#I’m sure they could just put their differences aside and f*ck it out

[fuzziiwuzzii]

⚠️NSFW⚠️

(Uncensored here and here)

Louis getting the loving from his evil husbands like he DESERVES

(also the first time I get flustered by my own art help)

[ks-dreams-fantasies]

Rio smut? Where the couple argues over him sleeping with Beth during there break up and the reader then saying she slept with someone too and rio gets super mad

“I said I couldn’t wait” - Rio (Good Girls) 

I feel like Rio would be such a “Do what I say, not what I do” type of boyfriend in this situation. 👀 We all know this man is possessive as f*ck, so of course he would get mad knowing his girlfriend slept with someone else (even if they were broken up). Anyways, thanks for your request, hope you like it 🥰

Warning : Angst, Smut (Teasing, Female receiving)

Word Count: 1.8k (Not proofread sorry)

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You walked fast, Rio following your every step from afar, as you were almost running towards the car. You had just gotten into an argument over his associate, at least that’s what she called her. You were at dinner, when you ran into her, Beth Boland. Well, she just found you and decided to join you, interrupting your date night

“I have to talk to you” she had said, batting her lashes at your boyfriend

“Whatever you have to say, you can say in front of my girl” he stated pointing towards you, already annoyed by her presence

“You sure you don’t want like a bathroom break, we had so much fun last time” she responded smirking lightly, trying to bug you. Of course, her comment had bothered you, but you didn’t want to let it show. Rio clenched his jaw, irritated by her remark.

“Na, I’m good” he shrugged his shoulders “Now, let us enjoy the rest of our evening and leave” he continued, looking her straight in the eyes. She stood there, annoyed by the fact he was choosing you over her. Ever since she had slept with him, she didn’t want to admit it, but she always wanted to be around him in a way and the fact that he was now back with his girl and not paying attention to her, drove her somewhat crazy. He stopped paying attention to her and proceeded to cut a piece a steak, his focus now on the piece of meat in front of him. She huffed loudly, stomping her feet before leaving the two of you alone as your eyes focused on your boyfriend’s figure. You couldn’t believe what had just happened.

“So, what was that about?” You asked, trying to get him to talk, although you knew exactly what it was about. He took one last bite, clearing out his plate, while you pushed yours aside, not being hungry anymore

“Nothing” he said taking a sip of his drink, dodging your question

“Didn’t seem like nothing to me” you muttered under your breath before finishing your glass of wine

“What was that?” he said looking right at you, the waiter interrupting you. Rio knew well enough what you had said, and it was clear to him that you were bothered by the situation

“May I get you anything else?” He said smiling softly at the both of you,

“The check, please” you demanded, before Rio could say anything. The waiter nodded before leaving quickly, feeling the tension between the two of you. He came back shortly after, Rio handing him a hundred-dollar bill, thanking him, as you both stood up to leave. You walked rapidly in front of your boyfriend, wanting to get away from him. Rio couldn’t help but noticed the different pairs of eyes looking at your beautiful figure as you moved towards the front of the restaurant. All he wanted was to put these guys in their place, showing them what was his, but he knew he didn’t have time for that, following you as you exited the building.

You walked at a fast pace, Rio following your trail closely, a small grin on his face, almost amused by your behavior. As you got to the vehicle, you waited for him to unlock the door, but much to your dismay, he didn’t.

“Lose the attitude baby” he said approaching you, as you stood near the passenger side of the car.

“I have every right to have one” you replied “And don’t call me baby” you sighed, annoyed

“Why? Because of what she said? Come on ma, I told you already, we weren’t even together when that shit happened” he stated, rolling his eyes, something you hated for him to do when you were mad.

“I know we weren’t together when you slept with that woman, I did the same” you said nonchalantly “But it’s the fact that you’re still in contact, hell your still in business with her” you through your hands in the air “That’s what annoys me”

“You slept with someone else?” he asked through gritted teeth, not finding the situation amusing anymore.

“You said it yourself, we weren’t in a relationship anymore. And what if we had never gotten back together, what was I supposed to do? Never have sex again?” you asked your voice getting slightly louder, fully irritated by his reaction

“Who is he?” he questioned, taking a step towards you, as you took a step back leaning against the car door

“It doesn’t matter Rio, I don’t even talk to the guy anymore. But you on the other hand, you’re still in contact with her.” You replied getting frustrated “I saw how she was looking at you, the bitch wants more than to just be your business associate” you stated

“I’m going to ask again and you better answer. Who is he?” he asked, pushing his body to yours, grabbing your neck with his hand, squeezing it slightly, taking you by surprise.

“And I’ll repeat, it doesn’t matter” you said, emphasizing every word “Don’t turn this on me” you continued, as he groaned before pushing you against the car as you gasped, trapping your body between his and the vehicle, his aggressiveness arousing you.

“You better not think about him again or worse, be in contact with him anymore, or else I’m-“

“You’re going to what, huh? So, you’re telling me this thing works for you, but not for me, is that it?”you asked, your tone laced with attitude.

Rio looked you up and down, breathing through his nose, trying to calm himself. The thought of another man touching you was enough to get his blood boiling.

“Is that it?” you repeated, getting to him as he crashed his lips hungrily onto yours, biting your bottom lip, earning a muffled moan from your throat. Your hand found its way into the waistband of his black jeans, pulling his hips to meet yours. He groaned at the friction of his pelvic bone, against your crotch before you decided to push him away to get some air. He looked at you, panting, detaching himself from your body.

“Get in the car” he demanded sternly. You could already feel yourself pooling into your underwear

“Don’t tell me what to do” you responded, opening the car door, hopping inside as Rio walked around to the driver seat, getting in as well, shaking his head lightly at your comment.

“Just wait till we get home (Y/N)” he noted, putting the keys in the ignition, turning it on, as Bryson Tiller’s voice filled the inside of the car.

“And what if I don’t want to wait” you said, challenging him. Something you both had in comment was your love to provoke the other. His head turned to look at you, his brown eyes getting darker with every word leaving your mouth. You bit your lower lip in anticipation of what was coming next.

“In the back. Now!” You obliged quickly, scared that the two of you would get caught, but turned on at the same time. Rio always got what he wanted and once again, even if he was in the wrong, you gave in, wanting him to please you like he knew how to do perfectly. He looked at you, still sitting in the driver seat, as you pulled your hips up, allowing you to remove your panties, throwing them onto his lap with a smirk. He didn’t say a word, as he continued to stare at your every move, licking his lips slowly. You decided you wanted to tease him so, you proceeded to pull up your dress slightly, opening your legs slowly, giving him a view of your dripping core. He grunted loudly at the sight of you, your finger making their way to your slit, spreading your warm fluid, a soft moan leaving your lips.

“Rio” you whimpered, toying with the small bundle of joy sitting in between your legs. It felt good, but you couldn’t wait for him to replace your fingers with his.

“I love hearing you moan out my name” he said, his voice deep and filled with lust. He couldn’t wait any longer, joining you on the back seat, placing his head to your neck, leaving an overwhelming amount of open mouth kisses. His left hand traveled to your needy core, while his right hand massaged your breast, making you let out a sight, pleased by his actions.

“Rio, please” you whimpered, gripping his bicep tightly, wanting to feel him where you needed him the most. He inserted two of his fingers inside of you, smirking at the wetness leaking from your warm fold.

“Did he made you this wet baby?” he asked you, enjoying the sight of your pleasured face, only getting a moan as a response to his question.

“I asked you a question (Y/N)” he stated, his voice harsh, adding a third finger still waiting for your reply.

“N-no, only you can make me feel this good” you panted heavily as he fastened his pace, making you moan louder, his name leaving your lips over and over again. Hi touch was magic and all you wanted was to feel him hitting your deepest spot. You whimpered, asking for more, as he moved his thumb to your swollen clit, making you shriek in pleasure, the feeling already overpowering your body. Rio loved to hear you beg, and listening to your every moan, indicating that he did everything he was asked to do to please you perfectly. You grabbed the back of his neck, pulling him closer, your lips meeting his, your tongue dancing together, feeling Rio, hard as a rock beside you. You let out a loud gasp against his mouth, as he curled his fingers inside of you, tickling your special spot.

“I’m so close baby” you mumbled, your head now down his neck, digging your fingers into the leather seat of his G-Wagon, trying to contain yourself.

“Cum for me mama” he whispered into your ear, the sound alone being just enough to throw you over the edge, moaning loudly as you came all around his fingers. He smiled at you, once you had calm down from your high, removing his fingers and placing them in his mouth, sucking slowly, enjoying the taste of your cum on his tongue. He moved his hand down his belt before you stopped him.

“I said I couldn’t wait” looking at him entertained by his not so amused expression.

“Wha-“ you cut him off, leaving a small peck on his lips, moving to the front of the car, buckling your seatbelt, waiting for him to move to the front of the vehicle for the both of you to get home.

“I didn’t say you couldn’t wait though” you smirked, feeling accomplished, seeing the astonished look on Rio’s face.

Let’s just say that he didn’t go easy on you when the both of you got home.

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Thanks for reading

Hope you liked it, let me know what you think

-K

[superhero--imagines]

Part 1 Here! / Part 2 Here! / Part 3 Here! / Part 4 Here! / Part 5 Here! / Part 6 Here! / Part 7 Here! / Part 8 Here! / Part 9 Here! / Part 10 Here! / Part 11 Here! / Part 12 Here! / Part 13 Here! / Part 14 Here! / Part 15 Here! / Part 16 Here! / < This is Part 17!>

Donate to Move to Higher Ground HERE!

Song for this Chapter - (X)

A/N: Soooo I might not update Saturday this week because I’ve been pretty slammed at work this week. If anyone would like to Beta read the next two parts of this series (Especially if you’re BIPOC) pls DM me. The next part I’m not so concerned about, but the part after. (Also need Beta readers for my original pieces!) 

* Your legs dangle beneath you as you continuously bump your head against the tree trunk hoping the contact will knock some sense into you

* It doesn’t even hurt, barley a tickle.

* You decided that the safest, and least embarrassing, place for you right now was up a 100 foot tall tree.

* You came here for some peace and quiet, to get away from everyone and sort out your thoughts

* Not that it matters since half the coven has been up here to talk to you

* Carlisle came first, though you’re betting he pulled the “dad” card so he could go first.

* “Lovely view.”

* “Hmm” you mumble

* He lets out a deep sigh, and you hate yourself for not making this easier for him.

* “So I heard that you and Edward had a .... romantic encounter.”

* You laugh

* “A romantic encounter,” you repeat, you look at Carlisle who mirrors your smile.

* “Edward does that too” He mumbles. Carlisle doesn’t miss the way you stiffen at the mention of his name.

* A long, deep sigh escapes him

* “I just want you to know that it’s fine,” He’s sitting far away from you on the branch, partially because of your powers and partially because he understands you want space.

* “You’re two healthy vampires and I understand you have needs-“

* “Oh my god Carlisle please don’t tell me you’re giving me “the talk” right now on a tree branch” you’re mortified but you’re laughing

* “I just want you to know that however you choose to proceed, I love and support you.”

* And then Carlisle does something he hasn’t done in a decade,

* he inches closer, breaking into your personal bubble and gives you a kiss on the forehead and a pat on your shoulder

* You smile after he leaps down and runs back to the house

* He hasn’t done something like that since he found you in Volterra, newly turned and asking to die.

* Truly a compassionate man.

* Rosalie’s the next one, she actually calls your attention from the ground

* “I brought you some blood in case you’re hungry” she shouts, holding up a thermos with what you assume is blood.

* You sigh, it looks like you won’t be getting much space

* She leaves just as much space as Carlisle when she sits by you on the branch

* “Nice view up here huh?” She even cups a hand over her eyes to see further

* This family and small talk

* “Do you want to talk about it?” She finally asks after a long moment of silence.

* You shake your head

* “Not really” she nods, lacing her fingers together on her lap. There’s another long moment of silence

* “Does everyone know?” She raises an eyebrow and you clarify 

*“That Edward felt that way I mean.”

* Rosalie gives you a smirk that basically says, ‘I thought you didn’t want to talk about it’, but she doesn’t tease you any further. 

*She lets out a long sigh and looks down to her hands

* “Remember that time you came to our house for the first time to play monopoly?” 

*You nod. 

*“Most of us pieced it together back then”

* You sigh, all the way since back then?

* It’s been over a decade.

* “Mostly because we usually don’t have board game nights, and Edward asked if we could so he could have an excuse to bring you over”

* That dork. 

*You can’t help but smile.

* Of course Edward saw how lonely you were in that house and decided to find an excuse to get you five other friends.

* Another long moment of silence passes

* “Look I- I know Edward is my brother and I would be thrilled if you guys got together-“ 

*she places her hand on top of yours.

* “But I want you to know that I love you, and if you decide that’s not what you want, then that’s okay.”

* Her eyes are so kind, she gives you a gentle smile.

* “No matter what you decide, I’ll still love you, you’re still my best friend-my (sister/brother).”

* You feel your eyes sting and you nod, you give her a weak smile and she sighs wrapping you in a hug.

* “I’ll come back later with more blood” she caresses your face before jumping down, running back to the house

* As soon as she’s out of sight you feel your branch bend down

* “Great view, you see any bears yet?” Emmett asks and you sigh, swirling the cap of your thermos off

* “Care for a drink Emmett?”

* “Well don’t mind if I do”

* Out of all of them, you think you like Emmett’s interaction the best

* He doesn’t talk about Edward, just makes conversation with you like nothing is wrong, like you’re staying up this tree like a stranded cat because it’s fun

* “I heard you kissed a bunch of people at the party” you groan and put your face in your hands

* “I was drinking, I guess I drank too much, and made some questionable decision.”

* He grins and pats your shoulder

* “It’s not that big of a deal, we’ve all been there. Besides I thought it was pretty bad ass.”

* You smile, of course he would.

* Emmett doesn’t sit far away from you like the others, he sits beside you and swings his arm over your shoulder bringing you into a hug.

* “Don’t stress out about things too much up here, and when you’re ready don’t be embarrassed to come home.” He plants a kiss in your hair before swooping down

* That’s your big brother for you

* It’s not more than ten minutes until you feel the branch away again

* “Oh my god, can’t I have just a minute-“ the words die in your throat when you turn to see who’s sitting next to you.

* “Oh, hey Edward.”

* He’s sitting just as far as Carlisle and Rosalie were, if not further, he offers you a brief smile.

* A long moment of silence fills the air and you gulp

* “It’s a real nice view huh?” You say,

* oh geez now you’re the one talking about the view

* “Yeah it’s beautiful.” Edward’s not looking at the view, he’s looking at you, and the implication makes you even more flustered than you are.

* You watch Edward, he’s so happy he’s glowing. Every few seconds a smile will creep onto his face only for him to force it into a frown, only for it to twitch back into a smile again. 

* You laugh.

* “You’re doing that thing where you can’t hide how happy you are.” 

* Edward openly grins once you say that.

* “You’re happy too, I can feel it all the way from here.” He says holding a hand out.

* Ah your powers are leaking through

* Looks Rosalie and Carlisle just wanted to look serious when they were here

* “Of course I’m happy” 

* He told you he loved you, how could you not be happy?

* He basically confirmed your wildest wishes and hopes.

* This is the happiest you’ve ever been

* “I don’t understand why you’re sitting up here honestly,” he shakes his head boyish smile curling onto his face as his eyes stay focused on the horizon. “I know you feel the same way as I do”

* He’s right, you do feel the same as him.

* Maybe for just as long as he has, you’ve just been holding yourself back because you thought he would never have those feelings for you

* Because you’re not the one who’s going to make him the happiest he could possibly be

* “Look Edward, I think you could do so much-“

* “Is this about Bella?” He interrupts, a bitter laugh when you remain silent. “Why do you think I would ever love her?”

* “The way you look at her-“

* “I don’t get that either, you talked about that last night too, I’m not sure what you’re seeing but the look I give her is of minimal tolerance.”

* ...

* Wait

* What

* “Oh cut the crap Edward, I saw the way you guys looked at each other on the stairway”

* “What stairway?” 

*Is he trying to play dumb? Because honestly- you’re a little convinced with that confused puppy look he’s giving you

* “At Conner’s party, you guys were talking at the stairwell, you looked at her like she was telling you all of the universe’s secrets.”

* He looks embarrassed, a hand tangling in his hair. 

* “Um- about that-”

* You caught the criminal red handed. He might like you, but he likes her too doesn’t he. Well he’s probably entranced by that scent of hers, no doubt he’ll forget all about you-

* “We were talking about you.” 

* ....

* (Y/N). Exe is broken

*  “While you were gone, we both came to an agreement to set our differences aside for you-”

* Why would they go that far for you, it’s not like you care-

* You remember the vitamins

* Going out of your way to include her in things, 

* Driving her home even when any normal person would have just ignored the whole thing

* Oh my god, you’re Bella’s best friend

* And even worse, everyone probably thinks she’s your best friend too. 

* (Y/N). Exe is broken

* “Don’t misunderstand for a second, I still find her absolutely repulsive, and whatever haze she’s got over the school is absolutely perplexing-”

* “But what about the carnation?” you interrupt.

* She’s the only one he bought a carnation for.

* “What carnation?”

* “The carnation you bought her on Valentine’s Day!” 

* Sure one carnation isn’t anything compared to the bouquet he bought you, but it had to mean something

* “I didn’t buy anyone any carnations.” He tells you, his eyebrows threading together

* Oh f*ck

* f*ck *f*ck f*ck f*ck f*ck f*ck *f*ck f*ck f*ck f*ck f*ck *f*ck f*ck f*ck f*ck

* You bought Bella that carnation.

* You bought all of your friends carnations, light red ones for friendship

* “Were you jealous because you thought I bought her flowers and not you?” 

*A mischievous grin arch’s onto his mouth and you hide your face in your hands 

*“You were, weren’t you? That’s adorable.”

* The criminal is teasing you, only this time you can’t complain because it’s rightly deserved

* “But- then what were you talking at the lockers about?”

* Edward’s face pinches into a look of disgust.

* “She came by to rub in my face how you had given us both the same colored carnations”

* “Wait-Bella knows you felt this way about me?”

* He laughs

* “(Y/N/N), I’m pretty sure everyone knows I love you.”

* Everyone but you apparently

* Was it really all in your head?

* Edward has loved you this entire time and you just...never noticed?

* “Honestly, I love you (Y/N), but sometimes you get fixated on these ideas for no logical reason-“

* Oh there’s a logical reason alright

* “-like what possible reason could there be for me to love a human like Bella? It’s just comple-“

* “Because you’re supposed to Edward!” 

* It’s the straw that finally broke the camels back.

* You tell him everything, about everything that happened in the books.

* Him falling in love with Bella, killing James, leaving her in new moon, the werewolves, the newborn army led by Victoria, their marriage and Bella’s pregnancy

* You frame it like you had a prophetic dream the night you turned, which is probably the closest way you can explain what happened without looking insane.

* Not that Edward would mind, he would probably get the best recommendation from Carlisle for a mental health institute and happily visit you three times a week with flowers and other gifts. 

* You both sit in silence after you finish telling him everything, the only sound the gentle whistle of the wind.

* “So what?”

* He asks, shrugging his shoulders and looking at you like you just told him a tv show he doesn’t like is getting cancelled

* You scoff in disbelief

* “ So what? Edward she’s your soul mate!”

* “You’re my soul mate” he says plainly, he’s inched closer to you this entire time, and now his thigh is only a flew inches away from your own.

* You feel embarrassed at his words, how can he say that so easily? 

*You’re still not even sure soul mates exist.

* Noticing you embarrassment he places his hand on top of yours, intertwining your fingers

* The contact makes butterflies erupt in your stomach.

* “I understand that you think that story is the one I want,” he says it slowly. 

* “But there’s already so many thing that are different.”

* He’s right things have changed, you know that.

* “Besides I don’t think I’m the one Bella has a crush on” he gives you a meaningful look and your eyebrows thread together.

* Wait what’s that supposed to mean

* “This world is different than the one you saw.” He squeezes your hand, and you sigh, 

* It’s different because of you.

* He should have had all those things. If it weren’t for you he would have had all those things

* “Edward she can give you a baby, a real baby that’s yours!”

* There’s only one common thread for all the vampires you’ve seen that still hunger for their humanity

* They all want a child.

* What Edward is getting, it’s a miracle. A Hail Mary. The odds of something like this happening are one in one billion at best.

* He gets to have a baby, and the woman he loves. It’s a win-win.

* He sighs and squeezes your hand.

* “But I don’t want that.” He says it so bluntly, like it’s the simplest thing on earth. 

*Your brain stops working.

* Well that can’t be right

* “We’ve never talked about it, but I’ve never wanted children, not even when I was a boy and still human.”

* Wait Edward doesn’t want kids? 

* Your head snaps up to meet his eyes

* “I think to want to bring children into the world you have to be at peace with the world and with yourself. And I’ve never been able to have either of those things.” He shrugs, his legs swinging under him.

* “What you saw- I was probably just going along with whatever Bella wanted, but I don’t think I would genuinely want to raise a child in this world, especially not when I look like I’m seventeen for the rest of my life”

* That makes sense. 

*Edward’s always been sensitive about his age. He looks older than 17, probably because of the venom. 

*But he’s the youngest of all his siblings, you know deep down he can handle the vampirism,

* But he can’t handle being a child for all of eternity.

* “But even if I did want kids, I want an eternity with you even more.”

* He squeezes your hand and you squeeze back, gulping the burning in your throat

* Whether it’s from thirst or the overwhelming emotions you’re not sure

* “Okay.” You finally say after several long moment of silence 

* “Okay, you’ll be mine for eternity or...” 

* You slap him lightly on the chest and he barks laughing

* “Okay...we can... date.” You say it haltingly, carefully even.

* “Like humans” you add for good measure

* You expect a bit of protest from Edward, he’s been waiting for you for over a decade now, you can’t think of a man alive who would be alright with just dating.

* But Edward smiles like you just agreed to marry him. He puts a hand on your face, and caresses your cheek with his thumb.

* “Alright, we’ll date like humans do.”

* You’re still a little worried but you find yourself smiling when Edward presses his forehead against your own. 

* His lips meeting yours.

* “(Y/N) and Edward sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.” You tease when he pulls away and he laughs again

* “You’re the worst you know that?”

* “Yet you still love me,” you tease “you loooooove me, you waanaaaa spend eeeeternity with meeee.” You sing and he laughs.

* “Suddenly I’m regretting my decision to court you.” 

* You sit in silence for a second, enjoying his scent. 

* It feels safe here

* It feels like home

* “Are you ready to go inside?”

* You should, you feel a lot better now, but-

* You groan and bury your face in his shoulder.

