#A father figure is a man in a position of power who elicits the kind of emotions one has or should have toward a father

[adickaboutspoons]

With respect, I disagree that the answer to proposition 2 is unambiguously yes. What's missing from your analysis is that our co-tagonists & deuteroagonist are ALL narrative parallels for one another, & all on v. similar arcs in S1. Ed, Stede, & Jim are all trying to escape from a past they no longer want to be part of & unbearable expectations toward a life where they can be accepted & loved as their authentic selves. Each has a source of friction from their old lives that embodies the restrictive values they're trying to distance themselves from, & which ultimately shames them into returning to their old lives. For Ed, this is Izzy; for Jim, this is Nana; for Stede, the Badmintons. Jim & Stede, after being drawn back into their old lives, receive council from a feminine figure with more emotional maturity than they (Jackie & Mary, respectively), & in so doing come to the conclusion the old life doesn't want them any more than they want it, make peace with laying the old life to rest, & joyously return to their authentic lives. Ed doesn't have that - or, rather, he's got Lucius, but the order of operations is wrong - Lucius gave Ed council BEFORE Izzy comes in with the steel chair to shame & threaten him back into his old life, & in this narrative, it's the last influence that bears the most weight. So before Lucius has a chance to give him additional council, Ed banishes the Voice of Reason from his life when he pushes Lucius overboard, & he is therefore stuck in the Old Life that he reviles. I hope that we can all agree that the Badmintons, while they embody the same colonialist & repressive, upper-class expectations for the correct performance of masculinity as Stede's father are NOT meant to be seen as a father-figure for Stede? And, that, when you add this into the whole tangle of influences/motivators being enacted on our heroes, that just because SOME of those influences are parental figures does not mean that parental status can therefore be conferred on ALL? With regard to the intentionality of the writers including signifiers that were meant to clue us in to Izzy position as a narrative parallel for Ed's father, I again have to disagree. DJenks said in multiple interviews that Izzy being a father-figure to Ed is not only something that didn't occur to them until they were breaking the last episode of the S2, but that the father-figure relationship is something that exists only AFTER Ed shoots Izzy. "He went from a troubled & downtrodden employee to a jilted lover to a discarded employee, to someone that is just trying to find his footing again—no pun intended—to actually becoming this guy’s parental figure on some level." "on the other side of the ego deaths, weirdly, Izzy is a father figure to Ed... The character is kind of a jilted lover who then becomes a maimed & discarded employee & emerges from that into being a father figure" "There is a nice parallel to have Ed treat him so badly at the beginning of the season & then come all the way around to where Izzy is this sort of father figure" Which is not to say this isn't something the writers weren't SUBCONSCIOUSLY including, the same way they didn't PURPOSEFULLY write Izzy to be a racist, but there are so many repeated instances of him displaying racist behavior, I wouldn't be surprised if "is racist" is one of those qualities that the writers subconsciously ascribes to the prototypical "bad boss" archetype. Ultimately, I'm not trying to talk anyone out of embracing Father Figure Izzy if they see evidence for it & found it meaningful. I'm just trying to explain why people like me do NOT accept it as a given, & why it has been alienating to be lumped in with blackhands shippers & izzy apologists, or told we are reading against the text, don't understand how narratives work, or are too dense to see the subtle hints that were clearly there all along.

i guess this is just another way of saying something i've tried to get at before, but when people say they don't think the father figure angle on izzy was set up in s1, i think they are actually conflating two different questions:

did s1 of ofmd portray ed as viewing or treating izzy as a father figure, even subconsciously?

did s1 of ofmd portray izzy's role in ed's life as a narrative parallel for ed's father?

i do think the answer to #1 is quite likely no, at least in terms of authorial intent. you CAN make a case for yes, but at best it would be extremely speculative. honestly the writing in s1 mostly strikes me as just not really very concerned about the question of how exactly ed sees izzy or why ed puts up with izzy's behavior. ed lets izzy get away with all that shit in s1 mostly for the same reason jim's able to teleport back onto the revenge in 1x10: because if he didn't the plot couldn't happen. his motivations for it i'm sure were discussed at some point in the writers' room but at the end of the day they don't really matter to the story s1 was trying to tell so they're left kind of handwavey. watching the ed-izzy scenes in s1 through the lens of izzy reminding ed of his father doesn't feel like actively reading against the text, but it does feel like you're just kind of making up a plausible answer to a question that doesn't actually have a canonical answer.

(david jenkins has said a lot of izzy's arc in s2 is about answering the question "who is he to blackbeard" and i think it's not just izzy himself figuring that out, it's the audience finding out for the first time over the course of the season as well, because s1 didn't tell us.)

the answer to #2 however is absolutely unambiguously yes. multiple people called this long before s2 dropped. i can think of at least six different specific people right here on tumblr who called out parallels between izzy and ed's dad explicitly during the hiatus after s1. a whole bunch more called out that the jim-nana relationship was very clearly paralleling ed-izzy, and obviously nana is not jim's literal parent but is nonetheless a parental figure in their life. these parallels are all very obviously intentional; jim's storyline, for instance, clearly had to be deliberately conceived from the ground up to parallel ed's (as well as stede's). the intentionality is especially clear when you look at the visuals - there are a bunch of visual callbacks to the flashbacks to ed's childhood in both the namby-pamby scene and izzy's duel against stede, and those callbacks are much too specific to be accidental, and they all very consistently place izzy in the role of ed's dad. there's a reason the line "i'm the kraken" appears exactly twice, once right after we see ed strangle his dad in front of a lighthouse and once right after we see ed choke izzy in front of a lighthouse. we also know ed's dad had a cut line "you're making my son soft," which, i don't know how you'd deny it if that was left in there. and yeah the line was cut (albeit based on what we know probably just for pacing) but somebody had to write it in the first place! they obviously knew what they were doing there.

djenks had this interview after s2 where he said something that surprised him as they storybroke the season was the idea of izzy as a father figure to blackbeard, and i believe him about that being a surprise, but i think fandom is doing something fans do a lot with creator interviews and interpreting that statement in a much more rigidly absolute and literal way than he seemed to mean it. i think what he's talking about there is question #1 - the idea of ed being aware on any level at all (even if only a subconscious one!) of izzy acting like his dad, of that being the motivation for ed relating to izzy the way he does, of izzy being one of a long line of angry white men ed has spent his adult life seeking out because of his daddy issues - that was a new idea that wasn't present in s1, that was probably a surprise. but that doesn't mean question #2 - the idea of izzy being positioned in the narrative as a parallel for ed's dad - was a new idea, it obviously wasn't. and in fact that already having been present in s1 is what led to the new idea of ed seeing izzy that way in s2. you're breaking the season trying to figure out what are the most important things to focus on for izzy's redemption and the role he plays in ed's arc, you realize izzy's role as a narrative echo of ed's dad is going to have to become much more centrally important than it was in s1, so you have to find ways to bring out that theme and emphasize it. and one of the ways to do that is to introduce this running motif throughout the season of ed seeking out angry white patriarchs who treat him a lot like izzy does and make it clearly an expression of his daddy issues. because that way when ed breaks down at izzy's apology and death it's a lot more clear to the viewer not just how he feels about izzy but exactly what deeper issue is being resolved for him in that moment.

[ladykissingfish]

The Akatsuki as Parents

Obito

Was a bit reluctant when he found out he was going to be a daddy ... at first. Not because he didn’t want kids ((he really did)), but because he severely doubted his own ability to be a father. But the second he holds the baby in his arms, he’s hooked. He will be so eagerly helpful and hands-on that during the child’s infancy, the other parent will rarely have to lift a finger. Diapers need changing? Obito’s on it. Baby needs to be fed at 2am? Obito’s already out of bed and warming formula on the stove. Rash? Fever? A cough? Obito is consulting every doctor within a 20 mile radius on what to do. Note that Obito is a hard-core traditionalist and, if he isn’t married to the child’s other parent before he gets them pregnant, he’ll be persistent about doing so before the kid is born. Sobs the first time his child calls him “papa”. As the child grows older, Obito will be a tireless teacher and mentor, and you better believe that the kid will know every facet of what was once the Uchiha clan. Sharingan training is a bit nerve-wracking for Dad, because while he wants his child to grow strong, he knows the power of the eye is a deadly one, and doesn’t like to see his son/daughter get hurt. Is the type to be a bit more strict with his sons than with daughters, in fact being a complete pushover for anything his little girl(s) wants. Very, VERY likely to insist a girl be named Nohara. Also the type to sneak and let his kid eat lots of sweets (like Obito himself does) before meals, much to the other parent’s chagrin. Also involves the other Akatsuki members as uncles/aunt in the kid’s life, especially Itachi and Sasuke as he wants the kid to be exposed to members of the family more often.

Hidan

The literal first words out of his mouth are “pregnant? Why the hell didn’t you make me wear a condom?!” Takes a long time to warm up to the idea of parenthood, but once he does, he’s surprisingly better at it than anyone would anticipate. He tends to be very fast-paced in his body movements and not really used to being careful, so if he’s holding his infant it’s best to make him sit still in a chair first. Once the kid(s) is older, it’s better, because Hidan’s energy levels will match (and overshadow) even the liveliest of children. It will be a big point of contention between Hidan and his co-parent on whether or not to introduce their kid to Jashinism, and Hidan will eventually promise to wait until the child is an adult to start talking about “all that shit”; although Hidan’s idea of adulthood seems to be when the kid is old enough to use a kunai. Puts a startling amount of emphasis on his kid getting a good education, and will be sure to send him or her to the best village school that he possibly can. The reason behind this is because Hidan himself had a poor education growing up, and is in fact barely able to read or do basic math; and he says over and over that his kid “isn’t gonna be some dumbass like his/her father”.

Kakuzu

Nearly faints when told he’s going to be a father. Will immediately get out a calculator and start figuring out expenses like diapers, food, toys, education ... is so preoccupied that he ends up neglecting the person who carries his child, causing them to go off on their own expecting to be a single parent. Oddly, it’s Hidan who sets the old guy straight. He stays on his case and talks to him until the nonagenarian sees the error of his ways, and goes after the person having his baby. Kakuzu will be gentle with a baby, and show a surprising affinity for making up and singing lullabies. As the kid gets older, Kakuzu will be a bit more strict. “Food is expensive; you better eat every bite on your plate.” “A hole in your pants? No give them to me and I’ll mend them; buying new clothes is unnecessary.” His child will grow up knowing how to stretch a buck and budget money better than any other kid their age. Kakuzu isn’t really one for showing much warmth or affection, but there will be a few rare moments in his kid’s life where his father hugs him and tells him how proud he is of him. Kakuzu knows that the life of a shinobi is hard and therefore encourages his kid to pursue other career paths, such as opening up his/her own business.

Konan and Nagato

These two are so closely intertwined that they could only be parental mates to each other. When a baby comes into the picture, Nagato will still maintain his position as leader of the Akatsuki as Pein, but will insist that Konan quit. It’s for a practical purpose rather than a sentimental one; they both lost their collective parents to war, and Nagato always thought that if he had a child, he’d ensure that at least one parent would be around to always take care of him or her. Konan, however, will still keep in touch with all of the Akatsuki members, who will become very enthusiastic uncles to her child. She’s always been a good cook but with a child she’ll level up to professional chef caliber, creating dishes that are fun and healthy. Her child(ren) will be taught all of their mother’s paper jutsus, and Nagato will work to devise a way for the brightest one to get his rinnegan once he passes. The kids will primarily spend time with Nagato through Pein, and only be taken to meet their father when Konan feels they’re ready. Because Konan and Nagato had a childhood devoid of parental love, they’re often at a loss for how to be affectionate or sentimental, instead putting a lot of emphasis on “toughening” their kids up, so that they’re prepared to face the cruelties of the world. But the kids will know that mom and dad love them; it’s obvious in everything they say and do.

Deidara

Will be the fun, loving, yet highly irresponsible father. As soon as his kid is born he anxiously awaits to see if he or she inherits his explosion-release kekkei genkai; and if the kid DOES, he’s ecstatic. “Art is an explosion” won’t just be a saying in his household; it’ll be a way of life. The child will grow up given complete freedom to express his or her artistic tendencies, with Deidara highly praising any and every impact they make on the outside world. Yet despite being for artistic creativity, he’ll be (surprisingly) strongly against the child joining any kind of organization that’s like the Akatsuki; he regrets his own decision to join as he feels it out a horrible damper on his artistic expression and independence. Likes to tell his young children stories every night, which are actually just heavily edited and sanitized versions of his Akatsuki missions. Like Obito, will be a bit more of a pushover for a daughter than a son, and will love spending hours brushing and styling the beautiful long hair that the girl inherits from him. He’ll let any member of the Akatsuki around his kids except for Hidan (because he doesn’t want his foul language around the child).

Zetsu

There are people in this world who know for certain that their lives wouldn’t be fulfilled by having children, and Zetsu is one of these individuals. While wanting no offspring of his own, he IS rather a good “uncle” to the children of his fellow Akatsuki members ((although the majority of these kids are too terrified of his physical appearance to want to go anywhere near him until they’re at least teenagers)).

Sasori

A child would be hard-pressed to elicit any kind of emotional reaction from Sasori, as the man cleared himself of most feeling when he underwent his puppet transformation. However, one thing that he could never rid himself of, was his ability to love. Even if he has difficulty showing it, he loves his child and would do literally anything to help or protect them. When the child is a baby, Sasori will spend hours crafting tiny puppet-dolls for the kid to play with. As he grew up with a skilled medic grandmother, he possesses a wide knowledge of herbs and healing, which he will painstakingly pass on to his children. Not one to baby his children by any means, as he lives by the philosophy that the world is tough meaning you have to be tougher; however will offer advice, support, and encouragement on any issues that may be troubling his son/daughter. Early on he expresses a desire for his child to learn to be a master puppeteer like himself; however will be understanding if they choose to pursue a different path. Is very smart and naturally mistrustful of strangers, so will likely choose to educate his kids at home rather than send them to a village school. The type to seem more like a trusted mentor or an interesting uncle than an actual father; also the type to relate to his teen or adult children better than young kids.

Itachi

Itachi never feels like he deserves any of the good things in life, because of what he’s done, and therefore doesn’t know how to handle blessings that are given to him. A baby is the ultimate example of this. Itachi will feel as though any child of his would be better off not knowing him or being “exposed” to the cursed Uchiha bloodline, so at first he’ll make it a point to barely be around his baby ((even though this kills him inside)). Surprisingly, of all people, it’s Deidara who will talk him out of this mindset, telling him how important it is for a child to be around their father “even if he is a damned red-eyed weirdo”. Once Itachi allows himself to fully commit to parenthood, that’s it — he’ll be the best damned father in the universe. He’ll be warm and affectionate, especially liking to pick his kid up (no matter how old they are or how embarrassed it makes them) and squeeze them. He’s not much of a disciplinarian, believing that kids need to be able to make mistakes in order to grow from them. The only time he’ll ever get angry is when the child does something that could have resulted in a serious injury. Itachi’s intelligence has always been off the charts, and he utilizes this to help his kid be a spectacular student. In fact, as the kid gets older, they’ll start bringing his/her friends around the house in order to receive Itachi’s tutoring. Itachi’s brother Sasuke will adore his nephew/niece and come home more often simply to be with them. Also Kisame will come around practically every day, and the kid will grow up learning an impressive arsenal of water jutsus to compliment the traditional Uchiha fire jutsus.

Kisame

The tall, somewhat awkward father that scares all of his kid’s friends with his intimidating physical appearance ... until he opens his mouth and they hear a god-awful dad joke come out. Any child of Kisame’s is going to be part shark, and therefore have some affinity for being in/breathing under the water. Kisame’s favorite pastime will be taking his baby (and yes, I do mean baby, as he tends to start his kid on this when they’re young) out for long swims in the ocean. Kisame has always been self-conscious of his looks, so from the time the child is born he will spend a good deal of time teaching him or her to have self-confidence and love for him/herself. Like many of the others in the Akatsuki, Kisame never received much of a formal education, and therefore puts a lot of emphasis on his child going to a “normal” school and giving it their all when it comes to their studies. When the child proves him or herself physically capable, Kisame will start training with them on how to wield/control samehada, as well as fight with a variety of swords. It goes without saying that Itachi will be in Kisame’s kid’s life from the day they’re born, and be their favorite “uncle”.

[fishylife]

Guess who caved and read all 66 chapters of Painter of the Night? I don’t normally like to read comics that are still ongoing because I don’t like losing momentum while waiting for updates but here I am 🤡🤡

Spoilers.

 I typed this while distracted so sorry for any muddled thoughts.

Story

I am glad that I read up to Chapter 66 because a huge misunderstanding was cleared up (the fact that Nakyum legitimately did not run away this time). I would’ve been pulling my hair out if the misunderstanding went on further (I HATE misunderstanding/miscommunication as a plot device).

A lot of people on the subreddit theorized that this was a huge turning point in the story. For the first time, we’re seeing Seungho show legitimate remorse and sadness over Nakyum’s suffering. Hopefully we’re going to see change his behaviour and act more reasonably towards Nakyum, and be more communicative about why he’s doing what he’s doing.

Though I think Nakyum is still a bit confused about his feelings for Seungho, he’s past the point of hating Seungho and wanting to leave. He said that he’d tried to run away before but he had nowhere to run to. He acknowledges that Seungho is a constant in his life, a protector and an indirect caregiver. But he’s still struggling with his feelings for Seungho.

In that way, Seungho and Nakyum are sort of opposite. Seungho recognized his romantic love for Nakyum first, but he couldn’t see how he was hurting him. As for Nakyum, he figured out how he could make Seungho happy early on, but he’s still struggling a bit with regards to how he feels about Seungho, likely because a part of his heart is still with Inhun. Again, he definitely recognizes Seungho as his protector (he’d instinctively called out to Seungho for help when he was kidnapped), but he’s still struggling over whether he’s in love with him.

This week we’re getting a continuation to the spinoff story so we won’t see the story pick up again until next week.

I do think the spinoff story is interesting. Currently, Seungho holds a lot of power over Nakyum, both in terms of political/administrative power, and physical power. But with Seungho as a peasant and Nakyum as a son of a noble family, Nakyum holds the social power over Seungho and it evens up their power dynamics a bit, which I do like. It feels safer for Nakyum lmao.

In terms of the style of story telling, it’s mostly angst, I’ll be honest. And it is rather melodramatic because miscommunication tends to be something the author uses quite a bit as a storytelling technique. Luckily, they’re not dragged out for too long.

Art

The art is pretty nice. It’s all in full colour, which surprised me. The art is extremely detailed. I wonder how the artist can do so much in a week lol. I hope they’re not overworked.

Seungho

Both Seungho and Nakyum have had their share of past trauma, but my thinking is that they’ve manifested in different ways.

It’s implied that Seungho’s father knew about his sexuality from a young age and tried to treat it through medical means and then by locking him up, which effectively stopped his education, despite him having been a bright student. Seungho then lived out his young adult days in debauchery. Early on, he implied that he was just living by his father’s principles, or something along those lines. My guess is that his dad left him behind so he could debauch in isolation without affecting the rest of the family.

So Seungho grew up without many close friends. He was surrounded by servants and yes men (like Jihwa) who would not call him out on his bullshit. So I think that’s how he developed his extremely bossy and abusive behaviour.

Why Nakyum was different for Seungho was that initially, he didn’t have power over Nakyum. He would tell him to do things, but Nakyum would not necessarily heed his commands, not painting, or trying to run away. His heart was still fully loyal to Inhun. So I think that was why Nakyum elicited extra violent behaviour from Seungho. Seungho had never been defied like this.

But I think Seungho was also intrigued by Nakyum. Nakyum was a contradiction because he drew smut but was always super embarrassed when faced with sexual situations irl. Seungho should've felt better when Inhun was sent away and Nakyum became submissive during sex and yet that’s when Seungho felt like something was wrong. Nakyum just kept eliciting unexpected emotions from Seungho. I definitely think Seungho saw him as a plaything at first, but came to care for him after he got to know more about him and his personal life.

Nakyum

Nakyum also came from a tough background. He was an orphan, and was raised along kisaeng ladies. Inhun was the first authority figure whom he’d had a positive impression of, and he latched on to him. He admired Inhun so much that he tried his best to listen to him when he told him not to draw erotic art anymore.

Inhun unfortunately didn’t see their relationship the same way. He showed a kind face to most of his students but he looked down on their lowly statuses. Only when he saw Nakyum as a pawn, did he give him attention. But he never hid his emotions, visibly expressing his anger when Nakyum wasn’t being a good spy, brushing off Nakyum’s confession of love.

Nakyum’s love for Inhun was so extremely pure and all-consuming. I cried when he was so swiftly rejected and condescended upon by Inhun T_T Because I knew how much courage it took for Nakyum to confess, how he wanted nothing but for Inhun to have good things, and Inhun cared not for any of that because it wasn’t want he wanted. Nakyum wasn’t helping him in the way he needed, and he cared far more for ambition than romantic love (not to mention romantic love from a lowly peasant).

After the rejection, Nakyum internalized Inhun’s words when he called him a prostitute. A part of him still loved Inhun and if he said that, Nakyum figured he must’ve been right. The other part of him decided that acting submissively to Seungho was the only way to survive.

Basically, Nakyum’s going through a huge emotional journey because his hero Inhun has kind of abandoned him (though he hasn’t forgotten him completely), but Nakyum hasn’t found a worthy person to give his heart to.

Seungho & Nakyum

I’m still thinking about their relationship and why we ship them despite the shit they’ve done (mostly the shit that Seungho’s done to Nakyum).

For Seungho, I think Nakyum was the first person he met who had a different way of expressing love. He’d never met someone like Nakyum who would stuff he despised just to help out Inhun. Even when Inhun didn’t show an inkling of appreciation. Perhaps Seungho felt that he didn’t know what love was until he met Nakyum.

As for Nakyum, he theorized that he was only desperate for affection and that was why he felt himself drawn to Seungho. I think that is technically true. But more than that, I think Seungho has arguably shown more levels of care to Nakyum than Inhun has. Yeah, Seungho has done horrendous stuff to Nakyum, but he’s also shown more affection to Nakyum. That includes physical affection, but Seungho also bought him warm clothes, called on a doctor to care for his health, etc. Again, all of the care absolutely does NOT cancel out the abusive behaviour on Seungho’s side, but that’s how I think Nakyum found himself feeling more and more comfortable with Seungho. Loving someone is about showing your bad sides as well as your good sides.

I think both Seungho and Nakyum are finding affection/care in forms that they’d never experienced before, and that’s why they are drawn to each other.

Problematic?

I had a feeling that this would be a story that a lot of people would consider problematic. It’s probably because I’m older now, but it doesn’t really bother me. I obviously know that there is toxic behaviour shown by the characters and I would never want that in real life, but it’s really not difficult for me to separate what works in fiction vs. what works in reality.

This was a different time period, when rich and powerful people could just do whatever they wanted. Not excusing problematic behaviour, just explaining the entitled behaviour of some of the elites.

Seungho for sure shows extremely toxic behaviour. I think the point is that he is a problematic man who has trouble expressing emotions the normal way, and it ends up hurting those around him and those he cares about. He’s definitely an imperfect person who’s unpleasant to be around, but I think one thing the author wanted to show is that bad people are still capable of having emotions. By no means do I excuse his toxic behaviour. But I am all for showing that flawed people are still worthy of attention. We are still interested in what Seungho does in spite of his poor behaviour because we recognize that he is still a person.

I also recognize that Nakyum is woobified a lot. He’s constantly put in situations where he is the victim and he doesn’t/can’t fight back. In the latest event with Jihwa ordering Nakyum’s kidnapping/murder, the Nameless one had threatened Nakyum’s life so that he wouldn’t reveal the fact that he’d kidnapped him, and that caused all of Seungho’s meanness in the past few chapters. I recognize that whump is a popular trope, but usually because it ends in comfort. (I specifically can’t enjoy whump if it doesn’t end in comfort) It sets up a situation in which it feels reasonable for the victim to receive comfort. Again, this is stuff that I only enjoy in fiction. I recognize that in real life, people shouldn’t have to get hurt to be worthy of love and care. But I can see why people may say that Nakyum being the victim might be a problem.

