#a straight up monster who went out of his way to manipulate an orphan for 4 years treating him like a friend and almost family only to then

[the-acid-pear]

there's something to be said about protagonists who jus get Worse as their series goes on but worse in a way that you're like "yeah i can maybe understand how we got here but i cannot justify it" like that sort of betrayal from a character you knew and loved becoming borderline irrecognizable. It's compelling

[bangtanmythology]

In The Name Of Song. Truth Uncovered.

About: Y/N finds out the whole story of what she has become and who those around her are. Her training starts and her and Jimin become the siblings he’s always known they were.

Brother!Jimin x Reader, Mermaid!Jimin, Angel!Yoongi. BTS Supernatural AU.

Words: 2.9K

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“I understand the parent’s side of things. My Great, Great Grandmother betrayed a group of witches by having an affair with the head witches’ husband, who was a human and had a child, so they cursed her. The curse meant that she would never be able to marry a regular human or another mermaid, if she did fall in love with any of these then she was destined to kill him with her voice. Right? So, when she sang a lullaby to her baby, the husband died. The baby, who was my great grandmother, ended up marrying an nasty, rebelling mermaid, their female baby was born half mermaid, the other half became what was known as a siren because the baby, our grandmother, used her powers for evil things, she’d lure sailors in, killing them and using them, never falling in love but instead simply killing them. When we use our siren form to lure people instead of making them fall in love, we will simply kill them. Grandma used the sailors and ended up having a baby with one of them, she abandoned this baby and another mermaid raised mum.” You rambled,

The story was beyond complicated, your head spinning round in circles as Jimin stared at you, nodding every so often with a focused look on his face. He reached his hand out and placed it gently on your ankle, in the few hours that Yoongi had left you alone with Jimin you came to realise that he was an extremely clingy person.

“Yes, that’s all correct and then you know the story with mum and dad, we are now indebted to the reapers but the devils and angels work along side these reapers and when an angel falls, instead of becoming a devil, they are stuck wandering around the earth however they retain some of their angel powers. Yoongi is a fallen angel because he betrayed Michael, the archangel. He has not told me what he did to this day. He is stuck on earth, he begged the reapers to kill him again, to take him from this world and place him as a devil in the next but they would not do it. He begged for a purpose, for something to do, for something to protect, they told him that his debt would be payed off if he spent his life watching over our families. They told him that when we turned 18 he had to bring us here and watch us, make sure that we weren’t causing harm to the reality that we were in, this is the 7th Reality, we’re from the first reality which is the main reality. He had some other mermaids brought here to train me, our grandmother is here, she’s going to help you, along with me, we’re going to train you.” Jimin’s voice was soothing, his words somehow sinking fully into you and making it seem as though maybe all of this would be okay. 

“Right, so he is a fallen angel, a bad one? He stares at me funny.” You mumbled, looking down at Jimin’s hand that was now gently running over the smaller grazes on your calves. Jimin looked up at you, shaking his head and laughing,

“He’s not bad, he was kicked out of the angel realm, that’s all, he’s grumpy, I mean he basically looks after this world all alone, the reapers went extinct 9 years ago and nobody else was sent to care for everything. Half of this world is dead, only magical creatures and hybrids live here. There’s human’s who are sent here to repent their sins, a lot of the creatures and hybrids feast on them. Werewolves and vampires are the worst, we have those in our reality too, they are aggressive, dangerous cannibals who feast on people and kill them. Of course, the werewolves and vampires here take care of those who are criminals. Quite often the ones sent here are either humans who commit serious crimes that they get put into life imprisonment or death row. We also have monsters who fight amongst themselves sent here. This is basically a training ground for a lot of people who are supernatural. We only stay here for a coupe of years and then we go back to the reality we are from. Originally, Yoongi was going to be sent to the 2nd reality to purge it, it is a hell reality, everything burns there, everything is crime and corruption. Of course, that would have been an awful place for us to be seeing as we’re weak to fire after all.” Jimin was rambling, his head now on your thighs as you ran your fingers through his hair, petting down the stray hairs that always seemed to stick up around his face.

“Well, if we’re weak to fire, what actually are our powers and what exactly am I doing here? How long will I be here?” you were looking around the cave, the water placing you in a trance as your eyes focused and unfocused on the shapes beneath it.

“Well, our skin is like that of a fish, of course when we are in our human form it doesn’t look like it or feel like it, but it definitely still is. You will notice that you’re now comforted when you are in the water, in fact if you really need to you can actually manipulate the water, nothing intricate, we can’t make patterns or anything but we can make ripples, waves, if we work together in groups we can even cause tsunamis. The ocean is where we are the strongest. I read a few books that say that if we meet another being, we can give them the ability to breath underwater which is obviously one of our strengths. Fire burns us severely, even the slightest touch will scald our skin and burn us, fire will kill us 3 times faster than it will kill anything else. When we sing, we attract others, they become enchanted by the sounds of our voices and we can lure them in, make them fall in love with us. I’ve done so with many girls, that’s why I have a bit of a reputation,” His voice trailed off at the end, his tone turning into a cheeky, playful tone that had you chuckling slightly. The small, adorable guy who was currently half asleep on your lap did not seem like he could be seducing anyone. His cheeky, lazy smile put doubt into you when I t came to his adorable clingy personality and you were sure that he could be a scary person when needed.

“I highly doubt that you are luring any women in with this clinginess Jimin, plus I haven’t sung a day in my life, nor will I, I sound like a trampled cat when I sing and it really isn’t pleasant,” Your voice was full of laughter and playfulness, mimicking his tone. The fever you had been burning up in had since disappeared and Yoongi explained that it was because he dumped you straight into the water as soon as you got here and you had transformed into your mermaid body, the reason behind the cuts, bruises and scrapes across your legs. You had not remembered anything because apparently it had been excruciating and Jimin convinced Yoongi to erase your memory of the pain.

“Hey! I lure plenty of women in I’ll have you know,” Jimin mumbled. You gazed down at him, a loud laugh escaping your mouth as his cheeks burned bright pink. He was half asleep, a huge smile of his face as your fingers continued carding through your hair.

“Y’know, both of us were left with parent’s that knew what we’d become, they’re humans who come from special families, protectors, they take in orphaned supernatural children and babies. I hated them when I first went there, I was 6, I understood what was going on, I wouldn’t talk to them, I lashed out, I did not want to be there. I wanted to go back to you, I wanted my little sister, I’ve known all these years that I had a sister, that I couldn’t contact her, that there was a little girl out there who needed me and I couldn’t do anything, I didn’t try hard enough, I’m a fai-“

“shut up. Do not talk like that Jimin. You couldn’t have done anything, we were separated for a reason, I didn’t know you existed, I was always protected, I never had problems. I used to be different you know, I used to be cheerful and naïve, I had someone in my life, an older brother figure, he protected me. Sure, he betrayed my trust but because of that I became careful, I stopped trusting people, I can analyse people, I closed myself off. Of course, he came back, and he’s kept his promise to this day, but I think something is weird about him. I think he’s like us, he disappears once a month for like a week or so and then he comes back always in a good mood and happy and he’s really athletic, strangely so, he’s really protective as well,” You were rambling, your brain trying to process that Seokjin may be something other than human. That everyone in your life might be more than human.

“He’s not like us, sounds like a werewolf to me,” Jimin sounded angry, his jaw clenching and unclenching to calm himself down, his fingers gripping his sweatpants.

“No way. You said that werewolves are nasty, evil creatures. Seokjin is lovely, he taught me to ride a bike, he took me to my first swimming lesson, he even spoke to my boyfriend when he embarrassed me and broke up with me in front of the whole school,” Your fingers had stilled in his hair, instead resting them on his forehead. Jimin let out a breathy laugh,

“Then he had an ulterior motive, he must have known about you being a mermaid, there is no way he’d do that purely for care for you. He knows more than he is giving up. Also, let me guess, you never saw that guy ever again?” Jimin was looking up at you, dark brown eyes shimmering, luminescent flecks lighting up his iris.

“Well no, I didn’t actually. That’s not like Seokjin, why would he use me for something like that, I knew him for 18 years, you know, I’ll bet that the years that he was gone was because he was here.” Your words were unsure and Jimin’s eyes were scanning over your face, a small pout set on his lips.

“Y/N, you don’t even believe what is coming out of your mouth right now. Anyway, I am sleepy, and I’d rather not sleep now, I’d like to be asleep and not out and about at night because I do not want an encounter with a vampire thank you very much.” Jimin was stretching his legs, raising himself to his feet, stretching his hand out to help you stand up with him. You stood with a groan, your legs protesting, knees feeling as though they were splitting in half from having been crossed for so long.

“How about I teach you how to change into your mermaid form, I mean, we only have a few hours of day light left and if you turn at night, you become a siren, not a mermaid. I’ve never seen one in person, but I’ve heard many rumours, apparently its not pretty, sorry Y/N.” Jimin had a big grin on his face, his previous radiant, happy attitude coming right back.

“You know what, I’d love that.” You smiled, your eyes looking around the cave, then down at your legs, wiggling your toes, patting the slightly damp floor of the cave with the sole of your foot. Your eyes flitted back up to meet Jimin’s.

“I have no idea how this works,” You chuckled, a nervousness creeping into your belly, he laughed and raised his hands above his head, intertwining his fingers and stretching them high above his head, leaning from side to side and then straight down, his hands touching the floor, his body surprisingly flexible.

“Well, first you’re going to need to be naked, there’s no way you can do it with clothes on. I won’t look, I promise, although, it’s not like I haven’t seen a naked woman before you know, and it’s not weird because all the mermaids have to see each other naked and also you’re my sister so I wont look at you in that way.” Jimin was laughing as he spoke, probably a reaction to the disgusted face you were giving him. You shook your head and pursed your lips.

“Definitely not, you need to close your eyes, then I’ll take my clothes off.” You told him, your voice pointed, echoing against the humid grey walls. He nodded his head and turned around, pulling his sweatpants down and jumping into the water, swimming a few feet away and keeping his back to you. You stood still for a moment, ensuring he was not going to turn around and embarrass you. Once he had been facing away from you for a few moments you began to undo your bikini top. Your brain suddenly remembered the words Yoongi had told you.

“Wait. Yoongi said that when I got here, he put me in the water and I transformed, does that mean that I was naked, and he put me back into my bikini?” You mumbled, cheeks heating up as you gripped the material of your bikini top in your hands. You saw Jimin shrug, his shoulders tucking into his neck as he raised his arms up in the air.

“when I got here, you were dressed but you definitely couldn’t have transformed with your clothes on. That’s one thing that Grandma made sure I never did.” He sounded bored and you quickly pushed your bottoms down your legs, stepping out of them and slowly lowering yourself into the water. You sighed as the pain in your legs seemed to disappear, the water seeping into your wounds as the water sparkled and the cuts, grazes and nicks in your skin seem to vanish slowly.

“erm, what’s happening to my legs?” You mumbled, your jaw hanging low as shock set into your body,

“Oh, well this water has been here for years, it’s connected to the sea of life, who even knows I don’t understand it either, this is the only body of water that does that, even the rest of the sea of life doesn’t do that,” He was smiling, you could tell by his tone. His hands clapped together as he mumbled a small ‘right then’ under his breath.

“okay, you need to picture your tail in your head. Close your eyes and imagine a fish, it is a beautiful, shiny fish, it is sparkling and swimming freely, zooming through the sea, it is happy, content with its life. Feel the water graze over its fins, it is warm, flowing in and out of coral and then, it becomes a human, with a beautiful, long tail.” His words are painting an exact picture into your head. You picture an emerald green fish, the colour of Jimin’s tail with golden colouration around its tail. It swam, shining, weaving between rocks, coral and other large fishes around it. The fish became engulfed by a bright light as a sharp shooting pain engulfed your legs and you could hear a faint voice.

“Keep focused, ignore the pain, focus on the fish,”

The bright light faded into a yellow hue, shortly replaced by a turquoise wave that seemed to break directly into your face before the wave disappeared. Small bubbles spread out in the water, a woman with beautiful green hair had her back to you, golden scales over her hips and waist, a large expanse of her back was clear, beautiful skin, the skin merging with the scales on the small of her back. Your eyes moved down to where her legs should have been, the golden scales faded into a beautiful emerald green, the gold returning down the sides of her beautiful, long tail. The bottom fin of her tail was a completely translucent golden colour, shimmering inside of the water. The fin was long, at least a half the size of the tail, split down the middle, two sides forming two curved, soft scalene triangle shapes that fluttered inside the water.

“you did it!”

Your eyes shot open, staring ahead of you. You felt the same, completely normal.

“No, I didn’t. I feel the same,” You mumbled, disappointment sinking into your features. Jimin laughed and shook his head, flicking his emerald tail as he swam towards you, reaching his hands out to grab at your feet, your arms stretch out behind you to balance yourself on the rocks behind you. His eyes glistened a brilliant green as they stared down at your tail.

Tail.

“oh my god! I did it!” You were screaming, the noise bouncing off the walls, a musical symphony piercing your ears, your eyes widened as you heard it, sending chills down yours and Jimin’s spines. You looked down at yourself, the beautiful gold and emerald tail you had seen in your mind was yours. Your chest was a translucent, shiny golden colour, it wasn’t scaly like your tail but more like the skin of a frog, glistening and smooth, your breasts completely covered in the golden colouring.

“Wow, this is amazing,” You laughed, a loud, airy laugh as you wiggled your tail out of Jimin’s grasp

[misstinfoilhat]

Whumptober 2019 #16: Scars- Bungou Stray Dogs

This is part 2 of this ----

“How can you do this to yourself?” Kunikida asked, deep in shock. Obviously, Dazai had been hiding something under his bandages. Self-mutilation had always been a distinct possibility, but not in his wildest dreams had Kunikida ever thought that it would be this bad. Nobody should be able to hurt themselves to this extent.

It should not be humanly possible, but then again...

A chill went down Kunkida's spine as he realized for the first time how the name of Dazai's ability actually seemed to fit the distraught man in front of him, in some sick, distorted kind of way. 

Maybe the idea of being in possession of no longer human was what fueled him, manipulating his body and mind into enduring these horrible actions which any sound mind should be unable to commit against oneself.

A faint shake of the head was the only response he could get out of the lethargic man and Kunikida decided to let it be for now.

If he pushed him too hard, it would only end in disaster. Even if Dazai always seemed to worm his way back to life, into the same annoyingly carefree and chipper 'bandage-wasting-suicidal-maniac' (which somehow had become a term of endearment around the agency) he usually was- this situation right here, right now, felt different.

It was real and right in front of him and uncensored and absolutely heart-wrenching.

So Kunikida kept quiet and continued cleaning out the wounds, using strips or stitching them together before covering them with excessive amounts of gauze while his thoughts were spiraling out of control about the days leading up to this...

...which had been utterly uneventful. Nothing to warn them of what was to come at all.

They had been just like any other days, weeks or months, with Dazai doing slightly dangerous things around the office, declaring them as possible suicide methods while wearing a huge grin on his face. Or, shamelessly getting down on his knees in front of any woman in his proximity that he deemed worthy, begging them to commit double suicide with him.

Teasing, agonizing Kunikida to no end, abrupting his thoroughly planned out schedule just to get a reaction- which Kunikida always would give him.

Pretending that Ranpo wasn't fiercely competitive towards him- letting the abilityless (and just a bit clueless), but never the less genius, detective solve several puzzles Dazai himself likely had been able to figure out the second he had laid his eyes on them.

And the way Dazai was huddled up in the corner of the room like a ferocious animal when Kunikida had come in...

“Who did you think I was?” Kunikida finally asked carefully. Dazai bearly stirred.

“Hm?” Dazai hummed, still a long way from his bathroom in his mind. But, he finally seemed to be waking up from the hypnotic daze he had been trapped inside.

“When I came in... You seemed to think I was someone else.”

“Oh.”

Dazai was weary and pale, probably from blood loss and sleeplessness. Kunikida had just begun to sew shut yet another gash on his arm, but the stinging, throbbing sensations that radiated from the self-inflicted wounds exceded far beyond Kunikida's precise stitches.

“I- I'm not sure,” Dazai answered sincerely, winching a little as Kunikida tied the first stitch at the next laceration.

“Sorry,” Kunikida muttered quietly, but Dazai only waved it off as not a big deal.

“I think I was somewhere else, in my mind, I mean,” Dazai explained before he scoffed drearily. “When you let yourself in, I was looking for a weapon I haven't borne in 5 years.”

At that, Kunikida raised an interested eyebrow, but continued his work meticulously all the while, hoping that his cryptic partner might continue this rarety of opening up if he didn't interfere too much.

Of course, Dazai didn't, which wasn't too surprising considering that he was the same man who had managed to keep his past position as one of the most powerful (not to mention dangerous) people of the Japanese underworld a secret for years. A position he had reached when he was still just a teenager.

How this suicidal, manically depressed goofball could manage such a thing, was something Kunikida would never be able to truly comprehend. It was likely something none of them would ever understand- they would never know how a scrawny child with a death wish had ended up as an executive in one of the most feared gangs in the world.

The only person in possession of those answers was currently seated on a toilet seat in front of him, bleeding from countless lacerations reaching from his throat to the soles of his feet.

So, Kunikida decided that he couldn't pounder on that part of Dazai's past anymore. It was simply too bizarre, and even if Dazai clearly was very haunted, maybe focusing on who Dazai was now- not who he used to be, could somehow pull him out of this self-destructive apathy.

Or maybe it's not Kunikida who needs to stop thinking of Dazai as a monster.

Kunikida cleared his throat, catching Dazai's glassy eyes that had previously stared blindly into his lap.

“Dazai, I know I might be the last person you'd want to hear something like this from, but I'm going to say it anyway... You have to stop blaming yourself for... whatever it is that's tearing you apart. You need to stop living in the past and start looking forward to the future... The past is clearly eating you alive, but the future just might save you.”

Dazai only looked at him. For a long time, while a small, pained smile slowly tugged at the corner of his mouth. Dejected, he let his hair fall in front of his eyes, and something in his expression shifted.

