrity beautiful-person attraction, and then there’s THIS. This feeling I’m talking about goes so far beyond the “you’re attractive” sort of attraction to like “laws of physics” sort of attraction. The kind of attraction that registers not just inside your core but also psyche. 

It messes with my head in ways that have turned me around ever since I was old enough to be aware of such things, and I’ve come to sum it up as “The great queer question.”

Do I want to be with you, or do I want to be you?

It’s hard when you’re young (or even not so young) and you’re hungry for role models, but also thirsty for something else. And the whole issue gets complicated by the way those two feelings register in similar places of your body. The first time you see a woman step into full ownership of her God-given gift of giving zero fucks for conformity it lights a fire in the deepest regions of your gut. And as the warmth spreads outward from that low guttural place it can cause things to heat up in areas right below your core, too. You know the ones I mean, right? Those body parts are very close together, sometimes it’s hard to separate the two types of attraction. 

And I’ve made peace with that, the not always knowing which came first, or which takes precedent, because ultimately it doesn’t matter.  As fun as it can be (and by fun, I clearly mean disorienting) to try to figure out if I want to be with someone or be like someone, I am non-binary enough to realize the answer can be, and often is:

Attraction and aspiration are both cool, they’re both fluid, and they totally intersect. I’m comfortable with that. I’m more than comfortable with it. I dig it. 

So if there’s no great conflict around attraction, why should that photo of ole K. Hep and her butchly furrowed brow still make my tummy so. damn. squimbly? Could it be something deeper than attraction? Something more complex? Something more elemental? Something like...

Recognition. 

You see, over the last few years I’ve gotten into the concept of ancestral echoes, or the idea that memories and the knowledge that comes from them can be passed down through our DNA. That you can, on some level, know  about things you’ve never experienced for yourself, and you can recognize the same sort of knowledge in other people.

Example: Folks way back up my family tree were sea-faring explorers. It’s been like 15 generations and I am super susceptible to sea sickness, but I am still so drawn to boats and the ocean. Not just like I find them pretty, but like I’m freaking Moana or something.  There’s a pull there that goes beyond all reason and logic. I know that if I get on a sailboat there’s decent chance I am going to lose my lunch, but I can’t stay away.  Even as I go green in the gills and my stomach does summersaults a part of me is still like:

I feel the same inexplicable connection when I look at that picture of Katherine Hepburn. There is a gay DNA level kind of recognition. A big queer ancestral echo. Whatever part of me that makes me gay senses its mirror in her.

Now I don’t know what part of me that is, nor what part of her trips that recognition trigger for me. The insolent stare? The turn of the mouth? Those gay AF eyebrows? 

I’m not sure, but I feel certain it would exist even if I didn’t know the words gay or DNA. Something queer in me honors something queer in her. It’s inborn, liike gaydar on steroids boiled down to its most primal level. It runs through the generations on double helix rainbows. It vibrates across my chromosomes humming through the lowest, most animal regions of my brain. 

I know you. 

We are the same. Whatever this thing is, it builds an unbreakable bond. A shared ..something. Brotherhood is too gendered. Personhood too vague.  A queersterhood. A ... wait for it ... Listerhood?

You didn’t really think I’d make it through this gay ass therapy session without her did you?

Well I didn’t, because I can’t. I am physically incapable of looking away from this paragon of queer top perfection.  And while I get that this is exactly the point where I should be able to tie this post up neatly on some note about our  foremothers of the past living on through our legacy, that’s not going to happen.

As much as I would like to have some spiritual or academic conclusion for the things I feel when I see this, I don’t.

Nothing about my reaction is academic, or hypothetical or high minded. 

I’ve looked these photos it so many times, trying to figure out what is bigger than attraction and deeper than recognition, and there’s only one word that comes close to capturing the experience for me:

Reckoning.

Reckoning involves looking something in the eye and taking stock of it and you at the same time. It involves taking weight and measures, taking inventory of your totality, and checking receipts on the things both utterly unquantifiable and yet indisputable. 

And when I look at those women, I am forced to reckon with a fundamental truth:

They are better tops than me.

Katherine Hepburn is a better top than me.  Ann Lister (as played by Suranne Jones) is a better top than me.  There’s no way around it.

No matter how much I like to think I have some natural predication for topness, they have more. Clearly.

Sometimes you look at someone and you just know they know things. Things you are desperate to know. They possess a command and understanding you do not possess. They have skills you can only, and probably only ever will, aspire to.

I am not ashamed to admit it. It’s just the natural order of things. Did Joe DiMaggio feel shame at not being Babe Ruth? Or for you non-sportsball people, does Lizzo feel ashamed for not being Aretha Franklin? I hope not. There’s no shame in having your greatness fall just below that of divine master. Not everyone can be the GOAT. I’m okay with that. It’s not a competition. I don’t need to best anyone.

But I do need to make peace with that reckoning in other ways. Like a wolf who just met the new pack leader, or pirate captain whose ship just got overrun, there’s a new world older that must be acknowledged in those moments. There is a hierarchy of tops and topness, and it’s just been indisputably altered.

I am not the top top, not even in my own mind. I can’t ignore it, I am the one who acknowledged it in the first place. I could run from it. At least in theory. I could look away, close my eyes, or banish those understandings to vast reaches of the unfollowed internet, but I am not a coward. 

As fluid as I am, and as secure as I am in who I am, I can feel gratitude at the the opportunity to look upon greatness.  To indulge my awe. To relish my vast appreciation of the most transcendent of beings.  

And then, of course, as is only right, I feel compelled to roll over. Honestly, I don’t know how anyone could feel compelled to do anything other than roll over when they look at that picture.  That is the great tremble in my gut: it is all the scripts being flipped. 

Does that make me a lesser top? Maybe. Does that make me a bottom? Perhaps sometimes. Does that bother me?

Not at all.

Cause really, what’s the use of recognizing a hierarchy to tops, if you don’t intend to enjoy every possible aspect of your own position on that spectrum?

[bloodhonnie]

maybe tmi but do you think that only ever falling for people who i know for a fact won't reciprocate is a symptom? the last time i fell in love it was so intense i felt like i was put on this earth just to exist in his vicinity and the whole time he had a gf of 5 years and said he saw me like "one of the boys" LMAO. part of me's like if you show interest in me there must obviously be something very wrong with you otherwise you wouldn't be able to even stand me... i swear 2 years ago my friend told me he was gay and for a week later all i could think was have i actually been in love with him this whole time?😂 also like you said! if they won't be in a relationship with me i don't have to think about my complex and very contradictory intimacy issues lol

Hello! I’ll try my best to explain what I think it is for me and you can do with that information what you will. Also a huge disclaimer that I do not self diagnose more like self speculate but I don’t shit on anyone that does self diagnose. Getting a diagnosis is hard and sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. I haven’t been diagnosed with ADHD so take this with a grain of salt I just think this describes what I go through the best.

