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feanorianethicsdepartment · 3 years

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Alright, I read your recent post and need to know - what is your interpretation of Maglor’s relationship with the twins?

askjdhslkjag my biggest self-inflicted problem in this fandom is that my take on maglor, elrond, and elros' relationship is so intensely detailed and specific i am forever tormented by none of the fic i read ever quite getting it right (from my perspective; i’ve read plenty of fic that presents a good interpretation on their own terms, it’s just never mine.) it’s simultaneously way darker than the fluffy kidnap dads stuff and nowhere near as black-and-white awful as the anti-fëanorian crowd likes to paint it, it’s messy and complicated and surrounded by darkness, and yet there’s also a sincere connection within it which mostly serves to make all those complications worse. angry teenage elrond is angry for a great many reasons, and the circumstances around him being raised by kinslayers account for at least half of them. there’s lots of complexity here, and i don’t see it in fic nearly as often as i’d like

(warning: the post... feathers? i already have an internet friend called faeiri this could be awkward - anyway, the post she’s talking about includes the line ‘everyone is wrong about kidnap dads except me.’ this post follows on from that in being as much a commentary about why various popular interpretations of both how the kidnapdoption went and the way people subsequently characterise the twins just don’t work for me as it is a setting out of my own ideas. i’m not really interested in getting into discourse here, i’m just trying to get my thoughts down. i’ve read fic with these interpretations before that i’ve liked, even, don’t take this as a Condemnation, aight? also this turned out long as hell, so i’m putting it under a cut)

i can never buy entirely fluffy depictions of kidnap dads

which isn’t to say i don’t read them! sometimes all i want is something sweet, for these kids to get to be happy for once. it’s not like i think their time with the fëanorians was completely devoid of laughter

it’s just. the pet names, the special days out, the home-cooked meals, it can get so treacly it stops feeling like the characters they are in the situation they’re in and turns into Generic Found Family #272

it soaks out all the complexity - which is the thing i am here for - and acts like oh, these kids were never in any danger, they were perfectly happy being abducted by the people who murdered everyone they knew, there’s nothing possibly questionable about this relationship at all

and... yeah. that’s not the characters i know. that’s not the context i know they belong to

i just can’t forget the circumstances that led them to meet

rivers of blood, the air filled with screams, a town ablaze, a woman choosing to die. every interaction the three of them have is going to proceed from that nightmare

(sidenote: i tend to hold it was maglor that raised the twins, with maedhros looming ominously in the background not really getting involved. it’s mostly personal preference, i’ve been in and out of the fandom since before this kidnap dads thing blew up and when i joined that was a perfectly standard reading)

(also the cave thing was a dumb idea, old man, if only because it implies beleriand had streams safe enough for children to play in at that point. the way it separates the twins from the third kinslaying is also something i don’t particularly vibe with)

probably my least favourite angle i’ve seen on the situation (edged out only by ‘maglor was actively abusive towards the twins’ which no no no no no no no no NO) is the idea that maglor (and/or maedhros, append as necessary) took the twins specifically to raise them

like, i get where it’s coming from, but it makes maglor come off as really creepy

(i have read fics where it is indeed played off as really creepy, but that’s not a maglor i have any interest in reading about)

(’mags 100% bad’ is just as facile a take to me as ‘mags 100% good’)

even if you’re saying maglor took them in because they had no one left to take care of them - i highly doubt they were the only children the fëanorians orphaned at sirion. idk, it always makes maglor seem much less sympathetic than i think it’s meant to

i prefer to think of it as more... organic? something that evolved, not something that was preordained. them growing closer gradually, the twins finding an adult who might maybe be on their side, maglor becoming invested in them almost by accident

and then the twins are so comfortable with the second scariest monster in amon ereb they frequently sass him off and maglor’s gotten so used to not hurting them he’s not even thinking about it any more. no one’s quite sure how it happened, but they’ve made a Connection

‘wait aren’t they a murderous warlord of questionable mental stability and a pair of terrified small children who’ve lost everyone they ever knew? isn’t that kinda fucked up?’ yup! that’s the point! complexity!

another idea i don’t like is the idea that maglor was an objectively better parent to the twins than eärendil or elwing

other people have talked about this already, i won’t rehash the whole thing. i will say that while i don’t think elwing was a perfect parent - someone so young, in such a horrible situation, i wouldn’t blame her for screwing up - i do think she (and eärendil) did the best by them they possibly could

this is one of the few things they have in common with maglor

something i come across now and again is the idea that sure, elwing and eärendil weren’t abusive or horrible or anything, but they were a couple of basically-teenagers with so many other responsibilities, there was only so much they could do. maglor, on the other hand, is an experienced adult who could take much better care of the twins

and...

first off, it’s not like mags doesn’t have a job. he’s a warlord, he has a fortress to help run, military shit to handle, lots of other stuff that needs to get done to stop everyone from starving or getting eaten by orcs. i feel like sirion had enough of a government there was plenty of opportunity for elwing to take days off and play with her kids, but in the fëanorian camp nobody really has the time to chase after a couple of toddlers, least of all one of the last points on the command network. they just don’t have the people any more

(seriously, the twins getting a formal education with tutors and classes and shit is a weirdly specific pet peeve of mine. this is a band of renegades, not a royal household; if there’s anyone left with those kinds of skills they almost certainly have more important things to do)

more than that, though - well, a quick glance through my late stage fëanorians tag should tell you a lot about what i think maglor’s mental state is like at this point. he is so accustomed to violence death means nothing to him, he’s lost most of his capacity for genuinely positive emotion to an endless century of defeat and despair, he hates everything in the universe, especially himself, he’s only able to keep functioning through a truly astounding amount of denial, and he covers it all up with a layer of snark and feigned apathy, which he defends aggressively because he’s subconsciously realised that if it breaks he’ll have absolutely nothing left

(maedhros, for the record, is... i’d say more stable, but at a lower point. maglor may interact with the world mostly through cold stares and mocking laughter, but at least his mind is firmly rooted in the present)

(on the other hand, at least maedhros lets himself be aware of what they are and where their road will lead)

which... this doesn’t mean maglor doesn’t try to be kind to the twins, or rein in his worst impulses around them

there’s just so little of him left but the weapon

he stalks through the halls like a portent of death and gets into hours-long screaming matches with maedhros and has definitely killed people in front of the twins

not even as, like, a deliberate attempt to scare them, but because when you solve most of your problems by stabbing them it’s pretty much a given that people who spend a lot of time around you are going to see you do it at least once

and sometimes, he curls up in an empty hallway, and weeps

... suffice it to say i don’t think elwing’s the more preoccupied, or the less mentally ill, parent here

just. in general, the fëanorians aren’t cackling boogeymen, but they’re not particularly nice either

no one has the energy left for that. not these isolated and weary soldiers at the end of a long losing war and the beginning of the end of the world. they don’t really bother to guard the kids against them escaping. where else are they going to go?

the sheer despair that must have been in the fëanorian camp after sirion, the knowledge that the cause cannot be fulfilled, that they are utterly forsaken, that they’re really just waiting to die -

it can’t have been a happy place to grow up in, under the shadow of loss and grief and deeds unrepentable, and the slow march of inevitable defeat

they would have had a better childhood if they stayed in sirion, raised by people who knew how to hope

but that isn’t the childhood they had. and despite everything i’ve said, i don’t think that childhood was an entirely awful one

yeah, see, this is where the other side of my self-inflicted fandom catch-22 comes in. just as much of the pro-kidnap dads stuff comes off as overly saccharine and simplified to me, i find much of the anti-kidnap dads stuff equally simplistic in the opposite direction

the idea that maglor and the fëanorians never meant anything to elros and elrond, that they had no effect on the people they became at all, that it was just a horrible thing that happened when they were children, easily thrown in the rear-view mirror...

that’s even more impossible to me than the idea that life with the fëanorians was 100% fluffy and nice

like, i’ve seen the take that elros and elrond hated the fëanorians from start to finish. they were perfect little sindarin princes, loyal to their people and the memory of doriath, spurning every scrap of kindness offered to them and knowing just what to say to twist the knife into the kinslayers’ wounds

... dude. they were six. hell, given their peredhelness, mentally they could easily have been younger

what six year old has a firm grasp of their ethnic identity? what six year old is fully aware of their place in history? what six year old would understand the politics that led to their situation?

don’t get me wrong, i can see hatred in there. but something else that doesn’t get acknowledged alongside it often enough is the fear

some of the stuff i’ve read feels like it gives the kids too much power in the situation. they’re perfectly happy to talk back to and belittle the people who burned down their hometown and killed everyone they ever knew, like miniature adults who don’t feel threatened at all

and, like, six. i can see them going for insults as a defensive measure, but it is defensive. it’s covering up fear, not coming from secure disdain

(and a lot of those insults sound, again, like things an adult who’s already familiar with the fëanorians would say, not a scared child who’s lost almost everything. why would a six year old raised by sindar and gondolindrim know what the noldolantë is, let alone what it means to maglor?)

(... i’m just ranting about this one fic that’s been ruffling my feathers for five years straight now, aren’t i)

i mean, i write elrond as the world’s angriest teenager, who snipes at maglor pretty much constantly, but the thing about angry teenage elrond is that he’s angry teenage elrond

he’s spent long enough with the fëanorians he has a pretty secure position within the camp, and he knows that maglor won’t hurt him from a decade and change of maglor not, in fact, hurting him

but as a small and terrified child abducted by the monsters his mother had nightmares about? he fluctuated wildly between ‘randomly guessing at things to say that wouldn’t get him killed’ ‘screaming at maglor to go away in words rarely more complicated than that’ 'desperately trying not to do or say anything in the hopes of not being noticed’ and ‘hiding’

(and i don’t think the twins were never in any danger from the fëanorians, either. quite besides the point that before they started orbiting maglor nobody was really sure what to do with them... well, they wouldn’t be the first children of thingol’s line the minions took revenge on)

(fortunately for them, maglor did, in fact, take them under his wing. by this point even their own followers are shit scared of the last two sons of fëanor, nobody’s going to mess with their stuff and risk getting mauled. tactically, it was a pretty good decision for a couple of toddlers)

more to the point, i feel like a child that young, in a situation that horrible, wouldn’t reject any kindness they were offered, any soothing touch in a universe of terror

in a world full of big scary monsters, the best way to survive is to get the biggest scariest monster possible to protect you. that’s how elros rationalises it when they’re, like, eight, mentally, but at the time they were just latching on to the only person around them who seemed to care about them

that’s how it started, on their end. two very young very scared children lost in a neverending nightmare clinging tightly to the lone outstretched pair of hands

as for maglor...

i’ve called mags evil before, but i see that as more of a... technical term? he is evil because he did the murder, he remains evil because he won’t stop doing the murder. hot take: murder bad

but that doesn’t make him, like, a moustache-twirling saturday morning cartoon villain. he is deeply unhappy with the position he’s in and the person he’s become, and he’s always trying not to take that final step over the edge

it’s not that i can’t see a maglor who is abusive or manipulative or who sees the twins more as objects than people. it’s just that that characterisation is one i am profoundly uninterested in. i do occasionally read fic with it, but it never enters my own headcanons

horrible people can do good things!! kinslayers can do good things!! the fallen are capable of humanity!! people can do both good and evil things at the same time, because people are complicated!! maglor is not psychologically incapable of actually taking pity on these kids!!!!

it’s... again, complexity. the fëanorians straddle the line between black and white, which is a lot less sharp in the legendarium than it’s sometimes characterised as. it’s what draws me to their characters so much, why i have so many stupid headcanons about them. pretending they fall firmly on either side of the line is my real fandom pet peeve

and, like, this moment? this sincere connection between a bloodstained warlord and two children who will grow up to be great and kind in equal measure? i may not entirely like the direction the fandom’s taken it recently, but that beat, that relationship, it still gets me

so no, i don’t think elrond and elros’ years with the fëanorians were an endless cavalcade of abuse and misery. i think there was love there, despite the darkness all around them

an old, tired monster, and the two tiny children it protects

maglor never hurts the twins, not ever, not once. his claws are sharp and his fangs are keen, if he so much as swatted them he’d rip them in half. instead he folds down the razor edges of his being, interacting with them ever so carefully. he has nightmares of suddenly tearing into their skin

seriously, the power differential between them is so great, maglor so much as raising his voice would break any trust they have in this horribly dangerous creature. fics where he does corporal punishment always get the side-eye from me

the mood of their relationship is... i find it hard to put into words. melancholy, maybe, like a sunny afternoon a few days before the end of the world. three people who’ve lost so much finding what respite they can in each other as the world slowly crumbles around them

there are times when it feels like the three of them exist in a world of their own, marked out by the edges of the firelight. maglor telling stories of the stars, elros giving relaxed irreverent commentary, elrond getting a few moments to just be, all their troubles kept at bay

they are the last two lights in a world sunk into darkness, the last two living beings he does not on some level hate. he will tear his own heart out before he sees them in pain

he teaches them to ride, he teaches them to read, he gives them everything he still has left. the twins should never have been in this situation, maglor probably isn’t entirely fit to take care of them, but it is what it is, and they take what love they can

(maglor depends on the twins emotionally a bit more than any adult should rely on any child. he’s still very much the caretaker in their relationship, but that relationship is the only one he has left that’s not stained by a century of rage and grief. he’s obsessed with them, maedhros tells him frequently. maglor’s standard response to this is to try to gouge maedhros’ eyes out)

(that particular darker side to their relationship, where maglor’s attachment to the twins turns into a desperate possessiveness - that’s not something i think i’ve ever seen in fic. which is a shame, it feels much closer to my own characterisation than the standard ways this relationship gets maleficised. darker, in a different way than usual. horribly compelling in its plausibility)

however you want to read it, i don’t think you can deny this is a relationship that defines elrond and elros’ childhood. they were raised in the woods by a pack of kinslayers, the text is quite clear on this

but i’ve seen a lot of talk about how elros and elrond are only sirion’s children. they are completely 100% sindarin, they love and forgive eärendil and elwing thoroughly and without question, they identify with doriath over - even gondolin, let alone tirion. the fëanorians - the people who raised them - had zero effect on the people they grew into and the selves they created

and that, more than anything else, i find utterly unbelievable

look, i get what this is a reaction to. a lot of the kidnap dads stuff paints the fëanorians as elrond and elros’ ‘real’ family, and i’ve already talked about what i think of the idea that maglor-and-possibly-also-maedhros were better parents than eärendil and elwing. i think it’s reductive and overly optimistic and just a little too neat

but to say instead that elrond and elros held no great love in their hearts for maglor, no lingering affinity with the fëanorians, no influence on their identity from the people they grew up around, none at all? that after it happened they just left it behind and resumed being the same people they were in sirion?

