#GOD it was a struggle finding any isolated part of this I could reasonably post

[musical-chick-13]

WIP Wednesday :)

It is here that he expects her to back down, to blow up at him the way he deserves, to walk out and never come back, like she should have done at the very beginning of it all, before he had a chance to ruin her life. Somehow, miraculously, she does not do any of those things; her eyes well up with unshed tears, and she smiles. “What…” He scrunches his eyebrows to make up for the lack of a decent end to the question. She swallows thickly, letting a single tear slip down her face. “No one…no one’s ever bothered to consider that before.” Both of his hearts crumple like paper. “Oh, River.”

[pizzatrocious]

So! With the end of this wonderful little event, I do have a bit of a bittersweet announcement.

I'll still be around here and there on a low-effort multimuse I plan to make a while from now... but, save for any light activity you'll still see from me, I plan on retiring from writing.

I'm not retiring for any bad reasons, quite the opposite! But as someone that's been writing on Tumblr for roughly... 14 years? I think I've done most of what I've wanted to do. Every kind of thread you can imagine, every type of character, and every type of genre. For the past few years I've jumped blogs A LOT, but really only because I loved chasing whatever next big thing felt fun to write.

I was here when ask blogs were the standard instead of RP blogs, regardless of whether or not the mun could draw. I remember my first ever Bowser RP blog, iconless and full of crack on a classic Redux theme. I unfortunately remember the Homestuck and Danganronpa craze, and an era where icons were a semi-new novelty that only the 'fancy' blogs used. I remember back when a majority of the Pokemon RPC was a fairly popular crack group that, at its peak, had 300~ active blogs all at once.

I remember the Splatoon Marie roleplayer that chased after me, even when I'd socially isolate myself during the darkest spots of my life, and the Rosalina blog she made later down the line. You might know her now as my wife, Rosie. Funny to think, our more popular duo wound up being Peach and Bowser.

I remember all the different iterations of the Smash RPCs, and all the people that rocked the community with every post. Then there was the Sonic RPC, a place that was almost torn apart by an awful person's hold on the community, only to rise from the ashes! That RPC's pretty quiet nowadays, but those guys may as well be sleeper agents for Sonic content.

Then there's the people I affectionately call 'The Elder Gods'. The ones that, despite being here over a DECADE, they still dedicate themselves to the same characters they always have. They're usually the ones with the ancient-looking blogs that go largely under-the-radar nowadays, but they're the foundation that built these writing communities. You guys mostly just keep to yourselves nowadays, but I see you.

And of course, my good ol' kindred spirits, the people that roleplay the most obscure, hyper-specific characters. Those one-off indie games, obscure shows, characters stuck to a spinoff title or are just dubiously canon, or characters with basically no canon that they've made into their own!

Of course, that's not to forget the people that take the big popular characters, and absolutely ROCK them in a way that makes the character all their own. Gotta toot my own horn, considering one of my old Bowser blogs had a couple thousand followers.

I could go on, and on, and on... but long story short, I've had a great time here.

Part of me never wants to stop, to be honest. But in all this time, I've become a different person. My hobbies have changed, my interests have changed, I'm a completely different person now! But I've also always been a stubborn creature of habit, never wanting to give anything up.

As a result of being anchored to my old habits so long, I'm left a little at a loss for what I want in life. More and more I've felt like a caged animal, just circling around my little enclosure and doing the same things over and over for enrichment. Add to that the usual struggles of adult life being rough and expensive, and you can imagine wanting to spend more of my time on survival is a factor too.

Nobody's gonna know what I really want now, except for me. I need to get out there and do some soul-searching. Find new hobbies, make new friends, experience new things... who knows what I'll be doing a year from now!

That said, I give my genuine, most heartfelt thank you to everyone I've ever crossed paths with in throughout all of the Tumblr RPCs I've been in. Honestly, the only reason I don't list off names is purely because I want to make sure nobody gets left out of my little expression of gratitude. You all know who you are, anyway.

I wish I could've known some of you a little better... but that's just life, isn't it? Sometimes the most impactful people in your lives are the ones you never get to really know. I'm sure I've gotten to be that person for my own fair share of people, with how reclusive I tend to be.

Again, this isn't goodbye. I mean, I'd be a little embarrassed if people thought I was gone forever, only for me to pop up a week or two later. This is a hobby I've always loved, I'll always find my way back to it. I'll always be lurking about, sometimes posting during funny shenanigans. Like I said at the start of this post, I plan on making a private, low-effort multimuse! Mostly I'll just use it to keep tabs on my friends and the writers I really enjoy seeing, but I still have a small list of characters I'd like to play around with a little.

Otherwise though, it's time to leave the nest and try other things.

Thank you again. This is Vincent, signing off.

[smittenroses]

hi i saw requests was open-

uh

unrequited love with Joseph, Aesop and Eli?

on uh our side

please, thanks ^-^

(also i just realised i wasn’t following u, sorry)

Unrequited Love — Joseph, Aesop and Eli

Cw: yandere-like behaviour in the form of obsessiveness, delusions, light self harm and hints of murder (Aesop), obsession (rational), unhealthy power dynamics and isolation (Joseph).

Please skip their parts if you do not enjoy Yandere-like behaviours as it's a central theme of their parts for reasons that become quite clear.

Also please remember (after the last time I posted dark Aesop headcanons): I am an autistic person myself and thus use my experience for writing him, and Aesop's behaviours are not a result of his autism in canon, they are a result of his upbringing with Jerry Carl, and I am simply putting my spin on his behaviours.

I will not hesitate to block if people come to me saying that I am demonising Aesop's autism.

Joseph Desaulniers | The Photographer

Joseph Desaulniers is a man that grew up refined, gentlemanly and... very lonely; after the passing of his brother, he struggled to even form friendships or even register any sort of affections as being comforting. He knew deep within his soul that Claude would want him to eventually move on but its quite difficult when it comes to the fact he spent his entire life trying to find a way to bring him back in order to try and secure a happiness he thought he forever lost.

When you had walked into his life, he thought that you were a gift sent by the gods above — maybe even his brother too — as you lit a spark deep within his shrivelled and decaying heart. He practically began to worship the ground you walked on deep within his mind as you laughed, you cried, you looked at him and he couldn't help but find himself melting. It was the happiest he had ever been since the passing of his brother

That's why his heart shattered immediately when you told him that you could not reciprocate his feelings. It scattered on the floor and was stomped by a million elephants, but yet somewhere deep in his mind he was sort of relieved that you had been so honest about it — he knew that in his mind, you had become simply a replacement for Claude, someone that he knew would never be able to come back no matter how much he would try over, and over, and over again.

Even if he knew it was wrong, he still couldn't help but crave for your touch, for your conversation and watching as you would interact with others caused for his thoughts to darken. You were your own person, yes, but it was quite different when others could have what he didn't: your affection.

As a hunter, he held a significant amount of power over those little survivor friends of yours. Maybe he could convince them to stay away.

Aesop Carl | The Embalmer

Aesop... getting attached to someone is quite alarming at first given his tendency to stay away from people, hell, it even alarms himself when he realises that he strays away from his routine just for one silly person! Whenever he gets infatuated with someone it quickly turns into a disaster so many tend to keep their distance. It doesn't take long until he eventually will lose interest.

It isn't his fault he acts this way; Jerry never showed him how to hold and maintain relationships beyond business matters, so when the need to be loved, to be held, to be seen as someone more than a teammate creeps its way into the crevices of Aesop's brain, it easily becomes dark.

He tends to confuse parental affection and lover affection easily.

It seems that you didn't get the memo about avoiding becoming the Embalmer's latest fixation as the more that Aesop got to know you, the more he fell and those dark thoughts began to swirl around in his head, swirl around, and around, and around until you couldn't get out of his head! You're on his mind 24/7, you're running laps and making him giddy.

You witnessed his first outburst when you rejected him, watching as he slammed his beloved makeup case to the floor and the contents of it spilling out all over the carpet of the manor, quickly gathering the attention of the other survivors as they rushed to separate you from the man. He didn't mean to scare you, he really didn't, but hearing that you didn't reciprocate his feelings made him so mad.

He watched as you were dragged out of sight by Norton as Ada attempted to calm him down, that his behaviour was unacceptable as he stuffed his fingers in his mouth, chewing on already broken skin and nail. No, he loved you and you loved him, why didn't you see it yet?

Maybe he might need to show you his gift sooner than he liked. You needed to know how much he adored you... He never asks for much, please, he needs you.

Eli Clark | The Seer

This man is the only one out of the three that was able to learn how to form healthy relationships in his time outside of the manor so if he's the one interested in you, thank fuck.

He's missing Gertrude dearly and the fact that you remind him so much of her sends his heart aflutter in his chest so much that Brooke Rose has to tell him to calm down before he gives himself a literal stroke.

Probably the sweetest one since he'll do anything and everything in his power to make sure that you're happy and that you are able to go to him for anything. He values himself on being helpful, visions or not.

Probably foretold to himself that you would reject him and was oddly calm when you said 'no', but either way he was still smiling when he said "Then we can still be friends?"

[makeste]

hello! I’ve seen some debate as to whether the 2nd meant allies in general would bolster izuku and although I do think that’s true (ofc any sort of support system that he lets himself rely on would bolster him) I feel like if that was what was meant it would’ve been made clearer? maybe instead of just katsuki showing up, the final panel would’ve had several students burst onto the scene. what are your thoughts?

agreed. and incidentally this is another big reason why it's not Toga. if it was her then Horikoshi wouldn't have devoted any time to OFA II's little hype speech. it just makes it kind of pointless, unless this whole time we've been sleeping on Toga's hidden ability to bolster Deku lmao.

but anyways, yeah. and I mean, Two's commentary here is really just acknowledgement of something we've long since known already. Kacchan is the one who will ultimately be able to reach Deku. we don't actually need a piece of dialogue to tell us this, because the manga has been showing it to us since day one. his resume is fucking stacked. I mean, let's go through it.

he is mean.

I love this you guys. I honest to god love it. because the thing is, if you ask anyone what Kacchan's absolute worst quality is, this would be the obvious answer, right? "he's an asshole" lmao.

but that's exactly what we need right now!! someone who's not afraid to tell it like it is, and won't try to sugarcoat things. someone who's not afraid to argue back and risk hurting someone's feelings. because right now Deku is walking all over anyone who can't do that. All Might tries to feed him lunch and he's like "nah I'm good, anyways bye." Endeavor tries to tell him to rest and he's all "I'm fine" and fucking hangs up the phone. nuh uh. enough of that. what we need is someone who will call him out on his shit. "hah!? don't tell me you're fine when it's obvious to anyone you can barely stand on your own two feet, dumbass."

he is stubborn.

kind of ties into the other thing, but yeah. right now we need a bullheaded asshole who won't take no for an answer if he thinks he's right. good luck trying to sweet talk your way out of this one, Deku.

he understands the situation.

this one is important, because in fairness, simply standing in front of Deku and saying "you shall not pass" isn't gonna be enough to actually accomplish anything here. ultimately he's going to have to be able to reason with Deku too. and so in that respect, it certainly doesn't hurt that Kacchan is someone who understands the OFA situation as well as anyone, and has always had clear judgment about it. he understands the threat of AFO ("they all died young"), and he understands the burden of All Might's legacy. he knows what Deku is dealing with, and that's going to give him an edge when it comes to finding that elusive-yet-critical talk no jutsu knockout blow.

he's been where Deku is now.

Kacchan knows a thing or two about burdens. granted, they've more often than not been ones that he's put on himself, but that didn't make them any less heavy. Deku right now is struggling not just with his feelings of responsibility, but also with all of the misplaced guilt that's feeding into it. AFO is targeting him. if innocent people get caught in the crossfire then that's on him. every minute that AFO stays out there getting stronger and causing more chaos is all on him, because he hasn't defeated him yet. and so on and so forth.

and Katsuki knows what that's like. because he blamed himself for what happened to All Might. that feeling of "if I'd only been stronger" is one that he's intimately acquainted with. that feeling of blaming yourself, of not being able to look someone you care about in the eye because you think it's your fault they got hurt. this is something he knows. this is a road he's already been down. and so if Deku tries to pull any "you don't understand" nonsense, Kacchan is uniquely situated to immediately shoot that shit right down.

he's immune to low blows.

lol I keep thinking of all the different counterarguments that Deku could make, and all the different ways in which Kacchan is perfectly equipped to handle them. anyway, so this particular thing is a very recent development, but very fortunately timed. so as we all know, Kacchan was a first class dick to Deku during their childhood. something which Deku, with his abnormally kind and forgiving nature, has never once confronted Kacchan about, even though he would have absolutely had the right. but anyway, so here's the thing though -- right now I fully believe that Deku can and will do or say just about anything in order to get Kacchan and the others to leave. and that includes hurting them in order to save them. so it would not surprise me at all if Deku goes as far as to throw Katsuki's old, cruel, selfish behavior back in his face as part of a last-ditch effort to get him to back down. desperate times and all that.

and maybe there was a time when that actually would have worked. but here's the other thing -- we know something Deku doesn't. namely, that Kacchan has recently leveled up emotionally and has finally unlocked his atonement quest. he finally understands that it's not all about him. which means that it doesn't matter even if Deku pulls out the big guns. he may hurt his feelings, but he's not going to scare him off, because Kacchan's focus right now is on atonement, not forgiveness. he's not doing this for a pat on the head. he's doing it because it's the right thing to do. and no amount of insults will be able to sway him from that.

he learned from the best.

I said this in another post a couple of weeks back, but yeah. Angsty Nomad Deku has nothing on early Kacchan in terms of pushing people away. early Kacchan was the motherfucking king of pushing peeps away. if you so much as LOOKED at this kid in such a way that SUGGESTED you might even be THINKING about possibly trying to save him, he would straight up throw a ten-year hissy fit lmao. Deku's "All Might, you don't have to tag along anymore"s ain't got SHIT on all of Kacchan's "STAY BACK DEKU"s and "I'D RATHER LOSE!!!"s and "OMFG HOW DARE YOU BE THE ONLY PERSON TO TRY TO SAVE ME FROM THIS RAMPAGING SLUDGE MAN WHO'S ABOUT TO SUFFOCATE ME TO DEATH"s. Kacchan is the undisputed goat here lol.

but anyway, so what this means is that he has accumulated a whole HOST of iconic lines and fateful parallels which he can throw back in Deku's face at a moment's notice. and the best part is that he learned it all from THIS EXACT MOTHERFUCKER, RIGHT HERE. what is Deku even gonna do!! argue against his own past actions?? "well, uh, I guess now that you mention it I should have just sat back and watched you die all those times" OH REALLY?? YOU DON'T SAY. THAT SOUNDS SO CONVINCING.

and so guess what, Deku -- if Kacchan was worth saving, then you're worth saving too. it's an ironclad argument. congratulations son you played yourself.

he always wins.

okay so real talk, we all know that what's really driving Deku right now is his fear of losing people. he's helpless against that. he saw Kacchan get stabbed right before his eyes and it fucked him up. he saw all these other people getting hurt and killed because he couldn't save them, and he straight up could not deal with those emotions at all. he's scared. he's more afraid of that happening again than of anything else. and AFO knows that, and that's why he's resorted to his current tactics, which have isolated Deku even further and caused him to push even All Might away.

what Deku is missing right now, and what he needs to have restored, is trust. trust is the antidote to fear. and when you're as scared as Deku is, it takes an extraordinary amount of assurance in order to ease those fears. basically you don't want to place your faith in anything less than an absolutely sure thing.

but Kacchan is exactly that. this is the exact type of situation that Kacchan's "aiming for the top" overkill confidence was made for. he's the one who never loses!! the hero who's going to surpass all other heroes!! Deku inherited All Might's compassion, but Kacchan inherited his determination. Kacchan is someone who brings reassurance. his confidence is unwavering. and in the end, I think it will be strong enough to pull even Deku back out from the darkness.

he is strong.

Kacchan is Deku's rival in every sense of the word, and I fully believe he's capable of matching him step for step even now. and so Deku can try to push him away, but Kacchan is capable of withstanding that force and staying his ground. Deku can try to run, but Kacchan still has him matched for speed. and as a last resort, Deku can even try to defeat him -- but Kacchan won't ever concede to defeat.

and all of this ties back into what I was saying about trust. because Kacchan is strong. strong enough not to die. strong enough to live. strong enough to not make others worry about him. and that's what Deku so desperately needs right now in order to finally let go of his fears. Deku needs someone who can get him to trust in others again, and to do that, he has to be able to trust in their strength.

and last but not least...

he has a secret weapon up his sleeve.

several, as a matter of fact. his hero name reveal. his apology, if he chooses to give it now (though I could see him waiting for a more sincere moment, rather than whipping it out now when it could be misconstrued as a manipulation tactic). but perhaps most importantly...

never underestimate the power of an iconic role reversal. because that's what I'm getting at here, if it wasn't clear lol. this probably would have worked better if I had a picture of him actually reaching out to Deku. but I mean, that's kind of the point lol. I don't have one because he hasn't done it yet. BUT CAN YOU IMAGINE. good luck withstanding that, Deku.

so yeah. look at all that. he really is a one-man Deku-saving army. which is not to say that the other kids won't have a part to play as well, or that it's not important for them to be there, because it is. but as far as the lead role goes, it's Kacchan. like that astronaut meme guy says. always has been.

oh and as a bonus he was smart enough to finally leave the mask at home today lol. LET DEKU SEE THE SINCERITY IN YOUR EYES. YESSSSSSS.