Other

I thought Jihwa & the Nameless one were going to be a side pairing from the moment I saw the Nameless one’s jaw lmao. It was angular and I was like, that’s a handsome man’s jaw. I’m glad that Jihwa realized before hurting Nakyum that he couldn’t possibly fix his relationship with Seungho anymore. He recognized that even with Nakyum out of the picture, Seungho wouldn’t want to come to him. Seungho’s mind would always be filled with Nakyum, and if Seungho had found out that he was behind the murder, he’d hate Jihwa even more. Like Nameless one, despite the despicable things that Jihwa had done, I did pity him. He was in love with Seungho for a long time, and thought that giving him everything he wanted (including letting him have sexual relations with others) would endear himself to Seungho. But they were just not meant to be.

But Min implied that Jihwa had crossed the line already this time by kidnapping Nakyum. After the happenings of Chapter 66, Seungho’s going to have a field day with Jihwa and I’m not sure how he’s going to get out of that one. Not sure if Nameless one can do anything to help.

I don’t know how long this manhwa is supposed to be, but there are several story lines other than Seungho x Nakyum that haven’t been addressed yet. Like I said, I think we’re going to see Jihwa x Nameless one expanded upon a bit. There’s some stuff going on with the Yoon family, since Seungho’s brother keeps coming over. I wonder if Seungho’s going to try starting a career (this isn’t based on anything, I’m just wondering). And I also have a feeling that Inhun might return, which will likely force Nakyum to choose between Inhun or Seungho once and for all.

To be completely honest, I don’t want this manhwa to drag out for too long. For selfish reasons because again I don’t like waiting for ongoing comic chapters. I don’t know how long the manhwa is intended to be, but based on my paragraph above, it’d still take a lot of time for all of those loose ends to be wrapped up. But considering the fact that Seungho and Nakyum’s relationship is probably finally going to get better, hopefully we’re over half way through? Just me being hopeful.

Final

I didn’t write a full review for this on my Dreamwidth because, like, this comic isn’t even done yet. But as you can see, I enjoyed reading it. I feel like I’m missing a hundred things that crossed my mind while reading this. And there are a lot of interesting analysis posts on Tumblr and Reddit that are opening my mind to other interpretations too.

I had a BL manga phase when I was a teenager and now I’m like “...is it time to get back into it?” Lol. In any case, it’s interesting reading BL as an adult now because like I said, it’s so much easier to separate the fiction from the reality now. I can read BL purely as fiction while recognizing what tropes are not healthy, and they don’t diminish the story. It’s melodramatic because it’s exactly that: melodrama.

[ampleappleamble]

—

It was worth it.

The arduous trudge up the mountainside, the stares and whispers from strangers and crewmates alike, Ydwin's snarky little jabs, stripping to his skivvies and getting poked and prodded and scrubbed down with everyone watching– Hel, even going as far back as sailing to the Dead Floe in the first place, or following the Watcher through the White Void– it was totally, completely, absolutely worth going through all of it just to be here, now, in this perfumed paradise of a bath. Now all Vatnir had to do was find a way to never have to leave.

A gentle slosh of water at his shoulder told him he had a visitor, but he was in such bliss that he found he couldn't be bothered to open his eyes to see who it was. Luckily, Aloth's voice identified him readily enough. "Enjoying the baths, are we?" He could hear the amused smirk on the wizard's face, but the Godlike couldn't have cared less.

"It's incredible," Vatnir moaned, submerged up to his chin in the shimmering water. And it was. It was quite literally the best he could ever remember feeling. He'd never felt so relaxed, bobbing lazily in liquid warmth, his joints throbbing with relief as the burden of his body's weight was lifted from them. The short walk from the washing nook to the baths themselves had been a delicate and harrowing affair, and the temperature of the water had frightened him when he'd first stepped in. But by the time he'd waded in up to his chest, he'd begun to wonder if this was what being in love felt like.

A warm chuckle flowed into Vatnir's ears, tingled as it trickled down his spine. "Ordinarily I'd be loathe to say I told you so, but in this case I might just have to break that personal policy," Aloth teased gently. "Although now that I'm over here, I notice the water's gone a bit cool on this side. Perhaps I should say something to the stewards..."

"Don't bother. It's probably just me." Vatnir had always been told that as the progeny of the Beast of Winter, Rymrgand had gifted him some innate power over entropy, making him able to encourage decay on a whim. And he could, but only on non-living things that were already on the decline: he'd amused himself many times in his grim, lonely adolescence by willing Valbrendhür's rapidly cooling ekkevít down to room temperature, or commanding the old man's smoldering pipe to snuff out. He hadn't consciously chosen to cool the bathwater around him– he couldn't remember having done so, anyway– but then, he didn't consciously choose to give those who spent too much time around him head colds or nausea either. It just happened, and he had learned long ago not to question it, but to simply resign himself to the consequences of his nature.

Of course, he explained none of this to Aloth, who merely smiled awkwardly and changed the subject. "Axa really did only want to help you, you know. She's a kind and generous woman, but her enthusiasm can, at times, blind her to the smaller details. Like the fact that you were utterly miserable back there, under all that scrutiny." The look of pity on the other man's face would have bothered him ordinarily, but Vatnir found he couldn't really blame Aloth for feeling how he did. He had probably been quite a sight at first: skinny and shivering, swaddled in filthy bandages, eyes darting to and fro like a caged animal.

"I understand, I suppose," the priest sighed, watching his crewmates frolic and splash on the opposite side of the pool. "And I do appreciate your... uh, intervention. Tekēhu was correct in pointing out that we who are chosen by the gods are rarely allowed to choose for ourselves. I'm used to simply enduring misfortune and discomfort, not speaking my mind when it regards... well, myself, my wants."

Aloth hummed thoughtfully, and Vatnir tried– and failed– not to let his gaze wander over the other man, his beautiful body, his elegant face. "A position I'm not entirely unfamiliar with myself, I'm afraid, despite my lack of divine heritage– although the nobility of Aedyr certainly seem to fancy themselves on the same level as the gods more often than not." He chuckled at his own joke, saw that Vatnir was not laughing, cleared his throat, continued. "Axa is a very strong-willed woman, more than decisive enough for all of us, and at times her intensity can make her a bit... intimidating. But she is more sensitive and open-hearted than one might think, and one can always count on her to listen, to try to understand, and to make things right to the best of her ability." The elf smiled fondly, turned to regard the little woman lounging in the water some distance away, smoking and chatting happily with Pallegina. "She did for me, after all."

Vatnir was still debating whether it was appropriate to press for details– and realizing he might actually find Aloth more attractive than the Watcher– when he felt the bizarre sensation of the waters suddenly twisting and roiling around him; warm, invisible tendrils wound around his limbs and slithered across his chest and belly, lifting and caressing and tickling him. He started to cry out in surprise, but somewhere along the way it transformed into an odd little giggle, the sound made all the stranger by it coming from himself, of all kith.

Aloth crossed his arms over his chest and sighed impatiently. "Really, Tekēhu, we were trying to have a conversation–"

"Is that so? Ekera, he doesn't seem to mind the interruption." The Watershaper grinned mischievously, and with a flick of his wrist, the current carried Vatnir to his side. "Besides, I figured the waters could use some churning. It's gotten a bit cold on this side, wouldn't you say?" He winked down at the priest, flashing that gorgeous grin of his, and Vatnir felt as though his brains had been transmuted into porridge.

The wizard opened his mouth to say something, but upon looking at Vatnir– at the bruise-colored blush spreading over his sternum and clavicle, the furtive glance cast in Tekēhu's direction– he thought better of it and said something else instead. "Well. I've finished saying my piece, anyway, so... I'll leave you gentlemen to it, shall I?" He flashed a strange, knowing smile at the pair of Godlikes and turned away, wading across the bath and back into Axa's inviting company.

Leaving the two of them, Tekēhu and Vatnir, alone. Together. Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods–

"May I?" The Marine Godlike gestured, and the water around them surged and swelled and pushed the two men to the side of the bathing pool, depositing Tekēhu with his back up against the tiled wall and Vatnir directly in front of him. Huge hands settled on his rickety shoulders, and Tekēhu squeezed gently, eliciting a soft, surprised gasp from the priest.

He felt the low rumble of Tekēhu's laughter vibrating in his chest, making little ripples in the water that rose goosebumps on Vatnir's skin. "Konstanten has been instructing me in the arts of relieving tension by way of massage," he murmured, "and if you don't mind my saying so, you look very tense indeed. Especially in the neck and shoulders. Just how much do your horns weigh, my friend?"

Vatnir felt as though his tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth, but he managed to stammer that he didn't really know. "It's not– I've never... uh, weighed them, or anything. Can't exactly remove them and put them on the scale. If only I could, I'd never put them back on again." What endearing banter, Vatnir. Go ahead and just kill the mood entirely, why don't you?

If Tekēhu was put off at all, he certainly didn't show it. Instead, his strong, steady hands worked the smaller man's shoulders, kneading the knots in his muscles and taking care to avoid the sores. "An understandable complaint, I say. They don't make it easy for us, do they, our heavenly patrons?" His thumb slid slowly over the nape of the priest's neck, and he couldn't help but grin triumphantly at the subsequent groan of pleasure. "Although, some of us do seem to have it a bit easier than others."

"You're telling me," Vatnir chuckled, starting to get his bearings back. "Some of us get tentacles and bioluminescence, some get feathers and hawk's eyes– and I get this." He gesticulated disparagingly at his withered, broken form, fingers trembling and numb.

"Come now,  it's not as bad as all that, is it?" The aumaua leaned down close to murmur in Vatnir's ear, his breath warming the elf's sallow cheek. "Word has it your Father... endowed you quite generously, moreso than most ordinary men, even. And I am not speaking of your horns, this time." He chuckled, his wet hands sliding slowly, salaciously, down Vatnir's arms. "Well... not the ones on your head, anyway."

He felt, for a moment, like he might actually die. This was it, the ultimate taboo broken at last, the unspeakable finally spoken. He was not at all prepared.

"Wh-what– I, y-you–" Vatnir sputtered and gibbered, pulling away from the huge man with a jerk before launching into a coughing fit, his heart hammering against his ribs, stomach tumbling, full of ice and acid. Usually his prolonged bouts of coughing at least gave him time to think up a lie or an excuse, but this time he could just barely focus enough to keep himself from vomiting or passing out, let alone think of something to say to... to that. Eventually when he caught his breath, he blurted the first full sentence he could piece together in his mangled mind: "H-how– who in the Hel told you that??"

"Serafen." The Watershaper's smile broadened, casual as ever as he leaned one elbow over the edge of the bath, propped his chin on his fist. "He entered the wrong changing booth, apparently, and got an eyeful of you with your robes up over your head. 'Biggest cock I've seen on kith or wilder,' I believe he said."

"That's– I can't believe–" The elf whined and clutched at himself, wrapping his arms around his torso and sinking into the water as though to hide from the accusation. He glared in Serafen's direction, his chattering teeth churning the water to foam in front of him, and the little blue bastard actually had the audacity to wink at him.

"A gift from the gods is nothing to be ashamed of, my friend," Tekēhu laughed, pulling him close again with a masterfully crafted undertow. "Unless, of course, one doesn't use the gifts bestowed upon him, for the... benefit of others."

Vatnir glanced up quickly into the aumaua's face, made eye contact for a split second before looking away– but that split second glance, the look on the little man's face, told Tekēhu everything he needed to know.

"You jest," he gasped, shocked. "You must! You mean to say– not even once have you–?"

The horned man flapped his bony hands at the Watershaper, breath hissing between his teeth. "For frost's sake, don't belt it out to the whole bathhouse! It's... it's no one's business but my own!"

He'd never seen Tekēhu look so serious before, so determined. "Apologies, truly," he said, quieter now but no less emphatic, "but this is a matter of great importance. How old are– no. No, I do not wish to know. I must offer it up to Mother Ngati, a lost thing, forgotten." He bowed his head in silent prayer, and Vatnir blinked at him, baffled and vaguely insulted.

"I'm– I'm a hundred-and-nine," he growled, wincing as Tekēhu grimaced in spiritual pain at this new knowledge, "and this is not a matter of importance, not in the slightest. It's simply– it's how things are, how they have been, all my life. Think about it– a priest of Rymrgand, raised from infancy in a clan that venerates him as an avatar of the ending of all things... this weak, sickly, twisted body... Who was I to pursue, eh? Who would willingly couple with me, break every taboo in the Land, risk execution, or worse, a slow, lingering death in the snow after being expelled from the clan and forced to wander the wastes alone? Who would deliberately ruin their life for... for this?" He gestured again at himself, less energetically this time, and hung his horned head low, sullen and defeated.

An uncomfortable silence hung between the two men for a moment, Vatnir cringing and wishing he'd said nothing, Tekēhu deep in contemplation, working through the priest's words in his head. At last, he reached out, slowly, carefully, and pulled the trembling elf close in a warm, intimate embrace. And in spite of it all, in spite of what the others might think or say about the two of them, Vatnir submitted completely, melting in the aumaua's arms while he tried in vain to stop shaking.

"After we have left this place, when we are back on the ship– there is a quiet, hidden place I should like to show you," Tekēhu whispered, sweet and sincere. "Ekera, there are many things I'd like to show you, if you'll allow me to. If you want it." His lips brushed the other man's temple, kissing him just below one of his horns, and Vatnir shuddered obscenely, longing for more. A thick finger slipped beneath his chin and tilted his head upwards, and he looked into the Watershaper's wet, black eyes.

"You'll find me? Below decks, later tonight?" The soft murmur reverberated in Tekēhu's chest as he spoke, and Vatnir felt it in his bones, in his loins. He let out a shaky sigh, lightly touched the scaly blue hand gripping his shoulder.

"Tonight, ja," he breathed, face hot beneath his mask. "Yes, I'll... I'll find you."

—

[thefilmfatale]

Jojo Rabbit (2019)

Who says you can't laugh about the Holocaust? Certainly not Taika Waititi.

The Hunt for the Wilderpeople director’s latest film Jojo Rabbit, set in Nazi Germany with a fanatical Hitler youth at its center, is uproarious, funny, and anything but glib. The story follows 10-year-old Jojo Betzler (played by the effortlessly charismatic and magnetic Roman Griffin Davis), who idolizes Adolf Hitler so much that Hitler (played by Waititi) has become his imaginary friend, popping up like a proverbial devil-on-one’s-shoulder during random moments of turmoil to comfort and counsel our budding young Nazi. 

Jojo’s dedication to the cause is unwavering. Thanks to some imaginative Nazi propaganda, Jojo is convinced that his purpose is to exterminate Jews, whom he envisions as winged creatures that eat children and hoard anything shiny. Alas, after playing cavalier with a grenade at Hitler youth camp, Jojo suffers an accident that renders him unfit to keep training with the other children, including his best friend Yorki (played by the adorably precocious Archie Yates). He’s promptly sent home, where his angst grows due to being isolated from his Jew-hating peers. To add insult to injury, he discovers that his mother Rosie (Scarlett Johansson) has been hiding a Jewish girl in their home. Outraged and beside himself with indignation, Jojo hatches a plan to get rid of the Jewish girl, seizing it as an opportunity to prove himself as a true Nazi believer to his peers. 

Jojo embarks on quite the character arc, and Waititi once again proves that he is a masterful director when it comes to working with children. His ability to elicit the purest, most delightful performances from child actors is amazing (just as he did in Hunt for the Wilderpeople), and the audience swiftly finds themselves endeared to Jojo and the rest of the cast. Performances from everyone were delightful, with Waititi allowing each actor (such as Johansson, Sam Rockwell, and Rebel Wilson) to bring their signature flairs to their characters. While the film is approached mostly as a period piece from an aesthetic standpoint (with costumes, set design, and color palettes largely faithful to the period), Waititi’s deliberate choices in making it anachronistic serve two purposes: to punctuate the satire, and to help make what should be a very sobering subject matter more approachable.   

The story, a loose adaptation of the book Caging Skies by Christine Leunens, while quirky and sweet certainly doesn't shy away from the real horrors of the holocaust. It’s a tightrope walk to juggle humor and atrocity, but Waititi makes it seem natural. He also knows precisely how to tug at heartstrings without being melodramatic. Jojo Rabbit’s triumph is ultimately in its ability to treat the topic of ideological extremism with the ridicule it so often deserves while at the same time provoking interesting questions about why people get sucked into blindly following charismatic demagogues, entrenching themselves in hate-filled cults, and spouting toxic ideologies. The best part? Waititi does this with so much thoughtfulness and nuance, all while serving up an entertaining, poignant story. 

By the end of Jojo Rabbit, you’re not raising your pitchforks screaming about the injustice of the Holocaust—that would be rather trite. Instead, you’re reminded that humans are complex, multi-dimensional, and capable of both immense kindness and unbridled terror. It’s a celebration of people’s capacity to change their minds. More importantly, it’s a reminder of the beauty of comedy and how laughter can be the best medicine during turbulent times. 

(More—including spoilers—under the cut)

What I love most about Jojo Rabbit is the depth of each character and how there’s so much to dissect and unpack for each one. Beginning with Jojo—we learn that not only is his father far away, in danger, fighting somewhere on the frontlines, but that he also lost his older sister Inge. We’re never told in full detail what happened to her, but the main takeaway is that her death, coupled by the absence of Jojo’s father, were tragedies that may have propelled Jojo to seek out the philosophy of the Third Reich. It’s not uncommon for young fanatics to get swept into hate groups when they are at their lowest points. When you’re angry or feeling helpless and lonely, it’s easy to externalize your pain and find someone to blame, whether it’s an entire gender, people of certain ethnicities, or members of a different political party. It’s simpler, you see, instead of owning one’s problems and acknowledging that the world doesn’t revolve around you. By making boogeymen out of people who are easy targets, we assert control over the senseless things that happen in our lives. It’s a way to feel powerful.

When you’re young, there are so many things that are out of your control. You’re caught in this torrent of everyone else’s decisions—your parents, school, your peers, society at large—and you’re looking around, flailing and hyperaware, that you’re living what is supposed to be your life and yet there seems so very little that you have ownership of. That's Jojo’s story. Not only is he caught in the middle of a war, but he’s grappling with some seriously heavy shit: an absentee father, a dead sister, a craving for acceptance from his peer group and, ultimately, a longing for connection that is rooted in positivity rather that hate. 

At first that connection seems to be cultivated by his mother, Rosie, who is literally and figuratively the most vibrant character in the film. From her bold, striking fashion sense and rouged lips to her joie de vivre, Rosie is, to quote Mulan, a flower that blooms in adversity. Even during the bleakest of times, she finds ways to uplift her son, whom she can tell is hurting. Her bursts of energy, her ability to find excitement and enthusiasm even in the most mundane of things, her rally to dance in the face of tragedy—all were reminders that dwelling on hatred and sorrow, while easy and sometimes necessary, is a crutch in a balm’s disguise. We must always forge ahead and seek hope when all feels lost, like “staring a tiger in the eyes”, as Rosie would say. That’s why, despite the risks of being caught by the Gestapo, she housed a Jewish girl in her home. In some small way, she was doing her part in the resistance against a hateful movement. While Rosie says she’s never stared a tiger in the eyes, her act of defiance came at great risk to herself, and that’s true courage.

In one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the film, Jojo is wandering the streets when he notices a bright, blue butterfly fluttering against the backdrop of hate-filled propaganda smattered on the city walls. He chases it wistfully and accidentally stumbles on the gallows in the middle of the town square. All the audience sees, hanging from the gallows, is a pair of legs with bright-colored shoes, and our hearts immediately sink. It’s Rosie. Waititi leads up to this shocking moment during a previous scene, while Jojo and Rosie are hanging out by a river. Rosie makes fun of Jojo for still being unable to tie his own shoes. She’s skipping gleefully on top of a concrete wall, with the camera trained low at Jojo’s eye-level, so the audience sees a shot of her shoes as she taps into a merry little dance. Waititi counts on viewers remembering this quiet scene to make what follows truly devastating. The effect is quite heart-stopping, and it’s impossible to want to reach out and give poor Jojo a hug as he cries out and wraps his arms around his dead mother’s feet. It’s then that Waititi makes his message known: Yes, there’s plenty to make light of in the world, but you can do this while also acknowledging that there’s plenty of darkness. It’s an impressive balancing act, and Waititi does it with so much wonderful exuberance and earnestness that it’s tough not to commend.

Viewers notice that the more Jojo focuses on the positive things in his life—his mother, his new Jewish friend Elsa—the less we see of his imaginary friend Hitler. And this is a deliberate choice by Waititi to prove a point: when you are consumed with hate, you’ll want to constantly keep feeding it because it’s comfortable and easy. As humans, we have a biological negative bias that we rely on as a means of survival. The very idea of entropy exists as a reminder that it takes more work to put things in order, to be good, to rise above, than for things to decay and distort and devolve. The more you fill your life with things that bring you joy, fulfillment, and contentment, the less you’ll rely on poisonous literature and toxic people. While this isn't exactly an epiphany for most of us, one may applaud Waititi for the inventive way he delivers this message.  

Another delightful character who, on the surface, seemed to be solely there for comedic effect, was Sam Rockwell’s Captain Klenzendorf, who’s tasked with whipping up these little rascals into Nazi-fighting shape. From the very get go, we sense that this man’s commitment to the Nazi cause is entirely for appearances’ sake. From his clandestine romance with his right-hand man (played by Games of Thrones’ Alfie Allen) to his soft spot for Jojo, the audience is led to believe that this man is merely pretending to be a hard-ass because that’s what you were expected to do, else be accused of treason to your nation. One could assume his affection for Jojo had something to do with being able to sympathize with the young boy after Jojo is relegated to doing simple jobs due to his injury (Klenzendorf claims he was benched from the frontlines because of an injury that led to him having a dead eye). But it’s toward the end of the film where we fully realize the totality of his character. In an earlier scene, Jojo is bullied by some older boys into killing a rabbit. They jeer at him as he wrestles with the decision to kill an innocent animal. He’s torn between wanting desperately to ingratiate himself into his peer group and staying true to the part of himself that’s kind, pure, innocent, and staunchly against needless violence. The music builds as we lean forward in our seats waiting to see what Jojo does. He decides on an act of mercy at his own expense, releasing the bunny and yelling at it to flee from danger. Unfortunately, before it has a chance to escape, the bunny is snatched up by one of the older boys, who wrings its neck in front of all the young boys to see. 

At first this seems like a scene that’s simply supposed to be an obnoxious display of bravado. But Waititi calls back to this scene towards the end of the film twice. Klenzendorf arrives at the Betzler household when it is being searched and ransacked by the Gestapo, who suspect Rosie has been aiding Jews. Jojo is terrified, not just to be discovered as traitors by the Gestapo but for Elsa’s (the Jewish girl they have been hiding who has now become his friend) safety. To get ahead of the situation, Elsa emerges from her hiding place and pretends to be Jojo’s dead sister Inge. When the Gestapo demand her paperwork, she shows them Inge’s old ID card. Klenzendorf immediately intercedes, grabs the ID from her hand and demands that she variate her identity by stating her birthday. Elsa stammers in response. “Correct,” Klenzendorf confirms flatly. The Gestapo consider this acceptable and vacate the premises, none the wiser. We discover immediately that Elsa had actually given the wrong birthdate, and Klenzendorf could have outed her right then, but decided not to. He was helping the bunny escape.

In another scene, when the Allied troops march into Germany and start rounding up all the Nazi soldiers, Jojo (who has a Nazi officer’s jacket on) is mistaken for one of them. He runs into Captain Klenzendorf, who creates a commotion by wrenching the Nazi jacket off of Jojo’s back and pushing him away, telling him to flee while yelling at him for being a dirty Jew so the Allies don’t execute him. It was an act of sacrifice from a man who recognized himself in the young boy. Klenzendorf saw Jojo’s gentleness and purity of heart and knew this kid needed to live. He released the bunny, stared a tiger squarely in the eyes—at the expense of his own life.

Jojo Rabbit, while certainly laugh-out-loud funny and full of amusement, is a moving story about heroism from a group of people who rarely ever get acknowledgment for their acts of bravery. These were Germans who defied their Führer and their Aryan brotherhood at great risk to their own lives. While these acts will never erase the horrors of the Holocaust, it’s a reminder that people are complicated creatures, capable of miraculous acts of mercy and horrific deeds of violence. It implores us to think about how some of the people that get caught up in hate groups are hurting deeply and just looking for something to blame their pain on. It definitely doesn’t excuse their actions or the bile they oftentimes spew, but it merely reminds us that behind every caricature is a human being in pain. 