that strikes me as just as much an oversimplification. it sands down all the potential rough edges of their identity, all that inconvenient complexity that stops them from fitting into any well-defined box, and replaces it with a nice safe simple self-conception i find just as flat and boring as declaring them 100% fëanorian

we can quibble over who they call ‘father’ (i personally find that whole debate kinda petty) but denying that it was actually maglor who was the closest thing they knew to a parent for most of their childhoods, and that that would, in fact, affect the way they thought of themselves and their family, elides so many interesting possibilities out of existence

(i’m not even going to get into the most braindead take i have ever heard on the subject, namely that because their time with the fëanorians was such a small fraction of elrond’s total lifespan it was like being kidnapped for two weeks as a toddler and had no greater significance than that. do you not understand what childhood is????)

like, i tend to think of elrond as a child as being very loudly not-a-fëanorian. elros is more willing to go with the flow - hey, if the creepy kinslayer wants kids, elros is happy to play into that in order to not be murdered - but elrond is very firm that he’s not happy to be here and he doesn’t belong with them

(this is after they get over their initial terror, of course, when they’ve realised they won’t be fed to the orcs for the tiniest slight. even so, elrond only really gets shirty about it around people he’s comfortable with, whose reactions he can reasonably guess at. naturally, the first person he does it to is maglor)

elros calls maglor their father exactly once, when they’re... maybe early preteens? this is because elrond hears him do it and immediately loses his shit. they have a dad, elrond says, in tears, and a mum, and any day now their real parents are going to come to pick them up and take them home

... right?

it gets harder to believe as the years roll on, as their memories of sirion fade, as they find their own places within the host, as maglor watches over them as they grow. elrond still mentally sets himself apart from the fëanorians, but it’s more of an effort every year. life in the fëanorian camp is the only one he’s ever really known. he can barely remember his mother’s voice

then the war of wrath starts, and the fëanorian host drifts closer to the army of valinor, and the twins come into contact with non-fëanorians for the first time in forever, and it becomes clear just how obviously fëanorian elrond is. he always insisted he wasn’t like the kinslayers at all, but he dresses like them, talks like them, fights like them

the myth cycles the edain tell are almost completely unfamiliar to him, he barely remembers the shape of the songs of lost doriath. even these sarcastic commentary and subversive reinterpretations he made of maglor’s stories - those were still maglor’s stories! he’s been trying to guess at the person he was meant to be, but it’s growing nightmarishly blatant how little elrond ever knew about him

instead, the people he was born to are as alien to him as the orcs of morgoth. he is a fëanorian, through and through

... yeah, elrond (and/or elros) having an absolutely massive identity crisis upon being reintroduced to his quote-unquote ‘true kin’ is another angle i’d love to see in fic that i don’t think i’ve ever come across. all those potential grey areas around who they are and who they’re supposed to be sound utterly fascinating, and i think it’s the complexity i hate to see elided over the most

i really, really doubt they could effortlessly slot back into being eärendil and elwing’s children. not when they’ve been surrounded by, lived alongside, been raised by the people who were supposed to enemies for most of their lives

they just don’t fit into that box any more. they can’t

speaking of eärendil and elwing, while i do agree that they both (especially elwing) get a lot more flak than they deserve, i don’t agree that therefore elrond and elros were never the slightest bit mad at them and fully forgave them for everything with no reservations

because, well, they were left behind. elwing had no other choice, but they were still left behind; it led to the world being saved, but they were still left behind. all the best intentions in the universe don’t erase the weeks and months and years of waiting, of a hope that grew thinner and frailer until it finally quietly broke

that’s a real hurt, and a real grievance. even if the twins rationally understand that their parents were making the best out of their terrible situation, you can’t logic away emotions like that. it’s perfectly possible for them to know they have no reason to resent eärendil or elwing, and yet still harbour that bitterness and pain

(i did write a thing once where elrond loudly rejects eärendil as his father in favour of maglor, but something i didn’t add in that i probably should have is that elrond later regretted doing that)

(not like, several centuries later, when he’d grown old and wise. two hours later, when he’d calmed down. but he was still legitimately angry at eärendil, because the one thing angry teenage elrond was not lacking in was reasons to be mad at the adults around him, and before he could figure out if he had anything less furious to say the hosts of the valar left middle-earth behind)

(it’s another element to the tragedy of the whole thing. in that particular story, which is mostly aiming for maximum pain, the only thing elrond’s birth parents know about their son for thousands of years is that he hates them)

(and he doesn’t, not really. you can’t hate someone you’ve never known)

not that i think they couldn’t ever make up with their parents! fics where elrond and his birth parents work past all the things that lie between them and form a functional familial bond despite it all give me life. i just don’t like the idea that there’s nothing difficult for them to work past

i don’t like the idea that elrond and elros would naturally, effortlessly identify with the mother they last saw when they were six and the people they only vaguely remember. i can see them doing it as a political move, i can see them going for it as a deliberate personal choice, but i can’t seeing it being immediate and automatic and easy

no matter how great a pair of heroes eärendil and elwing are, that doesn’t change the fact that to elrond and elros, they’re at most a few scattered memories and a collection of far-off stories. and so long as the twins stay in middle-earth, they’re never going to draw any closer

compared to the dynamic, multifaceted, personal, and deep bonds they have with the fëanorians - who, and i know i keep saying this but i think it gets tossed aside way more casually than it should, are the people who actually raised them, their birth parents must feel like a distant idea

and that’s why i can never buy interpretations of elrond as 100% sindarin, a pure son of doriath, with no messy grey areas or awkward jagged edges to his identity. given everything we know about his life, it seems almost cartoonishly simplistic

honestly it seems like a narrative a bunch of old doriathrin nobles trying to manouevre elrond into being high king of the sindar or something would propagate. it's neat and nice and tidy, something that’d be much more convenient for everyone if elrond did feel that way

but i just don’t see how he can. this narrative is easy and simple in a way real people never are, it ignores all the forces pulling him apart. elrond being uncomplicatedly sindarin with the life he lives and the people he's close to - that doesn’t make any sense to me

which isn’t to say i think he’s 100% noldorin, from either a gondolindrim or a fëanorian perspective. (i find it a little more believable, given, again, who he grew up around and who he hangs out with, but it’s still a bit too reductive for my tastes.) it’s also not to say i couldn’t believe an elrond who made an active choice to emphasise his sindarin heritage

it’s not how i think of him, but it works. i don’t have a problem with other people interpreting the complexities of the twins’ identities differently

i just have a problem with people acting like it doesn’t exist

in general i think there’s a lot untapped potential that gets left behind when you declare the twins, separately or together, as All One Thing

they’re descended from half the noble houses of beleriand, and they have deep personal ties to most of the rest. they belong to all of the free peoples even the dwarves, somehow, probably and i feel like that was kind of the old man’s point? so many peoples meet in them, to say they wholly belong to any one species is probably an oversimplification

they sit at a crossroads of potential identities, and rather than narrowing down their worldviews to one single path, they take the hard road and choose all of them. that’s what you need to do, if you want to change the world

and, to bring this back to my ostensible topic, in my estimation at least this mélange of possible selves does include them as fëanorians! it’s not overpowering, but it’s certainly there, and the adults they grow into long after they’ve left the host still bear influence from their childhood

nothing super obvious, nothing that wouldn’t stand out if you didn’t know what to look for, but there’s something almost incandescent in how fiercely elros reaches out for his dreams

there’s something almost defiant in elrond’s drive to be as kind as summer

as for who they publically claim as their family... honestly, it depends. while it’s usually more tactically prudent for elros to connect himself to his various human ancestors, on occasion he does find a use for his free in with the elf mafia, and elrond, code switcher par excellence, is famously the son of whoever is most politically convenient at the moment, which is rarely, but not never, maglor

(in the privacy of their own minds, well, eärendil and elwing may have been the parents elros was supposed to have, but maglor was the parent he actually had, and elros doesn’t particularly care to mope over what might have been. elrond, for his part, figures that after all the shit maglor has put him through, the least that bastard owes him is a father)

but honestly? i think before any of their mountain of identities, before thinking of themselves as sindarin or gondolindel or hadorian or haladin or fëanorian or anything, elrond and elros identify as themselves

they are peredhil, they are númenóreans, they are whoever they make themselves to be. that’s how elrond finally resolved his identity, figured out who he was and found something past the pain and the rage

he wasn’t doriathrin, or gondolindrin, or falathrin, or fëanorian, or whatever else. he was elrond, no more and no less

and that person, elrond, could be whatever he chose to be

... elros came to a similar conclusion, with much less sturm und drang that he’s willing to admit. being able to go ‘hey, i can’t possibly be biased towards any one of your cultures, because i’m descended from all of you and i was raised by murderelves’ makes it a lot easier to unite people around your personal banner, turns out

the stories other people tried to force on them shattered into pieces, and the peredhel twins were free to shape themselves into anything they could dream of

and as the new world struggles alive, these lost children of an Age of death begin to bloom into their full glorious selves -

i just. i love the poetry of that. despite every single shadow that hangs over their past, despite all the clashing notes pulling them apart, they harmonise it all into a greater, kinder theme, determined to make their world a better place in whatever way they can

they fail, of course, but so do all things. the inevitable march of entropy doesn’t diminish the long millennia they (and their descendants) held onto the light

and their growing up in the fëanorian host definitely had a huge effect on the noble lords they became. you can see it in elros’ loud ambition to create a land of happiness and hope, elrond’s quiet resolve to heal all the hurts inflicted by this marred reality

it wasn’t a perfect time by any means, but neither was it a nightmare. it was what it was, a desperate existence at the edge of a knife where, nevertheless, they were loved

even after years upon decades upon centuries have passed, it’s hard for the wise king and the honourable sage to separate out and identify all the conflicting emotions swirling around their childhood. they never knew eärendil or elwing, true, but they also never really knew maglor

not as equals, not as adults, not as people who could truly understand him. he disappeared into the fog of history, leaving only childhood memories of razor-sharp, gentle hands

it’s messy and it’s complicated and getting any real closure would be like shoving their way through a thornbush with bare hands even if elrond could find the shithead, and yet at the core of it all, there is light. not the brightest of lights, maybe, but an enduring one

that contrast, above all, that note of warmth amidst the shadows, is what fascinates me so much about their relationship. three screwed up people in a screwed up world, finding a little peace with each other

and the fact that somehow, it does have a good ending - the children grow up magnificent and compassionate and just, they become exemplars of all their peoples, lodestars of the new world born out of the ashes of the old - that makes it seem to me like this relationship must have contained some fragment of happiness

but, fuck, all the darkness that surrounds that love, all the tangled-up emotions its existence necessitates, all the prefabricated self-identities it can never slot into - nothing about it is simple, nothing about it is easy, and i find that utterly enthralling. especially how, despite everything, that flickering light never goes out

well, i don’t think it does, anyway. my take on this relationship is both complicated enough no one else ever quite gets it right and well-defined enough every single ‘error’ in other people’s interpretations sticks out like a kinslayer in rivendell

it is an entirely self-inflicted problem, i will admit. other people are allowed to interpret those complexities differently from me, and it’s entirely my own fault i lack the :waves hands around nebulously: to write my own hypothetical fic on the subject at a pace faster than glacial

still, though. i do wish there was more fic out there that engaged with these complexities. a lot of the common fandom interpretations of this relationship just sweep it all away

#ask #my terrible headcanons #elros #elrond #maglor #elwing #earendil #feanorians #niphredilien #yellow feathered faerie #putting your old url in the tags for archival purposes #post nyanyannya askbox clearout #ironically it turned out almost as long as the songfic that clogged up my askbox in the first place #and it is DONE #fuck this took forever to write #stayed up late just to get it out the door so i don't have to think about it any more #this is a long ramble and i'm pretty sure the end is just me repeating myself ad nausem sorry #i'll admit to a certain pro-feanorian bias in my interpretation #but i also don't want elros and elrond to just. live in a neverending horrorshow for decades #the silm's cruel enough we don't need that #narratively i feel like elrond being All Of The Elves is a good mirror for elros being All Of The Humans #but it didn't really fit the angle i was going for #bleck #let's see how many followers i lose for this

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lazyliars · 3 years

Text

c!Tommy's relationship to violence is a pretty fascinating one.

Specifically I got thinking about this in regards to Techno, and his proclaiming that he only saw Tommy as useful once he had displayed a willingness to commit violence against others alongside Techno.

And I think a lot of the difference in analysis of these moments between c!Tommy fans and c!Techno fans is that this kind of violence means different things between the two.

For Techno, fighting for or alongside someone is a pretty important thing; for someone who feels like he is often dehumanized and viewed as a weapon, choosing who he fights for and who he lends his power to means a lot.

As I see it, It's why his feeling abandoned during the Red Festival has much more weight amongst Techno enthusiasts then Tommy or Tubbo enjoyers, and why his bringing it up during Doomsday is such a point of contention between the two groups.

For the people in Tommy and Tubbo's corner, it's a deep hypocrisy; Techno claiming to feel used as a weapon after he had admitted that Tommy's usefulness and status as a friend and/or equal was tied directly to his being willing to fight.

But for the Techno corner, that's not what it's about; For Techno, fighting for someone you care about is a big deal, especially for someone who ends up being a loner a lot of the time. The willingness to protect someone is something deeper, almost symbolic.

It's a pretty nasty spot of miscommunication, tied with genuine misrepresentations of what Techno wanted from Tommy and a complete misunderstanding of what Tommy wanted from L'manberg and Tubbo, largely because during the Bedrock Bros arc, Tommy didn't know either.

Which ties back into how Tommy's relationship with violence works, and how it is pretty much the antithesis of Techno's.

For Tommy, not fighting someone is often a better indicator of his caring for them then his willingness to fight for them.

The best example of this is the scene in the community house; Tommy realizes that hurting his friends (specifically Tubbo) is not worth it - it's not going to get him what he wanted, and it's the turning point where he starts to understand what he always knew subconsciously; that what made the discs important wasn't entirely linked to the physical objects, it was the feeling of a carefree 'before time' that he wanted to return to.

It's Tommy's refusal to keep fighting Tubbo that is a transformative and inspiring moment for him, and a deep betrayal for Techno.

And it's why it hurts them both so badly.

Tommy doesn't want to fight Techno. He's genuinely apologetic to him and very obviously feels horrible for leaving him, and I imagine, had Dream not escalated the situation, Tommy would've been protecting him if the Butcher Army had tried to press the attack and finish what they started.