“Of course, Kunikida-kun... I have to stop dwelling on the past and focus on the future. It all makes sense now,” he murmured in an eery whisper, bitterness, and animosity dripping off his tongue like blood from a blade.

Like the blood, dripping from Dazai's hands, arms, legs, feet, torso, hips, chest, neck... Kunikida was clearly over his head in gaping wounds.

“Dazai...” Kunikida started to say, but Dazai jerked his head back up. Exhausted yet fiercely focused, half-lidded eyes peered holes through Kunikida, almost startling the usually stoic man out of his kneeled stance in front of him, needle still between two pieces of flesh, ready to tie it back together.

“No, you're absolutely right. If I just stop thinking about it, it will all go away. I will win back my will to live. This aching, gnawing, harrowing emptiness that makes me utterly unable to feel a single thing except for unbearable guilt, will just disappear! The loved ones of those I've tortured and killed will finally be at peace! It won't matter that I've orphaned countless children and simultaneously been the sole reason that the only man that could've saved them was killed-” his voice broke off in an abrupt, pained choke.

Trying to brace himself, he inhaled a sharp shuddering breath. Carefully exhaling, everything shattered again and he was left heaving on the toilet seat, somewhere in between a sob and hyper-ventilating.

“Shit, Dazai... I didn't mean...” Kunikida quickly finished the stitch he had been working on and cut the thread. He backed up, giving the struggling man some space.

“...do you really want to know why I do this to myself?” Dazai asked venomously, crouched down on himself in a way that Kunikida couldn't decide reminiscent a hug or a straight-jacket.

“It's my punishment. These are all my sins. No matter how many scars that litter my body, it will never be enough...” His voice was shaking, fragile and small, struggling to bear.

“I can't keep count of them, just like I lost count of all the people I've hurt... how many families I've destroyed... So, I wear these scars on my sleeves as a constant reminder of what I've done, and it will never be enough... Not until it kills me.”

Kunikida wanted to say something, anything.

...but what was there to say, really? Kunikida knew a thing or two about regret, that much was true. Still, what Dazai had done... What good was a regretful sinner to anyone? Or a dead sinner, for argument's sake...

It wouldn't change the past. It wouldn't change his wrongdoings.

“At least, you're helping people now, Dazai. It won't cancel all the other things out, but it does count for something.”

“...do you know what the worst part is, Kunikida?” Dazai asked, seemingly ignoring the blonde's attempt of encouragement.

“...the worst part is, that... even if what you say is true...” 

He was unable to finish that sentence the way he intended.

Again, Dazai choked on his words. He cleared his throat, fighting back tears (because he didn't deserve to cry- didn't deserve to grieve or morn or feel fucking sorry for himself-) before he was able to force out in a pained whisper, “...it won't bring him back.”

Kunikida had come closer now, leaning down with his hands hovering insecurely over Dazai's battered body, wanting, but lacking the courage to place the comforting touch he so wanted to set on his partner's shoulder.

Suddenly, Dazai yanked his head back up. His expression was tight, and he bit his lip hard enough to draw blood. His irises seemed to wobble from unshed tears as he grabbed onto the taller man's shirt.

At the blink of an eye, literally, Dazai's body betrayed him. One tear fell, two tears fell, and finally, the flood gates opened.

Kunikida stared horrified, paralyzed by the rare sight. Dazai was showing real, unfiltered emotions.

Quickly, the idealist shook himself out of his stupified immobilization and pulled the trembling man in, locking his arms around him tightly.

Dazai cried silently. The only sound coming from him was an occasional shuddering heave for air, and Kunikida only tightened his grip around him, whispering repeatedly in his ear that it was okay.

------------------

Kunikida came around his car to help Dazai out. He had reluctantly agreed to use the crutches that Kunikida had found inside the closet in Dazai's bedroom, to ease the pressure on his newly stitched feet. It had been the strict condition for driving him out here instead of to the infirmary.

Dazai stood, heavily leaned on them and peered over the graveyard he had lead them to. Kunikida stood beside him, trying to follow his gaze, which guided him towards an old, weeping willow. Its branches leaned tiredly over a sole gravestone at the absolute edge of the site, with a beautiful outlook over the ocean.

Dazai started to hobble his way towards the tree, the snow dancing around him like angles in an ethereal snowball fight before Kunikida was able to shake himself out of his musings and hurried to catch up to his partner.

“Wait up,” he said, raising his voice slightly before catching up to him. Dazai really didn't need to slow down- the trail was icy and Dazai was clearly struggling to make his way, with the crutches slipping off the path now and then- leaving him looking unstable and clumsy.

But, he didn't look back. He soldiered forward, aimed intently at the modest gravestone under the beautiful tree.

Once there, Dazai let himself crumble to the ground in front of it, reaching inside his pocket and pulling out a lighter. Using his bare hands, he dug out a small lantern from under the snow, and re-lit the light inside of it.

It immediately illuminated their surroundings, giving their evocative spot in the dim graveyard a serene, celestial glow.

Kunikida curiously leaned over to read the writing on the stone. It said Oda Sakunosuke- born October 26th, died January 10th...

...oh.

Reading further, the engraving read in beautiful cursive, “Be on the side that saves people. If both sides are the same, become a good man. Save the weak, and protect the orphans.”

Suddenly, he understood the significance this man had had on Dazai's life.

“It was his last words,” Dazai said calmly, apparently noticing Kunikida reading. “He is the reason I left the Port Mafia, to spend my life in the light.”

Kunikida nodded, captivated by the moment.

“You truly cared about this man, didn't you?” Kunikida stated severely. Dazai gave him a curt nod and concentrated his attention back to the tomb.

“He was a good man,” Dazai confirmed solemnly.

“I'm sure.”

“He...” Dazai started to say, but cut himself off.

Kunikida kept standing behind, watching the wind tearing at his partner's clothes, ruffling his hair in the frigid winter-breeze.

“...yes,” Dazai finally continued. “He was... He was too good for this world.”

The snow shifted behind him. Kunikida lowered into the snow by Dazai's side.

Together, they sat there in comfortable silence, quietly honoring the man's life on the anniversary of his death.

The air was chilly, and Kunikida felt the snow soaking through his trousers, but he was going to keep sitting there for as long as Dazai needed.

After some time, Dazai reached into his pocket and took out a small flask. He opened it, muttering a quiet “Kenpai',” and poured out a small amount onto his friend's grave, before bringing it to his own lips, taking a sip. He passed it along to Kunikida- who was driving, but still accepted it. “Kenpai,” Kunikida repeated with a nod, gesturing towards the grave in a small toast.

The whiskey burned on its way down his throat, warming him up a little.

After their drink, Dazai was finally starting to get up, and Kunikida hurried to his feet to help him out. He handed the crutches over to him and turned to leave.

Dazai stayed back for a moment, smiling faintly at his friends final resting place.

“See you soon, Odasaku,” he murmured silently, bowing his head in respect before following Kunikida's lead.

Kunikida didn't want to think about what he might have meant by that.

Calmly, they walked back towards the car, side by side. Dazai still struggled a bit but was keeping Kunikida's pace never the less.

“Thank you,” Kunikida uttered suddenly, and stopped. Confused, Dazai tilted his head and peered back at him.

“For what?”

“For showing me this. I really appreciate it. I know it's... sacred.”

Dazai lowered his gaze for a moment, before a sad sort of smile appeared on his lips.

“Oda deserves for people to know what a great man he was. I should be better about that, huh?”

Kunikida shrugged. “Maybe so, but I think an even better way to honor his memory, is to stop disappearing for days and hurting yourself. I didn't know Sakunosaku-san, but if he's half the man you claim him to be, I'm sure he wouldn't want that for you.”

Considering this for a moment, Dazai nodded his agreement as if it was a thought that had never occurred to him before.

“Yeah, you're probably right...”

“None of us do,” Kunikida pressed on.

They had arrived back at the car now. Dazai got in, while Kunikida ushered the crutches in the back before getting into the driver's seat.

Longingly, Dazai stared out of the window as they pulled out from the parking lot in front of the graveyard, heading back towards the solitude and pressing atmosphere of the dormitories. 

Somehow, Dazai dreaded it, afraid that his head would spiral back into that dark space. He already envisioned ripping open the countless amount of stitches one by one, fixating the pain from his inside to the outside of his body- letting crimson liquid escape, reminding him of the many screams of his defenseless victims as he stomped their heads onto the pavement and-

“Don't.”

A hand was placed on top of his own, and he realized that he was subconsciously picking at his stitches over the bandages. Dazai blinked several times, surprised that he had let his mask slip.

Kunikida sighed audibly.

“I'm sorry,” Dazai muttered, parting his hands.

“Don't apologize, just... Just don't do that.”

Ashamed of himself, embarrassed about his slip-up, Dazai kept quiet for a long time. The silence in the car felt pressing and uncomfortable- and Kunikida racked his brain for something to say. He didn't want to leave Dazai alone with his thoughts for too long.

“...if you don’t, I'll tape oven mitts to your hands, like a toddler with chickenpox.”

Dazai snorted, willingly taking the bait. 

“Actually, picking at your stitches soften the skin and make it scar less,” Dazai proclaimed matter of factly.

Kunikida side-glanced at his bandaged partner, for once, understanding where this was going-

“You should probably write that down,” Dazai smirked knowingly, receiving a chuckle in response, and a light smack across the head.

[guitarrod]

                                                Mixing Up The Medicine

 The fanfare is over as soon as you get back home. You traveled to the end of the world and you´re still home. By 1957, the world had shrunk in proportion to our ever bigger screens. You thought people would be less tolerant. You thought it would be harder to fool them. You play at being different people, you expect others to be real. Nothing is more claustrophobic than running away from home, going to the farthest stretches of the earth and be asked for your autograph. To your deep chagrin, it is even more deliberate in Japan. Back in Illinois, your fragile waif of a mother dreamed looking flakily at the sky while your father went binge-drinking and whore-fucking. Or at least, that´s how it would be shown, in a blockbuster. Starring as other people and averaging out suffering.  The role in life you played was that of a little boy acting for a living. Always the consummate professional.  

Mimicking people for laughs. Laughs as a wedge to break up the internal fighting  between your parents. Laughter as a pause for intermission.  A break. Laughter as a hail-mary attempt for wishful thinking.  

The problem still stands that movies and real life are separate. Not even as a kid you were at the slightest fooled about at its tomfoolery as you tried to bridge the two. Make one fantasize about the other. Not for fun, less for entertainment. It was survival. A talent honed and developed due to the otherwise neglect of your parents. It was before the world saw you enlarged in the big-screen. It was before life became larger-than-life. And, people, correspondingly, ever so smaller. If you could act your life out everything could be kept under control. Things would be kept to a simmer and you would only explode on cue.  If only when you were a kid it were possible for someone else to play-act yourself and another two actors to stand in for you parents. Life could be a play.  But in Japan, in 1957, you expected people to have a little more taste. At least on the other end of the world. You expected the world to be enormous enough and bigger than your own head.  It is an American sickness to imagine the rest of the world as exotic.

You knew who could play your mother. She´d be someone of a different time and place. Your mother looking out her kitchen window at a vast, level field of stunted prairie, cows mewing in the distance, horses lame, the dribble of spit on a dog´s snout. Equal mouthfuls of boredom for fodder.  The slow, repetitious, endless, emptiness while gazing out the kitchen window at the span of your life stuck with telephone poles marking the years you have lost, the adjacent field dotted by distant cows chewing and grazing and stunted  paralyzed while remaining in her mind forever like her dying sunlight.  In the flash of a camera it would stay still forever. Your husband and your sun around somewhere, your son would sometimes have to pick you up and carry you back home. She was wrong about her son, though. She was as wrong as people were back in the time when stars were just holes in the sky.  

Before Capote´s model 1957 magazine profile, The Duke in His Own Domain,exposed Marlon Brando, Brando had stated to the press his desire and intentions for Sayonara, the new movie he was headlining.  At a press conference that Brando conducted upon his Tokyo arrival,  Truman Capote states in his article  on Brando that “he informed some sixty reporters that he had signed on to do this role because ´it strikes very precisely at prejudices that serve to limit our progress toward a peaceful world. Underneath the romance, it attacks prejudices that exist on the part of the Japanese as well as on our part,´” and also he was doing the film because it would give him the “invaluable opportunity” of working with Joshua Logan, who could teach him what to do and what not to do.”

Capote fought hard for his trend-setting 1957 interview with Brando. He had in mind a further twist to the typical magazine profile. This piece would be a warm-up for what he called - apparently without irony – A “non-fiction novel”. It entailed, in essence, that he would set his reporting in the wider confines of story-telling. He would free up the magazine profile, flesh it out and spread it in a setting which originally was only allowed for drama. His magazine piece would  have the breadth of fiction-writing. It would consider development of character, a setting and a plot stone-set in reality. But, It wasn´t really inventing a new genre. It was more of a matter of redefining definitions.  He was loosening up unnecessary ties. He would combine prose writing with journalism. Smudging the division which separates both genres. Keeping his balance with one foot on romance writing and another on journalism.  He could make use of narrative tools to create drama in a non-fiction situation which the added convenience of already providing him with characters and plot. A non-fiction novel, a real-life story.  He made the best of both worlds, standing in the middle. The objective journalistic eye for detail would be subsumed by a first-person narrative that, while maintaining a safe distance from its subject, would substitute detachment for a cruel surgical account further molded and shaped for fiction-reader consumption. The finishing touches and improvements all sprinkled over for effect. The argument was that this effect would add, rather than reduce the realism of what was reported. We see everything through a focused eye and ear, not the unmanned, neutral camera of journalism.  Capote, instead, cuts thinly, piece by piece with hidden appetite something with more stuff than just gossip. He would make a book out of the premier Hollywood star.

During the whole event, we only see Capote in his description and observations of other people, and of Japan. We can only see  Capote indirectly, suggested by his tone, his off-handedness, his asides, his opinions,  his snickering. So much for objectivity… Capote´s journalism is that of a scientist who develops a taste for the monster he is cutting apart.  A psychopath sporting a white lab coat.

Both men had enough talent that manipulating others is simply second nature. They do not just possess the tricks of the trade. They are artists not tricksters. They are brilliant . And the very nature of their art implies distortion and deception. One is a Hollywood actor, the other is a writer trying not to be a hack.  They wear the same mask, the same costume.  It is a waiting game. The most disillusioned, the most hopeless is always victorious.  It is a token of the ones who least believe in others and in themselves.

Obscure, shaded, unsheltered men. Tender, vital men.  Marlon Brando and Truman Capote.  Tender men with their tender skin bruised. With injustice. With a mother having to be picked up in Chicago´s  skidrow  drunk out of her mind, or a little queer boy whose life has taught him how to sock somebody straight in the mouth. After being continuously slapped in the face while holding your arms out for a hug.  A punch to the stomach for expecting that hug. It is while he bleeds that a man comes of age. The shedding of blood is O.K. It comes by way of an education.

Hell was home. Paradise was the farthest from home you were able to go. In every street-smart criminal with an attitude and a sharp knife is a kid who once bit the dust.

Capote knew Brando. He was an outcast, by default, out of necessity almost by birth. Living in the outskirts of wherever he was, attempting not only to find his way, but to find a highway right to the heart of the matter. Oh, he knew Marlon Brando too well. A stranger in his family. A stranger to his world has only two options. He could lose, or he could concoct a win. An orphan being raised by people other than his parents, is nothing but a boy being raised by parents who were meant to have different kids. An orphan who despises the fact that he is an orphan will be expected to try to show the whole world that we are all orphans, and that our parents are just blood.   You are a child who lives with people who, no matter how they act, not matter how much people say they are your parents,  semblance and likeness in every way, you know you are living in a house of unstable landlords and strangers.   We are all orphans, in a way. We can be all orphans. You are the head of the orphanage, paid for by your suffering, paid for by your disillusionment. You are the key bearer. And by your credentials you will make a better mother and father than your own. You will be a better mom and dad to yourself. There is more in being a parent than neon nights, early morning road houses, sawdust and confetti strewn on the floor. Nude girls wanting to be actresses, lazy strip shows, boozing  and lipstick. A wailing demon-child, or a cold calculating one, is the result. The whole world is your home  and everyone in it is your extended family. People are all the same.

In this non-fiction fiction, instead of focusing on Brando, Capote is really focusing and writing about himself. Or, better said, he is creating his own persona, much like a fiction writer would create a character. And he will use all the tools available to a writer to make his characters as real as possible. His success in making Marlon Brando and his own persona believable can be compared to Brando´s brilliance in playing a role. The allure of a “non-fiction novel” is in the reader´s uncertainty about which part is fiction and which is real. After all, it allows for both. Furthermore, much like some first-person narratives in fiction or in the setting of a play, we are not exactly privy to his thoughts but, rather, to his language, his manner, the qualifications he makes about the objects and people populating his world.  Opinions and observations he shares with the reader, but not with Brando or any of the other characters. Capote expects to win us over as equals, equal snobs - we could only hope to be as such - and, with equal discrimination and discernment to know that Hollywood is nothing but cheap entertainment.  Like great media manipulators, Marlon Brando and Truman Capote know that the truth is in the making. And in this arena, it is the writer who has the last word.

The true-to-life Brando we are given is a naked man. One that is not, at least in the very  beginning,  aware that he is under such astute observation. Capote describes his mannerisms. We recognize them in the roles that Brando plays: “Resuming his ( Brando´s) position on the floor, he lolled his head against a pillow, drooped his eyelids, then shut them. It was as though he'd dozed off into a disturbing dream; his eyelids twitched, and when he spoke, his voice—an unemotional voice, in a way cultivated and genteel, yet surprisingly adolescent, a voice with a probing, asking, boyish quality—seemed to come from sleepy distances…”  The fact that we have seen Brando act in this fashion does not, in any way, whatsoever, diminish the writer´s artistry or make his job any easier. It is the struggle to find the exact words to fit into an internationally known and broadcasted acting performance, which ups the ante. It is much like having a known actor play a known person. It is able to encapsulate Brando by defining his art minutely. He does it so deftly that he does not only score points on Brando but establishes his art- writing – as superior to what our famous Holllywood boy can do on the screen. He gives us Brando as frosting, as the topping of all his other successes build up in his journalistic masterpiece.  