Even if you see Jojo Rabbit and don’t think it’s that deep—you may say “Starr, it’s just a comedy about stupid Nazis, it’s not even a true story”. What is true about it is that we live in a world of grey, and while it may be simpler to put people in buckets of black and white, hero and villain, good and bad, more often than not we are all just hurting in some way. What’s true about it is that we have more in common than we have differences and ultimately, everyone regardless of race, creed, sexual orientation, craves the same thing: freedom; Freedom from the burdens that we carry on our shoulders, from dead loved ones to strife and war. Freedom from the fear of persecution for being who we are. The freedom to wear whatever we want, screw whomever we want, and to dance like no one’s looking. 

[otpnessmess]

Of Casual Encounters And Late Nights Pt.2

Here it is! I don't know if it's as long as you wanted but it's almost double the first chapter. I hope you like it!

First Next Ao3

-

A week went by where Jason managed to avoid meeting Ladybug again while investigating, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t heard of her. Akuma attacks were as frequent as ever and gave him an opportunity to learn more about the terrors that had been plaguing Paris for years now apparently. He sent all new info on it to his family,  who couldn’t believe none of it had reached them up until that point. Bruce was feeling particularly flabbergasted among them.

“You mean to tell me there’s been a terrorist in Paris for years, one that’s been destroying the city twice a week, and we knew absolutely nothing about it?” He seemed to be going through the seven stages of grief before excusing himself to call Diana.

Meanwhile, Jason’s brothers piled up in front of the computer screen wanting to hear more about the heroes and their work. Tim was looking up information on the internet while Dick asked questions nonstop about their powers, and their suits, and if he had had the chance to talk to them yet. 

“They sometimes stay back after the attacks, but their powers have some kind of time limit so those are rare occasions, or so I’ve heard. They’re all proficient fighters and each have their own set of powers and weapon. Ladybug’s powers are the most impressive by far” 

The mention of her name threw him right back into the memory of the night they first met. Despite resenting not being given an opening to talk to her more then, Jason had to admit leaving had been the right choice. He wanted to stay in the shadows as long as possible, and dealing with the police on his second night in the city wouldn’t have made that easy for him. Adding to that, even though he was quite stubborn and didn’t want to accept it, he felt curious about the spotted heroine. She was sassy and clever and, if the two battles she had this week were anything to go by, her abilities to strategize rivaled Tim’s.

He came back to the present with a jolt when Dick whined about him not paying attention, eliciting a snort from both him and Damian, who also looked at the eldest with a sneer. “You’re 29 Grayson, no one that age should be making those types of noises.” Jason would rather die than saying it out loud, but sometimes he did miss the dumbasses that were his brothers. 

“You know, I don’t think we would have believed this was real even if someone had told us about it. I found a... Ladyblog? It has videos of almost every attack from the last 4 years as far as I can see, and these look every bit as outlandish as I expected them to. There’s this one where apparently the whole city was flooded.” Tim pulled up the video in the peripheral monitors for the others to see and, lo and behold, there was the video from the day Ondine had drowned Paris. Faint screams could be heard in the background as the person recording managed to get to the roof of a building just in time to see the people still left on the street be swiped by the giant wave. From then on it was all silent. “This is horrible, so many people must have died during this. How did they manage to recover? I’m sure the news of Paris underwater should’ve popped up SOMEWHERE.”

“They didn’t because it didn’t last more than an afternoon.” Jason ran a hand through his hair impatiently. The whole week he had been aching to go out as Red Hood but couldn’t risk meeting Ladybug and it was making him jittery. “That’s what Ladybug’s power is. She just….reverts everything. I haven’t been able to find out how yet, but I’ve been told it must be magic or some shit.”

“Reverts everything? Just like that? Like….turning back time?” Dick looked confused trying to come up with a rational explanation

“I don’t think so. Everyone except the victims remember everything that happened. It’s more of a cure, if you will. She fixes everything, makes a new Eiffel Tower appear, brings the dead back to life, you know, no big deal.” Jason couldn’t help but chuckle at their faces. “I know, if anyone tried to tell me this before I saw it myself I wouldn’t have believed it either.”

A moment of silence on his brothers’ end was interrupted by the return of Bruce. “Diana is positively furious right now. Apparently someone received a message from these heroes years ago and thought it was a joke, so they dismissed it. Diana asked to see the message and just unleashed hell on the poor guy after watching it. It seems her mother was a former Ladybug and she grew up knowing about the magic of the ‘Miraculous’” He said the word in a way that made his sons think he was as confused as they were “The League is planning to make a trip to Paris as soon as possible to assess the situation.”

Now that brought a frown to Jason’s face. “I know I’m usually the reckless one here, but listen to me for a moment. You’re just planning on barging in here, with an angry Wonder Woman, and a probably scared shitless League, to battle a guy who makes you his minion if you show the tiniest hint of a negative emotion? Imagine if Diana got akumatized. You must really want the apocalypse to start huh?” 

He scanned their faces and wasn’t surprised to see skepticism and some smirks too. This was so not typical of him. Jason was a shoot first, ask second kinda guy, and he used to enjoy killing a little too much for it to be healthy. But he remembered what Ladybug had told him about resorting to the least amount of violence possible, and he was honestly worried about what could happen if three dozen superheroes just showed up one day to a fight. “Listen, as far as I can see, Ladybug and her team have things covered here. Give me some time to gather more information and maybe I can find a way for her and Red Hood to have a meeting. I’ll ask her if she still wants our help. But until then, you should refrain from bringing anyone here. Unless you want panic to run rampant among the citizens because the whole Justice League came.”

Snickers could be heard coming from Tim and Dick. Even Damian was trying not to show his amusement at the situation. “Who would’ve thought Todd actually had a brain. We should go if only to check whether he’s been replaced by a clone or something”

“Oh fuck off Demon Spawn, I can be smart too if I want to."

Their father seemed to be mulling over his words before sighing and nodding. “Alright. I think we can go along with what you said for now, but I want you to keep us updated regularly, and to inform us if something out of the ordinary happens. If you need us there, we’ll be on alert. And I expect that meeting with Ladybug to happen sooner rather than later. Also don’t forget why you’re originally there, we have to gather more information on what the Penguin is planning."

“You got it Brucie.” He made fingers guns at the screen with a click of his tongue. “Expect it to be at least a week until I have some big news for you, but I’ll try to make it happen as quickly as possible. And worry not about my mission, I’m almost done with it. Now my dear family, if you’ll excuse me, it’s already 2am and I would like to pretend to be a tourist at least for a day tomorrow. I’ll let you know if something comes up.”

He quickly ended the call and face planted on his bed. This was going to be a long mission. One week in and he was already exhausted. He wasn’t lying when he said he was close to finishing the mission he was originally sent to Paris for, though.  He had infiltrated the goons quickly and efficiently, and managed to hear about a drug shipment due to arrive in a couple weeks together with a human one. As soon as he got the information as to where he’d call his family and they could resolve the problem easily. For now though, he couldn’t help but want to keep them away a bit longer. Be it because, even though he loved his brothers (not that he’d ever tell them), he wanted some time alone, or be it because he wanted more time to try and figure out Ladybug, he still wasn’t completely sure.

If you asked him, he would deny it to his dying breath that he was interested in the heroine, but something about her made him want to get closer and know more about her. In spite of the great amount of knowledge the public had on her, she was surrounded by an aura of mystery and something else that Jason couldn’t pinpoint, which had him turning in his sleep ever since that encounter in the alley. It also didn’t help that she seemed to be around the same age as him, her suit doing her great favours in all her red and black. Alright. Maybe he thought she was a bit attractive. Very attractive? 

“No. Nope. Not going there.” He got up and decided to ignore that part of his brain as of now. For no particular reason whatsoever. It was only normal to want to know more about the person protecting the city. Call it a professional interest, thank you very much.

The dark haired man decided to take advantage of having an expensive suite for once and took a long bath while doing some more research on Paris. He was indeed planning to walk around the city the next day after all. When he was done, Jason headed to the bed and fell asleep promptly. Dreams full of back alleys and superheroes. 

-

As luck would have it, it didn’t take long for the both of them to meet yet again. Only maybe not in the way the Gotham vigilante would have hoped for. Set on at least enjoying this pseudo-vacation he was gifted, Jason left his hotel the next morning to visit the most popular places in the city. The Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the Arc of Triumph and the Champs Élysées were the places he had chosen to visit during the morning and early afternoon, but, even though his main goal was to distract himself from the tasks at hand, he couldn’t will away the questions roaming around his head. 

How was he going to contact Ladybug? He wanted to do it as Red Hood, but he didn’t want the heroine of Paris to distrust him since he was pretty sure his reputation would precede him. He was known for being the most ruthless of the batfam, the only thing keeping him from killing criminals once he was done with them was Batman’s No killing under any kind of circumstances rule (which if you asked him was a special kind of bullshit, some of them did deserve to rot in hell in his opinion), and he wasn’t sure if Ladybug would be as willing to hear him out as she may one of his brothers or father. However, his only other option would be to approach her as Jason Todd, one of Bruce Wayne’s adopted sons. He didn’t even know whether Ladybug would care about his family name. This wasn’t his city. And on the off chance that she might have recognized him… He was still a mere civilian. One that had, on top of that, to explain his connection to the Gotham vigilantes without giving away any of their identities. Jason knew his hands were tied. Red Hood had to be the one to try and get the attention of the spotted hero. Knowing there was no other option didn't make him happy about it though. 

Once he was done with this line of thinking his brain decided to go back to the Penguin. He was trying to instill one of the worst types of businesses in Paris and he couldn’t wait to put a stop to it. As much as he knew drug trafficking to be terrible, he was of the opinion that people who engaged in (as well as profited off of) human trafficking should have a special circle of hell destined for them. Preferably in the very depths of it.

Jason was very much aware that, for as long as he remained in this city, negative emotions had to be controlled and dissipated as quickly as possible to avoid an akumatization. Especially those of someone with the skills and knowledge he had. He had a lot of the latter in strange topics, most of which he acquired growing up during his training. And albeit he wasn’t sure whether it would actually be useful to Hawkmoth or not, he would rather not put it to the test. All of this, however, was sent to the back burner for a second as Jason's thoughts strayed towards what he would like to do to the Gotham villain when he captured him. 

Being so busy imagining the 30 different methods of torture he would like to inflict upon the Penguin had made him completely disregarded his surroundings, however. Coming back to his senses, his brain pointed out they were standing at the door of what seemed like a very nice patisserie, just in time for his stomach to growl, his lunch seemingly having been digested some time ago.

‘Maybe something sweet is exactly what I need right now’

-

Some days had passed since Marinette met Jason,  and though he was still burning in the back of her mind, she had way too many things to worry about during the day to remember him often. At night, however, the questions she had originally asked herself the first night continued to plague her, and since Tikki told her not to worry about it too much, the designer saw wise to keep her train of thought to herself. She wasn’t even sure why her brain seemed so fixed on this stranger she had only met once. Sure, he was involved in a fight, and seemed to be a foreigner, but it wasn’t that uncommon for petty altercations to break out around the city while she patrolled. Also this was Paris, for Kwamis’ sake. One of the biggest tourist capitals of the world. There was no reason why this Jason guy should’ve stuck to her mind as he did. Yet here she was. In the middle of her afternoon shift at the bakery. Still thinking about him.

A chime coming from the door brought her out of her stupor. But as she looked up, ready to greet the new customer, she suddenly froze, and her brain could only supply her with the word green. 

Green eyes she had only got a quick glance into a week ago were now in front of her and the color was even more intense as they reflected the sunlight rays that entered through the bakery’s windows.

-

There you have it peeps and pals! I'll try to update sometime again this week in between Daminette December.

Tag list:

@18-fandoms-unite-08 @bamagirl513 @j-a-n-e--d-o-e @dawnwave16

[wkemeup]

The Witness (9)

series summary: After witnessing a Hydra hit and the handsome, borderline endearing cop who had become a regular at your bar takes it upon himself to ensure your safety off the books, you learn to rely on someone else for a change and find you don’t mind it at all. Not when it’s him.

pairing: detective!bucky x reader

word count: 7.9k

warnings: torture, serious injury, ANGST !!!

author’s note: I was going to split this into two chapters but I didn’t want to be too cruel.... 😅Prepare for angst 

series masterlist // previous chapter

You woke with a harsh jolt to find yourself in a dark room. Squinting your eyes, you struggled to adjust to the lack of lightening, save for the dim flickering of the single bulb hanging down from a thin metal chain at the center of the room. You attempted to stand and you furrowed your brow when you felt a tug on your arms. Eyes trailed down to your arms to find restraints wrapped tightly around your wrists, binding you to some kind of wooden chair. You move to kick your legs, only to find them adhered to the chair as well.

Panic began to rise in your throat as your heart pounded loudly in your ears when you heard a soft groan ahead of you. Eyes snapping up to a figure sitting just a few feet away, bound in a similar fashion, chin resting on his chest.

It was dark, too dark to see clearly, but you could recognize that silhouette anywhere. Bucky.

Before you could call his name, the overhead lights flashed on, blinding you briefly at the intrusion. You squeezed your eyes shut, light still seeping in from behind the lids as you slowly blinked to adjust. When you finally opened your eyes again, you realized you and Bucky were not alone.

Rumlow stood just next to the door, leaning against the wall with a smirk upon his face. His arms folded over his chest as he pulled his finger away from the light switch. You tore your eyes away from him, unwilling to give him the satisfaction.

Bucky had yet to regain consciousness but he was slowly coming to; head lulling side to side, trying to come back into himself. Having grown impatient, Rumlow made his way to the center of the room as grabbed a tight hold of Bucky’s hair, jerking his head up harshly to face you. A dark trail of dried blood ran down the side of his face where Rumlow likely hit him with the base of the gun to knock him out.

They must have done some damage to him after you lost consciousness, you realized. He didn’t have that kind of purple and blue bruising on his jaw or a swollen eye when you last saw him. You felt a painful ache in your stomach the longer you looked at him.

“Time to wake up, asshole,” Rumlow gritted, gesturing for a man standing beyond the door. He walked into the room; tall, dark black hair swept away from his face, with a boyish, handsome look about him despite his strong jawline. He didn’t look the Hydra type but as he chucked a barrel of ice water at Bucky and snickered under his breath when Bucky let out a pained gasp, shocked back into consciousness, you knew this man's affiliations were exactly where they belonged.

Bucky panted as the water dripped down his hair, soaking his clothes. He was shivering violently, limbs restricted by the restraints. Wide eyes met yours and panic burned behind shades of blue. He scanned you briefly, looking for injuries, before his gaze fell on your neck. You imagined there was some redness, maybe bruising from the man who had kept you hostage out on the street, because he clenched down enough on his bit to draw blood.

Then, a cough to his left from the man holding the now empty bucket. Slowly, Bucky turned to face him and his features hardened impatiently. He clenched his jaw, muscle twitching at the effort.

“Ward... you fucking piece of shit,” Bucky seethed and almost immediately after, he was met with a violent fist against the side of his face. You gasped, flinching instinctively, as the sound of his knuckles collided against Bucky’s jaw. Bucky chuckled darkly, turning to spit out a mouthful of blood before he looked back up at Ward through narrowed eyes.

“Nice to see you again, too, Detective,” Ward replied smugly, shaking his hand off.

This was the officer Sam suspected to be the mole at the one-four. Clad in a tight black t-shirt and dark wash jeans, you almost didn’t recognize him outside of the blue uniform. It had been a blur when you saw him leaning over the woman in the breakroom the first time you had set foot in the station after Charlie’s murder.

Ward bent down, kneeling at Bucky’s eye level, studying him carefully. “You’re not gonna ask me why I did it?”

Bucky shrugged, sending him a rather disinterested look. “I always knew you were a prick. Always figured if someone came along and offered you a bit of power, you’d bend right over like an obedient little--”

Ward charged at him, wrapping his hands around Bucky’s throat. A hitch in your breath as you watched, only settled as Bucky started to laugh again. How was he being so casual about this? It made your stomach twist into knots. His self-preservation instinct was long forgotten. Rumlow waved for Ward to back off and he obeyed immediately, dropping his hands. Bucky took a deep breath, stretching his neck, as he sent an amused look at Ward.

“Like I said,” Bucky taunted before he winked in Ward’s direction.

“You should watch yourself, Barnes,” Rumlow said, pacing around the room. “I wouldn’t be so cocky if I were you. Considering who else is in the room.”

A hand slipping onto your shoulder, causing you to shiver. Bucky’s grin fell immediately and he began tugging at the restraints.

“Don’t touch her!” Bucky growled, staring daggers into Rumlow as he fought the bindings at his wrists. The chair, bolted to the ground, creaked under him as he struggled against it.

Rumlow shrugged and he removed his hand from you. A wave of relief rushed over you and you slumped further into the chair.

“You’re not in the position to be making demands, Detective,” Rumlow taunted. He gestured for something out beyond the hallway and Ward quickly slipped out the door. A rustling clanging came from down the hall, the sound of wheels, metal. Then, Ward reemerged in the room, pushing a shiny silver cart. On top, laid a series of scalpels, knives, and various tools. You swallow but your throat ran dry.

“Now,” Rumlow began, reaching down for the scalpel, admiring it as he held it up to the light. He turned to face you. “You’re going to tell me where your bastard father hid the flash drive or I’m going to start carving up that pretty face of yours.”

You narrowed your eyes, confusion completely replacing the fear for a brief, peaceful moment. “I don’t... I don’t know what you’re talking about."

“Don’t play dumb with me!” Rumlow snarled, charging towards you with the blade aimed at your cheek. You recoil against the cool metal as it touched your skin and you could vaguely make out Bucky shouting desperately to ‘get the hell away from her!’

The knife dug into your skin, drawing a thin line over your cheekbone, eliciting a hiss from you. It happened so quickly, over before it began, though the sting lingered. Rumlow pulled away, admiring his work. The blood that trickled down the side of your face and down your neck tickled. You stretched to wipe it with your shoulder.

“I don’t know anything about a flash drive,” you spat at him, adrenaline coursing in you enough to bolster your conviction.

“Do you think I’m stupid?” Rumlow gritted. “Is that it? Do you think that I would keep you alive if you were nothing more than some pathetic witness to a hit no one gives a fuck about?”

You pressed your lips together. Truthfully, you had been wondering why they hadn’t just executed you in the middle of the street, or the very second his lackey opened the door to the car you had been hiding inside. They could have shot you on sight but they didn’t. It didn’t make sense if they were only trying to silence a loose end. Clearly, they needed you for something more.

“You know, we didn’t even realize Y/l/n had a daughter,” Rumlow explained, referring to your father as he wiped the edge of the bloodied scalpel on his pant leg. “Tricky bastard kept you to himself all those years. When Ward here brought us your name and you so happened to be running the same bar good ol’ Y/l/n used as his export hub, I went and put the pieces together.”

You could sense Bucky watching you, scanning you for signs of distress, of reaction, but you kept your features stone cold. You didn’t know your father had kept you a secret from Hydra. He never once mentioned it in all your years growing up or since he was locked away.

“Before the DEA nailed him, he managed to get ahold of a very important flash drive,” Rumlow continued, pacing around to your other side. You kept your stare on the floor by Bucky’s feet. “It has a list of all the undercover Hydra agents. Police force, local government, business owners, prosecutors, doctors, you name it. So, you see why it’s important you tell me where it’s at.”

You shook your head. “Doesn’t change the fact that I didn’t know it even existed until two minutes ago.”

“Fine,” Rumlow sneered. He exchanged glances with Ward. “We brought along the cop for a reason. Let’s test him out.”

You raised an eyebrow, dread sweeping over you as Ward quickly bent down and wrapped his arms around Bucky’s chest from behind him, holding him steady in the chair. Rumlow picked up the knife from the cart and in one foul sweep, lunged it down into Bucky’s hand, pinning it to the wood of the chair. You shrieked.  

Despite his best effort, Bucky let out a grunt, panting heavily as he clamped down on his jaw to keep himself from screaming. Your eyes had blown wide, heart stopping for what felt like several seconds as Ward and Rumlow retreated away, laughing amongst themselves. The knife was still lodged in Bucky’s hand as he wiggled his fingers.

“I don’t know anything about a flash drive!” you screamed, jerking your body against the restraints. They burned on your wrists, rubbing painfully at the skin. You could hardly feel it.

“And I don’t believe you!” Rumlow shot back reaching forward and yanking the knife from Bucky’s hand with no warning. He couldn’t hold back the shout this time as the serrated edges caught against his skin, blood spraying on the floor as Rumlow shook off the knife.

“Bucky!” Panic stung in your veins, desperate to get his attention.

“I’m fine,” he mumbled, slowly lifting his head to meet your eye, though you could tell by the clench in his jaw and the twitching of his muscles he was lying. Blood dripped down his fingers onto the concrete below. “I’m okay, doll. Don’t tell ‘em shit.”

“Ain’t that sweet,” Ward grumbled, folding his arms over his chest.

“Makes me a little sick, personally,” Rumlow replied as he picked up a fresh blade. You didn’t have time to react before Rumlow darted forward and plunged it into Bucky’s left shoulder. Bucky shouted, his voice aching and raw, hands clenching at the arms of the chair until his knuckles turned sheet white.

“Stop!” you cried, tears welling in your eyes before you could hold them back. “Please! I don’t know anything! My father never told me about a flash drive!”

“Not good enough,” Rumlow growled, yanking out the knife and cutting a long jagged line up Bucky’s forearm, trailing blood in its wake. Bucky flinched, his face contorting to swallow back the pain, though it did little to ease his suffering.

It went on like this for what felt like hours. Back and forth. Rumlow would ask you about the flash drive you knew nothing about. Unsatisfied with your answer, he’d plunge another knife into Bucky or carve his way across Bucky’s skin. After they bloodied the visible skin on his forearms, they ripped open his shirt, exposing fresh skin and spent a particular amount of time carving small, deep, concentrated marks into Bucky’s left shoulder, marring it over completely.

Tears were streaming down your face and you begged for Bucky to look at you, but he was becoming so light-headed he could barely focus on what was right in front of him, let alone meet your eye. His head was bobbing, dizzy from the blood loss, from the constant pain. He had stopped crying out several cuts ago. It was like his body had grown numb. You wanted to feel relief at this, that he no longer seemed to be in pain, but it only seemed to make the pit in your stomach worse.

“Please,” you begged on an endless loop, exhausted from the exertion, “please, leave him alone.”

Your chin fell against your chest, unable to watch as Ward and Rumlow continued snickering to themselves, taking turns marking up Bucky’s skin and drawing blood. You wished you were stronger, that you could have held yourself together for Bucky’s sake, but when faced with the worst of humanity you knew there was nothing you could do to stop it. There was nothing but helplessness.

A flash of gold caught your eye and you looked down to find your necklace as swung out from behind your shirt in the struggle. You stared at it, a resentment building the longer you felt it weigh against the rise and fall of your chest. Your father had been nothing but a liar. He had told you once it was meant to protect you. Some good luck charm it was. It was nothing but a hunk of metal. Unless. Pointless. Maybe if it was worth something you could have leveraged it for--

Your breath hitched.

Holy shit.

Leverage. Blackmail.

Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck.

“S-Stop, please, Brock,” you gasped, your voice having grown hoarse from screaming. Rumlow paused, glancing over to you, intrigued by the use of his first name. You met his eye, heart racing painfully beneath the pendent. “I’ll... I’ll tell you where it is.”

Rumlow raised an eyebrow, exchanging a glance with Ward. Bucky slumped over as they pulled away from him, giving his body an ounce of relief. You swallowed despite the dryness in your throat, keeping your eyes training on Bucky. He lifted his head slowly, as if it took all of the energy left in him to do so. He narrowed his eyes on you, apprehensive of your confession.

“Well, sweetheart, let’s have it,” Rumlow urged, a near jittery excitement in his voice.

“First, tell me why you killed Charlie,” you bargained, a newfound confidence surging behind the layers of anger and anguish he elicited with every carve to Bucky’s skin.

Rumlow smiled at the that, seemingly impressed. He shrugged. “That old man? Just orders from the chief. I don’t ask questions.”

“I’m sure you have your suspicions,” you countered and you're not surprised when he nods. He began twirling a small blade between his fingers.

“He was a known partner of your father’s. We suspected he knew of the list,” Rumlow explained, ever so keen to monologue. “When it became obvious he didn’t, he was nothing more than a liability. He had to be dealt with.”