But for Techno, this is a brutal betrayal - Tommy used him, despite the fact that Tommy had just lost the very thing he had joined Techno to retrieve, because Techno was conflating Tommy's willingness to fight with his willingness to protect Techno, because that's how Techno shows that he cares.

To Techno, Tommy refusing to fight for him is a betrayal. For Tommy, it is a reclamation of his sense of self, but not an abandonment of Techno inherently.

Another example is Tommy continuing to follow Wilbur during the Pogtopia era, even when it was becoming more and more clear that Wilbur's spiral was endangering the people Tommy cared about.

Tommy refused, at every point, to get violent with Wilbur, or even to abandon him. He refused to believe that it would come to that, and he continued to believe in Wilbur's ability to pull himself back from the edge.

(It also makes Wilbur's beliefs on violence in his conversation with Big Q during the elections even more tragic. It was never a belief set that Tommy shared, even when Wilbur was being consumed by it.)

And again, when the cabinet was talking about killing Techno, Tommy was the one piping up in his defense because he was (at the time) just minding his own business. This is the foreshadowing to bedrock bros.

And we can see the reverse of this when Tommy is being violent. It's generally portrayed as something negative for his character, as a failing.

It's why Revivedbur goading Tommy into fighting him while they're doing the tour is such a dark moment.

It's why the scene in the pit and Techno's killing Tubbo is such a sticking point for Tommy and why Wilbur's giddiness at the brutality is so disturbing; Wilbur was aware that this was a devolution for Tommy.

It's also why I personally consider his killing Jack to be the lowest point of exile. It was a full refutation of the kind of 'silly' violence, AKA violence with no consequences. What would have been a dumb joke before suddenly took on this somber tone, as Jack tried to swim back up and save himself. This ends up being further compounded by Jack declaring this a canon death - Tommy, at his lowest, kills someone he once considered a friend.

This is why many Tommy enthusiasts view Bedrock Bros as the closest he ever came to a villain arc; Tommy hurting people for the sake getting what he wanted was a massive shift in his character's morality - it's why his declaration of being "worse than everyone I didn't want to be" means so much.

And while it's easy to think that "someone he didn't want to be" means Techno here, I'd argue he's referring to Wilbur. Wilbur, who gave in to his worst self and ended committing violence against all of his loved ones, precisely when he realized that he wouldn't be able to recover the thing he wanted most. Wilbur, who was the one who taught Tommy to fight with "words, not violence."

"The thing I built this nation for doesn't exist anymore," and "The discs were worth more than you ever were" are lines that parallel each other.

But where Wilbur follows his words up with an act of tragic, self-destructive violence, Tommy catches himself. Tommy stops hurting Tubbo. He stops trying to hurt L'manberg. He tells Tubbo to give Dream the disc, refuting Wilbur's idea that "if I can't have it, no one can," that poisoned his mind.

None of this is to say Tommy is a pacifist. He will definitely fight when he has to - he's a war veteran, after all.

But I do think there's a distinct difference in how he relates to violence when contrasted against other characters, and how he's failed and succeeded with regards to that.

#Dream SMP #Tommyinnit #c!Tommy #Technoblade #Wilbur Soot #Dream SMP analysis #lazytext #long post

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xxdragonwriterxx · 4 years

Text

🔥Can I Hear it Again?🔥

A/N: Hey guys! Thank you so much for the support, you guys have been so absolutely amazing and I love and appreciate all of you! Please take this self indulgent shorter fic! It has a slightly OOC Levi in it but I wanted to try something a little different this time with his character. I still tried to make him as realistic as possible, but a but more flustered than usual. Enjoy!

