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creatingblackcharacters · 23 days ago

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No, That’s Not ‘How Color Works’. - Whitewashing

Whitewashing, as defined by Merriam-Webster:

"to alter (something) in a way that favors, features, or caters to white people: such as a) to portray (the past) in a way that increases the prominence, relevance, or impact of white people and minimizes or misrepresents that of nonwhite people and B) to alter (an original story) by casting a white performer in a role based on a nonwhite person or fictional character"

In fandom context, we know it to include:

Making someone’s skin lighter

Making someone’s hair a thinner texture

Changing someone’s nose to be thinner

Shrinking their lips

Changing the character in their entirety to be someone else

The Normalization of Whitewashing

Remember how I mentioned last lesson that despite the nature of poorly drawn Black characters, most audiences are not turned off enough to discourage the action in professional works? Similar idea with whitewashing. Not the same- unlike the Ambiguously Brown Character, which claims to have plausible deniability, overt whitewashing is usually enough to make fans speak up! But that’s the key word here- overt! It has to be “bad enough” to make enough people speak up, but as we’ve seen many a time, “bad enough” seems to have a much higher threshold for nonblack viewership (sometimes the limit doesn’t exist!)

Some visual examples

This is a link to my personal thread on a Netflix show I was watching- Worst Ex Ever. Now, while the show itself was quite enlightening, there was something I could not get over. I thought I was going crazy. And that was that no matter how dark the person of color would be in real life, the animated portions would draw this light pinkish-brown. Every. Single. Time. It's like they couldn't fathom scrolling down the color wheel. And this is a Netflix original! Netflix has plenty of money for someone to have caught this in creation. But... it was produced. And put out. And they're making more of it.

I asked all of the Dragon Age fans about the series, and uh… I didn’t know things were this bad, guys! Apparently this is a man of color, but it doesn't seem like the creators want you to know that 🤣. Jokes aside, as I’ve discussed before, the noticeable whitewashing- and that was one of many racist things I was told- was not enough to prevent sales... so why would they stop? I can only hope this new game, with all the updates, is enough to turn the tide. But the series has gone on for a while now, that if they’d chosen to do ye same olde… there clearly would not be a lack of financial support to prevent it.

Colorism as a Tool

Even when actors of color are cast, colorism often plays a role in normalizing whitewashing to audiences, even to Black audiences! People think “oh well at least they’re Black!” as if that is the only important part. It is not.

While Aaron Pierre, the actor cast for John Stewart of Green Lantern fame, is a GORGEOUS, STUNNING man, he is not the dark-skinned man that John Stewart is supposed to be and should not have been cast! To me, this is overt colorism, but clearly for many people this is not “enough” to warrant concern or even prevent the casting itself- including the studio behind the movie! Black fans have plead for years for the character of Storm to be played by a dark-skinned, preferably African, woman, and it has never happened.

It naturally happens in fan spaces as well, which is another indicator that colorism as a tool for whitewashing is quite effective for audiences. If I see one more Zendaya fan cast for Kida from Atlantis, I will scream. It’s been happening for years, and I don’t think any of the people who just want to see her and Tom on screen either understand or care that Kida is a dark-skinned character. Zendaya doesn’t look anything like Kida- it doesn’t matter if she’s Black too! Just because someone is Black does not mean they can play every single Black character! I’ve even seen people fancast Emilia Clarke of Game of Thrones fame, to which… I don’t have the words. I can’t fathom what would cause these decisions other than racism.

The Common Excuses

I must be honest. I don’t really feel like re-iterating how certain things are not okay and how to fix them, because I’ve already discussed these things in massive detail. So I’m just going to direct the excuses I regularly hear to my lessons, where you can read up on them.

“Their hair/eyes are like that because they’re biracial so-”

Relevant Lessons: 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 8, 9, 10

There is nothing wrong with having biracial characters with a range of features. I am not saying that! Because yeah, genetics do happen!

But I mentioned this in my last lesson, and I will re-emphasize here, that using biracial identity as a way to whitewash is a sinister form of racism. The intention here- the real intention- is the issue here! The idea that somehow this character can only look the way you want them to look by "diluting" their Blackness… I don’t know how you can explain yourselves out of that one.

You don’t get to use us as an excuse for diversity while still trying to maintain your preference for Eurocentric beauty standards. Black biracial people don’t always look light skinned, thin-haired and ambiguous, and even the ones that do don’t deserve to be treated as your fetish for pretend antiracism. If you just want to draw a white person with a tan, do that. But don’t change a character’s entire look just so you can work in some whiteness. If you want to claim that canon Black character’s mother was white, then I guess they inherited some of her personality because their features should not change.

“It’s my style/It’s the color-”

Relevant Lessons: 3, 4, 10

I hate all excuses for whitewashing, but I’ve grown to despise, hate, abhor and loathe this one the most as I’ve become an artist. I wish there were stronger words to describe just how much I hate the “style” and “color” excuse.

Are style and use of color oft intertwined? Absolutely. I’m not saying they aren’t. But out of everything, there are two things I want artists to understand:

1. Style does not cancel out racism! No style forces you to choose ashy greys and to change peoples’ features. That’s you! If you look at something, and it looks offensive, you change the style. You grow as an artist!

2. “Everyone who is brown will look ashy so I just-” if you recognize that your Black characters look strange in comparison to your nonblack characters, then it’s time to try something else! I don’t understand this sudden need for “realism” when it comes to color and lighting, but not when it comes to hair, for example. No one cares about realism when giving every and all Black characters wavy tresses they probably wouldn’t have, but suddenly milquetoast watercolor attempts at brown and off-putting lighting is “how it works”. That’s not fair.

The color picker is an available tool! I use it often!

Dead giveaway of purposeful whitewashing: if someone gets the outfit color palette right via color picking, but the skin color is multiple shades lighter. That means they were looking at that character and chose not to proceed.

Dead giveaway of purposeful whitewashing: if the white characters in the show are completely correct in their palettes. Again, that means they cared enough to look at everyone else… and not the Black characters.

If you use the color picker and the color picked is… disrespectful, you do not have to use that! You can simply choose a better color that is still similar to the brown that ought to be depicted!

“It’s the lighting-”

Relevant Lessons: 4, 5

If your white characters do not shine like snow in the sunlight because of your lighting, then your lighting does not make your Black characters suddenly light tan.

If your Black characters look bad in your lighting of choice- for example, putting a very dark-skinned character in electric white lighting can be ghastly- try changing the intensity or the color of the lighting. DON’T change your character’s skin color!

I'm going to show you some pictures of South Sudanese model Nyakim Gatwech. Pay attention to the choices of light, color, and makeup.

Look how BEAUTIFUL she is! Look at the choices of intensity and color of light, and how they make her look different in each image.

Now look at this image in comparison:

In this image, whoever did her makeup and took this picture did not take into consideration her skin tone. She's also under this really intense lighting. This is an example of "increasing the lighting does NOT make an image "better"". She didn't need to have lighter skin or "more lighting" to look good. She needed BETTER lighting, lighting that worked with HER.

To see this as an example in drawn art, @dsm7 makes an excellent argument for proper lighting and color, why it is an issue to use it as an excuse, and how to solve that problem.

‼️DISCLAIMER FOR NEXT EXAMPLE‼️

Okay. I am about to show y’all a fan-created example from my personal experience. It is a TEACHING EXPERIENCE ONLY. I am not including the artist’s name in this image. It happened a couple years ago, and it’s over- they’ve chosen to be who they are despite me kindly confronting them about it. The only reason I’m including it at all is because I feel like it would be remiss to have such a clear-cut, multi-level example, and not teach with it. That said, no, I am not telling anyone to act out towards them. Again, that is not what I’m telling you to do. The last thing I need is a literal lynch mob of angry nonblack viewership for trying to teach you all, and y’all sitting there watching it happen to me. Every example of whitewashing is not going to be so obvious, but I hope you learn how to spot the examples in the art you see and share.

I'm obviously a Hades fan, particularly of Patroclus- despite my disdain for the lack of effort in his canon character design. So I've seen a lot of things. That said:

“Well it’s just MY design of them-”

Relevant Lessons: ALL

The sepia coloring did not do this. The lighting did not do this. The design is the exact same as the Hades version, even down to the shape of the hair curling in the back. The only thing that is different… is the man himself.

Y'all. Y'all! You CANNOT take a pre-existing Black character and say “oh well this is my design of them” …and the design is of a whole white person. Because if the rest of the fit is the same, and the only thing that changed is the Blackness… Racism. If you’re going to “make up your own design”, then do that!

“Blackwashing”

Speaking of: I’m sure someone edgy out there thinks they’re so smart as they retort to the screen: “but if that’s not okay, then why is Blackwashing okay?” To which I say- shut up. 😐

The “definition” by fandom: making a nonblack character Black, usually an anime character, but characters in general.

Funny enough, the actual definition in the dictionary (or closest to) is “to defame”, in contrast with whitewash (as in whitewashing history). Maybe racist fans ARE using it correctly when they say you’re blackwashing their characters, when they mean you’re making them “less likable because they’re Black now”. 🤔

Anyway: Blackwashing is not real for the same reason reverse racism is not real.

Me painting these characters brown is not going to take away from the fact that there are far more of you in media than there is of me. Me saying that I ‘headcanon a character as Black with 4C hair’ is not going to make the studio go “oh! Well they must be Black with 4C hair now!” Me saying “oh I think I’d like this character better if they were Black” as a beta tester (less overtly, obviously, because I’m not racist!) will never make a studio change that character. Black viewers have minimal value in comparison to the power of the white viewer’s dollar. I could draw white characters Black every single day of every single game media… and they would still produce majority white characters. There has not been centuries- if not millennia, when we consider Jesus Christ himself, even- of purposeful “Blackwashing” with the intent of removing the original ethnicity- and thus importance- of white people. No one has ever been allowed to forget when someone is white. No one has ever been allowed to forget or not acknowledge white people.

How it could be "solved"

Personally, I love Black edits and I welcome them here. I find them creative and fun. But if you really, REALLY didn’t want us to make those edits, then naturally, we need more Black characters in all of our media!

I wouldn’t have to make edits if I saw more of me to begin with in the things I like to watch- but when we have those characters, racists act an ass about them. We’re not allowed to even be present! I’ve seen too many gamer bros mocking the existence of Yasuke in Assassin’s Creed, and he was a real ass man. But if we made a game about African peoples in African societies, how many of the gamer bros would actually play those games? Do you think there’d be as much support, when we hear so much about Black characters that are treated so abhorrently? How many games do we have where people would love their faves just as much if they were Black? I even learned that Solas was apparently supposed to be a man of color. IMAGINE how many people would not have liked that man, with the same exact plot and characterization.

Something I’ve noticed recently: apparently "Blackwashing" is not a thing when White fans “allow” it. Take this recent trend with Miku. International Miku was beloved! But if you draw any other character as Black on any other day, there will be people that are horrid about it. Ask any artist, Black artists and Black cosplayers especially, who’s ever done it what their comments are like. I’ve read entire missives akin to white supremacist drivel on how it’s somehow morally wrong to make characters Black. Meanwhile no amount of “hey maybe you shouldn’t do this” prevented the movie Gods of Egypt from being created, with a cast full of British White people.

Solutions to Avoiding Whitewashing!

1) Using References!!

Do I think you should know what Black people look like? Yes. We’re humans. It’s 2024. Everyone knows what we look like when it’s time to hate and discriminate against us, so you know what we look like when it’s time to love and depict us. If you’re on Tumblr, you have access to the Internet. ESPECIALLY if you’re in the U.S., as Black people are the source of damn near every piece of online pop culture. If you can find my dialect to make my jokes, you can find pictures of me.

Would I rather you use a reference every single time so that you can only strengthen your depiction of my people? ABSOLUTELY.

Anyone on the Internet telling you not to use a reference or that you shouldn’t need a reference? Unfollow them. You don’t need that negativity in your life. Why would you deprive yourself of a tool to create? The greatest portrait painters in history had to look at their subjects! You are not getting paid nearly as much to do this as Hans Holbein, and he had to stare at Henry VIII correct else lose his head- you can pull up multiple references. I’d far rather be judged for using hella references than be judged for being a racist!

Part of the issue is people draw what they’re used to, what they’re comfortable with (thus last lesson). But if what you’re used to is not what someone will look like… That’s not okay. Their features are not the issue, your skills are the issue. Learn! Practice! There is no rush. No one is rushing you to be perfect at drawing Black characters, and no one is rushing you to post them. You can just practice! If you’re not a professional, you can take as long as you need to draw! If you need to draw that piece of hair over and over until you feel like you have down the shape, you do that! If you need to use a tool that would draw the hair for you, you get that tool!

If you want to post, you can say you are practicing! If you make clear you are practicing, then be willing to accept that people may have feedback. I’d far rather deal with someone saying they’re unconfident and practicing, than someone posting a whitewashed caricature and closing their ears because “well at least I’m trying!”

2) Empathize! Care about actual Black people when you create a Black character!

Imagine, if you will, in the Twilight Zone: you went to an artist, and you asked for a white character (I typed in “regular looking white dude” on google). There’s hardly ever any white characters, you’re so super excited about this one! You paid good money, because you’ve seen just how amazing this artist creates! They’re so good at drawing characters of color! But no matter how many times you ask, they send you back an image of… Assad Zaman.

That man might be fine as hell! Gorgeous! Beautifully done! Chef’s kiss. Stunning! But… He’s not white. That’s not what you asked or paid for. You can’t even fathom how they mixed this up, they don’t even look alike! And when you confront them, they gaslight you, they call YOU the issue for not understanding how you can’t tell that this is a white man! They would never get this wrong! They have white friends, you’re the racist! But you’re not stupid, and you have functioning eyes- you can SEE what this drawing looks like! And… It’s not you.