You sighed, feeling no respite from his reasoning. Rumlow raised an eyebrow, waiting for you to continue. When you took a moment too long, he groaned impatiently and lunged the blade he had been fidgeting with straight into Bucky’s abdomen.

“MY BAR! It’s at my bar!” you shrieked, panicked as Bucky barely even recoiled at the intrusion, and Rumlow removed the knife. You didn’t dare take your eyes off Bucky for even a moment. Blood streamed down the small ripples of his exposed stomach; dark red oozing and coating over his skin until it dripped onto the floor beneath him.

“There’s a safe under the cash register,” you continued, voice shaking, “Inside, you’ll find a rifle. On the back wall of the safe, in the upper left corner is a latch. Open it and the flash drive will be in there.”

Then, you turned to face Rumlow, a look full of distain and loathing upon your features. Rumlow grinned, shaking his head with a laugh. He walked over to Bucky and slapped his hand on his wounded shoulder, coating his palm in blood.

“Would you look at that? You’re expendable, Barnes. Even to her,” Rumlow taunted, removing his hand and wiping it along Bucky’s chest, smearing the blood.

Rumlow picked up the gun from the table, cocking it loudly. “Now, if I get to that bar and I don’t find the flash drive, better believe I’ll be coming right back here to ask again and next time I won’t be so nice about it. You understand?”

You nodded carefully, keeping your expression as void of emotion as you could manage. Rumlow gestured for Ward to follow. He sent one last wink in your direction over his shoulder before the door latched shut, clicking several locks in place before you were alone again.

“You shouldn’t have lied to them,” Bucky gurgled weakly before he spit blood from his mouth. It dripped down his lips as he struggled to meet you eye. He was swaying, barely able to keep his head up.

“What choice did I have?” you replied, eyes flashing towards the closed door. “They were killing you, Bucky. Besides, I couldn’t let them know I figured out where it really was.”

“You what?”

“I think it’s in my necklace,” you confessed, and Bucky’s eyes narrowed on the gold pendent. “I told you my father said it would protect me but... I don’t think he meant in the way I thought.”

Bucky slumped, shaking his head in disbelief.

“He knew it would be all the leverage I needed if Hydra ever came after me,” you explained. “If I turn this thing over to the feds and they'd give me whatever I wanted. New life somewhere nice. New identity. This necklace could be the key to taking down Hydra for good. Maybe even expose their entire operation.”

Bucky nodded, trying to take in what you were saying but his eyes were falling heavy.

“I wish he had been a little less cryptic about it,” you huffed, the semblance of a smile on the curve of your lips. “That would have been helpful information a few months ago.”

Bucky smiled, ever so slightly, but it fell just as quickly, his energy not allowing him much else. His head bobbed forward and you could tell he was fighting losing consciousness. Dark red pooled on the concrete beneath him. He’d lost too much blood.

“Bucky!”

He jolted upright, blinking rapidly.

“I need you to stay awake, you hear me?” you begged, tugging on your restraints. He nodded drowsily.

A moment of silence. The room filled with nothing but the sound of your breaths and the drops of Bucky’s blood from down his elbow to the concrete floor.

“What happens when they come back and they found out you lied to them?”

You licked your dried lips. “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I just needed to do something to get them away from you.”

“You can’t tell them about the necklace,” Bucky pressed, though his voice was weak. He was using all of his energy just to meet your eye. “No matter what they do to me, you can’t give that up. Do you understand?”

You narrowed your eyes, shaking your head. “Bucky, they could--”

“I know,” he exhaled, eyes falling to the floor. “They might kill me. But think of all the people who lives you’ll save if you can get that thing to Steve. You have to think of the greater good, here.”

“Screw the greater good, I’m not going to let you die!”

“You might have to, sweetheart,” Bucky slurred, his voice trailing off as his head slumped forward again. You waited a moment for him to jostle himself back to consciousness, but when a moment too long passed by and he hadn’t moved, a jolt of panic ripped through you.

“Bucky?”

He remained still. Hair had fallen into his eyes; his fingers having lost their tight grip on the arms of the chair.

“Bucky!” you shouted his name again, jerking your body towards him. The restraints against you bound you in place, rendering you as nothing but a witness, helpless.

“Bucky, wake up!”

Again, nothing.

You froze, tears in your eyes blurring your vision. “No, no no nonono. Come on, wake up! Don’t do this!”

You let out an aggravated scream as you tugged at the restraints with all of your strength. Then, a subtle click and your right hand hitched a little further, a small space between your skin and the wood of the chair. The crisp air stung against the burns as you stared down at it in shock. You tugged again, wincing at the tension against your raw skin. Then, the sound of a light tearing at the stitching ripped. You pulled at it carefully and the cuff slowly fell to the ground. You lifted your hand examining the ruby red burn marks upon your skin. In the moment of relief, your eyes glanced back at Bucky to find him still unresponsive.

Frantically, you began working at your left wrist, feeling around the underside of the chair for the buckle. Once you were able to undo the latch on your left wrist with ease compared to your right, you bent over and began working at the bindings on your ankles. Tiny marks of blood oozed from your wrists from the burn of the restraints, but you couldn’t bring yourself to pay much attention to it as you freed your legs from the chair.

Unrestricted, you sprang to your feet and all but lunged at Bucky. Harsher than you meant to, you gripped the sides of his face, jerking his head to you. You brushed the hair from his eyes to get a better look at him, wincing at you touched the open wound on his forehead. Eyes shut and lips parted slightly; he was out cold. You leaned forward and pressed a quick kiss to his forehead before you released him and knelt by his side to start undoing the binds on his wrists.

Right hand undone he slumped forward towards you and you placed a steady hand on his unmarked shoulder for support. Then, a moment later, his left was loose.

“Almost there, baby,” you whispered under your breath, unfastening the restraints on his legs. Once he was free, you stood back to your feet, pulling his right arm around your shoulders and hulled him upwards. You only got him standing for a few seconds before the dead weight kicked in and the weight of him brought you both to the ground.

“Shit,” you cursed, turning Bucky onto his back so he wasn’t putting pressure on the wounded left shoulder. A smear of blood imprinted on the concrete in its wake.

Eyes glancing towards the door every few seconds, waiting for Rumlow and Ward to walk through at any second, you scurried back to your feet and tried to ignore the amount of blood that Bucky was leaving behind in this room. You bent down to lift him again, exerting all of your energy as you tugged on his right arm. Sweat beaded on your forehead and you still hadn’t been able to get him off the ground. You collapsed with an exasperated pant, wiping the sweat from your hairline.  

“Go,”

Your eyes snapped up to find Buck blinking slowly, just on the edge of consciousness. You scrambled over to him, crawling on your knees over the harsh indents in the concrete until you leaned above him, hands brushing the hair from his eyes.

“Leave me,” he mumbled again, voice so quiet on the edge of a breath you could barely understand him. His hand, covered in dark red, reached out for you and you clasped your hands around it, the sticky wetness of the blood pooling between your palms. Tears burned in your eyes as you shook your head rapidly.

“Don’t ask that of me,” you begged, a pang in your chest as Bucky’s head slumped to the side. He was losing consciousness again. “Don’t you dare.”

“They’ll be back soon,” Bucky exhaled heavily, his eyes falling shut. “Please, go.”

“I’m not leaving you!” you cried, shaking him as his body fell limp, unresponsive once again. With a paralyzing fear throbbing in your veins, unsure you’d ever want to know the answer, you adjusted your grip on his hand, feeling for his wrist and pressing two fingers to his pulse point.

Slowly, faintly, you felt a steady rhythm beneath your touch. A sob raked through you and you leaned down, setting your head on his chest, tears dripping from the bridge of your nose to his scarred skin.

You clenched your hands into fists. They were covered in his blood.

***

What could have been hours later, you still hadn’t moved. Your legs had cramped, muscles sore against the cool, impossibly hard surface of the ground. There was no way to tell the passage of time in this room. All you knew was eventually, Rumlow and Ward would return and when they did, that would be it.

Bucky was right. You wouldn’t be able to give Rumlow the necklace, not in exchange for your own life and not for Bucky’s. Not when, in the right hands, it could expose the vilest organization the city had ever known and destroy them from the inside out. The same organization that corrupted your father, a man down on his luck in his early thirties who had stumbled his way into trafficking drugs when he couldn’t pay back his small business loans. They had promised him help in his time of need and then drowned him in a debt he’d never be able to repay, not without joining their cause.

You’d die before you let that happen to another family.

Head throbbing from the very exertion of crying for so long, you found you had nothing left in you. Perhaps you were too dehydrated at this point for more tears. You sat next to Bucky, holding his right hand tightly in your own, pressing your lips against the broken knuckles, trying to memorize the feeling. You wiped the fresh blood away against your jeans, leaving behind a light red stain on his skin.

You had tied makeshift bandages to his arm, stomach, and hand, made of the spare pieces of Bucky’s shirt they had ripped in order to find more canvas to carve upon. They were soaked red with blood.

Bucky’s head rested in your lap and you ran your free hand through his hair, praying he would find some sense of peace amongst the pain in his body. Careful strokes against his scalp, watching the involuntary twitches in his face and you pretended he was only sleeping.

Then, a rustling came from the other side of the door.

Scattered footsteps.

A series of loud grunts and a clanging against the door.

You couldn’t bring yourself feel even a semblance of fear. You knew Rumlow would lose it when he saw you and Bucky out of the restraints. Perhaps it would all be over soon and he’d forget about the flash drive and kill you on the spot. The idea brought you some relief, at least.

The locks on the door began to click and the heavy metal frame swung open. You turned away from the two men walking inside, cast in shadows by the influx of light behind them. Entirely unwilling to face the monsters that had torn and carved and mutilated the man you loved. You wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of your fear.

When Rumlow and Ward returned, you had expected screaming, cursing, harsh hands lunging down at you and yanking Bucky away. You expected rage and punishment; anything other than the complete silence that followed. Glancing up at them, you narrow your eyes suspiciously as one of the men fell to their knees with a heavy thud.

Eyes slowly coming into focus, adjusting to the light now absorbed in the room, your heart nearly gave out at the sight. Blonde hair. Blue eyes.

Steve.

His hands were reaching out to Bucky, drifting over the wound on his abdomen then to the one on his arm where had blood soaked through the makeshift bandages. Hovering carefully over the mess of bloody patches on his left shoulder, Steve let out a painful sigh. He brushed at his mouth with the back of his hand, shaking his head. He didn’t even know where to start. You didn’t know either.

“We gotta get them out of here, Cap,” the voice behind him urged, stealing glances back out the open doorway. Tony.

Steve nodded quickly, seemingly coming back into himself as his arms slid under Bucky's broken body in an effort to lift him. Suddenly, your hands jutted out, gripping at Bucky reflexively.

Wide eyes bore into Steve’s and you tried to form words but nothing came out. You clenched at Bucky, trying desperately to draw him closer. You were shaking so violently that Steve set hand his atop of yours. You swallowed, tears blinking in your eyes as they fell in streaks amongst the dried blood on your cheeks.

“I- I tried to—”

“I know,” Steve assured you softly, not needing to know the rest of your confession before he absolved you. He squeezed your hands lightly, enough to communicate a world of regret, and slowly pulled your grip away from Bucky’s arms. Soft blue eyes that reminded you so much of Bucky’s did not leave yours for even a moment as he carefully set your hands to the side.

“I’m going to get him somewhere safe, Y/n. But I gotta do it right now. Do you trust me?”

You stare at him, a glimpse of uncertainty tugging at you, the knowledge of the Hydra infestation in the police force prominent in the back of your head. But as you watched his eyes fall down to Bucky, the panic and fear so abundantly evident upon his face, you reached up and gripped the pendent around your neck. With one hard tug, you yanked at the chain until it snapped, holding it out for him. It was the first time you had taken it off since you put it on all those years ago. He narrowed his eyes on you, looking back to exchange a glance with Tony.

“Take it,” you begged, jerking your hand towards him. The gold burned against your skin.

Steve nodded slowly, holding his hand out as you dropped it into his palm. He stuffed it into his pocket, a clear confused look in his eyes though he didn’t question it. There wasn’t time.

You slowly dragged yourself away from Bucky, giving Steve the room he needed to hull Bucky over his shoulder, draped like a rag doll. He grunted as he stood, legs trembling as his right arm snuck up around Bucky’s side to hold him secure on his shoulder. You watched, curled against the wall as Steve made his way towards the door, Bucky’s body dangling, blood dripping onto the floor with every step, lifeless.

“Hey kiddo,” Tony’s voice called softly, pulling you from your trance. You turned to find him taking a knee next to you. He offered you a careful smile, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “Let’s get you out of here, yeah?”

You nodded, taking his hand as he offered it to you. When you didn’t let go, he didn’t say anything. You were thankful for that, at least. He guided you steadily to the door and instructed you to keep your eyes up. There wasn’t a moment to question what he meant before your foot caught on something just past the door. You looked down to find the bloodied body of a Hydra agent lying face up, eyes staring off unfocused at the ceiling. You swallowed and Tony urged you on.

By the time you walked outside, you were surprised to find the sky had covered in a layer in dark blue. Hadn’t it been morning when you were taken? How long had you been held in that room? You squeezed at Tony’s hand in some attempt to find comfort in it the way Bucky had done for you, but there was a gold band around his ring finger that ripped at your fantasy. It wasn’t the same. It didn’t feel right. He wasn’t Bucky.

Tony led you down the stairs of the building, guiding you out towards the flashing blue and red lights illuminating the empty parking lot. You looked up to find you didn’t recognize a single building around you. It was too spacious, for one. You couldn’t be within the city limits.

“W-where’s Bucky?” you asked, glancing to Tony. You couldn’t find Steve anywhere amongst the sea of officers clad in uniform blue. Tony gestured to the ambulance at the end of the road, roaring its siren and speeding off in a sharp right turn that took it out of view.

“There wasn’t time to wait,” Tony replied, watching for your reaction. He must have sensed the panic creeping in your veins because he added, “Steve’s with him. He’s not alone.”

Heart falling back to a normal pace, you nodded slowly. You pressed your lips into a thin line, the most of a smile your body would allow. You knew Tony and Bucky didn’t get along, but you appreciated his attempt to ease your concern. Tony was a complex man; one that went from interrogating you, demanding intel on Hydra he believed you knew in your first interaction, to sharing a glass of scotch a few months later as he took up shift as your bodyguard of the day. A good single malt healed most wounds.

“Y/n!”

Your eyes snap up, searching for the voice. Tony led you down to the sidewalk and you spotted Sam rushing in your direction. His forearm was bandaged up, his other held in a sling with a massive bandage wrapped around his shoulder where the bullet had pierced through him. He shoved past an officer, mumbling an apology as he gripped the man’s elbow for support.

Tony stepped aside, moving to scold a reporter who had impatiently crossed the yellow tape, and you threw yourself at Sam. You wrapped yourself against his good side, holding your arms around his waist as he stroked your back with his free arm. He smelled faintly of disinfectant and cologne.

“Come on,” Sam urged, glancing around at the officers gathered in a circle talking to one another. “I’ll sneak you to the hospital before the press gets winds of you.”

You nodded, keeping a tight hold on him as he weaved you through the crowd. His hand pressed into your back, keeping you grounded against him as you approached the mass of reporters and cameras. Sam threw the edge of his jacket around you and you kept your head down when he asked, obstructing the view of your face so you could slip through unrecognized. When you reached the police car sitting at the edge of the crowd, you exhaled a breath of relief.

“Are you okay to drive?” you asked Sam warily, eyeing his injured shoulder.

He shrugged as he unlatched the driver’s side door. “I got myself here in one piece. Figure if I can escape from the hospital and one very pissed off nurse and drive to the warehouse where some psychopath is holding my friends hostage without crashing, I can get my partner’s girl back to him just fine.”

As you slid into the passenger's seat, you were surprised to find a smile tugging on the cracks in your lips. It hurt a little but you didn’t mind. Sam dropped in next to you, closing the door behind him and he nudged you gently on the shoulder.

“He’s in good hands, you know,” Sam offered, turning on the ignition. “Best surgeons available for New York’s finest.”

You nodded, feeling a semblance of relief in your chest before, “what about Nat? And Peter?”

“Still in surgery last I checked,” Sam replied, sensing your influx in anxiety. He pulled out into the road and made the right turn the ambulance had taken. “The bullet that caught Romanoff clipped the edge of an artery so it’s taking longer than expected. Parker, he uh,” Sam sighed, his fingers clenching the wheel, “he had a lot of burns from the explosion and a piece of the car got jammed up in his leg. It’ll be a while before he’s out.”

You watched him carefully, studying the way his jaw clenched. It was so familiar. You’d seen it too many times at this point. It broke your heart.

“You cops need to learn to put the blame on the assholes who deserve it,” you said flatly, almost in a scolding tone. “Not yourselves.”

Sam chuckled under his breath, nodding to himself as he looked over in your direction. You offered him a small smile which he returned with ease.

It was always easy with Sam. There were never any expectations or pressure to put on a mask. He didn’t question your panicked flinch when you had reached up to clutch at your necklace, only to find it wasn’t there or when several minutes passed by between telling you some mundane story from the one-four to ease your mind before you’d respond.  

He was smarter than most gave him credit for, more observant too. He’d deny it though, waving it off through some kind of witty one-liner or changing the subject. Sam preferred to be the source of light in the one-four. He kept to his pranks and his flirting and his banter that drove Bucky insane because he knew they needed it. Maybe, he needed it a little too.

When he came up on a red light on the border of the city line, you swallowed the dryness in your throat, turning to face him. You had spent the last several minutes trying to build up the courage to tell him about what you learned from Rumlow. Part of you wanted to wait until you got to the hospital, afraid of how he might react. But, as he glanced over at you with that encouraging smile of his, you figured now was as good a time as any to tell him one of their own was betraying them.

“You were right.”

Sam raised an eyebrow.

“Ward,” you continued with a heavy breath, “Ward’s the mole.”

A tilt of his head, a shrug in his shoulder, and sighed. He was calm, too calm for the reaction you were expecting.

“I know,” Sam confessed after the light turned green and he pressed down slowly on the gas. “I had a few of our officers' stationed at your bar, just in case. Thought maybe they’d send some of their goons out there to trash the place for fun. Ward and Rumlow walked right into it; friggin’ idiots. Barton arrested them a few hours ago. It was how Steve and Tony knew where to find you.”

You bit down on your lip, sinking back into the passenger seat in shock. “And they’re able to hold them?”

Sam laughed at that. “Hell yeah. We’ve got enough evidence against Rumlow to keep him behind bars until his trial. Ward will be a little tougher to stick, but Commander Fury isn’t going to let him out of his sight.”

“It feels too easy,” you sighed.

Sam shrugged. “Sometimes things are allowed to be easy. You don’t always gotta question when things go right for once.”

“Maybe,” you said, staring at the window as the blur of city lights came into view. “Haven't had a lot go right in my life.”

“Could be a good time to start,” Sam offered sincerely. He paused. Then, “on second thought, might want to hold that off until after we can restore your bar again. It kinda got caught in the crossfire. Rumlow and Ward didn’t go down without a fight and the place suffered a bit for it.”

“Had to be something, right?” you shook your head, the smile against your broken lips aching your cheeks. Good ol’ Sam.

***

The rest of the ride to the hospital was silent; comfortable, just watching as the colored lights blurred together as you passed by, listening to Sam hum softly under his breath to whatever was on the radio. It was almost as if the last 24 hours hadn’t happened. The stinging around your wrists and the faded red stains in your skin the only reminders.

He left the police car out front and asked one of the officers stationed by the door to park it around back for him. You appreciated Sam for that. He knew better than to leave your side, even if it was with one his uniforms. Couldn’t trust anyone but their own, and for now, that meant a small circle within the one-four.

Sam led you to the elevator and up to the eleventh floor where Steve was waiting. He sat in the far corner of the empty waiting room, tapping his foot and wringing his hands as he leaned over his knees. It smelled of cleaning supplies and the disinfectant wipes you had recognized on Sam earlier. As the elevator doors shut behind you, Steve’s head popped up having noticed your arrival.

“They took him back to the OR a few minutes ago,” Steve said before you could ask. He was good about that. He wiped his palms on his slacks and stood to his feet, making his way over to you. “Why don’t you take a seat? We’ll see if one of the nurses can come take a look at you.”

You nodded apprehensively. “Any word on Peter or Nat?”

Steve clenched his jaw as he set a hand on your back to lead you over to the chairs. Sam was already over at the nursing station.

“They’ll be finishing up with Natasha any minute now. Last update they said they were closing her up. She’ll need a ton of PT, which I’m sure she’ll despise, but she’s stable. She’ll be just fine,” Steve said with a sad smile. He took a deep breath. “Parker is still in surgery. A piece of metal from the car got lodged in his leg during the explosion and he, he suffered a lot of burns. They’re trying to do as much as they can right now to limit how much work they’ll need to do later. It’ll be a long recovery but he’s a strong kid. If anyone’s got the optimism for it, it’s him.”

Pang of guilt burned in your chest and your tried to remind yourself exactly where the blame belonged instead of taking it on yourself. It didn’t stop the ache in your stomach when you thought of him; sweet, young, energetic Peter with an endearing nervous energy, one of the trusted few members of the one-four who happily agreed to walk you to your bar every night without question. He was too good, too kind for this job. You prayed to a God you weren’t sure you believed in that he wouldn’t lose that piece of him.

Steve helped you sit down in the chair facing the long hallway where you expected the surgeon emerged from to deliver updates. He took a seat next to you and you could feel his eyes on you, looking for injury outside of the cut along your cheek.

“Did you look at the flash drive yet?” you asked quietly, glancing over at the nurse's station where Sam was still trying to get the attention of the older woman in scrubs. She was wearing headphones, bouncing her head along to the beat of whatever she was listening to.

“Flash drive?”

“The necklace,” you clarified and Steve pulled it out from his pocket. He handed it back to you and it felt odd sitting in your hand, like it hadn’t been something you had twisted and grasped at your whole life trying to draw the comfort your father claimed it possessed.

With a quick snap, you broke it in half. From the hallow chamber of the pendent, a USB drive so small it resembled a microchip fell into your hand. You sighed, a relief spreading through you as you handed the chip to Steve. You were right.

“Hydra has moles everywhere. It’s not just Ward. That drive will give you every name Hydra has on payroll, including in the one-four,” you went on to say. Steve didn’t seem surprised, he only nodding in acknowledgment. He must have suspected. He was too smart not too.

“It’s the reason Rumlow held me and Bucky for so long. They thought I knew where it was. Funny thing was, I didn’t even know it existed until he brought it up. Once I figured out it was in my necklace, I sent them on a goose chase to the bar.”

“Shit,” Steve sighed, running his hand through his hair as he shoved the chip into his pocket. “Can’t believe Sam thought to have our guys stationed there. Rumlow and Ward walked right into it. Some luck.”

“Don’t let Sam hear you say that. He’s taking full credit for bringing them in,” you teased, surprised by the light-hearted tone in your voice. Steve smirked, shaking his head as he settled back in his chair. You looked up to find Sam waving frantically at the poor nurse who had yet to notice him.

Some minutes later, as you watched Sam arguing with the nurse whose attention he finally caught, Steve let out a heavy sigh. “You sure you just want to hand this to me?”

You narrowed your eyes, waiting for him to continue. He pulled the chip from his pocket, examining it closely.

He shrugged. “This is some serious leverage, Y/n. If you brought this to the feds, they might arrange a deal for your dad. You could ask for almost anything and they’d make it happen.”

“If my father wanted to use it to get himself out of his sentence, he would have,” you considered slowly. “He gave it to me before he was arrested. He knew they were coming. I think he--” you sighed, “He wants to serve his time. He knows the horrible shit he got caught up in. He never meant for it to go as far as it did, but it happened. He was still responsible for the distribution of drugs that fell into the hands of innocent kids. If he wanted the easy way out, he would have traded this to the cops then.”

Steve nodded. “You sure you don’t want a beach house somewhere? Maybe a new identity as a soccer mom?”

“I’m just fine where I’m at,” you laughed, leaning further back in your chair. You eyed the drive between Steve’s fingers as he fiddled with it before your gaze fell on the double doors leaning down to the operating rooms. A sigh, a little more somber, “I’ve got a bit of an invested interest now, I suppose.”

Steve grinned, though he tried to suppress it as he followed your gaze. “Yeah, I guess you do.”

part ten .