🐉Song Recommendation: “Kangaroo Court” By: Capital Cities 🐉

~~~

“No.”

“I’m not leaving until you say yes.”

“No, (Y/N).”

“Yes, Levi.”

“You are a serious pain in my ass, you know that?”

“Yes, but I’m a serious pain in your ass that’s going to help you heal, whether you like it or not.”

“I don’t like it.”

“That’s too damn bad.”

Levi leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, glaring at the woman standing in front of him, her own arms crossed and a determined look on her face. Damn, he sometimes forgot how stubborn she could be until something like this happens, showing her fangs a little and talking to him in a way that most people wouldn’t dare.

He had actually gotten hurt on the last expedition. It was rare, but he wasn’t invincible. It also didn’t help that it was caused by a rookie brat, a nearly fatal mistake causing Levi to have to swoop in and save him at the last minute before he became titan bait. Although he had managed to get the cadet away from danger, the maneuver he had used had been sloppy in an attempt to get to the soldier as fast as possible, leading to him crashing into a tree before he could straighten himself out. He wasn’t horribly injured, but something was definitely knocked out of place.

He knew he probably needed some basic medical attention but he refused to go to the infirmary, insistent that the medical supplies be used for the people who actually needed them for severe injuries rather than on his minor aches and pains. His shoulder had been bothering him all day but he continued to sit it out, confident that his body would figure itself out and heal over time.

He hadn’t expected (Y/N) to get wind of his refusal for medical attention. Hell, he hadn’t expected her to find out that he was hurt, but who was he kidding, (Y/N) had been with him since they were children in the Underground. Of course she would notice his normally unnoticeable reactions to pain.

He would never admit it, but his heart warmed as he looked at her on the other side of his desk, demanding he let her take care of him because she cared and was one of the few people who recognized he wasn’t perfectly fine in the first place. He loved knowing that she had his back, always had, and never failed to know exactly what he needed, sometimes before he even knew himself.

He huffed at her when she started tapping her foot, impatiently waiting for him to inevitably cave. They both knew he wanted it, but he was being stubborn.

“You know, it’s too late to act all invincible and unaffected around me now, Levi. I’ve been with you ever since we were nothing but living skeletons, you don’t have to act all affronted because you need help with a minor injury.”

He scowled at her, his intense gaze meeting her fiery one, her stance telling him she wasn’t going to back down any time soon. He sighed and rubbed his temples pretending to be annoyed. “Fine, but you better do a good job, brat.”

(Y/N) immediately relaxed and smiled at him, returning back to her normal bubbly self. He rolled his eyes at her when she came up to him, but didn’t fight it when she grabbed his wrist and dragged him from his desk chair, heading for his private quarters.

“Strip,” (Y/N) demanded as soon as they entered the bedroom, slipping into his bathroom to hunt through the oils she knew he had stashed away.

“Wow, (Y/N). If you wanted to see the goods that badly, you could’ve just asked,” Levi teased, smirking when she came back into his bedroom with a scowl on her face.

“You know that’s not what I meant. Shirt. Off. Now.”

Levi quirked an eyebrow, silently challenging her. (Y/N) sighed in annoyance and placed her hands on her hips giving him a look that threatened violence if he didn’t cooperate. He chuckled as he eventually started to comply, reaching up to unbutton his shirt while (Y/N) moved around his bed to lay a towel down.

When the shirt was finally off, (Y/N) had Levi lay face down on the bed, his face cradled by a mass of pillows, before she straddled his lower back. Years ago, she would’ve been embarrassed out of her mind. But fate had had other plans and at this point they had been through so much together, tending to each other’s wounds both emotional and physical, they had both learned to deal with the interactions between them that occasionally toed over the line of friendship.

Grabbing the bottle of lavender oil she’d found, (Y/N) squirted a healthy amount into her palm and rubbed her hands together, humming at the pleasant smell of the oil. Levi sighed at the first touch of her hands on his back, settling further down into the mattress as she started kneading the knots in his muscles.

(Y/N) started gentle, using her fingertips to discover where the source of his pain was before she really began to massage him, clenching her hands into fists and using her knuckles to knead him. Levi occasionally let out quiet hisses and groans as she worked, but for the most part the room was silent, (Y/N) too focused on giving him relief to engage in their usual banter. Not that she believed he’d be able to understand what she would be saying anyway, judging by his closed eyes and relaxed expression.

When she had finally finished up with his back, she moved on to his injured arm, gently prodding the flesh to find where he was the most tender. Finding the displaced joint, (Y/N) flattened her palms and pressed, a loud crack filling the air as his shoulder was clicked back into place. Levi’s breath had caught when she had popped his joint but he was otherwise silent, his body relaxing when she began to massage the strained muscles.

“Doing alright, Levi?”

“Hmm,” Levi hummed noncommittally.

(Y/N) smiled to herself and dug a little deeper into the flesh of his shoulder before gliding her fingers over his rough skin, using her fingers to spread the pleasure up his arm. Gently but firmly working his muscles, (Y/N) made sure to focus on each section of his arm, soothing his aches and pains like magic. Glancing down at his face, (Y/N) was about to check on him again when the sight made her freeze.

He was blushing. And it wasn’t a subtle salmon pink either, it was dark and obvious. Although her heart hammered at the sight, her stomach fluttering with how cute he looked, (Y/N) couldn’t help but wonder if this was making him uncomfortable. If he was blushing because she was touching him in a way he didn’t necessarily want to be touched but was too socially awkward to say something. She knew how he was, putting up a confident front as Captain when in reality he was one of the most sensitive people she knew. It was very likely that he wasn’t enjoying anything she was doing at all.

(Y/N) immediately started to doubt herself. She had initiated this in the hopes that it would make him feel more relaxed, not more anxious. She only wanted to make him feel good, but if he wasn’t enjoying it, she didn’t want him to think he couldn’t tell her about his discomfort. Despite the rapid flow of thoughts flying through her mind, (Y/N) managed to take a deep breath and organize her words, her mouth opening to tell him what she was thinking when a loud noise filled the air.

(Y/N) froze, feeling Levi stiffen beneath her, his eyes flying wide open as they both realized what had just happened. There was no mistaking the nature of the noise Levi had just made.

Levi had moaned. A loud, needy moan that filled the room.

The sound set her body on fire, her core clenching subconsciously as her mind immediately conjured up images of him on top of her, or her with his cock in her mouth, or her riding him enthusiastically, giving him the utmost pleasure as he rammed up to meet her.

Levi gave her no time to speak as he quickly rolled over and lifted her off of him, getting up to sit on the edge of the bed, facing away from her. (Y/N) was shocked when she saw him cover his blushing face with his hands, never having seen him show this much embarrassment before. He looked like he wanted to find the nearest knife and slit his own throat.

“Levi-”

“(Y/N), I’m sorry,” Levi whispered so quietly she almost didn’t hear it, mumbling into his hands. It was so uncharacteristic of him to be acting this way, but (Y/N) found it endearing, adorable even.

“Levi, you don’t have to apologize,” (Y/N) said, trying to cool her own flaming cheeks. “It was supposed to feel good, I’m glad it was, um… working.”

Levi groaned at her words, shaking his head a little. “I didn’t mean for that to happen. I was trying to s-suppress it, but y-your hands felt so g-good and I couldn’t stop it.”

“Hey, it’s alright, it was natural! I was giving you a back massage after you practically dislocated your shoulder and almost displaced your spine, it was bound to cause a reaction from you. You were hurt and now you feel better, it’s just your body reacting to being healed again, nothing to be ashamed of,” (Y/N) said. She was honestly surprised she had gotten through that sentence without stuttering but she was glad she was able to hold firm, knowing he needed that reassurance right now. No matter how hot she thought he sounded, it was clear he was mortified.

“It wasn’t from the massage,” Levi said.

“Huh?”

“What just happened, that was because of you.”

“Wait, you mean you…?”

“Yeah,” Levi said with a huff. “I have for a while now, but I couldn’t find the right way to tell you so I just kept it to myself. I was hoping to tell you eventually, but I wanted to do it my way. So much for that I guess.”

(Y/N) was stunned. He…, liked her? Since when? Ever since she had known him she had never seen him gravitate towards wanting a partner, always appearing unfazed when even the most stunning women batted their lashes at him. He was still human, she knew he wasn’t immune to his hormones, but she had never expected to be on the receiving end of those desires.

Elated couldn’t even begin to describe what (Y/N) was feeling, her heart pounding with more than just the lust from their recent encounter. She had loved him for ages but had never engaged anything with the fear of possibly losing her best friend to something as stupid as feelings hanging over her head. But now that she knew the true nature of his emotions, (Y/N) wasn’t going to hold back.

“Hey ~Levi,” (Y/N) purred.

“Yes?” Levi asked, his brow quirked up at the sound of the husky lilt in (Y/N)’s voice.

“I’ve got to admit, that moan was pretty hot,” (Y/N) said, leaning up to graze her teeth along the shell of his ear, reveling in his responsive shudder. “Care to try making some more?”

Levi whirled around to look at her in shock, his silver eyes meeting her gaze until he could see the truth swirling within them. She really did love him back, something that made Levi’s stomach do a few funny flips. He couldn’t help the wicked smile that graced his features then, turning around to climb back to the center of the bed, suddenly immensely grateful for the towel she had placed over his mattress for the massage. Reaching for her, Levi leaned in and brushed his lips against hers, his eyes half lidded and filled with a lust that matched her own.

“Anything for you, baby,” Levi said huskily before (Y/N) crashed her mouth onto his, eager to make good on her silent promise to pull as many delicious moans from her normally composed Captain as possible.

#levi x reader #aot levi #attack on titan #attack on titan x reader #captain levi #captain levi x reader #levi ackerman #levi ackerman fanfiction #levi ackerman x reader #levi attack on titan #snk imagines #snk levi #snk x reader #snk fanfiction #snk #shigeki no kyojin

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melohax · 4 years

Note

Ok so I just realized that I can send long ask so I will just copy paste my last meta here, it will kinda be a mumble jumbo wall of text so I hope you don’t mind

I have never personally perceived what shadow Basil said about us as he was deeming is as cruel or evil toward them tbh. Shadow Basil seems to be there to ground Sunny back to reality more by recalling him of the past and calling out his escapism to me more. Him saying “but after everything, you left me” is less him calling out on Sunny being evil toward him but more on him calling out how Sunny just mentally completely shut off from reality, him dropped out of school irl and become shut in paralleling to him building an entire imaginary world on “black space” and suppressing the black space as the light bulb locking other half of Basil who knows away, leaving Basil both irl and in dream to be left alone dealing with his own guilt.

You talking about Basil irl and black space Basil occasionally has the same overlapping dialogues of “will you forgive me?”/“do you hate me?” also raised up possibility of Basil irl has also said these to Sunny in the past thus his manifestation saying the same thing to him. Basil in dream world acting completely carefree and sweet is more of him just want to live in his idealistic, good old day of the past tbh (evidence in how 4 years have passed yet the citizen in the dream world never age, dream HERO still 15 years old haha why are you so small) and Omori acting “cold” or “strange” isn’t entirely exclusive to Basil either since we saw the same instance with Mari who was trying to guide Sunny to the truth at the beginning of Last Resort arc, as he is the manifestation guardian who “guards” Sunny’s psych so to speak and the irl instance where Sunny hurt Basil is when them both are in panic and fist fight each other to dead so I think it’s an understandable reaction tbh SFGHVJBK.

There is a lot more but the biggest reason why a large part of me feeling like Sunny doesn’t exactly “hate” or blame Basil for anything he did is also because the way the narration portray him coping with thing, he completely and utterly rejects it, denies it from being real, being “I do not see it” (the closet door lead to the toy book with his broken violin completely disappeared irl in his pov despite other character still comment about it, when Basil was tying the noose to uh do the thing Sunny chose to pretend that he did not see what was happening, when he witnesses Basil’s death in one of the bad end if you try to interact with the door lead to Basil’s room again it will completely disappear with Sunny notes that “there is nothing there”) than blaming it on someone or something else and when he finally forced to face the truth he just blames himself the most, how he just took away everyone happiness irrc

ALSO SORRY AGAIN FOR A LONG WALL OF TEXT AFHJGJJ

Yeah, I’ve already talked in my other posts about Sunny’s coping through extreme avoidance and how it intertwines with him burying the truth in his subconscious and so forth. It doesn’t cancel out how his subconscious does see the truth to the point that Blackspace keeps leaking into Dream world.

Daddy Longlegs mentions this, how Sunny and Omori do all they can to pretend they don’t see the truth, repressing as much as possible BUT Blackspace still ends up leaking into the Dream world regardless.

As much as Sunny’s mind keeps working to get rid of all that hurts him, blackspace keeps seeping into his dreams and yet he still seeks Dream Basil out when he disappears from his mind. This is counterproductive in that it interferes with his own coping mechanisms of “I do not see it” and Omori’s attempts at defending his mind. It tells us that Sunny’s thoughts and feelings are conflicted, he both wants to suppress the truth while his mind simultaneously has him trying to save the person that represents said truth to him.

Sunny and Omori want to keep the good parts of Basil in his dream, the parts that remind him of the good ol days of innocent childhood. Meanwhile, he tries locking away the parts of Basil’s existence that hurt him (Basil giving him the Mari idea, Basil hanging Mari, the monsters Basil sees etc etc) but he always fails.

Daddy Longlegs, the Blackspace void people and the tree in the deepest well tells us Sunny’s mind has never been able to separate his ideal Basil from the parts of Basil that force him to acknowledge what happened.

I kinda also disagree with your other arguments too tbh.

Like I said before, monsters with Basil’s dialogue keep calling Sunny a liar (like the one on the train) and Sunny’s subconscious he tries to represskeeps focusing on how he hurts Dream Basil: Basil telling him he doesn’t feel safe, the invisible shadows in the main room of Blackspace calling Omori and Sunny evil, commenting on Sunny’s mistreatment of Basil and their fears that he’ll do something to real world Basil if he’s not “uncorrupted”.

Sunny’s mind specifically clings to Basil’s “do you hate me?” + his apologies for a reason. Real Basil very likely said these things to Sunny this mind keeps going back to it for a reason. Mari commenting on Omori being cold isn’t the same at all cus Basil commented on it in a context where he was about to be killed and his next words are about how he doesn’t feel safe with Sunny.

When I talk of dream Basil’s almost angelic persona, I don’t mean just him being the way he was in the “good old childhood days” all carefree and sweet. I’m talking about things like how even when he’s being killed, Sunny portrays Basil in his mind as still trying to be kind, understanding and passive even to the things actively hurting him (like how Dream Basil keeps trying to be nice to the spiders even while they’re eating him alive).

Real life Basil isn’t only made of infinite beatific patience like Dream Basil is. He cries, gets angry and really upset at times, tells Sunny it’s not fair that Sunny left him behind. Basil calls Sunny out on lying about promising to always be there for each other and begs in desperation for Sunny not to leave him, once again coming back to him asking “Do you hate me?”.

Dream Basil is also shown as very helpless and someone who would never resort to violence. This is shown not to be true in the real world.

Basil will resort to violence if he feels it’s absolutely necessary to protect the person he loves, like how he physically attacks Sunny at the end, possibly gouging Sunny’s eye out in the process. Basil does this believing he’s genuinely going to save Sunny from the “Something” behind him so it shows he’s not just this eternally passive, soft, helpless being Sunny’s mind portrays him as.

Real Basil is willing to do anything it takes (including resorting to physical violence) if its for the sake of the person he loves most. It’s a contrast to how Sunny in his dreams goes as far as putting his ideal of Basil on this pedestal of “purity” at times. This goes back to how one the invisible strangers walking in Blackspace void tells Omori it hopes real Basil is uncorrupted or else it fears what Sunny will do to him.

Then there’s shadow Basil. He doesn’t just “ground” Sunny, he also reminds Sunny of the consequences his actions have on others. This shows that Sunny’s subconscious (Blackspace) acknowledges the truth even though real Sunny keeps trying to pretend it’s not there and Omori keeps trying to bury it.

These are all parts of Basil that Sunny doesn’t want to see and that he keeps trying to lock away deep in Blackspace so that only his perfect version of Basil remains in his mind. All of the trouble Sunny goes through to shut his eyes and yet when Omori finds Basil in the alternate rooms in Blackspace, it’s as if Sunny’s mind keeps trying to guilt trip itself over how he’s been treating Basil by showing Basil constantly suffering and dying in horrible ways.

So imo the points you made are easily attributed not only to extreme avoidance but also to entangled feelings of hatred, love, fear and pain. Sunny isn’t a completely innocent character when it comes to his mind and certain actions (being able to stab real world Aubrey and stuff) but that’s ok. It doesn’t mean he’s simply a villain, it just means he’s complex and with complicated emotions the same as most human beings.

Of course at the end Sunny blames himself the most, I talked about this in my first post too. It’s by then that he’s accepted his main role in the tragedy with Mari (the fact it was an accident, Basils good intentions, why he isolated himself, etc) and he’s moving towards facing the most painful parts of it. That’s part of the whole point.

None of this means Sunny generally just cruel or callous, of course. Again, I’ve already said before that this doesn’t make Sunny objectively “evil” or anything of the sort. His own mind is the one calling him evil due to all his guilt and so on.