[braunbakery]

salvation, maybe (ii)

☞ reiner braun x reader [fem bodied] [chapter word count: 2.5k]

☞ sfw, angst, fluff, post-season 3 [after 4 year time jump], season 4 spoilers

☞ cross-posted on ao3 (very much ahead on ao3, just wanted to bring it to tumblr)

☞ fic plot: you have walked these streets many times before. you have passed this bench many times before. you have seen this man (lost in his thoughts, always drifting, always looking lost) many times before. but this time, this time you take a seat.

prev. next

ii. company

the glass clinks against the bar counter and reiner shifts idly in his seat as the bartender slowly pours him another drink. he watches you bring your glass to your lips in the bar stool next to him, your other hand rested on the counter. the orange lighting of the bar reflects off of the two glasses and, even though the bar is filled with the lazy chatter of other customers, reiner feels like he can hear your every movement.

he doesn't know how a walk through the streets of liberio wound up with him sitting with you at a bar in the middle of the night. he doesn't know how his daily trip to the bench in front of the fountain wound up with him sharing a drink with a stranger when he had been isolating himself since his return from paradis. he doesn't know how the hours passed so quickly, or why you had decided to spend an entire day with him. he can barely remember what you had talked about, faintly recalling sparse conversation about your family, about his family (about gabi and how there was definitely no one in liberio who didn't know her with the way her voice echoed around the alleyways.) he remembers a calm quiet settling between you two, he remembers visiting an empty, overgrown park. most of all, he remembers the feeling of your company.

his chest doesn't feel as hollow, his thoughts don't race as rapidly. and, even though his eye sockets are still full and his muscles are still tense, there is a part of him that is happy to not feel alone. even if just for a day.

and this relief that you offer him eats away at him like a parasite. he locks eyes with you and you offer him a small, kind smile, fully content to sit in the comfortable silence you have both accustomed yourself to. reiner doesn't know why he's letting himself have an escape. he doesn't want to find solace, he doesn't want to feel at peace, he doesn't want the warmth of someone else being with him and not expecting anything of him. he is guilty. in his head, he should always remain guilty, no matter the pain or the agony. no matter how dark the circles under his eyes become, or how tight his jaw clenches.

but, at this moment, he brings himself to ignore his self-condemnation as he watches you raise your glass once more to your lips. he doesn't know if it's just because you are a person, if anyone would have done, if it's because you seem like you would like the company too or if it's something particular about you that makes him want to stay. that makes him feel like it doesn't matter whether or not he deserves to stay. but he can't believe he had gone this entire time without the presence of this other someone with him.

"are you okay?" you ask him, noticing him slowly losing himself in his thoughts. reiner snaps out of his conflicted daze and loosens his tight grip on his glass.

"yeah, thinking about how they're going to beat my ass for not showing up at HQ today," he jokes, offering a cheeky grin. you laugh, pretending not to notice his genuine concern over the issue,"i-"

"reiner," a soft voice interrupts. a woman with dark, raven hair and large deep eyes slowly approaches the two of you on crutches. she dons the same uniform as reiner (the same off-white jacket and red armband, reiner's jacket is currently bundled up on the stool next to him), and reiner feels his grip on his glass tighten again.

"pieck," reiner responds, suddenly aware that his earlier joke is probably the reality. pieck smiles softly at him, and he knows that she holds no contempt for his absence today. but, that doesn't make the bundle of anxiety brewing in his stomach any less.

"where were you today? everyone was wondering where you'd gone off to," pieck slightly leans on her crutches, her head tilting to the side as she questions reiner good-naturedly.

"i..." reiner trails off. he can't find the words. how can he say that, hours ago, he had unconsciously made the decision that spending an entire day mostly in silence with a stanger he had just met seemed like more of a pressing matter than his duties to marley. as he struggles to find the words to express himself, pieck spares you a glance, finally taking note of your presence. she doesn't introduce herself, instead content to offer you another warm smile in greeting.

"maybe you should get home, yeah?" pieck suggests. behind her kind voice and sympathetic eyes, reiner easily recognises the sense of urgency in her words. it's a warning. he should probably get an early night's sleep before his attempts to offer a multitude of excuses when he goes into HQ the next morning. also, knowing pieck is here, it would be safe to assume that porco isn't far off. reiner had already pictured his smug face when he sees him tomorrow, probably feeling like his superiority over reiner had once again been proven. if porco finds him here, in this bar, reiner would never hear the end of it. it would just be another reason for porco to assert the fact that between them, he was the warrior and reiner was the coward. and even though reiner doesn't necessarily disagree (he doesn't really have the energy to think about it anymore), it doesn't mean he's particularly looking forward to it.

"yeah," reiner replies, nodding thankfully at pieck. pieck nods back and raises a hand from her left crutch, waving goodbye before going back to her table. but, she stops in her tracks and turns her head back, "don't worry, by the way. porco hasn't seen you." with that, she turns back and makes her way back to her table. reiner is thankful for her decency.

he scrapes back the bar stool and begins to stand up, getting ready to leave. but, as he reaches for his jacket, his vision blurs. you watch as reiner slightly stumbles forward, grabbing onto the bar stool for support. how many refills has he had?

he seems fine enough to speak normally, but as you watch him rapidly blink his eyes to regain his composure, you stand up, grab his jacket from the seat, and tug at his sleeve as you make your way to the exit of the bar. he seems okay now, walking normally behind you and reaching for his jacket from your grasp. once you finally leave the busy bar, the chilly night air meets your warm faces and the glow of the orange lighting inside reflects off your skin. reiner quickly pulls his jacket on and turns to you. you let go of his shirt sleeve that you didn't realise you were still holding.

"you don't have to leave with me," he says. in truth, he doesn't want to allow himself to be in your company anymore. this was just a break. a day where he could forget everything that he had to do and be, and it took all of his will to reject the consolation your presence offered. the reality was grim and brutal, and even if it was a reality where he was condemned to eternal guilt, it was still reality.

"i don't particularly want to be left alone in a bar," you say, already beginning to slowly make your way down the street. reiner tries to ignore the small relief he feels in knowing that you won't leave yet. that you don't want to leave yet. it was starting to prove tiring having to drag himself back to the guilt he felt lost without.

"do you live far? i can walk you back first," he says, sidling up next to you on the footpath. god, he was pathetic. for someone actively trying to isolate himself, he sure did manage to find every excuse to spend more time with you.

"i live on just the other side of market square," you say, recalling reiner telling you where his family home was, "it's close to yours. i'm walking you back first." in reiner's stumbled state (even though he had all but regained his composure now), you don't feel right making him walk you home and then himself. at least, that's the excuse you were telling yourself. in reality, you don't want to be alone. you're not ready to say goodbye. when reiner hears your adamance, he can't help but smile. he's too tired to argue, instead just humming in confirmation.

"are you going to be in much trouble tomorrow?" you ask. reiner turns his head towards you, and even though he had looked at you many times already, he never seems to get over the initial shock of someone else being there with him.

"it'll be fine," he says (he hopes.) maybe commander magath will just chalk it up to another tired day of being a warrior? maybe zeke had offered magath some sort of excuse in reiner's absence? maybe porco had shut the fuck up and not encouraged retribution for reiner's slight insubordination? reiner knows that you can tell from his clenched fists that he's lying and that he has no idea what's going to happen. but, he's grateful that you don't make an attempt to address this. reiner wonders if you know that he doesn't regret it.

"i'm guessing you have an early morning then?" you say, shoving your hands in the pockets of your jacket as the temperature of the night drops.

"ha," reiner laughs drily, "it's always an early morning." he watches you laugh at his disdain, the corners of his mouth curling upwards, "you as well?"

"yeah. i think i'm delivering papers tomorrow," you respond. you had told reiner that you worked as an assistant for the newspaper. the manager was an old man. he was kind, but you often found yourself doing a bunch of odd jobs that were either his responsibility or the requirement of someone he had yet to hire.

"do you have a permit to leave the internment zone for that?" reiner says without realising. the words are tumbling out of his mouth as soon as he thinks of them, and it scares him. he had spent years in paradis having to carefully think of everything before he said it, and now the words were just escaping his mouth and he had no restraint.

"yeah, just for an hour on the specific delivery days. we only really get delivery requests from the marleyan soldiers living just outside the fence." reiner nods.

"you should deliver a paper to us," reiner feels that he basically blurted that out and tries to save himself, "to HQ i mean."

"i didn't realise the people the paper is usually about took an interest in reading it," you joke. you're already planning your route to the warrior unit HQ, already planning what you're going to say to reiner when you deliver. even though it's just a suggestion on his behalf, you can feel the delight rushing through your body at some sort of insinuation that he wants to see you again. reiner chuckles at your comment, knowing full well that he's probably not going to read that paper and he'll probably just toss it off to zeke (if he doesn't end up spending the whole day being reprimanded for his antics.)

god, he can't stand himself. how can he ask to see you again? what's wrong with him? is he seriously so pathetic that after one day of enjoying someone else's company other than the warrior unit and the candidates (who, even though he appreciates them, are just a constant reminder of his mistakes and shortcomings and everything he fails to be) he can't go on without it? even though you hadn't given a straight answer, he can't ignore the feeling of blood rushing to his cheeks at the thought of seeing you again, no matter how hard he tries to pull himself together and scold himself for being such a half-assed piece of shit.

before he realises, his vision is blurring again and he's stumbling forward. instinctively, you reach out and grab his upper arm. your hand wraps around it, steadying him in place, and you didn't expect him to be so...warm. is that a titan shifter thing?

reiner mumbles a quiet 'thanks' in embarrassment and continues walking on. but, your grip on his arm never loosens and reiner realises (rather embarrassed with the fact that this is something he considers worth realising) that, other than the odd tug to his sleeve to beckon him forward, this is the first time you have actually touched him. his muscles relax under your hand. and it scares him.

reiner slightly pulls away at your grasp, pulling down at the armband on his opposite arm as an excuse to distance himself. he doesn't know why he's doing this (yes i do, he thinks, coward. you don't deserve this.) without thinking, he shrugs off his jacket and places it around your shoulders, his hands slightly brushing against your neck. even though he's warm, goosebumps form under his fleeting touch and you watch as he puts his armband back onto his arm.

"you looked cold," he says curtly, rubbing at the back of his neck and looking away. he realises that, in an attempt to use taking off his coat as an excuse to distance himself from your grip, he managed to just end up being closer to you. you can't help but smile as he tries to avoid your gaze.

a few more minutes pass, and you both find yourself outside reiner's house. reiner turns to you, opening his mouth and about to bid you goodbye, ready to spend the night wondering how he let a simple conversation at a bench this morning get this far.

"reiner," you say, before he can say anything. "i..." as you look at him, you realise how bad you don't want to say goodbye. and maybe it's just the fact that he really doesn't know you that well, or that if you really wanted to, you could very well ignore him for the rest of your life if things went wrong. or maybe it's the fact that you had lied earlier, and you don't actually live on the other side of market square, but the complete opposite direction that you had started walking from the bar, and if you said goodbye now you'd have to walk back all the way by yourself. alone.

alone.

"yeah?" reiner says, hand on the door knob, eager to get inside. he doesn't want to leave. really. it seems like he does, but the longer he stays out here, with you wearing his jacket and struggling to make the words come out of your mouth, the more he has to think about a life he can probably never have. but, what you say next takes him a minute to register, and takes you a minute to realise has actually come out of your mouth.

"can i...can i stay?"

[sobdasha]

had a few more thoughts about the Honda family

and all the Souma parallels.

(and by “a few” I apparently meant “a lot”, I did not mean to write this many pages)

In the other post I’d made a comment about how Katsuya’s romance with Kyouko, severe age difference issues aside, is just plain pathetic, a point which I believe to be Upheld by canon. And I wanted to talk more about that, the implications of that, and how that further builds the Akito and Tohru parallel. And also, Why Tohru Can’t Love Her Mom And Kyou At The Same Time.

The ideal, in Fruits Basket, is that when you make a connection with one person who loves you and sees you, this will enable you to make further connections with the people around you. Tohru does a whole heck of a lot of this; for one example, see Yuki explaining this to Kisa in the liking-yourself speech. Yuki does some of this for bitty Haru and later for Machi. Kazuma does this for Kyou. And so on and so forth. The positive experiences are meant to have a ripple effect.

It’s important to be grateful for what you have (Yuki and Machi’s “just one person would be enough” scene), but it’s human to crave more than that (Kyouko telling Saki that it’s probably normal to want other people to accept you even if you already have a loving and supportive family). It is important to crave more than that.

This was, in fact, the entire point of the curse. God meets cat. Cat’s companionship allows god to form connections with other animals. Cat is dying and god decides that 13 friends is the perfect number of friends and starts the reincarnation cycle. Cat says, “god you never once left your house. I wanted to see you go down and make friends with the humans. I wanted to see you experience the world and laugh in the sunlight. God you made 13 new friends but you’re still lonely and closing yourself off to the world forever, this is wrong and I am sad.” The banquets were supposed to be the gateway drug of friendship and meaningful connections, not the place where 14 souls stagnated alone and isolated until it became a curse.

That same wrongness happens in Ren and Akira’s relationship, where finally making a connection with one person who loves you and sees you made their world smaller and smaller. It wasn’t healthy, probably because 1) they remained in a toxic environment, 2) Kureno implies that Ren has mental health issues and I assume those existed prior to Akira’s death and were exacerbated, rather than created by, her grief; also I can’t imagine she actually came from a non-toxic family herself, and 3) Akira’s “you’re going to die an early death and the only thing we need from you first is a successor” trauma. Akira never found anyone other than Ren who understood how upset he was. Ren never formed a relationship with anyone other than Akira, partly because she was now trapped in a toxic family that despised everything about her and she refused to Prove Them Right by leaving. They both viewed their child as an object rather than a person; Akira seeing proof that he and Ren were definitely OTP and the Souma could go shove it, and Ren seeing a Rival.

I have a memory that I said at some point—probably in a Talking About Shigure post—that Kyouko helps Katsuya connect with other people. But this, I think, is not really true. I was thinking of how Kyouko helps bridge the non-relationship between Katsuya and his father. But that’s just one person.

Really, Katsuya and Kyouko are more like Akira and Ren.

Marrying-someone-who-just-graduated-ninth-grade aside, the fact that Katsuya and Kyouko meet is genuinely a good thing. Katsuya finally connects with the humanity in another person. Kyouko is finally cared about as a person. Their misanthropic-jackass-and-abandoned-cat relationship improves both of them, probably. Their connection is definitely the reason Kyouko decides to go to high school and quit her gang. It’s harder to tell with Katsuya, but you could argue that seeing Kyouko struggling and fighting and screaming against the world, as honest about her joy as she is about her loneliness-channeled-into-rage, causes Katsuya to say screw it and pursue the career in pharmacy that he’s interested in, instead of fake-politely submitting to the world’s expectations and internally resenting and disdaining everyone around him.

Katsuya softens in his relationship with his father. Both Katsuya and Kyouko see their child as a person in her own right, Tohru, rather than an object. Katsuya, in fact, is adamant about that fact when Kyouko is terrified of her pregnancy—that they can treat their baby as her own person, and if they aren’t perfect parents and they hurt their child, they’ll apologize—because Tohru is a person and an equal—and admit that what they did was wrong and why it’s wrong. They’ll treat Tohru with the respect they should have gotten all along.

But I don’t think it ever goes any farther than that. Like god, the Honda family becomes more and more isolated.

Does Katsuya make any work friends? We don’t really get a complete view of their lives, because Takaya is one person who can only do so much and space is very precious, so we only see what’s crucial to the story. But I would be really surprised to find that Katsuya had made any close friends outside of Kyouko. I honestly doubt that he has anything more than casual work acquaintances. (In contrast, we repeatedly see Kyou together with the two guys who got names in the anime that I forgot in his class; his friendship with them doesn’t get explored much in the manga, presumably because it doesn’t do any heavy lifting for his character development, but Kyou clearly has casual friends who seek him out and whom he doesn’t mind being with. See also the way Saki and Arisa also interact with those guys as a part of the group, while Tohru really only interacts with Saki and Arisa or the Souma.)

And I don’t think Kyouko fares any better. Does she have any close friends, other than her husband and daughter? Does she make friends at work? I don’t know what kind of work Kyouko does, and if she would have the opportunity to take her breaks socializing with coworkers. But it appears she spends her work breaks in an abandoned area socializing with a first or second grader. Kyou is the only person, as far as we know, that mid-twenties Kyouko can start to open up to. She doesn’t get all the way there—Kyou doesn’t connect the dots until much later—but it’s the closest she comes to talking about how she hurt Tohru after Katsuya died.

Where are the family friends? It doesn’t strike me as weird that the Honda family doesn’t have them, because I have also grown up in a poorly socialized household, but even I am used to running into unfamiliar people in public who explain that they know my mom or dad. I’m pretty sure family friends are a normal thing, and that’s how you get aunts and uncles that aren’t related to you, much in the same way that I’m pretty sure it’s normal to be friends with your cousins (especially if they’re in a similar age range and live nearby) and it is very common for grandparents to bring grandchildren with them to the grocery store because the grandchildren are staying over and they’re having a relationship.

Where is anyone but the Honda family at at Kyouko’s funeral? Kyouko made friends with Arisa and Saki, but did she ever make friends with Saki’s parents? Where are Saki’s loving and supportive mother and father and grandmother when the Honda family is arguing about who has to take on the burden of Tohru? Where are they, if they knew of the bad blood between Kyouko and the Honda family (and the disinheritance between Kyouko and the Katsunuma family), to sweep over Tohru’s protestations and tell her that it will all be fine, they’ll make it work out (they packed up and moved house for Saki, after all), it’s not Tohru’s job to worry about being a burden, it’s the job of people who love her to take care of her?

It can be both “because of the necessity of the plot” and “because they didn’t know.”

Tohru inherits this small, isolated world. And because of the trauma of being abandoned by her grieving, depressed, absolutely-not-coping mother, Tohru picks up on that Souma curse mentality. Tohru’s dad left, and Tohru’s dad tried to take her mom with her, leaving her with no one but Grandpa (who is not intimately part of their world but is not fully outside it either). Tohru’s dad is now a Rival. Tohru’s dad is now an Outsider. Clearly, a bond with an Outsider weakens the True Bond that Tohru had with Kyouko. Clearly, Tohru’s dad is Not Needed (because the other alternative is that Tohru is Not Needed). Clearly, only one of them can have Kyouko.

And it’s going to be Tohru.

Tohru picks up Katsuya’s fake-polite speech, equally disingenuously but from the opposite direction (ie, Katsuya was fake-polite to be an asshole, and Tohru is genuinely polite but faking the words). Tohru is pretty sure this is a form of wicked manipulation (much like Yuki is convinced that “be kind unto others as you would have them be kind unto you” is a form of wicked manipulation). Tohru keeps up with it anyway. Kyouko, as Kyou suggests, was probably comforted by this; rather than going full Akira “you exist to prove that I lived and loved a woman”, seeing Katsuya’s mannerisms in Tohru reminds her that her husband did exist without having to erase Tohru as a person. Kyouko does a lot of growing on her own, but with no support system and no friends outside the family and being fresh-out-of-college age, it’s not surprising that she fails to talk with Tohru about this, and tell Tohru that she knows why Tohru’s doing this, she knows how she hurt Tohru and it was wrong, you don’t have to do this anymore. This is a hurt between them, a grief, that they never talk about, even though they both know it’s there and Kyouko tries to smother it with love and affection and Tohru tries to shut it up in a box of denial.