* “It’s going to be so embarrassing, everyone’s going to know what happened and Emmett is never going to stop with the sex jokes”

* Edward just grins, he can’t believe after waiting for so long, you’re his now.

* It feels like a dream

* You’re right though, it’s is going to be super embarrassing going back home after this.

* He gets why you chose to wait it out in a tree

* “Yeah, let’s stay out here for a while longer.” He says wrapping his arms around you.

BONUS:

* Rosalie is peering out the window with gold opera glasses to her hand

* “Oh! He leaned in closer! I think he’s holding their hand”

* Alice groans beside her

* “No they’re just talking, they’re going to be doing that a lot”

* “What else do you see Alice?” Jasper asks from behind her, watching the tree you and Edward are sitting on intently

* “I’m not sure...it’s all changing really fast, in one they make up and go back to being friends,”

* Emmett groans from behind her, he can’t handle anymore yearning or weird sex talks with his brother

* “In another they push Edward of the branch and say: “oh why don’t you just go back to Bella you human lover””

* Rosalie shudders, well that’s not good

* Honestly she should have just told you Bella and Edward had come to an agreement to be civil around one another for your benefit while you were gone

* They basically bonded over how much they like you

* The carnation was probably just a sign of that truce, if it was even from him

* She’s got a feeling it was probably from you and you just forgot, but she didn’t want to embarrass you 

* Besides she figured it might be the final push you need to admit your feelings to him

* “They’re kissing! You guys they’re kissing!” Alice shrieks, and all of them turn their attention back to you

* Ah so you are

* “And so end the brooding chronicles” Jasper whispers and Rosalie hides a laugh

* “I would call them the yearning chronicles” Alice adds

* “Have you considered that maybe the reason they’re out there is because they want privacy?” Carlisle says without looking up from his open newspaper.

* The four of them shuffle awkwardly before walking away from the large window

* “You too Esme” Carlisle says

* Esme sighs, tucking her black opera glasses into her apron

* “Don’t blame me when we don’t have anything to say at the wedding when it comes time for a toast” she mumbles, walking back to the kitchen to finish her cookies

* “A wedding?”

* Queue Carlisle half sobbing half wheezing into his newspaper

* “Not one, but two kids leaving the family?”

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[washymylifeaway]

MatsuHana fanfic recs

HI LOVES :D MatsuHana is one of my FAVORITE ships and I always love reading their fics! I’m procrastinating my other wips rn, so that do be why this is coming out rn LOL. Also that ask really made me get onto writing this, so anon thank you for sending it in LOL. There are some with VERY sensitive topics and they’re very BOLD, but I hope you all are safe while going through this list <3 (also matsuhana leans more to lots of drinking, spicy smut scenes, and teenage boy humor (like d*ck jokes and sexual innuendos) and sometimes I don’t remember to warn for that, so again CAUTION)

As always, pls check WARNINGS, TAGS, and SUMMARIES for fics before reading and make sure you’re taking care of yourselves (since mental health is key!) Stay healthy loves <3

CP:

plus one by orphan_account (G) 6.1k // this fic made me feel so warm and fuzzy inside LOL. It’s also hilarious and is definitely worth a read! When will I get to share a heart shaped bed with someone :( But I really love it when they just go with the flow of things, and other people are like,,, aren’t you already dating? BUT THEY’RE LIKE UMMM NO? HSAKJSH.

rated m for by orphan_account (T) 10.7k // I love this fic it made me laugh so much throughout the whole thing! The vibes in this fic are immaculate and give me life (we love a good reunion with mystery writers), it is SO good! That’s why you should never leave/stop listening prematurely (@ iwa when he was a single dad fic). 

This gets annoying fast, Makki by Ink_stained_quills (G) 2.3k // IM IN LOVE WITH THIS FIC PLS I COULD NOT STOP CRYING TEARS OF LAUGHTER. This AU needs more fics PLEASE. It was SO freakin’ funny and the other teams KILLED ME. Like how they all approached the problem differently and how some of them (KUROO) asked for help LOL. Please this is so freaking funny go read it.

quidditch gloves, parchment, and custard cream by h_lovely (T) 12.4k // THIS IS SO GOOD, I love this fic. It really takes you through the emotions, and I love all the development in it!!!! Their relationship with one another (but only as homies right? ofc ofc), and even their families loving the other, this fic is so good! Read it even if you don’t like slow burn, you won’t even notice <3333

call me maybe by totooru (T) 33.6k // okay yea another (semi) chat fic,,, fight me. MatsuHana are just funny in general but throw some other characters (like Kuroo) into it and it turns into a comedy show. But the main point of this fic was like the near miss meetings and I think that the misunderstanding were hilarious (as much as I hate misunderstandings LOL).

Magical Mishaps and How to Deal by plumtrees (M) 10.9k // I lost this fic once and I searched for it FOR THE LONGEST TIME. But that’s cause I wanted to reread this masterpiece. IT’S SO FUNNY AND CUTE AND DOMESTIC AND UGH. Also the small angst made me SO SAD. But the ENDING? THE KISSES AHHHHHHH. (I’m yelling a lot BUT that’s cause I really love this fic <3333)

hang out fall in love by carafin (T) 8.6k // I love the Makki hates Mattsun initially but then falls for the irresistible charm he posses trope. It might be my favorite trope for MatsuHana specifically LOL. Like I really love this fic and it has MAGIC. It’s like a magical version of the VA one LOL. But like no radio shows or reunited best friends in this one :(

THESE ARE VERY ANGST!!!!!!!

boiled frogs by reginagalaxia (E) 91.5k // is it possible to hate a character this much? I never realized how much hate/rage I had in me. Really. Like. Imma boutta fight this MF LIKE SQUARE UP. The way I tried to manifest a fake characters death like,,,, Anyway. If my RAGE doesn’t explain how good of a freakin writer they are, then idk what will. PLEASE READ THE TAGS AND WARNINGS, THERE ARE VERY SENSITIVE TOPICS!!!!

Even Though it All Went Wrong by plumtrees (T) 9.2k // THIS IS THE REASON THIS POST CAME TO BE. I love this fic with all my heart (or what’s left of it). Like LOVE as in, this fic really broke me beyond just breaking me. Like. When Oikawa says what he says to Mattsun after the thing (you’re sorry __ _____ __ ____) and the Iwa right after (we know __’__ ___ ______ to make you ____ __ ____) (if you’re wondering wtf I’m putting here, just ctrl F you’re sorry and you’ll see), you cannot believe how hard that hit. GOD. (I am okay if you’re wondering :’)) This is my #1 favorite angst fic of all time and if you are okay mentally and have read the tags and warnings and are fine with them, then please read it. PLEASE READ THE TAGS AND WARNINGS, THERE ARE VERY SENSITIVE TOPICS!!!!

The Truth Comes Out by Your_Friendly_Neighborhood_Pigeon (T) 10.2k // this made me so sad and empty after I read it. Like I just sat there being like wtf did I just read I’m sad now. Again read the tags, there is a suicide attempt but there’s also some cheating in this one. This one also ends happy. PLEASE READ THE TAGS AND WARNINGS, THERE ARE VERY SENSITIVE TOPICS!!!!

New:

kiyala // this writer has a LOT of fluffy MatsuHana and I really love their works! It’s just all (for the most part) really cute and there’s a lotta blurred lines and boundaries that get cleared up (they define what their relationship is but with ~love~) in their fics :) My fav? Making Sense by kiyala (T) 1.5k // it’s very cute and I am one who loves when things just fall into place :D

tookumade // this writer has some of MY FAVORITE MatsuHana fics in it and I’m kinda really sad I don’t get to ramble on about them here :( (dw I will elsewhere LOL) If I had to choose, I would say Remind Me by tookumade (T) 28.6k and Zenith, Nadir by tookumade (T) 10.7k were my absolute favorites, but I cannot choose between them so don’t make me.

plumtrees // I LOVE THIS WRITER OMG. Again, someone who has written my all time FAVORITE fics (did I mention OF ALL TIME?) and I’ve obsessively read some of them too many times :’) Because I already recommended my other faves above, Captured Light by plumtrees (T) 3.5k will be my acting favorite rn. It’s really cute and depicts some really sweet moments between MatsuHana too!

h_lovely // this writer has SO MANY GOOD FICS! I really love their series and their getting together fics are all SO GOOD UGH. I recommended my favorite teen one above, but the other ones I loved are explicit so just check out this writer in general LOL. (I REALLY love mirror flower, water moon, it’s my favorite but it’s E cause some smexy scene happen, but it’s really SO good omfg. Also the roses series IS AMAZING as well!!!!)

cream puffs and carnations; by crossbelladonna (series) 11.6k // AU SERIES!!! I love the AU’s in this series and I really liked the prompts they chose for this MatsuHana week :D My favorite from this series might’ve been there he is again by crossbelladonna (T) 1.6k cause a) I love the mattsun hc in this (for his appearance) and b) IT’S CUTE :D I definitely related to Makki and his not very subtle crushing, and also I like the IwaOi + Makki as friends trope (and then they meet Mattsun), if you couldn’t tell yet LOL.

on the anatomy of crushes by carafin (T) 2.3k // (kinda cp but not LOL) it’s very short and cute and I love it a lot LOL. I love medical AU’s (even though it’s very back burner LOL), but also, like Mattsun saves the day is the move. Like the dedication he has even going on the bus? Especially for a guy? Amazing. I could never :’)

Parallel Lines by orphan_account (T) 16.3k // IN LOVE WITH THIS FIC LIVES IN MY MIND RENT FREE CONSTANTLY. I hate math. Just putting that out here. And while it’s a math fic, IT? IS? SO? GOOD???? And like I love it when characters are smart, like I love intelligent characters so like this was just ajndf. (also same Mattsun, I am allergic to normal math.) 

live it up, drink it in by punybastard (T) 2.1k // GAH this one! This is a pretty iconic fic in MatsuHana hell (in my personal opinion) and if I didn’t have that two fic limit on my staple fics, this would be there. I really loved the ending of it (v cute and v well done), but also the small side stories that were inserted made it all the more entertaining :D (aka the volleyball) But they are drinking underage, so if you’re not about that BE WARNED.

it's cold out here by bishounen_curious (M) 8.6k // PLEASE I LOVE THIS FIC. YES READ YESYESYES READ. OKAY FIRST check tags and warnings, there’s a lot going on in this fic. Like don’t be stupid like them, drinking underage, and don’t do drugs not a good idea very very bad. Aside from that, I am in love with sad sad sad Makki (along with stupid IwaOi) and him being a sad drunk made me ajhkjdfs. Just read it and feel the akfnakjs with me LMFAO.

poolside by tothemoon (T) 4.1k // I’m starting this out with I LOVE the ending and I REALLY LOVE the way this confession panned out. It’s such a great concept and it made me ajhfldshf inside!!! Also, recursive endings are some of my favorites (if you couldn’t already tell LOL), and I think it really makes something so nostalgic and adds depth to a fic.

The Courage of Stars by FairyLights101 (T) 7.1k // AHHHHHHHHHHHHH I LOVE THIS FIC YES!!!! OKAY TW CANCER THERE’S CANCER IN THIS NO DEATH JUST PAIN and chemo (which basically is pain). Some controversy, but the angst part of me wanted him to die DONT GET ME WRONG, I’m glad he lived, but like imagine. I really love this fic, and his efforts in the bucket list were admirable :’)

we could be the greatest team by anyadisee (T) 5.7k // it’s my crack fic :D Yes, this is just Seijoh messing around, boys being boys, relationships being compared with other relationships. No pining, just me with my established relationships (and Iwa fanclubs cause those are a thing. ALWAYS).

Wet Your Whistle by darkmagicalgirl (E) 5.4k // SMUT ALERT okay but like while it’s a major plot point (lmfao I can’t believe myself), the storyline itself is good. Also, I’m all here for bartender Makki and tattoo Makki and not subtle at all Makki and basically everything Makki. I like banter and stupidity okay?

[obnoxious clucking noises] by parenthetic (renaissance) (T) 3.4k // some more crack fic for you <3333 Literally, just idiots being idiots. That’s the fic. LMFAO but seriously, I would like to participate as well,,,,, I have yet to lose a game of gay chicken cause of my lack of fear akdjaslk.

that's what you get (for waking up in vegas) by skittidyne (T) 4.2k // THIS IS SO FUNNY. I love Elvis cause he’s always officiating marriages in my fics LMFAO. But also IwaOi in this added some real nice comedy, and overall another crack fic but I really liked this one (AGAIN LMFAO).

A Bouquet of Flours by guyfierimpreg (G) 5.2k // first I want to know how they got the flour to scream, I just can’t figure it out so if anyone would like to send me pictures that’d be great. Second, they would do this bs and this is all canon. I said what I said, and I don’t take criticism. Like, matsuhana best parents proven by the magical mishaps fic (LMAO).

texting (with a capital S) by parenthetic (renaissance) (M) 2.1k // okay I just wanted to say that the accuracy in the math stuff being mentioned makes me feel like this writer was in calc ab or something and that’s trauma right there. Anyways, it’s a texting fic kinda sorta getting together kinda sorta not? Idk how to explain it, but it was funny and then smut LMFOAJIAHFSJS (the derail was just like IwaOi in gay chicken, someone call the police LMFAO).

nebulas by tothemoon (T) 10.8k // I like the casualness of it. Like the confession was just so casual (smooth Mattsun) and like the progression was GOOD. Like, it’s a very poetic fic and there’s lots of thinking of deeper meaning, but its still got some comedy sprinkled throughout. I really loved the flow of it!!!!

my heart beats for contract law by orphan_account (T) 4.4k // I too would have a breakdown over school (me pretending like I haven’t already done that ahaha), but I really love so many things about this fic! Everything was just so ajsdfljdsn and I really love the 3 part plan Mattsun comes up with :DDDD (esp pt 3). Also, to propose while having an emotional breakdown at 3am in a McDonalds drive through. A mf dream.

Reflex by hiuythn (T) 2.3k // PLEASE IF THEY DIDN’T MEET AT HS THIS WOULD BE CANON ASF. You cannot tell me you don’t think this would not be cannon asf. They would meet like this. Also poor Teuchi stuck in the middle of all of this. I haven’t watched naruto, but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is random emotional sexual bonding over something. That is important. (THE ENDING AJKFHKJ)

You're in Pink (and I'm in blue) by Hyeyu (T) 4.4k // whooooo Hanahaki whooo anyway, despite how it seems, I like the hanahaki trope. I don’t fully understand it sometimes (most of the time tbh), but it adds some nice angst and desperate confessions, and I do appreciate those :D Honestly, I really liked the way this fic panned out, and I felt really bad for Iwa LOL.

stranger things by tinypersonhotel (G) 10.2k // I really like this one :D:D:D I love Makki + Oikawa friendship and they’re really the best to each other :’) The ending was satisfying, and the PLOT omg. It was SO good. I feel like I say this a lot though LOL, but I’m just really into fics with good plot progression (or else I don’t read them OOPS).

something of a disaster by latenights (T) 1.4k // chaos ahahhaha. Another crack fic? I hope no one is surprised LOL. It’s just a really short and simple, cute getting together fic with a LOT of insults LOL. I love this one in particular, “Tooru’s dinner special”.

snakes, meth labs and something like love by orphan_account (G) 3.6k // THE ROOMMATE AD PLEASE. I honestly would never think Oikawa would get a snake, but that doesn’t matter LOL. This was me indulging myself in the makki IwaOi best friends and mattsun stranger agenda but it’s a great agenda okay? It’s a good fic and there’s a microwaved fish :D

Lemonade by carriecmoney (T) 4.1k // okay once again, responsible drinking and don’t drink underage bad idea smh. But MatsuHana just making out where they want? I could see that. Yeah. Anyway, as much as public make out seshes make me *gag* feel embarrassed, what made me feel more *gag* embarrassed was the fact that the girls? just? stood? there? Like why are you watching this. Is that just me? I feel like they should’ve left smh.

surprise, surprise by airblends (T) 7.6k // some more pining and dancing around the issue whoooo. As much as I hate them not getting to the point (almost as much as I hate misunderstandings), it was a great fic. This is nosebleed c*ck block (idk if I needed to censor that but I did fight me).

A God for Every Season by timkons (T) 18.4k // I love the Hades and Persephone trope! Okay, I just love mythology leave me be, but anyway I really love a lot of this fic. Like how Mattsun thinks it’s a little brighter with Makki? CUTE I LOVE. But also, the fish funeral is ridiculous but also very on brand for Oikawa. And some BokuKuroo (idk is that their ship) in here as well :DDD

The Best/Worst Places to Cry in the City by AngryKitten (T) 4.4k // literally it is the title. Just you know, looking for the best place to cry in the city,,,, I’d like to say, don’t cat call people cause we’re not about that here. Even if it worked out for them, just don’t do it :/ Also don’t follow strangers. I feel like that’s a given but jic ya know?

this isn't exactly how i thought i'd be spending my adult years by jadedpearl (NR) 7.5k // okay petty Makki is yes and so is my Makki + IwaOi agenda LOL. (I’m thriving here can’t you tell? Yes regular skype/phone calls constantly) Anyway, blackouts and sickness really be here getting people together. (I’m asking nicely, nike.) And Makki is smooth with his words. (SHORTER MEN MADE ME LAUGH)

chocolate by tellalie (T) 3.6k // the dedication in this fic was amazing. Like making a whole a cake? Someone go do that for me. (For mankind.) Fake dating is really something else, but fake dating to out gag your best friends? Seems like I need to step up my game (but no seriously, my best friends are PDA monsters I hate it here). Also practice confessions are wack.

FINALLY I MADE IT. You don’t know how many times I almost gave up on finishing LMFAO. Is this my longest list? Idk. But I just know that I would’ve finished faster if I didn’t end up rereading almost every fic on this list LMFAO. Like no seriously I almost had to make a post saying this wouldn’t be coming out cause I got distracted by one of the longer fics (I’m blaming Mirror Flower, Water Moon specifically). But I hope you enjoyed this, and once again go thank that anon for spurring me into finishing this list LMFAO (am I a horse? Yea, probably but if one thing, I’m not sturdy).

[antiloreolympus]

6 Anti LO Asks

1. wasnt there a myth where ares dates demeter? (sometims erinyes instead) and they have a CHILD together? i know RS doesn't really research so it wont come up, but ... how awkward would that family reunion be? "hello, barely-legal version of the teenage girl i tried to mack on, i knocked up your mother"?

2. (Bit of a rant so be warned) I wish that RS had characterized everyone better, I mean I still can’t get over how Apollo was characterized (I got into LO before I fully delved into mythology and once I read on how Apollo really was I didn’t know how to feel about the story). It would’ve been so amazing if she portrayed them differently than they were in the myths in a way that made sense, like Aphrodite given a fully developed personality outside of being a bitch with a pretty face (she was a very loving mother in the myths and very much loved Ares, who adored her as well). And let’s be honest, persephone being a “cinnamon roll that can secretly kill you” trope is kind of getting boring, RS could have had some more fun with her character by portraying her much differently. Another trope that’s getting old is Demeter being an overprotective, controlling mess of a mother towards persephone which sucks once you really think about it (I mean the poor woman lost her daughter in an instant and didn’t know what was going on until she had to go to Helios to find out, she deserves a better portrayal than what RS gave her). Heck my favorite portrayal of Demeter that feels accurate to how she is mother-wise in the myths is from Mythic the Musical (“Mother’s Do What Mother’s Have to Do”). Also don’t get me started on how dirty she did Thetis (I love her design but my god was she done wrong personality and even role wise). I remember when I first started reading this and read through the majority of the comic and I genuinely loved it, not thinking about how weird it was until I read through this blog and it kind of just hit me. Hades is a creep in LO and he could’ve just not been written that way, she didn’t have to write Persephone as a literal 19 year old (even 119 is young for gods but at least that would’ve been a more comfortable number) the baby shower gift thing was gross once I thought about it again. If I had to put my main frustrations with this series I would put these as the main problems: Gods/Goddesses being done dirty in terms of personality and role in the story, Hades being a high key creep, I heard that Chiron is being portrayed as female which defeats one of the purposes of his character (he’s a genuinely kind man which is rare to find in Greek Mythology, he’s awesome), not utilizing other Greek mythological figures to help move the story along or even help persephone (for example, Ganymede who’s story starts off very much like hers or even other figures who were SA by gods), and Persephone not only being a self insert but a major Mary Sue which is a massive yikes when it comes to a serious storyline. Oh and her “erasing” the incest factor of Greek Mythology is hysterical because even with how she changes it up, Hades and Persephone are STILL technically related because Demeter is Hera’s sister, who is married to Zeus (Hades’ brother) still making Hades her uncle by marriage smh. Demeter considers Persephone her daughter so that doesn’t erase the incest completely. At least Percy Jackson made it clear that it was a thing, and they handled it very easily: they’re divine beings that don’t have blood and they’re not mortals, despite that Percy and the other demigods express obvious disgust at the topic. Done and done. At the end of the day I’m still not sure how I feel about LO and maybe I’ll continue reading it for the hell of it or just give it up since from what I’ve heard, the story has gone off the rails

3. i like how just off that timeline, we're supposed to feel like "aw look both hades and persephone had traumatic childhoods and important life changes at 19!" instead of being like yooooo this seven year beat the shit out of his dad and took him out? why would i care about hades' teen angst and then late 20s man pain whi lusts after a 9 year old when a goddamn second grader can kick ass? also yeah depending on this timeline theyre all pedos and zeus is actually a vicim 🤷🏼‍♀️

4. Okay, I could be misremembering things but, didn't Hera have a file on Persephone (which listed her under the TGOEM program) that she made for "possible suitors" purposes? And she included Hermes and Ares and Hades?

Again, I could be misremembering this but doesnt the TGOEM require the goddesses to, not be in relationships? Romantic or otherwise? And if thats the case, then why the f*ck was Hera making a "compatibility chart" of possible husbands for Persephone?

Was it because she noticed that Persephone and Hades had a thing for each other? Even though she was potentially still having an affair with Hades at the time And knowing he was having an off and on again relationship with Minthe?

Also isnt Persephone in college on the TGOEM scholarship? So wouldn't Hera want to like, talk to Athena + Hestia about that? And be like "Hey so I know Kore is in your program, but.... I want her to marry Hades" And I know Hera is technically Queen of the gods but wouldn't she still check with them?

Also, I had a seperate thought. So I know Hades says something like "I thought we agreed not to (see each other) back in the 80's" - now it feels like because Hera is/was having an off-and-on againa affair with her brother in law that her putting Hades and Persephone together and setting them up as a couple is an excuse for her to cover up her affair.

(Like if Zeus ever got wind of Hera's affair with Hades and he was upset she could just try to side sweep it by being like "oh, no thats not what was happening. I was really checking to see if Hades is a good match for Persephone and he is!" So she doesnt get in trouble for having an affair).