He strikes further “The voice went on, as though speaking to hear itself, an effect Brando's speech often has, for, like many persons who are intensely self-absorbed, he is something of a monologuist”.  Apparently Capote must have said something to Brando about his tendency to act perennially, pointing him out, throwing away his whole show. Capote is no cub reporter. He is no teen groupie. Capote is not a fan. We gather this not from anything said by Capote explicitly but by Brando´s reactions. Once again we see Capote through Brando. Or rather, we see Capote through Capote´s Brando´s impressions of Capote as written by Capote. It is at this junction, at this hour of the night that we are led to sense that Brando notices that he let his guard down too long. We are not shown how Capote talks and acts towards Brando because an interview is not an exchange between friends. Interviews are competitive fighting. No holds-barred.   Brando side-steps.  Lightens up the mood as is his wont.  Backing up defensively he jokes in self-deprecation "People around me never say anything," he says. "They just seem to want to hear what I have to say. That's why I do all the talking…" Capote must have sneered too early.

One should never bullshit a bullshitter, the saying goes. But that is if you are not prepared to win. To be king you must dethrone the other. To win the belt you got to beat the champ. And with genius iconic figures like Marlon Brando and Truman Capote, you can´t lose by points we have to be shunned off the ring.

During Capote´s strikes we cannot help but admire Brando´s cajoling.  The same imaginative, wit he uses when answering other reporter´s questions on acting. Anyone can act, some are better cheaters. And in the end, he is just another brick in Holllywood´s estate in the need to typecast personality, diminishing life into plot, and controlling behavior. He has the experience to know that fighting the system won´t take you very far. The way to not play the game is by making fun of it. Right at the outset of his career he was telling reporters he was only acting because he lacked the moral courage to refuse the money and look for real work.  There was really nothing to acting. People did it all the time. People did it in their sleep. Hollywood would just dream for you. When you´re caught smoking marijuana by a cop, you put on a performance. All we need to be actors is the opportunity provided. Some cry in funerals of forgotten friends. Some say they are having a fine morning before jumping off a cliff. As in any activity some have had the need to perfect it a bit more.  And looking for truth in an actor is like searching for love in a whorehouse. We all act, because we are all liars.  You got to admire his stance.

It only makes people wonder aloud how he is able to perform so well. And he dismisses the whole thing. Besides making critics like Capote feel like idiots. Instead of pleading your case you seem to agree with your critics, hitting them back on their heads with their critiques,  treating raves with dismissive contempt.  You not only block another sucker punch, you laugh them off the ring. But Capote can slither his way back in.  And he´ll give up a round or two for the benefit of  the snickering hypocrisy he thrives so much in while playing the pale buffoon.

On the other hand, what we have in Brando is the fullest embodiment of a technique, of the Method, as taught by Stanislavsky, on film. A method which believes in burrowing deep within yourself to look for answers to the problems involved with the impersonation of someone else´s feelings and actions. Understanding yourself as a treasure trove and having the charity to sacrifice it to exposure.  Your thoughts and feelings will back you up or prop you up like pegs on a wall to the point where you resurface as someone else.  In short, it is through self-knowledge that you learn about acting like somebody else. Some actors instead of subsuming their personality will make a career of doing the exact opposite. Marlon Brando sometimes believes in acting, sometimes he doesn´t. When he didn´t there would be a sort of symbiosis between what people thought of as the actor as a person with the role the actor played. Generally, the actor is not confused. Audiences and women will hope there is no difference. Men will find it easier guiding themselves on well-received performances than finding out for themselves how to be men.

To frustrate even more the situation, what is copied is a question of style, not of substance.  One cannot relive the role played in a specific movie since one´s life differs from the script. Who Marlon Brando really is might have or might not have been caught on tape, imagined, or been contrived by the viewing public who is spending a considerable time mimicking his mannerisms he was paid a healthy sum to play. In other words, Brando is the only man left laughing. Or snickering, because you can´t really laugh uproariously at such a situation when only you and your acting buddies know that kind of con is being set.

People started slouching in supermarkets, on dates, eating their meals. Marlon Brando became a performance, an institution. He could be a gun, or a badge. The orphan, Brando.  People stopped pronouncing words and preferred mumbling. It was taken for realism.

                                                                *****

By this time, you thought Japan was far enough from home. But it was too late. You were never given the chance to escape. After a world war, and two atom bombs and a need for cash, Japan not only was not so different anymore, even when it was still Japan it didn´t look too different. Hollywood had twisted it into mirroring what fawning eyes expected to see. The only ones who knew Japan now were very old people.

Besides thinking up exotic places, it is another American sickness to stereotype so hard that even what they see as diversity is well-defined in advance. They expect diversities where there are none and overlook the real ones by expecting them to be in the places they assign for them. It is a veritable strangled blow to kingdom come by Hollywood´s big screens.

Truman said that “Proportionately, the number of premises purveying strong liquor is higher than in New York, and the diversity of these saloons—which range from cozy bamboo closets accommodating four customers to many-storied, neon-hued temples of fun featuring, in accordance with the Japanese aptitude for imitation, cha-cha bands and rock ’n’ rollers and hillbilly quartets and chanteuses existentialistes and Oriental vocalists who sing Cole Porter songs with American Negro accents—is extraordinary.”, yet the Japanese probably don´t see eye to eye with him, because, despite pecuniary concerns, they might not be in on the joke. They are not acquainted with the value system that deems this a little ridiculous because nobody told them about it. Now, that is exotic.

Despite the good fun around the set, Sayonara was doomed because the producers and the director Joshua Logan could not employ  Japan´s famed Kabuki Theatre, the No players and the Bunraku puppeteers,  the Holllywood men were wishing for to provide a touch of antiquity and class.   But the same change that Capote noticed in Brando meeting him after 12 years - the lost vulnerability in his gaze, the rebel flash now tamed, the thirst and hunger of a man finally arriving at the opportunity to rise above himself and the whole world - vanquished.  A man who made his way in the stage, as the whole world saw his soul screaming.  As Pauline Kael said about his performance in Streetcar,   she was embarrassed for him. She thought she was watching a young man having a breakdown right on stage. And then she noticed that the young man was acting. Walked right off and went into the night.

He revealed your feelings scarred in his own face.  The spotlights and the headlines of Marlon Brando were for us all. At our best, we felt what he showed us, every day, on that stage, playing Streetcar . We needed a stage, a screen to show us what we were. The fact that we have in us blood that rushes through our bodies and keeps us alive.

Sayonara had big plans. At the onset of filming, spirits were high. It seemed that Hollywood was setting its spell, or its trap - depending if you´re standing East, or West - to prop up their staging of Michener´s  lovelorn romance  between an American  and a Japanese woman crushed as soon as it blossomed, by bigger outside forces way beyond their control. Politics. Two atom bombs. The fact that the Japanese are brown.

But, as it were, in spite of the cultural differences, the understanding and love between two people will always supersede the webs and traps and complexities of our world which inevitably interfere to thicken the plot, like fate would intercede in Greek plays.   Prejudice and racism is never personal. It is group-thinking. Politics are cold. And the teaser was having the Bunraku puppeters and the ancient art of the Kabuki theater as the bread and sausage  for another  Hollywood hotdog.

Japan at first said yes, but then reneged. Some Japanese applauded the decision claiming that they needed to protect their heritage, others denounced the decision as a step backwards, a forlorn cherishing of the past, a hindrance to a cosmopolitan future.  A milllenia-old  culture standing in front of a cosmopolitan shiny future.  Japan held its own and said no.  Negotiations would heat up as people thought to themselves of prices and tickets being sold.  In the meantime, Marlon Brando, the star, started losing interest.  And he started making fun of himself again. Maybe when he said it was a movie that would truly underscore cultural differences and racism on both sides, he was kidding his ass off. In fact, he now said  “ with a snort ‘Oh, ‘Sayonara,’ I love it! This wondrous hearts-and-flowers nonsense that was supposed to be a serious picture about Japan. So what difference does it make? I’m just doing it for the money anyway. Money to put in the kick for my own company.’”  If he was a bleeding heart the conman in him would provide bandages and band-aid.  Get back in the ring !

For a con man to be any good, he has to leave you guessing all the time if he is speaking the truth or not. To be totally convinced shortchanges the fun. Our con man just needs others to tend to believe in his con, or, in other words, to tend to believe in him. And the more convinced he is of his own act, the more real it would appear. A con can never be too obvious. But it cannot be so invisible in order for the people who have been conned not to know it. There is no con if nobody gets disillusioned. His biggest prize is your cherry.

“ I give up” says Brando after the initial hassle with governments and producers “. I’m going to walk through the part, and that’s that. Sometimes I think nobody knows the difference anyway. For the first few days on the set, I tried to act. But then I made an experiment. In this scene, I tried to do everything wrong I could think of. Grimaced and rolled my eyes, put in all kind of gestures and expressions that had no relation to the part I’m supposed to be playing. What did Logan say? He just said, ‘It’s wonderful. Print it!’”

Capote will not hesitate in presenting Brando in all his charm and glory. He states what Joshua Logan said “Marlon's the most exciting person I've met since Garbo. A genius.” He cites Elias Kazan´s praise “Marlon is just the best actor in the world.”  Despite making sure to distance himself,  “Since the most fervent of movie-star fans are the people who themselves work in the film industry, Brando was a subject of immense interest within the ranks of the "Sayonara", he does not underplay Brando´s  hold in the imagination of the public or his magnificent  creativity as an actor. He definitely wants to make sure that Brando is the world´s best actor in order to knock him down and  tries very hard  in making sure, we the public, won´t confuse him with what Brando calls “ the people with pencils”.   Downplaying Marlon Brando would not only minimize his certain incontrovertible victory that we anticipate, but would also be completely inconsistent with the opinions of anyone who has seen Brando act.  Apparently making a point of deflecting any high opinion Brando might make of him - the hiding reptile prone for the kill -  Capote´s  inquiries to Brando are purposefully obvious and Brando is lulled into handing out his pat answers. In other words, Capote makes him act, and relishes in the fact that Brando does not see that Capote knows the difference, letting him “talk and talk…”   “What’s so hot about New York?”  when asked about a return to the stage  “There aren’t any parts for me.”  In another hushed aside,  Capote smirks  “Stack them, and the playscripts offered him in any given season by hopeful Broadway managements might very well rise to a height exceeding the actor’s own.” The implication is obvious. Brando´s ego surpasses any attempt to limit him to a role.  We snicker with Capote, we are his accomplices.

Capote´s masterful and lasting journalistic piece begins almost haphazardly, as he  shows up a half-hour late to the interview he was actually barred from conducting by the movie´s director.  The fact that he showed up late is something he would like for us to know.  We are taken through his act as he hides his scalpel-sword under his coat, cutting and  sorting out inch by inch every expressive tissue of the “guileful salamander” turning him around, letting him crawl over his hand and under his sleeve. We sense the danger. But we have no idea about its size. We are led on. We take the risk.

“ Most Japanes girls giggle” is how Capote starts his article.

It is indirect and it is in keeping with his purported lack of interest with his subject´s  world while being atrociously snobbish, belittling  those who he simply doesn´t understand and seemingly finding no point in trying. A snob away from home loses his bearings. Capote the man, the persona, is left so unbalanced he needs to ridicule Japanese girls as silly uncontrollable gigglers who suffer, off and on, of a “ quaint hysteria”. He is not in Kansas anymore. It is very hard to be witty when you don´t speak the language.

The snob Capote has his whole act turned over, but he won´t spill a drop of his martini while he knows that there are still people listening. The reader is his crutch. The reader is his fellow traveler.  We are with him on his trip  away to Japan.  Yet Capote is more than a persona, he is a writer. A good writer. No good writer can really be a snob.

Like those Russian dolls in which bigger identical dolls cover smaller ones, Capote the writer is much bigger than Capote, the persona, to the point where the persona or the man cannot stain or diminish the writer in any way. They are two different beings, born out of different natures, and breadth. Capote the pompous snob is a cover, less of a cover, not even garment he can cover himself with, less than a nightie. Capote the writer towers over the snob.  As a writer he has to be able to disagree or even betray his pettiness.  Because a writer cannot have the same hang-ups as a man. It is impossible for a real writer to be a racist. It is impossible for a real writer to think of race as he sees color.

The writer does not care about snobbery, Hollywood or even Marlon Brando. All he cares about is his craft. He cares about turning a magazine profile into something bigger that will stand the test of age. His descriptions are masterly in their precision and conciseness. He is a conjurer waving his wand at the objects he chooses, making gems out of these objects that, when enchanted by their new description, make the old words seem mute.   A lesser writer needs to make a display of italics to make a spell of magic.

“The Miyako,” he writes “where about half of the ‘Sayonara’ company was staying, is the most prominent of the so-called Western-style hotels in Kyoto; the majority of its rooms are furnished with sturdy, if commonplace and cumbersome, European chairs and tables, beds and couches.” But, for the convenience of Japanese guests who prefer their own mode of décor while desiring the prestige of staying at the Miyako, or of those foreign travelers who yearn after authentic atmosphere yet are disinclined to endure the unheated rigors of a real Japanese inn, the Miyako maintains some suites decorated in the traditional manner, and it was in one of these that Brando had chosen to settle himself.” The slicing of irony made ever so thin. Yet the mockery is never an end to itself. Every analogy is many-layered, packed loosely.  Every metaphor reveals more and more with a simple change of the lens. Capote continues“ Without the overlying and underlying clutter of Brando's personal belongings, the rooms would have been textbook illustrations of the Japanese penchant for an ostentatious barrenness. (…. ) In these rooms, the divergent concepts of Japanese and Western decoration—the one seeking to impress by a lack of display, an absence of possession-exhibiting, the other intent on precisely the reverse—could both be observed, for Brando seemed unwilling to make use of the apartment's storage space, concealed behind sliding paper doors.”   Truman Capote is circling around, nearing one of his major themes. The forced bridging and conciliation of two very different cultures, Japanese and American, is not the only implication made out of the mess of a  faux-japanese hotel room occupied by an American, there is the further mess inside Brando´s head. And the confusion of suits and ties and jackets strewn around is just another portrayal of the clutter of a man trying to sort out his head in a world that seems to fit in the nutshell created by the movies he and others have starred in.   You have traveled all the way to Japan. Maybe the Japanese could oblige and be sincerely exotic.

It seems hysterical that to get away, Brando had to settle in Tahiti  at a time and a place where he was one of the first white many people there saw. A place where his acting and mannerisms played to an unshakable audience.  As another 50´s hero said over and over with the gravity that such foresight can bring in a man that is trying desperately to cling to a reality that is being lost,  someone not quite a man yet, an adolescent, but much more ancient, much older than the men who weren´t even able to witness their own betrayal and selling-out  - men of all trades and pretenses – the very doctors who, in their medical judgment, preferred to look for labels  to stick in their pill-boxes an adolescent who couldn’t´, because he simply didn´t want to,  couldn´t forget the world he glimpsed when was born in it, the world he knew existed, the world that made sense before he had to think about these things, the world he quite clearly saw as a child,  being sold without a sound, without a sparing look,  sold out, to every single bidder, in its every forgery, in the plays and in the movies, in the cries and fake laughter, in the faces people make and the words they all say, making absolute sense but  missing completely the heart  of the matter and the aim of a soul.  Fellow men who acted criminally augmenting his own disillusionment.  Grown men who fake. Phonies. There is no point, there is no credit in living and prospering in such a world.  A Marlon Brando or two would spring in a field of rye, but not any longer.  A highway has been paved in all directions and both Marlon and Truman helped set the concrete out of fear of being seen naked in the face of impeding laughter. Lest we forget, neither man lost their lives to the funny farm. They were both very successful. But I will wager anything that Marlon Brando is afraid of being fooled by that huge heart of his.

When he says he´ll “ walk through the part.” And when he says “ Sayonara – that wondrous hearts-and-flowers nonsense.”…

There wouldn´t be so many errors and mistakes made if the world lacked the technology for the totality and assault and control inherent in mass media.  And it is the nature of mass media to simplify and copy while stressing appearances. Nothing could be better for Hollywood and worse for the rest of us. Selling art like soap will only increase your stink.   From America to Japan and everywhere in between, you might have known someone as charismatic and intelligent as Marlon Brando.  You might even have known two. But it would never have crossed your mind to think he was larger-than-life. We were even lucky enough he took things seriously enough to try to be true in his own role-playing.  He played us with originality.

Now the problem is not only that the charm and charisma and intelligence have been downgraded and sold as merchandise, but that, exactly because of this very fact, it is impossible for you to meet another Marlon Brando. Too expensive. Talent is scarce, work is heavy. The CEOS of the entertainment industry have scoured their country for more fodder, Styrofoam puppets to substitute the people who first showed up with talent, after they ascertained, to their credit, that most people will not cry and holler at the incipience of this tragic state of affairs, but only in due time. When someone finally breaks down and has another fit, out of boredom, we will see if the talent is really all gone? And, anyway, who will stand up for us?  Lulled and disconnected enough in a place where art is appraised as pretty good if it is pretty real. That shouldn´t be a problem. It should be a given.

Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger.  

By 1957, this would sound absolutely absurd but these men became very well- paid actors. By the 80´s we were getting very screwed. The signs weren´t so hard to make out, even if they seemed normal. But how could we fool ourselves thinking that Industry-based, assembly line, conveyor belt,  mass entertainment ,commercial onslaught would not bite us in the ass. We may wish to consider, for instance the case of Steven Spielberg, and his comic-book, fast-food, cheap imaginings. Our kids cheering for an extra-terrestrial on a bike, pitching a toy, speak and spelling his way home and getting the fuck out. We liked our Speak-and-Spells.

Instead of climbing trees and running and swimming, kids had their fun ready-made and supplied to them. It saved them effort. And their parents knew they weren´t up to any mischief.