*disclaimer!! I’m not saying that rsd and bpd are the same thing or that ppl that only have bpd can have rsd. Rsd is specific to people that have adhd. I’m extremely aware but due to the similarities I thought it would be prudent to use it as a framework to explain what rejection and abandonment in relationships looks like for people with bpd.*

So into my answer! It’s extremely common for people who have ADHD (both children and adults) to have something called rejection sensitive dysphoria (which I will be referring to as RSD from here on out). RSD as described by webMD: “RSD can affect relationships with family, friends, or a romantic partner. The belief that you're being rejected can turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you act differently toward the person you think has rejected you, they may begin to do so for real.” The webMD article notes that there are similarities between symptoms of RSD and BPD. This excerpt from this psychology today article section titled: Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria in Relationships, explains how RSD can interfere severely in your life affecting your quality of life.

“As you may expect, RSD can have a significant impact on having relationships—or even the seeking of them. Dating can be especially hard for someone with RSD, as they are hyperfocused on any perceived slight whatsoever (Why did it take so long for them to text back?), and they may assume they are being rejected when that is far from the case. They may ruminate on what they said or did "wrong," or isolate themselves to the point of self-sabotaging and actually driving the other person away due to seemingly not being interested themselves.”

The next paragraph explains this cluster of symptoms further. Being insecure in your relationships can be a deterrent to those seeking you out or those that are interested in you.

“Within relationships, people with RSD can have different ways of manifesting their underlying discomfort and fear, and sometimes, gender roles can make a difference. A person may continually second-guess their actions, wanting frequent reassurance from their partner that everything is "OK" within the relationship. They may grow timid and afraid of sharing their real feelings because of the fear that those feelings won't be deemed acceptable. They may escalate conflicts with anger that feels out of proportion to the situation.”

You can check out the full article for a full list of symptoms that comprise RSD. Onto my point now. As someone diagnosed with BPD you might be familiar with the fact that we tend to have unstable relationships in our lives. Wether these relationships are romantic or not usually isn’t much of a factor when it comes to our insecurities surrounding how others perceive us. So, not only do we have an unstable sense of self, but we also have an unstable sense of how others view us. This usually stems from childhood neglect and trauma. When a child forms an insecure attachment to their parents believing or actually witnessing their parents, guardians, or caretakers leave or move on can cause long lasting trauma. It’s a form of emotional stability teasing. By that I mean that usually the caretaker intentionally or unintentionally essentially teases the child with emotional and physical stability. Some examples might be a semi absentee parent or a parent that verbally abused their child by claiming that they will leave because of how the child is or simply because they want to. Both of these scenarios can cause a child to no longer trust those around them. Children learn how to behave in society by observing their peers but most importantly from observing their caretakers. What’s my point? My point is that there’s some evidence to suggest that people with BPD experience something similar to RSD due to trauma or other factors. The first step anyone with BPD can take that will change their life is becoming self aware of the way they are and what BPD looks like for them. It’s important to note that I by no means am an expert in this and this is what I remember from my psych classes.

Anyways moving on to my own personal experiences. The biggest and most harmful situation to me that I perpetuated was liking someone who told me not once but twice that they didn’t wanna be in a relationship with me. I’m not saying that I’m fully at fault but it’s literally so annoying that I definitely subconsciously knew they would never take me seriously and I decided to bet all my money on the same pot. The situation is a bit complicated but it boils down to the fact that I knew they weren’t truly attainable so I cut it off only to go back TWICE to see if it would work out. I knew they weren’t attainable, they had told me so and yet I still continued to pursue them. Not everything is black and white tho and sometimes you need to learn to trust yourself and your intuition. I wasn’t particularly wrong for believing that they might come around but I was wrong for entertaining it simply because I wouldn’t have to actually commit despite what I thought and felt at the time. My experience with BPD is very similar to RSD except that for me as someone with BPD and not RSD I experience this all the time with everyone in my life. I don’t feel secure about any attachment I have to anyone and believe that eventually all of them will leave me because I am actually as bad as I think. This isn’t true and it’s a hard thinking pattern to break.

I don’t know if this helped? It might just be me rambling into the night. Anyways thanks for the ask and thanks for sharing with me! Stuff like this can be hard to sift through!

[gin-and-luce]

You killed our dog! Adriana of The Sopranos gave me strength to navigate life after a breakup during a global pandemic lockdown

I’m going through a breakup. It’s come at the worst time but also the best time. He ended things with me (more on that later) after three years in the most Beta-Male way...but this is what happens when your type can be boiled down to softboi. I can’t see my friends in the conventional way, so I made some new ones on screen to help me navigate the end during quarantine.

Over ten weeks ago I started watching The Sopranos. It doesn’t need justifying, everyone knows it’s the best television series of all time, but I’d never seen it, and I knew a global pandemic induced lockdown would provide optimum viewing circumstances. My favourite thing to do is completely throw myself into the female narrative and experience I’m watching on screen. I prefer a long deep drama over a film. I like being able to see my girls every night. 

People have said to me before “you should start a blog”, but I could never escape the feeling that doing so is massively narcissistic because it *is*, unless you have something actually relevant to write about. Alternatively, the image of Gretchen Weiners leaning in and going “you let it out honey, put it in the book” floats across my conscience, and everything embarrassing that I’ve ever done, plays in a montage in my mind. 

Who gives a fuck what I have to say about anything…….. especially about a cultural phenomena that is quite literally regarded as the best TV show of all time?

I’d been wanting to write this after I watched Long Term Parking. I lay in the dark for 45 minutes after the episode ended. I’d never felt like that watching a television show or film before. My throat had seized up but I didn’t cry, even though I felt like it. I knew it was coming from the moment Adriana met the agent. I wasn’t surprised, but I was heartbroken and absolutely fuming. I still am. 

I’m not angry with Christopher, Tony, or Silvio, but just the general unbalance I’ve felt when I’m in a relationship. The loss of self, relationships being a series of compromises. From what I have found from my own experiences and my girlfriends’, women are just much more willing to compromise, but don’t consider it to be a compromise. Men can only take into consideration their own reality, an evolutionary selfishness that just doesn’t translate. 

Just as lockdown began I texted my boyfriend to say I loved him and I missed him. He responded with “Can’t say I feel the same”. Nearly 3 years were over just like that. We had the obligatory phone call, where I was hysterical and he was smarmy and smug. Yet when it was over, I felt nothing. It’s allllll a big nothing.

My personal Gospel is Sex and The City (shout out to HBO!). This was my Berger moment. He essentially scribbled “I’m sorry, I can’t. Don’t hate me” on a post-it. The irony of the whole thing is that when we watched it together, he himself said he was most like Berger. Thinking about it makes me wince.

My life opened up in front of me, I was exposed to his weakness regarding the situation in full when his sister-in-law messaged me on Instagram a few days ago. He hadn’t told his family, nor had he told his flatmates (another shout out to my sleuths at the back, you know who you are!). 

The Sopranos is a show about life. The Mafia structure provides a vehicle for us to question morality and mortality. You take what you get from it. When I watch it again at a different stage of my life, I will get something else out of it. 

For me now, while I stew in my own emotion during quarantine, Adriana represents emotional labour and the expectation for women to behave in a certain way in relationships. 

At first when my ex’s family members were messaging me, I was confused. It is frankly humiliating to smile as if everything is normal, so as to protect someone that in the end would not do the same for me. I know he wouldn’t do the same because there was just no courtesy in what happened weeks ago. I am trying to move on but things like this stunt your personal growth.