5. okay, legitimate question: if artemis having a ton of uber-devoted female followers is enough to make her a lesbian ... why is ares not gay? because like ... not only were soldiers/male athletes famously homosexual, a lot of them basically ritually gave themselves to ares. it's heavily implied that this means that they considered themselves spiritually his eromenos'. the whole practice's bad implics aside ... ares should be SUPER gay? oiled up gym-rats wrestling nude levels of gay.

6. Okay so normally I don't care and or don't want to know, but - in this case I am a bit curious - is Persephone just RS's self insert character / Mary sue? Because if she is then that means that all the other male characters simping over Persephone (Hades, Hermes, Ares, Apollo, etc) gets a lot more concerning.

[ceoofanticatradora]

We need more anti C//A who are Adora stans (like you seem to be) so that people can understand that C///A is bad for Adora. Heck C//A is bad for Catra too, but the shippers don't seem to realize it. If Catra had been able to let Adora go maybe she could have healed instead of her festering and the abuse may have ended instead of escalated.

Hello Dear, welcome on my Blog and a big thank you for your message! Firstly I wanna apologize that this response is reaching you more than three full days, almost four later. Just real life getting into the way of my online presence (at least I got my A-Levels admission!) but I assure you that replying to you was on my To Do List the entire time. And while I could've typed something quick, I thought you deserved a full length response just as much as the person before you received. That goes for anyone really to ask/write me anything in the future.

Adora is a character that has flaws, her own interests, things she struggles with/is insecure about etc. but she also still works on being better (up to Season 5). This makes her relatable, fleshed out and overall three dimensional. Overall for me that makes Adora very likeable. Which is funny because when I first watched the show I thought of her as too goofy and felt like she as a character was overall just flat. Her character design did not speak to me either, the ponytail with the weird hair poof and these pointy shoulders of her jacket just really were not my taste. Isn't it amazing how perceptions can change?

As you can guess from that description I did not always stan Adora and she's probably still not my favorite character but over the almost two years I've been in this fandom I've grown rather fond of her. Other important characters to me are Kyle (a very relatable comfort character of mine, he learned to stand up for himself and others and I support that, f*ck Season 5 for barely acknowledging his existence), Lonnie (apart from treating Kyle badly (which I really do NOT support or excuse) I really love her, man, some women just do me like that, I mean she really stood up to Catra like that), Entrapta (I'm autistic too! It's great to have some representation, seeing the ableism/treatment she experiences in the show is not so much though), Seahawk (I don't even know why, I have some issues with his behavior towards Mermista at times but overall I love this dork), Scorpia (she reminds me of myself so much and I really wanna give her hugs, I'm so glad she chose to no longer let Catra treat her like that even though I will be forever salty she just immediately forgave her), Peekablue (I can explain this even less than Seahawk, especially since it was not even really him in the end but his existence somehow helped me cope with Season 5, without him I probably would've left this fandom ... and also my favorite color is blue) and Double Trouble (now there's enough people already critcizing how they're not exactly great Non-binary representation but this dramatic lizard will forever be in my heart, that reality check they gave Catra, basically slapping her in the face with facts was satisfying as h*ck, also I like lizards overall).

Now there's plenty of characters I like, dislike (or even hate) or am simply indifferent about but after all this is not a tier list but me talking about Adora, Catra and Catradora. Adora started off as this girl that was so sure what she was doing is right but once she was taught differently she was willing to leave everything she knew (except Catra, because she valued her despite everything) behind. And not only that, she broke out of the abuse cycle that Catra tried so hard to keep upright. And that is exactly what makes Adora such a good role model. She teaches children (or people) that:

Your past doesn't define what/who you are or what/who you can become

-> Adora used to be a Horde soldier and did not know where she came from, but nonetheless she found herself a family and became a hero that saved thousands of people

You can always change your mind and start a new life if you feel disappointed in what you are doing/who you are as a person

-> Basically the exact same point, Adora started a new life as she saw what the Horde really was and changed her mind about who to fight for

You deserve love too, be it platonic or romantic (or se*ual???) (If you're aro and/or ace just ignore the part that does not work for you)

-> While Adora for various reasons thought her only use was to please others and meet their needs and expectations (mostly due to Shadow Weaver and Catra) she learned to accept that she too deserves love and validation (if the love aspect would not have been focused on it being romantic love so she could smooch Catra in the finale this would've been a billion times better because she got love from her friends that showed her her real value)

You can walk away from something/someone, that does not make you egoistic/selfish

-> Adora walked away from the Horde, after Catra stubbornly refused to come with her despite many offers (basically Catra broke the promise, not Adora) from her too and that did not make her a "traitor" or "selfish", h*ck, Adora in the end did this for a bigger purpose too, even if part of it was her not wanting to live with such wrong morals

Your opinions, feelings etc. about a person/something can change and that is perfectly fine and valid, being able to change is part of what makes someone human

-> Adora's views on many things changed throughout the show: The Horde and the Rebellion, the First Ones, Catra, being She-Ra, herself, her priorities and so on ... she actually makes use of her brain, which is why Catra saying "Don't you ge it?" or calling her an idiot and dumb never sat right with me, she's a realistic character for shifting with her thoughts, feelings etc. and sometimes just does not fully think things through

You don't have to let other people treat you like sh*t (just because they have some issues they never worked through does not give them any right to let it out on you)

-> This point is obviously centered mostly around Catra and her abusing Adora almost every chance she gets, which is why Adora standing up for herself and not letting Catra blame her for her own decisions and mistakes is so important, "You made your choice, now live with it" is one of the most powerful lines throughout all the five Seasons

Now I'm sure there is still more to Adora's character than what I just listed and unfortunately almost all the points basically got pushed aside, well, Adora as a character got pushed aside in Season 5. All her growth, the things that made me love her, see her as great role model for so many people robbed of their value for the sake of making everything revolve around Catra. That brings me to her and how you are absolutely right that Catradora is harmful to both characters. Of course Adora is affected most by it in the end but Catra too is obviously suffering under the fandoms obsession and just the overall idea of them being romantically involved.

Just like with Adora the stans make almost everything about Catra over her relationship with Adora. She too can barely exist outside of it and if she wasn't the fan favorite she'd most likely would too be mostly in Fanarts that include Adora and not just her (if you google "Catra Fanart" most content is still Catra and Catra only but here and there Catradora still peaks through). But for whatever reason the fandom still views her more as her own person as the other ones? Catrouble and Scorptra Shippers might actually still get less hate than Glimmadora Shippers (I'm not denying they don't get any, they most certaintly do) which is just plain hypocricy and favorism. Kinda like the: A woman needs to be loyal to her husband and her husband only but if the husband wants to be active with other women that is perfectly fine because "that is just how men are" or how i like to call it ... sexism. Now in this case they are both women so it's not sexism but yo do get my point.

But much more importantly, Catra has an unhealthy obsession with Adora. Signs of that are for example:

Constantly talking about Adora, even when said person is not around (to Shadow Weaver, Scorpia etc.)

Obsessing over having control over Adora like in that one Episode "Are you kidding? I finally got control over Adora, I'm not giving that up!"

Building her entire character and her actions around Adora "We need to take Adora down", "Adora left me", "I'd rather see the whole world end than see you win!", also shown in Season 5 where she states she does save Glimmer only for Adora and not for Glimmer or to do the right thing

Getting aggressive or very emotional over Adora like clawing the wall, having nightmares etc. (destructive behavior towards herself and others)

Having no or barely any characteristics outside of her relationship with Adora like, we don't know her interests or likes and dislikes outside of being evil, obsessed with Adora, being abused by Shadow Weaver ...

Trying to force Adora to meet her needs and expectations regardless of Adora's owns

Sacrificing her oppurtunity to be happy in the Crimson Waste for the sake of her Adora obsession and being better than her at all costs

So yes, you were very right with saying that not putting Catra in a relationship with Adora would've benefited both characters. Catra could've learned to exist on her own, develop interests and a life outside of Adora. Learn to accept herself and eventually come to terms with her childhood abuse. She could've been free and not "the abusive cat girl that ended up with the person she unhealthily obsessed over to the point of no return" she kinda is now. Even if we ignore the whole "dating your long term abuser" part from Adora's side and "being rewarded" for horrible behavior, Catra alone is not giving a good example to people watching. As much as I dislike Catra, disdain her even, an ending where she is dependent on Adora, unable to stand on her own two legs after she led armies in war is not what I would wish for her, even with a decent redemption arc (that she did not get).

[ducavalentinos]

Different anon, and not to drag the fidelity talk onn, but i like reading your thoughs! I was thinking here: would CNM be a good thing for Mon? Or the only type of rl/marriage he could do? I know s3 gave him fuckboy vibes but I’m not sure,Ii don’t think it works for most ppl with normal lives, with him? aún menos. It’s a firm negative to me, what do you think?

Ok, I thought long and hard about this while listening to deftones and lana dey rey, and I had to google what CNM means because I was ???? for a minute there *I'm getting old* but ok, I'll add my thoughts below after the read-more link because this might get long, rambly and repetitive:

So, anon, I think I have to say here that I'm  really not a fan of the p*ly concept/system for rls, and it's why it took me a while to answer, because I had to put aside my personal thoughts and experiences and focus on Món and what the show established about him and think what would be best for him accordindg to that alone, and basing myself on that I will say is such a HELL NO for me, like omg, just thinking about it made me feel bad for Tijuana and all the men in it djsdjdjs. It's just way more than simply him not having the emotional maturity for it, although I don't even think that's related to this quite frankly, but I'm gonna focus on that and say he wouldn't have it, baby boy still watches cartoons and eat cereals, not that there's anything wrong or immature about that, because there isn't per se and I find it adorable with him bYe, but yeah it's a no. And then, we can all speculate and agree/disagree with just how possessive Món would be: a normal level, a high level, a low level, but whatever the degree of it, I think we could all agree he would be possessive with the woman he loved in some way, so already an issue there, too, because this is a concept that requires you don't feel feelings of jealousy or possessivess and/or actively fight on those feelings. Do I think Món could do that? no, I don't think he could, I don't think he's the type to be cool, indifferent that the person he has feelings for, the person he has an emotional and physical relationship with, would also be having that with others (and that's not a bad thing, either,sorry not sorry), that would drive him crazy and mi bb is already a bit crazy 🙄, I say this with affection. I can see him agreeing to it to make his partner happy and thinking more about his side of things, he probably wouldn't have a problem with the part of him getting to sleep/date other women, as a lot of men naturally don't have a problem with that lmao, he'd probably even smile at the words of his gf/wife saying he could be with whoever he wanted and it's ok mi amor, he'd think he has the BEST COOLEST gf/wife in the whole world, and I mean perhaps even a 3some with her and some other girl? HEAVEN. But his happiness would be short-lived imo, because the moment she told him she has other plans with other guys, or she cancelled plans with him because of it, or he saw her making herself look good for other guys, or worse, he saw her flirting, dancing with them, kissing them, having a great time with them and laughing at their jokes, in my view, even if he doesn't want to feel hurt by it, he would, and then he would just freak out, he wouldn't know how to deal with these emotions, not in healthy ways, so instead of having a conversation and being honest like: I don't like this, we should stop, it's not working, he'd probably just skip the convo part and go straight to the action part lol, and like regardless if he would continue or not to f*ck other women while all this is going on, and something tells me the moment it started to bother him, he wouldn't even. I can see him being so bothered, so miserable by the whole thing it would just turn him off from other women and he'd just sulk and be moody, or maybe he'd just have sad/angry/drunk/disconnected sex with them and leave the moment it was over and never call them again and continue to be sulky and moody, I can see him acting similarly as another babe of mine, Jax Teller from Sons of Anarchy when it comes to sex with other women, when he says to the woman he loves, who had left their town yeas ago, then came back and was leaving again: "You wanna know how many women I've slept with over the last 10 years? hundreds, maybe more, I don't know. I barely see their faces. [...]because when I'm inside someone, there's only one face I see." 😭 This line gives me Món vibes with his the one, but yes anyways, he'd either go over to the guy she was with and beat him senseless, or he'd send the juniors to do the job for him while he watches happily, or he'd just tell them to kill the guy in the most public way possible so that all of Tijuana, all of México, knowns exactly what happens to whoever dares to date his gf/wife, and any man bold enough to keep persisting, would perish. Or it would be the guy and Ramón trying to kill each other and causing havoc in the city, that's the norm of his world, he's a bandito and banditos have their own rules and norms how to deal with these stuff. And here I'll add that I don't actually think his agression, his anger would also be directed at the woman herself, he might be hot-headed and he might have anger issues, but I don't see in him the type of man who hurts/kills the women he loves tbh, given I think despite his environment, within his family he had mostly positive male and female role models, with his siblings, and that might have given him a balance there. We don't know how young he was when his father died, and we don't know anything about his relationship with his mother, but for me his strongest male role model is Mín, it's possible he and Francisco kinda entered the role of father figure in some way, too, with him and the younger siblings. And we know his closest bond with is with Dina, and that I think gave him a sensitivity and a respect for women, she has a strong personality, she’s a strong woman and he very clearly respects and loves her so much, so as far as Ramón is concerned, I don’t see any danger for the gf/wife, but for the guys around her? oh yes. And I'm not even going to really enter into the personal dramas between the gf/wife and the other women because we’re focusing on Món here, but it’s totally possible the gf/wife wouldn’t really like seeing him with other women either and vice-versa, or into more serious stuff like: what if the gf/wife got pregnant? and she doesn't know who the father is? Would Món be ok with that? it's another hell no for me and I wouldn't blame him for it. And how would this child be raised? wouldn’t already be complicated enough for he or she to grow up in a drug-related environment? wouldn’t it just add an extra layer of complications not really knowing who their father is? or not having them around? And of course this situation would increase Món’s level of stress, moodiness, anger, anxiety, it could make him consume more drugs, too....I’m sorry, but overall I think his life and  his personality are chaotic ENOUGH dsjdjds, he needs as much stability on his life as possible, he needs things, people to keep him centered, to tame his demons a little bit, to encourage him to handle it better, self-restraining his bad instincts more often, not surrendering to them, his lifestyle already makes that too easy, I def. believe he would benefit with a Ruth or a Tata on his side, he needs emotional security and comfort to balance the chaos around and within him, which this concept/system wouldn’t bring to him at all. So, yes, I'm inclined to agree with you. It's true the show gave him f*ckboy vibes djdjsjsj, but again, I don't see in Món the kind of guy to pull off this kind of rls, you have to be a particular kind of guy to pull it off (and to me guys like that are a huge red flag) I don't see even Miguel Ángel pulling it off, and he's infinitely more mature, pragmatic, business-oriented and closed off with his emotions than Món is or ever would be. Ramón is all emotions, so he might f*ck around, but once he got older and/or fell in love with a woman, in my mind, he'd fall hard, and those feelings of jealousy, protectiveness, and deep caring for sure would magnify with him, an attachment would be created there, an emotional bond which sex would only make it stronger tbh, and you can bet he wouldn’t be able to separate all that, (most of us can’t and again I don’t think that’s a bad thing) so even if he and the woman agreed to do open rl thing, and they talked about it, even so subconsciously, understandably, he'd still think and see her as HIS mujer, or MORE HIS mujer than any other guy, and it's likely the other guy/guys would think the same, too, and even the mujer in question regarding other women with him, and any contradiction to this would give rise to trouble, esp. for Món, he'd feel upset, and eventually, very soon, he'd just go off, it doesn't matter what he said, what she said, words are words, feelings are feelings. A lot of things are great in theory, but awful in practice imo, and when it comes to human beings, we're such a mess of feelings and thoughts, we like to pretend we aren't and that we are in total control of our emotions all the time, but that’s not correct, and it sure doesn't apply for Ramón hahaha. As far as serious rls goes, I'll say the closed one is the only way to go with him, I think it's the least bad, destructive path for all parties involved. Sure, problems would still occur, life is full of problems, relationships are hard, and nothing is perfect (well, maybe chocolate and tequila are 💓) and it's possible he would cheat after a while, it's also possible he wouldn't, or it would be one slip up here and there, and then he would just follow Mín's path like we talked about in other asks about this topic, I can see both of these scenarios happening, but even with the cheating scenario, imo that's still a better scenario than the one above with the open rls .And I think ultimately the choice would rest with the woman, if she could make her peace with that, knowing the viejas mean nothing to him and knowing the place she occupies in his life and his heart, I suppose it would be up to Món to make that clear and I think he would honestly. And If we’re talking marriage here, then she would be the wife, the mother of the children they have, the partner he loves and respects, (the one he would die for if necessary), when things get serious she’s his top priority, she’s the one he worries about, the one he wants to provide and protect, all of that stuff. Would that be enough? for some women it is, for others it’s not, so it’s a personal choice in the end, but still as far as I understood his character and the world he lives in, those are the options, in my mind it’s either something similar to Pablo and Tata or Mín and Ruth, anything other than that it’s just asking for double problems and bad things to occur, it’s a firm negative for me, too anon. PS: Can I just add I would pay to see a TV series, 18+ mex telenovela that it would be Món in this kind of rl/marriage?? like oh my god, the drama, the family drama, the heated arguments, the passive-agressive behavior, the sex, the violence !!!!  CHAPO'S JOKES ABOUT IT !!!!! I'm already laughing just imagining 😂😂😂, now that’s a show ok, and it’s my kind of show and it would be sooo entertaining to watch, even if I also felt sad for our Móncito lol.

[writearctic]

An Effort to Love (a) (m) - Seo Changbin

wc: 1.2k

please remember that you deserve the effort you give. if love turns lonely, let it go.

When Changbin entered your apartment, he found you peacefully asleep under the covers. He smiled and sighed; you were pure innocence to him. He always found himself returning to you when he needed to refresh.

A return to reality. No extremities. Just you and him. Good, clean sex as a restart from his line of quickies. His typical one night stands were good- fantastic when compared to your simplicity- and it made him feel alive. But the women he'd meet always wanted more.

Not you. You weren't expecting something from him. It was nothing more than sex. No strings attached. Because it was just simply you. You couldn't ever love him.

He sat at your bedroom desk and stared at your night light. Changbin was never one for relationships, but with you, he always found himself coming back even if just for the night.

His fingers began tapping the desktop anxiously. He had been away for a while. Changbin had been avoiding you: keeping himself busy sleeping around with other girls. Now, here he was. Back to his best friend. Or rather, friend with benefits.

You stirred in your sleep; Changbin turned to you but kept his fingers clicking on the desk. You heard the faint beatings and sat up rubbing your eyes.

"Bin," you croaked. There was a quick, rigid silence between you. "Hi." You didn't intend for Changbin to hear the difference in your tone. Your voice was much softer and almost breakable the second time.

"You're well?" He asked as an offer to fill the silent space. Changbin never fully looked at you anymore; it was always quick glances here and there. You couldn't complain though. You wouldn't complain in fear of losing him.

"Mhm yeah. How are you?" You placed your hands in your lap effortlessly and twiddled your thumbs in circles.

"I'm fine. Been to lots of new places lately," he chuckled.

"Oh? Like-"

"There's this new girl, Rosie, and oh my gosh. She gave me the best blow I've ever had." Changbin leaned back in your desk chair and closed his eyes obviously trying to relive the moment.

You were disgusted. Changbin had never talked about a girl with you before- you figured he respected your boundaries about his hobbies- but finally hearing him mention someone in such perverted regards enraged you.

It angered you because he may have found someone to stay. Someone who wasn't you.

You clenched your hands around the blanket- white knuckles.

"Oh and she has a room mate who-"

His voice faded. You couldn't make out the words from his mouth. You stared at him with glossy eyes hoping he'd look at you like he used to. But no. The short passes of his eyes continued to drift away from you. I don't even know you anymore, you realized.

"Changbin!" You shouted and threw your hands on your comforter with a plop.

"Hu-hm?" You startled him; Changbin was nervous. He finally faced you completely. It was still dark aside from your night light, but you could see him fairly well. And he saw you much the same.

The luminescent light framed his face perfectly; it made you see features about him you haven't noticed before. His lashes were shining from the natural oils that covered them. His skin glowed softly in an ethereal way. It was gentle like moon.

"Do you ever think about maybe staying around with me like you used to?" Your voice was normal now, but the tone was sharp. Even speaking to him like that made your eyes sting with tears.

"What?" Changbin scoffed at your question. "What do you mean 'like you used to?'" He crossed his arms defensively as if to shut you out.

"Like at the beginning of uni." You sounded pathetic but paid no mind to it. You were on a roll and determined to save the possibilities of what you two could be. "You know... when we'd have movie night every Thursday. And you'd walk me home after classes, ask about my day, or if I've eaten. Or even text me!"

He smirked. "Baby."

"Don't say that unless you understand what it means to me," you spat at him. You were certainly not like one of his late-night hook ups who fell for whatever tricks he gave.

He scoffed again. "I don't stick around. You, of all people, should know this best."

"I know, I do. But you used to spend time with me and make an effort to do so." You whined, and it pinched a nerve in the boy.

"Well, yeah. Cause it was your first year here," Changbin shrugged. "You needed a shoulder to lean on. Everyone does their first year. Truth is, y/n. I really wanted to stay friends with you. But then you grew up. Gosh, you're absolutely stunning now. And when you actually agreed to have sex with me? Oh my. It was like winning the lottery! You are simple in bed, and I love it when I need it. But that's kinda who we are now. I really didn't see a reason for us to be anything other than friends with benefits."

"What if I don't want that!?" You cried. The tears finally began pooling out of your eyes. Here he was, the man you've been crushing on for... well a while, saying you were nothing more than a use for "simple sex." You weren't even sure if that was an insult or not.

"What do you mean? You said 'yes' to sex with me." He asked. His eyebrows curled at your tearful response.

"Because I thought we'd be something more!"

It was quiet again, except for your small sobs which Changbin didn't seem to notice. He started the unrhythmic tapping of his fingers once more and became lost in thought. There's always strings attached, he noted to himself.

Your knuckles were white again as you clenched your fists against a pillow. You realized whenever you were with Changbin nowadays, your knuckles always turned white.

"I deserve to be chosen, not merely considered when you need to f*ck." Your eyes shot venom at him. His light tappings on the wood stopped abruptly. Your tone stung his heart just as much as it did yours. You were different now. You had grown up, and Changbin completely missed that detail.

"You're right." Changbin stood and collected his coat. "You're right," he echoed quietly.

"Wait, Bin." You stumbled out of bed and rushed to follow Changbin. "Don't leave, no. Please." You weren't crying anymore; you were heaving.

"Y/n, I'm sorry. I didn't realize I've been using you. It's not right, and you know it." He shuffled to put his shoes on while you bit your inner cheek. "Thank you for showing me how much of a jerk I've been. I'm sorry; I need to go."