It’s dehumanizing. It’s being told that there’s a “better way” to look like you, and that’s by… Not looking like you. You, as you exist, are what’s incorrect. Your identity is incorrect, not their drawing. It’s better to have thinner hair instead of an afro or locs, it’s better to have lighter skin, it’s better to have a straighter, thinner nose over a round one, and smaller lips.

And what makes it worse is knowing that people who don’t look like you? Probably won’t care. They won’t be willing to see- not unable, but unwilling- that playing with this caricature is harmful, that they’re propagating harm by not acknowledging it. They’re letting you know that your humanity means less to them than the clout received with a whitewashed or half-assed Black character, and that people will applaud them for that ��attempt at inclusion’. And people will applaud! They will be entertained by the mere performance! And that hurts.

I’m going to say this, and it’s awkward and I try not to say it directly on here, but… Having Black friends and/or being around actual, real life Black people would help. I can tell from some of the questions I receive that Black characters and their traits- especially things like our hair and our cultures- are being treated as… alien concepts. But even if, for whatever reason, you legitimately don’t know any Black people, you do not need to know us individually to care about our humanity as a whole! Even if you do not know we’re there, we are, and we could possibly see your work!

By acknowledging Blackness and making room to understand what it means- and that includes how we can look- you are doing the bare minimum of acknowledging our personhood. If you cannot do even that, you don’t need to be drawing us.

Conclusion

Here’s the thing: if you want to draw a white man with tanned skin, do that. Just do it! You do NOT have to erase me to have more of you! There is not a single fandom where the majority of the white fans ever said “gee, not another white guy!” It simply doesn’t happen. God knows we wish it did sometimes. You will always have an audience for white characters. There’s no danger to any of you of “being erased”.

(Without putting on my political hat, I will say that a lot of white people who consider themselves to be far from white supremacist will express beliefs in line with great replacement theory if you push them hard enough. It is unfortunately not as uncommon an idea as you might think. I would do some self-evaluation.)

People are going to notice that you only ever draw white people, but… To be frank, that has never stopped anybody from being successful. Again, Jen Zee, at Supergiant with the terrible dark-skinned characters… Still has a job. at Supergiant. A professional studio. Dragon Age. Multiple games of consistent whitewashing and racist writing. Still going. If racism prevented creation and popularity, I wouldn’t have to have this blog. Alas, that is the society we currently live in.

But if you ACTUALLY want to depict Black characters, if you ACTUALLY want to do right and be respectful- not because you want the clout, but because it’s the right damn thing to do- then you need to commit! This means drawing them as they are meant to be! Accept that you’ll likely lose some fan base, who was there (whether they were aware of it or not) for the white and lighter skinned characters. Accept that this means that trying to appeal to those people by whitewashing characters is 1) wrong, 2) racist, which is 3) something you chose to do when you could simply have just… Drawn more white people.

I’ll say it again: antiracism is hard. It’s hard doing the right thing in a society that rewards racism so easily. It’s really hard knowing that people will stop supporting you or caring as much about your work when you start including Black characters as actively as you do white ones, especially if you start talking about the importance of it. But in my honest opinion, I’d far rather be someone that cared about others, with genuine fans, than someone that was racist for the fleeting internet clout of strangers. And that may be less ‘hopeful’ than I normally am in these lessons, but… People make choices. And people who have been informed- as you are now- are aware of the choices they are making. It’s the thought that counts, but the action that delivers- let’s choose better actions.

#creatingblackcharacters #black character design #whitewashing #antiblackness

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celuere · 2 months ago

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Even MORE HCs of Arlecchino taking care of her pregnant wife.

pairing: Arlecchino x fem!reader

context: nothing, domestic Arlecchino is simply consuming me atm.

cw: pregnancy, SOFT Arle, FLUFF, mentions of throwing up

Somebody sedate me I love her so much.

Starting off with how you would quite literally never wake up on your own when pregnancy nausea forced you out of bed again. Arlecchino would literally be right next to you and gently scoop your hair out of your face the moment you bent over the toilet to empty your stomach. Gently stroking your back, whispering soft words of encouragement, telling you it will be over soon. She’d carefully help you back up and lets you rinse your mouth of the awful taste only to carry you back in her own arms.

If you happen to suffer from Hyperemesis gravidarum (which quite literally means that your nausea lasts for the entirety of the pregnancy and not just the first weeks), she either sits down next to you on the bathroom floors offering her lap as bed or she‘ll have a bucket placed next to your bed. But even then she would always be awake when your stomach is acting up.

I don’t think she‘s the type to talk to your belly but she’d definitely lean against it or gently rest her head on top, watching the soft kicks coming from the inside and tracing the spots with her fingers without uttering a single words. She is simply too mesmerized.

DO NOT! and I repeat DO NOT complain about your weight gain EVER to her, that’s Nr. 1 thing she doesn’t play around with. She literally couldn’t give less fucks about how much you gain or how else your body is changing throughout pregnancy. It almost feels insulting to her when you have the nerve to make a comment about stretch marks and she literally CANNOT contain herself and starts to explicitly explain to you why you’re getting stretchmarks, why they’re so visible and why she finds them so attractive. There isn’t a more beautiful and perfect sight to her than her pregnant wife.

Massages you wherever and whenever you need one, no questions asked. She absolutely loves helping you lay back and relax especially after a difficult day of growing another living being inside your body. She‘d run you a bath, even help you shampoo your hair and the rest of you if you’re too exhausted to do it on your own. She is completely and utterly at your disposal.

Will literal buy everything on the market for her babygirl while setting up the nursery because only in hell will she let her baby miss out on anything like she did when growing up in the House of the Hearth. Even tho you start questioning her when she one day comes home with a heat lamp for the changing table „in case she gets cold“ (Sandrone still owed her a favor)

Literally don’t try to strike up a conversation with her ass when you two happen to be in the same room as her. Her only answer will be few curt nods, an approving but absentminded „mhm“, and if she is feelings generous even a „Interesting… carry on…“, all the while her eyes are plastered on you. Talking and laughing occasionally as you get winded up in yet another discussion, your hand caressing the more than visible baby belly, wedding ring glistening in the chandelier light. Plus points of you‘re wearing something that highlights your body. It’s so over for Arle.

But so help her if one day the first contractions set in. You are immediately surrounded by your husband and a few midwives, checking up on you like you just fell down a bunch of stairs until you reassured everyone that you‘re fine and not went into labor. Still, Arlecchino refuses to leave your side for the rest of day and even earns herself a little scolding from you when she tried to talk you into bed again. You know how much you can handle better than her after all, right?

(A/N: I can’t write labor scenarios for the love of it so I just skip this part-) And the moment she finally gets to hold her love in her arms? It’s scary. Usually the Knave is never scared of anything. But when you hold out the little bundle of joy to her with an exhausted smile and tears staining your sweaty face- something inside of her is doubting herself. What if she accidentally hurts her? What if- lord and behold- she lets her fall down on accident? She is so tiny and fragile, it takes a few encouraging words from your side before Arle finally musters up the courage and very slowly and carefully lifts her babygirl up into her own arms. And she might never want to put her down ever again. She fits so perfectly into her embrace and it also feels like it to her. Like a missing puzzle piece being put into a place as she can’t help but gently stroke her finger over her daughters cheek, completely mesmerized by how soft she feels against her touch.

She starts thanking you. One time. Two times three times. Four times. Over and over as she showers your face in kisses until sleep eventually drags you into its depths. Goodness how could someone as cursed as her be blessed with this wonderful gift? What did she do to deserve this precious little girl in her arms- and her wonderful wife? It has to be some kind of apology from Celestia themself. It has to be.

So help this woman when her daughter opens her eyes for the first time and she stares into a direct replica of her own. Only with your eye color. Her breath catches in her throat for a short moment as she looks down at the beautiful color grazing the x‘s in her eyes, the little white hairs on the top of her head- but yet she still looks so similar to you. So similar it makes her heart ache. How is it possible for something this small to reduce the fourth Fatui Harbinger to nothing but a besotted idiot? This bundle in her arms- this life in her cursed arms. A testimony of how deep your love for each other actually went- it only belongs to the two of you. And she‘ll do anything in her power to protect it. No matter the cost.

SOOOOOOOOB I LOVE PAPA ARLE SM I CANT I ALENAIBEBE EEUGEUGHEUHH I WANNA CRY

#genshin impact #arlecchino #arlecchino x female reader #arlecchino x reader #genshin fanfic #fatui x reader #genshin x reader #peruere x reader #arlechinno genshin #peruere #albadrabbles #arlecchino hc #arlecchino genshin #x reader

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wearywinchester · 1 year ago

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Wrong Turn

Dean Winchester x Reader

Summary: When a fight with Dean leads you to take a breather, what was supposed to be a quick walk turns into something more.

Requested by Anonymous: “Hi <3 Can you write a Dean x Reader, they are in a relationship but they have a nasty fight one night, reader goes outside for a walk to take a breath but there is a storm and it's raining bad and she just gets lost and Dean freaks out when she doesn't come back? Angst and fluff please.”

Warnings: angst, arguing, swearing, mentions of blood, injury, anxiety, fluff

Tempers were well beyond their limit, a seemingly ongoing theme of the entirety of that day, stretching all the way through to that evening. Dean’s anger was never a surprise, not when it came to those that he held closest to himself. He can’t help it, never could. He gets himself so tightly wound with the ever growing desire to keep everyone safe, to keep everyone no further than arms length. He gets himself so worked up that he bursts, let’s that anger gush out of him in bouts of swearing and strings of words he almost always regrets later.

Tonight was no exception, not even close. It just might’ve been the worst fight the two of you have had in quite some time.

��I can’t believe you,” Dean says behind you, the motel door slamming shut faster than you can turn around to see him shove it closed with his boot.

“Believe what, that I did my job?” You say.

He was fuming, you could hear it in his voice. It was gruff and his words were sharp, an edge to it that wasn’t present most of the time. There was no humor, voice of that sweeter side you’ve always loved. It was filled with anger and frustration, deepened with irritation.

He chuckled, empty and humorless at the words that fell from your mouth and into the tense space. Did your job. To him, that was quite possibly the most ridiculous thing you could’ve ever said in your life given the context. The stupidest even.

That chuckle was so beyond bitter as he looked at you with a narrowed stare, those beautiful green eyes the angriest you’d ever seen them. Not at all soft as they most often were, not at all gazing at you with an adoration you can never ever fathom comes from looking at you. That loving gaze is replaced with the utmost of frustration as he stares you down, brows knit together.

“Doing your job? That’s what you’re calling it?” He says, laughter in his words as he tosses his duffel bag on the bed harshly, some of its contents spilling out of the half zippered opening. “Since when is putting your ass on the line to lore a damn monster a ten times stronger than you doing your job?”

You roll your eyes at his words, at the way he raised his voice. You wanted to say you couldn’t believe what you were hearing but that’d be a lie. It was Dean Winchester after all, you expected it.

“We hunt monsters for a living, Dean. Did you think I was just going to sit back and watch it kill somebody else? You would’ve done the same thing if I didn’t beat you to it,” you argue.

His cheeks were tinged a soft shade of pink, only making the freckles spattered on his cheeks and across the bridge of his nose all the more noticeable. Dean doesn’t flush, not unless he’s angry, not unless he’s pissed. And there he stands, pink and rosy with his jaw tensed as tight as ever as he looks at you, looks at you till he can’t anymore in an effort to calm himself down.

“I wouldn’t do something that damn stupid,” he says, his gaze returning to you.

“You would and you have, Dean, don’t give me that,” you say, watching his top lip quiver in anger. “Every hunt you do something reckless and stupid and everyone’s supposed to be okay with your self sacrificing way of handling things because you think you’re doing what’s best. You always put your ass on the line in a million and one different ways, but when I do it it’s stupid? That’s a load of crap and you know it, Dean.”

You’ve raised your own voice now, watching his chest rise and fall heavier and heavier as he wipes his hand over his mouth.

“Y/n—”

“No, tell me, Dean. How is that fair?”

“You don’t—”

“How is it fair, Dean?” You’re damn near yelling, body tense and the pit of your stomach filled with a heat that travels to your cheeks, burning hot as you swim in your anger.

“You can’t just go running around painting yourself as bait every chance you get. You don’t know what the hell you’re getting into, and you damn sure don’t know what you’re doing,” he counters, his gaze unwavering.

“Don’t know what I’m doing? I’ve been in this nightmare of a gig just as long as you have, and I’m still swingin’. Don’t you dare say that I don’t know what I’m doing,” you say.

You’re livid, cheeks on fire as you stare him down, finally thinking to release the handles of your duffel bag that’d been trapped within the tightness of your grasp long enough for your hand to be sweaty, long enough that your fingernails left crescent shaped indentations on your palm.

“God, do you even hear yourself when you talk, Y/n?” There’s that bitter laugh again, humorless as he rubs his hand down his face.

Now it’s your turn to laugh, an action that pulls his gaze back to you.

“Then maybe you should look in the mirror, Dean. Tempting your own fate and looking death right in the face seems to be your thing,” you retort, watching his brows scrunch even tighter together.

His lips part, finger raising to point at you with a slight tremble before it drops back to his side and he’s almost at a loss for words. Almost, as he shakes his head.

“You know what, Y/n? I’m not the one with a damn gash on my forehead. I’m not the one walking around with a torn off piece of my flannel tied around my hand to stop the bleeding. I’m not the one walking around, doing a piss poor job hiding a freaking limp because I’m too damn proud to admit I did something stupid. So tell me, Y/n, is it really just my thing?”

Your chest was heaving at this point, whole body trembling with adrenaline as you stare up at him with as much anger as you could muster. You could feel that strain in your throat, that horrid soreness that came with the ever difficult battle to keep that lump from rising and allowing your voice to break. That stupid lump that accompanied the tears that pressed so adamantly behind your eyes that it burned, that it stung.

