#The Happy Traitor

[fiasco95]

Regulus comes out wearing a black crossover skort, grey sleeveless crop top with black knee high laced up combat boots. To top it off he has make-up on; baby pink eyeshadow adorned with small yet sharp winged eyeliner. Tinted light red lipstick.

Regulus, twirling in place for James: So? Looks good?

James backing Regulus up to bathroom door he just came out of. Places his hand on the door next to his head. James quietly and hungrily eyes Regulus up and down.

Regulus, knowing what’s about to happen, turns around to open the door: No. Stop. This is my outfit for the concert you’re not-!

James pushes the door close.

James, without turning his head and continues to drink Regulus in: Love you, Pete. But get out.

Regulus, begging Peter with his eyes: No. Peter I swear to g-

Peter without having to be told twice already opening the front door: Will wait for you in the car! Mwah!

Regulus ended up being driven to the concert by James instead. James also has to buy Regulus 10 albums to compensate for ruining his outfit and makeup that day.

James is okay with that. (He will do it again.)

[ladystoneboobs]

the younger starklings about robb (robb the strong and brave big brother, the perfect heir, the fierce and unbeatable young wolf):

arya

bran

sansa

meanwhile, actual robb (robb the lord and then robb the kitn):

before arya ever promised to be strong by using robb as her benchmark, the definition of stark strength, ned had to remind robb to be strong as the ruling stark in winterfell. (strong for bran and rickon, the brothers he thought he failed by sending their would-be killer away, leading to his great moment of weakness in jeyne westerling's bed.) as his siblings' faith in his ultimate triumph held strong, even after the loss of the north, robb himself was struggling with despair.

as grenn once told sam, maybe everyone is just pretending to be brave, maybe that's how people become brave. robb was faking it to make it too, imitating his father's lordly attitude as bran later tried to imitate robb's. as his younger siblings remembered him as their shining example, robb was trying to live up to his father's example. not the ned who'd been in his circumstances, a teenager unexpectedly turned into a lord and fighting a war to save his family. no, ofc, he never knew that young ned. the ned he knew as his father, the standard to measure himself against, was an adult man in his mid-30s who'd ruled the north for ~15 years. but was that standard for a 15/16yo any more fair and valid an expectation than 8/9yo bran believing he was almost a man grown and holding himself to the standard of 15/16yo robb as robb's heir?

and the only person left close enough to see robb as the boy he still was died with him.

[rejectingrepublicans]

[its-ya-boi-cade]

[arkjamkson]

UHHHH IVE NEVER WRITTEN BEFORE, Don’t know how to tag and I didn’t proofread cause I’m real lazy. also kinda stupid, i probably used the same metaphors and similes like a million times. So uh, yeah. Read at your own discretion, I’ll tag what I think is important so read pls

TWS & MENTIONS—— Torture, blood, goreish, betrayal, heavy angst, overall gruesome and violent, mentions of relationship with simon ghost riley (implied but heavily), angst angst angst and more angst with a side of angst. Did I mention angst.

That’s it I think lmk if I missed any? Okay enjoy, hopefully!

Inspo and plot credit to users ghouljams & criminalamnesia !!!

————————————————————————

When your vision blurs and your eyes fog up— you can’t make sense out of the coarse pangs of pain running up your sides, down your legs and through your nose. For the first time in your life, it’s a weary weekend evening and you happen to be tied up to a splinting wooden chair in the middle of a dark warehouse. You think the red running down and dripping onto the floor is your own blood, but again, you can’t see. A fist collides against your stomach once, twice, then thrice, and finally relents.

"P…please— stop," You recognize your voice alongside the ringing in yours ears. Panicked— desperate. Your hands twitch behind your back on instinct, a deep familiar instinct to grab those hands and soothe your thumbs over those scared knuckles.