Also P.S. Please be mindful and don’t spam my inbox with so many messages tho 😣 I got this entire message sent thrice in my inbox and then you also sent it as a submission and then you also sent a few other asks as well all in the span of one day. They were all kinda the same subject over and over too.

If it’s tumblr being fucky and sending that many messages repeatedly, I understand and it’s ok but then I’d rather you come off anon instead cus boy it spams.

#omori #omori game #omori spoilers #spoilers #asks #omori sunny #omori basil #sunny omori #basil omori

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trash0receptacle · 4 years

Text

Stress pt. 2

(This is based on my personal issues and stuff more as a way to cope. I’m not romanticizing any of mental illness and my goal is not to offend anyone. I also feel I should put a warning so trigger warning for: Depression, Anixety, Mentions of Anorexia, and death.)

If you feel any like this may trigger you then feel free to skip it.

My dms are open but I don’t have notifications turned on however I’m fairly active on here. With that out of the way

With the statement left hanging in the air the atmosphere of the room turned serious. Mc gained a vacant and sad expression.

“What do you mean it happened before you got here?” Satan questioned

“Mc, you know you can trust us right?” Asked them avatar of envy

This got a chuckle out of Mc who uncharacteristically said

“Trust is bullshit.... everyone I’ve trusted has either lied to me, hurt me, or left me. Trust isn’t exactly something I believe in anymore.”

The brothers had never seen Mc speak with such bitterness and sadness. It was shocking coming from the human who acted like an angel.

“Mc, I-“ Lucifer tried to say but was cut off by mammon

“Mc who hurt ya” Mammon questioned very angrily

“It’s a long list”

Mammon just hugged Mc tighter while the others stared holes into Mc’s clouded eyes.

“I know if I say what happened I won’t be able to stop. If I tell you guys then I’ll end up telling you everything and it’s not your fault I’ve had a lot of shitty stuff happen to me.”

“Mc you don’t need to feel like your burdening us with your problems honey.” Asmo murmured

“If I tell you just promise me you guys won’t you know hurt people because I have a feeling you guys might get a little angry” Mc painfully laughed

All of the brothers nodded thinking Mc must have been exaggerating but where soon to find out they weren’t.

“Well let’s start when my childhood ended, when the person I never thought I could live without left, my aunt. The person I had to watch die and suffer for months unbeknownst to myself. When at 12 years old I stayed by her side every day because I didn’t want her to feel alone. The person who plagues my dreams and subconscious. Then in middle school how I was mocked for being “sad” about how I watched my life be torn apart in front of me. How my parents became stricter and distant quick to punish me for anything. How my tract record for being everyone’s therapist started. When I started telling people how they matter and shouldn’t off themselves. How I avoided my own internal demons by consoling others who would later hurt me. Then how all I became good for was advice and I had no one I could vent to not even my therapist. After that I started starving myself because I couldn’t bring myself to cut. My friends cut but I wouldn’t because I couldn’t let anyone know how broken I truly was. How I became horribly suicidal and almost committed suicide in 7th grade twice. Or how on my 13th birthday I was throwing up inside the restaurant bathroom and when o came out my parents shook me asking me if I did it on purpose. I still don’t know if I did or not. Then I got better. I was saved by my parents and my therapist however I was emotionally exhausted at this point. Then bam 8th grade happened. At this point because school had been easy for me I never had to try before and my grades plummeted so I stopped caring about school. My parents were always on my case about missing assignments and bad grades and everything. Not to mention when I tired to be kind to a girl getting bullied because I felt sympathy. I saw myself in her and told the other kids to knock it off. However I guess she took that as an insensitive to start harassing me and ultimately assaulting me for months. I was told I didn’t have a choice when I tried to stand up for myself so I disassociated. At the same time my only grandfather was diagnosed with a Brian tumor but the doctors were positive he would be okay. I had friends who were well connected because I went to catholic school so I was able to surprise my grandfather with being able to be on the field as his favorite football team warmed up. He got a signed football form the coach that he would keep in his family room next or his chair. However a month later he was put in hospice like my aunt. I couldn’t handle it so recently after the last time. But at least my aunt kept her personality unlike my grandfather who I had to watch be unable to care for himself and lose his memories. After that was blue well until my birthday that year which my dad forgot. Then my grandfather died a month later but I was unable to attend his funeral because of the coronavirus. How next I was almost put in the hospital for attempting to unalive and because I had starved myself to the point where I ate once a day. Then summer happened and I was happy again. My friends lifted my spirit but then they all got in relationships and didn’t need me anymore. So I became in their eyes a lying and narcissistic bitch. I was told I was fat and awful by them. And then I got okay again but still didn’t trust people and we arrive in the present. Oh well I forgot to mention my parents disowned me but that’s a another story.”

Mammon started to cry and hold Mc just wanting to feel like they could protect them. He knew Mc had been through a lot but to this extent he had no idea. He felt so angry that people did this to his human.He felt guilt for calling Mc a stupid human knowing it probably hurt mc.

Levi went over to Mc and hugged them from behind. He wasn’t the most affectionate person but he wanted to confirm they were here. He never wanted his Henry to feel like they didn’t matter. He felt guilty about telling them to die in arguments where his anger to the better of him.

Satan just sat there unsure of what to do or say. What could he say “hey I’m sorry you got assaulted?” His wrath wanted to destroy the people who did this to Mc but Mc seemed to believe it was their fault. They also seemed like they don’t want violence.

Asmo just sat next to Mc like Levi wanting to confirm they were there. He felt so bad about being so flirty and touchy now knowing why Mc seemed to be so modest. He wished he’d known because looking back in it he probably brought memories back mc wanted to forget.

Beel for once didn’t feel hungry so he left to go to the kitchen not for himself but for Mc. Mc said they used to starve themselves? This is why the offer him their food. He felt shameful for eating it knowing the truth now.

Belphie just put his head on mc’s lap. They let him do it before so he figured it was fine. Even with all of Mc’s personal stuff they still wanted to help him. He wouldn’t let Mc feel like that again.

Lucifer was shell shocked. His pride wouldn’t let him show emotion so he left. He went to his office to find Mc’s file. None of this was in it. He talked to Diavolo informing him of the sudden “update”. He wanted to talk to Mc privately but figured he’d need to wait.

Mc felt guilty. “I knew I shouldn’t have said anything” “look now they hate you”. They really couldn’t handle all of this right now and asked for some space to think. Much to the brothers dismay they left knowing if Mc truly wanted to be alone they would be able to use their pact.

Lucifer however didn’t have a pact with Mc so he didn’t have to listen. Knowing they would be alone he asked them to come to his study.

When they arrived he just held mc.

Note: Yeah I didn’t know how to finish and I’m a little sick so please don’t be that critical. And I’m alright now I just know that a lot of people (myself included) find comfort or something similar when reading angst. It can help them with their issues etc. Anyway have a wonderful day or night loves

- Caroilne

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flowerslut · 4 years

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happy whumptober

I’ll be following the lead of @volturialice in doing however many of these as I can in a Very Random order throughout the month. They will all be painfully unedited and posted as they’re written. Tonight’s prompt is a ‘canon’-divergent piece for my Call of the Night readers. (MAJOR SPOILERS for those who haven’t finished CotN)

No 16. A TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD DAY Forced to Beg | Hallucinations | Shoot the Hostage

Rating: T for allusions to violence Words: 2,238 Summary: The Protectors don’t make it to the clearing in time.

Borrowed Time

There isn’t a clock in the room.

There’s nothing, really. Not a bed—there would be no purpose for such a thing—or a chair—again, it would be meaningless—or even a window. Not one leading indoors or out. There’s a tiny vent on the ceiling, circulating air he doesn’t need to breathe, and there’s an intercom next to the black-painted door. The intercom is as pointless as the vent, in Jasper’s opinion. He hasn’t had a visitor in days.

Or maybe it’s been months.

He doesn’t quite think it’s been that long; his thirst isn’t bothering him as much as it usually does on a regular, everyday basis. (Or at least, he doesn’t think it is.) Which means he has to have fed recently. Which means someone has brought him blood. (Probably. He doesn’t think he’s hallucinated his meals.)

It doesn’t even frustrate him that he doesn’t remember. Or that he can’t tell what is real.

But there isn’t a clock in his room.

Sure, it won’t exactly help him orient himself. Knowing whether it is nine AM or six PM makes no difference in the grand scheme of things, but it may help settle him more.

His vision shimmers and blurs slightly. Jasper does what he’s done for days (or weeks or months) now: he stares straight ahead, unable to even brace himself, as the hallucination seizes him.

He doesn’t mind them anymore. After all, he’s been powerless to stop their onslaught. Just in the same way he’s powerless to control anything he does while they take over. It’s a strange feeling. He’s slowly becoming accustomed to the way his mind and body act while the world around him—a world that he’s not entirely sure is real or not—morphs and shifts.

He’s barely aware of the way he screams sometimes. At nothing, at everything.

It’s as if he’s been split in two. He is Jasper. He knows that much. But whatever hold Skye has put on him—whatever sickness she’s afflicted his mind with—has forced him, or the essence of who he is, to retreat far back into the recesses of his mind. When he’s able to think coherent thoughts he wonders if he’ll ever be able to make it back out of the pit he’s dug for himself in his own mind. In the area of his subconsciousness that is still his.

He’s partly aware of how he sees Maria in front of him. She’s dangling something, trying to draw his attention. He focuses on the detached limb she’s waving in front of his face, as if taunting him, and instantaneously he recognizes Alice’s skinny wrist.

He lunges at Maria but when his hands squeeze around her throat suddenly she’s not in his grasp and he’s spinning and hissing and screaming.

“You did so good,” he hears her voice purr as he desperately tries to find her in this room. “You did everything I needed you to.” Her accented voice is as high and clear as it’s ever been.

The part of his mind that is still sane struggles to be heard. She isn’t here. She’s lying. Alice is fine. Alice is okay. Focus. Ignore it.

But Jasper growls and lunges and yells for so long that eventually it’s been so long since he heard Maria’s voice in his ear that he doesn’t know how long he’s been screaming for.

And there isn’t even a clock in the room.

His body calms down as his mind begins to agonize over the woman he loves.

Alice. He wants to cry out for her. Where are you?

But he’s terrified to even attempt to speak the words out loud. He isn’t confident in his body’s ability to obey an order from the part of his mind that still belongs to him. And even if he could find his tongue and utter that two-syllable name he’s petrified that Maria’s voice will answer in reply.

Dead. She’s dead and you killed her. Those are the words she would say. Those are the words he’s heard her say in his mind for days or weeks or months now. Even before he’d been confined to this room they were the words he’d been haunted with. From the first nightmare Skye gifted him with to the most vivid hallucinations that seize him in this tiny, inescapable room.

He’s not entirely sure where he is. He knows he’s not in the clutches of Maria or her radicals any longer. The only solid memory he’s been able to form in the past few months is of the night his comrades took him back into their custody.

The smell of funeral pyres burning had registered in his senses before his airways had been cut off with a strong arm wrapping around his neck, ready to pluck his head from his shoulders at a moments notice.

He would’ve recognized Emmett’s signature hold anywhere and would have cried with relief if he’d been able to inhale enough air to complete the motion, but he was instead stuck frozen. After an unknown amount of time being subjected to Maria’s manipulation and Skye’s torture, he had nearly forgotten what it felt like to see, and to feel, and to breathe the air around him.

He’d forgotten what it felt like to exist in the real world.

With the way Emmett was holding him, Jasper’s head was stuck upward, staring as smoke filtered it’s way into the sky, the dark gray slowly blending into the blackness and dimming the stars above.

“Maria,” he managed to choke the word out with the little bit of air still left in his lungs. Kill her, he screamed mentally, just in case Edward was nearby.

And he was. Not two seconds later the sound of Edward’s distraught voice carried across the clearing.

“She’s dead,” Edward spoke monotonously, and Jasper couldn’t figure out why he didn’t sound relieved to be saying such a thing. Instead of relief, waves of sorrow and dread rolled over him as Edward continued uttering the words, over and over again, as if in disbelief. “She’s dead.”

He heard Bella crying—of course Bella was nearby, that was probably how they’d momentarily freed his mind from Skye’s hold—and then suddenly the haze was back, and he was lost to the nightmares once more.

Jasper doesn’t know how long ago that was, but it had been far too long.

Perhaps they’re still searching for a more permanent solution to his predicament. After all, Bella can’t linger by his side and shield him for the rest of their eternity. Perhaps there isn’t a solution. Perhaps this is their solution: to keep him locked away.

In all of his past research into Alice’s records, he’d never once given a thought about how a vampire asylum might operate if such a thing existed. But here he is, locked away with his mind wrapped up tight inside a snare, at the mercy to the lunacy that owns him now.

Time passes, because it always does, but Jasper doesn’t have a clock, so Jasper doesn’t know how long it is before suddenly he’s on his knees, inhaling what feels like his first breath of air in years.

He’s caught himself somehow and spends several seconds staring at the backs of his scarred hands. What he’s seeing is real, and he can just barely hear the sound of very muffled voices from beyond the door of wherever it is he’s being kept.

He’s scared to speak but after a few seconds, when the clarity doesn’t subside, he calls out as loudly as he dares. “Hello?”

His voice isn’t raspy but he knows that it isn’t carrying beyond the door. “Hello?” He calls louder this time, and the quiet sounds coming from somewhere outside of this room silence completely.

The lack of noise nearly drives him back into madness instantly.

“Please, don’t go. I need to know what—where am I? What’s going on?” He’s begging before he can control himself. On his hands and knees he pleads to whoever is listening in on his desperation, feeling like the shell of a man. “Please tell me you can fix this,” he raises his voice even louder as he calls out. “Please, I just want to talk to somebody.” Along with the clarity, he realizes something. “Bella? Are you there?”

The intercom clicks on.

“Hey, Jasper. You gotta stand up and back up or I can’t come in.”

It’s Emmett.

Jasper is so relieved to hear his voice that in a millisecond he’s off of the ground and as far away from the door as he can physically be in the tiny room.

“Now, I don’t want you attacking me or whatever, so you’ve gotta turn around and put your hands on the back of your head. Sorry man.”

Before Emmett’s even apologizing for the request Jasper has already done what has been asked of him. He doesn’t even care—and it makes sense; Jasper isn’t positive that he won’t attack Emmett—he’s so full of hope and relief that he would jump up and down like a fool if it meant he’d be in the company of someone familiar for any measure of time.

Jasper can hear more muffled noises before the intercom clicks on again. There’s a long sigh. “I know,” the first two words aren’t directed at Jasper, but the rest are. “You’re not allowed to turn around while I’m in there, okay?”

“Okay, I won’t.” Jasper quickly assures the man. He’s so antsy to be in Emmett��s presence. He has thousands of questions and he’s praying his comrade—the closest thing to a friend he has in this world—will be able to help him understand what’s happening.

The hiss of the door opening causes a feeling of such pure relief that Jasper knows Emmett feels it the instant he’s in the room. But when Jasper doesn’t feel the door close behind Emmett, he knows something is off.

“Emmett?”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

Hearing his voice in person brings emotion straight to the surface and suddenly Jasper is afraid he might start to cry. As he struggles to reign in his emotions, he laces his fingers together behind his head and presses his forehead against the wall, squeezing his eyes shut tightly.

“Where is everyone?” Jasper asks. “Bella is here, right? That’s why I can talk to you. I know that much. Is Skye dead? Is that why I can’t break free from whatever is wrong with me?”

“Bella’s around,” Emmett confirms, his words short. “Skye is alive, too.”

“So she can fix this?”

There’s a pause in which Jasper feels his stomach tighten. “We think so.” But Emmett’s words sound strange.

“Alice?” Jasper asks, still afraid that Maria will appear before him and start taunting him again. The fear just drives him to ask again, but louder, and with more urgency. “Is she here? Is she around?”

“Yeah,” Emmett’s voice cracks as he takes a few steps closer.

“I—can I talk to her?” He hates how childish he sounds. At the same time he hardly cares. He needs Alice more than he needs his sanity. Without her, he doesn’t even know what the purpose of fighting his way out of this haze even is.

“Yeah, you can.”

“I—” It only takes Jasper a few seconds to realize he can’t sense Alice in the vicinity; her emotional climate is so distinct that he would be able to sense her anywhere. Perhaps even in a hallucination. But with that thought, he isn’t so sure. “Do you have to call her? Where is she?”

“You can talk to her soon.” Emmett is much closer now, and every one of Jasper’s instincts has begun to alarm. He wants to turn around so badly and face his almost-friend. He wants to see a face that doesn’t belong to a hallucination and he wants more than anything to hold Alice in his arms once more.

“How soon?” Jasper demands, a crazed desperation beginning to take hold as he feels Emmett stop directly behind him. “I have to talk to her. I need to know she’s okay. You were right, Emmett. I love her. I need to tell her; I haven’t even told her yet.”

Emmett has to interrupt his escalating tirade. “You can tell her in a second,” and he hears Emmett shift slightly. With relief Jasper relaxes, anticipating the inevitable phone conversation that will transpire soon. Emmett must be pulling up Alice’s number because there’s a couple of seconds of silence before he speaks again. “You did really good, Jasper. You helped us finish things.”

“The war is over?” Jasper lets more of his weight rest forward and against the wall as Emmett’s words seep into his bones. “Maria is dead?”

“It’s all over buddy. Everything is going to be okay now.”