He had you angry, blood boiling as you stood there in front of him. He was no different, standing there with a jaw clenched so tightly you thought his teeth would damn near crack. He had a certain anger in his eyes, anger mixed with something you couldn’t quite place as you stared him down for as long as you could muster.

He always knew how to poke and prod, get under your skin. He was stubborn more than anyone you’d ever known, probably more than anyone that could exist. He was Dean Winchester.

“You’re a dick, Dean,” you say, all the venom and hurt you can muster in those four words. As much as you could even though it felt like your throat was on fire. Felt as though barbed wire was woven around it from all the built up pressure of the tears you’re trying to hold back to keep him from seeing.

There’s that laugh again, that same bitter laugh as he hears your words.

“Yeah? You act like you’re so tough, Y/n, like you’re the best damn hotshot hunter there is. You act like you know everything and you sure as hell don’t so get off your damn high horse before you do something even more stupid and get yourself dead.”

He was shouting by this point, brows knit and eyes narrowed as he stared at you with twice the anger than a minute ago and he was only met with the same look. The very same apart from the welled up tears and the wobbly lip you sunk your teeth into to try and hide it the very best you could. You couldn’t.

You couldn’t keep your facade up, not in front of him. You never could. It was damn near impossible as you stood there until you couldn’t anymore, spinning on your heel. You brushed past him, shoulder bumping him and nearly throwing you off balance as you head for the motel door.

“Where are you going?” He asks, his tone incredulous.

“Away from you. What’s it look like?”

You grab the door handle and can hear him scoff as you swing it open and at first he doesn’t think you’re serious, not as he chuckles and shakes his head, maybe to egg you on even.

He doesn’t think you’re serious even as you slam the door shut behind you, and maybe not even for a few minutes after that. But after that few minutes it doesn’t seem so funny anymore, it never did, especially not when you didn’t walk right back in. He doesn’t think it’s funny when he swings that motel door right back open to find the parking lot empty, the Impala void of your presence—to find you nowhere to be seen.

He stands there for a moment with a clenched jaw, anger pulsing through him that’s rapidly redirecting towards himself. But he simply steps back into the room and slams the door shut behind him so hard it rattled. Ran his hands through his hair and drug them down his face.

But he doesn’t move, too steeped in his own anger to go on after you as you walked along by yourself in an effort to cool yourself down.

It was cold out, that steady drizzle still coming down but bearable enough to keep on walking away from that motel and away from the man that’s got you all fired up.

Your cheeks were heated and your heart was still pounding. That horrible pressure behind your eyes of unshed tears had finally broken loose, hot tears rolling and mixing with chilly raindrops on your skin. Your face was scrunched in a way you couldn’t help even if you tried as you let them out, frustratedly wiping them away as if there was still a chance of the older Winchester seeing them.

You loved him, but god, you hated him sometimes. He was too protective for his own good, too angry. He’s got you so wound up you don’t know whether to scream, cry, or never turn back to that motel room again. Or perhaps all three. But you know you’d never actually run off. That may be exactly what you’re doing right now but you’d always find your way back to him.

He’s got a heart of gold but you’re too damn pissed to want to think about that right now.

He’s in that room by himself, Sam in the room next door. He’s in that room stewing in anger and regret for the things he’d said out of that anger. He’s beating himself up for that unshakable habit of saying things he comes to regret. He wants to rip that motel room apart, wants to go looking for you. He wants to do it all but instead he sits on the edge of that squeaky motel bed for a matter of seconds before he gets right back up again, splashing his face off with cool water in the bathroom sink. But instead he stays in that motel room, his remaining anger leaving him spiteful before that guilt trickles in.

It’s cold, damn it’s cold as you walk along the tattered sidewalk. The pavement is cracked and crumbling away at the edges, gravel spilling over from old parking lots you pass by. You’ve got no idea where you’re going, and no idea where you are. Of course you don’t, you’ve never been to this town in your entire life and it’s near in the middle of nowhere.

You were wandering around this little town and it quickly began to feel not so little as you continued on in a direction that surely wasn’t towards that motel.

Your heart was beating a mile a minute and you were almost too angry to care about your surroundings. So worked up that you felt damn near invincible, didn’t really care about any threats because that anger was enough of a driving force to keep you safe.

But that couldn’t be farther from the truth, not even a little. Because deep down, under all that anger, you realized maybe this wasn’t the best idea.

He’s an idiot. He’s such a damn idiot that you almost couldn’t bear it. He always did this. He always tried to bench you, to hold you back on hunts. He always tried to jump in and save the day, always stole your thunder. He treated you like some rookie hunter that constantly needs a watchful eye, that constantly needs to be supervised like you don’t know what your doing. He acts like you’re some rookie hunter that couldn’t go two seconds on their own without getting into some life threatening situation.

He acts like it’s the end of the world when you step in, when you do something risky for the sake of keeping people safe. He blows it so far out of proportion, makes it seem like you couldn’t possibly do anything more stupid when he does the same and more. He does the very same every single time without second thought, but when you do it, there’s no greater crime to commit than doing your job.

He was so hypocritical it drove you insane.

You were a mess of emotions, fury and upset knotted in the pit of your stomach. It burned and it sat heavy, made you want to scream till your throat was sore. But you decided against it, didn’t want to draw attention to yourself more than you already felt you were as you walked alone through the empty street.

Your chest felt tight, your frustration having you ready to burst and that even felt like it wouldn’t be relieving enough. It felt like your emotions were too big for you to handle.

You were angry, you were pissed. You felt everything all at once, all of it as the wind picked up. It was more than noticeable as the gusts took your breath away for a moment, distracting you for just a second.

You knew the weather was bound to worsen, you saw the flashes of lightning beyond the street lights. You heard the low rumble of the thunder that followed it. It wasn’t until the drizzle of rain picked up to a steady pour that the storm you knew was brewing was fully there. You were caught outside and damn near lost in the middle of a freaking storm.

Unbeknownst to you, Dean was worried, of course he was. He’d be worried even if there wasn’t a stupid storm letting loose.

God, you hated him sometimes, but you loved him too.

You were stubborn as hell, stubborn enough to let yourself walk along a bit further and doom yourself even more. To keep on going and getting yourself even more lost and upset as the tears on your cheeks mixed with the rain. You walked until you wore yourself down and it took some doing, your anger took some work to wear away as you stomped along.

You walked until you gave in, till you caved.

It’d been who knows how long as you ducked under the overhang of a small store, digging in your pocket for your phone.

12:47 am.

It’d been forty-five minutes. Forty-five minutes of stubborn spite and being far too angry for your own good. Of being so stuck in your own head you didn’t stop yourself from getting into danger, but maybe that’s just what you do.

You held your phone with a shaky, wet hand, scrolling through your contacts before highlighting Dean’s name. Just the sight of it had your stomach churning, that burst of emotions flooding through you but you hit call anyway, pressing the phone to your ear.

It rang once, twice…

“Hello?”

No matter how angry you were, you couldn’t deny the rush of relief that washed over you at the sound of his voice.

You didn’t answer right away, a few quiet moments passing.

“Dean—”

“Y/n, where the hell are you?”

“Hello to you too,” you say, and you didn’t even need to see him to know he wasn’t amused.

“Now’s not the time for games,” he says.

“Like you care,” you mutter, more to yourself than anything but he still heard it.

“I called you seven freaking times, Y/n. Don’t tell me that crap,” he says, and you can hear the sheer anger and frustration in his voice, a little impatience mixed in there too.

You pull the phone away for a second, catching that number seven right beside his name. Dammit.

You simply sigh, get all quiet for a moment or two as you stand there with your free arm wrapped around yourself, foot tapping against the wet ground.

“Y/n, where are you?” He reiterates.

You’re still quiet for a second, biting your cheek.

“I don’t know,” you admit softly, swallowing.

“What do you mean you don’t know?” He says incredulously.

“I mean I don’t know, Dean. We’re in a town we’ve never been before in the freaking boonies, what do you think?” You say louder, quieting back down and shrinking back against the wall at your outburst, trying to hide from any unwanted attention.

“Landmarks, Y/n, gimme landmarks,” he says, tone a little softer.

You hum softly as your eyes dart around, searching for the most helpful piece of information you could find.

“Dave’s. Dave’s Bar. Uh…a diner across from it too,” you say, wincing at the sudden crack of thunder.

“I’m on the way. And please, for the love of god, stay put. Don’t go wanderin’ around or I swear I’m gonna freakin’ lose my damn mind,” he says.

“Dean, I—”

There were those three beeps, those familiar three beeps followed by the stupid dead battery symbol. That fear in the pit of your stomach heightened, and you’re banking on Dean’s ability to find his way around because there’s no way in hell you’re stepping foot into that bar to use the phone. That just might be the stupidest thing you could do second to walking out here in anger by yourself in the first place.

That familiar sense of panic settles deep within you, heavy as you bite the inside of your cheek. In a matter of seconds you quickly find that you no longer wanted to storm off and go wherever your feet take you. You no longer wanted to walk farther away, not even a single step. You wanted to do none of that.

You wanted to be inside that Impala where you know it’s safe, hell, you wanted to be in his arms because that’s even safer. But instead you’re stuck outside in dodgy weather all by yourself, with no one to blame but yourself.

You had entirely no idea how far you were from that motel room, let alone where exactly you were. It could have been a much shorter drive for Dean than it was a walk for you, it had to be. But then again, you guys were in a town you’ve never been to, and he could only guess based off the information you gave him.

Worry ran circles in your mind, lap after lap that he wouldn’t find you, not for a while. Or even worse, that by the time he did, you’d have been snatched up by a crazy monster or an even crazier human being.

It made that dizzying feeling send waves through your chest, quickening your heart beat as you paced in the same spot. He told you not to move, so you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t, but you felt like a moving target the more you lingered in the same area. You felt like eyes were on you and you just couldn’t see them. It was unnerving.

He told you not to move, so you shouldn’t.

You sat on the nearby bench before realizing how soaked it was, not that it really mattered. But you stood back up in a huff, lifting your hands to your face and brushing away your wet hair.

You did something stupid, of course you did, but you’d never tell him that. Sure, getting some fresh air was always a good idea when arguing, gives a chance to cool off and clear your head. But not in the middle of the night when a damn thunderstorm is about to break loose.

You were being reckless, thinking in the heat of the moment and acting on it as people so often do. As Dean so often does. You dug your own grave and now you have to lay in it as you stand there with chattering teeth and your arms wrapped around yourself to maintain the non existent warmth you had in your body.

Seconds felt like minutes, minutes felt like hours, and hours felt like damn decades until you saw headlights. You didn’t dare draw attention to yourself in the event that it wasn’t Dean—he was incredibly observant, he’d see you without it.

But you heard a distinct three honks of a familiar horn, and that relief settles over you once more. He pulls a u-turn in the middle of the wide road, stopping along the curb right in front of you as he leans over the bench seat to look at you.

He sees that look on your face, he sees your stance, he knows you’re not going to make this easy for him, he knows. You’re stubborn as hell and he loved it and hated it all the same. Hated it in moments like this.

He knows, so he does himself a favor and gets out of the car and into the pouring rain.

“Well I’ll be damned, looks like you actually listened to me,” he says, looking at his surroundings, the very same ones you’d mentioned to him on that phone call.

You hadn’t strayed too far just like he’d asked you to, you stayed put.

You roll your eyes, exhaling a larger than life huff. “Don’t get used to it.”

Now it’s his turn to roll his eyes, and that expression he’s got is far less than humored as he narrows his eyes at you. He could tell you’d still be difficult, no matter how scared or upset or truly bothered you were, you’d always be difficult first because being stubborn is what you know best. Didn’t want to show how vulnerable you were, how vulnerable you are.

“You gonna stand there all night or are you gonna get in the car, sweetheart? It’s cold and this storm ain’t going anywhere,” he says, a hint of demanding in his voice.

“Then go back to the motel if you’re so uncomfortable. I’m sure can find my way back,” you counter, brows knit together.

“Like hell you can,” he nearly yells, his frustration evident. “Don’t be stupid, Y/n.”

“I’m not being stupid, Dean,” you say, equal anger in your tone.

“Yeah, you are, Y/n. You went wandering off in the dinky town we know nothing about in the middle of the night, and you got yourself lost in a storm. You’re damn lucky I found you before some monster, or even worse, some creep, got their hands on you. So yes, Y/n, you’re being stupid,” he shouts, that vein in his neck bulging and his chest heaving lightly.

“Go away, Dean.”

That’s all you could manage to say, all you could muster. You meant absolutely none of it, not at all, but that stubbornness in you was hard to resist.

“Y/n, just get in the damn car before I make you do it myself, and you know I will,” he says, a clear warning in his words.

You simply stare at him, you stand there and stare at him across the roof of the Impala as the rain continues to pour all around you, the wind making everything all the more intense.

You stood there and watched the crease between his brows, one created from your stubbornness and his frustration. You watched as the rain had his hair sticking to his forehead, no longer spiked up or disheveled from the sheer amount of times he’s run his fingers through it in the past two hours.

You stand there as the wind and the rain sends chills over you, cold and constant. He looks like his last fuse is about to blow, and he knows what you’re doing. He doesn’t give a damn about the weather, couldn’t care less now that he knows you’re in one piece, not lost in the middle of a storm. But he knows what you’re doing.

You’re so damn stubborn, so angry at him that you don’t want to listen, even if it’s inconveniencing you. You’re so frustrated, the last thing you want to do is sit a mere two feet away from him for who knows how long. It’s the last thing you want but yet it’s the only thing you want.

Not just because you were cold and wet and miserable. Not just because you were tired and in the midst of a freaking storm. He made you so damn pissed but you could deny the comfort that settled over you. Hell, is washed through you, rushed.

You didn’t want to listen to him, purely out of spite, not as you stand there and look at that expression he’s got. But yet that’s all you want to do.

After another passing moment, you exhale a short huff and open the door, getting in the car without a word.