The struggle with emotional labour hones a guilt that someday I’ll regret giving my early 20s to something that didn’t work out. I felt like I was on borrowed time.

These are obviously my own insecurities spurred on by the fact that I’ve read enough “10 things I wish I knew in my 20s” blogs to know that these are my selfish years. Still, it is ultimately devastating to see the last 3 years of your life conclude via a text that displays a failure to realise that there is no real clean cut for a long-term relationship. 

I respect him for the blunt statement because it means I get to reference the Berger SATC breakup and say “casually cruel in the name of being honest” (Taylor Swift, 2012) a LOT, which softens the pity in the social scenarios that I invent in my head in the shower.

When Tony calls Adriana to tell her Christopher has tried to kill himself, that was like my final phone call too. This is the end. Her youthfulness was why I related to her most in the show, but at the same time having nothing to lose made her easily expendable. Youth makes you put 100% into something knowing it is a gamble. 

I’m not comparing my ‘borrowed time’ to Adriana because she ends up dead, but there was a disregard for her life that was so harrowing because she did nothing but try and do the right thing. I watched Adriana put Christopher first willingly for 5 series. He supported her music management dreams but ultimately ended up making it all about him. He gave her the Crazy Horse but this ultimately was just another mob hangout. He sat on her dog, he continued to use heroin, shag other people, and so on.

“You could start writing again,” she tells him in her last episode, to which he responds  “I could do my memoirs, finally,”. Here is Adriana still!! STILL!! catering to Christopher’s ego to give herself some confidence. Very me.

All the way through she was just too good for him. Her ties to the Famiglia aren’t as tight as Carmela and Co. No children, still young, there’s chance for Adriana to get out if she wanted to. Of course this makes her prime FBl bait, but shows she sticks by Christopher through everything purely out of love. In the end she dies on her knees, subservient, with Heart’s Barracuda the last song she hears. I know Adriana had to go. That’s the way it is in the Famiglia because Christopher took an oath. But in a way she also had the carpet ripped from underneath her, just like me. 

There are lots of men writing on the internet about how Adriana is greedy and hypocritical. I just don’t understand where this reading is coming from other than obvious misogyny. I’ve read others that say if she was really that strong she would have simply left the relationship years ago. I believe that she believed things would improve for both of them, and that most people are just slut shaming her for her past. 

Still, Drea DeMatteo won a Best Supporting Actress Emmy for the episode. Fuckin’ A. 

I rooted for the woman. Before I was made redundant while working from home, I would spend half my life at my desk willing it to be 5:30pm, so I could slither back to the settee and spend the other half of my life in New Jersey. I’d phone my mum to discuss the episodes. She loves the show too, it’s always been a favourite in my household. We’d talk about the women like they were our friends and how we relate to them. The Sopranos is like a big mirror urging you to question everything. The answer to life is simply what are ya gonna do? 

Men love making things black and white so it is easier for them, when really women are in the background sorting out the shades of grey. 

Don’t get me wrong, Adriana’s significance is massive, albeit more so because of her death. You watch Christopher and Tony’s relationship start to crumble afterwards. It's shattering to see the disregard for Christopher’s sobriety and how despite his loyalty, he still sees him as a liability and weak. 

On the other hand, for Adriana’s sake, I am still enraged that he couldn’t see the bigger picture at the time. She is collateral damage in his path to finding his precious arc - “Wives, girlfriends, they can complicate life in a major way” Tony expresses to Jennifer as he runs from his own guilt. 

Christopher is desperate for Tony’s approval but is more than happy to use his blood connection as a protective leeway whenever he steps out of line. Again the irony is that he comes to tell Tony about Adriana first, just as the old Famiglia values say he should, but there is no real personal reward for doing so despite the personal sacrifice. 

I think Christopher regretted it in the end, and rightly so. When he is faced with his potential alternate life at the gas station, we assume that this was what made him go to Tony. It’s a family with loads of kids. Adriana probably can’t even have kids??? What kind of male logic?!  #justiceforadriana

I can’t help but feel for him when JT screams “Chris, you’re in the MAFIA!”. It’s the same kind of reality check that Chief Cubitoso gives Adriana, it’s an ultimatum and it’s the realisation that they are trapped in this life. Just ask Gene.

Carmela knew. I read her dreams as a testament to a woman’s intuition. She knows her friend isn’t what everyone is describing, she knows Adriana wouldn’t just disappear. She is all too aware of the emotional labour Mob women carry. When she sees Adriana with Cosette on the banks of the Seine, it is as sad as it is when we dream about people who have died. 

There is a scene in an early episode where Carmela says “Don’t we all?” in response to Meadow squealing “She’s MARRYING a BABY?” at a painting of The Marriage of Saint Catherine. I thought about this again when Christopher dies. Carmela passes her instinct off as hysteria, she isn’t to know. “So quick to blame, what is the attraction in that?” she cries during the aftermath of the car crash. There is a critique in her own femininity here that just makes you want to shout “NO CARM!!!!!!!”. As she believes she mothers Tony, there is the double-edged sword whereby he protects her through keeping her in the dark. “Heaven only ever sees my love making a fool of me” sings Emmylou Harris at the start of season 5. Carm’s power is taken away but she doesn’t even know. 

Carmela dedicates her life to being a mother but it’s not enough to save Meadow from her surname. We get some sense that AJ ‘Break Stuff by Limp Bizkit’ Soprano might be on a new path when he feels like the burning of his car among the autumn leaves of death was cathartic. As a man, he just has more freedom anyway. 

Miss Meadow gained her independence by getting her driving license, but in the end we see that she is still held back in the final scene by her inability to parallel park. She slots right in, eventually. As she does, she slots into the Soprano cycle after years of doing the most to get out and pave her own way. After every breakup with someone without links to the Famiglia, no scrubs, she returns and dates someone closer to home. Her career path is left tenuous to us, it would be all too easy for her to become a kept woman, which feels like it is the only real option should she settle down into the lifestyle with Patrick Parisi. It isn’t what she envisioned for herself, so part of me wants to hope that her story ends up a little bit more like Elle Woods. Legally Italian. 

I probably wouldn’t even have remembered her saying anything about parallel parking if I wasn’t terrible at parallel parking myself. It’s the pepperings of these subtle callbacks that make the show so beautiful. As the guitar solo plays on during the frustration, you’re invited to reminisce over Meadow’s journey. I fully wept watching her struggle to get the damn car parked because I’m trying to get my car parked too. Don’t stop believing, Meadow. 

I admire all the women in The Sopranos. The show is feminist, and that is a hill I am prepared to die on. It’s definitely up for debate as it is obviously littered with gratuitous nudity and women are commoditised. We have to allow this for cultural context for the show, but real life is basically exactly the same too? 

I read a post on Reddit where a dude is asking whether he should watch the show with his girlfriend. He types ‘“It’s a masterpiece of film but she probably wouldn’t get into it as I am”, and you don’t have to look much further to find more comments about how women and their puny minds just won’t get it. It’s an odd perspective to take given that Tony’s psychiatrist is a woman, but of course women could never grasp something so complex. It’s bullshit if you ask me, the female narrative prevails throughout all scenarios. 