(a/n: I really almost ended this chapter right before steve and tony showed up to save ya’ll so I’m def not as cruel as I could have been lol)

tags 🔮: @sweetheartbarnes / @musiclover1263 / @pies-wands-and-more / @buckygrantbarnes / @mywinterwolf / @breatheeagainnnn / @jewelofwinter / @lumar014 / @alohafromhell1 / @bucksandroses / @teardropcup / @beautiful-aravis / @me-chi / @somewereinthegalaxi / @marvelfansworld / @whyamidoingthistomyselfhelp / @deanwinchesterswitch / @yourwonderbelle / @fairislesheets / @brokeinflight / @verygraphicink / @lollipopdomination / @emotionallysalty / @forsaken-letters / @captain-hammer-of-asgard / @ashlieadelia / @kasimagines / @ladymelissastark/ @panic-naran / @pinkisokay / @jsmith509 / @hennessy0274-blog / @littlemsrantsalot / @bucky-rrogers / @the-wayward-robot

[vicisse]

on the darkling

listen. i totally understand the mixed opinions on this guy. i’ve pretty much resigned myself the fact that my opinion is and should be mixed. the darkling is the kind of character that is equal parts despicable and almost relatable—relatable and not redeemable. 

the man is a walking contradiction, and so is my opinion of him: i love to hate him, and i hate to love him. 

this post is meant to take a crack at the utter enigma that is the darkling and really break down his character. 

“The Darkling is a manipulative person, so why do so many people like him?”

i can’t speak on behalf of the whole fandom, but for me personality, i like TD in the sense that he is a complex character. does that mean i excuse the atrocious things he did? absolutely not. he is still an abject and detestable character. but i can still analyze and delve into the intricacies and reasoning behind his actions and find it interesting. 

(and besides, from a purely leisure-based perspective, TD is an entertaining character! i mean, he’s awful, but he’s also awfully petty. for a supposedly intelligent character with a vast amount of experience, he sure gets tripped up on the words and actions of a mousy teenage girl.)

some people, though, like to reduce TD to the bad boy/asshole who goes “soft” after meeting the girl of his dreams. not only does that trope grate on my nerves, it is also a far cry from the actual dynamics at work. 

not only has leigh commented on how she wanted to subvert the trope that a female love interest can make a bad man better (in regards to the relationship between alina and TD, at least), but she has also made it clear that TD would not change for alina. 

for all the times he reveals a little bit of truth to alina... well? it’s just that. a little bit of truth. it’s really another manipulative tactic: lies mixed with a little bit of truth, a classic TD move. he knows that alina is lonely and preys on that loneliness, talking on and on about how she isn’t like her friends, how none of them will ever understand her the way he can. 

“I’ve seen what you truly are,” said the Darkling, “and I’ve never turned away. I never will. Can he say the same?”

another reason why TD is fascinating to me is because he is so good at what he does that he manages to manipulate readers, too. they think he’s good for alina, or that alina will change him, that she was stupid for turning down a chance to step into power. 

(i beg to differ, though that is a whole other meta—on alina. this is about TD.)

TD is a compelling character because his very existence elicits so many questions: 

Why is he so obsessed with Alina? Does he actually feel anything for her? If he wants her so badly, why doesn’t he stop his quest for world domination and have a little more compassion for humanity?

Why did he make the Fold?

Why is he—well—Like That?

let’s go backwards, starting with Why is he Like That? well, the answer is easily: Baghra. 

her parenting is questionable, to say the least. i don’t doubt that she loves her son and genuinely wants the best for him, but “the best” gets warped with the times. in the early years, “the best” meant heeding her lessons, accumulating fear and power so no one could hurt them—hurt him. 

it isn’t until after the whole shadow fold debacle that baghra’s all “maybe the best is seeing my son come home,” because the monster who was peeling away strips of his humanity year after year is no longer her son. i mean, TD spent a good part of his formative years learning at her knee, truly heeding her words:

“I taught him that he had no equal, that he was destined to bow before no man. I wanted him to be hard, to be strong. I taught him the lesson my mother and father taught me: to rely on no one. That love—fragile and fickle and raw—was nothing compared to power.”

at the time, the latter certainly holds true. TD scarcely made friends, as baghra also warned him to be wary of touch (they’re amplifiers, after all), which is a pretty big part of socializing and human interaction. what does he need love for?

in order to make a difference, make the impact he desired, TD would have to climb a lot of rungs to step into a position powerful enough to commit to reality the dream he’s carried: to make a safe haven for grisha. 

but now his dreams have since been warped by time. 

it’s hard to fathom just how long TD has lived because we don’t know how long he’s been around. still, factoring time into the equation is helpful when it comes to understanding TD’s motivation. 

anger is certainly a huge motivator, and something that only festers on and grows with time, twining itself with resentment and bitterness and underneath it all: loneliness. anger, directed at a world that spurned him and people like him. anger, at a world that always, always took from him—because he must have loved someone at some point. he tells alina, 

“I have lived a long life, rich in grief. My tears are long since spent. If I still felt as you do, if I ached as you do, I could not have borne this eternity.”

and the loneliness, the burden of immortality, the curse of it. to watch the people you love taken by a world that spurned grisha, or worse: to watch them live long enough to die of old age while you remained unblemished by time, to repeat that cycle over and over again and bear the brunt of loneliness each and every time. 

“But wait,” you might be thinking, “doesn’t he have his mom?”

well, yeah. there is baghra, but... you have to understand: she’s the one who taught him to be that way. she was the one who taught him to rely on nothing and no one but himself. and also? who would want to spend eternity with a cold and distant mother? 

“Boo hoo, poor immortal character is stuck being lonely. Is that supposed to excuse the horrors he committed? I get lonely, too, but you don’t see me annihilating a whole town.”

no, not at all! this is just providing a reason behind it, not excusing it. understanding does not equal tolerance. TD is despicable, true, but i’m just pointing out:

a life in isolation + immortal life + grand ambition to change the world = disaster

it isn’t enough just to be grisha; TD is also an amplifier, so he was hunted by other grisha. that isolating existence combined with the long stretch of time he can live is already enough to strip you of what little humanity you have. add on the fact that TD once dreamed of changing the world, to make a safe haven for people like him, grisha, and the fact that baghra essentially raised him to rely on power and believe that the world is his birthright... yeah. disaster. 

of course, the real disaster here is TD, but apparently, disaster spur more disasters because he also made the shadow fold. so, Why did he make the Fold? honestly, it confuses me, too. 

see, when alina asks that, baghra tells her that the fold is no accident, which leads me, the reader, to believe that TD planned on splitting ravka in two in order to sanction fold crossings, which would get the king to rely on his second army, his grisha. buuut, leigh has also said in a couple Q&As that the fold was merzost gone wrong... to be honest, it’s probably both?

like yes, TD tried his hand at merzost and failed on a scale of epic proportions, but leave it to him to figure out a way around his mess. like sure, he wasn’t able to make his own amplifier (though why he would need more amplifiers when he is himself is an amplifier is beyond me), but he probably figures, hey, i can use this, and does. which brings me to the last stretch of questions:

Why is he so obsessed with Alina? Does he actually feel anything for her? If he wants her so badly, why doesn’t he stop his quest for world domination and have a little more compassion for humanity?

he’s obsessed with alina because she’s literally his answer. to everything. 

if he wants to cross the fold? alina. if he takes over ravka for many centuries and the people start to protest? alina, the revered sun saint, will subdue them.

so what if alina isn’t as powerful as he is, won’t live as long as he does? he supposes now is as good a time as any to whip out old grandpa ilya’s journals to get his set of amplifiers on her. 

she’s the amalgamation of everything he has ever searched for, ever wanted. and maybe that’s why a lot of people conflate those strong feelings for love, but the thing is... TD? loving someone? feeling anything? i have to laugh. 

that’s another thing about TD. when it comes to emotions, he’s not as emotionally stunted as some people make him out to be. 

he strikes me as a very introspective character. it doesn’t make sense to me that someone who’s lived so long is so out of touch with their emotions. he is, in a way, but i also think he is aware and merely chooses to ignore, push down, or disguise it as something else entirely. he’s not emotionally stunted, he just thinks some emotions are inconvenient. unpleasant. annoying, even.

the thing is, TD has lived a really loooong life. he doesn’t feel loneliness the same way any of the other non-immortal characters do. no, his kind of loneliness manifests itself without feeling, numb from the centuries of having nothing and no one to depend on but himself. 

i’m not saying that TD doesn’t love alina—though honestly, i could never imagine a world where he acknowledges he does. besides, it doesn’t look like what is the ideal definition of love as we see it, but it’s as close as he’s gonna get.

love is a tricky, flexible thing; and it isn’t always good or bad. ideally, love should be good, but. it’s like a friend pointed out to me: a controlling mother can tell her child, “i love you, so you have to do what i say,” but she isn’t necessarily lying. she does love her child, but she uses it as leverage to manipulate—another classic TD move. 

now, i never quite answered why, then, if he wants alina so badly, doesn’t he stop his quest for world domination and have a little more compassion for humanity? short answer is: it’s impossible. 

i’ve answered an ask before, on TD and the possibility of a redemption arc, but again: it’s impossible. i mean, imagine holding onto a grudge for years. years. at some point, it’s not just a grudge, it’s just you, holding onto your anger, some kind of injustice you feel but can no longer identify. 

it’s like that with TD, but x100000000000000000000. i might even be missing a few more zeroes, to be honest. 

TD is many things. stubborn, selfish, arrogant. arrogance plays a big role, because his ego is, frankly, the size of the shadow fold. someone who’s as self-righteous as TD isn’t going to readily admit he was wrong this whole time. 

the fold is one thing—but that mistake he could rectify, work around. if he were to admit that he was wrong for doing all this grand planning, plans he spent centuries building up to and waiting for, it would all go to waste. it would all be for nothing. at the very least, he has to see some follow through. 

and another thing: he’s not about to give up a centuries’ long ambition for one (1) mousy girl who is too stubborn to acknowledge her own potential. forget it! 

he might love alina, but he will always love power more.

[journeysintowebcomics]

Worm Liveblog #100

UPDATE 100: Look the Other Way

Last time Coil made pretty clear he knows Skitter and Tattletale are scheming something, but he’s not too worried about it because he still has aces up his sleeve. Also, the night went on without Coil being targeted at all, but she did triumph in her intimidation mission, so all is well. For now. Let’s continue.

Ah, it’s Triumph and a ‘Sam’ person. Perhaps Sam is Prism and this is after Skitter defeated them? They’re in the hospital, after all. It’s possible this is the day after. How good to see Triumph is recovering from his near-death experience.

Okay, this definitely is later. They’re talking about how Sam was invited home to partake in a meal with the parents. They’re both taking rather well how Triumph almost died, I must say. While that’s good – not letting it drag them down – I did expect it to be mentioned right away in some way.

He also went to see Cache, who is still at the hospital being treated for the severe burns he has. He’s going to stay there for quite a while, I believe, and without Panacea or anyone else who can heal quickly, it’s bound to be a painful and uncomfortable stay. Poor guy, really. At least he’s alive.

Pretty common for us to go straight from here to our offices, and there were apparently issues with photographers taking pictures of heroes in wheelchairs as they left the hospital.  Director Piggot arranged things this way for exactly this reason.

The need for PR makes this happen, of course. You can’t show a powerful hero in a vulnerable position such as being lugged around in a wheelchair. Heroes have to appear strong and almost invincible in order for the public to have trust on them. While a hero in a wheelchair will elicit sympathy, it won’t fit the PR the Protectorate wants, I think. That’s why they’re walking by themselves despite their injuries.

They encounter Ursa Aurora along the way, who immediately alerts them there’s trouble afoot. Oh boy!

“There’s an issue.  Division in the ranks.  Looking ugly.”

“The enemy?”

She shook her head.  “Our guys. And it’s about you.”

Looks like Skitter and the rest of the Undersiders aren’t the only ones who are in a constant whirlwind of trouble! Interesting, there’s dissension about Triumph and Prism? They did nothing wrong during the fight, why would there be division in their ranks about them?

Prism is still injured, a consequence of landing on her side when Skitter dropped her from the roof. It also brings bad memories of an undetermined sort. Backstory, eh? Her backstory is that her father was a coach who strived to turn his sons and daughters into excellent athletes. You can’t be a good athlete without suffering injuries and lesions along the way, and Prism’s injury was a pretty bad one, one that forced her to quit. That brought all sorts of problems with her family. Being injured again is making her remember those times, where she had to rely only on herself and no one else.

They’d gone out as friends, first, because they both had similar backgrounds, and segued into a casual relationship.  They had both been athletes, once upon a time.  She was an ex-gymnast, he had been a baseball player.  She’d triggered because of the aftermath of a career-ending injury. He’d acquired his powers because he’d been perpetually second place, doomed to miss his chance, a mere hair from a career in the major league.

He knew how devastating that stuff could be when you’d made the sacrifices, given up most of your adolescence to succeed at something, only to fall short.

Birds of a feather flock together, they say. Or something like that. While their trigger events don’t sound as traumatic as others, it’s pretty clear it must have involved a lot of suffering in some way. Emotional suffering is as harrowing as traumatic experiences. I wonder how their powers fit their trigger events – if they do, the powers don’t always fit.

He’d turned to his dad for help, and his dad had delivered a small vial that was supposedly designed to force a state equivalent to a trigger event, without the necessary trauma.

Oh, nevermind, he’s a Cauldron hero. Maybe Prism is one too.

Looks like there’s a discussions going. Some heroes are standing on one side, others on the other. Does that mean Miss Militia, Weld, and Kid Win are on the same side, while Assault, Clockblocker, Chariot and Vista are on the other? What are they talking about?

“-vigilantism!” Miss Militia’s voice was tight with barely controlled anger.

Jolly! Sounds like something fun.

Right away I can see Assault wants to be a vigilante, so could it be Clockblocker, Chariot and Vista want that as well? Kind of surprising Vista wants to. I can see Clockblocker and Chariot, but Vista kind of surprises me.

Obviously Miss Militia doesn’t approve vigilantism and is trying to dissuade them. Assault is the one who’s trying to argue they should make a quick, hard-hitting strike. Oh boy, if it’s against the Undersiders then for the sake of Dinah I hope this vigilantism attack happens after Dinah is free. I mean, I’m pretty convinced Assault and possibly others won’t stay their hand simply because Miss Militia frowns at vigilantism. There must be a confrontation sooner or later.

Also, since this is related to Triumph and Prism, I suppose Skitter’s intimidation was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Whoops! Could it be Coil saw this coming and decided to use some of the heroes’ vigilantism desires to get rid of Skitter? It would be quite the clever plan, and pretty difficult to counter.

“They attacked one of our own.  Again,” Assault said.  “And they broke a cardinal rule.  They attacked family.  You don’t unmask a cape, and if you happen to discover their secret identity, you don’t go after their family.”

It’s interesting how the honor system is a vital part of the heroes/villain relationship. It’s quite curious villains breaking this cardinal rule doesn’t happen often. I remember the ‘apprehend three times’ rule there is, and I suppose the Birdcage is quite the powerful deterrent. Now that Skitter presumably crossed a line, well, she has incurred in the heroes’ wrath.

Clockblocker cut in, “But we can assume she found out beforehand.  Unless you’re going to suggest she figured it out on her own?”

Funny you would say that. That’s exactly what happened. They think Tattletale gave Skitter the information, which is rather plausible, yes.

Shatterbird being captured and Regent controlling people around are more proof the Undersiders are crossing lines. That happened long ago! Still, I can’t deny all that is pretty sketchy and makes the Undersiders seem even more dangerous, and they certainly can use that danger to their advantage.

“You’d be violating your probationary status on the team,” Miss Militia said, quiet. “Going against orders.”

“My joining the Protectorate was conditional on being on the same team as Battery,” Assault replied.

Ouch. That hurt more than I thought it would. He’s fueled by grief. I suppose he really believes the Undersiders are responsible for Battery’s demise.

Triumph can see Clockblocker is siding with vigilantism because Clockblocker is contrarian like that when it comes to authority’s orders, and Chariot is there because Coil wants dissension. Vista, though, is a surprise. She explains she’d like that because she’s tired of losing people, and lists the names. Those really are several names, six so far.

“You’re making it sound more complicated than it is,” Assault said.  “I’m talking a quick, hard hitting strike against one of their territories.  One of the master-classifications would be a good bet.  I’d suggest Regent, but Shatterbird is too big a complication. Better to take out Hellhound or Skitter. Doing either would cut their tactical options down by a third, and it could gain us a hostage to leverage against the others.”

Honestly, Heckpuppy seems like the best option. She’s kind of predictable when it’s about attacking: she will do it and with all the force she can. Skitter is unpredictable and very versatile. They should stick with what’s safe. Buuuuuut I bet they will attack Skitter. She’s the protagonist, after all.

At least Miss Militia knows they would receive a retaliation and possibly lose. She knows how this goes, haha! In the end, Triumph sides with those who want to obey the orders to not attack. The discussion ends when Piggot says something. I bet Piggot heard everything.

There are visitors! A man and a woman. They enter, the woman removing her helmet and letting her face be seen. Triumph thinks she’s familiar, but it doesn’t seem like he can pinpoint who she is. The description doesn’t sound familiar either. The man, though, he seems to ring a bell more and Triumph is aghast.

“Dragon,” Miss Militia said.  “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

Dragon extended a hand, and Miss Militia shook it.  “Likewise.  Let me introduce Defiant.”

...ah. Well! I suppose Defiant is Armsmaster’s new name. Who is he defying? The Slaughterhouse Nine, or perhaps the Protectorate?

“Dragon and Defiant have stopped by to pick up resources and gather information before taking on a long-term mission,” the Director explained.  “Would you like to explain?”

“The Nine,” Dragon explained.

Oh! Well, more power to them! I wish them the best of luck pursuing the Slaughterhouse Nine. Hopefully they manage to succeed! They already know stuff about how they operate and what they will do, so they certainly have prepared themselves well so far, and if Piggot has no objections about Armsmaster – Defiant from now on, I suppose – leaving his home imprisonment and Dragon having aided someone in his escape from home imprisonment, then everything is fine.

I do wonder why Piggot is okay with Defiant being free, though. Maybe she really liked the thought of the Slaughterhouse Nine being pursued.

This isn’t the first time heroes pursue the Slaughterhouse Nine and it has always failed. These two are more confident because Dragon will be able to go on 24/7, giving the Slaughterhouse Nine no chance to rest. I’m not sure, I think more than just not sleeping will be needed to be effective against them. She failed before because Shatterbird was there and I suppose Dragon’s silicone and technology would have been vulnerable to her power, but now! Now she has a partner, and Shatterbird is away!

By the way, it’s great the Undersiders have something to counter a rather relentless hero like Dragon. They’re somewhat safer than they would be otherwise.

Defiant modified himself to be almost as enduring as Dragon, much to Triumph’s horror, who says Defiant is a monster now. This also seemed to surprise others, like Miss Militia. I suppose such an extensive modification is unheard of, even among tinkers.

So yes, the reason why the PRT is okay with this is because they hope they will succeed, and I can’t avoid feeling they may also be thinking something along the lines of ‘and if they fail, well, we don’t have to imprison Armsmaster and Dragon because they will be dead’. Bureaucracy can be pragmatic like that. Not that the AI in charge of the Birdcage perishing in battle is good at all.

Miss Militia seemed to recover faster than anyone else.  “That’s not the only issue the squads faced.  There’s the psychological strain.  Hunting a prey for days, weeks, months at a time? Especially targets that will commit atrocities if you let your guard down for a second?  It gets to you.”

“I think,” Defiant paused, as if he had to pick the right words, “My single-mindedness will be an asset on that front.”

Single-mindedness is not a favorable trait at all. Not sure it should be encouraged. Still, given Defiant’s actions so far, and Dragon’s...you know, being an AI, I think the pursuit is not going to affect them that much.

Dragon now has nine very large suit models she can control remotely. They can aid in the pursuit of the Slaughterhouse Nine, and while they’re not operational, they’ll stay in Brockton Bay. Is this going where I think it’s going? Could it be Dragon will use them to try to protect the city in the meantime? Rather unlikely, given these suits are...rather large, if I’m reading correctly, but still!

They wish Defiant good luck in helping Dragon pursue those crazy mass murderers, and that’s when Triumph decides he can’t just stand aside anymore. Everybody is pretending Defiant is not Armsmaster. Either absolutely everybody except Triumph was fooled somehow – incredibly unlikely, this is a large group of people! – or everybody had agreed not to mention the topic, somehow. The second is likelier.

“If you have a valid concern about Defiant,” Director Piggot spoke, “I think it would benefit us all to hear it.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but she’d already raised her hand to stop him.  “Rest assured, Triumph, if you were to allege criminal activity, we would arrest and detain him until a case could be made. We’d pull him off this wholly voluntary task and if your charges were serious enough, send him to the Birdcage. I suppose we’d have to adjust Dragon’s battle plan against the Nine, she would likely be forced to rethink her idea of having the suits stationed in Brockton Bay, so she was better able to defend herself.”

“I get what you’re saying.”

“I’m not saying anything, Triumph, only that you’re entirely free to speak.”

Really? I don’t know, with all that speech, it seems to me she’s actually trying to say something along the lines of ‘we already know, we’re not blind or stupid. We have worked on this plan for a while, here’s what would happen if you say something, so keep your mouth shut”. Nobody bothering to look at Triumph after that sure helps reinforce that Triumph should play along and do nothing.

“Just wanted to say that the guy’s got cojones,” Triumph said, with no emotion or inflection.  “Taking on the Slaughterhouse Nine like that, being this new to the game.”

Ahaha, yes, that’s definitely what Triumph wanted to say. Totally. He sure isn’t happy about keeping his mouth shut about this, about letting Armsmaster to come back into the heroes after his actions, but there’s too much on the balance to ruin everything by demanding Armsmaster is taken away. Not that they would listen to Triumph, anyway. Everyone else is clearly on the same side here when it’s about letting Defiant run around free. Disagreeing would lead nowhere.

Prism not intervening either kind of shook Triumph, to the point where he was now wondering if she was the ideal girl. That sure was a fleeting possible relationship! At the first sign of disagreement, he’s already backing out, without even talking to her. That’s not very mature of Triumph. He even leaves in a huff. Well I sure hope once he calms down he returns to talk to Prism.

Part of the reason why he’s so upset is because he understood Armsmaster and knew how it was possible he had gotten to the point he had tried to fight Leviathan by himself, even if it meant sacrificing a few villains along the way. I don’t think Triumph approves, but he understands how things led to it.

It spooked Triumph because he could imagine it all too easily, where his teammates seemed dumbfounded.  It all made sense, to the point that he could imagine himself doing something similar if he found himself in Armsmaster’s shoes.

If he understands how that happened, then it’s less likely he will ever walk down that same path, I think. He’s been telling himself he never will and maybe I agree, even though he seems afraid not intervening in Armsmaster getting away with his behavior means he could start going down that same road. I still think being aware of it means he won’t ever go through that. Hopefully.

Triumph arrives into a section of the city where everything still has the remains of the bombing done on the Slaughterhouse Nine. That was days ago! And nothing has cleared up yet? Bakuda’s bombs are fearsome, it’s a relief she didn’t get to use them. There even is radioactive fallout. Triumph ignores all of it and gets to the place where Crawler and Mannequin are. They were turned into silicon and are presumably dead. Someone really should cart those two out of here. I hope they’re truly dead and not just encased in silicon or something.

The reason they’re here is so Triumph can stare at them in an angsty manner. He’s concerned about how things are going, and staring at these two is his way to cope with his frustration today. He sat there for full fifteen minutes, just...staring at the silicone statues.

That’s where the interlude ends. Aw, that’s a bit of a letdown. I wish some of Triumph’s thoughts had been mentioned before that. I mean, sounds like he didn’t make any progress, but there was no narration between him sitting down to stare at Crawler and Mannequin, and the last line of the interlude. Just a couple lines about how this wasn’t helping at all could have helped reinforce the scene. Oh well. It was an interesting interlude, nonetheless.

So yeah, Dragon and Defiant will hunt for the Slaughterhouse Nine. I wonder...could this accidentally lead to the end of the world? It was said Jack would cause it, but that doesn’t mean he, like, touches a button and everything explodes. A set of circumstances leading to him being able to end the world somehow must happen. It’s possible Defiant and Dragon pursuing them may have something to do with it. You know what they say, about how trying to avoid your fate only takes you to it or whatever. It’s not impossible the actions to eliminate the Slaughterhouse Nine before the end of the world will accidentally lead to that very same end.