Changbin's fingers gripped the doorknob; he walked out of your life like you were nothing. You slumped to the floor in pain. You sent away the only friend you had at uni, even if you really weren't friends anymore.

"I shouldn't have said anything," you cried to the walls that trapped you. "I don't want to lose you." It was a whisper now. You were dehydrated from the spills of tears. Your nose was runny, and your lips were chapped. You were a mess because of the boy you should've loved just a little harder.

[mariaaxescallop]

how black lightning is treating its wlw romance

(just for context's sake, i'm currently watching 3x04 of black lightning)

(SPOILERS FROM SEASON 2)

i love black lightning. it is a series about a black family of superheroes and that is the main reason why i started to watch it. the black representation is amazing, just like the way they address the struggles of black people in the usa. i also love seeing black girls (with dark skin!) on screen with different hairstyles. one of the things i love the most about black lightning is the main family. i'm so here for the family issues, not only metahuman related, but also the day to day stuff. the series addresses parental control, coming of age, leadership, the subversion of gender roles (lynn stewart? yes ma'am), dialogue, responsibility, respect, boundaries and, on top of that, the love the pierces have for each other.

besides, i can see myself on anissa and jennifer, not only because of their relationship with their parents but also in the way they interact with each other. every time they get to talk about anything, like school, race, gender, periods (!!!!), sex, clothes, their parents and, sure, even superpowers, i can't help but smile because it's so goddamn beautiful. their sisterhood is definitely one of the things that attached me to black lightning from the start. but i'm getting distracted here.

that said, i have to share one thing i do not like about the series. the way it handles its lgbt characters aka anissa and grace (mostly grace) (and i'm not even mentioning the other 3). just to point out, i didn't start watching the show because of them, if i did i probably would have already abandoned it by now. yeah, i'm mad about grace's almost nonexistent screen time. sis shows up one episode for one scene and a half and then vanishes for another three episodes. the majority of the interactions between her and anissa happen off-screen. how do i know that? i had to ASSUME that in order to make sense of their relationship. the first few times we get to see grace it seems like she and anissa are good friends. next season, when she comes back after a very long time, it looks like anissa ghosted her and is cheating on her???? and i didn't even know they were together or something??? every time i see them on screen it feels like they are on a completely different page comparing with how they were last time i saw them. at first, i thought i was missing something... until i realized it was the show that was LACKING content.

just to make it clear, i never expected the show to be about them. it is supposed to be focused on, well, black lightning. i was ok with that. i even ignored this feeling that something was wrong... and then i noticed how much screen time khalil has. i can't help but compare him with grace because both of them are romantically involved with our pierce girls and both of them have powers. even though they have those characteristics in common, it is pretty obvious that grace doesn't get as much attention as khalil does. and it pisses me off. there's also the fact that i'm not very fond of teen romance, but that's just a personal taste and i'm not going to elaborate on that while it seems like the writers keep forgetting about grace's existence, they do not forget about khalil. even after his death.

i like khalil. he is a well written, charismatic character. i find his interactions with jennifer very tender and it is very cute to see how much they care about each other. we get to know khalil's dreams, his pain, his confusion, his anger, his guilt and, finally, his redemption. his arc was so carefully done. i don't like the resurrection thing, though, but that's another story...

and then we have grace, whose life we barely know until she disappears without telling anissa a thing. while she is missing, the audience receives a lot of important information like: she was a foster kid, she was kidnapped by a prostitution ring at the age of 16 (???), grace choi is an alias and she is, in fact, a metahuman. a shapeshifter, to be more specific. and all that during her absence! i mean, she wasn’t given the opportunity to tell it by herself!!!! meanwhile, khalil manages to come back from dead before grace's return!!! and he has a lot of very long, graphic scenes!!! i mean, c'mon. i couldn't care less about the 23 martial arts he knows, and i definitely don't give a f*ck about his punch-on-the-heart thing.

not only grace is belittled as a character, her relationship with anissa has been almost insignificant to the story. jennifer and khalil had it all: cute scenes on the roof, khalil asking jennifer to be his girlfriend, sex talk, supportive moments, the drama, reconciliation, they run away together and then jen has a lot of scenes showing her coping with his loss. all we have from thunder grace is a few cute dialogues and other few kinda-arguments (which sound out of place if you watch them isolated because you have no clue regarding what happened off-screen), then we’re shown grace is hiding something, she leaves, anissa talks to gambi and jennifer about her and that’s it. WHERE IS MY DRAMA???? i don’t wanna see khalil’s muscles for the 8464th time, i just want anissa and grace to talk properly!

i love the representation in black lightning. i love watching a black family full of strong women being cute with each other and at the same time changing their community for the better. but then we have this asian bisexual woman who doesn't even have room to grow as a character, being constantly put aside. and this is not me saying that she should appear more just because she is a queer woman of color. my point is that she is a very interesting character, with a troubled past and a possibly nice personality. AND SHE IS A METAHUMAN, AN EFFING LEOPARD, what could be more related to the plot than that??? the way i see it, the story that is being told in the show would make more sense if she had more space, if she was actually part of it and not only an afterthought. she could add so much more to the plot. but it takes the writers being interested enough to put some effort on it, which they clearly don't have. by the time grace didn't even show up on season 2's finale, i felt disrespected by this lack of interest, as a bisexual woc myself and as a huge shipper of thundergrace. jennifer and khalil's teen heterosexual romance was at the center of the last episodes, meanwhile grace was mentioned a couple of times and that was it. why can't she get the same attention the other side characters do? some of them are so useless to the plot and yet there they are. am i talking about lala? idk.

grace could be so much more, she deserved more dialogues, an entire arc, actually being part of the plot. she deserved more complexity. i know grace has the potential. it is a shame that the show slept on her like that. i don’t want lgbt representation for representation’s sake, i want it for real.

[immaculate-imperfection]

Mr. Kant

Plot summary: A teacher in a Berlin prison helps one his four students graduate. The inmates find a way to express their gratitude …

[Sorry, English is not my native language. If something sounds funny or doesn’t make sense let me know.]

Sometimes work sucks. Hard. Being searched everyday for contraband going in and out of this prison in Berlin was an irritating hassle. The bureaucracy and paperwork alone could have been reason enough for me to quit. Working with my students themselves was fine actually. Sure, at times there were witty comments during class but that was not much different from any high school I had taught. There was one incident when I was leaning over a student’s shoulder explaining the correct way of placing commas when Torres grabbed a handful of my right butt cheek. “If you were in prison I’d take real’ good care of you, Mr. Kant.” They knew I was gay and liked to tease my about it. There was no real malice behind it though. Out of surprise and fear I froze for a moment although I have to admit: When I was in the shower later that day I found myself fingering my hole imagining him f*cking me on his bunk bed. With his cell mate watching us.

My subjects were German language and literature but really I helped the inmates wherever I could to attain their GED. Just last week Fuchs tried to pass the official exams but realistically I did not have high hopes for him. A real shame considering how smart he was.

When I entered the class room my students were already waiting for me. The usual four. The students wore their prison uniforms. Unlike the bright orange overalls you might know from American prisons here in Germany they were a bit more, well, subtle: blue pants and simple gray sweaters. I walked to my desk and sat down, opening my satchel. “Alright, let’s see. Today we’re gonna continue with Goethe’s Faust…” “Mr. Kant”, Fuchs interrupted, “I have something to say.” He was 26 years old with shoulder long bleached blond hair and a fairly slim build. With a grin he picked up a piece of paper from his desk and held it toward me. From this distance I couldn’t make out what it was so I took a few steps closer to him. And there it was: his GED certificate. My jaw dropped to the floor. “I did it, Mr. Kant!” I was so overjoyed I started to laugh and immediately embraced him. Instinctively I kissed his cheek. Oops, a step too far. But it didn’t matter in all the excitement. “This is amazing! Congratulations!” “Thank you, Mr. Kant. I couldn’t have done it without you”, Fuchs replied and hugged me back. When we let go he was still smiling. “Seems, I should have tried to smuggle in a bottle of champagne”, I joked.

A moment passed. “Well, it’s gonna be hard to go back to teaching now but I guess that’s what we’re here for.” I turned around to walk back to my desk when Torres remarked: “Actually, we a have a little surprise for you, Mr. Kant. To thank you for what you’ve done for us.” Torres was a native Spaniard, 34 years old. He had a short buzz cut of black hair, almost shaven, and a five o’clock shadow. It was obvious he worked out. He continued: “Hansen?” Hansen was a rather quiet man but by no means shy. His body reminded me of a professional soccer player. He wore his dark brown hair in an undercut that curled up a bit on top. After he had gotten up he walked over to the door and locked it. I had no idea what this was about. I gulped. Where on earth did they get the keys? If the guards found out about this, they’d be screwed. Me too, probably. Seeing the fear in my eyes, Torres spoke again, with a calm voice: “Don’t worry, Mr. Kant. Everything is gonna be fine.” Karaman picked up two chairs and put them in front of my desk, one behind the other. A German with Turkish heritage, Karaman was 36 years old with a short beard and a bit burlier than the others. A bear if you will. Black hair covered his forearms and a bit of his chest hair peaked through the collar of his sweater. He pointed to the chair in the front. Reluctantly I sat down and he sat down behind me. He took both of my hands and held them crossed behind the back of the chair. Fear gave way to confusion. While I was wondering what they were planning on doing Torres said to me: “Sorry, Mr. Kant. Unfortunately we don’t have any music for this.” He stepped right in front of me and slowly began swaying his hips back and forth. Was he starting to give me a lap dance? It felt awkward and everyone chuckled at first. He turned around shaking his ass. His pants were not tight-fitting but I could get a hint of his butt. Maybe his thick thighs bulging in his pants gave it away.

He turned around once more and took off his sweater, revealing his white undershirt. He flexed his muscular arms with a seriousness in his face. I couldn’t help but notice that his body was nicely shaped. His arms looked strong and were accentuated by single veins. After he had taken off his shirt, too, I admired a tribal tattoo covering his left shoulder and chest. He lifted his left arm and shoved his armpit on my face. It tickled my nose. “Lick it”, Hansen suggested with a devious smile. I frowned and turned my face to the side. A silly idea. Clearly they were teasing me again. Torres chimed in: “Come on, don’t be shy, Mr. Kant.” Gently he guided my face back by my chin. My nose was in his hair. It was hard to deny but it smelled nice. It was hard to describe, it was somehow … dark? Hesitantly I opened my lips and licked his armpit. A little salty, a little sweet, too. Karaman chuckled a little, leaving me feeling a bit embarrassed.

Torres opened the buttons of his pants. God, where was this going? He pulled his pants down a bit exposing his white briefs. Continuing his dance, he started thrusting his crotch toward my face. I laughed a little. This was so stupid. “I thought you liked c*ck”, Torres insisted. I hesitated to reply: “Well, erm, I do but …” Before I could finish my sentence he pushed his d*ck right onto my face. I recoiled: “What are you doing?” Torres pulled down his briefs just a bit. I could see base of his d*ck’s shaft. I’m not going to lie, I was transfixed by this. Softly he pushed his crotch onto me a second time. I didn’t resist again. For a moment I closed my eyes. God, I love the smell of c*ck. I loved the smell of his c*ck. I placed my lips on what was exposed, not quite kissing it. Karaman let go of my hands. I rested them on his knees instead. He pulled even closer.

Torres grabbed my chin again and guided it upwards. “Open your mouth.” I looked up to his face and did what I was told. His smile turned into an expression that almost looked like he was angry. His right hand around my throat he opened his lips a little bit. A strand of saliva dangled from the tip of his tongue and landed in my mouth. I swallowed his spit, somehow feeling grateful. He got closer and spit again into my mouth, this time more forcefully. Aggressively pulling the hair on the back of my head he licked me, starting at my right collar bone continuing over my cheek just next to my ear. And then—he kissed me. On the lips. Everything up this point was very frisky but I instinctively knew that this was crossing a line. Nervously I looked around. The other inmates didn’t seem to care. Fuchs watched curiously, his head tilted a bit to the side. Hansen even had his hand down his pants. While I relaxed a little I noticed that I had been clutching Karaman’s upper thighs. I turned my face sideways to look at him but suppressed the urge to apologize.

When I turned back around Torres was still standing before me. The outline of his c*ck was now clearly visible. It was semi-hard and pointing to the right side in his briefs. Biting my lower lip, I couldn’t help but imagine what it looked like. Torres pulled down his underwear, his c*ck springing out of it. He moved closer until it was touching my face. Moving a little side to side the smooth foreskin of his c*ck brushed against my closed lips. I opened my mouth to suck him but Torres stopped me: “Lick my balls.” So I redirected my head, first kissing the part where his balls bordered his body. Then I licked the balls themselves, slowly. While his trimmed p*bes and closely shaven ball hair brushed pleasantly against my tongue his c*ck grew to a formidable size. It was bending slightly upwards. I looked up as if to ask for permission to suck his d*ck which Torres seemed to understand and confirmed it with a nod. His c*ck tasted so good. I may not be good at deep-throating but I love to suck d*ck. Karaman behind me shuffled a little. He had opened up his pants and guided my right hand to his crotch. I fondled it a little bit but impatient as I was I slid my hand down his briefs stroking his soft d*ck.

Torres pulled back and took a step aside. Only then I noticed that Fuchs was standing beside him, jerking his c*ck. He moved towards me and moaned as I closed my lips around his d*ck. He held my head with both of his hands when I took my hands away from Karaman to hold his shaft with my right hand and play with his balls with my left. I could see that his p*bes were slightly wet from sweat, so I licked them, too. He turned around and held his muscular butt cheeks to my face. “Lick it, Mr. Kant”, he demanded, so I brushed my tongue on and around his hole all the while stroking his d*ck. At the same time Karaman stood up and placed his balls on my right shoulder flicking and rubbing his soft d*ck against my neck. I turned my head to see what Karaman was doing. His balls were unusually large and hairy. I started to kiss his cut d*ck when Hansen suddenly exclaimed: “Wait, hold up!” He was standing a few paces to the side with his hard c*ck in his hand. Quickly he stepped before me and started skull-f*cking me. Ten seconds later he began grunting loudly. Warm c*m filled me that I could feel was shot with a high pressure, some of it oozing out of the side my mouth. He came a lot. He mustn’t have come in a long while. The characteristic taste of c*m gave me a kind of natural high. I hesitated to swallow to savor every moment. I stroked his d*ck forcefully to milk him of every drop. Hansen stooped down and kissed me softly. “Thank you, Mr. Kant.”

“Get up!”, Torres commanded. I began to like being told what to do. He guided me to my desk where I sat down. “Take off his clothes”, he said bare-chested to the others curtly, standing between my legs. Hansen got dressed and gave me a smile before leaving the classroom while Fuchs and Karaman untied my shoes and removed my socks. After giving me a kiss Torres lifted my sweater and shirt and took them off. I opened up my pants which Fuchs and Karaman then pulled down. Torres gently pushed me back. While I was lying there in my boxer shorts he raised my legs and took off my underwear. “You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting to see your c*nt”, he said softly. I felt exposed, vulnerable. He just looked at my whole for a moment before starting to rim me. I closed my eyes to focus on the sensation. When I opened them again Karaman and Fuchs were standing to the left and right of my face with nothing but their black boots on. Black hair covered Karaman’s chest and stomach. His bushy p*bes framed his c*ck nicely. Fuchs also had chest hair which surprised me a little although his fur was not very dense. I grabbed their c*cks and jerked them. Not after long I started sucking Karaman’s still semi-hard d*ck. His hair tickled a little. I could feel his c*ck growing inside me. The rimming stopped while Torres was taking off his pants. When he was done he placed his sweater under my ass. A thoughtful gesture. His c*ck was prodding against my hole. He leaned over me, our chests touching. “Open up your c*nt for me.” He pushed gently. He whispered into my ear: “Relax.” There was something about his voice that made it easy. He pushed a bit more and slowly he entered me. He sighed. When he was completely inside he told me: “Your c*nt feels so good.” Then he really began f*cking me. Being filled with his large c*ck was a heavenly pleasure-filled pain. Thrusting his c*ck into my c*nt he held up my legs. I moved on to sucking Fuchs’s d*ck.

Torres pulled out and told me to turn around. Karaman got onto the table, spread my cheeks and spit onto my hole. I arched my c*nt towards him, eager to receive him. He lay down on top of me pushing his hard c*ck into me. He didn’t f*ck me evenly. Rather his thrusts forward were fast and forceful and accompanied by a low grunt. His c*ck grew wider towards the base which was a very satisfying feeling. His sweaty stomach rubbed against my back. After a while he stopped and ordered: “Move aside.” I rolled over while he turned around to lie on his back. I climbed on top of him. With one hand I grabbed his d*ck while I licked his furry sweaty chest. He grabbed my head and pulled it to his left armpit which I gratifyingly licked as well. At the same time Torres was fingering me. After I was done I sat down on Karaman’s c*ck. He began f*cking me again, grunting. He started moving faster when he suddenly stopped deep inside me. “F*ck, I’m coming!”, he said with a sour face. I could feel the warm liquid dripping from my hole. While I was leaning forward with him still inside me, he gave me a passionate kiss. I loved the idea of being filled with his c*m. On my knees I moved back a little to suck his c*ck clean. With my ass high up in the air Fuchs rimmed my c*mmy hole. He told me: “Come down here.” I got off the table and stood in front of him. Fuchs took my arms and held them tight behind me, kissing me while our d*cks rubbed against each other. In the corner of my eye I saw Karaman, now dressed. He slapped my ass before leaving the room. Abruptly Fuchs turned me around lifting my right knee to rest on the table. “Do you want more c*m in your c*nt?”, he asked. I nodded. “Say it!” “I want your c*m inside my c*nt.” Before I could finish my sentence he pulled the back of my hair and started f*cking me. Fast. “Your c*nt is so tight. It’s begging to be f*cked.” He slapped my ass. Then his movements became slower but deeper. “Do you want that load?” “Yes. Please, shoot me your load inside me!” He pulled out and sat on of the chairs. “You have to earn it.” I sat down on his c*ck, repeatedly getting up and down again. Then I heard a soft splurch. Fuchs grabbed my thighs strongly and kept me down. He was breathing heavily, pressing his face against my back. “Clean it up”, he said in a stern voice. I got up, his c*ck sliding out of my hole and knelt in front of him. Single droplets of c*m were still on the shaft of his c*ck that I diligently licked clean.

Torres stood behind me. He placed his boot on my butt cheek, pulling it a little aside to see more of my hole. “Turn towards me”, he commanded. Kneeling before him I started sucking his d*ck again. Fuchs got dressed. Before leaving he grabbed me by the chin and spit into my open mouth. “See you tomorrow, Mr. Kant.” It wasn’t long until Torres told me sit down on my desk again. I lifted my legs to expose my c*nt, anticipating him to f*ck me. We were alone now. “Do you want it?” I nodded. He began f*cking me. He leaned over, his chest touching mine. He started out by biting my neck tenderly but proceeded to kiss me. It was strangely intimate. We locked eyes when he said: “I love your c*nt.” I suddenly felt so relaxed with him. Then he began moaning. “I’m coming!” He let out an “Aaah” as though he were in pain. A few thrusts more and he fully leaned onto me. He looked into my eyes and brushed a strand of hair out of my face saying: “Thank you for what you done for us, Daniel.” I was surprised. Never have I heard an inmate using my first name. Still inside me he kissed me once more.

We put on our clothes, silently but not awkward. I was still processing what just had happened. On my way to the door Torres grabbed my from behind putting his arms around my waist. With a knowing smile he said: “We should make this a graduation tradition, Mr. Kant. I think I could get used to that.” I chuckled softly. Sometimes working in prison wasn’t so bad after all.

[devil-kindred]

Get to Know Me - raisinghellinotherworlds

Saw @pd3 do this and though I’d give it a go!

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1. Name : Siren (it’s a pseudonym!)

2. Nationality: American

3. Age: 27

4. Birthday: January 29th

5. Zodiac sign (or your primal zodiac sign): Aquarius

6. Gender: Female

7. Sexuality: Heterosexual

More below the cut

[[MORE]]

8. Your looks (add a picture or describe yourself)

For the record this is the only recent picture of myself I like and this is about as much of my face as you’ll ever see bc I know my angles.

9. What do you/did you study?: I went to school for a Bachelors in Arts with and emphasis on Sciences but never finished it bc 1) college is expensive and 2) I don’t know what I want to do career-wise so there’s not a point in going back anymore.

10. What’s your current job like?/What job would you like to have?: I’m a service desk associate at a department store. Something where I could deal with less people bc boy does this job push my patience sometimes.

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11. What is your birth order?: Firstborn/Oldest.

12. How many siblings do you have?: Technically four, but only two living.

13. Do you have good relations with your family?: My immediate family. My siblings are closer to each other (but they’re only two years apart) but we get along. I also have a good relationship with my parents though I’m not as close to my mom as I could be it’s hard to forget the not nice things your parent say to you as a kid.

14. How many friends do you have?: Lots though only a few I see/talk to on a regular basis.

15. Your relationship status: Single.

16. What do you look for in a SO?: Intelligent, kind, has a sense of humor.

17. Do you have a crush?: I guess.

18. When was your first kiss?: WHY *sighs* I was... 25.

19. Do you prefer serious and meaningful relationships or casual dating/one night stands?: I’ve... never been in an actual relationship? I’d like to say serious.

20. What are your deal breakers? Being rude, cheating, and treating me like a child/you know what’s best for me/someone in need of saving (new flash, i am not your princess peach/some damsel in distress. If you need to rescue someone I am not your girl).

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21. How was your day?: It’s still early into the day and I go to work in about an hour and a half and I get to close so we’ll see!

22. Favourite food & drink: French Fries. Or anything with potatoes. I’m a fiend. And Dr. Pepper or Coffee.

23. What position do you sleep in?: On my side/stomach on the part of the bed that’s against the wall.

24. What was your last dream about?: It was... highly NSFT and no, I will not go into detail.

25. Your fears: I’m not a fan of spiders or bugs of any kind really, I hate clowns, and I don’t like thunderstorms. Or tornados.

26. Your dreams: Move, either out of state or out of the country.

27. Your goals: See above.

28. Any pets?: A bird, Momo.

29. What are your hobbies?: Writing, playing video games, and reading (fanfic or books)

30. Any cool places in your area?: I’m sure there are but I live in a town surrounded by corn and other farmland so... it’s anyone’s best guess.

31. What was your last awkward situation?: The other day when a customer stared at me for a solid three minutes when I explained that due to the pandemic we’re no longer offering one of our services in an effort to reduce contact.

32. What is your last regret?: That I didn’t realize the true nature of some people who I no longer speak to sooner.

33. Language/s you can speak: English, Spanish (I’m so rusty though), a little bit of French, and a teeny tiny bit of Japanese.