The Pine Barrens seems to be everyone’s favourite episode. It’s not my favourite but there are two major elements that resonated with me. The first is Meadow looking down at the three letter words Jackie Aprile Jr had placed on the Scrabble board, and the second is when Gloria says to Tony:

“What you said was that you didn’t wanna piss me off..which implies that you’d have to deal with me, which is more about sparing YOU than my fucking feelings”. Don’t need to elaborate on that. Rest in power, Gloria. Legend.

Of course I could write pages and pages of hot feminist takes on all of the women - Jennifer, Janice, Livia, Angie, Svetlana, Charmaine. Lord knows I could probably write a book on Tracee.“ 20 years old, this girl”, I bashed Living on a Thin Line by The Kinks for about a week after that episode. It is the male gaze of the show made me love the women more. Carmela is my mother and I’ll probably name my first born Meadow. 

Carmela is the powerhouse and backbone of The Soprano household even though Tony provides. She represents stability, emotional labour, and putting on a brave face regardless. In some ways, it is as if Carmela represents the human emotion side and the fragility of organised crime. She is secure, but not enough, and her lack of ability to stand on her own two feet plagues her conscience through time. She is totally complicit, but must be to ensure her future with Tony as he pays anything to roll the dice just one more time. At the end of Long Term Parking, she and Tony stand looking at where she will build her spec-house. The forest looks the same as where we lost Ade, it’s a grim reflection that Carmela wouldn’t have this life if it wasn’t for the quick disposal of those like Adriana.   

Yeah okay, what the hell is a show with a feminist underpinning trying to say about wider society about a woman who exercises her beauty, loyalty and ambition?? Is it that she is not to be trusted?? Adriana’s a rat, but before this she is already deemed “damaged goods” anyway. She dresses provocatively, but that’s because she just looks MINT always. You would dress like THAT if you looked like THAT. When you Google her, ‘Adriana Sopranos Tennis’ comes up. I roll my eyes. Fucking men, eh? To take it down to a basic Sixth-Form-Poet reading, Adriana is Curley’s Wife and Daisy Buchanan all in one. She loves a red manicure too, and it might have worked out better for her if she had played the complicit beautiful little fool. 

This isn’t ‘Why The Sopranos is good!’, but a love letter to Adriana and her strength, because there is basically little or no content written on the women of the show when I have Googled.  I needed there to be more things written about her that isn’t just “bitch had it coming” when in fact she is a martyr. 

When Adriana was on screen, there was my mate. I knew her, she wanted what I wanted, but she sacrificed so much of herself for others and it was heartbreaking to watch. She barely gets a look-in in early episodes, but when she does she is usually wearing something animal print, which automatically made her the number one character on my radar. I am choosing to believe the theory that she is the cat in the final episode too. 

Still, I have been struggling and questioning why an episode that aired 16 years ago, with no plot that links to my own circumstances, has had such a monumental impact on me. 

I saw a tweet that said “have we ever sat down and thought about why relationships only work if the guy is more invested than the girl or is that just something we accept” (@anugov1). Adriana invested more in Christopher, even in the end, than she ever did herself. 

As I navigate this transitional period in my life, I am Adriana driving in the vision we see when we think she is going to start her new chapter. We can’t leave the flat, I have no job. The Sopranos has provided the most cathartic escapism for me. As I enter into whatever new world follows this nightmare, I wanted my mate Adriana to find her new world too, turning the classic rock up to 11.

[chillax-kass-w]

After All | M19

[Reiner Braun/Reader]

Happiness seems impossible for Reiner, but he may get there after all.

Read on AO3

[As a note, the format of this story is as follows: chapters actually titled “Chapter _” are current to the Marley Arc, chapters titled “M_” are Reiner’s memories in succession, and chapters titled “RM_” are the Reader’s memories in succession]

Previous

Sunlight was filtering through the leaves, and he knew. He knew (f/n) would love these trees. She’d scale them up and down and wonder what their story was. She’d write that story; she’d tell it to him. She’d always been curious like that. He could just imagine her smiling at the adventure ahead of them; he could just see the golden sun in her hair, the life in her eyes.

“Hey, Reiner, got any water?”

His imagination halted at Ymir’s question. “Sorry, there’s not a hell of a lot I can do, even if it is a matter of life and death.” Now that she mentioned it, he was parched. He wondered when they’d get back to the Walls for some much needed rest.

“You’re right about that. This whole thing is bullshit.”

“Speaking of which, we’ve been working our asses off. No food, no sleep, no nothing. Ever since those Titans showed up. That was yesterday, right?” He sighed. “Man, we’re lucky the Wall hasn’t been destroyed. Still,” he held his hand to his head, “you’d think that meant they’d give us a break. And don’t even get me started on promotion…”

“Reiner.” He looked to Bertholdt; his eyes were wide.

“What? Aw, come on, I don’t think that’s too much to ask. Do you?” He chuckled. “No, I think we’ve done enough work to deserve consideration. It’s not easy to act in a situation as messed up as this one. As a soldier, I don’t see what’s wrong with being commended and rewarded for that… It’s just nice to be acknowledged.”

“Mister Reiner, what in the hell are you going on about?” Ymir had an incredulous smile on her face. What was that for?

“What do you mean? I’m not saying that I should be immediately promoted to Captain, you know.”

“Uh… That’s not what I mean.”

“Oh, by the way, where did you guys get that cannon from? I owe you one for saving my bacon.” He sighed. “And (f/n) injured her hand saving me too. Needed stitches. I hope she’s alright. She—”

“Hey!” He jumped as Eren stood with a shout, and that’s when he noticed the steam billowing from Eren’s arms. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Is this some kind of joke?”

“What are you mad about, Eren? Was it something I said?” He held up his hands in surrender. He didn’t understand.

“If you want me to kill you, just keep talking!”

“Wait, Eren,” Ymir held out her arm. Why was she missing limbs? “Whatever he’s saying, it’s not normal. Isn’t that right, Bertholdt? If there’s something you know, then quit being quiet and do something about it.” Reiner didn’t understand what she could be implying. He looked to his friend for some sort of answer.

“Reiner…” Bertholdt couldn’t meet his eyes. “Snap out of it. You’re not a soldier. We’re Warriors.”

Warriors.

1,820 years ago, our ancestor Ymir Fritz made a deal with the Devil.

She gained power.

The power of the Titans.

Eldia’s ethnic cleansing lasted for about 1,700 years.

The Great Nation of Marley incited a civil war and brought seven of the nine Titans to its side.

The Great Nation of Marley won.

The Great Nation of Marley is merciful to the Eldians.

I will become a Warrior and live with my mother and father as an Honorary Marleyan.

I will become a Warrior and eradicate the Devils within the Walls.

I will become a Warrior.

I will become a Hero.

Eyes shut, he realized. Everything had come together. When had it come apart?

“Marcel! No!”

“Take the blame and die!”

“Reiner’s dead. If you need Marcel, I’ll be Marcel.”

“This is the only way we can go home.”

His mother was waiting; he wouldn’t let her wait long.

Complications like her ruined everything.

He’d take her down and show her how cruel the world really was to devils like her.