“Fuckin’ hell.” Price grumbles. This wasn’t what he wanted to happen— not your betrayal, not the torturing, and most insistently— not the feelings that hit him when it all came crashing down. The pang in his heart planted the thought and truth that you were practically family. He shakes his head before slamming a door behind him.

“Fuckin’ hell is right!” Simon yells back, slamming down his mask onto the table. He catches a look at your blood smeared over it and anger flares up and over his lips again.

You look at his face and you think you’ve never seen him make that expression. You’ve seen the best and worse of him. You’ve seen the face he makes when he’s afraid, the one he’s made when he cries and his shoulder shake with sobs. It scares you how foreign they he looks now. Ten feet can’t feel anymore distant than right now. Tears boil over onto your red and purple cheeks, voice cracking and quiet.

“I didn’t— I wouldn’t! I was with Gaz all the whole time, tell them Gaz!” You manage and don’t notice how through your fading conscience, you omit and slur words together. When Gaz averts his eyes you can’t help but wonder who’s the real traitor in this whole ordeal.

“You abandoned your post, left Sergeant Gaz to fend for himself, didn’t answer none of your fuckin’ callsigns,” Simon steps closer. You flinch.

“Why?” He yells. “Fuckin’ speak!” Fear runs rampant through your veins and you can’t recognize this man. This man is angry and unrecognizable, and you can’t for the life of you believe why.

“Please, Simon— I didn’t. I wouldn’t.” A few words go unsaid in the wake of pain.

“Good at lying, aren’t you?” Simon steps close. He’s quick to pull out his infamous sleek knife out one of his holders and slice it across your shoulder. Warm blood trickles down and you let out a cry so raw it hurts your throat. It hurts, burns— but nothing sears more than the look he gives you.

You shake your head and sob out. This can’t be seriously be happening. You were just returning from hiding after the Mexican cartel stormed you and Gaz’s recon location. You ran until your lungs gave out and when you thought you were safe, Johnny had tied your wrist behind your hands and forced you down onto your knees with a rougher than usual hand.

Confused, you panted out. A joke, perhaps? You look around with a small smile. It drops as quick as it formed and it’s almost comical how fast it all happened. One second your legs were aching from running and the next it was from the cut of a choppy knife. The hand that used it was just as choppy, rigid, tense.

“Please, I didn’t do it! I didn’t fucking do it!” Your voice shakes with hurt and anger. “Why won’t you all believe me!” Your voice tears out of your throat. Simon slams his hand down on a table and the noise beats fear into you and gets your heart pounding.

Silence ensues and you could’ve sworn it was worse than being tortured. Your own fucking force members. Eight years, rough and painful years, for one bark from Shephard to tear everything down and away from you.

It takes a few more beatings from Simon for it to get through your hazy mind—He’ll kill you; Right here, right now. Your history can’t save you in the face of betrayal.

When your body is bruised and raw with cuts and you can’t place anything anymore, only then are you granted a silence. Like a madman, captain Price swings open the door of the room he had cowered into.

“Fucking hell, Simon! Stop!” He pulls Simon’s arm back, voice taut and if you could see, you’d see the guilt in the blue of his eyes. His words are like a bite in the neck to everyone in the dark room.

“Shephard conned us. He— Fuck!” He grabs the bloody knife out of Simon’s hand and throws it onto the ground.

“He and graves fucked us over. Lied to Laswell and the rest of us ate it up like fucking dogs!” He yells. Frustration pounds guilt into his head.

Simon’s hand goes limp and you don’t get the satisfaction of seeing guilt seep and set into his face. It would’ve been funny had it not been due to the weight of it all.

“Shit. Shit, shit!” Price runs up to you, eyes frantic as he look over your wounds. Raw, teared and sliced open. Bruised beyond recognition.

You can’t even respond to his hands holding together some of your wounds, the panicked yells between Soap and Gaz, the pale silence from Simon. It’s too quick, you think. That or your mind is slowing down. Most likely the latter.