34. Do you believe in astrological stuff? (Zodiac, tarot, etc.): I believe in my many things so yes.

35. Have any quirks?: Uh... I mess with my hair when I’m nervous? & the more nervous I get my (already high) voice gets higher and will go up several octaves the more nervous I get?

36. Your pet peeves: People in my apartment building slamming the front door all the damn time.

37. Ideal vacation: Somewhere with nice scenery and where it’s calm.

38. Any scars?: Quite a few small ones on my head from a car accident when I was just a baby (I went through a window- got a few scrapes but other than that was unharmed) and one on my hand (it’s on both sides of my hand too) from when I was toddler and got bit by a dog.

39. What does your last text message say?: “I’ll let you know when I get some gameplay posted!” I have a sideblog for casual TS4 gameplay. Was telling a friend that I was going to post new stuff soon.

40. Last 5 things from your search history: No thanks! It’s all just checking if a word is really a word and spelling anyways.

41. What’s your [Device] background?: Lockscreen is a wallpaper from FFXV ft. The Chocobros; Hope Screen is Sam & Evie.

42. What do you daydream about?: Writing mostly.

43. Describe your dream home: Decent amount of space, a library room to hold all my books... good lighting, comfy.... preferably NOT in the middle of nowhere.

44. What’s your religion/Your thought about religion: I am not a fan. Particularly of Christianity but everyone has their own beliefs and in that regard, to each their own. Just don’t try to convert me bc the answer is f*ck no.

45. Your personality type: INFP.

46. The most dangerous thing you’ve done?: Climbed onto the roof of the shed when I was little because I got something stuck up there.

47. Are you happy with your current life?: For the most part!

48. Some things you’ve tried in your life: Gymnastics, Ballet, etc.

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49. What does your wardrobe consist of?: Lots of t-shirts, jeans, shorts, flats, boots, etc.

50. Favourite colour to wear?: Black or Blue.

51. How would you describe your style?: Extremely casual.

52. Are you happy with your current looks?: Kinda? I really need to cut my hair because it’s gotten so long it’s annoying. But I can put up with it until it’s safe again bc pandemic. My hair is not that important I assure you.

53. If you could change/add something to your appearance - impossible or not - what would it be?: Oh God, could I be taller? Like at least 5’3”? Which is still teeny but better than my 4’9” ass.

Do you have any piercings or tattoos?: I have 3 piercings and three tattoos (two finished, one in progress)

55. Do you get complimented often?: Maybe? I’m oblivious to the point that you could have a flashing neon sign with the compliment written on it and it would probably still go over my head.

56. Favourite aesthetic?: Biker Chic!

57. A popular trend that you dislike: Neon.

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58. Songs you’re currently obsessed with?: Blessed Be - Spiritbox.

59. Song you normally wouldn’t admit you like: If I like a song, I like it. But if I have to pick one, I know everyone hates Despacitio. I know, ok but I really like the original version bc I like the sound. Latin music always has a fun groove to it.

60. Favourite genre?: Rock & Metal.

61. Favourite artist/band/genre?: Type O Negative, Pallbearer, Ice Nine Kills. Give me all the goth rock/metal and just fun metal in general.

62. Hated popular songs/artists?: Oh boy... don’t hate me but I um... don’t care too much for T Swift? And I’m not a fan of country.

63. Put your music on shuffle and list first 5: Devil’s // Door - VCTMS, Karasu - The GazettE, Path - Apocalyptica, I Walk the Line - Halsey, Drumming Song - Florence + the Machine

64. Can you sing or play any instruments?: I can kinda play bass but I’m still learning so it’s just like... the very bare basics.

65. Do you like karaoke?: I’m very self-conscious so no.

66. Own any albums?: Yes, though majority are digital.

67. Do you listen to radio? What stations?: Yes. I have it on for background noise in my room in which case I don’t pay attention to it, but I have XM radio in my car where I listen to Octane/Liquid Metal/Turbo.

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68. Favourite movie/series?: The Dark Knight trilogy or Hellraiser or Nightbreed.

69. Favourite genre of movies/books/etc: Horror, Sci-fi, and fantasy.

70. Your fictional crush/es: Too many. Look at my OCs and their SO’s and you’ll find a bunch of them.

71. Which fictional character is you?: My friends would say Mira Jane from Fairy Tail. My bestie says Mercedes from Fire Emblem Three Houses (minus the devout part bc... I do not have nice feelings re-religion. You do you though!).

72. Are you a shipper? List your otps, if so: Yes, and once again you’ll be reading for eternity. So I’ll sum it up as too many to list.

73. Favourite greek god?: Apollo.

74. A legend from where you live that you like: It’s said that before big disasters happen in the town I live in + the surrounding areas, that you’ll see a panther. Supposedly one has been seen before at least 4 different bad things that have happened over the years. I’m in the midwest though so take that as you will.

75. Do you like art?: I do but I don’t really have a favorite. ... I am kinda partial to Van Gogh though.

76. Can you share your other social media?: I have a Pinterest but since my other social media has my name (which I also share with an OC whoops. That’s what I get for being indecisive and going the first name the name generator gave me) I’d rather not. If you ask and we’re friends I’ll probably give it to you but...

77. Favourite youtubers?: I don’t really watch too many anymore but I’ve been watching a lot of jacksepticeye’s gameplay. Aside that I tend to just watch channels like PlayStation Access or Outsidexbox.

78. Favourite platform?: Instagram

79. How much time do you spend on the internet?: More than I should, I’m sure.

80. What video games have you played? Which one’s your favourite? Uh, if I had to list them all you’d literally be reading this for eternity. To sum it up, I mostly play RPGs/JRPGs, open-world, survival horror (my fave), and a few (emphasis on few) FPS. Favorites are (once again with a limit): Bioshock, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Until Dawn, Silent Hill 2, and Fatal Frame.

81. Your favourite books (manga also counts): do you know how f*cking hard this question is as someone who’s a bookworm? Ok, ok um... Gotta have a limit or I’ll never shut up... um... Three favorites: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, Horns by Joe Hill, and American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

82. Do you play board/card games?: On occasion! They’re best with bigger groups but alas, my apartment is rather small and I don’t have a lot of space for multiple people so I don’t play them often.

83. Have you ever been to a night marathon in cinema? No, but it sounds fun.

84. Favourite holiday: Halloween!

85. Are you into dramas?: As in, tv dramas? Kinda? I have a friend on lived in SK for a time and got into K-dramas so I watch them with her from time-to-time when she visits.

Would you use a Death Note if you had one?: No.

87. What changes would you make in the world, no matter how impossible, if you had the power to?: Oh boy... make everyone get along, ensure everyone could live their life to the best possible, etc.

88. Could you survive a zombie apocalypse?: Possibly.

89. If you had to be turned into a paranormal being, what would it be?: I’m going with mythical instead of strictly paranormal but... a vampire!

90. What would you want to happen to you after your death?: As in to my body? Cremate me. To my stuff, give my books to a good home and take care of my bird.

91. If you had to change your name, what would be your pick?: Most people call me by my middle name already since I got tired of people calling me the wrong name (& I like my middle name better) and insisting my first name was actually a nickname (it’s not, it’s the same as the musician I’m named after) so if I were to eventually be bothered enough, I’d have it legally changed to my middle name.

92. Who would you switch your life with for a week?: I don’t know to be honest. I’m fairly happy with my life so I think I’d just not switch.

93. Pick an emoji to be your tattoo: 🌊

94. Write 3 things about yourself - only one of them must be true: I took karate classes for several years, I’ve never dyed my hair, I’ve had two jobs thus far.

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95. Cold or hot?: Cold I guess? If we’re talking in reference to seasons give me cool (aka Fall).

96. Be a hero or be a villain?: Hero because being a villain would mean I’d have to be mean to people and I can’t even pick the mean options in video games without feeling guilty so...

97. Sing everything you want to say or rhyme?: um... no? I’m not quite certain what this means but I’m going to go with no?

98. Shapeshifting or controlling time?: Shapeshifting!

99. Be immortal or be immune to everything aside from natural death?: Immortal.

[theparanormalperiodical]

The Paranormal Guide To The Paris Catacombs - And The 11 Other Haunted Catacombs And Underground Tunnels That'll Scare The Sh*T Out Of You

The carol was right: we are in the bleak midwinter.

A blanket of snow might not be lingering outside my bedroom window, nor do I feel full of post Christmas cheer (well, aside from the increase in my chances of type 2 diabetes), but what I do have is shared with everyone reading this right now:

We all wanna go on holiday.

A cray cray vacay in the sun? A booze up in ‘Biza? A peruse around Paris? Sign me the f*ck up. 

So, I thought “well if I don’t have the time to go to Paris nor the money cause graduate entry level jobs are sh*t and I still don’t know how I’m going to afford to live in London in terms of rent and travel coasts cause god everything costs money”, why not travel to Paris online and take you with me?

*Cue ‘ahhhhhh’ sounds from the audience.*

A quick glance at the Eiffel Tower? A croissant overlooking the Notre Dame? A walk along the Seine and a laugh in the rain?

You see, we do things differently, here at the Paranormal Periodical. We aren’t sticking ‘round for the Instagram pics, and we won’t be stopping at Chanel, either. We are heading straight for the Catacombs.

And if that doesn’t satisfy your need for spooky, are you up for venturing a bit further? Hell yeah, we goin’ on a rooooadtripppp!

Today’s article is going to take us through the creepy AF history and hauntings of the Paris catacombs, and the 11 other haunted catacombs and underground tunnels that you gotta hear about.

Prepare your emotional well-being…

Soyons effrayants!

The Basic-bitch History Of The Paris Catacombs 

In short, unspooky terms, the catacombs are 200 miles of caves, quarries and tunnels, brimming with 6 million corpses. Ah, f*ck. That was heckin’ spooky, wasn't it?

But it’s not just the fact that there’s, like, a lot of dead French people there that makes the catacombs famous. It’s both the #aesthetic of death and the twisting labyrinth so many have been lost to that gets my stamp of approval. 

Unfortunately, the aesthetic isn’t the only creepy component of the catacombs. The history is terrible. Which is fine. This is fine. 

During the most iconic moments of French history - basically anything in the 18th century, like someone sneezing in a certain tone would probably spark a rebellion - there were a lot of bodies littering Paris. And I mean a lot, the cemeteries could not cope. 

Corpses cloggin’ up the streets are a problem, obviously. Merchants were complaining about the scent of rotting corpses putting off potential customers, there was a growing threat of disease, and as a result of their rainy weather, mud was making the bodies crash through walls and cellars. 

(Quelle surprise!)

Yeah, it’s pretty bad.

The most famous case of corpses causing issues is the collapse of the Saint Innocents Cemetery –  you know, when rotting bodies crashed through the wall of an innocent cellar which was being used as a restaurant.

Delicious.

Intrigued? So were Parisians from 200 years ago. The current obsession with the catacombs didn’t start with the recent films such as As Above So Below (2014), nor the clickbait fest that is now YouTube; it actually started about 100 years after their constructions began. 

The 19th century was when the interest piqued, but it was less the discussion of the spirits that roamed below the streets of Paris, and more the cool hip restaurants and hang outs that made the posh Parisians obsessed with these, um, new haunts. 

(Sorry.)

For some reason the French just can’t stop eating next to corpses and cemeteries. Beyond Parisians enjoying a baguette next to past victims of the plague, the use of the catacombs has figured pretty well within French history, too: from the rebels of the French revolution using the catacombs to murder monarchists, to the use of it by both the Nazis and the French resistance to make their moves in WW2. 

But this use of these tunnels doesn’t just piece together the paranormal patchwork of this haunted city. The other catacombs and underground tunnels’ partake in this, too. Because when you combine dead people and trapped people, you just get a lot of sh*t. 

Already hiding under the covers and looking up the quickest ways to exorcise a house for fear that a corpse circa 1730 is stuffed in your wall, garlic necklace ‘n’ all?

Prepare to get even more freaked the f*ck out.

The Haunting Of The Paris Catacombs

Unsurprisingly, the catacombs - yes, you know, the ones full of the same amount of corpses as London’s current living population - is listed as one of the most haunted locations in the world.

Whether it’s the 6 million lost spirits, the ghosts of those who died lost and alone, or simply the fact that its underneath one of the most historic cities, there’s no doubt that if somewhere gon’ have a ghost, it’s gon’ be here.

Add on top of that the general deathiness if the place, and visitors will be much more receptive to potential paranormal activity! Its dark, it smells, it’s a rather humid 15 degrees, and you are surrounded by the dead. With creepy inscriptions and skull and bone sculptures, we are possibly more likely to think “welp this sh*t’s gotta be haunted”.

But specific reports beyond “I felt a presence and yeah I was surrounded by tourists but my ghost-dar is like my gay-dar I can spot a pansexual and a poltergeist within 13 seconds when I walk in a room” are also noted.

Cold spots, being touched by invisible hands, whispers and voices, shadow figures, and the feeling of being followed are just a few traces of activity already claimed. I have tried to find more information on the spooky events that lurk beneath the streets, but there isn't that much discussion of it, let alone any specific cases of note.

Phew! So, no ghosts down here than, ahaha brilliant, I’m just gonna go take a shower in a Holy font now byeeeee-

Hold your horses.

There’s many more catacombs and there’s many more tunnels we have yet to explore, and they are crawling with otherworldly beings.

The #Aesthetic Of Death

Aside from the rather general hauntings witnessed, what really makes this location the place to be is the celebration of death. And we can only start the discussion of this by talking about the history of the dead in the catacombs. 

Their entrance into the current resting place is pretty wild, actually. They would be carted out in the dead of the night, with priests chanting behind them, creating a pretty casual procession, if you’re asking me.

I mean, of course, this is what I do when I pop to the corner shop for a pint of milk, but I’m not like the other girls, so…

This rehoming is what birthed the aesthetic of the catacombs: the workers arranged the bones in artistic and, like, totally traumatic sculptures - it’s this creepy-ass art which makes the catacombs quite so famous.

Take The Barrel: this is one of the most iconic examples of this celebration of death, and it’s even a support beam erected from the skulls and bones of past Parisians. Even if brittle human bone for 300 years ago doesn’t sound too supportive for an underground structure attempting to hold up the ground. 

“So, there’s literally bones within touching distance just clogging up the catacombs? Surely that’ll make it spirit-central?”

Not quite. Paranormal theories actually dispute this.

Spirits don’t remain attached to their dead body. Ghosts reportedly remain attached to the location of their death, whereas spirits are entities which basically wander around the earth and different plains. So, just because the bodies are there, doesn’t mean the dead are.

(Is it just me or does that last sentence just sound so like inspirational I don’t even think it’s inspiring if anything it’s a bit give up in your dreams but bitch IT’S CONVINCED ME TO GIVE UP ON MY DREAMS.)

Loads Of People Go Missing Here, Which Is, You Know, Fine.

There might not be much specific-supernatural-stuff going on, but there is an ungodly amount of people that go missing down there.

Great. 

Of the 200 miles of tunnels and caves, the public are only legally allowed to witness 1.2 miles of it. The French government has quite a wrangle on the catacombs, with guards patrolling and influence over those that go there. In fact, the cast and crew behind As Above So Below (2014) were given permission by the French government to even film there!

“Is it ‘cause the government doesn’t want us mortals to know about that spooky-ass shizz going on down there?”

No. 

It’s probably because exploring the catacombs is a suicide mission. And this is what gives the catacombs their frightful name. 

It’s even illegal to enter the catacombs without official guidance since 1985! 

This is because the building of the catacombs was officially f*cked up. It was an act of desperation with minimal planning and quick solutions; and it’s no surprise that tales of innocent explorers has littered the catacombs since their creation.

These stories have inspired the films documenting the catacombs, including one which had Pink in it, which I mean, 11/10 must watch, f*ck the information on the catacombs, I want to see Pink, dammit.

I don’t know about you, but whilst hauntings do give me the heebiejeebies... but being trapped? Nah, mate, not doing that. 

Unfortunately, there are people that do that. Heck, they’re probably doing it as we speak! And they are called cataphiles - young adults desperate for a little adventure. But instead of smoking stolen cigarettes outside of the local off licence, they get lost in underground tunnels. Obviously, this often ends rather badly. 

Even as recently as 2017, two teenagers were found after 3 days of being lost in the catacombs having entered through one of the many off-the-grid entrances. But it’s not just these youths that are getting lost and trapped - even the experienced have been left there to die. 

The first reported case was in 1793. Some hospital doorman supposedly got lost down there, and died alone and afraid. His body was found 11 years later. 

Fact is, you probably won't be murdered by a psycho-clown or possessed by a demon down in the catacombs - you will suffer a much more tragic fate. But these stories aren’t the only thing giving the catacombs their creepy name: it’s a piece of antique clickbait which established this tourist hotspot as a, uh, cold spot. 

The story goes that a camcorder was found in the nineties in the catacombs. Once they’d wiped off the thick layer of dust amassed over the years, the finders of the camera discovered that it contained footage of a man exploring the catacombs - and then getting lost.

It then recorded the descent of a man into madness. Our final clip is of this man dropping the camera, and running for his life. We do not know why.

This footage has been disregarded as a hoax, particularly as it was used in a documentary for added dramatic effect. But as a short film, it was one of the founding fathers of found footage horror, marking the value of this location as a truly terrifying site. 

(Mon dieu!)

What About The Other Haunted Underground Catacombs And Tunnels That Unfortunately Exist?

#1 - The Odessa Catacombs

In 2005, ‘Masha’ began to trend on the web. Stories of separation, starvation, and pictures of a mangled corpse soon began to circulate, too. Yet despite the rumours regarding Masha’s fate, one thing is for sure:

The Odessa catacombs - a labyrinth of limestone mines lying beneath the streets of Ukraine - has witnessed a series of grotesque events, all of which could easily include the death of Masha.

The story goes that a group of teenagers entered the tunnel in 2005, and one girl - Masha - became separated. Lost and alone, she died of either starvation or dehydration. And it’s no surprise: Masha had no chance of escape, nor survival.

These limestone mines clock up 1500 miles in total, and deservedly have been given the title of the largest catacombs in the world. 

These cold, dark tunnels have been used throughout Ukraine’s modern history, including being used as the location for the execution of captured Nazi soldiers during the war - but these were not the only murders committed there.

In 2011, the body of a murder victim was found in the catacombs having been left there for 6 months. And in 2015, yet another innocent Ukrainian met a similar fate. A teenage girl was bludgeoned to death with an axe in the catacombs by her 20 year old boyfriend. 

On top of that, this labyrinth encompasses storm drains, caves, drainage tunnels, and basements. And, of course, every urban legend ever seems to start in these dark’n’damp cracks and crevices.

“So this place is like totally haunted, right?”

Uhhh… 

Of course claims of hauntings stick close to these catacombs, but specific stories are hard to pinpoint due to the limited access we have to actually explore them. Despite this, there’s no doubt about it: this catacomb is creepy AF.

#2 - Bethnal Green Underground

London has witnessed many major historic moments, and is haunted by both the politics and the paranormal as a result of these events. Bethnal Green underground is no different.

The story goes that during an air raid test in the thick of WW2 panic broke out.

Which, honestly, I’m not surprised, I’d freak the f*ck out, too if I thought an air raid was about to go down. 

In an attempt to avoid being bombed, a mad rush of people descended into Bethnal Green underground. The thing is, when you have a huge group of people run for their lives into a very small area underground, sh*t is bound to happen.

And it did.

173 people were trampled to death that day. And some claim they never really left the station.

To this day, screams from women and children still echo ‘round the station, and have been reported by passengers and staff alike. Its for this reason that this activity has been dubbed ‘imprint haunting’.

This is when moments with an atmosphere of high energy are imprinted onto the surroundings, and are repeated or re-enacted. 

And yes, being trampled to death whilst running from a potential bombing definitely makes the grade.

#3 - Savannah’s Underground Tunnels

*Cue The Office memes*

As much as I love Oscar being an actual cinnamon-role, the memes about Savannah stop there. Things are about to get gruesome. 

Like most of the other underground tunnels and catacombs on this list, these tunnels have witnessed a variety of people being smuggled, killed and buried. This reached its peak of activity in the 19th century.

Take the Yellow Fever epidemic when victims of the virus were buried under the hospital in these tunnels, or when slaves were transported from the harbours to their new masters having experienced tortuous journeys on ships.

But if that wasn’t enough, these tunnels are now reportedly haunted by ghosts still trapped there. The main activity reported and recorded is that of ghostly moans from innocent victims once buried or smuggled through these tunnels - but it’s not traced back to the slaves, nor to those that were left to die in the hospitals:

It’s the sailors once smuggled out to sea.

Legend has it that a tavern is connected to one of the tunnels, and that it was a popular haunt of local sailors. If they just so happened to get absolutely paraletic, they would be smuggled to the ships to continue their duties. In fact, many would wake up hungover and miles out to sea!

Captains supposedly would make a point of hiring such drunkards in order to ensure that their workers - even if they weren’t in the mood for the 9 to 5 - would always make their first shift. 

Even if it was against their will. And they were f*ckin’ legless.

#4 - The Drakelow Tunnels

Worcestershire might not sound like the haunting hotspot of Britain… but yeah, no, its not. There’s no plot twist here.

England was one of the countries most affected by the World Wars, still bearing the scars to this day. And, just like Bethnal Green underground, it’s the supernatural scars that always seem to stick out.

During the construction of these tunnels, several construction workers were reported to have died - and gruesome deaths at that. Despite this, in 1941, the tunnels achieved their purpose of being factories for airplane parts, and even became bunkers designed to protect citizens during the Cold War in case nuclear war broke out. 

But it was when the tunnels were opened to the public that the paranormal scars began to cut through the past political inflictions. And it’s all down to this bloke called Oswald, reportedly one of the workers who met his fate when building the tunnels.

Fancy a visit?

Then you’ll probably feel a shove in your back, or perhaps something pull on your hair - Oswald is no playful poltergeist. He is a vengeful spirit with a violent streak. 

#5 - The Shanghai Tunnels, Portland

I have no idea why these tunnels bare the name of a Chinese city, but that is for sure not the only mystery on the table. 

Well, I say mystery - I think ‘misery’ is the correct term to use here.

These tunnels were once used to transport supplies from city harbour to local businesses. You know, food for restaurants and hotels, alcohol to bars and brothels, and sex slaves to most of these establishments. 

Nina, however, was one of the woman forced into slavery who testified against her plight, shedding light on the men who trafficked her and her fellow slaves. She was murdered for speaking out, and killed in the most pimpish fashion: being pushed down an elevator shaft in the hotel where she worked.

But Nina never actually left The Merchant Hotel.