He couldn’t trample a smile like that, even on a devil’s face.

No one would question the aim of a person who selflessly helped others.

Keep telling yourself that.

She was a good person.

Person?

“You deserve it, Reiner.”

Friend?

He’d become a good liar.

“Well, we’ll go see it then.”

Another lie.

“All thanks to you.”

“Who am I really?”

All you cause is pain.

He couldn’t change her future, as much as he wanted to.

“It’s your choice, Rein’.”

“I just want you to be happy.”

Just do what needs to be done, and keep moving forward.

“Wait, why are you in such a rush?! We haven’t even talked this over!”

“Hey, why is Marco being eaten?”

“It’s not your fault, Reiner. Please, please, don’t blame yourself for things out of your control.”

“Please, Reiner.”

He wanted to forget.

He wanted more.

He understood.

“Look at how beautiful it is, Rein’.”

“They remind me of you… respect, chivalry, clarity of thought…”

He couldn’t afford her.

If only he had the power to douse the flames.

If only…

“I fight for you.”  

“I fight for you too.”

“Reiner… I thought I lost you.”

“I thought I lost you, too.”

“Reiner!”

“No!”

No!

No!

Warriors.

We’re Warriors.

“Right… I see…That’s how things are…” He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. All he could do was hold his head in his hands and cry.

It felt as if he’d seen someone else’s memories. He’d always expected to be in this position, but not then, not his own memories. How had he forgotten? Why did he feel so out of control? Had he ever been in control?

“I think I’m starting to see what’s going on here. I thought something was strange. I mean, why would the man who destroyed the Wall risk his life to save Connie? You were taking contradictory actions, but without being aware of it. I don’t know why that happened, but… You were originally a Warrior whose goal was to destroy the Wall, but you pretended to be a soldier for so long, you could no longer tell which was the real you…” Ymir’s words vexed him, or did they pin him? “No, maybe you couldn’t bear the weight of your sins, so, in order to keep your mind in balance, you unconsciously escaped into a fantasy, convincing yourself you were just a soldier who protected the Wall… That caused your mind to split and altered your memories. Judging by Bertholdt’s dumbfounded expression, this isn’t the first time your stories stopped fitting together…” She laughed in the face of his plight. “And not to mention the ultimate irony, you convinced yourself you were worthy of love. Ha! I wonder what (f/n) is thinking right now. She must be—”

“Shut up!” He couldn’t take it, couldn’t face it. “Don’t say her name.” His blood was boiling with regret and determination, duty and the woes of his life.

“My bad, but isn’t it you who shouldn’t be allowed to say her name? Think about it.” She was right, absolutely right. At the thought, he buried his face further into his cold hands. He didn’t want to be seen.

He didn’t want to be there.

“You have to be kidding me. How can you act like a victim?” I don’t know. “What are you even thinking?” I don’t know, Eren.  “Why did you even listen to what we had to say that day? Tell me, Bertholdt. Don’t you remember what I said? I was right in front of you two. I told you about the time my mother was eaten by a Titan, didn’t I? About how she couldn’t escape because a piece of the gate you kicked down landed right on my house. You know about that, right?” Yes. “I told you, didn’t I?” Yes. “What did you think? What… were you thinking that day?”

“Back then… I felt sorry for you.” How could Bertholdt answer? Reiner’s entire being was withering away.

“Oh… I see… You two… You’re not soldiers… You’re not Warriors… You’re just murderers. You massacred people who’d done nothing wrong! You’re mass murderers!”

“I know that!” Reiner couldn’t take it. His sins were agonizing upon his back, in his chest, around his neck. “I don’t need you to tell me!”

“Then stop acting like responsible citizens worried about the state of the world! You two aren’t even human anymore! You’re the ones who turned this world into a living hell! Don’t you see that, you murderers?!”

Yes, he could see. He could see very clearly now.

A l l  y o u  c a u s e  i s  p a i n.

“So what do you want these murderers to do?! Do you want us to repent?! Do you want us to apologize?! Are you really going to preach to a couple of cold blooded murderers about how killing is wrong?! Will that satisfy you?! The Reiner and Bertholdt you know are gone! And if all you want to do is cry about it, then go ahead! Keep crying!”

He wanted to cry. He wanted to go home.

“You’re right.” Eren’s voice was cold. “Who am I? What do I know? Still, all I can do now… is work. Work hard… to make sure that you two die the most excruciating death possible.”

How could Reiner feel fear when he felt so numb?

“You can’t be for real. Eren, I’m begging you, I can’t put my faith in you if you keep talking like some stupid kid.”

“Like what…?”

“I’m saying there’s no way I’m going along with someone worried about petty little things like that.” She paused. “Hey, Reiner. What was that beast?”

His eyes widened. He didn’t want to talk about that.

He didn’t want to talk about anything.

“Beast? What’re you talking about?”

“Huh, you don’t know? Funny, considering that your eyes were beaming like you were kids when you saw it earlier.”

Eren was confused. “What ‘beast’?”

Ymir shook her head. “Just listen. That Beast Titan is the cause of this recent mess. It was what made Titans appear inside the Walls. Maybe it was testing our strength?” How did she know? “You two are trying to get to it, because, if you do, you’ll be able to go back to your home town, right?”

Before he could even piece together a response, Eren shouted again. “Tell me everything you know!”

“Be patient. I’m caught up in circumstances of my own. But listen, Eren. If you think that everything will be settled if you take care of these two… Then, you’re dead wrong.”

“Then who’s our enemy?!”

If only he knew.

“Our enemy? Well, if I had to say, then it’d be—”

“Ymir!” He couldn’t let her tell Eren. He couldn’t let her go. She was the one who’d ruined their mission to begin with. She had to return home with them. If not...  “Do you think this world has a future?” He paused, piecing his argument together. “If you know that much about what’s going on, then think about your plans. Surely you can consider coming over to our side.”

“And trust you? Fat chance! You can’t trust me.”

“No, I can trust you. Your goal is to protect Krista, isn’t it?” Even in his fractured state of mind, he knew how to get to her. That much was obvious, especially with the look in her eyes. “Based on our situation, can you not imagine we can help her in some way? Or… Do you think Eren’s strength is more reliable than ours?”

“What?!”

Despite Eren’s shout, he knew he’d convinced at least some part of Ymir. She was glaring at Eren, presumably sizing him up. “You were thinking of using Eren to escape from here, probably because you thought you had no chance if you let us take you.” She didn’t, but truth was strong in times of negotiation. “To be honest with you, that’s exactly right. And even if you did join us, we wouldn’t be able to guarantee your safety. But, if we’re just talking about Krista… Together, we might be able to make something work. Your tiny little life… or Krista’s future: it’s your choice.”

He was basing this off of his own deduction. Annie had learned much about the aristocratic families, enough to know there was an illegitimate child out in the world. Ymir had told Krista to live for herself, suggesting she had never done so before. And, to top off the theory, Krista had revealed her true name was Historia. That was a noble name if he’d ever heard one.

“Hey, so who’s our real enemy?!”

“Who knows…?” With those words, he knew he’d bought her silence and support.

