#I feel like. This should be tagged a little. But idk how .

[dballzposting]

KEEPING IT REAL WITH JIREN & TOPPO

First of all I love that the final antagonist of the arch was somebody who fights for nobody but himself, but not because he has a wonderfully large ego like Freeza, but rather because he purposefully chooses to and has crafted a philosophy that calls for this. He, unfortunately, believes this with his full capabilities of conviction. He has sacrificed so much in this belief.

So many times Goku and the others credit their strength to the way that they fight for others. Then here comes a guy who is unfathomably strong, and he has gotten here by fighting for nobody but himself.

But in the end he can't win, and it is the teamwork of the most UNLIKELY DUO that brings him down. And as these two diametrically opposed warriors both sacrifice their time in the ring in order to bring Jiren down with them, Jiren realizes that the "secret" to the Seventh Universe's strength is "the power of trust."

Which again. I am kind of sitting here in awe about. Goku and Freeza. Took a chance on each other because they had to. Goku and Freeza. FREEZA. He didn't want to do it. He did not want it to end this way. But he did it. With a heated fervor he did it. With a tactician's clarity he ended this all the while incorporating Goku's strength into his strategy. And they entrusted all to Android 17 as the last man standing.

And then it turns out that the Grand Zenos had a greater meaning behind this whole tournament, and that if the winner's wish had been a selfish one, they would have just wiped out all of reality as being not worth it! But if it was the "right" wish, a selfless one, then all the universes would be restored by the wish itself. They were sure that if the winning mortal wasn't already virtuous, then the challenge would have made them so.

Which. By the way. In all the philosophy our human minds have mustered. There are several distinct and overlapping theories as to what morality and ethics COULD EVEN BE. But on Dragon Ball Super, the supreme rulers of the multiverse have spoken: indubitably, morality is Helping Out Your Fellow Mortal even at the expense of yourself. WOW! Glad that the endless discussion has been concluded!!!

Morality is about MERCY and TRUST and ALTRUISM. It is Strength and Love and Passion.

WHAT A LOVELY AND COMPELLING STORY !!!!

Anyway back to Jiren.

He got really relatable and believable at the end there. Oh My Lord. He had felt the intolerable pain of loss in his time, and it at first encouraged him to respond to the villain who had wrought it. After his second great loss, he then could not deny what was glaring him in the face: that "might makes right." That's why he lost the first time, and that's why he had lost the second; it was because he wasn't strong enough, because HE wasn't strong enough, he could not rely on something as fallible as teamwork and virtue in order to win. All those things are corruptible, beliefs can change - but the hard, tangible reality before him is that when two opposing forces meet, THE MIGHTIER ONE WILL WIN.

And that was how he made sense of his world. Any organism is tasked with making sense of its world, and that perspective needs to meet the needs of the organism. Us humans, as instinct, incorporate emotional, social, logical, practical, and spiritual nuances when we are tasked with "making sense." It has to make sense TO US, therefore use all that we have to offer.

I appreciate Jiren as a character who so succinctly conveys our own nature to us. At moments of survival, one of the many vital tasks of the nervous system is to figure out the WHAT. Past the moment of impact, we continue to "make sense" of what it was retroactively, as its effect on us permeates. This is how we learn for next time. When Jiren first experienced that loss in his youth, he at first found his purpose in virtue, and that he was justified in righting this wrong both morally and by his own internal feelings of rage. After he lost again, he made a new sense by wiping away what now seemed like distractions so that he could see the overwhelming villain for what it was: SHEER POWER, nothing else. His comrades disassembled, his new family was destroyed. They could be conquered and their behavior altered. They could be killed. The only intransient thing that Jiren had seen was the absolute rule of cause and effect, of win and lose, of kill or be killed. Might makes right because might decides what happens at all, it IS morality by virtue of being the last man standing, it is reliable.

So in a perfectly predictable twist of fate, Jiren commits himself in totality to the rules that had destroyed him. But this time, he would yield the reins and use that law for his own favor. He has been convinced of the irreproachable legitimacy of Might, and he would have it for himself.

Because here's the thing. And this is what I'm REALLY interested in. This is what it all comes down to, everywhere you look, and what I'm so delighted to see expressed in his character.

WHAT was he fighting for? Rather, WHY was he still fighting? Not for hope, not for goodness, not for others. For himself, okay, but why does he NEED this?