She still wanders ‘round the rooms, following the steps down the basement in a black dress and fragranced with a distinctive perfume. She also plays tricks on the staff, perhaps seeking vengeance for those that once reduced her to her final fate…

But she doesn’t stop there: she is often seen in the tunnels, reportedly searching for sex slaves she can rescue or protect from the harm she once faced.

#6 - The Santa Priscilla Catacombs

Italian history has a habit of stumbling into twisted spiritual stories, like the Demonic tales haunting Turin, or the really-weird rumours about Rome, but the Santa Priscilla Catacombs have their own scandalous - and supernatural - past. 

In the 17th century, the catacombs were plundered on the orders of the Vatican - this is considered a component in the ‘destruction’ of the catacombs. Among the treasures found were frescoes - watercolour paintings - which depicted female priests leading a mass. This evidence contradicted the bible, and so the paintings were destroyed.

But if you dare venture down to the catacombs, you won’t just find scraps of biblical history. Instead, you’ll find cursed catacombs and angry spirits. 

It is claimed that the catacombs were destroyed thanks to the angry and aggressive spirits who sought privacy. Fair enough. They’ve even been rumoured to go beyond the realms of the catacombs, and pushed a carriage up above into a nearby river .

#7 + #8 - The Tennessee Coal Mines (DOUBLE WHAMMY WHADDUPPPPP)

Dark histories have already plagued this post enough, but thanks to the past events contained within the Tennessee coal mines, it seems like the sh*t just doesn’t stop.

When slavery was abolished in the US, southern states had to trade in the slave-based support for their economies for new methods of financial stability. The Knoxville Mine Corporation was one of the companies behind this shift, and hired convicts to work in their coal mines in 1877.

But things went south - yes, even further than the states themselves - when the convicts defied the guards by lighting a fire to cook food. 

Oh, I should say here that the mines were full of methane gas. Fires, flammable gases, tight underground tunnels…

It’s all a bit deathy. 

So, you won’t be surprised to hear that in 1902, a fire killed over 200 men - but it wasn’t the workers that set the mine alight. It was the ghosts of the convicts who were hungry for vengeance on those that forced them to work in the mines…

Well, that or they wanted a quick snack.

#9 - Fife’s Nuclear Bunker

It was only 4 years ago that yet another nuclear bunker was added to the list of places you wouldn’t want to be in past 8.30pm.

In one of Scotland’s nuclear bunker, a gaggle of mediums claimed that paranormal activity had occurred thanks to the ghosts of military personnel. But it's not just paranormal investigators that have noted the supernatural. Tourists themselves have become sick upon visiting, and others have even fainted thanks to the power of the paranormal felt here.

On top of this, pictures catching glimpses of shadowy figures in former offices have confirmed spooky goings on. Heck, one couple even claimed a spirit followed them home, leaving traces of activity such as moving objects about the house and draining mobile phone batteries. 

#10 - The Edinburgh Vaults

Our next underground spook-fest sticks to Scotland, and roots itself in the capital. Also known as the South Bridge Vaults, these are a series of chambers that have witnessed over 200 years worth of history. They’ve been taverns, they've been workshops, they've been storage space for less-than-legal activities…

But it was only during the 1820s that the conditions pushed out the businesses and made way for the poor to move in. The vaults have been investigated by many a TV show, from the iconic (a visit from the team behind Ghost Adventures), to the memeable (a one-off TV special with Joe Swash).

Yes, paranormal investigative-icon, Joe Swash.

But even outside of this meme, some activity was picked up: during the audio recorded overnight, a variety of voices can be heard before the sound of a child yelling. Silence then falls upon the vaults.

The danger of lurking about in the chaotic vaults - teamed with the supernatural rumours echoing off its walls - have meant it is now closed off to the public.

#11 - Sydney’s Train Stations (Yep, All Of ‘Em)

Most underground stations have a creepy claim to fame, but Sydney’s station have their very own set of tales that make me want to skip out a holiday in Australia altogether.

It was all unveiled when a former worker at the station revealed a network of tunnels underneath the city’s stations. There are tunnels, there’s a bomb shelter, and there’s a lake.

(Like, a lake. An actual lake. How in the hell do you put a lake underground?!)

There are also 2 hidden platforms that have never been used - well, according to known records, anyway. Platforms 26 and 27 were built over a cemetery and have witnessed traces of paranormal activity seen and heard by staff. Hearing whispering voices or perhaps the giggles of children playing confirms the creepiness of this location.

Who’s Up For A Gander In The Underground?

Nope, not me. No thanks. 

Go on your own and report back pls. 

#Living for this post? Then you’ll be #dyin’ to check out my other ones! 

(I’m sorry.) 

Hit follow to see more supernatural shizzle like this, and a new ghost story every damn day.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Collective Action: an interview with Cory Doctorow, author of ‘Radicalized’

A few weeks ago, we reviewed Radicalized, a fantastic collection of four stories from author Cory Doctorow about the extreme measures that people (or a certain Kryptonian) will take to push back against extreme forms of oppression or circumstance.  

Recently, I had the chance to speak with Mr. Doctorow about what inspired these tales as well as what some of the real world parallels they were inspired from.

There will also be spoilers for the various stories in Radicalized (especially Model Minority), so make sure you’ve already them first…which you really should have already.

AiPT!: Every story in Radicalized is great, but Model Minority really stood out to me, mostly because it was one of the best and most uniquely structured Superman stories I’ve ever read. What was your approach going into it to make Model Minority different than what has come before it?

Cory Doctorow: Humans have always been portrayed as his Achilles heel, but I think there’s an even deeper [issue] for Superman that goes back to his origins as a character. He was created by Jewish men in Brooklyn who were horrified about the rise of Nazism across the Atlantic. They wanted to build an immortal and unstoppable hero who could conceivably punch Nazis until they…well, stopped being Nazis!

But the actual answer to Nazis in Europe — although there were many brave individuals — was in no way an individual action. In fact, the answer was the largest collective action in the history of the world.

For reason both noble and base, I think we like to frame big fights as a struggle between individuals. The heroic individual who was at the right place at the right time and makes the sacrifice that makes things happen. Humanitarian movements definitely cultivate this.

Rosa Parks gets a lot of press as a solitary hero for her bus protest during the Civil Rights movement. But she was actually a community organizer who—along with her colleagues—planned out a strategy to get her arrested so that a case would be keyed up with a certain set of legal consequences that would be easier to argue in court and play into existing precedencies. If Rosa Parks had merely been a lone individual who was brave enough to refuse to give up her seat, she likely would have died in jail. It’s because she was part of a huge collective that she was able to have such a huge impact.

That’s what Model Minority really tries to dig into—the limits of individual action and the importance of collective action. Our perception of the individual as the driving force for change (rather than the collective) is something that still has a paralyzing effect on society’s willingness to confront its own issues. Look at climate change. It’s not happening because you didn’t recycle enough. But chances are (if you live in a city) that your biggest contribution to climate change is probably your commute. But you can’t dig a subway— Elon Musk can’t do that. And if even you could, you couldn’t rezone all the buildings for it to work. It would have to be a collective action.

AiPT!: Aside from Model Minority, the rest of the stories in Radicalized had a very near-future, Black Mirror-esque feel. Do you see the technology and events that took place as things we will see in the next few years?

Doctorow: I’m not a believer in the ability of science fiction to predict the future because I’m not a believer in predictable futures. That’s one of the big differences between an activist and a futurist. Activists believe that the future changes based on what we do. If the future were predictable, there’d be no reason to bring forth an event to create change.

The model of these stories is to show that the future can be great if we just don’t f*ck it up. The thing that drives a story like Unauthorized Bread is not merely that it shows how technological oppression takes place. It also shows how technical liberation takes place. People put a lot of emphasis on what technology does, but often overlook who it does those things for and who it does those things to. Often times that’s way more important.

Masque of Red Death was inspired in part by Doug Rushkoff’s story where he spoke to a bunch of hedge fund managers about their doomsday bunkers. They were trying to figure out how to make their bunkers sustainable after the apocalypse, but what worried them in particular was that their guards would kill them and take their food. One of the solutions they came up with were biometric food lockers that would only open for them. Once again, the issue isn’t what the technology does, but who has their finger on the button controlling it.

Going back to Model Minority, we have these predictive policing tools like the one Bruce sold to the NYPD. In reality, those tools are super racist. Patrick Ball, who runs the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, took PredPol (which is a major predictive policing tool) and gave it 2016 policing data from Oakland. He then asked it to provide where it predicted the most drug crime would be in 2017. He was then able to compare its predictions to the NIH survey about drug usage.

Predpol predicted that all of the drug crime was going to take place in black neighborhoods, which follows the police pattern that created its training data. If you’re only asking black people to turn out their pockets to look for drugs, then you all the drugs you find are going to be in black people’s pockets. According to the NIH data, however, illegal drug usage was pretty much even across the entire area among all demographics.

Now think about this: Instead of unfairly targeting a group of people, you could potentially use the exact same technology and data provided by PredPol (compared with the NIH data) to determine if policing patterns are racially biased. It’s all about whose finger is on the button.

AiPT!: Do you see the crisis on America’s southern border as a potential breaking point for people to become radicalized on both sides of the issue?

Doctorow: As a Canadian, I am somewhat baffled by both the American relationship to guns and the American relationship to healthcare. Every country has blind spots—when I lived in England, I couldn’t believe a country that managed to conquer the world still hadn’t figured out plumbing.

But America’s blind spots are pretty weird. The fact that they can’t do something every other country in the world has figured out is pretty baffling. It also spawns another weird question: Why is it that frustrated white dudes routinely shoot up mosques or kill their ex-wives, but don’t murder the healthcare executives who doom the people they love most in the world to die a slow, painful death? The pat answer would be that those executives are protected by a large amount of wealth and power. It’s much easier to punch down than punch up.

The other thing that Radicalized tries to do is to rebut our dominant model of radicalization, which is the contagion model. The idea with that model is there are a lot of people out there with very bad and dangerous ideas. If you get exposed to those ideas, then you will have the ideas too and go do bad and dangerous things.

But there’s not a lot of evidence to support that. Boston University did a study on the history of suicide bombers in the occupied territory in the West Bank. What they found was the biggest predictor of whether someone became radicalized was not ideology or a commitment to violence—it was if they were already suicidally depressed.

That trauma model—where people who are traumatized become much more susceptible/vulnerable to people with bad ideas—is a much truer account of what goes on in radicalization. It suggests that what we really need to be doing is reducing the amount of trauma as opposed to the exposure of people to bad ideas.

AiPT!: Where do you see that model at work in the current global landscape?

Doctorow: I feel like the people who are fighting it are being affected by racism that has been compounded by trauma. We’ve had 40 years of tightening belts and shifts in wealth from the middle to the wealthy. This has produced a large group of people who are traumatized and ready to be radicalized by difficult circumstances.

This about it this way: You think you have a secure chair at the table. Then someone announces “Actually, it’s not your chair. It’s musical chairs and at the end of the every turn, we’re going to decide whether or not you get one. Oh, and by the way, we’re going to let a bunch of people who have never had a chair compete for the chairs, as well…and we’re going to take away chairs at a faster than any in point in human history.”

When you consider that framework, it’s not a surprise that people can become racist, xenophobic a------s. It doesn’t exonerate or excuse them, obviously, but it does help explain it.

The arguments anti-vaxxers make today aren’t any better or more informed than they used to be. It was a stupid argument then and it’s a stupid argument now. Same with flat eartherism. What changes are the material circumstances of the people who believe the arguments. When you look at the rise of authoritarian movements throughout history, they almost always follow some sort of collective trauma.

Another source of trauma for people is that despite the wealth of information at our fingertips, there is a collective inability to trust it. There so many different sources of information that it becomes impossible to adjudicate them all, which forces you to defer to whomever is deemed the expert…or whoever shouts their information the loudest. That’s part of the reason you can have the FDA saying for 15 years that opioids were safe. Even the government can’t be trusted as a source. This leads to people often times finding someone who “feels” like someone they can trust whether they are credible or not—and you just believe whatever they tell you.

AiPT!: Moving onto something a little more light-hearted: Is Superman (or any other character in the DC Universe) someone you’d like to revisit in the future?

Doctorow: Honestly, I didn’t really always want to write Superman. In this instance, Superman was simply the right metaphor for the bigger question about individual and collective action and being an ally.

Speaking as someone whose father was a Jewish immigrant refugee to Canada, it was odd to see how he was initially treated as a racialized minority, but later “became” white. It showed me how whiteness is socially constructed—and how the last people on the whiteness boat are usually the first ones to get kicked off. In Charlotte, we had people chanting “Jews will not replace us,” but there are still conservative Jews (including within my own family) who treat white supremacy as a small price to pay as support for Israel and other portions of the GOP agenda.

One thing I wanted to draw attention to in Model Minority is that Superman’s whiteness (and humanity) is assigned to him as a courtesy. It is entirely contingent on his support of the establishment, who can withdraw it at a moment’s notice. It also shows the difficulty of allyship. No matter what you go through to help others, your struggle will pale in comparison to the ones without your privilege who you’re trying to help. Just like when Superman was asked “Where were you for the last 100 years,” you might have to confront the fact that you were previously a part of the problem.

That’s not to say we need to play oppression Olympics with everyone to compete for who has struggled the most in society. But I do think we need to acknowledge that the daily experience of different people in different experiences is something that we can’t fully comprehend.

AiPT!: This probably won’t be possible with Model Minority due to all the licensing red tape you’d have to jump through, but are there plans to make any of the other stories in Radicalized into other media properties?

Doctorow: Unauthorized Bread is currently in development as a television project. That’s all I can say for now

www.adventuresinpoortaste.com/2019/08/13/collective-action-an-interview-with-cory-doctorow-author-of-radicalized/

[sevi007]

Okay, a bit more eloquently this time around, because Sevi’s head has stopped spinning mostly and now I can write this out –

 Into the Spider-verse, guys. Look I went into this movie thinking: “Okay girl, you don’t understand, like, anything about Spider-Man, but you heard the plot is good, the music is awesome, and the animation is completely off this planet, so this is gonna be good anyway.”

 And I was right. And also completely wrong.

Because it was not good, it was out of this freaking universe (yes, the pun is horrible, bear with me, head is still spinning a bit).

 This movie was pure enjoyment and amazingness and feels from the very start to finish, highlighted with on-point music and topped off with animation that left me gaping and going “What the F*CK” more than once. I was so extremely hooked on this, I didn’t even see it coming!

 Where do I start? I can’t do this chronologically, I think, just… it’s amazing from the first second on. I will just try to list up what I especially noticed and liked, because if I try to say everything I liked, I will just retell the entire movie, so I’m going for main topics and put it all under this neat thingy -

 The characters are so freaking amazing.  hat starts right up with the introduction of the characters, say, for example: Peter Parker and Miles – not only is it smooth and a nice overview, it’s also setting contrasts between the two, and very fitting for both of them (one getting a more “ordinary” introduction compared to the comic-book-hero introduction). Going over their design – gosh, the designs, people, I was not expecting to look at either Prowler or Doc Ock and be like “Oh wow, okay, those guys look cool”.

Then there’s how each character is unique, and that completely. The movie underlines how the Spider-People might have their similarities (the comic book introduction and the “let’s do this one more time”), but it also emphasizes how they are all different. Because what else? The movie is trying to teach us that everyone can wear the mask. So they feature how special and unique every last character is. That goes for the Spider-People – even both Peter Parkers – as well as Miles, who still needed to learn what makes him unique, and even the side characters or the villains. (I will have to point out the villains separately in a moment).

And each of them – aside from a few sidekicks – are fleshed out so well, in so little lines. You feel for them. You’re interested in them. You relate to them. And that with so many characters, wandering over the screen so quickly! Masterful work right there.

  The villains we gotta get out of the way here, because I was so flashed by that. You have, like, three main villains? For me, it felt like three – Kingpin, Doc Ock, and the Prowler. And each of them fulfills such a completely different villain trope, and that all in one movie!

Kingpin with the tragic backstory and actually morally white goals reached with completely wrong methods.

Doc Ock with the “crazy” scientist role who has no regards to humanity (she was fully aware what would happen to both Peter B. Parker and Kingpin’s family if they were transported into a different universe, and she didn’t give a damn).

And Prowler with little to no tragic backstory, who seems so cold and detached, until he isn’t – and makes a good choice in the last moment. (Redemption arc villain with tragic end, maybe? In any case, completely different from the first two)

   The story was just, so amazing. I’m not too familiar with Spider-Man so I couldn’t tell if it was orientating itself by any storyline that has been there before, in the comics, but I seriously loved every twist of it. Because twists there were, a lot of them. Killing the already “perfect” Spider-Man right at the start of the movie? Having the protagonist not suddenly learning from his – reluctant – teacher, but unlocking the potential that has always been there? Only to mention a few. Completely amazing. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time, because I had no idea where it would go next. And that’s not even emphasizing the sheer feels or the slapstick moments, which were all amazing in their own right.  

Something I absolutely adored was that basically – literally? – no scene, no matter how seemingly small and insignificant, was there for a reason. Miles sticking to Gwen’s hair lead to her pointing out he needed to “relax”, which was later revealed to be the key to the sticking-ability and its release. Miles joking about a cape is later picked up again, and it’s used to show how Peter has come to appreciate the boy. Miles sticking to a train with the unconscious Peter in two is used again in the final fight, when he uses a train to escape Kingpin. And so on, and on. Every little detail is there for a reason, be it to reference Spider-Man and his appearance in other media, or because it’s important for the story later on.

   The music – I’m not even sure what’s better, the songs they chose (“Sunflower” and “What’s up danger” and “Scared of the Dark” are gonna stick in my head, you just know it) or the score. There was never a moment when the music felt out of place, or didn’t make my feels even stronger, or didn’t get me hyped up. Highlighting and emphasizing what was happening on screen, instead of simply filling the silence or even distracting. So well done.

   The animation. Guys. Guys, if anyone told me they used the multiverse to throw together the best of the best of animation tech for this one movie, then I wouldn’t even argue with it. I didn’t even know stuff like this was possible. These “switches” between, more like, mixes of almost-realistic style to clearly comic-book style? The Spider-People having all these different kind of animations all by itself, and all of them being on the same screen without making it look weird? Just, wow. Wow, and another wow, and I have to stop now else I never stop on that. This was, like, an entire love song (movie) to the art of animation, all by itself, and it was so fun to watch!

  Honestly, I loved every second and aspect of this movie. And I mean, honestly - They put so much work and love into this one, and it was so clear, too. How could I not love it, then? =D

[travllingbunny]

The 100 rewatch: episodes 3x06-3x10

Continuation of my post here

This post includes reviews the following episodes:

3x06 Bitter Harvest

3x07 Thirteen

3x08 Terms and Conditions

3x09 Stealing Fire

3x10 Fallen

3x06 Bitter Harvest

The Arkadia plot in this episode is quite interesting because it doesn’t go the way you expect.

It’s all about Pike’s plan to conquer some fertile land to grow food, so the Grounders couldn’t starve Arkadia out, but his plan requires them to “clear” a Grounder village in the area, as he already explained in 3x05. Bellamy was obviously horrified by the realization of what that would probably mean, but it ends up being one of several frustrating moments of this arc where he fails to change Pike’s opinion and then goes along with Pike’s decision in spite of his misgivings.

The story seems like it’s going to be all about the small armed Arker force victimizing helpless Grounder villagers – especially when it becomes obvious that Hannah and resident bigoted a-hole Gilmer would be ready to kill a child to prevent him from telling other villagers. And about Octavia saving the villagers by warning them to leave before they come. But there’s some moral complexity thrown in when Miller points out that the situation is tricky as warning the villagers, they might end up causing deaths to their friends, though Octavia also rightfully points out that an attack on a village, aside from being bad in itself, would be likely to make Lexa reconsider her decision and decide to attack Arkadia after all.

But I really like the twist that the villagers weren’t a bunch of helpless folks just waiting for Octavia to save them, and that, instead, they don’t want to leave their homes (why the heck would they?) and decide to defend themselves – and that they do it successfully, by releasing poisoned smoke. Because, guess what, Grounders aren’t “Noble Savages” or whatever nonsense some think they are. And it’s funny that Monty – who had pointed out “they are Grounders, they will fight” - actually had judged the situation better than Octavia, who thinks she’s so well versed into Grounder culture. If the village leader, Semet, hadn’t gone on to act like such an idiot in 3x07, I would have a lot of respect for him and the rest of the villagers (they showed themselves to be more competent than their soldiers). And just to be clear, I’m on their side here – as always, people have the right to defend themselves. Arkers here underestimated them and got smoked, just like Grounder army and Commander underestimated the Delinquents in season 1 and got burned.

In the end, Octavia had to warn her brother and the rest of the Arkers so they wouldn’t all die – and it still took two lives. It ends up with Octavia getting tied up by the villagers and brought to Polis, setting up 3x07, while Hannah blames Octavia and “traitors in the camp” for the two deaths, which sets up the conflicts in 3x08.

The first time I watched this episode, I was so terrified that they were going to make Bellamy’s group commit war crimes in the village  – because of all the brouhaha I had heard about Bellamy’s controversial actions in season 3, the supposed “character assassination”, or even haters calling him “genocidal” (?). So it was a huge relief none of that happened. But it would have been interesting to see what he would have done if they had indeed run into villagers. I think he may have been able to proceed with the mission as long as the villagers were either defending themselves, or if they took them captive, but it would be different if one of the group tried to harm someone defenseless, and he definitely would have snapped if anyone tried to harm a child. And that would likely cause conflict with the more extreme members of the group, and maybe prompted him to break away from Pike earlier. But it didn’t get to that.

But the other plot, the one in Polis, drives me nuts, because it makes no sense on so many levels.

King Roan gives Emerson as a “gift” to Clarke so she could get her revenge. Instead of of enacting one himself or giving him to his people. And then Lexa and Titus act as if their people have no reason to want revenge against Emerson - and that Clarke and the Arkers are the only ones that the Mountain Men have hurt. Lexa even says “So it is Blood must not have blood only when it’s my people who bleed?” Wait, what?! Her people did bleed at the hands of the Mountain Men. For decades. In all sorts of horrible ways. They said in season 2 that they lost thousands of people. We saw it: they were killing them with acid fog, keeping them in cages, draining them and throwing them out like trash, or hooking them on drugs and torturing and turning them into controlled cannibalistic monsters and sent them against their own people. And Emerson is not some random Mount Weather resident, he was one of the leaders in their regime, he was Cage’s right hand and led the Ground Unit. Clarke knows it, Lexa knows it - because she directly negotiated with him in season 2.