What we have is well-behavior posing as non-conformism. The whole world´s admiration will not fill every hole in your body. It won´t fill the holes in your music, in your smile, in your screams, in your head as a leather-jacket motorcycle boy, a hole in pin stripe suit, you are a hole winning Oscars sipping your champagne full of holes. A hole screaming its lungs out for everyone to stop for a while, step out of line.  

Copies sell just as well. And the screen focuses attention. And it is flat enough to acquiesce the horror.

Copies and posers don´t just stand for the real thing. They substitute it.  They stamp it out.  Any telling of people and reality is too messy and incongruous to fit in a story. Model performances are a forging of reality. Just like the limits and boundaries of a magazine profile which chooses which details will be summed up. Instead, it only abbreviates. Too much detail is excised and, to put it even more bluntly, it is not a question of downsizing , it is a question of wrongfully portraying reality. But you get your performance.  Life spills over, sticks out. Life swears and charges. Life never fits, if you make it real.

Our times have killed personality. Walk down the street and you can almost guess which people are pretending to be what roles in their heads. People live as if there were an invisible movie reel incessantly turned on while we fill in the blanks in our scripted lives by daydreaming parts of scenes and parts of people. We don´t even have to conjure up an actor or think clearly about some favorite scene in a movie, we automatically follow the rules and codes of the general narrative that glues us in. It seems impossible to stop this. And if one of us stopped pretending no one would notice, anyway.  Because of our love for a buck we have submitted our best feelings to a mass industry construction which keeps breaking new records of output and surplus cash.  In consequence, it has reduced human personality to style, it has diminished style to soap and it has sprayed soap into a stinking detergent. In Japan, Marlon Brando only goes out with glasses and a surgical mask. This in a country which bred people who committed kamikaze attacts to preserve their culture.  It wasn´t enough. Hollywood scared them witless. Brando is a star in Japan and he doesn´t know why and if you grill a Japanese groupie she may not know why either. While he is fucking them all into their “quaint hysteria”.

Capote said that Brando said “"Spencer Tracy is the kind of actor I like to watch. The way he holds back, holds back—then darts in to make his point,” . And to that we can safely infer that we are getting another clue about Truman Capote´s writing as he likes to talk about himself by way of answers to stupid questions. Much has been said about Capote´s pacing and rhythm in this article.  We are slowly pulled in, slightly interested, almost as if we were starting to play with an outmoded toy. But much like Brando we don´t quite put off Capote. There is a thread of interest that leads us on, until we are slowly entangled, quite aware of the knots being set but still we keep off putting off Capote. You drink a little sake, you listen to yourself talk, and he is close to you like your closest enemies, close like a brother, but you are far away from home and it is good enough to have someone you can talk to, while listening to yourself talking, someone who will listen to you and who knows your language. Someone who lingers.

Towards the end, it is hard to know if you are talking to yourself or to someone else.  Just like it is hard to separate fact from fiction, the truth from your imagination.

And the writing is masterful.

“I retired to the sun porch, (…)Below the windows, the hotel garden, with its ultra-simple and soigné arrangements of rock and tree, floated in the mists that crawl off Kyoto's waterways—for it is a watery city, crisscrossed with shallow rivers and cascading canals, dotted with pools as still as coiled snakes and mirthful little waterfalls that sound like Japanese girls giggling. Once the imperial capital and now the country's cultural museum, such an aesthetic treasure house that American bombers let it go unmolested during the war, Kyoto is surrounded by water, too; beyond the city's containing hills, thin roads run like causeways across the reflecting silver of flooded rice fields. That evening, despite the gliding mists, the blue encircling hills were discernible against the night, for the upper air had purity; a sky was there, stars were in it, and a scrap of moon. Some portions of the town could be seen. Nearest was a neighborhood of curving roofs. The dark façades of aristocratic houses fashioned from silky wood yet austere, northern, as secret-looking as any stone Siena palace. How brilliant they made the street lamps appear, and the doorway lanterns casting keen kimono colors—pink and orange, lemon and red. Farther away was a modern flatness—wide avenues and neon, a skyscraper of raw concrete that seemed less enduring, more perishable, than the papery dwellings stooping around it. Brando completed his call. Approaching the sun porch, he looked at me looking at the view. He said, "Have you been to Nara? Pretty interesting."

“I had, and yes, it was.” “Ancient, old-time Nara,’’ 

 “An hour's drive from Kyoto—a postcard town set in a show-place park. Here is the apotheosis of the Japanese genius for hypnotizing nature into unnatural behavior. The great shrine-infested park is a green salon where sheep graze, and herds of tame deer wander under trim pine trees and, like Venetian pigeons, gladly pose with honeymooning couples; where children yank the beards of unretaliating  goats; where old men wearing black capes with mink collars squat on the shores of lotus-quilted lakes and, by clapping their hands, summon swarms of fish, speckled and scarlet carp, fat, thick as trout, who allow their snouts to be tickled, then gobble the crumbs that the old men sprinkle. That this serpentless Eden should strongly appeal to Brando was a bit surprising. With his liberal taste for the off-trail and not-overly-trammelled, one might have thought he would be unresponsive to so ruly, subjugated a landscape. Then, as though apropos of Nara, he said, ‘Well, I'd like to be married. I want to have children.’ It was not, perhaps, the non sequitur it seemed; the gentle safety of Nara just could, by the association of ideas, suggest marriage, a family.

Marlon Brando died famous as one of Hollywood´s biggest lovers. He had slept with more than a thousand women. At the time of this article he had married Anna Kashfi who people at the time either had her conflated to be a Darjeeling-born Buddhist of the purest parentage or simply the daughter of an English couple born in India called O´Callaghan.

When finally asked about  James Dean, who tried to copy Brando on and off the screen, even going on to play the bongos, Brando said he hardly knew him. He was no friend of Dean. Once he met him in a party. Dean was striking it big. When he saw Brando step in he started showing off, acting just like him. Brando waited, embarrassed for him. Then he took him aside and told him that he should look for a psychiatrist, he had a few numbers he could call right away. “Listen to me, kid. Can´t you tell you´re sick?”

 My mother. I took care of her. Wanted to. She could have stayed in my apartment. She could have stayed in New York.

Before Brando became an actor, he was kicked out of school, expelled from the army, he needed food stamps, he was an elevator boy, he even thought of being a priest. As Capote quotes from hearsay “ He (Brando) needs to find something in life, something in himself, that is permanently true, and he needs to lay down his life for it. For such an intense personality, nothing less than that will do.”

"Marlon," Capote quotes his friend Elia Kazan, "is one of the gentlest people I've ever known. Possibly the gentlest." Kazan's remark had meaning when one observed Brando in the company of children. As far as he was concerned, Japan's youngest generation of lovely, lively, cherry-cheeked kids with bowlegs and bristling bangs—was always welcome to lark around the Sayonara   sets. He was good with the children, at ease, playful, appreciative; he seemed, indeed, their emotional contemporary, a co-conspirator. Moreover, the condoling expression, the slight look of dispensing charitable compassion, peculiar to his contemplation of some adults was absent from his eyes when he looked at a child.

People who knew him before he became Marlon Brando knew him as Bud. Some said that when living in New York and studying at the New School his apartment would always be filled with people. People who seemed to have strayed inside. Nobody seemed to know each other. There would be someone asleep, some girl dancing by herself , someone moving chess pieces on a board, but, from time to time, there was the drums, sound of drums everywhere. Bud banging away. He had fun, in intervals. He brooded by himself, and then he was wild, seemingly by himself, as well.

My mother. I tried so hard for her. My mother just broke like a piece of porcelain.

It is so very ordinary. The child of an alcoholic couple, Bud was raised in Libertyville, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. As a child he was eager, extroverted and fun-loving, always looking to compete playfully with whoever would hold their breath longest, for instance, or who could eat more hot dogs?  His parents were unstable. Both drank too much. They fought. Still just a boy, Bud would run away from home several times, always coming back. His father, as far as Bud thought, never really saw anything in him. He was always distant. Maybe the boy was just a burden, a millstone. Bud was defiant, protecting his mother. Maybe the boy reminded the father too much of himself.  Later on, as a teenager, Bud lived, ostensibly, the life of the All-American boy in the All-American high school , but the flip side as well, the muck-stained tragedy of taking mom to Alcoholic Anonymous, witnessing the dire reality of people striving and failing, drunks right outside the AA with worms crawling out of their bare legs, bums giving up on pleading for just a break. It was the flip side of Harry Truman´s  America, the squeaky clean America of preppies in polo shirts, even the motorcycle gangs he impersonated in The Wild One were too clean. Brando knew he was lying. As a teenager the extremes of his feelings for his parents were almost dialectical. His mother was a dreaming, lost, poetic, princess unsuited for the life of stink and mud his father sprang from, who in turn forced Bud to dig ditches and shovel manure.  Like another Hollywood leading man, Richard Burton, Bud grew out of manure.

“ Listen, already. It´s a disease.  Can´t you tell how sick you are…?”

Being insecure, feeling like the shovelfuls he sold for extra pay, even after first moving to New York, Marlon picked the kind of friends he thought he deserved. Nobody could ever match his intelligence, his brightness, his talents. They were low-lives who maybe would return his kindness. He seemed to be hiding, not from anyone, more from himself. He was covering himself up, slinking his way through the anonymous New York streets. It was too ordinary. Maybe it is because it is the stuff of real life, real people. Or maybe we just saw it in a movie.

His grandma said that Bud always seemed to pick on the cross-eyed girls for dates. The Hollywood heartthrob. When did he stop being Bud? Has he ever? Who is Marlon Brando? After he turned famous, he wanted, at least, to make one great movie about the disenfranchised, the dispossessed, the people who were swept away.

Capote twirls his scalpel. Snickers at the guileful salamander who can pretend to be anyone. Who has exchanged the dirt for Hollywood beds and linen. He looks at his dirty little worm, stone-faced. Almost losing his cover as a scientist, an unattached observer. They were too alike. The lies were too much, filling his head.  He quotes another person from hearsay:

“If you’ve noticed, Marlon can’t, won’t, talk to two people, simultaneously. He’ll never take part in a group conversation. It always has to be a cozy tête-à-tête—one person at a time. Which is necessary, I suppose if you use the same kind of charm on everyone. But even when you know that’s what he’s doing, it doesn’t matter. Because when your turn comes, he makes you feel you’re the only person in the room. In the world. Makes you feel that you’re under his protection and that your troubles and moods concern him deeply. You have to believe it; more than anyone I’ve known, he radiates sincerity. Afterward, you may ask yourself, ‘Is it an act?’ If so, what’s the point? What have you got to give him? Nothing except—and this is the point—affection.”

He had to have everything over–the-top for feeling so low. It is the same act, his friends would say. For compensation. Maybe Marlon Brando was really acting for himself.

“He listened to me. He knew he was sick. I gave him the name of an analyst, and he went. And at least his work improved(… ) this glorifying of James Dean is all wrong. That's why I believe the (Marlon´s) documentary about him could be important. To show he wasn't a hero; show what he really was—just a lost boy trying to find himself.”

“Listen, don´t you know how sick you really are …? 

It is too cruel. Because worse than the man who beats someone to a pulp is the man holding the camera.  Harder than the actual pain, is its reflection on the screen, the actor making faces, and meaning nothing.  The worst thing about bloody movies is that it is fake blood.  The screams are all out of synch, and so is the hurting.

Capote is ruthless, as if he blamed Brando. For Hollywood, for his fans, for pop culture, for something huge. Because the harshness, the manner in which he chose to end his piece is much like the scenes of a horror movie a child doesn´t want to see. But he makes you see. Your eyes are wide open. And then the child´s fear simmers down when he sees the credits. You see who did the lighting, the director, the names of the producers , the actors, everybody involved in the crew, and you learn that it was all make-believe.  You felt so much for nothing. Little by little, it carries on to real life. People learn about themselves watching actors interact on the screen instead of naturally interacting among themselves.

Worse than a drunk mother and drunk father is a movie about them. It is so empty, so fleshed-out. There is something blasphemous in reenacting something deeply felt. There is a lot of lying going on, when the aim is for us all to have the same specific feeling. And this is when you feel Capote´s rage. When you feel his hatred and anger that he can hardly control. The scientist letting all his grisly beasts out of the cage to devour each other in the lab. The man in a white coat punching and jabbing and slashing away at the dead body in the autopsy room. You want your child to be immune from all that you have seen, you want it to be different than when you were a kid, and you tell him fairy-tales at night when he can´t sleep, you tell him fairy-tales at night knowing against all hope that he will grow up and stop believing in your stories. You hope he sleeps right through the sufferings and pain in life which could turn him, perhaps, into a successful actor or leave him raging and mad kicking a wounded body, breaking bottles at night. And then, maybe when it is too late, you come to find that the worse that could happen is rather than going through the pain and troubles, your boy keeps believing in your dreams. Even if they are just imaginative fairy-tales. The real danger is losing yourself in a dream.

“She broke clean. Like a piece of porcelain. So I stopped caring.”

“You mad, crazy, fool…”

Capote is shameless. He was a monster. He was a HeHHHhwriter trying to make it. This is how he finishes his opponent off : “Brando has not forgotten Bud. When he speaks of the boy he was, the boy seems to inhabit him, as if time had done little to separate the man from the hurt, desiring child. “My father was indifferent to me,” he said. “Nothing I could do interested him, or pleased him. I’ve accepted that now. We’re friends now. We get along.” Over the past ten years, the elder Brando has supervised his son’s financial affairs; in addition to Pennebaker Productions, of which Mr. Brando, Sr., is an employee, they have been associated in a number of ventures, including a Nebraska grain-and-cattle ranch, in which a large percentage of the younger Brando’s earnings was invested. “But my mother was everything to me. A whole world. I tried so hard. I used to come home from school . . .” He hesitated, as though waiting for me to picture him:” And this is where the shock comes, when we feel the cut. Capote describes Marlon´s suffering as if he was giving scene directions, turning it obscene, as if he were illegitimating a man´s inner core of suffering. As if he was making another man´s life into a great big lie. “Bud, books under his arm, scuffling his way along an afternoon street. ‘There wouldn’t be anybody home. Nothing in the icebox.’  More lantern slides: empty rooms, a kitchen. ‘Then the telephone would ring. Somebody calling from some bar. And they’d say, ‘We’ve got a lady down here. You better come get her.’  Suddenly, Brando was silent. In silence the picture faded, or, rather, became fixed: Bud at the telephone. At last, the image moved again, leaped forward in time. Bud is eighteen, and:  ‘I thought if she loved me enough, trusted me enough, I thought, then we can be together, in New York; we’ll live together and I’ll take care of her. Once, later on, that really happened. She left my father and came to live with me. In New York, when I was in a play. I tried so hard. But my love wasn’t enough. She couldn’t care enough. She went back. And one day’—the flatness of his voice grew flatter, yet the emotional pitch ascended until one could discern like a sound within a sound, a wounded bewilderment—I didn’t care any more. She was there. In a room. Holding on to me. And I let her fall. Because I couldn’t take it any more—watch her breaking apart, in front of me, like a piece of porcelain. I stepped right over her. I walked right out. I was indifferent. Since then, I’ve been indifferent.’”  

Brando could be acting.  Maybe he is the real winner. For what it´s worth, if this was an act, I guess one could say he is the world´s best actor.

We can choose to see the curtain falling, or the screen fading to black. Or maybe we can read the article as Capote meant it. One or the other was left bowing for applause. The trick is to figure out which one. For their sake. After this article was printed in the Nov. 9, 1957 edition of the New Yorker, it quickly turned into a model for magazine writing. An early proponent of  New Journalism. Every student learned the ins and outs of it. A model of technique, a model of characterization. It is, in fact, a forgery. Just like a movie. Capote´s The Duke In His Domain is too careful and it is too deliberate. Locked within its limits and confines. It is much too neat. And life is rough. Life is rasp. Life is amplifier feedback. People stand out. People are spiky. Capote forges reality. Why not give it one more twist, choose a different ending, inconclusive, one that preceded the last few paragraphs.  One that is messy. One that pounds right through the drum skin. One that  thrills and loves. One that is alive.

 “ You know, it took me a long time before I was aware that that´s what I was – a big success.” said Brando “ I was so absorbed in myself, my own problems, I never looked around, took account. I used to walk in New York, miles and miles, walk in the streets late at night, and never see anything. I was never sure about acting, whether that was what I really wanted to do; I´m still not. Then, when I was in ‘Streetcar’ and it had been running a couple of months one night- dimly, dimly – I began to hear this ROAR!”

[pharaohsparklefists]

Episode 100, part 3! Continuing the story of how two emotionally damaged young boys somehow turned into two high-functioning but emotionally damaged teenagers. (While somewhere else, Yami has a really terrible duel.)

While we’ve been diving deep into the Kaiba brother’s traumatic past, you may have forgotten that a suspiciously similar genius boy is watching them on his array of floating screens and making smug genius-boy pronouncements about the illogical nature of emotions

excuse you this is SETO KAIBA we’re talking about, he only lets like maximum THREE emotions control him and no sentiments

(the emotions are disdain, anger, and DUEL)

Nah, like, for real, Kaiba has a LOT of emotions that he doesn’t like talking about and they do, for sure, control his (often outlandish) behaviour (and it’s damaging bullshit to conceptualise emotionality as the “opposite” of logic or intelligence btw) but more to the point...

YOU SURE DO SMILE A LOT FOR SOMEONE OSTENSIBLY EMOTIONLESS, you little bastard

Anyway, back in the apparently-accurate simulacrum of the not-yet-Kaiba brothers’ past, tiny!Seto sees the award ceremony of a chess tournament somehow being broadcast on actual television on the slowest news day imaginable, and not-so-tiny!Mokuba remembers how the next chapter of their lives came to pass, which he blames for...

seriously how is this chess tournament on the news?

... YEN ARE NOT EQUIVALENT TO DOLLARS. That’s ... I mean what even is that? That’s just a strangely-sized piece of paper. It’s smaller than a novelty cheque but much larger than an actual cheque. And it has a rosette on it?? ... IS IT YEN OR DOLLARS CAUSE THAT’S A HUGE DIFFERENCE! In 1995 (which is as far back as xe will go), $100,000 was  ¥10,216,277. Which would presumably do a lot more for an orphanage.