He's not fighting FOR something, but AWAY from something else - he is compelled to keep improving in order to avoid EVER FEELING THAT LOSS AGAIN, by his own admission and by the other characters' astute wording.

But it's not just the pain of loss. What he is so utterly compelled to FIGHT AGAINST, what he cannot TOLERATE, is the feeling of HELPLESSNESS.

I felt that feeling a lot in this arch. I felt it from the Destroyers and Kais sitting on the bench, knowing that their lives were on the line but that all they could do was sit and stifle it, while their angels sat blithely behind them. Are even gods just pawns in this grand cosmos?

Okay let's get real. The human reflex (and ability at all) to Avoid Feelings is what grants us our traumatizability. Something about our relatively huge frontal cortex allows us to suppress sensations, reactions, feelings, and other interoceptive experiences that would normally be restorative. The reason that animals don't get traumatized seems to be because they experience in totality their own activation, the freeze states if engaged, and then the release of the energy that had been mobilized in their system for survival.

I am not bullshitting you. Read Dr Peter A Levine

One of the biggest obstacles in trauma healing for humans is our reflex to AVOID HELPLESSNESS and therefore to AVOID embodying our own freeze responses. It's a complex and bizarre thing, but our own health and survival is interwoven through all of our neurological layers, and so deficits or damage presenting to our "higher" layers of mammalian perception very much can generate a response that we'd think more typical of the "lower" layers. The pyramid base of our most primitive coding supports all of us. The essence of the freeze/collapse seen in an overpowered reptile can be seen in a human infant overwhelmed by a lack of warmth and loving care. To a social mammal, not feeling that connection is devastating and means death. And a baby cannot fight or flee. Do you see where I'm going with this?

I AM NOT BULLSHITTING YOU!!!!! Read this book & his other books & other books by people like Bessel van der Kolk and Gabor Mate ETC

(Image ID: Super Interesting book called "In An Unspoken Voice" by Peter A Levine)

The key to resolving trauma is to be able to move through, or rather embody and gradually release, the visceral reality that did not get processed at the time of impact. The basic fundamental rules of instinct can still be found when we talk about more "abstracted" forms of trauma like developmental and emotional. But understand that one person is one structure of unity, necessarily so because how could we have evolved otherwise - and mind IS body and body IS mind, and invoking response in one entails a response in the other. Mind and body are not distinct entities in anything but prevailing societal philosophies.

Soooooo. Anywayyyyyy. Bear with me here. A lot of human trauma comes when a freeze state is entered and never properly exited. Those states are meant to be self-terminating, but through the power of the human brain, we can avoid letting things flow naturally. And again, in the complex evolutionary nuances of us primates, this doesn't have to be a hard collapse. The same instinctual wiring can be founds in things like a partial collapse of some systems (voice not working, anyone?), all the way over to just a general dull & dead disassociation. When sympathetic arousal of the nervous system pays out no dividends, the last resort is to full-reverse into parasympathetic shutdown. But when that happens, the "survival energy" (as is frequently termed in the book I mentioned above PLEASE READ IT) does not just go away. It was still mobilized, the muscles are primed, the nerve cells are primed, all systems are go, but it all just STOPS for a bit. To give the tiger time to give up on you. And then, when it's time, freeze will terminate, and all that energy is still there for you to either launch a rageful counter-attack or to engage in a quick flight - whatever seems to give you the higher chance of survival.

As the energy is held in reserves, so is the full state that you entered freeze with. All of the visceral sensations of rage, fear, and helplessness.

That is why humans avoid exiting a freeze. BECAUSE THAT STUFF IS REALLY HARD TO TOLERATE. The experience drove you to overwhelm for a reason. And if your nervous system did not develop in an environment of love and warmth and support, then it'll be less tolerant of difficult sensations, and you'll be more prone to disassociation and distraction. Many of us just go into shutdown kind of immediately without ever knowing it because we're detached from ourselves, we just know that we don't and can't do things but we don't feel "anxious" like what everyone else is talking about so what gives? (<- Me. But I have a lot more interoceptive awareness now so I can track it and so now I'm awesomne. I mean I'm still immensely fucked up. But there is now hope.)