Tohru’s world is now just Tohru and Kyouko. Tohru doesn’t make any friends until middle school. We know she gets bullied and doesn’t fit in throughout her entire school life. She is a riceball in a fruits basket and probably just manages to scrape by in conformity culture. When she does make her first friends, Arisa and Saki don’t count as Outsiders who compromise Tohru’s bond with her mom because Arisa and Saki are also misfits on the fringe. They are outcasts Tohru can bring into the circle. They are all monsters together, like the cursed Soumas (the only reason no one refers to Akito as a monster to her face, the way they do the rest of the Zodiac, probably has less to do with the fact that Akito doesn’t transform and more to do with the fact that Akito being in a position of power is useful for their own ends, so best not to undermine the head of the family by pointing the whole monster thing out).

And then Tohru’s mom dies.

Tohru isn’t god and she can’t make an eternal banquet. Tohru doesn’t know how to process her grief and how not to fall to pieces. Tohru knows how to empathize with other people, but she doesn’t know how to be vulnerable. Did she remember Kyouko wanting to follow Katsuya, and think about doing the same? But Tohru also wants to keep living, somehow.

So she makes her mom not be gone. Her mom is dead, Tohru knows that, just like Akito knows that Akira’s soul isn’t in the box choosing her over Ren and showing her the way to happiness. But maybe. So she talks to the portrait of her mom. She tries to rescue her mom from suffocating inside a mudslide. She takes her mom on holiday to the onsen. Her mom gets kidnapped once by Hiro. Tohru’s mom is definitely not gone. Tohru and her mom definitely still have an eternal bond. Tohru’s mom will always be first in her heart, so that Tohru will always be first in her mother’s heart. Tohru will never abandon her. Tohru will never leave her behind.

(Tohru will never be left behind.)

Tohru’s world is just Tohru and her mom.

Tohru has two best friends, Arisa and Saki, but she won’t let them in. She won’t depend on them. She won’t tell that that her grief is crushing her and that she’s living in a tent because she’s terrified of being abandoned. Tohru makes a lot of new friends in the Souma family, and she’s very happy, but she won’t let them in either. Tohru can’t open up to any of them freely.

I don’t think I saved it anywhere the survived the computer death, but I saw at least one post in the fandom talking about the growing disappointment of the reboot anime, and they had a valid point, so I’ll bring that in now.

I really like the reboot, but I am losing my passion in the final season. Adapting a story from one media to another is hard, and at the beginning I thought they were doing a good job. Small things were being cut, scenes were being rearranged and stitched together, but there was a definite purpose behind it. Instead of literally following each chapter, each episode tried to be a self-contained theme in the same way a manga chapter would be. Because themes repeat again and again in Fruits Basket in a slow build, this was working well. But small things that didn’t quite fit got cut. Scenes I liked and was sad not to see, but that I accepted had to be left out to make the episodes stronger.

But they’ve been piling up and piling up. Small holes have accumulated into big plot holes that the third season is tripping over. I’m sad that we don’t see the small progressions of Yuki and Machi’s relationship, the quiet scenes that show Machi is trying to pay attention to Yuki the way he has paid attention to her, and also all the Mogetas. I’m sad Komaki is the new manga-only character. If we don’t get Kyouko’s full backstory, we lose a lot of the context that’s in this post. I could go on and on.

But most importantly, as that someone else pointed out, we missed out on the progression of Kyou and Tohru’s flirting. It’s too late to cram all of that into a montage episode, and so now we’ve been given episode after episode of Mom Tohru, and hardly any Tohru Struggling With Romance In Addition To Struggling With Grief before suddenly everyone is confessing their love and I’m not as into it in the anime as I am in the manga.

So many of the Souma love and accept Tohru, but Tohru remains an Outsider—not because of the curse, but because she hasn’t formed close friendships with them. Tohru has a lot of people among the Souma she likes who like her, but she’s always a Mom to them. Tohru shares some of her own pain with them, but it’s shared for their benefit, not for Tohru’s own catharsis. Tohru shares so she will be loved, not so that she will be accepted.

Except Kyou.

Kyou, who looks at Tohru and thinks, “I’m pretty sure she’s that lonely person even now, even while she’s smiling and genuinely enjoying every moment with us.” Kyou, who’s falling in love with Tohru. Kyou, whom Tohru’s falling in love with.

Kyou is the only one that Tohru takes a desperate risk with. Kyou is the only one Tohru ~disillusions~ and ~disappoints~ in the hope that he’ll accept her regardless.

Kyou is the only one Tohru tells, “I don’t talk about my dad because I kicked him out of the family. I know my dad loved us and I loved him back, but I pretend to talk like him so my mom will forget about him and love me instead. He came between me and my mom and now I pretend he doesn’t exist. And I know I’m an awful person for behaving like that, so I keep his picture and pretend I don’t, and I pretend he’s the Bad Guy who earned it.”

The idea that Tohru can’t love both her mom and Kyou is, in a way, true. (I think that same post I’ve been referencing also talked about how dropping the budding romance also dropped a lot of the clues that this is Tohru unable to process her grief? Which is also very true. But if Tohru has the Souma mindset, then actually she has a legit point about not being able to love two people at once despite being a very loving person. Both can be true. Multitudes.)

Kyou is an Outsider to the world of Tohru and her mom. And if Tohru chooses to love him, it will weaken her bond with her mom, which is predicated on loving her mom more than anyone else. If she expands her world to include him in it, she will be betraying her mom. Tohru will be the Bad Guy who left her mom behind and abandoned her. Tohru will be her own villain, condemned for the same crimes she pinned on her dad.

Kyou 100% gets where she’s coming from with this, because he turns this exact argument on her when she confesses to him and he panics (akin to when Tohru chases him down in his true form and he slashes her and, in the reboot, yeets her into the lake, so that she will be hurt so bad she’ll never pity/love him again). He asks her if her love for her mom—her bond—was just a lie.

Tohru making friends after Kyouko’s death has been a lot like Akito letting Yuki and Kyou out into the world, certain that it would drive them back to the bond. Yuki getting character development is a huge betrayal. Tohru wanting to be together with Kyou, when she should only want to be together with her mom, is a huge betrayal.

Tohru has no model for expanding her world. She’s good at loving people, but bad at letting them in (Kyouko was bad at that too—like Mom Tohru, she was very good at sharing anecdotes about her violent youth, but very bad about sharing how she’d failed Tohru as a mom). Like Akito, she only really knows the bond—the certainty that her mom would love her. She’s been so terrified of not being loved that she’s acted this entire time like her mom is still around. When Kyou’s love is a possibility, she can only conceptualize it as a betrayal of her relationship with her mother.

It always seemed a bit too abrupt that Tohru looked at Akito with the knife and went “oh shit we’re literally the same”, but now that I’ve thought this all out, it makes eloquent sense. The whole time Tohru’s been working against the curse, she’s been in denial about her own blessing-burden-curse. Now that she’s just admitted it and had it thrown back in her face, she can look at Akito and see another person in an insular little world, isolated and lonely and walled-off from the world. Of course Tohru desperately wants to make friends with knife-wielding Akito—she just decided to let go of her ties to her mother that were suffocating her, and take her first steps into the world, and got immediately dumped by the person she loves. Of course she wants to make friends with someone who knows exactly where Tohru’s coming from and how terrifying what Tohru just did is and how awful it is to be rejected even though she’s got other friends she loves out here in this world she’s decided to finally step into.

Tohru is so damn lonely, and Akito is there, also lonely and screaming and crying and undeniably human.

(Smile, Tohru tells herself in the hospital. Smile and tell Kyou you were happy to meet him and just let him go. Don’t be a curse. Smile and let him find his own happiness. Which is more or less the same struggle Akito is also going through. But maybe they’re going through it together. Maybe they used their words, together, when they couldn’t confide in anyone else. Although it feels a bit unlikely that Tohru let herself break down about Kyou in front of Akito, and Akito already had one pity-party in front of Momiji and may not have wanted to burden Tohru with a second.)

One thing I really love about Fruits Basket Another is that Hajime alludes to the fact that Kyou probably won’t inherit Kazuma’s dojo after all.

Kyou inheriting the dojo is something both Kyou and Kazuma have wanted, and it gives me many warm fuzzies. It is very narratively satisfying. The dojo, while Souma property, is not actually part of the main estate.

What I love is that Kyou probably won’t take over the dojo specifically because he and Tohru have made so many friends in their new town that they don’t want to pick up and leave. Kyou finally succeeds in freeing Tohru from that small, lonely world, much like he’s been freed from the fate of the Cat Room. Their relationship enriches them personally and also enables them to make so many new connections. Kyou has friends at the dojo! Tohru has friends at work maybe! Friends where they buy groceries, friends among the parents of their children’s classmates, friends outside of their extended Souma family! They’ve kept ties that don’t hold them back and made new ties that don’t weaken or steal away any of their old ties!

When they left Tokyo, Tohru was prepared to go anywhere as long as it was with Kyou. Now, she and Kyou both don’t want to leave because their world is so much larger than just their nuclear family and they’ve put down roots. They’ve seen each other not only lonely in the moonlight and worn thin by death and loss, but they’ve gotten up and gone down the mountain to where the people live and made friends among them, laughing in the sunlight. Just like the cat always uggghhhhh I’m not crying I’m just so damn happy for them I can’t

[blu3mila]

PUSHIT

it’s a song by Tool that i’ve been sitting with for a little over a month now, wanting to say something. tried it in several ways and decided on a post overview, so here comes a stack of thoughts.

my first go at it was a painting. it came from scrambling, a part of the song that stuck with me from the start:

“You're pushing, and shoving, and scrambling To keep my feet flat on the ground”

i painted it, painted what sounded exactly like scrambling, like a shuffle, like kicking with enough desperation for it to land on something, anything. didn’t post.

i thought of Children next: ”We Will Adore Our Children“, a text i published last November. the concepts that i wanted to pinpoint with it got shown, but i know i mostly i skirted along the edges there. a conversation i had about that work left me with a phrase that i’m still carrying now: “a backdoor for disgusting”. the vital subtlety of handling certain topics.

i didn’t want anything readable and i didn’t publish my first painting. i reread Children. i felt, once again, the funny kinship, closeness, understanding, dialogue with another piece.

“And if when I say I might fade like a sigh if I stay You minimize my movement anyway I must persuade you another way”

it’s comforting to find something to relate to especially if it’s this specific, and it’s heartbreaking to not really, actually have a human connection with that. some sad isolation. i wrote this text.

i adore what the song accomplishes in its 10 minutes. there’s a repetition that links the whole story, the song starts with it:

“I saw the gap again today”

a scene that gets mentioned three times, three times that can be compared. the first one carrying the setting tone, “how things are”. the second one:

“I'm slipping back into the gap again”

escalates. still the same, the same familiar scene, but this time it just so happens to grow into an outward fight. the way the music supports this feeling is what hooked me in the first time: it feels and sounds like a fight. no break in the middle, it keeps going and going till it ends and leaves you to pick up the pieces. 

then picking up the pieces… no time is wasted here. it could be called a moment of quiet on which to build a climax, something to contrast with and… yeah, but what i adore here is the way it plays into the concept as well. putting this quiet passage right after a fight; it feels like a journey, the one that is made with one’s feelings. yet another “this can’t go on like this” but here it somehow actually leads somewhere. very hollow, tired out stating of the facts:

“You put me somewhere I don't wanna be”

coming to the first conclusion:

“Never want to see that place again”

notice how the music changes through this, how the tone changes with this conclusion. how the tone stresses that it is a conclusion, a decision made. good or bad doesn’t even matter comparatively, what matters is that it is change. something to move from. something that promises that the next time you see the gap, you’ve already given in to something, accepted that it won’t stay the same. then it comes the third time:

“Saw that gap again today Managed to push myself away And you, as well, my dear”

how the music comes with, how it sounds joyous, how it feels almost excited to do something different, something new, something that isn’t repeating the same old rotten pattern. when the next phrase comes sounding like a prayer, it delivers the cemented decision: 

“And if when I say I might fade like a sigh if I stay You minimize my movement anyway I must persuade you another way”

what gets to me the most here is the wording: it’s the “if” that i didn’t even notice the first couple times around.

i can’t tell if it really is that big or if it’s something subjective, but… it seals the deal for me. it’s written with so much awareness of how these things go: it makes the whole passage a logical argument.

it’s not “you do this and that, and i need to do something”. it’s not, because really, what does it matter if “you do this and that”? you’ve done it forever and i’ve taken it before, i don’t “need” to do anything. see the pattern? see how easily it slips away, the sympathy for the self? the hint of an idea that you don’t “need” to take it?

this is what the “if” changes, though. it frames the whole thing as an argument, as a logical conclusion, as a fact. and feelings and personal needs don’t matter, but facts can. this is how you trick yourself into bettering the situation, you say: “IF you do this and that regardless of my plea, THEN i do something”. it’s a subtle little thing in the wording but presenting it as an “action and logical, planned response” rather than “action and my reaction, my, god forbid, feelings” is what sells to the mind that is used to coping with an inescapable situation. or previously inescapable. it’s nothing factual, nothing actually different in the meaning behind the packaging of words, but it’s how convincing, proving things to yourself can be.

whatever, there goes the revelation! it’s sung, it resonates and rises above the gloom and the rot, and does so in a beautifully realistic way: not by anything kind and loving but by admitting that it’s all about pushing and shoving and pushing.

it is dear to me how this idea is directly faced, how the song breaks out into something living, colourful, pushes through with survival. how the shape that this survival takes is violence.

“Remember I'll always love you As I claw your fucking throat away” 

how anger is a sign of healing. how anger is a fucking sign of healing. this concept keeps blowing me away still.

i love understanding what has pained me in the idea of “acceptance, forgiving and moving on”: it’s the fact that often enough people skip the anger in the process. no, people expect others to skip the anger and that skewers the whole thing, turns it into a different beast altogether. 

going from a place of being hurt, having that hurt, internalizing that hurt and the reasoning for it… what would happen if the anger stage was skipped? if you were told “forgive them and move on, it’ll be easier” without having first reached the anger, the stage where a person realizes that the whole experience was, like, no-go?

possibly there will be no realizing altogether. outwardly or inwardly, the blame will stick and be the main feeling behind the experience. it will be internalized with nothing to balance it out. it will be cemented in the shape of the one that hurt, but it will no longer be a separate being, it’ll live in you. anger is the barrier, the understanding that it has never been even, that one side fucking HURT the other. whether it ever gets to peace with the other is not even that important, peace with self is. switching the self-blame for anger is, any day.

i believe the song celebrates it, but most importantly, it shows how it is a cycle. now it’s in you, the pushing and shoving, now it’s the first response to anything remotely resembling a threat. it’s the price, no, not price, it’s the consequence of having made it out.

i love how this song has the whole journey in it. i love this song, i love it as an art piece. i love how the concept for it was put together with the medium, how it managed to say all that and make it feel like what it was saying.

i also love that the theme goes through the entire album and other songs add to the picture. if “Pushit” shows coming into anger/survival, then “H.” definitely addresses the cost of that reaction. and it does that with so much empathy that it breaks my heart a little. but yeah, the struggle goes on and whatever, there are like other Tool albums out there…

[whenisitenoughtrees]

look me up and define me (please remind me) (part 1/2)

He is whatever puts Thomas first. But that changes so often that he doesn’t know what he is beyond that.

He is Janus when he is alone, but only when he is not someone else.

Janus has never minded the fact that his identity is fluid, ever-changing. He acts as whoever Thomas needs him to be in the moment, and if that means he doesn't know much about himself as an individual, well. It's never been a problem for him.

Until he gives away his name, and then it very much is.

Chapter Warnings: identity issues, non-graphic panic attack, references to self-harm

Chapter Word Count: 4,493

Pairings: platonic TDLAMPR, implied Moceit (though you don’t have to read into it)

Notes: This fic started as a oneshot but ended up being more than 10k, so I’m dividing it into two parts, the second of which will hopefully be posted Friday. Also, this fic as a whole was inspired by the awesome ‘The Record Player Song’ animatic by @turbovickii, which, 10/10 would recommend if you haven’t seen it

Chapter one podfic by @titheinironside

(part 2)

(masterpost w/ ao3 links)

Janus isn’t his name.

Or rather, it isn’t, and it is. He’s never had to think too hard about it before, has never had to struggle for the words to put it all into context. Janus is his name, yes, the name he chose for himself back when Thomas was young and they were all bright-eyed, foolish children, and his preferred moniker wasn’t Deceit but rather something entirely different.

Janus. Roman god of beginnings and of ends, of transitions, of doorways, of passages that lead on and on. God of time, and god of duality. He thought it a fitting descriptor for himself; he is sweet lies, lies that soothe and lies that heal, and he is bitter truths, truths that no one wants to hear, that he must keep to himself lest they do more harm than any lie could. If that is not duality, he doesn’t know what is.

But he is, at his core, whatever Thomas needs him to be. He is fluid in a way that the others are not, able to shift and change depending on the day, depending on what Thomas requires of him at any given moment. He is Thomas’ ability to lie, but only when it benefits him; when a truth would do the most good, he suggests that, instead. He wants Thomas to succeed, to do whatever it takes to better himself, to pursue his ambitions, but only until he pushes himself too far, works himself into exhaustion or questions himself too much. Then, he is the voice that tells him to relax, to take time for himself, to put his health above his goals.

He is whatever puts Thomas first. But that changes so often that he doesn’t know what he is beyond that.

He plays the part of the others, too, whenever it is necessary. They are used to it by now, so used to it that by the time he reveals himself to Thomas, they react with anger rather than surprise or alarm. But what they do not know is that for every time they catch him out, there are five more times he goes undetected, slipping in amongst them, a snake in the grass. He mediates arguments as Morality when the real Patton is nowhere to be found, uses Logic to pull them down to earth when Logan is too buried in his books and theories to realize there’s an emotional problem, uses Creativity’s bravado to advocate for Thomas’ dreams when Roman is busy dreaming himself.

He keeps the mindscape running smoothly. And when he is not one of them, when he wears his default skin, scales and all, he is known to them as Deceit. Nothing more, nothing less. A convenient villain, uniting them all in their distaste. It makes him sick, sometimes, their naivety, the knowledge that without him here, they would run Thomas into the ground all while professing their love for him. But he swallows it down, hides it within himself with all the other truths he hoards, and he carries on another day.

He is Janus when he is alone.

But even that is not true, not really. He is Janus in the snatched moments he has for himself, when there is no pressing crisis, nothing for Thomas to be doing or saying or making, when he can sit alone in his room with the jukebox crooning soft melodies. He is Janus, but only sometimes, because even alone, he draws on the traits of the others. Logan, when he needs a clearer perspective; Roman, when he needs an ego boost; Virgil, to indulge in his worries; Remus, to indulge in darker thoughts; Patton, when he is feeling weak and lonely and wanting, when he wraps his arms around himself and wants to pretend that he does not stand in solitude.