If only he could buy (f/n)’s safety…

“Reiner,” Bertholdt met him upon his branch, “are we really going to trust Ymir? Her Titan is small, but it was fast. If we don’t restrain her, she could take us out in moments… She… really is the one who ate Marcel, remember?”

How could he forget? That moment was cemented in his mind, his first monumental mistake. He’d let his focus drop for but a moment, and Marcel had saved him. Marcel was devoured by a Titan with long hair and black eyes. There was no second guessing the facts, at least for this memory. There was no disputing the identity of Ymir’s Titan. Her claws and sharp fangs couldn’t belong to any ther than the Jaws.

What if… he’d have been the one devoured that day?

“That’s right. But that’s exactly why her position is clear. She finally became human again. She probably wanted to wander, thinking of only her own survival… That is, until she met Krista. She found someone she valued more than herself, someone so dear that she’d jump into a swarm of Titans for her.”

He’d found that someone too…

“Reiner.” Bertholdt grabbed his shoulder; it brought him back to the moment, but he wouldn’t let it show. “What are you right now?”

No one.

“I’m a Warrior. Don’t worry. I have more reasons for bringing Krista with us than her just being cute. Did you forget? Annie tailed those guys who were loitering around the Training Grounds to see what they were up to. They came to observe Krista from the Church of the Wall, that group that knows what’s inside the Walls. Krista’s an important figure in a Wallist family. In other words, if the Coordinate we’re looking for isn’t Eren, then our mission won’t be over yet. If that happens and we have Krista, it should make the search much easier than it is now.”

“Yeah, let’s put an end to this. Next time we come here, we’ll be able to bring Annie, Krista, and that back to our hometown. And… that will be the last time we ever come here.”

Why did those words hurt so much?

Why couldn’t he use rationale to bring her home?

Why had this happened?

“Yeah, all our duties will be complete.”

His heart wouldn’t be.

But, Bertholdt’s…

He stopped him. “But, Bertholdt, tell Annie how you feel once we get to our hometown.”

If only…

“What?!”

“You stare at her too much! Enough that anyone paying attention would notice.”

“No, I—”

...he could do the same…

“Aw, who cares?” He crossed his arms. “You’re both murderers with little time left, right? Who else but one of us could understand the situation we’re in?”

Could she…?

Then, a sound met his ears. It was so familiar…

He glanced behind him, and there he found something he hadn’t quite factored into their equation.

Green smoke signals…

“Bertholdt.”

“The Survey Corps? Already?”

He readied his triggers. They had to move. “They shouldn’t be able to put together a scouting formation without moving a lot of horses over the Wall. I didn’t think they’d be able to act this quickly… Damn it. Commander Erwin might be with them.” Without a second thought, he shot an anchor above Eren. “We’re up against a tough bunch.”

He should know.

“Huh? What is it, Reiner?! It’s not night yet!”

“Doesn’t matter. We’re heading out now.”

He had to be level-headed. Bertholdt was counting on him. Annie was counting on him. Zeke was counting on him. His mother was counting on him. The entire Nation of Marley was counting on him. What were his emotions in the grand scheme of things? What was he in the grand scheme of things?

A Warrior.

There was a world waiting for his next move. The weight was on his shoulders; he could feel it. And, as he stepped toward Eren, he met his rival head on. “Eren, don’t be stupid and put up a fight.”

Eren laughed; it was forced. “Hey, you don’t need to act so tough. Look at me!” His arms were still healing from being severed, but Reiner knew better than to trust that. “There’s no way I could possibly fight back. Come on...” Reiner knew better.

So why did he let Eren attack him like that?

He was thrown on his back from the force, and Eren was above him, smashing his unformed arms relentlessly into Reiner’s head. He took it for a bit, allowed Eren to tell him to die, even considered it. But then, he found his resolve again. He kicked his former friend to the side, and, when he tried to get back up, he wrapped his forearm around Eren’s throat.

“I’ll kill you! I’ll fucking kill you! I’ll rip you apart!”

Just one squeeze, and he could kill him.

No, he needed him alive.

As he added pressure to Eren’s throat, he wondered just how it’d come to this. Why did the world have to be so cruel? Why had he been born in this position? Why were the Walls filled with people? Why had she been born inside the Walls?

At this point, he just had to accept it.

So, as Eren’s consciousness faded into nothing, he finally allowed his mind to settle on one thing: getting back home. That’d been his mission all along. That was all he’d ever wanted. Why had he forgotten that? Why hadn’t he stayed the course?

This was all his doing. He had to be the one to fix his mistakes.

As Bertholdt tied Eren to his back, Reiner planned his next course of action. The Survey Corps was too close for comfort, as were the Titans. Bertholdt had to carry Ymir on his back as well, so their mobility was limited. The situation just wasn’t in their favor.

Once Ymir was situated, Reiner and Bertholdt shot into the trees, and the Titans below followed. He gritted his teeth. “For now, we need to head somewhere with no Titans. Stay as far away from them as possible. I still haven’t recovered, and my Titan moves slow, so if we get surrounded, I won’t be able to protect both of us.”

“Then why the hell didn’t we wait ‘til night?!” Ymir shouted over the passing wind. “Oh… Signal flares?! So the Survey Corps came to save us?!”

Looking over his shoulder, he groaned. “Damn it, they’re already close. This is all because Eren got violent.” They had to get to the other side of the Titan Forest, and quickly. They were low on gas as it was, but, if they could just outrun the Titans, he could transform. It was open ground from there. They’d have the advantage.

“Reiner! It’s Krista!”

“What?”

“Krista’s with them! Now’s our chance to grab her!”

That wasn’t part of the plan. “You’re full of it! No way you can see that far!”

“I know she’s with them!” Ymir’s voice was desperate, demanding. “That idiot is too kind-hearted for her own good! She came to rescue me!”

That wasn’t part of the plan.

“Even if that’s true, we can’t go now!” He turned forward again, toward the mission. “We’ll get another chance!”

“What?!”

“We can’t grab her the way things are now! There’s no way to bust up that formation! Wait for our chance!”

“‘Wait for our chance’?! When’s that going to be?! After one of your Warrior pals eats me?! No! I can’t trust you!”

“Trust me! I’m not lying when I say we need Krista too!”

Just trust me!

“Prove it then! Prove it to me, right now! I need it to be now ! I want it to be now… At this rate, I’ll never see her again!”

At that, Reiner fell silent. His mission was in his eyes, but his heart…

I’ll never see her again…

“We can’t.” It was Bertholdt who answered, calm and collected. “Right now, we don’t even know if we can escape safely ourselves.”

He had to assure someone that a life would be saved, even if it wasn’t the one he truly wanted.

“I promise you! We’ll save her, I swear it!”

She was silent for a time. Then, as they continued their flight, she shouted, “I’m the strongest one here in this terrain.”

Reiner turned to find her grabbing at Bertholdt’s face, covering his eyes. “Ymir!”

“Ymir, stop!”

“Shut the hell up and think for a second! I’d be able to dominate this terrain, don’t you think?”

Bertholdt’s next anchor barely hit its mark. “Ymir, stop, we’ll fall!”