“And I’ll be able to talk to Alice soon.”

“Yeah,” and as Emmett’s voice cracks again, Jasper feels emotion begin to stir in him, too. “Real, soon, Jasper.”

“Okay,” Jasper whispers, relaxing as he hears Emmett shift his stance once more. “Okay.”

There is no clock in the room. Jasper Whitlock isn’t given a time of death. But time continues to pass nonetheless. The future comes, unseen. Ashes are intermingled with ashes. Love reunited in death and laid to rest together.

There is no clock in the room. But time does not stop.

#b4 any of u say anything: you're welcome that I didn't do this in cotn #jalice #twilight fanfiction #cotn #whumptober2020

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ficmylife4 · 4 years

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First Reading BNHA 14-24

I’m very confused by the pacing of this manga so far. Was it meant to be an anime right away, so the manga was expected to just be bare bones and filler and more characterization would be added in episodes?

After my complaints about how inconsistent Izuku’s characterization was, I guess that’s smoothed out now--by glossing over the extremes. Looks like this is going to be another one where a main character gets a difficult backstory with discrimination and horrible treatment only long enough to get sympathy points, and then completely forgets about it and acts mostly well-adjusted protagonist from then on. Izuku is vaguely curious that All Might wants him to announce himself at the Sports Festival at first--no desperation to get AM’s approval, none of the reckless and thoughtless need to be the best and prove he’s earned his place (fighting against internalized anti-quirkless bias), no tearful gratitude for what he’s overcome to get this far when he used to watch the festival on TV: no, it sounded like Izuku would have been comfortable and taking for granting participating in the middle of the pack b/c he’s a hero and that’s enough for him.

I’m a little disappointed that it seems like UA is just a backdrop, and actually learning isn’t going to be part of the story, which doesn’t imply good things about character development either. No build up about consider all the applications your quirk could have in unusual situations; it’s your first day, show Aizawa your creativity in using quirks you were never allowed to before. No build up to how to fight with quirks or strategize inside buildings or historical examples of teamwork to inspire you; first day of class, pair up and fight. You might have to think clearly in disasters despite the stress, we’re actually going to train for thi--no, real homicidal villains showed up, and obviously you don’t need any lessons or growth about how to handle attacks, everyone handles it pretty well. Two professional heroes are beaten bloody in front of students trying to protect them, no worries, the kids are almost on pro levels already. Mineta is the only one who actually reacts with fear and panic, and even he is fine afterward with no one reacting at all to the first time their lives were directly threatened or if they’re willing to be heroes now they know it’s about injury and overwhelming forces and ambushes, not celebrity and clean showy fights when expecting it on patrols.

Bakugou’s smart and has been surprisingly calm and in control of himself.

Shigaraki was a lot less childish than I was expecting from other things I’ve seen. He was observant, read Eraserhead and the battles well, could even keep up to notice what All Might did when he was moving too fast to see, wasn’t afraid to take a punch and get in close with EH, and he grasped his group’s limits well and expected to retreat soon after knowing Iida was bringing backup. He didn’t rave about his personal grudge or monologue about his own greatness or quirk, and admitted with a smile when All Might called him out on not really believing the party line he gave about wanting to send a greater message about the lack of difference in villains and heroes. He did react badly to the Nomu’s defeat, but it was brief, and he adapted well in his next attack to use Kurogiri’s mist. For someone I’d heard a lot about whining and throwing tantrums, he wasn’t nearly as self-centered as I expected about pain. After EH punched him away he just picked himself up off the ground, he stayed still to assess everything after Snipe shot his hand, and far from coddling him, I thought his discussion with Sensei while he was lying on the floor with bullets in every limb was chilling in the lack of concern for his pain showed by everyone in the room including him. Bleeding there, Shigaraki was still thinking about how the plan went and giving a report. He might not be an idealist devoted to a cause, but he was focused when it came to his own goal and unafraid to risk himself in it.

I really don’t get why Izuku was able to not hurt himself for that one punch against Nomu? What was the audience supposed to take away from that? The first time he tried to punch a living thing, he didn’t injure himself, so he subconsciously was able to control it. Are we supposed to applaud Izuku’s inherent compassion that held him back from wanting to hurt the villain trying to kill Tsu even as he attacked to stop it? Are we supposed to think it sad he can automatically control it if it’s to protect his target but can’t to protect himself? He broke his legs jumping later so it wasn’t about the violence. Was the key he stopped thinking about his weak body, didn’t weigh the damage and decide it was worth it? Thoughtlessness is being rewarded now? I guess that matches AM’s brilliant strategy that he can’t hit hard enough against Nomu so he’ll just hit harder than he possibly can.

What is this pacing? No room to think about the USJ attack or process any feelings from that or life-and-death situations, now showing off for the Sports Festival is so important! And again, no teaching or new stuff, they’re already expected to be hero material and this is just a showcase. But I guess Izuku isn’t worried about how far behind he is compared to the others, he’s ignoring reality and aiming for the top, without planning how to not use or safely use the quirk that breaks his bones to get there. Seriously, All Might, it’s his first month of school, the public isn’t anxiously awaiting the proof that a hero as mighty as AM is rising that Izuku has to send a message right now. No one outside the school even knows AM is planning to retire soon, and it’s not like there’s a shortage of powerhouses around. Why are the bragging rights of being able to be top of the class from your first month so much more important than learning to use OfA properly and rising up in the next year’s Festival? Unless this is a message about how the unreasonable celebrity demands to be perfect and capture the public’s fickle interest right away are taking time away from Izuku learning to be an effective hero, and the system shouldn’t be catering to the popularity contest so much?

#bnha #first reading

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villainever · 5 years

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Eve and the Performance of Morality

The "descent into darkness" as a format for a character arc is relatively common these days, especially in prestige television, and while it's more often played out with men than women, it's not unheard of as a trajectory for female characters. What's so interesting about Eve's development is how FAST it is happening. On a poorly-written show, this would be because the writers were rushing, too caught up in Point B to plot a satisfying journey there from Point A. But Killing Eve is basically a masterclass in good screenwriting, and it leaves us with the unshakeable feeling that this is the only way it COULD happen for Eve.

Other "descending" characters are so often ordinary, but transformed by their remarkable circumstances. They are pushed by the people around them and unfortunate events into compromising on their ideals and values, slowly shifting inch by inch until they've lost sight of who they were. And often, this is where they're killed off, or a redemption begins.

But even though she changes, Eve isn't transformed. She's REVEALED. And not just to us, but to herself. She isn't surrounded by people pushing her to darkness -- in fact, Elena, Hugo, Kenny, Jess and Niko are all trying to hold her back from it. Instead, she chases darkness. She follows Villanelle further and further, around a dozen corners in the gloom, and when the light's gone entirely, Eve realises that she can still SEE. Eve is made for the darkness, and Villanelle knows it from the beginning, but Eve is still working it out.

While I don't think Eve has the same compulsion towards violence that Villanelle does, I do believe they are an example of the nature/nurture conflict. Eve was raised by good people in a good place and got a good education, then married a good man and got a good job. "Nice and normal". At every turn, she was socialised and conditioned to mimic morality and empathy, and while Villanelle often acts this out as well, for Eve, the acting is still subconscious. She believes it comes from an innate impulse, rather than years of being told what to do and how to react. Neither Villanelle nor Eve really connect with people effortlessly on an emotional level, but Villanelle accepts that about herself, while Eve can almost pretend it's been bred out of her.

Eve's stable life and her moral framework are dependent on one another, so they implode at the same time. Staying in the realm of 'normal' with Niko necessitates a certain performance of conventional morality, but when Villanelle not only doesn't demand that performance but actually demonstrates an existence without it, Eve finds it harder and harder to maintain her home life.

Once the door has been opened, it can't be closed again. Eve is realising who she is, and more importantly, who she ISN'T. In 205, Martin says, "Don't add. Take away." And this is how we're experiencing Eve's arc. We take away outside pressure to be normal. We take away moral influences. We take away the expectation of goodness. And this leaves Eve looking a lot more similar to Villanelle than she's perhaps ready to admit yet to herself.

It's worth noting how Niko has identified Eve as self-obsessed, because she definitely is. But a lot of that self-obsession manifests in her fascination with Villanelle -- not only because Eve really likes Villanelle and stops caring about what distracts her from wholeheartedly pursuing her, but because Eve RECOGNISES some part of herself in Villanelle, and almost uses her as a mechanism for self-discovery. She watches what Villanelle does, and enjoys it, while being able to maintain the distance that comes from not having physically done it herself.

As I mentioned earlier, we've seen the "descent" arc before in modern television. One that springs to mind in Piper on OITNB. In S1, Piper commits increasingly selfish acts, but still considers herself a good person -- indeed, nothing she does can be really that bad, because she's a Good Person. Over S2 and S3, she continues downwards, until by S4, she's no longer able to reconcile the two versions of herself, so she decides she must be a Bad Person. Because of her pathological need to be liked, this doesn't work for her either, and ultimately, Piper ends up trying to do good things to become a genuinely Good Person.

Eve, I think, originally believed that she would hit some point like this, and bounce up from the bottom. But she won't. Why? Because at first, Eve thinks she needs people to like her, but she actually doesn't. She fires Kenny -- the last of their original team, the last person who knew Old Eve (not counting Carolyn, who has layers I won't get into here) -- and doesn't really miss him, or notice he's gone (eg. calling Hugo "Kenny"; they're interchangeable and missable). She wants Villanelle's attention, but Villanelle 'liking' her is different to the way other people might -- Villanelle wants her, is attracted to the best of the worst in her, is enjoying Eve's emergence from her crucible (or cocoon, depending on how you want to frame it). Eve's primary drive is Villanelle's interest in her, and that's certainly not holding her back in her journey.

Secondly, Eve doesn't actually care about being good. She's had numerous potential "wake-up call" moments -- stabbing Villanelle, facilitating the torture of the Ghost, nearly pushing the guy at the train station, Niko leaving, Villanelle killing someone right in front of her, etc. Yes, she had a minor breakdown over knifing Villanelle, but that was more the idea of Villanelle being gone than the stabbing itself, because the way Eve later says she thinks of it "all the time" doesn't sound as black and white as regretting it in its entirety; like Villanelle, she views it as a point of significsnt connection between them and I don't believe she'd let that go. Regardless, the point is that if she had a real gut connection to her moral compass, she would've bailed. Because really, her original mission is over. She caught Villanelle. She chased her and drew level and she's done.

But Eve's not done, because she's chasing not just Villanelle, but the Eve who can keep pace with her. She's chasing what Villanelle represents -- freedom from a system that doesn't fit Eve, not really.

What we have to remember, though, is that Eve has been socially and ideologically programmed for forty-five years. Most sociopaths lead typical lives and have long-term relationships and never really dig too deep into their psychology. It's doable. This is why Eve is slipping fast but not faster -- she's had a taste of liberation from her constraints, but her skin has long since grown over those shackles, so it's hard not to see them as a part of herself, and difficult to get them off.

But they'll come off, because Eve isn't a quiet woman with an average husband and a respectable government job. Eve is a chameleon, the way Villanelle is, only she's less deliberate and has been playing her character for far longer.

Which leads me to Villanelle's speech on life being boring and why it was so important for Eve to hear it. If we look at classic "chaotic" characters like Eve and Villanelle, they're often motivated by boredom, or rather, the desire to escape it. Villanelle and Eve are stuck in a world designed for other people.

The fact is, Eve has been bored forever. Eve was bored long before the pilot, when she was stuck in a holding pattern with Niko and imagining how she'd kill him, not because she wanted him gone but because it was INTERESTING. When she started keeping track of a female assassin but not even trying to report her, because she wasn't aiming for justice but ENTERTAINMENT.

Another fascinating element of their dynamic is that we as an audience are usually positioned to root for a redemption, but with Eve, we can't imagine anything more disappointing. We don't need her to turn it all around, we need her to dive in. Not only because it makes for a fresh storyline, but because great arcs are about characters finding who they are, and we have already grasped who Eve is. Along with Villanelle, we're waiting on her to realise it and act on it. Eve returning to her normal life would be a wolf among sheep, and I think Eve has gone too far. Not in that she's committed serious crimes she'd always be guilty of -- although she's getting close -- but because Eve is coming to understand she's not who she imagined she was, and any performance after this will be a conscious one. A decision to pretend. And guess what? That'll get boring, too. We root for a darkening Eve because we want her and Villanelle to escape that boredom, and escape it together, and forgetting this ever happened is not a way to do that.

I've smashed this out on my phone because I had a lot of thoughts and I'm not going to proofread because no one will actually read this. But essentially, I think we can expect Eve to continue using Villanelle as a proxy for a little while longer, until she's ready to cut loose her parachute. She hasn't committed to this yet because she doesn't want to forfeit the possibility of her old life to go back to (which is why she was upset over splitting from Niko even though she couldn't care less when he's actually around), but once she is reminded how horribly BORING it was, there'll be nothing to hold her back anymore. Because better to flame and implode than be smothered in a kitschy kitchen with a man you imagine blending up and pouring into a thermos. Better to be true and horrible than be nothing.

If you did read this thank you and I promise I'll stop writing mini essays and go back to regularly scheduled memes in a moment. I don't really do these because they don't interest anybody, but lmao, these two always get me thinking. hmu if you wanna trade theories lol.

#killing eve #ke #eve polastri #eve x villanelle #villanelle x eve #villanelle #oksana astankova #eve x oksana #ke analysis #mine #villainever #dont mind me just speculating #killing eve s2 #killing eve season 2 #villainever writes #villanevest writes

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sloppy-butcher · 5 years

Text

A Wise Man Once Said

A Jeff Johansen Story

Notes: Jeff is Daddy Jesus and no one can change my mind. Rin Yamaoka (The Spirit) is in this so be ready. This one isn’t as emotional or indepth as claudette’s story but i’ve always had the idea that Jeff, along with Ace and Tapp are like the dad squad and Rin is baby. Ash is more of an old man hooker and Bill is... Bill. Jeff needs more fanfiction and so does Rin so why not add ‘em together. I will probs write a Rin specific fic once her lore in the Tome 2 is realeased. Until then stay fresh my dudes

word count: 2782

TW: mentions of blood and death

“Jesus Christ Jeff.” Ace called down from atop the hill, his voice shaky and distraught. “Wh-what the hell?”

Jeff managed to momentarily tear his eyes away from the scene before him to look back over his shoulder at the two other men. Ace was bleeding, the wound in his shoulder from the hook he had just been taken off of was steadily leaking blood and staining his leopard-print shirt but Jeff could tell that it wasn’t the blood loss that was causing the man to look extremely pale and to shiver violently. Next to him, Jeff saw David Tapp, or as they called him, Detective. He looked as equally pale and distressed as the other but managed to maintain a stoic face. Both men looked down at their friend and at the thing he lay atop.

Jeff’s gaze followed theirs and landed back on that pale blue face of the killer nicknamed The Spirit. Ordinarily, Jeff, nor anyone for that matter, would never get this close to the killer as he was now. Or rather they would be able to too. Spirt was notorious for being the most violent and aggressive killer in this Hellscape and the only time one would be able to get this close to her was when she was carrying you off to be sacrificed. It terrified Jeff, staring into the face of the one who had time and time again hunted and killed you and everyone you cared for. And it terrified him, even more, when he realized that she was beneath him, between his legs.

Jeff couldn’t move, couldn’t think and couldn't react. All he could do was stare at the ghost girl and try to remember what made him do what he did. He began to unconsciously memorize her face; white, cloudy eyes surrounded by pale blue skin with lips gone purple. There were bruises all over her exposed skin and Jeff saw many lacerations dotted across her bare chest, all of which were stuck with jutting pieces of broken glass. She looked painful and Jeff couldn’t help but cringe at the thought of how much agony she must be in. But what stuck out the most about her, was the large growing pool of blood collecting around her head.

For a second, Jeff was worried about her. He had always been the type of person who would empathize with anyone hurt and watching as an unsettling amount of brown, dead blood ooze out of the Spirit’s head made Jeff nervous. Can Killers even get hurt? He wondered, can killers even die here? He felt the color drain from his face when he saw her chest stop moving. Very slowly and cautiously, like a kid waiting for their Jack-in-the-box toy to explode, he leaned down over her and hovered his ear just above her mouth and nose. He waited for a moment. Then he was hit with a wave of sudden relief when he felt her breath against his skin. A wise man would have questioned himself for doing such an act, he’d ask himself why he cared for such a monstrous creature only capable of bloodshed and death. But Jeff was a wiser man and instead decided to ignore such questions for now.