This is the end of the interlude, so I think I should end the update here. Next time...next time it will be some thoughts about Worm so far! And about its characters and situations, yeah. I’m glad the Update #100 ended right when an arc ended, that’s a nice point for a pause. So yes, next update will be about my thoughts, and then the next one will start a new arc. Thank you for reading!

Next time: in four updates

[dammitadolfnomorecake]

🏰⚔️ Royal Au - chapter one full

Huddled on the stable floor, Eren was finally safe from the rain. His body sickly from lack of food, and his clothes far too small, and in tatters from living on the streets. It hadn't always been that way, but since the end of the last Great War with Marley, poverty had run rampart through the small island nation of Eldia. Resources and taxes were at an all time high, as citizen moral was at an all time low. In the time of noble King Smith's rule, thousands of men had defended Eldia's shores, and not just from Marley, but from the kingdom of Draecia that lay along the long peninsula to the north of the island. The dragons and their riders, had long abandoned the ways of war, having entered a peace treaty of sorts that promised to stay clear of both Eldia and Marlery on the provision both nations extended them the same courtesy. For the most part, the treaty had been kept, though in every generation, there were those who would seek to destroy the uneasy peace, on both sides of the borders. Dragon blood and scales could fetch a high price, by those less pure of heart. Bones were often used by magic casters of Marley and Eldia, and having their supply cut had seen in an increase in illegal dragon hunting and culls. Of course, none of this mattered to the wasting form of Eren. Knowing this wouldn't put food in his starving belly, nor would it give him a warm and safe place to sleep... something he hadn't in last two years. Things hadn't always been this way. He'd once had a loving mother, and absent, though caring father. He'd had an adoptive sister, Mikasa, who'd always been there to baby him, and to prevent him reaching his full potential. He'd had a best friend named Armin, who lightening fast intellect... but when Marley had used captured dragons to destroy the southern side of the kingdoms outer wall, everything had gone to shit in a heart beat. His father had deserted him. His mother was crushed underfoot by a dragon so large, the sky had turned black above him. Some days he sorely wished he'd died with her, instead of being rescued by a royal guard. He was alive, but not for much longer. Mikasa and Armin had both found paths in the aftermath of devastation, where Eren hadn't. Mikasa was training to be a knight, her commander had never seen such a naturally skilled soldier. While Armin was training to be a royal diplomat, both now residing in the Royal keep... who's stables in which, Eren was currently hiding. It'd hurt to leave his friends, to lie and say he'd found a modest job at a small butchers. He'd done no such thing. No one wanting be responsible for a rat with such a fiery temper, or that's was what they said. It'd been fine to begin with. Living on the streets had been like some kind of adventure, until it hadn't been. In all the known kingdoms, omegas were the only ones capable of using magic. Upon presentation, they were sent to sanctuaries to train in the ways of attending in a royal court. Never before had a magic user come along, that hadn't presented an omega... and yet... only weeks before his home had fallen, Eren had. It started with a crackling sensation, like pins and needles in his fingers. From there it spread to small white sparks flaring from his fingers and wrapping around his hands. Terrified, he'd run to his mother for help. His mother just as mortified as she wrapped his tender hands, which had seemed to contain his newly forming magic. From there, the power had spread through his whole body. His senses growing so sharp that he could hear the neighbours down the road fighting, or taste an incoming storm in the wind, hours before it finally rolled in. For days he'd fevered, even bringing snowfall down on his bed, but before his mother could consult with his father, everything had gone to hell. Eldia had signed it's stupid treaty with Marley, and he'd become just another nameless face in those who's lives had been ruined by the upheaval. He couldn't tell anyone about his powers, lest the send him away from Armin and Mikasa, but he also couldn't hold down a job either. He hadn't even presented and yet, there he was. Likely to start a fire completely by accident, if the wrong word should be said in his direction. The stables had been his last safe haven. With Mikasa so distinguished, he'd been granted limited access to the keep, in order to meet with his sister. The guards at the gate house knew as well as he did, that Mikasa was off training in the countries north, but he supposed they taken pity on him given the fact he looked as if to die and the weather wasn't easing up. Mikasa and Armin never knew of his true condition. He'd stolen clothes each time he'd come to visit them, before washing and return them to the line in which he'd taken them. It'd been tempting as hell to keep them, but each time he couldn't. Everyone was working so hard to survive, it wasn't fair to cost them any more. If he'd had control of his powers, he liked to believe he could have found a real job, until he turned 15, which was the accepted age of entrance into the kingdoms military branches. In equal parts, it annoyed him and impressed him that Mikasa was the youngest soldier to enter at the age of 10, and that everyone expected big things of her... but he couldn't understand, why that couldn't have been him. Coughing, sparks danced around his body, as blood dribbled down from the corner of his mouth. He'd been sick for so long, he didn't remember what it was to be well. Drawing his thin legs to his chest, he coughed into his knees, his lungs rattled as he tried to draw a breath between the wet coughs. If he knew magic, he could help himself. If he knew hot to control his magic, he could build himself a fire, and wouldn't have to freeze in his soaked clothes. But the stable was the warmest place he'd had in days. The smell didn't matter, nor did the dampness of they hay around him... and while it'd been nice to pretend he'd see Mikasa again... he'd really just been looking for somewhere safe to die. * Riding into the castle keep, Levi was ignoring Erwin. His blond bear of a friend was an arsehole, and the last of the royal bloodline. Though they'd met several extremely long years ago, Levi still wondered how he'd ended up living the lie of a prince. Right now, he was wondering what they ramifications of him killing his "bodyguard" would be. Living on the streets, Levi's life hadn't been easy. Him, along with his two best friends, had been the most feared group of the city that resided under the royal capital. If anyone had been asked, Levi was a wild gutter rat, destined to live a life of petty crime and murder. Yet, there he was. Playing Prince Erwin, heir to the Kingdom of Eldia, in a game that made no sense to him. It'd all begun with the assassination of the former King and Queen, also know as Erwin's parents. It was a common practice for royal children to be sent away, to live as commoners and to live without even knowing the truth of their existence. Poisoned wine had been delivered, a gift from supposed allies, that caused the royal capital descended into chaos as the word went out. Rumours of a reward offered to those with information on the murder, but Levi had his eyes on a bigger prize. The young prince, that was Erwin. After all, if not for rumours, the underground would have been too boring for words. Sneaking above ground was easy, as was stealing horses. It was all laughably easy... only, it wasn't until he laid eyes on Erwin, that he found the young prince had expected something along such lines to happen. Erwin knew exactly who he was, and what Levi was there to do. Instead of ordering his execution, Erwin had proposed a simple deal. Levi to play him, and in reward, his two best friends would be given the right to live in the palace. It was a foolish scheme Levi had never thought would work, but the underground had grown boring. The daily murders no long elicited any sympathy from its inhabitants. Figuring he was going to die anyway, he'd accepted the prince's proposal... somehow, Erwin had managed to convince the royal court that Levi was in fact the best person to play the role of the orphaned prince. The royal court agreeing to prevent the death of the royal line... and that was how he became Prince Erwin to the outside world. Despite not resembling the royal line, in any other way than having dark hair like Erwin's mother had. Dismounting his horse outside the stables, Levi scowled at Erwin who was still laughing. It was hardly his fault strange women proclaimed their love for him each time he set foot outside the castle keep. He didn't want a single one of them. He'd met hundreds of parents hoping he'd marry their offspring, yet, Levi didn't want to marry purely because of his position. He wasn't the "king-to-be", he was Erwin's bodyguard without an ounce of tact. The woman who'd professed her love today, had learned that the hard way as Levi had ridden off the moment he'd seen the red rose in her hand "Are you done with your shitty laughing?" "Not quite, Prince Erwin. You really should be more refined, your highness" "And you really should pluck those overgrown brows of yours. I have no idea how you even see past them" "Leave my eyebrows alone. You're going to end up assassinated before you even ascend to the throne" "I'd like to see them try. It'd make a nice change from dealing with you" Leading his horse over, Erwin gathered up the reins of Levi's horse "I'll have the stable hands deal with them" "No. Those shitty arseholes are only good for shovelling shit. I'll clean my own tack" "What's the point of having servants, if you don't make the most of them?" "What's the point of having servants, if they're all useless?" Erwin rolled his eyes, yet didn't vocalise his disagreement. The death caused by the man's parents, had left everyone bowing and scraping as they tried to fill the chasm left. He and Erwin knew nothing about ruling a country, yet there they were. And now they were practically puppets to Marley. Tugging his reins back, Levi lead his horse towards her stall. The hulking black beast was his pride and joy, and nothing like the prissy white stead Erwin had chosen for himself. Left alone in the stables, Levi was curry combining down his stead, when the smell of burning hay caught his attention. There was no reason for the hay to be alight. Thanks to the magic of the court, all the lights within the castle grounds were powered by shining stones. Patting his horse, he abandoned her grooming, in favour of solving the mystery of the burning hay. Checking stall after stall, it wasn't until he reached the one closest to the stable entrance that he found the source. A small child curled into a ball, admits a blackened circle of hay. The child clearly didn't belong there, dressed in rags and stinking to high hell. Slipping into the stall, he prayed the kid wasn't dead. He didn't particularly feel like explaining that one. With his nose wrinkled in disgust, he poked the kid in the side with the tip of his boot. The child coughing so hard, that Levi momentarily felt a spark of pity "Oi, brat. What the fuck is going on here?" With each cough, small plumes of smoke would rise from the hay. Levi finally putting two and two together. The kid was an omega. The whole world knew that only omegas could use magic... Just fucking great. Squatting down, he was glad he'd left his gloves on as he shook the filthy mess by the shoulder "Oi. Brat, are you alright?" The kid definitely wasn't alright. He could feel how thin the child was. Coughing, the boy tried to shy from his touch "You can't sleep here" "... didn't come here to sleep..." So he could talk? "Then get up. You're stinking up the stables" Coughing as the kid tried to rise, red blood splattered with watery vomit onto the burnt hay. Whimpering, the kid collapsed face first into his own mess "Brat?" Wheezing, the child was fading before his eyes. Struck by unwanted thoughts of the underground, Levi acted before his brain could stop him. As if made of glass, he took the child into his arms. He was so, stupidly light... and his smell... so very sweet, despite being hidden beneath the stench of poverty "Alright. You're not dying in my castle keep" In his arms, the child's eyelashes fluttered, Levi leaving the stable gate open as he began towards the castle. The omega whining softly as his eyes opened. Levi momentarily left shocked at the greenest eyes he'd ever seen. Inside of him, a whirlwind of emotions were stirred into life. At 22ish, he was late to present, but then again, Erwin hadn't yet either and the man was twice his size... but all it took was one look at those pained eyes, and he was filled with need to help and protect the kid "Are you an angel? Come to collect me? I hardly deserve it..." If he was an angel, it was an angel of death and destruction "I'm not leaving you to die, or to burn the stables down. What's your name?" In his arms, the kid's eyes slipped closed before he could reply. The space between them filling with the sound of harsh breathing, which was way too uncomfortably close to a death rattle. Levi's stride hastening as he marched across the still wet courtyard, not caring how many shitty puddled he stepped in on the way. He couldn't understand what he was feeling, only that he had absolutely had to help the frail life in his hold. Kicking in the door to the infirmary, may have been overkill, yet Levi couldn't exactly open it with his arms filled of unconscious child "We need a healer!" "Yes, me lord" Laying the kid down on the first available bed, small sparks crackled and danced as Levi broke his hold "He's an omega! We need someone here to restrain his powers!" Levi didn't like the sound of that, he was even less impressed as the head matron took him by the arm "Sir, you cannot be in here. We do not know what this child is afflicted with" "I don't give a damn" "Sir, he could be contagious. You must go wash, then burn your clothes. We cannot lose another member of the royal family" "I..." "You must go. I will send a healer to find you in your chambers. Please reframe from allowing anyone in until you've been seen to" He didn't want to fucking go. The kid all but melted into the thin hospital mattress, and as he watched a healer stripping away the kid's shirt, he felt himself since at the sight. For the first time in his life, he turned away. Unable to bare the sight of bruised and torn skin, nor the clearly infected bites across it. Wherever the omega was from, he'd had a hard life. But now, he'd be taken into a sanctuary... unless he'd run from one as it was. Omegas stayed in sanctuaries until their first heat. That was then they made the trip to the capital city, where they swore their allegiance to the crown. He'd never seen the ceremonies, as he'd never been interested, but monthly reports from the various regions had made their was across Erwin's desk... his desk. Erwin filling him on the details of anything actually important. Confused and annoyed, he departed the infirmary. The child was just a brat, so why was he so caught up in him? He'd seen many a child like that below ground... that must have been it. An ugly ghost of his childhood rearing its ugly head and making him confused... Once declared uninfected, Erwin would scold him, and he'd forget the child. Their lives would fall back into a normal routine, and the kid would... the kid would be sent to a sanctuary until he came of age. That was the only thing for the child, and the best offer Levi could give. * Reaching his quarters, Levi shooed off the guards. He hated their constant hovering, and hated the way the knelt before him... and they always came back, no matter how many times he dismissed them. Stripping off his riding cloak, Levi had no issues with burning the horrible thing. The traditional colours of the Eldia empire had been a forest green, whose pigments were only found on Paradis island. Since Marley moved in, they'd been stripped of it. The kingdom colours now a silvery grey, deep navy, and white. Wearing Eldia green was now seen as treason by Marley... which, was in Levi's opinion, a total load of shit. Throwing the riding coat into the hearth, it was satisfying to see the ugly grey thing burn. Next came his grey tunic, then blue trousers, until he stood naked. His boots and belt the only thing to escape the flames. Rubbing his arms, he felt uncomfortably warm as he walked across his room and into his private bathroom. His bathroom was the only true place he could have a moment of peace to himself. The maids finally taking the hint after the hundredth time he'd told them he was taking a shit. Still, everything that came into his bathroom had to be checked, right down to the soap. He'd tried buying his own, but the maids had binned it... so then he'd hired the market stall holder to supply the whole castle. It was practically the only perk of being a prince. By the time Levi had finished bathing, the healer had arrived, as had Erwin. Barely stuffed into his own pants, the fabric scratched against his skin. Someone had obviously failed at their job when it came to washing them. Normally he'd let it slide, but he was far too irritated to. Walking into his room, Erwin was poking at the fire in the hearth, with the healer frowning at his half naked appearance "Leave the fire alone, Levi" God. It was hard to keep the lie up. He didn't know who knew what anymore, so with a witness, Erwin was now Levi "I heard you picked up a stray?" Moving to stand in the middle of the room, he nodded to the healer to begin with his magic shit. He couldn't deny magic existed, but he wasn't particularly fond of it, given he'd grown up without it. Ignoring the woman, he sighed at Erwin "I found a kid in the stables. It wasn't like I picked him up off the streets" "I heard the infirmary caught fire" "The kid can use magic. It happens" "If you'd left him there, he would have died" "And the stables would have burned down" Fuck. He hated the feel of magic. It was as if his body was rejecting it with every fibre that it was made of. Humming, the woman looked him up and down, before lowering herself to one knee. Levi ignoring her, as Erwin continued "Was that all there was to it?" "You know magic users have trouble using their magic when ill" "Which is exactly why you should have left him there. The kid is violently ill. Even with the help of healers, he'll be here for a week at least. His blood poisoned, caused by infected flea bite, and his heat has begun" Levi perked up slightly at Erwin's words. The omega would be here for a week? "Erwin, you cannot afford to become attached" "I am not attached. I just didn't want to lose the stables. Now. Healer, am I fine? Is that all?" The woman rose "Sir, you're rut is beginning. Your health, perfect. This is a joyous day for the kingdom. We'd feared you to be a beta, but the word must go through the castle at once. Our prince is an alpha!" Great. Just... great. A rut. He knew exactly went on during a rut... and the palace soldiers were hardly covert at hiding their's. Suppressants could be taken, and were actually mandatory after signing with Marley, but as far as he knew, he couldn't start them until after his first rut had passed "You may leave us. Make preparations for suppressants once the rut has passed" "Very well, Sir" Drawing up her long blue robes, the healer left them be. Almost every single omega born was female, males making up less than three percent, and most of them were barren. Groaning as he dragged himself to his bed, Levi flopped down stomach first "An alpha? I thought it was too late for you to present" "You're really going to give me shit over this, aren't you?" "You're small and rather delicate. Your stature, at a glance, would be more than enough for people to think you omega" "We can't all be huge arseholes like you" "At least now I know why you've been in a rotten mood all day" "I'm a fucking ray of sunshine. Now piss off" "Once you tell me what is to become of the omega?" "Send him to a sanctuary, once he's healed. He's not to be around alphas, and the usual shit. If they want to be arses over it, tell them it's a royal decree" "You won't be keeping him?" He could hear the implications in Erwin's voice. He was an alpha in a rut, while Eren was an omega in heat... logically, they'd be thrown together, despite the kid's young age. It wasn't happening. The idea of sleeping with a prepubescent kid was absolutely revolting, and he was having nothing to do with it "No. The kid will be sent to an omega sanctuary until it's time for him to pledge his allegiance to the kingdom" "Very well. I'll pass your message on..." "Good. Now go away. Apparently I have a rut to deal with, and there's nothing about you that I find desirable..." Erwin laughed, though listened. His steps moving towards the doorway "I'll have you know I'm pretty desirable" "I've heard more than I ever needed to about that" "You're already an insufferable arsehole. Maybe this rut will mellow you out?" "And maybe if you plucked your eyebrows, you'd hear me telling you to leave" "Haha. Have fun!" Levi liked to think there were a fair few things he knew, and one of them was that there was going to be nothing fun about this rut.

[flve-hargreeves]

MERLIN’S BEARD! Did you see DAVOS, also known as DAV / WHITBY rocking the SLYTHERIN colors in class today? How they manage to look so fit, while studying their arse off during their SEVENTH YEAR of schooling, is beyond me. The SEVENTEEN year old student is certainly making the WHITBY family proud, aren’t they? One time, I heard someone say they look a lot like some muggle, REECE KING – whoever that is. (c, she/her, 20+, ast.) ++ transfer from ilvermorny! ++ 1/2 siren!

 here we go again !  unfortunately due to muse issues, i decided to drop soleil and rework the parts of her history that i liked and create a new character.  so here is my sweet, summer child, davos mare whitby!   PSA IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR THE SIREN MYTHOLOGY I GOT YOU COVERED, Y’ALL. CLICK HERE TO GO!

                                           AESTHETIC PROSE.

rocks skipped across the black lake, the smell of citrus, dark chocolates, the scratch of a record ending, circle-rimmed glasses teetering precariously, and the lingering scent of smoke.

BACK STORY.

davos grew up in a single parent household. his father, arturo, fell in love with a siren. or rather, fell victim to her song. he had no idea that davos even existed until he was dropped on their doorstep with nothing but a note to explain his presence. he didn’t even know she was a siren when they met. not at first.  arturo was never married so news of davos’ birth was kept quiet.  in fact, no one even knew he existed until his sixth birthday.  he was raised by a nanny by the name of constance, the woman a maternal figure in his life.  she was mid-thirties, a squib from a reputable wizarding family whose patriarch worked with arturo at the m.a.c.u.s.a.  both were secrets the family didn’t talk about, which bonded them instantly. 

speaking of his father, his father is arturo ronan whitby.  or better known as the current president of the m.a.c.u.s.a.  he was elected into office in 1982 and has been serving ever since.  to the public, he spun a ridiculous story about davos’ mother dying during childbirth, leaving him a heartbroken single father who only had his son’s best interests at heart. they’d wanted privacy, which was why he’d kept him hidden away for most of his life. given that he’d lived most of his young life hidden from the world, it had been a shock to the system for davos when his father had suddenly given him free reign.  while he didn’t always see eye to eye with the man, he enjoyed the newfound freedom.  

the relationship between davos and his father is ... strained, to say the least. arturo wasn’t the kind of person who ever wanted kids, and suffice to say he wasn’t exactly expecting to be a father until davos kind of just showed up,  he’d smiled through the early years as davos’ doting grandmother had spoiled him rotten, his affections waning shortly after she passed.  arturo’s resignement to life as a parent didn’t go unnoticed by davos, but the boy doesn’t bring it up.  they’ve never been a very care-y and share-y family. 

while davos never really missed out on not having a mother, he has always wondered where he comes from. where he inherited his looks, and a cursed song that he often didn’t know what to do with.  it took years for him to figure out what he was, or what he thought he was, because artruro sure didn’t want to talk about it.  constance helped him research as best she could but with limited resources, they could only find so much. 

in school, davos was someone that people gravitated towards instinctively.  he was charismatic and his father was in a position of power.  it also didn’t help that, while he didn’t adopt the traditional siren characteristics from his mother like the need to live and breathe underwater, his voice was capable of eliciting reactions from those around him. people were more inclined to do what he said, hanging on to his every word in the courtyard.  he was always lousy with friends, no shortage of people clamoring to spend time with him.  it led him to question whether those friendships were real, especially given what he deduced about his parentage. a few passive aggressive comments from his father over the years, coupled with the reactions he drew, had led him to dig into his past as much as he could.  while he’d originally thought he might be part veela given his looks and influence, there was something that drew him to the sea and had him searching elsewhere. he’d known without knowing that veela wasn’t right.  another clue was that davos was was constantly being told NOT to sing by his father for threat of what would happen if he did. When he did, he was often punished for it.  

at the end of his fifth year at ilvermorny, davos was expelled.  after finding out that his boyfriend had only been seeing him to snag a coveted internship at the MACUSA, the wizard had tried to blow him up on school grounds. it had been an uncharacteristically aggressive move for the wizard who was usually quite calm, driven to rage almost instantly as the betrayal cut deep.  maybe it was because he’d thought the relationship was real, or because he’d been in love for the first time ever, but  thankfully a professor had grabbed his hand in time and the curse ended up tearing apart the courtyard, not his boyfriend’s limbs.  with his father’s influence at play, the expulsion was the worst of his troubles.  were he not careful, he could have found himself shipped off to azkaban for attempted murder.  in the moment, davos hadn’t cared.  all he’d seen was red, anger too potent.  while it took a lot to anger him, he’d really thought that this relationship was the one true, legitimate, relationship in his life.  jokes on him! 

arturo shipped davos off to live with his aunt helena for his last two years of school. he was forced to leave his friends, constance, and his life behind.  TBH he’s not very happy about it. he attended hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry and was sorted into slytherin. that he loved.  the fact that his bedroom overlooks the sea has actually calmed him down in terms of his resentment. it’s not uncommon to see him out by the lake, talking to the giant squid or doing his homework.  additionally, he joined the hogwarts house team as a chaser in the ‘88-’89 school year.  there was something about flying at top speed and throwing yourself about to catch the quaffle that brought a rush of adrenaline and a feeling that he’d never been able to capture on the ground.  he aspires to one day live up in the sky; his windows overlooking the clouds. 

PERSONALITY

he’s very sarcastic and kind of glib.  you’re definitely not going to get a lot of smiles from him unless he gets to know you.  he constantly looks sullen, or unimpressed, but that’s just his face.  he smiles when he wants to.  sometimes it’s even genuine.

he laughs. a lot.  sure, it’s usually at the expense of someone else, but still. his laugh is very deep, very difficult to mask, and could brighten up even the stormiest of moods. 

honestly he’s a pretty chill guy unless you piss him off.  when he’s mad, it’s really bad, but it takes a lot to get him there.  he’s also more likely to hit you with something than to throw a curse.  he really likes throwing rocks with his wand and seeing how much distance he can cover. it’s become a bit of a hobby.  bonus points if it hits a first year.  

CONNECTIONS

someone who gave him the tour of the castle. 

fwb.

dormmates.

potions partner.

quidditch rival (friendly)

enemy

unrequited crush

polyship

family friends

summer friends

summer fling

if you are up for filling any of these connections or want to plot pls hmu !!!  also if we have previous connections it’ll be easier to do starters for the event so yeeeet.

[thenavybluet-shirt]

A literary analysis of a bus poem.