Did the writers forget what happened in season 2, or do characters on this show have super short memory? Is three months the statute of limitation on “Blood must have blood”? It gets worse because we’re later supposed to believe that many Grounders are unhappy with Lexa’s decision to not take revenge on the Arkers for killing 300 of their warriors…which is somehow, apparently, much worse than everything the Mountain Men had done to them? First Nia, then Roan, now Lexa, none of them tried to get revenge for the crimes of Mount Weather against Grounders, but apparently there were no riots over that. The crowd just murmurs and talks at the end of the episode, when Lexa let Emerson go, after handing over the decision of what to do with him with Clarke. But that’s all.

The whole dilemma Titus and Lexa put in front of Clarke here is based on a ludicrous premise that Clarke punishing Emerson would be the same as Lexa and the coalition waging war and trying to kill all the Arkers. I guess you could just ascribe that to Titus being a manipulative d*ck (which he is). But committing genocide of an entire group of people in retaliation for actions of a few is very, very different from punishing one person for his own crimes. To be fair, Clarke points that out to Titus. But then he shuts her up with another false analogy bringing up Mount Weather. And it’s especially grating that it’s Grounder leaders, or even Emerson himself, who give Clarke crap about MW, which is incredibly hypocritical. They know damn well that she had no choice but either kill all of the Mountain Men, or let them kill her and all her people. And why was she left with no choice? Because Emerson and the other Mountain Men tried to kill all of her people (and they didn’t have to - they could have started by asking them to donate bone marrow. There’s a few thousand Arkers, no one needed to die to save the Mountain Men) and because Lexa and the Grounders betrayed Clarke and her people and left them to be killed by the Mountain Men. So Emerson is like “How dare ypu defend yourselves when we tried to kill you all?” and Titus is like “How dare you defend yourselves when we left you to die and they tried to kill you?” F*ck off.

Then there’s the stupid dichotomy of “either death by 1000 cuts, or let him go”. Come on, guys, surely you can think of other options in between? From killing him fast and without torture, to not killing him but keeping him locked up? This is not like that time in season 1 when the Delinquents exiled Murphy instead of killing him. They had a camp with tents, few people, few resources, they were not able to keep anyone imprisoned for any longer period. But in Polis, they have buildings and facilities (we later see cells in 3x13) and enough people to keep prisoners. Why would you let Emerson go free? Forget even justice, forget revenge - this guy is obviously a threat. Let him go, and he’s going to make trouble again. Who cares if he suffers? The primary concern should be stopping him from doing any more damage.

Clarke has always been pragmatic, so only way I can make sense of her actions here and not consider them OOC is that she’s been in this position where she is risking peace if she doesn’t let Emerson go, and she doesn’t have emotional energy to argue the case and point out the stupidity of it all, so she just opted for the lesser evil/lesser risk.

At the beginning of the episode, Lexa wakes up and says that she hears past Commanders talk to her in he dreams (setting up the chip reveal in the next episode), and that they’re not happy about her decision. So, past Commanders were really into killing and revenge. (Does that include Becca?) Lexa is clearly still unsure about her new policy at this point, though by the end of the episode, she gives a rousing speech about peace being the better option. Most of the episode’s plot in Polis revolves around Titus’ attempts to change Lexa’s mind, so I guess we’re supposed to think that Clarke’s decision to let Emerson go helped solidify Lexa’s resolve? This is dumb, for all the reasons above.

We see Clarke as an artist, again – she draws Lexa’s portrait while she’s sleeping, and this and her awkwardness while showing Lexa her drawing is an indication of her growing feelings for her. And that’s the only one-on-one scene they get in this episode, everything else is political stuff about Emerson, so 80% of the development of their romance is all in 3x07.

Another development setting up the next episode: captured Murphy is brought to Titus.

Timeline? Not sure, this time. One of the few times in the season where we don’t know

Body count: Two victims of poisoned smoke.

Monroe, one of the original 100 (leaving 45 Delinquents that are still alive)

 another Arker – Lacroix, minor character introduced this season. 

Note: There’s a huge continuity error in this episode. Emerson says that Clarke killed 381 people: “182 men, 173 women, and 26 children” That’s not true. Tsing said there were 382 people in Mount Weather in episode 2x11. Since then, a bunch of people had been killed before Clarke and Bellamy irradiated Level 5, so the number of people still alive in the finale were probably just a bit over 300. Many died long before Clarke came back to Mount Weather – killed by Bellamy or the Delinquents, some died fighting the Grounders and Arkers, some of them (like Vincent Vie) were civilians who were murdered by the guards for helping and hiding the Delinquents. Obviously, I have paid a lot more attention to these things than the writers ever have.

Rating: 5/10

3x07 Thirteen

And here we are, this infamous episode again. The title presumably refers to the 13th station, whose fate we find out in the flashbacks, but since 13 is supposed to be the unlucky number, it’s a very fitting title for the most unfortunate episode in the show’s history, the one where the writers had the romance between Clarke and Lexa happen for 15 minutes just to immediately kill Lexa, which it wrecked the show’s reputation and made a mess out of the fandom.

The present day events in this episode happen only in Polis, and Clarke Octavia and Murphy are the only ones out of the main cast who appear in it.

But to start from the beginning –the villagers from the last episode come to Polis for an audience with the Commander, and Titus introduces them. They give a redacted version of their story, with Titus claiming that their village was attacked and helpless. Which is not what happened – they defended themselves successfully. Semet also says Skaikru killed various members of his family. Which I guess might be true, but only if all of them were soldiers in Lexa’s army… but that’s not the story they’re trying to present, they’re making it look like their village was attacked and helpless civilians actually killed. And Octavia is there as their captive, tied up and gagged so she can’t say anything. And then, when Lexa reiterates that she’s not going to be going to war, Semet acts like a complete idiot and tries to assassinate her, in front of everyone (WTF) before getting stabbed by Titus. I always thought this was an incredibly stupid and unconvincing moment. But on rewatch, I noticed that Semet looks at Titus with a look of huge surprise and shock as he dies. Now why would he be surprised that the Flamekeeper killed him to protect the Heda? Either he’s an even bigger idiot than I thought – or Titus was the one who put him up to it in the first place (he was the one who brought them in and controlled the narrative they presented) in order to demonstrate to Lexa that her new policy will turn her people against her. He is maybe the only person with enough authority that he may have convinced Semet that he could get away with an assassination because he would support them. So, maybe at least this plot point was not that bad as I thought, but only if my theory is right. That would also solve the issue of “why are the people suddenly ready to rebel against their Heda over this, when they were OK with her deal with the Mountain Men and with letting Emerson go, and when they generally have a semi-religious worship of the Commander and value obedience and hierarchy” –if there was no spontaneous riot after all

Lexa makes the decision that every Sky person caught beyond the line would be killed. Which creates obvious problems for Octavia and Clarke. Octavia uses her remaining time in Polis to convince Indra to come with her, and to not retire because of her injuries, and to call out Clarke, making a snide remark about how she must be enjoying the comfort of her quarters in Lexa’s castle-like tower, and telling her that she has an hour to come back to Arkadia, or “you are not the person I thought you were”. Clarke says that she’s staying because she was needed for political reasons, but Octavia is not fully convinced, and Clarke seems unsure at this point. The fact she is even considering both options shows how much she’s changed. How much of it is being drawn to staying with Lexa because of her feelings for her, because Lexa is giving her comfort and making her feel good, and how much because she’s still scared of facing her friends back in Arkadia and the painful memories that would bring up, especially after that intense and painful confrontation with her Not=Boyfriend that reminded her of all that history and no doubt convinced her that he hated her, it’s up for discussion.

Good acting and the fact that the actresses have a lot of chemistry helps sell the romantic scenes between Clarke and Lexa in this episode, and on their own, they are really well done, with romantic music and soft lightning – but it all comes off as too soon, considering how poorly this has been set up and developed in the previous episodes. They both know they are going to go their separate ways, which prompts them to show their feelings for each other. Lexa suggests that Clarke could decide to stay with her, and Clarke avoids an answer, instead implying that Titus would have a problem with that (without naming him).If Clarke were to accept Lexa’s proposal, they could have an actual romantic relationship – all that Clarke would have to give up is: her identity, her freedom all of her remaining power, and all her family and friends, and live surrounded by people who dislike and distrusts her, with Lexa as her only protection. Seasons 1-2 Clarke wouldn’t even have considered that, but post-Mount Weather Clarke had already given up most of that, even before Lexa re-entered the picture. Still, she chooses to be herself again, and get back Arkadia. The best written CL moment in this episode is when Lexa show she expected that decision – she is aware Clarke would never choose her over her people - and comes close to telling Clarke she loves her, for being that way – “That’s why I… that’s why you’re you”. They are both aware that their respective roles are too much of a part of both of their identities and that they could only, perhaps, have a real relationship one day if they were free from leadership responsibilities (would that ever happen, if Lexa hadn’t died? We’ll never know, but it’s hard to imagine the Grounder society without a Commander, or a Lexa who retires and isn’t Commander anymore), before they kiss and Clarke initiates goodbye sex.

Two of the show’s many repetitive catchphrases get referenced- Lexa’s line “Love is weakness” from 2x09 and Clarke’s “Life should be about more than just surviving” from 2x14. Here we learn that “Love is weakness” wasn’t just something Lexa believed because of her horrible experience with what Nia did to her lover Costia, but something that Titus, her mentor, had always taught her. Later, in season 5, we learn that it is what all Flamekeepers teach Commanders. It makes sense: not just because of the Grounder views of what strength is, but also because, if a Commander doesn’t fall in love or get close to anyone else, the Flamekeeper can continue to be the main influence in the Commander’s life. It seems that Nightblood novices typically become Commanders as children, who are taken and separated from their parents– and Flamekeepers are quite older and their mentors, and the ones who can shape who they are. Titus is something like a father figure to Lexa, and also her subject, so while she has all the power, he has shaped her while she was growing up, and still has a lot of influence on her – and he hates someone else having more influence, especially someone from Sky people, who is making Lexa abandon the traditionalist views that Titus had taught her. He worships her, but he wants her to be who he made her to be, and love can be abusive (including the platonic, mentor/father-like love). Lexa had shown a tendency to try to control and isolate Clarke, and Titus has been manipulating and trying to control and isolate Lexa. In that way, her death, while problematic in many ways, isn’t random as people say – even though it’s a stray bullet, it happens because of Lexa’s choices and Titus’ toxicity, and it is tragic and both ironic and fitting that he is the one who ends up killing her. She ended up a victim of the traditions that shaped her and made her Commander but that she was starting to move away from.

Where I agree with Lexa/CL fans is that her death - the way it happened - was extremely poorly written and ended up playing into some bad tropes - Bury Your Gays and Death by Sex. Where I disagree with most CL fans is that I think the relationship between her and Clarke leading up to that was rushed, underdeveloped and poorly written. Both the CL romance and Lexa’s change of policy were incredibly rushed – and would have required a lot more episodes (probably an entire season, at least) and way better writing than what was there.

The weird way they wrote their relationship in season 3 weakened both characters in different ways.  As a Clarke fan, I’m far more interested in her, and I’m not sure what exactly they were trying to do with her arc here, except give her another short-lived, tragic romance that ends in the other person’s death (because Clarke must suffer in her love life and never be happy or be in a committed relationship). There are interesting interpretations that Clarke falling in love with Lexa was symbolically about her learning to accept a part of herself that she hated – but I’m not sure that her overall arc really fits with that so well, since Clarke still feels guilty and hates herself over various things she has had to do as a leader. In any case, I wasn’t enjoying watching her spend almost all of season 3a as a literal Princess in the Tower, no more really a leader but just a court favorite, staying in Polis as a symbol and putting all her energy into convincing Lexa to do or not do things and having to depend on Lexa to do or not do things to save her people.

Maybe that arc was better if you look at it from Lexa’s POV or as Lexa fan, since a lot of her fans seem to enjoy it. But I don’t think her arc is great, either. Her transition from adhering to “Blood must have blood” to deciding to be a peaceful leader happened very quickly - she was going to go to war against Arkadia in 3x05 and changed her mind at the very end of that episode when Clarke told her she should be a peaceful ruler. She still wasn’t sure about it in 3x06. And they kind of made it all in the end about her romance with Clarke, which made it a very muddled arc: did she really change her policy mostly because of Clarke’s influence (as Titus and everyone around her believed) or did she start to really question everything she had been taught and believe in another way? How would she have dealt with the opposition to her new policy among her subjects? Would she continue to rule as a tyrant and use violent means – as she was taught a Commander should –or would she come to the conclusion that, in order to attain peace, you need to use peaceful means, too? We should have had more time with her struggling with that and making those decisions without Clarke and without the context of Clexa romance. And definitely a different death would have been a much better writing choice - either in battle or something else that was about politics and war, not right after sex with a bullet meant for her lover.

Another, most unexpected Luna mention happens – in bed, when Clarke is looking at the tattoos on Lexa’s back, and hears about the Conclave for the first time, and the fact Luna was one of the kids she was meant to fight.

My favorite moment of the episode is when Clarke finds Murphy tied up – certainly the last thing she expected to see in Polis – and yells “He is my friend!” That was kind of funny and unexpected, since they were hardly what anyone would call friends in seasons 1-2, but they do become more friendly in this episode, where Murphy later even offers her sympathy for Lexa’s death.

Finally, the Becca flashbacks… The first time I watched this, I couldn’t put my finger on what exactly bothered me about them, but I just found them boring and annoying. The second time I started to realize, and now I’m sure: it’s because Becca’s actions make no sense to me. Are we supposed to like her or be on her side? She comes off as an insufferable megalomaniac, the savior complex gone wrong. The android you created destroyed the world, and you think an improved version of that same android is going to save it? Really? And you get a bunch of people killed just to preserve it?

And this is the big revelation about the Flame, and Becca as the first Commander. This is probably my least favorite plot point on the show, ever. What were the writers smoking every time they came up with some new element of the Grounder culture? None of it makes sense, but the chip, in particular, creates a bunch of plot holes. The fact that Grounders managed to forget all the technology, history, culture, just after 97 years (in fact, less – they’ve been like that for a while, presumably) never made any sense – but it is even harder to make sense of if the Commanders all have memories of a genius scientist from before the apocalypse. I have no idea if the show expects us to take the Grounder tradition and belief seriously, and why it romanticizes it so much. From what we can see, having memories of past Commanders never helped any of them be any wiser. So how exactly did the chip help anyone? Unless it was all just about the prospect of ALIE 2.0 one day helping put down the original ALIE.

Timeline: How much time did the villagers need to get from their village to Polis? That’s the amount of time that passed since the end of 3x06. This should mean there have been about two weeks since the beginning of the season, give or take a couple of days.

Body count:

One minor character death - Semet stabbed by Titus

The most infamous death on the show: Lexa, shot and deadly wounded by Titus

This does not exactly count as it happened way in the past, but the flashbacks covered the deaths of most of the population of Earth (six and a half billion people, according to what Becca says in 3x16), and then later, everyone from the Polaris station minus Becca.

Rating: 3/10

3x08 Terms and Conditions

Timeline: This episode seems to take place approximately at the same time as 3x07, in a different location and with a different set of characters, taking place fully in Arkadia, which is under Grounder blockade that they are promising to lift only if Pike is handed over to them.

While 3x07 didn’t feature any of the main cast characters other than Clarke, Octavia and Murphy (and was the first episode of the show that Bellamy didn’t appear in), this is the first episode without Clarke or Octavia. It’s a pretty solid and intense episode that focuses only on the growing tensions inside Arkadia, especially the mistrust and schemes as the two sides are spying on each other and luring each other into traps. It’s like a little political thriller about what happens when a community living in the state of war and isolation and increasing paranoia starts looking for enemies not just outside but inside, with sharp divides between friends, families and lovers.

This is also most of all a Bellamy-centric episode, which starts with him doubling down on his loyalty to Pike, and ends with him finally making the decision to turn against him – maybe not yet to the point of being ready to hand him over to the Grounders, but certainly enough to go behind his back in order to save his friends. Bellamy has looked unsure about Pike’s policies since 3x05 when he told Pike “We went too far” about the killing of the Grounder army, and after that he was obviously increasingly uncomfortable whenever he realized how far Pike was willing to go, but whenever someone (Kane, Octavia, Clarke) would try to change his mind, he would bring up some of the reasons why he joined Pike in the first place (mostly their history with the Grounders and the resulting distrust) and double down on his allegiance, maybe because, to admit to himself he was wrong, he would also have to admit that he’s made a terrible mistake again and killed people he didn’t need to kill. Monroe’s and Lacroix’s deaths in 3x06, apart from being Pike’s reason/justification to start looking for traitors within Arkadia – or rather, prove that the ‘traitor’ was Kane, and find those helping him – also seems to have convinced Bellamy to go along with it. Another thing that made him double down even more is the Grounders delivering their terms with threats and heads of the dead Arkadia guards who got caught over the line. Shooting them on the spot is certainly one of Bellamy’s most impulsive violent moments, but it’s not surprising he wouldn’t react well to that. But when Pike decides not just to keep Kane and the others imprisoned, as Bellamy thought he would (and as Pike first said he would do, after arresting Sinclair), but condemns Kane to death for treason and attempted murder (for trying to deliver him to the Grounders), it’s the crucial moment where you can see Bellamy start changing his mind: “Are we killing our own people now?”

Pike’s policy certainly escalated from 3x04 when he argued to the crowd that they shouldn’t look for enemies among their own, inside Arkadia (and counted Lincoln among those their own). Bellamy’s attempts to pacify Pike up to an extent rarely worked, - maybe the one time it did was when Bellamy managed to convince Pike that the sick Grounders who tried to escape should not be punished, because they just didn’t plan an escape, just saw the door and run, “just as we would do”. But he can’t prevent Pike from sentencing Sinclair and Lincoln, as leaders of the failed escape, to death alongside Kane.

So many Finn references in season 3 – by Raven, Jasper, and now Pike (just none from Clarke since season 2). Arguing with Kane, Pike – who doesn’t believe Grounders would keep their promise if he gave himself up - brings up the time when, as he says, they gave Finn to the Grounders in similar circumstances: “You surrendered one of the young lives you were sworn to protect…” but it ended in Grounders betraying them. I guess that’s the idea he got from the short summary he heard from Monty (who was in Mount Weather when everything with Finn went down), but that’s not what happened. Finn gave himself up, after everyone had been protecting him as long as they could. Why didn’t Kane correct him? This may be one of those times when the writers forgot the details of what happened in season 2. Anyway, considering his genuine desire to protect the teenagers from the Ark, which we later see in the flashbacks of 3x13, I wonder what Pike would have done if he had found out that Miller and Harper were one of the “traitors”, and if he would go as far as to cross that moral event horizon or if that would make him stop, but we won’t ever know. He did find out about Monty’s betrayal in the following episode, but in that case he had to promise Monty’s mom he wouldn’t hurt him.

The strain that the political divide puts on relationships is best seen in the familiar relationship between the Greens – Monty eventually helps his friends behind his mom’s back – and the romantic relationship between Miller and Bryan, because Bryan is from the Farm Station and loyal to Pike because he feels he owes him his life, and because Bryan plants a bug on Miller. Bryan doesn’t feel about himself for doing that to someone he loves, but Bellamy tries to reassure him that this kind o deception and betrayal is OK “if you are doing it to protect him”. Bryan isn’t sure: “What if I am the one he needs protection from?” Parallel to Bellamy’s actions regarding Clarke in 3x05.

Kane was initially against Harper’s suggestion that they knock out Pike and give him up to the Grounders to lift the blockade, citing moral reasons – that it would practically be murder: “This is not who we are” = “Maybe it should be”, replies Miller. Two seasons ago, Kane was the one arguing for ruthlessness in the name of survival, but now he’s on the opposite end. However, he eventually changes his mind and agrees with Miller and Harper, and tries to hand over Pike himself.

The big argument between Kane and Pike after Kane’s arrest is a clash of two different views of the world. Kane calls out Pike on having become a dictator, and points out to him that the world is not the way he sees it and that his way of doing things is destructive and has no future. But Pike is convinced that he is being realistic and doing what is necessary for survival of his people, and his arguments, including invoking the Ark laws, must remind Kane of his old self back in early season 1.

The City of Light stuff in this episode is really strong. Having this storyline focus on Raven, who is incredibly strong but has suffered so much both physically and emotionally, and Jasper, who has been broken the most by his suffering, was the best idea of season 3. Raven, under ALIE’s influence, recruits Jasper to help her to look for the second AI that ALIE is focused on finding, but instead, Jasper ends up being a catalyst for Raven to finally understand the nature of ALIE’s brainwashing and turn against her. Raven is still wearing Finn’s necklace, but it turns out she has forgotten everything about him, including nice memories, like her first kiss. ALIE doesn’t just remove the pain, she removes all important and emotional memories (Jaha has forgotten Wells, Jackson has forgotten his mother…).

Is this the first time we see Maya’s music player, which Jasper kept, or was he already using it in 3x01? Was that what he was using to play Violent Femmes? This time he’s playing Algiers, the song “Remains”. Maya had good taste in music.

Body count:

4 Arkadia guards killed off-screen by Grounders, who delivered their heads,

2 Grounder warriors (the same ones who delivered said heads) shot by Bellamy

Rating: 7/10

3x09 Stealing Fire

This episode is much worse than I remembered it. It’s not even bad, it’s just mediocre.

That’s in large part due to the Polis storyline (again), which is particularly bad here. In the aftermath of Lexa’s death, we finally find out the details about the way that new Commanders are made: we had already learned in 3x07 that what was described as something mystical and similar to reincarnation, is actually more of a Dollhouse thing, with people having computer chips in their heads with memories of dead people< and now we find out that the romanticized story about the Commander’s “spirit choosing its successor” is actually about kids being forced to fight and kill each other until only one remains. That’s extremely disturbing. (It also makes the line about the Commander’s spirit nonsensical and probably referring to superstition.)

In addition to being messed up, the Conclave is also a really stupid idea. Best line of the episode – Clarke pointing out to Titus just how stupid their succession plan is (Nightblood people are so rare, let them kill each other). It’s terrible that Ontari kills all the children, but, as Roan explicitly points out, those children were all (but one) going to die anyway, except it was going to be by each other’s hand.

This is where Ontari really gets into focus as the new villain. She’s my least favorite character on the show – what a trashy, one-dimensional, over-the-top, badly acted villain, and on top of it all, she’s so sexualized, that her scenes, especially every time she interacts with Murphy, look like I’m watching some trashy exploitation movie fantasy. They even show her bathing and acting seductively towards her future rape victim. WTF is up with that? She manages to bring down the quality of the show several notches every time she’s on screen.

Roan, now King Roan, also comes back, and is in his usual maybe-ally-maybe-not mode, and saves Clarke and Murphy, but also supports Ontari, because she’s Ice Nation, so he doesn’t care that she’s batsh*t. He justifies it by throwing Mount Weather into Clarke’s face, and I’m really sick and tired of everyone (Lexa, Titus, Roan) making that comparison WHICH DOES NOT ACTUALLY MAKE SENSE to justify their BS.