Again it's all a very complex subject that fascinates me to no end & that I cant fuking explain becasue what do i know. Please Read Books <3 Please look up "somatic experiencing" or maybe just read the books. I have given that book above as a gift to several different people and I am going to keep doing it

So basically coming into contact with your own frozen-over intensely vulnerable states in order to move through them (resolve, release, renegotiate, etc), is a challenge. Human beings are fiercely social and our nervous systems are wired to respond to each others'; we cannot live alone, and we certainly cannot heal alone.

SO WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH JIREN FROM DRAGON BALL SUPER ????

I'LL TELL YOU. He is literally just running hardcore from that feeling of helplessness. He is resolved to Never Feel It Again.

And the person he represents you see all of the time in real life. There are one million ways to avoid resolving what needs to be resolved, overexertion is definitely one of them. There are definitely gym rats who exhaust their muscles in order to avoid feeling their twitching unrest, to avoid feeling small and weak. Think about the sort of mindset that a lot of people have when it comes to working out. It seems to be about punishment and discipline. Of course the people who have it right understand that it's about vitality, enjoyment, and patience - but think about how hard it is to convince someone more toxic-minded of that. Harboring that trapped survival energy will reduce the complexity of your thoughts and your comfort in having them; you get caught in black-and-white dichotomies, you get stuck in "kill or be killed," you get stuck in obsessive compulsions, you can't comprehend letting things flow and you can't be okay with it, your social systems shut down and you cannot feel the support of others, you don't feel in control, and everything at its roots seems to be about your own fear; so you overcompensate.

Jiren has made sense of his world. It is a vital thing to do. And he has decided what he has to do to overcome his enemy. But the reason that he continues to FEEL the enemy when it is no longer present is because he has not healed. His enemy is the horrible helplessness he had felt. It haunts him. It stays with him. He tries to conquer it. But it follows him. It threatens to one day consume him. And he finds the enemy in external circumstance (as we are biologically geared to do, at our lowest levels, to orient toward and to locate the possible threat, toward what has elevated us so), but the real enemy is within. It's because his pain has not been resolved. It is because he has not learned how to befriend his bodily states and to move through them.

And this is KEY here - It is because he has REJECTED FRIENDSHIP, the necessary visceral feeling of safety and love, which would serve as both his safe spot and his empowering resource as he ventures into his most difficult feelings. You need good experiences to counteract the bad in order to unwind those knots.

We see this sort of stuff all of the time in every single one of us. Jiren was a sensitive little boy with no reason not to be, who (like the best of us) felt every ounce of his world with wonder - and then he had it all ripped out of him by the most horrible circumstances ever. And with the threat still looming, he couldn't ever rest. That sort of chronic stress will twist you all up. And then when his world flipped over again, it must have been a huge relief to just embrace a simple, BELIEVABLE philosophy, and to just dedicate all of his anger and fear toward one task.

I'm just impressed to see it portrayed so plainly on Jiren. It's all of us. It's not hard to see, but there are many ways to see it. It takes a certain sensitivity and skill to pluck it out of the world and write it all down. And then especially his short conversation with Top that this post started with screenshots of. If he suffered such an intense loss so young, and then again years down the line, of course he can't make any connections. He's not just out of practice, but susceptible to opening the door to that pain again.

I really liked how this arch was about trust in the end. I noticed throughout it the prevalence of duos (two Zenos, Beerus & Champa, Androids 18 & 17, Piccolo and Gohan teaming up, and especially KALE AND CAULIFLA), but I tend to hone in on duos for my own complex reasons of being so I figured that that was just me. But then in the end when it took the Most Unlikely Duo In Cinematic History to take out and teach Jiren, I was like oh my word ... Poetic cinema.

So that's my post. I LOVE how it was all handled. So succinct as always in order to leave more room for the fighting. Unlike my posts which are long despite my best efforts. Thanks for reading. And read that book!! Chao <3

[rosedustdreams]

Heyy!!😊

Can I request something with Walker and reader based off the song Into you by Ariana grande. I love your work 🥰

Into you

The music thumped softly in the background of the late night cast party, but your attention wasn’t on the music or the chatter in the room. It was on him.

Walker stood a few feet away, his back to you as he talked to one of the crew members. The way his head tilted slightly when he laughed and the way he leaned against the counter it all made your heart race.

You weren’t sure when it had started. Maybe it was the long hours on set, where the two of you would share quiet jokes between takes. Or maybe it was the way his teasing smile would soften whenever you caught him staring at you. Either way, he was consuming your thoughts more and more these days.