The leather seats squeaked as you did, as Dean did, your soaked clothing making it inevitably so. The heat you felt from the vents was immediate, comforting in contrast to the cold weather just outside. And it wasn’t long before he sped off.

You sat pressed up against the door and he very much noticed, was about ready to say something but he decided against it for this moment. Kept his tight, white knuckled grip on the wheel instead. But that didn’t keep him from glancing over at you more often than not.

He could feel you shivering, even if you insisted on sitting as far from him as you could. In reality, you wanted nothing more than to tuck yourself against him, but that spite you’ve got going on was still going.

You looked ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous sitting there like that acting as if he had the damn plague. Acting like you didn’t absolutely love the idiot sitting 3 feet away when it really could have been just one or two. You looked stupid and you knew it, you knew he knew it too.

“You gonna glue yourself to the door the whole way back to Bobby’s too?” He asks.

Exhibit A.

You exhale a huff, biting the inside of your cheek.

“Maybe,” you say, stubborn as ever.

You hear his quiet scoff, you know he’s shaking his head without even seeing him.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Y/n,” he says, glancing over at you briefly to see just how tightly your brows were scrunched.

“Shut up, Dean,” you say, quiet but he very much heard it.

He only shook his head, chuckling to himself quietly but this time it wasn’t completely void of humor. You were ridiculous.

You noticed how he turned the vent towards you, then you noticed how all of them were. Never mind the fact that he may have been cold. He pointed all the damn things towards you and that alone had you wavering.

No, you couldn’t. Couldn’t just give in so easily to that green eyed fool because he’d get all smug, let it go to his head. No matter how your heart skipped a beat, no matter how sweet the gestures were, one’s he did without second thought because he would always put you first.

No matter the cause, no matter the situation, he put you first every single time without hesitation. Doesn’t matter if it’s walking closest to the street when walking, or giving you the last beer. No matter if it’s giving you his jacket in the cold or ripping a damn piece of his flannel off to bandage you, even if it was his favorite one. He always put you first.

But you couldn’t think about that right now, you’d give in too easily. Couldn’t let him have that satisfaction because you may be ridiculous, but you you stubborn too.

What you could do, however, was scoot a little closer. Just a little bit, then a little more, and maybe you’d be damn near pressed to his side until you finally are.

“Think better of it?” He asks, and you hear that amusement in his tone.

You simply huff, displeasure on your expression as you glare up at him.

“Just cold, don’t get too excited,” you grumble, resting your head back on his shoulder as you cross your arms around yourself.

Just cold.

You were quiet the rest of the drive back to the motel, the drive that wound up being twenty minutes. Seemed like nothing, like a quick trip in a vehicle. But to walk, it felt like it was infinitely longer.

That familiar motel came into view as Dean slowed down, swinging into the small lot and right back into the same parking spot as he’d been in just hours prior.

It was still raining, still heard rumbles of thunder after flashes of lightning. The wind still blew against the car and swayed it faintly, the culmination of all three proving to be less than inviting for you to want to get out of the warmth and safety of the car and into the elements, even if it was just for a few fleeting seconds.

You scooted away from Dean as he dug in his pocket, fishing around for the motel key. He pulled it out with a smal a-ha, something that had you rolling your eyes as you push open the door.

It was quite a cold shock, actually, the weather a sharp contrast to the warmth of the Impala. But luckily Dean was just as urgent with getting inside the room as you were, though you still released your exhale just as loudly.

You can tell he’s not a fan of that action, not one bit as his jaw tenses momentarily and maybe even an eye roll. But it’s a matter of seconds before he pushes open the door.

It looks just as you left it, duffel bag on the bed, a few clothing items strewn about it in an effort to find something to wear. Though you were mid argument at the time, the action proving to be pointless and it showed.

Dean’s bag was in the same spot, unzipped and rifled through as it sat on the floor next to the bed still.

It was much warmer and much more dry than the inclement weather just on the outside of that door. But it was still tense. It was still tense and moody and damn near suffocating just as it was in the car, just as it was out in the storm. That was something that motel room couldn’t take away.

You brush past him in a huff, feeling his eyes on you as you made your way to the bathroom. You don’t care—he can look at you all he wants. He can glare, can furrow his brows, he can look as moody as he’d like but you don’t care. You most certainly do, but you’re stubborn enough to not want that to show.

You switch on the light, it’s yellow glow illuminating the small room. This is the first time you’d really seen yourself since this morning. The gash on your face, how tired you looked. How swollen your eyes were from crying, how rain soaked you were.

You looked exactly how you felt, and your reflection only made you more upset.

You were so worked up, so out of sorts, you left the bathroom all together in the huff that you entered it in. Just as upset as a few minutes ago, passing by Dean in the very same way as the first time.

He didn’t say anything, not at first. He didn’t say anything as he stood there and watched you, hands paused from what they were doing digging around in his bag. It wasn’t until you began digging in yours that he spoke up.

“What are you doing?” He asks, something more than curiosity in his tone. Something that sparked your frustration.

“Getting ready for bed, what’s it look like, Dean?” You counter, discontent in your tone as you speak.

“So you’re just gonna neglect your wounds like it didn’t happen and go to bed?” He says.

“Yes, Dean, that’s exactly what I’m doing.”

You continue to rummage through your belongings, not fully knowing what you were looking for in your anger until you spotted a shirt to sleep in. Of course it was one of Deans—you haven’t worn your own clothes to bed for quite a long while. It wasn’t going to change just because you were fighting like cats and dogs.

You dug around some more in search of your toothbrush, snagging your hand on something sharp enough to make you recoil as it brushes over your wound. You knew he saw it, of course he did. He saw most everything.

“Y/n,” he says.

You don’t respond, instead shrugging off your coat, letting it fall to the floor in a rain soaked pile, you shirt soon to follow. You could tell he was growing impatient again.

You sat on the edge of the bed and began to untie your boots, careless and rough with your actions. So careless that you gripped them with your frustration to toss them inside rather than kick them off like you normally do, the action sending jolt through your palm once more. It was a crippling wave of pain, one that had you sucking a sharp gasp through your teeth as you jerked your hand back

“Y/n,” he said, louder this time.

“What?” You ask, your annoyance evident in your tone.

“Would you calm down for a second?” He says.

“I am calm, Dean.”

He laughs again, the humor far from it once again as he looks at you.

“No, you’re not. You’re too damn busy huffing and puffing that you’re bangin’ yourself up even more than you already are!” He all but shouts.

“I’m fine, okay? It’s just a freaking scratch, Dean,” you yell, holding up your hand. It wasn’t until you looked at it, saw the fresh staining of blood on the scrap piece of flannel that you knew you were in for it. “Son of a bitch.”

“Bathroom. Now,” he says.

You look back at him.

“I can handle it.”

“I wasn’t asking, sweetheart. Bathroom,” he says.

You simply look at him for a moment or two, the very same way you did earlier when he asked you to get in the car. You look at him and see he’s not backing down, that he’s not kidding. So you roll your eyes and get up from the bed, brushing past him again and bumping him with your shoulder.

You can be pissed at him all you want, he didn’t care. He was patching you up no matter how much you fought him on it because he always did, and he always will.

You walk back in the bathroom with a short huff, the older Winchester right behind you.

“Have a seat.”

You roll your eyes. “You don’t have to tell me what to do, Dean.”

“Apparently you do.”

You glare at him, hopping up onto the counter anyway. You could tell another comment was sitting on the tip of his tongue but he chose against saying anything further on the subject.

He set the first aid kit down, flipping open its lid. His hand hovered over it for a few passing moments, as he looked over everything, pulling out the roll of bandage and the antiseptic, grabbing a moderate stack of gauze from its compartment.

He set everything down and laid it out on the counter before returning his focus to you. He grabbed your hand gently, so very gentle in contrast to his temper. He held your hand in his and turned it so your palm faced upwards. He let go momentarily to untie the knot in the fabric around it, requiring a little extra work from how tight he’d fastened it earlier. But soon enough he got it, loosening it up.

When he pulled away the fabric to reveal a nasty scratch that’d been plenty smudged with crimson, you lifted your gaze to see his expression. You saw the tension in his jaw, saw the way his brows pulled together in displeasure. You saw it all while you felt the gentle caress of his thumb over the heel of your hand.

He got caught up in staring for a few more moments, noticeably so, and he cleared his throat. He snagged some gauze and the bottle of antiseptic, opening the plastic cap with a flick of his thumb. He tipped the bottle over and squirted the clear liquid on the gauze, grabbing your hand once more.

He looked at you briefly, long enough to make sure you met his gaze as if to offer a wordless warning. He drizzled some of it directly on your hand, the sensation cold and stinging almost immediately and you half make an attempt to pull from his grasp but he tightens around your wrist gently, just enough to let you know he wouldn’t let you recoil.

He waited a few moments before taking the dampening gauze and dabbing away the excess liquid, tossing the dirtied material aside in favor of grabbing fresh ones.

Your hand was tender as he wiped away the blood, making sense of what he was working with ones he got it more cleaned up. It was red and irritated, hand throbbing from all the fuss and handling of it that you so desperately wanted to be over. So much so you began to squirm and continue to try and recoil.

It was no use.

You were relieved to see he’d been done with the liquid torment, for now at least, grabbing the roll of bandage. He’d laid down fresh, dry gauze first, peeling back the edge of the roll before he began wrapping it around your hand. He was gentle throughout the process, gentle despite being so horribly the opposite just hours earlier. He’d always take care of you.

His thumb brushed over the fresh bandage for a few moments, his gaze shifting to your cheek. You knew what was coming next.

“Dean, I can take care of the rest,” you interject, watching him nearly roll his eyes.

“I’m sure you can, but I didn’t ask you to either.”

You huff once again and roll your eyes, looking the other way when he grabbed more dampened gauze from the counter.

You felt his finger under your chin, redirecting your gaze to him so he could see better. You struggled to keep from moving, the anticipated pain having you trying to get yourself situated, shying away from that damn antiseptic in hopes he’d just call it a day.

Of course he wouldn’t.

“Dammit, Y/n, would you hold still?” He says, patience thin as he rests his hand on your cheek and redirects your gaze once more.

You heave a heavy sigh, shoulders slumping a little bit as you allow him to, eyes narrowed as you look up at him with all the annoyance you could muster. You didn’t want to hold still, you wanted to dig your heels in and do the exact opposite of everything he said. You wanted to piss him off even more because you were still angry, still upset with him.

You gave it a valiant attempt, tried your hardest and it lasted you a little while as you sat there on that counter. But with the way he’d been cradling your face in his hand, the way his thumb brushed back and forth across your cheek almost absentmindedly. It was hard to keep your irritation in place.

“He really gotcha good, huh sweetheart?” He asks, tone much softer than moments ago but that anger was still very much there. Not at you, but at the damn thing that put its hands on his sweetheart.

It’s like a burning feeling in the pit of his stomach, sitting heavy as a damn boulder there, getting heavier and heavier with each passing minute the more he allows himself to think about what happened, what could have happened.

He always does that to himself. Always keeps himself up at night. Lays there and let’s one scenario after the next plague his mind on things that could happen to you, things that could happen to Sammy. Things that could happen on his watch, trying to figure out ways to prevent said imaginary things to happen so he’s prepared for anything and everything. Things that could happen when he’s not there, even just for a split second. Those were the things that bothered him the most. Drove him insane till he got this tightness in his chest that had him nearly bursting at the seams.

He gets himself so worked up on those nights, all while you’ve got your head on his chest and you’re sound a sleep, not a care in the world for a few hours time. He envied it, how at peace you were, but it’s all he wants for you, helps loosen that tightness in his chest knowing you’re at ease. At ease while he lays there and torments himself with what ifs and things that didn’t even happen, things that might never happen.

Dean Winchester might seem calm, cool, and collected under the pressure of this hunting life. He might seem like he’s got everything under control at all times, got a plan for everything, a solution. And most of the time, he does. But he’s also got himself so wound up on the future way far ahead of him that it renders him anxious and stressed more often than not.

You simply shrug at the question. “S’alright.”

There’s that infamous eye roll he gives, that anger building once more at your nonchalance of the situation. It’s part of what’s got him so angry that night to begin with. You act like you don’t care when you really do, act like everything’s fine and that it’s just part of the job. It is, but getting hurt like that, hell, even getting just a simple scratch. To him—that’s purely like a nightmare when it comes to you.

He couldn’t care less how banged up and bruised he got, but when it comes to Sammy, when it comes to you, he gets so damn pissed he can hardly see straight.

“No, it’s not,” he says, dabbing away the remnants of blood smudging around it on your forehead.

You’re half tempted to argue in response, tell him he’s being dramatic. But you’d only be poking the bear, something you’d done the entirety of that night. But that look on his face, painted with worry and fear, you saw it and didn’t have the heart to poke and prod at him, at least not in this moment.

So you settle for a deep sigh, looking up at him while his other hand still rests on your cheek. You know part of him is being a little dramatic, you know he doesn’t need to get so tightly wound on scenarios that didn’t even happen, but pointing it out would do no good.

He drops his hand in favor of digging through his first aid kit. It’s always fully stocked, nearly jam packed to the gills with just about anything you could imagine. At every hunt he’ll stop at a gas station in whatever town you’re in, buy a box of bandages, supplies, anything he thinks he may need. He’s got this paranoia of running out, this worry he doesn’t have enough in the event of an emergency. But that worry is something he keeps to himself.

He pulls out three closure strips, tearing open their packaging. He’s careful in the way we places them, wants them to be damn near perfect, wants to add as little pain as possible to the pain he’s sure you’re feeling. Just the idea makes him riled up and angry at the thought of you hurting.

He dabs away any additional blood that formed, that cut looking a little better now that it’d been properly taken care of, leaving it to look a little red and angry after having been touched.

You continue to sit there on that counter as he cleans up, tossing the trash in the small bin on the floor right next to it. He can feel you staring, of course he can. He can feel it and confirms it when he turns back to you.