“Jeff?” Ace called again. Jeff sat back up and turned around to face him. Both Ace and Detective Tapp were frozen in place, both held the same horrified look in their eyes. Jeff suddenly remembered what happened.

They were in the area known as Disturbed Ward. Everything was normal up until Ace got hooked. Things weren’t going too well for Jeff and his friends, the Spirit seemed to be having a particularly bad day as she showed no remorse for anyone; not that she ever did show any kind of human emotion other than complete and utter wrath to the survivors, this time was just 1000 times worse. She was on a destructive rampage. And Jeff couldn’t do anything about it Everyone was on their last hook before even a second generator was done. Jeff had begun to lose hope, things were so bleak and meaningless, that was until Ace found him. Jeff was healing in a corner, or at least trying to, crouching behind a decrepit wall biting back his cries of pain for fear of the killer finding him. Luckily it was Ace who found him and without even saying a word he took Jeff’s medkit and set to work healing and fixing Jeff’s torn and battered body. When Ace was done he passed Jeff and smile and put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

“We got this.” Ace sounded sure and confident and Jeff felt infected by the man's hope and charisma. He was a good man, they all were. All his fellow survivors were good, honest people who deserved better than this. They didn’t do anything wrong. They didn't deserve this kind of hell. He felt rage ignite within him, rage at those who dared to hurt good people. That rage hit a boiling point when he saw on the hill that the Spirit was going for Ace again, right after he had been unhooked. He felt complete anger towards her. She was so powerful, yet she chose to go after the man who was injured and couldn’t fight back. Jeff felt Ace’s fear and it mixed with his rage. Suddenly his feet moved on their own and everything when white-hot with determination. Next thing he knew, Jeff had the Spirit on the floor. He had tackled her, his large shoulders colliding with her small frame. She didn’t have time to react and both parties where thrown off the hill due to Jeff’s momentum and sheer force. He heard a loud thud when they hit the ground, Jeff landing atop the ghost, and he had managed to cut his face open on her glass shards. When he looked at her again she was not moving, unresponsive and

Something had overcome him. An otherworldly force whispered in his ear to do something, anything in order to help his friend. He was much bigger than her and if he really tried he would easily overpower her. But there was always a barricade between him and that horrible implication. He wasn’t going to do to the killers what they did to them. Jeff refused to stoop their levels of brutality and he vowed never to resort to physical violence. Maybe it was his subconscious way of telling himself that no matter what they did to him, he would always better than them. But the awareness was always there, always sitting at the back of Jeff’s mind that if he really wanted to he could seriously mess up some folks. And watching Ace helplessly run away was Jeff’s tipping point.

He heard Ace mumbling behind him yet his attention remained on the Spirit. Her hair was wispy and was constantly moving, it curled around Jeff's knees which were planted either side of her chest. He could see the blood pool steadily get bigger. It was a lot of blood.

“Jeff.” Tapp was the one to call his name this time and despite his stone-hard tone, Jeff could make out a hint of unease in the detective’s voice. “Come. Let’s leave.” Jeff was amazed by Tapp’s ability to remain so calm and collected while the killer lay dying on the floor. He admired Tapp’s resolve to always look at the bigger picture and he respected the cop. But he could not find the motivation to follow him.

“Jeff,” Tapp called again, wary about raising his voice in case he might wake the Spirit. Of course, that was impossible, she was out cold. But Tapp didn’t know that. Only Jeff could see her blood. “If we move now we can all get out. Let's go. Now. Before it wakes.” Still, Jeff remained transfixed over the ghost.

“Jeff?” After a moment Ace asked. Finally, Jeff buckled.

“Y-Yeah?” He replied without taking his eyes off the girl. He heard Ace audibly sigh.

“Look, man, that was a bloody good move and I can’t thank you enough for saving me but,” he paused and looked to Tapp. The detective nodded his reassurance. “Look we gotta go, man.” There was a moment of silence. Jeff knew he had to go with them, he had to. But he couldn’t just leave her like this. She’d die. He could tell that she would, he could feel it in his bones. He had to think of something quick. Suddenly it came to him.

“A-alright. I’ll be right with you.” In the distance, a gen lit up. They all turned to look at it.

“Looks like they’ve got the right idea,” Tapp said nonchalantly, signaling to Ace to follow him so that he could stitch him up with a medkit. Ace breathlessly chuckled and willingly shuffled after the man. He passed Jeff one last look before disappearing behind the hill. Jeff was alone with the Spirit now and for a brief moment wondered if it would be best to maybe tie her up. He shook his head and instead took his jacket off. The wise man would have let the Spirit die then and there but Jeff wasn’t going to let that happen. He wasn’t going to have her blood on his hands.

“Here,” He unconsciously whispered to her as he balled his jacket up and placed it like a pillow underneath her head. When he pulled away he could have sworn he saw her face scrunch up in pain. He internally apologized for the discomfort. He stayed with her for a second longer, watching and just taking in and processing all the things he had just done. The wind picked up and Jeff shivered against the cold. He gave her one final look before standing and walking after the others.

“Jeff?” Somewhere through the fog, a voice called. “Jeff!”

Jeff blinks and suddenly he finds himself surrounded by a group of friends. There's Ace happily talking to Tapp who looks very annoyed. There was also Adam who seemed to the one who called him and then there was her. His eyes focused on her blue face. She says something but Jeff doesn’t understand.

“She wants to know if you are okay Jeff.” Adam translates for her. He doesn’t respond for a second, his mouth like brink unable to move. He sees her milky white eyes glow with concern for him and he couldn’t help but produce a soft laugh.

“Yeah, I’m alright.” She doesn’t look pleased with that answer. After shaking her head she softly asks him something in Japanese. Adam listens intently before relaying it back to Jeff.

“She asks if you were thinking about that time again?” Jeff slowly blinks and passes her a look of amusement.

“You always seem to know what I’m thinking about huh?” She lights up at the comment and squares her shoulders a little, pleased with her accurate assumption. She doesn't need a translator to understand English, it’s only when she tries to speak that Adam needs to be involved. He knows Japanese and when the three of them first approach the scholarly man with the proposition of being a translator for the girl he readily accepted.

Not long after that trial he and Ace stumbled upon her again. It was outside a trial in the woods during the time in which they were allowed to relax. The two men were looking for supplies when out of the trees she appeared. Both men were startled but she made no move. She offered Jeff his jacket back but he refused. She insisted yelling at him in Japanese but he strongly declined. He told her to keep it and to keep warm, the memory of how cold she was haunting him. She relented and brought the jack close to her chest. She looked so sad and calm and... human. As if on impulse Jeff asked if she’d like to join them. And from that moment onwards they all made an effort to meet up in between trials.

Ace, at first, faked friendliness with her. He’d make half-hearted jokes and he would actively try to avoid eye contact with her. But she was immensely fascinated with the charming man and would laugh at his funny stories and she'd listen attentively to ever gambling advice he’d give her. And, after he realized that she was genuinely interested, he didn’t have to fake anymore. Tapp needed some convincing to first meet her but seeing her stand before him, hands fidgeting like a nervous child in trouble, his stone heart bent slightly and he let her hang around. He’d talk cop stuff with her and when Ace would amaze her with tales of conquest in Las Vegas Tapp would comment about how illegal his activities were. When Ace would try to defend himself against Tapp’s scrutiny, she would act as the jury and would, more often than not, chose in favor of justice.

But she spent most of her time with Jeff. She’d watch him and was greatly intrigued by his tattoos. He’d let her touch them and she would gladly spend hours dragging her fingers along all the lines and words. He let her try on his rings once but they all were far too big for her and would fall off easily. Jeff would tell her about the many rock concerts he had attended and of all the wild adventure he had at music festivals. He told her about what a mosh-pit was and she seemed eager to try it. Jeff laughed and told her it was a little extreme for a small lady like her. That was even he remembered that she was a killer and also probably dead. But she didn’t act like a killer. In these quiet moments, she would smile and laugh like any other normal girl and, maybe Jeff was just getting numb, but she would even look normal.

It was Tapp who suggested getting Adam involved and with his help, they were able to learn about her. Her name was Rin Yamaoka and she was murdered by her upset father. This seemed to anger Tapp who proceeded to go on a rant about domestic violence and how the government needed to protect families who could not fend for themselves.

Rin then told them about her job and subsequently her boss. Well, she tried too. It was too complex and she was talking so fast that Adam couldn’t keep up. What they do know is that if she doesn’t do what she’s told to do she’d be punished. Her boss floods her with anger and rage and it clouds her mind and she can’t see when she's angry, she can’t think. She explained that when Jeff made her head smash onto the floor it pushed some of that blinding rage out of her head, at least until her boss called for her again. She explained that regardless she couldn’t go easy on them lest she loses herself again. The men all understood and took a vow that if they miraculously all ended up in a trial with her they’d willingly die for her. When they said that, she nearly cried.

“Jeff?” Adam called his name. Jeff turned and smiled at the man. Adam blinked and looked over to Rin then back to Jeff. He understood. Adam nodded and stood up and walked over to join Ace’s and Tapp’s conversation. Jeff returned his gaze back to Rin. He felt a smile tug on the corners of his lips as he opened his arm, offering a place for her next to him. She took it without a moment's hesitation.

She snuggled as deep as possible into Jeff’s embrace. He draped his arm around her and he could hear her sigh with content. Her hair welcomed him and gently tickled his face. He chuckled and brought his other hand up to run it through her hair. She closed her eyes and seemed to hum. She liked it when he gave her head pats or when he ran his finger through her hair. She was so small next to him and when she snaked her arms around his belly they barely managed to completely surround him.

Jeff sat there, at peace in purgatory with a killer warm under his arm. A wise man would have run for the hills or would have taken the advantage over the Spirit and finally snuff out her reign of terror. But Jeff was a wiser man and instead let her rest. She was still a kid after all, and from what he has seen, she was not all bad.

#dead by daylight #dbd #dbd imagines #dbd jeff johanson #dbd the spirit #dbd rin yamoaka #soft story #no real purpose for existence #like meee

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kyarymell · 6 years

Text

[Fic] Sugar Hearts; Leon S. Kennedy x Reader

Rating: T

Summary: Even with Raccoon City going to hell, you still end up sharing chocolates with the cute Rookie cop you just met.

Just a quick one-shot for you all, Happy Valentine's Day you love-fools! My boyfriend helped me write this by proxy because I’ve been watching him play the Resident Evil 2 Remake a bunch, giving me details on the universe.

No cover art for now, I’m too tired. xD

You were at the wrong place, at the wrong time.

Finally able to take a break from work, you were staying at your friend’s place in Raccoon City. It was strange seeing the military barricades everywhere, but no-one thought anything of it. Random acts of violence eventually became frequent and suddenly everyone was clamoring to the exits.

In the confusion, you were separated from your friend. Days passed holed up in their apartment and you were getting worried.

Even if looking for them spelled out your certain death, you would try. As you came to realise, the situation in the city was no regular occurrence.

Humans once populating the streets, were now mindless walking shells of flesh. It was straight out of a horror movie. Armed with a melee weapon, your first point of visit was the Raccoon City Police Department.

Thankfully, the reanimated corpses were slow, unlike those seen in movies. Running over to the historical site, you saw that the front gate was shut. Narrowly moving out of the way as a zombie lunged, you tried to find another way in.

Walking through a side alley, you find a gate with loose boards against it. Making sure you don’t get splinters, you quietly pry the nails from the boards. Slipping through the gate, you breathe a sigh of relief as you’re able to get away from the rain.

Stumbling into the main hall, miserable and wet, is when you meet Lieutenant Marvin Branagh. He’s heavily wounded, bleeding profusely from his injuries. You wish there was something you could do, but there’s no first aid kit in sight.

“Didn’t think there were any civilians left alive around here.”

“Then that means...”

“We were overrun a few days ago. I’m sorry. There were so many people coming and going- I can’t say if your friend was here.”

Downcast, you bit your lip. So that’s it then. Where would you even go now? Zombies surrounded the station as far as the eye could see. Your friend... maybe if you weren’t so scared hiding out in their apartment you’d reunite with them.

Maybe-

“You wanted to show me something, Lieutenant?”

Jumping, you were so deep in thought you didn’t even notice the newcomer. Judging by his uniform, he had to be a police officer. He looked young, hair clinging to his forehead from the rain.

This is your first introduction to Leon S. Kennedy, a rookie cop who was late for work and happened to miss the apocalypse. You’re in his company after Marvin fills you in on the situation- finding a way out by opening a secret passageway.

“Strength in numbers. Remember that.”

It sounds surreal, but then again, you’re in a historical building surrounded by zombies. Secret passages shouldn’t phase you by now. Before heading out of the main hall together, the pair of you make introductions and you find out it’s (technically) his first day on the job.

“Damn, that sucks.”

There’s nothing much to say- passing by what seems to be an office, there’s a banner with the words ‘Welcome Leon’ strung on the ceiling. It’s almost sad to think about his department throwing a party for a person who would never come.

“I couldn’t just abandon the other guys out here. I had to see what was going on.”

“I see…”

The way he speaks is with a hint of regret and you’re feeling it- too frightened to find your friend sooner. You wish you had that sort of confidence. The rookie noticed your faraway look and shot you a smile.

“As long as we stick together, we’ll be alright. Hopefully I’ll find some answers as to what’s going on.”

Trying to ignore how attractive he looked when he smiled, you nodded. It would be nice to know who was to blame for everything becoming fucked up like this.

A lot goes down in the next hour. You’ve been given a knife to fend off any attacks and you find it useful when a zombie grabs you from behind. Sticking your knife in it, you shove it away as Leon shoots it squarely in the head.

“Thank you.”

“No problem.”

You’re not sure how much help you can be in this situation, with no combat experience to speak of but you can reach and grab things that Leon is unable to. Things continue like this for a while, collecting keys and finding parts to mechanisms.

Then, Leon’s foot goes through a loose floorboard in the library.

“Shit-!”

With all the gear he was carrying, it was bound to happen sooner or later.

Diving for him, you grabbed his arm before he fell completely. The zombies on the floor below were alerted to the noise, grasping for his foot. He was heavy- but was able to regain his footing before falling completely.

“Thanks. Guess we’re even now. Let’s go before they catch up to us.”

“Sure.”

If you had to be honest, it was good to have someone watching your back, after days of being alone. Leon was considerate, making small talk when he saw how nervous you were. After running from monsters of all types, you felt a little hopeful that you would make it out alive.

Coming to a dark, quiet hallway Leon motioned for you to stay behind him. Trusting his judgement, you were a few paces behind him. Something still didn’t feel right.

“Le-?!”

You were about to call out to him, until you find yourself pinned against the wall. The rookie’s hand was clamped onto your mouth, effectively silencing you. There was a moment of confusion, then you saw a mass of flesh and bone crawl slowly past.

Every time it made a movement, there was a clicking noise across the floorboards. Claws. You willed yourself to stay put, hoping you wouldn’t be shredded to pieces.

The pair of you leaned against the wall, listening for the creature’s whereabouts. Sweat beaded on your forehead as Leon held you tight, his breath hot on your ear. Trembling, you tried to focus on how warm his body was and not how terrified you were.

After a tense moment of silence, Leon released you.

“Sorry,” he whispered, “I’ve encountered one of those things before. They react to sound.”

Nodding, you slowly walked with him and winced when the floor creaked under your boot.

Thankfully, the creature didn’t come back.

It was a blur after that; unlocking the passageway out, Marvin succumbing to his wounds and reaching the parking lot. There was a race against time, reassembling the circuit board to the jail and grabbing the parking key card.

All the while, you were running from some crazed giant mutant who was hell-bent on seeing you both dead. Finally losing the creature and opening the garage door, you were the closest to death you’ve ever been. Caught off-guard, a mutated dog tackled you to the ground.

Desperately trying to get yourself free, you moved to grab your knife and shoved it straight into the creature’s throat. Staggered, you kick it away and Leon is able to shoot it cleanly.

“You alright?”

Your breath is caught in your throat. Were you bitten? Would you become one of those things? Numb, your companion led you by the arm out of the parking garage.

Feeling raindrops on your skin pulls you out of your shocked state. Oh, how you were so glad to see the night sky again.

“I…”

“C’mon.”

Exhausted from the ordeals thus far, the pair of you take a breather after barricading a small newsagency. Setting yourself down on the floor, you’re relieved to be able to rest for once. Wrapping your arms around yourself, you hugged your knees tight.

It’s been horrible from the get go- you’re not sure how much more you can take of this. All the blood, seeing those things rend and tear flesh from each other…

Leon sits next to you, taking you out of your thoughts. There’s a square-shaped box in his hands and you can feel a slight chill radiating off it. The sound of the box unwrapping brings your attention to what’s inside.

Chocolates.

“Found these in the back, I think they’re free from infection.”

There’s a theory between the two of you that the cause of zombies was due to an outbreak.

“You think they’re free from infection?”