And tonight? Tonight, you swore there was something in the way he looked at you a flicker of something just waiting for the right moment.

As if sensing your gaze, Walker turned, his eyes locking onto yours. Showing off his playful smirk, as he raised an eyebrow, silently asking What’s on your mind?

You looked away quickly, heat rushing to your cheeks. But out of the corner of your eye, you saw him excuse himself from the conversation and make his way toward you.

Your heart leaped.

“Hey,” he said when he reached you, his voice low enough that only you could hear it over the music. “You’ve been quiet tonight.”

You smiled, trying to play it cool. “Just… enjoying the vibe.”

Walker tilted his head, studying you like he didn’t believe a word of it. “Uh-huh,” he said, leaning in slightly. “So you weren’t staring at me just now?”

Your cheeks burned, and you tried to laugh it off. “What? No, I wasn’t—”

“Sure you weren’t,” he teased, his grin widening.

“Walker,” you groaned, shoving his shoulder lightly. “You’re so full of yourself.”

“Only when I’m right,” he shot back, his voice warm and teasing. Then, after a beat, his expression softened, and he leaned just a little closer. “You know… I don’t mind it.”

“Mind what?” you asked, your voice barely above a whisper now.

He hesitated for a moment, his confidence faltering just enough to let you see the nerves underneath. “When you look at me like that,” he said finally. “Like I’m the only person in the room.”

Your breath caught, and for a moment, all you could do was stare at him. The air between you felt charged, like one spark would set it ablaze.

“I…” You swallowed, trying to find the right words. “Maybe it’s because you kind of are.”

Walker’s eyes widened slightly, and then his grin returned smaller this time, but more genuine. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” you admitted, your voice soft.

For a moment, neither of you spoke. The party faded into the background as the two of you stood there, the space between you shrinking with every passing second.

“I’m not great at this kind of thing,” Walker said, his voice quiet but steady. “But if you… I mean, if you want…”

You smiled, taking a small step closer. “Walker, just say it.”

“Can I take you out sometime?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

You didn’t hesitate. “I’d like that.”

His grin was blinding, and for a moment, you thought he might say something else. But then someone called his name from across the room, and the moment was broken.

“I should…” he said, gesturing toward the voice.

“Yeah,” you said, biting back a smile.

“But, uh…” He hesitated, his hand brushing yours for just a second. “Don’t go anywhere, okay?”

“Not a chance,” you replied, your smile growing.

As he walked away, you felt your heart race again, this time with the kind of giddy excitement you only ever heard about in songs.

A/N: sorry this is so short I'm working on so many requests at the moment idk how to feel about this.

Tags: @izzystylinson, @sophand4n4, @kaiwrites092, @shellsarepretty, @cheoriemoawa, @prettiesteyess,  @vintagewntr10, @hecallmebigpurrr420, @killualovbot, 

[serickswrites]

I know I already have a request in but u just had an idea and idk how to write it yet so you get to- yipee! Feel free to pass it onto someone else- i don’t want to be greedy.

But Whumper live-streaming the whump, and Whumpee gets to read the comments and suggestions and see the donations

Hey friend! Sorry it took me a ridiculous amount of time to answer this. I absolutely love this prompt. Please enjoy this!

Warnings: captivity, restraints, torture, gag, burns, electrocution, strangulation, video taping

Whumpee screamed around the gag in their mouth as Whumper pressed the white hot poker against their side. The pain was beyond pain. The smell of their burning flesh nauseating as Whumper pressed harder and harder.

"Be sure to look at the camera, Whumpee. Our audience loves to look at your pretty eyes while I work. You have such expressive, pretty eyes, Whumpee."

Whumpee stared at the camera just a few feet away. They hated that Whumper had an audience. They hated that people paid to watch their suffering. And most of all, they hated that people suggested what Whumper should do next.

"That's enough for now, everyone," Whumper said as they removed the poker, though it was no longer white hot. Whumpee sagged with relief. It was over. For now.

Whumper walked over to the laptop and carried it over to Whumpee. "Look, Whumpee, Donor696969 paid $500 for that. That's pretty awesome."

Whumpee couldn't believe it. This pain was only worth $500? Only $500? How could that be? How could someone pay so little to watch someone suffer so much?

"Oh, Donor12345123, that's such a good idea. Ok, gang, you get to vote on our next activity. Should I strangle Whumpee until they pass out? Or shock them until they pass out? You have two minutes to vote. Each vote is $50. You can vote more than once. Ready. Set. Go."