He is Janus when he is alone, but only when he is not someone else.

The Roman god Janus has two faces, one to look to the past and the other to the future. None to look to the present, and that is how he feels, most days, like there is none of him-as-Janus present at all, like every face that he wears is a false one, and his namesake has only two but he has far more than that.

He’s not sure he even knows who Janus is, besides the name, what he likes and what he dislikes, how he feels and how he acts when there is no pressure on him to keep Thomas well. He likes chess and philosophy, but he only ever plays as Logan, only uses that knowledge when he’s wearing the necktie and glasses, because otherwise he can’t get anyone else to listen. He dislikes surprises and stupidity and the ever-present knowledge that nothing in Thomas’ life is guaranteed, due to a society that actively works against most of its members, but are those his concerns or Virgil’s? He only indulges in stronger emotions when he takes Patton’s form, so who’s to say that the feelings are Janus’ at all?

And he almost never gets to act when there is no pressure on him to keep Thomas well. That pressure is always there, has always been there. Without it, who would he be?

In the end, Janus is just a name. Whether it’s his or not is difficult to say. And that has never been a problem for him; he exists to benefit Thomas, after all. He doesn’t feel the need for a solid identity beyond that, not like the others do. He only picks a name in the first place because everyone else does, because Creativity-that-is-Remus needs someone he can look up to, because Anxiety-that-becomes-Virgil needs to know that not everyone is out to get him. It’s a display of trust, in a way, but trust only leads to disaster, to angry two-toned words and pounding footsteps and a blank space in the wall where his best friend once lived, so really, what is the point?

Janus is his name. But he’s not particularly attached to it, and he’s content to leave it there.

But then, there is the callback, and the wedding. But then, he fights for Thomas’ desires harder than he has ever fought before, and when that turns sour, he returns to fight for Thomas’ failing mental health. He does so as Logan, and as Deceit when Logan’s form no longer suits the goal, and he’s not expecting them to listen but he still tries.

But then, everything changes.

But then, Thomas says, I don’t know that we are, and he believes for a moment that he is imagining all of this, that he has slipped into Roman’s face and has allowed a daydream to get just a bit out of hand, because to hear those words out of Thomas’ mouth is something he has fantasized about for so long.

But then, he has a chance at acceptance, a chance to change it all so that he no longer has to struggle to make his voice heard, a chance that all depends on using the right words at this exact moment, and in the split second before he begins to tug his glove from his hand, he panics. Because he is Deceit right now, and the amount of sincerity that he has allowed to spill from his lips has already been taxing. What else can he possibly say to earn their consideration, to earn a place among them?

And then he remembers the importance they place on names. From there, the decision is practically made for him.

He says the words as if on autopilot, an odd mixture of nervous and numb, and he has to check to make sure he has not accidentally shifted into Virgil’s hoodie rather than Deceit’s capelet as his fear thrums though him. Roman laughs, and he lashes out in return, though more due to offense at the idea that the name is stupid rather than because of a personal connection to it.

When Patton says it back to him, he can’t stop himself from flinching, just a bit, can’t stop the widening of his eyes, the stilling of every muscle. He should be glad, he thinks, because this shows that Patton, at least, is willing to give him a chance, is willing to let him in just a little. But all he can feel is a pervasive sense of wrongness, because he isn’t supposed to be Janus here. Here, he is Deceit, is acting as Deceit. Janus is for isolated, personal moments, and for the life of him, he cannot change that, cannot draw out what little he knows of Janus while there are others here, while Thomas is here.

It’s all wrong. And it only gets worse.

Patton wants to spend time with him, after that. Mostly, he’s glad to accept, is glad of the opportunity to endear himself, to cultivate a relationship that once would have been impossible. Patton invites him to bake, to watch movies, to play games, even to debate morality with him, and he does, and he finds himself enjoying both the activities and the company. But every so often, he catches himself, happiness curdling and souring, because these are all things he enjoys when he is Patton, when he is filling in the cracks that form in Morality’s absence. He has never done any of this as Janus, and every time Patton calls him by the name, he feels dirty, feels like the worst kind of imposter, because in these moments, he doesn’t feel as though he is acting as Janus so much as acting like a reflection of Patton himself, and if Patton knew that, knew that the person he thought he was befriending barely exists at all, he would be devastated.

For some reason, he thinks he would do just about anything to avoid that. For the sake of Thomas’ mental health, surely, and not because he cares about Patton as an individual. To do that would be to open a door that he wouldn’t know how to close. Better to leave it shut and locked, and to ignore the fact that the knob is already turning.

“You okay there, kiddo?” Patton asks him. “You seem a little distracted.”

He manages a smile, and he knows it comes off well, because that is what he is practiced in. “Perfectly fine,” he says. “Sorry about that.” He sniffs the air. “This batch definitely won’t burn if you leave it in any longer.”

And Patton gasps and bustles around, pulling the cookies from the oven, the redirection working perfectly.

Leave it shut and locked? Please. The door is open, he thinks. Perhaps it would be a disservice to both of them to pretend otherwise. Because he finds himself almost unbearably fond of Patton, these days, and guilty for feeling so. As soon as he has a moment alone, he has to shift into Patton’s form to get his emotions under control, to abate the itching tightness of his skin. Deceit isn’t made for these pleasant interactions, and Janus is about as tangible as mist, but he can hardly be Patton in front of Patton, so he wears a mask of scales and speaks past the acid burning in his throat.

The smart thing to do would be to stop. To retreat, to cut off these developing ties before they can do him any more harm. But for all the cognitive dissonance this is causing him, he doesn’t want to lose Patton’s friendship, his smiles and warmth. He’s not sure how he used to live without it.

The door is open so wide that it might as well be hanging off its hinges.

He can grin and bear it when it’s just Patton. For a while, it seems as though it will remain that way. Roman, at least, doesn’t want to see him, and when Virgil isn’t avoiding him, their interactions are far from cordial. And when he is tired, he can sink back into the dark side of the mindscape where Remus awaits him, and Remus, at least, has never expected him to be anything that he is not. He never calls him by his name, either, instead blurting out whatever obscene nickname pops into his head in the moment.

He has never been so glad of that.

But then, Logan invites him to play a game of chess, and for a full three minutes, he is overjoyed, because he loves to play chess, and Logan is the only one who could possibly give him a challenge, and the fact that Logan voluntarily wants to spend time with him is nothing short of amazing. The euphoria lasts until the board is set and they are facing each other, and he catches himself just before shapeshifting into Logan’s form. And he remembers: he has only ever played chess as Logan, learned to play in the first place so as to better imitate Logan. He has played against everyone in the mindscape but Logan at one point or another, providing a distraction and logical advice when Logan himself was unavailable, and none of them were any the wiser as to just who commanded the opposing set of pieces.

Except Remus, but he just thought it was funny.

It is all he can do to focus on the game. All he can do to put up a decent showing, though he loses. All he can do to prevent himself from mirroring Logan’s mannerisms by mistake, out of habit.

He doesn’t know how to do this as Janus. His face is frozen, but his hands are fidgeting, seeking release. Normally, he would copy Logan’s calm, his professionalism, but he can’t do that when Logan is sitting right across from him, sure to notice anything odd or out of place.

“It was a good game, Janus,” Logan says when they are done, and he wants to scream, because Janus doesn’t belong here either, doesn’t belong sitting by a chessboard. That has always been Logan’s place, and it disturbs him somewhere deep inside to be playing Logan’s game, wearing Deceit’s face, being called Janus. So much so that once the game is completed, he retreats to his room and stays there for a week, refusing to answer the door.

It should help. He is not Janus often, but when he is, it is here, in the sanctuary of his own room, his own bed.

It doesn’t help. If anything, it unsettles him even more, because the lines that hold his identities apart have been blurred so far that he spends the entire week uncomfortable in his skin, unsure of who he’s trying to be at any given moment. He shifts into the others, stares at their reflections in the mirror, but that doesn’t make things any better.

He needs help. He has to admit that, at this point. And there’s only one other he can think of to go to, only one other who might have experienced anything close to this tailspin.

He knocks on Virgil’s door.

Virgil opens it promptly enough, though his expression morphs from neutral to pissed off immediately upon seeing him. “Fuck off,” he snaps, and slams the door shut in his face.

He knocks again. And when he gets no reply, he keeps knocking, knocking and knocking and knocking.

“Don’t worry, I definitely couldn’t do this all day,” he calls airily, and Virgil jerks the door open again, face now firmly set in incandescent rage.

“What the fuck do you want?” he spits, all nerves and anger, all fight and no flight at all.

“Can I talk to you?” he asks.

Virgil stares at him, wordless, eyes narrow. And then, he holds the door open, allowing him to step inside.

“Make it quick,” he bites out, closing the door behind him. “What the hell do you think you and I have to discuss?”

He raises an eyebrow at that, because really? They have everything to discuss, and the longer they put it off, the more difficult it will be to start. Their relationship as it stands now is untenable; left to rot much longer, and it will begin to actively harm Thomas, which is something he absolutely cannot allow.

But that is not what he is here for.

“For both of our sakes, I won’t answer that,” he says. “I just have a question for you.”

Virgil glares. In his hoodie sleeves, his hands are balled into shaking fists. It hurts in an odd sort of way, to see how much he hates him. “Then ask it and leave,” he says, his voice threaded with trepidation. He already knows that he won’t like what he hears.

Well. That makes two of them. He knows he isn’t going to like asking this question.

“After you first told the others your name,” he says, “how long did it take for you to like hearing it?”

He has the dubious pleasure of seeing shock, pure and unfiltered, pass across Virgil’s face.

“How long--” Virgil starts. “What are you even--? I don’t know, I've never thought about it. I… I never disliked hearing it. I mean, I told them in the first place because I trusted them.” A barb, though not an undeserved one. “It was weird, but I wouldn't have told them if I didn’t want them to know it. Why are you asking me that?”

It’s exactly the answer he didn’t want. He knew that Virgil wouldn’t understand what he is going through, that Virgil, at his core, is exactly what and who he appears to be, unlike him. But he hoped that there would have been an adjustment period, at least, that there was a time when Virgil, so used to being called by his function, deemed the monster under the bed, would have found it disturbing or at least unnerving to be named so casually.

“Absolutely no reason at all,” he says, and turns back to the door. “Thank you for your time.”

“Nuh-uh.” Virgil catches him by the arm, and he freezes. “You’re not leaving.”

He breathes out slowly, tries not to show his growing fear. The effects of Virgil’s room are beginning to take root, but in his heart of hearts, he knows that’s not the only reason for the erratic pounding of his pulse.

“Oh?” he says, and fights to keep the tremor from his voice. “I thought you wanted me to ask and leave? Do continue with the indecision, it never ceases to delight me.”

“No,” Virgil says, voice hard. “You don’t get to do that. Not until you tell me what the hell you’re talking about.”

He should never have come here. He draws on Deceit like a cloak, like armor to protect him, armor woven of sarcasm and misdirection and misplaced confidence. Be what he expects, and he will never see anything different; that is a lesson he learned years ago. But the persona is shaky, muted by his confusion and by the bleed-through of every other guise he’s ever adopted. To give ground in front of Virgil is like diving into shark-infested waters with an open wound, but the smoothness he seeks to emulate slips through his grasp.

“It’s a question I need answered,” he says. “No more than that.”

“Bullshit.” Virgil tugs on his arm, and despite himself, he turns his head to face him. There is something odd flickering behind the irritation in Virgil’s eyes, something strange in the tilt of his head that he cannot place. It puts him ill at ease; to be unable to read Virgil is inviting danger, especially in Virgil’s own territory. “If you don’t like them saying your name, then why did you tell them?”

Caught.

He can feel all the blood draining from his face. His vision tunnels, focusing on Virgil’s face, on the expression that is anger and something that cannot possibly be concern, because they burned their bridges far too thoroughly for that. His head throbs, his breathing hitching, and he knows that he needs to leave, now, before he spirals further, because showing weakness in front of another is reprehensible but far, far worse if that someone is Virgil--

“Janus!” Virgil says, alarm threading through his voice, and that is absolutely the last straw. He rips his arm from Virgil’s grasp and sinks directly out, falling through the mindscape until he is in his own room, gasping for breath. His pulse races, his heartbeat roaring in his ears, and when he turns to look in the mirror, he finds that he has wrapped himself in Virgil’s form as his fears threaten to overwhelm him, hoodie and eyeshadow and all.

He curls up on the floor and tries to remember how to breathe.

It takes a long time for him to calm himself, and when he manages to look up again, it is Patton staring back at him. He likes being Patton, likes it more than being any of the others, because Patton is warm and soft and for all his flaws, fundamentally good in a way that used to repulse him but no longer does. Being Patton feels like the closest thing to a hug that he will ever get.

He forces himself to shift again, forces himself into Deceit before stumbling from his room and into the commons. Remus is laying on the couch, half-naked, watching some gory anime and eating ice cream straight out of the carton. He pauses for a moment, watching him, taking comfort in the familiarity; everything changes, but Remus, at least, is a constant, like the north star if the north star showed its love by threatening violence at random intervals. For the briefest of seconds, he shifts into Remus and then back to Deceit again, and for once, feels steady.

Remus takes notice of him eventually, sitting up and baring his teeth in a grin.

“How’d it go with Virgey?” he asks.

He decides not to question how he knew where he was.

“Right, because I want to talk about it,” he grumbles. “Can’t you tell?” He strides over to the couch, keeping as much dignity intact as possible as he shoves at Remus’ legs until he moves them, providing room for him to sit. “What are we watching?”

“Parasyte,” Remus offers, but there is an odd tone in his voice. When he looks, he sees that Remus is watching him now, rather than the screen, and something in the strangely level gaze is discomfiting.

“What?” he snaps.

“Nothing,” Remus says, raising his hands. “Just, are you good? I mean, we can switch it to something you wanna watch, if you want. Like, uh, that one show where everyone’s dead? You like that one, right?”

“The Good Place,” he mutters. “No, that’s alright. You’d be bored to tears.”

Remus frowns, but doesn’t respond. It takes another full episode-- he thinks; they must be in the middle of the plot, because he has absolutely no idea what’s going on-- for him to speak again, which is strange in and of itself. A quiet Remus never bodes well, because a quiet Remus means that either he is hurting, or he is seriously contemplating hurting someone else. No jokes, no disgusting gags, just a desire to inflict pain for pain’s sake. It doesn’t happen often, but it is never pleasant when it does. All too often, it is Remus himself who becomes the victim of these tendencies, Remus who tears into his own flesh rather than harming another.

But then, the silence is broken, and he almost wishes that it weren’t.

“If something was wrong, you’d tell me, right, Dee?” Remus asks, and he swallows, hard.

“Of course,” he lies, and of course it is a lie, a lie hissed out between his teeth, because there is nothing that Remus can do about this, so what would be the point in telling him about it? Remus cares, even if he shows it in odd ways, and it would only hurt him to be presented with a problem that he can do nothing to solve.

“Good,” Remus says, settling back in. “‘Cause you know, if anybody was hurting you, I’d smash their skull in. Like a watermelon. Bits going everywhere. Hey, have you ever seen those videos of people crushing watermelons with their thighs? Do you think I could get someone to do that to my skull?” He shoves a spoonful of ice cream into his mouth, speaking around it. “I bet it’d be real juicy.”

“I bet,” he murmurs. He doesn’t have the energy to respond further.

What is he supposed to say? He has no doubt that he could set Remus on any of the others easily; all it would take is a sentence, a white lie, and perhaps not even that. Oh, so-and-so was a dick to me, Remus, don’t you think they would like to be introduced to your mace? Remus would jump at the chance for a bit of sanctioned mayhem.

But no one is hurting him but himself. He wonders what Remus would do if he told him that. Could he get Remus to bash his head in, to hit him until whatever is broken in his brain comes loose? Or until he can’t feel anything at all anymore, and wouldn’t that just solve every one of his problems? No more confusion, no more angst, no more churning in his stomach whenever someone calls him by a name or a label that feels no more like his than any other.

The idea is more attractive than it should be.

He excuses himself not too much later, and Remus’ eyes bore into his back as he returns to his room, telling himself that it’s a strategic retreat, that he’s not running away.

He knows it for the lie it is, little though he wants to admit it to himself. And as he stands there in the center of his room, trying to decide whether it is worth it to continue with the day or if he should go to bed now, avoid the world for a little longer, his reflection in the mirror catches his eye, and he turns to stare at it. A face stares back, and he supposes that the face must be his, but he doesn’t feel like it. It looks as though it is mocking him, taunting him with his unreality.

He shudders and turns away, but the name rings in his head. Janus Janus Janus. A person he should know but that he can no longer find, even here. Once his room was a safe haven, but now it feels like a prison, trapping him between identities that he no longer knows how to escape.

He has his back to the mirror, but the reflection is still there, he knows, and a shiver creeps down his spine, filling him with something like anger and something like fear.

He turns off the lights.

Writing Taglist: @just-perhaps @the-real-comically-insane @jerrysicle-tree @glitchybina @psodtqueer @mrbubbajones

[feralphoenix]

HOWMST BELL THE CAT? - A treatise on one aspect of how the Pale King sealed the Radiance

sup hollow knight fandom, i’m back with the picante takes again after having Noticed A Thing.

as with my previous essays i’ll put this guy up on dreamwidth later for accessibility purposes, since my layout text may be too small for high-res pc users. i will attach that in a reblog at a later point.

CONTENT WARNINGS FOR TONIGHT’S PROGRAM: This essay discusses canon-typical body horror and bodily boundary violations, with some side mentions of colonialism.

all game screencaps are mine. the screencap of the wiki is from the “developer notes” (style guide) section of the “cut content” page.

ALSO: if youre from a christian cultural upbringing (whether currently practicing, agnostic/secular, or atheist now), understand that some of what i’m discussing here may challenge you. if thinking thru the implications of this particular part of hollow knight worldbuilding/lore is distressing for you, PLEASE only approach this essay when youre in a safe mindset & open to listening, and ask the help of a therapist or anti-racism teacher/mentor to help you process your thoughts & feelings. just like keep in mind that youre listening to an ethnoreligiously marginalized person and please be respectful here or wherever else youre discussing this dang essay, ty

HOWMST BELL THE CAT? - A treatise on one aspect of how the Pale King sealed the Radiance

We understand more or less how the Pale King’s plan was supposed to work. Stuff Radiance into a no-thoughts-head-empty and silent Pure Vessel to trap, isolate, and silence her, both putting an end to the Infection and killing her for good. Stick that vessel in the Black Egg, which harnesses Void BS to both keep the vessel alive indefinitely and to cover Hallownest (and its neighbors) in a time-defying stasis so that the Pale King could successfully hoard his favorite shiny FOREVER, threatened by nothing. Then put a seal on the Black Egg to prevent anyone from getting inside and harming said vessel while it’s strung up and helpless. And THEN, put protective seals on the anchors (the Dreamers) to the Black Egg seal to protect them from any external harm: The stasis means the Dreamers won't die of old age or starvation.