He averts his gaze for a moment as he grabs ahold of your hand, gently as his eyes glance over the fresh bandage. That very hand his shaky as it rests in his palm, his thumb brushing over the heel of it as a wordless for me of comfort.

You can see the way his jaw tenses as he looks at it, at the way his brows crease and knit together. You can practically see the gears turning in his head, working on overdrive and you know he’s thinking about what happened that day. And it’s almost as if he can read your thoughts, tearing his gaze away as if to clear his mind, shake away his own thoughts before he looks at you.

His gaze is still narrowed with that anger, but it’s quick to soften just a little when he meets your eyes.

You bite the inside of your cheek for a moment, swinging your dangling feet once or twice when you bump his leg with your foot.

“I’m fine, Dean,” you say, not so much in a stubborn, dismissive way this time.

His brows pull closer together again at the words, words he doesn’t agree with, but there’s that damn smile of yours. Soft and sweet, a little humor behind it because you’re trying to lighten the mood. All he can do is look at you, look at that small grin and wonder how he got so lucky to have you looking at him like that.

You reach up and swipe your thumb along his chin, wiping away the smudge of dirt that was smeared there. But you didn’t drop your hand, pressing your thumb in the soft dimple in his chin before you caress his cheek softly, letting your hand settle there.

You can feel his stubble scratch under your palm, can feel the tension in his jaw. But you can also feel it subside as the tips of your fingers brush over his hair as they rest at the nape of his neck. He may have been your tough guy, may have been rough around the edges, but nothing could compare to the way his gaze softened as he looked at you. As he responded to your touch in the gentlest way possible.

It worked wonders to sooth his anger, anger that still lingered and threatened to build up and tighten in his chest if he thought about that day one more damn time.

He leaned forward and rested his forehead against yours, hands resting on the tops of your thighs. He heaved a heavy sigh, breath smelling like the burger he’d had for dinner, and the beer he’d drank to wash it down.

His nose bumped against yours, and you can feel his unease without even looking at him, you know there’s words on the tip of his tongue.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he says, quiet as his breath puffs against your lips with each word.

You’re silent for a moment or two, something that maintains that unease he feels. Because he knows he gets angry, so damn angry that he acts like a jerk. Says things to piss you off in the heat of an argument. He knows it.

But it’s quick to ease when he feels your lips on his, soft and gentle, something he wastes no time in leaning into as he kisses you a little harder. He basks in every last bit that that kiss lingers, parting momentarily as his breath brushes against your lips warmly before kissing you again once, twice, three more times.

He can’t help but steal another as he pulls you closer to the edge of the counter with a grip on your hips, pulling back just enough to see your face.

You see every freckle, every single one, speckled across the bridge of his nose and splayed over his cheeks. Dotting along his eyelids and disappearing up into his eyebrows. You see the one that sits in his top lip, one that you never fail to press a kiss to, this time being no different.

You see the soft creases by his eyes, the near permanent lines of worry between his brows. You see every single detail up close and personal as you sit there and stare at him. And the way he runs his hand along your rain dampened hair, brushing it out of your face, it’s the only thing that distracts you and pulls your attention.

“Guess I’m sorry too,” you say, that humor in your tone making him roll his eyes. But the meaning, the sincerity is very much there and he knows it.

“You’re a pain in the ass, sweetheart,” he says, pressing a kiss to your forehead before spinning on his heel and stepping out of the bathroom.

“Hey!” You protest, hopping down from the counter with a fake frown that threatens to turn to a smile, even more so when he turns to look at you with raised brows. “Am I at least your pain in the ass?”

He pretends to ponder the question long and hard, lips puckered in thought as he stands there and watches you grow impatient and lightheartedly offended.

You’re about ready to scoff when he steps closer, hand reaching up to settle at the nape of your neck, fingers tangling in your hair softly.

“Always have been, sweetheart,” he says, pressing his lips against yours.

—

Taglist: @harrysweasleys @flamencodiva @stixnstripesworld @elegantbutedgy @campingmonkey @lanea-1 @deandaydreaming @agalliasi @malindacath @ajreturnstocringeyaccount @deanswaywardgirl @awkward-and-indecisive @drownthewitch @happyt0exist @sparkycorleone @humanmistakes @akshi8278 @kidd3ath @nyotamalfoy @elliewigginton20 @wandering-winchesters @senjoritanana

#dean winchester #dean winchester fluff #dean winchester x reader #dean winchester angst #dean winchester oneshot #dean winchester fic #dean winchester imagine #dean winchester fanfiction

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thefunkfactory · 22 days ago

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Jacque’s Gym

Ozzie was chilling at home alone in his living room after getting home from his local community college. He was bored and depressed and didn't want to think about what he was going to do after community college ended next semester because he had no clue what he wanted to do with his life. He didn’t want to go on some spiraling tangent about what was he supposed to do for the rest of his life so instead of doing that he was surfing through tv shows and movies trying to decide what to watch, he couldn’t find anything interesting on any streaming services so he just switched over to channel surfing through cable. Trashy reality tv, cartoons, straight to video movies, nothing was catching Ozzie’s interest. He finally had surfed his way to the sports channels, replays of NFL games, sports commentators talking endlessly about college basketball, channel after channel Ozzie was getting more and more restless and bored. That's when he suddenly flipped to a channel that was playing the strangest thing, it seemed like some cheesy advertisement for a gym he had never heard of. The odd thing was that the ad was absolutely silent as it kept showing footage of guys working out intercut with a black and green swirl taking up the entirety of the tv screen. Ozzie was about to keep on flipping through the channels when suddenly the ad had sound, “Come on down to Jacque’s Gym! Now through the end of the month we are offering a free month to any new guests! All you have to do is stop by and tour our state of the art gym!”. As the ad was playing the super scripted lines, Ozzie kept watching with eyes glued to the screen as the as just kept switching back and forth from images and panning wide shots of the gym to the green spiral. The ad began to conclude “Who wouldn’t wanna take advantage of this hypnotic deal?! So come on down to Jacque’s Gym located at…” Ozzie heard the sound fade away as he became more and more focused on just simply watching the hypnotic spiral. Just a few seconds later the channel resumed playing the baseball game that was on and Ozzie snapped out of his trance. He barely even remembered what he just watched, just that it left him with this odd feeling that he couldn’t place. He quickly forgot about it and hopped on his phone since channel surfing had proven to be incredibly boring.

Later that night as Ozzie got ready for bed he was just going about his routine when suddenly he remembered the ad for Jacque’s Gym that he had conveniently forgotten about. He was in the middle of brushing his teeth when he suddenly stopped as if he was frozen, his brother who was only a little younger than him noticed and waved his hand in front of Ozzie’s face and jokingly said “Hey? You in there? Earth to Ozzieeeee?” Upon hearing his name Ozzie snapped out of whatever trance he was just in and his brother, Austin, asked him “Yo where did you just go?” Ozzie replied “I..don’t know…” obviously confused himself.

Throughout the week Ozzie kept falling in and out of the trance, he never knew how long the trances lasted but by the end of the week he randomly fell into the trance when laying in bed around three in the afternoon and woke up from it around eight that evening wearing a tanktop, basketball shorts which were damp with sweat, and a beat up pair of converse all of which he hadn't worn since he used to workout a little for fun in high school. He only woke up that night to Austin coming into his room and loudly blurting out “EWWWWW OZ! Don’t you have any deodorant?!” Spurred out of the trance by his brother’s loud complaint, Ozzie sniffed the air and embarrassingly said “Uhhmmm…just uhh get out real quick!”. Ozzie had no recollection of the past 5 hours be he realized, via all the context clues, that somehow he was conscious enough to have dug up old clothes from deep in his closet that he didn’t even know he still had and had been actively working out to the point that him and his room now reeked of musty sweat and B.O. He knew that all of this had something to do with that weird ad he saw at the beginning of the week so he started doing some digging.

Ozzie took the next few days to find out what was going on with him. He scoured the cable channels looking and hoping that the weird ad would come back on so that he could try to understand what was causing this hypnotic affliction. He looked all over the internet and couldn't find anything. Then one night when searching he found this random reddit post he hadn’t found before, it was a post from someone talking about their friend. It stood out to Ozzie because the poster was talking about how he had a friend once who was a complete nerd, not a muscular bone in his body, then one day the friend started acting odd, like very spacey and kept disassociating for hours on end “almost like he was hypnotized” the redditor claimed. Then later on in the post Ozzie read something that made him feel like he was on the right path “He kept trying to get me to go to this new gym he was going to. It was something like Jake’s Gym or Jock Gym, something like that”. Ozzie knew that this had to be it and that the friend just must’ve misremembered the name of Jacque’s Gym. There was barely any traction on this week old post, but there was an update that the user posted it read “I haven’t heard from my friend in about a week despite me reaching out plenty of times. I'm a little worried but I remember that he sent me the location of the gym so that I could go with him if I wanted. I think I am gonna go and see if they have seen him at all.” The update was from just the other day. Ozzie sent the user a dm, asking about if he had found his friend and if his friend was doing any other weird trance-like things, and then he went to bed.

When Ozzie woke up in the morning he felt exhausted and quickly realized that he wasn’t in bed, he was wearing the same unwashed workout clothes he was wearing the other day and standing in the middle of his room with two 20lb. weights in his hands. Just like when Austin caught him like this, Ozzie’s natural musk hung heavy in the room. With his door and windows closed, who knows how long Ozzie was hypnotically working up a stench in the sealed room trapping all of his musk. Ozzie quickly put down the weights and stripped out of the sweat stained clothes, he ran to his windows and opened them all the way and turned on his ceiling fan in an attempt to air out his room. As soon as he did that he saw that he had a message from the user he reached out to, hoping to shed new light on the situation at hand Ozzie went to open it up when he realized that the message wasn't unread, it was sent to him at two in the morning and it had a read receipt showing that Ozzie opened it practically right after it was sent. Upon looking at what the user said, Ozzie read “Bro…you gotta come to Jacque’s its mind numbingly amazinnnnngggggg” and attached below it was a link that had already been clicked on. Ozzie, realizing that this is why he had a midnight workout sesh, weighed the risks and realized that he might get more answers if he could just sit through the video and not give in to the spiral.

He clicked on the link and it opened up the ad he saw. Ozzie made it through about thirty seconds of men working out interrupted by a green spiral when the script began “Come on down to Jacque’s Gym! Now through the end of the month we are offering a free month to any new guests! All you have to do is stop by and tour our state of the art gym!” Ozzie was keeping his mind occupied with thoughts so that he wouldn’t fall into another trance. “Who wouldn’t wanna take advantage of this hypnotic deal?! So come on down to Jacque’s Gym located at…” But just like the first time Ozzie couldn’t keep his mind together as it unraveled before he could find out where the gym was.

Ozzie came too sitting in his car in the parking lot of an old rundown strip mall, looking around he tried to orient himself. He looked down and saw that he was once again wearing the same dirty clothes infused with his sweat and B.O. that he kept waking up in, then once he looked up and in his rearview mirror he saw that perfectly framed in the mirror was a sign lit up a bright green that read, in huge block lettering, Jacque’s Gym. Ozzie rubbed his eyes and reopened them just to find that he wasn’t dreaming, he had wound up right where all the answers he was seeking were. Getting out of his car, just feet from the entrance he felt like this was a bad idea, he looked around and saw a small parking lot that could fit about fifty cars filled to the brim with every spot taken yet it seemed like every other store front around was completely abandoned. Ozzie composed himself and said “This ends now” as he began walking towards the building. With every step he took closer to the building he knew there was no going back, suddenly as if it appeared from thin air, a huge water bottle materialized out of thin air in his hand. He reached the doors and opened one, as he stepped in he felt his mind get fuzzy, a wave of stench engulfed the skinny twenty year old. It smelled as if a group of boys who have never showered a day in their lives hotboxed the gym with a barrage of farts and noxious gym socks. The wafting stench of feet, farts, B.O. and unwashed man ass was overwhelming for the tiny college student. He felt his knees go weak when suddenly he felt someone catch him, before he could react he was being carried away. Ozzie woke up in what appeared to be a dimly lit sauna room, it was about as big as a decently sized cubicle, he tried to move and realized it felt like his whole body was asleep. He heard a voice come out from what he assumed to be a speaker in the ceiling, “Looks like you found your way to your salvation boy” the deep voice from the ceiling said, “Are you ready to be the most disgusting version of yourself there is?”. Ozzie tried revolting, tried crying out for help, tried to command his body to escape but to no avail. The anonymous voice in the ceiling laughed and said “I love this part” as the sound of air slowly surged into the room. Ozzie made one last ditch effort to escape, knowing that it was in vain, as a mysterious green mist flooded into the tiny space. He caught a whiff of the green mist that was being pumped into the room, it somehow reeked worse than the stench when he walked into the gym. The green mist smelled like an eggy fart that lingers for eternity in your nose mixed with the reeking smell of a high school football team locker room on a hundred degree day. Ozzie felt something in him change almost as soon as the mist assaulted his nose, he felt that the smell he was experiencing wasn’t the revolting prison it was supposed to be but instead he felt like it smelled like…manhood. Ozzie’s brain was being taken over and rewired by the odor as more of the noxious aroma was pumped in the room, the stench of a bodybuilder’s smelly feet and the fumes from a brother’s musty unwashed pit became akin to smelling a little slice of heaven to Ozzie. He was pumped so full of the warm green mist that his body didn’t know how to handle it besides making him forever love the stenches that he was whiffing.

The green mist dissipated and Ozzie sat still exactly where he was as a door opened and a buff jock walked in wearing nothing more than a pair of electric blue shorts and Nike Air Force 1’s, he leaned down to Ozzie’s level, “You feel good lil bro? Feel the brostink flowing through you now?”. Ozzie just sat there, his mind too high on brostink to form words. The jock lifted Ozzie’s arm and stuck his head in it “PHEEEEEW OH YEAH! Bro you stink sooooooo good even if you dont have any meat on those lil bones lil brooooo!”. The jock kept Ozzie’s arm raised in the air and grabbed his head and forced Ozzie’s head into his own armpit, Ozzie was passively breathing in his own pit funk which would normally disgust him but now he just thought to himself “...me…stink…gooooood…”.