As you’re questioning him, he’s already popped one into his mouth. Shocked, you lean over and squeeze on his chin.

“Wait! Spit it out!”

Choosing to ignore your concern, he swallows it down then offers you a piece.

“Have some, they’re pretty good.”

“Leon…”

Frowning, you really don’t have the stomach for this sort of thing but take one anyway. Chewing on the sweet confection, you found yourself yearning for the days when things were normal. Perhaps some sugar was good for you, after the shock you just experienced.

“You’re right. They are good.”

Leon nodded and the two of you sat there for a while, sharing the chocolates. Your thoughts wandered. If only something like this could happen under normal circumstances…

How much more were you to endure before getting out of here? It was frustrating being on the receiving end of the rookie’s kindness all the time.

“I’m sorry that you end up saving me a lot.”

Your companion shook his head.

“You’ve had my back more than once- remember when I got grabbed and you threw me your knife?”

Biting the inside of your cheek, you were unsure of what to say.

“-and those weird puzzles we always seem to come across, you solve them pretty quickly.”

“Well…”

“I’m glad I met you.” his words are genuine and it ignites a heat in your chest.

Would you get another chance like this?

You’re not sure if it’s the adrenaline from earlier wearing off, but you allow your eyes to shut, pressing your lips against his. Subconsciously, your tongue darts out and you taste the lingering sweetness from the chocolate.

Gasping, you pull away from him as if burned.

“I’m sorry! Uh, we just met and-“

He gives you a smile-

“Nah, it’s fine.”

-and leans in to kiss you again.

#resident evil 2 #re2 #resident evil 2 remake #re2 remake #leon s kennedy x reader #leon kennedy x reader

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jswdmb1 · 5 years

Text

Jesus Just Left Chicago

“You might not see him in person

But he'll see you just the same...

You don't have to worry

cause takin' care of business is his name”

- ZZ Top

Like most people, I avoid the topic of religion. Not because I am uncomfortable discussing it, but because most everyone else is. I also don’t do it because getting into a conversation about religion has virtually no payoff. Most folks are set in their beliefs, and that’s fine by me so why waste the time and aggravation going through my beliefs when the other person doesn’t care. The only problem with this approach is that not everyone feels the same. Some like to share their beliefs and I have been provoked into discussions when I don’t agree. What my stance is on the topic, I’ll share in a minute, but I want to first share why I am bringing it up in the first place. It has to do with another taboo topic, death, which I have been grappling with a bit lately and the events of the weekend caused even deeper reflection on the subject.

Even though it has been a couple of years, I think my subconscious is still processing the deaths of my dad and mother-in-law. Before I go any further, if my essay to this point has made you uncomfortable, my ramblings on death aren’t going to make it any better, so you may want to stop here. Anyway, while I have accepted the loss of them both in many ways, the part I have not been able to get over is their actual act of dying. I think that aspect hit me particularly hard because I was present for the removal of their bodies after they died. I wasn’t actually with either when they expired, which I think made it worse. I think at least in that instance you can witness their passing and gain closure to the extent it can be achieved. Simply seeing a dead body does not provide such closure. If you have never been in this position (and I hope you never are), it’s hard to explain what it feels like, but it’s not like an open casket wake because you just see the person in their natural state and it’s harder to take that way. Worse, is that the image sears into your brain and becomes your everlasting memory of that person.This is pretty deep stuff, and I chose to often make the thoughts go away with a stiff drink (or two, or three) and defer the wrangling with my emotions. Once I went sober, I began to work on the issue, but it is too big to handle and I would still push it away. Problem is that it keeps creeping back and the last couple weeks have been a particularly bad stretch.

Within one month the birthdays of both will have passed along with my parents’ 50th anniversary sandwiched in between. It got me back to thinking about them both more and more, but unfortunately it kept coming back to those last images I had of each. Finally, last week, I really started letting my mind go where it needed to go. Without going into details, I spent a lot time reflecting on their deaths and the aftermath I witnessed and did it by reading how others I am familiar with have died. There is a particularly macabre and wickedly fascinating website called findadeath.com that goes into the details of the deaths of celebrities. While I agree that this is a weird and creepy way to spend some time, seeing that famous people end the same way as the rest of us made me somehow feel a little better about what I saw with those close to me. As a matter fact, compared to the horrible deaths of many celebrities (side note: if I ever get famous I won’t go near a bathtub ever again), we were fortunate that our loved ones died peacefully. This really hit home with the tragedies in El Paso and Dayton this weekend. I can only imagine how difficult those scenes had to be for those that were there on the scene and in the aftermath.

How this all connects, I promise I will do soon, but I should probably mention at this point that I do not believe in organized religion of any kind. I was raised Catholic, but nothing about that religion is congruent with my actual views on life, so I spent most of my adult years drifting away until I just quit all together. When people hear that, they automatically assume that I am an atheist. Nothing could be further from the truth. I most certainly believe that a spirit guides this vast universe. I just don’t agree that we are necessarily that important in the grand scheme of things. The universe was here a long time before we came along and it will be here long after we are gone. To assume that the human race is key to the whole thing seems foolish to me. That doesn’t mean that I don’t believe the spirit intervenes once in a while. At a minimum, I believe that certain individuals have been inspired to make a difference. People like Buddha, Mohammad, and Gandhi in the east, or Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King in the west. Obviously, Jesus fits the bill better than anyone.

Clearly, Jesus was a man of compassion and did his best to show others the way, but I think it’s fair to say his message wasn’t too popular at the time. Often, I think (as many do) about how he would react to the issues of modern day man. Specifically, I wonder how he would feel about the subject of guns and how they are used by us to kill one another. I think it would be an interesting sermon, don’t you think? If he were here, right now, and saw what happened this weekend, is there any way he wouldn’t immediately condemn the main vehicle for this death and destruction which are guns? And as bad as those two events are, it is nothing compared to the senseless gun violence that happens in cities like Chicago every day. I just cannot imagine any other reaction by him than utter disgust that we would not just allow such weapons to exist, but encourage their production and use.

And what would he think of those who lead us that neither condemn the use of such weapons to inflict mass suffering or even seem terribly bothered by it? And don’t you think he would have a bit of a problem with the organized religions that fully endorse these same candidates turning a blind eye to their support of guns (along with a host of other mean-spirited planks on their platform). My guess is that he would go back to the temple and throw those money-changing tables over again because the whole thing is sick. It certainly made me sick to hear the news of this weekend’s events when I have been doing everything I can to understand death in the first place. Now we have people willingly seeking death out in the most violent way possible and basically getting a free pass to do it by supporters of guns. It’s disturbing on every level.

I promised that I would connect all of this, and I think I may have failed. These are massively deep subjects and tying them all together is an impossible task. Worse, I am not entirely sure that finally confronting my experiences and feelings about death has done any good. Maybe it is something we simply are not supposed to understand. For now, I’ll try to put it back on the shelf and take it down another time when maybe I am readier for it. What I can’t ignore is the senselessness of guns in this country and the callous support of them by the Republican party (let’s just call them out here, don’t know why I am avoiding it) and the religious organizations that endorse their candidates (I’m looking at you Catholic Church). I guess for now we will have to rely on grass-roots support of parties/candidates that agree that guns are a problem and want to something about it. I will also continue to show my disgust with organized religion, specifically the Catholic Church, by actively renouncing any association I have with them. It may not make me popular with my family and friends that are still strongly Catholic, but I don’t feel as if I have any other choice.

I’m guessing nothing in this post will make me very popular. Certainly, it is not the feel-good stuff you typically see in social media, but I never promised any of that in this forum. At a certain point, after seeing such horrors like continued mass shootings, it needs to be acknowledged and I can’t stay quiet anymore. Politics and religion may be the third rails of our society, but they shouldn’t be off-limits when certain factions are directly responsible for the not just the allowance of death machines but the active promotion that enables their proliferation. You may not agree with everything I write, but hope we can at least agree that needless deaths should be avoided at all costs. If so, please at least consider the topic of gun violence and where the candidates and organizations you support stand on the topic. If you think they are part of the disease and not the cure, then speak up, especially if you are a Republican. Ask why they feel a need to allow these weapons to legally exist and how that position is in any way supporting the public good they have been entrusted with. Also ask your church leaders why they would openly support politicians that facilitate the breaking of the 5th commandment in the worse way possible. Until that pressure is applied, nothing is going to change, and I don’t think we can live with that. And if you are not sure if you should get involved, ask yourself a popular question that has become a cliche: What would Jesus do?

Peace, Jim

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libvrtines · 6 years

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hewwo i’m felix ( 20 , he / him , gmt ) and i just realised my fc has no mf resources that aren’ t from him as a fetus and will therefore b spendin approximately all my free hrs cranking out gif icons , so lets get it * pained laughter * ! this is my boy.. except he’s not my boy and i take no credit for who he is as a person because he’s the personification of a flaming dumpster fire , xu yuxian . his pinterest board is here , i don’t have a full amazing wc page but i do have some wc’s beneath.. so if u jus wanna stick around for that i won’t blame u bc otherwise this is just a Wreck . ( i literally just had to search up my muses name bcs i forgot it but i know he’s a scorpio at least so if that is any indication of how this is gonna be then yeah . this is gonna be the Worst ) . drop a heart if you would like to plot , or just add me up on d*scord no anime pls im christian#1950 for quicker messages ! TW : mentions of drugs , violence , death , blood , manipulation .

scanning XU YUXIAN, they are TWENTY FOUR year old and read as CUNNING but DECEITFUL, which explains why they are referred to as the VARMINT. before virtual reality HE was IMPRISONED FOR THE DISTRIBUTION OF DRUGS and living in QUINGDAO, CHINA. they’ve been said to look incredibly similar to HUANG ZITAO, but they’ve never seen it. in this new virtual world, they plan on DOING ALL OF THE CRAZY SHIT HE'S ALWAYS WANTED TO and hope to NEVER GO BACK to reality.

* BACKGROUND !

tl ; dr . “ the best way to solve a problem is just to eliminate it . " in thick accented mandarin. the roar of a bike kicked to life with exhaust pouring out of the tailpipe and the low graveled hum as it idles way past midnight. charcoal ashes and heavy-lidded eyes. teeth stained red from marlboro's and split, bloody lips. baseball bats through car windows, the scrape of a bic as it lights. the smell of cigarettes burned deep into veins. the drag of a knife light across a throat. knuckles blooming purple pressed into nose bridges, a smile with a pair of pliers knocking against porcelain teeth. THIS vine.

so as formerly stated this is yuxian, the worser half of the xu siblings. disruptive and dangerously reactive to any sort of aggression, he's adapted to a reality reliant on violence and force over patience and rationale. he's an overall shitty guy, with some even shittier habits. street smart and instinctive, his world works in harsh turns and bared knuckled fists.

dropped out of high-school.. was one of those ‘lunch is my fav class’ kids except he got dragged 2 school by the ear when he was younger and then people just. stopped giving a fuck !

so he did what most boys do in big towns with no proper parental guidance: raised a little hell, drank a lot of alcohol when his liver was barely formed, fixed bikes and engines, and beat up a few rich kids who looked @ him the wrong way. speaks like every mf villain in an anime ever. over-enunciates vowels and suffocates his consonants. acts like the stray he p much is w parents as shitty as his.

the xu family had earned themselves a nasty reputation in the community they lived in. they're tough, they're intimidating. they do things their way. xu’s speak with their fists and their knives and their brass knuckles and their bats, not known for thinking out their actions before acting out. violent. horrible. the worst People™.

yuxian’s parents owned and operated a dim-lit, greasy restaurant in the heart of their community, once used to deepen the family's pockets as they sold some choice off-menu items, they were offered a deal by a rich family that bought up their block when yuxian was around 15, selling their enhanced drugs imported from europe behind the grime-coated counter. yuxian saw the $$$ and didn’t think abt how risky it would b, or that they’d be the ones caught red handed if they were ever raided. being able to label himself as a drug dealer just made his reputation in the community go up.. and he was livin la vida loca

along with working as a drug-runner, he liked to fancy himself as something of a debt collector, making sure to "follow up" with anyone who hopes to evade payment to the family. weapons of choice include a baseball bat to the kneecaps and automatic knives. has he actually hurt anybody ?? absolutely Not. he a puthy ass bitch... but don’t say that to his face unless u wanna end up like that ‘what are u gonna do? stab me? guy who then.. got stabbed

basically yuxian will do whatever it takes to get what he wants and to survive. he never considers himself a bad guy; he considers herself bold where others find him brash. he thinks that he's tough where he's really just a brute. he's never a bully, it's never unjustified, but if he ever is he doesn’t think much of it bc he’s never gonna change , ygm ??

he ended up in prison when he started selling drugs to the rich family’s only son, who lbr, became quite a decent friend to yuxian. the son in question had a bad side - effect to the dodgy drugs they were dealing and died of cardiovascular complications. worst thing is that the last memory xian has of the world before virtual reality is waiting for his parents or siblings to come visit him at but being stood up. next thing he knows he’s in a world where his freedom hasn’t been taken from him and he can. he’s Extremely Bitter, and very Chaotic, my guys. so watch out

* PERSONALITY !

honestly and truly, at the end of the day, yuxian is not a good friend to have. xian is not friendly. he will never say the thing you want to hear as opposed to how he is feeling, he'll never sugarcoat anything, he'll never be a listening ear. encouragement and support don't exist here. he is fickle and fair-weathered and will use and use and use until there's nothing left to give.

self-serving and self-invested to his core, he cares so little it's essentially nonexistent for anyone other than himself. not even his family, given the circumstances. he is opinionated and reactive. volatile. if someone is looking for an influence in their life that will give no fucks and encourage even the smallest whispers of an impulse, yuxian is The One™.

every bad influence every mother's warned about, everything you know you should say no to: that's her. he has nothing to lose and lives his life accordingly. those in his periphery, he encourages to do the same. respect and admiration are not easily earned. he needs to be impressed. the grander the debauchery, the more points earned. but of course, don't try too hard.. bc that’s corny and he can sniff someone simply trying to impress from a mile away.

still, to those that he's aligned himself with and chosen to befriend – xian can be loyal the way a snake is to a pack. his trigger-haired temper and baseline defensiveness makes him a good rabid junkyard dog to have in any corner. loyalty is mostly reserved for those who benefit him or to those who serve his best interest – contrary to popular belief, he's not entirely stupid. but definitely has been called a bimbo a minimum of five times in his life.

simply put, he's a thug. his family has terrorised residents and he hasn't fallen too far from the tree, reaping the benefits of everyone's worst expectations. he's vindictive, manipulative, short-tempered and callous. he'll go to extreme lengths – which often include coercion via intimidation or violence – to get what he wants. he has little regard for other peoples' safety, well-being, or feelings. he lives to ruin lives; not in that fuckboy-esque i'm-going-to-steal-your-gf-and-ruin-your-social-life kind of petty bullshit. he IS a fuckboy but that’s besides the point..

every action is based on gut-impulse, acting purely out of unfettered emotion without thinking of what the consequences might be down the line. just pls hate him bc he really deserves it.

speaking of Love.. with a reputation that followed him from a few years into high school for being tht guy who makes u feel good abt urself then leaves u on read, he's learned to embrace it and accept that people think he just can’t commit. xian is not good in relationships, he doesn't quite know how to show affection in a healthy way. he gets possessive and jealous and easily poisons everything from the inside while trying to sort out the subconscious overbearing fear of this person realising how shit he is or actually realising they’re worth more than his half-assed attempts at affection. so instead he keeps it at an arm's distance before it gets that far.

* WANTED CONNECTIONS !

bad influence ( somebody he is corrupting essentially ) friends who like to crash parties / slum around bars perhaps people who he knows from before and were aware of his ugly reputation ?? idk this is gonna be an area only open to a few but if they ever lived nearby or in the city where he did then it’s a possibility ! friends who like to smoke weed behind dumpsters people who he can con someone who tries to see the good in him but beneath the dirt there’s just more Dirt enemies / frenemies violent low-lives who he can connect 2 on an emotional and physical level fwb / one-night stands / some sort of violent dislike in personality which in turn results in sexual tension ?

#virtualintro #why do i never have tags why am i like this #i think the last time i had fully functioning rp tags was like 2014. no lie

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