All in all, a pretty foolproof plan!

...except that the Dreamers are still vulnerable to having their minds breached with the moths’ magic... and the Pale King failed to take into account that his Pure Vessel was a person actually and the amount of toxic stress his training/upbringing put on them made them REALLY POORLY SUITED FOR THEIR JOB... and also that killing 99% of his million children and turning the Abyss into a landfill for baby corpses would take enough of an emotional toll on his wife and #1 enabler the White Lady that she would walk out on him, ensuring he’d only ever have one shot at this whole deal...

Basically it’s the sort of plan that an emotionally constipated, low-empathy sort of guy who pours all his points into INT and has a big fat zero for WIS might think is foolproof. It has big holes in it that the Pale King did not consider to be big holes until he got owned by the various consequences of his actions and fell down said big holes, making the shocked pikachu face all the while. Rip in die, my guy.

Anyway, there’s a lot of incidental information scattered about the game that gives us more insight into the stages of TPK’s plan. Looking at Monomon’s notes in the Archive suggests that she was probably involved in designing the Black Egg; the hidden room in the Weavers’ den points to their being the ones to blueprint the Dreamer seal; the White Palace’s hidden rooms reveal both TPK’s morbid fascination with the Void and his mea culpa wrt his motives and the Path of Pain is certainly suggestive of a lot of things. The White Lady tells us straight out that she walked out on the Pale King because she wanted no part in a second vessel batch, but how TPK didn’t handle that is only revealed via map design and some incidental dialogue from the Old Stag.

This stuff presents us with, if not a full picture, then at least a decent connect-the-dots of certain aspects of crater politics and Pale Court drama at the time, and how exactly TPK’s plan came together.

But there is still one glaring question that these cookie crumbs do not provide us an answer to:

Who shall bell the cat?

How did TPK et al manage to stuff Radiance into Hollow in the first place?

This is the subject of a lot of memes and jokes within the fandom because it's so absurd. Radiance fuckin hates that dude! She’s probably gonna be pretty wary of him considering how he stole her people in the first place! And considering the anti-colonialism slant of the writing - beyond the general sympathetic view Team Cherry gives of each indigenous bug society, Seer makes it very clear that Radiance has very good reason to take violent action against Hallownest - the answer is probably not something like “she’s just that stupid” or “she rolled a crit fail”.

Well... I have an idea of how TPK managed to get Radiance in there. It raises about as many questions as it answers, mind, but it may be someplace to start.

[desc: the hollow knight's entry in the hunter’s journal. top text/ghost’s comment reads: “Fully grown Vessel, carrying the plague’s heart within its body.” bottom text/hunter’s comment says: “The old King of Hallownest... he must have been desperate to save his crumbling little world. The sacrifices he imposed on others... all for nothing.”]

Here we have Hollow’s bestiary entry. Most of what we’re concerned with here is the top text, which says the seal has literally trapped Radiance inside their body. (First of all, ew, TPK.)

We already knew Radiance is literally actually inside Hollow, though: The Infection is leaking out of their body, and to get to fight Radiance, Ghost has to go traipsing into their sibling’s mind. So what’s significant about that here?

[desc: screencap of the outside of the black egg temple, post-infected crossroads. there are large infection blobs in the foreground and background, connected to each other by veins that come from inside the temple.]

The infection blobs are weird and get weirder if you kill enough Lightseeds for the Hunter to tell you their origin story, i.e. that the literal actual sun has been having a very long bad day and cried a lot, and some of the liquid coalesced into living flesh, and some of that living flesh took on a mind of its own to become Lightseeds. (Hollow Knight is a WILD place.)

Lightseeds are Radiance’s accidental children and share a lot of her traits: They are harmless creatures that try to avoid conflict if possible but if pushed will get creative and find ways to fight regardless of their physical limitations. (For the Lightseeds this involves hiding inside Broken Vessel’s corpse and puppeting it around to try to stab you.) They even have her same distinctive yell. And according to the Hunter, they’re born from the infection blobs. These enemies only ever appear in the Ancient Basin, which both Radiance and the Void have ransacked, and in the Infected Crossroads.

The infection blobs are connected to and sort of a weird extension of Radiance because the Infection itself is sort of a weird extension of Radiance. In the game’s internal style guide Team Cherry explains that the Infection started as an accident, not her original intention but what happened when Hallownest tried to block her out.

[desc: screencap from the wiki of style notes attached to seer that describe a sketch of radiance’s finalized backstory. text reads: “The moth tribe were (perhaps) descended from Radiance. However, the King convinced them somehow to seal Radiance away. I guess so he could rule Hallownest with his singular vision, as a god/monarch with no other gods. The moths sealed Radiance away by forgetting about her. Hallownest was born and flourished. However, the memory of Radiance lingered (eg [sic] the statue at hallownest’s crown) and soon she began to reappear in dreams and starting [sic] exerting influence. The King and the bugs of Hallownest resisted this memory/power and it started to manifest as the Infection. Thus the first attempt to seal Radiance failed, and the King had to try another method - the Vessel.” emphasis mine.]

Some fans have posited the blobs as deposits of pupa juice, but given Team Cherry's description of the Infection’s origins I don’t know how likely that is. Since the Void also sticks its squamous tentacles into things via veiny looking things and the Nightmare’s Heart has similar veiny nonsense in the Nightmare Realm, I wonder if it isn’t just a Meddly God Shit thing in general.

Whatever the case, the blobs are very much connected to/a part of Radiance.

And when you’re hanging around them, you will notice two things: They pulse like they’re part of a circulatory system, and you can hear Radiance's heartbeat emanating from them.

[desc: screencap of the game’s title screen with the infected menu theme in use: a glowing orange ball at the center of a lot of black tendony webbing.]

Let’s also think of the Infected menu theme, which you unlock after getting either of the endings where Ghost takes over from Hollow and absorbs Radiance out of them. Ghost is infected and then sealed inside the Black Egg in Hollow's place. It’s suggested by the animation’s staging that Radiance briefly struggles to get out of Ghost after absorbed but is ultimately stuck in them, at which point the seal is reestablished.

If you haven’t used the Infected menu theme yourself, the... interesting thing about it is that it moves organically. The light ball expands and contracts - y’know, sort of like a living organ - and so does the black webby stuff around it.

Also, Radiance’s heartbeat is included in the theme's ambiance.

[desc: hollow’s bestiary entry again]

To cut to the chase, this part of Hollow’s bestiary entry that says “the plague’s heart”? I don’t think that’s just Ghost/Team Cherry being poetic. I think there’s a good chance it’s LITERAL.

I think TPK is the sort of person who could cram a native woman’s literal living beating heart inside his own child’s body so they can use it as... say, a focus to absorb and trap her mind/spirit inside their body, too. Mr. No Cost Too Great is capable of a lot in the name of keeping other people’s claws off his Big Shiny kingdom. This is kind of his whole brand.

But also, like, yuck.

This fits the worldbuilding too; generally speaking Hollow Knight is Body Horror City. Also there’s the case of Grimm: While he and Radiance are loose counterparts at best with WILDLY disparate outlooks and ethoses, his existence serves as precedent that a Higher Being’s heart specifically can be separate from the rest of them.

As I said before, though, this DOES raise as many questions as it answers. If this is another piece in the puzzle of how TPK belled the cat, we’re now left wondering how he got Radiance’s heart to use as Hollow's focus to begin with.

We know he has access to the Dream Realm because that’s ultimately where he hid when Hollow’s seal failed, but who did he send to do the stealing and how did they get away with it? (TPK certainly wouldn’t have gone; his own life’s the one cost too great for him to willingly pay.) Was Radiance’s heart separate from her like the Nightmare’s Heart, or was it a part of her body? (I think the latter is more likely just from her personality; Grimm’s hidden heart makes sense because of how he keeps even his own servants at arm’s length emotionally, whereas Radiance is all heart all the time. I think this makes more sense with their equal opposites schtick too. But this would make for a WAY riskier mission.)

I can imagine all kinds of possibilities. None of them are definitive, but the thing they have in common is that they are all Awful... and how on-brand that is for Hollow Knight as a whole is, maybe, the most persuasive argument for It’s Literally Actually Her Real Physical Heart there could be.

[talks-refined]

Why azula, in my opinion, shouldn’t have had a redemption arc

i know it’s a complicated subject in this fandom but i wanted to give my two cents on it! i promise this isn’t me just going “booh evil”

okay so here’s the thing. the reason this is so complicated to answer is because it needs to ask pretty existential and complex questions like, can everyone be redeemed? how is evil made? how much of you is really only your upbringing? is it possible to be inherently bad? what do we fundamentally deserve? can you separate yourself completely from what you’ve been since birth and if so, what’s left?

now if you walked up to me and asked those questions, my answer would probably be something along the lines of “i don’t know, i just got here”. so that’s not what i’m gonna try to answer here

notice how i said “shouldn’t have had” and not “deserved”. i can’t tell you what azula “deserved”— probably a nicer childhood and therapy— but i can also say azula didn’t “deserve” anything. she’s a character, she’s words on paper, animation and voiced acting. there isn’t a real azula, an actual 14 years old child soldier out there awaiting to turn good. characters are story arcs, development, goals... what makes their value isn’t morals but what they bring to the story. and azula brings so much that, in my opinion, being ultimately redeemed would cheapen

first off: zuko. i’ve seen people say azula shouldn’t get a redemption arc because then her story would just be the same as zuko. it’s... not true, obviously, they’re different characters for a reason, but there is a part of truth i wanna point out here:

zuko and azula’s stories are diametrical opposites. two siblings, a boy and a girl, a firebending prodigy and one who’s average at the very best, one favored by his mother, the other favored by her father, one impulsive and one calculating. At the beginning of the story, one angry and unstable, the other calm and confident, one banished, desperate and without honor, and the other a princess and leader, acclaimed by all, who radiates regal energy.

“(ozai) said she was born lucky. he said i was lucky to be born. i don’t need luck, though. i don’t want it. i’ve always had to struggle and fight and that’s made me strong. that’s made me who i am.”

( zuko, to aang, season 1 finale )

that first sentence was the hook that told the viewers azula would come in the picture in season 2 and it tells you exactly the opposite dynamics their characters would develop on. azula is perfect, zuko is a failure is the message we’re supposed to get, at least that’s how they view each other and themselves, because that’s what their father taught them. but here’s the thing: luck is by definition elusive, and perfection is by definition unattainable. azula spends her life building herself around the vision that failure is inexcusable. because she’s at such a high place, because she’s so perfect, she can never fail, because she can’t and because she’s not allowed to. that mentality is bound to doom her, it’s inevitable. it’s a direct opposition to zuko, who builds himself in the fact that he’s failed so many times, that he made so many mistakes, that each taught him lessons. when zuko fails once, he knows he can get up because he was miserable for so long that it taught him he can survive anything. when azula fails once, she crumbles. azula is a cautionary tale of perfectionism, and cautionary tales can’t have happy endings. zuko’s approach of life has to reach a happy ending, because he’ll always look for one, it has to reach a redemption arc because he’s not scared of the mistakes he’s made in the past and he is always trying to better himself (the redemption comes when he realises he was trying to meet the wrong standards). azula’s approach of life guarantees a downfall because she’s convinced that failure is the end.

both their stories mirror each other, backwards. when we meet zuko, he’s failing, always, and when we leave him, he finally won. when we meet azula she’s winning, always, and when we leave her, she finally (by which i mean that it’s inevitable, not that it’s good) fails.

and there’s another reason (let’s pretend this is structured, okay?), that’s a little more complicated, and it has to do with ozai.

you know how ozai is barely present in the series? i’ve seen some people argue that azula is a better villain because she’s scarier or because we see her more. here’s the thing:

when you’re trying to portray something that’s really, really awful, it’s easier not show it. when you show something, in it’s entirety (in that context that would mean making ozai a deep, 3 dimensional character that we see develop) it’s... small. to define is to limit (- oscar wilde). when you only show small things tho, details, in movies it can be shadows, think the beginning of stranger things when you don’t see monsters, but can feel a threat, that’s when it can get scary as shit. because whatever limited, physical (or character-ial? is that a word) form you chose for the villain isn’t there in people’s minds, it’s only their own imagination trying to comprehend what you made them feel. and what people imagine based on only fear, or anger, is easily scarier than any five headed monster you can put onscreen.

that’s what ozai is: a looming threat. hell, i’m not even sure we see his face until season 3. he only has a handful of scenes. but i hate him. i hate him so much i could scream into a pillow and he’s so vicious it sends shivers down my spine. you know why? because of what he did to zuko and azula.

when you wanna keep your main villain mysterious, it’s good to give the audience characters that he’s interacted with. characters that he’s close to enough to have had an effect on them, so they can perceive a part of him. and boy did he have an effect on his children

( to be fair here: that idea and most of what i’m saying about it came from Overly Sarcastic Productions video on minions as a trope. it’s really good i love their whole channel, red is amazing)

season 1: meet zuko. he’s a sixteen years old. he’s a bad guy, but written so that you sympathise with him to a certain extent. then comes the Tragic Backstory Episode and you learn that he was challenged to a duel as a thirteen years old by his father after he spoke without permission in a meeting, begged for mercy, got half of his face burned off at the hands of his father, and was banished from his home to search for the avatar, who was dead as far as anyone knew.

now you’ve seen very little of ozai after this episode, but you’re ready to fight that guy, right? i know i am.

it gains a level of depth with azula. after being introduced to a character who is starving for his father’s love and approval, we’re introduced to a new character, who seemingly has all of that. azula is zuko’s ever winning rival. she has everything he wants, her honor, her title, her father’s favors.

(i think it’s worth noting that making your children compete for your love is already a red flag for noticing pieces of shit)

but it’s not enough. azula has everything, she is everything ozai values (cunning, strong, ruthless) and even then it’s not enough to please him. nothing will ever be good enough. and you see two children fighting, breaking themselves to please a father that is seemingly incapable of love, but keeps baiting them, giving them impossible standards to reach so they’ll always keep trying to please him.

okay, now you hate him, right?

but here’s the thing: because azula was a firebending prodigy, she got a taste of her father’s approval. he saw himself in her, where he saw too much of iroh and ursa in zuko. he was proud of her.

he was never proud of zuko. too soft, not strong, or fearless enough. because of that, zuko was never close to his dad. all he got was disdain. because of that, he forms bonds with other people (with his mother and uncle, at first) that expose him to another vision of life. and in exile, after chasing relentlessly, part of him is pushed to the realisation that he can live without his father’s approval. because he had to.

azula on the other hand, quickly becomes all ozai’s. from flashbacks you can clearly tell each of them gravitates around one parent, zuko around ursa and azula around ozai. even in her other relationships (zuko, tylee, mai...) she behaves according to what her father taught her, how to manipulate and hurt others

and ursa has flaws, god i’m not saying she doesn’t. that deserves a post in itself. but she values things like kindness, softness and love. ozai values strength, power and cunning. childhood is a formative stage: you often build yourself on the way you were raised. zuko had those conflicting values, because ursa, and ozai more indirectly, both taught him. but ozai isolated azula from other (adult) presences. this is more speculation but i really think it’s true, for what it’s worth. we rarely ever see ursa and azula interact, and when we do ursa is i think always? reprimanding azula for something that ozai taught her. it doesn’t seem like they spend enough time together for her to teach her daughter a better way.

that’s the thing. ozai’s “love”, or at least approval, was azula’s curse. zuko thinks it’s something he has to aim for, and later realizes it’s only ever going to be conditional and manipulative and stops trying. because he knew another way. but azula always lived with it. it isolated her, prevented her from ever finding a better way. his “love” is what did this to her

so yeah. none of this is saying that azula could never have been good. she was 14, she had a whole life ahead, i’m not some psychology master that can tell you exactly if it’s even possible to unlearn so much manipulation and abuse- i want to believe it is. but this is a story, and to me it’s the more nuanced, more interesting, better story they could’ve written. i think having those two very different and very paralleled stories, for a show that doesn’t shy away from complexity the way atla does, was very important.

while i was writing this, i showed it to a friend, who can speak for toxic households better than i can, and gave me a new perspective and the best conclusion: when in an abusive parental relationship, there’s always a tearing hesitation between ‘breaking free’ and doing what’s best for you, and staying loyal to your parent, someone you’re supposed to love and who’s supposed to love you. zuko is a message of hope ; azula is a warning

[lilywoood]

You’ve got a Mail 1/?

Hi guys I’m back from my little hiatus, I want to thank you for bearing with me, for your support all along that painful time of my life, I want to thank you for all the love you gave to my family and I, most of all I want to thank you for your patience so here it is my new project, my ideal crossover, here is the surprise I was preparing hoping that you’ll come to like it and that you’ll want to embark in this new journey. ♥️♥️♥️

If you like it and want to be tagged in futur part hit my askbox ♥️♥️.

Tag list : @felicitous-one, @translucent-bisexual @cherishingstydia @diazbuckleysworld @chrrlees @justsmilestuffhappens @comablog2 @hardychick89

Word count : 1543

Song : When the party’s over - Billy Eilish

“Hello my name is Evan “Buck” Buckley, I’m a 28 Virgo firefighter in LA and I recently was diagnosed with severe PTSD”

Buck sighed looking at his computer screen, like every nights for the past three weeks he was writing and deleting the same message, battling with himself about wether he should post it or not, wondering if it would really help, if they were really people out there who could understand him, support him, comfort him... and just like every nights he resigned himself, he deleted the message, closed his laptop and went straight to his fridge shoulder slumped and a tired chuckle escaping his lips, he knew better than hoping, hope was for dreamers, for idealists, for the old Buck, not for the new him, the adult Buck, Buck 2.5.

Throwing a quick glance at the clock above the fridge he noticed how it was a little close to 2a.m, he knew he should probably get back to sleep, try to get some rest so that he would be fully efficient, so that he wouldn’t give his team another reason to criticize him, another reason to blame him if something were to go wrong.