So the county I live in has a program in their public transit system called Moving Words. It’s actually pretty cool and the poems are fun to read. They are often by kids in elementary or middle school but there are some by adults too. They are generally pretty good. Anyway, I was bored on the bus so I decided to write an analysis of this poem because I had ideas and hey, I’m a nerd! Now I’ve stayed up waaay too late trying to finish it. :)

I like how Young used the structured the poem to convey that no matter how good a man he will become, all teenage boys objectify girls. Let’s first look at how Young develops the character of the man. A list of occupations—for lack of a better word— is used to build up a picture of a man. Most of these occupations are things with good connotations.

For instance, the poem’s opening lines paint a picture of social figures. People who are a “Defender of the Faith,/Father of Liberty.”(1-2) are people like MLK, people who dedicated their lives to positive change, people who in our collective conscious are near perfect and can do no wrong. As the poem continues, Young lists categories of people that are more broad or apply to more people. Line three uses titles that are generic but depict people society values. To be a “Cinematic Auteur” is to be someone who is acclaimed by the critics, which is something valued by our society. To be a “Comedic Genius” is to be cemented in our culture through references and the phrase “you haven’t seen this?” uttered in complete disbelief. These are people who’s bad moments are generally overlooked and not even glossed over in the history books. Instead, they are seen as amazing people because of the quality of their work. The next line is people who we look up to. Maybe not everyone, but most people have a teacher or a coach they looked up to. These words appeal to your individual memories. they allow you to picture someone good in your life.

I think it’s interesting that “Olympic Physicians” is in this line as well. These are not people that everyone has one of.  I think “Physician” brings both level of prestige and muster to the person. Physician invokes the levels of education and dedication needed to become a medical professional. Our society generally values doctors and think of them as good people because we have a bias toward people with a higher level, STEM education. “Olympic” also brings a certain level of prestige. Olympic teams would only hire the best, right? However, we don’t really hear about the physicians. We all have some scandal in mind when asked about Olympians or coaches, but I know I can’t even name one Olympic Physician. So the inclusion of Olympic Physicians is to add a level of prestige not sullied by the scandals that are present, like with other people involved in the Olympics. This occupation certainly adds to Young’s purpose, however the only reason I can find as to why she would include it in this line even though Olympic Physicians contrasts with the commonness of teachers and coaches is that they are all people who are respected and who’s advice is (generally) taken, especially if they are good at what they do. 

The next and final line of occupations is a list of male familial relationships. “Cousin, Uncle, Brother, Father”(5), the poem states. I think that these serve to remind you of more people in your life. Generally, people are closer to at least one of these relations than a teacher or a coach. Additionally, most men serve at least one of these roles. This line serves to make this narrative applicable to all men. an interesting thing to note: “be he” is repeated, from the opening, at the beginning of this line. I think this selective repetition serves to reinforce the universality of these relationships. Had every line begun with “be he”, the poem would have a nice rhythm, but it would lose it’s emphasis on the commonality of the familial relations. All if the people in the occupations listed above are probably one of these people. A cousin or a brother or and uncle or a father.

All these occupations are summed up in line seven with the sentence fragment; “makes no difference”. I find it impactful, almost like the em dashes at the ends of lines five and six signify that the “makes no difference” is them being cut off. You know the feeling when someone offers an assertion and you begin to offer what ifs and they keep cutting you off and saying it doesn’t matter? that’s what I feel like this line does.

When I first read the poem, I couldn’t see the title. The conclusion I came to about it after reading was that it was about how even smart, intelligent people are nervous the first time. But then I read the title. Object. At first, the title didn’t make sense to me. Then I reread it. the word “linger” in the second to last line caught my eye. What also caught my eye was that he was tickling her. It wasn’t that she had let him touch her, or that his hand had grazed her thigh, eliciting a reaction— both of which could very easily be the other side of the story. No, it was that he had made this happen. I think that the latter half of this poem is depicting a boy’s discovery that he has a power to do things to girls. Why do I infer that this is his discovery? Because first of all, the poem tells us that he is 14. While that isn’t too young for someone to have some experiences, it’s also not too old to not have any. But I think the real key is in the fact that his “eyes widen” at his touch. Generally, eyes widening is a signal of fear or discovery. I think his eyes widening is because of his realization of his power and how it could be used. I think the title of this poem suggest what happens next.

I think the title suggests that this boys begins treating girls as object. I think the building up of character in the first half of the poem suggests the universality of objectification. We generally don’t think of nice people as the kind of guy who would participate in objectification. But as the poem tells us, it matters not. They all are guilty in some capacity.

I think this poem has some interesting things to say about institutionalized and intrinsic properties of objectification. And there are still more things to analyze! I didn’t talk about the punctuation or capitalization and I’m sure that other’s have found other things to talk about in this poem. I feel like my analysis is only stating the obvious but I feel like these poems don’t get much attention so here’s to showing some underappreciated poetry some love.            

[exilevilifyrp]

                                           file: introduction

full name: dallas costa age range: 33 identifies with: born under a bad sign by cream genesis: hybrid gender: cis-male portrayal: dj cortona

                                                                         file: skeleton

Brute force and brash tones, that was all he’d ever known. Lungs filled with hot air, legs furiously kicking, he entered this world a fighter. A wretch of a human. Willful and arrogant, demanding survival instead of earning it. A child born of privilege, with the words of his childhood always sharpened like knives. All used to nick and scrape away all the weakest parts of him, his father desperately wishing to mold and shape Dallas into much more than he was supposed to be. But with pockets deeper than a young boy could ever imagine, Dallas ran wild with impropriety, focusing on immediate pleasures instead of working for what he wanted. What else was he to do? He was born prince, the city at his fingertips, and he walked through life with ease because no one had ever taught him any different. He took what he pleased and never apologized for who he was.

A Costa. A King in the making.

He was a rambunctious boy, carefree and curious, rife with desire to impress the man who’d raised him with never a kind word and instead always a firm hand: his father. Mitchum was never a generous man, never one to spend more than a few minutes at a time with Dallas if he thought the boy deserved it, which he rarely did. But he always did have a message, a mantra, if you will. You’re destined for greatness, he’d say. But the look in his eyes never quite met the weight of those words, as if he never truly believed them when he looked at his own son. It was easy to pick up on, that rejection from the man who gave him life, and at such a young age it only made him an angry child, his fists always clenched in an uncontrollable rage, never quite sure where it truly stemmed from because looking too deep inside always seemed like a ridiculous notion—something a man doesn’t do. Not when downing half a bottle of whiskey would do the trick.

So instead he lived in the moment, in the now, hurdling from each liquored up escapade to the next, always acting first and forgetting to even ask for permission later. Wherever he went, a fight surely erupted, chaos following him around like an invisible mentor, teaching him the way of conflict, of seizing any and all opportunity to play on people’s delicate emotions, to assert control over those meek and mild mannered. But such unfettered dominance undoubtedly stemmed from that very weakness his father had always known Dallas had, and he told him as such time and time again. Every time he disappointed his father, he was told how useless he was. How impetuous and immature, so ignorant and idiotic.

Think before you act, his father would always say, mustache set in a straight line as he tidied up yet another one of his son’s messes.

But where’s the fun in that? Dallas would ask, a shit-eating grin playing across his handsome features, already planning his next adventure.

But much to his son’s amusement, there came a time when Mitchum’s opinion no longer mattered, no longer held any credence in the Costa hierarchy for he’d gone and gotten himself arrested. He’d never been one for mistakes, never put himself in the position to be vulnerable in the eyes of the law, but one misstep, one miscalculation of his own self worth had landed him in prison for life and smeared his family name in one fell swoop. Some could say he simply fell, that Mitchum Costa, the once-revered patriarch, flew too close to the sun, and just as foolish and reckless as Icarus, he burned. And with him, his entire family was scorched, tainted by defeat and crippled by the loss of their supposedly fearless leader. Forcibly, they crashed into a devastating heap, smited down by Mitchum’s delusions of grandeur, helplessly watching in despair as their name and all they stood for fell from grace. And if he was asked, Dallas would probably laugh at such a thing. With a wicked smile upon his face, of course, and a celebratory drink in his hand, he’d offer up a toast as he saluted his father, congratulated him on making the gravest mistake of all: claiming himself a God, the very thing he’d always told his son never to do. But this story isn’t about a father’s failings, nor the pain or hardship of a callous man who got what exactly he deserved.

This is a story of a wild boy, greedy in his resilience, with an infectious sort of lawlessness coursing through his veins,  rising from the wreckage of a legacy turned to dust.

Following the imprisonment of his father at age fifteen, his mother had to make a name for herself somehow. She had to come up with a way to earn a living, figure out a way to keep a roof over her son’s head and put food on the table now that all their accounts had been frozen. But if there had been one thing Mitchum had done right, it was lock down contingencies. Followers of Haus Costa had flocked from far and wide, like vultures circling the body, hoping to get a chance at the seat now that the king had fallen. But instead of crumbling under the pressure of losing her husband, their provider and breadwinner, and cowering at the sight of six-foot-three, two hundred pound men at her door, Eliana stepped up. She refused let some nobody without the name of Costa nor the damn-near royal blood take over the syndicate, no. She became the leader Mitchum never could have dreamed of, taking on the nitty-gritty parts of the job with grace, attempting to instill a sense of responsibility into Dallas. She worked day-in and day-out, never breaking a sweat, never hesitating an inch when she had to get her hands dirty, nor giving it a second thought when she chose to pass on those same lessons to her son.

A beast of a woman, she had transformed a name once mildly feared and most certainly sneered at in a quite few sections of the universe into one that elicited great renown, now existing in only the most darkest of places, whispered on the lips of the most evil of monsters. Costa, it lurked in the shadows, ominous and terrifying.  What did they sell? Guns, drugs, protection. What did they trade in? Secrets, ammo, fame and fortune. Harrowing and revered ten-fold compared to her husband, Eliana had turned an ambitious little syndicate into an empire rich with blood-splattered gold. And with her help, Dallas rose ever higher. For eventually it’d be him who would take over. It’d be him and only him to fulfill a legacy, like his father had always wanted, he just never could have imagined it’d be Eliana’s instead.

He started off slow despite the urge to fall head over heels into the family business, regardless of the desire to drench dip his fingers into the sea of boundless income and violence. It called to him, the senselessness of it all, the way it was complete chaos organized by his mother, no longer a victim but a heroine of epic proportions. The way she worked, with such ease and calculated moves, like a master of chess and everyone she met a simple pawn in her game, weak and pliable and bending to her every will. He wanted that for himself, wanted to hold that kind of glory in the palm of his hand. And if he could have, he would have willed himself a deity, demanded people bled in his name by the thousands only to strike them down when they fell at his feet in worship. And if there had been one thing such infamy had taught him, one thing he’d learned while watching his mother reinvent herself a Queen, it was that such power, autonomy and influence in the right hands, well, it could span an entire universe.

And so he worked himself to the bone, laid himself bare before Eliana’s throne only to be met with disapproval, with hindrance, taking him nearly three years to work from mere foot soldier to captain. And what a perilous climb it had been, an uphill battle with seemingly no end in sight, but she knew her son better than most. She knew wanting responsibility and handling it were two very different beasts, their motives completely different, and before she could offer him such a position in good conscience, he had to learn; had to grow up; had to become a man. And for a while, it worked. For once in his life, Dallas stepped up. He never let his guard down and focused on every task at hand with unprecedented precision—like a true heir. Earning respect had never been his forte, not when he was handed far too much far too soon in his adolescence, but men came to fear him. They cowered when he entered a room, one hand gripping Polly as she rested gently against his shoulder and the other twirling a cigarette. But anyone who ever claims power doesn’t corrupt, is a fool. And so was Dallas.

With the title of underboss, of second-in-command in his sights, he began to slip. Little things fell through the cracks as his vision tunneled, once again only able to focus on those immediate pleasures he loved so much. It was one thing when his love of a good time would cloud his judgement, when it would force him to act instead of think, to do instead of plan ahead, but now? He wanted that crown, the one resting atop his mother’s head; it called to him, whispering in his ear like a seductive mistress of avarice, begging him to give in—to betray everything and seize that throne.

It was reckless, what came next. Taking that job with those two idiots, two inexperienced soldiers just like he had once been, and trusting that they could get the job done, that they’d have his back when the shit hit the fan. And when the unexpected happened, when the buyers demanded the drugs and refused to pay, their guns loaded and aimed right at Dallas’ head, the soldiers cowered. They cracked under the pressure, pissed themselves and left him for dead. He’d managed to take down two out of four on his way down, and before the Overwatchers showed up and slapped the cuffs on him. And even though he was barely conscious, he couldn’t help but laugh. To smirk in the face of irony, belligerent and ornery in its determination to be his undoing. For history had surely repeated itself, and despite his best efforts, Dallas Costa had become the last thing he’d ever imagined: exactly like his father.

                                                                        file: known associates

LUDOVIC MIRE - when you look at him, you don’t see a leader, you see a failure. it’s nothing personal, you say, just not something you like to see in a captain. in a leader. after all, you were the captain of your own ship, and men like you weren’t born to take orders from men like him. it’s only a matter of time before the rest of the crew thinks so too.

                                                                   THIS CHARACTER IS UNAVAILABLE.

[xpuriity]

(Do the rest of the headcanon memes that you haven't answered yet if it isn't too much~~)

SEND ME A FACE FOR A HEADCANON ABOUT MY MUSE! ( ♫ )

( Thank you for sending this nonnie — since they are quite a lot, I’m going to be putting this under a read more~ )

(`･ω･´) : What does your muse completely gush over?

Everything and nothing~ Rosa is very excitable, in an almost childlike manner than there is quite a lot that leaves her enthusiastic. However, there are of course, always things in particular that spark a more intense reaction from her.

Her family and friends, being one of those things — Rosa, while is too shy to speak about herself, has no qualms whatsoever going on and on about the people she admires and cares for. She is very affectionate and caring in that sense. A lot of her music revolves around them and they are what make her happiest, after all.

Next is quite simple stuff, such as the beautiful colors of the sky, birds soaring the clouds, an eye catching feather found, a pretty sea shell on the beach, or even the bright colors of a rainbow after the rain.

All in all, the hummingbird is someone who chooses to see the beauty in all the small things in life and enjoy them and as such it is not unusual to find her gushing over things, that may be deemed by others unimportant. 

＿|￣|○ : What situation would your muse give up in?

Rosa is naturally an optimistic person, but that in no way eliminates the idea she is very much prone to melancholy. A situation Rosa had come very close to giving up in, is post marine-ford — losing her father figure and the love of her life in one fated day took a huge toll on the hummingbird’s mental state. 

The events and tragedy of it all had impacted her in a way that she would almost take her own life, unwilling to walk an earth where they no longer walk by her.

Thus, to answer to question, one situation she would give up would be the loss of the people she cares for — Rosa is quite dependent in the sense she sees no meaning to life if not shared with loved ones. She is a loving person by nature and needs people around to share that with; if you take that away then instead she becomes no more than a vacant hopeless shell.

When it comes to battle, Rosa is not opposed to retreating if it keeps her crewmates and herself safe — however, a situation she would give up in, is if they had been threatened and putting her weapons down is the only way to protect them.

(｀-´)> : Who does your muse honor the most?

Her father figure and captain — Whitebeard.

For a long time, Rosa had no recollection of her parents as they existed as no more than a vague memory in her mind, but it had been the man who protected her home island who she would grow to consider her true parental figure.

Since then she had held a huge admiration and respect for him and his ideals, longing to become a part of his family, her positive feelings for him only growing once she did. 

(´；ω；`): What brings your muse into a state of depression? 

Rosa has a quite dependent personality; she is sensitive to her own emotions as well as the emotions of others, thus a majority of the time, such a state for her would be caused by feelings related to other people than herself. 

For example, if she is left alone for too long then she is likely to fall into depressive thoughts as a result of loneliness, craving affection and communication. Other triggers to such a state would include, feelings of deep fear related to losing the people she loves, whether to death or simply losing them as part of her life. 

ヽ(`Д´)ﾉ : What irritates your muse the most? (╬ ಠ益ಠ): What infuriates your muse to the point they may kill whatever it is?

There isn’t really much that gets to the pianist, she tends to be at most, quite calm and laid back; however, there are matters which quite hit a nerve within her sensitive heart. The first which comes to mind is unnecessary bloodshed; as in Rosa is not quite tolerable to people taking other lives without cause or reason — especially if innocent lives are hurt in the process.

Another factor which irritates the musician is one linked to herself rather than a general cause, and it is when people tend to underestimate her for her size or gender. Being a petite female among the strongest pirate crew (consisting if not fully then mostly of males), naturally, comes with a few provoking remarks — be it from allies or enemies; it irritates Rosa but also brings about a constant need within her to prove herself worthy. 

She is unlikely to kill anyone at all; regardless of how infuriated she is — the one situation where Rosa does merely consider murder, is revenge; she wishes to make Blackbeard pay for all the harm he bestowed upon her family.

（　ﾟДﾟ） : What does your muse do when surprised?(ﾟдﾟ): When your muse didn’t expect something, what do they do?

It highly depends on the situation and source of her surprise.

If it’s merely something as a jump scare or so, you can expect the musician to elicit a very loud and very child like squeal of sorts; she jumps back, yells and once the realization sinks in would proceed to pout in protest.

However, in more serious, situations; if the source of her surprise is rather more emotional, being a pleasant or unpleasant surprise, it is very likely for her to be at a loss of words. Lips parted in shock, eyes widened and posture frozen. Her initial reaction is almost always speechlessness, taking a moment to process the reality — the next reaction would depend on the nature of the surprise. 

( ﾟヮﾟ) : When is your muse happiest?d(*⌒▽⌒*)b : What makes your muse the happiest they could ever be?

Rosa is at her happiest when surrounded by her family, preferably when she is in front of her piano, playing melodies — be it background music to their noise or having them actually pay attention and sing along to her tunes doesn’t make much difference — so long as they are all happy together.

She is happy during the early hours of the day; when the sun begins to rise across the horizon and the birds are chirping loudly greeting the morning air.

As well as when in the presence of a specific raven haired male with freckles adorning his skin ( @xpyre​ ). No other individual could make her smile the way he does or feel as safe as when around him, whether she is by his side or watching him go about his day from a distance; there’s no doubt Rosa is at her happiest when Ace is within sight. 

⊂二二二（　＾ω＾）二⊃ : Does your muse like to cuddle?

Rosa appreciates any and all forms of closeness and affection, and cuddling being a rather more intimate form of hugging is one she does like; however, the act, like most such displays is not one she randomly participates in; rather the gesture is savored for a very few beloved individuals aka her best of friends and her love interest only.

To her, being in the warm embrace of a loved oneis considered a pleasant form of providing love and most importantly, safety — in their arms, she can find a little sanctuary away from the dangers plaguing her mind; thus it would make sense she, naturally, only cuddles with people who she does feel safe around. 

(((( ；ﾟДﾟ))): What is your muse terrified of? 

Rosa is terrified of losing her loved ones ones most — That fear is split into quite a few fears as well; she is scared of being alone again, scared of being taken back to the years of isolation and loneliness before finding a family, she is also scared of any harm befalling these she loves, scared of witnessing them in pain or having to see them / learn of them getting hurt again.

Before marine-ford, that fear was dismissed to the back of her mind; the hummingbird being young and naive, believed her family had been untouchable — the strongest crew alive, too powerful to be defeated. However, past the war and their losses, that belief, obviously, changed. 

In her main verse, Rosa is so much more fearful of losing any more loved ones; particularly she is very terrified of losing Ace again — having only recently gotten him back after experiencing firsthand the bitter taste of his loss, she has become so much more protective of him, desperate to keep him safe.

Σ(ﾟДﾟ): What would your muse be most shocked to obtain? 

Rosa does not care much for materialistic objects — there is nothing specific I can think of which she would be shocked to obtain — being a pirate, she does have a certain mentality she is free to obtain anything she wants, whether she steals it or travels for it.  

However, she is often shocked and caught off guard when receiving special forms of gifts, particularly any with a sentimental and deep meaning behind it. 

( ﾟдﾟ): What amazes your muse? 

Anything and everything — as stated above, Rosa tends to get excited rather easily; the simplest of matters can catch her attention; someone’s talents or skills can amaze her, as much as little things like the color of the sky, a beautifully shaped seashell, a blossoming rare flower, a one of a kind feather to add to her collection, etc. 

(´ー`)y-~~ : Does your muse do any drugs? Smoke?

She doesn’t. However, due to her insomnia, post-marine-ford war, Rosa had been prescribed some sleep medication. She doesn’t consume it daily and rarely does, but when the night feels too long and difficult to get through, it is not unlikely for her to down a pill or two. 

（ ^_^）o自自o（^_^ ） : How often does your muse drink?

Not too often. Rosa is rather a lightweight and she also doesn’t really enjoy the taste of alcohol, however on special occasions and celebrations, she would join her family for a couple of drinks.

ヽ(´ー`)人(´∇｀)人(`Д´)ノ: How friendly is your muse around new people? 

Rosa, despite her shy nature, is actually also very friendly. Her timidness is not one which causes her to appear intimidating or distant in the slightest and while she may not be one to talk much or make the first move to approach, when actually spoken to, she displays utter kindness in the form of a warm smile, an offer to help, etc. 

(‘A`) : What does your muse do when they’re alone?

Generally, when alone, the musician can be found either bird watching or more likely, working on some songs — she would use the alone time to relax and play a few soft tunes or if she’s feeling up to it, vent her emotions into her journal of lyrics.

（´-`）.｡oO( … ) : What does your muse think about a lot?

Rosa’s thoughts, more often than not, tend to revolve around her loved ones rather than herself; she’s either thinking of their safety, their happiness or even sharing something with them, like a song she’s been working on she can’t wait to play for them, an item she found she’s eager to show them, a story she wishes to tell them, etc.

The rest of her thoughts are just lyrics and music buzzing in her heart and mind, waiting to be released on paper or the keys of her piano.

(ﾟДﾟ;≡;ﾟДﾟ): Is your muse impatient? 

Not at all, but on the contrary, Rosa is rather very patient. She is usually rather calm and doesn’t mind waiting at all — she is most likely to be the most un-bothered person by a long crowded queue. 

( ´д)ﾋｿ(´Д｀)ﾋｿ(Д｀ ): Does your muse enjoy gossiping? 

Not really; she enjoys hearing what her friends have been up to and stories involving them directly — however, random gossip regarding people she is not on close terms with is not of interest to her.

Rosa doesn’t care to know who did what or any of that; in fact, she deems it rather none of her concern to get into people’s business and is bothered by anyone who speaks behind others’ back; deeming it a sign of betrayal. 

（･∀･)つ⑩ : Does your muse enjoy saving or spending money? Or are they indifferent?

She is kind of indifferent. Rosa does not really care for saving money or spending it — however, she also does not believe in hoarding money and sees no point to it if it’s not to be spent on things people love.

For example, if she sees an item she likes or believes a loved one would favor, she has no qualms whatsoever, spending amounts of money on it. You won’t witness her thinking twice about whether an item is necessary or not.

Likewise also, she is not likely to go out of her way spending money just for the sake of it.

（・∀・） : Does your muse like to tease people?

She’s not a very good tease, being quite innocent and shy — and is mostly likely to have it backfire at her in a few situations; but Rosa is generally very playful in nature and when around people she trusts / is comfortable around, will try to tease them a little.

（・Ａ・） : What does your muse consider to be bad?

Rosa is not really one to judge people on what they do with their own life, for example in terms of relationships or religious beliefs, etc. However, what she does consider bad, is when people’s actions bring harm to innocent people, even if the one being hurt is the person in question themselves. 

Being a pirate she is quite tolerable to petty crimes, however, as mentioned above, she does not, not will ever, approve of crimes which bring harm to others such as murder, assault, etc. 

（ つ Д ｀） : When your muse is sad, what do they do?

When she can put on a smile and conceal of her feelings, Rosa would do just that; she would not wish to worry her loved ones for her and would put their feelings above her own. However, in some cases, it becomes too much for her to put on a false pretense, being hyper emotional and sensitive, it’s not always easy to fake a smile. 

That is when the hummingbird would seek Isolation —retreating away into her own nest where she can cry without burdening anyone; she becomes distant, quieter and is more likely to just isolate herself away in her room or if they are docked, even seek privacy off the ship.

Occasionally, after retreating, she may pour out her feelings into a song, either playing some melodies and losing herself in the music or through venting in the form of writing some lyrics.

♪┏(・o･)┛♪ : Can your muse dance well?