ANYWAY.

Seto immediately comes up with a reasonably straightforward plan.

And then specifies...

And I would just like to point out, no, Gozaburo did not turn Seto into a ruthless, ambitious, goal-driven, emotionally-unhealthy person with a desire for power. Seto IS a ruthless, ambitious, goal-driven, emotionally-unhealthy person with a desire for power and that came pre-packaged. If he wasn’t that way when living (presumably happily enough) with his alive parents, he was that way after a short period of time in the orphanage.

Look, Seto knows he’s smarter than most of the adults around him and is supremely confident in his ability to manipulate or force someone into adopting him and his brother. And not just anyone; a powerful person he’s never met before. That means Seto knows he could trivially identify a potential adoptive parent/family and “make” them adopt him and Mokuba. He could have chosen anyone, and he would have been confident in his ability to do this. So firstly, it isn’t a friendly, innocent way to think. He goes straight from “I want this” to “I’ll force someone to give it to me” with no “maybe I’ll ask nicely”. Secondly, his choice of target is the wealthiest, most powerful person he’s had access to while at the orphanage. If Seto had wanted to, he could have had him and Mokuba adopted by their friendliest, sweetest, most emotionally well-balanced teacher by the end of the first week. He sees Gozaburo Kaiba, targets him, researches him, manipulates him into what he wants, and forces his hand. He could have done that to anyone. Seto didn’t want a loving parent, or a stable parent, or a happy parent. He wanted a rich, powerful parent. 

Although when we see Gozaburo in the orphanage, it’s briefly believable he might actually be ... nice.

y’know, while he’s doing his best Santa impression

That kid in the greenish hoodie totally got off-brand Duel Monsters cards.

On the way back out, billionaire CEO chess-grandmaster Mr Important is accosted by two orphans who didn’t bother participating in the distribution of (apparently off-brand) toys. They’re after something much more valuable...

“Huh, yeah, that’s what I thought you said. Weird.”

Seto immediately follows it up with...

“If you win, we won’t bother you anymore. But if I win, you have to give me a mouth, I’ve lost mine.”

NATURALLY there has to be conditions? The “condition” is actually a bet or a game: beat me at chess or you have to adopt me. Seto is about to tell us, in a few minutes, that he’s exhaustively studied Gozaburo’s chess strategies. He did so between seeing him win the prize money and him showing up and distributing the gifts bought with the prize money, which is anywhere from a few days to a few months. I’m convinced Seto also spent time in this period studying Gozaburo as a person, and is deliberately framing his demand in business terms, because he’s determined that Gozaburo is most likely to respond to a proposed business deal, as opposed to a bet or a game or a plea.

Gozaburo, on the other hand, has no idea how much research and preparation went into this, crediting Seto’s boldness to ignorance...

BABY SETO SMIRK

... And it doesn’t even make sense. I guess they were all previous winners? Or he’s using “world champion” to mean “world-class chess player”.

Gozaburo considers refusing, but something about Seto impresses or intrigues him...

The orphanage guy, meanwhile, is about to expire from embarrassment, totally out of his depth, not even the first idea of what is proper orphanage etiquette when an orphan brazenly challenges a billionaire visitor to a chess game to determine legal guardianship for himself and his younger brother.

... I don’t even think that’s legal. I don’t think you’re ALLOWED adopt an orphan just because the orphan beat you at chess.

I mean, Duel Monsters, sure, their whole world would probably accept that as legit, but CHESS?

Gozaburo agrees to this legal-minefield of a challenge, but says he won’t go easy on Seto. Seto responds like a stone cold boss...

OOOOOOH boom.

not-so-tiny!Mokuba turns to not-tiny-at-all!Seto at this point and says, essentially, “you had this all figured out, didn’t you?”. At the time, tiny!Mokuba looks worried and unsure, but older!Mokuba knows his brother well enough to know that even tiny!Seto wouldn’t have done this if he hadn’t been absolutely sure of his strategy. And giant!Seto confirms it...

Good thing there was so little on TV that chess matches were apparently televised. He must have caught all the re-runs...

So Seto and Gozaburo sit down for an intense chess match to decide the not-yet-Kaiba brothers’ whole future....

... which would be a lot more dramatic if it wasn’t for the wonky Eevees and giant-headed dog and hot pink elephant drawings as the backdrop.

The game begins and giant!Seto remembers how he won...

... is this how chess works? I don’t know much about chess but I’m SURE this isn’t how chess works. Is it?? Like I know it’d be off-putting to see your own preferred strategy employed as an opener by a 9-year-old you’ve never met, but would that really be enough to beat a world champion chess player? I’m dubious.

Anyway, it’s at this point, about to watch his brother beat his adoptive father at chess and confirm the direction of their very traumatic childhood for a second time, that Mokuba gets upset. He thinks if Seto had just lost this chess game...

And he suddenly, irrationally, grabs the door handle, wishing to intercede, to somehow step into the actual past and prevent this from happening. Seto tries to stop him, pointing out that this is just a virtual illusion, a replica of memories and nothing more, but Mokuba yells back at him...

Which is ... not rational. Mokuba says that this change, from Seto “always smiling” to “losing his smile” happened when Gozaburo adopted them, but we’ve just watched their memories of the time between their parents dying and Gozaburo showing up, and Seto does smile, but certainly not all the time, or even a lot, or with any particular warmth or happiness. In fact, he specifically told Mokuba (apparently multiple times) that he was forcing himself to appear happy to spite the people who’d ruined their lives, and even at that, he’s frowning more than he’s smiling in these memories. Furthermore, post-Gozaburo, Seto DOES smile, and he smiles at Mokuba more than any other time (if you don’t count maniacal DUEL laughter, which I don’t). He smiled at him just a few minutes ago, reassuring him in the forest!

We tend to take Mokuba at his word about their childhood, because of the two brothers, he’s a lot more open about the past, but being willing to talk about something doesn’t mean you’re right about it (as any academic discussion session will teach you...). I think once they were in Gozaburo’s house, and things were worse (emotionally), and the only joy at all they had was in brief moments alone together, Mokuba idealised this time in the orphanage, when they were alone together all the time. He remembered every (anxious, faint) smile of Seto’s and in his (very young, unhappy) mind, those smiles were big and bright and all the time. And he probably doesn’t really remember the time before the orphanage very clearly, because he was so young, so the orphanage seemed better than it was, whereas Seto probably does remember pre-orphanage so remembers the orphanage phase more realistically as not-super-fun. I think Seto maybe did smile more in the orphanage than at Gozaburo’s, because Seto smiles to reassure Mokuba and let Mokuba know he’s in control, and he was desperately clinging to that role in the orphanage. 

Which means Mokuba, Seto’s only family in the world, wants Seto to “go back to being” something he never was. Mokuba says he “knew” the brother who was “always smiling”, but that version of Seto is a fiction, someone Mokuba built out of biased memories while unhappy. Mokuba does know that version of Seto, but that version of Seto was never the real Seto. Seto can’t go back to being someone he never was. He never was a smiling, happy person.

He was, however, always always always there to hold Mokuba’s hand.

awwww so sweet WHAT THE FUCK

[huntertales]

Part Four: Life is All About Balance. (Two and a Half Men S06E02)

Episode Summary: Sam and the reader investigate a case about missing babies whose parents are being murdered, and upon working a crime scene, discover a baby boy. Dean is called to help after the reader and Sam are unsure of what to do. However, while taking care of the orphaned child, the reader and Dean discover something about themselves—they make decent parents. Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader (Slight Sam x Reader) Word Count: 2,930.

Previous Part | Supernatural Rewrite Masterlist

It was an outcome that you never wanted to happen; Bobby John slipping out of your presence for good and knowing that what you'd been hearing about in whispers was true. But if you had been anywhere else, you might not just have a sore neck to deal with and a few overturned tables to help clean up. You were far better off than the three hunters that crossed paths with it and shot at the shifter, which only made it angry, prompting it to seek out a revenge that he thought fit. You let out a frustrated sigh and grabbed a few books up from the ground, trying to keep yourself busy as the others helped. Samuel and the younger Winchester quietly talked amongst themselves as they discussed what happened. You clutched the books close to your chest and walked over to them, knowing exactly that they were talking about.

“I’m pretty sure it’s not a myth now.” You whispered to them, keeping your voice down to keep this conversation private as you possibly could, knowing Dean was still around here. But he was much closer than you realized when you heard his footsteps approach you from behind after he heard every word that you had just said.

“What the hell was that thing?” Dean questioned all of you.

You bit your bottom lip as you became a bit hesitant to give him some of the information that you had been working on for the past several months. Samuel kept quiet for a moment, Sam was the one who thought it would be best to let his brother know when he nodded his head.

“We think it might have been an Alpha.” Samuel explained to the older Winchester. Dean looked at the man with a bit of a confused expression. “Like all monsters come from somewhere, right?”

“And you think this was the—”

“King shapeshifter. First one who spawned all the others.” You said, giving him more information about what was going on here. Dean suddenly seemed overwhelmed with what you had been dealing with, you knew the problem was only beginning here when you realized the things you had been reading about were true. “That’s why it was so strong. And why nothing would stop it.”

“And he said he could find the baby anywhere, that he could feel it. Like there’s a connection.” Samuel said. “That’s in the lore, too.”

“What the hell does it want with babies, anyway?” Dean asked.

"Maybe he wants to make a little tykes softball team." You said, cracking a joke. But it only ended up with you letting out a scoff, frustrated at the lack of answers you could give to him, and even yourself. "We don't know."

“Great.” Dean muttered underneath his breath. “Well, then, how do we kill it?”

You remained silent from the man's question as your eyes wandered away from him and the two other ones standing next to you. All of you remained silent for a moment as you settled your gaze on Samuel, letting him break the news. "I don't know if we can.”

+ + +

You and the boys helped clean up best that you possibly could, but a few broken chairs and some blood stains could be taken care of with the Campbells. The three of you had a long drive back to drop off Dean, back to his quiet life with the family. You slipped out into the quiet night and headed out first, walking to the car as you shoved your hands into your pocket, still a little bit disappointed at how tonight went. Dean followed behind, and while he wasn't happy with the outcome, his mind had been focused on something else lately. It'd been a long time since he'd been hunting with you and his brother. While it felt good to stretch some muscles that had grown sore, he felt a little bit...off. Like something wasn’t right when he thought back to what happened.

“You know, it’s funny.” Dean started a conversation when Sam shut the door behind him, giving the three of you some privacy away from the Campbell family. You looked over your shoulder in curiosity as Sam looked over his brother’s way. “You know, just before you ganked the shifter in the motel, he mentioned a father, which makes sense now because he meant the Alpha.”

“Huh.” Sam nodded his head as he let out a quiet chuckle, rethinking back as he headed for the driver’s side of the car. You headed for the backseat, but your eyes never left the man’s face. He had always been good at lying before he jumped into the pit. But, lately, he’d been so good at it, you couldn’t tell if he was telling the truth...or manipulating you straight to your face. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Did you hear him say that?” Dean asked, keeping his tone casual.

“I don’t know, kind of a hot moment, you know?” Sam wondered what these kind of questions had to do with anything when he gave the man a confused expression. “Why?”

"Oh, because if you heard him, then you knew the Alpha was out there. If you knew the Alpha was out there, then you knew he might come after the baby, in which you were using the baby as bait."  Dean said. He knew his little brother like the back of his hand. The man was a damn good hunter, but he wasn't reckless, at least...he thought. He looked away from his brother and to you for a moment to see your reaction. Your face scrunched up ever so slightly, not from the accusation that Dean was throwing his little brother’s way, but as if you were shocked to hear him do such a thing. Like he’d done this before. “So, was that the plan? To use the baby as bait?”

“Of course not.” was good at lying straight through his teeth. He looked at his little brother with a bit of a surprise from the accusation. You narrowed your eyes on the man, knowing it had to be truth. He’d done a lot more dangerous things over the past year.  “Dean, I just thought Samuel’s was the safest place. That’s all.”

Dean slowly nodded his head, trying to believe in the excuse that his little brother said as if it were the truth. But he felt like there was a little white nestled somewhere in there. He couldn't help himself but take his brother's word with a grain of salt. He watched as you opened up the backseat and slipped yourself inside, leaving the man alone with his thoughts for a moment. You looked at the man sitting in the driver’s seat in the rear view mirror, a glare settling into your expression at how easy lying came to him, and how little bit of remorse he felt.

+ + +

The oldest Winchester was back home by the early the next afternoon. He said his goodbyes to you and his brother. Before he went off, you stopped him, telling the man to get over whatever kind of fear that he may have. Whatever sort of thing that was holding him back needed to be let go. If only you knew the thing holding him back from living a happy life had been staring at him from the passenger's side seat. Honestly, he missed you, just as much as he missed his brother and hunting. It was familiar to him. His family before knew how to protect themselves from monsters, didn’t need a roof and four walls to call home. But you and his brother couldn’t give him the sort of happiness that Lisa and Ben gave to them.

Dean always thought he couldn't have a perfect balance of both words. He loved hunting, he always loved having a home to call his own. But he didn't know how to balance it. He didn't know how to choose one. If he stuck with hunting, then he'd have to give up a woman that he was starting to care for deeply, and put her son into some kind of terrible danger if he left them. But he couldn’t wait on the chances of seeing you and Sam on the rare occasion if you wanted to stop by. If you would ever. You and his brother were still your family. He couldn’t go from seeing the both of you every day of his life to visits that might never happen. Dean would drive himself crazy trying to find something that would make him happy. But there was one thing that he knew that needed to be done.

Lisa was quietly drying dishes in the kitchen when Dean stepped into the house and got himself settled in. She peered over her shoulder when she heard him come in, the man felt happy to see her smiling at him. Dean wandered over to the countertop as she continued on doing her task. Looking around the house, he noticed that there was someone missing.

“Where’s Ben?” Dean asked.

“Bike ride.” Lisa answered without much thought. She finished drying the cup and placed it down to the counter without much thought about her son's activity. She reached out to grab another wet dish, but when she noticed that Dean was awfully quiet and staring out the window to the front yard, she let out a quiet sigh, hoping this conversation wouldn't turn into what she'd been dreading. "What?"

Dean stared out the window for a few moments before he finally turned to face the woman. He walked over to the counter and placed his hands on the edges. He looked defeated from the constant thinking he’d been doing. And it was time to admit everything.

“I don’t know what to do here, Lis. I mean, if I knew for sure what the safest thing was, then I’d do it. Stay here and look after you guys...or get as far away as I possibly can. But I don’t know. I just don’t want history to repeat itself. You know?” Dean admitted the stresses that had been on his mind lately. Lisa looked at him from what she heard him say, and from the look at started to settle on her face, she knew exactly what he was getting at. “And I get what I’ve been doing lately. You know, with the yelling and the acting like a prison guard. It’s just—that’s not me.  And you tell yourself you’re not gonna be something, you know? My dad was exactly like this, all the time...and it’s scaring the hell out of me. I can’t lose you two.”

“Dean? Can I be honest?” She asked, circling around the countertop until she was standing next to him. The woman tapped her fingers against the granite and looked around at the boxes, trying to somehow get herself to discuss a conversation that was making her feel nervous. But it had to be done. “Maybe we’re safer with you here. Maybe gone. I don’t know. The one thing that I do know is that you’re not a construction worker. You’re a hunter. And now you know Y/N and your brother’s out there, things are different. You don’t want to be here, Dean.”

"Yes, I do." Dean admitted her the truth, but she knew there was more to him that he would say.

"Okay. I understand that. But you also wanna be there. You're white-knuckling it, living these two separate lives. I don’t want you to stay here because you feel like you feel obligated to keep us safe. Like you’re trying to keep yourself from repeating history. I'm not here to fill whatever sort of role you need me to be. I want you here because

want to be." Lisa said. She felt a little bit guilty for the way she was speaking to him, but it was what that needed to be said. “But I’m not gonna have this discussion every time that you leave. And this—this is just gonna keep happening. So I need you to go.”

"Yes, I do. I can't lose you and Ben." Dean said, almost pleading with her. This past year had been the happiest, most normal that he had felt in his entire life. But Lisa could see things that he wouldn't admit to, parts of him that he thought were terrible. She still wanted him the way he was. However, the man wasn't getting what she was trying to say. "You're saying hit the road."

“Dean, if there’s some rule that says this all has to be either-or...how about we break it?” Lisa grew a smile, getting to the suggestion she’d been thinking about while he was gone. “Me and Ben will be here, and you come when you can. Just...Just come in one piece, okay?”

“You really think we could pull something like that off?”

“It’s worth a shot, right?”

+ + +

Life was all about trying to find the perfect balance between work and play. Dean and Lisa had made a compromise that he thought would never be able to happen for him. Lisa would stay to live her happy, quiet life with her son while Dean was out on the road, saving the world from monsters. He promised her to stop by every once in awhile, giving him that little bit of normalcy that he craved his entire life. Not to mention, he got to see you and his brother, back again like the happy, dysfunctional one that you were. You and Sam had been hunting together for the past year. It would be nice to finally get the trio back together. But if only he realized how close the two of you had gotten without him around.

Sam was different since he'd gotten out of the pit, but you couldn’t put your finger on it of what it was. Some of it made you feel uneasy, but other times, when it came to him making decisions that the old him would have hesitated on, he would do it without thinking. He was still smart as you remembered, a damn good hunter, and had the same dry sense of humor that would make you laugh on occasion. But there were a few different things about him. Sort of like how you let him find an empty wooded area to park the car when Dean left and kissed him without a sense of urgency. And how he'd been working out a hell of a lot more than he had before. You weren't complaining one single bit. If there was one thing the Winchester men didn't lack, it was looks. Knowing that Dean was back home sharing a normal life with Lisa, you felt a little less guilty to let Sam slip his hands under your shirt.

You weren’t going to sulk in self pity anymore, Dean wasn’t going to focus on the past of what was. Because the both of you had people in your lives that filled the void in your heart—whether it be some normalcy, a craving for human touch. However, life doesn't always work out the way you wanted it to. And feelings weren't that easy to destroy.