“That’s fine with me. My Titan might not be as strong as yours, but I can move quickly through the trees. I could grab Eren and rendezvous with the Scouts before you even knew what hit you. Wouldn’t be that hard.” At her threat, Reiner found his footing on the next tree he anchored to and stopped. They couldn’t risk it. “If you don’t take Krista right now, I’ll make a nuisance of myself here.”

Why couldn’t she just go along with the plan?

“Are you completely insane?! We won’t be able to save her that way! All because of your selfishness! I thought that you genuinely cared!”

“I do, in my way. Even if it means robbing her of her future, I want to survive and see her again. As a person, I’m really lower than shit… But she knows that, and she smiles at me anyway. You two don’t know what that’s like, do you?”

He did…

“Damnit!”

“Don’t be mad. I’ve thought this through. If I fight here, it’ll make it easier for you to escape! Or,” she glared at Bertholdt, fire in her eyes, “we could always tear each other apart instead! You think I’m nuts?! Then try me and find out!”

They couldn’t risk fighting here and now. If they did, the Corps would catch up, and they’d be too exhausted to fight them or even run away at that point. Ymir was right; she had the upper hand in this situation.

Damnit…

“Fine! We’ll keep heading to the edge of the forest! You better follow through, Ymir!”

“I will!”

With that, she let go of Bertholdt, falling behind them into a burst of lightning. The plan seemed to fall with her.

Even so, Reiner had to push forward. They still had Eren. He was more than enough, but the Jaw Titan was a priority too. He had to retrieve it. It was his own idiocy that caused them to lose it. It was all him. If he couldn’t bring it back to Marley, he was an absolute failure.

He already felt like one.

The edge of the forest was soaring into view. Their future was somewhere on the other side. As they switched positions in holding Eren, he all but held his breath. If Ymir didn’t come, what was the course of action? If—

“She’s here, Reiner!”

There she was. If she’d returned to them, that meant she’d succeeded in nabbing Krista. Somehow, the plan was working. Somehow, it didn’t seem all for naught.

“Good.”

So, just as he had so many times before, he held a knife in hand, and he jumped from the trees. It was all muscle memory from there. He eyed his hand as the blood trailed into light, and he wondered what the pain really felt like. He’d never felt it. The wound always closed as soon as he transformed.

(f/n) had felt it...

Lightning.

Ymir and Bertholdt latched onto his shoulders, and he ran. He ran, like he had the day they’d come there. He ran like he had, with Bertholdt and Annie on his shoulders. He ran, with the weight of the world on his shoulders. Open sky, open land awaited his feet. He was finally free.

Why did it feel as if that wasn’t the case?

Upon his shoulder, he heard a cough. Krista must have woken up.

“Ymir!”

“Krista… No, Historia.” Ymir must have exited her Titan. “I’m sorry I ate you out of nowhere. You must be mad, right?”

Left, right, left, right…

“What is this? What’s going on? We came to rescue you and Ere—”

“You don’t need to rescue me! Things have changed! I’m with Reiner and Bertholdt now. Like it or not, you’re coming with us! There’s no future inside the Walls! Hear me out for a second, okay? Life outside isn’t as bad as you think. Believe me. There’s no one out here saying the world would be a better place if you’d never been born.”

Think again.

“Yeah?! I don’t think Titans would say much either way! They’d be too busy trying to eat me!”

“We all have our shortcomings, right?! They’re not so bad if you look past that! It’s complicated, alright?!”

“Ymir, I don’t know what’s going on in your mind, but you’re not making any sense! It must be… that Reiner and Bertholdt forced you to do this, right? They threatened you!”

From his other shoulder, he heard Bertholdt voice his own thoughts. “It’s the opposite, actually…”

“I’m right, aren’t I?! Let go! Whatever they’ve got on you, I don’t care! We can fight them! Put the past behind you! What matters is right now! I’m here! I will always be your ally!”

If only…

“Ymir!” Bertholdt. “In case you haven’t noticed, the Scouts are closing in. If we’d left earlier, there might’ve been a decent chance of outrunning them. Going back for Krista was your idea. You forced us. Remember that? Ymir, why? What did we do this for?! Have you changed your mind again? Have you decided to stay inside the Walls with Krista? Don’t be a fool! Think!”

A fool…

“Let go! Don’t listen to him!”

Don’t listen…

“I can’t!” Ymir’s voice was shattering upon the wind. “I wish I could. Historia, I know you think I did this for you. But, at the end of the day, I did it for me. A long time ago, I stole the power of the Titans from one of their comrades. Their power is absolute. Inside or outside the Walls, there’s nowhere for me to run. At this rate, I’m going to be killed… But, they said if I cooperate, hand you over, they’ll speak on my behalf to get my crimes pardoned. It’s because you’re so important to the Wallists, who know the secrets of the Walls… When this world started going to hell… I thought that being with you… would be insurance for the near future… I almost died fighting at the tower… And I just couldn’t take it anymore. I was scared of dying. I wanted someone to save me somehow… I lied, and told you I was doing it all for you, but, really… It was all for my own sake. I’m begging you, Historia! Please, please save me!”

Please…

Please, save me…

“Didn’t I just tell you, Ymir? No matter what happens, I’m on your side!”

He was running toward the sun, running toward the blaze, but it didn’t emanate the brilliance he’d always revered. No, that was behind him. She was behind him. He knew. It was inevitable.

Shadows always sail away from the sun, after all.

Then, another familiar sound…

Was that an anchor in his shoulder?

Was that the whir of the 3dmg?

Were they that close already?

Ymir’s scream told him they were.

“Reiner! Protect us!” Bertholdt jumped under his chin, and to shield him, Reiner brought both his hands up to form a cage against his neck. Just in time, for Mikasa slashed at his hardened knuckles only a second too late.

“Mikasa, no! You’re not going to kill Ymir!”

Mikasa was on his head now. “That all depends on her! What’ll it be?! She can step aside or she can die! Her choice!”

“Reiner.”

That voice…

On his right shoulder, next to his ear...

She shouldn’t be here. She’s injured. She shouldn’t be here.

“Reiner, I know you can hear me.”

I can, (f/n).

“Please, tell me this is some sort of misunderstanding. There’s no way…”

It isn’t.

“Tell me, was any of it real? Did you ever truly care about me? Or was it all part of this lie?”

It was real. I care about you. I care about you.

“How many lies did you tell me?”

Too many to count.

“Why…?”

She was crying. Her fists met his cheek; he barely felt them. He barely felt.

If he had it his way, he’d tell her how real it all was. If he had it his way, he’d take her with him. If he had it his way, he’d stay with her until the end of time, until he’d heard everything she knew and everything she didn’t and every wish and every cry a thousand times over. But, it was never fated to go his way. Fate didn’t favor bloodstained hands. He had to accept that. He had to.

He was up to his shoulders in red.

“Why would you do this to me, Reiner?!”

To save the world.

“Why would you hurt so many people?!”

To save the world.

“You’re terrible!”

I am.

“You’re terrible…”

Her voice fell to a whisper. He couldn’t hear anything else. It was only her.

It was always her.

“I guess it’s always been like this. I’ve never gotten any answers from you. You’ve never listened to me. I should’ve known.”

I’ve always listened. I hear you.

“You’re a monster. I cared about you, and you’re a monster.”