Ozzie left the sauna room and started working out for the next two hours, he left Jacque’s gym barely able to remember where he parked his car even though it was only ten steps away. He got in his car and headed home after his workout, stopping for a burrito on the way, “Gotta refuel after that…huhuh” he said to himself in his car. Getting home and throwing away the burrito wrapper he went up to his room to find his Austin rifling through Ozzie’s room, “...Bro whatcha…doin?” Ozzie dumbly questioned, “I am looking for that blue jacket I really like I think you have-” Austin stopped himself upon smelling the odor floating off of his scrawny older brother’s sweaty body, “Ozzie, when was the last time you showered?”. “Ion know…huhuhuh…you tell me…” Ozzie rushed Austin and grabbed his head, even with him being bigger Austin has a hard time fighting back as he kept getting whiffs of super potent brostink drawing the struggle. Eventually losing the grapple, Austin was held in the musty crevice of Ozzie’s armpit until he could barely breathe. Falling to the floor Austin couldn’t wrap his head around what happened to his normally clean and tidy older brother and why it felt like his mind was slowing down after being trapped in his brother’s pit prison. Crawling away Austin tried to escape before being flipped over onto his back by Ozzie, Austin helplessly cried out to his brother “...what…happened…Oz?” to which Ozzie responded simply by saying “Jacque’s happened lil broooo” before knocking out his brother with a massive butt blast.

PPPPPPPFFFFFFFFRRRRRRRRRBBBBBBBBBBBTTTTTTTTTTT

#stink #dumber #musk #armpits #farts #face farts #ttf

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ghostdrinkssoup · 1 year ago

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something I find really interesting about hannibal’s character is how he uses people’s expectations and ingrained assumptions to hide himself. no one suspects he’s a serial killer because he doesn’t present as one. he’s elegant and refined and isn’t cruel to animals. he’s highly sophisticated, a polyglot and has a deep admiration for beauty and life. he appreciates saving lives just as much as he appreciates ending them. in fact, this particular aspect of his character is partly why it takes will the entirety of s1 to accept hannibal’s true nature. will saw hannibal save abigail and accompany her to the hospital in apéritif and he also saw hannibal save a man’s life by performing emergency surgery and taking over the operation at the end of sorbet.

this moment in particular is interesting because of how it’s framed to make hannibal look almost godly from will’s point of view:

1) hannibal is positioned immediately higher than will due to being in the ambulance, meaning will is looking up at hannibal, while hannibal is looking down on him

2) hannibal is standing under a bright light as he works to save this guy’s life, while will is standing in almost complete darkness

3) the usual orchestral, classical music is playing in the background, emphasising the apparent “holiness” of the act and framing hannibal as some sort of saviour

the impact of this scene is even more potent when considering the context of the rest of the episode, since will has already stated that the ripper is not the type to save people or enact mercy on anyone. his style of murders doesn’t suggest this characteristic whatsoever, and although will’s assessment is correct, hannibal’s personality and overall demeanour doesn’t match what we’d imagine a person like that might look like. I think will is confronted by this as well, because even if hannibal’s surgical skill means he matches the ripper’s profile (which makes him a valid suspect) his actions contradict will’s image of the ripper, while simultaneously affirming it:

it’s difficult to reconcile these facets of hannibal’s character. it’s inherently contradictory and defies our cultural expectations. nonetheless, hannibal’s inclination to save people is sometimes more insidious than his murders. he doesn’t save people out of altruism, he does it because he thinks he’s superior and enjoys deciding outcomes. he doesn’t view himself as insane, he views himself as god. this is most aptly explored in takiawase, through the acupuncturist/beekeeper killer. here we see a murderer who confesses that she killed a man to quiet his mind, and tells jack that it’s beautiful that she managed to protect him and her other patients. this is one side of hannibal’s character, the one who’s a doctor and therapist and sees death as a cure from disease, even if the ‘disease’ itself is literally just discourtesy. it’s ultimately an act of power.

and yet in this same episode he flips a coin and saves bella on a whim. this of course is framed to others as an act of mercy, however the reality is he took bella’s power away in an act disguised as kindness. once again, he hides in plain sight. this is the other side of his character, and it’s just as deadly.

it’s still about power.

but we don’t associate acts of mercy with monstrosity. when hannibal comforts abigail in trou normand we question whether he’s as bad as we think, because what negative connotations are tied to paternal tenderness? we miss that hannibal is fostering dependency, that he literally looks dead in the eyes as he holds her, and that he blatantly just told us that he’s using abigail to manipulate will:

hannibal often does this actually. he either directly says what he’s doing or suggests that he’s the culprit (often through cannibal puns, as we know) but no one ever interprets him correctly because doing so would contradict the image he’s carefully constructed for himself. it would cause too much dissonance.

and what’s fascinating is that on a subtextual level this is largely what the show is about. the story is an exploration of societal roles and the struggle to fit into stiff categorisation and expectations. will parallels hannibal in this regard because he’s desperately trying to repress his identity by taking on certain roles. and the audience is lured by this persona the same way the characters are lured by hannibal because will defies our understanding of certain tropes. on a genre level, will assumes the detective archetype, meaning we are primed to think he’s inherently good. when we see him say he wants to save people we believe him, even though he often only does so to prove to himself that he’s a good person. will is indeed righteous, a characteristic we often view positively, however he’s violent, wrathful and actively enjoys murder due to how powerful it makes him feel. he’s not dissimilar to hannibal, we just don’t see this straight away because doing so would disrupt our understanding of good and evil.

will hides the same way hannibal does, except will hides from us as well

#ghostie once again goes on a tangent #but it’s so !! I really love how the show fucks with everyone #and uses our expectations to do it #even on a narrative/genre level #the key to unveiling it is letting that conditioning and urge to categorise everything go #also wow I’m back to writing meta hello there #nbc hannibal #hannibal #will graham #hannigram #hannibal meta #ghost speaks

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neyafromfrance95 · 2 months ago

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What people don’t understand is that none of us expect Galadriel and Sauron to ever ‘be together’ or even have an explicit romantic storyline (although we definitely wouldn’t complain lol). It’s the implicit psychosexual aspects of their connection that underlines their relationship and ultimately influences their own psyche and how they move forward that has me in a chokehold.

i agree but guys, whatever they had going on in the entirety of s1 and whatever they have going on in s2 so far is pretty explicitly romantic.

"i can't let him in again" she says as she trembles and remembers him gazing down at her after they confessed to having a soul connection, and then elrond tells her that he never left.

the framing and execution and context of this alone is pretty explicitly romantic, it's not a subtext or an implication that something sexually charged and soulmatistic has transgressed between the two.

guys, sauron literally proposed to galadriel in s1, he proposed to her to be his queen...

and from my conclusion, the crew/creators haven't worded the dynamic as "romantic" bc they see sauron x galadriel's relationship as far exceeding the boundaries of anything "surface level" or "human" or "normative" hence the *cosmic* connection. but this doesn't change the fact that what they're describing is traditionally known as "romance", lol.

and i know that the incelbros and the puritans are gaslighting us into believing that sauron x galadriel is strictly platonic but it's on their own bias and the lack of the media literacy.

#sauron x galadriel #haladriel #saurondriel #the rings of power #trop #galadriel x halbrand #rop

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atrovel · 1 month ago

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i’m probably going to delete this if anyone wants to get into an argument, because i know i’m not going to respond well to it, but i’ve been thinking about discourse over Rocky Horror and transmisogyny and i want to voice my opinion.

if Rocky were made today, people would be horrified, and that’s obvious. but it wasn’t, and i think it’s important to consider the context of the time it was made. everybody says this– terminology and representation is going to be outdated. that’s to be expected. but i feel there’s so much more to it than that, and people that find Rocky Horror’s messages to be transphobic didn’t understand it.

at its core, Rocky Horror is a movie about movies. Brad and Janet are blatant and obvious stereotypes of the lead and love interest in a lot of movies at the time. Brad is a strong, protective family man, and Janet is a damsel in distress who faints a lot. the Transylvanians are an extreme opposite, but they’re also stereotypes– of how queer people were represented in a lot of media at the time. that’s the point. Dr. Frank-N-Furter is a reflection of how queer people were seen and represented at the time. he’s a stereotype cranked up to eleven, to the point it’s absurd, as obvious parody. the entirety of Rocky Horror is made to parody tropes and stereotypes; that’s what it’s about. the character of Dr. Frank isn’t made to make fun of queer people, but instead to make fun of the trope of villains being aggressively queer-coded compared to heroes in movies at the time.

i do absolutely acknowledge that Rocky Horror’s intent wasn’t and isn’t typically clear to a lot of people, and it can cause harm, but many people interpret it as exactly what it’s clearly making fun of, which is disappointing.

i think the reason Rocky can easily be seen as controversial or bad representation is that it was never intended to be for straight people. this movie is made for lgbtq and ‘unconventional’ people to say “if this is how people are going to see us, then let them” which really resonates with my queer identity. straight people & conservatives are never going to love us like we love each other, so why bother trying to change their minds instead of just embracing it? even though, again, Rocky Horror is outdated, this is a message that is still really relevant today which is why it’s so frustrating to me that so many people take it at face value when it’s blatant parody.

all this being said, if you personally don’t like Rocky Horror because it doesn’t resonate with your experience as a queer person, that’s perfectly fine, and i hold absolutely nothing against you for that. but Rocky has been a safe space for so many queer people for so many years and i think holding genuine anger toward its fans is completely ridiculous. i hope all these words make enough sense, and please be kind! thank you

#and please don’t say “but richard o’brien”#he’s 80 and my gosh people take something he said way too seriously #i’m not defending it but he is queer himself #and rocky horror is an exploration of that queerness #why would he write such a show only to make fun of himself #that doesn’t make sense #rocky horror picture show #dr frank n furter #rocky horror #rhps

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letters-to-lgbt-kids · 2 months ago

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(TW: Religion)

My dear lgbt+ kids,

When we think about reconciling Christianity and our identity, then we are often automatically jumping to „re-interpreting Bible verses that are used to justify homophobia/transphobia“ or to „looking for Bible verses that can be interpreted in a lgbt-supportive way“.

Both of that is valid and definitely has its place. And if you are someone who (or trying to discuss with someone who) believes everything in the Bible is true and to be taken literal, then looking for the most accurate interpretation of each passage is also pretty much the only thing you can do.

In that case, take comfort in knowing that there is often historical, cultural etc. context missing from conservative interpretations and learning about that context lets us see seemingly hateful verses in a much more inclusive light!

That Bible verse that seems to be against gay sex may very well be against rape, that Bible verse that seems to be against trans people dressing the way they want to may very well be condemning old rituals that have nothing to do with modern life. I don’t think looking for these alternative (or maybe *better*) explanations is heathenish at all. God wants you to think critically, that’s why he gave you the ability to. If he gave you a book to live your life according to, then it stands to reason that he’d want you to find the most accurate meaning of his words, and that means looking past the most superficial interpretation.

But if you are (or the person you’re talking to is) open to the idea that maybe the Bible isn’t meant to be taken literal in its entirety - then it can feel tedious to dissect singular verses.

In that case, you probably don’t feel the need to dissect other parts either and you just disregard them. For example you look at certain verses containing rules on hygiene or health, and you disregard them because you figure those were written in, and for, wildly different times and they just do not apply to modern life anymore, and you believe that one can be a good Christian while also disregarding those specific verses.

If that’s you, then an approach that might fit you better would be to look at the bigger picture instead. Treat the Bible like you would any self-help book - look at the overall messages but don’t assume that every single line is applicable to your life or even holds meaning.

This may seem counterintuitive or even like a “bad” thing to do, especially if you grew up in a taking-the-Bible-literal household, so I’ll give you some potential questions that may help you get into the mindset:

Which messages are repeated often throughout the Bible? Which messages are repeated in most big religions you know? Which messages would come to your mind first if you were to teach a child about God? Which values or attributes describe God best?

For me, and for many people, the biggest ones would be “God loves you unconditionally” and “God wants you to love others”. Another important one might be “God created you, and everyone else, because he wanted you to exist”.

When you identified some big picture core messages, and are open to the idea that the Bible may not be meant to be taken literal in its entirety (for example because it was inspired by the Holy Spirit but written by humans and humans can make mistakes or add their own personal agenda, or also simply because it’s so old and over time some of its original teachings got mistranslated or lost), then you may be able to look at these seemingly hateful verses with new eyes - not seeking to find a more accurate explanation, but rather being able to compare them to those core messages and being able to say “this fits in with the core message” or “this doesn’t fit in with the core message”.