It was an impossible task, sleeping didn’t mean rest anymore, sleeping was akin to torture for Buck, sleeping meant reliving the bombing, it meant that his left leg will start to ache, would get numb, it meant he would start to feel the heaviness of the truck, that his ears would start to buzz, that his breathing would get harder because the aches were clogging his lungs, and then water would replace the aches, then he’ll hear himself scream Christopher’s name but Christopher never called back, he was never saved...

His eyes kept on going from his couch to the six pack in the fridge, he was tempted to drink it all, tempted to down it until he passed out, after all passing out was not far from sleeping except that they won’t be nightmares, flashes, screams, passing out meant a dreamless sleep and that what he needed, what he yearned...

He wasn’t thrilled to get to work that morning, his head was pounding thanks to a raging headache and his muscles were sore due to the accumulation of sleepless nights....

He tiredly went through his morning routine, first a little run around his block, then a quick shower followed by breakfast and swallowing all the pills his therapist prescribed, final with little to no motivation got ready for work, already knowing what was awaiting him at the firehouse, knowing that they were going to make assumptions of how bad he looked...

He knew he looked like shit he felt like it too, that didn’t meant it was okay for people to remind him how bad it was, still he could already hear them, hear the critics, the whispers, could feel the glares...

He didn’t want to go, didn’t want to face them but he had to, he had to prove them he deserved his place, prove them he was right, show them he wasn’t a petulant kid, he was a fighter, a survivor, a warrior.

It’s been two months since he’s been reinstated, two months since he was ostracized, two months of nasty comments, two months of cold shoulders, two months of isolation, two months of loneliness.

If he was his old self he would have been gutted by it, he would have tried to win them back, would have been crawling at their feet begging for forgiveness , but he wasn’t Buck 2.0 anymore, gone was his childlike naivety, gone was his tendency to forgive and forget, he was like them now, an adult, a grown up forged by deception and betrayal, set on fighting for what was right, for what he deserved, he wasn’t going to beg, wasn’t going to forgive, he was fighting now, proving himself and not letting any of them makes him doubt his decisions, his choices they could either accept it or get lost.

He was always the first to get to the station, it was a decision he’d made three days after his reinstatement, after he overheard some of his teammates protest over his comeback, after he heard Chim and Eddie joke about how he wouldn’t make it till the end of the shift, after he heard them bet on what his next injury would be and if this time he would finally understand that he wasn’t meant to be a firefighter.

He never felt as betrayed and hurt as that day, never felt so much hate, bitterness and resentment for people he loved, admired, cherished, it wasn’t their comments, their glares and badmouthing that made him detest them, it was how they turned his love and respect for them into animosity, loathing, venom.

He was well entranced in reorganizing the inventory when he heard them, the taunting sound of their laughers.

He felt a shiver run down his spine, he felt his heart clenching in his chest, he felt stupid and ridiculous, it was pathetic how much he missed and loathed them.

It was close to lunch break when Hen joined him in the room, he was recounting the numbers of gauzes when she taped him on his shoulder making him jump back .

-Hey Buck, she smiled taking place next to him, didn’t saw you up here, she mentioned.

-Yeah, he shrugged, I didn’t, he stammered, I didn’t really felt like eating today, he chuckled still focused on his counting.

-You know avoiding us....avoiding them, she frowned, it won’t fix things, she offered

-I heard them, Buck whispered facing her, I heard them joke about how I wasn’t fit for this job, he snorted, how I was a walking disaster.

-Oh Buck, she gasped, I’m sure they didn’t...

-They meant it Hen, he cut, they meant every damn words, he growled stopping himself when he noticed her flinching, sorry, he croaked, god I’m such a mess, he mumbled kneeling down.

-Hey no no, she interrupted him, no need, to apologize, she reassured him, Buckaroo, she called softly, I’m not mad at you, she grinned.

-I’m just... it’s just I’m cranky cause I didn’t sleep well, he croaked, sorry I took it on you.

-You’re still having nightmares , she remarked sadly.

-I’m kinda used to them now, he tried to joke.

-Did you told someone about it, she frowned.

He nodded his eyes fixed on some stain on the floor, Hen bumped their shoulders accepting his sudden silence.

-I go to therapy twice a week, he whispered, I have a treatment, he pursued, but sometimes even the strongest medications can’t keep the brain from remembering, he admitted.

-I take that therapy doesn’t help, she stated.

-It help more than I though, he objected, it’s just sometimes I’d like to talk about it with someone that could relate to me.

-Someone with who you could share it without feeling analyzed, she nodded in understanding, did you told this to your therapist, she asked.

-Yes, he chucked, she, he cleared his throat, actually she...she tried to get me to join some sort of online therapy group, he frowned, for people with PTSD.

-And that’s not your thing, she guessed, Buck shrugged not knowing how to explain himself, is it the internet thing or the fact that it’s with people you don’t know, she pursued.

-I assumed that if I needed to talk about it, you guys would have my back, he wheezed, but then it all went wrong, he sniffed, and the only person that could understand me, the only person I could talk with now hates my gut, he gasped, so tell me how can I rely on strangers when my own friends turned their back on me, he smiled tears rolling down his cheeks.

-I’m not turning my back on you, Hen declared hugging him tightly, you have me and Karen if you need, she offered, but Buck, she added, maybe you should give that online thing a shot until things get better here, she offered before the alarm went off forcing her to leave him behind.

The rest of his day went smoothly, the 118 spend their shift having calls after calls, meaning that he never had to cone across one of them much to his relief, still Hen words have been playing in his head all day, that’s how he found himself glaring at his computer screen once he got home.

He was reading over and over the message he was about to post, trying to come up with an excuse, with anything that could make him delete it once more, but when he closed his eyes to think about it all he could see were the flashes, the memories, the reminders, he needed help, he needed friends and support and if his surrogate family couldn’t give it to him then maybe he could find it in the comfort of strangers.

So with trembling fingers and an over beating heart he clicked send, he took the leap and was rewarded mere seconds later with a new message less shorter than his, and a bit warmer, he took it as a sign that his wish, his prayer has finally been heard.

“Hi Buck my name is Tyler Kennedy “TK” Strand, I’m a 26 Scorpio firefighter in Austin, I’m also struggling with PTSD among other things, so if you ever wanna chat don’t hesitate”

[astudyinfreewill]

Something Wicked This Way Comes: or, the Rising Dark in Ronan’s Arc

as some of you may know because i never shut up about witch!adam i’ve been convinced for a while now that adam would go darkside in the dreamer trilogy. what i did not predict however, was that ronan is probably headed down a dark path himself. i thought the basic premise of the trilogy would have ronan in danger from both the nightwash and the zed hunters (which obviously still applies; he is very much in danger from those things), and adam striking some sort of dark bargain in an attempt to protect him. but after reading cdth, i think things might be about to take a more sinister turn.

so here are some thoughts i’ve been poring over, under a cut for length. what can you expect? well, there’s rambling! there’s bullet points! there are lyrics-inspired section headings! (we have fun around here.)

let’s start with the obvious, shall we?

1. “The Sandman, He Comes”

so...bryde.

we don’t know much about bryde - who or what he is, how he’s able to infiltrate ronan’s dreams, whether he can do it to other dreamers too, why he didn’t want to reveal himself, what’s his agenda - but what we do know is that ronan trusted him very, very fast. suspiciously fast, in fact. fast enough that adam remarks on it in chapter 39: “earlier today you had a gun on me. i’m just asking you give him the same shake as me”.

to clarify: in the previous chapter, ronan was shaken enough to hold a gun to adam, the love of his life, and not lower it even when he feels reasonably sure it’s him; yet it never occurs to him in the book to question bryde or his motives. when adam says he wants scry to try and get more info on him, ronan seems almost annoyed by adam’s wariness (ronan narrowed his eyes. “don’t gimme that look, ronan”) to which adam replies, understandably, that it’s only fair ronan holds a complete stranger to the same safety standards as his own boyfriend, at least.

but why shouldn’t ronan trust bryde (apart from the fact that he has no information about him whatsoever)? well, bryde’s behaviour is pretty damn shady, and extremely reminiscent of the ways that a cult leader might try to recruit people to his cause. @deerlovelylily​ discussed it very eloquently in this post, but just to recap:

bryde is able to access ronan’s dreams at will, including interacting with objects from them: he had the hoverboard at the end, and he knew exactly what was on the stomach of the murder crabs. (@streghe​ had a very clever suggestion that there’s a nonzero chance bryde actually caused the crabs to manifest in the dorm, since ronan barely saw them in the dream; why would bryde do that? well, to make sure ronan was cut off from adam, his real life support system and, coincidentally, a psychic who doesn’t trust bryde)

there is considerable evidence that he can access ronan’s memories/other parts of his subconscious as well, since he knows a lot more about his waking life than he should, constantly referencing people and events from it (as well as obviously knowing where ronan is/what he’s up to, which is very stalkerish in itself)

bryde uses this knowledge to manipulate and influence ronan through the words of people in ronan’s life. in ch. 58 he asks ronan “are you going to be quiet?”, which we know from trk is what niall used to say to the brothers before telling them a story. in ch. 43, he talks about the “emotional costs” of saving someone’s life, mirroring almost exactly the words of warning adam had told ronan in ch. 33 (“there’s such thing as an emotional cost”). adam was warning ronan about trusting bryde too easily, and we know ronan values adam’s opinion; by repeating adam’s words to him bryde is pulling a see, i can’t possibly have shady motives, because i am acknowledging the same risk adam warned you about.

that’s far from the only manipulative thing bryde does. his behaviour constantly alternates between praising ronan, guilting him, taunting him, and ordering him about.

in ch. 43 he tells ronan he’s “the most expensive thing he’s ever saved”, reinforcing the idea that A) ronan is special, B) bryde cares about him, and C) it cost him a lot to save ronan so ronan should feel grateful/guilty/indebted to him. he does this knowing full well that ronan isn’t going to doubt his motives for saving him, because ronan himself - brave boy that he is - has just told him he would save a dreamer without any questions asked.

bryde never shows himself to ronan until the very end, which has the combined effects of keeping him in the dark/at a disadvantage, and making him more intrigued by bryde’s mystery; at the same time, he constantly asks ronan to prove himself and earn the dubious privilege of finally meeting him (“next box”)

bryde promises things that he knows ronan wants: first and foremost, understanding of his dreamer powers; second, a community, by hooking him up with other dreamers (ronan’s been asking what am i, why isn’t there anyone like me, am i the only one? for a long time); last but not least, he heavily hints that he can free dreams from their dreamers, something ronan is desperate to do in order to give matthew his freedom

on more than one occasion, bryde gives ronan direct orders: “scrub [the word ‘real’] from your vocabulary”; “i don’t want you to think this ever again: it was just a dream”. and ronan obeys him, or is at least very affected by it. where he at first questioned whether his dreams of bryde were real, now he questions reality (e.g. holding a gun to his very real boyfriend and asking himself what is real?); in ch. 24 he thinks about the words just a dream and how bryde “had forbidden him from ever saying them again”. since when does ronan follow orders? who is bryde to “forbid” him to do anything?

bryde constantly deploys examples Us VS Them rhetoric, creating a schism between dreamers and humanity, magic and humanity. we know (and bryde probably knows) ronan has always struggled with not feeling human and not knowing what he is; that he deeply wants to be able to fit into the real world. what bryde is effectively saying is no, you’re not human, in fact humans and magic are enemies, and the real world is not for you... unless you can shape it to your will. 

to me, bryde’s spiels sound very... dreamer-supremacist, for lack of a better term. at the moment, dreamers are oppressed by the moderators, so they’re right to rebel; but there’s an emphasis on dreamers being more powerful than anyone else, and what they could do with that power. it kind of reminds me of magneto re: mutants in the marvel universe. and i think that is the direction he’s headed in: separate ronan from his human family and escalate the conflict between humans and dreamers much further than simple self-defense from the moderators.

there’s plenty of reasons to be mistrustful (if not outright skeeved the fuck out), right? so why does ronan trust bryde? well, several reasons.

2. “On The Right Side Of Rock Bottom” 

ronan is at the lowest that he’s been since tdt. it’s better and worse at the same time -- in a way, it’s worse because it’s better. in tdt, ronan was deeply in denial about himself and the things he wanted; now he knows what he wants (a happy life with adam) and can’t go after it, trapped at the barns. in tdt, ronan was suicidal; now he wants to live, and so of course his life is threatened on all sides, internally by the nightwash, externally by the moderators. 

through all of trc, one of ronan’s main goals was to return to the barns, feeling like his key to happiness was in his childhood home. but as it turns out (and as i suspected all along), being stuck alone and isolated on a dream farm surrounded by eerie sleeping things and a handful of incredibly traumatic memories of his dead parents isn’t as fulfilling as ronan imagined. to make things worse, he’s created a security system for the barns that causes him to relive his fears and traumas over and over (ronan for the love of God, why would you dream something like that). his brothers live in DC, which is close, but not that close -- and though he’s mending fences with declan, they still are somewhat at odds. his best friends, gansey and blue, are travelling the country with henry, and we know from the opal story ronan misses them and feels left behind. at the start of cdth he tries to escape by following adam to cambridge -- and that immediately goes pear-shaped, whether by accident or, as said above, by sabotage.

now ronan is truly alone, cut off from visiting adam, living with the guilt of wrecking his dorm and the self-loathing following the fact that adam had to tell people he’s, essentially, an unstable drunk (the place he actually was at in tdt). it feels like the progress has been erased. this is the first time since tdt ronan has hit rock bottom, and cdth tells us he sinks into depression, staying in bed for days, not showering or changing, eating expired food. he thinks of a life trapped at the barns alone doing nothing, and feels understandably suffocated. all the more so because it feels like everyone else is moving on - declan has his own life, gansey/blue/henry have their adventures, and adam... well, adam is growing up, which ronan feels he himself can’t do. this comes up at several points in the book: in ch. 5 ronan doesn’t recognize adam, noting he’s “growing from something beaten down into whoever he was supposed to be”, but finds it ridiculous that adam doesn’t recognize him because he’s still the same: “adam was changing; ronan couldn’t.” later, in ch.23, he notes that he often dreams of adam as older/more adult, while ronan himself is stuck in arrested development.

essentially: ronan is stuck. so of course, any lead that comes up - whether that’s mór ó corra, the new fenian, hennessy, or bryde, is going to make him reckless and ready to risk everything, because anything is better than being buried alive at the barns.

3. “Guilty, On the Run, And I Know What I Have Done”

remember how i said ronan hits rock bottom at the start of the book? well, it’s time to grab a shovel and keep digging, because then there’s the matthew thing. 

so... we learn very early on in the book (in case we didn’t already know from trc) that ronan feels deeply torn about his dreaming. he loves to create, but feels guilty about creating life, because that feels like an act of hubris against God to him. and he feels especially guilty about creating matthew, because that means A) that matthew’s safety and life depend on ronan’s, and B) that matthew essentially has no free will, something that’s very important to catholic morals.

the moment matthew figures out he’s a dream-thing, and calls ronan out on lying to him, ronan is dropped into a fiery pit of shame, guilt, and self-loathing (and we already know that all of ronan’s emotions which are not happiness manifest as anger). he remains despondent even in dreams, and essentially, refuses to deal with matthew’s hurt and disappointment. which on one hand is justified, because he has ~Dramatic Dreamer Developments~ happening; but on the other hand, he’s essentially avoiding responsibility towards his brother, lashing out at declan in needlessly mean ways when declan tries to get him to be there for matthew (“dad’s working, sweetie”... really?). it’s a kind of pettiness that ronan hasn’t displayed in a while, and it speaks to me of his own restlessness and self-loathing more than anything.

we already know ronan feels alone, frustrated, isolated, scared, trapped -- now he also feels guilty on top of it all, and it just redoubles his determination to free matthew (something bryde has hinted he can do, knowing the power it would have on ronan). this is ronan at his worst, and we see it not just in how dismissive he is of declan, but in how he treats hennessy in chapter 67. he wants hennessy to dream up the lace, so he can show her how to stop dreaming of it (which in itself is dangerous, since lindenmere can manifest dreams, and in fact it ends up almost killing hennessy). but he gets absolutely furious when hennessy can’t dream properly -- because she’s, you know, kind of stuck on the slightly traumatic memory of witnessing her mom killing herself in front of her. it’s something you’d expect ronan to have sympathy for, seeing as he’s witnessed both of his parents’ violent deaths. instead, he’s impatient, snappy, insisting hennessy isn’t trying hard enough -- and downright cruel, shooting hennessy’s clone before her eyes, then trying to force her to shoot herself (especially relevant when you remember the church scene in bllb, and how shaken ronan was at having to kill a copy of himself).

this new ronan, it seems, has reached rock bottom and then some, and he’s got no time for empathy anymore. we see this in the metaphor of lindenmere, a darker, scarier, more dangerous version of cabeswater (i.e. trc ronan), because “dangerous things can protect themselves”. we see this once again at the end, when he assumes his sundogs have torn someone apart limb from limb and he feels absolutely no regret, only rage. yes, matthew was in danger... but kavinsky also tried to kill matthew in tdt, and ronan still didn’t feel like he could kill kavinsky in cold blood. this is a new, darker ronan, brought to this point by desperation. he reminds me a lot of anakin in the prequel star wars movies (i know, i know...) and how he let his fear lead him to the dark side by trusting a powerful, shady mentor that he should never have trusted. how does it go? “fear leads to anger, anger leads to hatred, hatred leads to suffering.” and suffering leads to - or maybe is the dark side.