[ssparksflyy]

“you’re no good for me, but baby i want you, i want you” but it’s silena giggling as she’s reading these words from ur diary entry abt your big ass crush on luke castellan while ur struggling to keep your cool from across camp in one of the training areas as that very man is right behind you, fixing your fighting stance

[relic-seeker]

before pride month ends anyone wanna become a gay bug with me /joke

[sweetlullabyebye]

Confession attempt n°1 dearly beloved (scene under the cut)

[artist-ellen]

Me? Making odd marketing/promo images? It's more likely than you think. ;D

(I'm not good a promotional photos, I have zero equipment to do so... so Something like this? Not a bad solution if I do say so myself.)

https://linktr.ee/ellen.artistic

https://.amazon.com/Queens-Traitors-Fictional-Fashion-Coloring

[aletterinthenameofsanity]

Y'know I find it incredibly ironic that in my Chronicles of Narnia fic series, an interesting inversion in fate (and character development) finds the most rebellious among the most devoted to restoring Aslan’s kingdom, while the most faithful fell the furthest. Edmund turns back at the tree and becomes a king of Narnia alongside Caspian, helping guide it into a new golden age and earning the title of the Once and Future King, while Lucy literally becomes an eldritch goddess and is implied to have straight up killed Aslan at some point. Edmund gets his redemption arc and then some, becoming one of the greatest kings in Narnian history, securing the legacy of Aslan, while Lucy, the most faithful, falls further than even Lucifer and ends up usurping God himself, not because she desires power, but because she sees the way that Aslan uses it as unjust.

And yet...both of them are doing this for the same reason. To be a champion of the downtrodden. To correct injustice. To secure themselves and their own kingdoms so that it can never be stolen from them again.

Gotta love some foils/parallels!

[raayllum]

—Traitors (a.v.p)

[volvolts]

What is your avatar? I haven't seen this art in your blog?

its because it's not! i wanted to draw a vibe comic for young philip and drew this

and then this was the little comic

[rejectingrepublicans]

[elpeadro]

Part 1: The Good Ending

Part 2: The Bad, Tragic Ending

If the writers wanted CaitVi to be their canon OTP so bad, they had two ways of going about it…sike there was a secret third ending all along!

THE DISJUMBLED, TONAL MESS OF AN ENDING WE GOT:

Despite the pacing and dialogue issues of the first three episodes, I have nothing bad to say about Act 1’s ending. Caitlyn’s corruption arc, while extremely rushed in getting to this point given where her characterization was at in season 1, reaches its climax as we see just how far she has fallen: being willing to shoot a child, lashing out and hitting Vi, saying some incredibly bigoted things toward Vi, and, the pièce de résistance and one of my favorite scenes in the entire show, becoming the dictator of Piltover as the enforcers and Noxians beat their chests in salute to her. When Ambessa drapes that cloak over her shoulders and Caitlyn thumps her fist against her chest, it feels like the birth of a monster - and I mean that in the best way possible.

And she is a monster…except her actions are mostly confined to two music montages in episodes 3 and 4 and then shuffled off to the side for Warwick in Act 2 and the Machine Herald War in Act 3.

Just as it is a major problem when she goes from naive and priviledged, but good-hearted S1 Caitlyn to “let’s commit war crimes against a civilian population” S2 Caitlyn in the span of the Heavy is the Crown + Hellfire montages, it is even more a problem when the near-entirety of her dictator era is confined to the Paint the Town Blue montage. Because while I would begrudgingly accept the former being rushed to set up the latter’s payoff, the writers don’t pay it off.

At the end of episode 3, Caitlyn ascends to dictatorship. At the beginning of episode 4, she is questioning Ambessa, the justifications for martial law, and Maddie even suggests she could reinstate the council and remove herself as dictator. Can you say ‘jarring’?

That’s not how this works! You don’t write a good character having a fall from grace into a villain arc, then fast forward through the lowest and worst points of said arc. It’s like they made her a dictator just for the flavor it would give her character combined with the angst of her and Vi breaking up. Which, that’s bad writing process to begin with, but it’s especially bad when the writing has her BECOME A FASCIST DICTATOR.