Whumpee watched in horror as the chat exploded with comments. Watched in horror as Whumper called out the running total of votes. Watched in horror as they read comment after comment calling for more pain and suffering. Watched in horror as other torture methods were suggested. And they watched in horror as Whumper stopped the vote.

"Looks like electrocution it is! Hold on, Whumpee, I've got to change our set up here. Everybody just enjoy this view of Whumpee while I get everything set up."

Whumpee closed their eyes as they sobbed quietly around their gag. They didn't want to read anymore comments of people calling for their pain, their suffering. They didn't want to see how much enjoyment a group of people got out of their torture. And they didn't want to see what Whumper had set up next for them.

Tags: @mousepaw @jumpywhumpywriter @knightinbatteredarmor @hufflepuffwritingstuff2 @anightmarishwhump

@steh-lar-uh-nuhs @celestialsoyeon @st0rmm @ay5ksal @pedro-pedro-pedro-pedro-pe

@pepeniascat @acer-whumpstuff

[starscream-is-my-wife]

Ik it's a bit early but I can't believe it's been almost one year since this post

Btw yeah its real

[thebarrows]

put them in a room together and no one will come out alive (●'◡'●)

[amelia-yap]

AUEGH

[lale-txt]

heartbreaking! one of your favorite artists makes fun of y/n fics!

[danikatze]

[ID in alt text]

Another wip! It's kind of almost done :)

[labrayic]

crossover of the last two piece of media you watched/played?

This may be the weirdest thing I've drawn in a while and it is almost embarrassing how much effort I put into it lmao

Watched Deadpool and Wolverine for the second time last night and read a volume of One Piece today, making a silly little Wolverine version of Zoro just felt like the obvious choice. Zorolverine <3

[radioroxx]

hmmmm mal du pays thoughts tonight

[scionshtola]

i do think a good shtola arc for the future would be like, her sort of calculated recklessness with her own life negatively affecting someone else and her having to reckon with that

[hunterontheedge]

Guilty of liking a character that I don't even enjoy the canon writing of

[biblically-accurate-dca]

more human(?) sb guys

[byanyan]

rolls around on the floor........ so anyway, i failed my attempt to fix my sleep schedule... now i'm just gonna try waking up a bit earlier every day until i feel at least somewhat like a human being ashjfgds

[feelo-fick]

molten/molted/molded

also yes i do actually have a flamingo mug thats sorta chipped, and it is a little ugly, here it is :

its not super chipped, but i was still devastated when i found out

[javierduffy]

I'm in the middle of writing a javieran piece and it's got me thinking because by chapter 4, Hosea and Dutch are arguing more often than not, John is starting to pay more attention to his family, and Arthur is beginning to express his doubts more. So like if Javier and Kieran WERE in a relationship (and assuming Kieran lives, but this would still apply somewhat if he was dead) Dutch would be quaking in his boots and may even try to drive a wedge between them because if JAVIER starts to notice the cracks in the gang and focuses more on his relationship Dutch is done for. What do you think?

(this isn't very articulate I just woke up lmao)

ohh this is such a good idea … i’ve never really thought about how the rest of the gang would react to (and subsequently interact with) javier and kieran being together … personally i would think dutch could only start to really care (and become increasingly paranoid about it) if kieran were to survive. yes, by early chapter 4, dutch was already distrustful of john because john was distrustful of him after blackwater, but he only really “cut him loose” in his mind post-jack retrieval, when john really started, in dutches words, “playing family”. only by then does dutch really start to become increasingly more comfortable with entertaining the idea of exiling john from the gang, as seen by his several counts of threateningly reminding john that the first rule of VDL’s is that the gang comes first. meaning, once dutch lessens that influence of caring about john, he now has more berth in his mind to focus on and worry about other gang members. not to say that dutch wouldn’t have already considered the threat of javieran’s partnership, as dutch van der linde is the king of laying awake at night thinking about how all his loved ones can (and “probably” will) betray him, but i don’t think he’d truly be able to concoct a story in which he doesn’t come out on top, so he leaves it alone initially.