With all my love,

Your Tumblr Dad

#lgbt #lgbt+

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messiahzzz · 6 months ago

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You’re one of the most annoying people on this site. And that really says A LOT because WOW! Shut the Fuck up about Gale wanting to be a father or not. He never says that he doesn’t want to be one. You projecting things onto him doesn’t make it Canon.

on a serious note: i’m certainly not the one that continuously brings up this topic unprompted. i personally really don’t understand the entire controversy around the topic or why fandom feels the need to rehash this conversation almost weekly. i truly believe that there’s nothing more of value to learn from it, to address, or add to it… yet fandom won’t let it rest.

to once again clarify: what i mean by “gale wanting to be a father isn’t canon” is that there is no evidence/neither hints anywhere in any of the dialogue that support the contrary. characters like h*lsin, w*ll and la*’zel have entire adoption subplots. all of them mention their children explicitly during the epilogue:

narrator: *your soul warms thinking of lily aurora ravengard, your adopted daughter. a treasure of a girl, found at the entrance of the open hand temple - one grey eye, one brown.* w*ll: ah, the girl could melt the staunchest heart. she might even have brought a smile to old withers' face! w*ll: but tonight is for us - and lily's only four months of age, besides. i promise, the temple will keep her in good care.

player: and our little hatchling? is he safe? la*'zel: of course. i have complete trust in our newest allies. xan is in fine hands tonight. la*'zel: what a wonder he is. he will be a fine warrior, if he chooses. or a poet, or an explorer, or a scholar.

h*lsin: being away from it... i cannot help but worry how they will fare in our absence. player: we'll be back before they know it. h*lsin: i hope so. the children shall miss their bedtime tale tonight - though perhaps i can glean a few new stories from our friends here, to make up for it.

even shad*wh*art has a line where she briefly mentions that children might be a possibility for her in the future.

shad*wh*art: and i get to see my parents almost every day - i need to make every moment with them count, after so much was stolen from us. but they're doing well, [...] shad*wh*art: who knows? perhaps they'll have grandchildren before long.

gale in comparison? he has none of that. he remains childfree during the entirety of the game + epilogue. in fact, his line in the epilogue that addresses the topic of grandkids is this one:

tara: this is why mrs. dekarios and i will be waiting an eternity more for grandchildren. nodecontext: self-pitying gale: psst! shoo, tara. nodecontext: shooing away tara like one would a naughty cat.

i already wrote a post about this entire discourse here [x] but to repeat myself once more: all of the dialogue that vaguely addresses the topic of children in any way in regards to gale are these snippets

player: gale… how would you feel about having another person in our relationship? gale: what, like a child? i’m not quite sure i’d consider myself father material, plus our current lifestyle isn’t exactly what i’d call settled…

gale, upon spotting oliver during their game of hide and seek: ah, i have you! just a shame i don’t want you.

gale treating the children the group comes across with respect isn’t an indicator either. this is a courtesy gale extends to everyone he meets. he’s a character that approves of a protagonist who systematically commits good deeds. whether it’s sparing animals, helping without compensation in mind, or aiding children. wanting children to be cared for… and you know… for them not to die is common etiquette that every adult should extend to a child in need. those are not “dad goals!!!” it’s quite literally just basic human decency. gale is genuinely kind and caring to everyone he meets, there is no reason why this also wouldn’t apply to children.

i often see fandom mention his encounter with mol at last light and how excited he is to talk to her. which i think greatly misinterprets the context of the scenario since he didn’t have much of a reaction to mol before either — gale is ecstatic about lanceboard. again evident by his reaction to the party finding the life-sized board during the wyrmway trials, and how he immediately offers to give tav pointers. explaining different approaches to them in enthusiastic detail if they allow him to. the man just really likes lanceboard… as well as being the smartest person in the room.

gale: ah, lanceboard! why, this might just be the highlight of our misadventures to date.

gale: lanceboard happens to be a game with which i have more than a passing familiarity. might i offer a suggestion? nodecontext: gale's a badass lanceboard player, anticipating showing off

if you want to headcanon your tav and gale raising a big family together that is more than fine and no one is stopping you. whatever you want to happen to these two after the storyline of the game is up to your respective fantasies. no one is policing you on what you should do with your own character. go wild and create whatever fan content you wish, no justification required.

yet once again, as there is no mention in canon anywhere — neither in the main game nor the epilogue — that this is something gale would ever want (whether that may mean immediately or somewhere down the line) gale wanting to be a father remains a headcanon. while gale being childfree is explicitly shown in the game, in strict comparison to other companions that either have children by the end of the game or voice the desire to (eventually) have them.

my personal preferences are of no relevance here whatsoever. i care about accurate and correct characterization and will point out inconsistencies/false information no matter the topic. i, for one, want to appreciate these characters in the way they're written, not how i ideally want them to be.

#also i can live with being annoying #at least i don’t go out of my way to send anon hate to random strangers on the internet #asks #it speaks #fandom discourse #dad!gale #bg3 #gale dekarios #bg3 meta #summed up: gale is for the cf crowd

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rdng1230 · 3 months ago

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Sal Deluca Meta

Okie dokie here we go. Just remember y'all asked for this.

Here are some repeated talking points I’ve seen about Sal and why I think most of them are ignoring certain contexts or misattributing things to Sal that were said/done by somebody else. Also just general thoughts about our little mook.

Hen Begins

That Sal was a raging racist/sexist/homophobic.

Let’s deal with the first one first. Is he a member of the white boys club? Absolutely. He makes no effort to include Hen and doesn’t really acknowledge her at all until he’s complimenting her for her skills at the end of the episode. This is OBVIOUSLY not good. He should’ve been kinder and more welcoming to her. But the only one who specifically makes negative/mean comments about Hen is Gerrard and Tommy. Literally the only thing you could even interpret that way is him saying “for real?” to Gerrard’s diversity hire comment and the fact that he drops the pick axe or whatever the hell that metal thing was on the floor along with everybody else besides Chim. Not great, but also with what we know about how other rookies are treated even by Hen herself, I don’t think any of this behavior falls into “irredeemable racist monster” Buck chased Ravi with a chainsaw for christ sake.

Ok now the sexism. He actually stares daggers at Gerrard for the entirety of his stupid “waste of taxpayer money/women won’t be able to rescue my guys” spiel. Like the camera specifically focuses on Sal looking pissed as hell. Another thing I’ve heard falsely said is that after Gerrard storms off, Sal/Tommy follow him. That’s not true. They do get up and leave but they actually leave in the ass opposite direction. Sal’s face when he signals to Tommy to get up reads to me as “let’s get the hell away from the fallout of that grossness.” not “I agree with what that dinosaur just said.” But I also realize people can interpret that moment differently.

I think the sexist reading largely comes from the Kristen Stewart conversation. And come on, This is the lesbian website, if we start dinging people for finding Kristen Stewart attractive, we’re all going down. Plus again, Buck was STEALING EMERGENCY EQUIPMENT TO GO GET LAID AND HE’S EVERYBODY’S FAV SO I DON’T WANT TO HEAR IT. We see Sal kind of ignore Hen but also agree with her at the same time during this exchange. Again a case of Sal not really acknowledging Hen but not attacking her either. Go and look at his face when Tommy says that NY bitchiness comment. Sal does not look at all happy with him. Most of the time when anyone is being actively mean Sal looks pissed off, not approving.

Ok now the homophobia thing. And it's at this point I’m going to bring up the idea that some characters seem bad/good not based on their actions but on whose perspective we’re viewing those actions from. I see this being a problem with several characters. Most notably Taylor Kelly. But that's a whole other post.

Sal’s team Jacob comment is homophobic and gross but it's also 1) 2009 and 2) directed at someone who he clearly knows incredibly well and who we KNOW gives as good as he gets. I easily could’ve seen this interaction reversed with Tommy saying that to Sal because that's who they are and how their friendship works. But because we’re seeing this from Hen’s perspective it's another thing that makes her feel isolated and othered. And again THAT IS NOT GOOD SAL SHOULD NOT BE DOING THAT. But I don’t think Sal at all said that with the intention of putting Hen down, it very clearly reads to me as Sal teasing/riling Tommy up as they always have. Now obviously the harm still hits even if the intent wasn’t present. But I think if we can forgive Tommy for comments that were MEANT to be mean, then we can forgive Sal for comments that were just him fucking around with his best friend of several years.

That Sal was the ringleader or Gerrard’s right hand man

Does Sal have a sort of in charge vibe? Yeah absolutely. But very notably the only thing he actually initiates is the olive branch. It’s him that offers a hand to Hen and says nice job and you’re good at what you do. I also will die on the hill that the hemorrhoid complaint was his. Chim would definitely say that but not in an official report, Tommy would definitely bad mouth Gerrard, but not like that. Now who is known for kind of cruder language and a short fuse and absolutely would put that down in an official report? Sal motherfucking Deluca that’s who.

One notable thing that I find interesting is that Hen herself distinguishes Gerrard’s behavior from the rest of the team's. She definitely gives them hell during her big speech but when Chim does dishes with her she specifically says men like him not men like them. Just something I realized on my most recent rewatch.

To summarize, the only real thing Sal did that was unique to him (because they all failed to stick up for Hen, yes even Chim. Chim was nice to her but he never actually stood up for her to Gerrard’s face. He tried to redirect the conversation a couple times but that was it.) was the Kristen stewart comments and the Team Jacob comment. I would argue Tommy’s comments in Chimney begins and his NY bitchiness comment in Hen Begins are way more targeted, hateful, and fucking rude. (said with all love because we know Tommy had a bunch of growth and change and became the man we all know and adore.) IMO nothing in Hen begins that Sal says/does is as bad as what Tommy did/said.

Bobby Begins Again

Ok another reason why I don’t think Sal is this irredeemable sexist/racist/homophobic pig is WHY ON EARTH WOULD HEN STAND UP FOR HIM IF HE WAS???!?!?!? Hen is THE FIRST PERSON TO CALL OUT THAT CRAP even from the first episode she says something like “why is that always the first instinct with you whiteboy macho types?” So why why why why would she stand up for Sal if he hadn’t shown any improvement in that area in the now 7 years minimum that she’s worked with him. Answer: she fucking wouldn’t. Ok moving on.

The Bobby stuff

So remember how I said perspective changes everything? This is the major reason why. We as the audience love Bobby and know intimately the struggles he’s faced, so we’re naturally going to be angered by anyone who is antagonistic towards him. The thing is Sal doesn’t know ANY of that. This is what Sal knows about Bobby.

He’s from somewhere in middle America and has never worked in a MAJOR American city like LA/NYC. That’s it. He COMPLETELY ACCURATELY I MIGHT ADD predicts that anybody with that background will struggle to adapt to the specifics of LA. It’s Sal that has to pick up Bobby’s slack as he adjusts, calling out the shots at the tree trimmer call, taking the initiative with Maurice even though Bobby does ultimately do the saving. (Which Sal actually seems impressed by btw.) Bobby still can’t even read the city map when they pull up to the restaurant fire call.

Now imagine you’re Sal. First you had Gerrard as captain, who (I think it's fair to say) you DID NOT LIKE. One of the things he did was put down firefighters who disobeyed orders by rescuing people. We saw this with the “fetching a tide” call and with saving the boy in the submerged car. Hen disobeyed orders but showed real skill as a firefighter. And all she got for her troubles was being berated by her Captain.

Ok then after Gerrard you have an interim captain that seems like a decent dude, but he leaves and for a while you have a revolving door of retiring brass that are checked out, behind the times, or just generally disengaged. You become used to filling in as captain and get actually pretty damn good at managing the team. (I say this because Sal leads the team several times in BBA and nobody looks at all like this is a new development) Then they finally pick a nobody who has never worked in a proper city before and to you he’s just the newest asshole that will probably screw up and get someone killed. Sal has no idea about the challenges or traumas Bobby has had to face, just like we have no idea what might have happened in the 5+ years between HB and BBA. Sal has probably MANY REASONS not to trust Bobby that we don’t know about.

So how would you feel after you’ve successfully rescued a teenage boy’s life, if your new captain who you’ve known for like a day and still doesn’t even know how to get the engine to calls on time, calls YOU stupid for SUCCESSFULLY SAVING A CHILD’S LIFE. I think you’d be likely to blow up a little too.

Was Sal a hothead? Absolutely. Was he being smart by mouthing off to Bobby? Absolutely not. But I think his lines to Bobby during that scene are so telling. “You’re just the latest jag off in a long line of jag offs to come to this house and think you know how to run it.” In other words, he’s not really seeing Bobby during this exchange (he couldn’t possibly, Bobby is still being very closed off and won’t tell anyone what his story is for years) he’s seeing the long line of assholes that started with Gerrard that Bobby is unknowingly falling into the pattern of. Just like how Bobby didn’t really see Sal and one relatively tiny restaurant, he saw his wife and family and a massive apartment building with no way out. That to me is the tragedy of Bobby and Sal. I genuinely think they could’ve learned a lot from each other if they had left their baggage at the door.

In other words, would we judge Sal if he had gone after Gerrard in the way he went after Bobby? I doubt it. And that to me is what Sal is actually doing, going after Gerrard and all the other nameless asshole captains he’s been dealing with for YEARS. Sal was hotheaded and impulsive, but at the end of the day I think he was just dealing with misplaced anger that he put on Bobby, something both Buck and Eddie have done at some point or another even when they DID have all the information. If you can forgive the lawsuit arc, and Eddie’s comments in season 5 about Bobby’s kill count than dear god I think Sal has more than earned a pass.

Overarching things I find interesting about Sal that I don’t see anyone talking about

He cares a lot about the people they save on rescues, he’s the one on the majority of calls saying some variant of “its gonna be ok/we’re gonna get you out/don’t worry. Whatever the firefighter equivalent of bedside manner is, this guy has it.

His personal code of who he gives a shit about seems to boil down entirely to who has skills/is talented and who isn’t. The minute Hen shows real promise by saving that little boy, he is down there hand shaking and complimenting her. Ditto Freddie Costas. “Smart kid, probably saved his own life with that move.” You see this in his conversation with Bobby too “that wasn’t luck man that was skill.” You have to earn Sal’s respect and the way you do is by demonstrating competence. Sal genuinely does look impressed with Bobby for apprehending Maurice and showing ingenuity, the problem is it's immediately undercut when Bobby belittles him for saving the kid.

Anywho, that’s my Sal defense thesis. There’s probably other stuff I forgot but that's the bulk of it. I reserve the right to randomly reblog this with any other shit that comes to mind. Also as a disclaimer I still LOVE reading toxic Sal or asshole Sal content, absolutely eat it up with a spoon gimme gimme gimme. But I think it would be unfair to say that’s the ONLY read of him. He clearly does give a shit and is capable of growth and change, he just also happens to have a short fuse and very little willingness to go about things in a tactful way.

TLDR: free my man, he did do some of that shit but so did your blorbos, it's just your blorbos had the narrative on their side when they did it.