You absolutely cannot evoke the political imagery of fascism only to not follow through on it. It is a conscious, deliberate choice to write and animate the end of episode 3 and the opening montage of episode 4 as they are presented.

In the Paint the Town Blue montage, we see: 

banners with the Kiramman crest being hung up all over the city

security checkpoints for Zaunites with armed enforcers standing watch

a prison with watchtowers and tall, barbed wire fences

enforcers acting as riot police (complete with riot shields)

Zaunites throwing Molotovs at said riot police

unarmed Zaunites running from armed enforcers

a Zaunite prisoner being photographed standing against a wall with a bag over their head (I really want to point this one out)

an enforcer stepping on the head of a Zaunite who is already laying on the ground and being handcuffed by another enforcer

Zaunite rebels hiding in a boarded up shop from armed enforcers

Zaunite prisoners being marched forward with their hands behind their heads

an enforcer beating someone

a line of Zaunites kneeling with their hands cuffed behind their backs as an enforcer beats another prisoner

Caitlyn being framed in shadow with a brooding, sullen look

graffiti of Jinx as a revolutionary figure waving a blue flag

In short, a dictator’s regime putting up propaganda posters and symbols, political repression by the state, mass imprisonment, police brutality, civilian resistance against an authoritarian state, and people rallying around a revolutionary symbol. And don’t forget the opening of episode 3 where we hear the recording of Cassandra Kiramman say “the people of the Undercity deserve to breathe” only for Caitlyn to immediately go “umm actually no they don’t; time to weaponize toxic, carcinogenic smog against them and revoke the most basic of human rights.”

(Side note: “Paint the Town Blue” as the song for this montage doesn’t feel right, tonally. A bit too energetic and idk, peppy? This is a montage showing an oppressed group of people being brutalized by a fascist state. Maybe go for something somber and/or horrifying? Or something that makes viewers sick from how angry they are at the sight? Just a thought.)

If the writers were going to do something with all of this, then they did a good job - song choice notwithstanding. 

The problem is they don’t. Not a single character confronts Caitlyn over the atrocities she committed.

When Vi sees her - the woman who broke her heart, who betrayed her, who became a dictator and stepped on the necks of Vi’s people for a year - she’s more annoyed and mad at Caitlyn for attacking her on accident than she is for, I don’t know, THE WHOLE DICTATOR THING? Season 1 Vi would’ve let Caitlyn absolutely have it, if not outright fought her for what she did to Vi’s city.

In what is one of the most stunning bits of character assassination I’ve seen, Jinx APOLOGIZES to Caitlyn for killing her mom.

Ekko got written out of the story to where he never interacted with Caitlyn this season, because if he was giving her shit in season 1, then he would’ve let her absolutely have it, even harder than Vi did.

Sevika got written out of the story entirely after episode 4.

Jayce never comments on it once he gets back.

Mel never comments on it once she gets back.

The writers try to trick us with Vi and Caitlyn’s argument in episode 8, and then Caitlyn’s one-sided venting to Jinx in the jail cell about how they can never repay their crimes, but those are both so weak and half-assed.

We never see Caitlyn realize the weight of her crimes. She needed to have a scene where she “wakes up” and is horrified at how far she’s fallen and all the terrible things she’s done. We don’t get that. She’s already woken up and questioning things when we see her for the first time in episode 4. Nor does she suffer from the guilt of said crimes. Again, I’m going to complain about the blatant Macbeth reference in her part of the intro credits, because how do you deliberately evoke fucking MACBETH for a character who undergoes a villain arc and commits these horrible actions only to not have her crumble under the weight of her sins…you know…like what happens in Macbeth.

So Caitlyn isn’t held accountable either externally or internally. This wouldn’t be a problem if handled properly. A villain doesn’t have to be held accountable nor realize they’re a bad person to be an effective, satisfying character.