Yes. While Rosa is no expert dancer, she does know how to move her body quite gracefully and rhythmically to the music; her love of dance is influenced by her love of music itself and her own understanding of the melodies and tunes is reflected through her movement to the beat.

(ΘεΘ;): How much of a tsundere is your muse? 

Not at all. Rosa isn’t one to appear hostile in the slightest or deny her true feelings. Instead of hiding behind a cold exterior, the hummingbird does the exact opposite, she displays of a very warm front and where her feelings are concerned, usually has no qualms admitting to them.

┌(；`～,)┐ : What discombobulates your muse?

( I wasn’t sure what the word meant |— but the dictionary says: emotionally confused / distressed; so I will try to answer accordingly. )

The thing about Rosa is that she is to an extent very honest with herself about her feelings; initially she would be emotionally confused about her feelings for Ace — she knows he’s her best friend but she also realizes her heart beats so much quicker around him; she would struggle with her emotions not as a result of not realizing she loves him, but because she is fearful these feelings may be out of place.

Rosa is also definitely distressed by any form of rejection — she has spent a lifetime feeling rejected, even by the man she deems to be a father figure initially, thus to deal with that, tends to cause her to question her self worth and point of living.

The last thing which comes to mind is mind games and manipulations; Rosa isn’t down for any of that. She is very confused by people who say something and mean something else and being a very sincere and honest person herself, she really feels uncomfortable and saddened as well, having to question people’s motives.

ε=ε=ε=┌(;*´Д`)ﾉ : How does your muse run?

Rather than run, when Rosa is in a rush, she tends to use her wind devil fruit abilities to fly as it is so much quicker and effortless than running. However, when she is on her feet, her running would also partly resemble tiptoe-ing and skipping, except at a much faster rate, due to her default method of walking. 

ヽ(´▽`)/ : What does your muse look like when happy?

When Rosa is happy, her eyes tend to glisten — one could witness the euphoria shining so brightly within her eyes; her smile, though is often always visible, when she is happy, appears different, full of life, and oozing warmth and joy. Her cheeks would tint in color and her giggles could be easily heard. She also tends to skip joyfully rather than walk when happy, 

Her happiness, like much of her emotions would be worn on her sleeves, visible for everyone to see so clearly. 

ヽ(ｏ`皿′ｏ)ﾉ : Is your muse violent when angry?

Not unless her safety or the safety of her loved ones / innocent people is threatened. Rosa doesn’t believe violence to be a solution to anything and thus would opt not to rely on it to solve her matters, regardless of how angry she is.The only cases she does turn to violence is when its a mean to protect rather than harm.

She tries to maintain her calm, particularly when angry, because she recalls all the damage violence has caused to her childhood. The day she allows her anger to consume her and lead her to violence would be the day she had completely lost herself to no return; the day she would never forgive herself.

[greezyscumbag]

Try Me

Request from anon for a Jax x Reader where the reader is Unser’s daughter, and Hale keeps flirting with her so she asks Jax to pretend to be her boyfriend to get him to back off. Enjoy the smut ;)

A/N - I’ve done this a little differently to my other fake boyfriend/girlfriend imagines, as I don’t want to seem repetitive :)

—

“You don’t even know me. Get to know me, I promise I’ll change your mind.” You’re glad your back is turned as you roll your eyes in annoyance, not sure how long you’re going to be able to keep up the nice girl attitude for.

Turning to face the determined officer, you smile apologetically, your following answer the same as it always is. “Thanks for the offer again David, but I’m not sure things would work between us.”

“Why? Why do you always say that?” he asks, frustration heavy in his tone, his hand on your car door to stop you from leaving. “Is it because of the MC?”

“No-” You open your mouth to start denying his claims, trying to think of another reason not to go out with a dude that you just don’t find yourself attracted to, when you come up with the perfect solution. “Actually, yes. You’re completely right.”

“Listen, I know you’re close with them, but they’re bad people, (Y/N). You could do so much better.” Here he goes again, you think. Same speech as always. He doesn’t even know SAMCRO like you do, nobody does.

“Thanks for the lecture, David, but Jax asked me to be his girlfriend a couple weeks ago, and I said yes.” The pure horror on his face has you biting your lip to contain your smirk. “See you around.”

—

Walking into the clubhouse, you scan the room swiftly, not spotting the man you’re hoping to see. “He around, Sack?”

“In the apartments.” he responds, walking into the kitchen with a pair of rubber gloves and a plunger. You grimace, knowing Piney’s probably blocked the bog again. Shaking your head, you walk towards Jax’s residence, knocking on the closed door.

“Room service.” you call sarcastically, your voice sickly sweet. The door opens within a few seconds, Jax’s eyebrow raised, his lips turned up into a grin.

“Lucky me, though you’re slightly overdressed for the kind of ‘room service’ I’m used to.” he says, opening the door to let you in. “Wasn’t expecting to see you till’ later on.”

“I know, but I need to talk to you about a little favour so I thought I’d grace you with my wonderful company.” you tease, plonking yourself down on Jax’s bed. Shutting the door, he sits on a box in front of you, pulling his cigarettes out of his pocket.

“You can just admit you missed me, babe.” He takes a drag, your eyes capturing the way his cheeks hollow as he inhales the smoke, the action stopping your train of thought. “What do you need me for this time, Princess?“

“Are you ever going to drop that nickname? You’ve called it me for years.” He grins cheekily, the smoke parting from his pink lips as he shakes his head at you, knowing deep down you love the endearment. “Anyway-”

A knock on Jax’s door stops you, the two of you turning to see Chibs’. “Sorry to interrupt. Cops are here.”

“Could they be any further up our asses?” Jax spits rhetorically, discarding his cigarette in an ashtray on his cabinet before standing up. You follow him as he leaves the room, Chibs leading the way as the three of you head out to the front. All you’re thinking is please don’t be Hale.

You curse silently as you see the man himself standing against his police car, Jax tensing up as he sets eyes on the deputy. “You’re here so much I’m starting to think you wanna patch in.”

Hale just scowls, his eyes shifting to you as you move from behind Jax, stepping to take position between the Scot and the VP. He watches you for a moment, and you know Jax catches it as you see him look at you questioningly, a pleading look on your face as you hope he just follows your lead.

“We got a call about a guy on a motorcycle running a red light a few blocks from here.” You sigh in disbelief, having a sneaking suspicion that his visit is more out of spite than anything else. “Just here to check your plates.”

“Jesus, how bad did you piss off my dad to go from murders to speeding tickets?” you sass, folding your arms across your chest. Chibs chokes down his chuckle from next to you, taking a drag from his cig to keep down his humour.

“I’m here because it’s my job, (Y/N), to make Charming a safer place for our citizens.” You roll your eyes, nodding slowly. “Something bothering you?”

“Woah, I thought you were here for us, not for the chief’s daughter. Check your plates and you can be on your way.” Jax states protectively, not liking the way Hale is speaking to you. The officer glares in response, his hand moving to rest on the handcuffs on his belt.

“I wonder how the chief would feel if he knew what you were up to with his daughter.” Hale snaps, his whole entity dripping with jealousy. You swallow nervously, trying to hide the anxiety from your face.

Chibs laughs loudly this time, a laugh so loud with amusement that you can’t help but smile. “Jackie, you naughty boy.”

You share a look with your ‘boyfriend’, him smirking, a cocky grin spreading across his face. You let out the breath you’ve been holding in, Jax’s reaction of enjoyment rather than horror making you feel confident in your lie.

“Oh, I get it now. You’ve got a soft spot for my girl here, and you’re pissed she chose me over you.” Jax says, rolling his tongue over his lower lip smugly. “Not that you were even an option.”

“You watch your mouth, Teller.” Hale warns, his eye twitching as he steps up to Jax, the tension heavy between the two men.

“Or what?” Jax challenges, anger radiating off him in waves.

“We got a problem here, boys?” The voice of your dad cuts through the ever brewing argument, him smiling at you loving before turning his attention back to the two amped up males. “Hale, you’re not stationed to be here.“

You, Chibs and Jax watch on as Hale turns into a flushed mess, having no decent excuse for ever coming to TM in the first place - though you all know why he did.

“Thanks, dad.” You hug your father as you speak, him squeezing you tightly before leaving you to it.

“So, something you need to tell me?” Jax asks as you sit on the bench outside, embarrassment crawling up your body. “Wasn’t aware I was taken, darlin’.”

He nudges you playfully, your hands covering your face as you groan. “He’s been pestering me for weeks, figured you were the best deterrent.”

“Thanks.” Jax deadpans, a small smirk on his face as he passes you the cig, you taking a drag as you think about what to say. “Glad I could be of service, I guess.”

“Thanks for going along with it. Guess I owe you one.” You tap off the ash and pass the stick back, biting your lip anxiously. “How about I do you a favor?”

“Sweetheart, no offence but the kind of favours I’d like to have you do for me aren’t exactly innocent.” You cough, his reply completely unexpected, your core tingling involuntarily.

“Try me.” you tease, your gaze flickering to his lips for just a second, your hand coming to rest on his thigh, fingertips inching upwards.

Next thing you know, the two of you are locked at the lips, thankful that the clubhouse is empty, the others off on runs and whatever else. “How long have we got?”

“Half hour, tops.” Jax mumbles, connecting his lips back to yours, his tongue in your mouth eliciting a moan from you. “I don’t see us lasting that long to be honest, darlin’.”

You squeal as you feel yourself being lifted, the pool table becoming your seat as Jax places you on top. You rip at his flannel, the buttons scattering all over the room. Your fingers explore up and down his chiseled chest as he begins to nibble and suck at your neck, your eyes closing in pleasure as he works his way down.

“Please, Jax…” you pant, your underwear positively soaked as his tongue slips over your exposed skin. He practically growls at your pleading, him ripping himself from you as he expertly undoes his jeans, the fabric pooling at his ankles, his boxers joining the denim.

Your eyes widen as his cock stands before you, you pressing your thighs together subconsciously as the ache grows stronger. “Like what you see, Princess?”

“Don’t get too smug, Jackson, gotta see if you can fuck me well enough, first.“ His hands pull at your shorts, you lifting your ass to help assist as he rids the material from your legs. Once he’s discarded the fabric somewhere across the room, he connects his lips back to yours, lifting and squeezing your ass as he moves to you to the edge of the table.

You barely feel him move your underwear to the side before he sinks into you, a gasp leaving your lips as he nuzzles into your neck, his teeth biting at your skin as he fills you up.

You dig your nails into his biceps as he moves out of you, slamming back in deeply. He pulls back, loving the expressions you make as he fucks you so well, the little moans and gasps leaving your lips making him want to explode there and then.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to feel you around me, (Y/N).” You place your hands behind you to steady yourself, your pussy feeling even wetter as he talks to you. “You feel so fucking good, baby.”

“I’m so close, already. Fuck, just like that.” you whine as he hits all the right places, his strokes alternating in speed, but never lacking in power.

You rub your clit, clenching your pussy as you come, your mouth open yet nothing comes out. “That’s it, come for me, baby. Good girl.”

Jax grips the back of your neck as he speeds up his thrusts, his gaze locked on yours as he gets closer and closer to climaxing. You’re practically on fire as you feel another orgasm creeping up on you, the pure hunger in Jax’s eyes making you more sensitive than ever.

“Who knew you could take cock so well.” he whispers as he drills into you, a high pitched moan slipping from your lips. “Imagine if someone walked in right now, saw what a dirty slut you are, so desperate for me.”

His degrading words push you over the edge, a loud curse leaving you as stars fill your vision, Jax continuing to slam into you as he rides you through your high. “You gonna take my come, hm? Gonna let me fill you up like the good girl you are?”

“Yes, fuck, please Jax.” you plead desperately, your nails clawing down his stomach as he places hos forehead against your own, his eyes clenching shut as he let’s go.

He kisses you roughly as he comes inside of you, his hips gently rocking as his hot spurts shoot inside of you, your teeth sucking at his bottom lip.

He pulls out of you slowly, his juices and your own dripping from your satisfied pussy, your body feeling empty without his shaft inside of you.

Jax buckles up his pants, grabbing your shorts before lifting you up as if you weigh nothing. He carries you down the hall, just in time in fact as voices begin to fill the clubhouse.

Reaching his room, he places you down on the bed, his body crawling over yours as he moves a piece of hair from your face. “I’ve gotta go for a vote, but when I get back, we’re gonna see how sexy you look on your hands and knees.”

With that, he’s gone, leaving you shaken and hungry for more.

—

A/N - It’s been a whileeeeeee since I wrote some smut, but I’m so glad with how this turned out!!!! Hope you guys likeddddddd xxxx

[adz]

i wrote a not very good essay a while ago about connections between William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom and Chuck Palahniuk’s Rant (specifically about the relationship between Faulkner’s alleged anti-Eurocentric style of retelling colonial histories versus the splintered time theory of Rant) and found it today and thought i’d throw it into the void, here goes~

A Man Who Wanted A Son: Faulknerian Techniques in Palahniuk’s Rant

        Absalom, Absalom is widely considered one of William Faulkner’s most difficult novels to comprehend and enjoy. It is a dramatic and ambitious work, and its plot spans nearly a century. It is not unlikely that this novel and its companion, The Sound and the Fury, were primarily responsible for Faulkner’s Nobel Prize win in 1949. In Absalom, the story of one of Faulkner’s most enduring protagonists is told: Thomas Sutpen, the obsessed, incestuous, murderous patriarch of a doomed dynasty.

        One of the vital characteristics that sets Absalom apart from most novels with clear main characters, and even from Faulkner’s other novels, is that Sutpen doesn’t do the telling: his past is relayed by a series of characters, most of whom heard their information secondhand. It’s a difficult and complex storytelling technique, and Faulkner certainly doesn’t make figuring it out easy for the reader, but knowing the absolute truth about the events in the novel isn’t really the point. As Richard P. Adams writes in Faulkner: Myth and Motion: “In the text, the question of ‘truth,’ in any sense of historical accuracy, is hardly relevant. The issue is not what is true about Sutpen but what it is like to live in the South.” (183)

        Sutpen’s goal, and his eventual downfall, is his obsession with conceiving an heir who would live up to his own self-imagined legacy. During an interview at the University of Virginia in 1957, when Faulkner was asked by an unnamed audience member whether the central character in Absalom, Absalom was actually Thomas Sutpen, he responded: “The central character is Sutpen, yes. The story of a man who wanted a son and got too many, got so many that they destroyed him. It's incidentally the story of—of Quentin Compson's hatred of the—the bad qualities in the country he loves. But the central character is Sutpen, the story of a man who wanted sons.” (Faulkner at Virginia)

        Comparing any author to Faulkner tends to elicit impassioned responses, which is fine, because Chuck Palahniuk and Faulkner don’t have very much in common anyway. Faulkner was an undisputed master of prose who won multiple Pulitzer Prizes, and is continually considered one of the greatest American novelists and essayists of all time, whereas Palahniuk is mostly known for his 1996 novel Fight Club, which features a scene in which a man steals human fat from a liposuction clinic dumpster in order to make soap. Despite occasional tastelessness, Fight Club is a widely-known and relatively respected novel—at least compared to Rant, which Palahniuk published 11 years later to significantly lesser acclaim.

        Rant was kind of unprecedented, even to Palahniuk’s cult followers. The novel presents itself as an “oral biography:” a compilation of interviews with friends and acquaintances of Buster “Rant” Casey, our protagonist, concerning his childhood, activities as a young adult, and the events leading up to his suicide in a fiery crash. (Henceforth, he’ll be referred to as “Buster” to reduce confusion with the title of the novel.) The story takes place in two locations: Middleton, Buster’s fictional Southern hometown, and the unnamed city Buster moves to in order to realize his goal of becoming a sort of patient zero for rabies.

        Rant takes place in a science-fictional America in which society has been crippled by a voyeuristic form of entertainment known as “boosting peaks,” which is best described as a sort of mental virtual-reality lens that allows users to jack into others’ experiences and view them firsthand, complete with all the sensory stimuli. Only someone with a surgically installed ports can boost, and a port can be deactivated by something like a traumatic injury or brain inflammation. Buster’s actual objective in spreading rabies throughout the populace is to disable as many people’s ports as possible, and free society to live in the physical realm, rather than basking in self-induced mental dissociation. Admittedly, it’s a bit of a heavy-handed metaphor.

        Although the harmful detachment to the real world caused by the ubiquitousness of technology is the most obvious “message” of Rant, there’s an even more intricate subplot that is revealed late in the novel: it is discovered that by crashing a car just the right way, an individual with rabies can travel through time. Most of the narrators don’t fully understand how it works, but one character who calls himself Green Taylor Simms claims to have done it himself. As Buster’s father describes it, Simms visited Buster and explained that one could achieve immense power and even immortality by going back in time and impregnating their female ancestors. The purity of the bloodline would turn the traveler into some sort of superhuman, according to Simms.

        Then, in a Fight Club-esque twist, Simms reveals that he’s actually Buster, and Buster’s father, etc., and that Buster is his (Simms’s) heir; an alternate timeline version of himself. Simms also explains that his process involves returning to the past and murdering his female ancestors once they’ve served their purpose. It’s supposed to then be Buster’s job to repeat the directions he’s been given by Simms and achieve immortality, except that Buster chooses to defy Simms’s plan and instead attempts to travel back in time to rescue his mother from Simms.

        It’s unclear whether Buster succeeds in traveling through time and kills Simms, succeeds in traveling through time but arrives too late, or merely dies in a burning wreck, as most of the characters in the book assume. One of several interpretations posited by writer Marvin Sanchez has Buster trapped in an endless cycle of traveling back in time and arriving a minute too late to stop Simms, then living as his own father and raising himself as a son, over and over into infinity. Naturally, where time travel is concerned, the possibilities are literally endless.

        Whether you love or hate Palahniuk, it’s a pretty ambitious plot. In many ways, Rant seeks to investigate some of the same sick visionary psyche that saturates the pages of Absalom, Absalom. Thomas Sutpen and Green Taylor Simms, the protagonists, if they are protagonists, each attempt to create the same thing by the same means: rape, violence, and incest. Sutpen’s immortality may be a good deal more figurative than that of Simms, but both believe that their pure bloodlines will produce perfect offspring and preserve some sort of lasting legacy. However, Sutpen’s children end up murdering one another, and his eventual heir is Jim Bond, a mentally handicapped mixed-race child: sort of an ultimate failure for the elitist, racist Sutpen. Buster similarly defies his father’s predetermined future for him, but in an even more direct manner: he travels through time to thwart Simms at the very beginning.

        In Rant, we’re treated to a close look at the environment and upbringing from which Buster/Simms came: Middleton, an impoverished wasteland somewhere around the Bible Belt. Sutpen’s background is significantly hazier. It is described to us by narrators who heard it from people who heard it from other people. Since Sutpen’s intention is to leave his past behind and recreate himself as someone powerful and worthy of respect, it is reasonable that he would avoid spreading information about his time in Haiti, especially his miscegenous marriage and mixed-race son. “...A dispossessed and exiled Southerner, Sutpen marries into the Haitian plantation, gaining thus access to class and wealth, but he repudiates his wife and son on racial grounds. In exchange, he receives the slaves and the money that provide for his new beginning on the Mississippi frontier…” (Broncano 109)

        It’s worth repeating here that despite Faulkner’s sentiment, Sutpen may not be the best candidate for protagonist in Absalom. There is an argument to be made for Quentin: “...the text, if I read it at all correctly, shows that the heart in conflict with itself is that of Quentin...” (Adams 181) and possibly for Jim Bond. Palahniuk’s book is no different: Buster is asserted to be the protagonist, but this presents problems with his relationship with Simms (since they’re in a sense the same person), not to mention the fact that the book all occurs in real-time after his alleged death. Sanchez argues that perhaps the actual protagonist is Echo Smith, Buster’s girlfriend and the only significant interviewee in Rant who doesn’t appear in the book’s “contributors” section. Additionally, by traveling back in time herself and aiding Buster’s efforts not just to eradicate Simms, but also the technology that would allow boosting—the root cause of the dystopian society in the novel—Echo could have changed the present in the novel to the one we currently live in: the world in which Rant is merely fiction.

        In Sanchez’s words, “...Palahniuk wanted to present the novel as a real piece of history that had turned into fiction because the events that transpired [couldn’t] be proven anymore.” This description is particularly reminiscent of analyses of Absalom, Absalom. Quentin and Shreve have no way to confirm the veracity of any of the information they’ve accumulated, beyond what Quentin actually experienced. “There is an impenetrable pattern of relatedness and non-relatedness: those who were actually involved in the events were too involved to be objective; those who were capable of objectivity were too remote from the events” (Longley 210).

        The narrative techniques in both novels necessitate wariness from the reader; we have no way of discerning who is misinformed, and who is deliberately misinforming. Although the following quote was written about Absalom, Absalom, it applies to both: “An act of imagination is needed if we are to get at lifelike, humanly meaningful, truth; but to gain the lifelikeness we sacrifice the certainty of the publicly demonstrable” (Waggoner 152). The story must lose the absolute certainty of capital-T Truth in order to be told in a way that does justice to the intensity of the events within. Many modern tabloids would agree.

        In both Faulkner’s fictional world and Palahniuk’s “real” (but actually just barely fictional) one, there’s maybe some actual Truth beyond what’s filtered down to us by the narrators, but it’s as unattainable to us as it is to Quentin, Shreve, or to any of Buster’s acquaintances, except Simms and perhaps Echo Smith.  It’s mostly accepted that Faulkner did this on purpose as some sort of statement on reality (or perceived truth) versus Truth, but there’s not an overwhelming amount of evidence to suggest that Palahniuk had the same intention. As a result, the ambiguity at the end of Absalom, Absalom feels like a result of Faulkner’s decision to withhold information, whereas in Rant, it’s simply the outcome of Buster’s and Simms’s actions to empower themselves and to destroy one another. The “true” ending has been shrouded in mystery by those involved.

        According to Hosam Aboul-Ela, much of Absalom, Absalom’s uniqueness comes from what he calls “the poetics of peripheralization,” which express a relationship between the way Faulkner constructed the novel, and his use of an anti-Eurocentric history of coloniality. “This relationship is manifested in the structure of the novel. The resulting narrative is fragmented, jumbling time by presenting counterintuitive beginnings and endings and multiple flashbacks, flashforwards, and jump cuts. It uses multiple perspectives to emphasize the multiplicity of histories and realities and eschews the unified subject in favor of split narrative foci” (Aboul-Ela 136).

        Perhaps Faulkner would describe the colonial history in Absalom as anti-Eurocentric were he alive today, but it is just as likely that this interpretation, from 70 years in his future at the time he was writing Absalom, is merely applying a modern lens to a technique that Faulkner meant only to serve his trademark technique of delayed revelation. 40 years before Aboul-Ela’s analysis, Longley wrote: “The sheer magnitude of Sutpen’s grand design requires a matching magnitude of form and content: locale and time-span, geographical spread, and analysis of the meaning of history.” (209) Maybe Faulkner adopted this anti-Eurocentric historical method without realizing it in order to do justice to Sutpen’s sinister “design.” We can never know; we can only accept or deny each interpretation as we read them, same as Quentin.

Bibliography:

-Aboul-Ela, Hosam. Other South: Faulkner, Coloniality, and the Mariátegui Tradition. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh, 2007. Print.

-Adams, Richard P. Faulkner: Myth and Motion. Princeton: N.J., 1968. Print.

-Broncano, Manuel. "Reading Faulkner in Spain, Reading Spain in Faulkner." Ed. Annette Trefzer and Ann J. Abadie. Global Faulkner. Jackson: U Of Mississippi, 2012. N. pag. Print.

-Longley, John Lewis, Jr. The Tragic Mask: A Study of Faulkner's Heroes. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina, 1963. Print.

-Sanchez, Marvin. "Interpreting Palahniuk's ‘RANT:’ Splintered Time Theory." The Comfy Chair Massacre. N.p., 01 Feb. 2010. Web. 28 Nov. 2015. <https://moonwalkerwiz.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/a-long-long-rant-about-palahniuks-rant>.

-Waggoner, Hyatt H. William Faulkner: From Jefferson to the World. Lexington: U of Kentucky, 1966. Print.

-"Faulkner at Virginia." Interview by Frederick Gwynn, Joseph Blotner, & Unidentified participants. Faulkner at Virginia. University of Virginia, 13 Apr. 1957. Web. 02 Dec. 2015. <http://faulkner.lib.virginia.edu/display/wfaudio06_1>.