but if kieran were to be dragged into camp, one way or another, half dead and with an army of o’driscolls not too far behind him, dutch may now see this as the chess board being shuffled and the javieran side of it now having the upper hand. not so much in the sense that kieran has played any hand himself out of malice, but if he seems to be so important to colm o’driscoll that he’s willing to follow him out to a backwater corner in a shithole swamp just to kill him, then dutch now feels more comfortable with the idea of seeing kieran as baggage, or even a threat by proxy. plus, he sees how desperately javier is trying to settle the unease and distrust that is spreading in camp- several times has he rallied a campfires’ worth of people to continue trusting and believing in dutch. dutch knows exactly how valuable javier’s loyalty is, not only in his manpower, but also in his heart, and you’re right that he wouldn’t want to lose that. in dutches perspective, john’s seemingly solidified betrayal, followed by the o’driscoll attack, hosea’s death, and the trolly, i honestly think it would be in, and immediately after, guarma that dutch would begin to set his sights on impeding javieran’s partnership.

by this point, javier has a severely weakened sense of self, purpose, and safety due to the chaos of so many fatal failures in rapid succession for the VDL’s, while also having a powerfully bolstered sense of duty, trust, and loyalty to dutch because of how he committed to saving javier’s life before getting off of guarma (while arthur saw the worst of him there, javier was locked in a cage, so he’s no more privy to his leader’s downward spiral than he was before). so pairing this state of mind of javier’s with the way that kieran essentially lead the o’driscolls straight to them, it’s the perfect in for dutch to start trying to worm his way into javier’s mind about how kieran may not be “who he thinks”. now, i’ve seen a few documentaries on dutch, but i’m certainly no specialist, so i can’t settle on how exactly he would go about proposing doubt into javier’s mind. i could see him projecting things onto javi, convincing him into believing that it’s potential that he sees in kieran, and not what he actually provides. or perhaps similar to how grimshaw sees the threat in mary to arthur’s loyalty and attempts manipulation accordingly, dutch may not even pull javier aside but simply start speaking to his boat of disheveled followers on the way back from the island, saying “you know, we lost a few good men back there, and are mending a few more. that o’driscoll ambush was the last thing we needed- and that kieran, i never did like him.” simply to knowingly leave javier deflated, conflicted, and left separated from his lover long enough to let the love in his heart get muddled in the chaos.

by here, it could be written two different ways, depending on where your javier lies in his distance from canon LOL “canonically” (not that it could be, by now, since kieran must be alive, but let’s say that’s the only thing that changed and we aren’t going to diverge the ending itself any further), javier would fall for dutches tongue, and his relationship would eventually fall apart. kieran would notice immediately that javier’s heart was no longer with him, and it would quickly go downhill from there- in my opinion, kieran would then abandon the gang like a few of the other members prior to the climax shootout, and javier would make it there with just an extra ounce of grief in his heart, going on to flee to mexico like normal.

the OTHER outcome, and how i would write it personally because canon is simply something for me to clock in and out of as i please, is that javier’s conflictions are just a smidgen less due to that little ounce more free kieran makes him feel compared to the current state of the gang, (and no matter what, if he has to fight, he’ll fight, if he has to run, he’ll run. if he has to die, he’ll die. but he’ll stay free. yes, i am bastardizing this quote towards individuality.) and he manages to break free of dutches delusional influence- with dutches attempt at splitting javieran up being the thing that gave javier the courage to doubt him. javier owes dutch his life, and he knows this, but by chapter 6, javier’s love and the purpose he’s found outside of the gang (with kieran), like john’s (for his family) and arthur’s (for john), gives him the clarity to choose that over blindly following dutch off of the cliff. usually it’s around this time that i write him to flee, off to go find kieran again and choose him again, for the last time, once and for all.

i do think this is a very fun thing to speculate on !! thank you for sharing with me and for asking my opinion on it :’] it makes me very happy that you wanted to hear it !!! i agree with you that dutch could very well begin to see javieran as a threat against him, especially with john’s “betrayal” happening right before his very eyes stinging him already. it would be very easy to conclude that dutch would want to begin meddling in any relationships that aren’t between people whom he knows won’t question him- and kieran was never really loyal to him at all. if anything, it’s arthur he’s loyal to, what with how he thanks arthur profusely for sparing, protecting, and improving his life overall. dutch is smart enough to know that if he can convince javier to shake kieran, he’ll stay a valuable pawn on dutches side of the board no matter what, because then he’ll have nothing else again.

please please please do let me know when you’re finished writing it !!! i would be ecstatic to read it, i’m living on crumbs over here <//3