The problem is the tone of everything that comes after the opening of episode 4.

It’s almost like the writers are actively trying to have Caitlyn commit as few on-screen, bad actions as possible during her dictator era. Really all she does is threaten Singed with the prison cells she has deemed too inhumane to use. (Oh yay! She hasn’t been as awful as she could have been). After that, she immediately flips back to Vi’s side to help save Warwick, has a very surface level argument so people can say “but Vi did call her out”, “wins” Vi’s affections over Jinx and has sex in a jail cell with Vi going down on her (that sex scene could be its own post god I hate it), gets to be one of the good guys in the war without any pushback, and gets her happy ending with Vi.

The framing of all of this, both textually and by word of God via the authors, is simply incompatible with the weight of her crimes. 

The jail cell scene is presented as Vi and Caitlyn reconnecting and finally coming together, complete with a happy pop song - ignoring Vi’s sister being clearly suicidal and Vi certainly having trauma from spending 7 years in prison where the warden beat her enough times that he didn’t bother keeping count, to say nothing of Caitlyn not having earned Vi’s trust and intimacy. (Also, Vi couldn’t have gotten any pleasure or attention? They couldn’t have taken it to an actual bed?)

The way Vi talks about herself going behind Caitlyn’s back is unhealthy and toxic. (“I went behind your back (for my sister, who has committed far less heinous crimes than you, who just watched the kid she sorta adopted die right in front of her and is now a mental wreck, after you locked her up using your unilateral power as dictator of Piltover.)”)

Vi being very, very emotionally fragile and in no way composed enough to have sex is ignored. (It shouldn’t have to be said, but if someone is this close to having a breakdown and has already punched the wall until their knuckles are bruised, you absolutely should not have sex with them when they’re in such a vulnerable state.)

The “I’m the dirt beneath your nails” line is framed as cutesy and romantic, when that’s actually a horrible, demeaning thing for someone who is a member of the oppressed class to say about herself when her partner is a member of the oppressor class and quite literally was a dictator that violated the human rights of people like Vi, called them animals, and said their blood made them this way.

And most importantly, Caitlyn never has to confront the fact that she became a dictator and did all of these terrible things while in power.

Which, I truly cannot believe I am having to say this, but if you aren’t going to touch on the fact that a protagonist went down a dark path and became a fascist dictator, DON’T WRITE HER BECOMING A FASCIST DICTATOR.

(Or you embrace the tragic, toxic nature of leaving that stuff unaddressed, as discussed in part two.)

TL;DR: the ending CaitVi got is framed as a happy ending, except Caitlyn didn’t put in any of the work for it to be anywhere near a happy, healthy relationship, so it comes across as hollow, forced, and tonally off.

[lowrezbonuslevel]

beauty and the beast (he's both)

The current king was born a stray and derided as a false royal, but he found the power to change his standing. He's a true master of dressing for the part! And you know what they say: one man's body horror is another man's magical girl transformation.

(rest of comic under cut)

Now he rules his own kingdom! (His people don't like him very much. Something about his mind being corrupted? Oh well.)

tl;dr I think often about how he changed his entire appearance the moment he touched power. Was it his first priority?

[watcherintheweyr]

desperately need people to understand that alicent is a victim but she’s also an abuser and a perpetrator

that she actively makes choices to harm other women because of jealousy and envy and the greed deep in her bones because submitting to suffering didn’t get her what those women fight to grasp for themselves.

she is absolutely a victim, in show.

that doesn’t change that she abused rhaenyra and her children, her own son, most likely helaena given how she flinches every time her mother touches her, and is actively weaponizing the patriarchy of westeros against other women- rhaenyra primarily, but also mysaria and dyana.

she isn’t the moral, righteous force of good that even she thinks she is, she’s a wounded woman directing all of the rot, pain, and fury inside her at the wrong people and forces.