#sal deluca #Tommy kinard #911 meta

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redhoodinternaldialectical · 1 year ago

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I don’t think Jason has ever hated Tim

I recently revived my Jason Todd hyperfixation from its torpor and realized I had... Means and Ways of reading as many comics as I want for free, so I made the transition from Fanon Only to having read Lost Days, Under the Red Hood, Teen Titans #29 (where Jason fights and beats the tar out of Tim), Hush, Red Hood and the Outlaws (the majority of both runs), Red Robin: The Grail, Batman and Robin: Streets Run Red, Green Arrow #70 - #73 (where Jason kidnaps Mia), Battle for the Cowl, and a smattering of other bits and bobs, all within the last month.

I have come to the conclusion that the idea that Jason hated Tim before slowly learning to be okay with him is completely backwards.

Jason starts respecting Tim as a fellow combatant after basically their first meeting, and was sympathizing with him even before. Fandom talks a lot about how Jason repeatedly tried to kill Tim, but I think there’s a good argument to be made that actually Jason has never tried to kill Tim, and there’s a better argument that Jason has never tried to hurt Tim out of a dislike for him.

Tim is the one who feels viciously betrayed by Jason, hates his guts, and depending on if you blend in the New 52 either learns to begrudgingly like him or just stays hatin.

Obviously I need some proof here, since this goes completely against the grain of every relationship interpretation I’ve ever seen for them, so approximately seven miles of character analysis under the cut lmao

I’m gonna try to go in chronological order of the characters’ history here, which means we’re starting with Lost Days, and Jason’s first reaction to finding out there’s a new Robin:

This does not look like anger to me.

Lost Days is only six issues long, and this is the entirety of the pages devoted to Jason’s feelings on Tim. Jason succeeds in a plan that would have almost certainly killed Batman if Jason had gone through with it. Jason undeniably has Joker dead to rights at one point, but lets him go. Jason at no point in this story attempts to harm Tim at all.

Now for Hush.

Context for fanon only folks: this is where the “throat slitting” bit happens.

Context for a lot of confusion: I don’t know if Jason is the one who holds Tim hostage or not.

In the original Hush plot line this is only Clayface; Jason isn’t here at all. It was later retconned in Under the Red Hood that Jason was actually in this fight for... some amount of time. It’s highly unclear to me when they swap out. Probably because originally, they didn’t swap out. Oh well! In either case, it’s now canon that Jason coached Clayface on his acting, so for the purposes of this essay, Imma hold Jason responsible for the throat damages and the words said regardless of who did what!

Right off the bat: this is a hostage taking, not a murder. Yes, Clayson Jayface does nick Tim’s neck and absolutely makes the threat of murdering him to Batman, but it’s clearly a threat. Like, look at this panel:

He is talking a lot. This isn’t an attempt to kill Tim, it’s an attempt to screw with Batman. No matter who this is, they have every reason to expect that Batman will stop them before they do any permanent damage. Can you see that little, blurry, half-hidden line of red? Lets look at what the damage was later on:

The bleeding was stopped by a bit of cloth, some pressure, and he’ll need stitches eventually, but they can clearly wait, and Tim doesn’t seem alarmed. That’s enough to scar, and enough that it is perfectly reasonable for Tim to assume that he would have died if he hadn’t been rescued.

However, Jason being deeply protective of kids is a reasonably consistent character trait. “You really think I’m gonna bring the pain to a ten year old?” Even at Jason’s most villainous, he is willing to put himself in danger in order to protect his own sidekick Scarlet. I think it would be very out of character for him to have gone through with it. Combined with Jason’s later actions and the general fact that a hostage is pretty useless dead, I come to the conclusion that Jason was bluffing.

It is ambiguous though, and I admit that this is probably the weakest link in the “Jason never tried to kill him” chain.

But enough of that, was he angry with him? Is the hate there?

I argue no, and that really there’s no emotional investment in Tim at all. In terms of hard numbers the pages Jalay Toddface spends holding Tim hostage is 3 and the number he spends fighting Batman is 13 and the number of times he even so much as LOOKS at Tim is ZERO, like actually, literally ZERO TIMES. He does not spare poor Timmy a SINGLE GLANCE.

Now make a special note here because those three pages of no eye contact from someone who might not even be Jason are the ONLY times that Tim is called Pretender or Imposter.

I’m relying on this research done by Kiragecko: https://kiragecko.tumblr.com/post/128411908944/bat-sibling-interaction It only goes up to Battle for the Cowl, (as does this essay it turns out, I just don’t know how to bridge between that and the New 52) so it isn’t every interaction ever, but it’s still excellent research, go leave a like.

According to them: “Comments: Tim thinks about Jason a lot while he’s first training. He imagines the former Robins giving him pep talks, and uses them to fight off fear gas. When Jason comes back, though, Tim’s really nasty, especially in his head. Jason, however, is somewhat respectful. He usually calls Tim ‘Tim’, and seems to kind of like him. ‘Pretender’ and ‘Imposter’ are things that CLAYFACE said, not Jason.“

How many times are those said? Once. Each. That’s it. As a comment under the Jason and Tim post done by Kiragecko points out, “Replacement” doesn’t even get used.

Under the Red Hood is basically THE Jason Todd comic. To my memory he doesn’t interact with Tim in it. However, it does contain that aforementioned reconning! So we get to see his reasoning during this encounter.

And it very very clearly isn’t at all about Tim.

Moving on to Titans Tower, which is indisputably focused on Tim: When he fights Tim, he is absolutely violent and over the line, but he’s NOT out of his head. Jason is clearly very lucid and careful about what he’s doing.

Is he angry? Of course! He’s angry at the Titans who in his mind cared about him way less than their other members, and accepted a replacement robin as though his life, his whole flesh and blood self, was something that could be so easily forgotten and swapped out.

But I think it would be a mistake to assume that Jason’s at all mad that he isn’t Robin anymore.

A very interesting direct parallel to this fight is when Jason kidnaps Mia, Green Arrow’s sidekick Speedy, fights her, appeals to their commonalities and encourages her to solve crime his way rather than Green Arrow’s way.

In both scenarios Jason engineers a way to isolate a sidekick and attempts to teach them something through combat. He makes a direct appeal to them against their mentors, and seems genuine about what he’s saying. He also lets both of them live, and with Mia is honestly pretty damned polite about it all. At least, as polite as a guy can be about kidnapping you and encouraging you to try to kill him in your high school gym that he definitely should not know about.

The plain fact of the matter is that Jason knocked Tim out, had time to paint his whole ass name way up high on a wall, and did not kill him. This is the same Jason who just prior to that took out all of Tim’s allies non-lethally. The same Jason who kept Mia’s protector’s busy non-lethally. The same Jason who cuts Mia free and gives her weapons back and starts slow in their fighting to make sure he doesn’t hurt her too badly. The same Jason who seems to feel very strongly that killing, trafficking, or selling drugs to kids is an unforgivable offense and very clearly sees Tim as a kid.

Quite frankly, this reads not like a murder, and not like a jealous beatdown, but an attempt to convince Tim that he’s going to get himself killed and needs to get out while he still can. In Jason’s mind before they meet, Tim is purely A Robin, a kid who deserves better than to be put into danger against the same monsters over and over again until he finally slips up and dies.

Is this a hairbrained and back asswards way of doing that? Yes! But it does track for someone who tries to do all of his talking through his actions, which do speak louder than words, but unfortunately C-4 loudness is not actually a significant boon to nuanced communication.

If you want to put it in a less charitable way (and maybe we should, this is a bonkers asshole move on Jason’s part no matter how you slice it) then we can say Jason is testing Tim, trying to see if this one has what it takes to be better than he was, to survive where he couldn’t. Personally I think it’s a mix of both, and for this end of that emotional mess: Tim passes the test.

Jason leaves while talking about Tim in present tense, showing that he has every expectation of Tim being alive, and praises him in the process:

Did you know that the fun panel of Tim kicking Jason in the nuts is actually from the same comic run, about twenty or so issues later?

Did you know that the argument they were having starts with Dick and Tim wrestling with Jason and accusing him of a murder he did not commit, and in fact tried to save the victim from?

Did I mention yet that the death in question was of Duela Dent, aka the JOKER’S DAUGHTER, whom Jason caught attempting to hold a young woman hostage for ransom? And that Jason repeatedly shot her getaway balloon instead of her and then tried to save her life immediately afterwards despite the fact that she was going to let the hostage plummet to their death? And it is implied that part of the reason he’s so easy on her is because of “Once a Titan always a Titan” loyalty, with this being our first clue that Jason isn’t the one shooting at her anymore?

Did I also mention that he comes to her funeral in part to be around Donna (the starry leotard lady whose statue he smashed) because it’s nice to be around people who understand being displaced by their own death? And that the one who sticks up for him in this scene is Donna?

At risk of negating my own thesus here, I’d say it’s reasonable to think that maybe Jason feels rage-hate for Tim in this “kicked in the dick while Dick grins smugly” moment.

Lets go now to Robin #177 at the tail end of the 1993 to 2003 run - Bruce has “died” and Tim hasn’t yet gone on his epic quest to find him. Tim finds Jason unifying street gangs with the intent to bring them under control and solve the current crisis. He appeals to Tim for help with this, in fact he comes off as almost puppy dog eager to work with him, and seems really sad when he says fuck no.

This is one of the first fights in which Tim really holds his own against Jason, and I am very proud of him, yes :3

This gets Jason arrested. Then Tim actually goes through with a heavily modified, less violent version of Jason’s plan that Jason didn’t think could work. A few issues later, when Tim decides that he’s going to try to honor what Bruce would have wanted by springing Jason out of jail, Jason makes note of that.

Jason is pretty damned civil at their next meeting, even though Tim makes it pretty damned clear he doesn’t want him around.

And now... we have to talk about Battle for the Cowl.

I’ve seen it described as a masterclass in how NOT to write Jason Todd, due to it portraying him as being an absolutely off his rocker anger murder violence man. I am inclined to agree.

In this three issue comic Jason Todd has been dRiVeN mAd (in the most bullshit comic sense of that word) by Bruce’s will... telling him to go to therapy. Yeah. So uh, he dons a Batman suit to shoot people in AND pretends to be Black Mask so he can enslave a bunch of villains Amanda Waller style, and like it gets weird from there. It is an extremely jarring transition from that last scene to GUNS BAT HATE MAN.

He still does not hate Tim in it. I really, seriously thought I was going to have to make a lot of excuses for this portion but then the more I read of it the more vindicated I was cause let me repeat: One of the most unhinged with Bat hate and crazy juice versions of Jason ever put to print does not hate Tim at all.

Hell, he likes Tim! He compliments him!

And on top of that, even though he is MUCH more lethal against his fellow robins when they attack him - Jason straight up shoots a ten year old Damian in the chest. It’s fucked. - There is still evidence to suggest that Jason deliberately didn’t kill Tim when he had ample opportunity.

Jason first of all never hunts Tim down. I’ve heard Battle for the Cowl described as Jason tracking Tim down or kidnapping him or going after him to force him to Be His Robin, but that’s just not how it goes.

Instead he waits for Tim to come find his Batcave, disorients him, and goes for a ton of surface cuts. He only actually goes for a real body blow after Tim picks up a crowbar and beats Jason across the face with it a few times.

(Again, proud of you Timmy)

After the stabbing, Jason doesn’t just leave Tim there; this isn’t a matter of hurrying on before he could check. He’s seen dragging Tim off. When Nightwing later comes to rescue him, Dick is downright certain Jason is lying to him about Tim being dead because Jason is refusing to show him the body and Dick figures it’s because he knows there’s no body to show (if in part because he can’t let himself believe Tim is dead without hard proof).

Tim himself wonders about this, noting that the batterang was rusted and shattered on his armor.

Sure, Tim used playing possum to make his pulse slow to a near stop for a while, maybe that fooled Jason, but keep in mind that BRUCE taught Tim that skill, and if there’s one thing these comics have established, it’s that Jason is dangerous precisely because he is so intimately familiar with the techniques of the Bat. Jason even makes specific note of the fact that Tim being trained like Bruce and fighting like Bruce would be his downfall at the beginning of their fight.

The whole comic leaves me wondering just how much of what happened went completely according to Jason’s plan. I really would not put it passed him to engineer a ‘death in the family’ recreation for the next Batman in line! As much as I agree that this is garbage characterization for him in many many ways, I do think Jason makes a fantastic villain. I love to see him run rings around the Bats in some places, and make lemonade out of getting his ass kicked in others.

No matter how we interpret the stabbing here though, what does seem very clear to me is that Jason makes the Be My Robin offer to Tim first and foremost because he thinks pretty highly of Tim! He’s been rejected by Tim at least three times over but keeps holding a hand out for him. This does not seem like Tim hater reaction hours here!

Also that whole thing about kids being dragged into this vigilante life irresponsibly? Yeah that’s still there!

I have TRIED to find evidence that Jason hates Tim at like literally any point here. I have gone through the shit people point to. I have looked at the context around those and dug up more obscure interactions for second and third views. Everywhere I look I just see more instances of Jason complimenting Tim!! It’s driving me nuts!

The only conclusion that I can come to is that people read this stuff and just trust that Tim is right about Jason. Tim’s internal view waaay more closely resembles fandom interpretation. Tim assumes that Clayson Toddface would absolutely have killed him in cold blood, that Jason beat the shit out of him purely to prove he was stronger, that he’s a brute, a moron, an active danger to society, and that every bit of leniency given to him will result in betrayal and death.

I don’t have clearer proof for it, but I also don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Tim probably believes Jason has it out for him and holds him responsible for his replacement.

So yeah. As a fascinating reversal of my expectations going in: I don’t think Jason has ever hated Tim, but boy fuckin howdy has Tim HATED Jason.

#jason todd #tim drake #character analysis #jason todd and tim drake #jason todd & tim drake #jaytim #jason todd/tim drake #robin #red hood #red robin

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