Your eyes ripped themselves opened when you felt a vibration coming from your back pocket. It took both your hands to push Sam away for a moment to fetch out your phone and see who was texting you. Thinking it was one of the Campbells, you opened it up, only to find the name in the sender one you weren’t expecting to see. Sam’s eyes curiously wandered over to the screen, and when he saw who it was, you felt Sam's lips find their way to your neck, wanting to keep things moving along like how he wanted them.

Dean:

Call me when you get the chance. There's been a change of plans. Looks like you're not getting rid of me that easy, sweetheart.

You felt your heart suddenly pound roughly in your chest when you read the message, not even noticing that Sam was looming over your shoulder, reading it for himself. You attempted to write him back, Sam softly sank his teeth into the spot that always got you. You hit the send button as you quickly bit your bottom lip, trying your hardest not to say the wrong name.

Y/N:

Lisa get tired of you already? Haha. Kind of busy right now. I'll call you when I get the chance. :) xoxo.

Dean stared at the new text message longer than he should have. He felt himself inhale a deep breath from the way that you ended your text messages, back the way that you used to with him when the both of you were still in a relationship. But that was no longer. The two of you were best friends. Have been since birth. It felt good to be back in the Impala and on the open road, with a family that would be waiting for him. It's what he always wanted. Dean tucked his phone back into his jacket and got ready to turn on the Impala and hit the road. His eyes drifted to the rear view mirror to make sure he could see, but before he stepped on the gas pedal, he found his gaze lingering to the empty backseat...and just like that, he found himself going down memory lane. Dean felt his grip around the steering wheel suddenly grow tense.

Maybe this wasn’t going to be easy as he thought.

[Next Part]

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BASIC INFORMATION

FULL NAME: Stefano Enrico Paolo Giorgio Alessandro Luigi Eduardo Niccolò Teodoro Filippo Cristoforo Beniamino Patricio Giacomo Tomoso Eugenio Riccardo Giovanni Salvatore USED NAME: Stefan Salvatore PRONUNCIATION: ˈstɛfɑn sælvəˈtɔri MEANING:  Crown. The first Christian martyr.  REASONING: To me both of these make a lot of sense. Stefan for one has always been regal in a way, with an old fashioned set of morals, almost princely like, and it is also shown that his father had already written off Damon and put all of his expectations on him, even though he was the youngest son. And on the other side, Stefan has never been able to forgive himself for anything he’s done, and in a way that has fueled even more bad things to happen when he loses control. He couldn’t accept the fact he killed his father, or that he coerced Damon into finishing the transformation with him, and as a result he’s always seen things under this all or nothing light. He can’t allow himself to have good things, because in his head that leads to horrible mistakes, and he doesn’t deserve them. So even when he is happy, there is always a sense of guilt, and that he must punish himself in some way, or deny himself something to keep a sober head. In a big way, this strict fasting of any and all things he used to enjoy as a human, is what leads to his blood-lust and uncontrollable impulses whenever he lets go. He’s only been able to let go safely and enjoy himself truly without fears around Lexi. And on the other hand that also means he’s always willing to sacrifice himself for anyone he loves or deems more worthy  of living than he is. NICKNAME(S): Stef.  PREFERRED NAME(S): Stefan. BIRTH DATE: November 1st, 1846. TURN DATE: September 25th, 1864. AGE: 17 (before turned), 145 when he meets Elena Gilbert. ZODIAC: Scorpio. GENDER: Male. PRONOUNS: He/Him. ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: Biromantic. SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Bisexual. NATIONALITY: American, Italian descent. ETHNICITY: Caucasian. Half Italian, half French (from his mother’s side). CURRENT LOCATION: Mystic Falls, Virginia / verse dependent. LIVING CONDITIONS: Salvatore Boarding House, built in 1914, which he makes his somehwat permanent home after Damon kills their descendant, and owner, Zach Salvatore which passed the ownership to their name as the only Salvatores left / verse dependent. TITLE(S): The Pure of Heart. The Good Brother. Ripper of Monterey.

↬  INTRODUCTION VIDEO

BACKGROUND

BIRTH PLACE: Veritas State.  HOMETOWN: Mystic Falls, Virginia - USA. SOCIAL CLASS: The Salvatores were part of the Founding Families in Mystic Falls, that first colonized the region. They were land owners, and part of the upper class of the country. Stefan grew up in a very traditional catholic home, and was born and bred with the best South manners, education, and etiquette of the time.  EDUCATION LEVEL: Stefan never had a formal education in the way we think of it now, he was partially taught at home, and took some “Winter Sessions” at the local school as was custom, getting straight A’s then. However, he has always loved reading, and learning, and through the years, specially after being turned, he spent a lot of his time and energy on it. He knows all the classics, and has studied a lot of History, not to mention he attended several Ivy League schools during the years and specifically Harvard in the 1970′s. FATHER: Giuseppe Salvatore † (killed accidentally by Stefan in 1864) MOTHER: Lillian Salvatore (turned 1858) SIBLING(S): Damon Salvatore (turned 1864 also by Katherine Pierce) BIRTH ORDER: Damon - Stefan (seven years younger). CHILDREN: None. PET(S): A horse named Mezzanotte (Midnight in Italian) before being turned. OTHER IMPORTANT RELATIONSHIPS: Katherine Pierce, aka Katerina Petrova. Stefan met Katherine in 1864 when he was a 17 year old, still human. She came to Mystic Falls under the guise of escaping the Civil War, and sought refuge with the Salvatore family for unknown reasons. Perhaps because the doppelganger fate urged her to find Stefan. Immediately upon meeting, they felt a connection, at the time, Damon was away being trained for war, and Stefan and Katherine spent some time being the only ones in the house aside from his father and servants. Despite this, Stefan didn’t make a move, too gentlemanly to do so, until his brother came back and started to compete with him for Katherine’s attentions, which the latter encouraged, in part because she was scared of how significant her time with Stefan was becoming, in part simply because she wanted to. This caused a rift between them, and despite their seven year difference, Stefan and Damon spent the year chasing after the girl and while Damon was soon aware of her being a vampire, Stefan didn’t know it for a long time. When he did find out, it was after confessing his love for her, and Katherine then compelled him to not be afraid of it, and of her. The founding families had always been aware of mythical creatures, and soon enough Giuseppe started to get suspicious about this “innocent orphan girl” he’d taken in.  Eventually it all led to the conclusion of Katherine’s long con plan of faking her death, and while Stefan and Damon were unknowingly attempting to save her from it, their father shot both of them in cold blood, believing they were no longer his sons if they had been corrupted by a monster. Which in turn began their transition into vampires, having had Katherine’s blood in their system for a while, once they woke up and she was gone. For nearly a century and a half Stefan believed Katherine was dead, until one day when visiting Mystic Falls, he spotted Elena Gilbert in town and was shaken. Once he found out she was human, he decided to return to the town for good, for a while, and get to know her, hoping maybe that she could be the girl he’d thought Katherine was, the one he fell in love with once. His relationship with her is extremely complicated, she was the vampire who turned him, his first love, his first time, and for a long time he blamed all of the subsequent bad events of his life on her. And yet he can’t help it but be attracted towards her whenever she is around, and at the end, Stefan feels sorry for her, for the girl she was under her masks, the one he had loved, and who had suffered terribly. Even if he isn’t sure if he can ever fully forgive her. Elena Gilbert. As mentioned above, when Stefan first meets Elena his soul nearly leaves his body as he believes he’s seeing Katherine again after 120+ years. After he confirms she is human, however, when he saves her from drowning in the same car accident that kills her parents, he sees more than that. He sees her being kind, and loving, and friendly and warm, and he is fascinated by her. He decides then that he needs to meet her, get to know her, see if someone with Katherine’s face can truly be as opposite from her as she seems to. It takes him a short time to realize it is definitely real, and the more he gets to know her, the more he falls in love with all of the ways in which Elena is different from Katherine. In the way she doesn’t feel the need to manipulate him, to make him play games for her attention, to put on a show for him or make him compete. He always feels enough around her. More than that, in the way she respects everyone around her but still has an incredible moral and backbone and strength of character. He falls in love with the person she is, and it’s even better than what he felt when he was human, because it’s even more intense and because it’s fully and freely reciprocated. That is why he does his best to make none of the mistakes Katherine did with him, and be as honest and open with Elena as he can and as every opportunity comes. He sees the shadows in her from her loss and feels guilty that he wasn’t able to save her entire family, and so he does his best to make her as happy as possible, and be there for her whenever she needs her, whilst trying to never suffocate her or control her in anyway shape or form, the way he had been once. Alexia Branson, aka Lexi. Stefan first met Lexi in 1864, shortly after his transformation. The Civil War was still going, Damon had disappeared, and after losing control and killing his father, and his brother promising eternal misery to him, Stefan went off the handles for the first time. With so much death all around, he had an easy time gorging on his bloodlust and not being noticed. One night he tried to attack Lexi, not realizing she was a vampire just like him, an older and stronger one at that. She soon saw what was happening to him, and took it upon herself to detox him off of human blood and teach him how to turn his humanity switch back on and control his impulses. It worked, and after a while they went their separate ways. In 1912 Stefan returned to Mystic Falls for his half nephew’s funeral, and there he met Damon again for the first time in 50 years. They eventually went out for a drink, only Damon coerced Stefan into drinking human blood, and after he did, Stefan’s guilt for killing Marianna Lockwood led him into turning his switch off again and going back to his Ripper lifestyle. Lexi found him again in 1922, and then began his rehabilitation once more. Stefan had been at it for a long time, so it took her over a decade to get him well again and off of human blood, in 1935. It was also in that Ripper period that Stefan started being called the Ripper of Monterey when he went on a killing spree of a whole village in Monterey. After that, Stefan and Lexi kept a close contact. They saw each other at least every year, and on his birthday for one night, Lexi always took Stefan to have fun and be able to let go without being afraid of what he could do. She is the only one with whom he can be himself and not feel guilt over it. She makes him feel safe, even from himself. Lexi, shortly after being turned, lost her brother, who was 16 then, due to humans coming after her and getting her brother killed instead. It is implied that she took a liking to Stefan as the brother she had lost, and that she made it her mission to look after him because she had sworn to herself that she would look after her little brother and wasn’t able to. They have a true connection, and consider each other family. Damon killed her in 2009. Lillian Salvatore. Stefan was told his mother passed away in 1858, when he was 12 years old, and he believed that for the next 155 years. Lily, as they called her, was told to have supposedly been a much kinder parent than her husband, while still human. When Stefan was 5 years old, she tried to run with her sons, by stealing money from her husband’s bureau, but he caught the act, and proceeded to blame it on Damon. Stefan then watched his brother be brutally punished at Thanksgiving dinner when he denied having stolen anything, and his mother didn’t stop it. In 1858, she became very sick with tuberculosis. Stefan spent most of this time, being 12 years old, terrified of the knowledge his mother was going to die, and trying to deny it as much as he could, so he saw very little of her on that last year, even though he spent most of the time away procuring things for her and that she would like. At some point, his father sent her away to a clinic, where she ended up dying. As a child, Stefan blamed himself for her death, since his father sent him to procure a medicine in town for her, and when he came back she had already been been taken to the clinic. He thought, then, that if he had come back faster he might have saved her, when it was his father who did not want him there for her leaving, probably thinking he would be a nuisance to it, due to his adoration of her. It is indicated that Stefan might have been her favorite son, and the sentiment was mutual, Damon calling him “mama’s boy” once, despite the fact that his good obedient nature meant that his father also tended to “favor” him growing up. That year, a vampire nurse gave Lily vampire blood just before she died of consumption, and so she was turned. When she realized what she had become, she faked her own death and vanished, then succumbing to a ripper lifestyle.

IMPORTANT EVENTS: In  1851 (five years old) Stefan watched his father burn Damon’s hand with a cigar when he accused Damon of stealing money from him and Damon, being innocent, denied it. In 1852 (six years old) Damon broke Stefan’s nose trying to teach him how to punch (right hook). In 1858 (twelve years old) his mother got sick with TB and proceeded to die later that year (found to have been actually turned into a vampire in 2013). In 1864 Katherine came into their lives and Stefan lost his virginity to her, learned about the supernatural world, and got fed her blood and subsequently turned when his own father shot him whilst he was trying to save Katherine along with Damon, not knowing that it was her plan to get captured the whole time. After he’s turned, Emily Bennett, keeping a promise to Katherine, makes him an enchanted ring out of a  Lapis Lazuli stone that allows him to walk under the sunlight without being burned. It was also later that year when he met Lexi Branson, and she taught him how to control his bloodlust and keep his humanity in check. In 1912, Stefan met Damon again for the first time in 50 years, and Damon proceeded to coerce him to drink human blood, leading him into killing Marianna Lockwood and entering a ripper frenzy. In 1917, Stefan, still a ripper, decimated a migrant village in Monterey and became known by vampires all around as the Ripper of Monterey. It was also after the massacre that he was found by a Siren (old supernatural species who hunt the souls of the wicked) and once she made him realize what he had done he was horrified, and wanted her to kill and take him, instead, seeing he had genuine remorse, she pitied him and altered his subconscious to make him forget what he had done and believe he was worth living. After that his ripper killing became much more subdued. In 1922, Stefan met Klaus and Rebekah Mikaelson, and became best friends with the former and dated the latter. When Michael appeared, Klaus fled, kidnapping Rebekah with him and compelling Stefan into forgetting he ever met them. It was also the year when Lexi found him again, having heard of his killing sprees, and went on to rehabilitate him once more. In 1935, Stefan was finally off of human blood again and completely in control, with his humanity switch back on. In 1942, Stefan tried to re-conciliate with Damon once again, at Lexi’s insistence. He told him of his plans to join the war efforts as an ambulance driver, and Damon agreed. Despite that, Lexi warned Damon in secret that his lifestyle might damage Stefan’s recovery and after it almost proving true, because of the company he kept, Damon decided not to go, so Stefan left for war, to the North African campaign, on his own. In 1960, Stefan is shown to be drinking human blood again, but to still be in control. He lets a woman go after compelling her to forget, and when she meets another who seems to know everything about him and to tell him she’s after Damon to try to kill him, Stefan scares her off but doesn’t kill her either. In 1977, Damon was getting a reputation as a killer and Stefan, having been in Mystic Falls with Lexi, asks her to go help him in NYC, since Stefan wouldn’t be able to without going off the tracks, himself. Lexi does. 1987 was the year when Lexi took him to a Bon Jovi concert on his birthday, and also when Katherine is shown once again to have been stalking or looking after him, as she did in 1922 and several other times. In 1994, Stefan was back in Mystic Falls, living with Zach, when Damon appeared and convinced him he wanted to make up. Stefan believed him and believed he was off of human blood until he realized Damon had taken Zach and his pregnant wife off of vervain and was feeding on them. Stefan then tried to reason with him, and getting no results, tried to lock him up for a while. Damon escaped and killed everyone inside the Salvatore Boarding House, who were there for a party, includding Zach’s pregnant wife, Gail. Stefan took her to the hospital and they were able to save her baby, whom he made sure was adopted to a good family. Stefan compelled Zach to forget about his wife and daughter, believing it to be the merciful thing to do, and then left Mystic Falls, again, since he couldn’t hide the deaths from the whole town. He looked out for Zach’s daughter, Sarah Nelson, all her life, in secrecy, until she was killed in 2017. In May 23rd, 2009, Stefan returned to Mystic Falls once more, and watched Elena’s parents crash their car with her over the Wickery Bridge. He went on to save them, but was very insistently ordered by her father to save her first, which he did, but then was unable to get back to her parents in time. That was when he realized Elena looked just like Katherine, but was human, and decided to watch her for a while. Once he was sure and realized how good she was, how different from Katherine in his mind, he decides to stay and that he has to get to know her, enrolling into her High School after that Summer is over. Stefan has said that at some point in his vampiric life he has climbed Mount Everest.

MY STEFAN SALVATORE HEADCANONS COMPILATION tba!

ARRESTS?: None. PRISON TIME?: None.

OCCUPATION & INCOME

PRIMARY SOURCE OF INCOME: Salvatore Family fortune. SECONDARY SOURCE OF INCOME: Investments over the Centuries. TERTIARY SOURCE(S) OF INCOME: Compulsion when very needed. APPROXIMATE AMOUNT PER YEAR: Unknown. CONTENT WITH THEIR JOB (OR LACK THERE OF)?: Stefan used to want to be a doctor when he was human, probably due to his mother’s sickness and death, but it all changed after he was turned. As much as Stefan likes being useful, I’m not sure that he believes he could ever truly settle down and be happy. Even because due to his non existent aging, he can never stay too long in one place. Eventually he has to start over completely somewhere else, and that is why he mostly takes on passing jobs or studies but never really builds anything out of it. Stefan really likes to learn, so tends to have projects, instead, such as learning a new language, or learning mechanics, or studying literature, cooking!, etc. He moves from thing to thing and tries to learn a little bit of everything he can. PAST JOB(S): None. SPENDING HABITS: Stefan is not really a spender, unless when he is on ripper mode, because then he’s unrestricted with everything, not only money. However, he does like nice things. Stefan was raised in a certain way and, though not usually flashy in his tastes, he likes the more expensive side of life, quality and brands, while keeping a classic style. The one thing he really likes to spend on are classic cars and motorcycles, but he also likes to rebuild them and work on them, so it’s more part of a hobby than a spending habit. He likes to live a good life, but he does so reasonably for his social class. MOST VALUABLE POSSESSION: Probably his daylight ring. And after that, his books first and cars/motorcycles second. Also his picture of Katherine which he carefully keeps through the centuries despite his insistence that he despises her.