You’re right. You’ve always been right.

“None of that matters. Just focus on taking their heads off,” Mikasa’s words reached him. “If you even hesitate for a moment, we’ll never get Eren back. They’re a threat to Humanity. That’s all.”

Thump, thump, thump.

“Do you think that anyone wants to kill people?!” Bertholdt voiced his own thoughts, broken and all alone. “What kind of person would do this for fun?! Who would want to do this?! With what we did, of course you despise us and want to kill us! We can never take any of it back! But, we couldn’t come to terms with our sins… When we were pretending to be soldiers, it was a little bit easier. It’s not a lie, (f/n)! Connie! Jean! It’s true that we deceived you, but it wasn’t all lies! We really did think of you as friends! We really did care! I know… we don’t have the right to apologize. But, someone… Please, someone… I’m begging you, someone find us…”

“Bertholdt… Give Eren back.”

“I can’t do that. Someone has to do this. Someone…has to get blood on their hands.”

Someone...

“Everyone, jump off right now!”

She left a void on his shoulder. She left a void.

And Death was coming. Titans, a horde of Titans, were approaching them from ahead. The Commander was leading them straight toward Reiner. There was nowhere to go. The weight of the World was on his shoulders; the weight of his friends’ pain was there too. There was no escaping his sins. There was no escaping the path he’d set out on. All he could do was run, run and hope they’d make it out on the other side.

Just do what needs to be done, and keep moving forward.

With hands latched firmly to his neck, Reiner dipped his shoulder and ran. Just as he’d destroyed the gate those many years before, he rammed through the horde in his path. They kept coming. He kept charging. Ymir was screaming. They were around his neck, biting his head, holding him down. He had to move. Quickly, quickly, he had to move.

He had to get home.

Where could he go? He was surrounded. There was no way to fight with his hands around Bertholdt. There was no way to protect Bertholdt as he fought. What could he do? How many were there? Ten? Twenty?

It wouldn’t matter if they died.

Hold on, Bertholdt.

Just a little longer.

We’re almost there.

He let Bertholdt go, and he swung at the Titans closest to him. He swung, and he swung, and he prayed for safety. He prayed for home.

The Scouts…

They were upon him now. They were after Bertholdt. He had to choose the greatest enemy. He had to choose. He brought his hand up and around his friend.

“We’ve made it this far! We’re taking Eren with us and going back home!”

“Bertholdt!” Armin, upon his neck. “Are you two sure about this? You’re going to go home and leave your friend behind?”

Annie…

“You’re leaving Annie behind? Right now… Annie’s deep underground in Utopia District, to the far north… where they’re torturing her…”

No, no that couldn’t be true.

“As soon as they heard her screams, they realized… The wounds on her body might heal, but she can’t make the pain go away. They’re being careful not to kill her, of course, but they won’t let her rest. At this very moment, they’re inflicting pain on her in every way they know how—”

No, Annie…

“Children of the Devil!” Bertholdt… “I’ll kill every last one of you!”

At Bertholdt’s scream, Reiner looked down. At the sight of the Commander, he knew it was all over. Eren was falling; Eren was in Mikasa’s arms. They’d lost. He reached out to the retreating Survey Corps in a last attempt at recovering the Coordinate, but there was no moving with the Titans surrounding him, suppressing him.

It was over. He wouldn’t be able to last against so many Titans on his own. Bertholdt’s Titan was useless in a retreat. They needed Annie. They needed Marcel.

This was all his fault.

In an act of hopelessness and indignation, he picked up one of the smaller Titans and hurled it at their formation. He didn’t care who he killed. He didn’t care. He was on the brink. He was in a corner. So, he hauled another onto his shoulders, and he threw. If Eren was eaten, all the better. Perhaps the one to inherit his Titan would be less of a maniac. Perhaps, they’d be like Marcel. Then, they could go home.

Home…

With that on his mind, he could move. With that on his mind, he could push through hordes of Titans to his goal. In the face of Death, in the face of failure, he could do anything if home was the goal.

Lightning…

No, that wasn’t lightning. What was that?

Was that… the Coordinate?

What was that scream?

All of the Titans upon his back, all of the Titans begging for his nape, left him. They all ran past him, away, to devour another Titan. It was a Pure Titan. There was no reason for them to target it.

Unless…

Eren had the Coordinate. He could use it. The situation couldn’t be worse. Eren, of all people…

We have to get it back.

The last person in this world who should have that power is you, Eren.

“Stay back, you bastards! I’ll kill all of you!”

Eren’s voice reverberated in his very soul. That lightning was behind his eyes again, and he knew it was over. There was no escaping the horde Eren directed their way. There was no escaping his sins. Eren had promised an excruciating death; this was it. He would be devoured if he didn’t run. He would be devoured if he ran.

Bertholdt… I can’t keep him safe!

Bertholdt was screaming. There was nothing he could do. There was nothing.

Nothing…

But then, something so inexplicable happened.

Ymir came back.Ymir saved Bertholdt. Ymir fought the Titans along with him. For some reason, she’d chosen them; for some reason, he’d live another day. So, he ran. He ran until he couldn’t run anymore. He ran until his mind was numb. He ran until Ymir had to take over. And she ran until they were atop Wall Maria, the same Wall they’d destroyed those many years ago.

And, as they caught the breath they hadn’t anticipated in their lungs, he found only one question upon his lips.

“Ymir, why did you come back for us?”

“Well… Must be because I’m an idiot.” They didn’t laugh. “I’m here so you’ll have something to hand over. You guys can’t go home empty handed, right?”

He couldn’t believe it. “Do you understand there’s no hope of you being rescued if we go home from here? If you’re going to run… Now’s the time.”

“What’re you talking about, dumbass? I’m tired out. I’ve just had enough. I’m done.” In that moment, he had to agree. He felt done. Done with the hand he’d been dealt; done with the world; done with life.

“Ymir, why did you rescue me?” It seemed Bertholdt didn’t believe it either.

“Maybe because I heard your voice… If you hadn’t come to destroy this Wall, I would’ve been stuck in an endless nightmare. All I did was repay a debt. I’m the only one who knows about your situation, too… I’m the same way… I was hopeless on my own.” She reached toward the sky. The gesture pained him. He’d seen another hand reach for the stars so many times.

“Thank you, Ymir… I’m sorry.” Bertholdt was crying. If Reiner didn’t feel absolutely void, he would be as well.

“It’s fine… Being a goddess doesn’t feel so bad, either.”

He didn’t know about that.

But, something stuck with him. She’d said she would have been in an endless nightmare if they hadn't come to destroy the Wall. As he watched the stars parade across the sky, he had to agree, at least in some respect. If he’d never come there, he never would have experienced life. He never would have experienced friendship. He never would’ve experienced love. Within the Walls, he’d found a love for the World he’d never known. He’d wished for forever. He’d wished for a future. He’d planned a future. He’d found love.

He’d found (f/n).

She was everything he’d wanted. She was everything he’d known. She was everything he was never meant to know.

But, now, he realized that that destruction was a double edged sword. That destruction had led him to his present moment. That destruction had initiated his own endless nightmare, and there was no deliverance.

You deserve it, Reiner.

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