4.“Holding Out For A Hero”

still, you might say, why is ronan falling for bryde’s manipulation so easily? can he not see through it? how can he trust someone he doesn’t know, someone who refuses to be upfront with him? someone his psychic boyfriend with an uncanny character judging skills is understandably wary of?

in short... ronan needs a hero. 

or well, he needs a father, and those things are the same to him. ronan idolised niall, and he’s missed him terribly ever since niall diad. he missed him badly enough that he wanted to die for a very long time. now he’s coming to terms with the fact niall isn’t coming back, and not just that, but it turns out that niall might not be everything ronan thought he was (ronan hasn’t fully realised it yet, but he’ll get there; he’s starting to put the pieces together, from what declan and other people tell him of niall).

but if he accepts that niall’s gone, and worse, that niall wasn’t the infallible hero ronan thought he was... who has he got left to guide him? niall wasn’t just his father, either, but he was the only dreamer ronan knew for the longest time (the only other one was kavinsky, who sexually assaulted him and tried to kill his brother, so... not a great example) and yet he didn’t give ronan any guidance. and ronan needs dreamer guidance right now, with the nightwash threatening to kill him at every step.

enter bryde, promising all that and more. bryde’s not only a dreamer, he comes across like the alpha dreamer, ancient and powerful and all-knowing. he promises ronan tantalising answers, and even more importantly than that, he promises him community -- other people like him, so he won’t feel alone, so he won’t feel like a freak or an abomination; it has not yet occurred to ronan that (as maggie said in her video explaining the art/creation metaphor of the series) not all dreamers are equal: they don’t share the same skills or motives. 

ronan is desperate for what bryde is promising, for that kind of guidance in his life. all throughout the book, there is a lot of talk of heroes: ronan was raised on stories of the irish heroes of old, who accomplished amazing feats even though they were held back by geasa (magical weaknesses like his nightwash). ronan constantly thinks of these folk stories, while excluding himself from it (“ronan was no hero, but he knew fucking right from fucking wrong”). and how does he describe bryde when he finally sees him in ch. 79? yep, you guessed it: 

“he looked like a man who didn’t have to posture, who knew his strength. he looked like a man who didn’t lose his temper very easily. he looked, ronan thought, like a hero.”

ronan -- who is always posturing, who doesn’t know his own strength, who loses his temper very easily, who doesn’t think he’s a hero -- sees bryde as everything he’s not. and he’s willing to show him the same faith and devotion he once showed niall, because he needs a hero, a father, a teacher.

but i don’t think bryde is going to be the hero. i think ronan is going to be. there’s some early foreshadowing of this with ronan being depicted as “a gallant irish hero of old” while he kills the crabs (more posturing, really) but actually, we’ve known this all the way since trk, with niall asking declan to make sure that “ronan was the name of the hero, not the spear”; dreamers are weapons, but they don’t have to be. being a hero, ultimately, is about knowing fucking right from fucking wrong. and i believe ronan does.

but before he gets to be the hero, he’ll have to be the spear. and right now? he’s a spear in bryde’s hand. 

we know a dreamer is supposedly going to bring about the apocalypse through fire; we know ronan and fire have always been associated; we know bryde hates the modern world and would like to reboot it; we know bryde has selected ronan as his chosen one, for whatever reason.

when you connect the dots, they spell a whole lot of trouble.

[manesalex]

Sanctuary by @adiwriting

Michael’s life has been endless, never ending chaos. With no visible compass to guide him, he’s searched for answers. A home. A place to belong. He’d assumed he’d find it in the stars. Then something mystical happens… His entire entropy changes. Just not for the reason he thinks. Soulmate!AU, Deaf!Michael

This is a gorgeous exploration of the isolation Michael feels and, in this AU, how it’s heightened by the fact that he’s Deaf. We see how it all impacts him growing up in flashbacks placed throughout the fic. The highlight for me is his search for a connection that feels like home.

setting fire to our insides (for fun) by @emma-arthur

 Isobel is in the middle of the desert.

 It doesn't look like the desert around Roswell. In fact, it's not quite any desert. Turning around, she sees that she's on the edge of what looks like a small town. From the shape of the buildings, this isn't anywhere in America.

 “Iraq,” a voice provides. Isobel jumps, and looks over her shoulder. Alex. Of course. “About a hundred miles outside of Mosul.”

 “What are we doing here?” Isobel asks. “This is your mindscape. Why did you bring us here?”

 “I don't know,” Alex shrugs.

This is a beautiful exploration of Alex’s mental health through Isobel’s eyes. Emma doesn’t hesitate to focus on the damage and the trauma Alex has dealt with and the way witnessing it impacts Isobel, but they also show the slow work of healing. I look forward to more of this universe when and if Emma is ever ready.

Constant as the Northern Star by celzmccelz

Michael stares at Kyle. “But I’m a guy! How can I be pregnant?”

Kyle looks embarrassed. “Well, you appear to have a fully functioning set of female reproductive organs—or, I mean, like, the kind of reproductive organs that are associated with a double X-chromosome in humans, so I’d assume that you probably became pregnant when semen was introduced into your reproductive tract—”

“Jesus Christ, Kyle!” says Michael. He could have happily lived the rest of his life without ever hearing Kyle Valenti say the words “semen” and “reproductive tract.”

Kyle’s eyes widen. “Have you been having unprotected sex?”

“Oh my God, I am not having this conversation with you!”

The summary gives away that this fic is a mpreg fic, but it’s very much focused on Michael and his coping (or not) with the changes he’s going through and how Kyle becomes his support system, in large part because almost everyone else is gone. I love that this shows all of the characters flaws so perfectly and has you rooting for them anyway, much like the show does.

I Keep Myself Busy With The Things I Do, But Every Time I Pause I Still Think Of You by @i-never-look-away

Alex is missing. Michael finally breaks.

Written before season 2, this is a gorgeous Alex abduction fic that doesn’t deal with him being taken or found, but simply the impact it has on Michael. It’s realistic about what an ass he can be and how poorly he copes with how terrified he is and how desperately he needs Alex back. Plus it has Buffy Manes.

Wired for Struggle by wildrun

With his life falling apart, Michael spirals and pushes Alex, and everyone else away. Fortunately for him, there are people in his life who won't let him stay in the hole he's digging for himself. And as he slowly figures out how to turn his life around, he learns how to be a friend, and what it means to love someone more than himself.

This post s1 fix-it allows Michael to take the slow and careful steps of healing (aka, one of my favorite types of things to read). I love the way Kyle steps up as a support system and the tentative steps Michael takes toward communicating with Alex. This fic isn’t done, but I’m sure I’ll continue to love it as it goes on.

[darkshadow90]

Joker: My thoughts on Arthur Fleck

Hey guys. I’ve made a few posts about Arthur already, but I wanted to make another one. I love the Joker movie. I think Todd Phillips and the writers did a great job at writing an intriguing character that works as part of a Joker story or a possible origin story for the Joker. I think Arthur is an interesting take on the Joker because he’s so different from other interpretations. I think he can be really hard to pin down sometimes. I don’t think Arthur was maliciously evil, at least not at the beginning. I saw a post from @another-day-in-chuckletown talking about Arthur’s morality and I thought it was interesting. So I thought I’d share my thoughts too. But she’s probably better at putting things into words than I am. So anyway here we go with another meta post. Yay!

So in the beginning we can see that Arthur has a lot of issues. He’s dealing with mental illnesses and living in dire poverty. Neither one of those things are easy to live with, but both combined are no doubt a fucking nightmare. He’s trying to get help. He’s doing everything he can. He’s taking his medications and going to therapy. He knows it’s not “normal” to do the things he does. Things like stalking, and, well, killing people. As odd as it might seem to read this from me, but one of the most interesting things I find about Arthur is he seems somewhat childlike and doesn’t understand social cues, but at the same time he’s aware that his behavior in social situations is creepy and weird to other people. So I do think he’s somewhat self aware.

Arthur doesn’t know how to approach people so he just stands there awkwardly or he follows them. And it makes sense because he’s clearly been socially isolated for most of his life. He had no one to teach him proper social skills and boundaries. But I do wonder about his past experiences socializing with others because he’s aware he makes people uncomfortable. I think Arthur is smarter than he lets on. He apologized to Thomas Wayne because he knew he crossed a line. He even said he didn’t mean to cause trouble or make him uncomfortable he just wanted answers. And he also knew when he imagined Sophie coming to his apartment asking if he was following her that she would be creeped out when he said yes. He had a look of guilt when he said “yeah” He knew it wasn’t the best way to go about talking to her. Like I said, I think he’s smarter than he lets on. But even with all his struggles and all the bad things that happened to him, I don’t think he’s particularly a good person.

The only people we see Arthur kill are the people who hurt him or wronged him in some way. We’re not really meant to feel sorry for them because most of them are just assholes. I do feel bad about Penny that one upset me. Regardless of the context, of wether or not she lied to him and allowed abuse to happen or not, it was still upsetting that he killed a helpless person. In general, I don’t like scenes in movies where animals and helpless people are killed. That shit is really upsetting to me. So yeah didn’t like that part. Anyway, it doesn’t make him the well meaning guy we think he is. I actually thought it was pretty fucked up that he was opening up to the clerk in Arkham about what he did. It’s fucked up because he knows what he did was wrong and he’s happy about it. He knows what’s right and wrong.

For most of the movie, Arthur doesn’t hurt random people for no reason. He doesn’t do bad things for the sake of doing bad things. He has a code. He only hurts “awful” people or people who wronged him. I think he would feel bad if he hurt an innocent person. He didn’t hurt Gary and I’m very glad for that, but he felt bad that he scared him so badly. He felt bad that Gary saw him kill someone in such a brutal way. He knew Gary would be even more upset if he saw Randall’s body. So he said, “Don’t  look, just go.”  And then he jumped out and scared him so he wouldn’t look at the body as he was leaving. That scene makes me think Arthur doesn’t like to see innocent people hurt or upset. Up until the end of the movie, I was thinking this take on the Joker was kind of like an anti hero. He only kills bad people.

I find it interesting when Arthur is about to go on the Murray show he tells Murray he doesn’t believe in anything, but then when he confesses to killing the Wall Street guys, he rants about how society treats poor people and mentally ill people like shit, and hold the rich up on a pedestal. He talks about how no one has any empathy for other people, and he’s upset about it, rightfully so. So he clearly does care about and believe in something. Why else would his rant be so passionate? Also, Arthur killing Murray isn’t quite as spontaneous as we think. If you look and listen closely, after Murray tells Arthur not everyone is awful, Arthur says, “You’re awful, Murray.” He literally told Murray he was gonna kill him.

I write different stories about Arthur. I write both fluff pieces and I also write darker pieces where he’s further along his transition into the Joker, and I’ve written a few based on the persona we see in Arkham (I like to call him Arkham Joker because he is the Joker at that point.) My fluff pieces are based on what Arthur would be like if he had someone positively affecting his life and he was getting the help he needed and didn’t become the Joker. My darker pieces focus on the darker aspects of his personality and the persona in Arkham because I like to explore those aspects of his character. I feel really bad for Arthur. I want to believe that if he had just one person aside from Gary who cared about him in his life he would be the person he was in the beginning, but unfortunately he isn’t that person anymore. I feel bad for him, but I hate what he does.

Now, I’ve talked about the persona we see in Arkham and the end of the movie a bunch of times. That scene fucks with me every time I see it. I love it because it’s pure Joker, and it’s probably the best Joker moment in the whole movie. It makes my anxiety skyrocket, too. @another-day-in-chuckletown touched on it in her post. I’m so glad I’m not the only one who noticed the sudden change in his personality. It was jarring to see Arthur like that. He was suddenly much more malicious and had a dangerous presence that he didn’t have at any other point in the movie.  He was genuinely laughing without pain which was unsettling and when he suddenly stopped laughing and said, “You wouldn’t get it” I got very, very worried and immediately started shouting in my head “Get out of there! You’re not safe!” And then as he’s singing That’s Life and the way he’s staring at the psychiatrist and grins at her with those cold, dead eyes, I was like “Why are you still sitting there?! Go now!” I was scared for her. I was and still am genuinely afraid of him in that scene. The look in his eyes and facial expressions are the look of someone who is about to do a very bad thing or he’s thinking about about doing something bad to her. Wether or not he killed the psychiatrist is open to interpretation. I think it’s possible he did. He is full on Joker in that scene. It’s glorious and terrifying.

The man sitting there is a mystery. I always find myself wondering who he really is because he so different from Arthur and even the Joker we saw on the Murray Franklin show. The psychiatrist doesn’t refer to him by name, so Arthur might not be his real name. So I agree with Catherine’s post. It’s almost like the man we came to know over those two hours is a persona he made up and the man we see in Arkham is the real Joker, who he actually is. Smug, condescending, calculating, detached, malevolent, vain, petty, and narcissistic. I just get the feeling he’s a huge asshole, not as sympathetic as Arthur.

I’ve talked with some of you about this before and I know we have our own opinions and that’s totally fine. It’s what makes the ending so great. It’s whatever you want it to be. I still don’t see Arthur in him. Arthur wasn’t like him. It’s possible he could’ve been on drugs in that scene, but I doubt it. I think it’s safe to say since Gotham is a shit hole, Arkham is an underfunded hellhole. It’s understaffed, and there could be people working there that shouldn’t be. They probably don’t have enough resources to properly treat patients, and “Arthur” could be being mistreated. But I think he was actually pretty lucid in that scene. Given that he’s the Joker, I think that psychiatrist would’ve wanted him as lucid as possible so she could interview him. It would’ve been a huge career opportunity for her. I don’t think her using the Joker as an opportunity to advance her career would bother him. The Joker loves being in the spotlight and talking about himself. The whole movie is about him and told from only his perspective, so he’s probably okay with it. But whatever the case, I still think the man we see in Arkham is not Arthur. He’s the Joker. God, I love how this movie fucks with me and still makes me question everything even though I’ve seen it so many times. Best ending ever.

[jokertrap-ran]

Collar X Malice ~UNLIMITED~ Seiji Minegishi Route PRIDE Translations (Part 1)

Translator’s note : MC’s name shall remain as my normal (ラン) Spoiler FREE : Translations under cut !

Ran Hoshino: Yes, this is the Special regions crime prevention office speaking.

Male: Oh, hello! I can go through this line regarding any inquires about the X-Day incident, right?

Male: I've heard that the isolative measures that have been placed onto Shinjuku will be lifted soon, but...When will that happen!?

Ran Hoshino: Oh...I'm afraid that I can't disclose the exact date at this present moment in time.

Ran Hoshino: My apologies, but if you could wait for the official announcement to pass...

Ran Hoshino: ...Yes, that's right. Of course, understood. This is behind the 6th district's park, yes?

Old Lady: I'm really sorry about this, Hoshino-san. I don't want to be viewed as odd in the eyes of my neighbours but, I just can't help but to be concerned...

Ran Hoshino: No, not at all. Every little bit of information you provide will ultimately help in crime prevention of the area.

Ran Hoshino: Please feel free to contact us again if you find anything amiss.

Old Lady: Yes, thank you. I'll be leaving it to you then.

Ran Hoshino: Urgency: Low. Location: Shinjuku District 6. Classification: Suspicious person...There.

It has already been 2 months since we nabbed the perpetrators involved in X-Day; 2 months since the destruction of Adonis.

And those of us in the Shinjuku station spent the end of the year post-processing and cleaning up the mess it left behind all the way through the New Years.

But in all honestly, truth to be told... The SRCPO's job hasn't changed significantly from the past, much unlike the other departments.

We mainly deal with minor reports detailing minor offenses on a day-to-day basis and gathering all information related to X-Day.

Working alongside the Life Safety Division, we strive towards attaining regional security and crime prevention. Our goal and the amount of work we do is no different now.

Ran Hoshino: Whew...

I looked up after entering all the records from our conversation and saw Mochida-senpai crack his neck a couple of times before he made to stand up and leave his seat.

Masanobu Mochida: How about you take a break now, Hoshino? I see that the wave of reports have finally calmed down.

Ran Hoshino: Good work, Mochida-senpai. There were really a lot of them today.

Masanobu Mochida: Yeah. During the X-Day Incident, I was always thought to myself about how I wanted to resolve the case as soon as possible and free myself from the daily madness of being kept busy everyday, but...

Masanobu Mochida: I never would have thought that I'd be even busier after we finally managed to wrap the case up.

Ran Hoshino: I think that just goes to show how much everyone's getting jittery in their boots waiting for the quarantine to lift. 

Ran Hoshino: Even the calls I got today! 60% of them were all regarding the matter of when the quarantine ban was to be lifted!

Masanobu Mochida: I'm about the same as you in that aspect. "I want to make a bullet train reservation, so could I please know the date of when the quarantine ban will be lifted?"

Mochida-senpai replied with a bitter smile.

There's a platform specifically meant for those enquiries, we are faced with a situation where everyone is more concerned about special defence measures due to X-Day.

While I'm glad that our direct hotline is becoming more widely known, it's quite a challenge deciding if special defence can handle the enquires and redirecting them elsewhere.

Ran Hoshino: Seems like it'll take a while for the system to calm down...Still, I feel like the number of calls have drastically reduced now.

Masanobu Mochida: It's been 10 months since Adonis made their first statement...This just goes to show that everyone is able to have a peace of mind now that the turbulent times are over.

Ran Hoshino: ............

The case is over.

Rolling the words over the tip of my tongue, I turned and fixtated my gaze at the window.

Ran Hoshino: ...Mochida-senpai. The X-Day Incident is truly over, right?

Masanobu Mochida: What's with that out of the blue?

Masanobu Mochida: Of course, not everything has been solved. We'd have caught all the suspects if that were so.

Masanobu Mochida: Adonis has been destroyed and the isolation ban, lifted. I think it's fine to say it's done and over with for now.

Ran Hoshino: ...I guess you're right.

My hands ghosted over my neck, feeling the skin there despite no longer feeling the weight of the collar.

I could only feel the warmth radiating from my skin through the material of my shirt.

Gone was the feeling of the restrictive and cold collar that had used to be there.

Ran Hoshino: (I guess I should count my lucky stars that I'm still able to continue my line of work in the police...)

—— —— ≿————-　❈　————-≾ —— ——

--Last year, December.

A collar had been placed upon my being by Adonis. The day that we were threatened by the coming of X-Day.

[We'll kill you if you tell the police]

Bound by those words, I was forced to rely on on others, those not of the police. Investigating in secret.

—— —— ≿————-　❈　————-≾ —— ——

But the X-Day Incidents continued on, the victims increasing by the day.

Even if we managed to catch the perpetrators, their memories were erased. We were utterly helpless.

—— —— ≿————-　❈　————-≾ —— ——

Stuck, I made my decision then. --I'd tell the police everything.

It was inevitable that I'd become a burden to the police, to get the collar off and to solve the case. Of course, with it came the fact that my life itself was also endangered.

We still managed to remove the collar in the end thanks to the help of Sasazuka-kun and co. And above all...

We were able to nab Adonis thanks to the trust that the Investigation Headquarters had in my words.

—— —— ≿————-　❈　————-≾ —— ——

They took my actions in stride, choosing to go along with my choices rather than to abandon me.

It is only with thanks to a good many others that I am now able to stay on as a police officer.

Ran Hoshino: (That's right...There's no longer any need for me to fear my death, no need for me to be afraid that today might be the day I breathe my last.)

I was finally able to let go of that one fear of mine now that Adonis has been destroyed.

And the city of Shinjuku too.

—— —— ≿————-　❈　————-≾ —— ——

My throat's going to get wrecked by winter if I'm to continue picking up calls all morning.

I've still got some time...I should go get some tea and lozenges before my break ends.

Someone called out to me, just as I headed out with that intention in mind.