SKILLS & ABILITIES

PHYSICAL STRENGTH: Supernatural physical strength from being a vampire, which will only grow with every passing year. Subdued only by his animal blood diet, however, it is also shown several times that Stefan possesses a lot of hidden strength that can come out when he is emotionally unstable and make him dangerous even to much older vampires.  OFFENSE: Stefan is more defensive when in charge of his own mind, but he can take the first step if he needs to. Basically he’ll do anything he has to to protect innocent people or people he loves, but when it comes to himself he’ll wait and defend before he attacks. Stefan is also an experienced fighter and as such knows his way around taking down enemies. DEFENSE: Stean doesn’t really attack unprovoked, so he’ll mostly defend, and when he does he is very skilled and brutal at it if he needs to be. SPEED: Supernatural speed from being a vampire, which will only grow with every passing year.  INTELLIGENCE: Highly intelligent, both academically and emotionally. ACCURACY: Stefan is very skilled, and due to both supernatural advantages and his own habit of learning new things whenever possible, his accuracy tends to be high. AGILITY: Supernatural agility from being a vampire, which will only grow with every passing year. He was also shown to be very agile as a human.   STAMINA: Supernatural stamina from being a vampire, which will only grow with every passing year. He was also shown to be very physical and not shy to play sports, do manual work, or take long hikes as a human.   EXTRA: Stefan was able to overcome compulsion from an original vampire Klaus, due to his love for Elena. Stefan is the only known vampire that seems to be able to live completely off of an animal blood diet. Extra vampirical abilities such as, immortality, fast healing, highly improved hearing and eyesight, and also an enhanced sense of smell. As well as an ability called dream manipulation, with which he can enter other people’s dreams and either help make them peaceful or turned them into nightmares.  TEAMWORK: Stefan is an introvert but he can work well in a team, as long as there’s a clear objective, he’ll even compromise and work with someone who doesn’t have high morals if he has to, to achieve a greater good. He’s very open minded and doesn’t usually judge, which makes him easy to get along with, and his goals are usually to help someone in some way. He also literally is good at / can enjoy playing in a team, from time to time, as he did playing football in High School as a wide-receiver. TALENTS: Writing. Mechanics. Cooking. Playing the guitar. Playing football. Others. SHORTCOMINGS: Due to self-deprecation, Stefan can become frozen and not be bold enough or persistent whenever he feels that might not be what someone else wants. He also tends to forgive too much and try to see the good in people to a fault. LANGUAGE(S) SPOKEN: English, Latin, French and Italian.  DRIVE?: Yes, and he loves to and to race. He owns both a red 1963 Porsche 356B Karmann Coupe and a Harley motorcycle. JUMP-STAR A CAR?: Yes. CHANGE A FLAT TIRE?: Yes. RIDE A BICYCLE?: Yes. SWIM?: Yes. After he’s left to drown in a safe, over and over again, however, he becomes afraid of closed in spaces and skittish of deep water. PLAY AN INSTRUMENT?:  Yes, and he owns a guitar. PLAY CHESS?: Yes. BRAID HAIR?: Probably. TIE A TIE?: Yes. PICK A LOCK?: Yes. But he can also just destroy it with vampire strength.

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE & CHARACTERISTICS

FACE CLAIM: Paul Wesley. EYE COLOR: Dark green. HAIR COLOR: Dark blonde. HAIR TYPE/STYLE: Short and styled up. GLASSES/CONTACTS?: No. DOMINANT HAND: Right. HEIGHT: 5′11′’ feet (or 180 cm) WEIGHT: Unknown. BUILD: Lean and muscled, athletic. EXERCISE HABITS: Stefan has always been athletic and he likes to hike and or to exercise to spend energy and keep himself distracted. SKIN TONE: Pale, white. TATTOOS: A tattoo of a rose on his right shoulder. PEIRCINGS: None. MARKS/SCARS: None permanent. NOTABLE FEATURES: Well traced mouth, warm smile, deep set honest eyes. USUAL EXPRESSION: Brooding, quiet. CLOTHING STYLE: Casual-trendy / Classic. JEWELRY: Daylight lapis lazulli ring, worn on the middle finger of his left right. ALLERGIES: None. BODY TEMPERATURE: Colder than average due to vampiric traits. DIET: Animal blood / human blood usually when out of control. PHYSICAL AILMENTS: None.

PSYCHOLOGY

JUNG TYPE: INFJ ENNEAGRAM TYPE: The Reformer.  ( Ego fixation: Resentment. Holy idea: Perfection . Basic fear: Corruptness / Imbalance / Being bad. Basic desire: Goodness / Integrity / Balance. Temptation: Hypocrisy / Hyper-criticism. Vice/Passion: Anger. Virtue: Serenity. Stress: 4. Security: 7. ) Helper / Giver. ( Ego fixation: Ingratiation. Holy idea: Freedom, Will . Basic fear: Being unloved. Basic desire: To feel love. Temptation: Deny own needs / Manipulation. Vice/Passion: Pride. Virtue: Humility. Stress: 8. Security: 4. ) Peacemaker / Mediator. ( Ego fixation: Daydreaming. Holy idea: Love . Basic fear: Loss / Fragmentation / Separation. Basic desire: Wholeness / Peace of mind. Temptation: Avoiding conflicts, avoiding self-assertion. Vice/Passion: Disengagement. Virtue: Action. Stress: 6. Security: 3. ) MORAL ALIGNMENT: Lawful Good. TEMPERAMENT: Melancholic. ELEMENT: Fire. CELTIC ZODIAC: Reed (The Inquisitor) PRIMARY INTELLIGENCE TYPE: Verbal/Linguistic (83/100) and Intrapersonal (80/100). APPROXIMATE IQ: Unknown. High. MENTAL CONDITIONS/DISORDERS: Anxiety, Bloodlust, Depression, Suicidal tendencies, PTSD, sequels from emotional childhood abuse, self-hate. Can be Compulsive and Obsessed about his ripper days, such as keeping the names of every single person he killed. SOCIABILITY: Stefan is not really sociable, but there can be exceptions. Mostly he describes himself as a loner, but if he is with the right person he can have fun in a crowd, like with Lexi or Elena. However, if given a chance to pick he’ll always pick something quieter and more lowkey, also because it helps him keep control. In a party he’ll tend to keep to himself or interact with people he already knows. He doesn’t actively seek out new people and he doesn’t enjoy the spotlight. He does enjoy dancing and is good at it, though, and he likes music and shows.  EMOTIONAL STABILITY: Stefan is either extremely stable or very unhinged. When he has his human switch on he can usually keep a very good control, he is calm and serene, he is patient and thinks logically most of the time. However when the emotional pressure is too high and or something else happens that turns it off, he becomes more impulsive, careless, loves to be surrounded by people and parties and can go into ripper frenzies. When he is in control he tries to keep very tight reins, and it’s been implied that that’s part of the problem, that he never lets himself let go and when he does it’s because he’s lost complete control, and it doesn’t end well. OBSESSION(S): Being good, helpful, making up for the mistakes that haunt him. COMPULSION(S): Bloodlust. PHOBIA(S): Water and claustrophobia after Silas. ADDICTION(S): Human blood. DRUG USE: None. ALCOHOL USE: Stefan drinks often, because the alcohol helps with his blood crave, but due to his metabolism he doesn’t get drunk unless he really tries to. PRONE TO VIOLENCE?: Only when provoked or specially when someone he loves is threatened, but not as a general rule. And definitely when in ripper mode.

MANNERISMS

SPEECH STYLE: Stefan has a very witty, clear, intelligent, well spoken speech style. He enunciates well and usually sticks to grammar and very little slang. ACCENT: A light southern accent. QUIRKS: Gets very sarcastic when annoyed, even childish, knows a lot of trivia about a lot of different things, quotes literature at times.  HOBBIES: Reading, journaling, crosswords, learning new things, playing the guitar, hiking, camping, photography, building cars / motorcycles, working with his hands, cooking, pool, darts...  HABITS: Reading, drinking, journaling, working on his blood crave, early mornings and late nights, lots of coffee, reflecting. NERVOUS TICKS: Clenches his jaw, swallows hard, deep breaths, clenches fists, drinks more. DRIVES/MOTIVATIONS: People he loves, protecting them, making them happy, keeping them safe. Not losing control. Atoning for his sins, being a better person than he was yesterday. Understanding others.  FEARS: Losing people. Losing control. Hurting those close to him. Hurting innocents. Never being able to atone and become better. Never being loved, or rather worthy of it. POSITIVE TRAITS: Loyal, Intuitive, Empathetic, Brave, Compassionate, Kind, Generous, Loving, Caring, Protective, Determined, Careful, Earnest, Honest, Good listener, Attentive, Curious, Quiet, Calm, Considerate, Studious, Forgiving, Guider. NEGATIVE TRAITS: Private, Self-hating, Righteous, Anxious, Closed off, lives in Denial, Overstrict with himself, Mostly unable to let loose without deep fear, puts others in front of him to the point where he doesn’t go for what he wants if there’s even a minor chance someone else might not want it, Broody, comes off Standoffish, can be Jealous but only about Damon. SENSE OF HUMOR: Dry, sarcastic, ironic. DO THEY CURSE OFTEN?: No. CATCHPHRASE(S): "Says the girl who spends her alone time writing in a cemetery.",  "Yes, being a 150 year old teenager has been the height of my happiness." ,  "I usually keep to myself , I don't always fit in" , "Don’t flirt with me Katherine. I’m not Damon, I haven’t spent 145 years obsessed with you." ,  "I promise you, I will not let anything happen to you." ,  "I see the usual restraint has been exercised." ,  "Tell you what Ray. We're going to play a little drinking game. Something I like to call: truth or wolfsbane." ,  "That's good. It's good to want things, Katherine." ,  "You can’t put that on yourself. Not everyone is your responsibility. Not everyone can be saved." ,  "I see we are still fighting, got it." ,  "Let me just name the million other people I'd rather be having dinner with right now." ,  "If I let myself care all I feel is pain" ,  "This will be the second time Damon has tried to kill Jeremy. I guess nobody's perfect, right?" ,  "Sex wasn't good because we didn't care. It was good because you were crazy. Crazy sex is always good." ,  " I know "nada" means nothing. I know what day it is, I know what year it is, I know this car has a V-8 engine, and yet I am two journals deep, and I have absolutely no memory of who the hell I am." ,  " I'm feeling better, which in my world means I haven't committed a homicide since I last saw you. I've been doing a lot of thinking today, a lot of wandering around, and this seemed like the most appropriate place to come." ,  " Me. You have me. Look. You were there for me last night. Sounds like you're always there for me. So let me be there for you, ok?." FAVORITE QUOTE: “Yeah. But, you know, the life that we had, I mean, that was amazing, too, and it wasn't a spell or a prophecy. It was real. We fell in love on our own.” FAVORITE QUOTE (ABOUT): “ Because even in death, your heart is pure, Stefan. I sense that about you. That will be your curse.” — Emily Bennett.

FAVORITES

ACTIVITY: Reading / writing. ANIMAL: Horse. Mezzanotte. BEVERAGE: Whiskey. BOOK: Several, all the classics, also Shakespeare. CELEBRITY: None. COLOR: Blue. DESIGNER: None. FOOD: Italian. FLOWER: Rose. GEM: Lapis Lasulli. HOLIDAY:  Christmas / none. MODE OF TRANSPORTATION: 1963 Porsche 356B Karmann Coupe.  Harley motorcycle. MOVIE: Stefan's likes F. Scott Fitzgerald, especially his masterpiece The Great Gatsby; Scorsese, Taxi Driver. MUSICAL ARTIST: Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Patsy Cline, Willie Nelson, Bon Jovi... QUOTE/SAYING: “We choose our own path. Our values and our actions, they define who we are.” SCENERY: Mountains. SCENT: Wiskey, pine trees, cologne. SPORT: Football. SPORTS TEAM: None. TELEVISION SHOW: Seinfeld; I Love Lucy is his all time favorite, Loving cup episodes are the best. WEATHER: Fall. VACATION DESTINATION: Nature.

ATTITUDES

GREATEST DREAM: Reaching peace. GREATEST FEAR: Being a monster. MOST AT EASE WHEN: Alone, or with someone he loves, in nature. LEAST AT EASE WHEN: Surrounded by a human crowd. WORST POSSIBLE THING THAT COULD HAPPEN: Become a Ripper and never come back, or kill someone he loves in that state. BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT: Learning control. BIGGEST REGRET: Hurting Elena, both while under compulsion from Klaus and scaring her at the Wickery Bridge. MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENT: Stefan doesn’t really do embarrassed, shameful moments he has a lot of though. Definitely Elena seeing him as a ripper.  BIGGEST SECRET: People he’s killed while out of control. TOP PRIORITIES: Keeping his loved ones safe and happy. Keeping control.

adapted from

[coldinthenight]

educate me 🙌 its already sad enough this fool didnt marry erina hurt me some more

Send a 🙌 and I’ll introduce you to an NPC related to my Muse. // Accepting!

THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A SHORT AND SWEET DRABBLE but I was on mobile all day so! Now it’s a 2.9k word fic I’m so sorry @ mobile users….

(Warning for emotional manipulation and Dio being a complicated jerk)

Let’s talk about Erina Pendleton, a young nurse who returned to England after years in India. She immediately started work at the hospital near her hometown, solely out of a desire to aid those in need, because she’d learned soon enough in her teen years that there was never a shortage of suffering in the world. Here, at least, she could help ease that suffering for even a little.

She never expected to be called in one night and told to attend to a patient under the name of “Joestar”.

It must be Jojo, she thought. The fondest memories of her childhood came to her immediately - a fleeting romance between twelve year olds, marked by a nervous attempt at holding hands and playing together at the carnival and sharing grapes under a setting sun. Could it be, she wondered, and, would he remember her?

When she stepped into the Joestar’s room, it was not Jojo who lay there wrapped in bandages, ribs and collarbone and leg broken from a mysterious ordeal in his home that no one wished to talk about. The single most unpleasant moment of her childhood returned to her at the sight of the golden haired man who had stolen her first kiss. She could feel again the sting of his slap, the feel of mud in her hands, the disgust and shame she’d felt all at once.

But he had been a little boy then. And she a little girl.  They were adults now. Surely he had changed too over the years. Surely Dio was not the same. Surely…

And Jojo? Only one Joestar had been admitted into the hospital that night. Where was Jojo or his father? Surely, despite the pain Dio had wrought upon them, Jojo would not let him be injured this badly.

Erina tended to Dio that night. She hoped he would wake, so she could interrogate him about his brother. She hoped that the door would open and Jojo would walk in, questions and an explanation on his lips. She hoped, until the sun rose and cast the room in golden light, turning Dio’s hair into living flame when he finally stirred and woke with a fearful yell.

His cry startled her. She was at his side immediately, expression stern as she watched him cast his gaze around and take in his surroundings. Then those eyes which were still the same after all this time, like they could pierce through any defense, settled upon her.

“Nurse,” he said, “Where are my clothes? Change my bandages and send me on my way. I have business to attend to.”

“Your leg will not set right if you do not stay in that bed,” she told him. “Besides, what business could there be that Jojo could not do for you?”

He had been trying to pull himself off the bed when she spoke. Now he froze, and slowly, almost comically, turned his head to face her. She saw the anger, then confusion, and finally, recognition cross his face one after another. She saw him smooth his expression over into the same mask of calm interest she had seen many men wear before.

“Why…could it be?” His much kinder tone nearly made her shudder. “Are you not the Erina Pendleton from my childhood?”

His childhood, he said, when it was Jojo whom she’d spent hers with, and he who had driven them apart.

“Yes,” she said and he smiled in a way that was far too pleasant, and then laid back down upon the bed.

He requested her assignment to him for the rest of his stay, and what followed was not what she would call a romance. She wanted only to hear of Jonathan’s fate, while Dio seemed to delight in dangling the information before her in exchange for her continued aid and silence.

Silence, for there were various men who would come to visit him and speak to him at length. Policemen first, then lawyers, and more she suspected who had danger following their steps. Not once did Jonathan Joestar darken his door, and her attempts to find out more about him outside the hospital simply went in vain.

Finally, when his bones were all healed, when he could stand and walk once more, he strode to her as she was putting away the last of his bandages, and caught her by the hand.

“I have one last request for you, woman,” he said. When he said nothing further, she sighed and turned to face him.

“What is it, Dio?”

A smile spread on his face, one that made her shiver. It held none of the smugness or blatant desire to see her suffer that she had become used to. It was a kind, pleasant smile that she almost wanted to like.

“Erina,” he said, “You have endured everything I have thrown at you for the past month, and not once did you become unkind to me. Very soon I will be taking the mantle of lord of the Joestar estate. It will be a lonely affair and I would only want to share my fortune with a woman both strong and beautiful. So, my dear Erina…I would most like for you to marry me.”

She moved without thinking, the palm of her free hand meeting his cheek with a resounding smack. Silence reigned over them a moment later. He did not move as she lowered her arm, his eyes remaining closed. Fear took hold of her gut. Years ago, he’d struck her.

“No?” he said, finally moving, finally fixing his gaze on her again. “When this is my last request, and I have yet to tell you what has become of Jonathan?”

And Erina, who could not believe her ears that Dio would take not only her time in exchange for information that he simply would not give, but her life and future as well, imagined for a moment living her life without ever knowing what had become of Jonathan Joestar, and agreed to his request.

Lets talk about Erina Brando, wife of the new young Lord Joestar, who learned immediately after her wedding that Jonathan Joestar had been killed in the same incident that hospitalized her husband. Erina understood at once that Dio had made use of her lingering feelings for Jojo to keep her at his side and keep her silent about the things she’d heard in his room.

She vowed, even as she wept, that she would not let Dio use his inherited fortune to trample others beneath his heel.

Perhaps it was luck, or fate at work once more, that she met one Mr. Speedwagon, who had known Jonathan in his final moments, who swore to help her whatever way he could, who became her dearest friend in those times when Dio’s growing frustration turned toward her more and more.

Erina worked to reforge herself into steel, but Speedwagon would insist it was what she had always been. Unbending steel was a girl washing her lips with dirty water after a stolen kiss. It was a nurse who placed the lives of others over her own. It was a woman who gave her future to her tormentor for the sake of someone she had not seen in years.

Speedwagon sat himself in her parlor and shared tea with her, and together they turned each of Dio’s schemes back onto him. She handled money behind his back, and Speedwagon carried out plans and actions.

Dio had to know. He had to know about their meetings and whispers while he wasn’t looking. But he never raised a hand against her, not while she was carrying his son and not even after he was born.