Speaking of bulls*itting, Titus is a piece of work: dude actually tries to blame Clarke for Lexa’s death: “I may have pulled the trigger, but you killed her”. Yeah, Clarke, how dare you be my intended murder victim and not die!

Clarke, of course, desperately tries to ensure that Ontari doesn’t actually become the Commander, because she’s made it clear that she wants to kill all Sky people (and is generally awful), so she finally manages to convince Titus to give her the Flame to go and find Luna, who they all think is the last Nightblood (how lucky that Clarke remembered that and that she asked Lexa about that in bed). Before that, there’s a lot of talk about how the Flame works – according to Titus, if a bad person like Ontari gets the Flame, it only enhances those bad qualities, all the more reason not to give her that. (Does that mean it works kind of like Dr Erskine’s serum?) According to Titus, Lexa was the “wisest and purest” of the four Commanders he’s served (and Titus is not even super old, so that gives you an idea that Commanders tend to die violently). I really don’t know if this is supposed to be objectively true – Lexa made quite a few really bad decisions, from starting an unnecessary war against the Delinquents and losing, to making a deal with the Mountain Men and betraying the Sky people, to expecting Sky people to accept her as their Commander afterwards; but she was said by Emerson to be different from most Commanders because she was making alliances, and we don’t know anything about the earlier Commanders, except that they probably constantly waged wars between clans, killed a lot of people through the “Blood must have blood” motto, and failed to mount any serious resistance against the Mountain Men…. So it’s entirely possible that most Commanders were terrible leaders. So having the Flame didn’t exactly help them, did it? The one thing that would have been useful, Becca’s technological and scientific knowledge, they somehow didn’t know about.

On the other hand, Titus is hardly objective – dude is very genuine (and rather creepy) in his pseudo-religious adoration of his mentee/daughter figure/Heda Lexa (who, we learn from Luna later in 3x14, was his favorite even as the novice in the Conclave), He even kills himself with Roan’s sword, refusing to give Ontari the Flame, with the last words “For Lexa”. I don’t doubt that he really did love her in his toxic, controlling and manipulative way.

Throughout seasons 2 and 3, Murphy’s role was basically to be thrown around between various random storylines, and have bad things happen to him, while making snarky remarks and talking about being a survivor. Murphy ending up as Ontari’s fake Flamekeeper – just because he happened to be there and see when Titus took the chip out of Lexa - is one of the most random things that’s happened on the show. You’d think that Grounders would make sure that there would be more people who knew to do that, since the position of the Flamekeeper is so important.

The storyline in Arkadia is more interesting but also really frustrating in many ways.

The one good thing that happens is the Kabby development. Faced with the likelihood of Kane being executed, Abby indirectly admits that she loves him, by saying: “I can’t do this again” (see the man she loves die), and later, when he has to escape from Arkadia for the time being, Kane kisses her. Most romantic relationships on the show are either rushed or developed off-screen, so it’s good to finally see one that can be called slow-burn = their chemistry was obvious back in season 1 -and has had genuine development, but hasn’t been endlessly dragged out (slow-burn by TV standards – it’s actually just normal-burn, since it has been less than six months since the Pilot).

The episode starts as a follow-up to the resolutions from the end of 3x08 – Bellamy and Monty come to Miller and Harper, offering help and trying to convince those two they are on their side now because they want to save Kane, Sinclair and Lincoln, though Miller and Harper are unsure if they should trust them – trust between the Delinquents has really been damaged by the events of the previous episodes. Harper teases Monty about his mother, apparently not believing that he could oppose her or go behind her back, which Monty indeed does to help his friends. Bellamy opts to set up a meeting with Octavia to help her save Lincoln.

The Green mother-son relationship is pretty complicated – Hannah knows Monty ‘betrayed’ Pike to help his friends, so she warns Monty to get away but claims she didn’t give him up… although she actually did, she just asked Pike to promise not to hurt Monty. (This reminds me of Abby turning Jake to Jaha.)

The relationship between Miller and Bryan has been strained due to everyone spying on each other, especially since Bryan put a bug on Miller, and Miller found out someone did it, since Bellamy had to remove the bug first when he came to talk to him. And it wasn’t hard to guess who put it there. Miller makes Bryan reveal it, or maybe his intent was more to see if Bryan would choose him over his political affiliation and loyalty to Pike. Which he does, but that was when the stakes were as high as Miller’s life. The relationship was surprisingly fine after this point, I guess Miller was fine with Bryan making his choice at this point.

On the other hand, the Blake sibling relationship doesn’t heal so easy but gets worse, because Octavia meets Bellamy’s offer of help but nothing but distrust and anger, electrocutes him and chains him up in a cave and declines his help, saying that she doesn’t need his help “for the first time in my life”. Not a good decision on her part, since Bellamy’s plan was much more likely to work without alerting Pike, since he still had Pike’s trust and could have used that, unlike Octavia’s plan to be the lone hero – which was a lot more dramatic, but resulted in Pike using the interned sick Grounders to blackmail Lincoln to come back, under threat of the others being executed instead. Was that a deliberate parallel between Octavia electrocuting and handcuffing Bellamy, Bellamy handcuffing Clarke, Clarke electrocuting him to escape, and between Octavia electrocuting Bellamy and Lincoln knocking out Octavia with a syringe at the end of the episode, so he can go back to save his people and stop her from coming with him? Very different situations, but there has been a lot of that going around between people who love each other.

Lincoln’s death was a heroic, martyr-like one; he chose to sacrifice himself for others, which is fully in-character for him. His last words and the choice of music (“Cloud” by Elias) were really good. But it’s really hard to talk about Lincoln’s death without thinking of all the ugly BTS drama connected to it, and the fact that he barely had any screentime or development in season 3, makes me a bit bitter, as does thinking about the interesting storylines he could have had.

It’s interesting that one of the things Ricky said in his post-season 3 interviews was that he thought moving the death of his character from the finale, when it was planned, to this early, undermined the story, because, in his opinion, it made Pike too much into a villain. I thought the show was already going maybe too much in that direction, and Pike is actually not portrayed in muhaha villain fashion at any point, not even here (his attitude is more like that which we’ve seen, for instance, in Lexa – I don’t particularly want to do this, but I must do it to demonstrate my authority - but it’s true that the one thing audience doesn’t forgive characters is killing a beloved major character. However, in hindsight, Lincoln would have to die at some point even without the BTS drama, so Octavia would start her dark development.

Timeline: The episode starts almost immediately after 3x08.

Body count:

Seven Nightblood children/novices, including Aden,

Titus - suicide

Lincoln, executed by Pike – this is first death of a character billed as main cast member since Finn in mid-season 2, and third overall (the first one was Wells, another infamous death of a black character on The 100)

Rating: 5/10

3x10 Fallen

This is one of the episodes that’s really tricky to rate, because it has one storyline that’s great (the confrontation between Raven and ALIE), one storyline that is really good but where I have some issues with how certain things are portrayed in the long run (Blake siblings), but the third one is worst thing the show has ever done.

The City of Light scenes in this episode are really strong. I’m amazed to realize just how often in season 3 that storyline was the best thing or one of the best things about an episode, even though I found its conclusion in the season 3 finale really underwhelming. ALIE messing with people’s minds and characters either succumbing or fighting her was the most interesting part of that plot (way more interesting than everyone eventually joining to fight the evil robot). Raven’s storyline in seasons 3 and 4 is generally pretty strong and original, you don’t often see a character fighting a battle with and in their brain.  Here, she tries to defeat ALIE, first by blocking her from her mind, and then she finds a way to block her permanently – through the wristbands that the 100 wore in season 1. (I’m not even going to pretend to understand Raven’s explanation how that’s supposed to work, it’s really not my field.) But Jaha finds and destroys them all (of course, there’s where the detail from 3x01 – Clarke noticing that Niylah had one of the wristbands – is going to come in).

This is where ALIE achieves her victory in Arkadia, managing to chip almost everyone. She wins the battle against Raven by making her relive all her most painful memories, from physical torture – like being drilled in Mount Weather, tortured in Tondc, her operation, to seeing Finn die. This kind of thing can break even the strongest person, and Raven breaks.

We learn that Jackson has also already taken the chip. We also get a bit of backstory on him – his painful memory that he forgot is the death of his mother Mary from an illness, and he became a doctor because he wanted to save people the way he couldn’t save her. (I’m still confused why everyone on the Ark, which was supposed to originate from 12 different nations. has English first names and why almost everyone has English last names as well, with rare exceptions like the Jahas, Raven Reyes and John Mbege, but that’s a part of this show’s problems with worldbuilding.)

ALIE forces Abby to take the chip, too , by making Raven cut her wrists and almost kill herself. Lindsey Morgan’s performance as Raven and ALIE in Raven’s body is amazing.

Jasper is the only one in Arkadia who isn’t chipped at this point, and he manages to escape in the Rover and save Raven, before he bumps into Clarke, which is very fortunate since Clarke is the one who knows where to find the wristbands. These are some Jasper’s last heroic moments, before he breaks and has an antiheroic role at the end of the season.

But thanks to the other two storylines, I tend to think of this episode as the one where engage in physical and sexual abuse of men, to questionable and varying portrayal on the show/responses from the fandom.

The Blake siblings relationship has always been dysfunctional, but it goes to another level here.. I get that Octavia is grieving and I have sympathy for her, but that does not excuse beating the crap out of your brother, and then not showing any remorse. Some people argue it’s not abuse because Bellamy allowed her to do it, asking Miller and others not to interfere. Just like he later let her treat him as a “hostage”, even though he obviously could have overpowered her any moment, since he did it immediately when he wanted to - after Pike told people to shoot Octavia in the leg. But if the genders were reversed, I very much doubt that the viewers would be that blase over a grieving male character dealing with his issues by brutally beating his sister bloody, or that they would be OK with it because she allowed him to do it because she loves him, or because “she deserved it” (yikes!). That justification is wrong and disturbing even if Bellamy were actually responsible for Lincoln’s death. Which is highly questionable at the very least. He did come to her and offer to help get Lincoln out, but she chose to distrust him, treat him as a villain and chain him up and went to rescue Lincoln on her own - but Bellamy’s plan was better and he had an opportunity to use Pike’s trust in him, just as he did in this episode. So, one could argue that if Bellamy should be considered partially responsible for Lincoln’s death (for unintentionally setting the chain of events in motion that ended with his death), so should Octavia. But I’m sure it’s much easier for Octavia to blame Bellamy than to blame herself or not have a punching bad to take out her pain on (since Pike is not there), and Bellamy also prefers it that way, both because he cares about Octavia’s well-being more than his own, and because he’s always feeling guilty over things.

This pretty much encapsulates the dysfunctional Blake sibling relationship, which never had a chance to be normal, due to the circumstances they were raised in. He is always doing things to protect her and being self-sacrificial, like a parent towards their child, and she’s blaming him for everything that goes wrong, assuming the worst of him the moment he is not only doing things she is in favor of, and taking things out on him at least half of the time

Unlike something else from another storyline in this episode, I don’t have a problem with how the beating is dealt with in the scene itself – it’s portrayed as a dark and disturbing moment, and Miller and the others are obviously upset. But the fact that, after this, it’s still all framed as Octavia having to forgive Bellamy things and having nothing to feel about or be forgiven for, really bugged me and made me unable to like Octavia again for a long time after this

I don’t know if the show was trying to fool the audience into thinking that Bellamy was really going to hand over Octavia to Pike and betray the rest of the group – I always found it really obvious it was a ploy. Anyone who knows Bellamy would have known he would have never prioiritize Pike over Octavia -  at the time he probably wouldn’t prioritize Octavia over anyone (it took six more years for him to be able not to always put her first), but it wasn’t obvious to Octavia, since she actually believed his ploy.

Octavia wasn’t the only one who treated Bellamy as a villain throughout 3x09-3x10. Kane was also doing that, calling him an enemy an insisting he couldn’t be trusted, and the rest listened to him. Which is interesting, since Bellamy and Monty came to Miller and Harper to offer help after Kane, Lincoln and Sinclair had been condemned to death, and Bellamy has been trying to help since, while everyone is apparently cool with Bryan, who only switched sides after Miller figured out that he was the one spying on him, because he wasn’t able to sacrifice his boyfriend. Maybe Kane, Octavia and the rest were hanging out in The 100 fandom in 2016 too much…    But I guess that’s just the way this show works – the more important a character is, the more blame and punishment they get from everyone and themselves and the more they need to work for redemption, so Clarke gets blamed the most and Bellamy gets blamed for things he didn’t do together with Clarke, while supporting and especially minor characters can get away with much more because the show doesn’t care enough to focus on them.

When Bellamy turns over Pike to the Grounders, which is to ensure peace and lifting of the blockade, Kane asks if he did it because it’s the right thing or for his sister, and when he doesn’t get the answer, points out that it matters, and „Until you understand that, you will still be lost“. Which is a good point, Bellamy does still need at this point to work out some things and not just make his decisions on the fact that he wants to protect Octavia… and Kane, and Lincoln, and Sinclair, and Harper and Miller (because the lives of all of those that made him decide to turn against Pike, though protecting Octavia is what made him decide to give up Pike to the Grounders. It should be about general principles rather than just protecting those you care about… So why is this one of the moments where I find Kane kind of irritating? There’s something about the way he gives his mentorship advice that grates on me at times, even if he’s making good points – he sometimes comes off kinda of condescending.

Unfortunately, this episode has another plot – everything in Polis with Ontari and Murphy. Even after everything else that I had a problem with this season, everything involving Ontari in this episode is utter trash and feels like it comes from some much cheesier and worse show. If that was the only thing I was judging this episode by, it would get a 1/10. Ontari in general is a terrible character – not because she’s evil, evil people can be good characters, but she’s not.

But that’s not all - he premise is completely nonsensical: she has to prove that she’s a real Commander by… reciting the names of all previous Commanders, which they said only a real Commander would know? What??! That’s like saying only a President of USA would know who the previous Presidents were. You don’t need to have a freaking chip with the memories of dead Presidents to know their names, LMAO.

After the show went two and a half seasons without any rape, but now we get that with Ontari/Murphy… Which wouldn’t be a problem, if the show really acknowledged that and treated it accordingly. But that doesn’t seem to be the case? On the one hand, they make it clear that she has full power over his life and she makes it clear she will kill him if he refuses to have sex with her (what exactly do people think that is? Yet I’ve seen articles describing Ontari as „Murphy’s former lover“!), and he will reiterate that a couple of times later… but the way the scene is portrayed is at odds with that – tit’s all sexualized, they even use the same music as in the Clarke/Niylah consensual sex scene in 3x01..it all feels very  It can’t be rape when it’s a dude being forced to have sex with hawt chick, har har, right? Ugh. The worst scene in show’s history.

Timeline: The amount of time that passed between since 3x09 and the end of this episode is the amount of time that Clarke needed to get from Polis to Arkadia - so probably about a day, which is the case with most episodes (except 3x03, which took place a week after 3x02, and I don’t know how much time passed between 3x05 and 3x06 – a day or a few days). I guess this means this takes place some 16-18 days since 3x01.

Body count:

Three Arkadia guards who were with Pike, shot by Grounder arrows

Shawn Gilmer, stabbed by Octavia – because of course she was going to take a chance to finish that dude.

(Not really body count since the poor guy didn’t die – I guess – but there’s a scene where Ontari gets to be Ontari and gorge out an emissary’s eyes, after he has questioned her authority.)

Rating: 4.5/10

[darkzorua100]

...I’m starting to think that after this episode, Dr. Kogami was let off pretty generous by SOL Technologies after what he did. I mean yeah he was kinda murdered by them but at least he lived on in the network while Ryoken took pretty good care of his physical body. Honestly I’m surprised they didn’t go after Ryoken, or any of the other Knights for that matter, but that’s a discussion for another time. Now watching Go’s complete 180 during 74, I’m getting Roger flashbacks, especially the whole Sergey sub plot. I knew we were going to be getting people hiveminded going down the line after what happened to Jin, but I was just expecting it only from Lightning’s side. Now we have to worry about SOL brainwashing people too? Oh great, how screwed is Akira now?

The episode starts off with us seeing this giant metal dome inside of SOL Technologies and at first I thought we were seeing Aqua’s cage but nope, it is Go Onizuka, strapped up in VR gear and wires, doing simulation duels against Playmaker, and apparently winning too and my god, he actually did it to himself 0-0 Last time we really saw Go was during his duel against Soulburner where he was basically bitching about how Playmaker and Soulburner are all powerful because they went through the trauma of the Hanoi Project. So what does he do after that? Apparently make his own Lost Incident from the looks of things. Go, what the actual f*ck?! Okay yeah sure, SOL Technologies could have made him do this against his will but with the way the show has be writing Go as of late, I’m 100% sure he did this of his own free will, which I think is now gone. After Go steps out of the dome, and we see him again chasing Earth and Aqua, he’s completely lifeless, not Jin levels of lifeless, but he’s definitely not himself. He’s got the brainwash eyes and everything. He traded muscle for brain power and honestly, it is rather disturbing. Don’t know if this is actually SOL controlling him or the after effects of his Lost Incident but either way, this is just a giant nope from me, especially considering what they could do to Akira now. Queen is speaking next week and I don’t think that a good thing at all now that Akira is technically working with Yusaku’s group. I’m honestly expecting him to get brainwashed now and have a Blue Girl and/or Ghost Girl duel against Akira in the future now. 

Oh speaking of which, I love how this episode can go from WTF horror to WTF hilarious instantly. After what Ryoken told Yusaku about how Lightning’s group is monitoring the network, everyone is just meeting each other in real life to inform them of such. Yusaku has Akira meet him in a warehouse to tell him the details, using a voice changer to hide his identity while Takeru is on look out from on top of another warehouse and I’m just laughing so hard at this because my god, this show. Take out the card game element and this show could be something completely different I swear. Also I just love Yusaku and Takeru’s hoodies. Everyone in this show look freaking amazing in hoods. Hey Ryoken, I know you had one when you were younger but do you have another one for your current size? The Disaster Trio looks amazing in hoodies sorry. It is not my fault the show made these three super pretty. Also looking back at it, I think we missed out on Ryoken wearing a hoodie to meet Yusaku and Kusanagi last episode. I mean yeah he had no reason to hide his identity from them but with the way Yusaku screamed his name as “Revolver”, he probably should have. Anyway, potential fanart aside, Akira passes on the information to Emma (who isn’t dead and isn’t making a big deal out of the fact that she was almost shot) and Aoi who make it their goal to find Earth and Aqua to get them on the side of humans. Meanwhile, Yusaku’s groups is also trying to find Earth get him on their side before Lightning can convince him to join his cause who they figured must be searching for Aqua.

Cut on over to Earth and yeah, after lots of searching, and I mean a lot of searching around Link Vrains, he finds Aqua, who indeed was captured by Lightning since she saw through his plans and didn’t want her spilling the beans to the other Ignises. I don’t know if it is because he didn’t have the time, or couldn’t do it himself without another Ignis help (Windy in this case), but I’m wondering why he didn’t just rewrite her code into joining his cause like he was trying to do with Ai? If he had Aqua on his side, Earth would automatically be on his side instead of being outnumber now like he is now after Aqua told Earth the details of her capture. And let me tell you, he was not happy to find out what Lightning has been doing, especially with the whole capturing Aqua thing. I do like how Aqua, with her ability, was just so quickly able to call Lightning out on his bullsh*t XD He’s not going to be to happy to find out that she’s free.

So after the exposition, Go shows up and we get one of the funniest moments of the entire episode. In order to protect Aqua from Go, Earth pushes her to her death and she’s goes failing to hell. Yeah I know Aqua can float and isn’t going to die from this but my god that’s one way to perfect your waifu I guess. I do like to note that when Playmaker and Soulburner go out to search for Earth, they end up splitting up to cover more ground with Soulburner taking the lower areas. I’m willing to bet that Soulburner and Flame are going to end up finding wherever it is that Aqua fell. 

So after throwing Aqua overboard, Earth makes Go stick around to duel him. We get the reveal of Go’s change with Playmaker and Ai being witnesses to the it and the battle. Earth takes a pretty good lead and seems to have the most control of the duel until Go Fusion Summons (guess no Synchros from him unless he ends up summoning one next episode) and the episode ends there. While the duel is going on, Aoi decides to log into the Vrains to see if she can do something, putting her into the grand scheme of things going forward, while Emma decides to play the role of Kusanagi for her team.

I can’t go into as much detail as I usually try to do when I feel like there is a lot to take away from a episode, since I have to get ready to leave soon, but I really do like how this episode has set things into motion from two groups on two different levels. Right now, on the higher level, we have Earth and Go fighting it out with Playmaker and Ai observing. On the lower level is Aqua who like I said will probably run into Soulburner and Flame. Blue Girl is also running around, trying to catch up to the top group, and we know from the cast list that Spectre will show up. It makes me wonder if Blue Girl will run into Spectre who tells her to head on down to find Aqua? If Aoi does turn out to be our female Lost Child, Spectre will know that Aoi is Aqua’s partner, since Revolver stated that him and the Knights know the identities of all the Lost Children and their partner Ignis, so maybe the Knights are trying to get the Lost Children to pair up with their respective Ignis in order to keep them from joining Lightning’s side? It would make sense why Spectre would show up to maybe help Earth. I made a comment on the cast list about why Revolver wasn’t in it when Spectre was but if we are currently dividing the groups up, he might actually be down in the lower levels, trying to help Soulburner, Flame, and Aqua when what I guess is either going to be Blood Shepherd or someone from Lightning’s group attacks them. I currently just want to know how far did Aqua fall because there is a level in Link Vrains called Tartarus and that speaks for itself. And if she does end up in Tartarus, oh boy for a whole different reason. Ask the Kingdom Hearts fandom on what I’m referring to there. If we find Aqua with golden eyes, yeah sorry, we got to kill the bitch. 

Last few things I like to say. The ED, like the previous one, is changing to reflect the current events. Go looks to have seen better days in one shot before he changes to think he’s Jesus or something. So what’s that say about some of our other characters in the future? I...let’s just say I’m concerned for a certain someone...you all know who I’m talking about. He’s on the sh*t list and you all know it. As for the preview, it takes about how Go has just fallen so badly that yeah...he kinda sold his soul to the devil to defeat Playmaker. Go needs a hobby is all that I’ll say to that, other then the fact that he seriously is just the unlikable version of Zarc. The guy who just wanted to entertain people at the beginning of the show who seriously just lost his mind as it went forward. He might have actually sold his soul to Zarc, card game Satan and all.

...I now have an idea for a one-shot. I don’t know if I will actually write it but the idea is interesting.