???: Good work today, Hoshino-san.

Ran Hoshino: Oh, Minegishi-san. Good work today. I didn't know that you were coming over today.

Seiji Minegishi: Yes, I came to see how the Investigation Headquarters' faring.

Seiji Minegishi: I have to show my face around here once in a while since I am the commissioner after all. Otherwise, people will start questioning my position.

Minegishi Seiji, the individual overseeing the X-Day case back in the Investigation Headquarters.

He was always stuck around the Shinjuku station, giving out commands during the incident.

Since the case has been closed and marked solved, he's now more often found in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department now that things have settled down.

So, it's been about three days since I last saw his face around here.

Ran Hoshino: You're going back and forth the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department now, right?

Seiji Minegishi: Yes, I have some other cases to handle now that the X-Day Incident is more or less resolved.

Seiji Minegishi: What about you, Hoshino-san...? How's everything after that ordeal?

Ran Hoshino: Well, the reports regarding that matter has reduced considerably. But, I can't help but to feel that the dams holding in the public's anxiety has been broken...

Seiji Minegishi: Ah...Yes, while that is also a cause for concern, I'm actually asking about you, yourself.

Ran Hoshino: Huh?

Seiji Minegishi: Because you're the only one who Adonis has "allowed to live" despite being in direct contact with them.

Ran Hoshino: Oh...

My hand unconciously reached up to my neck.

We have yet to find the perpetrator who had placed the collar on me.

Despite the fact that they had ran away, we can't ignore the possibility of them returning.

It was natural for him to harbour doubts. Realizing his apparently concern, I adverted my eyes and turned away.

Ran Hoshino: Nothing much has changed...

Minegishi-san had widened his eyes in response before a wry smile formed on his face.

Seiji Minegishi: ...I apologise. It wasn't my intention to corner you between a wall and a hard place, I was just concerned about your mental state.

Ran Hoshino: Come again?

Seiji Minegishi: A good many things happened throughout the incident. So...When you really think about it, I don't think you can say that you have a peace of mind yet.

Ran Hoshino: No, I'm fine and well. ...I've really must have been a hassle to you. I thank you for all the help and consideration you have extended to me.

Seiji Minegishi: It wasn't me at all, no. I didn't do anything. In fact, I think Sasazuka-kun and the rest were the ones who had truly managed to help your cause.

Ran Hoshino: Oh, yes. Of course. I was just about to go visit them again.

—— —— ≿————-　❈　————-≾ —— ——

The odd combination of a group of people who had left the police force for one reason or another, working together to uncover the secrets of the X-Day case. ——Also known as the "Investigation Headquarters".

They had all separated ways and continued down their own paths in lives after the X-Day case had been closed. I was indebted to them.

And Sasazuka-san, who had just recently re-joined the force had gone back to the Metropolitan Police Department.

I heard that Enomoto-san and Yanagi-san we're both struggling to run a full-fledged detective agency on their own, a 2-man team.

And I've also heard that Shiraishi-san had taken a long vacation, disappearing off to god knows where...

Just recalling their individual faces made nostalgia well up within me.

—— —— ≿————-　❈　————-≾ —— ——

Ran Hoshino: It certainly does feel a little odd. To think that the case was closed just 2 months ago...

Seiji Minegishi: Heh, well you're absolutely right. It doesn't quite strike you as reality, seeing as how the quarantine ban has yet to be lifted as of yet.

Seiji Minegishi: I'm sure the citizens feel the same way too.

Ran Hoshino: I think so too. Most of the calls we've been receiving are more often than not citizens who are voicing their concerns.

Seiji Minegishi: ...In any case, there has been no reoccurring cases ever since Adonis was shut down despite there being remanants of them lurking about.

Ran Hoshino: Yes, but on the contrary...

Ran Hoshino: ............

Seiji Minegishi: Hoshino-san?

He looked at me curiously, noting the slight hesitance on my end.

Softly prompted by him, I opened my mouth once more to speak my mind.

Ran Hoshino: Crime rates have actually fallen as of late and there are lesser large-scale crimes that aren't related to Adonis. I'm sure the statistics show as such too.

Ran Hoshino: "Because Adonis had become a deterrent".

...That's right. It's been quite the hot topic on the internet recently. So much that most people actually agree on this as a whole.

Adonis had simply brought justice onto whom they deemed evil in their eyes.

Of course, their the whys and wherefores of their actions were unacceptable, but still...

Weren't they rather effective? They made criminals afraid of commiting criminal acts. They feared that they'd be next to face the brunt of it all.

The plausibility of that story is still being widely discussed over the net even now.

Seiji Minegishi: I see. So you're saying that there's a dwindling rate of crime thanks to Adonis?

Ran Hoshino: It feels rather conflicting when you actually read about someone justificating Adonis...

Ran Hoshino: Even though Adonis should be no doubt, evil in terms of legal and human rights--

Seiji Minegishi: Well, they're not exactly wrong either. It is a fact that Adonis does exact justice, in a sense.

Ran Hoshino: Eh...!? Seiji Minegishi: It is without a doubt that those whom they've disposed of did have some shady business.

Seiji Minegishi: But ethics aside, I think they exact justice on those people because they believe that they're right.

Ran Hoshino: But...Their actions are only lynching and nothing else!

Ran Hoshino: The school bombings and net-game killings, even if it's for revenge, it's still no reason to cause deaths across the board!

I've never had such a mindset for vengeance, not one that'd drive me to such viciousness.

That's why I can also never understand just how hurt and broken the suspects are.

That being said, this country still has it's laws. You'll only be denying the police's existence if you let them go scot-free like that.

Ran Hoshino: I don't think that such a terrible sight is justice at all...

There are many videos up on the net. I clenched my fist, recalling how bloody it was.

He gave a small chuckle in reply.

Seiji Minegishi: ...It's exactly as you say, Hoshino-san. Their judging criterias are way too general and vague that one may find it subjective.

Seiji Minegishi: If everyone could exact their own revenge, the vicious cycle will only continue to no end.

Ran Hoshino: ...You're right.

Seiji Minegishi: So even if Adonis was upholding and exacting justice as they deemed fit...

Seiji Minegishi: They are still to become outlaws of this country for passing judgement against the law.

Slow but steady, the evil will grow.

Minegishi-san placed his hand upon my shoulder, a small smile on his lips.

Seiji Minegishi: Seems like we had a misunderstanding. I don't agree with Adonis' way of handling things.

Seiji Minegishi: It's just that, I'm sure...That there a still a handful of people out there who still believe in their version of justice.

Seiji Minegishi: Even if Adonis is destroyed now, there's no denying the possibility of a second or third Adonis being created due to them.

Seiji Minegishi: ...And that's precisely why we must strive to understand how and why people sympathise and agree with Adonis on that matter.

Ran Hoshino: Right... You do have a point.

Seiji Minegishi: Have more confidence in yourself. You did the right thing.

Ran Hoshino: Thank you...

Previously looking at me in encouragement, his eyes slid close as he smiled.

Thinking about it, this might actually be the first time we've talked together so closely.

Feeling unrest, I opened my mouth to speak again.

Ran Hoshino: You're amazing.

Ran Hoshino: You're always so logical about things. I guess you're reliable and that's a relief.

Seiji Minegishi: Haha. Well, the subordinates wouldn't know what to believe if even the boss' blur as a squid.

He laughed at his own joke before jolting up, as if he had just remembered something.

Seiji Minegishi: You say I'm "amazing", but... I think you're the amazing one here.

Ran Hoshino: Amazing? Me?

Seiji Minegishi: Of course. Do you not remember how you were collared during the X-Day incident, putting your life at stake...

Seiji Minegishi: Any normal person, regardless of whether they're a police officer will have been used as a spy to get them leaks on inside info.

Seiji Minegishi: But you managed to put up a resistance till the very end, even going so far as to sacrifice your being. Not everyone's capable of that.

Seiji Minegishi: But more than anything else...We were able to control the Adonis situation thanks to your trust in the police and it's top brass.

Ran Hoshino: No, I should be the one saying that. It was thanks to the trust you and the rest of the Investigation Headquarters had in me.

Ran Hoshino: I was only able to get out of that precarious situation thanks to all of your instructions on how I should proceed with that collar on me,

Seiji Minegishi: ...How humble, not to mention, how stubborn.

Ran Hoshino: Sorry. But it's a fact that I didn't do anything...

Ran Hoshino: This all happened only because they didn't decide to kill me first, right off the bat. I mean even I'd have no choice but to comply

Ran Hoshino: if they told me that "We'll kill you if you refuse to become a spy for us right now".

Seiji Minegishi: That seems plausible. Truth to be told, it is your courage and judgement that has brought peace to Shinjuku as it is right now.

Seiji Minegishi: I was probably able to lead this case to it's closure only because the collar was on you.

That being said, being told as such tickles me a a little on the sides and I can't help being humble.

I just so happened to have the collar forced upon me and managed to successfully close the case.

Unable to hold his gaze any longer, I found myself adverting my eyes from his.

Seiji Minegishi: ...But...

He trailed off.

Seiji Minegishi: Why were you the one they chose?

Ran Hoshino: What?

Seiji Minegishi: ............

He stared at me, lips forming a frown as he pondered over something.

--Why was it me?

It was the very same question that had been circling through my head back then.  

I couldn't see why it had to be me.

Ran Hoshino: Minegishi-san? Um-

Office Announcement: Calling for the Shinjuku Station's Special crime prevention. A report has come in from a public phone in a park at Shinjuku's 6th district.

Office Announcement: The caller sounds like a girl, reporting that she was going to be killed and managed to escape.

Office Announcement: All patrols in the vincinity are to head to the scene, immidietely. I repeat, a report has come in from Shinjuku's 6th district-

Ran Hoshino: That announcement!

Seiji Minegishi: Indeed. It's not time for a drawn-out conversation right now. I'll head to the Crime Department.

Ran Hoshino: Of course!

——≿————-𝕿𝖎𝖑𝖑 𝖓𝖊𝖝𝖙 𝖙𝖎𝖒𝖊… ————-≾ ——

[vargnir]

world & lore masterpost.

here’s a whole drop of lore, monsters, magic, humans & various other things in fenrirs main canon for those interested. mostly it just serves as a guide for me to orient on.

all art here was created on artbreeder and doesn’t belond to me because while i can generate i definitely can’t draw.

THE WORLD OF ROTWELSCH.

the world itself is split into four different continents; anvel, halmel, nimdal & mucuri.

whereas anvel and nimdal prosper, halmel has been ravaged by war and famine and mucuri struggles against a neverending influx of darkness & monsters terrorizing it’s people. 

anvel lies on the northern parts of the world and is filled with plentiful rivers & seas, water plays a major key in the continent and it’s countries have unified to form the northern kingdoms. it’s people know all there is to possibly know about water and its inhabitants, they live with the sea and prefer to worship water-related gods. the northern kingdoms are more secluded from the rest of the world and prefer to live their lives privately. though certain countries within their unions are slowly starting to open trades with other nations across the world more and more.

nimdal lies southern of the world, its kingdoms have the most varying climates; countries like stanlow and aynor are plagued by heat and deserts but rare and sought after plants and animals that enables them to afford wells and water supplies. countries like claethor, tranmere or strathmore are rich of vegetation, filled with large forests and jungles alike, a plentiful fauna enriching their nations. northern countries like wolfden and glenarm are filled with snow; cold and ruthless but bringing mountains over mountains filled to the brim with minerals and precious materials and gems with them. 

halmel lacks population and resources across the formerly glorious continent in total; a war between itself and a long since vanished fifth continent left it in ruins all across its formerly rich environments. its countries have long ceased to exist and halmel at this point is considered one big kingdom in itself. bandits have easy play here and terrorize poor village people. to top it off monsters from mucuri have slowly begun finding their ways over and have begun making the vast, empty lands of halmel their homes. halmels general climate is a foggy, almost ceaselessly rainy and gloomy one.

mucuri used to be the most prosperous continent amongst them all, as well as the centre of all of rotwelsch. though it is unsure of what happened all that is known is that once, a long time ago, a man who called himself the harbinger of the gods stepped foot onto mucurian land and eventually monsters began flooding from everywhere, creatures of such malevolence and hatred that ever since the world has only called the man, who revealed himself to be a cursed wolf, tortured by cruel humans and craving to bring forth the end of the world, demise. ever since the cities and nations have been living in fear, trying to live a somewhat normal life at daytime and locking themselves closed and in at nighttime, praying to whichever god will hear them that they survive another night of slaughter around them.

CREATURES OF ROTWELSCH.

HUMANS.

humans are the primary race of rotwelsch, though certain nations or even continents live peacefully amongst other people ( such as anvelians live peacefully with certain oceanic inhabitants ) whereas others live in fear of creatures not humanoid in nature. humans born under special circumstances may have an affinity for magic whereas others may have a special connection to nature. those born with special abilities oftentimes are shunned by their kin and live in villages or towns of their own amongst their kind.

TIEFSEA.

a humanoid race of fish originated creatures adapting to life further away from deepsea. having made a deal with humans tiefsea are usually found lurking near port towns and occasionally even found sitting in bars. they are capable of surviving short amounts of time without water ( when trained up to a week ) but will dry out over time. they take on differing forms inspired by several animals found in the oceans. their appearance usually resembles fish more than humans in skin and facial features, though their body structure usually is more human. imagine zoras from legend of zelda but a tad more monstrous.

THE BROKEN.

former mortals corrupted by darkness and turned into husks of their former self and forced into submission by demise. while groups of them will attack villages and towns singular ones will target homes on the outskirts to either kill or find more suitable subjects for demise. some of them retain a sense of self somewhere deep within and it is not a rare occurance to hear the desperate cry of a broken fighting against its own instincts and mind. their appearane usually is vaguely humanoid with their bones and skin growing and hardening into sort of an armor.

THE PLAGUES.

creatures of unknown origin, some more humanoid than others. there are vast differences within plagues, some are small and fast while others are hulking brutes with raw power. the only similarity is that they seem to be able to communicate with each other and that each time they get cut their limbs and wounds can regenerate. their blood is acidic in nature and can burn through human flesh like it is nothing; because of that they are more feared than the broken. it is not uncommon to find a giant plague accompanied by a smaller, fast plague which turns them into deadly duos you have to be on the lookout for at the same time.

THE PREDATORS.

predators are a deadly kind; humans who are still completely capable of thinking but have lost all will of their own, incapable of making decisions for themselves they have been turned into deadly assassins by the darkness and make formidable foes. while it is assumed that their appearance is largely unchanged they are covered from head to toe in what appears to be dark coloured robes made completely out of void mass and pure corruption. one touch from them can prove poisonous to most, should they choose a quick death for their victims. their ability to think makes most of them unpredictable and causes them to be the most feared out of all the races in rotwelsch.

THE CURSED.

the cursed are beings like fenrir who have been wounded by magic and whose animalistic nature was meant to be subdued in favor of a humanoid nature. their appearance is mostly human though part of their animal origins is retained; for fenrir it is his ears and tail, for certain others it could be their antlers or even fins. the cursed are rare, incredibly so to the point they are mostly considered legends. but a handful of them exist, and while not all of them possess demonic blood like fenrir they still possess more abilities than the average human, all granted by their origin nature. cursed will usually live in isolation, though very few select ones will live among humans as their own, disguising their animal traits with magic in order to fit in.

OTHERS.

there is a vast amount of races within rotwelsch that have yet to be known by the majority of the world; even the tiefsea have only recently created contact with humans and with the current abundance in magic there is no telling what other beings are out there.

MAGIC IN ROTWELSCH.

magic is highly frowned upon in rotwelsch; it is considered the origin of demise and the reason darkness has befallen the world. people born with magic abilities are often abandoned at birth or taught from an early age to suppress their nature. fearing the power it bears most of humanity has dedicated itself to eradicating all magic from their lives whereas others, more powerhungry, cruel beings have taken it upon themselves to seek out people with magical properties to turn them into a part of their armies. 

with all different kinds of magic it is almost impossible to keep track of all of them, and yet the gods know. they give and take magical abilities as they see fit and design the powers as they wish. in certain areas in the world humans with magic and cursed live together in peace, both shunned by a world too fearful to see the beauty in their existence. 

THE END OF THE WORLD.

from prophecies long foretold three children will bring the end of times upon the world; 

one cursed from birth, meant to grow until it can swallow the sun from the sky and devor the king of kings before it releases eternal darkness upon the world.

one born from death, meant to command the forces of the dead to end the lives of all creatures wandering the earth.

one born from betrayal, whose rage will be the catalyst to the worlds end until it swallows everything that is left to destroy.

FENRIR THINGS FROM MY OLD PINNED POST.

fenrir is known in his world / his main verse. a fourty feet wolf that devours monsters big and small while keeping most humans relatively unharmed? yeah, that’s a pretty big conversation topic around the world he lives in, especially given he travels everywhere.

but it is not necessarily a good thing; even if he leaves humans unharmed he is a monstrosity; a beast. most people fear him and those who see the form he uses to walk among people for what it is in it’s entirety usually shun him.

fenrir doesn’t like interacting with people in any verse; he’s so used to being mistreated that he’d rather help silently and disappear without talking to anyone

he hates being thanked; he doesn’t think he deserves it and he generally dislikes the thought of people thinking that what he did to help them was anything but natural.

usually the only words he does speak to people are actually “don’t thank me.” before they even open their mouth

his voice is hoarse and rough because he barely talks. the most he can do without his throat burning is a short sentence, so never expect him to be very engaging in conversation.

because of that he’s made up his own little sign language --- most people don’t really get it unless they know him a bit better

there is a special guild trying to hunt him down because they know more about his curse than fenrir himself does

one of their “members” (he’s pretty much independent but relies on them for information) is a young man from the village fenrir saved when he lost his arm. he doesn’t necessarily want to kill fenrir but he does want to stop his curse from breaking free

he tries to befriend wildlife and smaller animals but they’re usually scared of him, except for one bird that follows him everywhere because he saved its life once.

it’s a robin!

he doesn’t keep food on his person other than some bread slices so he can feed his little bird companion

he thinks he’s not a good person --- nor even a person at all; it’s why he tries so hard to better himself, why he helps everyone.

he’s very harsh on himself, too

while his human form has a metallic prosthetic for his lost arm his wolf form actually has black matter to replace it; it’s more slimy in texture and practically radiates bad energy --- it comes from his curse

he’s ashamed of his ears and tails

he’s also ashamed of his scars

he gets flustered and embarrassed by even the most vague compliments

if you ever manage to break through his shell he’s very soft.

this is a wip and will be reworked over time to come !