And then, one day, almost two years into her marriage, Speedwagon stopped her before she could pick up her baby, and he told her, “I’m going to find Jonathan.”

“Robert, don’t joke about that.” She fixed him with a stern glare, unsure how else to respond.

“No! I’d never…” He looked down at George, cooing at his uncle from his crib, before continuing. “I’m sorry. I’ve lied to you, as has Dio. Mr. Joestar is out there, Erina.”

She felt as if he had just strangled her. “Why?”

“Because,” said Dio from the door, and he shared a knowing look with Speedwagon before continuing, “Jojo is no longer human.”

Let’s talk about Erina Brando, mother of George Joestar II, for whom she had to fight her husband so she might name him after a man she had never met but dearly respected. This was Erina as the Lady Joestar, who never let her son want for anything as long as he lived, who loved him despite the hate she nurtured for his father.

With the truth in her hands, she simply stopped talking to Dio and never let him touch her again. But for George’s sake, she reached for her husband’s hand and smiled for photographs, danced with him at parties and left him a peck on the cheek every morning. For George’s sake, she pretended to love his father the way she loved him.

Speedwagon returned eventually. George was just starting to be able to reach her waist when the former thug walked back into her life, hair cut short, back straight, and eyes dark. He had gone and traveled the world and he’d found oil in America, vampires in Europe, and mystics in Asia.

And a little girl. He carried with him a little orphan girl named Elizabeth, and behind her stood proud men from Tibet who wielded powers beyond hers and Dio’s imaginations. Erina set down George and told him to go play with Elizabeth, then invited Speedwagon and his friends into the parlor.

“The monsters are spreading their reach,” explained Speedwagon, “You must have heard of the incidents in Europe - we’ve been trying to stop them, but it’s difficult with so little resources, and they’ve begun to expand north. It’ll only be a matter of time before they move against us…”

“What is there we can do?” demanded Dio. “You’ve become wealthy yourself, Mr. Speedwagon. What can house Joestar do to help in fighting monsters we have nothing to do with?”

“Where do you think these monsters come from?” snapped the long haired man behind Speedwagon. Straizo, he would later introduce himself as. “Mr. Speedwagon told me about your youth, Dio Brando. Who do you think was the vampire who created more of his kind? Who do you think is leading them in this crusade against humanity?”

For the first time ever, it seemed that Erina and Dio shared the same thought and sentiment. As one, husband and wife said, “Jojo.”

And she thought immediately of the monsters coming, and George, who was presently playing with Elizabeth in the moonlit garden outside, becoming fearful of the night. George, a bubbly child who smiled like the sun, growing up knowing monsters who could not be killed existed around every corner. George, in constant danger, unable to rest for even a moment, until an inevitable death.

She looked to Dio, fear and desperation on her face, and was startled to find him mirroring her expression. He turned away from her immediately, moving to the fireplace, hand gripping the mantel. His knuckles immediately turned white, his entire body shook. Erina stepped toward him, considered her options, and placed a gentle hand on his arm.

“Erina,” he said, voice heavy. She could tell that he could not look her in the eyes, not with the knowledge weighing on them all that he was, ultimately, the one who had unleashed the monsters and doomed their son to a darkened future. “Get George, we have matters to discuss with our…our son. And prepare our things for travel - the Joestar estate will join this war.”

The weeks after this would become a blur, in time. Erina joined Dio and a handful of volunteers from their estate on the frontline, bringing with them a good amount of money to aid the cause. He shed the title of Lord and became a soldier, she threw herself back into medical work. Everyday there were less and less injured, and more dead, and even more who never returned but appeared as monsters on the battlefield. Dio, she would only see in the evenings, when they retired to their private room or tent or whatever small measure of luxury Speedwagon was able to grant them.

She spent most of her nights thinking about George and Elizabeth, living in the Joestar mansion with only Straizo for company. The mystic had insisted on staying behind to teach the children his art. For future use, he had insisted, just in case. She had not been able to argue with him, but surely, George would not need this Ripple one day. Not when they were fighting here, on the Swiss front. Surely they could win, surely this war would end soon…

Let’s talk about Erina, a woman whose fate was always so closely entwined with those of the men in her life.

Erina Joestar was the woman Jonathan Joestar gave his life to save. She buried her husband and son and drew steel from within herself to raise a grandson who would come to see her as his entire world.

Erina Brando did not have such a husband. She had one who lied and cheated to get his way, who fought vampires not with the Ripple but with technology and the lives of other men. Erina grew older and older tending to the hurt, and watched as Dio, too, grayed and stooped lower and lower. He could fight less. He was not as angry with her. He never said sorry for everything he did to her.

This was an Erina who drew steel out of herself to survive, one who watched as the world grew darker and darker. There were too few capable of the Ripple, much less even knew about it, and not even ten men could kill a single vampire.

Erina had hoped the war would end, but soon the little boy George and the little girl Elizabeth quickly became a man and a woman, and then they, too, joined the fight.

Let’s talk about Erina, hands shaking from years of handling medicine, sitting on the porch of what had once been the Joestar mansion. Around her, young men and women like her son and his wife hurried about. These were people who had spent their youths hiding in the shadows, who avoided open spaces at night, who dared not love anyone for fear of seeing them turned. These were people who fought for a life they no longer knew, who readied themselves for the coming battle that night, knowing that many of them would die protecting one of the few remaining strongholds humanity held.

None of them were ready enough, when it was not vampires who broke through the wall, but a feathered man who offered eternal life and youth to everyone present. He identified himself as the creator of the stone mask.

Silence fell upon the yard, and no one dared to move. With a sigh, Erina stood, and turned to Speedwagon, scarred face just visible through the barely open door of the mansion, and told him, “Robert, I entrust my husband and grandson to you. Flee with them, now.”

“Erina?” he said, blinking at her. “What are you doing?”

“Giving that fool a piece of my mind,” she said, following her words with a stern look. Speedwagon swallowed, wished her good luck, and disappeared, the door shutting behind him.

She bundled up her skirts and strode across the yard quite casually, as if it were a sunny spring day and she was about to see George off to school. She saw the feathered man following her with his gaze, saw him smirk upon assessing her. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the frozen warriors starting to move, starting to panic at the sight of her approaching him.

“Old woman,” he said, smirk growing. Mockingly, he flourished a wing and bowed, red eyes reminding her of Dio’s when he’d asked for her hand. “Do you wish to be young again, like these children around you? I can give you that. You need only don this mask.”

“I know of the mask,” said Erina, standing as tall as she could. “It was used on a man I loved. I thought him dead, but years later your vampires came. We received news that he caused this war, but I held hope that it was not him at their head.”

“Why, I believe I know this vampire you speak of.” He laughed, and leaned forward so they were eye level. “He is the one who made this possible. He is the one who gave me and my brethren what makes us gods.”

She smiled at him, looking up at his sculpted features, at the purple curls and black robes, and then she raised her hand and slapped him across the cheek.

“That,” said Erina, “is for creating the stone mask.”

[sadboyfactory]

how come you ship sheith if you're anti billdip

HOOOOO BOY. Congrats, Anon, I took a whole minute of silence for this one. I’m gonna put this one under a cut. Below is a character analysis on why Sheith strikes a cord with me and a little bit on why I don’t ship billdip.

The two ships have no point of comparison. I don’t even know… how you jumped straight to billdip after questioning why I like Sheith, but I have to assume you’re speaking in reference of the age gap. 

Let me put it this way, the incomprehensible age gap between a 12 year old and a trans-dimensional mind demon that’s been around since the beginning of time is the last reason why I abhor that ship. Let me just clear this up right away and say that- in terms of age difference ALONE- The Voltron creators left their ages incredibly ambiguous and haven’t confirmed any actual age for ANY of their characters, as far as I know. Keith is stated to be “Late teens” and Shiro straight up isn’t even given a point of reference. It’s entirely possibly that they fall in line with my headcanons of Keith being 19.5 and Shiro being 24. In terms of age difference and power dynamics, let me tell you that It’s still a little…. ehhhh. Being 21 years old, I know that the difference between a 19 year old and a 21 year old can be pretty noticeable. When I was 19 with a 21 year old girlfriend there was a slight power dynamic and I sorta felt it. It wasn’t that strong, but I was still infantalized every so often and therefor not always taken seriously. When you also throw in that Shiro is Keiths superior officer as the Leader of Voltron, things start getting really unsteady in terms of the potential for a healthy relationship. When you also throw in that Shiro carries a lot of baggage from his time enslaved by the Galra, the possibility of a healthy relationship with someone four years younger than him goes down a lot. Okay now lemme take this to a new comparison for perspective.I think a more appropriate comparison would be my dislike of Tonks/Remus from the Harry Potter series. If Tonks and Keith are both willing, enthusiastic consenting adults in love with an older person who has been through an immense amount of stress and suffers from PTSD, then why do I think one is okay and not the other?EASY!!! Trust. Trust and Control. I think that Tonks love for Remus was pure and I really liked it. She saw that there was far more to love within Remus than there was to fear and she trusted him with all of her heart, and she was good for it! She’s not the one under question here, Remus is. Remus was never able to trust her ability to cope with his intense baggage. He rejected her love because it made him uncomfortable, then he second guessed their marriage. He flat out regretted having a child with her and he even ran away because he couldn’t cope. I’m sure that he loved his moments with her, I’m sure that when she was in the room then she was all he could think about, but if in the moments that he had alone to himself- if ALL he could think about was how much he was screwing up her life just so he could be happy, then is that a really healthy relationship? Sure he may have loved her, but he couldn’t trust that love.Why not? Well, I have a theory. Remus spent most of his life as an outcast living in a society that hated him on principle. He grew up with anti-werewolf propaganda screaming that he was a monster. Even if people didn’t know he was a werewolf, their anti-werewolf attitude still reinforced an image that He Was Wrong. He was an unloveable beast. The only time he felt truly comfortable was with his close knit group of friends in school and that’s because they not only accepted he was a werewolf right off the bat, but then went above and beyond to change THEIR LIVES just to make his better. Remus then had to watch the world descend into a horrific war that further demonized his kind, but on a more personal note it killed everyone he knew and loved, save for one who was imprisoned for becoming a murderer himself. He dealt with this alone for 12 years. Tonks grew up in a world after this war. She was safe and loved, smart and promising, with a golden ideal for the world. Her only major outstanding difference- being a metamorphmagus- was seen as a blessing or a fun quirk. Her crystal view of the world may be no less valid than his jaded view, shes not WRONG to believe in the best, but for him all he can think of is what straw is going to break the camels back and ruin her. Lets compare this to Sheith. Shiro and Keith have both been through the runner. We don’t know much about Shiro’s past, but what we do know can lead us to assume that he was prominent, trusted figure within the Galaxy Garrison and likely rose to his reputation as a legendary pilot quickly within his career there. As far as we know, his strife begins with the Galra abducting him. It’s hardly necessary to remind us that his time fighting as a gladiator for Zarkon was so traumatic it left him with heavily suppressed memories. Basically, it was a FUCKTON of traumatic stress in not a lot of time and to cope his memories went caput. His experience with the Galra has had a lasting negative effect on him, but largely he’s been able to work through a lot.Keith has been through a lot of stress too, and over mostly a long amount of time. We know he grew up mostly alone. We don’t know when his father left or died, but by the time he’s left the Garrison he’s an orphan. He has issues with authority, suggesting that even when his father WAS there he was still an unreliable person (though Keiths vision of his father depicts him as meaning a lot to Keith, so I doubt he was intentionally abusive) Keith is still undergoing a lot of stress, finding out that he is in part Galra and having the pressure put on him as heir to lead Voltron, among other things. Throughout both seasons we see that Keith is most comfortable relying on Shiro for stability. Keith undoubtedly trusts and loves Shiro in 100% canon (romantic love is debatable, its a ship its not canon). Now what’s interesting is that in season 2 we see the tables turn and Shiro right off the bat is put into a position in which he must rely on Keith or die. Shiro has no problem putting his life in Keiths hands and never once doubts him. From then on we can see him beginning to lean on Keith as a second in command, minimizing the power dynamics between them. I’ll be the first one to admit that I don’t have a lot of solid evidence to go on in terms of balancing out the age gap and the power dynamics, but that being said I’ve only ever watched Voltron (season 1 and 2) once, whereas I’ve seen Gravity Falls in its entirety no less than six times at LEAST and I’ve been reading and rereading Harry Potter for my entire life. I’ll probably need to do some hardcore character studying to really pin down why I like it so that I can explain myself eloquently. But please know, I’m kind of doing that right now. My fic Put it Together, Break it Apart is both a follow-up to Season 2 and an exploration of Keith/Shiro and where it does and doesn’t work. I will say this, I legitimately think that if Keith ever DID pursue a romantic relationship with him then Shiro would be cautious to say the least. Any relationship between them would HAVE to be built on mutual trust and the absolute certainty that this was something that BOTH of them wanted, and both Keith and Shiro would be setting some pretty hardcore boundaries. 

TL:DRBilldip isn’t a good comparison for the relationship dynamics, so I brought up Tonks/Remus. Tonks/Remus have similar starting points as Shiro and Keith in their relationship, the difference being that Remus does not trust himself nor Tonk’s ability to cope with his baggage, and therefor tries to control the relationship in a negative way by deciding to run away from her. Shiro and Keith both trust each other equally and Shiro has spent the last season lessening his control over Keith by slowly abolishing the power dynamics between them.

Now I’m gonna go into why billdip is a horrible ship.

Bill abused Dippers trust and gained absolute control over him. Dipper said “no” and Dipper said “Stop” and Bill didn’t care. Dippers literal actual body was used by Bill for Bills own purposes against Dippers will. It was so traumatic for Dipper that he showed symptoms of PTSD. Do you understand what I’m getting at here? 

Let me say it clearly, then, for the people in the back. Bill’s actions may not have been sexual in nature, but they are allegorical to that of rape. Dipper was a victim of extreme violence and manipulation at the hand of Bill. And that doesn’t even begin to cover Bills actual literal reign of terror over his family, his friends, his town, and his concept of reality. I can’t even begin to explain why the ship is unhealthy, are you sure we watched the same show?

[titanomachyroleplay-blog]

“I want to commit the murder I was imprisoned for.”

Scarlett Maximoff

FC: Elizabeth Olsen Birthdate: November 2nd, 1992 Species: Mutant Abilities: Magic Manipulation Affiliation: Pro-Supremacy Profession: Café & Art Gallery Owner Gender: Female Sexuality: Straight

Personality

✔Courageous, Loyal, Intelligent ✖Asocial, Resentful, Obsessive

Past

Scarlet Maximoff’s life was quite disturbing from an early age; her parents were violently murdered when she and her twin brother Leo became orphans at the tender age of 7 years old. Their parents’ murder wasn’t random; it was very well planned and executed. Something that Scarlet would find out later in her life. From a very early age, Scarlet showed she wasn’t like any other kid. Sure, she looked like any little girl would look but there was something special about her. Small strange incidents always surrounded her, things that her teachers and parents couldn’t explain. From a chair objects strangely destroyed or deformed, to items moving around. She got into the radar of some very bad people.

Evil societies formed to dominate everything they could, societies who created chaos in order to conquer everything in their way.  One night, several masked man entered her house and murdered her parents and she got to watch it all; the pain, the screams and the blood. She was taken away with her brother, arrived to some strange facility in the cold mountains where she was kept hostage with her brother separated from her.

The twins were kept there the next 10 years of their lives, gruesomely tortured and punished. Going in and out of experiments to enhance her abilities and see if Leo possessed some kind of mutation like his sister and how to activate it, but all attempts were a failure. But they kept him because Leo was their weapon to control Scarlet, they would torture him in front of her just to get her to do what they wanted. Until one day, everything went out of control. One day torture was way too much for Leo, his heart couldn’t resist any longer and then he stopped breathing. Scarlet watched how the life disappeared from his eyes and then they woke up the monster hidden inside of her.

Rage, that all she could feel after that. “I want to watch the blood pouring out of you. I want you to beg, scream painfully for mercy that you know I won’t give you. I want to watch you burn” she said as she killed each guard, each scientist, every single person who was ever involved in that fabric of pain. Scarlet burned down the place and took only the dead body of her brother; it was out there in the snow where she mourned. She screamed in pain and cried hugging her lifeless twin. She knew she killed innocent people in the process of her revenge but, so far. She didn’t feel remorse whatsoever. Why should her? She had been taken everything away from her. She was holding the last thing she cared about, all lost.

She was found of course by police, and she was taken away but she did not resist. She was charged with massive murder charges and conspiracy against her country because of what they found in the facility. Even when she wasn’t guilty of that, she didn’t fight. She was getting executed, but she didn’t care because she had no reason to exist. But she did, just before everything about her went out to the public. It changed.

A woman showed up and made her history disappear, the charges, her birth certificate. Everything that linked her to Russia and that facility was gone. In exchange of one thing; live. The woman seemed to understand that Scarlet was too broken now but she convinced her that there was a better way to start over. And she accepted.

But Atlas wasn’t exactly what she expected, Scarlett felt trapped and alone as she couldn’t find a reason to exist in a world that would only hurt her for being who she was. A trip back to Russia showed her the path she needed to follow to get revenge, a path that show her that she was a solution for the suffering of many and when she went back to Atlas she met one person who like her wanted a different world. Cameron Clark became her partner as they both chased a dream to let Mutants rise above human kind who seemed unfit to rule the world in their eyes.

And that is when it started…

Present

Nowadays, Scarlett has two occupations but not everyone is aware of both of them. With the help of her deceased friend and mentor, Erik, Scarlett opened a Café where she could make a living out of it and would cover up her second occupation; assassin, spy and protector of Cameron who was leading the revolution. As she took her place as business owner, Scarlett would be constantly traveling around taking down the targets that she could get without needing Cameron’s help. She would infiltrate organizations, business, any place they needed information from in order to win revolution as well as taking down people who wanted to take them down first.

As Cameron feared things would get out of control in Hestia, he asked her to stay in one place and play her role in the town. He needs her there for now while the next part of their plan took part.